Chapter 2
He woke up from the rest Madame Pomphrey insisted on shortly before Headmaster Dumbledore walked into the room portraying calmness, but Harry could tell he was angry. It was in the little movements and the way he watched Sirius be levitated out of the room. The man came to stand by Ron’s bedside, and Harry and Hermione hopped off of their own beds to join him. Hermione started speaking before the aged headmaster had a chance. “Headmaster, you’ve got to stop them! They’ve got the wrong man!”
“It’s true, sir. Sirius is innocent!” Harry added, just in case Dumbledore doubted Hermione speaking by herself.
“It’s Scabbers who did it,” Ron interjected, pulling all of the attention towards his own injured self.
“Scabbers?” the headmaster asked, looking nonplussed at the odd turn of events.
“He’s my rat, sir,” Ron whined. “He’s not really a rat. Well, he was a rat. He was my brother Percy’s rat! And then he gave him to me and -”
Hermione cut Ron’s rambling off. “Point is, we know the truth. Please believe us.”
Harry couldn’t help but notice that neither of them had said the name of the person responsible, and he wasn’t sure if that was because they thought Dumbledore already knew, what with his all-knowing gaze, or because they thought it seemed more believable for someone not widely believed to be dead to have done it.
“I do, Miss Granger,” Dumbledore replied. Harry waited for the other shoe to drop. “But I am sorry to say that the word of three thirteen-year-old wizards will convince few others.”
Hermione sucked in a breath as if to argue, but deflated with the knowledge that he was right.
“A child’s voice, no matter how honest or true, is meaningless to those who are not willing to listen.” Throughout his little speech, Dumbledore kept patting Ron’s leg. Harry honestly couldn’t tell if the man didn’t notice the pain he was causing or noticed but didn’t care. He wasn’t sure which was worse, especially for a man running a school full of children prone to hiding secrets. “Mysterious thing, time. Powerful, but when meddled with, dangerous. Sirius Black is in the topmost cell of the aft tower. You know the laws, Miss Granger. You must not be seen, and you would do well I feel to return before this last chime. If not, the consequences are too ghastly to discuss. If you succeed tonight, more than one innocent life may be spared. Three turns should do it, I think.”
With that incredibly cryptic advice, the headmaster walked away. He turned back around just as he was closing the door. “Oh! By the way, when in doubt, I find retracing my steps a wise place to begin. Good luck!”
Maddeningly, the man promptly shut the doors and walked off. “What the bloody h*** was that all about?” Ron asked, sounding as bewildered as Harry felt.
“Sorry, Ron, but seeing as you can’t walk…” Hermione said, turning to Harry and pulling what looked like a necklace out of her shirt. Carefully, she extended the chain and pulled it over Harry’s head, then lifted the pendant and started fiddling with the knob on the side. Harry lifted a hand to get a closer look, only for Hermione to slap his hand away and continue intently working the pendant. She flipped the center section three times, then dropped her hand from the knob as it spun rapidly the other direction. Harry watched in fascination as people wandered backwards all around them as the light shifted in the room. He wondered what would happen if one of them were to walk through the place they stood, but he didn’t get a chance to find out before the world around them started going the right way again.
Just to be sure, Harry asked, “What happened? Where’s Ron”
“7:30. Where were we at 7:30?” Hermione asked right back, indirectly answering his question.
“I don’t know, going to Hagrid’s?” Harry replied.
“C’mon. And we can’t be seen!” Hermione explained, taking Harry’s hand and pulling him off at a run behind her.
Harry sighed. “Hermione!” he exclaimed. He really wanted to know more about this mysterious time-reversing necklace. Could it only go back, or could it go forwards? How far back could it theoretically go? Unfortunately, Hermione was too busy running to answer his questions. Sighing, Harry sped up and followed her to wherever their destination actually was.
For his troubles, Harry ended up shoved in a broom cupboard in the Great Hall. While in there, he glimpsed himself, Hermione, and Ron walking out of the door, which was decidedly odd. Harry’s head was beginning to hurt from lack of sleep and the werewolf’s magic invading his though, so he stuck it in the category of ‘magical skulduggery to not worry about unless I don’t have a dark lord after my head’, where it joined such things as the magical sky of Hogwarts’s Great Hall, moving pictures and portraits, and the possible sentience of Hogwarts herself. They made it out of the Great Hall with just enough time to hide before hearing Hermione’s punch connect solidly with Malfoy’s nose and Malfoy run off to tell his father. They shared a laugh for a bit about it, waiting for the three of them to make it safely to Hagrid’s hut, then moved to hide behind the pumpkin patch themselves. Once version 1.0 - Harry was undecided if he should count as a 2.0 considering his becoming a werewolf but shrugged it aside - of themselves had entered Hagrid’s hut, Harry moved to free Buckbeak.
Hermione pulled him back. “Fudge has to see Buckbeak before we steal him, otherwise he’ll think Hagrid set him free.”
Harry hated that logic, but he couldn’t exactly fight it either. Both of them turned their attention back towards the happenings in Hagrid’s hut. Scabbers appeared then, and Harry moved to do… something, he didn’t know what. Fortunately for the rat and possibly Harry’s sanity, Hermione stopped him and beat down the possibility with her logic again. Harry almost wanted to snarl with anger at the rat, and at being dropped from getting vengeance himself. Well, that gave him pause. He didn’t know how much of that was him wanting it and how much of that was his instincts coming out. Harry hadn’t even considered that being a werewolf might change more than the way he spent the one night of the full moon, but suddenly the prospect of it seemed much more daunting if he had to continually fight back his own instincts. Harry’s control over his emotions and magic hadn’t exactly been ironclad, though he did his best. The incident with Marge last summer only showed how much Harry was out of control, and now Harry had three summer projects: controlling his emotions, looking into healing, and becoming ambidextrous in spellwork. It was going to be a long, if completely necessary, summer. He zoned back in as Dumbledore led the Minister and executioner down to Hagrid’s hut.
“Fudge is coming,” Hermione said. “And we aren‘t leaving. Why aren’t we leaving?” She sounded worried, but Harry was too busy watching the man with an axe coming for Buckbeak and wondering if someday that would be him if he bit the wrong person.
The sound of breaking pottery snapped Harry out of his fatalistic spiral. Hermione threw another rock, this time hitting Harry 1.0’s head. “Ow! That hurt!” Harry exclaimed. For some reason, he hadn’t expected it to hurt him the second time around as well, though luckily he didn’t seem to be reinjured. Maybe this was why Hermione looked the same age as the rest of them even though she’d spent extra time in classes this year? She certainly didn’t look like she’d aged at twice the rate as the rest of them. The sudden realization that he’d have to not only let the wolf bite him again but feel the pain snapped Harry out of his musings. He’d rather be a werewolf than mad, he supposed, but that didn’t mean he had to look forward to feeling the pain instead. Harry could only hope the soul pain inflicted by the dementors and the magical exhaustion caused by fighting them off wouldn’t transfer either, or he’d have no choice but to go to the infirmary and get more help from Madame Pomphrey, which would spell the end for his relatively quiet, unhated life.
“Sorry,” Hermione said. Harry had no clue how much he’d needed to hear an apology for the night’s events until that point, but some small part of him felt a bit better. He knew that she was only apologizing for the rock, but he’d take any comfort he could get at this point.
“We’re coming out the back door!” Hermione exclaimed. Harry ran into the cover of the trees with her shadowing his footsteps. Together they hid as versions 1.0 hid right where they’d been earlier. “Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?” Hermione asked, sounding somewhat outraged.
“Quiet!” Harry hissed. For a witch so concerned about keeping him sane by preventing him from changing the night’s events, she didn’t seem to care about potentially doing so herself. Then again, Harry mused, she’d been running around with this time necklace all year and quite possibly was less sane now than she’d been at the beginning of the year. The sound of his own voice was a bit different than he’d expected, but Harry moved past it to focus on the more important thing: saving Buckbeak with the incredibly limited time they had left.
Once versions 1.0 had made it safely up the hill, Harry and Hermione crept back up behind the pumpkin patch. Honestly, Harry wasn’t feeling too great. His shoulder was throbbing, and the most Harry could hope for was that it wasn’t infected with anything more than the werewolf’s magic. He didn’t need to add an extra-ugly bite scar on top of all his other scars; he’d prefer just a regular, small-ish bite scar like those Ripper had left all over his legs. At Hermione’s urging, Harry went out to Buckbeak, bowed, and grabbed the chain to urge him towards the Forbidden Forest. The hippogriff refused to move, and Harry was stuck wondering if it was the bird’s unwillingness to leave Hagrid or some instinctual fear of the werewolf Harry was becoming. Regardless, Harry was glad Hermione’s brain was firing on all cylinders, as she’s managed to scrounge up some dead ferrets to bait Buckbeak with.
The Headmaster led the Minister and executioner out of Hagrid’s hut, pointing emphatically in the opposite direction, where strawberries had apparently been planted by some long-gone headmaster. Hermione froze, and Harry blurrily did the same, wondering faintly how he was going to explain his way out of his one or if Dumbledore would take care of it like he did the end of year situations with Lockhart and Quirrel. Eventually, Hermione’s brain reconnected enough to realize the danger they were in if they didn’t immediately move, so she ran into the safety of the Forbidden Forest with Harry and Buckbeak following closely behind, Harry focusing solely on not falling flat on his face through the blurrier than normal vision in his eyes and the pain in his head. The two of them heard the shocked exclamations about Buckbeak’s disappearance, but just as Hermione had said, Hagrid was in trouble because he’d been with the Minister the whole time.
The two of them followed Hermione into the forest. Night had almost fully settled in the trees already, but Buckbeak was too happy to be left alone with the dead ferrets to care. With Buckbeak settled, Hermione and Harry walked to the top of a little hill where they had a lovely view of the Whomping Willow. “Now what?” Harry asked, tired and desperate for a rest.
“We save Sirius,” Hermione answered.
“How?” Harry snapped, the pain and horror of the night catching up to him in a moment he wasn’t exactly proud of. Luckily Hermione was worrying about other things, but Harry mentally planned to get her some chocolates or something in apology later.
“No idea,” Hermione answered.
Harry really did feel bad now. A box of assorted Honeydukes truffles, maybe? It wasn’t like she’d be involved in any of this if she wasn’t his friend anyway. Both Professors Lupin and Snape entered the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow. Harry had thought about trying to stop the second professor, or at least delay him, but the man had protected them from the werewolf. Not that he’d fully succeeded with Harry, but still. Harry wasn’t going to put him in a Body Bind or anything. He actually thought the previous night’s events turned out rather well, for all the information they’d learned. “And now we wait,” Harry declared.
“And now we wait,” Hermione agreed.
Harry was actually hoping to get a nap in. Well, hoping wasn’t exactly the right word, but his head was pounding enough that he needed one. As loud as Lupin’s last scream/howl had been before he fully transformed, Harry was pretty sure he’d be awake in time to evade the werewolf that would be loose on the grounds. A thought struck him right after a bat almost flew into his face, and Harry gulped. “Hermione?” he asked, really hoping her answer wouldn’t be what he thought it would.
“Yeah?” she asked back, the softening tone in her voice showing that she could tell he was nervous and was trying to reassure him.
“A werewolf turns the full moon after they’re bitten, right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Harry shifted nervously. “What do you suppose would happen if someone was bitten and then faced the full moon again for a second time that night?”
“Oh Harry,” Hermione sighed. She pulled Harry into a hug, noting the trembles wracking his frame, though she couldn’t tell if they were from exhaustion, cold, or pain at this point, and rocked gently back and forth. “Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together. You’re still the same person. You hear me? You’re still my brother in everything but blood and my best friend, no matter what happens tonight or any other full moon.”
“Promise?” Harry’s voice was small, and he was still shaking in her hold.
“Promise,” Hermione declared, trying to show just how confident she was with her voice alone. She kept holding him, rocking gently as she felt a few tears wet her shirt before Harry sniffled slightly and relaxed into her arms. It was times like these that Hermione really wanted to find and completely annihilate the Dursleys for what they’d done to Harry, his self-confidence, and his trust in other people. Worse, she was afraid that Ron was going to push Harry away over this. He hadn’t exactly said the nicest of things while they were researching those werewolf essays. He hadn’t been the rudest, not by a long shot, but he’d grown up with some of the prejudices in the Wizarding World. “It’s your decision completely to tell anyone else, Ron included. You don’t need to tell him or anyone, not if you don’t want to.”
Harry stiffened for a moment, then relaxed further. “Okay.”
After both a long moment and no time at all, Hermione shifted and said, “Look. Here we come. Remember, no matter what happens tonight, I’ll still be your sister and best friend.”
Harry squeezed her hand in gratitude. “You see Sirius talking to me there?”
“Mmhmm,” Hermione answered.
“He’s asking me to come and live with him!”
“That’s great,” she replied. She’d missed showing the proper enthusiasm, she was sure, but Hermione really wanted to find and destroy the Dursleys. For Harry to be this thrilled about an offer of home from a half-mad escaped convict, things with the Dursleys had been even worse than she’d feared, and she’d feared a lot.
“When we free him, I’ll never have to go back to the Dursleys,” Harry continued, oblivious to the righteous anger building beside him. “It’ll just be me and him. We could live in the country! Someplace you can see the sky. I think he’ll like that after all those years in Azkaban.”
Hermione opened her mouth to say something in reply, anything, but her own frantic voice cut through their conversation. “Harry!” she’d called, more worried than Hermione had ever heard herself, not that she’d heard herself much. She tried not to run into herself when using the Time Turner. As the clouds shifted from in front of the moon and the light hit Lupin, Hermione tightened her hand on Harry’s. “Remember, I’m still with you no matter what. Don’t fight the change! It will only make it hurt more,” Hermione whispered urgently.
And then the light hit Harry. He collapsed to sit, his last thought to sit so he wouldn’t fall before he let the change have its way with him.
The wolf panted as he lay on the ground. The change had been quick and fairly effortless, his other half not fighting for control. Odd, for all the tales the wolf’s first spirit pack had shared with him before he bonded to this child, their partners rarely let them take control without a fight, or without poisoning themselves. The wolf flicked that out of his mind and rose slowly to his feet, taking note of how weak this body was and the areas he’d need to improve for both his and his bonded’s comfort. If and until they became one or the child started poisoning him like the one that had bit the child and started the bond, the wolf would focus on healing this child and protecting those they now valued above all.
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A/N: Sorry for the short chapter! I wish I had time to go through and write more (and edit more), but I don't. Sorry for any mistakes!