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The Permanent Record of Sirius Black


Remus pushed open the door to the classroom Peeves was destroying, throwing about the chairs and knocking books from a bookshelf, singing an odd little song that he’d made up himself:

Messy, messy, making messies
Tossing chairs and breaking deskies
Breaky, breaky, snappy, snappy
Lots of chaos makes Peevesy happy!



Remus hovered in the door a moment, dodged a flying chair leg, and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me… Mr. Peeves?”

Peeves flipped over, dropping a globe that he held so that it fell, snapping in half so that two parts of the planet rolled off in separate directions. He stared at Remus his pale white figure glowing in the dark in a shimmery sort of way. He barrel rolled across the room until he was right in Remus’s face. “Loony Loopy Lupin!” he cackled, “Is we still up to no good?”

“Yes, of course, Peeves,” he said, “But listen, how would you like to help me be up to no good?”

Peeves considered this a moment, then cackled and blew a raspberry in Remus’s face. “No, I don’t think so!” he giggled and clapped.

“But Peeves, you see it’s Sirius. He’s been caught by Filch and we have to go get him out of trouble.”

“Peeves likes trouble,” cackled the poltergeist.

Remus thought fast, “But Peeves loves antagonising Filch.”

Peeves, who had zipped back across the room and grabbed onto a desk and was about to chuck it into a large cabinet, stopped and hung there in the center of the room, staring at Remus.

“What if I told you we could get up to no good together and drive Filch utterly mad?”

Peeves dropped the desk straight down with a loud crack. “Go onnnn…? What does Peevsey need to do?”




Peeeeterrrr…. Peeeter Pettigrewww...

Peter turned onto his side in his sleep.

Peter.…

He was dreaming.

He was walking down a street, gloomy and empty, with haunting shapes of dead trees leaning over the roadway as he passed great stone walls coated with thick branches of ivy. And there, through a mist that had crept around him so silently he’d barely noticed it, he saw tall, imposing gates, looming up through the drizzling rain. A great big monogram L of gold and iron twisted around the center bars. As Peter approached them, the gates swung open, allowing him to step through, off the street and into the wide yard enclosed fully in high stone walls.

A path cut through the center, leading up to the overbearingly large house, the path lined by thick black needly torn brush that twisted and undulated, as though made of snakes or some other living creatures. Peter very carefully stayed away from it, afraid, and stumbled over uneven cobblestones, so focused on the living brush that he stumbled onto the stairs of the house itself. His eyes travelled up, up, up massive marble columns to the seemingly unending stories.

Peter got to his trembling feet.

“Peeeeter….”

He looked up at the door and there was a figure there, a figure so shrouded by darkness that he couldn’t make out the face. But the voice was the voice that had been calling to him in the darkness all term, and from the depths of the reflection of the crystal ball. He hesitated, desperately afraid.

“What you seek… is in here…”

Peter climbed the stairs, his mouth dry with fear, and he found the door flew open for him as he walked up to it.

Inside, the house was even more dismal than the weather was outside, if that were possible. The walls were covered with dark green paper with an old fashioned pattern. Long, dark wood tables and cabinets lined the walls of the room, covered with heavy ornaments and artefacts… dark instruments that buzzed and hummed and whirred… and he could hear high pitched cackling…

“Call your son! Call his name!” a rasping, throaty voice that Peter recognized all too well carried down the hallway and the skin on his arms turned to gooseflesh and he staggered, fighting the urge to run away.

It’s just a dream, Pete… he told himself.

“CALL YOUR SON!!!” Voldemort’s voice echoed down the hallway as he crept along, “CRUCIO!”

A terrible scream filled the house, the sort of scream that comes from deep within the guts of a person. The kind of scream that seizes up the nerves and wrecks the heart because you can tell by the sound of it that the worst thing a human being could ever endure is being experienced by that person… Peter fell against the wall, clutching with bare hands at the wallpaper, desperate for the sound to end…

“CRUCIO!” Voldemort’s cry repeated. “CALL YOUR SON!!!”

There was a horrible moment of silence, so thick and awful that it filled the very oxygen, seeming to suck every last atom of it away…

Peter walked slowly, feeling as though he’d been prodded, though there was no one else there to push him along… He found himself in the framed door way of a library.. And there, across the room, stood Lord Voldemort. He turned as Peter walked in, at the sound of a creak of the floorboard beneath Peter’s weight…

There was a cage before him… wrought iron like the gates… like the one in Peter’s crystal ball reflections… and inside of it, bruised and broken and sobbing, lay his mum.

He ran forward.

“PETER!” she screamed, her voice echoing about…


“MUMMY?” Peter sat up suddenly, still in bed, in his flannel pyjamas and sweating so profusely his pillow and mattress were soaked beneath him. He leaped up and dramatically fought with the buttons on his sleep top, feeling as though it were joking him desperate for air… Finally, frustrated and certain he’d pass out if he didn’t - Peter grabbed hold of both sides of the shirt and yanked, popping buttons off and fighting the shirt off his arms, throwing it to the floor and gulping great mouthfuls of air that made his lungs heave.

Peter grappled for something to lean against, something to support him, and he found himself leaning back over the bed…

Peeeeeter…

The voice… it continued to call him… even in wakefulness...




Sirius sat in the chair opposite Filch, staring at the old caretaker as he filled out yet another card, detailing Sirius’s latest offense to add to the file of delinquencies about the castle. “This is going on your permanent record!” he announced.

“What? Being out of bed?” Sirius asked in a cheeky tone. “How am I not on the next truck to Azkaban for that one? Blimey.”

Filch glared at him across the desk.

Sirius smiled.

“Adding your disrespectfulness!” Filch said, as though this might make Sirius reconsider his attitude.

“Merlin. My permanent record is quite sordid,” Sirius said.

“Playing with firecrackers, obscene language, dueling in the Potions classroom, cheeky attitude, disrespect!” Filch recited, “Disobedience, messing up the Great Hall with mud nearly every night for a year --”

“That wasn’t me, that was Derek Bell and Professor Blythe sneaking off to snog,” Sirius reminded him. “I just got blamed for it!”

Filch continued on, “Expanding a boy’s head with a curse! Teaching the suits of armor nasty dirty filthy songs -- two years in a row --”

“Well that one’s a tradition now. Professor Minnie’s holiday would just be ruined if I didn’t do that. Think about poor Minnie, sir!”

“TURNING EVERYBODY BLUE!”

Sirius couldn’t help it - he laughed.

Filch fumed and turned back to filling out the card.

Suddenly Peeves the Poltergeist came through the door, sailing along on his back, legs crossed over one another, hand braced up behind his head. He did a couple laps about the office as Filch was busy writing and had not yet noticed the ghost circling the room. Sirius watched him with interest.

“Filthy Finnicky Filch!” sing-songed Peeves, “Funny Farty Filch!”

Filch looked up - Peeves was directly over him. “You!”

Peeves blew him a ginormous , horribly wet raspberry, so that flecks of ectoplasm sprayed from the ghost and landed all over Filch’s face.

Filch fumed and leaped up, swiping at the air above him with his hands, but they went right through old Peeves, of course, who cackled and spun away without any damage at all. “Can’t catch a spirit! Can’t catch a spirit!” he clapped and rolled about, “Hee heee heee!”

Filch scrambled for a broom, swiping it at Peeves angrily as though he were a nasty black fly he was trying to shoo away.

Peeves cackled heartily, “Are we playing quidditch then?!” he asked, zooming around, “You be the chaser,” he announced and he quickly zipped from one side of the office to the other, as though bouncing off the walls, zig-zagging here and there all around. Filch was going positively mad trying to keep up, his rickety old legs flailing about and the broom waving about, never quite reaching the poltergeist. Not that hitting a ghost with a broom would be effective at all anymore than trying to grab him would’ve been.

“I’ll chain you up!” shrieked Filch.

Peeves circled ‘round to where Filch had the great deal of chains hanging on the wall and he lined himself up so his ghostly wrists were in the manacles and he looked to be dangling from the chains, his legs crossed over one another, sitting as though in meditation, and he wailed, “Oh no, oh no, not the chaaaaaiiiins!”

“YOU!!” Filch dove for the chains with the broom and shoved the straw end into the heart of the ghostly figure and Peeves seemed to burst part into a trillion little pieces and the white mist of him disappeared. He was gone. Filch stood upright, looking a combination of puzzled and excited. After several long moments of no Peeves stretched on, he hissed, “I’ve done it! I’ve rid us of the poltergeist!” His voice was positively ecstatic. He leaned the broom against the desk and, in his extreme excitement, he did a horrid sort of little jig. “AT LAST! AT LAST! I’VE RID THE CASTLE OF THE POLTERGEIST!”

Suddenly, with a pop, there was Peeves again, hovering over the desk, and as Filch jigged, he grinned at Sirius and took up the broom.

A smirk went over Sirius’s face.

“YOUUU!” cried Peeves, imitating Filch’s voice, and he shoved the straw end of the broom at Filch’s face.

All hell broke loose. Filch started shouting and Peeves began hitting at him with the broomstick and Mrs. Norris shrieked in her cat voice and Filch waved his arms about, trying to block Peeves from hitting him, and Peeves cackled and continued on. “GETTING DUMBLEDORE!” shrieked Filch and he ran for the door, Mrs. Norris streaking along after him, the poltergeist and the broom following behind as Filch rushed off down the corridor, screaming for Dumbledore. “LOOK’IT WHAT THE BLAST POLTERGEIST’S DONE, ALLLLBUSSS!” Filch bellowed as he ran.

Sirius hooted with laughter as he peeked ‘round the frame of the door, watching the old caretaker go.

It was a moment before he realized there was a second fit of laughter happening and he turned ‘round to see Remus coming out of the shadow by one of the suits of armor.

“Positively brilliant,” Sirius exclaimed.

“It was all Peeves, really, I just gave him the idea of going through the door,” Remus replied. “He got so excited at the idea of it, he zipped up here before I could even catch up.”

Sirius grinned, “Let me get my things, hang on!” he ducked back in the office and grabbed his bag and the thermos from the house elves. “C’mon -- let’s go.”

They started off down the hallway, Remus telling Sirius about how he’d caught Peeves in a classroom downstairs and talked him into pestering Filch for Sirius’s sake and Sirius laughed and told Remus all about his horribly tarnished permanent record. Remus laughed, “Oh dear, I’m snogging a hardened criminal, that’s for sure.”

Sirius grinned, his eyes sparkling.

“Perhaps it’s you what ought be chained up in the dungeons,” Remus suggested with a smirk.

“You wouldn’t have a bloody clue what to do with me once you got me there,” laughed Sirius.

“I might have some ideas,” Remus answered, blushing.

Sirius chuckled, “Oh would you? Like what? Do tell?”

Remus shook his head, “A gentleman never tells.”

“Who told you you’re a gentleman, Moony?”

They were on the stairwell at the third floor when Filch came running back onto the staircase from the fifth and saw them. “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAIT IN THE OFFICE!” he shouted, pointing at Sirius and rushing to get down to where they were.

Sirius laughed, “Run, Moony!” And off they went, headed for the tapestry that hid the Trophy Room passageway, making it there with plenty of time to spare before Filch rounded the corner only to find they’d disappeared.

“I’LL CATCH YOU MARAUDERS!!!” he shouted, and ran on passed the doorway.

Sirius and Remus lay about the floor, giggling.