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Noon sunlight fought its way through the dense canopy and finally pooled in a small clearing, setting a few dry branches aglow. Beneath the thick bushes, it was almost pitch black. A hare lay there, blinking slowly, savoring a rare moment of rest.
Suddenly, its ears shot up. Its nose twitched frantically.
CRACK.
A leather boot snapped a sunlit twig. The hare flattened itself against the earth, unmoving, eyes fixed on the boot. One step. Two. Closer and closer—
The hare scrambled up, darting deeper into the bush.
"Incendio! Petrificus Totalus! Accio!"
Flames erupted from its hiding place. The hare leaped, clearing the dancing fire, the rolling black smoke, the ignited dry grass. It found just enough unburnt ground to land on and kept sprinting—then its powerful hind legs locked mid-air. An invisible raptor snatched it up. It flew.
A second later, a hand closed around its ears.
"A hare." The boot's owner shoved something back into a pouch hanging from his backpack strap, studying the animal. "Think this could be Voldemort's Animagus form, Henry?"
"Aguamenti." The young man called Henry emerged from the trees, pushing aside branches. He pointed what looked like a bare branch at the burning bush. Water appeared from nowhere, dousing the flames.
"Henry?"
"You're the Animagus expert, Sirius. You tell me."
Sirius brought his face close to the hare, peering intently. The hare's instinct was to kick. But it remained stone-stiff, immobile.
"Hard to say," Sirius mused. "Feels like a regular hare. But it's Voldemort. Maybe we should eat it?" He bared his teeth in a grin.
"Up to you."
Sirius studied the hare a moment longer. Then he shrugged, his interest gone, and tossed it back into the charred, soggy bush. The hare flipped, scrambled, and bolted.
…
"How many hares is that now? Three? Four?" Sirius paused by a pine, tapping the trunk with his wand, checking for marks. A shadow crossed his face. "No magical traces. I hope Dumbledore anticipated all this." He laughed, short and sharp, trying to mask the edge in his voice.
"Don't lose heart, Sirius. It's only the second day." His companion didn't look up. He also wore a backpack and was fiddling with something like a compass. "It's pointing at a triangle… which means… goat horn? We'll find many things?"
"Let me see." Sirius walked over and took the compass. "Oh, no. That triangle's wider than the goat-horn one. It's the simplified rune for a Runespoor. Means our Luck Compass thinks we're… Merlin, I'm forgetting all this… headed for arguments and fights, basically. Ten points to Gryffindor, Professor Anthony?"
He shoved the compass back into Anthony's hands and strode deeper into the forest.
"If I were the Divination professor," Anthony said.
"Divination?" Sirius stopped, turning back, looking surprised. "They teach this stuff in Divination?"
Anthony shrugged. "Dunno. Probably. A Luck Compass sounds like a Divination prop. Why do you have a Luck Compass, Sirius?" He caught up, resting a hand on the tree trunk. He let his Necromancy brush against the nearby forest.
Points of death-light unfolded in his mind. Hare, fox—his cat, following at a distance—deer, grey wolf, bear, maybe. He quickly lost track of specifics. Fish, rodents, birds—all the forest's past deaths responded, dense, layered, until Anthony felt like he was floating on a sea of light.
"Bought it on a whim. Thought Harry might find it interesting," Sirius said. "Back in school, we used Luck Compasses to decide—Henry, you alright?"
Anthony blinked, pulling himself back from the light.
"I'm fine. Just… spaced out for a second." He shook his head. "What were you saying?"
Sirius frowned. "Nothing." He looked at Anthony again. "Let's rest, Henry. You've been walking all morning. Need to eat."
They walked a few more minutes downhill, finding another clearing. Sirius dropped to the ground, cross-legged, yanked open his backpack, and plunged an arm in. He started pulling things out: a massive stack of maps, unfolding on their own, detailing the terrain and roads of all Europe; very thin string, for marking trails, assassinating Voldemort, and fishing; a can of Butterbeer; two bags of crisps; a box of fruit pastries…
Anthony pulled two sandwiches from his own bag. They were a bit squashed, but thanks to the Wraith Chicken and Wraith Mouse, they were as cold as if they'd just come from a supermarket fridge.
"Thought I packed chairs," Sirius muttered, half his torso now inside the pack. "Ah, this must be it!"
He dragged out a black motorbike.
"Whoops. Wrong." He opened the bag wider, peering inside. "Think I ditched them back at the port."
"It's fine," Anthony said, handing Sirius an unwrapped sandwich. Sirius grunted a thanks, took a huge, distracted bite, and kept rummaging.
Thanks to the frequent exchanges between Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, getting from Britain to France had been easy. They'd rented a carriage pulled by winged horses from a tiny bird-watching association. The owner barely spoke English. They barely spoke French. The deal was concluded with surprising cheer in minutes, possibly because of the emerald ring, silver goblet, and gold coins Sirius had poured onto the table. They drove the carriage to Italy, where Sirius ditched most of his luggage ("Only brought it to look like a tourist," he'd explained to Anthony, balling up Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed hat and stuffing them into a bin, then abandoning a deck chair with a parasol next to a bus stop trash can). All he kept was a medium-sized backpack and a few attachable pouches.
Their Italian tour ended with a large black dog, pack in jaws, leaping into the sea, followed by a strangely-shaped human figure (Anthony had cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself; he didn't like water up his nose).
Yes. Stowaways. That's what happens without proper papers.
"Think I ditched the jam, too," Sirius said. "Still have salt and chocolate, though."
Anthony sat beside him, chewing his sandwich, watching a squirrel scurry across the map of Europe. He took out the Luck Compass again. It had three concentric rings and seven pointers, each ring etched with over a hundred tiny symbols. At the port, Sirius had been about to toss it too, until Anthony asked what it was. Now Anthony was its new owner, along with half a guidebook that smelled like it had been dug out from a pile of moldy bricks in a basement corner. He found the compass useful for learning various wizarding symbols.
"What's this one mean? This oval?" Anthony compared the book to the compass. "Mirror?"
Sirius glanced over from his bag excavation. "An egg. Means birth, newness."
"Thanks. You're really good at this."
"It's nothing, honestly," Sirius said. "You ever seen the Book of Admittance, Henry?"
"The one with the names of all kids suited for Hogwarts? Not in person. Why?"
"I have. We… we wanted to know everyone at Hogwarts. Planned to nick the Sorting lists from Minerva's office. Turned out they were kept in a tower. Locked tower. Anyway, we got in." Sirius sighed, lying back on the ground, looking up at the sliver of sky between branches. "The book was in the middle of the tower. Couldn't touch it, though. Just saw it."
"The Sorting lists?" Anthony asked.
"Had a No-Copying Charm on them. So we actually stole a roll," Sirius said. "Your professors know they're linked to the Book of Admittance, right? We tried a Spell-Scribing Charm. Got a mess of symbols we couldn't read. Took us ages to figure out what each one was doing." A fond smile touched his lips.
Anthony was about to ask why they needed to figure out the Book's symbols when a voice came from inside Sirius's pack.
"Sirius?"
Sirius jerked upright, fished a mirror from a front pouch.
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