lomonaaeren

“And then I woke up and he was standing by my bed….”

Harry listened in silence to the story that Weasley was telling. Harry had never spent much time with any of the Gryffindors except Parvati, but just going up to Weasley and asking him, shyly and with shining eyes, to tell the story had worked well enough. Weasley was swaying back and forth as if drunk on Firewhisky, gesturing with his hands.

It was enough.

But the story only made Harry think, again, that something was strange. Black had tricked the portrait that guarded the Gryffindor common room into letting him in by playing on her sympathies for a “lonely, abandoned former Gryffindor.” The portrait had told the Head Boy, Percy Weasley, that much. And then he’d come up to Ron Weasley’s bed and attacked him—or rather, stood over him with a knife in his hand, to hear that boy tell it. Weasley had screamed, and Black had turned around and run away.

It just didn’t fit with Harry’s conception of a murderous madman. Or the conception being pushed by the papers, anyway.

“What do you think of that?” Weasley asked triumphantly, turning towards Harry.

Harry gave him an empty smile. They were in the corridor outside the Charms classroom, one of the few classes that Ravenclaw and Gryffindor shared this year, and he only had to perform a little for his audience. “It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s amazing you survived.”

“Yeah! And—”

At that moment, Weasley had to cut off as Flitwick opened the door and motioned them into the room. Harry went with the flow of students, thinking.

“What’s with that expression?”

Harry blinked up at Michael as his friend sat down beside him. “I wasn’t trying to wear any particular expression.”

“Of course you weren’t.” Michael winked at him a little. “That’s why you asked Weasley all those leading questions when I don’t think you’ve even spoken to him before.”

“I might be interested in everything that has to do with Black.”

“Are you?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s the murderer stalking me.”

“But he hasn’t acted much like a murderer, has he?”

Harry leaned back in his seat. “What do you mean?” They kept their voices low, since Flitwick had technically started class, but he was on the other side of the room at the moment, scolding Longbottom and Finnigan about something.

“Only that Black had the chance to kill Weasley. He didn’t. He could have attacked the portrait and tried to force her to let him in, instead of using guile. He didn’t. And why go to Gryffindor anyway? He might not have been able to get into Ravenclaw, but Gryffindor makes an odd secondary target.”

“Unless he tried our Tower, got frustrated, and then decided to go into the House he thought he might be able to enter to let the frustration out.”

“The first thing I did this morning was ask the door-knocker on the Tower if someone who wasn’t of our House tried to enter with a riddle. The knocker said no one did.”

Harry was annoyed that he hadn’t thought to ask the knocker, even though he hadn’t heard any of the details of Weasley’s story until an hour ago. “Well, it doesn’t mean that he has to do things that make sense. He’s mad.”

“Is he?”

Harry didn’t have the time to answer before Professor Flitwick turned around, and Harry had to pretend to be a polite and obedient student.

But worry thrummed just beneath his breastbone. Obviously, if he’d noticed that Black was acting in unexpected ways, so could others. And they might capture Black, or kill him, or question him in a way that kept him away from Harry, and never tell Harry the results.

Harry was determined to reach Black first.

*

“Harry! What can I do for you?”

Harry didn’t correct Lupin, who had just dragged the door open and was beaming at him frantically, as if he could make up for everything he hadn’t done with smiles. “There was a question I wanted to ask you, sir.”

“Of course! Come in, come in.”

Lupin’s office had a grindylow tank, a locked and rattling wardrobe that looked different from the one he had used to test their boggarts in September, and an odd cage that looked empty but was covered with metal flames fastened to the bars. Harry frowned at it. “What is that, sir?”

“Just an invention of my own,” Lupin said, with the kind of cheerful tone that would have fooled a lot of people into not realizing he hadn’t answered. “Now, what kind of question could I answer? About your parents?”

“No, sir. About Black.”

Lupin’s face drooped, and he leaned forwards as though bowing to Harry. Harry would have liked to think he was, but he knew the professor better than that. “I promise you, Harry, that we will keep Black out of the school in the future. No one knows how he broke in…” He swallowed, a drop of sweat gleaming on his face for a moment. “But we will make sure that he cannot do it again, and we will keep you safe.”

Harry studied Lupin. He had come prepared with a few specific questions, but now, he thought that he could ask a different, more advantageous one instead. “Are you sure that no one knows how he got in, sir?”

Lupin started. Not enough for most people to notice, but Harry wasn’t most people. “Ah, what do you mean, Harry?”

“You didn’t look just frightened or upset or like you were trying to reassure me, sir. You looked like you were lying.”

Lupin stared at him, mouth slightly open. Harry could see a few teeth that were oddly worn-down and broken. He vowed to remember it. “It—I’m not working with Sirius Black!”

“You don’t have to be working with him to suspect how he’s getting into the school.”

“I’m quite sure that I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Potter.”

Lupin was ridiculously transparent, not that Harry was going to tell him that when it might make him change his easy-to-read mannerisms. Harry just shrugged and said, “All right. I’ll find someone else to ask about Black.”

“What? But no one else here knew him nearly as well!”

“You’re lying, sir. That means I can’t trust you about anything. And anyway, I know that Professor McGonagall taught him. Probably some of the others, too, like Professor Babbling. I’ll ask them.”

“No! Harry, please!”

Harry let his head droop for a second, his shoulders slump. Without looking at Lupin, he whispered, “I grew up around people who knew about magic, but never spoke of it to me. I couldn’t trust them. If you lie, I can’t trust you, either. Are you going to tell me the truth? Or not?”

There was a long moment when Harry felt as if they were balanced on the edge of a knife blade, and could sway either way. Then Lupin swallowed loudly. “All right. But, Harry, you must promise not to be disappointed in me.”

Disappointed? “Yes, sir. I’m listening.”

“There are a lot of secret passages in the castle.” Lupin turned away to stare at the far wall of his office, even though it was windowless and there was nothing there. “When I was a student, I explored most of them with your father and Peter and—and Black. I suspect that Black is using some of them to sneak into the castle.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

Lupin flinched. “You promised you wouldn’t be disappointed.”

“It’s hard not to.”

Those words struck Lupin harder than the poison or threats Harry might have used with others would have. Harry watched with a hidden smile as Lupin bowed further and whispered, “The professors counted on me to hold the others back. I was a prefect, they weren’t. I honored the rules on the surface, they didn’t. They would have been so disappointed in me had they known that I ran around with them in—in breaking the rules.”

It hadn’t sounded like “breaking the rules” had been the words originally meant to follow “in,” but Harry didn’t have to ask about that right this minute. “I don’t think you take my safety that seriously, sir.”

“I do, Harry! Of course I do!”

“Then why did you hide this secret? Not only Black could get in that way, but other people could! Death Eaters who are still out there!”

Lupin closed his eyes for a long second. Then he said, “Because the knowledge would have made its way to the Headmaster.”

“You cared more about his disapproval than you did about my life.”

“Harry—”

Harry fought the temptation to drape a cold mask over his face and simply withdraw from the conversation. He wouldn’t get what he needed that way. And now he had the perfect tool to manipulate Lupin.

“You did,” he whispered, and forced his voice to waver. “You—I thought maybe you would tell me about the knowledge everyone is hiding from me, because you told me about being my parents’ friend, but now I see that you’re just like the rest of them. Always hiding secrets.”

“No! No!” Lupin hurried over and stood in front of the door when Harry acted like he wanted to leave. “I promise, that’s not the way it is!”

“Then you’ll tell me more about Black?”

Lupin’s shoulders drooped. “What did you want to know?”

“Why did he ask the Gryffindor portrait to step aside instead of attacking her? Why didn’t he kill Weasley? It seems like those would have been the right actions to take if he was a murderous madman, but he didn’t.”

“Well, keep in mind that he’s been in prison with the Dementors for twelve years, Harry. That affects the mind—erratically. He might kill someone, but spare someone else. The whole point is that we can’t predict how he’ll act, and that’s what makes him so dangerous.”

Harry didn’t think much of this argument. “But has he killed anyone since he escaped from prison?”

“He killed Peter and twelve Muggles twelve years ago, isn’t that enough?”

But I don’t care about them. That would be a bad thing to say in front of Lupin, though, so Harry only frowned at him. “I was just asking about whether he’d killed anyone since he escaped, Professor.”

Lupin looked away with a harsh sigh, rubbing his face with a shaking hand. “I don’t know of anyone. But he could have. He could have killed Mr. Weasley in his sleep, or ripped up the Fat Lady’s portrait.”

Harry asked a few more questions, but they all produced the same kind of weary, vague answers. Lupin didn’t know if Black had been high in Death Eater circles, only assumed that he must have been, because that was what the papers had said after his arrest. He couldn’t tell Harry a lot about what Black had done during the war, because Lupin was almost always elsewhere. He couldn’t say whether Black might have visited his family and turned back towards their view of things, because it wasn’t like Black would have told him about it.

Harry finally asked the last question, the information he had been a bit reluctant to reveal to Lupin. “What about a rat?”

“What?” Lupin stared at him.

“One of my sources of information told me that You-Know-Who talked about a rat at Death Eater meetings. He liked to speak in code. But he never referred to stars, or blackness, or dogs, or anything else that would indicate he was talking about Black.”

Lupin swallowed slowly. “Who told you that, Harry?”

“A source.”

“Harry James Potter, have you been associating with Death Eaters?”

It was so absurd that Harry stared at Lupin with his mouth open. Then he shook his head and said, “You left me behind for twelve years. You don’t get the right to scold me like a parent.”

“Your father and your mother would have wanted you to remain in complete ignorance of their deaths and everything associated with them if knowing it meant you would talk to Death Eaters.”

“Tell me what it meant.”

“It means nothing, because you can’t trust anything a Death Eater says!”

And that was all Lupin would say on the subject. Harry finally left the classroom, his mind buzzing. He had noticed that Lupin had jumped twice, once when Harry had spoken about the rat, and once when he’d mentioned the word “dogs.”

There is something going on here. Something that he knows and isn’t saying. I don’t think Lupin is working with Black, but he knows more about him than he lets on.

Harry nodded. He would have to confront Black to learn the truth. And he thought he knew how to do it.

He headed for the dungeons.

*

“How many of the others did you tell?”

“Hermione.” Harry didn’t look up from the parchment that he was steadily covering with equations, all of them copied from the book Vector had given him.

“What about the others?”

“No.”

Theo was quiet for a long time. Harry ignored him until he had finished filling the parchment, and then he leaned back and raised his eyebrows in his first friend’s direction.

They were in a dungeon classroom, deeper than they had been even on Halloween night, and lit with a bobbing ball of light, a variant on the Lumos Charm that Harry had mastered last year. Theo’s shadow was cast sharply in front of him, and his eyes shone at Harry from a mass of it.

“Tell me why you didn’t tell the others.”

Harry considered the wording, and decided it wasn’t a demand that he would need to rebuke. “Michael would potentially be interested, but he cares more about Runes than Arithmancy, and he would argue about the method we’ve chosen. Zacharias would be adverse to the danger. Parvati is convinced that something is going on with Black, but she thinks that I should press Lupin and the other professors harder, so I have all the necessary information, before I do something about it.”

Theo half-smiled. “And you think that I’m a danger advocate? A Gryffindor?”

“I think that you can handle yourself, and also that you know more about Arithmancy than I do, and you’ll let me know if you think I’m taking stupid risks.”

Theo laughed softly and reached out a hand. Harry clasped it, assuming that was what Theo wanted, although he didn’t know for sure.

“I am glad to have found someone whose mind is so like mine,” Theo said.

Harry could be glad for that, too, and he smiled at Theo before he flipped the page of The Fire Equations to begin filling the next parchment.

*

“We should make at least one test before you try to confront Black.”

Harry didn’t like the way that time was passing towards the end of term. He wanted to get this settled before Christmas, since the Minister was promising to step up his hunt for Black over the holiday. But he also knew that Theo was speaking good sense, and this was why Harry had brought him into the secret in the first place.

So he and Theo went out onto the dark grounds one day near the end of November, a few weeks after the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch game when the Dementors had proved they were happy to come onto the grounds.

The air around them sparkled with the cold. Harry had Warming Charms on him, though, and the singing sphere Madam Marchbanks had given him last year which revealed Dark creatures. He hadn’t worn it since the first night in the Great Hall, because the presence of the Dementors just outside was setting it off constantly. But the increase in its noise and heat would be useful now, when they wanted to attract a Dementor.

He and Theo halted near the edge of the Hogwarts wards, not far from the gates and the statues of the winged boars. Theo had grown tenser and tenser as they walked, and he was shivering with what Harry knew was terror.

Harry felt an echo of that himself, but he felt more determination. He was going to stop this. He was going to find Black, and he was going to hold him down and make him answer questions.

“There.”

Harry nodded. His breath and Theo’s were making larger clouds than they had a moment before, and Harry could feel despair clawing at the edges of his mind. He wanted to lie down, give up, think that his escape from the Dursleys had been nothing but a dream…

The silver sphere around his neck flared hot enough to burn his skin, and Harry shuddered. No. He was away. He would have forced the world into this shape if it didn’t already have it. It took nothing to make his mind stop throwing fits of delusion.

He took out the glass sphere from his robe pocket and waited until the Dementor was close enough for Harry to make out the drifting tendrils of its cloak, or its form, whichever it was. And then he threw the Arithmantic weapon.

It rolled towards the Dementor, and the equations began to whirl and dance on the surface. Harry saw them flash briefly with fire in the moment before the whole night became too hot and bright to stand.

He flung his hand over his eyes, while his ears were flayed by the worst sound he had ever heard, a Dementor screaming. He never wanted to hear it again.

But he would have stood it and far worse, over and over, if it meant that he got the chance to question Black without the Dementors interfering.

When the light died, Harry raised his hand. He could still a floating shape where the Dementor had been, but it was—smaller than it had been before. And even as he stared at it, the creature turned and fled.

“We didn’t destroy it.”

Theo sounded disappointed. Harry shrugged, eyes still locked on the patch of night where the Dementor had been. “It doesn’t matter that much. We don’t need to destroy them, just keep them away.”

“I’d like to destroy them.”

“You’re more bloodthirsty than I thought, Mr. Nott.”

Theo laughed in what sounded like surprise. “You really have the imitation of Lupin perfect.”

“Mr. Nott, you are not to cast such violent magic. Can I interest you in telling me a secret? I’m keeping so many myself, I can hold some more.”

Theo convulsed in laughter as they walked back towards the castle, and if it was shaky laughter, that didn’t matter. Harry was just glad that his weapon had worked, and that he ought to be able to have all the private conversation with Black that he wanted.

*

In the end, it didn’t take that much effort to lure Black.

Harry started walking outside after dusk. Michael gave him a long look when Harry asked his friend to lie to the other Ravenclaws about where he was, but he didn’t actually object. He did say, “I expect you to tell me about this when it’s over.”

“Promise.”

It was a promise that Harry had every intention of keeping. He carried multiple glass spheres worked with the equations with him, and no matter how interesting the mystery surrounding Black was, Harry would kill Black before he would allow his insane godfather to harm him.

So he walked on the grounds, and he avoided Dementors, and he listened with amusement to the circulating rumors. Supposedly, the light and the fire that Harry had used to wound a Dementor was the result of someone in Hogsmeade getting drunk and using a Lightning Charm too violently.

They do not know the truth about me. Most of them will never know.

Madam Marchbanks wrote to Harry a few times during November and into December to ask if he wanted to have her come shout at Lupin. Harry smiled at the letters and wrote back polite negatives. The only professor he might have wanted her to shout at was Snape, and Snape kept his distance and ignored Harry.

A few days before they would have had to get on the Hogwarts Express, Black found Harry.

*

“Harry.”

The voice that came out of the darkness was hoarse and had a hint of a growl in it. Harry turned to face it immediately, one hand closed around the glass sphere in his pocket.

Black emerged slowly from the undergrowth. His eyes were bright and feverish. He was stooped over, too, as if he carried a huge burden on his shoulders. Harry studied him, and saw nothing of the madness that had been in the newspaper photographs.

I knew he was sane.

Black coughed, a long wet noise, and eyed Harry. “I wanted to talk to you,” he whispered. “I wanted to tell you that I didn’t do it.”

“You didn’t do which part?”

Black’s forehead wrinkled, maybe because he’d thought Harry would be more frightened, but then he shook his head and pushed past that. “Any of it! I mean, I was James and Lily’s Secret-Keeper at one point, but they made Peter their Secret-Keeper instead. I thought I would be too obvious.” Black’s face twisted with hatred. “And then the little rat betrayed them! I was hunting him down when he screamed that it was my fault and cast that spell that killed the Muggles and faked his death.”

Harry felt a hard beat start up in his throat. The use of the word rat might not prove much, but it did indicate that there was something there, some important piece of information other people had missed. “Why do you call him a rat?”

Black bared teeth that looked made for ripping out throats. “Because he’s a rat Animagus. The traitor cut off his own finger and escaped into the sewers after he blew up that street!”

The Dark Lord liked to speak in code, didn’t he?

Harry felt his mind leap on wings, the way it sometimes did when he was thinking about how to link different magical disciplines together, or when he finally saw how wand movement and incantation worked together to produce a spell. “There’s a reason that Lupin jumped when I said the word dogs to him, isn’t there?” he asked softly.

“Remus?” Black whipped his head back and forth. “Remus is here?”

“No, of course not. Do you think he’d let me walk into danger?”

Black slumped a little. “He thought I was guilty. They all did. But we thought he was a spy, so…”

The Order of the Phoenix was a mess. “If you didn’t do it, why did you say that you were guilty when they took you to Azkaban?”

“If I hadn’t suggested Lily and James make Peter the Secret-Keeper instead, they would still be alive! I didn’t betray them, but I killed them!”

Harry sighed. I hope that he can restrain himself from saying something like that in public, or they won’t have any opposition when they set a Dementor on him. “Look, I don’t blame you for that. I only wanted the answer to my questions. Another question. How did you learn that Pettigrew was alive?”

“Saw his picture in the paper.”

Harry stared at Black. Black stared at him in return. “I’m fairly sure that many people would have remembered seeing a dead war hero in the paper,” Harry said slowly. Maybe Black was mad after all.

“No, as a rat!” Black stomped his foot like a child. “He’s that Weasley boy’s pet rat! Saw him on the boy’s shoulder when they took a holiday to Egypt after winning some prize!”

Harry hissed between his teeth. He did remember that picture, now that Black had brought it up. He’d read the article so that he would know what had happened if someone wanted to discuss it, but he hadn’t paid attention other than that.

I want to kill Pettigrew. I want him to die begging, screaming.

But if he did, then Black’s innocence would be harder to prove. Or it would just vanish in a puff of smoke, since at that point he would be guilty of murder. Harry cocked his head at Black. “Are you interested in a trial to prove your innocence?”

Black laughed grimly. “There’s nothing that would convince Fudge I’m innocent, no matter what. I might as well crush the life out of Wormtail before a Dementor Kisses me.”

“Wormtail?”

“You were on the trail earlier. All of us were Animagi. Peter a rat. Your dad a stag, called Prongs. And me. Padfoot.”

Black blurred and wavered, and Harry leaped back, clutching the enchanted weapon in his pocket. But the blurring stopped soon enough, and a huge black dog tumbled to the ground, staring at Harry with grey eyes like Black’s.

Harry stared at his godfather. He had intended to ask how Black had escaped from Azkaban and evaded the notice of the Dementors, but that was obvious now. The Dementors had ignored the animals in the Forbidden Forest, too, apparently.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered, and at that moment, he genuinely meant it.

Black barked at him and wagged his tail, but Harry held his hand up when Black moved in as if he meant to lick Harry’s face. He had too many memories of Ripper to feel that comfortable so close to any dog.

“I think I might be able to get you a trial, and certainly Madam Marchbanks’s protection while you wait for it,” he said. “Are you interested?”

Black barked again, and wagged his tail harder. Harry hesitated a moment, and then extended a hand. Black pranced up and rolled over so that Harry could pet his belly. Harry still didn’t let Black lick his hand, but he supposed it was a start.

And in the meantime, he had solved a mystery and he was about to gain some leverage over powerful people. Maybe he could even turn Black against Lupin, or play them off against each other.

It had been a good evening.

*

Dear Griselda,

I know that you’ve been missing your chance to shout at people lately, so I thought the Minister would be a good possibility…