Sirius was laying on his back.
Two feet away, the water licked the shore of the lake, strewn with stones and dried up driftwood.
Everything was... far away... and ice cold.
So cold...
It was like Achlys was hugging him on the outside of his body for once.
Dementors.
"Nooo," he whispered. "Nooo, please..."
He could see his breath rising from his barely parted lips, trailing away in puffs like smoke.
His mind moved in and out - everything was in flashes.
There was fog settling over the water.
Far off, he could just barely make out the beach where they'd camped on the shore, see the logs and the remnants of the circles of stones they'd made for firepits.
After all this time.
Someone was yelling.
He could hear it the way you hear things underwater... recognizable as shouting but not clear enough to make out the words or voices.
So... far away...
Suddenly, James Potter fell to the ground beside him.
His eyes closed, glasses askew...
No... no, no, no...
"No..."
His eyes fluttered slightly open.
A flash of green caught by the moonlight...
Not James.
Harry.
Harry...
Harry?
"No --"
There were cold hands on his shoulder, under his neck... lifting his head...
"Sirius...at last..." Achlys breathed, rasping, rattling... leaning over him... hovering over him... her billowing black cloak, which usually filled up his entire chest, filled up the whole sky now.
From beneath her hood, he could see her mouth - thin lips on colorless skin, like the way the dead look, like the way an inferi looks... Strings of ghastly black hair hung from beneath the hood, and though her eyes was covered in shadow so deep he could not see them, he knew she was staring out at him... a nightmare come to life.
"I've waited years for this."
"Fuck off Achlys," he couldn't form the words, they came out as breaths instead, a sentiment without formation. She knew what he meant. He'd said it to her so many times... she had to know...
Last words.
Her mouth was on his.
Deathly cold.
Passionate beyond reason.
Urgent.
She wanted him dead.
Achlys inhaled, deep and strong and Sirius felt a hundred thousand memories stir through his mind in flashes like polaroids being thrown to the wind... voices echoing from another room far off... and Sirius felt his heart seize as she drew on him...
She released and he fell back to the stones on the shore.
Her mouth didn't leave his, but instead she drew in a second time and Sirius pictured himself like one of those cigarettes he liked smoking so much so long ago, like the cigarettes on the balcony over looking the castle grounds with James, when he would hold the thing between his fingers and hardly ever actually take a drag...
"I just like to watch it burn."
Achlys was watching him, Sirius, burn.
She started to draw the third breath - and he felt as though his entire heart was being torn out of his throat. He was drawn up, a guttural wrenching of a sound rising up from his lungs as she dragged, hard and deep and his breath left him completely.
It was like he could feel himself go --
Could feel himself coming up out of his own body...
Blinding white light filled Sirius's eyes. He couldn't see anything beyond the light or through the light. All he knew was that the light had blasted away Achlys and her lips were gone, her hands were gone, the rattling sound of her breath -- all gone -- all replaced by blindingly brilliant white...
He gasped, sudden, sharp, deep, and he sat up.
The white light was gone, the lake dark save for the luminance of the moon hanging overhead. Sirius gasped for air, his lungs tight from having had the breath forcible sucked out of him. He looked around wildly, his heart racing... Somewhere there was the sound of something crashing through the trees.
He looked around.
Harry Potter lay face-down on the stones to his right, and Hermione Granger just beside Harry. They'd landed criss-crossed, his arm protectively draped over her on one side and over Sirius's own legs on the other, as though he'd been guarding... and fallen mid-fight.
Panic rose up in him and he scrambled, reaching for a pulse.
Harry's heart beat was strong in his jugular. So was Hermione's.
He sank back, still catching his own breath, and his eyes searched the skies. Where had they gone? Where had they all gone? The very moon itself had been blotted out for their numbers...
Suddenly, there was gasp behind him and he whirled about to find a short, petite girl with hot pink hair sliding down the slope from the grounds above, holding her wand tight in her fist, her auror's uniform fluttering about her as she came to a stop.
She stood at the edge of the shore line, where the grass met the pebbles, staring at him.
Her voice was soft. "Wotcher Sirius."
He stared in disbelief, squinting, the pain shooting through his body causing his eyes to cross... "Nymphadora?"
She nodded. "Are you - are you alright?"
"Bloody hell. You're a grown woman."
She looked down at herself, then back up at him, "Yeah I s'pose I am."
"You were - you were still small last I saw you."
"Yeah," she said, "'s been twelve years."
Sirius nodded.
"I - I've never doubted you, I know you didn't do it!" she gasped. Tonks's cheeks were pouring over with tears. "I never --"
"I know you didn't."
"You do?"
"I do..." and Sirius reached into his pocket, his hands shaking, skin pale. He was dizzy - barely able to focus on her, even as he reached for the only things he had to call his own...
When he splayed out his hand a second later, it was to reveal not only the oragami-heart folded letter, but several more letters on bright colored papers with bright colored inks and folded in all sorts of different shapes... There was a woven thread friendship bracelet, a folded fortune teller, a strip of photobooth pictures... All things that she'd sent him over the years by owl post.
Tonks gasped. "You - you got them?" Her voice broke. "You got my letters?"
Sirius whispered, voice shaky and weak, "I - I stayed sane in Azkaban because of a - a little girl who sent me letters..."
Tonks opened her mouth to speak but before she could say anything, there was suddenly another voice on the hill and she whirled about, raising her wand, but clearly outnumbered as three men came crashing through the trees.
"EXPELLIARMUS!"
Tonks's wand went flying - as did Sirius's.
Frederick Savage caught them in his fist. The two other young aurors with him backed him up quickly, and they stood in a formation, ready to fight, as though there was anything left like that in Sirius, whose rush of adrenaline from whatever that bright white light had been began to fade off and Sirius weakened and tipped to one side.
"INCARCERUS!" screamed Frederick Savage shouted, and chains bound Sirius tight, hand and foot right where he knelt on the stones by the shore. Already weak, bloody, and torn, the heavy chains only made it worse, and Sirius screamed out in pain as the weight of those chains tore his skin all the worse and his mind whirled about, unfocused...
Tonks let out a shrill scream of shock.
"Sirius Orion Black, I'm arresting you for the offense of luring and endangering three students of Hogwarts's School of Witchcraft of Wizardry, on this, the twenty-third night of June, 1994. In addition to luring and endangerment, you are found fully guilty of having performed Dark Magic in the effort to escape previously from the prison Azkaban, prisoner number pertho aeighiz three nine zero...."
"No! Wait!" Tonks ran to him, pushing Frederick Savage back, making him stumble and nearly fall over. "Savage, no - listen, you have the --"
"Not now Tonks, we're in the middle of an arrest."
"I know but --"
"You shall be transported up stairs to be tried and executed --"
"NO!" Nymphadora Tonks rushed forward, but one of the other aurors turned and grabbed her, holding her back as she fought against the strong arms holding onto her as she screamed, tears in her eyes, "NO! STOP! STOP IT! NO!"
"-- for the murder of James and Lily Potter on Halloween night, 1981."
"NO!" Tonks shrieked, "He didn't do it! He didn't! He's innocent! Sirius! Sirius tell them - tell them what really happened! Tell us what really happened! Hurry!" But Sirius wasn't conscious, she realized. He'd passed out during Savage's arresting monologue. She started desperately clawing at the arms of the auror holding her. "Bryant put me down! PUT ME DOWN!" she screamed wildly. "PUT ME DOWN! HE'S INNOCENT! HE'S INNOCENT!!!!"
"I'm sorry, Tonks, listen, youv'e done enough damages tonight, I - Mad-Eye's gonna gave my head for this! but -- stupefy!
Albus Dumbledore stood behind his desk, pouring over a mess of handwritten parchments that sprawled over his desktop. He was musing and shuffling them about, reading one here and there, then pausing and shuffling them again, looking between them and a ridiculously thick volume on the bloodlines of pureblood families in history.
It was nearly midnight when the knock came on the door of his office, hard and urgent.
"Yes, come in..." he murmured.
A young junior auror came in, shaking with nervous excitement, his eyes wide and bright with the thrill of the scene he'd just come from. He was breathless. "Mr. Dumbledore, sir, we've - we've caught him. We caught him, sir!"
Dumbledore looked up at the auror. "You did? When?"
"Just now, sir. Just moments ago. Turner, Savage and I, we were out on the lawns and --"
Dumbledore held up his palm to pause the auror and he waved a wand - clearing up the parchments. "You are dismissed, Regulus. We'll talk again another time."
The junior auror looked where Dumbledore was speaking to and saw a ghost hovering in the corner of the room, back to them. Without so much as turning around, the ghost disappeared.
"Mr. Bryant," Dumbledore said, addressing the junior auror as he got up, "You've captured Sirius Black?"
"Yes, sir. Out on the grounds, by the lake, sir. Savage is taking him down to the dungeons as we speak sir."
"The dungeons?" Dumbledore mused.
"Yes sir."
"That won't do."
"Sir?"
"There is a holding room in a turret off Gryffindor tower..." he paused. "Allow me, I will summons my deputy headmistress to show you where the prisoner can be taken. She can show you the way while I go and collect the Minister and the head of the Department -- both are staying here, at Hogwarts tonight, due to the earlier, extremely unfortunate event concerning the hippogriff."
"Yes sir," Bryant answered.
Dumbledore cleared his throat, "Fawkes." The phoenix looked up from where he stood on his perch by the fireplace. "Go and fetch Professor McGonagall - tell her to meet us in the turret of Gryffindor Tower -- and hurry, Fawkes, we've not a moment to lose tonight," he added, glancing at the clock.
The phoenix rose and flew out the open balcony doors and into the night.
"Now... let us go and see your prisoner, Mr. Bryant."
There was a great commotion happening in the Entrance Hall.
Argus Filch was having an absolute fit. There were loads of aurors tracking in a great deal of mud, running in and out of the castle, a frenzy of excitement. Every auror that Mad-Eye Moody had sent to the grounds of Hogwarts was collected in the hall, every one of them abuzz.
Sirius Black had been captured!
"Savage's done it. He's done it!"
"Saved Harry Potter!"
"He'd stunned Harry Potter, Black had, nearly killed him, too - he's on the way to the hospital wing now, just seen him! He looked a right mess - unconscious and all!"
"They say there was a rogue auror helping Black out!"
"Did you hear that howling earlier? They say there's a werewolf loose on the grounds to boot."
"Black's werewolf!"
"You know, I think I remember reading about that once a long time ago, that he'd threatened a woman with his pet werewolf once!"
"Bloody hell, he really is mad - keeping a werewolf as a pet! What would you want with a filthy beast like that!"
"What's going on here? What's all the fuss for?"
"Sirius Black's been captured - him and his werewolf!"
"The Minister for Magic is on his way."
"Lucky he was on hand for the execution earlier today."
"Shame about that Hippogriff!"
"Didn't you hear?"
"What is going on?!"
"Got him down in the dungeons!"
"No they've moved him up to the tower - Gryffindor Tower!"
"They're performing the Kiss tonight! Right here at Hogwarts!"
"Any minute now..."