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Chapter 37 - A meeting with Sirius and the Marauder’s Map

"So you're saying your defense from the dark arts teacher may be a werewolf?" As Hazel spoke, incredulously, Evervine's nose twitched.

"Maybe this is why we do not have this course, it seems cursed."

"I was thinking the same thing." Both Hazel and Marcel looked to Evervine and nodded.

"Wait. Why do you think that he is a werewolf?"

Both Hazel and Hermione rolled their eyes at Harry's and Ron's confused looks but it was Evervine who answered.

"Your professor Snape told her with his lectures and assignments. Do males listen to anything?"

"Yes but I think it is a random phenomenon." Hazel was being very honest, since she actually researched the topic. "We also need to do something about Buckbeak, actually I would love to take his entire flock." She spoke absent-mindedly as her hands worked in the air.

With smoke and an odd sound Sirius was before them. Hermione pursed her lips and folded her arms. Harry went in for a hug as he spoke.

"Be careful Hazel. Hermione has on her snitch face."

Sirius frowned at this but said nothing. He walked to Hazel and hugged her. It was his mission to normalize hugging for her. She awkwardly returned the hug but she did not try to push him away.

"Uncle Sirius. Remus Lupin is your friend right?"

"He is."

"It would seem that Professor Snape is hinting that he is a werewolf."

Sirius narrowed his eyes in a way that told Hazel the hints were to the truth. Hermione gasped and Hazel realized she saw the truth in her uncle's eyes as well.

Hazel shrugged. "We will have to help him. What do you think Marcel."

Marcel sat in thought for a long moment. "The Tan Dimension sees werewolfism as a consequence of backlash."

Hazel, Evervine, Marcel, and Hermione looked to Sirius. He was stunned then he smirked when he understood what they wanted to know. He shook his head.

"No. He was bitten when he was young."

"When he was young? Is this an actual memory or is this what he was told."

This time Sirius was really taken aback as he stared at Evervine in shock. "To be honest he often said he had no memory of it and his mother told him the story of what happened."

Marcel nodded. "I think we should do a specific spectral and meridian cleanse."

Hazel rolled her eyes. "It proves nothing Marcel. I will do a dreamwalk tonight." Hazel smiled. "I have been wanting to truly talk with him. He is always so busy. And I know that you have been itching to create cleanses."

Marcel's eyes went wide. "You do make the best cleanses Hazel and do you see a better solution."

Hazel shook her head. "I do not. I will still do the dreamwalk first." She looked to Sirius.

"Now explain about this rat. There is something between the four of you right. Ever since I saw your dog form I realized that there was some sort of transfiguration component to this."

Sirius nodded and then looked to Ron. "That traitor Pettigrew is a rat. We all performed transfiguration to help Remus when he changed. It was partly to protect out friend and partly to show him we were still there for him"

Ron instantly had a frown on his face and looked ahead at no one. Everyone else gave knowing looks.

Hazel narrowed her eyes. "Ron? Aren't you upset with Hermione because you think Crockshanks ate Scabbers?"

"Well... Yes."

"So let's say that Peter Pettigrew is Scabbers. You said he has been passed down in your family for a long time. Longer than rats generally live? And isn't it reasonable that if he is Pettigrew that he understands everything we talk about and he knows that Uncle Sirius has escaped. And if this is the case could he not have gone into hiding? "

Harry cleared his throat. "I have seen a Peter Pettigrew on the Marauder's Map." He looked at Ron apologetically. Ron was speechless.

"What is your plan Uncle Sirius?"

Sirius had a wide smile on his face when he looked to Hazel. "I want to kill him." He shrugged.

Silence.

Everyone left the dreamscape, everyone except for Hazel. She had to do one more thing before she entered Professor Lupin's dream. The dreamscape slowly began to change. Everything seemed to soften, colors, edges, meanings, thoughts. She breathed softly and calmly.

"Why are you still with us. Your time is done. Rest and forget us."

Michael appeared next to her and sat down on a large blurred cloud. "I am not done. You are too important to me. I have to help you."

"And if she forces you across the veil, or worse yet rips your connection to the veil from you? You will either be lost and aware or lost and oblivious. What if I can not find you?"

He laughed a light hollow laugh. "You will always be able to find me and you know this and, for me it is worth the risk."

She sighed and gave up arguing. "What have you come to tell me?"

The apparition of her first love smiled. "She is now planning to take your third eye from you. She called on a fate denizen for help."

He knew he could talk freely here. The dreamscape was Hazel's realm. If she wanted to block out creation she could. Hazel's eyes had widened at the news of a conspiracy with an entity under her purview. She looked at Michael. She could not call attention to this. She did not want Rosa to know there was a leak or possible spy. She did not want to draw possible attention to Michael.

"Thank you Michael. I will not ignore this. I know that is what you are worried about."

A wave seemed to flow through Michael as he quietly watched her. He began to fade just as he began to speak, his eyes never leaving hers.

"I will not leave until she is behind the veil and there I will punish her. She has destroyed much for me."

Tears welled up in her eyes. "If you allow yourself to return you would regain all that you lost and more." But Michael was gone. She gave him authority to come and go from her dreamscapes as he pleased long ago.

She would need to strategize with Evervine and Hermione.

She closed her eyes and left her dreamscape, she liked to dreamwalk from reality. She waited. Waited until she felt the bed and pillows beneath her and the sheets softly draped upon her. She waited for the smells of her room to register and for the sounds of the dragons outside to make sense to her mind.

And then she dove. She dove deeply, searching, seeking. She found him almost instantly, as she usually did when she had a target well known to others that she knew well.

She stepped through a soft sheer grey veil. It did not part because due to her status she walked through the veil of dreams unhindered and undisruptive to the dreamer. When the dream veil parts you risk waking the dreamer.

She stepped through the dream veil and walked out into Professor Remus Lupin's dream.

She was in a dark forest of thin leaf less trees. Everything was in Grey's and everything was damp and dank. She walked across a wide clearing allowing her understanding dreams be her guide. She finally found him after finding five of his decoys.

He was definitely good at magic, to even protect himself here.

A dream decoy is a clever ploy to keep people out of your dreams and to distract and avoid dream, illusion, and mental attacks. The magic goes to the decoy because it will always display abnormal numbers.

Remus Lupin was a child. Hazel watched with clinical curiosity. And before the dream ever thought of looping she knew this was a looping torture made by Remus.

She shook her head. She ready herself. She was going to have to weed through his actuality, his perception of a moment, and the reality of the moment.

He sat at a table. A story unfolding before him but it was blurred. Two people in deep discussion. Perhaps a male and a female perhaps not. She walked and stood beside him to see if she could see any better closer to the scene.

It stayed blurred.

As a matter of fact it seemed to get blurrier and more muffled the closer she got.

She pursed her lips. She would have to read him through his dream. She thought about it for awhile. Reading someone from their dream could distort the read if you did not prepare well or understand what was truly sought. Seeing was not always a blind endeavor. And having a bit of sight before a reading could be misleading,

In other words: knowing someone or having information on someone could distort the read.

Within Remus Lupin's dream she took out her pink focusing crystal and rubbed it in her right hand with her thumb and pointer finger. Everything froze. Then it seemed to move in reverse and then begin again.

Hazel watched the scene unfold before her, her head nodding in understanding.

They would start with Marcel's solution.

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