Facing Danger
Chapter 53: Coals of Fire (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
"Danger." Evanie nodded, twisting her fingers in and out of one another. "That would make you Sirius' friend's wife. Remus. Did I get that right?"
"Yes." Danger thought she could trust her voice enough for that one word, if not much farther. The silence inside her mind was threatening to drown out the noises around her. "And you?"
Evanie's fingers froze for a moment. "I'm sorry, and me what? Or and I what, I suppose, grammar was never my strong point."
"I…" There was no easy way to say it. "My nose is good when I'm in wolf form. I can smell a man on you. I was wondering who he was."
And if he is who I think he is, if there's anything you'd like to take with you when we get you out of here.
"His name is Peter. But you knew that already, didn't you?" The eyes, a lighter shade of brown than Danger's own, were faintly accusing. "If your nose is as good as all that, you'd know who he was."
"I haven't been around him enough to know his personal scent as a human, but given that there's a good bit of rat mixed in there, I had a bloody good guess," Danger snapped back, then bit her lip. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."
"I'm the one who should be sorry. I woke you up and started poking at you." Evanie glanced around, shading her eyes from the setting sun. "Come inside with me? I get nervous out here. We can sit in Mare's—Aletha's—kitchen and I'll tell you what I know."
"Sounds like a plan." Danger took a deep breath, made sure of her balance on two feet instead of four, and followed at Evanie's heels. When they reached the edge of the woods, she tapped the other woman on the shoulder. "I can cover us from here to the door," she offered, tapping the handle of her wand where it poked out of the pocket she'd sewn into her jeans for it. "Disillusionment, it's called. A simple charm, which is good since I muff the more complicated ones half the time."
"Thank you." Evanie smiled, an expression composed of equal parts pleasure and relief. "I'm always worried someone will see me when I leave Peter's rooms. They did once, and…" She stopped, shivering. "Never mind. It wasn't very nice, was all. The house-elves will warn us if anyone is coming, now that I've asked them to."
Good for you, making friends with the ones who see all and know all. Danger extracted her wand from the pocket and tapped them both on the head with it absently. The greater part of her mind was worrying the puzzle of what hadn't been in Evanie's smile that she had expected.
I don't know anything about her, except her name and the fact that she's a Muggle prisoner of the Death Eaters—of Wormtail, for heaven's sake. What could I be expecting out of her?
She was still trying to work it out when they passed the well and reached the kitchen door, and it was the act of taking the Disillusionment off them both that gave her the answer. Evanie's face when it was revealed once more was rapt, amazed, wondering, but not envious. There was no hint anywhere in her expression or her scent that she wished she could perform magic herself.
Which puts her one up on me. I no sooner saw what Remus could do with that wand than I wished I had it for my very own…
Her mind seized on this and took it to places Danger would just as soon not have gone, especially right now.
Right now. Two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow since we were separated. Since I felt that shock, that awful tearing pain all through him, through me, and then… nothing. Nothing there, the way that it was, the way it used to be before. Before him, before us, when it was normal to be alone in my mind, when it was the only thing I knew. And the only thing, the only thing keeping me alive, keeping me sane, was the knowledge that he wasn't quite gone, he was still alive. Because if I tried hard enough, I could feel his body. He couldn't feel his body anymore, but I could feel it. I could feel the pain that he would have been in, the pain that had forced him into hiding, and I knew a body that could feel pain was a body that was still alive…
A hand on her arm was guiding her gently along a narrow corridor, into a small room gleaming with cleanliness, into a wooden chair in the corner. A small table sat at her elbow, and a glass of water was being placed on it. Danger watched with some fascination as her hand reached out, closed around the glass, and raised it to her lips. It seemed completely detached from the racing thoughts in her mind.
I pulled myself back together within a few moments. I had to, didn't I? We were fighting for our lives. I told Aletha I was all right, I told her to go, to guard Sirius' back. A bitter laugh rippled the water in the glass, now lower by an inch or so than it had been. And we see how well that turned out. If I'd just been a little weaker, maybe she'd still be herself. Maybe she could have stopped the Death Eater who was trying to take Sirius from where we were hiding, and then we would all be home right now, taking care of the cubs and waiting for Remus to come back to us…
"Breathe deep." The voice was quiet, insistent, and without realizing Danger obeyed. "That's right, in and out. Nice, deep breaths. You need to calm down, cool down. You're overheated. Sleeping in the sun for too long, maybe."
Overheated. Danger held out a hand and regarded the flames that wreathed it at her mental command, then vanished at another one. That sounds like what the spells did to my love. His body wasn't damaged, or not beyond what Healers can fix, but it was overheated with pain in that moment and he couldn't stay there. I'm not sure if he was thrown out or thrown in, but whichever way it was, he's coming back.
The knowledge eased the tightness in her chest and relaxed the muscles of her shoulders. That's one thing I can always be sure of. As long as there is breath in his body, Remus Lupin will come to me when I need him.
The tiniest of smiles touched her lips. If I've ever needed him more, I can't think of when…
In his room at Grimmauld Place, Remus stirred again, restlessly. Meghan, dozing in a chair by his bedside, woke with a start and blinked her eyes into her Healer-sight. "Yes," she whispered, pumping her fist into the air. "Yes!"
The movement woke Hedwig, who had been drowsing on the back of the chair. Meghan stroked the owl's soft head feathers, then pointed at the door. "Get Hermione for me?" she breathed. "She should know first."
Hedwig hooted softly and spread her wings. Meghan settled back into her chair and squirmed all over with satisfaction. Her godfather was more there than he had been for nearly two weeks.
Which sounds silly when you put it in words like that, but it's the best way to say it I know…
Everything would be all right with Moony now. She was sure of it.
Evanie let out a small, secret sigh of relief when Danger blinked a few times, looked straight at her, and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry about that. Was I gone long?"
"No, only a few minutes." A few absolutely terrifying minutes. A few minutes when I was sure every second that you were about to pull me into a panic attack with you instead of me pulling you out. But it didn't happen and it's over and dwelling on it won't help anything. "Does that happen often?"
"It hasn't been that bad before. I think it's a warning. Like that little blinking light on your car." Danger flashed her hand open and shut. "Telling me I've only got thirty more miles to go before I'm running on empty. I'm surprised I've lasted this long, actually."
"You're connected to him." Evanie was piecing together the fair amount she'd heard from Sirius and the bits from Mare about the woman in front of her. "Your minds, your souls, they're connected, and you had to put the bond on hold to come and find Sirius and Aletha."
"Exactly." Danger picked up the glass of water again and drank deeply. "It doesn't seem like that much of a sacrifice. Even less because he's hurt so badly that I couldn't feel him there anyway. But he still was there, and the instant he came back I would have known about it. Now, if he wakes up, I won't know. Or if…" She set the glass down, shaking her head. "No, that's not true. Bond or no bond, if my husband were dead, I would know it. And since I don't know, he's alive."
"What is it like?" Evanie sat down in the other chair, the way she had so often sat across from Mare—I suppose I should be calling her Aletha, but I barely got to know Aletha and I do know Mare—to do some homely task and talk about their lives and the small, insular world around them. "Having that bond, being with him that way? Is it different than just being married?"
"As I've never just been married, I couldn't tell you," Danger quipped, but she was smiling. "It is and it isn't, from what I can tell. We fight less than we would without the bond, both because we understand each other so well and because what hurts one of us hurts the other as well. We still do disagree on many things, we have our own opinions and tastes, but on the most important things we… we move in tandem. It's like dancing. I may not do the same moves that Remus does, but I understand what he's doing and why, and that means I can make my moves complement his, complete them. And neither of us can do it alone, not anymore. Does that make sense?"
"Yes." Evanie swallowed against the tightness in her throat. "Perfect sense. What would happen if… if one of you decided that you didn't want to dance any longer, or that you wanted a different partner?"
"Before or after the shattered kneecaps and the fractured skull?" Danger laughed. "I can't really conceive of that happening, but if it did…" She stopped, looking at Evanie more closely. "But that's not what you meant, is it?"
"Not really." The tightness was still there, making it hard to talk. "What if… what if one of you wanted to dance, and the other didn't even understand what dancing was about? Or he thought he was too clumsy or too stupid to dance, or that he didn't deserve it? What would you do then?"
Danger drew a deep breath through her nose, then let it out in a sigh. "Good Lord," she said in a faintly exasperated tone. "How did I miss that? You're in love with him, aren't you? With W—Peter?"
Evanie tried to answer, but her throat had closed completely. She nodded instead, and squeezed her eyes shut over the heat within them. Tears won't help. They never help anything. They just make it worse, make it hurt more, when it already hurts quite enough…
"You're in love with him," Danger repeated, and Evanie heard the sounds of a chair being pushed back, of water running into a glass already partly full. "And he hasn't noticed a thing. You don't seem like the imaginative type, but I still have to ask—forgive me, it's the mother in me—he's good to you? He doesn't hurt you or frighten you at all?"
"No." Her voice sounded too loud in her own ears, but she knew from the way her throat still felt that it probably hadn't been audible to Danger. She groped on the table for the glass, felt it pushed against her fingers, and managed a swallow of water. "No," she repeated, louder this time, and got her eyes open. Danger was watching her with the calm tension she knew herself from waiting for one of the children at the Home to explain a difficult time in their past. "No, he's been a perfect gentleman." A tiny laugh, almost a sob, surprised her. "A little more than I might want sometimes. I don't think he has any… experience. With certain things, if you know what I mean."
Danger frowned, shutting her eyes momentarily. "I think you're right," she said, her brow furrowed. "He didn't when Remus knew him, and I doubt he's had much chance since then. He's probably decided that he blew his chance for that, like everything else, when he—" She stopped, looking uncomfortable.
"You don't have to hide it from me." Evanie drank a bit more water. "I know it all. Sirius has been telling me, as much as he knows anyway. More about the way things used to be, before the war got so bad, before Peter made his mistakes. And yes, I know they were more than mistakes," she said when she saw Danger's lips narrow, her eyes start to spark. "I know what he did, I know that people died because of him. But do you know what that does to him?"
"I—" Danger clenched her hands into fists for a few seconds. "No," she said, opening them and stroking them down her legs as though she were calming a restless animal. "No, I don't."
"I do." Evanie dipped her finger into the glass, then ran it around the top edge, steadying the glass with her other hand. "I hear him cry in his sleep sometimes. I hear him call out names, names Sirius has told me. And I see him when he comes back from wherever he's been all day. I see the pain and the unhappiness in his eyes. He can never fix what he's done wrong, and he knows that, and it only hurts him more." The glass began to sing, and she damped it with her hand before it could get loud enough to attract unwanted attention. "He's trapped inside a nightmare, and he can't ever wake up from it, as long as he lives." She lifted her head to meet Danger's gaze. "Isn't that enough punishment for anything?"
Mare roused slightly, confused. She wasn't where she remembered being. She was somewhat sore and achy, far more tired than she should have been at this hour of the day, and comfortably tucked into her usual curl of bedding in her nest under the stairs. How—?
The voice registered with her next. It was breathy, hardly more than a whisper, but her nose and the raising of the hair on the backs of her arms told her who it must be. Only he had ever made that kind of impression on her, even in the form which was the only one she could remember seeing him wear.
"—broke it off short, before the end. Does that mean something? Am I supposed to finish it? How does it finish?" A quick laugh. "Wish we had Pearl here, or even better, Neenie, she never forgets anything. Oh well, guess I'll have to do. 'It was red and yellow and green and brown and…'"
Scarlet and black and ochre and peach, Mare found her mind supplying, instants before Sirius chanted them under his breath. And ruby and olive and lilac and fawn…
How do I know that? I shouldn't know that. It's just a random list of colors—wait, no, it's a song. Danger was singing it when I met her at her house. That's how I know it. Her stomach calmed down from the churning that had begun in it when the colors had spiraled from her so effortlessly. But she never got to the end either…
"'And purple and white and pink and orange and—'" Sirius stopped. His volume had been gradually increasing through the list, to the point where Mare could now take stock of his audible voice.
It sounds very much like his inaudible one. Deep, strong, well-trained. A bit hoarse, but he hasn't used it for nearly two weeks.
"Blue." A hand rested on her sleeve for a moment, then withdrew. "You stopped before you got to 'blue'. What does that mean? It must mean something. You wouldn't do that to me, Letha, I know you wouldn't. If you told me to do this to you, to…"
His breath hitched. "God, oh God, I'm sorry, Aletha, I'm so sorry. I swore to protect you the day I put that ring on your finger, and instead I did this to you. I'm the reason you're here, the reason you're down on your knees scrubbing those damn floors every day, the reason you don't even know who you… no."
The voice lost its wobble, became resolute. "No. I'm not the reason. That sadistic son of a bitch Voldemort—though my calling anyone that is a stretch, I know—but this is his fault, not mine. He wants me blaming myself over this, therefore, that's exactly what I'm not going to waste my time doing. Better to spend it trying to work out what the hell you meant by 'blue.'" He snickered slightly. "Couldn't have been a little less cryptic, could you? No, not really, not unless you wanted them all busting in on whatever secret you've got…"
Mare listened as Sirius lay down, listened as he mumbled to himself, listened as his breathing deepened and slowed into the patterns of sleep. Exactly two hundred and fifty of those long, regular breaths later, she permitted herself to move.
And, more to the point, to think.
Sirius' words, unplanned, almost casual, had shattered what few illusions about him and herself she had allowed her mind to build. The reality she saw revealed was so overwhelmingly different from what she'd believed that she couldn’t yet decide if it was better or worse. Sheer shock had her leaning towards the worse.
Concentrate on the small things. The ones I can deal with. I have a name.
Aletha.
She opened her eyes in the dim light of her nest and looked down at her hands, regarding their backs, their fronts, the way they closed and opened. It's pretty. Poetic, almost musical.
I just don't know if it's me.
Pushing that aside, she moved to the next point.
I'm Sirius' wife.
The idea had her stifling a nervous laugh with a mouthful of sleeve. Oh, I don't think so. Not that he isn't very nice to listen to, and to look at—I would assume…
Her train of thought whooshed to a halt as she realized she hadn't so much as looked at the man she was blithely dismissing as an impossible husband. With a small sigh, she sat up, turned her head, and looked.
As I suspected. Trouble on two legs, just like he is on four.
Her hand went out as though to caress Sirius' unshaven cheek. She snatched it back before it could make contact. So I'm attracted to him. I knew that already. But I can't be his wife. He's made a mistake. His wife is…
She stopped, shaking her head. Facts, Mare. Concentrate on facts. You never did get to have that talk with him, so you don't know exactly what it was he was forced to do to his wife. You just assumed that it was turning her into an animal, because that's what happened to him. How do you know it wasn't taking away her memories? Wouldn't that be worse? Especially if they kept her near him, so that he had to look at her every day and see what he'd done?
It left the bitter slick of fear on her tongue, but it made sense. It made more sense than she wanted it to.
It's why Danger acted as though she knew me. If I were Sirius' wife, she would. I would be that sister she talked about, the one who belonged in that room, the one who ought to wield that wand. And she would have been hoping that I would magically remember her, or that house, or those things. But I didn't. I don't. I had a feeling, but a feeling isn't enough. It's very nice and very romantic, but it isn't enough to make a decision about the rest of my life.
Bringing her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them. She was shivering, and doubted it was all from the cool of the air around her.
If it is my life at all.
If it doesn't belong to a ghost named Aletha Black.
She lowered her face to her knees for a few seconds, then raised it again and lay back down, curling herself back under the covers to try and warm up, ignoring the damp spots on her robes halfway down her legs. There was a puzzle to solve, and no matter who she was or who she wasn't, she had a perfectly good mind.
Besides, if I really am Aletha, I ought to know what I meant.
Even if I don't remember meaning it anymore.
Under her breath, she hummed the colors song, and concentrated on the final word.
Blue. If I were about to have all my memories wiped away, why would I want my husband to remember the word blue?
Unbidden, her hand rose to her chest, pressing its heel against her breastbone.
I want so much to say no. Danger stared into Evanie's eyes. To say it isn't enough, nothing's ever enough, not for what Wormtail did, to James and Lily, to Sirius, to twelve innocent people on that street in London. But then I'm up against my own logic, because if nothing's enough for him, then what would I change? He's as much a prisoner here as he was in Azkaban, and he may not be living his worst moments over and over, but he's adding new ones every day.
And she loves him. Knowing what he did, what he is, knowing everything about him, she still loves him. I couldn't do that.
Does that make me stronger than she is, or weaker?
It was a question without an answer. As was Evanie's, and it needed one.
"I can't say no," she admitted. "But I can't say yes either. I don't know, and I wish I did. I wish I could tell where justice ends and vengeance begins. I believe in the one, and I try my best not to indulge in the other." She slid a hand across the tabletop, feeling the grain of the wood rise and fall under her fingers. "Maybe it's neither of those that's called for here. Maybe it's something else."
Mercy.
Otherwise known as "The poor little bastard's already living through hell, why should I add to his misery?" No magic can raise the dead, and killing him would just put me at his level. I suppose I could take her away with me, but that punishes her as much as it does him. Possibly more, if he hasn't realized what a treasure he has in her…
Treasure led her thoughts in a certain direction, mercy in another. The two ran on parallel tracks for a moment, then circled around and crashed into one another, fusing into an idea that left her momentarily stunned with its idiotic brilliance.
Merlin's copper cauldron. Talk about killing with kindness!
But I suppose it's like Sirius said at Peter's trial, way back when. He was one of them, once, which means one of us. If things had turned out differently, we might be a Pack of ten instead of eight. Even eleven or twelve, if Sirius and Aletha had been able to keep going after Meghan, or if Peter and Evanie had…
Danger shook herself out of her reverie. Thinking of Wormtail by his given name, twice, meant she'd already made her decision and just hadn't acknowledged it yet.
May as well not waste any more time.
"I have something for you," she said. "Can I see your hand?"
"Which one?" Evanie asked cautiously.
"Left." Danger held out her own hand, her pendant chain looped across it. "Just put it—that's it, perfect." Evanie had placed her palm across the chain. "Now hold still. It won't take but a moment…"
With a little metallic writhe, the chain encircled Evanie's fingers. Her other hand went to her mouth, but she remained very still, watching it closely. Danger felt it pulse, once, twice, three times, as though a tiny heart were beating inside it.
It does have our blood in it, though I usually try not to think about that…
The chain dropped back into her palm, lifeless once more. Danger willed it back to its place under her robes, and gently moved Evanie's hand away with her other one. "Here," she said, holding out what she had envisioned. "They're for you."
"What are—" Evanie was quick. Danger saw the understanding leap into her eyes before she had begun the third word. "But how can we—"
"Three witnesses is all it takes, under magical law," Danger interrupted casually. "Witnesses who can testify they saw it happen, they heard the words exchanged. You mentioned some friends of yours, the ones who'd warn you if we had unwelcome visitors on the way. They'd do just fine. A bit unusual, but what isn't around here?"
"You're right." Evanie delicately removed the two pieces of metal from Danger's hand and tucked them into a pocket. "Thank you. It's probably the kindest gift anyone's ever given me."
"Owl me next year if you're still grateful." Danger resisted the urge to shuffle a foot, but did hunch her shoulders slightly. "He's hardly God's gift to women."
"If he were, then everybody would want him, now wouldn't they?" Evanie smiled again, though fleetingly. "But that's enough about me and my silly problems. We have to find Sirius, and M—Aletha. Can you track them? Smell them out?"
Danger grinned, back on familiar footing. "Do Death Eaters wear masks?"
Sirius woke with a start. A hand was over his mouth, and another one was fisted in his hair.
"You idiot," hissed a voice in his ear. "I ought to rip this out by the roots and keep going. Do you realize what I've been through thanks to you?"
Reaching up, Sirius dislodged the first hand. "Nice to see you again too, Danger."
"Oh—" She let go of his hair and flung herself across his chest. Fortunately, he'd been expecting something of the sort, and caught her partway there so that only half her weight crashed onto his unprotected ribs. Cradling her against him, he sat up and turned towards the other person whose presence his ears and nose were announcing.
"I see you've met my sister," he said.
"We talked." Evanie had a hand over her pocket as though she were afraid she'd lose whatever was inside. "It's good to see you again. Human, I mean."
"It's good to be that way." Sirius adjusted Danger slightly to stop his leg from going numb. "Do you happen to have the time? I think I slept longer than I expected."
"I don't know exactly, but the sun was setting when I was last outside, and that was about half an hour ago." Evanie glanced over her shoulder, as though hoping the curtain would give her a clue. "I should get back. Peter sometimes doesn't have to stay as long as the others, and I don't want to worry him."
Don't want him to know you have house-elf friends who can whisk you past that locked door without a qualm, you mean. But Sirius wasn't about to complain. "What's in your pocket?" he asked. "Tell me to bugger off if I'm being nosy, but you look like you want to show somebody."
"Is it that obvious?" Evanie covered a smile with her free hand. "I was trying not to be."
Danger turned halfway around, flicking away the tears still sliding down her face and sniffling back the rest. "We have him well trained," she said, and dodged the halfhearted smack Sirius aimed at her head. "Go on and show him if you like, but then get yourself back. I'll do the explaining if it's needed."
Wonderful. Things in a pocket that are going to need to be explained. From long experience with the Pack, Sirius was prepared for anything from frogspawn to the Crown Jewels, but the actual items lying in Evanie's palm made him blink. "Wait. Those are—are those for you? You and—"
"Yes." Evanie was beaming, something he had never seen before. "Danger made them for me. Out of her pendants, or the chain really. That makes them magical, doesn't it?"
Sirius rubbed his neck absently. His own pendants were there once more, though he had a nasty feeling their magic wouldn't work as long as his didn't. "I'd say so. But Evanie, are you sure—"
"I'd better go." Evanie kissed her fingertips and brushed them against his cheek, then did the same to Danger. "Say goodbye to—to Aletha for me. And please tell her thank you for everything she did for me. And that goes for you, too. Both of you."
One last smile, and Evanie was gone, the curtain rippling for a moment and falling softly back into place.
Danger slid off Sirius' lap and looked up at him soulfully. He snorted. "Are you trying to do puppy dog eyes?"
"Trying? Did you just say trying?" She drew herself up indignantly. "I will have you know these puppy dog eyes have won concessions from Remus—the day after full moon, no less!"
"Fine. You can use them on him when we get home. In the meantime, you can explain to me just what the hell you thought you were doing with her." Some scrap of common sense had Sirius keeping his voice down, but he thought the jabbing finger and coldly hissed delivery would do just as well as his usual bellowing for conveying baffled fury. "I may not be the best judge in the world, I've only been through a marriage ceremony twice, but those looked an awful lot like a pair of wedding rings!"
"Aren't you a smart widdle Padfoot." Danger smirked and mimed patting him on the head. "They were a pair of wedding rings, yes indeed they were!"
Sirius eyed the hand hovering above his head. "You know if that touches me right now I'm going to try to bite it."
"Exactly why I didn't." Danger's playfulness dropped away. "Sirius, she's in love with him. You've been spending time with her, as Padfoot. You have to know."
I've been trying my best not to know. "Yeah. I know."
"And he's probably well on his way to being in love with her, and just doesn't know it yet." She spread her hands. "This will make them both feel better about where it's eventually bound to end up."
"And why exactly do I want to make Wormtail feel better?" Sirius demanded. "Yes, I told her the truth about him, but that was just to try to clear out the stars in her eyes. I don't want her seeing him as some kind of misunderstood romantic hero, and handing her a pair of rings is going to lead to exactly that! He'll hurt her, Danger, you know he will…"
"Do I?"
The question stopped him, but only for a moment. "If you don't, you bloody well should! You have Remus' memories, you've heard the stories, you know what he's capable of!"
"I know what he was capable of, almost fifteen years ago, in fear for his life." Her voice was cool, detached, as though she were talking about things she had no personal experience with.
Which she is. Hard to remember sometimes she wasn't always there…
"I also know, and so do you, what he's been through since then. What he's done and seen and experienced. Some things you know much better than I do." Her eyes, white and black and brown without a trace of blue, were for one moment mirrors that reflected back to him the touch of darkness in his own eyes, the bit of Azkaban that never truly left anyone who'd been there. "Some things we neither of us know much about, but we can guess. But now he has something he's never had before. Now he has another person dependent on him, caring for him."
"Someone to clean up his messes and wipe his little bum. How lovely."
Danger managed to look down her nose at him, quite a feat considering the difference in their heights even sitting down. "You really are in a mood today. All right, answer me this. What was the worst thing about being here for you? Was it being locked up again, or being without your magic? Being apart from the Pack, not knowing when or if you'd see us again? Or was it something else?" She turned her head very slightly, shifting her own gaze, and his, past him.
"You know perfectly well that was it." Sirius stabbed a finger around his side. "I don't see what it has to do with—"
Then, in a rush, he did.
"He's going to fall in love with her," Danger repeated, nodding as she saw the comprehension appearing. "He's going to marry her, in a ceremony binding under magical law. And then he not only cares for her, but he's responsible for her. Which means he's going to know what you went through, every single day that you watched Letha scrubbing floors past your cage. Every day that you had to wonder and worry, was she going to make it through? Would she still be there in the morning? What was going to happen to her?"
"Only it'll be worse for him, because I always knew you were on your way, or somebody was." Sirius laid his hand over Danger's, squeezed it, felt the answering pressure. "Nobody's coming for them. This is all they have, all they may ever have. Which means Peter is going to feel that kind of fear, that bone-knotting gut-twisting piss-your-robes terror, for Evanie. Every day, as long as they both shall live." A smile sneaked across his face. He let it. "That sounds like justice to me."
"I knew you'd see it if I just explained it properly." Danger scooted closer and laid her head against his shoulder. "It's good to have my big brother back again."
"Don't count your Fwoopers before they hatch, now. We're not getting far if I don't have magic and Letha doesn't have a wand. Or the knowledge to use one once she gets it."
"Well, let's start with this." Danger reached under her robes and extracted a potion piece, still in its holster, strung on a slender leather belt. "No magic needed. Just arm, point, and squirt."
"I feel ridiculous with these things." Sirius accepted the piece gingerly. "And what do I do if they put up a Shield Charm?"
"Run?"
"Har har."
"No, I mean it. Run, get around a corner, and squirt them in the face when they follow you around it. Besides, if you're quick enough you can get them before they finish a spell. Now, as to the getting far part of it, I had a few ideas…"
Mare lay quietly and listened to Sirius and Danger chattering. She wished she'd been able to say goodbye to Evanie properly, but there had been no way to manage it without embarrassing Sirius. Evanie was a smart girl. She'd understand.
As for a wand, and the knowledge to use it… the second I may not have, but the first I think I could get my hands on without too much trouble. In fact, I could get my hands on two. And will, as soon as I can slip out of here.
To that end…
She concentrated on sending out waves of sleep, imagining them rolling off her and washing over Danger's earnest face, Sirius' gesturing hands. As far as she knew, her magic worked only with physical contact, but she'd been having it rubbed in her face on a regular basis lately that she didn't know everything. Besides, willing Lucius Malfoy to stay asleep while she worked on his face last night had gone perfectly.
And it was there that I spotted wands. Two of them, sitting on top of a bookshelf like trophies. One a bit thicker, a bit darker than the other, and that other—though I didn't let myself think about it at the time—looked more than a bit familiar…
Sirius punctuated one of his comments with an enormous yawn. Danger echoed him a moment later, and her rapid-fire speech began to slow.
Then there's knowledge. The knowledge of how to use a wand, of how magic works in general. And the knowledge of more esoteric magical things…
Her eyes opened to silence. Sirius was lying down once more, hand still outstretched to Danger, who was clasping it in both her own. Mare smiled, then slid down to their end of the nest and slid a finger gently under Sirius's robes.
Stay asleep, she willed, and pulled her finger free. It took her only a moment to verify what she had suspected, and she turned to Danger and repeated the process. This brought her a moment of consternation, but a closer examination, with the curtain pulled back to admit more light, settled her doubts.
It wasn't a message from Aletha to Sirius after all. It was a message from Aletha to me.
And I think I've cracked her code.
Slipping out of the nest, she started off towards Malfoy's room at a trot.
What she had to do would be best done in private.
Author Notes:
One or two of you have already worked out Aletha's message, and one very intelligent reader even figured out what it means, but the rest of you may be getting an inkling now. If not, just hang in there—next chapter should see the end of the Bad Things for a while, and everyone headed home. More or less.
As always, thanks for reading, and remember, I'm always grateful for reviews, even if I don't have the time or energy to reply. Also, if you have any prayers or good thoughts to spare, please send them my way. I'm in a stressful time at work and could use the love. Thanks, and have a wonderful week! Oh yes, and I disclaim the lyrics in the middle of the chapter, please don't get me in trouble for them…