A/N: This chapter was originally going to be called "First Time For everything," which sounded quite boring, so I decided to go for the good ol' Pringles slogan, which should probably be noted as not mine, but Pringles'!

A/N 2: I'm so sorry for not updating in 6 months! I don't have any proper excuses either! I apologise thoroughly, and hope that this chapter will be good enough for you guys! I've got holidays now, so I should be able to update at least once more before September. ENJOY!

Sorry if everyone is slightly confused, but I merged one chapter into another, because it was really small. This was going to be Chapter 10, and isn't now. Um, yeah, so I'll get on with the story now.

Chapter 9: Once You Pop You Can't Stop

James gulped and both Sirius and he turned around. Standing there was the librarian, looking very angry indeed.

"Ah, Mrs Pince - " Sirius started,

"Detention, for the both of you. Now get out of the library. OUT!" Madame Pince half-yelled, ushering the boys towards the front of the library. They ran, scared that she might turn them into girls or hex them to oblivion.

Remus watched them leave with a smug smile on his face. He then decided it was getting late, and packed all of his things away. He started to walk out of the library, but not before spotting Peter, who looked very confused. When the young boy saw Remus, however, his face lit up and he waddled quickly over to the werewolf.

"Remus!" he exclaimed. Remus nodded. "I got lost." Peter stated with a crestfallen face. "I wasn't a very good look-out, was I?" Remus gave him a pitying smile and shook his head.

"It doesn't matter anyway, 'cause they would've been seen by Madame Pince since she has eyes like a hawk. Also, it wasn't your fault they got a detention, you got lost. It's understandable." Remus assured him. Peter's eyes widened.

"They got a detention? Oh no, they are going to hate me! They're going to hate me, they're going to hate me…" he started to chant, pacing backwards and forwards in front of Remus.

"They're not going to hate you Peter, they're your friends! They'll forgive you, 'cause that's what friends do." Remus told the boy, grabbing him by the shoulders to stop his pacing. He made Peter look him in the eyes, and said, "They won't hate you Peter." Peter nodded. A question suddenly came to Remus' mind. "How did you get lost?" he asked the smaller boy.

"All the books looked the same and so did the bookshelves and I didn't know where I was meant to go even though they told me to go to the opposite one but I didn't know which one that was and - " Peter rambled, but Remus cut in mid-sentence.

"Okay, okay, I get you. Do you want to get back to the tower? It's nearly curfew, and we don't want to get detention now, do we?" he asked Peter, who shook his head. "Let's go then." They exited the library, and made their way to the Gryffindor Tower – Remus had to tell Peter that Sirius and James didn't hate him at least ten more times before they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady.

"Password?"

"Aureus Leo."

Sirius and James weren't in the common room; Remus decided that they would be in their dorm, so he proceeded up the stairs dragging Peter along with him. Sirius and James were sat on James' bed close together with worried faces. They didn't know what the detentions entailed, but they had heard stories and none of them were good. When Remus and Peter entered, they jumped at the noise and looked at Remus guiltily. Remus shrugged and Peter ran over them and knelt on his feet. He began to grovel for their forgiveness but they stopped him before he got barely two words out.

"Pete, it was okay. We weren't being careful anyway. Now we're going to rot and die in detention." James said, a sad look on his face. Peter's however, had brightened and he nodded ok before rushing down the stairs to nick some chocolate frogs from some other Gryffindors. After the door closed, there was a long, heavy silence. James and Sirius fidgeted on the bed whilst Remus watched them.

"I told you so." He said smugly before jumping behind his own bed, barely missing a pillow thrown at him by Sirius. This was followed by laughter and a full-out pillow fight. Soon after, the room was covered in feathers and three worn out boys were asleep in their beds.

The next morning at breakfast, Sirius received his detention slip by owl. It read:

Mr Black,

Your detention will be tonight at 8.00pm. Your punishment will be given to you at the Library then.

Madame Pince

James soon received his too, and both groaned at the prospect of the punishment they were going to get later that night. Remus gave them a look that clearly said "I told you so," and Peter was giving them a pitying look. They didn't like that at all. Peter should be the one receiving pitying looks, not giving them. Remus suddenly stood up.

"Come on you guys, if we don't go now, we'll be late for our lesson!" Soon, the other three were up and following Remus.

The day went by too quickly for Sirius and James. Every lesson had gone whizzing past and they now had half an hour until it was time for their detention. Sirius was pacing in the dorm room as James watched him anxiously. Never before had he seen his best friend this nervous. He looked at his watch, and smiled weakly.

"It's half seven." He stated. Sirius carried on pacing. "Do you think we should set off now?" James asked. "It'd look good if we were early and also if we get lost or stuck or confused then we'll have enough time to find our way again." Sirius nodded, seemingly incapable of speaking. James stood up. "Let's go then." Sirius nodded again, and they set off out of their dormitory, out of the common room and towards the Library.

Despite Sirius and James' thoughts that they were bound to get held up somewhere and get to the Library late, the two friends arrived fifteen minutes early. Unsure of what to do, they entered the Library and made their way towards Madame Pince, who looked up at the sound of footsteps at the least busy time of the day. She raised an eyebrow when she saw James and Sirius. "You two are early." She stated. Sirius and James nodded. Both were looking downwards and shifting uncomfortably - the moment of doom was almost upon them.

"What are you going to make us do?" asked James in a small voice, raising his head slightly to address the Librarian. Terrible thoughts of things they could possibly do for their detention were running through his mind: entering the forbidden forest to fight away something like an Acromantula, being left in a dark room without a wand, cleaning out an old Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom where –

"Clean the cauldrons for Professor Frux. Without magic." James jumped. He had forgotten he'd asked a question. Next to him, Sirius looked as relieved as he felt; obviously the same ideas had been running through his head. "Hand over your wands." Madame Pince said sharply, and the young wizards passed their wands to her silently. She took them, happy that they weren't as reluctant to give up their wands as the older years were, and began to walk to the entrance of the Library. "Follow me." She said after a few steps. James and Sirius jogged to her obediently and stayed behind the stern woman as they made their way down several staircases until they stopped in the dungeons. The door in front of them was opened to reveal a room filled with roughly two dozen cauldrons, all dirty from potions lessons since the beginning of September.

James and Sirius couldn't help but groan inwardly. After all, they had done something to deserve their detention. At least they weren't doing something more dangerous – like facing a manticore without a wand.

"Chop chop!" Madame Pince said impatiently. "The quicker you clean them, the quicker you're out of here! And you will lose points for your house if you don't clean them to Professor Frux's expectations." She walked out of the room, and closed the door. They were on their own now. Sirius grinned, and James grinned back.

"Call this a detention? I can't count how many times my mother's made me clean one of her cauldrons wandless, and these aren't even half as bad as her cauldrons at any rate! This'll be done in no time."

James laughed, and replied, "Yeah, well I've polished all those trophies of my parents, so this should be a doddle, right?" Sirius looked at him strangely.

"James, polishing and scrubbing are two different areas of housework." He told his best friend. "Scrubbing gets rid of dirt, but polishing gets rid of dust!" he sounded like he was explaining the answer to 1 + 1 to a small child. Then he smiled. "I'll teach you!" James nodded vigorously, and soon had mastered the art of scrubbing and cleaning cauldrons. Well, almost mastered.

"So, it's meant to look like this after its cleaned? Why isn't it shiny? When I polish stuff, it goes shiny." He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, and Sirius just laughed at him.

"That's because polish is meant to make it shiny. When you clean something, it just gets rid of the dirt and makes it look clean. And since when have cauldrons been shiny, anyway?" James threw his washcloth at him.

Several hours and dirty cauldrons later, two messy young wizards flopped down onto their beds in the Gryffindor Tower. James groaned. "My arms ache." Sirius looked at him in disbelief.

"You really are a spoilt rich brat, aren't you?" he asked, a hint of amusement in his voice. James scowled at him.

"If I hadn't just been worked to my extreme right now, then I would whack you with my pillow." He flailed his arms weakly to illustrate his point. Sirius smirked.

Suddenly the door opened with a bang, and Remus barged into the room, followed by Peter Pettigrew. Remus sat on Sirius' bed, looking worried beyond relief, and Peter stood in the middle of the room, looking awkward.

"Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you? How did the detention go? Was it horrible?" Remus gushed out, red in the face. Sirius was about to reply when James let out a huge fake moan, and Remus' gaze went from Sirius to James. "James? Are you alright?" James pretended to shrug nonchalantly.

"I suppose." Remus looked at him, wide-eyed. "My arms hurt a bit, and the top half of my body aches, but otherwise I'm okay." James said in his best "survivor" voice. Sirius snorted.

"Sirius!" Remus berated the long-haired youth. "He could be really hurt!"

"Yeah, because cleaning cauldrons can be so bad for his health." Sirius spat back. Remus looked at James, unimpressed.

"You cleaned cauldrons? Cleaned cauldrons? Here I was thinking you had to tend to something like a manticore or an acromantula, and all you've done is cleaned cauldrons?" he shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe it! Cleaning cauldrons!" he said angrily, and stormed towards his bed, where he sat down and draped the material shut around him.

"No need to act like a girl!" Sirius called after him, almost sniggering. They heard a 'humph' from the other side of the maroon drapes. Peter stood uncertainly, twiddling with his fingers.

"Go to bed, Peter." James ordered, and Peter obeyed, clambering into his bed and closing the drapes without changing into his pyjamas. James snickered, but was too ecstatic about how well the detention had gone to be bothered with telling Peter to change.

"So," he said, turning on his side to face Sirius. "That wasn't as bad as we thought it was gonna be." Sirius nodded, also on his side.

"It was a feeble attempt at trying to "dissuade us from our highly disruptive behaviour."" Sirius said in a voice that sounded uncannily like McGonagall's. James laughed.

"So … " he began. "Would you rather not do any pranking whatsoever, or would you rather prank your heart out and have to clean cauldrons every so often?" he asked mischievously.

"The second one." Sirius answered. "After all, it'll be more fun. Can you imagine us being boring people and not pranking?" James shook his head, a large grin on his face. "Me neither." His face lit up. "We need plans, and lots of them!" he decided, and James jumped over to his bed, enlivened. "We need a parchment, and a quill!" Soon, a quill was poised in James' hand (his handwriting was the neater of the two) and a roll of parchment was laid on his knees. The two boys talked late into the night, discussing various pranks and recording the most ingenious ones. They spoke in conspirational whispers – they had heard the rumours about the walls having ears. The stars shone through the window – their only light – as they exchanged ideas and scribbled down on the parchment. They were geniuses. They were the pranksters.