Hari banged on Remus’ door as soon as he arrived a few minutes later, panting after running the whole way. There were voices talking inside, which stopped when he knocked. Remus’ voice called him to enter and he pushed the door open immediately, stepping into the familiar office.

Remus’ trunk was set on top of his desk, half packed with his belongings. The now empty grindylow tank was sitting in the corner, still dirty from the many creatures that had inhabited it that year. Remus and Sirius were both standing inside the office, Sirius looking irritated as though he had recently been ranting about something.

Sirius did, however, already look much better than the night before. His skin was still pallid and his hair hung loosely around his face, but with fresh, clean clothes on, he already looked like a new man. However angry he seemed at the current second.

At Hari’s entrance, Sirius’ frown turned upwards in a soft smile and Remus turned to look at Hari as well, leaning against his desk.

“We saw you coming,” said Remus, gesturing to the open Marauder’s Map on his desk.

“You’ve resigned? Have you really resigned?” said Hari, crossing his arms on his chest.

“See, Moony? I told you,” said Sirius petulantly, waving his arm at Hari.

Remus sighed, looking tired. The bags under his eyes were more prominent than ever and he ran a hand over his face. “Yes, I am resigning, Hari.”

“But why?” asked Hari. “You’re easily the best teacher we’ve had! Everyone loved having you as a teacher!”

“Yes, but that was before word got out that I’m a werewolf,” said Remus. “I suspect the angry letters will already be on their way from the parents. And after last night, I fully understand their concerns. I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. I put all of you in danger and I… I couldn’t let that happen again.”

“But—but you can’t just leave!” exclaimed Hari, desperate.

Remus sighed, moving over to Hari putting his hands on Hari’s shoulders. “Hari, I cannot risk getting you hurt again like last night. I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen to you or anyone else.”

Hari huffed but nodded in understanding. Remus smiled, ruffling his hair and sitting down against his desk, next to Sirius. “Now, why don’t you tell me about this Patronus you conjured last night to banish literally hundreds of dementors?” asked Remus.

Hari told Remus and Sirius about what happened, including their time travelling which allowed them to make sure they had a witness to free Sirius. When Hari finished, Remus was smiling, gripping tightly to Sirius’ hand.

“Was that my dad’s Animagus form?” asked Hari. “A stag?”

“That it was,” said Sirius, grinning.

Remus nodded, smiling fondly at the memory. “We spent more time exploring the castle than many people with the aid of your father’s cloak and the Animagus forms,” he explained, “So, we made a Map of the castle.”

“And were you ever planning on telling me why you nicknamed me ‘Prongslet’ all these years and bought me a stuffed stag?” asked Hari, raising an eyebrow. Remus shrugged, smirking. “Merlin, Uncle Remus, that’s not even subtle!”

Sirius snorted. “That’s adorable,” said Sirius delightedly.

Sirius barked a laugh and Remus shot him a glare, elbowing him off the desk. “I was going to tell you eventually.”

“Before or after you were going to ‘eventually’ tell me you’re a werewolf?” said Hari, tilting his head and cocking an eyebrow.

“I can see the James in him!” exclaimed Sirius, grinning. He squinted. “And, strangely, the McGonagall.”

Remus rolled his eyes. He hopped off his desk and moved around to the other side of his desk, pulling out something. Sirius looked at it with interest and then Remus held out the Invisibility Cloak. “I retrieved this from the Shrieking Shack,” said Remus as Hari took it back. He glanced at the Map. “And seeing as I am no longer your teacher, I see no problem with giving back the Marauder’s Map.”

“Really?” said Hari, staring in awe as Remus wiped the Map blank and passed it to Hari.

Remus smiled. “I have no doubt that your dad would be incredibly disappointed with me if you didn’t learn all the passages in and out of the school,” said Remus. Hari grinned and hugged Remus tightly.

Sirius was watching the exchange a few feet away, looking hesitant but smiling warmly nonetheless. Hari moved his head away and smiled at Sirius. “You can join if you like,” he said. Remus looked over his shoulder at Sirius, whose face lit up, and pulled him over to join the group hug.

Standing in Remus’ office, crushed between his father’s two best friends, Hari felt the relief of last night washing over him once again. Sirius was practically free. In just a few months, they could finally be together again. Truly innocent.

Hari was the first to pull away, suddenly thinking of Peter Pettigrew.

“Why the long face, Hari?” asked Remus, immediately noticing Hari’s change in demeanor.

“Pettigrew. He still got away,” said Hari. He looked at the floor, toeing his trainer into the floor.

“Your efforts were not pointless, though, Hari,” said Sirius. “Pettigrew might have gotten away, yes, but you also saved my life. You saved me from a terrible fate.”

Terrible. Professor Trelawney’s prediction! It was right!

Hari slapped his forehead, eyes bulging. “Wait, yesterday when I had my Divination exam, Professor Trelawney got really strange all of a sudden!” he blurted. “I think—I think she might have made an actual prophecy.”

“Really?” said Remus, cocking an eyebrow.

Hari nodded. “Yeah, it was right as I was leaving. She got stiff all over and I thought she was having some sort of fit or something, but then she spoke in this really creepy voice. She said… she said that Voldemort’s servant would finally be free and would go to be with him again. She said he’ll rise again with his help…” explained Hari, feeling worry tying in a knot inside his stomach. “She was right about him getting away, so—so this means it’s my fault Voldemort can come back. All because I wouldn’t let you kill him.”

“Hari, you can’t blame yourself for that,” said Remus, shaking his head. “You must have learned from time travel how big of a difference even the smallest things can make and who’s to say what could have happened if you let us kill him? It was very noble of you yesterday for saving Peter’s life.”

“You’ll definitely be in his life debt, now,” Sirius pointed out. “That kind of magical bond can have immense power. You’ve sent Voldemort a servant that has a life debt to his mortal enemy and that could very well have huge consequences in your favour one day.”

Hari still wasn’t fully convinced that he hadn’t made a grave mistake in saving Pettigrew’s life. If Voldemort really did come back, it was all his fault for letting him get away multiple times last night. What if he didn’t listen to Hermione and Draco and had taken Pettigrew before he could get away? Would Voldemort still come back one day, even without the help from Pettigrew? What if he hadn’t saved Sirius from freedom by getting rid of Pettigrew? What if—

A weight on his shoulder pulled Hari from his rapidly spiraling thoughts. He glanced up into the gentle blue eyes of Remus, a knowing frown on his face. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Hari. There’s nothing you can do about it now, so worrying about things you can’t control will just drive you mad.” He squeezed Hari’s shoulder. “You should be proud of yourself for everything you did last night, Hari, even if one thing didn’t go to plan. You produced a fully corporeal Patronus at the age of 13!”

Hari looked between them both again. They wouldn’t judge him. He knew he could trust them not to laugh, surely…

“Last night, when we were being attacked by the dementors, I thought—” He took a deep breath. “I thought it was my dad who conjured it.”

“Easy mistake to make,” said Remus. “I know you’re sick of hearing it, but you do look immensely like him. The first time I saw you when you were five, I was taken aback at how much you looked like him already.”

“Except for the eyes. He’s got Lily’s,” added Sirius, smiling, eyes glassy

“It was stupid to think it was him, though. He’s dead.”

Sirius shook his head, moving over to Hari. “Yes, he may be gone, technically,” said Sirius. “But the ones we love never truly leave us. They’ll always be right here.” Sirius reached over and touched Hari’s chest, right where his heart was. “Besides looking almost exactly like him, it’s so easy to see him in you. And why else would you produce Prongs as your Patronus?”

A knock at the door stopped their conversation and then Minerva walked in. She looked unsurprised at the presence of Hari and Sirius in Remus’s office, simply smiling at all three of them.

“Remus, your carriage is here to pick you up,” said Minerva, tapping her watch with a forefinger.

Remus nodded and waved his wand over his shoulder, Summoning the last of his items into his trunk and locking it with a soft clicking noise. He lifted his trunk off the desk with a huff, putting it on the ground and turning back to Hari and Sirius.

“I’ll walk you to the carriage,” said Sirius.

Remus smiled at Sirius softly and then turned to Hari. “You know I’m picking you up at the station again, of course?” He looked over at Minerva and she nodded.

“Aye, I figured,” replied Hari, grinning and giving Remus a quick hug goodbye.

“I’ll see you soon, Prongslet,” said Remus, ruffling Hari’s hair again and moving out into the corridor. Sirius pushed past to join him, taking one of the bags from his hand with ease.

Hari followed the other three into the hallway and allowed Minerva to shut the door behind them, watching Sirius and Remus walking off down the corridor together, arm in arm. Minerva peered down at Hari.

“You should be proud of what you did last night, Hari. Albus told me all about what you did,” she said. “It was certainly a shock to process it, but…” She gestured in the direction Remus and Sirius went. “They hardly look like a pair of villains, do they?”

They started through the castle together, side by side, footsteps echoing on the stone floor. “I knew them when they were your age and, well, they might have been the biggest troublemakers to walk these corridors, but it makes far more sense that Sirius was the innocent one, I think,” she said with certainty. “I can’t think of a more tight knit duo than Sirius and James. Looking back, it feels foolish to have believed the story.”

“I suppose it’s the same prejudice people had against Draco, isn’t it?” said Hari thoughtfully. “Everyone assumes that people will be exactly like their families, but that’s not always the case, is it? I’m nothing like the Dursley’s, for example. I think everyone is just too quick to assume that people will always be just as bad as their families are, without even bothering to get to know someone.”

“When did you get so smart?” teased Minerva.

Hari shrugged. “I suppose being around people like you and Hermione was bound to rub off on me at some point.”

Minerva rolled her eyes, leading the way to her office without even discussing it. “Up for a quick cup of tea? I’d like to hear your side of the story from last night,” she said, opening the door to her office.

Hari grinned, following her inside the office. “I always have time for a cup of tea with you.”

¤¤¤

In the following days, Sirius Black’s upcoming trial was the only thing anyone at Hogwarts really cared about. Hari, as well as Draco, Hermione and Ron, were constantly getting bombarded with questions about how they discovered the truth and which of the rumours circulating were true. The dementors that had circled the outer edges of the grounds were sent back to Azkaban by the following afternoon and Sirius left shortly after, making way for wherever it was he would be living now. Even with an official trial in the coming months, everyone was already under the assumption that he would be found innocent already.

Percy Weasley, a Ministry of Magic hopeful, could be heard talking in the common room constantly about how he could fix the situation with Sirius Black. “If I get a job at the Ministry, I already have ideas for how they can avoid a situation like Black’s happening again,” he said to the only one that consistently listened to his rants—his boyfriend, Oliver.

The weather was also continuing to be uncharacteristically gorgeous for the north of Scotland. Students could be seen wandering the grounds at almost every hour of the day, playing by the lake together or playing Quidditch with a few of their friends or just wandering the grounds together.

The biggest damper on everyone’s mood, however, was Professor Lupin’s resignation. Hari wasn’t the only one bummed out about losing yet another Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. His whole Defence class were miserable about his departure as well.

“He was an excellent teacher. Who cares if he’s a werewolf?” said Seamus in the common room when they had that period off.

“At least he was actually decent at teaching,” added Parvati glumly.

“I wonder who they’ll replace him with this time?” wondered Hannah Abbott. “Can’t get any worse than Lockhart.”

“Maybe it’ll be a vampire this time,” said Dean hopefully. The others laughed at his comment.

Nobody was as upset as Hari was, though. Besides moping over the loss of Remus as his teacher, Hari couldn’t stop thinking about Peter Pettigrew’s escape. No matter how much he tried to stop thinking about him, tried to listen to Remus and Sirius’ insistence not to blame himself, Hari couldn’t help himself. He wondered where Peter was now and woke up in a cold sweat almost every night with nightmares about Pettigrew reaching Voldemort so that he could come back. He knew it was his own fault that he got away and he couldn’t get the thought out of his head no matter how hard he tried.

Not even passing every one of his exams could cheer him up. Thankfully, Hari, Ron, Hermione and Draco all manage to pass. Draco, of course, had been correct about his Potions results, having beaten Hermione to top of the class in that subject and had yet to let her live it down.

After the stress of the last year, Hermione reluctantly agreed to drop Muggle Studies, bringing her to a normal course schedule finally. She had to return the Time Turner to Professor McGonagall, no longer needing to go to overlapping subjects anymore.

“What? But you were the top of the class! You got, what, 300% on it?” exclaimed Ron once she told them the news over breakfast.

“I know, but I don’t need a repeat of this year,” replied Hermione. “You saw how much of a wreck I was for the whole year. It just wouldn’t be good for my mental health to continue pushing myself so much again. I’d like to actually enjoy my time here.”

“But seeing your mean side was great,” teased Draco, earning a shove so hard he fell off his seat with a squeal.

At the end of the month, the end of term came. Gryffindor won the House Cup for the second year in a row and not even Hari didn’t enjoy the celebrations. Even with Remus’ absence at the staff table, symbolised with the empty chair between Hagrid and McGonagall, Hari enjoyed the usual end of year feast and ensuing chaos.

Finally, Hari packed up his trunk and Hedwig’s cage, bade goodbye to Minerva and joined the rest of his classmates in heading for the scarlet Hogwarts Express in Hogsmeade Station. Hari joined Ron, Hermione and Draco in a carriage halfway along the train for the long journey.

“It’s the Quidditch World Cup this summer,” Ron said sometime into the journey. “You guys could come and stay with us! Dad’s usually able to get tickets from work!”

“Ooh, I’ve always wanted to go!” said Hari. “Plus, it’s about time I actually see your house.”

“I reckon I could talk Mother into letting me,” said Draco, petting Leo on his lap.

When they reached their second stop on the train, halfway through a game of Exploding Snap, Hermione suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! There’s an owl!” Indeed, the tiniest owl Hari had ever seen flew into the corridor and hovered outside their compartment, attached to a letter that was even larger than itself. Hermione let the little owl inside, stroking its soft brown feathers as Hari pulled off the letter. It was addressed to him from Sirius.

”Hari,

I hope this owl reaches you well. I have yet to get a new owl, of course, but he was the only one I could find at short notice. In fact, I was thinking Ron might like to keep him. I do feel bad for essentially losing his pet… ”

“That’s nice of him!” said Ron, taking the owl from Hermione carefully. “What d’you think, Crookshanks? Not another murderer?” he said, holding the owl out for Crookshanks to sniff. His answering purr told him it was fine. “Wicked!”

“The trial date is set, so I’ll see you soon, but I figure now is as good a time as any to tell you a few things I didn’t get time to say when we were briefly together. Firstly, I was the one that bought you a Firebolt for Yule.”

“Ha! I told you it was him!” said Hermione triumphantly, high fiving Draco.

“I wasn’t sure if you properly celebrate Yule since your dad never really did, but I felt bad about making you fall off your broom at the Quidditch game, so I wanted to make up for it.You really are a brilliant flyer. I gave Crookshanks an Owl Post order to get my money from Gringotts and sent the broom to you that way. That cat is scarily intelligent, I’m telling you. He knew right away that Pettigrew wasn’t a real rat and that I’m not a real dog. He seemed almost familiar, strangely…”

“See? I told you Crookshanks is just smart!” said Hermione. “Aren’t you Crooksy?” she cooed, patting his head lightly and ignoring Ron’s glare.

“I’m sorry also for giving you a fright that day near your Aunt and Uncle’s house. I tend to have that effect with my Animagus form sometimes, so I apologise for the multiple instances in which you nearly died because you saw me. Please envision me slapping my forehead.

Like I said, I’ll see you really soon, so I’ll keep this letter brief, but I just couldn’t resist. I’m trying to find a place to live, currently, but people are still wary of giving a house to a former convict, so I might look at Muggle houses soon. I’m not on their ‘Criminal Register’ at least…

Write soon,

Sirius.”

Sirius’ letter cheered Hari up significantly for the rest of the ride to London. Hari read over the letter another few times over as his friends moved on to discussing Quidditch and their other summer plans. A little while later, Pansy, Millicent and Blaise wandered past to talk for a little while.

“I’d say the owl is definitely an improvement to that ugly rat,” said Millicent as she patted the owl’s head. He couldn’t sit still, fluttering around the compartment and chirping happily when they stroked his tiny head. He didn’t even seem to mind Millicent’s less than gentle touch, try as she may.

“Seeing as the rat was a murderer, I agree,” said Ron through a laugh.

Soon enough, the Hogwarts Express pulled into King’s Cross Station a few hours later as the sky was beginning to turn a vibrant red and orange, giving everyone in the compartment a funny warm glow. Those remaining at the final stop clambered out with their many animals and trunks, following the rest of their classmates onto the platform to meet their families and say goodbye.

“See you in the summer!” said Hermione, hugging them each goodbye. “Do try not to worry about Pettigrew,” she said to Hari as she hugged him.

Ron made Hari promise to visit in the summer and then dragged his trunk over to meet his parents with the rest of his siblings, the little owl chirping merrily on his shoulder as he tried to explain to Mrs. Weasley why he had an owl now.

“Hari, look! It’s Sirius!” Draco elbowed Hari in the side, pointing across the platform. Hari turned to see where he was pointing and felt his face split into a grin. Sure enough, standing on the platform was Remus, as usual. But this time, however, he was accompanied by a grinning Sirius, practically bouncing on his toes. Not even the shimmering silver Magical Dampener he had to wear until the trial could dampen his spirits, it seemed.

“See you in the summer?” said Draco, smiling fondly and bumping their shoulders together.

“Obviously,” replied Hari.

He bumped Draco’s shoulder as well and then, dragging his massive trunk and Hedwig’s cage behind him, Hari made his way over to Sirius and Remus. He could tell that this summer was going to be a good one…