For Ever More

Harry was concentrating, hard. He had been working on this for nearly three years, and this was his third attempt. He was not going to get it wrong, this time.

"Third time lucky, I suppose," he said to no-one in particular - the Room of Requirement being empty, except for himself, and the potion ingredients and books that he had needed and the room had provided. He lifted the vial to his lips, tossed his head back, and drank. Quickly, he sat back down, concentrating, willing himself into his animagus form. He had spent the first two years meditating, to discover what his form was, without which he would not be able to succeed. He shuddered as he remembered his last attempt at transforming - he had forgotten the markings around his eyes from his glasses, and as a result had spent nearly a month in the hospital wing until Madam Pomfrey could remove the antlers.

He chuckled to himself, as he had when he had realised after the period of meditation the it was not necessary; he could have just looked a little more closely at his Patronus. After all, he mused, the Patronus and the animagus were both just the animal manifestation of his inner self. And you could no more change the latter than the former.

He willed himself to keep concentrating, to direct every ounce of willpower he possessed into his inner self, to change, to transform. He closed his eyes. And when he opened them again, he saw not with human eyes, but the eyes of a quadruped.

Anyone walking into the Room of Requirement at that point would have seen a great brown stag, with long, curving antlers, and circular, black markings surroundings its rich, emerald green eyes. It was fully grown, for that was the age that Harry saw himself. It was the pure, undiluted essence of being, and that in itself could never grow old, never die. For was that not the reason that so many lesser wizards and witches had striven to become animagi? When the human, with its weaknesses, faults, and self-doubts had aged, even to the point of death, the inner spirit remained timeless. The animagi form never ages. And when the person in them is weak, they only have to transform, to become what they always were, able to roam the Earths in their animagi form for ever more without fear of maturing.

Animagi never die of old age. They merely retreat inside themselves, inside their animagus form. And they become the animal that they never were in life.

Harry, of course, did not know this. He was only thinking of how proud Sirius would have been, were he to be able to him like this, as the stag.

As Prongs.

---

Professor Remus J. Lupin sank back into his chair, and sighed. Professor, he thought, with a touch of humour. He was never a professor; it was a farce. He wondered how he had survived that year, why he had not resigned before he could give Snape the pleasure of forcing him out.

But that was history now. None of it mattered, not since he had lost Sirius to the veil.

Was there any point in taking the ageing potion any longer, in carrying out this façade to its limits? He knew Sirius preferred him to drink it, preferred for them to remain the same age, despite the fact that he knew that werewolves did not age like normal humans. It was Sirius who had noticed his slow physical progress, who had went to Madam Pomfrey in their fifth year to ask for the potion, when Remus's growth had nearly stopped altogether. With him gone, what was the point? He may as well return to what nature had meant him to be, a permanent sixteen year old.

It was one of the so-called 'positive' aspects of being a werewolf, although Remus had never seen it that way. Immortality? The blessing of never growing up? Of staying at the tender age of what is adolescence to the human, but the prime of life to the wolf? It did not ring true. His body had not progressed past that age without the help of potions, true, but his mind had.

And his friends had.

So he accepted the ageing potion from Dumbledore, accepted that his life was a sham, a smokescreen. Now, though? Was there any point? For Harry, a voice in his mind kept saying, but he mentally shook his head. How could he serve Harry any better in a thirty-five year old's body than in his own, as sixteen?

Before he could change his mind, he pointed his wand, and directed a stunning curse towards the rack of flasks that held the bottles of ageing potion. They shattered, spilling the liquid all over the wooden floor. He frowned slightly. That was foolish, he told himself. A waste of good potions. But he cleared up, cleaning up the fluids and repairing the flasks with a few waves of his wand. He knew that in a day, the effects of his current potion would wear off, and he would return to that age that held so many memories, of himself, and Wormtail, and Padfoot, and Prongs...

He didn't care.

He was Moony.

---

Ennervate.

Sirius stayed still for a moment, his eyes shut. Then he remembered - the duel, the stunning spell from Bella, the veil - Harry! He jerked his head up, looking wildly around him. Where was Harry? What had happened?

He tried walking. It did not work, there was no sensation of his feet on the ground. Frictionless. Was there even a ground? He had gotten up, but that was merely by opening his eyes, and extending his feet. What was up? Was there an up? There was no sensation of up, or down, or ground, or sky. What was happening?

Sirius forced himself to calm down. He was not going to be able to help Harry by panicking. He looked around, and was met with only blankness. There was just no sensory input. No sound, no light, no smells, no touch, no sense of gravity, nothing.

Blankness. Eternal blankness.

Except-

There was someone else here. He could feel it, though he didn't know how. And someone had taken the stunning spell off him.

He decided to risk calling out. After all, what did he have to lose?

"Where am I?"

There was silence for a moment. Then-

Nowhere.

"Where's that?"

The voice chuckled. Always the same, Padfoot, always the same.

There was a pause. Sirius raised an eyebrow.

It sighed. If you really want to know, you are in between.

"In between what? Life and death?"

Yup, that's pretty much it. You always were rather perceptive, weren't you?

"Who are you?"

I'm hurt. Don't you recognise your best friend?

"...James?"

Noooo, your other best friend.

"Er... Remus?"

I was being sarcastic, you great lump.

"Oh. Sorry."

Don't be, Padfoot. Look, I... Thanks for everything you've done for Harry this past year. You've been the father that I couldn't be.

Sirius stayed silent for a moment. He could hardly believe this was happening - this was James - Prongs! - speaking to him. He had the opportunity now to apologise, to ask for his forgiveness-

"I'm sorry, Prongs. I could never replace you. I wasn't there for Harry for thirteen years-"

Sirius, it wasn't your fault. I've seen how you blame yourself and I can't stress this enough. It wasn't. If anything, it was my fault, not telling anyone that we'd changed secret keeper. I've been killing myself up here from watching you in Azkaban and knowing I couldn't do anything about it. Or at least, I would have been if I wasn't already dead.

Sirius chuckled at this; he'd known James long enough to know when he was joking. He smiled, for the first time. "Oh, Prongs, I miss you."

I miss you too. I'd come down there and hug you, if I had any kind of solid form.

Another laugh. "Oh, and I do?"

Actually, yes. Not necessarily your current one, though.

"What do you mean?"

Sirius - could you do something for me?

"Of course. Anything."

Can you go back down there?

"Back down to the normal world, you mean? But - why? I've been looking forward to spending some time with you!"

So have I, Padfoot, but you need to do this, for Harry.

"For Harry?"

For Harry.

"OK."

Now, since there's nothing to say you have to go back down in the same body you came up in, how'd you like to be sixteen again, Padfoot?

---

Remus sighed. He and Sirius had been looking for Wormtail for three months now; three months since Sirius had come back. Remus had actually been in the department of mysteries at the time, mourning after Sirius, when he had come tumbling out of the archway, not looking a day older than sixteen (Remus had stopped taking the ageing potion a while back, so they both appeared about the same age). After Sirius explained what had happened, and they had both explained it to Dumbledore, they had been searching, two fifteen-year-olds, but with knowledge and maturity far beyond that age. Remus had become an animagus on Harry's suggestion, after Harry had learned the Patronus shortcut to becoming one, to help them remain disguised whilst searching for Wormtail (to no-one's surprise, it was a wolf), and with Sirius, they had been looking for him ever since.

Not that they had had much success.

Remus had come home early tonight - it had been full moon last night, and although the moon didn't affect him much any more, as he retained his mind throughout thanks to the wolfsbane potion, it still made him a little tired. So when Sirius had apparated right beside him, holding a very familiar grey rat and shouting "I got him!" he had been surprised, to say the least.

They had been arguing about it for a quarter of an hour now, what they were going to do with him. Remus thought it was obvious - take him to the ministry and force him to take veritaserum as proof of Sirius's innocence. Sirius, however, wasn't so sure.

"But we can't, Moony! If they see him - or me - they will kill us on sight. They won't give you the chance to feed him veritaserum. You know the Ministry's new policy on this, now that Voldemort's back and Azkaban's been broken into - 'kill all death eaters on sight'."

Remus sat down on the wooden chair, heavily. "So what do you suggest we do?"

Suddenly, a gleam appeared in Sirius's eye. "When did Wormtail start turning to the dark side?"

Remus replied immediately. This was something he had been thinking about far too much. "The Incident."

Sirius didn't need to ask what Remus was talking about - the memories were clear enough in his mind, burnt there by twelve years with the dementors. Sirius, telling Snape how to get into the Shrieking Shack, and to meet him there, that night - a full moon - in a fit of rage. Snape, calling Sirius's bluff, stilling the Whomping Willow, going down the passageway, seeing the open door at the other end, and being pulled back by James, just as Remus sensed Snape and leaped down into the passageway, running towards him.

Their friendship had broken apart that day. James and Remus had not forgiven Sirius for a month, neither side agreeing to speak with the other. And neither side had seen the effect that it had on Peter; running between them, acting as the go-between, trying to persuade them to apologise, to forgive, to renew their friendship. Peter had lost his faith in the Marauders that day, lost his faith in Sirius for destroying their friendship, Remus for not being able to control almost killing Snape, James for refusing to forgive, and Dumbledore for allowing it to happen, allowing one of his students to almost be killed.

Sirius nodded at Remus, and pointed his wand at Wormtail. A blue-white light shot out of it, hitting the stunned rat, which writhed in midair before falling to the floor and becoming Peter Pettigrew, lying on his back, still stunned. Sirius walked over to Remus's potions cabinet, giving no explanation, and took out a bottle of light yellow potion from near the back. He looked down at Peter, and with an unreadable expression, took out his wand, and performed a quick severing charm, removing the silver hand, and quickly stemmed the bleeding, and cleaned the blood up. He then rolled him onto his back, tilted his head backwards, and poured the bottle of potion down his throat. He pointed his wand at Peter's chest, and muttered "Aperiotempus viginti annus intemporaliter."

The first thing that Remus noticed was that Peter was shrinking. His face pulled back on itself, and his hairline came forward. His right hand grew back. And there, lying on the floor in front of them was a sixteen year old Peter Pettigrew.

"One more thing to do," said Sirius, in an odd tone of voice. He pointed his wand at the figure on the floor, shut his eyes, and concentrated, focusing on exactly from when we wanted the spell to work from.

"Obliviate".

Remus suddenly realised what was going to happen. He and Sirius were both, physically, sixteen years old. When Peter wakes up, as sixteen, and with all his memories from the Incident to the present day missing, he's going to think he is still at Hogwarts, back in 1976. How were they going to explain that over twenty years had passed, and James's death? He voiced his concerns to Sirius.

"Don't worry," was the only answer he got. He sighed, and decided to just play along with whatever Sirius did. He didn't have long to prepare.

"Ennervate"

Peter stirred on the ground, and opened his eyes. "Sirius... Remus..." he slurred. "What happened?"

Sirius knelt down beside him. "Are you OK? We thought you'd never wake up!"

"Yeah - I think so." Peter sat up, and looked around. "Where are we?"

"This is going to be quite hard to explain," Sirius said. "In short, we're in the future."

"What?"

"That last spell - it knocked us about twenty years in the future. And there's no way to get back - time turners only go a few hours."

"Where's James?"

"Wormtail... James didn't come with us. We wasn't hit by the spell. And the future James is... well, dead."

"James? Dead? But - but how-"

"We all are - all our future selves, at least. Voldemort."

Peter flinched at the name, but at last reluctantly nodded his head. Sirius went on.

"But James' son is here - he's called Harry. Shall I get him?"

Peter gave the first hint of a smile for twenty years. "OK. I wonder how he's turned out? Our little Pronglet... Who's the mother?"

"Lily, of course."

"Lily? You mean she finally agreed to go out with him? James must have been over the moon..." His smile faded slightly.

Sirius suddenly disapparated, no doubt to get Harry. It took him a good quarter of an hour to explain everything, but eventually, he apparated back into the living room, holding Harry. Remus immediately rushed to his side, asking how he was, and Peter came forward reluctantly, and smiled shyly at him, stopping at the look Harry have him - he looked as though he was torn between smiling back and throttling Peter's throat. Sirius placed a hand on Harry's shoulder, calming him.

"It's alright, Harry. It's just Wormtail."

---

Moony.

Wormtail.

Padfoot.

Prongs.

Together again.

Four boys, destined to be sixteen years of age for ever more. Four animals, ensnared together, sharing one time. Moony, the great wolf. Wormtail, the wild rat. Padfoot, the giant dog. Prongs, the noble stag. Never ageing, never maturing, ever young. They roam the forbidden forest, never leaving, never changing. The children come out into the forest, trying to catch a glimpse of them, to see the legendary group. But they do not care. For they are the Marauders. And they shall be for ever more.