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James groaned, and shoved at Sirius.
“Mate, it’s the middle of the night. I went to sleep at midnight. Leave me alone!” he complained when his closest friend did the exact opposite of his silent command, and jostled him again.
“Jamie, come on! It’s the night!”
He cracked an eye open, and stared at the blurry outline kneeling next to his bed. “Who says it’s the night? I don’t think it’s the night.”
“Well I do! The moon does! Come on. It’s a new moon, we’ll be fine. I dosed Wormy and Moony with some sleeping potions, and . . .” he trailed off, and James knew.
He groaned and shoved his glasses onto his face. “What did you do, Siri?”
The older teen had the decency to look ashamed. “I kind of stole two hippogriffs from Hagrid. They’re waiting just outside the window.”
His stomach dropped. “Which ones did you steal?”
Please don’t let it be—
“Buckbeak and Hatehoof.”
He nearly cried. “Hatehoof despises me, and Buckbeak hates the both of us. There’s no way they’re going to get us there alive.”
Sirius lifted his hands. “Hey! Don’t look at me like that. They were the only two who were amenable to doing what we need them to do, especially after the last time we borrowed two hippogriffs.”
Both seventh years shivered at the memory.
The hippogriff had crashed, gotten injured—but not deadly injured—and since then, the herd had been studiously avoiding them. To the point that they had to borrow the flying carpet from the Room of Requirement, and that had gone just as well as they had expected it to go.
Not.
They had spent three days in the hospital wing pretending they had been foolishly playing Quidditch in the very foggy darkness.
They had also gotten banned from the next Quidditch game, which hadn’t ended well with their housemates, but, they had won the next three, and the Quidditch cup that year, so they had been forgiven.
“What about the thestrals?”
They had discovered at one point during their sixth year, while in pursuit of the foolish notion they had had one day, that their brooms had charms on them that prevented them from leaving the school grounds.
“How would you like trying to ride something invisible?”
“We’ve done it before.”
“No. I got the birds. Let’s go before the sleeping potions wear off. I didn’t give them much.”
James groaned long, and loud before he climbed out of bed and quickly dressed. “Do you have all of the supplies gathered?”
Sirius looked at him with a hurt face as he clutched his hand to his heart. “I’m insulted. Of course, I have everything.” He patted the satchel on his hip. “Do you honestly think that I’d wake you from your precious beauty sleep without being completely ready?”
“Yes. I do. Because you have. Multiple times. In the past month.”
“Hey! Don’t give me that look!” he hissed as he eased the heavy window open once James was ready. “This was your idea.”
“It was a drunk idea! You don’t listen to drunk ideas!”
Sirius scowled at him before he bowed to the proud bird that hovered in the air, and climbed on top of it. “I will listen to drunk ideas if they’re amazing, and this one was brilliant, and beautiful, and needed to be completed.”
James rolled his eyes so hard that white flashed in his vision, and pain lanced his head. He blinked a few times before he bowed to the black hippogriff that seemed to hate everyone—but especially James—and waited until the bird bowed her head back at him.
He swallowed, climbed onto the majestic creature, and held on tight.
Albus Dumbledore groaned, and pulled his pillow over his head in a futile attempt to drown out the incessant screeching of one of the alarm trinkets in his office.
He had nearly fallen back to sleep, when one of the wards started to ring.
He sighed and slid out of the sheets, and with a twitch of his hand, his socks readjusted themselves, and the soft wool tightened around his knees.
His sleeping robes slid on the ground behind him as he stepped into the office. His eyes immediately fell on the dancing pirate, and he grinned and sighed at the same time.
“Not again.”
With another flick of his wrist, a pair of yellow slippers flew out of his room, and his wand landed in his fingers.
The dancing pirate stilled, and fell silent, and with a flick of his wand, he apparated away.
It was good to be Headmaster.
James rolled off of Hatehoof’s back, and kissed the ground.
There was a dull thud next to him, and he peeked out of his self-imposed—kind of—misery to see that Sirius had done the same exact thing.
“I hate you,” he groaned softly.
“I hate me too, right now,” his best friend responded.
“If I can’t have children with my Lily-Flower because of this, I’m ending you.”
“If I can’t have children after this, I’ll help you.”
After a few more minutes of misery, the two pulled themselves up to their feet, and turned to the smug birds who preened under their vicious gazes. “We’ll be back before light. Please wait for us.”
The birds bowed—James was dead convinced that they were laughing at them—and flew to the special area for visitors who brought magical transportation other than a portkey.
The teens stepped into the phone booth, typed 64224, and another number that would make the booth think that they were Orion Black stepping in to work on some Wizengamot business.
They were in the atrium in record time, and slipped the Invisibility Cloak over their heads. James pulled out the wad of parchment that was so close to being completed. “Where are we going tonight?” he whispered.
“We just have the Department of Transportation left.”
James blinked. “Really? Are you sure?”
The elder of the two rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. We spent the last four months in the DoM, the two months before that we did the hearing rooms and Wizengamot. The month before that we did the offices—I’m still scarred by what we saw in the Minister’s office.” Both shivered and gagged. Sirius continued to list the rest of the Ministry, and they indeed only had the Department of Transportation left to do.
With all of the time that they had spent in the Ministry over the last two years, it was nothing to quietly sneak their way to the Department, and it was easier than cake to get into the Department with the magical lock picks they had developed after they went through thirty ‘indestructible’ pairs trying to complete the insane drunken idea that had been born at the end of their fifth year, and started at the beginning of their sixth.
“Do you want to start, or shall I?” Sirius asked after a minute of staring around the cluttered Department. “Or do we want to do it together to make it go faster?”
James shook his head. “Nuh-uh. You start,” he said a little breathlessly. “I need to figure out what that is,” he finished. He pointed towards a shiny broom on the other side of the Department in a side room.
“Don’t touch things!” Sirius hissed, just before James ran off towards the object.
He rolled his eyes at his best friend, and laid on the ground by the door. He pulled the Rune carving kit out of his satchel, and started to carve while James was off drooling.
Albus watched with bated breath as James circled around the broom multiple times.
Please don’t touch it. Please, no, no, stop. No. Oh no.
He put his hands against his head, and closed his eyes.
That’s going to hurt.
Sirius had gotten fifteen feet away from the door, with a rune sequence—an inch long, and five millimeters tall—every six inches, when a loud bang echoed through the room. He dropped the hammer and chisel, before he sat up to see James as he limped away from a small fire.
“What did you do?” he hissed. “We’re going to get caught!”
He shuffled slightly. “I touched it.”
Sirius made a motion as if he were about to strangle the younger teen. “What else did you do?”
“I tried to ride it . . . I crashed it.”
He sucked his lips into his mouth, and failed at stopping his laughter. “You crashed a broom?”
“It’s not my fault!” he hissed. Neither noticed the fire die, nor the smoke disappear. “The balancing charms were off. The footrests had some weird thing on it that made it go fast, and stop, and I accidentally somehow did both at the same time. I crashed into the ground, and then it exploded.” James rubbed his shoulder before he reached for the carving kit. “We’re switching.”
Sirius smiled grimly. “Why don’t you start with Binding what I’ve done so far to the parchment before you carve any more Runes.”
James sighed before he did as ordered.
Albus looked around the Department, and cast protective spells on every object that he thought the teens would touch.
Afterall, he had learned his lesson when the children nearly blew up the Department of Mysteries at the beginning of the school year.
That had taken some clean up.
A lot of clean up.
James had finished the wall Sirius had started by the time Sirius spoke again. “What is this?”
“I don’t know,” he called while he etched the small shapes into the stone, “but, as we have learned, you probably shouldn’t touch it.”
“Imma touch it.”
He sat up. “Don’t you dare, Sirius.”
“Come on! You touched the, uh, where is it—ah! Here it is! You touched the Firebolt—you touched a first draft? Are you stupid?”
“No, I’m brilliant, I’ll remind you. I just make not entirely brilliant decisions. Just, don’t hurt yourself or anything else, alright? We don’t want to be caught.”
“No one’s here.”
“Exactly. Let’s keep it that way.”
There was indistinct grumbling before a mumbled acquiescence was given.
He went back to carving and Binding, and was nearly done with the main room when a loud roar started from one of the side rooms. He dropped the chisel and hammer and ran into the room to see Sirius on a hunk of metal with two wheels. “Sirius! What are you doing?”
“Having fun!” he shouted. The seventh year cackled manically for a moment before he stopped, and seemed to grow hesitant. “How do I stop?”
“I don’t know! You’re the one who started it!”
“James—help!”
“Okay, calm down. Try and slow down, and come over here.” The teen started towards him, and sped up. He leapt out of the way. “Sirius, just jump!” he shouted as he covered his head.
“I can’t!”
“What do you mean you can’t?” Instead of words, a horrid shriek welcomed him. James peaked out from the cover of his arms, and froze when he saw the object and his best friend driving up the side of the wall, and then onto the ceiling. “Just let go! I’ll catch you!”
His best friend hesitated before he did as commanded, and with a swish and flick, he slowly levitated Sirius to the ground while the wheeled-metal thing fell onto a worktable. “I should have listened to you,” Sirius gasped as he pressed his hands into the ground.
“Is now an appropriate time to say, ‘I told you so’?”
Sirius nodded his head, and took the chisel and hammer. “We’re switching.”
James agreed, and the two stayed together for quite a while; Sirius carved the sequences, and James Bound the Runes to the parchment, and within a few hours, the two had finished the main room, the room with the hunk of metal, and a room with quite a few broom models—which, both had to constantly pull the other away from.
They had nearly finished a room that was filled nearly to the brim with random objects before James got severely sidetracked by one of the items, and left Sirius alone.
He sat up for a moment and stretched his neck and back before he laid down again, and began to painstakingly carve once more.
“Hey, what’s this?”
Sirius groaned and didn’t look up. “I don’t know, but, considering what’s happened the last few times, I don’t think you should touch it,” he drawled as he finished the Rune sequence. “Come on, it’s time for you to Bind.”
He frowned when he got no answer. He slowly stood, and looked around. “James? Where are you?”
Where had his best friend gone?
He looked around the room, and the seven other rooms in the Department before he went back to where they had been working, all the while calling James’ name.
James was standing in the room he had just left, wearing a toga, and he was soaking wet.
“Buddy? What are you wearing? Why are you wet?”
“You know,” he started slowly, “for as advanced as the Atlanteans were, you’d think they’d be smart enough to not have a self-destruct button for the entire island.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought it was a portkey. I just wanted to come home. Time travel sucks. How long was I gone?”
“About a minute,” he absently said. The words caused James to wail and clutch his head before James’ words processed in Sirius’ mind. He shook his head, before he slapped the back of James’ head. “What. Are. You. Talking. About?”
James looked at him, and for a moment, his eyes were haunted. “I touched something I shouldn’t’ve. Twice. The horror,” he whispered.
Sirius looked to the ceiling and sighed. “You Bind. I carve. No more playing around. We don’t have much time before we need to get back to school.”
The seventh year pouted, but acquiesced after he looked to the large conch shell in his hands and dropped it. He knelt next to the parchment, and began to Bind, and Sirius joined him, and started to carve.
Whenever one of them started to get sidetracked, the words ‘shell’ or ‘metal’ were exchanged, and they were kept on task, and the Department was finished at five am, just before they needed to start heading back to school.
They stood in the main room, and cast the needed spells on the parchment, said the needed spell, and the two whooped when their names appeared in the Department of Transportation.
“We did it. We really, really did it.”
“We made a Marauder’s Map of the Ministry of Magic.”
They two stood in awe for a moment longer before they folded the parchment up, and put their supplies away in the satchel on Sirius’ hip.
The two looked up, and frowned when they saw what looked to be the Knight Bus in front of them. “Is this where the Knight Bus goes when it’s not in service?”
“No, the Knight Bus is always in service.”
“Then why is it here?”
The two walked forward, and saw the folder that rested on the table next to the Bus. They quietly unburied it from the random parts, and opened it.
“Knight Bus 2.0?”
“What’s the difference?”
“No idea. Shall we find out?”
“Probably a bad idea.”
“Since when do we care if something is a bad idea or not?”
“True.”
The shell and the wheeled chunk of metal were long forgotten, as, almost as if they were one entity, the two reached out with their hands, and touched the side of the vehicle. Immediately, a purring sound that continuously grew louder and louder filled the room. The bus began to vibrate, and dance, and it looked alive. Then fire erupted out of the back of the bus, and it slammed into the far wall, and disappeared in a veil of smoke and fire.
“We should leave.”
“Most definitely.”
The two slung the Invisibility Cloak over their heads before they ran out of the Department, and were stopped mere feet from the door when they ran into a tall, smirking figure.
“Why, Mr. Potter, Mr. Black, it is such a surprise to see you here.”
“Professor Dumbledore,” they stuttered. The man flicked his wand, and the Cloak fell to the floor, through their bodies, as if they were just air. “What are you doing here?”
“You know,” the man started, “there are many wondrous things about magic, and Hogwarts. You see, the Founders placed a ward that would alert the Headmaster every time a student left the grounds.”
The two seventh years swallowed. “Every time?” they squeaked.
The man nodded, and continued. “In my experience, it is all great fun to sneak into places that we aren’t allowed, but there are limits, even to my own patience.”
“Professor?” they squeaked once more.
“I’ll keep my mouth shut, and I will fix the damage you’ve created, if you give me a copy of that little map in your pocket.”
“My parents?”
“Will never know a thing.”
The stench of smoke reached their noses. “Yes, okay. You’ll get a map.”
Albus Dumbledore sat in his office, and stared at nothing in particular as something hit him.
He was the one responsible for the fall of Atlantis.