A/N:

Hello! Just a short update today!

As always, I hope you enjoy!

Rose jolted awake early on Thursday morning. Wednesday had passed by swiftly, Rose only sitting her Herbology and Astronomy exams. She had been up late, attending the Astronomy practical exam, her eyes still tired from the long night. So, she had no idea why she was up at - she squinted at the clock on her beside cabinet - barely half past six o'clock in the morning. A glance around the room told her that there was no message patronus waiting for her, nor did anyone appear to be awake and in her dormitory when they had no business being there. Snuggled securely in the comfort of her blankets, Rose frowned. She was a night owl, not a morning person, there was no earthly reason why she would be awake this early. Turning left and right, she checked on Lily and Hestia, both still slumbering oblivious to whatever had dragged Rose from her sleep. Almost convinced that whatever had awoken her had been a dream she no longer recalled, Rose snuggled back into her pillow, hoping that sleep would reclaim her soon.

Alas, it was not to be. Thunder crashed, rattling the Tower, lightning flashing outside the windows. Rose sat up in bed, wincing as another thunderclap echoed off the stone walls of the dormitory. "Oh, bugger!" Yawning, she pulled on her robes, resigned to the fact that she was awake now. Remus' advanced hearing wouldn't let him sleep for much longer anyway, and once Remus was awake it was guaranteed that he would share the misery around.

Rose crept down the spiral staircase to the common room, cheered by the merrily roaring fire in the grate. The cleanliness of the common room told her that the House Elves had already been to tidy up - she imagine that had their work cut out for them, given the amount of wadded up parchment, broken quills and discarded ink pots that had littered the room when she had gone up to bed the night before. Regardless, Rose was more than happy to have the run of the common room. She gravitated to one of the squishy armchairs by the fireplace, curling up with her Transfiguration textbook. McGonagall's exam was scheduled for this afternoon, and even with the Marauders rather legendary prowess in the class (especially James, the Transfiguration prodigy and teacher's pet that he was), Rose didn't want to risk missing any of the little surprises McGonagall often slipped into her exams.

The occasional thunder and lightning that had so rudely awakened Rose had progressed to a full-blown storm by the time the rest of the Tower started awakening. Through the windows, little could be seen behind the driving rain and dark, ominous sky.

"I'm glad we're not due out there today" Sirius remarked, Rose's heart giving a funny little start. He could move also completely silently when he wanted to.

Rose snapped her textbook shut, smiling up at the handsome face before her. "Me too," she agreed easily, Sirius sprawling into the chair opposite her with his usual easy grace. "Good morning, Siri."

"Good morning, Rosebud" Sirius replied, sending her that cheeky half-wink that never failed to make him look twenty times more effortlessly charming than he normally did. "Lovely morning, isn't it?"

Rose put on a fake haughty accent. "All the better for having seen you, my dear."

Sirius tossed back his head, chuckling long and low. "I needed that, Rosebud" he admitted afterwards, smiling at her with lips and eyes. "Moony's driving us up the wall, and so are the Snakes." His hand carded through his hair, giving him the kind of windswept look James was eternally trying to achieve with his mess of hair. "I just needed to laugh."

Rose hummed softly. "So do we all, Siri" she sighed, refusing to be drawn into a darker subject today. "It's nice to have some time just the two of us."

Sirius knocked his foot gently against hers, gaze twinkling with all the things it wasn't best for them to say aloud when anyone could overhear. "That it is, sweetheart" Sirius said warmly, a smirk overtaking the gentler smile he had been wearing for her. "Although sadly I doubt it'll be for long."

"Ah" Rose hummed, knowing exactly what he was referring to. "Moony driving Prongs batty up there, is he?"

"More than you could imagine" Sirius laughed, utterly unrepentant for abandoning his best friend to his fate. "Moony's wanting to go over every single spell we covered in Transfiguration this year, and you know how Prongs is with that class."

"Brilliant but instinctive" Rose replied, despite knowing Sirius had only meant it rhetorically.

Sirius inclined his head in agreement. "I decided that, in the spirit of the exam season (and my Marauder nature), that it was every man for himself and legged it out of there."

"Yeah, thanks so much for that, you git" James snapped, whapping Sirius around the head with a cushion appropriated from one of the couches.

The stag animagus appeared behind Sirius' chair, a wicked smirk dancing on his lips. Rose inclined her head ever so slightly, smiling at the outraged expression on Sirius' face. He had deserved some kind of retribution for leaving James to face Remus' pre-exam study session without any kind of backup. They had long ago agreed that, much as they loved him, Peter was absolutely no help at all during those sessions. Remus usually corrupted him by fear of failing - such a studious man, their friend.

Sirius pushed James on to the couch nearest them, grinning unrepentantly. "I gave you the chance to run, mate" he reminded him - although whether he actually had or not, Rose couldn't say for sure. "It's not my fault that Moony apprehended you before you could take it."

James scowled darker than the storm raging outside the castle. "You didn't have to laugh so bloody loudly when Moony caught me though, did you? Bastard."

Sirius raised a playful eyebrow, definitely in a good mood today. "Marauder, mate."

Much in keeping with the theme of the morning, their first exam of the day passed quite enjoyably. Well, enjoyably enough that it far surpassed their expectations of stuffy, boring exams. Divination wasn't everyone's cup of tea (despite the amount of tea that drank in class, which Rose found pleasingly ironic), so those that took the class were committed to it. Either in believing the applications of the field, or in enjoying the silliness of the entire experience. There are some (like one Remus John Lupin) who told them that taking a class to NEWT level just because they enjoyed the tea and silliness was the height of stupidity (not to mention how it would reflect on their academic records, running the risk of failing the class if they couldn't be bothered paying enough attention), but James, Sirius and Rose paid them no mind. Occasionally Professor Snotra said something just close enough to prophecy that they could take something from it - and even if she never did again, having an understanding of all the areas of magic was important to the Marauders as a whole. You never knew when something might come in useful. So, that morning they joined the rest of their classmates in trudging upstairs to the Divination classroom to sit the exam.

After breakfast, they went their separate ways. Peter gave them a grin and a whispered good luck before he hurried off to the common room to study some more before the Transfiguration exam after lunch. Remus walked with them a little way, barely a trace of nerves for his upcoming Alchemy exam showing in his features. Alchemy was one of the most tricky subjects offered at Hogwarts, and for Remus to take it, showed a lot about his intelligence and character. Remus had stopped them in the middle of a corridor, expression tight and worried. "Don't note my head off" he prefaced, holding up one hand in the universal gesture of meaning no offense. "I know why you take Divination, and while I may not entirely approve, I do understand. I just hope that you didn't all get so caught up in the fun that you forgot to learn the content."

Noting his sincerity, James had nodded seriously. "Don't worry, Moons" he said brightly. "We have paid more than enough attention. Tea leaves, crystal ball, palmistry. We know what we need to. Stop worrying about us, focus on your own exam. Alchemy, Merlin help you."

Remus frowned severely, pointing a finger at James's nose. "You're trying to distract me" he accused. "It's working. Good luck, and have fun."

"You too, Remus" they called, taking the turn that would lead them towards the Divination tower and the ever vigilant portrait of Sir Cadogan.

As with all written exams, it was fairly boring. Rose wrote down what she could remember about dream interpretation, managing an essay on the meaning behind her latest dream. Then she scribbled down something on the meanings of the different symbols within tea leaves, including enough about the Grim (and other such onimous portents) to appease their gloomy Professor. And then, once the written exam was over, they moved straight into the serious business of the practical. Snotra floated around the room, watching as they interpreted each other's dreams, read their palms, and swirled tea around teacups. At the next table from Rose and the black haired Marauders, Hestia and Dorcas seemed to be having a good time. The best thing about the Divination practicals were that they always seemed to just be any other lesson, albeit without Professor Snotra's doom and gloom dire prophecies of what awaited them in their futures.

Dorcas snickered over having to interpret Hestia's latest dream. "Dreaming that we were on our summer break" she screwed her beautiful face into an exaggeration of hard thought. "Hmm, doesn't take a genius to work out what that means. You're tired of school, exams, and you want to be on holiday. Don't we all?"

Hestia rolled her eyes, kicking Dorcas under the table. "Don't make this all about you, Dorcas" she chided absently, watching Snotra trail around the room, quizzing random students. Snotra's 'sight' apparently told her who had done a good enough job to pass. "This is my dream we're talking about."

James hung over the back of his chair, grinning at the pair. "Listen to Jones, Meadowes" he smirked, unable to help himself. "Don't hog all the spotlight."

Dorcas raised an eyebrow, saying flatly "Says the Marauder."

James laughed, eyes sparkling behind his glasses. "She has the Sight" he told Sirius, who pulled him back into his chair.

"And you're bloody well supposed to as well," Sirius retorted, tone expressing just how much of a berk he thought James was being. "So get a move on, before Snotra fails the lot of us."

James just gave him a wicked smirk, tapping his nose as he replied "I knew you were going to say that."

Fortunately for James's nose (Sirius had been about to punch him in it), Snotra chose that moment to come and quiz them. She sat down on the seat that Remus had once claimed - back before he realised what a load of rubbish the class amounted to - and peered at them through her fizzy caramel hair. "Dream interpretation" she began, her voice carrying that spaced-out quality they had come to associate with her. "Is an important branch of the practice of Divination. Through oneiromancy we can tell the future. Now," Snotra began to relate a dream filled with fire, smoke and bloodshed, particularly paying attention to the shapes that the smoke, fire and blood had taken. "Serpents of smoke with tongues of flame licked at the walls, rivers of blood pouncing against the floor. It was dark, choking, hopeless. Then, my dream changed" she whispered ominously. "The full moon was shining brightly above a still lake, but the lake was not of water, it was blood." Snotra turned to them with eager eyes, awaiting their interpretations.

James broke the silence first, grimacing in apology. "Well, you're not going to win the lottery" he said, a chorus of hasty coughs echoing across the room. "It sounds to me like something bad is on the horizon. A disaster, a lot of injuries, possibly deaths." James cast a glance towards the others. "Wouldn't you concur?"

"Very much so" Sirius replied, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "The fire and smoke could mean a tragic but necessary cleansing, but not when coupled with the rivers of blood. I would have to agree with James when he interprets injury and disaster. There's nothing in the dreams which promise anything good or positive. It's all dark and dreary. No sudden, unexpected windfalls or mentions of love or anything."

Rose hummed in agreement, her mind focusing on the second dream - James and Sirius had the other one more than covered. "The lake of blood either hints at a hitherto unrealised desire of yours to turn into a vampire" she began, almost worried but for the fact that they all knew this class was bogus - as were the dreams, more likely than not. Practically nobody remembered their dreams that vividly, and if they did then they certainly didn't share them aloud with students. "Or this dream foretells and even greater tragedy than the first. A lake of blood, the kind of disaster that could create that would be unimaginable. Death on a scale even the papers aren't predicting." She shuddered, horrified and not just for effect. "It would mean slaughter wholesale. More deaths than people going to the quidditch." She floundered, seeing the glimmer of approval in Snotra's wide eyes. "The mind literally boggles."

Snotra clapped her beringed hands together, turning their attention to their tea leaves, insisting that they read each others as they had so many times before in class. It was ironic - given that nine times out of ten, they made everything up - but they were some of her 'most promising' students, and she treated them accordingly. So, for the next twenty minutes, the Marauders had fun making up the most outrageous interpretations of the other's tea leaves, predicting dire injuries and deaths in an imaginative variety of scenarios. Accurate or not, Snotra drifted off to examine the others, her usual serene smile on her face.

"Moony would have walked out in disgust" James commented, stretching in his chair.

"But this stuff is why we stick around" Sirius grinned, filling his teacup once again. "Sheer entertainment value."

"Oh yeah" Rose agreed, the odd feeling from before vanished. "She's a nut, but a very entertaining one."

"The nuttiest always are" James mused, kicking his feet up onto the table. "I mean, look at Dumbledore. Nuttiest of the nutty, King of Squirrel Poo he is, but we wouldn't change him for the world."

"King of Squirrel Poo" Dorcas wheezed, clutching onto the table to stop from falling over. "I dare you to say that to his face."

Rose blanched, horror flickering in her eyes. "Godric, Dorc, don't throw them down a wager."

But it was already too late. James and Sirius were sharing identical smirks, the wickedest of the wicked. "Challenge accepted" they said, smirks growing all the wider at Dorcas' protests that it was just a laugh.

Rose just heaved an exasperated sigh. "When Remus yells at you for this, just remember I was opposed to it."

"Worry not, my sweet" Sirius smirked "We'll happily take the credit for an act of such genius."

"And the detentions too, I hope" Rose replied, Dorcas seemingly relieved that the focus was no longer on her.

"Of course, Astra" James swore solemnly. "Pads and I are going for the record, you know."

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