Chapter Sixty-Six: Traitor

The celebratory party for the victory of Gryffindor over Ravenclaw lasted late into the night. Harry was exhausted, anyway, both from the match, and from all the practice he put into training himself to resist the effects of the dementors. He would probably have liked to have gone to bed much earlier than he had—he had that wary paranoia around him that made him back into corners and flinch at loud noises—but, as the guest of honour, it wasn't permitted.

Thor, remembering that Loki had never exactly been fond of parties, himself (despite dealing with them much better), wished that he had the authority to order everyone to leave his younger brother alone, and let him rest. McGonagall, as it turned out, was obliged to do this, instead.

Perhaps that engendered a certain restlessness, introspection, pensiveness. Perhaps, it was responsible for the return of another odd dream. Once again, he stood in his old bedroom at The Burrow, not doing anything in particular, except trying to decide what to do. That was when there came another knock on the door, which opened, but only when he said, "Come in".

A familiar figure entered, and Thor ran his hands through his hair, which was blond, again, and long (or what humans considered long for men, at least). It was back to the same old story; Ron and Thor, the second meeting.

"How's it going?" asked Ron. "How's Harry?"

The first statement held too much slang to make much sense for Thor—even if it turned out to have come from his own mind. But, he understood the second one.

"He is… unwell. Recent developments have left him frailer than I am accustomed to seeing him. The dementors are a particular threat."

Unsurprisingly, Ron didn't seem surprised by this news. He didn't even ask for clarification. He didn't ask "What dementors?". He only nodded, as if this were all expected. This did not help at all in narrowing down what he really was—a projection, a piece of subconscious, a displaced spirit come bearing warnings of things to come? It was difficult to know how to treat "him".

Instead, he said, "It's tonight, I think. The moment of reckoning. Maybe even the one I warned you to brace yourself for; I dunno. It was today, wasn't it? The match between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Harry caught the snitch, and everyone in Gryffindor breathed easier. Except for Harry: he was thinking of other things."

Uncertain how much the events Ron thought of matched those he had witnessed himself, Thor nodded, and then thought back over those words. "'Moment of reckoning'?" he repeated, turning the words over, slowly, in his mind. "What—?"

"Do you think you're helping Harry, keeping your secret from him? Don't you remember how he reacted when he learnt that Hagrid knew about Sirius Black, and had never told him? I think you may have run out of time to tell him on your own terms. It may be too late to save him."

There was a fatal finality to his words, and Thor surged to his feet, despite his earlier uncertainty, because how dared anyone to suggest that he give up on his only brother?

Ron forestalled him, saying, as if he could read Thor's thoughts (and maybe he could; who knew?), "I'm not saying that you should just give up on him. I'm saying that he is unraveling, and all around him, truths are being uncovered. Yours will probably be exposed soon, too. If you aren't the one to tell him—do you think he'll trust you ever again? You'll lose him. And then, he'll lose himself. You've seen it; you know I'm speaking the truth. He needs your help; he's convinced himself he's not strong enough on his own. Maybe, it's even true. So, have you decided? Will you tell him?"

He wanted to. He couldn't deny that he'd always wanted to, but that thought, the thought of keeping Harry safe, had stopped him.

As it had stopped Dumbledore, perhaps. Harry didn't resent Dumbledore, did he? But, he hardly had the power to sever all ties with the headmaster, and if he did, it would be through resigning from Hogwarts, giving up his friends, returning to the Dursleys—all greater sacrifices than tolerating someone who had let him down. Was it mere tolerance, then?

Why hadn't he thought about this all along? Why hadn't he decided, already? But, in this realm, time moved so swiftly, and so many things happened in rapid succession; he'd never get used to it—

"No, huh?" asked Ron, shaking his head. "I really had high hopes for this one. But, you make the same mistakes, over and over again. You know it, or I wouldn't be able to say it. You must be the ultimate masochist. But, maybe what I've said has helped you see things more clearly. You need to make a choice. Choose well."

A low, rumbling noise filled the room, coming from outside, and Ron turned back to look through the open door. His brow furrowed in concentration.

"It's on your end," he said, turning to Thor. "Something's happening in the Waking World. You need to get back there."

And just as Thor was about to protest that he didn't know how, Ron drew a wand from his jeans pocket, and cried, "Rennervate!"

And he woke up.

He awoke to the darkened dorms, to complete silence. He was unable to pinpoint anything that might have made such a noise—or any noise at all, for that matter. He slid back the curtains hanging around his bed with great care, trying to make absolutely no noise.

Someone was kneeling in front of the cage in which Scabbers was kept. It was on the far side of the room, up against a wall—the only place there had been space for it. He must have forgotten to lock the cage door in tonight's excitement. That was how Sirius Black had managed to open it without the key.

He snatched the wand off his bedside table, rolling out of bed, and to his feet, all in one motion. He was confident that he could get to Black before the man could flee, or wake the entire tower, if Black tried to threaten him.

Harry's words rang in his ears: He's innocent! Remember last year, when I was the "Heir of Slytherin"? Just give him a chance!

Give him a chance. Give him a chance.

Ron Weasley was supposed to be human, but he wasn't. If it all came down to it, he was confident that he could take Black down, alone.

"Stay where you are," he ordered Black, in a low voice, so as not to wake anyone else. It was his absolute quietest, but he knew that, but for his extreme fatigue, Harry would already be awake and moving. What he would have done, Thor couldn't know, but Harry was the lightest sleeper of them all, the most sensitive to noise. After that came Thor himself, which was a good thing. Neville could outsleep the dead, or however the saying went.

Sirius Black whirled around, eyes wide, already looking for escape routes. Thor was already approaching him, trying not to show just how little he understood what was going on.

Black was after Scabbers? Or, why else would he be hovering over the cage in the middle of the night—there was no mistaking a rat in a cage for a boy.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, maybe, he noted that the man's first impulse was to flee—and not to attempt to silence his opponent, who was, to all appearances, a child. Either way, he risked Ron shouting a warning. Perhaps he thought it best to do as he was told.

"Just let me take the rat, and I'll leave," Black said. His voice was hoarse, and thick with some unknown emotion. His eyes seemed to shine in the dark. He was shaking. "Just let me go. I promise not to harm any of you, if you'll just let me go without calling for help."

"That is my rat," Thor thought to say. "I believe I deserve some sort of explanation. What is your purpose in coming here?"

Black glanced around the room, clearly on edge, as if expecting dementors to come swooping in at any second.

"I'll explain to you," he decided. "If you agree not to call for help. But not here."

Thor did not back down an inch. Harry believed this man. But, when it came right down to it, it wasn't even Harry's inexplicable faith that was staying Thor's hand. He couldn't help thinking of another time, another situation, other explanations for which he should have sought.

Why ask now? Why care now?

I always cared—

But you never listened.

"Harry believes that you are innocent of the crimes of which you are accused," Thor said, looking for a reaction. Black's gaze snapped, as if automatically, to the bed in which Harry lay, still asleep. Then, he'd known where Harry was. And Black's actions—going to the cage, leaving all the beds alone, was the first evidence Thor had seen that Harry might be right.

"I will hear you out, as Harry asked of me," Thor said. There were very few mortals who were able to fight him on equal footing. None of them (or at least, none of the ones he knew) were here. "What is this location, of which you speak?"

Black frowned, shooting him a puzzled glance, as if there were something about Thor that he were trying to identify—something he recognised. But at last, Black shrugged, hands in his pockets.

"…It's a top-secret room my friends and I found by accident. On the seventh floor," he admitted.

"And how do you intend for us to reach this room, without being seen?"

Black grinned. "Do you know the Disillusionment Charm?"

And that was how, five minutes later, Thor found himself sneaking through the castle in the middle of the night, yet again, risking expulsion, or arrest, yet again, all to protect his younger brother.

Have you decided whether or not you will tell him? he remembered the externalised Ron Weasley saying. It was yet another thing to think of. He couldn't help thinking about it, even despite the need for focus that came with sneaking through a place under intense guard. There was a reason S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers knew better than to send him on missions requiring subtlety.

You're running out of time.

"In here," Black hissed, as if hearing something even Thor couldn't. Perhaps paying attention to some other sense than hearing and sight. They hid in an empty classroom, waiting for Peeves to pass, and then waiting a bit longer.

And thus, it went. They spent the next several minutes sneaking through the castle corridors, only to occasionally have to hide—always with a fair amount of notice—in any room that happened to be nearby.

He was sure that the Disillusionment Charm had worn off before they reached the seventh floor corridor, with its blank stretch of wall, and an unpromising picture of dancing trolls. His eyes narrowed, suspecting a trap, but Black held out a hand to forestall any objection.

"I know there's nothing here now," he said, his voice slightly less scratchy, but still quite hoarse, as if from disuse. "That's what makes it such a great secret, after all. All I have to do is pass in front of the door three times, thinking of what I want, and…voilà!"

A door shimmered into existence in the wall. Thor stared at it, barely seeing Black flash him a smug grin, as he slipped inside. That smirk looked rather incongruous, and fairly disturbing, on Black's gaunt, emaciated face, but it also served to soften some of those hard edges. There was a spark of life in his eyes that hadn't been there when he'd first appeared. Wary of the possibility that this was a trap, Thor followed.

The door vanished, and he tensed, half-expecting an attack.

"Easy, there," Black said, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. "I just want to make sure no one interrupts. It would be awfully suspicious to anyone in the know—and I know at least one of your professors knows about this room—if this door were to remain visible in the outside hallway."

He crossed his arms, and sat down on a plush, red sofa lying a bit further into the room.

"Is this where you have been hiding?" Thor demanded.

Black frowned, crossing his legs. "No. I've been hiding in the Forest, mainly. No one who values their own life goes in there unarmed."

He grinned, as if that were a joke. Thor considered telling him about the last two years. It sounded too much a challenge, and he had never been able to resist those.

But, Harry needed him. He shook his head, and refocused, with great difficulty.

"I suppose, to make sense of my actions, I'll have to tell you a bit of a long story—how we all got here," Black mused. "But, I have trouble remembering it all…the dementors took some of it from me. Remus would remember more, but I can hardly ask him to join us here. He thinks I'm a traitor."

"And I am not convinced of your innocence," Thor said. "Tell me what happened, to your mind. Prove your innocence. I have said that I would hear you out. I am a man of my word."

Black's eyebrows rose, again, but in the backs of his eyes flickered a strange, keen, intelligence, as if he noticed something amiss that he couldn't quite put a name to. But then, he just laughed, throwing his head back.

"How eloquent! You speak better than most kids your age," was all he said. "Well, I think it might make things a bit less tense if we introduced ourselves. You already know who I am: Sirius Black, infamous alleged mass-murderer, and escapee of Azkaban. But, who are you, and how do you know Harry?"

Thor would have said that this was his place to ask questions, but for the strange, wistful tone that crept into Black's deliberately light voice toward the end of his question. It couldn't hurt to answer.

"My name is Ronald Weasley," he said, and Black nodded. "Harry is my adopted younger brother."

It was very, very strange, that something he said could be both completely true, and completely false, at the same time. The stuff of madness.

Black's eyebrows rose, again. "…I see," he said, and then fell silent, looking down, but raising his eyes, and turning his head, to keep Thor in sight. "I suppose you want my story. I'll save the best of it for later, and tell you what you need to know. I'm sure I'll be telling the story twice, after all. Harry deserves to know, too. I never thought I'd have the chance to speak with him…not after all he's heard of me. I thought he'd kill me if we ever met face-to-face, and not give me a chance to explain, and I had to live, at least long enough to get rid of the traitor endangering his life."

He spat the last phrase, as if it left an acrid taste in his mouth, which was twisted into a snarl, an expression that looked even more grotesque on his almost skeletal face. Anyone else would likely have been terrified.

Black leant back, folding his arms over his head, the picture of calm and relaxed, but there was something—an underlying tension in his posture—that told Thor that Black was ready to move at a moment's notice, unarmed though he was.

"Well, I suppose I'll start at the beginning, just to give you an idea. You're from a pureblood family, so you'll probably have heard of mine. Slytherin dark wizards, the lot of them—believed all that nonsense Voldemort spewed about pureblood supremacy, all of it. They raised my brother and me to be the perfect, muggle-hating heirs.

"Only, I didn't buy it. When I came to Hogwarts, I got sorted into gryffindor, and my mother…didn't take it well. But, I didn't care, because, for the first time in my life, I had friends. True friends, who believed the same things I did, and who stood by me, no matter what—barring a time or two when I did something exceptionally stupid. I've always had my moments of stupidity. Most smart people do—their intelligence just means they're less likely to see the flaws in their own plans. I fell prey to that, too.

"My friends and I, we decided to become animagi—you know what that is? Yeah, I thought so. McGonagall's a cat. Anyway, it's damn hard to do, you know—thrice hard for the underage, and the Ministry keeps a close eye on those making an attempt, and forbids it to anyone underage. My dear old mum wasn't about to give me permission, and my dad was almost as bad as her."

He rolled his eyes, as if exasperated, but Thor could still hear the bitter hatred in his voice. It was a creeping, familiar sensation, listening to Black. It put him in mind of a few exchanges he'd had during the Chitauri Invasion—only he couldn't help thinking Black seemed rather justified in his bitter ire. Something, perhaps that familiar wary carelessness so familiar from Harry, suggested that Black was glossing over the worst of his parents' actions—and why should he not?—and that the truth was a harsher, more violent matter.

"It took us years to figure it out. But, in the end, we managed it—well, most of us. Even Peter Pettigrew," he spat the name, his face twisting into that snarl again, and the arms at last unfolded behind his back, as he leant forwards. "My best friend, James, could turn into a stag. But Peter Pettigrew—" he leant forwards, to whisper the next words, "—is a rat."

He leant back again, folding his arms behind his head, as if that were all he were going to say. One eye cracked slightly open, watching Thor, ready to move. It took a moment for the implication to sink in.

"Do you mean to tell me—?" Thor began, but apparently Black had just wanted him to start to speak so that he could interrupt.

"I'm saying that your pet rat is my ex-friend. The traitor, Peter Pettigrew."

"But, how would you be aware of the existence of Scabbers at all?" he asked. If Black hadn't happened to finally regain the strength to break out of Azkaban to murder Harry, then why had he come to Hogwarts? How could he hope to find a rat, even assuming it remained on the island of Britain?

Black gave a careless shrug. "Minister Fudge gave me a newspaper a few weeks before I escaped. It told me all that I needed to know."

And he reached into the pocket of his tattered robes, withdrawing the article in the Daily Prophet announcing the winner of the five-hundred galleon draw. There was a strange disconnect, seeing himself in the photo, before they'd gone to Egypt. But there was Scabbers.

"Lost a toe, see?" asked Black, tapping at the relevant paw to catch Thor's attention. "Cut it off himself. I tracked him down to some alley in a muggle neighbourhood. I underestimated him—he was always the slowest among us, physically and intellectually, but this time, he'd outplanned me, and he was quicker on the draw. Drew his wand, blasted the streets to bits, killed a bunch of people, and then, in the chaos, cut off his own finger, and fled into the sewers with the other rats. He'd framed me nice and good."

Another, sharp, bitter bark of a laugh. Thor had heard the like before. It was the laugh of a man facing the weight of the world, the world turned against him, with nothing left to lose, adrift and friendless. The man on the brink. He'd had to pull Harry back from that more times than he cared to recall.

The corner of one side of Black's mouth tried to draw up into a grim smile, but it failed. "And that's all the proof I can show you without Peter here. Are you convinced enough, yet? Shall we go get him?"

This time, a slight, mocking smile, full of bitter knowledge and regret. But, Harry was the one who could judge people's sincerity. He needed Harry, to properly evaluate Black's tale. Surely, two against one, with Black unarmed—if Thor thought he could face Black alone, he'd be doubly ready, with Harry as backup. Or perhaps, he was just thinking again of the old days.

"Yes," he said. "Stay here, and I will bring him to this room—him and Harry. I am confident that Harry will hear you out. Wait for me here."

"I don't have much choice, do I?" asked Black. "You know how to get into the room." Then, his gaze seemed to soften. Something new—perhaps a nascent gratitude, or concern—shone in his eyes. "Be careful. Make sure that Peter has no idea what he's walking into. He will do whatever it takes to flee. Keep your guard up."

Thor reminded himself that Black had no idea whom he was speaking to, and just how unnecessary such a warning was.