So this is the first proper chapter of Marauders, Inc., and I'm pretty excited about it. Please drop me a review to let me know what you think, and feel free to make any suggestions for improving.
Chapter One: Opportunity (Working for James Potter Does Not Pay Well)
"'Voldemort'? What kind of daft fucker calls themselves 'Voldemort'?"
This exclamation could be heard coming from a rather nondescript shop on Downing Street. The entire street was filled with the same sort of buildings, which meant that Shop 16B was just a grey square in a row of grey squares with only two signs setting it apart from the rest – one below the other, they read: Pettigrew's Second Hand Furniture Shop, and Marauders Incorporated, Private Investigators.
Pettigrew's Second Hand Furniture Shop was the very epitome of a stereotypical second hand furniture store – a bit dusty, silent, decorations stacked on coffee tables stacked on dining tables, and a lot of things people were afraid to touch for fear of bringing the whole thing down.
It was a rare thing that a customer wandered inside, and rarer still that they made a purchase. This was why Peter Pettigrew – owner of aforementioned shop – was devastated when James "No Sense of Propriety" Potter's thoughtlessly crude exclamation caused a woman to hurry out, ushering her small child in front of her.
"Dammit James! Watch your bloody tongue around customers!" Peter scolded.
James had the good sense to look contrite. "Sorry. I just… forgot, I guess?"
Peter flapped his hand at James (the near-universal gesture for "get out of my goddamn sight") and grumbled quietly about "people who never learned, particularly those named James Potter".
Wisely, James beckoned to Remus, and they retreated into the backroom.
"One of these days, he's going to kick us out." Remus told his friend. "Or maybe just you."
The backroom served as their headquarters. It was messy (Sirius preferred the term "chaotic organisation" – "it makes it harder for other people to find things!" which would have been a fair point if it did not also make it harder for them to find things) and looked terribly unappealing, but it worked. It wasn't like they had a better option, at any rate.
"They" were Marauders Incorporated, a fledgling private investigator firm James had founded after failing to find employment he liked with his Bachelor's Degree in Justice. (By his logic: cops were plebeian, the military was too uptight, private security involved snobs, and government security involved governments.)
Sirius, his childhood friend, had been the next to join after his parents disinherited him of the family business (Black's Bees – the Best Bees in Town), thus forcing him to recant the vow he had made as a child to "never ever work, ever". Unfortunately, he had zero credentials, having dropped out of university after a semester and a half of partying and not paying attention, relying on not being disowned so he could live off the family fortune. After three months of whining, and three months of James saying "no, you don't have the necessary qualifications to join my esteemed company", James caved first and let him join. (Neither of them actually knew what the "necessary qualifications" were.)
Then had come Remus, who had been one of the only friends Sirius had managed to keep from his brief stint at university. (Sirius had an interesting method of making friends – "annoy someone until they give in and accept you as a permanent part of their life. If necessary, shower them with expensive gifts".) Remus, however, thought that Marauders Inc. didn't meet his "necessary qualifications", with those qualifications being (a) a desk, (b) for the company to actually be registered as a company "so it's not just like a weird cult or something", (c) for Sirius to stop sending him invites to stupid Facebook games, and (d) Fenrir Greyback's head on a pike ("or failing that, some help to put it there… or you know, just get him arrested. Either one, really.").
Peter, who James had befriended in university, had helped with qualification (a) by renting out his seldom used backroom to them to use as office space and their headquarters (desk included). In return, James had bestowed the questionable honour of "Maraudership" upon him, declaring him to be "one of us, one of us, one of us". Peter still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the whole thing, but considering that no one had hired them yet, not even for one teensy job, it didn't really seem to be a problem, so he let it slide.
Remus' other demands had taken longer to meet – so long that at one point, Remus looked to be doing a great job of interfering with Greyback's gang's protection racket all by himself and Sirius feared he might not join at all. As it happened though, fear was a great motivator, and after several incidences (half of which were declared "never to be spoken of again") and life lessons learned (with a particularly memorable one involving the differences between soap and shower gel in various soups), somehow, somehow, they had managed to more or less meet all of Remus' requirements (they were still working on the last one though).
And then there were four.
Remus watched James patiently as he skimmed the file about the most recent string of murders.
"So… they started as disappearances," James stated, more to himself than to Remus. He often read and thought aloud. "Until three days ago, they showed up displayed in – in 'a remarkably artistic style'? Who wrote this?"
"I compiled it from several articles and reports." Remus replied, "Check the footnotes or whatever, it should be there."
"So if this was done three days ago, I suppose we won't be able to see it in person?" James frowned.
"Unfortunately. I did manage to get a couple of details though – couple of pages down."
James immediately flipped forwards several pages. "Is this it?" he asked, pointing.
Remus looked over James' shoulder. "Ah, yep, that's the one." He indicated a particular paragraph and read it to his friend. "'The bodies were found posed in sitting positions on the back stairwell – one corpse to each step. On the wall, words had been painted in blood: I am Lord Voldemort. Beware the heir.'"
"That's mental." James said bluntly.
"You want it?" Remus asked.
"Of course I want it. This could be our big break and then we might actually get people who pay us to do this! Imagine that! If we get hired for things, we could earn a living! This is the beginning of something great!" James said enthusiastically.
"That's what you said about the Grindelwald thing too, and you were years too late for that!" Peter called from the front room.
"Shut up." James snapped, thoroughly embarrassed. He could feel his cheeks reddening and wished he could stop it. Remus had the good grace to pretend not to notice.
"Good afternoon, my cherished companions!" Sirius waltzed through the door. "James." he added.
James rolled his eyes and thrust the file of papers into Sirius' hands. "Read." he said.
"Already did, Jamesy. I helped put it together, even." Sirius bragged. "What do you think? Where should we start?"
"Give me a night to go through all this?" James requested. "And we can start bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning."
-o-o-o-o-
It was noon by the time they finally met up at what James called "the most inconspicuous café in town".
"My tail is not bushy." Sirius complained. "I didn't sleep well last night."
"By 'didn't sleep well', he means dragged me out drinking with him until the pub closed." Remus clarified. "Karaoke was involved."
Peter rolled his eyes, and opened his mouth to deliver a scathingly witty comparison of Sirius' intellect and that of teaspoons, probably involving the frog-boot incident.
Before he could do so, James interrupted, living up to his various nicknames (No-Sense-of-Propriety Potter, James the Constant Interruption, Ruiner of Things). "We attack at dawn!" he announced with embellished grandeur. "By which I mean we conduct a slow infiltration over several weeks to find out, first: who Voldemort really is, and second: who he is working with or for. I have complied a list of the ten most likely candidates, in order of evilness. It may or may not surprise you that I have files on each one of them. Whatever the case, I have printed the basic information sheets for you all to read over."
He handed them each a small sheaf of papers and waited for applause.
There was none. As a general rule, Sirius was uninclined to ever applaud efforts that weren't his own, Peter was more concerned with the suspicious glances they were getting from the wait staff of the restaurant they were currently occupying and Remus had already started flicking through James' somewhat perplexing notes.
After a substantial moment of silence, Remus spoke up.
"Right then," he said, "I can see why no one ever took you seriously, James."
James gaped dramatically. "What do you mean? I've been very professional in my notes!"
Remus sighed. James probably actually believed that.
"See, real law enforcement don't have a 'Level of Evil' category," Remus pointed out, holding up the first sheet of paper as an example. "You also can't discriminate against someone based on their nationality."
"Okay, first: evilness is absolutely a legitimate and necessary measurement!" James protested, "Second: I most definitely did not discriminate against anyone."
"Right here, Potter," Remus said, decidedly unimpressed as he pointed to the line that said "+5 to Level of Evil on account of French ancestry".
"That's just France! It's not a real country!"
"France is a perfectly real country, and it's still discrimination! There are laws against that. You should know! You did law in university."
"You know, technically I did a Bachelor of Justice, but okay, fine, I'll take it out later." James conceded, with a tragically disappointed look on his face.
"Good. That being said, you do have some valid opinions," Remus continued.
"'Some'?" James asked, dismayed.
"Yes, 'some'." Remus confirmed. "Now, since you're the technical head of the company, what would you like to do with the some you have come up with?"
"Well, I was thinking –"
"Nothing good ever comes of that," Sirius laughed.
James bristled at the interruption. "Nothing good ever comes of your face," he retorted. Sirius was suitably cowed – which was to say, not at all. "Anyway, as I was saying, one of the places we should definitely investigate is the Creed."
Peter wrinkled his nose in distaste. Everyone knew the Creed, by name or not. It was that one shady bar that absolutely every town seems to have where characters of questionable morals would conduct secret business and miserable commoners would drowns their sorrows.
It was also the bar where Bellatrix Black ran off to when she got bored of pretending to help run the family business.
Which was why James, Peter and Remus were all staring expectantly at Sirius as soon as the Creed was mentioned.
"What?" Sirius asked, ever oblivious. "What's with the looks?"
"Do you think you could talk to your cousin?" James suggested.
Sirius paled, and pretended not to know what James was talking about. "My cousin? Andromeda? Sure, I talk to her all the time. Not sure what you think I –"
"No, Sirius," James rolled his eyes. "Bellatrix. Talk to Bellatrix."