Part III — D.S.F.S. Galileo
Ch. 21 — Metamorphosis
The twins had taken to carrying a pensieve with them whenever they visited a muggle-born or half-blood, that summer. They'd show Harry's edited memory of Voldemort's return, with duplicated copies of the Daily Prophet coverage and claims that it was all lies and rumours. Their own memories of them fighting with Death Eaters, recently, made believers of the doubters.
They also set up a redistribution system, taking each Daily Prophet, mass copying it, and mailing it through regular mail to the muggle-borns they had located. Technically, it was a copyright violation, but considering the way the paper was pushing the pure-blood agenda, it was something they felt was necessary.
They now had four five-person teams, Marines, of muggle-born wizards and witches who rotated being on watch for Death Eater attacks. They spent their waiting time practicing tactics with the hoverboards, and brushing up on their spell casting. That the little slip of a girl, Luna Lovegood, by herself, could take down most, or all, of an opposing team before they even realized she had started took care of any cockiness they had regarding their own skills when they first started. That Ginny Weasley could do so, too, using an entirely different set of skills with the exact same equipment, just impressed them with how much they had to learn.
That three of the recruits were actually retired Royal Marines with a score to settle against the Death Eaters brought another set of skills to the mix. The ex-Royal Marines were more than happy to share their expertise. They made their "war games" much more realistic.
The new D.S.F. Marines absolutely loved the idea of taking down Death Eaters. That they had nearly spell-proof clothing to wear, had portable shields that didn't require magic, and were invisible while tackling the villains down was just too much to believe, at times. Not having to worry about finances was another hard-to-believe fact.
Hermione's parents had set up a jewellery business that let them launder their gold bars and gem stones into pounds, francs, yen, and dollars. Which the muggle-born had no trouble spending in the regular world.
They now had more non-crew working for Enterprise, and as Marines, than they did crewmembers.
The crewmembers who already could apparate were now working at improving their distance, under supervision, until they could handle the distance from Kirkwall to Falmouth without a strain, a distance of about eight-hundred and fifteen miles. At the moment, almost all those who were still students had to do it in two jumps. While they told the uninitiated that it was to handle Death Eater attacks no matter where they might be, the crew knew the true goal was to be able to use apparition directly to and from the ship only six hundred miles over the Irish Sea. The eight-hundred-mile target was just to make sure they would never fail to reach the ship!
Hiring an experienced apparition teacher at the beginning of the summer hols had been a tremendous help at getting the rest of the crew through the basics — nobody quite trusted the twins and Lee completely. Handing the wizard a month's worth of wages every week had assured his complete attention and silence. Knowing that muggle-borns and half-bloods were being targeted by Death Eaters provided another incentive to keep quiet about what he was teaching — the DE's would kill him if they knew what he was doing.
Unfortunately for Harry, the Order's close supervision over him had left him out of the training, meaning his only recourse to the ship was through the Room of Requirement. Which meant he would be spending his school weekends sneaking into Hogsmeade for intensive practice sessions. As would some of the others who were still working on their long-distance efforts. Once they were all done, hopefully by Christmas, they would only need the Room's entrance if the ship was refuelling or somewhere else outside their apparition range.
Naturally, they would have to sign up for the Ministry' classes on apparition in Hogwarts to avoid suspicion on how they had learned, and to get their official licenses.
Cho and Mariette were teaching three others what they had learned about navigating the ship, and digging deeper into library to see how interstellar navigation worked.
In addition to Hannah, they had three muggle-born Healers — who had been previously or recently let go from St. Mungo's. They were now studying the rune-books made from the ship's library. The portable medical problem-solver had seen use several times to help the families or friends of the new employees and recruits — there really wasn't a reason not to, after all. The patients just told anyone who noticed their "miraculous" recovery from their medical problem as a surprise remission or a new medicine. It was rather shocking how many accepted those answers, both muggle and not.
There had been a short discussion about the best way to sneak the device into a children's hospital for the terminal cases. Would anyone notice a suddenly cancer-free patient every day? Especially if the next "cure" was at a different ward in another city? With the tech-cloaks and magic, they were fairly sure they could pull it off. But how not to attract attention to the sudden remarkable complete-remission rate was the problem. Maybe if they cured several patients, each in a different hospital, the same night? There were a lot of hospitals in England, Scotland, and Wales. According to the almanacs, almost four hundred people a day died from cancer, alone. For children, the number was far smaller number, but a significant number if you were the afflicted child's parent.
They decided to focus on children as the best use of their time. There were only about twenty wards with such patients. They had more than enough muggle-born volunteers to use all the portable medical problem-solvers they then replicated.
The Weasleys were deliriously happy, with almost permanent smiles on their faces. Molly couldn't seem to let an hour go by without hugging her husband. Arthur, meanwhile, was on a "paid leave" while the Ministry searched for a job that could "use his talents," as the Minister said. His previous job had been filled when it became apparent his recovery was remote.
In the meantime, he was almost glued to the chair in the sitting room, watching the incredible shows that were on the telly.
Neville had almost disappeared from sight — he was spending as much time with his parents as possible. It had taken a couple of days for the St. Mungo's healers to notice that both Frank and Alice, his parents, were a lot more alert than they had been. Within a week of that, the two were responding to verbal commands and occasionally a question.
The prognosis was that it would take time, but the healers thought the two were on the road to recovery. It might take many months, but, finally, there was hope.
Neville wanted to spend as much time with his parents as possible before school started. And the healers thought that his presence was speeding up his parents' recovery.
The only real disappointment all summer was that the Goblins had been completely quiet on the hunt for Tom Riddle's artefacts.
██:::::██:::::██
Remus became moodier as the night of the full-moon approached. After he left the kitchen for the tenth time that day, Sirius looked at Harry and said, "Come on, let's do it!"
Harry sighed. They had discussed this several times. Was lycanthropy a disease only on Earth? If Remus was on the ship and at Uranus, would he still be affected by the Earth's Moon?
"Look, we don't have to tell him." Sirius continued in a hushed voice. "When he isn't looking, I'll just hit him with a stunner. Then I can apparate him to the ship, we move to Uranus and see if anything happens. If it does, well, he's been taking the potion, so at most he'll just look like a werewolf. And we spend the night reading books, talking, and watching a movie or two, just like always. Then when morning arrives, I'll stun him again and bring him back here, he'll never know. Just think what it'll mean if he doesn't change!"
Harry nodded. "That would work," he said slowly.
"Or, I could tell him we have a new 'safe' room for him and we want to try it out, then apparate him to the ship. And then do the reverse tomorrow morning." Sirius leaned back and studied the ceiling for a moment.
Harry cast a silencing spell and tapped his comm-link. "All crew. This is Harry speaking. We're going to see if being at Uranus over the night of the full-moon will prevent a werewolf from turning. The night of the full-moon is the twenty-eighth, commencing tomorrow with moonrise at six-fifty in the evening. Sunset is at seven thirty-four. Moonset will be at seven in the morning on the twenty-ninth while sunrise is an hour earlier at just after six.
"I plan to take the Requirement to Uranus after lunch tomorrow, at one, and Sirius will side-along Remus to a secure room on the ship shortly before that. So, anyone with business on the ship will either have to postpone their plans until we return, which will be around noon on the twenty-ninth, or come along for the ride. Captain, over and out."
He waited a second, then tapped his link again, "Marietta?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"Will you or Cho be available to pilot the ship?"
"We'll both be there; it'll be a good time to show the trainees what to expect."
"Excellent. I'll see you when we get there, tomorrow. Captain, out." He cancelled the silencing spell.
Sirius shook his head, grinning. "Unbelievable," he said loudly.
"What's unbelievable?" came Remus' voice by the stairs.
"That all the episodes of Star Trek would take nine days to watch, non-stop." Sirius smoothly replied.
Remus shuddered, "And I thought you making me binge watch the original series eight hours a day for nine days was terrible." He shuddered. "It's a great series, I admit, but still, eight hours a day?"
Sirius laughed.
Harry had to admit, though, that watching that many episodes a day was tiring. Although it was giving him a much better understanding of what the other crewmembers sometimes talked about. That they had also taken the time to watch the three Star Wars films one day had actually been a welcome interlude. Light swords sounded so cool! After seeing the movies, he knew why those four crew-members had asked if they could try to make one.
Remus gave them both a steady stare. "What's with the sudden interest in space, anyway? It's not like it's real. And with magic, a lot of their plots fall apart." He sighed. "Not to mention one really good magic surge would short out all the electronic equipment."
Sirius gave him a big grin, "But imagine how much fun it would be if it were real!" He waved his fist around his head, as if he were holding something, and going "Bzzzzz." He laughed again. "Computer!" He intoned in a deep voice, "Fish and chips!"
A plate of fish and chips appeared on the table.
They all stared at it a moment, then Remus burst out laughing. "Who needs a computer when you've got house-elves!" he managed to get out between chortles.
Sirius harrumphed. "Thank you, Winky," he said to the air. Then looked over to Remus. "And we could do things like that in front of muggles and they would never blink an eye, would they?"
Remus suddenly looked thoughtful. "I suppose not," he said slowly, but the sighed again. "But magic and electricity don't work together, so it'll never happen."
Sirius got a gleam in his eyes. "Never say never."
██:::::██:::::██
Remus started pacing. Sirius rolled his eyes and looked at Harry. Harry shrugged.
"Will you calm down!" he said to Remus, and looked at Harry. "He does this every time, at noon. Pacing, walking, getting snippier and snippier until sundown and moonrise.
"It's not noon!" snapped Remus, glaring at him.
"See?" Sirius exclaimed spreading his arms as he looked at Harry.
Harry could only grin back at him, and shake his head.
"And he gets more argumentative, too," Sirius added, egging things on.
Remus stopped and looked at him. "I do not," he said and frowned.
Sirius turned to Harry. "See," he said, pointing. "Sometimes I think it would be easier to just stun him until sundown!"
The werewolf pointed back at Sirius, "Don't you dare!" he ordered.
"Too late," Sirius crowed. "Stupefy!" he said lifting his wand into sight in his off-hand, and followed up with a quick spongify on the floor.
"Come on Harry," he said, and chortled. "Let's get him to the ship. I'll set his watch back, wake him after sunset, and tell him it's only noon. By the time he realizes he should have changed, we'll be half-way through the night. And we can use that replicator thing to make one of the bigger rooms on the ship to look like this place's basement and ground floor. He'll never suspect a thing! It'll be the best prank, ever!"
Then he looked up in the direction of the drawing room and smirked. "I'm sure Hermione won't say no to getting copies of all the books in there, either."
Actually, Harry thought, that was a better plan than telling him they had a new safe room to try. If the ship could duplicate an entire starship, it shouldn't have a problem faking up a couple of floors of a tiny, to it, building, by simply rearranging a small section of its interior. They certainly had enough video of the various rooms. And a single thorough walk-through would take care of anything they had missed.
And it would be a pretty good prank, too.
With Remus out cold, it was a simple matter to transport him to the ship. Lee and Hermione were more than happy to use the replicator to recreate part of Grimmauld Place on the ship. By the time lunch-time came around, it was all sorted and Remus was lying on the drawing room couch, still out.
Lunch was leisurely for Harry, but it felt strange to be sitting in what he knew was a mock-up of the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, but know they were floating in space six hundred miles away. The Weasleys and Hermione were quick to agree.
The trip to Uranus was quick, and left the new recruits shaken at how easy it was. The space station located there was just as surprising.
And surprising to Harry was the giant sphere that was almost the size of the station sitting right beside it.
Hermione saw he was giving her a steady stare. She coughed, "Ahem. Well," she explained, "The refuelling tanks on the station are for that substance we can't find, and are too small for our needs. So, we had to make an auxiliary tank for the helium-three."
Harry nodded. He still didn't like the surprise, but it made sense.
"And what's that little thing over there?" he asked pointing at a white object that looked suspiciously like a lorry with a cone stuck to the front.
"Oh. Yes," she said brightly. "Lee pointed out that we could make a reactor that worked just fine all by its lonesome, but making it play nice after being integrated into a ship might be a problem."
Lee's voice came of the link. "I searched the library and couldn't really find anything that I thought would be appropriate. However, when I checked some of the sci-fi movies for inspiration, I came across a good design for us to experiment with. It was originally a general-purpose freight-slash-passenger rig, more like a large lorry or a bus. With a bit of rearranging I managed to fit both the fusion reactor and the hydrogen converter-generator for the test instead of whatever the original fuel was. Those two took up most of the cargo space, however."
"We were planning on doing this after we returned to Hogwarts," Hermione said, "but as long as we're here, we might as well run the tests. Everything is ready, after all, isn't it?"
"Sounds good to me," Harry said. "When do you want to run the first test?"
"It's basically ready anytime you are."
He nodded. "Okay, if there's nothing else that needs to be done, let's move it to a safe distance," he looked at Hermione, "say the other side of the planet, and give it a go."
A few minutes later, the D.S.F.S. Requirement had manoeuvred the test ship to the other side of Uranus and returned to the station.
"Initiating reactor fuel flow," Lee announced, as he looked over Hermione's shoulder. He had come up to join them now that the ship was in an orbit. His new assistants were watching things in the engine room.
She moved a control stone. "Initiating fusion reactor start-up. Protective shield-fields stable. Fuel flow increasing. Pressure building. Reaction beginning. Fuel flow stable. Power generation coming online. Power generation stable, fuel flow stable. Fusion Reactor stable." He looked over at Harry and grinned, then back to the console. "Initiating auxiliary controls. Integrating auxiliary controls . . . and . . . and . . ." He looked up frowning at the planet below them, then back at the console. "And it's gone."
Harry blinked.
"Running recorded sequences," Hermione said, steadily. "Oh."
She looked up at Harry, now standing beside them. "We forgot to disengage the hydrogen converter-generator, first. The two started feeding each other power, a feedback-loop developed, and the controls began to fail." She looked over to Lee. "Sorry. We should have switched off the hydrogen converter-generator as soon as the helium-three reactor stabilized."
"No, no," Lee said, shaking his head ruefully. "I should have caught that." He took a deep breath. "Well, might as well start a second one." He looked over to Harry. "That'll take about sixteen hours build time."
"Well, there's an important lesson," Harry said and looked around the bridge at the ashen faces as they realized what might have happened if they had tried that with the ship. "All testing is on unoccupied ships." He paused. "We'll be here another twenty-three hours, so, no rush on that next test ship." Harry smirked as he stared at the glorious sight outside the window.
In the meantime, he would enjoy the lack of scar-aches, headaches, and anger. It might only be for one night, but he intended to have a pleasant night's sleep without any Tom-induced nightmares. And he knew the serene feelings engendered by a full night's restful sleep would last for at least another day or two. He wasn't really looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts.
On the other hand, if this worked, Sirius and Remus, both, would know about the Requirement, and maybe he could spend the last few nights before heading to Hogwarts, here?
Much later, after a wonderful dinner with his friends, Harry watched his godfather and Remus on the monitor in his room as the time for sunset in London passed. Moonrise had been a bit over half-an-hour earlier.
"How ya feeling, Moony?" Sirius asked as he stood over the couch after casting a rennervate, and smirked.
"Did you have to do that, Sirius?" Remus asked as looked at Sirius, standing beside the couch with his hands on his hips. "You know that stunners just wear off the moment I start to turn." He shook his head and pushed himself upright. "And that always makes the wolf furious."
"It was the marauder thing to do!" said Sirius, crossing his arms as he defended his action, and then smirked.
Remus looked around the room.
"Couldn't just leave you on the floor, now, could we?"
Remus looked back up at him, frowning as he sat up. "Hasn't stopped you before," he said dryly.
The prankster shrugged. "Harry insisted." He started for the door to the room. "Lunch time." It was actually seven-forty in the evening, and Sirius had to smirk, again.
Remus stomach growled, to his surprise. "Didn't think I was that hungry," he said, and got up to follow his friend. "Where's Harry?"
"He floo'd over to the Weasleys. Said he'd spend the night there."
"Good," Lupin said, as he nodded. "It's better he's completely out of the house."
Sirius shook his head. "Remus, you'll be in iron cage, he'd be safe even if he slept just outside it."
"Still," Remus said stubbornly.
A bit later, after a rather large lunch, Sirius insisted they go back to the drawing room and almost dragged the werewolf there. He gave a surreptitious look at his watch. It was now well-after when Remus should have started to change. He gave him a marauders' grin. "So, how do you feel?"
Remus focused back on him. "I feel . . .," he frowned. "Good." His eyes shifted left and right. "The wolf is surprisingly . . . quiet." He looked up at Sirius suspiciously. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," said Sirius and feigned an innocent look. "It's barely . . .," he made a show of looking at the clock over the floo, "It's barely one, you've got plenty of time before the change. Maybe that stunner was just what you needed to help calm the wolf down for a little bit before you changed." He looked over at the pile of movie cassettes on the table beside the telly. "What movie shall we start with?" He turned and walked over to the pile and started shuffling through them. "Oh, this one looks good, The Last Starfighter . . . or this one, Time Bandits . . . The Princess Bride!" He turned to look at Remus, who looked back at him sternly, frowning, and the corner of his mouth pulled sideways. The werewolf was sure there was a prank buried in all this.
Sirius sighed. "Really Moony? What kind of prank could I pull that would affect the wolf?"
Remus slowly nodded. "Hasn't stopped you from trying, before," he murmured. He leaned back against the couch. "Time Bandits sounds interesting."
Sirius popped in the movie cassette and joined his old friend as the opening commercials started. Popcorn and butterbeers appeared on the side tables beside the couch.
He couldn't help but grin. It would be five in the morning before Remus realized he wasn't going to change — and that he didn't have to change for the rest of his life.
And neither would any other werewolf! When the last of the currently-infected died of old age, the disease would vanish forever.
Not having to drink that horrible Wolfsbane Potion every month would be merely icing on the cake, for Remus.
██:::::██:::::██
"General?"
George Hammond looked up to see a grinning Colonel Hacksaw. He waved him in, leaning back in his chair.
"Something really strange is happening at Uranus."
Hammond narrowed his eyes and stared at the man. "I hope this isn't a juvenile joke," he said flatly.
The colonel actually flushed a bit red. "No!" he objected. "Definitely not." He gathered his thoughts, temporarily scattered by the accusation. "An observatory in Japan has reported picking up a tremendous burst of energy from near that gas giant planet. The spectrometer reads it as a nuclear reaction using helium-three."
The General sat up straight.
"The secondary spectra indicate the presence of iron, carbon, gold, silver, and copper."
"When?"
"About four hours ago, the explosion was about two and a half hours before that."
Hammond sat, thinking hard. He wasn't an expert on such things, not by a long shot, but nuclear explosions in space did not normally include iron, carbon, and copper. Unless it was a nova or supernova, nuclear explosions were usually limited to hydrogen and helium — unless it was an artificially induced explosion. Was this tied to their mysterious anomaly?
"How do they know it wasn't a nova or supernova much farther away?"
"It couldn't have been too far away because they picked up reflections of light-spectra off clouds in Uranus' atmosphere. And the burst was gone nearly as fast as it appeared."
Definitely something close to the gas giant, then, and not a nova or supernova. The sheer size of a star meant it took several minutes for the on-start of a nova to cross the surface. And there were always residual effects that could be picked up for days, weeks, months, and years afterwards. He furrowed his brow, thinking.
"Now, why would they be looking at Uranus?"
The Colonel cleared his throat. "It seems that earlier this summer, at the end of June, a research student at Caltech picked up a periodic burst of heat from that planet that was interfering in his work. He thought it was an instrument malfunction until four other observatories picked it up, too. Interestingly, the source didn't appear to be on the planet, but in close orbit around it. They've been watching it ever since. It had a cycle of every ten hours. It happened all summer long and only stopped about — are you ready for this? — two weeks ago." He nodded at the general's arched eyebrows. "Yeah, just about when the anomaly first showed up here." The colonel grinned at him.
"They've determined that whatever it was, originally, was in orbit around the planet, but was too small for the Hubble to see anything. They had no ideas on what they were seeing, but they kept watch hoping to get more information. Then, when it stopped, they kept up periodic checks to see if it restarted or something else might happen.
"And it did. The explosion was right in line with the orbital plot they have, but exactly on the opposite side of the planet from where the plot said the object should be. Right now, we've got no fewer than eight observatories across the world locked onto the gas giant. And the Hubble is scheduled to take a look in about fourteen hours."
Hammond took a deep breath. "And still no indications of where our anomaly is?"
The colonel shook his head.
Hammond pursed his lips. "Let's task two of our satellites to cover Uranus until further notice, and start a communications black-out on this explosion. Nothing heavy-handed, just give notice they might want to run any press releases by their governments before they hand them over to the newspapers. And tell the proper people in those governments that we are aware of the situation."
He sat quiet a moment longer.
"And see if we can get a hunter-killer to target either a large chunk of debris or a dead satellite in such a way as to scatter the resultant debris over England between nine hundred and a thousand klicks. Maybe we can find the anomaly. Or confirm it isn't there."
The ante in this poker game had just gone up.
██:::::██:::::██
The two marauders had just finished dinner. Remus had kept glancing anxiously at the clock in the kitchen the entire time. He didn't know that Sirius and Harry had had the ship make the clocks in the "house" run much slower. It was actually somewhere around two-ten in the morning, not the five-thirty in the afternoon currently displayed. They had been watching movies for six hours, not four and a half.
"Relax Moony, you got another hour to go," Sirius said mischievously. "Have you ever thought about taking a portkey to Hawaii just as the moonrise is about to start? After all, while the moon rises at six-fifty here, evening starts at seven-forty. In Honolulu the sunrise is right at sixish. You could skip the entire night of the moon while lying on the beach watching all the birds in bikinis, you know." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively
Remus snorted. "Like I could afford a portkey that went that far," he said disparagingly. "Besides, the Yanks would never go for it. They have a permanent ban on werewolves entering their country. Even just traveling through." He sighed. "I checked." He looked away. "Several weres tried to do the opposite direction, portkey to Japan or Korea to knock out spending most of the night as a wolf. The officials . . . were not very cooperative," he added dryly. "It would certainly make life easier for the children if it were possible, though."
"Apparition?"
Remus just looked at him and rolled his eyes. "Crossing the Atlantic requires a portkey for the average wizard, remember?" He arched an eyebrow at the other prankster. "Never mind one for the Pacific." he snorted again. "Although you could go Scotland to Iceland to Greenland to Canada." He finished off his butterbeer. "Then cross Canada into Alaska, then Russia, and across Siberia, the Urals, and Europe." He vanished the bottle. "But, again, the different governments would throw a wobbly. You might get away with it a couple of times. But an entire group? Word would get out and they would quickly step up and put a stop to it. And trying to side-along a child? Good luck with that. Even resting an hour between jumps, by the time you got to number eight the middle of Canada, you'd be too exhausted to continue." He grimaced. "And then the wolf would throw a wobbly." He shook his head. "Not a pretty sight — or sensation."
He sighed again. "Much as I hate the Wolfsbane Potion, it's really the only viable alternative . . . and most weres can't begin to afford it."
Sirius nodded sympathetically. "Tried apparition, didn't you?"
Remus nodded. "Made it to Alaska before I couldn't continue." He shrugged. "The aurors were quite kind, considering. Because I was in a deep wilderness area, they let it slide and told me never to do that again. Gave me a portkey to the coast of Newfoundland, and said that I had better not still be in Canada come the next evening. Nor ever return."
After a few minutes' silence, with Remus staring at his butterbeer moodily, Sirius stood and said, "Well, anyway, we still haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. And Hermione says Police Squad is hilarious."
"I really think we should get the cage ready." Remus demurred.
"Nah, there'll be plenty of time for that. Police Squad is supposed to be half-hour episodes, we can watch that." He shifted in his chair, and then stood up. "At the first twinge of a reaction, we can move to the cage."
A reluctant Moony followed Padfoot back into the sitting room.
They settled in to watch the movie as popcorn again appeared on the side tables.
"Well," he said, much later, "that was pretty good, right Moony?"
Remus worriedly looked at the clock on the mantle over the floo, three hours later as the Police Squad credits rolled.
"Pfft, it's only seven-fifteen, we've got plenty of time. Besides, it's just us and you've been taking the Wolfsbane Potion. Relax. Here," he said shoving in the next tape. "We'll watch this until you start to turn, then we'll go to the cage."
Still glancing worriedly at the clock, Remus settled back. Without the wolf pressing hard, as he usually did every full-moon, Remus didn't feel as rushed as he normally would have been this close to turning. He felt rather relaxed, actually, as if he had all the time in the world.
Sirius surreptitiously cast a mild notice-me-not at the clock. With any luck, Moony wouldn't notice his attention switching back to the telly every time he went to look at the mantle-clock.
As the ending credits began to roll, Sirius looked at the mantle-clock, then at his watch. He nodded and gave Moony a smug smile. "Well," he said, "How's the wolf taking things, anxious to get out?"
Remus frowned. "He's . . . quite calm. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was the middle of the month." He narrowed his eyes and gave Sirius a suspicious look. He looked up at the clock and saw, with a start, that it was nearly nine o'clock. "What did you do?" he asked, alarmed, and stood. He looked around the room nervously.
"Would you believe that that clock," Sirius pointed at the wall, "is actually about ten hours behind the real time? That it's actually six o'clock in the morning?" He waggled his eyebrows.
"Impossible," Remus confidently stated. "And we just had dinner." He waved an arm around the room. "We're still in Grimmauld Place."
Sirius' grin grew larger. "Are we?"
"Of course we are!" Remus stood, walked over to the curtains, and yanked them open — to reveal a picture. He fell back in reaction. He looked at Sirius in consternation as Padfoot laughed.
He stared at the prankster, scared. Sirius continued to laugh. Moony turned and headed to the front door. He yanked on the handle. And nothing happened, again. He glared at the handle in his hand. Now that he was this close, he could see the door was actually part of the wall, and not a separate piece.
Sirius stopped laughing long enough to say, "Why don't you try upstairs?"
He moved to the side as Remus started past. But Remus stopped and stared at the portrait on the wall — the portrait that wasn't moving. It looked exactly like the one in Grimmauld Place, but it wasn't moving, not in the slightest. Not even when he slapped his hand on the frame — something that usually brought the old woman to a froth — did anything change.
He slowly looked at Sirius, disbelief evident in his expression. "What have you done?" he said in a hushed tone.
Sirius shook his head wryly. "It's not what I've done, it's what Harry and his friends have done." He clapped his hand on the other's shoulder. "We're going to rock your world! You'll never have to worry about a full-moon night again."
He turned and they headed back to the kitchen. "We wanted to try an experiment." Sirius grinned happily. "We didn't want to say anything, in case it didn't work. But it did. And quite well, I might add," he said in a very self-satisfied tone.
Once in the kitchen, snickering, Sirius led Moony to the back, where the old servants' rooms used to be. It was also where the house-elves liked to hide. Except, as they approached the door at the end of the short hallway, it slid open, and disappeared into the apparent solid stone wall.
"This is a completely secure room," he explained. "Only someone with one of these," he flipped his collar to expose the comm-link, "can open the door. Currently, however, it's set so that only mine can do that, and only after sunrise, London time."
Remus raised his eyebrows. He knew the comm-link stones were some kind of muggle device, but seeing Sirius with one was . . . surprising.
What was beyond that door left Remus slack-jawed — and Sirius laughing hysterically.
≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ██:::::██:::::██