A/N: Just as a reminder, the prophecy can be seen in full at the beginning of the prologue.
Also, omg. It's a longer chapter. Apologies for the long wait, but my creativity went on holiday.
Aaaand, special thanks to MooBlack for betaing this chapter (and most of the previous chapters). It's fifty times better now!
Chapter Five: In which there is a hunt for Peter and the Munchkinland Council finally begins to make "progress".
Three hours later, the Munchkinland Council was no further than they'd been two chapters ago, and the munchkins' stomachs were beginning to growl. The Mayor's First Advisor volunteered to fetch food.
"Hurry back!" was the Mayor's reply.
The cool breeze on his face as the First Advisor walked outside had never felt so good. It was rare for the council meetings to run over half an hour, tops. (There wasn't much conflict in Munchkinland.) When it ran over three hours, as it had today, everyone started to go crazy.
He ducked through the throng of people milling around the square. Munchkinland rarely got visitors. Now there were six in a single week. It would be the hot gossip for decades.
Within minutes, the First Advisor arrived at the catering company in charge of feeding the council. The company was the most widely known in the country; it was no joke catering for all those businessmen. While it was true their meetings rarely extended over thirty minutes, they were in the habit of holding a dinner party every night to relax after a long day's work.
Anyway, this isn't crucial to the story, so I'll stop rambling on about it. The Mayor's First Advisor was ducking back through the crowd in the square, returning to the meeting, when he decided to take his time and absorb some of the gossip. To his left was a bunch of giggling Munchkin girls.
"Did you see them?" gasped one.
"So hot," another replied
"The dark haired one looked right at me." The entire group squealed. The First Advisor rolled his eyes. Teenage girls.
"Five at once… This will go down in history for sure," he overheard from a group of elderly women just ahead of him.
"It almost overshadows the first girl."
"We've never had so much hope before… reminds me of how it was before the witches took over," another old lady rasped out.
There was nodding all around, from the other women. "Those were the days," one muttered.
No matter what we decide, people are going to hope, the First Advisor realized. He hurried back to the council meeting.
Just as he was opening the door, the teenage girls' conversation came back to him. The boys! he thought, feeling stupid. They'd hardly discussed the boys at all; they were so caught up in the potential of the girl.
"She isn't the girl in the prophecy," he called out as he entered the room. The other council members looked up in surprise.
The Mayor spoke. "You've been saying that all afternoon. Why do you repeat yourself now? Do you have further proof?" The First Advisor nodded enthusiastically and strode over to the assistant clothed in blue; the bookkeeper.
"May I read over the prophecy?" he asked. The bookkeeper handed over a copy.
After skimming it over quickly, the First Assistant began to point out details they hadn't yet looked at. "'The first of her friends shall be black as the night; a dog'—a dog! You see? It doesn't work. There was no dog; it was just the five of them. All clearly human. And 'the fourth… is really a beast that most people abhor'? There were certainly no beasts among them."
The council looked at him blankly when he was finished. The evidence was irrefutable. Dorothy had had a dog with her, no doubt about it. This young group of wizards did not. And a beast? No, they were all human. Not a beastly trait among them.
The Mayor stood up sadly. "Well," he announced, "I suppose we'd best be informing the citizens of Munchkinland that she's not the one."
And they did just that.
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"Well let's not just stand here gaping at each other! We've got to find Peter!" cried James, flailing his arms about in a panicked manner that made Lily look at him oddly. He stopped flailing his arms and shot her a cheesy grin that he surely thought was winning.
Lily rolled her eyes, but the gesture lacked the venom it might have a few hours earlier.
"Does anyone know a tracing spell?" asked Sirius. No one did.
"That book you've got, Remus?" suggested Lily, remembering the large book Remus kept shrunken in his robes. After a quick look in the index, the book (ironically called 538 Useful Spells for Unexpected Situations) was determined unhelpful yet again.
"Damn," muttered Sirius. "Why can't you have a useful textbook hidden away in there? They should call it 538 Useless Spells." Remus shrugged apologetically.
James was staring moodily at the spot in the grass where Peter had vanished. Suddenly, his eyes lit up with a brilliant idea. "We've got to go after him!" he exclaimed.
Lily looked at him as if he were mad. "Are you mad?" she cried, verifying that he'd correctly read her expression.
He held up his hands defensively. "Hey, we have no idea where we are now, right? If we step on that grass, surely we'll be no worse off." He had a point, and Remus nodded in agreement.
"He has a point."
"But who knows where Peter is now! He could have been transported into a vat of boiling water! He could have been vaporized! How do we know we won't be killed!" protested Lily.
"Come on, Evans!" pleaded James, slinging an arm around her shoulder. "You're in Gryffindor. Don't be a coward."
She flung his arm away in exasperation. "Potter! There's cowardice, and then there's pure stupidity! Jumping into suspicious grass that made poor Peter vanish into thin air in the middle of a strange place you've randomly been taken to by a freak potions accident on the off chance that you'll be able to help Peter out of whatever unknown problems he might be facing right now would fall under the category of pure stupidity!"
The frustration injected into Lily's tirade was, of course, entirely due to the obvious insanity of her companion and had nothing whatsoever to do with the butterflies his arm had given her stomach. After all, this was Potter.
That was when Remus began walking toward the edge of the road, toward the grass that had so recently swallowed their slightly pudgy friend. "Peter has always stuck by us. We can't just leave him to fend for himself."
Lily reeled in surprise. "I would expect you of all people to see why this is a bad idea!" she screeched at her fellow prefect.
Sirius chose this moment to speak up. "You want to leave Peter all by himself in a strange place, be my guest. But we're going after him." He followed Remus toward the grass.
James nodded. "He's one of my best mates, and I won't leave him," he declared.
Lily felt slightly sick at the idea of being left on this strange road by herself and momentarily saw their side of the issue. But surely it would be best to keep heading toward the city! People there could help them. They could return home! These boys were lunatics. She'd never liked them anyway.
Better alone than dead, right?
With a grimace, Lily gave in. "Fine, let's go," she sighed. James grinned at her. Remus flopped to the grass exactly where Peter had been. His body had left a faint impression in the grass.
The others held their breath. One second… two… three… four…
Nothing happened.
Remus sat up with a puzzled expression. "Maybe you're not heavy enough?" suggested Sirius.
"Padfoot!" Remus cried in an aggravated tone.
"I'm just saying… I'm not making fun. Just… he's bigger than you. It's a fact," protested Sirius.
Remus, being a reasonable person, conceded the point and moved on. "Help me add more weight then," he said.
Sirius dropped down beside him on the grass.
Still, nothing happened.
James joined his friends, even though the two of them were already far heavier than Peter. Still nothing.
"What the hell?" moaned Sirius. "Why won't it work anymore?"
Lily wouldn't admit it, but she was relieved. They weren't going to die after all.
Honestly, she hardly knew the guy. Peter was the quietest of the four friends and rarely talked to her at all. She wasn't sure she was willing to risk her life for him.
"I guess we'll have to find Wormtail another way," muttered James.
But Remus wasn't ready to give up yet. He sat in the grass with a scowl on his face, straining his brain for some idea. He got his companions to do everything he could think of, and the young wizards eagerly tried everything Remus suggested. They jumped and flopped and dropped and rolled and kicked, all to no avail. They tried recounting their previous conversation… nothing.
The perseverance of the boys gave Lily a shock. She'd never seen them like this. Gone were the easygoing appearances and the casual sarcasm. This was serious business.
Remus was so serious that he even managed to convince his mates to injure him in the same places Peter had been hurt, but even that didn't work. In the end, he admitted defeat. They would not reach Peter this way.
Lily was awed at the boys' devotion to Peter. All of them were shockingly persistent. Clearly the four of them were very close, and Lily wondered what could possibly create such a strong bond.
It was well after nightfall when the boys called it quits. The moon was a crescent, the unusual angle making it resemble a celestial grin. Though there wasn't much of it, moonlight illuminated the field brightly, making everything easy to see.
They decided to sleep in the field where Peter had vanished simply because they were now convinced it was perfectly safe. After everything they'd done they were in exactly the same state they'd been in before (aside from their current exhaustion which hadn't been there previously). Surely sleeping here would be safe.
And if the grass decided to transport them as it had Peter, well, that's what they wanted in the first place.
A/N: And there we have chapter five.
By the way… have you ever noticed the spelling of bookkeeper? oo kk ee… Yeah. Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway.