A/N: Sorry this is so late! Classes just ended this week, so everything the profs hadn't already squeezed out of us had to be turned in. As compensation, this officially the longest chapter so far. I even included some backstory. Well, most of the backstory, to be honest.

I'm thinking this story is starting to wind down. I've got at least another three chapters in mind (honestly this time; I've learned how to judge them…I think), but I don't think there'll be too much to come after that. Anyway, there's another fic project I want to get started soon; I'm planning it now. It'll be a fun piece, especially if I can update it regularly and finish it, as I expect to do with this one. I might do some scenes from this AU, too, and some other stuff that's canon-compliant, so stay tuned for all of that in the next few months (I'm far from speedy, as you've probably noted).

Ok, hope you enjoy the chapter. Thank you for reading, and thank you in advance to everyone who reviews.

Chap. 9

Harry found himself on the sofa, too warm beneath two blankets and so near to a roaring fire. He didn't remember falling asleep. He'd been staring into the fire after lunch. He'd seen grown-ups doing that on TV and had always wondered how anyone could sit still that long, just staring. But with so many thoughts floating around in his head, he hadn't known what else to do with himself.

He sat up. The rain had stopped; it looked brighter than it had all day.

He looked at the blankets, unnerved. That was twice in a row that someone had tucked him in somewhere after he'd fallen asleep. Was that sort of thing normal? Aunt Petunia had always just woken him up and told him to get into his cupboard.

Harry stood up and went into the hall, where the frigid floor made his feet ache. To the right, he saw light coming from around a mostly-closed door. Harry went to it and knocked.

"Come in," Remus called.

Harry pushed his way in, finding an office on the other side. It was much cooler in here. Bookshelves lined two of the walls of the cramped room, and a desk took up most of the floorspace in the middle. Remus sat behind it, a quill in hand and bent over a couple of books. He smiled.

"Did you sleep well?"

Harry shrugged. He looked for something to sit on.

As though reading his mind, Remus pulled his wand from a pocket. He aimed it at a book, which turned into a small stool. Harry sank onto it gratefully. It was wobbly, and the edges of the seat were papery, but he didn't mind.

"Where's Sirius?"

"Sirius went to Diagon Alley."

"Oh. I thought we weren't going till tomorrow. I wouldn't have fallen asleep—"

"No, he'll be back soon. He just thought you could use some proper clothes. And he wanted to get a better potion for your feet. He's going to take you down to the village for dinner when he comes back."

"Oh." Harry craned his neck to look at the desk, but couldn't see much from that angle. "What're you doing?"

"I'm writing an article. It's about Muggle superstitions. I write for different journals sometimes, Muggle and wizard ones."

"Why?"

"It's an extra job."

"Oh."

Remus set down his quill. "Do you have more questions? I imagine you've got an awful lot to think about now."

Harry shrugged and picked at the papery edge of the stool.

"It's all right to be confused, or scared. If—"

"Is Sirius going to get better?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Sirius. You said I had to give him time. And he's so…I don't know. Will he get better?"

Remus nodded. "I think he will. He already seemed to come to his senses a bit more today. He wants to be a good godfather for you, but he doesn't have the first idea how to do that. He's still trying to put his own life together."

"Oh. He said he's going to get a house in the country somewhere."

"I expect he'll look for something large, with a lot of open land around it, good for running and playing Quidditch."

"That's the game with the broomsticks, right?"

Remus smiled and nodded. "That's the game with the broomsticks."

"Sirius said he'd get me one of those and teach me how to play."

"He's been talking about that since he got out of Azkaban."

"How did he get out? You said it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't run away."

"It may well not have done. We told you earlier how he got sent off to prison. Everyone thought he was guilty."

"Even you?"

Remus looked very sad then, but he nodded. "You have to understand, Harry, that we both suspected each other, and no one knew until just a couple of weeks ago that your parents had switched Secret Keepers. But when you went missing, our world, the wizard world, was in an uproar."

"Because I'm the Boy Who Lived?" Harry asked. He tried to imagine being famous, but he didn't even remember what he'd done, so it all just felt too big and strange.

"Because you're the Boy Who Lived. The entire Auror taskforce—do you remember what the Aurors are?"

Harry thought a moment; he'd had so many strange words and names thrown his way today, but the Auror one came back to him almost at once. "They're the ones that are like the Muggle police."

Remus smiled. "Very good. The entire Auror taskforce was put on alert. Dumbledore is the one who put up all of the wards and protections around you, so the Ministry was checking with him all the time. But the Aurors weren't the only ones who wanted to find you."

"Death Eaters," Harry said. He remembered the swish of dark cloaks in the night and shuddered.

"Yes, the Death Eaters." Remus shook his head. "Thank God none of them caught you. But do you know which of the Death Eaters was at Hogwarts just then?"

Harry leaned forward. "Who?"

"Do you remember what we told you about Peter? How he disappeared as a rat?"

"He was at Hogwarts the whole time?"

"Not quite. He became the pet of a boy called Charlie Weasley, when he was about your age. The Weasleys are a pureblood family—"

"Like the Blacks? And the Malfoys?" Harry asked, trying to glare at the formless names.

"Not exactly like them. Not all purebloods are awful people. The Weasleys are just the sort of people who would make a pet out of an innocent looking rat, so they were perfect for Peter's needs. So he was Charlie's pet until the boy got an owl in his fifth year. Peter, known to the family as Scabbers, was passed down to the next oldest boy, Percy, who is now just finishing his third year at Hogwarts. So when you went missing, he was in the perfect place to find out everything that Dumbledore and the Ministry knew."

"And thend he would come after me?"

"No, I doubt that he would have done it himself." Remus glared at a bookshelf. "I think he would have sold the information."

"But how could he have used the money as a rat?"

Remus's expression cleared a little as he regarded Harry. "He wouldn't have sold it for money. He would have done it to curry favor with the Death Eaters again. You see, Voldemort was all but killed on Peter's information; many would suspect that Peter had laid a trap for him. But if he could deliver information that would let them get at you, he would have regained his position. He spent more than eight years as a rat because neither side would believe that he hadn't betrayed them. But this would have been his opportunity."

"What…what would the Death Eaters have done, if they'd caught me?" Harry asked.

"I don't know, exactly. None of them went looking for Voldemort after he was destroyed, so I doubt they would have sought to bring him back now."

"Would they have…killed me?"

Remus met Harry's eyes and nodded slowly. "Almost assuredly."

Harry shuddered again, realizing that he was a bit cold.

Remus must have noticed, because he stood and said, "Why don't we move back into the living room. Would you like a cup of chocolate?"

"Before dinner?" Harry asked without thinking.

Remus smiled. "Just this once. It's your first day back in the wizarding world. We can break a few rules."

A few minutes later, Harry sat on the couch with a beaker of chocolate. Remus took the wingback and continued his story.

"So Peter went up to Dumbledore's office, where Aurors were meeting all the time. They didn't have any leads on you at all after the first day; they were worried that you had already been kidnapped, or that you'd never run away at all, but that it had all been staged somehow. But Peter kept waiting and watching, ready to speed off with any new lead the moment that the Aurors had one. There was one thing he didn't count on, though. About three days after you went missing, and while Percy was in class so Peter had free reign of the castle, Mad-Eye Moody was in Dumbldore's office. You remem—"

"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Harry cried, then clapped his hand over his mouth because he hadn't meant to be so loud.

But Remus laughed. "Yes, exactly. I'm impressed; you've had quite a lot to take in today, but you remember everything."

Harry grinned. He couldn't even remember the last time an adult had been impressed by him, if there ever had been such a time.

Remus turned more serious as he continued speaking. "Well, as you remember so well, Mad-Eye is very, very vigilant. With his magical eye, he'd seen Peter in that office more than once in those three days. So he became very suspicious. Most rats don't like being around so many people and large birds, and they especially don't tend to stay in one spot of such a big castle for days on end."

"Do phoenixes eat rats?"

"No, not usually, but a regular rat doesn't know that. And before Peter knew what had hit him, because Mad-Eye didn't give any sort of warning at all, he'd been Stunned. The Aurors and Dumbledore tried a few spells to find out if he was really just a rat or not. When they got to the one that forces an Animagus to show himself, they got quite a surprise."

"Because Peter was supposed to be dead."

"Right again. So they woke him up and questioned him with Veriteserum—that's a potion that forces someone to tell the truth—and they learned the whole story. Fudge didn't want to accept it, or to deal with a wrongly accused prisoner who was probably insane when he was facing the greatest crisis of his career—your diappearance—but Dumbledore and several Aurors and other politicians forced the matter, and Sirius was free quite suddenly. Fudge tried to keep it as quiet as possible, sending Peter to Azkaban in the middle of the night and freeing Sirius at the same time. A few reporters had been tipped off and were there at the dock, and Fudge tried to buy them off, or to threaten them, or to bribe them, but the story had to break a few days later, anyway. It made quite a stir, especialy when they found that Sirius hadn't lost his mind. Most of the prisoners in Azkaban do."

"Because of the dementors?"

"Because of the dementors. Whatever problems Sirius has right now, they're nothing to what most prisoners have after that long there. Fudge thought he'd be able to keep Sirius in the mental ward at St. Mungo's for the rest of his natural life, with no one knowing that the Ministry had got everything so wrong, but the healers found him to be remarkably sane, and so released him. He's been staying here ever since, trying to find you. I expect he'll start searching for a place for the two of you to live in the next few days. I'm sure you'll have moved and settled before you're even ten."

"You know when my birthday is?"

"Of course I do; I was there the day you were born."

Harry was about to ask about that, but he jumped at the sound of a loud crack right outside.

Remus got up to open the door for Sirius, who was preceded by floating boxes and bags. When Sirius entered, he looked very smug, waving a very polished and new-looking wand at the packages lazily. He grinned at Harry.

"Good to see you're up, mate. We'll be going for dinner soon, and I got a potion for those feet of yours. You'll be back to normal before you can say 'quality Quidditch quaffles quietly quote quaint, questioning, quibbling quips.'"

Harry had no doubt of this, as he had only the vaguest idea of what his godfather had just said.