Sarah's Way
“I’m sorry for meeting you this way,” said Sirius Black, keeping his hands up. “I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of bad things about me.”
Sarah shook her head, not lowering her wand. Sirius Black still had Hedwig. Sarah’s eyes flicked to her owl, then back to Sirius Black.
“She found me,” said Sirius Black. “When I was checking in on you at the hospital. I’m so sorry I wasn’t faster, Sarah.”
Sarah gripped her wand tighter.
“I know you can talk,” said Sirius Black. He smiled ruefully. “You talked to me when I was a dog. You must have a lot of questions. And I owe you an explanation. I owe you so much more than that.”
Sarah swallowed. Her throat was horribly dry.
“Did you do anything to Hedwig?” she asked, her voice quiet and raspy.
“Is that her name?” asked Sirius Black. “No, I would never harm a feather on her. Like I said, when I was sneaking into the hospital, she caught me. She’s very protective of you.”
“She’s a good owl,” said Sarah, her eyes watering. “Swear you’ve done nothing to her. Swear on your life.”
“I swear,” said Sirius Black solemnly. “She’s been helping me. Trying to help me, I should say. I did not break out of Azkaban to kill you, despite what everyone believes. I never betrayed your parents. I’ve been trying to kill the real traitor. Your owl, Hedwig, could capture him, but I’m afraid he would transform if she tried. It’s bad enough I failed to get into Gryffindor Tower. He knows I’m after him now.”
Sarah cleared her throat. “What the fuck are you on about?”
Sirius Black’s eyes became misty. “You’ve got a mouth on you, eh? Just like Lily.”
“Don’t…” began Sarah. “Don’t talk about mum like you knew her.”
“I did know her,” said Sirius Black. “And your dad. James and I were best friends. Brothers in all but blood.”
Sarah pushed up her glasses and gave Sirius Black a good hard look. She had pictures of her parents’ friends. She hadn’t looked at them as closely as she should have.
“What proof do you have?” she demanded.
“You can ask Remus,” said Sirius Black. “He was friends with them too.”
Sarah’s arm shook. “You’re lying.”
“I would never lie to you,” said Sirius Black. “He hasn’t told you?”
“No,” said Sarah harshly. “No one tells me shit unless I make them.”
Sirius Black’s expression darkened.
“I’m going to sit down,” he said. “Please don’t curse me until I can tell you the whole story.
Sarah nodded, watching Sirius Black sink to the floor. He was very thin. He was the dog she had been feeding. If he wanted her dead, he would not have saved her from Ripper. He could have killed her at any time. She had slept with the dog in the room. She had petted the dog. It was extremely weird now that she knew he was a man.
Hedwig chirped, then flew to the entrance of the cave. Her feathers brushed Sarah as she passed. Sarah assumed she was going to act as a look out.
“Did you bring anything to eat?” asked Sirius Black. “Or drink? I know you rarely talk. It sounds like it hurts when you do.”
“I did,” she said, patting her bag. “Start talking, or I’ll make your own intestines strangle you.”
Sirius Black’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t fuck around, do you?”
“No,” she said bluntly. “I’m going to sit down too. My leg hurts.”
Sirius Black closed his eyes. “I’ve always been too late. I just wanted to see you before I made my way back north. I knew you were with Petunia, but I had no idea how bad it was. I trusted them,” he growled, his eyes opening again.
Sarah took another step back.
“Shit, sorry,” said Sirius Black quickly. “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself, and them. I would never do anything to harm you. I’ll try not to raise my voice, I know you don’t like it.”
“I’m used to it,” she said, slowly sitting down. Sarah stretched her leg out in front of her. She used her free hand to dig around in her bag and pulled out a bottle of pumpkin juice. Her wand never left Sirius Black.
“Start talking.”
“Alright,” said Sirius Black, nodding to himself. “Your mum and dad knew they would be targeted by Voldemort. A powerful protective charm was cast over your house in Godric’s Hollow. The Fidelius Charm. Everyone thought I was the secret-keeper. We spread it around. That was the plan…”
Sarah listened raptly to the tale of Sirius Black. Four friends and her mum. A false secret-keeper. The true one was a man named Peter Pettigrew, a man who had faked his own death and killed a dozen muggles in an explosion. Sirius Black had been blamed for the explosion and the death of Peter Pettigrew. He had been sent to Azkaban without a trial. He had escaped when he saw an article in the Daily Prophet, a photograph from the memorial for Ginny Weasley and Penelope Clearwater. A photograph that had a boy in it, a boy and his pet rat. Sirius Black was an animagus. So was James Potter. So was Peter Pettigrew.
Sirius Black rambled as he talked, and Sarah followed as best as she could. It was clear he was traumatized from Azkaban, and was trying very hard to be coherent. He stayed sitting down, didn’t raise his voice even when he looked furious, kept his hands where she could see them, didn’t make any move to approach her. Sirius Black told her how he had met her dad on the Hogwarts Express, how he had been sorted into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin like everyone else in his family. They played quidditch together. They snuck around the castle together. They became animagi together when they learned their other best friend was a werewolf. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs.
Her mum and dad had made Sirius Black her godfather. He got upset again when he revisited the night they had been murdered, how Hagrid had shown up on Dumbledore’s orders, had been told to take Sarah away, had promised she was being taken to safety, had taken Sirius Black’s flying motorbike with him while Sirius Black hunted down Peter Pettigrew.
“That was the biggest mistake of my life,” said Sirius quietly.
“They told me my parents died in a car crash,” she said. “That they were drunks.”
Sirius’ face twisted with rage again, and he grabbed his dirty grey robes.
“I can’t make up for the twelve years you spent with them,” said Sirius. “Or your leg. Or any of it. But I can make sure you never have to go back to those…those people again.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Dumbledore put a spell over Aunt Petunia that protects me from Voldemort. He won’t let me go anywhere else.”
“Fuck him,” said Sirius emphatically.
Sarah laughed despite herself, and Sirius grinned at her.
“I’ve got a house in London,” he said. “And I’ve got a plan to capture Peter.”
“How?” asked Sarah. “If he knows you’re after him, wouldn’t he just run off again?”
“While I’ve been in Azkaban for twelve years, he’s been living as a rat for twelve years,” said Sirius bitterly. “I doubt he’s in his right mind either.”
“What’s your plan, then?” she asked, lowering her arm. It ached from pointing her wand at Sirius the entire time.
Sirius grinned at her again, which made him look younger. Familiar.
“Have you ever heard of the Marauder’s Map?”
Sarah lifted her leg in the air, breathing a sigh of relief now that her prosthesis was off. Going through the tunnel twice, up and down hundreds of stairs, hiking a mountain, had left her leg swollen and raw. She had a potion for that, a salve, which helped immediately. The swelling had also made the phantom pains come back, which meant another potion. It was frustrating.
Sirius had woven an interesting and compelling story. That Hedwig was on his side helped give him credibility. That he had pretended to be a dog freaked Sarah out, and made her upset that she had missed Professor McGonagall’s lesson on animagi. Professor McGonagall could turn into a cat. Sarah knew that, and hadn’t considered that the dog was secretly a wizard. It was how Sirius had survived Azkaban, and how he could get past dementors. And why he had to lure Sarah far away from Hogwarts and Hogsmeade to tell her his story in person. The dementors knew what his soul tasted like. They had been feeding on Sirius for years.
Sarah grimaced as she worked the salve into her leg. The minty smell stung her nose, and made her hands smell, but it alleviated the pain better than anything else Madam Pomfrey had tried. Sarah wiped her hands off on her shorts and drank some water. Talking to Sirius was the most she had spoken in years. In forever. Sirius had done most of the talking, and she had filled up her empty bottle of pumpkin juice with water and rolled it to him. He was so grateful for everything. For the water, for the food she had brought, for Hedwig, for Sarah making the journey, for Sarah listening to him.
The photo album lay on her bed, opened to a picture of her parents’ wedding. Sarah had spent time going through it, looking for pictures of Sirius and Professor Lupin. There were even pictures of Peter Pettigrew, a short, chubby boy who looked happy.
Sirius was obviously very lonely. Sarah didn’t really get it, having never felt lonely herself. She didn’t mind if Hedwig kept him company, and in fact planned to enlist Hedwig to carry messages, food, and other supplies to Sirius.
Even if they had no connection at all, Sarah didn’t like to see people suffer. Innocent people. If he was innocent.
Sirius insisted Ron Weasley’s rat was Peter Pettigrew because the rat was missing a toe. Peter Pettigrew had cut off his finger and blown up a street. Sarah couldn’t say she was totally convinced by Sirius’ story, or his conviction that the pet rat was Peter Pettigrew. The Weasleys had all left Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday, so the rat was currently out of reach.
If Peter Pettigrew was smart, he’d take the chance to escape. Sirius planned to travel to where the Weasleys lived to watch the house, a place called the Burrow, all the way in the south. He said he could get there quickly with a wand, using something called apparition. It had been a long time since Sirius had done any magic other than turning into a dog. Sarah hoped he was able to steal a wand.
Sarah fell back onto her bed, moving her leg up and down. She would have to confirm Sirius’ story, of course. What she could of it. No one else suspected Peter Pettigrew was alive, but Sirius swore up and down he had cut his own finger off and fled into the sewers. Sarah did have to explain how she already knew Professor Lupin was a werewolf, as she hadn’t been at all surprised when Sirius had told her. Sirius hated Snape with a passion. Sarah’s dad and Sirius had some weird rivalry with Snape while they were at school, cursing each other in the corridors all the time.
Sarah learned quite a lot about Snape from Sirius’ ranting. How Snape had been friends with her mum—as unlikely as that seemed—and how he had been infatuated with her. Sirius guessed Snape hated Sarah so much because she was the daughter of James Potter, and because she looked a lot like her mum, except having her dad’s eyes and hair. It honestly made Snape’s obsession with punishing Sarah even more creepy.
Sirius admitted to tricking Snape into going to the Whomping Willow, which hid a secret tunnel to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade, on a full moon. Sarah’s dad had stopped Snape, but not before he saw Professor Lupin as a werewolf. And later, Sarah’s dad had dangled Snape upside down in front of a lot of people, and Snape called her mum a mudblood, and they tried to take off his pants. Sirius sounded ashamed of it, especially after seeing Sarah’s reaction. She didn’t want to think of her dad as an awful person, but she had thought he was a drunk for years. And she hexed people in the corridors too. She had killed a dragon, half killed Professor Quirrel, and killed the memory of Tom Riddle. Somehow, that didn’t seem as bad as taking off someone’s undergarments in front of a crowd, even someone like Snape.
Sarah looked at her left leg, then lowered it again. The Marauder’s Map. She had to find it. If she had that, she could find Peter Pettigrew, and also use it to hide from people more easily. Filch had confiscated it when her dad and Sirius were in school. They had made it, together with Professor Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. Sirius knew about the invisibility cloak. He was glad it had made its way back to Sarah, but was upset like her that it had taken so long. Apparently, her dad had lent it to Dumbledore for whatever fucking reason.
Sighing, Sarah wondered if her parents, despite being heroes, had been idiots.
There were preparations to be made before Sarah broke into Filch’s office. Even if Sirius hadn’t done magic in a long time, he still remembered it. He told her about the Summoning Charm. It would be useful in Filch’s office, which was crammed with papers and things confiscated from students over the years. Finding the Marauder’s Map in that mess would have taken forever.
With everyone gone for the holiday, Sarah had Hufflepuff Basement to herself. That meant she could practice the Summoning Charm without anyone questioning her, or watching her, or reporting her activities to the professors, or gossiping about her, or anything.
Sirius had been worried that she didn’t have any friends. He was a very social person, based on what little Sarah knew about him. He said he had been popular while at Hogwarts, and actually liked it. It was vastly different from Sarah’s unwanted popularity, popularity based on her parents being dead, and being left with the Dursleys and kept hidden for a decade, stoking theories and curiosity and absurd tales of what she had been doing the whole time.
Sarah had explained she didn’t want friends, and that she liked being alone. Hedwig didn’t really count, she was an owl. Sarah understood that other people were necessary. People like teachers and healers and people who made things like clothing and food. Sarah didn’t have the knowledge or skills to do all those things herself, not yet. Not to mention people wrote books, and Sarah spent a large portion of her time reading.
The common room was packed with dozens of plants, perhaps hundreds, tables, chairs, sofas, rugs, wall hangings, portraits…
Sarah narrowed her eyes at a portrait. They were notorious gossips. She didn’t trust them not to tell someone she was practicing spells they didn’t learn until fourth-year, or fifth-year. Sirius didn’t remember which. The portrait, a portly old witch, waved happily at her. Sarah frowned and went back to her dormitory.
Once she was safely out of sight, Sarah looked around for something to practice on. It didn’t matter much, as she could repair anything she accidentally broke.
Gathering all of her quills, Sarah piled them at one end of her dormitory. It was a fairly simple spell, if difficult to execute. Harder when the object you wanted to summon was magical, impossible if it was enchanted with anti-theft or anti-summoning charms. Sirius said him and Sarah’s dad hadn’t done that to the map.
Sarah pointed her wand at the pile of feathers.
Accio quill!
Her favorite quill, the peacock feather, twitched.
Smiling, Sarah tried again.
Professor Lupin was not in the castle.
It had taken Sarah several days to discover this aggravating fact. She hadn’t spent much time with Sirius as she had to make it back to Hogwarts in time for dinner, but he had told her a few easily verifiable things about Professor Lupin. That he was a werewolf, she already knew. He was a halfblood, with a muggle mother named Hope and a wizard father named Lyall. His mother had passed away during the war, and his father was alive and living in Wales. So far as Sirius knew, and his information was twelve years out of date. Presumably, Professor Lupin had gone to visit his father for the holiday.
So, Sarah spent most of her time practicing the Summoning Charm, and stalking Filch and Mrs. Norris. She needed to know what times he wasn’t in his office, and for how long. The man—Sirius said he was a squib, someone born without magic to a magical family—seemed listless without students to punish. It wasn’t easy to pin down where he was and when, and Mrs. Norris was stealthier than the ghosts. During a meal was the best time to strike, as Sarah had a reputation for not being at meals. No one would think twice if she didn’t show up to one.
Hedwig would have been useful, but Sarah hadn't seen her since she carried off a basket of food and a blanket for Sirius.
Christmas snuck up on Sarah. She woke one morning to a pile at the foot of her bed. Bemused, she put on her glasses while Hedwig did her annual inspection. Deeming the packages were safe, Hedwig settled on the footboard. Sarah was delighted to see her, as she had been gone nearly a week. It made Sarah uneasy, but Hedwig had been visiting Sirius for months without coming to harm. She trusted Hedwig to take care of herself.
Sarah opened the package from the girls in her dormitory, who seemed committed to giving her sweets. Sarah appreciated it, and now understood they were simply being nice. The wider variety was great, but Sarah would have preferred being allowed to go to Honeydukes herself. She could send Hedwig. She looked up from her examination of a Cockroach Cluster and saw Hedwig giving her a flat look. Sarah shrugged. She had lots of things to think about, and she couldn’t think of everything.
The next package was more surprising. It was lumpy. Sarah poked at it, then peeled a card off. It was a greeting card, signed by the entire Weasley family. Baffled, Sarah opened the parcel and found a black jumper with a snowy owl on it. The owl looked exactly like Hedwig. The jumper was very soft. There was also a tin of homemade fudge. Sarah stared at it for a bit, wondering if Sirius would like it. She wasn’t keen on eating homemade food from strangers. Or accepting a jumper from strangers, even if she liked it. The Weasleys would know their mum had made it, and if she didn’t wear it it might make them feel bad. If she did wear it, they would probably tell their mum. She imagined people who had mums generally told them things. Sarah had no idea.
There was no guarantee Pettigrew would return to Hogwarts. If he ran away from the Weasleys home, Sarah worried she would never see Sirius again.
The dilemma of the jumper and the fudge and the rat occupied her until Hedwig clacked her beak. There was a third package, something long and cylindrical. Sarah doubted it was from the Dursleys, and was glad Hedwig hadn’t bothered flying to Surrey to harass them. The summer had proven to Hedwig, beyond a doubt, that the Dursleys were terrible and a waste of time. They were probably busy visiting Aunt Marge in jail.
Sarah pulled the cylindrical package to herself, and was startled when it quivered. She gave Hedwig a suspicious look, but Hedwig only blinked at her. Shaking her head, Sarah opened the package.
It was a rolled up carpet. Mystified, Sarah got out of bed and set the roll on the floor. She untied the strings holding it together, and gasped when it unraveled by itself. There was a wave as it fully flattened, and the rainbow tassels at either end trembled at her.
The carpet was stunning. Sarah had never seen a carpet so beautiful in her life, or a carpet with such a fantastic design. It was a meadow at night time, filled with all sorts of magical creatures cavorting, hiding in trees and shrubs, flying across a dark sky that swirled with twinkling stars. Sarah could pick out individual constellations.
Curious, Sarah crawled onto the carpet, then gasped as it rose into the air. It was a flying carpet.
Hedwig landed on the carpet with a folded note in her beak. Sarah took it, grinning as the carpet rippled under her.
Dear Sarah,
I know you love to fly, as I saw you breaking into the broomshed to fly with Hedwig. Sorry for spying on you, I know how that makes you feel. With the dementors around it’s good to have someone watching your back. Keep practicing the Patronus Charm, and you’ll be able to protect yourself from them. You’re a brilliant witch (I’ve seen your rune work, did you teach yourself?), and I know you can master anything you put your mind to.
I thought about getting you a Firebolt (it’s a racing broom that came out this year), but since you’re still getting used to your prosthesis (did I spell that right?) I thought this would be more your speed.
Sorry for borrowing Hedwig. She did seem eager to take the order.
Happy Christmas
Sirius
The pear refused to turn into a door knob. No matter how much Sarah tickled it, no matter how much the pear giggled, the portrait door to the kitchens remained closed to her. Hedwig clacked her beak in irritation. Once again, someone had conspired against Sarah having dinner alone. She walked off in a huff. What was so special about Christmas? Why did anyone at Hogwarts even care about it? She gripped her crutches tightly, then stormed away as best as she could.
Sarah’s stomach growled as she walked into the Great Hall. The smell of food pervading the castle had distracted her from her flying carpet. The carpet responded to her almost as readily as a broom. She only had to want the carpet to move a certain way, and it moved before she could even think the word up, or backward. Rotating in place had been tricky, and Sarah was looking forward to seeing how the carpet held up while flying upside down. Unlike a broom, there wasn’t anything for Sarah to lock her arms and legs around.
There was a single table in the Great Hall again, which looked ridiculous in the huge space. Twelve towering trees covered in shining gold stars loomed over everything.
“Merry Christmas!” said Dumbledore. Professor Sprout gave Sarah a apologetic smile; it clearly wasn’t her idea to lock the food away. Other than the headmaster and Professor Sprout, there were Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, and Snape, so all the heads of house, as well as Filch in a moldering tailcoat. There were also three students, two small ones and a big one. Sarah recognized none of them, but they knew who she was. Everyone did.
Sarah took a seat at the end of the table, which wasn’t that far away from anyone since it was a small table. She ended up next to the older boy, who sneered at her once then pretended she didn’t exist. It was the perfect time to break into Filch’s office, but Sarah didn’t know what lengths Dumbledore would go to to force her to have Christmas dinner with everyone. And she didn’t know where Mrs. Norris was. Hedwig could easily carry the old cat off, but Hedwig was tired from her long journey and settled quietly on the table.
There was an explosion, and Sarah looked at the cloud of lilac smoke that had engulfed the adult end of the table. When it cleared, she saw that a hat with a vulture on it lay between Dumbledore and Snape. Sarah knew about Neville Longbottom’s boggart, Snape, and about how he had put his grandmother’s clothing on it. The hat was oddly specific for a Christmas cracker, even a magical one.
Sarah picked up a cracker and tried to pull it herself. It didn’t work. Sarah frowned at the cracker, which was wrapped with shiny paper decorated with snowflakes and hippogriffs wearing scarves.
“It’s charmed this year, Potter,” Professor Sprout said. “You need another person to open it.”
Sarah considered her options. She could put the cracker back, which would look stupid since she had already picked it up. There were two younger students, a boy and a girl who looked caught between being nervous and being overawed at the Girl-Who-Lived thing. Sarah’s professors, which would require her to leave her seat and walk over to them. Filch had been poisoned against Sarah by Snape, and she didn’t want to be near him anyway. Finally, there was the hulking boy next to her, who Sarah assumed was a Slytherin. The people who openly hated Sarah were all Slytherins, Snape included.
Sarah took out her wand.
“No wands at the table, Sarah,” Dumbledore said gently. “Why don’t you ask Cassius?”
The boy next to her flinched, then slowly turned to look at Sarah. He had wide set eyes and a heavy brow, and large hands that made Sarah nervous. Not many wizards resorted to physical violence since they had magic to hurt people with, but Sarah had seen the size of Slytherin quidditch team and she suspected the older boy was a member. Whoever the captain was had picked out the largest students in Slytherin, except for Draco Malfoy. Sarah unfortunately knew Malfoy was the seeker, and he looked frail next to the bigger boys.
“Go on,” Dumbledore said encouragingly.
Rolling her eyes, Sarah held out the cracker to the Slytherin boy. He looked mortally offended by the gesture.
“Warrington, get it over with,” Snape said acidly.
Sarah stared at the boy. Snape had pulled a cracker with Dumbledore. It was like him to want to spread the misery around. Sarah could not comprehend how her mum had ever been friends with him. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe Snape hadn’t always been awful, but Sarah knew for a fact that some people were. Dudley. Piers. Why would Sarah’s mum want to be around someone like Piers?
The boy finally took the other end of the cracker. Sarah was ready for him to try to pull it hard, but the presence of so many teachers must have deterred him. There was a loud pop, a cloud of green smoke, and something fluffy landed in Sarah’s lap. It was a hat of some sort, she knew that since it had come out of a Christmas cracker.
When the smoke cleared, Sarah was left with a white feathered mantle. The feathers were as big as a hippogriff’s, and might have actually been from a hippogriff. There was a hood too. Sarah pulled it on immediately. Hedwig finished choking down the lemming she had caught, then cocked her head at Sarah.
“You and your owl match,” Professor Sprout said happily.
Sarah held out her arms, wondering if she could fly while wearing it. Hedwig did the same, but actually took flight, no doubt hunting down the other small rodents that had escaped from Christmas crackers. Since the boy hadn’t got anything, Sarah picked up another cracker and offered it to him. After a moment’s hesitation, the boy scowled and grabbed the other end.
A large, rubber penguin head landed on the table. Sarah and the boy stared at it.
“Ain’t putting that on,” the boy mumbled, glaring at the penguin head.
Sarah looked around the table and saw there was a bird theme for the hats that year. Professor McGonagall had a yellow hat with canaries flying around it. Professor Flitwick had an entire cuckoo clock on his head that was nearly as tall as he was, and it kept striking the hour. Professor Sprout had an emerald green cap with shiny eyes and a bright yellow bill that occasionally quacked. A second stuffed vulture had appeared in front of Snape. Filch had a bonnet that looked like a rooster’s comb, complete with fleshy red wattles.
Food began appearing on the table, once everyone had a hat on. Even the boy next to Sarah had grudgingly crammed the penguin head on top of his own, giving the impression that a penguin was growing out of him. Mystified, Sarah began spooning roast potatoes onto her plate. She almost forgot she didn’t want to be sitting there with everyone.
The invisibility cloak was big enough to cover both Sarah and her flying carpet. It was strange, as she was certain it hadn’t been that big when she had first got it. It had grown of its own volition. It made her stalking of Filch much easier, as she wasn’t quite recovered from her long journey to meet Sirius. Sarah wasn’t sure if the carpet would fit in the tunnel behind the one-eyed witch, and she was wary of taking it over the Forbidden Forest as it was visible from below. She didn’t want to attract dementors, or get shot down by a centaur.
An opportunity presented itself on New Year’s Eve. Sarah, in her infinite wisdom, had sent Hedwig with an order for fireworks. Hedwig’s feathers were pure white, unlike other female snowy owls, and she was invisible in a blizzard. It made her the ideal delivery owl for more discreet purchases, at least in winter.
They struck at midnight.
Sarah rose silently in the air, squinting to make out Hedwig’s feathers against the dark stones of castle. She was hidden under her invisibility cloak, and the underside of her carpet was indiscernible against the night sky. Nothing capable of human speech ventured close enough to the castle to see her, nor were any of Hogwarts’ human inhabitants on the grounds. They were in the Great Hall, ringing in the new year with a late feast.
Hedwig was perched on a particular ledge. Sarah got out her wand and spelled the window open, carefully flying in.
Sarah had never been in Gryffindor Tower, much less the fifth-year boys dormitory. It didn’t smell like Dudley’s room, thankfully, which she attributed to house-elves. Snow blew into the dormitory through the open window. The conditions were perfect.
Reaching into her satchel, Sarah began unloading a prodigious amount of Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks, rolling them under the beds. While Sarah felt bad for the Weasley family, the twins were the likeliest culprits for this sort of thing, and Gryffindor Tower was very far from Filch’s office. They would also have a time of it getting into Gryffindor Tower; Sarah had overheard Gryffindor’s complaining about how complicated the new passwords were for weeks.
Sarah quickly retreated, Hedwig guiding the way to a window on the first floor. This was the trickiest part. Sarah needed to get in without alerting any portraits or ghosts, or leaving any evidence. Many of the portraits had their own celebrations and became inebriated on painted wine. Hopefully the portrait knight they had guarding Gryffindor Tower wouldn’t be too drunk to report the fireworks going off. The ghosts could be anywhere. Sarah spelled a window open, ducked as she flew in, spelled it shut, dried the snow that had got in, and shot down the corridor.
As Sarah reached Filch’s office, a series of distant explosions went off. She grimaced. Sarah hadn’t expected to hear anything, and hoped she hadn’t destroyed the dormitory. She pointed her wand at the door.
“Minerva, with me!”
Sarah froze, slowly turning to look down the corridor. The entrance hall was some distance away, but she could still see the headmaster in his elaborate robes.
“Filius, secure the Great Hall, protect the children. Argus, rally the ghosts and wake the portraits. Pomona, Severus, locate Sarah.”
“Headmaster, I—”
“This is not the time, Severus. Protecting her is the priority.”
Well, fuck, Sarah thought. The door sprang open. She hadn’t considered they would think it was Sirius trying to break in again. She needed to hurry. Accio Marauder’s Map!
Sarah peered into the darkness of Filch’s office. Nothing moved.
Accio Marauder’s Map!
She knew it didn’t have an anti-summoning charm on it. Sirius had told her it didn’t.
Accio Marauder’s Map!
They were looking for her.
The map was not in Filch’s office.
Sarah angrily flicked her wand and the door closed. She raced back to the window, back into the snow, leaning forward as the carpet sped to her own dormitory window. She had to get there before Professor Sprout did.
She didn’t need the map. She would get Peter Pettigrew her own way.