Facing Danger
Chapter 45: Rewards and Rulebreakers (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
He had read once, in a book about a particular type of transfiguration and all the ways in which it could go wrong, that talking to oneself was the first sign of madness. Some twenty years of experience with that type of transfiguration later, he was fairly sure that was wrong. The real trouble, in his opinion, began not when one was talking to oneself, but when oneself started answering.
I did it! exulted one voice. I did it! I tricked them out of their safety, I lured them out to where they could be attacked, and now my lord will give me a reward! Anything I ask for, anything at all!
But what if you ask to be released from his service? whispered the voice he hated to listen to, the voice he had tried for so many years to silence. What if you ask him to let you go? Even if you swear a Vow that you'll stay in your other form all your life and never approach any member of the other side to offer them help, do you think he would do it?
He tried once again to quash this voice. Why would I want to leave my master's service? Now that I have proved I can be useful, he will give me anything I want, anything I need...
Except your freedom. The voice was being obstinate. Except the ability to choose where you go and what you do. Especially what you do. Maybe it would have been better to run away and hide all those years ago, before he had a share in you, but now you are marked—and Marked—and he will never let you leave him. Not living, anyway.
Shut up and leave me alone, he snapped, the words coming out, in his current state, as a small squeak and an irritable hiss. I need to think about what it is I want.
Comfort? the voice suggested snidely. Friendship? Sanity? All the things you had, way back when, before you traded them for—
Shut. UP! Wormtail whipped around and buried his sharp front teeth in the closest portion of his anatomy that he could reach. It hurt, but that was good. Pain drowned out the voice and stopped the madness for a little while.
He wondered how soon he would have to start inflicting pain on himself constantly.
Danger arrived on the front steps of Headquarters feeling far more drained than Side-Along-Apparating Meghan would have accounted for.
Do you think maybe fighting in a horrific battle, watching two of your best friends in the world be taken prisoner, barely stopping your husband from being killed, and dealing with your foster-son's debilitating disease which chose this moment to flare up—not to mention you have the same disease and your body's already flashing warning signals at you—could have something to do with that?
Dumbledore, who had arrived silently beside her, put out a hand to steady her. "You need rest," he murmured. "I know how much there is to do, but working yourself into exhaustion will help nothing."
"I could say the same for you." Danger regained her footing, staring blindly out into Grimmauld Place. "When do you plan on resting?"
"As soon as I contact the Ministry to make sure they have accounted for all the dementors they once employed. There are enough ways in which our friends could be harmed in the Death Eaters' hands. I hope to ensure that one is not included..." Dumbledore stopped, looking at her intently. "What do you see?"
"I don't know." Ignoring the sound of the door opening behind her and Dumbledore's quiet conversation with the person who had opened it, Danger blinked a few times and brought her eyes back into focus. The street looked much the same as it usually did, rather dingy and run-down. The few passers-by had their heads down, concentrating more on where they were going than where they were. All except one.
Directly across the way stood a nondescript man, hands in his trouser pockets, looking at number twelve.
At her.
"Danger?" Not Dumbledore's voice, this time. Voni Pritchard's, she thought, and was proved right as she turned. "Is everything—no, forget I started that, it's a fool question at a time like this. What can I do?"
"Pearl, love." Danger stroked the side of her goddaughter's face, and kissed her forehead when Meghan lifted her tearful face from Danger's robes. "There's someone I need to talk to for a moment. Will you go with Mrs. Pritchard? I'll come straight back as soon as ever I can."
Meghan swallowed once, then nodded. Graham appeared beside his mother and held out his hands to her, and she let herself be drawn into the house. The door was starting to close when Danger realized what else—who, rather—she needed. "Voni!"
"Hmm?" The other witch stopped.
"Is Luna here? Can she come out for a moment?"
"I'll find out." The door shut firmly.
"Do you hope she will give you refutation, or confirmation?" Dumbledore asked.
"Confirmation. Definitely." The man's pose, that comfortable and nonchalant half-slump, had only rung the faintest of bells in her mind at first, until it had dawned on her why he was waiting across the road, why he hadn't simply walked up to her and started a conversation.
There are rules, you know. And half the point of rules is knowing when to break them, and when not to.
The door creaked again, and Luna poked her head around it. Danger pointed wordlessly at the man across the way. Luna observed him for a moment, then whispered a name into Danger's ear.
Danger snorted. "Typical. All right, I'm going over. I shouldn't be long. Can you wait for me?"
"I can," Dumbledore said gravely.
She was halfway across Grimmauld Place before it dawned on Danger just how cavalier she was being with the time and attention of one of the greatest living wizards of their age.
On the other hand, if he minded, he has plenty of ways of making that known. And I need to have all my wits about me for this conversation, none of them wandering.
She corralled her wayward thoughts, put on her best motherly you-brought-this-on-yourself face, and strode right up to the vaguely smiling man.
"So good of you to come and see me, Mrs. Granger-Lupin," he began, but Danger cut him off before he could go one word further.
"Alexander Zacharias Slytherin, just what do you think you're doing here?"
Sirius awakened from a nightmare of watching Remus fall limply to the pavement into a reality he couldn't say he liked much better.
He was lying on a cold stone floor, his back sore where he'd wrenched it trying to escape the Death Eater's noose. From the way his arms were pinned behind him, tied together at wrists and elbows with coarse, bristly rope, he hadn't made it. His head was enveloped in a smelly cloth bag, but no effort had been made to gag him.
Which means they've hauled me off somewhere that no one's going to hear me if I yell. How encouraging.
A soft moan sounded behind him, and his heart sank another foot and a half. Stuffed things up well and truly this time, haven't I? It wasn't enough to get my stupid self captured, no, I have to go and drag along somebody I'd rather die than see hurt—
"Letha?" he said, or tried to say. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and the word emerged garbled enough that he could barely understand it.
"Sirius." Her voice was breathy, threaded with fear, but under control. "Are you hurt?"
"Not badly." Experimentally, he twisted his wrists, and found a bit of give in the ropes. "Hold on a second, I want to try this..."
The Death Eaters who had tied up their captives had been thinking in terms of showmanship, Sirius surmised, flexing and relaxing several muscles in his arms alternately. Certainly none of them had ever seen Frank Longbottom's favorite party trick, in which he escaped in less than half a minute from what had looked, to Sirius' eyes, like a completely secure set of conjured restraints.
As in, I conjured them, and would have laid money on their being inescapable. If Letha hadn't talked me out of it. Which she did, and then talked Frank into teaching me how it was done...
He hissed under his breath as the bristles scraped his knuckles raw, but a little blood was a small price to pay. His left hand was free. A few seconds' fumbling work, and he could sit up, pull the bag off his head, and go to work on Aletha's restraints.
"That had better be—" she began. He spared one hand to unmask her, and laid it on her cheek for a moment before returning to work. "Oh. It is you. Where—never mind, you won't know that any more than I do. Are we alone?"
"No." The knots were tight and difficult to unpick but not complicated, so Sirius could look around the room without stopping. "Four others that I see. All adult-size, no one else awake. Masked, so I can't tell, but I don't think Moony or Danger are here." He sniffed, clearing his nose from the stale aromas of the bag. "Make that definitely not. But there is someone else here we know. Possibly two. Can't get any more specific until—ah-ha!" The last rope slid free, and he bent to kiss her abraded wrists.
She twisted out of his hold and spun herself around in the same motion. "Don't waste it there," she breathed. "Not when—"
"I know." Sirius kissed her lightly on the lips once, then pulled her close to his chest. "God, Letha, I'm sorry—"
"Don't be." Aletha's hand burrowed into his hair and stroked it. "I made my own decision. Don't I always?"
"Yes, you do. Always."
"Not your fault, then." She tilted his head down towards her. "Don't you ever think it was."
There were millions of things Sirius wanted to say, but most of them could be encapsulated in one simple three-word phrase. "I love you," he whispered against her lips, and kissed her again more thoroughly, a lovers' parting kiss, to treasure until they met again, whether that was in a day, in a year—
Or never.
He shoved that thought away. They weren't going to die, not here, not now. There was still too much they had to do.
And right now, that starts with finding out who these other people are, and which of them need help.
Releasing Aletha and scooting to the first person's side, he started untying a pair of small, pallid wrists.
Ron was swearing again.
On the whole, Ginny preferred Ron swearing to Ron crying. Ron crying was difficult to deal with, not least because he refused to admit what he was doing and wouldn't let anyone give him so much as a tissue. Still, Ron swearing got monotonous after a while. He didn't have the creativity of the twins, nor did he have Charlie or Bill's multi-language vocabulary to draw from, so he was stuck repeating the same few words and phrases over and over, and Ginny was getting tired of hearing them.
"I'm going for a walk," she said, standing up from her place in the corner of the Pride's den room. "I'll be back."
"Fine," Ron said without changing his tone, and aimed a kick at the wall. His foot bounced off and unbalanced him, so that Ginny's last view of him was of him flat on his back swearing at the ceiling.
Must not laugh at brother. Must not laugh at brother. Must especially not laugh at brother when other brother is missing.
The thought of Percy, and the subsequent ones of Penny, took care of her unwise flare of humor. She wandered down the hall toward the stairs, letting her thoughts go where they would.
Before the war had started, her only exposure to death had been her grandfather and her uncle Bilius, both of whom had died when she was too young to really understand what death meant. Even when she had helped Harry recover from watching Cedric die, or grieved with the Pack over baby Marcus, it hadn't struck her the way this did.
I didn't know Cedric, not really. And none of us knew Marcus. But Penny, we knew. Percy'd been bringing her along on visits for two or three years. She was real to me, she was a person, and now... now she's gone. She may have died trying to save that little girl, trying to be a hero, but she still died, and so did the girl, and it's all such a stupid... useless... waste...
Something broke under her knuckles. Startled, Ginny pulled back and shook her head, clearing her eyes. What did I just...?
The plasterboard on the hallway wall had a neat Ginny-fist-sized hole in it. She muttered one of the words Ron had been using in profusion and tried to draw her wand to fix it, but her hands were shaking too hard, she couldn't, she just couldn't...
"Easy, now, Gin-Gin," said a calm voice beside her, and Lee's strong hand closed around hers. "Hold still a second, you're pretty scraped up, and I don't think Mr. Padfoot'll thank you for leaving blood all over his hallway."
"No more will Kreacher," Ginny managed to get out, and heard Lee chuckle.
"And we wouldn't want to get Kreacher mad, now would we?" His wand appeared in her peripheral vision and made a swoop, and the white dust she had dislodged disappeared. Two more waggles, and the bleeding scratches on her knuckles disappeared. A final slash, and the plaster looked as good as new. "Care to come in? Danielle's keeping us updated from St. Mungo's on her Galleon, the Healers think Fred should be all right by next week now..."
Ginny nodded dumbly, and Lee steered her into the next bedroom on the right, which happened to be the Pride girls' room. Crystal jumped up from her place beside George on Hermione's bed and hugged Ginny tight, then deposited her on George's other side. Lee plunked himself down at the foot of Meghan's bed, next to where Graham was already sitting, both of them watching—
Knuckling tears out of her eyes, Ginny took a longer look at the extraordinary collection of people perched on Meghan's bed. Maya sat with her legs folded under, Meghan asleep in her lap like a much younger child. In Meghan's lap, likewise asleep, nestled little Bernie, and completing the picture on Bernie's lap were a pair of sleeping elflets. Cissus was snoring faintly, and Echo had her thumb in her mouth.
Ginny couldn't help but smile, even laugh a little, weakly, and George turned at the sound and gave her a one-armed hug and a knuckle rub that made her yip and slap his hand away. "There we are," he said with satisfaction. "That's more like our ickle Ginnikins."
Crystal poked him in the side. "Stop calling names. She's here, have you thought about it any more?"
"Thought about what?" Ginny asked.
"Hang on." George turned again and flipped a glittering piece of gold towards Lee, who bobbled it once but caught it with his other hand. "Keep a watch and let us know if anything changes, mate? We need to run up and drag Ron out of whatever he's got himself into by now."
"Will do." Lee tossed them an offhanded salute, and George stood up and scooped Ginny over his shoulder. She considered struggling, but decided it would only add to the awkwardness of the moment and instead went limp. Crystal led the way up the stairs to the den room and knocked on the door.
"Go'way," Ron snarled from within.
"You can't tell me that," Ginny called back, nodding at Crystal to open the door, which she did.
"I can them." Ron's eyes were redder than they had been when Ginny had left, and his glare at George and Crystal was unfriendly in the extreme. "Go'way."
"Here on business, little brother." George set Ginny down and stretched oh-so-casually in a way that just happened to expose the potion piece holster he was wearing under his unfastened robes. "Want to make a deal with you."
"About?" Ron still sounded ungracious, but his tone was picking up some interest.
"May we come in first?" Crystal inquired.
"Yes, you may," said Ginny, overriding Ron's grunted, "Go ahead."
George stood back to allow his sister and his girlfriend entrance to the room, then shut the door firmly behind him and Imperturbed it. Crystal tested the poufs on which the Pride girls usually sat, found one to her liking, and dropped into it. "So," she said, settling back with a look of bright and cheery Muggle cluelessness on her face. "Death Eaters."
Ginny knew Crystal and George had been developing this as a double-team tactic to find out which of their suppliers would cheat a "silly little Muggle" and proceed to fleece them shamelessly. What she didn't know was if Ron knew it as well. Judging by his sour expression, she didn't think he did.
Whatever they're here for, my nearest and dearest brother is about to get taken for a ride.
Serves him right.
Over the next ten minutes, her admiration for the tactic only grew. Crystal skillfully milked Ron of everything he knew about Death Eaters, how nasty and brutal they could be, how powerful their magic often was, how they struck unprepared and unaware targets whenever possible. Her questions, even for a Muggle with only a few weeks' exposure to the magical world, were ludicrous, but her manner was so engaging that Ron edged out of his shell to answer them, and once he was out Crystal refused to let him go back in.
"So you would say," she pursued, "that the best thing to do if there were known kidnap victims is to go after them immediately."
"Of course, but how do you find them?" Ron flung his hands out into the air. "That's the point of kidnapping. The kidnappers know where they're going and we don't. They could be anywhere, and we haven't got a clue how to find them..."
"Don't we?" George interrupted. The words were innocuous enough, but his whole body had come to a pose of alertness, attention, as if he had heard some call to arms that Ginny had missed. His eyes were focused on Ron, but not on his brother's face—no, he was looking at Ron's collarbone, at the wedge of skin neither robes nor shirt covered up.
Or at the gold chain just visible at the edge of that skin.
Ginny hooked her pendants out of her robes as George's idea came into focus behind her eyes. Percy, she commanded mentally, and the metal cooled against her skin as her family carvings flickered weakly. For a moment, she wished she could see her mother's charmed clock, to find out if it considered Percy's current situation to be "mortal peril" or not—
Don't be stupid. He's been captured by Death Eaters, of course he's in mortal peril. It just isn't immediate, which is why the pendants didn't go off until I asked. They can't tell us everything about everyone all at once, or we'd never get any rest, especially not in a war.
"But what good does that do us?" Ron asked. He'd followed Ginny's logic to the point of bringing out his own pendants, and she could see the fitful glimmers of light which meant he had probably asked the same silent question she had. "We already knew he was in trouble—"
He broke off, looking intently at something on the medallion. When he lifted his head again, his eyes were narrowed, and he looked from George to Crystal as though sizing up an enemy. "You're not leaving us behind," he said flatly.
"Wouldn't dream of it." Crystal hadn't changed her posture on the pouf, but her tone made Ginny think of one of the mazes Professor Longbottom had dreamed up for the DA to practice the fine art of the ambush. "Doesn't work without you, does it now? We couldn't very well—"
"I mean at all," Ron cut her off. "No telling us to stay outside or stay in the car or wherever. You want our help with this, you take us along as fighters. Nothing else. Got that?"
Ginny swallowed, the taste of jubilation in her mouth mingling badly with that of terror. Whatever Ron was talking about, wherever they were going to go, he had finally done something she'd feared he never would. Without a second thought or a question, he had included her in his "us" as an equal. He saw her now as Harry and the rest of the Pride did, as a strong fellow Warrior to be depended on, not his fragile little sister who had to be shielded and sheltered. She had wanted that from him for years.
And of course it has to be now I find out what Mum means when she says getting what you want can be the scariest thing in the world...
Firmly, she banished that thought. This is what I want to do. What I've been training for these last four years—longer than that, really, when you consider the extra rules the Pack adds to things like hide-and-seek. I can't let myself freeze up now.
Not when Percy's life might depend on it.
George frowned. "Ron, this isn't a—"
Ginny whipped her wand from her pocket. "Expelliarmus," she snapped, catching George halfway through his own draw, and swung her point down to freeze Crystal in the act of pulling her potion piece. "Don't," she said shortly, over Ron's growled "Mucinno!" and George's curse as the handle of his own potion piece was suddenly too slimy to grasp. Crystal held her hands up, palms out, and treated Ginny to a short wink.
Ron reached out his left hand and absently snagged George's wand out of the air on its way towards Ginny. "A game?" he finished, holding up his prize. "Never said it was. But it's like she said." He jerked his head towards Crystal. "It won't work without us, which means we have to go along. And it'd be stupid to drag us all the way there, wherever 'there' is, and then not let us fight. If there even is any fighting. The best thing would be to get in and out without them ever knowing. And as long as we know where we're going, which we will, we can do that."
Belatedly, Ginny's mind caught up with what George and Crystal were suggesting, and with why she and Ron were needed. It could work. It did work. Twice, actually, once to find me and once to find Harry and Draco and Hermione. Here's hoping good things come in threes...
"Fine," said George, holding out his hand for his wand. "You can come. But if you get killed, you get to explain it to Mum all on your own."
"I'll write her a note before we go." Ron tossed the wand over. "How are we getting there?"
Crystal got to her feet and stretched. "I can drive," she said, her fingertips brushing one of the bars installed in the ceiling. "I even have a license, which I would bet none of you do. And I've been dreaming about flying since I was four years old. Granted, I never thought I'd fly a car, but you do what you have to."
"Such a hardship for you," Ginny agreed, maintaining her straight face with an effort. "Let me grab a couple things we might be able to use and then we can get going. The sooner, the better."
Sirius surveyed the small room with a certain gloomy satisfaction. The Death Eaters' snatches, apart from him and Aletha, appeared to have been random, but they had netted a surprisingly resilient group.
If they were looking for someone who's going to fall apart just from fear alone, they grabbed the wrong people.
He'd met Remus' friend Sue several times on her visits to the Den, and been impressed with her good sense and her ability to function in the magical world nearly as well as she did in the Muggle. She was seated now with her back against a corner, talking quietly with Miss Meade, who seemed calmer here than she had when Sirius had first encountered her in the Leaky Cauldron.
I don't like what that implies about her past, but it's the present and the near future we need to be concerned with at the moment.
Mrs. Smythe, for her part, was bending over a still unconscious Percy with Aletha, showing her something. Sirius craned his neck and caught a glimpse of one of the DA's potion pieces. That's right, they were going to pass them out to Muggle relations once they had enough. Knockout potions and healing only, though—wait, healing—
He scooted across the floor to join them. "Were you going to use that on him?" he asked, indicating the potion piece.
"Why, won't it work?" Mrs. Smythe tucked a bit of auburn hair behind one ear. "Aletha was just saying she doesn't think he was hit with any particularly Dark magic..."
"I'm not sure he was hit with magic in the first place." Aletha explored Percy's swollen face gently with her fingertips. "These all look like physical injuries. He may have been knocked off his feet by a near miss, and this is just the result of a too-close encounter with a wall."
"Will it harm him to leave him as he is for a while?"
"It shouldn't." Aletha lifted her head to look at Sirius directly. "Why?"
Her tone was superficially calm, but Sirius could feel the tension roiling just under its surface. Hold it together, love, he willed, wishing for an instant they shared a bond like Remus and Danger did. Please, don't fall apart on me, I'll never make it through this if you do...
"First off, we don't want them knowing what you can do with that thing yet," he said aloud, blotting at Percy's sluggishly bleeding lip with a fold of the young man's cloak. "They left it with you, which means they don't know what it is, and it could make the difference between life and death for you later. And second, he's bunged up enough they might not recognize him right off. Which could make the difference between life and death for him. If they know who he is, they'll use him to hurt his family, possibly even try to turn his dad—"
Aletha snorted. "Good luck."
"Yes, well, you know that and I know that. But when they find it out, what happens to him?" Sirius let Percy's cloak drop from his hand. "Whereas if he's just another Muggle, a toy they can play with at their leisure, they might not get around to him, or to any of you, before the Order finds this place."
"Any of you?" Sue repeated, coming to join them with Miss Meade beside her. "Not any of us?"
"They know exactly who Sirius and I are," Aletha answered quietly before Sirius could find the right words. "And who they can hurt by hurting us. They won't pass up that opportunity, and neither will any of them want to miss it. You won't be guarded heavily, they'll be assuming you're helpless, that none of you can do magic or have any weapons..."
"It's a war," Miss Meade put in unexpectedly. "You have to take your chances where you find them."
"That's it exactly." Sirius chuckled once, without much real humor. "Not going to say I'm thrilled to be providing said chance, but it's what I do for a living. Professional trouble magnet."
"Troublemaker's more like it." Sue gave his hand a quick, hard squeeze. "Don't do anything you don't need to. Either of you," she added after a glance at Aletha. "What do you think, Grace? Call him yours?"
"It should fly as long as they don't look too closely." Mrs. Smythe ran her fingers through Percy's hair, a few shades brighter than her own. "This is not what I expected to be doing with my day, I can tell you that much..."
The nondescript man blinked at Danger. "I beg your pardon?"
Danger glared at him. "Don't you dare play dumb with me, not after the day I've had. I knew you were in there the moment I saw you, Luna just confirmed it, and you are damn well going to talk to me right now or I am going to kick you from here to the Den and back again. Without stopping. Through as many mud puddles, nettle patches, and piles of dung as I can find. Is that entirely clear?"
The man blinked again, his eyes changing from muddy brown to vibrant green in the instant of closure. "Dammit, Danger, I shouldn't even be here," he hissed. "Do you have any idea how many rules I'm breaking?"
"No, but I know perfectly well what I'll be breaking if you don't stop playing with me." Danger fought against the tightening of her chest, the shaking of her voice. I can't do this now. Not now. I have to keep going, keep fighting, I'm the only one left, the only one...
"It isn't playing, it's—" Alex cut himself off with an exasperated sigh. "To hell with the rules, you'll do no one any good if you fall apart. Come here."
Danger stumbled into the offered embrace and pressed her face against a grey-clad shoulder, muffling her explosion of sobs and keeping her tears from showing. "I hate this," she whispered after the first bout was over. "Please tell me I don't have to do the rest of it alone."
Alex sighed again. "I wish I could. But you do. It's the only way they'll have a real chance."
"I was afraid you were going to say that." Drawing a deep breath, Danger straightened up. "All right. I have a few ideas of my own about finding them, I should be able to manage that on my own, it's just being away from Remus for so long that I can't see a way around. Is that what you're here for?"
"Yes." Alex closed his hand around hers. "If you ask, we can put your bond into abeyance, put it on hold for a little while. As long as neither of you goes picking at it, it should last until you're together again."
"That does sound like what I need. What's the price?"
Alex shuffled a foot. "I want you to know this wasn't my idea."
"It's never your idea. Spit it out."
A third sigh. "A day off the time you can spend apart. Permanently. You'll still have twenty-four hours relatively healthy, but after that the symptoms will mount about two-thirds faster than they did before."
"Killing us in two days instead of three."
"Not the most diplomatic way of putting it, but yes."
"It's my life. If I'm not allowed to be undiplomatic about it, who is?" Danger twisted a tangle out of her hair. "The only reason for us to be apart for longer than a day now that we know about the bond is because one of us was captured. And in that case, I doubt either of us would want to survive anyway. I agree to the price. So I speak, so I intend."
"So let it be done." Alex laid a hand against her cheek. "If anyone asks, Ezra Smythe was hoping you would have some news about his wife. And Amanda sends her love to Draco, if you see him again before you leave."
"I plan to. Unless leaving immediately would have an impact on things...?" Danger trailed off at Alex's shaken head. "Alex, are you—yes, you are. You're crying. What on earth—"
"Don't ask." The words emerged in a harsh whisper. "Just remember. By the time you could get there, it would already be too late."
Green eyes closed, and opened again a somber brown. "Dear me." Ezra Smythe reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. "I do beg your pardon. I don't know what's come over me."
"It's a terrible thing to feel helpless when someone you love is in trouble," Danger heard her voice answering in impossibly normal tones. "Believe me, I know. You'll be the first to hear as soon as we find anything out."
"Thank you, Mrs. Granger-Lupin, very much." Mr. Smythe blotted at his eyes. "I hope your husband recovers soon."
"They think he will. But thank you for your good wishes." She inclined her head towards him in lieu of shaking hands, then turned and hurried back across the street, trying to get into familiar territory before tears could blind her. Three words echoed endlessly inside her ears.
Already too late.
Wormtail slipped out of his hiding place and popped back into human form as the Dark Lord entered the room, waving the Death Eaters back to their celebration when they would have risen in respect. Another twitch of the long fingers summoned Bellatrix to his side, and a third called a thin man Wormtail didn't know from the crowd.
His master looked... ill, Wormtail decided, studying the Dark Lord from the corner of his eye. One couldn't exactly describe him as pale, given that his normal skin tone was parchment-white, but he looked grey and tired, as though he'd been working a great deal of magic.
Maybe it didn't go well.
He buried that thought instantly. That was disloyalty, and unworthy of such a fine servant of the Dark Lord as he was today. If his master saw such thoughts in his mind, the promised reward might be taken back. There might even be punishment, for daring to think that the Dark Lord could ever do anything less than well.
Quite some master you serve. The snide voice was back. Not just your actions, not just your words, no, even your thoughts have to conform to what he wants...
Wormtail bared his teeth before remembering he was human once again. A hard pinch to his already sore left arm by the hard silver fingers of his right hand did a satisfactory job instead. Shut UP, I said. The night is almost over. My Lord will decide what happens to the prisoners, we will do it or watch it done, and then he will give me my reward and I will be able to go enjoy it in peace.
"Bring me where they are," the Dark Lord ordered, raising his voice so that everyone could hear him. "Let me see them for myself."
"Of course, my lord." The stranger bowed deeply and opened the other door of the room, waving Bellatrix and the Dark Lord through it before him. The Death Eaters fell in behind, most of them laughing and joking. Wormtail followed, his skin prickling with his desire to return to rat form. Sirius and Aletha might not notice me that way...
The voice scoffed. Sirius? Not notice you? When he spotted you in the middle of a battle, and got himself and his wife captured because of it? The only thing rat form might get you is killed, if he can get his teeth into your scruff before anyone can drop him. Or if she steps on you hard enough to snap your neck. Why not give it a try? You'd be well out of it. Not even your precious Dark Lord can call you back from death.
Trying to keep this thought from taking him over, Wormtail barely noticed when the procession of Death Eaters halted outside the room where the prisoners were being kept. What broke him from his reverie was a hand on his arm. He looked up.
"He wants you up front," said Rodolphus Lestrange, smirking. "Wants you to watch, since you did so well in the battle."
Swallowing back his usual timidity, Wormtail nodded and allowed himself to be escorted forward between the files of watching eyes. They passed through the doorway together and joined the Dark Lord and his court, standing at the opposite end of the room from the half-dozen prisoners.
Sirius growled deep in his throat when he saw Wormtail, then turned away to support a middle-aged woman who was cradling a young man's battered upper body on her lap. Aletha's eyes were as cold as midwinter mud. Behind her stood a matronly woman with silvering hair, one arm around—
Wormtail clenched his teeth, the better to keep his mouth from dropping open in shock. His eyes widened of their own accord. A secret dream, hidden in the back of his mind for more years than he wanted to remember, was coming alive again.
"The wizard and the witch come with us, to our current base of operations," the Dark Lord was saying. "The Muggles will remain here until we have finished with the proper treatment of their betters. Then we shall see what can be... devised for them." Snickers filled the room. "If no one has anything to add—"
"My Lord!"
Death Eaters stared, whispered, pointed. Lord Voldemort himself turned slowly to see who had addressed him. Wormtail would have turned to look, but he knew it would do him no good. He had recognized the voice in the moment of its speaking as his own.
"Yes, Wormtail?" said the Dark Lord after a moment of silence. "Did you wish to say something?"
"M-my lord." Wormtail bowed, clumsily, cursing at his tongue for its stammer. This would need to be said without a stumble if it was going to work. "You promised—you said I could have, I could ask, I would be given a reward. Anything I wanted. Within reason."
The Dark Lord inclined his head. "So I did. Must we discuss it now?"
"My lord, we must." Wormtail turned towards the prisoners and pointed. "I want her."
Sirius sucked air between his teeth and started forward. Several wands snapped up into place, pointing at him, and Aletha's hand locked onto his arm. "Don't—" she started to say, but was interrupted from behind.
"It's all right," said a soft voice, as the young woman at whom Wormtail had been pointing laid a hand each on Sirius' and Aletha's arms. "I'll go."
"He's a little rat bastard," Sirius said from the side of his mouth, but loud enough that everyone in the room could hear him. "What if he hurts you?"
A smile flickered on her face and was gone. "That's a chance I'm willing to take."
Aletha nodded in acceptance and released Sirius' arm, stepping back. Sirius, manifestly unwilling, did the same. The young woman glanced first at the older one who had been sheltering her, then at the middle-aged one who knelt on the floor with the young man in her arms, giving each of them another flashing smile for goodbye. Then, as calm as though she were going on a journey she had planned herself, she stepped forward towards Wormtail, until she was close enough that he could smell her faint perfume.
"Keep her under control," the Dark Lord ordered. "If she gets out of hand, she will not be allowed to remain."
Wormtail hastily grabbed her arm. "My lord, I will!"
Other Death Eaters forced Sirius and Aletha forward, blindfolded them, tied their hands. Dolohov was chosen to stay behind in charge of the Muggles and allowed to select three others to join him. The rest of the Death Eaters followed their master towards the back door of the temporary hiding place, where they would Apparate to the base they had been using for more than a year, ever since the Dark Lord's return. Through all the chaos, Wormtail found himself unable to look away from his prize for more than a few seconds at a time.
It's perfectly normal, he tried to tell himself. She's young, healthy, not too bad looking, and she's mine. The Dark Lord said so himself. No one will dare take her away from me after that.
And why are you so concerned about— the voice tried to ask.
Shut up. Wormtail grinned at the ease with which he had vanquished his niggling annoyance this time. She's mine—I can do anything I like with her—I finally have someone who will—
"Let us go!" the Dark Lord called out, and Wormtail had to abandon this line of thought in favor of grasping his new acquisition's arm tighter in preparation for Side-Along-Apparating her.
"This only lasts a moment," he murmured absently, pulling her close. "Don't be afraid."
"I'm not."
Wormtail almost wondered what this meant, but shoved it aside in favor of a clearer thought of his destination. The turn into darkness—constriction and airlessness—a loud pop, and they were there, the young woman looking rather pale.
The other Death Eaters, the Dark Lord at their head, were moving off towards the meeting hall, Sirius and Aletha being bullied along in their midst. Wormtail considered following, but decided he had better take his reward back to his own room first. "This way," he said, starting down the corridor in the opposite direction.
A left, a right, the second left past that, and they were there. He tapped the doorknob with his wand, and it turned, revealing the room in the same disorder he had left it. "Bloody useless house-elves," he grumbled, waving the young woman into the room in front of him. "Keep their masters' rooms sparkling, of course they do, but lift a finger to help me? Not likely."
"House-elves?" She took a seat on the edge of the bed without being asked, folding her hands in her lap. "What are those?"
"Annoying." Wormtail gestured vaguely around the height of his knee. "About so tall, brownish skin, squeaky voices, great huge eyes and ears. Look like some Muggle puppet designer's bad dream..." He caught himself before he could go on talking to this girl as though she were his equal. "Have this place cleaned up by the time I get back," he said in a tone he hoped would pass for sharp and commanding, crossing the room to his wardrobe. "There's a sink in there for water." He pointed a thumb towards his tiny washroom, then flicked his wand at the grating, lighting a fire. "In case you need to burn rubbish."
"Thank you."
Biting his lip before he could say You're welcome, Wormtail pulled his robes over his head, did a quick Freshen-Up Charm on himself—it would last him until whatever was happening out in the meeting hall was over—and slid into clean robes, finger-combing his hair into place. He almost let his dirty robes fall where they were, but instead tossed them into the corner he was using for laundry. One bit of helpfulness wouldn't spoil the girl beyond use.
He started for the door but was brought up short by her voice. "What's your name?"
"Wormtail."
"No. Your name."
"Everyone calls me—"
"I don't care. I want to know your name."
He looked down at his hand, gleaming silver against the tarnished brass of the doorknob. I should discipline her... I can't let her get into bad habits... she has to realize her place, understand where she belongs...
"Peter," he said under his breath.
"Thank you." A long pause. "I'm Evanie."
Author Notes:
Anyone who has read certain of my AU's will be screaming at me for that. Most of you, however, will be screaming at me for another reason. So I will just take this opportunity to say that the "already too late" Alex referred to does not mean that Sirius or Aletha is going to die. At least not yet.
My apologies for having to take yet another chapter to do Bad Things. Next chapter should get us through the worst of them and into the part of the story where everybody works on getting over the Bad Things. It won't be what you'd call good for a while yet, but it won't be actively getting worse either, and... you know what, I'll just go write it and let you read it for yourselves. Thanks for hanging in there, everyone! More as soon as I can get it written down!