Dancing in the Moonlight

Chapter 14- Chiquitita

This month had been strange so far, to say the least.

It was the second week of October, and the castle had transformed. The constant autumnal winds now circled the castle with brightly colored orange and red leaves, littering the grounds in their various hues.

The tremendously oversized pumpkins the young groundskeeper Hagrid had grown dominated the great hall, and several smaller (although small was certainly a relative descriptor) pumpkins were scattered about the rest of castle.

The month had started rather crazily, what with the culprits of the "Fantastical Flying Ravens" (honestly who had time to come up with such names) not yet having been caught. Lily was sure it had to have been James or Sirius who had done it in retribution for the Quidditch match, but they both had clear alibis having literally not been present at the start of the hijinks. Other, smaller, mishaps had been occurring almost every day. The laundry had somehow been switched around, and every house had been dressed in each other's colors for the entire week. Somehow the laundry kept circulating, and students who were able had resorted to charming their ties and robes back to their proper colors.

It was all so batty, no one had been caught yet and even now she observed several younger students sitting at their various house tables adorned in the wrong house colors.

Literally batty, Lily thought wryly, warily eating lunch in the great hall with Alice while waiting for Marlene to meet up with them from her Thursday Divination lesson.

Presently, transfigured bats were flying amuck all over the great hall and surrounding corridors. They hadn't bothered her or Alice yet, but Severus had had to keep a constant protego casted over himself, as the bats had swooped down and tangled themselves in his hair three times in the span of five minutes.

Lily was watching him angrily gesture to the bats to Professor Slughorn, when Marlene plopped down in front of her, with James, Peter, and Sirius joining her shortly after.

Remus was already sitting with her and Alice. They all had chosen to forgo Divination that year in favor of Ancient Runes.

The three boys and Marlene settled into place and began piling food onto their plates. Sirius, who had sat next to Lily, sandwiching her in between himself and Remus, watched in amusement as she flinched when one of the bats swooped close to the table.

"You needn't worry about the bats, Evans," he told her.

"I don't need to worry?" Lily asked skeptically, ducking her head yet again. "They've been all over Severus the entire time we've been here!" Lily chin-pointed as she spoke towards the Slytherin who was clearly about to flee his table.

"Hm pity," Sirius said, without a trace of the emotion in his voice. He continued with a smirk, "But I'm quite sure he's an exception."

"You're quite sure huh?" Marlene repeated suspiciously, narrowing her eyes and pointing her fork at him.

"He's just guessing, obviously." James cut in quickly. "But clearly the bats are subscribing to the "like calls to like" phenomenon. You really can't blame them."

"You four transfigured the bats?" Lily guessed shrewdly.

"Let's say we did, hypothetically, transfigure the bats, just for fun, would you be mad?" James tilted his head at her as he asked, batting his eyelashes.

Lily rolled her eyes, "I would be interested to know how you did it on such a large scale. Also why the bats are attacking Severus," Lily paused for a moment, watching the bats swoop down on several other Slytherins and amending her question. "Attacking some students and not others?"