They moved down the tunnel
awkwardly, bent double and in small groups. Amelia
could see Harry talking to Sirius up ahead; he
appeared to be unconcerned that Severus’s head was scraping
along the ceiling of the passage. Amelia winced
every time it hit a rock that jutted out, but she made no move to interrupt
their earnest conversation.

Hermione, walking beside her
cousin, filled her in on the bits she’d missed before her panicked entry to the
Shrieking Shack.

“… and he wouldn’t listen to any
of us, so we had to disarm him,” she was saying. “Which is when you came in.”
She paused and looked at Amelia out of the
corner of her eye. “Mel, are you all right? You
– you scared me back there.”

In the darkness, Amelia
found Hermione’s hand.

“I saw them, love. I saw them
happy and then destroyed… bodies. Just shapes in the rubble. Like before…”

Hermione didn’t need to ask what
her cousin had meant; she gave her hand a quick squeeze.

Harry
and Sirius had stopped in the tunnel up ahead. They were beaming at one
another.

Amelia
smiled a little, too.

“They deserve so much more than
they’ve had,” she said, in a tight voice.

Hermione nodded with feeling. So
do we… she thought.

They did not speak again until
they had reached the end of the tunnel. Crookshanks darted up first; he had
evidently pressed his paw to the knot on the trunk, because Remus, Pettigrew
and Ron clambered upwards without any sound of
savaging branches.

Sirius saw Severus
up through the hole and then stood back for Harry
and Hermione to pass. Amelia paused for a moment
to smile at him before climbing out into the night, but he grabbed her arm,
gently.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Amelia
said, puzzled.

“Yes you did. You trusted me – I
think that helped Harry to trust me… And you’ve
stopped Remus from being alone.”

She squinted at the skeletal
figure in the gloom of the tunnel.

“You really care for him, don’t
you?” he said, giving her a piercing look.

She nodded, a little numbly.

“Good. Because I’ve never seen
Remus look at anyone the way he was looking at you back there,” he said simply.

Amelia
didn’t know what to say to this man, who had been taken away from life for so
long, but still managed to worry about his friends. After a moment spent taking
one another in, Amelia clambered out of the tunnel,
Sirius close behind her. At last, all of them were out.

The grounds were very dark now,
the only light came from the distant windows of the castle. Without a word,
they set off. Amelia wondered whether or not
their absence had been noted at dinner… there were a few of them missing. Remus
glanced at her in the darkness.

He isn’t sure where he stands
anymore, she thought. Nor do I, actually.

Pettigrew was still wheezing and
occasionally whimpering.

“One wrong move, Peter,”
said Remus threateningly, ahead. His wand was pointed sideways at Pettigrew’s
chest.

Silently they tramped through the
grounds, the castle lights growing slowly larger. It occurred to Amelia that
this felt almost exactly like walking home after a dig, except without the
inebriation that usually took place in between finishing for the day and
actually arriving at whatever accommodation had been provided (tent, bod or
bunk-house). Quietly, she murmured this to her cousin, who gave her a brief
smile.

Severus was
still drifting weirdly ahead of Sirius, his chin bumping on his chest. And then
–

A cloud shifted. There were
suddenly crisp, blue shadows on the ground. Their party was bathed in
moonlight.

Snape collided with Remus,
Pettigrew and Ron, who had stopped abruptly.
Sirius froze. He flung out an arm to make Harry,
Hermione and Amelia stop.

They could see Remus’s
silhouette. He had gone rigid. Then his limbs began to shake.

Amelia
thrust Harry and Hermione behind her and raised
her wand, horrified. She reached out with her mind to feel Remus slipping away
and the wolf taking over. Wordlessly, she forced the children to take a step
backwards.

“Oh my –” Hermione gasped. “He
didn’t take his Potion tonight! He’s not safe!*”

“Run,” Sirius whispered. “Run!
Now!”

But they couldn’t run… Amelia
could feel it in Harry and Hermione too. Ron
was chained to Remus as well as Pettigrew. Harry
leapt forwards but Sirius caught him around the chest and threw him back.

“Leave him to me – RUN!”

There was a terrible snarling
noise. Remus’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were
hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling
into clawed paws. Crookshanks’s fur was on end again, he was backing away –

As the werewolf reared, snapping
its long jaws, Sirius disappeared from Harry’s
side. He had transformed. The enormous, bear-like dog bounded forwards. As the
werewolf wrenched itself free of the manacle binding it, the dog seized it
about the neck and pulled it backwards, away from Ron
and Pettigrew. They were locked, jaw to jaw, claws ripping at each other –

Without thought, Amelia
ran forwards, desperate to help her lover and his old friend – she had to do
something before they tore one another apart!

Sirius was thrown off to one side
as she reached them and the werewolf launched at her instead – she ducked and
he missed, rolling and returning to pounce. Somewhere behind her, Hermione
screamed and Amelia half turned, instinctively.

As she did so, fierce claws
ripped through her chest and shoulder, throwing her back onto the grass.

She was aware of a great weight
pressing down on her as her flesh burned and she screamed, howling her anguish
into the black. The stars above her went fuzzy with the pain and she coughed
and spluttered, reaching for a breath that wouldn’t – just wouldn’t – come.

As consciousness slipped from her
she heard screams and shouting, howls and snarling all around her, as if the
very darkness was tearing at her, until all was still.

0o0o0o0

Amelia
was having an awful dream.

She was small again and being
chased by snarling and spitting things, the trees catching at her clothes and
hair. She ran through the thicket and deeper into the darkness, but still they
came, scratching and biting and burning. It felt as if the pain might go on
forever –

Then, suddenly, she was free; blinded
by the moon, out in the open. She strained to hear a sound in the new and
bewildering silence, herself once more.

Something touched her hand and
she span around, terrified, to face this new demon.

There were two figures stood
beside her in the moonlight. Amelia blinked.
They certainly weren’t demons.

The woman spoke first.

“You’re going to be all right,
it’s just a dream.” It was as if her voice was coming from a long way away;
somewhere in the back of her mind, Amelia registered
that the woman had dark red hair.

“You were hurt,” said her
husband, running his hand through his messy black hair. “I expect Moony’ll be a
bit upset about that.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she
managed.

They smiled at her.

“We know that,” said the woman, eyes sparkling. “But he won’t see it
that way.”

The man nodded, sombre now.

“Don’t let him run away – he’s
too good at that…”

Amelia
nodded, numbly. How was this possible?

The sky was lightening above
them.

“Time to wake up,” Lily
said, kindly.

0o0o0o0

Pale moonlight had become
blinding sunlight at an altogether too rapid a pace for Amelia’s
liking.

“Madame
Pomfrey! She’s waking up!”

Amelia
experimented with her eyes – nope. Sunlight still hurt.

“Ow,” she stated and cracked one
eye.

Hermione swam into view; she was
grinning.

“Everyone safe?” Amelia
asked.

“Yeah,” her cousin answered.
“Well… mostly.”

Poppy bustled over, bustled Amelia
upright and bustled away again. She appeared to be in no mood for conversation
this morning.

Was it morning? Wait –

“‘Mostly’ isn’t a particularly
good assessment,” she grimaced. “Why can’t I move my arm?”

“… What do you remember, Mel?”

Amelia
squinted at her cousin.

Moonlight… pain… claws… Remus…

“Remus!”

Hermione pushed her firmly back
onto the bed.

“He’s fine – well, physically at
least – and you aren’t going anywhere soon.”

Amelia
looked at her again, she’d not heard that tone before – at least, not from
Hermione. It was the tone that Aunty Bea,
her mother and Aunty Ruth
used when something was not to be argued with; she’d used it herself in class,
and with Hermione.

Hermione was growing up.

“What about Severus?”
she asked in a low tone, glancing at Poppy.

“Well, it’s kind of a long
story…”

0o0o0o0

Harry
and Hermione filled Amelia and Ron
in on the rescue of Buckbeak and Sirius – she had Ron
had gone ‘Oooh’ and ‘Aaah’ at all the appropriate bits – and had been chased
out of the Hospital Wing by a still irritable Poppy. By lunchtime, Ron
was snoozing peacefully in his bed and Amelia
was thoroughly bored. There appeared to be nothing that could take her mind off
the nagging pain in her arm and shoulder, though Poppy assured her that it was
healing well.

The monotony was eventually
broken by Severus, who brought with him a bad temper and some
grapes.

“Tradition, I believe,” he said
softly, so as not to wake Ron, and placed them
by her bedside. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Non-existent,” she replied.
“How’s the head?”

“I’ll live,” he said, rubbing the
small cut on his forehead. He frowned.

“An attack like that should have
killed you.”

“Probably,” she said brightly.
“Poppy was saying something about being an inch away from my jugular… I thought
I might have died for a bit actually,” she continued, more quietly. “But I was
just having this weird, weird dream… I assume I have you to thank for
getting back up here?”

Severus nodded,
and absently stole a grape.

“… Sev’, how’s Remus?”

His frown deepened.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, a
little coldly. “It appears he’s been helping his old friend into the castle, to
get to Potter… Albus won’t listen.”

Amelia
looked at him. Severus looked livid; when he spoke, his voice
shook a little.

“I believed him, too! All that
stuff about Lily, and friendship, and you!” he snarled. Ron
stirred a little in his bed. Severus lowered his voice. “I
thought he was my – our – friend, and all this time…”

He looked up at her miserably.

“… You must be feeling pretty
rotten about it all too.”

She laid a hand on his arm.

“It wasn’t like that Severus,”
she said quietly.

Severus, still smarting from
Black’s escape, the loss of the Order of Merlin and the revenge that had been
wrested from him (not to mention the blow to his pride from three under-age
wizards knocking him out cold), did not react well to further confusion.

“What was it like then?” he
snapped, and Amelia took her hand away. He
managed to look abashed. “Sorry,” he said, in a small voice.

“… Do you know that I am a
Reader, Severus?” she asked, softly.

“No!” he exclaimed, aghast. How
much can she have seen? He thought desperately, before remembering that the
world was no longer at war. He looked her up and down a few times before
visibly relaxing. “Though it does explain a few things.”

Amelia
gave him a small smile.

“I think I can show you what
happened after you were – ah – incapacitated… if that’s what you want.”

Severus gave her
a hard and wary look for a moment, before nodding and drawing up his sleeve; as
she took his hand, she noticed a curious tattoo on the flesh of his inner arm.
She filed this information under ‘Ask about later’ and showed him what she’d
seen, what Sirius had shown her. Through her mind’s eye, he watched Remus and
Sirius unmask Pettigrew and the rat’s subsequent ‘trial’. He saw Harry
prevent his death, then Remus’s transformation. She showed him what Hermione
and Harry had told her about Pettigrew’s escape
and the swarming of the Dementors.

When they got to the bit about
Sirius’s escape on Buckbeak she hesitated, unsure, but decided that Severus
deserved to know.

When she’d finished, she was
shaky and exhausted; Severus too was shaking, though in his
case with horror. He was almost as pale as the hospital linen beneath his hand.

He stood swiftly, saying, “I have
to make this right,” before dashing out of the Hospital Wing and almost
knocking an enraged Poppy off her feet. The small witch shook her fist at him
before checking on Amelia and returning to her
office, a disapproving expression on her face.

0o0o0o0

*It is at this point in the story
that I have to move heavy objects away from myself, as I usually start throwing
things at three imaginary students, two teachers and one convict and shout
incoherently.