Birth of the Marauders

1930

Just after the turn of the year, there was a conference held at Potter Castle, between Septimus, Harfang Longbottom, and Charlus Potter. By that point, all three boys had noticed the distinct lack of action on the part of the school's teachers and other staff as regarded the Slytherins and their tendency to make life hell on everyone else in the castle.

They had also begun to do something about it, mostly individually though there had been several times when two or more of them had been present for an incident. By the end of the year, it had mostly been the three of them working together to deal with the situation at Hogwarts as best they could. It had worked well enough, but all three of them had agreed they needed some serious planning time.

"If the adults aren't going to do something about it, we should." Charlus insisted.

"I don't disagree." Septimus said. "But I think that's what good for the goose is good for the gander. If we start targeting Slytherin bullies somehow, we need to target *all* bullies."

"A valid point, Septimus." Harfang agreed. "I can think of a few folks in all four Houses that need their attitudes readjusted."

Charlus nodded. "I can agree to that. We just need to figure out how to teach them a lesson without getting into trouble ourselves. In that arena, I think we need to take inspiration from, and I honestly can't believe I'm saying this, but Family Black. The girls have been utterly vicious to Abraxas, everyone knows they are behind his streak of misfortune and accidents. Despite that, I don't think they've gotten caught even once."

Harfang nodded. "True. The one thing that bothers me about that is the fact it's possible it's part of the whole 'ignore Slytherin' mentality, but somehow I don't think so."

"No, it isn't." Septimus said. "Lucretia, Cassiopeia, and Callidora are very, very good, I won't deny that. Unfortunately, they're being helped by the fact that anything that can be labeled as pranks *is*. I hate to say it, but I have a feeling that so long as we don't start using Dark Arts or outright curses, we can pretty much get away with whatever we want."

"And humiliating the perpetrators will be so much more fun than beating the shite out of them." Harfang pointed out. "Bruises fade, and you can make out like you got them honorably. The gossip generated by humiliating incidents can follow you for life."

That got amused grins from all three boys for the truth of that statement.

"So we're agreed: prank the living hell out of bullies, and anyone we catch breaking important rules, like not pushing themselves on a witch." Septimus said, holding out a hand to the other two boys.

Harfang and Charlus gripped his and each other's hands, creating a tangle of fingers and palms. "Agreed." They chorused.

"So, let the planning commence. We're going to need to do this carefully, so that it remains anonymous as to who the perpetrators are." Harfang said.

"We're also going to have to find a way to make it clear to everyone that the pranks are a direct response to bullying or rule-breaking." Charlus pointed out.

"Right." Septimus grabbed quill and parchment. "Let's get down to business, gentlemen. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

The plan proved simple enough, for all it took a good deal of talking to work out the details. With all three boys sharing a room in Gryffindor, they didn't have to make allowances for different living spaces when it came to planning pranks at school. That said, they would have to deal with their other roommates, as there were eight Gryffindor boys in their year. They also had differing schedules to deal with, as Harfang and Charlus were both taking Muggle Studies, having become intrigued by Muggles in their visits to Septimus' home. Harfang was not taking Arithmancy, and Charlus was not taking Care of Magical Creatures.

They decided to convene their little revenge club in an abandoned classroom fairly close to Gryffindor Tower, which would reduce the chances of them being caught out after curfew. They also decided to keep their pranks as anonymous as possible. Septimus having friends in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw helped them with that, as he would be able to find out what the passwords were if he was discreet about it.

That would allow them to hit people while they were in the 'safety' of their Houses. This deprived their targets of a potential safe area, and muddled the issue of who could be targeting them, since they would be unable to eliminate their Housemates. Of course, none of them had friends in Slytherin, but Septimus was of the opinion that if they approached the Black girls, they would be amenable to assisting with either giving them the password to the Slytherin Dorms or placing prepared pranks for the boys. Charlus promised to talk to his father, something about obtaining a family heirloom that would make their quest infinitely easier.

"If I present it right, he'll be so pleased at me standing up to nasty sorts he'll be only too pleased to hand it over." Charlus told them with a grin. "But until I have it in hand, I'll not tell you what it is. I don't want us to count on having it until then."

After some debate, they eventually decided on a way to code their discussions about pranks and targets. Here, Septimus' extensive collection of living relatives came in handy. Any talk of birthdays, weddings, or the like with the name Weasley attached would garner little to no attention, because there were so many of them, and the odds of there being such an event in truth was quite high. Better, between the three of them, they had names of relatives (both living and dead) that started with every letter in the alphabet. This would allow them to substitute a name starting with the correct letter for the real name of their intended target. In this way, figuring out what gift to send for 'Cousin Alphonse's birthday' would be code for planning for the next prank on Abraxas. They would also choose a different relative (and event) for each prank, so as to keep people from taking notice that they'd been debating about the same thing for an entire year.

They also agreed to put serious effort into learning defensive hexes. They were quite sure that eventually they would either stumble across someone doing something heinous that needed to be addressed *right then*, or someone would put two and two together and come up with four as to the source of their humiliating event, necessitating that the three boys defend themselves from retaliatory violence. In conjunction with that, they solemnly promised to back each other up if and when they came under attack themselves.

The next item on the list was to decide what was prankable, and what was not. Bullying obviously was on the list, but they had to agree among themselves as to what constituted bullying. Once they had agreed on that, they debated what else was punishable by prank. Eventually, they decided that physical violence would result in a prank. Physical violence against a girl would result in a doubled prank. And though they prayed they would never encounter such a thing, any boy caught forcing himself on a girl would skip the prank meter entirely and get himself hexed impotent for life instantly. Beyond physical attacks, any hexes outside the normal range of prank spells would get the perpetrator (provided they could be identified) in trouble, unless the hex was performed against a known repeat offender on their list, since at that point it would become likely that the hex was in response to an incident.

They then decided that there would be an escalation in pranks. The first prank played on any one person would be mild – by way of being a gentle warning. Each successive prank played on the same person would get more and more embarrassing. Extra points in embarrassment would be awarded for multiple offenses in the same category. For instance, if someone bullied others repeatedly the pranks would get worse by orders of magnitude with each offense, jumping from the level of short-term hair dye to something like a spell forcing them to do or wear something very humiliating in the Great Hall during mealtime in very short order.

The last thing they agreed on was that they themselves could not ever stand accused of the wrongdoings they punished others for. Pranks could be humiliating, but could not cross the line into inappropriate – no making someone go naked, or some such nonsense. Such a thing would be qualified as crossing the line between 'teaching a lesson/making someone accountable and bullying. And on pain of becoming a target themselves, they would never bully outside of pranks, either. Nor would they break the rules they had decided they would punish others for breaking.

It would be better than a decade before any of the three of them realized that they had laid the groundwork for a mutual Alliance Oath between their families, between their agreement to work together for a cause and act in each others' defense.

By the time they returned to school after the Yule break, they'd gotten everything ironed out. Charlus had gotten his father to agree to let him have that family heirloom, which turned out to be an invisibility cloak. Septimus had been surprised, as such cloaks didn't last long enough to end up considered 'heirlooms'. According to Charlus, the thing had been in the family for hundreds of years, and aside from being an heirloom was something of a mystery and curiosity. Having it would simplify matters for them a great deal, as it would reduce the chances of getting caught to next to nothing.

It didn't take Abraxas long to be caught being pushy with Cedrella Black yet again. Actually, he didn't even make it through their first day back at school. The three boys had talked over what to do to Abraxas the first time he stepped out of line after they returned, so they immediately swung into action.

Their first prank on Abraxas was a finite-proof color charm that caused his hair to change colors every five minutes for an hour or so until it wore off naturally or someone realized it was finite-proof and used one of the more powerful spell cut-offs. Hexing him in the bustling confusion of the returned students without being caught proved ridiculously simple. It was less painful than the hexes the Black girls had been hitting him with, but more embarrassing,

By the end of January, the *entire* school was beginning to take notice of the fact that Abraxas and known bullies were being pranked. It didn't take the student body long to figure out that the pranks were a response to the bullying. With members of every House being targeted, no one could really finger any likely suspect, though the most popular option was the fifth-year and above Gryffindors, followed by the same-year Hufflepuffs. Both houses were notorious for having issues with people that hurt others, if for different reasons. The boys didn't know whether to be pleased or outraged that while the students had figured out the cause and effect, the teachers were still oblivious. Oh, they'd noticed an upswing in pranks, certainly, but they hadn't realized there was a pattern to the victims of a number of the pranks.

One of the first things that Septimus had done when they returned to school in January was to approach the Black girls. Since he and Charlus had acted in defense of Cedrella on the train, it was felt that they had the best chance of approaching the girls and winning their support. Septimus had deliberately approached Lucretia. She was the highest-ranked of the Black girls currently at Hogwarts, given she was the granddaughter of the current Head of Family Black, whereas the other three were all from the younger Black siblings. This made Lucretia the de facto leader and voice of the Black girls.

Lucretia had been understandably suspicious about being approached by two Gryffindors, even if they had come to her cousin's defense. The fact they *had* earned them a hearing, instead of her ignoring them or hexing them to get them to go away. Septimus was fairly sure they had come within a hairsbreadth of getting hexed anyway when they told her what they were up to, and wanted from her and her cousins. It took some rather fast talking and soothing of ruffled feathers to calm things back down. Eventually, once Lucretia had calmed down and thought the matter over, she agreed to provide them with the password to the Slytherin dorms when they needed it in exchange for a future favor of her choice within certain limits – Septimus hadn't been about to agree to a blanket 'anything I want' option.

The Black girls' assistance meant that Abraxas wasn't safe anywhere. Better, he was getting pranked at times, and in places, that the Black girls had iron-clad alibis for. That took some of the heat off of them, as Abraxas had been getting angrier and angrier with the girls over their attacks, with the distinct possibility of him eventually doing something truly stupid if he lost his temper. With attacks coming from another source, much of Abraxas' attention was diverted. He was far too busy trying to figure out who the new perpetrator(s) were and protecting himself (futilely) to waste much time and energy on the girls.

Sometime in February, someone started calling the unknown pranksters (it was commonly agreed that there had to be more than one) the Marauders. By the end of the school year, 'the Marauders' were well on their way to becoming legends. The boys had agreed they liked the name, and had taken to referring to their little group by the name when they were in private and could talk openly.

Despite, or perhaps because of their extracurricular activities, all three boys managed exceedingly high grades, with none of them getting less than an E on any subject, and all three of them having more O's than E's to their names. On the train home at the end of the year, they made plans to meet over the summer and discuss more and bigger pranks for the upcoming year, and to research more defensive spells they could use when that eventually came up.