The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

Home Safe

"What? What'd I do?" he asked, confused.

"You and that bleedin' song! The first years have learned it from the suits of armor and they've been singing it all evening while doing their homework!"

Sirius's eyes lit up and a great grin spread across his face. "Excellent."

Lily shook her head and marched off, muttering to herself about how mortified she was and how ashamed Sirius Black ought to be - teaching a load of eleven year olds a song like that! But James reached across the chessboard and gave Sirius a very smooth high-five as Remus scrambled off the couch, abandoning his History of Magic book, hurrying to do damage control with Lily across the room.

It was the day before the first Quidditch game of the season - James was on pins and needles and hadn't shut up on it all day, so the Marauders and Lily had sort of shoved him off on poor Frank at the breakfast table, who was the nearest victim that was actually on the team - when the owl post arrived, bearing the Daily Prophet. James was so busy babbling on to Frank that he didn't immediately open his copy, he sat holding his mail from Bubo, talking about how Frank's beater skills were impeccable and one of the reasons he was confident they'd win. But whispers were spreading like wildfire around the room and Sirius launched himself over the table to grab the paper from James, trying at yanking it out of his hand and managing to rip a part of the page.

"Bad dog!" James said, turning to look at him.

Sirius's eyes sparkled and he tugged it away, "Woof," he said thickly.

Lily snorted into her pumpkin juice.

Sirius looked at her with a grin. "Something funny, Evans?" he asked.

Lily shook her head - she'd managed to make pumpkin juice come out her nose and it was burning, she had tears in her eyes from it, but it was just so bloody funny...

Sirius took a sip of a mug of hot chocolate and unfolded the paper.

LUCY MINCHUM -- HOME SAFE! GRAND-DAUGHTER OF THE MINISTER FOUND ALIVE BENEATH THE DARK MARK IN HOME OF MURDERED MUGGLES
A story with both a happy and a sad ending, Aurors investigated a muggle home during the small hours of the morning that had been set with the Dark Mark in the sky. They found that followers of the Dark Lord had massacred a family of five muggles. The aurors leading the investigation conducted a thorough search of the home in hopes of finding some purpose that they would have come under attack from the Dark Lord, but no evidence was found that could explain why he had chosen that family as his victims.
They did however discover Lucy Minchum, who has been missing for nearly three months, alive and unharmed. The Minister himself disapparated to the scene to confirm Lucys identity and brought her to St. Mungo's to confirm her health - healers were amazed to confirm that Lucy Minchum was unharmed during her time with the Dark Lord and the girl is expected to be released from the hospital after a routine period of observation, some time this afternoon.

"Bleedin' hell!" Sirius exclaimed, and he looked up at Remus, who'd been reading the article over his shoulder. "Unharmed! What's the Dark Lord playing at?"

Remus shrugged, "Unharmed and without any conflict, just returning the kid? That's... odd."

"Certainly is," muttered Sirius, "Gotta be more to it. An ulterior motive of some sort."

James had taken the paper and read the headline by now and he injected, "Well, I mean, kids can get annoying. She probably annoyed him. I reckon ol' Voldy wouldn't be all too hard to annoy. Couple repetitive questions and you're done."

"Kids aren't annoying, they're precious," Lily Evans injected.

James rolled his eyes.

Peter took the paper and looked it over. "It is weird that there was nothing wrong. She doesn't even look bruised!" For the article was accompanied by a photo of Harold Minchum holding his granddaughter up, his arms around her waist as she carried her out of the muggle home.