Chapter 6: The Room
They were not disappointed. They stared into a large
room that obviously hadn't been used for many years. Checking to see that no
one was around, they climbed in, giggling at their own luck.
The room was perfect for them. It had five large
beds, several sofas, a fireplace, bookshelves complete with old books, ("My
GOD!" Sirius exclaimed. "These should be in the restricted section!"), and
games in a corner: wizard chess, gobstones, a very funny looking type of ball
and, to their delight, a full Quidditch set and five brooms. When James
uncovered these the others rushed over to pick them up, but they were so old
that each broom crumbled when it was touched. "Shit!" Lily swore.
"They were probably so old
they would have been uncomfortable anyway," Remus consoled her.
"And we've still got this
place!" Remus added. Her face brightened at once.
"What are those books,
Siri?" she asked.
"Most Potente Potions,
that's for me, Horrendously Horrible Charms, you can have that, Lil, How to
Defeat the Darkest of the Black Arts, here you go, Re, A History of Magic in
Europe, boring," he threw it away, "and, oh, look, Advanced Transfiguration for
Jamsie and loads of other stuff I can't read!"
"Wow!" they all said
together. They could not believe they had found this room. It would act as
their sanctuary when they were sad, a place to plan jokes or just to have
peace.
"Listen. This is our place, right?" Lily said
suddenly. "No one else comes here ever. Don't any of you show anyone its here."
They nodded agreement, then James put his hand out.
"To privacy," he said, as
four hands piled on top of his. They
were all uncharacteristically quiet for a while.
"We were supposed to be looking for secret
passageways, you know," Lily said eventually, breaking the silence.
"Maybe we should split
up?" Sirius suggested. "I'll go with Remus and Peter and Jamie and Lil can go
in the other direction." He smiled slightly at Remus.
"Come on then," Lily
snapped. She and James climbed out from behind the picture, already arguing.
"No, James, we've already
been down there. This way."
"Why!"
"Because."
The voices faded away.
"Are you sure that was a good idea, Siri?"
"No, but it sure is
funny!" The three laughed, before turning off from the route James and Lily had
taken, both parties leaving a wake of crooked pictures and slightly moved
statues.
It didn't take Lily and James long to find something
suspicious: a statue that just would not move, no matter how hard they tried.
"What is with this thing?" James grunted.
"Maybe it's an entrance!"
Lily scoffed.
"Maybe I am," a voice
agreed. Both looked around for Peeves or one of the other ghosts. "It's me. The
statue." The voice was cracked and high pitched; and they instinctively moved
closer to each other. When the statue, which was of an ugly old hag, started
talking again, Lily grabbed James' hand. The solid stone lips were moving!
"I am the entrance to a tunnel. But to know where it
goes you'll have to trust me." The hag cackled to herself.
Neither Lily nor James were lacking in courage. "We
will." They said together.
"Right. I'll whisper the
password to you and you climb into me. Have fun!" she cackled madly again. They
leaned closer to her. "Dissendium," she whispered.
"Dissendium," they
repeated. The humped back of the hag screeched open and James climbed inside,
quickly followed by Lily. They fell down a muddy chute and landed on top of
each other at the bottom. Lily giggled, but stopped when she heard the sound of
the hag's hump closing far above them.
"Oh crap!" they said in unison. Without another word
they started walking down the tunnel.
*******************************
Sirius, Remus and Peter were not having as much luck,
(if you can count possibly being trapped in an underground tunnel luck). They
had found nothing. "This is POINTLESS!" Sirius shouted, banging angrily on a
wall. To their utter shock an entire portion of the wall opposite swung
open. "Oh." Said Remus, speechless.
"How lucky was that!"
Sirius whooped, rushing over.
"Don't you think it might
have booby traps?" Peter spoke up; "like in those adventure movies?" the other
two stared blankly at him. Sirius stepped into the gap. "I'm going," he said,
"So is Remus. If you don't want to go you can stay here."
"I do wanna go!" Peter
whined.
"Well shut up then!" Peter
stepped into the hole and the wall shut behind them.
"Crap," they all said.
The tunnel led them behind
several rooms they recognised: McGonagall's office, which they knew very
well, the charms classroom, and finally, five floors down, Headley's office.
All the walls had peepholes and they could see everything that was going on.
"This is amazing!" Remus whispered to Sirius.
"Come on," Sirius
whispered back, tugging him along, "I wanna see where this goes."
The tunnel took so many twists and turns that they
lost all sense of direction, but they did realise they had left the school.
Peter tagged along behind his two friends, worried that it might turn out to be
some kind of magical, never-ending tunnel.
They eventually reached what appeared to be a solid
wall of rock ending the tunnel and their hearts sank. They stared at it for at
least five minutes before Remus realised that they could go around it to get
out. They emerged onto a hill above what was definitely Hogsmeade Village.
"WOHOOOOOOOOO!" they
yelled, dancing around as they raced to the village.
"Got any money, Re?"
Sirius asked while they were waiting for Peter to catch up.
"A little."
Unfortunately, the first shop they saw was
Honeydukes. Curious, they went in, and their jaws dropped. Within minutes they
had spent all of their money buying as many different types of sweets as
possible: Fizzing Whizzbees, Bertie Bott's, Chocolate Frogs, Droobles Best
Blowing Gum and even a few Cockroach Clusters for Lily and James. It wasn't
until they got outside that they realised that nearly all the Hogwarts students
had gone and it was getting dark. "We'd better get back or we'll be late!"
Remus said. They set off back to the tunnel entrance.
By the unhappiest of coincidences, as they had walked
out of Honeydukes, a tired James and Lily had just walked in. Their tunnel had
taken much longer, due to James spraining his ankle near the start. But when
they had snuck into Honeydukes through a trap door, their pale faces lit up. James
cursed that he only had a few Knuts, while Lily congratulated herself on the
Galleon in her pocket. They bought a few of everything, happily agreeing for
once, and got some blood-flavoured lollys for their friends.
When they had finally come to their senses they saw
only two other students remained in the shop. "Shit!" Lily swore, "Quick, while
they're not looking!" she hissed at James. They darted behind the counter, down
the stairs, through the trap door, and into the passage, before collapsing with
laughter.
"We'd better get back or we'll miss the feast!" James
said after a while. He helped up Lily, who was still weak from laughing and
they started walking. "We were supposed to meet the others at 5:30," Lily said,
"and it's 6:30 now. What'll they think we've been up to?"
James grimaced, then said,
"But what'll they say when they find out we've been to Hogsmeade?"
Lily grinned. "They'll
want to leave straight away!"
"No they won't, they'll be
too hungry."
"Yes they will!"
"No they won't!"
"Yes they will!"
They carried on bickering
the whole way home.
**********************************
By the time they got back the feast was over.
Luckily, Peter and Remus had saved them some food. (Originally Sirius had but
then he had eaten it.) "Ooooooooooh where have Jamsie-poo and Lilykins been all
this time?" Sirius asked around a mouthful of bread. The two didn't rise to the
bait. They just grinned with grins identical to the ones Sirius, Remus and
Peter were wearing. The grins of someone with a huge secret.
"We've been to Hogsmeade!" all five exclaimed at
once.
"What!" James and Sirius
asked.
"When?" Lily and Sirius
said.
"How!" Peter squeaked.
"We found a tunnel," James
said, "Did you?"
"Yeah," Remus answered.
"We bought you some sweets!"
"We got you some too!"
Lily said happily. "We ate ours on the way here." James looked at her with
admiration for this blatant lie.
Both groups handed each other the 'sweets' they had
bought. At almost exactly the same time they put the 'sweets' into their
mouths. And at exactly the same time they all spat them out again, to the
disgust of the common room.
"Learn some manners!" an anonymous
voice shouted.
"Piss off!" they replied
with one voice.