The room positively vibrated with the number of decibels which were emitted from Sirius' mouth.

On instinct Harry and Ron shot up and instantly grabbed their wands, they had had too many scares not to be prepared for this kind of eventuality. The room was dark, too dark for Harry to see anything, especially without his glasses. A quick lumos temporally rectified the situation, although the bright light hurt Harry's eyes and he was forced to close them, knowing he was leaving himself open to attack.

The marauders didn't seem so worried.

"Maybe you should yell a little louder in future, I think someone in China missed that one" Remus mumbled from under his bedcover, obviously still trying to blot out the world while not missing the opportunity to utilise his sarcasm. He really should have known better.

"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" Yelled Sirius for the second time, obviously proving a point, whatever Harry and Ron initially thought this was it obviously wasn't. From the stories of the trouble the marauders got themselves into this was almost certainly nothing in comparison.

"Do we get an explanation" Ron ventured, you could tell he must have been worried, petrified in fact, otherwise he would have rolled over and gone back to sleep by this point. Peter, by comparison appeared to still be asleep. Some things may never change but in all honesty Harry couldn't really blame him, six years of this being a regular occurrence quite probably built up your tolerance levels.

"Some little poo-poo-head decided it would be humorous to give me an early morning shower, now I hope the culprit will revel themselves before a full prank war will develop."

Sirius was right, he was soaked to the bone, his clothing sticking to his skin and his long black hair clumped together like rat's tales, the slight shaking as he got up out of his bed suggested that the temperature of the water was not exactly favourable at that.

No one needed to say anything, James' raucous laughter from the other side of the room told them all they needed to know.

"Your dead Potter" Sirius said in sinister tones, albeit with a huge grin plastered across his face, it was obvious he was abusing sarcasm. In all fairness he hadn't quite got it down to the find art the Slytherins had managed. Maybe that was a good thing.

The conversation of the day before had cleared the air, the depression had been semi-lifted and even if normal service hadn't been entirely resumed at least the group were not walking round in quite so much of a depression as they were before. Brooding got you no where.

The early morning wake up call had obviously stimulated the group, all of whom were now sat upright in bed, with the exception of Sirius who was too busy shaking his head wildly about to wet James in the same way as a dog drying itself off after a bath.

The water went everywhere, even spraying Harry who was at the other side of the room, not that it mattered too much the room was a sufficient mess for the water damage not to be noticeable. The boys lived like true students with their trunks open and half of the stuff falling out of them an under 10 of the floor visible underneath the piles of clothes and discarded transfiguration essays. Hermione would have a fit if she saw the state of the room. Even Remus, by far the tidiest and most organised of the group, hadn't made his bed in well over a week.

"Well, now that we are up, I guess getting ready for potions would be a good start" Remus said. The remainder of the group groaned.

"But Gander is a bloody sadist, she only gave me a Satisfactory for the appearance of my last potion because I got some on the rim of the bottle. I so wanted to shove it up her anus" Sirius spat out.

"We got Snape, your lucky. Anyway, she didn't seem too bad." Ron said, Harry's mouth practically hit the floor as he heard Ron sticking up for a teacher. He must REALLY like Hermione, she was obviously rubbing off on him. Of course neither pair would admit to it, but even James and Lily wouldn't and they were 100 unofficially an item now. Things had changed so much in a short period of time, unfortunately the only 2 who couldn't see it were Lily and James themselves.

"Well, Sirius, if you don't want to get on her bad side I recommend you get a move on, she's only bad if you give her a reason to be. Just pity the next generation – Snape indeed." Remus said. He had already collected his stuff and was making his way to the bathroom at that moment. Everyone else seemed to be making the most of the state of denial they were in.

"OK, I'll enjoy rubbing it in next Monday when I have 2 hours of relaxing while you have 2 hours of detention." Remus said

"No dear, part one next Monday is the first day of the holiday – so no detention. Secondly next Monday is a full moon." James said cheeky grin almost instantly wiped off his face by a random object being thrown from the bathroom by Remus, it emerged only to be a wet flannel.

"You ghet" Came from the bathroom.

"Whatever" was shouted back, in exactly the same sarcastic tones. These boys knew each other too well.

It took the group a good hour to get themselves sorted for potions, but by pure fluke they had got away with it for the second time in one week. Nice to know that occasionally luck was on their side. Lily and Hermione were already sitting at the front of class and had rather kindly saved a row of seats for the boys, who arrived a full 10 seconds before their professor. When the sat down Peter was still panting from having to run all the way from the dining hall were he had most definitely eaten one too many pieces of toast and was quickly developing a green tinge to his red sweaty face.

Professor Gander stood by the side of her raised glass and opened all the windows in the lab with her wand, instantly flooding the room with light and making it look a lot less dingy.

"Right class, today we are having an assessed practical. And before you start to groan I did warn you at the beginning of the year you would be having one. Formularies are on the front desk, distillation equipment at the back of the class, other equipment in their usual places and the store is stocked with everything you need. You will work individually and I do not want to hear a single word from anyone in this class. Your task is to formulate a potion for the treatment of eczema in children, you have 2 hours to do it in but you are not allowed to use any FastBrew in your method. You may choose the potion you think most appropriate, easiest or quickest but you will have to justify your choice. Good luck"

The trio looked at each other and decided just to play it straight, they had no preparation for this but they definitely did not fancy the consequences of an angry Professor Gander on their back. Accounts from those who had experienced her wrath suggested it would be a less then pleasant experience. The incident with the verituserum was bad enough, anyway, Hermione would never go against a teacher without good reason.

The class dragged, every minutes seemed like an hour. Hermione had chosen a rather complex looking lotion and little bottles containing all sorts were lined up on her desk, for glittering red powders (Pot Sparks) to deep black ball bearing sized stones (Blacksip). Ron appeared to have gone for the easiest thing he could manage, a cream of some nature that basically involved smearing a yellow powder into a white greasy base. Harry chose Arrehnius paste. He'd made it before and it had gone all right then. Best to stick with what you know, even in Harry's case this would probably be E45 cream.

About 45 minutes into the class a loud bang behind Harry had him reach for his wand for the second time in the morning. The room was covered in a thick yellow smoke which stunk of burnt sugar, as the gas diffused it became apparent the source of the commotion. The maurders bench was covered in a bubbling think gunge which appeared to be consuming everything in reach, they definitely wouldn't be getting an exceeds expectations for this class.

"Which one of you added the FastBrew" Said professor Gander, glaring at the tight group in the back left hand corner, her voice in a state of forced calm, the kind of tone people use when they are past angry. A stony silence greeted her question.

"If you don't say which one of you added the Fast Brew all 9 of you will be punished" Professor Gander said again, Hermione's mouth immediately dropped to protest but a look from Ron shut her up promptly, Lily however wasn't so restrained.

"9 of us? The rest of us were doing just fine, it was just one of these 4 imbeciles" She screamed.

"Miss Evans, you have just guaranteed yourself a detention for showing such disrespect to a teacher, how dare you speak to me like that. As no one is admitting to it I will see you in detention tomorrow night at nine till midnight. You will all fail this assessment. Now GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM"

Without further ado the group ran out of the class, grabbing their equipment and not even bothering to put it in their bags.

Outside the door Lily slapped James across the face, "I don't know which one of you pillocks did that, but I had something planned for tomorrow night and now you've screwed it up. We got kicked out of a class for god's sake!"

James took a step back, glaring warily at his future wife, probably out of fear of more physical violence. Wasn't it a well known theory – never get on the wrong side of a red heads temper? "Calm down, it's only one detention" he said gingerly.

"One bloody detention, is that what you get hanging round with you lot? We didn't even do anything but we get the fucking flak. That one class was worth 30 of our year mark and you screwed it up." Lily was fuming, her face was fast turning the colour of her hair and every word was said with true venom.

"I hate you Potter, now leave me alone" And with that she turned, threw her bag over her shoulder and stomped down the corridor, "Don't even look at me in future, I am no longer interested." She yelled back to the stunned group still standing at the door to the potions class.

"I hate you"


Sorry about the delay, Kimmii is back at uni so had all the fuss of moving out ect and my timetable is chocka at the moment (www.nottingham.ac.uk/timetable, I'm a second year M Pharm student, have a look for yourself.) So, I'm sorry, but on the plus side I got to play with ecoli on Wednesday and look like a proper scientist with my petri dishes.

OK, what houses are you lot all in at school? And what were they like?

Our primary school houses were random, I was in the red house (Lowry) and we never won anything, but at least we weren't bottom unlike the green one (Bronte) we also had Wordsworth (yellow) and Peel (Blue).

Now high school houses were better. I was in Kay which was were all the drama queens ended up, we always won interhouse drama and rugby (we were a rough lot). The other houses were Ashton, Calrowse, Grant, Hoyle and Peel. They all had colours too but I can only remember mine was green, Hoyle was blue and Peel white.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW MY OTHER STORIES

THANK YOU :)