The City On the Hill: Harry Potter Fic


Author: Bitterfig
Title: The City On the Hill
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry Potter/Remus Lupin (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black implied)
Summary: This story is a retelling of Prisoner of Azkaban set not in the late 20th century British Wizarding World of J. K. Rowling’s imagination but in a religious community in the United States during the 1840’s.
Beta Reader: Fedink
Word Count: 8900
Rating: R
Warnings: Mature themes, sexuality, references to violence and sexuality. Implied alcoholism.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any illegal acts taking place within that fiction are NOT condoned by the author. Depictions of any questionable, illegal, or potentially illegal activity in said fiction does not mean that I condone, promote, support, participate in, or approve of said activity. I grasp the distinction between fiction and reality and trust that readers will do the same. I do not profit from the fan fiction I write, and all rights to the characters remain firmly in the hands of their creator.
Author’s Note: It should be noted that while Harry is only 13 years old in the original Prisoner of Azkaban in this story he is 20 years old. This story was written for trubbleclef as a part of the hp_cross_fest



The City on the Hill

Part I



I was orphaned while still a babe and reared by mother’s kinfolk. I grew up in New York State, in a village outside the city of Utica. My uncle, Vernon Dursley, was a man of business, prosperous and well regarded in the community yet I can say without exaggeration that the rats in his stables were better treated and cared for than me, his nephew. I was fed and clothed enough to keep me breathing and decent, no more. From a tender age I made my bed in the unheated woodshed, even on the most bitter winter nights. By day I tended the pigs and chickens. I kept the kitchen garden. I did whatever chores I was told and if I displeased the Dursleys or their household servants there was a whipping in it for me.

This was my life and I knew no other till I was sixteen years old. That was when my parents’ people came for me.

It happened quickly, like the magical transformation in one of those fairy stories a warm-hearted housemaid had told me when I was a boy. The frog becomes a prince, the beggar a king. So it was with me.

One day near the end of summer two men came calling. Both were bearded and dressed in strange robes. Beyond that they could not have been more different. One was a man of middle years. He was a giant, broad as a barn and nearly as red. The other was of advanced age but dapper and bright-eyed as a boy. Odd visitors, odder still in that they asked to see me.

This did not please Vernon Dursley. He shouted at them to get off his property but the older man briskly brushed him aside and wandered about the grounds as though they were his own until he found me in the chicken house tending the hens.

He introduced himself cheerfully, ignoring Mr. Dursley who fumed at his elbow.

“I am High Elder Dumbledore,” he said. “And this fine gentleman is Brother Hagrid.”

“Hello there Harry,” the giant said warmly. “It’s been a long time but I’d know you anywhere.”

“We knew your parents well,” Dumbledore continued. “You resemble your father, but with your mother’s eyes. In their memory I welcome you to the Faith, Harry Potter, and invite you to come with us to the City on the Hill.”

I left with them that day. Why not? Though my Aunt screamed that they were foul sinners in one afternoon they had showed me more kindness than she had in all the years I’d lived under her roof. Besides, High Elder Dumbledore promised to tell me about my parents, something she had never done though my mother had been her sister.

To reach the City on the Hill we went West by rail until the train tracks ended then we traveled by carriage. It was a long journey of many days and the men who accompanied me said it was hard traveling. After we’d exhausted the railroads we moved along rough roads through a deserted countryside, sleeping under the stars and eating tinned food. Still, for me it was luxury. The simple food was plentiful and for the first time in memory I ceased to feel the gnawing of hunger. Moreover my mind was engaged as it never had been as Hagrid and Dumbledore explained to me the Faith, who my parents had been and who I was.

Acolytes, followers of the Faith, considered themselves to be Christians though in the minds of many who shared this designation - Methodists and Episcopalians, Lutherans and Roman Catholics - they were not Christian at all but a cult of freakish heretics. What separated the Faith from these other practitioners of Christianity was that they believed that the Holy Bible was only the first volume of the word of God and that the subsequent chapters were being written by men like High Elder Dumbledore who through his high status in the church of the Faith had read scriptures penned by Jesus Christ himself and thereby gained the ability to communicate with angels.

There was much more to the Faith, infinitely more which I would learn and study for years to come. What concerned me most as we made our way west to the City on the Hill was not Dumbledore’s explanation of theology and hierarchy but what he told me of my mother and father.

Though very young, Lily and James Potter were among inner circles of Acolytes to the Faith that High Elder Dumbledore had gathered to him twenty years before. “Just as the early Christians were thrown to lions we were much persecuted in our infancy,” Dumbledore told me. Dumbledore and his followers were cast out of the largest cities and the smallest villages. Rumor spread about the community of Acolytes. Because the marriages performed within the church were not recognized they were labeled fornicators, the women regarded as base whores. Plagued by violence wherever they went, Dumbledore decided he must take his flock to a place of peace, however far away that might be.

Around the time I was born, the members of the Faith (which numbered close to five thousand at this time) pooled their resources and sight unseen bought from the government a vast tract of land in the territories far to the West; a million acres that lay days beyond the nearest known inhabitant. They set out in a great body. “It was our Exodus,” Dumbledore told me. And like the Israelites bound for the Promised Land many catastrophes would befell them before they found their way home.

The United States government sold property to the Church of the Faith willingly enough, but it was only when the migration began that they realized how many followers Dumbledore had amassed.

It was more than enough to form a whole other country.

Though the Civil War remained years in the future secession and the strength of the federal government was on the minds of those in power, particularly Colonel Thomas Riddle. To Riddle the Acolytes of the Faith, who he would label Dumbledore’s Army, represented a very real threat to the nation. From the moment he heard of the Faith and their plans he would do everything in his power to thwart them, calling in favors from his political and military cronies and even taking the law into his own hands when he saw fit.

The Acolytes of the Faith had just passed Chicago, Illinois when word reached them that a militia was on the way to arrest Dumbledore for treason and disperse his followers. When Colonel Riddle and his militia arrived Dumbledore’s Army would meet them with resistance.

So began a war. Undeclared and probably illegal it is largely forgotten today, mentioned only in passing as an uprising, but it was a war. For months, battles raged as the Acolytes fought to reach their promised land. Many never made it, my parents among them.

Both my mother and my father both would distinguish themselves in the conflict, so much so that they would gain Riddle’s attention and ultimately suffer his wrath.

Because Riddle was pursuing them with especial vehemence, my parents were forced into hiding but to no avail. On a bitter cold October night, when I was just over a year old, Colonel Riddle found his prey. He came to them alone and shot my father at the door of the humble farmhouse where they had been living. Seeing what happened, my mother caught me up and ran out into the night. She never had a chance, she was on foot and Riddle was mounted. The moon and the stars were bright that night and once she was out on the prairie, away from the house and barn there was nowhere to hide.

He rode her down with ease and unsheathed his saber. He told her he would spare her if she left me to him. When she refused he ran her through then raised his sword to do the same to me.

“That’s when he was stuck down by the very hand of God,” Hagrid said, seeming more like a child than an overgrown man.

“It was indeed,” Dumblemore said. “Though the night was clear a bolt of lightening came down from the heavens. Riddle’s sword was shattered, a piece struck you across the face. That is why you bear that scar upon your brow.”

“And Riddle,” I asked. “What became of him?”

“He was as shattered as his sword. He survived the lightening strike, somewhere out there he is still alive but has neither spoken nor walked. He was returned to an infant on that night.”

It was a hot September afternoon but I shivered, partly to know that the man who had killed my parents lived, partly in horror at his fate.

Later I would discover that there was far more to this story than Dumbledore and Hagrid told. They gave me only the barest sketch of what occurred. It would take me years to fill in the details, to learn the whole truth of these events. It might have been that Dumbledore deliberately mislead me. It did not suit his purposes for me to know too much at that time. Still, because I loved him and because he is gone now I like to think that he told me only a little as an act of kindness.

You see I had so very much to learn when we reached the City on the Hill.

*****

Free of Riddle’s persecution, the great Exodus of the Faithful had reached their Promised Land just months after my parents were buried and I was shipped East to my mother’s kin. There they had founded the City on the Hill.

The City on the Hill.

I had never imagined such a place could exist.

I was an ignorant boy when I first glimpsed it. I had no way of knowing the buildings were modeled upon the holy city of Jerusalem or the names and stories attached to the marble statues. I only knew that it was beautiful and shining as nothing I had seen in my life. To stay in that fine city, I would have gladly tended pigs and chickens for the remainder of my days but to my surprise I discovered that within the City on the Hill I was as a prince.

The Faith was not just a religion; it was an incorporated entity that owned farms, banks, factories, and vast tracts of land rich in minerals. A share of it all was mine. All my life I had thought I owned nothing, that I was dependant on the charity of my Aunt and Uncle. It turned out that I had been rich all along, that for years the Dursleys had subsidized their income with the funds Dumbledore had sent them to feed, clothe, shelter and educate me.

I had been fed, clothed and sheltered after a fashion but I had received no schooling. I was, as I have said, an ignorant boy. When I arrived in the City on the Hill at sixteen years of age I could neither read nor write. I knew who the president of the United States was but not what city he governed from or the names of the states that made up the Union. I did not know that there were languages other than English spoken in the world. I could add and subtract simple sums but multiplication and division were far beyond my capacities.

High Elder Dumbledore spoke of enrolling me in the Seminary, a sort of University that taught the ways of the faith. I feared he would be angry or disappointed when he discovered how limited my learning was but instead he was not.

“You have much work before you, Harry,” he said. “It will not be easy for you but I know you will find a way.”

It was not easy.

During my first months and even years at the Seminary I struggled not just to learn my letters and figures but to absorb a strange new culture and a bafflingly complex religion that often seemed like fantasy and nonsense.

Thankfully, I was not alone. At the Seminary for the first time in my life I found friends.

Like me, Leontes Granger was a newcomer to the City on the Hill, a new convert to the Faith who’d spent his whole life in the city of Boston before he came west. Leontes had a passion for books and studying. When he heard that I could neither read nor write he made it his personal mission to help me learn.

In addition to Leontes I became close with a good-natured, outspoken boy in my dormitory named Ronald Weasley.

At first, I imagined Ron to be quite well off. He kept a servant, something done by only the wealthiest students at Seminary. I soon learned however that the servant, Scabbers, was actually a charity case of the sort that Ron’s mother was quite famous for. Scabbers had come to the City on the Hill several years before as a penniless vagrant, mute and disfigured by some accident. Ron’s mother had taken him in and gone so far as to provide him with a vocation, despite her son’s protests that she was making a joke of him among his classmates.

Ron’s parents were… eccentric.

Like my mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had been among that first group of settlers that followed Dumbledore West. Mr. Weasley had helped to build the City of the Hill and was an Elder. One would have thought this would have made the Weasleys prominent and well respected in the community. As it turned out, the opposite was true. To most they were somewhat ridiculous. To some they were downright dangerous.

You see both the Weasleys had very strong ideas of what the Faith ought to be.

I have spoken of Mrs. Weasley’s charity and openness. Her husband too had unconventional views. Mr. Weasley didn’t believe, as many of the Faith did, in isolation from the outside world. He was interested in politics, inventions and ideas outside the City on the Hill. He thought the Faith had a moral duty to get involved with abolition. And he had other radical ideas too. He thought that women ought to be allowed education, to attend seminary and even become Elders.

Because his father dared to contradict popular opinion, Ronald was held in contempt by many of our fellow students and even teachers. It was the first indication I saw that the Faith was not of one mind and one heart, that there were divisions and factions and differences of opinion among the Acolytes and that the creed my parents had died for, a creed I very much wished to believe in, might have its flaws. Still, at first I was just so happy to be there, to have friends, hot meals and a warm bed, and somewhere to belong.

*****


During my first few years at Seminary, Leon, Ron and I had more than our share of adventures. We got in a great deal of trouble and even did some good. We uncovered a spy among the faculty, showed up a charlatan prophet and even thwarted the plans of a conservative faction among the Elders to consolidate power into the hands of a few families. Along the way I learned a great deal more about the workings of the Faith and about my own story. Yet it seemed that the more I learned the less clear things became.

After two years of inseparable friendship, Leon confessed to Ron and I his most closely guarded secret. He was not Leontes Granger at all but Hermione, a girl who had disguised herself as a boy to learn about the Faith from the inside.

Within the Faith, men and women outside of wedlock were kept very much separate so it was a great shock to learn we had been sharing quarters with a girl all along. I was still new to the ways of the Faith so it was harder on Ron, who despite his father’s progressive ideas had grown up believing it was indecent for unmarried men and women to mingle. For several days he could do little more than stare wide-eyed whenever he saw Hermione.

“But we’ve shared a bed,” he finally stammered.

“We have,” she said. “And you snore dreadfully.” All three of us burst out laughing. She was still the same Leon, still our friend who was very much cleverer than either of us would ever be. If the Faith said she should subjugate herself to her husband, that her only role was to be the mother of souls, then perhaps the Faith was wrong.

In the year that followed I would learn other ways in which the Faith was wrong even as my destiny within it became revealed to me. It all really began when a man by the name of Lupin came to teach theology at Seminary.

Professor Lupin was a ragged man. He walked with a limp and his face and hands were scarred. He seemed to have wandered a great distance and been through a great deal. He seemed tired. Unlike most of the other teachers at Seminary, he was not an Elder and I soon learned that although he had been part of Dumbledore’s Exodus he was not even an Acolyte. For some sin or crime in his past he had lost his place in the Faith.

Yet when he taught, the Faith came alive. When he explained, all the murkiness seemed to lift and I could understand as never before.

Just before Professor Lupin came to Seminary, the City on the Hill began to buzz with news of a man called the Black Dog, an arsonist and murderer who had escaped from a distant federal prison. He sounded dreadful but to me it seemed like even worse than the Black Dog were the black-riders that soon filled the city searching for and guarding against him. They were called Dementors, and they were of the City on the Hill though they showed a very different side of it than I had seen before. They were an elite guard of troops who answered to no one, not even the Elders. They could enter any dwelling and take anyone into custody. Their methods of interrogation were torture and beatings and their very presence felt like a threat.

I couldn’t help but wonder who the Black Dog was and what he had done to inspire such a degree of fear that the people of the City on the Hill were willing to accept martial law under the brutal Dementors.

It was Professor Lupin who answered my questions.

In my time among the Faithful, I’d learned that direct inquiry rarely yielded information so I generally took steps to find things out for myself. This generally involved breaking rules and sneaking about, which is what I was doing on the evening that the Dementors caught me out after curfew.

The Dementors were in the middle of giving me the worst thrashing I’d had since I left the Dursleys when the familiar voice of my teacher rang out.

“Stand down,” he commanded pushing his way among the shadowing guards. “Stand down you idiots. Can’t you see that this is the boy you’re here to protect?”

It was strange, to hear him speak to them in their own language. Stranger still that they obeyed him, followed his orders as though he was one of theirs and not a rootless, destitute schoolteacher. And strangest of all to learn that awful Dementors were charged with guarding me.

Of course I’d just been thumped so soundly my own reaction was to fall unconscious at Professor Lupin’s feet.

When I came around I thought for a moment I was in the dormitory then I realized that though it had the same Spartan furnishings the room I woke in was far smaller than the one Ron, Leon and I shared with several other young men. I spotted Professor Lupin slumped nearby on a hard wooden chair and realized he must have brought me back to his own quarters and given me his bed. Apparently sleep had caught him unexpected as he watched over me. He would not have wanted me to see the bottle he held cradled to his chest.

Within the Faith, alcohol was regarded as a deplorable vice. Liquor, wine and beer alike were shunned and denounced. Since arriving in the City on the Hill I had not seen a tavern or a drop of spirits. And yet there was my teacher, who had only just saved me from the worst beating of my life, with a bottle of gin clutched to his breast.

From my life before, I knew that there are some men who cannot help themselves where drink is concerned. I understood that Professor Lupin must be one of these men. For his sake, and my own, I decided it would be better to keep this knowledge to myself. I closed my eyes and drifted back into dreams. When I woke, Lupin was standing at the window. There was no sign of the bottle.

Perhaps because I knew I was keeping his secret I didn’t hold back when it came to demanding explanation for other matters.

“Why did the Dementors obey your commands last night?” I asked. “What did you mean when you said they were here to protect me? I thought they were after the Black Dog, what’s he got to do with me? And how would you know what the Dementors are here for? Only the High Elders should know… you’re not even of the Faith any longer…”

“Feeling better I see,” he said with a crooked smile. “You’re asking me valid questions Harry, and you deserve answers. You should have been told long ago about why your parents died. Dumbledore didn’t think you were ready, but with Sirius at large not knowing everything could cost you your life.

“Where to begin?

“The Dementors obeyed me because that’s what they’re trained to do. They follow orders and I know how to give orders. I’ve been a solider in too many armies to count. It’s what I do, what I’ve done all these long years since I left the Faith.”

“A soldier?” I interrupted. “But you’re a teacher…”

“A man can be many things, Harry,” he said. “Sometimes even contradictory things. Dumbledore brought me to the Seminary because Sirius Black escaped from prison, to keep watch over you.”

“But why?”

“For the same reason he’s given the Dementors run of the city. Because there’s every reason to believe that Sirius Black, the one you call the Black Dog, will be coming after you. You see, he killed your parents.”

It was shock, like being slapped. I thought I knew that story only now it seemed it was different.

“Riddle killed my parents,” I insisted. Professor Lupin shook his head.

“Riddle should have never found them. They were hidden too well. Not even Dumbledore himself knew where they were. The only person who knew was your father’s best friend, your God-father, Sirius Black. He was one of us, an Acolyte of the Faith, the real thing.” At these words, his eyes seemed far away and a strange note of passion crept into his tone.

“Angels sang to that boy, I truly believe they did. I thought he was the brightest star, the best of this fallen world but in his heart he was a devil. He gave you up to Riddle, you and your parents. I can’t say what he was promised, but when he heard that the murders had gone wrong and that Riddle’s power was broken he went mad. He rode to Middleford, the town where Dumbledore had his secret headquarters at the time. He set the building on fire and as the people inside ran out he gunned them down. Eight died by his hand before the Federal troops were able to subdue him. Four more perished in the blaze. Dumbledore’s life was spared only because he was away, taking care of you.”

“This monster, this Sirius Black, why does he still live?” I asked. “Why wasn’t he hanged years ago?”

“Riddle was a well connected man,” Lupin said with a hint of bitterness. “Apparently he’d convinced the right people that slaughtering Acolytes of Faith was not a hanging crime. Or perhaps it was just that Sirius had always been charmed.”

“You knew him?”

“I knew him. I knew them all, Harry. Not just Sirius, but your mother and father Lily and James. There was Peter too, little Peter, who was burned to ashes in the fire. We were friends Harry, the way you and Ron and that clever, clever young woman who calls herself Leon are friends; inseparable, a part of each other. To me, that was the Faith, that love between friends. Yet Sirius betrayed us all.” His hands I noticed were shaking slightly. His shoulders slumped as he turned away. At that moment, he looked as helpless as I felt. I couldn’t allow either of us to remain in such a state.

“Dumbledore mollycoddles me,” I said. “But I don’t need it. No one looked after me for all those years I was in my Uncle Vernon’s care. I did what I needed to survive. I must do the same here and it will be easier because I won’t be alone as I was for so long. I’ll have help, from Ron, from Leon… that is Hermione, and I hope from you.”

“Anything you need, Harry.”

“You say you’re a solider as well as teacher. Then show me how to protect myself and the people I care about.”

*****

In the months to come I spent a great deal of time with Professor Lupin being tutored in the arts of the solider. He instructed me in the use of the sword, the rifle and the blade. He gave me a knife that had belonged to my father and as you can imagine I cherished it. He taught me to be alert, to watch and listen, to respond without thinking and to think always of my enemy’s next move.
I found these skills came to me far more easily than reading and writing had. Lupin said I was making excellent progress and perhaps most important I was doing something instead of waiting for the Black Dog to come for me.

And he was coming.

There were sightings of him, first in the outlying villages and farms then finally in the City on the Hill itself. The Dementors were everywhere and the tension was heavy and electric as the air before a storm.

Though he told me little of how he had come by the skills he taught me, after my lessons Lupin would often tell me about my parents and the happy times he had spent with them in school and after they had all come to the Faith. “They were shining people,” he told me. “There was a light inside them. Even during the times of persecution and during the worst hardships of the Exodus your mother was kind and patient to all and your father kept our spirits high. They were exceptional souls, Harry. It’s no wonder they had a special child.”

“What’s so special about me?” I asked. In my heart I’d been wondering this since Hagrid and the High Elder appeared at the Dursley’s three years before. “Why was Riddle so set on killing me? Why did Dumbledore travel all the way to New York State himself just to fetch me here? Why all the effort to teach me my letters so I can train as an Elder when I’m not even sure I if I even believe in the Faith?”

“You’re important to us, Harry. That is, important to the Faith. There are scriptures that don’t exist in this world but which the angels have allowed a chosen few to glimpse. In one of these texts is a prophecy of a man who takes up arms against the Faith and hounds its people across the land until a child destroys him. Riddle knew that much of the prophecy and so he came to kill you but there was much more. Supposedly it says that the child will grow into a man and face other enemies of the Faith, and that in the darkest hour he will save the Faith from itself.” It was so much, too much. I was overwhelmed, then he put his arm around my shoulders and at least I knew I was not alone.

*****

My private lessons with Lupin didn’t go unnoticed. One of my professors, an Elder Snape who had always disliked me seemed to pay particular attention. He made frequent comments in my hearing about Lupin’s “sordid past”, his unreliability and untrustworthiness. One day as Professor Lupin and I walked together down the hallway we passed Snape and he straightforwardly asked me if I smelled liquor. If I had not known how strongly Snape despised me I would have thought he was trying to warn me about Professor Lupin.

I mentioned Snape’s disparaging remarks about Lupin (though not the incident in the hallway) to Ron and Hermione.

Ron thought nothing of it. “Snape’s a sour old crow,” he assured me. “Always sticking his beak in where it doesn’t belong. Pay him no mind. Say, Scabbers, don’t throw those papers away. That’s my law class report; old Leon here has been hard at work on it all night.”

Hermione on the other hand grew serious.

“I want to believe you can trust Professor Lupin,” she said. “He seems to be a good man but handle yourself with care, Harry. He has weaknesses.”

Had she discovered that he drank? I would have asked her what she knew, but the bells of the Seminary began to ring in an alarm. We rushed out into the hallway and within minutes we had heard a dozen different stories. There were cries of fire and of murder (naming me as the victim.) We made our way to the center of the commotion and found that the truth was hardly less disturbing than the heresy.

One of the classrooms had been broken into and utterly pillaged. Furniture was smashed to bits, books torn and scattered, and on the blackboard a message was scrawled. “Harry Potter Beware,” it said.

The Black Dog had arrived.

“He’s broken in, he’ll murder us all,” a rather excitable music instructor was shrieking.

“The side door `round back of the North wing has been broken down. Looks like he took an axe to it…” someone offered, further encouraging the music instructor.

“He’ll murder us all in our beds!”

Meanwhile Hermione was scrutinizing the chalkboard.

“There was more to this,” she said. “Someone’s rubbed it out.” She was (as always) right, if you took a moment to look it was plain there had been more to the message, but that it had been hastily and incompletely erased. “Who found this?” She demanded of the near-hysterical music instructor. “Who raised the alarm?”

“It was the Weasley boy’s manservant,” a first year student volunteered. “He don’t talk but he rung the bell.”

“Ron, where is Scabbers at?” Hermione asked.

“Why? Ron wanted to know. “I’m sure he didn’t fiddle with whatever was written up there. Scabbers is a good ‘un. Besides I don’t think he knows his letters any more than Harry did when he first got here.”

“Still, he might have seen something…”

“Harry.” A voice hissed in my ear. I jumped as a hand closed around my arm then I saw it was Lupin and I allowed him to draw me away from the crowd. “Harry, you have to leave here immediately. If you stay you’re in grave danger.”

“I don’t want to go, Professor,” I said numbly. “This is my home. There isn’t anywhere else for me to go… Won’t I be safe, with everyone here? He’s only one man…”

“He’s evaded federal troops and the Dementors for months Harry,” Lupin said with uncharacteristic sternness. “If you remain here you will be endangering the lives of every person in this school. I know a place you can go, where you will be safe.” He must have known from my face that I was not convinced. “There was a parcel of land that would have belonged to your parents if they had lived. A place just beyond the city called Willow Creek for the great weeping willow that grows there. Do you know how to reach it?”

“I do… down the creek.”

“That’s right, Harry. By the willow, on the banks of the creek is a hermit’s shack, abandoned for years. Go there and hide, Harry. I’ll meet you there.” The idea of being alone in the dark night huddled in a shack on the place where my parents house ought to have stood chilled me.

“Promise you’ll come,” I pleaded.

“I will, Harry. Nothing could keep me away,” he said and pushed me back towards my friends as he disappeared into the milling crowd.

*****


I’d scarcely left the building when my friends caught up with me. Still deep in their argument (Hermione had managed to round up Scabbers and was questioning him while Ron protested that she ought to leave him be) they had noticed my absence and followed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Ron wanted to know.

“I’ve got to get away,” I said and I told them about the hermit’s shack at Willow Creek and the plan I’d made with Lupin.

“Is that wise?” Hermione asked. “Don’t you think you’d be safer at the Seminary with everyone about and the Dementors nearby?”

“Black Dog's there too.” Ron pointed out.

“Something is going on,” Hermione said. “There was more to that message than we saw. I think it was a warning, not a threat.”

“I’m going to Willow Creek,” I insisted. “I don’t care what you say.” I wasn’t thinking entirely straight in all the excitement. Perhaps I even believed that if I reached Willow Creek the spirits of my parents would exert some sort of magical protection over me.

That and I trusted Lupin. He had said I should go to Willow Creek so I would go.

“If you insist on going, you’re not going alone.” Hermione said.

And so we made our way to Willow Creek. Hermione dragged poor Scabbers along, continuing her futile interrogation. In response to her questions he only shook his head but I thought he seemed eager enough to get away from the Seminary where we all assumed the Black Dog was lurking.

On foot it took us the better part of an hour to reach Willow Creek. By then the moon had risen full and golden, the sky casting a light that was bright as day. The four of us had been grim and silent for much of the journey but when the hermit’s shack came into view I felt as though a great weight had been lifted from me. I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

“We’ve made it,” I said, then all hell was loosed upon us.

The sound of a gunshot was followed by a piercing howl from Ron whose leg collapsed beneath him. He would have fallen but for Scabbers who was desperately trying to hide behind him.

With a terrifying howl a wild-eyed man burst from the shadows and flung himself upon Ron.

“Now I’ve got you, now I’ve got you,” he shouted. He seemed to have the strength of ten men as he dragged my friend and his servant towards the shack.

I drew my knife, Hermione armed herself with a rock and we followed him inside. Neither of us understood why Sirius Black should attack Ron but we were both of us determined to rescue him from the madman’s clutches.

Ron and Scabbers were huddled in the far corner of the shack, the wound on Ron’s leg bleeding profusely. Sirius Black stood over them brandishing a rifle. In the half light I could see how scrawny he was, his arms and legs like long, jagged tree limbs. His hair and beard were long, matted and disarrayed, his eyes red-rimmed, his skin sallow, his clothing filthy and torn to rags. I might have pitied him if he had not been aiming a gun at my best friend.

When he saw me, knife in hand, he stepped towards me, speaking in a soft sing-song voice as if coaxing an errant child.

“You’ve got James’ knife,” he said. “You could almost be James, you look enough like him.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my father like you’re his friend,” I snarled. “Not after what you did to him.”

“That’s right, I betrayed him, didn’t I.”

“Yes!”

“Sold my best friend and his lovely bride to Colonel Riddle, I might as well have killed them myself.”

“That’s right!”

“Is that what they’ve told you Harry? Is that what you believe?”

“That’s what we all believe, Sirius,” a deep and quiet voice behind me said. Professor Lupin had arrived. “And yet I’ve delivered the boy into your hands. Right and wrong never did mean a thing to me when you were involved.” His words slurred together and his gait was even more unsteady than usual. A sour smell of alcohol rose from him. I realized he was drunk. Black must have seen it too. A maniac’s grin lit up his face.

“Remus,” he cried with glee. “Still my Remus after all.” The two of them embraced, kissing on the mouth, Lupin’s hands seeming to devour Black’s body.

“No,” Hermione screamed. “No. Damn you. No. Not this. Not after I kept your secret all these months.”

“I apologize, Miss Granger.” Lupin said. “I’m afraid you were aware of my proclivity towards my own sex but not the particular man who inspired my loyalty.”

At the time, I had no clue what they were talking about. All I knew was that Professor Lupin, my most trusted ally, was siding with Black against me. I didn’t know, or care, why. I leapt to attack him but Black leveled the gun at me.

“I’m not going to let you do anything you’ll regret, Harry.” He said. “Its time you all heard me out. The one who betrayed James and Lily Potter to Colonel Riddle is in this room all right but it’s not who you think.”

“Spare us your lies, cur,” a familiar voice sneered. “The Dementors are on the way.”

Elder Snape stepped into the room. There was a pistol in his hand that he coolly pressed to Lupin’s head.

“Oh, I never thought I’d be glad to see you.” Ron said with a sigh of relief. Snape gave him a look of unremitting disgust. Sirius Black just laughed; an easy, almost friendly chuckle.

“Well bless my soul,” he said. “It’s field commander Snape. How fares Riddle’s Army, Officer Snape?”

“It’s Elder Snape now.”

“I’d heard you joined the ranks of the Faith, Officer Snape. That must have been a conversion to put Paul to shame.”

“Shut your vile mouth, Black. And you,” Snape turned his attentions to Lupin. “You’re worse than he ever was. I knew you were a sinner, a drunk and a pervert but I didn’t imagine you were so corrupt as to knowingly hand over a student in your charge to a murderous fiend.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, Officer.” Black said cheerfully. “Still absolutely convinced of your righteousness and overly fond of the sound of your own voice. You must be overjoyed to have all your old enemies in your power. Lupin and I... James is dead of course but Harry provides a reasonable stand-in… and we mustn’t overlook Peter…”

As he said this, he gestured towards where Ron and Scabbers were huddled on the floor. Snape and Lupin both looked. Surely they had seen old Scabbers a hundred times around the Seminary and scarcely noticed him but this time, they saw something. A shock of recognition came to both their faces.

“It’s Peter,” Lupin gasped.

“But he’s dead, he died in the fire. Black killed him…” Snape said. He was confused, off balance. I’d like to say that I was the one who took advantage of this but I wasn’t. It was Hermione who sprang to action. She bounced the stone she was carrying off his wrist. Snape’s gun fell to the floor and he cursed with ferocity unbecoming an Elder.

“Leontes Granger,” he snarled, “I thought you of all these fools had a grain of sense.”

“I’m quite sorry, sir, and I hope once everything is sorted out you’ll forgive me and that my actions tonight won’t impact negatively on my grades,” Hermione said in all earnestness. “But right now I very much wish to hear what Mr. Black has to say.”

*****

What Mr. Black had to say was that it was Peter Pettigrew, not him, who had betrayed my parents to Riddle. Needing an outside contact to the world, my mother and father had been planning to entrust Black with their secret hiding place however Black had dissuaded them. He convinced them that he was too obvious a choice, that Riddle was bound to have him watched and followed. Peter on the other hand, well, people had a habit of overlooking Peter and so my parents took him into their confidence.

When Black learned of my parents' deaths he had known that Peter was responsible. He’d tracked Peter to Middleford, to the makeshift headquarters of the Faith but Peter had been too slippery for him. As Black arrived he’d set the headquarters ablaze, shooting down anyone who tried to flee.

Black was blamed. In the grief and confusion that followed the fire no one realized that the fatal shots had been fired from inside the headquarters. Peter was believed to have been lost in the fire but he had actually used it to cover his escape.

Yet all did not go as planned for Peter Pettigrew. A fire has no loyalty to the one who sets it. Peter may have lit the blaze but he did not control it. He got away that day and Black paid the penalty for his crimes but in the process Peter was grievously injured, his body broken and his face scarred.

For years, Peter lived a hand to mouth existence in the West but as the fortunes of the people of the Faith rose he gravitated back towards those he had betrayed. Then he was altered to such a degree that he had been able to live in close proximity to - yet still be unrecognized by - a man who had once been among his dearest friends, and another who apparently had once been his bitter enemy.

Once he was safely ensconced in the City on the Hill, Peter made himself useful once again to the enemies of the Faith by gathering whatever information he could. Rotting away in prison, Sirius Black was assumed to be among the greatest enemies of the Faith and so word of Peter’s activities eventually reached him and when he learned that Peter was at the Seminary, close to me, he made his escape. Black’s purpose had never been to kill me as we all thought, but to warn me. When he’d broken into the school he’d left me a message on the blackboard before he fled but Peter, finding it first had altered it, turning it into a threat.

Outnumbered and unarmed, we had Peter at a considerable disadvantage and he confessed willingly enough to all Black accused him of.

“But don’t the Holy Scriptures say you should forgive,” he beseeched us. “Remus, Sirius, I was your friend….”

“James’ friend as well,” Black said coldly. Seeing he would get nowhere with Black, Peter turned to Ron (who was white as a sheet and in considerable pain from his wound).

“Master,” Peter wailed. “Wasn’t I a good and faithful servant?”

“Good and faithful?” Ron snapped. “You were a terrible servant. I only kept you around because Mother insisted. You were always fiddling with my things and you never did what I asked. I bet it was you who took my Christmas candy when I was twelve. And here I’ve blamed Fred all these years.” Hermione must have cast him a disapproving look and even in his sorely distressed state Ron noticed because he quickly added, “not that that matters so much, I suppose, what with you killing people and spying and all that.”

And so we left the shack and set out to meet the Dementors Snape said were on their way. Our plan was to turn Peter over to them and clear Sirius Black’s name.

As so often happens, the plan went awry.

Professor Lupin had been drunk when he arrived at the shack and I couldn’t help but notice that all through the strange evening (at least during those times when there wasn’t a gun to his head) he’d continued to swig from his flask in those moments when he thought no one saw. As we left, I noticed he was unsteady on his feet, his eyes glazed. He and Black both had a hold on Peter, but Lupin seemed to be learning on his prisoner for support much the way the injured Ron leaned on Hermione and I.

Then abruptly Lupin fell to the ground in some sort of a fit, thrashing about howling and shrieking. In an instant Sirius Black was at his side, holding him close, whispering soothing words to him, and stroking his hair.

I will admit that Black’s tenderness stirred something in me I could not name. While they were thus, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

I never saw Peter Pettigrew slip away. Hermione must have, she cried out, but by then it was too late. By the time Lupin’s attack subsided and he lay insensible in Sirius Black’s arms our prisoner and our only proof of Black’s innocence was long gone.

I wanted to go to the Dementors anyways, to tell them of Peter’s treachery and exonerate Black. He refused.

“Without Peter’s confession they’ll never believe us,” Black said. “You’d need an Elder to bear witness.”

“What about you? I demanded turning on Snape. “You heard everything Peter said and you’re an Elder. They’ll have to believe you.”

Snape, who had been nursing his injured wrist, looked up with a sneer.

“My only passion is to see justice done,” he said. “I will certainly tell all I have heard. Mr. Black has only to ask.”

Hatred flashed in Sirius Black’s eyes, a hatred that felt as strong and real to me as a blade or a bullet. For a moment I thought he would kill Snape then and there but then the hatred fled, replaced by prideful distain.

“I’ll have to go on the run again,” Black said as though Snape had never spoken. “It won’t be easy but I’ll never go far, Harry. You’re James and Lily’s son and the destiny of the Faith rests on you. I’ll always watch over you.”

I appreciated the sentiment, I truly did. But I couldn’t help thinking that though he was not the madman I’d long imagined him to be, Sirius Black wasn’t entirely sane either.

*****


Sirius Black disappeared that night. I told Dumbledore all that happened and though he could not clear Black’s name he was able to use his influence to have the violent and unpredictable Dementors removed from the City on the Hill.

Elder Snape said nothing of the things Peter Pettigrew had confessed to; however he quickly spread the word of Lupin’s indiscretions. Lupin, he said, was a drunkard; he had deliberately endangered the lives of his students and withheld information that might have resulted in Black’s capture because of their friendship.

Just a few days after our adventure, I heard that Lupin had resigned his post and would be leaving the Seminary. I was not surprised at this revelation, but it left me uneasy. Snape’s accusations had not been false yet somehow they did not seem quite fair to me. I wanted to see Lupin again before he departed.

I found him in his quarters, packing away his books. The bed was stripped bare and on it laid his greatcoat and arms, a pistol, a rifle and a long knife. I understood that he was putting away his life as a teacher. He would go back to being a mercenary, fighting endlessly in other men’s battles for land and money though for him, the true struggle would always be with himself.

Lupin greeted me without meeting my eye. He was unshaven and he smelled of alcohol.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I’d hoped to talk to you before I left. To tell you that I’m sorry for everything I put you through…”

“That night in the shack,” I said, “you were surprised when you learned that Sirius was innocent. You sent me to him believing he had betrayed my parents, believing that he was capable of killing me.”

“You’re angry. You have the right to be. What I did was despicable. I am a weak man, Harry, a weak and deceitful man. Dumbledore should have never trusted me to come near you and I should have never trusted myself.”

“Those things you said to Hermione that night…”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think you do. She said she’d kept something secret; you called it a proclivity towards your own sex. What did that mean?”

“Miss Granger is a lovely girl who makes a lovely boy. As such, she’s come in contact with men like me, perverted creatures who seek to lie with one another rather than women as God intended.”

“You and Black then, you had been as man and wife?”

He turned away, wrapping his arms about himself as if against the cold.

“When we were young,” he said. “Though Sirius was never like me, to him it was a game. For me there was nothing else.”

“And that torments you.”

“Yes, but it does not excuse me. What I did to you was unforgivable.”

“Let me decide that,” I said.

He was right, he was weak. Ron had been injured because of him and my friends and I might well have died because of his misplaced loyalties. Sirius Black and Lupin himself could have provided me with a connection to my parents but now, because Lupin had allowed Peter Pettigrew to escape, that fragile link to the past had been shattered.

I had every right to be angry with Remus Lupin yet I was not. I placed a hand on his shoulder. So solid, yet it seemed to quiver with each breath he took. He was in pain, had been in pain for many years. I had thought the alcohol was his affliction, but now I realized it was the only thing that allowed him to go on.

It was wrong that anyone should be in such pain.

“Since I came to the City on the Hill,” I said, “I’ve been told that I’m special, important, that I’m spoken of in the prophecies. If any of that is true, I want to make a difference for you. I want to ease your suffering.”

He turned then, and I kissed him. I had never kissed anyone before, I didn’t know how. The night before in the infirmary, as my friend Ron lay in bed still pale from the blood he’d lost when Sirius Black put a bullet in his leg I had seen Hermione kiss him and so I did with Lupin as she had done with Ron. I gathered him up, I drew him near and somehow it happened.

His mouth against mine I knew the foul, burning taste of alcohol for the first time. If I could have licked it away, sucked its influence from his body I would have.

I remembered how his frenzied hands had moved over Sirius Black, now they were upon me. There was wolfish hunger in his caress, I knew this because his touch enflamed me and I felt the same aching need that he must have.

When we fell unto the bed I scarcely noticed the discomfort of the rifle and his sheathed knife beneath my back. I was panting, rubbing myself against him without shame. Then he slowed his pace. Perhaps he had feared I would push him away but when he trusted that I would stay he went more slowly, he handled me gently, as though I was precious to him.

We didn’t undress, only pushed aside whatever clothing we could to press flesh to flesh and wordlessly we moved against each other with mounting urgency,

Even after we had both spilled our seed, we lay wrapped up in each other. We did not speak; through from time to time he would kiss me with a tenderness that told me he was grateful. He believed he was damned and that I was kind.

Perhaps I was as special and important as they said - some kind of savior or saint. None the less I could not give him redemption, only perhaps a moment of relief.

I held him all that night, and then he was gone.