The Marauders: Year Four

Who is Harold Minchum?

Who is Harold Minchum?

"So who is Harold Minchum?" James asked, musing. It was Saturday afternoon, following the meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, and he was sitting in the desk chair in the upstairs room of the Shrieking Shack, a parchment pulled up before him, his quill hovering over. Sirius and Remus sat side-by-side on one of the two beds and Peter laid across the second one, sucking on a sugar quill. "What do we know about him?"

Remus spoke up first, "My dad was mates with him."

"Really?" James looked over, "Do you know him well?"

"Better," said Sirius, "How has this not come up yet in the like twenty million times we've discussed this already?"

"I've only just remembered! I've never personally met him, but he's been in my dad's stories before... My dad was mates with him when he was younger. They worked together at the Ministry when my dad was a junior assistant at the time. They went to a summit for MACUSA over in Canada... I think the place was called Scratchytoon? Siskatoon?... they were roommates there. It's when he met my mum." Remus looked sad - he'd just realized that he'd never hear that story again.

Sirius wrapped his arm 'round about Remus and squeezed him.

"So this bloke's worked at the Ministry a long while then," James said.

Remus nodded, "Yeah... my dad liked him a lot. Always went on about this story where Harold Minchum turned into his animagus form - a moose - and he was in a bar and I dunno dad used to laugh too hard telling the story for me to really understand what the bloody hell he was talking about. Something about the moose orders enough drinks that his antlers are holding all the shot glasses and I dunno."

"So Harold Minchum's an animorphamagus then?" James said, ("animagus," corrected Peter lazily), and James turned to the parchment and scribbled that bit down. "And he turns into a moose, you say? I wonder what personality traits go with a moose?"

"Probably similar to a stag," Sirius said, still hugging Remus comfortingly. "I mean, essentially a moose is just a gigantic deer, isn't it?"

"Moose are very different from deer, really," Remus inserted.

"They've got four legs and horns," Sirius said, "Essentially the same."

"So do rhinos, are those deer, too?" Remus asked sarcastically.

Sirius thought about it a moment, "They're dinosaur deer."

"Bloody hell," muttered Remus, shaking his head, "Can't ever be wrong."

James scribbled down research moose animagi - personality?? on the parchment. "What else? Do we know anything else about Minchum?"

"Moody seemed alright with him, he didn't hex him or kick him out or anything - he was going to go for a walk with him that day," Peter pointed out. "You don't go for walks with people you hate or that you don't trust."

Moody trusts him. James's handwriting was appalling, Sirius noted, craning his neck to see the list thus far. Only James himself would be able to translate that jumbled mess.

"And he was well dressed," Remus pointed out. "He had on a suit and tie - a bowtie. It was a nice tie. It was red with blue dots."

Sirius looked over at Remus, smirking, "You noticed that much detail about this bloke's tie?"

"Sure," Remus answered.

"Whyever for?" Sirius asked, and he narrowed his eyes, "Was this a handsome bloke?"