Seeing the kids completely forgetting about his predicament, Sirius, still trussed up, let out a few muffled, frustrated noises.
"Sirius!" Harry smacked his forehead. "Right!" He quickly scrambled to undo Sirius's bonds.
"You lot really are..." Sirius trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. He just sighed. "Oh, honestly..."
"So, that voice... that was You-Know-Who I heard?" Harry asked Cohen.
"Yeah, that creepy old git can't keep his nose out of your business," Cohen nodded. "Lucky for him he's a wizard, honestly. If he were a Muggle, he'd have been locked up ages ago."
"What's in this bag?" Ron crouched down where the small cloth bag had fallen from Peter's hand, cautiously picking it up.
"A Portkey," Cohen said. "Voldemort wanted to snatch Harry and use his blood to come back properly. Peter Pettigrew was doing all this on his orders."
Ron gasped, sucking in a sharp breath. "Blimey..."
"Then why in the name of Merlin's beard did you stop me from stunning that traitor?" Sirius demanded of Cohen, bristling.
"'Because I'm one of Voldemort's blokes!" Cohen said indignantly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You don't just turn on your boss like that!"
"How can you be his lackey--!"
"Don't you dare point fingers at me, you dog!" Cohen snarled. "How else am I supposed to keep a handle on things? Wait for Voldemort to snatch Harry, revive, and carry on making a mess of the wizarding world? Have the Dementors finally sucked out what little brain you had left after twelve years? You keep yapping and I'll leave you to it!"
"Alright, alright..." Harry quickly stepped between the two of them. "Sirius, just try and be the adult for once--"
"Are you helping him or me? James--!" Sirius blurted Harry's father's name without a second thought. By the time the word was out, it was too late.
Silence fell for a few moments, but their immediate problem was finding a way out.
It was daytime now. They had five conscious people and two unconscious ones. The best scenario was to somehow smuggle Sirius and Peter to Professor Dumbledore without anyone knowing. Once Dumbledore was involved, they felt sure everything would work itself out.
"But we've only got one Invisibility Cloak..." Harry pointed out. "And Cohen didn't exactly bring any spare carrying cases..."
"What if we just... leave Snape here?" Ron suggested brightly. "Sirius could use your Invisibility Cloak, take Peter, and the four of us could just walk back to the castle like nothing happened..."
"Harry shouldn't have come out in the first place, Ron," Hermione said reprovingly. "We can't possibly let Harry take the usual route back to Hogwarts from Hogsmeade..."
"This passage leads directly to the foot of the Whomping Willow at Hogwarts," Sirius suddenly interjected. "You don't have to go via Hogsmeade at all."
"What? You mean the path on Fred and George's map that they said went nowhere actually leads here?" Harry exclaimed, astonished.
"Oh, honestly?" Ron groaned miserably. "Those two never tell me about the secret passages!"
So, while they ultimately decided to leave Professor Snape where he was, they at least had the decency to cast a protection spell on him, just in case he ran into any bother.
With the Invisibility Cloak draped over Sirius, who was hauling Peter Pettigrew, they followed the secret passage from the Shrieking Shack all the way to the roots of the Whomping Willow.
"You know," Harry said to Cohen as they walked, "you could have told us earlier. Hermione wouldn't have gotten it all wrong – she was really just worried about us, you know?"
"Where's the plot climax if I spill the beans early?" Cohen sighed dramatically. "You know I'm planning to write a best-selling autobiography someday – nobody wants to read a completely uneventful life story! But honestly, you lot were terribly uncooperative. I'd built the tension perfectly, and apart from Hermione, not one of you even took a swipe at me."
"Can I still give you a quick jab?" Ron asked eagerly. "Then I can brag to Fred and George I punched a Dementor!"
"Go on then?" Cohen raised a questioning eyebrow, a slight smirk playing on his lips.
"Right, here we are," Sirius announced, stopping.
He clambered up the steps leading to the surface, pushed open a cleverly concealed trapdoor, and skillfully prodded the knot on the trunk that paralysed the Whomping Willow, allowing them to scramble out of the enraged tree's reach without getting battered.
"Didn't you go to Hogsmeade?"
As they hurried across the grounds, Hagrid, who was busy tending his pumpkin patch, spotted Cohen and the others making a beeline for the castle.
"Hagrid, not now--!" Harry called back quickly, giving Hagrid a rushed wave. "We've got something important to tell Professor Dumbledore!"
"Oh..." Hagrid rumbled, hearing it was about Professor Dumbledore, and didn't ask any more questions. "Well, Professor Dumbledore might be a bit busy today... then again, maybe he's just not one for a potter around Hogsmeade..."
With Cohen nearby, even the Dementors lurking outside the school grounds who might have sensed Sirius's presence didn't dare cross the boundary to snatch him.
Harry's heart was hammering away like a runaway Snitch. Cohen felt like he could hear the frantic thumping standing right beside him.
"Try thinking about something else," Cohen suggested dryly. "I feel like your heart's going to beat itself to bits from sheer excitement before you even make it up many flights of stairs..."
"But I am so excited..." Harry's hand, gripping the staircase railing, was trembling uncontrollably. "I can finally get away from the Dursleys – I can move to a new home next summer – a proper new home – Sirius said I can stay with him..."
Hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, Sirius reached out and gave Harry's shoulder a comforting squeeze.
"Careful!" Hermione gasped quietly, quickly reaching out to yank down the Invisibility Cloak that had ridden up, revealing Sirius's lower leg because of his movement.
Even on a Hogsmeade weekend, there were always plenty of students milling about the castle. Getting spotted now would be a disaster for Sirius.
Finally, they reached the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's office.
"Correct." Before Cohen could even utter the password, the stone gargoyle sprang aside with surprising speed, as if it were running late.
"Is 'The password is' really the password?" Ron asked, bewildered.
"Or maybe the password is just 'Cohen'," Cohen muttered darkly.
Climbing the spiral staircase, the group found themselves rather awkwardly squeezed together outside Professor Dumbledore's office door.
Before they could even knock, Professor Dumbledore's voice called out.
The door creaked open, revealing Professor Dumbledore sitting calmly behind his desk in his grey robes, hands steepled before him, his eyes twinkling as he regarded the four students and the two people hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak who had just piled into the office.
"Professor... we were hoping you could help us with something--" Harry began, intending to explain the whole messy business. But then he stopped short, the full implications hitting him – contacting a fugitive, sneaking out after curfew, assaulting a teacher... it seemed like they hadn't done a single thing by the book all night.
He hesitated. Could he really stand there in the Headmaster's office and openly admit to all the rule-breaking and potentially illegal things they'd been up to?
"First," Professor Dumbledore said, his eyes still twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles, "let us assume, for the sake of argument, that no one here has broken any rules whatsoever."
"Now, you may tell me everything, from start to finish – you know I am always amenable to hearing a complicated story. So... Sirius, you may remove that Invisibility Cloak. If I were the sort to hand you over unfeelingly, you would already be sitting in a holding cell at the Ministry."