Chapter Four: Sirius Black, Pettigrew Revealed and Diagon Alley.

When Harry came down for breakfast the next morning, he found both his masters (and wasn't that odd to think about) sitting at the table conversing quietly, glaring at the paper from time to time. Hermione was seated at the table as well, looking worried. He sat down and pulled the cereal box towards him with the Force, earning a scowl from Kiara as he did so, she didn't like him using the Force for trivialities like that.

"What's wrong?" he asked, when the silence at the table had gone on for a while. McGonagall sniffed slightly before turning to him.

"Mr. Potter, Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. He is highly dangerous and the Ministry believes that he is out to get you."

Now Harry was confused, he'd never heard of, wait a minute. "Sirius Black? As in Padfoot of the Marauders, that Sirius Black? The one who was made my godfather?" he said, turning his gaze towards Kiara. She nodded gloomily before pushing the paper towards him.

"Yes, Padawan, I'm afraid so. I don't want to believe him guilty, in fact I don't believe him guilty, but if Pettigrew is indeed alive, then where is he?" Before Harry could answer, Hermione broke in with a question which prompted them to explain the situation.

"But, Ron Weasley has a rat," she said, confused. "It's missing a toe and he's had it in his family for about twelve years." She looked up to find the gazes of both Kiara and Minerva fixed firmly on her. She gulped, she knew that neither Kiara nor Professor McGonagall would ever hurt her, but being under their combined gazes, especially with them being so strong, was rather disconcerting.

"Minerva, I believe we have a rat to inspect," Kiara said calmly as she reached for the Floo powder.

Ronald Weasley was most displeased to hand his rat over for a test that in his opinion was unnecessary. He was even more displeased to find that the test was well founded and that his rat was a person. He went off to sulk, not caring that the rest of his family was staring at the rat-turned-person in shock.

A few minutes earlier

"OK, Minerva, turn him back," Kiara said, holding the rat by the tail. McGonagall complied and shot a blue-white light at the squeaking rat. It hit, and then the rat started to change. Suddenly there was a rather mouse-ish looking man on the floor of the Burrow's kitchen.

Now

"Thank you, Arthur, Molly, we'll just take him and go shall we," Kiara said pleasantly, keeping a firm grip on the rat's collar. McGonagall turned and followed them into the fire, returning to Sanctuary where their apprentice and Hermione were waiting for the verdict.

"Start talking," Kiara demanded a minute after they stepped out of the Floo. Pettigrew gulped, this woman who had hold of him was scary, very scary. Harry felt a small bit of sympathy for him, the glare that his master was giving him was the one that she'd given Harry just after the Basilisk incident, and it wasn't pleasant at all. Pettigrew squirmed before beginning to talk.

"I did it. I was the Secret Keeper for Lily and James. We switched, no one was told. The Dark Lord, I told him to save myself, he would have killed me if I hadn't." Pettigrew broke down crying, and Harry felt nothing but disgust. He fully agreed with Kiara when she leaned down to hiss in Pettigrew's ear that it would have been far more honorable to die than to betray his friends and then frame another. Then again, she had continued, it would have been too much to expect since his animagus form was a rat.

McGonagall came into the room with two Aurors, and a bottle of Veritaserum. They poured some down Pettigrew's throat and questioned him, writing down the answers on charmed parchment that wouldn't lie. That done they took it to Amelia Bones who promptly cleared Sirius Black of all charges and put out a notice in the Daily Prophet to that effect.

The next day there was a knock on the door. Harry opened it to find himself looking at Sirius, who looked very ragged and also rather hungry. He let him in and brought him to the kitchen, where he then had to step aside as Kiara hugged Sirius hard, before practically shoving him into a chair and placing lunch in front of him. While he ate, Sirius was brought up to date on all the recent happenings and happily agreed when Harry proposed that, since he was making himself a rather odd family of sorts, with Kiara as his mother, McGonagall as a sort of aunt/teacher, and Hermione as his sort of girlfriend, then would Sirius agree to live in Sanctuary and be his surrogate father. After getting nods from McGonagall and Hermione, Harry looked to Kiara, who merely pulled both Sirius and himself into a crushing hug and whispered that she had no problems with the arrangement at all.

Two days after this new arrangement was properly documented and filed, Harry was having great fun teasing Kiara and Sirius by calling them Mum and Dad, and them retaliating by virtue of threats to send him to his room. Hermione and McGonagall watched with amusement, and then laughed when the post owl dropped its mail on Harry's head. Grinning he passed Hermione her school letter and Hogsmeade form, while looking at his own. He passed the Hogsmeade form over to his parents (as he now thought of them) while perusing his other two letters. One was from Sheryl and David, who had accepted his proposal and Harry was going to enact it that night with a bit of help from Kiara and McGonagall. Although he thought of them as his family, and had fun joking around with them, he never forgot that he was their apprentice, and still addressed them both as Master whenever out in public. Only in private, with the rest of his "family" could he relax and call them Mum and Aunt respectively. He called Sirius "Dad" all the time, because he wasn't Sirius' apprentice. He grinned as he looked up, only to see the form unsigned and wicked smiles on Sirius' and Kiara's faces.

"Come on, Mum, Dad, are you going to sign or not?" he whined. Kiara smirked, while Sirius sat back and watched with a similar smirk.

"Hmm, I don't know, there is supposedly a "dangerous killer" on the loose," his master said slowly. As Harry groaned she added, "and of course, being a Hogwarts apprentice does entitle one to go to Hogsmeade on any weekend, not just student ones." Harry blinked for a moment before his head whipped round to his other master.

"Professor is it true?" he asked, hardly daring to believe it. When McGonagall nodded, his face broke out into a wide grin. Hermione was slightly upset at this but recognised that Harry would probably be too busy to go every weekend. She felt better about it when Harry promised to only use this privilege if he absolutely had to. She was therefore startled when Poppy informed her that she had the same privileges and would also be sent to Hogsmeade on various errands on the weekends when they ran short of supplies. Hermione was also excited to learn that she would be visiting St Mungo's to see how the magical Hospital was run.

Hermione and Harry then started excitedly dancing round the kitchen at the news that both of them would be going to have the same privileges when they were brought up short by McGonagall's next statement.

"Should you abuse this privilege in any way, either myself or Master Lyn are more than capable of reducing it back down to normal student weekends for a period of time," she stated.

Harry was crestfallen to hear Kiara add, "Harry, if you do abuse this then I might just remove the privilege altogether for the same period of time."

Needless to say, both Harry and Hermione promised not to abuse this very special perk of being a Hogwart's Apprentice. Hermione almost went comatose with delight upon hearing that they would also have full run of the Restricted Section of the Library, again with the same conditions. That day they made plans to go to Diagon Alley, Harry and Hermione needed to be fitted for their apprentice robes, Harry in red, and Hermione in white and they needed to get their schoolbooks. There had been a lively argument regarding what they would choose.

Flashback:

"Professor McGonagall, tell Harry that Divination is a very woolly discipline and isn't worth taking. He ought to do Ancient Runes or Arithmancy," Hermione complained.

Harry jumped right in with "And can you talk Hermione out of taking all eight electives, it's making my head hurt to think about the amount of work involved." McGonagall stopped the argument by involving Kiara and the four of them sat down and had a discussion about the various merits of each class, with Sirius interjecting with what electives he had taken and why he'd found them fun. Finally they agreed that Hermione would be taking Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Muggle Studies, (Harry rolled his eyes at this, in his opinion Hermione didn't need Muggle Studies), and Harry himself would be taking Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy and Divination. The Divination was only an interest, he would drop it if it didn't look interesting after the first week, and besides he was curious to know if wizarding methods were anymore reliable than that of the Jedi.

Harry grinned in memory before stopping in front of Madam Malkins. As he and Hermione were fitted for their robes, he had a mental conversation with Kiara.

: Master, why are you not being fitted for robes?:

: Because: came the reply: I am only learning the basics of Transfiguration, like Minerva is only learning the basics of the Force. You and Hermione are the real apprentices here, not me or Minerva. How are you going to keep the two of us straight when talking about us to other people:

: I'm going to refer to you as Master Lyn and Aunt Minerva as Master McGonagall:

: OK that sounds good. Stop fidgeting:

Harry broke the connection, then felt along the one he had with Hermione, smiling as it took him less and less time each time, and also that the communication was smoother as Hermione got the hang of talking mentally.

"Hey Tawny", he said, pleased when Hermione didn't even turn her head to look at him.

"Yes Jet" came her reply.

"What do you say to heading to Flourish and Blotts next for our books, and then to Florean Fortescue's for some ice-cream, before we head for the rest of the stores."

"OK but we need to clear it with your masters though".

Hermione tended to refer to Kiara and McGonagall as Harry's masters, and was enjoying being able to pick up supplies that her own master, Poppy needed. Poppy had said that it would be a good test of her abilities and had provided a list of what she needed. She was pleased that Hermione was also learning to be a Jedi Healer and wanted to see whether Jedi healing might be worked into magical healing.

Armed with her list, Hermione walked up to Kiara and soon got clearance to do what she and Harry had discussed. Afterwards, Hermione went to the various places to buy stuff that she would need for her Healing apprenticeship, mainly books but there were some potions ingredients that she needed to get, as she needed to know how to make the various Healing potions even though there was a Potions Master on staff who usually made them for the Hogwarts hospital wing.

After getting everything they needed, the group Flooed back to Sanctuary and Hermione then Flooed back to her home, leaving Harry to sit through another two hours of what he called torture but his two masters called "rules and expectations", basically meaning that he sat through two hours of what he'd be doing that year as a Transfiguration apprentice, and also as a Jedi apprentice, in addition to his other schoolwork.

"Will I have to teach any classes, Professor?" he asked, as he'd read that apprentices usually helped their master with teaching classes, much like a senior padawan would have taught initiate classes in the old Jedi Order.

McGonagall shook her head. "Not until your sixth or seventh year Mr. Potter. You will be my apprentice but for the moment, you will be helping me mark the first years homework, and doing a type of accelerated learning course. This should make you more advanced than your classmates, but I'll give you extra work in class to make up for it. I assume you're going to help Miss Granger with learning extra stuff as well?"

"Er, no, Professor, she said that she was going to learn it in class anyway, so I didn't need to. We'll just keep doing what we have done, read ahead and study in the Den."

Kiara then broke into the conversation. "Padawan, I've noticed that you call me master, and Minerva, Professor, when technically we're both your masters. Care to explain why?"

Harry flushed slightly. "I'll call you both master when I'm alone or in public with each of you, but when I'm with both of you, it's a bit confusing for me when both of you answer to the same title. So," he broke off when he noticed both Kiara and McGonagall nodding.

"OK, we get the picture. That's fine, just remember to call us both master out in public, and if we are both with you, then just specify which one you wanted to talk to when we both answer." Kiara said after a minute. Harry nodded, before yawning slightly; the shopping trip had tired him out more than he'd thought. He excused himself and went upstairs for a nap before tea, coming down much more rested and refreshed. Sirius teased him about needing an afternoon nap like a five-year-old, only to yelp when Harry turned into Jet and growled at him. Changing back, Harry was amused at the look of shock on his godfather's face.

"What's wrong, Sirius?" he said, enjoying himself immensely.

Sirius picked his jaw off the floor and whispered, "How long have you been able to do that. Are Hermione and those twin Weasley terrors animagi too?"

Harry nodded, then grinned wickedly and said "Hermione and I have been animagi since our first year, Fred and George since their third. We are the members of the Demons. Our names are Jet, Tawny, Fleetfoot and Puck, and Fred and George would be very happy to learn who you are, Mr. Padfoot." He then looked down at the floor and said, "Oops I think I broke him," when Sirius fainted.