AN: Thank you for the reviews! I can't PM some of you and thank you personally, so I'd like to thank you here!


Peter spent the next week redoing the first part of the Animagus training, and to everyone's relief he's diagram showed it was done correctly. Remus makes the other three study the next part of the training, and wants them to understand it as was well as he does. Exams are approaching, and all of their heads are filled with random Transfigurations facts that have nothing to do with their exam.

The Marauders sit up in their dorm room studying. Sirius sits on his bed cross legged and has The Truth Behind Animagi open in front of him. James and Peter are spending some of their free time studying for the Potions final, while Remus finishes the last Astronomy chart for the year; he agreed to do James's as well as long as James promised to learn the next part of the Animagus training on his own.

There's a knock at the door, and Sirius slides another book over The Truth Behind Animagi before saying the person can enter.

Ramsay opens the door and leans into the room, "Potter, The Heads of Houses just let all of us Captains know that we need to get our crap out of the Quidditch huts by the end of the week."

"Yes, sir," James gives a two finger salute off his temple. Truth is he's left all his Quidditch gear down in the hut. Ever since Gryffindor lost the cup he hasn't wanted to look at it. Ramsay nods and closes the door back behind him. "Stupid Quidditch," James grumbles.

"Woah!" Sirius says. "There's two words I never thought I'd hear out of your mouth."

"It's Madam Hooch's fault," James protest. "Brennan cheated and she did nothing about it. If you already forgot, the guy broke my leg."

"Well the fall broke your leg," Sirius points out. But James isn't joking, he doesn't joke about Quidditch. "Look mate, there's nothing you can do about it but beat them next year."

James shrugs and twist his quill in his fingers, slowly a grin forms on his face.

"Oh no," Peter says. He spots the grins on James's face. "Sirius what did you say to give him a bad idea?"

"Nothing, I swear," Sirius laughs. "What's the plan mate? Are we getting back at them now?"


Late that night the four Marauders huddle underneath the cloak and take the passage that leads into the Gryffindor Quidditch Hut. James's broom is hanging up on the wall and he traces his fingers over it lightly and looks at it like he hasn't seen it the entire year. Finally he turns his focus back to the clutter in the room. "Sorry about this." He picks up one of Gryffindors practice quaffles. He takes out the short knife they had used to cut their fingertips with and cuts into the quaffle.

Remus takes out the paint. They made it from plants and potions supplies just like they had for a prank last year. He starts to write on the walls. He makes the writing sloppy and messy, taking extra care to make sure the paint drips and runs down the wall. James, Sirius, and Peter set to work breaking things. They don't touch anyone's brooms or gear, but anything used for practice or is old they start to destroy.

Peter dumps out the contents in a Broom Polishing kits and scatters them around to make the room look more messy. James tears into his old Quidditch gear he had left down in the hut earlier that year, throwing strips of the clothing around the room. Sirius picks up the chairs and breaks them against the wall. James knows they won't be heard. Ramsay never lifted the enchantment that blocks the noise from the outside, which also makes it so no one outside can hear what's happening inside. Ramsay left it so no one could stand outside the door and listen their plays.

Finally when they are all exhausted and have nothing left to break that isn't valuable they step back and admire their handy work. "It makes me sick," James says. "All that beautiful gear, destroyed."

"Yeah, little gits, destroying Gryffindors things," Sirius grins. He turns to look Remus's work.

LOSERS is painted in dripping green paint.

"Let's get out of here," James says. The four of them drop back down the ladder into the passage and make their way back up to their dorm.


The next day the Marauders wait in the common room. Most everyone there is studying, so it's quiet. They all steal glances at each other every time someone from the Gryffindor Quidditch team leaves.

After two long painful hours of studying Cross comes storming angrily into the room. James has never seen this type of anger from Cross before. Cross is always the quietest on the team, keeping his thoughts to himself. He snaps his fingers at James.

"Follow me," He says sharply. James drops his book and jumps to his feet. He has to rush to catch up with Cross. James follows him up past his own dorm, the 6th years are two levels above the Marauders. Cross slings to door open and enters. James hovers in the doorway. The 6th years dorm has five beds, all identical to the Marauders. The boys in the room are somehow messier than the Marauders are. They have clothes hanging from chairs and piled on the floor. Textbooks and crumpled pieces of parchment lay around everywhere, and not a single bed is made. The wall are plastered with posters of Quidditch and wizard bands.

"You won't believe what they've done!" Cross yells. James is taken aback by the yelling, but Ramsay is unfazed and James wonders why he isn't in shock over the outburst before he remembers Ramsay and Cross are good friends off the pitch.

"Who?" Ramsay asks, sitting up in bed and glancing over a book. "Oh, hi Potter."

James offers a small wave.

"Those gits!" Cross says, he moves across the room and slings open his trunk, he frantically starts digging around inside. Ramsay throws a questioningly look at James. James shrugs and steps into the room, closing the door behind him to block the yelling.

"Andrew, use your words," Ramsay says, standing up and moving over to Cross. "What happened?"

"The Quidditch hut is destroyed!"

"What?" Ramsay explodes, he turns to James, who backs up and bumps into the door. "What happened?" Ramsay yells.

"I don't know," James lies.

"He hasn't even seen it yet," Cross says, sounding calmer now that he finally pulls what he was looking for out of his trunk and breaths a sigh of relief. James tries to look around Cross to see what he's holding, and is surprised to see it's a Golden Snitch. "Good it's in here. I was worried I had left it in the Quidditch hut."

"It's the first one he ever caught," Ramsay informs James. "Thinks it good luck if he brings it back to the school every year. Andrew, how destroyed are we talking?"

"I don't know. I came right back up here looking for this."

"Right, let's go round up the team and find McGonagall. It had to be the Slytherin team," Ramsay says.

"It was," Cross says. "They painted Losers on our wall in green paint."

"Idiots," Ramsay says, shaking his head. "If they touched my Nimbus I'll kill 'em."


An hour later the Gryffindor Quidditch team and the Slytherin Quidditch team are all standing on the Quidditch Pitch. The two teams stand opposite each other. Madam Hooch, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Slughorn are all there as well. Everyone is mad, but all for different reasons.

"I already told you," Malfoy snarls. "No one from my team broke into the Gryffindors hut."

"Someone did, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall says sternly. "And your team played Gryffindor for the cup, you won and they lost. Now it seems you're celebrating close to the end of the school year."

"Why would we wait until now? If we were going to destroy their stuff we would have done it right after the match," Stump asks. Which doesn't help the Slytherins Team's case.

"Maybe someone from Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff did it," Malfoy shrugs. "Or one of them." He nods to the Gryffindors.

"Why would we destroy our own stuff?" Ramsay shoots back. "That's ridiculous."

"We need to sort this out," Madam Hooch says. "Someone destroyed the Gryffindors gear." She eyes all the Slytherins sternly. "Someone did it, and I'd like to know who it was."

None of them speak, just glare angrily at the Gryffindors.

"Boys," Professor Slughorn says to the Slytherin team with a small chuckle. "I'm sure it was just a prank that got out of hand. You're only making it harder on yourselves by not confessing."

"We didn't do it," Malfoy says again.

"Well until this rivalry is sorted out no one is leaving this pitch," McGonagall says.

"What?" James and a couple of the other Gryffindors shout in protest.

"Vandalism is not tolerated at Hogwarts, clearly the results of the final match didn't settle well with some of you. Potter and Cross blamed Brennan of cheating. The Gryffindors all left angry and the Slytherins proud, and now vandalism geared toward the losers as a form of celebration? No, it won't be allowed and this must be sorted out."

"Well Brennan is clearly the violent one," James says, gesturing toward his leg as a reminder. "Maybe he smashed everything up."

"Yeah he nearly broke Potter's broom last match along with his leg," Cross adds.

"No one from my team did it," Malfoy says again.

"Trohman told me I'd snap if he threw the Quaffle at me hard enough," Shipman speaks up. "He clearly likes breaking things too."

Shouting starts, all the team members yelling at each other about things they've said. Finally McGonagall sends a loud burst of sparks up into the air. It echos around the Quidditch pitch and makes them all fall silent.

"I have never," She says sternly. "Heard such hatred between students before. Slughorn, if you're boys are saying these things to my teammates, they need to have a firm talking too."

"Yes, Professor," Slughorn nods.

McGonagall turns back to the Gryffindor team. "I want the eight of you to go back to the hut, find your things that aren't broken, and go back to the Gryffindor Tower. Wait for me there."

The Gryffindors file out, James takes the end of the line so he can listen a moment longer. He grins to himself when he hears Slytherin is losing 20 points in total.


"But don't you feel a bit bad?" Peter asks that night up in the dorm room. "We got them in a lot of trouble."

"Technically they didn't get in trouble for what we did," James says. "They got in trouble for threatening us during matches."

"So no one got in trouble for wrecking the hut?" Sirius asks.

"There was no proof, so they couldn't be punished for it," James shrugs as he rolls onto his back and lets his head hang off the end of his bed. "But either way they all lost points and some of them got detention for the threats."

"Harsh," Remus says casually, not even looking up from his schoolwork.

"Serves them right, especially Brennan," James says. "Besides Gryffindor is getting a brand new Quidditch Trunk for training. New quaffles and bats... don't look at me like that Peter we didn't do anything wrong!"

"I wasn't giving you a look," Peter lies. James rolls his eyes. "I didn't, you just can't see right because you're upside down and your glasses are slipping off."

James spins upright and fixes his glasses while grumbling at Sirius and Remus for chuckling at him.

"We need to be doing our Animagus training, there's a full moon coming up and if we don't get back on this training we won't be done until our 7th year," James says. He snatches The Truth Behind Animagi off his bedside table and flips it open to the last page he was studying. "We also don't need to be leaving this around the dorm room," He adds before disappearing behind it.