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Four Marauders, Safe and Sound


Peter held James’s arm ‘round his shoulder, supporting him all the way as they made their way along the path through the woods. James still was having trouble inhaling all the way - his chest ached severely and his face had a bruise along one side from some of the rougher treatment he’d been given. Bruises covered most of his arms, too, and Peter was very careful not to touch the places where it would hurt if touched him wrong.

“You were so brave,” said James in a raspy voice.

Peter said, “Only because you were brave first.”

James smiled. “We both were.”

“Sirius was, too,” Peter said, “And Remus. You should’ve seen them back at the Shrieking Shack. Remus was incredible.”

James asked, “What happened to Professor Veigler?”

“I dunno,” Peter replied. “He ran out the door and Rey went after him and that’s all I know.”

“I hope he’s okay,” said James.

Peter nodded, “Me, too. And Remus, too.”

“Yeah, especially Remus,” James said.

They arrived to the edge of the clearing in back of the Shrieking Shack and made their way through the snow, the shafts of morning light hot on their backs. Peter kept glancing back, kept half expecting Rudolphus Lestrange to appear before them or from behind them, but they seemed to be alone.

Peter helped James up the stairs and through the front door of the shack, “Careful, there’s a step there…” He felt better already, knowing they were so close to the tunnel that would lead to Hogwarts. Whatever else had happened, or would happen, they would be safe once they got onto the grounds of Hogwarts.

“My parents are going to kill me for losing my glasses,” James said, squinting around the dark shack.

“Do you have any spares?” Peter asked. James shook his head. “Well, I’m sure Dumbledore will be able to help…”

Peter didn’t want to hang about long. He hurried to the trapdoor and tugged it open before carefully helping James to lower himself into the tunnel. He jumped down behind him and was about to tug the door shut when a voice cut through the Shrieking Shack.

“Oh thanking goodness! Thanking goodness that you is here! Master Remus is be needing help!” Peter looked up and pushed the tunnel back open. In the front doorway stood a tiny house elf with big flapping ears and wide bulbous eyes. “You is needing to come with Tizzy! Quickly!” she cried.

Peter looked down at James, who was staring up from below. “Go on,” he said, “I’ll find my way to the castle from here... I won’t be any use to you out there anyway, I’ll just be an added problem with not being able to see… and it’s not like it’s much different with or without my glasses down here anyway.”

Peter nodded and slid back out of the tunnel, summoning the bravery he’d felt earlier (though it felt a good deal harder now that he’d been so close to safety again) and hurried to follow Tizzy out the door of the Shrieking Shack. The house elf beckoned him along, back across the snow to the line of trees and a little ways in, where a thick patch of brush covered the floor of the forest. “In here, sir, in here!” Tizzy said and she tugged Peter down by his Gryffindor tie, as though he were a dog, pulling him along under the jagged little branches. “I says to him he should be hiding in case of the bad guys is looking for him,” Tizzy explained. “Master Remus is be needing help and Tizzy was needing to go and find it for him because Master Remus is not able to be getting the help hisself!”

Peter crawled hands-and-knees into the brambles and there, under the brush, laid Remus. He was quite battered, though the places he’d been bleeding had dried up into crusty mats. He appeared to be asleep at first glance, but a second glance showed one of his eyes had swollen shut and the other was blinking feebly. Now that the adrenaline and strength of the wolf had left him, he was sore all over, his lips parched, and a thick bruise rising up across his nose. A fresh cut laid there, jagged and horrid, so deep it was sure to scar, stretching from his temple, over the bridge of his nose and onto the far cheek.

“Pete!” he gasped when he saw Peter crawling toward him, “Oh Peter, you’re here!”

Peter nodded, “Blimey - Veigler really got you good, didn’t he?”

Remus said, “Is it bad? It feels bad…”

Peter hesitated, “Not as bad as you might think.”

Remus closed his eyes, “I’m going to be horribly disfigured aren’t I?”

Peter said, “I’m sure it won’t be all that bad…”

Remus shook his head and he started coughing. He sat up a little bit and when he coughed a thick line of bloody phlegm came up and Peter recoiled from it as he spat it out onto the ground. Remus looked up at him, “I need Pomfrey.”

Peter nodded, “Yeah… definitely. Can you move?”

“It hurts like murder, but I think so,” Remus replied.

Tizzy danced foot to foot, “You is seeing that Master Remus is be needing help from somebody much taller than Tizzy in order to be walking all the way to the Shack or else Tizzy would have done!” said the house elf eagerly.

“Thank you Tizzy,” Remus said.

“Tizzy is be taking care of her masters,” she said, “It is what Tizzy is happiest to be doing!” She followed as Peter and Remus worked to get out from beneath the brush and brambles and Peter helped Remus up to his feet, helping to carry him along back to the Shrieking Shack. It was a good deal harder with Remus than it had been with James - only because Remus was taller than James and his arm didn’t fit nearly as perfectly over Peter’s shoulders. Plus, Peter was extra twitchy - the longer they were in among the trees instead of safely in that tunnel on the way back to Hogwarts, the more likely it was that Rudolphus Lestrange would catch up with them and drag him away back to the Dark Lord.

As the walked, Peter told Remus all that he knew about what had happened, which, considering he’d spent a good deal of it hiding in robe pockets, wasn’t really as much as one might have hoped.

Tizzy led the way along through the trees, all the way until they’d reached the Shack and Peter was opening up the door. She looked up at Remus with a worried expression, “Is you be needing Tizzy to follow to Hogwarts or is Tizzy being more helpful to go and tell Master Lyall what is happening?”

“Go tell Dad I’m alright,” Remus nodded. “Thanks, Tizzy.”

“Yes sir, Master Remus, sir,” she grabbed hold on his hand and stared up at him, “Tizzy is most glad you are okay, Master Remus. You is be meaning a great deal to Tizzy and to Tizzy’s Master Lyall and Tizzy is knowing that if anything was to be happening ot Master Lyall’s Remus that he would be most sad… Tizzy would be most sad, also, Master Remus. You are the most goodest master, Tizzy knows.” She looked up at him blearily.

“Thank you, Tizzy,” Remus answered, “You’re the best house elf I know, too.”

Tizzy smiled, flapping her ears happily. “Tizzy is be thanking Master Remus for being so good, so kind…” She curtsied deeply. “Tizzy is be going back to tell Master Lyall of Master Remus’s okayness.”

And with a crack - she’d gone.




James was stumbling across the grounds, his hands out before him, eyes squinting, trying to make out what the vague shapes he was seeing around him were. Students, mostly, and they looked at him with curious eyes, whispering to each other and gasping in surprise and horror as he passed by them. He stumbled on the stone steps and ended up crawling up to the entrance hall door. When he was inside the castle, he spread his palms over the stone, thankful to feel it’s cool touch, glad to be within the walls of Hogwarts, safe. He’d never expected to be here again.

“Bloody hell! What’s happened to you?!” It was Frank Longbottom’s voice that broke into James’s pleasure of touching the floor of Hogwarts. Frank was just coming out of the Great Hall - lunch having just ended - and he elbowed Andy Woodhouse and the two of them ran over to pull James to his feet, his arms over their shoulders. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital wing!” announced Frank.

“Who did this to you?” Andy demanded, looking him over, “You look a mess, mate.”

James nodded, “I feel a mess.”

“Was it the Slytherins?” asked Frank.

“No… no, it’s a long story,” James replied, unsure how much of what happened really needed to be public knowledge - if any of it did.

Luckily, Frank didn’t press it much further, and neither did Andy. They hurried to bring James up the staircases to the hospital wing, carrying him right in. Pomfrey looked up from The Healing Witch magazine and dropped it promptly onto the desk so quickly it was nearly comical. “Good heavens!” she cried, “What in Merlin’s name has happened?!”

James said, “It’s a long story…”

“Well I can see that it is! Quickly, over here… over here…” she ushered Frank and Andy in with James over to one of the beds in the ward and helped them to get James up onto the mattress.

Andy looked worriedly over James.

“Feel better, mate,” Frank said, frowning nervously.

“Yeah,” Andy agreed, “Before the next Quidditch match, if you could.”

James laughed, wincing at the pain that shot across his ribs as he did so.

Madam Pomfrey came rushing back and shooed the two boys out of the wing, turning back to James with a thick white bandage covered with some sort of blue goop. “This will help numb the pain,” she said, and she laid the patch down on a tray for a moment, reaching to unbutton James’s school uniform shirt, and pressed the patch to his chest, smoothing it with her palms. The blue goop, whatever it was, was miracle working and James thankfully took the first full breaths his lungs had accepted in some hours.




Upstairs, Sirius was sitting in Dumbledore’s office, tears in his eyes as he stared at his trainers, waiting… and waiting… and waiting… The waiting seemed to be taking centuries. It seemed he’d been out in the Shrieking Shack with Dumbledore another lifetime ago, rather than mere hours, and he wondered what had become of his friends, of Professor Veigler, of headmaster Dumbledore. Where was everyone, what were they doing? Was Remus okay? All the bites and snaps that Veigler had gotten in had looked pretty nasty… and he still had spatters on his uniform, stained with Remus’s blood.

At least he’d have a new excuse for why he wasn’t wearing his uniform next time he was in Professor McGonagall’s class, he thought.

Suddenly the door opened and Dumbledore walked into the office, stowing his wand into his pocket as he did so.

“Professor,” said Sirius, quickly standing up, “You’re back.” He stared up at the Headmaster with a hammering heart, but found relief in that Dumbledore’s expression was calm and smooth. “Are they alive?”

Dumbledore nodded, “Yes,” he said. “I’ve only just confirmed it with Poppy. Remus and Peter arrived minutes before I did and James arrived nearly an hour ago.” He settled himself into the chair behind his desk with a sigh, “Ohhh Sirius, what a day it has been. What a day!”

“What a couple days, more like,” Sirius said. He ran his hands over his face, shaking his head. He paused, “What about Professor Veigler?”

Dumbledore hesitated. “I’m not entirely positive,” he admitted, “Though I do have my suspicions that I am still waiting for a confirmation on.”

“Do you think he’s alive?” Sirius asked.

Dumbledore nodded, “I believe so, but I do not know for certain.” He looked Sirius over carefully. “Why did you do it? Why did you leave the grounds?”

Sirius looked down at his lap for a moment, then he looked up at Dumbledore sincerely, “Remus couldn’t find you. You’d left. Veigler was in trouble… and… he was scared.”

“That is fair enough an answer for why Remus left the castle, but you, Mr. Black, why did you?”

Sirius shrugged, staring up at Dumbledore, “I dunno, sir… I couldn’t let Remus go it alone.”

Dumbledore nodded slowly, “A good enough answer.” He ran a hand over his beard, smoothing the whiskers.

There was a knock on the door - a timid little sound, and Dumbledore called, “Come in.” The door creaked open and Sirius turned in his seat to see Peter step inside shyly.

“Peter! You’re alright!” Sirius cried out.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Peter said.

“And Mr. Potter and Mr. Lupin are in Madan Pomfrey’s care?” Dumbledore asked.

Peter nodded.

Dumbledore smiled, “Well, then. There you have it. Four Marauders, safe and sound and back on the grounds of Hogwarts.” Dumbledore looked quite pleased with himself. “Of course, there’s the need for the full story to be pieced together… and for that, I’ll need each of your versions…” He looked at Sirius.

He left out important bits, of course, in the telling of his tale. Such as anything to do with Snuffles (which unfortunately left some big gaps in the how of tracking down James and Peter). Peter, too, had a large gap to explain, too, by leaving out becoming a rat - like how he’d got away from Fenrir Greyback in the first place, only to end up a good distance away, rescuing James. But overall their versions were enough to please Dumbledore who nodded at the end and leaned back in his chair.

“Sir,” Sirius said when Peter had finished, “Where is Greyback and his cronies now?”

Dumbledore sighed, “Well, unfortunately, Mr. Black, we have very little to show for what happened. Other than you four, of course. We apprehended one of the Death Eaters, but only one. The others all disapparated when it became apparent that they could not win. Rudolphus Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback never showed back to the cave, but the aurors are thoroughly searching the Forbidden Forest for any signs of them, and I would say it is safe to assume that they’ve both disapparated away by now. We have doubled security around the grounds of the castle, and cast several measures over the town of Hogsmeade as well.”

“Who was caught?” Sirius asked hopefully.

Dumbledore shook his head, “It was not your father.”

Sirius sighed and looked away.

“However, the auror Moody has been informed of what occurred in the Shrieking Shack,” said Dumbledore, “Which makes your father a wanted man.”

“Unwanted, more the like,” muttered Sirius.

Dumbledore smiled sadly, “I am very sorry that you must go through what you have. All of you have shown a good deal of bravery this night. Now, I know you are tired and I am sure you’re all quite hungry… I will have the kitchens send up sandwiches to the hospital wing.” Sirius looked up at Dumbledore in surprise. “You don’t think I didn’t know that’s the first place you were going to go the moment you left my office?”

Sirius smiled.