All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Seventh Year : Legacy ( Part 2 )

So here we are…

With freedom within our sweaty, greedy, grasps.

So remember this, boys and girls,

When your freedom comes along…

Don’t

Pish

in the water supply,

Just because…school is out for the summer…

“Oi, you missed one!”

“What?”

James spun around, glancing down the corridor they had just run through. There was still a single stationery suit of armour left on his side of the hallway, while the others had hopped down from their stands and begun to move about, strolling aimlessly back and forth or dancing odd, jerky little jigs.

“Oh—bollocks.”

The signal had just gone off a few minutes ago—a shower of golden sparks from behind the greenhouses, bright enough that anyone looking out the window could see them. Across the castle, the entire Inter-House Prank Co-Operative were casting their spells, setting everything into motion. For Sirius and James, that meant enchanting the suits of armour with Potter’s patented locomotion charm. They had just finished the first corridor when a rush of flapping wings came from outside; James ran over to join Sirius at the window, where they craned their necks to watch as every owl in the Hogwarts owlery swooped down over the lawn, twisting through the archways and disappearing into the castle. In minutes, the dungeons would be completely flocked.

“Blimey!” Sirius laughed, “Our Moony’s done it again!”

“Come on,” James clapped him on the back, grinning, “We’ve still got to get the second floor.”

As they made their way hurriedly through the corridors, more and more students began to pour into the hallways, startled by the chaos erupting across the castle. Bathrooms exploded in pink foam; portraits sang at the top of their lungs; clock hands whirled about madly, as if they’d been possessed. Peeves soared overhead, flinging armfuls of pink foam at unsuspecting students and cackling euphorically.

“Brilliant!” Sirius laughed, feelings as if his face might split from smiling so hard, “Bloody brilliant!” After months of work—scheduling meetings, planning out which charms to use, teaching the younger students to actually perform those charms correctly—everything was finally coming together.

“Wait until we tell the Prewetts about this,” James said, pulling Sirius up onto a window ledge so that they could survey their work, “Bet no one’s ever managed to pull off anything so massive before!”

“It’s not done yet!” Sirius jumped back down, “Come on, we’ve got to get outside before we miss all the real action.”

Outside, it was a perfect day: clear blue skies and balmy weather. Most of the students were pouring out onto the lawn, in varying states of disarray—some had pink bubbles in their hair, while others stumbled out wiping frosting off their faces, and still others were dripping wet, looking very confused in their waterlogged robes. It was pandemonium.