James Potter sat down in his seat in their secret lair, the Marauder's Den somewhere in the bowels of Hogwarts; He frowned at the atmosphere suffocating the room. Moony…no, he had to take this seriously, so no nicknames. Remus was glaring at Sirius like he wanted to burn him up with his eyes. Peter was looking especially squirrely, nervously glancing between Remus and Sirius, and then occasionally looking at him, looking for…something.
James was still reeling from everything that had happened, in such quick succession, that it was hard to take it all in. His group of four friends that had been together through thick and thin looked like it was on the verge of splintering apart; maybe even becoming enemies, judging by Remus' glares at Sirius. With Peter's timid urge to back away from the confrontation and run away, he might just leave and not come back.
'How did this happen? Our friendship was so tight, I didn't think anything would ever break us apart. And now look at us. It's only a matter of time before we're no longer friends at this rate. I've got to do something to figure out how this happened, and how to fix it.'
"Something deadly serious has happened," James finally said, and then shook his head when Sirius looked like he was about to make a pun on his name. Not the time or place, dude! "And I think we're all angry about the fallout, and confused about how it came to be."
A snort of agreement came from Remus, sounding almost wolf-like, even though the full moon was two days ago. Sirius sharply nodded, acknowledging the point. Peter seemed to calm down a bit, looking relieved that James was taking charge.
"I'll start us off with what I know," James said, and then placed a blank piece of parchment on the desk in between the group. "I had just finished studying for our Transfiguration OWLs on Thursday, and was looking at the map to see if the coast was clear to grab Sirius and Peter and sneak down to the Whomping Willow to join Remus like we usually do."
Once he, Sirius, and Peter had gained and perfected their animagus transformation, they had learned that it was best they weren't in the same room as Moony when he was going through his transformation. Even though werewolves under the full moon wouldn't automatically attack normal animals, it didn't mean they weren't snappish when suffering through the pain of transformation.
As a result, Prongs, Padfoot, and Wormtail would usually wait an hour after the transformation until they joined Moony, to help him get over the pain of transformation and play a bit to distract himself from tearing himself apart slamming into the walls in an effort to run free.
"Imagine my surprise when I saw Snape's marker approaching the Whomping Willow, pause for a moment, and then easily slip into the passageway under the Whomping Willow. As soon as I saw that, I ran to stop him. I didn't have time to grab Sirius or Peter for backup. I had to keep Snape from meeting Moony, or else he might die and then what would happen to Remus? The Ministry would execute him.
"I barely got there in time, just as Snape was unlocking the door to the Shrieking Shack with his wand. Moony tried to bust the door down, but I managed to grab Snape, pulling him away, and spell the door shut just before Moony could finish bursting through.
"At that point I couldn't stop him from going straight to the Headmaster to demand that Sirius be expelled for sending him down there, and Remus be executed for attacking him as a werewolf."
James let the silence hold for a bit as Remus glared angrily, almost hatefully, at Sirius. Sirius seemed on the point of speaking, but seeing Remus' furious hate filled glare, swallowed his words down. He looked quite sickly about this whole thing.
"There are a lot of things I just don't understand about this, though." James quietly said, managing to gain the attention of even the furious Remus. "Sirius, did you actually send Snape down there?"
"No! I swear I didn't! Remus' condition is a Marauder's Secret, and I would never tell anyone, let alone Snivellous of all people, anything related to our secrets!" Sirius swore loudly.
Looking over at Remus, James saw that his anger was cooling down a bit, and confusion was rising.
Remus could smell that Sirius was telling the truth. Honestly, hearing from Dumbledore that Sirius had set Snape up to be eaten by his wolf had made him so incredibly mad that he hadn't considered the oddities of the story. But now that he was smelling Truth from Sirius, it made him wonder what really happened.
"I believe you, Sirius." James solemnly said. "We all know the consequences to Remus if any student were to be attacked by him, even if it wasn't his fault."
"So how did Snape find out about pressing the knot to calm the Whomping Willow?" Peter asked with confusion in his voice. "I mean, he had to have known that if he was able to slip down there so quickly like James said. There's no way to get past it otherwise. Even throwing around a bunch of stunning spells would take time and be really noticeable, which he obviously didn't do."
"I'm not sure where Snape got that information," Sirius said in a small, quiet voice that was so unlike him. "But thinking back on the past week, there was one time where Peter and I were hanging out in an empty room, practicing our spells and joking about our next outing with Moony on Thursday. We thought we were alone in the room at the time…but thinking about it, there was a moment where…I'm just not positive, though...there might have been something. Maybe someone was hiding there with a spell and overheard us?"
"Hmm. Let me have my elf bring us a pensieve. We can look over that memory and see what you might have missed at the time." James called his elf, Feeney, who brought the big stone bowl and set it on the table. After thanking and dismissing the elf, he turned back to his friends.
"Where ever did you get such a priceless artifact?" Remus whispered as he hungrily looked over the runic scheme carved into the bowl.
"And why didn't you ever bring it before so we could rewatch some of our best pranks?" Peter asked.
"It's a Potter family heirloom, and it's one of a kind," James explained. "And my mother would make it so I couldn't sit for an entire year if I ever damaged it. She may have married into the Potter family, but she still clearly remembers what she learned as a Black growing up."
James shuddered at the creative punishments he'd gotten as a kid when he got too rambunctious. Despite doting on him for being their miracle baby when they thought they were too old to have children, his parents Charlus and Dorea never let him get away with bad behavior.
"Anyway, the way this works is that you pull a memory strand out of your head and put it in the pensieve. We can then enter an expanded space inside the pensieve where the memory plays out for our perusal." James explained for the benefit of Peter, who didn't have the family background Sirius did, or the study habits that Remus did, so he appeared to be lost about what a pensieve was used for, even if he didn't want to speak up and look ignorant in front of the group.
"Usually when going about a normal day, we only notice a fraction of what is going on around us, because we're distracted with all kinds of things and thoughts. But our senses are so much sharper than we notice most of the time, and our magic is constantly in touch with our surroundings, practically making a record of everything it touches.
"So a pensieve will take the memory we give it and recreate the scene. It won't just be what we paid attention to at the time, but what our magic noticed all around us. Everything within a certain radius.
"We have a collection of Potter memories left behind for our family to learn from, generation to generation. Some of the memories are only like twenty feet across because the family member's magic was weak."
"I wonder how big of a memory someone like Dumbledore could record!" Remus exclaimed with stars in his eyes, momentarily forgetting to be angry at Sirius in his excitement at seeing the rare artifact.
"Yeah, probably several hundred feet," James agreed.
"You know what they say about wizards with big feet…" Sirius tried cracking a joke, but all he did was succeed in getting Remus to remember why he should be angry. James almost face palmed as Remus went back to glaring while Peter snickered on the side.
"Anyway. This is how you pull a memory strand out of your head…"
After a bit of explanation and practice, Sirius and Peter were able to pull out the memory strands of the incident in question and placed them in a vial. James carefully dropped Sirius' memory strand in the bowl.
James explained once more how they would be pulled into a pocket space inside the pensieve where the memory strand would be played in front of their eyes. They would be able to walk around the memory and view it from every angle. He warned them not to run too fast through the memory, they might hit the wall face first.
After sharing a significant look, all four Maruaders touched their finger to the liquid, and felt like they were floo traveling into the memory itself.
Standing in the classroom, the group watched as Sirius and Peter were playing a game of wall ball with magic. They had a bouncy rubber muggle ball that they would bounce against the wall and floor. Instead of using their hands to catch the ball, they would use their wands to smack it with a brief burst of magic to recreate the effect of a tennis racquet.
Instead of watching Sirius and Peter playing and idly chatting about the next time they would run with Moony, the group of four kept an eye on the door and surroundings. Peter and Sirius didn't notice the door open apparently on its own, a shimmering field indicating a disillusioned person entering, and then the door closed.
Sirius was distracted by the sound of the door closing for a moment and missed the hit on the ball.
"Hah! I won!" Memory-Peter crowed in triumph.
Sirius looked around suspiciously, trying to find what had distracted him. But seeing the room empty except for him, Peter, and the bouncing ball, he had shrugged and turned around to Peter.
"So you did, Wormy. Best 2 out of 3?" Sirius asked with a chuckle.
"Nah. I've gotta go ask Brittany if she wants to have a picnic to relax this Saturday, seeing as how our OWLs start on Monday. It'll be the perfect opportunity for her to take her mind off of the tests and relax."
"Hah! As if you don't just want to make out with her!" Sirius laughed.
"Well, yeah. I mean, she's looking pretty good this year. And since Remus didn't make a move all last year, I figure I'm in the clear as far as making a move on her."
Peter grinned unrepentantly at Remus who glared at him for his remarks. He lost his chance with the girl anyway, due to this whole fiasco causing him to miss the picnic with her, but the point remained.
"Gah, I can't believe Remus won't even make a move on such a lovely girl that is completely fooled by his poor scholarly routine." Sirius laughed before turning solemn. "He's really got to get over this fear of his moony side. The closer he gets to a full moon, the mopier he gets. I get that he's cursed, but he's gotta learn to balance it out with some good things to take his mind off it."
Not-Memory-Sirius shrugged at Remus with a look on his face that said, "What? You know I'm right!"
"Yeah, totally!" Memory-Peter agreed. "Just as long as he doesn't start with Brittany this weekend. Anyway, I'm off to go ask her out. If she says yes, I'm going to visit the kitchens Thursday night before we meet with Moony in the Shack to arrange a picnic with the elves for Saturday. They always like a couple days warning for their prep time anytime we ask them for help on a date like this. You guys can manage to get past the tree without me there if I'm a bit late, right?"
"Yeah, don't worry about it," Sirius replied. "Me and Prongs were able to get through okay before you go the hang of Wormtail and made it even easier. We'll be fine."
The memory Sirius and Peter left the room chatting with each other, not noticing that after they left the room but before they moved out of range of their magic, Snape dispelled the disillusion charm on himself and stood there with a nasty smile on his face before the memory faded away due to Sirius and Peter getting too far away from the classroom.
The four Marauders came out of the pensieve's pocket space and stared at each other in concern.
"How long has Snape been sneaking around us, listening in and filling in the blanks?" James asked.
"His disillusion spell is near perfect. It's obvious that he's been doing it for a while now," Remus said, his mind already going through the times when Snape seemed to hint in his mocking way that he knew things they didn't want him to know.
"That was probably all the confirmation he needed to know when to go down there…" Sirius trailed off in thought. "But how did he know how to disable the Whomping Willow?"
"I think I know," James said. "I've been going over my memories last night, trying to make sense of this. And I think I know how Snape found out about the knot on the Whomping Willow."
James pulled a memory strand out and put it in the bowl. The four Marauders entered the memory and saw they were in the Library. James was sitting at one table, while Lily and Snape were sitting at a nearby table.
James was mostly studying, but occasionally he would look at Lily and Snape together and frown. His three friends laughed, having seen him mope about Lily treating him horribly for the past year and a half, ever since he got it in his head that he loved her around the Christmas break of their third year.
"Shh! Listen to what they're whispering about!" James scolded his friends.
"I know I'm really good at Potions," Snape was bragging, "but I worry about if I'll do well enough on Herbology to take the NEWT classes."
"Yeah, you do have a black thumb!" Lily cheerfully agreed as she pulled out their Herbology text.
"Maybe if I had some researched information about some NEWT plants that I could throw in, it might make up for my abysmal practical scores in Herbology," Snape said. "They could give me bonus points."
"He's totally leading the conversation…" Sirius pointed out.
"Shh!" Remus hissed at Sirius, still upset at him, even if he wasn't furious anymore. It was true, though. Snape was fishing for information.
"Maybe some information about a highly advanced plant like the Whomping Willow. If I had some interesting information about that plant, then I'm sure it would impress the testers and make up the points for me."
"Boo!" Peter gestured rudely at Snape, and the other three nodded. It was obvious to them with their knowledge of the Willow and what had happened a couple days ago what Snape doing.
"Oh! I just learned something interesting about it recently!" Remus groaned aloud, looking down in shame. The others looked at him, but he shook his head and mouthed 'later'.
"Did you know, that each Whomping Willow is grown in a special way by herbologists so that there is a specific knot on each trunk that subdues it?" Lily eagerly said. "Pressing on the knot will cause the Whomping Willow to relax its usual defensive instincts, thus allowing those that raise them to run diagnostic spells on them, or to harvest branches from them for wands, or to add fertilizer, or treat them. Isn't that amazing!?" Lily asked while looking down at her book. "Even after five years in a magic castle, I just can't get over how amazing magic is!"
"Yes…amazing." Snape absentmindedly said while a sneer and a look of glee had appeared on his face, unnoticed by Lily.
The group of four then came out of the memory.
"I vaguely remembered hearing Lily mention a willow from where I was sitting, so I looked that memory over," James said. "It's obvious now that Snape had been plotting this event and had been gathering all the information he needed to make it happen. I just can't figure out where Lily got the information about the Willow from. Remus? You seemed to have an epiphany about that?"
"It was less than a week ago when Lily and I were patrolling the corridors at night for our Prefect rounds," Remus groaned, fingers on the bridge of his nose. "I…was a bit tired with the full moon coming, and wasn't careful of my words. I…let slip to Lily what I knew about the Whomping Willow's knot that lets you subdue it, 'cause we were talking about the Herbology OWLs…"
"Damn!" Sirius exclaimed, and the other three Marauders couldn't help but agree.
"So now we know how Snape figured out how to get to the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. We've seen that it wasn't Sirius daring Snape to go down there like Snape told the Headmaster in his sob story of almost being eaten by a Werewolf." James paused in thought before giving a suggestion. "Let's review that memory of the meeting in the Headmaster's office now. With this new information, I want to review what really happened there."
James pulled out the memory and the four of them dove in. Now that they had a couple days to calm down from the high emotions and accusations, as well as not feeling particularly guilty at the disappointed looks that Dumbledore was beating them over the head with, the four of them were seeing the meeting in a very different light.
"There!" Sirius said, pointing at the scene of Dumbledore's long gaze into Snape's eyes. "Look at that! Classic Legilimency mind reading through the eyes. My mother couldn't ever do it without a wand, but it's obvious what Dumbledore is doing, now that I'm paying attention."
"So if Dumbledore read Snape's mind…" Peter trailed off.
"It means he knew that Snape has been sneaking around us, gathering information, and set this whole thing up," James firmly declared. "Whether Snape was trying to kill Remus while he was in his wolf form, or trying to set up Sirius and me to take the blame for sending him down there and get us expelled, which is something he's been harping on about since first year, it doesn't matter. Whatever Snape was trying to do, it amounts to the same thing in the end."
"And Dumbledore knew for a fact that Snape was lying," Sirius added on, looking the other three marauders in the eyes to emphasize his point. "Unless we're saying that Snape's Occlumency skill is so amazing he can lie to freaking Dumbledore mind to mind, then Dumbledore knew."
Remus slumped down at that pronouncement. He felt…hollow. Dumbledore had been a hero to him. He was the man who let him attend Hogwarts despite his affliction. Let him live as a normal wizard at school, able to make friends, able to learn magic. And now for the Headmaster to betray him by siding with Snape in this matter, it hurt him deeply.
"We all know how big a scheming schemer Snape is," James said, tapping his glasses to remind them of the incident that forced him to wear the spectacles. He didn't originally need to wear glasses, but a nasty potion contaminated by dark magic spilling on him out of nowhere in the halls one evening had permanently damaged his vision. They all knew that Snape was the one who did it, even if they couldn't prove it.
"But now we have to consider what purpose Dumbledore has here." James gritted his teeth in anger at Dumbledore's duplicity. "Even knowing that Snape had masterminded the whole thing, Dumbledore still threw all the blame on Sirius."
Sirius nodded seriously and said, "And he acted like he was doing me such a huge favor by brushing this under the rug and not expelling me…"
"But…Dumbledore has always been encouraging us to prank the really nasty Slytherins to dissuade them from following that terrorist…" Peter trailed off for a bit. "Why didn't he have our backs here? Why did he suddenly throw us under the bus for Snape? We all know Snape is a junior death eater wannabe. So why?"
"Dumbledore wanted us to dissuade the wannabes from joining the death eaters when they graduated," Sirius mumbled as he thought it through. "But has any of our pranks actually dissuaded them from sticking even closer to their group?"
"No." Remus looked almost sick as he considered the situation logically. "If anything, our pranks drive them further into the death eater camp."
"It's even worse than you think," James quietly said. "I was looking over my memories since first year, and I think our pranks have been making them more vindictive, not less.
"You've seen what those cruel bastards are like this year whenever someone gets a death notice from the ministry delivered at the great hall? Well, when I looked at how the Slytherin students reacted to such an event in our first year, they were acting like normal people, showing sympathy, confusion, and fear.
"But now? They're openly gleeful, mocking and gloating right there in the great hall. We've all known Sluggy is useless as a Head of House to restrain them, but they don't even bother hiding it in front of the rest of the professors anymore either. And Dumbledore just sits there, looking sad, but not punishing them."
"Dumbledore's been encouraging us to do these pranks for years now," Sirius said quietly. "And while he never stopped the professors from giving us detention for doing something he suggested in the first place, I always thought that was the price I was paying for fighting the same darkness that my family glories so much in. But now I'm wondering what the whole point of it all was."
"Why would Dumbledore suddenly turn on us now?" Peter asked just as quietly as Sirius.
"I don't know," James said in a subdued tone of voice. He too was overwhelmed by what they'd discovered.
"What would Dumbledore have done if Snape had killed me when I was a wolf?" Remus asked, causing the other three to stare at him in question. "Would he have turned it around on Snape and forced him to take an oath to obey him, in order to pay back the favor of not being expelled, just like what he tried to do to Sirius?
"And good job on not buckling under the pressure Dumbledore was putting on you, Padfoot." Moony complimented.
"It's something that my family always emphasized. Never make oaths when you haven't had a weekend to consider the necessity, and a lawyer to examine the wording." Sirius shrugged. "But the more I think about how Dumbledore was trying to put me into his debt, the more I'm worried about this whole thing."
"Wouldn't that just put a feather in Dumbledore's cap, though?" James asked. "Voldy's got several members of the Black family that we know about following him. What would be the response if suddenly Dumbledore has the Black Family Heir under his thumb? How much support could Voldy truly expect from the Black family if Sirius was sworn to follow Dumbledore?"
"It's a good move on Dumbledore's part…" Peter mumbled, before being cut off.
"Peter!" Sirius yelled, causing Peter to flinch.
"Wait, Sirius!" James interrupted before Sirius could go off on Peter. Glaring at Sirius to make sure he would be quiet for now, James then turned to Peter. "Peter, you're going to have to explain that one."
"Look, I didn't mean it was a good thing to do to Padfoot, to try to strong-arm him into a loyalty oath," Peter tentatively explained. "I just meant that from a strategic point of view, if you're trying to fight a war like Dumbledore is, it makes sense to deny your enemies resources.
"Sirius' family is loaded and a known supporter of the Dark Arts. And from what Sirius has said, some of his cousins are already joining. So if Dumbledore can use Sirius to pull back the Black family from helping you know who, he'll have bettered his position.
"And Snape, even as greasy a git as he is, is a genius when it comes to potions. We all know he loves the dark arts and is joining the junior death eaters. If Dumbledore can prevent you know who from getting hold of such a young and talented budding potions master…"
Peter almost laughed at the shocked expressions James, Sirius, and Remus were making at his analysis. It was even better than a prank, shocking and awing his friends. He then concluded, "Whether it was Sirius or Snape that he had dirt on and forced to make that oath, he would be gathering chess pieces and denying his enemy."
"Is this coming from that sunny zoo book you've been reading?" Remus finally shook his head and asked Peter, jokingly mangling the author's name because it was funny to him that Peter was finally getting bookish, so he played up the barbarian routine as a counterpoint. He succeeded in making his friends laugh, which was good.
"Yeah…I mean, I've never been as strong in magic as the rest of you, and my animagus form is kind of…"
"Pathetic," Sirius bluntly stated.
"Sirius!" Remus reprimanded, angry on Peter's behalf. They all knew that Peter was really disappointed with his form, and had been working on being useful. There was no cause to cut him down like that.
"No, it's true, Remus." Peter interrupted. "I've said it enough times myself, that I'm pathetic, that my rat form is really is pathetic. But when that muggleborn girl, Dacey, told me about those books about the strategies of war, I thought I'd look into it. See if I could turn my natural inclination for sneakiness to good use. And Sun Tzu's Art of War has a lot of interesting ideas, even if you have to do a lot of thinking to figure out how to apply it in real life.
"And I've come to accept that while my animagus form of a common rat is…less than cool. I've also realized just how useful it can be for spying. I can get around unseen and learn all about our enemy with it. Know your enemy, and know yourself, and you can be victorious in a hundred battles.
"And well, I guess coming to know myself also means accepting what I am. All of what I am. So I'm not really as sensitive about it as I used to be."
"Good for you, Peter!" Sirius patted Peter on the back cheerfully. Maybe he had gone a bit overboard on trying to get Peter riled up about his rat animagus form, so that he would get angry and stop feeling sorry for himself. Sirius knew that always seemed to work for himself when he was moping about his shitty home life. But it seems like Peter just had to come at the problem from a different angle, instead of the way he did it. He'd have to keep that in mind in the future.
Peter grinned at Sirius, pleased at the sincerity of the compliment.
"Okay, back on topic. What are we going to do?" Remus interrupted Sirius and Peter's bro-moment, still very concerned about how Dumbledore used him as a chess piece to force either Sirius or Snape into his service.
"Nothing." James firmly said.
"What?!"
"What do you mean, nothing?!"
"No way! We can't let Snivelous get away with hit!"
James shook his head at his friend's outburst before fixing them with a stare that meant he was not kidding around.
"We don't do anything." James repeated. "We're already stuck behind a rocky hard place by Dumbledore."
"I think you mean 'between a rock and a hard place'," Remus dryly corrected James.
"Whatever," James breezily waved it off. "We haven't even taken our OWLs yet. There's no way anyone in a position of authority would listen to our unfounded accusations against Dumbledore of all people. Except…" James paused to let the tension grow. "Except for my parents."
Sirius, Remus, and Peter stared flabbergasted at James.
"You're…going to run to your mommy?" Peter finally squeaked, trying not to laugh, but failed when his words caused Remus and Sirius to bust up laughing.
"Really, guys?" James asked with supreme annoyance in his voice.
"I never thought I'd see the day when stubborn Prongs waved the flag!" Sirius laughed, wiping tears of mirth away from his eyes. "After first year when we heard 'Luscious' Malfoy say 'Wait until my father hears about this!' 73 times in the first term , I never thought you would actually report anything to your parents, just to avoid being like Malfoy!"
James rolled his eyes and impatiently waited for his arsehole friends to get it out of their system. So what if he'd been a bit…close, with his parents before he'd started attending Hogwarts. So what if the sixth-year Malfoy's example had driven him to try to be more independent from his parents so he wouldn't be anything like a Malfoy. And so what if, when he invited Sirius home for Christmas that year because Sirius' family certainly wasn't going to welcome him, his mother had teased him mercilessly about his new attitude in front of his friend?
That was still no reason for Sirius to act like this.
"Got it out of your system yet?" James acidly asked his "friends".
"Yeah…no, wait a moment more!" Sirius howled with laughter, causing Remus and Peter to resume their laughing fit.
"…okay…you were saying, Prongs?" Sirius finally managed to squeeze out several minutes, and an uncounted amount of jokes, later.
"I was saying," James gritted through his teeth, "that we don't actually have to fix this ourselves. This is the kind of thing that parents usually handle. They've got more clout in the adult world than us, and they can get more done. And now that I think on it, it is highly suspicious that none of our parents were called in for this incident.
"Especially when Dumbledore tried to get Sirius to swear what amounts to a loyalty and obedience oath. The first thing that we should have done in the aftermath of this incident is call in our guardians to hash it all out. I say, better late than never, and let my mother go after Dumbledore for this. It'll be fixed before the week is out."
"Will she…?" Sirius trailed off.
"Of course she'll stand for you, too, Padfoot," James declared. "She's still a Black, even if she married a Potter. And she won't let your parents come back into your life and ruin things for you."
"And she'll definitely stand up for all of us." James said as he looked at his other two friends, Remus and Peter. They'd also been over to his house for a couple weeks each summer after they'd finished first year. His parents both liked the two, and they had no problem with their medical issues.
"Thanks, Prongs," Peter said softly. "I don't really want to bother my mother with this. She's already in poor health and barely keeping her job…"
"Thanks, Prongs," Remus said. Even if he was moved, he kept it short and simple.
"Don't worry about it, Moony, Wormtail. We stick together," James replied.
"All for one!" Sirius declared.
"Not that again!" Remus yelled as he threw a cushion at Sirius' face, which was quickly followed by cushions flying from James and Peter's hands. Remus regretted ever talking about the book that Lily leant him back in their second year to read. Sirius had spent the whole year reciting that catch-phrase every time they planned a prank, or got caught doing a prank, or were serving detention for getting caught doing pranks. He was thoroughly sick of it!
"And one for all!" Sirius' muffled voice finished the slogan under a pile of pillows, accompanied by groans from the other three.