Chapter 196: Clearing the Misunderstanding
"Then you really didn't escape from Azkaban?" Remus Lupin asked hoarsely. "And what did you mean just now—Peter Pettigrew was the Secret Keeper? Wasn't he killed by the Death Eaters?"
"I've been out for a while," Sirius replied, supporting Lupin as they made their way toward the treehouse. "I've been trying to find you ever since."
The door—patched together from mismatched planks—was covered in barnacle-like growths that seemed to breathe. When moonlight pierced through the clouds, those dark, knotted lumps shimmered faintly with a pearlescent sheen, as if they were part of some ancient ward designed to repel dark wizards.
The moment Sirius pushed the door open, a wave of damp rot and cold mist rushed out to meet them. Beneath it lingered the bitter almond scent of Wolfsbane Potion, leaving a metallic tang on the tongue.
The walls were plastered with old copies of The Daily Prophet, repurposed as wallpaper. One section—Sirius's arrest from ten years ago—had been deliberately pasted upside down. Every time the figure in the wanted poster tried to speak, the drifting swamp vapor blurred his face into obscurity.
At the center of the room stood a wooden table, sunk slightly into the floorboards. Its four legs were mismatched, and the thickest one had been hollowed out to conceal something within.
Sirius's wand.
The one he had entrusted to Lupin before his imprisonment.
On the tabletop, dried potion residue had accumulated into formations resembling stalactites. The tallest, a gray-green column, still held the corroded remains of half a silver teaspoon at its tip.
A row of potion bottles lined the edge of the table—empty, every single one.
Above, a hammock woven from spider silk hung from a leaking beam. A faded Gryffindor-red scarf was spread across a moldy buckwheat pillow, from which strands of hair protruded—silver-grey wolf fur, chestnut human curls, and even a couple of unicorn tail hairs.
Beneath the bed, a battered trunk jutted out from the swamp muck. Five claw marks scored its lid, the newest still sticky with fresh resin.
On the western wall, a driftwood shelving unit had been wedged into a crack. Seven uneven tiers bore an unnatural weight. At the top sat jars containing glowing lizard tails, while preserved organs in cloudy liquid twitched every few seconds. The middle shelves were stacked with copies of Magical Drafts and Potions, each spine tagged with different colored notes.
Lupin had never been particularly gifted at Potions.
But necessity had clearly forced him to learn—Wolfsbane didn't brew itself.
Moss crept through the gaps in the floorboards, turning blood-red under the full moon. On the eastern wall, a torn section of newspaper revealed three unsent letters. The parchment edges were jagged, as though they had been crumpled in frustration and smoothed out again.
Sirius looked around, his expression darkening with a mix of anger and grief.
"You live like this?"
His voice tightened.
"This place is a disaster."
Lupin let out a weak, breathy laugh.
"Well… it's still better than Azkaban, isn't it?"
Sirius snorted softly, a crooked smile tugging at his lips.
"Fair point."
But if anyone ever tried to throw him back into Azkaban again, Sirius knew one thing with absolute certainty—he would never go quietly.
After helping Remus Lupin sit down, Sirius began recounting everything that had happened.
"I was afraid the Dark Lord would uncover my connection to James," he said slowly. "So before that could happen, I transferred the role of Secret Keeper to Peter… and Peter betrayed us."
Every time he spoke of it, the same storm rose in him—grief, rage, and a bitter, gnawing hatred for his own blindness. How had he failed to see through Peter Pettigrew's cowardly disguise?
"So Pettigrew was exposed… and that's how you got out?" Lupin asked.
"That's right." Sirius let out a short laugh. "He was caught by a young wizard."
"A student?" Lupin frowned slightly.
"The most brilliant one I've ever seen," Sirius said, his tone carrying unmistakable admiration. "Honestly, he might rival even Albus Dumbledore in his youth."
"Really?" Lupin sounded skeptical.
"He's only in his second year," Sirius continued, grinning at Lupin's reaction, "and he's already received two Orders of Merlin—one of them Second Class."
Lupin's eyes widened despite himself.
"What house? Gryffindor?" he asked, almost hopefully.
Sirius shook his head. "No. Ravenclaw."
"Well… that's still impressive," Lupin said with a faint smile, though a trace of disappointment lingered.
After a pause, Lupin leaned back slightly, his expression softening.
"So… what was Azkaban like?"
Sirius sat down across from him, his gaze drifting for a moment before he began.
"Stone. That's the first thing you remember—the smell of stone. Salt, rot… basalt soaked in the decay of the North Sea. The cells are carved straight out of the cliffs—six-foot holes with half an inch of seawater always pooling on the floor."
"Some fools think chaining a man to a wall is enough. But the real shackles are the Dementors."
"My bed was a slab of rock—ice in winter, barnacles in summer. The waste hole led straight down into the sea. When the tide came in, it flowed back up."
"Cleaning?" He let out a humorless breath. "Once a month, if you're lucky. The Dementors would open the door and let the storm wash the filth away. One time they forgot to close it… and the current tore half a man's arm off in the next cell."
"As for food? Dead rats and dirt-covered potatoes tossed into a bucket and burned into charcoal. You eat with sharpened fish bones. I used mine to carve marks into the wall—three hundred days, neat and orderly… until my third winter, when the cold froze my fingers to the stone for a week."
"They don't change your clothes. First year, blood hardens into armor. Second year, lice start nesting. Third year, the fabric rots into strips, and the exposed skin festers under salt and wind. When it got too cold, I turned into a dog just to survive… the only magic they couldn't stop, because those Ministry idiots never knew I was an Animagus."
He paused, voice dropping lower.
"Nights are worse. When the Dementors press against the bars, feeding… you can hear the other prisoners screaming, echoing through the rock. There was a Ravenclaw Death Eater—spent two years reciting A History of Magic to stay sane. By the third spring, he was chewing his own nails. By Christmas… he'd carved 'I am guilty' into the wall six hundred times."
Lupin listened in silence, his face pale. After a long moment, he reached out and placed a weak hand on Sirius's shoulder.
"…You went through hell."
Sirius shrugged lightly, brushing it off.
"What about you?" he asked instead. "Tell me how you've been all these years."
Lupin let out a quiet, bitter laugh and tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling.
"My life?"
His voice softened, distant.
"The first snowfall of 1982… I walked into Knockturn Alley with my last three Galleons."
"At the apothecary, the apprentice looked at the holes in my robes and sneered. 'That's all you've got? And you want real Wolfsbane? This isn't a charity—get out.'"
Lupin didn't argue. He had once believed that the invention of Wolfsbane Potion would make life easier for werewolves.
He had been wrong.
Painfully, naively wrong.
Chapt