I take it back, it's poetically more fun to start posting the prequal now concurrently with this series. The fifth chapter will be posted the day this book ends, linking the two up. Which means updates for this drop to one a week, Thursday, while that will go up Monday.

If you've been wanting to see their normal life at Hogwarts outside of this mess, I think you will greatly enjoy We Were.

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Peter was not the only one who did a quick head count the moment they landed in a long, narrow aisle in the poorest of lighting and still sighed in relief to only see seven people moving about, if not counting themselves. Sirius had landed farthest away, sliding a bit into the shadows, but James moved instantly this time and caught him, pulling them all into a quick circle of relative safety and they all complied as they spied around.

It was exactly as the book had described, a great cathedral-sized room so large you couldn't see the walls or ceiling, with tiny little specks of dusty light the most pitiful of visible sources to give them exposure. The smallest of peeks around the corner showed endless rows of shelves, and they were on ninety-seven.

Their breathing sounded obnoxiously loud in the silence that followed. It should have been of some comfort no dead body had appeared this time, but it gave no one a single second of belief somebody wasn't going to come out of this dead, the most likely candidate the one amongst them. Peter had to crane his neck a bit, but finally he spotted the book resting on the shelf of objects, tiny little spun glass orbs each with a plaque underneath them. He frowned and turned slightly, now dead center in the group as everyone else kept looking around while he read:

S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.

Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter

He opened, then closed his mouth. He really should point that out to James, but he was hoping to get out of here instead, and yet, what were the odds the book wasn't going to do the same?

Regulus finally turned away from the endless shadows around them to see the same. The two frowned uneasily at each other, but Regulus quietly summoned the book to him instead of saying anything too. The chapter title was inevitable, The Department of Mysteries.

James, Sirius, and Remus all flinched heavily as Regulus began, moving closer to each other but still not daring to leave the sanctity of this tiny little space that wasn't currently trying to kill them. You-Know-Who was not lurking around the corner waiting to kill them all, he was just as human as anyone no matter how much the maniac tried to pretend otherwise, he was not above such trivial descriptions.

It was still hard to keep that thought in mind as Harry just kept feeling the pain of his scar. The journey seemed to take ages, by the time the teenagers on their way here arrived the others were at least trying to force themselves to relax enough they weren't standing on the balls of their feet, ready to run or throw a curse at a moment's notice. Instead they were all starting to take a look around now at the details of this place, even if still nobody dared speak a word except Regulus trying to get them out of here.

Except Sirius. Despite James having one death grip on his arm and the other holding his wand quickly snatched back from Moony, he was still just a foot apart from everyone else as close together as they could, that cold expression still held in place, his resemblance to Regulus was more heightened than ever. He still had his wand at the ready, he tracked James carefully as he watched the book when Harry made it down to that long corridor without a single obstacle and his face was just as worried for his godson to be here as they were, but there was still something remote to it all, like a delayed reaction behind whatever he was really thinking.

Sirius was the most impulsive, brash person Peter was convinced he'd ever meet. The first time they'd ever passed each other in the corridor was leaving Potions and he'd been pushed out of the way onto the stairs, the arsehole snickering as he chased after James without looking back. Yet Peter had hovered, and hoped, and watched the two in fascination for how easily they knew the place in their very first week. It had taken him less than a month to discover people so easily overlooked him and the ready penchant for eavesdropping quickly developed.

They'd noticed him though. James had caught him at it, smiling and offering if he wanted to help them out with something while Sirius had rolled his eyes and huffed impatiently, muttering about they didn't need a little sneak around to pull this prank off. Peter had excelled though, giving extravagant and detailed information of who would be where when this took place so much so they'd never tried pulling a stunt without him keeping an eye out again.

Padfoot had still taken a bit to warm up to him, but eventually he'd stopped side-eying him in annoyance and instead started up the teasing. Little things that slowly got more elaborate as time went on. Joking threats he used just as readily on Snivellus as him, smacking him upside the head or even sending a curse if he thought Peter was particularly in the way that day. Peter never protested any of it, the feeling of inclusion and even having this attention from the most popular kids in school was all he could have asked for in his life.

It was also him though Sirius tended to ask first about Muggle things, they had a wide range of experiments back in their door from a cannibalized radio Sirius was trying to pick up Muggle tunes on to even a landline he was trying to get to work. It's not that he didn't have the option of asking Remus either, but the whole thing had started when Sirius asked him for something he couldn't find in his Muggle Studies book and it had all spiraled from there, but it was pretty much the only thing the two ever had fun doing that didn't involve the others.

It was Sirius who held down a student and force-fed him armadillo bile when someone else shoved him down a flight of stairs once. It was always Sirius first who had a retaliatory remark, spell or otherwise if he perceived the slightest threat to any of them. His inherently cruel nature only rarely tempered off by James's influence as he jumped in to help, but escalation of whatever Sirius had been tempted to do somehow always had them laughing rather than anybody really needing a trip to the hospital wing by the end.

Whatever indifference Sirius was trying so desperately to keep up for Harry searching room upon room for him, Peter had a bad feeling for who it was going to break on when Harry did find him. He rubbed ruefully at his nose and watched Regulus, for the first time considering not just being Sirius's outlet if he retaliated.

Harry and even his friends getting delayed in each room for one reason or another was starting to make them all twitchy and sick with stress, Peter started biting at his nails as the endless possibilities for why he hadn't come across anyone. He was half tempted to offer to change forms and have a poke around, maybe they were missing something by refusing to move away. Surely the greatest danger was You-Know-Who, and he couldn't be here.

Sirius finally moved, and as he spoke for the first time his voice cracked with worry as he watched James, "stay away from that."

James had finally noticed the little plaque with his son's name on it just as Harry reached this aisle and was inevitably fixing to do the same. James still had a grip on Sirius, but didn't even seem to hear him as he took a curious step forward, a look on his face Peter really didn't like. James only waited long enough to hear that Harry picked it up just fine before reaching to do the same.

"It's not worth it Prongs!" Sirius said instantly, switching it now so that he was holding onto him, he had hold of his dominant hand and wand, but couldn't reach the other, there were just too many people in the way and he'd swear the shelves were already trembling from their proximity.

"You can't tell me this is a coincidence? This thing's obviously important! I'm related to Harry! Surely that should count-"

"Don't!" Evans pleaded with him, reaching out on impulse and catching his other wrist, and on pure instinct he looked to meet her eyes, and she stared back without a single waver. "Listen to yourself Potter! This hasn't happened yet, and bloody hell knows what'll happen to you if you do this now when we still have a chance to stop it."

"This could be our only chance!" James insisted, trying to fight her off weakly without actually touching her, that would be too distracting right now. "We could stop all of this now if we just get this stupid thing Voldemort wants so bad!" Nobody flinched at the sound of the name. "This is our chance to fix it all!"

"What if you die right now," Sirius pleaded with him desperately. Evans still hadn't let go of his wrist, Sirius still had a firm hold on his arm, but James hadn't so much as looked away. "That Bode man ended up with Alice and Frank because he was forced to try and grab this!" Their jokes and laughter all from before as they'd interacted with the various, seemingly empty environments felt more like a haunted nightmare. Peter still had a chunk missing from his ear, Sirius himself still had the scars from his fight with Moony, James's fingers were still injured from back when all this began. If James touched that, who knew if the effects would be reversed. "If you end up like that James, Harry'll never even be born, this'll all be for nothing!"

James still looked desperately at it, that tiny little pinprick of light the only thing he could see.

Peter couldn't just listen this time though, if they couldn't talk him down then Peter was prepared to stun him to keep him from doing it, but then the shelves began to shake.

Regulus blanched and whipped back to reading faster than ever as the shelves around them began heaving and moving dangerously, a few tiny glass balls even began raining down around them, one coming so dangerously close to hitting Peter he felt the graze of it like a slap on the cheek as it crashed at his feet instead. The puff of smoke tried to solidify into an old bearded man saying something, but his voice was lost under Regulus's.

James was still trying to push the others off, his damnable need for action that had led all of them through their years in school pushing him to still try one last desperate attempt to reach for the little ball still in place as Regulus finished with the perilous sentence Harry's group finally had company.