19.
"Professor Lupin is ill," Professor Snape clipped, scribbling the next assignment on the chalkboard, "and he asked me to substitute for the day." Despite every rumor that circulated the castle about Professor Snape pining away for the position of Defense teacher, Harry was surprised to find him looking awkward, decidedly out of place without the dark mustiness of the dungeons and the clinical neatness of a potions lab.
"Since Professor Lupin just ended a section in the book, I see no reason to start a new one without him since his absence will be quite short. Today," he said pointing his wand at the board, "you'll be learning about dementors." As he said the words, the syllabus on the board transformed itself into a detailed drawing of a dementor, complete with diagrams and annotations. Harry'd seen the same drawings before, but feigned surprise for Snape's sake.
"Sir," Hermione said, raising her hand, "dementors aren't covered until at least sixth year."
"True, miss Granger," Snape responded, rolling his eyes, "but given the unusual presence of dementors on school grounds, I thought you all would want to know how to protect yourselves against their effects. Before you say another word, Granger, while the dementors here are on watch by the ministry, dementors are still very dangerous and dark magical creatures. They cannot be tamed."
"Why are they dangerous, sir?" Neville asked.
"They revive bad memories, make you feel as if you'll never be happy again, and feed on the memories of those who live through trauma. In short encounters, the effects are temporary. With constant exposure, even the strongest people go mad and lose the ability to think, not to mention using magic. This is why they are so effective as bodyguards. The ultimate danger, however, is the way that they kill. The dementor's kiss steals the victim's soul, an injury that kills indefinitely." The class sat rigidly, staring at Snape with petrified looks of horror until Harry coughed conspicuously.
"Right, well, there are a few things you can do to protect yourselves." Snape began drawing the correct wand movements for the patronus charm and rattling off things that commonly ward off dementor effects. Nobody managed the patronus, of course, but the lesson made the students feel better about their chances. Later that same day, Draco left for the ministry with his father to testify at Buckbeak's hearing.
"Are you sure you're going to be okay while I'm gone?" Draco asked Harry apprehensively.
"Of course, it's only quidditch," Harry replied. "Besides, Buckbeak's life is at stake. Solicitor Lawson has a plan, right?" Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
"It wasn't all her idea. You'll see. You'll love it."
"Why do I get the feeling this isn't totally legal."
"Everything's legal if you can get away with it."
The days leading up to the quidditch game against Hufflepuff were bitter cold and Oliver made his training regimen ever more strenuous, partly due to his witnessing one of Harry's lessons with Lupin out in the forbidden forest. Harry was working on dodging various spells and projectiles blindfolded, using his hearing to listen for the telltale whistle of a curse or the flick of a wand to figure out where the threat was coming from and move out of the way. The lessons became progressively more rigorous and Lupin eventually taught him various spins and flips he could use to dodge. The moves were surprisingly animalistic, often involving a hunched defensive posture and Harry even found himself on all fours for a few stances. Oliver stumbled upon one such session randomly and narrowly avoided Harry's fist when Oliver stepped on a twig spying on them from behind a tree.
"Bloody hell, Harry," Oliver said, staring warily at the fist Harry'd planted firmly into the wood mere inches from his face. A knuckle-shaped crater appeared under Harry's magically shielded hands. "You're teaching the team how to do that," he said, eyes taking on that manic sheen he'd adopted recently. Lupin, being every inch a Gryffindor, eagerly agreed. Despite the team's grumblings, the training appeared to have paid off in the first few minutes of the game. The rain obscuring most of the Hufflepuff team's vision could do little to muffle the sound of an approaching bludger or the crack of a beater's bat. None of the Hufflepuff beaters had any luck hitting any of the Gryffindor chasers and Gryffindor led all throughout the first half of the game. Harry found the snitch fairly easily again, but held back to give his team some time to show off. A chill running down Harry's spine brought his attention to the sky above him, however, and his stomach sank when he saw the horde of dementors, with waves of eerie souls coursing behind them, surging towards the quidditch pitch. The crowd below, too engrossed in the game, could not see the dementors flitting through the storm clouds.
Harry immediately sped to catch the snitch, hoping again to end the game and avoid disaster by catching it. It was the shortest chase given by any seeker who ever played at Hogwarts, but the cheer of victory died as soon as it started when Harry released the snitch and instead angled his broom upward. A confused Cedric Diggory tried to follow and made it within sight of the dementors before Harry, bellowing for Cedric to turn back, pulled out his wand and cast a gust of wind at him, forcing his broom to turn the other way. As Harry flew into the rain to face the oncoming sea of black cloaks obscuring the sky like a swarm of locusts, Harry's heart fluttered anxiously with fear that he angrily quashed. The scream from his dreams echoed inside his head and the lightning around him seemed to turn green. Wiping away angry tears, Harry resolutely faced the thing that haunted his dreams. The largest dementor seized Harry painfully by the neck and for a moment, the cloudy sky turned into the scene from his dreams. Harry could see the face of a beautiful woman with fiery red hair, his mother, and the tears streaking her cheeks. Harry jolted back to reality and realized that he'd lost his grip on his broom and was slowly suffocating in the dementor's clutches. Grief coursing through him, Harry pulled his wand from its holster, aimed it at the dementor's face, and muttered, "expecto patronum." A brilliant white light, harsher than what Harry was expecting, lit up the sky and sent the other dementors rearing back.
"That's right, run, you bastards," he screamed. He took hold of the souls attached to the dementor holding him and ripped away the bonds, watching as the translucent figures disappear into the astral plane. The dementor screamed as the light of the patronus engulfed it and released him, sending Harry plummeting to the ground. Something plucked Harry from the sky a few short moments later and Harry opened his eyes to find a creature with a gray, sallow face like a mummy and closed eyes, garbed in a robe that seemed to reflect the night's sky, holding him. It looked like a dementor, but as it gently caressed Harry's face, he couldn't feel the usual dread and hopelessness he associated with a dementor. In his mind's eye, the scene of his mother's death replayed slowly in his head, but it didn't cause him pain. Instead, he felt an entirely foreign warmth spread throughout his body and it left him confused. As the memory came to a close, he thought heard something he hadn't noticed before, but his senses were wrenched back into reality. Passing a bony hand over his face, the creature let him go. As Harry fell, a raspy voice echoed in his head saying, "We will meet again, deathseeker." Dimly, Harry was aware of someone magically slowing his descent, but his eyes remained on the creature's face until he passed out.
Harry jolted violently awake a few hours later, clawing at the air, reaching for something. Someone caught his hands and held them to ease their trembling as another pair of hands steadied his shoulders and eased him back to his pillows. A third person dabbed at his face with a damp cloth. As his breathing calmed somewhat, Snape's hold on his hands relaxed incrementally and Harry stopped resisting Lupin's hold on his shoulders.
"Harry," McGonagall said, setting aside her washcloth, "everything is alright. You're safe now."
"Harry, do you remember anything about the quidditch game?" Snape flicked his wand, running diagnostic spells.
"B-bloody dementors," Harry said, clenching his fists hard to force his body to stop shaking. His fingers wouldn't warm despite the apparent warmth of the room. "I knew they were coming after me, so I led them away from the pitch. I think one of them got me and then I cast a patronus and I fell."
"You cast it!" Lupin said from his side, "I knew I saw-" Lupin cut himself off as Snape sent him a withering look.
"That would explain the magical exhaustion," Snape muttered darkly. "That was stupid, Harry."
"Oh shush, Severus, it was brave," McGonagall said, waving a dismissive hand. "I won't reward points for reckless behavior, but I'm proud of your selflessness, Harry." Snape grimaced, but kept his mouth shut, mostly just relieved Harry was awake. Madame Pomfrey bustled in just in time to end the awkward moment.
"How do you feel, Harry? You must be hurting." she asked.
"Only my neck and my head."
"Thought so. Those are ugly bruises," Madame Pomfrey said, peeling away Harry's grimy quidditch uniform to reveal a ring of reddened skin around Harry's neck. "The headache, I suspect, is a remaining side effect of the dementors. Once you get cleaned up, I can give you a salve for the bruises and some chocolate for the headache." Harry looked down at himself and saw that he was still covered in mud and dressed in his uniform. A few short spells later, he was clean and dressed in standard hospital wing jammies. Snape and Lupin left shortly after to aid in rounding up the dementors, leaving Harry alone with McGonagall. Looking around, Harry realized he wasn't in the regular hospital wing, but a small room that appeared to be across from Madame Pomfrey's office equipped with a hospital bed, potions cabinet, private bathroom, and what Harry suspected to be the wizarding equivalent to a crash cart.
"Where am I?" he wondered aloud.
"Poppy made good on that promise, Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, smirking from under her spectacles. When Harry realized what she meant, he groaned.
"Really? My own wing?"
"Oh it's better than that, Harry. You've got your own bed." Harry scrambled to the foot of the bed and found his name inscribed on a plaque in front of it. He groaned again.
"Make sure you let her know you like it," McGonagall continued, "Poppy's been working ever so hard on it."
"I'm flattered, really," Harry said, lying back down and covering his face with his hands. A moment passed before he asked, "What happened after I fell?"
"Professor Dumbledore stopped you falling and Shacklebolt was called to investigate the matter. A team of aurors rounded up the dementors and Dumbledore is in talks with the minister now to sort out what happened." Harry nodded and tried looking thoughtful, but McGonagall stared him down further.
"Up there in those clouds, Mr. Potter," she said after a while, "what did you see?"
"I saw," he began, swallowing hard, "I saw my mother. When she-I was looking at her above me and she was crying and she said-"
"Oh my word, you mean-"
"She said she loved me, professor," he said, staring numbly ahead of him. He hadn't heard it before, but the creature made him watch, forced him to watch.
"The green light-the last thing she said was-" McGonagall took one of his shaking hands and shushed him gently.
"Not another word, Harry." She held his hand, deciding not to say any more. After a moment, McGonagall patted his cheek and sighed, looking older than ever.
"To think that you would remember something like that. Is that the memory you used?"
"I kept dreaming of it, but I never remembered it. When the dementor had me by the neck, it was like I was reliving it. I didn't hear what she said until after I cast it, but at the time, it felt right." McGonagall nodded sagely.
"The patronus charm is a strange thing. We always teach it using very black and white terms. The happy memory required to cast it, however, is subjective. To remember something like what you remember is a rare thing."
"It makes me happy to know what she said, but why does it work if it hurts this much to remember?" Harry asked, turning to look at her.
"It's the purest form of grief that drives away dementors, Harry. Your grief is so sacred and so pure, that the dementors' effects cannot make you suffer for remembering. Very few have suffered as you have and even fewer have that kind of memory."
The next morning, Harry woke with a start and had a startled Cedric Diggory pinned to the floor with his hand on his throat and an upraised fist above his head before he was even fully awake.
"Told you not to touch him," the Weasley twins said, holding a drowsy Harry back and depositing him in his hospital bed. Harry blinked a few times and realized that both the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor quidditch teams stood at the foot of the bed. The Hufflepuff team bore bunches of flowers and bags of sweets.
"Morning?" Harry groaned, rubbing his still-sore neck. Cedric eyed the yellowing bruises warily.
"We wanted to thank you for doing what you did, Harry," Oliver said, grinning.
"Yeah, Harry," Cedric said from Oliver's side, "thanks for saving my sorry arse. I thought you were still chasing the snitch."
"It's fine, Cedric, really." Harry felt his cheeks reddening.
"Anyhow," Katie Bell said, producing a package wrapped in butcher paper, "we thought you'd want to know what happened to your broom, Harry. It rolled by the whomping willow." She unwrapped the butcher paper and produced a splintered, damp collection of wood that was once his broom. Harry touched it mournfully and sighed. It was the broom McGonagall gave him before his first game. Both teams mumbled their apologies, each member cringing at the sight of a lost broom.
"It's nobody's fault, really. Thanks for bringing it."
"You can use mine. Please, it's the least I can do," Cedric offered.
"Oh no I couldn't inconvenience you like that. I think I can make do on one of the school's brooms. It shouldn't take that long to get a new broom anyhow." Rapid footsteps interrupted everyone's thoughts. Draco Malfoy, still dressed in his coat and scarf, tore down the hall leading to Harry's room.
"Harry! I heard-" Draco paused mid-sentence at the sight of 15 people staring at him.
"Er we'll get out of your hair now, Harry," Oliver said, motioning for the others to leave. As the quidditch teams filed out of the room, Draco crept closer to Harry's bed.
"You okay, mate? I heard about what happened." Draco spotted the bruise ringing Harry's neck and looked aghast. "Did those things do that to you? Wait until I tell father."
"Hey, calm down. It's just a bruise. Madame Pomfrey said I could leave today. Besides, I cast a patronus!" Draco looked unconvinced.
"I knew I shouldn't have gone to that stupid hearing."
"Did they let Buckbeak off the hook?"
"Well, yes. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures decided they didn't need to go through with the charges Dumbledore brought up since I wasn't injured and I don't care. It also helped that father bought Buckbeak."
"He bought Buckbeak?"
"Yep. He bought him off of Hagrid. I think the panel gave up because it got too complicated."
"How did he manage to buy Buckbeak in the middle of an investigation?"
"Well, Solicitor Lawson managed to get Hagrid to sign over Buckbeak's papers and take Buckbeak to the manor before Dumbledore even contacted the ministry."
"Is that legal?"
"Of course it is! We got away with it, didn't we? Anyway, stop dodging the subject, Harry. I should have been here. You wouldn't have ended up in here, in your own wing of the hospital wing at that. You wouldn't have played Hufflepuff and I could have helped you."
"It's more likely you would have been in here with me with more than a bruise, or worse, with your soul sucked out."
"That doesn't make me feel any better."
"Well it makes me feel better that you weren't here to be in danger. There were so many dementors, Draco. It was nobody's fault. I chose to take them on by myself. I even forced Cedric to turn back when he tried to help."
"I know, Harry. I just wish you'd accept some help every now and then."
"Well, I'm thinking about building my own broom. How would you feel about helping me with that?" Harry said, gesturing to the remains of his broom.
"Bloody Hell, what happened to your broom?" Relieved to change the subject, Harry pressed Draco for his knowledge on broom construction.
The next evening, Harry was awake in the common room again because of his dreams, which were all the more vivid thanks to the quidditch match, and was startled to see the creature that saved him from falling floating in the window.
"Deathseeker," it whispered in his thoughts, "we must speak." Harry gestured for it to follow and it phased right through the glass like a ghost. Throwing on his invisibility cloak, Harry walked swiftly to the top of the astronomy tower.
"Okay, we can talk," Harry said breathlessly. Harry sat on a crate, gathering his cloak tighter around himself. The creature remained floating in front of him, so expressionless it was unnerving.
"What?" Harry asked, suddenly self conscious.
"You are very young," the creature said, cocking its head. Its voice was clear and neither masculine nor feminine, but high and gentle in his mind.
"Yeah, what of it?"
"You stopped us."
"So you really were the dementor?" The creature hung its head a little like a guilty dog.
"Yes. We apologize for hurting you." Harry realized the creature was staring at his bruises and tugged his cloak higher up on his neck. The creature straightened and brought up its hands, both palms of its bony, black hands facing the sky.
"Are you praying?"
"Yes." This admission was unexpected and Harry didn't know what to make of the former dementor's apparent spirituality.
"So if you were the dementor, why aren't you all...scary anymore?"
"You cured us," the creature replied, refocusing its attention on Harry.
"Cured you? So the other dementors are sick? What are you?"
"Many centuries ago, we were the watchers of souls. When a soul committed great evil, we descended upon it and cleansed it to bring it peace."
The wraiths, as they were once called, came to be when the need arose. Spirits that had done great wrongs sustained exceptional damage and could not rightly return to the astral plane, Legion said. Harry didn't know what any of that meant, but he could go along with it.
"The spirits speak the truth," the creatures said, returning to its praying posture. "We were once the most damaged of spirits and became this way to prevent the loss of more souls. We were the first spirit to become like this and lead others to do the same."
"How did you end up like the other dementors?"
"We committed a great offense to Death."
"Death?"
"The spirit who once oversaw the physical death and held power over the spirits who did not return to the astral plane. It once bridged the gap between the astral plane and the physical plane and acted where the spirits could not intervene, but it grew selfish. When we began the cleansing, Death lost control over those damaged spirits and we were punished for the offense."
"So he made you into dementors?"
"We must confess that we do not know how it happened. Our time as a dementor was dark and cold as if we did not have control over ourselves. We were the last to be punished and our brethren took souls indiscriminately as if maddened. They mistook grief and pain for guilt and in time we committed the same wrongs."
"Why isn't death still around to make you sick again?" The creature cocked its head.
We felt that Death had overstepped its boundaries and we intervened, though too late, Legion said. While Death was weakened, it could not be eradicated completely because it is Death itself. We have not felt its presence since.
"Can't you cure the others if you're their leader?" Harry was trying to wrap his head around it all, but the story was still way over his head. How could he understand a feud that went on over centuries?
"It is possible, but we have naught the power over them that we once did. We will swear our loyalty to you, however, deathseeker. We sense you have the power to cure them."
"I hardly know how to do that," Harry said, embarrassed. "I don't even know how I cured you. I don't even know what to call you, for that matter."
"We remember a name," the creature said. "Alistair."
"Well Alistair, I'll try to help you, but I don't even know where to start."
"The spell you cast and your power over souls. They will help you. We will be loyal to you. We will follow you for doing us this great service." Alistair turned to Harry and bowed deeply, leaving Harry even more embarrassed and suddenly unsure of what he should do with his hands. Harry scuttled quietly back to Gryffindor tower after an awkward parting, most troubled by his meeting, and almost missed the barn owl tapping at the glass. It was a hired owl from Hogsmeade and Harry didn't have to look to know who it was from. To his surprise, it was a parcel containing a book on broom making techniques and a letter, which simply read "I'm in." Harry smiled and hurried to send Hedwig to Solicitor Lawson.
"What are you doing, Harry?" Draco asked as Harry lugged a great piece of wood onto a table he'd conjured in the abandoned girls' lavatory. The place was distinctly quieter without Myrtle and the sinks concealing the chamber had since been removed and the hole boarded up, though crudely. The events of the past year succeeded in keeping people away, which suited Harry's needs just fine.
"I'm making a broom," he said, grinning like mad. He'd been using the school's Cleansweeps and while they were about as reliable as work horses, Harry found them lacking in maneuverability and speed.
"Why don't you just buy a new one? You've got the money."
"I've always found brooms, even my nimbus, to be too long or the wrong shape. I'm smaller than even the average seeker and I thought it would be a good idea to customize my own broom."
"Harry, don't speak ill of the dead," Draco said as Harry snatched a carving knife out of his hands.
"What, the broom? Draco, please. If it makes you feel better, I gave the nimbus-"
"Rest its poor soul-" Draco looked fit to cry.
"I gave the nimbus," Harry repeated with a chuckle, "a viking funeral. It was very nice."
"What a way to go." Harry shook his head and started in on hand carving the hunk of ash wood before him.
With the help of his time turner, he spent every other free hour he had for the next few weeks carving away at the wood, all the while imbuing it with his own magic as the book instructed him to do. Harry had fiddled with the broom's design for some time and, while researching, discovered that the bristles served as a sort of rudder, but was mostly kept there to maintain a tradition of disguising brooms as brooms, easily explained to a muggle. Instead of including the bristles, Harry decided to create a fanned shape at the end of the broom where the bristles would normally go. The curved ends of of the fan were carved into simple scrolls, with the curved ends just big enough for his feet. Harry carved wood in the Dursleys' yard sometimes when he was much younger if they left him alone and outside for the day, so he wasn't a complete novice, but it was difficult work that Legion helped walk him through with their collective memories. With the help of his Sight, he figured out the best shape for riding the magical currents that conventional broom makers were close to achieving, but couldn't perfect. It was a curiously curved pattern that changed incrementally the whole length of the broom and while it took a lot of work, Harry was very proud of the end result.
"That's a broom?" Ron and Draco both asked at breakfast one day, Harry's creation sitting on the table. Hermione, Ron, Neville, Draco, Pansy, Crabbe, Goyle, Blaise, and both Weasley twins ogled the strange, dark piece of wood lying on the table as if it might bite them. It was about as tall as Harry was and polished to a dull shine.
"Indeed it is, boys, and," Harry said standing up and calling the broom to him, "it doubles as a handy staff." It leapt into his waiting palm with a dull thwack and Draco and Ron watched with wonder as Harry spun it about easily in his hands.
"Wicked where did you learn that?" Ron asked in aw.
"Lupin. You won't believe the kinds of things he and my father got into while they were here. Bloody Chinese staff fighting. This won't be very good as an actual fighting staff, of course, but it'll do in a pinch."
"You're teaching me that sometime," Draco said, wagging a finger at Harry.
"But will it fly?" Ron looked skeptical.
"Yeah it will. I've already cleared it with Madame Hooch. Quidditch rules don't have anything against custom brooms and this is legal as long as it flies and doesn't use any other form of magic than the usual flight charms."
"Yes, but does it fly?" Ron repeated, the same skeptical, furrowed-brow expression on his face.
"You want to try it?" Harry asked, a mischievous look on his face.
Outside, Ron cautiously mounted Harry's new broom and listened warily to Harry's instructions.
"Just kick off like you normally do and put your feet where the knobs are at the end. Be careful, though, this thing has kind of a-" Harry broke off as Ron kicked a little too hard from the ground and shot into the air like a bat out of hell. "-mind of its own," Harry finished.
"Er, Harry," the twins said, "you reckon he's coming back?" Ron's screams could still be heard as his figure grew smaller in the distance. The rest of the group looked completely dumbfounded.
"Yeah, he'll be fine." Harry whistled sharply in within minutes, the broom returned obediently, a bewildered Ron in tow.
"That was bloody brilliant!" Ron screamed, voice still hoarse and hair still blown back. Everyone gave the broom a try and Harry was mildly relieved that nobody fell off.
In the common room later that night, Harry set off a plan he'd been working on ever since he captured Peter Pettigrew. He waited until the boys fell asleep and crept to Scabbers' cage. Vanishing the fake rat he'd conjured before, Harry replaced Peter the rat in his cage and planted false memories of the past few months as well as the suggestion that he wanted to kill Harry, which wasn't very hard to do, since Peter had apparently thought about doing it ever since Ron first met him. Cutting off the spell that kept Peter immobilized, Harry crept back to bed and waited. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, Peter Pettigrew tried to strangle Harry in his bed and Harry had him pinned to the ground within seconds. The commotion awakened everyone in Gryffindor Tower and McGonagall was summoned in her nightie, followed by a perturbed Dumbledore.
"Good heavens, Mr. Potter. What happened?" McGonagall asked, taking in the scene before her. Peter Pettigrew lay stuck to the floor of the room, muttering nonsensical things, mostly relating to murdering Harry.
"I don't know, professor," Harry said, wand still pointed at Peter. "I thought Scabbers had crawled into my bed, but he turned into this man. I've never seen him before in my life!" Ron looked aghast and it took him a few moments to notice that Scabbers' cage was empty. McGonagall pointed her wand at Peter and forced him into his animagus form. Before everyone in the room lay Scabbers the rat. Ron fainted. McGonagall hurried to close the room and usher the other students back to their beds. When Dumbledore arrived, Harry gave the same explanation and McGonagall turned Scabbers back into Peter Pettigrew.
"There's one more thing, Professors," Harry said, trembling a bit for effect. He knelt and, narrowly avoiding Peter's gnashing teeth, rolled up his filthy sleeve to reveal a dark mark, grossly tattooed on his fat forearm and barely visible under the grime of thirteen years.
"Get away from him, Harry," Dumbledore said, casting his own patronus to send a message to the ministry. "That man is dangerous."
"I don't understand it-it's Peter Pettigrew," McGonagall said, horror dawning on her face.
"I thought he was killed by Sirius Black, sir," Harry said, looking greatly confused. "If Sirius didn't kill him and he's a Death Eater, was Sirius framed? Was it this man who betrayed them? After all, if he was working with Voldemort, was it him?" Everyone in the room flinched at Voldemort's name and Dumbledore looked into Harry's rage-filled eyes. Harry didn't have to fake the anger in his voice. He let Dumbledore read the confusion, the suspicion, and the real malice that Harry felt towards the filthy man who lay before him. Peter, as a side-effect of being kept in stasis for so long, babbled things as they spoke.
"I was the secret keeper, oh yes," he mumbled drunkenly. "The dark lord was so pleased when I told him where they were. Yes, yes, and that stupid boy wouldn't die. If I killed him, the dark lord would be so happy with me." The babbling went on like this until the aurors arrived, headed by Shacklebolt, who gave Harry a sad smile and carted Pettigrew away.
"Harry, nobody knows for certain what happened that night," Dumbledore said, placing a comforting arm around Harry's shoulders. "However, now that we have Peter, we can question him and the truth will out. What's important is that you were not hurt."
It didn't take long for news of Peter Pettigrew's attack to spread to the Prophet, thanks in no small part to Harry's anonymous tip, and Harry sent a copy of it to Sirius. He sent another letter to Solicitor Lawson and yet another letter to Lucius and Narcissa. Harry knew he had to tread lightly if he was going to clear Sirius's name the right way.