Fractured Spotlights

James's POV

"How are you feeling this morning?" Sirius asked, flinging an arm around Remus's shoulders as we sat down in the Great Hall for breakfast. It had been a full moon the night before and Remus was still looking pale and sickly, but Madame Pomfrey had agreed to let him go to classes.

"I've been worse," Remus murmured, looking as if he was about to fall asleep sitting up. Across from him, Peter was asleep with his head on his plate; he was always the worst off if we spent the whole night awake.

"Well, we've got a nice relaxing morning to break you back in gently," I told him, waving my time table around and pointing to the Friday column. "Herbology, Transfiguration and then a free until lunch."

"What about after lunch?" Remus questioned sleepily, reaching for anything with sugar in it in an attempt to wake himself up.

"I've got another free, Divination and then Potions," I read off, raising my eyes to look at Remus and Sirius. "This means that Wormtail has the same as me, Padfoot has Muggle Studies instead of Divination and you have Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. No free I'm afraid."

Remus groaned and staggered out of his seat, dragging Sirius with him. "Let's go see the plants then."

I laughed and tapped Peter on the back of the head to wake him up. Swearing, Peter jerked awake and lifted his head to glare at me, causing Sirius, Remus and me to laugh even harder when we saw his face.

"Quick tip, Wormtail," I snickered. "Don't put food on your plate if you're going to use it as a pillow."

Peter scowled at us and began trying to scrub beans off of his face with a napkin. Eventually, Remus took pity on him and cast a cleaning charm. We grabbed a couple of pieces of toast to eat as we walked to the greenhouses and then left the Great Hall.

Herbology and Transfiguration passed quickly much to our relief. The teachers took pity on Remus and didn't say anything if he got a question wrong since they knew that he was often a bit dazed after a full moon.

We went back to Gryffindor Tower for our hour of free time before lunch, Remus went straight to the dorm to catch up on sleep and Peter followed him up. Sirius and I sat down on the chairs by the fireplace and began a game of exploding snap.

"Potter!" An angry voice shouted from behind me. Startled, I let go of my cards, causing them to fly forwards, most of them landing in the fire. Most of the cards made little explosions but the ones that landed in the fire resulted in the flames bursting out of the fireplace and nearly burning the chairs.

"Cool!" Sirius exclaimed once we'd put the small fires out. "We've got to remember that for a prank!"

"Definitely ," I agreed, turning to face whoever had yelled at me. Lily Evans stood behind me, her hands on her hips and a glare in her eyes as she looked at me. She gave the impression that she was half a second away from cursing me. "I haven't done anything."

Sirius chuckled at my automatic denial and then winked at Lily. "Yet."

"Yet," I agreed, nodding my head and giving Lily my best innocent smile while running a hand through my already messy hair.

"I know you haven't done anything, Potter. That's the problem!" She ranted, not giving me the chance to speak. "You're Head Boy, that means you have to do rounds, just like a Prefect does, and yet the one night you have to actually do some work, you skive off!"

"When did I skive off?" I demanded, trying to think back to the Prefect meeting I'd attended. Everyone had agreed that I was to do my rounds with Remus so that he could remind me, and I knew he wouldn't have skived.

"Last night!" Lily exploded. "You were meant to be there last night!"

"But I patrol with Remus!" I protested. "You know he couldn't do it last night."

"I know he couldn't," Lily growled. "But what was stopping you?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I had been too busy making sure Remus was safe to worry about Prefect duty, but I kept my mouth shut and just stared at Lily instead. After a second of silence, Lily huffed and spun around, storming out of the tower with her red hair billowing behind her like a Gryffindor banner.

"She's in a bad mood," Sirius commented idly, fishing a firework out of his pocket. "Should we make it worse?"

"Do we have time to plan a prank before class?" I grinned mischievously, knowing the answer.

"We always have time to plan a prank," Sirius replied haughtily. "And if we don't then we'll have to skip class."

"Why are we skipping class?" Peter asked, walking up to us with Remus behind him. "Not that I'm complaining, but it would be nice to know why."

"We have a prank to plan," Sirius explained. "Preferably before lunch."

"That gives us less than half an hour," Remus pointed out, glancing at his watch. "Is this going to be a 'whatever-we-have-in-our-pockets' prank?"

"I have fireworks and exploding snap cards," Sirius told us, emptying his pockets. Remus snorted and began digging around inside his robes to see what would be useful in a prank.

"Chewing gum, Snitch and two-way mirror," I announced, adding my junk to the pile. "But the mirror's out because Sirius doesn't have his."

Whenever we did a 'whatever-we-have-in-our-pockets' prank we weren't allowed to use anything but what we had in our pockets, it was a great way to think outside of the box and a way of practising quick planning.

"Erm, a broken quill and some string," Remus dumped it onto the pile and shrugged. "Nothing much I'm afraid."

"Same here," Peter sighed. "A screaming Yo Yo and some more chewing gum."

"This is going to take a lot of imagination," I muttered, rooting around the pile and picking up random objects.

"We'll think of something," Sirius said confidently, shuffling the pack of cards carefully while he thought. I knew immediately when he'd got an idea because he stopped shuffling and began grinning as if he'd gone insane. "I have a plan."

We listened attentively as he described his plan, editing the details and adding our own bits as he spoke. Remus jotted everything down on a piece of scrap paper that had been left on a nearby table and then we got our wands out and began casting charms onto the objects.

The first spell we used was Gemino to multiply the amount of chewing gum and string we had. It was tempting to do the same with the fireworks, but we knew from past experience that it wouldn't work out well. We used simple sticking charms to glue the chewing gum onto the exploding snap cards and then attached each individual card to a different part of a firework with the string so that they hung down like a bizarre mobile.

"Do you think this will work?" Peter questioned nervously as we stuffed everything back into our pockets and began making our way to the Great Hall for lunch.

"Not a clue," I said cheerfully. "But the great thing about a prank is that it doesn't matter if it goes wrong."

"What wise logic," Remus remarked dryly, sitting down at the Gryffindor table. "When are we going to set them off?"

"Set what off?" Lily demanded suspiciously, appearing suddenly next to Remus and sitting down. "You'd better not be planning anything."

"We're not," Sirius reassured her before continuing with a smirk. "We finished the planning ages ago." He offered her a cheeky grin before nudging my arm and reaching into his pocket. "Now!"

As one, we each flung a firework into the air, shooting a quick Incendio after it. The four fireworks exploded at the same time, causing the fake sky of the Great Hall to be lit with different colours. Almost immediately after, the exploding snap cards exploded as well, releasing the chewing gum. The chewing gum inflated into bubbles while in the air and then popped, covering anyone unfortunate enough to be underneath them in a sticky pink goo.

"Not too bad to say we only had half an hour to plan," I commented, regarding the mess that the prank had caused and examining some of the glue that had landed on my plate.

"I hope it only takes you that long to clean it up then," McGonagall said sternly as she walked over to us. "I do believe you have a free now. Messrs Potter, Black and Pettigrew, you can use it to clean the hall."

"I always knew you liked Remus better," Sirius sighed dramatically, putting on his best heart broken face.

Remus snorted and picked up his bag, using a cleaning charm to get rid of the exploded gum. "There's a good reason for that, Padfoot."

"You wound me, Moony," Sirius put a hand over his heart and pretended to stagger, leaning against me for support.

McGonagall gave us another stern look, reminding us to get on with our cleaning. Remus waved as he left the hall, catching up with Lily so that they could walk together. For some reason, Lily always forgave Remus for the pranks that were pulled; she seemed to believe he was always innocent when truthfully it was his idea a lot of the time.

"That wasn't the best way to spend a free period," Sirius remarked as we left the Great Hall, picking pink goo out from underneath his nails. "But the prank was a definite success."

"We didn't get a chance to eat though," Peter said mournfully.

"Not to worry, Wormtail," I laughed. "We can call in at the kitchens before we go to Divination."

"We'll be late," Peter warned, sounding conflicted.

"So?" Sirius snickered. "If your Divination teacher has the 'Inner-Eye' she should be expecting you to be late."

"Exactly," I cheered, waving to Sirius as he left to go to Muggle studies. "We wouldn't want to disappoint the teacher now would we?"