The Marauders: Year Four

The Meeting Room

"We'll never know," Sirius said, seriously, "There ain't no way in hell Snuffles is ever climbing Mt. Everest."

"Then you best not be putting any werewolves on Everest, either!" Remus replied.

Sirius grinned.

When Peter woke up, the boys got dressed in their school robes and went down to breakfast, leaving Sirius up in the room to continue going over the papers that James had assembled for the meeting that night. When they came back, Sirius was asleep on Remus's bed, his nose pressed into Remus's jumper. Remus smiled and collected the papers from the floor, neatening them and looking them over himself. He glanced at James, "How much of this lot are we going to tell everybody at the first meeting?"

"I dunno," James answered, "I'm thinking we shouldn't tell them too much, we need to make sure they're not going to rat us out."

"As a rat," Peter said, "I take offense to the term."

Remus chuckled and James playfully punched Peter on the arm.

"A lot of these people are probably thinking it'd be cool to belong to a secret society," James continued on, "But they might not know exactly what it is they're getting into, or what we mean to do, you know? I think we need to makes sure they know before we go telling them everything we know about the Death Eaters and You Know Who. Especially before we say anything about who our informant is." James glanced at Sirius. "We gotta protect him best we can, you know?"

Remus nodded, "That's what I was thinking, too."

Peter asked, "Well how do we know they're not gonna rat us out?"

"We'll have to be careful about what we say, maybe plant a bunch of different stories, like control groups, and if any of the stories get out, then we'll know which group it was, at least, that's done it, and we can narrow it down from there," Remus suggested.

James raised an eyebrow, "Maybe you should be the leader."

"Me? Blimey, I think not!" Remus shook his head, "That's obviously you, Potter."

"I'm not a bloody leader! For Merlin's sake - Sirius said the same thing --"

"You are though, this was your idea," Peter said quickly chiming in. "You're the one that's gone and formed it, you're the one that's overseen the recruitment and everything. You're the leader!"

James shook his head.

Later that morning, just before noon, they woke Sirius up and wrapped him in the invisibility cloak and walked in a cluster, keeping Sirius in their midst so he wouldn't get bumped into mysteriously by anybody they passed in the halls, and made their way to the seventh floor corridor where Barnabus the Barmy was pictured dancing with his ballerina trolls. "Here we are," James said, standing before the wall that would become the door. He looked it over carefully, then took a deep breath. "Alright secret room. Here we go... We need a place for a secret meeting... a place for a secret meeting where McGonagall and Moody won't find us... a secret meeting place that will be big enough for thirty or so people..." And as he paced, the golden light split the wallpaper and outlined the door.

"I'll never not think that's amazing," came Sirius's voice from the air beside Remus.

The knob of the door popped out all three dimensional and James reached for it and pulled it open.

Inside was what looked a bit like an empty classroom. It was a long hall with shelves along one wall that held books on Defensive Magical Theory and all sorts of silver instruments similar to the ones that they'd all seen before in Dumbledore's office. There were little cushions around the shelves and several desks against the wall. The center of the room was wide open, like some sort of training space, and at the far end were large cabinets. James looked about, clutching his parchments. "Good job, room," he muttered, "It's like the room knew what sort of meeting we would be having," he added, running a finger over the spines of the books.

Sirius pulled the hood of the cloak down so it was just his head floating about in the air, disembodied, as he looked about, and Peter, turning to see the other side of the room, let out a squeak. "Bloody hell! Nearly gave me a heart attack, looking like that!"

Sirius grinned, "I'm the opposite of Nearly Headless Nick, you lot. Look at me! I'm Nothing But Head Sirius! WoOOoOooooo..."

Remus and James laughed but Peter was still looking startled and he stumbled away to look at the cabinets.

After they'd thoroughly investigated the room, found all sorts of dueling practice supplies and loads and loads of books about defensive tactics and strategy planning, Remus turned about to look at James. "So how do the others get in here?" Remus asked.

"I told them to wait by Barnabus and we'd let them in," James answered. He looked up at a great big clock that hung up over the doorway and he hurried over to the door, "Speaking of which, it's after noon so they should all be there now!"

James peeked through a peep-hole in the door (the room really had thought of everything, he marvelled) and his mouth split into a grin, "You lot, they're here. Sirius... mind your head."

"Oh right." Sirius laughed, "Don't need to be frightening anybody else. Except perhaps Frank. Guys, if there's anyway to keep Frank after..." his eyes glowed as he reached for the hood, "I'd bloody love giving him a good scare. It'd be an excellent prank."

"Mean," muttered Peter.

James laughed though and he said, "We are for sure making that happen, Sirius."

Once Sirius had tugged the cloak on over his head, James wrenched open the door and all the students that were milling about in the hall filed into the room, all marvelling over the spacious area they'd never known were there. "What is this place?" asked Marty Brown, her eyes wide as could be.

"This," said James, "Is the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix... Welcome to our first meeting."

Everyone looked about at one another... the air palpable with importance.