Chapter 20: Perpetuus Procella
James lifted his head from where he lay spooned against Lily’s back, his arms wrapped around her starved, hollow belly. “Did you hear something?”
“You were probably dreaming.”
With a sigh, James lowered his head again and shut his eyes. A few moments later they sprung open. His brows scrunched together. “I swear I hear something.”
“Wishful thinking.”
Shaking his head in denial of her explanations, he sat up and strained his ears. Soon he heard it again. He looked down at Lily. “Didn’t you hear that?”
Her own brows knitted, Lily painstakingly turned onto her back. “Yeah, actually, I did.”
They listened until they heard it again. James stood up as if to make it clearer. “It sounds muffled.”
“If it’s outside, the rain would smother and abstract most of it. If it’s in the shack, whatever was making it would be dead by now.”
“I don’t think it’s coming from outside.”
“So if it’s not outside and not inside, where is it?”
They both moved their eyes around their room. “It can’t possibly be in here,” Lily finally said. She met James’s eyes. “They took your wand, didn’t they?”
“I think so.” He patted his pockets first on the outside of his robes, then on the inside. When he came to a pocket and felt something solid inside, he slowly pulled it out. He held the mirror before his face. He yelped when he didn’t see his reflection, but Sirius’s.
“Took you long enough.” Sirius smiled.
A light came on in James’s mind. His smile grew to match his best friends. “Ha! I can’t believe this!”
“What? What? What is it?” Lily wanted to know.
James knelt down and shoved the mirror close to her face so she could see it in the dark. She shrieked. “Oh, God! I look like Sirius!”
“Hey!” came from the mirror.
“Lily, this is no ordinary mirror,” James began. “This is a two-way mirror. I speak into this end and Sirius can hear me and talk back.”
“Like a telephone.”
“Er…sure.” James tried to remember what a Muggle telephone was. “Yes, exactly.”
She gasped. “They can come rescue us!”
“Is that Lily?” Lily and James both looked into the mirror to see Charlie pushing Sirius aside. She peered in, squinted, then let out a cry of relief. “You’re alive. Oh, I’ve been so worried. Where are you? Why did you leave?”
Lily opened her mouth to answer, but James was suddenly pulling the mirror away from her. “That doesn’t matter now,” he said curtly. “We need to get out of here.”
Lily studied his face. Where had that come from? One minute he was all happy-go-lucky, the next he was Mr. Grouch. She mentally put it aside. They had hope, a possibility to get out of here alive. They needed to focus on that. Then she’d need to get to a hospital. Explanations could wait until they were all safe.
Sirius was talking to James again. “Where are you?”
“I dunno.” He looked at Lily, who should her head. “Neither does Lily. From what I’ve seen, it’s a rickety wooden building. It’s small, only a few tiny rooms inside.” He paused as he tried to think of something else that would lend aid to their escape.
“It’s storming outside,” Lily spoke up. “It’s always storming.”
Severus Snape whirled around, a snarl on his lips, eyes narrow and dark. The first year boy instinctively took a step back, eyes round.
They were in the library, in one of the shadowy rows where Snape had been browsing through books at random. He’d needed something to do, something to distract his hands and his mind, so he wouldn’t think about her.
The boy, still frightened, held out a stiff arm. Clutched in his furiously shaking hand was a scrap of parchment. “F-from the headm-master.”
Snape snatched the parchment from the boy, and the boy immediately sped off in the opposite direction. Turning around so as not to be seen, Snape let the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. He knew it was awful of him, but sometimes he enjoyed seeing the looks on people’s faces when he threw them a glare. The highlights of his life, as it were.
He unrolled the parchment and read: “Dear Severus, I wish to see you in my office as soon as possible. Albus Dumbledore. P.S. Chocolate is soothing in trying times.”
He rolled the parchment up again as he began a brisk, no-nonsense walk across the library. He knew what was to come; he’d been waiting for it, and quite frankly he wondered why he hadn’t been asked sooner.
He reached the stone gargoyles that guarded the headmaster’s office and declared, “Chocolate Frogs.” They jumped aside and a spiral staircase appeared.
When he reached the door, he knocked politely and waited to be answered. Permission granted, he entered the room.
Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, half-moon spectacles miraculously balanced on the tip of his nose as he observed himself write something or other. “Please be seated, Severus,” he said without glancing up.
Snape did as he was told quietly and patiently waited for the headmaster to finish what he was doing.
Dumbledore stuck his quill back into his inkwell and rolled up the parchment. Snape wondered if the old man had remembered to cast a drying spell when he had finished. Nevertheless, Dumbledore set aside the parchment and leaned forward in his chair, pales blue eyes fixed on Snape, hands folded on the desk.
“You know why you’re here,” the headmaster began. Snape nodded. “Then let us not waste time. We’ve done far to much of that as it is.” He waited a beat. “Do you know where they are?”
“It’s very risky of me, telling you. Foolish.”
Dumbledore simply inclined his head, a very nearly imperceptible nod.
Charlie, Sirius, and Remus all stared blankly at each other. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Sirius said.
“Always storming,” Charlie repeated thoughtfully. “I wager Dumbledore would know.”
“Then ask him, dammit!” James shouted from inside the mirror. “Get”us”out of here!”
The three jerked and hurried stupidly to the door of the Marauders’ dormitory. Remus looked over his shoulder and asked as a second thought, “Coming, Pete?”
As they hurried down the corridor toward the gargoyle statues, Sirius told James through the mirror, “We'll let you know something as soon as we do.” James nodded, they severed the connection, and Sirius slipped the little mirror into the pocket of his robes.
They ran through all the names of the sweets they knew and it didn’t take them long to say the correct one. They quickly climbed the stairs, manners forgotten in their haste, and when they reached the top, they flung open the door to the headmaster’s office. “Professor Dumbledore, we”“ Sirius broke off.
Across from Dumbledore, Severus Snape sat before them, mouth frozen open as if he’d just been about to say something (which he had).
Charlie raised her hands to cover her mouth, her eyes ready to drop out of her head. “Oh my. We are so, so terribly sorry. So sorry. We’ll just”ah”we’ll just”“
Dumbledore stood from behind his desk, hand raised palm-out as if to silence her. “Never mind that, Miss Simmons. You are fortunate to have interrupted something that would probably be beneficial to your hearing as well.” He peered at the four Gryffindors over his spectacles. “However, best keep your manners close to mind next time.” He gestured. “Please, sit. Continue, Severus.”
Snape glanced warily at the group of Gryffindors. “Perpetuus Procella,” he began. “It is an insignificant island in the Irish Sea, just north of Wales, just west of England. I don’t know the exact coordinates.”
“Perpetuus Procella,” the headmaster muttered quietly to himself. “Latin for Perpetual Storm.”
“It’s always storming there. Never stops,” Snape told him.
From where she sat, Charlie smacked her forehead with her hand.
James sat with his back against the wall, his arms wrapped around Lily’s torso as she sat propped against his chest.
“I’m so cold.” Her voice was more a suggestion of one, barely traceable and rapidly disappearing”as was her pulse. It scared the hell out of James.
He leaned forward in the dark and pulled his arms out of his robes, then leaned back again and covered her with it, though he knew it wouldn’t help.