A/N:

Hello again! As promised, we're starting to get back into the action in this fic.

I just want to thank all of you for still reading this long-winded story, boring bits and all.

We've reached chapter 40 and there's still a long way to go.

So I hope you'll keep coming back and enjoying where the story takes us.

Until then, please enjoy chapter 40.

If any of the inhabitants of Hogwarts had possessed such reckless bravery and disregard for their own skins as to make careful study of the typical habits and patterns of the notoriously unpredictable Marauders, they would have noticed what absolutely no one in the entire castle - with all it's population of students, ghosts, portraits, house elves, and teachers - did. Namely, that the Marauders were, for want of a better term, behaving themselves. They had attended their final lessons of the day with nary a word of complaint nor a single hex being cast at unsuspecting Slytherin students (the firsties were special favourites, as they didn't know better than to openly gawk at them as they passed).

In a further show of uncharacteristic Marauder behaviour, they casually strolled into the Great Hall, bickering about James's iron-fisted rule of the Gryffindor quidditch team (he had practices scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday), and took their places at the Gryffindor table as if this was perfectly ordinary. It was actually, but the Marauders tended to get funny looks coming in on time for dinner - it made everyone else suspicious of the food they were eating.

"Prongs" Peter sighed, drowning his poor shepherds pie under an ocean of thick gravy. "Don't take this the wrong way, but don't you think you're being a bit of a prat?"

"How so?" James wondered, torn between a serving of pie or the chicken which Sirius had snagged for his own supper.

"You block booked the quidditch pitch, three months in advance" Remus groaned, digging about in his bag for any book to occupy him while their bickering continued. "It's the kind of thing a prat would do."

"No" James corrected, puffing out his chest. "It's the kind of thing a quidditch captain would do when said captain actually wants to win the quidditch cup." He smirked over in the general direction of the other tables. "As opposed to the Chudley Cannons approach preferred by the other captains."

"They don't just cross their fingers and hope for the best, Prongs" Rose sighed, sportsmanship requiring she at least make some token objection on the part of their opponents. "We don't just have to turn up to win, Jamie. It sometimes takes a while before you score so many goals they don't bother, and Siri hits so many bludgers at them that they start crying like Snivelly confronted with shampoo."

"Regardless" James dismissed, eager to get back to his original point. "I'm not a prat."

Sirius rolled his eyes, casually slapping the back of James's head in a perfectly timed fake yawn. "Prongs, my old mate, you are the biggest prat ever to strut the Halls of Hogwarts."

"As opposed to your being the most arrogant berk ever to strut the halls of Hogwarts?" James retorted, an absolute lack of heat in his tone.

"Is it arrogance if it's true?" Sirius wondered, to which Remus could only say an emphatic

"Yes!"

Rose ignored the morons she was friends with, and kept her attention focused on the plate full of cheese-and-gravy laden chips she had selected from the available dining options. Further down the table, Frank and Benjy had their heads together over what appeared to be a thick tome clearly borrowed from the Restricted Section of the Library, pointing out various passages in hushed tones - both oblivious to the curious gazes they were receiving. Slightly up from the scheming duo, the Girls were enjoying a comfortable, quiet meal together. Every now and then, Alice looked forlornly down towards her boyfriend, but seemed cheerful enough, giggling at the outrageous tales Emmeline was spinning about growing up in a small wizarding hamlet near Blackpool. Rose wished she had grown up in any of the wizarding hamlets dotted around the countryside - frankly anything would have been a better backdrop for their childhood than the grey and often dreary industrial town of Cokeworth. Lily glanced up (ironically enjoying the same meal Rose had chosen, sans gravy) and offered Rose a smile that lit up her face. Rose grinned back, happy that her sister seemed to have found a way out of the constant shadow of what was happening to their father. Jim had been right; coming back to school was the best thing for them - it kept their minds off what was happening for about seventy percent of the time, and it gave their father the comfort that he wasn't making them ruin their futures for his sake. They could and would smile, but they'd never forget it was happening - they just made the best of a situation that had long since spiralled out of their control.

Lily frowned at her, Rose guessing that some of her thoughts had been broadcasting themselves on her face. She shrugged slightly, rolling her eyes at the still bickering trio of James, Remus and Sirius in explanation. Peter was enjoying the free entertainment as he usually liked to do - it gave him more time to actually eat, which sometimes was hard to come by in their hectic schedules. Lily rolled her eyes exaggeratedly in return, her glittering eyes flickering towards Marlene - now eagerly inputting her own childhood antics into the conversation - and smiled. Lily was happy, happy to have her friends, and happy to be back in the place that nurtured them all. Rose had to concede that James had been right; Lily (and by extension the rest of their informal little rebellion) didn't need to know absolutely everything that they had to do in order to stay one step ahead. It wasn't just that she was a prefect and needed plausible deniability in a way that Remus didn't because he was a Marauder first and foremost, it was that they remained still innocent of the war and it's methods in a way that the Marauders themselves were not. Lily had come to Hogsmeade for them, and suffered by their enforced stay in the Hospital Wing - and that was precisely what they had all voted to try and avoid this time. Rose hummed a nearly inaudible tune, deliberately not thinking of their plans for tonight - just in case McGonagall wasn't joking and she really was employing legilimancy to get the head start on their 'infernal mischief'. Besides, Lily had mentioned once in passing that Snivelly was trying to make himself adept at the art. The last thing they needed was for that particular snake to decide to poke his abnormally large and greasy nose back into their business - not when it had taken them long and sustained effort to get it out of their business just over a month ago.

Rose left off ignoring her mad friends just in time to think she'd completely missed a change in subject. "I still think that if any of them try anything, we should use the intestinal expelling curse we discovered in that book in the Restricted Section" James was saying in a tone far too chipper for the subject matter.

"Honestly, Prongs" Remus chided, employing his Professor voice - a mixture of chiding and gentle 'you can do better than that'. "You keep that up and we won't be going to any quidditch matches this summer." Rose breathed an instant sigh of relief - they were still on quidditch and not their harebrained scheme for tonight.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" James demanded, playfully offended.

Remus (dear, sweet, far too good for this Earth Remus) grinned and obliged to elaborate. "You can't use an intestinal expelling curse on a referee at a quidditch match."

"But-" Sirius protested, cut off before his protest could form.

"Not even if you think that the ref is a biased, cheating git that needs glasses and to be intimately reaquainted with the rulebook" Remus clarified patently. "Not even then, Padfoot."

"You suck all the fun out of life, Moons" James sulked, crossing his arms like a petulant child.

"It's a curse" Remus deadpanned, liberating a particularly decadent chocolate dessert from it's prison in the middle of the table.

James made a rude gesture, then practically leapt for the treacle tart that materialised in front of him. "My precious" he cooed, raising his spoon in a worrying stab at the dessert.

Peter scowled at the picture James made. "What happened to 'try not to eat so much dessert tonight, Peter, we need to be light on our feet'?"

Rose laughed, Peter's impression of James had been spot on. "I think that was before James laid eyes on his precious, Pete."

James displayed his middle finger, too busy shovelling treacle tart into his mouth to offer a verbal reply.

"He's a class act, our Prongs" Peter snickered, something chocolatey and spongey on his plate, ready to be devoured.

"So mature" Rose agreed, cooing as if James wasn't just diagonally across from her. "He's an inspiration."

James swallowed his mouthful of tart, turning to glare at the laughing form of Sirius beside him. "Pads! Are you just going to sit there and let them say that about me? Me? Your best friend?"

Sirius made a show of looking around and considering his options. Then, with a wide, wicked grin, he replied "That's pretty much what I planned on doing, yeah Prongs."

James sunk into his seat, glaring at them all from beneath his messy black hair. "You're all gits and I hate the lot of you."

"Yeah, yeah" Remus hummed in disbelief.

"We love you too, Prongs" Peter added, grinning at the glare that prompted from James.

"Don't look so glum, Jamie" Rose teased, safe from his wrath on the other side of the table. "You can extract your revenge on Sirius and I in your torture training sessions for the next three days." James brightened at the reminder. "Besides, you did deserve it. Picking on poor Pete like that. Especially when it's you that's scarfing down enough treacle tart for - what you think about five people, Siri?"

"Oh, at least" Sirius agreed cheerfully, raising a fork threateningly in case James tried anything with his own cutlery. He lowered his voice, appearing for all the castle like they were merely having one of their not-infrequent whispered arguments (which usually ended with them strolling from the hall, ready to make mischief). "Now, if you'll hurry up and finish your third tart, we can continue with the entertainment for the evening."

"Entertainment?" Remus whispered, eyebrows disappearing into his hair. "That's not precisely the word I would use to describe it."

James reached across and patted his arm. "That's because you're a party pooper, Moony." He regretfully shovelled in the last few bites, swallowing audibly as he levered himself up off the bench. "Come on, you lot. We've got men to see about a dog."

"Really?" Peter looked delighted. "There's a dog involved? I love dogs, most of the time."

"Not an actual dog" James sighed, despairing of Peter's intelligence. "It's an idiom, you fool."

Peter frowned, blank. "A what?"

"A turn of phrase" Remus clarified, sending James a warning glare. "An expression. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be a dog. It just means that we're off to see someone about something."

"Right you are, Moony" Peter replied, seemingly content with that. Rose could only shake her head, marvelling at how someone who was actually quite bright, could also be so incredibly imbecilic even when he didn't have to be for show.

At ten o'clock that evening, when curfew had struck, and the castle should be still and silent, five shadows crept about where they had no real business to be. The shadow in the lead held his finger to his lips, beckoning them down the corridor. It was too dark right now to be able to use the Map and see if anyone was coming, so they had decided to do this old school - much as they would have to once they left school and joined the fight. Every experience like this with James was an excuse for practice. He meant well, even if it got a bit irritating. It was like living with Captain America - only James wasn't an American supersoldier, just an English super-idiot. The plan for the evening was, shockingly, just to surveil the outside of the Slytherin common room. It was far too risky to jump straight into infiltration and surveillance, especially when they didn't know exactly who and what they were dealing with. Though some of the Snakes were gormless, bigoted oafs, some of them were also terrifyingly intelligent - Snape and Mulciber could both be described as that, when they wanted to be. They were working their way up, slowly and steadily, to the actual infiltration stage of the plan.

Sirius reached out and grabbed the back of James's shirt, hauling him back a few steps. Remus and Peter all but crashed into them, Rose managing somehow to avoid colliding with Remus. "What is it?" James whispered, the sound almost gratingly loud in the silence of the dungeon corridor.

"Thought I heard something" Sirius frowned, his hearing almost as heightened as it would be in his animagus form.

That stopped James in his tracks. "Where?" James demanded, senses on high alert.

Sirius frowned, trying to call their mental schematics of Hogwarts to his mind. "Moony, is there a disused classroom, study room, closet around here somewhere?"

Remus mirrored Sirius, frowning in concentration. He had the most retentive memory out of them, especially considering he was the one that had painstakingly drawn out the map before they had charmed it. "Should be" he muttered eventually, pointing down the corridor further. "Three feet that way."

James and Sirius had one of their wordless conversations, Sirius releasing the grip he had on the back of James's shirt. "Slow and quiet" James whispered, lowering his body so he had a better chance of remaining silent as he crept along. Once the rest of them had emulated his altered stance, James began to sneak ahead. He raised his hand, rolling and curling all his fingers until only his index finger pointed forward. Rose took it to mean the Marauder version of 'wagons roll' and snuck after their intrepid leader. Peter rolled his eyes at the performance, winking at Rose before shifting down into his animagus form. He chittered a little at James - who grinned in wholehearted approval - and kept pace with them as they slowly covered the requisite three feet of cold, stone corridor. Wormtail darted ahead, sniffing his nose to the cold ground, he paused just inches from the door to the old study room (disused because of how few Slytherin students actually studied together) and chittered a warning. An alarm began to ring out in the corridor, a sound like metal being ripped apart over an operatic death wail - which fortunately covered James's fervent and creative cursing. He turned to the four of them, watching the door with stunned confusion, and growled. "Get a bloody move on! Leg it!" Wormtail chittered and ran as fast as his paws would take him, stumbling to his feet and nearly falling as Peter transformed back into himself. There might have been a noise of footsteps following, but none of the Marauders paid it the slightest bit of heed. Rose didn't think of the noise they might make, nor of the recklessness of what they were doing, she just followed James's lead, knowing that he and Sirius knew the hidden passages and secret tunnels in this part of the castle better than any of them. She lost count of how many hidden walls and shortcuts James led them through, trusting that he had a plan, a safe place in mind. Somewhere where they could hopefully take a moment to recover and gather their thoughts.

James practically sprinted to the wall, lifted up the edge of a wrinkled old tapestry, and ushered the other four in, dropping the tapestry back down to protect them all from view. "Lumos" Remus murmured, his wand lighting up the small tunnel they were crouched in.

"This was a brilliant idea, Prongs" Rose whispered, absently patting down the edges of the tapestry of several goblins counting gold - it was a tapestry that suited the greed and ambition of the Slytherin house, hence why it was shoved down here in the dim and draughty dungeons. "Come down here, right when they're apparently stepping up security. Gold star for that call, really."

"We found something out" James replied reasonably, as if his heart wasn't still racing from the suddenness of their flight and near-capture. Fortunately, even the Slytherin prefects weren't particularly bright, and didn't know the castle as well as the Marauders, hence their ability to slip through a few passages and hide here, in a safe spot that nobody but the Marauders knew about.

"Astra has a point" Peter wheezed, all but prone against the far corner of their hidey-hole. "What in Merlin's name were those snakes doing watching out for us?"

"They didn't see us" Sirius cut in reassuringly. "They weren't really looking out for us. They're just worried they're going to get spied on." Rose sighed, privately feeling that Sirius' tone would have been more reassuring if he didn't have that concerned frown on his face.

"What the in the name of Merlin's bloody beard was that noise?" Rose demanded, the sound coming out as more of a hiss than she would have preferred.

"Modified caterwauling charm" Remus guessed, the set of his mouth troubled. "Just loud enough to scare us half to death and alert them that there was an intruder, not enough to wake the entire castle. Fortunately."

"What is it, Rem?" Rose asked, knowing there was something he wasn't saying.

"He thinks we're up the creek without a paddle, and no wand to transfigure ourselves one" James announced, leaning his back against the wall with a groan. Running low like that was murder on the back.

"Well, just looking at our current situation, mate" Sirius drawled, the only one of them that didn't look that he'd been dragged through a mess of potion sludge. "We are up the creek without a paddle and no bloody wand."

"Nonsense" James dismissed, refusing to even listen to their logic. It was quite typical of him in such situations actually. Rose would be cross, but it did tend to also lead to brilliant, if absolutely reckless, ways out of whatever predicament they found themselves in at the time. "The fact that they stuck that infernal charm on the doorway proves that they're definitely up to something they don't want anyone else to know about."

"Granted, James" Remus agreed, sending a bubble of light up to bump on the low ceiling. "But that doesn't change the fact that whatever it is that they are up to, we can't possibly find out about tonight."

"Of course we can" James huffed, waving away the beginnings of Remus' logic like it was an annoying fly. "We need to know what is going on in there."

"We do" Remus conceded, Rose watching the already thin strands of his patience fray under the onslaught of James's stubborn refusal to listen to him. "But if they set that charm up so that we wouldn't know what was going on in there, and so they could have warning whenever someone approached the door - even something as small as a rat - that clearly tells us something."

"It tells us that they're shifty bastards" Sirius agreed, wanting to watch that little vein throb on Remus' forehead. Remus cut him a glare that said in no uncertain terms that he was not playing, to which Sirius smirked and shrugged. "But it also tells us that they wanted the warning of visitors so they could stop and possibly even tidy up whatever they were doing in that room."

"Precisely" Remus growled, throwing up his hands in a silent but fervent hallelujah.

Rose stared at the light spilling out under the gap of the tapestry, a curious Marauder urge stirring in her stomach. They said that curiosity killed the cat, but as none of the Marauders' animagi forms happened to be a cat, Rose felt no qualms about voicing the thoughts niggling at the irresponsible Marauder part of her brain.

"I'm with Jamie on this one" she uttered softly, turning back to her friends in time to see their jaws hit the floor.

"I beg your pardon?" Remus checked, confusion writ onto every feature. At least it was calm, unlike the responses her statement received from the others.

"Are you out of your Merlin forsaken mind?" - Peter, voice high and squeaky as it only got when he was caught off guard and slightly miffed.

"Are you bloody kidding me?!" - Sirius, and understandably so. Rose never actually sided with James on these things, her natural impulse being to err on the side of caution.

"Have I hit my head?" James wondered, turning wide and uncomprehending eyes on Sirius. "Have I hit my head and am now lying unconscious in the tunnels outside, waiting for you lot to realise I'm not with you?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Oh don't be so bloody dramatic, James. I have been known to agree with you from time to time."

"Last I checked, not about something like this" James replied, a part of him looking confused as to why he was pressing the issue when Rose had agreed with him for once. "On things like this, Lady Astra, you agree with Moony and Wormtail, very occasionally with Pads, but never to my recollection have you agreed with me."

"Well" Rose shrugged. "There's a first time for everything."

"Why?" Remus questioned, uncomprehending.

Rose resisted the urge to shrug again. "Frankly, Remmy, what better time could we possibly pick to spy on them than this?"

Peter stared at her, a familiar glazed look she recognised from Divination class appearing in his eyes. "I don't understand, Astra."

Rose didn't even need to glance across at James to know what he was thinking. "Jamie does."

Sirius turned to his best friend, expression mockingly all ears. "Oh, James does, does he?"

James nodded slowly, a smug little smirk twitching the corner of his mouth. "Yes, James bloody well does, Sirius. And if you didn't have your underwear in a bunch over Rose agreeing with me on this one, you would too." His smirk widened. "It's so simple. It's as plain as the nose on your face. And they'll never consider it."

Peter sighed, glaring as strongly as he was able to given his natural propensity to defer to James and Sirius in pretty much everything. "I'm getting a bit fed up with always feeling like I'm missing half the picture. Would someone care to elaborate, or are we just going to allude to the reasons like we all know about it even though we don't?"

James inclined his head, offering an apologetic smile to Peter. "Sorry, Wormy" he muttered sheepishly. "I get carried away sometimes."

"It's okay" Peter acknowledged. "Just please tell us what's so sodding obvious?"

"The charm is designed to scare people away as much as it is to warn the snakes inside the room" James began, explaining it as plainly as he could. "Therefore, after having the alarm scream out, the Snakes would assume that we scarpered and the last thing that they would think is that we would go back and investigate what they are up to in there."

"It's risky" Remus cut in, always the one to see the worst case scenario flashing in big red letters.

"It's reckless" Sirius conceded, anger apparently forgotten. "But it might just work."

"We are the Marauders" Remus muttered sarcastically. "We are brave and bold. We never miss an opportunity for recklessly risking our necks in harebrained schemes that sane people would never consider attempting in a million years."

James grinned fondly at him, the gold flecks dancing in his hazel eyes. "So, you're on board then?"

"Oh yeah" Remus agreed as if it were obvious. "Course I am."

Complicated as the modified caterwauling boundary charm was, it was but the work of a moment to disable. That kind of magic was a particular speciality of Peter's, and the others were no slouch at it either, when the need called for it. Once they were in, each Marauder took a corner of the room (except Peter, who claimed the big table in the middle of the room) and got right down to snooping. Rose found nothing but various moulding textbooks. Judging by the smell and feel of them, they hadn't seen the light of day, nor use in any student's studies since Dumbledore was a boy. Nonetheless, she diligently checked through all of them, leafing through the ones that allowed it, and gingerly handling the ones that looked seconds away from decomposing. She cleared the bookshelves and crouched down to examine the contents of a foul-smelling set of cupboards. Thinking nothing of it, she yanked the first door open, such a putrid combination of rotting smells hitting her nose that she fell back, gagging.

Remus came over, nose wrinkling at the scent. "Old potions supplies. Hasn't been open in years." He tapped his nose. "I'd be able to tell."

"Anything in your section?" Rose wondered, beginning to feel that this was all a waste of their time.

Remus shook his head. "Not unless you count contraband magazines and a few copies of the the Pure Blood Directory by Cantankerous Nott."

"Over here" James called, something in his voice telling them that he'd found what they were looking for. Rose wandered over to the corner James had claimed to investigate, frowning at the sheaves of parchment he was holding in his hands. They each gently took one, frowning in confusion at what they read. First Year, Second, Third, on and on until Seventh, writing starting to fill columns under the innocuous titles. It was elegant, so elegant, and cruel in a way that only came from the minds of the Black family. Names. Names they recognised, names they didn't. Names that all had one thing in common.

Rose stared at Sirius, horror dawning in their eyes. Plans within plans, and nothing they could do to stop it. James let out a shout and punched the wall, dropping to his knees with the same helplessness they were all feeling.

Thank you for reading.

Next time: The Marauders share what the Slytherins are up to. More plans are made.