"Ugh! I can't believe Rose." James groaned as he wandered into detention, late.

"Wonderful of you to join us, Prongs." Remus muttered, not looking up from his 500 lines of 'I will not prank the entire school again'.

"What's up with Rose, Prongs?" Peter asked, glad that he could look anywhere apart from his handwriting. The words were starting to make his head swim.

"She wouldn't let me try out for the Quidditch team." James said, slumping in his chair at the front of the class. "She wouldn't even let me show her how well I can fly."

"Tooting your own horn there a bit, Prongs." Sirius said, abandoning his lines. "I've seen you flying. You're nothing special."

"Oh shut up Padfoot." James turned around in his chair to face the three other Marauders, all focused on their lines to some extent. "None of you seem to care much about my plight."

"Your plight isn't worth caring about." Peter said candidly. Remus clicked his fingers and pointed at Peter.

"Yup. Now get on with your lines." He looked up from his parchment for a fleeting second before returning his attention to the looping, small handwriting that was slowly covering the page. "Otherwise we'll all be staying here until midnight."

"Lines are on the board, Prongs."

"You're one to talk, you're not writing."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "That's because I've finished."

"No you haven't."

"Yes I have, Wormtail."

"No, you haven't." Peter shrugged and put his quill down. "I'm good with numbers, Padfoot, and you've only written roughly 300 or 320 lines, not 500."

Sirius groaned and picked his quill back up. "Fine."

"You're so childish."

"Says the person who is a literal child. In size and everything."

Peter opened his mouth to snap at Sirius before something went out in his eyes and he closed his mouth and looked down at his shoes. There was silence in the room apart from the scratch of quills. A small sniffle drew the Marauders' attention back to Peter, who was trying not to cry.

"Hey, Wormtail, I'm really sorry." Sirius said. "I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine." Peter mumbled, picking up his quill.

"But-"

"I said it's fine, Sirius." Sirius closed his mouth and looked back at his scroll. After another burst of silence, James sighed and threw down his quill.

"I give up!"

"Give up now and we're all stuck here until tomorrow."

"So?"

"So, you'll be depriving us all of sleep."

"Who cares, me and Sirius can never sleep anyway."

"Yes but I don't know if you've realised this, James," James looked to the side at the use of his name rather than his nickname, "You and Sirius aren't all the Marauders. We're a democracy. One person effects everyone."

"So keep writing, Prongs." Peter simplified, over his crying spell.

"Why should I?"

"Because you were the one who got us into this mess in the first place." Remus snapped, slamming his quill down on his desk. "You're the one who said we were going to prank people. You're the one who wanted a detention. So keep living out your detention, Prongs. Otherwise we're all stuck here. For the rest of the night. And I don't want that to happen." Remus added under his breath.

James rolled his eyes but picked up his quill and started writing. None of the Marauders talked on the way back to the dorm that night.

I wrote this thing in record time. That's why it's so bad, ha ha *finger guns*. Yeah, um, my mental health's not that decent and my coping mechanism is being self-deprecating so... Anyway, I was thinking of maybe putting this book on hold when I get to Chapter 30 in favour of writing the final installment in the YNATFILWM trilogy. Um, what do you Kings, Queens and Non-binary Royalty think? Because this story's gonna be pretty long, I think. Or it will contain some masterful time skips.
Bye,
Blaize