HOGWARTS GROUNDS

Sage was pissed. She'd Apparated into a puddle, soaking her new Versace boots, and the icing on the cake was that the carriages to and from Hogsmeade had stopped running by that time of night. So she'd had to walk all the way from the village to Hogwarts.

She hadn't been back to Hogwarts in fifteen years, and seeing the castle loom in the distance made a strange, foreign emotion bloom in her chest. Something like longing, missing the times when she was able to run around the castle with her best friends, Lily and James, and years before that, her brother, without a worry or thought of war or Voldemort in general.

She shook herself out of thoughts of the past, years that she would never get back, no matter how hard she tried, and she turned towards the Shrieking Shack, where Sirius most likely would end up.

As she made her way across the grounds, Sage's heart stopped when she saw Harry and Hermione chasing after Ron, who was being dragged by a large black dog.

"Motherfucker." She grumbled, chasing after her godson and his friends and the idiotic man she loved.

She followed them to the Whomping Willow, watching as Harry and Hermione were, for lack of a better word, whomped, by the tree's branches.

"Aunt Sage!" Harry shouted, once he'd spotted the woman standing on the grounds, trying to find a way to get to the trunk of the tree. "Aunt Sage, help!" His voice went up an octave as he whipped by.

Minutes later, Sage had managed to wriggle her way under the tree's deadly branches and had ducked under every possible injury. She finally reached the trunk and pressed a steady hand to the knot of wood at its base, and she watched as the branches came to a dead halt, her godson and his best friend still dangling precariously from a high altitude.

"Stay still, you two." Sage yelled up to them, wand raised to help them down.

Harry, who normally would have run right to his godmother, stood indifferently by Hermione's side from the minute his feet hit the ground.

"What's your issue?" Sage asked him, looking at the boy with furrowed eyebrows.

He didn't meet her eyes, instead stomping towards the doorway in the trunk of the Whomping Willow.

"You hid everything from me. How my parents died, who got them killed, everything about Sirius Black." Harry grumbled. "You could have told me. I could've handled it. But you just kept your secrets instead."

Her expression softened, and she reached out for him, but he evaded her touch. "Don't. I'm not ready to talk about it." He said.

Well, she thought. At least I raised him with enough emotional intelligence to set boundaries.

She led the two children deeper into the pathway under the tree, following the marks in the dirt where the large black dog had dragged Ron away.

She wasn't sure what she would say when she saw Sirius again, after months of not hearing a single word from him. She wasn't even sure if she'd say anything. All she knew was that he deserved a crisp slap in the face for tormenting Hogwarts and their godson.

She pushed the creaky door that led to the main room of the Shrieking Shack open, stepping quietly over the threshold, and found Ron Weasley collapsed on a musty, threadbare bed, clutching at his leg.

"Ron!" Hermione Granger exclaimed. "You're alright!"

Ron nodded, grimmacing.

Sage grit her teeth. "Where's the dog?" She asked flatly, looking around the tiny room where she'd coached Remus Lupin through a full moon or two, years and years ago.

Ron looked terrified. "It's a trap! The dog's an Animagus. It's Sirius Black!" He told the three people in front of him, voice clearly frantic.

"Yeah. I know."

Sirius stepped out of the shadows, his angular body clothed in a pair of slacks that were dirty and ripped, and a simple long-sleeved shirt that gaped around the neck, showing off the tattoo of her name that was inked onto his chest, right over his heart.

Hermione raised her wand, although her hand was shaking. "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us, too!" She said fiercely.

Sage put her hand on Hermione's arm. "He's not going to kill anyone, darling." She turned to Sirius then, eyes blazing with anger. "You are a motherfucking bastard." She seethed.

Sirius just smiled at her. "Hello to you, too, love."

Ron's eyes went wide. "Love?"

Sage crossed the small room in two long strides and slapped Sirius across the face. His head whipped to the side, and when he turned back to face her, he was grinning widely.

Before he could crack a witty reply, however, she beat him to it:

"If you ever—and I mean ever—leave me again, I'll hex you into next year. And if you even think about scaring Harry again, you won't live to see tomorrow. You don't get to terrify him and destroy all the work I've put into making sure he stays safe, sane, and happy. I raised him and took care of him and nursed him back to health when he got the flu. I kept him safe for twelve years—you don't get to jeopardize everything I've done for him." She was practically foaming at the mouth with anger, causing the children behind her to gape at her in awe.

Harry's face was pale. "Sage, he killed my parents." He said quietly, looking between the two people that were supposed to raise him with wide eyes.

Sage glanced over her shoulder at him. "No, sweetheart. He didn't." She looked past him, towards Ron, and gnawed on her bottom lip. "Oi, Ron? Have you got your pet rat on you, by any chance?" She asked.

Ron nodded, still scared shitless. "Yeah, uh, I do." He pulled the rat—Scabbers, as the Weasleys called it—out of his pocket.

Sage's eyes went wide, and she pointed her wand at the rat.

"Sage, what are you doing?" Ron exclaimed, shocked, and he tried to stand up, even though his left leg appeared to be wounded.

Unlike the children, Sirius just stood there and observed, his smirk growing as he observed the way her face tightened, especially around her mouth.

She took a breath. "Ron, put the rat down. I don't want to hurt you." Her voice was scarily even and well-controlled, athough her anger seeped out around the edges.

She pointed her wand at the rat and cast a wordless spell, watching with bright eyes as it squirmed and squeaked in what sounded like pain, writhing around on the floor. It shouldn't have excited her to see an animal in pain, but she knew better; it wasn't just an animal, no—it was Peter fucking Pettigrew in disguise, hiding like the coward he was.

Finally, when the pain became too much, the rat changed form, shifting from a tiny animal to a man curled into the fetal position, twitching both in his limbs and in his face.

The smile on Sage's face was cruel, and for the first time in his life, Harry Potter looked at her with fear in his eyes.

Remus Lupin burst through the door before she could do what she desperately wanted to do—torture Peter until he was begging for her to kill him.

"Expelliarmus!"

Remus disarmed her easily, catching her wand as it flew through the air.

She whirled around and glared at him. "Why the hell did you do that? I had him exactly where I wanted him!"

Peter Pettigrew looked up at Remus with grateful eyes. "Remus! My old friend Remus!"

Disgusted by his words, Sage kicked at his leg, sending him to the floor once more. "Harry, this is the man that sold out your parents. He's the reason they died. Not Sirius."

With wide eyes, Peter struggled to sputter up a response. "No, I never—I could never! They were my best friends!"

Sage just laughed. "Charlotte Joyner was my best friend, too. D'you know what I did to the man that killed her?" She paused, giving him a moment to absorb her words. "I tortured him for hours. Made him beg for mercy. Watched him cry out for me to stop. And do you know what I did then?

"I ripped out his organs and left him to die."

Peter's gasp was music to her ears. "You killed Lawson?" He asked incredulously.

"It was the most fun I'd had in months." She said smugly, before turning to Remus. "Now give me back my wand so I can do the same to him."

Surprisingly, however, it was Harry who protested. With angry eyes, he said, "No. We can't kill him. We've got to do this right—Aunt Sage, I'm sorry I blamed you. But you can't be a killer. Not for them. It's not what they'd want for you. We've got to get him locked up."

"Come on." Sirius muttered, going to Sage and pulling her in so he could kiss her forehead. "We'll hand him over to Dumbledore, let him handle it."

She melted into his touch, and for a few moments, she couldn't even be angry at him for leaving, or for making Harry doubt her. All she could feel was a sense of calm that she shouldn't have been able to feel, seeing as the man that had killed two of her best friends was right in front of her.

The seven of them left the Shrieking Shack, Sirius and Remus holding Peter between them and pinning his arms behind his back.

When they reached the open air of the Hogwarts grounds, Sage basked in the light of the full moon for a beat, until the realization struck her.

"Remus—" She began, turning to face him, but she noticed the worst had already happened.

The werewolf had started to change, head twitching and eyes sharpening.

"Sirius, take them and run!" She called to her lover, and she pushed her godson away, putting as much distance between him and Remus as she could.

Sirius's face fell. "No. Not without you!" He replied fiercely.

She grabbed her wand from Remus's limp hand and pointed it at him. "Go! I'll be fine. Just—get Harry away. I can handle Remus. Make sure the children are safe, and come back for me." She ordered.

Harry's eyes seemed to plead with her. "Aunt Sage, I can help."

"No." She said simply. "I'm supposed to protect you. Not the other way around. You get your ass out of here, alright? Go!"

As Remus transformed into his alternate form in the middle of the grounds, her godson, his friends, and the love of her life fled. She couldn't watch them go—it took everything in her to keep her gaze trained on Remus, making sure she stood between him and the people she cared about.

fun!