"Harry, what happened?" I asked fearfully. Harry had just come back from his Divination exam, and Trelawney was taken to predicting his death. Something more substantial?

"Trelawney just Predicted something. An actual prophecy."

"Stop picking up her voice patterns and repeat it. Word for word. Wording is important."

"OK. Er-hem…

The Dark Lord has been alone, without peers.
His servant has been chained these twelve years.

Tonight, before midnight, from here the servant shall skive
Bearing the blood of his friends, and the mark of five.

The one wronged the most will shed his chain
To be helped by she who must go again."

"Oh, Harry… Sirius Black is gonna escape! Do you think he'll kill you tonight?"

"I… did not think of that. But one way or another, Sirius Black is gonna be dropping down this school's priority list."

"Harry, Ginny… I just came to tell you. Hagrid… he's lost the case."

We had hit two walls. Before the night was out, Buckbeak would be dead, and Sirius Black would run into the moonlight, leaving bloody footsteps behind him. There was literally no silver lining here.

"Wait a second… Harry, where's your Invisibility Cloak?"

"Behind the one-eyed witch on the third floor."

"How do you get to it?"

"Tap the statue and say 'Dissendium'."

Trust Hermione to come up with this plan. Also trust her to go out and collect the thing.

"We have a hippogriff to save."

It wasn't very long until four of us crammed under the Invisibility Cloak. Amber, bless her, had taught herself something called the Disillusionment Charm, and used that instead. We headed out to Hagrid's hut.

"Hagrid, it's us."

"Yeh shouldn't've come!" He still invited us in.

"Hagrid, I'm really sorry to hear about Buckbeak. Is there anything at all we can do to help him?"

"Nah, I'm sorry, Ginny. But thanks for the thought."

"It's just so… awful, to see Buckbeak sitting there, waiting for his doom," Amber said, tearing up. I put my arm around her.

"Oh. On the subject of missing pets…" Hagrid said, before pulling a rat out of one of his jars.

"Ron, you be more careful with this."

"Scabbers!" Ron cried out, holding Scabbers in his hands.

"I think you owe someone an apology, Ron…" Harry hinted.

"Right. Sorry, Hermione, for blaming you for me thinking Crookshanks had eaten him."

"…Good enough, I suppose. A little disjointed, but…"

"Hermione, we need to go NOW!" Amber interrupted. She was right. The execution party was arriving.

"Everyone, under the Cloak, one two three, let's go!" she chanted. We all hurried under the Cloak, and Amber Disillusioned herself.

"Go, before they see you leave!"

*THUD*

Impeded by the Invisibility Cloak, we didn't get far enough away from Hagrid's hut to be deaf to the axe's swing.

"Buckbeak…" Hermione cried. Ron went to put an arm around her, but Scabbers started twitching like mad. He got out of Ron's clasp, and Ron went to follow him.

"Next time we sneak out, I'm Disillusioning everyone. No more sentimentality about the Cloak."

We went to chase Ron, but a bark halted us in our tracks. We turned.

"It's… the Grim! Amber, we're going to die tonight!"

"But I never got the chance to-"

"Amber, I can see it too. Don't panic yet."

"Panic? This has gone from a future crisis to a current crisis! That dog looks like it is about to cause some serious damage!"

The 'Grim' leaped over us, and grabbed Ron by the ankle. It dragged him into the roots of the nearest tree. We tried to follow, but Harry was walloped by the tree.

"Girls… this is the Whomping Willow. We won't be able to follow the dog." Harry's statement may have been true at the time, but Crookshanks darted out from the Forbidden Forest, and hit the knot at the base of the trunk. The Whomping Willow turned still, and we began to follow the dog hesitantly.

"Ron!" Harry exclaimed, running to Ron. He was sitting in the corner of the house at the other end of the passage. Ron looked up at us fearfully.

"Harry… run! It's a trap!"

"Seriously, Ron, what's the problem?"

"He's the dog! He's an Animagus!"

The door we entered through closed. Behind the door was a gaunt figure. He would have looked at home as a skeleton, if it weren't for the eyes. Dark and forbidding, with a faint hint of humour that made the situation ten times worse.

It was Sirius Black.

I ran in front of Harry, and spread my arms wide.

"If you want Harry, you'll have to go through the rest of us, too!" I said, not thinking about what I was saying.

"No… only one will die tonight…" Black cackled.

"Then it'll be you!" Harry roared, pushing me aside and grabbing Black by the neck.

"You sold my parents to Voldemort. You would have seen me die, too. You have the mercy of only being attacked by me. If one of the girls got to you, you'd wish you'd've been Kissed."

"Harry, I didn't sell your parents to Voldemort!"

"You won't burrow out of this, Black."

"Expelliarmus!" someone casted. It was Lupin. Sirius Black was released from Harry's grip, and he ran towards Lupin.

"Sirius, I have one question. Who was it?" I couldn't understand this question at all. Black pointed squarely at Ron. Lupin looked closely where he was pointing.

"But why… unless… did you switch… without telling me?" Sirius nodded. Lupin lowered his wand, and embraced Black.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Hermione cried out.

"Hey, that's my line!" everyone but Ron said simultaneously.

"I've trusted you! I didn't tell anyone what you were, thinking there was good in you… but you've been helping Black all this time!"

"Hermione, calm down…" Harry tried to say.

"Harry, you can't trust him! He's been helping Black get into the castle, he wants you dead too… he's a werewolf!"

Everyone looked at Hermione for two whole seconds.

"I am very disappointed at you, Hermione. Half marks. I do not want Harry dead, and I have not been helping Black into the castle directly… but there is no way for me to deny me being a werewolf."

"Wait, directly? Professor Lupin, with all due respect, most of my friends are about to curse you and Black into oblivion. You have to hurry and make with the explanation," Amber told him. I sheepishly made it less obvious that my wand was trained on Black.

"Alright, Amber. You deserve the explanation. Sirius, Peter and James were my best friends at Hogwarts. They, like your sister, figured out the signs that I was a werewolf. But, instead of deserting me, they became Animagi just to comfort me in wolf form."

"My dad was an Animagus?" Harry asked.

"Yes. Peter was a rat. Sirius a dog. James a stag. Peter could disable the Whomping Willow, and the three could get under the tree, and through to this place. Which, as you may have guessed, was my one refuge as a werewolf. Once here… the possibilities were endless. We roamed the school and Hogsmeade so much, we could construct the greatest work of Hogwarts ever… the Marauder's Map!"

"The Map! So… Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs…"

"Correct. Were us. But we were far too carefree… we had plenty of slipups… and to this day, Dumbledore does not know about this. Even when we believed Sirius to be a traitor and getting past the Dementors, I failed to tell him how he's been doing it… so in a way, that is how I have been helping him."

"So that's why Snape doesn't trust you! Does he know?"

"Yes, he does. He does not know the full extent of it, however, and neglected to tell Dumbledore."

"Wait, Snivellus is here? At Hogwarts?"

"As a teacher."

"And as your worst nightmare!" Snape said, whipping off the Invisibility Cloak we had carelessly left behind.

"Vengeance is sweet. How I was hoping to catch the two of you here. The other two are dead, aren't they?"

"Severus, you are making a terrible mistake."

"Shut it, Lupin. The Dementors will be pleased to hear your relationship to Black… pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I daresay…"

"Severus…"

"Black, you too will receive your due in time. Now…" Snape bound the two, "It's time. You five, come with me!" Instead of following his direction, I stepped in front of the doorway.

"Stand aside, you foolish girl. You are messing with things beyond your comprehension."

"As are you, Snivellus. The two were in the middle of telling us an enchanting tale, and personally, I'd have liked to have heard the end of it."

"Stop it! You do not speak to a teacher like that! …Cru-"

"Expelliarmus!" Five voices cried. Snape got hit by each beam at the same time, and collided with the wall.

"We attacked a teacher…" Hermione wailed.

"That's nothing to what Snivellus meant. Second year in a row I've been worried about expulsion…" I told her.

"Diffindo." Amber said calmly, releasing Lupin and Black.

"Thank you, Amber."

"Will Snape remember anything?"

"I don't pretend to be an expert on head wounds, but I doubt he will. Your secret is safe with us, Ginny."

"And now, as Ginny so kindly put it, to finish our tale. James was the only one of us to get married outside of school, sadly. He was a marked man due to a prophecy, and had to hide. He stayed hidden with the Fidelius Charm, which…" Lupin said, looking at Hermione.

"The Fidelius Charm allows a building to be hidden by hiding its location in a living soul. As long as that soul, the Secret-Keeper, kept the secret hidden, the building would be perfectly impenetrable."

"Yes. I was the Secret-Keeper for the Potters. However, due to a spy within our ranks, I switched the Keeper to Pettigrew, thinking he would be an unlikely target. How wrong I was. He was the spy. He sold the Potters to Voldemort almost immediately. I stood there, staring at the ruins of the Potters, knowing what Pettigrew had done. What I had done. I'm sorry for ripping away your parents, Harry."

Harry looked Sirius straight in the eye.

"Where is he?"

"He's right there," Sirius said, pointing to Ron.

"You're mental!" Ron exclaimed. Amber thought otherwise.

"Ron, may I please hold Scabbers?" she asked. Ron gave it to her, and she looked at it. Her gentle-looking hands had an iron grip, I knew, so Scabbers couldn't get out of the inspection.

"When you cornered Pettigrew, how did it go?"

"He shouted that I had killed James and Lily. He then took out a knife, moved it around his body, before pulling out one of his eyes. The thing was disgusting. He then cast a spell which exploded the road, cracking the sewer, before turning into a rat and hiding in there."

"Just checking. He did lose an eye."

"Wait, Scabbers' lost eye…"

"Yes. In my hands is none other than Peter Pettigrew himself."

"Throttle him."

"No! What if it's just a rat?"

"Amber, loosen your grip slightly. I am going to cast a charm. Once it is done, Scabbers will either run to Ron, or turn into Peter. Either way, he'll need to be on the floor."

"Got it."

It was like watching a speeded up version of a growing tree. The rat grew to a man about Harry's height. He was a very plump man, with very grubby skin and a rat-like half face. On his other half was a clean socket, where his eye had been. While it had mostly scabbed over, the dark hole remained, as did the… you know, I shouldn't describe his eye anymore.

"Put on an eyepatch, Pettigrew! Have you no shame?"

"He doesn't, Ginny. A finger would have done just fine for his purposes, and would have made more sense to boot."

"Well, hello, Peter," Lupin told him, in a very calm voice that exuded trouble. Peter's eye widened. All three of us girls gagged, and Sirius conjured up an eyepatch for Pettigrew to put over his socket. He even attached it himself.

"We were just having a discussion about the night the Potters were killed. You may have missed the finer details on the floor, but you were involved…"

"Remus… Sirius… my old friends… you wouldn't have me sent to Azkaban…?"

"No, they would not, Pettigrew," Amber pointed out.

"Now, why did you do this?"

"I didn't mean to… the Dark Lord… you wouldn't believe the weapons he possesses…"

"He threatened you? Then you should have DIED! Died, rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you!"

"NO! Ron, I was a good pet, a good rat…"

"Ew! If I had known your eye was so repulsive, I wouldn't have let you near my sheets!"

"Hermione… clever girl… you don't know how much Ron talks about you…"

"I do, Pettigrew. You aren't endearing yourself."

"Ginny… kind girl… you cared for me. You helped cure my eye…"

"I did THAT? You… you pest!"

"Amber, Harry… I can tell… Amber, you won't let them kill me? Harry, James wouldn't kill me! He would have shown mercy!"

"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY?" Sirius was in a full our rage. "HOW DARE YOU TOUCH HIM? HOW DARE YOU SPEAK ABOUT JAMES IN FRONT OF HIM?"

"You should understand, Pettigrew," Amber said, holding Pettigrew tightly, exposing his chest to Sirius and Lupin. "If Voldemort didn't kill you, then we would. Glacius!"

"NO!" Harry called out. Remus and Sirius turned to him, keeping their wands trained on Peter. Peter tried to escape, but tripped on what little ice Amber had made.

"Harry, this piece of scum is the reason you have no parents. He would have seen you die, too."

"He can go to the Dementors. If anyone deserves that place, it's him."

"Harry? How nice… yah!" Pettigrew started, before falling again.

"Stop being so melodramatic. It's just a square inch of ice."

"But if you try to escape, Pettigrew… you will die."

The mismatched party made it out of the house with little concern. Harry and Sirius made their way over elsewhere, possibly to discuss something to do with Sirius being Harry's godfather. I looked at Pettigrew, chained between Lupin and Ron. I pulled out my wand.

"Ginny! Untie Ron, quickly!" Amber panicked.

"What?" I replied. We all looked to the east… where the moon was.

"Lupin didn't take his potion tonight. Lupin didn't take his potion tonight." Pettigrew mocked.

"Diffindo! Glacius! Glacius!" I casted, freeing Ron. Hermione pulled him away, as the icy aura me and Amber were making steadily grew around Lupin and Pettigrew. But the moon's power was too great. Lupin smashed the ice as easily as a hot knife through butter, and Pettigrew transformed. He ran into the night, and we were left with a werewolf.

"Ginerva Weasley, get over here, hide behind me, and explain where I am!" Snape called, having finally awoken. I didn't. Sirius jumped in, and blocked Lupin with his own attacks.

*Howl*

Lupin ran off. Sirius did so as well, clearly in a lot of pain. I followed him.

"No… no, please!" Sirius begged. I looked up. Dementors. By the hundreds.

To repel a Dementor, think of a happy memory, and say Expecto Patronum.

"Expecto Patronum!" I cried. But to no avail. My wispy Patronus was no match. No matter how much I recreated the happiness I felt in Harry's arms, I couldn't make my Patronus hold off the Dementors.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" A boy called. From across the lake, a Patronus formed. It knocked aside each Dementor as if they were ninepins. Another Patronus, similar to the first, joined it's rush. After the danger passed, and before I did, I thought I saw…

Is that what James and Lily look like?

I awoke startled. Madam Pomfrey was standing over me.

"The last one up, hm? Finally. You'd been out for so long."

"Sirius Black!"

"Is getting ready to be Kissed by one of those ghastly Dementors."

"What?"

"I know. No one deserves being a vegetable."

Dumbledore arrived in the room at that moment.

"Poppy, can you leave?" she did so reluctantly.

"Amber, come here. I have heard Sirius' story. I believe him, but precious few others will."

"Can't you save him?"

"No. What we need… is more time."

"Oh… How many?"

"No more than three. For both your meanings. And Miss Granger? If you succeed, more than one innocent life may be spared. This door will be locked. It is 11:55."

"Harry, Ginny, here," Amber said. I got up, and Harry came over.

"Sis, what about me?"

"I need you to look after Ron while we're away."

"I can do that," Hermione said, beaming.

"How long will we be gone?" Harry asked. Amber put a golden necklace around mine and his throats.

"Three hours." She took an hourglass on the chain, and spun it thrice over.

A big one. And I'll need to do it again, too.

As for Pettigrew having lost an eye instead, it's preparation for a very sinister passage intended to help cure my PTSD. From that, I mean recreate the traumatic event. You may see where I'm going with this, though you probably won't.

I do read Percy Jackson. I believe prophecies should rhyme and have hidden meaning no one will get until the moment passes. None of you remembered this chapter started with a prophecy, and just checked.

Neither can live while the other survives.