The Bribed Blessing
“How on earth did I let myself get talked into this?” grumbled Sirius Black, looking around the small neighbourhood square gloomily.
Grimmauld Place had not improved in the years since Sirius had last been here. Once a posh stretch of elegant homes, mostly belonging to old-money aristocrats, the place had now fallen into a depressing state of disrepair. The grimy fronts of the surrounding houses were not welcoming; some of them had broken windows, glimmering dully in the light from the streetlamps, paint was peeling from many of the doors and heaps of rubbish lay outside several sets of front steps.
“It won’t be that bad,” Remus Lupin insisted, nudging Sirius affectionately on the shoulder with his fist. “It will be an improvement from living off rats in a cave.”
“You’ll never hear me complain about the cave,” Sirius replied. “It wasn’t as comfortable as my time in the tropics was but at least I was able to be close to Harry.”
That was all that truly mattered to him now. Being there for his godson, protecting him, loving him, and making up for all those years lost. Not being able to raise Harry as his own after James and Lily had died was the very worst part about being sent to Azkaban, but he had consoled himself during his imprisonment by imagining his godson experiencing a happy childhood with his aunt, uncle, and cousin. Unfortunately, nothing could have been farther from the truth.
“Well above all else, Harry wants you to stay safe,” said Lupin. “This is a safe house.”
“Of course it’s a safe house,” said Sirius curtly. “My father put every security measure known to wizardkind on it when he lived here. It’s unplottable, so Muggles could never come to call - as if they’d ever have wanted to.”
“And Dumbledore will add his protection onto it soon,” Lupin reminded him. “It will make an excellent headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix and keep you well hidden, but in the center of everything. I understand that you never wanted to come back here, but it’s the right place for you to be right now. You know that Peter will have told Voldemort about you being an animagus by now.”
“Yes, yes, don’t lecture, Remus,” said Sirius impatiently, as he started up the worn stone steps of Number Twelve. He pulled out his wand and tapped it on the shabby and scratched front door, eyeing the silver doorknocker, which was in the shape of a serpent, with immense dislike. He was the only member of his family to not have been sorted into Slytherin and he still considered breaking with that particular tradition to be one of his greatest achievements.
There was the sound of many loud, metallic clicks and what sounded like the clatter of a chain. Then the door creaked open and Sirius stepped into the almost total darkness of the hall. He could smell damp, dust, and a sweetish, rotting smell; the place had a feeling of a derelict building. Feeling like he was being imprisoned once again, Sirius took a few more steps and heard a soft hissing noise and then old-fashioned gas lamps sputtered into life all along the walls, casting a flickering insubstantial light over the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a long, gloomy hallway, where a cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and age-blackened portraits hung crooked on the walls.
“Cozy,” said Lupin, behind him.
“Charming,” Sirius added.
The two men looked at one another and Sirius immediately erupted into a barking laugh, even though there was nothing at all funny about the situation. He just couldn’t get past the sheer irony of being back in the family home he had been so desperate to escape in his youth. The tragedy of returning here was so ridiculous that he had to laugh about it to keep from crying. His laughter traveled down the dreary hallway and immediately triggered a response from the house so alarming that Lupin needed to wait no longer to be introduced to the very worst of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
Moth-eaten velvet curtains had been thrown back to reveal a life-size portrait of a screaming old woman in a black cap that Sirius recognized as an accurate likeness of Walburga Black - his mother. She was screaming like she was being tortured. She was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed, and all along the hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell too.
“Shut up, you horrible, old hag, shut up!” Sirius shouted, as he and Lupin both darted forward and tried to tug the curtains shut over his mother.
Walburga Black’s face blanched. “Yoooooou!” she howled, her eyes popping. “Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!”
“I said - shut - UP!” Sirius roared, anger rising up in him, and with a stupendous effort he and Lupin managed to force the curtains closed again. Walburga’s screeches died and an echoing silence fell.
Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes, Sirius turned back to Lupin. “About as pleasant a welcome back as I could have expected.”
They proceeded through the rest of the house more cautiously though. Speaking only when necessary, and in whispers at that. It didn’t take long to discover that the rest of the house was in just as poor condition as the entrance was. With each room that Sirius entered, he was given another reminder of just why he had run away at the age of sixteen to James Potter’s house. He had hated the whole lot of his family; his parents with their pure blood mania and his younger brother, Regulus, who had been dumb enough to believe them. Resentment swelled within him as he reminisced on all the suffering he’d endured just to be returned here simply because Dumbledore thought he knew better and had only pretended to give him a choice.
“I think there’s someone over there,” Lupin warned, taking out his wand and distracting Sirius from his bitter thoughts when they arrived in the downstairs kitchen. “I heard something.”
“Probably just another doxy infestation,” replied Sirius, but he withdrew his wand as well, watching and waiting until the very stuff of nightmares crept out from behind the boiler to confront them. “Kreacher?”
Kreacher was a very old house-elf dressed in a filthy rag tied like a loincloth around his waist. He had served the Black family for longer than Sirius had been alive, but if Sirius had bothered to spare a moment’s thought for the elf in all the years since they had last met, it would only have been to hope that he was long dead. Indeed, Kreacher looked no happier about this reunion than Sirius was. He shuffled hunchbacked over to him with a scowl on his face and then flung himself into a ridiculously low bow that flattened his snoutlike nose on the floor at Sirius’s feet.
“Master is returned,” Kreacher muttered, for Sirius was the only member of the Black family left and by default the elf now belonged to him. “He’s escaped from Azkaban, they say. Oh, my poor mistress, she swore he was no son of hers and he’s back.”
“Alright, out,” said Sirius abruptly, pointing a finger back at the stairs which led to the upstairs hall and front door. “I’ve waited my whole life to tell you that. Be off! I won't tolerate any of your--”
“Sirius, you can’t do that,” Lupin interrupted quietly. “What would stop him from telling anyone that you are here in London if you set him free?”
Sirius glared down at the elf, who bowed again and continued muttering. “Ordering Kreacher around. What would my poor Mistress say? How she hated him. The nasty ungrateful swine that broke her heart.”
“My mother didn’t have a heart, Kreacher,” snapped Sirius. “She kept herself alive out of pure spite. Get out of my sight.”
The elf bowed again but the look he gave Sirius when he shuffled out past him was one of deepest loathing and he muttered all the way out of the room. ‘ - They say he’s a murderer. The nasty -”
“Keep muttering and I will become a murderer,” Sirius shouted after him. “Foul little git. What were you just saying when we got here, Remus? That this hovel is better than a large secluded cave up in the mountains?”
“Alright, it’s not,” Lupin resigned himself. “But it can be fixed up and once it is, you won’t find it nearly as depressing to be here. And remember that it’s only temporary. Once Fudge accepts that Voldemort really has returned and the Ministry starts arresting Death Eaters again, we’ll be able to prove that you aren’t one - you don’t have the Mark.”
“I won’t hold my breath waiting for Fudge to show a morsel of competence,” said Sirius bitterly. He'd seen quite enough in the immediate aftermath of Voldemort’s return to convince him that Fudge was a blithering fool who would sooner get them all killed before being willing to face the truth.
“He can’t be back, Dumbledore, he just can’t be…” Fudge had insisted the other night in the Hogwarts hospital wing, with a hint of a plea in his voice.
The Minister simply refused to see reason and was willing to express doubts about Dumbledore’s judgment and Harry's credibility if it meant reinforcing his own denials. All the while, disguised as the great black dog sat by Harry’s bedside, Sirius had been helpless to do anything. But Snape had been present in the hospital wing as well and he had oddly been very quick to react. He'd moved suddenly, past Dumbledore, pulling up the left sleeve of his robes as he went. He had stuck out his forearm, showing it to Fudge, who had recoiled.
“There,” Snape had said harshly. “There. The Dark Mark. It is not as clear as it was, an hour or so ago, when it burned black, but you can still see it. Every Death Eater had the sign burnt into him by the Dark Lord. It was a means of distinguishing each other, and his means of summoning us to him. When he touched the Mark of any Death Eater, we were to Disapparate, and Apparate, instantly at his side. This Mark has been growing clearer all year. Karkaroff’s, too. Why do you think Karkaroff fled tonight? We both felt the Mark burn. We both knew he had returned. Karkaroff fears the Dark Lord’s vengeance. He betrayed too many of his fellow Death Eaters to be sure of a welcome back into the fold.”
Sirius probably shouldn't have been as surprised about Snape outing himself as a Death Eater as he had been. Even as a kid, Snape had been obsessed with the Dark Arts and many of the Slytherins he'd hung around with had gone on to work for Voldemort. Why he had decided to switch sides or if he truly had was still a mystery to Sirius, but it disturbed him greatly to learn that Snape had been granted so much of Dumbledore’s trust and protection. How else would Snape have been able to display his Dark Mark to a room full of witnesses and fear no repercussions?
“I know you still think highly of Dumbledore, Remus, but it’s killing me to just be blindly obeying him,” Sirius confessed, pulling a dusty old chair back from the table and sitting down heavily in it. “He orders me to confine myself in this house, and I do it. He insists that Harry will need to be returned to his aunt for the start of summer, instead of into my care, and I barely put up a fight. Meanwhile, Dumbledore couldn't even be bothered to have a conversation with me before I was locked up in Azkaban and the key thrown away. Don't tell me that it was all out of Dumbledore’s hands, Remus, we both see what he went above and beyond to do for Snape.”
“I don't think yours and Severus’s situations can be compared,” Lupin said softly, as he joined Sirius at the table. “I think there's a lot about Severus that we don't know. We really shouldn’t presume anything.”
“Hmmm,” Sirius pursed his lips. Even if Dumbledore did have a secret ironclad reason for believing Snape had changed sides, it did not explain why he had entirely abandoned a devoted member of the Order of the Phoenix like himself. Sirius knew that the evidence against him had been bad - Wormtail had set him up spectacularly - but Dumbledore should have known better than anyone that things weren't always how they appeared.
“Dumbledore did say that Harry would be able to come here eventually,” Lupin reminded him carefully. “He just said not right away.”
“And only on his terms,” Sirius added menacingly. “Even though Dumbledore knows Harry's relatives don't treat him right and that Harry would prefer to be with me.”
“I'm sure he soon will be,” replied Lupin, “but you can't expect him to be brought here when the house is in this state. Let’s start fixing it up and then you can discuss this with Dumbledore further when he gets here.”
Sirius sighed, looking around the kitchen in dismay. “How does one even begin making a house like this fit for human habitation?”
It was clear that Kreacher hadn’t cleaned anything in years and there wasn’t a single room that had been spared from one or more infestations of mere household pests to dangerous dark creatures; not one surface that wasn’t covered by at least an inch of dust. Sirius and Lupin tackled the kitchen first and it took over a day and half of hard work to bring it up to even tolerable condition. Spiders the size of dinner plates had weaved webs through every cupboard, but they’d scattered, rushing to take refuge in other parts of the house, once their hiding places had been disturbed. And not wishing to happen upon them during the night, both of the men had opted to sleep on beds transfigured from kitchen chairs until they had time to properly fumigate the other rooms.
“There’s definitely a permanent sticking charm on the back of her,” Sirius observed the following evening. He was outlining the frame of his mother’s portrait with his wand while she glowered down at him. Walburga wasn’t screaming for a change because her son kept hitting her with a fresh stunning spell whenever the old one wore off, but it was still highly unpleasant to be in this close proximity to her revolting likeness. He’d been trying for over an hour to remove it from the wall without success.
Lupin gave him a sympathetic smile as he walked out of the drawing room just off the hall. There was a smear of dirt on his scarred face and his shirt was torn from the efforts of waging war on the breeding ground that this house had become. Walburga Black’s portrait wasn't the only thing that had proven itself impossible to remove either. Many family treasures had been secured in place by a permanent sticking charm as if they had foreseen Sirius eventually coming back to scrap all of it. And Kreacher kept creeping around behind them to steal back as much as he could.
“I hate it here,” Sirius said, which was a constant mantra in his mind that nothing and nobody could alleviate.
“You'd be out of your mind to feel any differently,” Lupin validated, while the sound of someone knocking on the door set Walburga off once again.
“Filth, Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from the place-” she cried, while Lupin opened the door to reveal Professor Dumbledore and Severus Snape standing on the front porch.
“Good evening,” Dumbledore greeted them brightly, as Sirius made quick work of stunning his mother’s portrait yet again. “Just look who I’ve brought with me.”
“Who - him?” Sirius jerked his head over at Snape, who had walked stiffly ahead of Dumbledore into the house and was leaning against a bare strip of wall as if in need of its support to remain upright. Snape looked exhausted and in a great deal of pain. Their eyes met for a moment and Sirius felt his facial features crease into a scowl of distaste, while Snape’s lip curled, even as his legs visibly appeared to be trembling. It had occurred to Sirius that offering this house as headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix meant that Snape was practically guaranteed to be a regular visitor, but it still felt weirdly invasive to see him standing there. Quite like how discovering Kreacher behind the kitchen boiler had made him feel.
“Look,” Dumbledore’s smile grew and he beckoned out the open door at the dark street behind him. Sirius peered over the headmaster’s shoulder. All the streetlamps had been put out so that visibility was practically zero, yet out of the shadows suddenly sprung a magical beast that had the front legs, wings, and head of a giant eagle and the body, hind legs and tail of a horse.
“Buckbeak!” Sirius exclaimed, as the hippogriff stood back on its hind legs in excitement before charging at him affectionately.
“I’m more familiar with thestrals,” Dumbledore said, after closing the door, “but Buckbeak flew us here in half the time. I think he understood we were on our way to meet you.”
Sirius laughed, a true smile temporarily melting the scowl off of his face and he rubbed the hippogriff’s beak and felt the ache in his heart lessen just a bit. It had been tremendously difficult to leave Buckbeak behind in Hogsmeade when he’d gone to alert Lupin and the others about Voldemort’s return. Even reassurances from Dumbledore that Hagrid would see to Buckbeak’s care had not been remotely satisfactory, because Sirius knew perfectly well that he needed Buckbeak even more than the hippogriff needed him. They’d been one another’s constant companions whilst on the run. Both outcasts, both condemned unfairly, and both deeply attached to one another now.
“Thank you, Dumbledore,” Sirius said, looking into those twinkling blue eyes and feeling his resentment dwindle temporarily as he slung an arm over the hippogriff’s back. He knew all his negative feelings towards the headmaster would return in a fury in due course, but at present he was distracted by such a much needed reunion with a beloved friend.
“Of course,” Dumbledore nodded. “I would have brought him here sooner but it's been a very eventful couple of days, as you can imagine.”
His eyes shifted onto Snape. “Let's all sit down,” he suggested.
“Yes, right in here should do,” Lupin was quick to add.
He led the way into the drawing room, which was still in a terrible state but the closest to the door - and Snape didn't look like he could walk very far at the moment. Even Sirius had noticed as much, watching the injured Death Eater limp over to a filthy straight-back chair beside the boarded up fireplace and wince while sitting down. Without first being told, it seemed obvious to Sirius that Snape had been sent back to Voldemort, but he still struggled to feel any sympathy for him. After all, Snape hadn't joined Voldemort ever intending to spy on him. He had joined because he had wanted to and there was nothing sympathetic about that or the consequences such a choice bore.
“Who else is coming tonight, Dumbledore?” Lupin asked, as he sat down in a matching chair next to Snape.
“Nobody else,” Dumbledore replied. “We'll meet with all the others very soon but right now the four of us need to discuss a matter that I'd like to keep quiet for as long as possible.”
“Oh?” Sirius looked intrigued. “What about?”
“Harry,” Dumbledore answered simply.
“And what's he got to do with Harry?” Sirius asked, shooting another pointed glare in Snape’s direction.
“I'm the reason we have this information,” Snape said coldly, glaring back at him. “The headmaster has given me the unfortunate task of securing Potter’s safety in the wake of these discoveries. He just assumed you'd wish to be involved.”
“Involved?” Sirius repeated, involuntarily wincing at what he interpreted as a lightly veiled threat as he turned on Dumbledore now. “Harry is my godson and you are to plan nothing around him without my involvement - especially not in collaboration with him!”
Dumbledore pushed his half-moon spectacles higher up on his crooked nose before responding. “There is so much to discuss tonight, but if this meeting is to continue, then the hostility in this room must be checked. I have already addressed this with both of you.”
“Let's get Buckbeak settled before we start, Sirius,” Lupin was the first to break the heavy silence that had filled the room after Dumbledore’s words, standing up from the chair he had only just sat down in. “Some water and a bit of food. Will you wait for us?”
“Certainly,” Dumbledore agreed, sitting down now in Lupin’s vacated seat and picking at a cobweb on the upholstery. Leaving Sirius with no other option but to walk out of the drawing room with Lupin.
“Where do you want to put him?” his friend asked.
“My mother’s bedroom, I guess,” Sirius shrugged. “It's the largest.”
He took hold of Buckbeak’s lead to guide him upstairs, but it wasn’t really needed. The hippogriff would have followed him anywhere, although it seemed concerned about its surroundings and wary of Lupin, whose bow it did not reciprocate. Sirius suspected that Buckbeak could smell the werewolf off him but didn't say anything as Lupin held back to keep his distance.
“Now don’t look at me that way,” Sirius said, opening the double doors of the master suite when they reached the topmost floor. “If I have to live here, then so do you.”
Buckbeak followed Sirius into his mother’s cold, unfriendly and rubbish strewn bedroom. “Have a rest while I talk to the others. I guarantee you there's mice hiding up here for you to snack on, but I'll fix you up something nicer once I finish up downstairs. Alright?”
Buckbeak nudged him on his shoulder like he understood and then settled himself onto the four-poster bed, the hangings of which were so moth-eaten that there were more holes than solid cloth. Sirius filled a basin with water to drink from the ensuite bathroom and then relished in giving Buckbeak a few more pats before heading back into the hall to join Lupin.
“Try to have an open mind downstairs,” Lupin pleaded with him. “You don't have to like Severus but he's a very skilled wizard and trusted by Dumbledore. You need him on Harry's team.”
“Snape hates Harry,” Sirius retorted angrily. “Just like he hated James.”
“Well his feelings towards me never interfered with him making me the Wolfsbane Potion perfectly every single month,” Lupin said diplomatically. “So I don't think Harry would be any different. Just listen, Sirius. Please?”
“Fine, fine, if it will make them leave faster,” Sirius muttered, as he reentered the drawing room and picked a chair as far away from the others as possible. Any tenderness he had felt towards Dumbledore for bringing him Buckbeak was already squashed.
“Sirius, you will recall Harry writing to you last summer about a dream he had involving Voldemort and Wormtail?” said Dumbledore, cutting straight to the point once they were all settled.
“Yes,” said Sirius. “And then I passed that news onto you.”
“Yes,” Dumbledore agreed. “It opened my eyes to the possibility of there being some kind of special connection between Lord Voldemort’s mind and Harry's, because I have no doubt that what Harry saw in that dream was actually happening.”
He paused and beckoned at Snape. “When Severus returned to Lord Voldemort on my orders, they discussed this connection and I am concerned that Voldemort might use it as a weapon. He might be able to see what Harry is seeing. He might be able to communicate with Harry through this connection - manipulate his thoughts and feed him falsehoods.”
Sirius had never heard of such a thing. He knew Legilimency, but that time of mind reading required eye contact and serious skill on the Legilimens part. He didn’t understand how anyone could share the mind of another person even if the normal rules had never seemed to apply in the case of Harry and Voldemort. He still didn’t properly understand why Voldemort had failed to kill Harry as a baby - what truly had all gone on the night that James and Lily had died. What he did know was that he needed to be there for Harry and so he swallowed the lump forming in his throat, resolving himself to work with the two men seated in the drawing room with himself and Lupin, regardless of how he felt about them personally.
“Okay,” he said finally. “And you have a way to block this connection?”
“I believe so,” Dumbledore replied. “The natural first step will be to train Harry in Occlumency so that he is able to close his mind to any invasion. But going further than that, Severus has been designing a potion that will magically cloak the mind of whoever drinks it - much the same way as the employment of Occlumency.”
“Really?” said Lupin, looking rather impressed. “How does that work?”
“It’s complicated,” Snape said shortly.
“Sure, but is it safe?” Sirius asked him.
Snape shrugged. “Perhaps,” he replied, sounding supremely indifferent.
“I wouldn’t recommend that we start feeding potions to Harry if I worried they would do more harm than good,” Dumbledore said. “Yes, there is an element of risk in drinking potions that haven’t been approved and studied on a mass scale, but Severus is brilliant at what he does and has run many tests on his own. Harry will only take the potion under his direct supervision until we’re confident of its safeness and effectiveness.”
“Are you asking for my permission or just telling me?” asked Sirius shortly.
“I do not need your permission, Sirius,” Dumbledore said calmly. “I'm asking for your blessing. I'm asking you to get on board with this plan and encourage Harry to do the same even though he won't like all that it entails.”
“What do you think, Remus?” asked Sirius, in order to buy himself some more time. He already knew that Lupin would want to go along with whatever Dumbledore believed was best. Aside from Snape being at the center of this plan, Sirius didn't really oppose much about it either. He just resented having his position in Harry's life undermined once again with Dumbledore calling all the shots.
“We can't give Voldemort a window into Harry's mind,” said Lupin. “And I don't know of any other method to prevent this because I've never heard of such a thing being possible without eye contact and closeness.”
“It is unusual,” Dumbledore agreed quietly. “With Occlumency lessons, Harry will learn to block Voldemort’s access, but this potion will insure it. I know that you want Harry to come spend the summer here, Sirius, and I want that for you both as well. If Harry goes back to his aunt’s house initally, begins Occlumency lessons, and starts taking the potion under Severus’s supervision, then I'd be comfortable allowing Harry to come to Grimmauld Place for the remainder of the holiday.”
“That sounds like a bribe, Dumbledore,” Sirius said resentfully.
“I don't intend it to be,” Dumbledore replied, “but I can't risk the operations of the Order of the Phoenix getting revealed to Voldemort through Harry’s thoughts. His mind needs to be closed to Voldemort and this is how it will be done.”