Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, settings or anything else from Harry Potter.
Warnings: AU
Chapter Nine
Harry picked himself up off the floor, standing between Lupin and Ron, who still lay winded in the thick dust that was like a drab carpet on every surface Harry could see.
"Please," he said. "Let us go."
"I can't," Lupin replied. "I need to tell you what happened."
"Well tell me, then," Harry shouted. "You keep saying you will, and you never say anything."
"Don't shout, please," Lupin said, wincing. "I will tell you. I will. Please, be patient with me. It's been so long."
Harry looked around. So this was the famous Shrieking Shack? Caked with dust and falling to pieces. Bits of furniture were strewn around, missing great chunks like bite-marks. In places, even the walls were wrecked, with holes in the plaster right down to the splintered wood that held up the structure, as if some huge thing had crashed into them with vicious force. The whole building creaked ominously, moving slightly at each turn of the wind with little sighs of falling plaster that added to the thick grey dust-layer
Harry said, "You came here when you were at Hogwarts."
"Yes," said Lupin. "At every full moon. My howls caused the villagers to think the place was haunted. That was good. I didn't want anyone to be hurt when I was...changed."
"Dumbledore let you into Hogwarts. Why?"
"Because Dumbledore is a great wizard, and a great man. He knows the price of segregation."
Behind Harry, Ron snorted, heaving himself up to his feet. Harry looked at him, and saw he was pale and trembling slightly, clutching an arm to his chest. "That worked out well, didn't it?"
Lupin seemed to ignore the comment, but he nodded at Ron's cradled arm and said, "Let me help you with that." He reached out but Ron shrank back, and Harry spread his arms out like a shield.
"You don't touch either of us," he said. "Until you can prove you're not dangerous."
Lupin let his own arm fall back down to his side, clutching his hand into a fist there. The other hand opened, letting the tightly held wand clatter onto the floor. He sighed, long and low, then took a deep breath, like a diver readying himself for the plunge. He opened his mouth to speak, and-
"Remus."
Lupin looked up, his eyes as wide as if he had been stunned. "Sirius."
"That's right." It was Sirius, at the door. Harry felt a fierce rush of relief at the sight of him.
His godfather stepped into the room, wand raised, looking more menacing than anyone Harry had ever seen. Lupin seemed to wilt at the sight of him.
"Sirius," he whispered.
"I knew it would be me who would get you, in the end," Sirius snarled. His voice was low and dangerous, brimming with hatred. It sent shivers the length of Harry's spine. "I knew it would be me. I wanted to have you all to myself, just for a little while." He reached forward with the wand, holding it with the same deadly intent that Harry had seen people hold guns in Muggle films.
"Sirius!" Lupin was begging now. "Sirius, please! Please listen to me! For James' sake, Sirius, for...for Harry's sake-"
"Harry!" Sirius wheeled on the gaunt figure of his former friend. "What do you have to do with Harry. You are the reason James and Lily are dead, Remus. You. So you don't talk about Harry. You've got nothing to do with Harry."
"I didn't kill them."
"Liar."
"I didn't kill them!" Lupin shouted, his voice rasping and desperate, hovering dangerously on the edge.
"Oh? Or the thirteen Muggles and Peter either, I imagine? So, what, the streetful of Muggles were just hallucinating, were they?" Sirius sneered.
"Peter." Lupin laughed softly in a way that sent icy shivers down Harry's spine. "Peter. Clever, clever Peter." He seemed to be talking to himself rather than to Sirius.
"Wasn't clever enough to spot you, though, was he?" snarled Sirius. "None of us were," he added in a lower, angrier tone.
"Peter Pettigrew and his finger in a box. But where's the rest of poor Peter Pettigrew?" Lupin was still laughing, and Harry shrank back from the new manic gleam that lit his hollow eyes. "Poor Peter. Poor Wormtail." Lupin raised a finger, pointed it directly at Ron. "Hello, Peter."
"He's barmy," Ron said. "He thinks I'm Pettigrew."
"I tried to warn you, Sirius. I did try. But you didn't listen. You didn't listen like you never listened to anything that you didn't want to, and I paid the price for it. But I'm going to put it right now." Lupin pointed still at Ron.
"If you want them, you'll have to come through me," Sirius said, making sure that both of the children were safely behind him.
"Not Ron," Harry said, with comprehension dawning. "Sirius, he's not looking at Ron, he's looking at-"
"Scabbers!" Ron cried as the rat burst form out of his pocket. He clutched at the long tail as it wriggled away, but Scabbers broke free and scurried for the door. It was in vain, though: Lupin's heavy boot came crashing down on his tail and he squealed shrilly in animal torment.
"You're madder than they imagined," said Sirius. "You really think that rat is Peter?"
"I wonder now," Lupin mused, "how we never suspected him before." He reached down and picked up Scabbers by his tail, dangling him in the air like a prize. "After all, he always was a rat. I'll never know how you managed it, Peter," he said to the wriggling creature. "You, of all people."
"I've had just about enough of this," Sirius snorted, advancing on Lupin with wand outstretched. "We're going to go now, and I'm going to give you up to the Dementors, and then I can forget about you."
"Dementors..." Lupin repeated the word, his eyes dark with terror. "No, Sirius, I can prove it. I can prove it, I really can. It is Peter, Sirius. Padfo-"
"Don't you call me that!" Sirius' voice was thick with menace. "Don't you ever call me that again. You killed Padfoot when you killed Prongs and Wormtail. Now for Merlin's sake just put the bloody rat down."
"I can prove it!"
"Sirius," Harry said. "Sirius, I think...I think he's telling the truth."
"Remus was always an excellent liar, weren't you, Remus? You managed to keep the fact that you were a werewolf quite a secret, didn't you?"
"Please, please-"
"Come on, Remus. Drop the rat."
Lupin looked utterly defeated. The fight seemed to go out of him in one small, broken sigh, and his shoulders stooped and his head hung. He held out the rat to Sirius with one hand and spread the other peaceably. Sirius stepped forward, hand out to take Scabbers, and then all hell broke loose.
Hermione burst in first, joined by Severus Snape. In unison they shouted 'Expelliarmus' - but not at Lupin. With an almighty crack Sirius flew across the room, hitting the wall with a thunk and dropping to the floor. He didn't move.
"Sirius!" Harry shouted, bolting to his fallen godfather's side. Sirius groaned and rolled sluggishly over, glaring at Hermione and Snape.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he growled.
"Stopping you from making a mistake even more idiotic than usual, Black," was Snape's reply.
"I should have known you'd be in league with him," said Sirius. "Birds of a feather, and all that."
"I would suggest that you keep quiet until you understand what is really going on," Snape drawled imperiously, bending to retrieve Sirius' wand.
"Hermione?" Ron said. "Can somebody please explain to me what is going on?"
"Ron, Scabbers isn't really a rat," Hermione explained breathlessly. "He's Peter Pettigrew."
There was a pause.
"You're all bloody mad," Ron decided, slumping to the floor. "You're all completely off it. He's a convicted killer, Hermione."
"I didn't kill them," Lupin said again, his voice small and tear-thick. Harry thought that if he hadn't been mad before, this was enough to drive anyone to it. He was beginning to feel a little unbalanced himself.
"Oh do be quiet, Lupin," said Snape. "You always were insufferable."
At that, Lupin seemed to collect himself. He straightened up and, still holding the shrieking, writhing rat, turned to Harry, his eyes wide and bright.
"Harry, did you ever learn what was the biggest piece they ever found of Peter Pettigrew?"
"His finger," said Harry automatically. "They put it in a box and gave it to his parents."
"Ron," Lupin said. "How many toes does your Scabbers have?"
"He's missing one," Ron answered, slowly and warily, glancing all the time between Snape and Sirius.
"How did he lose it?"
"What? I dunno, he's always had nine toes."
"Always? How long have you had him?"
"Thir-thirteen years."
"How many years ago did Peter Pettigrew die, Sirius?"
"You can't be serious," Sirius snorted.
"Thirteen," Harry whispered. "Peter Pettigrew died thirteen years ago."
Lupin nodded and smiled. "Severus, say Morphus, and point your wand at Scabbers."
Snape did so, and nothing happened. Sirius snorted again, but Lupin only shook his head gently, like a schoolteacher correcting a pupil.
"It's more of a jab," he explained. "Try it again."
Snape glowered, but tried the spell again. A flash of blue light exploded from the end of his wand, covering the rat, who squealed and squirmed as if in agony.
"Scabbers!" Ron cried, getting to his feet again, but stopped in shock and horror as he watched the spell do its work.
Scabbers was growing, twisting in a way that was hideous to see, his skin stretching, losing its fur; the delicate rodent bones snapping and reshaping themselves into the form of a human being, and when the spell finished a man had taken the place of the rat.
"Hello, Peter," said Lupin pleasantly. "Had a nice thirteen years?"
"Oh...oh, R-Remus, hello." Peter squirmed, blinking his little watery eyes and wringing his hands. Harry's stomach churned in revulsion. "My...my old friend."
"Peter?" said Sirius, who was dragging himself upright, looking dazed.
Pettigrew looked devastated, but tried valiantly to keep his smile. "S-Sirius, oh, my friend! My good, good friend."
"I can't believe this," said Sirius. "I can't...it's impossible."
"It's true," said Hermione, who looked sick to her stomach.
"Sirius!" Peter grinned desperately in an approximation of friendship. "Sirius, he's mad. You can't...I mean, you can't..."
"My, that's a nasty scar you've got there, Peter," Lupin breezed, grabbing Pettigrew's hand and holding it up so that they could all see the missing index finger. "Cut yourself, did you?"
"I was trying to escape you," Peter insisted, squirming out of reach. "You tried to kill me, just like you killed all those Muggles! I tried to stop him," he went on, turning to Sirius and then to the rest of them. "But he was too strong for me, I...I had to escape, and to hide, yes! To hide! For my life!"
He looked around them all with an expression of terrified pleading. He turned to Hermione, who averted her eyes; to Snape, who regarded him with sneering contempt and kept his wand trained firmly on him; to Ron, who looked shocked and repulsed; to Sirius; and finally to Harry.
"H-Harry." He forced his trembling lips into the approximation of a friendly smile, dropping down onto his knees, begging. "So like James, Harry. Would your father have wanted me to be killed, Harry? Would he have believed me?"
"You low, sneaking wretch," Remus snarled with wolfish ferocity. "You stinking rat. You talk to Harry about his parents when it was you - you, Peter! - who murdered them?"
Pettigrew's eyes filled with tears. "How could you understand?" he sobbed. "How could you know what I suffered? The Dark Lord has ways, means, he twists and persuades and threatens - I couldn't resist him. You couldn't have."
Sirius stepped towards Peter, quivering from head to foot with raw, brutal anger. Harry thought that he would, if he had his wand, kill his former friend there and then. "We all could have turned to Voldemort," he growled. "But we didn't. You weak-willed snivelling vermin!"
"You don't understand!"
"I understand that you sold them out to your Master! I understand that you killed them!" Sirius shook his head with disgust and hatred. He looked towards Remus. "I'm so sorry, Remus."
"Oh, I forgive you," said Lupin, in a tone of voice as if it were a matter of no importance, but a genuine smile was hovering at the corners of his mouth and there was a calmer light to his eye. Harry though that already he could see some semblance of the former man creeping into the mutilated face. Sirius seemed to see it, too, and he smiled at his friend.
Peter was crying now, low wrenching sobs that shook his entire frame. "Please!" he was sobbing. "Please!"
"Oh, do be quiet," said Snape, and he made a swishing motion at Pettigrew's hands, which were clasped together in desperate supplication. Thin ropes twined themselves around and around, and Peter struggled but they were too strong for him. He began to weep noisily, begging incoherently through his tears, and Snape rolled his eyes and muttered silencio. The noise stopped abruptly, and Harry watched while Pettigrew, startled, made a few more emphatic silent protests. It was a grotesque sight, and he turned away.
"What will you do now?" he asked Lupin.
Lupin smiled broadly, and closed his eyes. "It's been so long since I had the freedom to answer that question. I suppose first I shall have to go to Dumbledore, with Peter, to explain myself. I think...I think he will listen to me."
"We'll vouch for you, anyway," said Harry, determinedly. "Won't we?"
Hermione nodded, and Ron did too, though more hesitantly. To Ron, of course, Lupin might no longer be a mass murderer, but he was still a werewolf.
Snape said, "How very touching. I suggest we return to the castle with our captive, before the Dementors find us."
He was cut off by Hermione's shriek. She pointed fiercely at the place where Pettigrew had knelt, and where now lay only the thin coils of rope that Snape's spell had bound him in.
"You idiot!" Sirius shouted at Snape. "The silencio!"
And before Harry could move or speak, Sirius wasn't there any more: his body seemed to twist and change, like the transformation of Peter Pettigrew, but in reverse, until a big shaggy black dog had taken his place. Padfoot, he thought, as the dog gave a loud bark and raced out of the door, following the invisible scent trail. Snape, muttering curses, chased close behind; behind him Harry followed, not noticing whether the others followed behind and not caring about anything except that the betrayer of his parents should come to justice at last.
He chased the dim outline of Snape's billowing robes through the dusty gloom of the Shack; outside it was getting dark, and the light was poor and only got worse as they got deeper into the house, until they weren't in a house any more but a dirt tunnel, almost pitch black, and where it led Harry couldn't tell, he only kept his eyes trained on the shape of Snape in front of him, thinking that he would never have expected to be glad to see it. At the end of the tunnel Snape seemed to disappear, and for a moment Harry couldn't tell where he'd gone; it was only when he himself reached the dead end that he looked up and out into a square of branch-thatched sky: the Weeping Willow! He hoisted himself out, taking a moment to catch his breath and look around.
It was then that the first branch hit him.
Fortunately for him, it was one of the thinner and less heavy sorts, but it slashed across his face and stung like a whip-crack, and Harry staggered to the side, blind for a moment with the pain. He reached out his hand to lean against the trunk of the tree, and another stinging blow was laid across the back of his hand. At that he started back with a strangled yelp, further out where the branches could get at him more easily, and the blows rained thick and fast now. He lost his glasses early on, and stumbled about nearly blind, trying to get to beyond where he thought the branches would be able to reach but the thin branches kept twining around his ankles to trip him up and pull him back.
"Harry!" came a rough shout at last, and the stinging blows stopped suddenly. Harry lay panting, feeling every lash on his body. Lupin handed him his glasses, and when he put them on he could see a thin trail of blood across the red weals on his hands.
"Come on, Harry," Lupin ordered, but gently, trying to lift him and make him move out of the Willow's reach. "That won't hold forever. Hermione, come and help, please?"
Harry felt himself hoisted on both sides and half-walked, half-dragged a little way off.
"Oh, Harry, your face," Hermione gasped, and Ron let out a long, low whistle. Lupin was touching the lash-marks gently, like a Healer.
"You'll live, I think," he finished, smiling.
"Where're Sirius and Snape?" Harry demanded.
"I don't know. Still chasing Peter I - no, wait, look! There!"
Harry looked where Lupin pointed, and sure enough there was the big black shape of Sirius-the-dog, Padfoot, bearing down on a tiny scurrying form which darted this way and that to avoid him. Snape was nowhere to be seen.
"Come on," Harry urged his godfather, as the gap between dog and rat closed. "Come on."
But then, suddenly, the rat veered wildly to the left, too fast for the bigger dog to follow. Harry gasped in despair, but Hermione shouted, "Crookshanks!" and yes, the lanky marmalade tomcat was there, pouncing from the shadows with a grace and speed that Harry would never have thought he had in him. When his head came up, there was a wriggling rat clamped firmly between his jaws. The great black dog bounded to his side, barking joyfully.
"See? I knew he was right all along," Hermione crowed triumphantly, slapping Ron's hurt arm.
"Talk about a time and a place, Hermione," Ron groused, wincing and cradling his arm.
Lupin let out a long sigh of relief, patting the black dog on its head as it loped over to them. "Good dog."
And suddenly there was no dog, only Sirius, sitting at Lupin's side and grinning. "Well then," he said. "Happily ever after, it looks like, doesn't it?"
"It rather does, I must ad-admi- oh, no, no, no."
The light was dusky, tinged red with sunlight, but it seemed to grow suddenly blacker, the temperature frosty, all the joy and relief of the moment leeched out. Harry knew what he was going to see before he saw it, but it still twisted his stomach nauseatingly. There were so many of them: seemingly hundreds of ragged black shapes gliding silently towards them. Out of the Forest they came, and from the Castle, some from the sky; from every direction. Harry thought he was going to be sick, with Lupin's soft desperate murmuring in his ear.
"Expecto..." Sirius was muttering, but his voice was weak and thin and the arm that clutched his wand waved feebly. "No, not now, Expecto Pat-patro..."
Harry heard a rasping death-rattle of a breath behind him, close to his ear, and then it was all screaming in his ears - far off voices - screaming - screaming - flash of light - green light - no more screaming - silence - and blackness, blackness -
"Not my Harry! Not my Harry!"
Mother?
"Stand aside, foolish, girl."
"No, I won't, I won't!"
"Well, then."
screaming, screaming - a baby's high wail - voices muttering - high cold laughter - screaming - green flash - blackness, blackness - all over now...