"Sirius?" Hermione shrieked, and then Black, who had just burst in from the door, rushed to Hermione with extreme speed and covered her mouth.
"Don't talk!" Black's expression was very nervous, his handsome face full of panic.
"Also, Remus, close the door for me, now!" Black turned his head and shouted at Lupin, as if there was a terrifying dragon chasing him outside the door.
No, even a dragon couldn't scare him into such a state of disarray.
"Good heavens, how did you get here?" Lupin's surprise was no less than Hermione's, and he exclaimed in surprise, but he still listened to Sirius and closed the opened wooden door.
"It's a long story." Black breathed a long sigh of relief when he saw the door was closed, calmed down, and then he realized that there were more than just Hermione and Lupin in the room.
"Harry? What a coincidence." Black saw Harry and softly called out Harry's name, his deep eyes full of remembrance.
"Sirius Black?" Harry called out tentatively. This was different from the man in his memory. All of Harry's impressions of this man came from the moving photo attached to the Daily Prophet at that time. In the photo, Black looked like a madman, his expression ferocious, and he was covered in blood, constantly roaring, completely unrelated to his current refined appearance.
Now, Black was wearing a well-tailored black suit with a delicate red tie, and on the upper left corner of the suit were various medals of honor.
His messy, unkempt beard was also shaved clean, coupled with his tall stature and handsome appearance, making him extremely charming.
The people present had no doubt that even if Black hadn't been cleared of his charges at this moment, if he walked out swaggeringly, many people would definitely not recognize him.
At this moment, Harry matched Black with the man in his parents' wedding photo.
"Hello." Harry said cautiously.
"Sirius, feelings need time to accumulate, don't be too hasty." Lupin reminded him from the side. At this time, Black was already preparing to open his arms to hug his godson, but he was stopped by Lupin.
"I think you should talk about where you've been all this time." Lupin continued to stare at him and asked.
"Moody didn't tell the truth back then." Sirius smiled helplessly, and then continued: "He did play the good guy once, but true freedom isn't that simple."
"They're still making things difficult for you?" Lupin gasped when he heard this, and continued to ask.
"It is indeed torture." Black sighed, and said quietly, "The Ministry of Magic needs to conduct endless interviews with me, and make me say good things about them in the newspapers to restore their credibility. After tossing around for many days, I finally had time to come to Hogwarts, but the condition is that I need to do some false propaganda for them."
"Alright." Lupin looked at Black with some sympathy. He knew that his friend had never liked dealing with these things, not to mention that in the past twelve years he had basically not had much contact with people. It was estimated that his social skills had not improved, but had regressed a lot, which was indeed torture for him.
"Then what was going on with you just now? I don't think there's anything that could scare you like that." Lupin asked curiously at this moment.
"A woman, a disgusting woman, I don't want to deal with her in my life." Black's eyes were full of disgust.
Lupin's eyebrows moved almost imperceptibly at this moment, revealing a strange smile, and then said: "You're afraid of women?"
In Lupin's memory, Sirius had always shown no interest in girls. Even after so many years, Lupin still remembered how popular Sirius was when they were in school. Many girls even hoped to please the other three of them, and then give them love letters or chocolates, hoping they could pass them on.
However, Sirius had no interest in these things at all. At first, he could politely refuse them one by one, but after a long time, he became impatient. When there were too many letters, piled up like a small mountain, he would burn them all in one fell swoop.
Sirius's voice rang out at this time.
"Of course, she's the most disgusting woman I've ever seen. If possible, I really want to roast her into a roast chicken. You definitely haven't seen such a noisy and self-righteous person. Heaven knows why the Daily Prophet chose her to be a reporter. Is it because she runs fast?" Black complained: "Whenever I want to shake her off, even though I think she's been gotten rid of by me, she always catches up. I don't even know what method she uses." Black sighed, holding his forehead.
"Rita Skeeter?" Hermione asked tentatively, weakly.
"Yes, it's her. I've also seen reports about you. This woman is really too good at fabricating things. I don't think she should be a reporter. That kind of fantasist is her destiny." Speaking of this, Black slammed his fist on his thigh, obviously deeply poisoned by her.
"To be able to force you to this point, she's really quite amazing in a sense." Lupin was now trying his best not to laugh, and said pretentiously seriously.
"When I face other reporters, I can still recite the boring drafts given by the Ministry of Magic, at most just talking about what the prison benefits of Azkaban are. The devil knows where there are any benefits, and there's also the issue of overturning wrongful convictions, which should be aimed at my previous wrongful conviction, but this woman is completely an anomaly. She never asks those questions." At this time, Black showed an extremely disgusted expression again, as if just mentioning it was a torment to him.
"Mind telling us?" Lupin's mouth twitched, asking with "malice", which was the banter between good friends.
"Azkaban's Redemption: Sirius Black's Long Years in Prison, Incestuous Love: Cousins Become Prisoners at the Same Time, Is This a Twisted Romance Behind a Wealthy Family?" "Black's Romantic Past: The Distorted Love History of the Last Man of the Black Family..." Sirius Black just handed Lupin a rolled-up parchment, and Lupin flattened it out, and saw that it was full of this type of title.
"This woman asked me to give her exclusive authorization to let her write these broken things." Black said unhappily. "Of course, I suspect that woman's pen. Even if I don't authorize it, she will definitely not let go of the opportunity to spread rumors. That gossip!"
"Uh... okay," Lupin said, "I can suddenly understand you now."
"Me too," Ron said, looking at the man with sympathy.
"Me too," Harry said, raising his hand.
"Don't mention that awful crazy woman again." Black clicked his tongue, turned his gaze to Lupin, and then asked, "Tell me about you, Remus, how's work lately? Looks like you're tutoring these three little ones."
As soon as he asked this question, Black noticed that the atmosphere had clearly changed.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione's faces immediately fell, but Lupin's expression didn't change much.
"What happened?" Black asked.
Then Hermione quickly explained the course of events to Black.
"That kid, I knew he was no good." Black said resentfully, clenching his fists, the veins on his fists bulging, his eyes seeming to hold a spark of ignited fire, making Hermione suspect that this somewhat irritable man might roll up his sleeves at any moment to find Malfoy and give him a good beating.
"He's also stating facts, Sirius, don't you dare lay a hand on my student, I don't want to see you go to Azkaban again." Lupin said urgently, seeing Sirius's emotions rising.
"Alright." Black looked at the resolute Lupin, sighed helplessly, and then said, "You still have that old softie personality, it's really easy to suffer losses that way."
"I'm used to it." Lupin said with a smile.
"Huff." Black exhaled, was silent for a moment, and then said to Harry, "Let's not talk about annoying things, people should know how to enjoy themselves in time. Speaking of Lupin's identity, I remembered what we did back then. Harry, would you like to hear about our stories with your dad?"
"Of course." Harry nodded repeatedly, his eyes suddenly gleaming when he heard about his parents.
"Right, I have to say, you are as excellent as your father. If you were to keep your distance from Remus after finding out he's a werewolf, I would have given you a good beating on behalf of your father." Black said this first, before preparing to tell the story of the four Marauders back then.
"Let me tell it, Sirius, your storytelling skills aren't very good." Lupin said softly, then asked Harry, "Do you still remember the Whomping Willow?"
"Of course." Harry nodded quickly, he still remembered that his Nimbus 2000 was damaged because of the Whomping Willow.
"That Whomping Willow was planted after I entered the school." Lupin said, his eyes full of reminiscence.
"You all know that I was bitten when I was young. My parents tried many ways to heal me and restore me, but there was no way."
"But Dumbledore didn't give up on any student who could be saved. He did a lot for me. The Shrieking Shack has never actually been haunted, it was all the commotion I made when I transformed on the night of the full moon. He encouraged the villagers to spread rumors."
"At the same time, I also made some of the best friends in my life, Sirius Black... Peter Pettigrew... and your dad, Harry James Potter."
"At that time, I was very inferior. I was afraid that they would ignore me after they found out, but the act of disappearing once a month was too abnormal. I made up a lot of lies, and obviously, I was eventually exposed." Lupin said.
"I thought my friends would leave me at that time, but they didn't." Saying this, Lupin glanced at Black, and then continued in a nostalgic tone, "They didn't care whether I was a werewolf or not, they only recognized me as their friend, that was enough. In order to make me seem less odd, they even learned Animagus, so that I wouldn't seem so strange in the four-person group."
"Was my dad too?" Harry asked.
"Of course, that's right." Lupin replied.
"I would rather have never learned it." Sirius Black said with a sneer at this time, but in a blink of an eye, his eyes were filled with regret and unwillingness.
"What's done is done, regretting it is useless, people are always often deceived by appearances, aren't they?" Lupin said consolingly.
He could understand Black's meaning. Black was not regretting being friends with him, but was sighing why even Peter Pettigrew had learned Animagus, which strengthened his means of escape.
"That idiot, without me and James, he wouldn't have learned it even if he groped for a hundred years! It would have been cleaner if he had died from Qi Deviation back then." Sirius Black cursed.
Lupin didn't know how to appease Sirius, so he could only continue, "Several of us often went on adventures together, explored the entire Hogwarts, and also drew a map, but it was confiscated before graduation, otherwise I could have left it as a souvenir for you, Harry."
"Stop, Remus." Black said, mentioning the Marauder's Map, which made Black think of other things again.
What Malfoy had done at that time puzzled him immensely. He didn't know what that boy of Harry's age wanted to do, to catch himself? And then let Peter Pettigrew become a hero?
Then why did Moody help them later?
He couldn't ask about all these puzzles, he could only bury them in his heart.
The piece of paper that he signed his name on at the Ministry of Magic was enchanted. After he signed it, he could no longer mention the past after he was locked in the cage in any way.
But there is no doubt that Black's impression of his cheap nephew is definitely not good, especially since he learned today that Malfoy had caused Lupin to have to resign.
"Let me interject, you should have less contact with that Draco Malfoy in the future, this is my advice." Black thought for a while, and then said this.
"I don't want you to teach my students to hate each other." Lupin hurriedly stopped Black from continuing.
"You won't be their teacher soon, Remus." Black stung Lupin.
"In my eyes, he will always be Professor Lupin, my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher." Hermione said quickly, but Black was choked again.
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