The usual disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all of this, except the stuff I made up. Get it? Got it? Good.

Secrets of Hogwarts Chapter 7: Revelation and Recognition

            After the incident in the Great Hall, things were mostly normal. As the bell rang, signaling the end of Transfiguration, Harry prepared to leave with the rest of the Gryffindors, when Professor McGonagall called him to the front of the room.

            "Potter, the Headmaster wants to have a word with you. He's in his office." She walked out the room as Harry's insides turned to water. There could be only one reason why Dumbledore would want to see him…he knew about the prank.

            Harry's feet slowly moved him towards Dumbledore's office. On the way, as he passed the statue of Cadia the Cute (A/N: Hi again sweetheart! I love you!), he suddenly felt a need to have some allies with him. He tapped the Marauders crest (inadvertently opening the secret drawer) and said, "Moony, Padfoot, Prongs."

            James, Remus, and Sirius popped into view. "Hi Beaky! What's up?"

            Harry sighed. "Dumbledore knows. He wants to see me in his office." The apparitions were visibly shocked.

            "How could he know?" Sirius demanded. Harry shrugged, but James got an odd look on his face.

            "You know how he knows, Padfoot." Sirius realized and nodded. Harry was, of course, confused.

            "What do you mean, Dad?"

            "I'm not going to tell you, son. Let's just go see what it is that Dumbledore wants, ok?" The apparitions floated off. Harry followed them soon after, wondering what his father meant. He actually passed the stone gargoyle at first, then had to turn around and come back. A quick "Lemon drop!" opened the passage to Dumbledore's study. Harry climbed the stairs slowly, the apparitions right behind him. He knocked on Dumbledore's door, questions still whirling through his head.    

            The door swung open, revealing the familiar sights of Dumbledore's study. Fawkes the phoenix was resting in his usual space. The former headmasters and headmistresses were wide-awake in their portraits. Dumbledore looked up as Harry entered the room.

            "Harry! So nice to see you…and I see you've brought most of your partners in crime," he said, his eyes twinkling merrily.

            Harry sort of stared at him in shock. Then he turned to the apparitions, who actually seemed to be blushing. "He knows?"

            "He didn't at first, Beaky." James replied. "I don't think it was until we came to him to ask permission to leave you this gift that he knew about the Marauders at all. Of course, we had to level with him after that…fortunately, we were out of school and beyond his jurisdiction." He smiled and looked at Dumbledore.

            "That's right, Harry…or should I say Beaky?" Dumbledore cut in, smiling. "I could tell from the beginning, when Professor Snape burst into the Great Hall with his…shall we say, engorged proboscis (The apparitional Marauders tried in vain to hide their chuckles), that you had found your father's secret. I must admit, your pranks were inspired…Marauder material all the way."

            "That's what I said, sir." James said. "I always knew that he'd follow in my footsteps one day." Dumbledore smiled, then turned to Harry.

            "Harry, what I said in the Great Hall isn't quite true. Your father and his friends did try to play tricks on me, as Sirius mentioned this morning. However, you are the first to play a prank on me that I wasn't able to stop in time. As a result…" Harry gulped. He was sure this was going to be terrible, but Dumbledore merely kept smiling.  "I think I'll keep the results private until dinner. Go on to the rest of your classes, Harry. I'd like to speak with your fellow Marauders."

            Harry nodded and walked out of the room, not hearing anything Dumbledore and the apparitions were saying. He was too busy worrying about what would happen at dinner. He shared his fear with Ron and Hermione at lunchtime. Being the rest of the new Marauders, they were understandably worried as well.

            "Oh no…we could get detention, or…" Hermione gasped. "Expelled!" Ron sighed.

            "Feathers, you've been worried about that since first year, and you still hang out with us despite it. Don't worry so bloody much!" he snapped at her. Hermione opened her mouth as if to speak, but then snapped it shut. She turned to Harry instead.

            "What do we do, Beaky?"

            "There's nothing we can do, Feathers. Just wait and see, I suppose…"  The rest of the day went by way too fast for Harry's liking. It seemed that dinner had almost immediately followed lunch. The three plodded slowly into the Great Hall, not hearing the sounds of happiness from the other students. They sat down to eat, each looking just at their plates and nothing else. Everything Harry ate seemed to drop straight to the bottom of his stomach.

            About midway through the meal, McGonagall tapped her glass in the usual way to signal for silence. Dumbledore rose to his feet and addressed the crowd.

            "Students, I have ascertained the identity of the "Marauders" who have made us all, including themselves, the butt of their many, many jokes. I feel that it is time for them to make themselves known.  Would Misters Potter and Weasley, and Miss Granger, please come to the front of the Hall?"

            There was dead silence as Harry, Ron, and Hermione got up. Startled whispers started to circulate as they walked up to the teacher's table. Harry barely heard Fred and George whispering as he passed them.

            "Our little brother pulled a prank on Dumbledore?"

            "How will we live it down?"

            "You gonna tell Mum?"

            "Nah, you tell her. It'll do good to have the heat off us for a while anyway." Harry smiled a small smile, which faded away as he and the others reached the teacher's table. He noticed McGonagall glaring in her sternest way, and of course Snape's wide, nasty grin. "Probably hoping we'll get expelled" Harry thought to himself, before he gulped and looked to Dumbledore. He looked at the three with his usual twinkle, surprising Harry to say the least.  Dumbledore looked over their heads to the crowd.

            "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Marauders known as Beaky, Lionheart, and Feathers!" The three turned around, not knowing what to do. There was a great deal of silence, then a sound broke it. The sound of clapping. The Weasley twins were clapping, applauding their baby brother's work in outdoing them. Lee Jordan followed. Soon, the entire Gryffindor table was applauding. It quickly spread to the entire Hall, with two obvious exceptions: Harry could see from his vantage point that Draco wasn't applauding, and he knew for a fact that Snape wouldn't be. Dumbledore let the applause go on for a while before he signaled for quiet.

            "I believe some sort of recognition is in order here." He said. Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at each other warily.

            "For having the brains and guts to pull a prank on their headmaster, teachers, and every student at Hogwarts, I award Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger two hundred points each for Gryffindor!"

            Argus Filch, the caretaker of Hogwarts, was slightly late to dinner that night. He had just reached the doors when they were thrown open by a burst of noise, throwing he and his cat, Mrs. Norris, backwards down a flight of stairs. He was left rubbing his head and wondering what had happened.

            Everyone else, of course, knew perfectly well what had happened. The Gryffindors had exploded into cheering and applause at the fact that they had just received six hundred points for their house, catapulting them into first place for the House Cup. The three most responsible for this just stood stock still, hardly believing their luck. They weren't even surprised as the apparitions of the past Marauders rose up from the floor.

            "Wow! We could hear that down in the kitchens!" Sirius exclaimed.

            "You did it, son!" James yelled over the noise. "You made the Marauders legends! Everyone is going to remember the day Albus Dumbledore was pranked!" Harry just stood still, not believing any of it. He was sure that the points would be taken away at any moment. Finally, Dumbledore signaled for quiet again. Unfortunately, he didn't get it from a certain Slytherin git.

            "YOU GAVE POTTER TWO HUNDRED POINTS FOR PLAYING PRANKS?" Draco bellowed to no one in particular. In fact, he was actually facing the wall when he said it. Nobody knew why.

            "I wouldn't think you'd be so mad about Gryffindor getting so many points…GRYFFY!" Hermione yelled. The Hall burst into laughter. Draco burst into tears. Snape looked about ready to burst in anger. Yes, there was quite a lot of bursting going on.

            "Yes, yes, we know about Mr. Malfoy, everyone…however, I wasn't finished with my recognition of the Marauder's work." Dumbledore surreptitiously pulled a pouch from his robe and continued talking.

            "As impressed as I am with the work of our three young Gryffindors here, they DID pull a great deal of pranks, and that must be punished." Harry, Ron, and Hermione froze in their tracks. The apparitional Marauders floated back down through the floor, not wanting to see what would happen.

            "So…for breaking Hogwarts rules and pulling pranks on the entire school, I give the newest generation of Marauders…this!" He ripped open the pouch in his hand, catching Harry, Ron, and Hermione in a mist of…you guessed it…Jewett's Joke Powder. (A/N: Gives it a nice sort of circular feeling, doesn't it? Going back to the beginning with the pranks?) The effect was instantaneous. Harry's nose and mouth immediately fused into a sharp looking yellow beak. Ron's hair spread down the side of his head, under his chin, to meet at the other side and grow out until he had what appeared to be a lion's mane. To add insult to injury, he sprouted long whiskers. Hermione shrieked as dark brown feathers sprung up all over her body, covering her face, peeking out of the cuffs and sleeve of her shirt, and out under the cuffs of her pants. Everyone sort of stared as Dumbledore smiled.

            "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Beaky, Lionheart, and Feathers." The Great Hall exploded once again in laughter. The apparitions of the past Marauders floated up again, and couldn't help but laugh. Even Harry, Ron, and Hermione laughed as they saw each other. "But how did he get the powder to have these specific effects?" Hermione gasped through her laughter. "Who cares! He's Dumbledore!" Ron said through his. Harry didn't say a thing. He simply laughed and laughed…and marveled at Dumbledore's ingenuity.

            After what seemed like hours, the laughter died down. Dumbledore smiled and said, "Well, the day has ended…off to bed, students, to prepare for another day of learning!" The students filed out bit by bit. On the way to the Gryffindor common room, the three Joke Powder victims had yet another conversation.

            "Now are you two ready to stop all this joke playing?" Hermione demanded.

            "What? Are you kidding? We pranked the greatest wizard ever, and it got us six hundred points for Gryffindor!" Ron replied.

            "And a surprise attack with Jewett's Joke Powder!"

            "A small price to pay, I think…how about you, Beaky?"

            Harry smiled. "Oh, I agree…I don't think Dumbledore's taught us our lesson as well as he might think he has. After all, this is only temporary, and we've still got the Invisibility Cloak…"

            "And knowledge of every secret passage in the school…" Ron added.

            "And, of course, help from the past generation of Marauders…" Hermione said, smiling. The three of them climbed the stairs in silence from there, each of their heads whirling with plans on how to keep the Marauders alive. After all, they couldn't let such a great secret go to waste.

The End.

(A/N: You know, seven chapters is a lot more than I thought I would do in the beginning, but I'm glad how it turned out. I'd like to thank all my reviewers, including my girlfriend each time ::smiles:: I love you sooooooo much sweetheart! Everyone, please read and review the ending! Oh, and by the way, I can't say with any certainty that there won't be a sequel…::wink wink nudge nudge:: I hope you all liked it.)