Hermione froze in the thresholds of the Grand Staircase Hall when she sensed movement in the air that tickled the nape of her neck. The wind couldn't penetrate her knotted scarf and it wasn't particularly breezy in the castle, the chill wasn't natural and she shivered as it invaded her body like an allergic rash.
Tension. A tightening in the atmosphere, like a rubber band breaking in her vicinity she shuddered and wrapped her arms around her body. Shielding from its snap.
"Are you cold? Do you want my cloak?" Ron noticed her hesitation on the first step upwards and double-backed to shrug off his cloak, but Hermione graciously waved away his kind gesture. She tried not to blush but the chill wouldn't let her, the blood was draining out of her face instead.
Her heart started to race. Was something happening? Why was her body readying for fight or flight mode?
"I feel… odd," she admitted out loud, feeling foolish for giving such a basic explanation, and Ron and Neville slowed. Was this how Lyra felt whenever she complained about the supernatural discomfort her abilities brought? Her palm was tingling, like her scar was itching to be let out.
"What kind of odd?"
"I feel like someone's watching me," Hermione tried to verbalise the strange sensation creeping up behind her, and her stomach cramped when Ron and Neville huddled closer, whipping their heads around in search of a culprit.
"Someone like Lyra's dad?" Neville whispered, assuming the very worst, but Hermione shook her head and took her time inspecting the cavernous Grand Staircases. There were countless hiding spots here at Hogwarts, spaces behind walls, pockets in between floors, and hundreds of feet between them and the castle spires. Nothing unusual stood out to her but she vacuously drew her wand out from her jacket.
Her new scar twinged as her knuckles brushed the packet of playing cards she had just purchased from the antique store back in Hogsmeade, she'd forgotten they were in her pocket. Hermione pretended her heart hadn't spasmed as she pulled them out of her pocket and admired its aged box art.
Suddenly the feeling had motion, suddenly she knew what she had to do. She had to trust these peculiar urges, her Inner Eye was asking her to act.
"Hermione?" Ron tried to pull her out from her thoughts, but instead he watched in utter confusion as she removed the playing cards from their home and let them slip through her fingers.
"Don't pick them up!" Hermione exclaimed at the boys when they both moved toward the flurry of cards now littering the floor in front of the stairs like black autumn leaves.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and noted the pattern in which they fell. She knew she was drawn to the vintage black and white playing cards for a reason, not just because they were plucked from the stylish Victorian age. The gothic card reverses looked like black roses against the floor, a scattering of inky swirling patterns that appeared to dance the longer they stared at them, but Hermione ignored the fifty black cards and focused on the four white ones.
The four that were calling out to her, their gothic painted faces staring up at the ceiling in desperation. Waiting to be picked.
"The four of clubs," she muttered to herself, plucking the chosen four from the masses and tucked them tight to her chest. Something deep rooted in her percolated and she clung on to its power. "The three of wands… The ace of wands… and The Joker reversed."
"I didn't realise you took Divination so seriously, Hermione," Neville commented, keeping to the stairs to avoid standing on them.
"You have no idea," Ron chuckled.
"The four of clubs," Hermione rustled through her handbag and yanked out her new cartomancy guide, hoping her initial interpretation was wrong. "The four of clubs, the four of clubs… ah."
Four of Clubs: Deceit or betrayal from a loved one or a trusted friend. A change for the worse.
"Three of wands?" Hermione asked her book for a kinder description, and she winced again once she found it. Adrenaline slowly started to seep into her blood, diluting her in preparation for the worst.
Three of Wands: Loss. Cheating. Deception in order to steal. Misdirection. A liar in your midst.
"I mean I did just lie to Professor Lupin's face," Ron pointed out in an attempt to cheer Hermione up, but she shook her head and flicked forward a few pages.
"Ace of Wands," she read out before flashing them the page where the infamous cloaked figure they had come to know smiled back at them, "Death."
"Technically so did Lyra," Ron tried again, "I bet she's in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom lying to Remus right now. I'm sure that's nothing."
Hermione ignored him and matched the final description to the monotone jester smiling up at her from his flipped position. This was the one she wasn't too confident on but its meaning soothed some of the anxious wriggles in her gut.
This was Fate's card.
"It means everything isn't what it seems. Expect the unexpected. Flip your assumptions on their head," she explained, taking its appearance very seriously. She charmed the remaining cards to fly back into their peeling case and kept the four suspect ones close to her heart. "We need to find the others, maybe it's telling us we need to make sure Lyra tells on her dad?"
"Let's hope so," Ron said, taking the lead up the stairs.
"You said one of those cards means death?" Neville asked, the least confident of the trio, and Hermione motioned at Ron that she'd do the explaining.
"Death doesn't always mean death in cartomancy and tarot," she glossed over any accidental connections they made to Lyra, "it can mean new beginnings, the closing of a chapter, the end of a relationship or a friendship. Loads of different things."
"But it could also mean death is coming?" Neville couldn't let the idea go, and Ron tried his best to lighten the mood. So far they hadn't seen any sign of their troublesome friends or strict professors within the lower halls so they continued higher.
"Isn't Death always coming?" he said brightly, and Neville resigned with a gloomy smile as though he had never thought of it like that.
"I guess?"
"I thought I recognised your voices!"
Ron almost tripped over his feet when he spotted his younger sister's face poking out from over the sixth floor railings, her smile sunnier than the feeble beams trying to stream through the rafters. Her friends appeared one by one, all of them waving at the friendly arrivals.
"How was Hogsmeade?" asked Colin.
"Did you bring us any sweets?" Ginny looked hopeful.
"Happy birthday Ron!" Alice giggled as she vyed for his attention and waved extra hard, a pattern of behaviour he had seen in girls before. Shielding his blush behind his cloak hood Ron tried not to look too pleased with the attention as he waved back at the spectacled second year.
"We've got far too many sweets on us, come and take as much as you want," Hermione offered, inviting the second years down to join them on the fourth floor.
"Don't suppose you've seen the other two anywhere, have you?" Ron asked Ginny once he successfully wrestled his favourite fruit ropes off of her. He threw the family pack of Fizzing Whizbees as a compromise. Ginny caught them with a bow and deemed his question worth asking.
"We saw Remus march them up to Lyra's dorm not too long ago, I haven't a clue if they're still up there," she informed them, still smirking, "what did they do?"
"Got caught down in Hogsmeade without permission," Ron answered without elaborating, "did Remus look…?
"Pissed? Oh yeah," Colin finished for him, guffawing, "they were in big trouble. But that might have been because they jumped out of Gryffindor Tower?"
"And on a Firebolt too?! Did you know Lyra had a Firebolt?" Ginny gossiped, incredulously starry-eyed.
Hermione clutched the four playing cards tighter to her chest, horrified.
"They what?!" Ron rubbed his face in shock, "Merlin, the cards might have been right."
"They survived by the sounds of it, the cards aren't completely correct," Neville reminded them, but the pair didn't look particularly soothed by the thought.
Ginny's ears perked up and she slowed her chewing to inspect them all. "What cards? What are you up to?"
"Nothing!" Ron and Hermione raced to shut her down. She didn't need to get involved, they were only looking out for their young sibling and her friends by keeping her in the dark. After being petrified last year, they didn't need the aggravation. Ginny, however, interpreted their passionate cry as an insult and scoffed, rolling her eyes.
"You never tell me what's going on anymore," she complained, her body language colder than before, "Lyra would if she was here."
"Nothings going on, that's what she'd tell you if she were here," Ron corrected her, always up to arguing with his sister.
Hermione massaged her temples and went to interject that they needed to go when she realised that the world had fallen silent around her. She was moving faster than before, everyone around her was rooted to this point in time whereas she moved with mystical fluidity. The world was slowing down to accommodate for the glittering positive force at work.
The same chill that flooded her before was back with a passion, and she catapulted forwards through reality like a bullet. Her scar prickled, weeping again. She spotted blood on the fibres of her mittens.
The world rushed past in a bright blur of light— and then darkness.
Hermione blinked. It was true darkness. She couldn't see anything. The Grand Staircases were gone. But she could smell everything and it reeked! Like maggots, or stagnant water.
Her skin ignited with goosebumps and she reached out. The darkness was malleable, there in front of her to touch.
No. They were shadows.
"Lyra?"
The shadows stirred at the sound of her voice and lurched toward her, wrapping around her hands as though pleading with her to stay.
But the balance shifted again, and Hermione was catapulted back into the present. The world caught up a with her again and her legs nearly gave out from beneath her as the Grand Staircase hall came into fruition around her.
"Careful!" Ron acted fast to catch Hermione's arm before she tumbled to the floor. She latched onto him and winced as her palm seared, the blood still very much there. She hadn't moved from the fourth floor, the shadows were long gone.
"Sorry, weak ankles," she mumbled, not quite understanding what had just happened. Did she have a vision? Did her soul transcend dimensions again? "We'll see you later Ginny, we need to find the others."
"Good luck," Ginny looked rather bothered by her dismissal, the sting of finding out that her cousin was in possession of the best broom in the world and hadn't offered her a ride yet was apparent on her freckled face, but right now that didn't matter. They watched the second years wander off to ensure they weren't eavesdropping and continued their search for the two daredevils.
"Weak ankles?" Ron muttered, still cautious of Neville's ears, but Hermione waved him away. The vision was gnawing into all sides of her mind, was that really Lyra? The shadows certainly weren't threatening. Like a midnight summer sky, an undercover fort made from a freshly-laundered duvet, a friend's assuring hand during a power cut. She enjoyed those types of darkness, they were there to protect her.
"You two search for them, I need to go to the library and verify my predictions," Hermione ordered once she made up her mind, and she gave Ron her best interpretation of puppy eyes.
Lyra told her once that the boys were easy to coerce if she dared to exploit her womanly gifts and it appeared she had taught her very well. She was always the most perfect student.
"You'll be faster without me, and I'll be faster without you. You're better at finding them than I am so go do what you do best. I'll catch up with you afterwards." Hermione batted her lashes and sighed as though she had lost her breath, channelling her best friend's mannerisms the best she could.
She even dared to twirl her frizzy hair around her finger but she quickly stopped when she realised how badly it needed to be oiled.
"If there's one day that I don't want to step foot inside that part of the castle, it's my birthday," Ron gladly fell into her enlarged warm eyes and lapped up her words with a boyish smile, the tops of his ears burning. "We'll see you later."
Hermione lingered on the stairs, straining her ears to listen out in case Neville pestered Ron with more questions about her gifts, but her breathing calmed when she realised that she didn't mind if he asked.
So what if she was a Divination prodigy? She was an intelligent girl, it shouldn't have been that surprising that she was a Seer. In fact, she should be proud of her extra abilities. She was worthy of accessing branches of magic that weren't as available to the rest of their kind. Time liked her, she was an exceptional witch.
So she should start acting like the exception she was.
Hermione stormed into the library and hunted down the Divination section, an aisle she once resented but recently grew fond of. Sure, Trelawney insisted on decorating the shelves with dusty doilies and old-fashioned bunting that had seen its fair share of mothballs so her visits were usually filled with many sneezing fits. But she was starting to understand the charm of its feminine unconventionality. To all of the dainty chiffon, aromatic candlesticks, naked lady iconography and glitter crystal balls.
Had she been unintentionally sexist towards the subject she didn't believe in? Loads of the books she'd read on the art labelled it an inadvertently feminine branch of magic — flouncy, frangible, and capricious. It seemed as though there had been more female Seers than male over the course of history, but that fact didn't dumbfound her in the slightest. Women were more disposed to accepting the mysteries of the universe, they were intrinsic to the makeup of the earth. Possibly more so than men. So of course the wizards of the world would be threatened by anything that was attributed to witchy female power, many still doubted whether Divination was actual magic or just luck.
Suddenly Hermione felt unreasonably defensive on Divination's behalf and she blushed away her prior apprehensions. She made a note to talk to Lavender and Parvati about her female guilt later, she wanted to know what they thought about it all.
Hermione fell into Cartomancy totally by accident. She liked the familiarity of the playing cards, there was a sense of logic with the four suits and accompanying numbers or faces. It gave her the illusion that mathematics and science might play a part in the magical art and she appreciated the Muggle touch, her father knew every card game there was and had forced them all to play in their evenings on the cruise ship. She was keen to try other methods of predicting the future but she kept reminding herself that she had plenty of time to expand her wheelhouse. If the playing cards jumped out at her for a reason then it was her duty to listen.
There was a liar in their midst. A loved one, it must have been pointing to Sirius. The ace of wands meant Death, practitioners of Divination believed it signified the first wand that ever was so to speak, so this prediction concerned Lyra for definite. But the joker showing their face threw her off-kilter. Expect the unexpected? Hard pass.
Hermione hadn't experienced what the wizards would deem a 'real prophecy' yet, this was her first brush with Fate. She researched how the Ministry recorded and stored prophecies that were told by legalised Seers — a Seer who had registered with the Ministry — but the process didn't appeal to her. She was strongly against the idea of letting the government know that she was possibly someone of interest, and her friends agreed.
Her prophecies, if she were ever to predict one, did not belong to the public. The universe made sure to remind her of that fact. They were strictly for hers, Ron's, Harry's and Lyra's ears only.
"Come on, give me something useful," she grunted at yet another useless manual as she flicked its embossed cover closed.
None of the descriptions of the different types of predictions matched whatever the hell she experienced out on the stairs. No other Seer jolts through time like a ball bearing being thrusted from a slingshot, that wasn't a thing. Most Seers do not remember their predictions either and yet she remembered the velocity of the time jump, the darkness of Lyra's shadows, the stench of decaying rot that stifled the air…
Hermione paused and lifted her head from the book, nose wrinkled. The vision was scented? Impossible.
It wasn't a vision then.
She went somewhere. Time pushed her through the fabric of reality, to a place shrouded in darkness and what smelt like death. A place where Lyra had been before.
Or was currently?
"Absolutely not," Hermione whispered when her first instinctual answer flashed before her eyes, and she leant back in her chair to absorb the images. There was one place in Hogwarts that loosely matched the dark, dank pit she visited, one place where Lyra had definitely been before.
"I'm afraid so."
Hermione's chair leg lost its footing and she tumbled back onto the floor, spooked by the sudden voice that sounded so gut-wrenchingly familiar that she wondered whether she hallucinated. Because it was physically impossible…
Shaking head to toe, Hermione slowly climbed up off the library floor and gawked at the young woman sitting across from her, lounging in her own chair as though she had always been there. She was real, tangible, certainly not an illusion.
She whipped her head around, petrified of the idea of someone walking past and realising that there were two Hermione Grangers sat at the study desks in the thin section, but the older Hermione dared to smirk in the face of her youthful panic.
"No one else can see me," the young woman told her, amused, "not that it matters, no one ever comes up here."
The same chill as before skipped down Hermione's spine but she learnt to trust its ticklish footsteps.
Her doppelgänger was wearing the same clothes as last time, as though this meeting occurred mere minutes after their encounter on New Years Eve. But now she had the time to analyse her, to really get a good look at what the future held for her. Her retainer-straight teeth, her sharper cheeks, the lean muscle in areas she'd never thought was possible. It was quite comforting to see she would grow into her awkward limbs, and her mind spiralled as questions pushed their way through her astonishment. Her eyes drew naturally to the scars running up her arms and toward her neck, but her older counterpart welcomed her curiosity this time and lifted her chin so she could read them.
Hermione dropped back into her chair when she spotted the slur scratched across her older self's throat and she swallowed the bile that tried to surge up her unmarked one. Her older twin caught her interest and smiled, her heart breaking at the expression she remembered pulling long ago.
"Are you actually me?" The young girl whispered, transfixed by their presence, "or are you Time?"
"Can't I be both?" The young woman asked, playing with her young self with a toothy grin she grew to appreciate, "no, but with all seriousness, I am technically both. I'm borrowing a lot of power from Time so I can talk to you so I don't want to beat around the bush. You've got plenty to be getting on with."
Hermione clutched her forehead, reeling. Jesus Christ…
"How old are you?"
"Almost nineteen," her older self didn't sound sure. Hermione's heart pounded, struggling to stay contained in her chest. She couldn't tear her gaze away, just in case her future self changed their mind and dipped back through the timeline without an explanation. Has she graduated from Hogwarts? What was she doing now? She looked tired, worn out. Defeated.
She still couldn't logically justify this.
"Why are—?"
"Before we go any further," her future self interrupted the first of the million questions running through her mind and held out her hand. The same hourglass rune stared back and Hermione tried not to gawk. "Give me your Time-Turner, I'm sending you back first. You need to go down to Myrtle's old bathroom and… see for yourself."
Hermione shakily unravelled her scarf and leant forwards with the golden necklace, dumbfounded that she was right. Nothing in her body told her not to, she had to obey.
"The C-Chamber?"
Her twin heaved a heavy sigh, one that held a thousand more secrets than the infamous chamber they were talking about, and nodded.
"You'll see, in time you will know everything," Hermione assured her younger self, devastated as though remembering what the girl in front of her had to go through. "It's insufferable, I know, trust me. Or you. Trust us, everything will make sense one day."
"Why am I going down to the Chamber of Secrets?!" Young Hermione hissed, starting to hyperventilate. Her future self wasn't comforting whatsoever! "I don't want to go down there!"
"You won't really have to, just—," Old Hermione took a deep breath and locked onto her gaze, refocusing, "all you have to do is remember to go to Myrtle's bathroom once I send you back. Time will correct itself, you'll rejoin your rightful timeline as soon as you see Lyra and Harry."
Again, her answer wasn't what she wanted to hear at all, and yet she didn't feel anxious. She wouldn't be whispering with her secret future self if something went wrong.
The older Hermione's lips curled into an even wider smile and she lovingly stroked her hair.
"Exactly, Granger. Now, go and save Black and Potter. The dopes have gotten themselves kidnapped again. Some things never change, ey?"
She spun the hourglass of the Time-Turner once just as Hermione properly absorbed her confession.
"Aw you've got to be joking—!"
One iteration of Hermione vanished in a swoosh of gold dust. The timeless magic crashed in golden waves over the girl and she rasped, experiencing what she could only describe as a lung tornado. Pressure sucked the space her body occupied and part of her shot back in time, like Time had run a handheld vacuum all over her body.
"Deep breaths," her older self instructed, endeared by her beginner struggles, "it gets easier."
"Why am I still here? The Time-Turner doesn't usually feel like that," she frowned, rubbing her neck, but she pushed aside her own discomfort in order to get to the main issue. "Lyra and Harry have been kidnapped? By who?"
"I'm not here for that. I'm here to help you with this," she pointed at the weeping scar on the young girl's palm, "and what is discussed between me and you stays between me and you."
Hermione's brow crumpled. "You mean—?"
"—you can't tell anyone about this," she finished for her, assuming a firmer and more professional pose, one tight arm clasped over the other. "Ron, Lyra, Harry — they can't know. Time promised to help us but only us, and it's a price I'm willing to pay for everyone else."
She blinked. How ominous. "Uhh, ok?"
What else was she supposed to say?!
The older Hermione empathised with the haunted cower on her young face and she loosened her shoulders.
"Correct answer," she said gently, and Hermione braced herself. Her stomach was in shambles, she was amazed she had melted onto the floor again.
"What is it?" Her whispers sounded so childish compared to her counterpart's deep heaves, but she never waivered. She was ravenous for some nibbles of truth, of power.
"I'm going to teach you how to efficiently look through time," the young woman said, and the hush of the library faded away. "And you're going to find out precisely what happened at the very beginning. You're going to see what Beedle saw and more. You are not going to fail. Failure is not an option, Granger, I know you can do this."
It wasn't an ask. It was a command. Hermione was demanding, concise, and persuasive, and her younger self had no choice but to accept her mission.
But future Hermione wasn't finished. She had more demands.
"You will find a way out of all of this. You will, I speak it into existence, I believe in you. I love you. You will figure out how to save them."
The scar on her hand glowed crimson and the universe listened.
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
Lyra knew she was in mortal peril. Even in her unconscious state, she inherently knew that her body was being dragged into what she understood to be hell. Her shadows recoiled away from the walls and slimy floors of the unknown outside of her closed eyes, wrapping its protective arms around her and Harry like a mother beast snarling at the predator leading the way.
Or what he thought was the way.
Come on, wake uuup! Snap out of it! Fight the restraints!
The relief she felt when her shadows curled around Harry was more than enough fuel for her determination. Lyra tried to ignore that the ground they were on was infested with the corpses of rodents and God knows what else, and she began to panic when she realised that meant she was also lying in the viscera leftover from centuries of horror.
The resistance of the binding curse tried to build but she kept smacking it back, almost offended that this dark spell even attempted to subdue her.
WAKE UP! YOU'RE IN THE FUCKING CHAMBER! WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP—!
But it was only when Lyra blinked and saw Hermione's face looking back at her through the darkness, her dewy face baffled and her peach lips agape, that her magic won against her kidnapper's.
"Lyra?"
Hermione!
The whooshing force brushed over Lyra as she snatched her best friend's outstretched hands and squeezed, but Hermione was already gone. Her shackles fell from her body like a weighted blanket and she gasped, urging her shadows to protect her from what she was about to see. She prayed that she would be able to handle it, for her kidnapper's sake.
Immediate relief gushed into her gut when she pried an eye open and noticed she wasn't in the actual Chamber of Secrets. Her kidnapper hadn't made it that far, and judging by the unfamiliar path he was never going to. They were going the wrong way.
The antechamber was just as haunting and gruesome as its main attraction. The basilisk used the labyrinth under the school as her personal hunting grounds, what was left of her meals overflowed into the adjoining pipes, like millions of tiny ivory trophies left in their victor's absence they glowed in the harsh wandlight coming from the mysterious figure to her left.
Lyra laid frozen on the floor, pretending to be asleep so as to not let her kidnapper know she was free of his grip. Her foot brushed what she assumed to be Harry and she tried not to react. He was still out cold, his calm breaths cured her of her tremors and she relaxed into the shadows cuddling them both. He was ok.
Suddenly the harsh light flashed her way and Lyra refused to flinch. Her darkness acted accordingly to not raise suspicions and vanished as her kidnapper checked on them. Her face remained motionless as they changed direction and began to drag them back the way they came, their frustrated mutters indicating how little patience they had left. At least she was safe in her assumptions that this wasn't Tom.
Haha, idiot.
But then her confidence vanished along with her stomach, she nearly passed out again.
It was her father. It had to be.
Sirius knew about the Chamber?
You can do this, you're a lighthouse.
Lyra wasn't sure how she managed it, but she didn't give in to the voice telling her to kill. Her entire being was screaming out to get up and attack him, but she didn't extinguish her lighthouse so the darkness would win. She held her nerve and allowed her father to drag her and Harry through the pipes in search of the colossal serpentine vault door. She needed to know what he was doing first, or what he thought would happen if they found it. The secrets this man held... She could taste them, they were finally at arms length.
Her shadows shuddered, retreating from the entrance they were approaching, and Lyra dared to open one eye again.
FUCK!
He found it.
She recognised the mildew scent of wilting snake skin, the slow yet steady dripping of grey water disturbing the small pools nearby, the intense gaze of the snake statues flanking the door watching her. As she and Harry thudded to the ground once more, shards of bones and fallen rocks jabbing into them, Lyra shaped the shadows around her and gave her a moment's cover to lift her head.
Her kidnapper was masked. He had a grubby brown sack covering his head, she assumed he must have had eye holes but he was gazing up at the entrance to the mythical chamber door in awe of its dominating presence. He couldn't even face her properly like a real man. He was a lot shorter than she presumed.
Lyra zoned in on his wand – her jaw dropped, her wand. He'd stolen her wand!
Violation of the most disrespectful kind, Lyra's blood boiled but she bottled her rage and let the steam pour from her ears. How dare he–?!
But his other arm dropped down by his side as he collected his dark thoughts, and Lyra closed her mouth. A small prize, a minor win.
He was missing a hand and half of his forearm, and rightfully so. She couldn't wait to chop off his leg next, and then maybe the other arm too, he deserved so much worse.
But as the man made up his mind and turned to fetch one of his detainees from their pit of darkness, Lyra pushed her murderous desires to one side and used her brain for once. She was being too emotional, she needed to stay level-headed. Tom taught her better than this.
This wasn't her father, this was Scabbers in human form. As soon as it clicked, his rodent-like twitches and shifty characteristics even through the darkness were embarrassingly obvious, but she whipped her head back onto the floor as he came closer.
The sudden withdrawal of heat as Scabbers summoned Harry away from her black clasp alarmed her. She prayed he hadn't heard the fierce galloping of her heart, it was decibels away from betraying her and she still hadn't come up with a proper plan yet. She had to let Harry go.
Scabbers wanted to open the Chamber again. He knew all about Tom. He'd listened to everything they had said.
He knows I'm Death.
"Wake up."
Lyra snapped back to reality when Scabbers braved to clear his throat and force the unconscious boy to join him in front of the vault using her wand. He flicked the ball of light upwards where it hung in the domed pipe's ceiling before pointing the wand at Harry, as though sizing him up. He was on his knees in front of him with his hands bound behind his back and his head lolling against his chest.
"Wake up, Potter."
Lyra used Harry's initial exclamation as he finally woke up as her chance to fully immerse herself in the shadows and slip into the nothingness surrounding them. The rat man hadn't realised his second prisoner was just as elusive as her father, but her presence didn't matter right now. Harry was the key to opening the Chamber, he was his first problem.
At first Harry ignored his kidnapper, the shock of suddenly waking up in a place worse than his nightmares stole most of his focus and he frantically looked around, fearing the worst.
"What the hell have you done with Lyra?"
"Quiet," Scabbers flinched at his volume and Lyra's knotted wand twitched, sending a wispy hand around his neck to force him to gaze up at the door. The snake's eyes glimmered green with envy, inspecting the visitors requesting permission to explore the depths they would guard for eternity and Harry averted his pained gaze, trying not to flash back to that fateful day.
"Who are you?"
"Doesn't matter," the sack-covered stranger didn't want to talk. Lyra sensed his agitation in the wet air, his faith was mouldy and decaying. He really didn't want to be here anymore than they did, curiouser and curiouser. "Open the door."
"What? No," Harry spat back with a scoff, so genuinely offended that he managed to laugh, "are you joking me? You can't get down here without speaking Parseltongue, you do it."
"I can't, I've tried it before," Scabbers muttered, worsening Lyra's growing stomach ulcer, "it needs to be a true Parselmouth."
"Who are you?" Harry tried again, never backing down. Lyra closed her eyes and eased into the shadows shrouded around her shoulders, wearing it like a treasured cloak. She unfurled her fingers, and the shadow tendrils mirrored her.
"It doesn't matter who I am, what matters is what you've done, and what Black has done," the kidnapper deflected, but Harry tried to call him out on his bullshit.
"And you know all about what we've done, do you?"
"I think everyone might be interested to know that the Boy-Who-Lived has been cosying up with Death…"
The taste of the threat against her name in the sweet air ignited Lyra's decision to listen to the voice inside of her head. The voices were singing in chorus, echoing the siren call telling her to exercise her abilities and defend them all. She wasn't afraid of this rat, she wasn't afraid of her secret getting out, she wasn't even afraid of the chamber anymore. She was Fear, she was Darkness…
Harry opened his mouth, ready to curse the sack-faced coward who couldn't even look him in the face, when he saw the dense shadows of the chamber creep closer towards them. He tried not to search the shadows for her sparkling eyes and maintained his fierce glare up at the kidnapper instead. A faint black tendril scurried across his legs, letting him know not to worry, and Harry straightened his spine with the mean confidence of a man twice his age.
"Do you really think we're ever going to let that happen?" He challenged him, fighting the wispy hand as he ripped his jaw from its grasp, "I'm not opening that door."
The kidnapper stalked even closer, Lyra's wand now in direct line with his forehead. He never noticed how quickly his ball of light was flickering.
"Open… it… now."
"Go… fuck… yourself," Harry mimicked, and the kidnapper laughed. A genuine bark of laughter.
"Your father would have said the exact same thing. You really are his double."
Lyra's lighthouse extinguished and the entire chamber fell into pure, unadulterated, relentless darkness. Her control on her rage slipped through her shadowy fingers and she pounced on the kidnapper from all sides.
HOW FUCKING DARE HE?!
"ARGH!"
She squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed and squeezed. Until she couldn't squeeze anymore, until she felt nothing but the very matter the grown wizard wrestling in her cosmic hands was made of. His petrified screams came from deep within his soul, and Lyra devoured every last drop of his fear. It tasted so good on her human tongue, like sour ripe cherries and bursts of ice.
Harry dropped back and crawled away from the all-consuming darkness festering before him, glad to be free from the kidnapper's dark curse, but he tried not to look into the dark tornado of energy. He didn't want to see something he shouldn't.
"STOP! PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU!"
Drunk off the dark energy, Lyra's hold on the rat didn't last long. Her grasp on the darkness was weak, her power was starting to shatter. Scabbers was transforming, retreating into his rodent shell to protect himself from her trap, and she couldn't hold him still. He was trying to escape and she was scared that he was going to succeed.
"Lyra!" Harry yelled, on the verge of jumping into the nothingness, but the tornado imploded and the shadows quickly receded into the corners of the entrance chamber, scuttling and fumbling around to source the sound of the squealing, slimy Scabbers.
"HE'S GETTING AWAY!"
Bright, brilliant white. Harry swore he'd somehow accidentally blinded himself and he tripped over his own feet, he couldn't see anything. White light illuminated the chamber and adjoining pipes as though someone had switched on secret floodlights and he almost wept from the relief that hugged him when he realised who was barrelling down the pipes toward them. He swept the tears from his face.
"Harry! Thank Merlin you're ok!" Remus croaked, his wand aloft as he tended to the poor boy on the floor. Harry let him drag him up by his shoulders and surrendered to his brief hug, he could breathe again. His arms brought a sense of comfort he'd never had before.
Dumbledore flew past them both and headed straight toward Lyra who was still intent on catching the rat. The mountains of bones did everything to slow her down and she stumbled, frantically searching the corners for any sign of his slimy tail.
But he was gone. She couldn't catch up to him, her shadows weren't strong enough, her legs were spent. Lyra tripped over her wobbly feet and moaned, severely disappointed in herself. She let him escape.
"It's ok, Miss Black. Let him go."
Lyra gazed up at her headmaster who was peering into the darkness of the tunnel from her side, and her bright eyes widened in self-deprecation.
"First Tom, and now Ron's pet Scabbers?" she managed to say despite her torn throat, and she blushed as she accepted his helping hand. "Professor, you've got to do something about this chamber."
"That was Scabbers?"
Lyra welcomed Harry's slow exclamation and she collected her abandoned wand and rushed to launch herself at him, wiping the bewildered expression off his face with a tight embrace. She didn't care that she felt her teachers' stares on her back, she buried her face into his chest until she gathered the strength to acknowledge the nightmare she was in. Never, in her wildest dreams, did she think she and Harry would be back down here so soon.
"We're sorry we didn't stay in the tower," Harry began to explain, his voice hoarse from guilt. The heartbreak on Remus' face was killing him. "But we saw Scabbers, Ron's pet who we thought died," he added when Dumbledore's eyebrows rose, "we were just trying to catch him, he tricked us."
"You were only trying to help reunite Ron with his rat, how were you supposed to know?" Remus couldn't accept their apology, but the agony in his voice finally pulled Lyra from her hiding spot. What did he know? Why was he so sad?
"You know who Scabbers is, don't you?" It slipped out before she could stop it, "he didn't want us to see his face, he wore a sack over his head. Why?"
Albus summoned the aforementioned grubby sack and silently inspected it, his silver moustache twitching as he muttered to himself. Remus grimaced and smoothed his wrinkled brow with a clammy hand, coming to terms with it all.
"My guess is that he couldn't bear to look Harry in the face… Coward…" He spat under his breath, and the confused, dishevelled pair shared a look.
"Remus?" Harry said slowly, "who is he?"
Face drained and willpower shrivelled, Remus opened his mouth to confess to the poison he'd been harbouring for years when Albus interrupted with a soft cough.
"I'm afraid this conversation needs to be moved to my office, it is not safe for us to be down here. We do not know whose ears are hiding in the chamber walls," he said, extraordinarily calm and patient as always as he bent an arm around the young students as though shielding them from horrors lying around them. Albus smelt faintly of lemons and Lyra was strangely moved by the familiar scent. He was right, she couldn't be down here any longer.
They weren't alone down here.
It came from behind the vault door. She didn't want to believe it but she could hear the whispers singing to her from within. Pleading with her. Luring her into the chamber once more with its hypnotic hum and ominous hisses. Ancient magic desperately tried to catch her attention. Could Dumbledore sense it too? He was staring at the entrance door without a drop of emotion on his face, totally unreadable.
Ignore it.
I hear you loud and clear, sweetheart.
Keeping a tight fist around her own emotions, Lyra clamped her mouth closed and trained her eyes to stay strictly on her feet while Albus lowered the castle's guards and Apparated the group out of the snake's labyrinth. She suffered through the sharp sensation of teleportation without even a twitch and silently thanked Harry for sticking by her side so she didn't fall. None of this felt real, it hadn't sunk in yet.
CRACK!
"Thank goodness!"
Lyra finally lifted her head and squeaked at Hermione's sudden appearance as she leapt up from her armchair and wrapped her arms around her shell-shocked friends. She had been waiting in Dumbledore's office for them to return, and judging by the pile of books stacked on the chair's arm, she'd been waiting a while.
"Your warning was perfectly timed, Miss Granger," Albus pulled the trio out of their mutterings and gestured at them to take a seat. A delicate bone china teapot puffed into existence on his broad writing desk and he charmed the tea cups and saucers to serve his solemn guests. "Thank you again for coming straight to us."
"You knew we were down there?" Harry turned to gawk at Hermione, but Lyra lightly nudged his leg when their Seer friend struggled to meet his eye. She knew it had something to do with Hermione's new gifts, how else did she appear to her in the chamber?
"I don't know how to explain it but I had a gut feeling that something bad was happening," she spoke mostly to the two professors who were watching her most curiously. Lyra smiled at the smoothness of her little white lies, she was improving fast. "It was quite strange, at first I thought it was just my anxiety, but it got much worse when I passed the second floor. I checked Moaning Myrtle's old bathroom by chance, so I could prove to myself that I was just being unreasonable, but that was when I saw the exposed piping..."
"Continue listening to your instincts, Hermione. Exceptional as always," Albus praised, seemingly content with her explanation as he looked back to his gaunt-looking Defence Against the Dark Arts professor who still hadn't taken his seat. Remus couldn't stop pacing behind the headmaster's desk, his worn shoes squeaked with every heel turn.
Lyra helpfully broke the ice and stole the words from Albus' mouth as she pouted at her godfather. He'd never looked more like the boy from her family photographs, childlike fear was wrought in him.
"Remus, what's going on? It's ok, you can tell us."
Remus swallowed the lump in his throat and assumed his intended position in the chair beside Albus, his hands trembling as he took his first sip of tea. He met Lyra's persistent eye one final time and took a deep breath.
"Ron's pet rat, Scabbers," he started slowly at first, "he's not a real rat."
"Yeah, he's a guy?" Lyra couldn't help but blurt out, and only Hermione reacted badly to the revelation.
"He's a what?!"
"His name is Peter," Remus revealed, "Peter Pettigrew."
"The guy Dad killed? Your…?" Lyra trailed off as pieces clicked together, and she clutched onto the sides of her chair. She tried not to stare at Remus as though he was a wounded creature. "Your friend from school?"
"How? That doesn't make sense," said Harry, giving Remus a moment to compose himself.
"This is what I wanted to talk about earlier, before Peter lured you away," he said, and Lyra's lip wobbled when he looked back at her, "it's why I've been avoiding you."
"You figured out who he was at Scabbers' funeral," Lyra guessed, and Remus nodded.
"I'm so sorry, I should have told you sooner."
"What? That Ron's bloody rat is a human man?! And not just any man, a dead one?" She extrapolated, trying to work out what the hell was going on.
"That my school friends were unregistered, illegal Animagi," He corrected her just as bluntly as her, an old habit her father used to bring out in him years ago, and his confession lingered in the silence that followed. The three teenagers were stunned, staring back at their teachers as though they had grown tentacles.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Hermione muttered, leaning forwards to hang her head through her legs.
"Oh my God… I've gotten changed in front of him! A lot!" Harry exclaimed, unsure how to react as he hid his tomato red face in his hands.
Lyra shook her head and glared at Remus, at Dumbledore. This was a nasty joke. It had to have been. Thank Fate that Ron wasn't here too.
"And you waited two months to tell us this?!"
"Now is not the time to complain about withheld information, Lyra," Remus said gently, not rising to her anger, "I've told Professor Dumbledore all about your Firebolt, and your vault breaches."
Ah fuck.
Lyra settled down and scowled, unabashedly taking in Albus' amusement and disappointment as he waited for a pause in their bickering so he could begin. She held her tongue and allowed her headmaster to chastise her.
"I also know that you're in contact with Kreacher, the Black household's house-elf, thanks to Hagrid," he said casually, and Lyra shied away from Remus' incredulity.
Oops.
"You're what?!"
"Can we get back to the important matter at hand please?" She diverted the subject as she sensed her friends wriggling uncomfortably in their seats at the thought of being interrogated, "Scabbers is Peter, he's an illegal Animagus?"
"Sirius didn't kill him?" Harry pointed out the obvious, and Remus nodded. He hated the movement of admission but he sat tall and explained to them everything he knew. Lyra knew he was telling the truth, she could see the deadly weight easing from his posture the more he spoke, and she slowly slumped back in her chair as she absorbed the new information.
Peter's body wasn't recovered, the only evidence of him being at the scene of Sirius' crime were Muggle witness statements and his dismembered finger. He was one of their closest friends, and a member of an organisation called the Order of the Phoenix.
Remus then went on to explain the reason why everything went to shit that Halloween night, the conclusion that he continuously came to whenever he mulled it over. Lyra had heard about Secret-Keepers in vague passing, but she knew it was serious business when he began to relay the fated argument that flared up between his friends one day. Choosing the right Secret-Keeper was the difference between life or death, and it appeared to the members of the Order of the Phoenix that Harry's parents chose the wrong man.
Sirius.
Remus confirmed every single one of Lyra's assumptions.
But then he spoke to them about Peter as a person, about the boy he used to know and love and yet somehow Lyra was just in the Chamber of Secrets with him and Harry? It didn't make any sense.
Unless…
NO.
Lyra couldn't hear the rest of Remus' story. Her ear filled with buzzing to counteract the traitorous thought that sprung to mind. How dare she even think that? Sirius killed Giselle. Everyone said he murdered her mother, everyone told her he was a horrible, awful person… An evil man…
Nice try, Princess! This one is on me.
"Oh my God," Lyra rasped as she cradled her head and fought the terror Tom had instilled on her soul. Everything was starting to slip through her cracks, everything around her didn't feel real, but now was not the time for a mental breakdown. "Are you saying that there's a slim chance that this has all been one very stupid misunderstanding?"
"We don't know that," Remus was hasty to backtrack, he didn't want to be the one to say it.
"We have no idea what happened that night," said Dumbledore, wanting to inspire some kind of hope. He noticed Lyra's behaviour change, her emotions were written all over her freckled face, and he offered them more tea. "We do not know why Peter has been masquerading as the Weasleys beloved pet rat, and we do not know the reason why your father has chosen to break out of Azkaban, only to break into the castle."
"You said that your school friends were unregistered Animagi," Hermione pointed out, returning to the one issue that was bugging her the most, and she carried on when Remus acknowledged her with another nod. "How…? Who else was unregistered? And…" she glanced at Lyra before licking her lips. "Is that how Sirius escaped prison? No one else knows about his ability?"
"I suspect so. And no, no one else knows. I've been debating going to the Ministry with this information for months…" Remus sounded deflated, utterly empty and riddled with shame. Lyra recognised herself in him and whined. It wasn't his fault, he needed to know that.
"You're saying that Sirius and my dad were Animagi too?" Harry clarified, dumbstruck.
"Indeed, it is a surprise to me too," Albus said knowingly, sipping his tea.
"What were their forms?" Hermione wondered.
The second set of puzzle pieces clicked in Lyra's head and her visceral reaction to her first guess had her jumping onto her feet and mirroring Remus' pacing patterns. She knew what he was.
Remus wetted his lips, and she dreaded the very words he was going to say.
She already knew!
IF HE SAYS HES A FUCKING—!
"Sirius' is a huge, shaggy black dog," Remus dropped but Lyra wasn't astonished. Oh not at all! Fate was laughing at her, she could actually hear his bellowing glee at her expense and she tried her best not to give in to his torture. He wanted tjis reaction, the universe was ravenous for a show!
"Oh my fucking God?" Harry blushed but carried on pretending as though he hadn't sworn. "We can't catch a break."
"Why?" Albus looked from one blown mind to another.
"Because I found him, and fed him and gave him a freaking bubble bath!" Lyra hung her head to hide her silent laughter. Suddenly everything was pretty comical. Maybe Fate was onto something. "Long story short, I found a starving dog in the grounds over Christmas and I decided to foster him for a couple of hours. I literally walk straight into these guys' hands, don't I? Have I got the words 'Please take advantage of me' written across my forehead or something?"
"That's not your fault, you have a very big heart," Remus looked ready to cry himself. He cupped his strained forehead and continuously sighed, desperate to reach out and console her but he wasn't sure if he was in her good books right now.
"And a very dumb brain. He fled the tower when you got there," Lyra reminded him of Christmas Eve, not bothering to omit the facts, "when Scabbers faked his death. He snuck out when you all ran upstairs."
"Perhaps that explains why Sirius is here," Dumbledore mused, "since he doesn't appear to be here to harm Lyra and Harry. Neither of you felt threatened by the dog?"
Lyra stopped pacing to shake her head, all she could think about was how happy the hound was to see her… He was starving… The bubble bath revealed deep gashes hidden by his matted fur and she dramatically clutched onto the back of Hermione's chair.
Poor thing…
I know, but someone was there with Riddle that night all those years ago. It had to have been a blood relative…
"He was friendly, obedient, but hyperactive," Hermione described their run-in as the men occasionally exchanged glances that indicated that none of this was unexpected.
"Obedient? That's new," Remus murmured.
"But that certainly sounds like Mr Black," Albus concluded, satisfied with their answer, "and after this afternoon's turn of events, we have evidence that Mr Pettigrew is in hiding with malicious intent. Things do not appear to be what they seem, and I believe we may be the only ones who can get to the bottom of all of this."
"What about Peter? Do you have any guesses as to why he kidnapped us and tried to enter the chamber?" Lyra asked, not wanting to forget about the dark topic.
Albus' smile dampened and he sighed, sat back in his wooden throne and rested an elbow on its arm. He looked so casual and unlike himself, like a young man who was unafraid to show his dead end thought process. This version of the headmaster was her favourite, she held onto his every word.
"Unfortunately I do not, but I don't doubt that it has something to do with last year and this declaration of what I believe to be a show of loyalty towards Lord Voldemort," he gave his honest answer and Lyra's stomach fluttered. Remus didn't know all the details yet.
"I'm sorry to ask but was that really the Chamber of Secrets?" All traces of the prior conversation vanished and Remus' confident professor's demeanour returned. He clasped his hands together and leant forwards in a way that reminded her of Danielle during their mindful sessions. "You all went down there last year?"
"I didn't," Hermione answered first, "I was petrified last year."
"I went down there and killed the basilisk that did it," Harry added.
Lyra opened her mouth to spit out the first dark joke she could think of, but the warmth in her godfather's eyes caught her off-guard. He'd just told her everything he knew about that historic night, which sadly wasn't much, but it still meant a lot.
"And I was the one who opened the chamber in the first place and controlled the basilisk but—," she rushed to finish her statement before Remus could react, "in my defence I was seduced and then possessed by Lord Voldemort's evil school journal. I didn't mean to."
"…I see," Remus eventually answered, coming to terms with what Lyra was inferring. "And Peter wanted to take you back down there? Have you ever mentioned in front of Scabbers what's down there? Is there anything down there we should be concerned about?"
"From what Harry has told me, there is not," Albus answered for them, giving the teenagers some grace with the truth. Remus didn't need to know there was a corpse of Voldemort's sixteen-year-old self rotting away in the chamber. "So that means we will have to find out what exactly it is that Mr Pettigrew is up to, this mystery needs a conclusion."
Lyra, Harry, and Hermione swapped darting anticipatory side-eyes. That wasn't what they expected the wise headmaster to say, the known glint in his sparkling eyes was back and fiercer than ever.
"I have a proposal for the three of you," stated Albus, reverting back into a serious manner that was more becoming of a man of his status. "You do not have to accept this proposal, and in fact I encourage you not to, but… I think it is safe to say that, without you, it couldn't be done."
He revealed his wand and Lyra watched it swish, transfixed by its presence as the headmaster summoned three small, golden ornate figurines that wouldn't have been out of place on a dungeons and dragons board. Harry picked up the fiery bird token and ran his thumb across its metal feathers, impressed by the details.
"Are these phoenixes?" Hermione wondered, in awe of her own keepsake.
"I would like to induct you three into the Order of the Phoenix," Albus announced, proud of the strong reaction he had evoked, "as honourary members only, as you are still underage students after all."
Lyra snapped out of her magic-induced daze and claimed her token with a small peck on the phoenix's head. By the sounds of Remus' description of the Order, she would have been utterly insane to turn his offer down. The Order's mission statement was to defeat Lord Voldemort, a task that was already so close to her heart.
"Yes," Harry jumped the gun and signed himself up to join the liberation squad with the broadest grin on his face. Just like a green soldier he accepted the head of the organisation's terms without hearing what his first mission was and, as his manager, Lyra supported this decision. He should be the mascot of the secret club, considering his status, and should there ever come a time that the group came off hiatus then he should be allowed a shot at becoming a fully-fledged Order member.
"What do you need us to do?" Lyra was the one to ask the big questions, and Albus happily explained what he required of them. Remus sat beside him in silence, a war going on behind his forced pleasant smile.
"It is imperative that Peter does not leave this school before the truth comes to light. His attempt to break into the Chamber today gives me enough cause to see that he is arrested and questioned, but we also require information from Sirius," he explained his reasoning, and Lyra found herself nodding along.
"You want to use us as bait? To capture them both?" She presumed, and Professor Dumbledore gave her the humblest bow he could achieve while sitting down.
"In the safest way possible," he smiled, "yes, Miss Black."
Lyra pocketed her phoenix and flashed him her pretty smile. Thrill pulsed through her body, temporarily curing her imminent freak out. Her father might be innocent.
Her father.
Innocent…
Don't get ahead of yourself, he might not be.
He may know something useful though.
"I too want to know which one of these bastards betrayed Harry's parents and killed my mother so," she sat straighter and accepted his proposal, "I'm in."
"Excellent," Albus couldn't have looked prouder. "I think this may be quite beneficial for your peace of mind, Lyra. I do hope we can find you some kind of closure, if not with your father but with the Chamber of Secrets."
"What about Ron?" Hermione held off accepting the prestigious invitation with a pressing question. "Can we tell him about this? How do we tell him about this?!"
"I do not think it is wise to involve Ronald," Professor Dumbledore relayed, sobering up to answer Hermione's concerns. "Not yet. Peter may try to return to Ron as a means to escape, if he suspects that Ron knows about his secret then he may not appear. What we have discussed here tonight cannot leave this office. Peter cannot know that we know."
Hermione looked devastated but she nodded and politely accepted her token. "For the record, I do not want to be the one to tell Ron when the time comes," she said as an afterthought.
"Perhaps Ron will benefit from a session with Madam Pomfrey too," Remus took note, and Albus seconded his notion with a nod.
"So, lure Peter to us using Ron, and if we see the big scary dog again we'll try and lead him here to your office for questioning?" Lyra went over the key points again to ensure she had their mission straight in her brain.
"Precisely. But only if you are able to. You are not to put yourselves in harm's way to achieve this, you are to pretend that everything is fine on the off chance that Peter or Sirius pass your way naturally," he reminded them, still worried for their safety.
"If you aren't able to get back here with Sirius though, Harry, try using your patronus to send us a message, like how I showed you," Remus reminded his best student, and Harry looked more determined.
The dinner bell drew their private meeting to a close, and reality began to settle back in. Lyra stood up from her stiff seat and tried to appear totally normal. She noticed the slime stains on her pinafore mixing with the algae from the passageway and made a note to draw the hottest bath imaginable. She was slick with the stench of death, she hoped no one else could smell it.
"Stay vigilant, and keep in touch," Professor Dumbledore saw them out, standing tall with his hands clasped behind his back as he watched from his stone griffin guard. "Ah, and I think forty points to Gryffindor will suffice."
"We won't let you down, sir," Harry answered on behalf of the group, and the three Gryffindors left the third floor with their pondering Professor. Remus refused to let them head down to the Great Hall without an escort and judging by the pursing of his lips he wasn't finished with them yet.
Lyra guffawed and grinned up at him. "So, Sirius might be innocent—?"
"Albus shouldn't have done that," Remus cut her off, his tone curt and wary. "He shouldn't have inducted you, you're thirteen."
"Fourteen," Hermione and Lyra corrected him.
"We'll be fine. More than fine. We'll be great at this," defended Harry, "we've done far worse things than pretend that nothing has happened."
"Yeah, you've been in the Chamber of Secrets?" Remus didn't look happy at all. He shoved his hands in his pockets and urged them to keep walking. He spoke only out the side of his mouth.
"That was in the papers last year, it's old news," Lyra pointed out, feeling pricked by his tone. She tried not to rise to his moody jabs and gave him the grace that he showed her back in Dumbledore's office. "I understand you're just as terrified as us but this is good! We might be able to uncover what really went down that night they died, Dad might not have been involved at all!"
"But what if he was?" Remus shook his head, "you've been through enough, you're not going anywhere near Sirius without me."
Lyra went to argue back but Hermione's subtle arm tugs kept her grounded and silent. It wasn't Remus' decision, she wanted to do her part for the cause of truth. She was going to help whether he liked it or not, so she smiled and played nicely.
"Ok, sure," she said, "I'll make sure I won't go near him without you."
"I want to believe you, I really do," Remus consoled with the fact he wouldn't win and accepted her answer. "Thank you. And truly, I'm very sorry I didn't tell you all this sooner."
"Aw man, how the hell are we supposed to keep this from Ron?" Harry remembered all over again as voices fading into their vicinity. Everyone was making their way to dinner and they lowered their voices as bodies started to brush past. "This is going to kill him."
"You won't have to keep it from him long," Remus was the voice of reassurance as he led them toward the streams of people going into the Great Hall, indicating that this is where he would leave them. He cleared his throat and gave the three of them a sweeping look that McGonagall would be proud of.
"I hope your detention served its purpose and reminded you three that rules are in place for your protection," his voice echoed through the hall's antechamber and a few heads turned to smirk at them. Hermione dipped her head in embarrassment, unaware that this was the cover story they were sticking to, but Harry and Lyra graciously accepted their punishment considering the day they had.
"Yes, sir," Lyra stuck out her bottom lip and blinked up at Remus, trying to make him crack, "we'll never, ever, ever break the school rules again."
"Ever," Harry re-enforced, "cross my heart and hope to die."
"Oi!"
Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it!
Lyra spotted his hair before anything else and she turned to grin at Ron who was pushing his way against the current of students toward them, exasperated that he had finally found them. She felt her friends clam up beside her and knew she'd have to do the talking for now. The sweat on Hermione's brow could've been explained by his knitted bobble hat, but her pained expression was starting to catch his eye.
"Where have you guys been?" he asked.
"Detention," Lyra grumbled, and aimed a scowl at Remus who was watching nearby. "Turns out you're not allowed to jump out of the towers. This school is no fun."
"You got roped into detention too?" he glanced at Hermione, and Lyra relaxed once she got to grips with her facial expressions and tried to look as disgruntled as possible.
"I'm not happy about it either, I was reprimanded for aiding and abetting, you only got off lightly because it's your birthday," she drawled, turning Ron's dissatisfied smile into a genuine one.
"Oh! Well, lucky me I guess," he shrugged, but Lyra physically saw his chest swell with pride, "sorry to hear that guys, I can't imagine your detention was that awful though. What did he have you do, help clean his Grindylow tanks?"
"Yeah, something like that," Harry swung an arm over his best friend's shoulder and led him into the heaving Great Hall with what he hoped looked like a confident smirk. "But let's forget about our detention and enjoy the rest of the day together. In the tower. Where it's nice and safe."
Lyra followed her friends and tried her best to remain positive but the dark forces roiling inside of her whizzing mind were manic. She couldn't stop picturing the grim chamber, the infinite piles of bones burying her, the putrescent gleam of the pipe walls and wet floors, and the nefarious man who had been hiding in plain sight. The man who knew all of their secrets, who threatened the ignorance Lyra was relying on to keep her somewhat normal life. Her cousin's fucking pet rat?!
"Thanks for making this possibly the best birthday, by the way, especially after the year I've had," she heard Ron proclaim and her heart tore open just a little bit more.
Peter was going to pay, she wasn't going to let him get away.
Thank you for reading! I don't think I can ever write a small chapter ever again lol
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