All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.

~Earl Nightingale

Chapter Eighteen

A Plans A Foot

In the months before Christmas break, James would have said that Remus was a reluctant friend at best and an acquaintance at worst. He put in a lot of effort to try and befriend the skinny sandy haired boy, but it hadn't seemed like anything he did was making any progress. Then, after Christmas, and the issues with the broom tampering, it seemed like Remus was a different person. All of a sudden, he was extremely helpful and willing to aid the others in any way possible. And on one cold, evening in the middle of winter, Remus was the most helpful he had ever been.

"I've think I may have found something," Remus spoke, a little hesitantly. The four Gryffindor first year boys were sitting around the fire in the common room, books and various other school related detritus surrounding them. James, who had been only half focusing on his charms essay, instantly snapped his head up.

"What did you find?" James asked. He tried to reign in his excitement and enthusiasm, but a small amount bled over into the volume with which James asked the question. A few of the other Gryffindors scattered around the common room snapped their heads in the direction of the four. James gave them a sheepish, apologetic look before turning back to Remus and the others.

"There's this entry here, in Advanced Charms and Transfigurations, that mentions being able to find something that is lost. It's not exactly a real time tracking spell, but it is definitely a start." Remus turned the book he had previously had his nose buried in to show the others. James quickly glanced at it but found the explanation of the advanced spell confusing. Instead, he decided to take Remus' word on it.

"Do you think you can modify it?" Sirius asked, equally as hopeful as James, but at a more respectful level than James had been. Remus turned the book back around to him and consulted the confusing, and surprisingly small, script.

"I don't know if we can modify it, but I think it will help us narrow down the types of spells and components we need in a real time, follow a person, type spell." Remus then returned his nose to the pages of the book and was lost to the other boys for the next several hours.

James had set Remus on his hunt for a tracking spell less than a week prior and already Remus had made amazing progress. James was sure it would only be a matter of days before the spell was locked down and they had a way to follow the Slytherins without having to physically follow the Slytherins. And then, they could clear their own names, get their wands and their reputations back, and reveal who was behind the tampering all along.

With an increased determination, James dug into a book Remus had piled next to him. James didn't have as great a grasp on the theoretical as Remus, but James could at least look for different tracking spells.

James and Sirius walked through the hallways. They were absolutely deserted on account of it being nearly an hour after curfew. However, neither of the boys was worried about getting caught. That was one of the perks of serving detention with Professor Slughorn; he had so many stories of his trophy students that their detentions always ran late. Thus, they were essentially granted a free pass to roam the hallways late at night.

That particular detention had been the result of yet another disastrous attempt to follow the Slytherins. The pair had been trying to rig the suit of armour outside of the Slytherin common room to inconspicuously shoot tracking powder, a joke shop item they'd bought through a catalogue and the closest they'd gotten to a tracking spell, at the passing Slytherins. However, when Professor Slughorn had walked upon the pair, it looked as if they were vandalizing school property and they promptly received their twentieth detention of their first year at school.

Normally, they'd spend their free time post-Slughorn detention searching out new passageways, but today, neither was feeling up to any adventures. Both James and Sirius were feeling defeated. They hadn't gotten anywhere with the Slytherins, hadn't even located where they were meeting. To top it all off, they still hadn't gotten their wands back. It had been almost a month since they'd been taken, and the two boys were starting to wonder if they'd ever get them back.

As a result, James and Sirius were making their way directly back to the common rooms. Their heads were dejectedly hung low and they dragged their feet. All in all, they were a sad looking pair.

For once, they hadn't been up to anything, simply trying to get back to their doom room. That was why they were taken aback, and a little angry and upset, when Professor McGonagall called out to them. She'd been standing in the doorway, hidden from those in the hallway until they were right on her. McGonagall's voice wasn't uncharacteristically stern or disciplinarian, but it still put James on edge.

'What is it this time?' he thought to himself, slowly making his way closer to the Professor. He was very quickly reaching the end of his rope and if one more negative thing happened, one more thing went against him, he was certain he'd explode. His belief in a fair universe was rapidly eroding and it was getting quite devastating and demoralizing.

Finally, he and Sirius stood right in front of McGonagall. As they looked up at her, the despair that they were feeling was clearly expressed on their faces. This sight seemed to soften Professor McGonagall, as her normally stern expression was replaced with a compassionate, caring one. Her normally angular face changed as her expression did and, for a split second, James couldn't help but see his mother in Professor McGonagall's face. Maybe there was more to the head of Gryffindor than rules.

"I have some good news for you boys. Your wands have been thoroughly investigated and have been found to not contain a single trace of the spells that were placed on either the Hufflepuff or Gryffindor brooms. You have, thus, been cleared of all suspicion. I want to be the first to apologize to you for putting you through this. I would much rather believe the best in you. Maybe you could try and make it easier to think that you two are not responsible for malignant acts." Professor McGonagall spoke not as a professor scolding her pupils for their misbehaviour, but as a concerned parent, trying to offer her trying and difficult children some motherly advice to help them succeed in life.

"Here," Professor McGonagall continued, turning and reaching into the room behind her to retrieve something, "are your wands back. Your professors have been informed of this change and will stop providing you with theoretical work. If you find you have fallen behind in your practical magic abilities, all of your professors have agreed to provide you with evening tutoring to bring your magic back up to where it should be. Though, from what I've seen, I have little doubt that you will face any problems." At her last statement, Professor McGonagall seemed to beam a little with pride at her students' abilities.

James and Sirius stood still for several moments, shocked at what they had heard. They'd been expecting some sort of reaming out over some trouble they'd been suspected in. They hadn't thought that Professor McGonagall would be returning their wands and clearing their names. It was quite the shock to them.

"Well, hurry along now. You may have the free pass that a detention with Professor Slughorn provides, but you wouldn't want to take your recently cleared names and besmirch them with misbehaviour. Best you be off to bed as quickly as possible." She then shot the boys a look telling them they should leave her presence post haste to avoid actually getting themselves in trouble.

James and Sirius shook off their shock and quickly snatched back their wands. They then turned and hurried down the hallway. Their previously cloudy mood had quickly dissipated and both boys were now eager to get back to their normal hijinks.

James' and Sirius' eager and excited mood did not last long. The joy at having their wands returned to them was quickly replaced with frustration at not making progress in discovering where the Slytherins were meeting or what they were up to. While the boys had been cleared in the eyes of the Hogwarts staff, the student body still firmly believed that James and Sirius had played at least some roll in the broom tampering. Only by revealing the real perpetrators would James and Sirius truly clear their reputations and return their good, prankster king names.

All four boys, most likely based on the clearly exhibited magical prowess of James and Sirius, had believed that once the two had their wands returned to them, they would all finally be able to achieve something; they'd be able to find a clue or discover a spell that would solve their problems. They'd all believed that their lack of progress had been because they'd been handicapped, their two best practical magicians unable to perform any magic at all.

However, that was definitely not the case. Even with their wands, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were still at the exact same position they'd been before.

The dejection they were all feeling was clearly expressed one night in late March. The four were sitting at their table in the library, though that night, unlike the previous nights, the table was completely empty. Remus hadn't felt like setting out the work; he'd spent so much time staring at it all that the entire contents were seared into his brain. But more than that, he wanted to give up on their, for lack of a better word, quest.

"You've been cleared of suspicion by the professors. There is an extremely low chance that you'll get in trouble and face any repercussions from it. Finding out what role the Slytherins, and especially Warrington and Professor Strinkley, had in all of it is sort of pointless. Plus, I'm sure the professors won't stop looking into it all, and they will find out who really jinxed the brooms. We don't need to be doing anything!" Remus exclaimed. He was trying to keep his voice down, not wanting anyone else to overhear him, but his frustration was making it difficult. Despite all his research there wasn't a single tracking spell contained in a single book at Hogwarts, at least not one that didn't require seventh year magical abilities to even attempt.

"The professors don't believe we did it, Remus, but everyone else at this school does! We may not be facing any official repercussions, but we are facing angry Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors! And those repercussions can be much, much worse!" James returned Remus' exclamation. For his part, James was not trying in the slightest to quiet his voice.

"They do know some nasty hexes," Peter piped up. He looked white as a sheet, obviously nervous about being caught in between James on one side and Remus on the other. He hadn't yet picked a side in the argument, but the prospect of having to do so was causing him quite a large amount of distress.

"That may be true Peter," Remus replied, "but we've spent far too long on this. We need to move on! Focus on our schoolwork. James and Sirius are already behind because they've missed a month of practicing. That should be our main concern. Exams will be on us before we know it!"

James didn't respond immediately. Instead, he turned to Sirius who had been sitting quietly on the sidelines during the disagreement. "What do you think Sirius? What should we do?" James asked his friend, hoping he knew what the longhaired boy would say. Surely Sirius would be on James' side.

Sirius took a moment before thoughtfully responding. "We have been spending a lot of time on something that has yet to provide us with even a small result. If we do something epic, similar to Halloween, then that could change what people think of us. We'd be known for our good pranks instead of the brooms. You had that epic prank planned before the Quidditch game." James felt crestfallen at his friend's response.

"That being said, though," Sirius continued, "I really don't want to leave the Slytherins alone. They should pay for what they've done. At the very least they should pay for causing James and me to have our wands taken away. I'm not sure what we should do next."

James was quiet for quite a while, contemplating all that his friends had been saying. They had put in a month and a half's work on the project and were yet to have any achievements at all. His friends' frustrations were perfectly understandable. But James still desperately wanted answers to it all and wanted to clear his name in the eyes of everyone who had ever doubted him.

"How about a compromise?" he suggested, "let's keep at it until the first of April, right after my birthday. That's only a little over a week away. If we haven't gotten anywhere by then, we can forget about the Slytherins and we can put on that prank for April Fool's Day. I have a feeling that we're really close to a breakthrough."

The others were quiet, but eventually agreed to James' compromise. James knew that his birthday, always an exceptionally good day for him, would bring something that would turn their luck around and finally see the success of his attempts to reveal Slytherin's treachery.

"Okay," Sirius responded, "We can work on both the prank and the Slytherins. Maybe I can ask Moira if she knows anything. She is one of the only Slytherins who will talk to us. It's possible she knows something. It's worth a shot."

"I can wait until April!" Peter squeaked, glad that he could finally pick a side. All eyes then turned to Remus.

"I guess we could wait until April. See if we can get anywhere. But I think we should give up on a tracking spell. I just can't find anything that we could conceivably pull off. There might be a book at a bookstore or something, but without access to anything I just don't know where else to look."

James smiled sympathetically at his friend. Remus really did look frustrated and stressed out about the tracking spell.

"Deal. We work until April, but not on the tracking spell!"