Chapter 125: Terror on the Train

Edward had barely reached the next carriage when the train began to slow. Frost crept across the lower edge of the windows, whitening countryside that should still have been moving past them. He turned back toward Harry's compartment because Lupin was the nearest professor and because the sudden stop came too early to be Hogsmeade.

Ron still had Scabbers's cage on his knees, its latch closed exactly as Edward had asked. The missing toe matched Sirius's description and made Peter Pettigrew the strongest explanation for the rat, but a crowded train was no place to force the question. If the suspicion was correct, a public accusation would give Peter frightened students, narrow passages, and dozens of places to disappear.

"Why are we stopping?" Hermione asked as Edward reached the doorway.

The corridor lamps went out.

Cold entered beneath the door and passed through Edward's robes as though cloth and skin were equally useless. Every ordinary sound faded. Somewhere close, a woman screamed once, and Harry folded in his seat with both hands pressed against his ears.

The compartment door slid open. A Dementor filled the doorway, tall enough that its hood brushed the frame. One grey hand reached from its robes. Ron stopped breathing. Hermione's fingers locked around her wand without lifting it.

Edward drew his walnut wand and stepped between the creature and the others.

"Expecto Patronum!"

Silver vapour streamed from the tip, spread across the doorway, and tore apart. The Dementor paused but did not retreat. Its presence dragged Edward toward memories he had spent the summer learning not to use: his mother's last fire, Regulus walking into the cave, years of rooms in which no one knew his real name.

He tried again and obtained only a weak flare. The Dementor leaned closer. Harry slipped from the seat to the floor, his glasses striking the carpet.

Sirius had warned Edward that grief could wear the face of love. A memory was not useful merely because it mattered. He forced himself away from the Pensieve and chose something smaller: Kreacher waiting at King's Cross that morning, furious with worry and pretending he had come only to carry luggage.

"Expecto Patronum!"

This time the silver mist held. It formed no animal, only a bright, trembling screen between Edward and the hood. The cold stopped advancing. It did not lessen.

The effort shook his arm. Edward kept his wand raised and fixed the memory in place: the house-elf checking his scarf twice, complaining about station draughts, and hiding relief inside an insult about railway food.

A second wand rose behind him.

"Expecto Patronum."

Lupin's spell struck the mist and drove through it in a broad silver wave. The Dementor recoiled from the door. Lupin advanced one pace, face bloodless but steady, and forced the creature down the corridor until it vanished beyond the next carriage.

Warmth returned slowly. Edward lowered his wand only after Lupin did.

Hermione knelt beside Harry and turned him onto his back. Ron fumbled with the latch of Scabbers's cage, then abandoned it and helped loosen Harry's collar.

"Is he breathing?" Edward asked.

"Yes," Hermione said. "Harry, can you hear me?"

Lupin broke a large bar of chocolate into pieces. He placed one in Harry's hand, gave another to Hermione, and held a third out to Edward.

"Eat it."

"I am fine."

"That was not a question."

Edward obeyed. The first bite tasted absurdly sweet, but feeling returned to his fingers before he swallowed the second.

Harry opened his eyes. "What was that?"

"A Dementor," Lupin said. "One of the guards searching the train for Sirius Black. It had no authority to enter this compartment."

Edward looked at the professor. Lupin had been awake before the door opened; the stillness beneath the blanket had been watchfulness rather than sleep. Whether he had seen Edward examine Scabbers was impossible to tell.

Harry pushed himself upright. "I heard a woman."

Lupin's expression softened. "Dementors make us relive what we most wish we could forget. You did nothing wrong."

Ron stared at Edward's wand. "You held it back."

"For a few seconds," Edward said. "Professor Lupin drove it away."

The distinction mattered. His charm had resisted long enough for an adult to act, but it had not become a corporeal Patronus, and repeating the attempt alone would have ended badly.

Hermione looked from the fading silver haze to Edward. "You knew the charm before today?"

"I began learning it during the summer."

Lupin settled across from him, the chocolate still in one hand. "Who taught you?"

"My guardian."

The answer was true without naming Sirius. Lupin appeared to understand the boundary and did not press.

"He taught you well enough to choose a usable memory under pressure," he said. "Do not confuse that with mastery. Your first attempts failed, and the last would have collapsed if I had not joined it."

"I know."

"Good. Knowing is what may let you learn the rest."

The train began moving again. Voices rose in the corridor as prefects checked compartments and tried to learn why Ministry guards had boarded without warning.

Edward glanced at the cage on Ron's knees. Scabbers had burrowed beneath the straw, leaving only a patch of grey fur visible. Peter had heard the name Sirius Black, felt the train searched by Dementors, and watched Edward inspect his missing toe. The risk of startling him had just increased.

"Keep the cage latched until we reach the castle," Edward said. "If the lights fail again, do not open it for any reason."

Ron checked the wire catch with his thumb. "He hates cold."

"Then he can hate it from inside the cage."

Lupin's eyes shifted briefly toward the straw. It was not enough to reveal what he thought.

When Harry could stand, Edward prepared to leave. Hermione stopped him at the door.

"Thank you," she said. "Even a few seconds mattered."

Harry nodded. "They mattered to me."

Edward accepted that without pretending the rescue had been his alone. "Stay with Professor Lupin until the train arrives."

In the Slytherin carriage, Draco took one look at his face and abandoned the complaint he had prepared.

"What happened?"

"A Dementor entered Potter's compartment."

Pansy lowered the book in her lap. Theodore sat forward. Several younger students went silent.

"You fought it?" Draco asked.

"I held it briefly. Professor Lupin removed it."

Edward described the symptoms first: sudden cold, failing lights, despair without a visible cause. He told them to stay in their compartments and never approach a hooded figure. The silver nameplates he had distributed were fire wards and would not repel a Dementor.

Draco waited until the younger students were listening to Pansy's instructions before leaning close. "You used a Patronus."

"An incomplete one."

"Teach me anyway."

"I can explain the foundation. We will practise only in a supervised group, without a Dementor anywhere near us."

Draco agreed more quickly than Edward expected. The sight of Harry unconscious through the open compartment door had stripped the request of vanity.

Edward sat by the window as the first dark outline of Hogwarts appeared between the hills. He kept seeing the missing toe in Ron's hands and the way Scabbers had pressed himself into the straw after Sirius's name was mentioned. Neither detail was enough on its own, but together they refused to leave his thoughts.

Peter was inside the castle's protection. Sirius was outside it, still wanted for Peter's crimes. Lupin had noticed more than he said. Dumbledore needed evidence that could survive scrutiny, not a boy's certainty obtained by touching a rat.

The train curved toward Hogsmeade. Lights appeared ahead, warm against the wet evening, but the cold of the Dementor remained in Edward's bones.

For the first time, Peter Pettigrew was no longer an abstract name in an old betrayal. Edward had stood within arm's reach of the rat and chosen not to seize him because keeping everyone alive required patience.

That patience would have to last until they could close every route of escape.