Chapter Twenty Four

Secrets Revealed

I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.

~Mark Twain

"We've got to go! Cadwallader is headed to a meeting right now. I just know it!" James exclaimed. He had, only moments before watched the lumbering Slytherin suddenly give up on his work and hurriedly leave the library. It was strange behaviour, because James could see no reason why Cadwallader had suddenly left. The other boy must be up to something and a Slytherin up to something meant it was time for James and his friends to act.

James quickly grabbed his untouched books, stuffed them in his bag, pulled out his invisibility cloak, and nearly bolted from the library. The others scrambled to follow after, but James didn't slow down. He wasn't about to blow this opportunity. Not with school ending and the final Quidditch match of the year fast approaching.

Luckily, Cadwallader had a slow, slightly stumbling gait and this gave James, and especially Sirius, Remus, and Peter, the opportunity to catch up. The four lagged back a little until they were able to find a secluded section of hallway and disappeared beneath the invisibility cloak. Once they could no longer be spotted, they hurried to get as close to Cadwallader as they dared. Less than a meter behind, James was slightly worried that the sounds of their breathing, or their footsteps, or even the rustling of their clothes would be heard, but Cadwallader noticed nothing. Sirius shot James a look that clearly expressed a doubt at the longer haired boy's intelligence. James was forced to think of something as unfunny as being discovered by an infuriated McGonagall in order to keep from bursting out in laughter.

As Cadwallader slowly trudged through the hallways, James felt his heart start to beat faster and faster. By the time the doorway of the classroom where the Slytherins had been meeting loomed into view, James' heart was beating so fast he was worried it might explode or something. Remus, who was walking directly behind the messy haired boy and must have sensed his anxiety, put a comforting hand on James' shoulder. Feeling slight relief, but also figuring that holding onto each other would help ensure they all got through the door, James grabbed hold of Remus behind him and Sirius to his right side. The other three boys all grabbed onto each other, creating a square.

The door was closed, and most likely locked, but as Cadwallader approached, it slowly opened, as if sensing his presence. However, when he was about three steps away, the door started closing again. A small part of James began to stress and he picked up the pace, causing his friends to have to rush quicker as well. A part of him knew that they wouldn't make it through the door before it closed, not unless they were right on Cadwallader's heels. That, he would surely sense and they would easily be discovered.

"Hey! Cadwallader! Hold the door, would you? I forgot my key!" a booming voice called out from behind the four and their target. Neither James nor any of his friends dared look, but he was pretty certain it was Bletchley, another member of the Slytherin Quidditch team, who had shouted.

Whoever it was, he caused Cadwallader to stop his progress halfway through the door and lean against it. The burly Slytherin had to put a fair amount of his weight behind the action as the door kept, quite forcefully, trying to close itself. James couldn't believe his luck. They'd spent the past several weeks perfecting various unlocking spells and yet here was an opportunity to slip through the door without magic.

The four Gryffindors were in between Cadwallader and the assumed Bletchley. They could step out of the way, allow Bletchley into the room and then be faced with a closed door they would have to try to open with magic. It was a situation they had found themselves in, according to Remus' count, twelve times before with no luck. However, they could also just continue through the door. It would be held open until Bletchley, who was behind them, made it through the door. It was like fate had finally decided to smile down on them.

James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus slowed their progress down a little and delicately slipped through the open door, passing a very agitated Cadwallader. Despite the overwhelming desire to celebrate this momentous success, James decided it would be best to move out of the path of the doorway and find an out of the way corner. It would not do them any good to have a Slytherin accidently bump into them while they were invisible in the Slytherins' secret meeting.

Remus, always the strategist, silently began directing the others to a back corner, away from everyone else. As quietly as they'd ever done anything in their lives, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter sat down on four seats and waited for the meeting to begin. As the realisation of what they'd accomplished hit James, a silly lopsided smile crossed his face.

Quickly enough, the Slytherins began finding seats to sit in or walls to lean against. The meeting was about to begin and everyone wanted to make sure they had a comfortable spot to spend the time. Light chatter still permeated the room, though the large amount of chatter and low volume at which each person spoke made it next to impossible to hear exactly what any one group was actually saying. James and his friends would just have to wait for the meeting to begin in earnest and hope that something incriminating would be said then.

Suddenly, a hush filled the room and Warrington, the captain of the Quidditch team and, in James' mind at least, the de facto leader of the broom tamperers, walked in. All eyes were instantly on him, especially James', Sirius', Remus', and Peter's. Warrington stood at the front of the room, carefully surveying the crowd. For a brief flash, James wondered if the older Slytherin somehow knew that the Gryffindors were in that room. But that couldn't be. It took an extremely powerful magician to see through an invisibility cloak. And this invisibility cloak seemed more powerful than most.

"Evening, gentlemen," Warrington finally spoke, his previously tense posture relaxingly slightly. Whatever Warrington had been looking for, he must not have found it. "I wanted to start off tonight with a discussion of the teams standings for the Quidditch Cup. Now, unfortunately, the determination of the winner is decidedly out of our hands. We tried our best last match to score enough goals to secure our victory, but Hufflepuff managed to score too many goals to keep our margins in the places they needed to be." Warrington shot an icy disapproving look at the Slytherin keeper who was sinking lower and lower into his seat.

James desperately fought back the annoyed, frustrated, defeated groan that quickly built inside him. It was just another Quidditch meeting! They were discussing logistics about how much Ravenclaw needed to beat Gryffindor by in order to ensure that Slytherin would still win the cup. James listened at first, hoping that Warrington would mention illegal conduct that he wanted his team to partake in to help ensure the victory, but none was forthcoming. Only the comforting, assured hand of Remus placed on James' shoulder kept the messy haired boy from jumping up and leaving the meeting.

All that hard work, combined with that rare stroke of luck, and all they managed to sneak into was a lousy Quidditch strategy meeting! It made James' blood boil and he turned to his friend, the owner of the hand currently keeping him calm, and searched his face. James was looking for something, anything, that explained how Remus, who had put in the same, if not more effort as James could remain so calm in the face of yet another setback.

"Just wait," Remus mouthed at James in response. Something in the sandy haired boy's eyes and posture put James at ease and he chose to trust his friend. Maybe they could still get something slightly incriminating and just sell it really well.

Thankfully, the Quidditch team meeting only lasted about twenty minutes. Unfortunately, nothing, not a single thing that Warrington, or any other member of the Slytherin team, said was the slightest bit incriminating. Remus' hope and optimism had obviously been misplaced. This was not their moment, despite the amount of luck and good fortune they'd had in getting into the meeting.

Maybe they shouldn't even be trying to get into meetings. Maybe all the planning of the broom tampering was happening in a corner of the Slytherin common room. Or maybe they'd stopped planning, believing they'd done enough to secure Slytherin victory. Or, and James hated thinking it, maybe it had never been the Slytherins at all. Maybe they'd spent the last few months going after the wrong perpetrators.

James slunk low in his seat, avoiding the questioning look Sirius was sending him. His friend was obviously as frustrated and hopeless as James was and he just couldn't face admitting his defeat to his friends as well as to himself. This year had so much promise, and it had so quickly gone downhill. Sure, there were positives, plenty of the them James was sure. It was just that, at that moment, he could only really recall meeting his friends. All the other thoughts and memories rattling around in his head were about things that gone wrong or the bad things that happened.

Slowly the Slytherins began to stand and filter out of the classroom. James watched Cadwallader and Bletchley leave, their heads bent in discussion, probably over Bletchley's missing key. None of the Gryffindors moved, waiting instead until the room was empty. That way their slow, depressed exit could be accomplished without the fear of being discovered.

However, after about only half of the team and its reserves had left, a strange thing occurred. Instead of more Slytherins leaving the room, a few new ones began entering. James and the others sat up, extremely curious about what was going on. As the new Slytherins, mostly sixth and seventh years, entered, no one partook in chitchat. Instead, the newcomers, as well as a smattering of the Quidditch players quickly took their seats. Once again, Warrington took his place at the front of the room.

"Evening, gentlemen. First off, I'd like to start by saying this will probably be our last meeting of the year. After you are dismissed, I strongly suggest destroying anything and everything that has to do with our goings on here over the past few months. You won't need them after this and hanging on to them is only asking to be found out.

"Now, onto the agenda for tonight. We are fast approaching the final Quidditch game of the year. Slytherin is in fairly good standing to win the cup, but it definitely isn't a sure thing. There are definitely some things that can be done to ensure victory. However, this time around, we need to be subtler. No more obvious broom tampering. Dumbledore can still call the whole thing and then all of our efforts will have been for naught.

"So, I open it up now to suggestions on how to subtly sabotage Gryffindor." As Warrington was speaking, Remus had carefully reached into his school bag and pulled out his recording orb. He silently activated it and the orb began recording everything that was said within the room.

Ideas quickly passed throughout the room. Most of them, like cursing and jinxing Gryffindor players, were anything but subtle. Others, like tampering with bludgers so they were more likely to go after Gryffindors than Ravenclaws, were more appropriate. After all, like the person who made the suggestion stated, rouge bludgers were not an uncommon occurrence.

This meeting, unlike the Quidditch meeting, lasted almost an hour. It involved a fair amount of debate over the tactics that would be used, and a fair amount of planning to ensure that the tampering would not be obvious and definitely not be traced back to any of them. All in all, it was a lot of extremely incriminating information that the Gryffindors were witnesses too. And all of it was handily recorded by Remus for posterity, and as proof of the whole thing.

When the meeting finally broke up and all of the Slytherins slowly left the room -apparently curfew wasn't really a concern for a group of students willing to sink to illegal means simply in order to secure a silly house sport trophy- James felt such a sense of joy and relief. Finally! They'd finally done it! They'd gotten everything they needed to clear their names! James excitedly threw off the cloak and began dancing around the empty classroom.

"We did it! We did it! We did it!" James chanted in a sing-song voice as he danced. Sirius quickly joined in with the dancing and chanting, linking arms with his friend and spinning in circles. Peter clapped to the beat of their chanting but didn't join in further. Remus carefully folded the invisibility cloak and then deposited it and the now milky coloured orb into his bag.

"As much as I want to celebrate now, we're not done yet," Remus spoke, slightly dampening the mood. "We still need to bring our evidence to a professor and see what they do with it. And I think we should do it quickly. Warrington mentioned destroying other evidence that individual members possess and, if we can get a professor to act quickly enough, we may be able to save that evidence."

Remus' words had a sobering effect on the others, and James and Sirius stopped their dancing and chanting. Quickly, all four exited the room and, with newfound purpose, hurried down the corridors towards the professors' offices.