Runaway Home

Chapter Thirteen-

Dementia

"You're going to take me back to the Dursleys, aren't you?"

The Auror looked down at Harry, startled; he'd almost forgotten the kid was still walking beside him.

"They your aunt'n uncle?"

"Yes," Harry sniffed. He couldn't remember anything ever being as bad as this. Remus was in that little room, being questioned, Harry supposed, and Sirius... Harry let out a little sob at the thought of his godfather, pale and unconscious, in a dark little cell somewhere.

"Well, I 'spose I'll have to; nothin' else to do with you till we get this all sorted." Auror Brown couldn't help but be a little sympathetic. Poor kid had really gotten yanked around the past couple of days. And now, with Fudge acting like a maniac and new evidence in Black's favor, it was hard to know quite what to do or who was in the right anymore.

He gave what he thought was an encouraging smile, but Harry still looked despondent. "You're really sure that 'e was tellin' the truth, then?"

Harry stopped and stamped his foot, glaring up at the Auror. "Yes I'm sure! And, and Remus knows it too, and Dumbledore, and-"

"Wait jus' a minute, Dumbledore believes 'im?" Brown frowned; he hadn't been one of the Aurors called to collect Black, Lupin and Potter from Hogwarts- he was just the one who got landed with babysitting Harry when the higher level Aurors returned. Thus, he had never really been briefed on the entirety of the situation. Only that Black had kidnapped Potter, with Lupin as some sort of accomplice, and they had somehow ended up at Hogwarts. Brown had, naturally, assumed that Dumbledore was holding them in custody until the Ministry could get there.

"Yes, he does. He gave Sirius some... some Veri-ta-ser-um," Harry said carefully, in an effort not to trip over the unfamiliar word, "and asked him questions, and Sirius told him and the Minister everything I told you."

Brown gaped. Fudge had seen Black questioned under Veritaserum, and still he insisted on all this? And Dumbledore... well, sure, he wasn't Minister of Magic, but he was Dumbledore... not too long out of Hogwarts himself, Brown still had a student-like reverence for the old wizard. It was hard to imagine him being wrong on anything at all.

"Well... we'll do our best for Black, alright?" Brown smiled down again at Harry. "But 'till then, you'll 'ave t'go back to your aunt'n uncle's house."

Harry hung his head quietly, feeling woebegone.

"Oi! Brown!" Another Auror was hurrying down the corridor towards them.

"C'mon, I've got orders to fetch a dementor," he said. "I'm sure as shit not doing it by myself."

"Sir, I've gotta get Potter back-"

"Potter'll wait," the other Auror said impatiently. "Fudge wants Black taken care of now."

Harry was too horrified to say anything. He had no idea what a dementor could be, but "taking care" of Sirius could only be bad.

"Ah, sir, see, Potter's told me some things... and I... I think Black might be innocent, sir." Brown looked almost embarrassed. "It's just, they found out when they brought 'im back, he was an Animagis, sir, and..." He tapered off at the cold look on his superior's face.

"I don't bloody care what Potter said, or what Black is. Just... put him in there," the man gestured impatiently toward a door, "and let's go. It'll only take a few minutes, he'll be fine waiting."

Brown sighed and regretfully opened the door; it was another questioning room, just like the one Remus was in. "Here, kid, jus' stay in 'ere, and I'll be back in a couple minutes." He shooed Harry, who was still too stunned to protest, into the room and closed the door.

Harry heard the two men talking as they walked off, Brown still trying to convince the other Auror of what he'd been told.

"I wish Sirius were here," Harry whispered to himself. He hugged his sides and shuddered at the cold, frightening feel of the room. It was dark and damp and he could have sworn he saw something moving in one of the corners.

He shivered a little and took a moment to feel sorry for himself. Remus was all tied up, and they'd been giving him that potion to drink, and Dumbledore hadn't been able to do anything, and they were going to take him back to the Dursleys, and Harry didn't even know where Sirius was...

Suddenly Harry had a thought. He spun around and reached up to grab the high metal doorknob. Please let it be unlocked...

And it was.

Harry let out a little laugh of delight at his good fortune. Now if he could just look around long enough to find Sirius... there were lots of doors in the hallway, he had to be behind one of them, he just had to!

Looking surreptitiously up and down the hall, Harry found that it was empty, and he crept out. It was a mark of his innocence that he didn't give any thought as to how he was going to find Sirius, or what he'd do then.

But he wandered slowly down the hall, pausing a moment at each door and somehow deciding that they weren't quite right. He'd never known he was magic before Sirius had told him, though he did know of a few strange things he'd done and never been able to explain. His hair was always growing back right after it was cut, and then he'd set fire to Fudge's robes back in Dumbledore's office, hadn't he? Maybe those sorts of things were magic and he'd just never recognized it for what it was because he hadn't thought it was real.

But now he knew that some sort of magic had to be guiding him, because he could just feel that Sirius wasn't here.

And so he kept moving down the hall, from door to door.

***

"Oh bloody hell, they're gonna kill me."

Brown gaped, horrified, at the empty room.

"Fire you, more like. No worries, we'll find him again." The higher Auror shrugged. "C'mon, I don't really want to stay around this thing more than I have to." He gave a nervous little glance over his shoulder at the dementor a couple paces behind them.

Ministry dementors knew better than to attack Ministry employees; it would lose them an easy source of nourishment if they were banished from Azkaban, which they would be if word got out they'd attacked an employee. So they followed orders more or less docilely, and this one hung back, no less terrifying for its apparent obedience.

Brown shuddered and groaned softly to himself, but followed orders. He'd lost Harry Potter. In the bowels of the Ministry's foulest dungeon, no less, the one reserved for interrogation rooms and a couple of the more frightening court rooms.

"I'll help you find him," his counterpart said irritably. "Let's just hurry up, the Minister's probably already done questioning Lupin, he'll be waiting on us to take care of Black."

***

Harry felt dreadful.

It felt as though an icy chill had taken the corridor, and it almost seemed more dark and foreboding than before.

He stopped abruptly before a door. It felt like... maybe this was it.

But there wasn't any time to think about it, because the next thing he knew, he heard voices farther down the hall- Brown, and that other man. And the chill was getting more pronounced.

Harry gasped, almost unable to breathe, and clawed at the sinister looking handle on the door. It was locked.

With a little groan of frustration and fear, Harry rattled the handle. It had to open, nevermind why, it just had to! Sirius was there, he was sure of it, and those men were coming to take him back to the Dursleys... He could feel an unknown horror rising in his chest, the cold wrapping around his ribs and clawing its way to his heart, his breath quickening in fear and apprehension. He pulled vainly at the handle.

And with a little click, it opened.

Harry all but threw himself inside, quickly shutting the door behind him without bothering to think or ask himself why it had opened. Such reasoning was behind him now. All that mattered was getting away from that cold, awful feeling, and finding Sirius.

Still a little anxious, Harry turned away from the door, shivering not only because of the cold he still felt. The room was mostly dark, with a single torch burning dimly in a bracket on the wall. Shadows became horrible monsters in the frightened mind of the six year old, monsters not all that different from the one lurking in the hall at that very moment.

"Si-sirius?" Harry trembled violently, and wrapped his arms around himself. He'd guessed wrong, there wasn't any magic involved, Sirius wasn't here at all, and now those Ministry men were going to take him to the Dursleys, and Remus would be alone in that room, and Sirius would die, and-

"Unnnghh..."

Harry jumped at the unexpected noise. A groan, he realized. And he could see, now that his eyes were adjusting, something solid on the floor.

Someone solid.

Sirius looked rather as though he'd been thrown there on the floor, still unconscious, bloodstained, and sweating, though the wound in his shoulder appeared healed.

Harry was at his side in a moment, pressing himself close to his godfather and gasping at the unexpected heat in the man's flesh. Sirius moaned again, quieter this time, and gave a little shudder in his sleep.

"No..." he moaned softly. "No, you can't..."

"Sirius! Sirius, please, wake up, please..." Harry shivered, curled against the man's chest.

But Sirius was silent again, though his brows were knitted either in pain or in reaction to whatever fevered dream he was having.

And again that day, Harry began to cry, snuggling as close as he could to Sirius.

***

"Well, I guess they're not done yet."

Brown was nonplussed as he watched his superior glance down the hall in either direction.

They stood outside the same door that Harry had inadvertently unlocked, though of course with no knowledge of the fact.

"Maybe they're inside?" Brown offered.

The other Auror snorted. "Yeah, they're waiting in there with Black for us to bring the dementor. Bloody hell, of course they're not inside."

Brown sighed silently to himself. He continued to mull over ideas as to where the boy had gotten to, but gruesome and horrible thoughts kept popping into his head. What if Potter'd run into a dementor? There were some, patrolling these dungeons from time to time. Or a convict? Black himself, maybe? The man had gotten out of Azkaban, and the door had no more than a rudimentary locking charm upon it. Even if Black were ill, there was the possibility...

And the dementor sensed it all, growing more and more impatient as time dragged on.

***

"No, I refuse to believe it."

Brinks and Doyle stared incredulously at the Minister of Magic.

"Ah, sir, he just said, under Veritaserum-"

"I am fully aware of what he said, Doyle!" Fudge snarled. "But I refuse to believe that Peter Pettigrew committed those murders! An Animagus, indeed..." he snorted with malevolent mirth.

"But Veritaserum, sir!"

"You probably didn't give him enough, Brinks. Yes, that's the problem. A bit more, then, I'm sure, a werewolf and all... they probably require more..." Fudge glared at Remus' still form, slumped unconscious and kept upright only by the chains which bound him to the chair.

"We've already given him six drops, Minister, that's twice the recommended dosage." Doyle sent a worried glance at Brinks. This was getting too strange. Of course the Minister wanted this all taken care of and all, but Lupin had presented the same story that Brown said Potter told him. And they'd seen Black, he wasn't in any shape to be Confunding or modifying anyone's memory... Neither Potter nor Lupin had had that glazed look about them, either, and if he was using the Imperius Curse, the Veritaserum would have overpowered it anyway. There was only one conclusion-

Lupin's story was true.

And Black was innocent.

"Mr. Minister, if we give him any more, he'll probably die." Brinks sent an appalled look back at Doyle.

"I DON'T CARE! HE'S A BLOODY WEREWOLF, FOR MERLIN'S SAKE! HE'S IN LEAGUE WITH BLACK!" Fudge's bowler went flying off his head as he threw an enraged fit.

Both Aurors now had their wands out, looking apprehensive and stony. Fudge, gaining renewed awareness of his surroundings, looked hesitantly at the wands pointing nonchalantly at the ground.

"Well... perhaps..." he straightened his hair and his robes primly, "perhaps we'll just take care of Black, first, then deal with Lupin..."

"Sir, he might be innocent! You can't just disregard-"

"I will disregard whomever I wish, Brinks!" Fudge looked malevolent and haughty again. "Now, will you be coming to watch? I've sent an owl to the Prophet, they should have someone here by now, and I'm sure they've gotten the dementor there already..."

Muttering inanely to himself, he wrenched open the heavy door and stalked out. Brinks and Doyle took a long look at his robes, whipping out of sight, and then at Lupin.

"He's mental," said Brinks lightly.

"Yeah. Looks that way."