Author's Note:

Thank You for you feedback for chapter 02!

As always, it would make me very happy to see any reviews. Tell me what you think! I am also still searching for a beta, so leave me a pm if you are interested.

I hope you have fun reading this!

When Remus entered the kitchen on the ground floor the next morning, his head was still pounding — both from alcohol and the endless questions flooding his mind. Nearly every room on the second floor was a total mess, but on the first floor a few seemed to have taken nearly no damage on that fateful night, as most likely Voldemort had not entered them.

The kitchen was one of those rooms, and with a sigh Remus placed himself on the opposite of the already sitting child that claimed to be the son of his best friend and had just kidnapped him using highly complex dark magic.

"How?" he uttered, accepting the cup of coffee the child handed him.

"Time Travel," was the monotone answer that was offered.

"Time Travel?"

"Yes."

Remus took a few seconds to let that sink in. He didn't even want to know what it would take to make a jump in time this big. But what worried him even more was just how bad things must have been to drive someone to such lengths.

"Do you have any proof?" he asked, taking a sip of his coffee. Slightly surprised, he let the small flavour of cinnamon roll of his tongue. It wasn't a guarded secret, but he didn't think many people cared about how exactly Remus Lupin liked to drink his coffee.

"We will both swear an unforgivable in a few days. If I drop dead, I am lying."

Remus brows furrowed at that. "Why go to such lengths? There are easier ways to prove an identity."

"Yes, but the vow serves more than one function. The primary one will be protection from any binding magic trying to make you serve against our wishes. While this is not commonly known, the unbreakable vow always takes precedence over any other vow or binding if it was completed first. — which is why it was made an Azkaban worthy offence."

"Harry, I am still bou-"

"I know. Trust me, I have researched every possible way to break the ministry bindings, and while the situations required to do that without the consent of the binder are very few edge cases and the proceedings are often times less than… pretty, I have found ways. All of them require some sort of special condition to make use of loop holes in the spells. Luckily, being a lycanthrope is one of those conditions."

The child gave him a small smile which turned into a slight grimace for the next words. "The ritual will be quite painful in more than one way, but afterwards you will be completely free."

Remus knew the next words he uttered were wrong. He could feel it — even his wolf could feel it — but the bitterness inside him still made its voice heart. "To then be enslaved by another vow, to another master?"

Remus expected the small smile on the lips of "supposedly Harry" to vanish, but to his surprise he was met with a look that signalled so much compassion, he nearly dropped his coffee.

"I am no one's master. If you want, you are free to leave after the ritual. If you decide to stay, we will design the vows together and from that point onward, we will also work, live and breathe together — for our future and the future of every single person inside Britain."

Remus didn't know why, but his heart seemed to quietly burst into a million pieces at that statement. It hadn't been the words, it had been something deeper. Something only his soul was able to pick up on. Somehow, he knew that the person in front of him was telling the truth. Somehow, he could feel that the only right way forward was to trust him. Inside him, for the first time in years, hope shimmered to the surface. It was still small, but it was a feeling he had missed more than anything else.

"This is something big, isn't it?"

"This, Moony, is going to be the next era of magic. An era marked by freedom."

Remus took a long sip of his coffee, looking inside the brightly twinkling eyes of Harry Potter. "I'm in."

-o-o-

Remus growled, struggling against the chains that held him fixed on the altar. A freaking altar! Was there anything else screaming more "dark and painful" than an altar? The pain had begun to slowly rise as soon as Harry had started chanting, and now — after about an hour — it had started to become quite unbearable. And not only had he been chained to an altar, but he also had to be naked for it — so much for any kind of decency for the duration of this ritual.

The idea Harry had explained on how to free him from his bindings was quite simple. They were bound to a specific magical signature — the one of Remus Lupin. Altering that signature would make all of them useless as the bindings would still be applied to the old signature. The only problem was that changing a signature was nearly impossible. As the magical signature was directly derived from the soul of that individual witch or wizard, only magic effecting the soul would be able to do it — and only very few spells or rituals were able to do that. The killing course was the only spell Remus knew capable of altering the soul — namely destroying it. That was how Harry was able to move so freely. Through being hit by that curse his magical signature had been permanently altered.

When Harry had explained how exactly Voldemort had dropped all his bindings, Remus had felt like retching. Splitting one's soul once would leave most people on the brink of insanity. Doing it seven times should leave anyone a blabbering mess. It was a miracle Voldemort was even able to speak coherent sentences. Combining that piece of information with the shock that the Dark Lord was still very much alive and kicking didn't help his mood at all.

"How lo-arrgh-" he tried to ask for the third time, although he knew perfectly well that Harry wasn't able to answer, far too engulfed in the magic trying to draw his wolf out. Today was one day before the full moon, making Remus feel even more wretched than normal. But it was the day his wolf was the closest to the surface, excluding the actual night of the full moon. They planned on changing his magical signature through drawing his inner wolf deeper into his soul. While lycanthropy already permanently altered the soul, his bindings were promptly re-applied after he had been bitten. This was actually a ritual made to strengthen a werewolf, designed centuries ago by wizards wanting to up the power of their slave werewolves, when they were still considered good battle assets and not just despicable creatures. No wonder most werewolves had followed the Dark Lord. He at least found them useful.

Suddenly, the pain spiked to an unbearable degree and Remus could not hold back the primal scream that emitted his throat. His arms and legs were jerking at his chains while his whole body felt like it was on fire. Somewhere, in the back of his mind the thought registered that this felt way worse than the actual werewolf transformation. And when something felt worse than all your bones breaking and rearranging themselves, you knew something really hurt.

Normally, his mind would make him pass out from the pain, but the magic stopped that from happening. His vision started blurring, and he could feel the changes inside his body that he had started dreading the moment Harry had explained the ritual. Harry had theorized that Greyback had undergone this ritual too, and it was what had given him his more wolf-like appearance, as well as the physical and magical power-up.

Remus had always shied away from his wolf. Now merging closer to it, to the point of physical alterations, had made him more than a tad nervous. He was scared that he would become just like Greyback — a beast inside a man's body. Harry, on the other hand, had been quite optimistic, stating that as far as he knew Greyback had always been the violent animal he was, and Remus could "actually use some werewolf backbone to compliment the kind human".

That was the last coherent thought he was able to think before his screams turned into howls and his mind receded into a state of a barely conscious haze.

-o-o-

The week it took Remus to wake from his ritual induced coma Harry mostly spend planning. Harry wanted to introduce a few more core members into his little revolutionary organization, but most of them were still unreachable. Well, as soon as he got Remus a magical focus, a bit extra training, and able to comfortably work with his newfound wolf-abilities, they could at least start working on one of those. Harry was more than interested in what Remus's abilities actually consisted of. What he knew was quite vague and suggested big differences from werewolf to werewolf. He also knew Greyback was able to transform into a part-werewolf — that ability would be quite useful.

The fourth core member had to wait until he was able to safely enter Hogwarts. He was quite torn about that. On the one hand, living inside Hogwarts would give him a lot of new opportunities, but it also subjected him to the wary eyes of the staff members and one very observant headmaster. Well, at least he knew Dumbledore would be purposefully looking the other way whenever he was able to. The trick would be to keep him able to do that.

They still had a bit less than a year of preparation. That should leave them with barely enough time to get the third key member out of the clutches of the ministry. The other two major projects would be getting this house ready to act as a proper base of operations as well as starting Hermione's training. They also needed to carve out the necessary vows. Harry had already started to formulate part of them inside his head, but he really wanted to wait mostly for Remus's input. That man was far too intelligent to not involve him in their construction.

What he was able to figure out though, was that most likely it would be the most secure thing to establish a real organization with a defined purpose and centre the vows around that. He knew Dumbledore had done something similar with the Order of the Phoenix, but his success had been very limited, as their members were only able to follow order business when it didn't directly conflict with the former, first established, ministry bindings. Still, the headmaster was able to do quite a lot under these constraints, especially considering the mental barriers he was under. But it forced him to be incredibly passive, something one could not effort inside a civil war.

Harry had also started working on getting the destroyed rooms back into shape as well as turning this family home into something more… useful. For much of the work he needed at least Remus if not even more people to get the proper enchantments going. Things such as space enlargement, a duelling chamber with the proper safety wards. Stuff like that had never been his expertise. For now, he had turned one of the rooms on the first floor into his personal study. He had planned to set up person specific wards for their individual rooms as well as the ones containing sensitive information. Thinking about it, he remembered that something akin to a holding cell should also find its place among the rooms…

Harry sighed. The two floors just wouldn't be enough, even when going all out on space enlargement charms. Probably, they needed to dig a basement for some of the more… interesting rooms. Maybe they could engage a muggle firm, but Harry wasn't yet able to access any gold from his Gringotts account — Dumbledore would notice.

"Good Evening, Harry."

He looked up from notes, and a smile appeared on his face. Remus still looked quite tired, but he seemed to have mostly recovered. The transformation had surprisingly brought only minor changes to his appearance. It seemed to have accelerated his hair growth as Remus was now rocking quite the beard for only one week of not shaving. It also looked a lot fuller than when Harry had picked him up from his alcohol binge. His hair had grown too, now reaching just short of his shoulders. His muscles seemed to have grown, but in a way you would only notice if you knew Remus beforehand. While he had always looked rather weak, you could now see some definition through the shirt he was wearing. But the thing standing out the most were his eyes that now shined a dark yellow instead of the brown-grey they had been before.

"How do you feel? Any urge to eat me? By the way, you should keep the hair and beard. A bit of grooming and the girls will chase you around like crazy."

Remus shot him a slightly annoyed look. "Are you impersonating James now? Actually, I feel quite well considering what you put me through."

"Perfect. You should go downstairs and eat something. I will come down in a bit. I have a few more things to discuss with you before we start working on the vows."

Remus's expression turned into a mixture of worry and amusement. "Any more surprises? Maybe a second dark lord lurking around the corner?"

"Not quite," Harry replied, "It's good news this time, though."

Remus nodded once and Harry quickly finished his notes for the next year before standing up and following the werewolf into the kitchen. Remus was quietly eating the soup Harry had made earlier, looking less weak with every bite he took. Making himself a cup of green tea, Harry quietly wondered how to address the subject of Sirius Black, when Remus cut him out of his musings.

"Whatever you have to say, just say it. I can handle it."

Harry sighed. "Sirius is innocently incarcerated inside Azkaban and Peter betrayed my parents to Voldemort."

Silence followed. Remus had stopped eating as soon as the name Sirius had fallen. His hands shivered and his eyes betrayed a mixture of hope and despair.

"How?" he croaked, slowly putting the spoon out of his hand, fearing it would just slip out of it.

"They switched the secret keeper at the last minute. Sirius suggested Peter might be able to just mostly hide inside his rat form, which was a brilliant idea by the way. Turns out Peter had been a death eater even before joining the order, making the dark mark take precedence over the order vows. For the last nine years he has lived as the Weasley's pet rat. I suspect he has them confounded every few years, so they don't get suspicious."

Harry could see that Remus wanted to jump out of his seat as soon as he had mentioned Peter. "We have to hand over Peter! It's the only possibility of freeing Sirius!"

Harry, now with finished tea in hand, sat down opposite of the agitated man, fixing him with a stare. "Come on, Remus. You are intelligent enough to know Sirius will never see the light of day, even if we hand over Peter directly in front of the minister with Rita Skeeter taking pictures of it."

"But we can't just let him rot in Azkaban!" Remus exclaimed, running his hand through his hair.

"Exactly. Therefore, we have about one year of time left to break him out," Harry grinned at Remus's perplexed expression, before continuing, "And before you say it is impossible, Sirius has done it himself in my third year at school. It rose quite the fuss."

"You suggest breaking into a highly secured fortress of an island littered with dementors with two people?"

"Well, we obviously need to get you up for the task first." Remus threw his hands into the air while Harry let out a quiet chuckle.

"But before that we have some vows to design."