Unlike in the original timeline, Harry did manage to get his aunt and uncle's signatures, so he was allowed to go to Hogsmeade.
And this time, he wasn't going alone.
He'd invited Professor Lupin to come with him to the Hog's Head Inn.
Strictly speaking, though, the invitation wasn't Harry's idea at all—it was Sirius's.
After his name was cleared, Sirius had gone back home to rest and reorganize his life. During that time, he kept in steady contact with Harry.
When Sirius learned that Lupin was now teaching at Hogwarts, he asked Harry to help him arrange a meeting.
The two of them had once been close friends. But after Harry's parents died, their relationship had completely shattered.
To be precise, the cracks had started way back during the First Wizarding War—when the Order of the Phoenix fought Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Lupin had been sent by the Order to live among werewolves as an undercover agent. Most werewolves had sided with Voldemort back then.
Because of that, Sirius had begun to suspect that Lupin might be Voldemort's double agent.
As a result, Sirius had not included Lupin in the plan to protect Harry's family. That's why, on the night James and Lily were killed, Lupin—the fourth Marauder—was nowhere to be seen.
And because he'd been shut out of the plan, Lupin had never known the Secret-Keeper was switched to Peter Pettigrew. To this day, he still believed Sirius had betrayed them.
This meeting at the Hog's Head was Sirius's attempt to clear up that misunderstanding.
The Hog's Head was tucked at the corner of a little lane beside the Hogsmeade post office. A rotten wooden sign hung off a rusted bracket, bearing a severed boar's head wrapped in a white cloth stained through with old blood. Thanks to magic, the head still swung slowly from side to side.
Charming.
They stepped into the bar's ground floor and were immediately hit by dim light, stale air, and an overpowering stink of mutton fat.
The windows were so caked with grime that daylight barely seeped in.
The warped wooden tables were lit only by stubby candles—the bar's sole light source. Harry had thought the floor was packed earth until his foot scraped stone underneath layers of dirt. There was simply so much filth that the flagstones looked like a patch of dried mud.
Harry had no idea why Sirius had picked this place for a meeting.
He swept his gaze around the room and spotted Sirius's back in a shadowy corner.
He led Lupin over. The moment Lupin saw Sirius's face clearly, he went white and yanked out his wand.
Since the Ministry hadn't publicized anything, Lupin still had no idea that Sirius's name had been cleared.
"Professor, please—calm down!" Harry blurted, quickly stepping between them.
"Calm down?" Lupin snapped. "How am I supposed to calm down, Harry? He's the one who got your parents killed!"
"Professor Lupin, please, listen first. I know exactly what happened."
Harry hurriedly laid out the truth of that night, everything they'd unearthed in Dumbledore's office.
By the time he was done, Lupin slowly sank into his chair, wand hand lowering.
He hadn't expected the events of that year to be this tangled.
With Lupin finally sitting and breathing normally, Harry had a moment to greet Sirius properly.
"By the way, godfather… why did you pick this place to meet?" Harry asked, wrinkling his nose a little.
Sirius tipped back his glass and took a swallow of the Hog's Head's dubious "butterbeer," then asked in return,
"Doesn't Lupin's reaction just now answer your question?"
"What do you mean?" Harry still didn't get it.
"I may have been cleared on paper, but the Ministry never reported it publicly," Sirius said. "So most people still don't know. Every time someone recognizes me, they react just like Lupin did—wand out, ready to haul me in for the bounty."
Lupin rubbed his nose awkwardly. "I… apologize."
Sirius waved a hand. "No need to apologize to me. I'm the one who should be saying sorry. I actually suspected you were a double agent for Voldemort back then and cut you out of the Secret-Keeper plan."
He laughed at himself. "In the end I got played by the most inconspicuous person in our group—Peter Pettigrew—and ended up rotting in Azkaban. Honestly… I suppose that's my karma."
"Why didn't you tell anyone the truth back then?" Lupin couldn't help asking.
"James and Lily's deaths hit me hard," Sirius said quietly. "I went mad. All I could think about was killing Peter. When he faked his own death… I felt like I'd failed them completely. So when the Ministry grabbed me and threw me into Azkaban, I didn't resist. I thought I deserved it."
Lupin reached out and patted his shoulder.
He sighed. "It's all in the past. We're still alive, so we have to learn to look forward, don't we? Life goes on."
Hearing that, Sirius let out a long breath of relief. At least his old friend wasn't holding a grudge.
He even managed a rare, wry joke. "Coming from you, that's… unexpectedly optimistic."
Lupin chuckled and jabbed him lightly in the chest.
He knew exactly what Sirius meant.
Back when he was turned by Fenrir Greyback as a child, Lupin had basically had his entire life cut up and rearranged into one long series of tragedies.
And now the werewolf was the one telling Sirius Black to face life positively. No wonder Sirius found it bizarre.
With that bit of roughhousing, the knot between them finally began to loosen. Their conversation gradually slipped back into the rhythm of their school days.
They drank the Hog's Head's terrible yellow "butterbeer" and talked for a long time, swapping stories of mischief and chaos from their Hogwarts years.
Harry sat quietly beside them, listening with a smile he couldn't quite hold back.
Part of it was that he was genuinely happy to see the two of them reconcile.
The other part was that, in reminiscing, they inevitably spoke of his parents.
And any little scrap of information about James and Lily Potter was worth more than gold to Harry.
Eventually, without either of them really noticing, the topic drifted from the past… to Harry himself.
"Harry," Lupin said suddenly, "do you know why I stopped you from facing the Boggart the other day?"
Harry nodded. "I was wondering about that, actually."
"At first, I thought it would turn into Voldemort," Lupin said. "I didn't expect it to become a Dementor instead. A Boggart takes on part of the nature of whatever it transforms into. You hadn't yet learned the Patronus Charm—I was afraid you wouldn't be able to handle it."
"I thought it would be Voldemort too," Harry admitted. "But then, somehow, I suddenly remembered the Dementor on the train."
"That means the thing you fear most isn't any particular person or object," Lupin said. "It's fear itself. Harry… that's actually very impressive."
Harry thought for a moment, then said, "Right before I passed out on the train, I heard a voice. A woman screaming. I later looked into it—Dementors can drag up people's worst memories. I think that was my mum, screaming when she was killed."
At the mention of Lily, a flicker of nostalgia—and a faint, almost invisible sorrow—passed through Lupin's eyes.
He, too, had once had feelings for Lily. But he'd buried them deep, deep down.
He'd always known his life was nothing more than a tea table covered in tragedies; he didn't want to drag anyone else into that mess.
"Your mother was a very kind person," Lupin said quietly. "When everyone else shunned me, she was the one who reached out. She was good at seeing the beauty in others. Especially the kind of beauty that even they hadn't noticed in themselves."
Harry hesitated, then looked up.
"Professor… could you teach me the Patronus Charm?"
"Of course," Lupin said at once. "But why bring it up so suddenly?"
He genuinely didn't understand why Harry had dragged the conversation there.
"I don't want to hear my mother screaming again the next time I see a Dementor," Harry said firmly. "And I don't want to just pass out helplessly. I want a way to fight back."
"Good resolve," Lupin said, smiling. "I'll teach you the Patronus Charm. But there's no need to rush yourself. The Dementors have already been recalled by the Ministry—you won't be encountering them again any time soon. We can take it slow."
He thought for a moment, then added kindly,
"Whenever you have free time at school, come find me. If I'm not busy, I'm usually in my office. We'll practice then."
Lupin had no idea he'd just stuck a big, shiny flag in the ground.
Because not long after that, Harry would be seeing Dementors again.
A few days later, at lunchtime, Harry and Ron pushed open the doors of the Great Hall.
They'd just come from Divination. Arthur and the others hadn't chosen that class, so they were already at the Gryffindor table, halfway through their lunch.
"I still can't stop thinking about what Professor Trelawney said," Harry muttered as he sat down. "What do you reckon she meant?"
Ron waved a hand dismissively, shoveling food into his mouth.
"She's always like that, isn't she? Raving about this prophecy and that prophecy. You can't take it seriously."
After a few classes with Trelawney, even thick-headed Ron had started to notice her little bag of tricks.
If it weren't for the Divination homework being the easiest thing in the world—pure nonsense and freeform writing—he'd already be thinking about dropping the subject.
"But today… she seemed different," Harry insisted.
That caught Arthur's attention.
"Harry," Arthur said, glancing over, "can you repeat exactly what happened?"
Harry nodded. "She suddenly grabbed my shoulders, and she sounded… really strange. Like she wasn't quite herself. Then she said, bit by bit:
'The Dark Lord lies dormant in a shadowed forest, waiting for his faithful servant to return.
And his faithful servant will, before midnight tonight, break his chains and set forth to rejoin his master.
When servant and master reunite, the Dark Lord will rise again, more powerful and more terrible than ever before…'
"That's exactly what she said."
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