Eyes as Green as a Fresh Pickled Toad

Part Two: Sixth Year

Chapter Five - Melodia

"Hola, mis amigos! Como estan?"

"Excuse me?"

"Yo tuve un verano buenismo! Comparados con otros, este fue el mejor!"

"Come again?"

"Ustedes tienen Chicles? Ya tengo hambre. Pues, Chicles nollenan, pero ya tengo hambre de todas formas."

"Well, that proves my theory. She really is insane."

"Yep."

"Yeah."

"No kidding."

"I agree."

Melody Cauldwell glared. "Oh, come on! I'm not that bad, am I?"

Lily and the Marauders looked at each other and considered. "Yeah," they said in unison.

She proceeded to roll her eyes at them before taking a look around Platform 9 and 3/4. It was packed, as usual, with students running around trying to drag their trunks onto the train single-handedly, chatting with friends, and searching for lost pets; parents yelling over all the noise to remember to brush or looking around in awe, providing they were Muggles.

Lily Evans, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew were standing in a small cluster next to her, trying to get all of their things sorted out because, as Melody had rushed over to greet them, she had also inadvertently knocked over Peter's and James's trunks and they had both spilled open.

"I think those belong to James-" [holding up bright orange socks]

"Don't be daft, Remus, they've got Peter's name embroidered on them-" [snatching them away]

"Cute boxers, James, I love the little snitches-" [holding up a pair and wiggling eyebrows suggestively]

"Oh, shut up, Lily, and give me those-" [going quite red]

"That's my book, there-" [pointing]

"'Love Potions of the Eighteen Hund-'" [examining the cover]

"Do shut up, Sirius-" [Peter, red in the face]

"Is this a scented letter? 'Dear Jamsie'-oh, how cute James, can I call you Jamsie too, or mmpff-" [voice muffled as James jumps onto his back]

"'Dear Jamsie'? Remus, you give me that letter right now-" [Lily, snatching the letter away and beginning to read it quite sourly]

"Oh, Lily, don't read that, please-" [pleadingly]

"I had fun at the water park? James-"

"Oh, come on, Lily, give it back, please-"

"Oh sure, you'll tackle me but you can't tackle her-" [ annoyed]

"Precisely! Now, Lily-bean, don't-"

"Stop calling me Lily-bean! Aaack! You kiss like an angel? What in the bl-"

"Lily, please-"

"Oh, don't you even-"

At this point, the rest of Peter's and James's stuff had been put in their proper places, and everyone was avidly watching the show.

"Does anybody have some popcorn?" Sirius asked as Lily and James went off at each other like fireworks.

"No," everybody else said.

"Oh, wait a minute!" Melody said, smacking a hand to her forehead. "I have some caramelos de todos los sabores with me! I completely forgot! I can't believe I was asking you all for Chiclets earlier, when I had this whole-" she dug through her pockets and produced a very colorful box proclaiming: caramelos de todos Los sabores on the front.

"Oh, is that what you were babbling about?" Remus asked. "I could have sworn you were asking for a flying motorcycle..."

"What in the world is a caramelos de todos Los sabores?" Sirius asked as Melody passed the box to him.

"It's caramelo, if you're talking singular,"-he rolled his eyes-"and they're Every Flavor Beans," Melody informed him. "It's written in Spanish."

"Apparently," Sirius said, popping a bean in his mouth, but he spit it right back out again. "Eew...it's tar!"

* * *

Lily refused to talk to James for the whole of the train ride, and kept shooting him evil glances, but apparently they had made up by the time they got to school because Sirius and Melody caught them kissing just before they entered the Great Hall.

The Sorting Ceremony was rather boring, as usual, and the feast was quite chatty,-two first years had sat down on Lily's left and had dozens of questions-but all in all Lily was quite tired and was very relieved when the desserts had finally vanished from their plates and Dumbledore rose to make his start-of-term announcements.

"First of all, I would like to say welcome, welcome, welcome to all of the first years. We're looking forward to a wonderful year at Hogwarts.

"Second, it would do well for all of the first years-and some of the older students as well-to know and remember that the Forbidden Forest is out-of-bounds to all students, and that the Whomping Willow Tree is a rather dangerous plant, so if, by chance, any of you try to make a game out of touching its trunk, you should be prepared for some time with Madam Pomfrey in the infirmary and Mr. Filch in detention.

"Now, with that out of the way, let us sing the school song and then it's off to bed!"

Lily rather halfheartedly sang the school song, choosing a fast tune so she could get it over with quickly, and soon everyone was done except for five rather annoying Gryffindors, who were singing along to a breezy reggae rhythm and pounding on the table with their silverware as though it were a xylophone or bongo drums.

"Oh, ya man, learnin', learnin' till our brains...all rot!"

Dumbledore applauded cheerily, and then waved them off to bed.

Lily lead the first years rather sleepily behind her, muttered the password-"poppycock"-in front of the entrance to their common room, directed the first years to their dormitories, and then gladly trudged to her own and collapsed onto her four-poster, dead to the world.

* * *

They got schedules the next morning at breakfast. There was nothing groundbreaking, except that the Gryffindors now had Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins instead of with the Ravenclaws, and Ravenclaw and Gryffindor now shared Potions.

The only other point of interest that morning was the fact that, in the middle of breakfast, James and Sirius managed to make all of the seats of the chairs at the Gryffindor table suddenly disappear, causing everyone to fall to the floor and the two Marauders to get a detention apiece.

* * *

"So now that you're dating James, are you going to be all obsessed with him and neglectful of your school work and stuff?" Mimi asked, plopping down in a bean bag chair next to Lily.

Lily hid her red face behind her Potions book. "We are not dating!"

Mimi rolled her eyes and smiled. Lily glared over the tattered cover.

"And," she added, rather hotly, "judging by this book in front of my nose, I don't think my studies will be suffering too much from my non-dating-James status."

Mimi rolled her eyes again. "Right, Lily, whatever you s-"

"Lily! Ayuda! Ayuda! Necesito tu ayuda! Los Merodeadores me estan volviendo loca! No puedo saber que esta pasando! Estan planeando algo, sin mi, y-"

"Whoa! Melody! SLOW. DOWN."

Lily and Mimi were both staring at Melody, who had burst into the Ravenclaw Common Room, babbling hysterically in Spanish. Melody glared at them.

"No es 'Melody'. Es 'Melodia'!" Melody declared.

Lily and Mimi gave her looks. "Melody," they said.

"Melodia!" Melody insisted.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Whatever, just shut up, sit down, and start speaking English!"

"Sorry," Melody said. She plopped down on a bean bag chair. "It's just...you know that the Marauders were leaving me out of something last year, right?"

Lily and Mimi nodded.

"Well, they're doing it again!"

"Good!" Lily said. "You won't be blowing up the school again!"

"Li-ly!" Melody whined.

"Wha-at?" Lily whined back, mocking her.

"You have to help me!" she whined some more.

"Help you do what?" Mimi jumped in.

"Sabotage them!"

"Uh, no," Lily said.

"Well, we at least have to find out what they're doing!"

"No, we don't have to find out anything. Melody, don't you-"

Melody ignored Lily and interrupted her. "Yes, we do! It's a matter of life and death!"

"Sounds more like a matter of sanity and insanity to me," Mimi said, looking at the crazed look on Melody's face.

Lily giggled, and Melody glared at her.

"Come on, you guys! Don't you want to get back at the Gryffindors for that snowball fight last year?"

There was a spark in Lily's eyes, but it died out rather quickly. "That includes you, beanhead," Lily reminded her, poking Melody on the arm.

"Oh yeah."

Mimi and Lily giggled.

"Well, Lily, couldn't you just sweet-talk it out of James or something? I mean, he is your boyfriend, and-"

"JAMES IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND!" Lily yelled, a shadow passing over her face. She stalked off to her dormitory, but Mimi and Melody followed her.

"Can't you ever give me two moments of peace?" Lily asked, drawing the curtains around her four-poster and burying her face into a pillow.

"No," they answered back.

"Look, Lily, boyfriend or not-" Mimi began, but Melody cut her off.

"Oh, please, he is too her boyfriend, they just refuse to admit it."

"HE IS NOT!" Lily yelled, her voice muffled. She could envision Melody rolling her eyes.

"Come on, Lily, you couldn't go half a week without kissing him!"

"I could too! Besides, I don't kiss him-he kisses me!"

"Yeah? Well you don't seem to protest too much."

Lily felt her face getting hot. "I slap him sometimes!"

Her friends giggled.

"Lily, why don't you just try and ask him?" Mimi suggested. "It couldn't hurt, and besides, maybe then Melody would stop speaking in Spanish so much."

"Estoy ofendida," Melody declared, and Lily heard her start to leave. She tried to figure out what Melody had just said, but shrugged and gave up. She turned over and called out, before Melody got to the door:

"Fine, I'll ask him!"

"Really?" Melody called.

"Oh, sure, why not?"

"Yay!" she squealed. "Thank you!"

Lily heard her skip out of the dormitory and rolled her eyes.

Mimi poked her head around Lily's curtains. "He's still your boyfriend," she said, before turning and running out of the dormitory. Lily's face got red and she sat up.

"He is not!" she called after her friend.

But she fell back on the pillows, and smiled.

* * *

Blue bubbles floated in front of James's eyes, and he turned to see Lily smirking at him.

"Lily-bean!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up.

"I am not Lily-bean," she said, poking him in the back with her wand. James smiled and kissed her on the nose.

He had been walking down to the lake where Remus and Peter were terrorizing the giant squid, hoping to join in on the fun and trying to find out where Sirius had disappeared to.

"Hey, do you know where Sirius is?" he asked. Lily shrugged and eased herself into his arm, which automatically wrapped itself around her waist. It was a perfect fit.

"Probably off terrorizing some poor Slytherin first-years."

"First years? Probably seventh years, if they're Slytherins. There's not much difference, really."

Lily laughed and tugged at his ear, turning his head towards hers. "That's mean."

James rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you're defending them now!"

Lily wrinkled her nose. "Severus Snape? Never!"

"So, Lily-bean,"-Lily glared-"what's up?"

She looked up. "The sky."

"Thanks."

"Sure! Anytime."

"Lily-bean, I am not as stupid as you look, so if you don't tell me why you came out here I will be forced to bombard you with blue bubbles for all eternity, bwa-ha-ha!"

"Don't make me slap you, James."

"You wouldn't slap me!"

"Oh no? I've done it before!"

"Only when I kiss you."

"Well kiss me and then I'll have an excuse."

James raised an eyebrow. "Are you begging?"

Lily blushed. "No."

"Do you want me, Lily Evans?"

Lily's face went about ten shades redder. "Aack! No!" She covered her face with her hands.

James laughed and removed her hands from her face, then kissed her. Lily flushed more, if that was possible. James pulled back and studied her.

"Your face is as red as your hair," he told her.

"Augh!" Lily buried her face into his shoulder, letting her hair fall over it and taking in his smell. James smiled.

"You smell good," Lily said, falling into a sort of trance.

"Um...thanks? I did shower this morning."

"It's not that. I mean, besides the soap. It's just...you. It smells like..."

"Like what?"

Lily couldn't quite place a finger on it. It wasn't really one distinct smell, or even two or three distinct smells. It just smelled like...

"Home," she said softly.

"Excuse me?"

"Home," she repeated, a little confused herself. "You smell like home." She slipped back into her trance. "When we get married, I want our house to smell just like this."

James froze. Lily suddenly snapped out of her trance, eyes wide open. "Oh, no," she breathed. She pulled away and looked at him, both hands over her mouth. Her face flushed again, and she ran past him, back up to the school.

"Lily..." James called rather weakly after her, but even as he did so, he wasn't really sure what he wanted to say.

He was very, very confused.

* * *

"You, Sirius Black, are going to tell me what is going on!" Melody declared, crossing her arms and looking at him menacingly.

She had him cornered. They were in a corridor somewhere in one of the farthest wings of the school. Sirius was backed into a corner, looking rather nervous and actually starting to sweat under Melody's withering glare.

She was seven inches shorter than him, and had to look up to glare at him, especially when they were standing close together, like right now. It wasn't that Melody was short; Sirius was just tall. Melody was actually tall by girl standards, but Sirius was 6'2" and had a heck of an advantage.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sirius lied, only half-convincingly.

"You know perfectly well what I am talking about! You and the Marauders have been sneaking around without me!" Melody accused, getting--if possible--closer, and poking her finger into Sirius's chest. She stood on tiptoe to get closer to eye level with Sirius. "And you," she informed him, "are going to tell me exactly what has been going on!"

"Nothing has been going-" Sirius began, but at a rather hurt look from Melody he stopped and sighed. "Okay, fine, something has been going on, but I'm not allowed to tell you what it is, and under no circumstances would I break the Marauder Code of Honor." He slapped his hand to his chest rather dramatically, nearly jamming Melody's finger.

"Ow!" Melody yanked her finger away. "Thanks a lot, Sirius," she said, massaging her finger and glaring at him.

Sirius shrugged. "Sorry! It's a rule."

"I bet Peter, that scab-faced little wart-head is in on this, isn't he?"

Sirius shrugged helplessly.

Melody stomped her foot, which was very dangerous, as she was still standing rather uncomfortably close to Sirius and her foot nearly landed on his.

"This isn't fair! Don't you people trust me? I mmpff-" Sirius covered her mouth with his hand. Melody licked it. His hand went away.

"Eew! Melody, that's disgusting!" Sirius said, wiping his hand on his robes. "I can't believe you just did that!"

"Well then don't put your hand over my mouth!"

"I won't, believe me!"

As soon as Sirius had gotten over it, Melody grabbed the front of his robes and yanked his face down to hers. "Sirius, just tell me what's going on! I can't stand it anymore!"

Sirius winced. "You don't have to be so violent!" He detached Melody's hand from his robes.

Melody sighed, looking defeated. Uh-oh. Here came the part Sirius hated the most. Whenever he fought with a girl, she would wear herself down enough that she just deflated into nothing. And then Sirius would lose the fight.

"Fine!" she said, regaining her rather murderous attitude. "Then I'll just come back and squeeze it out of you later!"

Sirius smiled. Melody wasn't really like other girls.

"What are you smiling about?" Melody demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"You don't always have to be so tough, you know," Sirius told her, putting a hand on her waist.

Melody blinked. "Well sure I do!" she said, trying to sound like her normal, violent self, but it came out a little high pitched.

Sirius smiled. Melody's heart skipped a beat and started pounding faster. "If I wasn't tough, then I'd have guys hitting on me all the time, and I'd have to kick their asses." She slipped her arms around his neck. "It saves me a lot of time this way."

Sirius kissed her once, very softly, on the lips. Melody closed her eyes and considered for a moment, then very hesitantly kissed him back.

* * *

James was very, very confused. He was sitting on the lawn next to the lake while Peter tickled the giant squid, trying to explain things to Remus.

"She was talking about how I smelled," James said, shaking his head. "It seems really weird now, but at the time it was...I dunno, sweet or something."

"So then what?" Remus asked, watching Peter run away from a very agitated giant squid who was tired of having its tentacles played with.

"Then she was talking about getting married! I can't figure her out! She's insane, Moony! Insane!"

Remus smiled at the nickname. "I don't know what to tell you, Prongs. You're probably right, though."

"I am?"

"Yeah. She's insane."

* * *

Lily was crying, rather irrationally. "Mimi! I-don't-know-what-to-do!"

Mimi was trying to comfort her, but it wasn't really working. "Oh, come on, Lily, it couldn't have been that bad!" she soothed. "Just let things cool down for a couple of days! It'll be okay!"

"But-it's-not-that! We didn't--*sob*--have a--*sob*--fight or anything! We just-" she broke down and started crying again.

"Oh, Lily!" Mimi hugged her and grabbed a tissue, which Lily gratefully accepted and blew her nose with.

"Now, calm down and tell me what happened."

Lily nodded and told her about it as best she could, and then started crying again. "I made a complete fool out of myself!" her cheeks flushed just thinking about it. "He'll never be able to look at me again without thinking about how much of a complete idiot I am!"

"Oh, come on, Lily, it's not as bad as all that! Just avoid him for now, and things will get better. I promise you." Mimi smiled at her hopefully, and Lily nodded, although she didn't look like she quite believed her.

* * *

With classes in session again, things started to move very fast for the sixth years. They didn't have any exams to study for, excepting those at the end of the year, because O.W.L.s. were out of the way, and N.E.W.T.s weren't until next year, but the teachers seemed to enjoy pushing them anyway.

"You need to learn absolutely as much as you can this year!" McGonagall had announced in one class period. "The things you learn this year will be absolutely crucial, as next year some of you may miss proper lessons!"

Everyone knew what she was talking about, of course. Seventh years who were interested in Auror positions had chances to take a three-month Auror "internship" or "training session" for three months during seventh year, which began in late January and ended in early May. You had to be a Prefect, at least, to qualify for a spot. The Head Boy and Head Girl almost always went, even if they weren't serious about becoming Aurors.

Lily herself was planning to go--unless, of course, James was, in which case she'd stay at school, because she was sure she'd never get over her humiliation.

That is, until October 2nd.

* * *

Lily and James had barely spoken a word to each other for nearly a month, so when she got his owl, she was rather surprised.

Meet me by the lake at 8 o'clock.

-James

"Well, that's not very specific, is it?" Lily murmured, but she folded up the note and went out to the lake at 8 o'clock just the same.

He wasn't very hard to find; he was standing there, all alone, with his back turned to her. She walked up behind him quietly, and he turned before she got a chance to say anything. She smiled just at the sight of him. She felt like she hadn't seen him for centuries, and her heart sang just to be near him again.

He handed her a single flower--a rose, in full bloom. It was exquisite. The petals were blue and the stem was silver, no doubt a simple Coloring Charm, but it didn't matter to her.

"It's beautiful," she said softly, holding it delicately in her hand and minding the thorns.

"It won't last very long," James said, almost apologetically. "It's just a regular rose. And the thorns-" he seemed in a rush to apologize for it, but Lily took his hand and he stopped.

"It's beautiful," she repeated, and looked into his eyes, smiling softly, if that was even a way you could describe a smile. He kissed her, and then spoke.

"Whatever that was, at the beginning of the year-" he began, and Lily's face burned. She looked at the ground fiercely.

"Let's just forget it ever happened," he said. Lily looked back up at him, her face cooling down.

"Deal," she said, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

* * *

"Melody, for the last time, you do not need to know what is going on with the Marauders!"

"But I do! And you promised you'd ask James, remember, Lil?"

"Lil? Since when do you call me Lil?"

Melody slammed her hand into the table. "Since right now! Please, Lily? Come on! Sirius wouldn't tell me, but James likes you a lot more than Sirius likes me-"

At this Lily snorted and rolled her eyes.

"What?" Melody demanded.

"Please," Lily said. "You act as if you two aren't head-over-heels in love with each other."

"Yeah? Well, you and James act as if you don't spend all of Potions class staring at each other with googly eyes!"

Lily's mouth fell open. "We do not!" she sputtered, spots of color appearing in her cheeks.

Melody smiled. "Oh, you don't think so? Honestly, I think Professor Thorne's ready to hang himself!"

"Oh, shutup!"

"Not until you ask him!"

"I'm not going to-"

"Ladies!" a shrill voice interrupted their not-so-quiet argument, and, with a start, they realized they were both in the library and that a great many people were staring at them.

"S-sorry, Madam Pince," Lily stammered.

"Sorry, indeed! Now would you kindly get out of my library and not come back for a week, or I will be forced to take extravagant amounts of points from both of your houses!"

"But Mad-" Lily began, trying to explain that she needed a particular book to study from, but Madam Pince wouldn't have it.

"No 'buts', young lady, now GET-OUT!"

Lily quickly gathered up her things and left, cheeks flushed, followed by a rather unaffected Melody. At the entrance to the library, the girls saw James and Sirius, both of them looking rather amused, and Lily glared at James and kicked his shins on the way out.

"Ow!" James said, and then he had to follow her, and taunt her, and she had to keep kicking his shins.

"Spotted raincoats!" Sirius exclaimed suddenly, in the middle of all this shin-kicking and 'ow'-ing, and the other three had to turn and look at him quite strangely to make sure he was really all there.

"What?" Sirius asked, eyeing them all strangely. "You're all looking at me as though I were a three-eyed, pigeon-toed, hairless poodle with a big blue hairy tongue!"

"Well, that's a disturbing mental picture," Melody said, looking quite scarred. "For some reason I keep imagining it with my baby cousin's head on it..."

"Your baby cousin is a hairless poodle?" James asked in disgust.

"You're not talking about Steve, are you?" Lily asked, as she had seen pictures of all Melody's relatives. Melody always came to visit during the summer-well, except last summer, but oh well.

"No, no, I'm thinking of John..."

"If a peacock laid a rooster's egg and you put a rat on top of it, what kind of animal do you think would come out?" Sirius wondered, staring at the ceiling.

"Roosters can't lay eggs!" James exclaimed. "How daft can you be?"

"Sirius, they didn't put some special mushrooms in with the scrambled eggs this morning, did they?" Lily asked, rather nervously.

"No, but there was this fantastic boysenberry jam..."

"They make boysenberry jam?" Lily asked.

"Are you sure it wasn't blackberry?" James asked. "I love blackberry jam!"

"Aren't boysenberries poisonous?" Melody asked.

"No, that's mulberries!" Lily corrected her, rolling her eyes.

"Neither of them are poisonous, nitwits!" James informed them.

"We are not nitwits!" Lily snapped, and she kicked him in the shins again.

"Ow!"

"Maybe both of them are poisonous...?" Melody wondered, and all three of them ignored Sirius, who was now going on about dancing walruses.

Suddenly someone came tumbling out of a hidden passageway and rammed right into Lily and James, who ended up tangled on the floor. All three of them started struggling, which only caused them to get more tangled up with each other, and Sirius helped the third person to detangle himself, and it was, of course, Remus.

Sirius, Remus, and Melody stood watching Lily and James, who didn't seem to notice that there was no more third person and that they could now easily untangle themselves. Instead, they were arguing, and hurting each other, both in- and unintentionally.

"Ow! You kicked my shin again!"

"Oh I did not! But you-ow-you just poked my eye!"

"Oh sorry."

"You are not!"

"Sure I-OW!-am."

"Get your hand off my-"

"It's off! It's off!" [before she could kick him again]

"Are we untangled yet?"

"Well apparently not, and no one else is being much help-"

"Wasn't there another person in here somewhere just a moment ago--?"

They both looked up to see Sirius, Remus, and Melody laughing at them, and untangled themselves as quickly as possible, their faces red.

Lily glared at James. "That was your fault."

James's mouth dropped open. "It was not!" he insisted, flabbergasted. "It was his fault!" he sad, pointing at Remus, who smiled cheekily.

"Oh, come on, Prongs, you can't blame it all on innocent little me!"

"A-ha!" Melody said suddenly, jumping in and pointing a finger accusingly at Remus. "That's it! It's those nicknames again! What is with those stupid nicknames?!"

The Marauders all shrugged. "Nothing," they lied.

Melody narrowed her eyes at them, and then spun to look at Lily. "You!" she said, just as accusingly.

"Me!" Lily shot back.

"You promised you would mmpff-" Remembering what she had promised, Lily covered Melody's mouth with her hand, spots of color appearing in her cheeks.

"Yeah, yeah, later!"

"Oh, Lily, I wouldn't do that if I were you," Sirius advised her.

"Do wh-eew!" Lily said, removing her hand from Melody's mouth and discovering what Sirius had been talking about. She wiped her hand on her robes and Melody shrugged.

"Hey, it works!" she said.

They heard footsteps pounding down the hallway and all turned to look at the same time. It was Mimi.

"Did you really get kicked out of the library for a week?" she asked Lily, her eyes shining in excitement over the new gossip.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Yes," she said. "And it's all darling"-she poked Melody-"here's fault."

"It is not!" Melody protested. "Besides, you should be grateful! I'd love to have an excuse not to have to go to the library again for a week!"

"You do, pinhead," Lily reminded her, rolling her eyes. "And this is bad. This means you can't do your homework."

Melody's eyes lit up at the prospect. "Yay!" she shouted, throwing her hands into the air, and started jumping around the corridor, forgetting that they were all only a few yards from the library and that Madam Pince could hear her perfectly well from inside it.

Sure enough, a few moments later, Madam Pince stuck her head out of the library doors and glared at the group down the hallway.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor! Now get out of this corridor, or there will be more!" She ducked back inside the library and closed the doors with a decisive BANG!

The group of teenagers looked at each other and shrugged, and then carried on down the corridor in their usual fashion. After a few minutes, they somehow had themselves lined up in pairs, making a rather interesting procession going up and down the stairs, going absolutely nowhere before ending up back in the library corridor again, but nobody was really paying attention, so they just kept going again.

Sirius was in the front, which was probably the reason for them all going around in circles, and he was talking to Melody, who was still demanding to know the Marauders' secret.

Lily and James were next, squabbling as usual over absolutely nothing, but they both looked very happy to be doing so, for some odd reason.

Mimi and Remus brought up the rear, and were chatting quite happily about anything they could think of. They appeared to be the only two people not fighting, but for some reason didn't look any happier than the two couples preceding them, just...calmer.

After awhile-that is, after they had all talked and argued to their heart's content and none of them had gotten what they really wanted-they all returned to their respective common rooms and did a great amount of nothing.

* * *

Melody couldn't sleep. She was in the girls' dormitory, looking out the window, undoubtedly the only person still awake at this hour of the night...or maybe it was morning; whether midnight had passed or not, Melody wasn't really sure. The full moon was lovely, at any rate, and for the past hour or so she had sat staring at it, trying desperately to figure out what was going on; what she had missed.

She wasn't so sure why she thought that this was something she could figure out on her own, or even really what she was trying to figure out, but she felt as though someone had stuck a book right in front of her face, its pages blank, but only to her-it was a book everyone else could read (or at least, the Marauders could), but she couldn't, and she felt that maybe she just had to tickle it in the right place, or poke its spine for the words to appear, but no matter what she did, its pages were still blank, and so was her mind.

Remus was sick again, she had noted. He seemed to get sick a lot. About once a month, in fact. It was so odd...it almost seemed like he got sick on a regular basis, and then when he did get sick, he refused to tell anybody what he had been sick with. And besides that, an awful lot of Remus's relatives seemed to die during the year, a lot more than most people would ever get the chance to meet, and Remus had to be yanked out of school for every single one of their funerals, which all somehow lasted for days at a time. Either his parents had both had a phenomenal amount of aunts and uncles, or there was something fishy going on here.

And it seemed to Melody that Remus's strange illnesses and funerals had to tie in with the Marauders' secret somehow. She didn't know how they did, but she knew they had to. Of course, she realized that she could just be being completely daft, but both things were just so strange she couldn't help feeling that one had something to do with the other.

She sighed and averted her gaze from the moon to the grounds, which were bathed in an eerie silver light and looked perfectly still. There was no wind tonight, which for some reason made the outdoors look less welcoming, not more. Suddenly she saw a large, lumpy shadow out of the corner of her eye, and shifted so that she could see it more clearly.

At first she couldn't tell if it was many people or just one, large disfigured person, and then she saw that it wasn't a person at all...it was some horrible animal, a huge beast-but as they drew nearer her window, she saw that it was, in fact, three animals-a magnificent stag, a large, rather ferocious-looking dog, and there, in the middle-good God, was that a werewolf? Melody's eyes grew wide, and she shrank away from the window, somehow feeling that if the creatures took care to look up that they would see her, and somehow get into the castle and attack her.

A million thoughts were racing through her head, all jumbled together so that they didn't begin to make a piece of sense, but one thought finally jumped away from all the others and made itself clear and present in her mind.

Go get the Marauders.

She wasn't sure why this thought felt so comforting, or why she felt the urge to listen to the thought, but it seemed like the best, most logical thing to do, for no reason at all. The Marauders all took Care of Magical Creatures, yes, but that really didn't give her the right to go barging into the boys' dormitory at who-knew-when in the morning (or was that possibly night?) and wake all of them up just to see some creatures that might not be there when they all finally got to a window. Still, she threw on a blue bathrobe and hurried down the steps of the girls' dormitory, then took the steps two at a time up to the boys'.

She opened the door as quietly as she could, and, to her relief, when she crept in the only sound she could hear was snoring. Quite an awful lot of snoring, too. And loud. Good gracious, how could they sleep with all this noise? Well, she supposed they all just drowned each other out, or...something.

She had absolutely no idea which beds belonged to the Marauders, so she just started poking through all of them. The first three beds were occupied, but not with the Marauders, and the last four were...empty.

The Marauders' beds were all completely empty.

* * *

Melody was waiting in the common room when the Marauders all finally tumbled out of bed the next morning. Quite late they were, too, as it was a Saturday and they didn't have any classes to go to.

"You!" Melody said, jumping up as soon as she saw them and pointing a finger at all of them accusingly.

"What?" Sirius asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He was still in his pajamas, too, and Melody couldn't help but notice that he looked rather cute. But darn her for noticing that now! That was not important right now!

"All of you!" Melody said. "I need to talk to you."

James groaned and rolled his eyes. "Come on, Melody! We all know what you're going to ask us, and we're not going to tell you, so just sto-"

"No, that's not it!" Melody interrupted, fixing them all (except Peter, whom she was ignoring) with piercing stares. "I saw you," she hissed, with as much meaning in her voice as she could, and the Marauders' eyes all widened, for they all knew exactly what she had seen.

"Well, that's it, then!" James said, sighing, rather defeated. "You've figured us out."

* * *