Card the moon

Chapter 44 – So many secrets

It was interesting, that after everything he'd been through that year, finals were still the most exhausting experience. But, with all of them out of the way, the trio, united again, decided to pay a visit to Hagrid. They hadn't much that year, despite seeing him regularly in class.

The lawn was littered with loitering lay bouts as they made their way to the big man's cottage. Finals were done, school was essentially over, time to kick back and relax, seemed to be the attitude.

The chimney was happily smoking away when they arrived, and Hagrid was happily surprised to see them. But that wasn't the only surprise.

"Scabbers!"

"Found him in the pocket of me coat. Dun know ow ee got in there. Been meanin to bring him back to you."

Overjoyed to have his beat-up old pet returned, did not stop him from giving Hermione a very guilty, apologetic look. It was good to see.

Voices from outside kept it from becoming anything more than that.

"Iss the Headmaster—and Minister Fudge," said Hagrid.

"What's Fudge doing here?" said Harry.

"Proly checkin on the dementors an Sirius Black," Hagrid surmised, "Might be best if'n they din see you lot," he said with a meaningful look at Harry.

The trio snuck out the back while Hagrid went to greet his guests, hiding behind the wall of his garden till they saw the two men go inside before heading back to Hogwarts.

"Scabbers! Calm down!"

The rat, contrary to Ron, did not seem at all happy to be found and was struggling valiantly to escape.

"What's his problem?"

"Ow! He bit me."

With all the attention on the rat, none of them noticed till it was practically on them; a beast the size of a bear is pretty hard to miss. Harry momentarily froze when he saw it, the creature that had haunted his dreams all year, black furred and slavering jaws, the Grim.

The moment ended and he went for his wand but not fast enough. The great hound bowled him over and went for Ron. The ginger screamed, clinging to his pet in terror. The hound knocked him down, growling over him a while and snapping his jaws, then grabbing him by the leg and dragging him away.

"Ron!"

His friend was in danger, but as he pursued, he failed to realize he was in danger as well. Well-honed instincts saved him when the tree swung, and he hit the ground just narrowly avoiding the branch.

"Harry!"

Hermione dragged him back out of reach, both realizing they'd somehow wandered next to the whomping willow.

"Where is he. Where's Ron!"

"There's a hollow at the base of the tree," she said, pointing to what looked like a small hole between the roots.

"We've got to go after them."

The tree had other ideas and swung a crushing blow when they got too close.

"We've got to get past that!" Every second they wasted dueling with the tree was another second Ron was in danger.

"What do we do? What do we do?" Hermione paced frantically.

Harry didn't pace, not with his feet anyway. His mind was racing, just like when he was fighting a youma. It would take too long to destroy the tree; the fact he'd be in enormous trouble for doing so was superfluous to his friends' safety. He needed to stop it, just for a moment, catch those swinging branches and hold them.

"Hermione, I've got an idea. How fast do you feel?"

She looked skeptical when he explained his plan but lacking her own, she went along with it.

Harry stood back as she approached the tree. It seemed hesitant at her hesitance, but inevitably it took the bait. The branch came down like Odin's hammer, barely missing the bushy haired girl. Before it could raise it, a great wall of ice engulfed it, trapping it in place.

"Run!" Harry commanded as the tree valiantly, and successfully, struggled for freedom.

The sound of smashing ice echoed through the hollow as they dove into what turned out to be a rather deep hole into a long, dark tunnel.

"Bloody hell!"

"Harry?"

"I'm here Hermione," said Harry, raising his wand.

"Don't," she preempted. "We don't want to give ourselves away."

That was assuming it couldn't see in the dark, but he left his wand unlit and together, they stumbled and fumbled through the great, black passage.

"How long you think this goes?" he asked.

"I don't know. We must be under Hogsmeade by now."

The tunnel eventually sloped up and a rickety old staircase led them into an equally rickety looking building.

"Harry, this is the Shrieking Shack."

The rumored, most haunted place in Britain, did not look so much haunted from the inside as run down.

"I see a light, up those stairs."

They crept up the squeaky staircase, slipping silently into what appeared to have once been a bedroom, and there he was, cowering on the bed with a squirming rat in his hands.

"RON!"

Ron saw them and quivered, "It's him."

The door behind them squeaked, they turned, and there he was, like he'd walked right off the front page and into reality.

"Sirius Black!"

His wand was already in his hand, so was Black's. He was about to put to the test everything he'd learned that year when it all came to a screeching, hissing halt.

"All of you STOP!"

The voice was louder and more powerful than should have been possible from something so small.

"Luna!"

"All of you stop, now!" she repeated, placing herself between the three Hogwarts students and the former Azkaban resident. "That includes you back there."

"I'm not doin nothing."

And he wasn't, and that wasn't right, and it wasn't the only thing.

"Luna, why are you defending him?" Hermione demanded, in a pleading sort of way.

"Do you want to know the truth, or do you just want to hurt someone?"

The question wasn't directed at Hermione and Harry knew it.

"Talk fast."

"Then think fast," she fired back. "You remember your first youma?"

"Vaguely," he'd barely been conscious for it.

"You remember how it ended?"

"Me laying in the hall."

"And you remember where you woke up. Not in the hall. Did you ever wonder how you got there?"

"Yes," but he'd never gotten around to asking.

"I brought you there."

Harry gaped, "You!"

The crazed looking man nodded sanely.

"But you came to Hogwarts to kill Harry," Ron shouted.

"I didn't come here for Harry," said Black, "I came for him."

The already pale ginger when sheet white, "ME!"

The older man growled, "Not you, him. The rat!"

"What?"

"Hermione," Luna shouted, taking back the conversation, "you remember at the beginning of the year, when I told you it wasn't a normal rat?"

"I—yes, yes I remember."

"I was right. It's not a rat at all."

"What! Are you crazy? Am I crazy? WHY IS THE CAT TALKING?"

Harry sighed; this confrontation was not going how he'd hoped. "Long story Ron, tell ya later. Now what's this about Scabbers not being a rat."

"He's not a rat," the cat repeated, "he's a man disguised as a rat."

"A man! What man?" said Hermione.

"Peter Pettigrew."

All eyes went to the newcomer as he stepped calmly into the room, wand held casually in his hand.

"Professor Lupin?"

"Yes, Harry," the tired man said.

"What are you doing here?"

"Funniest thing actually. I happened to have the map, yes, that map, open on my desk when I saw you all going down the secret tunnel under the whomping willow. I saw you're name, Ms. Granger, Mr. Weasley, Sirius of course, and one other, one that I should not have seen. One that, if popular wisdom was to be believed, should have been more than a decade dead."

"Peter Pettigrew."

"The very same," he said. "Our old friend, Peter Pettigrew."

"Old friend?"

The old instructor sighed, looking so much older and slightly annoyed, though that may have been from the Azkaban escapee sniggering at him.

"Something you'd like to say Sirius?"

"Yeah. You've had him all semester, and you never told him Moony. You never told him about us?"

"Us?" The idea set the gears in motion and certain things began to fall into place. "You were friends?"

His tired professor nodded, "Yes. Sirius, your father, and Peter. They were my only friends in school. They were the only ones outside the staff who knew my secret."

"What secret?"

"He's a werewolf."

Lupin smiled, "When did you figure it out?"

"I suspected early on," she said, "the signs were all there. It wasn't till Snape gave us the werewolf assignment that I knew for sure."

"Very good Ms. Granger, top marks. Yes, I am a werewolf, have been since I was a boy, since before I came to Hogwarts."

It was all too much, "Okay, fine, you're a werewolf, whatever," Harry shouted. "What does any of this have to do with the rat not being a rat."

"He's an animagus," said Hermione as though she'd just gotten the hard question on the test, "Like him. The big black dog, that was him."

The man on the lamb sketched a brief bow.

And a few more things fell into place. The grim, it was him. The big black dog he'd been seeing since, "Magnolia Crescent. The night I blew up Marge, that was you?"

He nodded, "I wanted to check up on you. I hadn't seen you in so long."

It was too much. Everything he thought he knew was wrong.

He tried to turn the world back right side up so things would make sense but before he could manage it, Snape.

"Well, well, well, look what we have here. It seems I was right all along. Dumbledore never should have trusted you."

"Oh, bloody hell," Harry grumbled under his breath.

This was all he needed. Snape with his wand pointed at the people he needed to talk to looking like he was ready to commit murder and enjoy it.

"Harry," Hermione whispered.

"I know Hermione, this whole thing just went pear shaped."

"What do we do?"

He knew what he was going to do, the only question was, how much trouble would he be in when it was all over.

"Potter, what're you…"