Chapter Thirty-Six of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

Harry knew there would be scoldings despite everything he had done or hadn’t done, so he just did what made the most sense to him, and went straight to Professor Flitwick with Ron, the dog, and Peter Pettigrew.

Professor Flitwick was marking a bunch of essays, but he stopped marking them the minute Harry appeared in the doorway of his office. “Please come in, Mr. Potter,” he said, and his eyes went to Ron, who was still a little hysterical, and then to the sleeping, floating man behind Harry. Black lurked behind Harry’s legs, but Harry had no doubt that the professor saw him, too. “What’s going on?”

“It happened like this, sir,” Harry said, and launched in the story. He made it as plain and straightforward as he could. Flitwick might still disbelieve him or think he was crazy, but at least Harry would get the satisfaction out of knowing he was telling the truth.

And it also meant that he was less likely to trip over his own tongue trying to make up lies when the professor started picking holes in the story.

Flitwick listened intently, just nodding now and then. Then he asked, “And so both Black and Pettigrew are Animagi?”

“Animag—they can turn into animals, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

“I see.” Flitwick looked like he was listening to a distant sound. “I wonder if Minerva had any clue,” he said, which didn’t make much sense to Harry, but didn’t have to. Then the professor’s eyes sharpened, and he obviously returned to the present. “Then we must convey the truth to the rightful authorities.”

“Do you—think that’s a good idea, sir?”

“What do you mean, Mr. Potter?”

“I mean, the Ministry is still trying to hunt Black down for betraying my parents and murdering Pettigrew, even though he didn’t. They just might bring in a Dementor to Kiss him the minute they see him. And Professor Dumbledore will tell me that it’s my fault and I should have done something else, the way he always does.”

Flitwick drew himself up. Harry had to stop himself from shrinking backwards. Flitwick was the shortest professor in the school, shorter than even some of the firsties, but at the moment, Harry wanted to run away from him.

“If they try to do that,” Flitwick said, in words that seemed to shape and carve the air around him, “then they’ll find out why I’ve won as many dueling competitions as I have.”

And he smiled at Harry sharply, too, but Harry knew the sharpness wasn’t directed at him. It was directed at the Ministry, and the Headmaster, and maybe even the Dementors. Harry was sure that Professor Flitwick could do that spell, the Patronus, that kept Dementors at bay. Maybe he could make a difference.

Black whined behind him. Harry swallowed. He could be responsible for someone dying if he was wrong to trust Professor Flitwick. There was that.

But he was so sick of being on his own. And on his own, he couldn’t do anything about Pettigrew and Black and the Dementors and the Ministry.

So he said, “All right, sir.”

*

Professor Flitwick marched them all up to the Headmaster’s office. He cast a moving illusion on the way that somehow made them look like parts of the wall and the stairs. Harry tried to firmly fix the wand movement that the professor had used in his mind so he could study it later, since Flitwick had cast the spell silently.

That spell was cool, and might help Harry later. He had heard about the Disillusionment Charm, but he’d only got dizzy when he tried to cast it.

Any spell could make the difference between life and death, maybe, like the sleeping charm that Harry had used on Pettigrew earlier. But some were definitely more useful than others.

Ron had finally calmed down, but his face was dark and he walked with his head bowed. Harry put his hand on Ron’s shoulder as they rode the moving stairs up to the Headmaster’s office and asked softly, “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

Ron gave Harry a helpless glance and finally whispered, “He was sleeping on my pillow for years, Harry. And on Percy’s pillow before that.”

Harry shuddered a little and pulled Ron into a brief embrace. He had to stop when they saw the door to the Headmaster’s office in front of them, but he wished he could have continued. Ron sounded like he really needed it.

At least Harry hadn’t had to deal with finding out that his beloved pet was an Animagus. There was that.

“Come in!”

The Headmaster sounded cheerful, not like he was disappointed. Then again, he couldn’t see Harry yet. Harry braced himself and marched in.

Dumbledore’s eyebrows went up as he saw Professor Flitwick and Harry and Ron and the dog. They dipped down again when he saw Pettigrew floating in the blue bubble that Professor Flitwick had conjured to keep him from bumping into walls and corners. Then Dumbledore turned to Harry and said, “What have you done this time, Mr. Potter?”

“Revealed a grievous miscarriage of justice.”

Professor Flitwitck spoke the words like a trumpet, and Harry swallowed. He hadn’t really been sure, until this moment, that the professor would speak up for him like he’d promised.

“How is that, Filius?”

Dumbledore turned to look at Professor Flitwick, and Harry became aware of something for the first time. Snape always flinched a little when Dumbledore looked at him. Not outwardly, not really, but he got silent and still, as if he thought that Dumbledore would try to crush him if he stood too tall.

Professor Flitwick didn’t cower or go still. He smiled a little, as if inviting Professor Dumbledore to share a joke, and said, “It turned out that Sirius Black wasn’t the Potters’ Secret-Keeper. He switched places with Peter Pettigrew, who actually betrayed the Potters to You-Know-Who. And he’s still alive. He’s been in hiding for the last twelve years as the Weasleys’ pet rat.”

Dumbledore stared at Flitwick with his mouth a little open. Harry had to admit that it sound kind of mental, laid out like that. He wouldn’t have put it past Dumbledore to start laughing instead of listening.

(But also, it was kind of cool to see Dumbledore taken aback and not knowing what to do).

After a moment, the Headmaster recovered and shook his head. “Then why was the finger left on the scene? And who killed the Muggles who died in that blast, if not Sirius Black?”

“Pettigrew killed them, of course. And cut off his own finger to add to the illusion of his death, while he escaped in his rat form. You have to admit that it made a dramatic statement, and no one could be blamed for thinking that his body had been destroyed by the curse. But they could be blamed for hauling Sirius Black off to Azkaban without even listening to his account of the day.”

Harry was a little impressed that Professor Flitwick had figured this all out on his own, or at least the part about Pettigrew killing the Muggles, just from the details that Harry had given him. Black didn’t look like he wanted to turn back into a human at the moment to confirm anything.

“This is a wild story, Filius.”

Flitwick gestured at the sleeping Pettigrew who bobbed in the bubble. “Then what do you call him, Albus?”

“He could have survived and been hiding in fear of Sirius Black.”

“Then, at the very least, we need to revisit the accusation that Black killed him. That part isn’t accurate, and he doesn’t deserve to be in Azkaban for it.”

Maybe the Headmaster thought Professor Flitwick’s voice was a little too sharp, because he frowned at the man and shook his head before he turned to stare directly at the dog. “And what about you, Sirius? Do you want to reveal yourself?”

And then Harry had to be reluctantly impressed with the Headmaster and how he’d managed to figure it out. Very reluctantly.

The dog shivered, and for a long moment Harry thought he might turn and bolt out of the office. But then he shuddered again and transformed. Ron gave a faint scream and scrambled back towards the wall even though he’d heard Harry tell Professor Flitwick the truth, and Harry saw the way that Professor Flitwick’s hand tightened on his wand.

But Dumbledore just folded his hands in front of him with a long, exhausted sigh. “Everything Filius said was true, wasn’t it?”

“Every word, Albus. At least he believed me.”

Harry looked back in time to see the Headmaster flinch. It was a sight he’d treasure.

“I am so sorry, Sirius,” Dumbledore said now. His voice was ragged, and he was stroking his beard like that would make anything better. “I should have listened to you, should have come to Azkaban and asked why you’d done it…”

“Yeah, well. At least you can ask now. At least you can help now. Can you bring me in front of the Wizengamot and make sure that they look at Pettigrew instead of disposing of him in some dark corner somewhere?”

“Yes, of course. I can do that, and I will.”

Professor Flitwick was watching all of this with a beaming smile, as though he felt everything was on the way to being solved. Harry was a long way from believing that, but this was better than he’d thought. It probably helped that Black sounded so sane and Dumbledore seemed so upset about his part in condemning Black to Azkaban.

Harry thought of spending years with the Dementors, and swallowed. He couldn’t blame Black for escaping the way he’d done when he’d thought Black was consumed with thoughts of vengeance and had only broken out because of that.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry glanced up. Dumbledore had focused on him. Harry braced himself.

“You still should have come to a competent adult instead of trying to confront Pettigrew by yourself—”

“And would you have believed him without the evidence of Pettigrew being alive?” Flitwick interrupted then. Harry came as close as he ever had to feeling like he wanted to hug one of his professors. “Or would you have patted him on the head and given him a lemon drop and sent him on his way?”

“A Death Eater could be dangerous!”

“Yes, and Sirius Black broke into this school numerous times.” Flitwick rolled his eyes a little. “I think it’s time to consider what standards of behavior you demand from students and revise them a little, Albus.”

Dumbledore looked at Flitwick for a long moment, then at Black, and then at Pettigrew, as if expecting one of them to offer a solution to the problem. Then he gave a sigh that seemed to stretch into his bones. “Dismissed, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley.”

Harry turned and walked smartly out of the room. Ron trailed him, silent and shaken.

“That was mad!” Ron burst out when they were most of the way down on the moving staircase. “That was—and I thought Flitwick would—and Black was a dog? And we were walking around with a mass murderer the whole time, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Better than a Death Eater sleeping on your pillow.”

A second later, Harry wished he hadn’t brought that up, since Ron almost collapsed in on himself with his shudders. “Yeah,” Ron whispered finally, when they got to the bottom. “And I reckon Black’s not really a mass murderer, huh?”

“No.” Harry put an arm around Ron’s shoulders as they stepped off the staircase and past the gargoyle, which snapped shut with a deafening crack. “I don’t know what’ll happen now, but at least we know only one murderer is after me.”

Ron stared at him for long enough that Harry started to worry about whether he should take his friend to Madam Pomfrey. And then Ron shouted out with laughter, and leaned against the wall as he continued to guffaw hysterically, much the way Harry had laughed after they’d captured Pettigrew.

Harry smiled, and tried not to think too hard about the future. Maybe Black would be declared innocent, and some things would change.

But maybe not.

*

“Where were you?”

Harry walked past Blaise and Theo and motioned to them. He was hardly going to talk about this in the Slytherin common room, but their bedroom might be secure enough.

When they were there, he set up wards and anti-eavesdropping charms, then some warming ones as the snake slithered out of his robe and onto the bed. The snake was hissing complaints. “Your shoulders are tense at all times and there are no baby birds and you are running around with dogs and rats. You are not a good pet.”

Harry turned back to face Blaise and Theo and said, “It all goes back to when Sirius Black came after me in a corridor about an hour and a half ago.”

His friends went gratifyingly pale. Harry beamed at them and told them the story of Black’s confession and Pettigrew’s capture and the way Flitwick had taken them to Dumbledore’s office and dealt with the Headmaster in a steady, monotone voice.

When he’d finished, they just looked at him. Then they looked at each other. Harry supposed they were having another of those silent conversations he wasn’t part of, but for now, he was content to sit on his bed and glance towards the door. Crabbe and Goyle and Malfoy would probably want in soon, so they’d have to remove the wards.

“Why didn’t you come to us?”

Harry turned back to Theo. “Huh?”

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Theo had his arms folded around his stomach as if to prevent someone from hitting him there, and his eyes were fixed on Harry. “We could have given you advice about what to do, as well. We could have made sure that Black and Pettigrew got to someone in the Ministry who would believe the real story.”

“What? Why?”

“Because of the positions that our families hold.”

“But Blaise’s family is Italian, and we can’t even let your father know that you’re friends with me in public. What makes you think that they would want to do me that kind of favor? Why would I have thought of it?”

Theo opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again. Blaise seemed determined to pick up the thread, though. “My mother would have done a favor for a friend of mine. And she does have some sway in the Ministry, although admittedly we keep it hidden most of the time.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“And Professor Flitwick was better?”

“Uh, of course he was? He’s a professor at the school who the Headmaster would actually listen to. And he’s not Snape, who would just have scolded me and probably tried to Memory Charm me or something.”

Blaise and Theo exchanged more glances. Harry waited. Blaise spoke again, in a soft, subdued voice. “I suppose that we thought you would probably have asked us for those kinds of favors because we thought you were building a power base.”

“That’s something I said to keep the other Slytherins from acting like gits to me. It’s not something I’m trying to do.”

“I explained how you couldn’t stand aside from politics, Harry—”

“Yeah, you did. And I told you that I don’t want to get involved in them in any depth. I’ll do what I have to do to protect my friends. But this? It didn’t have to do with protecting you. It had to do with dumping the problem of a bloke who was supposed to be dead and an escaped madman on an adult to deal with, because I couldn’t.”

Theo and Blaise both bit their lips simultaneously. It was sort of cute. Harry shoved that thought away, though. They wouldn’t want him thinking it, and they would probably call him weird again for it.

And I’d deserve that.

“I didn’t think that you’d—distrust us so much,” Theo said. “Take it so personally. We want to see you build a power base partially to keep you safe, Harry. You never will be as long as there’s supporters of the Dark Lord and blood purists around.”

“And you think I can purge them from Slytherin?”

“No. But convince them to leave you alone.”

Harry spread his hands. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along, which I also already told you.”

“All right,” Blaise said softly. “Then we misunderstood. We thought you had ambitions that you were keeping from us because you wanted to pursue them alone or thought we would try to make you change them.”

“You know my biggest ambition, Blaise?” Harry leaned forwards. “To just stay safe. And keep other people safe. I think they’re about equal. But I won’t become some sort of Dark Lord to guarantee them.”

“All right. I think I understand now.”

“And I do. And I’m sorry about pressuring you.”

Harry looked slowly back and forth between Blaise and Theo. It seemed they really did understand. He’d seen them look worried and disdainful and proud and amused, but never really remorseful before. After a second, he nodded.

“Fine. Just remember that I—I’m honest. Because I don’t have any reason not to be. I’m not keeping secrets from you just to make you guess them. And you’ll be the first to know if I change my mind about being a Dark Lord.”

That made Theo smile, at least, and Blaise laugh a little, and they were able to move past it. As for Harry, he felt more relaxed than since before he’d had that conversation with Theo about power bases in the common room.

So there was only one problem remaining.

“I deserve baby birds. Get me baby birds.”