Rotten To The Core

“Guys hurry up, the limo’s  here we gotta go” Regulus said, watching the others frantically trying to fit things into their bags. There was a distant shout slowly coming closer to them until the Queen of Hearts stormed into the room, looking for Mary.

“There you are!” she said. “You are not going, if you get in that car there’s going to be problems. Mary- MARY!” Mary grabbed Marlene by the wrist, and ran for the limo with their bags still open, slamming the car door behind them as they got in. The Queen of Hearts followed close behind, banging on the window of the car, still shouting until eventually she just gave up and left, muttering as she walked away. Regulus turned to look at Remus, who didn’t look nearly as happy as the girls. Regulus knew Remus didn’t want to go, and to be completely honest neither did he, but they had no choice. And now that his mother had her mind set on this plan, there was nothing he could do. 

“Thank you.” he said, causing Remus to look up, confused.

“For what?”

“For everything. For understanding what's at stake here for me. For going along with it even though you obviously don’t want to. Just, thank you” Regulus was struggling, he was never too good at telling people how he really felt, but he was really trying. Because Remus deserved it after everything he had done for Regulus. Remus just smiled at him and with an arm around his shoulders, led Regulus to the car. 

The girls were sat on the far side, talking and laughing amongst themselves, so Remus and Regulus sat along the side of the limo. It wasn’t until they had sat down and started looking around that they saw the wall of food. It was all rainbow colours and various shapes and sizes. It looked like the girls had already found it because they both had some kind of stick in their hands with something crystal-looking along it. Remus dove in, grabbing something square and brown, whereas Regulus went for the little rainbow things in a bowl. He took a couple and, hesitating, put one in his mouth. It was soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside and it tasted like fruit but way sweeter. They were amazing. He went to grab more and looked over to see that Remus had taken the whole box of the brown square thing and was eating it like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He already had a brown smear around his mouth and as he ate it was getting worse and worse but Regulus didn’t have the heart to interrupt him when he looked so happy. He stuck to the little rainbow things, taking a big handful to keep in his lap. 

Just then, the car rumbled and started moving. They were actually leaving, and Regulus was nervous. One, because they were responsible for eventually breaking down the barrier and setting the villains free. Two, because he had never been in a car before and didn’t entirely trust it. And three, because when he got to Udiria, he was most likely going to see Sirius, an interaction he had been playing over constantly in his head. He wanted to see his brother so bad but also hated him for leaving him with their mother. There was a lot he wanted to say to Sirius, most of it bad, but after all the hard stuff was over, they could be brothers again. And that's all Regulus really wanted. He looked out the window, and saw that where they were driving, there was no road. It broke off just after the barrier. 

“Uh, guys? There’s no road.” he said, fear creeping into his voice. 

“It's a trap!” Mary shouted, and as they approached the end of the road, they all screamed, grabbing onto each other for dear life. But what they didn’t expect was for a golden path to appear as they left, expanding before their very eyes. And just like that, they were out of the Isle. There was no going back now. They all stopped screaming, realising quickly that they were ok. They were just a few minutes drive away from Udiria, a few minutes drive from the wand, and a few minutes drive from Sirius.