(PoA) CHAPTER TEN: The Boggart and the Pit

"Oh, thank God," breathed Fred as soon as Ellie appeared in Dumbledore's office again. He ran over to her, scanning her face for any signs of injury. "Are you okay?"

Was she okay? Traveling back to watch a sole memory of Tom Riddle's had been one thing, but watching memory after memory of her father's—feeling his pain—feeling his love… It was confusing, to say the least. She felt… exhausted.

"Y…yeah," she stammered, forcing herself to smile at him. "Can we go somewhere?" Her mind flashed to the spot her parents had called their own, and she added, "The picnic table by Hagrid's."

"Sure," said Fred, looking confused. "Any particular reason?"

"Yeah," she replied, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she dipped the vial into the Pensieve to retrieve the memories, took Fred's arm, and guided him down the stairs.

When they reached the picnic table by Hagrid's, Fred took a seat. But Ellie remained standing, not quite ready to sit yet.

"This was their spot," she said softly, meeting his gaze. "My mum and dad's."

His warm, brown eyes softened at that. "That's what he showed you? His relationship with your mum?"

"Mostly, yeah. His friendship with James, too—Harry's dad. They weren't just best friends, Fred. They were… well… closer. Sort of like us."

Like us, only minus a few degrees of sexual tension and romantic confusion, she thought inwardly. He seemed to be thinking something of a similar nature, though, of course, neither of them commented on it.

"Anything else?" asked Fred.

"Mostly just those. I saw myself as a baby, which was weird. Saw my mum give me up, which was… hard."

"But nothing about the night he was arrested?" asked Fred, frowning.

"No," she admitted. "But I'm sure that'll be in the next batch."

Fred didn't look entirely convinced, but, for her sake, he didn't seem to want to deny it.

"I want you to meet him," she said suddenly. "Dad. Then you'll understand."

A tiny grin formed on his face at that, much to her relief. "Meeting her parents," he joked. "Oh, the pressure."

She rolled her eyes and shoved him playfully. "Look, Fred—I really appreciate you having my back in there. I know it must have been scary for you, and I'm sorry for that. But you have to swear to keep this a secret, okay? Even from George. Even if you think I'm in danger."

"El," he said softly. "You know you can trust me. Always."


Her first Defense Against the Dark Arts class with Lupin was the following day, and Ellie found herself very uncertain of what to say, or not say, to him. Surely he knew who she was, right? Had Sirius not been one of his best friends?

Sure, but he thinks Sirius is a murderer, like the rest of the world, she reminded herself grimly as Lupin told the class about an interesting Dark creature called a Boggart. Which means he probably thinks you're no more than a murderer's daughter.

Despite her uncertainties about how to interact with Lupin, Ellie very much enjoyed the class. Boggarts were shapeshifters, she learned, who liked to occupy small, enclosed spaces like cabinets and wardrobes until forced to confront witches and wizards. Upon confrontation, they took the forms of whatever those witches and wizards feared the most. The spell to fight them off was called Riddikulus, and was conjured by picturing the frightening thing in a humorous state.

Neville was the first to try it out. When the Boggart emerged from the wardrobe, it took the shape of none other than Ellie's uncle, Severus Snape. Neville shuddered at the sight of him, but closed his eyes, picturing, at Lupin's encouragement, Snape wearing his grandmother's clothes.

"Riddikulus!" Neville shouted frantically, opening his eyes.

It worked.

"Excellent, Neville!" Lupin shouted happily. "Twenty points to Gryffindor!"

Ellie couldn't help but smile at the look of pure elation on Neville's face. She was fairly certain it was the first time any teacher had used the word "excellent" in reference to him.

Dean was next. Ellie shuddered as a giant, disembodied hand emerged before them, but he quickly and expertly trapped it in a mousetrap. After him came Parvati, whose Boggart shape was a mummy, but she, too, managed to defeat it by having it trip over its own bandages. Seamus managed to render his Boggart's banshee mute, Ron put his giant spider that looked frightfully like Aragog on roller skates, and then, suddenly, it was Ellie's turn.

She didn't know what she would see. She had once considered Dementors the scariest thing in the world, and she was no less terrified of them after having met them, but something else nagged at the back of her mind—something even darker.

It was that something that appeared when the Boggart saw her.

It was a giant, dead black dog.

Ellie gasped out loud, jumping back from the creature with a yelp. The students around her looked confused. When she glanced at Lupin, she saw astonishment on his face. He recognized that dog; he just wasn't sure why she did.

She bit her lip and pulled out her wand. The dog was fine… the dog was alive… No, not happy thoughts, she reminded herself; funny thoughts! She pictured him as not a great, black dog, but rather, a Dalmatian. Seeing that it wasn't enough, she added butterfly wings.

It was crazy, but it worked. One wave of her wand and uttering of the word Riddikulus, and the dog changed into a miniature, flying Dalmatian.

Lupin's face was still white. A few of the students laughed at what she had done, but no one moved. Ron, Harry, and Hermione, who all knew about her Animagus but not her father's, seemed surprised by her Boggart. Harry took a hesitant step toward the Boggart as if recalling that now it was his turn, but Lupin jumped in front of him, pushing him aside. The Boggart shifted into a bright, glowing, silvery orb, then, with one shout of "Riddikulus!," turned into a deflating balloon.

"Wonderful job, everyone," said Lupin in a shaky voice. "We'll get you in there next time, Harry." He turned to Ellie and said in a darker voice, "See me after class, Miss Prince."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione shot Ellie curious glances for the second time that class period, but she tried to pretend she didn't notice as she hung back to chat with Lupin.

"Miss Prince," Lupin said when everyone else had filtered out.

"Call me Ellie," she heard herself say, then blushed. "Please."

"Ellie," he repeated thoughtfully. "Short for Eleanor, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Tell me, Eleanor. Why did your Boggart take the form of a dead dog?"

She watched him carefully for a moment. Should she come out and say who she was and what she knew? She wished she had spoken with her father before coming to this class; surely he could have given her some advice on whether or not Lupin was trustworthy.

"I know," she finally said, deciding to ride the fence, at least at first. "I know you were friends with him."

He looked every bit as bewildered as he had when he saw that black dog. "With… with Sirius?" he stammered.

She nodded.

"But… how could you know that?" asked Lupin. "How could you know about his Animagus?"

She smiled slightly. "Between you and me? It's mine, too."

"But…" He looked pained. "You aren't… communicating with him… are you?"

This question, she wouldn't be so quick to answer honestly—at least, not yet. "No," she lied. "Kind of sad, isn't it, that my biggest fear is a man dying who I don't even know?"

Lupin's eyes clouded over with sympathy. "No, Ellie. It isn't sad. It's called love—and it's unconditional."


Classes continued over the next few days, but there wasn't much room in Ellie's head to focus on them. Harry seemed to notice her distance from him, but he didn't remark on it. She tried not to give Fred any one-on-one time except for late at night, when she met up with him to work out the best time, place, and way for them to meet up with Sirius. They sent Woodstock on scouts to search for him every night, explaining to him that, come Saturday night, they'd be following.

Finally, Saturday night arrived. They snuck out of the common room windows once everyone else had gone to bed, mounting their broomsticks and following Woodstock into the Forbidden Forest. A few minutes later, the owl landed on the forest floor. Ellie scanned the grass carefully until she spotted a small handle made out of some sort of stick device. She reached down for it, flung it open, and smiled; Sirius Black was looking back up at her.

"Blimey, sir," said Fred, peering down at Sirius in surprise. "Those pictures really don't do you justice."

Sirius narrowed his eyebrows warily at Fred, obviously not entirely sure who he was, as Ellie bit her lip not to laugh. "This is Fred Weasley," she explained to him. "The one I told you about."

Fred seemed pleased as punch by her choice of words, and even more pleased by Sirius' reluctant nod and gesture for them to join him in his little pit. They crawled down to join him, thanking Woodstock and closing the top of the pit behind them before speaking again.

"Sorry I took so long," said Ellie. "Been sort of a crazy week."

"Not at all," said Sirius, whose look toward Fred seemed to have shifted from wary to curious. "How are you settling into your third year?"

She glanced at Fred, who looked about as amused as she felt by the question. "Fine, I guess. How are you settling into life as a fugitive at Hogwarts?"

Sirius laughed good-naturedly at that. "Fine, I guess," he echoed.

"Not a half-bad setup you've got done here," quipped Fred, looking around at the spacious pit. Sirius seemed to have conjured and Transfigured quite a few necessities for himself; it almost looked like a normal bedroom.

"Thanks," chuckled Sirius. "I always was good at conjuring things."

Ellie's eyes sparkled a bit at that, but she forced herself to focus. "Look… Dad." The word still felt strange to say, but Sirius' reaction to it was so happy, she couldn't help but smile. "I used the Pensieve."

"And?" he asked eagerly.

"And…" She frowned. "Well, I have some questions."

"I thought you might. Let me guess your first one—why didn't I include any memories of the night of my arrest?"

"Well… yeah."

"I'll be happy to send you off with them tonight," he assured her. "The first batch, though, was more important to me. I needed you to understand how much I loved your mother, Ellie—how much I love you."

"But… why? Don't get me wrong—it was nice, seeing all that, and I'm glad you showed it to me. But what does it matter now, whether you loved her or not? Surely you aren't, I don't know… hoping for a round two?"

He looked amused by that, if a little saddened. "No, Ellie—I'm sorry to say a round two doesn't appear to be in the cards for us. I suppose I needed you to see that I'm capable of a love like that. Does that make sense?"

It did, she supposed; a person who loved like that could never betray their loved ones, right?

"It felt like there were some missing pieces," she said. "Besides your arrest, I mean. What was it you did to Snape that was so bad, for example? What made her leave you?"

Sirius' eyes darkened at that. "It's not something I'm proud of, Ellie—it's without a doubt the biggest regret of my life. I left it out of that vial for a reason."

"And she's asking you for a reason," said Fred, surprising Ellie.

"You're right," said Sirius with a reluctant sigh. "A friend of ours—Remus; you may have noticed him in some of the memories—he was a werewolf."

"Hang on," Ellie said, eyes bulging. "Professsor Lupin is a werewolf?"

This time, it was Sirius whose eyes bulged. "Professor Lupin?"

Fred let out a long, amused cackle at that.

"He's our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," Ellie explained to Sirius. "Brand new. But we had no idea he was a werewolf."

"Good for Dumbledore," said Sirius, looking impressed. "Not an easy thing to do, hiring a werewolf. But an admirable one. How is Remus, anyway?"

"He's… good, I think," said Ellie. "We had a sort of… weird first class, where he had us fight a Boggart. He recognized your Animagus, and—"

"Hang on," interrupted Sirius, just as she had a moment ago. "Your Boggart took the form of my Animagus?"

"Well…" She bit her lip, suddenly feeling embarrassed. "More like your… dead Animagus."

Realization filled Sirius' grey eyes, which quite nearly watered. But he didn't say anything.

"Anyway," said Ellie, clearing her throat. "He asked me about you, and I lied and said we hadn't been talking. He seems kind, though—helpful. I wondered what you thought of him—whether you might want me to speak to him on your behalf."

Sirius considered that for a moment. "Remus was a good friend and a good man. I always thought I could trust him, and he me, as far as I knew. I'm sure that, like any reasonably-minded man, he saw the evidence against me and came to the same conclusion that the Ministry did. I wish he could have found a way to believe in my innocence, but I can't hold it against him."

Ellie nodded; it was about what she had expected. "Then, maybe, there is hope? I could take him to the Pensieve with me when I return, if it's okay with you."

"It is," Sirius decided after a second. "Just… don't tell him where I am unless you're sure he's been convinced."

She nodded again, then frowned. "I think we've gone way off-topic. You were telling us about what you did to Snape that made Mum leave you."

"I was hoping you'd forgotten," Sirius said grimly. "In short, Severus had been following the four of us around for many years by then, trying to figure out what we were hiding about Remus. Frustrated by him and by how hard my relationship with his sister had become, I… made a mistake. Gave him the location of the place where Remus would be transforming on the next full moon in the hopes that Remus might attack him."

Fred and Ellie both remained silent at that. It was a cruel thing to do; there was no denying it.

"James intervened," Sirius added after a moment. "Probably saved his life, though my intention was never really to kill Severus. I only wanted to teach him a lesson."

Ellie believed that much, but it didn't change the harsh reality of what he had done.

"I just have one more question," she said. "Why didn't you include any memories about your family?"

Sirius stiffened at that. Clearly his family was a very sore subject for him. "They were bad people, Ellie," he said darkly. "Very bad people. You don't need to see any of that."

Ellie glanced at Fred, who gave her a gentle, supportive nod. He didn't want her to see those memories, either, she could tell.

"You look exhausted," Sirius told her. "Let me give you the next batch of memories, and you can go off to get some rest. We can meet here again next weekend, after you've reviewed them. If you're able to slip away."

"Sir," said Fred, eyeing Ellie's wand cautiously as she handed it to Sirius. "If you don't mind me asking… what is it you're doing here at Hogwarts, exactly? Besides seeing Ellie?"

Sirius closed his eyes, ignoring Fred long enough to draw a new batch of memories out of himself, tip them into the vial, and then hand both the vial and the wand back to Ellie.

"I have my reasons," he finally said. "But sharing them with my daughter would mean putting her in danger, and that's something I've done far too much of already."


Another very long chapter for you! I just can't stop writing when it comes to Sirius! Can you tell he's one of my favorites? Post your thoughts in a review if you've got them, and make sure to tune back in for the next chapter, "Sweet Little Ellie!"