A/N: Welcome back for another chapter everyone. Nothing really to talk about this time I don't think. Hope everyone's having a good summer so far. Still accepting suggestions for the Tri-Wizard tournament if people have any ideas of things they'd like to see there. Beyond that, hope you enjoy this chapter! See you on the 28th!
The Sphinx Club had been riding high recently. With the back-to-back victories in the Buckbeak case, as well as Harry's victory in the dueling tournament, the Sphinx Club had elected to have one huge party, and they had decided that it would be after the end of their exams, as one final hurrah before they all left for the summer. Lavender and Parvati had taken to planning it as always, and had managed to acquire all the services of the Weasley twins, on the proviso that they got to join the fun as well. None of the Sphinx Club minded that very much, given that Ginny was a part of the Sphinx Club Lite that was the Griffon Club, and they were expected to attend.
With the party planning going on, alongside the continued dueling training that several members were doing, the Sphinx Club's schedule had been filled all the way through to the start of June. Leaving them ready for their finals, which was a foregone conclusion, they had studied far too hard to not pass them with flying colours.
Even the ever anxious Hermione felt as though she was adequately prepared for the exams once she actually saw them, effortlessly filling out answers with what was almost certainly an excessive amount of detail. The practical exams came even easier for the group, being able to display spells in pure textbook fashion, even though many of them had found more comfortable personal ways to cast certain spells. Padma, for example, had taken to the calming charm so well that she no longer needed the wand movement for it, which had been excellent in keeping Hermione from hyperventilating in the lead-up to exams.
Harry, Hermione, Neville and Luna were sat outside, enjoying the fresh air of the late Scottish spring, waiting for the rest of their merry band to finish with their exams. It was the final day for them, and everyone was quite ready for them to be over. The stress and anxiety that filled the castle was overwhelming, and now everyone would have the necessary time to wind down.
"Do you all have any plans for the summer?" asked Hermione, looking over at her friends.
"Not that I know of really, I think Nym wants to go to the Quidditch World Cup since it's being held in England this year. She's really hoping the English team will make it, but from what the guys in my dorm have been saying, Bulgaria's going to have it on lock." Harry said, leaning back on his hands. Quidditch was an interesting game, but it just didn't hold the same appeal to him that dueling did. Maybe in another life he would have played. Maybe.
"Seamus has been pulling for Ireland, but they do pretty well on the regular. Wouldn't be surprised if they ended up taking it." Neville said. Neville did actually quite like Quidditch Harry knew, although he was not quite skilled enough with a broom to consider playing. Harry had spent some time working with him to improve his skills, but it seemed his balance just didn't exist in the air. Neville had been fine with that, he didn't need to play Quidditch for his house team, just do well enough for a casual game with his friends and dormmates. In that regard he was more than capable, and was supposedly quite the beater when he wanted to be.
"Oh, you should let us know if you plan on going Harry! Father can get press passes for the Quibbler, so I can go with him and see you." Luna said, smiling over at him.
"I suppose if you all were there it might be enjoyable, but I never did get the joy of that game. Not like Susan at the very least." Hermione said.
"I don't think any of us could enjoy the game like Susan does. I'm sure she's already got tickets for the event, and would have even if her aunt wasn't the head of the DMLE." Harry said with a chuckle. For all his dormmates cared about quidditch, they couldn't hold a candle to the passion for the sport his Hufflepuff girlfriend showed.
"Imagine if you had played Quidditch Harry, Susan would cheer louder than anyone in the stands for you, probably against her house team." Neville said, laughing at the image.
"Probably best for Susan's lungs and everyone's ears that I didn't give in to Davies then." Harry said. Davies had finally given up on recruiting Harry just a few months ago, and even then that had likely been because Cho Chang had really started to excel as a Seeker.
They continued to discuss their summer plans for a while, when a large black dog caught their eye. It was dragging something behind it.
"Ron?" Neville asked, clamoring up. "It's got Ron Weasley! Hey! Dog! Let go!" Neville dashed after it. Harry, Hermione, and Luna wasted no time in chasing after as well. Regardless of their opinion on the youngest Weasley male, they wouldn't want him injured.
"Where did he go?" Harry said, as he finally caught up with Neville by the Whomping Willow, thankfully just out of its reach. Hagrid had told Harry it could take down Perytons with a single blow, and he wasn't in any hurry to test that.
"Dragged him under the tree, in that little hole there. Come on! We've got to follow him." Neville said, before dashing to the tree and starting to crawl under it. Harry was proud at the confidence Neville was showing, he had really come a long way from the shy boy he had been only a couple years ago. This wasn't a time to think about that though. He had to move.
Harry managed to squeeze into the tunnel, with Hermione and Luna following behind him. "Any idea where this goes?" Luna asked, her voice unconcerned. Leave it to Luna to be this cool under pressure.
"Not a clue." Harry said.
"We'll find out soon, there's light up ahead!" Neville said, as he began to crawl even faster.
Clamoring up through the hole, Harry immediately met eyes with Professor Remus Lupin, who was standing next to a large black dog. It looked familiar, but Harry couldn't immediately place from where.
"Professor Lupin? What are you doing?" Harry asked, confused. Was Professor Lupin the latest in an increasingly long line of bad Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers?
"You couldn't avoid getting seen? Really?" Lupin asked to the dog, ignoring the students for a moment. At that moment, the dog began to stand up on it's hind legs, and started to shift. Fur gave way to pale skin, except at the top of the skull, where it formed into a curly unidentifiable mess. Dread started creeping through Harry's mind, filling his body with this chilling feeling that flooded him from head to toe.
Harry knew the man in front of him.
He had killed his parents.
Harry saw red, immediately pulling out his wand and firing a spell at Sirius Black. Harry didn't know what spell he cast, he just casted something, anything, to do the man harm. In reparation for everything he'd done to him. Done to his family. Done to the dozen muggles who'd lost their lives in the explosion.
Harry's outburst didn't last long however, as soon as the spell shot forward from his wand, Harry, as well as the other students in the room were disarmed by Remus Lupin, and Harry was struck immobile by the Petrificus Totalis spell.
"Calm down for a moment! I'll explain everything. I must know something first." Lupin said, before looking over to Sirius. "If you're wrong about this, I'll be helping him you know."
"I'm aware, I'd let you." Sirius said, looking at the children for a moment, before casting his eyes to the red-headed boy who had been unceremoniously dropped on a bed in the corner of the rundown shack. "It should be in his robe pocket, near his chest. The stunner should have knocked them both out cold."
Professor Lupin opened the front of Ron's robes, and pulled out a particularly fat rat.
"Scabbers?" Neville asked, looking very confused. "You're working with a criminal for… the Weasley pet rat?"
"Figura Originis" Professor Lupin incanted, before a blue wave of light shot forward from his wand towards Scabbers. What followed was truly unexpected. Scabbers' limbs began to elongate, as his teeth and ears began to retract into his head. His stomach became even more plump as his size began to double, then triple, than go even further. Within a few moments, Scabbers the rat was not present, instead there was a somewhat disgusting middle-aged man.
"That's him alright. It seems you were right Sirius." Lupin said, looking over to him.
"The map had never lied before, no reason to think it would now." Sirius said, looking down at him.
"I'm sorry for doubting you." Lupin said, looking down in seeming shame.
"I would have doubted me too. Everything was going wrong back then, and I didn't exactly make it easy for myself by seeking out revenge immediately before making sure everything else was okay. Harry could have died from pneumonia that night for all the good I did him because I was too focused to make sure he was safe." Sirius said.
"What on earth is going on? Professor Lupin who is this man? Why did you kidnap Ron? Why is Sirius Black here?" Hermione asked, her eyes whipping back and forth between everything in the room.
"This, Ms. Granger, is Peter Pettigrew, presumed dead man. Once upon a time he was a dear friend. For the past 12 years or so, he has unknowingly been responsible for the murder of two of my closest friends, and I didn't even know he was alive." Lupin said, as he conjured ropes to bind the unconscious rat man.
"What? The Potters? But Voldemort killed them, because Sirius Black betrayed them… somehow." Hermione said, her mind obviously racing trying to keep pace of everything. Harry wanted to scream, but the body bind he had been placed in was very thorough. Only Neville holding him up kept him from falling to the floor.
"What happened that night has been… under debate until now. I'll give you my side of the story, and then we'll wake up Pettigrew and allow you to hear his. I understand this is a lot to take in, but I know the four of you are very smart kids, Lupin here told me as much. Harry, I know you're angry, but I promise that I'm not here to hurt you. I would NEVER hurt you." Sirius said, as he took in a deep breath.
"Halloween night of 1981, I heard that James and Lily had been attacked by Voldemort. That should have been impossible. They were under a ward called the Fidelius. Studious kids like you should know what that is, but I'll give you a refresher. The Fidelius charm can be cast on a place to make it seem to not exist, except for people who 'know the secret' of the place. Generally, when you cast the spell, you designate someone outside of the home who you trust to know the secret, so that way the secret is safe. Anyone who knew James and I would immediately think I was their secret keeper, and I was going to be. But James and I knew that everyone would think that, so we made a switch. Choose someone who is less obvious, and let everyone still assume it was me who held the secret. That would keep the secret as safe as could be, because I couldn't divulge the secret even if I wanted to, not that I ever would. James, Lily, and Harry's lives each meant far more to me than my own. So when it came time to choose the secret keeper, we chose it to be Peter, and hid that from everyone who wasn't myself, Lily, and James. That way everyone would simply assume I was the secret keeper. Peter was the last person of the friend group that would be expected. He was the weakest of us, and the most cowardly. We figured he'd stay nice and far away from all the fighting, and we'd have everything wrapped up long before the war made it his way. At some point though… this… rat bastard, went to Voldemort and sold out the Potters, probably to save his own hide. When I heard they were attacked… I knew that Peter had sold them out, so after confirming that they had been slain, I rushed to find Peter. I found him and we dueled on the street, and he exploded a gas line, killing those muggles and making it seem like he just died in the explosion. I was wracked with grief, so after they found me… I just let them take me away." Sirius exposited.
Harry's body bind ended roughly half-way through the story, but he stayed still as he listened. That… seemed much more in line with what everyone had ever said about Sirius Black before the incident. Andromeda herself had said she had no idea how he could turn on James like that, and she would know better than almost anyone. Lupin had said that this man before him had been one of the first to hold him as a baby… one of the people who was so excited to see him be brought into the world. One who had been close as brothers with his own father. Harry could see that in the grim shadow of a man who he saw before him, although that inner spark seemed… dulled. Likely by the over a decade in Azkaban.
"Why break out now? What caused all this?" Harry asked, getting to his feet. He was calmer now, and didn't have his wand anyway. For as gaunt and malnourished as Sirius Black may have been at the moment, he was a good two heads taller than Harry, and likely a few stone heavier. He wouldn't last in a physical confrontation.
"Cornelius Fudge paid Azkaban a visit over the summer. He came to my cell, possibly to mock me, maybe out of curiosity, doesn't really matter. He had the paper with him, and I had asked if I could have it… I had enjoyed the crossword in my day. He gave it to me, maybe out of shock that I still had enough mind to even consider it. That's when I saw the front page. The Weasley family had won a trip to Egypt in a lottery drawing. I was happy for them, Arthur was good people, even if I didn't know Molly all that well. That's when I saw Ron holding that rat. Peter, James, and I… we were animagus like Professor McGonagall. We could transform into animals, we had learned to do it as children as a… bonding exercise. James was a Stag, I am a big black dog, and Peter, apparently fittingly is a rat. I'd seen Peter transform dozens of times in my life, and I'd recognize his animagus form anywhere. Add in the fact that an identical looking rat was missing a finger, like Peter had been, and I was suspicious to say the least. Maybe my mind had been going, but… knowing that Peter was still out there… and knowing that you were going to be in Hogwarts with that monster? I had to get out. I had to protect you, like I hadn't been able to before." Sirius said, with a grave look on his face.
"That's why you attacked the Fat Lady on Halloween night… you knew Ron would be at the feast, and Scabbers would be alone in the dorm." Hermione said.
"You're right. Halloween is one of the few times I could guarantee the dorms would be empty. She wouldn't open up for me though, and I flew off the handle and attacked her in my dog form. Not my brightest move, but Remus was always the smart one." Sirius said.
"How'd you find out for sure though?" Harry asked, looking over. "I understand that you'd want to be done with this quickly, but if you waited 12 years, surely a couple more months for a better opportunity wouldn't be remiss."
"Remus can answer that. Show him Moony, it's his birthright after all." Sirius said, smiling at Remus.
The Defense professor pulled from his pocket a folded up piece of parchment, which he tapped a wand to and said "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." The blank parchment suddenly filled with a floorplan of Hogwarts, and several footprints could be seen meandering about the place, each tagged with a name.
"This is the Marauder's Map. James, Sirius, Peter, and I made it when we were in school here. We'd left it here when we graduated for the next generation of pranksters to pick up where we left off. I found it in the hands of the Weasley twins after I overheard them say the phrase to unlock it. I confiscated it, but had every intention of giving it back to them eventually. I'd opened it to reminisce a bit, when I saw Sirius's name on the map. I rushed to find him and confront him, and when I did, he managed to convince me to check for Peter's name in the Gryffindor Boys dorm. Sure enough it was there. Sirius explained everything, and we've been working to set this night up ever since. I… I was torn on whether or not I should really trust him, but the Sirius I knew would have never sold out James… Peter might have. All of this… well it's pretty compelling evidence for me." Lupin said.
"So? What's your plan from here? Sirius can't exactly just show up and say he's innocent." Luna said.
That gave the room pause. Had they not that far ahead?
"Huh, I guess I wasn't sure I'd get this far." Sirius said. Harry was dumbfounded. Was he like this? Is this what the girls heard when he said this? He'd have to apologize to them later.
"Well, Professor Dumbledore is the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. If we bring him Pettigrew alive, that in and of itself warrants your case being looked at again. Especially if we can provide any other proof that you didn't kill anyone." Hermione said, gears turning in her head.
"Then I believe it would be best to get him there as quickly as possible. Professor Lupin, does that map show where Professor Dumbledore is at the moment?" Harry asked, looking over at his Defense instructor.
"Yes, seems he is in his office, although that does bring up an issue… Sirius aside, how are we going to carry an unconscious Pettigrew all the way to Dumbledore's office?" Lupin asked.
"Simple, we're not. Mobilicorpus." Harry incanted, lifting the pudgy man off the ground. "I don't imagine that many students actually know what Sirius Black looks like, I only did because of all the pictures Mom has. So as long as you're with us Professor Lupin, I imagine we shouldn't have too many issues." Harry said, beginning to walk out the door.
"Oh! We musn't forget Ron, Ginny would be rather cross with me if I let you all simply leave him here." Luna said. In all the excitement, Harry had indeed forgotten about the youngest Weasley male.
"Mobilicorpus." Lupin cast, levitating the boy. "We'll take him in the castle and leave him on a bench. He's fallen asleep in my class enough times that I imagine such a phenomenon wouldn't be new to him."
Leaving the small shack they were in, Harry recognized it as the Shrieking Shack that was just outside of Hogsmeade. "The Shrieking Shack? Why were we in there?" Harry asked, it seemed like an odd place to hold that meeting, surely somewhere closer to Hogwarts would have been easier.
"It's… familiar." Lupin said, brushing it off.
"Is that where you went for your werewolf transformations?" Luna asked, causing everyone to pause.
"How… how did you know that?" Lupin asked.
"Oh, you've always been ill just after the full moon, and there were some deep scratch marks all in that building, especially along the floor. Plus your Boggart is the moon, it makes sense really." Luna said, idly walking along.
"I'll admit I had my suspicions as well, especially after Snape had us study the werewolf chapter so close to the Full Moon." Hermione said.
"Well, I suppose that cat is out of the bag. Yes, I am a werewolf. It's one of the reasons finding work was so hard for me." Lupin said.
"Wait… isn't tonight the full moon?" Harry asked, thinking back on it. Astronomy class had made him keep tabs on the moon cycles.
"Oh no, you're right. Wolfsbane, Wolfsbane." Lupin said, rifling through his pockets looking for the potion. "I… don't have it."
"It's okay, we just have to get to Dumbledore before sundown. How long do we have?" Harry asked, making his way towards the castle.
"About half an hour." Hermione said, her voice tense.
"We"ll be cutting it close, but we can make it." Harry said, continuing on.
A tense silence fell over the group as they began their march towards the castle. The Mobilicorpus spell was limited in how fast it could move individuals, so that largely dictated their pace.
Harry felt a deep chill go down his spine, as he heard a scream. The hairs on his neck stood up on end. "Did anyone else hear that?" Harry asked, looking around.
"No, but why is it so cold? It's June, it shouldn't be this chilly." Hermione said.
"Dementors!" Lupin yelled, pointing his wand at the creature, forcing the body of Ron Weasley to flop to the ground.
Lupin's silver wolf shot forth from his wand, before running circles around the group, trying to drive away the half dozen or so spectral figures that surrounded them.
The spectral canine lunged towards one of the shadows that surrounded them, snapping at it with its jaws. The force of the bite sent the specter back, before the wolf moved on to the next phantom, repeating it.
This was doing a fine job at repelling the dementors, until the moon began peeking over the horizon. In that moment, the wolf simply vanished from reality, and Professor Lupin began to double over.
"No! Moony! Kids, run! I'll hold him off." Sirius said, as he began to shift from an emaciated man to a large black dog.
Lupin's transformation looked visceral and uncomfortable. Muscles and tendons moved underneath the surface of his skin as his form shifted to more closely resemble wolf than man.
Sirius lunged at Lupin as he turned his attention toward the group, and a sense of overwhelming fear was sent through the children. Harry had faced these kinds of things before, a troll and Quirrel in his first year, and a Basilisk and Tom's spirit in the second. His fear was muted, tempered by having faced more directly frightening creatures. Hermione and Luna however, weren't so lucky. While Hermione herself had been there for the troll, she had been mostly paralyzed in fear then as well, and the Basilisk had literally petrified the pair of them the prior year. They didn't have the same experience in dealing with this fear that Harry had been forced to cultivate.
With that outcropping of fear coming from the girls, it acted as a beacon for the Dementors, who began making their way towards them. Harry was torn for a moment. He knew the spell, he'd practiced it over and over, for months now. He could form an ample mist, but… would that be enough? More dementors poured from the area around them, now numbering a dozen. Two dozen. Three. More and more poured out. There must have been a hundred now.
Harry turned to look at Hermione and Luna… and saw the unbridled fear on their faces. Even Luna, who would put up a brave face in the most dire of circumstances… was scared. Of course she was, she was still a little girl, suddenly about to lose her life to a horrible monster who would take away everything that made her Luna.
Harry broke, no matter what, they would be safe. He wouldn't allow any other outcome.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry incanted, and the mist he had formed so many times before, began to solidify. First forming a pair of back legs, then the front, and then the head. What stood before him was a creature of grace, of stature, of power. Tied up in the muscles of the beast was power unmatched, and it responded to Harry's call, in one mind with his soul. In front of Harry, wings outstretched and claws at the ready, was an androsphinx.
Harry had awaited a protector, and one had came for him.