18.
Harry lay awake again, this time owing to his conversation with Lupin. Did Sirius ever have a trial? He couldn't help but feel that he was missing too many details about his godfather's crimes. A roiling pit of anger still lay coiled in his belly, but he was less certain that it was justified. The only people who could have possibly known about the fidelius charm were his parents, Sirius, Pettigrew, and...Dumbledore. But what about Peter Pettigrew? Where did this mysterious fourth friend go? Harry whacked himself in the face with his blankets in a futile attempt at trying to get himself to sleep. Of course, he pored over all of the newspapers from back then in the library's records that afternoon just before dinner and found nothing on Peter except for a line that spoke of a severed finger belonging to the man. It didn't make sense. The writing, as detailed and explicit as articles were today, painted a gory scene full of stray body parts. It was obscene, really, almost too bloody. Why leave just a finger when all of the other bodies were left entirely at the scene, even if they were in bits and pieces? Why was Peter even with so many muggles?
Harry slapped himself again, trying anything to get his brain to stop firing like a gun fight in an old muggle western, anything to sleep. Another firm slap and Harry gave up trying to sleep and got up. He decided against his better judgment to slip quietly out of the common room, swinging the sleeping Fat Lady's portrait quite silently with the help of his wand and a clever charm or two. Under his invisibility cloak, no one could know that he'd gone out. He headed for the clock tower because he liked the way the gears sounded as the clock ticked away, but stopped as a shadowy figure ran headlong into him. Harry reacted quickly and managed to stay on his feet while the stranger fell backwards, staring dazedly up at the empty space where Harry stood.
"James?" the man asked in a shaky voice, face half obscured by his hair. He smelled terrible. Before he could say anything else, Harry stunned him and disillusioned the body. Levitating the man behind him, Harry hastened to the clock tower and found the largest bell sitting there where Filch had left it for repairs the week before. Since he was a squib, he had to ask Snape for help and the professor hadn't had time to replace it since. Harry carefully levitated the large bell and crept under it with his prize. Inside, he straightened and cast a battery of privacy charms and a free floating lumos to get a better look at the strange man. The picture in the Prophet made him look much angrier than real life, but there was no denying that the man sprawled before him was Sirius Black. Harry cast a silent ennervate and had to immediately cast a restraining curse to pin Sirius to the walls of the bell as the man pounced at him.
"Are you stupid?" Harry asked him, remaining unseen. "Why would you come into the castle? I don't know who you're after, or why you escaped from Azkaban, but you really must have lost your mind in prison if you were stupid enough to come here. I did you a favor. If you'd gone any farther, someone would have seen you."
"Who are you?" The man asked, fighting against Harry's restraints. "Why do you have James's cloak?" Harry pulled the cloak off slowly, stepping into the light to look up into his face. Sirius gaped at him and then started sobbing.
"It's you," he sobbed, "It's really you." Harry's brow furrowed.
"You know me?"
"Of course I do. You're Harry, aren't you? You-you have your mother's eyes." Harry's eyes hardened.
"Don't talk about my mother." His voice was cold, sharp enough to cut through a man's heart. Harry produced his glass orb and broke it apart into tiny shards, sharp like needles, almost invisible to the eye, but all too tangible on the skin. They flew at Sirius's face, forcing the man to press his head against the wall of the bell, afraid to move against the sharp needles pricking every pore on his face.
"I could kill you now, if I wanted to, but fortunately for you, I've got questions. Unfortunately for me, it's the middle of the night and if I don't make it back to bed, I'll be missed. Now hold still." Sirius made a curious whimper, but did not move. Harry looked into Sirius's soul and tied a strand of his own magic to it, a kind of tracking spell no one but himself could see. It might have hurt for Sirius, but Harry couldn't find it in himself to care.
"I will say this once and you will listen," Harry said when he was done. "You're going to leave the castle the way you came. Keep out of sight, but stay near Hogsmeade and I will find you during the next Hogsmeade visit and you will answer my questions. Are we clear?" Sirius started to protest, but Harry forced the glass deeper into his skin, drawing blood in some places. He reformed the glass into larger, sharper needles ringing around the man's neck. The process produced heat and the points of the rapidly cooling molten glass needles burned his skin. Despite the pain, Sirius barked out a few garbled words.
"The rat!" he hissed, "I need the rat. Your friend's rat, the one missing a toe."
"What do you want with Scabbers?" A rat? Harry didn't expect this at all.
"He's an animagus, Harry. He's Peter Pettigrew, the man who really betrayed your parents." He speaks the truth, Legion said in his mind, almost amused. Again, Harry believed Legion to be a good judge of character. The clock tower's minute hand groaned above him and Harry was acutely aware of the hour, knowing that he would be missed if he didn't head back soon. He huffed with frustration.
"I'll deal with him," Harry spat, releasing his restraints and reforming the glass orb. "For now, you need to leave. Go before someone spots you." Sirius looked like he wanted to protest, but nodded obediently, keeping his hands in the air in surrender. In a show of power, Harry lifted a hand and effortlessly levitated the towering bell clear away from their heads and motioned for Sirius to leave. He obeyed, looking warily over his shoulder at Harry before sprinting out from under the heavy bell. Once they were clear, Harry donned his cloak again and left Sirius in the dark wondering where he'd gone. Harry watched him go, only mildly surprised to see him turn into a dog whose furry paws brushed quietly against the hard floors.
"Padfoot, eh?" Harry whispered to himself. "I need to learn that one."
As he dragged his bedding into the Great Hall, Harry bitterly regretted not killing Sirius when he had the chance. In his haste to leave the castle, Sirius had managed to wake up several portraits as he tried to jimmy a door open. The whole castle woke up in an uproar just minutes after Harry had finally clawed his way back to bed. Harry found a secluded corner and lay down pointedly to the side, avoiding every eye trained on him. Many, he was sure, blamed him for the breach in the castle's security.
"Hey Potter," Draco hissed, shuffling over to Harry's corner.
"What?" Harry mumbled back darkly.
"Scoot over," he replied, already shoving Harry over with his bony elbows. Draco stacked their pillows side by side and they slept with their backs against each other, Draco shooting down every look that came Harry's way with a glower of his own. Though Draco's body heat at his back comforted him, Harry still shivered and failed to fight the impulse to wrap his arms tightly around himself. If Draco noticed it, he didn't say a word.
"How did he get into the castle?" Ron asked over breakfast the next day. Harry shrugged and grunted noncommittally, pretending to avoid the subject, eyes fixed on Ron's rat. He could see now the subtly concealed threads of magic. Scabbers had an entire magical core and Harry hadn't noticed the entire time he'd known Ron. Harry scowled and tossed his toast back onto the plate, too angry at himself to eat.
"Oh no you don't, Potter," Hermione said, levitating the toast up to his face. "Ron, stop talking about Sirius. You're ruining everyone's appetites. Harry reluctantly went back to nibbling on the rest of his breakfast, trying his damndest not to reach across the table and crush the rat between his fingers.
We must confess that we did not anticipate this, Legion grumbled, almost as surly as Harry felt. The rat possesses a core that is barely a core at all, perhaps because of prolonged time spent in the animagus form. The soul chooses the form, after all. Harry scoffed into his tea and almost scalded his own nose. Hermione patted his back and stuck her tongue out petulantly at Ron, who sneered and scooted farther away from her.
"Are you two still fighting?" Harry set his tea down and rubbed his scar.
"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione asked, grabbing Harry's arm to get a better view of his face. Ron scooted back over to them, his concern for Harry overpowering his irritation with Hermione.
"It's just a headache. I didn't sleep well last night on the floor." It wasn't a very good lie. He had a migraine, probably because he intentionally did not fall asleep so that he wouldn't wake up screaming from his dreams in front of the entire school. The searing pain in his scar, however, was a different story entirely. As Ron and Hermione bickered, Harry could feel pain lancing through his forehead to the point that he could feel the outline of his scar.
"I'm going to lie down before our first class. Don't worry, I'm just tired." Harry waved off his friends, abandoned his breakfast, and made his way up to the common room. When he made it to the grand staircase, however, a wave of nausea hit him and he had to try hard to keep himself from being sick in the middle of the throng of students heading to breakfast. Loosening his tie, Harry dashed through the closest door and ran as far as he could before the pain and the nausea brought him to his knees. He threw up what little he'd eaten for breakfast and pressed his forehead to the floor, letting the blessed coolness of the stone sooth the feverish skin. He heard the soft whisper of smooth bottomed shoes scraping against the floor. Whoever it was hesitated a moment before running to where Harry was hunched over. The sick was magicked away and Harry felt himself being wrapped up in a cloak and picked up gently.
"You're burning up," Snape hissed, bundling Harry up tighter in his cloak and rubbing his arms down to ease the shivering. Harry heard a door slam shut and Snape deposited Harry in an armchair, reaching to touch his forehead. Harry yelped and flinched away from the contact.
"Your scar. It's bleeding." Snape moved away to fetch more potions and Harry tried to open his eyes, to banish the glaring pain obscuring his vision. Hazy images flashed before his eyes and Snape's office was replaced by darkness. Harry was overcome by rage that wasn't his own and he thrashed, only to be jolted back into reality as his body hit the floor. A hand touched his shoulder and he struck out with his fists instinctively. His first blow missed, but the second made contact with a jaw. Snape grunted and caught Harry's fists in his on hand.
"Harry, calm down. You're safe." Harry blinked and immediately relaxed in Snape's grip, breathing heavily, trying not to be sick again. He slumped back against the armchair and closed his eyes. Snape applied a wet cloth to his forehead with gentle pressure and pressed the lip of a potion bottle to Harry's lips. Harry drank obediently and was relieved to find that the combination of pain reliever and fever reducer was working.
"Was it him?" Snape asked warily, helping Harry back into the chair. He pulled up a stool and continued his ministrations on Harry's scar.
"It was," Harry sighed, feeling embarrassed.
"What did you see?"
"Nothing, just-" Harry shook his head.
"Where did you learn to punch like that?" Snape asked, rubbing his jaw. Harry laughed weakly.
"Lupin and his crazy bootcamp." Harry's chuckle caught in his throat as the darkness flashed through his vision again. Snape saw him wince and rolled up his sleeve to show Harry his own mark, which burned an angry red against his own skin.
"I should have known yours was affecting you worse," he said, moving to cover it again. Harry stopped him and traced the burning mark with his fingers.
"Are you sure you don't want me to get rid of it?" Harry looked steadily in Snape's eyes.
"Thank you for thinking of me, Harry," Snape sighed, "But as I told you after you did that for Lucius, I need to keep it."
"Because you're a spy?" Harry couldn't believe it, but he was getting irritated with Snape's petulance. He would have removed it anyway if he didn't think Snape would hate him for doing it.
"No, because it's the best way I can protect you, Harry. He's still alive and this mark is the only way I can stay close to him to make sure he won't hurt you."
"I'm not worried about myself, Professor. I couldn't live with myself if you got hurt, if the mark's hurting you now." Snape shook his head.
"Your life is more important right now, Harry." Snape gently pried Harry's fingers away from his sleeve and rolled it back down. He sent all of Harry's teachers an owl, waited for him to eat a full meal, and sent him back to bed.
"I will sick the Granger girl on you and if I find out from her that you didn't make it to bed, I will sick Draco on you to take you shopping every day over the holidays," Snape clipped as he left for his first potions class of the day. Harry didn't complain and scuttled up to the Gryffindor common room. When he got there, however, Harry was surprised to find Scabbers sitting in his cage.
"Hey there," Harry said, poking a finger through the bars of the cage, "did Ron come back and leave you here?" An idea sprouted in Harry's mind. As quick as he could and out of sight, Harry transfigured a sock into a rat, a husk of a thing that would look and act like a rat until Harry ended the spell. It was another one of Legion's tricks. He hid the husk behind his back and approached the cage, reaching out one hand to stun Scabbers before switching him out with the fake rat. Harry transfigured Scabbers into a button and shoved him in his pocket as he retreated to his own bed, drawing the bed hangings with a sweep of his arm.
"Did you want to see me, Professor?" Harry asked as he stepped through the doorway of McGonagall's office. As usual, the office smelt of tea and old parchment and he found McGonagall in an armchair in front of the fire.
"Yes, Mr Potter," she said, gesturing to the armchair opposite hers. "I heard from Severus that you were ill," she continued as Harry sat and she levitated a teapot from its hook over the fire.
"Yes, it must have been stress. I'm feeling much better now." McGonagall eyed him for a few seconds and he fidgeted under her gaze.
"I called you here, Mr. Potter, hoping you would talk to me. You've probably figured out by now that Sirius Black is after you. At the risk of sounding like a horrid muggle psycho-something or another, how does that make you feel?" When Harry didn't answer, she sighed and said, "It must make you feel something. I know you're not afraid of him. You let me know as much when I refused to take you to Hogsmeade." When Harry still did not speak, she continued.
"How about a trade?" Harry's eyes snapped to hers and his eyebrows furrowed together.
"Ah, interest at last," she said, the corners of her mouth flicking up in amusement. "I know you're always looking for something to learn. I'm the world's foremost expert on transfiguration. I must have something you want to learn."
"I want to be an animagus," Harry said after a long while. It was a good chance. McGonagall arched one eyebrow and threw up both hands.
"I see you've been thinking about this for a while, Mr. Potter. Very well. You're a third year and you're the best in my class. I don't see why not." She pointed her wand in the general direction of her desk and a small box floated over to them. From the box, she produced a single leaf, which she handed to Harry.
"That is a mandrake leaf. Hold it to your tongue with a sticking charm for a whole month. I suggest putting it under your tongue." Harry obeyed and grimaced at the bitterness, but didn't complain.
"The second thing you need to do is allow me some access to your mind. It's nothing so intrusive as a legilimens, but I do have to help you along your way to discovering what your form is. Otherwise, there's no telling what you could do to yourself." Harry nodded, certain that his mental barriers would hold.
"Excellent," she said, rising from her seat. The professor transfigured a very nice carpet over the cold stone floor and gestured for Harry to follow. "Oh, don't look so surprised. You've never seen an old woman sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor?" Harry's confused expression deepened and the professor grinned, looking extremely pleased. It wasn't often she could get Harry to break his stoicism in front of her. Her lesson, as it turned out, was a deep meditative session not unlike those he had with Tom. She had him sit cross-legged on the ground with his hands on his knees.
"Close your eyes, Mr. Potter, and focus on the things weighing on your mind," McGonagall said, placing the fingertips of her index fingers to Harry's temples. A gentle probe approached his barriers, only enough to see his immediate thoughts and nowhere near enough to tap any memories further. He thought of the usual things, Lupin's homework, his lessons with Snape, his duelling with Flitwick, Ron's spat with Hermione, and the trouble with poor Buckbeak. Inevitably, however, his mind wandered despite his best efforts, to Sirius. He managed to keep their meeting out of his thoughts, but he couldn't help but wonder how a man who claimed to be his parents' best friend could betray them.
"I know you don't know much about your parents, Harry," McGonagall said gently, the lilt of her accent echoing through his mind, "but I believe their friendship with Sirius was genuine. Your father's parents even took him in. War, however, changes people. Regardless of what others say, what do you make of Sirius, Harry?"
"I think I don't know anything about him. I don't know enough to think anything about him," Harry said, the picture of Sirius from The Daily Prophet roving around his mind.
"Really?" McGonagall said, sounding surprised. "You're not at all angry?"
"No," Harry sighed after a moment's pause. "I was. I wanted to kill him at first, but then I started really thinking about it and realized that I knew next to nothing about this man and neither did anybody else, really. If the newspapers could lie about that night, then they could have lied about Sirius, too."
"Why would you think the newspapers lied?"
"All of them say that I stopped Vold-He-who-must-not-be-named, when really I was only a baby who did absolutely nothing to save myself that night. It was my parents-" A lump in his throat stopped him from saying the rest of the sentence.
"Your parents?" McGonagall said gently. She waited patiently as Harry gathered himself and forced the tears to retreat.
"My parents. It was really my parents whose sacrifice saved me and the newspapers made me out to be some hero."
"You think that your reputation and the fame the newspapers forced upon you overshadowed the tragedy of their deaths."
"Yes," Harry bit out.
"There's more you're not telling me, Harry. I can see it here in your thoughts."
Another moment's pause and Harry rasped, "I didn't know about any of it. I didn't know that my parents sacrificed themselves for me until Hagrid came to get me that evening. I'd always, always known that they were dead, but I didn't know they died for me, that they were murdered for me. I spent my whole life thinking they died in a car crash, when really they died for me and then everyone tells me I'm a hero and nobody even cared that they died for me."
"You feel guilty, then," McGonagall said in his mind, still sage-like and calm, "and you're afraid that you might make the same mistake in assuming that Sirius is guilty. You think it's your fault that your parents died and that his betrayal was also your fault. If your parents didn't need to protect you, they wouldn't have died and Sirius wouldn't have needed to betray them." Harry didn't respond to that, but his thoughts mutinously agreed with everything she said.
"If by your reasoning, however, you were completely powerless to do anything the night your parents died, then you also had no power over their actions or anyone else's. If Sirius really was a death eater, he would have still betrayed your parents. If not, they still would have died during the war and a great many people would have, too, had it not ended when it did. You could not control anything your parents did and you could not have stopped the dark lord from hurting them." Harry knew she was right, and the logical part of his brain knew that she was right even before she spoke, but his guilt still gnawed at his stomach.
"Since you didn't know the circumstances behind your parents' deaths," she continued, "finding out now feels like they died all over again. This guilt that you're feeling over not knowing, not honoring their sacrifices, is really part of the grief that you never had the chance to resolve before the wizarding world thrust its opinions upon you." She hit a chord with Harry that time and realized that he never did get the chance to really bury his parents. The morbid thought came to him that he wanted to join his parents in death more often than he thought about relinquishing them and their memory to the afterlife. He was more guilty that he should think about living when someone else had died in his place. It was selfish.
"No, Harry," McGonagall said, still calm, "your parents chose willingly to give their lives for you and you could have done nothing to stop them. It is more selfish to throw away the life they gave you." Again, he could not deny that she was right. McGonagall retreated from his mind and Harry woke slowly, feeling somewhat more free. McGonagall sat patiently in front of him, hands folded neatly in her lap, a smug expression on her face.
"You've done very well, Mr. Potter. What did you feel when I left your mind?"
"Like I was...flying?" She nodded sagely, the corners of her mouth crinkling upwards.
"It's still too early to tell, but your form could be an animal that can either fly or run swiftly and lightly. It's really very good progress. We will do more during our next lesson in let's say two days."
"What about my end of the deal?"
"Why Mr. Potter," she said, arching an eyebrow, "you've already fulfilled it." When he realized he'd been had again, Harry's face turned beet red and he scrambled back to his feet to leave.
"Wait a minute, Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, rising to her feet. "Take a biscuit and some tea with you. Severus would be ever so cross if I didn't make you eat something."
"Thanks, Professor," Harry muttered, finally escaping her office, biscuit and tea in hand.
Harry emerged from Honeydukes with a profoundly agonized expression on his face, which was carefully hidden behind a well woven glamour and a wall of notice me not charms. To the world, he was a girl younger than eleven with long blonde hair and it was the furthest he could get from his true appearance, such was the extent of his paranoia. His expression, however, didn't belong on the face of a girl that young.
"I should have known the twins had something like this," he muttered to himself. When Harry tried to sneak out of Hogwarts earlier that day in an admittedly half-baked attempt with his invisibility cloak, the twins had tackled him, shoved him in a bag, and taken him to an empty classroom. There, they produced a crazy looking map imbued with a confusing jumble of ingenious, but crude threads of magic. Harry tried giving back the map, thinking it was far too valuable, only to have the twins shrug and say that they haven't needed the map in quite some time. He already thought they possessed superhuman talents in the art of pranking, but knowing they reached a level of mastery that surpassed even a need for the map made him fearful of knowing what else they had up their sleeves.
Putting his conflicted feelings of fear and amusement aside, Harry reached for the magic that tethered him to Sirius and followed the thread to a small cave on the outskirts of town occupied by a pack of wolves and one familiar black dog. Harry released his glamour and approached the den, entirely unconcerned with the wolves, who seemed to know who they were dealing with and respectfully exited the den as if to give him some privacy with Sirius. It was quite a large den, consisting mostly of an overhanging rock, under which a large hole deep enough for a man to stand in was dug by many generations of wolves. Sirius regained his human form and approached Harry, apprehensively watching the wolves leave. After his conversation with McGonagall, Harry sighed and decided he couldn't work with this man if he was dirty, disheveled, and scared of him. Wandlessly, Harry conjured a table, chairs, and a tea set before him. He pointed a finger at Sirius and in a few short spells, the man was clean, shaven, and dressed in a brand new set of robes. Finally, he carved out a fireplace in the walls of the cave where a roaring fire blazed to life whose smoke seemed to disappear as it hit the air. When the work was done, Harry sat down and motioned for Sirius to follow. He threw a leg over his knee and tossed the button/rat onto the table.
"Eat first, please," he sighed, pushing a plate of sandwiches closer to the starving man before him. No amount of magic could fill the gauntness of Sirius's cheeks. "You're no use to me starving. It's not poisoned."
"Don't you hate me? Why are you doing this for me?" Sirius asked, picking up the food cautiously in one hand, keeping his eyes on the small, but threatening figure before him.
"I don't hate you," Harry said, crossing his arms. "If I seemed angry the last time we met, it was because I was in a bad mood and what you did was kind of stupid."
"It kind of was, wasn't it," Sirius mumbled. "You don't believe the newspapers-"
"The newspapers are full of lies," Harry snapped, "I didn't know you existed until a few months ago and no fish wrap that's done me so many wrongs is going to tell me what to think."
Sirius laughed, a raspy, unused sound that seemed to break his barely held together face. "That's very Brechtian of you."
"What does that mean?" Harry knew, of course, who Bertolt Brecht was because of all the reading he did, but he wasn't about to let Sirius know that.
"Oh he's a muggle thinker. He thought that people shouldn't believe everything that things like the newspapers and theater wanted them to believe and that people should form their own opinions from the media they consume. I read some of his stuff while the war was going on and it gave me a lot to think about, helped me cope." The ghost of a smile reappeared on his face and he went back to eating. Harry stared down the man before him, mulling over his opinions of him, trying hard to shake his anger so that he could be objective.
"You are very powerful," Sirius said, rattling Harry out of his reverie. "How on Earth did you do all those things-all this?"
"I, uh, had to learn fast because of the, you know, dark lord thing." Harry paused for a second, frustratedly raking a hand through his hair, and said, "I'm sure you read up on me when you got out. I did a lot of accidental magic, I guess, to protect myself."
If Sirius had read the papers and learned of Harry's rescue from the Dursleys, he didn't show it. Instead, he chewed thoughtfully for a little while, swallowed, and said, "You know that nervous tick you have with the hair? You got that from your mother. It's how we could tell she was bothered."
"I had no idea," Harry said. He let Sirius eat and when he was finally finished, Harry picked up the button that was sitting innocuously on the table.
"Say I believe you when you say that Peter Pettigrew betrayed my parents," Harry said, flipping the button around his knuckles idly, "what were you planning on doing once you got ahold of him?"
"I don't really know, to be honest," Sirius laughed. "I know that sounds stupid, but after this many years, all I really wanted to do was kill him."
"That is stupid," Harry said, catching the button in his fist.
"I know, but I was a dead man anyway. I'm going to get caught eventually. All of magical Britain is looking for me. Everyone I care about is dead or hates me. The last thing I wanted to do before I died was kill that bastard."
"If I'm going to help you," Harry started, "you're going to have to change that attitude. We're going to do this the right way. We're going to clear your name."
"Harry, I don't want you to worry about this. I just wanted to kill Peter and go back to prison, or die, or whatever. I never wanted to bring you into any of this."
"Too late," Harry said, smirking. "You're my godfather. You're the closest thing I have to the family that I lost and you could be useful. I'm not letting your shit attitude stop me from saving your arse. Look." Harry transfigured Peter the button back into Peter the rat and again into Peter the person. Sirius sat rigid in his chair, mouth open in amazement and the frozen, terrified form floating in the air before him, as if suspended in water. Legion's latest lessons were on keeping a person's body and soul in stasis, as if pressing the pause button on a life. He couldn't do it too long before the soul inevitably began to leave the body, but people could stay this way for a few months. It was something like being frozen in carbon from Star Wars, only real and much cooler, not that any pureblood wizard would know what Star Wars was.
"We have this and the fact that you were never given a trial."
"That's all true, but how are we going to get around the Ministry? It's the ministry's fault I never got a trial."
"No, think," Harry said, crossing his arms. "Who sent you to prison? Whose testimony was it that the Ministry took to heart to decide your guilt?"
"Dumbledore's, but he can't-"
"Yes, Dumbledore," Harry said, cutting him off. "Think about it. If you had a trial, you wouldn't have been taken to prison. I wouldn't have been stuck in that hell hole of a place. I know you were supposed to take care of me when my parents died, but you couldn't because Dumbledore put me in my relatives' care without telling anybody."
"That does make some sense," Sirius said, cradling his head in his hands.
"What?"
"I-I tried to take you away from Godric's Hollow after the attack. I was the first person there and the first thing I did was pick you up and try to take you somewhere safe, but Hagrid showed up and told me Dumbledore was taking you to your aunt's house and I was so distraught, I-" He looked at Harry for a horrified moment. "It's my fault you-"
"No," Harry said, voice icy calm. "It was Dumbledore."
"But why would he do this to me? To you?"
"The same reason why he put me with the Dursleys. To ruin me. He didn't care who he took down to do it." Harry still didn't understand why Dumbledore did all this to him, but every word out of Sirius's mouth further confirmed that it was Dumbledore's doing from the beginning.
"In any case," Harry said, changing Peter back into a button, voice all business once again, "I'll let you think about everything I've told you. If you're genuinely interested in clearing your name, send me an owl." Harry left Sirius with a bag of supplies and some money, as well as a very good glamor.
"You're really good at this whole escaping the law thing," Sirius said as if it were a dismayed observation.
"I have very good role models," Harry said, thinking about the Weasley twins and the map.
"Oh no, t's the Potter genes at work. You had me worried you were all your mother with none of your father, but I see his mischief survived in you." Sirius paused and smiled down at his hands, trembling just a little bit.
"You know," he said, looking up at Harry at last, "if we get out of this alive, you might make a good marauder." Harry smirked and left him under cover of his glamor and dared to think that they might be able to pull this off after all.