"He thinks you hate him, you know."
"I do hate him."
"You don't hate him, stop being an arsehole."
Sirius paused, standing on a tall boulder, and took a long drag off the cigarette he'd been puffing upon as they'd been walking about in the woods. He looked back over the lake, at the castle, looking high above, silhouetted against the cold, stark white of the sky, which threatened snow. James could smell the snow, he said, but Sirius thought him insane for it. He lowered the cigarette and let out a long stream of smoke through his nose, looking a bit like a small dragon.
"I'm not saying that you're as close to him as, like, me or Remus, but he's still one of your best mates," James insisted. He was a couple paces off, brandishing his wand about, knocking the remaining dead leaves from trees and brush as he walked. "He's still a Marauder."
Sirius grunted. "I s'pose. I mean, by necessity. What else were we going to do with the little fucker while we have our adventures?" Sirius raised the smoke again and muttered, "Could've told on us if he wasn't involved. Could've betrayed us long before now." He stuck it between his teeth.
"Exactly, he could've betrayed us long before now," James said. He held out his hand and Sirius pulled the box of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and tossed them to James, who shook one out of the box and lit it with his wand before tossing it back to Sirius and leaning against the rock that Sirius stood on. He stared out at Hogwarts, too. "He didn't, though."
"Not until now," Sirius said, sliding down to stand next to James. His boots landed with a thud and he dusted himself off and looked at James as he leaned beside him against the rock.
"Just try to be a little nicer?" James asked, the cigarette bobbing between his lips as he spoke.
Sirius nodded. "Yeah, I'll try."
"Thank you," James said. He took the cigarette out and made a face. "Bleeding hell, no wonder I've quit. That's fucking disgusting." He threw it down, grinding it out with his toe.
Sirius nodded, looking at his, "Yeah. They are pretty gross." He hesitated, then chucked his down, too. "What do you reckon we saw in them before?"
"Rebellion?" James guessed, laughing.
Sirius adjusted his leather jacket and looked over at James with raised eyebrows. "I'm a fucking gay ass Gryffindor from the Black family that's shagging a werewolf on a pretty much daily basis, do I really need another thing to rebel with?"
James laughed. "You forgot your motor bike, tattoos, long hair, muggle music..."
"Bleeding hell, I'm a stereotype," Sirius groaned and kicked the cigarette away.
James grinned, "Perhaps you ought to take up knitting."
"Knitting? Why knitting?"
"It's the least punk rock thing I could think of," James replied.
Sirius grinned, "Dunno, I could knit some sweaters for my gay-as-fuck boyfriend."
"Of course you found a way to make it rebellious," James laughed. "Alright, let's do what we came out here to do and get back to the Shrieking Shack. I still need to get back to the castle for the meeting..." Quickly, they both started setting protective charms all about the woods.
James cleared his throat as loudly as he could. "Excuse me, everyone... hullo... evening." A good deal of faces turned to look at him. James flushed. "We're here to figure out a plan to help one of our own... and when I tell you lot what's going on, you're going to jump to certain conclusions, but they're wrong - and we're all going to react from a forgiving place, with respect, and care, alright?" He looked about at the faces surrounding him, Regulus Black's among them.
Everybody in the room quieted and gave James their full attention, except Peter, who was sitting on the floor, resolutely staring at his toes, rocking himself ever so slightly. Wendy sat beside him, rubbing his back with a worried expression on her face.
James pieced the words together in his head. He had one shot to say this as delicately as he could so that they wouldn't all lose their minds and chuck Pete out the door. "There's been... an incident... where You Know Who has managed to sort of... force... one of us to work for him." Eyes turned instantly to Regulus, who sort of cowered back in surprise - looking at James in shock. "No... No, you lot... Come off. It's not Regulus," James shook his head. "No, it's Peter."
Everyone looked to Peter instead, except Regulus, who was still recovering from being the first suspect. There was an expression of confusion, of marvel almost, going among the Order members in the room. Whispers went up, and Wendy's hand left Peter's back as she stared at him in hurt disbelief.
"He isn't evil," James said, "He didn't mean to get into the situation he's in, it wasn't purposeful, but Voldemort takes advantage of things and he took advantage of Peter and he's got Peter sort of... locked into a promise... and we need your help to figure out how to free him so that we can have Peter back."
The room got quiet.
"What sort of promise?" asked Emmaline.
"Well, you lot remember Mopsus."
Ali nodded fervently. She clearly remembered the battle at the Lestrange Manor, remembered how brave Frank Longbottom had been and she looked down at the ring on her finger and twisted it about, wishing Frank was there now.
"The old Divination teacher? The blind one that died or something?" Alabastar Jackson, the Slytherin boy, asked. He was the one member that hadn't been included in the previous couple informal meetings of the Order, and was out of the loop on the goings-on of Mopsus and the locket and such.
"Well, there's a lot more to Mopsus than just divination teacher," James said. "He's a Time Thief, a Time Keeper I guess might be a better description. He's... Well, I dunno if he's good or evil, to be honest. He could be either, really."
"What's he got to do with Peter?" Regulus asked. He remembered the old man visiting at Number 12 with Voldemort on more than one occasion, and remembered the way Mopsus had stared at him, with sort of expectant eyes that seemed to bore right through Regulus's very soul. He had smiled at him once, a creepy, crawling sort of grin and muttered something Regulus hadn't caught, but always wondered about. Especially after finding that prophecy in the old divination room that Voldemort had showed to him the year before, disguised as Professor Gaunt... Regulus could still see the odd form of his brother, suspended in water, could still hear the rasping call of his name...
James replied, "Well, the clocks that Mopsus had in his office, that he was obsessed with... well, those clocks keep track of people's lives, sort of? And he can transfer seconds from one person's life to another, sort of... borrowing time, I suppose... and that's how he's managed to stay alive so long, just stealing seconds from different people for himself, I guess. I mean, I think he's dead, but I - oh honestly I'm not even entirely sure of that." James struggled to explain, then, "It's sort of like Doctor Who."
They all looked at one another in confusion.
"It's a muggle telly show," Lily spoke up. "About a time traveler. He can move through time, and his time lines sort of crisscross about so that he never knows if he's in his own future or past, and I suppose Mopsus is sort of like that. He can manipulate time and although he's actually dead now, he's also sort of alive because he's able to manipulate things in the past that haven't happened yet."
The confusion cleared, but only a little.
"It's really hard to explain, I guess," James said.
"Yeah, clearly," Marlene said, still trying to work out the past that hasn't happened yet bit.
"Anyway, Voldemort wants Mopsus's clock, the clock that stores his remaining time," James said, "He's been after it awhile. He kidnapped me last year for it, thinking I knew how Mopsus's time stuff works. Dunno why he thought I would know, but that's besides the point, really... Anyway, I think he's trying to become a Time Thief himself, so that he can be invincible, like Mopsus is."
Mutterings went up through the room.
Regulus's voice carried over the others, "He's been trying to be immortal for years." The others all looked at Regulus. "I've heard him say so. He's also said before that he is immortal and that even if the Resistance killed him, he would live on... I dunno how, but I s'pose... maybe he's figured out the clocks a bit better than we expect."
James winced. "Merlin."
"Maybe he wants Mopsus's clock so he has all the time that Mopsus had stored up," suggested Emmaline logically, "I mean if Mopsus is centuries old, he must have loads of time stored, yeah, if he's been stealing all the long?"
James hadn't thought of that. "Excellent point, Emmaline."
"I still don't understand what this lot has to do with Peter, though," Regulus said.
James said, "Well, the promise he made Peter make was an Unbreakable Vow to retrieve the watch that has Mopsus's stored time, or a particular bit of time that Mopsus has stored, at any rate. Well, he thought it was a particular watch and that's what Pete stole; it happened to be my watch. But it isn't Mopsus's time after all... Dunno how I came to get it, but I ended up with a watch that stores Peter's time. And now Voldemort has that."
Alabastar said, "But an Unbreakable Vow is... unbreakable."
"Deduce that one yourself, did you Al?" Regulus teased, laughing. Alabastar laughed, too.
"So the only way to break the vow is... to bring him the actual clock of Mopsus?" Maryrose asked.
"I think so," James replied.
"Do we have this clock... or watch... or whatever?" Alabastar asked.
"I don't know," James answered. "Voldemort seems to believe one of us does."
"What's it look like?" Marlene asked.
"I don't know," James answered.
Alabastar said, "So let me get this straight. Peter's made an unbreakable vow to Voldemort, promising to get him a clock that we don't know if we have, or even what it looks like. Top it off, if Voldemort gets the clock, he becomes immortal and might already be immortal for all we know?"
Unease went up in the room at this summary.
James nodded. "Pretty much."
"Well isn't that fun," Alabastar said.
"Furthermore," James continued, "Peter's also made, now, another couple promises. He promised not to tell anyone about what's going on and also to bring me to Voldemort. So whenever he tries to give us more details, he gets a sort of... automatic langlock, and everything I know about the situation's been figured out by many hours of charades."
"He wants Peter to bring you to him?" Marlene repeated.
"Yeah," James answered.
Lily spoke up, "Which is absolutely not happening."
"I should say not!" exclaimed Wendy. Peter looked at her. She'd edged a bit away from him, nervously.
James shrugged, "We'll see what the plan calls for, alright?"
"No," Lily answered, "Not alright. You're not going."
James said, "Well, I mean, if it's life or death for Pete --"
"Then we'll figure something out," Lily said, "Something that does not involve you having to be in his presence again."
James wanted to continue on with the argument, but he could see the fire in Lily was nearly as brightly red as her hair and he decided to let it rest. For now. He sighed and continued on, "Anyways, we need to free Peter of this unbreakable vow, and get the watch with his time back so that Voldemort can't play at stopping it and killing him."
"Well how are we supposed to get close enough to Voldemort to steal his jewelry?" joked Maryrose.
"I guess that's the question we're here to solve," James said seriously. "That and to try to figure out where Mopsus's clock might be to appease that bit as well."
"You really want to just give him the clock of Mopsus?" Alabastar said, "And how do you think we're going to find it anyways if we don't even know what it looks like? Do these things glow or something so we could tell if they're one?"
"No," James answered. "They're just regular clocks."
Alabastar's eyebrows raised. "James, it's impossible. Of all the clocks on earth we're looking for just one and there isn't even any indication what it is or what it looks like or anything about it at all?"
Peter squeaked.
They all looked at him.
"What is it, Peter?" James asked.
He was wringing his hands nervously. "I - The - I -"
Lily went over and put her arm around his shoulder. "Yes?"
Peter pointed at James.
"James," Lily guessed, and Peter nodded then tapped the Mickey watch on his wrist. "Watch... James's watch?"
"Well you gave him that already, Pete," James said.
Peter shook his head. "No. I gave him this one." He held up the wrist with the Mickey Mouse watch.
"But that is my watch, Pete, my parents gave it to me for my seventeenth."
"Different watch," Peter replied, struggling to find words that his tongue could speak.
Lily looked up at James, "Do you s'pose your parents know about all this...?"
James shrugged, "Dunno... but even if they did, they still gave me the mouse watch."
"Yes but, maybe they gave it to you because they couldn't give you your own for some reason," Lily suggested.
James remembered the feeling of being utterly gutted, of having expected a really nice watch and getting the Mickey one instead. He'd been so disappointed himself that he hadn't really noticed the look of disappointment in Charlus's eyes... until he thought back now. "Alright, that makes sense, actually," James said, "A lot of sense."
"And whatever watch you were supposed to get must have Mopsus's time," Lily said.
"But why would James's watch have Mopsus's time?" questioned Alabastar in confusion.
"Dunno," Lily admitted.
"Unless it's not Mopsus's life that Voldemort's after," Marlene said. "Maybe he's after time that Mopsus has stored, and maybe that time is James's for some reason."
James thought of the precious seconds he'd bartered with Mopsus. That would be stored on his clock, or watch, or whatever it was. Could Voldemort be after those seconds? And if he was, why? Why those seconds when there were probably seconds that meant a great deal more than any James Potter could've traded off... and clocks with a much larger number of them for Voldemort to extend his life with. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.
But --
"Anyone have any ideas at all?" James asked. "Anything. No matter how ridiculous. It might just take something ridiculous to figure this whole thing out."