A/N:

Hello everyone!

Only a few more chapters and we'll be finished Hogwarts Sixth Year. Thank you for coming along and staying along.

As ever, I hope you enjoy.

Bright and early Friday morning, the Marauders and their fellow students were released from the Hospital Wing after a night of Madame Pomfrey's finest care. And it wasn't an entirely uneventful night. Dumbledore had come to see them late on Thursday night, pacing between the beds with an intense expression. After peering intently at them all, satisfying himself that they were recovering from whatever had just happened, he sat down on one of the visitors' chairs and steepled his fingers.

Rose sat back against the fluffy pillows, waiting for whatever their esteemed headmaster had to say. Whenever he was ready to say it, that was. Getting Dumbledore to talk was like getting Remus to agree to a very ill-advised prank after his morning chocolate fix; not impossible but damn near it. Sirius waited as patiently as he was able, rummaging through his Honeydukes stash for something to snack on. The rest of them, Lily and James included, just watched their headmaster with impatient expressions, waiting for him to - in a much nicer way, of course - get a bloody move on and spit out whatever he came there to say.

"I suppose you are all wondering what caused today's event" he began slowly, seeming to weigh his words carefully.

"You could say that, Professor" Marlene agreed, James for once deciding not to be the first voice heard.

"I'm sure" Dumbledore mused, staring almost serenely out at them all. "Well, I shan't keep you in suspense." Electric blue eyes flickered over to Sirius, as if reading his thoughts. "It was, as you have undoubtedly surmised, a cursed artefact. One I hadn't thought ever to see again, let alone see within these castle walls."

Sirius cleared his throat, tossing another discarded lolly box onto the mess at the end of his bed. "What kind of cursed artefact, Professor?"

Dumbledore shook his head, giving Sirius a look that told him he ought to know better than that. "No, Mr Black" he said gently. "I will not tell you what it was, only that we have safely recovered it." His gaze turned towards the rest of the ward, still smiling as if this wasn't a serious conversation. "Rest assured, it will not harm you, nor anyone again."

"We trust you, Professor" Lily stated, relieved to have the danger past.

"Regardless, I once again find myself owing my students an apology for not keeping them as safe as I ought to have." For a moment, Dumbledore looked as old as his years and tired too. Rose cursed herself for failing to realise that this war was having an effect on him too.

James grinned widely, waving his hand to dismiss Dumbledore's apology. "It's all in a day's work for us, Professor" he reassured him, an exhilarated glimmer in his eyes Rose only usually saw during the quidditch.

Lily and Remus raised their hands shyly in unison, blurting out a question they had been dying to ask since their Headmaster walked in. "What about our exams?"

Dumbledore laughed, smiling broadly at them. "Your exams were recovered unharmed" he informed them, Lily and Remus sighing in relief. "And you shall be able to sit your final exams - including your Transfiguration practical tomorrow."

"Merlin's Y-fronts!" Benjy cursed, Frank and even Caradoc echoing his displeasure.

James and Sirius smirked, clapping in wholehearted agreement. "We couldn't teach them any better" James gushed, miming wiping away a tear.

Rose tentatively leaned forward, a question niggling at her brain. "What happened today, Professor?"

"A very good question, Miss Evans" Dumbledore praised, pausing for a moment to find the right words to explain. "The artefact was imbibed with a strong curse, enabling it to both pass undetected through our wards and subsequently to detonate. Think of it as a magical charge, blowing the doors off-"

"It blew the bloody doors off!" James and Sirius chorused, laughter ringing through their voices.

Lily snapped a emerald glare on Rose. "You took them to see the Italian Job?!"

Rose shrugged, not seeing her sister's problem. "Dad said they'd enjoy it."

Lily groaned, making a noise of disgust inn the back of her throat. "I cannot believe you."

Remus cleared his throat. "I believe the Headmaster was explaining what happened today?"

"Thank you, Mr Lupin" Dumbledore smiled, seemingly having enjoyed the brief interlude. "The artefact first blew the doors off," he paused to smile at James and Sirius (who were still chortling) and continued. "The force of the blast threw you all towards the front of the room, where you landed on your fellow students, the desks and, of course, the floor. Thus explaining your physical injuries."

"What about the smoke, Professor?" Alice wondered, Hestia and Mary humming agreement.

"That was the second stage of the curse" Dumbledore sighed, a trace of anger hiding in his even tones. "Dark magic sometimes leaves traces, unavoidable and dangerous by themselves. That green smoke you saw was one such trace, and a distinctive one at that." Dumbledore knowingly nodded to Sirius, who tilted his head in reply. "Given enough time, it would have made it almost impossible for you to breathe - yes, even worse than when we arrived, Miss McKinnon - and would have dissipated within hours."

"Within hours of eventually killing us" Sirius finished with steely grimness.

"Unfortunately so, yes Mr Black."

Rose felt ice trickle down her spine, goosebumps spreading across her skin. That close. They had come that close to dying at the hands of dark magic, and something told her that it wasn't even a properly serious attempt.

James broke the heavy silence that naturally had encompassed them, smiling gratefully at their headmaster. "Thank you, Professor" he said, head held high. "We'll not take up any more of your valuable time."

"No" Dumbledore agreed proudly. "I don't think you will." He rose seamlessly to his feet, smiling around at them all once last time. "Keep up the good work."

Sirius gazed innocently at him. "We have no idea what you mean, Professor."

Dumbledore just hummed enigmatically, bidding then goodnight as he strode out of the double doors.

James was silent for about ten minutes after Dumbledore left, staring at the doors with a contemplative frown on his face. "Godric, he's a genius."

Edgar rolled his eyes, speaking for the first time in a while. "Yeah, brilliant he is" he agreed dryly. The Hufflepuff captain rolled his eyes at James, looking despairing of his sanity. "Sadly, you're not quite as bright as we thought."

Sirius sat up, a dangerous smile on his face. "How so?" he invited, voice silky.

Edgar cleared his throat, hurriedly putting up his hands to show he meant no real offence. "Not that way, Sirius" he hastened to clarify. "What happened today was nothing any of us could have predicted. Utterly out of the blue."

"Exactly" Lily agreed softly, inclining her head at James. Whether or not she knew how James had protected her, Rose didn't know, but it made her happy to see Lily not actively hating him. "There was nothing in any of our covert surveillance that suggested they were planning to disrupt the exams."

James smiled tightly, not entirely having forgiven himself, but pleased Lily didn't blame him. In things like this, Lily's opinion meant more to him than the words of the other Marauders.

"Just so" Edgar stated, pointing at Lily. "What I meant, oh esteemed captain, is that you were forgetting something rather important."

James tore his gaze from Lily, confused. "Hmm?"

Edgar cast his gaze to the ceiling, praying for patience in the way that Remus often did. "The Quidditch final! Saturday? Gryffindor versus Slytherin? For the quidditch cup? Good Godric man!"

A slow, wicked smirk stretched across James's face, lighting his eyes with the malevolent mischievous twinkle that suited James so well. "I am quite well aware of the final, Bones" he assured him, dark glee coating his words like treacle. "We'll finish our final exams tomorrow, then go out and get some payback, Gryffindor style."

Sirius cracked his knuckles menacingly, smiling calmly the entire time. "Mulciber's head would look rather wonderful with a nice dent in it, wouldn't it?"

Mary laughed, looking up from her book. "Couldn't make him look any worse."

Sirius smirked, another thought giving a wicked cast to his face. "And Reggie's face would be so much less irritating once I've accidentally hit it a few times with my beater's bat."

Benjy pouted, tossing a final bite of chocolate into his mouth. "Why do you get all of the fun?"

Sirius continued to smirk. "I'm unfortunately Reggie's brother - if anyone is going to smash him in the face with a bat, it's going to be me." He finished the statement by pointing both thumbs back at his chest.

James grinned consolingly at his fellow chaser. "Don't worry, Benjy. There'll be more than enough fun had for all of us."

"I agree" Remus said, winking at Rose. "Rosie will be snatching the snitch out from beneath Regulus's presumably broken nose." Sirius inclined his head at his friend, pleased Remus wasn't raining on his parade. "Edgar gets to commentate. James and Marlene and Benjy get to score so many goals, it'll probably be embarrassing for both sides-

"Or just for the Snakes" Marlene smirked, rubbing her hands together at the thought.

"-and the rest of us get the pleasure of watching it all happen from a cosy position in the Gryffindor stands."

"Have fun, smash Slytherins in the face or not" Lily began, staring right at James. "Just beat the pants off of them."

"Why Miss Evans" James cried, and Rose was a Hufflepuff if he didn't sound slightly flirtatious. "I thought you didn't care for quidditch."

"Oh I don't" she informed him, deadly serious. "But I do care about seeing their smug grins wiped off their faces. And a humiliating quidditch defeat is by far the legalist way I can think of for that to happen."

"In that case," James sprang off his bed, bowing as deeply as he could before Lily. "I vow to win for thee, my lady."

Lily raised an eyebrow, but she was smiling too. "Don't push it, Potter."

Remarkably, James didn't push it. He acted like Lily had never said what she had, instead throwing himself into passing the exams - just as the rest of them were doing too. That was why, right on time Friday morning, they came striding into the Great Hall en masse. Whispers immediately erupted throughout the Hall, speculating on exactly what had happened during the sixth year Transfiguration exam, and what had kept over a quarter of the sixth year class in the Hospital Wing overnight. Edgar broke away with a swift smile, rejoining his housemates with an air of enigmatic mystery about him. Caradoc glanced at his own table, shrugged, and carried on to sit at the Gryffindor table with Benjy. Strangely enough, nobody had ever told him he had to go back to the Ravenclaw table. Rose wasn't sure if it was because Gryffindor house quite liked Caradoc, or if their amazing tolerance of the Ravenclaw interloper was down to the knowledge that the Marauders liked him. Either way, it didn't change the fact that there he was, and often there he would stay. Of course, by the time they had been discharged from the Hospital Wing, reassured Madame Pomfrey that if they felt ill at all they would come right back (all of which was, naturally, them lying through their pearly white teeth), and then made their way down to the Great Hall, it was too late for them to do anything more than grab a slice of toast, gulp down a cup of tea, and then hightail it out of the Hall to make it to their first exam on time.

Rose noticed one or two of the suits of armour watching the doors to the Defence Against the Dark Arts practical exam that afternoon. It had been exactly the same for their Transfiguration practical that morning. And, as Remus had commented at lunch, their Ancient Runes exam had been guarded by a couple of the famed Hogwarts statues, ready to do their duty for the students of their school. But Rose didn't believe that anyone would be cretinous enough to try again, not with Dumbledore having the entire school on high alert. Oh, his passive smiles and general aura of serenity might fool most of the students, but they knew better. His electric gaze was just a little too intense, his stares lasting just a breath too long, and McGonagall was frankly a dead give away. That cat that was roaming the corridors was definitely not Mrs Filch, only a fool would think so. The sad fact was that whether or not there was going to be another attack, there was frankly very little that the Marauders could do to stop it. They had no prior intelligence (last they heard, the potion was still in the early stages, Snape growling something along the lines of it needing a long time to brew, not that Mulciber seemed overly pleased about it), and they had to focus on this, their final exam of the year. Defence was the one area where all the five Marauders excelled. Maybe not all equally - Remus and James and Sirius were definitely better than Rose and Peter - but nobody denied that the five of them were continually top of the class, year after year. And that, with the revolving door of often incompetent professors. Quite a feat, if Rose did say so herself.

That brought them were they were now; sitting on the floor of the Defense Corridor, waiting for their turn to sit the practical exam. Remus, was of course, being his usual effervescent self, going over their theoretical exam with Lily in hushed whispers. Peter and Frank were trying to relax and take their minds off of things with a stress-filled game of Exploding Snap ("don't let it singe your eyebrows off again, Wormy"), playing for high stakes. Well, if you called the last bag of Jelly Slugs in either of their possessions high stakes. Rose, James and Sirius sat together, a little way away from the rest of their year, listening to James lay out tactics for the Quidditch final tomorrow morning. Usually the quidditch final would already have been played by the time the exams rolled around, but with the chaotic way the year had gone for them all, it just wasn't to be. As if things weren't already stressful enough for them without adding on the biggest quidditch game of the year to the exam week. The only bright side was that the Slytherin team hadn't been able to get out and practice either, what with Reggie sitting his OWLs and the rest of the team similarly focused on their chances of continuing education.

James leaned forward, pitching his voice lower in case the Slytherins were listening in. "Lily told us to beat the snot out of the cheating Snakes" he announced, proud as a peacock. "So that means we're in it for the long haul. Clear?"

"Crystal" Sirius replied, his accent turning the word a little longer than it ought to have been.

"Great" Rose sighed, already seeing what James wanted from her. "Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be on distract Regulus duty?"

"You and Pads" James corrected, watching the way Sirius' eyes lit up with glee.

Rose momentarily felt the urge to smack her head off the stone wall of the corridor. It quickly passed, there was no sense in her doing the Slytherin job of hobbling the Gryffindor team. Nevertheless, she had objections and felt they had to be stated. "Reggie's a cunning little bastard" she said, managing to keep her voice a hissing whisper. "And slippery as the snake he is. He's not going to be easy to trick. Not once he cottons on to your brilliant plan to impress my sister."

James gasped, mouth hanging open like the thick troll her sister often accused him of being. "I'm not doing this to impress Evans" he protested, Rose privately thinking it a miracle that lightning didn't strike him down where he sat. "We're doing this to get even and win the Quidditch Cup for the fifth year running." He inclined his head slightly, amending "And possibly to impress Evans, just a little bit."

"You know she's not going to go out with you" Sirius observed, popping James's bubble so he didn't get his hopes up again for nothing.

"Of course I do" James sighed sadly. He looked like a kicked puppy. "Evans is never going to go out with me, but that doesn't mean I suddenly don't want to impress her. I do." He shrugged, feigning a nonchalance they all knew he didn't feel. "The whole school knows I'm pathetic when it comes to Lily Evans. I want her to think well of me, even if it is only for one day."

Sirius nodded, resolve settling into his grey eyes. "Okay then" he whispered, settling back on his bag. "Let's start thinking of ways to distract dear Reggie."

"Besides hitting bludgers at his smug head?" Rose suggested, that being by far her preferred way of dealing with a Slytherin - even Sirius' brother.

Sirius inclined his head, as if that plan was a given. "Aside from the inevitable bludger to the face, yes Rosebud."

"Well Captain our Captain, any bright ideas?"

James's face lit up, the melancholy vanishing from his eyes. "Ideas?" he laughed. "I have files!"

Rose glanced up at Sirius with a sarcastic sort of smile on her lips. "See, dear, he has files!"

Sirius shrugged, eyes twinkling. "I always thought he had fleas."

James scowled, creasing the skin between his eyebrows. "No, Pads" he corrected grumpily. "That was you. Back in fifth year."

Sirius waved a hand carelessly, his wand sending sparks hitting Benjy's ear.

"What?!" Benjy snapped, turning away from whatever thrilling conversation he was having with Caradoc.

"Practice tonight" Sirius called, James nodding solemnly beside him. "We're going for the long game."

Benjy winced but sighed. "I'll be there."

James peered intently at him through his glasses. "You bloody better be."

It was going on four o'clock that afternoon when Grimhorn finally opened his door and called out Rose's name. She was among the last of her year to be called (bloody typical that) but she had enjoyed the wait. It gave her the perfect time to have a quick nap and catch up on some reading. Well, once James and Sirius had been called in. They had gone about an hour before her, James bidding her farewell with a grin and a reminder not to forget about their upcoming practice. Sirius, on the other hand, had winked, blown her a kiss, and strutted off down the corridor just like a man who had blown his exam out of the water. Remus, on the other hand, had been called up just before her, wishing her a soft good luck before he went to enjoy himself with his much deserved relaxation.

"Miss Evans?" Grimhorn called, a touch warily.

Rose came to her feet with a smile, inclining her head at the incompetent professor. "Professor Grimhorn" she replied, unable to entirely stop the smirk from showing in her voice.

"Let's begin" Grimhorn said, shutting the door with a wave of his wand. Rose drew her own wand, assuming the expected ready position.

For the next twenty minutes, Grimhorn tested Rose on all the areas of Defence that they had covered that year. She nonverbally shielded herself from his minor jinx's and hexes, easily repelled Grimhorn's weak attempt at Imperising her, cast her own nonverbal minor hexes and jinxes, and more. She demonstrated her ability to create an imperturbable charm, performed a stretching jinx, temporarily enjoyed the sight of Grimhorn with his ears all shriveled up like prunes, and finally created an area of the room safe from any intruders thanks to the ever-handy cave inimicum spell. Rose felt quite proud of herself for resisting the temptation to show off, instead maintaining a professional detachment as she moved through the exam. Grimhorn had never enjoyed the more theatrical side of the Marauders in class, and she felt that just this once she could give him the best of what the Marauders had to offer, just without some of the dramatics that James and Sirius preferred.

As they finished, Rose gave a half bow to Grimhorn and he did the same. "Thank you, Miss Evans" he said, momentarily not sounding like the pompous moron that had taught them for the past year. "Very well done."

"Thank you, Professor" Rose replied, a gentle smile curving her lips.

"Good luck" Grimhorn bade, waving the door open with another twitch of his wand.

Rose inclined her head, all but skipping out of the classroom. They had done it! Another year of exams over. Another year at Hogwarts nearly over. Now, it was time to have some fun. Even Remus couldn't deny that they deserved it.

Some fun in the sun, then quidditch practice, would finish the day nicely. Then the quidditch final tomorrow, creaming Slytherin for giggles, and the leaving feast on Sunday. And then, the summer holidays - months of relaxation, surveillance, and quidditch games - stretching out in front of them with a warm golden haze. This year might have royally sucked, but by Godric the summer was going to be better. Sirius had told her so.

Thank you for reading.

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