a/n-We bet you thought this day would never come. But here it is: Chapter 13. There will only be one chapter left after this one. Please review!

Disclaimer-In the year and a half since we last updated, we have not come into the ownership of Harry Potter, 'tis most unfortunate.

Chapter Thirteen

The first of May dawned a bright and beautiful Monday morning. However, as it was in fact a Monday the moods of the students failed quite horribly to reflect the pure wonderfulness of the weather. Alas, things were only going to get worse for them from there on.

"Good Morning, students!" Dumbledore's unnecessarily cheerful voice boomed out across the Great Hall towards the end of breakfast that particular morning. The headmaster, who had previously appeared to be deep in conversation with Professor McGonagall, was currently standing in front of his chair at the Head table, a smile upon his face and a slight twinkle in his eyes. "I have the most excellent news for all of you-"

"Classes are cancelled!" A sixth year Hufflepuff called out at the same time as a Ravenclaw third year loudly exclaimed, "We get to take our end of year exams a month and a half early!"

"You're going to declare us the winners of the Quidditch Cup in order to spare the other teams' feelings and save them from lifelong humiliation!" The captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team shouted, further interrupting the headmaster.

"You've finally come to your senses and decided to abolish Gryffindor House and you're kicking them all out!" A seventh year Slytherin—who was quite possibly the Head Boy—shouted triumphantly.

"These are all excellent guesses," Dumbledore informed the student population. "However, they are all sadly incorrect."

"It's just as well," The Gryffindor captain said to the people sitting closest to him. "It's always more fun when we get to humiliate the Slytherins in the most public manner possible."

"Of course," Dumbledore continued thoughtfully, having taken a momentary pause in which to contemplate the best way possible to share his exciting news with the students. "All of your guesses aren't completely incorrect. Classes have, in fact, been cancelled for every Friday this month."

At this pronouncement an ear-shattering cheer went up from three of the four house tables, whilst the Ravenclaws muttered amongst themselves about the strongly-worded letter that they were already planning to send to the Hogwarts Board of Governors about their clearly senile headmaster.

"However," Dumbledore continued, once the noise level had returned to normal, "As this is an institution of learning, we simply cannot have any of you miss out on any learning opportunities. Therefore, we will be scheduling extra classes on Monday through Thursday nights to make up for the lost class time on Fridays."

At this point all of Ravenclaw House broke out into applause, some of them even going so far as to give Dumbledore a standing ovation. The rest of the students chose to shoot death glares at the eagle house—and quite possibly a few jelly-legs jinxes as well.

"You might be wondering why we, the staff, have chosen to make this schedule change," Dumbledore said, choosing to ignore the glares the rest of the staff were now shooting at him at the implication that they had had any say in the matter that Dumbledore was about to speak about. "You see, the month of May will be a truly momentous time for us here at Hogwarts. And to learn more about it, you should all visit the Schedule of Events that Mr. Filch was so kind enough to put up for your viewing pleasure in the Entrance Hall. On it you will find all of the details you will need to know about all of the wonderful team-building activities we will be spending all of our weekends accomplishing for the rest of the month."

A shocked silence met Dumbledore's announcement as the students all took their time processing what he had said.

"I can tell by your silence that you are all excited beyond words for the inter-house bonding that will take place over the next few weeks," Dumbledore informed the students, a twinkle in his eyes. "I, too, am overjoyed at the mere thought of this pivotal experience we will all be sharing in due time. However, it is nearly time for morning classes to begin. Do try not to let your understandable excitement distract you from your classes. I hope the rest of your day proves to be just as wonderful as the start to it has been!"

And with that dismissal, Dumbledore resumed his seat and appeared to pick up the conversation he had previously been having with Professor McGonagall immediately.

Now, the students of Hogwarts liked their inter-house rivalries just the way they were, thank you very much. None of them were at all pleased with the announcement the headmaster had just made.

"I didn't think he was serious about the inter-house team-building when he mentioned it last month," Remus informed the rest of the Marauders as they stood in the Entrance Hall after breakfast. They were at the back of a large crowd of students attempting to read the ridiculous team-building schedule that had been put up.

Marlene had, for whatever reason, been designated by the rest of the group as the one who would check out the schedule and report back to the group. However, as she was a tiny first year—the tiniest, in fact—it was impossible for her to get through the crowd. As such, she was currently jumping up and down beside Remus in an attempt to see over everyone else's heads and failing miserably at it.

"I mean, talk about trying to accomplish the impossible," Remus continued, ignoring the orange-haired girl jumping up and down beside him. "I don't see why he thinks this is going to work. Obviously it's going to be a massive failure."

"We need to figure out a way to get out of it," Peter stated seriously. "Can you imagine it? Being forced to interact with Slytherins for an extended amount of time? Who would ever want to spend time with any of them willingly? And having to 'bond' with them as well?"

"An excellent question, Pete," James said. "I'm so glad you brought that up, because I have come up with a solution."

"It's a good solution, too," Sirius interjected. "I happen to really enjoy it."

"Would you care to share?" Remus asked politely, as Remus was prone to do.

"Well obviously we need to stage a protest of some sort," James replied, "You know, cause mass chaos. Our usual stuff, I suppose. But this time it needs to be on a way more massive scale. I think the first thing we need to do is call an emergency meeting of all of the school's biggest rule breakers. If we can all work together, then we'll be able to show Dumbledore that this inter-house unity rubbish he keeps going on about is never going to work."

"That hardly makes any sense," Marlene informed him, having given up on attempting to see over the crowd. "But that's probably why I like it so much. Besides, we haven't had a support group meeting in so long."

"I know," Sirius lamented, "It's been more than a week since any of us have had a detention. We're really slipping; we aren't living by the Detention-Anon motto at all."

"One detention at a time!" Marlene exclaimed enthusiastically, while Remus edged away from her as quickly as he could manage.

And that was how the five first-years found themselves in the Room of Requirement that afternoon instead of the Great Hall eating lunch, accompanied by their regular detention crowd. They began their meeting as they usually did: by standing in a circle to say their prankster affirmation, "I'm a rule-breaker and that's good. I'll never follow the rules and that's not bad. There's nothing I'd rather do than sit in detention."-as per usual, Remus remained silent for this part. Once they had all taken their seats, though, they quickly realized something very important:

There were not nearly enough steady rule-breakers at Hogwarts to stage the kind of protest that would end all of this inter-house team-building nonsense once and for all.

"We could recruit," A fifth-year Hufflepuff suggested, "I, for one, think it would be simply lovely to have more people to hang out with in detention."

"Er..." Several of the assembled Gryffindors and Slytherins said awkwardly, while the other few Hufflepuffs nodded enthusiastically.

"While that does sound...er...lovely," Sirius agreed awkwardly, "I feel like having more detention buddies is more of a long term goal than our short term timeframe will allow for."

"I suppose," The Hufflepuff acquiesced, deflating slightly, which caused one of her fellow Badgers to pat her arm consolingly and murmur, "There, there," in a soothing manner.

"However," Sirius continued brightly, "I do think recruiting people to help stage some sort of protest is an excellent idea."

"Just what sort of 'people' did you have in mind?" A second year Slytherin demanded suspiciously, eyeing Sirius' maroon and gold striped tie with open distaste.

"I think you'll like this one, actually," James jumped in at that point. "What we really need in order to stage a campaign of enough magnitude to be noticed is people with the precision and skills necessary to lead large groups of people."

"Huh?" Came the succinct response to James' speech.

"We need the Head students," James explained. "As well as their lackey prefects, I should imagine. They're pretty good at getting people to do what they tell them to, don't you think?"

The group members all readily nodded their agreement to his question.

"We're going to have to have another meeting with them tonight, then, I think," A fifth year Gryffindor spoke up. "So that we can begin planning exactly what needs to be done before this weekend's unfortunate activities."

"Excellent," A fourth year Slytherin commented. "I haven't skived off Astronomy in ages."

"We will need to figure out how to convince the Head Boy and Girl to show up, though," The Gryffindor continued thoughtfully. "Neither of them are likely to to want anything to do with any of us rule-breakers."

"Actually," A seventh year Slytherin chose this moment to speak up, "The Head Boy is my twin brother so I think I could probably manage to get him here."

At this pronouncement, both Sirius and James looked at the Slytherin girl-who happened to be a regular fixture in Filch's detentions-with a newfound sense of respect.

"I've recently acquired a rare Herbology text that I think would fascinate the Head Girl," Remus offered, only somewhat reluctantly-after all, he would much rather spend his weekends studying, rather than doing fruitless team-building exercises.

"Excellent," James said with a grin. "After we meet with the two of them, we'll have them share our plans with the prefects and the rest of their house members."

"Huh," Sirius commented later as he and the rest of the Marauder's and Marlene were making their way back to Gryffindor Tower from the Room of Requirement, "That was easier to sort out than I expected."

"I never knew anyone so awesome could be related to the Head Boy," Marlene agreed just as they were passing a rather lovely statue of a gargoyle. "I think I'm going to have to talk to her about how to cope when Merric gets to Hogwarts; I can't have people forgetting how great of a prankster I am when they see how much of a goody two-shoes he is."

Once they had rounded the corner, the aforementioned statue suddenly leapt to the side and the wall that had been behind it split in two. A twinkly-eyed Dumbledore stepped off of the bottom of the staircase that led to his office-having paused there when he heard voices on the other side of the wall-and into the corridor.

"And so it begins," He said with a smile.