While Hermione's roommate was coming back in, Kate whispered a quick greeting to her, tucked the glass jar holding Peter under her arm, and slipped out of the Gryffindor Common Room.
"Professor! Professor!"
Buzzing with a strange excitement, she pounded on the door of the Headmaster's office, but no matter how long she waited, nobody came to answer.
Odd. It was fine if Dumbledore was out, but where was Sirius?
Don't tell me he was wandering all over the castle again.
Kate ground her teeth, flicked her wand, and a tangled mess of golden threads appeared before her eyes.
It was the most successful alchemical item she'd made since she started studying Alchemy: simple, handy, and it combined tracking with binding.
Once buried in the walls of Hogwarts castle, it could trace the movements of anyone wearing the matching piece.
The metal nameplate she'd given Sirius last time was that matching piece.
As long as he never took it off, she could find him anywhere within Hogwarts by following the thread.
Picking out of the jumble a single strand that stretched beyond the castle, Kate frowned.
Why had he gone outside?
Judging by the direction the thread ran, though, he was heading for the Forbidden Forest.
The Forbidden Forest...
Something occurred to her, and her face changed. She was about to dash out after him, but the jar in her arms held her back.
After a moment's thought, she pulled another length of golden thread from the wall and wrapped the lid and the jar up snugly. Only then did she jump straight off the tower.
Hovering lightly a meter above the ground with the help of a Levitation Charm, Kate felt the ominous premonition in her chest grow stronger. A flick of her wand, and the bluebell flames blazed at full power, carrying her at breakneck speed toward the Forbidden Forest.
The Dementors floating in the sky spotted her from far away and scattered, giving her a wide berth.
Living things have an instinct for seeking good fortune and avoiding disaster. By now the Dementors were terrified of this she-devil, who not only wanted to eat them but wanted to experiment on them too.
This time, though, she hadn't come to experiment. With those nuisances out of the way, it took only a few minutes to reach the edge of the forest, a spot almost nobody ever visited.
Amid the quiet, dense woods, the green undergrowth had been trampled into a winding path.
And at the end of that path, a hulking armored warrior had been buried in the earth, with only half its body showing.
Kate didn't even stop to catch her breath. She glanced around, then barked, "Come out! I can already see you!"
A large ginger cat bounded out from the thick grass and bushes and rubbed affectionately against her trouser leg.
She ignored it for the moment, her eyes fixed on the spot Crookshanks had come from. "I'll say it again. Come out."
After a while, a gaunt man slowly stepped out from behind a huge tree trunk.
"So this is your secret, Shafiq!" Sirius grinned smugly.
When Delar and the others had found the armored warrior, Sirius, who'd been hiding on the eighth floor, had been secretly watching that tall, hulking suit of armor too.
So after David and Kate left the eighth floor, he'd taken Crookshanks along and tailed the armored warrior in secret, following the direction it had fled, all the way here.
What he hadn't expected was that Kate knew where the armored warrior was hidden as well.
That could mean only one thing: she knew who, or what, the armored warrior really was.
In all the time they'd known each other, this was the first time he'd caught this little Slytherin witch out, and Sirius felt a thrill of excitement.
Now that he had a secret on her, this little witch could never trick him again!
Kate glanced at the cat still rubbing against her ankle, sighed inwardly, and bent down to pick it up. "I came looking for Crookshanks."
"Liar!" Sirius glared at her, his expression a little manic. "Shafiq, that thing is your accomplice, isn't it? Tell me, where's the person controlling the warrior right now!"
Kate regarded him calmly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Sirius wrinkled his nose in displeasure, glanced at the armor in the dirt, and strode toward her.
"What exactly did you put that thing in Hogwarts for? Are you planning to hurt Harry? Or have you got some other scheme? Tell me!"
He was only a few steps away now, but Kate just stood there holding the cat, in no hurry at all.
Right at the instant Sirius's hand was about to touch her—
The ground began to tremble faintly beneath his feet. Alarmed, Sirius barely managed to steady himself, then looked back and saw that the warrior, so quietly buried in the earth a moment ago, was slowly rising to its feet.
A flash of white light gleamed in the gap of its helmet, and its movements abruptly quickened, becoming as nimble as if someone were living inside it.
"I told you," Kate said, watching him coolly, "this warrior has nothing to do with me."
The words were barely out of her mouth when the armored warrior shot out a hand, clamped it around Sirius's neck, and dragged him backward.
"Let go of me!" He struggled with all his might, but a wizard without a wand is, for the most part, as feeble as an ordinary person.
Especially someone like Sirius, who'd been tortured in prison until his body was nearly spent.
The armored warrior lifted him off the ground with ease and then went still for the time being.
Kate strolled over to stand beneath him, her eyes curving into a smile. "See? If you didn't know so much, you wouldn't be in mortal danger."
She set Crookshanks down, took her wand out of her pocket, and was just about to point it at Sirius—
"Expelliarmus!"
A flash of red light knocked the wand out of her hand and sent it stabbing into the soil nearby.
Kate tilted her head, then turned around without any hurry and smiled at the person who'd been hiding behind a tree. "I knew you'd come, Professor Lupin."
At least half an hour had passed since she'd set up the armored warrior, and there was no way Sirius had just waited here doing nothing all that time.
He had no wand, and he wanted to test the armored warrior, so the only thing he could do was call Lupin over to help.
So she'd guessed long ago that Lupin would come. She had only wanted to lure him into making a move.
Sure enough, Lupin stepped out from behind the tree with a grim face, a trace of disbelief in his eyes. "I always thought you were a good child, Kate."
"Aren't I a good child?" Kate spread her hands innocently. "Didn't I say this big fellow has nothing to do with me?"
"Bullshit!" Sirius finally wrenched himself free of the not-so-tight iron grip and dropped to the ground.
Seeing this, Lupin hurried over to help him up, then handed over the wand Kate had dropped.
But Sirius hesitated. He'd snatched Kate's wand once before, and every time he tried to cast a spell, it backfired on him.
"Remus, there's something wrong with this brat's wand."
He flung the pure white wand angrily onto the ground, even farther away, and rubbed his sore neck. "Well, little one, you've got no weapon now."
Seeing that he meant to go for her, Lupin stepped in to stop him. "Let me handle this."
Then he turned to Kate. "Child, I think you'd better explain clearly why this armor is here. I'm your Teacher, and I will certainly..."
Before he could finish, a deafening crash sounded beside him.
Lupin turned and found that Sirius, at some point, had located a thick branch among the bushes and was swinging it with all his strength at the armored warrior in front of him.
After only a few blows, the branch snapped in two, while the armor itself remained completely unscathed.
"There's an alchemical array in this armor. Fire won't soften it and water won't rot it," Kate reminded him, utterly at ease. "If you think you're strong enough to damage it physically, go ahead and try."
Sirius's face hardened. Ignoring Lupin's objections, he pointed the broken branch straight at her.
"So it is connected to you, Shafiq! What exactly are you trying to do, leaving something this dangerous in the school!"
The jagged end of the branch nearly poked her pert nose, and Kate frowned, leaning back slightly. "Careful. I don't like people pointing weapons at me."
Sirius smirked. When he'd first been knocked out by Kate, he really had held a grudge against her.
That grudge had mostly worn away over everything that happened afterward, but he was the type who couldn't let a loss go without getting even, so he was at least going to give this little brat a scare.
He wanted to make sure she'd never dare drug him again.
"Scared now?" He raised an eyebrow. "Then..."
"Expelliarmus."
Kate pointed a finger, calm as ever, and the branch, along with Sirius himself, went flying and slammed into a big tree.
She rubbed her nose and widened her eyes innocently. "I warned you. Don't point weapons at me, or bad things happen."
At her words, Lupin instinctively shifted the wand in his hand back behind him. Still, he said with some surprise, "Your Wandless Magic is very polished."
"Thank you for the compliment, Professor." Kate put on a well-behaved smile and looked up at the blazing sun overhead. "Luckily, it isn't night, and it isn't the night of the full moon."
Lupin's pupils shook. He watched warily as Kate walked up to the armored warrior and even patted it lightly.
"In first year I broke a suit of armor, and Headmaster Dumbledore told me to replace it with a similar one. So I just picked one out at home and had it shipped over."
As she spoke, she looked at the wand lying on the ground in the distance, and a Summoning Charm brought it flying back to her hand.
She dusted it off gently and went on. "As for why it's running around the corridors, that's because—"
A flash of white light gleamed in the gap of the armored warrior's helmet, and it moved again, right before Sirius and Lupin's startled eyes.
"It's special," Kate said, spinning the lie without so much as a breath.
Then she watched the same question mark bloom on the faces of both middle-aged men at once.
Funny enough, it was rather comical.
Noticing the amusement in her eyes, Sirius, who had finally scrambled to his feet, flew into a rage. "You're making fools of us!"
"No, I'm not. I have the utmost respect for my teachers," Kate said, looking at him with exceptional innocence. "At least for Professor Lupin, I do."
So far, she hadn't laid a single finger on him.
Sirius grew even angrier and roared at her in a hoarse voice. "So you're just making a fool of me, is that it!"
"Calm down, Sirius!" Lupin hurriedly wrapped his arms around him to keep him from charging forward and provoking Kate again.
He could see it now: the two of them had walked straight into her rhythm and were being led around by the nose.
"Student Shafiq," he called out loudly to Kate, one hand clamped over Sirius's mouth, "what exactly are you trying to do today?"
Sure enough, a reckless teammate needs a calm one beside him to hold him back, or she'd never get a chance to speak without taking a beating first.
Kate cleared her throat. "I originally planned to hand this fellow over to Headmaster Dumbledore, but he isn't in today, and I happened to run into you two, so I'll show you first."
She took the glass jar from her arms. The golden threads on its surface gradually faded and turned into a golden bracelet around her wrist.
Only then did the two men notice the little rat inside the jar, trussed up in golden thread.
"This is..." Lupin murmured, his eyes fixed on the rat. Suddenly they went wide.
"An Animagus? You caught him!"
Sirius stopped struggling too, staring in disbelief at the rat in the jar, bound too tightly to move. "Peter?"
"Back then, because of Professor Lupin's werewolf condition, the three of you best friends decided to secretly learn to become Animagi, so you could turn into your animal forms and keep him company on the night of the full moon.
"Harry's father was a stag, you were a black dog, and Peter was a rat. That's where the nicknames you left on the Marauder's Map came from."
Kate set the jar on the ground. "Sirius, you're the one who told me all this. I said I'd help you catch Peter, and I haven't broken my word. But you never seem able to trust me."
The golden threads slowly unwound, and the little rat in the jar gradually regained the ability to move, scrabbling in terror to escape.
"Give him to me!" Sirius's face twisted, brimming with a hatred that could swallow the heavens, and he lunged for the jar.
But Kate merely stretched out a hand, and the golden threads instantly coiled around his hands and feet, leaving him unable to move.
"What are you doing!" he bellowed at her savagely. "Are you trying to shield this murderer!"
Kate dug at her ear impatiently. "I just said it. You still don't trust me."
With a wave of her wand, the earth around them rose from the flat ground and formed a wall that enclosed all of them. Only by looking up could one barely make out the dense woods overhead.
"Even if we're going to let him out for a confrontation, we should think about whether he might escape first."
She said it helplessly, raised a hand to recall the golden threads, and, seeing that Sirius had at last calmed down on the surface, shook her head and turned to open the glass jar.
"Stand back!" Lupin pulled her aside, and at the very instant Scabbers was about to bolt from the jar, a bolt of blue light shot out.
Scabbers froze in midair. The little gray body writhed frantically for a while, then dropped to the ground.
A moment later, a man appeared whose looks were even worse than the Noseless Dark Lord's.
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