The Marauders: Year Three | #Wattys2016

Who is the Boy?

Who is the Boy?

Sirius stuck his head up from the trap door in the basement of Honeydukes. It was quite dark, the crates still and quiet. He raised his lighted wand and looked about. Out the squat little window in the far corner of the room, he could see pale blue moonlight reflecting off the snow. "Alright," he whispered, and he climbed out, holding the door open for Remus to climb through. They closed the door, careful to leave it just barely ajar, jamming a small box of chocolate frogs under the edge of it so that they would be able to get back into the tunnel quickly if they had need of it. Sirius nodded, leading the way to the creaky stairs and Remus followed along. They climbed up them and gingerly pushed open the door, stepping into the little shop.

Honeyduke's was a magical place during the day, filled with sparkling sweets and laughing voices. At night, it was a bit of an obstacle course, with all the various buckets of cockroach clusters and jelly slugs about. They made their way carefully through it, not wanting to raise their wands too high and attract attention of any passersby. After all, they had no intentions of getting caught and touted as thieves in the store when they were only passing through.

They reached the door and Sirius aimed his wand, "Alohamora," he whispered, and they stepped into the cold winter night outside.

Remus huddled closer to SIrius, nervously looking about the dark street, lit only by the pale moonlight. The moon was close enough to full that Remus could feel his skin prickling from it, his heart rate picking up. Every muscle in his body was sore, and he wished desperately that he'd taken along some of the aconite leaves Professor Veigler had given to him.

There was not much of anybody on the streets, but even so, Sirius insisted that they use the invisibility cloak borrowed from James's trunk. They flung it over themselves and began walking slowly down the streets. They passed the Three Broomsticks - just as Bilius Weasley was tripping out the front door of the place, singing Henry the Eighth again, as he'd been doing last time they'd seen him. Sirius hesitated for a moment, contemplating giving Bilius a talking to, but he could feel Remus's anxiety building with each passing moment, and he knew that talking with Bilius Weasley would lead to much more than just a pause... so they left Bilius to stumble back to his room alone.

They snuck down a side street and there was the Hogshead pub, with its gory severed-pigs-head-on-a-platter sign looming creepily up ahead of them. As they approached, a man in a long black cloak came out, and hurried away in the opposite direction, toward the end of the street, which turned into a path that ran away into the woods. "Who was that?" whispered Sirius.

"Dunno," answered Remus.

They got real close to the pub and Sirius went over, boldly standing on his tip toes, trying to see through the dirty windows to check if Dumbledore or Professor Veigler were inside, but the windows were so caked in smudgy dirt and age that they were impossible to see through. Sirius looked at Remus and said, "I can't see a thing."

"Maybe we should go inside," Remus suggested.

"That's what I was thinking," Sirius agreed.

So they snuck around to the door of the pub, holding the cloak close around them, and they waited until the next time it opened up. It was Hagrid, carrying a bundle up in his arms. "Yer goin' ter haf'ter go in ter my coat now," he said, tucking the bundle into the top of his moleskin coat gently, "It's very cold out here an' yer not needin' ter freeze yerself. It's a bit nippier than in Greece yer know..." He cradled his hands around the lump in his coat as he stood in the doorway, the heat of the pub blowing out around him. Sirius and Remus had been lucky it'd been Hagrid, for they had plenty of time to go in, look around and see Dumbledore and Veigler were no where to be seen, and duck back out before Hagrid had finished his whispering to the three headed dog he held to his chest in the door frame.