Chapter 134 — The Hours Still Left

Severus put his written account on the Headmaster’s desk. His shoulder throbbed as he withdrew his hand; he had refused Poppy’s request to return for further treatment until this was settled, and the prospect of another argument with her was beginning to seem restful.

‘Cornelius has it in my hand and in my words,’ he said. ‘Minerva has brought the children’s statements. If he continues to call this a rumour, it will be because he has chosen not to read them.’

Dumbledore checked the signature before setting the pages beside the others. ‘I have asked for an immediate review of the order,’ he said. ‘He has refused to delay the transfer while it is considered.’

‘Black must not be handed to those creatures.’ Severus waited for an answer, watching the older man’s fingers come to rest against the papers. ‘You know what they tried to do tonight.’

‘I know.’ Dumbledore met his eyes without offering a reassurance. ‘I am trying to prevent him from giving them another opportunity.’

Mercer’s name appeared in several places on the uppermost page. The child had been at the centre of nearly everything Severus had just been required to describe, and was now in a hospital bed with the marks of Lupin’s claws across his shoulder.

‘And afterwards?’ Severus asked. ‘Does your other plan still require Ken’s son?’

‘It requires a decision I have not asked him to make.’ Dumbledore moved a small photograph away from the edge of the desk. Severus recognised Ken amongst the figures and looked back at the statements before the sight could distract him.

‘He is thirteen, Albus. Stop answering me as though courage makes him older.’ He kept his hands at his sides, resisting the urge to push the papers back across the desk. ‘You intend to put something dreadful in front of that boy and call it a choice.’

‘I intend to explain what it would mean, including the reasons he might refuse.’ Dumbledore left the photograph where he had put it. ‘The other course is already under way.’

Severus looked up sharply. For a moment he ceased to notice his shoulder; he had known there was another course, but hearing that it had begun made the room feel smaller.

‘You may not survive that,’ he said. Dumbledore nodded, quietly enough that Severus wanted to make him answer in full, until the words sounded like something a man could sensibly agree to do.

‘You will tell Mercer enough to understand what you are asking,’ Severus continued. ‘You will not use his father to make refusal feel like a betrayal.’

‘I promise you that.’ Dumbledore held his gaze, and did not withdraw the promise when Severus remained silent.

There was nothing else Severus could extract from him tonight. He turned towards the door, then stopped with his hand against the wood.

‘Deal with the child we have in the hospital wing first,’ he said. ‘There will be no decisions about the Dark Lord tonight.’

He left the statements concerning Black open on the desk. The question of whether anyone would act on them followed him down the stairs.

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I woke with my hand half closed on the blanket, expecting stones underneath it. Then Ron asked Hermione to stop scraping the plate quite so thoroughly, and the hospital wing came back around me. The clock showed twenty past six.

Hermione had washed her hands and found food. My portion waited under a cover on the table, cool by the time she helped me sit high enough to reach it.

‘Pomfrey said to eat when you woke,’ she told me. She moved the plate nearer my good hand before I could try leaning towards it.

‘Did she say anything encouraging?’ I moved my shoulder experimentally and stopped as the dressing pulled.

‘That you hadn’t been out of bed while you were asleep.’ Hermione handed me a fork with the expression of someone who considered that a considerable achievement.

‘She’s in quite a good mood about it,’ Ron added. He pushed his empty glass across the table and asked for more water.

I ate a few mouthfuls before attempting anything else. The pain now occupied particular places instead of my whole body; my knee was stiff and my shoulder allowed very little movement, but the room no longer tilted when I looked across it.

‘Hagrid came back,’ Hermione said. ‘The centaurs found Lupin further into the forest. They’ve told the staff where he is, and they’re keeping people away until morning.’

‘He’s alive?’ I put the fork down while she nodded. The answer mattered more to me than I had expected, after seeing what my paw had nearly done to his head.

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‘Still changed,’ she added. ‘And people have heard there was a werewolf. Some saw you fighting him; there are already messages going to parents.’

Ron looked at the support under his leg. ‘He’ll have to explain,’ he said, then picked up the glass Hermione had filled for him.

‘So will we.’ I thought of the empty cord falling onto the grass. Some people would hear the word werewolf and decide they needed nothing else, but there were questions about why we had been close enough to get hurt that deserved answers.

Harry moved in the next bed. Hermione stood, but Pomfrey was already approaching and asked us to give her room. She spoke his name and waited until his eyes found her face.

‘Sirius?’ he asked. I told him he was alive, and Harry turned towards me, his gaze catching on the dressing at my collar before it reached my face.

‘I saw my dad,’ he said. He watched me as though I might know where his father had gone while he slept. ‘At the water. When the light came.’

Pomfrey helped him sit and put a glass in his hands. I waited until he had drunk before asking whether he had seen a face, and he looked down into the water.

‘The stag,’ he said. ‘I saw the stag, and I thought it was him. It felt like him.’

‘There was a stag,’ I agreed. ‘And a lion. They came from the far bank, but I couldn’t see who sent them.’

He whispered his father’s nickname, Prongs, and held the glass between both hands. We already knew what James’s animal form had been; I could understand why Harry, opening his eyes with his godfather lying still beneath his arm, might have wanted that silver shape to mean more than it did.

‘I don’t know whose it was,’ I told him. ‘I won’t pretend I do.’

He nodded slowly, still wanting a different answer. Pomfrey gave him chocolate and asked about the cold, his leg and what he remembered before waking. When she went to fetch a dose of something she warned him he would dislike, he found his wand on the table and took it with unusual care.

‘Where’s Sirius now?’ Harry asked. Hermione told him Hagrid had said the Dark Tower: treated for his injuries, but still held by the Aurors. Harry began pulling the blanket back before she finished.

‘We told them,’ I said. ‘Snape did too. McGonagall took our accounts to Dumbledore, and we’re waiting for an answer.’

He stayed sitting up, chocolate softening in one hand while the other gripped his wand. When McGonagall returned to question him, he began before she had taken her chair; I finished eating while she sorted what he had seen from what he had been told.

At Snape’s arrival, Harry looked once towards Hermione. ‘I asked for her wand to make light,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know I was going to use it on him.’

McGonagall wrote that down. Harry went on without asking her to stop, and I left him to give the account in his own words.

***

After she had gone, I opened the pouch on my lap. My fingers went twice to the pocket where the Patronus covers had been before I made myself stop feeling for paper I had already used.

‘What are you doing?’ Hermione asked. She watched me take out the brush, then looked at the bandage across my palm.

‘Preparing replacements. I won’t cast anything here.’ I tried holding the brush as usual and found the dressing in the way.

‘Let me support the board,’ she said. ‘And stop if it hurts. Sitting down doesn’t make everything count as resting.’

I took two treated blanks from the remaining paper and laid out the first pattern. The strokes needed more care with my fingers stiff and my shoulder held close; halfway through, I put the brush down until I could trust my hand again. Hermione waited without trying to finish it for me.

The work brought back Lupin’s classroom and his advice about choosing a memory I could reach. At the pool I had needed more than a picture of an afternoon: I had needed to want the next one badly enough to keep hold of it. I had not told Luna any of that yet.

I pictured trying to explain, and the way she might wait while I made it sound less frightening than it had been. I would have to catch myself doing that. She deserved to hear what had happened, including how much I had wanted to get back to her.

‘You’re smiling,’ Hermione said. She shifted the board carefully while I put the finished piece aside to dry.

‘I was thinking about someone.’ I checked the joins in the pattern, though my attention had wandered considerably further than the ink.

‘I gathered.’ She made room for the second blank without asking for a name, and Harry watched me begin again.

‘What did you think about, when you made the lion?’ he asked. His wand rested across his knees as he looked at the paper.

‘People I wanted to come back to. Things I still wanted to do with them.’ I could give him that much, but there was no set of instructions in it that would let him borrow what I had felt.

The second piece took longer. I stopped to drink, then again when my hand would not hold steady enough for a narrow line. By the time I had checked both patterns and folded clean covers around them, it was nearly seven; preparing them had not restored the strength I would need to cast.

I put the two replacements into the pouch and tied it shut. Hermione took the board away before I could decide to check anything else, and for once I did not argue about having done enough.

Dumbledore arrived a few minutes later carrying McGonagall’s statements. Harry sat straighter as soon as he saw the papers, but the Headmaster told him he had read his account before he could begin it again. He drew the curtain to give the four beds some privacy and sat where we could all see him.

‘The Minister accepts that Professor Snape has given a serious account,’ he said. ‘He insists that Pettigrew be produced before he reconsiders Black’s case, and he has refused to postpone tonight’s transfer.’

‘He can’t ask a Dementor to wait afterwards,’ I said. Dumbledore looked at me and agreed with a single word, without any of the gentleness he usually put around an answer.

‘I have sent the statements with a request to halt the order. There has not yet been a reply,’ he continued. ‘Sirius remains in the tower while the Aurors complete their account of his capture. Cornelius intends to have him brought down at half past seven.’

‘You won’t let them?’ Harry’s fingers whitened against the blanket. He had put down the wand, but his hand stayed close to it.

‘I shall not stand aside and watch them take his soul. Holding the Ministry’s officers here by force would put people at risk, however, and I would prefer to avoid that confrontation.’ Dumbledore turned towards Hermione. ‘There may be a way to give us the time we need.’

Her hand rose to her collar. I remembered the lessons she reached without passing through the corridors between them, and her promise to explain when she could.

‘You have something that can recover hours already lost,’ Dumbledore told her. ‘Three, I believe, would be enough. But you must explain before anyone agrees to use them.’

I looked from his face to Hermione’s hand. We had less than half an hour before the Minister meant to move Sirius, and she was reaching inside her robe as though there might actually be more time in there.