To Bedlam and Partway Back

NOTE: WARNINGS FOR SLASH

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I own none of these characters

Chapter Six

The man's grey eyes were pleading with him not to freak out. Cedric kept glancing between him and Harry, but his wand was firmly directed at the haggard man.

Harry still hadn't said another word. His eyes were still fixed on the man's waxen face, opened to their vibrant verdant fullest. "Sirius Black?" he repeated.

"H-harry-" the man croaked, his voice raw with disuse.

Harry pointed at him and exclaimed indignantly. "You licked me!"

Cedric turned from Black to stare at him in disbelief. "That's all you can think about now?"

"I'm trying not to think of anything else," the boy retorted. "It's slightly unnerving to've just been licked by your parents' murderer by proxy."

"Merlin, where do you get these words?" Cedric asked, running a hand through his honey-coloured hair. "I swear, Hermione's been brainwashing you."

Sirius Black just stood there and goggled at them. Then he snapped to attention once his brain processed Harry's words and he exclaimed heatedly, "I didn't betray them! I'd die before betraying James and Lily!"

Harry and Cedric glanced at each other and sighed. "Gryffindor," Cedric supplied, nodding sagely.

While Black just looked at him in confusion, Harry said, "We guessed you couldn't have betrayed my father. The two of you took the Pledgeship Bond together, didn't you? And Lupin, he Bonded with my mother?"

Sirius's grey eyes widened. "H-how did you know that?" The filthy man winced as his voice cracked.

Cedric conjured a glass of water and handed it to him. "Here." He wrinkled his nose at Sirius. "Didn't you use a 'Scourgify'?

Sirius gulped down the water like he hadn't tasted fresh water in the ten years he'd been in Azkaban. Cedric replenished the water, and Sirius shot him a grateful look. Then he waggled his fingers.

"No wand, remember?"

Cedric cast a quick cleaning charm, and then repairing charms on his robes. But he could do nothing for the man's nearly skeletal frame.

"How do you know about the Pledgeship Bonds, and Remus?" Sirius asked again. "I wouldn't have thought Dumbledore would tell you about either of them." A dark look drifted across the man's face, but he didn't say anything more.

Cedric just looked at him in disbelief. "Dumbledore knew all along? That you and Lupin had taken the pledges?" When Sirius nodded cautiously, the usually mild-mannered Hufflepuff exploded. "Then what in blazes was he thinking! That neither of you'll had died would've been a pretty telling clue about what happened that night!"

Sirius seemed taken aback by Cedric's rage. "What am I missing?" he asked.

Harry touched Cedric's elbow just as the blond was about to rip into another tirade. "Dumbledore tried to split us up the same night we Bonded."

Charcoal eyes widened. "What-the bastard-" Then his eyes narrowed in on the Hufflepuff prefect. "You Bonded with my thirteen-year-old godson?" he snapped. "You stupid duffer, don't you know what the consequences are-"

Cedric's temper flared. "You stupid twat, you don't even know what the consequences were if we hadn't!" he shouted back. "Why the hell are you caring now, huh? He's never been your godson before this; you're twelve years too bloody late!"

Harsh breathing snapped him back to the present, and Cedric whirled about, completely disregarding the apparent mass murderer in front of him. All his attention was on the thirteen-year-old sitting very stiffly at the edge of the couch. The skin about his lips was white; his nostrils were flared, but it looked like he was barely even breathing.

Cedric immediately hauled the boy into his lap, lips moving against the smooth shell of his ear. Fingers threaded through dark locks, and a single hand caressed a thin arm with the utmost gentleness. Harry relaxed almost immediately into his arms.

Sirius was the first to speak. "I'm sorry," he said in a low voice, looking shamefacedly at the ground, "I wasn't thinking." He let out a soft whuff of laughter, but it was tragic and sad. "Remus would say I never do." He raises his eyes to firmly meet Cedric's. "If you can take care of him, if he trusts you that much- I don't have any say in the matter."

"Damn right, you don't," Cedric said, just to be petulant. Then he sighed, and sank back into the couch, pulling Harry back with him. But the boy twisted away from his chest and stared at Sirius with large and imperious green eyes. "If you didn't betray my parents, then who did?"

Sirius sucked in a harsh breath, and he was obviously trying to control his temper. He flexed his fingers several times, before he reached into the breast pocket of his robes- now that they were cleaned and repaired, they could see they were of a charcoal silk that matched his eyes- and withdrew a badly wrinkled newspaper clipping. His hand was still shaking with anger when he handed it to Harry.

The boy stared at it, disbelieving. Cedric took a look at it and blurted out, "The Weasleys?"

Sirius looked startled. "Wha- oh, no, no, not them-"

Harry heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank Merlin," he murmured, ruffling his messy hair nervously. He might not be on speaking terms with the family, but they'd once been kind to him, and he hadn't forgotten. There were too pitifully few on that list for him to have forgetten so soon.

Cedric looked at the man suspiciously. "Then who is it?"

Sirius crept cautiously closer, and then pointed at Ron's shoulder. "There."

Harry just looked at the man flatly. "Scabbers. A ruddy rat. As if the Weasleys weren't bad enough, now going about you're blaming their ruddy rat?"

"Of course not!" Sirius exclaimed, looking affronted. "It isn't just any rat. Look at its paw."

Cedric peered over Harry's shoulder, but the boy knew what Ron's pet rat looked like. "Yeah, Scabbers is missing his middle toe. I've known them since First-Year! He's been with Ron for years, and Percy even before that, and he'd always been missing a toe."

Sirius just looked at him as if he expected the thirteen-year-old to make the connection. When Harry just raised his eyebrows expectantly, Sirius huffed and said, "The only piece of Pettigrew's they found was his middle finger."

Harry rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, maybe it was a message to you to shove-"

But Cedric watched the man with wild eyes. "Another animagus?" he whispered uncertainly.

Sirius nodded triumphantly. Harry frowned. That was the second time he'd heard the word, but he'd had no idea what it meant.

"What's an animagus?"

"It's uh- a wizard, or witch, who can turn into an animal," Sirius floundered.

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Like you and the Grim. Or Pettigrew and Scabbers."

Cedric nodded, and took up the thread from Sirius. "Exactly, Harry. It's a form of advanced transfiguration; it's notoriously difficult, and wizards usually end up changing themselves into wholly animal, which means they'll never be able to transform back into their human forms since they've lost their minds, or they only end up changing halfway, which is pretty pointless." He looked back at Sirius. "So the three of you- you, Pettigrew, and Lupin?"

Harry laughed. "Doesn't he have a natural animagus form once a month?"

Sirius paled till he looked just like a corpse. "You know? But how-"

Cedric looked at him scornfully. "I'd like to think some of us, at least, have a modicum of intelligence. All magical-raised children are taught to recognise the symptoms and signs from birth. Surely you knew that?"

The man rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure, my mum used to kick me out of the house every full moon in the hope I could, eh, recognise, the symptoms and signs."

Harry looked horrified at this, while Cedric didn't look too surprised. He would have, after all, heard of the reputation of the Blacks.

"And to answer your earlier question," Sirius continued, "it wasn't Remus- it was me, that bleeding traitor, and your dad, Harry." He grinned eagerly at the reminder, and from an angle looked almost human.

Harry blinked softly at this revelation. "What was he?" he asked quietly.

Sirius broke into a chippier smile. "A stag," he said, "a big old one, with eighteen tines and a huge rack. Oh, shut it, you," he told Cedric irritably when the blond tried to hide a laugh behind a cough. Harry looked up at him questioningly, and he gave him a lopsided smile, before bending down and whispering in his ear. Sirius scowled at the thoughtless intimacy, but couldn't help but smile when Harry laughed. Then he began to sweat when Harry considered at him speculatively, with an arched brow. That had been the same look Lily use to give him when she was about to hex him something fierce.

But then the boy's young face softened, and sobered. "Then that's…that's how you survived the Dementors? Because you didn't betray my parents?"

Sirius looked bitter at the very mention of it. "I as good as," he spat. "I was the one who suggested the switch, because I didn't think anyone would suspect using a sorry excuse like Pettigrew as the Secret Keeper." He shook his heavy head. "No, what kept me going was not the thought that I was innocent; it was revenge." His grey eyes gleamed with the mania. Then they lighted on Harry, and the madness faded away, leaving only a pained regret. "And you. Always you, Harry."

Cedric cursed. "If Sprout knew about your Pledging, they should've been able to realise there was no way you could still be alive if you'd betrayed James Potter!"

Sirius shrugged, loss twisting his face into something nearly unrecognisable. "I never got a chance to say anything in my defence. Besides, even if I had said something, what are the chances someone would have believed me? Unless they used Veritaserum, but they wouldn't even use that on trials for people like Malfoy."

Harry turned questioningly to Cedric. "Veritaserum?"

The blond smiled faintly down at him, brushed the messy black hair away from his face. "It's exactly what it sounds like, a truth serum. It's so powerful that the maximum dosage they can give any adult is five drops. The average dosage is about three, and minors can't be dosed at all because of adverse reactions to developing magical cores. It's a terribly effective poison as well," he added, "as even six drops will kill you, but since it's a controlled substance and so expensive, it isn't realistic to use it in that manner."

Harry bowed his head briefly as he absorbed that information. Then he turned his brilliant green eyes to Sirius. "So what was your plan coming here and showing up, then?"

The man gave him an embarrassed face. "Eh, well, I just thought I'd make my way up to the castle, to the Gryffindor tower, nab the traitorous rat, and then eat him?" At the twin looks of disgust the boys gave him, he quickly amended it. "Well, maybe not eat him. I might just chew on him a little and then throw him into the hippogriffs' feeding trough." His grey eyes widened childishly. "Did you know Hagrid's got hippogriffs on campus! That's brill! I've always wanted to ride one."

The two boys exchanged a look of astonishment, then burst into gales of merry laughter. Sirius smiled sheepishly at them.

"We'll get Scabbers for you," Harry said decisively. "And we'll talk to Lupin. We'll clear your name for you- just sit tight! I don't want you to get caught and get sent to Azkaban all over again!" He gave an unfeigned shudder, and Cedric sighed in his ear, rubbing at his arms to get some warmth in them. "Especially not with those Dementors there."

Sirius shook his head sadly. "The Dementors don't matter," he said softly. "It wasn't the memories that tortured me, but rather the Bond. After James' death- I felt it, you know." He looked through his godson with glassy eyes. "I felt it the moment he died. It was like something had snapped within me, was choking the life from my lungs-" he turned away from them with a noise, his charcoal eyes wet. Harry reached out with a gentle touch to his damp cheek. Sirius unconsciously pressed his lips against the small fingers, and then clutched at Harry's hand.

"I couldn't- I couldn't think straight. Then I'd gotten there, and their house was just this wreck-" he gasped with the raw intensity of the emotion welling within him "-it was like I'd been stabbed in the chest, my ribcage split open, and my heart pulled out for me to eat." Cedric looked distraught at his words, and his grey eyes kept straying down to the boy sitting in his lap, all his attention focused on his godfather.

"I couldn't even think about you."

Here Sirius looked so regretful that Harry just gave in and pulled the man's head and shoulders into a hug.

"All I had left was vengeance. So I went after Pettigrew, and- well, you know the rest."

Cedric swallowed hard, and then asked, "The four of you were friends. Wh-why, for Merlin's sake, did you all Bond!" The two dark-haired males looked at him in shock. "If just two of you had died, the other two would have followed! Didn't you ever think of Harry! And a werewolf- you of all people should know they don't exactly have a long life expectancy- not even thirty-five years, in fact! Were you just expecting Harry to lose his- his uncle, and his mother at one go, and be fine with it?" His arms tightened about the boy almost painfully, but Harry didn't say a word.

Sirius glanced away guiltily. "It was the war. Even though Lily and James had gotten married…they weren't expecting any cubs yet, Prongslet." He smiled affectionately at the boy and quickly ruffled his hair. "You were completely unplanned. We made that pledge to stay true to each other, and to survive the war. But when you came along- we all freaked out. None of us knew quite what to do with a baby." He barked out a laugh. "It was your mother you smacked us guys into sense. We'd just have to make it work, she said. And in case something happened, we trusted Dumbledore to take care of things- although that obviously wasn't the smartest decision to make." He sighed, the smile slowly fading away from his lips.

"Perhaps if one of you had Bonded with Pettigrew instead, then none of this would've happened," Cedric snapped. "And Harry'd still have someone left!"

Judging by the horror-struck look on Sirius's face, that obviously hadn't occurred to him quite yet. Cedric smiled in grim triumph. "I didn't think you'd have thought about it. Awfully selfish now, aren't we?"

Sirius closed his eyes in self-recrimination. Harry looked between him and Cedric, completely bewildered.

Cedric sighed into his hair, and pulled him close. "Do you remember," he began softly, "what Sprout said about the state of Bonds? That if the Bonded is dead, the other cannot live? Except for-"

"Except for vengeance," Harry finished, his face white. "And once Pettigrew is sentenced- your vengeance will be complete, as will Lupin's, even if you hadn't actually done it yourself. You're both going to die."

Sirius didn't dare to look up. His silence was all the answer Harry needed.

"I don't believe this," Harry choked out. "Are all adults this selfish?"

Sirius's head shot up. "Harry, please-"

"No," he cut him off, "I don't want to hear another word. You're a dead man walking, Black. You have been for twelve years. Don't you dare claim me."

He rose to his feet shakily, looking terrified that he'd actually touched the man, and Cedric quickly stood as well, holding his arm to steady him.

"We'll get your name cleared," Harry said bitterly, "so the four of you can go and do all the amazing things you'll never got to do, since there was a kid in the way."

He whirled about and stomped out of the shack. Sirius surged to his feet. "Harry, wait-"

He was stopped by a wand in the chest. Cedric's hand was trembling, not in fear but burning anger. "I agree, Black, you didn't draw your lot. No matter what you'd done, you still didn't deserve Azkaban. I'll talk to Harry for you. But if he says the word, don't you ever dare come near him again," he snarled. Then he spun around and sprinted after his Pledged.

Sirius could only sink onto the recently vacated couch and wonder how they had gotten so much wrong in so little time.

On a side note, Hermione actually does have her time-turner, but it doesn't actually have any bearing on this story. Sorry for that mix-up from the last chapter!

Tomorrow's chapter will still be posted, so no worries on that end. Cheers.