The Marauders: Year Four

Spying Eyes

It was a long walk along the passageway, but he passed it practicing his "Aha!" for when he'd busted Remus. He pictured himself peeking in to see Rey sharing a double fudge chocolate bar on the couch with a boy in a flickering firelight, their eyes all gooey as they puckered their lips and Remus leaned forward toward the boy -- and Sirius's blood boiled before his imagination could let their lips touch and he ran all the harder down the tunnel, as if he had to outrun the kiss, as if the longer he took to get there, the more snogging was going to get done.

He'd decided to take the witch's tunnel instead of the Whomping Willow for two reasons. The first was that with the feast going on, it would be nearly impossible to get out to the Whomping Willow without encountering other students or staff along the way. The second was that he figured whoever Remus's boyfriend was, he'd probably go in and out of the Shrieking Shack by the trap door and Sirius didn't fancy running into the boyfriend in the tunnel. Plus, once he'd got to the Shack, he wouldn't have been able to sneak in through the trap door. Unless they were upstairs...

And suddenly a whole other scenario played out in Sirius's head and he ran all the faster.

He reached Honeydukes basement in no time at all, it seemed, and he carefully lifted the door in the shop store room and looked about, making sure the coast was clear. It was still during business hours. He could hear the jingle of the shop door and see feet going by the small window that looked out onto the village street. He climbed through the door and snuck up the stairs and through the door into the shop - only just making it without being seen.

Sirius tried to act casual as he walked through the shop, pausing here and there to look at something, then putting it back as though he'd changed his mind, not wanding to raise suspicions. Of course, a teenager in Hogsmeade on an unscheduled visit was just as suspicious as a shoplifter might've been, and the shopkeeper was eyeing Sirius as he headed for the door.

Outside, the air was quite cold, that biting sort of autumn air that turns one's nose pink. A wind blew through, carrying on it some of the damp leaves, streaked with white frost along the edges. The leaves whistled along at Sirius's feet as he turned down the street that led to the Shrieking Shack. He paused at the fence, laden with omens and tokens, and the little placard, warning of the terrible horrors that awaited anyone who went too close to the Shack. Hostile Spirits Dwell Within the sign read, and he remembered the conversation that they'd had about the moaning and shrieking ghosts -- and Sirius looked up at the shack, hoping to Merlin there was no moaning and shrieking going on inside it.

He looked about, made sure he was alone, and then he grabbed onto the top of the fence and vaulted himself over. He ran across the lightly-snow dusted ground, his feet melting prints along the path, all the way up to the Shack, his heart in his throat. He snuck 'round to the back, the windows that faced the woods, boarded up, but where the living room would be. Carefully, Sirius stood on his very tippy-toes, peering through one of the cracks in the wood.

He could only just barely see through, there were cobwebs in the crack of the wood and a spider crawled along them, obscuring Sirius's view a bit. He ducked about, trying to find a window that allowed him a good view... but none of them were great. He could only see fragments of the interior of the Shack. "Bloody hell," he murmured, frustrated. He couldn't see Remus anywhere. He glanced up at the window hovering above him - he couldn't have seen through it even if he had a way to get up there, he reminded himself, for they'd covered all the windows and walls with the duvets in the clubhouse room, just for this very reason, to keep spying eyes out. What happened in the Marauders' clubhouse stayed in the Marauders' clubhouse.

He pressed his eye to the hole in the wood by the spider again. He had to see what was going on! And then he saw just a fragment of two sets of robes headed down the stairs and his heart was in his throat. He'd been hoping, honestly, not to find a thing out there in the Shack, except Remus sitting on the couch, pathetic and alone and eating the fudge bars all by himself just as he'd claimed. Sirius had already decided that if that's what he found then he was going to turn into Snuffles and bark at the door for Remus to let him in. He'd been so hopeful that maybe, just maybe, James had been right. But with the sight of two figures in the Shack, Sirius stumbled back from the window.