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starfishstarFANTASTIC BEASTS AND HOW TO WIN THEIR HEARTS: A RETELLING OF BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by
stereolightning and starfishstar
SUMMARY:
A man with nowhere else to turn agrees to live forever in a remote mansion that exists in perpetual autumn, his host a reclusive character known only as the Beast. By turns attentive and taciturn, the monstrous lord of the house keeps his dark secrets close to his chest, yet both host and guest find themselves increasingly captivated by one another. But how can a Beast give his heart while he remains a prisoner of his own curse?
A fusion of Harry Potter with Beauty and the Beast, told in seven chapters.
CHAPTER SIX
The Beast landed at the edge of Hogsmeade with a gasp. He’d done it. After years of trying everything he could to escape his opulent captivity, he’d finally managed it—because Harry needed him.
For a heady moment, he lifted his nose and breathed in the scents of spring. Twelve years since he had smelled the scent of blossoming flowers.
But he had more important things to do here than admire the vegetation. In the distance, above the treetops, the Beast could see the spires of Hogwarts, the scene of the happiest years of his life, home to the merry pranksters once known as Sirius, James, Lily...and Peter.
How dare Peter show his face here? How dare he be alive? He had cast his curse on Sirius and then he had died. The Beast knew this, had seen it happen with his own eyes. So how was Wormtail alive and at Hogwarts?
Ensuring his hood was drawn down low to hide his monstrous countenance, the Beast hurried through the falling dark until he reached Honeydukes. There, he hid himself in the shadows at the corner of the building and waited for his godson, the boy he hadn’t seen in person in nearly thirteen years. The street was silent. His heart pounded.
Feet sounded against the pavement; the Beast spun towards the noise, his concealing hood clutched tightly around his face. A boy was running towards him with a silvery cloak bundled under his arm, and even in the dusk the Beast would have recognised those flashing green eyes anywhere.
“Harry—!” he cried, stepping forwards.
“Wait—” the boy panted. “I’m sorry—I know you said to come alone, but he saw us sneaking out. But it's okay. He said he won't give us detention.”
The Beast felt his heart dropping, fast. “Who did?”
Harry was still out of breath. “Professor W—”
“Professor Wormtail,” interrupted a high, quavering voice, and Peter Pettigrew precipitated out of the shadowy street, his wand held aloft. Behind him came two more students—Ron the freckly redhead and Hermione with the bushy hair. Harry’s friends.
Peter's voice was just as Sirius remembered. The face was altered—whether by inexpert charmwork or a long-ago curse, it was impossible to say. The nose was shorter, the face oddly stretched, the watery eyes now of unequal size. He might well pass as someone other than himself, if no one who had known him well ever looked too long.
“Your professor,” Sirius spat, “is a cowardly murderer. He killed your parents, Harry, and he deserves to die.” The Beast reached for his wand, then thrust his arm in Peter’s direction.
Ron gasped. Hermione cried, “No!”
Harry sprang in front of Wormtail, shielding him. “What are you doing?” he cried.
“He’s trying to kill me, is what he’s doing!” Peter shrieked, clutching Harry’s shoulders and ducking so he was more fully protected.
The Beast kept his wand arm extended, unwavering. “His name is Peter Pettigrew, he was a friend of your parents, and he betrayed them to Voldemort.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this is my professor, Benjy Fenwick. He teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts. And he lets us call him Wormtail, Professor Wormtail, that’s his nickname.”
The Beast laughed, the sound painful in his throat. His wand was still pointed at Peter, though he could do nothing now with Harry standing between them. “Benjy Fenwick? That’s a twisted touch. Is that how you’ve hidden all this time? Faking your own death in our duel and living under stolen identities ever since?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Peter cried shrilly. “My name is Benjy Fenwick, and I’m a decorated veteran of the war against the Dark Lord!”
“Benjy Fenwick is dead. I was there. I saw him blasted apart in battle—they never recovered his body. You, though. Show me your hand!”
“My hand?” Peter quavered, still cowering behind Harry.
“Your hand! We duelled and I thought you’d died—but all they ever found was your finger. If you are Benjy Fenwick, which you aren’t, your right hand was whole and complete until the day you died. But if you’re Peter Pettigrew, you’re missing the index finger of your right hand. Show me your hand.”
Hermione piped up from the side, where her gaze leapt anxiously between the Beast’s outstretched wand and Harry, “It’s true, professor. We’ve all seen that you’re missing a finger.”
“Oh, that!” Peter cried. “I lost a finger in the war, everyone knows that.” Then his uneven, rabbit-like eyes peeped over Harry’s shoulder at the Beast as he asked, “Who are you?”
“He's my godfather,” Harry blurted, at the same instant Sirius said, “None of your concern.”
“Godfather,” Peter repeated, so quietly it was nearly a whisper. Without warning, he darted out from behind Harry and fired a jet of quick blue light at Sirius. Sirius’ hood fell away.
One of the children screamed. The Beast reared back, scrabbled to cover his face, but it was too late.
“What are you!” Harry shouted.
“Harry—”
“No, get away from me!” Harry had leapt back, towards his friends, and was staring with wide eyes.
The Beast raised a placating hand. “Harry, it’s me, Sirius, your godfather. You know me by my voice. I was cursed many years ago to look like this, but it’s me.”
“That’s why you’ve never let me see your face!” Harry shouted, enraged. “You’re a monster! You’ve been deceiving me all these years!”
“A monster,” Peter said, and his voice rose to a shrill, nervous whine, as it always had done when he was improvising an excuse at school. “He was going to try to steal you away, Harry, this ugly, jealous creature. He filled your head with lies. Lured you out of school. It's very good I was here, very good, indeed.” Peter straightened up, patted Harry paternally on the back. “Trust your professor, and come back to school now.”
“You,” the Beast growled. “How dare you. Don’t you dare touch him.”
The Beast lunged, but both Hermione and Ron burst forwards, positioning themselves between Sirius and his quarry. Before the Beast could react, they disarmed both Sirius and Peter with cries of “Expelliarmus!”
Harry sidestepped Peter, and produced his own wand. “One of you is lying,” he said. “Which is it?” He looked to Hermione and Ron, as if they might know.
Sirius wanted to grab Peter and shake him, curse him, wring the life out of him with magic or bare hands, but there were three children in the way, and he first needed Peter to cast the counter-curse, to end Sirius’ days as a Beast. Perhaps then, if the curse were lifted—Sirius was hit with a wave of yearning for it—Harry could come home and live with Sirius, as his godson and heir.
“Not I!” cried Peter. “When have I ever hurt a hair on Harry's head! It's that Beast who’s lying! He’s a foul Dark creature, can’t you see what a monster he is?”
“Because of you!” Sirius yelled. “This monstrous form is your doing! Harry, listen, after he sold your parents to Voldemort, I tracked this worthless rat down, and we duelled, and he cast this curse on me, before turning his wand on himself. For the longest time I thought he had killed himself. There was so much light and smoke and blood. But I see now that the second spell was a feint. He used it to escape. He's been hiding in the shadows ever since, scavenging the lives of fallen friends.”
“Hide in the shadows? Me?” Peter cried, hysterical. “It's him who hides in the shadows, Harry! Sirius Black! Such an unhappy young man, driven to madness long ago, and now he looks as horrible on the outside as he is on the inside. He lied to you. He told you he lived in some far-off country, didn’t he? But he doesn't! He lives in his grand old family house right here in Britain!”
“Yes, that’s true, and it’s the only lie I’ve told in all of this! I didn’t want to scare you, Harry. I didn’t want you to know why I couldn’t let you see me.”
But the damage was done. “You’re the liar,” Harry said, turning his wand on Sirius. “You lied to me. Why should I trust anything you say?”
The Beast felt his whole body freeze, as if ice were encasing his heart and spreading outwards through his lungs. If Harry ran away from him now, without understanding the whole story—if Peter was allowed to stay near Harry, whose parents he had betrayed to Voldemort—No, the Beast must make Harry understand the danger. But he stood frozen, unable to find the words.
“Harry,” said Hermione, her voice scared but strong. “It’s not impossible that both of them are lying. Or, Sirius may have lied about some things, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth about this. I mean, it’s silly to think that only one of them is capable of lying, isn’t it?”
“I have to choose who to trust,” Harry said. “Professor Wormtail’s always been decent to us.” He rounded on Sirius. “What were you going to do, with my Invisibility Cloak?”
“Finish the job I started twelve years ago,” the Beast snarled. That, at least, was an easy truth.
“There, you see!” cried Peter. “Completely insane! Utter madness!”
“Harry,” Sirius said, his voice rough. “Hear me out. Let me tell you what I know, and then you can choose who you believe. If you believe I’m lying, I will leave and never bother you again.”
Harry stared at him and Peter in turn. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, all right.” He folded his arms, the picture of teenage scepticism. Beside him, Ron shifted uneasily. Hermione adjusted her grip on the wand she held, Sirius’ wand. She stood alert but listening.
“Your father was my best friend,” Sirius said. “I would have died for him. I was meant to be your parents’ Secret Keeper, but at the last minute, we switched. To this scum.” He spat the words in Peter’s direction. “It turned out he’d been spying for Voldemort all along. He ran to his master with their location, and Voldemort, he—murdered your parents, Harry. Your dad and your mum. And when I came to the house and found them—” He choked on the words, but forced himself to go on. “When I found them, to my eternal regret, instead of staying and looking after you, I ran after this coward, desperate for revenge. I left you with Hagrid, loaned him my motorbike—”
“Your what?” Harry interrupted, in a very odd tone of voice.
“My flying motorbike, I lent it to Hagrid that night, so he could get you safely to Dumbledore.”
“I remember that,” Harry said, his voice still very strange.
“You can’t possibly!” squeaked Peter, interjecting in the story for the first time. There was fear in his voice.
“I do, though,” Harry said, slowly, staring at the Beast in wonder. “I used to have dreams about a flying motorbike. I thought I’d made that up.”
“It doesn’t mean anything!” Peter squawked. “Or he might be faking it! He—he heard that somewhere, that you remembered flying on a motorbike, he’s just using whatever he can find to trick you—”
“You really were there,” Harry said, staring at Sirius, ignoring Peter completely. “You were there that night. You were a friend of my parents’.”
“Yes.”
“You were my parents’ friend, and so was he, and he was the one who got them killed.”
“Yes,” the Beast growled.
Harry studied his face, his monstrous face, and the Beast forced himself not to wince away from that probing gaze. At length Harry said, “I believe you.”
Hermione gave a little cry and rounded on Wormtail, extending the arm that held Sirius’ confiscated wand.
“Professor Wormtail,” Hermione said, her voice quivering with indignation. “You lied to us!”
Peter blinked his rat-like eyes, panicked and fast.
“Let me at him,” Sirius snarled.
Hermione glanced back at him, worry etched in her face. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Make him release me from this curse.”
Hermione looked at Harry. Harry looked back. Some understanding must have passed between them, because Hermione stepped aside and handed Sirius’ wand back to him.
The Beast advanced, wand raised. Wormtail cowered, and the Beast in all his monstrous height towered over him. “You did this to me. You cast this curse that turned me into an inhuman beast and trapped me in my own home, in eternal autumn. I thought you were dead, and there was no hope of ever reversing it. But now that I know…” He raised his wand higher and bared his teeth. “If you want any hope of surviving this night, lift the curse.”
He could live as a man again. He could experience all the seasons again, not only the chill autumn of his loss. As a man, he could offer Harry a home. As a man, perhaps Remus—
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wormtail snivelled, ducking low to the ground and avoiding the Beast’s eyes. “I can’t undo a curse like that.”
“You’re lying! Lift the curse!” The Beast advanced until he stood over Peter, his wand aimed straight for his throat. Peter, at last, raised his small, terrified eyes to meet the Beast’s terrible gaze.
“I—I can’t—”
“Expelliarmus!” cried a horribly familiar, oily voice from the shadows, and the Beast’s wand flew from his hand.
The Beast spun towards the sound. The owner of the voice, narrow and sallow as ever he had been, stepped into the moonlight. “Out of bed, at this late hour. Potter, Granger, Weasley. Fifty points from Gryffindor. Each.”
Sirius moved to take back his wand, but Snape pointed both the wands he now held in his hand, the motion lazy yet deadly precise, bringing him up short.
“I’m not sure what you think you’re doing in Hogsmeade at this hour, with these students, but I can see that you’ve greatly upset them,” Snape said coolly. “And as I’m sure our professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts must have an excellent reason to be cowering there in the road, you’ll understand if I’m sceptical as to your good intentions. Do stand up, Fenwick.”
“Professor Snape, you didn’t hear,” Hermione began, a little breathless. “He’s not Fenwick, he’s—”
“That’s enough, Granger. You are already facing suspension, if not expulsion, from this school.” Snape’s black eyes flicked back to Sirius, studying him minutely. “Well, well. Can it be? At last I understand why you haven’t been flaunting your patrician features in high society all these years. ‘Living abroad,’ wasn’t that the story you put about?”
“Give me my wand,” the Beast growled. “I don’t know how you recognise me, and frankly I don’t care. The real danger here is that man.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Snape breathed. “In fact, I think I had better hold onto this wand for safekeeping. And truth be told, Sirius Black, I see no difference between the beast you were at school and the beast that stands before me now.”
Panic was rising in Sirius’ chest. “You don’t understand what you’re doing. I’m not the danger here. I’ve come here to save Harry.”
An oily smirk. “Save him from what? End of term boredom?”
“From that worthless piece of filth!” Sirius cried, pointing at Peter, who still had not risen.
“Enough,” Snape snapped. “I shall escort these children back to school. Slouch back to your self-indulgent exile, if you wish. It’s no concern of mine.”
Rage boiled higher inside Sirius’ chest. “You!” He lunged, but Snape, lighter and quicker than the Beast, only had to step out of the path of his charging feet and fists.
Then Ron shouted a warning, and there were hard, running footsteps as Peter pelted away up the street with his wand clutched again in his small, pale fists. The Beast wheeled around to follow. He was without a wand, but if he could just grab hold of him—
He charged after Peter, he was gaining with every step, he nearly had the man’s collar in his grasp—
There was an ear-shattering pop, and Peter was gone.
Harry ran up to Sirius. “Where is he?”
Sirius shook his head.
“No!” Harry cried. “He can’t just—I mean he can’t just—where did he go?”
“Children, you will return to school!” Snape ordered behind them. The Beast turned to see Ron and Hermione glaring back at Snape, defiant.
Sirius crossed to Snape and took back his wand with a hard, swift jerk. “I’ll have that back. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Have I not made myself perfectly plain?” Snape drawled to the students, looking past Sirius as though he were not there. “Up to the school. Now.”
“I’ll take them there,” Sirius bellowed.
“And how, pray tell, shall you open the gates to the school, when you are neither teacher nor keeper of keys?” said Snape. Then softer, waspishly, “And how will it be when the whole school sets eyes on you, Black? When they see you for what you always were, the outside matching the inside at last?”
There was a tap at the Beast’s shoulder—Hermione. “It’s all right, Sirius, er, Mr Black,” she said. “We’ll tell Dumbledore everything.”
“Yeah, we will,” Ron said, nodding his agreement.
Sirius glared at Snape. Snape glared back.
“Er—maybe we can just all walk there together?” Hermione suggested.
With a minute, angry jerk of his head, Snape acquiesced, and all five of them started towards the castle in silence.
Sirius let Ron and Hermione fall a few steps ahead, following the hateful black outline that was Snape. The Beast lay a hesitant paw on Harry’s shoulder. Harry, extraordinary Harry, didn’t pull away.
“If you see any sign of him—if he comes back to the castle—” Sirius said. The very thought of it filled him with rage. Peter, at Hogwarts with Harry all this year, and he hadn’t known. Where was that horrid rat now? Running straight back to his old master, no doubt, now that his cover was blown. How long until they began to feel the effects rippling outwards from this night? How much more damage might Peter do, once he was back at Voldemort’s side? How much damage had Sirius done, by letting the rat slip through his grasp?
“I’ll contact you through the mirror,” Harry said. “But he won’t come back, will he? He’s not going to dare to come back, now that you’ve discovered him.”
They had nearly reached the school. Sirius glanced up at its moonlit spires, at the winged boars topping the gates that provided entry to the grounds. He looked down at Harry, who was gazing up at him, wearing an expression Sirius had seen a hundred times on Lily Potter’s face—concern, and something quietly ferocious. How fervently Sirius had hoped to give him a real home, the home Lily and James had intended when they named Sirius as Harry’s godfather. All hope of that was gone now, extinguished as quickly as it had begun.
“If ever you need me,” Sirius said, his voice breaking. Everything he wanted to say to Harry died in his throat. How could he offer a home to his godson, when he was too monstrous to be seen? How could he protect him, when he himself inspired hatred and fear on sight? It destroyed him to hand Harry back into Snape’s care, but he had no choice.
“I’ll call for you,” Harry said. His eyes were wide. “I promise.”
“If you’re quite finished with your tearful goodbyes,” Snape sneered. They had reached the school gates. Snape swirled his wand in the air, the movement unnecessarily showy, and the heavy Hogwarts gates swung open. Snape chivvied the students through and onto the path that led up to the castle, and the gates clanged shut behind them. Harry glanced back, but Snape pushed the boy ahead and swept along after him, his bat-like cape flapping absurdly behind him.
Sirius watched his godson until he was a speck on the grassy moonlit hill. In the distance, the castle doors swung open and golden light spilled onto the lawn. Then the small dots that were Harry and his friends stepped through, the light extinguished, and Harry was gone.
Unable to hold back the breaking of his heart, the Beast threw his head back and howled his grief at the sky. Then he spun on the spot and was gone.
#
The courtyard of the house was full of the customary scrabblings and scratchings of small creatures when the Beast returned. The air felt warmer than usual, a soft breeze sighing through the trees and lifting dry leaves up from the ground, but all the Beast could feel was the weight of his heart, so heavy he could barely stand.
He had failed. All these years he had suffered his curse in silence, but at least he had had the small comfort of knowing Peter, who had betrayed them, was dead. Now he knew a far more terrible truth—Peter was out there, and free. The curse would never be lifted. And Sirius could never be more than a distant figure in Harry’s life, a shadowy protector in a magic mirror. The eternal autumn that had begun for Sirius on the day of his friends’ deaths would never lift.
Sirius slouched inside the house and through the dining room, where an untouched feast steamed magnificently. He plucked up a leg of something—chicken, maybe, he was too heartbroken to care—and gnawed on it, feeling no pleasure. A bottle of white wine sat in a bucket of ice, and he picked it up, uncorked it with a spell, and drank. The bottle was gone before he had finished slouching through the lower rooms of the house, unsure quite what he was after, but walking, restless, through the familiar faded opulence. He ascended a staircase and entered the library, remembering with a vague pang of delight and responsibility that he still had a houseguest. Perhaps seeing Remus would offer some solace.
Sirius owed him an explanation, too, for his hasty exit. The expression on Remus’ face when Sirius had dashed away… The Beast knew he had been terribly rude to his—guest? Or dare he think of him as a friend?
Remus’ customary tidy piles of books lay on the desk, carefully bookmarked, but no Remus sat beside them. The mahogany planks hovered perfectly still beside the highest shelves—no Remus perched on any of them. Sirius called Remus’ name. No answer.
He searched the rooms of the upper floor. Remus’ bed had not been slept in; the house-elves had turned down a corner in their usual fashion and put a glass of water on the nightstand, but there was no sign of Remus.
He couldn’t be lost in the house? Not after they had made that map.
Perhaps Remus truly had gone—he could be deep into the woods and halfway to the little hamlet twenty miles away by now, or he might have Apparated. Or something might have happened to him, one of the house’s other magical creatures might have bitten or cornered or incapacitated him. The boggart was gone, yes, but an old house like this always attracted magical fauna. But hadn’t Remus proved himself competent at self-defence, when he’d taken on the pixie infestation weeks ago?
Where was he, then? Increasingly worried, increasingly sure that Remus had gone for good, Sirius walked faster. Through the silent banquet hall. Through the kitchen. The locked cellar caught his eye.
He tried the doors—they refused to budge.
“Alohomora!” he cried, but still they didn’t open. Growing more concerned by the moment, the Beast tried more advanced disarming magicks, calling on spells he hadn’t had cause to use in years. He thought he heard something in the cellar now, scrabbling and whining. He worked faster, concentrating fiercely, and finally the doors burst open. Sirius descended into the cellar at a run.
An unfamiliar smell. Musky, animal.
“Lumos,” Sirius cried, and his wand tip lit up.
A huge, grey monster with a werewolf’s unmistakable slit pupils stood at the foot of the stairs, its great, shaggy paws planted in a puddle of Remus’ torn clothes. And Remus was nowhere to be seen.
(continue to CHAPTER SEVEN)
by
stereolightning and starfishstar SUMMARY:
A man with nowhere else to turn agrees to live forever in a remote mansion that exists in perpetual autumn, his host a reclusive character known only as the Beast. By turns attentive and taciturn, the monstrous lord of the house keeps his dark secrets close to his chest, yet both host and guest find themselves increasingly captivated by one another. But how can a Beast give his heart while he remains a prisoner of his own curse?
A fusion of Harry Potter with Beauty and the Beast, told in seven chapters.
CHAPTER SIX
The Beast landed at the edge of Hogsmeade with a gasp. He’d done it. After years of trying everything he could to escape his opulent captivity, he’d finally managed it—because Harry needed him.
For a heady moment, he lifted his nose and breathed in the scents of spring. Twelve years since he had smelled the scent of blossoming flowers.
But he had more important things to do here than admire the vegetation. In the distance, above the treetops, the Beast could see the spires of Hogwarts, the scene of the happiest years of his life, home to the merry pranksters once known as Sirius, James, Lily...and Peter.
How dare Peter show his face here? How dare he be alive? He had cast his curse on Sirius and then he had died. The Beast knew this, had seen it happen with his own eyes. So how was Wormtail alive and at Hogwarts?
Ensuring his hood was drawn down low to hide his monstrous countenance, the Beast hurried through the falling dark until he reached Honeydukes. There, he hid himself in the shadows at the corner of the building and waited for his godson, the boy he hadn’t seen in person in nearly thirteen years. The street was silent. His heart pounded.
Feet sounded against the pavement; the Beast spun towards the noise, his concealing hood clutched tightly around his face. A boy was running towards him with a silvery cloak bundled under his arm, and even in the dusk the Beast would have recognised those flashing green eyes anywhere.
“Harry—!” he cried, stepping forwards.
“Wait—” the boy panted. “I’m sorry—I know you said to come alone, but he saw us sneaking out. But it's okay. He said he won't give us detention.”
The Beast felt his heart dropping, fast. “Who did?”
Harry was still out of breath. “Professor W—”
“Professor Wormtail,” interrupted a high, quavering voice, and Peter Pettigrew precipitated out of the shadowy street, his wand held aloft. Behind him came two more students—Ron the freckly redhead and Hermione with the bushy hair. Harry’s friends.
Peter's voice was just as Sirius remembered. The face was altered—whether by inexpert charmwork or a long-ago curse, it was impossible to say. The nose was shorter, the face oddly stretched, the watery eyes now of unequal size. He might well pass as someone other than himself, if no one who had known him well ever looked too long.
“Your professor,” Sirius spat, “is a cowardly murderer. He killed your parents, Harry, and he deserves to die.” The Beast reached for his wand, then thrust his arm in Peter’s direction.
Ron gasped. Hermione cried, “No!”
Harry sprang in front of Wormtail, shielding him. “What are you doing?” he cried.
“He’s trying to kill me, is what he’s doing!” Peter shrieked, clutching Harry’s shoulders and ducking so he was more fully protected.
The Beast kept his wand arm extended, unwavering. “His name is Peter Pettigrew, he was a friend of your parents, and he betrayed them to Voldemort.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this is my professor, Benjy Fenwick. He teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts. And he lets us call him Wormtail, Professor Wormtail, that’s his nickname.”
The Beast laughed, the sound painful in his throat. His wand was still pointed at Peter, though he could do nothing now with Harry standing between them. “Benjy Fenwick? That’s a twisted touch. Is that how you’ve hidden all this time? Faking your own death in our duel and living under stolen identities ever since?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Peter cried shrilly. “My name is Benjy Fenwick, and I’m a decorated veteran of the war against the Dark Lord!”
“Benjy Fenwick is dead. I was there. I saw him blasted apart in battle—they never recovered his body. You, though. Show me your hand!”
“My hand?” Peter quavered, still cowering behind Harry.
“Your hand! We duelled and I thought you’d died—but all they ever found was your finger. If you are Benjy Fenwick, which you aren’t, your right hand was whole and complete until the day you died. But if you’re Peter Pettigrew, you’re missing the index finger of your right hand. Show me your hand.”
Hermione piped up from the side, where her gaze leapt anxiously between the Beast’s outstretched wand and Harry, “It’s true, professor. We’ve all seen that you’re missing a finger.”
“Oh, that!” Peter cried. “I lost a finger in the war, everyone knows that.” Then his uneven, rabbit-like eyes peeped over Harry’s shoulder at the Beast as he asked, “Who are you?”
“He's my godfather,” Harry blurted, at the same instant Sirius said, “None of your concern.”
“Godfather,” Peter repeated, so quietly it was nearly a whisper. Without warning, he darted out from behind Harry and fired a jet of quick blue light at Sirius. Sirius’ hood fell away.
One of the children screamed. The Beast reared back, scrabbled to cover his face, but it was too late.
“What are you!” Harry shouted.
“Harry—”
“No, get away from me!” Harry had leapt back, towards his friends, and was staring with wide eyes.
The Beast raised a placating hand. “Harry, it’s me, Sirius, your godfather. You know me by my voice. I was cursed many years ago to look like this, but it’s me.”
“That’s why you’ve never let me see your face!” Harry shouted, enraged. “You’re a monster! You’ve been deceiving me all these years!”
“A monster,” Peter said, and his voice rose to a shrill, nervous whine, as it always had done when he was improvising an excuse at school. “He was going to try to steal you away, Harry, this ugly, jealous creature. He filled your head with lies. Lured you out of school. It's very good I was here, very good, indeed.” Peter straightened up, patted Harry paternally on the back. “Trust your professor, and come back to school now.”
“You,” the Beast growled. “How dare you. Don’t you dare touch him.”
The Beast lunged, but both Hermione and Ron burst forwards, positioning themselves between Sirius and his quarry. Before the Beast could react, they disarmed both Sirius and Peter with cries of “Expelliarmus!”
Harry sidestepped Peter, and produced his own wand. “One of you is lying,” he said. “Which is it?” He looked to Hermione and Ron, as if they might know.
Sirius wanted to grab Peter and shake him, curse him, wring the life out of him with magic or bare hands, but there were three children in the way, and he first needed Peter to cast the counter-curse, to end Sirius’ days as a Beast. Perhaps then, if the curse were lifted—Sirius was hit with a wave of yearning for it—Harry could come home and live with Sirius, as his godson and heir.
“Not I!” cried Peter. “When have I ever hurt a hair on Harry's head! It's that Beast who’s lying! He’s a foul Dark creature, can’t you see what a monster he is?”
“Because of you!” Sirius yelled. “This monstrous form is your doing! Harry, listen, after he sold your parents to Voldemort, I tracked this worthless rat down, and we duelled, and he cast this curse on me, before turning his wand on himself. For the longest time I thought he had killed himself. There was so much light and smoke and blood. But I see now that the second spell was a feint. He used it to escape. He's been hiding in the shadows ever since, scavenging the lives of fallen friends.”
“Hide in the shadows? Me?” Peter cried, hysterical. “It's him who hides in the shadows, Harry! Sirius Black! Such an unhappy young man, driven to madness long ago, and now he looks as horrible on the outside as he is on the inside. He lied to you. He told you he lived in some far-off country, didn’t he? But he doesn't! He lives in his grand old family house right here in Britain!”
“Yes, that’s true, and it’s the only lie I’ve told in all of this! I didn’t want to scare you, Harry. I didn’t want you to know why I couldn’t let you see me.”
But the damage was done. “You’re the liar,” Harry said, turning his wand on Sirius. “You lied to me. Why should I trust anything you say?”
The Beast felt his whole body freeze, as if ice were encasing his heart and spreading outwards through his lungs. If Harry ran away from him now, without understanding the whole story—if Peter was allowed to stay near Harry, whose parents he had betrayed to Voldemort—No, the Beast must make Harry understand the danger. But he stood frozen, unable to find the words.
“Harry,” said Hermione, her voice scared but strong. “It’s not impossible that both of them are lying. Or, Sirius may have lied about some things, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth about this. I mean, it’s silly to think that only one of them is capable of lying, isn’t it?”
“I have to choose who to trust,” Harry said. “Professor Wormtail’s always been decent to us.” He rounded on Sirius. “What were you going to do, with my Invisibility Cloak?”
“Finish the job I started twelve years ago,” the Beast snarled. That, at least, was an easy truth.
“There, you see!” cried Peter. “Completely insane! Utter madness!”
“Harry,” Sirius said, his voice rough. “Hear me out. Let me tell you what I know, and then you can choose who you believe. If you believe I’m lying, I will leave and never bother you again.”
Harry stared at him and Peter in turn. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, all right.” He folded his arms, the picture of teenage scepticism. Beside him, Ron shifted uneasily. Hermione adjusted her grip on the wand she held, Sirius’ wand. She stood alert but listening.
“Your father was my best friend,” Sirius said. “I would have died for him. I was meant to be your parents’ Secret Keeper, but at the last minute, we switched. To this scum.” He spat the words in Peter’s direction. “It turned out he’d been spying for Voldemort all along. He ran to his master with their location, and Voldemort, he—murdered your parents, Harry. Your dad and your mum. And when I came to the house and found them—” He choked on the words, but forced himself to go on. “When I found them, to my eternal regret, instead of staying and looking after you, I ran after this coward, desperate for revenge. I left you with Hagrid, loaned him my motorbike—”
“Your what?” Harry interrupted, in a very odd tone of voice.
“My flying motorbike, I lent it to Hagrid that night, so he could get you safely to Dumbledore.”
“I remember that,” Harry said, his voice still very strange.
“You can’t possibly!” squeaked Peter, interjecting in the story for the first time. There was fear in his voice.
“I do, though,” Harry said, slowly, staring at the Beast in wonder. “I used to have dreams about a flying motorbike. I thought I’d made that up.”
“It doesn’t mean anything!” Peter squawked. “Or he might be faking it! He—he heard that somewhere, that you remembered flying on a motorbike, he’s just using whatever he can find to trick you—”
“You really were there,” Harry said, staring at Sirius, ignoring Peter completely. “You were there that night. You were a friend of my parents’.”
“Yes.”
“You were my parents’ friend, and so was he, and he was the one who got them killed.”
“Yes,” the Beast growled.
Harry studied his face, his monstrous face, and the Beast forced himself not to wince away from that probing gaze. At length Harry said, “I believe you.”
Hermione gave a little cry and rounded on Wormtail, extending the arm that held Sirius’ confiscated wand.
“Professor Wormtail,” Hermione said, her voice quivering with indignation. “You lied to us!”
Peter blinked his rat-like eyes, panicked and fast.
“Let me at him,” Sirius snarled.
Hermione glanced back at him, worry etched in her face. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Make him release me from this curse.”
Hermione looked at Harry. Harry looked back. Some understanding must have passed between them, because Hermione stepped aside and handed Sirius’ wand back to him.
The Beast advanced, wand raised. Wormtail cowered, and the Beast in all his monstrous height towered over him. “You did this to me. You cast this curse that turned me into an inhuman beast and trapped me in my own home, in eternal autumn. I thought you were dead, and there was no hope of ever reversing it. But now that I know…” He raised his wand higher and bared his teeth. “If you want any hope of surviving this night, lift the curse.”
He could live as a man again. He could experience all the seasons again, not only the chill autumn of his loss. As a man, he could offer Harry a home. As a man, perhaps Remus—
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wormtail snivelled, ducking low to the ground and avoiding the Beast’s eyes. “I can’t undo a curse like that.”
“You’re lying! Lift the curse!” The Beast advanced until he stood over Peter, his wand aimed straight for his throat. Peter, at last, raised his small, terrified eyes to meet the Beast’s terrible gaze.
“I—I can’t—”
“Expelliarmus!” cried a horribly familiar, oily voice from the shadows, and the Beast’s wand flew from his hand.
The Beast spun towards the sound. The owner of the voice, narrow and sallow as ever he had been, stepped into the moonlight. “Out of bed, at this late hour. Potter, Granger, Weasley. Fifty points from Gryffindor. Each.”
Sirius moved to take back his wand, but Snape pointed both the wands he now held in his hand, the motion lazy yet deadly precise, bringing him up short.
“I’m not sure what you think you’re doing in Hogsmeade at this hour, with these students, but I can see that you’ve greatly upset them,” Snape said coolly. “And as I’m sure our professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts must have an excellent reason to be cowering there in the road, you’ll understand if I’m sceptical as to your good intentions. Do stand up, Fenwick.”
“Professor Snape, you didn’t hear,” Hermione began, a little breathless. “He’s not Fenwick, he’s—”
“That’s enough, Granger. You are already facing suspension, if not expulsion, from this school.” Snape’s black eyes flicked back to Sirius, studying him minutely. “Well, well. Can it be? At last I understand why you haven’t been flaunting your patrician features in high society all these years. ‘Living abroad,’ wasn’t that the story you put about?”
“Give me my wand,” the Beast growled. “I don’t know how you recognise me, and frankly I don’t care. The real danger here is that man.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Snape breathed. “In fact, I think I had better hold onto this wand for safekeeping. And truth be told, Sirius Black, I see no difference between the beast you were at school and the beast that stands before me now.”
Panic was rising in Sirius’ chest. “You don’t understand what you’re doing. I’m not the danger here. I’ve come here to save Harry.”
An oily smirk. “Save him from what? End of term boredom?”
“From that worthless piece of filth!” Sirius cried, pointing at Peter, who still had not risen.
“Enough,” Snape snapped. “I shall escort these children back to school. Slouch back to your self-indulgent exile, if you wish. It’s no concern of mine.”
Rage boiled higher inside Sirius’ chest. “You!” He lunged, but Snape, lighter and quicker than the Beast, only had to step out of the path of his charging feet and fists.
Then Ron shouted a warning, and there were hard, running footsteps as Peter pelted away up the street with his wand clutched again in his small, pale fists. The Beast wheeled around to follow. He was without a wand, but if he could just grab hold of him—
He charged after Peter, he was gaining with every step, he nearly had the man’s collar in his grasp—
There was an ear-shattering pop, and Peter was gone.
Harry ran up to Sirius. “Where is he?”
Sirius shook his head.
“No!” Harry cried. “He can’t just—I mean he can’t just—where did he go?”
“Children, you will return to school!” Snape ordered behind them. The Beast turned to see Ron and Hermione glaring back at Snape, defiant.
Sirius crossed to Snape and took back his wand with a hard, swift jerk. “I’ll have that back. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Have I not made myself perfectly plain?” Snape drawled to the students, looking past Sirius as though he were not there. “Up to the school. Now.”
“I’ll take them there,” Sirius bellowed.
“And how, pray tell, shall you open the gates to the school, when you are neither teacher nor keeper of keys?” said Snape. Then softer, waspishly, “And how will it be when the whole school sets eyes on you, Black? When they see you for what you always were, the outside matching the inside at last?”
There was a tap at the Beast’s shoulder—Hermione. “It’s all right, Sirius, er, Mr Black,” she said. “We’ll tell Dumbledore everything.”
“Yeah, we will,” Ron said, nodding his agreement.
Sirius glared at Snape. Snape glared back.
“Er—maybe we can just all walk there together?” Hermione suggested.
With a minute, angry jerk of his head, Snape acquiesced, and all five of them started towards the castle in silence.
Sirius let Ron and Hermione fall a few steps ahead, following the hateful black outline that was Snape. The Beast lay a hesitant paw on Harry’s shoulder. Harry, extraordinary Harry, didn’t pull away.
“If you see any sign of him—if he comes back to the castle—” Sirius said. The very thought of it filled him with rage. Peter, at Hogwarts with Harry all this year, and he hadn’t known. Where was that horrid rat now? Running straight back to his old master, no doubt, now that his cover was blown. How long until they began to feel the effects rippling outwards from this night? How much more damage might Peter do, once he was back at Voldemort’s side? How much damage had Sirius done, by letting the rat slip through his grasp?
“I’ll contact you through the mirror,” Harry said. “But he won’t come back, will he? He’s not going to dare to come back, now that you’ve discovered him.”
They had nearly reached the school. Sirius glanced up at its moonlit spires, at the winged boars topping the gates that provided entry to the grounds. He looked down at Harry, who was gazing up at him, wearing an expression Sirius had seen a hundred times on Lily Potter’s face—concern, and something quietly ferocious. How fervently Sirius had hoped to give him a real home, the home Lily and James had intended when they named Sirius as Harry’s godfather. All hope of that was gone now, extinguished as quickly as it had begun.
“If ever you need me,” Sirius said, his voice breaking. Everything he wanted to say to Harry died in his throat. How could he offer a home to his godson, when he was too monstrous to be seen? How could he protect him, when he himself inspired hatred and fear on sight? It destroyed him to hand Harry back into Snape’s care, but he had no choice.
“I’ll call for you,” Harry said. His eyes were wide. “I promise.”
“If you’re quite finished with your tearful goodbyes,” Snape sneered. They had reached the school gates. Snape swirled his wand in the air, the movement unnecessarily showy, and the heavy Hogwarts gates swung open. Snape chivvied the students through and onto the path that led up to the castle, and the gates clanged shut behind them. Harry glanced back, but Snape pushed the boy ahead and swept along after him, his bat-like cape flapping absurdly behind him.
Sirius watched his godson until he was a speck on the grassy moonlit hill. In the distance, the castle doors swung open and golden light spilled onto the lawn. Then the small dots that were Harry and his friends stepped through, the light extinguished, and Harry was gone.
Unable to hold back the breaking of his heart, the Beast threw his head back and howled his grief at the sky. Then he spun on the spot and was gone.
#
The courtyard of the house was full of the customary scrabblings and scratchings of small creatures when the Beast returned. The air felt warmer than usual, a soft breeze sighing through the trees and lifting dry leaves up from the ground, but all the Beast could feel was the weight of his heart, so heavy he could barely stand.
He had failed. All these years he had suffered his curse in silence, but at least he had had the small comfort of knowing Peter, who had betrayed them, was dead. Now he knew a far more terrible truth—Peter was out there, and free. The curse would never be lifted. And Sirius could never be more than a distant figure in Harry’s life, a shadowy protector in a magic mirror. The eternal autumn that had begun for Sirius on the day of his friends’ deaths would never lift.
Sirius slouched inside the house and through the dining room, where an untouched feast steamed magnificently. He plucked up a leg of something—chicken, maybe, he was too heartbroken to care—and gnawed on it, feeling no pleasure. A bottle of white wine sat in a bucket of ice, and he picked it up, uncorked it with a spell, and drank. The bottle was gone before he had finished slouching through the lower rooms of the house, unsure quite what he was after, but walking, restless, through the familiar faded opulence. He ascended a staircase and entered the library, remembering with a vague pang of delight and responsibility that he still had a houseguest. Perhaps seeing Remus would offer some solace.
Sirius owed him an explanation, too, for his hasty exit. The expression on Remus’ face when Sirius had dashed away… The Beast knew he had been terribly rude to his—guest? Or dare he think of him as a friend?
Remus’ customary tidy piles of books lay on the desk, carefully bookmarked, but no Remus sat beside them. The mahogany planks hovered perfectly still beside the highest shelves—no Remus perched on any of them. Sirius called Remus’ name. No answer.
He searched the rooms of the upper floor. Remus’ bed had not been slept in; the house-elves had turned down a corner in their usual fashion and put a glass of water on the nightstand, but there was no sign of Remus.
He couldn’t be lost in the house? Not after they had made that map.
Perhaps Remus truly had gone—he could be deep into the woods and halfway to the little hamlet twenty miles away by now, or he might have Apparated. Or something might have happened to him, one of the house’s other magical creatures might have bitten or cornered or incapacitated him. The boggart was gone, yes, but an old house like this always attracted magical fauna. But hadn’t Remus proved himself competent at self-defence, when he’d taken on the pixie infestation weeks ago?
Where was he, then? Increasingly worried, increasingly sure that Remus had gone for good, Sirius walked faster. Through the silent banquet hall. Through the kitchen. The locked cellar caught his eye.
He tried the doors—they refused to budge.
“Alohomora!” he cried, but still they didn’t open. Growing more concerned by the moment, the Beast tried more advanced disarming magicks, calling on spells he hadn’t had cause to use in years. He thought he heard something in the cellar now, scrabbling and whining. He worked faster, concentrating fiercely, and finally the doors burst open. Sirius descended into the cellar at a run.
An unfamiliar smell. Musky, animal.
“Lumos,” Sirius cried, and his wand tip lit up.
A huge, grey monster with a werewolf’s unmistakable slit pupils stood at the foot of the stairs, its great, shaggy paws planted in a puddle of Remus’ torn clothes. And Remus was nowhere to be seen.
(continue to CHAPTER SEVEN)
