Chapter Twelve: The Midnight Feast

Remus was woken up the next morning by his curtains parting and Sirius crawling his way into his bed. 'You alright?' Remus asked him sleepily, shifting over to make room.

'Yeah.'

'So … why are you here?'

'I was awake.'

'So you came to wake me up... how thoughtful of you.' He reached behind himself, grabbed his pillow, smacked Sirius in the face with it and then settled back down. Sirius snuggled down next to him. 'So how come James isn't the lucky one?'

Sirius snorted. James' loud snores could be heard through the barrier of the curtains. 'James is dead to the world, isn't he? Anyway - I wanted to talk to you. Did you have a good Christmas?'

'Great …' He bit his lip. 'I heard yours … wasn't?'

Another snort. 'It was even worse than normal. I dunno…' he shrugged, 'maybe it just seemed worse because I'd been away - escaped for a while. And being back is harder when you've been away. I got the worst presents in the world.'

'Did you get a lump of coal?'

'Ha!' He gave a bark of a laugh, 'if I'd got a lump of coal I could have lit a fire in my room and not frozen my testes off all holiday… ' He coughed. 'I mean .. you know.'

'Well, my house was properly heated but - I have been cold before, I know what it's like.'

'I hate the cold.'

'Most people do.'

'So what it's like - a nice, family Christmas?'

Remus smiled. 'It's good. We were pretty quiet but we had a good time together. We went to go see my mum's family the day after Boxing Day. I don't want to boast, Sirius, but my muggle cousins are better than your wizarding ones.'

'A pack of slavering cannibals with meat cleavers are better than my cousins.' They both laughed. 'So … how was your mum?' Sirius' voice had become tentative … slightly awkward.

'What do you mean?'

'You said before we went home that she was sick.' He frowned … Surely Remus remembered that his mother was sick? If she was sick … But … no - James couldn't be right. He looked at Remus - quiet and pale, his golden brown hair all tousled and messy after sleep and his soft smile … James couldn't be right. It would be too cruel for that to be true of someone as nice as Remus.

Remus's eyes had clouded over. 'Yeah … she was … She coughs a lot, her breathing doesn't sound right. My Grandma thinks she looks ill. Wanted her to see a muggle healer. It made me not want to come back - in case she needs me.'

Sirius looked surprised. 'Why would she need you? You're only a kid - how could you help her?'

It was Remus's turn to look surprised. 'When you're poorly it makes you feel better if people you love are around. If someone who loves you is with you then even the worst illness isn't so bad. You know how it is.'

'Oh.' Sirius's expression had suddenly become very closed and very haughty. 'No I don't know actually.'

'What? You've never been poorly?'

'Of course I've been poorly! … I've never been loved.'

'Oh.' He gave him a gentle shoulder barge. 'Well - if you get sick, I promise to visit you in the Hospital Wing and then you'll see.'

That made Sirius smile - and he shoulder barged him back.

...

Down at breakfast, Remus poured golden syrup onto his porridge and started tucking in just as the morning post arrived. As always, Lily hunched over her bowl to try and protect it from falling feathers. 'This is something I did not miss over the hols,' she grumbled.

'I don't understand how muggles send letters if they don't use owls,' Petra said. 'I used to think they didn't have letters - but the girls all write them in those books you lent me, Lils.'

'Well of course we send letters - we just send them through the post. Like normal people.'

'What I don't understand,' Mandy said, waggling her spoon at Lily and Mary, 'is sending people to Coventry. What do they do when they get there?'

The muggleborn girls both snorted into their porridge. 'They're not actually being sent to Coventry, the place,' Lily explained, smirking a little. 'It just means you're not talking to someone - you refuse to acknowledge their existence. It's just a turn of phrase.'

'Oh. It doesn't make sense.'

'No - I suppose not - but that's what it means.'

Remus frowned to himself, wondering what on earth the girls were talking about - they had been over excited and secretive about something ever since they had got back. And their weirdness only increased as the days went on.

…

When it came time for their weekly flying lesson - where it was time to start playing Quidditch - Mary McDonald looked disdainfully at the quaffle in her hands, which she was supposed to be practising chest passes with, and - with a sniff of her beautifully upturned nose - said: 'I wish we could play lacrosse instead.'

The other three girls fell over themselves to agree. 'What's it like to play?' Mandy asked.

Both Lily and Mary turned red… of course neither of them had ever played lacrosse!

…

During a rainy break time, they sat in a classroom, looking out over the grounds. 'I wish we had a swimming pool,' Mary said.

'Yes that gets filled up by the sea,' Mandy agreed. 'It seems so exciting. Sort of romantic.'

'Here it would have to get filled up by the Black Lake,' Lily said gloomily. 'I don't much fancy giant squid in my swimming pool.'

…

Outside the Transfiguration classroom the girls could be heard to lament the fact that they did not have a French teacher they could play tricks on. 'Imagine playing a trick on Professor McGonagall,' Lily said. They all shuddered.

'Maybe with Flitwick?' Petra suggested. 'One of us could pretend to be deaf - like Alicia did.'

'Ooh - there must be a magical way we could do the sneeze pellets,' Lily said. 'I bet there's a charm. We could use it on the boys.'

Remus frowned to himself and shook his head … remembering who he was going to blame if he suddenly had an uncontrollable sneezing fit.

…

And every meal time the girls would put their heads together and discuss what food would keep well and where they could put it.

'My mum's sent me a tin of crumpled cream-horn snorsnacks, which I've put in my trunk for now,' Petra said. 'They're my uncle's favourite and she got them for him for Christmas … but he never turned up.'

'I've got a box of Tunnocks Tea Cakes - but there's only six,' said Mary

And that seemed like it would prove to be a problem. Every so often Connie from Hufflepuff or Sandra from Ravenclaw would stop by and give the girls an updated number. 'That's everyone,' Lily said at last. 'That's a lot of us… we'll have to try and replicate the Tunnocks Tea Cakes.'

'We're going to need somewhere big,' Sandra said, nodding. 'And we need to decide when to do it.'

…

The four of them spent the evening huddled in a circle by the fire, their heads bent close together - and they did not appear to be doing any homework. When they finally got up to go to bed they carefully packed up everything that they had been looking at in their school bags and walked away still whispering.

Something dropped out of Petra's bag. 'Oh - here - you dropped this…' Remus said, reaching down from his chair and picking it up. It was a paperback book, the front cover depicted some muggle schoolgirls in a classroom - all appearing to be having a wonderful time. 'Upper Fourth At Malory Towers' Remus read, before Petra snatched it out of his hand.

'I'll take that!'

'Sorry - I was just trying to help.'

She tutted and ran back off to the girls. 'Honestly - why do we have to be at a boarding school with boys in it?'

Remus frowned to himself, wondering what he had done that was so terribly offensive. From the looks the gaggle of girls threw in his direction as they disappeared upstairs, he gathered it was just the fact of his general existence that was objectionable. He shook his head, and went back to his transfiguration homework.

'What's up, Remus?' James suddenly appeared and sat in the squashy armchair opposite.

'Nothing - well, the girls hate me because I'm a boy but other than that - nothing.'

James waved a dismissive hand. 'Oh - who cares about them? They're only girls. Listen - me and Sirius think we've come up with a plan.'

'Oh this should be good,' he said drily.

James grinned. 'It is! Look - we want to find the Slytherin common room, right? Well - trying to find it at night was...'

'A disaster.'

'If you want to put it that way.'

'I do.'

'Right - but me and Sirius thought - what if I put the cloak in my school bag, yeah? And then after dinner we'll follow the Slytherins out of the hall - follow them straight to the common room and find out what their password is.'

'Tomorrow?' Remus asked.

James nodded, 'might as well as not.'

'We're not actually going to go into the Slytherin common room tomorrow though are we?'

'Maybe we'll work up to that. But we will go in one day.'

...

The next day, they sat nervously through the stew and dumplings that made up tea and then, once the hall was emptying out - nipped behind a suit of armour and pulled the cloak over their heads. 'Right - let's pick a Slytherin and follow it,' James hissed.

Creeping carefully and trying to avoid bumping into any students exiting in the opposite direction, they followed after Evander Upwin and Giles Pryce as the pair of first year boys left the Slytherin table. Just as they had suspected, the boys made their way towards the door that led down to the dungeons. The corridors down there were labyrinthine - twisting and turning and going on and on for what seemed like forever. And with all four of them under the cloak and trying not to make a sound, the Gryffindors had to travel slowly - and it was all they could do to keep their prey in their sights.

Eventually, Upwin and Pryce came to a stop by a bare, damp, stone wall. 'Manticore,' Upwin said, and with a rumble the wall scraped back - the corridor shuddered a bit and clouds of mortar drifted to the floor.

The common room was visible for a moment - it was dark and gloomy and there was a greenish quality to the light that suggested it was right beneath the lake itself. And then the two Slytherin boys had gone inside and the wall rattled closed again - sealing shut with a dull thud.

'Blimey,' whispered James, 'it's a pretty depressing place, isn't it?'

Sirius shuddered. 'It looks like my house; I see why my family all love it. Thank God I'm a Gryffindor.'

'So now we know - and we know the password.'

'Until they change it,' Remus pointed out.

'So we need to go in sooner rather than later.'

Remus and Peter glanced at each other dubiously. 'Is that it?' Peter asked, 'can we go back now?'

'Hang on a minute,' Sirius had taken out his wand. 'It's too good an opportunity to pass up. Cadero.' Blue sparks shot from the end of his wand and hit the concealed entrance to the common room.

'What did you do?' James asked.

'Tripping jinx … I think I did it right. I've only read about them.'

'What happens if you did it wrong?' Remus sounded a little worried.

Sirius looked worried for a moment as well '...It's best not to think about it. I'm sure I didn't.'

'Well come on,' James hissed, 'let's head …'

But he was interrupted by the ominous rumbling of the damp wall scraping back. More mortar fell to the floor in puffs of dust, and the ground shook beneath their feet. And then Snape walked through the gap - and out into the hallway. He took one step, tripped over Sirius's jinx - and then screamed in pain. He fell to the floor - and as he landed, the tangy, metallic scent of blood rose into the air. He lay on his back gasping and crying out, and the boys could see that his robes had been shredded. And through the tatters, his leg was visible - a great gash of bright red crimson was flowing freely down his calf, deep and ugly.

His scream brought other Slytherins running - and one after the other they fell over the tripping jinx and crashed to the floor, crying out in agony - their own legs lacerated and bleeding.

The smell of blood became thick in the air, it began to pool on the ground. There were sounds of gasping and panting and crying and shrieking.

And yet more Slytherins kept coming to look - and tumbling on top of their own classmates - until there was a great heap of them all, jumbled up together.

It would have been funny if it wasn't quite so awful; them all lying there in a pile - flailing helplessly. But the very real injuries undercut the amusement. The boys stared in horror at what they had done. 'Let's get out of here!' Remus hissed.

Carefully, they made their way back along the passage - hurrying as fast as they could without being seen. The sounds of the Slytherins' groaning and screaming out became fainter … until suddenly Peeves could be heard, yelling his head off. As if drawn to the distress, the poltergeist had arrived in the corridor and was now hovering over the fallen students, cackling with glee and enjoying every moment. But only moments behind Peeves was Filch. And the four boys heard his cries for a teacher... and then Slughorn's booming voice.

They ran all the way back up to the entrance hall where they whipped off the cloak and then legged it up the marble staircase and back to Gryffindor tower. Once in their dorm, Sirius sank onto his bed, ashen faced. 'I'm dead!' he gasped. 'They'll kick me out for sure.'

'We won't tell anyone, no one will ever know - will we, boys?' James looked around at the other two, who shook their heads.

'Did you see all that blood?'

'It was an accident,' Remus assured him. 'You didn't mean to...'

'Cut Snape's leg off?'

'It was still attached! Madam Pomfrey will fix it in, like - a minute.'

'We should go back downstairs,' James said, 'pretend like nothing's wrong.'

But the words were barely out of his mouth, when they heard the sound of the portrait slamming closed very sharply and then McGonagall's voice - barking. 'Every Gryffindor. In the common room. Now.'

Alarmed, and trying not to show it, the four boys meekly slunk their way downstairs and joined the thronging crowd of their fellow Gryffindors. They attempted to arrange their faces into the same expression of polite puzzlement that everyone else was wearing. McGonagall's lips were the thinnest they had seen them yet.

She took a deep breath and flared her nostrils. 'I hope there is no one in this room who knows why I am here,' she said, her voice was shaking with rage.

The boys continued to look bemused but interested.

'Just now - somebody - has been down to the Slytherin common room and placed an extremely vicious lacerating hex outside their door. Twenty students have been sent to the Hospital Wing with severe cuts and blood loss.'

There came a cheer from one of the fifth years over by the fire. McGonagall turned to stare at him, looking like she was about to breathe fire - and he quailed beneath her gaze. 'A week's detention, Vane. And twenty points from Gryffindor.'

There was a collective groan - that went immediately silent as she turned her glare on all of them. 'This … incident - had better not be a return to the sort of high jinx we saw last term before the Quidditch. It had better not be a reopening of enmity between the two houses. Professor Slughorn and I will not stand for it. I very much hope that the perpetrator is not standing here in this room - but if they are, and they are caught - rest assured they will be expelled. There is no excuse for such dangerous, violent, vindictive behaviour. And if anyone in here knows anything about it - they had better come and speak to me … or else! '

Peter twitched. James grabbed hold of his wrist and gave him a warning look. McGonagall's nostrils flared one more time, and then she turned on her heel and was gone. As soon as the portrait closed behind her - murmuring and chattering broke out, as the whole house put their heads together to talk about what had happened - and who knew what.

Sirius looked like he was about to be sick - he was all pale and clammy. 'Let's go back upstairs,' Remus said to the others, taking one look at him and taking pity. They made their way back to the stairs, trying to look casual and inconspicuous - and then fled up to their own room and slammed the door tight shut.

'Oh god - what am I gonna do?' Sirius groaned. He collapsed on his bed and buried his face in his hands.

'Don't do anything - it will all blow over,' Remus told him. He sat down on the bed beside Sirius and patted him awkwardly.

'Of course it will,' James' voice was brisk. 'Though … maybe we should leave the Slytherins alone for a while until everything calms down again.'

'Sirius?' Remus sounded tentative - he was still patting his friend, but there was a question he needed to ask. 'What did McGonagall mean when she said it was a lacerating hex? I thought you said it was just a tripping jinx?'

'It was … at least I thought it was … maybe I got it wrong ...'

James and Remus glanced at each other - wondering if that was really the whole truth, but not wanting to press the point.

Peter was frowning, there was a gleam of disappointment in his eyes. 'If we're not going to prank the Slytherins anymore - what are we going to do?'

'Start looking for secret passages?' James suggested.

Remus shook his head, 'find out what the girls are up to.'

Sirius - his face still hidden by his hands - just groaned.

...

Sirius kept his head down the whole of the next day - and behaved himself in every class, meaning he got top marks all round and made his pineapple tapdance the most intricate and impressive routine in Charms class. 'Stop it, you idiot,' James hissed - as the pineapple shuffle ball stepped around the desk. 'You'll make the teachers suspicious if you behave yourself.'

But Sirius was not the only Gryffindor acting out of character.

By now the girls could not stop whispering and giggling, their heads were constantly huddled together as they held furious discussions under their breath. Every so often they would glance around - catch one of the boys looking at them and give them a haughty stare - as if their very existence was offensive.

'What are they doing?' James asked.

'It's something to do with those books they're reading,' Remus said.

'What books?'

'Dunno - some muggle book that Lily and Mary brought back to school… Maybe I could ask my mum…'

'Yeah - do that,' James said, just as Lily looked at them both and sniffed disapprovingly. 'Because the girls aren't going to tell us anything.'

So that night Remus scribbled a quick letter home.

Dear Mum,

Hope you are feeling better. I have a strange question but - do you know what "Upper Fourth at Malory Towers" is? I think it's a non- magic book for girls and I wondered if you'd read it. Today we learned how to make a pineapple tap dance. I wasn't very good at it but then I'm not sure when I'll ever need to know how to do that in the real world, so maybe it doesn't matter that much. I am well.

Love, Remus.

The four of them took it up to the owlery to borrow a school owl and sent it off. The next morning Remus got a letter and a package.

Dear Remus,

I am fine - stop worrying! Yes I read all the Malory Towers books - I used to love them when i was a girl. I always wanted to go to boarding school and play pranks on the French teacher! But Grandma told me it would be nowhere near as fun as it seemed in the books, it would just be a lot of feeling homesick and falling out with your friends … I hope that's not what it's like for you. I do worry. And I hope you don't play pranks on your French teacher … if they teach you French at magic school? Anyway - I've sent you my old copy of the first book in the series so you can see for yourself - though why you're interested in some old girls' book from twenty years ago I have no idea.

Take care - and keep well and do whatever Madam Pomfrey tells you to make sure you don't get poorlier than you have to.

Lots of Love, Mum.

Remus read it out - skimming over the last bit so his friends wouldn't ask questions - and then ripped the brown paper off the package. A book fell out, the dust jacket depicted two girls in bathing suits standing on a rocky beach - while the title "First Term at Malory Towers" was spelled out in large green lettering.

'What on earth is it?' Sirius asked, frowning.

Remus cracked it open and all four heads pored over it. 'It's a story,' he said, flicking through. 'About going to school.'

'Why would anyone write a story about a bunch of kids going to school?' James asked.

'I dunno - but this is what all the girls are reading.' As he flicked through the pages he saw mention of the swimming pool that was filled up by the sea, and playing something called lacrosse, and sending people to coventry, and pranking the French teacher …'The girls are trying to recreate this ,' he said. 'Lily and Mary must have read these, like my mum did, and they want boarding school to be less… lessons and detention and homework and stuff and more … fun . Like it is in the book. So they're trying to make it happen.'

'So … what exactly are they planning to do… exactly?' Sirius asked.

Remus shoved the book in his bag, 'I'll read the whole thing later and let you know.'

But that evening he lay on his bed and was utterly baffled by the twists and turns of if Sally Hope really did have a baby sister and where Gwendolen had hidden her inky shoes … but was none the wiser as to what exactly it was the girls were planning. He wrote home for the next book … but when that arrived there was nothing in there to help him out either.

So he wrote home again - and this time Hope Lupin had clearly thought enough was enough, because the next day the four remaining books in the series all arrived together.

You are a strange boy!

She wrote in her letter.

As he unwrapped the parcel, he noticed Lily wrap a handful of bread rolls into a napkin and stash them into her bag. He frowned.

But when he got time, he cracked on with the next book (he was a little embarrassed, but he had to admit to himself, if not to James and Sirius, that he was by now quite invested in the goings on of these muggle girls and their various adventures and petty dramas). It wasn't until he reached the book Petra had dropped - the fourth in the series - that he finally understood what was going on.

'They're planning a midnight feast!' he told the other boys (he was a little disappointed that he now didn't have an excuse to keep on reading, but he kept that to himself).

'What's that then?'

'Exactly what it sounds like. They get up at midnight and … have a feast.'

'What's the point?' Sirius asked.

'Well - I think it's the danger - you're not supposed to be out of bed. Plus nice things to eat. It's not just the Gryffindors - it's the Hufflepuff and the Ravenclaw girls too - so they'll have to do it outside of the common room - which means they might get caught by Filch - or Big Macca.'

'Blimey,' James sounded impressed. 'I didn't think the girls had that kind of rule breaking in them… So - we're going to crash, right?'

'Of course we're going to crash,' Sirius said. 'We can't let the girls have more fun than we're having.'

They spent the next few days straining to listen in to the girls' conversations to try and uncover the details of their plan. But Lily and her friends seemed to be wise to the fact that the boys were spying on them … and any time any of them got near to the girls they would be met by a wall of stony silence, or the girls would turn their backs and stalk off - noses in the air.

'It's like they don't even want us to spoil their fun!' Sirius complained.

But then, one Herbology lesson - Remus spotted Lily passing a note to Connie Bidwell from Hufflepuff. Connie read the note, grinned and scrunched it up and put it in her pocket … Remus could just see a corner of it sticking out.

He carried his watering can across to where Connie was working, pretended to bump into the work table, poured water all over her - she screamed and then started yelling at him - and whilst she was distracted, he whipped the note from her pocket.

After the lesson, the four of them huddled behind the greenhouses and read it:

On the 29th! It's a Saturday - so we don't have to get up in the morning. Midnight - in the Trophy Room. Tell the others.

'So there we go,' James said. 'We've got them.'

…

As the 29th approached, the girls became more and more palpably kept catching each other's eyes in lessons and having to stuff their knuckles into their mouths to stifle snorts of laughter. Professor McGonagall actually took five points away from each of them for silliness … that had never happened before. James and Sirius had to blow up the snuff boxes they were supposed to be turning into snails just so they could lose twenty points of their own and restore the natural order of things.

But Remus had another reason to be waiting for the end of the month - and it was for considerably less exciting reasons than the girls. The night after the midnight feast would be the full moon … and as it approached, his skin began to prickle and his head began to ache and he wondered if he was really going to be up to gatecrashing the little party. Only he couldn't back out and stay in bed instead - otherwise the other boys would want to know why.

He spent as much of the day of the 29th resting as he could get away with. He stayed late in bed, he went upstairs mid afternoon saying he needed a book and sneaked a nap, and he let himself doze off in a squashy armchair in front of the fire after tea. His bones were starting to feel like they were on fire and no matter how much he slept he did not feel refreshed.

And worse! He was sure he could notice James and Sirius giving him worried looks. As if they had spotted something was wrong. They can't know he told himself fiercely. If they even so much as suspected they would not still be my friends.

At ten o'clock, James yawned widely, stretched and then said in an overly loud voice: 'come on, boys - I think it's time for bed.' They all got up and trooped up the stairs, very careful not to look at any of the girls as they went.

Once in the dorm - they sat on their beds and waited.

…

Up in the girl's dorm, Lily got into her nightdress - went up on tiptoes to kiss her poster of David Cassidy good night and then climbed into bed. She grinned at the other three. 'I'll wake us all up,' she said, and then followed the trick the girls in the books used of banging her head against the pillow twelve times while saying 'twelve o'clock' very firmly.

Mary watched her - and then set an alarm clock and put it under her pillow. This turned out to be a wise move … as Lily did not wake up at the allotted time, and they were all awoken a couple of hours later by the muffled beeping of the alarm.

And then, giggling and whispering and trying not to make too much noise, they got out of bed, pulled on their dressing gowns, picked up their satchels of stashed food and crept on bare feet down the stairs.

…

The boys - listening carefully - heard the sounds of the girls crossing the common room. 'Come on - invisibility cloak,' James said. He pulled it out of his trunk and held it up for them all to duck under.

'We should prank them before we gatecrash!' Sirius suggested, his eyes suddenly lit up and gleaming with a wicked idea. 'They won't be able to see us - we can scare the living daylights out of them before we nick their food.'

'Excellent,' James' eyes lit up to match Sirius's. 'Come on then.' They gave the girls time to get out of the common room, and then crept down the stairs and followed them out.

…

The girls reached the Trophy Room on the third floor just as the Hufflepuff girls arrived. Sandy Lewis and her fellow Ravenclaws were already inside, and they had set out a picnic blanket and laid out the food they had brought.

'It looks amazing!' Lily squealed, shivering with excitement. She sat down on the floor and started unloading her own goodies and soon all the girls were eating and laughing and shushing each other when they got too noisy - reminding each other that Filch could be about. 'In the summer we should do this again - and go swimming in the lake,' Bettina Bagshot said, 'like the girls all did in the book.'

'Yes - only we'd have to hope it doesn't rain,' Lily said.

But Bettina laughed. 'You're forgetting we're witches,' she told Lily. 'We can put an Impervius Charm on the food so it doesn't get wet!'

'I didn't know you could do that!'

'Oh yeah - my mum puts it on the washing when she hangs it out to dry - so she doesn't have to run out and get it if it starts to rain.'

'We need to learn that charm then. And we need to start looking into ways we can use magic to start pranking people. We should be able to prank ten times better than the muggles in the book.'

'If we learn the Impervius Charm - we could make it rain in potions,' Petra suggested. 'It would put the fires out under the cauldrons and everyone would get wet except us.'

'Yeah - we could make it absolutely pour down right on James Potter's swollen head,' Lily agreed eagerly. 'He's such an idiot. I really can't stand him.'

'Black is going to be very good looking when he's older though,' Mary said, sagely.

'He's an idiot too.'

'Yeah - but he's going to be a really attractive idiot.'

'Wait - Mary, do you fancy Black?'

Mary blushed bright red. 'Of course not!'

But Lily had started to grin, 'I think you do!'

'Oh yeah - what about you and "Severus" ?'

Lily sniffed. 'Sev needs me,' she said with great dignity - and bit viciously into a Tunnocks Tea Cake - the cream splurged everywhere.

…

The boys quietly made their way to the third floor and padded down the hall towards the Trophy Room, moving carefully so they remained safely hidden under the cloak. When they reached the room the door was pulled to - though they could hear the sounds of the girls laughing and chatting and munching just beyond.

With nothing else they could do, they pushed the door open - it creaked ominously … and immediately silence fell inside the room. The boys stood still, holding their breath. 'What was that?' they heard Mandy Thomas hiss.

'The door - there was somebody at the door - shh!' Through the crack, the boys saw Lily put her fingers to her lips.

'Go and see who it is!'

'No way - we'll get caught. Just be quiet.'

James shoved the door again. It groaned. The girls squealed - and then clapped their hands over their mouths. The boys stepped through - and the door slammed shut behind them.

'There's someone in here!' Connie Bidwell whispered.

'But there is nobody - look!' Lily pointed at the empty doorway for proof.

'Maybe it's a ghost.'

'The ghosts aren't invisible.'

'Maybe it's Peeves.'

'He wouldn't be that quiet.'

'Then it's something else .'

Beneath the cloak, James let out a low moaning, wailing noise. The girls yelped in fright and clapped their hands over their mouths again. The boys buried their fists into their mouths to try and stop themselves from laughing. James moaned again - and this time Sirius joined in.

The girls were now sitting stiff, their eyes were wide and darting around the room, looking for any sign of what was making the mysterious noise.

Peter started wailing too.

'What is it? What is it?' Petra breathed, clutching hold of Mary. 'We need to get out of here!' The girls all sprang to life and started packing up the remains of their midnight feast and shoving it into their satchels. Sandy folded up the picnic blanket.

Carefully, so as not to reveal his arm - James reached out and picked up a trophy. It was a special services to the school award from 30 years ago - given to some bloke named Riddle. It was nice and big. And James made it dance in the air.

The girls screamed - no longer trying to stifle the sound. They began to run for the door … only of course the boys were standing right in their path - and the cloak didn't stop them being solid.

Lily hit up against them - and screamed again as she felt their bulk. 'It's there - it's there!' She danced a few steps backwards.

Mary grabbed hold of her hand. 'Come on, let's rush it.' And moving as one, the girls stampeded forward - banging into the boys and sending them flying. The group of boys all lost their balance, staggered, stumbled - separated - and then fell out from under the cloak in four separate directions - each landing in a stand of trophies which all then fell to the floor with a horrendous smashing and crashing sound.

The girls all screamed again - and then stood blinking at the boys, who stared back up at them rather stupidly.

'Potter?'

'Hello, Evans.' He tried to sound nonchalant, spreadeagled as he was amongst the golden cups.

But then they heard the flatfooted footsteps of...

'Filch!' Remus hissed at them all. 'Everyone - run…'

And with more squeals and yelps, the girls made their way to the door and separated out once in the corridor - headed back to their own common rooms. The boys scrambled up and followed them out - the invisibility cloak bunched up uselessly in James' hand.

'Quick the Charms corridor,' Remus said, leading the boys through the castle. They ran full pelt until they reached Flitwick's domain and then Remus ran his hands along the tapestries.

'What are you -' James started to ask.

'Shh.' He found what he was looking for and ripped it open - revealing a concealed hallway behind. 'Get inside.' They all tumbled in and began to creep their way along.

'How did you know this was here?' Sirius whispered. He sounded impressed.

'It had to be. When he chased us the other night we heard him talking to that horrible cat from behind here. It's one of Filch's secret passageways. We can get all the way to the other end of the castle in this and then double back and get home a different route. He'll never know we were near the Trophy Room.'

'D'y' think the girls got back alright?' James asked.

'Who cares?' Sirius shrugged.

Remus proved to be right, and they followed the secret passage all the way down to the first floor - cautiously stepped back out into the public hallway of the castle and then began to scurry their way back to Gryffindor tower.

They skirted the Trophy Room, staying as far away from it as possible and hurried up more stairs.

They heard Filch again when they reached the fifth floor. He was talking - and he sounded jubilant. 'Well - tears will do you no good - should have thought of that before you broke the rules. I'll chain you up by your ankles and whip the skin right off your back. You'll think again before you get out of bed in the night, Missy - don't you worry about that.'

'No, please - Mr. Filch, please…'

The boys ducked behind a suit of armour and watched as Filch dragged Lily down the corridor, his hand gripped around her upper arm like a vise. 'Let's see what Professor McGonagall has to say. She won't be impressed - I do hope she lets me use the cat o' nine tails.'

'Should we do something?' James asked.

'What - get ourselves chained up with her in solidarity?' Sirius snorted. 'Don't be soft. Come on.' And once Filch and Lily had vanished down the hall, he led them all the way back to the common room.

...

The other three girls were all huddled inside, looking very serious, when the boys arrived. 'Filch got Lily,' Petra told them.

'Yes we saw. He's taking her to McGonagall.'

The three girls all shuddered. Sirius snorted. 'Oh don't be soft!' he told them. 'She'll get a detention and some points docked. No biggie.'

'It might be "no biggie" to you, Black,' Mary snapped at him, 'but some of us care about not getting into trouble.'

'Yeah? Well - you should have thought of that before you planned your little midnight feast.'

Mary opened her mouth to fire off a furious retort - but was cut off when the portrait swung open again, and this time Lily came in - weeping. The girls immediately gathered around her, wrapping their arms around her and making soothing noises.

Sirius snorted again.

'Detention!' Lily wailed, 'and fifty points from Gryffindor!'

'Well,' James said loudly over her sobs - trying to sound cheery,'that's not so bad. Sirius and me get that all the time. We've survived. Well - we'll see you girls in the morning.' ...And he turned as if to go back to bed.

But Lily had pushed her way through her friends and was now glaring at him, her face red and screwed up in anger. 'You!' She spat at him. He looked alarmed. 'Why did you have to turn up? We've been looking forward to this for weeks. Why couldn't you just leave us alone?'

'We just thought it would be a laugh.'

'You ruined it!'

'Have another.'

Mary tutted loudly. 'It was for her birthday!' she said. 'Tomorrow - today now - is Lily's birthday.'

'Oh.'

'And you've ruined it!' Lily spat at him. 'I've got a detention and lost all those points.' Tears were leaking down her face and she dashed them away angrily. 'Why do you always have to spoil everything?'

And then she burst out sobbing and ran up the stairs to bed. The other girls sniffed at the four of them disapprovingly and followed behind her.

And with that, the boys found themselves well and truly sent to coventry. And Remus could not honestly say that they did not deserve it.