FOURTY-FIVE

"Burn belongings to keep warm the mortal flesh you are left with…" Josephine's finger ran across the ancient page, and although she sat very near the radiator in the boys dormitory, she shivered.

"This is some creepy shit," Sirius confirmed from beside her as he looked over her shoulder. "The mandrake leaf, kept under one's tongue for 30 nights, thereafter shredded and… wait, 30 nights?"

It was the weekend, and Josie and the boys were amongst piles of books. The darkness gave their finally fruitful findings a certain eerie quality. While Remus was still trying to do his best to stay out of it - for while his friends might not, he knew the possible severity of their actions - he couldn't stop getting sucked in by what he overheard. This sounded like some borderline dark magic. James was the most immersed in a book that Josie had ever seen him, and Peter was so submerged in his duvet while he poured over the volumes that only the top of his blonde mop of hair was visible.

"A whole month? Where does it say that?" Josie asked, and Sirius pointed. "Wow. Do you think that's legitimate?" Even as she asked she knew the answer. From his half curtained bed, Remus joined the conversation.

"Well did you expect it to be easy?"

"The sass!" Sirius snorted.

"It's not just difficult," James said, "it sounds damn dangerous… I think this is blood magic." From what they could gather, in order to become an animagus, there was an extremely complex potion to be made with some kind of ritual.

"The problem is that these ingredients are all really hard to come by," Peter muttered.

"Yeah, one of the problems anyway," James affirmed. "We should focus on that and then figure out the rest later, this book says we have to do it at a certain time of night? And there's the freaky ritual at the end…" Remus made a face.

"You're still going through with it?" He said. Everyone looked up at him on his half curtained four poster. A heavy silence hung for a few seconds before the mutual consensus was reached. There was a serious tone that Josie hadn't experienced with the boys before, although it was apparent that they also didn't realise how much they had bitten off. She turned her eyes to Sirius, who wore a slight smile, his eyes eager. Foolishly fearless. "Just checking," Remus shrugged, although he, too, seemed to get a thrill out of the risk.

"Do you know how fucking cool this would be if we pulled this off?" Sirius confided. James scoffed, and soon he too, was grinning. Sirius's finger ran down the list of potion ingredients; asphodel root, cat hair, jewel weed, lacewing flies, morning dew… the mandrake leaves, and most morbidly, their own blood. As they set about planning various heist plans in order to gain the ingredients, James began rooting around his trunk, pulling out items with increasing speed.

"What are you looking for, James?" Peter asked. No response came as he kept rummaging, and he soon turned around with a wild look in his eyes.

"Sirius, where's the invisibility cloak?" James asked, accusation rising in his voice.

"Uh," Sirius flicked an anxious eye back to Josie, but didn't seem to keep it for long, remembering. "Mate…"

"Mate! Tell me you didn't leave it at the freaking restricted section," James despaired, running one of his hands through his hair. Josephine's stomach dropped and she tried to look away from James, his silhouette against the moonlit window exuding an air of stress. When there was no answer from his best friend, he broke; "Tell me!"

"James…"

"Sirius!"

"It's all right! We can just go back there and grab it tomorrow night, it's not even a big deal," Sirius tried to appease James.

"Not a big deal!" James shot his widened aggravated stare to Josie in disbelief. "Not a big deal? Sirius, do you know how hard it is to find an INVISIBLE OBJECT?! MOTHERFUCKING HARD!"

Sirius wisely had stopped attempting to calm him down, and Josie didn't dare say anything either in fear of James Potter's wrath.

"What were you even doing?" James continued, berating them. "How even…" Clearly frustrated, his voice dispersed into tense silence, and he sighed heavily. Josie saw a hard expression fall on Sirius's face, clearly trying not to fly into an equal fury.

"If someone were to find the cloak we would be in some deep shit," Peter said quietly. "They would immediately know it was us."

"Exactly!" Josie jumped in. James looked up, his eyes piercing. It was clear he was about to go off again so she spoke quickly. "No, listen - if someone had found it we would already know about it, McGonagall would have killed us already… We still have time." James snorted.

"You fuckers better get that cloak back tonight or I'll kill you before McGonagall gets the chance." The threat was supported by the aggressive look on James's face - his eyes wide and his jaw set. Josie met his gaze and tried to remain steeled as Sirius had already stood up and started to leave.

"I'm really sorry James," she quietly offered before following him, and as she carefully closed the door behind her, the click was louder than if she had slammed it shut. She found Sirius standing just outside, his shoulders tense and knuckles white as he balled his hands into fists.

"Are you okay?" Josie whispered, trying to get a good look at his face in the darkness. He merely exhaled very deeply through his mouth and walked down the stairs into the common room. Tiptoeing after him, she was unsure what to do, so she kept quiet. Even though it was the middle of the night, they navigated the common room without so much as a stubbed toe, knowing the room as well as they would their own home. As they peered out of the portrait hole, the castle was quiet except for the sounds of the staircases restlessly floating, stone against stone, and the soft snoring of the Fat Lady. Sirius spoke, his rage finally pouring over.

"He can be such an entitled prick sometimes," he said through gritted teeth. "It's not a fucking big deal, and if he ever tries to order me around like that again I'm going to break all of his fingers." Slightly taken aback by the violence in his voice, Josie grabbed his arm before he could sneak out of the portrait hole.

"If we're gonna get the cloak back we need to make sure we don't fuck up again, we can't go if you're all worked up and reckless like that," she retorted. "Stay level-headed. Besides, he's kinda right, we could have gotten caught."

"But we didn't!" Sirius hissed, a little too loud. He finally turned to make eye contact and Josephine swore for a split second that his grey eyes glowed, but it was late and her tired mind could have been mistaken. Something about being confronted with her appraisal seemed to snap him back into reality, and his vexed expression relaxed slightly.

"Let's just go," She whispered.

Authors note: 0-100 real quick.