Remus, Lily, and Peter trudged together along the road to Hogwarts after having Apparated from the Lupins' house after dinner to Hogsmeade. The ground was damp and spongy underfoot; and everywhere Remus looked in the darkness, little pale flowers turned their papery faces toward him. Trees were budding overhead, whispering mysteriously in the crisp evening breeze. His robes billowed behind him as he walked with his head down, his small suitcase swinging rhythmically with each step. He wanted to hold Lily's hand, but it wasn't time yet. First, he had to tell his friends – tell James. He owed him that much, though it terrified him. He couldn't think about it. For now, he contented himself with watching Lily's shoes stepping one in front of the other while Peter chattered about homework he needed to do. His chatter soon turned into a diatribe about the advantages of practical homework versus written theoretical essays. Remus was grateful for the inane banter; it kept him from thinking too deeply about what had happened over the past day and a half. How could so much change in so short a time?
Now Peter was going on about Sirius and how he had tried to talk with his brother Regulus before the Quidditch match on Saturday. Remus glanced at Peter in surprise, wondering when Sirius had decided to break his own rule about The Silent Treatment; it took a lot for Sirius to make that choice, but once he made it, it was for good. "If you ask me, I think Regulus is a lost cause," Peter said sagely. "I don't know why Sirius even bothered." Peter went on, and Remus watched his friend's fingers fiddling nervously with the collar of his cloak as they walked.
"Wait," said Lily sharply, walking quickly to a storefront where there were several posted photographs of missing witches and wizards. She stopped in front of one of the newest photos and gazed at it. "This is a student. I've seen him."
Remus and Peter joined her on either side. Meeting Remus' eyes with that vulnerable and skeptical gaze that he knew so well were the large, dark eyes of Madhav Sastri. Remus had tutored the Hufflepuff until the end of February, had given him advice over pumpkin juice about girls. He was fourteen. Apparently the boy had gone missing during Professor Sprout's class trip to Hogsmeade on Friday. It was an annual pilgrimage of third years, during which Professor Sprout replenished her supply of ale worms, and the Hog's Head taps were cleaned as well as they were ever likely to be cleaned. All future trips to Hogsmeade this year were officially cancelled, according to Headmaster Dumbledore's note at the bottom of the poster.
The three stood there, speechless, staring at Madhav's young, stern face for several minutes, and Remus felt a terrible hollowness inside his chest. Peter started and glanced behind them twice, shuffling from foot to foot and furtively watching as a few witches and wizards ambled past them on the road.
"Come on," said Remus at last, and he began walking again, head down. Things were bad and only getting worse, if such a thing were even possible. His heart raced, thoughts sped through his brain, and his body needed to move. Lily and Peter hurried to keep up with his long strides.
Once inside the front gate, they tramped up the stairs, passed through the portrait hole, and found the Gryffindor Common Room deserted. Perhaps everyone was still in the infirmary after the Gryffindor and Slytherin post-Quidditch brawl. Remus and Lily spoke short goodbyes to each other, not quite meeting each other's eyes as they turned toward their respective stairwells. They had promised to meet each other later, after everyone was asleep. As Remus and Peter climbed the steps to the boys' bed tower, however, they began to hear a woman speaking.
" … you're quite certain?" It was Professor McGonagall's voice. "Thank goodness none of the students were here!"
Heart thudding, Remus sprinted the rest of the way up the stairs, Peter following hastily behind. What on earth had happened? The sight that greeted him when he hurtled into the bedchamber made him drop his suitcase. It thumped onto the floor and fell on its side, its leather and brass handle squeaking as it landed.
McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Filch stood in the center of the room, and they all turned their faces toward Remus when he entered. Sweeping his eyes about him, Remus saw that all the bed curtains appeared to have been burned. His own curtains were reduced to mere rags, as if someone had decided to hang some laundry out to dry just prior to a volcanic eruption. There were scorch marks on the wall beside the window, but the window itself was intact. On the floor, Remus' old trunk lay in pieces, apparently having exploded, and its contents were strewn violently about the room. His books and clothes and letters from home lay awkwardly in corners and under other beds. Many of the items were singed or blackened. A burgundy sweater hung from a wall sconce over James' bedside table. Remus' Transfiguration textbook sat casually open on his bed, as if he had been reading it this morning and had dashed off late to class, leaving the book behind in his haste.
He closed his mouth, which evidently had been open. "What …?"
"A student," Filch spat, "managed to – "
Professor McGonagall placed a hand on his arm and he was quiet. The caretaker's eyes darted toward Dumbledore.
"No one was hurt," said Dumbledore reassuringly. "All of the boys from your class are still in the infirmary. There was a bit of a riot – "
"Peter told me," interrupted Remus.
Dumbledore nodded and glanced at Peter, who was staring at the debris on the floor. "This likely happened last night," the headmaster continued. "It was discovered by the house elves this afternoon when they entered the bedchamber to do their weekly cleaning."
"How – " Remus swallowed around the huge lump in his throat. He couldn't seem to finish the sentence.
"We don't know," McGonagall answered with a creased brow. "But we are certain it was someone within Hogwarts."
It was then that Remus noticed that, although the other students' trunks had been rifled through, none of them had been blasted open. He stared at his own trunk, the blood pounding in his ears.
"You're pale, Lupin," said McGonagall in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. "Sit down."
Remus, still transfixed by the sight of his ruined trunk, didn't answer. She moved toward him, and his hand reflexively went up, palm out, halting her movement.
He dimly heard Peter find his voice at last. "Why would they do this?"
The map, thought Remus as he stared at his trunk, where the Marauder's Map used to be. There's nothing else in my trunk worth having. Whoever did this doesn't know Filch has the map. He confiscated it just before I went home, and no one knows that.
Before anyone could answer, Remus turned slowly toward the stairwell, leaving his suitcase lying in the middle of the room. He didn't heed the calls of Professor McGonagall or Peter. As he descended the stairs, he vaguely heard Dumbledore's quiet voice telling Peter to let him go. Exiting the Common Room, he walked with purpose until he found a series of deserted hallways. Once there, he wandered up and down, up and down, watching his own feet as they stepped in front of him, left, right, left, right. He thought briefly of Severus Snape. He could have done this; Remus wouldn't have been surprised. But it seemed heavy-handed, unlike Severus. If Severus wanted something, he'd steal it without your ever noticing it was gone.
Soon a terrible thought began to grow and blossom inside his brain; and with almost morbid fascination, his conscience stood aside and watched as the thought gradually flowered into an almost unrecognizable fruit. He walked and walked, trying to talk himself out of believing what his brain was telling him, but it was practically undeniable.
He had to find out.
The infirmary had been magically expanded to accommodate all the Gryffindors and Slytherins currently being treated for various hexes and curses. There were cases of fish scales, and weeping boils, and hair growing down to the floor, and extra limbs, and disfigurement, and bonelessness, and many ailments that were not visible to the naked eye. A shimmering barrier had been placed between the students of each house, presumably to curtail any further hexing.
Remus scanned the group of Slytherins on the left, and the hollowness inside his chest felt almost unbearable when he saw that Sirius' brother Regulus was not among the patients. Was he never admitted to the infirmary after the match? If Sirius had casually told Regulus about the Marauder's Map, could Regulus have managed to sneak into the bed tower to try to steal it? His heart thudded as he realized that he very well could have.
On the right, he saw Sirius and James at the far end of the room, trying with varying degrees of success to play Exploding Snap; it was quite a feat, considering the fact that James's body was still slightly twisted and mostly boneless and neither one could sit fully upright yet. Their careless laughter sickened him. They hadn't noticed Remus when he came in, so he turned around and left as quietly as he had come.
Later, after Peter was asleep in the boys' bed tower, now magically repaired and restored, Remus waited for Lily in the darkened hallway where they had agreed to meet. He hadn't the words or the energy to tell her about the wrecked bedchamber, or his suspicions about Sirius and Regulus and the Marauder's Map. So when she finally appeared, stepping into and out of the shafts of moonlight as she walked past the windows toward him, he did the only thing he could do.
He allowed her lips to keep his from having to speak.
A/N: Thanks for the lovely reviews, everyone! I've worked on several chapters this weekend, so the next two should be up very soon.
Leave a review and enjoy a secret rendezvous with the Marauder of your choice. Angst is optional. ;)