All in the Family

Chapter 20: Dobby's Warning

Considering past events, Remus actually felt a second of relife as he slammed down onto something that made a creaking groan of a bed instead of the much harder surfaces. Then the book smacked him in the face as it too impacted this place. He yelped in fury, jerking upright and pulling it off his nose, and immediately noticed a window. With bars on it. He couldn't breath, his skin was surely boiling off him at this very moment to be replaced with something so much worse, something wrong-

Instinct propelled him forward, he didn't even notice until much later there was glass in the way as he shoved that aside, the fresh air wafting in did nothing to relive him as he was now fully able to turn his head in all directions, pleading with the clouds to part- until his eyes found that glowing orb in the sky, and he finally breathed.

It as waning, at least five days old.

"Moony," a hand gently grasped his shoulder, and he whirled on the spot with an uneasy expression still in place. They'd been lucky this time, but the bars...where were they?

Sirius continued with an easy going smile, exuding calm in the face of his friend still breathing rather hard for no reason four out of the eight people here would understand. "Relax, I don't like being locked up either, but we'll get out as soon as we can."

"Right, yeah," he gave the jerky nod of agreement he knew was expected of him. Still, his eyes lingered on the black cord that had yet to really start fading from Sirius' throat, the way Prongs still kept his hand protectively close to him as he sat down uneasily on the foot of the bed. Injuries for them here meant something, and he was still convinced he'd cause the worst to all of them.

Grasping Sirius' hand on him for a moment longer than he really should have, he forced it away in the next moment, lest the stares continue, and went back to the book he'd so quickly dispelled from him while trying to eye the rest of the place, not to give away the small space hadn't been what had set him off. There was nothing to note of really, the simple bedding looked like an afterthought, a minuscule blanket hardly big enough for the childlike bed crammed into the corner. The shelves lined the wall all filled with broken or forgotten things, dust clear in the air as his nose continued dilating just a touch to fast. The smell of owl droppings was the most distinguishing from that, and he was now grateful for the air flowing through for this fact alone.

Then he froze as a soft hooting from behind him made that really register.

Regulus had landed very near the waste bin Hedwig's cage had been set upon, and reflexes alone had saved the owl from tumbling to the ground with him as the shock of his landing hit the room. The others hadn't landed much better, they never did, and the small space left many in each others company much closer than they normally would have preferred. Pettigrew had landed extremely close to him, his head smacking the wall right under the window. Lupin had nearly trampled him in his mad dash to pull that open, but he'd quickly flipped his agitated gaze from his friend back to the snowy creature hooting dully at them.

"So this is Hedwig eh?" Potter muttered, his own eyes sweeping the room the most critically. "I'm guessing we're still at the Dursley's."

"Mind like a steel trap that one," Regulus muttered under his breath. He really should have known the response he'd get, saying that so close to one of his mates, and so was unsurprised to see Pettigrew give him an angry glare for that, opening his mouth for some witty defensive retort he was sure, but then Lupin began, gratefully cutting that off.

"What's a Dobby?" Alice muttered for herself, only half her attention on what she was hearing as she found herself half hanging out of the room, through the door, that had a cat flap of all things in it. Or rather, who, she supposed as she kept wriggling her ankle in the tight space, since she didn't know many things that could provide a warning like the chapter Lupin was starting revealed would be happening. As if they needed anymore warning from this book something was going on in their life.