Vengeance

(_)(_)(_)

Summer 1977

James was champing at the bit. And severely irritated, to put it mildly. Voldemort had been attacking randomly nearly daily since the deaths of Charlus and Dorea. Muggles, Muggleborns and their families, half-bloods and the odd 'blood traitor' families had all been hit.

And there wasn't a damn thing James – or any of the young Marauders – could do about it. They still had a year of school left. James had given serious thought to just … not. He was a Lord. A very, very rich one. NEWTs meant very little, in the end. If he'd needed to work to sustain himself that would have been one thing. As it was, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren could all live off the Potter wealth without working a day in their lives without putting an appreciable dent in the total unless they were ridiculously free with their spending.

But as much as he was tempted to just walk out and not bother with NEWTs, he knew better. Voldemort and his minions wouldn't last forever. Once they were gone, James knew he would very quickly go stir-crazy if all he had to do with his days was watch over the Potter holdings. A job was kind of a necessity, not for the money it provided but for the distraction and stimulation. Besides, if he became, say, an Auror, he'd have a legitimate excuse to hunt Death Eaters for sport. Not that he really needed one, thanks to the Alliance, but still. It'd help keep a disapproving Dumbledore off his back if he had at least the appearance of a legitimate reason to be hunting the bastards down.

Honestly, James was waiting for the day when Dumbledore overstepped himself. He'd been dancing dangerously close to the line of interfering with Alliance affairs ever since the death of James' parents. James knew that Septimus, for one, was about ready to punch Dumbledore's head in. Harfang was a bit quieter in his disapproval, but then he was quieter in general.

Speaking of Dumbledore, the last two months of Hogwarts had been … interesting. Septimus, Cedrella, Harfang and Callidora had insisted the young Marauders be given separate, secure housing. While they didn't know of anyone in Gryffindor who was a Voldemort supporter, that didn't mean there was one. Same went for both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

Dumbledore had tried to argue against the kids all being moved into their own dorm. At least in part due to Lily, who was the only female in the bunch. But he'd also claimed the Gryffindor boys had no need to move, because no Gryffindor would stoop to joining Voldemort.

That sentiment had been treated with the derision and disbelief it deserved. Dumbledore had had no choice but to cave. In those last weeks, Hogwarts had become a warzone. Not that they'd been sparing the rod before – they had the OWLs necessary to get their wand-rights since the start of the year, so hadn't had to worry about being expelled. But after the funeral? Oh yeah. All hell had broken loose.

The Voldemort supporters had tried to even the odds and/or stop Marauder retribution by essentially taking hostages. That is, they not only traveled in packs, they forcibly included students who weren't supporters in the hopes the Marauders wouldn't start a fight for fear of hitting innocents.

Idiots.

Not only had this pissed the Marauders off even worse than they already had been, it was utterly useless. Because they didn't have to wait for the idiots to be out in public to hit them where it hurt the most.

So the Marauders made a very pointed point of completely ignoring the supporters in the halls, classroom, and Great Hall. Instead, with Jinx's help, they hit the supporters after they'd retreated to Slytherin House in the evenings. Not a one of them got a moment's peace. Clothing and school supplies stolen. Homework shredded and/or soiled beyond repair, and every mean, vicious, hurtful 'prank' the Marauders could come up with were employed. Yet every time a teacher or, more frequently, Dumbledore, checked, they had a cast-iron alibi. It never occurred to them that a Family house-elf was being employed to accomplish the harassment.

Once again with feeling: idiots.

Now, though, James had an entire summer before him. To perfect his animagus transformation, among other things. James had no idea what the Weasleys and Longbottoms had been up to while he'd finished the year, but they'd made it clear that everyone was allowed to go Death Eater hunting, if they so desired. All of them had signed up. Even Lily.

The first thing the adults did was have everyone try out old wands. While they would hopefully not be in any pitched battles where their wands could be broken, it was better to be safe than sorry. And while no one could say anything about the younger Marauders taking part in the hunt for Voldemort and his followers, having the backup wands to use the more questionable spells with would keep too many eyebrows from heading for hairlines.

Then it was time to get to work.

The next two months were … well, interesting. James and Sirius, who were both interested in becoming Aurors – if only for that legitimate liscence to hunt Death Eaters for sport – learned a lot from Septimus and Harfang about what sort of knowledge they'd need to make it in the Auror corps. It was also more than a bit of an education to see the two men in combat. Even if the 'combat' was about ten thousand times less harrowing than the war had been. At least according to them, at any rate.

More often than not, James felt like he could all but see his own father, and Charlus' usual place in Septimus and Harfang's fighting tactics. It was fairly obvious that the two of them were used to working as part of a triad, even to James' largely untrained eyes. Seeing that gap hurt.

Even as it amused. Because the young Marauders had their own unique style. They had learned to work in pairs as was the norm, but had also learned to work in triads as well, thanks in large part to the elder Marauders. The young Marauders put their own twist on it, however, by interchanging who was in which triad on a whim. Though the triads that worked best were Severus, Lily, and Regulus together, and James, Sirius, and Remus together. Thanks to the fact there were six of them they'd also learned to fight in groups bigger than three, including all of them at once.

The first thing they did was go Carrow hunting. Tenibrus was dead and gone, but thanks to his idiocy, his entire family were legal targets. Not that they were going to go after the whole family. Just the Death Eater scumbags in the family. Which was limited to Tenibrus, his wife and his kids, who had been in Hogwarts with the young Marauders.

Had. They had (wisely) left Hogwarts when the young Marauders left to mourn the deaths of Charlus and Dorea. James was honestly grateful for that because he was not entirely certain he'dve been able to restrain himself from killing them in cold blood in the weeks after he'd returned to Hogwarts. He's also fairly sure Severus would have done something lethal to them. Though Severus at least wouldn't have been so rash as to hex them in the sight of all and sundry.

It was slightly worrying to realize that making those three pay for his parents' deaths had felt good. Just slightly. The way a nundu running around was slightly worrying. James' only comfort, and it was a very small one, was that the others all felt much the same way.

The Carrows weren't dead. They'd just been … well, scared out their damn minds and chased all over the UK. Eventually Tenibrus' wife had fled the UK entirely to escape the Alliance while she and her kids were still alive. At the start of it all, James had been all for doing a lot worse, but now he was glad they hadn't. As long as he never had to see any of the three of them again, he'd be fine.

By the end of August, James somewhat ruefully decided the adults had known what they were doing. Initially, he'd wondered if they'd gone a bit 'round the twist when the young Marauders had been invited along. Hardly surprising, given what had happened, but still. Encouraging a bunch of very angry teens to kick ass and take names as violently as they liked short of the Unforgivables? Sounded kind of iffy, on the surface of it.

Two months solid of chasing after idiots, hexing the heck out of them and interrogating them had cooled everyone's ardor. As angry as James had been … and still was … the irrational edge had been worn off. At this point he was just … done. Tired of it. Still pissed as hell, but calmer by far than he'd been at the start of summer. Even Jinx seemed to have calmed down somewhat, though whether that was because James had calmed down, or because Jinx was honestly feeling calmer was debatable

They rolled back into Weasley Cottage in mid-August. Just enough time to shop for their school gear and unwind from the summer-long hunt. First thing they did was touch base with Frank and Alice. While they were a few years older than the other young Marauders, they hadn't been old enough to not want anything to do with the younger set. Even Arthur, who was even older than Frank, had watched the younger Marauders a time or two when their parents were busy.

The check-in had two purposes. The most important to see how Frank was doing. The secondary purpose was to find out what they'd missed. They'd been in and out of the Cottage and Longbottom Manor all summer while they hunted, only rarely staying long enough to bother reading the paper rather than catch up on sleep or what have you.

The good news was that four known Death Eaters had jumped ship and fled in the wake of Charlus and Dorea's deaths. They'd known they would be in the Alliance's sights and wanted no part of that nonsense. Either that or they'd been horrified that Voldemort would attack an Alliance. Which was understandable. No one with a lick of sense did that. So it made it pretty clear that Voldemort was batshit insane, desperate, or both.

Probably both.

The neutral families had, for the most part, headed for the safety of their heavily warded manors, intending to stay the hell out of the way. A few had stepped up and started Death Eater hunting themselves, but they had to be careful about it, as they didn't have the excuse of a violated Alliance to hunt the bastards with. Most of the light-siders were torn between frowning in displeasure at the attack on an Alliance, frowning with displeasure at the extremes the Alliance had gone to to avenge themselves, or (most rarely) debating the wisdom of joining the hunt like some of the neutrals had done.

No points for guessing who was leading the 'we are disappointed in you for the severity of your reaction' crowd.

James was really starting to hate Dumbledore.

On top of all that, despite the hunting going on, Voldemort had his people spend the summer raiding. The good news being that with Jinx's help, they'd managed to stymie a couple of the raids entirely and break several more up before they got much further than setting up anti-apparation and anti-portkey wards.

By the end of summer, Jinx knew most of the Death Eaters if not by name, then by their magical signatures. He also had what sounded like half of the Hogwarts elves and most of the elves serving light-side families on their guard and on standby in case their families got hit by any of the people he'd gotten signatures on and could pass that knowledge to other elves. Calling in more elves to defend their families might save those peoples' lives, which was something every elf with a decent Master/Mistress could get behind.

Shopping was quieter than usual, though whether that was because they were doing it later than they normally did or because people were avoiding the drama was debatable. Whichever it was, there were definitely a lot less people on the Alley than James was used to.

James spent the last few days before Hogwarts going over the Potter accounts, both on his own, with Septimus, and at Septimus' urging, with the goblin in charge of the Potter accounts. While James hadn't known all the details before this summer, he'd known that Septimus had arranged things such that the Weasley family was, for the first time in centuries, flush. So he was willing to take the man's advice on investing and the like.

Fortunately, his ancestors had been a fairly conservative bunch where money was concerned, so there hadn't been a lot of investments in general, and none in anything risky. It had simplified things considerably. After talking it over with the goblin in charge of the Potter vaults, James had given the go-ahead to invest more aggressively, and with more risky investments, so long as the goblin was sure of a profit in the endeavor. He had also, much as Septimus had done, increased the percentage the goblin got for doing his job. Though in his case, because he could afford it, he went with five percent, rather than the three Septimus had offered. James could afford to pay a five percent fee easily, where Septimus hadn't.