Flight 703

Marlene stumbles over her feet as the man pushes her forward through the jungle. He's holding her wrists, which he ziptied shortly after placing the bag over her head. "Where are you taking me?" she asks, again.

But again, she is met with no response, and he shoves her forward again. Through the bottom of the bag, she can see a sliver of light and she feels the tall grass against her pants.

The rain has let up, but it's still sprinkling, which makes the bag damp and hard to breathe through. Marlene stops again to try and catch her breath, but she's met with yet another shove. "Give me a second, Christ," she says leaning forward to get the bag off her face and taking another shaky breath.

"We're almost there, keep going," his Yorkshire accent comes through strongly in his speech, and a flicker of nostalgia comes over Marlene as she remembers her mother, who sported a similar accent.

They walk in silence for another five minutes or so when suddenly the man pulls her to a halt. Marlene feels him bend over and hears the sound of something sliding. He stands and guides her over before saying, "step down."

Marlene does as he says, moving her right foot around until she feels the earth drop and she bends her knee to meet it again. It takes a little bit, but eventually they reach the bottom, and the man pushes her forward again. The light she could see from the bag opening isn't as bright anymore, and it feels like dirt underneath her now.

He turns her around a corner and suddenly he grabs her shoulders, spins her around, and pushes her down into a chair. He pulls the bag off her head, and she takes a deep breath, but instead of fresh air, she's hit with the deep smell of dirt. As her eyes adjust, they shoot around the room, taking in everything.

As she expected, they are underground, with the floor and ceiling made of dirt. There are wooden support beams on the walls and ceiling, and the floor has banana leaves and bark covering it. The room, although leaning towards the burrow side of things, also has more modern furniture.

The armchair she's sat in is weathered, but sturdy, as is the couch on the wall to her left. There's a table in the far-right corner with various trinkets scattered across it and a bookshelf on the wall across from her filled with books. There's an archway to her left as well, next to the couch, but she can't see anything on the other side.

The man lays the bag on the back of the chair she's now in and leaves the room, down the hallway they entered from. Marlene furrows her eyebrows and starts moving her arms, trying anything to undo the zipties binding her.

She scans the room again and sees a knife on the table across the room. She casts a glance back over to the hall before standing and quickly moving across the room. She turns so her arms are facing the table and leans back, trying to grab the knife. She extends her fingers and finally feels it, so she pulls it to her and moves back over to the chair. She maneuvers the knife to be between her wrists and the zipties before the man returns. He's still wet from the rain, but she can see him more clearly in the light from the lanterns positioned on the wall.

His face is stern, and his eyes are cold, investigating her bag which he took when he tied her hands. "Hungry?" He asks dryly, holding up one of the many mangoes from inside. He checks the other pockets, to find nothing, so he sets the bag down by the bookshelf and moves to sit on the couch.

Marlene finds herself looking over at the hallway again. Slowly, she saws at the ties behind her. "Don't," the man's voice draws her attention back and he is staring at her. "The hatch is locked, there's no point in trying to run."

"What do you want from me?" She asks, making herself keep his gaze to look less intimidated.

"You'll see," he says looking her up and down before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pocket watch. She watches as he pops it open and looks over it intently. While he's distracted, she pushes the knife a little harder into the zipties and tries to slow her racing heartbeat.

Caradoc pulls his backpack straps up and looks around while the rest of the group stops to take a break. "Should we turn back?" he asks the group turning to face them.

Amelia lifts an eyebrow and stands up. "Why would we go back now? We don't have enough water for everyone to get through tonight, and we still haven't found Ethan."

He holds his hands out, "I'm just saying, it's going to be dark soon."

Fabian stands up and joins them, "He's right, it's already going to be hard enough to find our way back after the rain washed our tracks away."

Amelia looks up at the sky, watching a few droplets fall. She sighs. "I'm not going back until we've found him." With that, she pulls her own bag up and walks through the trees. Caradoc rolls his eyes and hurries after her, the others following.

Remus walks alongside Sirius who looks over at his limp leg. "You alright?" He asks and Remus looks over.

"Yea, hurts, but it's fine," he says, looking back down at the ground.

Sirius sighs and looks ahead at the group. "If you're hurting too bad, we can turn around."

Remus shakes his head. "I said I'm fine. Besides, you wouldn't be able to find your way back without Caradoc or Fabian," he says, and Sirius feigns a chest pain catching Remus' eye again.

"You wound me, Remus, truly." This gets a small smirk and Sirius smiles to himself as they continue behind.

Amelia trudges through the mud and the wet grass, and Caradoc jogs up to walk beside her. "Why are you doing this?" he asks her, looking up at her through his hair. 

"Doing what?"

"Why are you so adamant about finding this kid? Did you know him or something?"

"No," she says keeping her eyes ahead, scanning the ground for any sign of Ethan or a water source.

"So why are you doing all this for some guy you didn't even know? I dunno it just seems kind of-"

"I told his cousin I would find him," she says, cutting him off.

He brushes the hair out of his face and sighs. 

"I told him I would find Ethan, so that's what I'm going to do." 

"But why do you have to?" He presses and she stops, turning to face him. 

She scans his face, and he squares his shoulders, waiting for an answer. The others walk by Remus slowing to see if they need anything. Amelia waves a hand and offers a small smile, and he continues on. 

Caradoc shrugs, "Well?"

She looks back at him. "I have to keep my promise." She says and he shakes his head.

"That's not all, there's something else bugging you, and we don't know when or if we'll be rescued, you can't just keep this stuff bottled up. You can talk to me." He says, gesturing with his hands and she lays a hand on her head. "Amelia-"

"Look, there was just a promise I made that I didn't get to keep before," she explains, and he looks at her. "Back before we crashed, and like you said, we don't know if we're even going to get off this sodding island so excuse me if I want to right a few wrongs!" She throws her hands up in the air and starts off again before Caradoc grabs her arm. 

"Thank you," he says.

"For what?"

"Making it feel like I'm stuck with another real person, instead of a bunch of emotionless robots," he says, and let's go, walking away.

Amelia stares at him for a moment before relaxing her shoulders and following him.

Regulus wakes up with a throbbing pain in his head and he groans. He feels like he's swaying, as if he's on a boat, and he moves a hand up to his head. As he does, he feels something warm on his forehead, just above his eyebrow.

He opens his eyes to see dark red staining on his fingertips.

He can feel himself shake the tiredness away as he stares at the blood. He takes a shaky breath and turns his head. He's in the plane, but it's not moving anymore. Instead, he's upside down, buckled firmly into his seat.

He can feel his heart begin to race as he looks to the aisle seat next to his to see that it's empty. His throat is dry, and he's sweating. His torso hurts, and he looks up to see a few gashes running along his stomach and he winces.

He looks further up the seats to see a few people also in the same predicament as himself. He tries to call out for them, but his throat is so dry, that all that comes out is a hoarse attempt.

His hand trails upward to where his seatbelt buckle is and he fumbles with it for a minute, but his fingers don't have enough strength to pinch the sides to pull them apart. His breathing is ragged, as he twists to look behind him. There are a few more people, but the closer he looks, he can see that their bodies are limp.

Their arms are dangling above their heads, and their necks are slack. Regulus feels chills run down his spine as he looks forward, seeing the same fate has befallen the people ahead of him.

Sweat drips off his nose as he moves his hands back up to the buckle, struggling with it again as he pulls his head up to look at it. He grinds his teeth when all of the sudden, a click sounds from behind him. He whips his head back to see the bodies still hanging there. He is about to turn back around to mess with his belt more when he realizes that there is a body missing from when he looked the first time. There were four people behind him, but now there are only three.

He looks around the fuselage frantically, searching for the person who was once behind him. "Where are you?" he asks quietly, his voice barely getting traction from his vocal cords. After a few minutes, he doesn't hear or see anything else, so he drops his head. The heat is getting to him, making him see things. 

He closes his eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and shakes the crazy thoughts from his head. 

Don't be ridiculous, just undo the damned seatbelt.

He opens his eyes and is met with the face of a man directly below him. He gasps and pushes himself back into the seat. The man's face is cut up, the gashes running deep, and his mouth is agape as he stares up at Regulus. The man's eyes are wide, and his eyebrows are raised, creating a horrifying expression.

Regulus squints his eyes, as the man's mouth moves slightly. "What?" he whispers.

Just when he thought the man's eyes couldn't possibly open any further, they do, practically protruding out of his head. 

"It's all your fault!" He screams and stands up, wrapping his bloody hands around Regulus' throat. He chokes out, staring at the man's face which is upside down from his perspective, and he wraps his hands around his attacker's trying to pry them off of his throat. "It's all your fault, Arcturus! You got him killed!" The man's spit flies across Regulus' face as he shouts, throttling him back and forth. His breath begins to fall shallow, as his vision blurs. "It's your fault!"

"Regulus!"

"Regulus!" James shouts, gripping his shoulders tight as he shoots up from the seats he was laying on. He takes multiple deep breaths, holding his throat as James falls back onto the sand. "Christ, mate, you scared the hell out of me!" He says, looking up at him.

Regulus coughs and looks over at James. "What happened?" He rasps out and James grabs a water bottle for him. 

"You were having a nightmare, I guess, and it looked like you were choking." He says, handing him the opened bottle. Regulus grabs it and gulps it down, coughing some of it out.  "Are you okay?"

James looks at him, setting the bottle cap on the makeshift table next to them. Regulus leans back against the cold metal wall, clearing his throat. "Where's Peter?" He asks, trying to change the conversation.

James looks over to Peter's empty bed. "Alice took him to walk around, he was going stir-crazy in here," he explains, looking back at Regulus, who is looking down into his hands. "Regulus, are you okay?" 

Regulus shakes his head. "I'm fine, James." He says it so quietly, that James almost misses it. It was the first time he addressed him by his name. James smiles to himself and sits back on his bed. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, crossing his legs under him.

"No," Regulus says bluntly and James nods.

"Okay, so what do you want to talk about?" Regulus looks up at him.

"What?" 

"Come on, I'm bored out of my mind in here, and Frank won't let me leave until my head heals up more." He says, tilting his head to the side.

Regulus rolls his eyes and can feel a small smirk grow on his face. He sighs, "What do you want to talk about?"

James smiles. "Do you like sports?"

Marlene leans back into the chair, appearing to be relaxing when in actuality she's leaning the zipties further into the knife. The man is sitting at the table, tinkering with his pocket watch, using small screwdrivers to investigate the insides. 

She kicks herself mentally. Why did she hold her hands too tight together when he tied them? Why did the knife have to be so dull? Why did she chase that stupid bird?

Running through the questions in her mind, she hears the hinges on the hatch open down the hallway. She turns her head, towards the entrance, but the man doesn't move. Distant footsteps grow closer as she turns slightly to hide her hidden knife from the new arrival. 

Just then a man turns the corner and Marlene gasps. She looks frantically between the two, confusion riddling her face. The new arrival smiles a little bit and tosses his pack onto the couch.

"I'd forgotten how much I've missed seeing that reaction." He says and the man at the table laughs to himself.

"But- you- You're twins?" Marlene stumbles over her words looking at the identical men in front of her. The new man nods and sits down on the couch, looking at Marlene.

"My name is George," he says, and she moves her eyes to the other man. "And that's Fred."

Marlene closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I- I don't understand who are you? Were you on the plane?" Fred laughs and George shoots him a look.

"No, Marlene, we weren't on the plane," George says and Marlene snaps her gaze back to him.

"How do you know my name?" She asks, and the man stands up and moves over to the bookshelf. 

"Marlene McKinnon, age 25, you were born in Yorkshire, like us. You were on Allico Flight 703 flying from Liverpool to Boston. You were in seat C15." He lists off and Marlene's jaw goes slack.

"How the hell do you know all that?" She asks, sitting up straighter. 

He pulls a white binder out of the bookshelf and turns the cover to her. On the front it says in big green letters; 

Allico Flight Manifest 

Flight 703

She shakes her head. "Where did you get that?" He tosses it on the table next to his brother.

"Found it in the jungle, after watching your plane fall from the sky."

She feels her heart beat faster. "You watched us crash?"

George nods, gesturing his arms above his head. "We were out hunting and heard this deafening sound from above us. We look up to see your plane plummeting down and ripping in half before we lost sight of it through the canopy." Marlene drops her eyes to the floor, remembering the crash. Before she lost consciousness, the screams she heard were horrifying. She remembers the old lady next to her grabbing her arm for dear life after pulling her oxygen mask on. She looks down to see the fingernail imprints still indented into her skin. Her skin crawls remembering seeing the dead bodies on the beach and in the fuselage.

"Oi, you still with us?" George snaps a finger and Marlene snaps her eyes back up. 

"If you were on the island before us, how did you get here?" She asks and Fred drops the tools he's holding on the table before standing and staring at his brother. She watches silently as Fred, storms off into the other room to her left. 

"Don't mind him. It's a... hard thing to talk about." He rubs his arm before sitting down on the couch again.

"Well, I want to know." Marlene insists, readjusting the way she's sitting.

He sighs, looking at her. "Alright. I'll tell you." Marlene nods her head. "Right after you give me the knife."

Caradoc wipes the sweat from his brow and looks up at the sky to see the sun setting slowly in the distance.

"We really should be turning back," he calls out to the group and they all stop and turn to him. "Either that or we make camp here."

Sirius nods and lugs his backpack off. "I'll go try to find some dry wood for a fire." Remus tosses his bag to the ground also.

"I'll help," he says and they head off into the trees.

Amelia sits down on the ground and takes off her trainers, slowly stretching her ankles.

"Y'alright?" Fabian asks, sitting down next to her.

"Yea, twisted my ankles a few times, probably should've worn better shoes," she explains, gesturing to her worn footwear. Fabian nods and lifts his pant leg to show his hiking boots.

"We'll need to find you a pair of these," he says and she smiles.

"Definitely."

Benjy and Caradoc are talking a ways away, pointing back towards the beach.

Amelia finds herself staring at the sky, and Fabian nudges her arm.

"What's up?"

Amelia shakes her head. "They should've found us by now. I just don't get it," she says, picking at her nail polish.

"I mean, there are a few reasons, that could be why they haven't come yet." He says.

"What do you mean?" She asks, pulling her shoes back on.

"Well, the machinery might've malfunctioned, the communications could have broken before the crash, it could be anything really," he explains and Amelia sighs and nods.

"Right, let's just hope whatever it is doesn't stop them from rescuing us for too long." Fabian smiles.

"It's not all that bad." Amelia cocks an eyebrow at him. "I mean, the island is beautiful. We could've crashed in quite a few worse places. We should be grateful, for what we got."

"Grateful?" Amelia snaps. "Our plane crashed, Fabian! People died. We have only been here two days and we've already run out of fresh water. Oh, and we're stuck here with a bloody monster, that killed one of us!" She gets up and the others look over, seeing what she's yelling about.

"That's not what I meant," he says, standing up.

Amelia shakes her head and walks to the other side of the campsite. Caradoc comes over to Fabian.

"Everything okay?" He asks and Fabian shrugs.

"I'm not great with making people feel better. I'm so used to animals." Fabian says, rubbing a hand on his neck.

"Hey!" Sirius comes rushing back into the campsite, and everyone looks over. "Grab your bags! Come on!" He waves an arm toward where he just came from.

"Where's Remus?" Benjy asks, picking up his pack.

"He's fine, but come on, you'll want to see this!" He ushers, grabbing his and Remus' bags before taking off through the trees again.

They all exchange a look before following.

They break through the trees to find Remus standing in front of a giant rock hill, with a huge waterfall flowing down it. They all gape at the sight, taking it in, in the golden light. Benjy cuts through the silence with his laughs, rushing over to the pool, grabbing handfuls of water, and pulling them into his face. The others follow suit, filling bottles and washing themselves with the clean water.

Caradoc stands near the overhang with Sirius, filling their bottles. "This is great. How'd you guys find it?" Caradoc asks running a hand through his hair.

Sirius smiles, looking over at him. "It was honestly unintentional. We were just looking for firewood, but we could hear the water flowing so we followed it." He extends an arm. "Then voilà!"

Caradoc laughs, closing the cap on another bottle.

Amelia and Benjy laugh down below, splashing each other with waves of water while Remus and Fabian collect firewood to make camp closer to the water.

Fabian walks by and catches Amelia's eye. He gives her a small smile. "Told you it's not so bad."

Marlene leans back in the chair, watching George flip the knife he confiscated from her in his hand.

"Are you going to tell me how you both got here now?" She asks and he looks up.

"It's not exactly easy to understand," he cautions and Marlene smiles.

"It has to be better than knowing nothing about you." She counters and he lays the knife down on the couch next to him.

He stands and grabs something from the table. He then walks over to her. "Stand up."

"What?"

"Stand up," he says again, motioning his hand upward.

She looks at him up and down, before standing up slowly. He turns her around and pulls his own knife out of the sheathe on his belt. Her face falls and she struggles against his hands. He holds her wrists tight and quickly pulls his knife through the zipties.

She relaxes and runs her hands across the sores the ties created on her wrists.

He throws the zipties into a bin on the floor and holds out what he grabbed from the table to her. It's a golden necklace with a circular pendant in the middle. She gives him a confused look before taking it carefully.

She rolls it in her hand looking closer she can see that the pendant is split into three individual pieces; circles that turn within each other. Inside the inner piece, is a small hourglass filled with pale sand. On the outer two rings, is an inscription:

I mark the hours, every one.
Nor have I yet outrun the sun.
My use and value unto you,
Are gauged by what you have to do.

"What is it?" She asks looking over the necklace.

George sits back down. "It's called a time-turner," he says gesturing to it.

"A what?"

"It's a timepiece. It lets you travel through time."

She stares at him for a minute before rolling her eyes. "Right. If you didn't want to tell me, you could've just said that." She tosses the necklace back to him.

"I'm not lying." He says, twirling the necklace in his hands.

"Okay, sure, and I'm David Bowie," she remarks and George raises an eyebrow.

"Who?"

"Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't know who that is!"

"I really don't," he shrugs.

Marlene doesn't know what to be more shocked about. His audacity to lie about something so serious, or the fact he doesn't know her favorite artist.

"It's quite simple to understand, but I guess for a muggle it's confusing," he says tilting his head to the side.

"What did you just call me?" She asks raising her eyebrows.

"It's not offensive-" he pinches the bridge of his nose. "It's a term for people with no magic."

"Magic?" she scoffs and George sighs.

He stands, placing the necklace on the table again before turning to her. His eyes scan hers before he holds out a hand.

In an instant, a bright white light emanates from his palm, making her squint her eyes. Through the light, she can see something forming. Her mouth falls open a little bit, as the light becomes a physical form. Hopping slightly in George's hand is the bird from earlier. Her eyes shoot up and he is smiling down at the bird.

"How did you just do that?" She asks, standing from the chair and walking in front of him.

"Magic." His response is so blunt and sure takes Marlene aback.

"You're serious?" She looks down at the bird which looks back at her. It looks so lifelike for being made of light, and she can feel George's eyes on her.

"Are you ready to believe me now?" He asks, grabbing her hand, and letting the bird move over to her.

She smiles slightly as the creature ruffles its bright feathers in her hand. She looks up at him and nods.