Adventurous-Another Marauders Fanfic

10-The Hog's Head Interlude.

Sephy sat between James and Sirius, munching on a croissant as the quiet, frantic murmuring continued to fill the Great Hall. Dumbledore was sitting in his chair up at the staff table, he had summoned them, but hadn't yet gotten up to speak.

Samantha was sitting between Halley and Remus opposite, and Sephy couldn't help but notice that the young blonde hadn't touched a thing in terms of breakfast. She looked wan, and paler than normal. Halley had loosely filled Sephy in with the fact that Samantha had been 'nearby' when the library had been torched, but Halley hadn't known anything more than that, and Sephy could read in her friend's face that something wasn't right in Samantha's mind.

As Sephy reached for a second croissant, a hushed silence fell as Dumbledore sedately got to his feet. He surveyed the crowd from behind his half-moon spectacles, before leaning across the table, taking a slice of toast from the rack next to McGonagall and sitting back down again.

"What's he doing?" Peter asked, looking earnestly between James and Sirius. The latter spun his fork round in his fingers.

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"It's Dumbledore. Nobody ever knows what he's doing" Halley scoffed.

"Do you think the paintings saw anything?" Samantha asked suddenly. Halley looked quizzically at Sephy, who flashed her a set of wide panic eyes.

"I couldn't say" Remus replied, before anyone else had the opportunity to. He slipped an arm around Samantha's shoulders, squeezing her comfortingly. "The library corridor is always super dark at night, isn't it? And we know the portrait jester won't ever snitch on us. It basically comes down to whether or not the lightning lit up the corridor long enough for any of the other portraits to stop cowering and get a good look."

Samantha looked pained, shaking her head as if to signify that Remus wasn't helping. He sighed, and didn't move his arm.

Halley shared a despondent look with Sirius.

"Ahem."

Dumbledore had risen without anyone's notice, and was standing pensively, the tips fingers pressed together on his stomach. The seven friends all spun around to look.

"As some of you may be aware" the Headmaster began pointedly. "The Hogwarts Library suffered a terrible attack, last night. Madam Pince informs me that a great deal of books have been damaged, some of them beyond repair."

Whispers flew around the Great Hall like wildfire. Across on the Slytherin table, Samantha noticed, Severus Snape and his cronies weren't entirely looking surprised. She frowned.

"For those of you with N.E.W.Ts and O.W.Ls this year" Dumbledore continued. "I assure you that the library will be returned to its rightful state as soon as possible. However, I am forced to demand of anyone who knows of this event to come forward."

Deathly silence. Dumbledore chuckled quietly to himself from behind his beard.

"I do not expect the perpetrators to hand themselves in. That would be foolish of me" he explained. "However, I feel I must tell you all that dark times may well be on the horizon. If we allow evil such as this to flourish in Hogwarts, it certainly shall. As a fellow member of this school, I only ask for each and every one of you to rebuke it with every strength you yourselves possess. I hope you all enjoy your Saturday."

With that, Dumbledore turned on his heel, and returned to his chair.

"Well, that was a bit intense" Sirius commented, biting hard into an apple as the Great Hall once again dissolved into chatter.

"Should I tell them what I saw?" Samantha was asking. James was dissuading her over a fifth pain au chocolat.

"You'll only get yourself into trouble for being out of bed after hours" he pointed out. "And you can't exactly tell them anything that they don't already know."