Surpassing Danger
Chapter 36: The Unfairest of Them All (Arc 7)
By Anne B. Walsh
You might need a few tissues, but save most of them for next chapter. Enjoy!
Bernadette Pritchard huddled up in a ball behind one of the hangings in the drawing room at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, hoping no one would think to look for her there.
She remembered the summer before, when she'd helped Meghan deal with being sad, but this time she and Meghan were both sad together, and so was everyone else around her. Her mother wouldn't come out of her room, and her father had his hardest angry face on, and they hadn't seen Maya since it happened (even in her own mind, she flinched away from naming it), and everything was wrong, wrong, wrong—
A hand pulled back the hanging close to Bernie's face. She made a little growling noise at the light which hit her square in the eyes and turned her head to glare at the person who'd invaded her hideaway.
The person glared right back at her, staring down his wrinkly, greenish-brown nose with distaste. "Little mistress tries to hide from her pain," he said, waving his other hand at the hanging, which obediently slid aside on its rings. "But the pain follows, yes? It follows wherever the little mistress may go."
"That's none of your business," Bernie snapped, but underneath her annoyance she was confused. How could Kreacher, one of the banes of her existence, know so exactly what she was feeling?
The ancient house-elf shook his head. "Kreacher's business is his masters and mistresses," he said. "And Kreacher has lost in his time, oh yes, Kreacher has lost much." One long finger beckoned her. "Come, little mistress. Kreacher will show you a place where pain is not always so very bad."
Bernie hesitated for a moment. Then she saw the two figures lingering in the doorway, one smaller than the other, and pushed off the floor to get to her feet. If Echo and Cissus were going with her, things ought to be okay.
"Good." Kreacher nodded and turned swiftly around, padding towards the door. "Little mistress will come, she will climb with Kreacher, and Kreacher will show her one of the secrets of the house, one of the secrets Kreacher's blood masters no longer know…"
Five minutes later, on the roof of number twelve, a long-disused trapdoor creaked, swayed, and swung open with a groaning complaint of metal against metal. Out of it stepped three house-elves and one human, who shaded her eyes to look across the forest of rooftops spread out before her. "It's like a whole 'nother world," she said, taking a few steps sideways for a better vantage point. "One nobody on the ground even knows is here."
"Kreacher came up here often," said the oldest of the house-elves, snapping his fingers at a section of the railing around the rooftop walkway on which they were all standing, which quickly rose back into its proper upright position. "When times were so bad for the House, when Kreacher's Master Regulus had died and the Mistress was…not well. Kreacher would come up here, and breathe, and think, and for a little while, some of the pain would go."
"For a little while. And some of it." Bernie walked forward to lean on the newly repaired railing. "Will that work for me?"
"If the little mistress will let it, then perhaps." Kreacher watched as the elflets tucked themselves against Bernie's legs, Echo on her left, Cissus on her right. "Tell the troubles to the wind, little mistress," he said quietly. "The wind will sweep through and carry away any parts of them that are not held so tight as others. And when some of the troubles are gone, little mistress will have room in her heart again for some of the good things she still has." He glanced down at Cissus, who returned the look blandly. "Like her friends."
Bernie turned her face into the wind, grateful that she could blame any tears spilling out of her eyes on its power. "My brother is dead," she told it, feeling the breath whisked away from her lips almost before she could finish shaping each word. "He died doing a good thing, and some of the people who put him in the way of getting killed are already being punished, and we'll find the other ones who were part of it and punish them too—but he's still dead and he's never coming home and I don't want people to get punished, I want Graham back again and I can't have him, and it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not FAIR!"
Her voice had risen through her recitation, until by the end she was shouting, flinging each word into the teeth of the wind as though her love and grief and anger could fix things. With a sob, she dropped her face into her hands and let her tears boil out of her.
"Why did they have to take him away from us?" she whispered. "He never did anything wrong."
But not even the grownups in her world had an answer for that question.
Unless it's that they think he did.
She wept quietly as the wind rushed over her, as her friends offered what comfort they could by simply being there with her, as Kreacher stood to one side, watching in silence. When she finally lifted her head again, she felt…different.
It's not really better, not a lot better, anyway. But it's just like Kreacher said. A few tiny bits of my hurting blew away on the wind, and that means I have a little more room to remember good things. She looked down and smiled at Cissus, who reached up to squeeze her hand, then knelt down to accept Echo's hug.
Her sad and her angry hadn't left her, not all the way, not now, and possibly not ever. But now she didn't feel like she couldn't breathe because of them anymore, and she thought she might even be able to eat.
I'll have to see if Mother will come up here with me, she decided, starting for the trapdoor again. Or Father. The wind might help them too.
"Thank you, Kreacher," she said as the elderly house-elf opened the door with his magic.
Kreacher bowed low, and for once, Bernie didn't feel like he was making fun of her with the gesture. "Little mistress is welcome," he said, and waved her and her friends in front of him so that he could close the door behind them as they descended.
Meghan's eyes and throat ached when she awakened, but she'd expected nothing less. Crying had predictable results on her, none of which were pretty. But now she'd cried her tears, and got them out of the way for the time being, and she needed to do something useful with the remaining strength of her pain.
I'm going to go find my Mama Letha. She'll know where I'd do best to start.
Dressing quickly, not forgetting her potion piece, she hurried down the stairs, glancing in passing at Natalie's empty bed. Her friend had gone home to be with her parents for a little while, with two Order members assigned to watch their house at all times, but she'd promised Meghan to be back again before the end of the month.
She's stronger than I think I could be. If I lost Neville…
The thought burned within her, more painful than the soreness of her throat, but she soothed it with the sight of that selfsame wizard, waiting for her in his usual spot near the bottom of the girls' stairs, making a bit of vine dance as he waggled his finger at it.
We still have each other, and Natalie still has us, and the rest of her own Pride. So does Maya, and she and Lee have each other, and the shop to help tend. Not to mention, Percy probably has a list of Red Shepherd work he can give them, missions against places that the people who were there in those caves might be hiding.
She found herself smiling, in a way which made Neville give her an appreciative look, as she rounded the last curve and leaped the last three steps down to the common room. "You look like you're having good thoughts," he told her, tucking his vine back into his pocket to take her hand.
"I'm thinking about us." Meghan laced her fingers with his. "The DA, the Red Shepherds, the Prides. Even the Order and the Pack. The Death Eaters think we're just a…a pile of bottles, like the ones you could throw balls at when we had the May Day Fete. If they knock one of us out, we all come crashing down."
"But we're not." Neville retrieved his vine and laid it across their intertwined hands. At a brief puff of breath from him, it writhed and began to send out tendrils, wrapping around fingers, palms, and wrists until they seemed to be wearing a single green glove. "Bottles are dead, not living. And we are very much alive. They can hurt us—they did hurt us, yesterday—and that makes us weaker right there and then. But afterwards…"
"Afterwards, we're like the trees with holes in their trunks, out in the Forest, or the bushes we grafted in the greenhouse, to make Ginny's roses for the wedding." Meghan stroked the vine-glove with a finger of her other hand. "We grow back together. We heal. And when we do, we're stronger than we were. The second Pride isn't ever going to give up on hunting Death Eaters now, and good luck trying to tell anybody in the DA that all Slytherins are bad!" She sighed deeply, her momentary good mood sliding away. "I just wish it hadn't had to happen like this."
"So do all who live to see such times," Neville quoted softly. "But that is not for them to decide." He squeezed her hand, bringing her eyes up to his face. "Breakfast?"
"Breakfast," Meghan confirmed, glancing around the common room until she'd located most of the rest of the Pride in their usual spot (Harry wasn't there, but if anyone could take care of himself at Hogwarts, her big brother was the one). "We have to learn and practice if we're going to win the war, and that takes staying healthy. And then I need to talk to my Mama Letha about how we can win the war best, and she'll probably be at breakfast too. So yes. Breakfast."
"You know, that's what I love about you." Neville found an end of vine and tugged once. The vine-glove unraveled briskly from around their two hands and shrank as it went, until he was holding his original, three-inch bit of green between his finger and thumb. "You always see everything so clearly."
"Is that all you love about me?" Meghan pouted.
"No, but if I stand here and keep listing things, Ron will get to breakfast before we do and then there won't be anything left."
She hadn't known she could still laugh.
Harry slid out of the hole by the fireplace in Dumbledore's office. "Good morning, sir," he said, and smiled at the clothed house-elf who was directing the silver teapot to top off the Headmaster's cup. "Good morning, Dobby."
"Harry Potter, sir!" Dobby levitated another cup over to the teapot and began to fill it. "Dobby has brought a letter from Harry Potter's godfather, all to do with Kreacher—but the news is good," he added hastily at the look on Harry's face. "Dobby must get back, though, there is much to do at the house, and Winky and Mrs. Wheezy are both with Mrs. Pritchard today…"
For a moment, Dobby's cheerful features hardened, and Harry had a sudden insight into why the wizards of the past might have thought it wise to tie their elves to their families with such strong, deep magic as they had used.
Because just like goblins, they're powerful enough to do a whole lot of damage if they're allowed—and just like goblins, they've got all the same feelings human beings do…
"These Death Eaters are very bad," Dobby said quietly. "Not in all the stories Dobby's parents told him and his sister, nor Winky's parents told her and her brother, of all the days gone by when house-elves have worked for wizards, was the killing of wizard children ever a thing that wizards did. Taking children, yes, to make the parents do things, or to make the children into more like themselves. But killing…" He shook his head, and waved one finger, sending the full teacup, sloshing gently, across the room to Harry. "No. Killing is new. And a bad new, instead of a good one."
I wonder. Harry caught the cup in midair and took a sip. Before his fire magic had been awakened, it would have scalded his tongue, which meant that now it was just the way he liked it. House-elves have been nannies and nursemaids to pureblood kids for all those same 'days gone by'…how would they take the news that their precious masters are out there now killing off kids like the ones they helped raise? None too well, I'd think.
"But Dobby is daydreaming, and work must be done! Have a good day, sirs!" Dobby bowed to Harry, then to Dumbledore, and disappeared with a loud crack.
"Good news about Kreacher, sir?" Harry asked, coming into the room to take a seat in one of the visitors' chairs.
"He appears to have responded to the needs of Bernadette Pritchard, as a pureblood child resident in his house, by moving past some of his earlier grudges and prejudices to help her with her grief." Dumbledore unrolled the small scroll lying on his desk and skimmed down the boldly written lines (Harry would have been able to name the writer as Padfoot even had Dobby not mentioned it). "Sirius believes it might now be time for the reward you had promised Kreacher. After which, perhaps, a meeting between him and Dean Thomas could be arranged."
Harry glanced over at the closed cubbies in which Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup reposed, innocent-appearing items that they were, with Gryffindor's sword in its glass case set on the top of the shelf above them. "Can we do that today, sir?" he asked, letting his hand drift down to his dagger. "I think it might make all of us, my Pride, feel better to see one of those things die."
"That sounds like an excellent idea." Dumbledore set aside the scroll and cradled his teacup in both hands. "And once it is done, perhaps we should see about a certain plan I believe you once broached, involving your own weapon and that of Godric Gryffindor?"
For a moment, Harry drew a blank. Then he remembered, and couldn't help but grin. Carry around my dagger for everyday, just like I do now, but whenever I say the right trigger phrase and make the right movement, I've got the sword instead…
"I like that idea too, sir," he said aloud. "Besides, won't that mean the sword gets the basilisk venom in it, like my dagger already has?"
"It will." Dumbledore nodded. "And whenever you have no need of the sword, it will be here, available to me or to the next resident of this office."
Harry almost laughed. Next resident—thinking ahead a bit, isn't he? McGonagall becoming Headmistress is years off yet, and we're hoping to finish the war before November…
Then his nose got its chance to catch up with his brain, and he went very still.
"You have been told what the Death Eaters hope to accomplish, using your brother as their cat's paw," said Dumbledore, as calm as if he were discussing a plan to add a vanishing step to every staircase or enchant the suits of armor to do cartwheels rather than the possibility of his own death. "For all the precautions we may now take, we cannot be certain that their plan will not succeed. And perhaps, in a larger sense, we would be wisest to let it do so."
"We should what?" Harry wasn't sure how he'd stopped the final word from being a full-on shout, and judging by Fawkes's annoyed whistle on his perch behind Dumbledore, he'd still been louder than he should have. "Sir—"
"Have you ever, Harry, heard the saying, 'The graveyards are full of indispensable men'?" Dumbledore reached around to stroke Fawkes's feathers, and the phoenix grumbled a little in his musical voice but also leaned his head into the caress. "If Voldemort were to die tomorrow, the Death Eaters would have no strong voice to lead them, no central authority whom they all would follow. The infighting and squabbling for place would disorganize them entirely, and you can imagine we would not hesitate to destroy them while they were at such a disadvantage."
About to ask what this had to do with the price of raspberries in Reading, Harry stopped and forced himself to think it through. "He judges us by himself," he said after a few moments. "Doesn't he?"
"What else does he have to judge by?" Dumbledore smiled. "His strikes are already scattered due to the need to try to locate the many different groups who oppose him. He believes that my influence is the only thing which ties all those groups together, that without me they will drift apart, each to its own smaller agenda." He gazed into his tea as though he were trying to see the future in its dregs. "How little he understands us."
"Good," Harry said flatly. "I don't want him understanding us. That'd mean he could fight us better."
"So it would, Harry. So it would indeed." The Headmaster drew a long breath, bringing himself back from wherever his mind had been wandering. "But as I was saying. If the Death Eaters' clever strike succeeds, or even seems to succeed, they will believe that Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix are both theirs whenever they choose to stretch out their hands. Whereas, if we prepare ourselves properly for such an occurrence…"
"Things won't fall apart," Harry finished, nodding with a sense of profound relief. A feigned weakness, meant to lull an enemy into complacency, was something a Marauder's cub understood perfectly. "If you went into hiding to make them think you'd died, Professor McGonagall would become Headmistress…" He frowned. "But she wouldn't lead the Order, would she? I don't think she'd want to."
"She would not." Dumbledore chuckled. "Indeed, she has told me so repeatedly. Look closer to home, Harry. Who among the Order has already proven himself a leader—unless I should say themselves, for surely the effort is a joint one?"
Harry groaned aloud at his stupidity in not seeing this ages ago. "They'll be good at it, sir," he said after another sip of tea. "And I'm not just saying that because they're my parents."
"No, you are saying it because it is true." Dumbledore leaned back in his chair. "Remus always had potential, but only after Danger came to him was the greatest part of it unlocked. They are more, together, then either could ever be alone. As well, Danger has been working in the Pepper Pot since before it opened, and is therefore thoroughly conversant with the methods and plans of the Red Shepherds, while I have been bringing Remus further and further into the workings of the Order, and my own thoughts and beliefs about the course of the war, for some time."
"Because the graveyards are full of indispensable men." Harry drew his dagger and turned its blade back and forth, letting the light reflect off it. "What time should we start making Voldemort a little closer to being indispensable, sir?"
"I would imagine his Death Eaters already consider him so," Dumbledore remarked. "Would just after lunch work well for all of you?"
Draco groaned, shoving the frustratingly vague Transfiguration text across his desk. "I give up," he said to thin air. "I'm never going to understand this stuff! Everything else, I'm already up almost to O.W.L. level, past it in some things, but not this…"
Pushing back his chair, he stood up to pace, but stopped halfway across the room at the sight of his bed.
"Maybe I'm not," he said, starting to smile. "But I know who is."
Getting comfortable took only a few moments, dropping off to sleep scarcely longer than that, but to Draco's annoyance, Fox was nowhere to be seen when he opened his dream-eyes. He was getting ready to sit down and sulk when something occurred to him.
I may look four years old, but I know more than a four-year-old would. I know lots of kinds of magic. And Fox always says, you can do whatever you want in dreams. Maybe could I put both of those together and come up with a spell that would tell me where he is?
Reaching into the pocket of his robes, he came up with his wand, and had to laugh as he realized that it had fitted itself to the contours of his dream-body's hand. After giving it a few experimental waves, which sent gratifying showers of sparks every which way, he walked out to the center of his room's open space and shut his eyes.
What should I say? Not an incantation, not a proper one, I'd have to know it exactly to get it right—but maybe if I try a rhyming spell, like Fox uses to joke with me, that would work…
Slowly, he raised his wand over his head, like someone getting ready to cast the first spell of a duel. "Water, fire, earth, and air," he said, then hesitated for an instant before the proper rhyme occurred to him. "Show me Fox and take me there!"
After three seconds of silence, Draco sighed and opened his eyes, disappointed. I should have known that wouldn't—
His thoughts broke off in what would have been a squawk of amazement if he'd been able to make any noise at all.
He was no longer in his bedroom.
A vaulted ceiling, with broad windows set all around, soared high above him. Bookshelves with ladders to get to their upper bits, staircases of graceful wrought iron, and paintings of snoring wizards and chattering witches lined the curved stone walls. The floor space, what there was of it, was taken up by one enormous desk, several comfortable-looking chairs, and a small crowd of people, most of them Hogwarts-age except for one older wizard with an impressively long silver beard and flowing hair to match. And standing behind them, watching intently, was—
"Fox!"
Somewhat to Draco's disappointment, his relation neither jumped nor yelped. Instead he went quite still for the space of a breath, before turning to face Draco. "You," he said with a curious mixture of worry and thoughtfulness in his expression, "are not supposed to be here."
"I know. But I wanted you." Draco trotted over, peering with interest at the people. "Is this your family? They look like the story-pictures you showed me that one time."
"You mean you don't—" Fox cut himself off. "Never mind, of course you wouldn't. Yes, here they are. They won't be able to see us, but you knew that already."
"Because we're just dreams to them, the way you are to me?" Draco hazarded, allowing Fox to lift him up when the older boy's arms came down almost absently.
"Not quite." Fox balanced Draco expertly on his hip and walked a slow circle around the little group. "It's more like…I know that this happened, or something like it, very recently. But I can't see the real thing, not without a whole lot of magic to give me extra strength, because that's not my gift. I'm a dreamsculpter, not an astral traveler."
Draco frowned. "What are those? Dreamsculpter and as-as…"
"Astral travel is when your spirit steps outside your body for a little while, to go to a real place and see real things that are happening." Fox set Draco down on the broad desk, motioned for him to watch, and stamped one foot on the floor. It rippled. "But that's not what's going on here. See how it's all soft down below us? That means this is all inside my mind, a made-up place and not a real one. A dream."
"So this place isn't real?" Draco sat down, disappointed. "I should have known. It's too nice."
"What, this place where we are?" Fox chuckled. "No, it's real all right."
"But you just said—"
"If you have a model of Hogwarts, does that mean Hogwarts itself doesn't really exist?" Fox interrupted. "This is just like that. It's a model of the Headmaster's office there. I've been in it a few times, so I know what it looks like." He smiled. "Starting when I wasn't much older than you are now, come to think."
"So you have been to Hogwarts!" Draco slid off the desk, tremendously excited. "You can tell me about it when we get back to my room, there's still so much I need to know—"
"No." The word was flat and cold, a tone Draco seldom heard from his relation, and Fox's arms were folded across his chest, the blue eyes narrowed in anger. "I thought we'd settled this already. I'm not going to help you with that one."
"Why not?" Vaguely, in the tangle of people behind Fox, Draco thought he saw a flash of silver and red, heard a strange hiss like the Dark Lord speaking Parseltongue and a smash of breaking glass. "What's wrong with—"
Fox stamped his foot again, making the office vanish around them. They stood together on a featureless gray plain, Draco now looking at his relation from the same height, rather than from below. "Hey!" he objected, hearing a similar voice to his waking one, if not quite so well-controlled. "That's not fair, I wasn't ready—"
"Why not?" Fox mimicked his four-year-old tones almost exactly. "Because if you were really taking this whole mission thing seriously, if you were going to act like you're almost seventeen and ready to take responsibility for your actions, you should have been paying better attention than that. I'll tell you this much, Draco, if by some miracle you manage to pull off what your father wants you to do, and they catch you at it—which they will—it won't matter to them that you were just obeying orders. They'll come down on you like a ton of cauldrons. You'll probably never even see daylight again, let alone any of those rewards he keeps promising you."
"Why would you think I'm going to get caught?" Draco scoffed. "It's a perfect plan. The Pack has themselves deluded into thinking I was with them because I wanted to be, so I'll just pretend they're right and that I want to 'come home'." He paused for an overall shudder at the thought of what such a homecoming would really mean, if it were to happen, then went on. "Father knows a spell that will give me the information I need to play along with their twisted little ideas, I'll convince them I'm for real and get them to let me in, and then I'll ask them if I can't have some time alone—"
"What happened to them wanting you to be their slave?" Fox broke in, drumming the fingers of one hand against the other arm in a complicated rhythm pattern. "Trying to steal your magic for Hermione all the time, and make you do the chores?"
"That's the beauty of it." Draco grinned. "They only dare do that when they're at home, and they're not at home now. They're at Hogwarts."
"True enough." Fox nodded slowly. "But I still don't see—"
"Dumbledore's such a goody-good, they'd never dare admit what my life was really like in front of him," Draco continued, surprised at Fox's slowness to catch on. Usually his relation was much quicker than this. "So they'll have to agree with everything I say, and let me have the sort of things that seem reasonable. Like a few minutes to myself, to enjoy being back where I belong. Or even a private word with the Headmaster, because I've seen so many things while I was with the Death Eaters that only he should hear about…"
"And once you're alone with him, you're going to kill him." Fox's voice had returned to its earlier, flat, disapproving tone. "Kill him, and set up a target that a properly tuned Portkey can always get to, even through wards like Hogwarts has. Then your father and a bunch of the other Death Eaters will come through using that, and spread out through the school to hide other targets just like it in places people would never think to look—and once that's done, they'll come back, pick you up, and leave again. With Dumbledore dead and Hogwarts theirs whenever they want it."
"That's how it should go." Draco smirked. "Simple, elegant, and foolproof."
Fox choked. "Sorry," he said when Draco looked askance at him. "Swallowed wrong. But there's just one problem with foolproof plans. People keep inventing better fools."
"Oi!"
"Hold it, hold it—" Fox snapped his fingers, and Draco, about to charge at his relation and demand that Fox take it back, found himself abruptly wearing his four-year-old body again. "That wasn't meant for you, no matter what you may think. And we aren't going to get anywhere going around in circles on this. You're going ahead with it, no matter what I say, aren't you?"
"Yes I am." Draco crossed his own arms defiantly. "And you can't stop me."
Fox smiled. "Was that a challenge?"
Draco's first instinct was to say no, but he overrode it—how dare this, this dream-bully think he could push around a son of the Malfoys? "Yes it is," he snapped back. "This is the one thing my father's ever asked of me, in exchange for his spending his whole life trying to get me back, and I'm not going to let you mess it up!"
"If you say so." Fox went to one knee, looking at him with a thoughtful, searching expression. "But remember this, Draco. I may not agree with everything you want, but if things go wrong out there, I'll be here to help you. Think you can trust me that far?"
"I guess so," Draco said after a few moments of consideration. Fox hadn't said he was going to mess up the mission, and one of his father's most-often-repeated maxims was that a wizard could never have too many friends. Of course, his father tended to use the word "allies" or even "debtors", but it meant basically the same thing, didn't it?
"Thanks." Fox blew out his breath. "So, what were you looking for me about this time? Transfiguration again? I bet I could even guess what lesson you're on, I had the same trouble back in my O.W.L. year…"
"Again," Sirius instructed, watching Harry bring himself into ready position. His godson was sweating heavily and breathing hard, but his movements were as fluid and clear as they had been at the start of this exercise. "And—go!"
Strike, block, strike, duck, lunge, parry, weave, feint, Harry executed one of the knife-fighting patterns Sirius had taught all the cubs when they were younger, shortly after Amy Freeman had given them their daggers for Christmas. Only this time, when he came to the rest position in the middle, he twisted his wrist once and pulled his arm back, and his eyes went momentarily abstracted as he mentally pronounced the phrase he'd chosen, Filio leonis if Sirius recalled it right—
The silver blade in his hand lengthened and broadened, the rubies ornamenting the grip swelled. In less than a second, what had been Harry's dagger was now the sword of Godric Gryffindor. Sirius had no doubt the dagger was now ensconced in the glass case upstairs in the Head's office, probably looking rather odd and lonely up there.
He eased back as Remus stepped up, his own sword in his hand, to take the position of adversary in this new portion of the bout. Harry brought the sword up to guard, and they eyed one another for a moment, two alpha wolves seeking one another's weaknesses.
When they moved, they did so in near-perfect unison, and the clang and clash of silver against steel rang through the main room of the cubs' Hogwarts Den. Sirius, no swordfighter himself, could and did still admire the poetry in this form of combat, though he'd spotted several moments when an adept knife fighter could easily have sneaked a shorter blade through either side's guard—
Though I'm probably just deluding myself, because my bouts with Moony always end up the same way anymore, no matter what we're armed with. Either we get a mutual kill pretty early, or we go at it until one of us is so tired he makes a mistake and the other one wins basically by default. He grinned to himself. Which is pretty much what the Death Eaters are counting on us to do, next week, and pretty much what we're going to take advantage and do to them…
The tests of intent had been just as unpleasant an ordeal as Dumbledore and the Heads of House had suspected they would be, but a surprising number of students had passed them. Sirius suspected Snape had altered the wording in a few cases, but also suspected the Head of Slytherin had his eye very closely on those particular students, and had let them know about the observation in no uncertain terms.
Because if there's anything a Slytherin hates, it's knowing he isn't going to get away with whatever he's got planned.
Probably also inevitable was the handful of students who had left the school "in protest" once the tests had been announced, but before they could be administered. Sirius was fairly sure the gap had been there on purpose, and wondered if any of the students who had departed realized that for themselves.
You're willing to up and leave over having to prove you don't want to hurt your fellow students? That's great, that's fine, don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out…
But the developments over the last few weeks that Sirius liked both most and least hit him a bit closer to home.
Kreacher, for one. Whatever Harry and Meghan hauled him off here to Hogwarts to do, it chirked him up like nobody's business, and he went off to meet with Dean Thomas like he was eighteen months old again, starting his duties all fresh and shiny-new. And Pearl did something too, something involving stabbing, or at least that seems to be what I see her miming every once in a while. He sighed, waving his wand absently at his face to dry a bit of the sweat running down his forehead. What is it with me and violent women? Though be fair, Padfoot, it's not just you, the entire Pack seems to be full of them…
And then, of course, he was looking at the thing he'd been trying to avoid looking at since Aletha'd reluctantly shared it with him.
The Death Eaters are sending Fox here, to try and kill Albus. And Albus wants to let them. Not just because he thinks Fox isn't as far gone as he seems, but because he's dying, and that's not right—he wasn't supposed to die, not now, not like this—
The mingled scent of flowers and bread hit his nose just in time for the voice in his ear not to make him yelp. "Thinking too hard again?" Danger inquired.
"Albus Dumbledore," said Sirius shortly, "is out of his mind."
Danger regarded him for a few moments. "There have been times I'd have agreed with you in a heartbeat," she said finally. "But I'm honestly not sure this is one of them."
"What part of his risking his life is a good thing, then?" Sirius demanded.
"The part where we know it's coming so we can prepare for it?" Danger patted the wall beside her hand, smiling. "And the part where we get our missing cub back, practically gift-wrapped?"
"Brain-blanked is more like it." Sirius growled under his breath. "If I ever get my hands on Lucius…"
"Queue starts behind me and Remus." Danger's smile had disappeared at the invocation of the elder Malfoy's name. "But Sirius, tell me this. After we've been informed that our Draco, Draco Black, would be protected from the worst of what his father wanted to do to him—after we've had more than a few indications that he might still be in there somewhere—and after we know that the beginning of the Death Eaters' plan is for him to pretend that's still who he is, that he's escaped and he's coming home—after all of that, do you truly think he's going to be able to muster enough anger for a Killing Curse? Against anyone, let alone a man he's trusted since he was four years old?"
"I think it depends on what kind of protection he had, and how effective it was." Sirius turned his head just enough to see Harry and Remus come to salutes, then relax from their guard, grinning at each other though Harry was favoring one shoulder and Remus putting more of his weight on his right leg than his left. "And really, Danger, under all of it? I just don't want Albus to die. Not this close to the end of the war, to everything he's fought for and believed in. That's not fair to anyone…" He sighed deeply. "And I know, I know. No one ever promised me fair."
"Or if they did, they were lying." Danger leaned her head momentarily against his shoulder. "But he's made his choice. He'll face Draco and trust that all those years of our love are stronger than a month of Lucius's hatred, and if the stress of that turns out to be too much for him, the way Letha says it might well be…" Her breath hitched once, then settled. "Minerva's been confirmed by the castle as his successor, and the Ministry will have a hard time arguing with a few thousand tons of semi-sentient stone. And Remus and I have a decent handle on the Order work, and Harry and the Pride on whatever they've been so mysterious about. If there was ever a good time—or maybe I should say, a least bad time…"
"Yeah." Sirius slid his arm around his sister. "Guess so."
They stood in companionable silence, thinking of how far they'd come together, and how far they still had to go.
And there we have it. The last of the preparations are over. Next time, we enter into the date encompassed by Luna's vision—but will what happens that day be what anyone is expecting? This is an Anne story, so of course it won't!
Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to visit Anne's website, read the blog, Anne's Randomness, and, of course, review!