The kitchen was very warm for such a big room. Barty thought that it must be the many stoves and ovens on the countertop that surrounds the room - or maybe the stone walls, trapping the heat the stoves produced. The big fireplace beside them only added more heat, the fire burned bright as it casted a shadow of them sitting side by side at a table that he was sure to be positioned exactly under the Gryffindor table at the great hall. The ceiling was high - not as grand as the great hall, but it was definitely gawk worthy - and it really should have made the room colder, yet it didn't.
Perhaps the high ceiling was only an illusion.
What he was sure to be real was the lives surrounding him - house elves! House elves all around him! They all worked in a harmonized chaos, moving from one place to another in hurried little steps that were sometimes accompanied by tiny cheerful jumps. Barty noticed that each of them walked proudly - chest puffing as if showing off the badge stamped on the chest part of their make-do toga from a tea towel. A Hogwarts badge.
He knew of course that Hogwarts must have house elves to do all the chores - but to think that Hogwarts had this many of them!
It must have been ten minutes at least before his novelty of the kitchen wore off. He finally stopped trying to watch every happenings around him, settling on the warmth of the room with Madeline at his side. His sister had been silently watching his awe the entire time with a smile, and now she was gazing off the big fireplace on their right, lost in thoughts as her fingers played and twirled the deep green ribbon at the end of her braided hair.
She did that often now. That is, playing with her hair and her ribbons.
"You like the ribbon very much, don't you?" He clicked his tongue, mocking a disappointment, "I should have given you a ribbon."
"I like your gift too," Madeline replied distractedly, her eyes still stuck on the fire.
Barty huffed, "You're giving away your chocolates at every chance you get now."
He didn't know it at first, but two weeks ago, MacDougall was looking too smug when they talked about Madeline's teaching. It wasn't hard to question her - the girl was practically bursting when someone finally asked her about it. Apparently Madeline had trusted her to do an errand, which was sending two boxes of chocolates to Madam Pomfrey and making sure that the healer read the note accompanying it. Barty was sure that Madeline gave her hufflepuff friends a box each as well.
His sister finally turned to him, a smile growing on her serene face. "But thanks to you, I won't be running out of chocolate anytime soon."
He grinned. That was too true. As he couldn't give her something as awesome as her bouncy clouds, he decided to compensate with the quantity of his gift. His gift was more than just a box of chocolate - it was a box charmed with the extension spell and he gave her at least three dozen boxes of chocolates there, preserved with a stasis charm. Barty had to defend his cheeks from Madeline's grabby hands again when she finally figured it out.
Two big mugs and a plate of cranberry pie suddenly floated down from the air, landing on the table in front of them.
"Whipsy brings Miss Maddy's order!"
Barty turned to look at the speaker. It was Madeline's house elf friend at Hogwarts, the one with big floppy ears and a smile too big for her small face. "Thank you, Whipsy," his sister beamed at the elf, making Barty nod along.
"Yeah, thanks Whipsy. The pie looks delicious."
Whipsy's floppy ears perked up, her eyes shining, "Miss Maddy and her brother is most welcome!"
Barty wasted no time digging into the pie. An hour of trying to find the entrance to the kitchen had drained all the energy in him, it would seem - or maybe it was the non stop laughter that accompanied his silly attempts.
That reminds him - He swallowed his latest bite before turning to Madeline, "how did you figure out that you have to tickle the pear?"
Barty watched his sister ate her pie with the grace of their mother, chewing slowly as though biding her time, and so he waited.
"It just came to me," came her short reply.
He pouted. That wasn't interesting at all. "You just suddenly realized that you have to tickle the pear?"
"The poor pear looks like they need a good laugh."
Barty frowned. The pear was indeed looking peaky, but he doubted that Madeline could guess from that alone. Watching his sister again, he realised that Madeline was not meeting his eyes.
She was hiding something.
But that wasn't unusual at all, he wryly thought. Madeline was often reluctant to share about certain things - it usually didn't bother him, though he thought that this was a rather trivial matter to be secretive about.
"You know," he said instead, "It's like I gave you a vast supply of chocolate and you gave me unlimited access to any food."
Madeline met his eyes, her face thoughtful. "That's certainly one way to see it."
They stared at each other in a long pause.
"You still have to give me a present for my birthday," Barty stated, making his sister grin.
"Of course."
They both ate another bite of their pie with a smile, the previous tension on Madeline's shoulder melted away with its sweet taste. Cranberry pie was their favorite - an all time choice every time they had a picnic in the garden. Barty might not care for Winky as much as Madeline did, but he did miss her and her cranberry pies. He missed teasing her, too. He missed the manor, missed falling asleep at the library and woke up with a blanket around him at meal times…
"How do these tables work, do you think?" He changed the topic again and took another bite. He saw Madeline smirk at the corner of his eyes.
"You put your plates on it, and you eat."
"Maddy."
The disapproval in his voice was met with a small chuckle. Barty rolled his eyes, though a grin still escaped him.
"It transports the plates here to the tables upstairs, doesn't it? Does it work like a switching charm?"
Madeline shook her head. "There must be something tangible to replace the food."
Right. "Does it work like a portkey, then? Wait, no - the tables here would have been transported along if they were portkeys."
"Portkeys also can not transport objects without living beings to anchor the charm," Madeline added with a smile.
Barty felt heat creeping up his face. He didn't know that - he just blurted out any transportation mode he knew. He found his hand reaching up to the back of his hair, rubbing it sheepishly, "I'm guessing that floo is out too?"
"You guessed correctly. "
Barty nodded, waiting quietly as Madeline drank her juice. When she finished, however, she didn't make any attempt to continue the talk. Barty leaned to her impatiently.
"So? How does it work?"
Maddy arched an eyebrow at him. "Why do you assume I know it?"
He met her unimpressed look with one of his own. "Because you know everything, Maddy."
His sister pursed her lips, "I don't know everything, Barty."
Undeterred, Barty stared at her expectantly.
There was a pause.
Madeline sighed, "I think it has similar principles to the vanishing cabinet."
Barty grinned, sending his sister a triumphant look - which was pointedly ignored as Madeline reached for another pie. As he mulled over her reply though, he realized that he couldn't recall much about the vanishing cabinet. He knew of it of course, but he had not read anything that particularly discussed its mechanism, and he admitted this to his sister.
"That's because there aren't many of it left," Maddy explained quietly, staring at her pie. "They stopped producing it after the ministry found other means of transportation that are easier to track. Only a handful of old families have them now."
Barty tilted his head. "Then how do you know about its mechanism?"
"An educated guess," she replied, oddly sounding defeated. "I told you I don't know everything, Barty. The vanishing cabinet, unfortunately, is one of the subjects that I know very little about."
He blinked.
He didn't know why, but Madeline, with her eyes downcasted, looked like she was genuinely dejected for not knowing more about it.
But it didn't really matter, did it? It was just pure curiosity. The tables and the cabinets were just a curiosity, and they had years to crack them down. At least, that's what he thought.
Barty took a sip of his juice, watching his curious sister at the corner of his eyes as he did it.
.
The benefit of knowing how to enter the kitchen was massive - he now didn't have to wait for meal times to get snacks. It was a huge thing for Barty, as studying without snacks to occupy his mouth usually ended up with him getting sleepy.
Cauldron cake was his choice of snacks this Sunday - he smugly brought a plate full of it to his dorm, earning envious looks from everyone he passed by. When he arrived at his room, his friends were all there, eyes automatically drawn to the delicious smell.
"Where did you get that?" Rabatan asked, leaning forward in his seat.
Barty grinned, entering the room with his shoulder pulled back. "Somewhere. Here, Reg. You deserve a cake for training as hard as you did."
He threw one of his cakes at the older boy, trusting Regulus' skill as a seeker to catch it. Regulus, though he sat on the farthest sofa from where Barty stood, easily caught the cake just before it flew past his head, sending a smug smirk at Evan and Rabastan when he did it.
Rabastan turned to Barty, meeting his eyes. "I helped edit your charm essay."
"One cake for you as well," Barty conceded, throwing yet another of his cakes - it flew past Rabastan and into Regulus' hand. Barty watched them in glee, hoping that a drama would occur, and he pouted when Regulus easily passed the cake to Rabastan. They were no fun.
Someone cleared their throat.
Turning his head, Barty was met with the standing figure of Evan, his eyes filled with hope. "I'm your best friend?"
He closed his eyes with a mock pained look and shook his head, "I can't get rid of you, more like."
When he opened his eyes again, Evan was already munching on a cake.
His cake.
"Hey!"
"Never lose sight of your enemies, Barty," the cake thief said unconcernedly, walking back to his desk.
He narrowed his eyes. Enemies it is.
Barty walked to his bed with a huff, counting the cake in his plate as he did so. He still had 5 cakes left. Moving all the books that towered on his nightstand to his bed, he put the plate in its place as he sat. He fully intended to eat the cakes on his bed as he read the Spell Book, grade 2. His room was shared by all the first years so he usually put up some resemblance of etiquette, but Otto and his lot were at the library now, searching for the reference books they needed for the charm essay due on Tuesday. Evan would have gone with them if Barty didn't generously lend Madeline's books to him - a wasted kindness, Evan had just written his name at the corner of the parchment.
It was not unusual for Evan and him to invite Regulus and Rabastan to their room -the older pair also liked to invite them to the second year dorm. As Barty already tempted them to eat in a library once, he wasn't afraid to break any more rules in front of them.
He still sensed Regulus' judging eyes on him as he sat on his bed, though.
"My question still stands," Rabastan reminded him, looking at him with a curious look. Barty grinned at him, taking a bite from one of his cakes.
"And my answer won't change."
"A secret, is it?" Evan quipped in from the corner desk. His chair was now facing towards the room, the corner desk stood forgotten at his back. Avoiding his assignment again, undoubtedly. "Must be maddy."
Regulus perked up. "Your sister gave you these cakes?"
Maddy's name was like a spell for Regulus, he thought. "In a way."
The older boy now looked down at his cake longingly - it was a bit sad, if Barty might say.
Barty of course didn't miss the way Madeline and Regulus tiptoed around each other. It started a little after the holiday ended - Madeline suddenly became more cautious around everyone, and in return, Regulus became even more hesitant every time she talked to him. Barty had asked Madeline about it, but his sister wouldn't budge, saying that nothing had happened. But of course it was a lie - something must have happened between them.
The thing is, Barty was reluctant to ask Regulus about it.
Madeline was his sister, so it would be odd if he asked Regulus about something concerning his sister, right? He should have gotten his answers from Madeline.
But perhaps he didn't have another choice besides asking Regulus about it, he bitterly thought. Madeline already had so many secrets - her nightmares, her reasons to hide her true abilities, her knowledge of the dark lord, her curious reaction to certain topics, among other things.
Barty desperately needed to at least solve this one problem to help her.
He looked at the older boy determinedly, "say, what happened between you and Madeline?"
The older boy froze, his carefully blank expression a split second too late to hide his real thought.
Barty narrowed his eyes, "Did you offend her?"
"I did not," the older boy replied tonelessly, eyes meeting him with indifference. Barty held his gaze challengingly. If Black did anything bad and hid it from him -
The older boy looked away.
"But I think I should only talk to her at minimum until I learn more about occlumency, or at least basic self control…" he trailed off, his voice just above a mutter.
Barty's eyebrows shot up, and so did Evan's.
They both exchanged a look. Regulus never gave up a chance to talk with Maddy. The older boy tried to be calm, but both of them could see his eyes gleamed every time Madeline turned to him. For Regulus to say this… Evan gulped and turned to the older boy, "Did you accidently confess your love?"
"It's not love," Regulus scowled at Evan. "And I don't accidently confess anything."
"He was just being dumb," Rabastan added helpfully, making Evan deflate from his previous tension.
"Oh. Nothing new, then - ouch."
He threw an offended look at Regulus, a hand rubbing his arm where Regulus had aimed a book at. "But seriously, Maddy's awfully tense lately. Do you have any part in that?"
Barty also wanted to know that as well, and he watched as Regulus put his expressionless mask on him again. It was awfully suspicious. Maybe Regulus didn't offend Maddy, but he must have done something -
"Maybe it's because of those four," suggested Rabastan.
He snapped his attention to him. The other boy had a thoughtful look on him, and Barty couldn't help but consider his words.
That's right, there were those annoying four, as well. He could see Regulus seething from where he sat at the mention of those four. Marauders, they called themselves nowadays, and Barty wasn't one to forget how one of his classmates was hexed into sticking to a wall for a whole afternoon - admittedly, Titus was provoking them first by calling Sirius Black a blood traitor, but everyone in their house called him a blood traitor, so it wasn't like that kind of provocation was new to the older boy.
And now they had set their eyes on Maddy. They even went as far as mocking him when they met his eyes, he fumed. His muscles tensed at the memory and he closed his eyes, breathing slower and relaxing his muscles.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
It didn't help much.
He opened his eyes again, only to glare at the dark wall of his room. "I really, really want to hex them all."
"What's stopping you?" came Evan's unconcerned voice, sounding too close for the other boy to still be sitting by his desk. True enough, Barty turned to his side to find his friend standing beside him, a cauldron cake held in his hand.
He blinked.
A cake in his hand.
"Thief!" Barty cried out at the smirking face of Evan, who shrugged without any guilt.
"You have yourself to blame. I warned you."
Barty narrowed his eyes.
Those cakes were his. He brought it from the kitchen. Supper time was still three hours away and now he didn't have enough cakes to last until then. "Run," he gritted out.
Evan smirked, but run he did not.
His mistake.
"Alright, I warned you."
Barty moved as fast as Evan's widening eyes, tackling him to the floor, hands reaching to retrieve his stolen cake. Evan held one of his arms up, keeping the cake from meeting the ground - and more importantly, away Barty's reaching hand - while his other hand was pushing Barty's head away from him.
Barty decided to put one of his hands on Evan's head as well.
"Get off! This is undignified - watch the hair!" - "My cake!" - "You have a lot of them!" - "I need all of them!" -
As the two of them fought for their cake, Regulus had turned to Rabastan without as much as a second glance at the fighting lump on the floor, previous tension forgotten. "One galleon on Junior."
Rab smirked. "You're on."
.
One of the reasons why she liked sitting with Lily Evans and Severus Snape was that their table had quite a secluded location, with the closest other table standing 10 feet away from it.
Today, 10 feet away still felt like invading their personal space.
"Just ignore them," muttered Lily under her breath, more to herself than to her friends.
Madeline tried to keep her eyes on her book, 'Advance Charms on Space Alteration' that was disguised as 'Spell Book grade 3', though her mind was having a hard time to stay focused, her heart beating loudly in anticipation for the inevitable confrontation.
Because just over there, at the closest table from her, sat James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, eyeing their table with the subtlety of an elephant.
In hindsight, giving them chocolates for their prank was probably not her brightest idea. It was impulsive, and careless. She shouldn't have attracted their attention unless she wanted to be dragged into their life.
"I swear those toerags don't know when to stop," Lily had ranted three weeks ago when Madeline asked her about the best response to curb their interest. "Best for you to ignore them - unless they're really bothering you, of course. In that case, you can give them a piece of your mind."
"And how does that work for you, Lily?" Snape had remarked, his tone condescending.
The girl went red as a response.
Unfortunately for her though, Snape's criticism held some truth. The advice was not working at all for her own problem, as James Potter was still asking her out every day. Rather than admitting this though, she huffed, "have you got any helpful suggestions, then?"
At that, Snape had turned to Madeline and sneered, "you cast your most painful curses at their pitiful existence."
Lily blinked at him, her face the picture of innocence, "And how does that work for you, Severus?"
They both were in no position to give advice on this matter, Madeline belatedly realized just then.
For over a month, she had successfully avoided the Marauders - it wasn't that hard, she knew more passageways than what was mentioned in the marauders map now. She even managed to still give Remus Lupin a box of chocolate after the full moon without direct contact - courtesy to Barty's yearmate, Celinna MacDougall, who was more than happy to forward her chocolates to Madam Pomfrey.
But she realized now that it only made them more desperate - desperate enough to risk getting thrown out by madam Pince.
"Crouch," gritted another voice.
Madeline sighed, putting down the book she failed to read for the last ten minutes. She looked up to meet the caller's eyes.
Snape was practically steaming from the ear, his face red in boiling rage. It was to be expected, the marauders were sitting there, just ten feet away, watching every second of them with their chin supported by their hands and their body leaning forward. How could they still be this annoying even without opening their mouth, she wondered?
"What do you want me to do, exactly?" she asked the older boy tiredly. "They haven't done anything yet."
- It was like she jinxed it.
The second those words left her mouth, a paper plane flew to them and poked Snape's head, right at his temple.
Repeatedly.
Madeline held her breath as she watched Snape's face getting redder and redder.
This was no good.
She turned to her friend with a pleading look, "Lily, I think you should… "
"Yeah," Lily nodded, comprehending what she meant though her eyes still stuck on her friend's raging face and the paper planes - since when did it grow in number? "Before they…"
"Yeah," Madeline winced.
Lily quickly picked up the books they used, giving her friend a quiet 'come on, sev', before finally pulling her friend away from their table. It was best for them to make some distance - Snape and those four would have duelled right then and there at the library if someone wasn't there to seperate them. Snape glowered at his mortal enemies the whole time, not even blinking even as his figure was getting farther away, until the view of him was entirely blocked by lines of shelves.
It happened so fast, and without more time to prepare herself, the four chairs around her were suddenly filled by the ghosts of her past.
"Not going to join your friends?" Sirius Black asked in a mock whisper, grey eyes glinting from the seat across her.
Madeline straightened her back, face blank.
'So you can resent Snape more because two pretty girls prefer his company over you?' was what her mind wanted to say, but she pushed it down, knowing it wouldn't help her case.
Instead, she said, plain and polite, "May I help you?"
"Madeline crouch," Remus Lupin softly called her from Sirius' left. "You're a very difficult person to meet."
The person on her right nodded, "Too true, too true. Say, how do you do it?"
Even their voices were almost alike.
Madeline turned to her right, meeting a pair of hazel eyes behind rectangle glasses. The person in front of her was not Harry, her mind kept repeating the words, no matter how the image of them overlapped in her mind.
"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying."
The boy grinned.
They looked so much alike.
"You see, we were just curious about the newest addition in our growing number of fans - one from Slytherin at that. But imagine our surprise when we couldn't catch you by surprise at any time."
'It's unheard of," Peter Pettigrew said.
"Outlandish," James Potter shook his head.
"Unprecedented," quipped Remus Lupin with a smile.
"Catastrophe!" Sirius Black shouted, still in a mock whisper, his eyes widened dramatically. "No one is supposed to be sneakier than the marauders."
Something in her twisted, their carefree grin a contrast to their hollow dead eyes in her nightmares.
She occluded.
"Then you already know how I did it."
The passageways, after all, were an open secret, though many only stopped at knowing two to three passageways, mostly to have a shortcut to the farthest class from their dorm. It didn't help that the passwords were often so absurd that it was almost impossible to figure out most of them.
But those things wouldn't stop someone who really wants to freely sneak around the castle.
James Potter frowned, getting what she meant but still couldn't quite comprehend it. "Yeah, but how do you know about them?"
Madeline couldn't help the unimpressed arched eyebrow his words had triggered. "Gryffindors do not have monopoly over adventures and the thrill of mystery."
"You're saying you're the type to seek adventures?" Sirius Black inquired.
She answered with silence.
"Say, how many secret passages do you know?" - came James Potter's question again.
Another stubborn silence.
"Are you an aspiring mischief maker?" asked Lupin, his head tilting in curiosity.
Again, they were met by silence.
"Are you hiding something else?" Peter Pettigrew finally asked.
Her eyebrows shot up, and all the Marauders winced. They tried to subtly glare at Peter Pettigrew - who shrunk, knowing he messed up.
Madeline smiled internally. So they had some suspicions, after all. This interrogation was more than just scooping some potential fellow sneaky student… She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. "I don't need to answer any of your questions.
Sirius pouted.
"Aw, but we thought you liked us."
"One box of chocolate for a prank well done does not equate to liking you."
"Two chocolates," Remus Lupin reminded her, "You gave us another chocolate two weeks ago."
"I did?" She frowned, feigning a confused look at the boy. "I swear I did not. Two weeks ago... I gave some extra chocolates to Madam Pomfrey at that time. Were you in the infirmary again two weeks ago?"
The boy froze, a blush rising up his cheeks.
She got this, she thought as she watched the Marauders exchange a secretive look with each other.
They had thought she, a Slytherin, had given them another chocolate, which probably made them curious about her motive. But technically, she didn't give them another chocolate. She gave them to Madam Pomfrey, to whom she wrote a note to feel free to share the other box of chocolate with anyone who was in the Hospital wing at that time. And they couldn't accuse her of being deliberate in this, as that would mean that they had to confront the idea of how they they thought she knew that they were going to be there at that particular day, which happened to be a day after a full moon - which, of course, would go wrong if it turned out she hadn't realised that it was full moon, and potentially giving her new ideas about Lupin's sickness.
It didn't matter if they were still curious about her knowledge of the passageways. Their other base of suspicion was defunct, and from their perspective, this interrogation had given her more info than the info they likely would get.
"Well, this is awkward," Sirius Black smiled.
A tactical retreat from this topic, she assumed. A perfect time for her to control the conversation.
"I might send you some other sweets if I deem your work worthy of it," said her with her arms crossed, "but please don't mistake this as an attempt to befriend you. It was just a show of appreciation, one that I'm sure black here know about, if Lady Black didn't fail to impart the knowledge of various social gestures on him."
Sirius Black entertained her, "and what kind of work is it that you count as worthy?"
She smiled. "The kind of work that will have everyone remember it with a smile, and not a scorn."
"Some people just don't have a sense of humor, you know," snorted one James Potter, making her head snap at the other boy's direction.
The boy looked so much like Harry…
But he was not like Harry at all.
She met his eyes sternly. "And some people mistake bullying as pranks."
James Potter flushed.
"We're not bullying anyone," he defended.
"And if you're talking about Snape," Remus Lupin added, "you should know that he's the one who usually provokes us first. We're not bullying some innocent student."
A saccharin smile grew on her face, "And yet, it's always four against one."
Her words worked like a charm.
No longer that they pretended to be familiar with her, now they were sitting stiffly, with their faces guarded and their eyes colder. Her words reminded them that Madeline Crouch was Lily Evans and Severus Snape's friend first, before she even gave them any attention.
It was best like this.
Her giving them chocolates was a mistake. A wishful thinking to connect with her past.
In reality, being friends with the Marauders would complicate things for her mission. The Marauders basked in other's attention, and Madeline Crouch wanted none of it. In befriending them, she would make as many enemies as she would make allies, and she didn't need any of it.
The war, the horcruxes. She need not to face them head on, gaining unnecessary attention from both sides.
No, she would be smart. She would move without anyone noticing her to begin with, saving life faster than the body count, faster than they would catch her.
But, she thought, meeting their eyes one by one, that didn't mean she wouldn't help them out a bit.
"Snape only has Lily as his friend," she started, "A useless ally for his situation, I may say," - "Hey!" - "so," she ignored James Potter's outraged cry, "if he starts turning to find stronger allies in the likes of his other yearmates, you will keep in mind that it is you that pushes him to do it."
Her words met silence.
She took in the sight of four teenage boys in front of her. All of them were narrowing their eyes at her, their gazes defensive but not really comprehending what her words were about. Looking at them now, she realized how young they were. Barely fourteen.
At fourteen - what did Hermione Granger do at fourteen?
Her memories were all hazy now but she remembered feeling scared of failing her class... - She remembered the need to excel...
Studying.
She was studying 25 hours a day.
The war hadn't entered their mind yet.
A shaky breath escaped her, realizing that her words wouldn't make sense to those boys.
She wasn't saying that it was their fault that Snape would join the death eaters, but it wasn't farfetched to say that they had a massive contribution in that decision. At least, that was what she observed from all the halfbloods in Slytherin. They were the easy targets for the other houses as they didn't have any true allies in their own house, and it only made them desperate to find some allies even more…
What first started as house rivalries and grudges would grow to be a black and white view on the war but now -
Now they didn't know anything about the war in front of their eyes.
She focused her gaze on them again.
"That said, I would like it very much if you leave me alone. I don't want to be associated with you publicly."
The moment was broken, and Sirius Black smirked condescendingly, "Do your housemates disapprove of us? Say it ain't so!"
"There are appearances to keep," she replied simply, almost shrugging, to which the other boy scoffed.
"Slytherins."
It was best like this.