The Marauders Spirit
“Where’s the rat?!”
“What??”
Sirius had slapped his hands on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, shoving some kid out of the way so he could get in front of Ron Weasley. Ron looked terrified; he was pale, wide-eyed. Sirius didn’t give a damn.
Peter was gone. He was nowhere on the map. Sirius had watched it for an hour, scouring every centimeter of the map, and Peter never appeared on it.
“We need your rat, Scabbers,” Harry said - apparently trying to be the ‘good auror’ to Sirius’s bad.
Sirius didn’t understand Harry’s determination to make the same friends he had before. Sirius didn’t think Ron or Hermione were all that great of friends, why Harry thought it would be better the second time was beyond him. It was a problem for another time though, sometime after they fucking found Peter.
“Why do you want Scabbers?” Ron asked. He swallowed hard and looked between Sirius and Harry quickly. “You - are you trying to do some sick experiment on him?”
“What?” Harry reeled back, surprised by Ron’s immediate and ignorant assumption. “No, we—”
“Tell me where the rat is or I’ll experiment on you,” Sirius told Ron, seething. The other students near Ron scooted away, but Sirius could see his older brothers standing up and moving to see what was happening.
Sirius liked Fred and George, despised Percy, and he would hex them all if they tried to stop him from finding Peter.
There was no bloody way that Sirius Black got bested in a duel by Bella, fell through a veil that took him back in time, and Peter escaped for a second time.
“I don’t know! But you leave him alone!” Ron cried. “Scabbers is a good rat, don’t you dare hurt him!”
“What’s going on here?” Percy asked with all the pompous idiocy that Sirius expected of him. Sirius swore that he was puffing his chest out to show a badge that Sirius didn’t give a damn about when he put a protective hand on Ron’s shoulder.
Sirius swore loudly and colorfully as he pushed himself off the table and stormed from the room. Ron didn’t have Peter. Peter wasn’t in Hogwarts, not in any of the hidden entrances or tunnels.
He was gone. Peter was gone.
“Siri! Wait!” Harry was jogging to try and catch Sirius and he was the only person in any world that Sirius would slow down for.
It did nothing to ease the anger in Sirius’s chest that Peter was gone though and Sirius spun on Harry the instant he was close enough.
“We should have killed him!” Sirius yelled. He pointed at Harry and knew, he bloody well knew, that it wasn’t Harry’s fault. But Harry was there and Peter was gone and Sirius was dead and hated.
“What are you on about? We’ve been here one day!” Harry held his hands up and stared at Sirius with big eyes. “We can’t kill him if we can’t find him.”
“I meant before!” Sirius swung his hand out to shove the suit of armor beside him, needing to hit something that wasn’t Harry. Sirius was pissed and he wasn’t going to ruin everything even more than it already was.
“When before? In the Shack?” Harry looked around and stepped closer to Sirius, too damn brave. “Is that what you’re on about?” he whispered.
“Yes!” Sirius backed up a step and clenched his hands in fists at his side. He scowled fiercely at Harry even while he tried to tell himself to stop. “You should have let us kill him and none of this would have happened!”
Shut up, Sirius. Shut the hell up.
“You’ve got to stop screaming about killing people,” Harry hissed at him. “Maybe, just maybe, Pettigrew heard you because all you do is yell and he ran off.”
“Which wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t followed me in the veil!” Sirius snapped, finally letting that fly. “Why would you do that? Huh? What’s wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” Harry did take half a step backward, physically being pushed away by Sirius’s vile anger. “You’re mad I followed you? What was I supposed to do with Lupin saying - saying you were… that you were dead?”
“LEAVE ME TO DIE!” Sirius yelled. When he swiped out again and knocked the suit of armor over with an echoing clatter, Harry grimaced and took two more steps away.
“You don’t mean that,” Harry said once the reverberating clatter was gone. Sirius couldn’t look in Harry’s eyes, in the wetness he could see building or the quiver to his lip.
Sirius turned his back on him and said nothing at all. What was there to say? That Harry restarted his damned life because he couldn’t stand the idea that Sirius wouldn’t be a part of it? That they lost Peter and he would probably bring Voldemort back once again?
People were going to die because Sirius fell through a veil and Harry chased after him? Sirius wasn’t careful again and it was going to get someone killed again?
It didn’t need to be said, Sirius knew they were both thinking it.
Harry stomped away after a moment too long, just as he should have done in the ministry.
Sirius ruined things, it didn’t matter what he called himself. To his very soul, he was always going to just be himself.
With most of the castle at dinner and Harry probably in the wrong common room, Sirius went back outside with the map. It was still activated and Sirius pulled it out to look over as he walked aimlessly.
It was the most complicated bit of magic that Sirius and the other marauders had ever pulled off. Their first effort had been rubbish, they had only charmed it to the occupants of the castle themselves. When new students arrived and they saw they weren’t showing up on the map, they had to restart.
James had been the one to think of linking the map to the castle itself and the entire grounds. It took months to find out how to do it, months of research and testing of wards and charms to link the map to them, but they eventually did it.
Peter had drawn most of the map, Sirius and James set the wards up, Remus had cast the incantations to infuse a bit of their personalities in the map.
That reminder had Sirius immediately sitting on the ground, unintentionally in sight of the Whomping Willow which had once been the meeting spot for the marauders.
“Mischief Managed,” Sirius said, tapping the map with his wand. It cleared away instantly and Sirius swallowed before he tapped it again. “Talk to me.”
It only took a second because the creators of the map had been at least half as brilliant as they thought they were:
Mr. Moony would like to demand why Mr. Padfoot is using the wrong spell. Mr. Moony did say that perhaps it was too many words for some mischief makers to remember.
Mr. Prongs kindly requests that Mr. Padfoot not use the map while intoxicated on illicit potions as it leads to poor decisions, see photographs of Mr. Padfoot’s hair in year three for proof.
Mr. Wormtail—
Sirius wiped his face and began folding the map before ‘Mr Wormtail’ could say anything. It would be an insult to the injury that the rat already dealt him by disappearing, Sirius was sure.
It was unfair, Sirius being given a second chance at a life that he didn’t deserve anymore than James did. In fact, Sirius deserved it much less than James… James had been the one who grew up, who made all the right decisions.
James was the best of them and it was the worst two who were given a second chance to make the same mistakes—
One moping by a tree and reading insults from the friends he no longer had, the other back on the run after causing the death of the best one.
It wasn’t right and Sirius didn’t know how to fix it.
Sirius fell backward and stared up at the sky as guilt began gnawing at him.
Fixing things probably didn’t involve screaming at Harry, blaming him for not killing someone years ago. It didn’t involve being angry at Harry because Sirius didn’t understand why Harry would follow him. Harry didn’t know that they’d end up in 1991, they could have both died a horribly painful death for all he knew.
How did Sirius repay him? By shoving things and screaming at him. Sirius blamed Harry for Peter scurrying away as if it wasn't Peter’s one great talent: escaping danger.
It took some time before Sirius rolled on his side then slowly climbed to his feet. If Sirius wanted to do things right, if he wanted to make any kind of life… he was going to have to apologize.
Sirius dragged his feet on his way back to the castle. Dinner had ended, curfew might have even began. Circe, Sirius didn’t think he would ever have a reason to need to —
Sirius stopped all at once when he was struck by sudden inspiration.
What good was an apology without a gift? And what would be the best gift Sirius could give Harry?
James’s invisibility cloak.
Sirius turned on his heel and felt a stirring of excitement as he pulled the map from his pocket and began planning. The first thing he would need was… Peeves, in the boys restroom on the sixth floor.
Perfect.
Sirius went through tunnels and secret shortcuts to get up to the sixth floor without running into any prefects or professors. Snivellus was patrolling the dungeons, Minerva the first floor. There were a pair of prefects, including Percy Weasley, on the third… each floor had at least one prefect or professor patrolling which only meant it was going to be an impossible challenge.
Those were the best ones really.
Before he snuck from behind the moon phase decorated tapestry on the sixth floor, Sirius cast a disillusionment charm and silencing charm on himself. There were only two prefects on the sixth floor (or maybe an errant couple considering they had been in the empty staff room for quite some time) and Sirius was able to slip in the bathroom unnoticed.
Peeves must have been stuffing the toilets because Sirius walked in to water covering the floor and toilets spraying straight up in the air. Sirius cackled and Peeves flew through one of the stall doors, upside down, and cackled right back at him. Sirius didn’t bother removing his disillusionment charm, he knew Peeves could see him perfectly fine with it on.
“Icky sticky Blackie!” Peeves snickered, spinning in tumbles before Sirius. “Shouldn’t a little firstie be sleeping sweetly in his little bed?”
“Probably.” Sirius grinned, forgetting how much he had once loved collaborating with Peeves. None of the other students could stand him, but that was because they didn’t bother appealing to Peeves in words he understood: mischief.
The more mayhem, the happier the poltergeist.
“I wanted to see if we could make a deal?” Sirius asked, pulling his wand out and twirling it for show. “You help me get in Albus’s office, I’ll owe you three spells of any sort at any time.”
“Oooh!” Peeves stopped his spinning, which had been making Sirius a bit dizzy, and his face spread in a smile so wide it would have ripped a human face in half.
“Little Blackie learned some tricks from his Papa Blackie!” Peeves laughed and rubbed his hands together. “What do you want in Dumbley-dee’s office, Little Blackie?”
“I’ll add a fourth spell for you to help me even if I won’t tell you,” Sirius said, much too used to Peeve-speak. If Sirius told him it wasn’t his business, Peeves would get offended and tell the whole damn castle that Sirius wanted to break in the Headmaster’s office.
“Five spells or Peeves goes straight to Dumbley-dee and tells him your nasty little plan.” Peeves held out a hand to Sirius, “Don’t lie to me, Little Blackie, you won’t like what happens to lying little firsties.”
Sirius reached out and let Peeves pump his hand up and down while Sirius moved his to mimic a handshake.
“On my honor as a maker of mischief,” Sirius said solemnly. “Alright, Peeves, here’s what I’m thinking…”
Sirius had never pulled off a prank as grand as it would need to be to steal a priceless heirloom from the headmaster, but Sirius refused to fail.
For once in his damn life, Sirius refused to fail.
The beginning of the plan went off just fine. Peeves distracted the gargoyles while Sirius unlocked the complex charm on the door. It meant that Sirius needed to first release the trick charm, the one that would alert Albus to the door being opened.
Sirius had seen Albus taboo Grimmauld Place, it would be more of the same charms and wards. There might be a hex or two involved, but Sirius didn’t think Albus would want to injure children breaking in his office as the entire Order had been fine doing to anyone trying to infiltrate their headquarters.
Peeves continued arguing with the gargoyles, playing word riddles and demanding an audience with the Headmaster. Sirius had already checked the map before they set off to the office, but he checked it once more when he had the tangled web of spells and wards removed.
Albus was still in his bed and Sirius kept his eye on that labeled dot as he slowly pushed the office door open. Sirius took two steps inside and nothing… Albus didn’t so much as move.
Grinning, Sirius leaned out to wave at Peeves, giving him the thumbs up that the first step of their operation had been successful.
“Fine! Be some meanies and Peevesie will cover you in beanies!” Peeves waved his hands and caused a mini-storm of beans to begin raining down on the gargoyles until they were both covered in baked beans.
Peeves blew himself backward with a loud raspberry and Sirius started sneaking up the staircase while the gargoyles grumbled to each other in a foreign tongue about Peeves. Sirius kept one eye on the map while he carefully walked up the stairs.
All Sirius needed to do was find the cloak, undo any enchantments protecting it, take it to Harry… not get caught. It sounded harder than it would be, Sirius was sure.
Sirius stopped at the top of the staircase and put his ear to the door, waiting for Peeves’s signal for Sirius to enter. All Peeves needed to do was get the portraits fighting about something they all felt passionate about that they wouldn’t notice one lone, disillusioned, student creeping about.
It took no time at all before there was a knock on the door, three quick raps, and Sirius was able to enter.
“HOW DARE YOU?” Old Headmaster Everad howled as he whacked Phyllida Spore over her head with his cane. “A SOFT OPTION? NECROMANCY?! IT WOULD STILL BE HERE IF THAT BOY IN 1802 HADN’T CREATED INFERI!”
“WISPY NONSENSE!” Undercliffe thundered as he pulled on the flowers weaved in his beard in distress. “NECROMANCY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AN OPTION IF ALCHEMY HAD NOT OPENED THE GATES!”
Sirius walked through the office, entirely unnoticed by the bickering portraits, and sat himself in Albus’s chair. Harry had asked about the cloak that morning… which meant that it had to have been on Albus’s mind.
Slowly, Sirius looked around the office at all the trinkets and cabinets, the many bookshelves and enchanted items that could be used for a great variety of purposes. There were too many options, it could take Sirius hours to search every nook and cranny, he needed to try and think like Albus.
Why did Albus have James’s cloak? Sirius hadn’t thought much about it before, but it didn’t make any sense to him. That cloak was bloody priceless in every sense of the word, Sirius suspected it was linked clear back to the Peverell brothers, the youngest one that sired the Potter line. James should have had it with him… he had kept it tucked beneath Harry’s crib mattress since the day he was born…
“It’s silly, I know…” James had just laid Harry in his crib and he paused to touch the silken material of the cloak where it was tucked. “It saved our arses so many times, maybe it can save Harry if he needs it.”
Sirius didn’t think it was silly, Sirius thought that Harry was the most important person and if the cloak could add one more layer to his protection then it was no laughing matter at all.
“So why…?” Sirius trailed off in thought while he continued looking around the office.
Albus wouldn’t want it to be hidden, because then he would be hiding the cloak from its rightful owner. Albus liked to think that he was benevolent, never malicious.
The cloak wouldn’t be overtly hidden, but tucked out of direct sight, somewhere like…
It didn’t click for Sirius until he scanned the corner cabinet from top to bottom, his eyes lingering on the stained glass front. There was a green shine behind the glass, one that Sirius thought might be a pensieve.
A pensieve was a great tool to use to look over old memories, to look for patterns or proof of suspicions.
If Sirius had a magical cloak that was important enough to take from a family being directly targeted by Voldemort, he would want to have more than just the cloak: he would want to remember all the times it had been used and its effects.
Sirius was careful to give Peeves a wide berth as he crossed the office. Peeves looked busy applying Talbert’s Tacky Glue to the spines of all of Albus’s books and Sirius thought it was best to leave him be.
The corner cabinet had its own charms weaved in every panel of wood and glass. It was more ancient and extensive than even the Headmaster's office door had been and Sirius had to pause twice to check the map to make sure Albus was still asleep while he worked.
Sirius didn’t understand why the pensieve cabinet was protected more than the office itself. There weren’t common charms on it, but many that felt sticky and thick as Sirius unraveled and pulled them away.
There were three cabinets and Sirius started at the top, opening it and holding his breath.
Nothing. Only an ornate and stone pensieve that was emptied but had a dozen vials with glistening memories stored inside.
The second cabinet was disappointing as well, all that Sirius found was a stone, one that reeked of ancient and heavy magic. It was a deep red and glittered with what looked like flecks of gold, it had to be powerful, important. Without proper time to check it for curses, Sirius didn’t even bother even trying to touch it, as enticing of a thought as it was.
It was the third cabinet where Sirius struck gold. Neatly folded inside, just as pristine as it had been the day that Sirius first saw it, was the Potter family invisibility cloak.
Passed on from father to eldest child for centuries, Sirius was all too happy to take it from the cabinet and cover himself with it so that he could return it to the proper owner.
Peeves reminded Sirius once more of the bargain they had struck before they parted ways and Sirius hurried himself down to the dungeons.
The high of a successful mission had Sirius grinning to himself as he skipped down corridors, hopped over cracks, even let out a merry whistle or two. It had been a mad day, when Sirius considered it.
Had it just been twelve hours since Sirius woke and thought his biggest issue was seeing boys change in front of him? Had Sirius truly had a fit over Pomona Sprout not vehemently denying the innocence of Sirius Orion while Peter slipped out of his fingers once again?
Sirius truly needed to sort his priorities. There was a professor with Voldemort possessing him in the school and Sirius had been worried about if any of his old teachers thought he truly betrayed James or not?
There was quite a bit to do if Sirius wanted to do as Harry said and keep Voldemort from returning, keep people from dying. The two of them could stop a war, they could. Sirius and Harry…
They could stop a war if Sirius could stop being an utter wanker.
It was quite a heavy ask of him though, as it hadn’t yet happened in his first chance at life. Sirius rather hoped that Harry would be up for dealing with him.
If he followed him in a veil, then Sirius had to hope that a single fight wouldn’t drive them apart already.
Sirius was busy enough with his silly hopping and skipping that he actually hopped right past Harry in the corridor with their common room. It took his brain a second to realize that it was Harry who was sitting against the wall and then he backtracked.
For a second, while Harry couldn’t see him, Sirius paused to just look at him. Harry was sitting against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, and his fingers tangled in his hair. Sirius couldn’t see his face, it was hidden in his knees, but he saw the force of which Harry was tugging at his hair.
“Careful, you’ll go bald doing that.”
Harry jolted and looked right at where Sirius was, though Sirius knew he could see him until he pulled the cloak off in a dramatic flourish.
“Ta da!” Sirius folded it a bit hastily and offered it to Harry, who accepted it slowly.
“I was going to say I was an arse and I’m sorry, but I thought that an apology without a gift was useless really. So… I got that for you.”
“Did you steal it?” Harry asked, running his fingers over every inch of the cloak without looking away from Sirius.
“Yeah, obviously,” Sirius drawled, grinning at the small smile that was beginning to show on Harry’s face. “It wasn’t likely that Dumbledore would hand it over to me. You might not have heard, but my father was a murderer, you know.”
Harry laughed quietly and held out a hand that Sirius was quick to grasp so he could pull Harry to his feet.
“If you do mad things like break in the Headmaster’s office, people might mistake you for a Gryffindor, you know.” Harry tugged lightly on Sirius’s tie as he mocked him and that was that.
They’d eventually need to talk Harry following Sirius through the veil and what they planned to do about Peter and Voldemort and all the other rubbish. It was alright for a night though, they couldn’t exactly go back in time again to stop Peter from escaping Hogwarts.
Probably.
Best to not find out what happened if time-travelers traveled back in time again.
“Why were you in the corridor?” Sirius asked when they crossed the last bit of the walk between where Harry had been at and where the entrance was for the Slytherin rooms.
“I forgot the password,” Harry admitted sheepishly. “It’s a mouthful, isn’t it?”
“Harry…” Sirius stopped and gestured to the stone door, specifically to the silver snake carved on it. “Just tell it to open up? Why are you bothering with the password? You’re the one bloke in the castle who doesn’t need it.”
“I don’t?” Harry blinked at Sirius and Sirius knew that he wasn’t pretending, he honestly hadn’t known that he could open the door at any time.
“You think Salazar Slytherin bothered with passwords?” Sirius asked. He stepped to the side so Harry could do his bit of magic. “Go on then, give it a go.”
Harry seemed embarrassed and Sirius couldn’t guess why. It was an odd gift for him to have, but handy. If Sirius had been a Parslemouth then he’d have been pranking the Slytherins twice as often when he’d been a student.
“Er…” Harry leaned toward the door and started hissing. Nothing happened at first, then the stone snake unwound its body and the door clicked open.
“See?” Sirius started to walk past Harry, who held the door open for him. “No passwords… uh…” Sirius stopped right inside the door and saw that even if it wasn’t all the Slytherin students, a good portion of them were awake and gawking at where Sirius and Harry stood in the doorway.
Harry whispered a very quiet swear and shifted his cloak behind him when Fawley approached them slowly with her eyes wide.
“Did one of you just use Parsletongue?” she asked, looking more at Harry than Sirius.
Sirius didn’t know if it had echoed in the common room or if there had been something that alerted them that someone had opened the door without the password. All Sirius knew was that suddenly Harry pushed him lightly by the small of his back so that all eyes were on Sirius.
“Sirius did,” Harry lied loudly. “Neat trick, huh?”
The others certainly thought so. There was a silence and then an outbreak of awed whispers and hushed conversations while fingers were pointed and Sirius’s name flew around the common room.
“Good one,” Sirius muttered to Harry as they slipped past the outbreak of chaos to get to their dorm.
“I got enough of it my second year,” Harry said, much too cheerfully. “I thought it should be your turn.”
Sirius pushed Harry playfully, Harry pushed him back, and they had their arms tossed around each others shoulders when they slipped in the dorm.
“Defense tomorrow,” Harry reminded Sirius after they changed. Sirius had jumped on Harry’s bed, deciding to lay there until he was tired enough to sleep.
“Is Voldemort a good teacher?” Sirius asked, a joke. “You’d think he would be, right?”
“If his mouthpiece didn’t stutter.” Harry took his glasses off and tossed them on his bedside table while his cloak was stuffed under his pillow with his wand. Harry also pulled the blanket back enough that Sirius could crawl up and they could lay on their backs beside each other while they talked quietly.
“What do you think we should do about that?” Sirius mused quietly.
“We could unwrap the turban and terrify the entire student body,” Harry said. When Sirius quickly looked at him, he saw Harry was grinning so it was probably a joke.
“Or I could just burn Voldemort out of Quirrel’s body,” Harry added when he saw Sirius watching him. “I can’t imagine we need to drag it out to the end of the year.”
“We’ll sleep on it,” Sirius said, stifling a yawn. He closed his eyes and settled in like a child waiting for a bedtime story. “Tell me about your first year,” he asked.
“Alright then…”
Harry told Sirius about the events of his first year at Hogwarts until they both passed out, much past midnight. Something Harry said bothered Sirius and he couldn’t place what it was… something about the stone that Voldemort had gone after…
A blood red stone with flecks of gold in it…
A stone that woke Sirius up in an instant once his brain made the connection.
Why the hell did Albus ever move the stone from his office to a magical obstacle course? One that, clearly, wasn’t half as difficult to get past as the wards and charms on Albus’s office door and cabinet?
Sirius sat up, the room still dark around him, but his mind now racing. He replayed Harry’s words over and over, his instincts screaming that something was off. Why would Albus go through all the trouble of hiding the stone in a way that a group of first-year students could navigate?
He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that there was more to the story than what Harry had been told. And Sirius, having spent years in Azkaban contemplating every move and every detail of his past life, knew better than to ignore his gut.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Albus, one of the most powerful wizards alive, wouldn't make such an obvious mistake. It had to be intentional. But why? To lure Voldemort out? To test Harry?
Sirius’s blood ran cold as he considered the implications. What if Harry’s first year had been orchestrated not just by Voldemort’s return, but also by Albus’s careful manipulation? What if Harry had immediately been used as a pawn in a much larger game, one that Albus had been playing all along?
He needed to find out more. The Order had always trusted Albus Dumbledore implicitly, but maybe it was time to start asking questions. And Sirius Orion had never shied away from asking questions… it was clearly going to be a trait that he passed on to his son.