Hermione hunched uncomfortably under the hard gaze of Albus Dumbledore. As soon as he'd managed to squeeze out of Hermione that they had a way to contact Harry, he'd pounced on that opportunity like a tiger. The Gossip Stone sat on the desk, looking no different from an interesting green river rock. Ron had been politely, but firmly dismissed, and she missed his support. Doubtless, that was why he'd been led out of the office. He was more stubborn than her when it came to his loyalty toward his friends, and that made it harder for him to be intimidated into working against them.

"Miss Granger, if you would," Professor McGonagall prompted. She stood beside the two chairs in front of Professor Dumbledore's desk like a prison guard.

Hermione quailed. 'Sorry, Harry,' she thought, cursing her trained-in drive to trust and follow the directions of all authority figures. It made her an easy interrogation target for her teachers, no matter how much she'd been improving her lying skills since she'd become friends with Harry and Ron.

She leaned forward over the rock. "C-Contact Harry Potter," she said nervously.

The rock began pulsing a brighter green.

"There's no guarantee he'll pick up," she said, her voice small.

"Now that we know how to use this device, we can make as many attempts to call him as needed without your assistance, Miss Granger," Professor Dumbledore said. Since Hermione had given in, he just looked incredibly tired rather than scary. "You may return to preparing for your classes. Please, if you see young Harry, notify a member of staff immediately. He may require medical assistance."

Hermione nodded tensely, thought she knew full well she would do no such thing. The Harrys had been discussing Hylian potions recipes with Prince Tiamus, and she knew Blue or Yellow would make sure their more reckless siblings maintained their health. Once the boys got back to the castle, she or Ron—whoever ran into them first—would bundle them off to a corner to figure out a story. Hermione didn't know how they'd placate the angry, worried teachers, but they would find a way. Either that, or they'd break the Harrys out of wherever the Headmaster locked them up for their own safety.

She heard sharp, not-quite-running footsteps and the dull snap of billowing cloth. Instinctually, she froze. Over two years of Potions classes had taught her that was the only correct response.

Professor Snape rushed up from behind and wheeled around in front of her. He stood with his arms crossed and his dark eyes narrowed. Not unusual for him. The air crackled with a sense of ire, though, and the professor looked just a bit undone. His chin-length hair was greasier than usual and messily brushed back from his face. There were shadows under his eyes, as though he hadn't slept.

"What has Potter done with Draco Malfoy?" he growled. "I know you must know something about it, Granger. You always do."

"He hasn't done anything with him, to my knowledge—"

"Hermione." Professor Snape leaned closer to her height and pierced her with his intense gaze. Staring at him like a petrified mouse, Hermione reassessed her initial assumption of his mood. She'd thought Professor Snape was cross because he almost always was. If he wasn't angry, he was smug about something; she gave the teacher a measure of respect due to his genuine mastery of his subject, but was under no illusions that he was a pleasant person. That look in his eyes, though…He was desperate, not angry. The man seemed scared.

"Miss Granger," Professor Snape corrected himself, "please, just tell me where my student has gone. He's seriously ill and avoiding treatment. Not that that incompetent nurse has been able to find what the cause of his sickness is." He spat the last sentence. Hermione winced in sympathy for poor Madam Pomfrey, who no doubt had been enduring the man's rages since he'd first become suspicious of Malfoy's health.

"I know whatever has happened to him must be related to Potter," the man continued, snarling the name like a curse. "He didn't start having symptoms until that menace started dragging him into trouble, and now this!" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "At least when they disappeared before, I could be assured they were still somewhere on campus!"

Hermione just stood there quietly and let him vent. She had no idea what she could say that wouldn't make the man even angrier at Harry or betray Malfoy's tentative trust. Since Professor Snape was so worried, she was tempted to tell him that his favorite student was perfectly healthy, just undergoing an unusual form of puberty. Even if he was a rather mean teacher, she was still struck by the impulse to help him. The less authority-respecting part of her racing mind, meanwhile, was occupied with finding a lie he would accept. Lying wasn't one of her strengths, though…

"I'm not sure where Harry is right now," she began, since she it was the truth, "but Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall are trying to contact him. He has a Hylian cell phone that they're ringing up." She recalled only after speaking that Professor Snape was probably a pureblood like Malfoy, given his similar attitude. "Erm, I mean he has a long-distance communication device that—"

"I know what a cell phone is, Miss Granger," he said, sweeping around her. "Now get back to your musical magic nonsense and forget this conversation ever happened." He squeezed past the gargoyle guarding the Headmaster's office, which now sat stuck halfway between guarding the entrance and retracting, and hurried up the stairs.

Hermione smiled once the teacher's swirling robes had disappeared from sight. Well, that had been easy! Sure, she'd kind of thrown Harry under the bus, but she was sure Red or Blue would get a kick out of hanging up the phone on a shouting Snape.

Ron's voice made her jump. "Blimey, you'd almost think he had a heart."

She spun around. "Where did you come from?!"

"Well…" He grinned and showed something he'd been holding behind his back. It was a handful of silvery, almost liquid cloth. Harry's Invisibility Cloak! "Yellow and Blue remembered to take these along, but Green and Red didn't." He tossed it over himself, vanishing from sight. "They didn't get messed up crossing dimensions at all! Brilliant, right?"

"Ron, you shouldn't have been digging through Harry's things," Hermione said disapprovingly. "Did you ask Harry's permission for that cloak?"

"So long as I don't rip or stain it, he won't care," Ron's disembodied voice said breezily. "I wanted to make a little nest for Scabbers so he'd stop taking up my pillow. Harry told me a while back that he keeps the rags of old clothes in the bottom of his trunk in case he needs to mend or sew something, so..." There was a swishing sound and a ripple in the air as he showed off his borrowed cloak. "That's how I came across this."

"Seriously, I keep trying to tell you about that rat—"

"Hey, what if we went to check on Lupin?" Ron cut in. He and Harry both had an annoying habit of tuning her out, but Ron was less subtle about it. "He's been locked up in his rooms for weeks. Is he even washing? Or eating?"

Hermione sighed. Ron was stubbornly certain that Scabbers was above board, and since Hermione didn't technically have proof or a way to demonstrate otherwise, she couldn't refute him without possibly putting an innocent animal's life at risk. She'd rather not hurt someone's familiar if there was a chance it really was just a pet.

"I'm sure he's doing both," she said, deciding to put the Scabbers situation out of her mind. The rat hadn't done anything but be a rat yet, and Mr. Black would surely have some plan to handle this once he reached the castle. "Why wouldn't he?"

"Well, I mean, no one's seen him. I sit at the back of your class, and sometimes the teachers keeping an eye on you get bored and talk," Ron said. "They get their food in the teachers' meeting room, but Lupin hasn't shown up. It's like he's disappeared."

Hermione frowned in concern. Professor Lupin had already been something of a recluse before he'd decided to fully lock up, but he'd at least spent at least a few hours a week on hall patrol like other teachers. Since arriving in Hyrule, he'd been in the Hospital Wing and then he'd been gone. She wasn't even sure whether he was actually in his rooms or if that info was just school rumor. With the Skullfish-ridden lake around he couldn't have gone too far, though, even if he was likely a werewolf…

"He is due for a welfare check," she said, rubbing her chin. "Last we saw, he was severely ill. He could be in trouble and unable to go to the Hospital Wing. Why on earth hasn't the Headmaster gone to see him?"

Ron lowered the cloak so he could visibly shrug. "Maybe he has and Dumbledore's keeping that information to himself. You know how the old crackpot's been lately, all pushy and Snape-ish."

"The poor man is doing his best to keep hundreds of people from starving to death on an island in the middle of a lake full of flesh-eating undead fish. He's got more on his plate than either of us could imagine."

"He's still being an arsehole." Ron stuck his tongue out at the gargoyle in front of the Headmaster's office. "So, are you in or are you out? I'm charming Lupin's door open either way."

Hermione pursed her lips. "…Alright, I'm in. He might need help," she decided. "Did you bring the spare cloak?"

"Yeah, because I know you." Ron's floating head and shoulders wiggled as he rummaged through his pockets. A hovering hand appeared holding a silky fall of silver fabric.

They swept, ghostly, through the castle. Their presence was felt in the form of an odd wind that turned heads in their passing and a spooked startle from anyone who noticed extra footsteps in the sparsely populated corridors. Hermione had a hard time not giggling and giving herself away. Whenever she'd tucked under this cloak with anyone else, it had always been a rather harrowing experience. Wearing it on her own was fun! Being invisible was such a simple thing, and yet so empowering at the same time. It would be all too easy for someone to take advantage of such a power to become the world's greatest thief or something even more nefarious. She knew that if stripped of her self-control, she'd probably be sneaking all kinds of confiscated books from the library and figuring out how to bypass the curses…

She gasped, making a few nearby Hufflepuffs jump and scurry down the hall. The Restricted Section! Vaati's enchantment-breaking magic theft! It was possible the Restricted Section's defenses had been shattered! How on earth had this not occurred to her before? Well, she knew how—her days lately had been filled with learning, transcribing, and teaching a style of magic that had never been meant to be passed on in a classroom setting. Still, though, there were so many learning opportunities now open to her that she'd never once considered in the entire month that they'd been in Hyrule!

Hermione grinned to herself, only just suppressing an evil cackle. Oh, Blue was going to be so mad when he learned about the books she'd managed to get her hands on. He'd have to read everything after her, and he'd hate every minute of knowing Rule-Loving Hermione had been the one to think of going after those books first instead of him. He and Yellow had been spending all kinds of time in the library lately, but it hadn't occurred to them to sneak past Mrs. Pince to find the forbidden medical texts.

After a surprisingly quick and easy trip—Hermione's brain was still wired to watch for monsters in the halls—they arrived at the door to Professor Lupin's private quarters. Like the entrance to the Slytherin dungeons, the doors to the teachers' hidden living quarters had also popped into full visibility. In this case, there was a handy nameplate for the "Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts" posted outside for the new professor of each year to appreciate.

"I sure hope this thing doesn't blow his lock up or something," Ron muttered as Hermione took her Magic Rod out of her robe pocket.

'Me too,' she thought. "Alohomora."

The door unlocked with a sharp bang that made Hermione cringe. The knob was still in one piece though, so…success?

"There's no way we're sneaking in after that!" Ron hissed. "Why do these staffs always do things wrong?"

"Because they're designed for Light World mages and we've got more magic than they're meant to channel!" she furiously whispered back. "I'm working on a better enchantment, alright?"

The door opened to reveal Professor Lupin, whose head was almost entirely obscured by a set of huge black sunglasses, a bandanna, and a silly brown bowler hat. "As you can see, I'm alive, I'm fine, and I—" The man cut himself off upon not seeing the well-meaning busybodies who'd almost broken down his door. He tilted his head one way, then the other in a doggish gesture of confusion. "Isn't someone there?" The professor sniffed the air, then looked down at where Hermione and Ron stood. "Harry?"

Hermione edged back when a grasping hand reached out. How did the professor know about Harry's Invisibility Cloak? Had Professor Dumbledore spread that information around?

"Did you steal Harry's Invisibility Cloak?" Professor Lupin asked, sounding rather upset. Did he feel that strongly about stealing? "Who are you? That was his father's cloak, you know. How do you have it?" His voice was…wrong. Only slightly, like how Malfoy's was a touch to the left of human now. Lupin's voice was deeper, yet pitchier, and his words were strung a little too close together. Almost like a song.

Since it seemed like the man was only going to become more agitated the longer she and Ron tried to pretend he couldn't sense them, she lowered the portion of the Invisibility Cloak that covered her head. "It's just me, Professor. I'm not stealing this, only borrowing it. Harry wouldn't mind," she said.

"Were you smelling us?" Ron demanded, emerging from his cloak as well. "Are you part-something, and that's why you got sent to the Hospital Wing? Is that why you've been holed up like a Boggart, too?"

Professor Lupin stared at them. Maybe he'd lifted an eyebrow behind his shades. "I believe a better question would be why two students were attempting to invade a teacher's private rooms using a piece of contraband that isn't even theirs," he said. "As you can see, I'm alive and well and in no mood for visitors. Good day to you."

Ron stepped forward. "Wait—"

Hermione took a riskier approach. "Wingardium Leviosa!" The charm caught his hat and flung it away to reveal—

Ears.

Conical wolf ears with fur the same white-speckled brown as the man's hair, sitting at the upper sides of his head.

It was seven-thirty in the morning, a few days before the full moon, and he had wolf ears.

Hermione's mind took off at light-speed. She'd done her research. She knew all about werewolves, both the truths of their condition and the traditional hatred aimed toward them. While most witches and wizards were afraid to spend too long in the same room as one, just in case their contagion somehow transmitted through proximity, the only time they became contagious was during the nights of the full moon. If a werewolf wasn't a magically virulent wolf, they were perfectly normal human. There was no in-between. This was literally impossible. No werewolf in history had ever been recorded sticking between physical phases, let alone during the day.

Ron gasped, stepped back, and pointed. "You're a werewolf!" he exclaimed. "So that's why Hermione was acting all cagey about you being in the Hospital Wing and checking her calendar!"

Lupin wandlessly summoned the hat back into his hand, put it back on, and laughed. It was the saddest, most broken laugh Hermione had ever heard. "That's just the thing," he said, sounding close to sobbing. "I look like this, but I'm not a werewolf anymore. There's nothing in my blood. No fire, no gnawing in my mind when the full moon is only a couple of days off. That shadow who attacked the school—the one that looks like Harry—he did something. He saw my curse and…and took it out, somehow. I look like a monster, but for the first time since I can remember, I'm not." He gestured toward his doorway. "Tea? To be honest, I've been going mad from not speaking to anyone, so any measure of human interaction would be lovely. Also, I still have some French Earl Grey left."

"Good tea and conversation sounds like an excellent way to spend the morning," Hermione declared. She would have very much liked to know how and why Shadow Harry had decided to steal Professor Lupin's curse. It was perfectly within his powers, as an ancient entity with millennia of magical experience. Hermione was most concerned with the why of it. If Vaati wanted his hands on a sample of the werewolf contagion, that was a potential disaster on the scale of two worlds. If Shadow Harry had taken it for his own motivations…it was still a problem, and probably going to turn out a lot stranger, but it would be something they'd at least have a fair chance of managing.

"W-Wait, what are you doing?" Ron asked when she walked toward the door. "He's part wolf and you're just fine to chat?!"

Hermione turned around and fixed him with a stern glare. "I don't care if he has wolf ears, gills, or the ability to breathe fire, Ron. He's a good teacher and a good person. Even if he were still a werewolf, I wouldn't care," she said sharply. "A werewolf is only an innocent person under an evil curse. Would you want Ginny to be treated like a monster because she was under a curse last year? I'm the one that wound up Petrified, and I don't blame her."

Ron raised his hands defensively. "Okay, forgiveness and understanding, I get it," he said. "But seriously, you're just going to roll with the fact that he's got wolf ears and who knows what else under the stuff on his face?"

"If he's been trapped partway between forms by the process of his curse being removed, I imagine whatever he's hiding can't be much scarier than a certain green person we know."

Professor Lupin looked at her. "'Green person'? Is that code for 'Slytherin' or should I be worried about one of my students?"

"He's fine, I promise," Hermione assured him.

Ron frowned as he processed Hermione's point. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay, I guess you're right. He's a better teacher than Quirrell or Lockhart, for sure." He followed her into the room and looked up warily at the professor. "I'm gonna keep an eye on everything, though."

"Your willingness to protect your friend is commendable, Ron. If the points system were working, I'd give you ten for courage," Professor Lupin said as he closed the door behind them. He went to the small kitchen in the back of the apartment to make tea and snacks.

Like their current tenant, Professor Lupin's quarters were a quiet and humble-looking place. They had the set-up of a two-room apartment with attached bathroom, where the middle room held a sitting area and kitchen, the bedroom was off to one side, and the water closet was on the other. There wasn't much furniture, and what furniture there was had a long-used look to it. He had a couch, a reading table, a bookshelf, a lace-shaded antique lamp with no power cord, a fireplace, and that was it for the living room area. The dining area consisted of a small round table and a few cheap wooden chairs. Pictures were scarce. A couple included people who looked like Lupin, and another few depicted the professor as a teen with some friends around him. Hermione passed by one of the childhood photos, absently noticing that Harry was in it, then backed up and took a second look because that just plain didn't make sense.

The boys in the moving picture were jostling around, pushing playfully at each other as if competing to see who could stay in the frame. Lupin was easily recognizable by his narrow face and the tired look in his brown eyes. Even then, he'd been under the werewolf curse. The boy to his left was small and distinctly mousy, with small features in a soft face. He nervously did his best to stay in-frame. The rowdiest two teenagers were both tall, black-haired, and unusually handsome. One had longer hair, gray eyes, a certain pointiness to his face that reminded her of Malfoy, and a rakish grin, while the other looked like Harry in a few years.

…Correction: he looked almost like Harry. His eyes were hazel instead of emerald green, he held himself tall and proud, and that confident and mischievous smile of his was distinctly un-Harry-like. His hair was stylishly windswept rather than sticking up in odd places, his face was softer and rounder with baby fat that Harry lacked, and he just looked so…"put-together" was the term that best fit. He looked like Harry if he were certain of himself, a bit more filled-out, and old-money. It was very strange to see.

"If you're wondering who those boys are, the order is Peter Pettigrew, me, James Potter, and Sirius Black going from left to right. We were in the same year." He sighed, pouring water from a steaming kettle into three teacups. "I know it isn't…proper, to have something like that—"

"You couldn't have known what would happen all the way back then," Hermione said. "Has Harry come to see you about his family yet?"

The professor shook his head. "No, unfortunately. I think he's still convinced I'm out to ruin his home life," he sighed. "Still, I've kept photos like that one within easy reach so I'll remember to show him once he decides to speak to me. There's another one—a portrait of Lily and James from just after we finished school—on the bookshelf if you'd like to see what your friend's parents looked like. It…It isn't a picture I can always look at, with…what happened."

Silently, reverently, she went to the bookshelf and tugged out a golden picture frame with a braided design and turned it around. The occupants of this picture looked lovingly at each other before seeming to remember the camera and putting on beaming smiles. James had his arms wrapped around a red-haired girl with dainty, innocent features, stunning green eyes, and Harry's soft smile. She had her head leaned into the crook of James's neck and occasionally turned to peck him on the cheek.

"Don't let the picture fool you. Lily was rarely as peaceful-looking as that," Professor Lupin said as he sliced bread for sandwiches. "She had good ideas that deserved to be heard and a strong drive to help the people around her, but oftentimes people didn't want to listen to someone of her family background. Lily would make sure they listened. It's a rare skill to be able to command a room, but she had it." He piled the sandwiches onto a plate. "I think you would have liked her."

"Was she an Animagus like your friends?" Hermione asked, only realizing too late that the man had no idea that secret was now known across the castle.

Professor Lupin whipped off his sunglasses to stare at her with startled amber eyes. "What?! How on earth—?"

"Sirius Black said so. Haven't you heard?" Ron said from where he sat on the threadbare couch. "He and like thirty Ravenclaws are off living with Deku Scrubs in the Lost Woods. Zelda says he's been looking after them like a proper teacher, but I'll believe that when I see it."

"Sirius?! And…what is a 'Deku Scrub'? Where are these woods? Are the children alright?" the professor asked in a panic. "Does the staff know? What are they doing about this?"

"Why don't we sit down and talk?" Hermione suggested. "It sounds like you've missed quite a lot."

Over a morning snack of cucumber and tomato sandwiches and delightful lavender-accented tea, they exchanged what they knew about the last few weeks.

Ron and Hermione (but mostly Hermione) summarized what they knew about Black's unexpected temporary custody of thirty-two Hogwarts students. The staff did know where he was, but with him and the Ravenclaws surrounded by a magical forest that was known for making people lost until death or beyond, Professor Dumbledore hadn't wanted to risk feeding the school's limited adult population to the trees. Instead, Hermione would pass along reports from Zelda to Professor McGonagall to tell to the headmaster so he could stay apprised of the Ravenclaw situation.

They covered what had been happening with Harry, the volcano, the Hylian language and magic classes going on, and the gradually lessening presence of monsters outside. Hermione had shown the teacher her Magic Rod so he could try it. Unlike wands, Magic Rods were fully interchangeable and just as useful to one mage as another. It made them easy to get mixed up, so it wasn't uncommon for students to use whatever permanent inks or hard bits of metal were around to mark their initials on the brass, aluminum, or pewter handles of their staffs. Hermione's had a Triforce symbol painted by the head and another on the back end of the handle in charmed gold ink.

Professor Lupin explained what had happened during the last full moon. His horror at having found himself unmedicated, still in the school, and tied down by chains he couldn't put his full faith in made Hermione's heart pang in sympathy. Though her Time-Turner was currently untrustworthy, not having the double-packed schedule she'd started off with that school year had given her some extra time to read up on what she suspected about her teacher. Legends about werewolves scathingly accused them of being murderers and willful spreaders of their disease. She'd only found one small, slim book in the library that had contained an account from an actual werewolf. The woman had written the memoir in 1778, and her grief at both her disease and the abject lack of kindness she was shown at every turn had broken Hermione's heart. Professor Lupin sounded just like that poor lady had.

Apparently Shadow Harry had appeared at his bedside and declared that Professor Lupin's curse was just too dark to leave running loose in Hyrule. He'd even claimed that he'd stepped in before to stop other such dark magics from spreading across the country, thus why Hyrule didn't have any equivalent to lycanthropy. Again, she didn't doubt her teacher's story. Lycanthropy was an illness that had killed a lot of people, both by its sufferers being tracked down and murdered while human, and by werewolves uncontrollably hunting the prey their curse hungered for. Shadow Harry would ultimately have fewer people to leech emotion off of if that magic were left to spread, even if a great many citizens of Hyrule would wind up miserable. Unfortunately, with the spirit being ever-unhelpful, he hadn't said what he was going to use the stolen magic for. Hermione tried to take comfort in the fact that Shadow Harry didn't want it running rampant; that meant he'd probably find some way to rein it in when he put it to use.

When the topic swung back to the people stuck in the Lost Woods, Hermione explained all that she knew of Sirius Black's story of innocence while Ron sat sullenly and interjected with protests. For someone who frequently complained about the uselessness of his familiar, he was oddly quick to defend him. Hermione forged on anyway, determined to get the teacher on her side. Luckily, the man seemed eager to believe Black's strange tale.

"Why haven't they detained that rat, then?" Professor Lupin demanded when Hermione brought up Sirius's claims of innocence. Long canines flashed into view as he spoke. "There are charms to reveal Animagi! Albus ought to have run those checks without hesitation!"

"I don't know why," Hermione said, shrugging helplessly. "Maybe it's because everyone and everything is currently stretched so thin that the Headmaster didn't want to bring a potential criminal detainment into everything. It also could just be because no one wants to believe Mr. Black. The story does sound strange, and he's been painted as a madman by the press."

"It's because Scabbers is just a rat, like I keep telling everyone!" Ron cried with exasperation, tossing his hands up. "He acts like a rat, he smells like a rat, and he's just a bloody rat! What nutter would pretend to be a pet for twelve years?! Scabbers has peed on me before."

Hermione and Professor Lupin shuddered. If the rat was actually a mass-murdering Voldemort supporter, then that meant—nope, not thinking about it. Much better things to think about.

"Do those revealing charms cause any harm to the animal if it's not an Animagus?" she asked to get them onto a better line of discussion.

"No, not at all. I even cast one on Sirius, back when he was, er, Dog. It didn't affect him." His face scrunched in confusion and he scratched at one of his furry ears. "It was the strangest thing. How did he avoid detection?"

"That golden collar Dog had on was a curse from Shadow Harry. It's likely that Sirius was in the castle when Vaati changed it, he wound up in one of Vaati's dungeons, and Shadow Harry decided to play a 'prank' instead of killing him," Hermione explained. "The curse made Sirius an actual dog. Well, more like an oversized Crup—he was still smarter than usual."

"Ah, Hylian magic. That would explain it." Professor Lupin shook his head. "If I try that charm on Scabbers, then the two possible results would be an unimpressed rat or a man who ought to be sent to Azkaban just for taking advantage of a child the way he did, if not Kissed for killing over a dozen people. The spell is painless." He leaned his elbows on the table and gave Ron a steady look. "Would you rather continue experiencing the uncertainty of not being sure what creature you're caring for, or would you like to receive an answer now, Mister Weasley?"

Ron's face went gray and strained, pushed in all directions by the emotions flashing across it. Hermione saw no small measure of horror warring with his apprehension.

"It won't hurt him if you're right," she said. "And if you are, I'll stop nagging you."

That was the ticket. Carrot and stick: Ron loved being right and hated being nagged.

"Alright, then, you can do it," he declared. "And when I'm right, you'd better keep a closer eye on that cat, Hermione. Scabbers has been looking a little sicker lately."

'Gee, I wonder if that's because he's heard Sirius is loose in Hyrule and telling people his story,' Hermione thought. "Yes, I promise," she said. "Now, let's go see who's right."

Notes:

-The reason the Invisibility Cloak hasn't been getting much use is because Light World monsters and people can partly see through it, which means it wouldn't be super useful to the Harrys on their quest. Also, given how often the boys get stabbed, it wouldn't be a great idea to bring an irreplaceable heirloom like that into battle. Since it's a purely Dark World object, it can't be added to their summons lists, either.