The Marauders: Year Six Part 2 #Wattys2017

Wormtail

Wormtail

Lily Evans parked the Morris Mini in the road outside the Lupin House. Her mum would kill her when she found out the car was gone, but Lily really didn't care. She needed to talk to Sirius. She pushed open the door of the car, tugging her pink wool coat around herself, the air cold on her knit-tight covered legs. She struggled with the latch on the gate and ran up to the door, hugging herself, and rapped her knuckles against the wood, shuffling to stay warm as she stood on the porch.

The lawn was covered with snow and there were footprints from the garden gnomes, and birds that had landed.

The owl she'd sent with her letter to Sirius hooted from the tree. He still had her parchment tied to his leg.

She frowned up at the bird and leaned to look through the window. "Are they not home?" she murmured, sighing in frustration. She banged on the door again. "HELLO?" she cried, "HELLO? SIRIUS? REMUS? JAMES?"

But there was no reply.

She huffed and her breath came out in a great cloud and she turned around to run back to her car. She stopped dead in her tracks at the edge of the porch for there, before her, stood a very, very old man indeed. He was hunched over and wearing robes that were worn and moth-bitten, and he leaned upon a can like a hundred trees whose roots had been entwined together. Large knuckles and pale, paper-thin skin, his eyes milky with blindness... One hand was laid over the other upon the handle of the cane, and from that hand hung a long chain with a watch hanging upon the end.

He seemed to stare at her, though without seeing her, and Lily's spine tingled from the back of her neck straight down to her toes.

"You seek answers to questions that you do not have words to ask, Miss. Evans," Mopsus said lowly, his voice grainy from disuse.

Lily stood her ground, wary, wondering where he came from and... how.

"Come now," Mopsus said. And he held up the watch in his hand. "We wouldn't want to waste precious seconds. Now would we?"

Lily hesitated. She shook her head.

"Good, then," he murmured, "No time to waste." And he held out his palm.

Very much against most of her better judgement... Lily walked across the yard and put her palm into his. With a CRACK! they were gone.

It would be but moments later that a spark would flash in the hearth beneath the mantel and Sirius Black would step out of the floo...

"Quaerite tenebris."

. When he finished speaking the spell, there was a jerk behind his belly button like being transported with a portkey and Peter landed hard on his stomach on a stone floor and he looked about, scurrying to flip over.

It was pitch dark except for a far-off glow of flickering torch lamp and he could see cell bars and he crab-walked backwards, away from the doors, fearful... and his hands tread on something and he turned, fearful, and drew his wand. "Lumos!" he announced, and the cell was illuminated, long shadows of the cell bars cast over the corridor outside.

But there on the floor was James Potter.

"P - P - Prongs!" Peter stammered in shock and he hurried to his mate's side. "Prongs, you're here, you're here!"

But James didn't move.

"Prongs!" Peter went up to him. "James?"

There was the tiniest of whimpers.