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What’s Mopsus Playing At


Argus Filch was about as happy as could be. He grinned, pulling the cards from his drawer and licking the tip of his quill before dipping it into the ink pot with relish. “Off- fen - ders…” Filch was writing as he spoke, “Sirius… Orion... Black…” he looked up over the quill at Sirius. “James… Charlus... Potter…” look over the quill. “Peter… Cecil… Pettigrew…” Look. “Remus… John… Lupin…” Look. “Lily… Jane... Evans.” He cackled. “Five students - Five!” He looked at Mrs. Norris, who had climbed up on his lap and was clawing at his ratty robes with her claws, purring loudly. “Yes, my sweet, we’ve got the lot this time! Got the lot!!” He licked the quill again, turning back to his notes, “Fourth years…” He grinned, “Possibly a first in all of Hogwarts history -- an entire year of one of the houses given detention at once.”

“Actually, in 1914, there there was an incident in Hufflepuff house involving a niffler set loose in the --…” Remus stopped when he felt Sirius kick him in the shin. He bit his lip.

Filch glared at him. “A little smarty pants, are we?”

Remus shook his head.

Filch turned back to his card. “Offense - out of bed after hours, breaking and entering into a classroom, disturbing the peace, in possession of dungbombs,” he added, glaring at the little pile of bombs he’d taken out of Sirius’s pocket. “And… this… Marauders’ Map?” he turned the parchment over and Sirius tensed, wanting to leap forward and rip it out of Filch’s fist.

James sat forward. “Sir, if you please, Evans, Lupin and Pettigrew weren’t involved in the offenses. They were… they were trying to stop Sirius and I from doing it. We were going up to the Divination classroom - we thought it would be funny to leave dungbombs on Professor Mopsus’s chair so that when he sat down they’d burst and --” James waved his hands to indicate the smell that would fill the room. “Thought it would be quite funny.”

Filch glared at at James for a long moment, as though wanting to hit him for taking away some of his glee at capturing five offenders. “Still out of bed,” he muttered and he turned back to his card.

Lily was staring at James in surprise. He’d just thrown himself (and Sirius) under the bus in an attempt to get her, Remus, and Peter out of trouble. Her breath came out a bit shaky and she looked down at her hands in her lap.

“Lucky I can’t use the chains… so lucky… Dumbledore on the way… going to get you two expelled…” he pointed at James and Sirius.

Sirius, who was a worn veteran in the chair across from Filch by now, leaned back and tossed his feet up on the edge of the desk. “Ohh, Filch… Filch, Filch, Filch. Ol’ Dumbley ain’t gonna expel us! Blimey, when ya gonna learn, man? Dumbledore bloody adores us. We’re ol’ mates. Go way back, us and Dumbley.”

“Git yer feet off my desk, you filthy little hoodlum!” Filch hopped up, disturbing Mrs. Norris, who shrieked, her claws ripping new tiny holes in the robes as she slid to the floor and bolted. She reached the door just as it opened and streaked into the hall. Filch was shoving Sirius’s feet off the desk when the person who had opened the door cleared their throat.

Peter let out a squeak.

Remus looked over and there, framed in the doorway, was Professor Mopsus. He clutched his cane, his hands shaking. He inched into the room, and Peter began to whimper, his fingers wrapping around the hand rests of the chair he was in, his knuckles white. Remus looked to Sirius with wide eyes. Exactly what they’d been trying to avoid -- Mopsus was here.

Filch looked up from pushing away Sirius’s feet and glowered at the professor. “Mopsus.”

James kept his face turned carefully straight ahead. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Lily’s eyes narrow as she looked past him at the Professor. He turned, but wasn’t sure what it was that had concerned Lily. He glanced back at her with a questioning look and she wrinkled her face up in response. James looked back at Mopsus. At first he didn’t know what had concerned her, but then he noticed it. The wrinkles on Mopsus’s face were deeper than they’d seemed the last time they’d seen him, and there were dark shadows under his eyes, and in the hollows of his cheeks, where his jowls had seemed to sink even lower than usual… If it was possible, given how old the man looked already, it was as though Mopsus had aged another whole decade since they’d seen him just that evening at the staff table at dinner…

Filch leaned over the desk, “We’re taking care of the offenders! Taking care of them, not to worry, Dumbledore’s on his way,” he said.

Mopsus murmured, “Offenders?” His milky white eyes stared blankly, his fingers flexed over his cane. “These are my students.”

“They broke into a classroom and attempted to steal --”

“Are you, a caretaker, arguing with a Professor, Mr. Filch?”

Filch silenced, looking quite reprimanded.

“I had requested these students to come to my classroom tonight,” Mopsus said, his voice croaky.

“At this hour?” Filch demanded, “The middle of the night?”

“Divination requires odd hours for accuracy,” Mopsus murmured. “These students have done nothing wrong.”

Filch looked like he’d been robbed, “Well they - they were found with dungbombs!” he accused.

“The dungbombs were not detonated.”

Filch’s mouth opened and closed, “But - but just having them --”

“And did you confiscate the dungbombs?”

“Of course,” Filch muttered.

“Then you’ve done your part, Filch.” Mopsus turned his head as though to look around at the five of them, though his eyes were fogged and unseeing. ”Students to bed, we’ll hold our lesson another night, seeing as we’ve missed the bewitching hour already. Hurry.”

All five of them stayed sitting, looking uncertainly between one another.

“You heard me,” Mopsus said, “Go back to your dormitories.”

Lily jumped up first and Peter followed suit, followed by languid Sirius, who stared at the old man as he passed by, then Remus and James taking up the rear, casting a glance back over his shoulder at the Marauders’ Map, still sitting on the desk of Filch’s office.

They walked down the hall, trying to stay calm. They could hear Filch shouting behind them, and Remus reached out to grab Sirius’s hand as they moved along. Sirius could feel the nerves in him trembling. When they reached the stairwell, Peter broke into a run up the stairs.

“Bloody hell,” whispered James.

Lily said, “Did you see his face? How… how old it was?” She looked at James with furrowed brows.

James nodded.

“What’re you on about? He’s always been old!” Sirius said.

“But he was even older just now,” Lily said. “His cheeks were all sunken in and his wrinkles were much deeper than they were before.”

“Perhaps we interrupted his beauty sleep,” snickered Sirius.

Peter was waiting at the top of the stairs for them, looking quite terrified.

“What do you reckon Filch will tell Dumbledore when he gets there and finds we’re not there?” James asked.

“Better, how are we going to get our map back?” Sirius demanded.

“Actually,” said Remus as they reached the portrait hole, “I think the best question is: what do you reckon Mopsus is playing at, getting us out of trouble like that?”

They paused in the corridor, looking amongst each other.

“We gotta get our map,” Sirius mumbled, then turned to the Fat Lady. “Godric.” She swung forward and he climbed through.

Remus sighed. “I have a feeling we’ll be visiting Filch’s office again soon.”

“Well we don’t want him reading the map,” James pointed out, “Or he’ll know all our passageways.”

Lily raised an eyebrow, “All? How many passageways do you know?”

“Loads,” Peter said.

Sirius stuck his head back out the door. “I have a plan to get our Map back.”

“That was fast,” Remus said, climbing through the portrait hole as Sirius ducked back inside.

Peter followed.

James waved for Lily to go, “Gingers first,” he said playfully.

Lily paused. “James… about that day, after the cinema…” she was flushed, and looked down at her fingernails as she tried to figure out how to word the apology, clearly very uncomfortable with it.

He smirked at her, “I know.”

She looked up, “You know?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “You don’t have to say it. It’s okay.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded.

Lily started for the portrait hole - she could hear Remus inside arguing with Sirius (“Well if you’d listened to me when I said tonight’s endeavor was stupid then we wouldn’t be needing to get the map back!”) - and she was just about to go through when James caught her arm, stopping her.

“Evans,” he said.

She looked back at him.

“Don’t let her call you names like that, okay? Stand up for yourself because… well, you’re pretty fantastic.” He let her wrist go.

Lily stared at James for a long moment, then whispered, “Thanks, Potter. I suppose you’re not always so horrible yourself.”

He smiled -- and she turned away, climbing through the portrait hole into the common room to find out what Sirius’s latest scheme would be.