What Was :: 6 ::

Garrison Wallace was pacing around his office, still in a very bad mood, although Lillian Evans had already been in Azkaban for - he looked at his calendar - two months come Thursday. And according to the time - he looked at the clock - 8:56 p.m. , he had been working overtime for twenty-six minutes without even realizing it. He quickly jotted this down on a piece of paper for the Payroll Witch on level four. He folded the paper into a rather clumsy plane with his tounge between his teeth. Once he had grabbed his coat and a large cigar from the box on his desk, Wallace left his office and proceeded to throw the paper airplane down the hallway before locking the door and heading on the opposite direction for the stairwell.

*

James and Sirius had just found their way to the corner of Diagon Alley and a dusty alleyway - one that could have fit a wide bottomed opera singer and her bright red handbag, but nothing more. James pulled out his invisibility cloak and threw it over himself and Sirius.

"This thing just isn't as big as it used to be -"

"If you had laid off of the meringue earlier, but no. Just bend your knees a little -"

"What do you think I'm doing? You're hogging two thirds of the cloak, you cheap ba-"

"Sirius shut UP - the door!"

The two best friends looked down the alleyway, just in time to see a cloaked figure step out from between a pile of upturned wooden baskets and an array of scrap metal. He readjusted the collar of his cloak and let out a few puffs from a large cigar in his mouth before ambling sideways out of the alleyway. Sirius and James stayed close to the wall, James nearest to the corner by only a few inches. All at once, Garrison Wallace's face poked out, almost looking James in between the eyes. He had to hold his breath against the foul cigar smoke slowly curling around in front of him.

Garrison seemed to stare for ages.

'He can't see through cloaks, he can't see through cloaks. Not without his glasses,' James repeated reassuringly to himself.

After a few more minutes, Garrison emerged fully from his hiding spot, content that no one would see him coming from the alleyway. James' head turned to look at Sirius, who had his eyes closed tightly and his face all screwed up in deep disgust.

When the hunch of the man's back had disappeared down the deserted street, Sirius' eyes popped open, and a great blast of air came out of his mouth.

"What the hell was he smoking? Dried dragon dung? Oh holy god -"

James laughed silently. They edged around the corner, Sirius still swatting the air around his face with his hand, annoyed when it got tangled in the cloak.

Once they reached the slight gap betwen the garbadge piles, James swore into the night air.

"What?"

"We can't use our cards to get in."

Sirius stared blankly at him.

"Are you new?" he said incredulously. A corner of the cloak blew into his face. His hand shot up and started pulling the cloak roughly off of himself. Once it had formed a round knot around his forearm, he flicked his wrist angrily until it hit James square in the chest.

He cleared his throat.

"Are you new?" he said again.

"If you think a hairpin is going to work on that -" he said, gesturing to a small slit between the ground and wall - so faint that it just looked like a crack from old age.

The two went on, silently bickering over how they were going to get in.

Little to their knowledge, a cigar-weilding official was quickly making his way back towards the darkening alleyway, having forgotten his briefcase in his rush to get home.

*

Lily's free hand was hitting every inch of the man in front of her. After the third or fourth left hook that Westley took to the shoulder, he spun around to face her.

"Once more - so help me - just do it once more and see what happens."

Lily couldn't care less. Anyone who was involved with bringing her down was a bug that needed to be squashed. It happened in a heartbeat - Lily's hand clamped around the man's neck, squeezing as hard as she could, just as he let go of her left hand to use both of his in trapping her throat in the same way.

As the oxygen was slowly being cut off, Lily realized what her last thought had been.

Anyone who was involved with bringing her down was a bug that needed to be squashed.

"No," she choked out, "No, please!"

His hands closed - if possible, even tighter. Her body went weak as her brain was shutting down. Lily stumbled until her back hit the wall. Her eyes were rolling, but the man - she could still see the man's eyes. An incomprehensible look in them.

"James," she cried out, without even realizing what she was saying. It came so silently, as if a plea. If Westley hadn't been in her face at that moment, he wouldn't have heard it at all. But he was standing there, and he did hear the name.

Lily's eyes closed - feeling ready to vomit, but knowing that she no longer had the strength to do it. Her hands lost their grip on Westley's fingers and fell limp at her sides.

Westley didn't notice the woman's sudden stop in resisting. An image had formed in front of him - almost like a video reel.

James had just said something funny. Westley was sitting across the table from him, almost choking on a potato chip as Sirius approached them with his own lunch.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Westley seems to be enjoying our schoolday antics."

"Does he now?"

Sirius turned to him.

"Did he tell you about pushing Lily into the lake in second year?"

"I never pushed. She just ... got in the way of my arm, is all."

Westley laughed even harder, burying his head in his hands to wipe away the tears from laughing so hard. When he finally pulled them away to see again, he realized that he wasn't in the lunchroom anymore. He was on a train, and there was a dead woman crumpled at his feet.

*

"No YOU listen. We can just use that piece of tin can there, and if we can find some nails -"

"There's no time, genius. We need ... to ..."

"... what? We need to what? Don't - don't space out on me like that. Think, James. Th-"

But whatever Sirius was about to say was muffled by the invisibility cloak being thrown over him. The cloak itself had barely draped over their feet before Garrison Wallace edged back into the alleyway.

Sirius turned to look over his shoulder, and in seconds had shoved James behind the pile of scrap metal. James smacked Sirius upside the head, and mouthed 'What did you do that for?'

Sirius hit him back. He pointed to a few very faint footprints in the dust where they had just moments ago stood. Garrison Wallace was treading all over them as he fought to extract his key.

James gulped.

"Sorry," he whispered.

Sirius jut shot him an ugly look while he rubbed the back of his head, before he froze. He stooped to pick up a dirty and rusted goblet, and before James could work out that his friend was moving out from underneath the cloak he had thrown it to the ground.

James' eyes went as round as saucers as the sharp clang of metal on stone shook the silence.

Sirius again felt the sharp smack of something on the back of his head. He turned to face what (to anyone who didn't know better) would have been labelled dead air. He jumped at this "empty space" and wrestled it to the ground. He was confident that he had James in a headlock when the cloak fell to the ground and he realized it was just his elbow.

He coughed quickly and let go.

"Lay OFF with the annoying hitting like that okay?"

James spoke in a voice that he was trying to keep quiet, even though Sirius was speaking loudly.

"Wallace would have heard you, don't you think?"

Sirius leant back on his heels to survey the entrance to the Auror HQ.

"You'd have thought he would have come back, then."

James' shoulders relaxed, and he too looked over at the entranceway. Deserted.

"Are you using your eyes like a good boy?"

"What?"

"Look at the doorway. That rusted piece of crap had to go somewhere."

James looked at the doorway again. There, at the bottom, sat the goblet. Wedged between the door and the wall, holding it open for them.

"Sirius, you're -"

"A genius, yes I know. But you and your physical abuse may have killed off valuable braincells."

James interrupted at 'yes I know.'

"Okay, follow my lead."

James pushed the door open very slowly, the goblet rolling into a black abyss. James edged into the darkness, letting Sirius creep in behind him. Once the door closed, the darkness consumed them completely.

A shiver ran up Sirius' spine. He should have thought of this earlier. This was going to give their times in school a run for their money. They could be caught, fired, put in prison even.

His smile couldn't have been any bigger than it was right now.