"Did he now? And what did your husband tell you?"

Sirius Black stepped a bit closer to her, curious enough to stretch his tired skin into a smile.

"Actually he wouldn't tell me. I don't know why I didn't put it together myself, actually. Why the dementors never broke you, why it's been so hard to find you; you're an unregistered Animagus," Morgana stated, standing calmly with her hands clasped together in front of her. She was only biding time now, until Remus came, hopefully to help her.

"Still clever as always," Sirius said, her voice still cracking from disuse.

"Not clever enough."

In the silence that followed, Sirius dipped his head in thought, looking up at her and then down at the ground. Morgana worried he was making decisions she didn't want him to make, but he was impossible to read. He'd become good at hiding himself.

"Keep me, let the children go."

He looked up, then laughed.

"I don't want any of you. I want that rat. And I'm growing impatient with your games, Morgana Fawley. You were always kind to me. But I'm not above going through you to get what I came here for."

"Then I suppose going through me is your only option, Sirius. I wish you the best of luck," Morgana said in the same calm voice, willing Sirius to look her in the eye.

"Expelliarmus!"

Each wand Sirius held flew out of his hands and into Morgana's, a heavily breathing Remus Lupin standing in the doorway.

She held a small tentative smile, pocketing the wands.

Sirius should have been angry, but the look on his face was more equivalent to a child arriving at a theme park. Remus smiled a bit himself, straightening up and putting his wand down to his side.

"My old friend!" Sirius said, grabbing Remus in a tight hug. Morgana took a protective step back closer to the three, close enough for them to grab their wands from her pocket. They stood at odds now, and Remus turned to face Morgana more on Sirius' end of the room than hers.

"I should have known," she said, looking at them both in contempt, "how dare you not tell Dumbledore about this! You just as well let him through the doors yourself!"

"Morgana, I…" without the words to say to her, he turned to his old friend, "Listen, Padfoot, I know why you're here. I saw him too. Morgana, Peter Pettigrew is alive."

Morgana shook her head at him.

"There's no way, he can't be. That whole street was destroyed… he… we found his finger..."

Remus stepped toward her, but she held up her ring clad hand defensively.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said quietly, "but I will if I have to."

"I'm sorry. I just needed more time to be sure of my theory. If I'm wrong, I'll accept my place in all this. But Peter is not dead. He's there."

Remus pointed to Ron, and they all looked down at the rat squirming around in between his hands.

"Scabbers? You think Scabbers is Peter Pettigrew?" Ron answered incredulously.

"How old is he?" Morgana asked, kneeling down to Ron. Hermione inched closer to Ron protectively.

"About 12 or so, he's been in the family a while," Ron replied, fighting a bit hard with the now squeaking and squealing rat.

"And he's missing a toe..." Hermione said slowly, looking to Morgana is shocked realization, "And if Sirius is an Animagus, maybe Peter was too."

"Expelliarmus!"

Remus' wand flew from his hand, sending him sailing back into Sirius and both of them to the floor. Snape stood triumphantly in the doorway, looking down at them.

"Remus!" Morgana said, standing and stepping toward them. Snape turned his wand on her.

"Not another step, Queen. I knew you were both in on this together. And look at you, handing Potter off to Black on a silver platter," Snape said as he stepped further into the room, eyeing her. She smiled.

"Didn't I tell you before, Severus? If you hurt my husband, you will pay for it," she said, stepping forward toward him. She did her best to hide her change of face from the children. But baring her fangs was enough for Severus to step back into the open door frame.

"Decipula!" he said in a shaky voice. The framework of a cage appeared in the cramped room, missing Morgana and falling to a heap behind her.

"Expelliarmus!"

This time the disarming spell came from three wands, Harry, Ron, and Hermione. All of which hit it's mark and sent Snape crashing through the already decrepit wooden door. He slumped down in the corner, a small stream of blood issuing down his face from somewhere on his head. He was out cold.

Morgana took a moment to let her face relax, hiding it with a sweep of her hair. She knelt down again beside Ron, taking the rat calmly from him.

She brought the rat to Remus, her face still unconvinced. He tried to smile at her.

"Trust me," he said quietly. She stared at him, into his eyes, deeply. Searching, trying to find the truth of this. She could hear him, clearly as though he'd spoken it aloud.

I love you.

"With everything I am."

She nodded, in agreement or coercion, he didn't mind either way. She was with him.

She held up the squirming rodent, its beady eyes fixed wildly on Remus as he tapped it's belly with his wand tip.

It froze, stiff as a board, making Ron groan in sympathy for his poor rat. And then it began to contort. Morgana dropped it in shock, and it rose before them all a dirty fat man, Peter Pettigrew.

He immediately reached out toward her with tiny hands.

"Auror Fawley, please! Don't let this madman kill me!" he begged, dropping to his knees before her; more greatly resembling his rat self again. Remus stepped forward and kicked Peter's hands away from her.

"Do not touch her," he said sternly, simultaneously sending a hand flying back to stop Sirius from coming any closer.

"My old friend," Peter murmured, rubbing his hands and looking up at Remus, who stared back down at him in disgust.

"Let me kill him, Moony! He was the secret-keeper, and he sold them out to Voldemort. Let me kill him. Let me do what they've put me away for all these years," Sirius begged from the other end of Remus' arm.

"You… are really alive…" Morgana muttered, staring down at Peter. He turned on his knees back to her.

"Please, please have mercy! Don't let him kill me!" he again reached out toward her, and again Remus kicked his hands out.

"I said don't touch her, you traitor. How could you turn James and Lily over? How could you betray our friends?" Remus said, his wand still pointed firmly at the cowering, twitchy man.

"He… he… you were all always so much stronger than me! I didn't want to die, I didn't want to-"

"-so you let the Potters die instead? You selfish, terrible excuse of a man. You let a man rot in prison, left a boy without his parents, for your own sad, pathetic life," Morgana said, shaking her head. She glanced at Remus, then to Harry.

"He should rot in Azkaban, then," Harry said firmly, locking eyes with the now snivelling rodent of a man.

"That settles it, we won't kill him then. We'll turn him in. Come along, rat-boy," Morgana forced him via magic to his feet and procured a rope from her palm that wrapped around him in a snake-like fashion. Before he could so much as squeal a protest, a kerchief made its way around his mouth. Sirius watched Morgana work in amazement.

"Though my words don't mean much these days as an ex-Auror, I will gladly speak on your behalf for exoneration, Sirius," she said to him as she pushed Peter forward toward the door. Sirius nodded gratefully.

"Thank you. You have always been kind," he said. She laughed a bit.

"I get that a lot," she answered as he fell into step beside her. She handed him Snape's wand, and as an afterthought hoisted Snape up via magic to follow them.

Remus helped Ron get to his feet and quickly produced a splint to stabilize his leg, letting Hermione and Harry take hold of either side of him to help him along. Remus fell in just in front of them and they marched haphazardly out from the shack.

"I always wondered why you stopped visiting me," Sirius said as they awaited the slow moving trio of children behind them, "you went and got married. Who's the lucky man?"

Morgana looked at Remus, who looked back at her with a small smile.

"No… Moony?" Sirius asked with a developing grin that more and more began to suit him again.

"It was actually an arrangement Dumbledore made, for both of us to be here to keep Harry safe. We're not yet married," Remus explained. Morgana raised an eyebrow at him.

"Not yet?" she repeated.

"Well, you're already wearing the ring but I figure I should still ask," he responded. She smiled at him, glancing upward as the clouds parted and shed the light of the full moon upon them. The full moon. She looked back at Remus, who was also looking up.

"Oh… oh no… Remus? Did you take your potion? Remus!" she shouted as he dropped to his knees, his hands covering his face and his body racking in pain. Hermione looked up as they approached.

"Get back! Get back from him!" Sirius shouted. In the distraction, Morgana let go of Pettigrew, who at once transformed back into a rat and went scurrying to freedom across the lawn. Harry started after the darting rodent with a limping Ron on his tail. Morgana rushed to Remus, wrapping her arms around him as he began to shake. She looked up at Hermione, frozen in place with a horrified look.

"GO! Get out of here!" Sirius shouted at her, jarring her to move. She leapt past the fallen body of Snape and ran after the boys into the forest.

"Morgana, he's going to turn," Sirius said, watching her desperately trying to hold on to Remus as he writhed in pain. He grabbed her, pulled her back on the grass as Remus began to morph.

"Morgana, go, I've got him!" Sirius said. Morgana looked up, shook her head a bit.

"He's my responsibility. Go get them, get Pettigrew."

"But you can't-"

He stopped as her face changed before him, her teeth bared and a savage display lit her in new light under the moon. He stepped back from her, first in fear and then nodded in her capability; and quickly transformed into the large dog, leaping off into the forest. Morgana stood, face to face now with the snarling wolf Remus. Her fangs bared, she thought back briefly to the moment they met. The moment he'd walked in between Dumbledore and Snape to the hall of the sanctuary, and she set eyes on him; how her heart had felt warm, how she'd felt it beating again for the first time in long while. She'd known, somewhere deep down, she'd again meet the man who inspired her to care for those who could not care for themselves. It had been the greatest gift of all to fall in love with him too. And now, staring him down and sizing him up all at once, she prayed she would not have to kill him tonight to save her soul.

Stumbling, bloodied and trying desperately to shake free of her vampire self, Morgana wound her way through the darkness of the forest toward the shouting she'd heard only a moment before. It had sounded like Sirius, and no word of the children. She was wounded, she could feel the blood dripping off her face and body and falling onto the grass. She had hurt Remus badly enough that he'd run, but not badly enough to kill him. He may not have been so kind with her; but that wasn't her worry now.

She made it to the clearing in time to see the great lot of dementors pouring down upon Harry and Sirius. She shakingly tried to reach out her hand, cast them away, but her arm refused to move from her side. The pain, finally reaching her, told her that at the very least her shoulder was dislocated; maybe broken. So she continued to limp forward, the dementors paying her little mind as she reached them and tried to shield them from the mass of the soul-sucking monsters with her body. Somewhere close by, a silver light erupted in time for her blurring sight to catch it, to ward off the dementors attacking Harry and Sirius and send them recoiling across the lake. Morgana pulled the unconscious boy closer to her, even as her own mind began to fade the only thing she could do was protect Harry Potter with the very last breath she had. It was strange, what felt like dying that was quite the opposite.