[Closed][Bendy timed to shortly after the podpop before last]

[grimbiker]

It hadn’t been long since Sirius had woken from podsleep. He had gone exploring but somehow he kept coming back to hydroponics. It was so different from the rest of the ship. He’d heard that the entire ship was alive but it felt smothering, not like it was here where everything was vibrant and colorful. Here he felt truly free.

Sirius sat against a tree. His legs ached. He had spent too long in Azkaban (although apparently not as long as he should have). His muscles had not withered completely but he was still weak. For now it was enough to rest here and gaze at his surroundings, so unlike the cell he’d left behind.

Comments

[grimbiker]

"That must have been a sight." After a moment Sirius's smile faded. The jokes were just a distraction from what he really needed to know.

"Did I get him?"

[myboggartisthemoon]

And there it was. The question he knew had been coming, which meant the answer he had been dreading.

Lupin folded his hands in his lap and looked down at them as if they were fascinating beyond measure. Words took a moment to come.

"You dragged him -- Ron -- into the Shrieking Shack. Peter was with him, changed. I'd been watching our map, it showed everything, and when I saw all that I came at a run. Harry and Hermione were there, too. We explained everything, we forced Peter to change back, and they believed us. We --"

He didn't want to say we should have killed him right there, because even though that would have changed everything, Harry had been right. "Harry told us... and I think he is right in this, Sirius, that James wouldn't have want us to become murderers, not for Peter. We agreed to take him back, to prove your innocence..."

He had skipped over a number of things in this explanation, glossed over others, but details such as Ron's injury or even Severus's presence were trivial compared to what he was about to say. He looked back up at Sirius, the picture of misery. "It was a full moon that night, Sirius. I had forgotten to take my potion. When we left the tunnel to the Shack..."

[grimbiker]

"He got away?"

Sirius didn't know what this potion was. They must have made some discoveries while he had been in prison but right now that wasn't his concern. Pettigrew escaped.

"Was anyone hurt? Harry was fine when I saw him." And he hadn't mentioned any of this.

Peter got away after everything. After Sirius had been so close to killing him Peter had escaped a second time.

[myboggartisthemoon]

Lupin looked down again, heaving a mighty sigh. "You interposed yourself, of course. But Peter changed while we were busy, and of course out there in the open, catching a rat..." He shrugged bleakly. "You were captured, but... Harry and Hermoine rescued you, with a hippogriff of Hagrid's that was also to be unfairly executed. So, you were free, and Dumbledore knows the truth now. What happened after that, well, you'd be best to ask Harry about that. He's older than I knew him, the same way I'm older than you knew me. He'd be able to tell you more, no doubt."

Meaningless words, mostly, spoken just to keep the conversation going; afraid that if he stopped, he would have to endure Sirius's anger.