Chapter 129 — A Different Way Back

Pettigrew tried Lupin’s name twice, as though the first attempt had failed because he hadn’t said it properly. Black moved towards him, and Snape stepped into his path. I stayed beside the closed door, watching the hands spread on the floorboards.

‘We have very little time,’ Lupin said. ‘Answer plainly.’ Pettigrew looked towards Harry and began a sentence about James, which Harry stopped before he could finish.

‘Don’t use my father.’ He spoke quietly. Pettigrew fell silent more quickly than he had when the rest of us shouted.

‘Everyone thought Sirius was the Secret Keeper,’ I said. ‘How could you give Voldemort something you weren’t keeping?’

Black closed his eyes, then answered before Pettigrew. ‘We changed it. At the last moment, I told James to use Peter. Everyone would watch me; nobody would think he was the one they needed.’

Lupin’s face tightened as he asked why he hadn’t been told. Black looked from him to Harry and admitted he had suspected somebody was passing information, without knowing who. He had helped put the secret into that person’s hands.

Pettigrew shook his head urgently. ‘You don’t know what it was like,’ he said. ‘What he could do.’

‘Did they make you the Secret Keeper?’ I asked. His gaze darted towards me, but his answer concerned what Voldemort would have done to him if he refused. Snape told him to answer the question, and eventually Pettigrew nodded.

Harry drew a slow breath. ‘And you told him where they were.’ Pettigrew said he had no choice, bringing Black forward hard enough that Snape had to catch him with an arm across his chest.

Snape’s face twisted as the movement pulled at his injured shoulder. Black scarcely seemed to notice him; he kept looking at Pettigrew, saying James and Lily had trusted him and let him into their home. Lupin’s wand trembled while he watched.

‘I thought you were dead,’ Lupin said. ‘I grieved for you.’ Pettigrew put out his hands, trying again to explain how frightened he had been.

‘You let them take Sirius,’ I said. ‘After making everyone think you died trying to stop him.’ He answered that he had needed to get away. ‘You had twelve years to tell someone.’

His eyes moved to Ron. Ron pulled his uninjured leg closer and told him not to look at him like that, so Pettigrew turned towards Harry instead. I stepped between them as he moved, catching his wrist when he reached for my sleeve and pushing it away.

‘Stay where they can see you,’ I said. He tried pleading past me, invoking Harry’s father again, but Harry told him he should have helped James when it mattered.

Pettigrew sank onto his knees. Black tried to pass Snape once more and asked Harry to let him finish. Harry said no, with enough force to make both men stop.

‘I want Dumbledore to hear what he just said,’ Harry told him. ‘I want the people who’ve been calling you a murderer to know he was here, alive, saying it.’ Pettigrew began thanking him, and Harry turned back sharply. ‘I haven’t forgiven you.’

Then he asked Black to come with us and let Pettigrew answer for it. Black’s shoulders lowered. He moved away from Snape and sat on the damaged bed with his hands pressed between his knees, agreeing at last without looking at the man on the floor.

I turned towards Snape. ‘You saw him change,’ I said. When he confirmed it, I asked whether he would tell Dumbledore.

‘I shall give my account, Mr Mercer. You will give yours.’ That was enough to let me release a breath I had held until my chest hurt. Lupin found a length of sound curtain cord and bound Pettigrew’s wrists while Snape searched him. He had no wand.

‘He could turn back into a rat,’ I pointed out. Snape said that was why someone would keep watching; the cord was no substitute. Lupin took hold of the binding and told Pettigrew where to stand, keeping his hands visible.

I gathered the two spent pieces beside the hinge. The marks had burnt through as they had in the practice room, leaving nothing more to call on. Harry came over while I put them away and thanked me, his eyes moving towards Black.

‘For stopping me,’ he said. I began reminding him that he had stopped Black too, but he shook his head. ‘It isn’t quite the same.’

I admitted it wasn’t. Harry watched me fasten the pouch, then repeated that he wanted to know what I was planning when I could tell him. I promised he would. The anger between us had eased enough to let the request stand clearly on its own.

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Across the room, Ron shifted and immediately regretted it. Hermione caught his shoulder before he fell back against the wall, and Snape looked from the bandage to the stairs. He said Ron wasn’t walking through that passage.

He took a blanket from the least damaged part of the bed and laid it across two lengths of timber. Under his wand, the wood straightened and the cloth pulled taut, forming a narrow litter. I watched the joints settle into place, recognising how much of the work I couldn’t have repeated.

Harry and I supported Ron while Hermione kept his injured leg steady. Black came forward, stopped a few feet away and offered to help. Ron looked at him over Harry’s shoulder.

‘You can stop biting people,’ he said. Black accepted the answer without trying to smile.

‘I’m sorry. I saw him getting away again, but that doesn’t excuse what I did to you.’ Ron drew a breath through his teeth as we lowered him onto the blanket, then told Black to remember that part.

Snape raised the litter just above the floor. Harry and Hermione went to either side to guide it around the damaged furniture while Lupin took Pettigrew towards the door. Black remained near me as I opened it, his hands empty.

‘Why did he look at you like that?’ he asked quietly. Pettigrew turned his head, and I waited until Lupin made him face forwards before answering.

‘I used him in experiments when I thought he was Ron’s rat. Hermione helped. We shouldn’t have done it without asking, and I lied afterwards.’ Harry looked back from the litter, but Ron answered before anyone could make a joke.

‘They’ve told me. We’re dealing with it.’ Black glanced between us, and whatever he had intended to say became a simple acknowledgement. We followed the litter onto the stairs without turning Ron’s pet into a story for his entertainment.

Snape lowered the litter at the turn, keeping Ron beneath the ceiling while Harry and I guided it towards the opening downstairs. Even with the spell taking the weight, the passage required care. At the narrowest points, we had to stop while somebody checked the space ahead.

Lupin stayed in front with Pettigrew, halting whenever Snape told him to. Black walked behind them, hands visible. Harry kept his light raised while Hermione watched Ron’s leg, and for a while the only conversation concerned roots, turns and how much room remained beside the blanket.

‘There wasn’t ever a Scabbers, was there?’ Ron asked eventually. I matched my pace to the litter instead of answering from somewhere ahead of him.

‘There was the rat you looked after,’ I said. ‘The person inside chose to lie to you.’

Ron stared at the ceiling passing overhead. ‘I keep thinking about things I told him.’ I could find no answer that made that less painful, so I stayed beside him until he looked back at me. ‘Don’t buy me something to make this go away.’

‘I won’t surprise you with a replacement. If you want another pet later, I’ll help you look. Help pay, if you want, but you choose.’ He considered that, then said later. I agreed and left it there.

Harry glanced towards Pettigrew. The Sneakoscope Ron had given him kept going off in the dormitory, he said; he had thought something was wrong with it. Ron suggested there might not have been, and I watched Pettigrew’s head turn at their voices.

‘It might have been warning you,’ I said. ‘It still wouldn’t have told us his name.’ Lupin made Pettigrew look ahead again, keeping hold of the cord as the passage bent.

Hermione asked Black why he had attacked the Fat Lady. Her voice was low, but the tunnel carried it. He said he had known Peter was inside and the portrait wouldn’t let him through.

‘She was protecting the students,’ I said. Black’s face tightened as he looked back.

‘I know. I lost my temper, frightened her and tore the portrait. She hadn’t done anything wrong.’ He turned forwards when Pettigrew shifted beside Lupin. The professor tightened his grip and told him to keep walking.

Black explained that the searches had made it harder to move near the castle, so he had used the Shack. I asked how he knew the passage, and Lupin answered this time, describing the arrangements Dumbledore had made so he could attend Hogwarts.

The house was where he went to transform. The passage took him away from the other children, and the Willow discouraged anyone from following. The noises people heard had been his; Dumbledore had allowed the stories about the house to grow because they helped keep people away.

‘We found out,’ Black said. ‘James, Peter and I learnt to change so we could be with him.’

‘In fifth year, after a great deal of work,’ Lupin added. He glanced towards Ron’s litter. ‘We thought being able to do it meant we could manage everything that followed.’

I thought of McGonagall, the review I hadn’t waited for and the ruined pouch kept among my things. I told Black I had been learning what I could carry when I changed, with McGonagall’s help, and might want to ask him about it when we had time.

‘An expanded pouch?’ he asked, looking towards my waist. I said yes, and he warned me against experimenting in a hurry. When I said I had learnt that part already, a smile began on his face, then faded as Snape called for another stop at a tight turn.

We reached the roots at last. The light outside had thinned towards evening, leaving the hollow beneath the tree dark by comparison. Lupin pointed out a knot on a low branch, and Black pressed it with a long piece of wood found beside the entrance.

The restless movement overhead stopped. Lupin told us to get clear, and Snape brought the litter out while Harry and Hermione guided it beyond the lower branches. I followed with Black; Lupin came last, keeping Pettigrew close and looking towards the castle as soon as he was outside.

‘We need to keep moving,’ he said. Snape lowered Ron onto a level patch and sent red sparks high above the tree. Another flare answered from the direction of the main gate.

‘They know where to look now,’ Snape said. He flexed his wand hand, then knelt to check Ron’s support. ‘A moment. His foot is turning inwards.’

Hermione settled beside the litter. I held the timber while Snape adjusted the binding, with Lupin watching Pettigrew a few paces away. Black stopped by the path and looked up at the castle, one hand closed around his other wrist.

Harry looked from him to us. I told him to go and speak to his godfather while we finished, staying close enough to hear when we were ready. Ron agreed from the litter, saying he had enough people telling him not to move.

Harry released a breath that nearly became a laugh. He crossed the few paces to Black, who turned as he approached. I looked down at the support in my hands, giving them what little privacy the open ground allowed.