Chapter Nine

The Bloodstained Cages

Sirius's point of view

There was an unspoken rule at Hogwarts, that everyone knew. It was that Gryffindors and Slytherins did not speak to each other, without throwing insults, but since when did Sirius pay attention to the rules? That was just about the only rule he hadn't broken yet, but that was about to change. The heads of everyone in the Great Hall turned as Snape marched purposefully toward the Gryffindor table. He was holding an extremely thick book that, not all that surprisingly, looked like it was on dark magic.

"Lupin, Black," he stated in a voice that sounded as though a loved one of his had recently died, "I'd like a word with you." Sirius, surprising even himself, stood and followed Snape out of the Great Hall. Remus was trailing behind them with a wary expression.

"Okay, I'll bite," Remus began as soon as they were out of the Great Hall.

"Please don't, Dumbledore'll be miffed." Sirius whispered. Thankfully, Remus didn't seem to hear him.

"Why do you sound so remorseful all of a sudden?" He finished.

"I was speaking with Flametail, and I was able to convince her that my questions were hypothetical. She gave me this book, and told me to figure the answer out for myself, and I have..."

"Bad news?" Sirius guessed. Snape suddenly looked uncomfortable. He opened his mouth, then closed it a few times, as if trying to find the right words, then, gave up, opened the book, and turned it to show them the page, turning his head away and squeezing his eyes shut. On the page was a picture of a grotesque creature, a skeletal deer, standing on hind legs with flesh clinging to its bones in strips, blood dripping from fangs, with a caption reading Shapeshifters: Skinwalkers. "What is that?" Sirius asked, taken aback by the detailed, gory picture.

"My aunt Surly." Snape said sarcastically. "It's a Skinwalker, you twit. It says so right underneath the picture."

"And..." Sirius prompted, annoyed.

"And, a skin walker has the ability to instantaneously copy anyone's appearance, and they have the ability to asexually reproduce." Sirius snorted, in spite of himself. "That means they multiply, Black." Snape snarled. Sirius sobered immediately.

"There could be hundreds of them walking around the school in just a matter of weeks, and we might never know who's been replaced, and because these are intelligent beings, they will switch places with the friends of their original victims first, so suspicion is limited. That also means you two, Flametail, and I are next. You two, because you already noticed the impostors, me because I noticed them, and because I understand the way they work, and Flametail because she knows Pettigrew a bit and would be a threat to any supernatural creature trying to gain entry to the castle." Snape seemed to pale a bit, Sirius hadn't thought it would be possible if he hadn't seen it.

"While that is foreboding and everything, I still think we should focus on trying to find Peter and James." Remus said.

"I agree." Sirius nodded quickly.

"About that..." Snape swallowed. "S-skinwalkers often... erm..."

"Come on, Snape, spit it out." Sirius growled.

Severus's point of view

"They, erm... well they often..." It was actually physically difficult to get the words out of his mouth, "eat... the... the victims they replace." Lupin and Black both went pale as snow, and Severus grimaced.

"P-peter and J-james have b-been eaten by Skinwalkers?" Lupin stuttered.

"Hypothetical, huh?" A deep, quiet, female voice asked. Severus jumped and turned around to face the girl. It was Flametail, of course. Severus didn't feel like talking to her at the moment. He pushed the book into her stomach, forcing her to take t back.

"Take that wretched thing back, it has the darkest magic in it I've ever seen, and I'm sure it's been moving around." He growled, wanting nothing more than to rid himself of the book.

"Of course it moves around, all of my books are possessed by at least one spirit." Severus felt fear course through his body and physically recoiled away from the book. "This isn't even the darkest book I own either, I have a few dedicated to torture curses, a whole bunch on blood magic, and a few dedicated to theoretical magic like necromancy and immortality spells that involve murder, and have to be done annually." He felt both Black and Lupin shift behind him, and he almost felt the urge to run the opposite way.

"By the way, this entry is slightly out of date, it's been proven that they don't actually eat their victims, they tend to be herbivores, though it varies, but you'd have a hard job finding them. Nobody knows where Skinwalkers take their victims, although, there is a quite famous lycanthrope slayer," here she shot an icy stare in Lupin's direction, "who also specializes in magical creatures, I've heard she even has a pet basilisk, who might be able to help. Siren, they called her... but she'll be hard to find too, dropped off of the face of the earth two years ago... nobody even knows what she really looked like, always wore a hood." With that, she turned and walked away, her cloak dragging across the floor, not being picked up by the breeze the movement should have created. He was so surprised by that, and the fact that Pettigrew might be alive, that he almost didn't notice that she didn't have a shadow, what exactly was she? He turned back to Lupin and Black, who looked ecstatic.

"What are you so happy about, you heard her, we can't find them." Severus cocked his head to one side, genuinely curios.

"I thought you said you wanted Peter back." Black suddenly growled.

"W... I, I do." Severus faltered.

"Then why, in the name of Merlin's sodding beard are you giving up so easily?" Lupin asked hotly.

"I... erm..."

"Yeah, Snape. If you don't want to help, get out of our way." Black pushed his way passed him, Lupin shadowing him, though, admittedly, not shoving him so hard. He thought for a moment, to weigh out the options. If he didn't help them, they'd probably never find Potter and Pettigrew... but that's as far as his thoughts went, because suddenly, as though he'd planned to do it all along, he ran down the corridor after them.

"I want to help." He muttered, when he caught up.

He didn't go to a single class that day, neither did Black or, to Severus's surprise, Lupin. The three of them spent the entire day pestering Flametail to give them different types of books, reading them(Severus was forced to read the darkest ones, which he was sure would give him nightmares for a while), returning them, and repeating the process, searching everywhere trying to find out more about "Siren", but they found nothing, and Flametail was getting very irritated with them. They went on like that until curfew, the only thing that happened that was out of the ordinary, was that Severus had found a picture in a book that he had seen only once before, the night before that one, in a dream. In that dream he'd been in the library, sitting next to Lupin, reading a book on taming the darkest creatures, and remembered seeing that specific picture. After Black and Lupin left, presumably to their common rooms, Severus found himself roaming the dank dungeons alone, just thinking. He sighed when he found himself at the Slytherin portrait hole, he was sure everyone was going to hate him even more than usual. He opened the portrait hole cautiously after muttering the password(Serpensortia). To his great surprise, everyone ignored him. He breathed a sigh of relief and went straight up to his dormitories. While changing into his pajamas, he got a horrible headache.

He climbed into his bed, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain. Sleep couldn't come fast enough, but, why wouldn't it, it took it's sweet time. The darkness around him shifted, it didn't get lighter or darker, it just felt different, like his eyes were wide open, but he still couldn't see. Blue lights flashed in front of his eyes, illuminating metal cages stained with dark substances, hanging from chains, but he was sure he hadn't fallen asleep yet. The penetrating darkness was only getting deeper, more real, becoming inescapable. His head turned of it's own accord, but that was useless, as he still couldn't see anything. A sense of calm, for some inexplicable reason, was flooding through his body. He felt taller all of a sudden, just a little bit. He could smell blood on the air. He turned his head to the other side, straining his ears for any sort of sound, not knowing why he was. That movement caused his hair to brush against his cheek, it wasn't greasy, it was silky, and felt thicker than normal. His hand lifted in front of him, but he couldn't even see his fingers.

There was a second flash of light, this time red. Once again the cages were illuminated. Inside the one he was facing, was a teenage boy, probably the age of fourteen, who was tall, had black, messy hair, and glasses that flashed in the light. With a jolt of recognition Severus called out,

"James!" That didn't sound like his voice, no, not at all. Potter turned to look at him, he disappeared into the darkness when the red light died.

"Peter!" He called back. "Mate, where in the Name of Merlin are we?" Peter? What kind of dream was he having, and why was it so detailed? He never remembered being able to smell things in his dreams before, or feel things, like the cold bars he had suddenly wrapped his fingers around.

"I dunno, James." He called back.

He was pushing on the inside of the bars. A feeling of immense power coursed through his arms, and with the almighty sound of bending metal, he wrenched the bars apart. He took a half step back, and made a spectacular leap, landing on the top of the cage the housed Potter. Another flash of light, this time pink, gave him opportunity to scale down the side, ripping two bars out of their positions, and threw them into the cavernous depth of the pit below them, the clanging sound that would've come from them hitting the bottom never came. In the next flash of light, this one an eerie purple, Severus could see Potter's shocked face.

"How did you do that?" Was Potter's only reaction. Severus did not reply.

"We need to find a way out of here as fast as possible." Severus gasped, but it was not audible at all, or at least he thought it wasn't. "James, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Potter replied.

"Oh, Merlin..." Snape, you have to help us. It was like it was Severus's own thought, but he knew it wasn't, suddenly, he understood that this wasn't a dream, he was inside Pettigrew's thoughts, inside his mind. I'm trying to. He thought, and, for some reason, Severus knew that Pettigrew had heard him, then his eyes flew open, and he was being jostled awake by Lupin and Black.