The Missing Marauder: A Harry Potter FanFiction

Chapter 24

"Rowan!" he called, racing after her. He knew he was insane for still wanting her, for still loving her after everything. But the two small words had made all the difference. All the pain, emotional and physical, he'd been through in the past few minutes could be easily forgotten if she turned out to be okay.  

If.  

Sirius was really beginning to hate the word "if."  

He forgot how fast she was, sprinting and not even breaking a sweat, while he was gasping for air and panting trying to match her pace. She was out of the castle in seconds and running through the grounds, with no particular aim that he could identify, besides trying to escape from him.  

Instead of going down the road to Hogsmeade, however, she took a sharp turn into one of the courtyards. He followed as they raced through the courtyard and then through long hallways that seemed to never end.  

And she kept going until they hit yet another courtyard, out of which was a long bridge. Her feet against the wood of it made loud padding sounds and his were even louder. He soon began to realize that she was speeding up, and he was losing her.  

He couldn't lose her. Not again.  

Nobody was around. The sky was pitch black, not even a star to light the way, and the moon had disappeared behind the clouds. Nobody would see him when he transformed into a large, black dog.  

And suddenly he was gaining on her.  

She noticed, too, sped up even more, and when she got to the end of the bridge she had to use her hand to help her with a turn so sharp he didn't think it was possible.  

Then they were going down stairs, very steep stairs. She was running two at a time and he, at the top, transformed back into a human and went after her, three at a time.  

"Rowan!" he called, "Rowan, please just talk to me!"  

She barely glanced at him over her shoulder before she started going four steps at a time.  

Finally he could see where she was headed; the boathouse.  

Why would she want to go there?  

He could see it up ahead, a small wooden building on the edge of the lake with a long dock hanging over the water. He'd only been down there a few times before; once, when they were all first years and again in the beginning of that year.

"It can't be September," James moaned, collapsing onto the grass, "It's too hot to be September. Maybe it's June or July or August, but not September."  

"Unfortunately it is," Rowan sighed, Sirius standing beside her, "Yesterday it was August. Today it is September."  

"Can't we just leave it at 'yesterday was August'?"  

"Whatever you want," she muttered, looking up at the sky and closing her eyes, "I don't care."  

"What we need is a nice, cool place to just hang," said Peter, "The five of us know more about Hogwarts than anybody else in school, you'd think we'd know a place where we could sit and our blood wouldn't start to boil."  

"If only," Sirius mumbled, took Rowan's sleeve and dropped to the ground, pulling her with him.  

"What we need," Remus observed, "Is a map."  

"A map?" Sirius questioned incredulously, looking up at him.  

"Yes," he replied simply, "A map of Hogwarts. The grounds, the floors, the shortcuts, everything."