The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

The Trophy Room Passageway

"There it is," he said, as they came down the last steps on the second little flight of stairs. "Brutus Scrimgeor said there was more than one, but this is as far as I made it last time."

Sirius inched closer to the edge and held his wand up, staring down. He couldn't see a thing down there, the glow of his wand seemed eaten alive by the darkness below. "It's like it goes on forever," he whispered.

"It very well could," Peter squeaked, "I've heard of pits like that, pits that go all the way to the center of the earth and you burn alive for all eternity there!" He looked right terrified, his eyes wide, "That's what volcanoes are, you know. That's where the fire comes from!"

James rolled his eyes.

Remus was inspecting the stuff hanging up on the walls. "Look at this, you guys," he called over his shoulder. They hurried over to look at what Remus had found. It was an old photograph of a group of Hogwarts students from perhaps ten years prior, clustered together in front of the old tree in the courtyard.

James pointed, "There's Brutus Scrimgeour." The boy was heavy set with dark eyes and a Gryffindor scarf wrapped tightly about his neck, his nose pink from a wind that made his scarf flutter as he blinked up at them from the picture.

"Blimey, isn't that McGonagall?" asked Sirius, also pointing. The girl he was pointing at had long hair that flowed about her shoulders in loose waves and strong arms that held her broom. She grinned up at them as she laughed happily, arm slung around a boy who was dressed in the pads of a Keeper. "This lot appears to be the Gryffindor quidditch team," he said, counting up the players to find there were seven.

James stared at the picture with reverence. "Scrimgeour said him and his friends used to come down here all the time. You reckon these are the friends?"

"Why else would somebody hang the photo of the quidditch team up down here?" asked Sirius.

"Maybe they're fans of quidditch," suggested Peter.

"McGonagall must know about the tunnel then," James concluded. "Wonder if she figured out I found it? Seems she would've said something if she had, when she found me talking to Scrimgeour. Doesn't it?"

Sirius had a feeling that maybe she wouldn't have and the thought of her keeping their secret made him like her much more than he had before. She suddenly seemed much less uptight. Maybe McGonagall was secretly more like them than she let on after all.

"There's loads of interesting things in here," Remus said. "There's a map of the tunnel over here. Look, shows all the pits. It looks like this goes down to the fourth floor," he added, illuminating a parchment with hand drawn details of the passageway. He reached for the tack and loosed the map from the wall, "This will be dead useful," he explained.

"Does it say what's in the pits?" asked Peter, voice tremulous.

"No," answered Remus.

"What if there really is a dragon down there?" Peter whispered.

Remus raised his eyebrow, amused, "A dragon?" He looked at James and Sirius, "Which one of you doffers told him that there was dragons down there?"

Sirius grinned sheepishly. "We were only joking about that, Peter, nobody would ever dream of trying to keep a dragon in the bottom of a pit. Imagine the chains that would take to keep it down?"

"They say there's one in Gringott's," James said.

"That's got to be a load," Sirius answered, "Dragons breathe fire, he'd just burn the bank up and fly off."

"I s'pose," James mused. But it made him rather sad to think that there weren't any dragons inside the wizard bank. It had always made him more excited about following Charlus through the gloomy old tunnels of the bank with the little goblins to the Potter family vault. Charlus had told him about the Gringott's dragon one of the many times he'd begun to cry about the turbulent ride in the train cart through the dark. It made sense Charlus would've made something up about dragons to distract James's attention.