Albus Dumbledore flicked through the Daily Prophet and sighed deeply. It was still full of the latest story. The deaths of Lily and James Potter. The disappearance of Lord Voldemort. The miraculous survival of little Harry. The news had broken some days ago, but the talk and speculation would take longer than that to die down. And of course, it had all been brought up again by yesterday's events.
Sirius Black. Who would have thought it? It had never occurred to Dumbledore that Sirius could be the traitor. Of course, a lot of people were now pointing out his background. It seemed that the Black in him ran deeper than anybody had thought. Dumbledore sighed again. He had always done his best to keep Sirius away from his family influences. But in the end, he had fallen, despite all Dumbledore's efforts. And now poor Peter Pettigrew was dead too, and Sirius was off to Azkaban, a fate that Dumbledore was not sure anyone deserved, whatever their crimes.
And poor little Harry was an orphan. The Boy Who Lived, they were calling him now. The memory of a sleeping face, with a head of black hair and that terrible scar, was still fresh in Dumbledore's mind, and he was still not absolutely sure that he had done the right thing. Minerva was quite certain that he had not, and was being very stiff with him. And Remus Lupin had been horrified. His angry letter was still on Dumbledore's desk. He had even offered to take the boy himself, a mark of his desperation, since Dumbledore knew that Lupin didn't consider himself a fit guardian for a baby. Poor Remus. In a few short days, his entire world had come tumbling down. All three of his best friends gone. What the boy must be going through.
Once again, Dumbledore's mind dwelt on the unbelievability of the fact that Sirius, of all people, had betrayed James. Dumbledore liked to think that he knew his students well, and he had known those two better than most, thanks to the amount of trouble they had managed to get into. But try as he might, he could not make the Sirius Black he had known at Hogwarts into a Death Eater and a traitor. Sometimes, Dumbledore thought he must be getting old.
And then, slipping into his mind so clearly that he was astonished that he had not thought of it earlier, he remembered the curious incident that had taken place nearly a year before. The day Sirius had turned up in his office with a red-haired girl who claimed to be from the future, wanting to change the events she had told him were to come.
But it was the way in which that incident had ended that his mind dwelt on. Her parting words to him before she Apparated.
"Sirius would never betray James," she had said. "Not ever. I know he wouldn't"
He had not know why she should be so emphatic. It had seemed an obvious statement; the idea that the traitor in the Order - and they had all known there was a traitor - might be Sirius Black had never been one that Dumbledore had entertained. Yet here they were. And the girl had come from the future with dangerous knowledge. Her words had been deliberate, of that he was certain - she had been giving him information. But could they possibly be true? Could they have got it all wrong?
Furiously, his brain began to work. If they were wrong, if there was even a chance that Sirius was innocent, he must do something. The boy was facing a lifetime in Azkaban.
The girl had said she knew, with a certainty that went beyond a belief in Sirius's character. He had let her tell him nothing, but if her word was to be trusted, Dumbledore had to assume that she possessed knowledge of some sort of proof - of the actual facts of the case, from the vantage point of nearly fifty years into the future. But that would mean that the Potters must have changed their Secret Keeper, because only the Secret Keeper could have betrayed them. Who else would they have chosen? Remus Lupin? But no, that would have been a mad choice - for a night every month, Remus had no idea who he was or what he was doing.
There was only one other option.
It made a certain sort of twisted sense. The rather stupid little boy who tagged along after those who were more popular, more powerful than himself. The boy nobody ever really noticed. It made sense, too, that he should have been Secret Keeper. It was exactly the sort of clever trick Sirius and James delighted in. Because nobody ever thought of Peter Pettigrew. And it fitted the facts of the case. Sirius had been arrested after Peter had confronted him in the street, but Peter must have known he wouldn't stand a chance in a duel against Sirius Black. It made far more sense that the confrontation had been the other way round - that Sirius had gone looking for Peter. Whether Peter Pettigrew was really dead or not, Dumbledore had no idea - he could well imagine Sirius killing him if he knew him to be the traitor. But that was not his immediate concern.
He was right; he was sure of it. The things that had made no sense were clear in the light of this theory. But there was little chance he would be able to persuade the Auror Department of it. As far as Barty Crouch was concerned, he'd got his man, and he wouldn't want to hear crackpot ideas about time-travelling girls. No, if Dumbledore was going to put this right, he'd have to do it himself. Last November, he had stopped Sirius from doing anything to change the future, but he could no longer sit idly by. James and Lily were dead and nothing could bring them back, but Sirius himself was still alive.
Dumbledore could not let an innocent man suffer a life sentence in Azkaban. He pressed his fingers together, and gave himself over to deep thought.
The cold and the dark were all-consuming.
Shivering, Sirius crouched on the floor, his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, his face buried in his arms. There was no happiness left. No hope. He tried desperately not to think of all the walls and locked doors that lay between him and freedom, but they wouldn't leave his mind. He saw them all the time, and heard the clangs as they had closed behind him, all mingled in with other images - memories he had tried to forget. Flashes of all the bad times as he was growing up. The coldness, the punishments, the arguments, the furious misery of all the times he would never escape the darkness. The day in fifth-year when he made the biggest mistake of his life, and the expression of hurt and betrayal on Remus' face when he heard what Sirius had done, James's anger and the terrible, guilt-ridden weeks that followed when they refused to speak to him and he had thought he had lost the friendships that were the only good things he had.
And, worse and more vivid than any of the rest, flooding into his mind and refusing to be dislodged, was the horror of the house in Godric's Hollow. The blind, agonising fear when he had seen the blasted shell of a cottage. The terrible burning memory of Lily and James's bodies, James in the hallway and Lily in front of the cot, right there in front of Harry, who was crying for parents who would never come. Who cared that Voldemort had gone, if he had taken Lily and James with him? Over and over, Sirius saw those sights in his mind. The crying child, the spread of red curly hair across the carpet, and the lifeless staring face of his best and oldest friend. And the pain of it froze him; he couldn't remember anything but pain. There was no gleam of brightness in the dark, only blackness and despair.
He didn't hear the steps outside his cell until a voice spoke.
"Sirius."
He had no idea how long he had been in here; it could have been days or months. But it seemed like a long time since he had heard a kind, rational voice. It felt like a lifeline in an ocean of misery and, slowly, he looked up. No, it was not a dream or a hallucination. You didn't have good dreams here. Albus Dumbledore really was standing outside his cell.
"Professor?" His voice came out croaky, and he wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd used it. But Dumbledore was here and suddenly there was a crumb of hope, if only he could get him to believe the truth. "Professor, please, you have to listen to me!" How often had he said these words to the deaf-eared, stony-faced Aurors who had captured him? "I didn't do it, Professor, it wasn't me. I… I didn't betray them."
"I know," Dumbledore interrupted him. "I believe you."
Sirius stared at him, thinking for a moment that he had misheard. Surely everybody believed him guilty. The Aurors had had no doubt. He had not even been given the courtesy of a trial. Nobody had contacted him; nobody had tried to help, not even Remus.
But Dumbledore believed him.
"You… you do?" he whispered.
"Yes. And I have two things to give you. Come here."
Sirius stared at him, open mouthed.
"Mr Black." The faintest hint of irritation tinged Dumbledore's voice. "We do not have all day. Do you trust me?"
"I… yes…" He had nobody else to trust, after all.
"Then come here. I am not allowed inside. They believe that you are a homicidal maniac."
Still not quite sure whether this was real or not, Sirius struggled to his feet. They had not been gentle when they had arrested him, and there were still places that ached. He stumbled over to the door. Dumbledore drew his wand, poked it through the bars and set it against Sirius's temple. Sirius flinched away, but Dumbledore looked steadily at him.
"Trust me," he said quietly.
Then he closed his eyes, and Sirius saw his mouth move slightly as he performed complicated magic. And into Sirius's head flooded memories. His own memories. Memories that had been taken from him one November day almost a year ago.
He gasped as it all came back. The girl that he and James had found in London. Lily. James's granddaughter. All the things she had told him. His own fate – a fate that was now coming true. And that night. The night in the Muggle hotel. Hogwarts the next day - waiting outside Dumbledore's office while she talked to him inside. Coming back in to find a wand pointed at him, and her face, twisted with pain.
"I'm sorry." Her voice came back to him, clear as a bell. "Sirius, I'm so, so sorry."
And then… nothing.
Reeling with shock, he staggered back and glared at Dumbledore, anger beginning to infiltrate his brain.
"You… you took my memories."
"And now I have given them back to you," Dumbledore said seriously. "I had no choice Sirius. And neither did she. You must see that."
Sirius stared at him. "Lily and James. We could have saved them."
"No, we could not," Dumbledore said firmly. "Because whatever she told you – and remember, I still don't know what that was – were things that had already happened. There was nothing you could have done."
"Then why are you here?" demanded Sirius bitterly. "Because I'm supposed to be in here for twelve years." His anger broke into desperation at the end, and Dumbledore looked at him with pity.
"What I should perhaps have said," he said quietly, "is that what she told you were things she thought had happened. I don't think that there's much possibility that she could have been wrong about Lily and James, that they could have been alive when she believed them to have been dead."
Sirius thought about this. "I suppose not," he admitted.
"But," Dumbledore went on, "there is the possibility that she could have been wrong about you."
"I doubt it." The bitter tone was back in Sirius' voice. "She was pretty sure."
"And so she would be, if that was what everyone believed had happened."
Sirius stared at the Headmaster, trying to work out what Dumbledore was telling him. Was there some way he could escape, and yet everyone still believe him to be in Azkaban for the next twelve years? That was impossible. Wasn't it?
"Now," Dumbledore went on, "I said I had two things to give you. The first was your memory. The second is this."
And he held up a chain on which swung a small gold pendant shaped like an hour glass.
Sirius gaped at it. "The… the Time Turner? But how have you got it? Didn't she go back? What happened to her?"
"Oh yes, she went back." Dumbledore smiled faintly. "But you don' need a Time Turner to return to your own time. Only to visit somebody else's."
The last words were spoken with a significance Sirius could not miss.
"You mean… you want me to… to go to another time?"
"Forty seven years, I think she said," said Dumbledore musingly. "That should be safe enough, I think."
"You're sending me to the future?" Sirius sounded incredulous.
"I am not sending you anywhere. You are perfectly welcome to stay here if you wish. For another twelve years, I believe you said."
There was a short silence.
"What good will that do?" Sirius asked. "I'll still be stuck in this cell, just in a different time."
"No, that wouldn't be ideal, I agree," Dumbledore said. "Do you know where that girl lives? I assume that she might be prepared to help you. From what she said to me, it seems that in the future you are known not to be a murderer."
"I... yes." She'd told him that she lived in Barnstaple, and enough about her home that he thought he'd be able to find it. But the whole idea was absurd. How was he supposed to get there? It couldn't work.
"Excellent," said Dumbledore. "Well, I suggest, Sirius, that you transform. The Dementors are less likely to detect an animal, and you should be able to slip out of the bars, I imagine."
"What?" Sirius started back. "You… you know?"
Dumbledore looked amused. "My dear boy, I've known for some time. Ingenious of you all. Most reprehensible, of course, but ingenious nonetheless. And very useful now."
Sirius shook his head. He felt that he wouldn't be surprised at anything more now.
"But Professor, as soon as I'm gone, they're going to notice. And the whole point is that nobody can know I've escaped. At least not for twelve years."
At this, Dumbledore positively beamed.
"Ah, yes. Now you have hit upon the cleverest part of this plan. Indeed, I am really rather pleased with this little invention. I've been working on it for some time now, and I believe I've now perfected it." From out of his robes, he drew what looked like a small metal box. "Inside this box," he said, "is something I am calling a Spirit Impersonator. When it's opened, it releases a force that, to all intents and purposes, replicates the sense of a human. It isn't sentient, and it wouldn't stand up to close magical inspection. I don't believe that outside this prison, it would fool a Dementor, as they can sense human emotions acutely, and this doesn't have true emotions. However in here, they are surrounded by a positive sea of human misery. They are not going to notice that one cell is lacking any emotion. I've charmed it to look like you, or rather as you might look after a significant stay in here, which is more to guard against human visitors than anything, as Dementors can't really see much. I have even," he added proudly, "installed in it a capacity to store memories. If you put some of your memories inside it, it will display some of your reactions. I think that ought to be enough to fool any casual visitor. It will last as long as we want it to. I'll charm it, so that after twelve years it simple fades away. At that point, the Dementors will realise your absence, and will imagine that you have only just escaped."
Sirius was staring at Dumbledore with open-mouthed astonishment.
"Come now," the Professor said briskly. "We don't want to take longer than we can help over this. Choose some memories to give it. Unless, of course, you would rather remain here?"
"No," said Sirius emphatically. "No, I wouldn't. I'll give it a go."