Chapter One: Back Track
Oh dear, I'm back again! And I'm still broke! Don't own Harry Potter and never will.
Okay, here's the scoop: Kailey Macauley is our main character; she is going by an alias so to all our other characters she is known as Keena McIntosh. She is currently thirteen years in the past (that's why she's got an alias to begin with), and the Marauders have just graduated (so they're all roughly 18 now).
Remus, Lily and Keena are on a mission. They are trying to find a way to defeat the Avada Kedavra curse before James and Lily's demise (Lily has no idea that she's sitting on death row all she knows is that she's trying to make the world a better place for her future son, Harry, to live).
James knows of and has accepted his fate on death row with Lily, so he hasn't got a clue what the three of them get up to in the Spell Inventions Division of the ministry.
Okay, I think that's enough…Onward!
Lily, Remus and I stood in front of two tiny phone booths. We exchanged glances with one another before the three of us squeezed ourselves inside of one.
"Remus, hurry up and enter the code, the muggles are starting to look over," Lily said nervously.
"What d'you mean? Muggles aren't supposed to be able to see this thing!" Remus began freaking out.
"You mean we chose the wrong one?"
"Damn it, my shirt is stuck in the stupid door," I said, not really listening to the other two.
"Then pull it out!" Lily said.
"I can't, if I open the door, we'll all tumble out!" I shouted frantically.
"It won't matter; we've got to get in the right one anyway!" Remus argued.
"I'm going to kill Sirius; he told me it was the one on the right!" I shouted furiously.
"You won't be able to kill him unless you open the door," Lily said, her face beginning to turn pink, one of her danger signs.
Suddenly there was a tap on the glass.
"Oh bloody hell," Remus muttered, attempting to bring his hand to his head so that he could rub his temples.
"What? What is it? I can't see," I said, losing what little there was left of my cool.
"It's a police officer," Lily muttered.
"So ask him to open the bleeding door for us!"
"He's getting his nightstick out…" Remus began; a look of sudden understanding came over him.
"What for?" I asked.
"WAIT! DON'T BREAK THE--!"
CRASH!
The officer had swung his stick into the door and the glass had shattered into at least hundreds of little pieces.
"What do you three think you're doing?" the officer asked in a Scottish tone. "If you want to have a two on one shag, you should at least do it where children can't see it!"
"Excuse me?" Lily asked, her face turning bright red.
"Sorry, Sir, won't happen again," Remus said in a rush grabbing Lily and myself round our waists and leading us around a corner and into an alley out of sight of the officer.
"You actually went along with it?" Lily asked outraged.
"Did you have another explanation you were willing to use?"
"I'd rather have told him I was a witch, thank you very much," I said, putting my two cents in.
"Glad to see I'm outnumbered again. Let's remember whose idea it was to ask dear old Sirius for advice!"
I opened my mouth to argue back, but no good comebacks came to me, so I closed it again.
"Point two for Remus," Remus said, holding up two fingers to emphasize his point. "Now, I think the officer has moved on, let's go."
The three of us hurried back and entered the correct phone booth. The only reason I knew it was right was because its door wasn't broken into shards of glass.
Remus entered the code and three pins came out each reading our names as well as Spell Inventions Division—Department of Mysteries. The phone booth brought us strait to our office. It wasn't so much of an office as it was a dungeon. The floor and walls were all thick stone; if we were to make something explode, it wouldn't affect the rest of the ministry. So far we had only caused seven explosions, three of which took place because we all three used our wands on the same object but with different spells. The other four had experiments we knew would backfire, but it sounded like fun anyway.
For the past two years at Hogwarts the three of us had nearly lived in the library. We blamed it all on studying so that we could get the position we were in at the ministry. They only let the most dedicated and serious of workers join Spell Inventions, so we defiantly had a job. Right now, however, we were trying to prove that we had something that could move forward without ministry assistance. If we were unable to, we were going to be back at square one: experimentation in the basement—something Mrs. Potter in particular did not want to see happen.
"Okay, let's run over what we have again before we start today," Lily said, sitting down at her desk, which was neatly organized. She opened a draw and pulled out a two-year old piece of parchment. "Inferi come to life with the incantation Mortasto incessus, along with the caster putting a drop of blood onto the tip of his wand."
"After breaking down the incantation we learned that it nearly literally means 'Dead Feet Walking'. We know, Lily, we've done this hundreds of times!" I said. I was growing impatient of how often we went over the bit of information we had discovered at the Hogwarts library at the end of our sixth year. "What we need are the wand movements to create inferi as well as the proper ones for Avada Kedavra,"
"Too bad Madame Pince kicked us out of the Hogwarts library after she found out what we were looking for," Remus said bitterly. "Now that woman is the pure medieval muggle definition of witch,"
"She was just doing her job," Lily muttered, digging through papers in a draw I couldn't see.
"Yeah, but she's making our job a lot more difficult," I said, picking up a stress ball Sirius had gotten me as a gag gift for my birthday and throwing it up in the air and catching it again.
"Well, Keena, you're on such good terms with the headmaster, why don't you ask him to let us back in?" Lily asked me sarcastically. Everyone knew that Dumbledore and I rarely if ever got along since I had run away the summer before sixth year.
"Yes, maybe he'll decide to suddenly forgive me for all the trouble I've caused over the course of my seven years at Hogwarts, especially the last two,"
Somehow Dumbledore had gotten it into his incredibly thick head that I should've stopped Sirius from telling Snape to go to the Whomping Willow on a certain night of the month. While Sirius ended up with a month's worth of detentions, I got two. I couldn't wait to see what he would do to me when Sirius escaped Azkaban in the next fourteen years, though I hadn't mentioned this worry to anyone, seeing as no one knew that Sirius was destined to Azkaban.
"He likes you two, maybe he'll let you guys go back into the library even if he doesn't let me in."
"Are you kidding me? You're the one who came up with this whole thing! It wouldn't be right if we did the research without you," Lily answered, throwing the parchment she held in her hands onto her desk.
I smiled and thought for a moment.
"Why don't we find out who invented inferi?" Remus suggested.
"We searched the library for two years on that one, Rem," I reminded him.
"There has to be a book somewhere that has that information," Lily said, clenching her fist around her own stress ball (another gag gift, this one courtesy of James).
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the only empty bit of space on my desk.
"Keena, don't you remember the last time you did that?" Remus cautioned.
"Nope,"
"That's because she was knocked unconscious by the cauldron that we used to keep back there,"
"Oh yeah,"
"What are you two--?" Suddenly my chair flipped out from underneath me and I landed, back first, on the ground, swearing to Merlin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
"C'mon, Keena, what did Merlin and the Founders ever do to you?" Lily laughed, holding her side.
"Well, Slytherin's latest heir was the cause of my foster father's death,"
"Must you dampen the mood?"
"Now that you mention it, Moony, yes," I said, rubbing my back where I had landed on the hard stone floor. "I should get a cushion for behind this thing,"
"Don't you remember that was the noise that made Madame Pince come over to our table in the first place?" Remus scolded.
I gasped.
"What?" Remus asked, looking dumbfounded.
"That's it! There is a book at Hogwarts that might help us! Yes. We need to get there ASAP!" I shouted, jumping up from the ground and grinning widely at my sudden realization. "Lily, you've got it in your notes when the first inferi came into being right?"
"Yes—it was around the time of--"
"Good, just tell me when we get there,"
"Keena, we're not allowed, besides there are students studying right now,"
"Why should I give a damn about their studies when we could save lives right now?"
"Aren't we trying to save their lives too?" Lily asked.
"How can we do that without the Hogwarts library?" Lily and Remus exchanged glances before sighing deeply in aggravation. "I knew you'd see it my way," I grinned. "We'll have to see dear old Dumbles first, though. One of you do the talking, I don't think he likes me in the least,"
We went over to the small fireplace that rarely ever burned. I went first, taking the floo powder in my hand and commanding it to take me to Dumbledore. Our fireplace was one of the few that was still connected at Hogwarts, mainly as an escape route if it were ever needed.
I stepped out of the fireplace and into the familiar office of Albus Dumbledore. I was followed in quick succession by Lily and Remus.
"Ah, Miss McIntosh, Miss Evans and Mr. Lupin. To what do I owe this surprise visit?" he asked, barely looking up from his desk. His brow was furrowed and he looked as if he were deep in thought.
"Well, Professor, as you probably know, we're working in the Spell Inventions Division at the Department of Mysteries," Lily stated.
"Yes, those are the rumors I have heard. They are, I take it, true,"
"Yes sir," Lily said, nodding. "But you see, we're looking for some classified information we believe we may find at the Hogwarts library,"
"The problem is, sir, Madame Pince band us from the library in the middle of our last year." Remus finished.
"So that is why Mr. Potter, Black and Pettigrew were so often checking books out near the time of N.E.W.T.s last year," Dumbledore said more to himself than to us.
"Yes, sir, but we really need to get into the library,"
"Madame Pince told me that you three were doing research on inferi. May I inquire why?"
"It's part of our research," I answered vaguely.
"What research would that be?" he said, finally looking into my face.
"The classified research, sir," I said staring back at him determinedly. "Do you not trust us sir?" I asked.
"It is not a matter of trusting you three, more of a matter of trusting that this research is for (for lack of wording) for the greater good,"
"Trust me, sir, if we do this right, we could change the world," Remus answered.
Dumbledore did not seem entirely satisfied with this answer, but he nodded all the same. "Tell Madame Pince I have allowed you three to re-enter the library. You may use it whenever you feel it necessary."
"Thank you so much sir!" Lily said eagerly.
"But be careful. Do not forget to cast shield charms before every test," Dumbledore cautioned. "I had a great friend who once forgot to cast his shield charm. You may now find him in the back of the Godric's Hollow graveyard."
"We will be careful, sir," Remus insisted before we excused ourselves and ran off to the library.
And that was the first chapter of Making Promises! I'm actually pleased with how this chapter came out, I think. Please review! Until chapter 2!
:-D