Harry spent one day in the infirmary and woke up the following morning with his colour back. The afternoon after classes, the five of them knocked on Professor Lupin's office door.
He answered it looking like a man who hadn't slept in two days. The particular quality of his exhaustion — skin slightly grey, shadows deep under the eyes, a tremor in the hand that held the door — was consistent with what Kevin had described. Werewolf-transformed. Recovered, but not yet fully.
"Come in. Harry — I heard about the match. Are you all right?"
"Fine, Professor." Harry glanced at the others, then at Kevin.
Kevin nodded.
"Professor Lupin, we didn't come about the match." Harry's voice was steady. "We need to ask you about Sirius Black."
Lupin went still.
He hadn't told anyone he knew Sirius. The fact that these children knew said something about where the information had come from.
Kevin held his gaze calmly. "Dumbledore told us. He doesn't believe Sirius betrayed the Potters. We're trying to find out what actually happened, and we think you might know."
The name Dumbledore did what it always did — eased the wariness from Lupin's face, gradually, like a knot loosening.
He sighed, sat down in his chair, and looked at Harry for a long moment.
"I don't know the full truth," he said. "I want to be honest with you about that from the start. No one does."
He leaned forward, hands clasped. "But I can tell you what I know. I knew Sirius Black better than almost anyone. He and James and Lily and I were close — closer than I can explain easily. We were each other's family for years."
"And Sirius Black would not have betrayed them." He said it the way you say something you've staked your life on. "Not for any price. Not under any pressure. Not for anything."
He paused, rubbing his forehead. "I have no proof of that. I can't clear his name. I didn't know he'd escaped, and he hasn't contacted me, so I can't help you find him."
Harry exhaled. The tension in his shoulders had been wound tight for months. He could feel it releasing.
"If you believe he's innocent," Harry said, "then who did betray them?"
"I don't know." The despair in Lupin's voice was old and tired. "I was working away from Britain at the time — the Order was sending me abroad for long stretches. James and Lily had gone into hiding under the Fidelius Charm. The Secret-Keeper was Sirius."
He looked at Harry directly. "I believed he was the Secret-Keeper. So did everyone. When Voldemort found them — and James and Lily died — Sirius was arrested. They said he'd killed thirteen Muggles and his best friend, Peter Pettigrew. Left only a finger behind."
"The evidence was on the street. The Ministry didn't look further."
Harry sat with it. New name: Peter Pettigrew. Someone who'd supposedly died in the same blast that sent Sirius to Azkaban.
"I've carried this for twelve years," Lupin said quietly. "Wondering what I missed. Whether there was something I could have done."
He looked at Harry. "But here's what I believe: if Sirius has come back to Hogwarts, it's not to hurt you. Whatever brought him here — whatever unfinished business he has — it involves the truth. Not violence."
"Wait for him," Lupin said. "Stay safe in the meantime. Become the kind of wizard who can handle whatever the answer turns out to be."
Harry nodded slowly. The shadow that had been Sirius Black's name — threat, fear, the face his grief had stuck to — was shifting. Becoming something else. Someone.
Someone he might actually want to meet.
They said their goodbyes and left without mentioning the werewolf. Not the moment for it.
Christmas crept in. The castle filled with decorations, the temperature dropped properly, and the particular peace of an almost-empty Hogwarts settled over everything.
All the students were staying this year — Sirius's proximity, the Dementors, the uncertainty. The Ministry hadn't wanted anyone travelling. Dumbledore had agreed, and made the castle beautiful enough to make up for it.
Kevin briefed Dumbledore in a private conversation — what Lupin had said, what they'd pieced together, where things stood. Dumbledore listened, asked two precise questions, and confirmed he had no trace of Sirius's current location.
He had the look of a man running calculations Kevin wasn't privy to.
The hippogriff situation at Hagrid's remained uneventful. Snowdrift and Buckbeak were both well, both excellent. Norbert had been ranging freely through the Forbidden Forest for months, which Hagrid supervised with enormous pride and occasional shouted instructions.
Kevin set up the extension-charmed tent beside Hagrid's hut. Christmas camp.
Draco appeared uninvited on the first evening, announcing that he wasn't going to stay in the Slytherin dungeons for the entire holiday while everyone else was having fun, and who had failed to invite him?
Kevin pointed out that Draco spent most of his free time in those dungeons voluntarily.
Draco said that was not the point.
Kevin let him stay.
The first snow fell that evening, thick and even.
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