One of us - Marauders Era

4

"How is she still asleep?"

"I don't know, I've been trying to wake her up for twenty minutes"

Josie slowly opens one eye to see the three girls standing around her bed, they rip the covers off her and yank her into a sitting position.

"You're all dressed," Josie tiredly observes,

"Because it's twenty minutes until class and we want breakfast," Mary replies. Josie's eyes grow wide before grabbing her uniform and running to the bathroom.

"You guys go to breakfast, I'll see you there," she calls to them. Luckily one of the perks of being a metamorphmagus is she never had to bother with her hair and face. After getting dressed and brushing her teeth, she looked in the mirror and changed her hair to whatever she fancied.

As she was about to leave, Josie hears some thumps and yells come from the common room. Grabbing her bag, she rushes out of her dorm to see James and Sirius lying at the bottom of the stairs.

"What happened?" she asks Remus who was standing next to them laughing.

"You were taking so long that they came to get you, only for the stairs to turn into a slide and both of them fall back down," he says with an amused smile.

She helps James back up, his hair even messier than usual and glasses crooked.

"You guys waited for me?" she asks, genuinely surprised, the boys looked at her confused.

"Of course we waited, you're one of us," James replies straightening his glasses, after seeing the emotional expression the small girl had, he wraps her in a hug.

"Too much sappy talk," Sirius intervenes, taking Josie's arm and dragging her towards the exit, "let's get breakfast."

"So the first subject today is... Defence against the Dark Arts with Professor Ramirez," Josie announces, holding her timetable.

"That is correct," a man's voice says. Josie looks around confused while a second-year who was sitting nearby chuckles in amusement at her. Suddenly a silver man comes through the table and greets her.

"I'm Sir Nicholas, how do you do,"

"He's a ghost," the second year explains.

"Are there a lot of ghosts here?" she asks after Sir Nicholas leaves,

"I think there's five, one for each house and Peeves the Poltergeist. Watch out for him."

The second-year explains how Peeves is a troublemaker and likes to play pranks and annoy people, especially Filch the caretaker.

Josie and Lily decide to start finding their way to class early only for Severus to join them since his class is on the way.

"Harper," he greets her coldly. Josie snorts, guess they're using last names.

"Snape," she replies mockingly making Lily laugh slightly but she quickly shuts up after seeing Snape's expression.

"You think you're better than everyone because of your special abilities," he snaps causing Josie to let out a laugh of disbelief.

"Sev that's-" Lily attempts to intervene,

"No Lily it's okay, if Snape here likes to start arguments to get attention then let him."

"I'm not trying t-"

"GiVe mE AtTenTioN" she mocks causing Snape to huff and storm off.

"Josie..." Lily sighs, Josie smiles sheepishly muttering an apology.

The class was pretty basic, Josie and Lily paired up and Professor Ramirez taught them how to send red and green sparks into the air to call for help. Both the girls managed to do it quite easily and spent the rest of the lesson sitting on the grass talking.

"I understand you were just defending yourself but it's going to be complicated now my two best friends don't get along," Lily explains sadly. Josie comforts her and promises to do her best to not cause any problems with Snape.

"Josie! Watch! We figured out how to make the sparks into proper fireworks," Sirius exclaims excitedly making her laugh. She watches as the green spark goes up and separates into more green sparks.

"Nice," she comments, only for her expression to turn to fear as the individual sparks catch fire and start falling back down towards them and the other students. Her hair turns green as she yells for everyone to run. 

"Pretty hot right?" Sirius jokes as they stare down at the burnt patches of grass. Josie gives him an unamused look while Lily and James argue loudly next to them. 

The next lesson was History of Magic with Professor Binns. On the way, Josie tells the boys that she'll meet them there since she needs the bathroom.

"I swear she has the bladder of a squirrel," she hears Sirius murmur as they walk away. She laughs, quickly using the bathroom and rushing out so as to not be late. She runs down the empty hall and up the stairs. After making a few turns Josie realises she's completely lost.

"Great. Just great," she says to herself. Moments later she sees something silver at the end of the hall and hears some laughing. Hoping they can help her, she runs towards it.

As she gets closer she sees it was a strangely dressed ghost with a mischievous grin.

"What do we have here?" the ghost asks, floating closer to the small girl,

"Uh... I'm lost," Josie says,

"Hello lost, I'm Peeves," he cackles, Josie remembers the second-year girl warning her about Peeves but she didn't have many options right now.

"Very funny, my name is Josie and I need to get to my History of Magic class. Can you please help me?"

"What can I get in return?" he asks. Josie tries to think of what you could possibly give a ghost. She grins, remembering something.

"Later in the week, my friends and I are gonna pull a prank on the whole school. Would you wanna help?"

Josie watches as his smile widens, just glad she was at least on his good side now. As she walks, they discuss different pranks.

"I like you," he cackles, "you're lucky, that doesn't really happen often." They reach her classroom. 

"See you later," Josie salutes him before quietly opening the door to the classroom and sneaking in.

She quickly slips into the seat next to a tired-looking Sirius,

"Why is there a ghost teaching this class?" she whispers,

"My theory is that the subject is so boring, even the teacher died," he replies resting his head on the desk. Josie tries to muffle her laugh causing the teacher to stop and look around suspiciously. 

She takes some notes but soon gives up like the rest of the class. The Professor's voice was so monotone and boring, it was ironic that he was the one who was dead. She looks to her right to see Sirius was asleep as well as half of the class.