The Last Marauder — Lionheart

Chapter 21: The Last Marauder

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“Draco, you look terrible,” said Hermione, proving once again that she never let sympathy interfere with the important business of telling everyone things they already knew.

She was not wrong, however. He’d awoken late the night before, as he had each day for the past two weeks, and made a nightly pilgrimage to the Marauder’s Map, where he pored over the castle and grounds until he was satisfied that Black was nowhere to be found.

Which he wasn’t. He was totally absent, which didn’t help Draco’s argument for not being in the preliminary stages of madness. At this point, he was starting to hope that the murderer would come after Harry sometime soon, if only to justify the amount of effort Draco had dedicated to preventing it.

When he woke up, it was almost noon on the last Saturday in November, and the common room was completely empty except for Ron, who was busily disemboweling a Peppermint Toad, and Hermione, who had colonized the better part of three tables for her homework. Harry was gone.

“Cheers,” he said groggily. “Make a man feel welcome. Where is everyone?”

“Hogsmeade! It’s the last trip before the holidays,” said Ron. “Harry went down to shop for bubotubers with Hagrid.”

“Is he getting a new broomstick?” he said, stealing a bit of Hermione’s hazelnut scone. She made a cross noise like a poked cat. “He should at least buy a stopgap broom, we’re getting murdered on the school’s old Comets.”

“He’s still in mourning,” said Ron wisely. “Best not to rush him. A man grieves in his own way.”

“We’ll all be grieving if Wood kills him,” said Draco, stealing some of Hermione’s tea to wash down her scone with. Too exasperated to defend her terrain, she simply pushed the mug at him and let him have it, which was precisely the outcome he intended, and he rewarded her with a pat on the shoulder. “Which he might do, if Harry doesn’t show up for practice soon. Between that and my arm, he’s down two of seven. Anyway, he can afford a new one.”

In a Gryffindor tragedy of historic proportions, Harry’s Firebolt had drifted into the Whomping Willow during his fateful crash, and it had returned to him in a bag of splinters. Since then, Harry had refused to let anyone throw them away, choosing instead to keep them in a pouch near his bedside, which had at first seemed solemn and respectful and now verged increasingly on unhinged levels of grief.

Both he and Draco had returned to classes after a weekend in the Hospital Wing. The late days of the term were good ones, and not just because Draco’s arm meant everyone else had to carry his supplies around for him. Lupin had moved into the more dangerous and interesting amphibious creatures, and Neville had ceased to ask Draco questions like “where’s the burner again?” and “what’s a pipette?” in Potions. His success with answering Snape’s question, albeit through Draco’s coaching, had conferred on him a degree of confidence that appeared to be producing material — if not terribly impressive — results.

After lazing about the common room for a while with Hermione and Ron, Draco decided to make a pilgrimage down to the dungeons and visit Snape; he wanted to pass a letter on to his mother. He hoped to broach the subject of staying at Hogwarts for Christmas: the twins were going around with a sign-up sheet for something called a White Elephant, and it seemed the general consensus in Gryffindor Tower was that there was going to be a rather lively party, which he thought it might be a shame to miss.

The castle dropped precipitously in temperature during the winter months, so he dressed in a pale cashmere jumper, with a burgundy scarf that Dobby had knit for him years ago. Thus attired, he found the Potions Master in his study, brewing something over his personal cauldron near the fire. The gutter of firelight paved the study in cozy, warm tones, which clashed with the cool colors of the various bottles and beakers decorating the walls. He tapped on the door, and Snape, after a preliminary suspicious glance, bid him come in.

“Afternoon, professor. Brewing something interesting?” He nudged the door shut with his ankle and hung up his cloak on the coat rack.

“Come and see,” said Snape, which, for him, was downright friendly. Perhaps the Christmas spirit was infectious.

Draco peered into the cauldron’s depths, but all it held was a clear, bubbling liquid, indistinguishable from water. He sniffed, but the scent was either nonexistent, or so faint that the general dank of the dungeons obscured it.

“I can’t get anything.”

“No, indeed. What does that tell you?”

He sucked his teeth. “…That I should get a hint?”

“In the real world, you will not have the luxury of asking what lies hidden in your goblet,” said Snape curtly, crushing a line of beetle shells with the flat of his blade. “You must rely on your five senses and your wits. Come, think. You know it is not water.”

“Right,” he said doubtfully, “that’s one thing off the list.” He took a stirring spoon and agitated the potion, testing for viscosity; he managed a few strokes before Snape, noticing, slapped his hand away and repossessed the stirrer. “It’s not very viscous, and there’s no residue on the cauldron, either… It’s remarkably featureless, actually. There can’t be that many potions that are totally clear and scentless, are there?”

“No. In fact, there are few.” Snape’s tone was flat, which was a good sign; he always rewarded competence with indifference.

“Plus, you’re brewing it, so it’s probably something difficult,” he said, “because if it was easy to do right, you wouldn’t bother. Your time’s too valuable for that.”

Snape tipped his head to the right, a tacit assent. “A logical assertion,” he said, “though not one that requires knowledge of potioneering.”

“No, but it’s true,” said Draco, pleased. “So based on your ingredients, then, I’d say… what’s that, monkshood?” He frowned. “Fresh monkshood. Which is inedible, actually. A poison? Okay, I’m lost again.”

“What is monkshood, Draco?”

“A plant?”

He gave him a scathing look. “Recall your Herbology lessons. I told you once that you should pay ample attention to them. I will be dismayed if you did not listen.”

Draco, scowling, leaned against the table and folded his arms. He remembered Neville chattering about something in the greenhouses last week — it’d been about taxonomy conventions, how some plants had more than one name. There had been something that prompted that conversation, too — a plant in the greenhouse itself, something Neville was growing with Sprout…

“Aconite,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “Monkshood is another word for aconite, which is also called…”

He broke off, and stared at Snape. “Why are you making a Wolfsbane Potion?”

If Snape was pleased, he did them both the favor of hiding it well. “It took you enough time,” he said coldly. “Outside the classroom, you will have seconds to make those kinds of deductions, not minutes.”

“Great, sir, I’ll work on that. Why are you making a Wolfsbane Potion?”

“Because it is a tremendously difficult brew, and it requires an expert hand.”

“I’m sure, but that’s not a reason,” he said brazenly. Snape’s cheek twitched at his insolence. “You haven’t answered the question. It’s not regulation-approved, so you can’t sell it. And the ingredients are too expensive for it to be a lark. Did someone commission it?”

“If they did, I would be strictly bound by terms of non-disclosure, as you surely understand,” said the Potions Master. He sprinkled the crushed beetle shells into the cauldron, gave it a brisk stir, and left it boiling. Examining the brew, he frowned, and then made a note in the textbook to his right. Draco noticed that the pages were covered in scrawl so thick it covered the printed text.

He huffed, and plucked a stray beetle shell from his jumper. “Fine. Keep your secrets,” he said sourly. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Speaking of which, are you visiting the Manor anytime soon? I have a note for my mother.”

“I am not your owl. As I have often told you.”

“Oh, I know, sir. Only if you’re going anyway. I know my mother wanted to have you over for dinner sometime between now and the holidays, and I just know you could make her terribly happy if you happened to bring a letter from her son. Something to brighten her day, perhaps? With Dobby gone, it’s frightfully lonely, at the Manor.”

Snape set down the knife, glowering. He stuck out his hand in bad grace. “Give it to me, and cease these frightfully inept manipulations.”

“Thank you, sir,” Draco said cheerfully, handing over the letter, and it disappeared into the folds of Snape’s robe. He flopped into an armchair by the fire, and watched as Snape fretted and fussed over the cauldron, giving it the odd counterstir now and then while it bubbled to completion.

“Do you require something,” said Snape, presently, peeved.

“Such as, sir?”

“I do not know. You have inflicted yourself on me, heedless of my time or priorities, so I should think I would be forgiven for presuming you had a purpose of some urgency. Perhaps a Healing Solution for your arm.”

“Oh, that’s quite fine, sir, thank you. Although I will say,” he added severely, “that Skel-Gro is some nasty stuff. And Granger’s got me nervous about it, now, too — she says that when muggles break their bones, their Healers sometimes have to cut them open and rearrange their bones in the right order, so they don’t heal in the wrong way. Have you heard about this? Obviously, that’s barbaric and horrible and wrong-headed, but it got me thinking that I don’t actually know whether Skel-Gro makes sure your bones are in the right order before it starts working. And I admit, it’s no great reassurance when you ask Madam Pomfrey that question, and she looks at you and goes, ‘Darling, I’m not a muggle Healer.’”

“Draco.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Before you speak,” said Snape, “I implore you to give serious and extenuated consideration as to whether or not I am likely to care.”

Draco rolled his eyes, kicking his feet up on the ottoman. “All right, here’s one you might care about,” he said. “Do you think Sirius Black is coming to kill Potter?”

There was a clatter from the desk, and he craned his neck. A stirring spoon had fallen.

“Alright, sir?”

“Fine,” gritted Snape. He Summoned it into his hand, and dropped it in a bath of sterilizing agent with the other used tools. “Is this what consumes your idle hours? Thoughts of muggle Healers, and concern for Harry Potter?”

“There’s a lot of quidditch, too,” said Draco, truthfully.

“Tsk.”

Snape put the cap on the cauldron and swept over to the fireplace, removing a bubbling pot from its midst. “It is hardly Potter who has to fear Black’s return.”

“What do you mean?” Draco slid his feet from the ottoman and sat up, intrigued. “Why not him? He went after Potter’s parents, anyway, didn’t he?”

Snape knelt to stir the coals, leaving his back to Draco and his face to the fire. The flames glazed his silhouette in gold. “Sirius Black would not have lifted a finger against James Potter with a knife at his throat,” he said.

Draco shivered.

“But he sold him out,” he said. “To the Dark Lord. And he killed—”

“Oh, murder, yes,” said Snape easily. “Of murder, he was capable. He was a cruel and selfish bully in his youth, and he remained one all his life. I could believe that he killed thirteen muggles; I could believe even that he killed Pettigrew. Peter was always a shadow beside them, a hulking, servile creature. Him, Black could have killed. But Potter, Lupin — no.”

“Lupin?” he repeated sharply. “What’s Lupin got to do with it?”

“Don’t you know?” said Snape, in soft, sly tones. “Remus Lupin was the fourth piece of their little set. A marauding band of wastrels, flouncing about the castle, smashing up things and people wherever they went… but popular, of course. Rabidly, fanatically popular. The handsome, swaggering quidditch star… the prodigal son of a falling dynasty… the wounded prince of Gryffindor Tower…”

“…Sir?”

“I suspect Lupin still feels stricken,” he said, mostly to himself, with no small degree of satisfaction. “To err so grievously in judgment, and for so many years, must do terrible things to a man’s confidence. I expect that is why he has never confessed his history to you, or to the other students, even when he — supposedly — has nothing to atone for. Two dead, and the third imprisoned, wanted for murder… the Marauders are no longer the sort of group to which one might eagerly profess his membership.”

Snape straightened, still holding the poker, which glowed red at the tip. “Do not speak of this with Lupin,” he ordered. “He will know I told you, and there is no telling how angry he will become. For your safety, you should endeavor not to irritate him.”

“Endeavor not… sir, you don’t think he’s dangerous?”

Snape traced the blade of the poker with one finger, lost in thought. “Consider this,” he said, at length. “The day Sirius Black was apprehended by the Ministry, Remus Lupin went into hiding. He has not resurfaced since. He has never taken up new acquaintances, or found a new place for himself in the world. This professorship, to all evidence, is the first steady job he has held since the Order disbanded, thirteen years ago. Does that sound like a man you would gladly trifle with? A well-adjusted man, suited to the trials of teaching, who has no secrets in need of protecting?”

Draco, who thought Snape was perhaps not one to talk about being secretive or well-adjusted, wisely kept silent. He said only, “I don’t think Dumbledore would hire him if he were dangerous.”

“Dumbledore hired Sturgis Podmore while the man was in the grips of the Imperius Curse,” said Snape grimly. “It does not serve you to think him omniscient. It does not even serve you to think him always wise. It serves you to protect yourself, first, last, and always, against all those who have not walked through fire to earn your trust.”

Unwittingly, and a touch ironically, Draco thought of the line of fire in the Vault, back from first year. How did that seem so long ago? It had only been a year and a half. He felt ages older than he’d been then.

Perhaps sensing Draco’s hesitation, Snape added, “And that, if you would care to know, is wisdom from the mouth of Lucius Malfoy.”

Draco bent his head and nodded, dutifully committing it to memory.

“Professor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know Regulus Black?”

Snape paused. Draco fretted at first that he’d provoked him to anger, but the Potion Master’s expression was not irate, merely perplexed. “Yes,” he said. “He was two years behind me. A clever boy, but quiet. He lived in his brother’s shadow.” He paused again. “Why do you ask?”

“I just heard someone mention him the other day. Mother never said much about him, even though he’s part of the family. I thought you might have known him.”

“I could speak, within reason, of his actions; I could not speak to his character. This hedging tires me. Ask your real question.”

“Did he have a will, or something?”

Snape clucked his tongue. “A conspiracy theory,” he said briskly. “Drummed up by daydreamers and pilgrims of a lost cause, dreaming of a pureblood resurgence. No. Regulus Black died without issue, and there was never any question as to whom Witherfell belonged.”

“Which is me, right?” said Draco pointedly. “I mean, my mum. But me, eventually.”

“Have you forgotten your Blood Laws? Did Narcissa fill your brain with porridge, those long eleven years? Your line of succession should be prayer and scripture to you, by now. Upon her death, the rights to Witherfell reverted from the line of Orion and Walburga, who disinherited one son and lost the other, to the next superior direct descendant of Phineas Nigellus—”

“A line running from Cygnus Black, Senior, to Pollux to Alphard, disinherited, whoops, for the crime of being bad at embezzlement,” said Draco impatiently, “passing thereon to his brother, Cygnus Minor, but whoops again, dead, therefore: his firstborn, Bellatrix Lestrange, neé Black, who will die in prison long before the true and final heir of the Black estate: his secondborn, my mother.”

Snape said, “Save for neglecting Lucretia—”

“Oh, come on, you sound like Mummy. You have to go three generations back for her to even have a claim, besides which, she never had children, and, oh, also, she’s dead, so she couldn’t make a claim even if she had one.”

“Nevertheless, save for her, you are correct. You will hold Witherfell, eventually, provided you survive your aunt and mother. Is that the root of your familial inquisition?” Snape’s mouth twitched. “Do you fear a secret bastard of Regulus coming to contest your claim? An Edgar to your Edmund?”

“No,” said Draco. “I’m perfectly happy with my father’s inheritance, thank you, sir. I was merely wondering.”

A crystal instrument on the desk gave a shrill whistle, and Snape cracked the lid, releasing a bath of foul-smelling steam from the cauldron. Draco wrinkled his nose and discreetly pressed the back of his hand over his mouth. “It is done,” said Snape in satisfaction. “What you smell is the accelerated fermentation of the wolfsbane; it produces a rather unpleasant odor.”

“Delightful,” he said. “The wonders of potioneering.”

Snape clamped the lid back onto the cauldron, and with a swish of his wand, he siphoned away some of the steam. “If you intend on dining with your friends, you should make your way upstairs,” he said. “It is nearly six o’clock.”

Draco rose quickly, checking his watch, and found that more time had passed than he thought. “I should. Thanks, sir.”

“This is not a courtesy. It was a polite recommendation for you to leave the room.”

“Naturally, sir. Will you be eating upstairs, or shall I bring you some food from the Great Hall?”

“I will dine after the brew is done,” said Snape, with grim resolve. “Several hours’ work remains in this, before it goes to ferment for next month. I must continue.”

Draco blinked. “Alright,” he said. It seemed to him that a potion could stand to wait the time it took to wolf down a sandwich, but perhaps he’d been spending too much time with Ron. “Well, good luck with it, sir. Thanks again, about the letter.”

Snape grunted, absorbed in the process of measuring something slimy and green. Draco let himself out.

His godfather was something of an odd duck, he reflected. A good man, but an odd duck, no two ways about it.

He encountered Ron and Hermione coming up the Grand Staircase, while they were coming down. “Ah, you made it,” said Hermione, who was wearing a corduroy coat in velvety, autumnal brown. She had put up her hair, and cradled Crookshanks in the crook of one elbow; she looked vaguely like she was going to work on a farm. In these and other ways, she and Draco would never be alike. “I wanted to let Crookshanks out for a walk before it gets dark. Would you like to come?”

“It’s a cat,” he told her. “It doesn’t need walks. That’s the whole point of having a cat.”

“That’s what I said,” said Ron emphatically.

“Living things need fresh air and enrichment,” she declared. “Hagrid says that nothing ever felt worse after running around in the grass.”

“You asked Hagrid for advice on cat parenting? Hagrid, who keeps an illegal monster in his backyard? Hagrid, who makes buddies with giant spiders?”

“Lower your voice,” said Ron darkly, as if, like demons, the Acromantulae materialized when invoked.

“Hippogriffs aren’t illegal, they’re merely proscribed without a Special Creature Handling License,” said Hermione, primly, but uneasily.

“You think he’s got a license, do you?” said Draco, sternly. “You think he sat down and filled out the paperwork? In triplicate?”

“Truly, a hippogriff is a Class Four only by taxonomical accident,” said a mild, hoarse voice, descending from above. Lupin rounded the banister of the Grand Staircase and limped his way down the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing. “The rating system classifies both of its parent creatures, the griffin and the pegasus, as Class Four, so the rules of categorization insist that its rating follow suit. Most magizoologists, however, consider it functionally a Class Three, for which one requires only a General Creature Handling License, which Hagrid has.” He stopped on the step below them and smiled, adding, “Good evening, you three. Did you get out to Hogsmeade today?”

Draco, miffed at being corrected, felt the need to point out: “Being ‘functionally’ Class Three doesn’t change the licensing problem. The law is the law.”

“Indeed it is,” agreed Lupin. “Though for myself, if I could choose between Hagrid or a paper license to stand beside me in the face of a rampaging hippogriff, I would much prefer Hagrid. What does that say? Maybe nothing. I don’t know. All I know are the facts, which I find generally have very little bearing on matters of the law… excuse me, if you would, Mr. Malfoy, I must go. We must let these questions percolate for another time. Have a marvelous evening.”

Cryptically, and peacefully, he limped out of the Entrance Hall and through the oak double doors, disappearing into the twilight beyond.

Ron scratched his head. “You think he took something?” he muttered.

“Ron!”

“I’m just saying! It’s his day off, he could have! I wouldn’t blame him.”

Still frowning at the double doors, Draco slowly drew the Marauder’s Map out of his satchel. Harry had loaned it to him to keep him from waking up the whole dorm whenever he wanted to check it at night.

“Not again,” said Hermione immediately.

“Hold on, I want to check something. ‘I solemnly swear…’”

“I know! I know what you want to check! It’s an obsession! I really almost think I should confiscate it, just to cure you of the predilection—”

Balancing the map on his forearm, he flipped to the section containing the grounds, and ran his finger across the whorls of ink until he found the dot marked ‘LUPIN.’ It was moving quickly across the lawns, headed in a straight line for the Whomping Willow. It was alone.

Before he could feel disappointment, however, he noticed another pair of dots moving together in a nearby quadrant. The first was marked ‘HARRY POTTER,’ and it was coming up the pathway from Hogsmeade. The second — which was approaching the first from within the dark scrawl of the Forbidden Forest — read ‘SIRIUS BLACK.’

Draco almost dropped the map.

“Look! Granger! Weasley! Look, right now!”

“What is it? You can’t really exp… oh, my God.”

Hermione took one glance and thrust it violently aside in Ron’s direction. He peered at it, and lost what little color he had to his name. “Bugger,” he said loudly. “That’s — that’s him, isn’t it? The guy?” He looked gravely from one face to another. “That’s Black.”

“Yes! And he’s coming for Harry — oh, God!” Hermione squeezed Crookshanks, who gave a yowl of indignation, and was obligingly dropped. “That idiot! I told him not to go out! I told him it wasn’t safe!”

“You believe me, then?” Draco demanded eagerly. “You believe that I saw him? I wasn’t making it up? That’s real?”

“Yes, yes, of course, but who cares? That’s utterly beside the point now, we’ve got to figure out what to do!”

“We’ve got to go get him,” said Ron suddenly. He folded the map, businesslike, and stuck it in his back pocket. He sniffed. “Nothing for it. Gotta go fetch him. No time for anything else.”

“Yes,” said Draco, grateful that Ron’s mulish resistance to overthinking — or, more generally, thinking per se — had intervened on their behalf. “We can… we can get Lupin, on our way out. He’s the closest professor.”

“I thought you said you didn’t trust Lupin,” said Hermione shrilly. “Didn’t you see him with Black?”

“Yes, but in an emergency—”

“He might be a contact! He might have let Black into the school!”

“Who cares?” said Ron pointedly, brushing through both of them, and striding past the entrance to the Great Hall. “Harry’s out there, and he’s alone, and there’s a murderous loony headed straight for him. Either Lupin helps or not, but if he doesn’t, I’m still going to go shove my wand so far up Sirius Black’s arse that he’ll still be sneezing magic when they bury him.”

He shoved through the double doors, giving Draco and Hermione no choice but to follow.

They raced down the lawns — Draco swallowed a short, potent swell of deja vu — and along the rock path. The last lighted minutes of twilight slipped through their fingers, and the sky seemed to flush a darker color every time they lifted their heads, plunging precipitously from indigo to black. Their shoes crunched over a slippery plate of frost, and Draco could barely see past the silver cloud of his breath hanging in front of his face.

For what it was worth, he scanned the lawns skirting the Whomping Willow, but Lupin was nowhere to be found.

The inky colonnades of trees rose like an iron grill from the edge of the lawn, and Ron plunged between them without hesitation, his wand blazing white to carve a path out of the darkness. After a moment’s hesitation, Hermione followed, whispering “Lumos maxima,” and under the pale umbrella of her wand, the three of them hurried down the path to Hogsmeade.

It was eerily quiet. Most of the students had returned already, in observance of the sunset curfew. Draco wished fervently that Harry hadn’t taken the Cloak, so that the three of them might not be quite so conspicuous through the trees, but at the same time, he was glad that Harry had it, since perhaps he would have the good sense to make use of it now that darkness had fallen. The pathway seemed longer at night than it did in daylight, though rationally he knew it was the same length. He kept expecting to see the gates of Hogsmeade rise from behind each bend in the path, only to encounter another forested stretch of dirt, another wall of foreboding trees. Every rustle in the darkness made him jump, wand at the ready, with a curse cocked on the tip of his tongue.

The knowledge of just what kind of creatures did lurk in that darkness did nothing to allay his fears.

The three of them didn’t speak. The only sound was their breath, which came faster the longer they hurried, and the crackle-snap of twigs and leaves and animal bones underfoot.

So complete was their focus that they failed to notice the small figure scurrying up the path towards them, until Ron plowed straight into it, and the two of them went down with a great shout in a tangle of limbs.

“Ron!” cried Hermione, and her Lumos vanished, plunging them all into darkness. “Flipen—”

“No! No! S’fine! Fine!” Ron threw up a hand, just barely visible through the dim. “It’s him! It’s Harry!”

He staggered to his feet, hauling the smaller boy up by the collar, and shucked the Invisibility Cloak from his shoulders. Harry’s face emerged from nothing, visibly rumpled, but unhurt.

“Blimey, you lot,” said Harry. “What are you all doing down here?”

“Looking for you!” Hermione exclaimed, weak with relief. “We saw Sirius Black on the Marauder’s Map, and he was headed for you, so we tried to get Lupin but he was gone so we ran straight here just in case—”

“Sirius Black?” he gasped. “Are you joking?”

“No, she’s not, because what do you know, I was right, surprise, surprise, kiss my royal, et cetera, I will accept apologies in the form of cash or check, and would someone please put a light back on, it’s pitch out here.”

“That’s you, isn’t it, Draco?” said Harry, squinting. “I can’t see.”

“Nae, ye dumb pillock, it’s Professor McGonagall.”

“Lumos maxima,” said Ron, and light poured from his wand-tip, a beam only somewhat smaller than Hermione’s. He lifted it high, like a torch. “Think we ought to get back, shouldn’t we? Seeing as the baddie’s probably still out here?”

“Yes,” said Hermione fervently, shivering. Something rustled in the trees closeby, and Draco stepped closer to her, putting his back to the circle of the four. “I think we should hurry. And Ron, maybe you oughtn’t hold that light so high — it’s quite visible, especially now that it’s so dark.”

“I hear you, but problem is, it’s easier to kill us if we can’t see anything,” said Ron, not unreasonably. “So we’re in a Catcher 22.”

“A Catch-22, yes.”

“What did I say?”

They crept up the path, moving more slowly now. Harry offered them use of the Cloak, but between Ron and Draco’s growth spurts, the four of them could no longer fit under its reach, even with their ankles showing, so they let Harry and Hermione share it between them. With the sun down, the temperature sunk almost to freezing, and Draco kept flexing his fingers to keep them from growing stiff around his wand.

“Is it just me,” whispered Hermione, “or is it very cold?”

“Yeah, no kidding, I’m losing toes over here,” said Ron. “Let’s pick up the pace, I didn’t bring my cloak.”

“No,” she said, drawing up short. “No. I mean very cold.”

Harry said, in a small voice: “Do any of you hear that?”

“What?” said Draco, his heart thudding.

“The screaming,” he said.

They all looked at him.

“No,” said Ron. “Do you?”

Hermione took a sharp breath. Draco couldn’t see her through the Cloak, but he could imagine the way her face had gone tight, electrified with realization, because he could feel his doing the same. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up, one by one, like gazelles lifting their heads at the scent of a lion.

“I think—”

“We need to run,” he finished for her, and started walking backward, quickly, away from the castle. “Run fast.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Hogsmeade’s closer, we can go there —”

A hoarse, shrill rattle pierced the air directly over their heads. Hermione screamed. Ron thrust his wand into the air, and it illuminated the fluttering black mass of a dementor, floating mere feet above them in the trees.

Its gaping mouth yawned wide, and another deafening rattle scraped out of its throat. At the sound of Hermione’s scream, it swept down on them, descending like a vulture, with talons outstretched. Draco made a sound that was part shriek, part war cry, and part exhortation, and then he ran like hell.

More rattles chorused from the trees, a whole cacophony of shuddering cries, like a flock of ghostly birds. Black cloaks poured from the branches above in a swarm and frenzied in the canopy above them, blotting out the few starry patches of moonlight. The four of them thundered down the path back to Hogsmeade, feet fumbling over the slippery dirt. Harry moved the fastest, easily overtaking Hermione, and slipped free of the Invisibility Cloak, passing Draco. “Hogsmeade!” he shouted, above the riotous shrieks of the dementors. Draco nodded, gasping for breath, and fumbled his wand into his left hand, ignoring the pangs of pain that rocketed through his injured elbow with every step.

Hermione, lagging between Draco and Ron, thrust her wand into the sky. “Verdimillious!” she cried, and a shower of red sparks flew up through the trees, piercing the veil of dementors and crowning the canopy.

“What’s that do?” shouted Ron. “Does it kill them?”

“No,” she cried. She leapt over a fallen log and stumbled through the landing, barely catching herself. “It’s a flare — Lupin’s still out there, he might see us!”

Draco found himself battered by a wave of affection so strong it numbed the sharp edge of terror. It was so wonderfully competent. They didn’t have any spells that could deal with the dementors on their own, so she’d just — of course. He was irritated he hadn’t thought of it himself.

“Verdimillious,” he shouted, and sent a coruscating lance of green sparks through the trees.

“Verdimillious!”

They rounded the final bend, and Ron bellowed in dismay: the gates of Hogsmeade were closed and padlocked. Curfew had passed.

“Around the side!” cried Hermione, after only a moment’s pause. She banked left and plunged through the trees, scrambling over a stump the size of a boulder. “Up through the trees!”

“Guys,” gasped Harry, “I’m sorry… I, I can’t…”

Draco finally paused to look at him. The boy was absolutely drenched in sweat, and listed against one of the tree trunks, trembling like a leaf in a storm. Whatever strange power the dementors wielded over him, it was taking its toll.

He swore. “Granger! Wait! It’s Potter, he can’t—”

“N-no — d-don’t — just go, go on without m-me—”

Draco was duly considering a full-blown panic attack when, without breaking stride, Ron crouched and hoisted Harry over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Harry made a small noise of protest, swatting feebly at Ron’s back, but then his head flopped down, and he went limp.

“Good man, Weasley,” cried Draco, faintly awestruck, but Ron ignored him, breaking into a dead run after Hermione. The speed that he achieved with a full person slung over his back was incredible. Draco wanted to give him some sort of medal.

They ran.

The chill made it hurt to breathe. A swarm of dementors profused from the forest behind them, oozing from every clump of foliage, their cool breath laying a crust of frost over each naked finger of every bush and tree, settling a bone-deep ache of cold into Draco’s limbs. Every time he glanced over his shoulder, his heart skipped again at the horrible sight of a black morass — a billowing fog bank of tattered cloaks and horrible, decaying hands, faceless, except for the horde of yawning mouths — racing up the path after him, clawing its way out of the endless dark, like a living, hungry nightmare. The sound was like a steel rod drawn across the surface of a lake, piercing and horrible.

Hermione led them on a strange and winnowing path through the skirts of the Forest, keeping close to the Hogsmeade fence. “Granger!” Draco shouted. “Where are we going?”

“The most haunted place in Britain!” she replied, and dove through a narrow gap in the trees. Draco had to slot himself sideways and leap through, landing clumsily in the foliage beyond.

They broke at last onto a worn footpath, and scrambled up a steep hill. At the top of the hill sat a dilapidated shell of a house, its pitched roof protruding into the sky like an accusation, its shabby walls and windows paved with filth. The hill around it was shaved ugly and clean of foliage, save for clumps of frost-matted heather that shattered under their feet as they climbed to the door.

A new, deafening howl burst from ahead of them, and a dementor swept down from the open sky, its wide arms outstretched, cloak flapping. In the rich bath of moonlight, it looked almost gray, ghostly, like another phantom of the Shrieking Shack.

Hermione screamed, backpedaling. She ran into Draco, who had been a footstep behind her, and they collided, hard. She turned, starting to run away, but he gripped her and held her still, for they couldn’t go back — the swarm was still surging up the hill behind them, like a tide of smoke.

Ron roared a word that Draco had never encountered outside of a book before.

“What do we do,” said Draco tightly, as Hermione shook violently in his arms. “What do we do, Granger, tell us, what do we do—”

“I don’t know! There’s nothing about dementors in our textbooks! Cover to cover, they don’t mention dementors once!”

“Then think, you’re the smartest one here, if you can’t think us out of this—”

The dementor sank down over them, its howl so piercing it blotted out the sound of his own voice. He could count the individual flakes of decaying skin on its weathered hands. It blotted out the sky above. It swallowed the blanket of stars. Draco made up his mind, shoved Hermione behind him, and closed his eyes, wondering what his soul would look like, if he had one, when he lost it.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

White light blazed against the backs of his eyelids. He pried them open and saw a white shape fly over his head, tackling the dementor, which shrieked and swept away from them. It clawed fervently at the silvery creature — which was bipedal, but unmistakable animalistic, with stifle-jointed legs, long, unnatural arms like an ape, and a fanged snout. It would have been terrifying, had it not been in the process of saving Draco’s life.

The dementor shook itself free of the silver beast and tore off into the night sky, its cloak fluttering behind it. One enemy vanquished, the beast whirled, trailing gusts of mist, and galloped head-on for the swarm of dementors, moving alternately on an eerie combination of two and four legs. The dementors peeled back as it approached, repelled by the exuberant shine coming off its skin, and fled in the wake of it. It chased them down the hill, back into the Forbidden Forest, with a speed that was both fearsome and deeply relieving, considering that it was driving them away from Draco’s general direction.

“What was that?” Hermione whispered, pressed against Draco’s back.

“A Patronus,” said a gravelly, barrel-deep baritone.

Standing beneath them on the path to the Shack was a skeleton in a man’s clothing. He was so thin that his skull pressed through the wax-paper skin of his face, and the hollows of his eyes were all but lightless, save for the faint sparkle of dark brown eyes lodged faintly in their depths. A tattered skein of muddy, matted hair hung to his elbows, and his clothes were gray rags, shapeless, like blankets hastily transfigured into robes.

He lifted his lips in a weak smile, and his teeth gleamed yellow.

It was Sirius Black.

“Hello,” he rasped. “That’s Harry Potter, isn’t it?”

He pointed with his wand to Harry’s body, still draped over Ron’s back. Now that the dementors were gone, Harry was starting to stir, his hands twitching.

“If you want to kill Harry, you’ll have to kill us, too,” said Ron, lifting his wand.

“Kill him?” Black’s jaw went slack, his expression almost crestfallen. “Why?”

When none of them answered, the criminal stepped forward tentatively, wetting his lips. “You’re his friends?” he rasped out. “Yes? Harry’s friends?”

“Stay back,” warned Draco, waving his wand. “You might be dangerous, but there’s four of us, and only one of you.”

“I have no intention of being a danger to any of you,” said Black, vaguely indignant.

“What do you want, then?” said Ron warily.

“What do I… what do I want — so many things. But if you must know… most immediately… at this juncture, I want to get inside that house.” He pointed at the Shrieking Shack.

“The Shack?” said Hermione, after a pause. “Why?”

“My, ah… my friend is in there, right now, at the moment,” said Black, full of a nervous energy that sent his eyes darting back and forth from Hermione’s face to the door. “And he needs me. So I hope you forgive me for the very rude thing I’m about to do.”

“What are you about to d—”

“Stupefy.”

The red spell caught Hermione in the chest. She crumpled to the ground soundlessly, her eyes fluttering closed.

Draco’s heart rate kicked somewhere into his throat. He dropped to his knees and snatched up her wrist, where to his relief, her pulse thrummed, hale and healthy, against his fingers.

“Hermione!”

Ron had no such assurances. He threw out his wand-hand at Black and roared, “Reducto,” but Black deflected the spell with a twitch of his wand and fired another Stupefy at Ron’s heart. It landed squarely, and Ron keeled over, sending both him and Harry tumbling into the gorse.

Draco scrambled back, wand outstretched. “Stop,” he begged, his voice thin with panic. “You’re — you’re my uncle. We’re family. You shouldn’t kill me. I’m your nephew. Well — once removed.”

Black did actually pause at that, his wand listing ever so slightly off-course. “You’re Cissa’s boy?” he said, in tones of wonder. “Cissa Black?”

“Yes! Yes, I’m her son. Narcissa’s. Narcissa’s son.” Draco was awash in relief. “Your nephew. I’m sorry we didn’t — we never got to meet.”

“You’d be her son with Lucius, then,” said Black, his eyes flitting over Draco’s person with the air of one taking inventory.

“Y-Yes. He was my father.”

“That explains the hair,” he said. “Was? Isn’t he still?”

“He was. He is. He’s — dead.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Really?” said Draco, surprised.

“No,” said Black. “Your dad was a thin squirt of blond shit. Ruined your mum’s personality while I knew her. Glad he’s dead, to be honest.” He lifted his wand. “But if you ended up friends with James’s boy, I guess she made a recovery. So I am sorry about this one. Truly.”

“No — no, no, no, don’t—”

The last thing he saw was a flash of red.

A strange, rhythmic creaking interrupted his sleep.

Draco lifted his head, blinking stars out of his eyes, and shoved back a hank of his hair. Above him, a shattered chandelier listed drunkenly from one of its supports, twirling on its axis. The brass arms creaked with each slow rotation of the ornament.

He was sprawled across the floor of what very well may have been the filthiest room he’d ever occupied in his life. The wallpaper peeled in gouged stripes, shaved through by cavernous claw-marks, and the furniture lay in cratered remains around a floor twice paved in detritus. Glass bejeweled the floor beneath shattered windows, through which a cool wind drifted, and between slats of nailed-up boards, the dark of a pitch-black sky lay thick behind the panes.

Beside him lay Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all of whom were stirring to life alongside him. They had been laid out together on a relatively unlittered patch of floor, away from the sharper rubbish. As if in consolation for their less than comfortable lodgings, a pillow had been tucked beneath each of their heads.

Draco sat up and braced himself on his elbows. Sirius Black sat on a chair in the corner, holding one wand in his right hand, and four in his left. In the corner lay a magnificent four-poster bed with dust-encoated hangings, and on that bed lay something large and furry, its chest undulating in the slow rhythm of sleep.

“What is that,” Draco said, quietly, so as not to wake it.

Black, deep in thought, took a moment to respond. “Hm? Oh, he’s no threat,” he said. “I mean. Well. Technically he is, but he won’t be. By the time he wakes up, he’ll be alright again.”

“That’s a werewolf,” said Hermione, in a very small voice. She had sat up, too, and drawn as far away from Sirius Black as she could without phasing through the wall of the Shack.

Black frowned. “Bit pejorative, when you put it that way,” he said. “He’s a person.”

“Be that as it may, on any other day of the month,” said Hermione, slowly, “right now, he’s a Class Five magical creature.”

“No, he’s napping,” said Black pointedly. “And I told you, you don’t have to worry about him. He’s taken his medicine.”

“I’d still like my wand, please,” she said, with laudable steadiness.

“Yes. No, that’s understandable. Unfortunately, I can’t give it to you just yet,” he said. “It’s nothing personal, I just don’t have very much confidence you won’t try to kill me.”

“Why?” said Harry. Draco hadn’t known the boy was awake, and turned, in surprise, to see him sitting upright against the leg of a sofa. His face was schooled in a plain serenity that only ever touched Harry when he was on the verge of apoplectic rage. “Why would I try to kill you?”

“It’s what I’d do, if I were you,” admitted Black.

“That’s fair,” said Ron, mostly to Harry.

Harry stood up. Black followed the movement with his wand.

“Are you going to kill me?” said Harry calmly. “My mum and dad weren’t enough, so you came here? Finish the job?”

Black did something strange, then: he convulsed, as if physically struck.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t, Harry, and I won’t. Wouldn’t. You’ll never…” He closed his eyes, shook his head once, powerfully — like a dog, Draco thought — and opened them again. “I would let you kill me first, before that happened, Harry. Do you understand? I would let anyone kill me first. And I would want them to.”

Harry tilted his head, not understanding.

Black stood up, dropped the wands — all five of them, including his own, which clattered to the floor along with the others and rolled away from his feet. With trembling hands, he pointed to his own chest. “Harry, you haven’t seen me in a long time, so I understand if you don’t remember,” he said, “but I’m Sirius. Your godfather. I — I was your father’s friend, and I—”

“Don’t,” spat Harry.

“I was,” said Black, louder, “it’s the truth, I swear it on his grave, his and Lily’s both. I was his friend. No, hang that, I was his brother. I loved him, do you understand? I loved James Potter more than I have ever loved any — almost anything, certainly myself—”

“DON’T LIE!” shouted Harry. “Don’t lie to me — you KILLED him—”

“Peter Pettigrew killed your father!” Black roared, and rushed forward, his hands outstretched — to do what, to embrace Harry, to shake him, to claw at his shirt, Draco couldn’t tell, and never found out, for Ron read the act as some intolerable combination of the three, and leapt in front of Harry, arm coiled, just in time to haul his fist brutally into Black’s nose.

The force snapped Black’s head back on his neck and sent him reeling backwards, bellowing in shock. Blood splattered on the floorboards, joining a diverse menagerie of preexisting stains, and Black staggered to the wall, clutching his face. Hermione seized the opportunity, and scrambled forward on her hands and knees to snatch up three of the closest wands within reach.

Keeping her own, she held one each to Ron and Draco, who snatched his and trained it on Black.

The wanted man groaned, fingering his nose, but failed to respond in kind, either by magic or force. Instead, he croaked, “That’s a cracking good arm, boy. Chaser or beater?”

Ron blinked. “What?”

“Well, I merely assumed,” he said, mopping the blood off his chin with a filthy sleeve. “Didn’t see you at the match, but that’s not to say you can’t play. Harry, you’re the best seeker we’ve had in years, James would have been in spasms… sorry about the dementors, by the way, I had no idea they’d swarm…”

“Sorry about the dementors?” said Harry, strangely, at the same time as Hermione exclaimed: “Oh, they came for you!”

“Course they came for me,” said Black grimly, shooting a scurrilous look out the window. “They did just now, too, in the Forest. They always swarm when I leave the Shack. This place is warded with enough Concealment Charms that they can’t get a whiff of me, that’s thanks to Dumbledore… he made sure it was good and hidden, for Moony… but that’s the trick of it, I can’t leave. I made it just by the skin of my teeth when I first arrived.”

“Then why did you come?” demanded Hermione. “You were free. Why come to the one place with the most security in the Wizarding World?”

Black gave a small, tremulous smile. “You sound like Moony,” he said fondly. “Did he ever read me the riot act, when I turned up here. But I couldn’t help it, I told him. You spend thirteen years dreaming of something, you can’t just let it go.”

“Dreaming of what?” said Hermione.

Black turned his smile at the floor, and put it away, like he was boarding up a house. “When James and Lily went into hiding,” he said, instead of answering, “I volunteered as Secret-Keeper. I wanted to do it. Who better, I said. Who do you trust more than me? But James said no, it would be too predictable. He said that anyone who knew him would assume it was me, and if I ever got captured, he didn’t want to make me lie.” He smiled a new smile, stiff, starched, deeply bitter. “As if I would have broken,” he said. “As if all the Cruciatuses in the world — anyway. They chose Peter, instead.” He spoke now directly to Harry, who was staring at him.

“Peter Pettigrew,” said Harry. “The man you killed?”

This, too, Black ignored. “Do you know how many minutes it took for Peter Pettigrew to break?” he whispered. “How many minutes of torture it took, to give up the life of his oldest friend? Guess how many minutes. I know the answer. I know it very well. I shared a cell with Antonin Dolohov.” He repeated, louder, “How many minutes, Harry?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry, faint.

“Nine.”

It was loud enough to make the chandelier rattle. The beast on the bed snarled, still dozing. Draco edged away from it.

“Nine minutes,” said Black, glassy-eyed with rage. “Didn’t even hold out into double-digits. Not even for James, he couldn’t. James! His childhood friend. His only friend, sometimes. The man who defended him, and trusted him, and gave him a home, when no one else would’ve looked twice at him — the man he should’ve loved more than anyone, by rights — he gave him up after NINE MINUTES!”

Draco twitched up his wand, a Knockback Jinx on the tip of his tongue. But Black wasn’t aggressive, at least not towards Harry; he turned, and paced the floor, full of a restless, animalistic energy.

“So I went after him,” he said ruthlessly. “You say I killed him? I wish I had. And I would’ve whistled my merry way to Azkaban for it, too, if I’d only done the job right. But he got away from me, you see. And they found me, with blood on my hands, laughing at the sick joke of it all — that you were an orphan, little baby Harry, the spit of your father even then, and I couldn’t even do you the honor of avenging them.”

“But he’s dead,” said Harry woodenly. “Isn’t he? Peter Pettigrew, he’s—”

“Very much alive,” spat Black. “Trust me, I would have known, otherwise. Slimy little lump of pus, Wormtail, he always did know how to save his own skin. He got away from me, then. Not now, though. Now we’re together again, me and Moony, we have a deal — we’re going to find him—”

“Hang on,” said Ron, lifting a quelling finger. Black obeyed. “Sorry. Cool monologue. Problem: who’s Moony?”

“Who’s Moony?” repeated Black. “Why — it’s him.”

He gestured at the bed. “My friend,” he added, a little proudly.

“The werewolf?”

“No, a person,” Black retorted.

“You’re friends with him?” squeaked Ron. “How do you know he’s not going to — I don’t know, eat you—”

“It’s Lupin, isn’t it?” said Draco suddenly.

All turned to stare at him.

“The werewolf,” he added, jerking his chin at the bed. “It’s Remus Lupin. Your ‘friend.’”

To Harry, he added, “They were all friends at Hogwarts. James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin. And Lupin leaves the castle on full moons.”

“I’m not even going to ask how you know that,” said Black softly. “I suppose any number of people could have told you, your mother being only one. But yes. Remus was the fourth Marauder.”

“Marauder?” exclaimed Harry. “Like the Map?”

Black broke into a brilliant grin. “Found it, have you?” he said. “Thank God. I dreamed a hundred terrible dreams where it wasted away in Filch’s closet, never to be misused again.”

“My dad made that map?”

“More like Remus did, actually,” said Black, tipping his head at the sleeping werewolf on the bed. “He came up with most of the spellwork. We merely mapped out the castle. Then he did the rest. He was always the cleverest of all of us.”

“Wait,” said Ron. “You called your friend — the werewolf — Moony?”

The grin reappeared, with an attitude that could only be described as ‘hangdog.’ “Padfoot,” he said, placing a hand on his own chest. “Nice to meet you.”

“Wormtail, for Peter,” said Hermione, reciting from memory. “And then—”

“Prongs, for James,” said Black, nodding. “It was, ah… something of an inside joke.”

“Okay,” said Ron, rubbing his temples. “Okay. Give me a second, would you? Moony. Merlin’s tits.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” interrupted Hermione, though Harry was already staring at Black with an expression akin to reverence. “It’s a terribly convenient story you’ve got. Blame the whole thing on a dead man, and convince us you’re here to avenge someone who’ll never turn up to defend himself.”

Black sneered at her. “Could start with the fact that you’re alive. That was none too convenient to pull off, let me tell you.”

“Answer the question,” snapped Draco. Black flicked up his fingers, surrendering.

“It’s the truth, all right?” he said, still speaking mostly to Harry. “You can ask Moony when he wakes up. He believes me. He and I share too much history, for him to not… give me some Veritaserum, I’ll tell you the same. It was Peter Pettigrew, mark me. That’s the man who deserves to die. Not me.”

A pitiful whine came from the bed. Black hurried over to the four poster and snapped shut the hangings, hiding the creature from view. “He’s transforming,” he said quickly. “You lot should clear out, for a minute, if you don’t want to hear — it’s not always the prettiest thing—”

Groans and whimpers escaped from the bed, combined with a horrible crackling sound, like bones being shattered and ground into each other. A high, animal howl pierced the air. The sound grew thinner and reedier the longer it went on, and strains of a human yell emerged underneath it, segueing gradually into a full-throated scream of tremendous pain.

Black hurriedly cast off his outer cloak of withered gray, and leapt forward. Draco at first thought he was going to flop down on his face, but instead, the criminal transformed in midair into a large black German Shepherd, its fur matted thickly over its flanks. The dog leapt onto the mattress, and disappeared behind the hangings.

“What,” said Ron. “What. What!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Hermione. “Now, that makes sense!”

“What does?” said Harry, echoing Draco’s sentiments.

“He’s an Animagus,” she explained excitedly. “That’s how he traveled without being seen, and it’s probably how he snuck past the dementors. I wonder how long he’s been…? Because if that’s how he got close to Lupin while they were in school, that’s tremendously interesting. I suppose perhaps the werewolf doesn’t attack him in animal form, because it doesn’t read him as a threat? Or it perceives certain other animals as kin? I don’t know, I’ll have to ask him about it. Padfoot, oh, ha, ha, very funny…”

The horrible noise from within the bed was receding, replaced by the wet, raspy breathing of a very exhausted human being, combined with the whining and sniffling of a very large dog. Soon, Black reappeared from behind the hangings, swung his shaggy head around the room, and delicately picked up his discarded cloak between his teeth. He carried it daintily over to the bed and disappeared again.

“Thank you, Padfoot,” said a calm, ragged voice.

The hangings drew back, and Remus Lupin peered out at them, blinking away the faint light of the chandelier. He was swaddled in Black’s shabby traveling cloak, which draped about his bare shoulders and covered most of his scrawny, scarred body.

“Ah,” he said. “Well. I suppose I have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” said Harry, unexpectedly kind. He put a hand on Ron’s wrist and lowered his wand. “Professor, you’re a werewolf.”

Lupin looked down at himself. “Yes,” he said. “It appears so.”

“Does Dumbledore know?” said Hermione, minutely.

Lupin smiled. “Yes, he does,” he said. “He’s known ever since I was a student. He built this place for me, years ago, so that I would have somewhere to transform that wouldn’t risk the other students… that was before we had a Potions Master quite so talented as our Professor Snape, and before I had access to the Wolfsbane Potion.”

“Still can’t believe Snivellus is a professor,” muttered Black, who had transformed back to human form, and now reclined, nigh-luxuriant, on the pillows. “Of all the people. Did the corpse of Gellert Grindelwald turn him down? The Giant Squid?”

“Severus Snape is a genius,” said Draco, coldly. Black eyed him without affection.

“You think so? He told you that, did he?”

“I know it. And he’s the reason Lupin isn’t rampaging through the castle grounds right now, so—”

“Oi, watch it,” snapped Black, as soon as the word rampaging escaped his mouth. “Moony isn’t a danger to anybody, and it’s not as though Snape’s doing it from the kindness of his heart, is he? Dumbledore’s had to lean on him pretty hard to get him not to run and blab to the Ministry.”

“Yes, what a terrible person, wanting to tell the Ministry there’s a werewolf at a school for children, ” said Draco coolly. “Certainly he’s got no one’s interests at heart but his own.”

“Remus,” said Black lowly, “is a threat to no one.”

Lupin tipped his head one way and then the other. “Well, I hope that’s not true,” he said mildly, shrugging the cloak higher about his shoulders. He poked around the bedding, presumably searching for his clothes. “I should like to think I’m something of a threat to my enemies, if not a terribly impressive one. And to your point, Draco, yes, Severus Snape is a remarkable Potions Master. Far better than Slughorn, who at his best could never have approximated the quality of Wolfsbane Potion that Snape produces for me monthly, and for which I am duly grateful. Nevertheless,” he added, “he remains, as he has always been, a hopeless and colossal knob. Sirius, where’s my wand?”

Harry guffawed in delight. Draco scowled.

“Right here, Moony.”

“Thank you.” He Summoned his clothes, and discreetly donned his shirt, which increased Draco’s comfort level by a non-inconsiderable amount. “Now. At this point, there are several avenues open to us.”

“Is this the part where you kill us?” said Ron fearfully. “I’d really like for this to not be the part where you kill us.”

“Play your cards right, we’ll try to work something out,” said Black easily. Ron gulped.

Lupin scoffed, flapping a hand chidingly in Black’s direction. “Nonsense. Ron, we’re not going to kill you,” he said kindly. “We’re not going to hurt you at all. For one thing, I’m still your professor, and I have a duty of care, which I take very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that Padfoot and I are going to have very cross words later about the inappropriateness of bringing you here during one of my transformations.”

Black folded his arms, frontloading a pout for this conversation in advance. “What was I supposed to do? Leave them out there as carrion for the dementors?”

“I believe that the terms we discussed involved you not leaving the Shack at all,” said Lupin, in a faux pleasantness that dripped with warning. “Seeing as doing that tends to bring down swarms of dementors, the likes of which gave cause for you to rescue, and subsequently Stun, the children in the first place, and Sirius, when I said we were going to have words later, I did mean all words synonymous with ‘later,’ and not ‘now.’”

Black clucked his tongue, mulish, and fell silent. Lupin turned back to the four of them, smiling calmly.

“No,” he said, “I really meant there are several avenues open to you. You know my secret now, obviously. Once I acquire a pair of trousers, I will escort you back to the castle, and you may do one of several things. You may find your way immediately to the headmaster’s office, where you will report that I am harboring a dangerous criminal in my custody on school grounds, in violation of Wizarding laws and Hogwarts bylaws alike. I will be prosecuted, probably imprisoned, and Sirius will be taken back into Ministry custody.”

“Some of those things will happen,” Black clarified, in sour tones. “Not all. Let’s not get carried away.” He said pointedly to Lupin, “Neither of us are going to Azkaban while I’m still breathing.”

“Be that as it may,” Lupin said, acknowledging it, “that is one option available to you four. Here is another: you may find your way instead to the Owlery, where you will write to the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures, and report an unregistered werewolf in residence on Hogwarts grounds. The aurors will come for me, attempt to take me into custody, and Sirius will do… whatever he intends to do to prevent it. Best case, we flee, and end up in hiding somewhere damp and unpleasant. Worst case, we die.”

“In a blaze of glory,” said Black.

“In a blaze of glory, yes, thank you. Yet a third option,” continued Lupin patiently, “very similar to the second, is that instead of the Ministry, you address your letter to the Board of Directors. They will react with shock and horror to the suggestion that a werewolf has been lurking amongst their children, ready to strike at any moment, but out of concern for the reputation of their school, they will probably insist that Dumbledore sack me quietly, to prevent the scandal from getting out. No aurors; no dementors; no dying blaze of glory.” He smiled sadly, and spread his hands. “There you have it. You will note I have ranked these options in descending order of unpleasantness for me.”

“But you haven’t mentioned the other one,” said Hermione, after a pause.

Lupin inclined his head at her, his expression very like he was calling on a student. “Which is?”

“We keep your secret,” she said, as if it were obvious. “We don’t tell anyone.”

Draco made a noise of protest. “Hold on,” he said. “Let’s not make hasty promises—”

“I like this one,” said Black immediately. “What’s your name, again, girl?”

“Hermione,” she said. “Hermione Granger. But Professor, it’s the obvious answer, isn’t it? You haven’t hurt anyone. You have it under control. You’re not responsible for it, I mean, you can’t possibly help it. It’s a medical condition, if anything.”

Draco groaned. They were doomed: Hermione’s laser-focused Gryffindor Instincts had identified a Person Slash Group In Need, and there would be no preventing her from offering help. One could only climb aboard the Charity Express or get swept into the undertow.

Black was nodding heavily with every word. “Listen to her,” he said, pointing. “Exactly right. Medical condition, Moony, you hear that? Totally not responsible — entirely blameless—”

“And it wouldn’t be fair to dismiss you, or punish you,” she said passionately, “when you’ve been the best professor we’ve ever had, and worked so hard for us all year, only for us to turn around and reward you by — by betraying you. It wouldn’t be right.”

“I agree,” said Ron unexpectedly, speaking up for the first time in a while. He had apparently ruminated on the many nickname-related wrongdoings committed by the Marauders, and deemed them insufficient to merit prison. “You’re a decent bloke. Didn’t kill us. Barely hurt us, if you count a knock on the head. Saved our skins from dementors, that was class.” He nodded stiffly to Black. “Stands to reason. Shouldn’t turn you in.”

“As much as I appreciate that, you two,” said Lupin, with great tenderness, “you have quite kindly skirted around the part where I harbored a wanted man on Hogwarts grounds. To lie about that — to merely do nothing, even, to elect not to report me — would make you complicit in my crimes, and I do not know that I can accept infecting you all with my guilt.”

“Infecting them all with your — oh, listen to yourself!” said Black irritably. “Would you stop trying to fall on every sword that sticks its nose out of the dirt? For five minutes? It’s putting me right off.”

“They deserve to make an informed judgment. I could not accept their sacrifice without knowing that they undertook it willingly.”

“All right, so we’ll undertake it willingly,” said Hermione boldly. “I know what the law says, about reporting. I also know that we’re students, and if you get discovered, it’s not like they’re going to come after a bunch of thirteen-year-olds for failing to… to turn in their favorite teacher. We can just say we didn’t know the law.”

“We’re all moving pretty quickly past the part where we decide they’re not guilty,” Draco said pointedly. He looked around at the others. “Have we actually resolved that? We believe they’re telling the truth? Full, complete, and entire? No reservations about this, none?”

“I respect your skepticism, Draco,” Lupin said. “If you have any questions that would make you feel more comfortable, if answered, I would be pleased to do so.”

“It’s not — alright, it’s not that you don’t have the right answers,” he said begrudgingly. “It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t exactly fancy getting someone tossed to the dementors, I just feel as though we should have a bit more of an inquest first, before we all throw in.”

“A proceduralist,” said Lupin, smiling. “Like your father before you.”

“Well, yes!”

“I believe you,” said Harry suddenly, interrupting them all. Lupin and Black both pivoted towards him with an almost amusing attentiveness, a hunger for his attention that Draco had often seen, but not recognized, in Lupin’s gaze. “Both of you. I believe your story, and I believe you about Pettigrew. I don’t… I don’t want you to get captured. Or to die.” He swallowed. “You’re my godfather, you said?”

“Yes, I am,” said Black, hungrily. He moved forward on the bed, with an animal grace. “He asked me the night you were born… I was first,” he added, with a glance at Lupin. “By mutual agreement. The second — they always planned to have a second — would have been Remus’s…”

“A second,” said Harry, thick with emotion. “So there would have been a sibling. For me.”

“Or two,” agreed Black. “James was an only child, and he loathed it. He wanted a nice big family, he said, lots of boys and girls, plenty of people to play with. He joked about having a quidditch team, but Lily drew the line at three, so they probably would’ve landed around four or five, if you average it.”

“It would have been three,” said Lupin, in tones of amusement. Black shrugged, relenting.

“What else can you tell me about them?” said Harry, and there was hunger in his voice, too. “My parents?”

“Oh,” said Black, looking at Lupin. “Oh. Harry — everything.”

The answer lit Harry from inside, like a flame catching a wick. He glowed. “Everything?”

“Yes. No one knew James like me,” he said proudly, puffing out his chest. “Not his own mother what changed his diapers. Ask me any question. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But not tonight,” said Lupin firmly, standing up. He had acquired and discreetly vested himself with some pants, and hitched them up with a bit of string for a belt. “The sun will rise in a few minutes, and you all should be back in Gryffindor Tower when it does. If you do intend to keep my secret, then it will be easiest for you if you do not have to explain to Filch why you are starting your morning on the wrong side of the castle doors.”

“Great,” said Ron loudly. “I’m knackered. Let’s go—”

“Will I see you again, though?” Harry said to Black, worried. “You’re not leaving, are you? You’ll still be here?”

“’Course I will. ’Course. Can hardly leave, can I? I’m here whenever you need me.” Black crept all the way forward, until he perched on the end of the bed, like a filthy bird of paradise. “Come back to the Shrieking Shack, sometime, and we can talk about it,” he said, full of terrible bruised hope. “I’ll tell you everything. Whatever you want.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah? You’d like that?”

“I would,” said Harry, and Draco could barely look at him, so bright did that candle shine.

They gathered their wands, and Lupin healed a few minor scrapes and bruises they had picked up on their flight from the dementors. Harry received what must have been the millionth repair for his broken glasses, and Hermione fussed at a bump on her head where she’d hit the ground after being Stunned. Then Lupin took them down to the basement of the Shrieking Shack, where a hidden passage led them all the way under the Forest and up through the Whomping Willow.

Sirius Black accompanied them all the way to the very mouth of the passage. There, hunched in the earthy antechamber of the tunnel, he visibly dithered over how to bid them goodbye, and settled on pumping Harry’s hand in a firm, energetic handshake that made them both eminently uncomfortable.

“Goodbye,” he said. “For now. Come to the Shack. Really. Any old time. I’ll — spruce it up a little, I know it’s not the prettiest—”

“Well, it’s not like you’ve got an interior decorator,” said Ron generously, sticking out his palm, and after a moment’s hesitation, Black clasped it.

“Good arm.”

“Good aim,” said Ron. “Teach me that spell, would you? The Stupefier?”

“What, a Stunner? It’s simple. I imagine Moony could show you, too, but — of course, I’d be happy to. Not that you need it, with that right hook.” He gave Ron’s hand another respectful shake, and turned, halting, to Hermione.

“We don’t have to shake hands,” said Hermione, eyeing the crusts of fungus and miscellaneous brown matter under his fingernails.

Black cracked a grin. “You,” he said, “remind me very much of a girl I used to know quite well as a boy. She was wise and terrible, and said all the right things at all the wrong times.”

“That’s nice,” said Hermione. “I’d just as happily not remind you of anyone, though. I’m myself, and that’s quite enough.”

“Seems like it,” said Black sagely, and tapped his forehead in a salute. She shuffled her feet, awkwardly, and did the same. Draco snickered.

Which brought Black’s attention, finally, to him. “You and I,” he said, “are long overdue for a conversation.”

“We’ve known each other for about nine hours,” said Draco. “I was unconscious for eight of them.”

“I know. I’ve been carrying most of our conversations on my back, boy.” Black croaked a laugh, and slapped him on the shoulder. If his arm had held a scrap of muscle on it, instead of skin and raw sinew and bone, Draco might have been shaken. “Really. I mean it. You and me, the full ten rounds. Everything you never wanted to know about the Black family, and everything that’s happened since. You understand?”

“Not at all,” said Draco honestly. “You’re nothing like my mother. I’m not sure I currently believe the two of you were related.”

“No? You didn’t know your mother at Hogwarts. I did. You’d understand it more, if you had… but you’ve got to go,” he said, catching Lupin’s eye. “So I’ll make you the same offer I made Harry. Come back. Anytime.”

He had resigned himself long ago to the necessity of shaking Black’s hand, and now, having thus girded himself, managed to execute the gesture with minimal skulking or flinching. He wiped his hand surreptitiously on his pants when it was done.

They emerged from the tunnel under the Whomping Willow as the first pink fingers of dawn split the sky. Lupin hung behind, saying whatever his own goodbyes were to Black, and emerged belatedly from the tunnel-entrance to hurry after them, his matted hair ruffling in the morning breeze.

“What do you think the deal is, with them?” said Ron quietly, before Lupin came within earshot. The lake glowed with the burgeoning sunrise, and the air tasted crisp and cold, like fresh mint in cool water, the flavor of a bright winter morning.

“What do you mean?” said Hermione.

“Black and Lupin,” said Ron, nodding at the approaching professor. “There’s something up there, right? That’s not exactly a friendship, is it?”

“God,” said Draco immediately and soulfully, “please, don’t let’s talk about this. I have had a rough enough night without you deciding we should all let’s talk about this.”

Heedless of his prayers, Hermione said thoughtfully, “I assumed they just had a close bond. Sirius did say James was his brother, you know — perhaps it’s the same for them.”

“Yeah?” said Ron. “You got any brothers?”

“Admittedly, no.”

“Well, I do,” he said. “Five of them. And there’s not one of them — not one, not even Fred or George — who acts that way with each other.”

Harry, wandering up ahead of them, had no comment on the matter. He was apparently lost in thought. For that silence, Draco loved him, deeply and earnestly.

“Hm,” she said doubtfully. “I suppose it’s a very… intimate thing, when you get down to it. Enduring all those transformations, side by side, for years. You’d probably end up acting a bit odd around each other no matter what. It’s an intense physical experience.”

“Granger,” said Draco, with religious intensity, “I will pay you so much money to never say the words ‘intense physical experience,’ with respect to a teacher, ever again.”

“I was using the words literally! I didn’t mean anything salacious!”

“I could see it,” mused Ron. Lupin was now close enough that they were sailing close to dangerous waters, talking about this, and if he gave any sign of having overheard them, Draco resolved to walk straight into the lake. “Not that I love thinking about it, mind, he’s still my professor. But I want to get out ahead of this, in case the opportunity comes up to say ‘I told you so,’ later on: I could see it. For the record.”

“It is inescapably so noted,” said Draco. “Now, can we talk about something else, please? For instance: I’m thinking of greens and blacks, for my funeral. Closed-casket, obviously; death by humiliation is bad for the skin.”

They trekked up the grassy knoll to the castle, tousled by the morning wind, and the last leaves of November fluttered down around them in a ballet of brass and gold. In daylight, the grounds no longer seemed so ominous, nor half so full of terrors, as they had the night before; indeed, there was a warmth to them that had not existed yesterday, as they had met the terrors full in the face, unearthed the monster under the bed, and known it by daylight for a friend.

miscellaneous notes:

-shoutout to the person in the comments who was like “oh are we going to see Peter?” in response to the sneak peek last chapter. the answer is: sort of! for my self indulgence is limitless and my patience is not.

-in retrospect that is on me for using “Marauder,” singular, though I thought it was a fun play on words. the gag is that lupin is supposedly the “last” Marauder, according to Snape, but the twist of the chapter is of course… that he’s not!

-shoutout also to severus “never not bitter” snape, who eats spite for breakfast lunch and dinner. sir please put down that poker. you’re scaring your godson. go eat a snickers

-sneak peak for next chapter: just in time for the holiday season, it’s a christmas episode! writing ch22 was the most fun I’ve had writing any chapter yet, and that’s saying something, because writing this thing only gets more and more fun with time.

CH22 is slated to drop tuesday or wednesday of next week; I’m traveling this weekend, and workslammed to hell, but since the fic is pre-written up to like CH30, I’ll be sure to have something out on schedule. cheers!