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“Let me in,” he demanded.
The Fat Lady crossed her arms, glaring at him. “Not without the password,” she retorted, firm.
“I said let me in!” yelled the man, grabbing the frame so tight that his knuckles whitened in the useless attempt to rip it out of the wall.
“I won’t move,” said the Fat Lady with fierceness, but she shirked in horror and fled when the sharp blade of a pocket knife plunged into her canvas, tearing it apart, slashing it into strips that littered the floor.
Sirius walked through the portrait hole and emerged in a wide, deserted room. Comfy armchair and red sofas surrounded the hearth, where a crackling fire had been lit to warm up the air.
He reached the couch before the mantlepiece to run a hand on the ruby fabric, and the rage that had washed over in him faded away while the ache in his chest swelled, cutting his breath off. He fell on his knees, his eyes shut to bite back the tears, his hands clenched on the pillow where James had sat so many times, laughing and grinning and living.
Sirius startled when something brushed his fingers, and he found himself staring at the ginger cat that had become his only friend. It was hard to ignore the vice grip seizing his heart, but Sirius forced himself to get up, chasing away the insane yearn of clinging to that pillow forever.
Finding Peter had to come first – Harry had to come first, and ensuring he was safe was the only way he had to honor James’ and Lily’s sacrifice and trust.
“Where is he?” he asked to the grumpy cat, his voice hoarse.
The cat meowed in disappointment, looking insistently at the portrait hole. Sirius swore and kicked an armchair, painfully aware that his chance to catch Peter had probably just gone to hell. Who the fuck would bring a rat to the Halloween feast?
“Show me where he stays,” he said through gritted teeth.
The cat looked at him with a cold stare, probably offended by his rude manner, but eventually he moved towards the boys’ dorms, his tail held straight in the air.
Sirius followed him along the spiral staircase, but stopped in his track when he walked before the door of his old dorm.
Ignoring the annoyed meowing coming from the floor above, Sirius took a deep breath and grabbed the handle, opening the door.
As the common room, the dorm was virtually identical, even if there were two beds more than he was used to. Where Sirius had hung motionless posters of muggle women and motorcycles, somebody had put pictures of his favorite Quidditch team, and a bunch of shoes were throw in the corner where James’ silver broom holder once stood, but the beds were still four-poster, the curtains still red, the trunks still placed at the foot of the beds.
Sirius’ gaze wandered on the floor, looking for the spot that had hidden their secret for so long.
He had once mocked James for wanting it to be accessible without a wand – “We should be able to access it in our Animagus form too!”, he had claimed – but now Sirius felt deeply grateful for James’ imaginative mind. He kneeled and put a hand on the intersection between the four tiles. I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.
An instant later the tiles disappeared.
The four footprints they had imprinted on the concrete where still there, all different from each other, all real except for the one of the werewolf that had required a certain amount of magic to be faithfully reproduced.
Sirius ran his fingers upon it, then moved slowly to Prongs’, tracing with his fingertips the only hoof-shaped footprint of the lot.
Twelve years since the day he had found James’ and Lily’s corpse, and it still hurt like it was yesterday.
Finally, Padfoot let the tears flow, and for an insane moment he hoped Moony would come to cry with him.
***
Remus kept staring at the torn canvas of the Fat Lady while the Gryffindor students were lead back to the Great Hall. His heart was pounding, Peeves’ words echoing in is head. Nasty temper he’s got, that Sirius Black.
It was Dumbledore to shake him from his stupor.
“Severus, I need you to gather all the Slytherins in the Great Hall, if you please,” said the Headmaster. Snape sent Remus a suspicious glare, but eventually nodded and stepped away.
“Remus,” resumed Dumbledore, “I have to speak with the students and the other Head of Houses, since Minerva is looking for the Fat Lady. Can I ask you to start searching for Black in the Gryffindor Tower?”
“Of course,” said Remus, his voice a bit hoarse.
“Very well, then. Start from here and then check wherever you find more suitable. After all, you are the one to know him better.”
Or so I believed, thought Remus, but nodded nonetheless.
He entered the common room holding his wand high in front of him. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but he was still surprised to find it exactly as he remembered it, and with nothing amiss. A deep wave of aching nostalgia washed over him. A lump formed in his throat when memories of the days spent at Hogwarts with his friends overcame him, but nothing could bring back what Sirius had so painstakingly managed to tear apart.
Remus swallowed, trying to shove those thoughts aside. He needed to focus. He needed to find him. “Homenum revelio.”
Nothing happened, and for a fleeting moment Remus wondered if that spell would have worked if Sirius was in his Animagus form, but he whisked the thought away. It couldn’t have been so simple to get in, that couldn’t be it – Sirius must have used some complex Dark Arts, probably something that Voldemort himself had taught him.
The thought made Remus realise that Sirius might know a way to avoid being detected by that spell, so he took a deep breath and begun thoroughly searching the room.
When he was confident that Sirius wasn’t there, Remus walked towards the boys’ staircase. He was confident that had been Sirius’ destination, since Harry slept there, and anyway, the Marauders had never discovered how to bypass the girls’ dorm wards. Even in the improbable case that Voldemort had told Sirius how to enter there, Remus couldn’t see why he would have.
He searched for Sirius dorm by dorm, using the Hominum Revelio spell again before entering and double-checking with his eyes, looking under the beds, behind the curtains, in the loos.
When only a flight of steps separated him from his old dorm, Remus took a deep breath and then kept going. His heart skipped a beat when he saw that the door was open unlike all the rest, and when Remus finally stood before it, blood pumped fast in his veins, because it was impossible to miss the spot on the floor where the tiles were missing, showing four footprints impressed on the concrete.
Sirius had been there. He had been close, so close, and Remus couldn’t believe that he had missed him, that the traitor had dared coming in their dorm and uncovering their footprints.
Sirius must have fled after hearing the students coming back from the feast, assumed Remus, because otherwise he couldn’t explain why Sirius had left their secret exposed like that, for everybody to see – not that the fact Sirius was an Animagus could explain how he had got inside Hogwarts or out of Azkaban.
Unless… unless he had left it open for Remus… to remind him how much Black had taken for him, the same night of twelve years ago…
Of one thing Remus was sure, though – he couldn’t afford to let other people find out. He entered in the room, his gaze fixed on the floor to prevent other memories to overwhelm him.
He kneeled down, running his fingers upon Prongs’ and Wormtail’s footprints.
Mischief Managed, he thought, letting a single tear dropping on the floor.