Chapter 7: Sirius Black

Sirius Black was breathing hard, his ribs visible under the thin cloth – it'd been two months, now, and he'd had to walk, walk, walk because he'd barely been able to apparate for the last four days, the clothes he'd found were getting threadbare, not quite visibly so yet, but he could feel it on his abused skin – but he couldn't stop.

He had two energy squares from the safe house left. Equivalent to a meal each, with a disturbing taste and the impression you hadn't eaten anything – because you truly hadn't – but still, enough energy to last about ten hours. Two squares, twenty hours.

He was almost there. It would probably take longer than twenty hours, but he was almost there, and he couldn't stop now – he couldn't stop at all. If he stopped now, he'd never get back at it – he wouldn't have the energy to – and anyway, he just couldn't.

Sirius let out a harsh breath, and his right hand clenched on one of the two potion vials in his coat's pocket. He'd stolen the first one from a seedy shop in Knockturn Alley, and Lord Bones had been gracious enough to... gift... him the other one.

He'd checked the inveniosseus potion a few minutes ago, and there was no doubt to be had: Peter was there.

He stopped his walk, and his eyes followed the path out of Hogsmeade and fell on the large gates and the massive wall closing the path. For some reason – and he had an idea about that, and he hated, hated it, it made him grind his teeth, just thinking about it – the rat was at Hogwarts. Just like Altair, just like Harry.

Just like so many other children, too. And if Peter had betrayed James and Lily – and Remus, and Sirius – if Peter had rather blown up a street than be confronted by him, who was to say that he was above taking a teenager hostage to get out of there if things turned sour?

The Peter Pettigrew he'd known would never have – but that was eleven, no, twelve, years and a series of betrayals ago. Maybe he still wouldn't – but it was better to assume that he would.

Sirius couldn't see the castle from here, of course not, but he knew the sight well enough – the feelings associated, friendship and a haven away from his mother's disappointment and schemes to get him back, the possibility of more – and it was a promise like any other, in the end. You could promise anything, and you could even mean it, but sometimes it just wouldn't work out, no matter how much you tried, no matter that you'd meant it. Look at him, Sirius Black. In the end, he had just been another Black – and that was what he'd been judged as, by everyone if not by a court of law. And who would be surprised that a Black had finally joined the other side, in the end?

It wasn't like he'd been the only one to change his mind – even if he hadn't, all that mattered was what others could see, and Peter... Peter had made sure that they could only see his guilt.

Oh, some of it was perhaps on Sirius – his paranoia, his anger, his ruthlessness, the fact that he had trusted the very one friend he shouldn't have – but without Peter's lies, perhaps the world would have been willing to doubt his guilt.

There was a sound not far away, and Sirius' focus jumped away from – betrayals, lies and slander – Peter and Hogwarts. His eyes almost immediately found the source of the noise, and he found himself staring a little girl – seven, eight – walking her dog in the eyes.

She had brown curls, and her eyes were wide as she looked at him, but she wasn't screaming yet.

Still. She might not have recognized him yet, but Sirius had no doubt she would soon – she wouldn't be looking at him like that, if there wasn't the feeling that she knew his face, that she'd seen him before somewhere, that she should scream, perhaps.

He needed out of here – he couldn't get into the castle through the gates, anyway, and the Shrieking Shack was under surveillance, he'd seen it on his way here. Moody had almost spotted him again, and this time, this time... It was the Shrieking Shack they'd put under surveillance, so Remus had told on him – finally. Which meant they knew about Padfoot. He'd gotten away with it the first time, near the safe house, because animagus forms weren't glamours, and therefore Alastor couldn't see his true appearance underneath – he'd heard whispers of the wizard's new eye, even back in Azkaban, Rookwood had been smug enough about it, or rather Flint had been in Rookwood's stead, considering Rookwood never talked that much.

But Sirius – Padfoot was distinctive enough, he was a damned grim for Circe's sake, and an underfed one at that, deep black like the grims at Black Manor, over four feet tall, massive like a bear yet with ribs poking out, with matted fur that finished into a dark fog, ominous on a good day. Few people stayed long enough near a grim to be able to recognize one at first glance, but if they knew to look for one...

The girl's mouth opened, and Sirius bolted – he was barely well enough to handle apparition at this point, and he'd need an energy square right after, but he had no choice, it was that or facing whoever would come out at the girl's screams in a confrontation he hadn't planned ahead, and he was hungry and tired and he couldn't afford it.

He could, of course, take the girl hostage long enough to get out of here, but Sirius didn't do that unless you were an adult and a Death Eater bent on murdering people, so.

He needed...

Sirius felt the world spinning around him, and he fell to the ground panting. The vague shapes of tall trees and the steadfast presence of a grey wall told him he'd apparated where he wanted, and he couldn't feel anything out of place, so he hadn't splinched himself, but.

He lacked the physical resources to efficiently pull an apparition, he knew it, and if he had eaten anything in the last three days – he'd found hard bread in a village, and since then it had been only energy squares – he would have been vomiting it all right now.

As it was, he started dry-heaving instead.

After a minute or so, Sirius could breathe again, without feeling the need to throw up his innards in the process. He forced himself up – felt a bit dizzy for a moment, but pushed through it because he was nothing if not a stubborn bastard.

He looked around for more details; he hadn't exactly been thinking when he'd apparated, so he wasn't sure which part of the wall he'd ended up at. Hopefully one far enough from Hogsmeade, and if possible not too far from the Ghostly Gate.

He could distinguish a familiar mountain in the background, and from the view Sirius knew he was perhaps ten, fifteen minutes away from the gate. Not so bad. He needed to start walking again – energy square, right, then he'd have only one left but at this point it was that or possibly being unable to walk out of exhaustion, so.

James had found the Ghostly Gate during a weekend in sixth year – they'd spent the entire two days out in the Forbidden Forest, and McGonagall might or might not have been pissed/worried when they'd reappeared after she'd been told her four most problematic students hadn't spent their night in Gryffindor Tower and no one had been able to find them – and Sirius didn't think many people knew about it. The Hogwarts ghosts, of course. Dumbledore. Maybe a few Ministry officials, and some of the professors.

They hadn't put the gate on the Marauders' map, mostly because it was so far out it didn't fit on it. You had to go through half the Forbidden Forest to reach it – it was the further limit to the Hogwarts grounds, the line through which you couldn't apparate. There the wall enclosing the grounds fell into disrepair – or perhaps it had never been finished to begin with – and for half a mile or so the grounds were open – though hardly unprotected. The forest itself was enough of a guarantee that nothing would come from that side – it went on past the wall and the Ghostly Gate, after all, and the creatures which lived there were dangerous enough on their own. Magic played its own part, too – you couldn't walk through the open wall, not unless you passed through the gate itself, even if no frontier was visible between that side of the forest and this side. This side of the forest was subject to a disorientation enchantment, complete with runic anchors buried in the ground, so you wouldn't find your way to the gate if you didn't know it, and that side of the forest – inside the wards, on Hogwarts grounds – had a sweeping spell coming from the castle every night to search for human visitors.

And even without that, even without that...

Sirius squinted, the evening light playing with his eyes and half-blinding him. He thought that was the wall falling into disrepair, right? If it was, soon enough there wouldn't be a wall – and yet he wouldn't be able to pass through, onto Hogwarts ground. Not as a human, not as a grim, not at all. There would be no trees going over the limit, too, no plants growing where the wall should have been, except for thin, armless blades of grass.

The only thing he'd find where that absent wall should have been, right in the middle of the gap, would be the Ghostly Gate.

There.

A grey arch of stone in the middle of nothing, a gate of black iron blown open by the wind.

And standing right before it, as if to stop anyone from entering – or leaving, as James could have told you, back when he wasn't dead, when Peter hadn't betrayed them all, when he'd still been able to speak – stood a ghost wearing plate armor, a large claymore in his dead hands.

Sirius knew that if he were to go and stand in front of the ghostly knight, if he demanded entrance, the ghost would ask for his name and intentions to report them to the Headmaster. If Sirius gave them to him, the ghost would pronounce the gate shut, and leave to talk to Dumbledore – and what would come next was not something he wanted to consider. If Sirius didn't, the ghost would also pronounce the gate shut, and they'd stand staring at each other for as long as Sirius himself didn't look away – James had lasted about eight minutes, then he'd said he was hungry and they should go back to the castle.

Remus and Peter had snickered for eight minutes, too, as they'd made their way back through the Forbidden Forest. Sirius, himself, had been busy plotting an expedition for the summer holidays, to look for the Ghostly Gate from the other side of the forest – it had taken James and him three weeks, just to get over the disorientation enchantment, and then one week with Remus and Peter to figure out the exact rules to cross over.

And even then, they hadn't been able to sneak in, mostly because you needed the ghost's authorization, and the ghost was entirely loyal to Hogwarts, which meant they'd ended up awkwardly discussing their holidays with Dumbledore himself – in glorious burgundy sleepwear, at that, because the ghost had gone and gotten him out of bed for them and apparently the headmaster had obliged – on the sixth of August.

Good thing, though, because today Sirius knew the rules to get in, and what they hadn't been able to do back then, not with the headmaster present, not without letting go of their secret – Sirius knew he could do it, today.

The Ghostly Gate was always open, and the ghost was always present, ready to close it at the first intruder. The knight had been of the House of Prewett – known for their courage and loyalty – and had gone to Hufflepuff – loyal and hardworking – and he'd remained so even after death. He'd guarded the back gate for the Headmaster of Hogwarts during his lifetime, its powers tied to his voice only, and hadn't left. There was no swaying him – no bribe, no menaces – and he'd rather let someone die before his very eyes than let someone enter who shouldn't be let in. Easier to do when all the people you'd ever cared about were long dead, Sirius guessed, but from what Remus had found out in a dusty book in the school library, he'd been just as steadfast during his life.

The trick was that animals were free to pass the gate without checking in, as long as they weren't dangerous – and no, grims weren't that dangerous, and a ghost would know it. The ghost just let them get in, get out, and didn't comment.

They were, after all, animals.

Sirius doubted the ghost had been told about Sirius Black, illegal animagus extraordinaire – and, more importantly, on the run and totally about to sneak in to not-murder a dirty, lying rat. Not yet, at least – his ability to turn into a big black dog wasn't yet common knowledge, or he would have seen it in the Daily Prophet he'd nicked in Hogsmeade, and that meant they couldn't have learned of it that long ago. Whatever had prompted Remus to fess up – take your pick, maybe it was his admittedly poorly-handled visit to Mrs Pettigrew, or it'd been Sirius' rather ambiguous visit to Malthus Bones, or something else entirely, he was even surprised Remus had waited that long, after all, from the werewolf's point of view, Sirius had betrayed them first – hadn't yet destroyed his plan, though it was making his life slightly more difficult.

Sirius could just about make out the ghost from where he was standing, which meant he had to transform into Padfoot right now or he'd get made – and then the guard would know he wasn't actually an animal.

A moment of intense change – his bones and flesh, his vision, the scents, the world around him, and a sense he never had as a human, the sense of what was dead and what should be.

Grims were almost normal animals, barely magical in the usual way. They didn't have special powers or weird physical attributes, they were born the normal way, and their life expectancy was barely higher than a normal dog's – which was possibly why Sirius' animagus form was one, as animagi weren't supposed to be magical creatures. Their only magical abilities were a sense of life and death, and fangs which could rip through the undead and return them to death – but were no more dangerous than normal dog fangs to live beings.

A dead grim, of course, was another story, but so far Sirius was still alive, and therefore so was Padfoot.

He was a nice, absolutely normal – and possibly terrifyingly huge – dog, so when Padfoot trotted up to the ghostly knight, sniffing right and left for effect, the ghost didn't stop him or order the Ghostly Gate shut.

Padfoot, as an absolutely legit grim who could definitely identify the ghost as a not-living, stopped sniffing and looked up at the knight with a tilted head of black and damaged fur, and silver eyes – those were supposed to be a glowing yellow for a normal grim, but Sirius was only playing at being a normal grim, so, you couldn't ask for too much accuracy.

The knight stared at him for a moment without saying a word – the armor did kind of hide any possible reaction – but finally commented.

"You do look starving, Sir Death. Mayhaps you will find more to eat on the other side of this Gate, but beware, for there are many perils in this Forbidden Forest. I do not fear for your safety, of course, but your hunt might be difficult."

Padfoot tilted his head a little more – grims were intelligent, of course, but they didn't exactly speak human. They spoke dead, though, so even if he hadn't been Sirius and just Padfoot, he'd have a vague idea of what had been said... with absolutely no way to answer.

The knight didn't seem to be offended, and nodded at him.

"If you are certain, Sir Death, then I wish you farewell."

The ghost had a funny way to address Sirius, no matter his appearance, it seemed. As a grim he was, apparently, "Sir Death", but even when they'd spent three days trying to cajole the knight into letting them in fifteen years ago – James and Remus and Peter had gotten "young sirs" – it had been "Son of the Stars" for Sirius.

And the gate did not close on him as Sirius walked through the Ghostly Gate, and its guard only watched him move deeper into the Forbidden Forest.

He could feel it, when he crossed the magical borders of the school – the air was different, full of magic and hope, and it tried to turn him away for a moment, but he persisted. The air around him shivered, uncertain, but it couldn't force him away, and in the end, it let him in.

He didn't turn back into his human form until the late evening – far, far away from the Ghostly Gate. He'd covered some ground, hunted a rabbit and eaten it raw – perks of being an animagus, while the idea was still as weird, the act itself didn't make him sick while in animal form – and steered clear of areas the Marauders had deemed... dangerous, during their numerous explorations of the Forbidden Forest – though they had rarely come this far.

No one would expect him to arrive at Hogwarts from this side of the grounds, even if now he'd most likely been identified by the young girl who had stumbled upon him while walking her dog. No one, after all, was insane enough to try and hike all the way to Hogwarts through the Forbidden Forest – not even if they could turn into a grim.

Of course, a lot of people had called Sirius insane over the years, even before the betrayal, before Azkaban, before they started thinking...

Sirius also had intimate knowledge of the forest itself, thanks to his hours under the full moon, running around with a werewolf, a stag and a rat. Few witches and wizards could claim as much, and of those, only Hagrid roamed freely across the grounds.

Still. Something being considered insane had never stopped him; it wasn't going to stop him now. What mattered to him was not how feasible someone else thought his projects to be, only if it was the right thing to do – and accessorily whether or not he had a plan. Willpower was never something he needed to take into consideration, and the risks to himself were a minor variable at best.

So yes. He'd always been considered... slightly out of it, perhaps. Just a step to the left from what was considered societally acceptable. If they all thought he'd pulled a 180 eleven years ago, if they believed he'd rather just murder people for his own enjoyment and ambition – ah! As if he'd ever had any of that – it wasn't like they hadn't believed him insane before.

Well. For all their differences in ideals, Sirius and Bella had a lot in common, and he unfortunately knew it. Bellatrix wouldn't let what others considered insanity stop her, either – she hadn't, as a matter of fact.

Sirius – Black again, not grim – looked up at the sky, but it was hidden by the dark leaves of centuries-old oaks. The night was falling, and his energy was running out. He needed to rest – to escape the sweeping spell of detection, too – if he wanted to be able to cross the remaining half of the forest tomorrow. He still had one energy square, too.

The trees would do, he thought, as he scratched away the little dried blood from his lunch which hadn't fallen off Padfoot's fur and had instead stuck to his skin. He could fool the detection spell by being a dog, but that meant trusting he wouldn't turn back in his sleep – he didn't have enough magical reserves for that, not with his failing health.

Anyway, it would be more secure for him to sleep up in the branches, with a few spells of protection to make sure he wouldn't fall down or be noticed during his sleep, than to stay on the ground. The Forbidden Forest was full of dangerous creatures, and even those who weren't so much didn't necessarily like seeing a grim on their turf.

At three in the morning, Sirius felt something in his sleep, and opened a cautious eye, bleary thoughts in his mind but a silent alarm on his skin, like the knowledge of a trap barely evaded.

Nothing had changed from earlier in the night – the trees were dark, leaves were quietly chanting in a faint wind, and he could hear a few animals discreetly making their way on the edge of his consciousness.

But something had woken him up, and he had no doubt that it had been something real. Something still coming, perhaps, something he should...

Sirius would not move from where he'd been sleeping, he wouldn't move at all, unsure of the price to pay if he did. There might be someone – something – watching. Waiting for his mistake.

And indeed, a shimmering light appeared in the corner of his eye from the direction in which the castle itself stood, far and beyond the trees. Sirius sighed in relief, as a fairy fog grew out of the ground, white and sky blue and pale gold and mauve, licking at the tree roots and covering the grass with clouds of magic, like the breath of an old god revealing the truth of those hiding in the shadows.

Good thing he'd taken to hiding in the trees, then.

The fairy fog went past his tree, and moved on, towards the further limits of the grounds of Hogwarts. He'd gone undetected, once again – it would have to last until he caught a rat.

The magic fog and its shimmering lights gone, Sirius listened to the forest.

He was alone, indeed – he had been for a long time, but here, at least, no one was screaming in insanity, no one was crying in a corner, as fear and despair invited themselves from the dark recesses of a dementor's cloak.

Not so far away, he heard wolves howling at the moon. Memories came back, gnawing at his focus, and with them sleep started asserting itself again – one time, he and Remus had outrun the deer and the rat, and they'd joined the Hogwarts pack for a night of full moon. They had been different, he knew, from regular wolves, more perceptive, cautious of the strangers which weren't quite like them – the wolf which wasn't one, and the grim which wasn't one – yet understanding of their intentions. They'd helped coral Remus four times, after that, because they knew: they were descendants of werewolves, themselves, more people than their parents had ever been when transformed, and yet very much wolves.

He woke up with dawn, ate his last energy square, and took out his two vials of potion. One was for later – looking as appetizing as ever, too – but he needed the inveniosseus potion again. He had to check, even if there was no reason for Peter to have left Hogwarts – Sirius wasn't going to break into the castle, where he could be caught much more easily, if the rat wasn't there.

The only way he could move on – the only way he could do something for Altair, for Harry, perhaps, if he needed it too – was for him to get rid of the thrice-damned traitor. Peter had to come first, then – especially if he was somehow hiding out in the very place Harry was studying, after what he'd done, after the danger he'd put the boy in years and years ago, by selling his entire family to the Dark Bastard.

Sirius took out the cork of the vial with the originally-dark-gray potion inside, which had been softly glowing bone white when he'd stood in Hogsmeade, not far from the castle gates, and had turned dark again when he'd apparated further away, towards the Ghostly Gate.

It was glowing a bit again, but not quite strongly enough to turn entirely white.

He let a few drops fall out, and put the cork back on.

The drops of potions rolled around in various directions for an instant, then all took a sharp turn to head towards Hogwarts itself, dripping slowly up and down an uneven path, glowing softly but stubbornly as they made their way towards the bones they were tracking.

Sirius took a sharp breath. The rat was still there, and he would find him.

There was no other way.

The day came and went – Sirius walked around the acromantulas, a grim again, and both sides knew better than to attack the other. They remembered, just as he did, how the grim would roam the forest, with a werewolf who wasn't here and yet had put foot on the grounds again in the last two months. The others – the stag was absent, and the rat reeked of fear – weren't there, but the grim was, and the werewolf wasn't far. They remembered the grim's claw and fangs, and its burning anger, its cold efficiency. It was for everyone's benefit if the giant spiders left him alone.

If they didn't, both sides would bleed, and none would win.

Sirius went to sleep, again, and woke, again, in a tree. The edge of the woods wasn't far, one hour at most, and dawn wasn't here yet. He was uncertain of what exactly was going on – he wasn't in Azkaban, that much he remembered, but where, why... – but the sky was darkly visible even through the high leaves, and the stars were lit for his eyes.

Sirius, he noticed, was burning bright tonight.

The vials were still in his pockets.

The sound of hooves hammering the rough ground of the Forbidden Forest woke Sirius up entirely, this time, and after a moment of hesitance, the wizard hopped down the tree he'd slept in, and turned himself into Padfoot. Centaurs were astute enough as it was, and had a problematic tendency to stargaze at the most inappropriate moments – read, when someone named Sirius Black tried to hide in the trees and looking up to stargaze meant looking towards the place he was trying to hide.

Three centaurs arrived not so far from Sirius' tree – where Sirius wasn't anymore – their heads up in the stars, but their attention still sharp, as they almost immediately zeroed onto the grim prowling on the path with a tense frame and matted fur and silver eyes unlike any they'd seen before in a grim – except in one which had run around the woods for almost three years, more than a decade ago.

The centaurs exchanged a glance, then looked back at the grim, a frown on their faces.

"Sirius and Adhara burn bright tonight."

A centaur cocked her head, stared a bit more. Padfoot didn't growl, even if he would very much want them to leave him alone, just so that he wouldn't be made.

"There was a grim, years ago, who roamed the forest with the young werewolf, a stag and a rat, do you remember?"

"There was."

The three centaurs gave him one last look, and left.

The grim was alone – again. Suddenly, he made a decision, and howled, howled, howled to the stars above, and his name amongst them – and the wolves answered, from far away.

They knew him, and he knew them.

The howling resounded with meaning: maybe it was time for death to be back on these grounds.