By the end of September, James, Sirius, Peter and Remus had got a reputation for pranking. Even though Peter and Remus usually backed out of most of their plans, James and Sirius somehow pulled them in for the rest of them. They all had grown so close, that James couldn't imagine a day without his friends.

Within a span of a month, James alone had managed to get around thirty detentions, due to which he had got several letters from his parents-thankfully none were howlers.

'He's coming, hurry up!' Peter hissed.

James nodded ,'Im almost done,'

He hurriedly started placing several dungbombs in inappropriate places around the caretaker's office.

Having put the last couple under the desk, he ran out, carefully, skipping some places, to Peter.

'Where are Sirius and Remus?'

Peter pointed sideways. James turned and grinned widely.

Remus and Sirius, who had put on, extremely muddy shoes, were walking towards them-purposely dirtying the floor around them.

'Im glad you agreed to help us on this, Remus' James said cheerfully.

'I didn't,' Remus said, though looking pretty glad ,'We had a deal,'

'One class without disturbance? Did I tell you that's gonna be herbology, which me and Sirius are skipping?'

'No, we didn't agree on that.' Remus frowned.

'we just agreed on one boring no-entertainment class for you,' Sirius said

'that-'

'tis is not the time-Filch is coming!' Peter said.

Hearing the faint howling(meowing) of a cat, they ran behind the tapestry right across filch's office. Sirius stopped long enough to fill the entrance of filch's door with mud, then he ran behind them, smiling gleefully.

'Dirtied my floor again!' Filch screeched coming over, Mrs. Norris following closely behind. 'My Door! Stupid children, never think about the work I have to do because of them!'

As soon as filch entered inside his office, there was an explosion. At once all the dungbombs had exploded- giving dense brown smokes from inside the room, and a horrible smell.

'How did you manage to put off all at once?' Remus asked.

'Chain reaction.' Sirius replied.

'Yeah-its my idea ofcourse. The first one-which was right in front would set off the second and so on.' James added.

Filch was shouting from his office about crazy children.

'That's our cue to leave,' James said and ran further back into the tapestry, coming out from another tapestry in the entrance hall.

'What do we have now?' James asked, still running.

Remus took out his schedule from his bag and looked it through, 'Charms.'

James nodded and jumped out of the window nearby.

'James!'

'Believe me Remus,' James said, hanging from one of the pegs in the castle wall ,'I went through all of this with Sirius, yesterday.'

'Yeah, it leads straight into the charms classroom.' Sirius said before jumping out, and getting hold of another peg.

'I don't think I'll even be able to climb that.' Peter said.

'Oh come on!' said Sirius pulling Peter up.

Remus sighed before following.

They walked through the windowstills of the castle wall, jumping over some. James stopped at one window and peeked through it, he looked back up grinning.

'Don't tell me you are going to break the window,' Remus said ominously.

'That is exactly what we are going to do.' Sirius said.

Even before Remus could move to stop them, James and Sirius had kicked hard on the windows and jumped in.

Murmuring about his reckless friends Remus jumped behind them.

James had landed right atop Lily Evans' table, causing her to jump back and shriek loudly. The glass shards, that he had broken lay on the ground near the window. He glanced at Sirius, who had somehow, managed to fall over Mary MacDonald, who made no attempts to push Sirius away. Remus was frantically jumping away from Alice Prewett's chair, while Peter was sprawled on the floor.

'Mr. Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew!' Flitwick squeaked, his wand on the floor. Perhaps, they had given him a nice little shock by jumping through the window in middle of class.

'Yes Professor?' James grinned messing up his hair.

'You are late by fifteen minutes! And you show up by breaking the windows? You will all clean the mess after class. Also Detention today after dinner.'

'Sure Professor,' Sirius said way too cheerfully.

As they took their seats, James leaned over to Evans, who sitting right in front, 'I didn't hurt you, did I Evans?' he asked earnestly.

Evans frowned ,'You don't need to worry about that.'

'Oh c'mon,' he smirked ,'Usually girls would do anything to get me worry about them.'

'Well, I am obviously not one of them. Now stop disturbing me, Potter. I unlike you- do listen in classes.'

James shrugged and leaned back. Not five minutes later, there was a knock on the classroom door.

Professor McGonagall entered the class, with her usual stern face. But the whole class roared with laughter on catching sight of the one following her.

It was Filch, a sour look on his face. He was completely filled with dung, as if he had just bathed in mud.

James was clutching his stomach, laughing hard. He didn't stop until McGonagall spoke, at which, the whole class quieted down.

'Filius, I would like to borrow Black, Potter, Lupin and Pettigrew, if you wouldn't mind,'

'Sure, Minerva.'

Doing his best to control his laughter, James followed his friends outside the class.

'I am pretty sure, it was these four troublemakers, Professor,' filch growled.

Sirius laughed ,'Nice outfit, filch.'

'That will do, Mr. Black,' McGonagall said unsmilingly, 'Argus, if you would get cleaned up, now that I've called them out, it would be good,'

Filch nodded and marched away, muttering angrily all the way.

'Are we in trouble?' James asked, amused.

'As usual,' McGonagall replied. She led them to her office, and had them seated in front of her. She took a deep breath and asked, 'Now may I ask why the four of you thought it would be fun to explode Argus' office with dungbombs?'

'But professor, we have done no such thing.' Sirius replied, with a poker face.

McGonagall glanced at Sirius unbelievingly, 'Are you lying to me, Black?'

'Well, that depends on how you define lying.'

James let out a chuckle, when McGonagall turned to him, he grinned apologetically, his hand reaching his hair.

'I define lying as not speaking the truth. What do you define it as, Black?'

'Reclining horizontally on a surface.'

This time, James could not help bursting out laughing. Even Remus had a smile on his face, while McGonagall looked as if she wanted to slap Sirius right across the face.

'You will all help clean filch's office, without magic,' she said severely.

'As you wish, professor,' James replied with a brilliant smile.

'Any more questions, professor?' Sirius grinned.

'Get back to your classes,' McGonagall said.

'Absolutely,'

'I always get detention, whenever I join you in your petty pranks.' Remus complained as he picked up the glass shards from the floor.

'Don't say you didn't enjoy it,' James said, a cleaning broom in his hand.

'It was fun,' Peter said,'But it also got us to clean filch's office- which we've got to do right after we're done with this mess.'

James looked around at the tiny glass pieces on the floor ,' It's a pity we don't have any classes now. Im pretty sure McGonagall wouldn't have asked us to do this stuff in between a class,'

'Of course not,' Remus said taking James' broom ,'If you aren't gonna do anything, I might as well do it,'

'Why so sirius, Remus?' Sirius asked, cracking up laughing at his own pun.

They managed to clean filch's office for five minutes, before sitting down on the tiny space they had cleaned.

'This is so tiring,' Remus breathed.

'why don't we just use magic?' Peter asked

'Because,' Sirius answered 'We have saint Remus Lupin with us,'

'Shut up,' Remus mumbled.

'Ah, I cant take it anymore- tell Remus you don't want to skip the next class, do you? Its time for herbology in a while.' James informed

'What do you suggest?'

'I suggest you keep quiet,' he said taking out his wand ,'It might surprise you on how many cleaning spells I know.'

Minutes later, the four were walking out of a extremely clean and tidy room. It had just taken a couple of spells to clean up the dung.

'We have to hurry to herbology now,' Remus said hurriedly.

'Not we, me and James are skiving off, remember?' Sirius smirked.

'Yeah. Peter will you be joining us?' James asked.

'I would, but I don't really want any more detentions or stuff today.' Peter replied.

'That's sad, anyway,' James said, reaching the great hall, 'This is where we part ways.'

'But where are you going?' Remus asked curiously.

'You can come with us and find out,' Sirius winked.

Remus shook his head, 'Have a good time at…whatever you two are up to. C'mon Pete.'

After Remus and Peter left, James turned to Sirius, 'Where do we start, this time?'

'Entrance hall?'

James nodded.

Walking aimlessly through the bottom staircase of the entrance hall,they reached a corridor which was lighted brightly.

'Have we been here before?' James mused.

'Alas, No.'

'Maybe we will find the kitchens today, or we will have to start from the right side next time.'

Sirius nodded and they continued walking. They came to halt when the corridor came to an end with a huge portrait of a fruit bowl.

There was an apple, banana, grapes, orange and a pear.

'So, this is the end?' Sirius asked dejectedly.

'Maybe not,' James said walking forward. He stopped right in front of the portrait and put his ear to the frame.

He could hear several voices right then. He was certain that there should be something in there.

'We gotta find a way to open this,' he said.

'Password?'

'Nah, I don't think a password. I mean- every portrait in Hogwarts that has a portrait, has a picture of an actual person. This is something else.'

'Unless we figure it out ourselves-'

'We will, Sirius. We have to. It's a necessity.'

'Remus could've helped us,'

'Right. I cant understand how he could prefer Herbology over this,'

'Well- its Remus John Lupin,'

James chuckled, 'How in Merlin's name would this open?'

He ran his fingers over the fruit bowl and started scratching each fruit.

'Mate, what are you doing?' Sirius laughed.

'I heard, some things need some scratching,'

'This would never work.'

Right then, as James took his fingers off the pear, it squirmed and a green door handle erected out from the middle of the fruit.

James smirked at Sirius, and pulled the handle open.

They were met by an incredulous sight. They entered into a gigantic, high-ceilinged room with five tables identical to the ones in the Great Hall above. There are large quantities of pots and pans heaped around the stone walls, on counter-tops and stoves, and a large brick fireplace at the other end of the hall from the door.

The most unusual thing was that the place was swarming with house-elfs. The tiny elves were running around, cooking, cutting, and doing all kinds of stuff. Presumably preparing dinner.

'Did you know Hogwarts had house-elfs?' Sirius asked

'Not really,' James answered, 'Though I pretty much know everything.'

Not seconds later, a group of house elves had surrounded James and Sirius.

'What can we do for you, sirs?' one of them squeaked.

'Well, I could do with a snack,' James smiled

'What would sir's prefer?'

'Anything tasty.'

The house elf nodded and sprinted away. The other elves, meanwhile, led them to a table that seated four and asked them to wait till the food was ready.

They didn't have to wait long. Minutes later, the elves had served a variety of snacks on their table, including bread rolls and doughnuts.

'Merlin, I'm full,' Sirius breathed as they left the kitchens.

'Yeah, those house-elfs are pretty good. Just like my elf Mitty back home. You have a elf too, I guess?'

'Oh don't talk of him. Kreacher is a rotten sack of flesh.'

'Mate, I understand about your family, but surely your elf isn't-'

'You don't know, James.' Sirius said darkly, his voice strongly indicating he didn't want to talk about this.

'Sirius?' said a voice from ahead.

James turned to see a seventh year Slytherin girl, with a head girl badge. She walked to Sirius and smiled at him.

'dromeda,' Sirius said.

'Haven't seen you in a while,' she said sweetly.

'Yeah well, I had been wondering if you'd become like bella and cissy, since im not in Slytherin.'

'Sirius!' she said astounded.

'Yes?'

'How could you- think that?'

'I don't know. Haven't everyone become like that? Reg is the only one to have sent me descent messages. You didn't even bother to see me.'

'Sirius,' James said surprised at the bitterness in his friend's tone.

Sirius turned to him ,' ah, sorry James. This is Andromeda Black, my cousin and sister of Bellatrix and Narcissa Black.'

Andromeda nodded at James, and turned back to Sirius with a stern face ,' You do not think like that Sirius. I couldn't talk to you because I wanted to give you time to settle down. I know its hard.'

' I think I'll go. See you Sirius,' James said turning to go

'You can stay.' Sirius said.

'No, you both need to talk-'

'I'll talk to you later dromeda,' Sirius interrupted ,'Astronomy tower after dinner tonight.'

Andromeda nodded ,' See you Sirius. And believe me I'm not like them…just like you.'