First off, how could I not commemorate a Friday the 13th in October by not posting something? I shall be spending the day with my black cat Lucky!
Okay, so I lied. I couldn't help it, in having to go back and redo the first few books the compulsion to write this while it was still on my mind overwhelmed me. However, as you'll see below, this is quite a different style than Life that Never Lived. Chapters will be relatively short in comparison, and so will go up twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Hope you enjoy!
Before you get started; Warnings include- Explicit Wolfstar (Remus/Sirius), and on the whole a rather flimsy premise that I honestly created to indulge myself because I didn't let myself do it the first time. A lot less logically based and a lot more I just felt like having fun with this one. It's not to say I'll let this degenerate into tropes and one note things, but there's going to be even less reading of the books involved, as in literally they're just interacting around the story with only passing mentions of what's going on in there. I'm not denying here I took a lot more liberties and fell into a lot more 'standards' of this type of fic than my first time around...ironic now that I think of it. If you want a much more grounded basis and more 'realistic' approach to a reading series, I put my heart and every cell of my mind into The Life that Never Lived on my profile and those books. I'm pretty sure this one grew from my funny bone that I broke when I was seven.
Random side note insert; I actually for a time considered doing one of those, reading a book that's read the books. You know, they'd essentially be reading The Life That Never Lived. I ultimately derailed from that because of a few non canon decisions I made for this fic, and because the idea's kind of goofy in general, as well as conceded. There doesn't need to be fan fiction about my fanfiction thank you. (This is all your fault Inspired Girl, you succeeded in giving me an ego.) Instead I was inspired to try another way, in Queen of Creating's style, in that you only get some over all commentary of the whole chapter. Hope you enjoy!
The dungeons where Potions were held had always felt like the most oblique part of the castle, and Sirius had been in every corner of it to claim as such. It wasn't entirely the fault of the dark stone walls or the often unexplained fumes. The feeling seemed to seep up straight from the cold stone floor no matter how many fires were lit, as if the wooden stool itself were trying to pin them all with the forever unknown.
Sirius had never been more grateful for a Potions class to be over, and that was really saying something. It was the last one of this bleeding school semester, and if he had to spend one more day glaring at a cauldron and somehow inexplicably turning it the wrong color one more time without the usual helpful hint from Peter telling him why, he was going to chuck every last drop of it in Slughorn's face for constantly telling him he'd figure it out!
He'd never packed up his bag faster, even managing to multitask by muttering under his breath how stupid all this was. He was the first person to make it to the door, but collided with someone even less pleasant to see than the three people he'd most been avoiding lately. He cursed loudly, earning several dirty looks as the rest of the class was now passing. His bag had ripped upon stumbling into his little brother and smashed to the ground, sending his things flying and managing to spray him with ink.
Regulus hesitated in the doorway, muttering a quick, "sorry Sirius."
"Oh, it knows my name," Sirius growled under his breath, though his tone was far less hateful than usual, considering this was the first time he'd had a proper conversation with someone in nearly three weeks.
"Yes, he does," Regulus' scowl looked remarkably close to Sirius', the two put side by side at once was rather eerie. His tone though was even more friendly than Sirius', which wasn't all that hard as he tried to explain his abrupt appearance. "I ah, I came sprinting down here to see if I could catch Slughorn, ask him if I could pick up an extra credit assignment."
Sirius straightened with his stuff still half strewn around, but again that pull for someone to talk to seemed greater, especially as he glanced back and saw who hadn't left yet, so he responded no matter how unenthusiastically.
Frank and Alice slipped in past the two Black brothers at the doorway and found the room mostly empty, and they shared an exasperated look as they wondered if they'd just walked in on Slughorn telling this group off again. They were early for their next class after all, but the teacher was nowhere in sight. They did get a full view of what started quite an interesting journey.
James was hanging by Evans' cauldron, trying to chat happily with her, but mostly waiting for Sirius to leave first. He could hardly stand to look at him these days, let alone pass by him in such a restricted place, yet the wanker had struck up a conversation with Regulus of all people, someone he'd hardly spoken a whole sentence too in the past five years, but no, he'd chosen now! Probably just waiting for them to walk past so he could try apologizing again.
Remus and Peter were hovering on edge right beside him, Remus fidgeting with what was left of his cauldron on the desk while Evans' was trying to pack hers up and being hampered by James staying in her way.
"Won't you at least consider coming? It's our last game of the season! What if you're my good luck charm, you've always been the best at those! Do you really want to be the reason Gryffindor loses?"
"They've gotten on just fine without me there the past years," Lily snipped. She never knew why she even bothered responding to him half the time, but considering it no more discouraged him than ignoring him, at least this way she got to vent.
She tried to sidestep past him, James once again stepped into her way, and the two collided with each other, their hands accidentally slipping into her cauldron Remus had just accidentally dumped his own potion into.
Whatever the concoction the two mixed together created upended the entire world.
At first though, nothing really changed. There was no marvelous flash of light, no force of nature that showed everyone outside of this room had vanished. Lily simply made a gagging noise as she pulled her hand out of the vat and glared furiously at Remus, pulling her wand out at once with her less dominant hand she hadn't tried to catch herself with and banish the gunk off while hissing at him, "You are so lucky I turned that in already Lupin! What the hell did you even create? I've never seen this before," she finished with a critical eye at the now steaming mess, that vanished before their eyes.
"Wow Remus, you should do that more often, really makes cleanup easier," Peter chuckled while Remus looked rather concerned.
"I, err, I'll admit, I really screwed up my potion worse than usual. I think I added three things I actually wasn't supposed to, so you've got me."
James just flung the mess from his hand, which also vanished before it had even landed on anyone, and glanced back hopefully like he'd thought his source for this mess had left already.
He hadn't.
His face was turned in their general direction, like he'd been trying to subtly glance over and hope for the same, but now he was looking right through James. That wasn't uncommon lately, but the stunned look of confusion on his face was enough James grudgingly turned his head the other way to see what.
Back on the lip of the cauldron, was a slim red book, with a bright gold one emblazoned on the edge. It was just sitting there, like Evans had left it on purpose, but it certainly hadn't been there a second ago.
Lily took his distraction as a chance to bolt from the room, Regulus gave his brother an awkward wave goodbye and went back out towards Slughorn's office since he'd clearly missed him, and Alice and Frank tried to casually step back out as well. The whole school had not been oblivious of the fact the four Marauders had not been seen together in quite some time, and neither of them particularly felt like putting their nose into why.
James frowned in confusion at the odd title stamped across, which simply read Harry Potter Year One in bright gold letters across the plain scarlet cover.
"Err, did either of you-" James looked at the two as if in some kind of explanation, but both gave a mystified shake to their head. James couldn't help it, he still looked automatically towards his best mate, and then he caught himself and realized they were the only four left. Sirius' eyes had still been locked in on the odd object, really ridiculous his mind supplied as James had no relatives named Harry, and wondered if this was some odd attempt at a prank?
Sirius didn't stick around to care, completely forgetting the rest of his things, he turned on his heel and finally exited as well, when they all heard a shriek.
As one, the four bolted up to the Entrance Hall, Alice and Frank right behind them as they hadn't wandered off far, to see Lily standing in the middle and stamping her foot in frustration upon seeing them.
"Damn, I thought someone would have reacted to that."
"Err, Evans," James began in concern as if for her health.
"Where is everybody!" She demanded while gesturing to the Great Hall where there should have been a packed lunch crowd. Nobody was in there, and now that they were listening for it, the din of a castle filled with people, was deadly silent all around them.
As if given a signal, everyone began shouting all at once, sure the ruckus would cause someone to appear, but the only other arrival was Regulus coming up from the stairs as well, looking at all of them with great concern.
"Geez, you lots shouting usually has a much greater audience."
"Thank you Regulus for that helpful insert!" Sirius snapped.
Regulus ignored that and seemed to look around himself and really realize his own words, before realization slammed into him as well as he whispered, "What's going on?"
"We'd all like to know that," Frank put his hands up in frustration, this was what he and his girlfriend got for getting to class early.
"This is ridiculous," Lily seethed, stomping up towards the stairs. She was intending to barge into every crevice of this place and find someone other than these idiots to deal with. She didn't know what the school was playing at, but it wasn't funny.
Alice and Frank followed her as they still considered her the least craziest compared to the others.
Sirius still couldn't bring himself to look at the other three and bolted out onto the grounds for an exit, and Regulus couldn't think of anything better to do but follow him.
James waited until they were back alone before nodding to Peter, who pulled the Marauder's Map back out and cast the charm to activate it. On cue, the magical ink appeared, spreading through the tattered paper, but only revealing eight names instead of the several hundreds it normally housed.
"What the bloody hell?" Remus demanded, snatching it away as if sure somehow Peter had cast it wrong. He deactivated it and retried five times before looking up in exasperation, to see James flipping through the book.
"Of all times, you chose now to pursue one of those!" Remus demanded.
"Remus, what the bloody hell was in that potion," James whispered to him.
Remus looked at him askance. "I told you I don't know, I was, well I-" it was hard to admit how thoroughly distracted he'd been, even more than usual in his potions classes. His past two attempts had been utter messes as well. Somehow without Sirius by his side and being a constant distraction, he'd found a way to blow up his more recent attempts, so he'd been rather proud this one had only changed the wrong color seven times. "What's your point?"
"This," James waved it around, his face still looking somehow detached as if he had no clue what he was really saying, "it's-" he broke off, and Remus huffed in exasperation as he snatched it away.
"Yes James, it has words, glory look at that they're even strung together with sentences! What's the big-" he stopped abruptly at what he saw quite clearly had Prongs so thrown off. Remus could feel it now, feel this book was giving off as if the most powerful magic to exist, certainly that he'd ever been around.
"This isn't, there's no way-" he tried to protest what his eyes weren't changing.
"What?" Peter demanded in exasperation of the two.
"That's from the future." James stated coolly.
Peter laughed, realized neither was pulling his leg, and then yanked the book to him as well.
"It, it's a joke or-" he tried to say, but it was the exact same to his eyes as well.
"Remus, what the bloody hell did you mix with Lily's Profligare potion?"
"I, I told you, I have no clue!" Remus insisted, his heart restricting painfully in his chest.
"Why aren't their words in this book?" Peter asked curiously. There were an easy three hundred pages to this thing, but the rest was blank.
"Put that down," Remus suddenly yelped, slapping it away from him. It thudded to the ground and even skidded a few feet while Wormtail looked offended.
"Merlin Remus, James was holding it for a whole five minutes and he didn't explode."
"Let's prioritize for a minute," James insisted. "Ignore that thing and figure out where everyone is, maybe show that to Dumbledore-"
"That might be a problem, as there's no one else here!" Remus snarled.
"Well I'll say one thing, Evans sure can make one good banishing potion," Regulus commented as he stepped back into the Entrance Hall sains Sirius.
The question burst out of James before he could consider doing otherwise, "where's your better half?"
Regulus scowled hatefully, hesitated, but still answered, "still wandering the damn grounds, think he said something about checking the bottom of the lake. I don't know what you lot are fighting about, but for him to be saying that even as a joke really is something."
James flinched with the first spot of guilt he'd felt, and Remus looked away as if he hadn't even heard. Peter took the opportunity to shove the map back out of sight before he twisted his fingers together and just deciding to ignore that as well and said, "We might as well go find the other three. Something Dark is going on around here, perhaps we shouldn't go wandering off."
"Oh that's nice, just leave him out on the grounds by himself then if that's what you're thinking," Regulus muttered as his two friends seemed to agree and took off up the stairs, Peter having to jog to keep up.
They found them already up to the third floor, and with every empty room they'd open, they'd become increasingly more panicked. This just wasn't natural! Even during the holidays you were likely to run across someone by now! A ghost even! What was left of the Marauders caught up to them, and Lily's near hysterics weren't helped without their answer to this.
"Just come back downstairs!" James was trying to put his hands up in a comforting, surrendering gesture to the vivid redhead who hadn't stopped shouting for a solid minute, so her face was as bright as her hair. "We found something you lot really should see!"
It took a bit more persuading and Frank and Alice agreeing first before Lily conceded searching every room wasn't helping.
They went back downstairs and saw Sirius had rejoined his little brother, and the two were frozen in place over what had already been discovered.
The moment the other six had arrived back in the Entrance hall, the book was again dropped in surprise, Sirius pulling his wand out and hissing, "shit, what kind of magic is this!"
Open for all to see, words were now visible upon the rest of the page.
"You wanted to show me a book!" Lily demanded as she looked murderously at Potter. "How is that helping to find out what happened!"
"Just look at it," Potter insisted.
Without touching it, she went to where it had fallen on the floor, and then she too along with Frank and Alice saw.
There was a picture of a little bundle of blankets with a baby clearly wrapped in it, and he had a scar across his forehead. Below that was the seeming title The Boy Who Lived, which meant nothing to anyone so their eyes skipped down to below that, which was just under the date 1981. Six years from now.