The Marauders and the Arenotelicon

Getting up to the Astronomy Tower wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't taken two wrong turns and had to dodge Peeves the floor directly below the tower itself. When they walked cautiously into the room to find Snape, MacNair and Wilkes waiting on them they were prepared for a barrage of snide remarks concerning their punctuality.

Snape merely nodded in a business-like manner at them as they approached and stated crisply, "Let's get on with this."

Sirius gave an equally stiff nod in reply and the two boys took up positions. James had walked Sirius through dueling etiquette to prepare him but it was obvious Snape more than knew what he was about. They had taken four steps when Remus heard distant footsteps. While the sound was still a bit distant, it was obviously heading up the stairs to the tower.

"Someone's coming!" he hissed. "Hide!"

There was an immediate scramble for cover behind columns and into deep alcoves. Everyone held their breath as the footsteps became clear. When Peter's anxious face appeared in the wan moonlit observatory, everyone began to breathe once more.

"Pettigrew, you idiot," MacNair began but he was interrupted by someone else.

Someone named Argus Filch. "Well, well, out of bed after curfew, a whole lot of you. Step into the light so I can make out who you are and give you what you deserve."

Pandemonium immediately ensued. Snape muttered some spell in a whisper that tossed Filch from the exit. There was a rush for the door while an enraged Filch struggled to his feet. Remus grabbed Peter as they all ran and the four Gryffindors made a break for it. They heard Filch screech in delight, "Gotcha!" as they thundered down the staircase.

"He got one of the Slytherins," panted James in a low tone as they screeched to a halt in the corridor. "Which way?"

"That way!" pointed Remus, his hand still wrapped firmly around Peter's upper arm, guiding the other boy. He sensed that Peter was confused and terrified at their predicament. "What are you doing here, Peter?"

Peter gulped. "I thought I'd come after all. I didn't know Filch was following me, honest!"

"Excellent job," snarled a voice behind them. "Lead him right to us, Pettigrew. Next time why don't you flash a sign in the hallway so the professors can join the hunt?"

"Shut up," Sirius, James, Remus and Peter said in unison. "This way," Remus urged again and they turned right. Unfortunately it was one of those corridors that changed during the evening hours and in no time the five of them were lost.

"Brilliant," panted Snape.

"If you know the way, then leave!" Sirius said in trembling rage.

Snape sauntered by and gave a little wave. "I will. Watch out for Filch!" He disappeared around the far corner.

"Now what?" asked Peter fearfully. "We're lost and Filch is going to be hunting us."

"Go the way Snape did but we turn left at the next corner." James frowned in concentration. "I think."

"Better than roaming around with no plan at all," Sirius informed them and took the lead. As they walked Remus was positive that someone was following them but when he'd whirl around to look, there was no one there. The feeling stayed the entire length of their walkabout the castle looking for familiar ground. Unfortunately, everything looked the same in the dark.

After a bit, Peter said suddenly, "We're in the third floor corridor! Look, there's the History of Magic classroom."

Everyone immediately relaxed. No longer lost but still on the lookout for Filch, they could quickly make their way to the Gryffindor portrait hole with little problem now. "Let's go," James said resolutely, taking point from Sirius. The group was once again on the move.

"I hear footsteps where there shouldn't be any!" came an evil voice and the boys immediately broke into a run again. Footsteps echoed behind them as well as they skidded around a corner. Sirius tripped over Peter and crashed into a statue of a hump-back witch.

"Oh God, we're done for. We need a spell that will get us upstairs!" panicked Sirius.

"What is the spell that creates steps?" asked James, panting, his eyes wide in fear. "Dissendium? No, that makes one go down -" A chuffing sound next to Sirius made all four of them jump. "A hole!"

Remus could hear Filch approaching fast and knew they had no time to debate. With a tremendous shove, he pushed James, who fell into Peter who fell into Sirius like a domino effect. Sirius toppled into the cavity created by the statue that moved. The other boys followed him, tumbling down cold stone steps. Remus jumped in behind them just as the witch began to close again. He scented Snape as the witch stopped moving. Snape had been following them.

"What is this place?" Sirius' voice echoed eerily in the darkness after several tense moments of silence as the boys listened for pursuit.

Remus pulled out his wand at the same time James did. Their voices united in the gloom. "Lumos." The two wands immediately lit up like thin candles.

"Wow," gasped Peter. "It's some kind of underground tunnel."

"Those stairs are pretty steep though," noted Sirius. He began walking toward the inky darkness beyond the wand light. "Let's see where it leads."

"Are you nuts?" hissed James. "Let's just figure out how to get back into the corridor and get back to the common room."

Remus, though, was with Sirius. "It heads towards Hogsmeade," he commented, noting the direction of the tunnel. "Obviously Filch knows nothing about this tunnel, James. Its not like he's going to go looking for us."

James looked ready to protest but he paused a moment to consider. "Peter?" he asked, turning to the remaining member who hadn't said anything. Like Sirius, though, Peter was staring into the darkness beyond.

"Let's see where it goes," agreed Peter.

James shrugged. "Okay but if we get mauled by a werewolf, it's all your guys' fault."

Everyone nodded, Remus a bit more stiffly than the other two. A bit late for me, he thought to himself, and not likely going to happen on a waning moon anyway.

They walked for what seemed like forever, stumbling over the rocky surface and commenting on the dripping water coming from the cavern-like ceiling. Finally another set of steps lead upwards and Remus took point this time. Creeping up slowly, he found a trap door. Pushing it open carefully he found himself emerging in a roomful of boxes. The sugary-sweet smell that assaulted his nose was heavenly and made his mouth water.

He leaned back down to see the three anxious faces of his friends peering up at him. "I think it's Honeyduke's!" he exclaimed in an excited loud whisper.

"Be careful!" warned James in the same tone. "The shop owners live upstairs above the store." Remus nodded and climbed into the basement storeroom. The other three boys quickly followed.

"Wow!" breathed Sirius, awestruck. "All these boxes are filled with candies?"

"Yeah," James said, warily walking around them and toward the door at the far end of the room. "Now be careful and be quiet."

"If we can get out of the shop without waking anyone up, we can check out the shack," Remus commented.

The four of them exchanged glances, nodded and began to sneak up into the main shop area. Peter found the back door unlocked and they exited into the back alley. Darting behind several more shops they paused to plan.

"Okay," James began to strategize, "it's obvious they must be somewhere else otherwise they wouldn't have left the back door open. We have to make this investigation fast and beat the owners back here before they lock this door. The shack in question, if I remember my visits to Hogsmeade correctly, is at the far end of town. Luckily, it's a small town. We need to keep in the shadows and out of sight. We'll look around the shack and then head back here. We'll discuss what we've noticed back in the common room." James looked at each of them in turn, receiving agreeing nods from the other three.

It took about ten minutes to get to the shack and it was easy enough. Remus swallowed hard when he saw the building that housed him every full moon. It looked like it was going to collapse at any moment. He realized that it was only Dumbledore's spells that kept the building intact to begin with, especially with a violent werewolf banging and scratching around inside.

"You'd think ghosts would find some place better to haunt than that old shack," whispered Sirius derisively.

"Ghosts aren't particular," Peter whispered back. "They haunt where ever they died or are bound. Who knows what that shack used to be."

"True," conceded Sirius.

Remus' sharp hearing picked up a familiar voice. "Get back! Dumbledore's coming!" He shrank deeper into the shadows of the trees they were hiding in just as the headmaster and two village men came around the bend in the road. James, Sirius and Peter followed Remus' lead and sank closer to the ground and hopefully further out of sight. They were close enough though to hear the conversation between the three men.

"It was huge, sniffing around the door. About scared poor Genie to death, it did. Having' enough trouble with that Puffskein, don't need any more, if you know what I mean, Headmaster." The shorter and rounder of the two villagers paused for a breath. It was obvious he'd been talking nonstop for several minutes.

"I see," Dumbledore mused. He leaned forward with his illuminated wand and peered at the wooden front door. The other villager pointed out several areas on the door and the ground, but none of the boys could see what that was from their hiding place.

"There and there it's obvious that something's been digging, Dumbledore, and with more sightings of something going into or on the edge of the forest, we're frankly starting to get nervous. Whatever this creature is evades our traps and charms and spells don't seem to effect it much in staying away. That it showed up again right before dusk was unnerving. It looked like it was waiting on something."

"You said there were spooks in this old shack, Dumbledore? And you're certain they can't get out of the house?" asked Genie the Puffskein's owner sharply.

Dumbledore only nodded and began to wander around the building. As he passed close by their spot in the shadows, the light from his wand brushed them and Remus held his breath, hoping the men wouldn't look their way. They didn't and their perusal took them to the back side of the old shack. After several moments where none of the boys could hear what was being said the men continued around until they arrived back in front of the building.

"I shall place a few more charms on the building but until we find out what this creature is, I'm afraid there is not much that I can accomplish either." The two village men looked disheartened by the comment but agreed nonetheless.

A few minutes later the three men went back around the bend in the road and out of sight. The four boys emerged from the shadows and went over to the door to see for themselves. Remus took a closer look than the other three, knowing that he was looking for a canine-like beast. The scratches looked like the scratches he made on the floor of his father's laboratory before the two of them reinforced the flooring with magically cushioned and scratch-proof tile. The ground was churned as if something had tried to dig underneath the door and Remus shuddered to think what would have happened if the beast had succeeded in the endeavor.

"Let's look in the back," suggested Sirius, already heading in that direction. James and Peter willingly followed but Remus trailed behind a bit, carefully looking along the side as he went. No other sign of scratches or trenches in the ground or wood panels were apparent. Obviously his werewolf form and the beast were going head to head every full moon at the front door. Was the scent of the other easier to be scented there perhaps? And why would the beast come back when it could smell the werewolf wasn't in residence?

"Hey look at this!" James' voice echoed excitedly in the dark silence.

"Ssh!" shushed Peter as Remus came around the corner of the shack. James was crouched on the ground, picking at something in the shrubbery up against the shack.

"What is it?" asked Sirius eagerly, crouching next to James and raising his lit wand for better lighting.

"I think it's fur," James whispered loudly. "How could the headmaster have missed this?"

"Maybe he doesn't think there really is a beast in the forest? Maybe he really thinks that ghosts haunt the shack?" Peter suggested, taking the fur when James handed it to him.

Remus leaned down to inspect it as well. He surreptitiously sniffed but there was no scent that he could pick up. It had either been there for some time or his sense of smell in human form wasn't enough, even with werewolf enhanced senses, to pick it up. "It looks like its from a dog."

"Well, that creature looked like a dog, according to you and Peter," Sirius commented. "Let's take it with us. It's a clue."

"A clue?" James looked amused. "To what?"

Sirius scowled. "Isn't it obvious? We have proof now, with our eyewitness testimony and that of the village men, that there is something out there."

"And just where will we tell the headmaster where we found this?" asked James, still amused.

"Or how we knew that the villagers were seeing something as well?" Peter added.

"Easy," Remus returned in Sirius' defense. "We accidentally overheard the headmaster's conversation with the villager that visited him this afternoon and we found the fur when we saw the animal by the Whomping Willow tree in one of our games a few days ago. No problem in coming up with a story there, because it's the truth."

James seemed convinced but Peter was still uncertain, yet said nothing else. "We'd better get out of here," James told them, looking around. "We still have to sneak back into Honeydukes, get down the tunnel and figure out how to get that secret opening by the witch to work, and then get back to Gryffindor Tower."

They made their way cautiously back toward town and Remus, on impulse, turned around to stare at the shack that was his prison every full moon. He swore he saw a glint of two eyes staring at them from the brush just inside the forest a short distance from where they had been hiding from Dumbledore and his companions.

"Look!" he hissed, pointing at the eyes but when the others turned around, the eyes had gone.

"What?" asked Peter.

"Eyes," Remus told them. "Not far from where we were hiding. I think the creature was watching us."

All four of them shuddered at the idea and continued their path to Honeydukes. They made it in right before the shop owner, hearing him opening, entering, and locking the door of the shop just as they finished going down the basement steps. They scurried behind boxes to hide in case he came downstairs but instead the owner went upstairs. Quickly, Peter opened the the trap door, which had actually been difficult to find as it blended in with the wood flooring tile. It probably accounted for the reason that no one seemed to know about the tunnel since its entrance/exit was so difficult to find in the flooring.

They quickly made their way toward Hogwarts, muttering to themselves about ways to get back into Gryffindor Tower.

"You realize that if any of the Slytherins get caught they're going to blab," Sirius informed them darkly.

"Maybe, maybe not," James replied with a shrug. "Either way, its our word against theirs..."

"Unless they've got Filch standing in front of the portrait hole waiting on us." Sirius final comment was a sobering thought and kept them silent the rest of the walk to the Hogwarts end of the tunnel. It took a bit to figure out how to get the witch to open but once they'd succeeded in that, the four Gryffindors made their way to their dormitory without any problems or pursuit.

Remus decided once he'd settled into his covers that it had indeed been a grand adventure, exhilarating and exciting. An adventure he would never have had if it hadn't been for Albus Dumbledore's kindness. He fell into a fitful, guilt-ridden sleep.