68
The Dementors could not feel the cold of the winter morning, or the light of the distant sun. They could see neither the snow nor the mountains nor the storm nor the sky. Their world was gray, a shadowed, visionless world, blissfully empty except those nagging, torturous, living presences, those souls they longed to obliterate to return the world to its rightful void.
The void was all they had known, until they had been drawn into this world by one of those presences, a soul that they now, after centuries of inhabiting this dimension, recognized to have been twisted and corrupt, but which at the time they had simply recognized as the first – the first soul, the first presence, the first torment to awaken their hunger. They had never known hunger until they came to this world, but they knew nothing but hunger now.
And now, in the gray nothingness all around them, they could feel more presences, presences their ally had given them leave to devour. To ally with such creatures was an insult and a frustration, but the presences were powerful, capable of inflicting great pain at times, and the Dementors could bide their time. A day would come, centuries or millennia from now, when they had devoured all these nagging souls. Until then, they would satisfy themselves with these few.
They could feel, in the gray expanse, the sharp, piercing weapons of the souls, bright guardians that held them at bay. Without eyes, they could not discern the shape of those guardians, but wizards had explained to them over the centuries that they took the form of animals. The Dementors had only the vaguest notion of what animals were; lesser beings, with presences and souls that barely registered beside the fierce, vivid souls they longed to devour.
The shape of those bright guardians did not concern them. It was their nature, the concentrated force of magic and spirit without the vulnerability of flesh and soul, that tortured them. Everything they despised and wished to devour bound together in a weapon they could not destroy. They hated the guardians.
But, though they could not destroy the guardians, they could sometimes, when their numbers were great enough, so overwhelm the souls behind them that the guardians faded away, the spirit within them collapsing. And they had the numbers, now. The Dark Lord, their supposed ally, had fed them well, and they had all come to his side when Azkaban fell. Every Dementor that had guarded the prison guarded this place now. These souls, which they had been given permission to take, would not escape them.
They spread over the land in a wave of mist and cold, finding and engulfing one after another of their prey. Bright, fierce souls, airborne like themselves, fell one by one out of the sky. The pitiful tools they had used to raise themselves up from the ground were lost to them. Assured of their victory, the Dementors descended.
If Severus had been alone, he was confident he could have concealed himself from the Dementors. He had done so in Azkaban; had slipped through their grasp without raising even a hint of their suspicion, not once but twice now. Despite his weariness, the exhaustion of a sleepless night following a battle he and his allies had lost, he was certain that, in solitude, he could have simply slipped past the Dementors again, another formless shadow in the mist.
Yet he was not alone. Patronuses surrounded him, the bright sparking hummingbirds, the blazing beacon of Savage's tiger. He could see, and sense, the Dementors' attention riveted to their little cluster of souls, could feel their hunger and malice driving at them from every direction, until the dawn was blotted out, the earth and sky swallowed in mist, until the three humans were hovering motionless in the gloom surrounded by shadow.
An eerie silence had fallen over them, broken only by the gasping breaths of Alice and Savage as they both struggled to maintain their Patronuses beneath the assault of so much hatred and hunger. Severus, hanging weightless in the air beside them, unable even to feel the pull of gravity without a broom pressing against him from below, felt as though he had slid into a dream, lit only by the fluctuating shimmer of hummingbird Patronuses as their strength waxed and waned. His Occlumency shields were still in place, masking his presence, but there was no such shield for his companions. Even as he watched, Savage's tiger became almost incorporeal for a moment before her jaw clenched and the beast took form once more.
Keeping his mind as clear as a still pool, he said, "I am going to Transfigure your mouths."
His words were muffled in the gloom, sounding dull and hopeless, but he heard Savage's intake of breath and saw Alice's eyes widen, and knew they both understood.
Moving slowly, still allowing the dreamlike sensation to hold him in place, both in the air and within his own mind, he raised his wand and pointed it at Alice's face. He saw the glint of habitual suspicion flash through her eyes, but he gave her no time to doubt. Within a moment, her skin had smoothed over beneath her nose, giving her an eerie, almost Dementorish appearance in the ebbing silver light of her hummingbirds.
What he had not anticipated was the Dementors' reaction. Rage pulsed like icy lightning through the air, unseen and yet so deeply felt that Severus's Occlumency shields shuddered, and Alice, perhaps distracted by the sensation of losing her mouth, or perhaps merely so relieved to be protected from the Kiss that she had momentarily let her guard down, let out a strangled cry, half of her hummingbirds winking out of existence.
Instantly, the Dementors struck, one pale clammy hand reaching through the gap in the Patronuses to seize hold of Alice's broom handle, inches away from her fingers. Severus saw the panic flood her eyes, undoubtedly fueled by her now limited ability to breathe, and she tried to wrench the broom out of the Dementor's grasp, only for another hand to grasp her arm, her ankle, her hair.
Savage's Patronus shot forward, its massive jaws snapping at the Dementors, but then it was Savage who was unprotected, Savage the hands were grasping, and Severus realized in an instant that she was their target all along – she, who still had a mouth.
He could not conjure a Patronus from within his shields. He needed to feel, and so he let his shields drop, just for a moment, just long enough to picture Lily's face.
He knew even before he thought the incantation that it wasn't going to work.
Whatever he had felt for Lily, the weeks he had spent in this world had unraveled it, and he felt only a distant sadness, a powerful disappointed nostalgia.
Expecto Patronum!
Nothing happened.
But the Dementors knew he was there, now. He could feel their attention locking around him like chains, their surprise at his sudden emergence, there in their midst where a moment before they had felt nothing but shadow. For a moment, he wavered, indecision consuming him. If he could think of another memory – a happier memory –
But there was no happiness, no light, no love. He had lost Lily, just as he had lost himself, and every chance of goodness he might ever have had – his life would end here and now, as it should, and he would fail to protect these women, as he had failed Lily, as he had failed his mother –
The tiger Patronus swept past him, and its brightness cleared his mind for a bare instant, long enough for him to drag his shields back into place, to shove down the despair that had threatened to consume him. No, he could not think of another happy memory now. It was far too late for that. He must be emptiness, or they would make him emptiness.
In the gloom before him, the tiger winked out.
Of the flock of hummingbirds, only two remained, and in their fragile light Severus saw Savage fall, torn from the broom and cradled almost lovingly in the waiting Dementors' arms as they sank downward into shadow. He could see her struggling, thrashing against their grip, but even her far-from-delicate form was no match for the hunger converging on her.
Severus did not spare a glance at Alice; she was safe, so long as she could keep hold of the broom. Dropping into the mass of Dementors, he slipped through their ragged forms, ignoring the instinctive revulsion at their touch as he shoved them out of his way. The dreamlike sensation, lost for a moment when he lowered his shields, had returned to him, and he had to fight against the helpless feeling of struggling against forces he could not beat, of trying so hard to reach something only to be held back, confined, defeated. The Dementors could not sense his soul, but they knew he was there, and he felt their clammy fingers clenching in his robes, tearing at the cloth as he flowed through their midst like the shadow he was pretending to be.
His shields were barely holding now, assaulted from without by the malice of the Dementors, from within by his growing terror that he would be too late. He didn't know if seconds or minutes had passed; in this nightmare world, time had ceased to have any meaning, except as a reminder that he would not make it in time.
Then he saw a flash of pale skin, nearly indiscernible from the mist but still tantalizingly solid, and he was there, grabbing hold of her even as a hoodless Dementor lowered its face to her mouth.
Without a Patronus, there was very little Severus could do but hit the creature in the face. He shuddered at the cold, decayed clamminess of its flesh, but watched in satisfaction as its head snapped back, a furious, rattling breath escaping its mouth. By then Severus's wand was aimed steadily at Savage's unconscious face, and by the time a Dementor gripped his wrist to stop him, the spell was already done.
Only his own mouth remained, now.
Yet the Dementors, recognizing Savage's uselessness to them, released her, and Severus felt her weight drop freely, his grip on her robes not strong enough to stop her from plummeting out of his grasp.
Arresto Momentum! he thought desperately, but he had no idea if the spell had reached her or not.
Ripping his wrist away from the Dementor that had seized it, Severus fought the hands grasping at him, crying out as they began to tear his robe from his shoulders, Potter's Cloak in one pocket, Fiend in another. His shields almost fractured then; for an endless moment, he watched his robe stretched taut, Fiend clinging to the splitting fabric, her bristling fur the only hint of color in the mist and gloom. Then, with a dull ripping sound, the robe burst apart, Fiend leaping wildly toward his outstretched hand even as the Dementors, perhaps sensing the hope and fear surging through his shields, pulled him backward.
Fiend missed his hand by inches, and fell.
"No!" he gasped, struggling against the deathly hands. But the despair was already flooding into him, thicker than the mist that had swallowed Fiend whole. "No…"
Cold filled him, not from the gloom all around, but from within, seeping out of his heart and mind to poison every cell in his body. He was lost… Everything was lost… There would be no rest, until everything in him was destroyed… Until he was nothingness itself…
Dimly, he felt the revulsion of an inhuman hand gripping his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw the eyeless face of the creature above him, the sucking void of its mouth, the gray skin that surrounded it. This, then, was to be his end. If only it had come sooner…
Lily, dead, because of him…
Dumbledore, dead, because of him…
Strangers, innocents, all dead, all because of him…
And now Fiend, dead, because of him.
The thoughts blurred together in a mass of anguish and regret, and he closed his eyes, ready to surrender, ready to release himself, finally, from the burdens he carried, from the burden of his own soul.
Then he heard the creature's rattling breath, felt the brush of its hideous mouth against his own, and thought, absurdly, and this is to be my first kiss?
Revulsion filled him. Revulsion – and laughter.
The laughter burst out of him, a dark hysterical cackle. Was this really to be his end? Fiend had given him some semblance of a kiss once. And now this…
His cackling grew wilder. Was this what it felt like, to have his soul ripped from his body? Hysteria? Was that what this strange, raw feeling within him was – the bonds of his soul and body being shattered, his grief and regret and loneliness breaking apart in one last uncontrollable barrage of laughter?
He had never heard of anyone responding to the Kiss like this, but then, he had always had a strange sense of humor.
Yet he was awake now, alert. His shields, crushed and forlorn, could not be raised, but neither could he surrender himself wholly to this. He could still feel his soul – albeit perhaps only for a few more moments – and despite his hysteria he was beginning to come to the realization that he might want to keep it.
His wand was still in his hand, dangling weightless at the end of his arm. He couldn't tell if he was still flying, or if the Dementors were holding him in the air, but he knew he could not raise his wand to his mouth. There was only one spell he could cast, then. But was hysterical laughter really a sufficient foundation for it?
I want to live, he thought. He gripped his wand more tightly. I want to live.
The feeling was more anguish than joy, more grief than hope, but hadn't that always been the case, with his Patronus?
I want to live.
Expecto Patronum!
He saw silver light silhouette the Dementor still trying to Kiss him, saw it shimmer within the folds of the mist. Dementors released him, one after the other, until at last the one trying to Kiss him was forced to relinquish its hold.
Then it was gone, and he was falling, the silver of his Patronus an indistinct glow above him. He tried to see what it was, because it wasn't a doe, but the mist folded around it, enclosing Patronus and Dementors both, leaving him to fall alone into cold and darkness.
Hermione blinked against the snow in her eyes, her head reeling, her body aching and disoriented after her fall. She could only remember scraps of what had happened. The Dementors - the broom reeling out of control - Patronuses blinking out of existence - and then falling, falling and trying both to slow the pull of gravity and to protect her soul. Where the others were, she had no idea. She was alone.
She had not yet managed to sit up; she had the strong sense that she would be sick if she did. The sensation of skin stretched across her face where her mouth should have been was both a comfort and a source of unceasing distress. She wanted to breathe properly, and especially now, when she felt so much in danger of vomiting, an open mouth seemed like an absolute necessity.
But she resisted the urge to undo her spell. She could see, through her snow-flecked eyelashes, that the Dementors were hovering in the mist above her, no doubt sensing the soul that was out of their reach. As a child, she had always felt a vague sense of fear and despair whenever they came near. In later years, her own memories had begun to surface in their presence, as they were threatening to do now. But ever since Azkaban, when she had first Transfigured her mouth and had felt their full fury surround her, she had felt more than the despair they instilled: she felt them, their purpose and intent, and she knew on a level deeper than logic that they wanted to punish her for what she had done.
More than that: they knew who she was. They knew she was the one who had defied them in Azkaban. She felt it in every fiber of her being. They recognized her, and they hated her.
She shivered, memories of the war crowding at the edges of her mind. Her arm was shaking, but she made herself lift her wand, remember the feeling of kissing Severus – but he could be dead now – and forced out between chattering teeth, "Expecto Patronum!"
The otter wasn't as strong as she might have wished for, but it was stronger than many Patronuses she had conjured before, and she eyed it with renewed hope. Even as she felt relief blossom through her, the otter shone more brightly.
Next she drew the coin out of her robes. Harry's broom had spiraled out of control when the Dementors came for them, throwing her off before she could Transfigure his mouth and leaving her with no sense of where he might be, or where Ginny and Severus had ended up, or even of where she was. She couldn't transmit any location or ask for help that couldn't find her, but she resolutely spelled out HG alive and sent it to her friends, hoping fervently that at least some of them would be able to respond.
She waited a few seconds, then a minute, then another, before swallowing back her fear and stowing the cold coin in her pocket, near her skin. She used a Point Me spell to establish which way was north, then headed west, hoping that Harry's broom hadn't veered so far off course that west wasn't still the nearest end to the wards.
Around her, there was only silence and mist, the crunching of her feet in the snow unnaturally muffled, the little light of her Patronus the only sign of movement. She could barely see ten feet in front of her, and more than once found herself jumping in alarm as a dark shape loomed suddenly out of the gloom, only to resolve itself into a tree or rock. There was no sign of the sky, the mountains, any geographical feature that might have told her where she was. The ground was uneven, sloping up and down beneath the shapeless snow, but she had no real sense of where she was, or even of whether she was in the same valley they had been flying over before the Dementors surrounded them. She knew she was still within Voldemort's wards, and that was all.
Then, with a warmth that filled her all the way to her heart, her coin burned. Frantically, she snatched it out of her pocket, turning it until the message was clear: SS alive.
SS – Severus Snape. But which of them was it? Would the older Snape have had the presence of mind to use the initials SP? She couldn't decide. But she held the coin in her palm, reveling in the sight of the words even though the warmth of the coin had faded. One of them, at least, was all right. Her Snape, her Severus – at least one of them had made it, and was well enough to use the coin.
There was no follow-up message, and it was not difficult to imagine why. If he – whichever of them it was – was in the same position she was, there would be nothing else to say. He had no doubt concluded the same when she hadn't sent a location. Headed west, she spelled out. There was no answer.
Feeling both comforted and frightened, Hermione forced herself not to contemplate why only one of her friends had responded, and carefully stowed the coin back in her robes. Then she resumed her trek, her otter staying close, her tongue anxiously running over the inside of her sealed mouth where her lips should have been.
She had grown so used to the dark shapes of trees materializing out of the mist that she didn't immediately realize that the shape ahead of her was moving. When she heard the shuffle of feet through snow, she almost cried out even despite her mouthlessness, hope and excitement coursing through her. Her Patronus darted forward, driven by her happiness, only to waver horribly as its silver light settled on dead eyes.
The Inferius flinched away from the light, staggering sideways into the mist and stumbling out of sight. Hermione clutched her wand tightly, silently calling her Patronus back to her and peering into the gloom, trying to hear any sound of the reanimated corpse. But either the Inferius had stopped moving, or the Dementors' mist had drowned all sound it could have made, because she heard nothing, only her own breath sliding in and out of her nose.
Was it avoiding her Patronus? Or was it trying to find a way around it? The otter was circling her, lighting the mist all around. Had the Inferius simply fled?
Her heart was beating hard against her ribs, leaving her almost dizzy with its rhythm in this gloomy, featureless world. Was she alone again?
Was that the shuffling of feet she was hearing? Or only her imagination? Where was it coming from? It seemed to be all around…
Her heart dropped, and, even before the shapes began to stir the mist, she lashed out with a blue Incendio! then watched as the flames seared outward, striking not one but three Inferi, engulfing them in heat and light. They staggered and fell, but they weren't alone. Hermione could hear others now, perhaps not as afraid of her Patronus as they were of fire, or perhaps too tightly bound by the Dark Lord's will to ignore an enemy, even one with light.
Fire had always been a specialty of Hermione's, and she felt confident as she whipped her wand around, blasting the Inferi with blue flames as her Patronus circled overhead. If anything, the attack was a comfort, a chance to see something other than relentless mist, a chance to vent her terror on physical forms, a chance to feel the warmth and light of fire, however grotesque its circumstances.
It was the stench of burning flesh that finally undid her; she gagged, and, panicking at the thought of choking on vomit, she cast the counterspell to her Transfiguration. She felt the shift in the Dementors, their sudden focus and triumph, even as she bent over and retched up the contents of her mostly empty stomach.
She felt her otter shudder, felt the sudden grip of misery that threatened to seize her, only strengthened by the sight of the half-rotten, half-burned face of an Inferius woman mere feet away. Spitting up the last of the bile, she raised her wand again, recasting the Transfiguration, only to feel her Patronus vanish with the renewed weight of absolute hatred that slammed into her.
Despair crushed her into the ground, where she lay curled up in the snow with the reek of vomit and burning flesh mingling in her nose every time she tried to breathe. She needed to conjure her Patronus again, but she felt tears forming in her eyes, tears of helpless terror and wretchedness. The Dementors' hands gripped her hair, her face, gripping so tightly she thought they were trying to carve their way into her mouth. She tried to fight them, but her fingers were going limp, her wand slipping from her grasp…
And then, miraculously, a silver light appeared. It was so tiny she thought she was imagining it at first, her mind taking her back to the room full of flying keys, and the terror of that chess match that had nearly killed Ron.
Are you a witch or not?
But she had lost her wand, had lost Ron, had lost Harry, had lost everyone…
The light came closer, and she realized it was a tiny bird, a hummingbird. The cold hands released her face, and she curled up more tightly as the bird sped back and forth over her, its silver needle of a beak piercing every hand that tried to brush it aside.
Alice, Hermione thought. Relief was starting to pour through her, and in its wake she moved her hand in the snow, feeling for her wand. The cool wood felt perfect against her hand, and she allowed the relief to fill her again, before she raised her wand and imagined what it would feel like to be safe again, with everyone she loved by her side.
SS alive, she remembered.
Expecto Patronum! she incanted silently.
Her otter leaped into the air, driving the Dementors farther back than the little hummingbird had managed. Hermione sat up, looking around in exhausted terror at the retreating wraiths, and finding, only a moment later, another handful of silver birds, flitting around a very weary and also mouthless Alice.
Climbing to her feet, Hermione stumbled over to her, the hummingbird and otter following behind. Alice eyed the otter with obvious relief; her hummingbirds were flickering in and out, some of them barely more than wisps of gossamer light. Hermione's otter, by contrast, was like a gleaming pearl, so opaque Hermione couldn't see through it at all.
Her gaze met Alice's, and she could see Alice wanted to speak, but with the Dementors still waiting just beyond the light of their Patronuses, there was no chance of restoring their mouths now.
Impatiently, Alice raised her wand, her hand shaking slightly, and drew out a series of uneven scarlet words in the air:
Lost Savage and Prince. Don't know if they're alive.
Hermione tried to swallow back the aching fear that swelled up in her chest, but a few tears still burned her eyes. He's all right, she told herself. He can Occlude, he has his Patronus…
She wondered suddenly if his Patronus would still be as strong now. She had seen the way he looked at this world's Lily, with a kind of bafflement, as if he wasn't quite sure what he felt for her. He wasn't in love with her, Hermione knew. He was confused.
What if his Patronus wouldn't come? Had he had time to remove his mouth?
There was no time to give in to the terror building inside her. At the edge of her vision, she saw movement, more shuffling figures.
Incendi-
"Crucio!"
It wasn't Hermione but Alice who screamed, crumpling into the snow, all of her hummingbirds winking out at once as a strangled screeching emanated from her mouthless face. Hermione spun around, searching for the spell-caster, but she could see only mist, lit alternately by her silver otter and the blue flames that were still licking at the ruined Inferi. Alice's strangled screams seemed swallowed by the gloom, her twitching body kicking up snow, but still Hermione couldn't find the source of her agony, and her eyes burned with new tears, this time of fury.
Incendio! she thought again, sweeping her wand around her as flames raced through the shadowed air. She saw the flash of a Shield Charm, saw her fire fold against its surface.
And then they were dueling, Alice now choking on sobs at Hermione's feet while the still unseen Death Eater shot spells at them from the mist. Hermione blocked them, erecting another icy wall only to flinch as it shattered, the ice cutting into her like knives. But she had learned from the last fight with Death Eaters, and Transfigured the snow beneath the wizard's feet to ice, listening in satisfaction as, with a muffled thump, he hit the ground.
She grabbed Alice, dragging her up from the snow and shoving her forward, away from the fallen Death Eater, but no sooner had she taken a step than a rotten, mindless body slammed into her, taking her to the ground.
It was the Inferius she had heard shuffling toward them before, the one she had been trying to burn when the Death Eater cast the Cruciatus Curse at Alice. It was the corpse of a man, a large man, and Hermione struggled futilely beneath him as his rotten fingers gripped her wand arm and held it down, her wand pointed away from him, useless.
She heard quick, crunching footfalls as the Death Eater ran toward them, but he didn't stop for Hermione, and she heard his voice – young, but not quite familiar – call out, "Alice! Alice, I'm coming for you!"
Then he was gone, and Hermione was left to struggle with the Inferius, which had sunk its teeth into the robes at her shoulder, hard enough to make her let out a strangled grunt of pain. The idea of those filthy teeth breaking into her skin made her kick out wildly, but it was useless – she was panicking.
The Patronus! she thought, and in a moment it was there, its pearly light flashing in front of the Inferius's eyes. It flinched, drawing back from her shoulder, its grip on her arm loosening, but not enough.
Worse, it was closing its eyes now, squeezing them tightly shut against the light of her Patronus and sliding its free hand toward her throat.
No! Hermione thought, panicking in earnest now. Incendio! Incendio! But the fire only illuminated the snow, and the still flaming bodies of the other Inferi.
And one of those bodies, on her other side, was within reach, blue fire lazily devouring its form. Hermione flung her left arm toward it, trying to ignore the terrifying sensation of dead fingers crushing her throat, of her breath, already restricted to her nose, cutting off completely. Her hand grasped a handful of robes, hot with fire, and she yanked at it frantically, nearly sobbing in relief as it tore.
Ignoring the burning pain, she pressed the fiery cloth against the hand gripping her neck, and felt wonderful freedom as the fingers released her. Sucking air in through her nose again and again, she swung the fiery scrap of cloth, almost burned down to nothing now, at the Inferius's other hand, forcing it to release her wand arm.
Incendio!
The force of her spell knocked the corpse backward, blazing with blue light. Hermione fell back, still breathing hard through her nose, and buried her burned hand deep in the snow. It was over, she had made it…
From the gloom to her left, another shuffling figure took form. Then another, and another. Nearly crying with exhaustion, she raised her wand.
Incendio!
Sirius hadn't fallen off the broom; he had jumped. When the Dementors had surrounded them, and it had become clear that the broom would never make it with his extra weight, he had yelled at James to get Lily out, dropped over the side of the broom, cast a timely Arresto Momentum, and found himself on his own with about a hundred Dementors on his tail.
He had tried to Apparate, but with his makeshift wand had managed nothing more than splinching himself about fifty feet away from where he started. That was the last sight he had of the land around him – the sight of his blood spattering against the snow fifty feet away. Then the mist had fallen over everything, and all sense of direction and space had lost meaning.
He had transformed immediately, before he even had a chance to evaluate the damage from his splinching, and he was running at a limp now, leaving a blood trail behind him, with no clear idea of where he was or where he was going. He had the horrible suspicion he had passed back within the Death Eaters' wards; he had felt some strange charge of magic in the air, and all his fur had stood on end. He told himself it was a good thing; if he could lead the Dementors back toward the Death Eaters' lair, then so much the better for James and Lily.
With that thought in mind, he had started transforming back and forth, human for as long as he could bear, to draw the Dementors to him, then back to animal until they started losing interest, then human again. He didn't know how many of them might have tried to follow James and Lily, but he knew at least a hundred or so were still following him, no doubt frustrated and confused by the way his soul kept fading in and out of their awareness.
It became a game to him, very quickly. The pain of the splinching, the fear of the Death Eaters, the shock over Lily's pregnancy, all subsided in the thrill of tricking the Dementors, who had made the last week of his life a living hell. The despair that filled him each time he returned to human form, when memories of Remus, the Inferius Remus, awoke once more in his mind, was nothing compared to the memory of running with Remus, a memory that filled him as soon as he was back in the snow, his paws leaving deep prints behind him.
The anguish was almost precious to him now, as if Remus could live on in him, in this form, the form Sirius had gained to help him. He could never be Padfoot, and not have Moony be a part of him. He would always be with him. Always.
He braced himself with that knowledge as he transformed again, his human form almost hateful to him as he overflowed once more with the misery of Remus's death, Remus's twisted resurrection, Remus's corpse burning as Sirius's entire world fell apart. He cried out, and crouched in the snow, clutching his hair and resisting the urge to turn back into a dog. The Dementors were only just beginning to sense him, and he needed to hold out, for James, for Lily, for their little child. He needed to draw the Dementors away from them.
Thoughts of Lily filled his head, of her irrational refusal to tell James about the pregnancy, of her hesitation when he had asked if they were all right. He could not let their marriage fall apart. And what was Lily thinking, hiding her pregnancy from James? She did know how the rings worked, didn't she? As soon as James took off his gloves - which, admittedly, in this cold, wouldn't be anytime soon - he would see the blue glow on his own ring, wouldn't he? Sirius wasn't an expert on the rings, but he didn't think it was only the mother's ring that glowed blue.
But what was going on between them? How could Sirius fix it? If they fell apart… if James, like him, was left without the person he loved most...
He could feel the mist shifting, the shadows gliding ever nearer, feeding on the hopeless rage and loss that clawed through him. It was time to transform again. Finally, finally, he could be Padfoot again.
He gathered himself, letting the magic fill him, only to feel the hair at the back of his neck bristle, his canine senses manifesting already, and telling him to duck.
He dropped, and a jet of red light soared overhead to vanish into the mist. Twisting around, raising the inadequate wand, he felt a jolt of surprise as he recognized his attacker as Crouch, of all people.
"You are violating the law –" the man said, looking utterly deranged. Behind him, a shark Patronus flicked its tail this way and that.
Levicorpus! Sirius thought, waving the inadequate wand at Crouch and praying for the best.
And it worked – sort of. Crouch flew up into the air, dangled there for a minute, and dropped onto his back in a puff of snow.
Sirius was tempted to curse the bastard – after all, he was the reason Sirius had ended up in Azkaban mere hours after Remus had died – but given the wand he was using and the look on Crouch's face, it would have been suicide, and Sirius did still want to live to be godfather to whatever little mischief-maker James and Lily had made.
Transforming into a dog again, he bounded away, ignoring the angry shouts behind him. He considered circling back around to follow Crouch – after all, even a sane Crouch wrought devastation wherever he went, and Merlin only knew what this lunatic version of the man would do – but at that moment he caught a familiar scent, and went rigid.
James!
Snow flew up around him as he raced after the scent, his heart thundering with both anticipation and fear. Why was James here, within the Death Eaters wards? Had the Dementors driven him back around? And where was Lily? Sirius could smell no trace of her, but maybe it was just that her scent wasn't as familiar to him as James's…
And then, in the mist ahead of him, he saw the wonderful outline of a silver stag, radiating warmth and hope and friendship. Sirius couldn't help himself; he transformed back into a human, staggering through the snow toward his friend.
Only to stop when the head of black hair that turned toward him was that strange, almost-just-like-James face of the Peverell boy.
"Sirius!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up as if they were best friends.
"Peverell," Sirius said, frowning. For a moment he considered the possibility, however bizarre, that the boy in front of him, so like James, also smelled like James. But that was ridiculous; the boy smelled vaguely of broomsticks, but there the similarity ended.
"James is somewhere around here," Sirius said, looking away from the boy to peer into the gloom.
"He is?" Peverell asked, looking around, too. He sounded alarmed. "I thought he was with Lily."
"He was. They were flying away when the Dementors caught up to us – they must have gotten turned around –"
Peverell looked at his Patronus and said, "Find him."
The Patronus – which looked exactly like Prongs, right down to the size and curve of the antlers – stepped away from them, in the direction Sirius had been running before the sight of what he had believed was James's Patronus had stopped him. Without waiting to see if Sirius was following, Peverell hurried after it, and Sirius, loath to part with either the Patronus or the chance of finding James, followed.
"Why does your Patronus look like Prongs?" Sirius said.
Peverell's jaw clenched. "Now isn't exactly the best time, Sirius…"
There it was again – that sense that Peverell knew him. Just the way he said "Sirius," in that exasperated but unmistakably fond tone, left Sirius feeling wrong-footed. And then there was his resemblance to James…
"There!" Peverell said, pointing.
For a moment, Sirius thought he was seeing the reflection of Peverell's Patronus in the mist. Then the reflection came closer, stretching its neck forward until the two Patronuses' noses were touching. And behind the Patronus –
"James!" Sirius cried, relieved.
James looked awful, his usually messy hair matted down with blood, the side of his face scraped open, no broomstick in sight.
"Where's Lily?" Peverell asked, before Sirius could. He said "Lily" the same way he said "Sirius" – as if they were all best friends, as if he loved them.
"I lost her," James said, wiping blood off his face. "I've been looking – but I couldn't send the Patronus ahead, they'd've Kissed me –"
"It's all right," Harry said, "I'll do it – find Lily, go now –"
His Patronus took off, not at the easy pace they had been following, but like lightning, vanishing into the mist in less than a second. James watched it go with something weirdly like pride.
What the hell was going on?
"Prongs –" he started.
"You'd better conjure yours, too, Padfoot," James said, eyeing the Dementors hovering above them.
"All right," Sirius said, looking at the silver stag and thinking of Remus. "Expecto Patronum!"
His wolf exploded into the air, bounding upward to taunt the Dementors before leaping back down again. James and Peverell both watched it with grief and longing, their expressions so identical that Sirius couldn't hold himself back.
"Prongs, is this your son?"
And James answered, without missing a beat, "Yeah. Now let's go find his mum."