Rating:
PG
House:
The Dark Arts
Ships:
Remus Lupin/Sirius Black
Characters:
Remus Lupin Sirius Black Harry and Hermione and Ron
Genres:
Drama Romance
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Prizoner of Azkaban
Stats:
Published: 12/03/2004
Updated: 06/24/2013
Words: 120,615
Chapters: 65
Hits: 86,935

Another Prisoner, Another Professor

Marauder

Story Summary:
AU. In Harry's third year he must learn the various truths about the new DADA teacher, Professor Black, and an escaped convict, Remus Lupin. SB/RL.

Chapter 15 - Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Summary:
While Ron and Hermione go to Hogsmeade, Harry helps Black and his house-elf carry boxes to Black's office, where the two of them talk over a couple of butterbeers.
Posted:
05/10/2006
Hits:
2,181
Author's Note:
I wrote and re-wrote this one a few different times before I was satisfied with it; hopefully it's all right now. :) I really can't wait until I get to writing the Shrieking Shack scene. Thanks for everyone who's sticking in there despite the lack (so far!) of Remus and of slashiness. :D


Everyone else is going to Hogsmeade on Halloween but Harry.

"You sure you don't want to sneak out with your dad's cloak?" Ron asked again, shoveling the last of his pancakes into his mouth. "I know dementors can see through them, but it's not like the dementors are going to attack Honeydukes, right?"

"No thanks," said Harry. "They'd probably think I was someone suspicious because of the cloak. I'll be okay, really." He had no idea what he was going to do for the entire day while everyone else was off eating sweets and buying jokes, except perhaps take a nap. It had been weeks since they'd snuck into the library in the middle of the night, but Wood's fanatically strenuous Quidditch practices were beginning to wear on him. "Bring me back a few Chocolate Frogs, okay?"

"We'll bring you back all of Honeydukes," said Hermione, her voice straining to sound cheerful. Harry could tell she felt a great deal of pity for him.

Malfoy was in the entrance hall, waiting in line for Filch to check off his name on the list of students allowed to visit the village. "Oy, Potter! Staying away from the big scary dementors?"

"Have fun," Harry said to Ron and Hermione, and was about to turn around and go back upstairs, when the other half of the double doors opened.

At first it looked to Harry like a stack of cardboard boxes with gnarled feet was walking into the entrance hall, but as the boxes walked past him, he saw that they were being carried by a very old house-elf, who was muttering under his breath and gritting his teeth as he stared at the line of students. "Master makes Kreacher carry boxes for blood traitor and Mudblood brats, Kreacher's mistress would cry if she knew..." Harry caught as the elf walked by. He was followed by Professor Black, out of breath and carrying a large battered wooden box that seemed incongruous with his elegant blue robes.

"Oh!" said Parvati, who was in line just ahead of Ron and Hermione, "is this your house-elf, Professor?"

"Yes, this is Kreacher," said Black offhandedly. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Kreacher, be polite and say hello."

The elf held the boxes stretched out ahead of him and somehow managed to bow. "Kreacher greets young miss," he said in a low, croaking voice, and added, in an undertone, "whoever she is, is she a Mudblood, Kreacher does not know - "

"That's quite enough," Black snapped. "Go upstairs and wait for me in my office."

The box seemed to be about to slip in his hands. "Professor," Harry said hesitantly, "do you want any help carrying that?"

"That would be great," Black replied. There was a slight gasp in his voice. Harry reached out and grabbed one of the side handles; together he and Black lowered it slightly so they could both take a handle and carry it up the stairs. Harry glanced at Ron and Hermione and shrugged.

"What's in this, anyway?" Harry asked as they reached the first floor.

"Dark artifacts," said Black. "We're going to have a unit on identifying and destroying them once we finish with dueling next week. Hopefully there are enough between this box and the boxes Kreacher's carrying to go around."

"Dark artifacts?" Harry asked. "Is that - safe to teach to third-years?"

"Oh, I think so," Black said. "It depends on the size and the power of the artifact. Besides, it's really about time I cleaned out my attic."

Before Harry had time to decide what he made of the last sentence, they had reached Black's office, where Kreacher was beginning to open the smallest of the boxes, his long snout sniffling as his fingers pried back the cardboard. Black hurriedly set down the wooden box. "Kreacher, don't touch that!"

"Kreacher must do as Master says," said the elf, tugging on one of his hairy ears and bowing low to the ground. Then, as he had done with Parvati in the entrance hall, he continued to speak in a lower voice as though they could not hear them: "But he does not want to, what would Kreacher's mistress say, Master is a bad wizard to take her things and plan to destroy them - "

"They don't belong to her anymore, Kreacher," said Black, folding his arms over his chest and staring down at the elf, who looked back at him with watery, bloodshot eyes. "They're mine, along with the house, and I don't want to hear another word today about 'Kreacher's mistress.'"

Harry thought he was beginning to grasp what the situation was. He noticed a picture of a little girl with dark hair on the wall behind Black's desk; she and Black had similar mouths and her nose was a smaller, more feminine version of his.

"Now go home," Black said to Kreacher. "I'll tell you when I need you." Kreacher glared at him, made one last ironic bow, and disappeared with a crack.

Black shut the box that Kreacher had begun to open. "I'm sorry about him. I've tried to stop him from being such a nasty little piece of work, but he's been trained that way for almost his entire life."

"Did he belong to your wife's family, then?" Harry asked.

Black gave him an odd look. "What?"

"Well, your ex-wife, I mean."

"I've never been married - oh! Oh, because of 'Kreacher's mistress.'" Black ran one long-fingered hand through his hair and sat down in one of the red velvety armchairs he had in front of his desk. "He's talking about my mother."

"Oh," Harry mumbled, feeling rather embarrassed. Now that he thought about it, really, the little girl in the photograph could be loads of people besides Black's daughter, perhaps not even family.

"That's all right." Black gestured to the second armchair; Harry sat. "My mother and I were sort of divorced in a way, we were estranged. The only reason I ended up with anything when she died - well, it's a bit complicated, but basically I was the only one she could give it to. You're lucky that she never made an official will - "

"Me?"

"Yes, you, because if she had, she almost certainly would have left everything to Draco Malfoy's mother."

Harry imagined Malfoy with an attic full of dark artifacts and control over a venomous muttering elf, and shivered slightly. Black smiled. "So his mum really is your cousin?" Harry asked.

"Yes, she is. Which is probably the only true rumor you've heard about me." The corners of his mouth were twitching. "Well, I won't keep you any longer, you'll want to catch up with your friends."

"They're in Hogsmeade," Harry said. "I can't go."

Black looked surprised. "Why not?"

"My uncle - he's a Muggle - he wouldn't sign my permission form."

"Oh." The surprised look shifted to thoughtful and his eyebrows furrowed. "Oh," he said again, and then stood up, walking behind his desk and crouching down to open a bottom drawer. "In that case, I don't suppose you'd like to join me while I taken a moment to have a bottle of cold butterbeer?"

"Sure," Harry replied; he felt pleased with this turn of events. In Black's sunny office with its comfortable chairs and very ordinary-looking papers and quills on the desk, it was easy to dismiss Hermione's concerns about him, not that Harry had had very many in the first place. "What's butterbeer, sir?"

"It's sort of like cold liquid butterscotch with bubbles - well, it can be warm, too, but I think it tastes rather disgusting that way." He stood up again, holding two glass bottles of golden liquid by their necks. "Most people drink it when they go to Hogsmeade, so at least you'll have one thing you didn't miss."

The butterbeer was very chilled, and tasted like what Harry imagined butterscotch candies tasted like; he'd never actually eaten one, as the Dursleys had never allowed him to have any sweets. "So," he said, after a couple of sips, "it isn't true that you traveled around East Africa killing nundus?"

"Well, maybe there are one and a half true rumors about me," said Black. "I did travel around East Africa for a number of years; the rest of Africa too, and a few parts of Asia. I was working collecting ingredients for an apothecary. No nundus, though I did have to kill and skin a number of boomslangs."

"Did Kreacher come with you?" Harry asked, having a sudden image of Kreacher muttering through the African grasslands.

"No, Kreacher stayed at home. I try not to use Kreacher for anything I don't absolutely need him for; I'd free him and be done with him, if it weren't for the nagging feeling I have that I'd be loosing a menace on an unsuspecting world." He tipped his head back and swallowed around one-third of his bottle of butterbeer. "Besides, he'd probably go to work for Narcissa - that's Malfoy's mother."

They sat in silence for a moment, until Harry asked, "What sorts of things are in those boxes?"

"Things that look completely ordinary, mostly," Black replied, "and that's the problem with them. They aren't like dementors; the danger doesn't come at you right away, necessarily. That reminds me, I've been meaning to talk to you about the dementors."

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"There isn't anything weak about you because of how strongly they affect you," said Black. His voice had dropped to a lower, gentler tone. "That's the way that they affect most everyone who's had terrors and traumas in their past. What they do is force a person to remember their worst experiences - that's why they guard Azkaban. The Ministry thought that having to relive every painful memory in a person's life was a fitting punishment for criminals. There are ways to fight them, but - "

"Could you teach me?" Harry asked eagerly, imagining himself flinging spells at the dementors and watching them crumple to the ground.

"Yes, I could," said Black. "It would require work outside of class, though; I have a feeling it will be a much longer process than something that can be accomplished in a few weeks."

"I don't care," said Harry. "I just want to be able to do something to stop them."

Black rose from his seat. "Tell me next class when you've got the time to do it. I don't want complaints that this is cutting into too much of your time from any of your professors - or from Oliver Wood, for that matter," he added, and grinned. Harry smiled back; his mind was full of vanquished dementors. "Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave, I'm going to unpack the artifacts and several of them can be particularly nasty."

"Okay," Harry replied. "Thanks, Professor." He left the office and practically leaped up the stairs to the Gryffindor Tower, feeling more free and hopeful than he had in weeks.