Lyra had disliked Severus Snape for as long as she could remember. He was always hanging around her friends and people she grew up with, but he always became so annoyed and angry at the world, and the relatively joyful teenage Lyra did not have time for those shenanigans. 

Things had not changed. He was always hanging around her husband, glaring at her because of her former relationship to the four boys that once ruled the halls of the school. He whispered in Lucius's ears, adding to whatever anger he felt towards her. Let's just say he didn't make their marriage any better. 

But Lyra knew that they were screwed as he threw off that Invisiblity Cloak (she was sure James was rolling over in grave because of that greasy git using his beloved cloak), because he had a dangerous grudge that was still to end, and a quick connection to Lucius, who was capable of horrible things to keep control of his family. Sirius, though unaware he was the reason for his imprisonment, would know. 

Hermione straight up screamed once he showed his face while Sirius jumped to his feet again. Harry also jumped, but rather comically where he stood. Lyra felt her breath hitch in her throat, nervous. 

"I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow," said Snape, throwing the Cloak on the dirty ground next to him, though keeping his wand pointed right at Remus. "Very useful, Potter. I thank you."

Lyra carefully moved to stand closer to the teenager, worried as she saw the maddened look on Snape's face. She wasn't sure what he was capable of. Harry glanced at her, looking a bit thankful for her protection. 

"You're wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here?" Snape asked, though slightly out of breath. "I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I brought a gobletful along. And very lucky I did... lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you and Black running along this passageway and out of sight."

Lyra frowned at the mention of Black, thinking Sirius hadn't been running with them, but she had. Then she quickly remembered that he had refused to call her by her married name since her wedding (where he was unfortunately invited). "It's Malfoy, actually."

"It never should have been!" Snape hissed, always having been pissed off that Lucius didn't listen to his advice, when he had told her to stay as far away from Lyra Black as he could. Not to ask her to marry him. 

"That's the one thing we can both agree on," the blonde said coolly, glancing reassuringly at Harry, who still seemed a strange mix of anger, fright and confusion.

Remus didn't like how the attention had gone to Lyra, now knowing that her husband was capable of such horrible things against her and the ones she loved. He didn't want her to get hurt. "Severus-"

Snape's eyes gleamed as if Christmas had come early. "I've told the Headmaster again and again that you've been helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here's the proof. Not even I dreamed you would have the nerve to use this old place as your hideout."

"Severus, you're making a mistake," said Remus, looking quite stressed at how things seemed to be turning out that night. "You haven't heard everything. I can explain. Sirius is not here to kill Harry."

"He doesn't care about Harry," Lyra spoke up, a mean glare on her face as she looked at the Potions Professor. "He just cares that he found us all here and can get us in trouble. Nothing's changed, has it, Snape?"

"I've told Lucius again and again that you're no good. That he should throw you out on the streets where you belong. Always thinking you were better than everyone because you were dating Potter," said Snape bitterly, his glare every bit as mean as hers. "I wonder how Lucius will feel that you're here. I knew you were the one who broke him out of Azkaban."

The woman sighed in annoyance, her hands raised in exasperation. "Why does everybody think that?"

"Two more for Azkaban tonight. Maybe three if Lucius has finally had enough of you and doesn't feel like protecting you anymore." He glanced gleefully at Lyra. "I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this. He was quite convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin. A tame werewolf."

"You fool. Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?" asked Remus, furiously defending Sirius, who had yet to speak. He had been living with Snape's anger for the last year, but he wouldn't let it take it out on Sirius, or Lyra for that matter.

Suddenly, thin cords flew out of Snape's wand, tying themselves around all places of Remus's body. His mouth, his hands, his legs. Lyra, enraged by him trying to hurt her old best friend tried to rush forward, but stopped as Harry reached out, grabbing the sleeve of her robes and pulling her back. He hadn't quite wrapped his head around her, but he didn't want her to run in and get hurt. 

Sirius wasn't close enough to them for anybody to stop him. He roared, like a true Gryffindor, as he ran at Snape, but was stopped as Snape pointed his wand between his eyes, hissing as he spoke. "Give me a reason. Give me a reason and I swear I'll do it."

Lyra was ready to yell at him and tell him to just shut the hell up before she would hex him, but Harry tugged at her sleeve once again, though looking frozen in his spot. An incredibly confused Ron was struggling with his rat, who looked more and more scared by the second. 

Hermione was the only one who dared do anything. Cautiously, she stepped closer to Snape and Sirius, her voice soft and uncertain. "Professor Snape... It- it wouldn't hurt to hear what they've got to say, w-would it?"

He glared at the young girl. "Miss Granger, you're already facing suspension from this school. You, Potter and Weasley are out of bounds, in the company of a convincted murderer, a werewolf and their accomplice. For once in your life, hold your tongue."

Hermione glanced at Lyra, who was smiling slightly in encouragement, nodding to tell her to keep going. She thought it'd be easier to have one of his students convince him than her, who he had hated for over twenty years. "But if- if there was a mistake-"

"Keep quiet, you stupid girl! Don't talk about what you don't understand!" Snape screamed at her, obviously going mad. In pure anger, his wand started shooting out red sparks right in Sirius's face.

"You horrid greasy git," Lyra hissed, not caring about how Harry tugged at her sleeve and sent her look to tell her to shut up. She was the only parent in there, and her motherly instincts quickly kicked in. "Hate us all you want, I don't care if you kill me or get me thrown into Azkaban. But don't you dare scream at these kids just because they want the truth!"

"I'm the one who decides what the truth is here, Black," he spat her maiden name before he looked at Sirius once again, grinning madly. "Vengeance is very sweet. How I hoped I'd be the one to catch you..."

"The joke's on you again, Severus. As long as this boy brings his rat up to the castle-" Sirius nodded towards Ron, who still looked both confused and freaked out. "I'll come quietly."

"Up to the castle?" asked Snape, sounding quite condescending. "I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the Dementors once we get out of the Willow. They'll be pleased to see you, Black. Pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I'd say."

"You- you've got to hear me out. The rat- look at the rat," said Sirius, suddenly even paler than he had already been. They could all hear Lyra muttering all kinds of curses at him under her breath, but it had no effect on them. 

"Come on, all of you," said Snape, turning to Harry, Hermione, Lyra (who looked ready to kill) and Ron. He snapped his fingers and the cords that held Remus flew to his hands. "I'll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the Dementors will have a kiss for him, too-"

Lyra had been about to run over to stop him, but Harry was faster. He had the Quidditch reflexes, of course. He blocked the door that Snape was trying to get them to walk through, his chin held high. 

"Get out of the way, Potter. You're in enough trouble already," Snape snarled at him, a personal type of loathing behind his eyes that a teacher should never have against their student.  "If I hadn't been here to save your skin."

"Professor Lupin could have killed me about a hundred times this year," Harry said defiantly. "I've been alone with him loads of times, having defence lessons against the Dementors. If he was helping Black, why didn't he just finish me off then?"

"Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works. Get out of the way, Potter," the Potions Professor hissed at him, looking like he was almost prepared to point his wand at the boy. 

"You're pathetic!" Harry yelled right in his face. In the background, Lyra beamed proudly. That was the Gryffindor courage she so clearly remembered James having, just without so much yelling. "Just because they made a fool of you at school you won't even listen-!"

"Silence! I will not be spoken to like that!" Snape snapped, looking as if he had James Potter right in front of him and was prepared to treat him accordingly. "Like father, like son, Potter!"

"Don't you dare talk about James, you foul little-" Lyra started, releasing a string of curses that made Ron raise his eyebrows, impressed, and made Hermione's eyes widen and her cheeks turn red.

"I have just saved your neck, you should be thanking me on bended knee!" yelled Snape, not caring about the woman's anger. "You would have been well served if he'd killed you! You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in the Blacks. Now get out of the way, or I will make you. Get out of the way, Potter!"

Harry, as quick of thinking and reckless as he was, hurried to hold out his wand before Snape could even take a step towards him. He knew he might regret it later, but he honestly didn't care. "Expelliarmus!"

Suddenly, they realized that there were several people who had screamed the same spell. Ron, Hermione and even Lyra were holding their wands out. The two former looked quite shocked at what they had done, but Lyra was only looking quite pleased. 

Due to the power of three bright teenagers and a well-trained adult witch (who got an O in her N.E.W.T.-exam in Defence Against the Dark Arts because of Remus's help), Snape was lifted from the ground and slammed into the wall.

The impact made quite the noise, even allowing the door to rattle on its hinges. Snape fell to the ground, quickly unconscious with blood barely visible through his greasy, dark hair. It was still quite obviously there, though. 

His wand tried to go in several different directions because of all the people who had tried to disarm him, but it ended up landing on the bed, next to the orange cat that had previously been sitting on Sirius's chest.

"You shouldn't have done that. Good one, though, Lyra. You've still got it," said Sirius quite hoarsely, showing off his yellowing teeth as he smiled slightly.  "You should have left him to us, Harry."

"We attacked a teacher, we attacked a teacher-" Hermione started hyperventilating, being the only one who seemed to freak out about it. Harry was strangely calm, refusing to meet anybody's eye. 

"And you did so wonderfully. Hermione, isn't it?" Lyra said, trying to seem comforting. She got her mum mode on, knowing that this girl was the same age as her son. If she could be there for him, she could be there for her. "It's alright. You're not going to get into trouble. Everything will be alright."

She cast a quick glance towards Remus, who was still tied up on the ground, looking quite shocked at what had happened as he struggled. Her and Sirius both hurried to help untie him. She offered him his hand with a small smile and helped him stand up. "Up you get, Remus." 

Sirius looked to his godson once his best friend was alright and standing. He couldn't help but think back to his youth, as James would always be quick to defend him and help him during their fighting for the Order of the Phoenix. "Thank you, Harry."

"I'm still not saying I believe you," the thirteen-year-old boy retorted, though his eyes weren't quite as mean behind his round glasses. They all knew he was getting closer to believing every second. 

"Then it's time we offered you some proof," said Sirius, his voice gentle. He turned to Ron next, not quite as gentle, though not because he was angry at the redheaded boy. "You, boy! Give me Peter. Now."

"Come off it. Are you trying to say you broke out of Azkaban just to get your hands on Scabbers? I mean..." Ron trailed off, looking to his friends for support. "Okay, say Pettigrew could turn into a rat... There are millions of rats, how's he supposed to know which one he's after if he was locked up in Azkaban?"

Lyra supposed the boy was more intelligent than he looked. Remus nodded, seeing sense in his words, looking to Sirius as he spoke. "You know, Sirius, that's a fair question. How did you know where he was?"

Sirius seemed annoyed at being question, but still hurried to reach into his robes, pulling out a crumbled piece of paper. He tried to smooth it out, but it still wasn't good as new. He held it up, revealing a picture of the Weasley family in Egypt from the Daily Prophet.

"I didn't know they gave you the paper in Azkaban," said Lyra quietly, suddenly realizing how stupid she sounded while saying it. There was no other explanation for how he had gotten it in her head. 

"They don't," her cousin said shortly. "Fudge gave it to me. When he came to inspect Azkaban last year, he gave me his paper. And there was Peter, on the front page on this boy's shoulder. I knew him at once, how many times had I seen him transform? And the caption said the boy would be going back to Hogwarts, to where Harry was..."

"My God," said Remus softly as he studied the picture, looking quite closely at the rat on Ron's shoulder. "His front paw..."

"What about it?" asked Ron, still quite angry that they kept trying to accuse his rat of being a murderer or something. It was just a bloody rat, for goodness' sake. A rat he'd had in his family for years and had cared about. 

Lyra hurried to look at the clipping from the paper, also catching what Remus had seen. She scoffed, shaking her head as she chuckled without any humor. "He's got a toe missing. Of course. I never thought he'd have it in him, the little creep."

"Of course," Remus breathed, looking like everything was finally coming together. So many years of unanswered questions and lies, and now it all made sense. "So simple, so brilliant. He cut it off himself?"

"Just before he transformed," Sirius explained. "When I cornered him, he yelled for the whole street to hear that I'd betrayed Lily and James. Then, before I could curse him, he blew apart the street with the wand behind his back, killed everyone within twenty feet of himself  and sped down into the sewer with the other rats."

Remus shook his head for a moment, in awe of the sheer brilliance he didn't know Peter had been capable of. He looked to the boy who was holding the rat in his hand."Didn't you ever hear, Ron? The biggest bit of Peter they found was his finger."

The Weasley boy still refused to believe it could be true, even if he could see Harry and Hermione seeming to come more around to the idea. "Look, Scabbers probably had a fight with another rat or something! He's been in my family for ages, right-"

"Twelve years, I'd bet," Lyra cut him off before he could continue. "Very peculiar timing for a rat that looks so much like Peter's Animagus form to come to your family. And how many rats do you know that have gotten to be that old? I expect he wasn't exactly a baby when you got him either."

Ron frowned, knowing that her arguments made sense. He just didn't want them to, so he continued to refuse to believe them. "We- we've been taking good care of him."

"Not looking too good at the moment, though, is he?' said Remus, smirking a bit to himself as the rat kept squeaking in fright. "I'd guess he's been losing weight ever since he heard Sirius was on the loose again."

"He's scared of that mad cat!" the redheaded boy exclaimed, pointing to the orange cat once again, who seemed quite unbothered. Lyra was once again wondering where that cat came from, she had gotten no explanation. 

"This cat isn't mad," defended Sirius, stroking his fur comfortingly. "He's the most intelligent of his kind I've ever met. He recognized Peter for what he was straight away. And when he met me, he knew I was no dog. It was a while before he trusted me. Finally, I managed to communicate to him what I was after, and he's been helping me."

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean?"

"He tried to bring Peter to me, but couldn't," he explained. "So he stole the passwords into Gryffindor Tower for me. As I understand it, he took them from a boy's bedside table. But Peter got wind of what was going on and ran for it. This cat, Crookshanks, did you call him? Told me Peter had left blood on the sheets. I suppose he bit himself. Well, faking his own death had worked once-" 

"And why did he fake his death?" asked Harry harshly, suddenly seeming to break out of his silent trance, where he had just been listening. "Because he knew you were about to kill him like you killed my parents! And now you've come to finish him off!"

"Harry, calm down-" Lyra tried to speak, but her words were forgotten in the heat of things. 

"Yes, I have," said Sirius, his gaze firmly stuck on the rat Ron was holding onto. 

Lyra sighed, exasperated as she glared his way. "Sirius, for once in your bloody life, don't be so dramatic! It's not making things any easier for you!"

Harry glared at his godfather, quickly regretting the way he had defended him against Snape, attacking a teacher and risking getting into trouble for him. "Then I should have let Snape take you!"

"Harry," said Remus hurriedly, "Don't you see? All this time we've thought Sirius betrayed your parents, and Peter tracked him down. But it was the other way around, don't you see? Peter betrayed your mother and father. Sirius tracked Peter down-"

The Potter boy was getting sick of hearing these different sides of the story, not sure which one to believe was true. "That's not true! He was their secret keeper! He said so before you turned up, he said he killed them!"

"Of course he bloody did," Lyra muttered, annoyed. She raised her hands to clutch the bridge of her nose. She had forgotten how much of a headache Sirius could be because of his drama. Not even Draco was that bad. 

"Harry... I as good as killed them," Sirius said sadly. "I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as Secret Keeper instead of me. I'm to blame, I know it." 

He took a breath before continuing his explanation. "The night they died, I'd arranged to check on Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he'd gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn't feel right. I was scared. I set out for your parents' house straight away.

"And when I saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies..." Sirius trailed off. Lyra closed her eyes, suddenly feeling like crying at the image of James and Lily's dead bodies. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder in comfort. "I realised what Peter must have done. What I'd done."

"Enough of this," Remus broke in, looking sympathetically at his two old friends, both of whom seemed affected by the mention of the deaths. He was, too, but he didn't like showing it. "There's one certain way to prove what really happened. Ron, give me that rat"

"What are you going to do with him if I give him to you?" asked the redhead suspiciously. He mostly just wanted that night to end, to get out of the situation. If his rat would be alright afterwards (when they'd proven he was just a rat), then he might as well just get it over with.

"Force him to show himself. If he really is a rat, it won't hurt him," Remus assured him. Hesitantly, Ron finally held out the struggling rat to his Professor, who quickly took him in his hand. 

"Ready, Sirius, Lyra?" Remus asked his two old friends, grasping tightly onto the rat. He seemed to be struggling much more, squeaking and and twisting around in the werewolf's grip. 

Sirius grabbed Snape's wand from the bed while Remus and Lyra held onto their own. He looked between the two, his eyes watery. It didn't seem true. They were there with him and they were all going to get justice while by each other's sides. "Together?"

"Just like old times," Lyra assured him fondly, sharing a soft smile with him. 

"On the count of three," stated Remus. The three all pointed the wands at the rat in Remus's hand.  "One. Two. Three!"