"Do you think I could have a look at the rat?" Lupin said evenly.

"What?" Ron said. "What's Scabbers got to do with it?"

Xylophone snorted.

"Everything." Lupin said. "Could I see him, please?"

Ron hesitated, then put a hand inside his robes. Scabbers emerged, thrashing desperately. Lupin moved closer to Ron. He seemed to be holding his breath as he gazed intently at Scabbers.

"What?" Ron said again, holding Scabbers close to him, looking scared. "What's my rat got to do with anything?"

"That's not a rat." Sirius Black croaked suddenly.

"What d'you mean - of course he's a rat -"

"No, he's not." Xylophone said quietly. "He's a wizard."

"An Animagus," Black said, "by the name of Peter Pettigrew."

It took a few seconds for the absurdity of this statement to sink in. 

"You're all mental." I said.

"Ridiculous!" Hermione said faintly.

"Peter Pettigrew's dead!" Harry said. "He killed him twelve years ago!"

He pointed at Black, whose face twitched convulsively.

"I meant to," he growled, his yellow teeth bared, "but little Peter got the better of me...not this time, though!"

Black lunged at Scabbers; Ron yelled with pain as Black's weight fell on his broken leg.

"Sirius, NO!" Lupin yelled, launching himself forwards and dragging Black away from Ron again. "WAIT! You can't do it just like that - they need to understand - we've got to explain -"

"We can explain afterwards!" Black snarled, trying to throw Lupin off, one hand still clawing the air as it tried to reach Scabbers, who was squealing like a piglet, scratching Ron's face and neck as he tried to escape.

"They've got a right to know everything, Pads!" Xylophone cried. "Ron's kept him as a pet! There are parts of it even I don't understand! And the twins - you owe Daisy and Harry the truth, Pads!"

Black stopped struggling, though his hollowed eyes were still fixed on Scabbers, who was clamped tightly under Ron's bitten, scratched, and bleeding hands.

"All right, then." Black said, without taking his eyes off the rat. "Tell them whatever you like. But make it quick, Remus, Emily. I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for..."

"You're nutters, all of you." Fred said.

"I've had enough of this. I'm off." George said. 

"Softpaw? Hopper?" Fred said, beckoning us towards the door.

"You're going to to hear me out." Lupin said quietly, raising his wand. "Just keep a tight hold on Peter while you listen, Ron."

"HE'S NOT PETER, HE'S SCABBERS!" Ron yelled, trying to force the rat back into his front pocket, but Scabbers was fighting too hard; Ron swayed and overbalanced, and Harry and I caught and pushed him back down to the bed. Then, ignoring Black, I turned to Lupin, and, supposedly, Emily.

"There were witnesses who saw Pettigrew die." I said. "A whole street full of them..."

"They didn't see what they thought they saw!" Black said savagely, still watching Scabbers struggling in Ron's hands.

"Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter." Emily said, nodding.

"I believed it myself - until I saw the map tonight. Because the Marauder's Map never lies...Peter's alive. Ron's holding him, Daisy, Harry." Lupin said.

Harry and I looked at each other.

'They're all out of their minds.' I sent.

'I know, right?' Harry replied. 'Bloody mental.'

'Indeed.'

'Naturally!'

"But that would mean that Pettigrew was an illegal Animagus, like Daisy, Terry, Fred, and George -" Hermione said, only afterwards seeing us four shaking our heads violently. "Oops, sorry -"

"You too, then, Daisy!" Black said, looking delighted. "Illegal Animagus, nicknames, creating a group, and obviously a prankster, seeing that look all pranksters have on you - you are so like your father!"

Lupin had a clouded look on his face. "Yes...you don't know just how like her father she is, Sirius...and just how much she isn't..."

"Right, Hermione!" Emily jumped in quickly, forcing a laugh. "But the Ministry never knew that there used to be four unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts."

"If you're going to tell them the story, get a move on, you two." Black snarled, who was still watching Scabber's every desperate move. "I've waited twelve years, I'm not going to wait much longer."

"All right...but you'll need to help me, Sirius." Lupin said. "I only know how it began..."

Lupin broke off. There had been a loud creak behind him. The bedroom door had opened of its own accord. All eleven of us stared at it. Then Lupin strode towards it and looked out into the landing. 

"No one there..."

"This place is haunted!" I said, clutching Terry's arm.

"It's not." Lupin said, still looking at the door in a puzzled way. "The Shrieking Shack was never haunted...the screams and howls the villagers used to hear were made by me."

He pushed his greying hair out of his eyes, thought for a moment, then said, "That's where all of this starts - with my becoming a werewolf. None of this could have have happened if I hadn't been bitten...and if I hadn't been so foolhardy..."

Emily put her hand on his shoulder, her eyes reassuring. Black looked bitterly at them.

"I was a very small boy when I received the bite. My parents tried everything, but in those days there was no cure. The Potion that Professor Snape has been making for me is a very recent discovery. It makes me safe, you see. As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform...I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again. 

"Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month. It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me. 

"But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic. He said that, as long as we took certain precautions, there was no reason I shouldn't come to school..." Lupin sighed, and looked at Harry and I. "I told you two, months ago, that the Whomping Willow was planted the year I came to Hogwarts. The truth is that it was planted BECAUSE I had come to Hogwarts. This house -" Lupin looked miserably around the room, "- the tunnel that leads to it - they were built for my use. Once a month, I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous."

I couldn't see where this story was going, but I was listening raptly all the same. The only sound apart from Lupin's voice was Scabbers's frightened squeaking. 

"My transformations in those days were - were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumour...even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don't dare approach it...

"But apart from my transformations, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. For the first time ever, I had friends, four great friends. Sirius Black...Peter Pettigrew...of course, your father, twins - James Potter...and Emily Lancaster-Schofield. She hated us - but she was still a great adviser and friend to me, understands me better than anyone else - until halfway through fourth year or something."

"She helped us, but she was NEVER friends with you guys, Xylophone only loved ME." Black grinned.

"No, Sirius, she hated all of us." Lupin said, glancing at Emily quickly, a faint grin on his face.

"Especially you, Pads." Emily sniggered. "In fact, I still hate you."

"Damn." Black said, faking a look of dejection. Emily giggled.

"Now, my four friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her...I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth...

"And they didn't desert me at all. Instead they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."

"Our dad, too?" I grinned.

"Yes, indeed." Lupin said. "It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father, Emily, and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong - one reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. And if you four really are Animagi -" we nodded, "then it's lucky that you four are four out of five of the brightest students in the school, the other being Hermione, of course - especially you, Daisy. I remember Professor McGonagall complaining about you - that you're the most brilliant student in the school, but that you don't use your brains for your schoolwork." Lupin's lips twitched. "Rather like your father. Anyway, Peter needed all the help he could get from James, Emily, and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will."

"But how did that help you?" Draco said, sounding puzzled.

"They couldn't keep me company as humans, so they kept me company as animals." Lupin said. "A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James's Invisibility Cloak. They transformed...Peter, as the smallest, could slip beneath the Willow's attacking branches and touch the knot that freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me. Under their influence, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them."

"Hurry up, Remus." Black snarled, who was still watching Scabbers with a horrible sort of hunger in his face.

"I'm getting there, Sirius, I'm getting there...well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals, they were able to keep a werewolf in check. I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade than we did... And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map, and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot. Peter is Wormtail. Emily is Xylophone. James was Prongs."

Fred, George, Terry, and I were staring at him, starry-eyed - well, they were, and I probably was.

But wait - the name 'Xylophone' wasn't on it...

"What sort of animal -?" Harry and I began simultaneously (both going to ask the same thing - what was our dad, and what was Emily, to gain the nickname 'Xylophone'?), but Hermione cut across us.

"That was still really dangerous! Running around in the dark with a werewolf! What if you'd given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?"

"A thought that still haunts me." Lupin said heavily. "And there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We were young, thoughtless - carried away with our own cleverness. Emily's a Seer - she could sometimes See our future adventures and assure us that nothing was going to go wrong - but she still couldn't See them all.

"I sometimes felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust, of course...he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other Headmaster would have done so, and he had no idea I was breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others' safety. He never knew I had led four fellow students into becoming Animagi illegally. But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month's adventure. And I haven't changed..."

Lupin's face had hardened, and there was self-disgust in his voice. "All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn't do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I'd betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I'd led others along with me...and Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job, when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find work because of what I am. And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using Dark Arts he learnt from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it...so, in a way, Snape's been right about me all along."

"Snape?" Black said harshly, taking his eyes off Scabbers for the first time in minutes and looking up at Lupin. "What's Snape got to do with it?"

"He's here, Sirius." Lupin said heavily. "He's teaching here as well." He looked up at us all.

"Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defence Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons...you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -"

Black made a derisive noise.

"It served him right." He sneered. "Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to...hoping he could get us expelled..."

"I dunno, I certainly hated - still do - Luke Van Der Douche." Emily said bitterly. 

Lupin shook his head at Emily, grinning slightly. "Severus was very interested in where I went every month. We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn't like each other very much. He especially disliked Emily and James. Jealous, I think, of their talent on the Quidditch pitch..." Emily mouthed something that looked like 'Lily' at Lupin, and he looked like he was holding back a laugh. "Anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf - but Emily and your father, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to their lives...Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on, he knew what I was..."

"So that's why Snape doesn't like you," I said slowly, "because he thought you were in on the joke?"

"That's right." A cold voice sneered from the wall behind Lupin. 

Severus Snape was pulling off the Invisibility Cloak, his wand pointing directly at Lupin.

Hermione screamed. Black leapt to his feet. Harry jumped as though he'd received a huge electric shock. 

"I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow." Snape said, throwing the Cloak aside, careful to keep his wand pointing directly at Lupin's chest. "Very useful, Potters, I thank you..."

Snape was slightly breathless, but his face was full of suppressed triumph. "You're wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here?" He said, his eyes glittering. "I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your Potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along. And very lucky I did...lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight."

"Severus -" Lupin began, but Snape overrode him. 

"I've told the Headmaster again and again that you've been helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here's the proof. Not even I dreamed you would have the nerve to use this old place as your hideout - and you, Lancaster -"

"Severus, you're making a mistake." Lupin said urgently. "You haven't heard everything - I can explain - Sirius is not here to kill Daisy and Harry -"

"Three more for Azkaban tonight." Snape said, his eyes now gleaming fanatically. "I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this...he was quite convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin...a TAME werewolf..."

"You fool." Emily said softly. "Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?"

BANG! Thin, snake-like cords burst from the end of Snape's wand and twisted themselves around Lupin's mouth, wrists, and ankles; he overbalanced and fell to the floor, unable to move. Snape pointed his wand at Emily, but with a roar of rage, Black surged forwards in front of her. Snape pointed his wand straight between Black's eyes.

"Give me a reason." He whispered. "Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will."

Black stopped dead. It would have been impossible to say which face showed more hatred.

"Come on, all of you." Snape said. He clicked his fingers, and the ends of the cords that bound Lupin flew to his hands. "I'll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the Dementors will have a kiss for him, too -"

Before I knew what I was doing, I had crossed the room in three strides, and blocked the door. 

"Get out of the way, Potter, you're in enough trouble already." Snape snarled. "If I hadn't been here to save your skin -"

"Professor Lupin could have killed me and Harry about a hundred times this year." I said. "We've been alone with him loads of times, having defence lessons against the Dementors. If he was helping Black, why didn't he just finish us off then?"

"Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works." Snape hissed. "Get out of the way, Potter."

"YOU'RE PATHETIC!" I yelled. "JUST BECAUSE THEY MADE A FOOL OF YOU AT SCHOOL YOU WON'T EVEN LISTEN, YOU FUCKING SLIMEBALL -"

"SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT!" Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. "Like father, like daughter, Potter! I have just saved your neck, you should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he'd killed you!" Terry and Draco started forward, both their faces filled with rage beyond reason, but the twins grabbed their arms and held them back. "You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black - now get out of the way, or I will MAKE you. GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!"

I made up my mind in a split second. Before Snape could take even one step towards me, I had raised my wand. 

"Expelliarmus!" I yelled - except that mine wasn't the only voice that shouted. There was a blast that made the door rattle on its hinges; Snape was lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall, then slid down it to the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from under his hair. He had been knocked out.

I looked around. Fred, George, Terry, Draco, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had tried to disarm Snape at exactly the same moment. Snape's wand soared in a high arc and landed on the bed next to Crookshanks.

"You shouldn't have done that." Black said, looking at me. "You should have left him to me..."

I avoided Black's eyes. I wasn't sure, even now, that I'd done the right thing.

"We attacked a teacher...we attacked a teacher..." Hermione whimpered, staring at the lifeless Snape with frightened eyes. "Oh, we're going to be in so much trouble -"

"Awesome!" Terry, the twins, and I high-fived. 

Lupin was struggling against his bonds. Black and Emily bent down quickly and untied him. Lupin straightened up, rubbing his arms where the ropes had cut into them.

"Thank you, Daisy." He said.

"I'm still not saying I believe you." I retorted.

"Then it's time we offered you some proof." Black said. "You, boy - give me Peter. Now."

Ron clutched Scabbers closer to his chest.

"Come off it." He said weakly. "Are you trying to say you broke out of Azkaban just to get your hands on SCABBERS? I mean..." He looked up at Harry and I for support. "OK, say Pettigrew could turn into a rat - there are millions of rats - how's he supposed to know which one he's after if he was locked up in Azkaban?"

"You know, Sirius, that's a fair question." Lupin said, turning to Black and frowning slightly.

"How DID you find out where he was?" Emily asked.

Black put one of his claw-like hands inside his robes and took out a crumpled piece of paper, which he smoothed flat, and held out to show us.

It was the photograph of the twins and their family that had appeared in the Daily Prophet the previous summer, and there, on Ron's shoulder, was Scabbers.

"How did you get this?" Lupin asked Black, thunderstruck.

"Fudge." Black said. "When he came to inspect Azkaban last year, he gave me this paper. And there was Peter, on the front page...on this boy's shoulder...I knew him at once...how many times had I seen him transform? And the caption said the boy would be going back to Hogwarts...to where Daisy and Harry were..."

"My God." Lupin said softly, staring from Scabbers to the picture in the paper and back again. "His front paw..."

"What about it?" Ron said defiantly.

"He's got a toe missing." Emily said.

"Of course." Lupin breathed. "So simple...so BRILLIANT... He cut it off himself?"

"Just before he transformed." Black said. "When I cornered him, he yelled for the whole street to hear that I'd betrayed Lily and James. Then, before I could curse him, he blew apart the street with his wand behind his back, killed everyone within twenty feet of himself - and sped down into the sewer with the other rats..."

"Didn't you ever hear, Ron?" Lupin said. "The biggest bit of Peter they found was his finger." 

"Look, Scabbers probably had a fight with another rat or something! He's been in my family for ages, right -"

"Twelve years, in fact." Emily said. "Didn't you ever wonder why he was living so long?"

"We - we've been taking good care of him!" Ron said.

"Not looking too good at the moment, though, is he?" Lupin said. "I'd guess he's been losing weight ever since he heard Sirius was on the loose again..."

"He's been scared of that mad cat!" Ron said, nodding towards Crookshanks, who was still purring on the bed.

But that wasn't right...Scabbers had been looking ill before he met Crookshanks...ever since Ron's return from Egypt...since the time when Black escaped...

"This cat isn't mad." Black said hoarsely. He reached out a bony hand and stroked Crookshanks's fluffy head. "He's the most intelligent of his kind I've ever met." 

"Like owner, like pet." I whispered, and Terry and the twins sniggered.

"He recognised Peter for what he was straight away. And when he met me, he knew I was no dog. It was a while before he trusted me. Finally, I managed to communicate to him what I was after, and he's been helping me..."

"What do you mean?" Hermione breathed.

"He tried to bring Peter to me, but couldn't...so he stole the passwords into Gryffindor Tower for me... As I understand it, he took them from a boy's bedside table..."

This was absurd...and yet...

"But Peter got wind of what was going on and ran for it...this cat - Crookshanks, did you call him? - told me Peter had left blood on the sheets...I suppose he bit himself...well, faking his own death had worked once..."

These words jolted me to my senses.

"And why did he fake his death?" I said furiously. "Because he knew you were about to kill him like you killed our parents!" 

"No." Lupin said. "Daisy -"

"And now you've come to finish him off!"

"Yes, I have." Black said, with an evil look at Scabbers.

"Then I should've let Snape take you!" I shouted.

"Daisy," Lupin said hurriedly, "don't you see? All this time we've thought Sirius betrayed your parents, and Peter tracked him down - but it was the other way around, don't you see? PETER betrayed your mother and father - Sirius tracked PETER down -"

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" I yelled. "HE WAS THEIR SECRET KEEPER! HE SAID SO BEFORE YOU TURNED UP, HE SAID HE KILLED THEM!"

I was pointing at Black, who shook his head slowly; the sunken eyes were suddenly over-bright.

"Daisy...I as good as killed them." He croaked. "I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as Secret Keeper instead of me...I'm to blame, I know it...the night they died, I'd arranged to check on Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he'd gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn't feel right. I was scared. I set out for your parents' house straight away. And when I saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies - I realised what Peter must have done. What I'd done."

His voice broke. He turned away. Emily bit her lip, tears in her eyes.

"Enough of this." Lupin said, and there was a steely note in his voice I had never heard before. "There's one certain way to prove what really happened. Ron, GIVE ME THAT RAT." 

"What are you going to do with him if I give him to you?" Ron asked Lupin tensely.

"Force him to show himself." Lupin said. "If he really is a rat, it won't hurt him."

Ron hesitated, then at long last held out Scabbers and Lupin took him. Scabbers began to squeak without stopping, twisting and turning, his tiny black eyes bulging in his head.

"Ready, Sirius?" Lupin said.

Black had already retrieved Snape's wand from the bed. He approached Lupin and the struggling rat, and his wet eyes suddenly seemed to be burning in his face.

"Together?" He said quietly.

"I think so." Lupin said, holding Scabbers tightly in one hand and his wand in the other. "On the count of three. One - two - THREE!"

A flash of blue-white light erupted from both wands; for a moment, Scabbers was frozen in mid-air, his small black form twisting madly - Ron yelled - the rat fell and hit the floor. There was another blinding flash of light and then -

It was like watching a speeded-up film of a growing tree. A head was shooting upwards from the ground; limbs were sprouting; next moment, a man was standing where Scabbers had been, cringing and wringing his hands. His eyes darted to the door and back again. Crookshanks was spitting and snarling on the bed, the hair on his back standing up.

"Well, hello, Peter." Lupin said pleasantly, as though rats frequently erupted into old schoolfriends around him. "Long time, no see."

"S-Sirius...R-Remus...E-Emily..." Even Pettigrew's voice was squeaky. Again, his eyes darted towards the door. "My friends...my old friends..."

Black's wand arm rose, but Lupin seized him around the wrist, gave him a warning look, then turned again to Pettigrew, his voice light and casual.

"We've been having a little chat, Peter, about what happened the night Lily and James died. You might have missed the finer points while you were squeaking around down there on the bed -"

"Remus." Pettigrew gasped, and I could see beads of sweat breaking out over his pasty face. "You don't believe him, do you...He tried to kill me, Remus..."

"So we've heard." Emily said, more coldly. "I'd like to clear up one or two little matters with you, Peter, if you'd be so -"

"He's come to try and kill me again!" Pettigrew shrieked suddenly, pointing at Black, and I saw that he used his middle finger, because his index was missing. "He killed Lily and James and now he's going to kill me, too...you've got to help me, Remus, Emily..."

Black's face looked more skull-like than ever as he stared at Pettigrew with his fathomless eyes.

"No one's going to try and kill you until we've sorted a few things out." Lupin said.

"Sorted things out?" Pettigrew squealed, looking wildly about him once more, eyes taking in the boarded windows and, again, the only door. "I knew he'd come after me! I knew he'd be back for me!"

The argument carried on - Emily explaining that she had been hunting Voldemort in Albania with her mother and grandmother for twelve years and came back as soon as she received a Patronus from Lupin saying what he had seen on the Map - until Black was starting to say things that I believed.

"But then I saw Peter in that picture...I realised he was at Hogwarts with the twins...perfectly positioned to act, if one hint reached his ears that the Dark Side was gathering strength again...ready to strike the moment he could be sure of allies...to deliver the last two Potters to them. If he gave them Daisy and Harry, who'd dare say he'd betrayed Lord Voldemort? He'd be welcomed back with honours...so you see, I had to do something. I was the only one who knew Peter was still alive..." Black said.

Black explained how he got out and how he always came to watch the Quidditch. Apparently Harry and I both fly as well as our father did.

He looked at me. I didn't look away.

"Believe me." Black croaked. "Believe me. I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them."

And at long last, I believed him. I nodded.