First Meeting

Between the two candy balls, Sirius Black was rolling his eyes and vomiting his guts out, while Peter Pettigrew… sorry, the entire rat was already soaking in vomit.

"Eugh~"

The instant Adam saw clearly, he flung away the candy ball in his hand with a disgusted expression and glanced at his palm.

Thankfully, thankfully, the air holes were small enough, and the vomit was too thick to flow out at all.

He threw a Sleep Card at them, then used a Bubble Card to wash and dry the man and rat. Adam used an Erase Card to wipe away this stretch of their memories, then restarted their first meeting.

After Sirius slowly regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was that something was wrong with his condition.

He was actually in human form!

Had he been exposed?!

Just now, he clearly… huh? Just now, what had he been doing?

Sirius frowned. No matter how hard he racked his brains, he could not remember. Instead, waves of nausea rose within him.

Had he been hit with an Obliviate?

"Yo? You’re awake."

Sirius turned his head alertly and discovered a boy in a Hogwarts uniform sitting in front of him with a cheerful smile.

"The operation was a success. Congratulations, you’re a girl now."

Sirius instinctively squeezed his legs together, then realized something was wrong.

"…Do you know who I am?"

Though he did not know what had happened, he was currently a wanted criminal. Judging by the badge on his chest, the child opposite him belonged to Hufflepuff. Perhaps he could use that…

When he saw the rat in the plastic box beside Adam, Sirius’s thoughts immediately spiraled uncontrollably into boundless rage. Everything he had been thinking was burned to ashes by fury, leaving only one thought in his mind—kill that traitor!

There was no wand at hand, but he still had the fangs and sharp teeth of his Animagus form!

With a flick of Adam’s finger, Sirius, captured by a Float Card, desperately performed all manner of poses in midair as a vicious dog hunting prey.

Fifteen minutes later, Sirius’s limbs hung limply, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth as he panted like a bellows. Yet his eyes were still fixed viciously on Peter Pettigrew.

Several more minutes passed before Sirius finally looked at Adam as if waking from a dream.

"Calmed down?"

Adam snapped his fingers. Sirius dropped from the air and transformed back into human form.

"…What exactly do you know?"

Sirius was not stupid. Once he calmed down and thought carefully, he could spot many clues. Every one of them pointed to Adam’s unusual nature—he seemed to know a great many things.

"I originally didn’t know much, but now I probably know everything."

Adam picked up the crystal glass beside him and took a sip. The amber liquid was clear, and the crystal glass elegant. Just as Sirius habitually tried to determine what kind of alcohol it was, he saw the bubbles constantly rising through the liquid…

Stunned by the other party’s wandless, silent Levitation Charm and those words, he had almost forgotten that this child before him was still a Hogwarts student.

Thinking of this, and recalling how he had been controlled by the Levitation Charm without any ability to resist, Sirius’s expression became somewhat complicated.

Were Hogwarts’ young wizards all this capable now?

However, remembering that Adam was merely a student, Sirius relaxed somewhat. Since the other party had not handed him over to the Dementors, that meant Adam truly knew at least part of the truth—at the very least, he knew Sirius had been framed.

"Who exactly are you? Did you bring me here?"

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Adam Reed."

Adam?

Hearing that name, Sirius could not help licking his lips.

Ever since breaking out of prison, he had not eaten a proper meal. During this time in the castle, that name had left a deep impression on him. Yet before Sirius could savor the memory of those little biscuits he had secretly eaten that day, Adam said:

"As for the person who brought you here… yes, that was me."

"Why?"

Adam gave him a surprised look, his face plainly saying, Listen to yourself, then casually picked up the newspaper on the nearby table and pointed at its front page.

More precisely, he pointed beneath Sirius’s wanted poster on the front page, at the reward of an entire Galleon.

Sirius: "…"

Should he be grateful? The person who had found him was a kind Hufflepuff who, after learning of his experience, had resolutely given up the enormous reward and not turned him in.

Come to think of it…

"How did you catch me?"

Sirius could not help trying to remember again, but no matter how he searched his memories, there was only blankness…

"Bleurgh—"

Well, it was not completely blank. At least there was a surge of nausea.

"Actually, it was a coincidence."

Adam wore an expression as though he had fallen into reminiscence.

"That day, after class, I saw you mixing Concrete Number Forty-Seven. You know, the key to the Fourier Transform lies in the lavender scent of the final note, and then red carp, green carp, and donkey."

"Oh… that really was quite a coincidence."

Sirius went blank for a moment, then wore an expression as if the past was too painful to revisit.

Mm, as expected, the Substitute Card made the effect much better. Combined with the Confundus Charm, it even saved him the trouble of making up an excuse.

Unfortunately, he first had to establish the other party’s goodwill toward him, then use The Love to magnify the weak points in their mind before he could confuse their perceptions more gently.

And it was difficult to say whether the many repeated "first meetings" before this had affected the other party’s mind somewhat, making this attempt go so smoothly…

With a few casual words, Adam had Sirius use his Animagus form. Then, with a slight movement of his fingers, he made Sirius fall unconscious for who knew how many times and erased the memories of who knew how many "first meetings."

Adam’s feelings toward Sirius were rather complicated. On one hand, because of Professor Snape, and because Sirius would affect him this school year, Adam did not have much goodwill toward him.

But this man, who had let himself be locked in Azkaban for so many years out of guilt, then resolutely escaped after seeing his godson in danger, swimming all the way from Azkaban to land in the form of a Black Hound and enduring hardship to save his godson… Adam thought he did not seem particularly clever, but he truly could not bring himself to hate him.

Using him to test the results of Adam’s magical research counted as a small bit of revenge for being affected by the Dementors this time and having his barbecue interrupted last time.

There was no helping it. He normally could not find test subjects intelligent enough to provide feedback yet whom he could experiment on freely without the slightest psychological burden. Peter Pettigrew was the only one he could toy with without any pangs of conscience, but Peter was simply too ugly…

Whenever he thought of that, Adam could not help sighing over his lack of foresight. If he had known, he would have used the Twin Card to make a copy of Lockhart.

Floating Sirius and Peter up, Adam casually tossed them into two separate abandoned classrooms. Whether they would run into each other again after waking up was none of his concern.

As for how to properly resolve the issues of "the Ministry of Magic wrongly imprisoning an innocent man in Azkaban for more than a decade" and "the hero promoted by the Ministry of Magic actually being a vile traitor," that was even less his business.

He would leave Professor Dumbledore and Sirius’s godson to worry about it.