Updated Sunday 24th April 2005
Disclaimer: See Chapter One… oh, and there are gratuitous borrowings from Chapters 17-19 of POA.
Chapter Seventy: Leap of Faith
The sun now blanketed by the horizon, Estella rose and restlessly began to kick around the edge of the lake. Given the hour, she knew she'd have to return to the castle soon - perhaps swing by the kitchens for a quick bite to eat after all - before settling down in bed with a good book. She was of mind to return to the castle and do just that until, however, her eyes witnessed a flurry of activity at the foot of the hill she was standing on. There, by the Whomping Willow, were four figures in a tense stand off. Hearing a dog bark and snarl, Estella's blood froze when she recognised one of the smaller shadows to be a dog… her father. Moving behind a bush to stay out of sight and casting a spell to hear better, Estella began to recognise one of the shouting voices as belonging to Harry… which meant the other people were invariably Ron and Hermione. With shivers running down her spine as Estella recalled the last time she'd heard Harry shout – at her – her eyes bulged in mortification when she remembered also that her father was most likely out for Harry's blood.
'It's probably just a hungry stray' Estella tried to assure herself, but to no avail. Something bubbling deep in her gut told her that it was her father… which could only mean that Harry was in mortal danger.
'Oh no!' Estella's heart was gripped in fear for the boy-who-lived. Sure, the last time they had spoken to each other they'd had a fight and more or less hated her now, but there was no way she was just going to stand by and let something happen to the boy – lest of all by her father's hand, and lest of all when she could have prevented it by stunning the man with her wand that night in the Gryffindor common room.
Now the only dilemma Estella faced was the question of if she should seek out an adult for help, or go it alone. When she saw the dog attack Ron and drag him into the tunnel under the tree, her mind was made up for her. There was simply no time to do anything else.
It was time to go and do what she should have done that night in Gryffindor Tower… maybe then Harry could understand her.
Following stealthily behind Hermione and Harry as they tore down the path of the underground tunnel, Estella struggled to push the memories of the last time she had been down in that very same tunnel out of her mind. Part of her wanted nothing more than to run and seek comfort from her Godfather, but, as luck would have it, that night was a full moon. As for her uncle, well, if he helped her with this he would find out that she'd let her father get away earlier, and then she would be in for it.
No, she had to do this alone.
Pulling herself out of the hole and into the room she knew all too well, Estella looked up just in time to see Harry and Hermione's wand tips wafting faintly up the stairs, their owners but faint outlines in the dark room. Following at a distance, Estella made her way up to the landing and followed her ears to a firmly shut door – the only room with a faint light emanating from under it. Knowing that the Ministry couldn't detect under aged magic used at the Shack, Estella cast a feather-light charm on the door and a silencio to its hinges before slowly pushing it open and entering the room just in time to hear her father speak.
"Lie down," her father's voice barely reached her ears as he addressed the woozy looking red-headed boy quietly. "You will damage that leg even more."
"Did you hear me?" Ron replied weakly. No one had noticed her presence in the room yet. "You'll have to kill all three of us!"
Wand in hand, Estella's mind was spinning. Her father's back was to her, and he hadn't registered her arrival… it would be so easy just to stun him and have it over with; but she couldn't do it. In her childhood training with her Godfather, the man had instilled upon her the values of etiquette and procedure. An Auror, for example, would always give a felon opportunity to surrender without the use of force – it was bad form to take gratuitous advantage of an offender's turned back. On the other hand, her Uncle had taught her defence tactics from the perspective of a former Death Eater… where it was more than acceptable to do whatever was necessary to ensure one's own personal safety. But whose direction should she follow?
"There'll only be one murder here tonight." Estella heard her father say.
Before she could make up her mind about how to approach the situation, her options were narrowly cut short after she opened her mouth and spoke without thinking.
"No! No, there won't!" She snapped defiantly at her father's turned back, her wand grasped firmly in her hand, pointing squarely at the man as he spun around to acknowledge the newcomer.
"Expelliarmus!" Sirius shot the spell hurtling towards her with an almost regretful tone in his voice, the man hoping to catch her unawares as he took aim and fired the spell while he was turning to face her.
His daughter, however, was far too quick for that, blocking his spell with a shield and countering with a leg-locker curse.
Fending off the curse with a defensive block, Sirius parried with a tickling hex – for Merlin, how he just wanted to hear his daughter's laugh. The spell catching Estella unawares as she dodged right into the line of fire, not realising that her father had anticipated that feint in his aim, Estella's eyes made contact with her father's as he watched her carefully. Sirius, however, was not very well matched with the youngest Weasley boy's wand; and so rather than causing her to writhe and erupt into uncontrollable giggles, Estella merely shivered as the ghostly wisp of unseen fingers brushed past the folds of her outer robes ineffectually. It was, however, enough of a distraction for Sirius to summon Estella's wand to him and cast her an apologetic look.
Feeling naked and vulnerable without her wand, Estella's first instinct was to go for her back up wand – most likely her father's as she favoured that over her mother's for defence – but she didn't want to make things worse by giving her father the opportunity to get his own wand back. It was best to appear submissive, take the time to regroup, then strike again when least expected. Not that she had much time to consider her options anyway as Harry – who, brimming with rage and being held back only by Ron and Hermione – suddenly leapt forward and physically attacked her father.
"YOU KILLED MY MUM AND DAD!" Harry roared as he forcefully knocked Sirius' wand hand aside and started to brutally fly at him with his fists. Estella's heart was in her throat as she watched the two fly into a wall and struggle against each other. All the years of anger and feelings of pain and abandonment as her juvenile mind grasped with the unanswered questions of why her father had left her mother to die and deserted her in favour of doing bad things to other people threatened to overwhelm her. One side of her wanted to see the man caught and dealt with accordingly, but the other, more predominant side wanted answers.
She did not think she would be able to walk away without seeking them.
What happened next was a blur of arms and legs as Hermione helped Harry overpower Sirius; the room ringing with the sounds of yells and screams. In the middle of it all, was Estella, unable to move from her place in the centre of the room as he mind battled itself. Her mind came back to itself when she could hear her fallen father whispering from his place sprawled on the floor against the wall.
"Going to kill me, Harry?" Estella blinked her eyes back into focus to see Harry poised over her father, his wand raised and eyes ablaze. Her father, meanwhile, was looking particularly worse for wear, all bruised and bloodied.
"You killed my parents." Harry replied shakily, his wand level.
Grey eyes flickered from green to matching grey, their irises dull with the weight of regret, pain and guilt.
"I don't deny it," her father said, very quietly. "But if you knew the whole story…"
Estella's heart leapt. She was going to get the answers she sought!
"The whole story?" Harry interrupted her father in a furious tone of voice. "You sold them to Voldemort, that's all I need to know!"
"You've got to listen to me," her father said, and there was a note of urgency in his voice now as he looked directly at Estella, his eyes silently pleading with her to hear him out. "You'll regret it if you don't… both of you will. You don't understand…"
"I understand a lot better than you think," said Harry, with his voice shaking more than ever. "You never heard her, did you? My mum… trying to stop Voldemort killing me… and you did that… you did it…"
Sirius' eyes watered, and he averted his eyes from the sight of Lily's emerald gaze as they tore into him accusatorily from beyond the grave. All the feelings of guilt and shame and pain that he had punished himself with throughout his time in Azkaban cast a black cloud over his mind… it was almost as though Dementors were approaching. Just when he was about to give over to the pain and despair in his soul, however, the intense stare of his daughter's eyes on him warmed his soul like twin beacons of light, showing him the way. Her presence was as invigorating as the strongest Pepper-up and as effective at chasing away his demons as a fully corporeal Patronus in pursuit of Dementors.
He had to tell them the truth. He had to tell them what happened.
As her eyes locked with her father's once more, Estella was overcome with a wash of emotion. Like an invisible, subconscious force tugging at her soul, Estella felt compelled to stop Harry from doing something rash. For some inexplicable reason she just felt as though the pair of them really needed to hear what her father had to say.
"No." Estella said in a choked voice as she thoughtlessly moved to stand between Harry and her father.
"And there I thought you were trying to help us!" Harry bit back, his voice laced with betrayal. "But you're just here to help him all over again after all!"
Estella looked from her father to Harry frantically, her wand hand twitching over the place in the robes where she had her parents' wands hidden. Inwardly her mind was running into overdrive, trying to assess the next best course of action… did she try to reason with the enraged boy before her so that he would give her father a chance to say what he wanted to say, or should she take a massive leap of faith in what her heart was telling her and discreetly drop her father's wand into his hand so that they could tackle the situation together; or did she step aside and let Harry do what, for all intensive purposes, he had every right to do.
"Get out of my way, Estella." Harry said warningly, brandishing his wand at her. "I don't want to hex you, but I will."
The seconds lengthened, and still Harry stood frozen there, wand poised, her father staring up at him as she stood between them. Ron's ragged breathing came from near the bed; Hermione was quite silent.
And then came a new sound –
Muffled footsteps were echoing up through the floor – someone was moving downstairs.
"WE'RE UP HERE!" Remus could hear the children screaming from upstairs as soon as his keen senses had picked up their scents and noted their tracks in the dust.
"WE'RE UP HERE – SIRIUS BLACK – QUICK!"
He bounded up the stairs, two, sometimes three at a time, the adrenalin coursing through his body granting him an agility he had not known for many years.
"Expelliarmus!" Remus yelled as he entered the room, pointing his wand at a startled Harry, who stood over the felled form of his former school friend. Sirius looked to be suitably cowed, and he didn't want the young Potter boy doing anything rash before he'd had a chance to get some answers from the fugitive.
To his upmost surprise, Estella was also in the room, and she was now looking at him with a mixture of shock, confusion and… fear… in her eyes.
"Where is he, Sirius?" He said gruffly, his heart and mind at war with the confliction of emotions he was feeling at that moment. His first instinct had been to take his goddaughter into his arms and wipe away the doubts and aversion she displayed in her features, but his overriding concern at that immediate moment was to find a dead man.
Sirius pointed to Ron, his sunken grey eyes never leaving Remus. Staring intently at the father of his goddaughter, the wheels of his mind spinning furiously out of control, the pieces began to click into place for Remus.
"But then…" he muttered, "why hasn't he shown himself before now? Unless…" His eyes widened, and he took a shaky breath. "Unless he was the one… unless you switched… without telling me?"
A firm but weary nod released the floodgates around Remus' heart.
'Sirius was innocent!' A voice screamed in his mind 'Dear God!'
Lowering his wand, the last remaining 'free' marauder crossed the room to gather his long lost comrade in a firm embrace, ignoring the betrayed stares of the four confused children.
"I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" Hermione screamed.
Estella watched on confused. What were they talking about? Why was Remus there? Why hadn't he stunned Sirius already? Her eyes flew instinctively to a gap in the boards that covered one of the windows. The moon was set to rise at any moment, she was sure of it.
"Moony." She whispered fearfully, looking at her Godfather warily as though he had sprouted an extra head.
Remus let go of Sirius and gave her an appraising look. He was just about to say something when he was interrupted.
"You – you!" Hermione had raised herself off the floor and was pointing at Remus, wild-eyed. "You and him!"
"Hermione, calm down…" Remus tried to placate the irrational girl before him, his eyes constantly flicking to Estella to gauge her reaction.
"I didn't tell anyone!" Hermione shrieked. "I've been covering up for you!"
"Hermione, listen to me, please!" Remus shouted over the volume of her voice. "I can explain…"
Estella watched the exchange with a bubbling feeling of dread tearing at her insides. The last time she had seen her Godfather shout so desperately like that had been when he had been close to transforming and she and he had been in that very room some six years earlier. Eying the night sky as it peered through the gaps in the boarded up window once more, Estella back-stepped towards the door. She had to get them all out of there. What if Remus hadn't taken his potion?
Harry, meanwhile, was shaking with more fury. "I trusted you," he shouted at her Godfather, his voice wavering out of control, "and all the time you've been his friend!'
"You're wrong," said Remus. "I haven't been Sirius' friend for twelve years, but I am now… let me explain…"
Estella's head shot up. Remus was friends with her father again? Had she pushed him away so much that he had done the unthinkable? She stifled a gasp. What had she done? So enthralled in the developments unravelling before her, she temporarily forgot all about the pending full moon and trying to warn the others in the room.
"NO!" Hermione screamed, "Harry, don't trust him, he's been helping Black get into the castle, he wants you dead too – he's a werewolf!'
Estella looked at Hermione sharply. How had she found out? Why would she think Remus had been helping her father all this time when the man only had cause to turn in recent times? Had her Godfather been in league with her father all along? Her eyes darting between her father and Godfather warily as doubt settled in her mind, Estella took another step back away from them, now concealing herself in shadows. It was then, how, so caught up in refuting Remus' explanation about how he came to teach at the school, that no one noticed when Estella disappeared under a shimmering ripple of thin air.
Finding the Defence Professor's office abandoned – evidently in a hurry – Severus searched the office for any sign of where his reluctant colleague may have ran off to on such short notice. Catching sight of the Marauder's Map – a demonstrably activated Marauder's Map – Severus' suspicions were heightened when he saw the blinking dot that represented Remus Lupin moving rapidly along the length of the tunnel under the Whomping Willow and off the map's edge. Ever since he had invented the Wolfsbane Potion, a locked room was more than sufficient to keep the near tame wolf at bay; and so it was no longer required for Lupin to be sequestered in the rambling old shack. So why was he going there now? Specifically, why was he rushing off their now without his dose of Wolfsbane?
Growling at the inconvenience of it all, Severus stalked out of the offices and out of the castle, goblet in hand. Curiously, he found none other than the infamous Potter Invisibility Cloak at the base of the Whomping Willow. Sealing the goblet with a containment charm and pocketing it, Severus drew his wand warily and threw the cloak over his shoulders. Somehow he just knew that this evening was about more than just a crazy lunatic wanting to live life on the wild side, and he knew that he was not going to like what he found at the end of the tunnel one bit.
Sure enough, Severus' apprehensions were fully warranted when he stumbled upon the scene in the upstairs bedroom. Seeing his niece alone in the shadows, out of immediate reach of her fugitive father or soon-to-transform godfather, Severus' first objective was to extract his niece from harm's way. Sneaking back through the already open door – Potter's cloak already proving more than useful – Severus cast a impenetrable privacy charm on the cloak and mindlessly turned the first item he could find – a certain goblet – into a portkey and then stealthily made his way back into the room.
Sneaking up behind his niece, he caught her unawares as he threw the edge of the invisibility cloak over her, shielding her from view as well as encasing her in his privacy bubble where no one could hear them. Grabbing her around the waist, pulling her back against him so that she didn't move and dislodge the cloak that was concealing them, Severus whispered words of assurance into the child's ear when her body leapt, startled, by the sudden contact.
"Settle child, it's only me." He muttered into her ear, his free hand instinctively covering her mouth as she tried to scream and began to struggle against him. Sure, he had charmed the cloak to contain the noises under it, but Severus was not sure how effective it would be against the intuitive ears of a lycan who would soon as smell them out if so inclined.
"Uncle Sev?" Estella's muffled voice questioned against his hand as she relaxed against him in recognition.
Severus removed his hand from her mouth, but still held her to him as he fumbled in his robes for the portkey.
Thrusting it into her hand, he then pointed his wand at it for purposes of activating it. "Do not leave my quarters until I return, do you hear me?" He said, his voice belying a tone of urgency as the time for the moon's rising grew imminently closer.
Before Estella could register what her Uncle had meant by that comment and realise that she was in fact holding a portkey, her uncle had relinquished his grip on her and tapped the edge of the goblet with his wand, muttering an activation spell. Her eyes wide, and her mouth open to protest, Estella snorted with contempt as she felt the familiar tug hook her navel and transport her away. It was too late.
Landing on the floor of her Uncle's office in a ungracious heap, Estella pulled herself up jerkily and threw the goblet portkey smashing to the ground in her fury. How dare her Uncle treat her like such a infant? She could have helped! Harry, Hermione and Ron were still in danger! She didn't have a chance to get any answers! How could he do this to her!
Leaning against her Uncle's desk in an effort to anchor herself, Estella's eyes widened when she identified the smoking, silvery potion that pooled at her feet, running in little rivers through the cracks in the stone tiles. In his haste, her Uncle had given her a goblet of Wolfsbane to use as a portkey. Why else would her uncle even have such a potion on him if not for the fact that her Godfather had not imbibed his monthly dose?
'Oh no!' Estella's stomach did a somersault, threatening to spill its contents all over the floor over top of the potion she had indirectly destroyed.
Upon seeing his greasy git of a brother-in-law reveal himself in the room with the audacity to accuse his best friend of treason and fill his Godson's head with rot, Sirius' blood boiled. Asides from Pettigrew's betrayal, the man before him was almost equally responsible for his incarceration. All those years of wondering why Severus could be so vindictive as to exact his childhood revenge upon him by condemning him to Azkaban and the answers were now, suddenly, staring him in the face. Severus really hated him. Hated the father of his only living blood relative so much that he would willingly deprive a child of its father, another child of a Godfather, and let a killer go free. Once upon a time Sirius would never think a person could be so consumed by their hatred that they were blind to all reason; but as he looked into the steely orbs of the smug, self-satisfied bastard before him, he realised one thing: the feeling was mutual.
After noticing that Estella was no longer in the room, and, with a sick feeling in his gut, realising that he had probably taken her away from him again – this time from right under his nose – Sirius growled in rage and lunged for the man that shared blood with his wife. Almost languidly the man in question aimed his wand levelly at the spot between Sirius' eyes.
"Give me a reason," Severus whispered menacingly. "Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will."
Sirius held back slightly, but the fire in his eyes was no less apparent. "Why don't you tell our willing audience what you told me in your letter, Severus?" He asked quietly. "Tell Remus how you knew all along his best friend was innocent! Tell Harry about the better life he could have had with his Godfather! With his parents even, had you enough spine to look out for anyone but yourself!"
"Shut up!" Severus spat defensively, jabbing his wand in Sirius' face. "You have no idea what happened!"
"What would Selina say if she knew, Severus? If she knew you did nothing to give her child a father?" Sirius continued, pain in his eyes, guilt overwhelming his senses – what kind of father doesn't even realise when his child leaves a room? What if it hadn't been Severus who pulled her out? She could have been in danger and he didn't even notice! Turning his attention back to Severus, he redirected his self-loathing at the man before him. "You could have told Dumbledore about Peter, gotten me a trial! That's all it would have taken, damn it!"
Severus shook with fury. "You didn't deserve her." He said in low tones, not even gratifying Black with his true intentions. "Either of them."
Blinded by rage, Sirius leapt at Severus, wand or no. Sure enough, all hell broke lose. Severus had barely managed to hit Sirius in the face with a stunner before Harry, Ron and Hermione simultaneously threw a disarming spell at him, the force behind the trio of spells knocking him out cold.
"Bloody hell!" Ron cursed, leaning on his good leg. "What a night!"
"We stunned a teacher! We stunned a teacher!" Hermione murmured over and over to herself, hands pulling compulsively at her hair in mortification.
"Get a grip, 'Mione!" Ron groaned. "Git deserved it."
Harry, meanwhile, had revived Sirius and untied Remus, whom unbeknownst to him, Severus had tied up to protect them in the event of the moon rising. Hauling the two men to their feet, he then handed Remus back his wand before turning to look Sirius straight in the eye and taking a deep breath.
"Show me Pettigrew."
Before Estella could bolt from the office, headed back in the direction from whence she had just come, the headmaster's head appeared in her Uncle's fireplace; pesteringly enquiring about the purposes of a emergency portkey that had just infiltrated Hogwarts' extensive wards.
"My Uncle caught me wandering around outside and ported me back here." She said, not wanting to disclose the full story until she had given herself a chance to get her head around things. She knew to have the school and thus the ministry alerted to her father's whereabouts would spell his demise; and for some reason she couldn't bring herself to take that irretrievable step. "You know what my Uncle is like with me and full moons."
"Quite right." Dumbledore nodded congenially, his eyes not seeing the sight of the spilt potion Estella was standing in front of. "Though I must ask why your Uncle did not return with you."
"There were several other students out on the grounds, I believe." Estella bit her lower lip anxiously, her eyes flicking from the clock to the door impatiently.
"Ah well then," The headmaster paused as he pulled his body through the Floo, joining her in the office, much to her consternation. "Shall I accompany you back to your Common Room?"
"My Uncle requested that I await his return here." Estella cautioned, thankful the potion would go unchecked from the older wizard's perspective as he stood on the other side of the desk.
"Oh I'm sure your Uncle will take a while." Dumbledore pressed, holding out his arm for her to take as he went towards the door. "I am sure you would rather be with your friends. Don't worry about your Uncle, I will let him know I sent you to your dorm."
Save telling him just where the man was, Estella felt she had no recourse but to agree.
Left under the infuriatingly close eyes of her house master – who was inexplicably omnipresent in the common room tonight – and the conscientious army of studious house prefects, Estella was beside herself with hopelessness. She should be out there helping her Uncle, not wasting away in a stupid common room with a book! Speaking of books, Estella had turned to a book to get her mind off things happening elsewhere. All she could do was sit and hope that everything would be alright.
Trying to focus on the text of the transfiguration text she was reading, Estella finally managed to wrap herself up in the book. She'd caught Hermione using the book as a resource for a third year transfiguration essay some time ago, and had made a note at the time to borrow it one day.
Soaking the information up like a sponge, Estella mused absently whether or not it was Hermione who had scrawled the surprisingly helpful cliff notes in the margins of the text.
'No way,' her mind reasoned. 'Hermione would think it sacrilegious!'
Shameless defacement of school property or no, there was no denying that whoever had annotated the book was exceptionally bright. Estella quickly found she was learning more from the abridged explanations in the spine than she was from the convoluted body of text. In fact, Estella would even bet her potions kit that that was the only reason the normally fastidious librarian hadn't vanished the avid reader's critique.
Skimming over pages, Estella realised that whoever had studied this book so extensively was not doing it just to get an 'O' in a transfiguration essay. As the book glossed over certain details and omitted others, the disgruntled reader had penned in page references to other more helpful books, so as to fill in the gaps. It surprised her though, that most of the footnoted resources were either in the restricted section, or not available at the school at all… which was a rare occurrence given a library of such magnitude. Whomever listed such sources clearly felt they would be of assistance to someone in the future.
But why would anyone need to research something that thoroughly? Unless… something in Estella's mind clicked. Everything the book's unplanned commentary contained provided everything anyone would ever need to become an actual animagus.
Had the marauders been the ones to doctor this book? Registered animagi were trained through the ministry to reconcile with their animal forms… the process so intensive that very few people dared to try it otherwise.
She knew from her recent scrutiny of the Animagus register that the Marauders hadnever been registered. It had to be them
Estella dropped the book as though she had been burned. As intriguing as the book and its amendments were, Estella was trying to avoid anything to do with her family at that moment, not actively identify with the likes of her father and what he got up to in school. She was halfway through casting the book aside and retrieving another from her book bag when a hand on her shoulder startled her from her thoughts. Yanking her head up in surprise, she straightened up in her chair in a little, hardly noticed corner of the bookish common room, to face her guest.
"Elsie? Luna?" She asked, concern furrowing her brow. They looked like they were going to jump out of their skins.
"H-how can you be so calm?" Elsie asked quietly. "He's here! He's in the castle!"
Placing her hands squarely on the table before her in a bid to steady herself, Estella knotted her brows together in confusion. "Who's here?"
Elsie and Luna exchanged a look. "She doesn't know?" Luna half-asked, half stated. "You don't know?"
"Know what?" Estella shook her head in confusion. "What's happening?"
"The Ministry are bringing Dementors into the castle!" Elsie exclaimed in hushed tones.
"They want the kiss performed straight away!" Luna nodded gravely.
Estella felt her innards knot and twist anxiously. "What are you guys talking about?" She asked fretfully. "Who… who is getting the kiss in the Castle?"
"Oh for Merlin's sake!" Elsie cried, slapping her head in frustration. "You really haven't heard anything, have you?"
"Sirius Black was caught an hour ago. He's being guarded somewhere in the castle until the Aurors get here…" Luna said. "You mean you haven't spoken to your Uncle tonight at all?"
"No, what? Why would I have seen my Uncle? What does he have to do with this? When… how?" Estella was aghast. Looking around the room she could now notice the furtive glances the students therein were giving her. Had she been so consumed in her thoughts that she had not even heard the frantic whisperings and seen the sympathetic looks as the news spread through the common room?
"Maybe you should go and see Professor Flitwick… or on second thoughts, Madame Pomfrey. You look a little peaky." Elsie frowned.
Unsteadily rising to her feet and backing away from her dorm mates towards the doorway, Estella nodded absently and fumbled her way out. "I – I – I need some fresh air." She said before turning and running from the room – and the Ravenclaw Commons. Without knowing why, she suddenly found herself outside her Godfather's offices. With a full moon high in the night sky, Estella knew her Godfather would be of little assistance to her at this time and yet she was methodical as she let herself into the man's office and searched for what her subconscious was screaming at her to find.
The Marauder's Map. At least, if the stories she had grown up with were true, then the mysterious piece of parchment she had witnessed bear the marauder's names was a map.
"Accio Marauder's Map!" She waved her wand in sharp snappy movements and summoned the map from its place on the floor by her Godfather's desk. For lack of any other idea on how to best work the map, she stabbed her wand at the parchment and demanded in a clear voice: "Point me Sirius Black!"
Sirius Black was in Professor Flitwick's office. Estella cursed. She had just come half way across the school from there.
"Where is Estella Black?" Severus Snape leered down at a group of terrified first year Ravenclaws as he swept into the bookish common room of his niece's house; having just returned to his office to find the floor puddled with Wolfsbane and his niece gone.
"Professor Snape?" A voice called out to him from a adjacent hallway – the hall that led to the girl's dormitories.
"Miss Carmichael." Severus stated in acknowledgement, crossing his arms over his chest in expectation.
"Estella's not here, sir." She continued, encouraged only by the distance between them. "She tore out of here like a runaway bludger as soon as she found out."
"She looked like she was going to be ill." Luna added matter-of-factly. "Have you checked the infirmary?"
"I think she said she was going to get some air." Elsie clarified. "She goes down to the lake or up the Astronomy Tower…"
Severus could hear no more he was already out of the room, tearing up numerous flights of stairs that would take him to the Astronomy Tower, for he knew his niece would not be foolish enough to go outside on a full moon, again anyway.
Taking a few steadying breaths to try and stop the room around her from spinning, Estella leant against her Godfather's desk and peered past the map in her hands to stare into the fire groggily while she processed her thoughts. She couldn't believe it. Her father was about to receive the Dementor's Kiss! Part of her was indifferent – after all she never actually knew him – but an increasingly overriding side of her was mourning, actually mourning. The image of her father's fathomless eyes burning into her, so expressive and sad and soulful about to become lifeless and dull choked a sob from her system.
'He deserves it! It's his sentence for his crimes!' A frequently unheard voice of reason tried to purge her heart of all feeling. Yet as guilty as she knew him to be… as condemned and useless to her that he was as a fugitive, Estella could not condone the fate that awaited him. No matter his crime, he was, whether she liked it or not, her father… and what's more, her mother had loved him. She would not have wanted this. Had she been alive and in Estella's position right now, she would have tried to do something. Estella had no idea how she knew that, but it was just something she didn't question.
As her eyes flickered from the dancing flames in the fireplace and the pouch of floo powder that was on the mantle, a plan began to hastily wrought itself in her mind. The map in her hands not only told her where her father was, but it also incidentally detailed the special, temporary wards that had been placed around his holding cell. Watching the symbol that represented the headmaster leave the office suddenly, reappearing in the infirmary as if by floo or apparition, Estella knew it was her time to act.
With only a rudimentary knowledge of security warding, Estella could only guess the properties of each listed ward from the Latin words they derived from. Glancing back at the office floo again, it occurred to her that they had left a massive loophole in their security. The floo was more or less open… perhaps not hooked up to the network outside the school, but still permissive of travel between staff member's offices… provided the traveller had floo powder handy.
'Guess they didn't consider a student may have uninhibited access to someone's office.' She thought to herself as she reached for the pouch of Floo powder on her Godfather's mantle. To be on the safe side, Estella wasn't going to Floo herself into her housemaster's office. What if she couldn't get back through? What if her father really was deranged and tried to use her as a hostage? If her father didn't get her killed in the crossfire then there would be a few ticked off men lining up to finish her off on account of her stupidity.
No, it was safer just to fire-call him. She didn't know if it would help him get away, but by giving him back his wand she knew he'd at least have a fighting chance and she'd be able to rest at night knowing she didn't just stand by and let her parent perish. Tossing a pinch of powder into the fireplace she directed her head towards the Ravenclaw Housemaster's office. Looking inside the cosy office, her eyes, which had begun to adjust in the low lit dim of the room, could make out a slight, heaving body shackled in the corner furthest from the floo, his back to her.
Her breath catching in her throat, she suddenly realised she didn't know what to call him.
"Um… hello?" She said softly, clearing her throat. "Excuse me?" She continued in a loud stage whisper (the door outside the office was likely guarded).
The body stiffened, startled, before turning around to face her, chains rattling. A stunned look of disbelief clouding his face, Sirius Black blinkingly stared at the apparition of his daughter. Was this a sign of the Dementors getting closer? That his fear of having his daughter witness his fate was manifesting itself in this cruel hallucination?
Estella frowned slightly at her father's seemingly indifferent reaction and fumbled in her robes for the item she had come to give him.
"Estella?" Her father said suddenly, moving as close to the fireplace as the chains would allow. "Are you real?"
Realisation dawned on Estella's features. Her father had thought her to be a figment of his imagination! "If I'm a figment of your imagination I'd sure as hell like to know why I had to go to so much trouble." Estella responded sarcastically, her tendency to draw from humour when nervous a trait she had picked up on over the years. "Yes, I'm real."
A mixture of happiness, fear and sadness filled Sirius' eyes. "You can't be here. You can't see this." He said regretfully. "I'm so sorry it turned out this way."
Estella shook her head mirthlessly. Had her father given up? Did he not think she was capable of helping him?
"It doesn't have to be this way." She said softly, thrusting her hand through the fireplace – a weird sensation when the rest of your body is still firmly elsewhere. "Take this. It belongs to you anyway. You should have it back… I have a feeling you're going to need it."
Sirius eyed the wand in his daughter's outstretched hand like it was Selina putting his wedding band on his finger all over again. "Why?" He croaked, reaching out and taking the wand from her hand gingerly. Over the course of the years he had convinced himself that his daughter had surely been raised to hate him.
"My mother would have done no differently." Estella said sadly, drawing her hand back through the fireplace as she heard the approaching flapping of what she thought were Dementors. "I… I have to go before I'm missed."
With that, Estella withdrew from the fireplace, away from her father whom she could hear blasting the chains around his limbs with his wand. Placing everything back in her Godfather's office just the way she left it, she turned and bolted for her dormitory, anxious to get back before they discovered her father had a wand and attributed it to her absence.
Looking out a window as she hurried her way back to the West Tower Estella caught a glimpse of something flying off, bearing a passenger.
'Buckbeak!'Her heart heaved a sigh of relief.
It appeared that more than one life had been spared that night.
End Chapter: Leap of Faith