Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Nightmare Before Hogwarts
The Nightmare Before Hogwarts
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. /Beetlejuice /is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: You guys continue to be really awesome and I’m loving all the suggestions that I’m getting for the Dursleys and a lot of them will be worked into the fic. Also I’m going after large Marge so any suggestions for that bitch are welcome too.
The Wolfman doesn’t have an official name so I’m using the name that Werejaguar of Halloween Town gave him.
And one quick announcement: while not quite yet, I will be adding both the Addams Family (going mostly by the movies) and the classic movie monsters into this ‘verse. I am going with the versions in the two Scooby-Doo films from 1988 as they are the ones I think will fit in best.
This chapter has been betaed Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Edit 5-24-18: This chapter betaed a second time by The Patient One.
Chapter 12
Lily was surprisingly okay with James taking a few of Dudley’s discarded toys and books, and had been thrilled that James had found Harry’s blanket, repairing everything before presenting it all to Harry. Harry had been in awe of the gifts, having no idea they use to be his cousin’s, and had happily put them up in his room with the few macabre toys that the other citizens had gifted Harry with. Lily was still unsure about the guillotine toy, but evidently it was a common plaything in Halloween Town. Jack even said he had one as a child, which brought up many questions on its own.
The undead Potters loved their new home, mostly because they got to be with Harry again. But with their circumstances, the only supplies they could gather were either morbid, Halloween-themed, or both. Lily remained concerned about the food that she fed her son, even if Harry didn’t seem to mind the strange-looking food at all.
James still had yet to go to his old family home, having planned on doing so soon with Lily and maybe Jack, who was curious about seeing a Wizarding home outside of the ones that existed in the afterlife. But now that he had begun tormenting the Dursleys—and consequently grown proficient opening the way between the mortal world and Halloween Town—the next priority on the wizard’s agenda was the other Marauders and how to find/break them out of the hellholes they were currently in.
Remus Lupin, a.k.a. Moony, had been the bookworm of the group. He was also a werewolf, something he and the others discovered by their second year of Hogwarts. With great effort and no regard for the Wizarding laws, James and the other two had learned how to become Animagi, achieving the transformation by 5th year so they could keep Remus company during the full moons. It was hard to tell where Remus might be now; James knew Remus preferred not to associate with any of the werewolf packs in the Wizarding world, and he heard nothing about his friend from the other witches and wizards he met in the Land of the Dead.
Sirius Black, a.k.a. Padfoot, had been the bad boy and a larger prankster than even James was. He came from one of the darkest families in England, but rejected their teachings and became one of the few gray sheep of the family. His animagus form was a huge, black dog, just as effective as James’s stag form at keeping the werewolf at bay if it proved necessary. Sirius’s location was the only one of the three that he knew: he was locked up in the magical prison Azkaban for supposedly being a supporter of Voldemort and betraying the Potters. James had no intention of leaving his best mate in that hellhole any longer than he had to. But he had nowhere to start in regards to planning a breakout from a wizarding prison that nobody had ever escaped from before, guarded by a horde of the only creatures in the world that he still felt threatened by as an undead poltergeist. So he reluctantly shelved that idea for now.
Lastly was Peter Pettigrew, the real traitor and rat Animagus. James had no idea where to even start with that one, Wormtail could be hiding anywhere as a rat, so he was deemed unimportant…for now.
So everything circled back around to Remus and how to locate his werewolf friend.
“We could send him an owl?” Lily suggested.
“Do they even have owls here?” James asked, then added, “Even if they do, Moony would never believe any letter from us; even if we didn’t grow up learning the phrase ‘no magic can raise the dead,’ he wouldn’t believe an owl that came out of nowhere telling what happened to us in the last few weeks. /I /still don’t believe it.”
“Alright, so what do we do, then?” Lily said as she propped her chin in her hand. James leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest and a thoughtful look on his face.
“Hey, what about that werewolf guy that lives here?” He said after a few minutes.
“What about him?” Lily asked.
“Maybe he knows how to find another werewolf?” James suggested. “Do werewolves have a network they can connect with each other with?”
“How do you know that would even work?” Lily asked.
“I don’t have a better idea, do you?” James asked back. Lily sighed and shook her head.
“No… well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask him,” she said.
“Let’s round up Harry and go find him, then,” James said, standing and heading upstairs.
Harry was in his room, lying in the middle of a black, fluffy rug drawing with the art stuff James brought him, his little feet kicking back and forth and a look of innocent joy on his face. The sight warmed both of their long-stilled hearts.
“Hey there, Prongslet, want to go out with Mummy and me?”
“Where we going?” Harry asked, the art stuff forgotten as he eagerly jumped up and ran over to James, slipping his little hand into his daddy’s. The coolness of James and Lily’s dead flesh didn’t bother him at all.
“We’re going to go find that werewolf guy,” James explained as they headed down the stairs where Lily waited for them by the front door. “We’re hoping he might help us find a friend of mine.”
“Why? Can he sniff him out like a doggy?” Harry asked.
“Well, no,” James said as he knelt by Harry. “See Daddy’s friend is a werewolf, too. His name is Remus, but we called him Moony.”
“You talks about him and a Padfoot a lot,” Harry said with a nod.
“That’s right. See, son, a lot of people don’t like werewolves and it makes Moony very sad. But me and Padfoot weren’t scared of Moony and we all became best friends,” James explained. “But after we died, Moony is all alone now and I bet he’s very sad. So we want him to come live here with all of us.”
“Whats about Padfoot? How comes he’s not living with Moony?” Harry asked. James sighed sadly and ruffled Harry’s hair.
“Someone put Padfoot in jail. You know what that is?” James asked. Harry nodded and twisted his hands in his shirt.
“It’s where bad people go. Uncle Vernon says bad kids can also go the jail so I had to be extra good,” Harry said.
“Baby, no one puts children in jail,” Lily said. “Not like this and you are a very good boy.”
“Yes, Mummy,” Harry said smiling up at Lily then looked at James again. “Why is he in jail? Did he do something bad?”
“No, Prongslet, Padfoot was wrongly put in jail, they thought he did something that he didn’t do and the person who did it ran away,” James said. “So because of that he can’t be with Moony, at least right now.”
“Oh,” Harry said tilting his head to the side and had that thoughtful look at only children could have. “Okay, I hope Padfoot is let go when he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We’re working on that,” James said with a grin and stood, taking Harry’s hand again. “But first we have to help Moony.”
“Okay,” Harry said swinging James’s hand as they left.
In short order, they reached the town square. A handful of civilians were out and about: Ethan and his friends were leaning against the side of the town hall, talking and munching on snacks; Behemoth the gardener was shuffling off towards the pumpkin patch with half a dozen bags of fertilizer in his arms; and Jack himself was kneeling by the fountain, filling up a few crystal bottles with the flowing green liquid.
“Ah, good morning, my friends!” the skeleton perked up as he saw them. “What brings you here?”
“Good morning, Jack,” Lily greeted politely. “James and I have been trying to think of a way to find a friend of ours on the outside and bring him here. It wouldn’t be as simple as just sending an owl; Remus would never believe that we were able to contact him from beyond the grave.”
“He’s a werewolf, Jack,” James picked up. “So I was wondering if that Wolfman guy would be able to help us.”
Jack hummed in thought as he looked around the square. “Possibly. He would know the details better than I would for this.” He continued looking around before perking up as he spied the Wolfman making his way through the square at a leisurely pace.
“Excuse me, Glenn! Do you have a moment?” Jack called. The Wolfman’s ears rose and he turned toward them, making his way over immediately.
“What is it, Jack?” the Wolfman asked in a gravelly voice. Harry shyly hid his face into James’s shoulder, the Wolfman was a little scary close up. He was stout and hunch over, wearing a torn up plaid shirt and no pants but covered in thick, bristly fur.
“The Potters would like a quick chat with you,” Jack said, gesturing to the witch and wizard.
“Excuse our interruption,” Lily said with an apologetic smile. “But we are hoping you might be able to help us with something, Mr…Glenn, was it?”
“Yeah,” the Wolfman growled. “So what do you need?”
“Ruff ruff!” Harry perked up when he heard Zero and spotted the ghost dog entering the square.
“Daddy, can I go play with Zero?” he asked.
“Sure, champ,” James said. Letting him down, he grabbed a pebble off the road and changed it into a small ball, then handed it to his son. Harry grinned happily and ran over to Zero.
“Look, Zero, want to play?” he asked showing Zero the ball. Zero barked happily and flipped in the air, his sheet wagging excitedly. Harry giggled and tossed the ball, watching as Zero took off after it.
“See it’s like this, one of my best mates in school was a werewolf,” James started explaining, giving the werewolf his attention. “It was kept a secret to everyone but the professors and the school staff, but me and my other best mate figured it out after a couple of years knowing him. Knowing him—Remus is his name by the way—he’s pretty much isolated himself from the Wizarding world since we died.”
“We would love to find him and bring him here, it would do him a lot of good,” Lily added. “But we don’t really know of a way to do that. We can’t really just send him a letter or show up where he is right now, not as we are.”
Glenn considered them for a moment, scratching at a couple of fleas that had gotten into his fur.
“Tell me about your friend,” he said at last. James just grinned and started talking about Remus, how smart the other man was and how he had been a prankster right along himself, his other best mate Sirius and Pettigrew. Glenn let him go on for several minutes before asking another question.
“How did he get turned into a werewolf? Doubt he was born that way.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about it but when he was a kid, Fenrir Grayback bit him,” James said. He flinched back a bit as Glenn growled loudly. “I take it you know him.”
“I know him alright. Going around attacking and turning kids, making most werewolves look bad,” Glenn spat as his fur bristled. “Even my brother is appalled by him and he works for Dracula.”
“Dracula?” Lily asked perking up. “As in Count Dracula, like in the books?”
“I don’t know how much he’s like in that book that Stoker guy wrote, but yeah, he’s the real deal,” Glenn said. “Okay, so you want me to help get in touch your friend.”
“That’s the gist of it,” Lily said with a small shrug. “Honestly, the only other option we can think of is taking the chance of sending an owl.”
“What’s a bird got to do with it?” Glenn asked.
“We use owls, and sometimes other types of birds, to deliver mail for us,” James explained. “Owl post, we call it. But let’s face it, even if we could get our hands on a post owl, Moony isn’t gonna believe it’s from us what with being dead and all.”
Glenn nodded slowly. “Alright. I haven’t gone for a good run in the other world in a long time,” Glenn said. “I’ll help you look for yer friend. Got any ideas where I’d find him, or even what the guy looks like.”
“I’ve got a few ideas where he might be, I know he won’t return to his old family home. He’s on some sorta outs with his father. But there are some places he might go and I have a few ideas of where he’d go during a full moon. Though if all else fails, he’d probably take an owl from a fellow werewolf that wanted to talk about things,” James said before giving his ideas of where Remus might go and what the man looked like.
Harry ran over a few minutes later, hiding behind Lily. They heard yelling behind them at the same time and turned to see Jack telling off three kids who had frightened looks on their faces before hightailing it out of there. One had on a red devil costume, another was dressed as a witch, and the last had a skeleton outfit on.
“What in the name of Merlin?” Lily asked as she picked up Harry, cuddling her baby close to her. Glenn gave an annoyed growl and shook his head.
“Those three,” he said with a grunt. “That was Lock, Shock, and Barrel.”
“I’ve heard those names before, I think,” James said as he stepped closer to Lily and rubbed Harry’s back, feeling the boy trembling under his hand.
“They’re the town’s resident trick-or-treaters, and they’re nasty pieces of work,” Glenn explained, his lip curling in disgust. “Used to be that we called them ‘Boogie’s boys,’ they worked for that bug-filled trash heap Oogie while he was still around. They don’t come to town often and they’re harmless as long as Jack is nearby; he keeps a tight watch on them. But they’re still sadistic pranksters whenever they get the chance. Don’t trust them any, and keep an eye on them if you see them.”
“Thanks for the warning,” James said with a frown. “Okay there, Prongslet?”
“They were mean kids like Dudley,” Harry said as he hugged Lily around the neck.
“Well, with snots like that, sometimes you gotta let them know you won’t let them push you around,” James said. “But we’ll tackle that another day.”
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go home,” Lily said, thanking Glenn and then carrying Harry off. James at the same time walked over to Jack, who was standing in the middle of the town square with his bony arms crossed over his chest, still glaring in the direction that the trio took off in.
“Thanks, mate, for standing up for my kid,” James said as he stood beside Jack. Jack shook his skull slightly then sighed.
“Those three,” he muttered. “They’ll behave for a while, then they’ll come back to cause trouble. It’s not the causing trouble that annoys me, it’s that they carry it too far and don’t care that someone gets hurt, sometimes doing it on purpose.”
Processing Jack’s words, James mused about his days at Hogwarts, when he and his friends became the infamous Marauders, reflecting on the many pranks they pulled during their seven years. The student they targeted the most was Severus Snape. And yes, James knew many of their pranks went too far, coming to a head with the incident with Sirius’s prank using Remus’s werewolf form.
That had brought into focus just how bad James and his friends had become with bullying Snape. Of course, the greasy git hadn’t been any sort of innocent snowflake, he had gotten them back just as hard for the pranks and they had caught him many times bullying younger years, especially Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. So it had been bad on both sides, though James had grown up out of that, even if he still loved playing pranks. Snape, on the other hand, had become a Death Eater.
“I know a little about that,” James said finally. Then he added, “But they had better not try to hurt my kid again, they won’t like me if they do.” There was a dark note of warning in his voice that had Jack nodding.
“As long as you don’t kill them,” he said then left. James chuckled darkly as he headed home; he knew many ways to make someone miserable without killing them.
*****
Several minutes before…
“Is that him?” Barrel asked as he peeked around the wall with his two partners in crime.
“It’s gotta be,” Lock said with a flick of his tail.
“Well, he is the only new kid around here, you dummies,” Shock said with a roll of her eyes.
“Who you calling a dummy?” Lock asked as he turned and hit Shock in the shoulder. She retaliated by hitting Lock back, knocking him to the ground. Lock growled and grabbed the girl by the leg, pulling her down with him, straddling Shock as he began choking her. Shock grabbed Lock’s pitchfork and stabbed him in the side, making him yelp and get off her. Zero turned briefly in their direction when he heard Lock’s yelp of pain but didn’t investigate as the troublesome trio was hidden from sight.
Lock, Shock, and Barrel had just come out of their sugar coma after consuming much of the candy they had racked up on Halloween night and decided it was high time to cause a little mischief in the town. Once they arrived, hiding from everyone else in the town, they caught up on the news that a witch kid had shown up during the yearly celebrations and that an undead couple had joined the town. Immediately they had dismissed the new adults and focused on the new kid. He hadn’t been hard to find, as small as the community was a new face always stood out.
Barrel studied the new kid, ignoring Lock and Shock as they continued to fight behind him. The kid had wild black hair, bright green eyes, and wasn’t much taller than the three of them. Skinny, too, like a witches broom, Oogie wouldn’t have bothered eating the kid as he didn’t have any meat on his bones. If the kid was here alone, maybe he could join their gang? He was a witch, right? That meant he could do magic! Even Shock had trouble doing magic!
When Barrel posed the suggestion to Lock and Shock, they paused in their fighting to consider it. Then both of them grinned and cackled.
“I think we should go welcome the new kid,” Lock said as he and Shock stood, brushing the dirt off their costumes and grabbing their masks. “After all, that’s the ‘nice’ and ‘neighborly’ thing to do.”
“And we’re always ‘nice’ and ‘neighborly’,” Shock added as she and Lock shared a smirk then slid their form fitting masks on. Barrel grinned widely and pulled his down as well as he followed his partners out into the square.
Meanwhile, Harry had tired of his game of catch and was standing on his tiptoes to look into the fountain in the middle of the square. He liked the creepy looking dragon statue and was reaching toward the greenish water that poured out of its mouth.
“Hey there!” a boy’s voice said behind Harry making him jump in surprise and spin around. Zero growled when he saw the trio, moving closer to Harry’s side. Harry came face to face with three children, one was a boy wearing a red suit on with a faded red mask with a wide grin and sharp teeth. The second, a girl, was wearing a faded purple dress and a tall witch’s hat with a black band, and a green mask with a scowl and a large hooked nose. The third was also a boy wearing a black shirt and pants that had what looked like bones on the outside, his mask was white with a large grin of yellow teeth.
“Umm… hi?” Harry said, unsure as he hadn’t met these kids before.
“You’re new around here, aren’t cha?” the girl asked as she and the other two started to circle around Harry like sharks.
“We heard you crashed the yearly celebration on Halloween,” the boy in the red suit said. “Pretty cool.”
“I didn’t crash it,” Harry said with a confused frown as he didn’t know what that meant.
“Sure you did, pretty impressive,” red suit said again.
“Umm… who are you?” Harry asked as he slowly turned with them trying to keep all three in sight, something he learned from having to deal with Dudley.
“We’re the town’s cool kids,” said the short boy with the skeleton suit.
“Lock,” the red suit kid took off his mask.
“Shock,” the girl did the same.
“And Barrel,” the last kid said, doing the same as the first then taking out a red and black lollipop and taking a lick from it then held it out. “Want some candy?”
“Umm…” Harry didn’t really answer, getting a bad vibe from the three kids.
“Well, too bad, get your own!” Lock said while Barrel snatched the offered candy back, all three of them laughing. Harry started to edge away but Lock stopped him by wrapping his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “So, we hear you can do magic.”
“Do a trick!” Shock said as she looked around the square and saw two corpses she didn’t recognize talking to that flea bag Wolfman. “Something to them over there.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Harry said as he ducked out from under Lock’s arm. “That’s not nice.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Lock said with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s just a trick.”
“I’m not going to do that to my mummy and daddy,” Harry said with a shake of his head.
“Mummy and daddy?” the trio asked looking at each other.
“Those are your parents?” Lock asked pointing at Lily and James.
“They’re kinda dead,” Barrel said.
“They’re still my parents,” Harry said defensively. “And I don’t know any magic yet anyway.”
“What kind of witch doesn’t know magic?” Shock asked. “Seems pretty useless to me.”
“I bet he’s just a big crybaby,” Lock agreed. Zero lunged at Lock, barking loudly. Lock cackled as he dodged Zero’s lunge.
“I’ve got a trick,” Shock said. “Let’s dump him in the fountain.”
“Yeah, he needs a bath,” Barrel agreed. Harry gulped, eyes darting around as he looked for a way to escape as the three surrounded him, grabbing onto the frightened boy. The next instant, Jack was looming over them.
“Unhand him!” he snarled in his most frightening dark tone. Lock, Shock, and Barrel gasped and turned, cowering in fright when they saw the Pumpkin King behind him in all his dark glory. Harry took this chance to dart off to the safety of his mother.
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on him ever again, you leave him alone. If I catch you three bullying Harry again, I’m going to make what I did to the three of you for that Seven Holidays King nonsense look like child’s play! NOW SCRAM!”
Boogie’s boys didn’t need to be told twice as they turned and ran out of the town to the safety of their tree house.
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. /Beetlejuice /is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: You guys continue to be really awesome and I’m loving all the suggestions that I’m getting for the Dursleys and a lot of them will be worked into the fic. Also I’m going after large Marge so any suggestions for that bitch are welcome too.
The Wolfman doesn’t have an official name so I’m using the name that Werejaguar of Halloween Town gave him.
And one quick announcement: while not quite yet, I will be adding both the Addams Family (going mostly by the movies) and the classic movie monsters into this ‘verse. I am going with the versions in the two Scooby-Doo films from 1988 as they are the ones I think will fit in best.
This chapter has been betaed Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Edit 5-24-18: This chapter betaed a second time by The Patient One.
Chapter 12
Lily was surprisingly okay with James taking a few of Dudley’s discarded toys and books, and had been thrilled that James had found Harry’s blanket, repairing everything before presenting it all to Harry. Harry had been in awe of the gifts, having no idea they use to be his cousin’s, and had happily put them up in his room with the few macabre toys that the other citizens had gifted Harry with. Lily was still unsure about the guillotine toy, but evidently it was a common plaything in Halloween Town. Jack even said he had one as a child, which brought up many questions on its own.
The undead Potters loved their new home, mostly because they got to be with Harry again. But with their circumstances, the only supplies they could gather were either morbid, Halloween-themed, or both. Lily remained concerned about the food that she fed her son, even if Harry didn’t seem to mind the strange-looking food at all.
James still had yet to go to his old family home, having planned on doing so soon with Lily and maybe Jack, who was curious about seeing a Wizarding home outside of the ones that existed in the afterlife. But now that he had begun tormenting the Dursleys—and consequently grown proficient opening the way between the mortal world and Halloween Town—the next priority on the wizard’s agenda was the other Marauders and how to find/break them out of the hellholes they were currently in.
Remus Lupin, a.k.a. Moony, had been the bookworm of the group. He was also a werewolf, something he and the others discovered by their second year of Hogwarts. With great effort and no regard for the Wizarding laws, James and the other two had learned how to become Animagi, achieving the transformation by 5th year so they could keep Remus company during the full moons. It was hard to tell where Remus might be now; James knew Remus preferred not to associate with any of the werewolf packs in the Wizarding world, and he heard nothing about his friend from the other witches and wizards he met in the Land of the Dead.
Sirius Black, a.k.a. Padfoot, had been the bad boy and a larger prankster than even James was. He came from one of the darkest families in England, but rejected their teachings and became one of the few gray sheep of the family. His animagus form was a huge, black dog, just as effective as James’s stag form at keeping the werewolf at bay if it proved necessary. Sirius’s location was the only one of the three that he knew: he was locked up in the magical prison Azkaban for supposedly being a supporter of Voldemort and betraying the Potters. James had no intention of leaving his best mate in that hellhole any longer than he had to. But he had nowhere to start in regards to planning a breakout from a wizarding prison that nobody had ever escaped from before, guarded by a horde of the only creatures in the world that he still felt threatened by as an undead poltergeist. So he reluctantly shelved that idea for now.
Lastly was Peter Pettigrew, the real traitor and rat Animagus. James had no idea where to even start with that one, Wormtail could be hiding anywhere as a rat, so he was deemed unimportant…for now.
So everything circled back around to Remus and how to locate his werewolf friend.
“We could send him an owl?” Lily suggested.
“Do they even have owls here?” James asked, then added, “Even if they do, Moony would never believe any letter from us; even if we didn’t grow up learning the phrase ‘no magic can raise the dead,’ he wouldn’t believe an owl that came out of nowhere telling what happened to us in the last few weeks. /I /still don’t believe it.”
“Alright, so what do we do, then?” Lily said as she propped her chin in her hand. James leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest and a thoughtful look on his face.
“Hey, what about that werewolf guy that lives here?” He said after a few minutes.
“What about him?” Lily asked.
“Maybe he knows how to find another werewolf?” James suggested. “Do werewolves have a network they can connect with each other with?”
“How do you know that would even work?” Lily asked.
“I don’t have a better idea, do you?” James asked back. Lily sighed and shook her head.
“No… well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask him,” she said.
“Let’s round up Harry and go find him, then,” James said, standing and heading upstairs.
Harry was in his room, lying in the middle of a black, fluffy rug drawing with the art stuff James brought him, his little feet kicking back and forth and a look of innocent joy on his face. The sight warmed both of their long-stilled hearts.
“Hey there, Prongslet, want to go out with Mummy and me?”
“Where we going?” Harry asked, the art stuff forgotten as he eagerly jumped up and ran over to James, slipping his little hand into his daddy’s. The coolness of James and Lily’s dead flesh didn’t bother him at all.
“We’re going to go find that werewolf guy,” James explained as they headed down the stairs where Lily waited for them by the front door. “We’re hoping he might help us find a friend of mine.”
“Why? Can he sniff him out like a doggy?” Harry asked.
“Well, no,” James said as he knelt by Harry. “See Daddy’s friend is a werewolf, too. His name is Remus, but we called him Moony.”
“You talks about him and a Padfoot a lot,” Harry said with a nod.
“That’s right. See, son, a lot of people don’t like werewolves and it makes Moony very sad. But me and Padfoot weren’t scared of Moony and we all became best friends,” James explained. “But after we died, Moony is all alone now and I bet he’s very sad. So we want him to come live here with all of us.”
“Whats about Padfoot? How comes he’s not living with Moony?” Harry asked. James sighed sadly and ruffled Harry’s hair.
“Someone put Padfoot in jail. You know what that is?” James asked. Harry nodded and twisted his hands in his shirt.
“It’s where bad people go. Uncle Vernon says bad kids can also go the jail so I had to be extra good,” Harry said.
“Baby, no one puts children in jail,” Lily said. “Not like this and you are a very good boy.”
“Yes, Mummy,” Harry said smiling up at Lily then looked at James again. “Why is he in jail? Did he do something bad?”
“No, Prongslet, Padfoot was wrongly put in jail, they thought he did something that he didn’t do and the person who did it ran away,” James said. “So because of that he can’t be with Moony, at least right now.”
“Oh,” Harry said tilting his head to the side and had that thoughtful look at only children could have. “Okay, I hope Padfoot is let go when he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We’re working on that,” James said with a grin and stood, taking Harry’s hand again. “But first we have to help Moony.”
“Okay,” Harry said swinging James’s hand as they left.
In short order, they reached the town square. A handful of civilians were out and about: Ethan and his friends were leaning against the side of the town hall, talking and munching on snacks; Behemoth the gardener was shuffling off towards the pumpkin patch with half a dozen bags of fertilizer in his arms; and Jack himself was kneeling by the fountain, filling up a few crystal bottles with the flowing green liquid.
“Ah, good morning, my friends!” the skeleton perked up as he saw them. “What brings you here?”
“Good morning, Jack,” Lily greeted politely. “James and I have been trying to think of a way to find a friend of ours on the outside and bring him here. It wouldn’t be as simple as just sending an owl; Remus would never believe that we were able to contact him from beyond the grave.”
“He’s a werewolf, Jack,” James picked up. “So I was wondering if that Wolfman guy would be able to help us.”
Jack hummed in thought as he looked around the square. “Possibly. He would know the details better than I would for this.” He continued looking around before perking up as he spied the Wolfman making his way through the square at a leisurely pace.
“Excuse me, Glenn! Do you have a moment?” Jack called. The Wolfman’s ears rose and he turned toward them, making his way over immediately.
“What is it, Jack?” the Wolfman asked in a gravelly voice. Harry shyly hid his face into James’s shoulder, the Wolfman was a little scary close up. He was stout and hunch over, wearing a torn up plaid shirt and no pants but covered in thick, bristly fur.
“The Potters would like a quick chat with you,” Jack said, gesturing to the witch and wizard.
“Excuse our interruption,” Lily said with an apologetic smile. “But we are hoping you might be able to help us with something, Mr…Glenn, was it?”
“Yeah,” the Wolfman growled. “So what do you need?”
“Ruff ruff!” Harry perked up when he heard Zero and spotted the ghost dog entering the square.
“Daddy, can I go play with Zero?” he asked.
“Sure, champ,” James said. Letting him down, he grabbed a pebble off the road and changed it into a small ball, then handed it to his son. Harry grinned happily and ran over to Zero.
“Look, Zero, want to play?” he asked showing Zero the ball. Zero barked happily and flipped in the air, his sheet wagging excitedly. Harry giggled and tossed the ball, watching as Zero took off after it.
“See it’s like this, one of my best mates in school was a werewolf,” James started explaining, giving the werewolf his attention. “It was kept a secret to everyone but the professors and the school staff, but me and my other best mate figured it out after a couple of years knowing him. Knowing him—Remus is his name by the way—he’s pretty much isolated himself from the Wizarding world since we died.”
“We would love to find him and bring him here, it would do him a lot of good,” Lily added. “But we don’t really know of a way to do that. We can’t really just send him a letter or show up where he is right now, not as we are.”
Glenn considered them for a moment, scratching at a couple of fleas that had gotten into his fur.
“Tell me about your friend,” he said at last. James just grinned and started talking about Remus, how smart the other man was and how he had been a prankster right along himself, his other best mate Sirius and Pettigrew. Glenn let him go on for several minutes before asking another question.
“How did he get turned into a werewolf? Doubt he was born that way.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about it but when he was a kid, Fenrir Grayback bit him,” James said. He flinched back a bit as Glenn growled loudly. “I take it you know him.”
“I know him alright. Going around attacking and turning kids, making most werewolves look bad,” Glenn spat as his fur bristled. “Even my brother is appalled by him and he works for Dracula.”
“Dracula?” Lily asked perking up. “As in Count Dracula, like in the books?”
“I don’t know how much he’s like in that book that Stoker guy wrote, but yeah, he’s the real deal,” Glenn said. “Okay, so you want me to help get in touch your friend.”
“That’s the gist of it,” Lily said with a small shrug. “Honestly, the only other option we can think of is taking the chance of sending an owl.”
“What’s a bird got to do with it?” Glenn asked.
“We use owls, and sometimes other types of birds, to deliver mail for us,” James explained. “Owl post, we call it. But let’s face it, even if we could get our hands on a post owl, Moony isn’t gonna believe it’s from us what with being dead and all.”
Glenn nodded slowly. “Alright. I haven’t gone for a good run in the other world in a long time,” Glenn said. “I’ll help you look for yer friend. Got any ideas where I’d find him, or even what the guy looks like.”
“I’ve got a few ideas where he might be, I know he won’t return to his old family home. He’s on some sorta outs with his father. But there are some places he might go and I have a few ideas of where he’d go during a full moon. Though if all else fails, he’d probably take an owl from a fellow werewolf that wanted to talk about things,” James said before giving his ideas of where Remus might go and what the man looked like.
Harry ran over a few minutes later, hiding behind Lily. They heard yelling behind them at the same time and turned to see Jack telling off three kids who had frightened looks on their faces before hightailing it out of there. One had on a red devil costume, another was dressed as a witch, and the last had a skeleton outfit on.
“What in the name of Merlin?” Lily asked as she picked up Harry, cuddling her baby close to her. Glenn gave an annoyed growl and shook his head.
“Those three,” he said with a grunt. “That was Lock, Shock, and Barrel.”
“I’ve heard those names before, I think,” James said as he stepped closer to Lily and rubbed Harry’s back, feeling the boy trembling under his hand.
“They’re the town’s resident trick-or-treaters, and they’re nasty pieces of work,” Glenn explained, his lip curling in disgust. “Used to be that we called them ‘Boogie’s boys,’ they worked for that bug-filled trash heap Oogie while he was still around. They don’t come to town often and they’re harmless as long as Jack is nearby; he keeps a tight watch on them. But they’re still sadistic pranksters whenever they get the chance. Don’t trust them any, and keep an eye on them if you see them.”
“Thanks for the warning,” James said with a frown. “Okay there, Prongslet?”
“They were mean kids like Dudley,” Harry said as he hugged Lily around the neck.
“Well, with snots like that, sometimes you gotta let them know you won’t let them push you around,” James said. “But we’ll tackle that another day.”
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go home,” Lily said, thanking Glenn and then carrying Harry off. James at the same time walked over to Jack, who was standing in the middle of the town square with his bony arms crossed over his chest, still glaring in the direction that the trio took off in.
“Thanks, mate, for standing up for my kid,” James said as he stood beside Jack. Jack shook his skull slightly then sighed.
“Those three,” he muttered. “They’ll behave for a while, then they’ll come back to cause trouble. It’s not the causing trouble that annoys me, it’s that they carry it too far and don’t care that someone gets hurt, sometimes doing it on purpose.”
Processing Jack’s words, James mused about his days at Hogwarts, when he and his friends became the infamous Marauders, reflecting on the many pranks they pulled during their seven years. The student they targeted the most was Severus Snape. And yes, James knew many of their pranks went too far, coming to a head with the incident with Sirius’s prank using Remus’s werewolf form.
That had brought into focus just how bad James and his friends had become with bullying Snape. Of course, the greasy git hadn’t been any sort of innocent snowflake, he had gotten them back just as hard for the pranks and they had caught him many times bullying younger years, especially Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. So it had been bad on both sides, though James had grown up out of that, even if he still loved playing pranks. Snape, on the other hand, had become a Death Eater.
“I know a little about that,” James said finally. Then he added, “But they had better not try to hurt my kid again, they won’t like me if they do.” There was a dark note of warning in his voice that had Jack nodding.
“As long as you don’t kill them,” he said then left. James chuckled darkly as he headed home; he knew many ways to make someone miserable without killing them.
*****
Several minutes before…
“Is that him?” Barrel asked as he peeked around the wall with his two partners in crime.
“It’s gotta be,” Lock said with a flick of his tail.
“Well, he is the only new kid around here, you dummies,” Shock said with a roll of her eyes.
“Who you calling a dummy?” Lock asked as he turned and hit Shock in the shoulder. She retaliated by hitting Lock back, knocking him to the ground. Lock growled and grabbed the girl by the leg, pulling her down with him, straddling Shock as he began choking her. Shock grabbed Lock’s pitchfork and stabbed him in the side, making him yelp and get off her. Zero turned briefly in their direction when he heard Lock’s yelp of pain but didn’t investigate as the troublesome trio was hidden from sight.
Lock, Shock, and Barrel had just come out of their sugar coma after consuming much of the candy they had racked up on Halloween night and decided it was high time to cause a little mischief in the town. Once they arrived, hiding from everyone else in the town, they caught up on the news that a witch kid had shown up during the yearly celebrations and that an undead couple had joined the town. Immediately they had dismissed the new adults and focused on the new kid. He hadn’t been hard to find, as small as the community was a new face always stood out.
Barrel studied the new kid, ignoring Lock and Shock as they continued to fight behind him. The kid had wild black hair, bright green eyes, and wasn’t much taller than the three of them. Skinny, too, like a witches broom, Oogie wouldn’t have bothered eating the kid as he didn’t have any meat on his bones. If the kid was here alone, maybe he could join their gang? He was a witch, right? That meant he could do magic! Even Shock had trouble doing magic!
When Barrel posed the suggestion to Lock and Shock, they paused in their fighting to consider it. Then both of them grinned and cackled.
“I think we should go welcome the new kid,” Lock said as he and Shock stood, brushing the dirt off their costumes and grabbing their masks. “After all, that’s the ‘nice’ and ‘neighborly’ thing to do.”
“And we’re always ‘nice’ and ‘neighborly’,” Shock added as she and Lock shared a smirk then slid their form fitting masks on. Barrel grinned widely and pulled his down as well as he followed his partners out into the square.
Meanwhile, Harry had tired of his game of catch and was standing on his tiptoes to look into the fountain in the middle of the square. He liked the creepy looking dragon statue and was reaching toward the greenish water that poured out of its mouth.
“Hey there!” a boy’s voice said behind Harry making him jump in surprise and spin around. Zero growled when he saw the trio, moving closer to Harry’s side. Harry came face to face with three children, one was a boy wearing a red suit on with a faded red mask with a wide grin and sharp teeth. The second, a girl, was wearing a faded purple dress and a tall witch’s hat with a black band, and a green mask with a scowl and a large hooked nose. The third was also a boy wearing a black shirt and pants that had what looked like bones on the outside, his mask was white with a large grin of yellow teeth.
“Umm… hi?” Harry said, unsure as he hadn’t met these kids before.
“You’re new around here, aren’t cha?” the girl asked as she and the other two started to circle around Harry like sharks.
“We heard you crashed the yearly celebration on Halloween,” the boy in the red suit said. “Pretty cool.”
“I didn’t crash it,” Harry said with a confused frown as he didn’t know what that meant.
“Sure you did, pretty impressive,” red suit said again.
“Umm… who are you?” Harry asked as he slowly turned with them trying to keep all three in sight, something he learned from having to deal with Dudley.
“We’re the town’s cool kids,” said the short boy with the skeleton suit.
“Lock,” the red suit kid took off his mask.
“Shock,” the girl did the same.
“And Barrel,” the last kid said, doing the same as the first then taking out a red and black lollipop and taking a lick from it then held it out. “Want some candy?”
“Umm…” Harry didn’t really answer, getting a bad vibe from the three kids.
“Well, too bad, get your own!” Lock said while Barrel snatched the offered candy back, all three of them laughing. Harry started to edge away but Lock stopped him by wrapping his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “So, we hear you can do magic.”
“Do a trick!” Shock said as she looked around the square and saw two corpses she didn’t recognize talking to that flea bag Wolfman. “Something to them over there.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Harry said as he ducked out from under Lock’s arm. “That’s not nice.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Lock said with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s just a trick.”
“I’m not going to do that to my mummy and daddy,” Harry said with a shake of his head.
“Mummy and daddy?” the trio asked looking at each other.
“Those are your parents?” Lock asked pointing at Lily and James.
“They’re kinda dead,” Barrel said.
“They’re still my parents,” Harry said defensively. “And I don’t know any magic yet anyway.”
“What kind of witch doesn’t know magic?” Shock asked. “Seems pretty useless to me.”
“I bet he’s just a big crybaby,” Lock agreed. Zero lunged at Lock, barking loudly. Lock cackled as he dodged Zero’s lunge.
“I’ve got a trick,” Shock said. “Let’s dump him in the fountain.”
“Yeah, he needs a bath,” Barrel agreed. Harry gulped, eyes darting around as he looked for a way to escape as the three surrounded him, grabbing onto the frightened boy. The next instant, Jack was looming over them.
“Unhand him!” he snarled in his most frightening dark tone. Lock, Shock, and Barrel gasped and turned, cowering in fright when they saw the Pumpkin King behind him in all his dark glory. Harry took this chance to dart off to the safety of his mother.
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on him ever again, you leave him alone. If I catch you three bullying Harry again, I’m going to make what I did to the three of you for that Seven Holidays King nonsense look like child’s play! NOW SCRAM!”
Boogie’s boys didn’t need to be told twice as they turned and ran out of the town to the safety of their tree house.
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