CHAPTER 18: NEW GUARD
From then on the lights were never on in Mr Hagrid's house. Until somebody realised that lights on would deter burglars and make things seem normal.
James and Sirius looked in the windows several times over the course of days but never saw any signs of anybody living there. So they decided to try and make his acquaintance. They knocked on the door. Nobody answered.
Then Sirius decided to just ask McGonagall about it.
"We haven't seen Mr Hagrid in ages. Where is he?"
Transfiguration class had just ended. McGonagall was putting papers back in the binder.
"I don't know. Just like I don't know where William Wallace really is. Or Teabag. Or Purry Haggis." She had a faraway look in her glasses. "I'm sure... they're in a really good place. Me lads, do you agree, that people who give their pets serious human names are silly?"
They did agree. Calling you cat something like Elizabeth or Margareth was silly. But names like Penny or Polly were ok. McGonagall was pleased, that they had a sound view on pet naming, and gave Gryffindor 20 points.
One time they happened to visit Remus when Dumbledore was there.
"Ah! Visitors!" he said. "I bet you want to hear this story I was just telling. One time professor McGonagall turned Josephina Borrell's broomstick into a daffodil. The healing potions in those days were so primitive that Miss Borrell had a thumb bone in her nose for years."
End story.
"Why?" Sirius asked.
Dumbledore hesitated ever so slightly.
"Enough time has passed now for me to say that Josephina Borrell was a dreadful child and now she is a dreadful foreign minister in the EW."
"So basically, she deserved it?" James asked.
Dumbledore hesitated again.
He raised a finger.
"Don't get ideas!"
(Why would they get ideas? What sort of ideas?)
Then he pulled out his watch.
"Is she that much already? I believe it is time for me to leave."
He got off the sofa and headed for the door.
"Good day," he said with a hand on the knob, "to you all."
"Um, sir?" said James before Sirius brought IT up, because he'd only do it rudely. "Where is Mr Hagrid? I feel like I haven't seen him at all lately."
Dumbledore was afflicted by the same sentimental gaze that had befallen McGonagall.
"Oh..," sigh, "He's on his next great adventure I suppose. How nice of you to think about him. He... he would have appreciated that. But don't worry. I'm sure you will be reunited with him sooner than you think."
He nodded at each of them and left the room. Sirius threw himself on the sofa.
"I don't know how you stand the psychopath!"
By now Remus was in good enough shape to be discharged at any time. He did not have some special insight as to where Mr Hagrid could have gone and was just as mystified.
"Oh!" He went and got paper and a pen. "Let's write him!"
They wrote a quick letter and sent it straight away.
One day professor McGonagall gave the entire glass a group assignment. James, Sirius and Remus formed a group and set off to find a private study room in the library. On their way there they felt like they were being stalked.
And they were.
By Peter Pettigrew.
"Hi!" said Remus.
"Can we help you?" Sirius asked, his tone not wanting to help anyone.
Peter mumbled something.
"McGonagall says I can do my group assignment with you."
James groaned internally. Peter was just so awkward and boring and useless at everything. He so hoped Sirius would just tell him to piss off, but he kept his mouth shut for a rare change and just looked all around annoyed.
"How fun!" said Remus.
Nobody was perfect.
"But our group is, like, already full," said James. "I mean there's three of us... Ask Mick and Keith, they're only two and that's not a group!"
He said all this with a big helpful smile.
Keith and Mick J heard this as they were walking by. They glared at James and hurried to get away. Peter began to stalk them instead.
James, Sirius and Remus went inside a study room and sat down at an oval table to brainstorm
"I have written a few chants in support of my new team!" said James. "Do you want to hear them?"
"You haven't even put together a team yet!" said Sirius. "I thought you couldn't wait!"
"Putting together a team is not as easy as you might think!"
"I thought you were going to go to loser quidditch and inspire them with a montage or something."
"I did do that. I went down to loser quidditch and said to them: Hey you bunch of mama's boy losers! How would you like to train under a REAL leader? With some hard work I can make you great! So what do you say, losers?"
End story.
"How did it go?" Remus asked.
"I was thrown out. Nobody has sought me up afterwards. But that is also an important part of the process. Weeding out the losers."
There was a shy knock on the door. And James, sometimes having the memory of an optimistic goldfish, opened.
He cursed himself internally for doing so.
"Hello!"
"Hi," Peter replied.
It was the curse of James's extroversion that he smiled too much at people. He should have just let Sirius answer the door.
"Can we help you?"
Peter looked up at him, his pink face like that of a baby cupid crossed with a pig.
"Can I be in your group?"
Sirius shook his head very openly. James scratched the back of his head.
"Oh gosh, hmmm... The thing is we already got started you see... Like there's hardly anything left to do now... Hey! I know! Ask Keith and Mick J!"
"I asked Keith and Mick J. They have formed a group with Mick T and Ronnie. They said to ask you because three is not a group, it's a broken car."
Bastards.
"But we haven't-" said Remus when all of a sudden his almonds were spilling out on the floor and he had to get down to pick them up.
"Oops," said Sirius. "I'll help you with that."
James turned back to Peter.
"We are one of those three-wheeled mopeds. Tell Keith and Mick J that every car's got to have a spare wheel in the boot!"
He gave thumbs up and shut the door.
"Phew!" he said as he sat down again.
Very soon there was another knock and it was simply James's plan to ignore it.
Except this time it was McGonagal so she opened anyway, and Peter was with her.
"Why don't you join their group? They don't mind at all, isn't that right me lads?"
She closed the door and now Peter was on the wrong side of it. James opened his transfiguration book to remind himself of the types of transfiguration. Sirius did the same. If Peter just wanted to stand there that was fine by them.
"Why don't you take that chair there?" said Remus and Peter hurried to take it.
Then it became very quiet and awkward, not to mention boring. James gave his wand a spin on the table.
"Ok let's brainstorm guys. Let's throw out some ideas."
"Ok," said Sirius. "I think we should devise a clever scheme to find and kill Levi."
"Levi?"
"Levi Amgettinghairy the Hogsmead Werewolf! Where have you been!"
Peter looked shocked and horrified.
"But that's just... That's... There's no... Everyone says it's just a Slim Shadow!"
"If you need to tell yourself it's just a Slim Shadow then I don't think you are right for this group, sorry."
Remus glared at him,
"What's that got to do with transfiguration?"
Sirius thought about it.
"We could turn him into a bunny rabbit first! Better?"
"Now that does sound pretty badass," said James. "We'll need bait."
"Easy peasy. We tie Peter to a tree and lie in ambush."
Peter began to sniff and cry.
"Are you going to let it get to me? I don't want to... I don't want...!"
If he sobbed louder he was going to attract the librarian.
"It's going to be fine!" said James. "We'll just... put you in kale armour!"
Sirius broke down laughing at kale armour. Peter began to cry after his mummy so Remus took him to Miss Owl. James and Sirius knew they were in for a telling off.
"Werewolf jokes aren't to everybody's taste I guess," said James.
Sirius banged the table.
"You know what we need to do next time? Wait outside the tunnel! Then we shall catch the 53 year old man with the chiskers before the action."
"Chiskers?"
"Chin whiskers."
"Do you suppose he uses the tunnel? Wouldn't we have noticed? Nobody has disappeared. Except for giant Jeff Lynne of course."
"Let me address your concerns one at a time my naive chum," said Sirius. "One: Assume one or more have disappeared. We won't know unless we know them. Dumbledore won't announce it because of the big donors wanting to keep it quiet. It would harm the school's reputation and that would harm the money."
"If somebody suddenly went missing, word would go around."
"I don't think you understand the power of money. How easy is it to say that Steve is going to a different school now? And if you assume that Dumbledore is in on the scheme, he can easily pick out students for the shifter that nobody cares about."
It was sad, a bit tin foil hat, but not entirely implausible.
"Two," Sirius went on, "Perhaps the monster in question isn't as far away as we think."
They saw Mr Filth in the window, fixing a lamp. He had pervy eyes.
"Perhaps Dumbledore did the right thing at last. Maybe giant Jeff Lynne was the shifter and Dumbledore, suddenly cured of his were-blindness, dealt with him appropriately."
"Guess you just solved that mystery then."
James couldn't bring himself to truly suspect Beardy Weirdy. Suspecting Mr Filth was easier because he looked the part more. They had also considered Mr Romsay the PE teacher because he was so unpopular with the athletically impaired, and who would have a better insight as to which students were weak and unpopular?
"Or maybe," Sirius whispered, "It's Dumbledore himself!"
"Nah."
But they were sure they were going to know real soon.
And so the time came. The night was incredibly cold. They had intended to wait outside. But it was just so very, very cold out.
"Sod this, I'm going in!" said Sirius and made a snowball. James beat him to it, chucked his at the deactivation knob and they went in.
The iron bars, locks and chains, all that, it was all gone. All of it had been replaced by an iron face. Sirius pointed at some small hard-to-read words.
"Protected by Unbreakable Passwords. Step back while I hack it."
"Ok good luck."
Sirius cracked his knuckles. James squeezed his, he couldn't crack them. Sirius cracked his knuckles again.
"Are you hacking that today?" James asked. "Although I don't see how you could."
"Easy peasy. I saw on Warlock Gnomes one time, that there is one password that can be used on everything."
"What is it?"
"The inventor of the password system made a secret universal password that can be used on any portrait guard in case of an emergency. It is a word that supposedly nobody can use as their password. If anyone tries to select it they explode."
"That wasn't my question. I asked: What's the password?"
"He intended it to be his wife's name, but as he wrote it down, he ran out of ink. It's: Rache!"
The eyes on the stone face flashed red and died out. Red, the universal colour of wrong.
Sirius tried a more French-sounding pronunciation.
"Rache!"
The eyes flashed red again. Sirius scratched his bobble hat, about to try again.
"Ray-"
James pulled him away from there.
"Oh no, you've done enough! We usually only get three tries!"
"But according to Warlock Gnomes-"
"You know that's just a TV show, right? They make crap up all the time just to suit the plot. Spells & Curses, on the other hand, they research things very closely. They have a team of experts to consult about amnesia matters. One time nurse Bloom had to get past a password protected door to save doctor Heartfeel from the vampire. Just in the nick of time she realised what the word was, that could unlock any portrait guard."
"What was it?"
James turned to the iron race, ready to savour his moment of victory.
"Love."
The eyes flashed red. James didn't understand. From now on the guard stopped responding entirely.
"I don't get it! It's supposed to work!"
He felt the kind of disappointment he always felt, when he had been lied to by TV.
But the plan hadn't been to enter, it had been to wait for the shifter to arrive with his prey. Entering the tunnel they had truly underestimated how cold it was going to be in there. And there was a chance they were going to have to wait for hours.
It felt like they had planned this so thoroughly but after only a mere hour of waiting that pneumonia was going to be a fact. If only they had packed a thermos of hot drink, some blankets and a deck of cards.
James kept jogging on the spot. Sirius looked in a cupboard that had nothing in it except for a flask of mystery potion.
"What's that?" James asked.
"Keep Warm."
Sirius put it back and shut the cupboard door.
Five minutes later they had both chugged the stuff.
Then they passed out.