Lupin's office door was ajar, and the room was empty. Snape slammed the goblet of Wolfsbane down on the desk, ready to raise hell, when a piece of parchment with moving parts caught his eye.
"Lupin?" he called, bending over to take a closer look at the parchment.
He was astonished to find it was a map of Hogwarts, that gave the name and location of what looked like every single inhabitant. It placed Poppy in the hospital wing with Kenneth Towler and Geoffrey Hooper, Hagrid in his hut, Trelawney up in her tower. Dumbledore's office was empty, and it showed Snape himself standing right in the middle of Lupin's office.
What possible use could Lupin have for a map like this? The thought chilled his bones, and he set to scanning the parchment for the werewolf, picking up the goblet and ready to go after the beast.
It took him about a minute to find the dot marked Remus Lupin, and when he had found it, he almost wished he hadn't.
The murderous creature was loose in the grounds, moving so quickly Snape thought for a moment he had transformed already. Perhaps the whole thing was an effort to catch Snape in the trap he had barely escaped back in his school days. Lupin, wild and bloodthirsty, down in that damn tunnel, leaving the map out to tempt Snape to follow. This time, there was no Potter to save the two of them from Azkaban.
This time, as well, Snape wasn't sixteen and ignorant. He could handle a werewolf, if he had to, and he was wise to any tricks Black or Lupin could possibly conceive. Perhaps the two of them hadn't grown up beyond adolescence, but Snape had.
He would show them precisely what happened to people who messed with Severus Snape, these days.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
After watching them all vanish into the tree Daniel stared at it for a while, fingers still clenched tightly around his wand.
After a moment, his brain slipped into gear. He'd promised Black a broom. He started to move off to the Quidditch shed, but stopped in his tracks at the sight of the execution parade making their way back up to the school. Hagrid was blubbering so loudly Daniel could hear him even from this distance. The guy with the axe was swaggering along, with Fudge hurrying after him. Dumbledore had his hand up on Hagrid's shoulder, but had his head bent to talk to the tiny old man, who was struggling to keep pace.
Once they vanished through the huge doors, Daniel started to move again, glancing up at the castle every minute or so, certain that Dumbledore would somehow find out what he was up to.
On his third glance up, he saw Lupin running down the stairs and across the grounds, wand lit, determination in his stride.
Daniel made his way slowly and carefully towards the Quidditch pitch, making sure he never came anywhere near crossing Lupin's path. He was astounded to see him making his way straight to the Whomping Willow, and his jaw dropped when something the man did brought the tree to a creaking, reluctant halt.
He was relieved, and then horrified, when Snape came out only minutes later. Snape was reliable, and powerful, and the one teacher at Hogwarts Daniel really felt was on his side. But for once, Daniel wanted a Gryffindor to defy the head of Slytherin and come out of it okay, and when did that ever happen.
Daniel tried not to think of what kind of a time Black was in for, instead making his way steadily across to the Quidditch pitch.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Snape prodded the knot on the Willow's trunk, utterly ignoring the memories that surfaced along with the action. He had been considered worthy to serve the Dark Lord before turning twenty, and worked with Albus Dumbledore for over a dozen years after that. If he couldn't defeat a werewolf, coming fully prepared to do so, then his name wasn't Severus Snape.
The tunnel made him feel slightly claustrophobic, and he clenched his teeth as he walked. His silent castings reassured him that the tunnel was wholly without magic.
The thought came to him after a while that it was possible Lupin had hurried down here to sequester himself in safety rather than coming to Snape for the potion and risking transforming in a public place.
He dismissed that. The map on his desk was a blatant effort to involve Snape, and that meant he had malicious intent. Judging by Lupin's behaviour earlier in the year, he would not make such a move on his own initiative. He had taunted Snape, never letting him forget who had Dumbledore's favour, but he had not moved in outright hostility.
Black was involved, Snape just knew it. He had finally worked Lupin around enough to convince him that Snape's murder was necessary.
Snape lengthened his stride, nothing but eager to finally face the pair of them, and give them what they deserved. If they wanted a showdown, Snape would very much enjoy giving them one.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
When Daniel arrived at the broom shed, he regarded it carefully for a moment. Draco had taken brooms out without any trouble that Monday morning, but it was after dark now, and there would surely be some kind of security.
This was the kind of situation where having been learning spells from Black all year really paid off.
He cast ProponoAdmonitio first, and then Porropolus. They didn't detect any kind of trap, or ward, or alarm system. That probably meant that the security was way out of Daniel's league, but he supposed it was worth a try.
Just so long as whatever anti-burglary spells were up weren't fatal. You never knew, at Hogwarts.
Alohomora didn't open it, and nor did Leidsete, but Ontsluitedid.
He stepped into the shed, closing the door most of the way behind him, and lit up his wand. The brooms were all stray twigs and dull wooden handles, and they all looked the same to him.
He looked around until he recognised one as the kind he'd flown with Draco. He took that one, then picked up another, that looked thinner and faster. It said "Cleansweep 6" on the handle.
It would have to do. He put out his wand, and left the shed, closing the door firmly behind him.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
The first voice Snape heard once he was within magically-enhanced earshot of the shack forced him to re-think every one of the conclusions he had come to.
" … looked them up when I did my homework," Granger was saying, struggling to keep calm by the sound of her. "The Ministry keeps tabs on witches and wizards who can become animals; there's a register showing what animal they become, and their markings and things."
Snape had never imagined that Lupin or Black would have involved Potter and his sidekicks in their assault on him, however friendly they had all become over the course of the year. They could have them out here in Hogsmeade to kill them, but if that were the case they wouldn't be letting Granger rattle on as she was.
Which left to him the conclusion that the thoughtless trio had again been nosing into things that were not their business, and which would wind up with the deaths of the lot of them if Snape had not been there to save them. Again.
Their topic of conversation was bizarre, to say the least. Snape waited a short distance back from the door, reassessing his priorities.
"And I went and looked Professor McGonagall up on the register, and there have only been seven Animagi this century, and Pettigrew's name wasn't on the list —"
Lupin started to laugh. It chilled Snape more than he could say. The werewolf was confident. The situation was under his control. "Right again, Hermione!" he said. "But the Ministry never knew that there used to be three unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts."
Then there came the voice that Snape really just needed to punch.
"If you're going to tell them the story," Black growled, "get a move on, Remus. I've waited twelve years, I'm not going to wait much longer."
Snape too could not wait any longer. He had to know more about what was going on inside. He could attempt a spell to try and spy into the room, but if it was detected by either wizard inside, they could act quickly, with Snape still stuck outside the room.
No, the only feasible option was to open the door, and be ready to disable Lupin, and take down Black at the first sign of any trouble, while shielding the confounded Gryffindors from any danger that may transpire.
"Alright," Lupin said, "but you'll need to help me, Sirius. I only know how it began … "
Snape pushed the door open, wand out and any number of incapacitating curses on his lips.
They all stared right through him.
Lupin was closest, face tight with worry but in control of himself. For now. Then there was Black by the wall, and Snape felt a savage jolt of satisfaction at the sight of him.
Black had been an attractive young man. He'd been effortlessly handsome, and charming, and gallant, and he'd known it. Snape could barely see that boy in the man standing tensely in this room. His hair fell in horrific clumps down to his elbows, his skin was a pasty yellow colour, he had blood all around his nose and a rapidly darkening eye. He held no wand, and when it came to physical condition Snape could probably take him in a fistfight, with one hand tied behind his back.
Oh, how the worm turns.
Lupin walked up to the door. His wand was in his belt. Snape didn't understand why he didn't draw it and cast detection spells, but he wouldn't complain. He would remain hidden, and evaluate.
Potter was standing by the bed, wand in hand, knuckles bruised severely. Granger stood by him with a bloody lip, and past her Snape could see Weasley half-sitting up on the bed, face slightly green and shoulders shaking. Snape assumed, then, that they had not been invited.
"This place is haunted!" Weasley said, his voice weak.
"It's not," Lupin said, and Snape could see the wheels turning in his head. Then he turned away, stepping back to the centre of the room to face the Gryffindor students.
The situation would take some assessing. Snape kept his back to the wall but edged away from the doorway, settling in behind Lupin.
"The Shrieking Shack was never haunted," Lupin said. "The screams and howls the villagers used to hear were made by me."
This wasn't, apparently, news to Potter, though he didn't seem at ease with the thought.
"That's where all this starts," Lupin said. "With my becoming a werewolf. None of this could have happened if I hadn't been bitten … and if I hadn't been so foolhardy."
Granger hushed Weasley, who had started to speak.
Lupin shot her a haunted look, profile grim. "I was a very small boy when I received the bite," he said. "My parents tried everything, but in those days there was no cure. The potion that Professor Snape has been making for me is a very recent discovery. If makes me safe, you see. As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform. I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again."
The utter moron had been staying in his office as a werewolf? It sounded like he'd wanted to be discovered after all. He shouldn't be too bothered by the way this evening was going to end, then. Snape felt himself grinning triumphantly at the thought.
"Before the Wolfsbane potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month," Lupin continued, still unfathomably oblivious to Snape's presence. "It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me.
"But then Dumbledore became headmaster, and he was sympathetic. He said that, as long as we took certain precautions, there was no reason I shouldn't come to school." The werewolf sighed, and looked right at Potter. "I told you, months ago," he said, "that the Whomping Willow was planted the year I came to Hogwarts. The truth is that it was planted because I had come to Hogwarts. This house, the tunnel that leads to it: they were built for my use. Once a month, I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous."
He had them. He had them all listening intently, though Black's gaze was fixed on Weasley.
"My transformations in those days were - were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumour; even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don't dare approach it.
"But apart from my transformations, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. For the first time ever, I had friends, three great friends. Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and, of course, your father, Harry: James Potter. Now, my three friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her. I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth, and they didn't desert me at all. Instead they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."
Snape didn't believe that for a second. Potter and Black didn't have such immensely difficult magic in them, and as for Pettigrew, Snape would sooner believe he was the Japanese Minister of Magic.
"My dad, too?" Potter asked, pathetically single-minded.
"Yes, indeed," Lupin said perfunctorily. "It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong: one reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will."
"But how did that help you?" Granger asked. She was clever, but Snape didn't have faith she would be able to find too many holes in Lupin's story. Lupin was weak in countless ways, but he knew how to cover his tracks.
"They couldn't keep me company as humans," Lupin said, "so they kept me company as animals. A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James's invisibility cloak. They transformed: Peter, as the smallest, could slip beneath the Willow's attacking branches and touch the knot that freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me. Under their influence, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them."
"Hurry up, Remus," Black interrupted, impatient as always, but he wasn't looking at Potter at all. It was Weasley he couldn't tear his eyes off, to Snape's continued bemusement.
"I'm getting there, Sirius, I'm getting there," Lupin said, treating his old friend just as he had treated Granger. This was his stage, and his story, and he had to get it exactly right to ensure that he kept Potter on side.
"Well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night."
Snape's vision dimmed for a moment, in pure, horrified shock. And then revulsion and rage filled him, boiling up inside of him so fiercely it was all he could do not to start blasting away right then and there.
"Sirius and James transformed into such large animals," Lupin was continuing, apparently not thinking he'd said anything so very appalling, "they were able to keep a werewolf in check. I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade than we did. And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map, and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot. Peter is Wormtail. James was Prongs."
"What sort of animal —" Potter asked, and Snape bared his teeth in a silent snarl.
"That was still really dangerous!" Granger exclaimed, apparently as uninterested in the minutiae of James Potter's life as Snape was himself. "Running around in the dark with a werewolf! What if you'd given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?"
"A thought that still haunts me," Lupin said, almost convincingly. "And there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We were young, thoughtless. Carried away with our own cleverness. I sometimes felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust, of course … he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other headmaster would have done so, and he had no idea I was breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others' safety. He never knew I had led three fellow students into becoming Animagi illegally."
Snape doubted that a great deal.
"But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month's adventure. And I haven't changed … "
Snape tried to calm down, but the sight of Lupin and Black right there in front of him automatically dissipated any control he managed to amass. He settled for breathing very, very slowly, and half-closing his eyes.
"All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus," Lupin continued. "But I didn't do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I'd betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I'd led others along with me … and Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job, when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it. So, in a way, Snape's been right about me all along."
"Snape?" Black said, swinging around to look at Lupin. "What's Snape got to do with it?"
"He's here, Sirius," Lupin said. Snape's hand tightened around his wand, his breath faltering. "He's teaching here as well."
Black didn't look surprised. Snape didn't relax his grip.
"Professor Snape was at school with us," Lupin explained to his thralls. "He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defence Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons. You see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me —"
That brought out the monster in Black. "It served him right," the man said, a homicidal gleam in his eye. "Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to, hoping he could get us expelled … "
"Severus was very interested in where I went every month," Lupin said smoothly, a perfectly sober foil for Black's hostility. "We were in the same year, you know, and we — er — didn't like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James's talent on the Quidditch pitch."
The way Lupin was going, Snape would enjoy his destruction more than he would Black's. Jealous, indeed.
"Anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirus thought it would be — er — amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it. If he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf, but your father, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life.
"Snape glimpsed me though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was … "
"So that's why Snape doesn't like you," Potter said, as if it were the last piece of the puzzle. "Because he thought you were in on the joke?"
There would be no better moment. "That's right," Snape said, taking off the stupid cloak, and pointing his wand at Lupin's black heart.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Daniel did not want to go into the forest alone at night, no matter how safe Black had declared parts of it. But he didn't really have many choices. He had to wait somewhere for Black's word, somewhere not too far away from the Whomping Willow but out of sight of the castle.
Hagrid's place was a possibility, since he'd seen how you could get out the back without being seen, but Hagrid's dog might be there, or any number of other creatures the man had decided to adopt.
He kind of knew Protego, and could escape a lot of animals on a broom. He tried to take comfort from those facts, but that didn't stop his heart rocketing about in his chest as he tried to find a good hiding place among the dark trees.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Granger screamed, ridiculous girl. Black was on his feet in an instant, but even he wasn't so brainless as to attack a man who had his dear friend Lupin at the end of his wand.
"I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow," Snape said, tossing it aside. "Very useful, Potter, I thank you."
None of them spoke.
"You're wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here?" Snape said, taking the stage before Lupin could wrest it back from him. "I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along. And very lucky I did … lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight."
"Severus," Lupin said, but Snape couldn't afford to let him speak.
"I've told the headmaster again and again that you've been helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here's the proof. Not even I dreamed you would have the nerve to use this old place as your hideout."
"Severus, you're making a mistake," Lupin said, a hint of genuine desperation edging into his voice. "You haven't heard everything. I can explain. Sirius is not here to kill Harry — "
"Two more for Azkaban tonight," Snape interrupted. "I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this." He decided to be generous, and give Lupin a chance to impress him. If Lupin could accept Snape's words, and admit his own guilt, perhaps Snape wouldn't take him straight to the Dementors. "He was quite convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin," he said meaningfully. "A tame werewolf…"
"You fool," Lupin said, and that was the soul of the man. "Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?"
Snape cast Coactus, a touch of his suppressed rage finding an outlet. He was the one with the wand here, and Lupin would respect that.
Black roared like a wild beast, and made a move at Snape.
Snape gladly transferred his wand from Lupin's heart to between Black's eyes. "Give me a reason," he whispered, savouring the words. "Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will."
Disappointingly, Black froze. Snape probably couldn't get away with killing Black in cold blood in front of the students. But then, he didn't have to cast Avada Kedavra to rid the world of Black and Lupin.
"Professor Snape," Granger said, barely managing to get the words out. "It … it wouldn't hurt to hear what they've got to say, w-would it?"
"Miss Granger," Snape said, returning her false courtesy in kind, "you are already facing suspension from this school. You, Potter and Weasley are out of bounds, in the company of a convicted murderer and a werewolf. For once in your life, hold your tongue."
He thought he'd laid it out quite frankly and reasonably, but under stress it seemed Granger lost her lauded faculties for logic. "But if — if there was a mistake —"
"Keep quiet, you stupid girl," Snape thundered. "Don't talk about what you don't understand." He held his hand steady, but despite himself a few sparks spat at Black.
Granger finally took the hint. Snape composed himself, and focused back on Black. "Vengeance is very sweet," he said, voice barely audible even to him. "How I hoped I would be the one to catch you."
"The joke's on you again, Severus," Black said loudly, effortlessly aggravating Snape even further with his dismissal of the drama at hand. "As long as this boy —" he indicated Weasley, "— brings his rat up to the castle, I'll come quietly."
"Up to the castle?" Snape repeated, innocent confusion wreathed through his voice. "I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the Dementors once we got out of the Willow. They'll be very pleased to see you, Black. Pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I daresay."
Black blanched. "You — you've got to hear me out," he rasped, voice tantalisingly close to begging. "The rat — look at the rat … "
"Come on, all of you," Snape said happily. He summoned Lupin's bindings up to his hand, suppressing the shudder that even such indirect contact to the creature gave him. "I'll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the Dementors will have a kiss for him, too."
Potter got in his way, predictably.
"Get out of the way, Potter," Snape snapped. "You're in enough trouble already. If I hadn't been here to save your skin —"
"Professor Lupin could have killed me about a hundred times this year," Potter said. The gall of the boy, to try reasoning with Snape, after all this time. "I've been alone with him loads of times, having defence lessons against the Dementors. If he was helping Black, why didn't he just finish me off then?"
Snape didn't really have time for an extensive psychoanalysis of Lupin, Black and Potter right then. Not with Lupin in the state he was in, and Black the firebrand he was. Events could all too quickly spiral out of control. He needed to get back to the castle, to his simmering supply of Wolfsbane. "Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works," he said, wondering if perhaps the boy had forgotten that Lupin would kill them all in an hour or so, unless Snape intervened. "Get out of the way, Potter."
"You're pathetic!" Potter bellowed. "Just because they made a fool of you at school you won't even listen —"
"Silence!" Snape shouted over him, his patience just about exhausted. "I will not be spoken to like that!"
Lily's eyes looked up at him full of rage out of Potter's face, and he lost it.
"Like father, like son, Potter!" he raved, barely keeping his mind enough to point his wand closer in to Black's face. "I have just saved your neck! You should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he'd killed you! You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black — now get out of the way, or I will make you."
The boy didn't move.
"Get out of the way, Potter!"
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Daniel sat in the fringe of the forest, brooms resting up against a tree, staring across the moonlit grounds at the Whomping Willow, swaying gently, though there was no breeze. The mirror was on the ground in front of him, reflecting the night sky.
He didn't know how long he waited. He cast warming charms every now and again, but they didn't stop him from feeling cold. After a while his feet and hands started to fade into view, though he could still see through them like they were made of water, or stained glass or something.
He sighed, and looked back up at the distant tree. If nothing happened for too much longer, he knew he'd start wondering if he should go in after them, before he became completely visible again. He had an ally in there from each side in Black and Snape, if they hadn't killed each other yet. And if they had, then he could just leave, and get back into the castle somehow, and never have been involved. Dumbledore could clean up the corpses.
As he watched, the tree froze. Daniel's heart rose to his mouth. He pocketed the mirror, slid his wand up his sleeve and grabbed the brooms.
A weird shape came up out of the roots. Daniel squinted at it, tilting his head back and forth to try and work out what it was.
He'd just realised it was a cluster of three people, all moving like they were holding hands and couldn't let go, when another figure came up like it was being winched up from a branch. Once above ground, it dangled unpleasantly in mid-air.
For a moment, Daniel was convinced they'd somehow hanged Snape, and took a panicked step back. Then three more people came up. Daniel knew he wasn't the best at maths there had ever been, but six people had gone in, and seven had come out.
Screw sound-finding. He needed a night vision spell, and a binoculars spell, because one of the people at the base of the Whomping Willow was Peter Pettigrew.
Daniel left the brooms back in the forest and walked tentatively out of the forest across the grass. It was so dark that so long as he was mostly invisible, he should be fine. As he walked, the crowd at the base of the Willow sorted themselves out and started to head up to the castle.
Daniel got close enough to be able to assure himself that there was no rope around Snape's neck. Black had a wand pointed at him, and was hovering him forward as the rest of them walked. Daniel was sure there were more dignified ways to transport people, but hey. Just because Black wasn't a mass murderer or a Death Eater, didn't mean he was a saint. Snape could get really, really annoying, after all. At least he wasn't dead. Probably.
Lupin and Weasley each had a hand chained to one of Pettigrew's. Funny, how Pettigrew looked exactly like Daniel had thought he would. He couldn't see him all that well, but he was clearly pudgy, balding and shitting himself. Daniel's wand hand started to itch, but he clenched his teeth and shoved it in his pocket. Black had things under control, it seemed. Cursing the fuck out of Pettigrew wouldn't exactly help matters.
Weasley had one leg in a splint, and Lupin had his wand on Pettigrew while Black took care of Snape. Once Daniel had seen all he needed to see he dropped back to the edge of the forest, watching them go with a funny little pang of regret. He was happy that things had worked out for Black, but it ended things as they had been.
Slivers of moonlight fell over the grounds, and Daniel watched glumly as Snape wobbled into the threesome up front, and they all came to a standstill. Daniel took a few steps forward, and watched, wand in hand.
Potter lunged at Pettigrew with an alarmed yelp, but Black grabbed him and shoved him away. In the moonlight, Daniel could see Lupin shaking and jerking, and maybe it was just Daniel —
It wasn't.
Daniel's legs turned to jelly, and he had to drop to his knees to avoid crumpling completely.
Lupin. Snape's Wolfsbane. Theo had been right. Daniel watched, barely thinking, as Black transformed and leapt at the wolf, dragging it away from Pettigrew and Weasley. As they tore at each other, one thought found its way into Daniel's dazed mind.
Pettigrew.
He forced himself to his feet, and then Granger screamed. Something exploded, twice, and Potter disarmed Pettigrew, too late. The man vanished, presumably replaced by the rat, but Daniel didn't have time to think about it any more than that, because the werewolf was charging right at him.
Holy fucking shit.
Daniel stumbled back into the trees, bouncing off them like a pinball, trying to find where he'd rested the brooms. He didn't know if the Disillusionment charm covered smell, and he really really didn't want to wait to find out.
He found the right place, got on one of the brooms, picked up the other, and flew, just as the wolf entered the trees.
It could smell him. Either that, or it could somehow hear him flying through the air. It leaped up way higher than Daniel thought it would be able to, snapping wildly in his direction, and he jerked his broom upward so hard he almost fell off backwards. He abandoned the broom he was carrying, grabbing onto the smooth handle of the one he was flying, and holding on for dear life, going cold all over as he rose higher into the air.
He shot up over the trees, and the wolf howled in frustration. The howl faded as it ran off, though, and Daniel dropped back down into the treetops.
But the cold didn't leave him. He felt sick to his stomach, and his heart sank down into it, as he broke out in shivers.
There was an agonised yelp from the direction of the lake. Daniel braced himself and rose above the trees again, just as he realised where the cold was coming from.
Dementors. A shitload of Dementors had come to visit, and they were closing in on something by the lakeshore. Something letting out constant dog-like whimpers.
Daniel gritted his teeth and dropped to about ten feet off the ground, flying the damn broom as fast as he could manage without flying straight into branches. The forest cleared in front of him as he sped toward the lake. Once he was wholly out of the trees, he stopped despite himself. There were so many Dementors,and Daniel wasn't even a good flier when he was the only one on the broom. Maybe Draco could pull it off, or Potter —
Potter. He could find Potter, and give him the broom, tell him to rescue —
The Dementors were moving in a different pattern, now. Almost like someone else was there.
"Expecto patronum!" someone bellowed. "Expecto patronum!"
The Dementors jerked back from Black, and Daniel saw Potter grab Granger and set her on the opposite side of Black. "Help me!" he screamed. "Expecto patronum!"
There was a silver mist hovering around him, which the Dementors seemed reluctant to go near.
Daniel didn't hear her speak, but Granger must have cast the same spell, because something silver poured out of her wand as well, and the Dementors backed off from her as well.
Potter kept shouting the spell, and Granger held steady behind him.
Daniel turned his broom around, and throwing caution to the wind, flew straight across the ground towards where he'd last seen Snape and Weasley.
Snape was stirring, and Daniel had a sudden, brilliant thought.
He pulled out his wand, pointed it at his own head, and said, "Oro insolio," and then he flicked his wand sharply at Weasley and added, "Tiravox,"
"By the lake!" he bellowed in Weasley's west country accent, trying to deepen his voice as much as he could. He hadn't thrown his voice perfectly, but at least it wasn't coming right from him. "Dementors by the lake! Harry and Hermione!"
Snape made it to his knees, and as soon as he looked to be properly conscious Daniel flew back into the forest. The charm was wearing off pretty quickly now. Daniel thought it was dark enough to be safe, but this was Snape, who knew every trick in the book.
He fought off the cold, heavy feeling in his stomach and flew back to where he could see the Dementors. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Potter and Granger were somehow still standing. Daniel thought their clouds or whatever looked fainter than before. Black was still lying crumpled between them.
Potter wasn't shouting any more. As Daniel watched, Granger stumbled backwards, falling onto Black, and the Dementors on her side closed in.