The whispering never stopped.
Whenever James turned his head toward the murmuring voices, the students who had been gossiping about him would immediately fall silent.
But the moment he turned away, the whispers returned like flies—clinging, relentless—accompanied by a hundred pitying, curious, or gleeful glances that pricked his skin like needles.
His pace quickened.
Before long, he was running.
No matter how fast he moved, the mutters chased him—snickers, gasps, the faint chant of his humiliation spreading from one corner of Hogwarts to another.
Ignoring the shouts of his friends calling after him, James felt as if the entire world were staring, laughing, savoring his disaster, retelling the story over and over.
The whole school now knew: Potter, the pride of Gryffindor, had pissed himself in class.
His fame, once a source of pride—Quidditch prodigy, natural leader, future star—had never felt so worthless.
Now, if he could have vanished entirely, he would have.
He ran until he reached the open grounds beyond the castle.
The giant's hut—Hagrid's cabin—loomed in the distance, but James barely reached the edge of the field before collapsing, gasping for breath.
Lying flat on the grass, he stared blankly at the sky, half-tempted to quit Hogwarts entirely.
It was nearly half an hour before the sound of approaching footsteps jolted him from despair.
"…Sorry, James. This was all my fault."
Sirius's voice wavered with guilt.
Peter and Lupin stood behind him, watching with anxious faces.
"Don't worry," said Lupin softly. "Everyone makes mistakes. Give it a few days—people will forget."
His tone, calm and sincere, eased some of the fire in James's chest.
Peter nodded eagerly, grinning awkwardly.
"Yeah! It's no big deal. The professors all said it was an accident anyway. Nobody's losing House points or anything."
"They shouldn't lose points!" James snapped, his voice trembling with fury. "Because this was his fault. The stupid Slytherin set me up!"
The other three blinked in confusion.
James's tone rose to a near-scream.
"Why else would he be perfectly fine while we all drank the same potion and I ended up—like that? Peter must've been spotted when he switched the bottles! Snape knew—he planned the whole thing!"
None of them had considered that possibility before.
But once the idea was voiced, it took root.
The more they thought about it, the more likely it seemed—and slowly, each boy drew a sharp breath of realization.
Lupin felt it most keenly.
He remembered the paper airplane he'd sent to warn Snape—that uncanny moment when Snape had "accidentally" shifted, avoiding it completely as if by instinct.
At the time, Lupin had been sure the Slytherin was doomed for embarrassment.
But in a matter of minutes, everything had flipped. Snape had turned the challenge back on James, forced him to drink his own potion, and walked away untouched while James suffered a humiliation that no Hogwarts student would ever forget.
A trap, set and sprung in plain sight—and Snape had never even raised his voice.
No one spoke.
The heavy silence pressed down on them all.
And in the back of each mind lingered the image of those black, emotionless eyes.
That faint, contemptuous smirk.
Sirius broke first.
"We can't let him get away with this. He's just one bloke—we'll find a way to strike back."
There was a dangerous edge in his tone; witnessing James's misery hadn't softened him—it had only sharpened his hatred.
Lupin said nothing, torn between two loyalties.
Peter fidgeted, glancing nervously from face to face, desperate to disappear.
James, however, had gone eerily calm.
Every thought, every heartbeat, was devoted to one single plan: revenge.
"We can't beat him head-on," he muttered. "Not as we are. He's faster with spells, sharper. Even if we ganged up, we might not win."
"So what then?" Sirius demanded. "We just let it go?"
"Of course not." James's eyes flashed with a familiar confidence—almost madness.
"This Christmas holiday, I'm going home. And I'll bring back something—our family heirloom. With it, he won't stand a chance."
The color returned to his face as he spoke, his voice growing stronger.
That object—his family's "treasure"—a powerful magical item unique to the Potters. The more he thought about it, the more he believed in their victory.
"When the time comes, we strike together," he said fiercely. "We'll catch him completely off guard."
"Er… uh…"
Peter hesitated. Noticing their eyes turn toward him, he forced a nervous smile.
"Why don't we, um... focus on learning spells seriously too? That way, if anything goes wrong, we can at least run for it, right?"
"There'll be no failure this time," James said firmly. "You don't understand what that thing can do. With it, we'll win easily."
Lupin finally found his chance to speak.
He looked James in the eye, his voice low but steady.
"Even so, studying won't hurt us. Even if we beat Snape, there'll always be more Slytherins that need teaching a lesson. We can't rely on that relic every time, can we?"
James paused. Then, grudgingly, he smiled.
"All right, Moony. You always make sense."
The tension lifted.
Sirius exhaled, throwing an arm around James's shoulder on one side, Lupin on the other.
Their laughter rang a little too loud, a little too bright—but they all needed it.
The Marauders were back together, stronger than before.
They would rebuild their pride.
And as they reaffirmed the eternal creed of the Marauders—
"Never defeated, never humiliated—only plotting our next howling revenge."
somewhere far below them, the boy at the heart of their fury was utterly unconcerned.
For Snape, conflict with the Marauders was no surprise.
It was inevitable, the price of intertwining his path with Lily's.
He had anticipated it, planned around it, and saw no reason for alarm.
What truly mattered lay elsewhere.
And after several days of exploration across the castle's twisting corridors, he had finally uncovered the faint, shimmering trace of a room he'd dreamt of since arriving—
the Room of Requirement.
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