They let him see Lucius Malfoy unaccompanied and unwatched, but now there were two Aurors in the next room watching with surveillance spells. Percy was not unaware of the irony, but he wasn't sorry either.
Bellatrix's cell was lower down in the prison than the bright room full of sunlight and the blue ocean where he met with Lucius. Four squares in the ceiling, about eighteen inches on each side and a couple of feet from the corners of the room, had been spelled to let light through but nothing else. The light flowed austerely through the room from ceiling to floor in transparent golden pillars, flickering and fading in and out of existence as unseen prisoners on the floors above walked into their own light-pillars and through. The beams should have lit the room more than they did, but they served well enough; enough to catch and fire the dust motes that sparked in the air; enough for Percy to see to write on the table that had been set up for him well away from Bellatrix Lestrange. On moonless nights the cells must have been as black as the inside of a tomb.
"Good morning, Mrs. Lestrange," he said.
Bellatrix sat in a chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Manacles secured her slender wrists to the arms of the chair, and her ankles to the legs; a thick metal band around her ribs kept her pinned against the chair's back. Her head was tilted forward, shadowing her face with a heavy mass of tangled black hair that did not reflect the sun. Under the shadow, her chest rose and fell with slow, heavy breaths. He might have wondered if she was asleep if her very stillness didn't argue against it - her stillness and the odd feeling that even with her eyes cast down and obscured by her hair she was still watching him.
Stupid to be this afraid. For God's sake, he wasn't a little boy anymore.
"Mrs. Lestrange, I don't know if you remember me - I came to speak to you a couple of months ago. My name is Percy Weasley. I'm assistant to Minister Fudge."
His voice fell flat into the unmoving air. Even to his own ears he sounded like a pompous bureaucrat.
"Mrs. Lestrange, can you hear me?"
Know your enemy, and know yourself. He didn't know either. How was he supposed to get her to talk?
Percy spread his hands flat on the table and remembered sitting across a chessboard from his small brother, the only other Weasley who seemed to have a mind suited to the game. Close your eyes, Ron, he'd said. Now imagine yourself standing on the chessboard exactly where the piece you want to move is standing, with all the other pieces around it. Visualize every move that piece could make, like a glowing line on the chessboard. Now pick the worst of those moves, and make the light go out. Good - now do it again. Do it until there's only one move left.
He wasn't going to go back to Lucius Malfoy empty-handed.
Methodically, he began to bring up every piece of information he knew about Bellatrix Lestrange, and light paths flared into life and died on the chessboard like a lightning storm. The Longbottoms, pawn to king four. Bellatrix Lestrange Her Testimony, Transcript, knight to king's bishop three, knight takes pawn. Rodolphus Lestrange, dead now for years, knight to king's bishop three again. The Department of Mysteries, pawn to queen three; Cruciatus, Ginny and Harry, bishop to king two and pawn to king's bishop three; ten years in Azkaban with the Dementors, bishop to king three, That woman's no family of ours, Percy, if I were to tell you some of the things she queen's knight to queen two I know spells of such power that knight to king's knight one -
- the chessboard fell into darkness, and there was only one clear, blazing path left to the black queen.
"The storm is coming," he said, and Bellatrix lifted her head and began to laugh.
A rush of grim triumph, and the faint metallic echo of blood in his mouth. Percy's hand brushed against his quill, and left it where it was.
"The storm is already here, you stupid boy," she said in a voice like scraping rust. He wondered how many years it had been since she'd spoken, and if she no longer felt inclined to affect a little girl's voice or if Azkaban had taken that too. "You've stood in its eye for years, and now the eye is passing."
"It's passing slowly," Percy answered, with just a little disdain in his voice, and watched.
"But exceeding small," Bellatrix answered, and laughed again, bitter. Her eyes flicked up to his suddenly, for the first time - and Percy's nerve almost failed in the face of it, of being pinned with a gaze that saw him shrewdly and clearly from a plane that had nothing of sanity in it. "I know your family, boy. Blood traitors."
"We're purebloods," Percy shot back instantly, voice ringing with aggressive, fierce pride that he hadn't known he felt until he tried to conjure it. Bellatrix's gaze flickered, as if she were noting and filing away his response without reacting to it; he was going to have to be more careful than he'd thought.
Then she tilted her head and looked up into the light, not seeing it. "Pure in blood, pure in… no, that's all there is, isn't there? Blood. Do you see it coming? Blood in a rain, in a wave, covering hands, filling mouths, there will be no color in all the world but red. That is the gift my Lord will give us in His beneficence - neverending pain." Her voice was rich with dreamy pleasure.
"Whose blood?" Percy asked.
Her attention snapped back to him with unnerving speed, nearly setting him back in his chair. "All of it, boy," she said levelly. "All of it until the houses stand empty, until the streets are filled with carrion and flies, until the entire world is silent as a charnel house. Not even His faithful will be spared in the end."
"I don't understand the nature of his gift," Percy said, choosing his words carefully and swallowing the bile in his throat. "How will the deaths of his faithful be a gift to them? "
"Have you ever seen real blood spilled, young pureblood?" she asked, tilting her head again. The light spilled into her eyes, and they weren't black as Percy had thought - they were blue, the color of the ocean in deep twilight. "Have you seen it gout and spray, have you seen it pulse onto the wall like a heartbeat? You rut and sweat and whisper fumbled words and call it intimacy, but it isn't. Intimacy is the extremity of pain when all the barriers we keep around ourselves are destroyed. Intimacy is life flowing over your fingers. And the greatest deliverance is to watch your own blood pour through your hands like a libation to the gods, pouring like a tide that you could no more keep back or hold in your hands than you could the whispering sea."
I can't do this, Percy thought, ill and terrified. I can't. He was keeping his hands flat on the table now so that she wouldn't see them shaking.
"Even my fool of a brother-in-law won't be spared, though he thinks he will be," Bellatrix said, lips twisting in cold amusement. "He sent you here, didn't he? I can smell him on you, like I used to smell him on Narcissa. Whatever he's promised you, he won't give it to you, you know. In the end he won't even be able to keep his own son from being broken on the cross and gutted like a dog."
It was easier to control his reaction than Percy would have thought, easier to keep a carefully neutral expression; easier to maintain shattered equilibrium than flawless poise. "The Ministry sent me to speak to Malfoy," he told her. "The Ministry has sent me to speak to you."
"And why have you come?"
"To understand," he replied unhesitatingly, and saw a small glimmer of approval in her eyes. Left to his own devices, Percy would rather have stuck his head in an oven than done anything Bellatrix Lestrange would approve of, but… know your enemy, and know yourself.
He knew her now. The knowledge made him feel filthy, but he knew her. And he was coming to know himself as well.
"The Dark Lord will face quite a bit of resistance to his plan if he means to rule over a wasteland," he reminded her.
Bellatrix's lips curled in a small, lazy smile, and her wrists pulled just a little against the restraints. "Harry Potter," she crooned, caressing Harry's name with her tongue, and for the first time it was easy to see the beauty she had been. "What a shame. Such a pretty child. An objet d'art manacled to a dungeon wall, waiting to be broken."
He wasn't going to be sick. There would be time for that later. Percy focused on the center of the chessboard, watching moves glow into life and die, taking the measure of Bellatrix's feint.
One more breath. One more minute. He could outlast her. Just this breath, and the next, and the next. Pawn to king's castle three.
"The Dark Lord didn't do very well against Potter last time," he said, allowing just a hint of scorn into his voice. "What makes you think he'll do any better this time?"
Rage flared in Bellatrix's eyes, and Percy thought, Please, God, let her never leave this room. "That fool Dumbledore is gone - yes, even I heard that, even here. Without his protection, Potter will be nothing more than a gnat in my Lord's eye. Even I would have had him if Dumbledore hadn't been there, and I am not the greatest of His servants." She smiled, terrible against the fury in her eyes. "Five more minutes and I would have made Potter crawl. I would have made him come to me on his knees. I would have made him beg to serve me, and hate himself for begging, and learn to love the sight of his own blood."
"Mrs. Lestrange," Percy said quietly, "I find it hard to believe that your Lord has any greater servants than you."
"Then you know nothing, boy," she answered, just as softly. "And there will come a day, and it will come soon, when you'll wish that you knew nothing still."
"Time to go, Mr. Weasley," one of the Aurors said from behind him. Percy sat for a moment, unsteady and unmoving, and then wordlessly gathered up his quill and parchment. His parchment was still blank; he'd have to set down his notes when he got home that night. He didn't think he was likely to forget anything.
He stood outside the gates of Azkaban for a long time, shaking.
The house looked just the same as it had the last time Harry had seen it, running slowly to seed, the silver snake-shaped doorknocker tarnished against the peeling wood. The door still opened to the tap of his wand; Harry half expected the hinges to shriek a protest into the dark street, but there was only the soft snick of a bolt drawing back before the door swung silently inward, pushing into thick blackness. He stepped through and closed the door behind him.
For a long time - longer than he should have - Harry stood in the darkness breathing in the smell of dust and decay. The last time he had been in this house he had been fifteen years old, on fire with rage and a sense of entitlement of a calibre possible only to Death Eaters and fifteen-year-old boys... and Sirius had been alive, Sirius who in many ways had never stopped being fifteen, and now never would. Harry found himself listening intently, silence pressing as smotheringly close as the musty dark. Those small, furtive susurrations might have been rats, or portraits shifting in their frames, or...
Harry drew out his wand and lit the gaslamps, one after the other down the long hall; and the darkness folded back from portrait frames and ornate tables, slithering away from a cobweb-covered chandelier to pool on the stairs. Harry followed it, trying to walk quietly, and stopped before a pair of long curtains that had once been black, faded now to dullness in the sickly yellow gaslight. Taking a deep breath, he reached out and opened the curtains.
He'd thought he was prepared for her screams but they drove him flat back against the wall, echoing deafeningly in his ears and stabbing straight to the pit of his stomach: filth, dirty half-breed, defiling, unworthy, invective and hate tearing the silence to shreds.
It took him too long to fumble with his wand and move away from the wall. One hand clapped over his ear, he moved quickly up and down the hall methodically stunning the other clamoring portraits. When they were quiet again he returned to Sirius' mother and pointed his wand at her, whispering tight incantations.
Hooked into claws, her hands scrabbled at her face as she screamed, drawing runnels into skin that bled red paint out of the canvas, droplets that slipped down the portrait and vanished back into it. Harry's hand tightened on his wand and his eyes narrowed, focusing intently. Long minutes slipped by. Sirius' mother howled and beat her hands bloody against the frame, and Harry whispered, following her frantic movements with his wand. Finally she slowed, and the sharp pounding of her hands on the frame eased to the beating of a bird's wings against a cage; Harry watched as her eyes grew distant and her head slowly tilted, the black bombazine cap that must have gone out of fashion in her great-grandmother's day sliding down to the floor. Quiescent now, she settled down into her chair and began to hum quietly.
Harry lowered his wand, and realized only then that he was shaking with the aftermath of terror.
He moved forward and peered down at the nameplate. "Faith," he said softly, his mouth twisting in recognition of the irony.
She rocked herself slowly back and forth, still humming some sweet slow melody that made Harry think of dusty music boxes forgotten in attics.
"Faith," he said louder. "Tell me where the Malfoys bury their sins."
"Malfoy, Malfoy," she sang.
Harry squeezed his eyes closed and fought for calm. "The Malfoys, Faith. Narcissa married one. Do you remember Narcissa?"
The portrait echoed, "Narcissa..."
"Narcissa, yes," he said encouragingly. "You know all about the Malfoys, they're a Pureblood family -"
"Filthy little half-breed, dirty blood," she crooned softly, twisting her hands in front of her in slow, eerily graceful movements.
"The Malfoys -" Harry heard his own voice rising in pitch and volume and caught himself, lowering it again. "Tell me where the Malfoys bury their sins."
"...hang you like dogs, clean the race again..."
"Faith. Please. Please, help me. I have to find Narcissa's son, he's in danger."
Faith closed her eyes and began to hum again.
For just a moment, Harry knew exactly how Sirius had felt when the Fat Lady had refused to let him into Gryffindor Tower. He wanted to put his fist right through the canvas, to somehow reach in and choke the answers he needed out of Sirius' mother.
Oh, God, there's no time! You hateful, daft old bitch, tell me!
He opened his mouth to try again - and a child's laughter flew, bright and joyful, into the silence. Harry stood stock still for a minute, then reached out and slowly closed the curtains. "Draco," he called quietly.
Laughter again, farther away this time, flying up the stairs. Harry turned to follow, lighting his wand against the pitch blackness, one hand on the dusty banner and his eyes resolutely avoiding the row of house-elf heads. He called Draco's name again and followed the hallway down to the drawing room, his heart hammering, sweating a little in the close air, sleeping portraits and serpentine candelabras lit briefly by his wand and then fading back into the darkness. The drawing room was flooded with moonlight, making Harry blink and making a cold glittering cloud of the dust that rose under his feet.
"Draco," he called. "Come out, come out, wherever you are -"
Ollie ollie oxen free, Draco's voice floated to him. Harry followed it and found a small portrait hanging in a corner, so covered in dust that the portrait itself was a featureless blur. He lifted a hand to rub the dust away.
Draco, no older than he had been the day they met, leaned his head sleepily on a large wolfhound and blinked at Harry with undisguised curiosity.
Harry swallowed hard, unprepared for the wave of fierce, miserable protectiveness that washed over him. "Hello, Draco," he managed to say.
"Hullo. Who are you?"
"My name is Harry. Harry Potter."
Draco sat up and looked at him with interest. "Really? You're all grown up. Am I grown up now too?"
"Well... yes," Harry answered, unsure if that was the right answer - this Draco would be a child forever.
"Are we friends?" Draco asked, still studying Harry intently.
Harry's throat closed. His fingertips moved to stroke gently down the frame, tracing the ornate carving. "Yes, Draco," he whispered finally, and the half-truth stung his eyes with tears. "We're friends."
"Only Mummy said I should make friends with you. But you mustn't tell Father. He says your mother was a mudblood and the Potters are dirty Muggle-lovers." The slurs rolled so matter-of-factly off Draco's tongue that Harry winced.
"Why did your mother want you to make friends with me?"
Draco shrugged and patted the wolfhound, who panted amiably at him. "Who knows why mums want the things they do?" he asked philosophically. "She wanted me to wear a robe with a frilly collar for this portrait. Father wouldn't have it. He said it looked like they'd bought it to bury me in."
"Draco, I need you to tell me where the Malfoys bury their sins. Does that mean anything to you?"
For a moment Draco looked blank, and Harry's heart plummeted. Then he threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, I know! That's Father's joke."
"Where?" Harry asked eagerly.
Draco's smile turned sly. "What will you give me if I tell you?"
Harry resisted the temptation to beat his head against the frame. "Bloody hell, Draco, you were a right prat at this age," he muttered; then, louder, "What can a portrait possibly want?"
"A cleaning, to start with," Draco answered, looking around with that fastidious sneer that Harry remembered so very well. "And I want to hang over there where Bellatrix is hanging. She can see outside better than I can, and she never lets me in her frame."
"I'll move you, but I can't take you to have you cleaned for a few weeks," Harry said desperately. "Draco, I've no time."
"Why haven't you?" Draco asked indignantly, as though nothing in the world could possibly be more important than taking him to be cleaned.
"Because..." Harry cleared his throat, trying to get rid of that suffocating knot. "Because you're in danger, and I have to find you."
"My father will find me," Draco said with such confidence that Harry went cold.
His fingers tightened hard around the frame. "Your father's... your father's away right now and I don't know where to reach him. Draco, please, please tell me."
Draco folded his arms. "Move me first."
"And then you'll tell? You promise?"
"I promise."
Harry lifted the portrait gently off the wall. Cradling it in his arms, he hunted along the wall until he found Bellatrix Lestrange dozing on a scarlet rococo couch.
For a long moment he only looked at her. She was young in this painting, striking, without the cold, ruined beauty that Harry remembered. Even in sleep her left forearm was turned inward, out of view. Surely that wouldn't matter, Harry thought bitterly; not here, in this house.
In his mind he saw Sirius fall through the veil, gone between one breath and the next, and Bellatrix had laughed. She'd laughed. Harry had woken in a cold sweat with her fucking laughter ringing in his ears for years afterward. He wondered if Sirius was still falling.
Something snapped in his chest and he yanked her portrait off the wall, hurling it across the room and then whipping out his wand, freezing the portrait in midair and snarling "Incendio! " between clenched teeth. The portrait burst into flame, and he heard her scream once before he slapped a silencing spell around her.
Hanging in the air, the portrait burned in eerie quiet, sending frantic shadows leaping over the walls and splashing red onto the ceiling, onto the windows, over the back of the portrait that Harry clutched protectively to his chest. Bellatrix hammered at the frame, screaming, blistering, old paint melting and running down over the wood in a thick stream onto the carpet.
"You could get out," Harry said, his voice harsh and unsteady and thick with rage in his own ears. "You could get out of that frame."
Bellatrix writhed in agony, blackened and melted along her right side; her hair was burning now, flaring like a bonfire around her head.
"Go on, then," Harry whispered. "You stupid bitch, go on."
The flames sparked into a sudden gust and the canvas peeled back, shrivelling into twisted blackness from one side of the frame to the other. Bellatrix threw back her head and screamed and had time for nothing more before the flames overtook her - and suddenly there was nothing left but the frame floating in the middle of the room and the shadows scuttling closer as the flames died down.
Harry pointed his wand and whispered "Exstinguo," and let the frame fall to the floor. It shattered into a drift of ash and scorched wood. Harry closed his eyes and turned away from it, trembling and sick. None of the other portraits had woken.
"Did you kill her?" Draco asked with a sobriety that would have been unusual for him at that age.
"I…" Harry tightened his fingers on Draco's frame, then let out a long breath and hung the portrait where Bellatrix's had been. "There. Better?"
Draco craned his neck, peered across the room, and smiled. "Much better. I can see the tree I used to climb."
"Did you come here a lot?" Harry asked, startled.
"Yes, sometimes when Mummy and Father went away or were having an important party. I stayed here with Faith."
Draco, shut up in this mausoleum with a madwoman... "You promised you'd tell me," Harry reminded him.
"All right," Draco said agreeably. The wolfhound plopped its head down onto his lap with a sleepy whoof and Draco patted it absently. If by some bizarre chance they got out of this with their skins intact, Harry was going to buy Malfoy a wolfhound puppy for Christmas, an ice-white purebred with a pedigree back to the Founding. "Well, you know about Squibs, right?"
Harry nodded.
"They happen in pureblood families sometimes too. They don't usually live past seven or eight years old. Father says that whatever's wrong with them that makes them not have magic kills most of them before they even get to be my age."
Harry thought of Filch and Mrs. Figg and kept silent about his suspicions as to what exactly it was that killed pureblood Squibs in the nursery. "Go on."
"Well, you aren't ever supposed to talk about Squibs in the family - it's bad to have them, like a sin. And you can't bury them with wizards, because they don't have any magic, and without magic they might as well be my dog," Draco said matter-of-factly, shrugging a little. "So our family has a graveyard on the Manor grounds where the real Malfoys are buried and a crypt in a cemetery on the north coast of Caithness for Squibs and things. So when Father really wants something gone he says we should bury it in Caithness with the rest of our sins."
Bloody hell, the Malfoys certainly didn't want their sins underfoot. Any farther north and they'd have fallen right off the edge of the world. "'And things'?"
Draco looked conspiratorial. "Well, I've only been there twice - my dad goes there every two or three years when he surveys the rest of our lands to make sure the crypt hasn't crumbled to the ground or something - but I think there's a werewolf buried there too, and maybe a vampire. You can't tell anyone, though."
"I won't tell," Harry said absently, his mind already winging north. Even as fast as his broom was it was going to be well into daylight before he got anywhere near Caithness, unless he Apparated back to Hogsmeade and went from there. Even then… Harry glanced out the window. He could see the outlines of trees against the sky now. He begrudged every minute, but Jesus he was tired, and if he Apparated back he ran the risk of blowing his element of surprise if anyone was watching Hogwarts - and besides, he had another stop to make first. Raking his fingers through his hair, he gave a sigh of frustration.
"Draco, I need to go get some sleep. I'll come back and take you to be cleaned before long, I promise."
"All right," Draco said sleepily, and gave a huge yawn. "Remember you promised."
Harry reached out to touch the portrait's frame. "Go to sleep, Draco," he said softly, and went to find the bedroom he and Ron had slept in the last time he'd been here. There was a good solid bolt on that door.
The sky to the east was shading to purple when he bolted the bedroom door, shook out the dust on the blankets, hid his pack under the bed, and curled up in a ball under his invisibility cloak. He closed his eyes, trying not to listen for Kreacher's footsteps on the stairs, and let himself drift.
Remus wasn't asleep yet when the owl tapped at the window, which was a bloody good thing - this close to the full moon he woke badly when he was startled awake, the world spinning around him in a razor-edged jumble of light and shadow and blood-sharp smells, and he was never sure for long seconds whether he was himself or the wolf. He slipped out from under the covers, frowning at the twinge in his hip when he stood but stubbornly leaving the cane where it was, and went over to open the window. The owl fluttered in and settled on his headboard, furling and unfurling its wings with quick spasmodic movements and looking warily at him.
Remus sighed. "I don't bite," he told the owl. "Not for a few more days. Now come here and let's see who you're from."
He sat on the side of the bed and watched as the owl inched closer to him and stuck out its leg. Remus unfastened the letter, frowning in puzzlement at the Hogwarts seal - the owl wasn't Hedwig and the parchment was stiffer and heavier than the kind Harry used, and for a moment he thought Bad news with a sort of hollow resignation before he broke the seal and opened the letter.
Lupin, it began rather tersely. Remus raised an eyebrow and scanned down to the signature, raised both eyebrows, and continued to read. The owl shuffled its feathers and settled in on the headboard.
I believe that I have made an advancement in the treatment of your condition - a modification of the linden-based potion you have been in the habit of taking.
Well. Heartening if true. Remus hoped he'd made it taste better.
The new potion has yet to be tested, however, and therefore I invite you to come to Hogwarts. Should you choose to do so, please be prepared to make an extended stay.
It was signed in Severus Snape's cramped, fastidious hand.
Remus tapped the letter against his lower lip, thinking, and then glanced at the owl. "Are you waiting for an answer?"
The owl hooted.
Saying that he was "in the habit" of taking the linden potion was something of an exaggeration; it was a worthwhile luxury but a luxury nonetheless, and most months Remus placed his trust in the isolated location of his house and the set of chains and manacles that required opposable thumbs to open. James had designed the manacles, clever James; Remus had called him Hephaestus and made Lily laugh. If nothing else, perhaps the new potion would give him a few months of spending the full moon curled up on the hearthrug instead of waking cold and bruised on the floor. At his age, that might by itself be worth whatever it was that Severus wanted that was too sensitive to be put into a letter.
And, frankly, Remus was bored.
"All right, then," he told the owl, and went to dig a parchment and quill out of his desk. After a moment's consideration, he wrote:
Dear Severus,
Thank you for your invitation. I'd be delighted. I'll be at Hogwarts by noon tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Remus Lupin
That should do. Remus attached the parchment to the owl's leg and shooed the owl out the window. Leaning against the casement, he watched it wing through the moonlight toward the north, and wondered.
At 11:30 the following morning he Apparated to Hogsmeade, luggage in hand, and stood for a minute on the corner just past the Three Broomsticks, looking around.
Funny, really, how Hogsmeade never seemed to change. One would think that after all these years there would be new stores, new buildings, renovations at least, but there weren't. Remus could still have made his way from Dervish & Banges to the Three Broomsticks with his eyes closed and known what shops he was passing along the way, without so much as running into a bench that hadn't been there before. It should have been reassuring, but somehow it wasn't; coming to Hogsmeade always made Remus feel as if he had walked into a toy village in a shop window, caught forever in a tiny snippet of time, and he was the only one who understood that it wasn't real.
There were only a handful of shoppers meandering down the street - a tired-looking young witch with a very active little boy, an older couple looking in the window at Gladrags and carrying on what looked like a cheerful argument about the displayed fashions, a dark-haired young man disappearing around the corner toward the Hog's Head -
"Come on, it'll be loads of fun," James insisted.
"Only for people who can't smell a chopped onion at six inches," Remus answered, irritable with the approaching moon, his nose wrinkling fastidiously at the thought of the smell in the Hog's Head.
Peter slung an arm around his shoulders. "Come on, don't be a wet blanket. James and I saw a vampire in there once."
"You did not," Sirius corrected him with good-natured scorn. "What does a vampire want in a pub?"
"Idiot, he wanted a pint," James shot back, and the ensuing mudfight ensured that anywhere in Hogsmeade but the Hog's Head would toss them back out on their arses.
Remus blinked and was standing on the corner again in the weak autumn light, a shabby middle-aged man with a web of wrinkles across the backs of his hands like the crackling of flawed glaze. The air was heavy with the smell of wood smoke and fallen leaves.
One side of his mouth quirking in a rueful smile, Remus turned away from Hogsmeade and headed toward the castle.
"Tea?" Severus asked shortly.
"Please," Remus answered, and waited while Severus poured for both of them. Severus was doing better, he had to admit. One of these days he'd stop focusing his gaze six inches behind Remus' head as though Remus were blocking his view of something much more interesting, and then he would almost have achieved politeness.
"I'll come straight to the point," Severus said after they'd settled in with their tea, facing each other across the small tea table with the sun slanting between them. "As I said, I believe I've made advances in the potion generally used to treat lycanthropy. In exchange for your agreeing to test that potion, I'm prepared to offer you employment here at the school."
Remus took a sip of his tea, pondering. "Employment in what capacity?"
"Teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts."
Remus' teacup came down sharply on the table. "What's happened to Harry?"
Severus swirled the tea in his cup a bit, looking irksomely unperturbed. "I've no way of knowing how much Potter has told you, if anything at all; so, briefly: two nights ago, Draco Malfoy disappeared. On that same night, Hermione Granger was attacked by Death Eaters -"
"Dear God," Remus said, rubbing his fingertips over his forehead. "Is she alive?"
"Yes, but from what Potter told me she might as well not be," Severus answered, and his tone could have been brutal but wasn't. Another improvement, Remus noted absently. "Ron Weasley has decided that Draco is to blame for the attack on Granger, apparently; and last night Potter left with the intention of tracking Draco down and bringing him back here by main force if necessary."
"With or without Ron's blessing?"
"Decidedly without, I should think."
"Do you know where Harry's gone?"
Severus shook his head. "No, nor would I have let him tell me if he'd tried. I provided him all the help I could and then sent him on his way."
Remus took a slow breath and lifted his teacup again. "Does Harry think Malfoy had something to do with the attack on Hermione?"
"No. Nor do I."
"So he's gone rushing off to save the day, half a step ahead of the Ministry in the form of his best friend, dodging Death Eaters and probably Lucius Malfoy, and all undoubtedly with no clear idea where he's going or what he's going to do when he gets there."
"A Gryffindor to the bone," Severus commented dryly.
Remus closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips across his forehead again. He was getting a headache. "Well, someone has to be. God knows we're not all very good at it," he said quietly. "Severus, why did he do this? Harry's impulsive but he's not stupid, and he'd trust Ron with his own life, let alone anyone else's. What's going on that finding Draco Malfoy, of all people, is so important to him that he'd set himself against Ron and leave you in the lurch in the middle of the term?"
"Potter moves in mysterious ways," Severus said rather waspishly. "However, regardless of why he left, the point is that he did, and I am in need of a Defence professor. You have experience with the position, and I believe that Potter actually based his lesson plans around yours. Are you interested in standing in for him until his return?"
Remus sipped his tea, thinking. It didn't really take much thought; he was bored, extra money was always welcome, and he was worried about Harry. "Yes, of course. When do I start?"
"Tomorrow, if possible," Severus told him. "I'll have one of the house elves show you to your rooms and bring along Potter's syllabus and lecture materials."
"Are you planning to drop hints about my condition this time?"
Severus' lips thinned. "Lupin, how many werewolves are those children likely to see in their lifetimes? It's an invaluable -"
" - teaching opportunity, yes, I know." Pull the other one, Severus, it's got bells on. "We went over this last time and I thought we had decided to leave it be."
"How long do you think could you have taught here, teaching Defence of all subjects, before one of the children noticed that your illnesses always coincided with the full moon? God knows Potter's cohort was a millstone around the neck of the average intelligence level at Hogwarts, but not all of them were intolerably dense -"
"Severus," Remus interrupted. "Please. Not this time."
For a moment Severus looked as if he were about to argue, then nodded reluctantly. "There are five days left until the full moon. You'll have to begin taking the potion tomorrow. Come to my office after dinner - it's better to take it on a full stomach."
Remus drained his teacup and set it down on the table. "Thank you. I'll see about getting settled in."
And once he was settled in he was going to go and find Minerva, who would have a damn sight more answers than Severus did or Remus was a Hufflepuff.
