Chapter 133 — An Account Worth Hearing

‘Stay awake, Mercer.’ Snape’s fingers pressed against the side of my neck. I opened my eyes, though I could not remember deciding to close them, and tried to turn far enough to see Harry.

‘Breathing,’ Snape said, following my glance. ‘Both of them.’ He moved Sirius’s arm clear and turned the two bodies carefully onto their sides. His mouth tightened when the movement pulled at his injured shoulder.

‘There were two Patronuses,’ I told him. My right arm would not lift properly when I tried to point across the pool, so I used the other. ‘From over there. I couldn’t see who cast them.’

‘Then you will not get up to look.’ He took Harry’s wand from the stones and put it inside his robe before raising his own above the bank. Red light broke through the branches, and an answer came almost at once.

Hagrid reached us with his crossbow caught against a low branch. He pulled it free, shaking water over the shore, and stopped when he saw Harry lying beside Sirius.

‘Do not shake him,’ Snape said. He held up a hand before Hagrid could kneel. ‘Come down carefully. There is very little room.’

Hagrid squeezed between the bank and the water, one broad hand hovering over Harry’s head. ‘I followed yeh from the hut,’ he told me. ‘Lost yeh behind the rise. Professor McGonagall came after Dumbledore sent for help, an’ then we heard the howlin’.’

‘Ron?’ I asked. I remembered the litter under the Willow and Hermione holding the knot while we tried to move him.

‘With Madam Pomfrey. Hermione went with him; we got the stretcher out.’ He glanced back as more footsteps reached the bank. ‘Help’s here, Oswald. Yeh can stop tryin’ ter stand.’

McGonagall came down behind him with two strangers in dark travelling cloaks. She crouched on my uninjured side and asked where I had been struck, then eased my shirt away far enough to inspect the shoulder. I told her about the claws before she could ask about teeth.

‘Madam Pomfrey will examine it,’ she said. She covered me with a cloak, and the warmth hurt as it reached my fingers. ‘Keep that arm still.’

One of the strangers stopped beside Sirius and said his name. His companion drew a short chain from beneath his cloak, and I pushed myself onto an elbow before McGonagall’s hand steadied my back.

‘Wait. He’s injured,’ I said. The man looked towards me, still holding the chain. ‘Peter Pettigrew was in the house. We brought him out alive.’

‘We were told there might be a second fugitive.’ The stranger turned to Snape rather than ask me anything else. ‘Was he there?’

‘I saw Pettigrew resume human form,’ Snape replied. ‘He admitted passing the Potters’ whereabouts to the Dark Lord. He escaped during Lupin’s transformation.’

Neither man moved for a moment. Then the one beside Sirius straightened and looked directly at Snape. ‘You will give that account to the Minister. Black remains in our custody.’

‘Then attend to him while he is in it,’ McGonagall said. Her hand remained against my back as I tried to look round her. ‘He is unconscious, as you can see.’

The first man knelt to check Sirius’s breathing and the wounds along his side. His companion put the chain away long enough to help prepare him for moving, and they spoke quietly together. Pettigrew’s name had changed how they looked at Snape; it had not made either of them step away from Sirius.

‘Dumbledore needs to hear this before they take him anywhere,’ I said. I had to stop halfway through to breathe, which made it difficult to sound as urgent as I felt.

‘He will.’ McGonagall helped me settle back against the bank. ‘Severus, go with Black. I shall bring Mercer.’

Snape stood with more care than he usually allowed anyone to notice. He told the strangers that the Headmaster was at the castle entrance, dealing with their colleagues and the Dementors, and suggested they explain where those creatures had chosen to hunt. One man looked towards the empty air above the pool before helping lift Sirius.

Hagrid gathered Harry into his arms, supporting his head. I tried to stand when McGonagall offered her hand, but my knee folded as soon as I put weight on it.

‘That settles it,’ she said. She conjured a stretcher, helped me onto it and drew the cloak over my feet. I did not have enough strength left to argue about what it settled.

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Above the bank, the trees opened onto the castle windows. I watched them move between the branches until the motion made me close my eyes, and heard McGonagall tell somebody to clear the path ahead.

***

Madam Pomfrey cut my shirt open at the shoulder. I told her they were claw marks before she asked, and she gave me a look that suggested the news had already reached her.

‘I heard you the first time. Now let me look.’ Her light travelled along the wounds while I watched her face. ‘And you were in your animal form when this happened?’

‘Yes.’ I moved my fingers when she asked, then held still while she tested the feeling down my arm. Only after that did she begin cleaning the shoulder, which gave my left hand a strong reason to grip the blanket.

Ron lay across the ward with his injured leg supported above the mattress. Hermione sat beside him in her muddy outdoor things, holding his water glass. She began to rise when she caught me looking.

‘Stay there,’ I said. ‘He’s got more excuses for needing you than I have.’

‘Only one legful.’ Ron tried to grin, then saw what Pomfrey was doing and stopped. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Deep enough that I do not want him testing it.’ Pomfrey put down the cloth she had been using. ‘You may both practise being still. I would welcome evidence that either of you knows how.’

Harry had been put in the bed beside mine, his wand on the table where he could reach it when he woke. Hagrid remained at the foot of it until Pomfrey sent him for fresh blankets. I kept checking the rise of Harry’s chest while she finished dressing my shoulder.

She treated the scraped palm and examined the knee I had hurt at the Willow, then made me drink water before allowing questions. Something for the pain followed. By the time she helped me into a clean shirt, my own lay cut and bloodied in a bowl beside the bed.

‘Was he bitten?’ Hermione asked quietly. She had set Ron’s glass down, but stayed in the chair as Pomfrey settled the covers over me.

‘I have found claw wounds,’ Pomfrey answered. ‘He will remain under observation, and he will stop volunteering for further injuries.’ She looked at me for the last part, leaving no doubt about who was expected to arrange that.

I nodded and accepted the chocolate she put into my good hand. The ward clock showed half past five; after the darkness by the pool, I found it difficult to believe we still had the whole evening ahead. I concentrated on eating slowly until McGonagall returned with a chair and her notes.

‘The Headmaster has asked the Minister to suspend any action against Black while the new evidence is examined,’ she said. She sat close enough that I would not have to raise my voice. ‘I need your account of what happened in the Shack.’

I began with the room, Ron on the floor and Sirius facing Harry. When I reached Pettigrew’s change, she stopped me to ask where everyone had been standing and which parts I had actually seen. The questions made me separate what I knew from what I had expected to happen.

‘Sirius said they switched Secret-Keepers,’ I told her. ‘Peter admitted telling Voldemort where to find them. He said he was frightened.’

‘Are those his exact words?’ she asked. Her quill waited over the page until I admitted I could not remember the whole sentence. She recorded that too, without asking me to improve it.

Ron and Hermione answered the questions that concerned them. Where our memories differed, McGonagall took the accounts separately, rather than asking us to agree which one sounded better. Harry would have to give his own when he was awake.

‘Professor Snape’s telling him too?’ Ron asked. He looked towards Harry’s bed and lowered his voice. ‘Even after Harry knocked him over?’

‘Professor Snape is giving his account now. What happened to him requires an explanation; it does not alter whether he saw Peter Pettigrew.’ McGonagall closed her notes and stood. ‘I shall take these to the Headmaster. You three are to rest.’

She had not promised Sirius would be free when Harry opened his eyes. I wished she had, though I was beginning to see how easily we would have believed her if she had promised something she could not give. I watched her carry the notes out and hoped there was enough in them to make someone listen.

Hermione moved her chair between our beds once the door closed. She asked what had happened after we entered the trees, and I told them about finding Sirius, the water freezing and the figures coming down towards us. Some parts were still too close to describe for long.

‘Mine held them back at first,’ I said. ‘Harry’s too. Then the light broke, and I used the other piece.’

‘Did it work?’ Ron asked. He leaned towards me without trying to move his supported leg.

‘It was a lion.’ I looked at my empty hand, remembering the paper leaving it. ‘A whole one. It got them away from Sirius, but I couldn’t keep it there.’

‘Long enough to matter,’ Hermione said. She was not smiling, which helped more than I expected. I could think about its shape for a moment without seeing the hood over Sirius’s face.

‘Two others came after mine went. Another lion and a stag, from across the pool.’ I described the light as well as I could, though I had no names to attach to it. Snape had arrived from our side; I had not seen anyone behind the brightness on the other bank.

Ron looked towards Harry. ‘Perhaps whoever it was will tell us when he wakes up. They can’t just save everyone and go home.’

I hoped somebody would come and explain. The stones thrown into Hagrid’s hut and the movement between the trees bothered me too, but I could not connect an unseen hand at a window to an unseen caster across a pool merely because both were mysteries. I had enough things to report without quietly turning a guess into another one.

Hermione took the chocolate wrapper from my hand. I had been folding and unfolding it without noticing, and she flattened it against her knee before telling me to sleep for a bit.

‘You should eat something,’ I said. ‘And wash your hand. There’s mud all over it.’

‘I can manage the order, Oswald.’ She inspected the hand and put it back in her lap. ‘I’ll stay until you’re asleep. Then I’ll find some food.’

Ron made a small sound that might have been a laugh. I lay back before it became another conversation I was too tired to finish, listening to glass touching glass and Pomfrey telling Hagrid that three blankets were sufficient. The bed stayed warm while the sounds gradually lost their edges.