Disclaimed

Author's Note: Thank you reviewers! Things are about to get angsty for our heroes, so don't say I didn't warn you!

The Basement

By Marz

Chapter 15: Convicts in a Candy Store

"Harry?" Black asked. He sounded almost scared.

"What?" I growled.

"I'm…I'm sorry." Black held out his hands, palms up, like he was begging for more porridge or something.

"Well that's just great! That's perfect then. You're sorry. They're dead and you're sorry."

"I didn't know. Please, you have to understand…"

"I have to?"

"Harry…"

I cut him off. "Just…just shut up for a while!"

Black crawled to the back of the cave and I crawled to the front. I could just barely see the night sky through the leaves hiding the entrance. In the back of the cave, Black started mumbling to himself, and making funny little wheezing sounds. He may have been crying.

I had a strange tight feeling in my chest and a dark spot in my mind. Every time I went over what Black said, both grew worse. How could you not notice someone spying on you? How could you be friends with someone for ten years and not notice you meant nothing to them? How could anyone be that oblivious, that stupid? How can Black carry on like that? My breath hitched and I drew in more air through clenched teeth. I was certain right then that I hated him. I believed him, but I hated him.

            I took the Marauder's Map out of my pocket and looked it over. The spider guts hadn't done any damage to it as far as I could tell. Dumbledore wasn't there yet. I tried to focus on the map but Black's funny little noises kept breaking my concentration.

            The questions started running through my brain again. How can he keep that up? If it wasn't for him, I'd know what my parents looked like aside from pictures. I might have sisters and brothers. It's not as if he lost his parents and had to live with the Dursleys. He didn't have to grow up feeling like he was a worthless freak. Until he made a dumb mistake and cost me my family, he got to go to school with my dad and have a normal happy life.

            How do you know? asked the little voice, back from its inconvenient vacation. Maybe he lived in a cupboard too, and it's not as if he spent the last twelve years working on his tan.

            I tried to move those thoughts aside, as feeling righteously angry was better then just sitting on my bum in a cave while someone else was awkwardly emoting, but the little voice had been to the gym while it was away. I wasn't going to give in that easily though. I started arguing with myself.

            Some people think it's strange to carry on long conversations in your head, but growing up I did it all the time. The Dursleys weren't exactly interested in what I thought, so I had to work a lot of things out on my own. Somewhere along the way, the little voice developed. Maybe everyone's got a little voice, like that talking cricket in Pinocchio. The talking puppet in that movie was very annoying. Of course I never saw the end of it, so maybe it got better. I've gotten off track. Oh yeah, I maintain that internal discussion doesn't mean you're crazy. Only people who talk to themselves out loud are nuts, like Black.

            Is it really fair to pick on him like that? Interrupted the little voice.

 He was stupid and they died. He shouldn't be acting as if he's worse off then me.

            Maybe he is. You don't cry for your parents.  Maybe he misses them more.

            That isn't right! He knew them and I never got a chance. It's his fault that I never got that chance. It isn't fair.

            Didn't a fellow named Pettigrew, and some chap going by Voldemort have a little something to do with it?

            I hate it when the little voice outsmarts me.

            You're just jealous because Black knew them and you didn't. It's not as if you never made a mistake. Who thought it was Snape after the stone, when it was really Quirrell? And didn't you let Tom Riddle get a hold of your wand in the Chamber of Secrets? He was acting incredibly dodgy and you turned your back on him. Black was trying to fool a brilliant, powerful megalomaniac, and a close friend betrayed him. He failed. It was a fight you couldn't have won either.

            Alright, fine. Black wasn't abnormally stupid, and he has had it worse then me. Now what?

You should help him.

With one last internal curse directed at the little voice, I crawled over to Black, who was still mumbling, and had added a bit of rocking back and forth to his display.

            "...sorry, I'm sorry, my fault, sorry…" he mumbled with his hands clenched in his hair, fingers digging into his scalp.

            "Hey, Black!" I said, trying to get his attention. "What's wrong?"

            He continued to mumble, so I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. He looked up at me confused. "James?"

            I started to correct him, but he latched onto the front of my shirt. "James I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen like that. I lost my temper. I just wanted to scare him. I wasn't trying to kill him. James I wasn't trying to kill him. Please James! I'm not like them! I'm not. Please believe me James."

            I wasn't sure what he wanted. "I believe you." I said.

            "Please tell Remus. Tell him I didn't mean to. Tell Remus…Oh God, Snape knows. He'll tell them…"

            "Tell who?" I asked.

Black's eyes cleared up then. He blinked at me, and let go of my shirt.

"Sorry." Black said. He put his hands on the sides of his skull. "I was just remembering. I was wrong. They should have trusted Remus. He never let James down. Why is it like this?"

Black watched me as if he expected an answer, but I didn't have one, so I just shrugged.

"I forgot," Black started hesitantly, but stumbled into a desperate mumbling rush. "I forgot. There were always Dementors, always picking things out of my head. They took it all. All the people I ever knew and all the things I ever saw or did. In Azkaban it was gone, except for Peter and the dead. The dead never faded. They used to sit with me. They used to stare at me."

He paused for a second, and I nodded. I was starting to get a bit unnerved, but I was even more unnerved about trying to stop him from talking.  It's never good when someone tells you "I see dead people", except in that American ghost movie about that little kid, I forget the name of it. I never saw the end of that one either. The Dursleys always used to kick me out of the living room twenty minutes before a movie ended. I really hate those people. Anyway I was struggling to figure out what Black was talking about.

"I knew," he said, "They weren't really there. I knew that. But all the time they would sit with me and I knew I had to do something. I had to make it right. I knew I had to kill Peter. And when I got the paper, with Scabbers right on the front page, it was clear. Everything was clear and I understood."

His voice started getting scratchy.  

"But now, the rest of it is rushing back in. When I see the castle it reminds me of so much that it drowns me.  When I hear you, I think of everything James ever said to me. I don't know what to do. I remember my birthday fourth year, and that time we all got drunk on fire-whiskey and James threw up on Filch, and when Remus lost his shoes in the dungeon, but there isn't any order. I don't know what to do, with everything turned all around and mixed up. What am I supposed to do?"

He seemed completely lost. I don't usually run into situations where I have to be the mature one. I knew whatever I said was just going to screw things up worse then they already were. I also knew that we couldn't afford for him to get more confused, and there was only one thing he could really focus on.

"We have to get Peter." I said. "He's hiding in the castle."

The dull look in his eyes was replaced by frightening intensity. "I have to kill Peter."

"Right," I said. "We need a new plan."    

            I showed him the Marauder's Map, which he seemed to know quiet a bit about. I didn't want to risk sending him off into another monologue, so I didn't ask how he knew. We went over possible ways and times to sneak into the castle.  The best way seemed to be a tunnel leading from a candy store in Hogsmead, called Honeydukes, to a corridor on the third floor of the school. When Dumbledore returned, we would go through the tunnel, and straight to his office and then explain everything. Black and I agreed that a simple plan was best.

            Black was describing Honeydukes to me, but suddenly trailed off, eye's glued to the map.

            "What is it?" I asked.

            "Remus?" he asked.

            "Hu?" I said.

            Black waved me over, his filthy finger nail pointing to the area labeled "Hospital Wing." There were only two people in it. Madam Pomfrey, and Remus Lupin.

             "Harry, who is that?" he said pointing at Lupin,

            "That's Professor Lupin, the defense teacher." I recalled then that Dumbledore said they used to be close friends.

            "What happened to him?"

            "He had some kind of seizure yesterday. Hermione and I found him and brought him to the hospital." I paused. Hermione probably didn't want me to tell people she could time travel, so I decided to leave that part out.

            "He had a seizure? What kind? How?"

            "He was shaking and gray foam was coming out of his mouth."

            "Gray? Are you sure?"

I nodded. "Why? What's going on?"

"Poison."

"What? Professor Lupin's everyone's favorite teacher. Who would want to poison…" I trailed off. "Did he know Peter was an Animagus rat?"

Black nodded. "We're going in tonight." 

            We decided to wait until most of the castle was asleep. If Dumbledore wasn't back, when we got there, we would send him an owl. As the evening wore on I grew bored and as the Map was the only source on entertainment, I spent the time spying on people I knew. Seamus Finnegan was in the 3rd year Gryffindor dorm, looking through my wardrobe. I'd have to yell at him when I got back to school. Hermione and Ron were in the library. Professor McGonagall was in the Great Hall with Hagrid and Filch. Movement at the edge of the map caught my eye. Hundreds of dots were circling the gates of the school, but they flickered on and off the page, and none of them were named.

            "What do you think those are?" I asked Black.

            "The dementors are back," he said, leaning over my shoulder.

            "They can't get into the tunnel can they?" I asked.

            "They could if they knew it was there. We'll have to be careful."

            "Careful? We're going to…OW!"

            Black lunged forward and grabbed the map away. He knocked me sprawling on the ground, but didn't notice.

            "What was…?" I didn't get even half my sentence out before Black growled "Pettigrew."

            He dropped the map, and I picked it up. A dot labeled Peter Pettigrew was sitting in the kitchens.

            "We're going now." Black said. Without a backward glance he crawled out of the cave.

             The second he was clear of the brush hiding the mouth of the cave, Black turned into a dog and tore down the hill. I don't know where he got the energy for that sprint, since neither of us had eaten in the last twenty four hours, and I'm even more surprised I could catch up to him. The whole way to the town I was sweating from the exercise, and this was reconstituting the spider guts to a disgusting degree, but as the first buildings came into view I went cold all over.

            It occurred to me then, that if the dementors were back at Hogwarts, then perhaps they were in other, near by areas as well. Unfortunately this thought occurred only three seconds before we ran into the first dementor. It drifted out into our path with its arms outstretched, almost as if it expected a hug.  Black whined and skidded in the dirt, but the creature ignored him, and glided straight towards me. I darted left, ducking.

            I got under its attempted grab, but as I passed its fingers brushed against the back of my neck, and all I could see was white fog. I heard screaming echoing in my brain. I didn't stop running though, which made me rather proud, until I ran into the side of a building that the fog had obscured.

            My head rang and for a second I couldn't remember where I was. Then cold hands grabbed me under arms. I tried to pull away.

            "Stop damn it!" hissed a voice in my ear.

             I realized it was Black. He'd turned back into a human and was trying to put me on my feet. As we started running again I looked back, and wished I hadn't. The dementor that had touched me floated after us, along with a football team worth of its friends.

            "How much further?" I asked Black.

            "Here!"

            Black sped up even more. One leap and he was on the porch in front of the store. With a second leap he crashed through the heavily decorated front window, knocking over display racks and sending glass and brightly colored candy flying in every direction. I hopped through after him, narrowly avoiding the shards still stuck in the sill. The dementors floated in right behind me.  I grabbed an oversized novelty lollypop and threw it at the lead dementor, but it was undeterred by sugary snack food.  The screaming rang through my head, but moving made it less intense. Black went straight to the back of the store and kicked open a door marked "Off Limits."

The stair case started so suddenly I missed the first step, and would have fallen if I hadn't run into Black.  As we got to the bottom I heard real screaming upstairs. I guess someone had heard us break in and came to investigate. Black desperately shoved crates around, clawing at the floor boards.

            "There's a trap door. Help me look!"

            I dropped to the ground, running my hands over the boards, but there was nothing to find. I looked over my shoulder and saw the first of the dementors glide down the steps. What if they remodeled the floor since the map was built? My nails dug into a crevice then and I pulled up as hard as I could. I bent back the finger nails on my left hand, and nearly lost my grip, but Black caught the door as it started to slip.

            "You first!" Black said, pointing into the dark empty space.

 I couldn't see anything down there. I hesitated, and in that instant's pause it caught me. The hands were around my neck before I could even consider dodging. The thing picked me up easily and turned me around so we were face to face, only it didn't have a face. All it had was a dark gapping hole in the slimy blue gray flesh of its head. Its foul breath blew across my face as it leaned towards me.

            I wanted the white fog to come back. I didn't want to see what it was doing, but everything remained terribly clear. I couldn't remember anything worse then this. It let go with one hand ran its fingers across my lips. I couldn't stop my self from screaming.

            Hands locked onto my ankles and pulled. The slimy fingers lost their grip. I couldn't bring my hands up in time and my chin slammed against the floor. Something cracked. My neck felt broken, but before I could think about anything I was dragged through the trap door. It shut with a snap right after, and I couldn't see anything.

            Black pulled me to my feet. I had trouble holding my head up straight and my jaw was killing me.

            "Harry we have to hurry. There are stairs right ahead of us. Go as quick as you can and don't let go of my arm."

            I heard the door above us creak. We ran.