Chapter 11
“Surprise!” a voice bellowed, startling the everloving fuck out of the werewolf. Remus spun around, wand up and the killing curse on his lips. The stick dropped from his numb fingers as he stared in unmitigated shock at the figure that stood just outside the lights streaming from the small cottage in the Forest of Dean. It was given to him by James Potter, to give the lycan a place in which to hunker down on the nights of the full moon.
“P-Padfoot?” the werewolf gasped painfully.
“In the flesh,” was the pithy reply. The animagus slowly walked toward his best friend and brother, grey eyes sad. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier; it took me this long to escape the safe house.”
“W-what safe house? How are you alive? I saw you fall through the Veil of Death in the Department of Mysteries,” Remus barked out, his rapid-fire statements giving Sirius pause as he deciphered them.
“Let’s go inside,” Black said softly as he put a gentle hand on Lupin’s shoulder. “There’s a lot to go over.” Once inside, and with tea served to the both of them by Winky, who had happily bonded herself to the lycan, the animagus began to explain. “That veil in the Department of Mysteries is a portal to a safe house for the Unspeakables.” The werewolf’s mouth dropped open, eyes wide in shock and disbelief. “I know. I fully expected to be reunited with our friends, but instead I was spat out in a stone ritual room, in the center of a runic circle. Fortunately it wasn’t active; I can only assume that the Unspeakables are needed to make it work.
“I spent a couple of days exploring the room and trying to figure out how to get out. I felt incredibly stupid when I discovered that all I needed to do was press on the only opalescent stone in the wall to make the exit appear. I stayed in that house for quite a long time. I wasn’t sure where I was, and I didn’t really want to return to England as long as James’ son was still alive. When the newspapers carried the story of the end of He Who Must Not Be Named and the collapse of the boy, I thought it would be a good time to come back. I remembered about this cabin, and I waited just outside your wards until you came back before I revealed myself.”
“Your ‘death’ devastated Potter, I’ll have you know,” Remus told his best friend with a wry smile. “I had to keep him from going in after you.”
“Well, I’m glad that you did that so he couldn’t find me, but why?” Sirius queried with a frown. “I would have thought that you’d have been just as happy to have the boy gone as I would have been.”
“There were too many witnesses and I was too close to the bastard,” Remus replied gruffly. “If I didn’t do anything to stop him, it would have looked odd, considering we were supposed to be the closest thing to ‘family’ that the boy had.”
“We played him like a fucking fiddle, didn’t we?” the animagus said with a malicious laugh.
“Yeah, well now our allies are on the run,” the lycan told his friend, frowning in consternation. “When the boy lapsed into that coma, it activated his living will, and as soon as that happened, all sorts of dirty laundry was aired all over the world. We’re very lucky that we didn’t leave anything lying around or allowed ourselves to be overheard by the wrong people.”
“Yeah, I caught sight of some of that,” the animagus murmured, eyes distant. “Anyway, how long do you think it’ll take before the boy dies?”
“I don’t know, but I hope it happens soon,” Lupin snarled, the werewolf close to the surface at the thought of Harry Potter-Malfoy. “If it wasn’t for him, our pack would still be alive. I knew there was something wrong when my werewolf instincts refused to see him as part of my pack.”
“I always got a hinky feeling from him, myself,” Black confessed with a grimace. “I don’t know how James or Lily didn’t feel it. Of course, Lils could probably blind herself to anything; she wanted the child so badly.
"That whole fiasco with Pettigrew almost cost us everything ,” he continued, shifting the conversation away from the abomination that had stolen the only family he’d ever known. “He shouldn’t have been able to fight off that compulsion that Albus had him under, but it only lasted long enough for him to spill the secret to the Dark Lord. When he came to the cottage to warn James and Lily about Voldemort’s approach, it took everything I had not to curse him right away.
“Fortunately, Voldemort was right behind the rat and his attack prevented Peter from spilling the beans and warning them. Old Snake-face was supposed to just kill the boy, but James and Lily fought him and ended up dying. All because that little shite had to be born. I was so mad, I chased after Pettigrew and cornered him near the tree house. I killed him right there, then transfigured him into a branch. In fact,” Sirius’ face twisted into a malicious grin, “we used him to build that fire when we went on the run for a while.”
“Yeah,” Remus agreed, his own mouth morphed into a malevolent smile, “we had to make it look like you had been carted off to Azkaban, so that Albus could do away with Potter himself. I guess whatever protections Lily had enacted for the boy prevented Dumbledore from killing him as well. It was pure genius to drop the boy off with Lily’s vicious sister, in the hopes that he’d be beaten to death before he ever got a chance to get his Hogwarts letter.
“That didn’t work out too well, though. Somehow that wretched child survived, and when he showed up at the castle, I was enraged. There he was, flaunting our friends’ deaths in our faces with his presence. And then the papers got into the act, and we couldn’t escape him. I’m telling you, Siri, I nearly killed him in third year, when I was asked to be the DADA professor. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but I had no choice. Albus had been putting the boy through his paces, to see if he could be molded into the perfect weapon, and I had to do my part to make sure that Potter survived long enough to kill Voldemort.”
“Whose idea was the dementors?” Black barked incredulously. “They nearly killed me.”
“Yeah, that was Albus’ doing,” the werewolf confessed sheepishly. “It was a spur of the moment thing, and he thought it would be a good way to convince the boy to be the hero that everyone deserved. If you hadn’t have shown up at the school, you never would have been brought into the middle of the headmaster’s plans,” the lycan chastised gently.
“I was watching your back, I’ll have you know,” Black said with offended dignity. “I wanted to make sure that the kid couldn’t hurt you.”
“I thank you for that,” Remus told his friend, “but it nearly derailed all of the plans that Dumbledore had up to then. However, he was able to adjust things so that he could use you as the carrot before the horse, ensuring that the boy would follow all of Albus’ instructions for the chance to live with you.”
“That was the only part about this that I didn’t like,” the animagus responded gruffly. “I wasn’t even asked if I wanted to be involved in all of the old man’s plots, but there I was, being forced to host that little shite.”
“It’s all over now, Siri,” Lupin soothed gently. “All we have to do is wait until the boy passes and we’re home free.”
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July 31, 1999
The Daily Prophet
NEW EVIDENCE COMES TO LIGHT!
Unspeakables break silence!
Betty Braithwaite, reporter
In a shocking move, the Unspeakables break their silence about one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Department of Mysteries. The ‘Death Veil’ through which Sirius Black had fallen in 1996 is not, in fact, a death veil at all. It is a portal that leads to a safe house, created by one of the first Unspeakables, Dorian Gray, in 1675 to protect all of the employees of the Department of Mysteries and their secrets. Because of the frequency in which goblin rebellions occurred, as well as the few Dark Lords that had risen over the centuries, Gray felt that it was necessary to protect the sanctity of the Department of Mysteries, as well as prevent their secrets from falling into the wrong hands. The portal linked to an unplottable sanctuary to where they took all of the Darkest magical artifacts, as well as the numerous volumes of research and spell crafting in order to keep that information out of the Ministry’s hands. Everything was hidden in well-disguised rooms and cubby holes.
As you all may remember, on June 18, 1996, Harry Potter and five of his friends stormed the Department of Mysteries, looking for Potter-Malfoy’s godfather, Sirius Black. The connection that the young Potter heir had with his vilest enemy had shown the boy visions of Black being tortured by Voldemort and his followers in the bowels of the Ministry. Fearing the loss of an important link to his family, the child went there to rescue Sirius Black. Unfortunately, it was a trap; a way to lure the young man to the Ministry so that the Dark Lord could obtain the prophecy orb. Death Eaters were waiting for the teen, demanding that he turn the orb over to them. Of He Who Must Not Be Named and Black, there was no sign.
Potter-Malfoy refused to give any ammunition to You Know Who, so a battle ensued between several highly trained, older witches and wizards and six students, ranging in age from fourteen to sixteen. Astonishingly enough, the six teenagers were able to hold off the more experienced Death Eaters until Albus Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix could arrive, Sirius Black amongst them. The fight raged on as the warriors for the Light battled back the Dark forces. It was as a duel between Bellatrix Black-Lestrange and Sirius Black had been fought that the unthinkable occurred, and with a well-flung spell Lestrange knocked Black back through the veil. Thinking that his godfather had just been murdered, Harry Potter-Malfoy attempted to go after him, but was prevented by Remus Lupin.
If, as the Unspeakables say, the veil is a portal to another location, where is Sirius Black? He’s obviously still alive, so why didn’t he come and aid his godson during the final battle? In fact, where was Lupin, who had claimed to be the child’s parents’ best friend? Have they betrayed and abandoned him like the rest of Lord Potter-Malfoy’s so-called friends? Now that Lord Potter-Malfoy is in a coma, and doesn’t appear to be recovering, why hasn’t either Black or Lupin come to visit the teen? What has Harry Potter-Malfoy done that was so horrible? Was it because he survived, and his parents didn’t? How much more betrayal must that brave, lonely, abandoned little boy suffer before he’s finally at peace?
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“Well, Sirius is alive,” Hermione murmured in a monotone as she read the paper that had just been delivered by post owl. The Weasleys and she were hiding in some run-down shack on the outskirts of Selkirk, Manitoba, trying to figure out how to get some food. “Looks like Potter had absolutely no one but the Slytherins, Longbottom and Lovegood supporting him. The Slytherins are dead, but I don’t suppose it matters much anymore, since he’s dying.”
“Fred and George are on his side,” Ron grumbled churlishly. “So’s Charlie.” He looked at his parents as the bushy haired know-it-all leafed through the paper. A gasp alerted the group that all was not well back in wizarding England.
“Ginny’s dead,” Hermione whispered, tears dripping down her cheeks. “According to the article, she went into Harry’s hospital room to kill him and was taken out by a sectumsempra to the neck, cast by Narcissa Malfoy.”
“That bitch,” Molly snarled in fury. “As soon as we get back to England I’m going to kill her.”
“You and Ron were barely able to break Arthur and Bill out of the Ministry holding cells,” Granger barked angrily, flinching as her voice echoed in the room. “If it wasn’t for me, they would still be there,” she said more quietly.
“Now look here, you jumped-up little mu-ggleborn,” Molly snapped, just barely changing direction in time. “Just because you can vomit up every book you’ve read doesn’t make you better than the rest of us. I have half a mind…”
“Quiet,” Ron hissed suddenly, head cocked in a listening pose. “I hear someone out there. I say we stun them and take their money. We haven’t eaten in three days and I don’t think I can go much further without food.”
“Agreed,” Hermione huffed as she glared daggers at the Weasley matriarch. They all stood and shook out the pins and needles in their legs before carefully walking to the door. Arthur peered out through the gap between the door and frame for a few moments, assessing the situation.
“There’s three of them; all big men, and they’re gathered around a rusty truck,” he whispered. “Even though the truck looks a little rough, they’re wearing some expensive-looking watches. They're also wearing heavy plaid coats and high leather boots, with their pant legs tucked in. They've got some strange, long tube-like things leaning against their shoulders.”
“All right,” Hermione told everyone. “Ron and I will go out first. If they see two teenagers looking a little battered, they might be more sympathetic and let their guard down. As soon as they relax, we’ll hit them with stunners and take whatever they have, as well as the truck.” Nodding, the rest of the group faded back into the shadows, watching as Granger fussed with her hair and clothes for a moment before stepping through the door, Ron on her heels. There was quiet murmuring for a few moments before several loud bangs rang out, startling the other three.
Without thought they barreled out of the shack, wands out and aiming at two of the three men. The third was lying on the ground, stiff and still; it looked like one of the teens had gotten off a stupefy before the loud noises occurred. “Avada,” Molly began, but she wasn’t able to finish the spell. More reports filled the air as Mrs. Weasley went down hard, blood gushing from a belly wound. Bill’s wand hand was nearly obliterated as several slugs flew his way, and Arthur took a blast to the chest. As he collapsed to his knees, he stared at the children, who lay a few feet away. Hermione had a sluggishly bleeding hole in the middle of her forehead; her cinnamon colored eyes wide and staring blankly into the sky. Half of Ron’s face was blown away, and only one blue eye remained to stare at his father almost accusingly.
Karma truly is a bitch, was the last thought the Weasley patriarch had as he fell face forward into the dirt.