True Colors
Chapter 11: Storytelling
By Anne B. Walsh
The two teams of "landscapers" met, as Dumbledore had said they would, in the back garden, which was lit as brightly as day from the leaping, tumbling flames of the Fiendfyre. Dumbledore vanished the last bush himself, then waved everyone back to a safe distance. Zelda trembled against Ron’s legs, watching the back door, which stood open like a black hole into the depths of the house.
"This isn’t just about your family, is it?" Aletha asked, kneeling down beside the wolf-girl.
No. It isn’t. Zelda licked her chops, her fur standing out on end. No matter what else happens tonight—today—my life is never going to be the same as it was. And even if it’s better...
"It’s still a change and it’s still frightening. Yes." Aletha put her arms around Zelda, and got a cold nose against her neck for her troubles. "Even if things do go badly wrong, you’ll always have a home with us," she murmured into a pointed ear. "I’ve heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you already."
So do I. Your letters were always—Zelda broke off with a gasp. They’re coming! she shouted "aloud" to the group. They’re coming, they’re all alive, they’ll be all right, they’re coming out right now!
Before Zelda had quite finished speaking, a form very like her own materialized out of the gloom of the doorway. Four legs, pointed ears, long gray fur, tufted tail, were backlit by the glow of the Fiendfyre. With a wordless cry of thankfulness, Zelda galloped forward and slid under the adult female wolf’s left foreleg, lifting her head to nuzzle at her sister’s cheek and receive loving licks between her ears in return.
If I could just ask everyone to stay fairly quiet, a woman’s strong voice called out as the two wolves turned to face the entrance of the house again. Certainly don’t stop yourself from making sure your children are unhurt, but please try not to shout or scream. There’s someone whose illusions we don’t wish to disturb just yet.
"Is it just me, or does that sound a tad bit vindictive?" Sirius muttered to Aletha.
"Some things never change," Aletha returned. "Remember how long she used to hold grudges?"
Arthur, Molly, here she is, the woman said as a human form appeared in the doorway, carrying a smaller one over its shoulder and shepherding another beside it. Sirius, Aletha, you too.
Meghan darted forward and caught Harry as he nearly fell. Sirius was there an instant later, scooping both of them up, carrying them away from the house, back to one of the ornamental benches that were set up all around. Aletha steadied him his last few steps until he could collapse onto the bench and sort out his armful of mixed children, both of whom were now gasping for breath.
"Thanks, Pearl," Harry panted, shaking ashes out of his hair. "I thought I was going to choke for sure there."
"Don’t you know to breathe through your robes?" Aletha asked, watching Molly take Ginny from Severus Snape’s arms as Arthur supported the Potions Master, who was limping badly on one leg.
"Tried." Harry spat a gob of soot into a nearby bush and made a face at it. "It got in anyway."
"Well, you’re all right now," said Sirius, scooting Meghan over to Aletha’s lap, Harry being a lapful by himself. "Why didn’t you ever tell us Zelda was really—"
A tiny, ash-streaked hand covered his mouth. "She’s still got that collar on," Meghan hissed at him. "Do you want her to die?"
"No, of course not..." Sirius looked up and sighed. "Merlin’s iron cauldron. Trust Narcissa to walk out of a house on fire looking like a picture out of Witch Weekly."
Aletha chuckled. "I can see the article now. What to wear when disaster strikes."
Ray released his mother as soon as they were free of the house itself and darted to Zelda and the adult wolf, standing nearby. A moment later, he held up a long strip of green leather and shook it triumphantly at the other boys, who pumped their fists or waved back. Hauling off, he flung Zelda’s collar towards the house, where a small fiery canine leapt up to catch it and worry it into ashes.
"Good arm he’s got," Sirius said, and felt the vibrations of Harry laughing. "What’s so funny?"
"Tell you later." Harry had his eyes shut, as though he were too tired to stay awake any longer—and well he might be, the sun’s almost up. Been one hell of a night...
Narcissa, not quite as pristine as Sirius had suggested but still surprisingly complete for having walked through the equivalent of an oven, surrendered Luna to Gerald’s arms and went to sit down beside Snape, who was enduring Molly poking with her wand at his injured leg. Arthur had Ginny in his arms, from whence she was busily explaining something to Ron, sitting beside them. Neville stood a respectful distance from Frank, Alice, and Dumbledore, who were in quiet colloquy over something that seemed to require a lot of pointing at the Manor. Ray knelt between Zelda and the adult wolf, an arm over each of their backs, all of them watching the door.
Who’re they waiting for? Who’s missing? The kids are all out, Dumbledore said he thought Quirrell was probably dead by now, Snape and Cissy made it all right...
A human form coalesced in the darkness of the doorway and stumbled out, resolving itself into a coughing Lucius Malfoy.
That’d be who. Shame he couldn’t have been caught inside—I mean, not that I’d wish that on a friend of Harry’s, losing his dad that way, but personally I think the world could do without old Lucius. Is that everybody, then? I keep feeling like we’re still missing someone...
One of the doorposts cracked across with a sound like an Apparition. A moment later, the door crumbled in on itself, leaving the back of the house an unbroken expanse of fire-engulfed wood.
"No!" Meghan gasped, and Sirius sucked in air between his teeth as he realized who was still unaccounted for.
Come on, he willed his missing friend, staring at the burning wall as though he could knock it down with the power of his eyes alone. Come on, I just found out you’re alive, you can’t die on me now...
CRASH.
The wood above and to the left of the door splintered, and a flaming four-legged form soared outwards, landing lightly on the rock path behind Lucius, who had fallen to his hands and knees in his struggle for breath. It posed for a moment, fire still wreathing its body as if it were one of the creatures of the Fiendfyre, now celebrating their sole possession of Malfoy Manor, then shook as though coming out of the water, and the flames in its fur winked out in succession from its blunted snout to its tufted tail.
"Beautiful!" Sirius enthused. "Just beautiful! I noticed a little stumble on the landing, a slight hesitation before the shake, but that sequential action on the fire was gorgeous, so I’m going to give it an eight point five!"
Aletha and Meghan both smacked him.
"What?"
In a tree somewhere behind them, a bird called. Another answered it.
"Is it morning?" Harry mumbled, shifting his position on Sirius’ lap.
Sirius glanced at the sky behind him. "Just about. Why?"
"Because I want to see it happen." Harry sat up, stretching his back. "I want to see them change back."
"That’s right," Aletha said as Ray drew his wand and held it out to Zelda. "She said they change at sunrise and sunset, or they would without that potion, and they never took it tonight—dear God, Sirius, do you realize who we’re about to see? Who’s been here, alive, for all these years?"
"It’s starting to sink in, yeah," Sirius said, watching Zelda trot over to the wolf who had followed Malfoy out of the Manor, Ray’s wand between her teeth. Ray himself had vanished into what was left of the garden. The female wolf was on her feet and coming towards them. "I just hope there’s a bloody good reason Dumbledore’s never done anything about them, if he’s known the whole time, the way it sounded like he did."
Mostly, said the woman’s voice in their minds as the wolf stopped beside them, he never did anything because we asked him not to. Because Lucius had us covered every way we could have tried to escape, even with Dumbledore’s help. One or two of us might have got away, but never all three. Not unless we were able to pull off something like this. But—
She broke off with a gasp, as Zelda and the male wolf froze in place. Everyone’s eyes fixed onto one of the three.
The sun had risen. The change was beginning.
Slower than Animagus, Sirius noted as he watched, but doesn’t look as painful as a werewolf transformation. Good thing, if they have to do it every morning and night. But no, they do have a potion they can use to stay in one form most of the time—still, if this is natural to them, it’s better that it doesn’t seem to hurt them too much—
Paws twisted into hands and feet, fur blurred and smoothed into robes and hair, lupine snouts shrank into human noses, ears rounded and slid down the sides of heads. Aletha was on her feet, her arms extended, her face alight with joy as the last features on the face of the woman in front of them settled into place.
"I never stopped hoping," the woman said softly, stepping forward into Aletha’s embrace. "None of us did."
"Neither did we," Aletha breathed, hugging her friend gently at first, as though afraid she would disappear, then tighter and tighter every second. "Danger, my God, it’s really you, you’re back, you’re alive!"
Meghan insinuated herself into the hug. "Hi," she said upwards, examining Danger’s face closely. "You look a lot like your pictures. Only older."
"Thank you for boosting my ego, little one," said Danger, bending to kiss Meghan’s forehead. "You, on the other hand, look exactly the way your mummy describes you in her letters. Right down to the attitude."
"Letters?" Aletha pulled back slightly to look at Danger. "You get my letters? How?"
Danger opened her mouth to answer, then paused. "I think that’s about to be answered for you," she said, turning towards the center of the garden, where a slender man in well-worn robes was testing the heft of his borrowed wand. "Along with a great many other things. May I sit down?"
"Of course, of course—" Aletha steered Danger to the bench and sat down on the other side of her from Sirius, Meghan climbing up to her mother’s lap.
Sirius shook off his feeling of unreality and put an arm around the woman who, along with Lily, had been the closest thing he’d ever had to a sister. "It was really you, then?" he asked quietly. "That night in Azkaban, with the dream that sent Letha to Dumbledore?"
"Yes, that was really us." Danger laid her head against his shoulder. "I wish we could have saved Lily and James as well, but tell the truth—would you have believed a dream telling you Peter was the spy?"
"Probably not," Sirius admitted. "No."
"So we did what we could." Danger reached out and brushed Harry’s hair out of his eyes, and he rubbed his head against her hand before turning to watch what was happening in the garden’s center. "The same way we always have."
Lucius Malfoy finished a vigorous bout of coughing and caught his breath, wiping his mouth with one hand.
This is far from the best thing that has ever happened to me, but it is hardly the worst. I am alive, Narcissa and Draco are alive, and my fortunes have suffered only a slight setback. It will be a nuisance to rebuild my home, but it will also be an opportunity to add several features I have admired in other houses I have visited. If, after all, I decide to rebuild here—the promise was made that no one would be told where our household guardians have been all these years, but someone like Dumbledore or Black might still guess and make trouble for me...
He ignored the quiet sounds of the other people in the garden around him and the roaring of the Fiendfyre alike in favor of his thoughts. Narcissa has been hinting for months about taking a holiday. We can easily go abroad for a time, travel in France or the Germanic states until the furor dies down. Draco can finish out his year at Hogwarts, then come to us over the summer, and transfer to Durmstrang for next year if it becomes inadvisable for us to return here permanently.
Getting to his feet, he looked into the distance, noting the streaks of dawn beginning across the sky to his left, the pall of smoke obscuring what stars were left to his right.
Tonight has certainly been a night of endings, but they say that in every ending lies the seed of a new beginning.
Let me see if I cannot find the truth of that for myself.
He drew his wand to conjure himself a drink of water.
"Expelliarmus!" shouted a man’s hoarse voice behind him.
Lucius stumbled forward a pace and fell to one knee on the rocks again, the wand torn from his hand.
Who—and why—
He thrust himself back upright and turned just in time to see his wand fall neatly into the palm of a man he had not seen for more than twelve years.
Seen in his human shape, that is...
"Elm, isn’t it?" said Remus Lupin, holding up Lucius’ wand and inspecting it in the light from the Fiendfyre. "Elm and dragon heartstring. Not a combination I’d prefer, but I suppose it’ll do." He handed the other wand he was holding to the girl standing beside him. "Thank you, love," he said, and the girl smiled before running off towards one of the benches which ringed the garden.
"Caesar!" Lucius snapped. "Return my wand at once!"
Lupin whirled, training the wand on Lucius with perfect dueler’s posture. "Call me by that name again and you’ll be speaking out the other side of your head," he said softly.
Lucius retreated a step or two, startled. He was always so docile—so obedient—
"You really don’t understand yet, do you, Lucius?" Lupin shook his head, as if baffled by a child’s obstinacy. "You think you’ll get away with this, like you got away with being a Death Eater. You think you can somehow set everything back to the way it was, erase these last twelve years, pretend they never happened. Perhaps you even think tonight was an accident or a fluke, that you can overawe me and return me to my ‘rightful place.’" He smiled, looking rather more like his wolf form than should have been possible with his human face. "Allow me to disillusion you. A night like tonight has been my goal all along. To destroy your master, free my family, and show the world the true face of Lucius Malfoy."
"You swore," Lucius said, feeling his breath coming faster. He could not, he would not let this—this—animal win. "You swore you would tell no one where you have been!"
"And I won’t." Lupin’s smile broadened until ‘grin’ was the only descriptor possible. "Because I have no need to. Look around you, Lucius. What a terribly ungracious host you’ve been, not even saying hello to your guests..."
Lucius turned in place, feeling a chill begin to strike inwards towards his heart.
Albus Dumbledore stood directly behind him, regarding him with eyes that twinkled not at all. On a bench to Dumbledore’s right sat Arthur Weasley and his wife, their two youngest children at their feet. The girl stuck out her tongue as she saw Lucius looking at her. Beside them stood Frank and Alice Longbottom with their son, and slightly behind them, half in shadow, stood Severus and Narcissa.
Why did they not tell me—say something—warn me that I was being watched, that others were observing—
Gerald Lovegood had found a seat in the low fork of a tree, and his daughter perched above him, her feet swinging idly. The next bench over held Sirius Black and his Mudblood wife, and sitting between them, her head on Black’s shoulder and her eyes closed—
Calpurnia. Lupin’s precious Danger. What hold did she have over Narcissa, I wonder, to allow her to slip her collar at the same time as her mate?
Each adult on this bench held a child on his or her lap. Black’s wife cradled their daughter, who like the Weasley brat was making a face at Lucius. Black himself had his arm around Harry Potter, whose grin resembled Lupin’s quite closely. Lucius could not see the face of the girl on Danger’s lap, but her wild cascade of brown curls made him sure it was his son’s Griselda, Hermione as her name had originally been.
And because of that same mass of hair, I cannot see if she is still collared or not. Perhaps, if she is, I can still salvage some good from this night...
If I can find Draco. Where has he gone?
"I suppose I do owe you one debt of gratitude from all this time, Lucius," Lupin’s voice broke into his thoughts again. "One order you gave that I was more than happy to obey. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for giving me the chance to kill Fenrir Greyback." The former werewolf twirled his wand idly in his hand, never letting it stray from its aim towards Lucius. "I suppose once it was established that the spell worked on purpose, and with a human transfigured into a wolf, in the same way as it had worked by accident and with an Animagus the first time, you had no further need for him?"
"The Dark Lord said—" Lucius heard his voice crack and forced himself to calm. "The Dark Lord believed the werewolves would come to heel more easily without his leadership. Especially once he was no longer debilitated by full moons, but able to change, with his full mind, every night."
"Indeed." Lupin chuckled. "I’m sure it had nothing to do with your taking the other half of his spell-binding into your own household."
"Nothing at all," Lucius lied, remembering Narcissa’s biting words when she had learned what he intended to do with the wolf cub which had been Hermione Granger.
"A creature which is magically linked to Fenrir Greyback, and you wish to give her as guardian to my son? Have you taken leave of your senses? Prove to me first that she will not savage the very one she is set to guard!"
Looking at Lupin, whose grin had altered not a whit except to grow slightly broader, Lucius wondered when his wife had acquired the gift of prophecy.
"Tell me more about this spell," Sirius called. "How’s it work? What was this accident?"
"I’m so very glad you asked." Remus tapped his chin thoughtfully, or so most of his audience probably thought. Sirius knew the Marauder sign for thank you when he saw it.
Though it used to be he was the straight man, and I’d do the funny lines...
"The spell is where our story begins, really," Remus said, beginning to walk around Malfoy, who eyed him warily. "It’s why we were kidnapped in the first place, Danger and I. Voldemort had learned I was a werewolf..." His eyes flickered to the shadow where Snape stood beside Narcissa. "But not that Danger was an Animagus. So he took a great deal of pleasure in telling me, when we were brought before him, that he would give me some company the next time I transformed." He smiled. "I assume he was expecting me to panic, not to laugh. Certainly he seemed surprised by my reaction."
I would’ve been too. Might have given yourself away a bit there, Moony...
"The next thing he told me, though, surprised me in my turn. Namely, that I would be transforming that very night. If you’ll recall, the night we were kidnapped wasn’t a full moon—it was still four nights away—so I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Until I realized he meant that he’d found a way to force a lycanthropic transformation." Remus’ face went grim. "Then I did start to panic, just a bit. After all, the one saving grace of being a werewolf has always been that one knows, to the minute, when one’s life will go out of control and when that state will end. If it could be forced..."
Sirius tightened his grip on Harry. Werewolf attacks not just one night in twenty-eight, but every time the sun goes down. Possibly even when it’s still up. And because they resist magic, you can’t stun them, can’t shield against them, can’t set wards that will hold reliably...
"And then he sent me into true full-blown panic." Remus stopped with his back to Malfoy Manor, where the Fiendfyre was beginning to die down, though the animal forms still leapt and danced through the blackened remains of walls and windows. "He told me that once I had transformed under the influence of his spell, I would never again regain my human form. My human mind, though, he planned to let me keep. So that I could be, as he put it, trained." His face bore testament that he had known, all too well, what that training would consist of.
Imperius. Or if that didn’t work right, Cruciatus whenever he did something they didn’t like. Or torturing Danger. Trying to turn him into a living weapon, a human stuck in a wolf’s body and slowly going mad. God, Moony, I’m sorry, I wish we’d known, I wish we could have found you in time...
"Danger was to serve as my test victim." Remus waved a hand at his wife as he began to circle Malfoy again. "We would be caged together while the spell was performed on me. If I attacked her as soon as the transformation was finished, the Death Eaters would get a show and Voldemort would know that the spell still needed some refinement. If I did not, if I remained where I was or showed her some sign of affection, then it could be assumed the spell had worked properly, and I could be placed under the Imperius Curse and forced to attack her."
"We are talking about the same Remus Lupin here, aren’t we?" Aletha murmured so quietly that only Sirius and Danger could hear her. "The world’s stubbornest man, and startlingly resistant to the Imperius?"
Danger chuckled under her breath. "I wasn’t about to share that with Voldemort," she said. "And I wasn’t about to share my Moony, either. Not after what I went through to get him."
"God, yes." Sirius snorted. "‘Are you ignoring me because you’re a werewolf, or are you actually gay?’ Best pickup line in the history of the universe, there, Danger."
Harry went into a suspicious-sounding fit of coughing. Hermione’s shoulders were shaking. Meghan looked up at Aletha curiously. "Mummy," she said, "what’s gay?"
"We’ll talk about it later, love," Aletha said.
"Danger," Remus continued, shooting a glance at their bench, "being her usual impetuous self, tried to knock me out of the way of the spell before Voldemort performed it. She was, of course, in her own wolf form at the time, to ensure that I wouldn’t bite her even if the spell did take effect on me. But she mistimed her jump, and the spell struck us both at once. And that made all the difference in the world."
"Of course," said Alice as soft sounds of understanding erupted around the circle. "One human in wolf form, and one werewolf in human form—it thought you were both the objects of the spell, it tried to force you both into the werewolf form, but it only had enough power for one, so it was only able to do so for half the time it was meant for!"
"Precisely." Remus inclined his head to her. "We’re not quite sure why it became sun-dependent rather than moon, but perhaps someday we’ll find an answer. What matters to us is the result—we change, naturally, from human to wolf at sunset and from wolf to human at sunrise. And we never lose our human minds."
"Full moons do get a bit interesting," Danger chimed in. "We seem to share the wolf mind between us on that night. It can make us unpleasant to be around, or so we’re told, but we don’t attack humans indiscriminately or try to destroy whatever we’re near."
"Don’t we, now?" Remus murmured. Danger bared her teeth at him. "In any case, once the Death Eaters—and we—had determined these things about us, Voldemort was ready to try training us to fight for him. Unfortunately, since we are half werewolf each, we were resistant to all the spells he tried. They worked, but not well, and with that and our own personal opposition to his agenda, after a while he lost interest in us in favor of more productive work." He met Malfoy’s eyes without fear. "We probably would have been killed outright, if Lucius hadn’t been willing to try one more thing."
"Collars," said Molly in a tone that would have sent her children running for the hills. Ron flinched a little, even knowing it wasn’t aimed at him.
"Yes." Remus rubbed at his neck, his face thoughtful. "And even they didn’t work quite the way he’d expected. They’re supposed to give the master total control over the animal—allow him to give it any command he likes, and have it obey—but he could never force us to do anything through them. He could set punishments, though. And did." The wand tracked back around towards Malfoy, who eyed it with a mixture of covetousness and fear. "Pain for small transgressions. Tightening to cut off our breath for larger ones. And, for truly egregious offenses, a poison that made us ill for days in small doses and would have killed in larger ones... administered to the one of us who had not so offended."
"So either of you could have run away at any time," said Frank in a tone of clarification. "If you didn’t care that the other one would die painfully for it."
"You have grasped the general idea." Remus tossed the wand into the air and caught it again. "Doing magic, of course, would poison us. And communicating our identities, or even our humanity, to anyone who did not already know was punishable by instant death." He smiled fondly towards Hermione. "Some of us found ways around that. But that comes later. Those first weeks here..." His eyes caught Malfoy’s and held them. "That was the only time that made me think seriously of sending Danger away and letting myself die for it."
"Frigid nights patrolling the grounds," Danger said, her tone cold and flat. "Knowing full well that anyone trying to sneak into this manor would likely be a friend of ours, and that we would still be forced to attack them or die ourselves. Endless days in a pitch-black cellar, trying to keep each other alive with only the warmth of our bodies and our robes, praying we’d be remembered long enough to be fed. Were you just being your usual self, Lucius, or were you actively trying to break us? You came very close, you know. Closer than I like to remember."
"What stopped it?" Aletha asked, finding Danger’s hand and pressing it. "How did you fight back?"
"Several ways." Remus leaned against a convenient tree. "First, we made friends with Dobby the house-elf. We had a lot in common with him, so it wasn’t terribly hard. Once we’d done that, we were able to persuade him to bring us a few little luxuries, things no one would miss. Candle ends and matches, so we could see each other’s faces once in a while. An old blanket or two, to be sure we didn’t freeze. Table scraps, if someone didn’t finish a meal or didn’t care for it. And, of course, books."
"Books?" The word seemed forced from Malfoy. "All this time, you’ve been pilfering from my library?"
"Not pilfering," said Danger in a tone of complete reason. "It would only be pilfering if we didn’t return them. They kept us from going mad with boredom. And in one of them, we found something we thought we could use."
"It was an oath." Remus had his eyes closed, the better to remember. "A magically binding oath of devotion, said to help those who had some great and difficult task in hand by providing them with whatever power would be most useful to them that they lacked." He chuckled deep in his chest. "The way we were living, simply getting from day to day seemed like a ‘great and difficult task’. And after what we’d been through together already, we had no doubts we could remain devoted to one another. So we swore the oath. And everything changed."
"That night, while we were sleeping, I discovered I had the ability to direct my dreams," Danger said. "I could even share one with Remus without setting off our collars, and craft one and send it to another mind we knew without getting too much pain from it. The usual strictures still applied, so I couldn’t use a dream to tell anyone where I was or what had happened to me, or anything that could have harmed my ‘master.’" Her sneering tone would have done Snape proud. "And my actively sharing a dream with someone who wasn’t Remus would have made him quite ill." She flashed a smile at Sirius. "I did it once anyway, though. When it was most truly needed."
"That explains your letters to us," said Aletha, nodding. "But what about ours to you? How in the world can you get a letter that we’ve burned?"
Remus cleared his throat. All eyes turned to him. "Observe," he said, and blew on his palm.
A fire kindled where his breath touched, burning in midair without visible fuel or support.
Malfoy looked from the flickering flame, to the remains of his house, and his face twisted in rage. "You did this," he hissed. "You planned this—you made this happen—"
"Yes, yes, and yes." Remus tossed the flame into the air and wiggled a finger at it, and it twisted into a five-pointed shape and drifted towards Malfoy. "Gold star for you, sir."
"Using magic for our own benefit only, as long as we weren’t trying to escape or tell someone we were human, didn’t seem to trigger the collars," Danger said as Malfoy leaned away from the flaming star. "So Remus could set fire all around the cellar walls to keep us warm and give us light. And while we slept, I could give us a dream of being human and free together. Especially nice when we began to spend more time in wolf form." She glanced to one side. "When Severus developed our potion."
Sirius’ head whipped around. "You developed it?" He started to get up, but Danger’s hand on his arm held him back.
"I was not aware of the identities of those for whom it was to be used," said the Potions Master from his place several trees over. "In fact, I was unaware that any such people existed. It was put to me as an academic question, one with which I toyed for nearly a year before coming up with a usable formula."
"And it still has a flaw Lucius would love to erase," Danger put in. "Once a month, we need a day off from it, or the trace ingredients in it build up and poison us. So we could be kept as wolves for a month, but then we’d have to have a day as humans." She stretched luxuriously. "So nice to have my arms again..."
"I suppose it was a blessing in disguise, really," Remus said thoughtfully. "Being kept as wolves most of the time. It meant we were permitted out of our room during the day. Which led directly to one of the most important things that happened to us while we were here."
"Ah yes." Danger grinned, looking around the circle. "All right, everyone, here’s a question for you. If you’re an evil overlord, or trying to be, what’s the most fun you can have on the cheap?"
"Taunting your enemies," said Luna, swinging her feet. "Especially if they can’t do anything about it."
"Ten points to the perceptive young lady in the tree," said Remus, bowing to her. "We spent the better part of a year being Lord Voldemort’s very favorite captive audience."
Several people groaned. "Now I know you’re all right, Moony," said Sirius. "You’re still punning."
"I haven’t been pun-ished nearly enough to make me stop it, Padfoot," said Remus, grinning at his friend.
"Somehow I don’t think you two should ever meet my twins," said Arthur.
"Too late," Ginny murmured.
"What was that?" said Molly to her daughter.
"What sorts of things would he tell you?" Gerald asked Remus over this. "His plans, or what he’d already done, or both?"
"Some of both," said Danger. "He especially loved to tell us about the people he’d killed, or was going to kill. But he also branched out into areas like how he’d made sure he could never be killed himself. Including specific descriptions of all the items he’d crafted for that purpose, and their locations and protective enchantments."
"We made sure to give him the response he wanted," Remus said. "The shock, the horror, the hopelessness of our own position and our friends’."
"And we kept careful track of everything he’d said, and waited." Danger smiled. "Because by that point, we knew that someday we would be able to get messages out, to someone who could do something about it."
Remus turned to face Malfoy. "And that is what made it all worthwhile," he said coldly. "Through every game you ever played with us, every humiliation you ever threw at us, I kept this day, this moment in mind. The day when Voldemort would lie dead on the ground, and you stand wandless and defeated in the wreck of your life, wondering what happened to you. We happened to you, Lucius. We have ruined you. And I cannot find it in my heart to be the least bit sorry for it."
"Ruined me," Malfoy repeated, nodding ruminatively. "That you have. But not completely, Lupin. Not completely. One thing I have done, you cannot touch. One achievement you cannot sully."
Remus twirled the wand between his fingers. "And what might that be?"
Malfoy laughed. "I’m rather surprised you ask. You certainly used his name to great effect inside the house. My son, Lupin. My Draco. Unless you are willing to resort to outright murder, my name will live another generation, and no man who has achieved that can be said to have been totally ruined..."
"Oh, Merlin’s beard and boots," said Narcissa in a tone of deep disgust, drawing everyone’s eyes as she stepped forward. "Lucius, please. Do not force me to make this public in such a way."
Danger squeezed Sirius’ hand. "She’s more like you than you knew," she whispered. "Listen to this."
"Make what public?" Lucius was asking, his face bewildered. "What are you talking about, Narcissa?"
"I am talking about Draco. Your Draco. The son you are so very proud of." Narcissa looked her husband in the eye. "Do you not think now would be a good time to face facts, Lucius? You will likely be spending the rest of your life in Azkaban for what you have done to these people—can you not spare one moment to be truthful to yourself?"
Lucius stared at her. "Truthful to myself—what in the world can you mean? Something about Draco?"
"Something about Draco?" Narcissa shook her head, as though she were trying to shoo away a fly. "Everything about Draco. The fact that there is no Draco. He does not exist, Lucius. He never did."
And Lucius' head exploded... no, not really, but tune in tomorrow to see what did happen!