Payback Time

Thanks for all the reviews. I very much appreciate them. They make me feel much better.

I think I’m manic. Blasted bipolar. I’ve been writing nonstop all morning. It’s getting out of control. My hands are killing me. I think I’ll have to sit on them to stop.

Anyway. Here’s another chapter. Please, don’t expect such rapid posting in the future.

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Sirius Black woke like he always did, in his human form. He stretched and that was his first mistake. He was frozen before he finished.

“Who are you?” he heard Harry asked, though he could not answer.

His eyes moved to where he saw Harry glaring at him. The teen waved a hand at him and nodded for him to talk. “Sirius Black, your godfather,” he said, trying to move and failing.

“Why are you pretending to be a dog?” Harry asked, not letting the man move just yet. His hands held at the ready.

“I’m an escaped convict, but I’m innocent,” he answered quickly. “I promise I mean you no harm. Just hear me out,” he said as fast as he could. “You can do whatever magic on me to make me tell the truth. I promise I am innocent,” he said again. He knew Harry could do magic that was different than normal. He saw him do it on the goblins yesterday. He didn’t know the extent, but he knew he could do some mind manipulation.

“Talk,” Harry said, waving his hand again.

So, Sirius spilled his story about how he was framed by the rat Peter Pettigrew, and how he saw the rat in the paper. Harry listened with various degrees of emotions. When the man was finished, he released him.

“Do you believe me?” Sirius asked, finally able to move. He sat in the chair near the window.

“Yeah, I cast a truth spell on you,” Harry said, rubbing his forehead at all the information that he had just received. “Show me the newspaper article,” he said, holding out his hand. He had a bad feeling about it.

Sirius dug in his pocket and pulled out the article. He handed it to Harry, who looked at it and sighed. “Do you know that kid?” the ex-prisoner asked, looking at the despondent face.

“Yeah, that’s my best friend, Ron,” Harry said, picturing his best friend’s face and making a gesture with his hand and a rat was right in front of him. He made another gesture and there was a cage around the rat. He was a bit concerned that his friend might be worried that his rat had disappeared, but it was needed. He’d make it up to Ron later.

“Wow, how did you do that?” Sirius asked, picking up the cage and growling at the rat within. He shook the cage and made the rat squeak. He looked to make sure it was the correct animal. It was gray and missing a toe on its left paw. It was Wormtail alright, he growled again.

Harry grabbed the cage away from the man and put it on the bed. “Leave it,” he said, smacking the hand that grabbed for it again. “We need him to get you free.” He magically pushed the man back into his chair.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sirius pointed out, leaning back in his chair with a pout.

“I got struck by lightning yesterday, and now I’m stupidly powerful,” the teen answered, with a smirk. “I can do anything I want with just a wave of my hand,” he added, still smirking.

“Really?” his godfather asked, looking down at his clothes, which were prison wear. “Can you magic me up something to wear?” he asked, always one to be vain about his appearance. His hair and beard were a mess, and he was looking like a crazed man. He had never looked so bad in all his life, and he didn’t want to look like this a moment longer. “And do something about my hair?” he added, waving to his face.

Harry moved his hand and Sirius was now wearing some jeans and a button-down. His hair was neatly cut, and he was sporting a goatee. “There, you’re all prettied-upped,” he said, holding out a handheld mirror.  

“Thanks, pup,” Sirius said, looking at his face and grinning like a fool. Now, this was heaven. His godson did good.

“How do we get your name cleared?” Harry said, pointing his finger at the rat and erasing everything that just happened from the man’s mind. He then put the animal/man in a bubble, so he didn’t learn anything else. It wouldn’t do for others to find out that Harry could do things with just a wave of his hand. That would ruin his fun. Not to mention his payback.

“You’ll have to take the rat to Amelia Bones. She’s the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Sirius said, seriously. Something he doesn’t do often on principle.

“Where do I find her?” Harry asked, getting dressed for the day with a wave of his hand. This doing magic with a thought was neat.

“She’d be at the Ministry,” Sirius said, getting up and pacing a bit. “I can take you to where you need to be, but I’ll have to change back into Padfoot, that’s my dog form’s name, and you’ll have to find your way from there,” he explained, still pacing. He didn’t want Harry to have to go there by himself, but it would be dangerous for him to go there in his Animagus form.

“I can change your form so no one will realize you are not a real dog,” Harry said, thinking he would go as Harriet. It wouldn’t do for him to go as Harry; he would be too close to the case that way. He would have to come up with some kind of story about how he found out about the rat though.

That would be a puzzle.

“How would I explain about Peter, here?” he asked his godfather, hoping the man had a solution.

“I’m not sure. We could turn him back into his human form and turn him in that way,” Sirius suggested, thinking that would be the only way to reasonably do it.

“I could glamor you to look like my father,” Harry said, knowing he could do that. His glamors were very realistic.

“Or your mother,” Sirius said, with a bit of laughter.

“I like that better,” Harry said, looking at the man and sizing him up, as if seeing how he would look like as a woman.

“I was kidding,” Sirius said, holding up his hands.

“I’m not,” Harry said, waving his hands and turning the man into a female.

Sirius was quite a looker as a woman. He stood about 5’5” and was a busty brunette with a slim waist and long legs. “Harry this isn’t a glamor, my man bits are gone,” the man turned woman said in a loud voice, with his hands searching for his tackle and coming up empty.

“Quit being a baby, I’ll give them back,” Harry said, knowing that his returned when he cancelled his glamor.

“You’d better, godson oh mine,” the dogman said, giving up on finding his manhood. He then explored his chest until Harry hit him with a stinging hex.

“Stop that, you perv. Turn into a dog,” Harry commanded, wanting to see if the change crossed over.

Sirius shrugged and did so. He was surprised when he changed into a female version of Padfoot. He was still black but smaller, and his manhood was still gone.

Harry turned into Harriet and picked up the cage with Peter and left the room. He moved to the dining room and walked out of the pub, foregoing breakfast. This was just more important.

Sirius turned back into a woman once they were out of the pub and raised his wand hand and called the purple double-decker bus called the Knight Bus and they took the harrowing ride to Whitehall. They made their way to the phone booth outside of the famous building. Sirius dialed the word magic on the number pad. A voice asked them their purpose.

“Here to speak to Amelia Bones,” Sirius said to the air. Two tags came out stating that they were there to speak to the Head of the DMLE. They took them and attached them to their shirts.

They were taken down to the atrium, and Sirius hustled them over to the guard that checked Harry’s wand. When he asked for Sirius’s he said, “I left it at home. We were shopping today and silly me, I forgot it.” Then he giggled like an airhead, and the guard let them go.

Sirius took them to the lift and punched the button for the correct floor. They waited for level two to open, which wasn’t long. They exited the car and went to the desk at the far end of the room.

“We’d like to speak to Amelia Bones,” Sirius said, in his best female voice.

“Your names?” the woman asked, taking notes.

“Serena Anderson and Harriet, my daughter,” Sirius said, using the name Harry used last night.

“We need to see the Head of the DMLE,” Harry reiterated to the secretary as the woman wrote their ‘names’ down.

“Oh, why?” she asked, looking at the two females carrying a cage with a rat in it.

“We think we might have captured a criminal,” Harry said, holding up the cage.

“Why do you think that?” the woman asked, pushing a button on the desk.

“It’s not a rat,” Harry said in a quiet voice, like it was a secret.

“Oh, well that is interesting,” she said, waving them into Amelia’s office. She got up and proceeded them in. “These ladies wish to speak to you,” she said, waving them to sit.

“What about?” Bones inquired, looking harassed, like she had been doing more than her fair share of work all day. She had been. Sirius Black had escaped, and Fudge had been in her office off and on all day long telling her how to do her job. She was this close to killing the man and his toad of a secretary.

“They say that they have a rat that is not a rat,” the secretary said, pointing to the cage.

“That is a pickle,” Amelia said, pointing to her desk indicating Harry to put the cage there.

Harry complied and started their cover story. “We were shopping when we saw this man lurking about, looking shifty. We didn’t think much about it, until he looked my way. I was studying all about those that were awarded Order of Merlin medals, and I recognized him. He is supposed to be dead. I immediately told my mum and she yelled at him. He turned into a rat and tried to get away, but we stunned him and brought him here,” he said in a rush. They had talked about what to say when they were on the Knight Bus. It was a simple story, that was easy to remember.

“Who do you think he is?” Bones inquired, doing a spell over the cage confirming that it was indeed a human.

“Peter Pettigrew,” Harry said with a decisive nod. “I studied everything about him. He was my hero. I think my heart broke a bit when I saw him,” he said sadly, like he was indeed heartbroken. There were even tears in ‘her’ eyes.

“There, there, Harriet,” Sirius said, patting his ‘daughter’s’ hand. “She is so emotional,” he said to the women in the room. ‘She’ handed ‘her’ ‘daughter’ a handkerchief and patted ‘her’ hand again.

“I would think so, if this is true,” the secretary said, looking at the distraught ‘girl’. She had a daughter the girl’s age and so she knew the girl was going through puberty right now. Emotions were bound to run amuck. Especially over young women’s heroes. This must be devastating to the child.

“Well, there is only one way to find out,” Amelia said, putting the cage on the ground and expanding it. She then pointed her wand at the rat and turned him human. “I’m afraid you are correct. That is Peter Pettigrew,” she said, cursing under her breath. This just made her job ten times harder. That meant that Sirius Black was innocent of at least one murder. Blast and damnation. Fudge wasn’t going to like this. However, there was little he could do about it. The evidence was irrefutable. If that man tried to cover this up, Amelia was going to throw the book at him.

“Does that mean that Sirius Black is innocent,” was ‘Harriet’s’ innocent question. He didn’t know he was voicing her thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Amelia said, honestly. “But it does call a lot of things into question,” she confessed, looking at the girl, who seemed to be bouncing back from her upheaval. Then again, Susan had mood swings too. Girls at this age were just so temperamental.

“Well,” Sirius said, standing and gesturing ‘Harriet’ to do the same, “we’ll let you get back to your job.” He then led Harry out of the room.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” Amelia said, showing them to the lift. She had a lot of work to do now that they dropped this bombshell on her lap. She had to get it all done before Fudge came and mucked it up.

“It was our duty,” Sirius said, wanting to get out of the building as soon as possible. He didn’t want to push their luck anymore then they already were.

“If I have any questions, how do I find you?” Bones asked, looking at the two as they got into the lift. She didn’t think she would, but it was a standard question.

“We’re at the Leaky,” Harry said, not wanting to lie to her. She was a nice person.

“Okay, thank you again,” the Head of the DMLE stated as the doors closed. She went back to her office to begin questioning the new suspect. She’d get as much out of him as she could before the shite hit the fan. That way she had her ducks in a row.

“Why did you tell her that?” Sirius said, not really angry, but concerned that she might nab him. He was very uncomfortable with her knowing where he was. Even if she didn’t know who he was.

“She’ll not have questions,” Harry said, waving his hand at the door, making Amelia and the secretary forget their faces and where they were staying. They would just remember that two females came in with the rat.

“Smart kid,” Sirius said, and then went quiet.

Harry waved his hand again, and Sirius raised an eyebrow. “I just made it so Peter will tell the truth, and nothing but the truth for the rest of his life. Even if he escapes, he can never lie.” Harry hoped that gave the man trouble for the rest of his miserable life.

That had Sirius cracking up.