Hi Everyone,
Just a quick word before you start this much overdue and over delayed chapter.
I am so terribly sorry for the time since my last posted chapter.
It has not been a great 2+ years for me, and given the shitty year 2020 has been, I have been in the slow process to reacquaint myself and complete this story. (I've always known how it will end, that has not changed, but the time between may have changed my writing style a little)
I won't lie there is still some writing to go before the next chapter will come. And it will be finished, but given it is Christmas I hope you enjoy this one.

I've not had a beta or proof reader on this, so many apologies for typo's, grammar or other minor errors. I have done my best to eliminate many of them for you.
Much Love
Natstar
xoxox

To escape the fates
Your fate
You must find a man black of night
With a heart of gold
And keep intact his soul of light.
Remember the way
The path sewn of old
Threads are cut
Lives are sold...

Chapter 33

Sirius muttered another curse under his breath. Never before had he ever seen the Shrieking Shack become such a dangerous maze of jumbled rooms, and twisting hallways which included quite a number of nasty traps. When he emerged from the tunnel was still in animagus form when he realised upon the first trap, and that was only because the magic itched his nose making him sneeze almost constantly. The dog senses also saw through the trap. But it still had forced him to transform from his dog form in order to get past. Now that he was in his own limited human form, he had to be careful where he stepped. He had to get through it, to find his daughter, then Hermione and get themselves back into their own time.

He'd heard his daughters wails a few times, and by now would be heightened due to hunger, tiredness, a need to have her nappy changed and fear. It was what he had scented as he raced down the tunnel. Not just Peter's fear, but Astra's. Normally the house would creak and groan so much you could hear everything happen from anywhere in the house. Now there was a deadness that was unlike anything he had ever felt in here. The place that he once played animal games with as a teenager, to when he did use it briefly to hide as a criminal on the run, was nothing to the new level of creepiness this building now had.

Despite his growing desire to lengthen the pain and punishment on the rat, he had to admire the skill to make an almost ever changing maze within the confines of a house. He wondered how Peter had done it, however, knew that question would most likely go unanswered. He was going to kill Peter like he had tried to do twice in the past. The first time was really only a few scant months from the present moment; which seemed so long ago now after everything he had been through since. The second so long into the future and yet not as far forgotten in his own mind.

Tenses. The past in the future and the future in the past. Living in it for this short time Sirius finally appreciated the toll it had brought on Hermione. Her ability to try and distinguish, and understand it was something to behold. He knew there were moments that were incredibly hard for her, because she knew about it from her past in the future, then had to live it and see the past with her own eyes. Seeing it and knowing the outcome of those she had grown to love cost her. But the selfish thought still bubbled in his mind that if she never was thrown back into his past he'd never have fallen in love with her.

Sirius banished the thought and looked around the room again. He had to pick a doorway and this room had four choices. Well five, if he was also counting the window. But he had tried that once before and the results of that test of theory still shook him. He'd also discovered if he spent too long deciding the room would decide for him in an equally unpleasant manner. His apparent timer he knew would be running out. He stood before them all, conveniently all were on the same wall, including the door he had just come from. A slight noise beyond the room he'd just left made him turn and select the door. The room beyond no longer looked like anything from the minutes before. It seemed that the moment the door closed the house moved and changed beyond the portal.

Taking a breath he stepped cautiously through, cursing again as the panelling on the opposite wall creaked popping out the nails right at him. His shield blocked most, except one to his leg. He hissed as he silently used accio to pull it from him. And another to clean and seal the wound. Something from this time that Moody taught them, that if you had the chance to heal the scratch before shooting the bastard that shot at you, take it. It could mean life or death.

He looked at the bloodied, half rusted nail in distaste throwing it aside as he moved into the room. This one seemed to be more of a hallway, and there were no doors, just warped versions of portraits on the wall. Behind him the door slammed shut. No matter how many times he jumped a little. The entrapment reminding him only too well of the slamming door of his prison door of thirteen years. He turned back, stopping short, realising as the door was nowhere. Just a wall. He looked down the hall, his wand lighting the way. It wasn't straight. It seemed to curve beyond his vision. Great. He moved cautiously forwards, casting out detection charms and even an occasional hex into the darkness.

Up ahead as the hall curved back in on itself another light shone. It was heading towards him. Dropping the Lumos spell and opting for a stronger shield he braced himself. The light grew closer. A familiar song reached his ears as its form took shape. Not a song. A lullaby. His lullaby. His daughters' Lullaby. Sirius was staring at a patronus version of himself. His animagus self, With Hermione's voice singing their lullaby. It ran circles around him and moved back down the hall. Looking over its shoulder, as if to follow. Hermione was here. Somewhere near.

He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. But then he'd also sent his patronus to her. It seemed like hours ago, though having fought his way through the cursed house to this point, time was hard to judge when the rooms and halls twisted back on themselves and attacked you. The patronus dog stood at the end of the hall. Three doors to choose from. It picked the one on his left, only passing through the portal as Sirius's hand touched the door knob and turned to open it. The lullaby disappeared as he opened it. Astra's wails the loudest he'd heard yet. He didn't have a chance to look at the room as he had to duck Peters Hex.

"Not as dumb a dog as I was lead to believe." Wormtail sneered. He sent another hex at him forcing him to block again. He wasn't ready to send one back as his eyes adjusted to the room and identify where his daughter was and more importantly where he so desperately wanted to send a return hex.

"It's a shame. I did want to have more fun with you. Nice touch on the patronus. Still self-centred enough that it looks just like you." Another hex, flashing purple flew at him. He rolled and the spell hit the wall beyond. Burning the wood.

Sirius laughed. Despite the danger, he full belly laughed. Blocking Peters hexes with ease. He recognised Moony's monthly bedroom. It seemed his daughter was on the bed Peter not far from it. A shadow within the shadows of the room.

"What. Is. So. Funny?" Wormtail sent a hex with each word.

Sirius still grinning, "That was not my Patronus, Peter. Now give me my daughter and I'll grant you a quick death."

With every step the world around her seemed to shimmer and change. Night became day, day became night. Hogwarts looked new and old and new again, then disappeared entirely. Even with the feline grace of her panther form she stumbled as everything became topsy turvy. Landing on her hands, not paws Hermione hissed as gravel grazed her palms that stopped her fall. Picking herself up, she looked around slowly. She thought she was near Hagrid's hut, but when she tried to focus on it it seemed to disappear into a fog.

Voices in her head were so loud, like a room of people all shouting at once. Covering her ears she tried to block the sound but it made the noises only louder. She cried out as she fell to her knees. Behind her eyelids flashes of images and scenes played before her, the backgrounds were always different, the times all different, but the man in them always seemed the same. Different realities all with impossible outcomes and always playing out to where he died and she remained.

"Sirius" she heard her voice every time and he turned and smiled and she watched him die a thousand times over in different ways, in different times, in different realities. Over and over the scenes played out. Hermione screamed as she clutched her head, the last she saw him lying on a magnificently tiled floor dressed in extravagant white and purple robes, his eyes staring up at her and whispering "What have you done?"

Darkness took her as she whimpered in a ball. Silence fell. Her mind however still had the four words echoing. What had she done? Opening her eyes slowly, she expected to see Sirius's bloody body on a tiled floor, her hands bloodied, but the world was still as before, Hogwarts grounds open before her, Hagrid's darkened hut nearby and the shifting outline of the Whomping Willow not far past it.

The poem whispered through her mind again. And it brought her to her feet. She staggered forwards towards the tree. Immobilizing it's twisting, thrashing limbs she made for the hole it guarded, tripping and falling though it landing hard at the bottom of the tunnel. Groaning, she pulled herself up and stumbled forwards. She had to get to Sirius before it was too late. Again.

Something about this time, to all the others that her mind re-lived seemed different to the rest. Something about this time resolved to her that there was a chance that she could change how it would end with Sirius not dead at the end. She tamped down all the doubts and let the fire burn on that resolution. She needed to get to Sirius, worrying about the visions would come later. If she succeeded.

She reached the end of the tunnel and stepped into the Shrieking Shack. It was unrecognisable to what she remembered it to be. Peter's manipulation of the house had changed it entirely. It almost felt like it had come to life on it's own. Trying to change back into a panther was ineffectual, like Sirius she couldn't change. Odd. Especially seeing that the reason the Marauders all used to change was to be in this house.

Stepping forwards slowly, trying to remain alert she considered something else. How had he found his way back in time with them? How had they found her? She paused too long as her mind considered the problem and the house in its magic launched an attack. She dodged just in time and ran for the door. It almost seemed to shrink away from her the closer it got. Flinging a spell it exploded on impact and suddenly the opening was before her, though the echoes of the blast seemed to almost echo through the maze of the house. The house creaked and shifted around her, she turned and saw the hole in the wall she made shrink and become a solid wall.

No turning back, only forwards, whichever direction that was.

Sirius blocked again. It was all he could do. Wormtail was using Astra as a shield to stop Sirius casting anything directly at him. It also didn't help that whatever charms or curses that were used to change the Shrieking Shack, also brought the broken furniture alive and he found himself outnumbered.

He wished he could just torch the place, but as long as his daughter was in danger, and he suspected Hermione now finding her way through the maze he couldn't risk it. A sound echoed through the house. As if someone was blasting their way through. It seemed like Hermione had less qualms about destruction than he did. Peter's maniacal cackling drew him back to his current predicament. Something was off about him, more than he'd seen before. But the man stayed in the shadows behind the bed on which his daughter lay, crying and screaming.

"She shouldn't be doing that." Peter snarled. His wand flashed and a spell came toward Sirius, missing him and hitting the floor.

"Your aim is as lousy as ever Peter" Sirius taunted as he jumped aside from the broken table that tried to charge and impale him.

"Don't be so sure!" Peter yelled back. Sirius realised too late a hole was opening in the floor. The table was charging at him again, as was the snapping armchair from the opposite side. There was no choice, Peter began to fling another curse aimed at him, he blocked it and jumped. Peter's laughter and Astra's wails cut off as the hole sealed itself as he fell. And kept falling. Longer than logically possible. His brain barely registered the expletives of his current predicament as the trick house warped to accommodate his seemingly endless fall.

He tried to reach to the jutting edges of the walls but his descent either was speeding up or the house was moving around him. The boxed world the house surrounded him continued to blur past him. Doors and windows elongated and punctuated the walls. One blew apart above him and he looked up hearing the noise.

"Sirius!" Hermione's voice called out. She'd nearly toppled as she tried to dash through the hole in the wall. She was still clinging to the door tattered door, preventing her own fall. Flashes of Sirius dying over and over again threatened to push through. Him falling to his death from various precipices. Different scenes but the same look of fear and helplessness as he fell into a blackness.

The house shook and groaned and began to twist and pull itself around not liking getting another hole blown through it. The wall that Hermione was on started descending like an out of control elevator. She squeaked and screamed as the sudden change of gravity moved her rapidly downwards, bringing her senses back to the true reality playing out before her.

"Hermione!" He watched in horror as the house tried to throw Hermione, bringing her rapidly closer to him as he continued to fall. Yet Hermione's own fear changed as her eyes looked past Sirius. His endless freefall was coming to an end with spiked floorboards drawing nearer.

"Levicorpus!" Hermione's wand pointed at him; her sliding wall drawing them near level the floor coming up faster. Hermione's strain in concentration to hold the spell while moving at odds to the current trajectory showed. the wall was still moving faster than his falling, Sirius had only one shot. He pointed his wand and flicked it at the opposite wall. The force pushed his fall sideways barely through the void, colliding into Hermione throwing them both back into the room together.

As suddenly as gravity began everything stopped. The silence beyond was palpable as both had expected a crash of some kind to follow. Both were breathing hard. Hermione groaned under the sudden weight of Sirius. He shifted rolling off her. Both filthy from head to toe.

"You Ok?" Sirius asked as Hermione groaned again as she moved to sit up a little.

"Just winded" She lied and wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing more grime than cleaning anything off it. In truth she felt sick. The poem repeating itself over and over in her mind like a chant. Like a prophecy or a curse. Impossible odds, whatever happened to lead to this to finally save Sirius as she hadn't done so before. A thousand times before.

Sirius stood and put a hand out to her, "We need to get our daughter and go" she said as he pulled her up.

"Not until I kill that rat bastard." Sirius growled.

Hermione grabbed his arm, "No! Sirius we need to get her and just go!"

The fear in her voice stopped him from pulling away. He nodded and went to say something but Hermione pushed him back, "look out!" a beam in the roof dropping them, separating them again. Behind each of them ceiling beams smashed down hard, ones that already dropped slid back up the walls readying for a second try. Sirius dashed under one coming up next to his wife. Grabbing her hand he pulled her forwards where a door made itself visible. Hermione pulled him back in time as another beam almost crushed him. They never let go of each other as the room continued its attempts to smash them to smithereens.

Both pointed their wands in unison as they leapt, the door opening with such force the door knob embedded into the wall as they passed through the crashing behind them stopping. The room ahead seemed to be near total darkness. The door seemed to struggle shutting as it pulled plaster and wood from the wall before slamming shut making the darkness complete.

"I, really, really hate this place." Hermione gasped. A ball of light bloomed from Sirius's wand.

"I thought I was lucky to have reached Moony's bedroom, but now I think that was another trick."

Still holding hands he began to guide them forwards but Hermione didn't move.

"You saw Astra?"

"And Peter. But, I don't know. Something about him seemed… peculiar." His face was grim. "Come on. I suspect he still has some nasty surprises. We need to move upwards if we can. Don't let go of me."

They began moving, Hermione's wand tip lighting up to further light their path. Broken glass crunched under Sirius's boots and Hermione hissed as the glass cut her soles. Sirius glanced back and swore.

"Dammit, Hermione! Where are your shoes?!"

"Blown apart like the rest of the hospital room was!" She snapped back, tightening her grip as she lifted one foot waving her wand over her foot, wincing as the bloodied shards dislodged. She waved her wand over the shards transfiguring them into a glass slipper around her foot. Lifting her other leg she did the same to the other foot.

"There. Shoe issue solved." She huffed and moved forwards pulling her husband along this time.

"I'd laugh at the irony of the shoe choice if we weren't in so much danger" Sirius muttered, glancing back to make sure they wouldn't be ambushed as they kept moving forwards through the darkness.

The dark hall seemed to go on almost endlessly, twisting and turning with no clear sign of exit from it. The silence in the darkness didn't help as they moved slowly. Both were tense for a trap to be sprung. Sirius squeezed her hand to stop. She looked back to him questioningly. He let the light from his wand dim and pointed it towards the wall. Hermione, a heartbeat behind him nodded, extinguishing her own as Sirius's wand went out, it flashed and blasted a hole through the wall.

Hermione had shut her eyes from the flash and opened them as the wall had blown open until the force of the magic rippled and as in reverse began closing back into a wall blocking them into total darkness.

"What the?" Sirius watched as the slats slid back together.

Hermiones' wand bloomed again, bathing them in light. The wall appeared as before like the blast did nothing. She threw a light ball to sail where they had gone and another down the direction they were moving. Both lights seemed to veer around a corner and disappear into the darkness. No sign of exit in sight.

"We need to keep moving it seems" Sirius moved to take the lead, his wand lit brightly, yet its light still didn't seem to penetrate the darkness ahead. The tug on his arm meant Hermione slowed down, he looked back at her. Her brow was creased, thinking hard.

"What is it?" he asked, letting them pause again.

"What if we are looking at this all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if we aren't meant to be using magic to get through the house?"

"Hermione, are you out of your mind?" he looked at her incredulously. "The house is trying to kill us! Peter wants to kill us!"

She shook her head. "The house has only attacked each time we used magic. We were forced from our animagus forms at the beginning and the house responded to its magic. Sirius, I think the house is feeding from our magic somehow and turning it back on us."

Sirius's eyes widened at the revelation, "and I just attempted to blast a hole through it. RUN!"

Hermione stumbled as he pulled her forwards. "Nox!" she screamed plunging both of them into darkness as the light died. Both seeing after images in the blackness as they ran blindly through the hall, stumbling and crashing into the walls as the hall twisted on them unexpectedly. The house creaked and groaned and they felt the hall becoming steeper making it harder for them to progress forwards.

Then Sirius saw it, a line of dim light where a door revealed itself. The incline became so steep, Hermione's weight now pulling him back. Stuffing his wand in his mouth, he grabbed onto a wall hook just as Hermione slipped her weight now forcing them to both dangle. Praying he didn't snap his wand between his teeth he pulled her up to reach the hook herself. Her hand was now wandless as she'd stuffed it into the beaded purse that still somehow remained attached to the fraying cord that kept it tied to her.

Hermione reached up for it, but nearly slipped from Sirius's grasp as the wall hook bent out, not used to the weight of two people. Sirius looked down at Hermione, silently begging her not to let go of him. He nodded at her and strained again to pull her up. She grabbed it, the hook slowly opening up more under the weight. Sirius let go of Hermione reaching around to put his wand into the bag also seeing it as the only logical place at present.

"Princess, I need you to climb up to the door up there. Can you do it?"

Hermione looked up where the light shone in a line in the wall. She nodded to him, reaching up with her other hand to the hook. Her movement made the hook stretch straighter again. Both sucked in a breath as their hands slipped on it Sirius's was on the outer edge.

"Quickly, this hook can't take us much more!" Sirius growled at her. Hermione reached again and began pulling herself up past him, Sirius using his free hand to help push her up to the portal. He grabbed her glass slippered foot and shoved her upwards as she pushed off him to launch herself up to the door knob. She hung above him, her dangling feet a foot above his hand still hanging from the hook, that now was pulling itself ever so slowly from the wall. He watched desperately as she carefully maneuvered her hands to turn the door knob.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Hurry it up Princess this hook doesn't have much left in it!"

"The door opens outwards!" She followed with her own vocabulary of expletives as she shifted. Sirius also swearing looked around, his eyes now better used to the darkness. The other side of the hall wasn't very far. He found himself again with only one chance but he took it. Pulling a leg up he pushed off with one hand flat on the wall. The wall hook snapped and fell but his hand as he had already let go to push against the wall, his feet flat on the opposite wall. His arms already burning from hanging and pulling up Hermione did not like the new position.

Hermione screamed for him when she heard the wall hook snap and the sounds below. She'd been moving her feet up the wall when it happened and slipped barely hanging on to the door knob.

She watched as he began to slowly crab crawl upwards, knowing his strength wasn't going to last, she renewed her efforts to climb and turn the knob she pushed off hard and swung an arm around to grab the other handle screaming in pain as the door swung back, onto her arm and shoulder that was now in the gap. Breathing hard and tears streaming down her cheeks she pulled herself up, forcing the door open enough to get her elbow through the gap. However because her weight was still hanging from the other side of the door, it meant she scraped skin, grazing herself as she did so.

Breathing hard she paused trying to calm her mind from the pain. She took a breath and let go of the outer door knob, to push the door up and try to wriggle through. She felt Sirius as he edged nearer to the opening that her body held open. Hermione shifted so her good arm was over the lip and tried to pull herself through. Sirius was now level with Hermione's knees, sweat poured as he struggled to keep his body steady and moving upwards. His fingertips finally curling around the gap in the wall.

" 'Mione. I need you to lift the door." His words were laboured. Hermione twisted so she was sideways to better lift the door.

"Don't you dare fall." She warned, her arm shaking to keep the door open above them. Sirius didn't reply as he focused on carefully positioning himself to push with his feet to clear the gap.

His push wasn't quite enough. Hermione didn't even think as she let go of the door and grabbed onto his belt.

The door hit her shoulder as Sirius's weight pulled down. Dislocating her shoulder she screamed. Sirius's hands still clinging to the gap, but felt himself become weightless as Hermione's magic at the point of losing her beloved hovered him up and through the door. As soon as he was through the gravity shifted and suddenly the floor was back to being a floor. Scrambling around he pushed open the door pulling Hermione through.

Pulling his wand back out of the bag he pointed it at Hermione's shoulder relodging it back, and healed her cuts and abrasions. The jolt of her shoulder moving back had her crying out again, but it hurt less back in than out.

"This place is fucked." Sirius muttered as he pulled her up. They couldn't stop, reaching a new room meant they had little time before the next trap released again. He'd seen his daughter once before he was pushed down a hole, he'd be damned that he wouldn't get there a second time. And worse, it had been some time that he'd heard his daughter's cries.

A cackle seemed to come from within the walls; the sound unnatural and not of this world. The only other time either of them had heard a laugh like that was Azkaban after all happiness had been stripped from it. After any sense of sanity and reality had warped it. It was the laughter of a madman. And it echoed oddly around them.

Hermione reached for her wand as well moving so her back was against Sirius and his hers. Their hands held together tightly. Scratching in the walls had them shift but neither knew which wall. It almost was as if the scratchings came from all sides. As quick as it started it stopped and another cackle made them turn again.

"What do you want Peter?" Hermione called out.

"NOT PETER! NOT PETER!" the walls seemed to scream in the disjointed voice of Peter Pettigrew. They both blocked as nails flew from the walls at them.

"What do you want, Wormtail? What have you done?" Hermione asked again.

"Did many things. Many things! Hee hee! That slut Marlene begged. But she had that mutts seed. The dark lord saved her to last for me. Let me play in her mind. She screamed so much."

Hermione paled, "Marlene was pregnant?"

Sirius swallowed hard, squeezing Hermione's hand supportively as they continued to circle slowly waiting for the strike. The voice was deranged and neither could tell where it came from.

Wormtail cackled maniacally.

"And Lily? It was all about her, wasn't it? Like what you wanted to do to me that night at the costume party." Hermione demanded, hot tears threatening to fall, blurred her vision.

"You're the last. You were meant to be first. We underestimated you. But not now. Now we have the power. Now you are in our game."

Sirius growled, "Come out you coward. Come out and face us like a man!"

The cackling seemed to circle them, both kept their guards up. The house creaked and shifted, an archway appeared on either side. From the other side they could see a familiar staircase, that the original Shrieking Shack led up to the bedroom where Astra was. Sirius made to move forward towards the one facing him but Hermione held him there. Something wasn't quite right about it. She just couldn't place what.

They found out as Sirius sent a hex as Wormtail's face flashed past the opening, almost too late Hermione worked it out and pulled them down to duck and send a hex the opposite direction as Sirius's spell rebounded off a mirror back towards them. Deflecting his own spell he pulled Hermione towards the true opening that was now quickly shutting. Hermione deflected as two more spells came through the mirror at them as Sirius made a spell to slow and shut the archway.

Wormtail's face in the mirror behind them twisted in anger and disappeared from view as the house warped and twisted around them, closing the archway as they finally came face to face with the fourth and last marauder, barely recognisable to the cringing and cowardly man they'd encountered previously.

A slight movement and Wormtail's visage multiplied all around them. The faces reflection's all not quite the same, and not all because of how each mirror's reflection showed. There was a derangement to him neither had seen before. One second his face split in a grin that seemed to almost stretch his face into two, and suddenly as it seemed the faces were glowering in rage, hate and disgust, and for the briefest of moments fear, flickered.

Sirius stepped forwards cautiously and some of the mirror's images now displayed distorted angles of Sirius, then Hermione as she followed carefully into the mirror maze the house gave them.

Wormtail tittered as his spells were flung at Hermione, deflected again by shields. Yet the spells when he cast seemed to come from all directions as multiple spells hit at once threatening to break the barriers both Sirius and Hermione put up. Sirius countered quickly sending towards one of the Wormtails. Unlike Wormtail's spell did not multiply and only shattered the mirror, the refracted shards displaying absurd partial images of himself.

Another cackle and the images shifted so the reflections switched around between the three of them, as did several bursts of hexes wormtail directed from the new angles. He didn't stop shooting at them forcing them to duck and roll away, separating them. Again both tried to shoot back, but the mirrors only seemed to either fracture, or refract absorbing the spells making it waver and ripple. Sirius spun around to get back to Hermione, but all reflections showed only his own worried face.

"Hermione!" He shouted. The word echoed and warped around him.

"Hermione! Hermione!" Wormtail imitated in a high pitched screech that drowned the other echoes which continued tauntingly. Sirius glowered and took a step forward, the mirrors changing as he moved. He wasn't sure if he was moving further into the maze or closer to Hermione but, like every other room in the house he needed to find a way through. For Hermione and for Astra.

Hermione turned slowly, and the mirrored versions turned with her. Her chest pounded hard in her chest. It was too much like the shattered dreamscapes of her nightmares. Too much like the reflections that showed other things, dark things, heartbreaking things. A movement in the corner of her vision made her spin around but only her grimy tearstained face stared back in growing apprehension.

Sirius's voice calling her name made her jump. She felt he was so near but none of the mirrors gave any indication on which way he was. Starting to walk to where she thought it came from she called back out to him, but unlike Sirius's her voice didn't echo around. Another movement in another mirror as Wormtail's Taunting calls of his own to her, the mirrors now surrounded her by their tormentor.

He stared at her for a long time, some mirrored faces almost leering at her, others simply glaring in naked hate. "Will you beg for us? Like the others?" Wormtail's voice spoke through all the mirrored versions of him. His head twisted back and forth on his shoulders, She was unsure as if he was fighting for control, or the mirrors warping and distorting his face. Yet before Hermione could grasp what she saw or heard he screamed and spells shot at her from all sides.

The scream rippled through and Sirius cast a blocking shield instinctively. The mirrors flashed almost blindingly white as all the mirrors around him changed their reflections showing as Hermione struggled to hold up against the barrage that Wormtail seemed to be throwing at her.

Sirius growled, but was not able to do anything. Spells kept being shot sparking and warping against her blocking spells. His growl became a roar and a surge and pulse of power pushed out from him cracking and fracturing all the mirrors around him. The shattering broke off the attacks at Hermione, but it also turned all the mirrors black.

"Hermione!" Sirius called again, as he began to search frantically for her. They needed to stay together to survive this cursed place. He felt sick. He could not comprehend how Peter had managed to create and distort the Shrieking Shack, or why every time he saw the bastards face that something was very, very about their own transport back in time, Dumbledore's confidence in them getting back, if their estimation of the Death Eaters, and Voldemort was grossly mislead began running through his mind. He called out again to Hermione, pausing to listen out for any sound from her. She was right. They needed to get their daughter and go.

Smoke and dust settled around Hermione as she cautiously lowered her wand. The shock wave from Sirius had pushed her back, she'd barely a moment to refocus the surrounding spelled shields as the pulse blasted and shattered the mirrors. The silence was punctuated by Sirius's call and she turned towards it, the strap on her bag finally giving out dropped.

"I'm here!" She choked and coughed, "Sirius I'm here!" bending to retrieve the bag.

Scratchings and a squeak, then a shadow and a wand tip pressed to her throat as a hand grabbed and yanked on her hair. Sirius's footsteps sounded closer as the hand in her hair forced her up and pulled her back hard enough to keep her off balance. Wormtail's hand now around her throat, she couldn't move away from the putrid smell of his warm breath that assaulted the side of her face close enough to snarl into her ear "drop it".

Hermione tossed the wand away watching it roll out of sight. The hand on the throat squeezed tighter as she felt ropes magically wrap around her wrists pulling them behind her painfully, her struggles futile as the bonds threatened to cut off the circulation in her hands. Wormtails tensed and tightened pulling her against him as Sirius rounded a corner and skidded to a stop.

"Not one step more!" Wormtail dug his wand into Hermione's ribs, she could all but grunt in pain and flinch. "Warning you Black, don't even try!"

Sirius straightened, his wand still pointed at them. "Let my wife go."

Wormtail squealed and cackled, flexing his hand around Hermione's throat and deliberately prodding his wand tip cruelly into her side, enjoying how flinched and whimpered against him, and the pain, frustration and anger that Sirius's face now showed, sparks sputtering from his wand, but nothing more.

He tightened his hand over her throat and whispered into her ear, instructions to her.

"Sirius, " She choked out, still struggling to breathe. Wormtail lessened his chokehold enough. Taking breath eyes only on Sirius.

"Get Astra. Get her and go!" She kicked out, sending the contents of her bag sprawling.

"NO! NOT WHAT WE SAID YOU FUCKING FILTHY SLUT! Crucio!"

Hermione tried to scream but the vice grip held her up when all she wanted was to drop as the curse caused unimaginable pain. She'd had the displeasure of its effects in her fourth year with the phony Professor Moody, but when intent for pure pain wasn't behind it she still was still not fully prepared for the pain Wormtail was giving to her.

"No! Hermione! Stop! Peter Stop!" Sirius pleaded, lowering his wand. Another minute, and Wormtail let up. Hermione could only sag against him, stars in her vision as her oxygen was limited to small gasps of air.

"You don't want to do this."

"Don't we? We wanted her. We fucking saved this whore. But she only had eyes for you! We wanted Marly, and she laughed at us and fucked Remus. And Lily, she hated James. All those years at school. But the lying bitch still went to him! And what about Wormtail? We had no one." Spittle flew from his mouth as he stared wild eyed at them. He began cackling again.

"We? What do you mean we?" Sirius asked in disbelief.