Sirius' Rescue I

Harry had never been a deep sleeper. Whenever one of his dorm mates went to the loo in the middle of the night, he would listen to them stumbling through the darkness.

He blamed the Dursleys. His light sleep was probably the result of being in a near-constant state of awareness for most of his childhood. Having your aunt scream you awake or Dudley performing a 'practical joke' was not a pleasant way to start the day.

While he lay awake and pondered these thoughts, he tried to figure out why he had awoken at this time of night. The only sounds audible were the steady breathing of the wizards he shared his dorm with.

And then he heard it. His ear caught a very quiet and muffled sound. It reminded him, vaguely, of his name. Bewildered at what could be causing it, he sat up. The sound was so quiet he couldn't detect it over the rustle of his blanket.

Confusedly, he stared at the end of his bed. It made absolutely no sense to him. Without touching the floor, he quietly crawled to the foot of the bed and slowly leaned forward.

His trunk, a massive hunk of wood and metal, silently stood there. It looked no different than it would during the day. His eyebrows furrowed. Harry pressed his ear to it.

This time he was certain: someone had called his name.

The young wizard whispered, "Sirius!"

Hurriedly, he untangled himself from his bed sheet and wrestled with the lock on his trunk. He had barely opened the lid when he heard his name again, "Harry!"

"Harry, wake up!" The voice said again. It definitely belonged to Sirius. He sounded very urgent. "Oh bugger thi- come on, Harry! You have to wake up!"

Frantically, the Boy-Who-Lived started rummaging through his trunk. When had he accumulated so much stuff?

"Whatever it is you're doing..." As Harry accidentally shoved a woolly jumper over his magical mirror - the very same mirror he was fitfully trying to locate - the voice faded away momentarily. Finally managing to untangle the inconveniently small magical device, Harry realised he had missed a chunk of whatever Sirius had just said.

Raising the mirror to his face, he caught the tail end of the last sentence. "-your help! This is a matter of life and death!"

His godfather's face in the mirror was badly illuminated. "Sirius?"

"Damn it! What took you so long?"

Harry was about to answer when Sirius' voice got a little louder. "Never mind! It's not important. Harry, I need your help. You need to get in contact with Dumbledore or anybody else from the Order!"

"What's the matter?" Harry blurted.

"I'm stuck at the Ministry. I'm inside of a..." Sirius looked at his surroundings. Then, he resumed, "Does this look like a conference room to you?" He asked, waving the mirror wildly around.

Harry saw a table, chairs, a cabinet of sorts – all made from the same dark wood – and a large expanse of stone-gray wall.

Harry attempted to reply.

However, Sirius continued to speak. "Who the heck cares?" he asked rhetorically. "Anyway, I had to hide from a patrol. A patrol! There were no guards. Never! I mean the sole reason for us to keep watch every night is that there are no guards. This is just so..."

Harry watched his godfather take a deep breath which calmed him down somewhat. Then he resumed his little monologue. "The very good news is I was not found... The bad news is that I can't get out of here. The door is enchanted against unlocking spells and everything I have come up with so far hasn't worked. Someone will have to come here and open it from the outside. It's not locked or anything; I got in without using magic at all. But the damn doorknob on this side of the door is fixed! Some idiot must have installed the stupid thing the wrong way around!"

Sirius let loose an oddly impressive string of swear words, aimed at his pitiful situation. He then attempted to calm himself again. "Okay, it could be worse. I'm not at immediate risk of discovery. And it's like, what, one in the morning? The first Ministry employees will not arrive for at least five more hours. I bet I could ride a decent broom all the way from Hogwarts to London within that time! So for now, I'm not in danger."

Harry breathed a small sigh of relief.

"And I'm no longer a wanted man. So, I won't immediately get kissed by the Dementors if they found me here." Sirius harshly sucked air in through his teeth. "But I'm on Level Nine. And I'm inside the one department where entry is forbidden to all but a few individuals...I mean, I only passed through the Hall of Prophecies and not one of their weird labs... that should count for something. So once again, it could be worse. But I will get 'treated' to some time in Palace à la Azkaban if I get discovered!"

"Sirius!" Harry snapped.

"Ah, don't worry, Harry!" The wizard sent him a roguish grin. "That won't happen anyway. I'd rather blow my way out of here with a Bombarda. The mission will be ruined if I get found here anyway. So there is no reason to hold back!"

"This is no joking matter!" Harry almost shouted. He barely managed to tone his voice down, before the other occupants of Gryffindor Tower awoke.

"Your father would have been all in for a little bit of action!" Sirius grinned manically.

"Sirius, pull yourself together!" Harry hissed.

The adult pouted. "Remus had a bad influence on you!"

"I'm going to get hold of someone from the Order, but you have to describe to me where exactly you are!"

"Nothing easier than that!" Sirius nodded eagerly. "I'm inside the Ministry of Magic." He added in a sing-song voice, "Level Nine, Department of Mysteries."

Harry's eyes bulged. He actually recognized the body-less voice he had heard in the elevator when he had met with the Minister of Magic during the summer.

"I know, I know; I was told to stay in the special hideout. But you can't imagine how boring that is! So, when I was at risk of falling asleep, I decided to stretch my legs by going on a little patrol. That's why I went down to the corridor and checked if our alarm was still active. Everything was fine. I took one look into the Entrance Chamber. You've got to know, the door is never locked. It's a trap to capture anyone who intends to look at the security of the Department of Mysteries. As soon as you step in it starts to rotate."

"And now you're trapped." Harry summarized dryly.

"No." Sirius frowned. "I mean, yes. But not because of any room with rotating doors. The Unspeakable's little trap was broken. So, I decided to take a brief look around. Nothing more - I swear! I mean, we've been guarding the place every night for almost a year now. Was I supposed to ignore the one chance I had to peek inside?"

Harry could really not believe what he was hearing. How unreliable could a single person be? "Sirius, what exactly happened?"

"I checked the doors in the Entrance Chamber. And they were all unlocked. So, I verified once more that Dumbledore's alarm was alright. And it had not been triggered. So with all doors unlocked I went to make a short inspection of the Hall of Prophecies." He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'What else should I have done?'

"I passed through a… let's call it a library and then I was already in the Hall of Prophecies. I took a short walk along the shelves. It's wicked how many crystal globes with prophecies they collected over the centuries and who those prophecies were made to and who they were about!"

Harry groaned when it fully sank in how Sirius had gotten himself into that mess. "No kidding? You're on a mission for the Order and you just decided on a whim to wander off and have a private sightseeing tour?"

"I was not abandoning my post! It was a patrol." Sirius stressed in defense of himself.

"Damn it, Sirius!"

The older wizard's shoulders dropped. "Yeah, I know, I messed up. Just go and tell Dumbledore, so he can send someone to unlock this stupid door for me. Even Mundungus could get me out of here..." The image in the mirror became shaky and Harry heard some rattling. "Crappy door!"

At first, Harry was about to hurry down the staircase and run as fast to Dumbledore as he could. Then he remembered that they were not pressed for time. So, the Boy-Who-Lived grabbed his rumpled clothes off the floor and took them down to the common room where he pulled them over his pajamas.

Despite having some time to spare, he ran all the way to Dumbledore's office. It was quite the distance and Harry was breathing hard by the time he arrived at the Headmaster's office.

The young wizard then realized that he had no clue whatsoever what the password to Dumbledore's office was. He had named what felt like a hundred sweets before he snapped. "It's an emergency, dammit! I need to talk to the headmaster."

The stone gargoyle's reply so surprised Harry so much that he made a small jump backwards.

"I can't do anything for you," The stony guard huffed. "If the headmaster was in Hogwarts, I would have informed him about your desire to speak to him fifteen minutes ago. But he is not in his office. In the case that this is an actual emergency, go and talk to your Head of House."

"McGonagall!" Harry cried, already turning to run in the direction of her office. She was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

But he had no luck with her either.

He pulled the mirror out of his pocket and told Sirius about the situation.

The man in said object cursed his bad luck extensively.

"Okay, I'm sure we can find a solution to this. Do you keep your broom in your dorm?"

"Naturally."

"Get it and fly to Hagrid. He might be able to get in contact with Dumbledore."

"You're a genius, Sirius!"

"I've been saying that for years! But nobody ever acknowledges it."

"Give me just five min-"

Sirius interrupted him. "Shh, I heard something. I'll call you. Don't call me first!" Then the mirror was just a plain mirror.

The fact that Sirius had broken the connection suddenly made the whole situation a lot more urgent.

On the way back to Gryffindor tower, Harry finally thought of the Marauders' Map. It would save him a lot of time.

Upon his return, the Fat Lady had the nerve to reprimand him! "You should've been in your bed for hours! If you don't get to your dorm right this instant I shall inform Professor McGonagall about this incident."

"How convenient!" Harry exclaimed, smiling for the first time that evening. "Please do so right away - I am looking for her, after all."

The Fat lady deflated visibly and allowed him to climb back into the common room.

Harry tried to stay reasonably quiet while he hurried to fetch his broom and the other heirlooms of his father. He was not overly successful. How his dorm mates remained asleep was beyond his understanding.

Back in the common room, he unfolded the map and placed the invisibility cloak on the seat next to him. First, he looked at the quarters of the Transfiguration Professor. They were empty. Then, he glanced at the headmaster's. They were, similarly, empty. In a last-resort attempt, he folded the Map so he could check Hagrid's hut. Not a single member of the Order of the Phoenix was in the castle. What were they all doing?

Harry had half a mind to jump onto his broom and fly to the Ministry. He was reasonably sure that he could find Sirius thanks to the short description he had been given.

But that was a dumb idea.

Harry checked the map thoroughly. Dumbledore, Hagrid, and McGonagall had to be somewhere!

Nervously, Harry thought about the time he had wasted so far. Maybe, he should just take his broom? He argued with himself how obviously dumb and reckless that was while scanning the map for the name of any Order member.

Then he remembered Snape.

But the one time he wanted to see the Potions master, he couldn't because he wasn't in the castle either.

Harry eyed the window. If he left the castle through it he would save about ten minutes.

Nervously, he turned the mirror in his hands. Why wasn't Sirius calling? Had something happened to him? If he could just talk to anybody...

Habitually, Harry thought of Hermione. Once the idea had formed, he remembered the prototype coin Hermione had given him. They had been experimenting with the Protean Charm. He pulled the coin from his pocket. He tapped his wand at it in the way he had been shown.

He watched the map while he waited for Hermione to answer his short message. At least she was where she was supposed to be! And she was even awake! He saw her move.

As if he was hypnotized, Harry watched Hermione climb down the circular staircase of the girls' dorms. He looked up just in time to see her appear. "What kind of emergency? I'm studying for Arithmancy. I've got a test tomorrow."

He told her where Sirius was, who was not in the castle, what he had done so far, and what he considered to be his only option beyond waiting for Sirius to call him. He ended with, "What should I do?"

"Send an owl to Dumbledore and everyone you're looking for. Maybe, they're down in Hogsmeade or the forest. Or somewhere else close by. And then you get back into your dorm."

"Yes! That plan is genius!" Harry opened a window.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked in alarm.

Harry picked his broom up. "I'm going to fly to the owlery." He mounted his broom. Then looked at Hermione. "Are you coming?"

Hermione looked at the broom. Then her eyes stared out of the window and into the night.

"There is nothing to worry about. I promise."

She shook her head. "Let's write the notes together and you fly over to the owlery alone afterward."

"Fine." Harry dismounted his broom and they wrote four notes. Composing them wasn't as easy as Harry had initially thought, but Hermione was correct to point out that they had to speak in code in case the recipients of the short letters were not alone when they received them.

Flying to the owlery took less than a minute. Many owls were out, but Harry found four willing birds to deliver his messages.

Then he returned to the common room.

Hermione had switched her casual clothes for something a little more formal. She was sitting at a table and leaning over the map he had left behind for her, her arithmancy book lay forgotten next to her.

Harry grinned. "I thought you would have gone straight back to bed."

"And risk that you do something stupid - like flying on your broom all the way to London?"

"And what should I do if none of them gets the message in time? I'm not even sure if there is still enough time left to fly to London."

"Maybe, Sirius has already found a way out on his own. You should call him before you do something rash."

Harry retrieved the small magical mirror from his pocket. He tried to call his godfather but there was no answer.

"And what if he has not managed it? If I want to fly to London, I should get going right now."

"You can't fly with a broom to London." Hermione huffed. "That's mad! How are you even going to find it?"

"I'll just fly south. Maybe, I'm not as good at Astronomy as you but I know the North Star."

"And how are you going to find the Ministry? At night? Do you even have the slightest idea how big London is?"

Harry felt like swearing but Sirius chose that moment to call him on the mirror. He hissed, "No words! The security wizards are playing cards in the room next to this one. Have you told Dumbledore?"

Harry shook his head.

"McGonagall?"

Harry shook his head.

"Have you told anyone from the Order?"

Harry shook his head.

Sirius pressed his lips onto each other until they turned white. "I really don't want to ask this of you, Harry. But if you can't find anyone I need you to get to the headquarters and alert whoever is there. I'll call you back on the mirror as soon as the guards resume their patrols."

Harry nodded in understanding.

The connection was interrupted.

"Don't be dumb!" Hermione grabbed Harry when he tried to mount his broom.

"Hermione, you heard him. I need to help him."

"But certainly not by flying all the way to London!"

"You're right! You can make me a portkey. That will be way faster."

"No, I can't."

"Hermione, please I need one."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, I'm not unwilling. I'm just unable to make you a portkey. One can only make portkeys aimed at places one is sufficiently familiar with. And one needs to be sure the destination area is big enough and clear. And I can't think of any place which fits those criteria."

"What about your parents' house? It's way closer to London then Hogwarts."

"That would have been possible if I had not placed a very nasty trap on the property."

Harry cursed. "Okay, I'll fly then."

"No!" Hermione almost tackled him to the ground.

"And what else am I supposed to do then?" Harry asked impatiently. He could feel precious time dissipating.

Instead of answering his question, Hermione replied, "Harry, Sirius is an adult wizard. He can take care of himself."

Harry was growing very impatient and this was reflected in his clipped tone. "Clearly, he can't. He is stuck. If I have to, I'll fly to the headquarters. I'll make sure someone helps him. Unless you know a better way to get there?"

"Use the floo obviously." Hermione nodded her head at the huge hearth in the Gryffindor common room. "Too bad that this fireplace isn't connected. But you can use the hearth at the three broomsticks"

"No!" Harry shook his head excitedly, "I'll use Umbridge's fireplace. She has a bowl with floo powder on her mantle. It looks like a disfigured cat."

"You can't be serious! Of all the teachers you want to break into Umbridge's office?"

"Yes, I am serious." The longer Harry thought about it the clearer it became that this was the way to go for them. "It's perfect actually. She's made so many enemies since she came here. We'll just vandalize her office before leaving and she'll never figure out why we broke into it."

"Why not the Three Broomsticks?"

Harry tapped the map on the table. "Because this guarantees that we won't get caught."

Hermione bit her bottom lip. "That's probably true."

"Okay, what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

They checked the map before they actually left. Not even Filch was patrolling the corridors at this time of the night and Peeves was in Professor Binn's office. Nobody else was out of bounds.

Umbridge's office was surprisingly close to the Gryffindor tower.

Faced with the closed door, Hermione said, "Give me a minute." She waved her wand and rattled down a litany of spells and charms in such short order that Harry had no idea where one ended and the next began.

He watched the air glow and little sparks of magic danced back and forth between Hermione's wand and the door. When she fell silent, he asked, "So?"

"There is some enchantment on the door that works as an alert. And I'm not sure that I can undo it without tripping it."

"So, we blast the door apart with an explosion, throw some more spells, and then use the floo." Harry had hoped Umbridge would only find out about her office in the morning but time was of the essence.

"Let me try something first." Hermione stepped away from the door and tapped some of the big gray granite stones Hogwarts had been built from a thousand years ago. There was no pattern to Hermione's doing and the longer Harry watched the more random it seemed to him.

He soon felt very impatient and he considered asking Hermione what the heck she was doing but she seemed so committed. In the end, he didn't dare to mess her magic up by interrupting her.

When she stopped and looked at him, a huge grin split her face. "Have you ever wondered how the archway in the courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron works?" She tapped two stones with her wand.

With big eyes, Harry watched the two and a few more shift out of the way. They left a hole big enough for a person.

"You're a genius!" He rushed to her side and following an impulse, he gave her a peck.

"It's actually just a matter of looking the enchantment up."

"And remembering it. And also thinking of it at the right moment," Harry added.

Once they were in Umbridge's office, Harry noticed that the spell was not as impressive as he had reckoned at first. The big stones formed no elegant archway. They also looked to be glued to their brethren on the inside of Umbridge's office in rather weird angles.

"I would need more time and probably smaller stones to make that look good," Hermione mused while inspecting her work critically.

Meanwhile, Harry was focused on the result of the shifting stones. They had ruined quite a number of wall plates and smashed a ... Harry looked closer. He had honestly no idea what the splintered wood had been. The most important thing was that the fireplace and the bowl with floo powder were okay.

"Can you close the hole?"

"Sure." Hermione tapped her wand at the wall. With a scraping noise, all stones slid back onto their former places.

"Do you want to wait here or tag along?"

"I'll certainly not stay here." Hermione glanced around.

"You could go back to your dorm and study Arithmancy."

Hermione huffed, "Or I tag along and make certain that you don't do something very stupid."

"That's up to you." Harry grinned.

"How about we try to repair this stuff? Umbridge will never know someone was here at all," Hermione suggested.

And as much as Harry wanted to smash everything, he understood that it could be useful to hide the fact that they had been here.

"Reparo!" Harry aimed at the mess of broken bits of wood. They twitched but otherwise nothing happened.

Hermione frowned. "You don't know what that was?"

Harry shook his head.

"How is the spell supposed to work if you don't know what it was? You have to picture the outcome." Hermione knelt down and inspected the mess. "Can you fix the plates?"

A single look at the many shards scattered everywhere prompted Harry to say, "No."

"Too bad," Hermione sighed. "I guess this was a small Fire-screen desk."

"A what?"

"Doesn't matter." Hermione gestured at the room. "You want to dispose of this gaudy trash?"

"We can share."

"I'll do the desk." Hermione waved her wand then she stopped. "Maybe, we should use only spells which are part of the curriculum."

Harry asked with morbid fascination, "What were you going to cast?"

Hermione had the decency to blush slightly. "I wanted to make the desk rot and then transfigure the rotten stuff into a completely different table."

"And when Umbridge would have undone the transfiguration she would have ended up with the rotten stuff?" Harry chuckled.

Hermione nodded. "Oh, I have another idea!"

"And what?"

"I'll vanish the glue and everything else keeping the furniture together!"

"We don't have time for something that fancy."

"You do the rest of the room and I'll only disassemble the desk."

A powerful "Reducto!" cast at a chest of drawers taught Harry to be more careful. Scraps of parchment and sawdust flew everywhere. The explosion had also sent most decorative plates falling to the floor. "Whoops."

"Seriously?" Hermione snapped. "Give me at least a minute."

Harry smashed the few remaining things his first curse had not destroyed. He glanced at Hermione and found her busy. Out of boredom, he vanished some random shards.

Once Hermione was done tapping the heavy desk it had been turned into a collection of wooden boards.

With a grin, she looped her arm around his and turned them to face the fireplace.

Before they left, Harry had one question, "What about the door?"

"What about it?"

"What is Umbridge supposed to think about how we got in here?"

Hermione grinned evilly. "I say, let her try to figure it out on her own."

Harry grabbed some floo powder and called the address of their destination. And like last summer, the knowledge did not register in Hermione's mind.

When they stepped out of the green flames, Grimmauld Place was eerily quiet.

"This can't be true," Harry groaned.

"Maybe, someone is upstairs or in the kitchen," Hermione suggested.

Harry hurried to the staircase and shouted upwards. "Hello? Is anybody home?" Then he went to check the kitchen. The room was dark. So, he ran upstairs, where nobody could be found either. The house was empty.

When he returned to the drawing-room, he found Hermione sitting in an armchair. The bowl with floo powder stood on a small side table next to her.

She noticed his look. "It's just a precaution to keep you from doing something rash."

"I need to go and help Sirius."

"That's why we're here. We will wait until someone comes round. And then you can deliver your message and Sirius will get help."

"And what if nobody comes conveniently around?"

"Then we'll deal with it. But for now, we'll wait."

And that's what they did. Harry tried to sit. But he couldn't. He was too restless. He wanted to do something. Anything. To distract himself, he went to the kitchen and prepared a snack. Too nervous to eat it, he offered it to Hermione. Most of the time he spent by wearing the carpet down with an endless back and forth on the same path.

After another hour Sirius finally got in contact with him. He whispered, "Harry, where are you?"

"At the headquarter," He answered just as silently.

Sirius hissed at him, "Not so loud!"

Harry saw his godfather look at something he could not see in the mirror.

"Okay. I think... Yes, they resumed their game." He looked back at Harry. "Well done, Harry. Now listen, I overheard the guards. They all have to be at the starting checkpoints of their rounds at four o'clock... which is in about forty five minutes. That will be the perfect opportunity to get me out of this conference room. If nobody manages to get here in one hour, I'll blast my way through that door and make a run for it."

Then the connection was severed.

A/N: Beta-reading for this chapter was done by Avaxius and Kodra. Thanks!