fatal love

chapter 182

Get to Hogwarts. Find Peter, find the rat, protect Harry. Wouldn't fail again, couldn't. Kill Peter, finally get revenge. What happened next didn't matter. Save Harry, kill Peter.

He hid in the Shack. No one disturbed him, apart from the cat. It sniffed him out, knew he wasn't a dog. Clever cat. Not bad company, better than Dementors. So hard, he didn't want to wait.

He was desperate. He'd waited so long. Now it was time.

But no. Couldn't be stupid, couldn't get caught. Not yet. After he'd found Pettigrew. So wait. Bide his time. Eat rabbits in the forest, bring so rats back for the cat.

Ha. Rats. Not the right rat, though. But practice, practice was good.

Twelve years exactly. Twelve years to the day since he lost Lily, lost James, since he sentenced Harry to the life of an orphan.

He couldn't go back and change everything, but he could get justice. Revenge. He was fed up of waiting. Wormtail had avoided punishment long enough. Who gave a shit about consequences? Not him. Twelve years.

Should never have happened. Wormtail had to pay.

Decisively, he opened the trap door and padded through the old passageway as a dog. Onwards, get to Hogwarts, find Wormtail.

He popped out at the base of the Whomping Willow, and crept across the grounds as secretively as he could. Couldn't get caught yet. Not yet. After he'd found the rat.

When he entered the castle, he heard the loud hum of chatter coming from the Great Hall. Good. Gave him time - he didn't want to be interrupted.

Recklessly assuming everyone would be at the feast, he ran through the hallways and up the stairs at full pace, remembering the way to Gryffindor Tower as if through muscle memory. He turned back to human form just before the last corner, approaching the Fat Lady as a human.

She shrieked as soon as she laid eyes on him, an ear-splitting scream that made Sirius scream.

"Shut up!" he barked, though his voice was hoarse from disuse, scratchy and croaking. "Let me through!"

"S- Sirius Black!" she stuttered, pointing a panicked finger at him. "You're here!"

He grinned at her, but it felt weird, like he'd forgotten how to do it properly. "I am. So let me in."

"No! Never!"

"LET ME THROUGH YOU STUPID BITCH!"

She gasped dramatically, and Sirius rolled his eyes.

"I heard what you did to your friends!" she told him. "I know who you are!"

Sirius whipped his knife out, pointing it at her threateningly.

"I'm a Gryffindor, you have to let me through."

The Fat Lady smiled triumphantly. "Not without the password I don't."

Sirius growled, practically trembling with rage.

"I always knew you were bad news," she continued. "Much preferred your friends, especially the Pettigrew boy, always the most polite. But you killed him, didn't you?"

Sirius snapped, roaring - how dare she, mentioning that rat, that rat, that killer, James and Lily dead, his fault, she was laughing at him - and plunged the knife forward, slashing through the portrait. Again and again and again.

It wasn't until the screams had faded into the distance, and he realised that he was attacking an empty painting, that the fog over his head began to clear. Not completely, never completely, but enough to think.