Disclaimer: see previous chapters
A/N I'm in a rush to write this but .. I was trying to be historically correct throughout the whole thing so the research was a bitch to find. Thankfully though I managed it. So hoorah! Sorry but I'm really in a rush!
Thanks to inumoon3 ummm, I dunno about the crush idea, I'm still playing with the Sirius Remus pairing in my head for this story, so... we'll see okay? this story is turning out to be a bloody epic I think so I have time to mull things over, Lady-Draconian-Sapphire, angelkitty77, Kodoku Wolf, lovemehatemejustdon'tfearme, and MistyShimmer for reviewing! I'd give you Draco plushies but sadly I don't have any-sniff-
"This is not the time to stand around and laze about like lowlifes." Snape growled out, his obsidian eyes showing no mercy as he walked on the cool grass towards a dirt road, which looked like it had been actually walked on so many times that it had just been created that way.
James glared at Snape while trying to get Peter to stand up straight. "Where are you going?" James called out to Snape, whilst thinking what a git the greasy haired man was.
"Potter, I'm heading to that Grecian temple over there which happens to have a rather large hole in it now thanks to that statue we brought with us." Snape called back, sounding very grumpy, and James craned his head over the hill they appeared to be on, they were near the top of it so it wasn't that hard.
And indeed there lay a temple with stone columns standing at what looked to be the entrance of the temple, with a triangle-like ceiling at the bottom of the hill, well near it anyways.
It looked like a few of the columns had been rammed into by something rather large, and James imagined the statue had not gone unharmed in its return to the temple. "'Arry, Snape's right ya know, ya 'ave to get up. It's not safe to just lie down like that." Hagrid said to Harry, who was lying down on the grass, with his eyes closed.
Hagrid himself had gotten up slowly, standing up to his full height, towering over the students. Harry, on the ground opened his eyes, let out a sigh, and pulled himself up off of the ground. "Can we go and sleep somewhere please? I feel like I'm about to fall down and I'm lying on the ground." Harry said, looking a bit green now that James thought of it.
Hermione walked over to Harry and lifted him up so his arm was wrapped around her shoulder as Ron took the other side and they helped him follow Snape down the path. "Well, we best be movin' as well." Hagrid said, motioning for the marauders to follow the rest of the group along the path.
James let go of Peter, who fell down again, earning a laugh from the other three as he got up shakily again. Sirius and Remus had let go of each other hastily, and were moving towards the 'road' as James and Peter quickly followed.
Professor Snape took over, to the grudge of everyone else in the group, but sadly no one else had any plans for where they would spend this one night, as the sun seemed to have already gone down over the horizon.
Snape decided they would stay in the forest by the temple, and amazingly out of his robes he transfigured a few tents, not the ones from the future, but tents that could be made out of cloth and keep them covered for the night, no one had known Snape would plan so well for this.
As James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus set up their tent, Ron and Hermione set up a tent for themselves and Harry right beside it with their wands. Harry slept on the ground under his tent, as he had fallen asleep right after they moved silently through the woods into the clearing they were now in.
"Hermione, why is Harry…?" Ron asked, as they finished up with tying the tent to two nearby trees.
"Why is he so sleepy? I think the spell took a toll on him; his energy is going into protecting that child of his, not into his own protection. We're going to need to watch out for him." Hermione said, opening up the tent and going in to check on Harry.
As for James' tent, well, it was 'progressing' but Sirius kept falling down laughing every time Remus got a wave of the wand wrong and the tent lopsided again and again. "Shut up Sirius, I'm trying to concentrate." Remus growled out, trying to kick Sirius who was laughing so hard his eyes were watering.
"Sirius, please, I want to be able to sleep tonight. Take one look at the other three tents over there, if Snape can get a decent looking tent up out of this cloth and we can't, well then…" James said, knowing he was going to get Sirius to work better if just to beat Snivellus.
"Right James, now shut up, we have work to do." Sirius said with determination as he flicked his wand at the tent and it stood up straight, then he flicked it again and the ropes they had been using for it tied themselves around two tree branches above them.
James looked at the tent dumbfounded, it by far looked better then the other tents now. "Sirius, why can't you use your genius for things productive more often?" Remus asked, before getting tackled to the ground by Sirius.
James found it odd that Sirius would tackle Remus for that, but he ignored it and hopped into the tent, laying down the rest of the cloth onto the cold ground for the bottom of the tent.
"Okay you guys, it's ready, finally, for us to sleep in!" James called out and Peter crawled in first, followed by Remus whose foot was got in Sirius grasp. James laughed as he saw his friends fight, and Remus fought for his foot back.
"Let me go Sirius!" Remus huffed, and threw his foot in the direction of the tents wall, with Sirius along and he fell on the cloth. The next thing James heard was the snap of two ropes and the tent fell around them.
As the cloth covered their heads, showing the figures of four boys, any onlooker would have thought it a pair of badly made ghost costumes, or the more superstitious would have thought them ghosts. Remus huffed again.
"Sirius, can you stop acting like yourself for five minutes." All three boys said at the same time, and they went about trying to fix their tent, again.
Harry woke up the next morning feeling sick, no surprise there. He got up as quickly as he could from the ground, ignoring the slight backache he had from sleeping on the ground all night, and ran out into the clearing, throwing up in the nearby bushes.
Harry looked around, noticing the other tents were silent, and that it was actually dawn, as he could see the pink sky as the sun rose from behind the trees. 'I got three months and some odd weeks left of morning sickness, how the fuck am I gonna survive?" Harry thought to himself, glaring at his stomach.
"Don't think for five seconds I asked for you, but goddamnit you're growing on me." Harry told the baby growing in his body, knowing he'd love the thing inside of him, but why did he have to be the one who got pregnant? Oh right, his damn powers.
Harry knew he wasn't angry about being pregnant, but it was an inconvenience at this time in his life. There was to much going on right now for it to be safe to have a child, but he knew he'd try, and if anything tried to harm his unborn child, he'd raise hell and all its demons from the underground and bring them down upon the unlucky bastard.
Voldemort would probably be that unlucky bastard, but he was already on Harry's 'must kill list' so it didn't make much difference.
Harry walked over the clearing again, about to crawl into his tent when Snape got out of his, glaring at Harry before speaking, civilly to him. "Potter, Hagrid and I believe it best if you do not come with us as we go into the town this morning." Snape said to him.
Harry opposed that decision right away. "NO! I'm coming with you, I…" Harry was starting to object before Snape made a noise that sounded like a very low growl, and for some reason Harry shut up right away as soon as he had heard it. It wasn't like him to do so, but for some reason, Snape looked scary to him for five seconds there.
"I do not care what your heroic complex makes you think you are capable of. You are not, Potter, I repeat, you are not powerful enough at this time because of what you carry in your body. With that child, you're in no way capable of making it down the cliff to the market square in the town below us. Draco would murder us all if that child was lost because the flea bitten boy carrying it was too stupid to take care of himself properly." Snape made a great speech of it, and what Harry hated the most was how right Snape was.
Harry grumbled before nodding his head, he'd felt completely exhausted last night, and he had a feeling that if he didn't watch himself, he'd get that way easily. He hated admitting defeat, or admitting that for the time being, he may be a little more vulnerable then normal.
"Fine, but you can't keep me back here forever!" Harry snapped back, before crawling furiously into the tent, knee digging into Ron's leg by accident as he tried to get onto his mat, but Ron still didn't wake up, even though if it had been Hermione, he was sure she would have woken up ready to lecture him.
Later that morning James found himself and his friends riding a cart Snape had transfigured out of a fallen log, with a mule transfigured out of a small bird in one of the trees. Hagrid drove the cart, with Snape showing him where to go on the road to get down from the cliff to the town.
Snape had told Ron, Hermione, and Harry to stay behind with the tents, explaining that women were looked down upon, and then explained the plan to Hagrid who briefed the others on it. James already knew Harry didn't want to, but for some reason Harry said he knew it was best for him to stay behind, this one time.
The plan was to go to the market and 'shop' for food while listening or asking, or looking even in case the group had been sold as slaves to others in the cities for the group of students they had lost to the time pocket.
"So how exactly will we know what to look for?" James asked as he climbed onto the cart after Remus.
"Well, Narcissa Black and her son aren't going to be mistaken for regular Greek people, and I don't know about you but if any Greek person had Lily's hair I'd turn in my eyes for glass ones. So I'm pretty sure anything about unusually strangers, slaves being sold to someone would give you a hint." Remus said, sitting down on the hard wood of the cart.
"Or simply Lupin, anything about strange goings on at the temple that has to do with the statue missing." Snape suggested cheekily from the front of the cart, earning him four glares that he could not see.
James soon saw the outline for how the town, or city actually, had been built as they rode down the road from the temple. The temple stood above the city on a rather large hill, creating a cliff above the city, and there were gates around the city, but from above on the hill, they could see the many homes inside the city, as well as a few larger ones closer to the open area in the city.
As they rode towards the city they noticed that one of the western gates was open, allowing people to move in and out of the city. "Hagrid stop." Snape ordered, pointing his wand at the marauders, and Sirius' reaction was to pull his wand out as well. "Black put your wand away, I'm going to transfigure you're robes to look like the clothes they wear now." Was the scathing remark sent Sirius' way.
Sirius let go of his wand, glaring at Snape as he waved his wand at each of them, their robes turning into white tunics that went knee-high and were sewn up the side with thread, and at the shoulders had been pinned together with three small black brooches. There was a belt at the waist made of simple leather, tying the cloth snugly around their waists.
As for Snape himself, he transformed his tunic to reach his ankles, with a green cloak hanging on his shoulders, tied at one side with another black brooch. Hagrid had something similar on as Snape after Snape cast the charm over his clothes, only he had a red cloak instead.
"These Greeks were on a totally different level of fashion weren't they?" James said, as he looked at his clothes and how they really felt as if they were about to fall off any minute, but he knew Snape didn't hate him that much, did he? James shivered because he knew it was Snape and he wouldn't put it past Snivellus to cause James a little embarrassment.
The others nodded, Sirius looking rather pleased as he tried to undo Remus' brooches, seeing as it might cause the whole robe to fall down. "Sirius, would you go annoy James? I'd like to keep my clothes on!" Remus cried, as they reached the gates that had been opened around the city. James snickered at his friend, when he saw four soldiers looking at them with small beady eyes.
One of the soldiers stopped them, and started to speak in a language no one in the back of the cart understood. Snape amazingly, responded, as did Hagrid, and the soldiers nodded in approval, letting the cart pass into the city streets.
"Where the hell.." Sirius asked, looking at the two grownups as if they had grown two heads. Hagrid chuckled and explained it for the four in the back.
"Severus, I think ya should cast the translation charm for them, how can they help us when they dunno how ta speak the language everyone else knows?" Hagrid said, and Snape seemed to mutter under his breathe at Hagrid.
"Don't ask me to cast another spell for these four after this; they can manage on their own after." Snape snapped back, quickly checking to see who was around before he quietly cast a translation spell over the group.
As they rode on, the houses came into view, all the houses seemed to be built around a courtyard, and they seemed to be all one-floor homes. Some children could be seen in the courtyard, drying clothes it seemed, doing other odd chores, while some more curious children looked at the cart and pointed at Hagrid, excitedly chattering away at the sight of such a large man.
Snape and Hagrid found the square, with few problems although there had been one where Sirius had scared one of the children, causing them to scream and startle the 'mule.'
As soon as they reached the square James took it all in with a strange delight, stalls were set up all along the square, while a statue of a man stood somewhere near the center, as well as a slab of rock that looked like it was an altar of some sort.
"Okay ya four, we're going to go over to tha' table and get our money changed, then you can buy some things to eat, and Harry said he wanted meat, if ya can find it." Hagrid said. Jumping off the cart and took the mules reigns, leading it towards a table where a man sat with a bunch of coins and a scale in front of him.
One man was just leaving the table, as Hagrid walked up and placed a few coins on the table. "We'd like these coins changed please." He said in the weird language they had heard earlier, only this time they understood it! It was weird, like hearing something foreign to the ears and still… you knew what it meant.
James hardly heard Hagrid's natural accent because of the charm, and wondered exactly how strong Snape really was, because he had always thought he wasn't that powerful as he was annoying, but he could have been wrong.
The man looked up at Hagrid, and his eyes went wide, before he nodded and took the money, examining it and putting it on the scales. "Is it just me, or were we under prepared for this?" Remus asked, and the rest of them nodded, because James knew he, Sirius, and Peter hadn't even thought about clothing to fit into the scene in this ancient city.
Even knowing it was an ancient city sent shivers up James' spine because it felt so… new. Alive was a word too, with the people talking, laughing, most of the square was made up by men and any women he saw walked very close to certain men, who he assumed where their husbands, and he knew now why Hermione wasn't allowed to come along for this, none of them except Harry and James looked slightly related.
And from what he could see the women were very submissive to the men, and what he knew of Hermione Granger was one thing, she was hardly submissive. It would probably have gone sour if she'd come along, making them look very much like strangers, not something they wanted probably.
"So have you come here to see the god?" the man asked, as he took the money Hagrid had given him, and in another pouch he put in more coins, sealed the pouch up and handed it over to Hagrid.
"The god?" Hagrid replied back, looking confused.
"Yes, the god. A few days ago the priest went up to the temple and where the statue had stood there was the god Hades from the underworld himself, and the statue had dissapeared! His dark eyes almost scared the priest into an early grave!" the man said as Hagrid picked up the pouch he'd been given and took out a few coins, giving two each to the boys.
"Hades? The ruler of the underworld? Here?" Hagrid asked the man, putting on a pretty good show of being surprised. The man looked smug suddenly, glad that he could gloat and tell knowledge that they did not have.
"Yes, he's a sight to be seen and even his wife Persephone is here as well, along with a few loyal followers. The priest of Hades says Hades is here to see his wife and that is why the season hasn't changed yet; I believe you have to take it up with the priest if you wish to have an audience." the man said, chuckling.
"Although why you would want an audience with Hades himself is beyond me, his wife perhaps, but not Hades." the man whispered to Hagrid very lowly, as if afraid Hades himself could hear what he was saying.
Hagrid nodded, and looked at Snape, whose head had been bowed the whole time and James realized something. They had found who they were looking for. Snape lifted his head suddenly and looked straight at the man, who looked terrified and respectful all of a sudden.
The man bowed his head at Snape in respect and it clicked for the marauders. The younger Snape and one of the girls had been mistaken for the religious gods of the age. Now to Sirius the idea of Snivellus marrying anyone was funny as hell, and he had to have Remus slap him over the back so as to not laugh his ass off.
'Well we found them.' James thought, not realizing that as easily as they had found the others, it would be a little more then hard to get to see them.
Review! And give me your opinion as well... A long time ago, way back when I started the story, a suggestion for the pairing Remus/Sirius was made. Who would still like to see that pairing?
