chapter 5
"I've got it!" Sirius yelled. James and Peter looked up from their game of chess.
"Got what?" Lupin asked, still looking down at his book.
"Our very first prank" Sirius said proudly.
"Okay, go ahead" James said, interested in what Sirius had to offer.
"We'll turn everyone's robes into Gryffindor colours for a day" Sirius said, rubbing his hands together in excitement. Lupin raised his eyebrows.
"And you know how to do that?" he asked. Sirius shook his head.
"No, but how hard can it be? I'll go to the library first thing tomorrow" he said. The others remained silent.
"Are you guys in?" Sirius asked nervously. James and Peter shot each other a look.
"Sure" they said. They all looked at Lupin expectant. The boy started grinning.
"Alright. Black, if you don't go to early tomorrow, I'll join you to the library" he said.
"Yes!" Sirius exclaimed. He closer the curtains around his bed and started changing for bed.
"Checkmate!" he heard Peter yell.
"Well done, Pete" James said. Sirius smiled to himself, it was nice they all made up. Slowly but surely the dorm started to feel like it had the first day they had arrived here. Like home.
"Sirius? Are you naked?" James asked.
"Only if you want me to be" Sirius replied, grinning satisfied when James' head peeped through the curtains.
"Will you join me for rounds again tomorrow?" he asked, ignoring Sirius joke.
"Yea sure, if you manage to get me out of bed" Sirius answered. James gave him a thumbs up and closed the curtains again. It didn't take long for Sirius to fall asleep that night.
"Sirius!" He turned around and found Lupin running up behind him. Sirius waited for the taller boy to catch up to him.
"I thought you'd wake me up" Lupin said, trying to catch his breath. Sirius lifted his hands.
"I tried to!" he said. It was true, after he came back from running with James, he had tried to shake the other boy awake, but all he'd gotten was a muffled "leave me alone." Sirius looked Lupin up and down.
"Your Jumper is inside out" he said. Lupin looked down ashamed.
"No it isn't" he tried. Sirius grinned.
"Yes it is. And you haven't brushed your hair, haven't you?" Lupin quickly combed his hair with his fingers, but it didn't really do much. Sirius tried his best not to burst out laughing.
"Come on" he said, and grabbed Lupins arm. He directed them to the nearest bathroom and used some water to fix the other boys mousey brown hair.
"Much better. Now, fix your jumper" Sirius said.
"Okay, look away" Lupin said.
"Why? We're both boys" Sirius said.
"I- my body, it's eh, weird" Lupin stuttered.
"You have scars, don't you?" Sirius said, to which Lupin turned bright red. Sirius sighed and lifted his own shirt.
"So do I, look." Lupin silently stared at Sirius torso, filled with scars he had gotten during his childhood.
"What happened to you?" He asked. Sirius let go of his shirt and shrugged.
"Same thing that happened to you, I assume. Bad parents." Lupin hesitantly nodded. Sirius wasn't really ashamed of his scars, he had learned they were just part of him now.
"I'll turn around if you really want me to" He said.
"You don't have to" Lupin said, and started taking of his jumper. His scars were different. Sirius couldn't exactly pinpoint how they were different, but they were. He knew better than to say anything about it, though. He silently watched as Lupin got dressed again, making sure his jumper was on the proper way this time.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Ready."
The library was still empty, except for Madam Pince, of course. Protecting her precious books like a lion protecting her cubs. Her eyes followed them as they walked in.
"Where do we start?" Lupin whispered.
"You start looking on that side, I'll start over here" Sirius said.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Lupin asked.
"Anything on colour changing spells, I guess" Sirius replied. Lupin nodded and walked to the end of the row. The two of them started scanning every book, pulling one out every once in a while to see if it was what they were looking for. Time went by quietly and suddenly Lupin broke the silence.
"I think I got something!" He practically yelled it, so they got hard stare from Madam Pince. Sirius hurried over to the other boy, who sat on the floor with a big book, lying open in his lap.
"It's technically a spell for changing the colour of wood, but I reckon we can get it to work on fabrics" Lupin told him enthusiastically. Sirius inspected the page.
"Doesn't seem to hard. I think we should be able to pull it of" He said. They went to check out the book at Madam Pince's desk and hurries to breakfast.
With a loud bang they dropped the book on the breakfast table.
"What's that?" Lily asked.
"It's a book, I thought you'd know" Sirius said, earning him a well deserved grimace.
"Wow Sirius, I didn't know you could read" Mary joked. Sirius leaned over the table to pinch her in the face with a big smile on his face.
"Did you find it?" James asked him. He nodded proudly.
"Well actually I found the book" Lupin said, rolling his eyes.
"Yes but it was my idea" Sirius said.
"What idea?" Lily asked. They all fell silent.
"Nothing" Sirius giggled.
"You guys are being suspicious" Marlene said.
"Whaaaat? Us? Never" James said, stuffing his face with scrambled eggs. He barely even chewed before swallowing it and downing his cup of tea.
"You guys done eating?" he asked the other boys.
"Merlin, James, we just got here" Sirius said.
"Just take some toast with you, we have studying to do before class" James said. Sirius and Lupin exchanged a look as Peter began to collect his breakfast and got up. Sirius sighed and got up as well, way too exited for their very first prank to wait any longer. He tried to keep his cool, but he wasn't great at hiding his excitement. The four of them left the great hall and returned to their dorm. Lupin opened the book on the right page and showed it to Peter and James.
"We just need to change the spell a bit to make it suitable for fabric" Sirius explained.
"How do we know it'll be temporary?" Peter asked. Sirius shrugged.
"We don't."
"Won't we get in trouble?"
"Peter, don't worry so much. No one will know it was us" James said, clearly also exited to pull this off.
"We need to practice the spell though" Lupin said, grabbing one of his shirts from his trunk. Sirius was grinning as they got to work. They had only been learning actual spells for a month, but he felt in his bones they would actually find how to do this.
"I have this book on changing spells" James said, pulling the book from his nightstand.
"Why do you have this?" Lupin asked.
"Got it for Christmas from ma, said it would come in handy" he said.
"She was right about that" Sirius said as he flipped through the book. He scanned the pages, looking for something useful.
"Here, I've got it" he said, pointing at one of the pages. James took the book from him and got to work. It was clear he was a very clever boy, it didn't take him long to figure something out. He even managed the black to stay black, but the rest turned a bright red.
"Perfect! Now how do we make sure we get everyone's uniform?" Sirius asked.
"We'll have to break in to the other houses, probably during the night" Lupin said.
"Breaking in?" Peter said in a high voice.
"How do we do that without being caught?" Sirius asked. James got a wide grin.
"I have something that will help us" he said. He pulled his trunk from under his bed, and got out a silvery cloak.
"What's that?" Lupin asked. James said nothing, but put on the cape. They all gasped in unison. James' entire body disappeared.
"No way" Sirius said.
"Why did you never tell me you had an invisibility cloak?" Peter gasped.
"It's been in the family for ages" he shrugged.
"Dude, this is the coolest thing ever" Sirius said.
"Hey guys, I don't want to be a dealbreaker, but we have to get to class" Lupin said.
"Nerd!" James screamed, but they all got up and walked to class together.
"Lily is so going to kill us" James whispered. Sirius nodded.
"Worth it."
After dinner, the four boys hurried back to the Gryffindor tower.
"Should we all try the spell once more?" Sirius asked.
"I don't have enough spare clothes for that" Lupin said.
"We'll be fine, we'll all be able to pull the spell off" James said confidently as he grabbed the invisibility cloak from his suitcase.
"James, it's not yet midnight, we can't go yet" Peter said.
"How will we get into the rooms at midnight? Now there's still people coming in and out so we better go now" James said. Sirius considered it, James did have a point.
"I agree" he said finally. Peter frowned.
"You don't have to come with if you don't want to, Pete" James said. Sirius had noticed how Peter followed everything James did, so he already knew he would come with them even before he said it out loud.
"Will all four of us fit under it at the same time?" Lupin asked.
"Maybe we should split up" James offered.
"I want to go with James" Peter squealed. Sirius had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Of course he did.
"We have three common rooms to visit, though" Sirius said. James thought for a while.
"Me and Peter do Hufflepuff, you and Lupin get Slytherin and you and me Ravenclaw" he said. Sirius nodded in agreement and so did the others. The prank was his idea, so it was only fair he got to do two of the three rooms and the other two didn't really seem to mind James doing the same. James and Peter were the first to go. Sirius sat on his bed, nervously biting his nails. He felt Lupin stare at him from the other side of the room.
"Got something on my face?" Sirius asked him.
"You're nervous" Lupin said.
"Of course I am, what if they get caught? It's still evening, what if they notice now their robes are changing colour?" Sirius rambled.
"Almost no one was wearing their robes during dinner, and if they do notice, it'll still be funny" Lupin said. Sirius silently nodded.
"I guess you're right." Time went by and Sirius grew more nervous with every minute passing. Why did it take them so long? Did something bad happen? Did they get caught? He bit his lip and watched Lupin cast small charms. Beautiful colours spat from his wand. Sirius was so intrigued by this he hadn't noticed the return of James and Peter.
"Did you do it?" Lupin asked. James grinned widely. Sirius sprung up from his bed.
"My turn" he said and he joined James under his cloak.
"This thing is so cool" he said.
"I know" James whispered, as they walked off.
"Why did it take you so long?" Sirius asked.
"It took a while for someone to leave the room so we could pass" James explained. Sirius nodded, even though James probably couldn't see him. They walked in silence for a bit.
"Can I tell you a secret?" James asked.
"Sure" Sirius responded.
"I'm glad things are okay between you and Remus now. It was getting real tiring, having the two of you fight all the time" James said. Sirius bit his lip.
"I'm also glad" he said. They neared the Ravenclaw tower and waited next to the entrance. They were lucky, it did not take long for a group of students to arrive at the entrance and solve the riddle. The boys quickly slipped into the common room behind them. The ravenclaw common room was nice. It had a warm feeling to it, but a different kind of warm than the Gryffindor room. Not that Sirius knew much about their own common room, he barely ever spent time there.
"How do we do this?" he whispered to James.
"We can just perform the spell from here" James said, and pointed his wand at one of the staircases. The casted the spell and even though they couldn't see if it had worked, Sirius could feel the magic doing its work. He pointed his own wand at another staircase, and together they went through every one of them, casting the spell and transforming the robes of the Ravenclaw students. They were clever, Sirius suspected they would be the first to find a way to get rid of the red colour. They waited for the entrance to open up again and left as smoothly as they had gone in. Once they were back in the hallway, they high-fived each other.
Now all there was left to do was Slytherin. Sirius was kind of nervous to be alone with Lupin again, but after their little moment this morning, he suspected they'd be just fine. It was awkward, though, being pressed up under the cloak against someone he knew did not like him very much.
"Watch were you're going" Lupin hissed when Sirius accidentally bumped him with his elbow.
"Sorry" he whispered back. It took quite sometime of waiting till the wall of the Slytherin dungeons opened up and they could slide in. The room was cold, empty, dark. Sirius had never been more glad not to have ended up in Slytherin. The room was crowded with people, though, but contrary to the Gryffindor room, it was quiet. Students were chatting here and there, but it was so very much divided into little cliques, it was honestly just sad. As quiet as they could, the two of them made their rounds past all and every dorm, hoping their spell worked out the way they had intended. The entire way back to the Gryffindor tower, neither of them said a word until James welcomed them back.
"How'd it go lads?" he grinned widely.
"I think it worked" Sirius said, now also grinning.
"How'd what go?" a girls voice sounded and Sirius caught James quickly fixing his hair before turning around.
"Lily" he smiled brightly, but the tiny redhead just stared the four of them down, arms crossed and lips pressed into a thin line.
"How'd what go?" she repeated, her eyes darting down to the invisibility cloak Lupin was still holding.
"Nothing" Peter said in a high pitched voice.
"Then why were you out after curfew?" Lily asked.
"Evans, come on, let us have some fun" James grinned, but Lily did not seem to find it funny at all.
"Next time I'll tell McGonagall" she said, turning around and walking away. Sirius saw James swallow before turning back to them.
"We should get some sleep, big day tomorrow" he said, but he sounded rather unsure.
Excitedly the four of them walked to the great hall the next morning. It was still very early in the morning, they were the first to arrive, so they took a seat close to the entrance and Sirius absently chewed on a piece of toast until students started arriving. The first ones were actual Gryffindors, from a higher year and it actually took quite some time for people from other houses to arrive, which Sirius suspected had to do with their uniforms. Then, eventually, the first students from other houses came walking in. Sirius recognized a group of Hufflepuff girls from their year, they had herbology together, walk in, dressed in black and red and yellow. Sirius excitedly nudged James, who had not seem them yet. The other boy grinned and focussed his gaze on the entrance again. Soon enough the hall was filled with red and yellow, a few students had been smart enough to just put on other clothes, but most people had class directly after breakfast and had to be in uniform.
"Potter" Lily's voice cut through the laughter rising from the Gryffindor table.
“This is your doing, is it?" she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Hey! Don't give him all the credit" Sirius muttered, causing Lily to send him an angry look.
“Come on Lils, you have to admit it is impressive" Marlene cut in. Lily crossed her arms, staring down at her breakfast.
“Possibly" she said. Sirius looked over at the teachers table, where half of the staff members looked around looking very confused and the other half were hiding behind their hand, trying not to show they found it rather amusing. McGonagall was one of them. It was very funny, seeing all the bitter Slytherins looking angry at, Hufflepuffs laughing at it all and Ravenclaws already looking for a counter curse.
The classes that day were very chaotic, most people couldn't yet tell what house people were really from so the point system got very fucked, much to Sirius' pleasure, because Gryffindor gained a whole lot of points that weren't for them. It was not until dinner that the spell wore off and all robes returned to their normal colors. Sirius was disappointed to see this, but maybe it was for the best. He did feel the prank had brought the four of them closer together, which he was very happy with. Sirius went to bed feeling very fulfilled that day.