After the deaths of Mary and Fiona, Dumbledore cancelled exams for all the younger students—but the Ministry insisted on administering O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s to the fifth and seventh years, so the Marauders spent their final weeks at Hogwarts sitting exams they had done absolutely nothing to prepare for. Even Remus hadn't been able to find the motivation to study. Sirius suspected they all had failed, but it didn't really matter—the Order of the Phoenix didn't put much stock in N.E.W.T. scores.
There was one thing the Marauders had prepared for, something they'd been plotting all year: their final prank at Hogwarts, a massive, spontaneous graduation party the night before the seventh years all sailed back across the Great Lake and into their adult lives. It felt a little strange to be planning something so carefree after everything that had happened, but Peter had figured that Mary and Fiona would have wanted them to all go out with a laugh, and Lily had agreed.
"Everyone good on what they're supposed to do?" James asked. "And on how to use the talkie-walkies?"
"Walkie-talkies," Remus corrected him, smiling. He'd introduced the Marauders to the Muggle technology a few months before, and James and Sirius were still quite fascinated with the strange black speaking boxes. Despite having magic, wizards had never been the best when it came to speedy communication—they still used owl post, after all.
"Right. Peter, keep your eyes glued to the Map, and no using the Dungbombs unless absolutely necessary. We don't want to stink up the place, after all."
"Got it," Peter said, clutching the Marauder's Map to his chest.
"All right then—let's throw ourselves a party."
The Marauders split up, with Sirius heading downstairs to the kitchens to check on the cake they'd ordered from the house-elves. The elves showed it to him proudly: it was as massive as Sirius had requested, circular and wide as a dinner table with at least five layers. It was rimmed with scarlet-and-gold icing, and the elves had written WE'RE DONE BITCHES across its top in intricately fancy calligraphy. Sirius grinned—it looked absolutely perfect.
"Thank you," he told the elves. "Did I ever tell you guys how amazing you are?"
"We're proud to serve you, Master Black," said one of the elves, giving him a little bow. "Do you have any more orders for us?"
"I believe this is the last one." Sirius flicked his wand at the cake, reducing it to a normal, more manageable size, and sent it flying up behind him with a nonverbal Wingardium Leviosa. "But it's quite a masterpiece to go out on, I'd say." The house-elves squealed with delight at his complement. Sirius gave them all one last grin before disappearing out the kitchen door with his cake in tow. He wondered why Kreacher couldn't be a bit more like the Hogwarts elves.
"Is my path clear, Wormtail?" Sirius asked into his walkie-talkie.
"All clear," Peter confirmed. "Slughorn's in his office though, so try to keep quiet—and Remus, Filch is lurking around the main third-floor corridor."
"I'll skip that floor for now," Remus said. "Thanks, Peter."
With his cake levitating behind him, Sirius crept out of the dungeons and into the tower of the Grand Staircase, where the moving stairs stretched up interminably overhead all the way to the ceiling. He spotted a bit of James's shoe poking out from beneath his Cloak and went over to join him on the large cut of purple carpet he'd procured. "Everything set up, Prongs?"
"Yep." James pulled off the Cloak and eyed the cake hovering at Sirius's shoulder. "Oh, that looks brilliant."
"It looks even better full-sized," Sirius promised him.
"Let's get this thing started, then." James held his walkie-talkie up to his mouth, a little too close. "All good, Moony?"
"Everything's been properly Spongified," Remus confirmed.
"Wormtail?"
"Filch is out of the way."
"Excellent." James glanced up. "All right, Lils. We're just about ready." Sirius nodded, and the two of them stood up and brandished their wands at the staircases above them. Sirius had no idea if they could pull this off, but James had insisted—and why not? They were Marauders; they could do anything.
"On the count of three, Padfoot," James murmured. "One…two…."
"Impedimenta!" the boys yelled together, straining under the force of the spell. The moving staircases slowed in their swings until they ground to a halt, some of them stuck halfway between two landings. The students climbing up and down them stopped, confused, and glanced around to see what was going on; sooner of later their gazes all found the grinning James and Sirius standing below them, which was enough of an answer for anyone concerned.
On cue, Lily dove off of one of the upper landings on her broomstick, leading a flock of seventh years in V formation around and over the flights of motionless stairs. She threw a brightly-colored ball into the air that burst into a cloud of fireworks, the seventh years behind her following suit until the tower was filled with explosive color. Some of the watching students screamed; others cheered.
With a wave of his wand, Sirius dimmed the lights, and James bit his lip in concentration as he called a giant disco ball down from the ceiling above, replacing the brief bursts of the fireworks with circling rainbow lights and blaring music.
It wasn't long before the landings and ground floor were flooded with students gaping around at the sudden chaos. Sirius directed his cake to the middle of the floor and coaxed it back to its full size, multiple students having to scatter out of the way as it grew. "Incandia," James said, pointing at the cake—its icing began to glow, the words WE'RE DONE BITCHES lighting up brightest of all. There were more cheers, and a great rush of students coming to pull out handfuls of luminescent cake. Sirius glanced up to find swarms of younger students with lit wands bouncing up and down on the landings, screaming with delight—they'd discovered Remus's Spongify charmwork, apparently.
Remus and Peter had reached Sirius and James on the ground floor, panting from their run. "This looks fantastic," Remus said over the music.
"What's wrong, Petey?" James asked, narrowing his eyes at the fourth Marauder—he was biting nervously at his nails.
"I lost the Map," Peter said. "While I was distracting Filch, he found it on me…I deactivated it in time, of course, but he still guessed it was something important, so he took it."
"Damn it, Peter." Sirius tugged his hands through his hair. "We don't have time to steal it back."
James glanced between the two of them. "Good," he said.
Remus blinked. "Good?"
"Yes—this is great. It's not like we'll be needing the Map after we graduate, right? Our whole goal for making it was to pass our knowledge down to the next generation of mischief-makers here. And what could be a more worthy trial for a mischief-maker than raiding Filch's confiscated items box? The Marauder's Map will find its way into the right hands all by itself."
"Hmm." Sirius tilted his head. "I guess you're right, Prongs. Well done, Petey."
"Er…thanks?"
"Now get on the carpet," James said. "It's time for our final trick."
Remus and Peter climbed on, the four of them squeezing close together on the purple fabric. "All right, carpet," James said to it. "Up!"
With a shiver, the carpet extricated itself from the ground and lifted the Marauders up into the air, higher and higher until they'd nearly reached the ceiling. The students below ceased their dancing and cake-shoveling to blink up at them as they hovered overhead on their very much illegal magic carpet. Then, slowly, they all began to clap, the applause loud enough to drown out the thumping bass of the music.
The Marauders joined hands and took a deep, grandiose bow, James waving down like the Queen of England. Then he reached into his pocket and threw one of the firework-balls behind him—it exploded into a brilliant, fiery phoenix, spreading its wings over the Marauders and lingering in the air much longer than any firework had the right to. Lily swooped in on her broomstick and grabbed James around the neck, pulling him into a kiss that nearly yanked him off of the carpet. At this, the applause somehow grew even louder.
Sirius peered down at the small cluster of students below who weren't applauding—Snape and his friends, the school's resident Death Eaters. Most of them were scowling up at the phoenix, but Snape was scowling at James and Lily. They were the ones who had killed Mary and Fiona; Sirius was sure of it.
But tonight, as tiny figures far below them, the Death Eaters seemed insignificant, and the phoenix glowing behind them—the Order, the Marauders' future—was so much brighter. So Sirius leaned over the edge of the carpet and stuck his tongue out at them as James whisked them away through the Entrance Hall and out of the castle, onto whatever adventure awaited them next.
