Chapter Text
Harry Potter's face was stamped on the front page, just like the last three days. A new lie each day, with thousands of liars as collaborators. Nothing new in the British magical world for the past fifteen years, really. But Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley were not as at peace with the events as the rest of the occupants in the cursed house of Grimmauld Place.
Ron was forbidden to talk to his mother if it was about Harry once more. Dumbledore had told Molly and Sirius that they couldn't contact their friend during the summer; the unstable political climate put them in more danger than usual. They didn't want Harry to worry, they said.
But he would anyway, he'd even be furious because they weren't allowed to tell him anything. Ron knew it, the best friend’s sixth sense firmly told him that Harry would be furious with both of them for abandoning him over the summer. It was like second year all over again, except this time Ron and Hermione knew what was happening, and Harry was the only one left in the dark.
"I don't like this at all, Herms," the redhead stomped around the room in frustration.
Grimmauld Place, in Ron's opinion, was ugly. Ugly like only dark and abandoned houses could be, ugly in the sense that he hated the opulence that covered it and yet was so malignant. The only advantage of being there was escaping his brothers and being able to see Hermione, but it didn't make up much for the fact that Ron missed his spacious yard and the fresh breeze of the Burrow.
"I know, Ron, but what can we do? Dumbledore said—”
“For the tits of Morgana, I don’t give a frog's bald hair what the headmaster said! Is he the one who will have to endure Harry’s anger? No. Is he the one with a best friend trapped in a horrible Muggle place after the most powerful dark wizard ever, who, by the way, is hell-bent on killing said best friend, and who can’t do anything because they tell him to just wait?! No!"
Ron finished his rant panting, his cheeks flushed with anger and his freckles standing out horribly.
Hermione finally put aside the horrible book she was carrying. She looked at her friend thoughtfully. She was worried about Harry, yes, but she also trusted blindly in anything Dumbledore said. But Ron was no longer so sure. He was definitely wrong, at least on this occasion.
Both had stopped receiving letters weeks ago, even when Snape and Dumbledore had allowed them to add an extra sentence to the parchment to ask if Harry was okay, they no longer received letters from him. Before he stopped, Harry used to send them two Muggle sheets each, asking what was happening in the magical world. Now he hadn’t replied to anyone, not to him, Hermione, Lupin, or even Sirius.
Ron was on the verge of doing something typically Gryffindor and suicidal. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know how to speak through the Muggle “tell-phawn” or how cars worked without being magically altered, he was about to march through Muggle territory just to see if Harry was okay, even if he was angry with them for not being able to give him more than measly words scribbled on parchment.
Always the voice of reason, Hermione threatened to tell his mother what Ron was planning to do. She argued that it was just over three weeks until they could bring Harry back. But bringing him only a couple of days before the start of the school year was an insult. When before they had been able to take him away from the Dursleys earlier. But the situation was more tumultuous than they were being led to believe. Even they hadn’t been able to eavesdrop enough, and the adults didn’t tell them anything concrete.
"If we go, Ron, we won't be able to take Harry with us." Hermione ran her fingers through her thick, curly hair. "Basically, we can only see him and then leave. In and out, just a quick hello."
Ron smiled, victorious at having convinced Hermione.
"Thank Merlin, I wasn't sure I could navigate Muggle villages without your help."
"They're neighborhoods, Ron, and you're right, you couldn't."
They both packed a single backpack, a Sneakoscope, various leftovers from Ron's mother’s cooking, and a few newspapers, so they could inform their friend, though Hermione made him promise not to say anything about the Voldemort situation.
Early in the morning, there was little movement in the house despite already having been called to breakfast by Ron's mother. Only his mom, Professor Lupin, Sirius, Hermione, and himself were at Grimmauld Place. The elusive members of the Order hadn't been around since the previous night, the twins were at Lee Jordan’s house until the next Friday. Percy was avoiding them, Bill was still in Romania, Dad was working and pretending his job wasn’t on the line, and Charlie was with Fleur, but his mother didn’t know that.
With his mother at the back of the house locked in the kitchen and Sirius hiding somewhere in the upper rooms, it wasn’t difficult to simply walk out the front door. They couldn't use the Floo Network, their mother definitely had a warning spell on it if anyone tried to use it, and it would wake that horrible portrait of Sirius's mother in the process.
The house was always shrouded in a grim silence, the walls waiting for some curse to rebound and the portraits waiting to scream at the slightest provocation. But outside, in Muggle London, everything was incredibly noisy.
Ron watched eagerly as all the cars passed by. They looked so much like his father’s car, but they were louder and stayed glued to the ground. He was brought back to reality when Hermione punched his shoulder.
"Ack! What was that for?" His friend led them along the sidewalk, moving away from the house.
"Put away your wand, Ronald, we don’t want to add another scandal to our ranks."
Ron obeyed reluctantly. These jeans were rather stiff, and their pockets weren't as large as robes, but he supposed as long as they didn’t need to run, it wouldn’t be a problem.
"How are we supposed to get to Harry? I don't think there are any portkeys around here."
Hermione gave him an exasperated look as she called the Knight Bus. Upon boarding the enchanted bus, the feeling of dizziness and weightlessness overwhelmed them. Hermione had to hold on and look at the floor to avoid throwing up. Their surroundings blurred and shifted.
A large black dog sneaked out from its hiding place on the stairs to go to the upper floors. Its fur, which had been dirty, matted, and smelly for so many years, was now brushed, smelled good, and although it would never regain the softness of its youth, it was now curly at the ends, giving it a softness it didn’t possess in its human form.
"Woof."
Remus looked up, hidden in an old armchair in the room he had been assigned, immersed in a reading he couldn't afford outside the walls of Grimmauld Place. Dark magic books were only abundant among pure-blood families, and ancestral magic books were only found in dynasties as old as Hogwarts.
"Sirius, your allowed time as an Animagus has passed. You can't hide in Padfoot all the time, and you know that." Despite his scolding, he was more than accommodating when the Animagus placed his snout on his lap, scratching behind his ears.
The dog whimpered after the scratching stopped, but obediently moved away to leave behind his animal transformation. The man stood up, stretching his back. His curly hair was loose, and the beard he had for so long was gone.
"For Merlin's sake, Moony. It's bad enough being trapped in this hippogriff-shit hole, give me a break." Sirius leaned against the side of the armchair, slightly falling onto his friend.
Remus snorted, closing his book in frustration. "Behave like an adult, will you?"
"Don't start, Moony! What's wrong with being Padfoot?! There's no one here, and Harry still can't come back! Not that you care since you're so desperate to agree with Dumbledore!" He moved away from the chair, throwing his hands in the air as he shouted.
"The best for Harry is ensuring his well-being—" Remus tried to keep his patience.
"The best for Harry is to be with his family, the only one he has left!"
Remus faced Sirius, both men standing several meters apart. "And you think you’re the best for Harry?!" The werewolf shouted incredulously.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"
"It means, Sirius, look at yourself in a mirror for Merlin's sake!" Remus pointed at him. "Do you think a house with a freshly freed Azkaban convict is a place for a child?!" The brown-haired man advanced through the room, moving his wand to send objects blocking his path against the wall. "An old haunted house, a mad lunatic, the entire magical world calling him a liar—"
"Oh, so why didn't you take him then?! If I’m so dangerous, why didn't you save him from those Muggles?!" Sirius pushed Remus, trembling like a madman with wild eyes.
"I WASN’T A MUCH BETTER OPTION!" A piece of furniture shattered against the wall. Remus growled, furious at the tears welling up. "You know what I am... you more than anyone know how badly things could go..." Sirius shrank back at the venom in his words. A wound that had never healed, and that the war had only made deeper and more painful. The center of everything that went wrong. "One mistake, one second, it all depends on how the beast feels." Remus swallowed. "I wasn’t in any viable position to care for Harry. No money, no job, no home, no friends."
Sirius stepped back, once again replaying the scenes that had tormented him for thirteen years. The thing is, in Azkaban, the torture comes from your own mind, the Dementors, the solitude, and the cold—a perfect cocktail for mental damage. Sirius endured much better than all the other inmates, but only because he could hide as Padfoot, and that didn't even mean much in the grand scheme of things.
There were days when he couldn't get out of bed, his mind trying to convince him that his body had finally succumbed to the cold and he could no longer feel it. Other times, he was so afraid to close his eyes and find out that everything was a hallucination. Sometimes he thought he was back at Hogwarts, the best years of his life, only for the illusion to shatter, leaving Sirius even more unbalanced.
Remus sighed, exhausted and immediately regretting the entire argument. The end of the month was approaching, the moon would soon curse him again, but he was the more stable and mature of the two, he couldn't afford to lose his temper like this, it wouldn't help Sirius.
He slowly took the Animagus' hands, and Sirius allowed it, keeping his gaze fixed on something over his shoulder.
"I'm sorry. You're still as much of an idiot as when we were kids, but I'm sorry for yelling at you." The calloused, scarred hands rubbed slow circles on his friend's pale, skeletal hands.
Sirius shrugged. "I'm sorry. I just want Harry to be safe, where he belongs." He took the werewolf's hands in his, squeezing harder than necessary. But Remus had more strength and pain tolerance than any normal human, and Sirius had lost his sense of perception in the first years of his imprisonment. "With us. Harry told me, Moony, and it wasn't even the whole story. How those damn Muggles treat him worse than a house-elf, how he goes hungry and they lock him in his room. You met that horrible sister of Lily's, do you think the boy was lying?" he pleaded.
"Petunia was always jealous of Lily and everything magical. But to think she'd treat her sister's son like that..." Seeing the look his friend was giving him, Remus sighed. He couldn't help wanting to be selfish, even when it hadn't worked years ago.
Keeping his pack close. Sirius and Harry, the last he had left.
"If you want Harry to live with you, you have to recover, Sirius, I mean it." Remus was already regretting having said anything. "You can't skip the healer appointments, and take all the potions—"
"Yes, yes, Moony, but you're forgetting the most important part. Harry is going to live with us. Not just me." Remus tried to object. "No, I don't accept excuses. James and Lily are *gone*, and we have to make up for not being able to take care of Harry and honor his parents' memory."
"We have to do this the right way, Padfoot. For Lily and James. We can't afford any mistakes." Remus conceded. "But! That means you'll behave like the adult you're supposed to be. No encouraging Harry just to anger Molly."
Sirius growled, an animalistic habit that would be hard to break after literal months spent as a canine. "That witch born of Wrackspurts..."
Remus held Sirius by the shoulders. "Padfoot..."
"Okay, okay, I'll do my best!" Sirius relented. "This would probably be a good time to tell you why I came up." He licked his dry lips. "Ron and Hermione left, I heard them talking about Harry. I was going to let them go so Harry wouldn't be alone... but that probably wouldn't be very responsible of me, would it?"
Remus could only take a deep breath, no one could reach him like Sirius did, for better or worse, only he could make him feel so deeply in his bones. A shame that for thirteen years he had only given him bad reasons to feel it.
"Did they go to Little Whinging?"
Sirius nodded, his curls bouncing around his head. "I put a tracking spell on them."
"We have to get them before Molly finds out, she'll be furious with Ron."
Both descended the stairs carefully, grateful that their commotion hadn’t awakened the talking portrait of Sirius’ mother. Such were old magical houses—capricious. One day, they could be so absorbent that you couldn’t hear what was happening in the hallway, and other times you could even hear the second-floor bathroom from the kitchen. At least they were lucky this time, if they could get the kids back before Molly Weasley’s fury consumed them all.
Sirius didn’t bother with any disguise other than a Muggle sweatshirt with an atrociously large hood that obscured his face, and a pair of those ripped jeans he used to wear so much before everything went wrong.
Out in the real world, Sirius felt like just another ghost; it was liberating, but he had to stay invisible, practically undetectable. Even though it had been a while since his appearance on the front page, wizards were not rational people in the heat of the moment. Even after begging and demanding for months, Dumbledore wouldn’t allow him to reopen his case, and certainly, Sirius couldn’t do it himself. Without the support of a member of the Wizengamot, he couldn’t request a trial this time, especially not with Veritaserum.
They walked three blocks north, far enough to avoid suspicion, but still close, just in case. It wasn’t necessary, but Remus’ arm navigated to the Animagus’ waist, holding him close so they could Apparate together. Sirius didn’t object, content to stick closer to the werewolf without needing an excuse.
They both appeared in front of a small house, common-looking and certainly undetectable among the sea of the neighborhood, distinguishable only by the faded yellow paint and the immaculate plants. No one was outside, and all the houses emitted a silent hum. The two wizards barely managed to walk toward the house where Remus once spent two weeks of summer with Lily when the yellow house with a sky-blue door burst open.
A redhead and a head of unruly curly hair were shoved out of the house roughly; the shouts were indistinguishable, but the anguish and anger were palpable even without magic. The commotion lasted no more than a few seconds, but Sirius immediately registered the extra eyes peeking between the ugly floral curtains and the creaking doors.
“He’s supposed to be under protections—!” Ron shouted into the house, but a pale, bony hand shoved him out.
“The boy vanished overnight; your freakish wizard stuff is none of my concern!”
“Dumbledore said—!” Hermione’s shrill voice was cut off by a mass of rosy flesh in clothes two sizes too small.
“Thieves, freaks, get out of here! There’s nothing for you unnatural people inside my house!”
“WHERE DID YOU HIDE HARRY, YOU DAMN SONS OF—”
Petunia’s eyes moved away from the two erratic children at her door. A sight both familiar and strange greeted her, like when she was a child: a man with soft, tired eyes contrasting with the raw scars that marred his face, yet still capable of evoking an image of kindness. Petunia expected to see beside him a redheaded girl with soft freckles forming a heart on her right cheek, a girl who had a similar face yet so different from her own.
But it was only a dirty, ragged man, not her sister who had been taken. First at eleven, and then again at twenty-one. Now only remnants remained, like the kind-eyed man standing in front of her.
"And what are you doing here?" Petunia's sudden ferocity cut through the others' babbling. "How dare you come back here! You wizards always find ways to meddle in the good lives of normal people!" She hissed.
Ron and Hermione turned to their ex professor with desperation.
“They say Harry hasn’t been home since the end of July!” Hermione cried. “Professor Lupin, what if they took him? It’s been almost a month since his birthday!”
“If something happened to my godson, Merlin help me, I’ll turn them all into rugs!” Sirius lunged at Vernon.
The fatter man staggered backward, stumbling against the wall as he grunted with the effort to stay upright with an adult on him. Petunia shrieked in distress as she pulled at the Animagus’s sweatshirt, unable to get him off her husband. Remus had to take a deep breath, trying to organize his priorities. He couldn’t panic about Harry while Sirius was attempting to earn the title of murderer, this time for real.
Hermione struggled to dry her anguished tears while pulling Sirius, who had fallen onto Vernon when he could no longer hold both their weights. The Animagus kept trying to wrap his hands around Vernon’s chubby, thick neck, hidden under layers of flesh, while the larger man pulled at Sirius’s curly hair in an attempt to get him off.
Ron stood aside, watching the fight with a degree of detachment that could only be earned through years of exposure to this kind of behavior. He wrung his hands with nauseous worry. Who knew where Harry was? Suffering, hurt, scared, angry? Here they were, spending a leisurely and quiet summer while Ron’s biggest challenge had been hiding from his brothers and trying to write a letter to his friend when that friend was likely kidnapped, probably tortured while they slept and played Quidditch contentedly.
While all the adults fought in a frankly absurd pile of limbs, and Hermione tried to be the voice of reason, the redhead noticed another figure hiding on the stairs. A boy, perhaps his age, tall and almost as thick as Vernon, wore a Muggle t-shirt that said “Precious Surprise” in small letters, long shorts, and sneakers the same shade of red as his shirt.
Ron tried to muster all his patience and goodwill.
“Hey, you, where’s Harry?” He quickly climbed toward what could only be his friend’s infamous cousin. Harry had never said anything directly, but Ron was good at deducing, reading between the lines, and connecting the dots. None of those dots were anything positive about the boy.
He grabbed the neck of the boy’s shirt while shaking him as he tried to escape upstairs. The boy turned red but couldn’t shake Ron off.
“Answer me, you bloody son of a witch!”
“How should I know? He was always locked in his room; he hardly ever came out, not even to do his chores!”
“Where’s his room?” Ron growled.
On the second floor, there was a dilapidated white door, identical to the rest except for the details of dirt, age, and some marks that looked like punches and kicks. Behind it was a small, dark room. A single bed with frayed sheets and a flat pillow was against the right wall. Immediately at the foot of the bed was a large piece of furniture with cardboard boxes about to collapse under their own weight. On the left side was Harry’s trunk under a pile of old books, Christmas decorations, and gardening equipment. Harry’s broomstick was lying in front of the trunk. There was a decrepit coat rack with ironed clothes hanging on it, and next to the window was Hedwig’s cage.
Ron recognized that window.
The room didn’t have much space. With him and Harry’s cousin inside, there was barely enough room to turn around without elbowing each other. Ron felt his vision clouding with rage. He rummaged through the bed, the clothes, Hedwig’s cage—anything that might give him a clue about what had happened to Harry or where he might have gone.
“He just left without a word? You didn’t ask where he was going, didn’t find it odd that he didn’t come back home?” Ron growled, pushing the other boy away.
“Notice?!” The other boy scoffed. “We had to kick the door down. Dad thought he’d starved to death in there, but Mom insisted he’d eventually come down to eat something. If he left, it wasn’t through the door or the window.”
“So he left using Floo Powder? Without a broom, he can’t Apparate, he couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“Whatever you weirdos use, we don’t have it here.” Ron was about to lose his patience. “Although, he did have that tellphone thing around his neck.”
"What tell-phawn?"
"The thing Harry talked to every day? I thought he'd finally gone mad when I heard him talking to himself in the bathroom, but when another voice responded and there was no one else in there." He shrugged with embarrassment. "I was about to tattle to Mom about him having a cell phone, you know, those new ones that just came out and don't need to be connected? But it turned out to be that strange necklace of his."
Ron tried to grasp the information, but the Muggle references eluded him. A necklace? Harry didn’t wear jewelry; he barely remembered to put on his glasses in the mornings, and that was because he was blinder than a Niffler. He always forgot where he had placed them the night before, and sometimes they both had to search for them amid the red and gold chaos that sharing a room with four boys caused.
Ron looked at Harry’s cousin with disgust. His friend had always returned from summer holidays thinner and paler; now he could see why Harry always seemed to need extra food.
“We're taking Harry’s things. There better not be anything missing.” Ron pointed his wand at the other boy, unable to do more than threaten, but the boy raised his hands cautiously.
“Just go.” He stammered.
Ron glared at him before running downstairs.
“Guys, I know how to find out where Harry went!”
While Ron was upstairs trying to be a detective, the adults and Hermione had barely made any progress. Everyone was standing this time, with Petunia pulling her husband back while Sirius was held by the waist and pulled back by his former Defense professor. Hermione was the first to notice her friend.
“How?”
“I’ll need one of you to take a memory.” Ron pointed to the scruffy wizards who were fighting like cats against the Muggles.
“No one is taking anything from my house!” Vernon wheezed.
Sirius smirked. “Don’t worry, Wally Whale, we’ll take it from your head!” Both Muggles stepped back in fear.
“Sirius!” Remus and Hermione scolded.
“We don’t know where the boy went. Before he stopped showing up, he didn’t have the decency to tidy the kitchen and the garden. My poor peonies withered in July,” Petunia complained.
“Your nephew is missing, and all you care about are your stupid flowers!”
“Enough!” Hermione shrieked. She turned to her friend. “What did you find out, Ron?”
“This guy admitted seeing Harry talking to some kind of necklace. If we can see the memory, we might be able to identify the voice of whoever he was talking to.” He pointed to the pale Dudley, who seemed undecided between going to his parents or staying still in the corner.
“Ron, that’s brilliant!”
Ron scowled. “Why do you sound surprised?”
Remus pushed the Animagus firmly behind him, trying to evoke his patience and negotiation skills as much as possible. But even he couldn’t avoid the frustration with both Muggles who dismissed Harry and didn’t seem to have an ounce of remorse or concern for the fifteen-year-old under their care who had disappeared, and worse yet, hadn’t told anyone.
“Petunia, just let your son give us the memories, and we’ll leave. We’ll take Harry’s things too.”
“Will it hurt him?”
“No, it won’t harm him at all. He’ll just let us see the memory and nothing more.”
Petunia nodded in her son’s direction. “Go ahead Dudders, nothing will happen my love, I promise.” She then turned back to Remus. “If you hurt him—”
“Like you did to Harry?” Sirius growled quietly.
The woman shuddered, tears welling up. She raised a hand to cover her sob, her husband immediately abandoning his murderous glares at the wizards to console his wife.
Remus pretended not to have heard while calmly approaching the boy. “This won’t hurt you in any way…”
“Dudley,” the boy whispered, barely maintaining composure in front of the tall wizard and his wand.
A flash of recognition passed through the werewolf’s amber eyes. The echo of a peaceful, exciting conversation filled his mind for a second, a time before the storm and the hell that followed, killing the hopes of that tacit conversation.
Remus transfigured a picture from the wall into a simple glass jar with a lid, not bothering about the broken promise that they wouldn’t take anything from their house. He pointed his wand at the center of the boy’s forehead, his movements fluid and precise.
“Think about when you discovered Harry talking. Try to stay focused on the memory, replay it as if you were there again.” Dudley nervously followed the wand, then nodded and closed his eyes to evoke the memory.
The faint thread of the memory unwound from Dudley’s head, like a loose strand swaying in the wind. The glow traveled into the jar as the wand tilted toward the container. Everyone avidly followed the bottled magic.
“That’s it, now get out.” Petunia spat. “Out of my house, out of my life.”
All the wizards nodded without a word. They had nothing to do, nothing to thank for, and certainly wouldn’t leave if they had to claim what they wanted. Sirius and Ron summoned Harry’s belongings; the three Muggles exclaimed as the items flew down to their hands. Vernon peeked outside, paranoid that someone had seen that display of unnaturalness.
Sirius moved ahead with the children, suddenly remembering that he had said he would be more responsible and mature to be a good example for Harry. The three Disapparated without a care for possible Muggles; Sirius had the spirit but still lacked thinking through his actions.
Remus stayed behind. Vernon and Dudley didn’t bother to come out, only Petunia stayed at the door, waiting for them to finally disappear.
“You went with the name your mother-in-law chose in the end, huh?” He kept his gaze ahead.
After a few seconds of silence, Petunia’s voice came out weak. “She said it wasn’t so bad in the end, so I gave in.”
Remus wanted to say more, to shout, something, but in the end, he settled for nodding and walking out. There would be a place far enough for him to Apparate.