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Who is the Boy?


Sirius stuck his head up from the trap door in the basement of Honeydukes. It was quite dark, the crates still and quiet. He raised his lighted wand and looked about. Out the squat little window in the far corner of the room, he could see pale blue moonlight reflecting off the snow. “Alright,” he whispered, and he climbed out, holding the door open for Remus to climb through. They closed the door, careful to leave it just barely ajar, jamming a small box of chocolate frogs under the edge of it so that they would be able to get back into the tunnel quickly if they had need of it. Sirius nodded, leading the way to the creaky stairs and Remus followed along. They climbed up them and gingerly pushed open the door, stepping into the little shop.

Honeyduke’s was a magical place during the day, filled with sparkling sweets and laughing voices. At night, it was a bit of an obstacle course, with all the various buckets of cockroach clusters and jelly slugs about. They made their way carefully through it, not wanting to raise their wands too high and attract attention of any passersby. After all, they had no intentions of getting caught and touted as thieves in the store when they were only passing through.

They reached the door and Sirius aimed his wand, “Alohamora,” he whispered, and they stepped into the cold winter night outside.

Remus huddled closer to SIrius, nervously looking about the dark street, lit only by the pale moonlight. The moon was close enough to full that Remus could feel his skin prickling from it, his heart rate picking up. Every muscle in his body was sore, and he wished desperately that he’d taken along some of the aconite leaves Professor Veigler had given to him.

There was not much of anybody on the streets, but even so, Sirius insisted that they use the invisibility cloak borrowed from James’s trunk. They flung it over themselves and began walking slowly down the streets. They passed the Three Broomsticks - just as Bilius Weasley was tripping out the front door of the place, singing Henry the Eighth again, as he’d been doing last time they’d seen him. Sirius hesitated for a moment, contemplating giving Bilius a talking to, but he could feel Remus’s anxiety building with each passing moment, and he knew that talking with Bilius Weasley would lead to much more than just a pause… so they left Bilius to stumble back to his room alone.

They snuck down a side street and there was the Hogshead pub, with its gory severed-pigs-head-on-a-platter sign looming creepily up ahead of them. As they approached, a man in a long black cloak came out, and hurried away in the opposite direction, toward the end of the street, which turned into a path that ran away into the woods. “Who was that?” whispered Sirius.

“Dunno,” answered Remus.

They got real close to the pub and Sirius went over, boldly standing on his tip toes, trying to see through the dirty windows to check if Dumbledore or Professor Veigler were inside, but the windows were so caked in smudgy dirt and age that they were impossible to see through. Sirius looked at Remus and said, “I can’t see a thing.”

“Maybe we should go inside,” Remus suggested.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Sirius agreed.

So they snuck around to the door of the pub, holding the cloak close around them, and they waited until the next time it opened up. It was Hagrid, carrying a bundle up in his arms. “Yer goin’ ter haf’ter go in ter my coat now,” he said, tucking the bundle into the top of his moleskin coat gently, “It’s very cold out here an’ yer not needin’ ter freeze yerself. It’s a bit nippier than in Greece yer know…” He cradled his hands around the lump in his coat as he stood in the doorway, the heat of the pub blowing out around him. Sirius and Remus had been lucky it’d been Hagrid, for they had plenty of time to go in, look around and see Dumbledore and Veigler were no where to be seen, and duck back out before Hagrid had finished his whispering to the three headed dog he held to his chest in the door frame.

Sirius and Remus, back on the street, watched as Hagrid went on his way, singing a funny lullaby that made his voice warble as he sang.

“The land of the Gurg where the flowers grow
Tis the land where one day we’ll go
‘Tis the place yer been seein’ in yer dreams
One day she’ll return, the missing Queen
The land of the Gurg where the waters flow
Tis the land where one day we’ll go”

“What kind of song is that he’s singing?” Sirius asked, liking to think himself a connoisseur of music.

Remus said, “Well Gurg is the word for King in Giant-speak. Sounds like it might be a giant lullaby.”

“Odd... Anyway, Dumbledore’s not here, mate,” said Sirius.

Remus looked heartbroken. “I don’t know what to do! What do we do? Sirius, you always have a plan, please! You have to know what to do!”

Sirius sighed and looked around. “Alright, hang on. Let me think... C’mere.” He pulled Remus along into an alley beside the Hogshead. They stood there in knee-deep snow, Remus shivering, teeth quietly chattering, as Sirius thought. “Ok, it’s not much of a plan, really, but -- maybe Snuffles will be better equipped to track him down. I’ll change and see if I can smell him. Just follow me, I guess.” He ducked out from beneath the cloak and he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and changed into the shaggy black dog.

After pushing his nose at Remus’s invisible palm for a moment to comfort him - Remus’s anxiousness was just that much worse to Sirius’s senses now that he was a dog. The energy surrounding him was palpable with fear. Snuffles sniffed about on the ground for a moment, rooting his nose through the snow. He went around the front of the pub, walking about for a few moments, sniffing along the pathway. Then he paused and he doubled back, then turned the other way again, walking circles for a moment. Remus watched, shivering by himself under the invisibility cloak and wishing that he’d worn his Gryffindor scarf.

Finally Snuffles seemed to have found a trail and they were walking quickly down the path towards the forest.




“Do you reckon his big nose gets in the way when they’re snogging?” James asked Peter as they climbed the stairs, on the way back to Gryffindor tower.

Peter nodded solemnly, “Yes, of course,” he said. “Probably comes close to pecking her eyes out at least once a session.”

James laughed, “Probably! Only one of the many dangerous things about snogging with a chap like Severus Snape!” He ran his fingers along the rails of the stairs as he walked, his face a scowl. He wished Sirius was there - Sirius would’ve been way better at making fun of Snape than Peter was and right then James wanted to make fun of Snape more than anything else in the world.

They reached Gryffindor tower and climbed through the portrait hole and headed up to the dormitory. James pushed the door opened, expecting to find Sirius in there, at least, but the room was empty. Sirius’s record still spun on the table, needleless and silent. James looked around, eyebrows creased with worry, as he noticed that their cloaks were also absent. Peter didn’t seem to notice their mates were missing, he was climbing onto his bed with the books he’d borrowed from Madam Pince for his History of Magic assignment. James spotted the note and snatched it up from the bed.

“Bloody hell, they’ve left the castle,” he said.

“What?” Peter looked up.

“Rey and Sirius,” James said. He waved the note for Peter to see, “They’ve left us a note. Apparently Veigler left the castle and they’ve gone to find him, they’ll explain later.” James looked at Peter nervously.

“That’s not good,” Peter said.

“I can’t believe Remus allowed it,” James said, “He’s usually better at stopping Sirius and his crazy ideas…”

Peter looked scared, “Where did they go?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“What if they have a run-in with those terrible spiders?” Peter asked, shivering with fear at the thought of Aragog and his offspring.

James took a deep breath, “Dunno… Blimey, they should’ve waited for us. Four is always better than two…” He paced nervously, and, because the movement of it was driving him mad with his anxiety heightened, James grabbed Sirius’s record off the turntable and tossed it onto his bed. “We’ve got to do something.”

“What’re we supposed to do? We don’t even know where they went,” Peter argued. He had his books already open on his lap.

“We’ll figure it out. They can’t have got far and there’s only so many ways out of the castle without being seen. They probably went to the Shrieking Shack.”

Peter looked scared, “But that’s where he - he becomes a wolf,” he said.

James nodded, “Yeah, but it’s not the full moon, so he’s not turning tonight.”

Peter glanced at the window warily. “It’s bloody close. What if it’s just enough and it pushes him over?”

“It won’t, that’s not how werewolves work, mate.”

Peter looked profoundly nervous. “It’s after hours now, how are we supposed to get all the way down to the Whomping Willow without getting caught? They probably went when it was still okay to be out in the corridors.”

“You git, we’ll take the invisibility cloak.” James jumped for his trunk, shoving it open and -- “Where the hell’s the cloak?” he asked, frantically digging through his things.

“Maybe they’ve taken it,” Peter said.

“Then we’ll use the Marauder’s Map and be sure Filch isn’t coming our way,” James said, diving for Remus’s bed. But the Map wasn’t under the mattress where they always kept it, either. “Bloody hell, they’ve left us defenseless. How are we supposed to follow them without the Map or the cloak?”

Peter looked a little bit relieved, “Maybe they didn’t intend for us to follow them.”

James’s eyes were very solemn as he looked over at Peter. “That’s not how friendship works, mate.”




Dumbledore moved swift and silent through the forest, his wand lit low and keen senses searching… searching… He’d lost the tracks he’d been following a few feet into the trees, where the snow became sparse and eventually died away with the canopy of the trees to protect it. He wasn’t sure if leaving Fabian Prewett behind at the Hogshead had been the wisest choice. Now that he was in the dark, there was enough of a foreboding feeling sinking through the air that even Dumbledore felt nervous, though one would never know it by looking at him for how steadily he moved.

Ahead of him in the dark, something moved and he paused, stepping close to a tree. “Nihil videre,” he whispered and he tapped his wand to his nose, crouching low. The effect of the spell was nearly instant… Dumbledore suddenly blended nearly entirely with the tree behind him, only a slightly shimmering outline that only the sharpest of eyes would see remained visible. He held very, very still.

Bane stepped through the trees, his strong black body and black hair nearly as invisible as Dumbledore in the darkness. He paused in the pathway and breathed deeply. “Albus,” he said.

Dumbledore stood up, “Videre,” he said, tapping his nose again with his wand, flickering into view again. He looked up at Bane, “You’re skills are most magnificent, as always, Bane,” the headmaster said.

Bane asked, “Why are you in the forest?”

“Four men have just come this way,” Dumbledore said, “Am I correct?”

Bane nodded. “But you interfere with things that are not yours to interfere with. The stars have foretold this as it is and you cannot dream of stopping what the fates have divined.”

Dumbledore stared up at the huge centaur, “Can’t a man dream of anything?”

“It is not wise, Albus,” Bane replied. “Stopping this now, tonight, will set forth a far more sinister path, with so much more blood to be shed before it ends. It will curse those whom you seek to save tonight and their lives will be forever haunted by the repercussions. Tonight, you would lose the one - tomorrow, you would lose the lot.”

Albus tried to work out the words Bane spoke - but the centaur knew far more about the future than Dumbledore and there was no way to divine exactly what the centaur was promising would come to pass.

“If I can change the divinations of the fates this once,” Dumbledore said slowly, “Then I can change it again tomorrow.”

“Eventually, there will be no changes to be made,” Bane replied. “And tonight… tonight there is much to lose. I am afraid you don’t understand how many lives are in trouble if you continue to try to save the Boy.”

Dumbledore shook his head, “I refuse to allow Sirius Black to be led to slaughter.”

“It is not Sirius Black you seek to save,” Bane said.

Dumbledore blinked, “But - but Ned said --”

“The werewolf was wrong,” Bane said, “He read the signs incorrectly.”

Dumbledore looked up at the centaur, “Tell me what the truth is. Who is the Boy?”

Bane stared at Dumbledore, the struggle of wanting to helping the old Headmaster and of wanting to protect the secrets of the centaurs battled in his eyes. Finally, he said, “Peter Pettigrew.”

Dumbledore’s eyes clouded with confusion, “Pettigrew? How --?”

“The stars have spoken, Dumbledore… and the stars are rarely wrong.”