The Legend of Padfoot and Prongs

James, who had been amusing himself with his stolen Snitch, sat up slowly when he heard the dormitory door slam shut and his best friend's vehement swearing. He grinned as Sirius stormed across the dorm and tossed his wand on the foot of his bed before flopping down beside it and wrenching off his sneakers. James couldn't contain his curiousity any longer when Sirius took one look at the bottom of his left foot and swore loudly.

"Something wrong, Sirius?" he asked, grinning like an idiot. "Does ickle-Sirikins have a splinter in his footsie?

"Shut up, git," Sirius grumped in answer. His foot slapped back down onto the hardwood floor. He winced. "And if I didn't, I do now."

James snorted bemusedly. "That doesn't answer my question."

"I know." James immediately noticed that his best friend wasn't even so much as moving his foot now and began to grow a little worried.

"Are you okay? What happened to your foot?" he asked. Sirius sighed.

"Do you promise not to tell Moony or Wormtail?"

"Of course!" Now thoroughly curious, he crossed the room and sat down beside his friend. Sirius lifted up his foot to reveal a thick, leathery, sugar pink pad -- like to a kitten's -- on the sole of it.

James promptly fell backwards, laughing. Sirius smacked him upside his head.

"It's not funny, you prat! It's pink and I can't get it off!" he roared. James kept laughing, but rolled out of reach and onto the floor.

"It's so cute, Sirius! The girls will love it!" he wailed. Sirius, with a growl, picked up his wand threateningly. Unfazed still, James continued, "How'd it happen?"

"Snivellus," was the simple answer, which only made James laugh harder. He stopped abruptly when he heard Sirius bark out some spell and felt something shooting out of his head. Now Sirius was laughing, and James was in search of a mirror.

Once he found one, he wasn't pleased.

"FORKS, Sirius?!" he bellowed, the be-padded boy roaring with laughter. James stared at his reflection in horror, running a forefinger over one of the six silver forks now sprouted from his temples. "Bloody hell! At least YOU can cover your foot!"

"Tough luck, git! That's what you get for laughing at me!"

James had just lunged for his wand for revenge when Remus and Peter walked in and both froze at the sight of James and his silverware-laden head. Peter immediately burst out laughing, but Remus just grinned.

"Don't tell me," he muttered. "This is another fight concerning Quidditch teams."

"Actually, no," James answered.

"Why does James have forks growing out of his head then?" Remus asked, still mysteriously calm beyond his twitching smile.

"Because he was a prat and laughed at my expense," Sirius explained, shifting so that his padded left foot was buried under the lump of dirty clothes next to his bed.

"How so...?" Remus continued his line of questioning. James had just enough time to belt out the answer ("He was hexed by Snivellus and --") before Sirius put a Silencing Charm on him. Remus's grin grew wider.

"Let me see, Sirius," he tried to persuade, while James thumped on the floor angrily. As Sirius showed Remus the bottom of his foot, Peter tried to reverse the charm, only succeeding in making the prongs of the forks grow longer. Remus coolly ignored the explosion of noise (Sirius laughing, James yelling, Peter bounding for safety) and got control with a single, deafening "QUIET!"

Surprisingly, everyone did as they were told. Remus cleared his throat. "I think that both of you should go see Madam Pomfrey."

"The only way I'm going is if Sirius keeps that foor bare," James grumped.

"Fine by me," Sirius smirked. "Everyone will be too busy looking at your head, prat, so I'll go unnoticed."

Not two minutes later, Sirius and James walked down into the common room, James with his grill forks coming from his temples and Sirius with the one bare, padded foot and very soft-looking cat ears sprouting from the top of his head. Remus and Peter followed, more or less just to see the reactions of their fellow Gryffindors; a good portion of which laughed, the rest just stared, dumbstruck.

Sirius and James continued on, alone, to the hospital wing, ignoring any and all sniggers and pointed fingers, arguing fiercely and tossing insults back and forth. Normally, both would have just laughed it off, but both were in terrible moods and were feeling particularly hostile. (James would later blame it all on Lily Evans.)

Explaining the incidents to Madam Pomfrey proved interesting.

"...so I was innocently trying to get him to help me, ma'am, and he started laughing at me. So I had to hex him, you see."

"Yes, but Padfoot here didn't have to make bloody forks come out of my head! So I got him back!"

"Yeah, Prongs thought putting these bloody ears on my head would make us even, and I just haven't gotten a chance to even the score..."

"Well, Mr. Padfoot, Mr. Prongs," Pomfrey adopted their spiteful nicknames with thinly veiled amusement, "follow me and we'll take care of your various ailments. No more name-calling, either, or I won't help either of you."

A few hours later, they were walking back to Gryffindor Tower, James with a bandage wound around his head, Sirius with a heavy limp, both eating chocolate with one hand and massaging their heads with the other. James suddenly started chuckling.

"Outta your tree again, Jimmy?" Sirius asked grumpily.

"I've been thinking."

"Isn't that against the law?"

"Aw, shut up, Padfoot! You're making me forget what I was going to say!"

"You know," Sirius snickered, "I kind of like that nickname, Mr. Prongs."

"I do believe we've found our codenames, then," James said with a grin. "That's what I was thinking about. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs -- names obtained in that order."

Sirius repeated the nicknames thoughtfully. "The Hogwarts Marauders. Magical Mischief Makers, tirelessly terrorizing Slytherins daily! I like the sound of it."

Author's Notes: Happy birthday, Hikari! :D And our dear magical mischief makers are in their fourth year here, so there you go. Don't forget to review, luv!