The enchanted forest and its many visitors
6th year present day:
The lake was still.
A slab of black glass, barely breathing. Sirius sat hunched on a flat rock, fingers twitching as he lit the joint with the tip of his wand. His hands smelled like ash and Remus. He’d scrubbed them already, but it clung. Stuck under his nails, soaked into his cuticles.
He shouldn’t have taken that vial, not right before the game, shit.
His lips were dry. His jaw hurt from clenching.
6:30.
James would at the pitch soon, lacing his boots like it was the World Cup, wondering how long Sirius supposed detention was taking.
6:35.
Sirius pressed the joint to his lips again.
6:50.
He should get up. He should care.
Instead, he took another hit. Exhaled slowly. Let the smoke curl past his cheekbones like fog over gravestones.
The frost hadn’t melted yet. His boots left pale half-prints in the hard earth as he paced a slow line between the lake and the tree line. His blood felt too warm, like it was fermenting inside him. The joint was nearly gone, and the high that had soothed his little panic attack at breakfast. But the edges were blurry. He liked that.
Crack.
A sound—sharp and brittle—snapped through the silence like a snapped bone.
Sirius froze.
Another rustle followed. Not the lazy shuffle of an animal, not the stiff stomp of Filch’s boots. It was fast. Frantic. Erratic.
He palmed his wand, squinting toward the woods.
And then he saw it.
A figure—small, slight—running through the trees. No. Limping. Stumbling. One hand clutching something tight to their chest. Their other arm was dragging behind at a wrong angle.
They were wearing Hogwarts robes. Blood on the hem. Clear as day.
Sirius’s heart slammed against his ribs.
“Oi!” he shouted, voice sharp, cracking. “You alright?”
The figure didn’t turn. Didn’t look at him. Just kept going. Head down. Mouth open like they were screaming—but no sound came out. Nothing reached him.
He stepped forward, wand slipping into his hand out of instinct. Still high, yes, but he knew what he was seeing.
“I said—”
The forest swallowed them whole.
Gone. Just like that. Into the fog curling low over the dead undergrowth. The trees trembled. Then stilled.
Sirius stood frozen, heart thudding unevenly in his throat. He waited. One minute. Two. His breath steamed in the cold. No birds. No wind.
Nothing.
Just the lingering image of a bloodied child vanishing into the woods like a ghost.
Sirius didn’t think.
He took off after them.
Boots thudding against the frostbitten ground, lungs burning as he crashed into the trees. Branches clawed at his jacket, cold air slicing his throat raw. The joint slipped from his fingers somewhere behind him, forgotten.
“Hey!” he shouted, wand gripped tight in his fist. “Mate your hurt!”
No answer. Just the sound of something crashing deeper into the trees.
He pushed harder, ducking low branches, eyes straining through the fog. It got darker the deeper he went, like someone had drawn a curtain across the sky. The trees here were older. Denser. The kind you didn’t notice on school walks, because you weren’t supposed to be this far in.
“Lumos,” he muttered. Light flared at the tip of his wand, trembling slightly with the shake in his hand.
No footprints. No blood. No path. Just fog.
And then—again—that sound.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Three quick cracks. To the left. Then behind. Then ahead. Like something was circling him.
Sirius stopped short.
His heart was hammering now. Not adrenaline—fear.
The light of his wand flickered. Once. Twice.
“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered. “You’re high. It’s nothing. It’s—”
He turned.
There was a shape between the trees.
Not the same one. Taller. Still. No face. Just… an outline. Watching.
The air dropped. All the way down his spine, cold like ice water.
Sirius took a step back. Then another.
The shape didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.
The light sputtered again—then went out.
Darkness.
Thick. Choking. Like something alive.
And then—just as quickly—nothing.
The shape was gone.
So was the path.
He turned in a slow circle. The trees looked wrong now. Closer. Like they’d moved while he wasn’t looking.
“Shit,” he whispered.
The high was gone.
All that was left was the cold.
And the feeling that something had just watched him walk straight into a bloody trap.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Peter chimed, shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth with all the grace of a troll.
Remus didn’t look up from the scrap of parchment in front of him. His quill twitched once, then stopped completely.
Annoying Remus Lupin was a rare skill—one few could boast of. But Peter, yes, Peter had turned it into an art form. A deeply unappreciated, endlessly consistent art form.
“You’re failing Transfiguration,” Remus said flatly. “You turned your teacup into a grapefruit. It was supposed to be a hedgehog.”
Peter shrugged. “Still a breakfast food.”
He grinned. Remus didn’t
“What the hell were you doing first year?”
They were the only two left at the table now. James had left maybe twenty minutes ago—off to the pitch, most likely. The girls had filtered out one by one, clutching scrolls, quills, half-finished toasts. There was a vague kind of emptiness in the hall now, and something about it set Remus’s nerves on edge.
He glanced down at Peter’s parchment, then rubbed the side of his face.
“I’m not overreacting,” he said, more to himself this time. “You’re not passing your bloody OWLs if this is how your Transfiguration looks.”
Well maybe you should tutor me,” Peter mumbled, still chewing. “You and Sirius are the clever ones.”
Remus finally looked up. “Sirius didn’t even show up to class last week.”
“Still smarter than me,” Peter said with a small, sour laugh.
Remus looked up, finally, his gaze distant.
He wasn’t sure when the feeling had started. Maybe halfway through breakfast. Maybe last night. It had built slowly—a quiet sense of something off, something askew beneath the surface. Like one of the castle’s staircases shifting before you’d stepped on it. Like the air before a storm.
And it wasn’t just Peter’s idiocy, though that certainly didn’t help.
His quill tapped against the parchment.
“I’ve got rounds later,” he said, not really to Peter. More like he was grounding himself with the fact. “Might walk the perimeter. Something feels—”
“What?” Peter blinked at him, brows lifting.
Remus’s eyes flicked toward the doors, then back down at his notes.
“Nothing,” he said, folding the parchment in half. “Just tired.”
But he wasn’t. Not exactly. His blood felt sharp in his veins. Alert. How it felt during a moon.
Something wasn’t right.
“I just—” Remus exhaled, voice low, almost to himself. “I don’t know. Something feels wrong.”
Peter blinked at him, mid-bite of his toast. “What, like… the match? Trust mate James and Sirius are going to knock it out of park at Quidditch”
Remus stared at him, expression unreadable.
Peter chuckled awkwardly. “Come on, mate. It’s a foggy morning, but it’s still Saturday! You’re acting like we’re about to be cursed.”
“I didn’t say cursed,” Remus said flatly. His eyes hadn’t left the magic sky, that was stormy and steamed over. “I said something feels off. Like the ground’s shifted under us a little and we’ve not quite noticed it yet.”
Peter shrugged. “You’re being weirdly poetic.”
Remus didn’t answer.
Peter went back to rustling through the Daily Prophet, the large pages crackling as he flipped to the middle column. “Hey, look at this,” he mumbled, mouth half full. “More disappearances. This time in Knaresborough. Whole family gone.”
Remus’s gaze snapped to the paper.
Peter kept reading, oblivious: “Aurors think it’s just a Displacement Hex gone wrong, but it says here their doors were all locked from the inside. No trace. No magic signatures left. Just a broken picture frame.”
“Let me see.” Remus’s voice was sharp now, clearer.
Peter looked up, finally sensing something in Remus’s tone that made him pause. He handed the paper over.
Remus scanned the article in silence. It wasn’t long. Just a few paragraphs. But there was something in it that made his stomach twist—a detail about the youngest child leaving their wand behind.
Why the fuck couldn’t he shake this?
A soft thud broke the silence. A shadow fell over the table.
Remus looked up.
Lily stood there, cheeks flushed, hair half-pulled back like she’d run the whole way from the tower. There was a stitch of worry in her brow that didn’t quite match her attempt at nonchalance.
“Did, uh—Sirius come back here?” she asked, hands in the pockets of her robes.
Peter blinked up at her, mouth still full. “Not since breakfast.”
“Why?”
——————————-
She knew it was stupid to ask.
To be looking around like this. Pacing corridors like some lovesick idiot girl. But by god, she was getting so worried she couldn’t bloody stop herself.
And now—here she was.
Standing in front of his bloody boyfriend.
She shouldn’t have come to the Hall. Shouldn’t have looked him in the eyes.
But something was off. She’d felt it the moment Sirius got up from breakfast without looking at anyone—without looking at her. That sharp turn of his shoulder, the way his hands had been shaking slightly, how he’d left his toast untouched. And now, he’d missed warmups before the first bloody match of the year.
That never happened.
“Did, uh—Sirius come back here?” she asked, voice strained with attempted casualness, hands buried deep in her robe pockets.
Peter blinked up at her, mouth still full. “Not since breakfast.”
“Why?” Remus asked, sharp now. His quill had stopped. His fingers were tensed around the edge of the parchment.
She hesitated. Just for a second.
What was she supposed to say? Sorry, I’m just losing my mind because your boyfriend —my secret mistake —is missing and I haven’t been able to stop imagining him dead in a ditch since half past six?
“He missed warmups,” she said instead, too quickly. “Uh—James thought maybe he was messing about after leaving Slughorn’s, but I—I checked. He wasn’t there.”
She left out the part where Slughorn looked confused when she’d asked.
The part where he’d said Sirius had never owed him a detention in the first place.
Hadn’t even been scheduled.
That detail was sitting like a stone in her stomach.
Remus was going a little pale now. She regretted saying anything. Wished she could reach into the air and undo her words. But it was too late.
And now her own hands were shaking.
What happened, Evans? Don’t want to reveal you’ve been shagging him in secret for a bloody year?
The voice in her head was cruel. She ignored it. Swallowed hard.
“I just thought…” she trailed off. Tried again. “I just thought he’d be back by now.”
The silence was too long. Remus and Peter were both looking at her.
“Think he’s using again?” Peter burst out.
She flinched. Her throat went tight.
She didn’t know how to say it. That something wasn’t right. That she’d checked the pitch, the tower, —everywhere.
That a hollow panic had started somewhere in her chest and now it was cracking through her ribs like ice.
And the sky—Merlin, the sky—even that looked wrong.
It had gone thick and strange around the castle, a stormy veil sitting low over the grounds, swallowing the horizon. Like it was pressing in. Like the world was holding its breath.
She didn’t want to say any of that.
So instead, she said, very quietly, “I just have a bad feeling.”
Remus blinked. Something flickered in his eyes.
Then he stood up.
“The Marauders Map is our best bet.”