The Twin Marauders

15)Moon Soaked

-Arabella's POV-

"James and Lily sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!"

Lily looked around at all the annoying students making fun of James's crush on her. "This is so stupid." She rolled her eyes.

"I've always noticed how stupid our peers are sometimes. How are you feeling about being future Mrs. Potter?" I looked around at the smirks on everyone's faces.

"Not helping, Bella!" She snapped.

"Sorry, sorry. I do have to say that I was right though."

"Still not helping!" She folded her arms, her long hair whipping me in the face. I guess I deserved that.

"I'll turn the rumours to Annie and Remus. They seem like they're going to get married tomorrow, by the way they're acting like they've already been married for twenty-five years. They won't mind that much." I pulled my honey brown hair up into a bun.

"Don't do that to Annie. People will get over it when they see no progress between me and James." She then proceeded to stick her tongue out at the Ravenclaw Quidditch team captain, who was making kissing faces.

"Okaaay. You better hope so." I tripped a seventh year bloke that was getting way too close to us.

I bid my goodbye to Lily and headed towards the library. This was becoming such a normal routine, I didn't get lost on my way to the library.

When I entered, Sirius was the only one there. "Are we early?" I slammed my bag on the table.

"Shhhh!" Madam Pince shushed me for the twenty thousandth time this year. I apologised and turned back to Sirius.

"Yes. I am starting to enjoy all of this," Sirius said as I sat down, "I'm excited to complete the potion. We're almost there!"

"It's getting quite exciting. I wonder what animals we'll all be." I placed my head on my hands.

"You'll be a squirrel or a chipmunk." Sirius flipped his hair to prove no point whatsoever.

"Why?" I waited for a valid answer.

"Well, they're very loud and annoying at times. They also are very excited about acorns or something."

"Hahahaha, that's hilarious." I laughed sarcastically.

"They're also really cute. You would be an adorable little squirrel."

I posed dramatically. "Yes I would."

"Being egotistical now? Maybe you've hanging around me for too long." Sirius winked.

I rolled my eyes. "Obviously. Five years is way too long for me."

We stopped talking for a minute and stared at each other. I woke up out of my trance. "What are we doing?"

"Well, I'm looking at your pretty face." Sirius said cockily.

I laughed. "You can look at anything else though."

"I want to look at your face, is there something wrong with that?"

"Maybe it's creepy?" I covered my face in embarrassment.

"Alright, let's get started!" I heard Annie's voice and a parade of footsteps. I uncovered my face and looked to Annie. "Have you lot been doing the Animagus spell every night and morning?"

We all nodded. I haven't missed a single time, I'm so proud of myself.

"Wonderful. Tonight is full moon, so we need to take our jars outside to have our leaves in the light. Luckily, it's supposed to be a clear night."

"What if it isn't a clear night and we set them out?" James ruffled his hair.

"Well, then we'll have to start over with the leaf process." Annie moved her hair out of her face.

We all groaned. We did not want to start the process again.

"But it's fine. It's supposed to be clear and I know a spell just in case." Annie reassured us.

We brainstormed our plan. We would all try and fit under James's invisibility cloak. "It's going be tight with five of us under it." Annie said.

"No, there's going to be six of us." I counted the four boys plus the two girls.

"Annie's right. Five." Remus scanned us. There was a sad and sorry silence for Remus. "It's alright. I'll be fine."

"Okay, so at ten o'clock tonight?" Sirius asked for confirmation.

"Yes." Annie confirmed.

We packed up and left the library. The rest of the day went on like a drag, for excitement was building up in chest. Finally, at about ten o'clock, we found a way to navigate out of the common room, and outside the castle onto the grounds. When we were in the middle of a field, with the Whomping Willow barely in view, we slipped off the Cloak.

"Finally! That was tight and sweaty!" Peter finally spoke after being silent for about, maybe, a week. Or maybe even a month, I didn't keep track of the time.

"Over here." Annie gestured to a big flat stone in the middle of the field. She pulled out five phials and her jar. She switched her leaf to one of the phials and set the phial on the rock.

"Take one and put your Mandrake Leaf in it." She set them on the rock and watched as we took one and moved our leaves to the phials.

We watched as the moon lit up our phials. "This is cool." James looked at the light filled phials.

We were silent for a minute. We heard pained howling in the distance. Annie gave a sad sigh. "Poor Remus. I feel so bad."

James put a hand on Annie's shoulder. "Me too."

"Well, we're trying to help him. It's the best we can do." I put my hand on her other shoulder and gave her a side hug.

"Yeah, we'll be able to help him out by turning into animals. I mean, that's pretty neat." Sirius flipped his hair dramatically.

"I'm happy we're helping Remus." Peter whispered so quietly only I heard. I turned back to him to give him a thumbs up. He didn't notice me, but looked sadly at Annie. He'll get over her soon, hopefully.

We talked about our OWLs at the end of the year. "I'm excited." Annie said.

"I think you might be the only person excited for OWLs." Sirius sat down next to me on the ground.

"Yeah, I'm not excited to take exams. But I am excited to win the Quidditch Cup this year." I stated.

"We're totally going to win this year, just like every other year since second year." James ruffled his hair.

"Annie, you're only excited because you're going to pass all of them." I laid down to look at the clear night sky.

"Of course she's going to pass all of them. She's smart." Peter piped up. There was an awkward silence and I refrained from telling Peter that he's got to give up on her.

The sun started to come up after a few hours, but it felt like only a couple minutes. We picked up our phials and turned to Annie for further instructions. "Make sure your name is clear on your phial. Then put them in this bag."

"Why?" James asked as he dropped his phial in the bag.

"Because they can't and won't see the light of day, or any light at all, until the next lightning storm." Annie explained as everyone carefully placed their phials in the bag.

We snuck quickly back to the Gryffindor tower to go to sleep. Since I had no classes today, I was going to take a long nap so I didn't have jetlag in another day in the future. I climbed in my warm bed and fell asleep quickly.