"Ron, what's wrong?" Harry felt around for his glasses and shoved them on. When his vision finally cleared, he saw Ron already kneeling on the floor, frantically tearing his sleeping bag open and throwing it aside.
"Scabbers is gone!" Ron scrambled out of his sleeping bag, his bare feet hitting the freezing stone floor.
His eyes desperately scanned every corner of the Great Hall—the shadows stretched long by the candlelight, the narrow gaps between the sleeping bags, the piles of bookbags and cauldrons pushed against the walls.
He was hoping against hope that the balding rat was just wandering nearby looking for a snack.
Seamus poked his head out of the adjacent sleeping bag, his hair a tangled mess. He blinked sleepily, then snapped awake. "Scabbers? Are you sure? Maybe he's just roaming around for food."
"I have to go find him," Ron muttered, his voice steadily rising. "He's got to be close, maybe if I—"
"Mr. Weasley."
Snape's voice sliced out of the darkness like an ice-cold blade, slipping silently and precisely into Ron's panicked breathing.
The billowing black robes emerged from the gloom. The thin lips beneath his hooked nose wore that signature, nauseatingly mocking smirk. His dark eyes glinted in the candlelight with the patience of a cat cornering a mouse.
"The middle of the night," his voice wasn't loud, but it made the entire Great Hall drop into a deathly, graveyard silence. "With Headmaster Dumbledore's explicit orders that no student is to leave the Great Hall... where exactly do you think you are going?"
"My rat," Ron's voice cracked, bordering on a sob. "Scabbers is missing. I have to—"
"Is that right? A rat?" Snape repeated. He sounded like he was tasting a severely botched potion, rolling every syllable over his tongue before spitting it out.
"A filthy, balding rat. That is your excuse for violating direct orders? While Sirius Black might still be roaming this very castle?"
"He's not just some ordinary rat!" Ron's face flushed a deep crimson, the heat creeping all the way from his neck to the tips of his ears. "He's been in our family for twelve years, starting with my brother Percy..."
"Twelve years," Snape cut him off, his voice dripping with absolute disbelief. The slow, methodical cruelty in his tone reminded Harry of every single time Snape had systematically destroyed a student's confidence in Potions class.
He took a step forward. His black robes dragged across the floor with a soft, sinister rustle.
"Fascinating. Truly fascinating. An ordinary rat rarely lives past three years. Yet your... Scabbers, was it? Has lived for twelve. And..."
His gaze dropped to Ron's empty hands, moving as slowly as if he were inspecting something vile. "And he just so happens to go missing on the exact same night Sirius Black infiltrates the castle."
Silence.
"Wh-what are you implying, Professor?" Ron opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat.
Snape took another step forward. His shadow completely swallowed Ron. Standing barefoot on the stone floor, the red-haired boy suddenly looked incredibly small and fragile—like a frog paralyzed by a snake.
"I am implying, Mr. Weasley," Snape's voice dropped even lower, until only the few students awake nearby could hear him.
"If Black broke into Hogwarts solely to look for a rat..." He paused, his mouth twisting into an even crueler smirk. "Then it seems our intruder... has resorted to chasing mice."
A few students who had been woken up—Dean Thomas, and a couple of Slytherin girls—let out muffled snickers. The laughter sounded exceptionally harsh in the cavernous room.
Ron's face burned. His fists clenched, then unclenched.
"But, of course," Snape continued, his voice returning to its lazy apathy. "If Black was simply looking for a midnight snack, then it's tough luck for Scabbers. After all, the cuisine in Azkaban... leaves much to be desired."
"How—" Ron's voice trembled, heavy with anger and something much deeper—genuine fear. "How could you—"
"Get back in your sleeping bag, Mr. Weasley." Snape turned sharply. His robes flared out in a crisp, clean arc, like the slash of a black blade.
With his back to Ron, his voice carried an icy, unquestionable authority. "Unless you intend to become Sirius Black's next appetizer."
Ron stood rooted to the spot, his bare feet aching against the cold stone floor, feeling an unprecedented sense of isolation.
His Scabbers. His companion of twelve years. Gone, on a night filled with so much danger.
"Crookshanks!"
Hermione's voice rang out from the other side of the Gryffindor section, filled with the exact same panic and urgency. It was as if Ron's crisis had suddenly jogged her memory. She shot up from her sleeping bag, her hair frizzing out even more wildly than usual.
"My cat—Crookshanks—he's still in the dorm! I locked him in the dormitory, but—but if Black can tear through portraits, if he can—"
Her words abruptly died in her throat. Snape had already turned toward her, his black eyes glinting in the candlelight with something dangerously close to amusement.
"Miss Know-It-All," his tone sounded like a judge handing down a sentence, enunciating every single word. "Let me trace your logic. You are terribly concerned for the safety of a cat, right as our Mr. Weasley is currently heartbroken over the disappearance of a rat. Perhaps..."
His mouth twisted. "Perhaps Sirius Black came to Hogwarts to collect pets? To assemble some sort of... animal army?"
Hermione's face instantly ran the full spectrum from panicked to furious. Her brown eyes flared with that familiar fire Harry always saw when she faced Snape's blatant unfairness in class.
"It's not funny, Professor!" Hermione's voice cracked, bordering on tears, though the anger won out. "Crookshanks isn't a normal cat, he's—"
"He's what?" Snape took a step closer. "A pet with 'special abilities'? Just like Mr. Weasley's 'special rat'?"
"Perhaps he simply went out hunting for that very rat. Wouldn't that be perfectly natural?" Snape sneered.
Hermione opened her mouth to argue, then suddenly froze as a realization hit her. Her eyes darted toward Ron—the messy-haired boy standing barefoot on the stone floor.
Scabbers. Crookshanks.
Ever since the term started, Crookshanks had relentlessly hunted Scabbers with a paranoid, unwavering obsession. She had always chalked it up to feline instinct, the natural prey drive of a half-Kneazle.
But...
"Now, get back to your sleeping bag, Miss Granger," Snape's voice returned to a flat, cold baseline.
Hermione turned stiffly and walked back to her bag. But for a split second, her eyes met Ron's. That single look was a chaotic mix of confusion, worry, and a heavy, suffocating dread that neither of them could quite name.
Meanwhile, in a forgotten, dust-covered room somewhere deep in the castle, moonlight bled through a shattered stained-glass window, casting mottled pools of red and blue light across the floor.
A massive black dog was curled up in the deepest shadows of the room. It was far larger than a normal dog; its matted black fur clumped together, looking like a solidified patch of the night sky under the moonlight.
Its ribs jutted out visibly beneath its coat—the unmistakable mark of long-term starvation. From deep within sunken eye sockets, a pair of eyes stared intently at the creature sitting across from it.
A large, ginger cat.
Crookshanks.
Crookshanks's flat, squashed face carried a bizarre, almost human-like expression. His unblinking amber eyes were locked onto the black dog. His thick tail twitched lazily, sweeping across the dusty stone floor and leaving fan-shaped trails behind.
The black dog let out a low whimper. It sounded half like a sigh, half like a question.
Crookshanks replied with a soft purr. Then—incredibly—he stepped forward and gently nudged his head against the dog's front paw.
The black dog lowered its head, gently nuzzling Crookshanks's neck with its snout. The cat let out a loud, satisfied purr. Then, he turned and padded toward the door, his tail held high in the air, clearly saying: Follow me.
They melted into the darkness of the corridor, their footsteps as silent as ghosts.
Outside the window, the moon slipped behind the clouds. The Hogwarts clock tower tolled twice, the hollow sound echoing through the empty castle.
Julien opened his eyes, staring up at the floating candles near the ceiling. The eagle-headed hound totem beneath his skin pulsed with a faint heat.
Sirius Black was gone.