Warning
June 9th, 1994
Fifth Year
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Jo and Leili had gone down to see Hagrid-Leili had left her book bag behind during lessons-and check on the results of Buckbeak's second appeal.
They knocked on the door and a sad, helpless looking Hagrid opened it, "Oh, hello you two. Nice of yeh to visit, we lost the case and Buckbeak's just been-he can sense it y'know, intelligent creatures, Hippogriffs."
"We're so sorry, Hagrid," Jo said while Leili tried to keep from tearing up. They didn't know Buckbeak well, but Hagrid spoke so highly of him and it was a shame that one spoiled boy's father could ruin two lives with his silver tongue and the swish of an axe. There was nothing the Slytherpuff Alliance could do for this.
"Is there anything we can do, to help?" Leili asked; they didn't have long before sunset but they'd do what they could.
"'Fraid not. What're yeh doin' down here anyway? It's nearly sunset!"
"I forgot my bag last lesson, came to grab it. Jo wanted to come along, safety in numbers." The girls didn't know that the Gryffindor trio had just snuck out the back door.
"Ah," Hagrid tossed back a blanket and unearthed Leili's bag, purple with white lightning striking through clouds, it had been a birthday gift from her mum. "Here ya go."
"Thanks, Hagrid."
There was a knock at the door.
"Yeh'd best be going," he sniffled as he ushered them out the door.
"Oh, Hello Professor Dumbledore, Minister," Leili said politely.
"You know, Minister, Buckbeak doesn't deserve this, he's a good Hippogriff. It wasn't his fault Malfoy decided to play chicken," Jo said.
"The deed is done young lady, the appeal has come and gone and was declared in favor of execution. Now, you'd best see yourselves up to the castle, there you go, go on, go on."
"Miss Akina, Miss Montgomery," Dumbledore twinkled.
They bade Hagrid and Buckbeak farewell and started up towards the castle.
"Can I kill the Minister?" Jo whispered when they were out of earshot.
"How do you feel about Dementors?" Leili asked back.
"Not favorably."
"Then, no, you may not kill him."
"How about if I punch him?"
"Probably not a good idea."
"What if I just broke his nose a little?"
Suddenly, they heard the frantic squeaking of Scabbers as the trio was heading back up, hidden from sight by the invisibility cloak. Their voices, however, floated up to the girls and they turned around just in time to see Ron emerge from seemingly nowhere to chase after something small, presumably Scabbers, aka Peter Pettigrew. Then, in a flash of orange fur, Crookshanks leapt after the rat.
"Ron!" they heard Hermione yell before she and Harry also appeared out of thin air and ran full tilt boogie back down the hill after Ron into the fast approaching darkness.
"What are those kids doing?" Jo asked. They were just about to lose sight of them when they saw a flash of red hair fly through the air. And then they heard him scream as a shadow advanced on him.
They heard the telltale snap of bone and more screaming as the shadow dragged him towards the Whomping Willow where they disappeared.
"We need to get help, now." The girls took off running, across the bridge down the path, into the castle and through the corridor.
Their legs took them to the Potions classroom where they found Professor Snape, "Professor!" Jo called as they reached the doorway.
Their momentum carried them into the classroom and to the desk where Professor Snape stood watching them. The last time one of them had come literally running to him, she'd had valuable information and by the looks of them, this time was going to be no different.
"It's Harry, Ron and Hermione, sir," Jo said in a rush of breath, "Ron chased after his rat, Scabbers, actually Peter Pettigrew in the guise of a rat," Snape was moving towards the door at the mention of Pettigrew's name, "and he was attacked by something large and black, probably the size of a large dog." She would realize much later how accurate that description was. "It took him to the Whomping Willow and Harry and Hermione tried to follow. We lost sight of them and you're the first teacher we've found to tell," Snape was out the door and down the hall before she fully finished.
Snape hurried down the hall, going to rescue three of his least favorite students.
He immobilized the tree and slid through the hidden tunnel underneath. He picked up the discarded invisibility cloak and used it as he pushed open the door and slid inside to where Lupin and Black were telling the story of their school days and how James Potter had pulled him away from the Whomping Willow Branches.
"Why does saving them always include running?" Leili gasped as she caught her breath.
Jo didn't laugh. She paced the classroom, chewing on her thumbnail. "Something's wrong."
Leili sat on a desk and watched her best friend pace. Her stomach twisted into knots. "What's going on, Jo?"
"I don't know. Something to do with Lupin." Her vibes were almost never specific, just a gut feeling of wrongness. Occasionally, the feeling was tied to a person, but rarely. There was a long howl from the direction of the forest and both girls figured it out at the same time. "Werewolf," Jo breathed as Leili grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room.
"We can't go down there. If he smells or hears us, we're dead; you can't hide from a wolf. Professor Snape is down there; He'll keep them safe. Ok?"
Jo stared at Leili, jerking to stop. "Come on! There's a hundred different ways we can do this!"
"Like what?!"
"We'll get some chicken or I don't know, something meaty and smelly, charm it to look like a deer and use it as a decoy. Or maybe charm a scent-can you charm scents?-and use that to throw him off! We can't just do nothing, I'm sick of doing nothing!"
Leili shifted from foot to foot before asking, "How do we get to the kitchens from here?"
Jo instantly took control, "This way."
They begged different bits of meat off the house elves, one volunteered an entire meat pie and with both of them together and quite a lot of muttering they managed to fashion the meat into a deer shape and then with a careful, careful concentration and care and frankly imagination Leili managed to get it to look like a doe with an illusion spell she was very much not supposed to know. She managed to get the thing onto its hooves and-while looking like a puppet master at a marionette show-managed to get it to move.
"If Lupin doesn't buy this, I blame you,"
"Yeah, yeah, blame me later, let's go!" And they went, clumsily with much annoyed swearing, but they went.
Jo wingardium leviosa-ed their deer down steps and Leilani threw her whole body into making the thing move.
They hurried down to the Whomping Willow only to find Lupin fully transformed, if it weren't for the kids standing warily around him, they'd have thought he was a regular wolf.
Struck by an idea, Jo started pulling up handfuls of wet grass, tossing them to one side she dug up piles of mud. Without waiting, she began to smear it on Leili's cheeks and neck, her arms, any bit of exposed skin that might give off a scent, she also shoved some into Leili's shirt sleeves.
Leili bit back a yelp as the cold muck encountered her armpits.
Jo did the same thing to her own skin, trying to cover as much of their shampoo and deodorant smell as she could. Snape was unconscious, floating in front of the rag-tag group. Pettigrew was nowhere to be seen, but Ron was handcuffed to Lupin. The big black dog was standing on his back legs, swatting at Lupin, who had broken out of the manacle around his paw.
Lupin snapped at the dog and the dog clamped his jaws around Lupin's neck. Lupin didn't like that, he tore free of the dog and they stood: snapping, clawing, tearing at each other. Leili sent her makeshift doe into the fray; the doe circled the dog and the werewolf before heading off into the woods.
"Get the kids out of here," Leili instructed Jo.
"I'm not leaving you."
"Do you have a better idea?" she hissed.
"Actually, yes." Jo pointed her wand at Professor Snape, "Ennervate."
Snape regained consciousness, snarled "Potter," and threw himself in front of the kids when he realized there was a werewolf on the loose.
"Oh. Good plan." The wolf tore after the deer and the dog shot a look at Snape guarding the trio before chasing after Lupin. The girls followed the dog into the forest and lost him. They didn't know which way Lupin had gone.
"I've lost the werewolf!" Leili said.
"How do you lose a werewolf?!"
"It's easier than you'd think!" The deer was in pieces because Lupin was not himself and thinking only of food, which the deer smelled like. They were left standing alone in the Forbidden Forest.
Later, Sirius would find himself having to explain how a deer-that-wasn't-actually-a-deer managed to distract and then out-run (for a time) a hungry werewolf.
Suddenly the sounds of a dog in pain echoed through the forest and the clearing and the world went cold. The girls ran towards the sound, they heard Harry try to cast a spell, the same spell over and over again. When they reached the lake and saw the Dementors sucking the souls out of Harry and a too-thin man they shouted, "Protego!" and "Repello Inimicum!"
The Dementors moved out of the way but they seemed to be waiting. Biding their time until the shield charms collapsed. They swiped at the shields, pushing them, testing them, weakening them.
Then, a voice that sounded like Harry's came from the other side of the lake and a bright animal, glowing silvery blue galloped towards the Dementors, ramming them with great, branching antlers and throwing them away. The Dementors fled and the stag eventually faded.
Snape found them in the forest. The girls had kept the shield charms up but opened a hole wide enough to let Snape through when he found them what felt like hours later.
"You should not have come down here," he said.
They didn't respond.
They followed him up to the hospital wing, with Harry and Snape's new prisoner in tow. An unconscious Sirius Black was hardly a threat, but it was glaringly obvious that Snape didn't like him; he kept letting him float headfirst into trees.
They allowed Madam Pomfrey to look them over for injuries after she'd treated Ron, Harry and Hermione; they were unscathed. She'd sent them off to bed with a sleeping draught, which they obediently took-after scrubbing their skins almost raw in the shower.
When they woke the next morning, Jo was almost sick with the feeling of Déjà vu. They didn't know that Hermione and Harry had turned back time to rescue Buckbeak and Sirius.
They didn't know that Harry was the one who cast the Patronus-though they did suspect (based on the voice they heard casting the spell). They really didn't know that Harry could just make out their outlines in the wand light from across the lake. They couldn't know that Harry was reminded of the two voices and shoes he'd seen in the chamber last year.
They'd be delighted to know that while they puzzled him to no end, their identities remained secret. They did know that Jo's Déjà vu subsided as soon as the clock struck the hour they had returned to their dorm from the lake. They also knew that that was highly suspicious.