Chapter 1
James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were under the cloak, heading back from setting up a prank when they heard voices coming from the Astronomy tower, two people were being sent away from prefects, and if Remus wasn’t mistaken, the prefects were Lily and Sirius’s brother, Regulus.
“Come on,” Sirius said, moving towards the tower, “I want to make sure he doesn't try something.” Remus was certain that Regulus wouldn’t, all the prefects could easily figure out the schedule and know who did anything, but Sirius was always strange when it came to his family so the three of them didn’t argue and followed.
They reached the top of the tower just in time to hear Lily say, “I'm assuming this is about this morning.”
They exchanged a look, Was she referring to what happened in potions?
"Professor Slughorn wasn't particularly interested in telling us what happened," Regulus says.
Why did Regulus care? As far as Remus knew from Sirius, he just cared about blood purity and pleasing his parents. Was he hoping to enact some sort of revenge?
"No, I guess he might not love the idea of telling his students all about a fight he didn't notice was happening until there was yelling." Why was she actually answering him? "Marlene picked a fight with Mulciber, which she said was pretty easy,” Lily almost made it sound as if Marlene was aiming for a fight, “He didn't seem all that interested in raising his voice, but that makes sense to me, seeing as we were in class with his Head of House. So they argued really quietly for a while, and by that point all the students knew something was going on. Sophia Warrington tried to shut it down, but she did that by insulting Marlene, so obviously that accomplished nothing, and I told her so—Warrington's probably annoyed with me now. Erm, that was when Potter got involved."
Remus glanced at James trying to gauge his reaction. Though as one of the most popular people in Gryffindor house, he probably was used to being talked about.
"How so?" Regulus asked. He definitely cared way too much about what had happened.
"He said Mulciber should probably put down the knife. I don't think he realized he was vaguely aiming it in Marlene's direction—he was just kind of gesturing with it. But once Potter pointed it out, Marlene grabbed Mulciber's wrist and told him that if he was so—I think the word she used was 'butthurt'—he could put down the knife and they'd settle it later like adults. But that was definitely a distraction maneuver, because as soon as he agreed to a duel, she let go and stuffed nettles down his robes."
"Were those part of your potion?" Definitely not an innocent question. Was he trying to get revenge on Marlene? And Lily was helping him by giving him information?
"Er, no," Lily said shifting into a more deliberate posture, "Sirius snuck into the ingredients cupboard while Potter was talking and dropped them next to Marlene." Was she worried about talking about Sirius with Regulus?
He looked at Sirius, but Sirius just looked kind of confused.
"So other Gryffindors are getting involved of their own volition," Regulus said. Involved in what?
He and James exchanged a look, what was Lily mixed up in and what had they accidentally stumbled into?
Regulus continued, "Do you think that'll push them to start taking action on their own, or will we need to set more of a precedent first?" Remus certainly didn’t miss the use of the word we. Whatever it was, Regulus and Lily were in it together.
"A year ago, I would've said that was more than enough, but..." She shrugs. "I don't know anymore. Potter's calmed down this year. A little. He might need more of a push, and..." Why were they trying to get James to cause trouble?
"And the others won't do anything without him?" Regulus asks.
"Well, Peter definitely won't, Sirius probably won't, and Remus claims this is the most peaceful year of his life and he'd kind of like to keep it that way.” All true things.
"I'm sure we can give them a crusade worthy of their spontaneous participation," Regulus says. "It's not as if they're absolutely necessary. They just have a way of garnering everyone's attention."
He exchanged another glance with James, they seemed to be trying to use the Marauders as tools.
"Oh, I'm well aware," Lily says. "We can do a crusade. Marlene and I are trying to get our friend Alice—Fortescue—to take on the seventh-years." Or maybe not only the Marauders.
"What's the likelihood?" Regulus asked.
"It's complicated by the fact that we're not actually telling her anything about Dark Arts, because she's very openly against them, but she likes the idea of striking back. Leaving Hogwarts better than she found it."
This time, James and Remus’s look was more frantic, Lily, Regulus, and Dark Arts made absolutely no sense!
"Will that work on other people too?" He was still reeling from the Dark Arts revelation.
"Of course." Were Lily and Regulus trying to massively manipulate Gryffindors? Or was this a very strange dream?
They got back to the dorm and stared at each other for a minute.
James spoke first, “Does anyone have any idea what that was?”
Peter said hesitantly, “It sounded like Regulus was trying to stir something up and was using Lily to do it.”
“Marlene as well,” James said.
“I’m certain that's not true,” Sirius said, “Walburga would never let him work together with a muggleborn on anything.”
“I was slightly more concerned about the discussion of Dark Arts,” Remus added.
They turned to look at him.
“I suppose that is worrisome,” James said.
But Sirius scoffed, “I wouldn’t be too concerned, she is a muggleborn so even if he has introduced her to Dark Arts they would never let her into the network so she would not be mixed up in anything bad like blood magic.”
“Network?” Peter asked, “What network?”
Sirius looked from face to face, “You know, the Dark Network.” When they remained silent he continued with, “Forget I said anything.”
The other three Marauders exchanged a glance, “What is the Dark Network?” James asked hesitantly.
Sirius paused for a moment as though trying to choose between telling and saying nothing, “The Dark Network is just all the… people who practice the Arts in England.”
“Like your family?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” Sirius replied, not meeting anyones gaze.
Everyone seemed ready to drop the subject but Remus had one more question, “Should we tell anyone what we heard?”
“I don’t think so,” James said, “we should just observe and see what happens.”
They agreed and went to sleep, the next morning's rigged water balloons would be worth the sleep.