Right, here's another oneshot for you, centered on our four favorite trouble makers. Or maybe just the one. I dunno depends on how you look at it. Nevertheless, I beg you to take the time to read it and leave a review. It would be greatly appreciated XD

Sirius Black was getting seriously annoyed. Here he was, fourth year, Gryffindor, most popular kid in school, and yet his best friends found themselves incapable of being on time. Didn't they know how special this day was, how long he had been waiting for it? Even Lupin wasn't here, and he was never late, unless you count the days after the full moon when he was tired and depressed. James and Peter were a different story, but they had never, ever held up a plan this cunning, this pure.

Still, Sirius sat there at his table in Potions class wondering where the hell his friends were. Class started five minutes ago, and he was bursting to get started, but alas his friends were vital to his plans. In fact, they came up with the plans. Slughorn was showing signs of agitation, and Sirius knew why. The boy had never stayed this quiet for this long without having some kind of lunatic plan in his head: Slughorn had no idea how right he was. The only thing left now was for his friends to finally show the hell up.

Even the class had noticed something was wrong: Sirius seemed on edge, something that very rarely happened, and he was alone, which happened even less. He was tapping the handle of his wand on his seat, sparks flying off the edge. Everything was set and ready, and it was going to be brilliant, wonderful, total ecstasy, except that one teeny tiny problem. His friends still didn't show up. And that alone was ruining his plans completely. The problem became only more annoying when he remembered how they had discussed this, that they would wake up early, eat early, hex Snape early, so why did everything have to go wrong at the last minute?

Sirius looked out the window. Despite the cold out there, he was feeling rather hot: unlike everybody else, he had opted to keep his cloak on, buttoned up to his neck. You couldn't see past his socks.

What were they doing anyway? What could possibly be more important than this? This plan was everything, their insurance policy, their guarantee that they would be marked down as the most brilliant students that ever walked these halls. Then again, they were surely already marked down as the most brilliant students who ever walked these halls, but that only made things better. How long he had stayed up last night, thinking about this one moment, he had no idea, but that didn't bother him now: the only thing on his mind was the whereabouts of his three friends.

Snape was staring curiously across the room. No doubt he was trying to figure out what was wrong with Sirius, or where his friends were. Or maybe, Sirius thought, he's just jealous of my good looks. Yeah, that's probably it. He returned a hate-filled glare to the young Slytherin.

It was a Monday, meaning that, in the event that they would get a detention for the next few days, they would not have to miss out on the weekend, which was predicted to be very nice. At the moment, however, rain was crashing down on the castle, washing away all hopes of going outside at a free period. Sirius was so occupied in his own thoughts that he almost didn't hear Slughorn's question, which had been directed at Sirius.

'Sirius, name a key ingredient in Veritaserum.'

'What?' Sirius sat up straighter in his chair, trying to cover up his brief confusion: No matter what, even if his friends were infuriatingly late, Sirius Black would never answer a simple Potions question wrong.

'Oh… Right. Uh… crushed asphodel root.' He finished awkwardly, hoping that nobody had noticed his hesitation.

'Correct! Ten points to Gryffindor!' Slughorn beamed, still looking rather suspicious at the absence of Sirius's friends. 'Now Veritaserum is lethal if brewed wrong because of it's precise…'

Sirius never found out why Veritaserum was lethal if brewed wrong because the rest of the lecture seemed to be drowned out by the tick-tock of the watch strapped to his wrist, which showed that class had started ten minutes ago. Transfiguration was the only class that he didn't have with the rest of his friends (he was in the minor Transfiguration classes: it was the subject that he had the most trouble with) and it just happened to be right before their Potions class, therefore, he had no way of knowing what had happened to his friends. He was actually starting to get a bit worried, because no matter what had happened, Remus Lupin would NEVER allow himself to be this late to class, even if Potions was his worst subject. James had been much later to classes before (his record was thirty minutes for reasons too pathetic to put here), but he had been absolutely intent on coming to class early today, and Sirius suspected that James would throw himself from the common room window if they had missed this opportunity. As for Peter… Well, he went wherever James went.

Sirius spotted Snape whispering something to Mulciber, who looked at him, alone at his table, and sniggered. Sirius face slipped into a confused expression. Was it really so unusual for Sirius Black to be found alone?

'Now today marks the beginning of a project that will span over two months, in which you will attempt to brew a cauldron of Veritaserum. Now, this is usually done in sixth year, but this is an advanced class so…'

Tick… Tick… Tick… The watch seemed to be mocking him. Twelve minutes… Thirteen minutes…

'And you may begin!'

Barely focusing on what he was doing, Sirius began to kindle a fire under his cauldron. Almost fifteen minutes in and no signs of his friends were apparent to him. He was adding his chopped up Lagundi leaves when he heard the shuffling of chairs around him. Half relieved, half furious, Sirius turned to shout down his late friends, but found that they weren't his friends at all: All the Slytherins from the other table had decided to chat, and Snape was sitting right next to him.

'There's no tea party over here, boys.' Sirius jeered. 'Or shampoo.' he added, turning to Snape.

'Don't worry, we're not here to party.' one of the Slytherins laughed. Sirius recognized him to be Walter Gant, a particularly stupid kid, even for Slytherin standards. He was quite skinny, and about three inches shorter than Sirius, who was surprised to even hear him speaking to the young Gryffindor. Then again, there were about five of them, and only one of him, but he tried not to dwell on that.

'So where are you're boyfriends, Black? Off matching their socks?'

Sirius almost laughed at this insult: it was so UN-insulting, he almost waved it off, but he wasn't one to let a Slytherin get away with anything. Sirius had the strong urge to answer "That's a good question", but thought better of it. He instead smiled at Walter, and his reply came out quite smoothly.

'Gee, leave my boyfriends alone, Wally, you have plenty,' he said, waving at the other Slytherins. 'Of course, I can see why you'd prefer mine to yours, yours look like they haven't seen a shower for weeks-'

'Watch your mouth there, Black, or we might slip a Babbling Beverage into your morning tea. You wouldn't want that now would you?' Snape was waving a mocking finger in Sirius's face.

'Y'know, waving fingers in front of my face won't make you look better, Snivellus.'

'Ah, Gryffindors and Slytherins, together at last!' said Slughorn obliviously, coming around to their table, cringing a bit a Sirius's half-assed potion, but beaming nonetheless. 'You keep it up boys!'

'Oh yeah,' Sirius replied, 'we will.'

They all waited for Slughorn to wander off to another table (somebody's cauldron had caught fire completely, but his was not uncommon, so Sirius ignored it), until they started to throw bad putdowns at each other (these were particularly stupid Slytherins, with the exception of Snape, so Sirius wasn't really trying his hardest, and he saved his better insults for another day).

'Oh please, Black, your brother is THREE times-'

Mulciber never got the chance to finish his surely poor insult as somebody had grabbed his shoulder from behind. Ready to tell the person off, Mulciber looked up at the culprit, and Sirius saw his eyebrows disappear behind his unkept bangs.

'Get out of my chair.'

James was smirking at the Slytherins, as if waiting for one of them retaliate. Sirius was surprised to see that it was not, in fact, James who had slapped a hand on Mulciber's shoulder, but Remus, who was unsmiling, had an eyebrow quirked, and was looking rather awesome.

Mulciber stood up and faced Remus. While Sirius was sure Mulciber was trying to look cool, Sirius rather thought standing up was a bad idea. Mulciber wasn't exactly short, but he was in no way taller than Remus: in fact, out of the people at the table, he had to be the tallest.

'What are you gonna do if I don't, Lupin? Kick me?'

'Oh no, no, no. Much worse.'

Mulciber weighed the chances of getting his ass kicked by somebody who was never known to be violent. He seemed to have decided not to risk it because he turned to his fellow Slytherins. 'I'm bored.'

'Me too,' said Walter, and one by one the Slytherins went back to their table (all the while being glared at by Snape who had actually become bored with Sirius). Remus took his rightful place in his chair, and James and Peter followed suit.

'Sorry about the lateness, love,' said James to Sirius. Sirius simply stared at him blankly. He was waiting for an excuse.

Detecting the source of hostility, James rose to the occasion. 'Remy here got cold feet, as you could probably tell-'

'I did NOT get cold feet,' interrupted Remus. 'I never agreed to do this.'

'Sure you did,' said Peter. 'You just didn't say so.'

'It is impossible to reason with you guys...' Remus started massaging his temple. 'Right, well my chances of convincing you guys not to do this are slim to none, so...' He looked at Sirius.

He sighed. 'Right. You first Jamesie!'

James rose from his seat and proceeded to the front of the class, followed by his three friends. Remus could be heard muttering something about 'a bad idea. A very bad idea.

They stopped at the front of the class. They simply stood there until the entire class had their attention on them. After one sigh of indignation from Remus, they all simultaneously ripped off their robes.

There stood the four Maruaders, stark naked in front of the entire class.

They did indeed get detentions.