"Sirius!"
"Mmmm…"
"Sirius, wake up!"
"Mmm?"
"It's Christmas!" James hissed at him in the darkness. "Wake up so I can give you your present!"
He reluctantly sat up, unable to see two inches in front of him until James clicked a lantern on and tip toed over to light a fire. Peter was still fast asleep on the other sofa, snoring softly.
"Whu time izzit?" he groaned, rubbing his face. He reached back to grab his pillow and hurled it at Peter's face.
"We've got two hours until our next mission," James said, wrapping a blanket around him again as he tossed two packages out. Peter and Sirius did too, keeping their cold feet tucked under the covers while they tore into the wrappings and listened to the sound of Kate making breakfast in the next room.
Their missions were not being put on hold by the holiday. To make this crystal clear, Kate had planned visits to two locations instead of one, just to keep them on their toes. So far they had covered eight locations on their map, ticking them off disappointedly every time they came back to the Inn.
Their first mission was to a forest that was home to a small research lab that studied all magical half-breeds, sometimes in cruel and controversial ways. They had split up in the village as Kate and Peter left to look for signs of underground activity in the woods, and James and Sirius went to the local wizard pub to try and find out anything relevant. Kate would cast spells on them before heading out, transfiguring their features to look like older warlocks who were just passing through.
To the half-breed testing center— to the homes of Greyback's worst enemies— to a Muggle village plagued by suspicious "lunar" events— to the Auror training university—
This was how all their missions had gone so far. Kate could search vast areas of forest with a single spell that revealed human life. And the other two would gain as much information as possible about the town rumors or anything else they could use. For James and Sirius it had been easy work so far— they were already outgoing and friendly by nature, so to sit in a pub finding out tidbits of small-town drama and piecing clues together to tell Kate about had been a job made in heaven.
For Peters' part, it was much more traveling and much less action. The only advantage for him was that with all their skipping around, Peter was getting better at Apparating than the other two. But the stresses of his daily activities with Kate were wearing heavily on him. He was always more exhausted and hungrier during mealtimes, having searched miles and miles of empty landscape while always staying on high alert.
The three of them finished unwrapping their presents and were chatting loudly over them when Kate came in with the breakfast.
"You three are up earlier than usual," she said, smiling. "Thought you'd want to sleep in. We've got a big day ahead of us."
"Oh come on, what are the odds we'll find the compound on Christmas Day?" James said through a mouthful of Honeydukes candy Peter had given him.
"Hey! Change your attitude, I don't want you to let your guard down for a second."
Kate passed out their plates and then swiped the presents onto the floor to clear the coffee table.
"We'll be traveling farther North today," she said, unrolling the map. The places they had already searched were now marked with glimmering blue pins. "Just off the coast of the North Sea."
They leaned in and looked at the red pin she was pointing at. It was marked over a wizard village on the coast of Scotland.
"What's so special about it?" Sirius asked.
Kate's finger traced from the edge of the coastline, outwards over the North Sea, and stopped right next to an island so tiny that the map only marked it with a single black dot of ink.
"Azkaban."
The three of them leaned in closer for a better look.
"It houses the magical criminals of seven European countries. The place we're visiting today is the docking-place where inmates are boarded onto ships and taken over. There is no Apparating in or out of those waters, the Floo is disabled around the dock, and any transportation must be done with non-magical means. There is tight security around this village. Any idiots trying to break someone out of Azkaban will usually head here first, so there could be many Dark witches and wizards mulling around. We'll need to be extra careful."
James and Sirius felt the prickling of adventure inside them and couldn't keep the mischievous grins from bursting onto their faces. They glanced at each other, frenzied with excitement.
"The pub you two will be visiting," Kate went on, "is known as The Witches Steak. You certainly won't have to try so hard to get information… anyone sitting in a pub on Christmas instead of having dinner with their families are going to be easy targets. They'll probably already be getting drunk and spilling their secrets to anyone who'll listen. Peter and I will have a much larger area to cover, though. The forest surrounding the village is particularly dense. But no matter what, I want to be back here for lunch by two o'clock. I don't want to spend more than six hours in a place with such high security."
The three of them nodded and Kate smiled again, rolling up the map and heading back upstairs.
"This one'll be interesting," Sirius muttered.
"No shit," James agreed. "Finally some real action. If we see an ogre my life is complete."
They met Kate half an hour later at the front door where she held both James and Sirius by their chins to magically transfigure their features.
"Dashing," Sirius joked as he eyed himself in the mirror. He now had blue eyes, a bald spot, and a thick graying beard with deep wrinkles around his eyes.
"At least you don't have a bloody uni-brow," James muttered.
Peter laughed openly at them and they reached out to whack him over the head.
Kate fastened a dark green cloak around her neck and grabbed her bag.
"Okay, are we ready?"
They nodded.
"Mirrors in your pockets?"
"Yep."
"Okay, let's go."
They joined hands, focusing hard on the village name, and turning left into the void of Apparation as Kate led the three of them through the spell. Their feet came back in contact with the ground, which was now covered in fresh snow. They opened their eyes and looked around.
A thin layer of frost had dusted every surface of the street they stood in. The avenue led into a crooked shopping street behind them that veered left around a corner. But in front of them it led downward, past several homes and fenced off pastures, down a long sloping hill where they could see, from a distance, the movement of waves rolling gently into a harbor with wooden docks and a swaying fleet of ships. Tall trees of a dense forest loomed ominously over the rooftops, stretching beyond the backyards and covering the surrounding hills.
"The pub is around the corner," Kate said, pointing uphill. "We'll meet back here at two o'clock. Contact me if you find out anything I need to know."
"We will," they said and grinned goodbye to Peter before departing.
"One year ago today we were fighting off Death Eaters," James murmured to him as they rounded the corner.
"And now we're hunting them down," Sirius grinned. "Sort of anyways…"
"Ironic, yeah?" James laughed.
They wiped the grins off their faces as they drew nearer to the pub and composed themselves before entering.
It was dark inside. Polished round tables littered the dining area and a long wrap-around bar took up two walls against the back. Grey broken light streamed in through the dingy windows. There were only four people besides them, but the only person who took any notice of them was the bartender.
"What can I get for you two?" he growled as they drew nearer and took stools at the bar. He looked them up and down suspiciously with dark hooded eyes.
"Two ciders, please," Sirius said.
The bartender grunted and came back a minute later with their mugs.
"You two staying 'ere or passing through?"
"Just passing through," James said. "I'm Charlus and this is Orion. And you are…?"
"I'm known as Blackthorn," he grumbled. His voice sounded gravely, as if he hardly ever used it. "Funny day to be passing through…"
"Funny time for a pub to be open," Sirius shot back. "We're business partners, anyway— we're here on a job."
Blackthorn raised his eyebrows with interest and one of the solo drinkers at the other end of the bar turned to look at them, listening in.
"A job, eh? And what kind of business are you two in on exactly?"
"Welllll," James said, faking an air of reluctance. "We shouldn't tell you. It's top secret and all, you know, for the Ministry. Got to do with some… er… persons of interest, let's say. We're in the process of investigating them."
"It wouldn't be anyone living 'ere, would it?"
Sirius and James glanced at each, trying to look grave and serious.
"It may… or may not."
"Well, you know," Blackthorn said, drawing up his own tumbler of ale and stroking his flaming red beard in interest, "we do get a lot o' funny people comin' through 'ere. What with the harbor to Azkaban just down the street. There's some crazies who pass through every month or so, set on breakin' their friends outta there. Raving lunatics, the lot o' them."
"Yes, we've heard."
"We were looking at someone slightly closer to home, though."
"So it is someone livin' 'ere?" Blackthorn grinned evilly.
Sirius and James raised their eyebrows imploringly.
"Oh, I see, you can't tell me," Blackthorn let out a crack of laughter and took a swig of his drink. "Well, it's just that I've lived 'ere me 'hole life and I knows just about everyone. Everyone there is to know, anyways!"
He shook with thunderous laughter and they pretended to laugh along with him.
"Yeah, I think the nuttiest we gots 'round 'ere are the Lovegoods and that mental son o' theirs. They live up in the Marsh Hut. Always ranting on about 'ow Azkaban is really the home o' the Minister of Magic where he keeps the prisoners as his slaves!"
Blackthorn roared with laughter and thumped the bar with his giant fists, spilling some of their cider.
"Ahhh," he sighed finally, wiping a tear from his saggy eyes. "But they're harmless… some o' them pureblooded maniacs up the street might not be so harmless though."
James and Sirius leaned in with interest.
"Anyone who might be in league with You-Know-Who?"
"Ooohhh, definitely," Blackthorn slurred. "And if not, they sure are sympathetic towards him. The Hyatts. They've been up there for a few years. Came over from Austria. Rumor has it they been keepin' some dangerous creatures locked up in their backyard… been doin' some grisly experiments on 'em, doin' cross breeding o' mutant species and mixin' potions and spells with dark creatures…"
"How do you know that?"
Blackthorn smirked wickedly and then turned his head to look down the bar at the eavesdropping stranger.
"Steve 'ere is a longtime customer o' mine. He'll tell ya—,"
"They tried to sell me a Thestral that they'd bewitched to spit fire," Steve called towards them. He seemed like a shady character, with the hood on his brown cloak obscuring most of his face.
"Really?" Sirius grinned. "How much was it going for?"
Blackthorn roared with laughter again.
"It wasn't that I couldn't afford it," Steve said, walking over to sit next to them. "Just that I didn't want no Ministry officials coming in and chucking me onto one of those boats in the harbor."
He toasted with Blackthorn and they both gulped deeply from their mugs.
"And they've just made our forests reputation even worse…"
"Yeah!" Blackthorn boomed righteously. "As if we didn't have enough problems before they showed up!"
Sirius frowned, listening closely.
"They've been setting their experiments lose in there," Steve explained to them. "Everytime something goes wrong or they can't sell something a bit… vicious… it goes running around in there."
James and Sirius looked quickly at each other. Sirius' hand twitched nervously toward his pocket where his mirror was tucked inside. If there was a fire breathing Thestral running around in there, especially if neither Kate nor Peter could see it in the first place, they needed to be warned.
Before James could clear his throat to announce their departure though, something that was troubling him burst from Sirius' lips.
"But you said the forest had a reputation even before the Hyatts?"
Steve and Blackthorn exchanged dark looks.
"Oh yeah… I mean… now, we can't prove it or nothing but… there's definitely something goin' on in there—,"
"I been hearin' screams and snarls comin' outta them trees for years now," Blackthorn muttered. "It's worse than the dark forest up where Hogwarts is. I mean, they got giant spiders in there and other creatures, but in 'ere… well, we've had some incidents."
"What incidents?" James said quickly.
"A few years back," Steve said, lowering his voice so they had to lean in. "a couple of Muggles decided to come wandering in. Normally we're pretty good about keeping them out but this time they came up over them hills up there."
"Yeah, they were hiking through, weren't they Steve?"
"Mmm, on some ridiculous scouting mission or something. So they hiked through the woods, taking an old trail, and were heading towards our little village here when...,"
Steve shook his head and took a swig from his mug.
"When what?" Sirius pressed him.
"When some Ministry people down at the docks heard the screams."
"Was the talk of the town for a few months, it was," Blackthorn piped in. "They went to investigate where the screams came from and didn't find nothin'. They found a shoe, but not the person they heard screamin'. Nothin'! Until the sun came up the next morning and they went down to untie the boats at the docks. They found both of 'em there."
"Torn up."
"Torn to shreds! One of 'em was missin' a leg, both o' them slashed to pieces."
"Dead. Horrible bloody way to go, I'll tell ya—,"
"The Muggle reporters who covered the story thought it was some sort of pervert killer. But our people knew better… their slashes came from claws, they did… not a weapon. And the limbs looked like they were shredded off with fangs. Razor sharp fangs."
"Looked like some sort of werewolf got to them—,"
The loud scraping of wooden stool legs against floorboards rent the air as Sirius stood up suddenly, fumbling with his mug of cider in his haste to his feet.
"We uhm… my business partner and I have to— uhm," he gulped, trying to steady himself and failing miserably. He was trembling in shock as adrenaline coursed through his veins.
"We need to go," James elaborated hurriedly.
Sirius threw some coins on the counter.
"But— wait just a second, we didn't mean to frighten you off!" Blackthorn thundered. "We meant no disrespect—,"
"You didn't, we just need to—,"
"We have an important prior engagement—"
"Have a happy Christmas—,"
Fumbling, and with all eyes in the pub now staring at them, James and Sirius half-ran out of the tavern and into the freezing winter wind outside. James pulled Sirius by the sleeve around the corner in the road, both of them slipping on the icy street.
"Wait!" James reached up and snatched the mirror out of Sirius' hand before the other boy could shout Kate's name into it. "Think for a second… if this is for real, we need to figure out how to get back here without our wands."
"What? What the hell are you on about?"
"Because we're not sitting on our arse's while the Aurors take down Greyback, remember?" James hissed at him.
"We're not even sure it's him!"
"And what if it is?"
They stared at each other for a second, both thinking fast.
"The Lovegoods," Sirius said suddenly. "What was the name of their cabin?"
James opened his mouth, made a stuttering noise, and then closed it.
"Shit!" he spat. "It was like… the Marches, or the Marshes—,"
"It wasn't plural, it was two words."
"The Marsh….hut?"
"That's it!"
"But Blackthorn said they were crazy."
"And harmless."
They stared at each other for a moment before James lifted the mirror to shoulder-height and called Kate's name into it.
"James? Sirius? What's going on, it's barely been an hour!"
"Er… yeah, we need to talk to you. How's the search going?"
"I'm not sure…It's just hard to navigate in here and I've been getting some strange signals with my spell around an oak tree."
Both of them exchanged apprehensive looks.
"Strange signals… how?"
"Hard to explain...,"
By the look on her face, their worst fears seemed to be confirmed.
"Kate, come get us. Now. We're standing where you left us."
There was an air splitting crack as Kate appeared out of thin air next to them, grabbed both of their arms and dragged them back into Apparation.
"Duck down," Kate hissed.
Peter was crouching behind a boulder nearby. They hunched over and made their way towards him.
Describing the forest as hard to navigate had to be the biggest understatement they'd ever heard. Not a single foot length of flat, un-slippery land was in sight. The terrain itself was steep and lumpy, and any section that wouldn't have been was besieged with invasive tree roots.
"Merlin, how can you see in here?" Sirius whispered. The dense canopy of branches had plunged them into semi darkness.
"Your eyes'll adjust," Kate said.
"What are we looking at here?"
They were now all kneeling behind the large boulder and facing a rather medieval looking oak, whose trunk seemed to be twisted together from three separate trees. Not only was it immensely thick, but that support also gave it the freedom to be unnervingly tall— it stretched upward so high that it surpassed the tips of the surrounding forest and plunged into the sky where they couldn't even see its top.
"Watch this," Kate whispered.
She pulled out her wand and pointed behind them.
"Homenum Revelio!"
Nothing happened.
"Now look."
She pointed ahead of them, waited until they were all watching, and aimed at the trunk of the giant oak.
"Homenum Revelio!"
All at once, there was a slithering motion and the leaves around one small portion of the roots rustled around.
"Is… that what's suppose to happen?"
Kate sighed, pointed her wand at Peter, and cast the spell.
The leaves under his knees flew up, along with the dirt and twigs around him. The debris hung there in the air for a good five seconds before twirling a little and falling back to the ground.
"You see? It's a very faint signal, but there's still something over there."
They all gazed at the roots for a moment, which were a good thirty yards away from them. Their frosted breaths misting the icy air around them as they lost themselves in thought.
"Kate, we spoke to the bartender and a local in the pub," James whispered suddenly. "They told us about these Muggles who got attacked in here a few years back."
"What happened to them?"
"They were… murdered. Horribly."
"The bartender admitted it could have been a werewolf. They were torn to shreds and dumped on the docks."
Kate turned white and looked back over at the roots.
"This forest gives me the creeps," Peter whimpered.
Sirius fidgeted. There was definitely something over there, and there was only one way he knew of that could quickly sort out what it was without using his wand.
"Oh, fuck this," he hissed suddenly. "Kate, don't freak out, and keep your wand on me."
And with that he stood up, marched around the boulder and morphed into Padfoot as he went.
He could hear James shushing Kate and caught a few words of her exclamation before she fell silent again.
The only thing that was now hindering him was how differently his mind processed strategic thoughts. But the heightened senses of smell and hearing were more valuable to him right now. He lowered his snout and sniffed along the ground, trying to adjust to which smells were part of the earth, which were from Kate and Peter, which were from animals…
An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. Slowly, he approached the base of the enormous tree, creeping silently towards the roots Kate had aimed her spell at.
A wiff of moss… the smells of decaying branches and stumps… an animal had recently crossed through here, a deer perhaps… and there was something else…
Sirius stopped, sniffing hungrily into a spot on the ground, trying to discern what it was. It smelled bitter and tangy and irony…
With a jolt he realized it was blood. Old traces of blood. The ground was frosted over it, but it was there.
Fear streaked through him. He lifted his ears, straining for the slightest sound and heard for the first time… something he hadn't heard before changing shape… something only his canine ears seemed capable of picking up…
It was a soft rumbling, coming from below his paws. There was a source to it though and he lowered his nose again, his guard on high alert as he moved closer.
Sirius jumped when a twig snapped under his paw.
Only one large gnarled root now separated him from his target location. With a surge of bravery, he leaped over the root, crouched down low to the ground, and came face to face with—
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