===June 19 1993===
While Harry and his friends rode the Hogwarts Express home for summer a man sat in his cell in Azkaban. He is just one of the many prisoners in the complex. The difference is that he was innocent of his crimes. His name is Sirius Black, once head auror, now you wouldn't recognize him. Prison food has left him very lean, but since he could move about his cell he was still fit. His hair, that he previously kept short, was now long and strangely falling in his face.
"Black!" A man calls out, Sirius looks up and sees a prison guard walk his way. Sirius never bothered learning their names, the human guards were only here during the daylight hours and only there for a couple weeks before they were rotated out. It was all an attempt to keep the prison's other guards from affecting them too badly.
Dementors, the prison's true guards. The wraith-like creatures feed on unhappy memories. The feeding process would slowly drive someone insane. They emanate fear, steal the heat from a room and could steal your very soul with a 'kiss'.
The guard stepped up to Sirius' cell. "I brought your copy of The Prophet."
"Two weeks old as usual?"
"Of course." The guard says as he lays the newspaper just inside the cell. "Enjoy."
Sirius waits until the guard walks away before he gets up and grabs the paper. He carefully opens it and gasps as he looks at the front page.
Chamber of Secrets, secret no longer. Thanks to the efforts of Harry Potter, the famous boy-who-lived, and his friends (pictured below) the infamous Chamber is now fully open.
Sirius stops reading and looks at the picture. "Harry, my boy." Sirius whispers to himself. 'You look so much like James." He runs his fingers over Harry's face. Then he looks down at the names before looking at the others in the picture.
Hermione is pressed up against Harry. Sirius smiles at the look shared between the two then gasps when at the very last second of the moving picture he sees a familiar ring on her hand. "Lily's ring? Impossible."
Filing that away he looks at Ron. Ron stands slightly away from the obviously happy couple. A look of happiness in his eyes as he looks at them, a rat crawls out of his pocket and into view. "No," Sirius says as he looks at the rodent and notices it's missing a toe.
The ex-auror sees red, as he crushes the paper in his hands. "He's not dead," he whispers to himself. "That sneaky bastard! He's at Hogwarts." The paper starts to smoke in his hands, "I'll get you Pettigrew." He says as he lets it turn to ash.
Slowly a plan started to form in his head. That rat could clear his name, so he needed him alive. Harry was too close to that traitor, he'd have to find him and warn him. He also needed to know about Hermione and why she was wearing Lily's ring. Unfortunately Sirius knew that the guards would never believe him if he told them, so he only had one option.
#####
Late at night, long after all the human guards had left Azkaban prison. The dementors float through the halls terrorizing the prisoners. A large black dog lays on the floor of Sirius Black's cell. The dementors float right past the simple thoughts of the dog, only being interested in the human ones they could eat.
The dog watches as one of the dementors fly past and takes the opportunity to change back to his human form or Sirius Black. Sirius places his hands on two of the bars and focuses his magic. Like all aurors he was trained for this, but in all his years here he hadn't tried it.
Sirius feels the bars resist his magic, so he pushes more and more of it into the bars. Soon they give, not a lot, just enough that he could fit his head through. He quickly changes to his dog form and slips through the bars. He can see the bars are already returning to their normal form as he walks away.
===June 25 1993===
The first couple days of Malachi's training were almost entirely focused on helping Harry learn how to properly stand while wielding a sword.
Meanwhile Malachi had Hermione try a bunch of different weapons trying to find what she was going to learn to use. They had finally settled on a pair of daggers, and she was practicing with a pair of wooden ones right now.
===July 23 1993===
Harry would never again say anything bad about Oliver Wood's Quidditch training regiment again. Oliver's training was like a day in the park compared to Malachi's. Not that he would complain. No matter what odd task he gave them he was right there doing it too. Malachi would either do it with his one hand, or with a modified prosthetic.
Right now Harry is exhausted, his athletic clothes soaked in sweat as he kneels on the ground. A weighted training sword lays on the ground nearby. He looks to Hermione on the other side of the training circle, her left arm pressed against her side as she pants from exhaustion, a pair of weighted training daggers lay in separate corners of the room.
Next Harry looks at Malachi. Malachi stands in the middle of the training circle, a prosthetic arm with a shield on his left side and a wooden sword in his right hand.
"You're getting better." Malachi says.
"We barely lasted five minutes against you." Harry says.
"And I think you cracked my ribs with your blade." Hermione says.
Malachi puts the wood sword in its sheath on his hip then hands a vial filled with a red potion to Hermione. "Drink."
Hermione takes the potion and drinks it, she instantly feels better. "Thank you."
Malachi nods. "You two have only been at this a month, you didn't expect to be experts that quickly did you?
"No, but there's two of us and only one of you." Hermione says.
"Going against a person who has years of experience." Malachi says.
"Are you going easy on us?" Hermione asks.
Malachi shakes his head. "You two are picking it up fast, and I'm not used to fighting like this."
"I take it you're referring to your other arm?" Hermione asks and Malachi nods.
"What happened?" Harry asks.
Malachi sighs. "I suppose I might as well tell you. You'll hear it eventually. I haven't always been on the side of light."
"I was 18 studying ancient runes hoping to earn my mastery to teach it. As I left the building to go home I got jumped by a few wizards, they used magic to incapacitate me then beat me up, calling me a weak mudblood when He showed up and killed them."
"Voldemort?" Harry says.
Malachi nods. "He pointed me to the mageknights, who use ancient runes to combine magic with weaponry."
"I grew up a blacksmith's son, so I knew how to make and use blades. Mageknights taught me how to forge magic into the blades. Within a year I was high in their ranks, and had learned more about ancient runes with them then I did in the mastery class."
Malachi sighs. "Eventually He ordered me to eradicate the mageknights, and I did. Then one day I found out the two wizards that beat me up were followers of his, he'd ordered them to do so. That's when I left and started fighting against him. He made the mark burn until I couldn't stand it. I tried everything, but I found out I couldn't remove the mark from my arm. So I removed the arm from me."
"You cut off your own arm?" Hermione asks.
"I did." Malachi answers. "I used a blade I forged with dark magic so it can't magically be grown back."
"That explains the arm." Harry says. "Mind telling us how you ended up in an area so close to muggles."
"This was my father's forge." Malachi says.
===July 30 1993===
"I'm so excited." Hermione says. "I get my actual blades today."
"I bet." Harry says. "How are your hands?"
Hermione holds her hands out, palm up so Harry can see the healed magical tattoo of a rune on the inside of each of her middle fingers. "Completely healed. Malachi is almost as good at healing as Madam Pomfrey."
"Good to hear."
They put on their shoes and head to the forge where they find Malachi polishing a pair of black bladed daggers. He looks up at them and places the daggers on the table. "I present Hugin and Munin."
Hermione chuckles. "You named my daggers after Odin's ravens?"
Malachi smiles. "I know that Ravenclaw's symbol is the eagle, but somehow I thought the names were appropriate for the Heir of Ravenclaw."
Hermione nods. "Hugin!" One of the daggers vanishes from the table and appears in her right hand.
"Very good, now focus your thoughts on the dagger, and let it go." Malachi instructs, Hermione opens her hand and the dagger floats in mid-air. "Tell it what to do with your mind."
Hermione concentrates and the dagger suddenly flies off and embeds itself in the wall. "A little distracting.'
"At first, yes, but as you practice it'll become easier." Malachi says.
"That makes sense." Hermione says before calling out. "Munin!" The second dagger vanishes from the table and appears in her left hand.
"Now let it go." Malachi orders. Hermione does so. Suddenly Malachi throws a knife right at Hermione's heart. Munin responds quickly and blocks the knife. "Munin copies fighting memory, I purposely let it copy mine. Hopefully it'll protect you when you can not protect yourself."
"They are both beautiful." Hermione says.
"If you let someone hold Hugin you will be able to hear their thoughts, and with Munin see their memories."
"I can use the blade spells you taught us with them too, right?" Hermione asks.
"Indeed." Malachi says. "Use the day to get used to your new weapons, we'll fight later. Tomorrow I'm giving you the day off to go to Diagon Alley and get your school supplies."
===July 31 1993===
Harry and Hermione walk out of the cabin in their robes, they see Malachi dressed in robes himself. A prosthetic that ends with a normal looking hand on his left arm. "Now remember, summoning your weapons and in Hermione's case using their latent abilities will not activate the trace, but any of the other spells will."
They both nod. "Understood."
"Good," Malachi says, then he apparates the three of them to the Leaky Cauldron. "I have some things to do myself, I'll meet you two back here in a couple hours."
"Sounds like a plan." Harry says as Malachi opens the path to Diagon Alley. As they enter a large black dog darts out from a dark corner and slips through the opening before it closes.
Harry and Hermione try to go about their shopping as quickly as possible, especially since they don't want to leave Malachi waiting. As they approach Magical Menagerie Harry leans into Hermione. "That dog has been following us since we got here."
Hermione nods and darts right, while Harry darts left. Sirius in his animagus form runs after Harry, only to come to a dead end without seeing him. As Sirius turns around Harry pulls off his invisibility cloak and summons his sword into his right hand, he holds one of Hermione's daggers in his left. "All right animagus return to your human form or I'll chop off your head."
Sirius changes to his human form and starts to move forward when suddenly he feels something pressing against his groin. He looks down and sees the dagger that was in Harry's left hand now floating in mid-air pressed against his groin. "One wrong move and you're neutered." Hermione says as she steps beside Harry.
"Why are you following us?" Harry asks.
"I wanted to talk to you." Sirius says.
"Funny, when I want to talk to someone I walk up and introduce myself." Harry says. "Not stalk them like a mad wizard."
"I can't exactly walk around." Sirius says. "I am a wanted man."
"I thought I recognized you." Hermione says as she grabs one of the wanted posters they'd seen since they entered. "Sirius Orion Black."
"How'd you escape Azkaban?" Harry asks.
"Animagus." Sirius responds.
"Harry," Hermione says, her voice barely above a whisper. A clang is heard as Hugin falls to the ground.
"Mione?" Harry asks worriedly, but unable to remove his eyes from the criminal in front of him.
"I'm fine." Hermione says.
"What happened?"
"The poster…" Hermione hesitates. "It says he betrayed your parents."
Something inside Harry snaps, his sword vanishes as he grabs the emaciated man and pins him to the alley wall. "It was you!" he yells in a fit of rage.
"No," Sirius says, clearly out of breath. "James was my friend."
"DON'T YOU DARE SAY HIS NAME!" Harry screams as he holds Sirius to the wall with his left hand and summons his sword. "Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you now."
"I'm your Godfather, I would show you the memory of me doing the ritual if I could." Sirius says.
"Lies!" Harry growls as goes to impale Sirius.
"Wait!" Hermione shouts. "I have an idea." She steps forward. "Munin!" The dagger appears in her left hand. With a flick of her wrist she twists the dagger in her hand so the handle is facing away from her. She holds the dagger towards Sirius. "Take it, then show me the memory."
"I don't understand." Sirius says as he grabs the dagger. The second he does his mind jumps.
#Flashback#
A much younger, clean cut Sirius kneels in front of James and Lily Potter. Lily holds baby Harry, while James holds his wand Sirius places his wand on Harry's head. "I, Sirius Orion Black, swear on my magic that I do hereby accept the duty and responsibility as Godfather of this child, Harry James Potter. If anything happens to his parents I will do everything to protect him in their stead."
#End Flashback#
Sirius drops the dagger as the memory ends. "What was that?"
"Me viewing your memory." Hermione says as she dismisses her daggers. "He swore to protect you on his magic."
Harry let's Sirius go, and backs away slightly. "So he can't harm us?"
"I can't hurt you." Sirius says. "Her, however," he moves to grab Hermione but stops mid grab.
Harry grins slightly. "As I said, you can't hurt us."
Hermione moves away from Sirius so he can move. "What just happened?" Sirius asks.
"We're engaged." Hermione says.
"So hurting her, is hurting me." Harry says.
"Look, I'm sorry." Sirius says. "I wasn't really trying to hurt anyone. I just need to talk to you."
"I believe you." Harry says. "So talk."
"The person that betrayed your parents is Peter Pettigrew." Sirius explains he looks at the two teens, and neither reacts. "I tracked him down after…." He hesitates and Harry nods resolutely.
"He cast a spell to cause an explosion." Sirius says. "All the aurors found was a finger. I thought he was dead. However I have come to believe he faked his death."
"How?" Hermione asks.
"As you now know I'm an animagus, so was Peter. His form is a common rat, much like the one your friend has in the picture in the Prophet."
"Awful big coincidence." Harry says. Hermione clears her throat. "Point taken. So what do we do?"
"We will find out if I'm right about the rat." Sirius says. "Then we catch him to prove my innocence."
"How do we do that?"
"It'd be a lot easier if you had the Marauders Map." Sirius says. "But Peter got it taken off of him in our seventh year."
"Marauders Map?" Harry asks.
"Our group of friends, Me, your father, Peter and Remus Lupin called ourselves the Marauders during our school years because of our love of playing pranks on people." Sirius explains. "We made a magical map that's tied to the wards of Hogwarts.'
"Did you put a spell on it so you could locate it if you lost it?" Hermione asks.
"More or less." Sirius says. "We each had our own code word we could use to locate it. Harry should be able to use his father's, you'll need a broken compass though."
"You know what." Hermione says with a wicked grin. "I already have a plan."
Sirius looks scared. "You remind me of Lily with that look."
Harry and Hermione walk into Magical Menagerie leaving Sirius, in his dog form outside the shop.
A sales lady walks up to them. "Welcome to Magical Menagerie, I'm the owner Merida, how can I help you?"
"We'll, I've decided I'm ready to get my familiar." Hermione says. "I'd like something smart, and willing to catch rats occasionally."
"Sounds like you're looking for a keezle, you have to have special permission to have a full-blooded one. I just happen to have a couple half-keezles though."
"That sounds amenable, I'd like to see them please." Hermione says.
Merida brings out two crates, one has a mid-size orange cat and the other has a small black one. "The orange one is Crookshanks, she's been with us for years. The black one is just a kitten so she doesn't have a name yet."
Hermione looks at both of the cats then says. "This is going to look scary, but I promise I won't hurt any animals." Merida nods confused. "Hunin!" The dagger appears in Hermione's hand, instantly Crookshanks cowers to the back of her cage while the black kitten looks at Hermione with its hazel eyes. "Open the kitten's cage." Hermione instructs as she lays her dagger on the counter.
The kitten walks out of the cage and places it's paw on the dagger. 'I saw you in a dream.' The kitten says telepathically. 'Are you going to be my owner?'
'You are very young, I think I'd be closer to a new mum to you.' Hermione thinks back. 'Would you like to come home with me?'
'I'd like to go with you...Mum.' The kitten thinks back.
'Then you shall, the young man next to me is soon to be my husband so he will be your father. A friend of ours should be able to make something so you can talk to both of us on a regular basis.'
'I'd like that very much.'
'Just one more thing, then I'm afraid I have to end our conversation for now.' Hermione thinks to her. 'Do you have a name?'
'No, Mum, I don't.'
'How do you feel about Loki? The Norse God of mischief, I have a feeling we're going to get into plenty."
'It's perfect! Thank you for the wonderful name!'
"She is my new familiar. " Hermione says, "her name is Loki."
"Isn't Loki traditionally male?" Harry asks.
"Loki was a shapeshifter, also was both mother and father to monsters, according to lore." Hermione explains. "So I fail to see how it can't be used for a female."
"That makes sense."
Harry and Hermione exit Diagon Alley. Loki lays on Hermoine's shoulder watching as Sirius walks behind them in his dog form. They enter the private parlor only to find Malachi already there.
"You two brought company I see." Malachi says.
"There's a story behind it, can you apparate us all back?" Hermione asks.
"Of course."
"So I just took Loki here as my familiar after having a conversation with her through Hugin, I was hoping you had a way for her to be able to communicate with both of us."
"Actually, that I can arrange." Malachi says as he walks over to a workbench and pulls out some metal. In a matter of minutes he has a collar for Loki. He hands Hermione the simple collar. "Put it on her."
Hermione takes the collar and carefully fastens it around Loki's neck. 'Can you hear me sweetheart?' Hermione sends her thoughts to Loki
'Sure can, Mum.' Loki mentally answers then projects her thoughts to Harry. 'Can you hear me Dad?'
Harry's eyes widen. "Dad?" He asks aloud in surprise.
"She's just a kitten." Hermione explains. "So I'm her mother."
"Ah, makes more sense." Harry replies, then thinks his response to Loki. 'Yes, I can hear you fine.'
'Good.' Loki says as she purrs happily.
"Anything else?" Malachi asks, obviously frustrated.
"We were hoping you'd harbor a criminal here." Harry says as Sirius retakes his human form.
"Auror Sirius Black, I heard you were in Azkaban." Malachi says.
"I escaped." Sirius says. "Malachi Meris, I thought you were a Death Eater."
Malachi reveals his prosthetic arm. "I cut those ties.