Chapter 12

Scheming

That was what Sirius Black was currently doing. Scheming. Pacing around the Shrieking Shack, lost in his own thoughts, several plans being cooked up in his head. On the couch, a fluffy ball of orange fur, Crookshanks, watched him exasperatedly. But Sirius just continued pacing. It helped him think, or so, that was what he thought.

Currently, he was mulling over a simple fact.

3 days until the full moon. 3 days until Halloween. 

Crookshanks had reported back to him about this. It was going to be the full moon, and Halloween night. In other words, the perfect time to initiate his plan. Or the first attempt at it anyway. 

There was to be a Hogsmead weekend, with a feast right after, rendering the castle almost empty. Besides, what better time than Halloween to get his revenge, the day that he had started plotting his revenge. And it was a full moon. Doing some marauding, though alone, seemed like the perfect tribute for those he had lost, on the exact day that he had lost them. 

Now, there was only one obstacle. And it was bloody enormous. How in the fucking hell was he supposed to get into Gryffindor tower? He didn't have any means of doing so or any resources to help him besides his wand, which he knew could get him anywhere he wanted to go. 

He'd asked Crookshanks to scout for means of getting into the tower with a password, but the cat had no luck. He hadn't expected much. The Fat Lady often gave the impression of being off in her own little world, which was understandable if you didn't have anyone to talk to or with besides the occasional student coming by and telling you some oddball word, the password, to make you let them into their common room. It would be depressing for anybody.

However, she was really good about her passwords. They weren't difficult, definitely not as easy as the Slytherin's, whose passwords mostly alternated between 'Salazar' or 'Pureblood'. It was normally something like 'Flobberworm', or sometimes during holidays, 'Baubles'. He wouldn't be surprised if the password was 'Jack-O-Lantern' or something like that, but he was sure that if he got it wrong, she wouldn't let him in even if he tried to charm her. Not that he could charm anybody in his current physical state and the fact that he was an escaped convict didn't help his case much either.

There had to be a way to make getting in easier. His original plan would have to wait. It would come, but it would have to wait. He hated to have to do it but the Fat Lady was going to have to go. 

Now with that done, there was the matter of him getting into the castle. 

Luckily, having made the Marauder's Map, or at least co-starring in its creation, he had an excellent knowledge of the castle's secret passageways, several of those leading outside of the castle's boundaries, meaning that one could also use them the opposite way. He set his mind on Honeydukes. It would be the easiest, and it wouldn't be all too hard to pretend to be someone's dog to get in the store, though being careful not to be spotted by the owner's, and use the passageway into Hogwarts. 

He'd had everything planned out in those 3 days, even to the point for in case the stone slab to the passageway wasn't open, he'd have Crookshanks pretend to have spotted a mouse or some other creature, knowing that the cat was very convincing and that the owners would probably fall for it.

He had to admit, a lot of the credit for this plan of sneaking into the castle, removing the Fat Lady instead of trying to get in the common room with no avail, had to go to Crookshanks. Without the cat, Sirius was sure that he'd have never been able to concoct the whole scheme himself. He'd begun to see cats in a new light after meeting Crookshanks, never before understanding that their habit of just staring at people, however creepy, wasn't meant in that way, rather, they were simply collecting information, which Sirius had found extremely useful. 

So it was that when Halloween morning rolled around, Sirius was ready. His wand stowed in his pocket, he transformed into Snuffles, knowing that it, and his clothes, would become an extension of himself until he transformed once more, something that, even after reading a lot about in theory when learning how to become an animagus, he'd never figured out, and didn't plan to anytime soon. 

Crookshanks led the way, using his bottlebrush tail to signal to Sirius if the coast was clear or not. They'd planned that out from the beginning too. A quick flick of the tail meant that it was safe, but they had to move quickly, Crookshanks holding it straight up meant to halt, and keeping it down and relaxed was the signal that they could go without worry.

It was quite ingenious if Sirius said so himself. 

They crept into Hogsmeade, which to their relief, and their expectancy wasn't crowded yet. As it was a Hogsmeade weekend for the students, they'd realized that they could use that to their advantage, as the place being crowded would allow them to blend in better, and hopefully allow them to access Honeydukes and the passageway better seeing as the shopkeepers would most likely be busy with the students--and a few teachers. 

They waited in the brush for a moment. Sirius was on the lookout for dementors, creatures that he absolutely hated, and this feeling hadn't been improved by being locked up in Azkaban for 12 years. The Ministry, being the idiots they were, had actually set those things loose around the perimeter of Hogwarts, and he assumed that they would be floating around Hogsmeade as well, though not today, since all the students would be there. 

He wouldn't be able to transform until he was a safe way into the passageway, as upon closer inspection, his own face was plastered to every shop window. 

Eventually, the little village started filling up, until you could barely see the floor through the endless mass of students. Many of them, third years, Sirius assumed, given their enthusiasm, were running from shop to shop. 

Several made a beeline for Honeydukes, and Crookshanks, as well as Sirius, as Snuffles, followed. Crookshanks had to be especially careful, seeing as his owner, a girl named Hermione, as he'd explained to Sirius, was one of the students, meaning that he'd have to take a lot of care not to be spotted for fear of her finding him and puzzling over how he'd gotten out, then locking him in her dormitory to keep him from doing so, which was a horrifying prospect. 

Luckily, Crookshanks wasn't noticed by anyone as they managed to sneak into the back of the store. Sirius even managed to knick a packet of Jelly Slugs on the way, which he had clamped in his jaws. Upon seeing that the passageway was open, they gave each other a look and clambered in. One of the shopkeepers was searching in a box marked 'Fizzing Whizbees', and Sirius and Crookshanks took that as their opportunity to dash past him. 

Sirius crouched in the darkness, watching as Crookshanks approached the shopkeeper and rubbed against his legs, purring. The man nearly crashed through the roof of the cellar in surprise, until he looked down and his face softened as he saw Crookshanks. "Where'd you come from little fella?"

Crookshanks mewled in response. 

The man picked him up. "Looks like you've gotten a little bit lost. I'll take you outside."

Crookshanks didn't struggle and looked back into the darkness where Sirius was hidden one last time as the man carried him up the cellar steps and out of sight. 

Sirius bolted, running for about 10 minutes before he knew that he was safe and that he wouldn't bump into anyone, so he transformed, walking calmly towards the end of the passage, where he knew he'd have to stay for a while until the feast began and the castle was empty.

He opened the packet of Jelly Slugs, for which he'd ran back to the cellar and tossed a few sickles on to make up for their absence, knowing that he couldn't bring himself to eat them without buying them himself and being honest about it. He bit into one of the neon blue slugs and grinned. It'd been years since he'd eaten any sort of sweet whatsoever unless you counted cinnamon roll that a lady at a muggle shop had given him after his escape from Azkaban. 

His grin evaporated as he remembered James' inability to say the word 'cinnamon' correctly, always pronouncing it as "cininaminon" or something like that. He'd scoffed back then and constantly made fun of James, but right now, he'd have given anything to just hear his best friend speak again, even if it was gibberish. 

He finished the Jelly Slugs right as he made it to the end of the passageway, crumpled up the wrapper and stuck it in his pocket, then sat down next to the stone slide, waiting the time out. Every so often he'd climb up the tunnel and peer out through the witches hump to no avail, knowing that he would be able to execute the plan once he saw the familiar hordes of students making their way to the Great Hall.

And seeing as it was the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, the students would most likely try to elongate their trip there to be as long as possible, meaning that Sirius had a long wait in store for him. No matter. If there was one thing that Sirius had learned in Azkaban, it was patience. Before being taken to the prison, he couldn't stop talking, no matter how hard he tried to. But in Azkaban, there was no one to talk to and nothing to do, and he just couldn't get the energy to do something like sing, as he normally would in an occasion like that, though that would probably have been due to the presence of dementors, the most horrible creatures on Earth, floating right outside his prison cell. 

So he waited, until finally, on his last trip of the tunnel to see if the students were back yet, he saw a large crowd of them in the passageway. Conveniently, there was also a clock mounted on the wall a little ways away, and though Sirius had to squint to make out the time, he found that it was a little after 7, and if he wasn't mistaken, the feast was going to start in 20 minutes. He'd wait until then, not wanting to take the chance of getting there before, worried that he'd bump into a crowd of late students, which he knew there would be, as he'd always went to the feast late, having spent a long day in Hogsmeade and taking his time to get back to the castle. 

The 20 minutes passed quickly compared to the amount of time that he'd been in the tunnel previously, which he'd make out to be around 8-9 hours. Cancel the journey to Hogsmeade though, and the journey through the tunnel, and he'd only been there 7 and a half hours, though that was still a staggering amount of time. 

At last, it was time. Hope this all wasn't for nothing, he thought to himself, then made his way up the tunnel. He repeated his motto in his head. What's life without a little risk?