Prelude to Moondance

    Before most students of Hogwarts knew it, the next week had passed like a quick summer rain. The first week of classes were almost over, with only a few mishaps. James and Sirius had landed themselves a detention from Professor Malador for making a delayed sleeping draught in Advanced Potions. They wouldn't have been caught, but when Snape had began dozing off in potions and had nearly knocked over three cauldrons full of bubbling potion...

    "Did you see the look on old Snivelly's face when Malfoy grabbed him before he fell? Priceless! I've never seen his eyes so wide before," laughed Sirius, as he, James and Remus trudged down the hall to their last class of that Friday, Transfiguration.

    "They belong together, those two," James added, laughing. "They looked so perfect in each other's arms..." James fluttered his eyelashes and turned to Sirius. "Severus...will you marry me?" he asked Sirius in a low, drawling voice.

    "I'm afraid not, Lucius...marriage would mean having to take a shower," Sirius answered very gravely, narrowing his eyes like Snape's almost always were, and separating his black hair to look like curtains around his face. They both burst out laughing, but their laughs were met with a reprimanding stare from Remus.

    "Oh, Moony, no need to say it...we know we deserved the detention," James chuckled, looking at Remus. "If it were up to you, you wouldn't have given it to us, and we would have been gracious."

    Remus sighed. "I wouldn't have given you a detention. I probably would have docked points from Gryffindor, and you know I hate doing that. I can never keep you two in line."

    "Keep Prongs and Padfoot in line, Moony? We are the meaning of the word trouble," said Sirius devilishly. They rounded the next corner and ambled into Transfiguration, taught by their head of house, Minerva McGonagall. They took the desk in the back, one of the few with three chairs in it.

    "Oy! Lily!" James hissed sharply. "Lily!"

    Lily and Sariyah, who were sitting at one of the front tables, both turned around. James motioned to the empty table beside the boys. Lily shook her head.

    "I can't see from back there!" she answered. She blew him a kiss and turned to Sariyah and said something. Both of them laughed and turned back around.

    “Girls are so odd,” muttered James, sliding his hand through his messy black hair.

Sirius and Remus nodded in agreement.

    After a short while, a cat trundled into the room. The chattering of the class died down as they all intently watched the grayish cat with strange markings around its eyes make its way to the front of the classroom. It hopped up onto the desk, walked in a circle once, then sat, its yellow eyes gazing at the students. Suddenly, the cat began growing, and soon enough, Professor McGonagall was sitting on the table. Many students clapped, even though they had seen her do this before, once during their first year.

    James, Sirius, and Remus exchanged knowing glances. Unlike most of the other students, they weren’t as impressed by this transformation, mainly because they had become quite good at it themselves over the past years.

    “For the rest of the year,” Professor McGonagall started, “we will be learning important steps in transfiguration. These will be tested on your N.E.W.T.s, so I must tell you that you must pay attention and try your utmost to master all of the transfigurations that will be taught.” The class was silent as she spoke.

    “Today, we will be doing a bit of complicated transfiguration, very complicated,” she said, going behind her desk and picking up a cage from behind it. It was filled with large rats of all colors, shapes and sizes, all sniffing and squeaking in the cage. A few of the girls let out terrified gasps; a Gryffindor seventh year named Acantha Ellis shrieked, surprising many of the people around her.

    “Miss Ellis, please,” McGonagall said in a stern voice. “Contain yourself. They’re just rats.” Acantha had gone very pale, and her hands were shaking terribly. Beside her, her best friends and fellow Gryffindors Lethe Robinson and Bernice Northing tried to comfort her as best they could.

    Professor McGonagall instructed them to come up and each get a rat. Acantha nearly fainted when McGonagall said this, but Bernice went up and got a rat for herself and Acantha. She held both rats far from the frightened Acantha.

    James picked up a rat from the cage. As he walked back to his desk, he winked and grinned at Lily, whose green eyes twinkled as she smiled back. Beside Lily, Sariyah was becoming very nervous, her stomach churning. Transfiguration was her worst subject. She had only managed to get into the advanced class with much tutoring from Bernice, who was excellent at it. The rat that she had picked from the cage was turning its beady black eyes from her to her wand.

    “Try not to set it on fire this time, Sariyah,” Sirius muttered as he walked by her to get a rat, reminding her of their fourth year when she was trying to turn a rat into a saucer and accidentally set it aflame with the incorrect wand movement.

    Sariyah’s mouth became dry as she remembered the classic moment. She nodded mutely, her eyes focused on her rat.

    “Now that you all have your rats, I will explain what we will be doing. It may seem trivial, but we are going to be turning rats into mice. The reason it is so difficult is that the differences are very minute, and a perfect mouse is what will be expected when you will be tested,” McGonagall stated. She pulled out her own wand and pointed at the rat and did an intricate choreography with it, twisting it this way and that. A jet of pink light shot from her wand and engulfed the rat with what looked like a fuchsia liquid. The liquid was gone in seconds, leaving McGonagall’s gray rat as a small gray mouse. The class clapped in amazement, as that was one of the most tricky wand movements they had ever seen.

    “Begin,” commanded the professor.

    In the back of the room, Remus, James, and Sirius were all concentrating hard on their rats. Remus was scanning over a page of his transfiguration book and twisting his wand back and forth, as were James and Sirius.

    “Wait...what if one of these rats is Wormtail?” murmured Remus, examining his rat. He picked it up and looked at it in the eye. “Is that you, Peter?” he asked it meaningfully. James and Sirius began sniggering, but stopped when they saw McGonagall giving them a strict look.

    “I suppose we would find out if he appeared on the table,” laughed James, keeping his voice low.

    “People would think it crazy,” remarked Sirius, a smile still playing on his lips. “Wormtail appearing out of nowhere, shivering on the table.”

    Most of them had little luck turning the rats into mice. James had managed to shrink his rat a little, Remus had shortened the tail of his rat and made its eyes smaller. Sirius, however, had a very temperamental rat that refused to sit still long enough for him to do anything to it. He finally had James hold it down and tried the spell, and his rat turned into much more of a mouse than anyone else’s.

    McGonagall, who was walking around, observing her students, paused to look at Sirius’s rat. “Decent, Black. Still looks like a rat, but that’s the farthest anyone has gotten. Five points to Gryffindor,” she said. Sirius smiled a little and tried the transfiguration again with the rat.

    Suddenly a large popping sound came from the front of the room. Everyone’s head snapped to the front. Sariyah had a hand clapped over her mouth and her eyes were widened in shock.

    “Miss Khan?” asked Professor McGonagall asked in a slightly bewildered tone, as she saw there was no rat at Sariyah’s desk anymore. “Problems?”

    "No," she squeaked. Sariyah’s rat had vanished completely. Lily’s mouth was still hanging open.

    “Where did he go?” Lily mumbled, trying her best not to burst out laughing. She looked around, on the floor and under the desk.

    “I don’t know,” Sariyah said. “I just...oh this is awful...that poor rat...” She peered over the side of the desk to see if the rat had somehow scurried away, but he hadn't. She looked at Lily...and one look was all it took; Sariyah burst out laughing, her nervousness vanishing as she realized the hilarity of the situation. The bell signaling the end of class rang, and students started filing out of the class, trying to catch a glimpse of what had happened to her rat.

    The three boys were waiting for them outside the door, grinning like madmen.

    “Well Sirius,” said Sariyah, managing a small smile without giggling incessantly, “I didn’t set it on fire this time. For crying out loud, I don’t even know where it went.”

    "That was really very impressive, Sar," Sirius grinned. "I mean, I don't think any of us have made things disappear completely..."

    "Not counting that Knarl in Care of Magical Creatures," said Remus, staring off into space. "That never showed up again."

    "I forgot about that," said Sirius.

    "That's horrid! The poor Kneazle!" exclaimed Sariyah, who had only heard the part about making some animal disappear.

    "Knarl, not Kneazle," corrected James. "Yeah, that was fourth year, before you two bothered to acknowledge our presence."

    "James, it was a bit hard not to acknowledge your presence. What with the whole following me around business," attested Lily.

    "Well we didn't really know you until fifth year," James said. "We've been in the same house, and we barely exchanged words until then."

    "Funny, how you don't really notice people when they're right in front of you," said Lily. They were silent the rest of the way back to Gryffindor tower, where they had much homework waiting for them...and a long weekend ahead.