Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to those with far great intelligence and attention spans then I. Harry Potter and all related material belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Brothers, etc. Only the original ideas or plot belong to me, and they're so enormously lackluster I'd probably be forced to pay someone to steal them.

Author's Notes: I know, it took obscenely long to get this chapter out. I was completely out of it for a week, apparently what I thought was wrong with me was a great deal more complicated then we knew. Anyway, I'm back to full health (I hope!) and can't wait to continue writing. I will not abandon this story! I spent the time I was sick outlining the chapters to make it easier to type out and stay to the plot. Thanks so much for bearing with me, the next chapter will be quite long to make up for it and out as soon as humanly possible.

The Flight From Death

Chapter XI: Complications

As Harry Potter tramped through the thick confines of a nearly pitch black thicket, his gratitude toward Wormtail had notably diminished. Had his mother been alive and near him (and not hugging him to death or wailing over the state he was in) she would have been thoroughly appalled at the terms he was currently using to describe his 'rescuer'.

"...And if I ever see him again I swear I'll beat the bloody hell out of him, and we'll just see if there's a finger left when I'm through with him! Maybe this one!"

A squirrel chattered disapprovingly overhead at the hand gesture Harry displayed to the general forest. Annoyed, Harry kicked a pinecone at the offending rodent, however it succeeded only in rebounding off of the tree trunk and nailing him in the forehead, leaving a distinctly pine-cone shaped scar over the lightning one.

It had been several hours since he had been able to leave the haunted cabin, and Harry had been highly eager to do so. He would have left sooner had he not developed a highly embarrassing nosebleed (he suspected it might have had something to do with all of the smoke he had inhaled) and had to tear a strip off of Dudley's baggy old shirt and use it to clog his nose while he waited for the bleeding to cease.

By the time he had recovered he nearly tripped over his feet in the haste to leave the cottage—while Harry was in general agreement with Hermione that Divination was a bunch of bollocks, he could not help but notice the foreboding aura within the building. It felt almost as though something had died there, and the wallpaper was peeling from one corner along a jagged series of slashes. He decided he would far rather live in ignorance then come upon the knowledge of to whom the cottage belonged...and what had happened to them.

It had been after a few very short moments of mental deliberation that Harry had decided to take off. His method of deciding was taken from two years ago, on his fourteenth birthday, when he had sat and considered what his friends' might have said in this sort of situation. Hermione's opinion had come quite easily:

"You let them take your wand? Oh, Harry, honestly...well you had just better stay where you are and wait for Dumbledore and the Order to find you. I'm sure they're looking for you right now..."

Ron's, on the other hand...

"Stay where you are? Are you mad? Voldemort wants to kill you! Run like mad and hope you don't get eaten by whatever lived in that cottage!"

And Sirius would say—

Harry kicked himself mentally and quickened his pace to an awkward jog, refusing to stray back into that subject. For once, it had been easy to agree with Ron. Harry remembered faintly one of his early school teachers lecturing the small group of six year-olds that if they ever found themselves lost without their mummies and daddies, to stay where they were and not move until their parents came back to find them. Upon hearing this, Harry had refused to move from his seat for the rest of the day, determined not to move from the spot until his parents came to take him home. The poor woman had nearly been in tears as she explained the situation to the Dursleys, who dragged him unceremoniously home and locked him in the cupboard with no meals for the rest of the day.

Not surprisingly, Harry had since then stopped worrying when he was lost (which was quite rarely, as the Dursleys never took him anywhere) and went on his way. This was no different. For all he knew, the Order had long since stopped searching for him. Voldemort could have informed them he was dead for all he knew, and staying in one place wouldn't do him any good. While the Order might have had no idea where he was, there was a great chance that Peter was simply attempting to put Harry's guard down and would tip off Voldemort the first chance he got.

So here he found himself: out in the middle of nowhere without a wand, food, water, or any sign of human habitation. Clearly Pettigrew's views on justice were a little more then slightly stunted. Then again, this was the man whom had betrayed his best friends and spent twelve years as a rat. Clearly logic was a rare token item in the Wizarding population.

But for now he would walk—or jog, as the situation permitted—and lengthen the wait until his impending death. He wondered briefly what Voldemort would do if he was eaten by a bear before the madman could get to him.

A loud, shattering howl split the air, and Harry found himself moving faster then before.

Or a wolf.

Remus Lupin gazed silently at the battered remains of what had once been his home: a small, dingy cottage in the middle of nowhere. He had built it with his own hands years upon years ago, soon after graduating from Hogwarts. Prongs and Padfoot had helped.

But only a little.

The memory of that particular argument brought the shadow of a smile to the war-beaten face of the werewolf, but it was almost instantly replaced with the stoic expression he had grown accustomed to wearing lately. It was the expression of a man who had been beaten and outsmarted, but who still lived. Sometimes he wondered how it was that Dumbledore could read a person's every thought, for immediately after Sirius had...after the accident, Albus had arrived at Grimmauld Place to have a very long talk with Remus about his importance.

"We must continue to live even when all hope has failed us, Remus. You are now the only link that Harry has to his past, and the greatest role model in his life...."

And he had gone on in this manner for a very long time. Remus appreciated Dumbledore's concern; he had even made every effort to do as he was told and to live for Harry. But he did not do it happily; it was a job he had never wanted. This was Sirius' life that he was living, James' life. They should have been with Harry, not him. After all, if James had wanted Remus to be there for Harry, he would never have shut him out. Would never have believed that he would do what Peter had done. It was this that had kept him away from Harry throughout his entire childhood—if James had wanted him to keep his distance, he would do so. No matter how much he cared about the only link to his friends that he had left.

Enough.

Growling at his own inner dispute, Remus turned his attention to the task at hand once more. The Order's magic detectors (which Remus strongly suspected had been smuggled out from the ministry by a few skilled aurors) had reported magical activity in a magic remote area. Since Harry's capture, Dumbledore had been very insistant in keeping him occupied with minor jobs for the Order—in other words, anything that didn't concern Harry or Wormtail in the least. This had seemed like the perfect task for him, for the activity had centered on the cottage he had once taken residence in to transform.

Odd jobs like these were in surplus, for the Order might as well have been an extended and more efficient branch of the Auror Department of the Ministry. Any magic in muggle inhabited or remote areas was to be inspected to ensure that it was not a Death Eater hideout, or what Arthur Weasley called "muggle baiting". Personally, Remus thought it was a waste of time, and Moody seemed to agree with him, because the rule-bound ex-Auror had thrown aside conduct and sent Remus without a partner—everyone else was busy on the hunt for Harry or Pettigrew.

Still, it wasn't every day that one revisited the place they had spent years of their lives in, and it was Albus' hope that returning to Canid Cottage (Sirius had nicknamed it, to the indignant objections of the two non-canine Marauders) would allow him to think back on several fond memories and mourn his friends in a healing manner. It was one of the few times in Dumbledore's later years that he was entirely wrong.

Reluctantly, Remus pushed open the wooden door, which squeaked wearily at him. As shadowed eyes met the inside of the house, a sudden onslaught of memories hit him:

Unbearable, familiar pain. Trying not to scream in front of his friends. Failing.

An encouraging whine from Padfoot, and the anxious stamping of Prongs' cloven hooves.

A rat scuttling eagerly across the floor.

The smell of blood on the air.

Remus' heart began pounding so loudly that he could nearly hear it echoing off the walls and through his ears. For a moment he was afraid he couldn't breathe, but as his senses came back to him he took a long, shuddering breath.

But the smell of blood was still there.

That couldn't be right—could it? No one had been in here for over a decade, and while it had always smelled of blood in the past (due mainly to the good-natured sparring of Moony and Padfoot) it had been long, far too long for the scent to linger this strongly.

And there was another smell, he recognized it immediately and felt the panic rising in him again. Franticly he bent down, scourging the floors for hidden clues as to what had happened, so that he nearly missed the clues right in front of his face.

A shuddering hand reached for the strip of cloth that seemed to have been dyed an odd color of red. Noticing the crumpled parchment for the first time, a sudden feeling of terror would not allow him to pick it up for several long moments. Then, moving the damp cloth to his free hand, he picked up the pale note and read the three simple words in a handwriting he had seen so many times before.

For half a second he couldn't understand, and then...

He dropped the crimson cloth as though it had attacked him, staring in horror down at the fabric, which he now realized was coated in blood.

And then he understood.

Wormtail had done it. Wormtail had killed Harry.

It was revenge for Lupin and Black's intentions to kill him in the Shrieking Shack, for all of the times the Marauders teased pudgy Peter, for the jealousy Wormtail had always felt when he saw what lengths James would go to help Remus.

He had killed Harry, taken the only thread to his past that Remus had, that kept him from falling into insanity.

And suddenly Remus knew what he had to do. He would find Wormtail. He would finish the job that Sirius had started. He would find the rat...

And he would let the wolf kill him.

Now we're even.

After Notes: Short, I know, but I couldn't move on to what happens next without having to merge this chapter with the next. The next chapter will be up ASAP, thanks so much for everyone who'se sticking with me. I really appreciate it.