The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Forty Seven

Every one of Cassie’s friends worried about her as the days and weeks went by; the death of her parents had sent shockwaves of fear rippling through her circle of friends, both because they were scared and unable to help their friend and because the war was closer to home than ever before. No longer did they feel as if they were safe and it wasn’t uncommon to see seventh years writing daily letters to their family. Their terror pervaded their houses and the school, no matter how hard they might try to hide it, and Lily stumbled upon - or was involved in - numerous hushed conversations about ‘after school’. The Marauders seemed to contain more pent-up energy than everyone else put together and they prowled the corridors restlessly, their hands ready to fly to their wands. The whole school felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for the final thing which would push it over the edge and send the world crumbling to the floor. The seventh years could barely focus on anything apart from getting out at the end of the summer, and they hurried through the corridors as if they rested on the brink of an enormous precipice and with one wrong step they would go tumbling over it, falling into nothingness.

“I wish we could do something,” James cried in an agony of agitation as he banged his head against his Potions essay. “I want to fight! I want to help!”

Sirius nodded and huffed. “I want to know what’s going on. None of the teachers will tell me anything - I even tried sweet-talking Professor McGonagall, Professor Banks and Professor Freye but I could get anything out of any of them!”

“Prophet’s useless too,” Remus sighed. “They'd rather not report anything unless they really have to. You can bet that they wouldn’t have said anything about Cassie’s parents if they hadn’t been Aurors.”

“You’d think they would have wanted to cover that up,” James said. “After all, who wants to know that Aurors that powerful and well-known aren’t safe? If they can be attacked then anyone can.”

“Yeah but the Prophet never actually said that it was Death Eaters,” Peter said.

“Yeah they just said that they were the victims of ‘a vicious and unprovoked attack’ or something,” said Sirius. “As far as the Prophet’s concerned that could be a Quintaped… Nah I don't know… a lot of time the Prophet probably isn’t telling the whole story but at least they give us a slightly better picture than we would have otherwise. I think it would be worse if they didn’t report anything at all… I bet the Ministry wants to put pressure on them to stop reporting it.”

“I don’t know,” Remus replied, “they keep using it to publish tips on how to stay safe… At the moment it seems like the Ministry wants everyone to know as much as possible… I mean, the Ministry seems to be doing all it can and all the Aurors are working with the Minister…Imagine if Death Eaters got into the newspaper though…”

James shuddered and said, “It’d be horrible. It’s bad enough as it is now with people spreading rumours alongside what the Prophet’s saying… If we only had rumours… I hate not knowing what’s happening. It’s been getting worse for years; you know my parents told me that stuff’s been happening almost as long as we’ve been alive… Back before Dad retired, when he was still working as an Auror, I remember him talking to Mum about the laws they were pushing through and all of the alerts they developed. I mean there’s so much stuff which is classified now and the Minister’s secrets have secrets. I think Dad always disapproved of that because he used to tell me what was happening - well what he could anyway…” 

“Or maybe him and your Mum realised that you would find out somehow anyway so they decided to save themselves the trouble,” Remus suggested with a chuckle.

“Personally I’m in favour of Moony’s hypothesis,” Sirius said. “Your parents are used to dealing with politicians and criminals - not even a Marauder is a match for them.”