Parting Ways
by Morgan D.

"I didn't know this was here," Harry breathed.

"Where else would it be?" Lupin shrugged.

Where else, indeed? It had been a victory for Hogwarts. A double victory, no less. And the trophy room was the place where the celebrated achievements of Hogwarts students throughout history were to be stored and displayed for posterity. If Harry had at least once conceded the issue some thought, he would also have concluded that this was just the natural place to keep it.

However, just as he had given away the one-thousand-Galleon prize as soon as he found someone willing to take it, the boy had not been willing to concede the issue any thought, finding comfort in the notion that he would never have to see the Triwizard Cup ever again.

Well, so much for that comfort.

"Will you bring me that chair over there?" Lupin asked, his voice no more than a cautious whisper. "I'd need to grow a couple of feet to reach it."

Despite his uneasiness, Harry hurried to obey, tiptoeing carefully on the wooden planking. According to the Marauder's Map, there was no living soul — nor dead ones — on the entire second floor, and Crookshanks had retaken his watch post, guarding the door to the trophy room from outside. Still, it would be foolish to take chances; they couldn't afford to be caught.

The chair was made of solid cedar and astoundingly heavy. Lupin ended up having to help the boy to carry it to the cabinet where the Triwizard Cup was on display.

"You reckon it's safe to touch it?" Harry panted.

Lupin was out of breath as well. "You mean, could it still be a Portkey to that graveyard where Lord Voldemort took you two years ago?" He stared at the Cup thoughtfully. "I doubt it. For one thing, I've never heard of a Portus Spell lasting that long. Also, there's no protection around it, not even a glass dome or something, and polishing all these cups and medals with no magic has always been one of Professor McGonagall's favourite punishments for particularly naughty pranks." He had a definitely reminiscent half-smile on his face as he said that.

"What kind of pranks?" Harry couldn't resist asking.

"Like... transfiguring a Jarvey into a Burmese cat, and training it to say, whenever it had its ears stroked..." Lupin added a sexy hoarseness to his voice. "'Oooooh, babe, you're so gorgeous, I want you to be the mother of my kittens.'"

Harry had to cover his mouth to muffle his laughter. "You didn't."

"Perfect team work. I captured the Jarvey, Sirius trained it, James transfigured it, and Peter sneaked it onto McGonagall's desk." The werewolf looked around at the countless trophies in that room. "Unfortunately, I was the only one assigned to polish Hogwarts' glorious past. We had to serve our detentions separately."

The boy followed his gaze, remembering Ron's cranky mood after facing that exact punishment in their second year, because of the incident involving Mr Weasley's car and the Whomping Willow. The chamber seemed to hold one thousand years worth of medals and awards. It probably did. "There's a lot of silver here," he commented. "Doesn't it... you know... hurt you?"

Taking a deep breath, Lupin climbed on the chair, testing both its strength to sustain him and his own ability to keep his balance. "You never did that essay about werewolves for Professor Snape, did you?"

"Erm... no."

"Silver is only harmful to werewolves when in direct contact with their bloodstream."

"Oh." Harry felt a bit stupid. Hadn't he seen Lupin handling Sickles when they rented that broom?

Apparently satisfied with the chair's stability — and also his own —, the greying man slowly opened the glass door at the upper side of the cabinet.

"Er... sir? Are you sure about this?"

"About silver?" Lupin arched an eyebrow. "Positive. I would be, wouldn't I?"

"I mean, about Portkeys. You're sure it's inactive now?"

"Ah. Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Practically positive."

"Practically?" Harry echoed worriedly.

Lupin smirked. "You're right, of course. Hand me the backpack."

Harry did, and saw the man opening the bag in front of the Cup, while prodding the trophy to the edge of the shelf with the side of his wand.

"Careful," the boy urged. If the metal cup missed the bag and fell on the floor, it would make a lot of noise, and Harry didn't want to take the risk of grabbing it in mid-fall.

"Not to worry," Lupin soothed him, his speech intermittent as he nudged the Cup forward. "As much as I'd love to... visit Lord Voldemort's... family mausoleum someday... for tourism purposes..." The Cup was now dangling dangerously from the shelf. "...right now I have... my own dead loved ones..." A final prod and the Cup fell safely inside the backpack. "...to take in consideration."

Harry grinned, and helped the tired man down from the chair. "I hope you won't ask me to accompany you to that graveyard, Professor."

"Not to that one, no," Lupin agreed, holding the backpack at arm's length, as if it had a living animal inside. "All right. This was the easy one. Two more to go."

"Where are the others?"

"One is in Dumbledore's office."

Harry cringed. Not at all an easy one. "And the other?"

"No idea. We'll have to look for it."

Terrific. So now they could choose. Would they rather try their luck at guessing the password to Dumbledore's office and against whatever defences the Headmaster might have installed to protect the place in his absence? Or wander through the ninety-three corridors, one hundred and forty-two staircases and nobody-knew-how-many rooms of that ever-changing castle, looking for one single object? "Can't we simply Accio the two elements?" he asked Lupin.

"Dumbledore has anti-theft alarms in his office, as your father found out when he tried to summon the Sorting Hat in our fourth year. And if Summoning Charms were that efficient for objects whose location we don't know, burglars would never have to leave the comfort of their own home." He snapped his fingers. "Accio Galleons, and gold would fly to their hands."

The finger snap echoed in the ample room. Crookshanks stepped inside, growling reprovingly at the werewolf.

"Sorry," Lupin mumbled, hiding the offending hand in his pocket.

Harry opened the map, his mind racing after a better solution. "There must be another way..." Unfortunately, the parchment revealed only the castle architecture known by James Potter and his friends in their school days, and the location of people, animals and ghosts. The few objects drawn in the map were the statues, paintings and coats of armour that served as strategic marks or as doorkeepers to the password-protected entrances. And the castle was so huge and tricky! Going to one place to another when you actually knew where you were going could already take so long, thanks to all the hindrances caused by the moving staircases and eccentric rooms that popped up on different floors depending on the weather or day of the week. But if they really couldn't summon the elements...

The idea hit him as his eyes found the lines that drew a corridor on the seventh floor, a spot where a certain tapestry was curiously not being displayed. "Professor? Have Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs ever found the Room of Requirement?"

Lupin blinked. "The what?"

That Hogwarts' reputation as the safest place in the wizarding world was a tremendous fallacy, Harry knew all too well by self-experience. But as he guided Lupin and Crookshanks to the seventh floor, he wondered if it weren't the generations of naughty students who had kept the rumours of that undeserving fame alive over the centuries. The three of them had had no trouble crossing the grounds from the Whomping Willow to the Entrance Hall. Similarly, impostors and wrongdoers never seemed to face much difficulty on their way into the castle — and some of them were even rewarded with a salary.

On the other hand, when all you wanted to do was go up five floors without alerting the caretaker or a wandering teacher...

They had met Filch no less than four times on their way up, and once the git had come very close to stumbling on Crookshanks. Thankfully, despite his thirty-something years and his fatigued state, Lupin obviously had a lot of practice walking silently while sharing an Invisibility Cloak — probably more practice than Harry himself had —, and Filch had failed to spot them every time. Curiously, the werewolf seemed a lot more worried about evading Mrs Norris, and made them stop from time to time to check the map for her location. Lupin also made a point of staying away from corridors filled with too many portraits, staircases with marble handrails, rooms with low ceilings, and carpets with animal patterns. If the man was dead lunatic and paranoid or indeed knew more about the castle's traps than he did, Harry was still unable to decide.

All in all, it took them over twenty minutes to get to the wall facing the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. "It's here," Harry hissed, getting out from under the cloak.

Lupin stared at the ludicrous tapestry in bewilderment. "Merlin's beard! Don't tell me you've actually found Peter's Bubotuber pus storage!"

"Peter's... what?"

"He brought us here once... We were still working on the map and he said he had found this room we had never heard about. Should be in front of this tapestry." Lupin pointed to the blank wall opposing it. "We tried every spell we could think of, but didn't find anything. I thought he had made it up, trying to impress James."

"Bubotuber pus?" Harry frowned, wondering why someone would be in such a desperate need of it that it would summon the Room of Requirement. "Did he have pimples?"

"Yeah, often." The werewolf eyed Harry suspiciously. "I remember he was particularly upset about it that day. He wanted to ask someone... Evelyn O'Shea, I think... out in a date, but he thought she'd be disgusted by his skin. And then, after dinner, he hauled us all here, saying he had found this huge room filled with hundreds of bottles of..."

"...Bubotuber pus, best medicine against acne," Harry nodded. "Yeah, this would be the place."

"I suppose I don't need to ask why you call it the Room of Requirement, then. You know how to open it?"

The boy quickly explained the procedures and, with Crookshanks draped around Harry's neck, soon they were walking back and forth past that spot on the wall, concentrating on what they would need. Or rather, Lupin was supposedly concentrating on the two remaining elements and on whatever else was necessary to cast the Pentagram Sortilege, while Harry, not really knowing what those would be, thought simply, Please, everything we might need to bring Sirius back.

"Obviously, we have some changes to add to the map," the werewolf beamed as they completed their third walk and the lustrous door materialised in the centre of the wall. Harry turned the brass doorknob and stepped inside, hoping for the best.

And found Sirius's face smiling at him.

Just as cheerful and handsome as in the photograph of the Potter's wedding but as old as he should look in his thirty-six years of age, without the premature wrinkles acquired during the nightmare of Azkaban... there he was, Sirius Black, alive and kicking. He wore rich, elegant robes of dark carmine and was brushing his fingers through his clean, silky hair. And he was smiling. The broadest, happiest, most beautiful smile a human face was allowed to display.

It was only a half-second, an instant between heartbeats. No more than a twinkling of an eye, during which Harry truly believed it was that simple, that he just had to make a wish and the Room of Requirement would grant it.

"Splendid!" Lupin exclaimed, examining the room over Harry's shoulder. "Excellent idea, Harry. I think everything we need is here."

"Is this one of the elements?" the boy croaked, pointing at the image of Sirius right in front of him. "The Mirror of Erised?"

"Indeed, it is." The werewolf's grin faded. "Oh dear, you're standing on... Can you see... Is it...?

"What is the other element?" Harry asked abruptly, turning his back to the Mirror. He placed Crookshanks back on the floor and closed the door.

Lupin took a while to reply, and as Harry turned back he noticed the man had also stepped away from the Mirror's viewpoint. They didn't have time to dwell on dreams. They had to make them come true.

The room was very different now from how it had been as the DA's meeting point. Smaller, with white walls reflecting the diffuse light that seemed to come from nowhere, it had a pitch-black floor that felt like polished stone. It held no pieces of furniture. There were instead a few cardboard boxes lying around, a small pile of books, some strewn objects — extendable rulers, a tape measure, a protractor, two different bottles, a compass — and what looked like a couple of large sacks of sugar. And right beside the Mirror of Erised...

"Here it is," Lupin announced, picking the long, shiny silver sword from the floor, admiring the big rubies encrusted in its handle. "Fascinating. I've only seen this in an old portrait of the Four Founders."

Harry had of course seen Godric Gryffindor's sword before, and he used to associate it with awful memories. Curious how in a few years the thought of facing a Basilisk had lost most of its frightening factor... No one had died then. It had been a time when the good people never perished, and there was nothing Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal.

His eyes went back to the towering Mirror, dazzlingly majestic with its baroque gold frame, appallingly alluring with the promises it could not fulfil. Not being at the correct angle, all he could see in its reflection now was Crookshanks sniffing one of the boxes. Three short steps would position him on the proper spot again... and what if that was all Harry could have? This whole mission was absurd, a delirium born from grief... but he could have Sirius smiling happily at him just behind the Mirror's surface for as long as Harry stood there, for as long as Harry needed him. Dumbledore had alerted him about those who had wasted their lives in front of that mirror... but what life had he left to be wasted? A family that despised him, friends who couldn't understand him, allies that couldn't help him, mentors he couldn't trust, and an ever-growing list of deadly enemies? Just three steps, and hope would be restored.

Clenching his fists, Harry moved into the room, coming to stand at the back of the Mirror. "How are we going to take all this with us, Professor?"

Lupin had squatted near the boxes, examining their contents. "I don't know. I confess I wasn't expecting to find all this here. My original plan was to find the Mirror and the sword as quickly as possible, then find another place to build the Pentagram. But now..."

"What? You're not thinking of doing it here, are you?"

"We have everything we need. And I'm tired, Harry. Casting Shrinking Charms to fit all this in the backpack won't be that easy."

Harry didn't like it one bit. What if somebody came into the room and found them there? What if Dumbledore came back earlier than expected and found them there?

"By the way," Lupin frowned, "can we move this stuff out of here?"

"What do you mean?"

"This Room of Requirement is so remarkably convenient. In my experience, any tool that resourceful just has to have a but somewhere..." Lupin took out a bright green apple from one of the boxes and walked to the door. "Let's test it, shall we? Check the map and tell me if it's safe."

Harry unrolled the parchment and scanned the sketch of the seventh floor. "All clear."

Lupin pulled the door wide open and stood under the doorframe, one leg inside, one leg on the corridor floor. He held the apple on his outstretched palm and moved his arm slowly toward the entrance. From where he was, Harry couldn't tell exactly when the apple would pass the line dividing room and corridor.

But he saw clearly when the apple turned into glowing white dust and vanished.

Harry cursed under his breath. "Are these things here even real?"

Lupin moved his arm back into the room, and the apple rematerialised on his palm. He rolled it between his fingers, studying its consistence and texture, then sniffed it and finally bit it. "Very real," he reported, munching it with a scowl on his face. "And terribly acid."

"But we can't move them out."

"No," agreed Lupin, closing the door. "Which gives us two options. One, we cast the spell right here. Two, we leave this room and try to get the Mirror and the sword the usual way."

In other words, it was either waiting for someone to find them there, or run around the castle hallways asking to be caught. Brilliant.

Lupin stood there, quietly gazing at Harry's face, and the boy took a moment to comprehend that his former teacher was waiting for him to make the final decision. The gentle gesture of consideration brought bittersweet warmth to Harry's heart. "We stay," he decided, laying Dudley's backpack on the floor behind the Mirror of Erised. "Let's do it at once."

The werewolf nodded gravely. "Let's get started then. Look around, there should be some white chalk here somewhere."

Harry located it easily, a small square box filled with chalk sticks — something the boy hadn't seen since he was ten, as all the teachers in Hogwarts used their wands to write on the blackboards. Leaving his half-eaten apple on the top of the books pile, Lupin picked up from the floor the tape measure and the compass, and walked around the room, watching the spinning of the needle. "Our South vertex will be..." He halted near the far back wall. "Here."

Harry marked the spot with chalk, while Lupin stretched the tape measure on the floor, aligning it with the compass needle. "Twenty-five feet should be enough. That's our North vertex."

After Harry drew an X on the second point, the two wizards used the rulers to chalk a line connecting the two vertices. "You said you know how to prepare the Pentagram?" Lupin asked.

"From the North vertex, draw a line as long as the first at thirty-six degrees Southwest," the boy recited dully. "From there, same thing, thirty-six degrees East... then thirty-six degrees Northwest, then thirty-six degrees South, which should coincide with the starting point. Want me to do it?"

"If you don't mind. I need to go through those books and figure out the runic text to frame the inner pentagon."

"Twenty-five feet, right? I'll handle it."

Despite his readiness and impatience to help, Harry was worried. He had drawn a total of three Pentagrams in his entire life — two during his fourth year and a third one while revising for his OWLs —, and none of them had come out right. He plied the protractor and the tape measure with the utmost care, knowing that if he didn't mark the angles with absolute precision or if he allowed the lines to be an inch longer or shorter than they should, the final line would miss the first vertex, forcing him to erase the whole thing and start over. Trelawney had never complained about his crooked Pentagrams, with one leg longer than the others and a squashed pentagon in the centre, as long as they served to predict atrocious suffering and a violent demise for Harry. He suspected the gods — or the powers behind fate, according to Lupin — would be a lot more exigent.

"Harry?"

"Hmmm?"

"When we were trying to get the room open, did you request raw chicken liver?"

"What?!" The boy raised his head to see Lupin holding a red plastic bowl. "No, why would I want... raw liver?"

"Then this must be yours," the man grinned, putting the bowl down before Crookshanks. The cat practically jumped into it, burying his face in the juicy meal. "If you're hungry, Harry, you can take some of the apples. There's a lot more than what we're going to need."

"Not now, thanks." The drawing would demand all his concentration, and at any rate he hadn't felt much like eating since... Stop thinking about it, dammit!

Lupin sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping the pages of the first book on the pile and finishing his apple. He looked so calm and confident, as if oblivious to the dimension of their task, as if rescuing someone from the realms of the dead wasn't much more challenging than learning a slightly complex spell. It was hard not to doubt his sanity.

And what did that say about the boy following him all over Britain and helping him out?

The hands holding the protractor were trembling.

About forty minutes later, Harry's knees and back were screaming in pain, Crookshanks had fallen asleep on the sugar sack, and Lupin was lying on his belly, copying something from the books on small pieces of parchment. No one dared to mention the time. Maybe Dumbledore had already returned to the castle, maybe he wouldn't return at all tonight. Maybe he would go straight to his chambers, or maybe he would be knocking on their door the next second. Maybe there was nothing to worry about. Maybe their mission had already failed. They couldn't tell, and they didn't seem to want to find out. Harry certainly didn't. They carried on with their assignments — or in Crookshanks' case, with his nap — as if the Room of Requirement was their entire world and nothing existed out there.

The numbers 25 and 36 whirled in Harry's mind, dancing together on a stage shaped like a compass face, surrounded by absolute void. It was a shame that Professor Snape wasn't there, because this was the closest Harry had ever got to emptying his mind and mastering Occlumency. He was so focused on those numbers that it took him a moment to realise that the final line had successfully taken him back to his starting point, and that the basic Pentagram was finished.

"I did it," he murmured, waking up from his trance. "Professor?"

Grunting at his own weary limbs, Lupin slowly drew himself to his feet and inspected the flawless pentagon framed by five identical isosceles triangles drawn in white chalk on the glazed black floor. "Looks perfect," he lauded. "A star to reach our star. I'm glad you're here to do this, Harry. Last time I had to draw a Pentagram, I ended up with six points somehow."

"Did you find those runes you were looking for?"

"Yes." He raised the tiny, crumbling book with a grey, peeling cover that he had in his right hand and pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. "It starts here..." He flipped several pages. "...and it ends here. You'll need to squeeze your writing to fit it in the pentagon border."

"Me?!"

"You've done all the hard work so far. I thought you could do this while I arrange the vertices."

"But I've never studied Ancient Runes!" Harry shook his head, gazing at the series of quaint characters Lupin's finger indicated. "That looks like Gobbledegook to me."

The werewolf grinned. "Actually, some of these runes are Gobbledegook. It's an exotic incantation developed by the Goblins in the twelfth century to transport an entire army through shielding wards — before Srohpekyn the Leery invented the Bulwark Ward."

"And how will that take us to where Sirius is?"

"The basic principles — transit and barrier-crossing — are the same. It's the elements on the vertices that will determine our destination."

"Er... if you don't mind, I'd rather do the vertices."

"You're sure? Aren't you too tired?"

"Aren't you?" Harry snorted. "I didn't turn into a werewolf last night. You said my godfather wouldn't have let you out of bed so soon after the full moon, and I can definitely see why." He bit his lip, abruptly realising he might have gone too far. "Er... I mean..."

But Lupin was laughing good-naturedly. "All right, all right, so much for trying to be gallant. Let the old man do the intellectual work while the young generation uses their muscles."

"You're not old, Professor," Harry corrected him gently. "No one who sticks chewing gum into Peeves' nostrils can ever be called old."

Lupin's smile was so frank and affectionate that it made Harry look away, torn by embarrassment and a sense of unworthiness. It wasn't like the conspiratorial grins of his friends or the worshipping beams of strangers at The Boy Who Lived; it was a very alien expression in Harry's life, one that he automatically associated with the Mirror of Erised. With the proud, infinitely loving smiles he had first seen on his parents' faces in the reflection of the Mirror in his first year at Hogwarts, and now with...

Keep that bloody Mirror off your mind! Harry told himself firmly. "You'll have to tell me what to do, Professor. We start by naming the vertices, I suppose."

"Use Latin instead of the Kua trigrams," Lupin nodded. "Productive cycle, starting with Wood."

The former teacher sat in the centre of the pentagon with a few chalk sticks and the little book, and started copying the runic text just inside the border. Meanwhile, Harry walked to the East triangle, where he wrote Arbor in carefully outlined capitals, glad that Lupin had asked for Latin. He still remembered the Chinese names of the trigrams — Li for Fire, K'an for Water, K'un for Earth, Chen for Wood and Chi'ien for Metal — but would have been unable to recall how to draw them without aid.

He circled the Pentagram clock-wise, naming each of the vertices in turn: Ignis at South, Terra at Southwest, Metallum at Northwest... "Uh, how many Ls in Metallum?"

"Two."

"Thanks."

...and finally Aqua at North. "Done. What's next?"

"Look for some coloured candles. I think they're in a square box over there."

That was the Room of Requirement, so even if the candles hadn't been there a moment ago, they were now that Lupin had said they were. The room seemed to be a bit on the exaggerating side though, as there were far more candles and in far more colours than they would really need. "This one matches your robes, Professor, look," Harry said, picking a flaming orange candle.

"Eurgh," Lupin grimaced. "Must be my sickening subconscious. Hand me five black ones, please."

Unlike the others, the black candles were very short and wide, similar to hockey pucks. Harry deposited five of them on the floor at Lupin's knees.

"Thanks. Now for the vertices... start with Metal, destructive cycle."

"Trelawney's favourite," Harry muttered, moving to the Northwest vertex and placing a thin white candle on the very tip of the five-point star. "Metal destroys Wood," he recited, following the line that connected the Northwest and East vertices, trying not to step directly on the chalked drawing. There he laid a green candle, before moving along the next line to Southwest. "Wood destroys Earth." He thought of trees growing and draining away the soil's minerals, leaving the land barren. He was like that, wasn't he? His birth had meant doom to the people who had given him life...

Goddamn it, will you stop thinking?! He placed the beige candle and marched resolutely to the North vertex, pulling a blue one from the box. "Earth destroys Water... and Water destroys Fire..." A red candle on the South point. "...which destroys Metal. Done."

"Now for the heavy part," said Lupin, "Tastes. Controlling cycle, starting with Earth."

The controlling cycle followed the same order of the destructive one, only backwards: Terra, Arbor, Metallum, Ignis, Aqua. Easy one. The problem was... "This is a really big Pentagram, you know."

"It had to be, to fit the Mirror of Erised in one of the triangles."

"Makes me wonder how much sugar those Goblins needed to transport a whole army..."

"I reckon they used honey, in fact," Lupin pondered.

"Poor bees..."

"Are you sure you don't want my help?"

"It's okay, I can handle it. Beginning with Earth, you said?"

Dislodging a napping cat — who wasn't at all pleased to be roused up and showed his displeasure by clawing Harry's arm — was the simple part. The complicated one was carrying the huge sack on his shoulder, open just a small hole in the fabric, and sustain the heavy burden while the flow of sugar seeped into the Southwest triangle. He was supposed to form with the sweet powder a reasonably circular disk inside the perimeter of the triangle, making it as broad as possible without dripping anything on the chalk lines that formed the Pentagram.

"Largest Pentagram I've ever drawn... before this one..." Harry panted, "...was about one foot long. Just four spoonfuls of sugar were enough..."

"Now you know why Pentagram Sortileges aren't popular for travelling."

When Harry finally got to drop the sack on the floor, half of its contents were spread in an almost four-feet-wide flat pile. Time to fill the next triangle. "Wood, sour. What did you request, Professor? Grapefruit?"

"Vinegar. Not so heavy."

"But harder to control," the boy countered. The liquid would be trickier to keep inside the perimeter and form a circular pool.

"Just stand outside the perimeter, hold up the bottle over the centre of the triangle and pour it slowly. It should spread more or less regularly. This floor is very smooth."

"Okay."

"Just don't let it come too close to the lines, or it'll leak over when we place the elements."

Harry found the tall glass bottle of red vinegar and did as he was told. He had to stretch his arm as far as it went to keep the bottle over the centre of the triangle, but it was indeed a lot simpler than he had expected it to be. He started hoping all the other tastes Lupin had asked for were in liquid form.

But next came, "Metal, acid." He winced. "Don't tell me. Green apples?"

"You should eat a little, Harry."

"Maybe later."

Hauling the six apple boxes closer to the Northwest triangle was tiresome. Arranging the fruit in a neat disk shape was just annoying and time-consuming. Harry suspected his spine would never stretch properly again after this day.

"Fire, bitter." Harry saw the other large bottle lying on the floor. "Beer?"

"You've been around Sirius for too long," Lupin snickered. "Black coffee."

"As long as it's liquid..." The boy swallowed the dry reply that he hadn't at all been around Sirius long enough. He hadn't even known his godfather had liked beer before a moment ago. When he, Ron, Ginny and the twins had gone back to Grimmauld Place after Mr Weasley was attacked, they had found Sirius smelling of Firewhiskey. The poor man must have felt so lonely then, with Christmas approaching and only that accursed house-elf to make him company. Harry wondered if it had been just the depression and solitude, or if Sirius used to drink regularly. Not a question he would want to ask now, though. He was through with people censuring his godfather.

Such thoughts caused his hand to shake in anger, and the coffee pool came out somewhat irregular, but thankfully he didn't spill any of it on the chalk lines. "All right. Now... Water, salty." His eyes spotted the other huge sack where Crookshanks had nested after being driven out of his previous bed. "Bloody hell..."

"Take a break, Harry. I'm almost done here, I'll give you a hand."

"No, it's okay..."

"It's just a minute," Lupin insisted. "Take the time to eat a little."

"Don't worry, Professor, I'm not..."

"Harry." The werewolf's tone was sharp now. "Don't make me jinx you, okay? Sit down and have a bite."

The power of true authority felt not that dissimilar to being hit by an Imperius Curse. Harry found himself obeying before being really aware of doing so.

Distractedly picking one of the remaining apples from one of the boxes, the boy seized the break time to take a look at Lupin's progress. The border of the inner pentagon was now almost completely trimmed by a tiny scrawling Harry had no hope of deciphering. He had never even studied Scandinavian runes, let alone Gobbledegook, and he honestly couldn't see much difference between those signs and Ron's lazy, pointless scribbling when he was trying not to fall asleep during History of Magic.

Harry bit the apple and let out a hiss as the tart juice touched his tongue. "Argh. This tastes like sulphuric acid!"

"And how would you know that?" Lupin chuckled. "When exactly did you taste sulphuric acid, Harry?"

"Just now, I'm sure."

"Maybe if you ask the room for something else..."

Harry shrugged and gave the fruit another bite. "There's plenty more yet. You want one?"

"No, thanks. This little adventure has been ruthless to my poor stomach; I shouldn't make it worse. Besides, imagine if the first thing I do when we find Sirius is puke on his feet."

"It might give him the wrong idea, I suppose." Harry wished he could feel just for one second that same absolute certainty that they would see Sirius again and that vomiting on his feet was indeed a concrete possibility and reason to be concerned.

Insanity sounded like such bliss.

Four of the black stocky candles had already been put on the intersection points that formed the vertices of the pentagon — they also had to be placed in a certain order, as the incantation was written down. They would have to find some Muggle matches to light all ten candles on the Pentagram, or cast an Incendium spell outside the five-point star perimeter and use something like a wooden stick to take the flame to each wick. "Professor?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why can't we use magic over a Pentagram?" He knew they couldn't, because Trelawney had emphasised that point several times. That was why he was sorely aware that he couldn't have used his wand to draw its lines, or appealed to Wingardium Leviosa to pour the salt and sugar on the appropriate triangles — or, an idea that only now occurred to Harry, asked the Room of Requirement to build the Pentagram for them. But the Divination teacher had never explained the reason behind it. Parvati had tried asking her once, and Harry ended up with the strong suspicion that Trelawney didn't know either.

"Pentagram Sortileges are magnetiferous, endotropic and vertically oriented," replied Lupin, somehow managing the entirely too long words without making them sound like a challenge. "Which, translated to English, means... One, that the magical energies will accommodate to a certain pattern dictated by the planet's magnetic field. Two, that those energies will revolve inward, re-aligning themselves inside their original boundaries. And three, that the spell affects and is affected by whatever stands directly above the Pentagram."

"Ah," Harry arched an eyebrow. "And what would that sound like when translated to 'English for Dummies'?"

"You can't use magic over a Pentagram."

Harry was tempted to hit the man's head with an apple.

Possibly sensing the daggers coming from the boy's glare, the werewolf smiled. "Sorry. That's not even accurate. You can use certain kinds of magic over a Pentagram without disrupting its magical field. You could brew your favourite potion right on the centre of this pentagon; the magical reactions occur inside the cauldron, inside each of the ingredients. Sirius could step in here and turn into a dog; the transformation takes place inside the Animagus' body. Those are examples of endotropic sorcery."

"Okay..."

"But if you pull out your wand..." Lupin let go of the chalk for a moment, massaging his now sore hand. "Any charm or hex you can think of, any kind of spell that requires a wand is necessarily exotropic sorcery. The magic comes from you, is focused by the wand and sent outwards, emitted to alter something that is outside the magic source. That kind of sorcery would irreversibly disrupt the magic field of the Pentagram."

"Because the Pentagram is endotropic?" Harry concluded.

The werewolf shook his head. "Because the Pentagram is vertically oriented."

The boy rolled his eyes and raised his arms in defeat. "Never mind. I'm sorry I asked."

"That's advanced sorcery theory," Lupin soothed him. "Not even the NEWTs classes get to that."

"Good."

"But you'll surely see it in your preparation studies if you really decide to become an Auror."

Just my luck, thought Harry dully. "Wait... How do you know about that?"

"About your career choice? Professor McGonagall told me. And I admit I was surprised."

"Why? I'm good at Defence Against the Dark Arts," the boy said defensively.

"The best student I had," Lupin agreed. "But I've never thought that you'd fancy working for the Ministry..."

"I don't."

"...or spending the rest of your life hunting Dark Arts wielders..."

"Not really."

"...or competing in beauty contests with Mad-Eye Moody."

"Ouch! No."

"So why do you want to be an Auror?"

The teenager shrugged, staring at his half-eaten apple. "I don't know. There isn't anything I really want to do, that's all. I've never thought much about it, and Professor Moody told me once I could be a good Auror."

"You mean, Barty Crouch, impersonating Mad-Eye?"

"Erm... yes." That sounded awful, didn't it? Taking careers advice from an insane Death Eater... "What did Sirius say?" he asked abruptly.

"Sirius?"

"Yeah, when McGonagall told you... Wasn't he there too? Didn't you tell him?"

"Oh. No, he... he never knew." Lupin gazed sadly at the boy. "I'm sorry, Harry, she only told me the day before... before the raid to the Department of Mysteries. And I forgot... I was worried about other things and I forgot to tell him. I'm truly sorry."

That seemed to be the supreme truth about Harry's life these days: anything concerning Sirius had to be denied him. "I see. I'd have liked to know what... I mean... We never talked about this sort of..." He sighed, tossing the apple core back into one of boxes. "Actually, we didn't get to talk about almost anything, did we?"

Lupin resumed the work with the runic text. "I can tell you what he told me, when I was having doubts about what to do after Hogwarts."

"What did he say?"

"That after surviving a werewolf attack when I was five, after making it into Hogwarts despite my lycanthropy, after coming through seven years of school relatively unscathed despite the influence of my insane and highly subversive friends..." A reminiscent smile shone in his face. "...and because living each day during wartime must be considered a great victory, I was under the moral obligation to grant myself a happy life."

For a silent moment, Harry studied the man before him: the greying hair... the young, fatigued face... the frayed, horribly orange robes... the rolled-up sleeves revealing the leasing pact stamped on the bandaged arm... the meticulous hand writing the incantation... the conspiratorial grin. He had never thought of it before, but even if the honour of being Sirius Black's best friend had belonged to James Potter, there was something about Remus Lupin that made him, in Harry's eyes, the perfect match for the strong, courageous, whimsical figure of Harry's godfather. "You really like teaching, don't you?"

"There's nothing else I'd like to do more." Closing the little book, Lupin positioned the fifth black candle in its place. "That's it. Pass the salt, please?"

Crookshanks didn't take the loss of yet another chosen bed very well, and his claws endowed the collar of Lupin's robes with a brand new rip before Harry managed to yank the cat away from him. Thankfully, no more incidents occurred while the two wizards seized the huge salt sack up and carried it to the North triangle, forming a mostly circular pool of salt near the word Aqua.

"How big is an army of Goblins, anyway?" Harry grunted at the end of the task. "How were they able to carry all this stuff around?"

"The usual way," Lupin panted. "By hiring Trolls to do the heavy job. Now, are you ready to place the elements?"

The youngster nodded. "Dissolving cycle?"

"Yes, starting with Fire. The Triwizard Cup."

"The Cup?" Harry frowned. "But I thought cups, glasses and bowls were Water symbols."

"They usually are. But remember what I told you before about the meaning of symbols?"

"That they vary according to the context?"

"Exactly. And in this context, that cup represents Fire."

"If you say so," the boy shrugged and fetched the backpack. Getting the Cup to stand in the centre of the coffee pool without touching it directly or splashing the black liquid all over the place was a bit difficult, but accomplished in reasonable time. "After Fire, Wood. What's the element?"

"Your broomstick, of course."

Harry paled. "You want me to put my Firebolt in a pool of vinegar?!"

Lupin didn't answer. He simply stretched out his left arm to the boy, palm upward.

"Why can't we use your Oakshaft?" Harry moaned miserably. It was a selfish, useless suggestion, and he knew it. Not only they had left the Oakshaft back in the Shrieking Shack, but they also couldn't risk Lupin's arm, in case they actually had to return the broom to the shop after all.

"Come on, Harry. You know it doesn't work that way."

No, it didn't. However, Harry also didn't know exactly how it worked. Only the correct elements would take them to their correct destination, but Lupin wasn't explaining why those were the correct elements, and it seemed not even he knew for sure where their destination was. A place where neither they nor anyone they had ever known existed, he had said, and where they would find the passage to yet another mysterious place: the world where they had all come from, where they would supposedly find Sirius... Just thinking of it gave Harry a serious headache. He wasn't good at riddles. The sphinx at the Triwizard Tournament had been enough to make him sweat with her rather mundane riddles; this was way beyond his competence.

All the boy knew was that the elements should reflect their destination somehow. Unfortunately, this was enough to make Lupin's request make some sense. The Firebolt had been a gift from Sirius, and Harry had always cherished it, not only for being a superb broom, but as a token of the special connection between him and his godfather...

And because the Firebolt was so dear to him, it was painful to think of giving her such a cruel treatment. "That vinegar will ruin the twigs," he murmured, fishing the shrunken broom from his pocket and surrendering it to the werewolf.

"It'll be as perfect as ever next time you fly it," Lupin promised. Vertically oriented or not, he clearly didn't want to take the risk of disrupting the Pentagram: he took the Firebolt to the farthest corner of the room before casting the counter-charm to return it to its normal size.

This was when Harry began to panic. It was just a joke, wasn't it? A self-indulgent folly with a grain of dementia, a bizarre dream he wasn't ready to wake up from. Flying to Scotland, breaking into Hogwarts, talking nonsense while preparing a preposterous sortilege... Just a flitting faith, that was what it was. Like the brief moment shortly after Sirius' fall, when Harry had believed he would see his godfather landing on the other side of the archway or pulling the veil aside to return to his duel with Bellatrix. Like the brief moment when he had held the two-way mirror in his hands and called Sirius' name, certain that there would be a reply. Like the brief moment when he had run after Nearly Headless Nick, confident that Sirius would come back to him as a ghost. Like the even briefer moment when he had opened the door for this room and believed that the dear face smiling at him could be real.

Perhaps this would be a recurrent mania in his life from now on: stumbling on fatuous excuses to be hopeful, revelling momentarily as he poured over such illusions the sheerest faith his heart could bring forth, then landing brutally on the forlorn reality of common sense. Harry couldn't even say it sounded so bad, considering the other option seemed to be admitting his defeat and utter inability to make things any better, and resigning himself to perpetual hopelessness. But this particular instant of self-indulgent folly was about to damage his Firebolt... Five seconds after Lupin laid it down on the East triangle, Harry could already see the twigs swelling and bending in the reddish liquid, wet stains crawling all over the handle and eating away its lustrous surface... Sirius would never forgive him for wrecking such an expensive, heartfelt gift.

"So now it's the Mirror's turn," said Lupin, oblivious to the boy's anguish. "Should be a little heavy. Give me a hand?"

Ashamed of his puerility and weakness, Harry dragged his feet toward the Mirror of Erised and helped Lupin carry it to the North triangle. He needed that dream so badly! He simply had to give this extravagant scheme a chance, because rescuing his broom and leaving before knowing for sure... He just couldn't. Not as long as there was still a microscopic chance that this sortilege would work. "Now, Metal... I don't need to ask, do I?" he snorted. "Gryffindor's sword."

Lupin was leaning heavily against the Mirror's frame, trying to regain his breath. "Careful not to scatter the apples."

After laying the antique blade on the bed of green fruit, Harry didn't stop to ask any questions. He knew what the fifth element had to be. Maybe even Crookshanks had known it all along. Pulling the last object from the bottom of the backpack, the boy hoped the two-way mirror, completely useless so far, would redeem itself at last and justify its existence.

However, before placing it on the pile of sugar, Harry took a moment to contemplate the Pentagram, his brows knitted together. "Are you sure this is right, Professor?"

"What do you mean?"

"Two of the five elements are mirrors. Feels a bit odd, doesn't it? A little... repetitive." He looked down at the fissures in the small square mirror in his hands. "And how do you know this is supposed to be aligned with Earth and that one with Water? Doesn't sound logical."

"Both mirrors should show you what you're trying to reach," Lupin told him, still grasping the Mirror of Erised for support. "But this one will show you an elusive reverie — Water —, while the one you're holding could have shown you reality — Earth."

Harry nodded, and put the two-way mirror down on the Southwest triangle.

"As for why these elements and not others," the werewolf went on, "I'm afraid I don't know myself. I saw them in my vision. I know they're the right ones. But I have nothing but suspicions about how this equation truly works."

"For example...?"

"For example, I suspect we were extremely lucky that Sirius died this year."

"WHAT?!"

"Sirius gave you the two-way mirror last January, didn't he?"

"Yeah, when we said goodbye after Christmas holidays..."

"And you won the Triwizard Cup last year."

"Me and Cedric," Harry corrected him.

"And you got the Firebolt from Sirius during your third year."

"I didn't know it was from him then. I had just found out he was my godfather..."

"And Dumbledore told me about your using Gryffindor's sword to kill a Basilisk at the end of your second year."

"Yeah, I had to..."

"So let me guess," Lupin concluded. "You were in your first year when you first saw the Mirror of Erised?"

Harry's eyes widened. "Wait. Wait right there. I thought we were going after Sirius. What does that have to do with my five years at..." He suddenly felt dizzy, and the Pentagram seemed to spin around him. "Five years..."

"Strange symmetry, isn't it?" said Lupin. "I don't know why, but I know you are the centre of this Pentagram, Harry. This is about you somehow, not about Sirius, let alone about me." He twitched his lips, his nails following the carvings of the larger mirror's gold frame. "And that's why I'm saying that if Sirius had died a year earlier or a year from now, we wouldn't have been able to use a Pentagram Sortilege to get him back."

"I killed him."

It was the only answer, wasn't it? The murderer was the centre of the Pentagram that would take them to the victim...

"Harry? Harry, please listen to me." Lupin was still standing beside the Mirror of Erised, and didn't move a single step closer to him. His eyes, however, seemed to cross an infinite distance to touch the boy's soul. "If we sit down and list all the factors that resulted in Sirius' death, we might be able to come up with a hundred-something theories about why it happened. Incidental factors, premeditated factors, and factors we have no explanation for. But I can tell you, Harry, that blaming it all on you is the pettiest, meanest and most simplistic answer one could find."

"Then why...?"

"It was Sirius' fate to die. I know it's not a satisfactory answer, but it's the only one I can give you. Maybe there was some hidden purpose to his death. Or maybe he was simply rejected by that wave."

"Rejected? Like some piece of trash?"

"Like something that had outlived its usefulness."

Harry was dimly aware that he was trembling, feral anger engendering a small earthquake in the core of his being.

"I know it sounds cruel and cynical, Harry. Have you ever heard the quote, 'God does not play dice with the universe '?"

The boy shook his head.

"Well, I am convinced that fate plays chess with us."

Lupin's words in the Dursleys' kitchen echoed in Harry's ears. A very intense player... patient, but willing to face rather violent sacrifices... too protective of the Queen... "So you believe fate got rid of Sirius... because of me? For my sake?"

"For the sake of the game, in which you seem to be the most important piece."

A silly image erupted in Harry's mind: he was lying on a divan and telling a bearded, bespectacled, Freud look-alike psychiatrist, "No, it's not that I think I'm the centre of the universe. I am the centre of the universe, and I'm having trouble dealing with it."

That tart apple he had eaten started hopping mutinously in his stomach.

"Here, Harry, catch."

Seeker's reflexes allowed him to grab, even without thinking, the small item Lupin had flung at him: a Muggle matchbox.

The Pentagram was ready and this adventure was coming to an end, whatever that end was. Decided to enjoy the final minutes of this doomed fantasy, Harry pushed his questions to the back of his mind and lit the five candles of the vertices in the same order he had arranged them. Lupin took care of the black candles of the pentagon.

When they were finished, Crookshanks had already taken his place in the centre of the five-point star, and was mewing impatiently at the two wizards.

"We would have been faster if you had been more cooperative," Lupin muttered dryly.

If the cat understood the reprimand, he didn't consider it worthy of a reply.

"Is that it?" Harry asked, suddenly aware that his legs were shaking. "We're done?"

Lupin picked the two pieces of parchment he had worked on earlier and joined Crookshanks in the inner pentagon. "You must say these aloud, slow and clearly. These words will take us to Sirius," he said, raising the parchment on his left hand. "And these will take us home..."

"I can't."

"Of course you can, Harry. It's simple Latin; if there's a word you don't know, I can..."

"No, you don't understand," the boy stammered. "I can't be the one to do it."

"If you're worried about the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery..."

Harry shook his head vehemently. "It's not that."

"Then what...?"

"I can't... because I don't believe you!" Harry blurted out. "I'm sorry, Professor, I really am. But don't you see? It's like when you taught us the charm against Boggarts, remember? You told us, the words alone are not enough."

"No, they aren't," the older man said softly. "You must put your heart into them. That's the most essential truth about magic."

"Then I can't be the one to do it. I just can't. Because... I'm so sorry, Professor, but I don't believe any of this. I want to, you have no idea how badly I want to. But I can't."

"Why not?" Lupin asked with surprising serenity.

"Because the dead do not come back. Never. Dumbledore..." Tears exploded in Harry's eyes, and he dried them angrily. "I hate him, Professor, I hate him with all my heart, but he is right. He is always right. Nothing can bring the dead back to life. Nothing!"

The boy found himself shaking all over, his fists clenched so tight that his nails were piercing his skin. There it was, the dire landing after another foolish leap of faith. It was over. Sirius had just died once again.

More tears came, and Harry was simply too tired to try to stop them.

"Harry, come over here."

He obeyed, not daring to look the man in the eye. The fact that Crookshanks was also staring at him didn't help any.

Lupin pulled him to the centre of the pentagon and gently turned him around, until they were both facing the North vertex. "Look up now."

Harry did. And found Sirius again.

"Please, don't." He tried to step away, but Lupin held him firmly in place.

"Just look, Harry."

The Mirror of Erised was a tool for cruelty. What other purpose could it serve? What good did it achieve by showing people what they wanted the most but could never have? The deceitful glass showed this handsome and outrageously lively Sirius standing behind Harry, resting his hands on his godson's shoulders in a proud, paternal gesture... and as Harry felt Lupin's hands holding him more or less the same way, it was just so easy to... to believe...

"Say the words," hissed an indistinct voice into his ear. It must have been Lupin's, but... the sentence had come out as nothing more than blown air and a faint sibilance... It could have been Sirius' voice, couldn't it...?

Harry felt the parchment being pressed against his palm, and he accepted it. He knew what he had to do.

"Philosophi Lapis," he read.

Behind the Mirror of Erised, a cerulean, five feet-tall flame rose from the thin candle on the vertex, casting bluish shadows on the room's white walls.

Harry's voice grew stronger. "Camera Rerum Arcanarum."

Godric Gryffindor's silver sword gleamed powerfully as the candle behind it emitted an equally long white flame.

"Captivus Askabani."

For a split second Harry feared the fierce green blaze bursting at the East vertex would burn his poor Firebolt. Lupin's hand squeezed his shoulder, urged him to proceed.

"Poculum Ignis."

Blood-red fire mounted from the candle behind the Triwizard Cup...

"Phoenicis Ordo."

The two-way mirror, shattered as it was, spread the sienna light from the fifth vertex all over the chamber... Lupin stepped closer to him, Crookshanks climbed on his feet...

And the final line. "Portus."

The five black candles sputtered at the same time, and thick darkness fell over them like the mighty embrace of a Lethifold. Harry braced himself for the feeling of being hooked up by his navel, of the ground vanishing from under his feet, of being jolted backwards, spun in the air or dematerialised into scattered molecules.

But none of it ever came.

In fact, the journey through the Pentagram was as swift as anticlimactic. A mere blink, and an entirely different landscape was lit up around them, roaring deafeningly with noises, scents, shapes and colours that hadn't been there half a second before.

Something bumped into Harry from his left, accidentally stepping on Crookshanks' tail. The boy heard a grunted and not very apologetic, "Sorry." Whatever — or whoever — that had been, it was out of sight before Harry had the time to react.

"Crowded in here, isn't it?" asked Lupin in a mystified tone.

Opting for a gradual attempt to orient himself, Harry looked down first. The black smooth floor had been replaced by grey stone tiles; the lines of the Pentagram were still visible, drawn no longer in chalk, but in faintly glowing light. Crookshanks was sitting between his feet, nursing an aching tail. Candles, elements, apples, everything they had used to adorn the Pentagram was now gone.

And there were people. Many, many people. They walked hurriedly past them, wearing Muggle clothes and looking all too busy to care about people and cats popping up out of nowhere. One or another passer-by would give them the kind of judgmental glares Uncle Vernon reserved for beggars and punks, and some seemed to think they were being somewhat inconvenient by standing there where they were; but overall, everyone seemed to be only concerned with their own affairs.

Just behind Lupin was a balustrade with glass panels; one of them was marked with a large number 10 painted in dark blue. Past the moving crowd, Harry could see very familiar brick walls, and the continuous rumbling he heard was unmistakeable. He didn't remember ever being in that particular spot, but he recognised the place anyway.

And it looked like a very unlikely place to find the door to the realms of the dead.

"Professor? Is this where you were expecting us to be?"

"I don't know what I was expecting," admitted Lupin, frankly bewildered. "But it most certainly wasn't this."

They were in London. More precisely, at King's Cross train station.