At noon, Lupin appeared near the Shrieking Shack. He kept a careful watch on his surroundings, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
The Aurors had probably decided that hardly anyone would be sneaking around in broad daylight, and the Shrieking Shack itself did not look as though it held any useful clues, so none of them had been left behind to guard it.
That let Lupin breathe a little easier, because what he was doing was definitely not something aboveboard.
He was here to meet Sirius, and Sirius was currently a wanted fugitive. If anyone found out that he, a Hogwarts professor, was secretly meeting with a fugitive, it would have a devastating effect on his career, and Hogwarts might be dragged into it as well.
If his identity as a Werewolf were exposed, then the Werewolf community, whose terrible reputation had only just begun to loosen a little, might end up being branded evil all over again.
So no matter how one looked at it, secretly meeting Sirius should have been the sort of thing done in the dead of night.
Lupin felt awkward for more than one reason. It was not just the bright sunlight overhead making him, as someone who felt like he was doing something shady, feel guilty. It was also the bright, lively girl following beside him.
Tonks had ended up coming along after all. Lupin did not know whether to call her bold or simply too confident. She had actually dared to follow a stranger to meet a wanted criminal, without any fear of being sold off somewhere.
Still, in a way, that saved him some trouble. Lupin did not have to worry about the girl secretly reporting him while he was meeting Sirius, and he also did not have to wrestle too early with whether he should kill her to keep her quiet.
Everything could wait until after he saw Sirius.
The sinister Shrieking Shack stood right in front of them.
As a haunted house famous throughout Britain, the Shrieking Shack had never been repaired. Its original dilapidated look made it seem as though it might collapse the next second, or have some zombie leap out and bite someone.
When the Ministry of Magic had investigated Mundungus's disappearance, they had not dared get too close to the place either. Even wizards were sometimes afraid of things that did not really exist.
Ghosts and the like were hardly rare in the wizarding world. Hogwarts Castle alone housed more than a dozen of them.
But fear was fear. Tonks stayed tucked behind Lupin, peering cautiously at the Shrieking Shack as though it were the gaping jaws of some man-eating monster, terrified it might swallow her whole.
"Why is the place you agreed to meet at somewhere like this?" Tonks asked nervously.
Tonks had also been a Hogwarts student. She had grown up on all the frightening legends about the Shrieking Shack.
Lupin's expression turned a little odd, because he himself was the creator of those horror stories surrounding the Shrieking Shack.
Judging by Tonks's age, Lupin had not even graduated yet at the time. She might well have heard his ghostly howls with her own ears.
"Don't worry. It's not nearly as frightening as you think," Lupin reassured her.
After all, the most dangerous the Shrieking Shack ever got was when he transformed into a Werewolf. And now that he, the Werewolf in question, was standing right in front of Tonks as her shield, there was no way things could be more dangerous than that.
"But wouldn't Sirius have set up some deadly trap here? He's a dangerous man," Tonks whispered.
"Even if there are traps, they wouldn't be aimed at me," Lupin said calmly.
From the moment Sirius had appeared to help him, Lupin had believed that Sirius absolutely was not the kind of man who would betray his friends.
The two of them approached the Shrieking Shack. Lupin checked the area one more time to make sure no one else was around, then pushed open the shack's battered door.
It opened with a creak. No stale, rotten smell drifted out, which was only natural. Sirius had been living here for some time now, and he could hardly do that without breathing.
There was no dramatic setup. Sirius stood not far from the door, in a spot that was not immediately visible, but once he confirmed who had come, he stepped out openly.
Sunlight from outside fell across him. The face that had once attracted so many foolish young girls was no longer nearly so appealing. It looked weathered now, like a drifter's.
They had already seen each other once before at Honeydukes, but the circumstances then had hardly been suitable for reminiscing.
"Long time no see, Remus," Sirius said with a smile.
...
On an empty stretch of grass, a trail suddenly appeared, as though something invisible had pressed it down.
The mark extended steadily forward, as though an unseen person were walking across the lawn.
After some time, the trail came to a stop, and a voice slowly emerged from thin air.
It was Raichel.
In an experimental accident, Raichel had fused with the bloodlines of dozens of magical creatures, including an Invisibility Demiguise.
It was a magical creature that looked like a white-furred monkey, and just like its name suggested, its ability was invisibility.
In the wizarding world, the Invisibility Demiguise was a highly prized magical creature, because Invisibility Cloaks were made from its fur.
Unlike Death's Invisibility Cloak, those cloaks only lasted about a year, but that still did nothing to lessen their value.
Because of that, the Invisibility Demiguise had nearly been hunted to extinction.
But invisibility was not its only ability. The reason it had not completely died out, aside from the protection of a few far-sighted people, was even more because of its other innate gift.
That gift was seeing the future.
That ability allowed some of the cleverer Invisibility Demiguises to avoid the hunters pursuing them, keeping their numbers at a level that was dangerous, but not quite enough to drive them to extinction.
Raichel had naturally gained that ability as well. Invisibility and prophecy had both greatly boosted his ability to survive, and they also let him seize on crucial clues even when he had no leads at all and was completely in the dark.
Recently, however, Raichel had begun to feel as though his gift of prophecy was going wrong. The future he saw had become blurred and indistinct, as though covered by a layer of frosted glass.
This was not the first time he had encountered that sort of thing. In the past, similar problems had appeared when he tried to use prophecy to observe his own teacher and the Second Senator.
"Is it that heir of ancient magic? Is the power of ancient magic making my prophecies unreliable?" Raichel muttered to himself.
Fortunately, although what he saw was somewhat blurred, the actual content was still correct. Raichel had still seen where the people who killed one of his bodies were.
They were at the Shrieking Shack, the place with a secret passage leading to Hogwarts.
"I'll go take a look first. Once I've confirmed there's no problem, I can gather everyone and make a move directly," Raichel thought impatiently.
He had already wasted too much time around Hogwarts. It was all because of those Dementors. Otherwise, he could have gone straight to Hogwarts Castle and found that heir of ancient magic himself.