OF WOLF AND MAN (PG-13) BY IAMSHADOW - Chapter Seven: Grim Encounters
Title: Of Wolf and Man - Chapter Seven: Grim Encounters
Chapter: 7/?
Author: iamshadow
Ship: Remus/Sirius
Word Count This Chapter:
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst. Violence. WIP.
Summary: Hallowe'en, and the days that follow, are Black.
A/N: This chapter was very interesting to write. I'd like to hear what you think of it, if you comment. However I won't be able to reply to comments until Monday, because I'll be away from phone and internet access.
This chapter contains dialogue and situations originally created by and belonging by copyright to JK Rowling. Some lines of dialogue are taken and used verbatim from Chapter Eight (The Flight of the Fat Lady) and Chapter Nine (Grim Defeat) of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (p. 174-175 and p. 202-205 of the Bloomsbury adult cover pbk edition). However, the arrangement and descriptive passages surrounding any copyrighted dialogue, and any additional dialogue not contained in JK Rowling's work, is my own.
This is a Work in Progress. Please don't let the fact that it's incomplete put you off.
Chapter List HERE
I made rather a big show of being hale and hearty at the Feast that evening. Harry, Ron and Hermione’s anxious staring combined with another escalation in Severus’s glares down the table in my direction was rather wearing. He had obviously not forgiven me for talking to Harry that afternoon. It verged on the ridiculous, being the centre of all this melodrama, and I kept having to repress a mad urge to laugh a little hysterically.
I ended up ignoring all four of them and having a lively discussion with Filius Flitwick. He was working on a thesis about an obscure subcategory of Experimental Charms, and was clearly thrilled to find someone who not only was willing to listen, but knew a little of the theory behind it. I had been a better than fair Charms student and Filius was an excellent dinner companion. The result was that I nearly forgot about my Imminent Death by poison.
I was rather jovial, and even a little tipsy, by the time the Feast wound to a close. The alcohol’s effects would dissipate as soon as I got to my feet and began walking back to my chambers (an unfortunate result of my metabolism this close to the Full Moon), but the glow was contributing significantly to my good humour. Unfortunately, it was all about to come to a crashing end.
A terrified Gryffindor student brought word of some sort of problem. He wasn’t very clear on what it was, only that the Head Boy had sent him, and that it was serious. Dumbledore set off at once. I only hesitated for a few moments before following in his wake, Minerva and Severus with me. None of us spoke. I had a very bad feeling about the summons, and was suddenly completely sober. It was rather like being ducked in an icy pool of water.
My nervousness wasn’t helped by the ominous signs on our walk up the stairs. The paintings were terribly upset, the ghosts agitated. We eventually reached the corridor outside the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. It was crammed with a silent, frightened mass of students. The reason for their being outside was immediately obvious. The Fat Lady’s portrait had been brutally vandalised.
Dumbledore’s grave face turned to us. “We need to find her. Professor McGonagall, please go to Mr Filch at once and tell him to search every painting in the castle for the Fat Lady.”
A rude chuckle greeted this suggestion. “You’ll be lucky!” Peeves taunted from above.
“What do you mean, Peeves?” Dumbledore asked patiently.
Peeves was thrilled with the chaos brewing below, but he answered Dumbledore plainly enough. “Ashamed, Your Headship, sir. Doesn’t want to be seen. She’s a horrible mess. Saw her running through a landscape up on the fourth floor, sir, dodging between the trees. Crying something dreadful. Poor thing.” Peeves seemed absolutely delighted.
“Did she say who did it?” asked Dumbledore, his voice still level.
Peeves seemed to glow incandescent with smugness. “Oh, yes, Professorhead. He got very angry when she wouldn’t let him in, you see. Nasty temper he’s got, that Sirius Black.”
An hysterical twittering broke out amongst the students. My heart dropped into my stomach. I’m sure my face turned white; I could feel the colour bleaching from it. Severus’s glare was stabbing into me like knives. Right then, I couldn’t care less.
Numbly, I helped herd the children back down to the Great Hall, and listened as Dumbledore co-ordinated a search of the school and grounds. It took me a few moments to realise that I hadn’t been given an area to search.
“Remus, I would like you to go back to your rooms for the night,” Dumbledore said to me quietly, once the other teachers began spreading out. I opened my mouth to protest and he cut me off quickly, his stern look brooking no opposition. “I have full confidence in you, never doubt that. Harry and the other students will be protected by the wards in the Great Hall, but your safety is paramount, too.” After a pause, I nodded, though I was far from happy.
Dumbledore seemed relieved that I had acquiesced. “Thank you, Remus. I understand this is a very difficult situation for you, but right now, we have no other choice.” I avoided his earnest gaze. I didn’t want to heighten an already tense situation by behaving like a five-year-old.
“Minerva? Would you please accompany Remus back to his chambers, and make sure they are secure?”
I followed Professor McGonagall silently and with some resentment. After conducting a quick search of my quarters, she left, ordering me to lock myself in.
I cast a Locking Charm on the door, then, after a moment’s consideration, an Impeturbable Charm and a modified Shield Charm on it and on the fireplace and window as well. When I was done, I could feel the magic crawling on my skin, and hear the high pitched hum of the makeshift wards with my over-sensitive ears. I decided I had officially succumbed to paranoia.
Restless, I caught myself pacing at least four days early. It didn’t make any sense. If it was Sirius, he had taken a ludicrous risk even coming near Hogwarts. Why come inside, then attempt to break into the Gryffindor Common Room when everyone was in the Great Hall?
I dissected the entire event from half a dozen different angles, but it still didn’t add up. Perhaps Sirius really was insane, and his actions only made sense to himself.
The attack on the Fat Lady frightened me with its savageness. Although she wasn’t alive in the sense of a human being, she was a sentient magical construct capable of thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t a big step from destroying a painting that got in his way to killing a human. I admitted to myself with a sigh that Dumbledore’s caution was right. It wasn’t his fault that I despised being caged.
Despite the fact that it was very late and I was tired, I didn’t go to bed. I sat down in my armchair in front of the fire, curling my knees up to my chest like a child, and watched the flames burn with a heat I could not feel through the shimmer of the wards.
**************************************************
I opened my eyes, and he was standing in front of me. He was dirty and ragged, and there was something desperate in his face.
“How did you get in here?” I asked guardedly.
He waved his hand carelessly. “I was always here.” He was holding my wand, I noted, blearily.
His eyes roamed tirelessly over everything in the room. “So, this is what you are now. This is what you do.” There was disdain in his voice. He had never understood my scholarly ambitions.
“Yes.”
He snorted. The sudden exhalation started a ragged, hollow coughing fit that took him quite a while to control. I twitched in my chair, and suddenly the wand was pointed steadily at me again, and his face was hard. “Don‘t you dare.”
Obediently I froze, easing back. There were a tense few seconds, where I tried very hard not to breathe. There was a good chance I could win in fight, even while he was armed, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Sirius had always been a superb dueller, and in his current state, he wouldn’t be likely to mess about with niceties. I suspected, given his allegiances, he’d Unforgivable first and talk later. So I played the good hostage.
“So,” he began again, mirroring my pacing of a few hours ago, “where is he?” His voice was a hiss, his eyes fever bright.
“He’s safe,” I said, bracing myself for an outburst or a blow. “He’s well protected. You’d do better to leave. You’ll not get your hands on him tonight.”
He looked furious and quite wild. “But don’t you see? I have to find him!” He ran a hand through his matted hair. “I have to kill him! Then everything will be alright!”
I regarded this strange, demented being with the face of my friend. “No, Sirius. I don’t see,” I answered quietly. “I don’t see how more deaths could possibly fix anything.”
He stared, utterly baffled. “It’ll make everything better!” A glow of fervour overtook his features. “I won’t have to run anymore. You’ll be my friend again.”
At this, he looked so pitifully hopeful that I almost forgot that he was a mass murderer that had killed my best friends who was holding me at wand point, threatening to kill their son. Almost.
“You’ll always have to run, Sirius. Always. They won’t stop. Killing him won’t solve anything.”
“Yes, it will!” he insisted, frustrated. He had stopped pacing before. He started again, looking quite mad as he gesticulated. “If I do this, it will fix everything with Lily and James! It’ll make it right again.”
I felt bitterness and anger rise up in my throat. I forgot that I was the submissive one in this situation, forgot about my own safety. I let the Wolf rise to my eyes, and he flinched back. “You think killing him can help Lily and James? You’re insane! Nothing, nothing, can help them. They’re dead! Dead, and it’s all your fault! Your fault I’m alone! Your fault that I’m stuck in this room like a rat in a trap!”
I was standing over him, shouting now. I had my wand back in my hand, and I was watching him cowering on the hearthrug. “It’s your fault I feel this way! Your fault I can’t stop loving you!”
He was gibbering now, making small, frantic noises which might have been pleas for mercy. I didn’t care. I raised my wand, relishing the fear in his eyes. “Crucio!”
His screams filled my ears. I felt a savage sort of pleasure. The curse light was bright, and it seemed to be getting brighter. I raised my hand to shield my face…
I blinked. The weak November sun was streaming in the narrow window. Every muscle in my body was cramped from sleeping in the chair. My wand was on the desk where I had left it the night before, and my hearthrug was innocently bare of escaped fugitives.
I only just made it to my tiny bathroom before being horribly sick. If I was pale and jumpy at breakfast that morning, nobody else seemed to notice it. The night before had unsettled everyone.
************************************************
The Change later that week was understandably savage. When it became clear that this was going to be the case, Severus arranged for my potion to be sent up with my dinner by the house elves.
I didn’t sleep at all on Wednesday night. I had begun pacing just before dinner; doing my best to wear a path in the floorboards. My teeth were grinding, and I kept getting surges of adrenaline that made me bite my lips and hands. The taste of blood wound my tension up another notch.
It was just as well that Severus didn’t bring me my potion in person on Thursday. Or that no one else visited, for that matter. The steadily worsening weather outside didn’t help; the changing barometric pressure made the pain much worse. The more pain, the greater my agitation. I locked myself in at dawn rather than mid afternoon, and even then my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly perform the charms.
At some point the following day, I was vaguely aware of being lifted from the floor by several pairs of hands and tucked into bed. A cup was placed at my lips and I sipped from it reflexively, almost choking on the liquid; water, icy cold. It was drawn away. I must have made some noise of protest because it was returned and I slowly drank my fill, before being eased back onto the pillows. I sank into oblivion again, the last recognisable sensation being a cool, gentle hand on my brow.
When I became conscious again, I was told that when I hadn’t appeared or been heard from by late afternoon on Friday, Dumbledore had become concerned, knowing that the lead-up to the Moon had been hard on me. Along with Professors Flitwick and McGonagall he had broken the charms on my door, to find me collapsed on the floor. Apart from the usual exhaustion, I had hypothermia from lying nude on the stone for nearly half a day, too far from the fire.
Poppy Pomfrey was visiting me every hour or so; evidently concerned, but keeping her scolding to a bare minimum. It helped that I took the Pepper Up she pressed on me, and half a dozen other concoctions, without protest. I assumed that Severus had been in at some point or another, but it must have been while I was insensible not long after I was found, because I did not recall it.
As it was, it took me until late Saturday afternoon to rise from my bed and move carefully about my chambers, unbalanced and frail like an invalid.
By Monday morning, despite Poppy’s protests, I felt well enough to teach again. I’d marked every bit of homework and every essay I had waiting on my desk, and I was going stir crazy stuck in my room.
Once my Third Years had filed in for their class, I was hit with an immediate wave of protests about Severus’s brief reign of terror in my absence. He had berated and intimidated them, and proceeded to ignore everything they told him about the curriculum to date. Instead, he had chosen his own lesson topic, and set a diabolical amount of homework on - what else? - werewolves.
I smiled gently, reassuring them. “Don’t worry. I’ll speak to Professor Snape. You don’t have to do the essay.”
Only Hermione Granger seemed dismayed by this sudden change of fortune.
The lesson that followed was pleasant, and the class unusually polite and attentive. Perhaps they were counting on their exemplary behaviour to sustain my constitution and prevent further need for substitution. It was actually quite flattering.
When the students began to file out, on an impulse, I called Harry back. He looked pale and miserable; not surprising, considering he‘d spent most of the weekend, like me, flat on his back having potions shoved down his throat. “I heard about the match, and I’m sorry about your broomstick. Is there any chance of fixing it?”
Harry visibly winced. “No. The tree smashed it to bits.”
I felt a surge of irrational guilt, and sighed. “They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts. People used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it.” And I felt horrible every time I saw his face for months afterwards. “No broomstick would have stood a chance,” I finished apologetically.
“Did you hear about the Dementors too? Harry’s voice was forced, the tone tight. I met his eyes and there was bitterness there, a resignation.
“Yes, I did. I don’t think any of us have ever seen Professor Dumbledore that angry.” I could say that with confidence. Even in the aftermath of Sirius’s prank on Snape, even during the war, nothing compared to the look of cold fury I had seen on Dumbledore’s face as he sat at with me in my chambers, by the fire, and told me about the game. “They have been growing restless for some time … furious at his refusal to let them inside the grounds … I suppose they were the reason you fell?”
“Yes.” Harry’s face contorted for a moment, then an explosion of anger and pain erupted from him. “Why?” he demanded. “Why do they affect me so much? Am I just - ?”
I cut him off. “It has nothing to do with weakness,” I said firmly. “Dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have.”
Now that this conversation, which had been inevitable since the encounter on the Hogwarts Express, was actually happening, I wished to be anywhere else than here. But there was no reprieve.
“Dementors are amongst the foulest creatures to walk this earth,” I continued. “They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that has happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Harry was looking downwards. He swallowed convulsively, before saying in a strangled, little voice, “When they get near me - I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.”
I felt a strange, icy chill envelop me, and a tingling in my fingertips. I almost reached out to hug him, to comfort him, but something stopped me. He didn’t know who I was, apart from his teacher. He didn’t know that Lily and James had been my family, and that their loss had shattered any illusions I still had about the world. And I didn’t know how a child that had been raised the way he obviously had would react to physical contact. I didn’t think I could stand to see James’s son flinch from my touch; not in this moment, not right now.
“Why did they have to come to the match?” he muttered. It could have sounded petulant and sulky. It didn’t. Harry instead sounded tired and resentful, like a much older man who had been knocked down once too many times by life. Like myself, all those months ago, talking to Dumbledore. What is this, Albus? Some sort of group therapy? The broken healing the broken, bonding over shared grief?
I closed my briefcase, responding matter-of-factly, “They’re getting hungry. Dumbledore won’t let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has dried up … I don’t think they could resist the large crowd around the Quidditch pitch. All that excitement … emotions running high … it was their idea of a feast.”
“Azkaban must be terrible.”
I clenched my jaw, nodding. “The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don’t need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they’re all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks.”
I should have been expecting the next question. I wasn’t.
“But Sirius Black escaped from them. He got away…”
I fumbled picking up my case; fingers suddenly nerveless. Bending to retrieve it, I hoped that Harry hadn’t seen my face when I heard his name. “Yes. Black must have found a way to fight them.” I was amazed at my voice, so calm and steady, so at odds with the turmoil within. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible … Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long …”
“You made that Dementor on the train back off,” Harry interjected. I could see his brain ticking over, almost hear cogs turning as he wrestled with this unexplored angle.
“There are - certain defences one can use,” I began hesitantly. “But there was only one Dementor on the train. The more there are, the more difficult it becomes to resist.”
Harry at once became eager. “What defences? Can you teach me?”
“I don’t pretend to be an expert on fighting Dementors, Harry - quite the contrary…” I was back-pedalling, showing my cowardice, and I knew it.
“But if the Dementors come to another Quidditch match, I need to be able to fight them - ”
Right then as he spoke, I knew my resistance was futile. Harry’s eyes were fierce, and his jaw set firm. He had never looked more like his mother than at that moment. Lily Evans - The Immovable Object, James had dubbed her at some point midway through our Fifth Year. Ever humble, he titled himself complimentarily as The Irresistible Force.
And here I was, facing yet another Immovable Object. Harry stood unwavering, and his determination broke the remains of my resistance. “Well … all right. I’ll try and help.” Harry’s eyes flashed triumphant. “But it’ll have to wait until next term, I’m afraid. I have a lot to do before the holidays. I chose a very inconvenient time to fall ill.”
<- 6. A Bone of Contention )O( 8. Searching Within ->
Chapter: 7/?
Author: iamshadow
Ship: Remus/Sirius
Word Count This Chapter:
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst. Violence. WIP.
Summary: Hallowe'en, and the days that follow, are Black.
A/N: This chapter was very interesting to write. I'd like to hear what you think of it, if you comment. However I won't be able to reply to comments until Monday, because I'll be away from phone and internet access.
This chapter contains dialogue and situations originally created by and belonging by copyright to JK Rowling. Some lines of dialogue are taken and used verbatim from Chapter Eight (The Flight of the Fat Lady) and Chapter Nine (Grim Defeat) of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (p. 174-175 and p. 202-205 of the Bloomsbury adult cover pbk edition). However, the arrangement and descriptive passages surrounding any copyrighted dialogue, and any additional dialogue not contained in JK Rowling's work, is my own.
This is a Work in Progress. Please don't let the fact that it's incomplete put you off.
Chapter List HERE
I made rather a big show of being hale and hearty at the Feast that evening. Harry, Ron and Hermione’s anxious staring combined with another escalation in Severus’s glares down the table in my direction was rather wearing. He had obviously not forgiven me for talking to Harry that afternoon. It verged on the ridiculous, being the centre of all this melodrama, and I kept having to repress a mad urge to laugh a little hysterically.
I ended up ignoring all four of them and having a lively discussion with Filius Flitwick. He was working on a thesis about an obscure subcategory of Experimental Charms, and was clearly thrilled to find someone who not only was willing to listen, but knew a little of the theory behind it. I had been a better than fair Charms student and Filius was an excellent dinner companion. The result was that I nearly forgot about my Imminent Death by poison.
I was rather jovial, and even a little tipsy, by the time the Feast wound to a close. The alcohol’s effects would dissipate as soon as I got to my feet and began walking back to my chambers (an unfortunate result of my metabolism this close to the Full Moon), but the glow was contributing significantly to my good humour. Unfortunately, it was all about to come to a crashing end.
A terrified Gryffindor student brought word of some sort of problem. He wasn’t very clear on what it was, only that the Head Boy had sent him, and that it was serious. Dumbledore set off at once. I only hesitated for a few moments before following in his wake, Minerva and Severus with me. None of us spoke. I had a very bad feeling about the summons, and was suddenly completely sober. It was rather like being ducked in an icy pool of water.
My nervousness wasn’t helped by the ominous signs on our walk up the stairs. The paintings were terribly upset, the ghosts agitated. We eventually reached the corridor outside the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. It was crammed with a silent, frightened mass of students. The reason for their being outside was immediately obvious. The Fat Lady’s portrait had been brutally vandalised.
Dumbledore’s grave face turned to us. “We need to find her. Professor McGonagall, please go to Mr Filch at once and tell him to search every painting in the castle for the Fat Lady.”
A rude chuckle greeted this suggestion. “You’ll be lucky!” Peeves taunted from above.
“What do you mean, Peeves?” Dumbledore asked patiently.
Peeves was thrilled with the chaos brewing below, but he answered Dumbledore plainly enough. “Ashamed, Your Headship, sir. Doesn’t want to be seen. She’s a horrible mess. Saw her running through a landscape up on the fourth floor, sir, dodging between the trees. Crying something dreadful. Poor thing.” Peeves seemed absolutely delighted.
“Did she say who did it?” asked Dumbledore, his voice still level.
Peeves seemed to glow incandescent with smugness. “Oh, yes, Professorhead. He got very angry when she wouldn’t let him in, you see. Nasty temper he’s got, that Sirius Black.”
An hysterical twittering broke out amongst the students. My heart dropped into my stomach. I’m sure my face turned white; I could feel the colour bleaching from it. Severus’s glare was stabbing into me like knives. Right then, I couldn’t care less.
Numbly, I helped herd the children back down to the Great Hall, and listened as Dumbledore co-ordinated a search of the school and grounds. It took me a few moments to realise that I hadn’t been given an area to search.
“Remus, I would like you to go back to your rooms for the night,” Dumbledore said to me quietly, once the other teachers began spreading out. I opened my mouth to protest and he cut me off quickly, his stern look brooking no opposition. “I have full confidence in you, never doubt that. Harry and the other students will be protected by the wards in the Great Hall, but your safety is paramount, too.” After a pause, I nodded, though I was far from happy.
Dumbledore seemed relieved that I had acquiesced. “Thank you, Remus. I understand this is a very difficult situation for you, but right now, we have no other choice.” I avoided his earnest gaze. I didn’t want to heighten an already tense situation by behaving like a five-year-old.
“Minerva? Would you please accompany Remus back to his chambers, and make sure they are secure?”
I followed Professor McGonagall silently and with some resentment. After conducting a quick search of my quarters, she left, ordering me to lock myself in.
I cast a Locking Charm on the door, then, after a moment’s consideration, an Impeturbable Charm and a modified Shield Charm on it and on the fireplace and window as well. When I was done, I could feel the magic crawling on my skin, and hear the high pitched hum of the makeshift wards with my over-sensitive ears. I decided I had officially succumbed to paranoia.
Restless, I caught myself pacing at least four days early. It didn’t make any sense. If it was Sirius, he had taken a ludicrous risk even coming near Hogwarts. Why come inside, then attempt to break into the Gryffindor Common Room when everyone was in the Great Hall?
I dissected the entire event from half a dozen different angles, but it still didn’t add up. Perhaps Sirius really was insane, and his actions only made sense to himself.
The attack on the Fat Lady frightened me with its savageness. Although she wasn’t alive in the sense of a human being, she was a sentient magical construct capable of thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t a big step from destroying a painting that got in his way to killing a human. I admitted to myself with a sigh that Dumbledore’s caution was right. It wasn’t his fault that I despised being caged.
Despite the fact that it was very late and I was tired, I didn’t go to bed. I sat down in my armchair in front of the fire, curling my knees up to my chest like a child, and watched the flames burn with a heat I could not feel through the shimmer of the wards.
**************************************************
I opened my eyes, and he was standing in front of me. He was dirty and ragged, and there was something desperate in his face.
“How did you get in here?” I asked guardedly.
He waved his hand carelessly. “I was always here.” He was holding my wand, I noted, blearily.
His eyes roamed tirelessly over everything in the room. “So, this is what you are now. This is what you do.” There was disdain in his voice. He had never understood my scholarly ambitions.
“Yes.”
He snorted. The sudden exhalation started a ragged, hollow coughing fit that took him quite a while to control. I twitched in my chair, and suddenly the wand was pointed steadily at me again, and his face was hard. “Don‘t you dare.”
Obediently I froze, easing back. There were a tense few seconds, where I tried very hard not to breathe. There was a good chance I could win in fight, even while he was armed, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Sirius had always been a superb dueller, and in his current state, he wouldn’t be likely to mess about with niceties. I suspected, given his allegiances, he’d Unforgivable first and talk later. So I played the good hostage.
“So,” he began again, mirroring my pacing of a few hours ago, “where is he?” His voice was a hiss, his eyes fever bright.
“He’s safe,” I said, bracing myself for an outburst or a blow. “He’s well protected. You’d do better to leave. You’ll not get your hands on him tonight.”
He looked furious and quite wild. “But don’t you see? I have to find him!” He ran a hand through his matted hair. “I have to kill him! Then everything will be alright!”
I regarded this strange, demented being with the face of my friend. “No, Sirius. I don’t see,” I answered quietly. “I don’t see how more deaths could possibly fix anything.”
He stared, utterly baffled. “It’ll make everything better!” A glow of fervour overtook his features. “I won’t have to run anymore. You’ll be my friend again.”
At this, he looked so pitifully hopeful that I almost forgot that he was a mass murderer that had killed my best friends who was holding me at wand point, threatening to kill their son. Almost.
“You’ll always have to run, Sirius. Always. They won’t stop. Killing him won’t solve anything.”
“Yes, it will!” he insisted, frustrated. He had stopped pacing before. He started again, looking quite mad as he gesticulated. “If I do this, it will fix everything with Lily and James! It’ll make it right again.”
I felt bitterness and anger rise up in my throat. I forgot that I was the submissive one in this situation, forgot about my own safety. I let the Wolf rise to my eyes, and he flinched back. “You think killing him can help Lily and James? You’re insane! Nothing, nothing, can help them. They’re dead! Dead, and it’s all your fault! Your fault I’m alone! Your fault that I’m stuck in this room like a rat in a trap!”
I was standing over him, shouting now. I had my wand back in my hand, and I was watching him cowering on the hearthrug. “It’s your fault I feel this way! Your fault I can’t stop loving you!”
He was gibbering now, making small, frantic noises which might have been pleas for mercy. I didn’t care. I raised my wand, relishing the fear in his eyes. “Crucio!”
His screams filled my ears. I felt a savage sort of pleasure. The curse light was bright, and it seemed to be getting brighter. I raised my hand to shield my face…
I blinked. The weak November sun was streaming in the narrow window. Every muscle in my body was cramped from sleeping in the chair. My wand was on the desk where I had left it the night before, and my hearthrug was innocently bare of escaped fugitives.
I only just made it to my tiny bathroom before being horribly sick. If I was pale and jumpy at breakfast that morning, nobody else seemed to notice it. The night before had unsettled everyone.
************************************************
The Change later that week was understandably savage. When it became clear that this was going to be the case, Severus arranged for my potion to be sent up with my dinner by the house elves.
I didn’t sleep at all on Wednesday night. I had begun pacing just before dinner; doing my best to wear a path in the floorboards. My teeth were grinding, and I kept getting surges of adrenaline that made me bite my lips and hands. The taste of blood wound my tension up another notch.
It was just as well that Severus didn’t bring me my potion in person on Thursday. Or that no one else visited, for that matter. The steadily worsening weather outside didn’t help; the changing barometric pressure made the pain much worse. The more pain, the greater my agitation. I locked myself in at dawn rather than mid afternoon, and even then my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly perform the charms.
At some point the following day, I was vaguely aware of being lifted from the floor by several pairs of hands and tucked into bed. A cup was placed at my lips and I sipped from it reflexively, almost choking on the liquid; water, icy cold. It was drawn away. I must have made some noise of protest because it was returned and I slowly drank my fill, before being eased back onto the pillows. I sank into oblivion again, the last recognisable sensation being a cool, gentle hand on my brow.
When I became conscious again, I was told that when I hadn’t appeared or been heard from by late afternoon on Friday, Dumbledore had become concerned, knowing that the lead-up to the Moon had been hard on me. Along with Professors Flitwick and McGonagall he had broken the charms on my door, to find me collapsed on the floor. Apart from the usual exhaustion, I had hypothermia from lying nude on the stone for nearly half a day, too far from the fire.
Poppy Pomfrey was visiting me every hour or so; evidently concerned, but keeping her scolding to a bare minimum. It helped that I took the Pepper Up she pressed on me, and half a dozen other concoctions, without protest. I assumed that Severus had been in at some point or another, but it must have been while I was insensible not long after I was found, because I did not recall it.
As it was, it took me until late Saturday afternoon to rise from my bed and move carefully about my chambers, unbalanced and frail like an invalid.
By Monday morning, despite Poppy’s protests, I felt well enough to teach again. I’d marked every bit of homework and every essay I had waiting on my desk, and I was going stir crazy stuck in my room.
Once my Third Years had filed in for their class, I was hit with an immediate wave of protests about Severus’s brief reign of terror in my absence. He had berated and intimidated them, and proceeded to ignore everything they told him about the curriculum to date. Instead, he had chosen his own lesson topic, and set a diabolical amount of homework on - what else? - werewolves.
I smiled gently, reassuring them. “Don’t worry. I’ll speak to Professor Snape. You don’t have to do the essay.”
Only Hermione Granger seemed dismayed by this sudden change of fortune.
The lesson that followed was pleasant, and the class unusually polite and attentive. Perhaps they were counting on their exemplary behaviour to sustain my constitution and prevent further need for substitution. It was actually quite flattering.
When the students began to file out, on an impulse, I called Harry back. He looked pale and miserable; not surprising, considering he‘d spent most of the weekend, like me, flat on his back having potions shoved down his throat. “I heard about the match, and I’m sorry about your broomstick. Is there any chance of fixing it?”
Harry visibly winced. “No. The tree smashed it to bits.”
I felt a surge of irrational guilt, and sighed. “They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts. People used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it.” And I felt horrible every time I saw his face for months afterwards. “No broomstick would have stood a chance,” I finished apologetically.
“Did you hear about the Dementors too? Harry’s voice was forced, the tone tight. I met his eyes and there was bitterness there, a resignation.
“Yes, I did. I don’t think any of us have ever seen Professor Dumbledore that angry.” I could say that with confidence. Even in the aftermath of Sirius’s prank on Snape, even during the war, nothing compared to the look of cold fury I had seen on Dumbledore’s face as he sat at with me in my chambers, by the fire, and told me about the game. “They have been growing restless for some time … furious at his refusal to let them inside the grounds … I suppose they were the reason you fell?”
“Yes.” Harry’s face contorted for a moment, then an explosion of anger and pain erupted from him. “Why?” he demanded. “Why do they affect me so much? Am I just - ?”
I cut him off. “It has nothing to do with weakness,” I said firmly. “Dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have.”
Now that this conversation, which had been inevitable since the encounter on the Hogwarts Express, was actually happening, I wished to be anywhere else than here. But there was no reprieve.
“Dementors are amongst the foulest creatures to walk this earth,” I continued. “They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that has happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Harry was looking downwards. He swallowed convulsively, before saying in a strangled, little voice, “When they get near me - I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.”
I felt a strange, icy chill envelop me, and a tingling in my fingertips. I almost reached out to hug him, to comfort him, but something stopped me. He didn’t know who I was, apart from his teacher. He didn’t know that Lily and James had been my family, and that their loss had shattered any illusions I still had about the world. And I didn’t know how a child that had been raised the way he obviously had would react to physical contact. I didn’t think I could stand to see James’s son flinch from my touch; not in this moment, not right now.
“Why did they have to come to the match?” he muttered. It could have sounded petulant and sulky. It didn’t. Harry instead sounded tired and resentful, like a much older man who had been knocked down once too many times by life. Like myself, all those months ago, talking to Dumbledore. What is this, Albus? Some sort of group therapy? The broken healing the broken, bonding over shared grief?
I closed my briefcase, responding matter-of-factly, “They’re getting hungry. Dumbledore won’t let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has dried up … I don’t think they could resist the large crowd around the Quidditch pitch. All that excitement … emotions running high … it was their idea of a feast.”
“Azkaban must be terrible.”
I clenched my jaw, nodding. “The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don’t need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they’re all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks.”
I should have been expecting the next question. I wasn’t.
“But Sirius Black escaped from them. He got away…”
I fumbled picking up my case; fingers suddenly nerveless. Bending to retrieve it, I hoped that Harry hadn’t seen my face when I heard his name. “Yes. Black must have found a way to fight them.” I was amazed at my voice, so calm and steady, so at odds with the turmoil within. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible … Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long …”
“You made that Dementor on the train back off,” Harry interjected. I could see his brain ticking over, almost hear cogs turning as he wrestled with this unexplored angle.
“There are - certain defences one can use,” I began hesitantly. “But there was only one Dementor on the train. The more there are, the more difficult it becomes to resist.”
Harry at once became eager. “What defences? Can you teach me?”
“I don’t pretend to be an expert on fighting Dementors, Harry - quite the contrary…” I was back-pedalling, showing my cowardice, and I knew it.
“But if the Dementors come to another Quidditch match, I need to be able to fight them - ”
Right then as he spoke, I knew my resistance was futile. Harry’s eyes were fierce, and his jaw set firm. He had never looked more like his mother than at that moment. Lily Evans - The Immovable Object, James had dubbed her at some point midway through our Fifth Year. Ever humble, he titled himself complimentarily as The Irresistible Force.
And here I was, facing yet another Immovable Object. Harry stood unwavering, and his determination broke the remains of my resistance. “Well … all right. I’ll try and help.” Harry’s eyes flashed triumphant. “But it’ll have to wait until next term, I’m afraid. I have a lot to do before the holidays. I chose a very inconvenient time to fall ill.”
<- 6. A Bone of Contention )O( 8. Searching Within ->