All in the Family

Chapter 129: The Department of Mysteries

I take it back, it's poetically more fun to start posting the prequal now concurrently with this series. The fifth chapter will be posted the day this book ends, linking the two up. Which means updates for this drop to one a week, Thursday, while that will go up Monday.

 If you've been wanting to see their normal life at Hogwarts outside of this mess, I think you will greatly enjoy We Were.

HPHPHPHP

Peter was not the only one who did a quick head count the moment they landed in a long, narrow aisle in the poorest of lighting and still sighed in relief to only see seven people moving about, if not counting themselves. Sirius had landed farthest away, sliding a bit into the shadows, but James moved instantly this time and caught him, pulling them all into a quick circle of relative safety and they all complied as they spied around.

It was exactly as the book had described, a great cathedral-sized room so large you couldn't see the walls or ceiling, with tiny little specks of dusty light the most pitiful of visible sources to give them exposure. The smallest of peeks around the corner showed endless rows of shelves, and they were on ninety-seven.

Their breathing sounded obnoxiously loud in the silence that followed. It should have been of some comfort no dead body had appeared this time, but it gave no one a single second of belief somebody wasn't going to come out of this dead, the most likely candidate the one amongst them. Peter had to crane his neck a bit, but finally he spotted the book resting on the shelf of objects, tiny little spun glass orbs each with a plaque underneath them. He frowned and turned slightly, now dead center in the group as everyone else kept looking around while he read:

S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.

Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter

He opened, then closed his mouth. He really should point that out to James, but he was hoping to get out of here instead, and yet, what were the odds the book wasn't going to do the same?

Regulus finally turned away from the endless shadows around them to see the same. The two frowned uneasily at each other, but Regulus quietly summoned the book to him instead of saying anything too. The chapter title was inevitable, The Department of Mysteries.

James, Sirius, and Remus all flinched heavily as Regulus began, moving closer to each other but still not daring to leave the sanctity of this tiny little space that wasn't currently trying to kill them. You-Know-Who was not lurking around the corner waiting to kill them all, he was just as human as anyone no matter how much the maniac tried to pretend otherwise, he was not above such trivial descriptions.

It was still hard to keep that thought in mind as Harry just kept feeling the pain of his scar. The journey seemed to take ages, by the time the teenagers on their way here arrived the others were at least trying to force themselves to relax enough they weren't standing on the balls of their feet, ready to run or throw a curse at a moment's notice. Instead they were all starting to take a look around now at the details of this place, even if still nobody dared speak a word except Regulus trying to get them out of here.

Except Sirius. Despite James having one death grip on his arm and the other holding his wand quickly snatched back from Moony, he was still just a foot apart from everyone else as close together as they could, that cold expression still held in place, his resemblance to Regulus was more heightened than ever. He still had his wand at the ready, he tracked James carefully as he watched the book when Harry made it down to that long corridor without a single obstacle and his face was just as worried for his godson to be here as they were, but there was still something remote to it all, like a delayed reaction behind whatever he was really thinking.

Sirius was the most impulsive, brash person Peter was convinced he'd ever meet. The first time they'd ever passed each other in the corridor was leaving Potions and he'd been pushed out of the way onto the stairs, the arsehole snickering as he chased after James without looking back. Yet Peter had hovered, and hoped, and watched the two in fascination for how easily they knew the place in their very first week. It had taken him less than a month to discover people so easily overlooked him and the ready penchant for eavesdropping quickly developed.