CHAPTER 10 – THE GREEN DOOR

Sirius was laying in the middle of darkness, awaiting for Remus Lupin. He had spent the whole day thinking about what have happened to his life after he was betrayed by Wormtail; about the time he spent in Azkaban and mainly in what he would do after his name got cleared. When he ran away from prison, his only thought was to prove he was innocent after all, he had not thought of the future yet. Now Sheeba was back, and so were zillions of thoughts and feelings that were hidden, or stuck in the bottom of his soul. It was her existence that made him think about the future and made him feel the urge to rebuild his life. If Dumbledore, Remus or anybody had told him he could not enter that subterranean cave the next day, he probably would not listen to this person and would enter anyway.

At this very moment, Remus arrived and switched on the room's light. His face showed despondency, as it always happened when the full moon was coming (and it was coming the next day). "Sirius, do you know what's electricity?"

"No, but I don't like," Sirius said as he put his hands on his face, "lights that turn on out of the blue without notice."

"Bad news. They didn't let me talk to Dumbledore. What if we let to do this all after the full moon?"

"And lose Wormtail? No way. We've got to catch him tomorrow, Moony."

"Padfoot, it may be a snare."

"Send an owl to Dumbledore saying 'we're gonna get in', well now."

"Warn Sheeba, then."

"No. She's never needed warning."

"Sirius, you're doing exactly what you need to lose a woman…" said Lupin, and Sirius jumped out of the bed.

"If I warn her, she'll find a way to prevent me from entering that damned cave. The more days I spend out of there, the more days I lose from my life… you don't know that, Moony. You aren't a 'dangerous criminal' who has to walk around hidden and seeing Dementors everywhere. Either I get in there and catch Wormtail or else I die clearing my name. And this is what I'm going to do, with or without you and Dumbledore."

"Okay, Padfoot, I'll go there with you tomorrow. But you'll promise me you're going to warn Sheeba now about what you're going to do."

"You don't need to say it, Remus, I already know," Sheeba had just Apparated just behind him.

"I told you she doesn't need notification," said Sirius grimly, turning his back to Sheeba, who did not even notice.

"Remus, Sirius, I've been at Hogwarts the whole day; things aren't at all good there. More than half the students are under a Confusion Spell. I've just told this to Dumbledore and he gave me an idea about what might be happening."

"What?" Sirius was avoiding to look at her.

"Somebody may be trying to do a forbidden spell there. I've made a little survey: every student who had a haircut there is under a Confusion Spell. Dumbledore will reinforce the security and also asked for reinforcement to the Ministry's Police."

"Where have Dumbledore been the whole day?" asked an irritated Sirius, without looking at her.

"He was solving an important matter. Something he's trying for a good deal of time and hadn't succeeded yet…"

"And what are you going to do?"

"I'll be at Hogwarts with the Police. Mad-Eye Moody's going to arrive tomorrow and then, things will get calmer. We'll make a conspiracy against forbidden spells, and after it's done, we believe that every Confusion Spell made at Hogwarts will disappear. The situation is so complicated that Sybil Trelawney was taken to St. Mungo's Hospital last night."

"What happened to her?" asked Lupin.

"Actually, I think she had a 'Blow of the Norns' and didn't withstand. Although I don't believe a word of anything she night predict, nobody had ever seen Sybil Trelawney such as mad as she was yesterday before. The students don't know this yet. She's been taken to the hospital in the middle of a delirium in the daybreak. It's the badness in being a charlatan: eventually they feel the weight of their responsibility. Now I need to go back to Hogsmeade."

"And won't you kiss me goodbye?"

"No, Sirius. You started with this, therefore you'll end with this also," said Sheeba before Disapparating.

"Don't say a word, Moony," Sirius added, ill-humored.

Miles away, at Hogwarts, Hermione had just watched to this dialogue.

**

The next day, Sirius and Lupin Disapparated in a forsaken tube.

"Now," said Sirius, "we just need to follow the smell of rat," he turned quickly into a huge dog, scenting, looking for Wormtail's sour smell, which he could recognize from miles away. Sirius could feel his smell, and knew he was somewhere nearby, but he was very good in terms of hiding.

They walked more than two miles and Sirius could still feel Peter Pettigrew's smell. There was a crumbling in the middle of a tube, however they did not have any difficulty in recognizing it was a barrier.

Sirius, in his canine form, jumped through it. Lupin followed him, and just after the barrier, they had the first clue: there was a lateral yanked door into which there was more stairs that headed to a deeper somewhere.

This door was under a Beheading Spell that Lupin took some hours trying to decipher. When he finally managed to do it, he looked at his watch: midday.

 "Sirius, I'm leaving this door with a Disarm Spell. If we reach Wormtail, I don't want the Ministry's Police or the Aurors to have difficulties to get in here. We've got to be quick; it's a race against time."

At that moment, at Hogwarts, Dumbledore was telling the students very seriously that they were not going to have classes that afternoon due to the forbidden spell cleaning that was going to take place there. He also forewarned that anybody who did not want to have a spoiled spell would have half an hour to register it. Hermione reminded Harry that he would have to communicate about the robe his godmother gave him, since it was not registered yet, and so would she need to tell the staff about the jewel Sheeba gave her. At the front of the table where Professor McGonagall was registering the spells, a row of students started to take shape.

Mad-Eye Moody was going to guide the work. Next to the main table, Sheeba held anxiously something in her pocket. It was an abject she had taken from Sirius the day before; a button. She was holding it tightly and muttering, "Quick, Sirius, quick…" She could not pay attention to anything that happened in the Great Hall.

Meanwhile, at London, Lupin and Sirius (who had turned into a man again) were going downstairs a flight of stairs that seemed to plunge into darkness. Every time, they passed through many trap hexes that they avoided by the use of Stunning and Ejection Spells.

At Hogwarts, Mad-Eye Moody was starting the ritual, bawling rather antique words and holding a wand in each hand. At his front, there was a spluttering cauldron that cast violet smoke in the air. Moody dove the wands into the cauldron and the smoke was divided into rosy and bluish spectrums. Each one of them turned into a huge horse that looked like a ghost and the couple galloped in the air to opposite directions. As they did it, the sound of many spells exploding and snapping and disarming was heard… love charms from fifth year girls, joke curses like Fred and George's, naughtiness, etc.

At Hagrid's cabin, a teapot, into which he was keeping something he made to give to Madam Olympe Maxime (he was officially forbidden of doing magic) exploded; a quill bewitched with cheats for the Transfiguration Test exploded in Draco Malfoy's bag.

When one of the  horses disappeared heading to the second floor, an immense explosion agitated Hogwarts and everything was just panic. Snape ran towards where the sound was heard as a flock of house-elves entered the Great Hall yelling and saying that the kitchens were getting flooded. Sheeba ran towards the kitchens just in time to see the ceiling crumbling down and, inside it, the biggest Confusion Ice – formed by a multicolored ball of yarn which was actually many people's hairs entangled - she had ever seen was melting. When it finally turned into a liquid, she left the kitchens.

Sheeba returned quickly to the Great Hall to touch Harry. When she touched him, nothing happened. The ritual was getting finished and he was still under the Confusion Spell. She met Dumbledore's apprehensive eyes and said, "His Spell isn't here. Somebody stole it."

Then, she noticed that Snape had disappeared from the staff table.

At this moment, Sirius and Lupin bumped into a door that headed to two corridors, one at left, the other at its right. They decided to go to opposite directions; Sirius went to left and Lupin went to right. As Sirius rushed on the corridor, he noticed that it changed harshly its direction, as if it was a maze ("I hate mazes," he thought). He bumped into a yellow door the very moment he walked to the next curve. He opened it carefully, without getting in. He looked into it and ducked just in time to avoid a fireball that a kind of pixie had just spat at him. He closed the door quickly and decided to go forward. He walked a little bit more and saw a second door, this time it was red. He smelled what might be behind it, opened it even more carefully and saw a big troll. Then, he conjured strong ropes and bound the creature, just to verify that this room did not have another exit but the door in which he got in. He left the room and walked in the corridor again. When he saw an orange door, something popped into his mind and he ran far away from it and back all the distance he had already passed through. At Hogwarts, Sheeba repeated, "quick, Sirius, quick". At the end of the other corridor, Remus Lupin had just seen a green door.

To be continued…