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Chapter Forty-Eight—A Gift Long-Awaited

Remus rubs a shaking hand across his face. Then he reaches again for the scrap of parchment that a nondescript barn owl delivered to him only when he was alone in his quarters.

Remus, I’m coming back.

He never doubts that it’s real, that Sirius has managed to escape Azkaban. If anyone could do it, it’s the wildest and most fearless of the Marauders.

He just doesn’t know what to do about it. Alert Albus, so they can help Sirius hide in a safe location? Try to get ahead of the Ministry hubbub that will arise when they find Sirius gone? Go ahead and prepare a safe location by himself, in case Albus’s inscrutable political will decides that it would be best for Sirius to serve out his sentence?

Well, one thing I definitely won’t do is tell Harry.

Remus shakes his head a little. It still baffles him that Harry would rather see Sirius suffer for months under the Dementors than just accept that all the sacrifices Sirius made were so that Harry would have a safe world to grow up in.

Then Remus puts the notion aside. It doesn’t really matter. What does is alerting Albus—the best course after all—and making sure that he will have the ability to take care of, feed, and hide Sirius.

And get him Mind-Healing after the Dementor exposure that he unjustly suffered, as well.

*

Aradia shakes the Daily Prophet out over her table. The newspaper from Britain is often the last one she reads in a day, a compromise between her desire to know what is happening in the country where her sons are and the utter ridiculousness of most of the “news” stories the paper prints.

She goes still when she sees the headline. It takes long moments to make herself reach out and lift the paper so she can be sure she is not mistaken. Even though she is also sure that she is not.

SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPED FROM AZKABAN!

Aradia skims the article briefly, but of course, it’s all sensationalism and little detail. She does pick up that Black managed to leave without alerting the Aurors or the Dementors—so much for the prison’s impregnable reputation—and that no one has any coherent theory about how he did it. Someone the Prophet interviewed does suggest that maybe Black starved himself to fit through the bars, but both the reporter and Aradia doubt that he’s been there long enough. It more likely has something to do with his Animagus powers, even though the paper also insists that the prison took precautions against that.

When she is finished reading the story, Aradia turns and reaches for the journal Harry gifted her that allows them to exchange messages and thoughts.

Have you read the Prophet this morning?

The answer comes back almost immediately into her mind, with overtones of disgust. As the months pass, they are getting better and better at sending each other messages.

Yes. I’m not sure what we can do about it, though. If the Ministry arrested him and even they can’t keep him imprisoned…

Aradia flickers the quill for a moment, considering. Then she writes, Do you think he will run to Hogwarts and Lupin?

I can’t see why he wouldn’t. But I don’t know that that means I’ll be able to learn anything about Black’s whereabouts just from observing Lupin. Neither of them has any reason to trust me at this point.

Aradia cocks her head. True, in some ways that is unfortunate, but she would still much rather have Harry free of the burden of people who falsely pretend to care about him. Keep your eyes open. It might be that Black would approach you because he is on the edge of madness, even if Lupin tried to convince him it was a bad idea.

Yes, Aradia.

Aradia smiles and smooths her fingers down the page for a moment before tucking both journal and quill away. Then she faces the newspaper article again and frowns. It is becoming more and more necessary to do something about Lupin, Dumbledore, Black, and anyone else who thinks they can control Harry or harm her sons, but she is still baffled as to what. Harry, Blaise, and Theo Nott have committed enough murders in the school that another one, or even a disappearance, might bring the full investigative wrath of the DMLE to bear on the situation. Aradia is confident that her children and their friend would escape arrest, but she would so hate to damage their budding careers.

Then there is the spell unfolding in Godric’s Hollow, and Aradia does not know if some of those sharp crystalline edges might be protecting Black and Lupin. And there is the fact that she honestly does not know if she can do something bad enough to them to punish them for—

Aradia sits up. The answer rings into silence like a dropped coin on the floor of her mind.

Of course she knows what she can do. Of course. And it will be no more noticeable to the victims, at least immediately, than the reality-altering spell that Augusta cast at Godric’s Hollow has been to anyone else.

Augusta surges to her feet, energized. She will need to study the crystalline representation of the wards she created and then visit the Potters’ house again, carefully. It would not do to alert Augusta of what she plans.

But if she can do this, if she can pull it off—

And of course she can. Is she not the Black Widow who has escaped arrest or even suspicion for half a hundred crimes?

She will do it. She will create the ultimate revenge on Black, Lupin, Dumbledore, and, depending on what she finds when she studies the spell, perhaps Augusta.

It will depend on careful study, research, and patience. It will not take effect this year, perhaps not next year, either.

But in the end, she will have what she wanted, and none of them will know the trap has sprung until it is too late. More than too late.

Aradia smiles, and goes to prepare herself for Apparating into enemy territory.

*

“Remus. Remus, I’m here.”

Remus shudders a little as he stares at Sirius crawling out of the bushes in front of him. He’s panting, shivering, so dirty that he looks as if he’s run on all fours in human form from the island instead of dog form. He collapses even as Remus watches.

It’s a miracle that he made it to their appointed meeting place at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Remus swallows and gathers up Sirius with a Levitation Charm and a charm on his own arms to protect himself from dirt and insects and the matted hair that Sirius seems to have acquired despite only spending a month in Azkaban. Well, they wouldn’t have let him cut it, would they?

Sirius smiles at him, and promptly passes out.

Remus carries his best friend carefully back into the school, and down and around through a secret passage thick with dust to the sanctuary he and Albus have prepared. It’s a room deep in the bowels of the dungeons, which Sirius will hate, but there are enchanted windows that show false views of sunlight. And Albus cast a spell on the ceiling that’s a variant of the one used in the Great Hall, so that Sirius will get to see clouds and blue sky and stars.

Maybe the stars will comfort him. Remus recalls, distantly, that Sirius talked about studying Astronomy as a child, since it was a field of special import to his family. They don’t name all their children after stars, but it’s close.

Albus is already waiting in the doorway of Sirius’s sanctuary. Remus tries to think of it that way, and not as another prison cell or a tomb, as he lowers Sirius to the bed that’s waiting. Even semiconscious, Sirius turns with a sigh and buries his face in the pillow, enchanted to smell fresh.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done,” Remus says softly to the Headmaster, although his eyes remain on Sirius.

“I was the one who sent you both away from Harry on a quest that lasted many more years than I thought it would.” Albus’s voice is hoarse with grief. “Perhaps everything would have been different if you had stayed here to raise him.”

Remus takes a deep breath. “It would have been, but not necessarily in the best way. We wouldn’t know—Voldemort’s means of immortality, or how to defend against it.”

“True.” Albus broods for a moment, and then looks up with a resolutely cheerful expression. “One of the house-elves from the kitchens has agreed to tend Sirius. Her name is Mindy. She was fond of him when he was here as a student.’

Remus nods temperately. He knows that Sirius isn’t that fond of house-elves, having been half-raised by Kreacher. But there’s really no one else they can trust to visit on a regular basis. Remus will visit as much as he can, but he’s constrained by his class schedule. Albus will probably be able to vanish without people questioning it more than he will.

“Do you think we did the right thing?”

Remus winces. He didn’t mean to let the words slip out. And from the way that Albus turns around and stares at him incredulously, he didn’t expect to hear it either.

On the other hand, Albus understands instinctively that he’s referring to giving Sirius a place to hide, not leaving Harry behind while they tried to save the world. They’ve already discussed that, after all.

“Of course we did,” Albus says, with a gentle shake of his head that’s probably meant to make Remus think about the question he’s asking. “Who else could we have trusted to take care of him? And the Ministry would only try to put him back in Azkaban. I trust we are agreed that Sirius does not belong there.”

Remus takes a quick breath and nods. “Yes. Of course we are. Of course.”

Albus gives him one more inscrutable look, then nods before he leaves. Remus slumps back against the wall and watches Sirius breathe. Then he shakes his head and casts a few Cleaning Charms. Sirius doesn’t like them, but he would probably be more distressed to wake up and find himself so dirty and sweaty.

It’s not like they gave him an opportunity to bathe in Azkaban.

That prison is an abomination, Remus thinks, as he stands and watches Sirius’s chest rise and fall in slow, steady breathing. No one can deserve it. Well, maybe Wormtail, if he had lived after Sirius found him, but no one else.

Remus closes his eyes and swallows so slowly that he can feel every moment of his throat bobbing. Then he turns and departs, setting up several wards so that Sirius can’t leave, not even in his dog form.

Soon, very soon, he and Albus will speak with Sirius, and emphasize the need for him to remain hidden and away from temptation—said temptation probably being to try and contact Harry. But in the meantime, Remus has a meal to appear at, and there are people who monitor his schedule.

Severus.

Remus grimaces. They can never let Severus know that Sirius is here. He’s probably been rejoicing that someone he hated was sent to prison.

It stings something deep in Remus to know that Severus holds on to old grudges strongly enough to rejoice in someone else’s unjust captivity with Dementors. But there’s nothing he can do about it right now.

*

Aradia lands at the edge of the wards on the Potter home and waits quietly, for long moments, to see if Augusta or someone else will appear. It wouldn’t surprise her to learn that the woman inducted the Headmaster into her secret.

But there is no movement, no response. Aradia eases her way forwards and casts a small spell at the edge of the glittering, crystalline wards.

Still no response.

Aradia has a store of patience that would surpass the spider people think of her as, however, and she knows all about delayed traps and the like. She waits, hands neatly folded at her sides, eyes tracing the silver glitter in the air that marks the edge of the active and seething protections around the house.

Still nothing.

Aradia finally breathes, and gets to work.

She has come with a different purpose this time, and with a prepared crystal orb that she had to sacrifice blood to create. She has used them in her hunting of victims for the Suns, but not often. They take so much foresight and planning and at least half her captures are done in the pivot of a moment, when someone reveals that they are planning a worse crime or trying to trap her instead.

This time, however, there is nothing to interfere as she stoops and sets the orb rolling at the edge of the wards.

The orb shimmers and comes to a stop long before it reaches the wards. Aradia raises her eyebrows and walks in a slow circle around it. This isn’t something she anticipated.

The orb is powerful enough to record the whole of one wizard’s memories for a week. Taking the measure of the wards and duplicating them shouldn’t be a problem.

However, both the protections around the house and the orb are shuddering, in regular pulses that look like a heartbeat and seem to be reflecting the blasts of magic coming off it. Aradia narrows her eyes and retreats a pace, preparing a Shield Charm to pop up in front of her if she needs to do so.

The next moment, though, both the orb and the protections calm, and then a silver image blinks briefly into existence before being sucked down into the orb. The orb immediately turns from crystal to thick and clouded, as if shimmering with a prophetic vision. Aradia picks it up and Apparates without waiting to see if someone will come to investigate what she did.

She has all she needs, now, and the only reason she will have to visit the Godric’s Hollow house in the future is to regard the progressive decay of Augusta’s fascinating spell.

While she creates her own version of it to trap Black, Lupin, and Dumbledore in the tightest hell possible.

*

“The Dark Lord never talked about Parseltongue being able to control dragons.”

“I know what I saw, Severus.”

Severus sighs and resists the urge to touch his own twitching eye. He doesn’t need to worry about what he reveals in front of Albus, anyway. The signs lately are that the man will misinterpret everything he hears and sees.

But Severus does say one more time, “If this is a talent that he had, he has never revealed it to me.”

“I am asking you to investigate and find out, Severus. Surely you retain your old contacts with Death Eaters who could tell you more.”

Severus doesn’t glare, but it’s a near thing. The Headmaster, more than anyone, should know what Severus’s years under his thumb have done to the reputation of an ex-Death Eater.

But it doesn’t mean Severus doesn’t know people he can question, so he inclines his head and says shortly, “I will investigate.”

“That is all I am asking of you.”

It is not. But “supporting the Headmaster’s delusions of grandeur” has been part of Severus’s job description for years now, so it’s not as if he can complain about that.

He rides down the moving staircase, frowning as he does. He does not know enough about Parseltongue to know for sure that it can control dragons or not. But his statement to Albus was true: the Dark Lord never spoke of it. And Severus would have thought the Dark Lord would brag about such a momentous weapon, perhaps even before using it to bring dragons to their side of the war.

Even if Severus could find the Dark Lord’s spirit, he would hardly be in the position to question it. But he does know another Parselmouth now, and he is curious to discover what Harry will say.

*

“Did the Headmaster say how he saw this dust-dragon?”

“He performed a ritual that allowed him to see into the past. He did not share the details of the ritual with me.”

Harry nods, his eyes still fastened on the cauldron in front of him. It’s bubbling bright and silver, just as it should be. He scatters in the dragonfly wings he needs before he speaks again. “And he thinks that it has to be the Dark Lord?”

“For Albus, everything comes back to the Dark Lord.”

Professor Snape’s voice is dry enough that Harry leans back and looks up at him. The professor’s eyes are narrow, and his hand moves roughly on the mortar and pestle as he grinds up a series of blooming flowers Harry doesn’t know the name of. He seems harsh and clipped, but it’s been months since he was really like that to Harry. Harry knows that he’s just frustrated about Black’s escape from Azkaban and apparently these things that Dumbledore is asking him to do.

“Well, I don’t think Parseltongue can be used to control dragons,” Harry says. “I have read some books about it now that—certain people provided me, and none of them mentioned it.”

“And you have no idea where this dust-dragon came from?”

“It seems a very unusual sort of being,” Harry says thoughtfully, while his heart pounds out an irregular rhythm. “And you said that Dumbledore only connected it back to the Dark Lord because of his obsession?”

“That’s so. He thinks Greengrass’s death, Black’s imprisonment, and the death of Callahan are all connected.” Professor Snape pauses to dump the mashed flowers into a small cauldron without any water in it. “Perhaps also the disappearance of Hollis Lestrange, although in that case I had the impression that he thought Lestrange had gone to join the Dark Lord.”

“Who’s still a wraith or spirit?”

“He possessed someone once. He would be capable of doing so again.”

Harry has to admit that. “Well, I don’t know of any connection between Parseltongue and controlling dragons, or dust-dragons and the Dark Lord.”

Professor Snape sighs and nods as he places more flowers in the mortar. “I assumed that would be the case, but I thought I would ask for my own private information.”

Harry gives back a thoughtful nod and returns to his own potion, relieved beyond measure that he didn’t need to speak a lie in front of Professor Snape that he might have picked up on.

It’s something to think about, though. If Dumbledore has ways of viewing the past, even if those ways are limited or require a lot of expensive ingredients for the ritual, then he and Blaise and Theo have to be more careful than ever about the ways they get rid of their enemies.

Honestly, thinking about it, Harry feels a little stir of excitement in his belly instead of fear. They didn’t get discovered this time. They won’t in the future.

They will take steps to make certain of it.

*

Sirius sighs and accepts the tray from Mindy. She smiles at him and pops away. Sirius stares down at the porridge and fruit on the tray, and then up and around at the windows and ceiling, and lastly at the locked door.

The always-locked door. Plus it’s covered with wards that he would need a wand to deal with.

Sirius eats slowly. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate what Remus and Albus have done for him. It’s that a prison is still a prison, and he can’t shake the feeling that he has things to do, like finding a way to make the Ministry rescind his sentence and accept his killing of Wormtail as justified.

And find a way to speak to Harry.

Sirius drums his fingers on the edge of the tray, and then takes another bite, since Mindy will come back to stare at him with sad eyes if he doesn’t. He knows what Remus will say. Harry is unreachable, since he wouldn’t even come to Azkaban to visit Sirius and holds Sirius’s killing of a traitor against him. There’s no way that Sirius should spend time or worry on his godson.

But Sirius remembers the squirming little boy that James handed him right after he was born, and he remembers his tears falling and landing on Harry’s cheeks. He remembers how Harry stared at him with bright eyes on his first birthday and laughed when cake got smeared over his face.

I can’t just give up on him. There are ways to reach him, if he’ll listen.

The problem is that Sirius can’t think of any of those ways when he’s sitting trapped in this comfortable prison.

He swallows the last bite of strawberries and hands the tray to the elf when she pops in for it. Then he leans back, with his hands folded behind his head, and studies the clouds darting over the fake blue sky.

Someday, he’ll walk under the real one again. Someday, he’ll be free and able to take care of Harry the way his godson deserves.

But not today.

*

“What is that, Mother?”

Blaise doesn’t mind admitting his eyes are as wide as the sky when he sees the glittering crystalline structure that Mother has built up in a room that used to be a Potions lab. He has the feeling he should recognize it, but there are so many blocks and knots and carved edges graven in light on the air that his mind keeps slipping away from the sense of it.

“Wards?” Harry asks, leaning in behind him.

“A replica of the wards that Augusta Longbottom has put on the Potter house,” Mother answers. Her hands brushes Blaise’s shoulder, and then she turns and steps towards Harry. “I don’t suppose you recognize anything?”

“Steel and I haven’t exactly concentrated on wards, Aradia.”

Despite Blaise’s own fascination with the design hovering in the air, he can’t help turning to smile at Harry. The dry tone in his boyfriend’s voice is just one of the many reasons that Blaise loves him so much.

Mother, of course, takes no offense. She merely smiles and shakes her head. “I wondered if you had any memories from infancy of the wards or protections on your house,” she says. “Or any memory of the night your parents died.”

Harry pauses. Blaise watches him. It’s a question he’s wondered about, but wouldn’t have sought to ask in the way Mother has.

Harry takes a deep breath and releases it. Then he says softly, “Sometimes I think I dream of a flash of green light and a woman screaming.”

“The Killing Curse?”

“The books I’ve read says that no other curse matches its shade of green, so I assume it has to be, but I don’t know for sure.”

Mother nods, not looking surprised. She was asking more for the sake of completeness than because she really expected Harry to add anything, Blaise surmises. “Then I will proceed with my plan.”

“What plan is that, Mother?” Blaise asks, a little hurt that she didn’t include him in the creation of it.

Mother turns to face him, and Blaise shives. This is the face she wears when she is ready to sacrifice victims to the Suns. He knows since he has helped her prepare a few sacrifices now, although his own first kill was Greengrass.

“To trap Black and Lupin and Dumbledore in a version of reality that they will consider worse than Azkaban,” she says softly. “I will have to study how Augusta Longbottom created the reality bubble in the Potters’ house. It could be months before this is ready. It could be years. But it will be ready in the end, and they will pay.”

Blaise smiles and turns his head to look at Harry. Harry’s eyes are alight, and he is looking at Mother with fierce love.

“You’re doing this for me,” he whispers.

“Of course. The enemies of my foster son are my enemies. I could never let them live, and I hesitated this long only because I could not think of something terrible enough for what they had done.’

Harry’s smile is sharp, cold, dazzling. Blaise drifts towards him, and Harry rests his head on Blaise’s shoulder when he gets close enough, but he doesn’t look away from Mother’s face.

“I made the right decision, the day that I decided Blaise was my friend,” he says.

“Of course. And we have been repaid for the protection and friendship we extended to you many times over.”

Blaise plants a soft kiss on Harry’s hair and studies the model of the reality-altering spell hovering in the air. He can wait, for the promise of such vengeance as Mother will bring them. He looks forwards to how much it will hurt everyone trapped in it.

And in the meantime, they have Christmas with Mother to enjoy, and gifts to mark the present.

Even if none as rich, as deadly, as long-awaited as the one that Mother has just spoken to them of.