The Marauders Year Five Part 2 #Wattys2017

I'm Not Letting Go

I'm Not Letting Go

"Let's find a shitting spell. We'll make the whole lot of them be vexed with cases of explosive diarrhea so that they've all shat themselves at the table in the Great Hall," Sirius suggested.

Peter snickered.

They were walking through the tunnel beneath the whomping willow toward the Shrieking Shack, Peter running along behind them carrying a sack of food and drinks, and panting to keep up with the two energized, taller boys as they plotted Lily's revenge.

"We could infest their common room with flobberworms," Peter suggested, wanting to be included.

"They'd just step on them," Sirius argued.

"Oh. Right," Peter nodded. "Yeah, true."

Sirius dragged his wand along the wall of the tunnel, frustrated.

"What'd they do to her again?" Peter asked.

"We don't know, Peter," James said, "But we're reckoning it's something similar to what they've done to Mary Macdonald by the way she was acting."

"Ohhh," Peter said. "That's why we're angry at them, I get it now."

"God Peter, how can you be so stupid?" Sirius asked. "Seriously, how am I the one with terrible grades when you're having trouble keeping up with who your own enemies are and why?"

"It's just that we're angry at them quite often for many different reasons that's all," Peter said.

Sirius said, "Let's coat them in honey and dust them with kelp powder and guppies and levitate them over the Black Lake for the Giant Squid to snack upon."

"And give the poor Squid indigestion?" James asked.

Peter said, "We could spellotape them to a rocket and send them to Mars."

"Behold, how the first Martian war begins," Sirius replied.

James sighed. They were nearly to the trap door. "It's got to be perfect, whatever it is we do because I'm sure, the way our luck goes, we'll end up in bleedin' trouble for it while the arseholes run free. It's got to be worth the hours and hours of detention Minnie will set us."

"I'm still enjoying the idea of the shitting charm."

James came to a stop below the trapdoor. "What time is it? Can we go up as humans or do we need to transform first? Anybody know?" He looked about between the other two.

"No idea," Sirius replied.

"Haven't got a watch," Peter answered.

James sighed and climbed up the steps to the trap door and reached for the latch, unlocking it. He pushed it up ever so slightly, peering out through the crack. Thin strain of sunlight cut through the unsettled dust as it fluttered from the ceiling, sparkling in the rays as they lit up the deep gouges in the walls where his antlers had marked the wood and cut into the plaster the month before. "We're okay, there's still sunlight," he said, and he pushed opened the door. "Remus?"

There came a groan from the couch and James pulled himself through the portrait hole, realizing that the lump he'd thought was just blankets on the couch was actually Remus Lupin, and he hurried over to find Remus had stretched as long and flat as he could, laying on his belly, trying to stretch out the knots in his spine, and he had tears pouring over his cheeks. "Oh bloody hell, Rey, are you alright?" And for the time being the discussion about the Slytherins escaped his mind. He patted himself down for his handkerchief, for getting he'd given it to Lily Evans, and quickly pulled his jumper sleeve over his hand and used the edge of it to wipe Remus's face.