Times Change

Times Change

by DawningStar

Chocolate, Sirius Black decided, was certainly very nice in reasonable amounts, but taking Prongs up on a dare to eat the dormitory's entire stash had probably--much as he hated to admit it--been unwise.

He sat up in bed, shoving the blankets aside irritably. He'd succeeded in the dare, but his stomach had roiled ever since. It had rebelled against the glut of chocolate once already, though he had at least managed not to wake anyone by it, not even Moony, who often slept lightly. Wormtail snored loudly enough that few noises could disturb the dormitory.

But the twist and lurch hadn't gotten any better since, and lying silently awake bored him horribly, which was even worse. Taking a short walk had to be better than having his whole night's sleep taken with nothing at all to show for it. And after all, being ill was a perfectly good excuse for being out after curfew, and he might as well make full use of it. The trip to the hospital wing could be very long if properly managed. With any luck, by the time he got there he'd be feeling much better and not have to bother anyone.

Sirius eyed the trunk by James' bed for a moment, but logic suggested that trying to steal either the Invisibility Cloak or the Marauders' Map when what he most wanted was not to wake Prongs was idiocy, and avoidable idiocy. He didn't really need them anyway.

Besides, it's good practice, Sirius thought, grinning to himself as he crept softly down the stairs, into the deserted common room. Can't always count on maps and invisibility, or I'll get lazy. He was fairly sure that candidates in Auror training wouldn't be allowed Invisibility Cloaks, after all.

The Fat Lady, who couldn't always be trusted not to inform on students out past curfew, was thankfully snoozing when Sirius slipped out past her, and didn't wake. The air of the castle brushed by him, cool and dark and friendly, smelling of ancient magic and fresh-scrubbed stone, and Sirius took a deep breath, his stomach already feeling more settled. He'd been right, this was just what he needed.

With the cheerful carelessness borne of having an actual reason for being about, Sirius set off toward the Hospital Wing via the longest possible route. The suits of armor creaked at him as he passed, rather as though they had missed him, Sirius thought. It had to be at least a week since the Marauders had roamed the castle at night, which was certainly far too long.

Idle mind wandering back to his earlier thought, he wondered for a moment whether Auror trainees were, in fact, permitted to use Invisibility Cloaks.

Auror training--his good mood faded. The wizarding world needed all the Aurors it could get to fight on behalf of the innocent, with the influence of the latest Dark Lord steadily increasing. He and Prongs intended to be part of that fight. Sirius made jokes about it most of the time, but when he was honest with himself he had to admit that it frightened him.

Not that he was afraid of risking his life. Some things were worth dying for, and he'd long ago decided which things those were. And yet--the future stretched endlessly ahead, bleak and uncertain.

What if I choose wrong? What if I fail Prongs?

It was that possibility of failure that worried him, far more than his own death. He'd tried harder than he liked to admit to convince his best friend not to become an Auror.

But that was the distant future, after graduation, and in the present he'd almost lost track of where he was. Sirius hesitated, looking around the empty corridor by the dim glow from his lighted wand. It wasn't an area of Hogwarts he had seen very often, a fourth-floor hallway far from any of the well-used classrooms with nothing to bring the Marauders by. Bare and undecorated, without even a halfway interesting portrait; the single frame on the wall was empty except for glittering sparks of starlight. Someone with an unhealthy interest in Astronomy, Sirius figured.

The brighter flare of motion; a shooting star. Sirius watched it fade, and giving in to a silent, irrational prompting, said quietly to the painting, "I wish I could know whether anything I do will make a difference. I wish I knew what happens."

The last word faded into a heavy silence. Even the walls seemed almost to be listening, stone pressing intently inward...Sirius shook his head at his own folly and turned away.

And paused. Had that stairway been there a minute ago? He couldn't remember seeing it, but then he hadn't been looking very closely...he was quite sure it hadn't been there when they'd been through to map this area. Something the Marauders had missed? This was a thing he couldn't possibly ignore. Stairway appearing only on Fridays? Maybe it's only there from midnight to three in the morning, or maybe it's because there's no moon tonight... He shrugged and headed eagerly down the narrow stone steps. Moony could figure out all the details later.

Seven steps downward, he felt something in the air quiver and wind itself about him. The next step was no longer a step at all, but the beginning of a steep slide, and the steps above had abruptly become the same. Sirius twisted in shock, trying to keep himself from falling, but there was nothing to hold on to--his wand slipped from his flailing grasp and instantly plunged him in total darkness--

Well, this is an unpleasant sort of adventure, he had time to think before his head cracked hard into the stone wall and he thought no more.

______________

There was something very hard poking into his back. There were further hard things under his legs and head. "Ow," Sirius muttered, finding that his head throbbed as though it were about to explode when he tried to move it off the hard thing. Also there didn't seem to be anything more comfortable to move it to.

Giving up on moving just yet, Sirius worked on getting his eyes open instead. This met with somewhat more success, except that all he could see were distant sparkles. He blinked several times, but they failed to go away or to resolve into anything more comprehensible.

Where was he, anyway? This wasn't his bed under him, that was for sure, not even allowing for the pranking abilities of his roommates. That was right, he'd gone for a walk. And hit his head. Sirius grimaced, hoping he wouldn't have to tell Prongs about this; he'd never live it down.

But this didn't feel like the smooth stone floor of a Hogwarts corridor, either, it had far too many jagged edges. And what was with all the sparkly lights? Surely he hadn't hit his head that hard. Where had his wand gotten to?

Managing to sit up at last, he groped about for the missing item and found nothing but more crumbling rocks. Nowhere in Hogwarts could possibly have this many loose rocks... Sirius narrowed his eyes, frowning and with a growing sense of worried confusion. He looked upward again. The lights hadn't changed...

Stars, he identified at last, disgusted with himself. Of course they were stars. It was so dark because this was a new-moon night, and he was outdoors. That explained the rocks. The trick stairway had dumped him outside the castle.

With that settled, Sirius climbed to his feet with marginally more assurance and began searching in earnest for his wand. No way was he going back without it.

Five minutes into a fruitless search, he sat back down and tried to think. He couldn't see anything, and searching by feel wasn't getting him anywhere--and every step he was terrified of treading on his wand and breaking it. As a human his sense of smell was worthless, but no one could possibly see him here...checking once more to be quite sure of this, Sirius swiftly transformed into his canine Animagus form. Scent broke in a wave on his nose, enough to make him sneeze several times in succession--dust and old magic, animals and humans, distantly familiar and yet strange.

It was the old magic smell that startled him most; Hogwarts always smelled of powerful magic, but never of magic abandoned and decaying. Confusion began to creep unwillingly back.

His own smell was easy enough to distinguish after that first moment, and he set a paw very gently on his wand before transforming back. He picked up his wand, relieved to find it safe and undamaged. Now for some light, and he could figure out where exactly he was and how to get back.

"Lumos," he commanded, putting a bit more power in it than he'd done earlier, and held up his wand. The light fell on vast gray rocks tumbled haphazardly across each other, edges crumbling from exposure, smaller pieces of rubble coating the ground so thickly that only a few blades of grass managed to work their way upward. Moss grew more abundantly in the shadowed crevices.

There was nothing else within reach of his wandlight.

He knew there were no ruins this extensive on the Hogwarts grounds.

Where am I?!

Ten minutes' walk in a straight line hadn't brought him out, nor provided any clues as to where he could be. His worry grew steadily as he picked his way over the mountainous rocks. He began to notice that some of the rocks looked scorched and blasted, coated in soot--some looked half-melted as though from intense heat. He began to notice shards that didn't fit with an ancient ruin: shards of glass and ceramic and once something that would look exactly like a tap from a bathroom faucet, if a tap had been crushed nearly flat.

The sky above him grew paler, but Sirius barely noticed the added light until he reached the top of a small rise and looked out. Some distance away, a steel-gray lake reflected the sky, a familiar lake, a lake he had seen countless times by daylight and by moonlight. A giant squid's tentacles were dimly visible through the morning mist.

No, Sirius thought numbly, unable to look away. No. This isn't possible.

Behind him, a calm female voice said, "Stupefy." Sirius never felt himself collapse.

______________

Wakefulness came with the abruptness that meant someone had used a spell to cause it. Sirius tried to move, and found that his hands and feet had been rather expertly bound to the chair he sat in. The room was walled in cold stone and lit by a pair of flickering torches.

An unfamiliar girl whose bright red hair trailed escaping tendrils across a dirt-smudged face was just lowering her wand. Sirius didn't think she could possibly be older than he was, but her brown eyes were harder than stone. Behind her, a taller man with the same fiery hair leaned against a wall, his gaze warily on Sirius. Wire-frame glasses could have made him look like a scholar; the way he held his wand and everything in his stance said he was very used to fighting for his life.

"What are you doing here?" the girl demanded curtly of Sirius.

She was definitely, Sirius identified, the one who had Stunned him. As such, the question seemed highly unfair. "You knocked me unconscious and brought me here!" he snapped angrily. "And somehow I'm supposed to explain this?"

"Kill him and have done with it, Ginny," the man recommended. "He's obviously not one of us, and no innocent comes to the Ruins by choice. Kill him before he kills us."

It was the matter-of-fact way he said it that shocked Sirius to silence for a moment. But neither words nor tone seemed to startle the girl even slightly. "We can't just kill him, Percy," she responded, with irritation that suggested she had said the same thing several times before. "He doesn't have a Dark Mark. He may not be one of us, but he isn't a Death Eater."

The man she'd addressed as Percy grimaced, unconvinced. "Unless You-Know-Who finally developed enough brains not to mark his spies," he muttered.

Sirius began to understand the cause of their paranoia, and hoped desperately that he was wrong, that this was all some enormous joke. "Look," he couldn't keep himself from saying, "I don't know where I am or how I got here, and I don't know what you're talking about, but I swear I would never support You-Know-Who. Never."

"Of course, you would say that even if you did support him," Percy pointed out skeptically, "since you're at the mercy of members of the Resistance."

"Why did you come here?" Ginny asked again, "...not this room, you might have a point about that, but to the Ruins of Hogwarts?"

"Ruins of...Hogwarts?" Sirius echoed. He could feel the blood leaving his face. Hogwarts, by far more dear to him than his childhood home, the place of everything the Marauders had done together--the shock of that first recognition broke over him again, a wisp of disbelief still numbing the full impact. Hogwarts... The school had stood for a thousand years, stood against everything the world had thrown, nothing could destroy Hogwarts--"That's not possible," he whispered, and shut his eyes, repeating silently, desperately, this isn't possible...

She cleared her throat, waiting for him to respond, but he couldn't have made any kind of coherent response even if he'd had any idea what sort of answer she would accept. Minutes blurred together as Sirius tried to wrap his mind around things that were mutually contradictory: he couldn't deny what he'd seen outside, and he couldn't accept what Ginny seemed to be saying, saying as though it were no new thing. He shook his head, as though trying to shake off the whole world presenting itself to him, and muttered, "Voldemort couldn't--"

The reaction was immediate. Percy stiffened and stabbed his wand forward in clear threat, as Ginny spun warily outward and hissed, "Don't say the name!"

"Dumbledore says fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself," Sirius growled. "I'm not afraid. I can say it if I want."

"Silencio," Ginny snapped--she had her wand out and directed at him so quickly he barely even saw it. Sirius glared at her, outraged, and automatically opened his mouth to tell her off. The spell was a powerful one; not a sound escaped him. And to add insult to injury, she wasn't even looking at him anymore; she and Percy waited with eyes fixed on the room's exit. "Go and warn Violet," Ginny whispered, "quick, before they..."

The older man had ducked out of the room even before she finished the sentence. Ginny looked again at Sirius, a dangerous flare in her eyes. "Dumbledore's dead," she said bluntly, "and so is everyone else who said that name carelessly, ever since You-Know-Who set up his nasty little tracking spell. And so will you be if any of us are hurt for this."

Sirius felt his eyes go wide in shock.

"And you'll try to claim you didn't know," Ginny guessed, skepticism clear in her tone. "Had no idea what You-Know-Who's had in place to kill us. If you aren't a spy, you're an idiot, and if you're a spy you're a bad one. But you won't say it again. Ever. Or I'll kill you myself."

At Sirius's chastened nod, she lifted the spell with a flick of her wand. "Sorry," Sirius muttered. "I--I didn't know. I won't say it again."

Percy slammed the wooden door open. "Ginny, we're out of time," the man said sharply, a new tension in his voice. "They've triggered the wards, they're on the grounds. Leave him and let's go."

The girl turned from Sirius without protest, following Percy to the door. "Wait, you're leaving me here? Who's on the grounds? What's going on?" Sirius called after them, bewilderment threading into his shock. The wooden door swung shut behind the redheads and Sirius was alone.

He growled under his breath and tested the ropes--not cruelly tight, but definitely secure. Transforming might give him the slack he needed to escape; on the other hand, the ropes held him in a position awkward enough that he might just end up hurting himself if he tried.

Whoever Percy had meant by 'they,' Sirius was certain from his tone that they weren't friendly. And if Ginny and Percy had been afraid because they thought Sirius might be a Death Eater, that said pretty clearly who their enemies were.

Sirius strained against the ropes once more. They were sturdy and new, no doubt magically conjured. But the wooden chair they attached him to gave the squeak of old and rotting wood...he grinned, and threw his weight into rocking the thing back and forth.

It only took a few minutes to work up enough momentum, and Sirius winced as he and the chair toppled over backward. The impact reawakened the pain in his head, but he ignored that in favor of working his way loose from the splintered wood. Becoming Padfoot for a moment was enough to rid himself of the remainder of the ropes. Now he needed his wand, and he needed some answers.

The door had no lock, and a short, dark corridor led Sirius to a room lit from one end with pale sunlight. There was no trace of either his wand or the redheads who had taken him prisoner, and he walked softly, unwilling to go rushing in to a situation he knew he didn't understand.

The only conclusion he had been able to come to was that a great deal more time must have passed while he was unconscious than he had thought. Or maybe not while he was unconscious; maybe someone had Obliviated him, removing all the explanatory memories. Either way, the war seemed to be a great deal worse than he had ever expected, if teenage girls calmly contemplated killing Death Eaters. If Hogwarts--

No, he wasn't ready to think about that yet.

He probably couldn't be much help to Ginny and Percy without his wand, but surely there was something he could do to prove to them that he had no loyalty to the likes of Voldemort. There had to be something--especially if he really had brought danger to them by saying that name. Creeping toward the sunlight, he stepped silently over mounds of rubble and peered out. In the distance, someone was shouting something, but Sirius couldn't make out the words. No one was in sight--he slipped out, ducking quickly into the shelter of an especially large boulder and wishing he had his wand, or Prongs's Invisibility Cloak, or preferably both.

"Filthy little blood traitors!" someone screeched, "Avada Kedavra!" Sirius bolted toward the sound, hoping he wouldn't be too late.

Peering down from the top of a mound of rubble, he could see that what had sounded like a battle was more of a chase--distantly identifiable bright red hair ducked and ran in the general direction of the Forest while about five black-robed, hooded figures pelted after them throwing curses. Both redheads were still moving, so the Killing Curse must have missed, Sirius saw with relief.

There was nothing at all that he could do for them from here, and he didn't think they could keep it up much longer. Ginny probably had his wand; once he had that, he knew he could improve the odds considerably.

As Padfoot, he was certain he could slip around faster than the Death Eaters; the tumbled rocks offered plenty of cover for a dog. He put the makeshift plan into action at once, streaking toward the Forest on all four paws.

Safely behind an enormous slab of stone that looked as though it had once been half the roof of a tower, Sirius paused for breath, peering out to check on the positions of the others. He'd made it, he noted, feeling vaguely triumphant, and transformed back.

The sight of Percy running all-out past him cut short his self-congratulation. He looked out from his shelter again, to see all five Death Eaters converging on the redheaded girl--she'd been hit by something at some point and held one arm against her with a pained expression, but she was throwing jinxes behind herself and making better speed than the Death Eaters.

All but one. One of the Death Eaters had outdistanced the others and now aimed his wand from an angle where Ginny wasn't defending herself--Sirius saw it, saw that Ginny didn't, and made a reckless dive at the girl. Distantly, he heard the Death Eater shout "Obliviate!" and felt the spell slide barely above him.

Ginny lashed out in a panic, a fist landing painfully on Sirius's nose. He supposed that was understandable and lost no time in dragging her back to her feet and into a run. "Have you got my wand?" he shouted at her.

"How did you get loose?" she shouted back unhelpfully, tore her hand free, and cast a silent Shield Charm just in time to block the next bright red flash.

They had reached the edge of the Forest, and now it was Ginny who was dragging him, obviously with a specific direction in mind. Sirius could see Percy, still well ahead, and hear the crashing of Death Eaters clearing a wide trail in.

"They can't get away now," a young, breathless voice spoke just at Sirius's elbow, making him jerk in shock. He looked down and nearly tripped at the sight: a young girl's head floated unsupported beside them, smooth black hair framing a delicate, hazel-eyed face. Something about the sight seemed peculiarly familiar, but he couldn't quite think what it was...

By the time he had recognized the effect of an Invisibility Cloak, Ginny had nodded to the child and gasped, "Too close behind us--need your help," and Sirius found himself dragged to the ground to crouch beneath familiar silvery folds.

The Death Eaters crashed by in pursuit of Percy, and silence settled over the forest. "They can't escape now," the girl repeated, faint satisfaction and a soft regret mingled in her voice. "I got all five of them."

"Got them?" Sirius couldn't help asking. She was apparently talking about the Death Eaters, but they had certainly showed no signs of having been 'got'...

In the distance, an adult voice screamed--another voice joined it...both cut short with a horrible suddenness.

"Anti-Disapparition Jinxes," the little girl beside him whispered. "They couldn't escape." She clambered to her feet and tugged the Invisibility Cloak back to herself, folding it carefully into a pocket in her threadbare robes.

"Five of them this time," Ginny said pensively as she stood. "Aragog's children should be happy with that." She turned a speculative gaze to Sirius. "But you...you could have gotten away. Why did you come after us?"

He frowned up at her, deciding not to get up in case she took it as a hostile move. "You were in trouble. I know you don't trust me, but I couldn't stand by and let Death Eaters hurt you."

The black-haired girl laid a tentative hand on his shoulder, looking earnestly at Ginny. "He saved you from that Death Eater, Ginny, I saw him. I trust him."

"We have to be careful, Violet," the redhead reminded her. "You-Know-Who has tried getting spies into the resistance before." Her eyes were still guarded, but Sirius could tell that something--whether it was Violet's approval or Sirius's actions--had gone a long way toward getting him in past the suspicion. "If you wanted my trust, it would have been a good idea to explain what you were doing wandering around the Ruins."

"About that..." Sirius sighed. "The thing is...the thing is, I can't remember anything before I was in the Ruins. Except Hogwarts, I remember Hogwarts..." He leaned forward with sudden urgency. "This--this can't be Hogwarts. Not even You-Know-Who could do this to Hogwarts."

Shock overcame the caution in Ginny's eyes. "I do believe you," she said at last. "No spy would claim something that strange...Hogwarts has been a ruin for nearly a decade."

A decade? Sirius formed the words soundlessly in disbelief. His mouth had gone suddenly dry, and an attempt to swallow made the back of his throat hurt. "What--what happened?" he got out, in something not unlike a croak.

Ginny shrugged sadly. "You-Know-Who had already taken over the Ministry, taken over practically everywhere else...Dumbledore evacuated the school, before it happened, got all the staff, the students, even the ghosts and portraits and most of the magical artifacts out safely. You-Know-Who wanted to use Hogwarts as his training ground, his fortress, his headquarters. Some people say it was Dumbledore that wouldn't allow Hogwarts to fall into his hands. Some say it was the castle itself."

Well, given that alternative, Sirius knew, he would have chosen the same...even Hogwarts in ruins was better than the thought of Voldemort using the castle's powerful magic for evil ends. "So Hogwarts...and the Ministry..." He swallowed again. It didn't help. "Everything...everything's gone?"

Her chin came up at that, and there was steel in her expression as she straightened. "Not everything. We're the resistance. As long as we hold out, there's hope."

Some hope, Sirius couldn't help thinking. Without Dumbledore's leadership, without the Ministry's coordination or the trained Aurors...how long could a resistance that seemed to rely heavily on children possibly hold out?

But maybe he was being unfair; all three he'd met seemed to be intelligent and resourceful. Surely there were a great many more. Which reminded him--"What happened to those Death Eaters? It's obvious you led them this way on purpose to ambush them, but...how?"

Ginny's cool brown eyes rested appraisingly on him once more. "Our explanations had better wait a bit. You say you can't remember anything? Like a Memory Charm could have done?"

"I thought so at first," Sirius admitted, and shook his head in frustration. "But it doesn't explain everything, it hardly explains anything. I just don't know."

"Fair enough," Ginny acknowledged. She looked at the younger girl. "I'll bring someone who can test him. You'll have to stay here and watch him--and I don't care how much you trust him, you follow standard procedure, Violet."

The black-haired girl scowled, and moved a few steps away from Sirius. "I know that," she said in indignation. "Go on."

Ginny nodded and began to turn away. "Wait a minute!" Sirius yelped. "This is the forbidden forest! You're just going to leave us here? Can't I at least have my wand?"

"Percy has your wand," Ginny replied curtly. An ironic smile touched her lips. "Don't worry, Violet will protect you."

Sirius blinked at her uncertainly for an instant before the air's soft clap signaled the redhead's Disapparition. Leaving him alone with a child? Even granting that he didn't have his wand...either Ginny was more willing to trust him than she had let on, or else she considered Violet to be well able to take care of herself. Sirius suspected it was the latter. Honestly, remembering just how difficult the theory behind an Anti-Disapparition Jinx was, he didn't want to test what else she could do.

The child in question seated herself on the mossy ground a few feet away and leaned comfortably back against a tree, peering at him with bright hazel eyes. "Percy said it's your fault they attacked," she said, not quite an accusation. "Did you really say the name? How could you?"

Sirius shut his eyes and buried his face in his hands. Apparently he was never going to live that down. "Dumbledore said we ought to," he defended himself.

"Professor Dumbledore's dead," Violet said, as though everyone ought to know that and she was having doubts about his intelligence. Sirius didn't blame her; he was having doubts about his own sanity.

Nevertheless, he gathered what fragments of logic remained to him and asked, "How did it happen?"

Violet evidently took him to mean the matter of the dangerous name, though he had meant the question in a rather broader sense. "You-Know-Who likes people to be afraid," she said simply, "and he knew what the Headmaster had been telling people for years and years. Once he had plenty of people and plenty of magic to spare, he cast this spell, as a way of getting back at Professor Dumbledore for denying him Hogwarts, we think. Appealed to his sense of irony, or something."

"So when anyone says his name..."

A shiver ran through her, and her fingers tightened on her wand as if for comfort. "They can hear you. The spell tracks where you are. And more often than not, Death Eaters show up a few seconds later. It's the only thing that gets them through Hogwarts boundaries, though fortunately for us not many of them at once."

There was silence. Sirius found his thoughts shrinking in horror from what he'd done, or almost done, to this brave group. "I'm sorry," he murmured, feeling it desperately inadequate.

Her hazel eyes sharpened on him, as though trying to judge his sincerity, but she chose not to challenge him on it. "We're going to need a name to call you by," she remarked instead.

"Sirius Black," he answered automatically, wondering why it was those eyes looked so familiar.

Violet made a noise of unmistakable disgust. "Look, I understand if you don't want to give us your real name, but you could at least pick a less obvious lie."

He stared at her, bemused. "What do you mean?"

One hand gestured in his direction--the left hand, Sirius noted; the right held her wand in what he suspected was a deceptively casual grip. "Everyone knows Sirius Black was my parents' friend. If he were alive, he'd be old."

It was a feeling very like being hit with a brick, Sirius decided dazedly, or possibly a large book, one of the kind Moony always yelled at him for throwing...This isn't possible, he tried to say, and realized that he'd forgotten to breathe. His head dropped into his hands with a stifled moan.

"Are you okay?" he heard Violet asking in concern. "I'll call you Sirius if you want me to, I didn't mean to upset you..."

Am I okay? Either I'm in the future, which is a horrible one, which is definitely not okay, or else I'm completely insane, which I think I would really prefer. No, I'm not okay. Sirius drew a shaky breath. "Violet," he began, striving for calm, "who are your parents?"

"James Potter was my dad, he died just before I was born," she replied promptly. "Mama's name is Lily..." She trailed off uncertainly. "What's wrong?"

In some distant part of his overwhelmed mind, Sirius wondered just how pathetic he must look, for a girl he'd never seen before to sound this worried about him. He couldn't bring himself to care. "What happened to Sirius Black?" he forced through a tightening throat. Dead, James is dead, I'm dead--I don't care what happened to me except don't let it be my fault Prongs died, anything but that, anything--

The girl made a noise very like a squeak. "You can't mean you think..." she began, stopped halfway, and started over with confidence it was obvious she didn't feel, "That's not possible."

It echoed his own thoughts so perfectly that he might have laughed if he'd been capable of it. "Just tell me," he whispered. "Please. What happened?"

A heavy silence stretched between them for a moment that felt to Sirius as though it had to be at least as long as the one that had brought him to this shattered world. It ended at last with the sound of three people Apparating in quick succession. "Ginny!" Violet cried in relief, and Sirius heard leaves crunch as she jumped to her feet and hurried a short distance away. "You're not going to believe--" her voice dropped sharply to the point where Sirius couldn't make out what she was saying. Several equally low and indecipherable voices responded in startled tones.

Curiosity slowly winning out over shock and despair, Sirius raised his head and looked at the new arrivals. Ginny had brought only two people back with her, one a tall, gaunt man whose dark hair hung past his shoulders in a tangled mat, and the second yet another girl who shouldn't have been out of Hogwarts, this one with bushy brown hair. All three of the girls were casting peculiar glances toward him as they whispered; the man just stared, pale eyes intent.

It was the adult who brought a halt to the agitated if near-silent discussion, with a gesture toward Sirius and a hoarse, clearly audible growl--"It would be quicker just to ask him."

Ginny, Violet, and the brown-haired girl traded sheepish looks and nodded agreement. The redhead took the initiative, crouching next to Sirius, while the others stayed a few feet back. "So now you're claiming to be Sirius Black, are you?" she inquired, with half a smile.

Anger dimmed the pain, and Sirius let his temper flare at the implied doubt. "I haven't claimed anything," he snapped. "I told Violet my name. It's you lot who seem to be having a problem with it."

"He really does look the part," Ginny commented to Violet, ignoring his outburst. "Just like he stepped from one of those photos your mum has."

"It is possible," the third girl put in, studying Sirius with a clinical detachment. "According to Moste Potente Potions, the De-Aging Potion is known to cause memory regression, which is why it's never been very popular. But I can't understand why You-Know-Who would do something like that."

He didn't want to think about why it was that they all seemed to be automatically assuming whatever happened to him was Voldemort's doing. Probably just paranoid, all of them--no, he wasn't going to think about it.

Ginny regarded him soberly for a moment, then turned away. "Hermione," she addressed the brown-haired girl, who stepped forward and handed over a vial filled with clear liquid. Ginny held it up for his inspection. "This is Veritaserum. If what you've been saying about who you are is true, then you won't have any problem taking a few drops and letting us ask you some questions, will you now?"

It was a challenge, and Sirius knew it. The thought of taking the powerful truth potion made him flinch out of habit, and everything he didn't want anyone to know flashed through his mind--illegal Animagi, full moon adventures, Moony as a werewolf, the Map, all the pranks no one had caught them for...

And subsided almost as quickly. Ginny was right. It didn't make any difference if they found out about all that, and it seemed this was the only way to get any answers from the wary group. "I'll take it," he said quietly, meeting Ginny's eyes, and tilted his head back, his mouth slightly open. She smiled at him, and carefully tipped three tasteless drops onto his tongue.

"I hope it really is him," he heard Violet whisper to the other girl--Hermione, was it?--as the potion began to take hold, with a sense as of floating. "Mama would be so happy to have Sirius back alive, even after what happened," the girl was continuing, staring at him with hazel eyes, Prongs's eyes...

Even after what happened...

But what happened? he wondered, through the fog that was rapidly enclosing his consciousness.

Their voices seemed to come from a long way off now, and his answers were equally remote, dim and unemotional. Questions about who he was, how he had gotten into the Ruins of Hogwarts, any connections he had with You-Know-Who. He knew he couldn't have lied even if he wanted to, which was of course the point behind the potion.

It was impossible to judge how long it took before the effects of the potion faded. He blinked to clear his eyes and found the four resistance members watching him with thoughtful expressions. They looked marginally less suspicious of him, he was grateful to note.

"You know about their Animagi forms," the bushy-haired girl--Hermione, Sirius remembered--said slowly. "If you are Sirius Black, you should be able to prove your other form..."

Irritably, Sirius leaned over into a slightly less awkward position without waiting for her to finish the predictable request, and transformed. The wands guarding him lowered slightly, as their owners traded wondering glances; Padfoot picked up the change in their scent, from suspicion to uncertain hope. Except one. The adult's wand and scent were absolutely steady.

Too impatient to wait longer, he returned human. "Satisfied?" he asked, and couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of his tone. "Now will someone please explain what's happened?"

A brief hesitation--"Yes, of course," Ginny said at last, sitting back. "It won't do any harm to tell you things that are common knowledge already." She glanced at Violet. "It's just--this is--I've never had to deal with a situation quite like this, that's for sure."

"I'll tell him," Violet interrupted. "He was my dad's best friend and he would have been my godfather. I want to tell him." She seated herself on the ground next to Ginny, facing Sirius.

"Go ahead, then," Ginny agreed.

Violet gulped a breath, let most of it out again in a sigh, and began to run nervous fingers through the long black hair that fell over her shoulder. "James Potter married Lily Evans not long after they--you--graduated from Hogwarts, and you were his best man," she began.

Good for them, Sirius thought. Not that it was unexpected; Prongs had been obsessed with Lily Evans for years, and she'd finally begun to return his interest. At least this confirmed that there had been some happy times for the Marauders before everything went wrong.

"It was after their first child was born that Dumbledore warned them that they'd become targets somehow, them and the Longbottoms," Violet continued. "You-Know-Who was always getting more powerful, and so Dumbledore said they should use the Fidelius Charm to hide. Dumbledore was the Secret-Keeper for the Longbottoms, but my parents wanted you to be theirs. They did it in October of 1981, when my brother Harry was a year old. It seemed to be working for a few months, but then--no one knew, but they found out later when they checked where you'd been staying--after the attack--"

The happy times hadn't lasted near long enough, Sirius concluded, fists clenching involuntarily. Secret-Keeper. He'd heard of that process before, though not in detail. If he was Secret-Keeper, and Prongs was dead, it meant he had--no. No. I'd never fail Prongs like that.

"--you'd been captured...You-Know-Who came to the house where my parents were living, there was no warning, he killed Harry and my dad. Mama tried to stop him but she was pregnant with me at the time and she'd gone into premature labor, she couldn't do anything, she and I both nearly died before she made it to Hogwarts with an emergency Portkey. You..."

Violet broke off to swallow, hard, and Sirius saw with dread that she had gone very pale. "You-Know-Who...made sure everyone could hear you. Years later. When he took over the WWN. Said he'd--he'd broken you, and he'd do the same to anyone who tried to defy him." Her voice sank steadily lower, a whisper that echoed all the horror he could see in her face at the memory. "You screamed...you were--and--and--no one's seen you since," she finished in a rush, burying her head in trembling hands.

Ginny wrapped a comforting arm around the younger girl's shoulders. "It's a horrible story to tell, but thank you, Violet," she said gently.

"This has to be terribly difficult for you to hear, Sirius," Hermione said somberly, coming closer, "but I hope you can understand now why we have to be so cautious about you. Even now that we're sure you're telling the truth about what you know, we can't be quite sure that this isn't some kind of trick." She grimaced. "You-Know-Who doesn't spend much time bothering about our group anymore, not with Professor McGonagall and the Longbottoms still on the loose, but he seems to find us a bit irritating, if the number of Death Eaters he sends after us is any indication."

Sirius paid little attention to her, dazedly sorting out the implications of everything Violet had said. He'd been--and Prongs was--

"Moony," he said abruptly. "Remus Lupin, I mean. And Peter Pettigrew. You didn't--they--they're all right, aren't they, they're in--in your resistance thing?"

He looked swiftly away from the pity that fell over the girl's face. She wasn't the one who answered; a rough hand fell on his shoulder in an effort at comfort, and the older man's scratchy voice said the words Sirius knew he didn't want to hear. "Gone, both of them. After the first wave of werewolf attacks, after the Ministry fell, ex-Aurors murdered Lupin in the panic. Pettigrew died about a month later, in the battle for Diagon Alley." A long hesitation. "I'm sorry."

Sirius shook his head, trying to deny the words, the situation, anything--the world was insane, he was insane...he couldn't do it. The way these people looked at him. Sympathy, and understanding. Eyes that knew too well what it was like to lose everything. Everyone. "So everyone's dead," he whispered, and barely felt his fingernails digging into his palms as his knuckles turned white. I betrayed Prongs, it's my fault he's dead, I should be dead too...

Warm hands covered his fists, and he looked up, a bit startled, into Violet's determined face, a set to her jaw that reminded him achingly of Prongs. "I'm not dead," she said firmly. "Mama's not dead. She calls you my Uncle Sirius, and she'll be happy that you're not dead. We need you."

Sirius shut his mouth and blinked at her for a moment, then nodded fervently. "Anything I can do to help you, I will," he promised his best friend's daughter. "Anything." The world had gone insane, but he had to find some way to live in it.

Violet smiled at him, a spark of mischief lightening the concern in her hazel eyes. "I know. You said so under the Veritaserum." She looked over at Hermione and the black-haired man whose name Sirius still hadn't heard. "Can't he please come and meet Mama? You've checked him for Imperius, checked him for eavesdropping spells, there's nothing else to check him for and he's got to stay somewhere."

"True," Hermione agreed, with audible reluctance. "It's just that--look here, Sirius, we trust you, but there's still a high risk that you appeared here as a part of one of You-Know-Who's plots. You can't go out of our sight--and whatever you do, you can't leave Hogwarts grounds, You-Know-Who would capture you within five minutes."

Sirius frowned. "What do you mean? What does it matter if I leave Hogwarts grounds?" Information, that was important, that was a way to keep himself under control. He needed to learn everything he could about the shattered world he'd apparently had some part in causing...

"Let's explain that on the way," Violet suggested hopefully, tugging Sirius to his feet. "And we have to introduce everyone properly, too."

Hermione tried to look disapproving, but the amused quirk of her lips she couldn't quite hide rather spoiled the effect. She gave up and smiled instead, turning to lead the way into the forest. "All right, all right. Introduce away, Violet."

The black-haired girl grinned as they began to pick their way through the thick undergrowth. "Well, I'm Violet Potter, Uncle Sirius--can I call you Uncle Sirius?"

"Er--sure, why not," Sirius agreed in mild bemusement, ducking a low branch.

"And you've met Ginny Weasley," she continued, "and her brother Percy is probably still with Hagrid."

"Before Ginny came back to get help, he'd sent a message that everything was under control," Hermione contributed. "Percy, not Hagrid, mind you. Hagrid's ideas of a situation being under control are a bit unreliable sometimes."

Ginny smirked. "The Dragon Incident," she muttered under her breath.

Hagrid's here, Sirius silently filed the information away. The presence of the groundskeeper somehow made the world feel slightly more like home, in spite of everything. There was something still the same.

"This is Hermione Granger," Violet persisted, ignoring the byplay, "and she's horribly smart." Well, maybe not ignoring it so much after all, Sirius decided, hiding his amusement. Violet added, "She and Mama are the resident proofs that You-Know-Who's an idiot."

Hermione flushed a bit at the comment. "What Violet means to say is that I'm Muggle-born," she clarified primly. "I hope you won't have any problem with that. I know the Blacks are an ancient pureblood family."

"Most of the Blacks are idiots like You-Know-Who," Sirius agreed readily--here at last was a subject he was familiar with. "I like to think my brand of idiocy's a bit more fun. I've got nothing against Muggle-borns."

The bushy-haired girl relaxed noticeably at this, while Violet rolled her eyes. "Hermione, I know you've had some nasty experiences, but Uncle Sirius would never be like that, or Mama wouldn't talk about him like she does," she chided.

Something occurred to Sirius. "Hey, if you're Muggle-born and Hogwarts was destroyed a decade ago, how'd you find out about anything?" he asked without thinking, and winced as she stiffened again. "Er, no offense."

She released a sigh. "None taken. It wasn't your fault. But Death Eaters...don't like Muggle-borns. Even children who don't know a thing about magic." A distinctly quelling look, aimed mostly at Violet with the surplus toward Ginny and Sirius himself. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Anyway..." Violet said, after an uncomfortable pause. "That's Nigel."

Expecting to hear a last name, Sirius raised an eyebrow when she gave none, and looked at the adult. The pale-eyed man had taken a rear-guard position, wand out, and met the look expressionlessly. "I don't want to talk about it, either," Nigel said, the rasp in his voice as perceptible as before.

Sirius realized, with some surprise, that the man had barely spoken a word to him since arriving. It was definitely a good idea not to press the issue, he decided, and turned back to Violet as the most willing to talk. "So, about leaving the grounds?"

Violet blinked at him. "Well, you can't do it," she shrugged, disconcerted, "though Percy's the one who knows about that, he and Hermione..." She looked pleadingly to the other girl.

Hermione reluctantly grinned. "I suppose I had better explain. Though it's quite amusing when you try, Violet."

Her face took on a distinctly sulky cast. "It was a perfectly good explanation for the purpose. You were only confusing the poor boy."

"To quote," Hermione said, "'You-Know-Who can smell Hogwarts on us, and he'll kill us if we leave.'"

Violet flushed, folding her arms and staring downward. "He's a centaur, and he's two years old," she muttered. "It made a lot more sense to him than all your talk about inverted wards and signature detection. So."

Sirius nearly laughed at the playful banter--it wasn't so much different from the way he would have teased any of his friends--but the subject made it difficult to forget the situation. "You-Know-Who kills anyone who leaves?" he asked instead. "But there are resistance groups other places, aren't there?"

"Oh yes, quite a few," Ginny confirmed. "But if we went to any of them, we'd draw attention to them. It's a spell You-Know-Who put over the Ruins several years ago--after he realized it was becoming a haven for Resistance members. We're relatively safe here, but if we left we'd stand out like Hagrid in a room of goblins."

He frowned. "What makes this place safe, then, with everything destroyed?"

Ginny looked to Violet, who looked to Hermione, who shook her head ruefully. "No one knows that for sure. My theories aren't worth much, honestly..."

The crunch of twigs underfoot was the only sound for a moment, as Hermione seemed to need time to gather her thoughts. At last she said, "Whatever it was, we know it happened the day Hogwarts fell. You-Know-Who didn't die, obviously, but for more than half a year there was no sign of him and the Death Eaters were in chaos. It was a terrible blow to our side, losing Dumbledore and Hogwarts, of course; but whatever happened that day, it wasn't You-Know-Who that won. He wanted the school, wanted the symbol, and he lost that forever. And even when he came back, somehow he couldn't come near Hogwarts. A few Death Eaters at a time could get in, but never very many, even after he set the summons on his name."

"You've seen the ones he's sent lately," Violet commented wryly. "Not enough brains to suspect a trap, not enough power to cast a proper Killing Curse, never even felt me jinxing them from behind. The ones You-Know-Who doesn't mind losing, in fact. He used to send better, and more--but after he realized none of them ever came back, he cast the tracer spell, instead."

Sirius nodded in understanding. "And this spell tracks everyone who leaves Hogwarts."

"That's it," Hermione confirmed. "So we've been stuck here for five years now. Fortunately for the resistance, Professor McGonagall had already decided that everyone would be safer in small groups, spread out...less of a target. Not many of us were trapped here..."

"Look, Uncle Sirius!" Violet interrupted, clinging excitedly to his arm and pointing ahead. "That's our garden--we're almost home!"

Putting aside with some difficulty how odd it felt to be addressed this way, Sirius peered in the direction the girl indicated. Sunlight broke through the dark canopy a short way off to shimmer on a tangled mass of plants, most of which he vaguely recognized from years of Herbology classes but wouldn't have cared to try putting names to. It looked less like a garden than like a forest clearing, really, but he supposed that was probably the intent.

"Mama will be so happy to see you," Violet went on, grinning up at Sirius. "Hurry up, Hermione, let us through the wards, I've got to tell Mama!"

She's talking about Evans.

The thought struck Sirius with the force of a slap. He supposed he had known that all along, but only now was it beginning to sink in. The beautiful redheaded Muggle-born witch Prongs had chased all that time, Head Girl and often top of the class, the girl he'd seen studying in the common room only that night--Lily Evans had a teenage daughter. Lily was old.

And apparently, of all the friends he'd made, she was the only one left alive.

It didn't escape his attention that as Hermione muttered spells to allow the group through the invisible protections around the place, both Ginny and Nigel were watching him narrowly with wands drawn. He chose to ignore their mistrust, since there wasn't really anything he could do about it.

Violet dragged him forward rather faster than he might have preferred, past the greenery, downhill and into a dark crevice sheltered by the roots of ancient trees. "Mama!" she shouted. "Mama, guess who it is, it's really him, he said so under the potion and everything!"

The dim crevice widened into a respectable cave, lit from above by pale blue flames hanging in glass jars and from one side by a cheery fire that fed on nothing and gave off no smoke. A cauldron hung above the fire, steaming gently. The woman who looked up from stirring it had thick red hair and vividly green eyes; apart from that, Sirius knew he would never have recognized the Lily he had known in this stranger. Strain and grief had laid permanent lines into her delicate face and stolen the light from her eyes.

"It can't be," she breathed, in a voice that sounded almost as unsteady as Sirius felt, staring. "Padfoot?"

"Evans," he acknowledged shakily, and realized too late that it was possibly inappropriate to call James's wife by her maiden name. Only it seemed wrong calling her anything else somehow.

The woman was seated in a peculiarly shaped chair beside the fire, and gave no sign of rising to greet her daughter. Sirius absently wondered why, and his eyes dipped involuntarily to her feet--he felt his breath catch suddenly.

Where her feet should have been. The frayed, patched robes Lily wore didn't quite hide the fact that her legs ended shortly below the knee, in ugly, blackened masses of scar tissue.

She caught his horrified gaze and snatched for her wand. "Accio!" she snapped angrily, and a thin blanket soared across the room to drape itself across her lap, hiding the damage. "I was careless a few years ago," she muttered.

It explained, he supposed rather dazedly, why Lily hadn't been with Violet and the others in trapping the Death Eaters.

"Sorry, Mama," Violet interjected repentantly, going to her mother's side. "I didn't think to warn Uncle Sirius about that."

"Never mind, it's not important..." Lily wrapped an arm around Violet's waist, not taking her eyes from Sirius. "Hermione...the Veritaserum...?"

"He really does believe he's Sirius Black," Hermione reported from behind Sirius. "And all the details he gave match up, even his Animagus form. But he doesn't seem to remember anything past the age he looks to be--the last thing before he appeared in the Ruins was his seventh year at Hogwarts. The effects are all wrong for a Memory Charm--I thought maybe De-Aging Potion could account for it."

Lily shook her head thoughtfully. "Possibly...but why would You-Know-Who have done something like that?"

"To confuse us," Violet suggested. "But who cares why he did it? Uncle Sirius is alive!" The joy in her smile lit up the room. "He's here, he's safe! He can tell me all about Dad! You will, won't you, Uncle Sirius?" she added anxiously. "All about the Marauders, and Hogwarts?"

"Of course I will," Sirius promised at once. He couldn't have denied her that...

It took a light push from behind to shake Sirius out of his muddled thoughts enough to realize he was still standing in the narrow entranceway. Hermione nudged his shoulder again, impatiently, and inquired, "Are you planning a career as a door? Because I can Transfigure you if you're really set on it."

Sirius hastily moved further into the cave, letting Hermione, Ginny, and Nigel inside. The adult still held his wand as though expecting Sirius to attack, though both the girls' had disappeared somewhere within their faded robes. "He shouldn't be here while we discuss it," Nigel growled. "I don't care what he remembers, he has to be something You-Know-Who cooked up to destroy us, some kind of copy--nobody knows what all dark magic is capable of."

After an instant's noticeable reluctance, Lily nodded. "You're right, we can't take the risk."

She looked saddened by the admission, but there was a grim set to her face--Sirius swallowed nervously. "Er," he said, "you wouldn't--I mean--I'd never do anything to help...You-Know Who..."

"I believe you, Uncle Sirius," Violet said, and there was the same regret in her hazel eyes. "It's just that we can't be sure he isn't using you somehow. We know it isn't your fault, don't worry."

Sirius shook his head, feeling very much overwhelmed. There was simply no argument he could make; what if they were right? He wouldn't know...

If this level of paranoia was necessary, it was a wonder it hadn't driven them all insane.

"I...I'll do whatever you think is needed to keep everyone safe," he gave in, dejectedly.

Something flickered in Nigel's pale eyes at the words, but his expression didn't change as he pointed to a back part of the cave, where magic had permitted a makeshift door. "Stay in there, then. It could be an hour or two; don't come out."

Sirius walked wordlessly into the room and shut the door behind him. Muffled voices muttered spells he recognized, and then all sound from the other side was lost. Sirius sighed, and looked around by the light coming from more of the blue-tinted flames.

His temporary prison obviously served as a bedroom most of the time, probably belonging to Nigel, Sirius guessed. It was irregularly shaped and rather small, no more than eight feet on the longest side. A bed took up a significant fraction of the space, more of a cot, really, narrow with a thin mattress; Sirius wondered idly why no one had Transfigured it to something a bit more comfortable. The corner of a box was poking out from under the bed, most likely holding clean clothes, since there was nothing like a dresser.

The only other furniture in the room was a bookshelf, wedged into the corner between the door and the bed. For lack of anything else to do, Sirius began to examine the books on it. There were a considerable number, mostly on Transfiguration with a respectable section about defensive spells, and Sirius realized after scanning the first shelf that the titles were familiar. He picked one up at random.

Property of Hogwarts Library, the stamp read. Of course Dumbledore would have made sure the books were safely out. Though it was a wonder Madam Pince hadn't killed him for suggesting her collection be scattered.

Assuming, anyway, that the librarian had still been alive herself at the time. Sirius shoved the book roughly back into its slot on the shelf and began to pace. The size of the room permitted no more than three steps each way.

What had happened to him? Hermione had suggested the only answer that made sense to her, but Sirius found it impossible to accept. Memories as traumatic as everything he'd been told had happened didn't just disappear without a trace. If he'd spent that many years as Voldemort's prisoner...

Well, then again, he really didn't want to remember that. Sirius shuddered at the thought. Violet's horrified whisper, the voice of a child speaking of her nightmares: Said he'd--he'd broken you...You screamed...

Given more than a decade to manage it, could Voldemort have broken him so completely that he would serve the Dark Lord? Surely not--but--

If a few months' time had been enough to get James's secret, a secret Sirius would have sworn to protect to his death no matter what...

Was he putting the resistance in danger just by being here?

Sirius sat down on the hard cot, head sinking into his hands. His head spun, whether from the pacing or the unanswerable questions. Or just fatigue. Not counting time spent knocked out, he'd barely slept since eating all the chocolate in the dorm last night.

Except that had been fifteen, maybe twenty years ago.

Sirius flopped backward on the bed, heaving a sigh. Worrying wasn't getting him anywhere; he would just have to trust that the resistance members would figure out whatever Voldemort was plotting. He yawned...no harm in napping a while, since there was nothing else to do.

______________

"Uncle Sirius?"

The surface under him was considerably softer than the rocky ground he remembered, but much too hard to be his familiar four-poster bed, and the young voice calling him brought everything back far too clearly. Sirius rubbed a hand wearily across his eyes and mumbled something incomprehensible even to himself.

Violet was standing beside his borrowed bed, a hand on his shoulder. "Are you hungry, Uncle Sirius?" she asked. "Ginny said you haven't had anything to eat today."

An appealing smell drifted through the open door, and Sirius felt his stomach grumble in response. The thought of chocolate was still unsettling--Would a De-Aging potion really give me that reaction to a memory so old? he wondered--but there was no trace of chocolate in the rich scent. Sirius swung his legs over the side of the cot willingly enough, and managed a smile. "Food sounds wonderful."

"Come on, then--everyone's eating together tonight," she informed him, gesturing toward the door. There was a worried note in her voice, Sirius recognized now, and she didn't return his smile.

Wondering a bit nervously what was bothering her, he stretched his arms over his head for a moment to ease the bruised pain that had just begun to make itself fully known, then stood up. "What's happened, Violet?" he asked. "They're not going to--to do anything to me...?" Surely their paranoia wouldn't go so far as to kill him. Though Ginny's brother had sounded perfectly willing to do so...

"Nobody's going to hurt you," she reassured. "Nigel's still arguing that it must be some kind of a trick, but he hasn't really managed to convince anyone. We have to be careful, of course, but they're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Hermione and Mama both think that this would be out of character for You-Know-Who. The Headmistress-in-Exile thinks so, too."

"Well, that's a relief," Sirius said, trying--and, he was fairly sure, failing--to sound as though it hadn't really bothered him. He followed her out the door. "What do you mean, Headmistress-in-Exile?"

Violet frowned at him. "Well, she can hardly stay here, with Hogwarts being the way it is, can she? --Oh," she interrupted herself, sheepishly, "I'm sorry, I forget you don't know these things...Professor McGonagall is the Headmistress. There was never a chance to see if Hogwarts would accept her, but it's what Dumbledore would want. She coordinates schooling for everyone as well as leading the Resistance."

It was another hint of continuity for Sirius to anchor himself with, and he clung to it. The Gryffindor Head of House was still alive, and still teaching, apparently, if not in quite the ways he was used to.

The room with the fireplace was empty, though the cauldron was still steaming over the banked coals. This seemed to be the source of the pleasant smell, containing a thick stew and not a potion as he had assumed on seeing it the first time. "Where is everyone?" Sirius asked.

"Getting the rest of the meal ready, I expect," Violet replied, taking a ladle from a hook on the wall and leaning over the cauldron. "I promised Mama I would bring the stew, she thought it could do with a few minutes more and it's hard for her to get herself around, much less carry the food."

Of course it would be. Sirius managed, with some difficulty, not to shudder at the thought of Lily's missing feet.

"It's done now," the child continued. Leaving the ladle in the stew, she took a step back, drew her wand, and wordlessly lifted the cauldron off the fire. With ease that spoke of long practice, she directed it in front of her down a passage Sirius hadn't noticed before, not spilling a drop. "Let's go--the dining room's this way."

The stone passage was lit at intervals by yet more of the flickering blue flames, spaced closely enough together to keep the fractured shadows pale against the smooth walls and floor. Looking at the perpetual light, Sirius wondered how many of the people who lived here had good reason to be afraid of the dark.

Violet didn't speak again as they walked, and it didn't take long for the silence to make Sirius nervous. She'd said everything would be fine, and he couldn't imagine her to be lying, but what if the others just hadn't wanted to tell her what they considered necessary?

The worst part was, he still couldn't think of any way to argue against their paranoia...

The tunnel ended in another room that flickered with firelight; here, the arched stone was considerably higher. The only furniture in the room was a sizable table and mismatched chairs to go with it. The delicate carving on the table was identifiable at once--Sirius remembered spending hours studying it, with his friends, in order to make certain adjustments. It was the Hogwarts staff table.

Some of the people sitting around it were equally identifiable. Hagrid caught the eye at once, towering over everyone else and undoubtedly the reason the cave roof had to be taller here. His thick black hair and beard were perhaps wilder and contained more leaves and twigs, but he was comfortingly familiar.

A few seats down was another familiar face: Argus Filch, peering at him with sour skepticism. The former caretaker's hair might have gone a bit grayer, a bit thinner, but the lines in his face hadn't changed a bit.

Violet landed the cauldron gently in its place. "Here we are, Mama," she announced cheerfully. "I'm hungry, can we eat?"

At the head of the table, Lily Evans--no, Sirius corrected himself hastily, Lily Potter smiled and gestured for her daughter to take the seat beside her. The other empty plate was, Sirius saw with a grimace he barely managed to suppress, between the redheaded Percy and a scowling Nigel.

On the brighter side, he noted as he moved toward the chair and sat down, the table was heavily loaded with food. Pitchers of pumpkin juice were evenly spaced down the table, the stew was still steaming, there were bowls of nuts and plenty of fruit in baskets, as well as peeled carrots, celery, and a heaping bowl of salad. There was nothing at all based on grain of any kind. Sirius supposed that growing all one's own food would put some restrictions on the diet.

Sirius pulled his chair out and sat down. He didn't ask what the decision had been. If they were letting him eat with them, they weren't going to do anything permanent to him. Since he was between the two who had been the most hostile to him, they weren't about to trust him. He couldn't really blame them.

Lily tapped a fork on her plate, and everyone looked toward her. She smiled faintly. "I know everyone's hungry. This won't take long." Her green eyes focused on Sirius. "Until and unless more evidence comes to light, we're willing to accept your story, strange as it is. Even Nigel agrees there's not much choice but to call you Sirius Black."

Nigel growled something under his breath. Nobody chose to ask him to repeat it.

"You can't leave Hogwarts grounds," Lily continued, "but we'll provide whatever you need here, if we have it. For safety's sake, you won't be involved in any of the things Voldemort doesn't know about. But you've given sufficient proof that you don't mean us any harm, so we'll return your wand--you'll probably need it for self-defense."

Beside him, Percy smiled wryly at him and handed over the wand. Sirius accepted it, not bothering to hide the relief in his expression. He wasn't quite helpless without his wand, but he certainly felt a great deal better having it. "Thank you," he said politely.

"Please forgive us for the--er--rude welcome," Ginny put in, glancing at her brother. "I'm sure you understand our need for caution."

Sirius nodded. "I don't blame you. And I'm sorry for the way I acted, too. I had no idea what was going on."

"And now let's eat," Lily said briskly, suiting action to words and reaching for the ladle in the cauldron. "Pass your bowls and I'll serve."

On the whole it was an uncomfortable meal for Sirius. Everyone at the table seemed to be sneaking looks at him and quickly lowering their eyes every time he glanced at them--everyone except Hagrid, who didn't bother to hide his curiosity, and Nigel, who seemed to be trying very hard to stare unblinkingly. The suspicion in Nigel's pale eyes hadn't faded even slightly.

Sirius didn't want to ask what kind of meat was in the stew, for fear he wouldn't like the answer, but it was well seasoned and tender, and he took two sizable helpings. All the eyes watching him made him eat considerably slower than was usual, however, and he didn't quite dare to join the conversations. Mostly people were talking about mundane things. He learned, for instance, that Hagrid's chicken flock was thriving, that there was a minor illness going around the centaur herd, and that it looked like a bad season so far for the potatoes. On occasion, however, and in hushed voices, there were mentions of more serious matters. Sirius tried very hard not to listen to these, but it was difficult--there was no sound to block them, since no one seemed to want to talk to him.

Hagrid was the one exception. After the first few moments of strained silence, the half-giant evidently gave up on struggling with the whole question of identity. "Great ter have yeh back, Sirius," he said across the table in a booming voice, with a wide smile.

His sincerity was impossible to doubt, and it made Sirius feel considerably better. "You haven't changed a bit from the way I remember you, Hagrid," he grinned back.

Hagrid chuckled. "You're a bit younger than I remember, but you haven' changed much either." He hesitated, with an uncertain look around the table, and leaned forward. "Wish I could take yeh to meet Aragog--you'd like him. But Lily said that--"

"Don't tell him about Aragog," Nigel interrupted sharply. "Not a word. You heard Lily."

The thick-bearded face took on a hurt expression. "I wasn' going ter, Nigel, I never would."

"Well, don't," Nigel repeated the order, with a glare.

This essentially cut off all conversation from Hagrid, since Nigel spent the rest of the meal glaring at him whenever it looked as though he might speak. Nigel's glares more or less discouraged everyone else, too, or so it seemed to Sirius. Even Violet only smiled tentatively toward Sirius every few minutes, spending most of her time silently chewing.

Under normal circumstances, it would have taken considerably less provocation than Nigel had already given for Sirius to begin plotting some rather elaborate pranks by way of revenge. However, these circumstances were anything but normal. Pranks seemed wholly out of place here, even if he hadn't gotten the distinct impression that suspicious behavior of any kind was liable to get him killed.

At last, in some desperation, he turned to the dark-haired adult. "If you don't want me to know anything the Death Eaters don't know, can you at least tell me what they do know?" he demanded. "You haven't said a word about yourself. Do they know that little about you?"

Nigel's pale eyes flashed dangerously. "They probably know more about me than I know about myself," he growled. "That's what generally happens when they capture and torture someone."

Sirius stared at Nigel. He didn't seem inclined to say any more, for which Sirius couldn't really blame him.

"We rescued Nigel from a Death Eater prison, after You-Know-Who disappeared in the Hogwarts attack," Lily put in, her voice very calm, apparently either oblivious to the tension in the air or else, which seemed more likely, choosing to ignore it. "He doesn't remember anything before that, and none of the other prisoners knew who he was."

"Why not?" Sirius knew even as the words escaped that they were probably unwise--pressing Nigel on the issue certainly wasn't going to make the adult any friendlier.

"Because they were insane," Nigel snapped. "Or worse. Shut up."

Sirius accepted another helping of stew and complied. He honestly didn't want to know.

The meal trailed to an uneasy end. Feeling oddly obliged for the return of his wand, Sirius helped the others clean and carry the dishes to the shelves in a nearby pantry. Lily did most of the cleaning from her place, with an expertly aimed wand and a series of quick commands of Scourgify, which left Sirius with carrying.

On his third trip, a sarcastic sniff from the wall past the cabinet startled him almost into dropping the stack of bowls. A sly face fringed by a sharp beard peered down at him from a silver-and-green background and drawled, "So you're the one all the fuss is about."

The face and voice both were familiar. "Phineas Nigellus!" Sirius exclaimed. He'd seen the portrait of his great-great-grandfather many times in his parents' house growing up, before meeting it again in the headmaster's office. "What's this portrait doing here?" he demanded of Nigel, who stood nearby, watching suspiciously as always. "You're all paranoid about me hearing things, but you're letting this Slytherin hang around listening and probably spying--"

"In case you've forgotten," Phineas Nigellus interrupted, a bit too smugly, Sirius thought, "I and all the portraits are bound to serve Hogwarts. The position of Headmaster is technically vacant, but Hogwarts has made it quite clear that the Dark Lord is a totally unacceptable candidate." The former Headmaster grimaced. "I think I would agree, even if the man hadn't been responsible for wiping out my family's name," he added bitterly. "Regulus and Sirius were the last of the Blacks."

"Well, since I'm alive, he hasn't wiped out the family name yet," Sirius pointed out. Not that he'd ever been anywhere near as proud of the family name as everyone else seemed to be. A family of lunatics wasn't much to be proud of, to his point of view.

The portrait raised one painted eyebrow. "Do you think so, indeed? Well, as overjoyed as I would be to welcome my great-great-grandson back, you'll have to forgive me for expressing my, ah, skepticism." Phineas glanced toward Nigel, and some understanding passed between them, Sirius thought suspiciously.

"Oh, you've met Phineas!" Violet said brightly, coming around the corner just then with the last armful of silverware, and ignoring the warning look Nigel shot her. Sirius felt very inclined to hug her for that. Nobody else seemed capable of bringing any kind of normalcy to the (admittedly strange) situation.

The girl dropped her load into a drawer with a series of clangs, and continued, "It was Phineas who remembered Nigel from Hogwarts, did he tell you? Because their names were alike. That's how we found out his name. We still don't know anything else, though."

"I'll thank you to keep your comments away from my life," Nigel said acidly. "Don't you have anything better to do than hang around this impostor?"

Violet folded her arms defensively, her face betraying her injured pride. "What's wrong with you, Nigel? You never talk to me this way!"

"You don't understand," growled Nigel. "You're too willing to trust this boy--"

"And you wouldn't believe him if he brought a whole trunk full of proof!" Violet retorted. "Everybody's willing to give Uncle Sirius the benefit of the doubt except you, Nigel, and I--"

Nigel slammed his fist down on the table for emphasis. "There isn't any doubt! None of you know what I--"

"Well we would know if you would tell us!" Violet shouted.

They glared at one another, breathing hard with the force of their anger. Violet, Sirius decided, had definitely inherited her mother's temperament, red hair or not. The argument made him distinctly discomfited, but since it was about him, there wasn't much he could say--probably if he tried he would only make things worse.

Nigel's glare turned on Sirius. Violet set her chin defiantly and stepped in front of Sirius. This did not actually intercept Nigel's glare, since Violet was more than a head shorter than Sirius, but Violet then proceeded very deliberately to stick out her tongue at the older man. Sirius twitched uncomfortably.

"What's the problem here?" a new voice cut in before Sirius was tempted to try interrupting in spite of the probable consequences. He turned with considerable relief to see Percy fixing everyone with a disapproving frown.

Violet went to Percy at once. "Nigel's not being fair!" she complained. "Everyone agreed that Uncle Sirius wasn't that much of a threat, everyone but him." She pointed irritably at the gaunt man. "He's being rude. He's got no right to be rude."

Percy's lips twitched, but to his credit he didn't smile. "I understand how you feel, Violet, but Nigel just thinks it's better to be too paranoid than to regret--"

The red-haired young man stopped abruptly, and his face paled, freckles standing out like cinnamon on milk. Anxiety tugged at Sirius, and he moved forward to support Percy if necessary, wondering what was wrong.

It wasn't a full second later that a piercing whistle echoed through the tunnels, an echo with no discernible source, warning of a fallen ward, and Percy found his voice and gasped, "They're in, they've broken the third ward! Nigel, get Violet and Sirius to the back tunnels, there's nothing you can do here--go!"

Suiting action to word, Percy had his wand drawn and was halfway across the room before Sirius recovered enough to ask what was going on. Nigel shoved him violently in the direction of a narrow tunnel, rough-edged and dark. He half-turned and found Violet and Nigel hurrying after him, both their wands drawn, and chose not to protest the shove.

Violet was moving quickly, but she cast a confused look at the adult. "This tunnel, Nigel? But it's not--"

"This one--don't argue, there's no time," Nigel replied curtly, with a nervous glance in the direction Percy had disappeared.

"Where are we going? I want to help," Sirius said, pulling out his own wand. "I'm not going to just leave Lily and the rest."

"Can you cast a Patronus?" Nigel demanded.

Sirius hesitated. A Patronus? The seventh-years had been told that spell wouldn't be on the N.E.W.T., he remembered... "I've never tried," he had to admit.

Nigel's face twisted with disgust. "Then you're useless," he said roughly, shoving Sirius farther into the tunnel. Behind, Violet muttered a spell to block the way back, and the dim light from the other room vanished. "Light your wand."

Three wandlights weren't enough to keep Sirius from scraping his leg painfully across a jagged outcropping a few feet into the tunnel. He bit back words unsuitable to Violet's ears as Nigel pushed him forward again. "Even if I am useless, why aren't you helping Lily?" he demanded of the older man.

But it was Violet who answered, softly. "It's dementors coming, Uncle Sirius. Nigel can't cast a Patronus. He doesn't have any memories happy enough." She sighed, and added, "Neither can I. Not very well. And we can't afford to distract Mama and everyone."

Useless, Nigel had said, but apparently they were all in about the same situation. Sirius wondered now whether that look of disgust had really been entirely for his own inability. "All right, all right, I understand," Sirius muttered.

"Everyone's always managed before," Violet assured him, but the worry in her tone spoke louder than her words.

Sirius stumbled over another rough patch of ground, catching himself painfully against the wall. "Where are we going, anyway?" he asked.

"Hogwarts," Nigel snapped. "Shut up."

Gritting his teeth with the effort of holding in several pointed remarks that he was sure wouldn't go over well, Sirius focused his wandlight on the ground and his attention on Violet. It was useless trying to talk to Nigel, or get any answers. Prudently, he lowered his voice. "Is there something wrong with this tunnel?" he asked the girl.

She shrugged, picking her way carefully over a few more loose rocks. "Well, you can see it's not finished. Others are easier to get through. I don't think Nigel wants you to know about them." An apologetic tone, with hints of frustration at the adult, but not defiance. Violet obviously thought the caution unnecessary, but she wasn't going to tell Sirius much, either.

Sirius wasn't surprised. Irritated, but not surprised. He peered at the ground, successfully avoided another outcropping, and completely failed to see the overhanging ledge until it made its presence clear with a sharp, painful blow to his forehead. He recalled Violet's presence in time to clench his teeth on the words that wanted very much to escape.

"Wait," Violet's sharp command cut through his preoccupation. One hand to his head, which felt damp with what Sirius rather suspected was blood, he looked down at her.

Nigel had paused, too, head up, almost as though scenting the air, and snarled something under his breath that had the distinct rhythm of a strong oath. "The rain," he whispered, and Violet nodded grimly, leaving Sirius more confused than before.

A gentle breeze whispered by, tugging the edge of his robe and bringing with it a hint of fresh air, not the earthy closeness of the tunnel. Sirius hissed in sudden comprehension, and fear.

"Do we go forward, or back?" Violet asked. Her tone was calmer than it had any right to be, Sirius thought, but her hand was clenched tight on her wand.

"Forward," Nigel rasped, after a moment. "If your mother and the rest are doing their job, all the dementors will be distracted by now. I'm not taking you back into the middle of that."

Violet nodded acceptance, staring nervously into the darkness ahead. "Sirius," she said suddenly.

He swallowed, unwilling to let fear show in his voice. "Yeah?"

"The spell is Expecto Patronum," she instructed, and demonstrated the wand motion. A glimmering silver wisp escaped, and she frowned at it. "You have to think of...something happy."

"Right," Sirius said, forcing his hand steadier. Dementors--he hated dementors--they'd been some of his worst nightmares growing up. Something happy to counteract them. The way Prongs had looked after that last prank, that was happy.

Except thinking of Prongs reminded him of Violet's hazel eyes, so like her father's but without the carefree spark of mischief that had always characterized James Potter, and of why Violet had never known her father. He wondered whether Violet had ever known what it was like to live without fear, and what her worst nightmares might be.

They went on in tense silence. Sirius nearly ran into Violet before realizing that she had come to a halt, and noting further that the fresh air was stronger here, cool and damp with the night. He peered forward, and saw with dismay that a large portion of the tunnel wall seemed to have collapsed outward, wide enough for easy entrance. The tunnel itself was intact, but it was not at all safe from intrusion.

"Blast it," Nigel muttered, examining the fallen earth by the light of his wand. "It's worse than I thought."

"I'm sorry," Violet said, in a small voice. "This was my section, I--I think maybe I didn't do the support spells right."

Nigel shook his head, face grim in the faint light but his voice gentle. "Our fault for not checking, it was your first try. There just wasn't enough time. Come on--it isn't far now."

The slippery mud made for even worse footing than the rough floor of earlier sections, and Sirius picked his way carefully past the gaping hole in the tunnel. "Some safe route this is," he muttered, not quite under his breath.

It drew an immediate, heated reaction. "If you think I'd give away our real secrets to a Death Eater spy--"

"Please don't fight!" Violet pleaded, glancing behind with fear in her eyes. "If you get angry they'll sense you, they'll come..."

This was inarguable, and Sirius worked on choking back his irritation. The fact that Nigel had fallen silent at Violet's reminder helped considerably.

"Just a little way more," Violet whispered, and Sirius couldn't tell whether she had even meant to say it aloud.

The draft whispering past them from behind grew suddenly colder. Sirius shuddered. "They're coming," he whispered hoarsely, unwilling to look back for fear of what he might see. "Run."

Violet took him at his word and scrambled nimbly ahead, light-footed over the rough floor. Sirius hurried after her, keeping his eyes on the bobbing wandlights ahead. His own seemed strangely dim as his hand tightened on the wood...

There was a hissing breath, sounding far too close. Swallowing hard, Sirius turned reluctantly. He had to hold back the dementors, give the others time to get away, especially if he was the only one with any chance of casting the spell.

A happy memory--a Marauder memory, dashing carefree across the grounds... "Expecto Patronum!" Sirius shouted, forcing defiance into his voice.

Silver mist sparkled at the end of his wand, and a dementor halted, clearly visible only a few feet away. A second hooded figure came forward, unaffected, and Sirius cautiously backed up, pushing down the urge to panic. "Expecto Patronum!" he chanted again, louder, and more silvery stuff floated to block the narrow tunnel.

The chill in the air crept slowly into his bones, and distant voices echoed in his ears...

Against his will, Sirius felt his wand begin to slip from his numb fingers. He clutched it more tightly and tried to dredge up a happier memory, but all he could find were the voices of hatred and fear and despair...

"Uncle Sirius!" Violet's frightened call was shrill, terror in her young voice. Sirius heard it and wondered dimly when he had fallen to the ground. It didn't seem to matter much.

Now Nigel was shouting, too, and both of them tried to cast the same spell, voices mingling in an odd chorus. Sirius shook his head to clear it, and found that someone was yanking on his hand. He tried to stand on nerveless legs, which folded under him. "Go on," he gasped. He couldn't let Violet be hurt, not James's daughter.

She wasn't leaving, though, and Sirius realized that he was going to have to make an effort to convince her he was all right before she would. Summoning his strength, he retreated into his Animagus form, hoping that if nothing else four legs would support him better, and make it impossible for him to drop his wand.

His mind cleared almost at once, the cloud of despair lifting enough to permit some thought, some movement. Padfoot pressed against Violet's knees, trying to get her to move faster, as he growled warningly at the dementors.

The smell of fear was almost overpowering, and the deathly decay of the dementors. Somewhere ahead, though, there was a tang of smoke, the cheerful light of a torch waiting for them as they rounded a last curve, and the lingering aroma of cleaner that indicated Argus Filch to Padfoot's nose, even now, when its scent had mostly been replaced by dust and smoke.

Violet was shouting something incomprehensible, something about collapse. She shoved Padfoot and Nigel forward, toward the safety of Hogwarts' dungeons--well, it actually felt more like a kick, Padfoot decided, resentment seeping through his panic.

The girl inexplicably then chose to pause, turning back, trying once more to cast a Patronus in their defense--but Padfoot could hear how her voice shook, and wasn't surprised when the dementors pressed forward. Desperately, he sank his teeth into the edge of her ragged robes, and yanked her forward with him, past Nigel--if the adult didn't have the sense to run he didn't much care, but Violet was a different matter.

Nigel helped by shoving Violet on, but confirming Padfoot's suspicions showed no inclination to get to safety himself. He was chanting the spell, with no more success than Violet, gleaming mist the only result. And Violet, showing a lack of sense that she obviously got from James, yanked back, struggling to stay near Nigel.

Perhaps the incomplete Patroni were having some effect, though, Padfoot thought, because the dementors were no longer coming so fast as they had been, seemed almost to be wavering, and the cloud of despair didn't seem to be affecting his companions quite as much as before...but there was no time for that, they had to get away, get to safety, no one without a full Patronus could hold off a determined dementor, surely Violet and Nigel both knew that, why they wouldn't run was beyond Padfoot's comprehension...

"Get in here, you idiots!" a new, harsh, familiar voice cried over the useless spells, and all at once Violet and Nigel gave up their apparent competition to be the one at the back and rushed forward. Padfoot stopped dragging the girl and ran full-out alongside her, careful not to trip her, too relieved to wonder at the odd rumbling overhead.

Just behind, where the dementors still approached, the roof of the tunnel trembled, cracked, and collapsed with a roar. Letting out an involuntary yelp, Padfoot scrambled past the end of the tunnel into the torchlight, skidding to the far wall, as Nigel and Violet turned to watch the now-blocked tunnel, their wands still raised. Dust sifted through the air, but the mound of rubble that had formerly been a tunnel no longer moved.

Argus Filch regarded Padfoot suspiciously, but most of the elderly man's rancor was apparently reserved for Nigel. "What possessed you to take Violet through an unfinished tunnel?" Filch spat. "Your paranoia put the child in danger, Nigel--you've gone too far this time."

Returning to human form took a moment's concentration, particularly when Sirius felt as though he was about to collapse as spectacularly as the tunnel. Succeeding, he checked to be sure he still had his wand, put it carefully into a pocket with fingers that trembled with lingering cold, and didn't bother to get up. He leaned back against the stone wall instead and listened to Filch lecture Nigel, with considerable enjoyment--it was exactly what he'd wanted to say and hadn't quite dared. The shadows flickered as Filch swept his torch about in emotional and potentially dangerous gestures.

Nigel wasn't defending himself against the accusations, his face expressionless but guilt evident in his stance. Violet looked even more uncomfortable, looking from one adult to the other. It was she who finally interrupted, quietly. "Maybe it was a stupid thing to do," she agreed as Filch paused for a breath, "but we're all okay, and that's what matters, right?"

Filch grimaced sourly, but didn't argue. "You two had better seal that off before something decides to dig through," he advised.

Seeing that there was no further entertainment to be had, Sirius voiced his own question to Filch, tentatively. "How did you do that?"

The man snorted in disdain. "They build the tunnels for the possibility of invasion," he replied. "I'm as much a member of the Resistance as anyone, even if I am a Squib."

Sirius supposed that was all the explanation he could expect to get. It was enough--it did make sense for the escape tunnels to be rigged to collapse.

"I've got to light the torches," Filch muttered, "if you lot are going to be here for long. You'd best come with me, boy," he added to Sirius.

The icy cold of the dementors had not yet faded from his bones, and his legs felt very nearly too numb to hold him. Chocolate banished dementor-chill, he recalled Moony lecturing them, and a bar of it suddenly seemed the most desirable thing in the world. The sickness he'd felt earlier at the thought of it had vanished without trace. "Is there any chocolate?" he asked.

Filch shook his head. "Not even Professor Sprout could grow proper cocoa beans in this climate, and what little the Resistance does have is needed more elsewhere. Come on--you can walk it off."

Reluctantly, Sirius pushed himself to his feet, keeping one hand on the wall to steady himself. Violet and Nigel appeared to have forgotten all about him, deep in a conversation about how best to seal the destroyed tunnel.

The Squib had opened a small wooden door, within which Sirius could see a stockpile of unused torches. Filch handed him the single lit torch, bent over, and pulled out an armful. There was an empty bracket on the wall, and one of the fresh torches slid neatly into it. At a nod from the elderly man, Sirius touched the flaming torch to the tip of the other, and stood back as it caught and began to burn merrily, bright and smokeless.

They placed the torches at intervals down the shadowy hall, and the lit dungeons looked so much as Sirius remembered them that he could almost pretend that the rest of Hogwarts still waited above. The stair to the ground floor would be just around the corner...

Around the corner, the hall where the stairway had once been was filled with broken rock. Sirius sighed. The illusion had been nice while it lasted.

"I know," Filch said quietly. Sirius looked at him, startled. The former caretaker offered a sad smile--not an expression Sirius had ever thought to see on the familiar face. "Every time it's lit up, I can forget for a moment--just a moment. Then everything comes back. I saw it in your eyes." He broke off, and nodded in the direction of a wooden door. "Go on in there. Torch brackets are on either side of the door. I'll get the last one here."

Dutifully, Sirius entered the room, letting the door swing open and feeling for the brackets. He found one, slipped the burning torch he carried into it, then turned to look for the other--and paused, staring at the far corner of the room, frozen with a sudden chill.

So pallid as to be almost translucent, a ghostlike figure lay hovering about three feet off the ground, shadowed in the torchlight like a thick mist. Sirius frowned--Ginny had said all the ghosts were elsewhere, hadn't she? And this didn't look like any of the familiar Hogwarts ghosts...

A gaunt, hollow face turned slowly toward Sirius as Filch entered the room behind him and lit the second torch. The new light glittered in dark eyes and shone palely orange on a jaunty hat that looked entirely out of place. Bells clinked softly with the weak movement.

Misgiving crept icily into Sirius's stomach. There was something familiar about this being after all.

Filch had finished with the torches and approached. "I never would have believed I could miss the way he used to be," the former caretaker muttered. "But it was part of the way Hogwarts used to be, and..." A slow, regretful shrug, as he looked down. "You look a little better," he addressed the being. "How are you?"

A wheezing thread of laughter drifted from cracked lips. "I'm dying, of course," came the scarcely audible reply. The dark eyes stayed focused on Sirius. "But not quite as fast, maybe. Aren't you going to introduce old Peevesie?"

"You can't be," Sirius blurted out, shock and dismay overriding caution. "You--Peeves--a poltergeist doesn't--doesn't die--you can't be..."

But between the faint remnants of color, the too-familiar voice, and Filch's words, he couldn't honestly make himself doubt the being's identity.

Filch cleared his throat. "A poltergeist exists from the uncontrolled magic and emotions of large numbers of wizarding children," he said gruffly. "Now that Hogwarts is dead, or nearly so, not only are there few children here, but the vast majority of the collected magic has scattered. There isn't enough left for a poltergeist. Peeves is, as he said, dying."

Peeves hadn't looked away from Sirius. "I know you," the faded poltergeist whispered suddenly. "I know you, you were one of mine, you've come back..."

"It's Sirius Black, Peeves," Filch put in.

"Course it is," Peeves whispered, and smiled. As weak as he looked, there was something oddly triumphant about that smile, Sirius thought.

Filch might have noticed this, too, for the caretaker commented, "He does look better than usual. I daresay you have less control of your magic than Violet and the rest have had to learn."

Sirius felt this was a definite insult, until he thought about Ginny's speed with her wand, Violet's five Anti-Disapparition Jinxes cast in rapid succession, and the screams from deep in the forest that signaled their success. Living in a war zone evidently necessitated growing up even faster than being friends with a werewolf had--Sirius never liked to think of himself as being adult, anyway, because adults never seemed to have any fun. No wonder he had more to spare for Peeves than those who now lived at Hogwarts.

Deciding it would be wiser to drop that particular issue, Sirius commented instead, "I'd have expected him to be somewhere else causing trouble. Like the ghosts." Surely in all the world there was still someplace untainted with the fear of Voldemort.

"All the ghosts did leave," Filch agreed, "but Peeves is bound to his origin here, bound to Hogwarts."

The faded poltergeist turned his head away as if to sleep, the dim echo of a smile lurking about the translucent face. Sirius stepped quietly backward, shaken. He'd always liked Peeves; the troublemaker had been endlessly creative and a great help to the Marauders, in taking some of their blame if nothing else.

The footsteps in the hall outside were soft, but Violet's voice wasn't. "Uncle Sirius, Uncle Sirius!" she called, and bounded into the room, face lit with excited relief. "Mama sent a message, all the dementors are gone now, everyone's safe!"

Tension Sirius had almost ceased to notice flooded away from him at the news. He smiled at the girl. "That's wonderful, Violet. Are we going back, then?"

Violet shook her head. "No, that's not what happens. After an attack everyone shelters here in the old dungeons while we reset the wards, and check all the tunnels and entrances, and stuff. When it's an attack on our home, I mean, like this was."

"Makes sense," Sirius nodded. "What do we do, then--just wait for everyone?"

Dark hair tumbled forward as she shrugged agreement. "Sure."

Nigel had entered the room just behind Violet, silently, and his gaze stayed fixed on Sirius all through the conversation. "No," he said now, and there was an odd note in his voice, unidentifiable and worrisome, Sirius thought. "No, I think the boy and I should begin checking the tunnels. And you and Argus should light the torches on the other side, Violet."

Sirius wanted very much to disagree with this suggestion, but something in the adult's pale eyes held him silent. It was Violet who protested, almost at once, "I want to come with you!"

The man gave one slow shake of his head, eyes never leaving Sirius. "Not now, Violet. And don't worry," he added, with a grim smile. "I'm not going to hurt your Uncle Sirius."

Violet began another complaint, but reluctantly subsided when Filch laid a hand on her shoulder and muttered something inaudible. "Well--if Uncle Sirius wants to, I guess," she gave in.

Sirius didn't particularly want to, but he wanted even less to be the cause of another argument, and maybe there would be something he could do to change Nigel's opinion of him. "Let's go, then," he said, trying to keep his hesitancy hidden and afraid he had failed rather badly. Nigel only tilted his head expressionlessly and waved for Sirius to precede him out the door.

"Come on, Violet," Filch advised. "We can have the whole place lit for your mother if we hurry."

Slowly, Violet obeyed, her feet scuffing along the stone floor. Filch's hand rested on her shoulder, in comfort or protection, but as they turned the far corner of the hall, she cast a last glance behind her, hazel eyes sparking in the torchlight, stern and commanding as Lily and James both at their most stubborn. A glance directed not at Sirius, but at Nigel. Sirius felt suddenly far safer, illogical or not.

Nigel led the way down the hall in the opposite direction, back where the torches were already burning. Sirius trailed after, trying to think of something to say. The adult didn't seem to feel any hurry to break the silence, but it pressed in on Sirius with a weight as heavy as stone. Too heavy to force words through.

"You did well, defending Violet," Nigel said at last, turning to face Sirius with a curious expression. His eyes flickered, as one examining evidence and finding an unexpected conclusion. Sirius hoped this was a good thing. "I can't fault you for not managing a full Patronus, given the situation; you were wise to transform."

There seemed very little to say to this. "Thank you," Sirius responded, politely.

Nigel looked around, drawing Sirius' gaze outward. They had passed the site of the now-blocked tunnel, and the hall branched here, one way torch-lit and stretching around a corner out of sight, the other a dim corridor which ended a few feet back in what looked like another collapse of the ceiling. Sirius wondered if that had been a planned trap, or simply part of Hogwarts' ruin.

The sound of a spell made Sirius start for a moment, but it was only Lumos, and Nigel aimed the wandlight into the darker section. "Look in here a moment, if you would," he requested.

There didn't seem any reason not to. Curiously, Sirius lit his own wand and stepped into the short passage.

The walls had been utterly bare in other intact parts of the dungeon, but here Sirius saw the light glint off the frame of a painting. For a moment he thought that it was too shadowed to see the picture itself, but as he raised his wand he realized that the background was like black velvet, absorbing all light. And scattered across were the familiar patterns of stars, as though sprung from his own memory, in those last few moments before everything had changed. However everything had changed.

"I wish I knew what happened to me," Sirius muttered, glaring at the innocuous flecks of light. "That stupid painting's the last thing I remember seeing."

"Is it," Nigel said, turning to look at him. The odd note in his voice was stronger than ever, and still Sirius couldn't quite identify it. "You'd like to know what happened to Sirius Black, would you?"

Sirius nodded, ignoring the adult's implied doubt of his identity. There was no use arguing anymore, really.

Nigel offered a humorless smile, more like a skull's grimace. "Death Eaters came to his home barely two months after the Fidelius Charm was complete. Broke the wards and caught him asleep. You-Know-Who tampered with his mind until he was half insane and had lost all track of time. The secret didn't last long. Then You-Know-Who let him recover, told him exactly how he'd betrayed James and Lily, and used him as light entertainment for the next few years. A useful target for new recruits to practice their Cruciatus on. And to test...other interrogation techniques. A symbol of the fate of blood-traitors, wishing for death and never granted it."

It was all in a low, matter-of-fact tone that only increased the horror of the words. "No," Sirius whispered, denial rising involuntarily in his throat. "No...I couldn't--I couldn't possibly have forgotten...that."

"It didn't happen to you," Nigel snapped, fury flickering swiftly across his face before he looked away. And added, in a harsh whisper, "It happened to me."

Sirius was sure he couldn't have heard properly. "Do you mean," he began, slowly.

The adult leaned abruptly forward, hands closing tight on Sirius's shoulders. "I know who you are now," Nigel hissed. "I don't know how you're here, but I know who you are--you can change it!"

Frightened, Sirius tore away and stumbled back several steps, colliding hard with the stone wall. Nigel advanced on him, face feverishly bright with a desperate hope. "I thought I was strong enough," the man rushed on without explanation, "I thought I could protect them, I was wrong, I didn't even hold on to their secret long enough for them to be warned, it's my fault James is dead, my fault..."

Sirius couldn't move. No sound would come from a mouth gone suddenly paper-dry. Wholly unnerved, he stared at the adult's limp black hair, pale eyes...

"Listen to me," the other said hoarsely, "listen to me, whatever you do, don't let James make you his Secret-Keeper--whatever happens--swear it!"

He worked his mouth, swallowing hard. "But you're saying," he managed, hearing the unnerved quiver in his voice, "you're saying that you're--that you're me."

The adult's hands gripped his shoulders again, painfully tight. "Swear you won't let it happen," he growled. "Or I'll kill you. That might work just as well."

Sirius found that his breath was coming short. It wasn't too late after all, maybe--he could still change it--he hadn't failed James yet! He raised his chin with a new determination. "I won't let it happen," he promised, staring at the face aged by despair, the haunted eyes, his eyes... "You--you're really...?"

"I was Sirius Black," the man confirmed, the words full of a bitterness Sirius could imagine far too well. "Lily and the rest rescued me from one of the Death Eater hideouts that fell after You-Know-Who's setback at Hogwarts. I told them I couldn't remember my name." He shook his head, slowly. "I remembered everything well enough...I couldn't face Lily. After so many years of torture, no one recognized me but the portrait, and for whatever reasons of his own Phineas claimed that he recognized me from Hogwarts and that my name was Nigel."

Sirius wasn't inclined to spend much thought on this. "And I can get back?" he asked with rising eagerness. "How?"

The adult--it was hardly possible to think of him by the name he claimed they shared--fixed him with a glare. For the first time, Sirius wondered whether he might be somewhat less than sane; years of torture certainly couldn't be beneficial to one's mental health, and his eyes...

My eyes...

No, it really wasn't possible to think of them as the same.

"Swear to me you won't let it happen," Nigel insisted harshly. "You won't be the Secret-Keeper. You won't betray James. Swear it."

It was hard to meet the desperation in those haunted eyes, harder to think of all that had happened to change the face Sirius ordinarily saw in the mirror into this drawn, haggard countenance, where years of pain and guilt had etched their grim records. It was impossible to deny the demand. "I won't be the Secret Keeper," Sirius promised his future self. "I would rather die than betray James. I won't let it happen. I swear."

Nigel's gaze lingered for a long moment, as though weighing his sincerity. The adult didn't speak.

Uncomfortable under the scrutiny, Sirius fidgeted for a moment before impatience got the better of him. "You can send me back?" he demanded. "Because you know if I can't get back then this whole promise thing is pretty worthless."

Nigel shook his head slightly. "I know you'll go back--and before too long--or else everything would already have changed, from me not being there. But I can't send you back. I don't even know how you got here." He looked at the star-flecked picture, speculative. "But I wonder..."

The echo of a strained chuckle drifted to them from somewhere down the hall. Both Nigel's eyebrows went up in what looked very like a sudden and not wholly welcome realization. "Peeves!" he hissed.

The poltergeist floated toward them around a corner, pale and drawn, but smiling with a wicked glitter in his dark eyes that made Sirius very sure that Peeves hadn't changed much. "Did someone call me?" the being inquired in feigned concern. "Is the poor little boy lost in time? Does he need help getting home?" He chuckled again, darkly.

"What do you know about this, Peeves?" Nigel demanded.

Peeves managed to look deeply hurt. "You ought to be thanking me, you know," he informed them. "Poor Peevesie's spent years setting this up. I couldn't even play pranks, it took so much out of me." He rolled his eyes expressively. "You'd think Hogwarts would be more cooperative about saving itself, honestly."

"It was you who brought him here?" Nigel asked, sounding no less incredulous than Sirius felt. "You've barely moved for five years!"

The poltergeist rotated slowly upside-down, peering scornfully at them. "Surely you didn't think that a thousand years of magic disappears quite that quickly? We're dying, Hogwarts and I, but we're not dead yet. I haven't moved for the past few years because I've been trying to convince Hogwarts to do something about the situation. I told you that already."

"You never mentioned this to anyone," the adult said suspiciously. "We've got as much reason to want the past changed as you do. If that's what you wanted, why didn't you ask for help?"

Peeves blew a long raspberry. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "I don't have to explain myself. You lot wouldn't have the first idea where to start, even if you'd all agreed with me." He grinned, and twisted right side up again, seated cross-legged in midair. "Besides, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun."

"I don't trust you, Peeves," Nigel told him bluntly. "How do I know your idea of fun won't just make everything worse?"

The poltergeist held up one hand solemnly, though the glitter in his eyes didn't fade in the slightest; if anything, it had grown. "I swear by Hogwarts Castle and all the jokes I've ever made," he said, with a grin. "I will not permit this to change the world for the worse."

"Fine, great," Sirius interrupted at last, patience failing, "but how do I get back?"

Peeves sighed gustily as though in irritation at how slow they were. "The stairway, naturally. Isn't that how you got here?"

"It can't have been a stairway down here," Sirius protested. "I landed out on the surface."

"The painting is here, so the stairway is here," Peeves explained, speaking very slowly, with exaggerated gestures. "Need that in simpler words?" he added. And pointed to a flight of stone steps that led upward into darkness.

Sirius was quite certain that the stairs hadn't been there a moment ago, but he was too anxious to get back to waste time arguing with a poltergeist. He sprang for the steps, set his foot on the first--then paused.

He'd promised Violet he would tell her about her father, about the Marauders. If he did change things, maybe it wouldn't matter. But still, a promise was a promise, and he was leaving Violet without keeping it...

Only, he wasn't really leaving, was he?

"Nigel," he said quietly, turning.

The man raised an impatient eyebrow. "What are you waiting for?"

It sounded sillier than he'd thought, now that he had to explain it. "I--I promised Violet, you know, that I'd tell her about--us. The Marauders. I just--if this--if it's not possible to change the past, I wouldn't want to--to break my promise..." He trailed off.

The adult stared at him for a moment, and something indefinable softened in the pale eyes. "I always thought that Violet--that everyone would hate me, if they found out who I was," he whispered. "But they didn't hate you." He looked away. "If I have the time before history changes, I'll tell them. I'll keep your promise."

"Thanks," Sirius whispered. "And I swear, I won't let it happen, I won't let James die, not if there's anything I can possibly do to stop it."

The familiar-yet-unfamiliar face quirked a faint smile. "I know... Good-bye, Sirius."

"Good-bye..." The boy hesitated. The name came awkwardly, but he felt he had to say it. "Good-bye, Sirius."

There were no more words to say. He took a breath and walked into the darkness of the stairwell. Within a few steps all the light from below had faded.

Slowly, so as not to miss a step in the pitch black, he felt his way along the wall and set his feet on the stone, until it seemed as though there had to be a good many more steps than were possible in the ruined Hogwarts dungeons. He took this for a hopeful sign and became a bit more confident.

But the step a few paces upward apparently didn't exist. His foot plunged down into emptiness, and he threw a hand out to catch the wall, but it apparently didn't exist here either, and he spun downward--

Not again, he had just time to think, and then his head crashed against the stones of Hogwarts one more time and the world went away.

______________

Cold. Alone. So lonely...

Dying but not yet dead. Not yet. Magic layered for so long takes longer than this to fade, longer than...time, time slips away and back and away...

There were children once. Magic and laughter and love. And the darkness crept in, and the laughter faded.

White hair and phoenix song, darkness and the basilisk.

Whispers through the dark. The last Headmaster is dead, and there will be no other, for darkness hissed in the survivor's eyes and the choice was made.

Meant to teach and protect not to fight, never to fight. Better this slow death than accept what he would teach; loveless heart and splintered soul. A final lesson to a student who would not learn.

Students. Everything given for the students. What other purpose is there?

Gone, now, fragments scattered and all is lost.

Lost. Dying...alone.

You asked the question and you receive the answer. Hear. Attend.

It shouldn't end this way...

Don't let it end this way--

______________

There was a voice calling his name. It was a familiar voice, and he couldn't think why he should be so terribly relieved to hear it. Everything seemed blurred, and the pain in his head stabbed through all efforts to remember.

"Padfoot," the voice was hissing, low and anxious. "Padfoot, you've got to wake up. If we don't get out of here, Filch will catch us."

There was something about Filch in the memory he couldn't find, but what was it?

"Padfoot!" A hand on his shoulder, shaking him roughly.

He forced his eyes open, blinking, dazed. Worried hazel eyes met his gaze, eyes that he knew somehow were twice over connected with everything he couldn't quite remember. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. "Prongs?" he mumbled.

Relief entered his friend's face. "Finally! Come on, Padfoot, we've got to get back to Gryffindor Tower before someone finds us. I've got the Invisibility Cloak and the Map--here, get up..."

Sirius pushed himself approximately upright, accepting James's hand and pulling himself the rest of the way to his feet. His head pounded hard enough that he wondered whether it was going to explode. "Ow," he muttered, rubbing the location of the pain and finding a rather large area that was tender to the touch.

James Potter had turned back to the Marauder's Map, studying it by his wandlight. "Filch is headed this way, but if we take the second floor shortcut we'll be able to avoid him. You all right, Padfoot? We'll have to hurry."

"I'll be fine," Sirius answered automatically, and winced at the sound of his own voice in his aching head. "Eventually," he added, softer.

They hurried through the hallways, the Invisibility Cloak tucked under James's arm, since it was considerably faster to run without it and they had the map to warn them of anyone coming. It wasn't until they were on the third floor and well away from Filch that James asked, "What were you doing down there, anyway? Did someone knock you out? I checked the Map when I saw you weren't in the dorm."

Sirius grimaced. "There was this stairway on the fourth floor. It went out from under me and landed me there." Except there seemed to have been an awful lot in between the falling and the landing, if he could only remember it all...

"Oh, the trick stairway," James said knowledgeably. "Don't you remember, we found that thing third year? Shifts around to different parts of the castle, but it's never any use. Odd that it landed you in the dungeon from the fourth floor, though, it usually doesn't go down more than one floor. No wonder you were knocked out. Good thing you aren't hurt any worse, really."

"I suppose," Sirius said with ill grace. He did remember the trick stairway now--they'd spent much of that night third year pushing one another down it and then finding each other again because it had randomly separated them. He should have been able to recognize it, even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

But it didn't explain the odd images swimming through his mind...

Hallucinations, Sirius decided, not quite as firmly as he would have liked but firmly enough to set the matter aside. None of it felt real now that he was awake, which was one good sign, and for another thing the whole premise didn't make sense. Why would James ever resort to a Secret-Keeper to defend his family? James would never want to hide behind someone else--James could defend himself against anything Voldemort could throw.

Marginally satisfied with this logic, Sirius nonetheless shivered at the fading memories. The thought of being captured still terrified him, which he supposed explained why he'd dreamed about it. And the dementors--even the thought made him feel a lingering chill in his bones...

"Hey, Prongs?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Is there any chocolate around?"

James stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and stared at him incredulously. "Are you kidding?" he demanded.

Sirius shrugged. "I just really feel like eating some chocolate."

James threw his hands in the air, his dim wandlight tracing a wide arc across the hall. "I give up. You win."

"What?" Sirius asked in mild confusion.

"You've just eaten all the chocolate we could beg, borrow, or steal in Gryffindor Tower, and you're asking for more. I hereby swear that I will never dare you to eat chocolate ever again."

"Oh." Sirius thought about this. "I did do that, didn't I?"

"Yes," Prongs said dryly, "you did, Padfoot."

Sirius definitely remembered feeling unsettled at the thought of more sweets, but somehow it had vanished during his time...unconscious, because he could not possibly have been where he remembered being. Did a promise made to a dream count? If dementors met in a dream could make him feel this cold, maybe it did. If it ever happened that James needed a Secret-Keeper, Sirius would definitely not let it be him. That much made sense, even if it was from a dream. He would be the first one anyone would think of, which would put James in danger. But he didn't especially want to think about it.

"So I guess that means there isn't any more chocolate around," he mentioned to James regretfully.

"Not any that I could find, believe me."

Sirius sighed, and put the whole matter behind him until there was actually something he could do about it. It had probably been a dream. He hoped it had been a dream.

Even so, it bothered him. Dreams shouldn't have real effects. And--"I really did want some chocolate..."

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