Chapter 4
“Dora, I’ve brought the papers you needed,“ Regulus stepped into the small hut to find his friend, chatting vivaciously with-
“-It’s a shame he has to leave for the week. I mean, I’m glad he’s made progress with those thieves, but I could finally duel with him at my full potential!”
“And all you needed was a pair of glasses!”
The Red Knight and Pandora were sitting at the table, eating pie and laughing so amicably that Regulus wondered for the first time if those two had actually met before, and had been pulling a prank on him by pretending they had never seen each other.
“Oh my!” Pandora exclaimed when she finally noticed him, dropping the slice of pie she was holding and covering her mouth full of crumbs. She got up hurriedly to greet him.
“Come in, come in! I was chatting with James, here,” So it’s James now, huh? “And I completely forgot you were supposed to visit.”
“I gathered that,” Regulus said, gritting his teeth.
He really didn’t need that knight distracting his Pandora, not now that they were finally going somewhere with their research. Well, they were still pretty lost, but at least they had a semblance of a trail, somewhere they could start from.
And if they wanted anything more, they couldn’t afford tea parties with blind knights.
“James gave me his mother’s recipe and it’s amazing!” she explained, leading him to the table and offering him a seat. James cut a slice of pie and offered him some.
“Try some, mysterious man whose name Pandora won’t tell me,” James commented.
Regulus had a mean comment just on the tip of his mouth, but it was hard for him to be mean in Pandora’s home (and he did have a sweet tooth), so he decided against sarcasm and in favour of the dessert.
“So?” the knight asked, expectantly.
It was delicious: soft, sweet, still warm from the oven. He was used to the Court’s fine meals and Pandora’s…experimental cuisine, but this pie fell into the ‘food definitely made by a mother whose secret ingredient is love’ category.
Not that he had any other examples, given that his Mother never cooked, but he did have an imagination.
“It’s fine,” he replied. Then he handed the papers to Pandora. “Dora, I got you those essays you asked for. We need to talk about our research,” then Regulus added, raising an eyebrow, “Alone.”
Then he took another bite of pie (the knight seemed to appreciate it), leaving Pandora to her pondering.
“Are you sure we can’t tell him? I think he might turn out to be a good resource,” she concluded, nodding towards James.
“Do you need help with something?” he immediately asked, so eager to be useful.
“Like you could be of any help to us, knight,” Regulus rolled his eyes.
“Don’t be mean under my roof!” Pandora swatted his arm.
“I’m not being mean, I’m being realistic,” Regulus covered the spot Pandora had slapped with a hand.
“We’re barely getting started, how could he help?”
“Getting started with what?” James inquired, again.
Pandora looked at Regulus.
Regulus shook his head.
She batted her eyelashes, but he didn’t budge.
She gave him another look, but Regulus still wasn’t convinced-it was hard not to see any Godric’s Knight as an enemy, given how he was raised: his Mother had always detested the Gryffindor Kingdom, for unknown reasons that dated back to the Great War.
So, had it been anyone else, he would’ve been way more rigid in his resolution.
But it was Pandora.
“Whatever,” he conceded. “If he ends up ruining everything, I’ll kill him.”
“Yay!” Pandora cheered.
“Excuse me-“ the knight looked like he regretted getting involved, much to Regulus‘ satisfaction.
“We’re looking for ways for a human to become immortal. Do you know any?” Pandora uttered, excited.
“No? Why would you want to become immortal?” James asked, taken aback.
“I surely don’t,” whispered Regulus, “And I want to make sure no one else can.”
“Immortality is bad,” added Pandora, shaking her head with finality.
The knight looked like he wanted to ask for more information, but the silence stretched long enough to change his mind, apparently.
“Are you sure you don’t know anything?” Pandora continued with fervor. “Legends, myths, anything?”
“Sorry to disappoint, but none of the stories I know include immortality. Also,” James said, “I thought your thing was, like, nature and science. Why do you care about folk tales?”
“There’s always some truth to them, knight.” It was Regulus that answered him, a heavy determination in his voice.
Actually, it probably wasn’t determination, but despair.
Fuck it, he’d take anything if it got him closer to finding out the key behind immortality: popular rumours, ancient legends, unreliable manuscripts. Anything. He was desperate, after all.
“I’m sorry,” James said, and Regulus could almost believe him. “I can’t help you. Magic is beyond my field of knowledge.“
“It’s not something a knight is required to know,” Pandora shrugged, and they all fell into a brooding silence, broken only by the occasional clack from the fireplace.
Magic.
Red Knights were usually trained since childhood, and Regulus was quite sure that the Assembly provided the trainees with adventure books, stories about honour and bravery, dragons and damsels in distress, to encourage the image of the noble, fearless knight as an ideal to aspire to.
Nature, with its plagues, famine and calamities, wasn’t feared by the rich, aristocratic knights, no. The common folk dreamt of escaping Nature’s laws, avoiding illness, physical pain, the old age.
Death.
This desire to make up for humanity’s natural flaws was at the base of medicine, and the reason behind the sprout of so many ‘witches’ in the areas where authorised doctors weren’t available, where most of the commoners lived.
Regulus had an idea.
“Maybe we should ask a witch, then.”
~
Under the Gryffindor Kingdom’s jurisdiction there was, of course, the City.
In the City lived the majority of the residents, from the poorer commoners to the richer nobles, and although life there wasn’t perfect (as it rarely was, anywhere) Sirius didn’t aspire to live anywhere else. In the City, one can find anything they need, from the best products sold at the market to the leisurely activities and the shows sponsored by the Assembly. And it was safe, too, since the Knights Headquarters rose inside the City itself, on the West.
It was perfect.
Under the Gryffindor Kingdom’s jurisdiction there were also the territories just outside the City, near the Forest.
Part of these territories, around the walls of the City, were committed to fields and even mansions for those who wanted to spend their summers in the quiet countryside. Sirius wasn’t a big fan of this particular lifestyle, too calm and repetitive for his adventurous spirit, but he could understand the appeal of tranquility.
And then, almost under the Gryffindor Kingdom’s jurisdiction, there were the villages hidden in the Western part of the Forest. ‘Almost’, because those areas were only formally part of the Kingdom, but the Assembly thought them too dangerous to take care of. No one actually lived in the Forbidden Forest anymore, and those who did were outlaws and criminals-it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
So, Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised when Moony, Cherry and Wormtail led him in the woods as soon as the night fell. They were making way amongst the branches, following a path only they knew.
“We have to get him changed,” Wormtail was blabbering, blonde hair ruffled by the nocturnal breeze. “They’ll eat him alive if they see the armour.”
“I kinda want to see it,” Cherry threw Sirius an evil grin.
“Let’s go to Rosie’s,” Moony decided, looking straight ahead. Cherry whistled gleefully.
“I bet she has something to cover him up.”
Sirius was still mad about getting involved in this stupid plan, but the silent treatment he had been giving the criminals wasn’t really successful-he suspected they hadn’t even noticed it.
“The Three Broomsticks are just around the corner,” Wormtail said, probably to Sirius, considering the three of them where completely at home between the bushes, the trees and the hidden criminal-meeting-spots.
Where Wormtail saw this corner in the middle of the forest, Sirius had no clue, but he followed nonetheless.
The pub was old at best, and decrepit at worst. From the outside, it looked like a small wooden cottage, with broken windows and a big sign that almost read ‘T-e Thr-e B-roo-s-icks’.
Despite its abandoned appearance, a loud buzzing and a soft yellowish light came from the building.
Sirius followed the three, who entered the pub as if it was theirs, completely ignoring the other clients, that Sirius was quick to recognise as criminals (unsurprisingly, he’d add)-he was quite sure he had read about some of them in Alice and Frank’s reports.
Sirius felt eyes on him, many eyes, but he stared back, bold, challenging, like he wanted to pick a fight; probably because he really wanted to: he had never had the chance to actually kick a criminal’s ass, and this looked like his best chance.
A couple of people shifted in their seats, glowering like dogs, and Sirius grinned at the thought of starting a fight.
“Cut it,” Moony whispered to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Almost like under a spell, all the people in the building reluctantly lowered their gazes, leaving Sirius alone and appalled.
“Are they that scared of you?” Sirius asked.
“They’re not scared,” Moony corrected him, and he looked almost offended. “We’ve helped most of them, one way or the other. They’ll leave you alone as long as you’re with us,” he paused. “We’re thieves, not monsters.”
“You are killers,” Sirius replied, leaning on the counter. Cherry was banging on the wood, calling for the owner of the pub, a certain Madame Rosemerta.
“Whatever you say, Black,” Remus sneered.
“Rosie, it’s us!” Wormtail yelled, reaching behind the counter to steal a few grapes.
“I know, I recognised Marls’ banging from the first floor!” shouted a woman, jumping down the stairs two at a time, the hem of her skirt lifted.
“Good evening, my sweethearts!” she greeted, pinching the cheeks of the three bastards as if they were her children.
“Who’s this pretty boy? He looks…” Rosemerta studied Sirius for a second, her expression turning to confusion and slight disgust. “Knightly. What is he doing here?”
“He’s a friend,” Moony began, making Cherry snort, “We need to change him into something more like…us. Do you have any spare clothing?”
~
Moony, Cherry and Wormtail had spent the past hour coming up with outifts for Sirius, yet it had took them only five minutes to make him wish the room on they were using as a changing room had a window he could jump from.
Cherry had given him enough wolf whistles to make Sirius want to smother her with the ridiculous fur hat he put on for outfit number five that Moony had insisted he tried on ‘because it might get cold at night’.
Sirius realised, perhaps a bit late, that the man had been giving him absurd pieces of clothing from the big, odd-smelling trunk, only to have Cherry laughing at him like a fool.
Wormtail was the only one who seemed to actually want to help, but maybe Sirius thought so because he couldn’t figure out whether he was giving genuine advice or was very good at sarcasm.
Madame Rosemerta laughed at their antics, coming up from the ground floor every now and then with food and drinks.
“Have you had enough fun yet?” Sirius burst out, coming up from the wooden screen he had been dressing behind. The room fell quiet, Moony, Wormtail, and Cherry turning towards him with wide eyes and half dressed up.
“This one doesn’t look too bad, actually,” commented Wormtail.
“Who gave you a decent outfit? I was just about to suggest this scarf thingy!” Cherry complained, shaking what looked like a dead, furry snake.
“I picked it out while you were busy pretending to be a jester,” Sirius replied. He’d searched for the most practical items, keeping his expectations low in terms of fashion, but the result wasn’t as bad as he expected: a white laced shirt, a cloak, pants just slightly too long and a belt for his sword.
“Jester,” mocked Cherry, “Don’t bring your royal lingo into the woods, darling, you have to fit in.”
She looked at him up and down.
“You look hot, though. I hope you get some sort of fungus or rush from that shirt.”
“Delightful,” Sirius pressed his lips into a thin line. “What now?”
“Now,” Moony got up from his stool with the help of his crane, which was weird, considering Sirius hadn’t noticed any limping when they were in the woods.
“We go downstairs, get drunk, and enjoy our last night before the mission.”