They climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and stepped into the ground-floor room of the Shrieking Shack, wands raised and hearts hammering.
Dust hung thick in the air.
The floorboards creaked under their weight.
From the room ahead came voices — one of them Ron’s, high and whining with pain.
Harry and Hermione exchanged one sharp look, then moved together.
Ron was slumped against the far wall, one leg twisted at an ugly angle.
He clutched Scabbers to his chest while the rat twisted and fought to escape.
Standing over him, pacing like a caged animal, was a man in rags.
His striped robes hung in filthy tatters.
Long, matted hair and an unkempt beard framed a face that was all sharp bones and hollow eyes.
He looked half-starved and half-mad.
In one hand he waved Ron’s wand like a conductor’s baton.
“—Wormtail, you filthy, snivelling traitor — after everything we did for you —”
Harry didn’t wait.
He stepped fully into the room and fired a Disarming Charm.
The wand flew from the man’s hand.
Harry caught it cleanly with his left and kept his own wand trained on the stranger.
The man — Sirius Black — spun toward them, then immediately lunged sideways and dragged Ron up as a shield, broken leg and all.
Ron cried out.
Black’s eyes were wild.
“I’m innocent!” he rasped.
“It wasn’t me — it was him — the rat — Wormtail —”
The next minutes were chaos and shouted accusations.
Black ranted about Godric’s Hollow, about the night Harry’s parents died, about betrayal and frames and twelve years in Azkaban.
Harry kept his wand steady even as the words hit like Bludgers.
Hermione’s was just as firm beside him.
Then the door behind them burst open again.
Remus Lupin stood there, wand raised, face pale with shock and fury.
He took one look at Black and his expression hardened into something dangerous.
Black met his gaze and pointed at the struggling rat in Ron’s arms.
“That’s not a rat, Moony.
That’s Peter Pettigrew.”
Lupin froze.
It took both of them — Black and Lupin working in grim tandem — to force the Animagus reversion.
The rat shrieked as its body stretched and twisted, fur melting into pale, trembling flesh.
Seconds later Peter Pettigrew knelt on the filthy floorboards, small, balding, and weeping.
“Harry — please — you wouldn’t hurt an old friend of your father’s —”
Snape arrived like a thunderclap.
He disarmed half the room in one furious sweep, black eyes glittering with triumph.
For a few terrible minutes it looked as though he would drag everyone back to the castle in chains.
Then the situation flipped again.
Wands were recovered.
Alliances shifted.
The strange, battered group began the long, limping journey back toward Hogwarts.
They never made it.
Halfway across the grounds Pettigrew saw his chance.
In the confusion he transformed again and vanished into the dark.
Lupin gave chase without a word.
Hermione levitated Ron and sprinted for the castle with him.
Harry turned the other way and ran after the only family he had left.
He found Sirius at the edge of the Black Lake.
The Dementors came out of the mist like a tide.
This was the third time they had come for him that year.
The cold hit harder than before.
Harry’s legs gave out.
Sirius was already on his knees, head bowed, the last of his strength draining away.
The creatures swarmed.
One lowered itself over Sirius, hood gaping, ready to feed.
Harry tried to raise his wand.
His fingers wouldn’t obey.
The world was turning gray.
Then light — blinding, silver, and vast — exploded across the lake.
A stag.
Enormous.
Majestic.
It charged through the Dementors and scattered them like smoke.
Harry had just enough time to think, Dad?
before darkness took him.
He woke in the hospital wing to the worst possible news.
Sirius was locked in Professor Flitwick’s office.
Minister Fudge had already summoned Dementors for the Kiss.
Harry and Hermione tried to explain.
They told Fudge everything — Pettigrew alive, Sirius innocent, the truth about that night in Godric’s Hollow.
Fudge’s face grew redder with every word.
“Confounded,” he snapped.
“Both of you.
Clearly.
I won’t hear another word of this nonsense.”
He stormed out.
Dumbledore lingered just long enough to give them a cryptic hint about a Time-Turner and how many turns would be needed.
Then he left.
Hermione pulled the chain from under her robes, looped it over both their heads, and spun the hourglass three times.
The world blurred.
They freed Buckbeak first — the hippogriff was still tied near Hagrid’s hut, awaiting execution.
They hid him deep in the Forbidden Forest.
Then they waited near the Whomping Willow, watching their younger selves emerge from the tunnel.
When Pettigrew made his escape the second time, they were ready.
They never caught him.
He reached the edge of the wards and Apparated away before they could close the distance.
But they did save Sirius.
With Buckbeak’s help they reached the window of Flitwick’s office.
Sirius climbed onto the hippogriff’s back, pale and shaking but alive.
He looked at Harry for a long moment — something fierce and grateful in his eyes — then dropped the two of them safely onto the Astronomy Tower before wheeling away into the night.
They made it back to the hospital wing just as Dumbledore was locking the door behind them.
In the Wizengamot chamber the memory faded.
Memory-Harry stood once more in the centre of the floor, gaze steady on the rows of witches and wizards watching him.
“You may be thinking Hermione and I broke the law by helping an escaped convict,” he said quietly.
“You would be wrong.”
He let the silence stretch.
“Sirius Black was never convicted of any crime.
He was never given a trial.
The law is clear: a person arrested must be tried within one month.
After thirty days without a trial, continued detention becomes illegal.
At that point the Ministry was no longer holding a prisoner.
They were holding a kidnap victim.
Sirius Black did what any kidnap victim is legally entitled — even encouraged — to do.
He escaped.”
Memory-Harry’s voice hardened.
“On the second occasion we simply helped him finish what he had already started.
We broke no law.
The Ministry broke the law the day they threw him into Azkaban without a trial and left him there for twelve years.”
In the VIP box Albus Dumbledore sat very still, eyes closed.
Amelia Bones was already writing notes with sharp, decisive strokes.
Cornelius Fudge looked as though he might be sick.
The boy had just dismantled another pillar of the Ministry’s authority in front of the entire Wizengamot.
And from the look on his face, he was nowhere near finished.