Shrieking Shack Escapees
Remus returned from career advice wearing a punch-drunk look as if he had been drugged with a Confusing Concoction, but he smiled when the others asked how it went. Sirius kicked James about as discreetly as one could imagine Sirius kicking someone, and James winked back as Remus whistled light-heartedly. McGonagall had lived up to her word.
With career advice behind him, most of James' time was spent filling in the Hogwarts map, which he gladly chose over studying for O.W.L.s. Surprisingly, Remus never missed an opportunity to tour the castle with the others even with exams hanging over their heads. He even supplied some of the more useful additions to their map, marking which staircases tended to move around and which floorboards disappeared most often.
Finally, at the conclusion of another two weeks, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter gathered over the completed map in the middle of their dormitory. Heart pounding in excitement, James twiddled with a dry quill absentmindedly.
"Is that it?" Peter whispered to the others, his voice catching in awe and relief.
"There's only one more thing left to do. Let's hope this works," Remus answered. Raising his wand, he tapped it over the inked drawings. "Homonculous!"
At first, James thought that nothing had happened, but then he noticed tiny, black dots appearing all over the face of the map. Spaced throughout the classrooms and hallways, the dots wiggled in place until tiny, inscribed names appeared just above them. On the seventh-floor corridor, James saw Professor Vector exiting her classroom, and Eric Thompson was loitering near Pollux's office on the third floor. Dozens of students were sitting in the Great Hall for supper, and in the Gryffindor Tower, James saw his own name floating next to those of his roommates.
"You've actually done it!" Sirius breathed to Remus, looking over the map, and Remus shot him an offended scowl.
"Look! There's Dumbledore!" Peter cried, pointing to the Headmaster's office. Sure enough, the name "Albus Dumbledore" was moving from one end of the room to the other, and James broke into a grin.
"It's brilliant! I can even see Peeves and the ghosts!" he exclaimed. "Where did you find that spell?"
"Spellwork in Cartography," Remus answered, his chest swelling. "I had to gain access from the Restricted Section."
"It still feels like we're missing something important," Sirius said under his breath, crossing his arms, and the others stared at him.
"What do you mean?"
"We need a spell to keep people from reading the map," Sirius explained. "What if a professor were to find it? They'd confiscate it for sure. And what if Snape happened across it?"
Falling silent, James and the others looked around. "He's right," James agreed. "We need a way to keep other people from using it."
"We could charm it to snap at anyone who got within an arm's reach of it," Peter suggested.
"And how would we open it?" Remus objected.
"I know!" Sirius interjected, shooting a finger into the air. "We'll erase its contents when we aren't using it and open it with a password that only we know!"
After a moment's pause, Remus turned to him with an almost reverent nod. "That's . . . actually very clever, Sirius."
"I've gotten good at hiding things from my parents," he replied, too smug to take offense.
"Then what's the password?" James asked. "And how will we wipe the map?"
"Two passwords!" Sirius announced, pumping his finger in the air again "One to open it, and one to close it!"
"That's perfect!" James praised.
"But first we need to decide on the passwords," Remus reminded them. All four of them lapsed into silence for about a minute or so, but then Remus began chuckling to himself. Finally, he was able to compose himself enough to spit out, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good!"
Breaking into grins to match Remus', the others laughed until they ran out of air.
"Brilliant! And then?" James prodded.
"Mischief managed?" Peter suggested hesitantly, and the others snorted again.
Hiding a chuckle behind his hand, James said a bit sadly, "The idea doesn't have much flair, but at least the passwords will keep anyone from—"
"Who said that's all we're going to add?" Sirius asked, cutting him off.
After blinking once, James pushed Remus and Peter aside and swept several inkwells off the map. Grasping the quill he had been playing with, he said, "All right, what'll it be? An Ink-Squirting Spell? A charm for lingering paper-cuts?"
"Isn't a password enough?" Remus protested, looking over James' shoulder.
"What's going to keep people from trying every password they can think of, eh?" James brought up. "We need to teach them not to poke around what isn't theirs."
"I say we charm a Dungbomb to go off if they get the password wrong," Sirius suggested, and Peter snickered.
"At least do something a bit subtler," Remus sighed, and James and Sirius shared a look.
"All right," James agreed, although Sirius rolled his eyes. "What would you suggest?"
Thinking, Remus chewed his lip for a moment. "The map could . . . insult whoever tries to read it?"
"I like it!" James cried, snapping his fingers.
"Ooh, let's!" Sirius said. "'Sirius Black bids you a good day, and he hopes that your nose catches on fire for poking it where it doesn't belong.'"
"We can't use our real names!" Remus interrupted. "Do you want an easy detention?"
"We'll make up codenames, then," James announced, and Sirius and Peter perked up.
"Can they be based after our Animagus forms?" Peter requested.
Sirius added, "And Remus can be named after his—"
"Furry little problem," James finished.
"Loony Moony! Just like the story!" Sirius supplied, grinning and crossing his arms.
"Just Moony, thank you," Remus corrected, and the others nodded.
"Moving on, then," James said. "Sirius, you can be Snuffles!"
"I will not."
"What's wrong with it?" James teased. "Too adorable?"
"I think it's fitting," Remus agreed, making Sirius glare at him.
"If you call me Snuffles, I'm calling James Raccoon-Eyes."
"Er, let's not do Snuffles," James corrected. "What about Short-Snout?"
"I'll decide my name," Sirius demanded. "And I vote that James be called Prongs."
"Wait just a minu—" James started, but Sirius interrupted him.
"Everyone in favor?" Sirius and Remus both raised their hands, and Peter followed after a slight pause, giving James an apologetic look.
"Fine," James grumbled. "But I hope you know that you're being ridiculous."
After another pause, Sirius nodded to himself. "I think I'll be Padfoot."
"Padfoot?" Remus asked. "How'd you get that?"
"It's what I notice about my transformations, all right?" Sirius defended. "I like having paws."
"What about you, Peter?" Remus asked, turning to him. "You don't have a name yet."
"He has to be Wormtail," James announced before Peter could stop sputtering.
Laughing, Sirius clapped his hands together. "It's perfect! Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs!"
Although James winced at the last name, he did nothing to stop Sirius as he dipped a quill in the nearest inkwell. Folding the map together, he began writing in the blank space of the front page.
"Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs," he read aloud, afterwards tapping his wand on his name. Following suit, Remus and Peter enchanted their callsigns, and James completed his last.
"Should we erase it?" Peter asked when they had finished.
"Very well, Wormtail," Sirius answered with a smile, and he pressed his wand over the map. "Mischief Managed."
One after another, the meandering names across the map began to vanish, and in a few seconds, the entire parchment had gone blank. Ecstatic, the four roommates exchanged high-fives, having concluded their business for the night.
It was the afternoon before the next full moon when the fifth-year Gryffindors gathered on the grounds for Care of Magical Creatures. Remus was feeling sickly, and the hippogriffs, which the class had been revising for the last two weeks, seemed much more anxious than usual. This fact was not going unnoticed by the rest of the students, and James, Sirius, and Peter were trying to keep Remus occupied near the back.
"I thought of bringing a ball or a piece of rope into the Shrieking Shack tonight," Sirius whispered, bumping against Remus' shoulder. "You know—just to keep the two of us occupied."
"We could take snacks with us," Peter suggested.
"Of course you'd say that, Wormtail," James said, laughing. "What would I eat? Handfuls of grass?"
"I was getting hungry the last time," Sirius commented. "Do you think we'd be able to eat human food? Or would you suddenly develop a hankering for dried oats?"
"What are you four laughing about back there?" Professor Kettleburn called out when they dissolved into snickers. "Come give me a hand with this one, will you?"
James motioned for Remus to stay behind while he, Sirius, and Peter walked up to the hippogriff. Each of them bowed, but the horse-eagle hybrid thrashed its head and bolted away from Kettleburn.
"Oh!" the professor cried, and he waved the boys back before beckoning to some of the Slytherin girls. "How about you give it a try? I just don't understand it!"
Backing up to Remus again, James and the others grouped by his side. "Is your furry little problem causing a lot of trouble today?" James asked. Some of the nearby students gave him an odd look.
"It seems to be worse than usual," Remus told James with a small smile, and Alice turned towards Remus.
"Do you have a rabbit at home?"
Flushing a bit, he answered, "Cat, actually, but it's quite the pain."
"Ah, yes," a snide voice mumbled, and James turned to see Snape eyeing Remus. "Everyone knows that hippogriffs distrust the fur of common house cats."
"They do?" Alice asked, apparently bewildered.
"That'll be on the O.W.L., Newshod," James told her. "Better write it down."
As she hurriedly did so, James turned his steely glare on Snape, who narrowed his eyes at him and his friends.
"Feeling well, Lupin?" the hook-nosed Slytherin interrogated.
"I'm all right," Remus answered slowly, looking him up and down.
"Not planning on going home around this time, are you?" Snape pressed. "Rumor is you took a few days last month. Is there something going on with your family?"
"Sod off, Snivy," James snapped. "It isn't any of your business to know what he's doing."
"Family issues, is it?" Snape responded, jumping on the obvious discomfort in the air. "Funny, they must have been going on for years now. Or is it a split family situation? You visit your dad one month, and your mum another—"
"Oi! Prongs said sod off, didn't he?" Sirius jumped in harshly. "You'd know a bad family, wouldn't you?"
"You're one to talk, Black," Snape sniffed, quickly recovering from the insult. "Haven't spoken to your brother in several months, have you? Shame about that, you won't guess the sort of things he's doing now . . . And has Professor Black gotten cross with you more than your mum this year? I haven't heard one of her Howlers in a while."
"Levicorpus!" Sirius burst, and Snape was immediately hanging by his ankle. Previously occupied with the hippogriffs, the other students spun around at the spell's loud bang, and several laughed as Snape struggled to reach for his wand, which had since fallen to the grass.
"How dare you—" he hissed at Sirius, but their talking classmates drowned him out. If any of them knew the counter-spell, none were moving forward to help. Even if they had wanted to, Snape let out a thunderous, "DON'T!" as he again swiped for his wand, and James wondered if he had spotted Lily pushing through the audience. She stopped, but Kettleburn waddled through a moment later.
"Who's done this? What's happened?" Whirling around precariously on his peg legs, he met blank stares. "How did you get up there?" he asked Snape, who reached as far as his fingers would allow.
"Give. Me. My. Wand!" he grunted, and Kettleburn stared at the fallen wand for a moment before obeying. "Liberacorpus!" Snape corrected himself, and he plummeted to the grass in a heap. Several more laughs rang out as he furiously untangled himself from his robes and stood.
"Odd thing for you to do," Kettleburn told him quizzically, apparently misreading the situation, and he wobbled back to the hippogriffs. "On, then!"
As he left, Sirius smirked at Snape, who retreated into the crowd with fire in his eyes. Hopeful that the problem had been solved, James pretended not to see Lily glaring at him and Sirius.
Once class was dismissed, James sent Peter up to Gryffindor Tower to retrieve his Invisibility Cloak while he and the others waited by the lake. By the time Peter crawled out through the tunnel opening, sweating and panting, the sun had already inched halfway to the horizon. With Remus in the lead, the boys slipped under the Whomping Willow and wound their way through the underground path to Hogsmeade.
"I don't mean to keep you from classes tomorrow, so don't wear yourselves out," Remus said as they climbed the final distance to the Shrieking Shack trapdoor. "With O.W.L.s coming up—"
"Don't worry, it's Defense Against the Dark Arts in the morning," Sirius answered. "Wouldn't miss this for the world!"
James snickered, but Remus' sudden stop made the others stumble together, even with his warning groan.
"Oi, I think he's turning early!" James shouted over the gasps quickly filling the cavern. "Let's get him through!"
Jumping into action, Sirius and Peter helped James drag Remus across the remainder of the tunnel and through the trapdoor. As soon as they were inside, they bolted away from Remus and watched him convulse from a few paces away. Not wanting to close the trapdoor as a human while Remus stood so close to it, James shut his eyes and imagined a large stag. In another moment, he had transformed into his Animagus form alongside the others as they waited for Remus to change.
Unexpectedly, Sirius let out a sharp bark, and James lifted his front hooves into the air as the black dog charged past him, heading straight for the newly-transformed werewolf. Snarling, the werewolf whirled and snapped at Sirius, but they tumbled away from the open trapdoor and into the neighboring room. While they were distracted, James brought his hooves down with a thump and raced towards the trapdoor, intending to close it with a kick. However, as soon as he turned around and aimed his back foot, the werewolf shot out of Sirius' hold and zipped James' way.
"Watch out!" James meant to yell, but his warning came out as a loud bleat as he adjusted to miss crushing the werewolf, and it disappeared through the open hole in the floor. Peter's frantic squealing filled the room, and Sirius dove after the escapee without hesitation. Panicked, James trotted around the hole until Peter dashed through his feet in a hurried decision.
Still running in a circle, James wondered what to do, his mind racing over the possible repercussions of this latest development. Only a few seconds passed while he was thinking, but it had already been far too long when he decided that Sirius and Peter would need his help. Struggling to regain his composure, he imagined himself as a human and felt himself shrinking to a more manageable size.
"What a bloody mess," he spat when he had finally fallen backwards onto the floor, and he pushed through the trapdoor feet-first.
He had left his wand behind, so he blinked in place for several moments as he tried to orient himself. His heartbeat felt like it might leap out of his ears, and he twisted his head to hear the echoing barks from inside the tunnel. From what he could tell, it sounded like Sirius had already gone far ahead, so the others must not have caught up to the panicked werewolf. Once he had determined that he was safe for the moment, James took off at a trot with his arms outstretched to guide him through the passageway.
Every few minutes, he paused to listen to his surroundings again, paranoid that he would not be able to transform into his Animagus form in the cramped space if the others turned back. But for better or worse, the others kept echoing farther and farther off every time he stopped to listen, and James eventually broke into a steady run through the tunnel. By his reckoning, he was now closer to the Whomping Willow's entrance than the trapdoor of the Shrieking Shack, and he needed to make it outside before he could transform; his heart skipped a beat every time he imagined what would happen if he met the werewolf inside the passage.
After several minutes of uninterrupted running, James crawled up to ground level and poked his head into open air. Fortunately, the full moon provided enough light to see by, and he scrambled out of the hole only to scream and duck at a sudden movement to his right. Something grazed his upheld arms, and his cheeks warmed slightly when he realized that the Whomping Willow had swung at him.
"I never thought I'd be relieved to have you attack me," James spoke to the tree as he leaped forward to punch the knot at its base. After a prolonged shiver, the Willow let its branches fall limp as James straightened and looked around.
"Sirius? Peter? Are either of you out there?" No one answered his call, and he paced carefully away from the tree, looking over both his shoulders.
Suddenly, a voice from up ahead caught his ear, and he reached preemptively for his Invisibility Cloak only to realize that he had left it in the Shrieking Shack. After a few seconds of wasted time, he quickly imagined himself as a stag and felt his body growing for the second time in the night.
"I though' I 'eard somethin' fer sure," the voice spoke again as it neared, and James backed away on his four feet as Hagrid stepped forward in the light of his swinging lantern. "Didn't yeh 'ear it too, Fang? Somethin' close ter a howl, seemed like . . ."
Pausing as he locked eyes with James, Hagrid trailed off as his boarhound sniffed the air at his side. Thinking for a moment that Hagrid would be able to see through his disguise, James tried to think up an explanation, but the Gameskeeper let out a slight guffaw.
"That's a right funny lookin' deer, innit?" Ears pinning against his head, James backed away a few steps as Hagrid held out his meaty hand. "Wait, I'm not going ter hurt yeh! Don't yeh live in the forest, young 'un? Wha' are yeh doin' out 'ere?"
Just then, an eerie howl came from the opposite direction, and James whirled around. Remus. Picking up his feet, he took off towards the sound as Hagrid called out from behind.
"There it is again! An' now the deer's gone—but don't they usually run away from noises like tha'?"
Quickly outdistancing Hagrid's deep voice, James galloped clumsily over the grass until nearing the entrance to the Forbidden Forest, where he heard another howl accompanied by a bark. Picking up his pace, James burst through the underbrush and dodged through the trees, making surprising time in the limited light coming through the treetops. Making rapid judgments in his path of travel, he ran until a series of barks drew him to a small claring.
Braying in warning, James burst through the trees with his front feet waving, expecting to find the werewolf at Sirius' throat. Instead, he spotted a wide pool of silvery water in the center of the clearing, where the others had made their temporary respite. Movement on one of the nearby tree trunks alerted James to Peter's presence; the tiny rat had apparently climbed to one of the lowest hanging branches. Both Sirius and the werewolf were standing over the water's edge, taking turns yipping at a toad that had just dove under the surface, but the werewolf jumped away at James' sudden entrance. Growling, it snapped its teeth and retreated a few steps, but Sirius barked a few times and joined the werewolf farther down the pool, giving James what he imagined to be a dog's worst glare.
Humbled, James lowered his feet to the ground and assumed a less threatening pose, lowering his head in an attempt to apologize to the werewolf. Unfortunately, it seemed to take his leveled antlers as a sort of threat, and it dashed off a few more paces while Sirius chased after it. Squeaking, the rat slid down the tree trunk as James followed the others, and they all congregated near a mossy boulder a short distance into the forest. This time offering a simple bob of his head to apologize, James kept away as Sirius nipped at the werewolf to keep it from scratching at itself. Growling, it ran to the far side of the boulder, and James followed on the other side. It was much too late to get back to the Shrieking Shack, so he had to keep Remus from leaving the forest and stumbling across Hagrid or another late-night wanderer.
The werewolf eventually laid down against the boulder, and the four animals spent the rest of the night within eyeshot of the forest pool. When the morning began to dawn, the werewolf shied away from the light trickling between the trees, and it hunkered on the shady side of the boulder as it slowly began to transform. Within a half-hour's time, Remus lay shivering and bleeding at the foot of the giant stone, half-unconscious with fatigue. Quickly changing into their human forms, the others hoisted him upright, and James gave up his outer cloak.
"We should get him to the hospital wing," Peter voiced, and he and Sirius began pulling Remus along.
