Author's Note:
Hello, first off, we want to thank you for giving this story a chance! But before you start reading, you should know that we're planning to write four books about the Marauders, our favourite characters from the Harry Potter books. This is the first one and will be split into two parts, one for first year and one for second year. Besides that, the books will also show the events of the First Wizarding War and the impact they had on the Wizarding world.
Last, but not least, the characters and places of course belong to J.K. Rowling and we're only using them to bring our own version of these troublemakers to life.
Happy reading! :)
Prologue
Saturday, August 31st, 1971
A faint pop sounded in the quiet evening of a small town near London. The sound barely heard, due to droplets of rain beginning to pelt the narrow street with the waning sunlight.
A pair of battered dress shoes had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, along with the scruffy-bearded, dark-haired owner. He stood looming in the semi-darkness for a moment, stroking his beard with a thoughtful look upon his lined face, before carrying his bulky frame down the street.
Not a single soul came his way and no curious eyes peeked at him from between curtains, only the meowing of a cat in the distance and the soft thudding of his shoes lent him company.
The man eventually halted in front of a small, brick house standing to his right. He seemed to have noticed the lights were still burning brightly inside and so followed the cobbled trail, leading through a quaint flower garden, until he reached the front door. A fist came to knock loudly on the wood and rustling was heard from the inside.
A moment later, a woman peeked her head out. Her short blonde hair tucked neatly behind her ears, made the relief shining in her eyes even more visible.
"Oh, Larkin," she spoke gently, opening the door further to let the man in. "Why'd they keep you so long this time? Did something happen?"
The man didn't answer her right away, instead choosing to walk farther into the warm interior of their house. He pulled off his shoes and untidily threw them towards the coat rack behind the door, before moving to sit on the sofa.
"Don't worry 'bout it," he said finally, waving off her questions, "the Ministry's just been busy with those disappearances lately."
The woman's expression turned worried. "Do you think it has anything to do with that horrible incident with the Muggle Minister's family last year?
"I still remember those photos in the Prophet – strung up like puppets they were."
The man shook his head grimly, for he remembered them too. Only too clearly it seemed. "Nothing like that, Deena. Just run of the mill kind of things, those disappearances have been happening regularly for the past six years now."
The woman looked unimpressed, crossing her arms in front of her chest, so Larkin quickly added, "How're the kids?"
Her face softened somewhat and she hesitantly dropped her hands back to her side. "Asleep, the both of them. They'd wanted to wait up for their father, but eventually they got too tired."
"I'll check on them later," Larkin said with a sigh and closed his eyes briefly.
There was a moment of silence, until he felt the sofa dip at the additional weight joining him. A warm hand rested on his cheek and stroked the dark hairs there.
"You look tired," she whispered, her hand moving to gently run her fingers through his hair, her eyes studying his face. "You should head off to bed."
Larkin met her worried gaze. "Yeah, you're probably right," he said, but there was no sign of movement.
"I mean it," the woman clarified more sternly, "you've been spending more and more time at work and I can see that it drains you. Go to bed."
Larkin nodded, but his body still remained seated. He knew if he even attempted to sleep, his mind would take him back to the papers still stacking high on his office desk. It felt like he hadn't even gotten ahead at all these past months, with so many mysterious incidents and the constant confusion.
Not to mention that year-old case Deena had so graciously reminded him of. Larkin doubted they'd ever find this self-proclaimed Lord Voldemort. It seemed he was just a myth nowadays.
He needed to tune the stress out completely before even attempting to close his eyes, so he pointed his wand at the cabinet to his right. The drawers burst open and a glass came floating out, along with a half-empty bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky.
"You don't have to wait up for me," Larkin added, watching the bottle as it tipped towards the glass to fill it with the reddish-brown liquid. "I'll be up in a minute, Deena."
The woman frowned at him, pulling her hands haltingly away from his face to fold them in her lap. "It's fine, I can wait."
Larkin shot her a look, but did nothing except grab his glass from the table and quickly bring it to his lips. The whisky burned its way down his throat, but the feeling was a familiar one by now.
Deena sat by his side the entire time, watching with dismay as he drank one glass after the other, until his body was starting to hum with the warmth radiating from his stomach. It seemed he was wrapped in a blanket, shielded from the world outside, mind too befuddled to even remember the hundreds of owls he'd received today for the time being.
It was then that he lifted himself from the sofa and made to make his way swayingly to the stairs that led to their bedroom. He'd just taken one step forwards, when a delicate hand grasped his wrist.
For a moment Deena looked like she was going to say something, her mouth was opened, but not a word came out. Instead, she just shook her head and Larkin thought he saw her wipe at her eyes. Her hand hesitantly slipped from his again and folded itself back onto her lap.
Larkin spared her one last glance. "G'night," he slurred, before making his way up the stairs with slight difficulty.
His feet didn't carry him straight to his bedroom though, instead his hand rested on a different doorknob. Larkin twisted it rather loudly and the light from the hallway flooded the dark room. Two voices groaned in unison at the sudden brightness and buried their heads farther into their blankets.
The floorboards creaked beneath his feet, but he paid them no mind and moved closer to the two squirming forms. His eyes moved to the left bed, where his older son, Thomas, was trying to blink the light away from his eyes.
"Dad?" he asked groggily, looking up at him in surprise. "You're home!"
Larkin shot a look over his shoulder at Thomas' younger brother, but found him to be completely covered in blankets from head to toe. They moved steadily up and down, as the boy breathed deeply in his sleep.
"Shh!" Larkin whispered nonetheless, swayingly kneeling before Thomas' bed. "We don't want to wake David now, do we?"
Thomas seemed not to hear his father's warning words, hastily climbing out of his bed and giddily throwing himself into his father's broad chest.
"I've missed you," he mumbled into the pristine fabric.
Larkin frowned slightly at this, while his hand moved to affectionately ruffle the thin, dark strands of hair on his son's head. "I've missed you too," he said honestly.
The two pulled apart at last, as a loud yawn echoed in the room. Larkin haltingly pulled Thomas' hands away from his waist and set the boy back down on his bed.
"You go on to bed now," Larkin said gruffly, "I'll see you both in the morning."
Thomas nodded tiredly and slipped beneath the blankets once more. "Good night, Dad."
"Sleep tight," Larkin said with a small smile, "and don't let the doxies bite."
He heard his son's laugh, right before he closed the door again with a loud creak and walked the rest of the way down the hallway, until he reached his own door and exhaustedly leaned against it.
His eyesight was a blur of colours by now, so it took a while before he finally found the handle and successfully pressed it down. His feet managed to carry him the last few metres over to the double bed, before giving way as he collapsed.
The firewhisky did its job well and Larkin slept peacefully without even a single yell from the Head Auror ringing in his ears, until a loud pop sent his eyes bursting wide open. His hand instinctively went to his wand still in his trouser pocket, as dark eyes tried focusing in the darkness.
Larkin was about to cast Lumos, to be able to see better, but a white light already illuminated the room.
A tired groan came from the form next to him on the bed and Larkin only now realised Deena had joined him. She must've climbed in when he was asleep and had graciously pulled him all the way onto the bed.
"What's going on?" she asked, blue eyes cracking open.
Larkin merely rubbed her forearm gently. "I reckon it's nothing, go back to sleep."
Deena's eyes closed again with a half-aware nod, too caught up in her dreams to register anything around her to its full extent. Larkin was relieved at that, because he recognised the figure now materialising next to the fireplace.
A man had appeared with grizzled hair that reached his shoulders. He wore a scowl, which defined the wrinkles starting to form on his forehead, as he regarded the two on the bed with dark eyes.
"Moody," Larkin acknowledged, eyes meeting his. "What're you doing here?"
"Bottlebrush," he growled, nodding his head in his direction, before getting straight to the point. "There's been a killing."
He didn't seem to think this form of intrusion even slightly out of the ordinary and Larkin figured he'd done this many times before, so he tried not to be unsettled by the fact his colleague had just placed himself in the middle of his private bedroom and instead slipped from the bed with wide eyes.
"What?" he asked almost disbelievingly, face slack with astonishment, "But why? I-its been a year since – since the –"
"Found them bodies up in Harlow, and I came back down to get you. There's no time to waste, we have to be back there, before the bodies turn cold," Moody said, urgency in his voice.
Larkin nodded stiffly, knowing this to be a matter of high importance. He lifted his wand to his dress shirt, straightening out any wrinkles, before pointing it at the door.
His pair of battered shoes pushed it open soon after and he quickly pulled them over his feet, before sending one last regretful glance at his wife soundly asleep on the bed.
She would understand, he told himself doubtingly. She would need to.
His eyes slipped from her figure to focus on Moody's, as he moved to stand next to the older man. The two men glanced at one another briefly, before their bodies folded in on themselves and then vanished completely from view. There was that familiar tug in his stomach and a feeling of foreboding, just before his eyes opened to a drastically different place.
They had landed on a cobbled street winding through several houses on either side of them. The sight looked eerily peaceful at such a late time of night and not a sound echoed in the summer air. Aurors and Obliviators were already spread out all over the place, some flicking their wands at confused-looking Muggles to obliviate the small sight of magic they'd seen, while others combed through the alleys to find a sign of the perpetrators.
"This way," Moody growled, pointing a calloused finger at one of the houses. "It seems like our dear friend Voldemort has decided to strike again."
Larkin's mouth went slack, as his eyes followed Moody's finger to a sickeningly familiar sight. Between the grey, rumbling clouds a slithering green snake was floating high in the sky with its tail fixed inside the humongous skull burning like polished emerald stars.
The mark of death, he thought.
The mark he'd last seen draped over the floating corpses of the Muggle Minister's family at Westminster Bridge last year.
How foolish had he been to hope this brewing conflict had died down. How foolish had he been to think it hadn't been a malicious act of war.
"The door was strangely locked from the inside and the Muggles left looking like they had fallen asleep. One of the neighbours called it in to the Muggle Aurors and they passed it on to us.
"That's about the only thing they were good for, since none of them saw anything. They all claimed it was too dark to see, before we erased any lingering memories."
The two moved into the house and Larkin took in the dastardly sight. Three ghastly corpses lay on the ground at their feet, their skin having turned grey and lifeless and their eyes glazed with a blank expression he only knew too well by now. The furniture had no visible sign of a struggle, and everything seemed to be eerily in place.
Larkin crouched down closer to one of the victims, finding wide-open blue eyes of a young boy staring up at him. Despite having been hardened by the sight of death a long time ago, the youth still visible in him reminded him greatly of his two sons and an ominous shiver passed through him. For a split second he let himself imagine what it would be like if the boy was one of his and felt his heart clench with fear.
His hand came out of his coat pocket and he gently let his fingers close the boy's eyelids. "Was any evidence left
behind?"
Moody scowled at that. "Nothing. Nothing at all."
Larkin nodded, that didn't surprise him. He lifted himself from the ground again and carefully let his feet carry him farther into the room.
His eyes wandered the room once more and settled on the stairs leading upwards. "Have you looked up there?"
"Aye," Moody said, "Cobbridge, one of the new ones is up there, but she hasn't found anything useful."
"She won't mind if I have my own look around then," Larkin said. "The new ones rarely do."
He lifted one leg onto the first stair and tested its stability before putting his full weight on it. One could never be too sure in an old place like this, but the wood held nicely, so he moved upwards.
"You go on then," Moody called from below, "I'll see if I can find my luck down here."
Larkin finally reached the landing and noticed, to his surprise, that the lights seemed to be working up here. This was rarely the case, when powerful magic had been used.
Having no more need for his wand at the moment, he flicked it once to relinquish the glow at its tip, before tucking it back into his trouser pocket.
There was a long hallway stretching on from there, where two doors stood ajar. He moved towards the first door and stepped inside carefully, only to find another person there beside him.
The young woman was leaning over a rickety old desk, eyes scanning the surface for anything unusual. Larkin wondered how she was even capable of seeing anything with her straggly, mousy bangs seemingly blocking her view entirely.
He also noticed her fingers, as they traced the assorted papers before her. They were small and delicate-looking, much like the rest of her body.
"You must be Cobbridge," Larkin greeted in a light tone, though his expression remained grim.
The woman looked up hastily, as if caught doing something she shouldn't. "Oh, er- yes, that would be me, Eleanor.
"Cobbridge, I mean, I'm Eleanor Cobbridge," she said, stumbling over her own words.
Larkin's lips couldn't help but twitch slightly at her nervous state. "Bottlebrush," he introduced, pretending not to have heard her stutter and nodded his head in her direction.
"Moody tells me you haven't found anything useful either?" he continued, eyes moving to canvas the room.
It looked to have been used as an office of sorts, with the desk Cobbridge was still leaning against at the far side of the room being one of the only furniture in it, besides the green, fluttering curtains on the left wall.
"No, it looks like Voldemort's companions didn't stay long enough to head upstairs as well," Cobbridge explained and shook her head.
"But I haven't looked through all the rooms yet," she added, "maybe there'll be something in the others."
"All right," Larkin agreed, "after you."
Cobbridge crossed the room and swiftly moved past him into the hallway again, where she headed past the second door, presumably having already looked in there, before reaching the end of the hallway.
Larkin was a short way behind her, so he clearly heard the loud gasp she let out. He quickly hurried over to where she was standing in front of a wall and his own eyes widened at the sight.
The wallpaper had been ripped in the middle, creating a large round patch of dry wall where a message was written in thin, jagged letters, which had seemingly been scratched into the plaster.
We've been cowering for too long.
We've let filth walk among us.
We've let mud claim our pure blood.
No more.
We've given you a taste for blood.
Now it's time to rise above or die opposing the Dark Lord's might.