Halloween
The rest of the night, and the following morning were spent intensely reading. Peace and quiet for Remus, who'd volunteered to go with James while Sirius and Pete went to make good on Alexander Wilde's offer.
For some off reason, the eggs were the easiest part to secure, Remus still hadn't the faintest how Sirius managed to get 540 eggs inside the castle. Much less how he managed to fit them all inside their room, he just got back from class one day to find the heir of the noble Black House literally stepping on eggshells.
Remus convinced James to read aloud since there was only one book, "that way we can back and forth ideas as you read." Which worked for some reason.
The time-delay part of the charm was nailed down already when Sirius and Peter came back, Peter was rattled.
"I don't get it. He's so unsettling." Peter said about the Slytherin boy, and for once, Remus agreed with him.
"You wouldn't last more than an hour in one of my family functions." Sirius said it as he skipped over egg crates.
"He just knew what I was thinking. It was freaky." Pete kept going, he wasn't going to get over it for a while, for Remus' misfortune.
"I believe we'll be done with the spell just in time for dinner, lads." James pushed the book forward, having found just what they needed.
"And just in time, let's start Halloween on a good note tomorrow."
...
After the last trip to the library, Remus became the default compass for the navigation of Hogwarts after dark. The only problem was that he was particularly unfamiliar with the dungeons. He'd avoided them as much as possible during his walks, avoiding the chance of running into Snivellus, and he couldn't really smell his way to the room since it was all damp and they kept a lot of storage down there, the smells of every single thing at the same time was overwhelming, but Sirius seemed to know the way once they were down there.
Of course, that none of that was the biggest one of their problems at the moment. But rather trying to be as quiet as possible and drawing the least attention they could with a row of five hundred and forty eggs levitating in a line behind them. For some reason that was the best they could manage, and for another reason, perhaps divine intervention as far as Remus was concerned, they didn't cross one single soul, living or otherwise on their way below.
From a wall, a stone sculpture carved into the wall hissed. Making every boy under the invisibility cloak stop on their tracks. The snake wasn't really looking at them, but it coiled into somewhat of a circle, and revealed the entryway to the Slytherin common room.
"Pure-blood." Sirius uttered as silently as he could. James avoided everyone's eyes, like it was something you didn't talk about, and Remus would've ventured to say Peter didn't hear. The door opened to a little foyer, a tall fountain with a spiral staircase leading further below. Peter stayed next to the door, ushering the long row of levitating eggs until the last passed through. The others kept almost tripping to keep the cloak on while heading down.
The Slytherin common room was nothing like Remus expected. He was thinking something similar to a torture chamber, with chains and torture devises around, all enveloped in the wailing cries of their victims. But the room had a still beauty to it. Little moonlight came from the grand stained windows that led to the lake. It probably explained why most slytherins were so pale. There were portraits all around--sleeping, luckily, wizards and witches in regal robes and most with mean looks on their faces. At least three tables with a carved chess board on them. And more to Remus' attention, there was a portrait, one Sirius kept staring at from the second it came into sight.
Sharp cheekbones and a long face. Black hair pulled back into a complicated pattern Remus couldn't follow. She worse a dark robe, with lace up to her long neck. Her hands rested on a wand in her lap, black ivory carved with vines up to its handle. On her left hand, one single ring with a symbol Remus seemed faintly familiar with but he couldn't place it until he read the plaque in the frame--Walburga Black.
James was the first to react, placing a comforting hand of Sirius' shoulder, "alright there?"
That was enough to break Sirius from his trance, he shook his head, his hair took back it's rightful place framing his starry grin, "sorry for that. We've got things to do don't we?"
Five hundred and twenty eggs were flown and placed all about the Slytherin common room. Air mines, set to blow up as soon as anything but those who cast the spell moved close to them.
As for the twenty eggs that seemed unaccounted for, in a gesture of appreciation for the access to the common room given by Alexander, were all planted around Snivellus' bed.
Now it was just a matter of waiting. Waiting for morning, for breakfast, when the slytherins were going to be ambushed by a warhead of exploding eggs.
The boys couldn't bother to sleep at all that night, the room was filled with giggles and hopes, images of how grumpy Snape would arrive for breakfast. Peter even said he'd hoped to get Serena, and immediately switched to praying for not getting caught, because if he got Serena and she found out "you'd be a dead man, Peter. Not even the resurrection stone would be able to get you back."
...
They were the first ones down at breakfast. Suspicious on its own, but they were willing to risk it (James and Sirius were, Remus couldn't be bothered with worrying about it, he'd been most of the term in detention for not turning in homework, and Peter couldn't not tag along.
One Ravenclaw student, Abigail Quinn a sixth year, walked in with her face red and blushing. She was the first one there. The rest of Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor were quick to arrive, like normal. The Slytherin table was uncharacteristically empty.
"Did you hear?" Lily sat next to Remus, but she was loud enough for the others to be let in, "Someone set off eggs charmed to explode in the Slytherin common room. I hope you're not involved in that mean stuff Remus." She eyed the rest of his friends with that last sentence, like Potter and Black were corrupting him. She wasn't necessarily wrong.
"Why-ever would we engage in such thing?" Sirius was sharp witted, or a mouth. "For your information we believe in inter-house cooperation, my dear, dear, Mrs. Lily Evans."
"If you say so Black. For your sake I hope we don't lose any house point if who-ever is caught is a Gryffindor." She stared intently at the two of them again. Oh she was onto them. But the twitching faces of Narcissa and Bellatrix Black walking into the Great Hall was enough for Lily to know she had lost all of their attention, and the giggling started.
Remus could still hear the cracking of eggshell remains in the steps of Snivellus, it made him giddy with laughter. He glared at them all through breakfast, each time he looked at them they laughed a little louder.
Mary and Marlene seemed just as cheery as them, they sat close enough, for them to hear Lily give her lecture of how that's mean again.
Luckily for them, everyone seemed to be having a great laugh at it--not the Slytherin table.
Just before breakfast was served, Dumbledor, who would rarely be bothered to join the student body for meals, unlike other professors decided to give out a few words, most were an expected general tell-off, but "... I will remind you the school rules forbid any marauding in the castle, or any kind of wondering through the castle after curfew..."
"What's Marauding?" Pete was not as well read as Sirius, nor as quick to catch context as James, and not as unwilling to ask questions as Remus.
"A form of wondering," Sirius was quick to reply, "grosso modo, of course." The other three didn't get what grosso modo meant, to the simultaneous annoyance and amusement of the young Black heir, "what we were doing yesterday, you dumb blokes, we were marauding. We are the marauders." And a piece of history fell into place without any one of them knowing it just yet.
"Marauders." James savoured the word. "Nice ring to it," Remus chewed through his breakfast.
"It feels like we're organizing a crime gang." Oh Pete, ever scared.
"A prank gang!" Sirius corrected, raising his glass, one of those nasty habits, "Long prank the Marauders, may our spirits never die fellows!" With his cheeky Sirius Black grin that always made them join in.