“you have a house elf? Thought you were muggleborn?”percy asked.

“nah!, was raised by muggles, my parents were wizards, just like harry…..in multiple ways”

“I see…”

“that was a house elf? You mentioned them once last year, when you first talked to me, what are they? he called you master?”

“…..” uh-oh! Spew alert!, good thing it was dobby.

“….house elves are servants of ancient wizarding families, my family doesn’t have one though, I hired dobby last year.

“hired?”

“yes! Percy, hired. He was a free elf looking for a job and I hired him, he’s a bit of a maverick among elves” I told percy to shut up with my eyes, which he did even though he looked confused.

“fascinating!, wizards can’t apparate at hogwarts you know, can he get in?”

“oh yes, elven apparition is different, now why don’t you take ginny to find fred and george so they can help once we get the brooms”

“oh ok, come on ginny”

She left.  phew!, if she’d seen dobby last year…. .

“wait!, you asked for only four broomsticks”

“yep, me, professor lupin and the twins, you’re staying in the train, in case we need to signal someone on the train, and you’re a prefect”

“…..all right”

The girls returned with the twins soon, and then dobby came back with the brooms. Lupin had the train slow down a bit and then the four of us took off to the skies. We used sparks to stay in contact….mm?  green sparks?

I flew toward the sparks and found lupin doing the same. We found the twins who were doing their best to fly alongside a semi transparent car. Lupin shot a spell at it and it became completely visible, and we could see the confused two stooges staring at us. I flew upto the side and gestured them to land…..they’re still just staring at me….should I punch through the window?.....i took out my wand and drew a down arrow on the window in glowing letters, that seemed to get through ron, and he slowed down and started to descend. I gestured to lupin, and he nodded and flew off towards the train to signal percy that we found them.

Once they landed.

“why’d you guys come up?, you want to ride the car to the school too?”

“oh ronnie-”

“let's save it for later”  I interrupted fred.

I called dobby and after he finished swooning over harry, he apparated to hogwarts with their luggage and came back by the time lupin found us. He marked the location of the car and then dobby apparated us all back to the train compartment and then I sent him to inform dumbly. Apparently, like in canon, harry and ron were blocked at the platform, they completely forgot about hedwig…or the option to wait for the weasleys and decided to take the road trip to hogwarts….in the sky. Percy tore into them, and hermoine added in, and the rest of us watched the fun. Then after we had lunch a letter arrived from dumbly that mr weasley had found the car. Luckily they weren’t seen by any muggles, but the ministry was freaked when they learnt that harry hadn’t been in the train, so they asked to confirm his safety as soon as he reached the school, guess dementors will give him some extra care…wonder if he’ll faint?....i may not be able to see, cuz dumbly asked me to apparate back to the castle with dobby as soon as I got the letter, which I just did.

After we got to dumbly’s office, I looked at the big thin black dog lying beside dumbly’s desk .The dog stared back at me. I stared back, I already lost a staring contest today, not gonna lose another one.

“it was his doing”

“what was his doing?”

“he ordered kreacher to block the platform so that he could get peter”

“oh…”. Ha I won!. He looked away first.

“so, you broke him out?”

“no I did not. Alastor sometimes visits azkaban to check the security, so I just had him a photo of harry at the weasley family to sirius, they picked harry up a few weeks after the vacation started and ron and harry exchanged letters. Aurthur took the photo at my request when I gifted him a  muggle camera . the photo also included scabbers eating out of ron’s hand, near harry…..i got news of his escape a few days after alastor left”.

“I was searching for him when phineas told me that kreacher had suddenly been summoned from the house of black, luckily I had placed a locator spell on him, which I followed to find him with sirius at the platform. He was in his dog form and getting ready to charge at ron when I found him. I took him back to hogwarts with kreacher, and he refuses to change back even after I explained to him that I knew he was innocent and was going to catch peter. I was hoping you could convince him”

“mmm he’d do that, why not just force him to change back?”

“I was hoping he would talk voluntarily”

“then sit tight and wait, harry will probably faint soon, or feel sick cuz of dementors getting too close, so use that excuse to call him, ron, hermoine and lupin to your office,

 let ron bring peter-oh that got your attention huh?, what about your godson? Oh looking away again? Feeling guilty are we? let’s see if you can maintain that aloofness when you see him later…..

as I was saying, get them all in here, have professor snape bring some veritaserum, and then we can eat popcorn while we watch the drama”

“…..popcorn?”

“please, it’s family business, and friend business and enemy business, bonds of love and hatred and regret are all interwined together, leave it to the participants to sort it out themselves, you just have to make sure no one gets too close to killing another, I’ll be in charge of popcorn and the snarky comments”

“sigh!...sirius are you sure you won’t like to change back and talk?”

The dog turned it’s head away.

“…..very well, I’m getting a headache, so we’ll just do it your way”

“yes!, I’ll get the popcorn…do we have it in the kitchen?”

“I don’t think so “

“I’ll have dobby get it”

“about the dementors-“

“oh harry will be fine, lupin’s with him and I left them plenty of chocolate, he’ll at best just faint for a bit due to his first exposure to a dementor….consciously “

“very well, let’s wait”