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Chapter Twenty-Seven—The Revelation

“There’s nothing we can do about delaying the Tournament?”

Albus shook his head gently at Lily. She looked worn-down. He had thought it would be a good thing, having James come to Hogwarts, so that Lily’s attention was not split constantly between home and the school, but now he wondered if she had had a minute to herself since she arrived.

“No. The Ministry is determined to go ahead with it.” Albus folded his hands on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Past Headmasters and Headmistresses murmured in the portraits. He had spoken with them, but none had any advice, even the ones who had been alive the last time the Tournament was held. “And of course, Karkaroff and Maxime are keen on the idea, or they would not have agreed in the first place.”

“Karkaroff. The man is a Death Eater.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Albus said quietly. “But he was officially pardoned, and we have little choice but to invite him.”

Lily closed her eyes and sat still for a moment. Then she opened them again. “Could I request a favor?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“I don’t want to have to deal with Karkaroff while he’s here. Please. I don’t want to see him or talk to him or walk near him. I’d like to be seated at the far end of the professors’ table and excused from all Tournament-monitoring duties.”

Albus nodded instantly. Lily and James had lost more than most in the war. “Of course, my dear. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thank you, Albus.” Lily tried to force a smile onto her face, but it fled quickly. “I’ll have enough on my hands with James and the children.”

“Is Arianna still upset about Harry?”

Lily nodded, her eyes growing dim again. “Yes. She thinks he’s ungrateful for rejecting the help we tried to offer him, and I made it worse by encouraging her to be his friend. And of course, she’s earned a detention already for hexing that Slytherin first-year.”

“Please do try to keep her under control, Lily. Sirius is an example of the kinds of depths that too much hatred can lead to.”

“Yes, Albus. Of course.”

*

“I don’t understand what you want!”

Sirius snarled the words at Remus, trying to force some kind of reaction. Remus had used to be the kind of person who hated his friends being upset at him. In a way, it was astonishing that he had screamed at them as much as he had about Harry’s accidental disownment.

But this Remus didn’t respond other than giving Sirius an amused glance. He was walking up and down in front of the chair he’d bound Sirius to—not just bound him, but had used a spell that actually melded Sirius’s flesh with the chair’s wood—and was enclosed in a Privacy Bubble that obviously let him still hear Sirius. He was speaking quietly into a communication mirror in his hand.

Sirius strained his ears again, but he could hear nothing. That was a powerful Privacy Bubble.

Or Remus had remembered that Sirius had senses powerful enough to resemble a canine’s even in human form and had made sure that he couldn’t hear.

Sirius leaned back, tears leaking under his eyelids. He hadn’t done anything Remus hadn’t agreed to. Yes, Sirius and Lily and James had been the ones to approach him about the Polyjuice plan, but Remus had agreed! He’d sent the hair!

For him to be upset now was the height of hypocrisy.

Remus abruptly tucked the mirror away and turned towards Sirius. The Privacy Bubble dissipated, and he looked at Sirius with a small smile. “Well, I imagine that you have a few questions for me.”

“Yes, like: what the fuck?”

Sirius screamed the words as loudly as he could, but Remus, despite his delicate sense of hearing, didn’t flinch. He just shook his head a little. “I’ve melded fully with my wolf, Sirius. You can’t jolt me with screams like that anymore.”

Sirius stared at him with a mounting sense of dread. “You went Dark?”

“Say, rather, that I met someone who taught me I didn’t need to fear the darkness that had always been inside me.”

“Who is this person?”

“Oh, he goes by several names. But the one you would know him by is You-Know-Who.”

Sirius sat frozen, staring at Remus, waiting for the moment when he said it was a joke. Remus just looked back, and seemed to be enjoying himself.

“You couldn’t,” Sirius whispered. “We feared you were a traitor during the war, but we were wrong. Remus, you couldn’t trust him.”

“At one point, I would have said that my best friend wouldn’t have almost killed and eaten James and Lily’s son, either. But we all change.”

“I didn’t almost kill and eat him! If he said that to you, he’s lying!”

“Why would he say it to me, when he had no idea who I was?” Remus took a step closer, and Sirius held very still. Instincts he hadn’t realized he possessed were screaming at him that, yes, Remus had fully melded with his wolf, and that wasn’t a good thing for Sirius’s continued survival. “No, I heard of it from someone else. Someone Harry confided in.”

“Who? Harry isn’t close with Albus or any of the professors. I mean, Slughorn brags about him, but Harry is just using him.” Sirius couldn’t bring himself to regret it, either, because Slughorn deserved to be used, even if he could regret Harry turning into a manipulative little bastard.

“And you think those are the only adults Harry would interact with?”

“It’s not a Death Eater, is it?” Sirius demanded, suddenly remembering that summer he’d seen Harry with the Malfoys.

Remus burst out laughing, a hoarse noise that made Sirius think it was what Death itself would sound like if it could laugh. Remus actually bent at the waist. Sirius stared at him. He couldn’t remember the last time Remus had laughed like that.

Then again, he hadn’t seen Remus for more than a decade. And his best friend as he remembered him was well and truly dead.

“No,” Remus said at last, straightening up and shaking his head with a chuckle, “not a Death Eater.”

Sirius took a deep breath and decided to make one more push. “Then why did you come here? Are you just going to taunt me before you kill me?”

Remus cocked his head and moved closer. Sirius caught his breath as he watched shadows move over Remus’s face, making his eyes glow more golden. When Remus lifted a hand, his fingernails had turned into claws.

It was a level of control and transformation Sirius had never heard of, outside of dedicated bastards like Fenrir Greyback.

“I wanted you to understand exactly what you did,” Remus breathed. “Enough to make me a hunted fugitive if more people knew. Enough to make Harry hate me forever. And then you went back to teaching in that school.” His voice rose a little. “What would have happened if you’d had some other reaction to the Polyjuice and hunted Harry down again?”

“So you don’t care about all the other innocent kids in Hogwarts? Remus—”

“I care about them exactly as much as you do, given that you went right back to a teaching position while still suffering under the unknown consequences of Polyjuice.”

Sirius closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One of the things he had noticed since he’d started taking the potion was how close to the surface his temper ran. It seemed to come roaring out of him like fire more often now.

But he had to reasonable to persuade Remus, who was acting as if he were suffering under that consequence himself.

“We had to reach out to Harry,” Sirius said. “You don’t know what he’s like, anymore, the way that he’s sunk into Slytherin politics. I know that he could still be James and Lily’s little boy, but someone has to tell him that. Has to show him that there’s more to life than Slytherin and its power games.”

“Tell me what he’s like.”

Sirius took a relieved breath. It did sound as though Remus were going to listen. “He’s quiet and cold,” Sirius said quickly. “He acts as though nothing matters except his goals.”

“Does he?”

“Yeah. And you know how foreign that would be to his character if he’d been raised as a Potter! James and Lily are always thinking of how they can benefit other people than themselves. Their children, Lily’s students, Muggleborns in general. Harry has none of that.”

Remus turned back towards him. Sirius faltered as he saw the gleam of light off Remus’s teeth, but he did have to keep going, he reminded himself. This was about more than him.

“I know that Harry feels isolated. He’s one of the only Muggleborns in Slytherin, if not the only one. But that’s no reason for him to act like—” Sirius shook his head. It was hard for hm to put into words, even growing up in his family as he had. Regulus and Bella and Mother had been passionate about everything, unlike the dead-eyed boy who’d sat across from Sirius for so many conversations.

“Like?”

“A dead fish,” Sirius blurted. “Like he’s only engaging with someone out of politeness or because he has to. He doesn’t care.”

“So he didn’t care about you? Or, excuse me, the version of me you were portraying?”

“He paid attention to me. He talked to me. But there was never anything behind the façade. Do you understand me?”

“No. Not really.”

Sirius took a deep breath and reordered his thoughts. He wouldn’t have had to explain this to James and Lily, who had seen Harry in the past few years and understood him. But he supposed, grudgingly, that Remus would demand more than a few minimal impressions.

“He was supposedly giving me updates on Slytherin politics and the like. And he was listening to me. But it was as if he were—storing it for later. Not as if he were really listening. Just taking it in and thinking about how he could use it, not about—why I was sharing it, or why it mattered to me. Except that he would think about those things if they could benefit him. That was all.” Sirius bit his lip and shook his head. “I’m not explaining this well.”

“You’re explaining it from your perspective. I do wonder what Harry would say, if someone were to ask him. Or explain that the Remus Lupin he was talking to was actually Sirius Black.”

“We had to get hold of him somehow! And don’t say that I should have just become Defense Against the Dark Arts professor under my own face and name. Harry wouldn’t have talked to me then. I already wrote to him offering to sponsor him in learning Potions, and he turned me down.”

“Why did you have to reach him so badly?”

“We have to rescue him, Remus! It’s obvious that the Slytherins are using him for what they can get from him, and it’s also obvious that the Muggles who raised him mistreated him—”

“I told you.”

Sirius fell silent, swallowing. Remus had spun around to face him, and his face was distended with a terrible stretch of teeth. He took a long, prowling step towards Sirius, and his breath was hot and heavy, his eyes full of hatred.

“I told you what would happen, when you came up with that idiotic plan to leave him with Lily’s Muggle family,” Remus snapped. “I went and observed the house for a full week, pretending to be visiting a neighbor. And I told you what I saw. How much they were obsessed with being normal, how they reacted when I started that conversation about magic and myths with a neighbor of theirs. I told you! And you put him there anyway!”

“Remus, what choice did we have? There was that prophecy—it could have been that You-Know-Who would have targeted him—”

Sirius fell silent with a gasp, and not because Remus had threatened him again. His mind had jumped back to an overwhelming fact that he hadn’t felt ready to deal with at the time—Remus had said that You-Know-Who had taught him to embrace his wolf—

“You’re going to give Harry to Voldemort,” he whispered, too shocked and frightened to mind saying the name.

Remus snorted at him and prowled closer to the chair. His eyes and teeth and claws all gleamed in the light of the small fire he’d lit on Sirius’s hearth.

“No. I might as well tell you this now, because soon enough you’ll be in no condition to really think about it.” Remus’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair, making the wood creak warningly. “Harry found the Dark Lord on his own.”

“What?”

“Yeah. He’s the Dark Lord’s apprentice.” Remus was smiling at Sirius now, and seemed to enjoy the impact of his words punching into Sirius’s body like the Killing Curse. “He sought out power, and the Dark Lord took notice of him because he’s a good Potions brewer.”

“And you didn’t try to get Harry away?”

Sirius shouted those last words and lunged forwards, only to be brought up by an abrupt whimper as the parts of his body that were melded with the chair pulled him back. Remus’s eyes shone with bright red enjoyment as he leaned into Sirius’s space.

“No. Because you had already poisoned any chance that Harry would have trusted me. And because the Dark Lord has treated Harry better than you did.”

“Remus, that is not true—”

“You condemned him to abuse at the hands of Muggles for ten years. It would take ten years of abuse on the Dark Lord’s side to make up for that.” Remus seemed to consider it, and then added, “Or ten years of you being abused. Maybe the Dark Lord will ask Harry if he’d like that.”

“We didn’t know they would be abusive! And we had to get him away from You-Know-Who and the prophecy!”

Sirius felt sick to his stomach knowing all their precautions had been for nothing, that Voldemort had found Harry anyway. And who knew whether Remus was lying when he said Harry had become Voldemort’s apprentice of his own free will? Maybe Remus had tricked or bribed him somehow?

Maybe Remus was the traitor all along?

Remus sniffed and then sighed a little. “Once the Dark Lord taught me to meld with my wolf, I got the real benefit of enhanced senses. And to think I used to believe that fear smelled disgusting.”

“You were the traitor,” Sirius said dully. “Or both you and Peter were. This—I can’t believe that this happened.”

“Tell me something. Harry didn’t ask me to ask you, but I found myself curious after the few talks we’ve had. Why did you never go visit him when he was growing up? At least present Lily and James as the aunt and uncle through some unknown sibling of Lily’s? Or yourself as a fun-loving uncle who’d known his parents even if he couldn’t talk about them?”

Sirius stared at Remus and waited for him to see the obvious answer. But Remus just looked back, with his eyes taking on a slight red glow as Sirius watched.

“Are you mental?” Sirius whispered. “When we could have led the Death Eaters to him?”

“And you couldn’t have taken precautions against that?”

“Not any that would have held!” Sirius tried to wave his arms, and was brought up with a sharp jerk as the chair reminded him that his arms were currently part of it. “Not—don’t you understand what a risk that would have been for him?”

“Maybe not.” Remus’s face was blank in a way that seemed deliberate. “I would have thought that you could cover your tracks. Visit dressed as Muggles. As I said, be a part of his life even if the magic wouldn’t let you be his parents and godfather.”

“It was best to leave him alone. Just in case someone found him. And we didn’t even know the magic had functioned as a complete accidental disownment until Lily tried to talk to him and found out she couldn’t.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Remus said softly. “Surely you must have had some suspicions before that, if you tried to speak to others about him and found your voice stopped.”

“We didn’t know for certain.”

Remus stared at him for long moments as if expecting something else, then shrugged and shook his head. “Well. It doesn’t matter that much. I’m going to make sure that you can’t hurt Harry again, and the Dark Lord is going to make sure that I have my well-deserved revenge for my exile and the use you put my face to.”

“Remus. You can’t do this.”

“Why not? Didn’t you have ten years of inaction against both me and Harry?” Remus smiled, but with glee that Sirius could feel like teeth snapping at his bones. “I promise, this action won’t take as long.”

“Remus!”

Remus raised his wand, twirling it a little between his fingers. “Did you know that there are some spells werewolves are uniquely suited to casting?” he asked softly. “More powerful in our hands than in the hands of humans? At least, once we’ve fully accepted our wolves.”

“You are human!”

“Not what you sounded like a moment ago,” Remus murmured, and aimed his wand “Imperio.”

*

Lord Voldemort narrowed his eyes at the message his apprentice had sent him about the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He had known nothing of it, and he doubted that any of his Death Eaters had, or they would have reached out to him. That was unusual of Lucius at the very least, as embedded as he was in the Ministry.

For a moment, sitting at his breakfast table in the sunlight, Lord Voldemort entertained the notion that Lucius might have decided to keep secrets from him again, but put it aside. Lucius had learned a very thorough lesson too recently to think he could get away with defiance again.

No, it was a mystery. And Lord Voldemort enjoyed mysteries only when they were under his control.

Perhaps, after all, he had neglected Minister Fudge too much.

Lord Voldemort stood with a snap of his cloak around him. It was time to plumb the mystery and make sure that there was no danger to his apprentice or his true followers.

And if there was…

Well, he did enjoy the moments when he had solved a mystery and was toying with his prey before killing it.