The Marauders: Year Four

The Permanent Record of Sirius Black

The Permanent Record of Sirius Black

Remus pushed open the door to the classroom Peeves was destroying, throwing about the chairs and knocking books from a bookshelf, singing an odd little song that he'd made up himself:

"Messy, messy, making messies
Tossing chairs and breaking deskies
Breaky, breaky, snappy, snappy
Lots of chaos makes Peevesy happy!"

Remus hovered in the door a moment, dodged a flying chair leg, and cleared his throat.

"Excuse me... Mr. Peeves?"

Peeves flipped over, dropping a globe that he held so that it fell, snapping in half so that two parts of the planet rolled off in separate directions. He stared at Remus his pale white figure glowing in the dark in a shimmery sort of way. He barrel rolled across the room until he was right in Remus's face. "Loony Loopy Lupin!" he cackled, "Is we still up to no good?"

"Yes, of course, Peeves," he said, "But listen, how would you like to help me be up to no good?"

Peeves considered this a moment, then cackled and blew a raspberry in Remus's face. "No, I don't think so!" he giggled and clapped.

"But Peeves, you see it's Sirius. He's been caught by Filch and we have to go get him out of trouble."

"Peeves likes trouble," cackled the poltergeist.

Remus thought fast, "But Peeves loves antagonising Filch."

Peeves, who had zipped back across the room and grabbed onto a desk and was about to chuck it into a large cabinet, stopped and hung there in the center of the room, staring at Remus.

"What if I told you we could get up to no good together and drive Filch utterly mad?"

Peeves dropped the desk straight down with a loud crack. "Go onnnn...? What does Peevsey need to do?"

Peeeeterrrr.... Peeeter Pettigrewww...

Peter turned onto his side in his sleep.

Peter....

He was dreaming.

He was walking down a street, gloomy and empty, with haunting shapes of dead trees leaning over the roadway as he passed great stone walls coated with thick branches of ivy. And there, through a mist that had crept around him so silently he'd barely noticed it, he saw tall, imposing gates, looming up through the drizzling rain. A great big monogram L of gold and iron twisted around the center bars. As Peter approached them, the gates swung open, allowing him to step through, off the street and into the wide yard enclosed fully in high stone walls.

A path cut through the center, leading up to the overbearingly large house, the path lined by thick black needly torn brush that twisted and undulated, as though made of snakes or some other living creatures. Peter very carefully stayed away from it, afraid, and stumbled over uneven cobblestones, so focused on the living brush that he stumbled onto the stairs of the house itself. His eyes travelled up, up, up massive marble columns to the seemingly unending stories.

Peter got to his trembling feet.

"Peeeeter...."

He looked up at the door and there was a figure there, a figure so shrouded by darkness that he couldn't make out the face. But the voice was the voice that had been calling to him in the darkness all term, and from the depths of the reflection of the crystal ball. He hesitated, desperately afraid.