The Ministry of Magic would never readily admit it had made a mistake. That was exactly the sort of thing the Ministry under Cornelius Fudge loved most.
Without decisive evidence, they would much rather double down, keep treating that damned Peter Pettigrew as a hero, and nail the blame onto Sirius for good.
Sirius had no doubt the Ministry would do exactly that. They had always been like this.
"So all we need to do is find a way to catch Peter Pettigrew, right?" Tonks said. "What evidence could be stronger than the supposedly dead man himself turning up alive?"
Tonks was excited. She felt as though she had stumbled into something that could change her entire career.
A trainee Auror happens upon a wrongly accused innocent man, clears a true hero's name, and reveals the truth to the world. It sounded like the stuff of legend.
Just as she was happily imagining herself becoming a full Auror and soaring straight to the peak of her life because of this, Lupin and Sirius both looked at her as though she were an idiot.
Who did not know that everything would be solved if they could catch Peter Pettigrew?
The problem was that they could not catch him. They had no idea where that damned rat had run off to.
He had hidden himself for a full thirteen years. Who knew where he was now?
"Oh, right. That raven told me one more thing," Sirius said, suddenly remembering. "He told me to go see someone, said that person would help me. I went to see him once before, and he immediately told me you were in danger and sent me to save you."
"Another person? And who is this stranger supposed to be?" Lupin said, already feeling a headache coming on.
"You should know him. He's a Hogwarts student," Sirius said. "He's..."
Suddenly, a dull thud rang out inside the Shrieking Shack, which until then had held nothing but the sound of their voices.
Sirius cut himself off and, together with Lupin, looked toward the depths of the Shack.
Deliberately muffled footsteps came from the dark interior, but in a place as run-down as this, they still inevitably produced the creak of old floorboards underfoot.
"Is... is someone in there?" Tonks panicked so visibly it showed on her face. The first thing that came to mind was all the terrifying legends about the Shrieking Shack.
She turned to Lupin for help, only to realize that somehow both he and Sirius had already vanished.
Gone?
All kinds of horror scenarios rushed into her mind, and before Tonks could scream, she heard Lupin whisper, "Hide, quickly!"
She turned around and saw that Lupin and Sirius were already hidden beneath a loose section of floorboards. Lupin stuck his head out and beckoned to her.
Tonks hurried over and squeezed inside, then asked in astonishment, "Why are you two so good at this?"
"Practice," Sirius muttered vaguely.
It was not as though they could tell her that back in their student days, they used to spend entire nights running wild through the Shrieking Shack, howling like ghosts and playing hide-and-seek.
"Practice? You two..." Tonks had just started to press the matter when Lupin hissed softly, "Quiet. Someone's coming."
Tonks immediately shut her mouth and, together with Lupin, peered through the crack in the floor toward the depths of the Shrieking Shack.
The footsteps kept moving about in the back of the Shack, going from one side to the other as though searching for something.
Lupin and Sirius exchanged a look. Sirius mouthed, "secret passage."
They had been keeping watch the entire time, so there was no way someone could have walked into the Shrieking Shack without making a sound. That meant this person had obviously come through the secret passage.
Apparition was out of the question. The inside of the Shrieking Shack was too complicated. Even Lupin and Sirius, who knew the place well, would not have dared set their destination here.
But that was exactly the problem. Very few people knew about the passage. Even among the Hogwarts professors, scarcely anyone did. And with the Whomping Willow guarding the entrance, it was basically impossible for anyone else to know the secret way in.
So who had come here through the passage?
The footsteps drew closer from the depths. Lupin could even make out a pair of shoes approaching.
Whoever it was seemed to be about to leave the Shrieking Shack.
Sirius and Lupin exchanged a brief glance, then the instant those shoes reached them, they both struck at once and grabbed for the person's calves.
No matter who this was, where they had come from, or why they were in the Shrieking Shack, the first step was to subdue them. Questions could come later.
But they grabbed nothing.
The pair of shoes in front of them suddenly vanished, only to reappear two meters away in the next instant.
Sirius and Lupin slammed to the floor, and before they could react, they felt a dizzying surge of magic catch hold of their bodies and haul them up into the air.
"Ugh... damn Levitation Charm." Sirius gagged and nearly threw up.
Using the Levitation Charm directly on a human body caused extreme discomfort. That was why no wizard used it as flight magic to make themselves fly.
Lupin handled it a little better. A Werewolf's physique gave him abundant stamina and fairly strong resistance to magic, so he managed to see clearly the face of the person in front of him, the one who had lifted them with the Levitation Charm.
And that face shocked him.
"Leonard William?" Lupin exclaimed.
"Oh, so it's Professor Lupin. And..." Leonard glanced at Sirius beside him, then back at Lupin, looking rather meaningful. "This wanted criminal as well."
Sirius forced his head up to take one look at Leonard, then went, "Ugh," and vomited.
Leonard: ...
Throwing up the moment you met him was a bit much, was it not?
Tonks, who was still hidden beneath the floorboards and had escaped disaster only because she had frozen and failed to dart out in time, panicked.
Her two teammates had been far too reckless. Now both of them had been caught in one go.
It sounded as though this newly appeared stranger knew Lupin, but Sirius Black, standing right beside him, was a wanted criminal worth ten thousand Galleons.
Ten thousand Galleons. That was enough money to turn father against son.
She absolutely could not let this person take Sirius away. This was her chance to skip straight past probation and become a full Auror in one leap.
Tonks pulled out her wand. She felt she had the advantage. That man was out in the open, while she was hidden in the dark. One of her seniors had once told her that in a duel between wizards, the one who struck first held the absolute advantage.
She could definitely take him down.
Tonks's heart hammered like a drum. Tonks felt her advantage was overwhelming. Tonks flung up the floorboards and charged out.
"Stupefy!"
The red spell hit its target squarely in the chest, and a triumphant smile instantly spread across Tonks's face.
In the very next second, a faint silver light burst from Leonard's body, and the Stunning Spell bounced straight back the way it had come like a rubber ball.
Before Tonks's triumphant smile could even fade, the rebounding Stunning Spell struck her right between the eyebrows.
With that smile still frozen on her face, Tonks collapsed unconscious on the spot.