The Marauders: Year Four

The Pledge

The Pledge

Sirius moved out to the Shrieking Shack that night, despite Remus's objections that the Shack was too cold and too horrible a place. Sirius pointed out that they'd fixed it up better than it had been before, nobody would be looking for him out there, and he had his marvelous stereo there, thanks to his Moony, and James pointed out that they didn't really have anywhere else to hide him that was safe and not already being used as the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. But Remus hated it just the same because the walk to the Shrieking Shack was too long to make every night and therefore he didn't get to feel Sirius's arms about him at night as he slept and it was a very, very long night without the weight of Sirius Black next to him in the bed.

But they'd only moved Sirius just in time for the very next day they returned to the dormitory after lunch to find Moody poking around the Gryffindor common room, accompanied by Professor McGonagall. Her eyes followed the three boys up the stairs as they rushed by, James without looking twice at her, afraid of the look that might be in her eyes. "He isn't here, Alastor," McGonagall said heavily, "I think we might have noticed if Sirius Black was roaming about the castle. How would he even get in through the gates?"

Moody shook his head, "I know what I've seen, Minerva."

McGonagall lowered her voice, "But how would he have made himself invisible?"

"A cloak, I told you," Moody grumbled.

McGonagall shook her head, "If those boys had an invisibility cloak, we would know of it by now!"

Moody sprang unannounced checks on the Gryffindor common room over the next week, with or without her, searching for Sirius Black, but of course he didn't find him there. "Blimey," whispered James one morning when they woke to find Moody sitting in the chair by the fireplace, waiting, watching, "What in hell do you reckon makes him so keen on finding Sirius anyway? I thought Moody was alright, but I mean -- he's exerting an awful lot of energy to capture a runaway teenager, don't you think?"

Remus shrugged, "Moody hates lawbreakers."

"Could we get in trouble for hiding Sirius?" Peter asked nervously, looking about at the other two.

"Harboring a fugitive, I reckon," James answered.

Peter shivered, "What do we do? What do we do?"

"What do you mean what do we do? We're not turning him in, we just keep the secret," Remus replied. "Don't be a ninny."

McGonagall had stopped James once after class to ask him if he was going to be attending their next Animagi lesson and he'd replied, "I have other extra curricular activities to tend to now, Professor, I'm sorry..." and she'd looked both worried and heartbroken at exactly the same time and he'd had to run off before he was tempted to tell her everything - right down to how he'd somehow ended up a leader, just like she'd said about him when she'd told him about the form of the stag... It would have made her proud, if she'd known, he thought, that he was living up to the stag... He wished he could show her how good he was at changing... but he couldn't, of course. She couldn't ever know.

It was hard, with all the extra scrutiny from Moody, to make the plans for the next meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, but somehow James managed to do it. They planned a time for Saturday morning, right after breakfast, and James heard from several of the people who had attended, agreeing to come to join the Order officially. And miraculously, nobody had seemed to rat out the group of them, or at least there were no rumors or anything flying about.