[b]

1, A rainy day with a werewolf[/b]

For summer weather, it was cold and rainy. Remus cast a levitating charm on a fistful of mud, and threw it across the meadow. Anybody could figure he was in a bad mood. Anybody who knew him could also conclude that the full moon was near.

Remus was one of the (perhaps not so few) children who couldn't wait to get back to Hogwarts again, and not only because of his thirst for knowledge. Oh, he loved learning, even from that horrifyingly stupid DADA teacher last year. She was a good example of what not to become. But also: he had friends at Hogwarts, friends who would help him through the worst of his transformation as well as cheer him up 24/7 . They were always there with him, Merlin, even when he just wanted to catch a moment for himself. After what had happened to him, his parents never even considered having another child, so Potter, Black and Pettigrew were the closest he would ever get to a brother.

Another fistful of mud flew across the meadow and crashed against the trunk of a shrivelfig tree. His mom, his muggle, loving, patient mom, wouldn't be happy. Another fistful of mud followed. He could not care the least about her opinion, at the moment.

He sat down on a rain-soaked rock, and focused on the memory of his closest-to-brothers. Potter, Pettigrew. Two so very different young wizards. Potter, and Pettigrew. He forcefully shut out the grinning face of Black. After the stunt just one full moon before, Remus didn't think he would ever as much as talk to him again.

There was a loud pop, the sound of somebody apparating to his parents' house. He picked up the voice of an unknown man as he (presumably) introduced himself, and then, there was another voice, a much more familiar one, and Remus promptly turned the opposite direction so that he could avoid them.

The chubby boy followed him through the meadow, however, and soon Remus found that running from a schoolmate was not something he could keep up forever.

"Get lost, Peter," he pleaded, still not turning around to face the little thing, but not walking away from him either.

"Just listen, for once, Moony!" Pettigrew panted. In neither forms was he used to chasing a werewolf. "We all know it was a bad joke, but Merlin, what do you call what we've done in Honeydukes, then?"

"Nobody was using me as a murder tool at Honeydukes!" Remus shot back. "And don't tell me Prongs set it all right, because he didn't! He prevented the worst, yes, but only because he was saving Padfoot's sorry aft!"

"Would you please calm down, Moony? We all know Sirius is an idiot, but everybody makes mistakes and friends are - friends are for keeping each other in line and preventing things go too bad, you know. Like us, preventing you from biting anybody."

"That's somewhat the opposite of what Black was doing!"

"But at least, don't be angry with James," the not-a-rat-now pleaded.

"Or with you."

"Or with me," Peter nodded.

Remus took a deep breath.

"James went to Evans, first thing. Boasted about how he'd saved "her" Snape's neck.

Peter dropped down in the wet grass. "I didn't know she was involved."

"That's the point, Peter! She wasn't!"

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'."

Water and reality were raining down on the two friends, until Remus's mother appeared with a large umbrella, calling them both by their names.

"Can't she do a water-repelling charm?" Peter blinked.

"She's a muggle."

"Oh."

They walked back to the house, Remus with slow, sullen steps, Peter anxiously, wondering what James must be doing right now. Last he'd heard from him, Prongs had announced with a smug face that he'd managed to lure Evans to the Potter Manor with the promise of looking up old rituals in books that the muggleborn would otherwise only see in the Restricted Section. Something about magically forcing Sirius to grow some sense of responsibility, although young Pettigrew would have bet it was just as impossible as conjuring food out of something inedible.

But, Peter wondered, getting Perfect Lily to Potter's home had seemed just as impossible, and there, it happened when noone was expecting it. And knowing the girl's abilities, for her, impossible only meant more research before pinning it.

[B]2, A windy evening with an animagus[/b]

Sirius was circling the roads around Godric's Hollow. Despite the Potter Manor being his home for almost three days now, the area was still new to him. Previously he'd only visited the family home, but now that he was an inhabitant, he had brought out his motorbike and started memorizing the nearby streets. It was so much better than sitting in his room under Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place! He wouldn't ever trade his freedom for the family wealth. Regulus was happy to be the new heir, so his parents should have been happy that he had done what was best for the family. Instead, his mother had burnt him off the family tree in addition to his father disowning him. Apparently, he had inherited his tendency for rush decisions from somewhere….

Sometimes, he had to admit, not all his rush decisions were good ones in the hindsight. Telling Snivellus the way to Moony's hiding place was definitely a bad one.

"They say never look back!" he yelled into the wind. Then, just because nobody should ever tell him what to do, he blinked back at the muggle war memorial in the village center, then grimaced at the thought of what really had happened between Germany and Britain and how his headmaster had put an end to it all.

He turned his attention back to the road just in time to avoid running his bike over a very young child.

"Merliiiin!"

He missed the child by mere three centimeters. Three was a magical number, right? Perhaps even better than seven, which was highly overappreciated. There were three good houses at Hogwarts, for example. Anything above that was the odd-one-out.

He turned the motorbike around, and stopped it at the young thing.

It was a boy, a black-haired, small, underdeveloped boy who had curled around himself, eyes wide, as if under blankets during a spooky fairy tale. Only, there were no blankets around, only the asphalt and the pools of rainwater on it. He was wearing grey pajamas that were already soaked.

Sirius looked around. None of the muggle inhabitants of Godric's Hollow seemed to grace the muddy roads at this time of the day. Some muggle tele-something serial was on for the evenings, or so Evans had once explained, and that held their attention just like a Quidditch World Cup would hold every wizards'. There was nobody around to whom Sirius would have passed the child, so he pointed his wand at the small thing, cast a drying and a warming charm, then picked the scared thing up and drove straight back to the Potter manor.

Lily was still inside. Prongs would kill the both of them if he just marched in on their first date, but then, he would suffer the consequences later. Now he had a grey bundle of fright in his arms, and if said bundle will help keep Evans inside for even longer, well, would James complain or not?

"Alohomora!"

He parked the bike, went inside, discarded his wet jacket, dried up the water and mud he'd brought in, then marched straight into the living-room with his head held high. "Hey James, look what I've just found!"

To his shock, not only Prongs and Lily were in the room (they seemed to have been packing away some old candles that were normally used for rituals) but also James' parents. At his great entry, Mrs Potter screamed, while Mr Potter burst out laughing. "Miss Evans, it worked!"

"I told you!" James joined his father.

"What worked…?" Sirius looked around suspiciously. Suddenly, those candles and pieces of chalk became very suspicious…. Were they doing a ritual? And what was his own shirt doing in the center?

But Lily was already dragging him to the couch, checking the young boy for injuries, while James's mom conjured Prongs' old blanket around the child.

"Look, he's so scared!"

"No wonder, it was sleeping between the two lanes some thirty meters from the memorial, in the middle of the rain."

"I doubt he was sleeping. And he's a boy. See? He has the same thing you do!" Lily hastily replied.

"It… He gave no sound! I thought I should bring it in. Do you know any muggle place where it could be brought in? Sorry, he."

"Didn't work," James muttered to his dad.

"He definitely needs a healer," his mother replied, ignoring the remark from her own son. "Let me bring him something to eat…"

"How did we get saddled with a muggle orphan?" James wondered. "He's clearly been out in the rain for… maybe hours."

"What makes you think he's a muggle?" Lily queried.

"Wizarding children don't vanish without their parents looking for them. We would be getting owls from pretty much everybody who knows us, asking us to join in the search." Mr Potter explained.

At the sight of hot cocoa Mrs Potter just brought in for him, the child uncurled and took the cup from her, demandingly. He drank it in one go, then coiled back around himself, staring at the three wizards and two witches from under the blanket's fluffs.

"How old could he be?" Prongs asked.

"Around three," Mrs Potter guessed.

"Must be at least four," Lily disagreed. "Look, he's very thin. Looks like he's never been fed properly. Would a child like that be the size of his age?"

"Is there a muggle hospital around here?" Sirius queried. "Or anywhere you could apparate with him?"

"I never asked. Maybe I can ask Mrs Taylor tomorrow."

"Why does he give no sound? He looks like somebody's put a silencing charm on him."

"Then he would be at least gaping," Sirius argued. "Just like Snivellus after that Astronomy class."

Lily's grimace reminded him too late that pranks on Snape were not to be discussed in front of her. "He's very scared. I'd say, traumatised."

After the young thing had chewed through a light dinner, Mrs Potter cast a thorough cleaning charm on him, then helped him dress into the clothes she'd been storing in an expanded crate since James's childhood. Then it was somehow agreed without any dispute that Sirius would be the one whose bedroom he'd be sleeping in, as he had been the one who found him. Nobody seemed to care what young Black had to say about the decision.

At least, the boy slept through the night without crying. He didn't give a sound during the day, either, only sat in the corner for hours, and consumed his food with great appetite. After witnessing him squish some vegetables with uncontrolled magic, taking him to any muggle institute was out of question. The Potters owled to the Ministry and St Mungo's, but nobody seemed to be looking for a missing boy, although both replies included an offer to take the child in.

"Out of question!" Sirius exclaimed. "Finders, keepers!"

[B]3, A chilly morning with a Dark Creatures expert[/b]

Preoccupied with the child, they almost forgot to visit Moony before the full moon came. Remus loudly insisted that they shouldn't come pretending nothing had happened, but Lily was of a different opinion and explained that abandoning their friend just because he felt hurt rightfully would have been just as bad as the initial deed was. So Sirius and James floo'ed over to the Lupins as soon as the moon was up, and marched out into the tidy living-room in their animal forms, down to Moony's hiding place.

Later, Lyall Lupin told the two of them that a little warning wouldn't have hurt, although he admitted that Remus had asked him to burn all their letters they had sent during the summer break.

"But then, what of the surprise?" Sirius asked, the rays of the rising sun glamoring his long hair. Remus, currently under a blanket in the armchair, sipping hot chocolate, only growled.

"Remy, we all know you're not companionable on your days after, so sorry for ignoring your opinion!" James said, downing his butterbeer.

"Are you guys registered?" Mr Lupin eventually queried.

"And what? Go to Azkaban for not filling out the proper forms before we began?"

"No, but…"

"We discussed, and the answer is, they won't," Remus murmured. "I won't do it in their stead. Some of us do keep the secrets," he added, giving Sirius a stern look.

James felt the need to change the topic.

"Moony, as you kept ignoring our mail, I guess you don't even know about the wizard child Padfoot found two days ago?"

"You WHAT?"

"If you ask why we didn't tell you, I'll show that pile of unopened letters down your throat, Moony."

Another growl. "One reason I would have liked them burnt."

"Tell me about him!" Remus's muggle mother insisted. Little did she care about wizarding law when there was a child to discuss!

"About four years old. Pretty black hair, as handsome as I was, much less talkative."

"Still won't even give us his name," James continued. "Doesn't speak at all. Not to us, anyway. Lily insists she'd seen him talk to a garden snake."

"WHAT?" Lyall Lupin jumped up. "You've found a Parselmouth?"

"If that's what it's called," James shrugged. "Does that mean he won't be ever speaking to humans?"

"How did you get Lily involved?" Remus asked. To him, his friends stumbling across a lost wizarding boy with an extremely rare talent was still much more plausible than Lily being on speaking terms with either of them.

"She asked if there's a magical way to make Padfoot a little more responsible, and I invited her to check in our library," James explained. "There was an old ritual called Responsibility Placement, so we thought it should work. The candles were still out when Mr Idiot came in with the boy in his arms. Who would have thought?"

"But it's a Parselmouth!" Mr Lupin insisted. "Those are dangerous! Everybody known with that talent ended up as a Dark wizard! Have the Potters not told you that?"

"You're prejudiced, sir, how about that one?" Sirius shot back.

"No, I'm being the sole voice of reason here!"

"Well, at least, thank you for explaining why Sirius gets on so well with the child," James said in a bit more respectful manner. "He's the one with a family of snakes."

"At least you didn't try to get your own brother killed last month, boy," Mr Lupin murmured.

"News spread fast," Padfoot brooded at that. "So three days after I moved out from a purely Slytherin residence, I got one all on my own?"

"Finders, keepers," James quoted him.

+1, It's all explained

Three days before / thirteen years later

Barty Crouch was staring at the Unspeakable in front of him. She didn't appear dangerous, but Crouch's old auror instincts kept telling him that they were standing in her home territory.

"Are you sure this would work?"

"No, but I'm sure there's no other way to prevent all of You-Know-Who has ever done."

"And you want me to do it."

"In your time, you were famous for approving radical measures when that was the right thing to do." The Unspeakable looked at the old wizard, then back at the jar of timesand she was holding. "I cannot send you back to kill him in person, but with this method, you could vanish that monster back at the starting point."

"I thought vanishing people is not possible," the wizard noted.

"That area is still under research," the Unspeakable replied. "Him being not here right now is the key, because you can only not vanish someone who exists right now."

"And if you're wrong? We will conjure him right into this room?" Crouch huffed.

"I think it's worth the risk."

"At least you do." There was very clear disagreement in his tone. And just a shade of contempt.

"Just aim at his school years, or maybe before. Aim at him when he was only a child! Then the worst we can get, is him appearing here in his youth."

Barty considered his options. No, the Unspeakable was right, vanishing Voldemort was the only way to prevent his son from becoming a Death Eater. He would do an awful lot for the entire wizardkind, even if nobody will ever know about it.

"So, I should cast the charm through the timesand in a place where he had been as a child?"

The Unspeakable nodded. "And have your wand ready afterwards. Just in case he appears."

"I wonder how nobody broke into the Department of Mysteries before," Sirius Black whispered. "This was ridiculously easy."

"It never occurred to anyone that it's doable. You should know how normal wizards think."

"Where am I from normal, Tom?"

His stepson replied something in Parseltongue, perhaps an apology.

Really, one would only attempt this robbery if they're not just desperate, but a bit mad as well. But they have pulled off crazier tricks before, and Wormtail needed all the help he could get, so there they went. All is fair in love and war. And they weren't really stealing the Fountain of Love. Just… borrowing it for a friend in need.