It wasn't until the end of June that Sirius finally caught a bit of luck.
A little before sunset, he spotted the Minister for Magic walking across the castle grounds, flanked by two other Ministry men and Professor Dumbledore; Sirius's insatiable curiosity lured him out of his hideaway in the Forbidden Forest and after the four men until they came to a stop in front of Hagrid's hut. A large gray hippogriff was chained to a tree among the pumpkins out back, pawing at the ground anxiously and flapping his massive wings. It wasn't until one of the Ministry men stepped forward to speak to Hagrid, a large black axe clutched in his meaty hands, that Sirius realized the hippogriff was about to be executed.
He thought back to Professor Kettleburn's classes on hippogriffs so many years ago—they were powerful and proud, Kettleburn had said, but fiercely loyal to anyone who'd earned their trust. Sirius had thought they looked magnificent. Why would the Ministry want to execute one of Hagrid's?
But before he could investigate further, he heard something that made his fur stand on end. Voices, strangely familiar to his ears, carried towards him on the evening summer breeze. Carefully he picked his way around the hut to find their owners, but there was no one to be seen on the darkening lawn. The voices were still there, though, muttering quietly to each other….
"Scabbers, keep still," one of them whispered.
Sirius froze. Scabbers was the name the Weasleys had given to Peter's rat. And that voice…it was Ron's voice, and there was a high-pitched squeaking accompanying it…he'd found Peter again, he must have—but where were they?
A dark shape flashed across his view up ahead: Crookshanks, his loyal partner-in-crime, running towards the sound of Peter's cries. "Crookshanks!" moaned a girl's voice. "No, go away, Crookshanks! Go away!"
"No!" cried Ron as another shape materialized out of thin air, its head bobbing above the grass—Crookshanks darted after it, and then Ron appeared too, charging after both of them, followed immediately by Harry and the girl. They'd been using James's Invisibility Cloak, Sirius realized; somehow Harry must have gotten his hands on it. Of course he had—he was James's son, after all.
Growling, Sirius raced forward as Peter bolted towards the Whomping Willow, only ten yards away now—he was trying to escape down the tunnel to the Shack—Ron dove forward and grabbed him, pulling Peter's writhing mass in towards his chest.
The three students whirled around at Sirius's approach, Harry reaching for his wand; Sirius leapt at him, knocking him to the ground…he didn't want to hurt Harry, of course, or any of them, but Peter was his priority now…. Ron had stumbled to his feet, gripping Peter too tightly for Sirius to get at him, so he lunged for the Weasley boy instead, sinking his teeth into his arm and dragging him and Peter away.
Ron screamed as they made it beneath the Willow's branches; Sirius dodged them as deftly as he could, as blinded to the pain of their thrashing as he was to the pain he was causing Ron. He dragged Ron through the gap in the tree roots, down the slope into the tunnel to the Shack—desperately Ron hooked a leg around a root, trying to keep himself aboveground, but Sirius was persistent; he pulled and pulled on Ron's arm until his leg came free with a snap and a cry.
Sirius didn't have much time…he dragged the screaming Ron through the tunnel, keeping an eye on the rat thrashing in his hands. If you'd just let him go, I'd leave you alone, he thought; but Ron held on stubbornly to Peter, and so Sirius brought him all the way to the Shack and upstairs to its bedroom, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him.
Finally he let go of Ron's arm, leaving him cowering beside the moth-eaten bed and whimpering as he examined his broken leg. Then Sirius stepped back towards the door to transform into his human self, Ron's face going slack with horror as he rose to his feet and became the wizarding world's most wanted fugitive. Peter, squealing pitifully in his hands, somehow looked even more terrified than his owner.
Sirius grinned at the two of them, bristling with more than a decade's worth of pent-up rage. At long last, he was about to get his revenge.
