Sirius Black is more terrifying to view in person than printed in black and white. Castor observes how his eyes never stray from Ron, who's seated on the dirty mattress in the opposing corner of the room. His face is hollow, with sharp cheekbones and deep sunken eyes. His striped Azkaban jumpsuit is ripped at the knees, and if Castor looks closely, she can see how fragile and haunted this man is. Castor grips her wand as she holds it out in front of her, pointed at his chest as she glares at the man in the corner, grits her teeth as he pushes the door of the room closed, trapping them in there with him.
"No!" Hermione cries, moving in front of Harry. "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!"
"No. Only one will die tonight." Sirius' voice is low and croaking as if he hasn't properly spoken in years. He takes a few steps forward, And Harry overcome with a multitude of emotions, rushes past Castor slipping his arm out of her firm grip on his jacket sleeve as he knocks himself into Sirius.
"Then it will be you!"
"Harry, no!" Castor yells, moving forward to pry the boy away from the murderous man. Harry wrestles him to the ground, hands around his neck as he reaches for his wand. Castor wraps her arms around Harry's chest from behind, heaving him off of Sirius and back into the corner with Ron and Hermione. Crookshanks, who's apparently been in the room with them this whole time, takes this moment to seat himself on Sirius' chest, blocking any way for a stunning spell to hit him. Harry's wand shakes in his grip as he points is at Sirius, Castor holds tight around his ribs. Her own wand is still held in her grip but she's unable to wield if she has to hold him back.
"Are you going to kill me, Harry?" Sirius laughs. The door bursts open again, Professor Lupin and Pollux with wands out in front of them.
"Expelliarmus!" Professor Lupin claims Harry's wand as it flies out of the boy's hands and into his own. Castor uses this opportunity to move the younger teenager behind her again, holding an arm out to her side to protect Hermione and Harry. She positions herself in front of Ron. Pollux stands at Professor Lupin's side, the group of them caging in Sirius Black between all of them.
"Castor!" Pollux eyes his sister, looking for anywhere she may be hurt.
"I'm fine." She doesn't move her eyes from Sirius Black, doesn't so much as blink.
"Well, well, Sirius, looking rather ragged aren't we?" Professor Lupin moves towards the man still lying on the floor. "Finally, the flesh reflects the madness within."
"You would know all about the madness within, wouldn't you Remus?" Sirius laugh again.
"Really?" Pollux mutters. "A werewolf joke now?"
Remus lowers his wand, reaching his hand down to pull his old friend to his feet. Sirius grips Remus' hand tightly, throwing himself into his chest and hugging him around the shoulders. Castor is appalled, as it Pollux. He'd hoped the professor would've interrogated the man more than just taunting him.
"I found him. He's here!" Sirius whimpers. "Let's kill him!"
"No!" Hermione cried, pushing into Castor's still outstretched arm. The dark-haired girl pushes her back again. "I trusted you! And all this time you've been his friend." She yells at Professor Lupin.
"Hermione, wait!" Pollux knows what she's about to reveal.
"He's a werewolf!" She points at her DADA teacher. "That's why he's been missing classes!"
"How long have you known?" Remus eyes the young witch behind Castor. Sirius stares blankly out in front of him.
"Since Professor Snape set the essay."
"You really are the brightest witch of your age, Hermione."
"Enough talk, Remus." Sirius snaps, moving to the middle of the room, Pollux's wand following after him. "Let's kill him!"
"Wait!"
"I did my waiting! Twelve years of it! In Azkaban!" Sirius' voice hitches, as if he wants to cry and scream out in a rage all at the same time. Castor doesn't want to feel for the man, but the way he's so emotional stirs something in her. She shoves the feeling down, out of mind as she focuses on protecting the trio behind her.
"Wait." Remus repeats lowly. "Harry has the right to know why." He looks towards Pollux behind Sirius, able to see the resemblance so clearly now that they're standing near one another. But he'll save that for another time.
"I know why!" Harry's emotional, distraught. "You betrayed my parents! You're the reason they're dead!"
"Pollux?" Castor asks. "What's he talking about?" Her twin has the decency to look a bit guilty.
"You never told her?" Ron spoke up from his spot on the mattress.
"Pollux Dio, what have you been keeping from me?" Castor snaps at her brother, her wand lowering slightly as she pierced her twin with an icy glare. Sirius glances at the boy behind him.
"Harry it wasn't him." Remus speaks firmly. "But it was somebody, who, until quite recently, I believed to be dead."
"Who was it then?" Harry had grown impatient, as has Castor.
"Peter Pettigrew!" Sirius spits the name is if it physically pains him to say it. "Come out, come out Peter! Come out and play!"
"Expelliarmus!" Castor is surprised to see Professor Snape, retrieving Remus' wand into his own hand. The Jones twin is shocked that he didn't hear the potions masters' thoughts when he entered the building. "Vengeance is sweet. How I hoped I'd be the one to catch you." Snape smirks as if he'd been waiting for this moment his whole life.
"Severus, please." Remus begins, but when Snape's wand is turned on him, he moves to stand behind Sirius. Professor Snape looks to Pollux, nodding him over to the right to stand with the others. Pollux moves quickly and holds his wand in front of him but not aiming at anyone in particular.
"I told Dumbledore you were helping an old friend into the castle, and now here's the proof."
"Brilliant, Snape." Sirius taunts, moving closer to the wand pointed at him. "Once again you put your keen and penetrating mind to the task, and as usual, come to the wrong conclusion. Now if you don't mind, Remus and I have some unfinished business to attend to."
Everyone in the room jumps and Snape points his wand into Sirius' neck.
"Give me a reason." Snape eyes Sirius. "I beg you!"
"Severus don't be a fool..." Remus tried to placate the situation.
"He can't help it. It's habit by now." Sirius is still taunting the wand pointed at him.
"Sirius, be quiet!" Remus snaps.
"Be quiet yourself, Remus!" Sirius snaps right back. Castor and Pollux's gaze bounce back and forth like a pinball game.
"Listen to you two, quarreling like and old married couple." Snape drawls.
"Why don't you run along and play with your chemistry set?"
Castor can't help but lean into her twin, still eyeing Sirius in confused disbelief.
"This guy?" She points at him, looking from Pollux to Sirius again. This is the guy our mother fell in love with? Pollux shrugs halfheartedly, shaking his head.
Sirius glances at the twins again, curious as to why he feels drawn to them. He knows who Castor is, he's been her companion in the forest for almost seven months now. He doesn't know why he kept coming back to see her, it only pained him most days, the girl looking like the ghost of the woman he still loved after all these years. Snape must notice his confused glance, and he smirks, eyeing his childhood enemy with glee.
"What's the matter, Black? Don't recognize your own twins?" He taunts. Sirius' eyes widen as he bounces back and forth between Snape and the siblings in the corner, looking for a lie that isn't there. Castor and Pollux are enraged now, wands lowers as they finally explode on their professor. Remus watches them, surprised that his theory had been correct as they don't deny the information.
"What?!" Harry spits from behind them. Hermione and Ron are shocked, looking between the twins as they finally piece together the similarities in physical appearance.
"Gemini..." Sirius whispers. He stumbles back into the piano, revelation painted across his face, his chest aches fiercely, and he presses a hand to his ribs as if to steady his rapidly beating heart.
"Oh, fuck you!" Pollux yells, pointing angrily in Snape's direction.
"You're such an asshole!" Castor even flips him off.
"You had no right to do that!"
"That was completely uncalled for, you twisted jackass!"
"How did you know anyways? We never told anyone." Pollux and Castor glare at Professor Snape, wishing she could launch him out of the second story window.
"Oh, please, anyone with eyes and a competent brain you see how much you are copies of your parents." Snape spits at them. Sirius steps forward again, and Severus points his wand at the escaped convict's neck again. "I could do it, you know?" He moves forward, forcing Sirius back into the piano. "But why deny the dementors? They're so longing to see you." Sirius gulps. "Do I detect a flicker of fear? A kiss? It's said to be nearly unbearable to witness, but I'll do my best."
"Severus, please..." Remus begs. Castor moves slowly, pulling her hair back and out of the way, securing her wand through her curls and flexing her wrists. The 16-year-old witch moved forward, but she doesn't see the Harry has moved behind her as well. Professor Snape finally takes notice of her change in position, tilting his head curiously at her.
"I don't regret what I am about to do." She twists her wrists around quickly before harshly shoving one palm out in front of her, the gust of air blowing the professor back into the poster bed behind him, the old wood cracking and splintering on top of him. Apparently, Harry had the same idea, because just as she pulled her own stunt, Harry had stunned Professor Snape at the same time she did.
Castor looked behind her, Harry held Hermione's wand out in front of him, pointed generally at Sirius, but he was eyeing Professor Lupin as well.
"Tell me about Peter Pettigrew." He ordered.
"He was at school with us. We thought he was our friend." Remus spoke as if begging Harry to believe him.
"No, Pettigrew's dead." Harry pointed his wand at Sirius, though Castor was still standing in the way. "You killed him!"
"No, I thought so too, until you mentioned seeing Pettigrew on the map." Remus moved in front of them both.
"Fred and George gave you the map?" Pollux looked at Harry.
"The map!" Castor cried as she connected the dots. "Padfoot! That's where I'd seen the name before! How could I be so stupid?!"
"The map was lying then." Harry tried to conclude.
"The map never lies." The unison response came from Sirius, Remus, Castor, and Pollux.
"Pettigrew's alive." Sirius looked at Ron in the corner again. Castor finally connected the dots. If Sirius was an animagus, then...
"Holy shit." Castor swore again. "Pollux..." She looked to her twin, who only nodded back at her. How? She knew Pollux could hear her thoughts.
Fidelus Charm. He was their secret keeper.
Castor found herself having to take several calming breaths. She paced back and forth in front of the broken piano; hands braced on her hips as she forced her rage to remain at bay. The wrong man spent more than a decade in prison. Peter was an animagus, who spent who-knows-how-long posing as Ron's pet rat. Peter betrayed the Potters, which eventually lead to their deaths on Halloween 1981.
And Castor, who knew very well, and much more recently, what it was like to lose a parent, especially so suddenly, felt so filled with anger that she began to flex her hands into fists, nails piercing into her palms in deep crescent shapes.
"Ron." She addressed the Weasley boy. Ron, who, like her other friends in the room knew that Castor's silent anger was much worse than when she was yelling and screaming, gave her a nervous look. "How long have you had Scabbers?"
"Um...twelve years." He responded slowly; Harry's wand lowered in realization. Castor stopped pacing, facing the mattress in the corner, her chest heaving in barely repressed rage as she clenched her fists again. Remus was watching her carefully. This was a completely different person to him. The young witch he knew was much different than the one who stood before him now.
"And has he always been missing a toe?" She glared at the beady eyes of the rodent. Ron gulped, remaining silent. "Ron...give me the rat." Ron shook his head, bringing Scabbers closer into his chest. "GIVE ME THE RAT!"
Castor just about lunged in Ron's direction. She was stopped in her tracks as Pollux restrained her, pinning her arms against her chest as she thrashed in her twins hold. Pollux grunted, doing his best to move her to the other side of the room as she twisted and tried to escape his tight grip around her, swearing and cursing up a storm. Castor Mya Jones had never felt such anger like this before, and her palms began to smoke and spark. Pollux flinched at the sting he felt in his own hands.
"Castor, calm down." Her twin shoved her away from him, the heat becoming too much. He held one hand out in front of him, waiting there if he had to stop her again. Pollux was usually the one who needed to be talked down off the ledge of madness. Castor actually did it quiet often, and how she managed to calm him every time was a miracle. To be honest, Pollux wasn't sure he could contain his sister if she used her full strength. "Let's work through this. We'll reverse the transformation and then we'll go from there. Okay?" When her palms were no longer smoking, she nodded, taking more calming breaths to keep her powers under control.
"All they could find of Pettigrew was his finger." Harry continued the conversation.
"The dirty coward cut it off so everyone would think he was dead." Sirius glared at the rat again, sneering. "And then he transformed himself into a rat."
"Show me."
Sirius wrestled Scabbers from Ron's grasp, ignoring the pleadings of the Weasley boy who desperately didn't want any of this to be true. Hermione waited next to him, watching as Sirius grabbed Harry's wand from Remus. The two old friends held their respective wands out in front of them as Sirius dropped Scabbers on the piano. They narrowly missed the rat several times, chasing after him as he ran across the piano keys, onto the stool and scurried across the floor towards a mouse hole.
Castor pulled her wand from her hair, midnight curls bouncing around her shoulders again, pointing it at the rat at the same time as Sirius and Remus. The occupants of the room watched as the area of the wall expanded and broke apart as Scabbers was transformed back into his human form.
Peter Pettigrew was alive. And he was very much a filthy fucking liar.