18 Chapter 11.5: Black Flag

Leavesden Studios, UK. August 2003.

The ultra rich had ultra strange hobbies, like building a fully animatronic two-story house inside another larger warehouse. I ought not to complain though, considering I was going to be one of the tenants of said robot house for the next several days, if not weeks. 

If it wasn't quite clear yet, I was filming the Shrieking Shack section of the climax for the Prisoner of Azkaban.

 Even though our makeup was freshly administered, neither Emma nor I had looked so grimy in our lives. Blood, cuts, soot, dust, and every other imaginable type of detritus was smeared across our skin and clothes. 

The house, as it was elaborately designed to, swayed. Emma lost her balance slightly when it did. I tensed when she grabbed my arm for support, so that we both remained square on our markers. 

We were standing at the threshold of the main room, Rupert was just beyond on the other end of it. 

"Quiet on set! We go again. Action."

[Hermione and I dashed across the room to Ron. The free floating camera craned along our trajectory, keeping just the three of us in frame.

"Where's the dog-! I demanded, "Ron, your leg-!" Hermione worried just slightly over my line to underline the urgency of the situation.

"Not a dog," Ron moaned through grit teeth. Ron had one hand occupied by the docile rat playing Scabbers, while the other clutched the prosthetic broken foot that bent at an awkward angle. "Harry, it's a trap - He's the dog... he's an Animagus!"

While we spoke our dialogue, the camera circled around Ron's back, and tilted to focus on his foot and the marks and steps tracked through the thick layer of dust. The camera zoomed as Ron pointed and followed in, stopping just as it reached Gary Oldman as Sirius Black. 

The door slammed shut, and the camera pulled back into a wide shot. 

Sirius was filthy. His hair, both head and facial, was matted. The Azkaban uniform was in tatters, revealing the runic tattoos which were Cuaron's Mexican culture leaking through. Somehow, the makeup department had made him look even dirtier than us. Sunken eyes, sweaty skin, and just the most horrid set of chompers that couldn't be attributed to British dentistry alone. 

He twirled Ron's wand and shouted, "Expelliarmus!"

The mono-filament wires attached to mine and Hermione's wand pulled taught on their reels and yanked them out of our hands, clattering against the wall a few feet away from Ron. Sirius had his wand focused on Ron, or more accurately Scabbers, his manic eyes were fixed on my own seething ones. 

He took a step closer. The house swayed again, the opposite way. The mounted camera capturing all our side profiles moved with it. The frame would show the house tilting in Sirius' direction as he spoke. His voice sounded hoarse enough for a polo match. "Your father would have come to save his friend, too. Brave of you, Harry. I'm grateful... it will make everything much easier...." He taunted.

I bared my teeth in hate. My muscles tensed enough that I was visibly trembling. My breathing was short and sharp. I made to lunge at Sirius, but just as I shifted a foot forward, a set of arms locked around my waist and pulled me back. "No, Harry!" Hermione pleaded.

In that same moment, Ron jumped up, snatched the collar of my shirt to hold me back, hobbled on his broken foot, and placed himself between me and Sirius. "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!" he yelled fiercely. Sweat was lining his hairline, and the lighting would highlight his pallid demeanor. 

"Only one will die tonight." Sirius hissed with a wide smile, his wand still trained on Scabbers near Ron's chest.

I twisted and fought Ron and Hermione's combined grip on my body. "Just one? What's the matter, gone soft in Azkaban?" I snarled out. 

"Mate-!" grunted Ron. "Harry, stop!" yelled Hermione. Both struggled to hold me back. 

"Didn't care last time, did you?" I broke Hermione's hold and slipped from Ron's clutches. I tackled Sirius. "When you slaughtered my mum and dad!" I roared.

My shoulder dug into his gut. Surreptitiously, I slid my foot behind Sirius', knocking him off balance, and sent both of us tumbling like we'd rehearsed countless times. 

Gary Oldman had been apprehensive at first, but if there was one thing I'd learnt how to do in my martial arts lessons, it was how to take a fall. 

Sirius and I pitched forward. On cue, the house swayed and pitched back in the opposite direction. The mounted camera would catch the moment of impact, and the opposing movement would emphasize the violence of it. 

The free camera on the jib would follow our descent down. Sirius and I would be framed and centered. It was an extreme close-up shot featuring my rage and Sirius' shock. It was a locked steadicam shot, which means that despite him and I being the ones falling, the camera would keep us upright while the world swirled around until we crashed on the hidden mat beneath the dust. 

Two things happened immediately as we hit the mat. Sirius' (Ron's) wand slid past my ear and twitched. A remote detonated canister of CO2 fired, signifying the pre-CGI VFX for a spell slipping past my face and striking the wood on the ceiling. 

Debris rained down as we wrestled. Ron, nearer to the discarded wands, scrambled on his knees and palmed them, while simultaneously Hermione dove for Sirius's wand hand.

She latched onto his wrist and smacked it on the floor while I reared my arm back and punched the mat tightly near Sirius's torso. The camera angle would allow it to look like I got him in the ribs. Sirius gasped, his face scrunched in pain. He let the wand go, which I snatched before Hermione could. 

Still furious, I dug the tip of the wand into his sternum right above his heart. 

Sirius' breath shuddered as if the wind had just knocked out of him. "Going to kill me, Harry?" he croaked. He maintained that manic smile. 

The room stilled. My chest heaved from my position over him. 

I twisted the wand and leaned. The house swayed again and followed my motion. Sirius squirmed uncomfortably under me. His hot breath washed over my face, thankfully minty and not minging like his teeth. I whispered, "You've never heard it, have you? It's the only thing I remember of her." my voice grew more and more shaky. "My mum screamed when Voldemort came. You did that…" I growled out the last line. 

The door of the room burst suddenly open when David Thewlis as Remus Lupin came hurtling into the room, "Expelliarmus!" Lupin shouted.

The prop wand, once more, flew out of my hand. Seeing my advantage gone, Hermione snagged me by the collar, hoisted me on my feet and pulled us back away from the two adults. All the while I stared dumbfounded at Lupin, who lifted and brought Sirius in for a hug. 

"Remus, I found him!" Sirius whimpered, but his voice carried delight in spite of the pain he was in.

"I know." Lupin's voice was tense but soothing as he held Sirius up gently by his elbows.

"Let's kill him!"

"Where is he, Sirius?" The groan of the house titling came again. Slowly, Sirius raised and pointed his finger straight at Ron. 

The camera zoomed in on Ron, rat and wands fisted in each hand, who dragged himself on the floor towards his friends. "No!" The camera quick-panned over to a shrieking Hermione, "I trusted you!" 

Everyone's eyes were now on the calm but wary Lupin. "Hermione, listen to me, please," Lupin lowered his wand and tried to shout over Hermione. "I can explain -"

But the now enraged Hermione wouldn't be outdone. "Don't believe him, Harry!" She pointed aggressively at Lupin. "he's been helping Black get into the castle, he wants you dead too - he's a werewolf!"

Lupin stopped dead. "How long have you known?"

"Ages," she admitted, "You were ill every full moon, and your boggart was it, too."

Lupin let out a chagrined laugh. "You really are the brightest witch of your age, Hermione. But not up to your usual standard this time - only one out of three. I won't deny I'm a werewolf, but I didn't help Sirius into the castle, and neither do I want Harry dead." He said coolly. 

Through clenched jaw I spoke, "If you haven't been helping him," my eyes darted from Lupin to Black, "how did you know he was here?"

"The Marauder's Map."

"You know how to work it?" I asked suspiciously.

"Of course I do. I helped write the damned thing." He answered impatiently.

"You wrote-?" my question was interrupted by his continued impatience.

"Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs," he began. "I'm Moony. That's the nickname my friends gave me when they discovered my secret in school. Your father, James, among them. I know everything there is to know about the map, just like I know the invisibility cloak can't hide you from it." 

"You know about that, too?"

"The number of times I saw James disappearing under it..." Sirius' voice was haunted. 

Lupin gestured at the surrounding detritus. "This shack? That tunnel? That blasted tree? All of it was made for me, to serve as a cage for me to transform alone. A price I happily paid to attend Hogwarts. But then I made three stubborn, foolhardy, wonderful friends I didn't deserve, who learnt animagus magic just to keep me company. Your father was a stag, Harry. Prongs." He pointed to Sirius. "This dog is Padfoot, and-"

Everybody jolted when Sirius launched himself at Ron. "Scabbers!" Ron yelped as Sirius stole the thrashing rat from his hands. 

"Come out! Come out, Wormtail!" Sirius jostled the struggling rat in his grip.

"The last one, the one who truly betrayed your parents, is a rat animagus."

"Peter Pettigrew!" Sirius howled. He reached for the wand in Lupin's hand.

Lupin pulled it away. "You can't do it just like that - they need to understand -" he tried to calm Sirius

"Enough talk, Remus. Let's just kill him!"

"Wait!" 

"I did my waiting!" Sirius wailed with every bit of air in his lungs. "Twelve years of it!" His voice bounced off the walls. There was no hiding the pain in it when it cracked. "In Azkaban!"

No one moved, no one spoke. There was no following that delivery.]

A bell rung, a slate cracked, and a voice called, "Cut. Magnifico!"

"Wow." I heard Emma whisper under her breath. I had to nod in agreement.

Thewlis helped Rupert up, but my eyes stayed on Gary Oldman as he paraded the rat around.

"Can someone please take this vermin off my hands?" Not even a minute, and he was already out of character. He was in full control of his performance rather than the other way around.

"One day…" I finished the rest in my heart, 'That's going to be me'