When the two teenagers fell into silence, the sun outside the window immediately dropped beyond the horizon.
The train stopped at the Hogwarts station platform.
Harry drifted out of the carriage in a daze, but he didn't go down onto the platform at all—he simply arrived directly in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory.
He was back. The familiar four-poster beds, ancient stone and brick, tapestries, desks, tea tables… and Ron, Neville, Dean Thomas, Seamus—those familiar faces.
"What's wrong with you?" Ron looked surprised. "You look… unhappy."
Harry shook his head and gave his friend a grateful look. Yes—he wasn't truly left with nothing. He still had friends.
"As long as you're okay, mate. Loads of weird stuff happened this Christmas. Snape and Malfoy didn't come back to school at all. Bet they're cooking up something nasty."
Harry's expression was strange. "Professor McGonagall?"
"She's fine, but she looks really busy. And I really don't like the lot from the Ministry—they brought Dementors in. They make everyone feel awful, but what can you do? Dumbledore's in hospital, and too many prisoners broke out of Azkaban. Especially that bloke called Sirius—absolutely terrifying."
"Is that so?" Harry let out a tired, indifferent laugh inside his chest.
His gaze drifted around the dorm and landed on Ron's pet rat, Scabbers. It looked seriously ill—patches of fur had fallen out, and it didn't even want to move.
"What's wrong with Scabbers?"
Ron let out an annoyed yelp. "Who knows! It looks completely knackered. Scabbers is an old, old rat. George says it might be about to die."
"I remember you saying it's been in your family for more than ten years. That's a really long-lived rat."
"Yeah. Poor Scabbers. I don't even dare take it out, because Hermione's cat is always trying to grab it."
"I'm sorry, Ron." The sympathy he felt wasn't just comfort for his friend—Harry himself felt a little better too. He realized he still had a conscience. He could still grieve for a friend's loss.
Maybe it wasn't all ruined. Maybe all he'd done was get rid of a few—
Lightning cracked through his mind. Harry forced himself not to remember what had happened early on the morning of December twenty-eighth. But his heart immediately dropped into an ice pit. Everything was rotten—why pretend otherwise? His family, his followers, his enemies, his parents' love… all of it had been destroyed by Fiendfyre and the Killing Curse.
The Harry of the past was, in truth, already dead.
Only Hogwarts was home now.
He couldn't lose Hogwarts too.
Harry lay down on his bed. The moment he closed his eyes, he sank into a nightmare.
In his sleep, those miserable, burning faces roared at him. The boy stood on a ground as cold as black iron, staring up at corpses falling from the sky like rain.
"Harry." Someone was calling him in a low voice, but Harry couldn't find where they were. Corpses were everywhere. Countless dead souls floated in the air. Wizards and witches in strange clothes—dying horribly—like the wizarding world had reached the end of days.
"Harry." The voice calling him grew clearer.
"Harry!"
He jolted awake.
The scene in front of him changed again. He was inside a ruined shack, and a gaunt man stood before him.
"Who are you?"
Harry looked around. It was the dead of night. New snow leaked in through broken doors and windows. Dust swirled in the air, and the cold cut to the bone.
The man in front of him looked pitiful—skin stretched tight over bone, like a dried corpse.
"I'm Sirius Black. Your father's friend." The man called Sirius held his face in a strained, unnatural tightness. "I escaped Azkaban to find you, Harry. I came to kill someone—but not you. They all think I'm Voldemort's dog, but that's not the truth! I'm going to find the real traitor."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Harry pressed a weary hand to his head.
"Harry! Look at me." Sirius grabbed his shoulders, his fingers like iron hooks. "Back then your parents went into hiding in Godric's Hollow to escape Voldemort. They put a charm on the house—the Fidelius Charm. That spell needs a Secret-Keeper. As long as the secret isn't betrayed, no one can find the protected house. At first they asked me to be the Secret-Keeper, but I didn't think it was safe, so I convinced them to switch to someone else."
Fidelius Charm? Secret-Keeper? Harry still couldn't untangle the logic.
His head hurt so badly he felt close to snapping.
"Let him go!" Ron's shout came from outside the shack, followed by a wordless spell—red light that slammed into Sirius and blasted him backward.
Ron and Hermione rushed in, throwing themselves in front of Harry. "You villain—get away! Don't you dare hurt Harry!"
"You're his friends?" Sirius didn't get angry. He actually looked pleased for Harry. "Harry, you've got good friends. I'll tell every one of you the truth. But before that…"
A ginger cat leapt into the shack's doorway, a rat clamped in its mouth.
Ron screamed, "Scabbers!"
Then Hermione screamed, "Crookshanks!"
Harry stared dumbly at the chaos in front of him. Hermione's cat had brought Ron's rat here. The sickly rat let out a shrill, miserable squeal.
Sirius suddenly attacked Ron and Hermione, using a Disarming Charm to knock both their wands out of their hands.
"Harry! Look closely—this isn't a rat. He's an Animagus. He's Peter Pettigrew! He's Voldemort's dog. He's the one who betrayed the secret and got your parents killed!"
Sirius pointed his wand at Scabbers. "Show yourself! Damn you—did you hear me?!"
Ron tried to lunge at Sirius and fight him bare-handed, but Crookshanks got in the way, blocking him.
Just then, loud shouting and commotion surged outside the shack. A crowd came running—Neville had notified the professors. With them came Ministry officials and Aurors, and a swarm of Dementors.
The new professor, Lupin, burst in first. Then Professor McGonagall. Then Professor Flitwick… the Minister for Magic, elite Aurors…
The shack was packed.
Merlin—there were too many to take in. Everyone was talking, everyone was worked up. Harry saw grief, rage, confusion, icy hostility. Mouths opening and closing, words pouring out—talking, talking, talking—like the noise was going to split his heart in two.
"Quiet," Harry groaned weakly.
No one caught it.
"I said, quiet."
The Minister for Magic shouted for order. Dementors drifted outside the windows. The arguing only got worse, the noise like people trying to tear the world apart with their voices.
"I said—QUIET!"
The roof of the shack exploded.
Because the boy called Harry casually lifted the Elder Wand in his hand.
Everyone fell silent as if their throats had been seized, unable to make a sound.
All the adults stared at the wand in Harry's hand.
"That is… the Elder Wand?" an Auror asked softly.
The Elder Wand said: yes.
And answered him with a Cruciatus Curse.
Everyone raised their wands and aimed them at Harry.
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