“Lily!” George shouted suddenly to Fred, “That’s Harry’s mum’s name! Lily Evans… Potter.”

Everyone, even Fred, turned and stared at George like he was a lunatic. Realising what a prat he’d just made of himself, George’s face went as red as his hair.

“I mean… I just… you look like… somebody I know,” he mumbled in a desperate attempt to cover up his weird and, to them, seemingly random outburst.

Luckily for him, nobody seemed too worried, apart from James, who frowned slightly, his brow furrowing.

“Lily Potter…” he muttered under his breath. Everyone ignored him, and Lily smiled slightly.

“Definitely a relation of Arthur Weasley,” she smiled, “Every bit as odd. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind.”

There was a silence as everybody tried to think of something else to say. Finally, James decided to snap out of his thoughtful trance and say something cocky and stupid to fill the silence.

“Got a date to the Halloween Ball yet, Evans?” he drawled. Both Fred and George found themselves cringing. Sirius, Remus and Pettigrew exchanged glances and rolled their eyes. Lily, on the other hand, simply glared at James venomously.

“No I don’t, Potter,” she growled, “But I can tell you something. It won’t be you, even if that means going alone.”

James just smirked and winked at her, and knowing that she now had only suggestive comments from James to look forward to if she stayed, Lily gathered up her things and made her way towards the girl’s dormitories, nodding politely to Remus.

“Yeah, walk away Evans!” James taunted her, “You know you really want to! You know better than anybody else that we’ll end up going together, baby!”

Lily simply ignored him, disappearing up the stairs to her dorm. Remus and Sirius turned and stared at James in unison.

“Baby?" Remus repeated, “She’s Lily Evans, not Jennifer Gray!”

This didn’t have the desired effect really, as everyone just stared at him blankly.

“Jennifer Gray?” Pettigrew repeated, his eyebrows raised in the same fashion as his friends all seemed to favour, yet somehow not managing to look anywhere near as cool.

“She’s a muggle actress,” Remus started to explain, “She was in the film Dirty Da…”

He broke off when he realised that the blank stares were remaining firmly on everyone’s faces.

“Never mind,” he sighed, “Didn’t expect any of you lot to pay attention in muggle studies anyway. My point is, I think that you should try a different tack with Lily. She’s clearly not going for the cocky frat boy thing.”

James’ face remained blank.

“Frat b…”

“Never mind,” Remus sighed again.

---

The next day, Fred, George and the Marauders put their first prank into action. It was perfectly simple really. All they had to do was make an aging potion – Fred and George were practiced at that – and… well, you can take it from there. The only problem was not getting caught.

It was George who had come up with the solution. He had remembered a certain quiddich match two years ago, and was pretty sure that would hold the solution.

The potion had taken two days and a lot of stealing from the potions store, but soon it was happily bubbling away in a cubicle of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

“I can’t believe people were using this dump to brew potions thirty years ago,” Fred commented, flicking a slimy-looking brown thing into the cauldron and jabbing it into the thick mixture with the end of his wand.

“What?” Remus laughed, pushing Fred out of the way and giving the potion a proper stir, “People still brew potions here? You mean the teachers haven’t found out about it yet?”

“Best kept secret in Hogwarts,” George said proudly.

“Yeah,” Fred agreed, “Our brother and his friends think they’re the only ones who come down here…”

“…they think they’re really smart…” George muttered, though there was no contempt in his voice.

“…but we’ve been breaking no-magic rules in here for years!” Fred grinned.

“We just never got caught.”

Sirius laughed loudly. “These guys really are the future us, aren’t they?” he smirked.

Even James had to grin.

“Nice to see our legacy lives on!” he said, peering into the cauldron cautiously, “Is this ready? It looks pretty…”

“Orange?” supplied the twins in unnervingly unrehearsed unison. James examined the mixture and laughed.

“Exactly,” he grinned, “Are you sure this is going to work? Because it won’t be great for our images if this messed up.”

“No sweat,” Fred assured him, “We’re sure it’ll work.”

“Ninety percent sure, at least,” George added, just to assure them. They weren’t assured.

Slightly unsurely, the twins made their way through the school, carrying the cauldron of orange gloop. Sirius, James and Remus followed under James’ invisibility cloak silently.

(“So that’s how Harry and Ron managed to sneak about at night before they got the map!” George had commented)

“There’s our target!” James hissed from behind them. The twins looked ahead and almost dropped the cauldron in shock. They would have recognised the boy at whom James’ disembodied finger was pointed. Tall, lanky and greasy haired, there stood seventeen-year-old Snape, mooching around a group of popular-looking Slytherins.

“Snape?” George almost laughed, “You know Snape?”

“Snivellus?” James said, “What, he hasn’t been chucked out of the wizarding community?”

“Well there’s a turn out for the books,” Sirius mumbled.

“He’s our potions master,” Fred said.

“Total git,” George added.

“So he didn’t end up doing Defence then?” Lupin said curiously.

“No, you got that, Moony!” Sirius said proudly. Fred and George decided to avoid explaining the whole situation with Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers. Too much bother.

As confidently as possible, the twins strolled up to the crowd of Slytherins. The whole prank was balancing on the Slytherins not knowing who Fred and George were. If they knew that they were allied with the Marauders, it wouldn’t work.

“Bugger!” muttered Fred as theatrically as possible; dropping an armful of books he was carrying (to be honest, he felt a bit weird carrying books about. He felt like Hermione Granger). He attempted to pick them up, struggling with the brimming cauldron. Finally, sighing, he looked apologetically at the teenage Snape.

“Can you hold this for a second?” he asked, holding out the cauldron. Snape only gave him a sneer as a reply. The twins sighed. The Marauders had known none of the Slytherins would agree to help anybody else, especially not a Gryffindor. That was why they’d incorporated this into their plan.

George dug around in his pocket with his non-book-filled hand and produced four galleons.

“Just for a minute,” he said. Snape considered this for a second, before snatching the coins up wordlessly and taking the cauldron from Fred. He peered into it curiously, as Fred and George both stood there grinning.

“Why aren’t you picking your stuff up?” Snape snapped, “I’m not holding this forever.”

“You bet you’re not,” the twins muttered in unison. Just then, something weird happened to Snape’s arm. It began to bubble slightly revoltingly, before turning completely rubbery and weird. The twins quickly stepped back, under the invisibility cloak, turning to see the grinning faces of the Marauders.

“That bone-removal charm was pure genius!” whispered James, tucking his wand into the pocket of his robes as they hurried away from the rapidly spreading stream of orange gloop. The Slytherins were letting out yells of frustration, and jumping around angrily as the potion reached them and their skin began to wrinkle and beards began to sprout from their faces.

“Great charm,” George agreed.

“Learnt it from a teacher,” Fred added.

“Good old Lockhart.”

“Knew he’d be good for something.”

The twins laughed silently. Lupin gave them a strange look and stooped to pick up the galleons they had given to Snape, which were now incredibly ancient looking.

“Antiques,” he grinned, “Worth a fortune.”

---

OK, that’s it for now. A big, big thank you to all my lovely reviewers. You’re all so nice! This chapter’s dedicated to Violet Fire Crazed because she’s pretty cool, and I’m a bit scared that she actually will write the end herself, and also to kaitlyn because you can’t be that enthusiastic and not cool!

Remember, keep the criticism constructive, or I’ll come after you with a flamingo, and also remember to recycle, because good planets are hard to find.

BNRH