As soon as I walked into the Great Hall with Sirius, James, Peter and Remus, the first thing I saw was Professor McGonagall standing at the front of the room, conversing with the three seventh-year Slytherin boys who'd been scared off by us only a moment ago. One of them was holding a bloody napkin to his nose.

James nodded his head towards the one with the bloody nose. "Nice one," he told Sirius, grinning.

Sirius smirked back, but the smirk faded when he saw McGonagall striding towards us. As she neared, James and Sirius took a step back and held their hands up in resignation. I expected her to go straight for them, but instead, she went to me. I stared at her, wide-eyed, waiting for her to speak.

"Miss Reynolds, I was informed that you used the Impediment Jinx on some fellow students in the corridors! Is this true?" she demanded sternly.

"What?" Sirius snapped, interrupting me as I had been about to lie and deny doing so. "No, of course she didn't do that! She did no such thing, right James?"

I let out a very quiet sigh of relief, hoping that she would believe him.

"Of course not!" James agreed.

"She didn't do it," Peter piped up.

"I can vouch for that, it definitely wasn't her," Remus interjected, sliding into a seat at the Gryffindor table.

"Professor McGonagall, let's be realistic here," said James, placing his arm on her shoulder, which she quickly shrugged off. "Does that honestly sound like something Bianca would do?

McGonagall pursed her lips. "No, which was why I was surprised."

"Exactly!" said James. "Those blokes got confused because we were the ones fighting them, not her." He gestured between himself and Sirius.

"What?" she snapped.

"I'm the one who used the Impediment Jinx on him," James lied.

"Yes, and I punched that one in the face," Sirius said honestly, pointing over at the Slytherin table. "It was very satisfying, though I must admit my fist got quite badly bruised."

"Mr Black!" McGonagall scolded.

"It's all right, Professor, you'd understand if you knew exactly what had happened that caused us to act in such a way," James said calmly, pushing his glasses up as they had begun to slip off his nose.

"Nothing—and I repeat, nothing—can justify such behaviour! Detention for both of you, and ten points each from Gryffindor!"

James turned to Sirius, shaking his head disapprovingly. "She'll understand when we explain the situation." He turned back to McGonagall. "Professor, I hope you have a minute to chat... Let's just go right over there and I can explain what exactly happened that does indeed justify our behaviour towards those bast—"

"Potter," McGonagall tutted.

"Those... Blast-Ended Skrewts. That's all I was going to say, Professor, honest!"

James led Professor McGonagall away to explain exactly what had happened between the Slytherin boys, Isla and Muriel. Meanwhile, I looked down the table until I saw them. Thankfully, Muriel wasn't crying anymore and it appeared as though Isla was trying to make her laugh.

"I can't even count the amount of times I have taken the blame for you anymore," Sirius said to me.

"Yes, and I appreciate it very much. Thank you," I said. "Like I always say, I'm not planning on ever getting detention."

"I might not be able to do it every time, especially if you keep doing bad things," he said.

"What? I don't do bad things!" I said loudly.

"I beg to differ," he answered. "You're quite the troublemaker."

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are," he hummed. "Between turning McGonagall into a teaspoon last year to jinxing people in the corridors, I'd say you're becoming a regular troublemaker..." I could tell by his tone that he was joking.

"I'm not," I mumbled, resting my chin on my fist. "You're only saying that because you know it bothers me... Come on, he so deserved that Impediment Jinx. He insulted my capabilities, as if I'm not five hundred times more powerful than he is." I crossed my arms in frustration.

"Everyone knows you're more powerful. Not saying he didn't deserve it," Sirius replied. "The other one also deserved that punch I gave him, didn't he?"

"For sure," I said, looking at Remus, who was poking his breakfast with his fork. "What's wrong? You're not hungry or something?"

Remus shrugged.

"Eat some chocolate," Sirius replied flatly. "It usually fixes you, doesn't it?"

Remus mumbled something.

"See, Peter, right there, is my role model," said Sirius, pointing to the boy who was currently stuffing his face with breakfast. "Be more like that, Remus. You're too thin."

"Now you're just sounding like James," said Remus.

James came back and plopped down next to Peter.

"Who sounds like me?" he asked.

"Sirius; he told Remus he needed to eat more because he was thin," I said.

"Yes, Remus, eat!" James yelled, grabbing a piece of toast and trying to stuff it into his friends mouth.

Remus swatted his hand away, shaking his head. "What did McGonagall say? You explained everything, right?" he asked.

"I gave her every single tiny detail, minus of course the bad stuff that Bianca did," he said, chuckling as I shot him a glare. "She felt really bad, especially for Isla and Muriel... She said she's going to go and talk to them later. She's still giving us detention, Pads, because we admitted to our crime, but the good thing is that she'll probably go easy on us this time and probably won't force us to clean the floor or anything. Plus, we're not in separate detentions this time, so that's a plus!"

James and Sirius high-fived.

"What about them?" I asked. "Do those Slytherins get detention? Letters sent home? Expulsion? Something?"

"I think Minnie's probably going to give them detention as well, but not at the same time as ours. And their detention will probably involve a lot more of Filch wacking them with sticks as they hang upside down by their ankles," James chortled. "Ah, the very thought is a marvellous one."

***

The following day, the Marauders were taking longer than usual to get to the Great Hall for breakfast.

Normally, I either waited for them in the common room or met them in the Great Hall, but it was already quite late when I headed there and they still weren't there.

I thought it was odd and began going over scenarios in my head that involved the boys being murdered by a bunch of Slytherins on their way to the Great Hall. The thought gave me goosebumps; I pushed it aside and began to eat, anxiously drumming my fingers against my leg.

I had become so dependent on the fact that I could always sit and eat with them. At the moment, I sat alone. There were empty seats all around me and I tried to make sure those seats remained empty so that I'd have to talk to as few people as possible. I could only tolerate a select few people and I could only have real conversations with even fewer. I found that with my real friends, the conversation just flowed effortlessly and it was never forced. With my favourite people, there was always something to talk about.

I continued eating in silence, glancing around the Hall and letting my eyes land on Corey, then Ainsley, then Regulus; the only other three people besides the Marauders that I didn't have to force a conversation with.

Laughter caused me to look over at the Entrance Hall. Soon, the entire Great Hall had erupted into hysterical laughter and it took me a while to realize why.

James, Sirius, Remus and Peter stood at the door, looking thoroughly disgruntled. I squinted at them and saw that they were all covered in hair. It wasn't regular, manly facial hair... No... They had thick, dark hair sprouting from their cheeks, eyelids, foreheads... even from their noses. Truth be told me they looked extremely comical, and the serious expressions on their faces made it even more hilarious.

"Oh, no way, Lily!" I whispered under my breath, chuckling. "What did you do?"

I looked over at Lily, Alice and Marlene, who were all laughing even harder than anyone else in the entire Great Hall. I caught Lily giving Marlene a high-five, confirming my suspicions.

The boys walked towards the Gryffindor table and sat down next to me.

"Not. A. Word," James said to me, holding up a hairy hand.

The gesture alone was enough to make me snort.

"How?" I asked with a wide grin on my face.

"They switched out our damn shampoo and soap," Sirius huffed.

"Wait, wait, wait. I don't get it... So how did you not see that one of you got really hairy after a shower and get rid of your shampoo? What, did you all take a shower together or something?" I said, covering my mouth with my hand to stop myself from laughing.

"That's what's so ingenious about this, actually," said James in amazement and wonder. "It only came out an hour after each of us took a shower, so by the time we had started sprouting hair, we had each already showered. The effects of it were delayed... It was brilliant!"

"Anyway, we tried everything to get rid of it," said Remus, stroking his hairy forehead. "Literally everything. Every spell, every Muggle way of doing it... Nothing works."

"This was not how I imagined facial hair," Peter sighed, shaking his head sadly.

"I'm finding it really hard to keep a straight face while talking to you," I chortled. "It's just... your faces are so hairy and..." I burst out laughing.

"You don't know—and you don't want to know—where else the hair has sprouted," Sirius said, shuddering.

"But what I don't get is why you guys didn't just go straight to the Hospital Wing this morning. Why bother even coming here?" I questioned.

Remus, James and Sirius all turned to look at Peter.

"We would've gone straight there," said Sirius, annoyed, "but someone didn't want to miss out on breakfast. So we had to come here and embarrass ourselves first... Say, Peter, I don't get how you aren't too grossed out to eat when you've got hair growing from your tongue."

"Shut up, Padfoot," Peter mumbled with his mouth full of food.

"You put on quite the show," I said, looking around only to see people still pointing and laughing.

"We look like Moony on a full moon," said Sirius.

"Shut up, Padfoot," Remus grumbled.

"Sheesh, Padfoot gets all the hate today," Sirius said in mock sadness, spitting his nose hair out of his mouth.

I patted his arm, but retracted it immediately because of the amount of hair growing from it.

"How did she do it?" James asked himself aloud. "How did she do this?" He began going through every single Zonko's product, wondering what exactly Lily could've done to make her prank as elaborate as this.

"It's weird that Prongs is much more amazed by this whole scheme than he is angry, isn't it?" Peter asked.

"James, if you really want to know, just ask her," I suggested sarcastically. "It's not like she'll decapitate you or anything."

"OK," he said, standing up.

"What? James, no, I was joking. She will decapitate you. She'll never actually tell yーand there he goes," I said, sighing.

"Let's go listen in!" said Peter, rising from his seat along with his plate filled with food.

We followed James as he moved down the table. "Lily... Lily! Lily! Oi! EVANS!"

Lily had clearly been avoiding having to talk to him and pretending she hadn't heard him. She turned away from Alice and Marlene and snorted upon seeing James in all his hairy glory.

"What do you want, Potter?" she asked, trying to conceal her laughter and keep a straight face, but clearly failing miserably.

"How did you do it?" he said to her inquisitively.

"Excuse me?" she said. Her green eyes were glimmering.

"How did you do it?" he repeated. "Please, Evans, let's not do this. I know it was you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, cocking her head to the side and frowning slightly.

James sighed. "Well," he said as though he was daring her to come up with an appropriate answer, scratching his chin, "if you didn't do it, then who did?"

Lily seemed to ponder this for quite some time. Then she actually rose from her seat and approached him. As she got closer, he began looking more and more scared, as though she'd attack him.

Instead, she brushed a strand of dark red hair behind her ear, leaned closer to him, then said, "Bathsheba did it."

With that, she turned away from him and skipped back to her seat. James, with his very hairy face, looked at where Lily had just been standing, mesmerized. His eyes held a sort of wonder and he seemed at a complete loss for words. He might've been smiling slightly, but it was hard to see through the hair that grew from his lips.

"And with that, a very hairy man fell in love," Sirius announced loudly and dramatically.

"Shut up, Padfoot."