AN: Um, so what can I say to excuse the lack of updates on this for something like four years? Not much I can say, other than it was already long overdue for an update when I got my first publishing contract a little over two years ago and after that there was just no time. I am using NaNoWriMo this year to go rebel and get a lot of unfinished projects completed, including this one and the other Harry Potter fanfics that are still unfinished. I always hate running across unfinished stories and am truly sorry that mine have been left for so long without being updated and completed. I am hoping that by the end of November this will be remedied.

Oh, and in the interests of not keeping you all waiting for even longer, this is unbeta'd so please excuse any typos and the usual grammar errors that sneak into my work.

The Traitor Revealed

Remus was not a morning person, and all the other marauders knew that. Therefore, it was something of a surprise for him to be woken up at the crack of dawn by the sound of someone swearing loudly in the neighbouring room.

"Just fold it!" James ordered.

"I'm trying to. It's got a mind of its own."

"You're doing it wrong."

"You could try helping."

"I am helping."

"By standing around telling me what to do?"

"I'm supervising."

"You're just bossing me about."

"Watch the lamp!"

Remus buried his head under the pillow as a crash in the next room told him that Sirius had not watched the lamp.

"That's my Mum's favourite lamp," Peter shouted.

"A quick reparo and she'll never notice the difference," Sirius replied. "She won't be back until after we've won the bet anyway."

"It was a gift from my Gran," Peter added miserably. "It's an antique."

Remus stumbled out of his bed, giving up on sleep since his friends seemed determined to make as much noise as possible.

The sight that greeted him in the next room was not what he was expecting. He had, of course, expected the room to be in a bit of a mess, but the disaster that he walked into was far worse than he had imagined.

Sirius was tangled up in the bed sheets, while James was now trying to lift up the mattress of the bed. At first he thought James was trying to tuck the sheet under the mattress, but the sheet was no longer on the bed at all. Half of it was wrapped around the bedside table and the rest was wrapped around Sirius.

Peter meanwhile was kneeling on the floor, picking up the various pieces of his mother's vase.

"If you think this counts as making the bed, you'd better try again," Remus told them, before rapidly backing out of the room and going in search of breakfast.

The clattering from the floor above finally came to an end and Sirius, James and Peter joined Remus in the kitchen a few minutes later.

Sirius, still dragging the tangled and clearly ripped sheets behind him glared at Remus. "You put a spell on the sheets, didn't you?" he accused. "That's why we can't get the bed made properly."

Remus groaned. "The sheets aren't jinxed to try to make you fail. You just aren't thinking things through before you try the tasks."

Peter deposited the broken lamp onto the table and looked pleadingly at Remus. "My mum's gonna kill me if we don't get this fixed."

Remus pulled out his wand and quickly restored the lamp.

"Oh, so it's all right for you to do magic," James grumbled. "We could have repaired it ourselves if we'd been allowed to use our wands."

Remus gave a long suffering sigh. "Repairing broken objects isn't on your list anyway. Making a bed – properly – is what you were supposed to be doing. Have you even managed it?"

"Er…" James looked at Sirius who suddenly found the floor tiles exceedingly fascinating. "Sort of."

"It doesn't count until you do it properly," Remus stated after they had all traipsed back upstairs to the bedroom.

Sirius gave the bed a glare that Medusa would have been envious of. "Do we both have to make the bed?" he asked.

James sucked in his breath through his teeth and shook his head wildly. "You aren't going to get out of this one and leave it all to me."

"But…"

"No!" James interrupted. "You're going to do your share of this bet."

"But I'm not used to doing menial tasks like this. I'm sure I can do lots of stuff like muggles do, but I'm not a bleedin' maid."

"And I am?"

"Well, no, but…"

"Of for crying out loud," Remus shouted. "All you've got to do is make a bed and if you both work together it's a lot easier than one of you on your own. It's not like we're not asking you to scrub the toilets or anything. "

Peter, who had been trying to find a suitable place to put the repaired vase, where it would be safe from the antics of Prongs and Padfoot, looked up thoughtfully. "Actually, cleaning the bathroom, toilet included, sounds like a great idea for the list to me."

"You git!" Sirius shouted. "That's hardly helpful."

Remus frowned at his friends as they shot baleful looks at each other. "Helpful, Padfoot?" he asked quietly. "Why would Wormtail be being helpful?"

"Er…"

Remus folded his arms across his chest and waited for an explanation. James was the first one to crack.

"Wormtail said he'd help us in exchange for us doing his Defence homework for September," he admitted with a sheepish look.

"That was before Sirius said you'd got me cheap," Peter snapped.

"You were eavesdropping?"

"Not on purpose, though I'm glad I did."

Remus raised his hands to stop the arguing. "Okay enough! We're supposed to be friends and I don't want to waste the whole week arguing over this."

Sirius brightened up considerably. "Does that mean you forfeit?"

"Absolutely not," Remus replied firmly. "It means we need a slight change to the rules. Peter, no more sabotaging the others."

"I didn't do a lot to sabotage them anyway."

"I'm guessing you unplugged the phone," Remus said. "And I know you use muggle currency enough to know the difference between English and American money."

Sirius and James glared in unison at Peter, who didn't even try to look apologetic, merely muttering 'cheap' under his breath.

Remus turned to Sirius and James with a thoughtful expression. "And for trying to cheat at all by getting Peter to help you, I'm not only adding cleaning the toilets to the list, but I'm going to make it cleaning the whole house – top to bottom, cellar to attic."

"No!" Sirius shouted. "You can't do that."

"This is my one item for the day being added," Remus explained with a rather nasty smile.

"And what about Peter? He was the one helping us. What about making him clean the place with us?"

"Peter knows how clean the muggle way," Remus reminded them. "You know as well as I do you'll just make him do all the work."

"We wouldn't."

Remus raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"Okay, we would," James admitted. "But you can't punish us and not him."

"It's not like I have actually helped you at all," Peter reminded them. "I hadn't done anything since I overheard you talking about me."

"Then you should be punished for sabotaging us," Sirius suggested.

Remus, still tired and cranky from his interrupted sleep had heard more than enough. "Sirius, give it a rest or I'll start sabotaging you myself, and I'll do a lot more than unplug a phone."

"You wouldn't cheat."

Remus took a step forward until he was toe to toe with Sirius. "You just woke me up at the crack of dawn with all this noise. You've done nothing but argue since I walked in here. And to top it all off, I've not even had my breakfast yet. Do you really want to push me?"

"No," Sirius squeaked, stepping back out of the way of Remus's wrath and tripping over the sheets that were still tangled round his feet, landing once again in a heap on the floor.

Remus left him to get to his feet and went downstairs in search of breakfast. He hoped his idiotic friends had at least picked up some eggs and bacon during their foray into the world of muggle supermarkets.

A brief glance through the fridge made it clear that the eggs had been forgotten. He had half a mind to tell them they had to do the shopping again, but he suspected they would still get it wrong and they'd probably use up all the money they had left, and if that happened they would no doubt end up at the beach at the end of the week regardless, because they'd have no money to pay to get into the museum at all.

o-x-o

James and Sirius stood in the living room, trying to decide which room to tackle first in what was sure to be a day long cleaning job.

"I say we do the worst room first and then leave the easier ones until later."

"I say we start easy and work our way up."

"Maybe we should do the room with the breakables in first so we don't accidentally damage something when we're tired later on."

"But if we do something wrong before we've got the hang of it we could break something expensive anyway."

"We could start at the top of the house and work our way down."

"I don't want to clean the attic first. How about we do that last and start in the cellar."

"I thought I saw some rats down there."

"That was Wormtail."

Remus shook his head silently as he read the morning paper. At the rate they were going they'd never decide which room to begin with. "How about you start in the kitchen by cleaning up the breakfast pots and washing down the counters?"

James and Sirius didn't seem to have anything to say to that and with a couple of shrugs they wandered into the kitchen.

"I think Moony's enjoying having us slaving away far too much," Sirius complained. "I bet he doesn't know how to do the stupid pots."

"Probably has his mum do them when he's at home," James agreed.

Remus followed after them and leaned on the door jamb. "Actually I've been washing pots like muggles since I was a kid. My mum and dad have always had me doing jobs round the house to earn my pocket money."

"You have to work for your pocket money?" James looked aghast at the very idea.

"Yep. Washing pots, dusting, hoovering, weeding the garden."

Sirius shot a look at the list Remus had compiled. "You can't add anything else onto the list today," he reminded him.

Remus laughed. "You think I'd let you two lunatics loose in Mr and Mrs Pettigrew's lovely garden. Plants can't be repaired like a broken vase if you destroy those."

"You don't have much faith in us, do you Moony?" James said.

"Not a jot." Remus grinned wickedly. "Now how about you hurry up and do the pots so you can get started on the rest of the house."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Oh yes." Remus pointed at the sink. "I can only see one set of marigolds there, so you'll have to decide between you which gets to protect their delicate hands from the evil old water with the gloves."

Sirius, moving as fast as lightning, grabbed the gloves before James had even turned around. "I'll wash and you can dry and put the pots away."

"But that means you're doing one task and I'm doing two!"

Remus groaned. It was going to be a very long day.