A/N: So here's the new chapter. Thanks to all my lovely reviewers!
Chapter 9
Hermione screamed, Sirius leapt back to his feet, and Harry looked simply shocked.
I didn't listen to Snape as he spouted off half-mad gibberish about Sirius and Remus, in favour of keeping my eyes on Pettigrew, who had subsided a little now that the potion's master was there. I'd been trying to keep calm all through this conversation, but I could understand Sirius' impatience. That man had ensured my brother and sister-in law's deaths. He was the reason my world collapsed twelve years ago, and he was going to pay.
I vaguely heard Hermione trying to reason with the raging professor, but he just screamed in her face like a mad man.
And then Harry stepped in front of the professor. He also tried reasoning first, but quickly jumped to shouting, and humiliating the man. Bad move. Snape yelled back, and then Harry proved that he was sorted into the right House as he disarmed the professor. Unfortunately for Snape, he did it at the same time as Ron and Hermione. Snape was lifted off his feet, and slammed into the wall, then slid down it to the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from under his hair. He'd been knocked out.
"Nice shot," I commented as Snape's wand landed on the bed next to Crookshanks.
"You shouldn't have done that," Sirius said, his eyes on his godson. "You should've left him to me."
Hermione was freaking out in another corner of the room. "Cheer up, Hermione, chances are he's not going to be able to remember all this, and if he did, I'll tell him I did it. He already hates me anyway."
She looked at me in disbelief, as if she couldn't fathom anyone not caring what a professor thought of them. Even though I was 29, and he'd never been my professor, and I'd never liked him in the first place. But there was also a little hope in her eyes. She was just a thirteen year old girl, after all, even if she was a bit of an overachiever.
And then Remus was trying to explain to Ron that his rat was, in fact, an animagus. And seriously, neither him, nor Sirius were doing a very good job of reassuring those kids, nor were they doing a very good job of explaining.
I rolled my eyes and decided I'd explain it myself. "Ron, your rat's a human in disguise, by the name of Peter Pettigrew. Harry, he was the one who betrayed your parents, because Sirius thought he'd be the obvious target for Voldemort," I ignored the shudder, "so they switched, and Pettigrew became the secret keeper. And we can prove it, if you just let us put a spell on the rat. If it's a normal rat it won't hurt him," I explained.
Maybe it was because I gave them a summary, or maybe it was just because I said it and not Sirius or Remus, but the trio fell silent and exchanged looks.
Harry looked at me then. "Harry, I swear I'd never do anything to hurt you," I whispered, hoping he could hear the sincerity in my voice.
He still looked a little wary of me. "What if you're not who you say you are?"
I smiled; this was something I could prove easily. "That's a valid question. Do you know anything about relations spells?"
Before Harry could respond, Hermione had already stepped forward and started explaining. "They're spells that can show the family bonds between different people. Red means immediate family, the colder the colour gets, the further the relation. Black means no relation whatsoever," she recited, clearly having memorised it.
I nodded and smiled anyway. "Yes. Harry, I'll need your hand." He held it out, and I took it in my left, so I could still cast the right. An orangey-red hue appeared around our joint hands. I smiled.
"Does that satisfy you?" I asked.
Harry looked at his friend. Hermione frowned. "I've never heard of them being tampered with before, and the tint suggests she's not immediate family, but still very close, like a cousin or an aunt…" she said, her eyes still on our hands.
Harry nodded and released my hand. "Fine. Ron?" he said, looking at the other boy. Ron reluctantly handed his struggling rat over to me. It clawed, and fought and tried with all it's might to get away, and I bared my teeth at it, not able to suppress the reaction. I held it tightly by the scruff of its neck while Remus and Sirius – now holding Snape's wand – got ready to reveal the coward for what he really was.
"Together?" Sirius said quietly, his eyes never leaving Wormtail.
"I think so," Remus said. "On the count of three. One… Two… THREE!"
A flash of blue-white light erupted from both wands, while I let go. For a moment, the rat hung suspended in mid-air, his small, grey from twisting madly as he fought the spell. But eventually, he lost.
More slowly than usual, the rat grew into a shadow of the man I had once known. He seemed to have lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time, giving him a gaunt look, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head. His skin also looked unhealthy, but aside from that and his obvious older age, he looked much the same as he had all those years ago. He still looked like a coward, and a traitor.
…And the dance began. Peter kept insisting that he had only been hiding from Sirius (and Hermione suggested that he could've killed Harry at any time in the past 3 years, but Remus countered that Peter only ever did something if he had something to gain from it), despite the obvious evidence against that, and, when he couldn't convince any of the adults in the room, he turned to the children. First, he turned to Ron, who was disgusted ("I let you sleep in my bed!"), then to Hermione, who simply looked horrified, and tried to ignore him. And last, of course, he turned to Harry, at which point both Sirius and I shouted. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY?" we shouted. I blushed, and kept my mouth shut after that, but Sirius just continued; I didn't think he had heard me. "HOW DARE YOU FACE HIM? HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT JAMES IN FRONT OF HIM?" I silently agreed.
Pettigrew continued to appeal to Harry's sense of justice, while Sirius kept interrupting him with shouted insults, going so far as to say Pettigrew should have died before divulging information about Lily and James.
Remus and Sirius almost killed the man, but Harry intervened, insisting the rat should be brought back to Hogwarts so Sirius would be free. Harry, Ron and even Hermione finally seemed to have been convinced, as we agreed to take Pettigrew back up to the castle. Sirius levitated Snape, and Ron and Remus agreed to be chained to Pettigrew.
Crookshanks led the way, followed by Remus, Pettigrew and Ron. Next came Snape, drifting creepily along, followed by Sirius, Harry and Hermione. I brought up the rear.
While we went through the tunnel, Sirius started talking to Harry. "You know what this means?" he asked, and I knew immediately what he was talking about, but he probably didn't know I was now Harry's sole guardian.
"you're free," Harry replied.
"Yes…," Sirius started, but I interrupted him.
"Speaking of freedom, Harry, the reason I came up to the castle was to tell you I got your aunt to sign over your custody to me. Unfortunately, you'll have to deal with both Sirius and I when he's declared innocent again. We were both your godparents, and Lily wanted us to have shared custody," I explained over Hermione's head.
"Really?" Harry said, excitement clearly audible in his voice. "But who would I live with?"
"Me. Sirius, I'm sorry to say that the ministry claimed your house as state property after you were arrested, but there's plenty of room in the manor, you're welcome to stay in your old room."
A silent "Thanks." drifted over to me, but I could tell that he was a little disappointed. He'd probably been hoping that he could have Harry to himself, but he was in no condition to be taking care of a teenage boy as well as himself right now.
We climbed out of the tunnel in silence and started trudging towards the castle. But a shift in the clouds made Remus freeze. I followed his gaze toward the moon and remembered that Snape had said something about Remus forgetting to take his potion.
"Oh, my! He didn't take his potion tonight! He's not safe!" Hermione gasped.
"Run," Sirius whispered, and I realized with some indignation that he meant me as well. "Run. Now."
I wasn't planning on moving, and Harry and Hermione didn't seem to want to go away either. Harry took a step towards Ron, who, I realized, was still chained to Pettigrew and Remus.
"Leave it to me! Run!" I said, pulling out my wand and placing a well-aimed diffindo at the manacle on Remus' shaking hand.
Sirius changed faster than the eye could see and bounded onto the now fully changed werewolf. I turned around to Harry and Hermione, urging them again to run, but the girl's scream alerted me to what was going on behind me. Pettigrew was trying to escape.
He had knocked Ron unconscious, and had used the same spell on Crookshanks, after which he'd turned into a rat and scurried off.
"Oh, no you don't!" I muttered and changed into my lynx form. With all the commotion going on around me, and the fact that I hadn't changed in over three months, made it a little difficult to track the rat at first, but I quickly found his trail, and bounded after him. He stayed ahead of me, though, and eventually dived into a hole in the ground, and no matter how much I clawed at him, I couldn't reach him. Then I heard Harry's voice shouting "Sirius!" and halted my hunt abruptly. I turned my head in the direction I'd come from, but couldn't see too far, even with my cat eyes.
I looked back at the hole and scowled. If it was a choice between saving my friends and catching the rat… I ran off back towards where I'd left Harry, but as I came closer, I smelled Snape, and it wasn't the scent of someone unconscious. I quickly changed back, and ran forwards. I found Snape with Ron on a stretcher beside him, making his way over to the lake. "Miss Potter, still alive, I see," he sneered, real hatred in his voice. Yup, he thought I'd knocked him out.
"Where's Harry?" I asked ignoring his jibe. He pointed, a nasty smirk on his face, and I followed his finger. Hundreds of dementors were hovering over the lake, but I couldn't really see anyone. Then, suddenly an almost blinding white light, emitted by a patronus, chased them all away. As the light dimmed, and Snape I hurried over, I could tell it was a huge stag, and I knew immediately whose patronus that was. By the time we got there, Harry and Sirius were unconscious on the lake's bank, and my heart skipped a beat. What if that patronus had been too late?
I used a diagnostic spell on Harry first, while Snape bound Sirius tightly and reclaimed his wand. I sighed in relief as the spell indicated Harry was just exhausted and a little dehydrated.
"How did you conjure the stretcher?" I asked, indicating the one Ron was lying on.
"Weasley's wand," he replied curtly, without looking at me, and conjured three more, levitating Harry, Hermione, and the bound and gagged Sirius on them.
I turned around and whispered: "Accio Remus' wand," while cursing myself for not thinking about using that spell on Pettigrew. I tried it, but apparently, he was out of range.
I turned to Sirius and performed the same spell on him as I'd done on Harry. He was far worse off, having lost a considerable amount of blood, undergone severe starvation and dehydration, as well as a poorly healed fractured bone. I thought it could be reset, though.
Snape stared at me intently, probably waiting for me to demand Sirius be let go, or for me to try to curse him, but I was smarter than that. There was no way I could ever outfight Severus Snape in a duel, and I wasn't stupid enough to try to convince him of the truth, he'd never believe it, and if he did, he'd still try to turn Sirius in, just for the fun of it.
"Shall we?" I asked, keeping my eyes on Harry. I was hoping he'd think the worry in my eyes was for my young ward, instead of for the escaped convict floating next to the potions master.
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