(AN: This A/N will be really quick, not like last chapter's, that was just to dissuade you from reading… anyway. I'm sorry this fic is turning out to be crap. If I write another one, it will be better… but please give me ideas as to what should happen. Thanks. On to chappy 7. Or should I say crappy 7… haha I am SOOO not funny.)
Disclaimer: Yeah, if I owned Harry Potter, Sirius would be alive and kicking. Enough said. Oh yeah but I did make up Aidan… so… HA!
Oh yeah there is a lot of German in this chapter, and my German is not entirely too wonderful, actually it's kind of unique. Also I made some of it up. Sue me. Sorry! (haha, Liz, im Deutschklasse, "Wer reitet auf der Sohn?" and "Punkte für Liz's Manchoff!")
Chapter… SEVEN!
Liz tumbled through the arch, magically dragging all of her friends behind her with the help of Aidan. She tripped and fell to the ground, causing everyone to land hard on the ground. As soon as she was through, amazingly strong sunshine and a sudden, uncomfortable blast of heat washed over her. This, and possibly getting out of the ethereal world in which they had just been, caused everyone to wake up suddenly. All with the sole exception of Sirius, that is.
"First order of business," Liz said. Does everybody have their wands?"
Seven responses of 'yes' and one 'no' filled the air. "I don't have mine," Peter said nervously.
"Git," said Christian and Mary at the same time. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
"Liz, Sirius has his wand," Remus said after seeing it poking out of his back pocket. Sirius. Sirius," he called, trying to wake Sirius up.
"I wouldn't bother," James said, poking Sirius in the shoulder with his own wand. "He's out."
Sirius mumbled something about pants and turned over.
"Whatever," Liz said impatiently. Again, she was the first of the group to even attempt to assess the situation. "Where are we?"
"Yeah, ask us, because we would know," Christian said sarcastically.
"Well, I just thought—" Liz began haughtily.
"Yeah, we know," Christian said, smiling. "I was joking. Now what were you saying?"
"Yeah— well…" Liz said. "Basically what I wanna know is, where in the name of Happy Jack are we?"
"AAAUGH!" Mary screamed. "Now you've gotten it stuck in my head! Thanks a lot!"
But Liz wasn't paying any attention. She was looking around at the landscape. It was very, very flat, and almost as far as she could see in all directions, there was nothing but sand. Lots and lots of golden, sparkling sand. Hmmm, she thought, taking it all in. This is what I always thought Egypt or somewhere would look like…
The only discernible feature of the land was mountains, rising off in the far distance. The sky― a beautiful blue― was completely cloudless, and the blue seemed to go on forever. There was also a hazy smudge on the horizon that could have been a town or at least some kind of inhabited area, but it was much too far away to see. Then she looked directly up at the sky. She gasped in surprise at what she saw, and this caught the attention of Allison, Christian, and Mary. "What is it?" Allison asked.
"Look," Liz half-whispered. She pointed upwards. "There are three suns," she finished, half-disbelieving.
"Sweet!" said Mary, but she was drowned out by the exclamations of James, who thought that he had been the first to notice the multiple suns.
"Hey, look guys!" he squealed. "There are three suns! That's awesome!"
Mary and Christian exchanged a look that clearly said, Git.
Liz was absentmindedly talking to herself. "And if we do manage to travel that far— but we don't have water— we don't know how far it is— and we don't even know what it is—"
Quite suddenly, Sirius woke up. "GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS!" he shrieked, coming out of a dream as he sat up. Realizing that everyone was staring at him, he grinned sheepishly and stuttered, "Um— sorry— I— well— a dream— never mind."
James muttered something under his breath that bore a close resemblance to "Stupid bloody gay git."
Sirius heard and was quick to turn red and reply, "I am NOT gay! Nark!"
James sniggered and said sarcastically, "Riiighht." This was the final straw for Sirius. He lunged at James, almost getting him by the throat. However, seeing as how his reflexes weren't too good, James simply stepped aside, and Sirius flew past him and landed on his head.
"Oof!" he grunted as he hit the ground. "I think I broke my neck."
"Really?" Christian asked with mock excitement. "Check to make sure!"
Actually complying with her sarcastic request, he tenderly felt a spot on his neck. "OW!" he gasped loudly. "I think I really did. I'm gonna diiiieee!" He rolled over on the sand, preparing to pretend to die a dramatic death (say that ten times fast!). However, as soon as he rolled over, he yelled, "OUCH!" and sat up immediately, rubbing his backside.
"Well, that was a sucky fake death," James commented stupidly.
"No, no— look at that!" Sirius said in annoyance. He gestured to an object half-buried in the sand. It was about the color of dirty bronze, but blended in nicely with the golden sand. "It poked my back!"
Christian, Mary, and Allison sniggered.
Liz, however, was still standing off to the side, muttering to herself. "But how long it'll take―"
Meanwhile, the four Marauders and the three unoccupied girls were poking at the strange object, while Aidan stood off to the side, watching the little mob with interest, but keeping his distance. His arms were crossed and he was tapping his foot impatiently.
"What d'you reckon it is?" James asked, eyeing it with interest. No one had yet been brave― or naïve― enough to try and touch it. Well, except Sirius, because he was a git, but Allison had quickly slapped his hand away.
The little object, although still half-buried in sand, appeared to be a simple box. No decorations, no flourishes. Just a smooth, simple box. At first, it had appeared to be made of wood, but upon closer inspection, it was like nothing any of them had ever seen before. It was, as has been said before, the approximate color of dirty bronze, though maybe a little lighter. Probably the oddest thing about it was that it seemed to almost sparkle a little bit. Although, Christian thought as she looked at it, maybe sparkle isn't really the right word. It's more of a― a glittery shine, or something. Indeed, the box did seem to have a bit of an otherwordly aura of light, one that had nothing to do with any of the three hot suns blazing overhead.
Finally, Sirius could contain neither his curiosity nor his strange affection for shiny objects any longer.
"Please, please let's open it," he begged.
"Sirius, are you quite mad?" Mary asked, displaying a rare instance of common sense/sanity. "Who knows what that is? Or what's inside?"
Sirius's smile fell and he looked longingly at the box, saying, "Yeah, but it's so shiny―"
"Yeah, well, so is Snape's hair, but you're not about to play around with that, are you?" Mary asked.
Sirius's only reply was pretending to vomit.
Liz suddenly swiveled around to face the group. She stomped over and snapped, "Hello, Earth to you gits, but in case you haven't noticed, Christian doesn't have a face, we have an unexpected guest―" she gestured to Aidan "―we're in the middle of a very foreign desert, we have no idea where we are, and we're God knows how many dimensions, universes, or macrocosms away from Europe!"
Everyone, including Aidan, stared at Liz for about five minutes while she glared back at them. Finally Sirius spoke up.
"What's a― what's a macrocosm?" he asked somewhat tentatively. Then, hoping to lighten the mood, he grinned widely.
Liz stared at him, eyes wide, for a moment longer, then narrowed her eyes dangerously. She huffed angrily and turned away.
Sirius recognized the evil death gleam in Liz's eye and hastily tried to make it up to her. "Liz, it's― look, I'm― I'm a git, all right?"
Liz turned to him and looked him right in the eye. "Too right you are." She turned away and walked resolutely towards the larger group of people, which was standing around and discussing the mysterious object. "Now, what have we here?" she asked them as she drew nearer to them.
"We don't know," said Allison. "That would be why we haven't touched it yet."
"Oh," said Liz. "Right." She knelt down near the item and began to examine the box, which was about half the length of a notebook, and around two and a half inches tall. She didn't really notice anything different than the others had, until―
"Hey, what's that?" Mary asked. She pointed to a tiny, absolutely minuscule little symbol on the side of the box. Liz bent even closer to the box and investigated the little embellishment Mary had pointed to. It looked like a woman's face. That's odd, Liz thought. That face looks extremely familiar…
Everyone except Aidan had crowded around the box when Mary had pointed out the little symbol. He was still off a few yard away, looking extremely impatient. James looked up from the intense examination they were all giving it and said, "Bloody hell, we've got trouble. Um, guys…"
At this warning, everyone looked up. Approaching in the not-so-distant distance were what looked like four men on horses. As they came closer to the group, they were able to see that all four men were dark-skinned, bald, and wearing nothing but beige-colored pants that looked like they may have been animal skins. The pants came down to about the middle of their calves. The horses were all very dark brown, and extremely sweaty. They had no form of riding gear except for a blanket, which is what the men were sitting on.
The nine students stood up straight and faced the men, who were drawing ever closer.
"Should we try to talk to them?" Christian whispered anxiously.
"That may be a good idea," Remus said. "The way I see it, we're probably going to die either way, so why not at least try?"
Mary whispered sarcastically, "Thanks, Remus."
"Shh!"
They all stood up straight again. Liz decided to go for it and shouted, "Hello! Um… we come in peace!" However, she was rudely interrupted by Christian's whisper of, "We're not in Area 51, Liz! Don't talk to them like we're aliens!" She straightened up and bellowed, "HELLO! PLEASE DON'T KILL US! WE'RE NOT ALIENS! WE AREN'T EVEN ARMED! HELLL- OOOO! LOOK!" She waved her hands in the air. "NO WEAPONS! WE SWEAR! NOW IF WE COULD JUST GET A PLACE TO STAY FOR THE NIGHT―"
Allison grabbed her hands and hissed, "Are you insane?"
The men seemed to be having a discussion amongst themselves on their horses. Finally one looked up and shouted, "Halt! Wir kommen zu dir! Wir sind die Puelitzen!"
The four girls all looked at one another. Although many students had scoffed at the idea, all four girls had taken Language Studies in their 4th through 6th years. "Is it just me…" Allison said slowly, "or did they just speak German?"
"Well, at least we can understand them, sort of," said Christian. "But what does 'Puelitzen' mean?"
"I don't know," Liz replied. "What did they say again?"
"They said, 'Wir kommen zu dir, wir sind die Puelitzen," Mary supplied. "Which means something along the lines of, 'We'll come to you, we are the something.'"
"'Puelitzen' probably means 'police,' or something," Allison said thoughtfully.
"Ja, ja, wir sind die Puelitzen." The men were very, very close now, easily within earshot of the group. They rode a little bit faster the rest of the way to the area in which the group was standing, then stopped at about only three yards away.
"This is really creeping me out…" Mary murmured to Remus.
Suddenly, the man in front, leading the procession, gestured to James and said, "Nimmt das Junge!" Two of the men swung gracefully off their horses and started advancing on James.
"Guys!" he shouted, and sort of backed away slowly, eyes filled with fear. "What the―"
"Oh man," said Liz. "Oh man oh man oh man. They said, 'Take the boy.' They're taking James! We've gotta do something!"
James, having nowhere to run to, was quickly grabbed by the two men. They bound him with ropes rather easily, even though James was putting up something of a fight, and positioned him on the back of the horse on which the man who was neither the leader nor one of the men holding James was sitting.
Sirius, upon hearing Liz' statement, rushed over to the men and said, "Uh― no, that's probably not a good idea― we like our Jamsey, see― so if you'd just put him down, that would be bloody great―"
Mary pushed him aside and hissed, "Git! Haven't you noticed that they don't speak English?" Then she turned to the man who had been leading the procession on their way there and said in a very pleasant voice, "Nein, das ist nicht gut. Er ist mein Freunde. Wir brauchen er. Kannen wir er haben, bitte?"
The man looked down his nose at her and said, "Nein. Wir mussen er nehmen. Es tut mir leid. Aber kannt ihr mit wir kommen, ob willt ihr."
Mary smiled and held up one finger. "Ja. Danke. Eine Moment, bitte." She started walking back towards her friends.
Sirius leaned over to Liz. "What'd they say?"
Liz whispered back, "Well, Mary said that no, that's not good, that James is our friend and we need him. Then she asked the guy if we could have him back."
Sirius inquired further. "Then what'd he say?"
Liz answered, "He said, no, sorry, we have to take him. You all can come with us, though, if you want."
Sirius asked, "Then what?"
Mary reached them at that moment and answered his question. "Yes, thank you. One moment, please."
Sirius blinked and said, "Ah."
Christian, focusing on the matter at hand (wow! Imagine that! Christian focusing!), said, "There's no question. We have to go. We have to stay together. If we get split up, we're screwed. There's no way we can let James go by himself."
Liz whispered something into Christian's ear, smiled evilly, and looked expectantly at Christian. Christian blushed slightly, but quickly regained her composure. Off a few yards away, the leader of the strange men snapped, "Los geht's! Schnell!"
James, with a very wide-eyed, nervous expression on his face, nodded his head as vigorously as he could.
Liz said, "Allison, would you please tell them that we're coming with them?" While Allison turned around, stood up and said, "Ja, wir kommen mit Sie," Liz told the rest of the group, "Guys, it's probably not a good idea for any of us to speak unless spoken to. Even then we've gotta be absobloodylutely careful. Agreed?"
"Agreed," came the simultaneous cacophony of six voices. Aidan remained sulkily silent.
"Aidan?" Liz said. "Please just promise; we're going to need all the help we can get during this."
Aidan looked her right in the eyes for a moment, then looked at his feet and muttered, "Fine."
"All right, let's go then," Liz said wearily.
The eight students got up and trudged reluctantly towards James and the four strange men. Although traveling off into an alien land with four tribal-looking men was probably not a good idea, no one could think of anything better to do, and no one could think of any spell that would help them save James. They were, as Christian had put it, screwed. To the max.
"Ihr werdet verfallen uns," they were told by the leader. "Kommst du jetzt."
"Ja, wir kommen," Liz answered politely, although somewhat tiredly.
"Ihr musst wandern," the leader continued. "Sprecht bisschen. Erzahlen deine Freunden dass von."
"Did you guys hear that?" Christian asked her non-German speaking peers. "He said, "You'll follow us. Speak little. We have to walk." To the man she said timidly, "Ja, sie wissen."
Liz whispered to the students, "She said, yes, they know now."
"Kommt!"
The two men who had handled James swung themselves back onto their horses, and the four horses began to move. Already they were going too fast for the eight students to keep up. In desperation, Allison called out, "Langsamer, bitte!" which of course means, "Slower, please!"
The men made no visible sign that they had heard, but a moment later they slowed down. The eight students watched as the men whispered among themselves for a minute. Suddenly, three of the men, including the leader and the man carrying James, leapt off, riding at top speed. The remaining man looked extremely cross. He began to ride back to where the students were standing.
Sirius, Peter, and Christian all shouted, "JAMES!" at the exact same time. Sirius and Peter made as if to run off after the riders, who were receding farther and farther into the distance by the second. However, Remus grabbed each guy's shirt collar, and Mary grabbed Christian's, before they could go anywhere. "Are you mad?"
Sirius looked extremely crestfallen. "But… James…" his voice trailed off forlornly as he remembered the terrified expression James had worn as the riders moved off with him strapped precariously to a horse's rear end.
Meanwhile, the man on the horse that had remained with them had been watching all of this with a very amused expression. Exactly what about the situation he found so amusing, no one knew, or really wanted to ask. Finally, after surveying them with satisfaction for some time, he spoke. "Kommt mit." That was all. No explanation, no apology, just "Come with me."
He spoke again. "Ich gehe langsam. Aber musst du schnell gehen."
Christian whispered, "Guys, we've gotta walk fast. Jog, even. Let's go." And with that, they set off, the dark-skinned bald man keeping them moving at a quick pace. As they began to move, Remus saw Liz slip something into her robes.
About an hour later (no one knew for sure; Remus's watch had broken), they were still moving across the desert, though not nearly as quickly as they had been. The only water they had stopped for had been about a half-hour ago, and it hadn't even been water, it had been a silvery liquid that all of them had been scared to touch. So all eight of them were hot, tired, dusty, depressed, and extremely thirsty. If they didn't get water soon, they'd probably die, for real. This was on everyone's mind, except for Sirius's. All he could think about was James. His best friend, all alone save for some bald weirdos…
Meanwhile, Liz and Mary were discussing the fact that they seemed to be coming nearer to the 'hazy smudge on the horizon' that they had seen before. As they got closer and closer, it did indeed seem to be a town, or even a small city.
Suddenly their 'guide' spoke― something he hadn't done for almost the entire journey. "Wir sind eneigen hier."
Remus whispered to Mary, "What'd he say?"
She whispered back, "We're almost there."
Remus nodded.
It was true. They had been able to see what they were approaching for some time now, but as they finally reached the outskirts, it was more massive than they had ever imagined. There were at least four different levels of streets, platforms, sometimes overlapping. Ladders led to the platforms, and there were buildings, some nearly four stories high! That wouldn't have seemed entirely too impressive to the students, except for the fact that everything was made out of what appeared to be mud. People― all dark-skinned― were absolutely everywhere for as far into the city that they could see. Amazingly, even the women appeared to be completely bald. The city― because that's what it seemed to be, now― spread out in front of them seemingly to no end, for it extended well past the limits of their vision. Activity was everywhere, and it was so loud that one had to shout in order to be heard.
"Ah. Wir sind hier. Gut. Kommt mit." The man dismounted his horse and handed it off to a shirtless boy who appeared to be about the same age as the students. Like the men, he was dark and bald. The boy glanced in amazement at the eight. At the sight of Christian, he sucked his breath in sharply and stared. The man said, "Keveln, Sehen nicht. Nimmt mein Pferd. Jetzt!"
The boy drew his eyes away from the group and looked at the man. "Ja. Leid." He took the horse and led it off, farther into the city, where the crowd swelled to even greater numbers.
The man watched them go, then turned around to face the eight. He beckoned to them with one finger, then slipped off into the crowd. They were started to get some weird looks from the people around them, probably due to the fact that everyone around them was at least four shades darker than they were, and nobody else had hair. They stuck out like an elephant among mice.
"Wait up!" Sirius shouted, then started running. He just managed to catch a glimpse of the man entering one of the many building before Remus grabbed him again and said, "Sirius, you can't keep running off like a madman! Don't be a prat!"
"―some people just can't help it," Christian said with a grin.
"―if we lose you here we'll never bloody find you!" Remus continued.
Sirius shifted impatiently while Remus yelled. He said nothing in defense, and when Remus was done, he shouted "This way!" as he ran off yet again.
Remus shook his head, annoyed, but followed anyway.
Sirius reached the building that the man had entered. Fortunately it had been just up the 'street,' so his friends were able to follow him fairly easily.
After ducking and weaving through the thick crowd in their mad attempt to follow Sirius, the seven students finally caught up with him almost right after he entered the building. However, Remus, the first one to enter the building after Sirius, was unlucky enough to find that Sirius had come to a sudden halt just inside the doorway. He ran into him full-force.
"Oof! Remus, mate! Watch where I'm going!"
"Shut up, Sirius."
Mary was next. Unaware that Remus had stopped, and looking in the other direction, she ran into Remus in the same way that he had run into Sirius.
"AAH! Remus! Why'd you stop? I almost died!"
"Uh… sorry, Mary."
"It's all right! Ha, I don't actually bloody care!"
However, the end of the episode of clumsiness had not yet come. The pattern continued all the way through Christian, Liz, Allison, Peter, and Aidan.
Christian: "Ow! Mary! Must you always cut me off?"
Liz: "Christian, what's the— OOF! What the fu—"
Allison: "Whoa! Liz, what's bloody wrong with you?" Falls down.
Peter: "EEE!" Trips over air and goes flying.
Aidan: Trips over Peter and starts swearing at him in Celtic or whatever weird language he speaks.
Soon they had made a sort of horizontal eight-person pileup, not unlike the one that had occurred in the trophy room. However, their attentions were diverted from the painful, tangled up mess by the room they had just entered, which was about the size of a large classroom.
"Whoa," someone said.
Hanging from every wall were tapestries, tapestries with colors so bold— deep purples and shining golds and royal blues and deep greens and yellows and every other color you can think of, plus a few you can't— that it almost hurt to look at them. But the dozens of torch-bearing sconces attached to the wall around the room made it even worse. The light from the flames reflected of nearly every thread of every tapestry. Additionally, the room smelled strongly of incense, and it was very warm. The fumes of the incense were making everyone a bit tired, because there were no windows or visible ventilation systems to let some of the fumes out.
Along with the tapestries and the sconces were ornate rugs and carpets on the floor. They appeared to be made out of the same material as the tapestries.
There were at least six doorways in the room, each leading off to some unknown place. The man whom they had followed to the city noticed them. He was standing right next to one doorway, and as soon as he had caught the eye of the students, he beckoned to them, right before disappearing into the door he'd been standing by.
"Well, let's go!" Sirius said, and made as if to sprint off to the door.
"Sirius! Wait!" Remus shouted. Aidan sniffed temperamentally and rolled his eyes.
Sirius stopped just short of the door. "Come on," he pleaded.
I've never seen him so dejected in my life, Christian thought.
Mary caught Christian's eye and nodded. Then she looked at Liz, who shot her a look that said, I know.
"What if we never see James again?" Sirius asked them, his tone a bit more defensive now. "What if we do see him, but he's all mangled up and torn into little pieces by these people? What if they're going on a picnic and decided to have little James sandwiches?" He was getting more and more hysterical with each syllable.
It was at that moment that everyone in the group realized just how deeply they were in this. At first it had seemed like a dream. A long, scary, very detailed dream, granted. But a dream nonetheless. Now one of their number was in real danger, and if they didn't act soon, there was no telling what would happen to James.
Remus thought all this and said, "All right, let's go." He set off towards the door. Sirius, glad to see that he wasn't alone, stepped through the door, closely followed by Remus. A look of terror at being separated from his Marauders crossed Peter's face, and he waddled through the doorway as fast as his extremely-slowly-moving legs would take him. The four girls were right behind. Finally, the only one left was Aidan. He looked at the doorway with an intense expression of dislike. A little spasm of dread crossed his face, but it passed too fast to be noticed. Finally, he stepped over the threshold to join his colleagues.
