Seventh cup of tea of the evening, folks! Twining's Lady Grey... mmm. Yeah, sorry it took so long, I got one really horrid review and it sorta demotivated me. For the record, I'd like to say that I live in Britain so the term Eurofag is actually incorrect. It would be a pound sterling homosexual. Which I'm not denying that I am, I just prefer not to be called it -_- Nevermind! Feelsy chapter, I know, it will hurt your little damaged feels very much. (Hehe)

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Harry was so relieved she was taking him seriously that he did not hesitate, hut jumped out of bed at once, pulled on his dressing gown and pushed his glasses back on to his nose.
'Weasley, you ought to come too,' said Professor McGonagall.
They followed Professor McGonagall past the silent figures of Neville, Dean and Seamus, out of the dormitory down the spiral stairs into the common room, through the portrait hole and off along the Fat Lady's moonlit corridor. Harry felt as though the panic inside him might spill over at any moment; he wanted to run, to yell for Dumbledore; Sirius was bleeding as they walked along so sedately and what if the knife was magical? They passed Mrs Norris, who turned her lamplike eyes upon them and hissed faintly but Professor McGonagall said, 'Shoo!' Mrs Norris slunk away into the shadows, and in a few minutes they had reached the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore's office.
'Fizzing Whizzbee,' said Professor McGonagall.
The gargoyle sprang to life and leapt aside; the wall behind it split in two to reveal a stone staircase that was moving continually upwards like a spiral escalator. The three of them stepped on to the moving stairs; the wall closed behind them with a thud and they were moving upwards in tight circles until they reached the highly polished oak door with the brass knocker shaped like a griffin.
Though it was now well past midnight there were voices coming from inside the room, a positive babble of them. It sounded as though Dumbledore was entertaining at least a dozen people.
Professor McGonagall rapped three times with the griffin knocker and the voices ceased abruptly as though someone had switched them all off. The door opened of its own accord and Professor McGonagall led Harry and Ron inside.
'Oh, it's you, Professor McGonagall . . . and . . . ah.'
Dumbledore was sitting in a high-backed chair behind his desk; he leaned forward into the pool of candlelight illuminating the papers laid out before him. He was wearing a magnificently embroidered purple and gold dressing gown over a snowy white nightshirt, but seemed wide-awake, his penetrating light blue eyes fixed intently upon Professor McGonagall.
'Professor Dumbledore, Potter has had a . . . well, a nightmare,' said Professor McGonagall. 'He says . . .'
'It wasn't a nightmare,' said Harry quickly.
Professor McGonagall looked round at Harry, frowning slightly.
'Very well, then, Potter, you tell the Headmaster about it.'
'I . . . well, I was asleep . . .' said Harry and, even in his terror and his desperation to make Dumbledore understand, he felt slightly irritated that the Headmaster was not looking at him, but examining his own interlocked fingers. 'But it wasn't an ordinary dream . . . it was real . . . I saw it happen . . .' He took a deep breath, 'S-Sirius - has been attacked by Arthur Kirkland.'
The words seemed to reverberate in the air after he had said them, sounding slightly ridiculous, even comic. There was a pause in which Dumbledore leaned back and stared meditatively at the ceiling. Ron looked from Harry to Dumbledore, white-faced and shocked.
'How did you see this?' Dumbledore asked quietly, still not looking at Harry.
'Well . . . I don't know,' said Harry, rather angrily - what did it matter? 'Inside my head, I suppose - '
'You misunderstand me,' said Dumbledore, still in the same calm tone. 'I mean . . . can you remember - er - where you were positioned as you watched this attack happen? Were you perhaps standing beside the victim, or else looking down on the scene from above?'
This was such a curious question that Harry gaped at Dumbledore; it was almost as though he knew . . .
'I was him,' he said. 'I saw it all from the his point of view.'
Nobody else spoke for a moment, then Dumbledore, now looking at Ron who was still whey-faced, asked in a new and sharper voice, 'Is Sirius seriously injured?'
'Yes,' said Harry emphatically - why were they all so slow on the uptake, did they not realise how much a person bled when they were bloody stabbed? And why could Dumbledore not do him the courtesy of looking at him?
But Dumbledore stood up, so quickly it made Harry jump, and addressed one of the old portraits hanging very near the ceiling. 'Everard?' he said sharply. 'And you too, Dilys!'
A sallow-faced wizard with a short black fringe and an elderly witch with long silver ringlets in the frame beside him, both of whom seemed to have been in the deepest of sleeps, opened their eyes immediately.
'You were listening?' said Dumbledore.
The wizard nodded; the witch said, 'Naturally.'
'Sirius Black,' said Dumbledore. 'Everard, you will need to raise the alarm, make sure he is found by the right people - '
Both nodded and moved sideways out of their frames, but instead of emerging in neighbouring pictures, neither reappeared. One frame now contained nothing but a backdrop of dark curtain, the other a handsome leather armchair. Harry noticed that many of the other headmasters and mistresses on the walls, though snoring and drooling most convincingly, kept sneaking peeks at him from under their eyelids, and he suddenly understood who had been talking when they had knocked.
'Everard and Dilys were two of Hogwarts' most celebrated Heads,' Dumbledore said, now sweeping around Harry, Ron and Professor McGonagall to approach the magnificent sleeping bird on his perch beside the door. 'Their renown is such that both have portraits hanging in other important wizarding institutions. As they are free to move between their own portraits, they can tell us what may be happening elsewhere . . .'
'But he could be anywhere!' said Harry.
'Please sit down, all three of you,' said Dumbledore, as though Harry had not spoken, 'Everard and Dilys may not be back for several minutes. Professor McGonagall, if you could draw up extra chairs.'
Professor McGonagall pulled her wand from the pocket of her dressing gown and waved it; three chairs appeared out of thin air, straight-backed and wooden. Harry sat down, watching Dumbledore over his shoulder. Suddenly there was a shout from the top of the wall to their right; the wizard called Everard had reappeared in his portrait., panting slightly.
'Dumbledore!'
'What news?' said Dumbledore at once.
'I yelled until someone came running,' said the wizard, who was mopping his brow on the curtain behind him, 'said I'd heard something moving downstairs - they weren't sure whether to believe me but went down to check - you know there are no portraits down there to watch from. Anyway, they carried him up a few minutes later. He doesn't look good, he's covered in blood, I ran along to Elfrida Cragg's portrait to get a good view as they left - '
'Good,' said Dumbledore as Harry made a convulsive movement. 'I take it Dilys will have seen him arrive, then - '
And moments later, the silver-ringleted witch had reappeared in her picture, too; she sank, coughing, into her armchair and said, "He's been found."
Dumbledore marched over to another portrait, this time of a clever-looking wizard with a pointed beard, who had been painted wearing the Slytherin colours of green and silver and was apparently sleeping so deeply that he could not hear Dumbledore's voice when he attempted to rouse him.
'Phineas. Phineas.'
Phineas opened one sleepy eye. 'I know.'

'Know what?' Harry demanded, frustrated at the lack of action. 'What's wrong with Sirius?'
Harry realised immediately where he had heard Phineas's voice before: issuing from the apparently empty frame in his bedroom in Grimmauld Place.

'How badly injured?' Dumbledore asked calmly, hands folded on the desk.
'He doesn't look good.' said Phineas in a slightly smaller voice.
'How badly injured?' Repeated Dumbledore.

'Dead!' Snapped the portrait. 'He looks as dead as I did. He was the last of the Blacks and now we're gone.'

Harry froze. 'Dead.' He heard himself mutter, almost subconsciously.

He could feel Ron's gaze burning hot on his cheek but could not summon up the energy to life his leaden gaze.

'Harry, you alright, mate?' Ron asked concernedly.

Harry's eyes itched. He rubbed them agitatedly with the sleeve of his dressing gown. No, that didn't work. He felt a lump in his throat, swallowing his words. Harry could hear McGonagall and Dumbledore conversing in hushed whispers next to him, voices urgent and clipped. Words like '2P' and 'gone' and 'country' enveloped him in their sounds. Harry let the first tear fall. Then another. And another. Soon, the fifteen year-old boy was staring down at a crimson dressing gown made quite wet with tears.

'He can't be. Sirius can't be dead.' Harry murmured. 'I'd know. You'd have to feel something! Like a pain, or a weight or… People don't just go like that.'

'Harry.' Harry looked up. Dumbledore was finally looking at him. 'It's okay to cry.'

'Shut up.' Growled Harry, rubbing his eyes furiously.

'Potter!' Exclaimed Professor McGonagall angrily, 'Behave yourself!'

'Why would it not be okay to cry, Dumbledore?' Harry's voice was rising unsteadily. He felt himself rise to his feet, trembling with exertion. 'I saw my Godfather being killed by a madman, I did it! And you sit there… in your 'headmaster' chair and tell me it's okay to cry? I knew that before I came here thanks. I knew this when I was eight years old and locked in a cupboard. I knew that when I was the only person I knew who had never had a birthday present. And now my father figure is dead all you can tell me is that 'it's okay to cry'? Screw you!'

There was a loud crack from behind him and a ragged looking Remus Lupin apparated into the office.

'Albus, Sirius...' His usually pale face was gaunt and white.

'I know, Remus.' Dumbledore said sadly, eyes still on the thin fifteen year old. 'I know.'

Harry ignored Lupin's entrance, glaring at the headmaster, face dripping with tears. 'He's dead and it's all your fault!' He shouted. 'I don't know what you are doing in the Order but now Sirius is dead. You… You've taken my family! I-I'm alone again. How could you? You incompetent fool! You're not fit to run a paper bag, you-'

He was stopped by a pair of strong arms wrapping themselves around his waist. 'Harry, stop it.'

Harry stopped, emerald eyes glittering with unshed tears. Lupin was holding him close to his body, the warm embrace surprising him. Harry leant back slightly into Lupin's arms, breath hitching and his shoulders shaking with the force of the incessant flow of tears.

'It's alright, Harry.' Harry saw Lupin's eyes sparkling as well. 'He's gone, but you're not alone. As the last of your father's friends I will protect you. Come on, little cub, you don't have to be brave anymore. Sirius loved you so much. You're still loved. It's going to be okay.'

Harry reciprocated the embrace, smelling the wild smell of bracken and woodsmoke on Lupin's coat. Lupin held him securely upright, refusing to let Harry crumble. Eventually the boy stepped back, wiping his eyes on his towelling sleeves and offered Lupin a small, faint smile. For the first time all night, he felt as if his world had stopped falling.