A Treasure Odyssey

Part 4: Who's The Thief?

Because Hufflepuffs just weren't clever it was a widely known fact that their dorms were empty Wednesday evenings when they were out playing hide and seek. They were surprisingly braggy for such a wussy bunch. The walls in Fletcher's dorm were lined with shelves on which golden trophies he and his fellow dorm mates had found sat. Treasure chests were stacked all over and golden coins even came out of the faucets. Fletcher's oozing bed was the only area where jewels didn't sparkle.

"Greedy buggers!" said James, seizing a trophy he had won for the Junior Kestrels one summer and didn't bother pouring out the jewels kept inside of it.

"Squidbeard was a thief himself" said Sirius and put on some latex gloves before turning over the dirty mattress. "He would have expected this, nay, he would have wanted this"
"You don't need to justify our actions to me" said James and put down the trophy by the door so he could commence with the gutting of chairs. "We just want to borrow it, remember?"

Sirius let the mattress fall back and ran a knife through it next.

"I mean, our money is made of stuff explorer wizards found in the Americas anyway, so what hasn't been stolen at one point or another? It's all just a chain of theft when you think about it, and I'm just continuing the great tradition"
"I know you feel that way. It's why you're capitalist"

"So are you, you're just closeted about it"
Twenty minutes of searching felt like an hour and yielded no luck whatsoever. Done shaking feathers from a pillow Sirius tossed the case over his shoulder.

"He must have brought it here. He would have" he said uncertainly.

"What if he didn't? It belongs to Aunt Muriel, not him"

"I know but he treats it like it belongs to him"

Soil rained to the floor when James stabbed an orchid pot, expecting to find nothing and not doing so either. He switched from his looting-glasses to his homework-glasses as he went for the door.

"I think I will draw my line here and leave Aunt Muriel's drawers alone"
The two left the dorm in the messy state they had put it in defeated spirits, half-heartedly considering other potential hiding places but failing to come up with any alternative that was as likely as Aunt Muriel's drawers.

It was a quiet evening in dormitory M, owed to the fact that Sirius had found a book (which hadn't been hard, it had been put on his bed) on how to meditate to the point of hallucinating. Genuinely intrigued, he and James had decided to pick up meditation after all and journal about it because not doing so for their homework was simply too mainstream anyway.

A record with rainforest sounds spun on the record player. Incense from the divination room filled the dorm with the scent of Christmas-y spices.

"Om… om…" said James, occasionally peeking to make sure Sirius wasn't using illegal substances as a way of cheating or laughing for making him look like an utter tit. He was disappointed to find Sirius was still in fact meditating, because if he hadn't it would give James more of an excuse to quit.

"Sod this" he said, deciding to quit anyway. "Nothing"

"Then you must be doing it wrong" said Sirius.

"Are you getting anything?"

"I'm getting a very intense, otherworldly smell…"

The strange, otherworldly smell grew stronger when Fletcher let himself in without even knocking first, disrupting the peace by slamming the door to the dorm first and the doors to the mysterious old cupboards second. Most of them turned out to be too well protected for an incompetent wizard like him but he managed to get his head inside a wardrobe that Sirius had forgotten put the chain back on. He screamed and tried to close the doors, hurt his head, retracted his head and closed the doors.

"What are you looking for?" James asked.

"Don't play dumb!" said Fletcher and stuck his Aspen, 18 sensible metrical centimeters, bluecap toe inside one of the birdhouses.

"If you want the Faberge egg back you will just have to bet that neat chart collection in a round of rummy" said Sirius, his eyes still closed and himself still in lotus position.

"Why do you pretend you don't have it when I know it was you who made a right mess in my dorm?"

"Is it missing?" James asked.

"I'm not as stupid as you think!"

When Fletcher took his wand out of the birdhouse he found it was covered in a very strange and oozing goo. He turned up his nose in disgust as he wiped it off on his robes.

"I'm in the mood of reporting this!"
As a final attempt at finding the collection Fletcher stuck his left hand inside a barrel covered in post-its warning him not to and lost it. He shrieked, more from terror than from pain, and ran out of the dorm. The barrel spat out the hand shortly after.

James put his homework aside and tore a plastic bag from a roll to keep the hand in while Sirius waited by the door. When they found Fletcher in the hospital wing he had already been assigned a bed, upon which he was sitting dressed in the hospital wing gown poking the band-aided tip of his left arm and sucking on a thermometer.

"How's your hand?" Sirius asked, wiggling the plastic bag.

"Not as awesome as my new one" Fletcher replied.

"The Bodygrow Potion is really painful" said James. "A lot more painful than just sewing a body part back on"

Fletcher grew pale in the face instantly.

"And I suppose I can only have my hand back if I give you my very sought after ship in a bottle" he said.

"No. What ship in a bottle?"

"The bottle with the Black Oyster, of course. Without it, finding Squidbeard Island will be both tedious and time consuming"

"We just want you to shut up about the barrels and the drawers and the birdhouses" said Sirius. "And the clocks and the teapots and the violins and the blenders"

"And answer this question" said James, "Do you know for sure the collection was stolen today?"

"Of course I'm sure" said Fletcher and added nothing more to that.

"Well, how do you know?"

"Not telling you!"

"Do you want your hand or not?"

"Let's just say I have my way. But now that I think about it, of course you couldn't have taken it because you Gryffindors couldn't find a curry in India. But just who could have done it? Was it me?"

Fletcher bemoaned his terrible Finder's Curse and went on to mumble about his sleep-hiding habits, now suspecting only himself after ruling out everybody who wasn't a Hufflepuff, having his fellow Badgers in too high regard to suspect any of them.

"Anyway, we think Voldemort might have it" said James.

The thermometer fell out of Fletcher's mouth. "V-V-Voldemort?"

"So you should let us have the ship in a bottle so we can hide the treasure before he gets it" said Sirius.

"Better us than him, right?" said James. "And if you don't give it to us there is a chance somebody else will try to get it from you. And they won't be as nice"

"How do you expect me to believe anything you say?" asked Fletcher, trembling.

"We don't need treasure. We're just looking for drama" said Sirius.

"That's great because I hate drama. And I do know this: if Voldemort gets hold of the Moon Talisman there will be drama. Werewolves already give me the collywobbles without anybody controlling them all like marionettes"

"You know what the treasure is?" James asked.

"Of course I do. It's all in Squidbeard's Looter's Journal"

"Is it safe?"

"Yes and it will stay safe!"
Madam Pomfrey was coming out of her office. Sirius dropped the hand beside Fletcher and left along with James before Pomfrey got a chance to usher them out because they had gotten more than they had come for anyway.