Prisoner of Azkaban 19 – A Thread of the Mystery
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The next morning, having gone to sleep late, Rhiannon was rudely awoken by frightened screams from the bed beside her own. Bleary-eyed and barely able to see, Rhiannon fought her way free of the tangled sheets with a groan, fumbling for the wand she kept under her pillow. “Wh’ -wha’s goin’ on?” she slurred, brandishing the wand as she finally managed to drag herself upright. She levelled her wand on where she thought the scream had come from, squinting to make out something of the blurry shapes in her vision.

“S-s-s-s-s- Black!” someone, Ron by the pitch and accent, sobbed in terror. Clumsy in her fear, Rhiannon staggered out of her bed and fumbled her way towards theirs, hands outstretched. She collapsed onto the bed and tugged them into her arms, shocked to find the tall redhead shaking, their heart rate and breathing uneven and racing.

“Sirius Black?” Rhiannon whispered, horrified. Ron nodded, a scratchy sort of sensation against her shoulder, and Rhiannon hugged them tighter.

“He- he was holding a knife, look, he cut down the h-h-h-h-hangings,” Ron stammered, choking on frightened tears and too-quick gasping breaths. “I thought he was going to kill me, but he was muttering about looking for something and he- he was so angry when he couldn’t find it, I thought he’d kill me anyway, he’s – he looks sick, like a dead man-” Ron trailed off, gasping for air as Rhiannon rubbed his back as best she could in the awkward position.

All very much awake now, the other Gryffindors crowded around them and Rhiannon fought back the claustrophobic panic. That wasn’t helpful. Not now. “Uh, who’s here – Ernie? Get – Get McGonagall,” she ordered, her words still clumsy with sleep and uncertainty as without her glasses, she couldn’t be quite sure of anyone’s identity in the muddles of scents and shapes that made up the dormitory.

“That’s Aeden, I’m Ernie,” the heavyset boy grumbled from somewhere behind them.

Rhiannon rolled her eyes, her patience quickly fleeing. “Well, w-w-w-w-whichever!” she spat. “Somebody get her already!”

Someone set a calming hand on Rhiannon’s shoulder, and she fought the urge to flinch as by scent she recognised it to be Lavender. “Rhi, settle down – your eyes, your glamours, just keep your head down.” she whispered, then raised her voice and gestured around the room. “Ernie, please get McGonagall. Aeden, Kellah, Harry, tell the Prefects. I’m pretty sure we need everyone out of here so no clues get muddled.”

Galvanised into action, the rest of the shocked Gryffindors cleared out of the room at Lavender’s insistence while she settled on the edge of the bed and pressed something small and spiky into Rhiannon’s hands. Her glasses. Clumsily, she fixed them onto her slightly beaky nose and immediately felt the pressure of her claustrophobia ease. “Now, your glamours – I’ve heard you cast them enough, do you want me to put them on?” Lavender murmured. Rhiannon nodded, and Lavender took her pale fir wand from where she kept it in her sleeve. Gently, as if applying makeup, the taller blonde girl brushed the glamours across the dark circles and scars that marked Rhiannon’s angular face. “You’re perfectly beautiful without these, you know,” Lavender told her matter-of-factly as she laid the last of the masking glamours across the thick scar over the crook in Rhiannon’s nose.

Rhiannon flushed faintly, feeling every feature of her face and body as if it stood out in sharp relief. Lavender’s reassurance battled with her own dysphoria and insecurities. She knew the glamours enabled that insecurity, but she just wasn’t ready to let everyone know what lay under them – not with the stigma they carried. Her friends had helped her to learn that she wasn’t a monster, but Rhiannon wasn’t at all sure she could convince anyone else of that. With all the snide remarks she’d heard that year, the way Lavender had been treated once word got out her father was a werewolf – she was even more certain than she had been when she first came back to school after the attack that she just wasn’t ready to wear that burden. Let alone make Dudley, already an outsider, wear it with her. She shook her head, eyes downcast.

“I – I’m not sure I’m ready to, to believe that yet but... thanks. Baby steps, y’know? It’s, not just about what I look like, not here.” Rhiannon murmured with an uncomfortable shrug. Ron, their arms looped around her waist now, squeezed her tightly and she laughed, embarrassed by their insistence. “Ah, fine, stop it!” she protested, swatting at their shoulder.

Downstairs, the portrait door clattered open and Rhiannon heard the clatter of booted footsteps as several people hurried upstairs. As they rushed into the room, Rhiannon recognised them first by scent as Minerva and Remus, the third a little belatedly as Professor Kjartanson, head of Gryffindor House. “Ronald, Rhiannon! Miss Brown – are you all quite alright?” Minerva asked, hurrying over when she saw them.

Ron untangled themself from Rhiannon and sat upright, straightening his pyjamas as he sat up straight. “I’m alright now, prof- Headmaster,” they managed, though it was audibly an effort to keep their voice steady. “But Black, Sirius Black – he was here.”

Minerva’s face turned stony and her posture rigid as she heard the news. “Missiculum radia,” she murmured. “All Gryffindor students to Great Hall at once. Faculty and Gryffindor prefects, stand guard at all ways in or out of the Hall. All other students, stay in your common rooms. Prefects, bar your common room doors, I will let you know when you may relent. Ellery, Percival, to my office, I will meet you there.” she rattled off quickly. Rhiannon winced and covered her ears – as yet without their jinxes - as with a hiss and crackle, the same message was repeated throughout the castle. “Oh, I’m sorry Rhiannon, I should have warned you. Would you and Miss Brown help Ronald to my office? I will need to question him further.” Minerva asked, as gently as she could manage through the tremors in her voice.

Rhiannon stood and limped to her bed to retrieve her cane and then, with Lavender’s help, she assisted a shaking Ron from the dormitory and out of the common room, trying her hardest not to listen to Minerva, Professor Kjartanson and Remus’ terse whispers as they searched the common room for any trace of Sirius Black. Anything, blood or hair or a fleck of spit, that could be used to track him.

All the Gryffindor students were questioned, one by one, in search of how Sirius Black had got into the common room without breaking the portrait down – as Sir Cadogan told the staff, he had simply provided a password and the foolhardy knight had allowed him entry. Because of the frequently-changed, ridiculously difficult passwords, students had of course struggled to remember them, Neville worst of all. He’d kept a list, and that list had gone missing, thus solving the mystery of how the passwords had been discovered. Neville was mortified, but rather than punish him McGonagall took this as a sign that Sir Cadogan was clearly unfit for the duty of Gryffindor Guardian, and had sent him back to his regular home in a back corridor of the second floor. In his place, Tina Gryffindor was returned to her usual post, her portrait beautifully restored by Argus Filch’s hard work.

With Tina Gryffindor back, the common room felt a lot safer. It wasn’t a battle to get into the room each night, the password could actually be kept secret now that everyone could remember it. But now that Sirius Black had again been seen in the castle, the Dementors patrolled closer and save for Quidditch games, students were unable to leave the castle interior for their own safety.

As a respite from the locked-down castle, Headmaster McGonagall arranged for the students of third year and above to have a Hogsmeade weekend. Classes were cancelled for first and second years and the prefects and head students remained behind to look after them, while the faculty were freed up to watch over the students in Hogsmeade. Rhiannon played the part of the miserable student resigned to stay in the castle and study while her friends set off to Hogsmeade together, but inside she was fizzing with excitement at the chance to sneak out of the school, meet with the others for drinks outside in the fields – a welcome break from the stressful day-to-day of school, and a chance to spend time with more of her friends than the usual confines of houses and class times allowed.

So while Rhiannon’s friends gathered in the courtyard and then traipsed on down to the nearby village guarded by their teachers, Rhiannon herself scampered upstairs to find her gloves and coat. With a heavy blanket of Chilling Charms over her clothing and no skin left exposed save her face, Rhiannon attached a Muffling Charm to her shoes and the bottom of her cane and threw the slick, oily folds of the Invisibility Cloak over herself. It was disorienting as always, and Rhiannon idly wondered if she should have cast the Muffling Charm over all her clothing as she bumped right into the frame of the door. With her unstable joints and the fact that for five nights a month her body, way of movement and balance was entirely different, proprioception was hardly Rhiannon’s greatest gift at the best of times and, unable to see where her own body began or ended, now was far from the best of times. Still, with the promise of many more bruises to find the next day, Rhiannon managed to make her way downstairs to the passage hidden behind the statue of the hunchbacked, one-eyed witch. There was a brief moment when she thought Filch’s cat might have caught her as she flinched away from a wall torch, averting her gaze before it could draw her into another panic, but it appeared that Mrs Norris was simply hunting shadows on the floor as she trotted off in another direction.

With that minor crisis averted, Rhiannon slipped into the tunnel and let the statue slide closed behind her. Safely concealed, Rhiannon threw off the Invisibility Cloak and stashed it in her backpack, then hurried off with her eyes fixed on the ground. She had a sort of stubborn resistance to the torches scattered throughout the castle – so long as she didn’t look at them too long she could go through her day with only an uncomfortable sensation of unease at their presence. It was sudden flame, when she had let her guard down, that really managed to upset her these days. Like the birthday party. She still hadn’t really forgiven herself for taking over Luna’s day with her own fears. There had to be some way to make it up to them, even if xe didn’t think she had to. Maybe she could bring back something from Hogsmeade, a late birthday gift.

All too soon Rhiannon reached the far end of the tunnel, and it was time to put the stifling Invisibility Cloak back on. She moved slower now, feeling for walls with her free hand and setting each foot more cautiously now she couldn’t see them. Using the muffled end of her cane she swept loose gravel from her path, and then drew her wand from its socket behind the carved snake’s head. “Wi-n-wing-ardium Leviosa,” Rhiannon muttered, lifting the heavy trapdoor out of the way just as she had before.

Stubbornly shoving aside the ever-present pain and the nausea from using the Cloak, Rhiannon shrugged off her backpack and hurled it up into the cellar above before, with a horribly creaking and cracking of overworked joints, Rhiannon followed it, landing on all fours with an uncomfortable crunch. Her shoes were muffled, her hands were not, and it was more by good luck than good management that nobody noticed her presence as she stood, retrieved her backpack and dusted herself off. She’d made this journey once before, she was prepared for the sensory overload of the shop and so she intensified the jinxes on her senses before she adjusted the cloak and padded upstairs on muffled feet.

Rhiannon took a deep breath, steadying herself, before she threw herself into the crushing heat and crowd of the shop, head down and stubborn as she pushed her way around the edges of the room to the door. Once out in the brisk chill of the February morning, Rhiannon slunk around into a side alley where she once again took off the cloak and stowed it in her backpack. As she took a deep breath, a smile spread over her face and she felt the familiar comfortable certainty settle deep in her chest, grounding her. Her friends, her pack – they were here somewhere.

Rhiannon found her friends as she always did, at least those in third year and above, and they spent the day together without any unwelcome interruptions like the time before. Much to Rhiannon’s delight she found that Hermione had ordered the fidget devices she relied on from Zonko’s, and given that Luna didn’t need any sort of durability enchantments the way she and Dudley did, it was a quick trip to purchase some for Luna, coloured blue and purple – zir favourites. After that, Parvati and Faye took orders from everyone and retrieved a picnic feast for them all from the Three Broomsticks, which they ate settled under a grove of oak trees a little way outside the village – close enough to be protected by the roaming teachers, far enough for Rhiannon to escape their notice.

Afterwards, comfortably full of good food and with a backpack filled with treasures not just for Luna but for Dudley, Ginny and several of her other friends in first and second year, Rhiannon slipped away. Back through the crowd of the sweet shop, back into the cellar, back through the trap door and up the hidden passage. She checked the map, cautious, looking for anyone who might be near the witch’s statue or the corridors nearby. Mrs. Norris was padding around a few hallways away, Filch was a few more, Lupin was in his office on the same floor... all was in its’ place save for one, strange thing. One small name, pattering along a hallway just twenty or thirty metres away – a name that didn’t belong. A name belonging to a dead man – Peter Pettigrew.

Peter Pettigrew, the man Sirius Black was meant to serve a life sentence for. But if Pettigrew was alive... Xenophilius had been right, there was another story here. Ron had said Black looked sick, mad, like a dead man... but anyone could look like that if they were desperate, couldn’t they? Anyone who’d spent twelve years in the nearest thing to hell on Earth.

Determined now, Rhiannon stowed the Cloak in her backpack and slipped from the passage, hardly listening as it slid closed behind her. With a murmur she renewed the charms on her shoes and cane and dispelled those on her ears, eyes and nose – she’d need all her senses now if she was to find a man who’d stayed alive and hidden for twelve years. Why he was here in the castle she had no idea, but if he was here... Sirius Black hadn’t broken in to hurt her. He must have broken in to find Pettigrew.

Rhiannon peered closely at the map, watching as Pettigrew’s name moved through the corridors. If she took that hallway, then the next across... she could intercept him. She adjusted the backpack on her shoulders and set off through the hallways towards her quarry. She couldn’t hear footsteps, couldn’t find a fresh scent – but he was here, somewhere, she was as good as right on top of him!

Suddenly, Rhiannon was stopped in her tracks by an affected cough. A very particular presence washed over her like a wet blanket, damping all the good feelings of the day – the aura of someone who carried around their own personal storm cloud. And there was only one person in the castle who could affect Rhiannon that way. She muttered the phrase to wipe the map, and stuffed it into her coat pocket as she turned to him with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Professor Snape affected a cold smile as Rhiannon looked up at him, her heart turning cold. She’d been so fixed on Pettigrew she’d forgotten to keep track of anyone else, and run straight into the last person she wanted to meet. “Young Master Potter. You know, for a moment, you looked just like your father there, so... self-assured, self-satisfied. Does it give you a thrill, knowing the whole castle’s locked down for your protection while you sneak out?” he drawled, the sides of his lips pulling up into an ugly smirk.

“I-i-i- I d-d-d-do-don’t know what you’re t-t-talking about,” Rhiannon stammered, feeling sick with nerves as she faced him. How did he know? She was sure no-one had seen her slip out of the passage, she’d checked. How could he know, unless someone had- unless someone had told him. Draco.

“Oh, don’t lie to me Mister Potter, you’re not very good at it.” Snape sneered. All at once his smirk vanished and he jabbed a finger at her. “Turn out your pockets. And your bag too, while you’re at it.” Rhiannon cocked her head, bewildered by the sudden change of tone. Snape’s expression morphed into an ugly snarl and he gestured at her sharply again. “Do it! Now!”

Galvanised into action, his tone catching on a decade of abuse, Rhiannon knelt and tipped out her backpack. Out tumbled the sweets for Dudley – one packet of pranks and another of genuine treats, the wrapped gifts for Luna, the charm bracelet she’d bought for Alianne and the set of pencils for Ginny, all of it. And all of it evidence.

Snape snatched the backpack from Rhiannon’s hands and lit his wand as he fished through the pockets, turning out more sweets, tokens of friendship – but it wasn’t what he wanted, and he looked up at her with a wild, childish sort of fury in his eyes, Rhiannon felt her heart twist and she stumbled back another step, trying to stay out of range of the wandlight. “I said, turn out your pockets, boy,” he spat. “I already know where you’ve been, now I want to know how you got there – ohhhh,” he murmured, as the light of his wand flashed against Rhiannon’s inhuman eyes and reflected, the tapetum lucidum plainly visible and Snape stood, drawing nearer, the wand held up to her face even as she flinched and tried to hide her eyes, it was no use. Ever since she’d returned to Hogwarts she’d had a crushing fear of anyone finding out and this, this was all of it realised at once. Snape already hated her over whatever rivalry he and her birth father had held, and his sneering voice was filled with a terribly satisfied vindication that now, he had something over her. The one thing that could be enough to make the wizarding world despise her, when being outed as trans had not.

“You’re the werewolf, the one they’ve had me brewing potions for,” Snape whispered, a vicious kind of elation creeping into his voice. “Or not one – the dosage is for two. That useless, fat Squib you call a cousin – he’s one too, isn’t he?”

Rhiannon stumbled, feeling weak at the knees, like she was not quite eleven years old again and Uncle Vernon wanted her Hogwarts letter only it was worse, this wasn’t just a memory – but just as in her memories, she couldn’t answer, her heart thundering in her ears and drowning out any chance of speech or even hearing, as Snape’s words repeated over and over in her head, his knowing expression burned into her mind. Snape’s expression now was twisted into one of wicked glee and he stood and strode towards her. “The Chosen One, Perfect Potter – a werewolf. Oh, this is perfect. Now, turn out your pockets, boy!” he ordered, turning quickly as a knife back to his original line of intent.

Rhiannon could only shake her head dully, couldn’t even look up to defy him as memories blurred into the present, Snape becoming Uncle Vernon, their voices overlapping eachother, afterimages from the wandlight blinking in her vision as she averted her gaze. But her lack of response infuriated Snape and he lunged at her, gripped her by the shoulders and shook her fiercely. “Your pockets!” he snarled, and when Rhiannon once again didn’t respond he tore off her coat and roughly shoved her away as he turned the pockets inside out.

Rhiannon fell to her knees on the stone floor, feeling as if the wind had been knocked from her as Snape found what he’d been looking for. He knew she was a werewolf, and now he had the Marauder’s Map. She heard the crunch of the parchment as he crushed it in his hand, the hard sound of his boots on the floor as he strode towards her. “You really are just like your father, Potter,” he hissed, before turning away with a whirl of his cloak. “And you’re just as predictable as he was. Missiculum. Lupin, I require your assistance.”

Rhiannon, her ears still unprotected, flinched from the sudden whoosh of air and flame as someone, presumably Professor Lupin, transported themself by Floo powder into a fireplace in the next corridor over. She scrabbled back, away from Snape, and curled herself against a wall as the footsteps, hurried and anxious-sounding, drew closer. “Rhiannon!” Remus cried, out, hurrying towards her.

“Not so fast, Remus,” Snape drawled, as he stepped into the space between Remus and Rhiannon. “The boy’s a sneak, the evidence is before you. He’s been creeping out of the castle while McGonagall has all of us and the guards of Azkaban themselves on guard for his protection, using this.”

Rhiannon dared to glance upwards as Snape held the map out to Remus, and she was sure she caught a flicker of recognition cross her favourite teacher’s face. They both knew it was a map. “First of all, Severus, her name is Rhiannon and she’s a girl, a fact you know perfectly well given she’s been your reluctant student for almost three years.” Remus retorted sharply. “And secondly – she has permission to be in Hogsmeade, her guardian granted it. You’re holding a piece of paper out at me as evidence of a wrongdoing that’s not been committed.”

“Oh, don’t play games with me, mutt, you know what this is,” Snape hissed. Rhiannon bristled and dragged herself upright using her cane and the wall, but Remus waved a hand at her before she could leap at the malicious Potions professor. Snape curled his lip at Rhiannon and unfolded the parchment, then rapped it with his wand. “Reveal your secrets,” he ordered it. The map remained stubbornly blank. “Show yourself!”

Again, nothing. An ugly red flush bloomed on Snape’s neck and spread up across his face, and Rhiannon, despite her shell-shocked state, couldn’t quite help her amusement. “I am Professor Severus Snape, a master of this school, and I command you to to yield the information you conceal!” Snape snarled. And as though an invisible hand wrote them, Rhiannon watched as words in black ink scrolled across the crumpled surface of the still-blank map.

Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people’s business,” Snape read, the red flush darkening to purple. He turned to Remus and jabbed the parchment into his chest. “This is your doing, make it stop,” he hissed.

Remus took the map from Snape and, with a wry twist to his lips, kept reading. “Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git,” he recited, as his lips twitched. “Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor.”

“Make it stop means make it stop! Not read every last pitiful, childish insult you and your sad little gang concocted at the age of fifteen!” Snape snarled, and he made as if to tear the parchment from Remus’ hands but Remus put out an arm and very simply pushed him back. Rhiannon, as a werewolf herself, was well aware of how much force could be put behind such a simple blow and she winced as Snape staggered backwards.

Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball,” Remus added with a crooked smile. “I really don’t know what you’re on about, Severus, it’s clearly just a parchment designed to insult whoever’s rude to it. Must have been a purchase from Zonkos’ where, I will remind you, Rhiannon has permission to be.”

As smoothly as he could manage for a man with a pronounced limp, Remus stepped around Snape and positioned himself firmly between the furious Potions professor and weary teenage girl. “Now, you’ve terrorised Rhiannon quite enough for one afternoon over nothing – something the Headmaster will be hearing about, by the way – so leave her in peace. Good day, Severus.” he said firmly, a clear dismissal. He and Snape stared at eachother for a moment, but eventually it was Snape who backed down and strode away in a whirl of his cloak.

Finally alone, Remus turned away and knelt down on the floor, collecting Rhiannon’s scattered belongings back into her backpack. Then, with it and her coat in hand, he limped over to Rhiannon and helped her stand upright, gently putting the coat back around her shoulders. “Here. I meant it, I will report that to the Headmaster, he had no right to speak to you that way. Come with me, I’ve got tea in my office that’s safe for you and some biscuits, you’ll need a moment to settle down, right?”

Rhiannon nodded, still too shaken to speak, and in seeing so Remus took her gently by the arm and helped her through the corridors to the office behind his classroom. He set her down in one of the armchairs that stood before his desk, and puttered over to a small kitchenette to put a kettle on with a muttered incantation. “Now, Rhiannon, I really hate to bring up that encounter at all but... we have to talk about this map. You must know what a risk it is, keeping that passage a secret and sneaking out yourself when as far as we all knew, you were safe in the castle.”

Rhiannon stirred at that, and looked up to meet his gaze for a brief moment. “Y-y-o-you know i’ss a map?” she slurred, confused. She wasn’t surprised as such, she’d seen him recognise it, she was just bewildered – he’d lied very convincingly to Professor Snape, and why? If Snape knew what it was and Remus did too, why the lie?

Remus sighed. “Yes, I know it’s a map. I was involved in making it – no points for guessing who Moony is, and the others were your father, Peter Pettigrew and... Sirius Black. I lied because while Severus knows, and he knows that I know, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on if he takes it to the Headmaster without my saying anything – at the moment, all he has is that he terrorised a teenage girl for a rude piece of parchment that he claims is a map. But Rhiannon, Professor Snape was right about one thing – we were children and we were thoughtless. This map is a danger to you and everyone in this school. If Si- if Black had it he could go anywhere, hide anywhere, and hurt you without us ever finding how he got in.”

Rhiannon shook her head, startled back to awareness by the mention of the names. Peter Pettigrew, the reason she’d stumbled into Snape in the first place. “No, n-n-n-no he – he might not. Professor – R-r-remus, if you made it, you know how it works – it shows ghosts d-d-d-diff-f-f-ifferently to living beings, right? Look, look at it, there’s – there’s someone on there who’s supposed to be dead, Peter P-p-p-p-p-pet-t-t-tigrew, if he’s alive then -”

Remus cut her off with a gasp, and rushed to his desk to unfurl the map, wincing and swearing under his breath as he knocked against it in his hurry. “Then Sirius might not even be guilty,” he finished in a whisper, his voice breaking. “We might have made a mistake, something could be wrong with it but – it’s too big a coincidence... Thankyou, Rhiannon. This could – this could mean a lot, if I can just find him again I can show Minerva...” he trailed off, muttering to himself. Once again, Rhiannon was reminded of the sense she’d got from him before, that he’d loved Sirius Black before all of this, probably still did... she could imagine what that meant to him, the first real chance that Sirius was innocent.

Recludetio Peter Pettigrew... no, he’s – damnit - I’m going to hold onto this, he’s not showing on it right now but... if you saw him, he’s here somewhere – there’s many places he can hide the Map can’t see, he’s good at hiding. I’ll find him. Rhiannon, thank-you, I mean it – and I won’t let Severus terrorise you again.” Remus said, and hurried back to his kettle to pour out what smelled to Rhiannon like raspberry tea into two chipped cups, the second of which he gave to Rhiannon along with two gingernut biscuits on the cup’s mismatched saucer. “I know you can’t have chocolate or caffeine, two of the best things for a shock but, the warmth should help,” he explained as he set them before her.

Rhiannon nodded mutely and sipped at her tea, idly dunking the biscuits in it so that she didn’t break her already-crooked teeth on them. The warmth of the ginger and the tea did help chase away the shivers and the hollowness of her fear, slowly but surely, and by the time she finished she felt confident enough to stand, hefting her backpack onto one shoulder as she did so. “Thankyou,” she murmured, rubbing at her eyes as she did so. She felt worn out, drained by the whole experience, but stubbornly pushed through it as she stood up. “I-f-f-f-fif-if – if you need help with, Pett-t-t-t-tigrew, I can help. Since I’ve got, kind of a personal s-t-t-t-t-ake in it all.” she added, and with a shared smile, she limped out of the office and off in search of the Miremark common room. She could sleep later – she had a Luna to find.

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