Chapter One: Some Trouble With A Little Help From My Friends...
Minerva McGonagall looked at the four confection covered boys in front of her desk on a Sunday night at half past midnight, and shook her head disappointedly.
"Mister's Potter, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew," came her clipped Scottish accent, "This is the third night this week I've had to see you four in my office past curfew. What the devil did you lot manage to do this time?"
James was the first to answer, "Well, Professor, I'm sure this is just some huge misunderstanding actually." Minerva raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at that, "And it's a huge misunderstanding because I didn't do anything 'this time' or any other tine for that manner." he gave her an overly saccharine sweet smile while he batted his ridiculously long eyelashes at her.
"Huge misunderstanding?" Professor McGonagall spluttered in disbelief, "Mister Potter, you do understand that you hexed another student! What is there to misunderstand?"
James paused for a moment to comically blink his eyes, and rethink his last statement, "Alrightie then," he said slowly, "Maybe it's not such a misunderstanding after all." McGonagall pursed her lips in grim satisfaction, "Thank you."
"But!" Sirius interjected, much to everyone's annoyance, "This is unjust, unmoral, and just plain out bloody unfair." he ticked off each word beginning in 'Un' with his fingers for emphasis. Remus rolled his eyes, and sighed in resignation, "I believe the word is immoral, Padfoot, not unmoral. Unmoral isn't even a word." he corrected. Sirius' eyes blazed as he turned on his friend.
"I didn't ask you, Moony. Now stay out of this! We're trying to save our arses here!"
He said the last part in a furious stage whisper as if he didn't think the Transfiguration teacher could overhear them at such a "lowered", and Remus would place quotation marks around this, volume. Minerva, of course, heard every word loud and clear, and gave Black a rather particularly sharp glare for his crass language before she harshly quieted the four of them down,
"Settle down now you two, or it's double detention for the both of you and fifty points deducted from the two of you- each. For speaking out of term." The two teens quickly shut up at that statement. Realization that she wasn't kidding around either kept them silent too. The older woman pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose and sighed as if dealing with incompetent fools, and in this case since it was the Marauder's, it wasn't that far from the truth she realized.
"Now boys," she started, "this behavior is highly unacceptable for-"
"Professor, it was an accident, I promise," the bespectacled teen suddenly blurted.
A vein throbbed in the Transfiguration teacher's head, "Now see here Potter-"
"We were framed!" Sirius cried loudly.
"Mister Black!"
"I don't wanna be expelled," Peter suddenly sobbed, adding his input to the conversation for the first time that night.
James sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, As Sirius and Peter continued to yell obscene and ridiculous nonsensical things at a baffled McGonagall who remained tight lipped and silently waited out their tantrums.
"Sirius made me do it!"
"I accidentally kissed a house elf!"
"I didn't do anything Professor!"
"My 56 year old mother wears a thong!
"Please don't expel me-I mean- us!"
"Remus' middle name is Merryweather!"
"Hey," Remus shouted irritatedly, "That was supposed to be a secret! It's personal," he growled.
"Shut the bloody hell up Moony!"Sirius shouted back.
Peter continued to grovel, "Have mercy, ma'am!"
"I wanked off during Transfiguration once!" Black screamed again.
"Padfoot, just be quiet!" Remus snapped.
"Make me!" came his heated petulant response.
"Oi, will you three cut it out?" James queried.
"Not until Sirius here stops being such a git..."
"I take offense to that you arsehole!"
"Please don't expel me..."
The four wizard's petty arguing took them to all time high, as they snapped at one another for who knows how long before the female Professor finally muttered a silencing spell that sewed their mouths closed. The fighting suddenly reached a decrescendo, and only silence remained. Minerva gripped her wand tightly from behind her desk, one hand balled over the wooden tabletop and turning white as the seconds ticked by. Finally she lifted the spell after counting to thirty in her head.
"Now what do you four boys have to say for yourselves? And before you answer, think carefully about what you are going to say because it is past midnight and no one can hear you if I decide to let my wand slip."
A barely restrained chuckle ripped from the Marauder's leader's throat and he couldn't help but immaturely whisper, "That's what she said," into Sirius' ear. The curly haired teen started to guffaw but was then scared witless by the positively chilling look the older woman gave him. She was in no mood to be messed with. The heir to the house of Black gulped in slight fear, looking towards his friend's for strength.
"Well, Minny," Sirius hesitantly started in that smarmy voice of his. Professor McGonagall growled warningly in response, "Black!"
The Gryffindor backtracked hastily, fishing for a better choice of words to charm their irate Head of House. "I mean, Professor," he said in that overly charming way that only Sirius could pull off, "We're innocent, ma'am, I solemnly swear it!" McGonagall didn't look convinced at his half-heartfelt statement, and pursed her lips distrustfully.
James gave Remus a wide eyed glance behind Sirius's back, silently mouthing the words, "Help, him!" The taller boy only gave an equally troubled look in reply, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'Just wait until Padfoot really starts to lie his arse off. Then we're in trouble.'
And lie he did...
It started with pleading their innocence with stories of farfetched alibis for each Marauder, to naming other students, unsurprisingly all in Slytherin, to blame, and even stooping to trying to bribe the Transfiguration teacher before Sirius gave up, pointed at the heavens and named the only Slytherin in the school worth busting, and screamed in his whiniest most exasperated voice:
"Alright! I give up! I admit it, it was Snivilus- I mean- Severus! There, I told the truth Professor! See what you made me do? Ratting my dear greasy, friend Sevvie-kins out! What has this world come to?" Black was in his element, turning the theatrics up and sprouting a fake tear every five seconds. He sounded pretty convincing too, as if he really cared about throwing Snape under the bus when in reality he nudged Wormtail, Moony, and Prongs out the door to give them time to make a break for it. McGonagall was secretly impressed at Black's acting skills if it wasn't painfully obvious he was staging a getaway.
With a lazy flick of her wrist, the classroom door slammed shut in the four escapees faces. Their expressions turning to that of a man faced with the gallows as the professor gave a small satisfied smirk in return.
"Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast Mister's Black, Potter, Pettigrew, and Lupin. You're not off the hook that easily. Now sit down once more! And NO Black, do not start sprouting whatever nonsensical idiocy you are planning to change my mind with!"
The four Gryffindors took their respective seats once more. James next to Sirius who was next to Remus who was next to Peter. All boys painfully sticky in places they didn't want, or thought possible, to be sticky in and being convicted of hexing a student.
To say it wasn't their finest marauder's moment was an understatement.
After their first escape attempt, Minerva didn't even bother with letting them explain themselves since they did such a shoddy job of it in the first place. The older witch merely charmed their lips closed once more and handed out punishment like there was no tomorrow.
The four wizard's in question only walked away with a thorough tongue-lashing, a months worth of detention for whatever the hell is was they did, twenty-five points taken away from each of them for aggravating her, and a stinging hex sent at Sirius' bum for "mis-use of a house elf."
And McGonagall said that was being benevolent!
When all that was said and done with, she dismissed them with the threat of suspension if she had to see them this late ever again. The four students, taking that to heart, then hastily ran from the room, and slammed the door, jostling no less than twenty moving pictures from their slumber. Their shrill yells of complaint followed the little bastards as they left.
Minerva could suddenly feel a headache coming on.
The Transfiguration teacher sighed at the thought when they were finally gone, and stood up to return to her own dormitory at last.
No less than thirty seconds later though...
CRASH!
"ONE MILLION POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR DAMMIT!"
Sirius peaked his head in to chastise their Head of House, but when a desk flew towards him, he quickly thought better of it...