lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Nine—War Drums

“Are you influencing Harry against us?”

Severus closes his eyes with utter exasperation. He gave the Wolfsbane Potion to Lupin, and Lupin did nothing but murmur some thanks as he stared down at it with wide eyes. That suits Severus. All he wants to do on these missions that Albus makes him run—the missions to make sure that a werewolf doesn’t transform and slaughter their students—is to bring the potion and depart without getting involved in a conversation.

Now, he has no choice.

“No,” he says coolly, turning around. “You did that yourselves, what with putting the mission to defeat the Dark Lord above your godson’s welfare.”

“Not my godson.”

Severus just stares, incredulously. It’s not that he thinks James or Lily would have appointed Lupin godfather in Black’s place. It’s just that he thinks they would never agree with the abrogation of duty towards Harry that those words imply.

Lupin catches his glance and turns a fiery red. “I didn’t mean—I’m grateful that you do this for me.” He lifts the smoking goblet of the potion, and then downs it while Severus is still debating whether he should tell Lupin how stupid he’s doing.

In the end, Severus does, but it’s for Harry’s sake and Lily’s, not Lupin’s. “Do not change the subject. Whether or not Harry is your godson in the eyes of the law, you had a duty of care for him.”

“What about you?”

“The person your friend James hated and who destroyed his own friendship with Lily?”

If Severus had known as a teenager what a joy it is to make the Marauders fumble with words, he would have been using them instead of hexes. Now, Lupin flushes and stares at his hands. “I—that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“That if you loved Lily, even if it was once that you loved her instead of all the time, you had a duty to—”

“Do not speak to me about Lily,” Severus breathes. He has gone in a moment from wanting to laugh at Lupin to wanting to kill him, and his mood is more fragile than a crystal chest created by the Phantasmagoria Potion. “Do not ever speak to me about her. You have no right, Lupin. No right.”

“But she would still have wanted you to take care of her son.”

“She would have depended far more on you and Black. And what did you do? Ran off to the Continent whimpering about duty.”

Lupin opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I—there’s some justice in that.”

“Some?”

“But we really were doing the best thing for the world! I promise!” Lupin waves a hand frantically at Severus. “If you knew what we were hunting, the way that we were trying to make the world safe for everyone and not just Harry—but it would include Harry, so that he would have a safer world to grow up in—”

“I do know.”

Lupin opens his mouth, closes it. He manages to work a croaky breath out of his throat, which amounts to, “What?”

“Albus told me. So I know what you were seeking, and I still think that at least one of you could have come back to look in on your beloved friends’ son a few times a year. You should at least have known that the Muggles he grew up with abused him. I had no idea that he had been placed with Petunia’s sister because I had no reason to go looking for him. What is your excuse?”

Lupin droops, because of course he does. Severus curls his lip. It’s amazing that Lupin has lived to his thirties without a spine.

“The quest was—the quest was all-consuming,” Lupin whispers. “We had to find and punish Peter. He took everything we ever had.”

You did not become a Death Eater. You did not destroy your friendship with your best friend.

But speaking those words will make Lupin either think he has power over Severus or offer more of that cursed pity, so Severus only shakes his head and asks, “And did you even find Pettigrew? I had the impression that he had escaped you and that that part of your quest was in vain.”

Lupin winces, exactly the way that Severus hoped he would. “We didn’t catch him,” he says. “But we’re close.”

“How close?”

“He’s in Britain.”

Severus waits for more, and then laughs incredulously when he realizes that’s all there is. “He’s on the same island,” he says. “In the same hemisphere, at least! Why couldn’t you come any closer to catching him?”

Lupin looks at him with despairing eyes. Severus decides after a moment that that’s all he’ll get, and turns and walks out of the office, shaking his head.

They do not deserve Harry.

*

“It’s too early.”

Neville just shrugs, since that’s Ron’s lament for every single breakfast and sometimes even lunch that they’ve attended at Hogwarts. He slides onto the bench beside his best friend and reaches for a platter of potatoes. Hermione is already buried inside a book on the other side of the table.

Neville eyes her. They haven’t become as close as they were before their argument, but on the other hand, Hermione hasn’t deserted him, either. He tries to push down the worry that that’s just because Hermione doesn’t have any other friends.

“Professor Black!”

Neville glances around. Lavender is bending down to coo over the large black dog who’s trotting along the back of the Gryffindor bench and stopping regularly to be petted and fed. Neville smiles. Professor Black seems fragile, sometimes, in the classes he teaches, as if he’s about to explode into the kind of hilarity that shatters into mad cackles, but there’s no doubt that he loves Gryffindor. And his Animagus form makes him seem calmer.

Black trots up to Neville and noses at the hem of his robes as if he’s an ordinary dog. Neville pretends that he doesn’t see the piece of ham he drops on the floor, or the way that Professor Black swallows it quickly.

“He shouldn’t be eating off the floor,” Hermione whispers.

Neville shrugs. He thinks ordinary dogs can do that without a problem—thinks, because Gran hasn’t ever let him have one—and Professor Black is pretty much an ordinary dog when he’s transformed except for his intelligence.

Professor Black continues trotting, and is sniffing around Ron’s feet. Then he abruptly stiffens and growls.

“Professor Black?” Hermione asks, drawing her legs up, since she’s the one whose feet he’s closest to.

Black explodes so suddenly into barks that Neville drops his fork and half the table shrieks. Then Professor Black tears out from under the bench, runs in a circle for a moment with his nose to the floor, and shoots like a firework out of the Great Hall and towards the main staircase. Neville stares after him.

“What was that all about?” Ron mutters into his teacup.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Neville mutters in response. He wonders for a moment if they’ll find out, then shrugs and goes back to his own breakfast.

Professor Black seems to like sharing things with Gryffindors. Hopefully they’ll find out.

*

Sirius has sharper senses than most humans when he’s in human form, but nothing like the keen sense of smell he has when he’s a dog. It’s different for him than for Remus, who can smell things like Dark magic that some people have put into the food they’re serving you for a week before and after the full moon even as a man. Sirius has to be a dog to pick up faint traces.

Which is the only excuse he can give for not having smelled Pettigrew before now.

It was just a trace, mingled with the Weasley boy’s scent in a way that said he might have been in Pettigrew’s presence a few days ago. But Sirius knows exactly what Wormtail smells like. He doesn’t forget the scent of a friend, or an enemy.

He tears up the stairs, bounding around students who are talking or laughing or shrieking at the sight of him. He doesn’t care if people have to be reassured later that he wasn’t some wild Grim, even though all or most of them should have seen his Animagus form by now. He doesn’t have time to stop and reassure them. Later might be too late.

He tracks until he comes to a stone wall that doesn’t open when he scratches at it, and then he lifts his head and barks imperatively. The Fat Lady comes to the front of her portrait to frown at him.

“Whose are you, then? I don’t remember any dogs in the Tower.”

Sirius hates doing it when it could mean he loses the scent trail, but he transforms back to himself and gives the Fat Lady his best roguish smile. “Me, Sirius Black. I need to get into the dormitories, please.”

“Well, you’re no longer a student, Mr. Black.”

“But once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor, right?” Sirius winks at her, and she flushes and steps towards the back of her portrait.

“Well, all right, you charmer, you,” she says. “Just this once.” And the portrait swings open.

Sirius yells his thanks before he turns back into a dog and leaps into the common room, running straight up the stairs. Weasley’s scent is stronger here, and so are others, almost enough to overwhelm Wormtail’s. But it doesn’t matter. Sirius has the trail now. It’s all he can do to not bay like a hound.

He charges into the room that must belong to the third-year boys, and gets a flash of rat, traitor, hate, in the instants before Wormtail dashes out from under Weasley’s bed and towards the bathroom.

Sirius gives a great bark and lunges after him. He misses. Wormtail is fucking fast and knows how to use it. He hides underneath a cabinet, and when Sirius starts to tear it apart with his jaws, Wormtail darts the other way and manages to get between Sirius’s front paws and out the door of the bathroom.

Blinded with hate, Sirius chases him down the stairs, towards the door out of the common room, and then into a corner when Wormtail seems to realize he has no way to open the portrait without hands or a voice. Soon the rat is cowering by the hearth, and Sirius is snarling in front of him, jaws open.

Peter shudders and transforms back. He looks as though his fingernails are claws, and his mouth is moving with a fast chatter as he says, “Sirius—my friend—”

Sirius changes back, too, because as much as he’d like to just tear out Wormtail’s throat, it would be murder at this point, before he hears the confession. He’s shaking with his hatred, but he manages to say, “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I was—I had no choice—”

“You had a choice.” Sirius’s voice rises and rings through the common room, and he doesn’t really care if he wakes up some student who’s sick or chose not to go down to breakfast this morning. “You could have died for us! As we would have died for you!”

“It’s not—you know that I didn’t bring him there, you know that he forced the secret out of me—”

“No! You were the Secret-Keeper! You had to choose to share something concealed in your very soul!”

Wormtail stares at him with very wide eyes, and Sirius laughs in what he can’t even pretend isn’t dark exultation. “You thought I wouldn’t know that? I was the Secret-Keeper before you! Of course I know how the charm works!”

“I was never the primary Secret-Keeper! Only one of those you trusted with the secret!”

Sirius snorts and rolls his eyes. “The charm doesn’t work like that, either. And you’re still stalling, Wormtail. I’d quite like an answer to your question. Why did you decide that dying for your friends wasn’t important?”

“You’re mad,” Wormtail whimpers. “Mad.”

“I just want to know the answer to that question. Come on, now, tell me that.” Sirius leans a little in. “If you can just tell me so that I can have one more insight into your miserable little soul that I never knew at all before you die—”

“I betrayed you, but only because I didn’t have the protection that you did as the primary Secret-Keeper! It’s the only reason! Once the Dark Lord knew that I had possession of the secret, of course it was finished!”

“You liar. You can’t even stop lying and do me the courtesy of telling me the truth when I confront you at last and know all about what you did, can you?” Sirius shakes his head in disgust. “If you knew how much I hate you—”

“I’m telling you the truth! You’re the one who doesn’t remember what happened that night!”

“Liar,” Sirius whispers. “I remember everything that happened that night, and after. I remember the way that you looked at me the one time Remus and I caught up with you before you managed to run away again—”

“You never caught up with me before this.”

“Liar.”

Sirius is shaking. He doesn’t know if it’s worth standing here to listen to Wormtail’s rambling explanation, even if he did want to know what made their “best” friend do this. He gathers himself, and feels the magic rolling through his muscles in the moment before he begins the change to a dog.

“I should have known that you would be useless,” he spits, and then transforms and launches himself.

There’s a long moment of confusion when Sirius is rolling and biting on the floor, and he can hear Wormtail squealing, and there’s gasping and thrashing, and someone who probably just came down the stairs from the dormitories screams—

All of that, and Sirius stands up with warm skin and blood in his mouth.

Wormtail looks up with glazed eyes. Sirius hasn’t ripped his throat all the way through, but he did get it most of the way there.

Wormtail tries to say something, chokes on bubbling blood, and vanishes into Sirius’s past.

Sirius stares down at him, and then hears the screaming of more than one student behind them and turns around to stare at them. Someone promptly casts a curse at him, and Sirius ducks under it and runs, fluid and quick, towards the door.

He barks urgently, and the Fat Lady lets him through, the portrait flying open. Sirius tears through the corridors the same way he did when he was running through the common room after Wormtail, his mind full of one thought.

He has to find Remus, and then Albus, before anyone else does.

*

There are few things that make Albus feel his age, but listening to the story that tumbles out of Sirius as the man huddles in front of his desk is one of them.

“You killed him,” Albus says.

“Yes.”

“That’s murder, Sirius.”

“No!” Sirius jerks his head up, and his eyes are full of blazing panic, not thought. Albus has his doubts as to whether Sirius has had many thoughts in his head since he began following Peter’s scent out of the Great Hall this morning. “He was wanted for betraying the Potters and the Longbottoms—he was a traitor—”

“That didn’t give you the right to execute him,” Albus snaps, and then feels bad as Sirius cringes back in his chair. “Sirius, you have to see how bad this will look to the Ministry. Fudge is growing irritated at depending on me lately, and—”

“But I’ll get a trial.”

“Of course you’ll get a trial. That is not the point. Whether we can see you acquitted is.”

Sirius stares at Albus with wide eyes. Albus wishes, bitterly, that he had acted differently years ago, impressed consequences upon Sirius more strongly. He seemed to believe he was immune to any.

“But—I was killing a traitor.” Sirius’s voice wavers back and forth for a moment.

“You didn’t bring him in and have a trial,” Albus says wearily. He wishes the world were different, that he could go back to the world of a few hours ago. But that isn’t the way the world works. “You killed him in your Animagus form in front of Hogwarts students. If anything, the Ministry is likely to see it as summary execution. Or vigilante justice.”

“He was a traitor.”

“But that wasn’t proven before the Wizengamot, Sirius. It wasn’t proven in any capacity aside from guesses we made.” Albus closes his eyes and spends a moment touching his temple. If he had not invited Sirius into Hogwarts—

Well, truly, there is no guarantee that this wouldn’t have happened. Sirius could still have tracked Peter here and killed him. Perhaps he wouldn’t have done it in front of students, or in his Animagus form, but Albus doesn’t really doubt it would have happened.

What’s done is done. Albus straightens up and shakes his head. “We must begin preparing your defense. Remus, will you contribute memories of what you know about Peter becoming the Secret-Keeper and what happened as a result of James and Lily changing from Sirius to him?”

After a moment, Albus adds, “Remus?”

Remus lifts his head slowly. He’s been huddled in the chair next to Sirius’s since they arrived in the office. Albus didn’t pay him as much attention as Sirius, because after all, he was not involved in this murder. And he thought that Remus’s position and coming with Sirius to the office meant he was simply preparing to support his best friend’s story.

He didn’t expect to see Remus’s eyes so shiny with tears.

Albus hesitates. Sirius is the one who asks, “Remus?” in a trembling voice.

“How could you do this, Sirius?” Remus whispers. “How could you? When we were going to make our way back to normal, with Harry? When we were going to capture Peter and bring him in? When we were building a life and reputation here that didn’t depend on being Marauders?”

There must be some reference hidden in those words that Albus doesn’t understand, because Sirius flinches as if Remus has kicked him. Then Sirius holds out his hand. “I just got so angry,” he whispers. “So angry, Remus. He was denying that he was the traitor, claiming that I was the primary Secret-Keeper and somehow You-Know-Who could have tortured the secret out of him—”

“That’s not the question I asked you, Sirius. I asked how could you give up on everything else we were trying to do to kill Wormtail?”

“He made me angry.”

Sirius’s voice is a mumble. Albus winces. He supposes he can see why Remus is taking this hard, but it isn’t the most productive line of discussion.

“We do need to make a decision about how we will present this murder in court,” he says. “And we need to decide what to say publicly about it before then.”

“You have to say something, as Headmaster,” Remus murmurs, his voice still absolutely crushed. “The murder happened in front of several students.”

“Yes, I know. Minerva is speaking to them, and I will also do so. And contact their families,” Albus adds. In all of this, he feels for the innocent students the most. No one should ever have to witness a death like that, least of all children.

“What are you going to say?”

“That this was unplanned and tragic, but that Mr. Black was carried away in a moment of anger.”

“And nothing more than that?” Remus lifts his head and watches Albus with eyes that still tremble on the edge of weeping. “Won’t people ask questions, such as why he was so angry at Pettigrew?”

“Of course they will. And of course we will reveal Peter’s identity and what he did. But there’s not much to be gained by going into all the details before the trial. What’s most important is reassuring the students and their families and preparing for Sirius’s defense in the Wizengamot.”

“Of course,” Remus echoes, voice oddly flat.

“You need not testify except to talk about how long you have hunted Peter,” Albus says, as kindly as he can. He doesn’t understand Remus’s reaction, but he can’t help but think that he’ll need to account for it and counter it. “You don’t have to talk about the killing as you weren’t there when it happened.”

“Lucky for me.”

“Yes, lucky. We don’t want you under too much scrutiny in case someone finds out you’re a werewolf.”

Remus shudders a little and then stands up abruptly. “May I be excused, Headmaster? I have essays to mark.”

“Remus, surely we should plan—”

“I’ll give my testimony about what Peter did. I don’t think there’s anything else that I need to be involved in. Sirius didn’t even try to use me as a weapon this time.”

And he turns and walks out of the office. Albus blinks after him.

This time. He did not realize that Sirius’s attempt at luring Severus into Remus’s jaws lived so strongly in Remus’s memory. Since he had remained friends with Sirius, Albus didn’t think it mattered so much to him.

“He’s still upset about that?”

Albus conceals a sigh and turns to face Sirius. “It seems so, but it is not that attempt from years ago we should be focusing on. We should be thinking about ways to get you out of trouble in front of the Wizengamot.”

“It really matters to him.”

Albus sighs aloud, this time, and starts endeavoring to turn Sirius’s mind to the problem in front of them, rather than the one that was put to rest years ago—except, it seems, in the minds of those who participated in it.

Yes, I wish I could go back to the world of a few hours ago.

*

You will keep yourself safe?

Harry nods a little as he reads the end of the long message that Aradia wrote to him in his book. He leans back on the couch in the Ravenclaw common room that he often occupies either alone or with Anthony and Padma. Right now, only Padma is there, buried so deeply in a book on magical theory that she probably wouldn’t notice a dragon parading around in front of her with spread wings.

I will keep myself safe, he thinks back to Aradia.

More words appear in his journal a moment later. I thank you for making the journals so that you could tell me at once about how mad Black is. I don’t know what he was thinking or why he decided that he could get away with murder, but it emphasizes that he might just try to snatch you and run.

Harry nods grimly as he sends back, I thought the same thing. Someone who could commit an impulsive murder would have no problem taking him along.

Blaise and Bathsheda and Steel will be watching out for you.

Harry smiles. Blaise went without saying, and Steel would probably do it if only to protect their teaching opportunity as far as Harry goes, but it’s good to know that Professor Babbling will be there if he needs her. Even if she would be protecting Blaise most of all and not Harry as much. Thank you, Aradia, he thinks to her.

No more words appear in the journal, so Harry decides that their conversation is done for the moment as far as Aradia is concerned. He tucks away the book and goes back to studying for his Charms essay.

“What was that?”

Oh, it seems that maybe Padma has noticed something beyond her book after all. Harry smiles up at her. “The journal I was looking at?”

“Yes. It didn’t seem like one of our textbooks.”

“It wasn’t. I think that I’d like to study spellcrafting someday, and one of the books that Blaise’s mum lent me about it said that you should start with trying to enchant simple, sturdy objects. A blank book is pretty ideal.”

“You think you could enchant it someday?” Padma exclaims. “That’s so cool.”

I’ve enchanted it already. I can do so much more than I’ve ever revealed to you.

But mentioning that would mean that Harry would have to explain too much that Aradia wouldn’t want him to explain. He smiles and disclaims instead, and Padma only asks a few more questions before going back to her book.

Harry smiles down at the pocket that holds his journal, and the one that holds the curled, sleeping Artemis.

Despite the threat Black presents, and probably will present unless the Wizengamot actually places him in Azkaban, Harry is more than happy with his life, and the adults who care about him.

*

Remus marks essays mechanically, his eyes fixed on the parchment in front of him, which blurs with the force of his concentration. Or his tiredness. But it’s a tiredness of the soul, not the body, and even if he finishes marking earlier than he expected and curls up in a corner of his bed with his face turned to the wall, sleep doesn’t come.

If I didn’t know that Sirius killed Peter, that he still has that violence in his soul, what would I think of him?

Remus wants to say that the behavior is aberrant for the man he spent years traveling beside, questing beside, sharing jokes and laughter and friendship with.

But when he thinks of the way that Sirius almost lured Severus into Remus’s jaws, almost threw away their friendship and Remus’s life in the pursuit of revenge once before…

Remus has to think that that violence was always within his best friend’s soul, just as treachery was in Peter’s.