Of All the Stupid Things to Do...

"And where do you think you're going, James Potter?" hissed Lily, cornering him outside the portrait hole. James once again cursed the sorting hat for putting him in the same dorm as her... he would much rather have been a Ravenclaw, like the rest of his family.

"I," he said, drawing himself up to his full height and stepping closer to her, "Am going to meet with a teacher." It wasn't strictly true, but James figured that Eclypsia was close enough that he could get away with it.

Or not. "I'm sure you are, Potter. Specifically, you're going to see Professor McGonagall about your detention."

"Detention for what?" James smirked slightly and got as close into her personal space as he could. The better to seduce you with, my dear...

"Being out after curfew," spat Lily. "You were coming out. I was about to head in."

James glared down at her and found himself reconsidering the tactical advantage of using physical presence to disconcert her, seeing as it didn't seem to be working and gave him a rather distractingly good view of her-

"Ten points from Gryffindor for being out after curfew, Mister Potter. I told you to take your responsibilities as a Prefect more seriously, did I not?"

"Yes, Professor," James grinned cheekily up at Professor McGonagall as she stepped from behind a pillar. "That was why I was doing it at night, Professor, I didn't want the first years to know about it-bad example and all that."

A smile twitched at the corners of McGonagall's mouth, but she reined it in before it could show itself.

"I want both of you inside that common room in under a minute, or you both have detention together. And if I should happen to pass by here after I have taken the twenty points from Gryffindor and find you standing here, it will be twenty each. Good night."

"Professor!" called Lily, "I thought you only took ten points from Potter."

McGonagall looked disapprovingly over her glasses at them. "I took ten from Potter for being out after curfew and I'm taking five from each of you for sexual intimidation. Now good night, Miss Evans."

If it hadn't been for the ten points, the sight of a mortified James Potter silently mouthing "sexual intimidation" over and over again might have been worth it.

~~~~

"-And then she started laughing at me! Not out loud-Lily Evans would laugh out loud for anything-but still! I could tell she was laughing."

It didn't help that he had probably deserved it.

"Have you thought of a way to get back at her?" asked Eclypsia lightly.

James nodded and swallowed a biscuit. "We've still to hammer out the hexes we're to use, but we have everything else worked out. It should be interesting-we'll even manage to get Sirius to pull off that dare that was handed to him a while ago."

"Which is?" prompted Eclypsia before carefully setting down her teacup.

"He's to spend an entire night in the girls' dorm. Specifically the Gryffindors in our year." James took a gulp of tea.

"Oh dear. And how does this affect the unfortunate Miss Evans? She has flunked her latest test," Eclypsia added.

"Really?" asked James hopefully. "Well, I'll tell you after we pull it off. It's a good thing Peter's dad never asks why we want the things we ask him to send us, though..."

~~~~

Slowly, slowly... it was a trick of balancing all the proper factors. Slide the weight onto the forward foot, and off the back foot... slowly slip the back foot in front of the forward foot... reach up, standing on tiptoes... stretch the scissors carefully upward...

*snip*

A long lock of red hair fell silently to the floor as Remus pulled the cloak completely over him. The Room of Hanging Chairs, although extremely comfortable, was distinctly hard to navigate with detection, given that the only place to walk was on the back of other chairs.

His target never woke.

~~~~

"Peter?"

"Hmmmm?" Peter made an indistinct noise as he crumbled lacywing flies into the pot.

"Do we have it all?"

Peter nudged the bag by his foot. "Right there. I checked the list five times, James; the only thing we're short on is time. If the potion takes a month to brew and the girls take a month to get over it, we're going to have to move if we want dates to the winter dance."

There was near universal groaning in the small cubboard under the stairs. "Lord," Sirius groaned, "don't tell me they're doing that again?"

"I'm afraid so, although I really don't see what the problem is. It's Moony and I who have trouble getting dates, not you or James."

"You do just fine, you just don't want people to know about it... and what makes you think I have it easy?" asked James.

Remus looked at him and began ticking points off on his fingers. "Rich, old family, Quidditch player, those eyes, that tan, the hair that just begs to be played with, the body, funny, smart, daring..." He looked down at his hands and realized that he'd run out of fingers, then shot James another look.

"Let me rephrase my question. What makes you think it's easier to be inundated with girls that want you without knowing anything about you than it is to ask one?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "James, have you ever done it? May I ask you to see if you still need that answered after you have?"

"Finally!" Peter slammed the lid down on the couldron. "You have no idea how hard that stuff is to make in bulk, do you?"

"Do we really need it in bulk?"

"Well, since the terms of the dare are that Sirius spend at least all of curfew there, and since we can't risk you getting caught..." Peter's voice trailed off.

"But that would be two doses, wouldn't it?"

"No, James." Peter smiled a little condescendingly.

"No?"

"No. It wears off after a bit. It's at least ten."

"Oh." James threw a wary glance at Peter, and then asked, hestitantly, "How many of those will I have to take?"

"Only two, James. After that, we pretty much want it to wear off."

James looked considerably relieved.

~~~~

"You WHAT?" James looked at Sirius as if he had gone insane, which he was beginning to believe he had. "WHO did you ask to the dance?"

"Lumiosi," Sirius repeated, grinning.

"She's nice enough," commented Remus.

"She's one of The Girls!" Was the whole world going crazy?

Both Remus and Sirius looked startled and then began laughing. "She isn't," said Remus. "You're thinking of the wrong Lumiosi."

"Oh." James sat down again, and pulled his Arithmancy book back onto his lap. "Which one then?" The other Lumiosis were generally all right. Lumiosis were mostly Ravenclaws, with several Slytherins thrown in on one side of the family and a handful each of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in the other branch. They also generally won the prize for "Most Cousins In Hogwarts". No one that James knew of had done an exact count, but since for some reason there seemed to be a larger portion of women in the family than men, and no pure-blood would ever hesitate to marry a Lumiosi no matter how they felt about dark magic, there had to be at least fifty of them in the students alone, and three of the faculty were related, too, although only one actually bore the name.

"Kawaiia. She's in Slytherin."

"Is she the one who looks like she's from India?"

Sirius nodded. "Her mother's one of the Lumiosis who just kept the name, and her father is actually from some Pacific Island or other."

Peter smiled. "You're lucky. She's quite pretty, and bright, you know. I'm going with Lissa Jolney."

Sirius frowned. "Rather plain girl? Ravenclaw?"

"Aren't all Jolneys?" joked Peter. "Yes."

"Good move," commented Remus.

"Why?" James had just been thinking that it was just like Peter to ask a plain girl when he could have had any girl in the school go with him. He was simply to sneaky to do it-if he asked one of the prettier girls to go with him, they might figure out that he dated those girls, and he wouldn't have his "innocent" air that always charmed them into the palm of his hand.

"She can dance," said Remus, without looking up. "She's a very, very good dancer."

James made an indistinct noise and tried to go back to reading, but his concentration was gone. Finally, he closed the book and set it to the side, pulling out a deck of Exploding Snap cards. "So who were you planning to ask to the dance, Remus?"

"I... wasn't, really."

Remus had been rather quiet on the subject of girls recently... James shoved his glasses up his nose and cocked his head to the side. "Why not?"

Remus started on the Arithmancy problem James had just given up on. "I... I'm not..." He dithered a bit more, then put his quill down with more force than necessary. "I can't ask a girl to go with me if she doesn't know what I am, James! It's not right to do that, not to anyone."

James gave him an even look, understanding his issue. The trouble was, not everyone cared that people were werewolves-after all, look at Sirius and Peter and him. In fact, Sirius' reaction had been something along the lines of, "Oh boy. That's has got to be the coolest thing I have ever heard of." Finally, James said, "Why don't you ask someone who you don't like all that much anyway? That way, neither one of you will be hurt."

Remus smiled up at him. "I couldn't do that, James," he said gently. "There's someone I do like, who is... not interested."

"Are you sure?" James asked. "Because, really, I'd do whatever it takes to make you happy. All of you, really. It's worth it to have friends."

Remus smiled sadly. "I'm sure, James."

James looked at him, then said, in an effort to lighten the mood, "Well I certainly hope it's not Lily. She's going to absolutely loathe you after this."

Remus looked so surprised that James immediately felt less guilty; obviously, it wasn't Lily.

After a bit, Remus asked, "Who will you take out?"

James thought for a bit. "I don't know," he said. "I was thinking of taking a Gryffindor girl, but I hadn't really decided which one... and I might not be able to, depending on how they react to my vengeance."

Peter's head snapped up from his Transfiguration essay. "Oh my god..." he breathed.

It was a tone that they all knew, and three heads, two black and one brown, turned towards him in alarm.

There was an unnatural stillness for half a moment, and then Peter said in a choked voice, "Potion. Brewing. Next step in five minutes. Cloak."

James shook his head, and said hoarsely, "Rat."

Wormtail was out the door in under five seconds, and made it to the cubboard with half a minute to spare.