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Sirius Black stared at Iris with sad eyes before he nodded behind himself in a gesture of telling her to follow him. He then shifted back into a dog and trotted off into the forest with Iris following close behind.

Sirius led her deeper into the forest and it was a few minutes later when Iris finally realized where he was leading her.

He stopped just in front of the Whomping Willow and Iris walked up to stand next to him. Sirius, still as a dog, then got down on all fours to be laying on his stomach before shimmying under the wild branches and tapping a small knot on the base of the tree. The Whomping Willow went still suddenly and Sirius beckoned her forward into a hidden tunnel in a large gap in the roots.

Iris glanced over her shoulder at the castle before crawling down the hole after Sirius Black. She slid down an earthy slope to the bottom of a very low tunnel. She followed Sirius silently along the tunnel for the next few minutes.

And then the tunnel began to rise; moments later it twisted, and Sirius had gone. Ahead Iris could see a patch of dim light through a small opening.

Iris raised her head out of the tunnel opening to see what lay beyond. It was a room, a very disordered, dusty room. Paper was peeling from the walls; there were stains all over the floor; every piece of furniture was broken as though somebody had smashed it. The windows were all boarded up.

Iris pulled herself up out of the tunnel and into the room, looking around with wide eyes.

"The Shrieking Shack," Iris said to a now human Sirius Black.

He nodded, still staring at her.

"I expect you are eager to know the truth," he said hoarsely.

His voice sounded as though he had long since lost the habit of using it. "I guess I'll start at the beginning."

Neither one took their eyes off of the other, each staring, mostly in wonder, at the person in front of them.

Standing across from each other, Sirius began his story.

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"So, you're saying Peter Pettigrew is the one who actually betrayed my parents and he is also an animagus and my best friend's pet rat?" Iris said slightly confused.

"Yes, exactly," said Sirius. "You can see for yourself. If the rumors I've heard are true, you're a talented legilimens."

Iris nodded reluctantly.

"I can't help it sometimes. I try not to look through peoples' heads, I feel like I'm invading everyone's privacy, but I can never stop myself," said Iris shamefully.

"Well, I'm giving you permission to look in my head, so go ahead."

Iris took a deep breath making eye contact with Sirius before forcing herself into his mind.

Iris had always imagined everyone's mind as a house. Everyone has a house, but some of the doors are locked and some aren't. Iris holds the keys to everybody's doors and can easily walk through their houses. When she encounters somebody who is better at occlumency their doors are locked and there are more of them, she has to sort through her mental ring of keys to find the right ones to open the doors.

Iris found Sirius's mental house and pushed open his front garden gate, one barrier down. She made it to his front door and twisted the nob to open the door, second barrier down. Entering the house, Iris came across a long hallway with doors lining both walls. Numbers labeled each door, each door representing one year of Sirius's life.

Iris quickly traveled down the hallway until she found the door labeled 1981. Iris tried opening the door but found it slightly stuck. Iris imagined a key in her hand, one to open the door in front of her. She inserted the key into the keyhole and pushed the handle down to enter the room.

The next room was a circular chamber with twelve doors, each labeled with a month of the year. Iris opened the November door. There was another hallway with doors numbered one through thirty-one. Iris entered the door with the number one on it.

Iris stepped out of the door and into a small flat where she saw a much younger and healthier looking Sirius Black running around frantically confusion written across his face. The confusion quickly turned into a look of betrayal and realization. Iris watched as he quickly ran to the front door of the flat and left in a hurry.

Iris felt herself fast-forward into the next significant memory. It was nighttime now, rather than the early morning she was just in, and she could see Sirius and Peter Pettigrew in the middle of a small town square facing each other with many muggles walking around and onlooking the two.

"You betrayed James and Lily, Sirius!" Pettigrew shouted for everyone to hear, and Iris noticed he was slowly pulling his wand out behind his back.

Pettigrew then whipped his wand out in front of him and shouted, "CONFRINGO!"

The street exploded.

In the loud noise of the blast, Iris noticed Pettigrew say a spell under his breath to sever his finger off his hand before he then turned into his animagus rat form and fled.

Iris pulled herself back out of Sirius's mind and noticed that nearly no time had passed.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that Sirius," Iris said quietly.

"I'll be alright, Iris," Sirius said sincerely.

He observed her, taking in every inch of her face as though he was amazed to finally be in front of her.

"There is so much... that I want to tell you," Sirius spoke, "Though I'm sure you are aware, for as bright as you seem, I was made your godfather."

Iris nodded, "And Harry...?"

Sirius looked down at his worn and grimy hands, "I'm sure you know by now," he hinted at what Iris had been suspecting.

She sighed, sinking against the wall down to the floor, "Why would you come to Hogwarts, you could have run, been free from the Dementors and the Ministry."

Sirius sat down across from her letting out a sigh of his own, "Well, I suppose it was because I wanted to see you. After all these years locked up, I wanted to see you and Harry, make sure you were alright."

Iris' blinked away the tears that were threatening to appear, she had never felt more sad and heartbroken for a person than she did now.

Sirius continued, "After I saw Peter in that paper, I just knew... I couldn't let him get away with it. He was at Hogwarts with the two of you, it was my chance to make things right, to prove that I'm innocent. It's time I get my revenge on that rat."

"Revenge isn't everything," Iris told him quietly.

"It is to me. He took everything I had, everything I cared about," he countered.

Iris could see the light of the moon slipping in through the spaces between the boards covering the windows.

She let out a long breath, "I've been out here too long, they'll notice I'm gone soon."

Sirius nodded in understanding, then stood up and walked over to her offering his hand out. She stared at it for a second before gingerly taking it and allowing the wizard to help her off the floor.

"It's alright, go on. One day, soon, I'll tell you everything... We can be a family," he said softly.

She searched his eyes for a moment before giving him a small smile. The young witch lifted her hand to the side of her godfathers face, and let it gently rest on his hollowed cheek, "I'd like that very much."

She took a step back toward the tunnel letting her hand slip from his face before turning and jumping down into the dark shaft.

Iris ran back out of the tunnel and out of the Whomping Willow roots. She reached her hand around the base and tapped the knob making the tree freeze. She then started sprinting as fast as she could toward the castle. Iris had always been a fast runner and she came first in all of her gym class races at muggle school. She made it back to the entrance of the castle within a few minutes and hastily pulled the door open. Iris kept sprinting back up to Gryffindor tower making sure not to run into any teachers. On the way she ran by a clock and noticed that she had been gone for nearly an hour.

Finally, she came to a halt outside the Gryffindor entrance, breathing heavily, trying to figure out how she could get in and answer where she had been the last hour without actually telling them anything.

Iris decided the best she could do would be to cast a disillusionment charm and sneak up to her dormitory where she would act like she was in it the whole time. It wasn't the greatest plan, but it was the only thing she could think of at that moment.

Quickly casting the charm on herself, Iris gently pushed the empty Gryffindor portrait open as little as she possibly could and slid through the gap silently. She noticed that the entire Gryffindor house was sitting around in the common room, looking quite stressed. She then carefully made her way around the shadowed edge of the common room to the dormitory stairs and quickly sneaked up them and into her room.

She then laid down in her bed taking the charm of and relaxed, letting out a long breath. Iris thought it would be best if she fell asleep, so that, hopefully, if anyone came up here it would look like she had been there sleeping the whole time.

Iris stared at the ceiling overhead with a million thoughts racing through her mind, not all of them her own, wondering how it all came to this.

Of course, she should have known that nothing would ever be easy or normal when it came to her, but as she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes only one thing was certain as she let the darkness of sleep take over:

This was just the calm before the storm.

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