Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

~Idiom

Chapter Ten

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

James sat at the breakfast table on the morning of October 30. He appeared anxious and on edge and kept glancing at the space through which the owls normally arrived with the post. Anyone with half a brain could guess that he was eagerly awaiting that day's owl post. Something, though what it was wasn't clear, was going to be arriving that day.

It had been a little over a week since he'd asked Remus to talk to Lily, since he'd essentially relinquished control over the Snape investigation. But the time of year, the rapid approach of Halloween had divided, then strongly pulled his attention. The closer it got to Halloween, the less focused on trying to gather useable facts and information about Snape James became.

Shortly after their first, extremely successful, Halloween prank, the four Gryffindor boys had decided to make it a tradition of sorts. Every year, at the Hogwarts Halloween feast they would perform some act of trickery. After all, James reasoned, it was in the spirit of the holiday. Muggle children did go door-to-door on All Hallows Eve declaring 'Trick or Treat'.

So, as October 31 grew nearer, James and Sirius turned their attention, and the attentions of Remus and Peter, to what their Halloween prank would be, and how they would pull it off. They spent several evenings, working late into the night, laying out ideas and planning out the intricacies. They all agreed that this year they should do something different than last year, so they chose to avoid anything with food.

James was quite excited about the plan they'd come up with. If they managed to pull it off, which James was positive they would, this prank promised to be quite fantastical. All that was holding them up was the package that should be arriving in that morning's owl post. They'd ordered the package from a mail in magazine several days prior and, every morning since then James had been waiting on pins and needles. The package had to come in today if they were going to have time to set everything up and pull off their epic Halloween prank.

"I think I see something," Remus finally spoke, squinting up at the owl post opening. Sure enough, almost as soon as the words were out of the skinny boy's mouth, a cloud of birds emerged into the Great Hall. The flapping wings and occasional squawking of the owls made it difficult to talk so a sort of hush fell over the Great Hall. Nearly all heads turned to the owls, each student wondering if there was something meant for him or her amongst the multitude of owls.

James, just like many others, stared up hopefully and expectantly. He didn't know what the mail-order company's owl would look like, so he didn't know which bird to focus on. Instead, he sat up straighter whenever a bird flew near to the quartet and subsequently slunk back down whenever the same bird flew past. If the package didn't come today, then all their planning would have been for naught. Their ingenious prank would be dead before they even managed to get it off the ground.

"Come on. Come on. Come on," James muttered under his breath as the birds thinned out. he thought he was muttering quietly enough that no one could hear him, but he was apparently wrong.

"Well, if the package doesn't arrive today," Peter squeaked, clearly nervous by where this train of thought was leading. However, he pushed on. "There still has to be something we can do to make it happen. And, maybe we can still afford to wait one more day." Peter was trying to sound optimistic and up beat.

"Waiting one more day would make everything tight. It wouldn't give us much time," James responded, not looking at Peter but instead still up at the ceiling and the remaining owls.

"Yes, but tight is better than –ack!" Peter exclaimed. The surprising sound drew James' attention. Peter had, only moments, before, been eating porridge and talking with the others. Then, in the middle of his sentence, something had dropped, presumably from one of the owls, right into his bowl. Porridge had then spattered all over the mousy boy. James' eyes grew wide at the sight.

"Fantastic!" he cheered, earning a hurtful look from Peter who assumed James' gleeful mood was at his expense. James quickly reached across the table and retrieved the package from the bowl. "We're rolling now boys." The messy haired boy turned the package around so that the mailing label was visible to Remus and Peter who were sitting across the table from James and Sirius.

Written on the parchment wrapping paper, in clear and elegant script, were James' name and the address of Hogwarts and, where the return address was located was written the name of the mail-in company.

The package they had been waiting for had finally arrived. The school wouldn't know what hit them during the annual Halloween feast.

Finally, the 31st of October arrived. All of the students at Hogwarts gathered in the Great Hall on the evening of Halloween. Excited and happy chatter filled the space as students from all four houses readied themselves for one of Hogwarts best feasts. On Halloween, the staff of house elves at Hogwarts out did themselves with roasts, and stews, and fish, and other great English dishes. Then, they turned around and did it all again with the dessert course.

James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter sat at their normal spots along the Gryffindor table. They hadn't been assigned them, or anything, they'd just started sitting there in first year and habit and human nature just sort of took over.

On that evening, the four Gryffindor were trying their hardest to not appear suspicious. Lots of students were already shooting them furtive glances and suspicious looks; they were just waiting to see what the pranksters had in store for the Halloween feast. And, despite trying his best to hide it, James was absolutely ecstatic about all of the attention.

"Watching all of them fret over what will happen and when is almost better than what their reactions will be post-prank," James gleefully cheered, looking around at all of the hesitant faces that populated the Great Hall. He nearly squealed with joy when the dinner feast finally arrived and, instead of the usual enthusiastic digging in that usually followed, people turned to look at the four Gryffindors. They were all, James suspected, waiting to see what he and his friends would do before piling food onto their plates.

Sirius, seemingly unfazed by the attention, quickly began taking large portions of roast, and potatoes, and vegetables, and bread. He piled the food several inches thick on his plate before he eagerly dug in. Sirius' actions broke some sort of spell as, the minute after he took his first bite, everyone else began eating. What had, only seconds before been an essentially quiet hall burst to life with a cacophony of cutlery clings, plate scrapes, glass tinkles, and easy-going chatter.

"So," Peter asked, leaning in close so that no one could hear him. Before he had spoken, he'd taken a large bite of potatoes and hadn't quite swallowed it all. "When is it going to happen? We could wait until dessert like last year, but that seems a little predictable. People are probably expecting it."

James smirked mischievously at his friend, then shot knowing looks at Remus and Sirius. The three of them had discussed their execution plan the night before, as Peter slept on a stack of books he'd been using to write a paper for astronomy. They thought about waking Peter to have him be a part of their conversation, but James decided it would be more enjoyable to watch Peter's surprised reaction, along with the surprised reactions of everyone else in the Great Hall.

"You'll just have to wait and see, Peter," James responded, punctuating his sly comment with a large bite of roast. Peter seemed to accept James' vague statement, simply shrugging and returning to his meal.

A loud clatter filled the Great Hall, emanating from the joyful boisterous crowd. They were obviously enjoying their meals and the celebration of All Hallows Eve. Like the years previous, the Hall was decorated with floating jack-o-lanterns and candles. All the tables had centerpieces of traditional fall fair, like gourds and leaves.

Suddenly, one of the large pumpkins over the Slytherin table exploded, a spray of fireworks shooting out of the inside of it. The Slytherins beneath it shrieked and scrambled out of the way. All eyes turned immediately towards the commotion, some even snickering at the Slytherins' expense.

Then, a jack-o-lantern exploded over the Hufflepuff table with fireworks shooting out of it. And, like the flip of a switch, one-by-one all of the jack-o-lanterns in the Great Hall exploded in an epic firework show. Everyone scrambled beneath tables to avoid being bit by a stray firework and set ablaze. Once the initial terror and shock wore off though, most of the students cheered on the explosive display and watched it in awe, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter included.

They were most definitely facing detention for their exploits, but, as colourful explosions went off over their heads, James felt it was all worth it.