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Homonculous Again


The stairs were murder.

Remus’s knees were weaker than he’d realized, and he had to pause to take breaks, his bones aching horribly as they tread upwards - the climb intense, with no landings, just stairs that went on and on and on… Sirius stayed behind Remus, one hand out, hovering behind Remus Lupin’s back as though to brace him from falling, though without ever actually touching his back, not wanting Remus to think Sirius saw hm as weak.

Lily would pause, a couple steps ahead of the boys, each time Remus started to wheeze and she’d motion for Regulus, who would catch Maryrose’s hand and she would turn, looking like Igor Karkaroff, and ask, in her sweet little voice that was so disjointed from Karkaroff’s face, “Is he okay?”

“I’m okay,” Remus would insist and they’d all move onward.

Lily looked at Sirius nervously, and Sirius stared back.

Remus coming along had been a bad idea. How was Remus to help in his condition? It worried Sirius deeply. More deeply than he would ever have let on.

They made it to the top of the stairs, but it had taken nearly fifteen minutes for them to get from the boat to the corridor, Sirius noted, looking at his pocket watch and nervously glancing at Regulus. They needed to move faster if they were going to get everything accomplished before Regulus would go to the Dark Lord.

With Regulus’s whispered instruction, Maryrose led them down the hallway as Igor Karkaroff, a bit wobbly on her feet with the height. Regulus followed behind her closely, glancing back at Sirius, Remus, and Lily, who walked in a knot together, Lily and Sirius both protective around Remus Lupin, whose gait was getting worse and worse it seemed with each passing moment. Sirius’s face was lined with worry.

“Left here,” Regulus whispered and they came to a short flight of steps and Remus winced at the sight of them. He took them bravely, though, without a word of complaint, holding his breath to keep from whimpering with the pain of each step. “This way,” murmured Regulus, and they went on down a long corridor. They passed a student and Maryrose kept her chin level and Regulus, Lily, Remus, and Sirius all looked down, avoiding eye contact, but the boy seemed quite distracted and didn’t pay them any mind.

“It’s so quiet in here,” whispered Lily, when the boy was gone, realizing that had been the first person they’d seen.

“It’s the holidays,” Remus said through grit teeth, “Probably most of the students are at home - just the same as at Hogwarts.”

“I didn’t even think of that,” Lily said.

They came to a wide hall then, with banners featuring the double-headed lion hanging from the rafters, flickering in a draft that whispered around the castle mysteriously. Five different corridors opened out into the hall and before them stood thick wood doors with great brass handles. Regulus said, “Here we are.” And he pulled open the doors to reveal a dusty library with rows of shelves and stacks of books, a very disorganized looking place, unlike the order and neatness Madam Pince kept Hogwarts’ library in.

Remus looked about, aghast at the state of it. “It’s a mess. How do they expect students to find anything in here?” he limped over to one of the shelves and blew dust from the spines.

“I get the feeling most of the lessons are demonstration based here, rather than book based,” replied Regulus quietly. He ran his fingers through the dust on one of the shelves, then turned to look at the others.

“Alright lot, start looking for anything about Durmstrang itself. Anything that might have maps of this place.” Sirius was holding his pocket watch again, staring down at it with worried eyes, “We’ve only got forty minutes.” He looked at Regulus for a long moment, then quickly turned and started blowing off dust from the books.

They all descended on the stacks and shelves, splitting up so that they were all looking in different places - except Sirius and Remus. Sirius refused to go too far from him, so while Remus looked at higher shelves, Sirius sat on the floor and dusted off lower ones, his knees crossed like a pretzel on the floor before him as he flicked through book after book, searching for something that resembled a map of the castle. He kept nervously flickering his eyes to the pocket watch, which he held in his splayed palm, his fingers curving ‘round the face of it as it tick-tick-ticked and tock-tock-tocked and the time slowly moved past as the stacks of books around them grew…

Every time he pulled it out, Lily’s eyes flickered to the watch… to the minute hates spinning… to the exposed clockwork that she could see, flickering there beneath the glass face… And the memory of the hunched form of Kostos Mopsus, bent over the table in that little fortress on a tiny Greek island miraged before her, coaxing that watch he’d held to move, to keep ticking.

Precious seconds, her brain whispered. Your precious seconds keep him alive, but only for so long.

A shiver went through her and she would redouble her efforts of searching, searching, begging the gods - begging Mopsus himself to help them.

Remus finally sank into a chair, his hands shaking uncontrollably, a bit short of breath, and he doubled over, his head by his knees.

“Moony?” Sirius asked, concern upon his face as he looked up at Remus.

“I’m alright,” Remus replied automatically.

Sirius sighed and rubbed his forehead, covering his eyes. Pressure was building. Only ten minutes. Ten minutes left before Regulus would go and he hadn’t yet thought up a reason to make Regulus stay, or a reason for Regulus to give the Dark Lord for his delinquency. Ten minutes and they were no closer to having the Map of Durmstrang…

Suddenly, a shriek rose up from the next row of shelves and Maryrose came running about the corner, holding up a book, splayed across her forearm, “I have it! I think I’ve got it!” and she raced to the table where Remus stood, the others shadowing around him as Maryrose dropped it down so he could have a look. “I mean it’s old,” she said, “Possibly some things have changed, but is it close enough?”

“I could fucking kiss you right now,” Sirius declared.

Regulus cleared his throat.

“I won’t, but I’m so happy that I could. Even if you are a girl.” Sirius said. Then he looked at her - still in disguise as Igor Karkaroff, with the narrow face and the long beard that hung from his chin with the funny curl to the end of it. “...who currently looks like a guy.”

Maryrose laughed.

Lily leaned close over Remus’s shoulder, her hands on his arm. “Do you think it’ll work, Rey?”

“It’s certainly worth a shot,” he answered, and he cleared his throat, drawing his wand from his pocket and they all held their breath with anticipation. He waved his wand in a complicated circle - praying the entire time that he remembered it correctly, after all it had been over three years since he had performed it on the Marauder’s Map (three years!) - and brought the tip of the wand down upon the map in the book. “Homonculous tabula!”

There was a long and horrifying pause… a terrible, trembling moment… in which the spell did not seem to do a single thing.

And then it happened.

A ripple went up across the book page, shivering it’s way out from the spot where they stood, and one by one they began to appear, their names on little labels on the page. Remus Lupin, Lily Evans, Maryrose Jenkins, Regulus Black, Sirius Black.... And they watched with held breath as the ripple moved ever outward, over the corridor and up stairs (they quickly flipped the pages of the book, each page corresponding to a different floor of the castle), and they saw the names of students who had stayed behind for the holidays begin to pop-up, names like Vlad and Jakob and Oskar appeared. There were names, too, that they recognized… Antonin Dolohov, Walden McNair, Evan Rosier...

“Oh gods,” Sirius muttered seeing Rosier’s name appear.

And they flipped between the pages then, watching the labels moving about, their eyes scanning, searching, waiting for James Potter to appear…

And a label did appear then.

And Lily Evans let out a gasp. “Oh my gods,” she whispered.

And Sirius’s eyes widened and then narrowed in concern.

Remus’s jaw dropped.

Maryrose looked to the three of them - and Regulus did, too, and he asked, “Did you know Peter Pettigrew was here?”

Sirius stared at the page. “No,” he said.

“What in the world would Peter be doing here?” Remus asked, looking up at Sirius and Lily, worried.

“Probably the same as we are,” replied Lily, “Trying to save James.”

“By himself?” Sirius asked, incredulous, “Bloody hell, back at Hogwarts it’s murder trying to get Peter to so much as go to the toilet without one of us going along with him! Much less, attempting to break into a castle to see the Dark Lord. And how did he get here? There’s no way in hell that Peter Pettigrew figured out how to get here on his own!” He paused, staring at the little dot, sitting still, in a corner of a room floors above where they sat now, in a high tower…

“Guys?” Regulus murmured as the final corners of the caps filled in, as the spell ended and the map sat before them, completed and their eyes trained upon Peter Pettigrew in shock, “I, uh, I hate to be the one to point this out but… but James Potter isn’t on this map.”

“He has to be,” Lily said, snatching up the book from the table top. “He has to be!” She scanned the page with her eyes desperately as Sirius grabbed the other side of the book and ruffled through the pages she’d already seen.

Regulus said, “For that matter, neither was Voldemort.”

“No,” Sirius wheezed from somewhere deep in his stomach.

“We came all this way for nothing!” Sirius moaned.

“It isn’t for nothing,” Remus murmured, his voice shaking, “Peter is here.”

“Oh gods, Peter,” whispered Lily, “Poor Peter.”

“Was he being polyjuiced as well?” Regulus asked.

“No,” Sirius answered, then, “I don’t think so. I don’t know. He didn’t seem odd. I guess. I don’t know. Peter’s… Peter’s always a bit… I mean…” he paused, then, “I don’t suppose any of us would notice if Peter was acting odd.”

Remus hung his head. He couldn’t argue it.

“But he’s your roommate,” said Regulus in surprise. “And one of your best friends!”

Sirius shrugged guiltily.

“Well, we have to rescue Peter, obviously, before we… we leave,” Maryrose said.

“You lot do anyway,” Regulus said. “I still have to go to the Dark Lord.”

Sirius pulled out his watch and looked at it. “Bloody hell.”

They had five minutes.

“But you can’t!” Maryrose said, turning to face Regulus, “Now we won’t know where you’re going! How are we supposed to rescue you?!” Her eyes were wide with worry, her voice trembling with panic. “What if you need us, what if you need help? And we don’t know where he’s taken you!”

Regulus said, “I don’t have a choice, Maryrose. He’ll kill Mother if I don’t go.”

She started to cry.

Sirius felt a lump rise up in his throat and he grit his teeth to suppress it.

Then Lily said, “But wherever Voldemort is… that’s… that’s where James is.”

They looked a her.

“Wherever Voldemort is… that’s where we need to be to rescue James.” She hesitated, biting her lip, staring at the map, at Peter Pettigrew’s name, then looked up at Sirius. “You, Remus, and Maryrose stay here and you rescue Peter.”

“And what are you going to do?” Sirius demanded.

“I’m going to go with Regulus.”

Regulus and Sirius both responded at the exact same time, in the exact same tone, their voices so similar that they sounded like twins: “No you aren’t!”

Remus asked, “Are you mad?”

Maryrose spoke up, “If you’re going with Regulus, then so am I!”

Regulus snapped, “No you aren’t!”

And Sirius said, “You can’t. You have to stay here and help with rescuing Peter. You’re the only one that can disguise yourself to get about the castle without raising suspicion. I’ll go with Regulus.”

“No you aren’t!” Remus said.

“I’m going to wherever James is,” Lily said firmly. “You stay here and help them find Peter.”

Sirius glared. “Lily, I’m not letting you go off alone.”

“Splitting up is not a good idea, guys,” Remus said.

Sirius replied, “Well what else do you reckon we do? We can’t very well all go with Regulus and leave Peter here, and we can’t very well not go and leave James Potter for dead. I refuse to leave James Potter for dead. Which is why the rest of you need to save Pete and I’ll go with my brother and --”

“Two minutes,” Regulus intoned, staring at the watch in Sirius’s splayed palm.

“I am going to help with saving James!” Lily persisted harshly, her voice ringing.

Regulus’s Dark Mark burned then so brilliantly white hot that it literally glowed red upon his arm and they all looked down at it as he let out a cry and fell to his knees. “KREACHER!” he cried out, “KREACHER PLEASE!”

And with a crack, Kreacher had appeared and Regulus looked up at them from the floor where he knelt and he said, wincing and through grit teeth as his wrist burned and burned like a feeling he had never had before, “Kreacher. Take me to Lord Voldemort. And then, when you have, return here and take whoever the bloody hell they decide there as well.”

Kreacher reached out a hand to grab hold on Regulus, “As Kreacher’s Master wishes,” he agreed.

Sirius suddenly sprang forward, “WAIT!” he shouted and Kreacher’s ears flattened unhappily. He looked at Regulus for instruction.

“I don’t have time to wait,” Regulus said.

“It’s just - what are you going to tell him?” Sirius pleaded, and he looked profoundly worried.

Regulus shrugged.

Sirius’s voice shook, “Please be careful, little brother.”

Regulus stared up at him. His eyes were burning. But he swallowed back the emotion, and he said, thickly, “You be careful as well… big brother.” And then he nodded at Kreacher and with a crack -- Regulus Black was gone.

Maryrose let out a cry and grabbed at the air where he’d been, tripping and falling onto Igor Karkaroff’s knees. “No,” she whispered, “Oh no, no.” Tears poured over her cheeks. “Oh no.”

Lily reached down and gently laid a hand upon Maryrose’s shoulder.