The Marauding Seven - Year 1

The Marauding Seven YEAR 1 chapter 6

One Prank or Two?

"Okay, listen up! Me, Alex, Remus and Wye were all in the common room last night-"

"Oh, you were huh, Sirius?" Sirius gave James a very dark look and he fell quiet.

"And Wye came up with a kinda 'group name' - The Marauders. After some discussion, we decided on 'The Marauders, The Magical Mischief Makers Of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.' Thought we'd better run it past you three though," Sirius added. James was nodding thoughtfully, Kate looked half asleep still, but Lily looked like she liked it.

"Cool. Bit long though," she said.

"The Marauders for short," replied Sirius. Lily nodded.

"Great!"

"Uh, Sirius," said Remus quietly. Sirius turned to look at him. "Have you done something to the Slytherins again?"

Every day this week he'd done something - on Monday he'd dyed their hair blue, on Tuesday he'd enchanted every single Slytherin owl so it would dive into a jug of pumpkin juice when it tried to deliver post, on Wednesday he'd put a sedative into their pumpkin juice, on Thursday evening he'd stuck them all to their chairs, and now-

"A simple drunkenness draught," he replied with a twinkle in his eye.

"You mean - they're all going to be drunk?" asked Alex dumbfounded.

"No, not unless they drink a whole jug, just, uh, tipsy!" Sirius grinned.

"Um, Sirius - Snape drinks an awful lot of pumpkin juice - it's his favourite!" exclaimed Lily. James began to laugh.

"No! Really?" Sirius feigned a look of complete surprise. "That, my dear friends, is the plan."

The Marauders were in Defense Against the Dark Arts again with Payne. Lily was taking notes, but as Payne repeated each point at least twice, this was what she had so far:

"Okay," Payne carried on in her monotone voice. "For homework kindly summarise Grindylows in a paragraph, for more information see 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.' Pack away."

Lily threw her books into her bag and raced out of the class. Remus had gone home to see his mum, who was ill, and she had been forced to sit next to James when Sirius sat next to Wye. She could have sworn he did it on purpose. All through the lesson she hadn't been able to look him in the eye after what her friends had said last night. She hadn't been able to be mean to him either, so all lesson they'd sat in uncomfortable silence.

"Kate! Wait up!" Kate turned round and waited for Lily, whose hair had been steadily coming out of her plait all day. "How did you get out before me?" she asked breathlessly.

"I was sitting next to the door," she replied.

"Oh, yeah."

"You know, I'm running out of pranks. That's gotta be bad - a little help here guys!" Sirius was looking extremely concerned, so Alex spoke up.

"What about Boggarts? I read about them somewhere," she said thoughtfully.

"You read to much. But, where are we going to find one? If Filch finds one it gets destroyed. We'd have to comb the castle," replied a downcast Sirius.

"And that'd take days," added James. Lily nodded. Kate noticed and thought about telling her she'd agreed with James, but maybe they were starting to bond. She didn't want to ruin that. James caught Lily's eye, and they both blushed. Whoa! Thought Kate. Maybe while they'd been girl-talking, Sirius and Remus had had a bit of a chat with James...

The talk of pranks continued, some ideas were used, others dismissed. Soon however, came Christmas...