"Prongs," Peter frowned, not quite understanding something. "I don't quite understand something."

James clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, and counted to ten to stave off the anger slowly threatening to push him over the edge. He was sweaty, and tired, and hungry, and all in all not at his best, and Peter was not helping very much.

James shifted slightly as he felt his right leg cramping, and he took a deep breath. "What, Wormtail?"

Peter slowly took in his surroundings. There was a suspicious muffled ticking noise, the source of which was not clear. His eyes roved over the shelves of cleaning supplies, the small wooden latched door where James was crouching, over the oddly stained walls visible between stacks of brooms, right up to the tiny little yellow lamp dangling from the slanted roof two feet above them, casting an ominous light over their surroundings.

"Why are we hiding in a broom closet?" Peter asked, justly confused.

There was half a minute of silence before he got an answer. "My good fellow, I cannot fathom what gave you the idea that we are hiding," James said, face glued to the peep hole in the wooden door through which he could see the cloak tails of students passing by outside.

"Er . . ."

"Don't answer that."

"Okay."

Tick, tick, tick.

"Prongs?"

"What?"

"I need to pee."

James refrained from slamming his forehead on the door, instead closing his eyes and sucking air in through his teeth. "Well, you should've gone to the loo then."

"I was going to the loo," Peter said resentfully, crossing his arms over his chest, "But then you threw me in a broom closet. This broom closet. I don't like it here, somebody's written 'DEATH' on the walls in what I'm pretty sure is red blood."

There were several things James wished to point out at that moment, the foremost being that blood almost exclusvely came in red and thus its color did not need to be specified. Also, he frankly did not care what was written inside or outside the broom closet, so long as it did not spell 'JAMES IS IN HERE' or any variation of it. He also wanted to let Peter know that he was actually doing him a very big favor by stowing him away in said broom closet, for Peter, as James had rightfully surmised, was unaware of the dangers of walking to the loo, and Sirius, as James had rightfully surmised, having reached unprecedented levels of desperation, was actively searching for Peter, and James was saving both their sorry asses—Peter from utter mortification and Sirius from hitting rock bottom. He also wished to add, here, that by indulging in said ass-saving, he was leaving one very resolute Lily Evans alone with one very clueless Remus Lupin, and that itself was a disaster in the works.

There was a lot on James Potter's mind at that moment, including a sinking feeling of realization that amid this madness he had managed to miss three Transfiguration classes in a week. He avoided thinking about this out of concern that it would trigger him to act on the instinct that was screaming at him to lock Peter in the broom closet and make a dash for it rather than incur the wrath of Professor McGonagall.

As these thoughts whirled around in his (large, rather well-endowed) brain, he mulled over how best to respond to Peter.

"Shut up," James said.

Peter, whose backbone seemed to disappear in James Potter's vicinity, merely pouted and heeded James' command to be silent.

Tick, tick, tick.

A bead of sweat rolled down James's temple. His eyes darted from side to side, trying in vain to identify the heavy combat boots that would give Sirius away. He had only to wait another ten minutes, until the sugar rush wore off, and then Sirius' mental reasoning would resemble something close to sanity. Until then, they would have to wait.

Peter sighed. "Prongs. We're going to miss Transfiguration. Again."

"So be it, Wormtail," James replied. It was infuriation how Sirius' problems sucked everybody across his universe of friends in like a black hole, and that James somehow wound up trailing behind Sirius and frantically waving his wand in a desperate attempt to fix whatever destruction Sirius wrought as everyone else scrambled for cover. It was part and parcel of being Sirius' best friend, but it was also a very tiring ordeal and James hardly ever got credit for it. Although, there was that one time Sirius tricked Snivellus into going to the Shrieking Shack on a full moon night while Remus was transforming . . .

James shook his head. He'd rather not think about that incident. It made him feel queasy.

Tick, tick, tick.

"I'm leaving," Peter declared. He began crawling toward the door.

With a stupendous yell and split-second Quidditch reflexes, James threw himself onto

Peter, causing them both to smash into a stack of brooms, which pushed over several bottles on the self, and suddenly the world around them was falling apart with a thundering roar and James's and Peter's yells were lost amid the clanging and smashing and deafening noises.

Tick, tick, tick.

The silence that followed was broken in their ears by the ringing aftereffects of having heard an aural apocalypse. Their heads throbbed in the anguish of an olfactory overload and suddenly, the DEATH in (red) blood on the wall shone a lot clearer. As if this wasn't enough, they were suddenly blinded by a cruel assault on their vision as the door was abruptly flung open, allowing a painful amount of light to flood into their dark, dismal closet.

Framed in the brightness of the day was a silhouette of a person with a frightening amount of hair and a menacing stance, blocking their only escape.

James screamed.

Lily looked almost bored. "James, what are you doing in here?"

James opened and closed his mouth. He blinked rapidly. He swallowed. He nearly screamed again when he felt a sentient lump crawling beside him.

"Hi Lily!" the lump said cheerfully, squeezing through the gap between her right leg and the edge of the door. Peter tumbled out into the corridor with a pop, and James heard him shout cheerfully, "Hi Remus!"

Lily's eyes were now slits as she regarded James sternly, still on the ground. "You're going to miss Transfiguration. Again."

"I was planning on attending that."

"Where's Sirius? This is ridiculous, must I herd you all to class like sheep?" Lily demanded irritably. She sighed, putting her hands on her hips. "Well? Are you going to get up? Or shall I carry you there, Princess Potter?"

With that, she turned on her heel and marched off.

James rubbed the end of his nose and sighed, trying to remember why he was saving people's asses in the first place and wondering whether he should simply lock all of them in a broom closet and have at it.

"I hate you all," James muttered to nobody in particular before clambering out of the closet and staggering off to Transfiguration.