The inside of the tunnel was dark and dank, and Hermione was clutching Harry’s hand as they rushed forward. Even with wands lit, the place was terrifying, with the flickering light making the walls look as though they were wriggling. Hermione was calling out gently to Neville, while Harry just kept forging his way forward. It smelled wet and earthy, like an animal nest, and the floor was cracked and hard to navigate. It took all Harry’s concentration not to fall.

They both looked up as they heard Neville yell and grew unconcerned about anything other than running upwards.

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In the castle, Severus Snape frowned at the door to his office. Tonight was his last scheduled group Latin lesson for the year, and all three students had not shown up. It was unlike them to be late—Neville might be a few minutes tardy, yes, but both Harry and Hermione were punctual, and Harry had always been prompt, even early, when it was his turn to spend time with Snape.

Snape sighed and cast a look around the room, hoping that when he next looked at the door it would burst open and three children would barge in. His eyes settled on a goblet filled with steaming Wolfsbane—

He leapt to his feet, then, and his face drained. He started to frantically rumage through the papers on his desk, finally coming upon one labeled ‘POTTER’.

It was the same charm that had been on the necklace he’d given to Potter, the chain he still saw the boy wear under his robes every day. Harry never took it off, and it gave Severus a little thrill, to see the boy wear it, but now it seemed to have a much better purpose.

He flicked his wand and his stomach quickly plummeted. Then he stood up and, as quickly as his stomach had plummeted, he left the room.

Harry’s status read:

HARRY POTTER
Condition: In Peril

Location: The Tunnel

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Remus Lupin looked at his wrist watch and frowned. Severus had never been late with his potion before, never. The man seemed to take an almost perverse pleasure of being on time—early, even, some days. He looked on in dour loathing as Remus swallowed and politely thanked him. He was always on time—but this time he was almost ten minutes late. Not that ten minutes would make such a difference—but something big had to be happening, that Severus was late. Something bad, probably.

Lupin’s stomach contracted, and his mind went to Harry. Little, shy Harry—Harry, who Severus protected, who Severus cared about. What if something had happened to Harry?

He started to make his way to the dungeons and Severus’ office, telling himself it was only for his potion—that was reason enough, really. And, if Harry was in trouble, maybe he would be of some service—

He arrived and the door to Snape’s office was left slightly ajar. That’s what tipped him off that his suspicions, aided a little by his problem, were spot on. Snape never left his door open—he always had wards extending several feet in each direction, even. But there were no wards and the door was slightly open. Not enough to even attract a passerby’s attention, by Remus was looking and Remus saw and Remus’ stomach sank and twisted.

When he entered, he half expected a lightning bolt to strike him down in the doorway. He half expected Snape and Harry to be lying there, dead, on the floor. He consoled himself that, this close to the moon, he would be able to smell them, if they were dead. He didn’t know if he was relieved to find no one there.

When he saw the status sign, still floating ghostly in the air, he did the same thing as Snape. He exited the room, heading for the first tunnel he thought of. However, where Snape had gone left, to a set of tunnels near the Hufflepuff common room, three corridors and a stairwell away, Remus made a beeline for the outside and the Shrieking Shack.

Forgotten by both, a goblet steamed and bubbled in the corner.

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The first thing Harry heard, as he broke out of the tunnel and into a dusty, deserted, destroyed room, was Neville’s scream again. This time, though, it was much, much closer, and he turned to help Hermione out of the tunnel and into the room as he listened. There was a doorway and, rather like Snape’s deserted office door back at Hogwarts, it was ajar slightly. Both Harry and Hermione looked at it with trepidation.

“Wands out?” he asked, and she nodded, pulling her wand out of her robe pocket. She looked around a little, though, and she seemed to realize something as she looked at the room.

“The windows,” she whispered, and she went to one and tried to pry the boardss away from it. Harry went to help, and after a few moments of worthless tugging she gave up and settled for boring a small, eye sized hole in the wood. She peered out, then pulled away, her lips set in a grim line. Harry peeked out—all he saw was a fence and some trees.

“We’re in the Shrieking Shack,” she whispered, pointing to the fence and a small sign bolted to it that read ‘NO TRESPASSERS—HIGHLY HAUNTED TERRITORY.’

“Brilliant,” Harry said. “The one time I make it into Hogsmeade…”

He stopped, though, as something far less terrifying than a yell floated to them. A whimper, undeniably Neville’s, a whimper they had heard when he ran into doors or when he cut himself with the potion’s knives or when he dropped a crystal ball on his foot, a whimper Harry heard late at night when Neville had a nightmare, it was that whimper only ten times more scared and hurt, and Harry almost ran up the stairs.

“We should have got Snape,” he said, then he made his way to the door and up the stairs.

The stairs were dusty as well, except for dog footprints and a big, Neville-sized smear leading them to a room at the top of the stairs. The door was closed, and Harry heard again that whimper. Hermione, though, looked puzzled.

“That pur…” she said slowly, softly. “It almost sounds like Crookshanks, when he’s trying to cheer me up…”

Harry gave her a puzzled look, then he looked at the door and tightened his grip on his wand. Hermione did as well, and Harry could see, in the dim light, how frightened she looked, and how determined. Another whimper came from behind the door.

The last thought Harry had before he forced his way into the room was that he didn’t deserve his friends.

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Remus Lupin was a great deal older, taller, and his eye sight was a little less than the last time he had traveled his way to the tunnel. His left leg was stiff—it always became stiff around the full moon, a reminder of a particularly vicious change when he was twelve when he’d nearly shattered the kneecap. In his mind, he was already in the tunnel, but in his body, he was barely out of the castle.

Severus Snape, to be fair, was very quick on the uptake. After a thorough search of the Hufflepuff tunnel, he had been half-way to the North Tunnel, a tunnel that ran through the entire outer wall, then under the school, when he had spotted a familiar sight and a sense of deja-vu. Remus Lupin, limping his way across the grounds. Typical.

He would have continued to the North Tunnel if he were an idiot or a fool. Instead, he started to run outside. To Lupin.

Hopefully, to Harry.

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What Harry found, upon his entrance to the room, was not nearly as bad as he had imagined, but not as good as he could have hoped.

Neville was, indeed, whimpering. He was laid out upon a bed that must have at one point been very grand and comfortable, though it was currently dust-ridden and ragged. There were deep slashes across the pillows, and in between whimpers Neville let out a little cough from the dust. He seemed to be mostly unharmed, except that his leg stuck out at a bit of a funny angle and his face was dead white. Harry remembered that odd sort of angle from when he had broken his arm, and he winced. Neville must be in a terrible amount of pain, he thought, and he stepped forward. Sitting on Neville’s chest, purring and allowing Neville to grip his fur quite tightly with his left hand, was Crookshanks. In his mouth lay a wriggling, squeaking rat that harry immediately knew was Scabbers. He almost wanted to let the cat eat the stupid thing. That’s what had gotten them into all the trouble in the first place—the stupid rat.

As Harry stepped forward, onto a creaky floorboard, Neville’s eyes shot open and he started to shake his head furiously.

“Harry, no, run—no, it’s a trick—“ He sat up, and though Harry would never have thought that Neville’s face could grow paler, grow paler it did. Hermione ran forward, and Harry scanned the room for the dog.

“What’s a trick? Oh, Neville, your poor leg…” Hermione moaned.

“Where’s the dog?” Harry asked.

“It’s not a dog, it’s an Animagus—he’s there, run!”

Harry heard the door close behind him and he spun around, wand out, and felt it fly from his hand. From Hermione’s squeak, he’d gotten hers as well. For, standing before them, with Neville’s battered wand, was Sirius Black.

Neville let out another whimper, and Harry backed up towards him. The man’s eyes were sunken and glowed unnaturally bright. His face wore a twisted parody of a smile, and his teeth were yellowed and jagged. He looked quite fearsome, but Harry didn’t feel scared. He felt an odd blankness, the sort he’d felt right when Uncle Vernon had snapped his arm. For three moments, everything had been blank and empty. And then…

Then a dam broke behind Harry’s eyes and he felt the rage come boiling in.

“I knew you would come.” The man’s voice was hoarse and snapped, as if he had screamed and screamed and could scream no more. Harry felt his fingers twitch, then clench, and he knew without a doubt that he could hear that man scream and feel nothing, feel blank.

“Honorable, like your father, loyal. You’d never leave a friend like that.” The man swallowed, and Harry found his eyes drawn to the man’s throat. It was thin, like the rest of him, a forced, unnatural skinny. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and Harry thought about how easy it would be to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and not let go.

“Don’t you talk about my father.” Harry didn’t even know that it was his voice. It sounded so low, and angry—it sounded like Snape at his most threatening, and Harry felt himself shiver.

“Harry,” Hermione whispered, taking hold of his arm and pulling him back. Neville reached out as well and grasped Harry’s shoulder. Then he pulled himself out of the bed and supported himself on Harry and Hermione. Distantly Harry could feel his arms shake as he tried to keep himself upright.

“You—you’ll have to g-g-get through us,” he said. His face was the color of snow and his eyes were bright with pain and his lips trembled. “We won’t let you t-t-touch Harry.”

Something in Black seemed to soften, and he took a step forward and spoke, with Neville’s wand still aimed at them. “You’re Frank Longbottom’s boy, aren’t you?”

Neville started to shake even more, and Hermione tried to take more of his weight. “I am. You—You’re cousin—“

The man’s face twisted. “Sit down.”

“Your cousin t-t-tortured—“

“I said sit.” But Neville did not move, and Black made a threatening motion with the wand. “I said SIT!”

Neville toppled over onto the bed, not so much as to obey Black but because he was shaking too hard to stand, and Harry felt the anger burn hotter.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” he said, and he took a step forward. “He’s a better person than you’ll ever be, don’t talk to him like that!”

“Harry,” Hermione whispered again, and he felt her trembling hand tug at his shirt, try to pull him back. “Don’t provoke him—“

“He’s just going to kill us anyway,” Harry snapped.

Black’s eyes shifted, turned brighter. “Only one will die tonight.”

Harry’s jaw set, and he tried to be happy—at least Neville and Hermione would be okay. But Neville spoke again from the bed.

“We t-t-told you,” he stuttered, and Harry idly thought that he’d never heard a more heroic sound. “We won’t let you kill Harry without killing us first.”

“R-right.” Hermione had apparently given up all hope of pacifying the man, and she flung her hair over her shoulder and straightened her posture, though her lower lip was wobbling madly. “Us first.”

Harry knew he didn’t deserve his friends.

The man took a step forward, his eyes too bright and his wand raised steady. “Only one.”

Harry felt something snap behind his eyes. “No,” he said. “I won’t let you even touch them.”

“You’re a good friend,” the man said in that cracked voice, and Harry knew the man was taunting him.

“Not like you,” he snarled, and he threw himself at the man.

Every fight he had seen on the streets flooded back to him, every dirty trick, and he felt the man tumble down underneath him. For a second Harry had the upper hand, and he didn’t even bother with getting the wand, he just forced his hands around the man’s pitifully thin throat and tried to squeeze. His legs were kicking, and he thought for a moment he would win, would squeeze the life out of Black right there on the floor—

But then he felt something in the man break too, and Harry felt thin, wiry hands wrap around his own neck and found himself pinned.

“No—“ the man rasped, those eyes gleaming so that Harry almost loosened his grip. “I’ve done too much—“

They lay there, in a sort of hopeless deadlock, both staring into the others eyes and feeling both unclean and terrified and unable to look away. The world was going fuzzy around the edges for both, black starting to eat into their vision—

Then a foot in a black Mary-Jane swung directly into the side of Black’s face.

The man let out a choked sound, and his hands loosened from Harry’s neck. Harry was forced to let go as Hermione leveled another kick, this one at the mans shoulder, and pushed him off Harry. Harry felt himself being pulled backwards, and he looked up and saw Neville’s pale face.

“No—go—your leg—“ Harry gasped, and he pulled himself up just in time to see Neville fall backward onto the bed, his leg at an even funnier angle and his chest heaving as he took shallow little breaths.

Harry turned to Hermione just in time to see the girl stomp on the man’s wrist and the wand in his hand go skittering across the floor. Hermione lunged for it, only to have Crookshanks, quite forgotten, dart in front of it, rat still in mouth. He regarded the wand with serious eyes, for a cat—should he drop the rat and take the wand? Or leave the wand and drop the rat? And Harry was never as pleased with the spiteful feline as when he decided the rat was more important and he backed away from the wand.

Harry jumped at the chance, lifting the wand and leveling it directly at Black. Hermione was over with Neville, doing something to his leg, and Harry pointed the wand at Black’s chest.

“You don’t understand—you don’t understand—“

Harry glared at the man. “I don’t—I don’t understand? How could—understand?” Rage was making it hard to think, hard to be aware of anything other than this was Sirius Black, who had killed his parents, who had tried to kill Snape, who had killed Peter Pettigrew and who had left him an orphan, left him with the Dursleys—

“You don’t know, you don’t know what it was! You don’t understand, please, I know, I know you’re angry, but you don’t—“

“I don’t UNDERSTAND?” Harry yelled, and he took a step closer. “I’ll—I’ll tell you what I do understand. You—you killed my mum and dad.” He thought of their picture, of his mother’s happy eyes and his father’s cheerful smile and how all he had was a picture that moved but wasn’t real. “You killed my mum and dad and, and betrayed them. To Voldemort. And you—you made—“ Suddenly all he could remember was his life with the Dursleys, which he had never thought was totally terrible, just not desirable.

But all he could think of was those nights when he was younger, when they first locked him in the cupboard, when he had a nightmare and had woken and cried out for his mum—they had left him, crying, in Dudley’s second bedroom, and then Uncle Vernon had burst in and hoisted him from his crib—he had outgrown the crib, but the Dursleys had refused to buy another bed for him—and carried him down the stairs, him crying all the way, and sat him in the cupboard and locked the door. And Harry had cried and cried all night, for his mum and his dad and the bedroom he should have had and the dark that would never go away.

And that was all. His. Fault.

“You killed them, and you—you made me an orphan. I understand that. I—I think I understand all of that.”

He closed his eyes, because suddenly the rage behind them had turned into something less hot and fierce and more—sad.

“I hear her, you know,” he said. “When the Dementors come…at night, when I sleep, I hear her yelling…”

“I’m sorry,” he heard that voice say, and it sounded sorry. But that wasn’t—it wasn’t enough, for this man to be sorry. This man had to pay, pay for all the things he had done to Harry and to Snape and to that little boy, barely more than a baby, who was still crying in the cupboard for his parents, for someone to let him out—

“That’s not good enough.” Harry raised the wand again, leveled it between the man’s eyes, and he waited for the man to make some move, flinch, close his eyes. But the man’s eyes stayed open and stayed so bright—and Harry thought for the first time that maybe he couldn’t kill Black. Maybe he couldn’t kill anybody.

“How could you do it?” Harry heard himself ask, and he almost kicked himself. Snape had told him that Black probably wouldn’t know. Black wouldn’t know, and now he was just asking questions to put it off, and part of him was all right with that, but the other part of him was screaming that he had to kill him, kill him now, and maybe then everything would go to how it was supposed to be, with his family and his own bedroom without bars or locks and his life—

But then he wouldn’t have Snape.

“I—you don’t understand,” the man said again. “We—we all thought it was the right thing.” The man’s eyes grew brighter, if that were possible, and a tear rolled down his cheek and Harry wondered why his cheek felt wet, because Black was the one crying, the one who was mad and unhinged and crying. “You look so much like him.”

That made Harry push the wand forward, and he hadn’t realized how close he had gotten to Black. The wand pressed into the man’s forehead, and Harry had never known a forehead could be thin, but Black’s was. The wand pressed into it and Harry tried to think of a curse, of any curse, because at this range Black would surely die. A Blasting Hex, or a Slicing Charm, and Black would be dead.

But all Harry could think of was the picture of his parents. He could never look at them again without remembering this, he knew, and he knew that he didn’t want his parent’s picture touched by this. Their picture was pure and light and it wasn’t this, it was a man crying with a wand held to his head, it was better than this.

Harry was better than this.

He let himself linger a moment more, than took a step back, the wand still aimed at the man’s head. But the man reached forward with one gaunt head and pulled the wand away from Harry.

As Harry was about to lunge and get it back, all four of the occupants of the room were distracted by the bang of a door being thrown open. Even Crookshanks stopped playing with Scabbers in the corner to listen.

While they all looked at the door, Hermione regained her wits, opened her mouth, and screamed.

“HELP! HELP! WE’RE UP HERE AND SO IS SIRIUS BLACK! HELP!”

There were footsteps climbing up the stairs, racing, and Harry hoped that meant everything was over.

It was obvious, when Professor Lupin entered the room, looked at Black for two seconds, than swept the man up into a deep embrace, that this was a stupid thing to hope.