For the first moment, I wonder if it's already happened. All the aches and burns and hollownesses are still there, and that's what makes me realize it must not have happened. The burns – anger, hate, fear: they all still lie within me, like embers hidden beneath the gray masking layer of ash. And hope. Ah. I have my soul, still.
I am tied to a chair, and my mouth is stuffed with some kind of cloth. It tastes the same way that the dirt under the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack smells. I'm sure the bindings are magical, but it wouldn't matter because I don't have a wand, and I can't use my voice, and I don't think I was ever good enough at Charms to get something both wandless and wordless.
Charms. I recognize the stool in the corner. This must be Flitwick's office. I didn't come up here much when I was in school, just the rare occasions to serve detention.
I try my legs and find that the chair is indeed spelled to the floor. Where is Harry? Where is the rat? Where is Remus? Through the window I can see the full moon, especially if I lean hard to the right. Well okay, One mystery solved at least. Remus is still out there roaming. Did he run off into the forest? I think he did, away from Harry and the others. God, if he hurt Harry or any student that would destroy him as well as their lives as they knew them. What if the dementors get him? Did they get Harry?
It occurs to me to wonder why they did not get me. It's coming back now and I think the last time I was conscious it was down by the lake, and they were converging on me. All ready to go, legal and everything, their cold horrible mouths pulling every last shred of hope out of me.
And yet. Who stopped them? They would not have stopped on their own.
At that very moment, the door unlatches and Dumbledore strides in, looking heavily at me over his glasses.
Sweet Jesus was it him? Did he save me, and if so did he save the rest? Did he get Peter?
Only now does it occur to me that if I were to shift into my dog form, I would be the wrong shape for the binding holding me to the chair. Would it still hold? Did Flitwick cast it?
Dumbledore lifts his wand and the ratty cloth in my mouth floats free. Not far, though, just in case he needs to replace it.
"Harry – !" my voice is still a surprise to me. I have used it so rarely for so long, that first I am surprised to have it, and then I am surprised that it does not sound to me like me. Dumbledore's eyebrows raise and the cloth moves a bit farther from my face.
"Is he alright?"
"Harry is all right," Dumbledore confirms slowly, and I try to feel relief at his words. I can feel his eyes moving over me. See into me, I think at him, please. Not too far, but far enough to just see the truth about tonight.
"Sir, I – It's Peter. Pettigrew!" I go on, breathless all of a sudden, "He's escaping! We must catch him. He's an Animagus." We all were. "A rat!" I rasp, "The boy's rat!"
It's good that I've gotten to see Harry, and to warn him and his friends. I know no one will listen to them, though, and that's going to make everything worse. But if Dumbledore can be persuaded, there's a chance. I don't think he can do anything for me. But if he knows what's after Harry, maybe he can protect him.
"The boy's rat," he repeats, his voice the opposite of mine, so quietly calm. His eyes harden. "A rat with a missing toe." He flicks his wrist and the cloth that was in my mouth is flung aside into a little pile on the corner of Flitwick's desk.
He drags Flitwick's stool in front of my chair and sits down across from me. "Tell me everything," he says, "quickly as you can, but leave nothing out, Sirius. It is vital that I know the truth, now."
"Sir with all due respect," I whisper, looking down. God is that really my voice? I didn't notice it so much when we were all shrieking in the Shack. "Are Harry's friends safe? There were three of them, Harry, and two others. Are all three..?"
"All three students are safe and inside the castle. Remus is, as you know," here he gestures at the window, toward the grounds or toward the moon, I don't even know.
"And the rat? Is there no chance of catching.. The rat?" even as my mouth rasps the question, I know better than to hope it. There was no chance of catching the rat the moment the dementors even began to move toward me. There was probably no chance the moment that little fucker transformed.
"I think you know the chances of finding a creature that small on these grounds at this point. You were almost overtaken by the dementors, but they were driven off.. it must have been by a patronus and I can only guess that it was Harry's. Whatever you conveyed to him must have been compelling. I have some guesses but I would like to hear it from you."
"Harry's patronus?" He's a child still at thirteen, how could he possibly have summoned one strong enough to push back all those dementors?
A warm feeling blossoms in my middle, hard to describe, but it must have had something to do with knowing that… if it really was Harry who did that, then he must be powerful, a gifted wizard, and who would have doubted he might be, given who his parents were, but more important than that – he must have some good strong memories in his heart, even at thirteen, even without Lily and James to raise him, his heart is full enough to fuel a corporeal patronus. And maybe he is going to be all right.
I think it was hope, but not the kind of desperate, relentless hope I've been living on for months, not the same bitter burgundy tang of hope for revenge. No. Hope for something better, hope for a future for this boy I have hardly had time to know.
Dumbledore is looking at me mercilessly, but with compassion. This is a look few could pull off, but I remember those eyes from over a decade ago, in the Order. This, you will have to take very seriously. This is not a prank or a game, they say, we do not have time to waste on shenanigans. We have a war to fight.
We have a war to fight.
"After we found out about Remus's condition," I begin, "James found some stuff about Animagi and we decided we could do it. Even Peter, though James and I did most of the brewing for him. By the end of fifth year we had. " We did the last part over the summer after begging James's parents to let us stay at the camp for a month. What a night, when our lightning storm finally came. Dumbledore's eyebrows are raised.
"Fifth year? Without any help from teachers or staff?" he asks. He must be remembering Cadessa, whom he and McGonagall trained themselves.
I almost laugh but it sounds like a bark. "It took us years." Of course she did it basically instantly in comparison. But she had help.
"I see. I have not given you enough credit, then. It is an exceedingly complex process, and to have not only succeeded without teachers' guidance, but without their knowledge…" he shakes his head, "I need not tell you it was foolhardy. That spell can go badly awry." I don't tell him how many times it almost had. I honestly don't know.
"We were singularly determined," I try to shrug, but am bound to a chair. And foolhardy, that goes without saying.
"What on earth made you want to risk that?" Dumbledore asks softly in his maddening 'I already know your answer' tone.
How can I say, I never really believed he'd bite us, bite me? Even out of his mind, the wolf in him would know me, wouldn't it? Wouldn't hurt me.
We fought about it sometimes. He'd say, you just don't understand. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I never will.
"We read an account," I say instead, "that bitten sheep and cows, other animals, it didn't hurt them. Well, it hurt them, but it didn't.. Turn them. The ones that survived. So we thought if we were animals, in animal form, it'd be the same. There's an account of an Animagus with a possible encounter, too, and she didn't..." I trail off. The evidence was always weak, and I know it, just as I knew it then. These are the rationalizations I'd come up with in those years to explain away this very question, once we had tried and it had worked.
"These things have not been tested or confirmed," Dumbledore insists, "this risk was immense."
"We could have stayed in our beds, yes," I realize now my eyes have been wandering around the room but now I meet his gaze straight on. "We could've but we couldn't, d'you know? I couldn't stay inside, knowing… imagining… if there was something I could do." I used to imagine I could hear him from Gryffindor tower, all the way down at the shack. Hear him howling and screaming. "Nobody should be alone at a time like that. Seems like the kind of time you'd need your friends around the most. Well. We found a way to be around."
How can I say, the thought of him suffering was worse than the thought of being bitten?
I had forgotten so much of these things while I was in that place, in Azkaban. Remembering it is a pain that I embrace, a kind of pain I couldn't even feel while I was there. It's like the pain of thawing, pins and needles after numbness.
The warmth first recurred when he hugged me in the shack tonight. It's like I forgot he was alive, even though I saw him now and then on the grounds. It's like I forgot I was alive, and couldn't imagine anything past the moment I would kill Peter, except death. I couldn't see anything good about or for Harry, either, just the threat that hovered round him all the time, the threat I had to eliminate no matter what.
All I could see was what the damage this tool, this Animagus ability, had done, what it allowed the rat to get away with. All I could see was its use to me now, to try to right what little of the wrong remains in front of us. What I could do as a dog that I couldn't as a man.
In that state, I couldn't remember why we started. I couldn't remember being a teenager, hell bent on helping Remus, and the euphoria of succeeding.
It seems the spell did go awry, just not in the way anyone knew how to warn us, and only after years and years of it going right.
"And your form, a large dog? Pettigrew, a rat?"
"James a stag," I supply and Dumbledore nods with a muttered "Of course!" Animagus forms do often match a person's patronus, though not always. I don't know if Dumbledore took note of James's patronus or not.
"We found ways to use all three forms pretty effectively," I explain, "Peter could help manage the willow, James and I could manage the wolf in Remus," Prongs was more a deterrent; usually it was I that engaged the wolf when needed. "But I mean, when Remus was with us like that he wasn't so hard to manage. When we ran together, he..." I can't really speak for him, but he had told us, "He said he kept more of his mind, when we were together."
"When you ran together? On the grounds?"
"Yes," I sigh, because I know I'm betraying Remus again. "We covered a lot of the forest, it's how we got the idea for the Map."
"And how you've been getting in to the grounds this year, despite all the usual defenses and the additional measures set up by the Ministry?"
"Oh yes. The usual defenses I was well practiced to account for by the time we graduated. And the dementors… they can't feel a dog as well as a man. Once I was able to slip past them in Azkaban, I knew they couldn't find me out here, not as a dog at least."
"Yes, Sirius, how did you alone in the entire wizarding world escape from Azkaban?"
I think he already knows.
"The same way I broke into Hogwarts." The same way I do anything. Dogged, crushing determination. Blindness, in a way, to anything but the one truth I knew. "I knew I was innocent of the murders. I knew that the man who was guilty was at Hogwarts, because of the photo in the Prophet of Ron's family. I knew that Harry was at Hogwarts and I knew I had to stop the rat, no matter what, before he could cause harm to Harry too. None of those are thoughts that dementors take, Professor, those broodings are what they leave you with, that's why so many go mad. But mine happened to be clarifying. And when I shifted to dog form, I could.. In a way.. rest. But that rest wasn't beyond knowing what I had to do, and so I came here to do it."
Dumbledore regards me for what feels like a very long time. I suspect he is deciding how much he believes what I have said, weighing it against all the other things he knows, all he remembers of me from before I went to prison. It should feel momentous to me, but I still feel so little.
"What happened tonight, best you can recall?"
"I saw my chance," it was dusk, and the rat had been trying to make a run for it. The cat had kept me apprised of the fact that the rat was no longer in the dormitory. We wondered if he might be gone for good, but the cat didn't think so. He was still on the grounds, just not with the boy anymore.
"I jumped over Harry and I hurt the other boy just to get to him, but I just thought for some reason, if I don't get him tonight, I might lose my chance and he might go back to his master. I dragged him – them – to the shack. I didn't want to bring the boy, Ron? I just wanted to get my teeth in the rat and shake. But Ron, he held on so tight, fought so hard, so I had to drag him along too. He wouldn't let me at the rat. I transformed back to my human form because I thought, if I could get him with a wand, I could kill him more cleanly, and stun Ron if I had to.. I hoped Harry would come." He's like James, like that. Wasn't going to run off on his friend.
"I thought if Harry came he might be able to understand, he'd see what Peter really was. I thought I could warn him, so that when I was gone he would know what I knew. He did come. And the girl that's like Cadessa, she came too. They thought I wanted to kill Harry." I shake my head "The last thing in the world I want. I did want to kill Pettigrew, though. For what he did. Not only because he deserves it for everything he's done, but – " Dumbledore cuts me off. Can he tell that if he doesn't, I'll go into a spiral?
"And Remus? When did he arrive on the scene?"
Remus.
"He got there after Harry stopped punching me." Reflexively I reach for my face to touch the bruise by my eye but my arm doesn't move, as it is tied to the chair. I pushed Harry off me, maybe too roughly, because all I could see was kill. I've talked more this evening than I've talked in the last 12 years. I've seen my godson and I've seen Remus and for almost the entire night all I wanted to do was kill. It was simply so imperative that I do so, before dying.
"Harry had his wand on me, I thought he might really do it," it would be all right for me if it was Harry, but I didn't think it would be all right for Harry once he learned the truth. To say nothing of my true mission – I had to end the rat, or at least warn Harry in a way he would hear. "But he didn't, and then Remus burst in, disarming everyone. He had looked at the map, the one we wrote, he saw the names, he knew the rat was still alive. He caught up right away."
"So he didn't know, before tonight, that you were on the grounds?"
I just look at him, not comprehending.
"I want to unequivocally say that Remus Lupin was not in league with Sirius Black and was not aware of or in any way assisting his entry to the Hogwarts grounds."
"Oh, that. Of course not. He thought I did it. He thought I killed them all, til he saw Peter Pettigrew in tiny little letters on the map that would betray any one of us no matter the disguise or invisibility cloak and we knew it. On the map, polyjuice and transformations don't matter."
There was a flicker of something, to be in that room, in that shack, to watch in real time as the children reacted to him. To see him manage the room in turn. Remus always could run a room. It drained him, he never wanted to, he never thought he was good at it, but when it was necessary he always could suddenly turn from soft into steel. Sometimes, like tonight, the steel showed on the edges that it was hardened from the hurting. Those kids didn't say anything he hasn't heard before. The boy recoiled, the girl got angry. I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't been there. I couldn't explain anything and was too desperate to have my revenge and end the threat. Of course he made space for three kids in the room, because he knew they were scared and young and because he knew things they didn't know.
Maybe I would have just killed the rat and I'd be … wherever people go when they get the dementor's kiss. Would that be better?
"So, naturally concerned for the safety of his students and also confused by the presence of a man who was supposed to have been dead, he hurried out to find you all."
"I'm sure he was losing his natural mind seeing both me and Peter on the map. He knew where we'd be." He still thought I was a killer at that point. He thought his students were headed to a boarded-up shack with a ruthless and unhinged killer. Of course he flew out the door without even a thought for his condition or his potion. He probably even thought he was going to be too late, but of course he had to try. We always have to try, with or without hope. But he got there and no one was dead, and no one a new killer.
"He made everyone slow down, made them listen, made me wait. Told them about his situation, explained how we were a bunch of unregistered Animagi. But then Snape showed up and buggered it all up, tied Remus up, almost let the rat get free. I told him I'd go quietly if the rat came too, but he threatened to turn me and Remus both over to the dementors. At this point the kids had heard enough to make them hesitate to throw any lives away, even mine, so they disarmed him and knocked him out," this almost gets a laugh from me, but I swallow it. The sight of their faces when they realized they'd knocked out a teacher, the fact that he was so clearly deranged that all three, even the girl, would do so.
"With him safely lying down, I untied Remus and together we forced the rat back out of his transformation. We explained about the Secret Keeper, the bluff, how we switched.." I look away. I can't hold anyone's gaze when I talk about this. I can't talk about this.
"Once he had a human voice he begged everyone in the room for his life, even asked Harry, dared to beseech Harry, the miserable fuck," I'm talking to Dumbledore and I'm being incredibly disrespectful and I don't even care, "not Harry of course. I explained about how I broke out of Azkaban, how I knew where he was, how he's been sponging off a wizard family just in case his chance came around and now it has.." I pause but Dumbledore does not jump in.
"We were going to kill him at last, Remus and I, together. But Harry stopped us, he said.. He said he didn't think James would want us to become killers on the rat's account. And I reckon he might be right, but James isn't here to give opinions because of that miserable fuck, but still, Harry chose mercy," Harry is still a child.
"It was his right to choose," I add. It is Harry's right, even more than mine.
"He said Peter should go to Azkaban instead. So, Remus tied him up, and Ron, who had been his owner, tied himself to the.. rat in man-form, and Remus did too, and I minded Snape's levitation and we were on our way back."
That was when I got to speak to Harry, briefly. He said he would come to stay with me. I didn't expect the boy to be so enthusiastic; I thought he would recoil and offer to visit me from time to time, out of pity or something. He lit up like a lumos and asked when he could move. For the first time I pictured getting a place, him sitting at my kitchen table, and suddenly my life had a purpose different from just killing Peter before I died.
"But when we came out of the tunnel…"
"The moon was rising."
I nod grimly. "All hell broke loose. Remus was the greater danger then." I had just had my first glimpse of a possible future for Harry, for me, and maybe even Remus, and I wouldn't see that destroyed by a stray moonbeam, a curse of the calendar. "I transformed, but Peter saw his chance, and he transformed too. I tried to chase him and keep one ear on Remus, but he's small and it was hard to keep the scent, my attention was scattered and... It didn't matter, the dementors were on me in a second. I lost Remus, I lost the rat, and I knew all was lost. There were so many of them. So many. And I knew they wouldn't wait." I meet his gaze again and am suddenly aware of just how tired I am. I had one thing to do, one task above all others, and I let it slip my hands.
I should have been the Secret Keeper. I should have endured torture and maybe death to protect James and Lily and Harry. Instead I have endured it for nothing, and those for whom I should have died are dead, except for Harry, and I've let him down too. It is my fault they are dead, and their betrayer skitters free.
"You are innocent." Dumbledore the pragmatist. "There is much to be done, if we have reason to believe that Peter will return to Voldemort, and I think we do. But in the nearest term, we have, unfortunately, to deal with the Law."
"Will you keep him safe, Albus?" he is almost as surprised as I am at the informal address. Why did I say that? I need to know. Man to man. Will you keep my godson safe when I could not.
He does not answer immediately which is gratifying. He's taking my question seriously and he's not going to deliver one of his pat answers.
"To the extent that I am able, Sirius, I will protect Harry."
I'm sure Dumbledore cares about all his students on some level. Harry is special to him, though, and I can see it in the way he isn't looking at me. He's looking inward and something else, some other image of Harry he has in there.
I guess that has to be enough.
"I would like your help in doing so, though," he adds, coming back to the room and the moment, looking in my eyes again. He looks old, but he always looked old. I can almost see my partial reflection in his glasses. I look like utter shit.
"I don't think there is much chance of persuading anyone. If we had Pettigrew up here, maybe." Or his dead fucking body.
"Let me see what I can do," Dumbledore says. I appreciate that he doesn't say, I'll handle this. He doesn't make me a promise I know he can't keep. He doesn't say, the Minister will listen to reason.
He knows how it looks. He believes me, though, and he'll watch out for Harry, and that has to be enough because that is all I get now.
He stands up and comes to the chair and starts undoing the bonds by hand. I can hear him murmuring and I realize the spells must have been his. He stacks the bonds neatly on the desk. I rub my arms and then gingerly explore the bruises from where Harry punched me. The blows were untrained, but full of the power that rage will bring you. I can feel in my face a reflection of something Harry and I had in common, at least for that moment.
"If anyone asks, I'll say I transformed and undid them myself," I offer. I don't need anyone to even suspect that Dumbledore is somehow in league with a 'known' killer like myself.
"No, I untied you because I believe you are innocent and I don't see any reason to make the evening even more uncomfortable for you," he says with a small smile, "I can take responsibility for that. It's not like you're going to escape from this office on your own with everyone on the lookout for you in the entire castle."
I shrug. There is nowhere for me to go. What there is, though, at least for the moment, is the lack of dementor presence. I might try to have some thoughts that wouldn't be possible with them around, before it's too late. Dumbledore shakes my hand. Are there tears in his eyes? "I am very sorry, Sirius," he says, "for what we all have put you through." Someone is shouting somewhere below us.
Dumbledore hesitates, then pulls me into a hug. It's a little bit awkward. He steps back and shakes his head. "I'll see what I can do," he repeats, and then he's gone, and I hear the lock click behind him.
I sit down in the chair and close my eyes. I try to imagine Harry, growing up. I picture him getting taller, looking more and more like James did when we graduated, or on his wedding day. I imagine him smiling, laughing. I imagine him walking around Hogwarts, some of my favorite places near the wood and by the lake. I imagine him playing Quidditch, even better than his father.
I imagine Remus too. I imagine him waking up, like he will in a few more hours, in pain. No, not like this. I imagine a different morning, and he's waking up in a soft bed. Next to Cadessa I think, warm with sleep. He's happy, and secure. Not lost or scared or lonely. Harry is growing up, resilient and strong, with friends more solid than mine, and a heart made of molten gold.
I know it's a lie but it helps me find something that resembles peace before the end.
A sharp rap on the .. window glass? Startles me out of my reverie. Harry is outside the window on the back of a hippogriff. His friend, the girl, Hermione, is with him. I rush to the window, confused, some emotion I cannot fathom burning brightly and suddenly, like hearing the thunder of the lightning storm that would change our lives in the summer at the end of fifth year.
The window is locked, but she leans over and expertly magicks it open.
"How – how –?" I cannot form sentences. What is going on? Am I in such a depth of dreaming that I cannot tell the difference anymore? I stare at the hippogriff, trying to see if the feathers look defined. In a dream they might not be.
"Get on – there's not much time," Harry insists, "You've got to get out of here – the dementors are coming – Macnair's gone to get them."
I brace on the window and pull myself through, sliding onto the hippogriff behind Hermione.
Harry directs the hippogriff to the tower where he and Hermione hop off immediately.
"Sirius, you'd better go, quick. They'll reach Flitwick's office any moment, they'll find out you're gone."
The hippogriff seems agitated. I am at a loss. "What happened to the other boy? Ron?" I ask. Again my voice.
"He's going to be okay. He's still out of it, but Madam Pomfrey says she'll be able to make him better. Quick – go –"
I can't stop staring at Harry. It's like I can see his golden heart shining through his shirt or something, but I can't. This isn't a dream. Harry really has saved me twice in one night. I should have saved him, but instead –
"How can I ever thank -" I begin.
"GO!" they both shout together, and so I do.
I'm not going to thank him, I'm going to make it up to him. I have always owed him my death, but now I owe my life as well.
"We'll see each other again," I assure him. I have no doubt of this now. "You are – truly your father's son, Harry…" I don't know what else to say. I can't say more. There isn't time for more. Not now, but there will be later. When we see each other again.
