They landed in the dungeons at school, but it took a few moments for even Regulus to notice that, the place was so little traveled by the majority of students.

"Been a while since we've just landed out in the school like this," James said as he jumped to his feet first, already trying to jog to the first turn. "How far do you think we can go now?"

"Race you to our tower!" Sirius crowed, already taking off behind him.

Remus watched in only mild concern, expecting them to run face first into the barrier any second, but they actually took off around the corner with no signs of stopping, so turned to Peter curiously, "still got the map on you?"

The others were still begrudgingly getting to their feet in the cold, dark hallway. The empty torch brackets made the majority of them prefer getting up as far from the dark shadowy wall as they could. There weren't even any portraits down here to mark the gray stones, just a single lone statue of a dusty old elf with the book resting on its head. It was an oddity to them not to see the very ground covered in cobwebs and their footprints for as unused as this part of the castle must be, but the house-elves must come through and clean even here.

Peter and Remus knew quite well though this particular corridor and instead watched their friends progress, only Mrs. Noriss curled up in Filch's office was the other thing to do. Their little dots headed in a direct path past their potions class, up the stairs and right to the Entrance Hall, but stopped abruptly upon not being able to go higher up the grand staircase. Remus bit his lip and Peter didn't bother to hide a snicker as they both happily imagined those two falling on their butts despite the names only hovering in place now, circling a bit, and actually managing to go into the Great Hall and Firenze's class, but not onto the grounds or anywhere else, their footprints began a mad race right back here, taking different routes.

Then both abruptly vanished from the map.

Regulus clutched Peter's arm hard and Lily gasped, already turning to run and see what new horror had happened, but Remus casually caught her without looking up and Peter gently patted Regulus' shoulder while tapping his wand again.

"Wait for it," Remus said softly, and right as they all heard the clip clop of hooves, their names appeared back on the map, now with matching foot marks to track their paths again.

The two technically came skidding into view, one from each end of the hall at the same time, but while Padfoot tackled Remus to the ground and began barking excitedly, poor Prongs' hooves slid on the floor and did not recover from the last tight turn. He crashed into a wall with a bellow of frustration and abruptly changed back, even the pop sounded agitated for his loss.

Sirius changed back while still drunkenly laughing his victory and James could not deny joining in even just for the thrill of being able to run again back in their school. Sirius collapsed onto Remus, who was already pushing at him with a long ago perfected aggrieved look. "I will cut off your tail you arse!"

Sirius obligingly rolled off, but not without getting the last word in, taunting in a sing-song voice, "neither of you could catch me!"

Lily couldn't deny the smile she felt as Potter pounced on his friend and the two began wrestling like it was any other day in the common room even if she still wrapped her arms tight around herself and was glad there wasn't a bottle in either of their hands this time. She, Alice, and Remus continued to watch with mild interest.

Frank reached over and held his hand out for the map curiously, saying, "that's really clever, so you illegal idiots won't get caught right?"

"Yep," Peter nodded as he passed it along. Frank asked what spell's they'd had to combine and the likes to get such an effect and the two began swapping eagerly back and forth yet again the complex magic involved in this thing.

Regulus walked off with a look of lingering annoyance he didn't feel like explaining to anybody, but not for the Slytherin common room, just to the book. He didn't want Sirius to try doing that to him though as he put Potter in a headlock and didn't feel like explaining that, so he grabbed their departure instead.

James finally won when Sirius was caught off guard, pinning him with his own yell of victory while Sirius scowled and huffed, "great, because we really need more of those blighters in our life! Elf tails, house-elves don't even have tails!"

"Or a good story for that matter," James agreed as he bounded to his feet, already eyeing the others like he was begging someone to ask him for another romp around. Nobody obliged, and he offered Sirius a hand up with a pout.

Ron was okay at least, though Lily was still grimacing with distaste as she knew she probably should still be in the hospital wing as well, she still felt more exhausted than she reasonably should have after resting and a good meal.

The boys kept up their banter though, and none of them actually felt like slipping off for once despite the fact they had the space to do so as the Marauders kept the ringer of attention once more, even in a smaller crowd than usual.

"Oh but Prongs, mine certainly will in the future if you remember!" Sirius grandly reminded. "The epic tale of my arse getting booted, not a finer story could be told!"

"Ah, to right," James nodded pragmatically. "Perhaps Harry will start following Kreacher around and badger him for that this whole chapter!"

"Only if he ends it with a nice little-" Sirius cut himself off before he could finish, a sort of half guilty look at Regulus and Evans. He'd been going to finish with a good poison to his hateful creature, but didn't want to get either riled up in any way at him right now, so abruptly changed to, "treat for the epic quest, as all great stories deserve."

He couldn't bring himself to stop there though and went into a reasonably good attempt at the bull-frog voice, exaggeratedly implying all that had transpired on the grand night involving mormon ninjas and concubines, not seeming to notice that despite his promise to Regulus about not wishing the house-elf dead, he wasn't exactly helping. He was starting to look a little green as he stubbornly kept reading, even when mention of a Quidditch game was approaching, and it wasn't because McLaggen would be in Ron's place.

Peter shot James a pleading look to shut him up, and Prongs mercifully decided to sacrifice another secret of theirs to oblige.

"Watch this," James whispered for the others before winking at Remus.

He grinned and understood at once, creeping up behind Sirius and snatching him up around the waist, lifting him off his feet. He made that squeal of surprise James had once issued from his throat as Prongs shot his wand at the currently present house-elf and said, "tergeo!"

The dust from the statue vanished, the head opened, and Sirius struggled and started swearing in protest as he realized what was about to happen before Remus still dropped him down and slammed it back shut.

They all distantly heard the thump as he landed at the bottom, but it came out much softer than it really should have, considering he shouldn't have been able to 'fit' in there at all.

"What is that?" Alice asked with delight, bending down to inspect the statue more closely. Now that it was clean, they could all see the Hogwarts crest on the tea towel and the name Hooky, the First House-Elf, inscribed at the base.

"Another secret entrance out of the school," Remus beamed as he held his hands firmly on the ears. "Leads to Hogsmeade station, lets out at a trash can down there. It's thanks to Evans we actually found this one."

"Really?" She asked, sure they were pulling her leg.

"Oh yeah," James nodded enthusiastically. "I was trying to talk to you one day and followed you down here while you were going to check on one of your potions, you threatened to curse me as usual so we went exploring the rest of the dungeons instead."

"It was the first secret entrance we accidentally found, not counting mine under the tree," Remus agreed fondly as muffled shouts began below his hands. "Say the magic word!" He raised his voice slightly.

Quite a few words came up that were not magically related.

"Peter's the one who found it actually," James continued with a grin. "He noticed how clean the rest of this place still was, all but the statue. Why would the elves leave it to get dirty and nothing else?"

"You four really are something else," Frank said in wonderment.

"I'd keep going if I were you," Remus shot at Regulus though he was hardly straining keeping the head down. The other Black barely heard he was still laughing so hard, tears or mirth still visible. "Surely you agree this is better for everyone's sanity?"

He struggled to get his breath back and obligingly did so.

It wasn't hard to concentrate, he almost wished Harry had ditched a Quidditch game for the first time in his life just to follow Malfoy he was so very curious what could be going on there even if he was drawing a blank what he could be off doing.

Even Sirius went quiet as Harry got injured during the game thanks to that pompous idiot of a player McLaggen, hitting him with a Beater's bat when that wasn't even the position he was supposed to be in! He woke up in the Hospital Wing, and came up with quite a brilliant plan thanks to past experience reminding him he did have a way to figure out what Malfoy was up to, by using an old servant of his, one he now had access to in his own house-elf.

Regulus pursed his lips with distaste at the idea of Harry using Kreacher like this. It was definitely something Sirius might have done, and his brother laughing loudly and falling back down the slide with another soft thump proved as much. He wished Harry would at least ask the elf if he'd be okay doing it, or just using Dobby who came along with the call and willingly volunteered.

It still bothered him greatly what his beloved friend for so many years had done to Sirius, but in some ways he just couldn't hate him for it. His house-elf had only ever been kind to him even when Mum and Dad weren't in the mood to acknowledge him and Sirius was at school, maybe if Sirius would ever show the time of day to anyone else he'd stop getting everybody so mad at him all the time!

He only realized how deeply frustrated his voice had gotten at the whole debacle when he got close to the last sentence and had no answer for himself. Peter gave him a friendly nudge and a sympathetic smile as he offered, "you don't have to finish, hell I'm sure we all wouldn't mind a bit of a break in this place if you didn't. Sirius isn't suffocating down there or anything."

The muffled protest was still shouting of betrayals and revenge made that obvious enough. Tempting as the offer was though, he shook his head and said, "no thank you, I really want to know what Malfoy's up to, and this is a good strategy. I just hope Harry isn't making the same mistake as Sirius once did and doesn't get hurt because of it."

They all watched him in uneasy silence for a moment, though Sirius may not have heard as he was still yelling loud enough to sort of make his point. Kreacher already had a nasty habit of making people's lives worse off in this future, and he twisted his fingers in miserable hope that this time his house-elf would show he could do some real good rather than causing Harry more trouble that would inevitably fall on them.