"Come on, this one's empty," said Harry, picking a compartment. It was small and quite cosy: a bunk bed dominated one side, a small table with two chairs the other. She and Black had boarded the train to Paris covertly - they weren't confident in Harry's ability to buy a ticket without arousing suspicion.
Once the door was closed, Black transformed back into human form.
"It'll do," he said, looking around the pokey cabin, "but we need to make some modifications. Wand."
It wasn't a request. Reluctantly, Harry passed him her wand. Just for a few spells. She had never had to share a wand before. There was something about it that felt just wrong. It wasn't natural.
"Obscuro Fentras," he said, holding the wand to the window, before sweeping it around the room. "Colloportus. Repello Malum. Repello Operam. Entrare Waulo. Silencio." The chain of spells finished, he prodded the air in different places with the wand, as if testing something. Whatever he found, he clearly felt it required more spells. "Juncta hexia," he said, and then, "Pegmato. Dissulso."
He tested the spells again, but this time was satisfied.
"That should do it," he said, handing Harry her wand back.
"What do they all do?" she asked, curious. If Black knew about security spells, maybe he would know how to break out of Flamel's cell.
"Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that," he replied, kicking his feet up onto the table. "Mostly they divert attention. Nothing heavy duty, mind. That would just draw suspicion. Better to avoid notice altogether."
"I guess," said Harry, and she climbed onto the top bunk. She didn't want Black sleeping above her. She remembered Dumbledore's protection spells on their house in Paris. "Why didn't you cast them on the door?"
Black cocked his head - a behaviour oddly like his dog form.
"You're a weirdie, you know that? Occlumency, Ideal wards... barmy. Anyway, it'd take me half an hour to pull off a single Ideal Ward. Time we don't have. These'll do."
He sat down and kicked his feet up on the table. His ratty old boots were falling apart, and Harry was becoming aware that he smelled rather bad. They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Harry was unwilling to relax around Black, and the Death Eater didn't seem very talkative.
"Will you stop staring at me?" he said after five minutes, "it's bloody disconcerting."
"Why would Harry's parents' choose a Death Eater as his godfather?" she asked suddenly. It had been weighing on her mind.
Black removed his feet from the table and stood back up, moving over to the window.
"Why would you care?" he said, bitterness unmistakable. "What does it matter? They're dead, and so's You-Know-Who."
The absurdity of a Death Eater - supposedly Voldemort's second in command - calling him You Know Who caught Harry by surprise. She'd only ever heard old Death Eaters call him the Dark Lord.
"He's not dead," she said, and then almost kicked herself. What was she doing, telling a Death Eater that his master still survived?
Black stilled his pacing and looked at her. A mixture of expressions seemed to cross his face: disbelief, fear, and confusion.
"Someday, Miss. Weasley, you're going to have to tell me how a ten year old girl knows the most dangerous secret in the world."
Now it was Harry's turn to cock her head.
"No," she said simply. "I don't."
Black laughed - a short laugh, almost like a cough, before he frowned, peering out the window again.
"What's the time?" he said, sounding suddenly serious.
Harry twirled her wand in a circle. "Tempus," she said. A series of chimes that only she could hear came from behind her ears. "Just past ten thirty. Why?"
"Something's wrong," said Black. "We should have left by now. Wand."
"Maybe we're just -"
Cold. It was getting colder, and the bright summer sun was starting to darken.
Someone screamed further down the platform. Ice spread across the edges of the window, and their breath misted in the air before them.
Dementors.
"WAND!" Black roared, and his eyes were crazed.
But it was too late. Just as the cabin light flicked out, the first Dementor came into view. There were five of them, floating just above the ground, covered almost entirely in ripped black robes. Only their hands were visible: mottled, scabbed skin covered their skeletal fingers, and each of them wore a ring of rusted iron. Their terrible faces were covered by their hoods, but as they passed Harry could hear the frozen air rattle as they drew it in - not so much breathing as feeding.
A woman was screaming. All of Harry's world was taken up by it. In France, his book lay forgotten, his eyes unseeing as he stared at it.
Not Harry! Take me instead!
Who was that? It was so cold. Why wouldn't anyone help the woman? The cold was digging deep now, right into Harry's blood, right into her mind. Newly developing instincts awoke.
She clenched her jaw and pushed against the cold, separating it and herself. She was Harry. She was here, now. She was master of her own mind, and those memories were her own. She wasn't interested in them now. The screaming faded, and she opened her eyes - she hadn't even realised they were closed.
Black had frozen where he was standing, watching the Dementors pass. His eyes were white, his pupils shrunk to a pinpoint.
"Wand!" Harry shouted, and she threw it to him.
Some part of Black must have still been aware. His arm caught the wand by instinct, and immediately he stood straighter.
"Expecto Patronum!" he said, his voice harsh and cracking, and a soft pearly light filled the compartment as a glowing white dog leapt from the wand tip. It prowled around the compartment, growling at the window.
The cold didn't pass, but it became somehow less intense. The temperature was the same, but it felt less biting. Less evil.
"Merlin's Balls," said Black, still staring out the window. "It can't be..."
The Warlock's Circle had arrived.
There were twelve of them in total, every one of them dressed in black. They were striding down the platform flanked by yet more Dementors. Their leader, Rufus Scrimgeour, was a tall man with a mane of rust coloured hair. He held his arm aloft, and his finger bore a ring identical to those the Dementors wore.
The wizards and witches behind him were an impressive sight. Black was able to name most of them as they passed.
"Bartemius Burke," he said, indicating a grizzled old man with a pointy grey beard. He was armed to the teeth with medieval-looking weapons - all of them likely enchanted with Dark magic. "He plundered half of Europe in the forties. All those weapons are priceless, one of a kind, artefacts. And that one's Cygnus Thames-"
"The bald one with the bandoliers?" Harry asked.
"That's the one. Potions specialist. Wanted dead or alive in thirty-five sovereign states for poisoning the city of Olm. Got it into the water supply - all for the chance Grindelwald might take a sip. Killed a hundred thousand Muggles - the city's been obliviated from Muggle history."
The idea of such a man walking free made Harry feel sick. She began to understand the uproar caused by the reinstatement of the Warlock's Circle.
"What about him?" she asked, pointing to another. He was the youngest of the bunch, handsome, with light brown hair neatly cut. The air seemed to ripple around him, and each time his boot hit the ground it wobbled, like he was walking on jelly.
"Christ!" Black exclaimed, seeing the man for the first time. An oddly Muggle expression. "No one knows his real name. He goes by Quicksilver. Banished from Britain in the sixties for practising alchemical wizardry. Captured by Dumbledore himself. It was huge."
"What's alchemical wizardry?" asked Harry, staring at the mysterious Quicksilver. He seemed different from the others, somehow.
"Complicated," Black said with a wry smile. "A bit of legilimency, a bit of transfiguration, a bit of potions. But mostly it's about the soul. Don't know much more than that. But there was a string of mysterious deaths right before Quicksilver was brought it. Brutal stuff."
As Quicksilver passed, Harry's eyes were drawn to the man behind him. He gaped. It was mad. They couldn't be controlled.
"What the hell are those?" Black said.
He was pointing at two snakes that were making their way down the platform, each one at least ten feet long and as thick as a man's leg. A wizard was walking between them, brandishing his wand, directing the snakes. They had blinkers covering their eyes.
"Basilisks," said Harry, still disbelieving.
"Fuck," said Black. It was an apt summary of Harry's feelings.
And then they saw the first witch. Black just stared at her. She was beautiful, in a way, with pale skin, red lips, and long, wild dark hair. She swaggered down the platform as if she owned it.
"Bellatrix," said Black. He looked completely shocked. "They let Bellatrix out. They're absolutely insane. Do they want to start a war?"
If this Bellatrix woman shocked Black speechless, it was Harry's turn when she saw the man a few steps behind her. Only one person's robes billowed like that.
"Snape!" she said, pointing wildly.
"Yeah, I see him," Black replied, and if anything he looked even angrier than when he saw Bellatrix. "Death Eaters, the both of them!"
Harry looked at Voldemort's second in command. He spoke about the Death Eaters with such venom. And then she realised -
"Wait, Snape's a Death Eater? But he works at Hogwarts!"
"Snivellus is a teacher?" Black said in surprise. "What was Dumbledore thinking, putting him near children? They might drown in the grease from his hair..."
Harry snorted, before stopping herself. She was not going to joke about Snape with Voldemort's most trusted. She was letting her guard down.
She turned her back on the window and retreated to the bunk bed. She wasn't going to let Black trick her. He was a Death Eater. He was no better than the war criminals that were being sent to avenge Harry's supposed death.
The idea of Death Eaters being freed to enact revenge on Dumbledore's killers made Harry's blood boil. Someone was using Dumbledore's death to undo everything he had ever stood for. Using it to weaken the British Ministry and strengthen Dark wizards. And then Harry's boiling blood ran cold.
Was that the plan? There was only one man that could have killed Dumbledore. Everyone knew it. It was the elephant in the room.
Voldemort had returned, and his attack had already begun.