The next week was spent preparing. It was important, James said, to get things done quickly, but it was also important, Lily said, to get them done correctly. So, even though James spent every night that week laying in bed, worrying about whether Walburga Black had found out about the vials of werewolf venom she had stacked away in her vault at Gringott's, he didn't fight to speed up the process anymore than he felt absolutely necessary.

Every file that James worked with in Mr. Underhill's office that week, he combed through more thoroughly than he might normally before putting it away, looking for one that might contain an official Ministry of Magic search warrant. He was sure to find one, he kept telling himself, even as the days passed by and he still hadn't come across what he needed.

Then there was Frank's business of asking questions of various instructors in his level of the Auror training center, trying to glean as much information about the process of how one went about presenting a search warrant as possible.

"Merlin's tit you'd think you were plotting to go into warrant serving as a career, Longbottom!" exclaimed Edgar Bones when Frank asked him questions on it for the third day in a row.

"It's come up on an exam is all," Frank lied, and he made a mental note not to ask Edgar Bones about it again, just in case.

Every night, they all gathered in the flat in East London, discussing things they'd found out, pouring over all the information they could get their hands on about the Gringott's vaults and relying on Sirius's shaky memory of the few times he'd accompanied his mum or dad to the Black family vault when he was young. Lily and Marlene worked on gathering spells to soothe and tame dragons while Remus researched goblin lore and magic to see if there was any information contained in that realm that they needed to be privvy to before enacting their plans. Emmaline knicked a jar of burn balms for dragon singes from Mungo's during one of her shifts on the healing team there, and Peter provided the snacks to keep them all well fed while they planned and plotted their way through the piles of notes they'd all compiled.

Slowly, something resembling a plan began to form and by the end of the week, the only thing left to put into place was the manufacturing of the warrant itself.

It was the last day of the working week and James glanced up at the clock. Five more minutes left to the day and then he'd be headed home to Lily and the others for the day. He shifted in his seat and glanced up at Mr. Underhill, who was staring down at a stack of paper work he was shuffling through. He hadn't yet found a warrant through the stacks of paperwork he'd been processing and storing all week, and he was frustrated. The fact that this small bit had been the hardest part of the entire plot thus far was unexpected. He'd thought that finding a search warrant would have been easy in one of the files, considering the nature of the cases he was processing, but it had eluded him. Surely they'd done loads of warrants for all the cases Underhill had been working on in the past year. Surely he'd gone and searched somewhere for something - an attack, a murder, a suspected Death Eater...

Suddenly, it hit him.

The warrant had been sitting there in his desk the whole time.

He glanced up at Mr. Underhill again, making sure the wizard was still focused on his paperwork. Confirming he was, James bent down and opened the bottom drawer of his own desk, where he'd stowed the thick file labeled FALLENGUNDER/VEIGLER, NED.

James's hand shook as he closed his fingers around the bulk of the file. He could see the warrant in his memory, an order to search Fallengunder Castle following the death of Ned Veigler, on order of the Minister, to take custody of any remaining documents or items belonging to the Dark Lord or his army. The warrant had angered him just a short time ago, when he had first started working in Mr. Underhill's office, but now he thought it might rather turn out to be a help to their cause.

And really, Mr. Underhill had said that James could lose the file, hadn't he? When James had questioned him about it? So in a way, it wouldn't even technically be stealing it. He'd intended to take it home and burn it, but had forgotten it and eventually left it to collect dust in his desi drawer. This file was already missing - it would not be noticed if the warrant were to disappear altogether.

Quietly, James shoved the folder into his book bag, eyes never leaving Underhill, pretending to scratch his leg as his cover. His bag slipped and he had to look down to catch it and open the bag, and in the motion, he smacked his forehead against the desk.

"Potter."

He looked up, his head smarting, and found Mr. Underhill pulling on his cloaks. "Sir?"

"Are you planning on going home this evening?"

James looked up at the clock. Somehow he'd spent fifteen minutes moving the Veigler file onto his bag. He scrambled up, knocking his chair over backwards and only just catching it before it fell completely over. "Sorry," he said, "Lost track of time."

Mr. Underhill adjusted his cloak and waved his wand, and his hat flew across the room and landed firmly upon his head. He picked up an umbrella from the stand by the door, hanging the handle over his wrist. He stared at James with a raised eyebrow.

"Right. Right, sorry." James grabbed up his bag and cloak and scrambled to follow Mr. Underhill, practically tripping over his own two feet.

"Potter."

"Sir?"

"Your wand." Mr. Underhill gestured toward the desk, where James's wand lay abandoned.

"Blast." James leaped back and grabbed the wand from the desk, shoving it into the leather scabbard at his hip.

Mr. Underhill nodded and led the way out of the office, locking it with a flick of the wand behind them as they left.

"Tried to amend my carnivorous habit, made it nearly 70 dayyyys... Losing weight without speed, eating sunflower seeds... drinking lots of carrot juice and soaking up the raaaaays..."

Remus hunkered down closer to his textbook, his nose practically touching the pages.

Sirius was dancing around the kitchen, wearing a pair of shorts and one of James's old t-shirts he'd stolen from the wash. He was working at making dinner, dancing as he waved his wand at the various pans and utensils doing the prepwork on the counters. 

"At night I'd have these wonderful dreams, some kind of sensuous treat... not zucchini fettucini or bulgur wheat... but a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat!"

Remus looked up and stared at Sirius as he swung himself about the kitchen, eyes closed, swaying as he danced. Remus raised an eyebrow.

"Cheeeeeeseburger in paradiiiise... heaven on Earth with an onion sliiiiice... not too particular, not too precisssse... I'm just a cheeseburger in paraaaadise...."

"Bloody hell, Sirius."

Sirius stopped dancing and turned, looking at Remus, a wild grin on his face. "Moonpie?"

"Will you please --? I'm trying to study this."

Sirius grinned. "Am I distracting you, my love?"

"You know you are."

"What, precisely, was distractive? The song about warm buns and hunks of meat, or my arse in these boxers?"

"I --"

There was a rushing sound from the other room and Sirius bounded off, prancing into the living room, making the utensils and pans crash to the counter tops as he left. "Prongsy is home!" 

Remus rolled his eyes. "Idiot." He turned back to the book.

In the living room, James was dusting off the floo powder and running a hand through his hair as Sirius bound across the room, turning into a dog with a pop about halfway across, jumping over the couch and headlong into James, who tumbled backward onto the floor.

"Bloody hell!" James laughed, shoving the dog off of him. "Remus, come get your dog!"

"He's your dog now!" Remus replied from the kitchen. 

James replied, "There's a marriage license that says otherwise, Lupin." James laughed and pushed Snuffles back, "Really now, calm yourself." He patted the floor around him for his glasses, finding them flung a couple feet away, and shoved them onto his face.

Sirius had turned back into a man and sat opposite James on the carpet, grinning.

"What the hell'uve you got my t-shirt on with your knickers for, you bleedin' prat?" James demanded, seeing the Gryffindor Quidditch shirt that hung baggily from Sirius's narrow shoulders. 

Sirius looked down, then back up at James, grinning. "I didn't hear you complaining when Lilith went prancing about here in a very similar outfit not three mornings ago..."

James's face turned red. "Well last I checked you are not Evans and you certainly don't look as good in my shirts as she does, at any rate!" 

Sirius's eyes sparkled. "You hurt my soul."

James got to his feet and plucked his bag from the floor, "I rather think your soul will mend." 

Sirius got up, too, and followed James into the kitchen, where he sat down next to Remus at the table. Remus looked up. "Hullo," he said.

"I'm here to return this to you," James waved at Sirius.

"Great, now I'll never finish my revision."

Sirius stuck out his tongue.

James cleared his throat. "Actually, Remus, if you've a minute - I wanted to talk to you about something rather important. It's about the plan we've got to get the venom out of Gringott's, you see there's been a rather poetic twist."

"A poetic twist?" Remus lay his finger on the line he'd just finished reading in the book. "What sort of poetic twist?"

"Well, I managed to get a warrant for us to use in manufacturing our own after and ---" he paused. "Is there a reason there's an onion on the floor?" James asked suddenly, interrupting himself.

"Apparently because I am heaven on Earth with an onion slice," Remus said with a straight face.

Sirius grinned and winked at Remus.

James looked between the two of them for a moment, then said, "Ohhh-kay. Moving on, then." He reached into his bag and he turned to Remus. "We're getting help from an old friend of yours." He handed Remus the folder.

Remus stared at it, his eyes moving over Ned Veigler's name.

He looked up at James.

"Ned?"

James nodded.

"Where the bloody hell did you get this?" he took the folder and flipped it opened, all but gasping when he found a large photograph of Ned Veigler smiling back up at him from the front page of the file, spello-taped onto an official document that detailed Ned's vitals - date of birth, species, blood status, date of death... and whether he was a Death Eater. The line beside this last attribute read, in Mr. Underwood's spidery hand, "Unproven, Suspected." Remus's throat constricted.

James said, "My boss was one of the aurors on the case, it seems. I found it filing and I told him I was there and that I know for a fact that Ned Veigler wasn't a Death Eater and he said that he couldn't change the records but he might look away if the file was to... disappear." James's mouth twisted. "Well. Abracadabra, as the muggles say."

Remus was flipping through the pages. He looked up at James. "You stole it?"

"He all but told me to..."

"Bloody hell."

"And here's the important bit here," James added, snatching the warrant to search Fallengunder from the pile as Remus happened upon it. He snapped the paper in Sirius and Remus's direction proudly. "We can use this little bugger here to create our very own warrant to search the Black's vault."

Remus reached out and took the warrant. "I can't believe they really thought Ned was a traitor."

"It was never proven," James pointed out.

"It was never true," Remus countered.

He turned back to the first page and ran a hand across Ned's photo again, staring into the kind eyes, lined at the corners from laughter, and the wildly overgrown beard and hair that was sort of the signature look for Ned Veigler. Remus pulled the picture out of the file and closed it, pushing it across the table to James. 

"Isn't it a bit poetic, though? That Ned's going to help us retrieve the werewolf venom? To save others from having your furry little problem?"

Remus nodded.

Sirius plucked the picture out of Remus's hands, looking Ned's face over in the photo for a moment, then handing it back to Remus. He sighed and sat down. On the stove, there came a sizzling sound.

James looked 'round. "What are you making, anyway?"

"Cheeseburgers," Sirius replied.