Chapter 6

Events passed quickly after that night.

After walking away, I lead Remus into the forest with Hagrid, and after shifting back, spent the rest of the night running through the trees. By the time the moon went down, Remus had worked out most of his energy when we returned to Hagrid's hut.

The following few days were spent with Remus recovering, and learning about the actions he had taken that night. The surprise and relief when he heard no one had been hurt, and that Sirius was looking to be set free brought a smile to those who were there to see his reaction to the news.

The minister however was making the entire process as difficult as possible, even going as far as to try and threaten people's jobs, but by now, too many people knew and he was forced to go along with everything or else find himself having more problems then he already had.

That said, the ministry would never come right out and say they made such an egregious mistake, and while Sirius' freedom was pretty much in the bag by this point, getting any kind of reimbursement was being fought tooth and nail.

Eventually Fudge had the idea to blame everything on the previous administration and make everything someone else's problem.

This lead to Crouch Sr. being sacked as the one who sent Sirius to Azkaban without a trial, while a few other unimportant people also lost their jobs for one reason or another. The previous minister was already retired and not much could be done about that but as far as Fudge was concerned, it wasn't his fault or problem.

As soon as Sirius was cleared of all charges, he was sent to St. Mungo's to get treated for everything that happened to him while imprisoned and on the run, and while there were many things that were wrong indeed with him, they were easily fixed and within a week he was released a truly free man.

Public opinion about the entire thing was mixed to say the least. At first there was shock and disbelief, but after it was disclosed that Pettigrew was alive, hiding as a pet of a Hogwarts student, the outcry was enormous. The very thought that someone, even if he was innocent, was hiding as a pet for a child and around their children, sent the parents bat shit crazy. Further testimony regarding Pettigrew and his crimes only made it worse as people began to question how this happened in the first place.

Pettigrew himself was sent to occupy Sirius' old cell, with cuffs lined with runes locked to his arms and legs to prevent him from using his magic to change his form, while they decided what to do further with him.

The current debate was whether to let him rot there or just be done with it and throw him to a dementor. He was certainly not having a good time right now.

After Sirius was released from the healers, his first destination was Hogwarts to see both Rose and myself and figure out what to do for the summer. Dumbledore convinced him to have Rose go back to the Dursley's for a few weeks, in order to charge up the blood wards, while I went home with Sirius and he got his affairs in order.

After spending the whole day with the both of us, he left to talk to the goblins and get a proper home address registered.

Rose herself was ecstatic about the news and her entire demeanor was lifted as she spent the remaining time at Hogwarts with her friends and talking to Remus about her parents and Sirius.

The one good thing about Remus being a werewolf coming out was that with the entire thing going on between Sirius Black being innocent and Peter Pettigrew being alive and the real betrayer of the Potters, the fact there was a werewolf at Hogwarts was not immediately noted upon.

Oh there was no doubt in anyone's mind that eventually the knowledge would become much more relevant and noticed, but it would seem Remus had a few more days to a week or two to recover at Hogwarts before he would have to resign and leave.

This gave plenty of time for Remus to tell Rose all about Sirius, James and Lily, which she soaked up with the upmost attention. Learning all that she could while she could about the family that was taken from her, and the family she might come to have.

Hermione, being who she was, immediately rushed to the library to learn everything she could about anything that had come out that night, from the werewolf curse itself in more detail, to recorded mutations if there were any. When she read all she could about that, she moved onto recorded 'half-breeds' and all she could find about them.

Safe to say she was not seen often outside of class or meals, and even then she didn't stay long.

The looks I could sometimes see her giving me though during meals, as I sat at the Ravenclaw table next to Luna Lovegood, and the thoughts I could glimpse from her mind, told me that she was greatly conflicted about all the things she had learned about my situation.

On the one hand, she didn't see me any less than she had before, and in some ways, her crush on me had grown slightly.

But on the other, she didn't know how to approach things about me when it came to her feelings. She had noticed the very occasional instances that it appeared I might like her back, but being the teenager she is, was uncertain if she was reading things correctly. Add onto that what she had just learned about me, and how I must be dealing with having my father just released, she didn't want to make things any more difficult for me.

Ron it would seem, had been talked down by both Hermione and eventually Rose about how to deal with me, and as far as he was concerned, I was a bloke he rarely had to interact with and was put out of his mind. He certainly kept a closer watch when he did interact with me, but outside of class he pretty much ignored me.

Most of my time the past two weeks had been spent with the professors, talking about my circumstances and with Dumbledore, showing him the details of the ritual I had worked out to get his opinion on.

It was quite intricate and required a lot of rare ingredients. The timing of the ritual was also very specific, needing to be done during the winter equinox, which just so happened this coming school year to be during a full moon. The entire thing required a lot of study in many specialties of magic, from charms and potions, to healing and mind arts. Even alchemy and dark arts magic were involved, though very very little of the last, and mostly only knowledge about the curse itself.

From the data I had collected the origin of the curse was a result of a wizard messing up horribly on trying to modify the animagus ritual. Finding some records in the Room of Requirement made references to how he had found out about and was displeased with his inner animal, and in an act of supreme arrogance, thought to try to make changes to the ritual and pick an animal he felt was more deserving of himself.

Along with switching and adding ingredients, he felt it was a smart idea to capture an animal of the form he wanted to achieve, in this case, a Dire wolf, and hoped that by sacrificing the beast, he could take its form.

From when the records were written, the time was not a good one for having knowledge of certain afflictions that affected animals, and in the case of the wolf he used, it had early stages of what would come to be known as rabies. This combined with the changes he made, caused horrible results, as his animal half, part of his very soul, was corrupted and transformed, his soul following after.

For days he rampaged before he was put down, now more beast than man, and in that time dozens had died. Many times more were wounded, and after he was dead the people of the area thought the situation taken care of.

It wasn't until a few weeks later, on the night of the full moon, that those wounded found themselves changed, into a diseased form that would come to be known worldwide as Lycanthropy.

This actually explained certain things about the curse itself, mainly the fact that almost no muggles survived the bite, since the curse seems to affect the part of the soul that witches and wizards have their animal halves, and it is magic itself that lets a witch or wizard commune with that half.

Perhaps the few muggles that survived were squibs or some such, and it is the magic they had, but could never use that allowed them to live? If they would even call their new circumstances living at any rate.

Remus had left the castle a few days ago, after the information about his condition came out, and the controversy surrounding Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew began to settle down. During the time he was still at the castle, we had spoken frequently about the idea of finding a way to deal with his condition, and he had agreed to help in any way he could to achieve it.

He was currently staying with Sirius at Grimmauld place helping to clean up the house and get it ready for Rose and myself.

Sirius had told me that after I got to London at the end of the school year, we would be heading to Gringotts to register me as heir of House Black, as it seemed he had never truly been kicked from the family. His grandfather had decided to only make it seem like he had, in case no other options came out. He never liked Lucius and while yes, if no other options came up the family would still survive, but if given the choice, that pompous fool would not get control of his house.

While the orphanage had been good to me, and in the past few years I did all I could to help them, I would greatly enjoy not having to go back there again. I never really spent much time there anyways the past couple of summers, mostly out training or acquiring things in Diagon Alley.

As Luna sat next to me, making magical animals out of her food during the leaving feast, I couldn't help but think about all the plans I had for this summer in preparation for the next year. Hopefully the whole fourth champion thing could be avoided if the plans for the locket worked out how I hoped it would.

Best case scenario, without any anchors and with no body, his spirit would fade away, which would only leave the remaining death eaters to take care of. Worse case, someone would try to put her name in the goblet and I would stop them.

She did not need to deal with any of that.

As the feast ended, and Gryffindor won the house cup again, everyone headed back to their dormitories before waking up tomorrow to take the train back home.

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The train ride back to London the next day was spent mostly in solitude. Through a bit of misdirection and spacial charms, I was able to make a cabin bigger and hidden from all those who were not greatly determined to find me.

That being said, it was a bit of a surprise as a few hours into the journey, a knock came from the door to my compartment, and after taking a look at who it was, I found Hermione standing on the other side of the door with a nervous look on her face.

"Hello Hermione, can I help you with something?" I ask her kindly, with a small smile.

The tone of my voice and the look in my eyes caused her to blush lightly. "I never got a chance to say thank you for doing what you did that night and for saving us." She looks away slightly before looking back at me. "Things might have been different if you hadn't helping the way you did, and Rose might not have had the chance she now has with your father to learn more about her parents."

"I'm glad she will have the chance as well, and that my father got the justice he deserved." I give her a smile.

"Would you care to join me? Or did you have somewhere else to be?" I invite her inside.

She takes a few quick looks around before giving a shy nod. "S-Sure, if you don't mind." She brushes some hair behind her ear.

Moving to the side I gesture for her to enter, and as she does, her eyes light up at the increased dimensions of the compartment.

"Oh!" She exclaims. "How did you do this? Isn't the train charmed against spells affecting it to stop certain enchantments from potentially damaging it?"

A light look of alarm crosses her face. "Is it safe?" She asks in a low whisper.

Giving a light chuckle and closing the door, I gesture to a chair siting around a low table center piece. "It's perfectly safe." I assure her. "While true that most magic is encouraged to not be used on the train, mostly due to being before or after school has started and ended, there really isn't anyone to monitor the train to make sure it doesn't happen."

"There are of course the prefects to make sure nothing truly dangerous occurs but for the most part it's don't ask don't tell." I finish as I pull some tea and snacks from a side bag. "Would you care for any?"

At my question, she gives a small shake of her head. "No, thank you. I'm not partial to tea actually."

I give a nod of my head. "Me as well, I only have this with me in case someone else wants any." With a small smirk and wink I add further. "To be honest there isn't even any prepared tea in it since I don't drink any myself. I of course have everything I would need to do so in case you were to have said yes but not much."

I hold out some snacks. "Any snacks though?"

"Sure." She grabs some of the chocolate offered.

Taking another look around, she asks further. "How did you expand the space?"

"Funny you should use that word, as it seems I have a bit of an affinity with space in general. Any type of enchantment or charm like the ones used in trunks and bags just come to me as easy as breathing. I might make a job of it later in life with just how easy it is. I even have a few ideas on some things I haven't seen anyone else make before." I comment and give a sly look while rubbing a certain plain ring on my left pointer finger. Though she doesn't notice or recognize what I mean by my words.

"What about you, do you have any ideas on what you might want to do after Hogwarts?" I ask her as I grab a few more pieces of chocolate.

"Oh I think it's too soon for me to be able to decide on something like that. There's still so much I have to learn at Hogwarts before I can pick anything." Her thirst for knowledge shines through.

I give a nod. "Understandable, we still have a few more years to go before that starts to become a major cause for consideration."

"Did you have any big plans for the summer?" I inquire.

She shakes her head. "Last year my parents and I went to France so this year we just plan to spend time at home. I'll probably do some reading in preparation for next year and do some revision of past essays to brush up on some things." As she finishes her statement she grows a little self conscious. Most people find that part of her to be annoying, she often hears the comments made about her being a bookworm. "You?" She asks hoping I don't comment on her embarrassment.

"Nothing wrong with that, sometimes it's good to brush up on things to make sure you don't get sloppy." I reply kindly. "I'll be spending most of the summer with my father taking care of some things involving House Black, when he's not spending time with Rose talking about her parents. I'll probably do quite a bit of training otherwise and at the end of summer the three of us will be going to Quiddich World Cup. He got top box tickets from the Ministry for what happened to him." I pause a moment before throwing out an invitation. "You're welcome to join us if you want, they gave us plenty of tickets."

The offer seems to distract her for a moment before she focuses back on a specific comment. "Wait, what do you mean you will be training, students aren't allowed to do magic at home."

"That's not entirely accurate." I answer. "While that is technically true, the trace doesn't actually tell who has used magic outside Hogwarts, only if someone has and where. In the cases where someone uses magic in the vicinity of their parents, the ministry assumes it is the adult doing the magic. Which obviously means Muggleborns are the only ones that are affected. I also train physically to keep in shape."

"But that's not fair!" The injustice of the topic causes her to grow angry.

"It isn't." I shake my head. "If you want, you can come over sometimes to visit Rose and get some practice in. That way if you want to join us for the world cup you could spend some time before hand with her. I'm sure she would enjoy it."

She nods her head. "I'll need to speak with my parents but I don't think that'll be a problem."

"Good to hear." Handing her small mirror. "You can use this to keep in touch, just say my name while holding it in front of you and it'll 'ring' like a phone letting me know you want to talk. The same will happen to you if it's the other way around of course."

Gently taking the mirror she gives it a look as she flips it back and forth. "I've never heard of something like this." She looks up at me. "Where did you get it?"

"I made it myself." Though to myself I comment on how I totally didn't rip it off from the books.

A look of shock crosses her face. "This must have taken quite a bit of advanced magic to make."

I shake my head. "It wasn't too hard, if I had tried to pair more than just the two then it would have been much trickier."

She blushes at the implied thought of giving her something pair specifically with her. "Thank you." She mutters.

"No problem." The countryside starts to grow sparse as it looks like the train is getting closer to London. "It looks like we're going to arrive soon, it was nice spending time with you Hermione. I hope you have a good summer and be sure to let us know if you want to come over some time." I bid her as we both stand up for her to depart and get her things.

"Of course." She responds as she opens the compartment door, though she hesitates for a moment before rushing back and shyly pecking me on the cheek, to then rush out the door.

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