Work Text:
“WHAT IN MERLIN’S NAME ARE YOU FOUR DOING!?”
It started as a joke, and it’s entirely Peter’s fault.
The four of them were lounging in their dorm, going—as they do every first of the month—over the Hogwarts rule book. Remus and Sirius were sharing Sirius’ bed, Sirius laying against Remus’ chest, each of them holding up their own copy of the Hogwarts rule book. James was resting with his lower half on his bed and his upper half off the bed, reading the book with his world upside down. Peter was sitting criss-crossed on the floor between Sirius and James’ bed, head bowed close to the book and his back hunched uncomfortably.
You might be wondering why they read the Hogwarts rule book every first of the month.
Loopholes. Or, as James Fleamont Potter calls it, “windows to our mischief.”
Nobody else approves of this saying, so the rest call in loopholes.
They were winding up for another successful month (their last loophole was found in November, when they found out that it’s not technically against the rules to mess with the charms on the moving stairs and made a whole group of Hufflepuff’s and Slytherin’s late to Charms) when, suddenly, Peter gasped loudly and stood sharply.
“What!?” James exclaimed as he scrambled to right himself, only succeeding in falling off the bed head-first.
Peter hurried over to Remus and Sirius, who were both on alert, too. Peter sank down onto the edge of the bed and pointed furiously at the page.
James muttered, “Thanks for the help,” once he got himself onto his feet, to which Sirius stuck his tongue out at him, then turned his head back to the book.
“‘Students may not be out of bed after curfew. Curfew is 9 o’clock for years first through fourth and 10 o’clock for years fifth through seventh,’” Peter read proudly.
“I don’t get it, what loophole is there?” James asked as he sat beside the tangle of limbs that is Sirius and Remus.
“‘Students may not be out of bed,’” Peter repeated, then emphasized, "Bed.”
“No,” Remus whispered as understanding dawned on him.
“W–Wait, I don’t get it,” James stammered.
Sirius suddenly gasped, then grasped Peter’s face and planted sloppy, wet kisses onto both his cheeks, to which Peter made fake gagging noises at.
“Wormtail, you are a genius!” he yelled.
“Can we back up?” James pleaded.
“Prongs!” Sirius turned on James and grabbed his hands. “If we can get our beds out into the corridor–”
James gasped.
“–then we can be in our beds after curfew!”
James began to grin widely.
“This is a terrible idea.”
They did it anyway.
Given the fact that the rule states that “students may not be out of bed,” and does not specify whether or not it has to be their bed, they decide to bring only one bed down. The first time they attempted it, a few days after the first of March, they woke half the tower when Peter’s Wingardium Leviosa spell failed and sends the bed to the floor.
They barely got the bed back into the dorm before students began to trickle out, and although many blamed the Marauders, there was no proof.
The second time they tried it, after perfecting Wingardium Leviosa on increasingly bigger things (Fabian Prewett stared confusingly at Remus when he saw him levitating a boulder way bigger than their beds), they’re caught by Frank Longbottom, who asked no questions but told them not to get themselves killed before sending them back to bed, stupid Head Boy that he is.
The third time they tried, they did it perfectly. At least until all four of them got onto the bed and the spell failed. Here, they were almost caught by Filch, but thank the Potter’s for the Cloak of Invisibility and Remus’ great skill at shrinking things.
After that, they decided to use two beds. Peter and James shared one and Sirius and Remus, saps that they are, shared the other.
The fourth time went off without a hitch.
They got down to the lawn and conducted races across it on the beds one at a time. The overall champion was James, but coming in second was Remus, then Peter, then Sirius, who pouted the whole way back to the castle.
The fifth time also went well, save for the almost run-in with Rubeus Hagrid, the gamekeeper at Hogwarts. Thank the Potter’s again for the Cloak of Invisibility and Remus’ great skill at shrinking things.
The sixth time, they decide to get a little riskier. Rather than conducting races on the open, sprawling grounds of Hogwarts, they decided to do it in the seventh-floor corridor where the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach trolls to do ballet hung.
They have no run-ins this time, though, and they get back to the Gryffindor common room laughing and hanging off each other’s shoulders. They then shut up when they entered the common room and saw Alice Fortescue and Mary Macdonald deep in conversation beside the fire.
They all stared at each other for a long moment before the boys slowly and quietly retreated up to their dorm.
The seventh time they go out, they end up racing in the Transfiguration corridor.
“Alright, alright,” Peter whispered as he climbed down from the floating bed, Remus doing the same on the other end of the hallway. Once Remus was effectively down, his cane having been used as leverage so that he could safely make it to the floor, Sirius zoomed back across the hall.
“On my count,” Peter whispered to Sirius and James, who were crouched determinedly on their respective beds. Peter took several steps back, then began to count back from three. “Three… two… one!”
Sirius and James took off, Peter rushing after them. They got to Remus before him, of course.
“Sirius won,” Remus said once Sirius and James climbed down from their beds.
“Damn it!” James cursed as he stomped his foot.
Sirius, the absolutely mature young man he is, stuck out his tongue at James, who, equally mature, did the same thing back.
This of course led into the two of them squabbling on the stone floor as Peter helped Remus onto the bed, then climbed onto the other bed.
“Go to the other end, you sore loser,” Remus whispered.
Then, horrifyingly, a door in the adjacent corridor opened.
“Shit!” James cursed as he and Sirius sprung up.
“Cloak, Cloak!” Sirius whispered furiously. “James, where is the Cloak?”
James, who had been furiously searching his pockets, looked up with a dejected look on his face.
“I don’t have it.”
“WHAT!?”
Peter practically heard whoever is out in the corridor turn on their heel and begin to march in their direction.
“Get on the bed! Get on the bed!” Peter exclaims in a hushed whisper.
Sirius and James make a dash to the beds. Peter grasped James’ arm and hauled him onto the bed, Remus doing the same with Sirius.
“We gotta go!” Peter said, wand in his hand, but then he heard the familiar click clack of heels and knew they were screwed.
Professor McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor House, stood at the end of the corridor in her nightdress.
Peter imagined that the four of them looked quite like fish caught out of water.
—
“WHAT IN MERLIN’S NAME ARE YOU FOUR DOING!?”
Professor McGonagall begins to march towards them, arms swinging shortly at her sides as her robe billows behind her.
“I have the rule book,” Sirius whispers over to Peter and James, and when the two turn, Sirius does, indeed, have the rule book in his hands.
At least he was smart enough to bring it in case something exactly like this happened.
McGonagall stops several feet in front of them, hands on her hips and mouth gaping.
Peter waves his wand pathetically and the bed thumps onto the floor, nearly jostling him and James off. Beside them, Remus does the same, although his bed floats gracefully to the floor.
“Why— Never in my— of all the things— completely—”
The four of them wait, heads low and extremely guilty expressions on their faces, for McGonagall to find her words.
It takes longer than you would think.
Finally, finally, McGonagall asks simple and straightforward;
“What?”
In perhaps the most exasperated tone of voice any of them have ever heard.
“We’re racing,” James supplies.
It takes another long moment for McGonagall to find her words.
“Why?”
“It’s fun,” Sirius says with a grin.
“Detention,” McGonagall says at once. “Detention for all of you. Two– no, three weeks, in my office every afternoon of the school-week–”
“Actually!” Sirius exclaims as he raises the book high above his head, and okay, they had planned for this, but also, now is not the time. “We’re not breaking any rules.”
McGonagall, having changed the wording of rules at least fifty times since the four of them joined Hogwarts, breathes in deeply through her nose, exhales through her mouth, then places her hands on her hips once more.
“Pray tell, Mister Black, how you are not breaking any rules.”
Sirius crawls to the end of the bed and holds out the book, where there’s a bookmark sticking out, and Peter knows the passage he pointed out so many weeks ago is highlighted.
Wordlessly, McGonagall steps forward and takes the book. She opens to the bookmarked page, and the four of them watch in the dim lighting as her eyes rove back and forth on the page. At one point, she adjusts her glasses; like a Pavlov effect, James does the same.
McGonagall breathes very deeply for several long minutes.
Remus thinks that if she didn’t have to keep up some sort of decorum as a Professor, she’d be saying she hates all four of them. He knows that’s not true, though.
“As you can see, Professor,” begins Sirius, who has elected to lay on his stomach with his arms on the footboard of the bed with his head propped on top of them and his feet kicking back and forth in the air, “we’re technically not breaking any rules. The rule, see, says that ‘Students may not be out of bed after curfew.’”
“And we’re not out of bed, mhm,” James says with a brisk nod of his head.
McGonagall snaps the book shut and hands it back over to Sirius, who grins delightfully. However, then McGonagall repeats, “Detention.”
“What!?” Sirius exclaims as he sits up quickly, electing to sit criss-crossed this time, a giant pout on his face. “Professor, we’re not breaking any rules! You saw it, right!?” Sirius opens the book up again and turns it around to face McGonagall, the upper half of his body hanging off the end of the bed as he strains to get the book closer to McGonagall.
Remus finally moves, though only to hold Sirius’ shoulder and make sure he doesn’t fall.
“Hm,” McGonagall hums thoughtfully. After a long moment, she says, “By the end of next week, I would like an opinionated essay on whether finding loopholes in the Hogwarts Rule Book and exploiting them are good or bad. I would like each of them to be different. No copying. Ten points from Gryffindor for each of you, now go back up to your dorms, take the beds, and never do this again.”
It’s the best they’re gonna get and they know it, so they solemnly follow Professor McGonagall’s instructions and, after shrinking the beds, trudge back up to the Gryffindor dorm.
“‘Never do this again,’ as if we’ll even be able to, since I’m sure she’s going to Dumbledore right now to inform him that another rule needs to be reworded because of us,” Sirius grumbles as he flops face-first onto his bed, his legs hanging off.
Remus laughs as he takes the beds from his pockets and sets them where they’re supposed to be, where there are giant bed-outlines made of dust.
“Okay, but that was fun while it lasted,” Peter says as he sits down on his bed.
James grins wickedly.
“I wish we got to argue about the rule more,” he says.
Sirius laughs into his bedsheets, and then James is laughing, then Peter and Remus join, and once they start, they find it quite difficult to stop.