Eternal

They were all still walking wounded.

Their bodies had healed, but their hearts and souls were still mangled, torn by losses and shocked by grief.

In a quiet moment, with Teddy fast asleep under Ginny's watchful eye, two of them met in the kitchen of the Burrow with an artifact of the past.

"...So."

"Yeah."

For a moment they just stared at it, a simple piece of parchment laying folded on the table, so seemingly innocent. Of the seven who had been its keepers, only these two remained. One murdered, one fallen, one betrayed, one betrayer, one accident, five dead.

The shorter of the two raised his wand hesitantly, then lowered it again. "I can't."

The other just nodded. "I know, mate."

"What are we going to do?"

Both were quiet for a moment, then the taller of the two picked it up.

"We do what they would have wanted. We take it back to Hogwarts."

Sometimes, certain things are destined.

"Lumos."

"We shouldn't be here...."

"Shh, Come on, Giles, don't be a baby! Besides, we're still in Griffindor tower, it's practically our right to explore."

The young boy, maybe a second or third year, looked at his friend doubtfully. He couldn't see much of her, just her feet and legs and arse and the end of her dark ponytail as she crawled along the passage in front of him. "Alice, we're going to get in trouble, this door was hidden for a reason..."

"Yeah, for us to find it! Now come on!"

Giles sighed, but kept crawling. After several twists and turns, Alice stopped unexpectedly, and he nearly ran into her back. "Hey, warn a guy. What's wrong?"

"It widens out ahead," came the girl's answer. "Not quite big enough to be called a room, and the ceiling doesn't get any higher, but... Hey, come look at this."

Indeed, the crawl way widened out, so Giles squeezed up beside her and blinked in the light of her wand. "It's just a bunch of old rubbish."

"Maybe..." Alice poked the pile of parchment and old leaves and owl feathers. "But why dump it all the way down here?"

Giles shrugged. "Maybe it's a rat nest, or something?"

"There's no droppings... Hey, look here."

Alice had pulled a couple pieces of parchment from the rest, pieces that were uncrumpled and neatly folded. She unfolded the first, and both children stared in awe as writing appeared spontaniously.

Mr. Wormtail would like to say that you are both very big gits.

Mr. Padfoot would like to say that Mr. Wormtail is not very creative.

They waited, but nothing more appeared, and after a moment the writing faded, leaving a blank parchment again. Disappointed, Alice set that one aside and picked up the other. It seemed a perfectly ordinary, unenchanted parchment, and it was beginning to yellow with age. She unfolded it carefully, to find only a single line, written in neat, if oddly familiar, writing.

"Mischief is managed if I solemnly swear I am up to no good." Giles read slowly, frowning. "Long live the Marauders. What's that supposed to mean?"

Alice's eyes widened, and she nearly dropped the parchment. "Good Merlin!"

"What?" Giles looked around nervously, sure they were about to be eaten by Greater English Tunnel Snakes.

"The Marauders!" Alice took hold of his shoulder and shook it, her face excited and flushed in the wand light. "They were the greatest pranksters ever at Hogwarts, back in the 1980's just before Voldemort's First War! No one knows who they were! Come on, haven't you read the books that George Weasley wrote about them? 'Moony's Magic' and 'Prongs' Perils' and the rest of them? The Marauders are legends, Giles!"

He gave her a doubtful look. "Alice, it's 2045, why do I care?"

Alice glared at him, then picked up the enchanted parchment and shook it. "Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail, Prongs, I know you're in there somewhere! Come out!"

Mssrs Padfoot and Prongs would like it to be known that they are flipping you the bird.

Giles frowned. "Maybe we should tell the Headmaster..."

"No!" Alice glared at him. "I swear, if you tell anyone about this I will hex you! I'll figure this thing out. It's something special, I know it, and if we tell any of the teachers they'll take it away. So you won't be telling them, right?"

Giles wilted a bit from the withering glare the girl was giving him, and he nodded reluctantly. "All right... This is only going to end in trouble," he murmured rebelliously and mostly to himself. "Trouble and detention."

It is said that a man never dies as long as his name is remembered.

In the headmaster's office of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter looked up as wards that had long been inactive suddenly lit up. He blinked, then smiled, just a little, and lifted his wand to deactivate the wards altogether. In the morning he'd have to floo George and let him know the Marauders were rising again.

But first, he stood up and moved toward the liquer cabinet in one corner of the room. He took out a bottle of firewhiskey and stood for a moment, gazing at the one portrait on the walls that wasn't of a former headmaster. This one had been painted from an old photograph he'd found, of four grinning boys in their last year of Hogwarts, jostling to get closer to the camera and grinning like loons.

Smiling only a little sadly, Harry toasted the past and drank.

"May Hogwarts always have pranksters; long live the Marauders."