Chapter Twenty Three

Crack

Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time.

~Arnold H. Glasgow

"Aberto," James spoke, pointing his wand at the lock. For a minute nothing happened, and James was a little disheartened. "Let me see that book again," he spoke, reaching for the book open in Remus' lap. The other boy had been rapidly flipping back and forth through pages, scratching out notes on what he found there. Remus didn't hear James' words, so the other boy reached over and grabbed the book from his friends' lap. Just as he did that, the lock that was sitting across the dorm exploded.

The four boys sat in silence for several seconds, taking in the events that had just transpired.

"I guess you don't actually need this," Remus spoke, once the initial shock of the explosion had worn off. He then reached over and grabbed the book back from a gapping James. That seemed to wake James up and he jumped to his feet and began whooping and hollering in excitement.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" James exclaimed before tiring himself out and returning to his spot on the floor. "Now you try, Sirius." James got another lock and put it in front of his friend. He then slide back to be beside Sirius and watched his friend with the charm.

They had been working on learning as many unlocking charms beside alohomora as they could. The belief was that if they could have an arsenal, then whatever locking or sticking charm the Slytherins were using on their door would be no match for the four Gryffindors. It was slow work, though. Today was the first time James had made anything happen to the lock and it still had a fair delay. Sirius had yet to have any result and Peter hadn't even worked up the courage to make an attempt. Remus said he would be put to better use researching and hadn't been practicing ay of the spells.

However, the hard work was not deterring James. He was riding a wave of recent small success and a strong belief that he was in the right and that those who were in the right would eventually succeed, even if it took them a little longer than they would have liked.

"Aberto," Sirius spoke, waving his wand as he said it. James held his breath, waiting for the lock to do something, anything. They'd made progress already, they should be able to keep moving forward and not slip backwards. However, even after several seconds, nothing happened.

Sirius angrily muttered under his breath, stood up and kicked the lock across the room. Peter, who had been sitting in the path of the lock, had to quickly dodge out of the way. "Sorry Peter," Sirius then muttered. He then slumped down on his bed, burying his head in his arms.

"Well, I think that's enough work for today," Remus spoke. He closed his book, tucked away his notes and quill, and stood up. He'd been sitting for several hours and as he stood, he stretched out his tired muscles. James readily agreed. If he pushed too hard, he was worried that he might make it so his friends gave up on the whole thing.

He was more invested in the whole scheme than anyone else. Remus was, at best lukewarm about all of their pranking and rule-breaking initiatives. Peter only ever seemed enthused when James and Sirius were enthused. And Sirius, though wanted to change their current reputation, thought it would be better to go about it with a prank. So, James had to tread carefully lest he push too hard and everything come crashing down around him.

"Finals will soon be upon us. You need to make sure you are looking over all of your notes and practicing the spells we have learned this year. You will have to do a written portion, which involves explaining spells, understanding theory, and discussing important aspects of magic. There will also be a practical portion were you will be asked to perform some of the spells learned over the past year. Both are equally important to your final grade and your final grade will eventually come to determine the classes you can take," Professor McGonagall explained one day in early May.

As James heard those words, he let out a groan. Upcoming exams meant multiple things for him, and none of them good. First, it meant that he would have to start studying and preparing, which would take up a significant portion of his time. That would mean that he wouldn't have as much time to work on cracking the Slytherin problem. Second, the coming of exams meant the coming of the end of the year. Soon, first year would be over and any progress they had made towards the Slytherin problem would be for naught. Next year would mean different Slytherins and the potential that no one wanted to really investigate something that had happened a year before. They needed to wrap all of this up before everyone left for the summer.

The first years were then dismissed and, without even standing up, James rounded on his friends. "We have some figuring we need to do," he whispered. Sirius and Remus gave him quizzical looks, wondering what had caused this reaction in James. Peter, for his part, looked worried, like James had discovered something truly awful.

"Lunch?" Sirius suggested, which was where all of the students were currently heading. It was obvious that Sirius was hungry and didn't want to be distracted from his food.

"Somewhere more private," James spoke, "the common room should be pretty empty at this moment. We can grab something quick for lunch and head there." James nodded his head like the decision was made and was glad that his friends didn't immediately protest. The way things had been going, with James essentially pulling his friends along in the past few weeks, he wasn't sure they trusted his planning anymore.

"As long as I can eat," Sirius responded, as the boys headed off with the rest of the student body. They made a quick stop in the Great Hall, grabbing sandwiches and sweets. Sirius stuffed his pockets more than the others and James wondered if Sirius was going through a growth spurt with the amount of food he was eating. Once they'd grabbed what they thought would be enough to sustain them through their afternoon classes, the boys headed out of the hall.

Most of the students were in the Great Hall, though with all the different schedules, they didn't all necessarily eat at the same time. It was also a fairly nice early May day, so there were quite a few students who had decided to venture out into the grounds and the somewhat warm weather. James hoped that it all combined to mean that there would only be one or two other people in the Gryffindor common room so that no one could overhear their conversation. James figured they needed to meet now, while they were still early in the end-of-the-year chaos, to plan out their priorities and how they would go about managing everything.

"Okay," James said as the boys took a seat at a table near the one of the windows in the common room. James had been right in his assumption and there were only two lone students in the common room. One was a third year girl who was sitting in an opposite corner working away on something. The other was a sixth year boy who was flopped across one of the couches, fast asleep. Neither one seemed to cause much worry of them overhearing.

"What figuring do we need to do?" Remus asked. He pulled out a quill and some parchment as he did so, supposing correctly that he would be the one recording their decisions.

"It's getting close to crunch time," James began. He paused to quickly assess his friends and see if they were paying attention. Remus had the quill poised over the paper, waiting to scratch out information; Peter was staring at James' with rapt attention; Sirius was busy stuffing his face but James was pretty sure he was listening, nonetheless. "Finals will be upon us soon. The end of the year is coming up quickly. If we don't plan out our priorities then something will end up slipping through the cracks. So, I was thinking we should come up with a schedule. Make sure we have time to study, to keep up with our schoolwork, to plan our end of the year prank, and to get to the bottom of the Slytherin problem."

As James was speaking, Remus was busy writing down thoughts. He then scooted his piece of parchment down a few inches and began to draw a grid, like a calendar to divide up their time. Sirius swallowed a rather large piece of turkey sandwich and then spoke.

"While I think it is important to figure out our time, it would also be less of an issue if we left one of those things off the list. I'm sure teachers won't be too harsh with the schoolwork; at the very least the load will hopefully be kept consistent. So, studying and schoolwork shouldn't take up too much more time than it is currently. If we then only add planning an end of the year prank, there's really no need for this discussion."

James had been expecting pushback on the Slytherin problem. Sirius and Remus had been pushing back for months. So, he wasn't really surprised, but he was a little saddened. He knew that Sirius was less concerned about reputation than James was. James had heard rumours about the Black's, none of which seemed to apply to Sirius, but his friend had apparently paid these rumours, these beliefs about the Black's reputation, no heed. So, James was pretty sure that some students and teachers thinking he was no good was not really all that new to Sirius. But it was very, very new to James and he didn't like it one bit.

He wanted people to think well of him. He wanted them to see him as a great student, a fantastic Quidditch player, and a prankster king. He didn't want people associating his name with broom tampering, with meddling and obstructing Quidditch. He needed to clear his name!

"Sirius might be right," Remus spoke. "There hasn't been any other sabotage attempts in months. In fact, the game a few days ago was a Slytherin game and no one had any problems with their brooms, neither Slytherin nor Hufflepuff. Maybe things are done for the time being and then, when next year starts no one will be talking about it."

James grumbled at his friend's fairly logical argument. There hadn't been a broom tampering incident since February, but James would not be deterred.

"Well, Gryffindor hasn't played a match since the last incident. They've only been tampering with matches that have Gryffindor competing. That way we look extra guilty. There's still one more Gryffindor match. They've probably been saving up all their planning for that!" James was essentially yelling at the end of his speech. The other two Gryffindors in the common room had been roused to their presence at his words and were now looking over curiously at the first-years, though the sixth-year who had been sleeping only moments before was also looking over with a little bit of anger in his eyes.

"Okay. We can try and plan it all out," Remus acquiesced. He was shooting furtive looks at the other occupants of the common room, hoping that they would soon lose interest. James slumped down in his seat a little sheepish.

"Yeah, no need to get your knickers in a bunch," Sirius said, taking another large bite out of his sandwich.

The boys spent the rest of their lunch organizing their time so that they could complete all four goals. They blocked out time to study for each of their subjects, though Remus argued that some of that could overlap with their assigned schoolwork because the assigned work would probably help them on their exams. They set times to work on the end of the year prank. It hadn't been a priority for James for several months now but once they'd finally cleared their names, they would need to do something to re-establish their prankster reputation. And lastly, but definitely not least, they planned when they would stake out the Slytherin's and attempt to reveal their secrets.

Once they'd figured all that out, they began their new routine. They went to their next class and then spent their free time as they had planned it out. Several weeks passed in that fashion, with the boys making small bits of progress in each of their four fields, though they'd had more defeats than success in the realm of the Slytherins.

James watched as Remus ticked off another mark on a scrap of parchment he'd been holding on to. The small scrap was nearly filled with small scratch marks. Each small tick on that sheet of paper was like a knife to the heart. Remus had taken to accounting for all the attempts the group had made at getting into the Slytherin meeting, and each time they had failed. At that point, both the number of attempts and the number of failures were equal.

And that fact was extremely painful to James. Despite their practice with unlocking spells, the Gryffindor boys had yet to discover the correct spell that the Slytherins were using, they seemed to change the spell with each meeting. And, on the rare occasion when James was sure they'd guessed the right spell, they'd failed to be able to perform it accurately. All of it led to the four of them standing awkwardly outside a locked door under the invisibility cloak, futilely trying to unlock it until Slytherins began reappearing.

"Well," Remus mused as he silently counted up the tally marks on the parchment, "Twelfth times the charm." He tried to make his voice sound cheery, but there was a slight depressive quality to it.

"I don't think that's the saying, Remus," Sirius spoke, squinting out the window at the bright sun that hung high in the sky. The quartet was sitting in the library, supposedly studying for their upcoming finals. However, none of them were really all that involved in their studies at that moment.

Sirius was staring out the window, at what exactly, wasn't clear. Remus was busy scratching on and studying his piece of parchment. Peter was staring out across the library at a group of girls, the other Gryffindor first years. James had trained his gaze on the table two over from where they currently sat. Occupying that table was Cadwallader, a member of the Slytherin Quidditch team. He'd been working on a large paper, which involved a lot of scowling and scratching out of things.

After nearly an hour, Cadwallader seemed to give up on his essay. That, or he finished it, though James was sceptical about that one. The burly Slytherin quickly began packing up and hurried out of the library. At that, James stood, startling his otherwise distracted friends. Something about the fairly suddenness of Cadwallader's movements had triggered something in James. No one goes from intently scratching and writing on parchment to suddenly cleaning up. There wasn't a look of accomplishment, a rocking back in the chair to observe his work, or a quick second reading that James would have associated with the completion of a work that so much effort went into. There also wasn't a frustrated sigh or any throwing. Cadwallader had simply been working on his essay one moment and then, as if he realised the time, quickly packed up and left.

"We've got to go! Cadwallader is headed to a meeting right now. I just know it!"