Another Prisoner, Another Professor

"So, what, Dobby thinks Black might go mental and kill you?"

"I guess," said Harry, just before being hit in the mouth by a jet of milk. "Ugh - how long have we got to keep doing this?"

"For the remainder of the period, Potter," said Professor Sprout, overhearing him. "No, Miss Patil, the center of the flower - there you are, very good. Let's see your plant, Miss Brown - oh dear. Longbottom, could you - Longbottom? Come and help Miss Brown with her Lilac, please, it's just squirted milk up her nose."

The Lactating Lilacs were, by far, Harry's least favorite Herbology assignment. They were leafy bushes about the height of a tall desk, and thick with light purple flowers that gushed heavy streams of milk. The class's task was to bottle the milk and then stick corks in the flowers once the flow began to ebb; they had been at it for five minutes and already the insides of the greenhouse windows looked as though they had been doused with watered white paint.

"Well, he obviously thinks Lupin's worse," said Hermione, whose hair, Harry suspected, was starting to curdle. "Otherwise he'd want you to leave Hogwarts like he did last year."

"Of course Lupin's worse," Ron said, banging a cork down deep into a lilac blossom. "Black would have to do an awful lot to be worse than Lupin - he could betray one friend to You-Know-Who and kill twelve people with a single curse and he'd still be behind. I don't know, though, I don't think trying to strangle Dobby is that bad of a sign - I wanted to strangle the little nutter myself after that Whomping Willow snapped my wand. A whole year of rubbish marks - "

"Dobby didn't make you take your dad's car, Ron," Hermione said. "You - "

"We didn't know if Mum and Dad could come back the other way! What were we supposed to do, not go to school?"

Hermione ignored him. "I don't think Dobby told us much more than what we already knew," she said, reaching for another cork. "We already figured whatever Black has is something that makes him dangerous at times. That's really strange, though, how Lupin was the one who could calm him down. Lupin must have been good at hiding what he was really like..." She tilted one of her flowers into a fresh glass bottle. "You know, the more that I think about it, I don't really blame Black for not wanting Swift to go to court with Hagrid."

"You're joking," said Harry, at the same time that Ron said, "You're mental."

Hermione looked defensive and more than a little flustered. "Well, obviously none of us want Buckbeak to die, but think of where Black's coming from with this. He thinks the Malfoys killed his brother, and he's probably right. If he gets on their bad side - more on their bad side, I mean, enough where it would be worth it to them to kill him and risk getting caught - what's going to stop them from doing him in?"

"He's the best Defense Against the Dark Arts professor we've ever had," Ron said. "He's really good - "

"Oh, don't give me that," Hermione snapped. "Being a really clever wizard doesn't mean some other clever wizard can't kill you. I bet Harry's parents were really good at magic, but You-Know-Who still killed them."

"I wasn't saying anything about Harry's parents!" Ron protested, just as a torrent of milk from Seamus's Lilac hit him squarely on the back. "They got killed by You-Know-Who, not the Malfoys - "

"The Malfoys aren't stupid," Hermione said. "They've stayed out of Azkaban after all the stuff they've been accused of and they got Riddle's diary into Hogwarts last year. They're awful people and they think they're better than anyone else because they're rich and they're purebloods, but they're not stupid. If they really wanted to kill Black, he'd have to really stay alert to survive. And I wouldn't put it past them to kill someone for getting them to lose their court case, especially not a case about Draco getting his arm torn up."

"I wouldn't put it past them to kill someone for getting them to lose a court case about Draco getting a nosebleed," Ron said.

"Exactly. And Black can't really afford to die now, can he? I mean, no one can really afford to die - "

"I hope the Malfoys can," said Ron, but Harry gestured at him to be quiet.

"No one can really afford to die, but Black can't die now, especially - he's got to be with Harry as much as he can, he wants the Malfoys to go to Azkaban for murdering his brother, he wants Lupin caught. It's not like he doesn't care at all about Buckbeak, that's why he got Swift to give Hagrid advice. But if he's got to chose between Buckbeak dying and him dying, he's going to go with Buckbeak." She looked at Harry. "I know maybe you don't understand, you're the one who drank Neville's potion to save Trevor - "

"No, I get what you mean," Harry said. "Besides, that was really stupid of me to do - afterwards I had this weird thing for a while, every time I touched somebody's skin I'd have these, I don't know, visions or something - "

"Oh wow," said Ron. "Why didn't you tell Trelawney? You could have got extra credit! Maybe I'll get Neville to make me some more of that stuff, I think I probably failed my last homework - "

"What do you mean, visions?" Hermione asked Harry.

"Like - like all of a sudden I wasn't where I really was, I was someplace else for a few seconds." He tried to think of how to describe it. "I think one time in one of the visions I was in McGonagall's classroom, and Cho Chang - this was before I knew who she was, I'd just bumped into her in the corridor -she was there and she'd just - "

"Hey, look!" Dean shouted. "Up there, it's flying over us - "

A dark shape about twice the size of a man was flying over the greenhouse roof, the noise of a Muggle engine following it as it passed overhead. With the milk all over the walls and ceiling, Harry couldn't see what it was; Dean and Seamus ran to the front wall of the greenhouse and started wiping the milk off the glass, everyone else crowding around them and trying to see over their shoulders.

"Look if you must and get it over with," said Sprout; Harry wasn't looking at her, but her voice sounded as though she were rolling her eyes.

"I think it's going to land," Lavender said. From what Harry could see through the milky glass, the shape was descending to the ground about half a mile away, near the wall of the castle. It touched the ground, skidded for a little ways, and then split in half, one half coming in their direction and the other half staying put.

"Somebody's coming over here," said Neville. "He's running - "

Parvati squinted. "I think it's Professor Black."

"A teacher you see every day, entirely uninteresting," said Sprout. Harry wondered if she had any idea how wrong she was about the second part. "Now get back to work."

"But he's coming over here, Professor!" Seamus protested.

"I don't care what he's doing, Finnigan, now keep corking your Lactating Lilac before it floods this place."

Harry took one final look and returned to his plant. Black was indeed heading towards the greenhouse; about half a minute later, there was a knock on the door and everyone looked up from their plants again.

"You're disrupting my class, Sirius," said Sprout as she opened the door. "What exactly is that thing - "

"Motorbike," said Black; Dean whistled and Sprout frowned. "I'm sorry, Pomona, but I've got to borrow Harry for a moment."

"How do you keep getting out of class so often?" Lavender whispered to Harry.

Professor Sprout seemed to realize she was defeated in the battle of keeping the class's attention. "Fine," she said. "As a warning, he's covered in about three pints of milk - "

"That's fine," Black said quickly. "Harry, come on."

Harry set down the corks he was holding and went to the door, making squelching noises with his every step.

The February air was cold on Harry's wet skin. From the look on Black's face, he suspected what was coming. "They convicted Buckbeak," he said.

Black exhaled heavily. "Yes."

The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, Harry in his dripping robes and milk-spotted glasses, Black with his dark winter cloak and heavy-soled boots. The cloak was big for Black and the pewter clasp, with its metal tendrils, looked as though it were trying to grab him by the throat.

"There'll be an appeal," Black said abruptly. "It's not over yet - "

"I know you're my godfather," Harry said.

He had not planned to say it, and the minute the words left his mouth he could not quite believe that they had. Black, it seemed, had not expected this either; he gave a short gasp and then, after a moment, sat down in what was left of the snow.

"I'm not angry at you or anything," Harry said, feeling a desperate need to fill the silence. "I haven't figured out everything, but I know you're ill with something - I know you've tried to get me to come live with you, I know that was what my parents wanted you to do. I know you used to live with Lupin, too, Dobby told me that - "

"Dobby?" Black said. He looked slightly dazed. "The Malfoys' house-elf?"

"Yeah. He, er, he came to see me today, he likes me a lot. And I know you probably can't tell me what you're ill with - "

Black got to his feet. "Come on," he said, taking his wand from somewhere within the depths of his cloak. With one flick every trace of milk on Harry was gone. "We're going inside."

"The greenhouse?"

"The castle."

"What if Sprout - "

"You can tell her you were with your legal guardian," said Black, and started towards the castle door.