"Until your name is cleared, wizard, you are not allowed to do anything that reckless."
Will did not budge.
"Cleared?"
Sirius repeated the word as though it belonged to some foreign language.
"You know better than anyone that the truth and what most people believe are not the same thing. My master just happens to be one of the very few who always knows the truth."
Will lifted his sharp little green face proudly.
"What exactly… do you know?"
Sirius pressed his ear to the wall and studied the small Pukwudgie butler with absolute seriousness.
"What you know, what you don't know—my master knows it all."
Will said it lazily.
Sirius pressed his lips together and said nothing, but his mind was in turmoil.
Ever since his identity had been exposed, he had been dimly aware that something about them was deeply unusual, and he had been building vague guesses ever since.
Now those guesses seemed to be hardening into certainty.
He had appeared in his Animagus form. Who could possibly know he was an Animagus?
And the people who did know—his friends and his enemies—how would they ever have passed that information on?
Now even that—the thing he had hidden most deeply, the thing almost no one knew—had been dragged out into the light.
The moment the word cleared was spoken, he felt as if he were standing there stripped bare, seized by a sudden confusion and overwhelming dread.
"How is that possible… how do you know…"
Sirius's voice came out hoarse.
"Wizard, my master possesses a kind of magic you can't even imagine."
Will said.
"That's impossible!"
Sirius sounded half-crazed now, forcing the words out of his throat.
"That rat could never have told you! And apart from him, everyone who knew is…"
"Dead,"
Will said matter-of-factly.
"How would you—"
Sirius went blank.
"Read more newspapers, wizard."
Will ignored his confusion and shoved a paper into his hands.
Then he picked up a book with a mist-covered design on the front—Dream Stories—and started reading.
Sirius snapped out of it a few seconds later. He looked at the shy face in the newspaper photo, then at the shining headline—Dreams and Gods—and something clicked in his mind.
A guess he had only just begun to accept, one he hadn't even known how to voice, suddenly forced its way to the surface from an angle he could never have imagined.
"Can I see your master?"
Sirius asked, his voice raw.
"Mr. Pukwudgie?"
Will seemed to think it over.
"Wizard, you've got nerve. I'll pass it on."
Then Room 10 fell silent.
The only sound left was Sirius rapidly turning pages and skimming through newspapers.
At the same time, in Room 11, Sean was getting ready to leave.
"Sean, what you said…"
Harry followed him to the door.
"Yes, Harry. He won't hurt you. But you still need to be careful."
After saying that seriously, Sean closed the door.
The Leaky Cauldron was quiet. Every so often, one of the drunks slumped over on the tables let out a snoring grunt.
Sean crossed the carpeted floor and watched Room 10's door swing open on its own. He let out a soft sigh and stepped inside.
"Mr. Black."
Sean said.
"Mr… Green."
Sirius hadn't spoken to anyone properly in a very long time. His voice sounded strange and rough.
"Are you an Animagus?"
Sirius hid the newspapers behind his back. The tremor in his wrist made it obvious how unsettled he was.
Under Sirius's unrelenting stare, the young wizard slowly nodded.
"Ah… an unregistered Animagus…"
Sirius looked briefly nostalgic. Then, as if remembering something, his face twisted with hatred before settling into deep, unmistakable respect when he looked at Sean again.
"You'd better keep that secret, wizard,"
Will warned.
"Secret?"
Sirius laughed.
"What secrets could any wizard possibly have in front of you? Unless they don't dream, and don't have dead…"
Suddenly Sirius lunged forward and crowded right up against Sean.
"You… you, we used to read that book. We all thought it was hypothetical—some magic that only existed in legend…
But if it's real… no, it has to be real—then you, you… they… do they hate me? I ruined everything. It was me. I destroyed everything. I'm the guilty one. I should be in Azkaban. That's the price I deserve…
But them—do they hate me?"
Sean fell silent. He said nothing, only lifted a finger and guided a kettle to pour three steaming cups of pumpkin juice.
Sirius seemed to realize belatedly that he had become far too emotional. He quickly sat down, his gaunt body nearly collapsing into the chair.
"The people who love us—do they really leave us? Or is it that when we face hardship, we remember them more vividly than ever?
The people who love us, and the people we love—do they really hate us? Or do they live on inside us, becoming part of us, while in truth it is only ourselves we hate?"
Sean spoke slowly and quietly, levitating a cup of pumpkin juice into Sirius's hands.
Sirius looked at him dazedly. As the warmth of the pumpkin juice slid down his throat, a flood of old memories broke loose in his mind.
The lights of Diagon Alley dimmed until only the Leaky Cauldron's windows still glowed with soft golden light.
Sirius sat there frozen for a very long time, not moving at all, until the once-steaming pumpkin juice gradually went cold, until the first crow of a rooster called in the new day.
Sean had left long before that, but he did not return to Hogwarts immediately.
According to his plan, he had already won Sirius's basic trust. The next step had been to help Sirius with a few tasks that wouldn't be too difficult, after which entering Grimmauld Place would have been easy.
But that was no longer necessary.
Sean looked at a box placed far off to one side. Inside it was perhaps the most evil wizarding object of all—a Horcrux made by Voldemort: Slytherin's locket.
The very first time Will had entered the Black house, the Pukwudgie butler had already found it and quietly brought it out.
During the next few days, while Sean stayed in Diagon Alley working on his spell-reshaping research, he would sometimes catch sight of Sirius lurking guiltily on the Leaky Cauldron's balcony, watching Harry sit out in the bright sun in front of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, working on his homework.
Florean Fortescue himself would sometimes sit and chat with Harry with obvious enthusiasm.
The wizard not only knew a great deal about medieval witch burnings, but also gave Harry a free ice cream every half hour.
Whenever that happened, the gaunt, gloomy man on the balcony would grip the railing so hard he looked on the verge of crushing it.
To stop him from leaping off the balcony outright, Will watched him without relaxing for even a second.
~~~
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