The days rolled into May, and it was just after the Easter break, when everyone was having had a refreshing two weeks off, roaming the castle halls and having fun around the Hogwarts grounds. It was also a pretty good time for the Marauders to cause a huge scene, or at least plan one of them, and they didn't miss an opportunity.
They had at first started with something general and quite small, tampering with gravity, or food, or the big clock tower. Then, they went for something more specific, something a lot smaller in scale to their other pranks, but definitely going for vengeance. It was two guesses who it was against, and I was sure that anybody in the castle would only need one.
Snape had insulted Peter and Remus once in the late April, in the library, nothing major, but it was a call for drastic action. Sirius and James had taken more offence than the two boys, and just had to take it upon themselves to plan something.
It turned out that on the Sunday night, the day before school started on the Monday, all the boys needed was some items from the greenhouses, the invisibility cloak, and a someone to know the Slytherin common room password. James had taken a lot of inspiration from Lily's muggle story, of the time when everyone in her primary school decided that itching powder was a great form of attack.
I was woken up by the annoying noise of birds making loud noises right outside the dormitory window, and the sun infiltrating through the curtains and blinding me. I sat up straight in bed and ran a hand through my hair, it was very bright in the mornings, and with the addition of Alice's curtains being drawn open by the girl herself, it was already going to be a very long Monday.
Even without Mary's constant complaints of very little toothpaste being left.
It was a strangely peaceful walk to the Great Hall for breakfast with Marlene and Lily, the other girls following behind us, talking about lessons or boys. That bit got quite annoying, but I couldn't do anything to stop it, they wasn't exactly harming anyone, talking about other people in a positive - or at least not rude - way.
The only person to also be annoyed by this topic was Lily, who frowned every time a certain glasses wearing egotistic was mentioned.
Sitting at the Gryffindor table, eating breakfast and drinking orange juice was generally calm, and a usual schedule. That was until four boys who called themselves the Marauders, stumbled in, giggling like a bunch of schoolgirls and whispering to each other. "Hello Lilyflower, how are you doing this fine morning?" James said cheerfully.
"What have you done this time?" Lily asked, accusing. James gasped, a hand on his heart. It seemed that we didn't need to find out by his words, or anyone else's, because the subject of the boys whispers walked in, his head hung low.
Severus Snape never liked to draw too much attention to himself, sticking to being snarky in the side-lines and the shadows, so when he walked in, jogging slightly towards the teachers and scratching his arms every few seconds, and twitching, he drew a lot of attention.
I turned to the boys, a small smirk on my face, it was obvious what they had done, now that I reflected on a previous conversation. When they talked about the itching prank, I thought it was a lowly threat but, they proved me wrong yet again. "You did this didn't you?" I whispered to Sirius, who was sat next to me, buttering his toast. Sirius shrugged, "Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies."
Slughorn stood up in front of one of his favourite students, leaning forward to actually hear the boy speak. Snape was finally asked to remove his greasy hair from in front of his eyes and as he did, everyone who could see the boy, gasped. Snape heard those gasps and quickly covered his face again, Slughorn shaking his head and leading the boy out of the Great Hall and to, presumably, the hospital wing.
As Snape walked out, I caught a quick glimpse of his face as he glared at the Marauders, obviously already speculating who caused this. I widened my eyes and sat quiet for a moment before asking the boys, "Did you know he was allergic?" Sirius and James laughed, Remus shook his head and Peter raised in eyebrows in shock, they all obviously had no idea.
Lily stood up, looking in the direction that Snape and Slughorn had just walked out and turning to the boys, "If I find out you did this, I swear, I'll hex you so far into the future that a time turner won't be able to find you." She then walked out, followed by Marlene who was obviously going to either calm her down or be moral support. "She'll miss the first lesson if she's lucky," Peter said.
Aafiya stood up, looking at her watch, "Don't you mean unlucky?" Peter shook his head and took a bite of his cereal, "Nope." Aafiya rolled her eyes and walked out of the Great Hall for her first lesson - Defence Against the Dark Arts - not wanting to be late. "Should we follow her?" Alice asked, her eyes darting between the door and the rest of us so that it looked like a ping pong match going on in front of her.
Remus stood up, also looking at his watch and calculating how much time we had left, Peter following suite. Sirius and James still sat down, drinking their pumpkin juice, clearly not bothering if they were going to be late or not, even though half of the students in the Great Hall, and the teachers, were now walking to their lessons. "When have we ever cared about being late?" the black haired boy said casually.
Alice thought the opposite as she stood up and walked out of the Great Hall, I decided to follow her, even though the Marauders were shouting at me to walk with them. "Whoever pulled that joke on Snape deserves to be given a weeks detention, sure it may have been funny at first but, he was allergic, they need to do their research."
We both knew, me more than her, that they would definitely will get at least one detention, because knowing those four, they wouldn't be very good at hiding the fact that it was them who pulled the prank.
The beginning ten minutes of Defence was generally calm, as it always is before the storm, and all storms come in different shapes and sizes. This particular storm came in the shape of the Marauders, bursting into the classroom, the door slamming on the side, all four of them taking seats at the back.
"Nice of you to join us boys, ten points from Gryffindor, and a further five for the disruption," the Professor said. I heard Lily scoff from a row away and I rolled my eyes, it was okay if they got a punishment for themselves, like a detention, but when they lost house points, it took a toll on the rest of our house and diminished our chances of winning the House Cup.
So far, in my experience in Hogwarts, Gryffindor had won two out of three Cups and this year, it was certainly going to Ravenclaw. They gained about fifty points last week, the boys losing equally that in one day.
After lessons of learning about Werewolves, which made everyone who knew about Remus appear to be a lot more attentive to. There was a few scenarios where the boys made jokes about it and answered questions with, "Well, isn't a werewolf a kind of sexy secret?" (guess who), this made the boy's ears burn red.
But there were other occasions when people were accusing werewolves and Lily snapped. "Did you not hear the Professor? Werewolves have no control on the full moon and I'm sure that most werewolves genuinely did not choose to become one," Lily said, and she was right, as always.
Walking out of the lesson was very chaotic, there was a mixture of responses coming from everyone in the classroom, some defending them, some accusing them. Remus had kept very quiet during the whole ordeal, only answering questions he was asked, or talking to Mary, whom he was sat next to, about the homework. I felt sorry for Remus, even though he had given us clear instructions on multiple occasions to not pity him.
"Are you alright Moony?" I asked as we made our way up to Arithmancy, it was the only lesson that we had together that wasn't with the other boys. The only other people in our house in our year doing this subject was Andre and Lily, who also, for some reason, did Muggle Studies. The scarred boy smiled at the stupid nickname we had given him and he nodded shakily.
"It was never going to be an easy topic to learn, but I'm getting through it," he replied.
It turned out that Arithmancy was boring, it had been since the start of third year, so there was nothing new, but this year was even worse. The Professor had been grilling us since the day after the winter break, that exams were looming ever closer and if we wanted to pass our O.W.Ls we would need to focus a lot more this year.
That being said, neither myself nor Remus wanted to pursue the subject after fifth year, when we could choose the subjects to drop. Even if Remus was talented and had a natural Arithmancy brain, he found the subject useless to the fact that he wanted to be a teacher of either Defence or Charms.
Well, that and the fact that every time I asked him, he would be very depressing and say that nobody in their right mind would ever hire a werewolf, and he would be jobless and penniless for the rest of his life. And, whenever he said such things, it made me quiet, because I hated to say that he was probably right.