Title - Origins

Author - MutantJediBauer (Spin Cycle)

Rating - K

Length - 1700 words exactly. And no, that wasn't planned. It just happened.. And it sort of creeped me out.. Hehe..

Summary -A prankster is running loose through Hogwarts. Three others want to team up with him. But to do so, first they must figure out who it is..

The only light in the room mainly came from the fireplace, emitting a warm golden light throughout the area, and causing shadows to dance the dance of the living as they moved across the walls. The glow was mesmerizing, intoxicating, and thoroughly embodying everything that one usually associates with a cold winter's night in a den of sorts. The other source of light came from the waning half-moon, its own pale glow contrasting the warm dance of the fire, while setting a calming stillness on all it touched. The two lights met on a rug near one of the walls, ghostlike waifs of a dance existing within a warm white square, balancing each other. It was this square of light that three dark, lumpy masses crossed through, the light briefly falling on each one until all had passed through and the path was once more continued uninterrupted to the floor.

'Shh!'

The quietly hissed sound tried to make a path through the silent room, but found too many plush cushions and obstacles in its way to properly achieve this desire, and so promptly died out before reaching the target audience.

'What?' came in reply.

This sound was uttered at a much higher decibel level, and therefore had a much more positive mission, although the ears it fell upon were not as happy as it was about this. The newest response to this last conversational note was simply the sound of moderately solid items hitting another solid object. Or possibly just one item hitting another repeatedly.

A third voice began to create its own sound, directed towards the two dark masses that had gathered themselves next to it, one on one side, and one on the other, rubbing its head amidst muffled sounds of retribution to come at a later date.

'Guys, the entire point of a stakeout is to sit quietly and wait for someone to come along, or something to happen.'

'Then why did you bring us?' the second voice countered.

'Yeah, why did you bring him?'

The sounds of moderately solid objects hitting another were once more heard in the room.

'Just settle down for a bit, will you?' the first voice came again, this time with a pleading tone. The two lumps on either side noticed this and complied, and for a while the only sounds were quiet breathing intermingled with the every-so-often cackle of the fire.

'Why are we here on this sit-out anyway?'

'Stakeout,' the third voice muttered under its breath.

'What was that?'

'It's called a "stakeout", not a "sit-out".'

'And we're here to figure out who's been setting off these pranks,' from the first voice, laced with irritation and with traces of sleepiness pervading its words.

'Ah yes,' came the second voice again. Now he remembered. All those lovely little pranks, since only a few months into first year they had been coming, and now continuing hear near the three-quarter mark of second. Mysterious they were, and usually hysterical as well, the pranks seemed to be set off with the perfect degree of subtlety, but were always enough to be circulated amongst the school and talked about for a respectable period of time. They were interesting as well, in that they neither seemed to really be targeting any particular audience, nor were particularly degrading or embarrassing to their victims. The threesome had tried to at least determine the house of the prankster by cataloguing the victims, but had found to varying degrees of surprise that all houses and many years had succumbed at one point or another. There didn't seem to be any particular schedule either, so one never knew when something would happen. And as of yet, there were still no suspects with any true means of truly doing anything.

So, armed with the absolute lack of knowledge that they had, the three had simply decided to stakeout various places in the castle, beginning with their own Gryffindor common room. They wanted to both see who the mischief maker was, and somehow join forces. Sure, they had tried to do a few pranks, but they couldn't figure out how to get many of them to work properly, and had only successfully pulled off a handful without landing themselves in detention. These first attempts too, had branded them as troublemakers, so anything else they tried to do, if it looked suspicious in the slightest, was quickly shot down or uncovered. But this person, who had already managed at least twice as much mischief as they had, could potentially be the key to success, and with their ideas as well to toss into the pot, who knew what could happen.

But first, they would need to find this person.

And to find them, they would need to stay awake.

He felt the light touch of the lump to his right begin to get heavier as the top part of the lump began to rest on his shoulder. Reaching over, he poked the lump in the upper- middle of this top part, to the tune of a satisfying start and small gasp. Leaning over, he whispered quietly,

'This was your idea, so you'd better at least stay awake for all of it..'

Judging by the direction of what must have been the lump's head, he suspected he was on the receiving end of a rather nasty glare, but the effect was inevitably lost on him in the shadows they were sitting in.

'Guys, look!' came the third voice further over to the right, accompanied by a slight rustling which he deduced to be robes rustling as the subject pointed, another effect lost to the shadows.

Across the room, crossing through the same patch of light descending to the rug, was a student, moving in complete silence, a silence so complete that for a moment, he wondered how the far-right lump had been able to locate it. The three watched as the figure crossed the room, but paused mid-way. It set something down, suddenly doubled back, and retreated up the stairs, with the same silence it had entered with. He looked to his right.

'What do we do?'

The other two glanced over at him. They hadn't really thought of this. What were they going to do now? The plans had only made it up to how they would find this person, and then skipped to all the pranks they could pull together, completely foregoing the meeting that would have to take place between those two roads.

Judging from the silence, he supposed there were rather blank looks on the other two's faces. Great.. Well they needed to figure out something before the figure came back down.

Or not.. he thought, as the precious time they had, abruptly ended as the figure entered again. It moved back to whatever it had set down, gingerly picking it up and heading once more in the same direction it had been going the first time. Quickly assessing the situation, carefully analyzing all the variables and thinking ahead to all the paths that lay ahead, having completed all of this in a total of two seconds, he leapt from his spot and cast the 'Lumos' spell.

As a third source of light invaded the room, setting the previous arrangement off-balance, the figure froze in his tracks, his back to the three. His stance was of neutrality, with only small traces of it being forced, although he looked ready for anything at the same time. The head was turning only so slightly to accommodate what could only have been eyes quickly summing up this new part to the prank. After a few moments, that seemed like so much more than that for all present, for vastly different reasons, the figure seemed to realize that there was nothing for it to do but face those who had found it.

Slowly it turned around.

'You?' exclaimed the first voice. 'But.. But... But that doesn't make any sense..'

'What my esteemed friend here is trying to say,' began the second voice before it was cut off by the third.

'It does make a bit of sense James.. If you think about it..'

'No it doesn't Peter,' the first retorted and began counting off on his fingers, 'He answers questions, he studies, he gets top marks, and he's quiet.' James paused. 'Those are all qualities we'd dismissed our other suspects for.'

One of the other three had created more light in the room by way of a different light spell, so the figure set his items down on a table nearby, and began watching them with guarded amusement. After all, while their reactions were funny to say the least, they also held a good deal of his spare time in their hands. If they chose to report him, he could be looking at a relatively good deal of detentions, provided enough clues were put together. Crossing his arms over his chest, he continued to try and gauge their reactions.

'But that's exactly why it has to be him,' came the third voice after a few moments of silence. James and Peter turned to look at him.

'What are you talking about Sirius?'

Sirius glanced back towards them before returning his attentions to the boy in front of him.

'Who would suspect?'

The figure gave a small nod. At that, Sirius grinned. After a moment's consideration, he crossed the space between them and offered his hand to the boy.

'Care to join forces?'

The boy raised a brow slightly, leaving his arms where they were.

'What? You've not heard of our pranks?' Sirius began with mock indignation. 'We did the one with the bewitched utensils. Remember?'

The boy looked down for a moment, a small grin breaking out on his face at the memory. As he looked back up, he reached out to shake hands. Sirius' grin grew even wider as he began to practically hop up and down with the simple prospects now coming to his mind.

'Excellent. Now, we've only one thing more to take care of tonight,' James began, a smile playing across his sleepy features as well.

The boy turned a puzzled gaze towards him.

'What's your name?'

The puzzled look faded into another small grin as the boy said,

'Remus Lupin.'

Consummatio. Any reviews would be highly appreciated, and I apologise now for any rationale problems, or little spelling or grammar problems, as I got the idea for this in the bath, and I knew once I began writing it that I would never finish unless I finished it tonight. So I've been working until two in the morning making sure that happened. It just seemed funny to me, the amount of stories that have Remus as basically being an innocent bystanderwhile his friends do all the pranks. Surely they befriended him for more than doinghomework, right? It's the same with Peter. They all had to see something in each other.. Anyway, those are just my views.. Hope you enjoyed!