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Well Now It’s a Party, Isn’t It?


Absolute pandemonium was breaking. Frank Longbottom knelt in the place Rudolphus had left him, trembling, he fell to his splayed palms. Honey was still clutching Ali in the cage, covering her eyes… Frank looked over at them, and though his body was weak and muscles sore, he staggered up. “Magna,” he said, waving his wand at Ali and she squeaked, her voice returning to her.

“Frank, oh my stars. Frank, you ruddy fool.” She struggled out of Honey’s grasp, slamming against the wrought iron bars and stuck her arms out the gaps as Frank fell against the cage, her arms wrapping around him. “He could’ve killed you!” Ali was sobbing. “He could’ve killed you, you idiot!” She frantically kissed every bit of his face she could reach through the bars.

Frank waved his wand at the lock on the cage door at his wrist. “Desolati,” he whispered, and the lock melted away. He stumbled back and Honey opened the door.

Ali quickly wrapped herself around Frank, her arms surrounding him and he winced as she touched his bruises and cuts, but didn’t stop her. He fell against her and she held him up, tears in her eyes. “I love you, I love you Frank, I love you so much.” She put her hands on his face, in his hair, kissing the blood-crusted lips as he stood before her, “You’re so brave, you’re so impossibly brave.”

Honey was peering through the doorway of the room, down the hall in either direction, her skeletal form eerie in the low-lighting of the dark green room. There were screams and shouts coming from outside the wide-opened front doors, the Death Eaters all trying to stop the fire from consuming the house, Rudolphus’s shouts… The roar of the fire itself… And from the other direction, the bellows of the Dark Lord in the private parlor he’d taken Peter Pettigrew to. Honey turned to look at the embracing lovers behind her.

“We gotta go Ali, we’ve got to get out of here,” Frank said, and it took all his strength to pull away from her. “We’ve got to get back to Hogwarts.”

“What about my son?” Honey demanded. “Peter. We have to get Peter.”

Frank said, “He’s under the imperius curse! He’ll kill us as look at us. We need help - we need - we need Dumbledore. You saw how many Death Eaters there are. And it took but one to do this to me… You and Alice without a wand… We are sorely outnumbered. Three battered wizards to -- what? Ten? Twenty?”

“Make that five.”

All three of them turned as a door on the opposite side of the room opened - the servants’ door, the door from the kitchens - and through it came Sirius Black and James Potter, wands aloft.

“Well now it’s a party, isn’t it?” Frank said, shaking his head in disbelief and amusement. “I should’ve known you lot were on the way…”

“James! Sirius!” Ali cried in surprise, running over to throw her arms about their necks in a hug.

Sirius grinned, shrugging out of Ali’s hug uncomfortably, “You bloody gits aren’t leaving us out of all the action!”

“Ruddy good try, though,” James added, patting Ali on the back.

“How in the hell did you get here?” Frank asked.

“Rode the motorbike, didn’t we?”

“What motorbike?” Frank demanded.

“What motorbike!” Sirius exclaimed, “The bloody motorbike that’s just blasted it’s way through the front of his shoddy old manor, that motorbike! James you hear that? What motorbike!” Sirius rolled his eyes.

James smirked at Sirius’s tone as Ali turned back and grabbed hold on Frank’s hand.

“Where in hell did you lot get a motorbike from?”

Sirius shrugged, “Stole it.”

“Stole it, he says, as though it was nothing!” Frank looked between Ali and James with an expression of disbelief, “As if people go about stealing motorbikes and showing up in the middle of You-Know-Who’s lair every bloody day!”

Sirius’s face broke into a grin, “Maybe I’ll make a habit of it.”

“Assuming ol’ Voldey lives through facing the lot of us,” said James arrogantly… Then he noticed the woman hovering by the door of the room and he drew his wand at her. “Who the ruddy hell are you?”

“Don’t! James!” Ali hurried between James and Honey and pushed his wand arm down, “That’s Honey Pettigrew, Peter’s mother.”

Sirius’s eyes flashed, “Peter’s mother’s dead.” He brought his wand up and Ali quickly hit his arm down, too. “And besides, I’ve met Peter’s mother, she’s fat, like him!!”

“No she isn’t. You-Know-Who has had her all this time. She’s been here. In that.” She pointed to the cage. “That’s why she looks differently. He’s been starving her, torturing her… all this time...”

James’s eyes widened. “Sirius. Peter’s visions.”

Sirius looked at the cage and felt quite sick. He looked at Honey Pettigrew, who was trembling, cowering away from the teenage boys with their wands, and she looked so much like her son - he felt a jolt of guilt. “I’m glad you aren’t dead, Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said awkwardly.

“Well that’s an idiot way to say it, you stupid prat,” said James, looking over at him.

“What? What’s so stupid about it?” Sirius demanded, “I am glad, and she’s not dead, and that’s the reason for my being glad so --”

“Well bloody hell it just sounds like a right stupid thing to say!” James replied.

“It isn’t a stupid thing to say!”

“It is, though!”

“And what makes you the judge about what’s stupid to say and what isn’t? Like you don’t go about saying stupid things every day?”

“What stupid things have I said?”

“I dunno, there’s too many to count, it’s every time you open your bloody mouth.”

“Hey… fellas,” Frank interrupted, eyebrows raised.

Both Sirius and James looked over at him.

“Think we could maybe put this argument on hold a bit until we’re - I dunno - not standing around waiting for the Dark Lord and his followers to realize nobody’s watching the bloody prisoners and come back and murder us all, maybe?”

“The man has a point,” James said.

“See, there’s a stupid thing you’ve said, right there,” Sirius replied, pointing at James, who stuck out his tongue.

“Boys!” Ali snapped, “Enough! Are you here to help us escape or here to ruddy get us all caught?”

“We’re here to help,” they said in unison.

“Then ruddy help!” Ali reprimanded them. She turned to Honey. “We’re going to get Peter, and we’re going to get out of here. Now. Someone come up with a plan.”

“Well where is Peter?” James asked.

“The Dark Lord’s taken him to the parlor down the hall with the Blind Seer,” Honey replied.

“And the Death Eaters are all outside - apparently reacting to the exploding motorbike you lot came in on,” Frank added.

“Alright…” Sirius thought a moment. “Okay. I have a plan. C’mon.” He started for the door.

“Hang on,” James said, catching Sirius by the neck of his leather jacket, “Your plans are notoriously bad ones. Do tell before we go springing into action here?”

Sirius shrugged. “We all go bust in the parlor and… take Peter back.”

“That’s it?” Frank demanded.

Sirius nodded, “Yeah. Pretty much.”

The others all looked at one another. “You mad?” Frank asked.

“We’re thinking of having him tested,” James replied.

“Why bother, he’s already proven he is,” Ali said.

“What? You’ve just said it’s Peter Pettigrew, Mopsus, and Voldey in there, yeah? So that’s three against five!”

“Three against three,” Frank replied, “Neither of them have their wands,” he pointed to Ali and Honey. “

“Still, three good stunners to the chest isn’t a light hit to take and --”

James snorted, “You love plans that involve stunning Voldemort, don’t you? That didn’t work last time we tried it and it’s not going to work now.”

“Well it isn’t like we have another motorbike to explode.”

Frank laughed.

They all looked at him, especially Ali, who said, worriedly, “Frank, darling, don’t go catching Sirius’s madness.”

“It’s just -- we’re wizards. We don’t need a motorbike to cause an explosion, do we?”

Sirius’s eyes sparkled. “Oh Frank. This is the start of a beautiful friendship. You see, I’ve discovered I rather enjoy causing explosions. -- Boom boom.”

A smirk trembled it’s way onto Frank’s face as Sirius flung his arm about Frank’s shoulders with zest. “Boom boom,” he replied, and his eyes sparkled right back.

Ali closed her eyes, “Oh bloody hell.”