Chapter 14
"This is a fucking farce," Harriet grit out as Pettigrew once more vanished into the overgrown grass, the long stems twitching and shifting as the rat scurried away in the direction of the barrier where it cut across the field they had cornered him in, hedgerows on all sides and the Burrow a few hundred feet behind them.
Eleanor didn't answer, squinting as she tried to track and anticipate his trajectory, truncated stunning spells spitting and fizzling at the end of her wand as he dodged in and out of her line of sight. "Hold on," she said, and dragged Harriet with her into another apparition, managing to land them right where she saw the last flash of bald pink tail, breaths short and lungs aching from forcing themselves again and again through the crushing vacuum.
There was a startled squeak from ground-level and another flurry of movement. They kept on top of him, stepping in his way and cutting him off until they managed to drive him into the next trap. Sure enough, there was a flash and a pop, and Peter Pettigrew tumbled into existence once more, hands scrabbling through the dirt for his dropped wand as he skittered away from them on his knees.
"Stay there!" Harriet thundered, and flung another stunning spell at him, which he just barely managed to deflect as he stumbled to his feet.
Eleanor hurled a body-bind after him, but he was already running for the barrier again and dodged it by a hair - she threw herself after him as he raised his wand and fired off another round of spells at the weaker underside of the protective wards. They were starting to crack and flicker.
"Expelliarmus!" Eleanor shouted, and his wand went spinning out of his hand as he ducked low again, arms over his head.
She grinned, but her triumph was short-lived; there was another pop-crack of apparition as Harriet disappeared from her side and landed right on Pettigrew's back, sending them both tumbling and sprawling in a heap, but -
"Oh Merlin!" Eleanor gasped as Harriet let out a horrible scream, clutching the place her leg had been, there was no blood but she was stuck, jerking with shock and gruesome pain, enough of a distraction that Eleanor wasn't fast enough to react when Pettigrew slipped out of her reach and into his other form again, streaking over to where his wand had fallen.
"Get him!"
Eleanor let off a volley of stunners as she sprinted after him but he was too small a target, and she let out a yell of frustration even as he hit another trap and tripped back into his human shape, already catching his wand from where it had been clamped between his teeth and using his momentum to duck another curse and take another shot at the wards - they crackled again, splintering dangerously and sparking with energy as they start to fray. Eleanor moved faster than she ever had before and bodily tackled Pettigrew to the ground, slamming his head and digging her knee into his back, her heel clamped down on his wrist until his hand spasmed and dropped his wand, hands tight, tight around his neck, squeezing hard and pressing up into his windpipe, maybe she could make him woozy enough that he couldn't transform -
Harriet was dragging herself forward on her forearms, aiming low so she wouldn't accidentally hit Eleanor - "Stupefy!" -
But Pettigrew had already disappeared from underneath her and slipped out of her hands, smaller and slipperier than she could have ever anticipated, fucking rats.
"We need backup NOW!" Eleanor bellowed towards the house, and kept up the chase.
"So he's there. Right now."
"Yes, he is."
Sirius nodded shortly. She was vaguely aware of McGonagall's eyes on her, watching warily for another blow-up or breakdown, whichever occurred first, but whatever panic was coursing through her system only registered as a low buzzing at the back of her skull. She jigged Harry up and down in her arms, ignoring the row of small ginger people watching with hawkish eyes from the couch. She had found a small island of certainty amid the torrent of anger, and she was clinging to it with both hands.
"I'm going to have to kill him."
McGonagall sighed. "I thought that would be the case."
"But I'm not leaving Harry."
"I know. You have a few things to consider here."
"Go on."
"The first thing is that we cannot be sure that the Death Eaters will not come here if they succeed at the Burrow. There's a chance they will start working their way through the remaining Order strongholds, and if they know about this place, it would be the obvious next step."
Sirius paused at that. "Who's your secret-keeper? It was shared with me through a note."
"One of my brothers. And before you ask, no, I'm not aware of any time Pettigrew went to see him, but we can't rule it out. Pettigrew was an involved member of our organisation, and vastly underestimated. There's no telling how much information he managed to ferret out before he was blown."
"Fuck."
"What does that mean?" asked one of the kids from the couch.
McGonagall shook her head, but Sirius turned to look at him. He seemed to be the oldest. He was holding onto the two smallest of his siblings while the next-oldest kept the others occupied with a stack of dog-eared comics. He was wearing an oversized Unhappy Giants t-shirt, which weirdly made Sirius want to cry.
"It means this house might be in danger of an attack as well, but we're not sure," she told him.
"Are Mum and Dad still coming?"
"As far as I know."
"That's alright, then." He went back to plying his baby sister with a toy niffler.
Sirius, nonplussed, turned back to McGonagall. "How many bases are left?"
"That I know of? Four, not including this one."
"So we can either shift the kids a few more times and hope the Death Eaters don't know about at least one of them..."
"If they know about this one, they will definitely know about the others. I think it's fair to say the Burrow was our last true port of call, the others have all been in use since before Halloween."
"So our best chance is to fortify the house."
"Most likely, for the Weasleys and I. Not necessarily for you."
"What do you mean?"
McGonagall was uncharacteristically hesitant. "This is an option I've been keeping in my back pocket, but. I have contacts in France."
"Oh?"
"We would have to act very, very quickly, but if you wanted to take Harry and leave the country, I would help you do that."
"Oh."
"I didn't bring it up before because it would drastically increase the stakes for me and for. For someone I care about. But I believe the situation now calls for drastic measures, and if you want the option, it is there for you."
Sirius rocked Harry in her arms and stared at McGonagall. The look on her face was one she recognised.
"This contact," she said. "You trust them?"
"With my life. She is... highly accomplished."
McGonagall had a tick in her jaw Sirius had never seen before.
In her arms, Harry fidgeted and whined, pulling at her shirt collar. Sirius looked down at him, his tiny starfish hands, his eyes so wide in his little face. Lily's eyes. James' face. The last scrap of family she had left.
Only that wasn't true, was it? She also had Remus. Merlin - at this point, she needed Remus. And Harry needed them both.
Whoever McGonagall was thinking of right now, they were at least as important. And Remus was still unaccounted for. Sirius tried to imagine leaving the country with that hanging over her and McGonagall's heads alike, and shuddered.
"I'll stay," she said. "I'll help defend the house if it comes to it. And with Pettigrew - I'll figure it out. But, Professor. Thank you."
McGonagall grasped her shoulder and gave her an approving shake. "Let's get to work, then. I'll start adding a little something to the main structure, you work on replenishing the wards. If there's one thing we've learned over the past few weeks, it's that your shielding spells are fairly unparalleled."
Sirius smiled weakly in spite of herself. "That was as much Remus as it was me."
"Then let's hope we can find her once the danger has passed. I have a feeling the two of you together will be the best guardians that little boy could hope for."
Harriet couldn't move, couldn't breathe for pain, gasping and gagging as she tried to keep track of the blurs that were Eleanor and Pettigrew flinging spells back and forth overhead. Her whole body was seizing and cramping as if her very muscles and bones were horrified, the shock of staring at her leg where it was folded out in the ground a few years away.
"Fucking Merlin," she sobbed, and aimed another curse at Pettigrew. It went wide and burned a hole through the hedge beyond him, almost hitting the other figure vaulting over into view and sprinting towards the fight, wand raised towards the growing weak spot in the barrier, Harriet rolled to stop them-
But it was Kingsley Shacklebolt, bolstering the wards and then in one motion yanking the ground itself from under Pettigrew's feet, sending him sprawling and giving Eleanor a chance to get one stunner in that finally hit the mark. Pettigrew slumped, unconscious, and for a moment there was only the sound of heavy breathing and crackling magic overhead and Harriet's own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
"Shit, shit, are you alright?" Eleanor asked, hurrying over.
"N-" was all Harriet managed to get out, her lungs tight and struggling to get enough air in.
"Fuck, okay, hold on, I'll help." She grasped Harriet's forearms and started helping her into a lopsided sitting position. "You'll be okay, we'll sort you out, you'll be fine."
"Be quick," Kingsley said, kicking Pettigrew onto his back and producing thick black ropes out of thin air to wind around his wrists and ankles. "Mad-Eye's coming and I got the word out to the others but Pettigrew will have done the same, if he was weakening the wards then the other loyalists won't be far behi-"
BOOM
The explosion was so loud the ground itself seemed to rock. Harriet was only aware of Eleanor and Kingsley staggering and shouting, of a cascade of burning sparks overhead and a cloud of black raining down from above. The world was too-bright and hazy, spinning away before her eyes. Figures were slamming into the existence around her - she could just make out Henry and Valerie as they hit the ground running, she could hear Emmeline shout something from behind. Harriet reached for her wand, her leg, Eleanor, anything, but her vision was tunneling and the Death Eaters were already...
The auror office in Aberystwyth turned out to be shockingly easy to find once you knew what to look for. Luckily, Cathy's brother lived in the general area and had been robbed one time a few years earlier. She remembered vividly his confused accounts of the karaoke bar it was hidden behind.
"Remember, he kept complaining about the noise every time he came down here," she said as Judd reversed into the inconspicuous side-street, just short of the mess of big green bins lining the back wall of the bar, both of them determinedly ignoring the criminal being sat on the back of their van. "You had to explain to him what karaoke was and he got way too into the idea?"
Judd chuckled. "God, that was a long Christmas."
They both sighed fondly at the memory and stared out of the windscreen. Then a thump from behind reminded them of what they were there to do, and they looked back warily.
Minnie - or Lupin, Cathy gathered - was still kneeling on the man's shoulders, pressing the wand she had gotten off him into the base of his skull, looking far too shaky and sweaty to be holding such a position but holding it nonetheless. The man, Crofter, was still locked up by whatever spell Lupin had brought him down with. His face was mashed into the carpet and he looked thoroughly resigned to his position.
"So you're just going to drag him in there like that?" Judd asked.
"I could do with a hand, if one of you is okay with that," Lupin said, shifting to indicate her injured arm where it was still strapped to her torso.
"Well, we've come this far." Cathy unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the van to walk around and open the back door, checking as she went that no one was lurking nearby and the van was properly blocking the view from the main road. "Come on, let's get this sorted."
Lupin stood up off Crofter and hopped down. "I'm going to try to levitate him to make him lighter, if you could carry him inside that'd be great."
Cathy raised an eyebrow and looked at Crofter. He was scrawny, sure, but he was still an entire person.
"You'll see," Lupin said.
She checked her surroundings herself, and waved her wand at Crofter with a muttered incantation. She winced when he jerked about a foot in the air and crashed right back down with a muffled yelp. "Shit. This wand is fucking terrible."
She tried again, this time managing to keep him about an inch off the floor. Cathy took hold of his foot, and found that he weighed almost nothing, easily floating out of the van when she pulled. She manoeuvred him around into an awkward fireman's lift, gave Judd a thumb's-up in the rear view, and slammed the van shut before following Lupin over to the back entrance of the bar.
"Did your brother mention anything about how to get in?"
"Not really. I vaguely remember him complaining about all the hot garbage, so I'm assuming it has to do with these." She nodded at the bins nearest to the small grey door that was set into the back wall. They were spilling over with refuse sacks, the smell already terrible and only made worse by the hot air pumping out of the vents at the base of the building.
Lupin sighed. "Suppose that's one way to keep the muggles out." She shook the overlong sleeve of her borrowed cardigan out of the way and started prodding at the bins.
Cathy, wanting to give whoever designed the entrance the benefit of the doubt, tried the door. It was locked.
"That'd just lead to the bar anyway," Lupin assured her, feeling under a lid and letting it drop with a clang when she found nothing there. "Trust me, if it's Ministry -affiliated, it's hidden under ten layers of deterrents and bullshit. Sometimes literal bullshit if you're in the countryside. This is what they spend our taxes on."
"You pay taxes?"
"Well I would if they'd give me a fucking job."
Lupin stepped back to consider the row of bins, and landed on one with a broken wheel that stuck out to one side. She gave it a kick, and looked on in satisfaction when it set off a series of oddly mechanical-sounding whirrs and clicks from inside the bin. She threw open the lid and prodded around with her wand until something flashed. A rusted brass horn that looked like it came off a very old phonograph slowly arose from the depths.
"This is reception, what can I help you with today?" came a tinny voice.
Cathy bit her tongue against a wave of nervous, incredulous laughter.
"I'm here to turn in a dangerous criminal," Lupin said. "Sam Crofter, he's been active in North Wales, should be in your files."
"Wh- are you serious?"
"As a dragon with a chest infection. I also need to speak to whoever's in charge of this office."
"I... hold on."
There was a long pause before the voice returned.
"Alright, come on up."
The grey door rippled and changed to a nice shade of blue. It swung open to reveal a corridor and staircase that definitely did not look like it belonged in a muggle karaoke bar. Lupin indicated for Cathy to follow, and led the way upstairs.
The office itself was quiet, with only a few people working in far-off corners and three waiting at the front: a nervous-looking woman who must have been the receptionist, and two aurors, a middle-aged man with a bushy beard and an older woman with steely grey hair. They all noticeably tensed when they saw the body Cathy was hauling, and then further when they registered the state Lupin was in.
"Well then," said the older auror mildly. "This is unorthodox."
"You're the boss around here?" Lupin asked.
"Head Officer Geraldine Howlett. Who would that make you?"
Lupin hesitated, and appeared to come to a decision. "Remus Lupin."
"And your friend?"
"Don't worry about her. She's just giving me a lift, she's not involved in this."
"And what is 'this' exactly?" asked the bearded auror.
"I said, I'm here to turn in Sam Crofter."
Howlett frowned. "Let's see, then."
At Lupin’s nod, Cathy carefully lowered Crofter onto the floor. Crofter, for his part, was struggling slightly again, but the combination of the binding spell and the levitation meant that he ended up just awkwardly rolling back and forth a few inches above the ground. Howlett and the other auror leaned over to examine him.
“Did you find that file, Helen?” Howlett asked.
The receptionist dove for her desk and handed over a purple folder, which Howlett flipped open to reveal a photograph of a slightly younger-looking Crofter making foul gestures at the camera. She knelt and held it next to Crofter's face.
"What do you think?" she asked the bearded auror.
He squinted. "Seems like him."
Howlett pulled out her wand and muttered a few spells that washed over Crofter's face in waves, not seeming at all concerned when he made an alarmed noise and tried to flinch away. "No illusions, no transfiguration," she said. "This is him alright."
Lupin stuck her free hand in her pocket. "Yep."
"Why on earth have you brought him here?"
"You were the only office nearby, and I need a favour."
"And you have him captured in the first place because..."
"That's a very long story and I really don't have time to tell it. The short version is that I needed something from him - specifically a new wand, I lost mine - and then I realised I needed something from you, so I brought him along as a show of good faith."
Howlett was outright suspicious now. "What is it you need from us?"
"Access to your floo network. I need to reach the main office in London as quickly as possible."
The bearded auror laughed loudly. "You must be joking!"
"I'm really not."
"What makes you think we'd allow you that kind of access?" Howlett asked incredulously.
Lupin was rocking back and forth on her heels, possibly to hide the face that she was starting to sway again, assessing gaze flicking over each of them in turn. "Does the Order of the Phoenix mean anything to you?"
The bearded auror looked confused, but Howlett's eyes lifted. She took a step back, and then a step forward, looking Lupin over as if re-evaluating.
"Is something happening?" she asked.
"Boss?" the bearded auror asked uncertainly. He was ignored.
"Looks like it." Lupin nudged Crofter with her toe. "This one's got connections. He mentioned someone recruiting in Knockturn Alley this morning, some kind of attack. I don't know where or when, but I'm almost certain it's Death Eaters. I need to get somewhere I can find out what's going on, or alert people if they don't already know."
"You can't just apparate?"
"Borrowed wand, I'd definitely splinch myself."
"And you think you can just turn up in the central office with no issue?"
“You can call ahead if you like. There should be someone there who can vouch for me. Ask for Moody, one of the Longbottoms, Shacklebolt, Savage or Proudfoot. If none of them are in, Crouch should know who I am. Wouldn’t bother him if you don’t have to, though.”
Howlett huffed a barely-there laugh and nodded. “Alright. Martin, deal with him if you would.” She nodded to Crofter, who appeared to have accepted his fate and was now gazing blankly at the ceiling.
“Right you are.” The bearded auror cast something and headed towards a side door with Crofter gliding along behind him like a deflated balloon.
Howlett turned back to Cathy and Lupin. “You wait here. Helen, keep an eye. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She strode off towards another door, through which Cathy could just make out a room with a large fireplace set in the wall before it closed behind her. They were left in awkward silence with the receptionist, who was staring them as if worried they’d suddenly attack, fiddling nervously with her wand.
Lupin cleared her throat. “Listen. I think this is where you can leave. I’m sorted from here, I really am.”
“You do seem to have a lot more control over the situation than I thought you would,” Cathy admitted.
“Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are, I’m taking some very uncalculated risks right now. But if I can get to London from here – hell, even if they don’t vouch for me, they’ll still want me where they can see me. Worst case scenario is I get arrested and held for questioning. I’d still get help for my hand, you’d still be in the clear.”
Cathy nodded slowly. “I believe you this time.”
And she did. Lupin was still sweating and trembling, she was still unsteady on her feet and obviously ignoring a ridiculous amount of pain, but she looked sure of herself. Whatever the significance of those names she’d dropped, they had given an edge of calm to her confidence that Cathy hadn’t known had been missing until now. She was out of damage-control mode, no longer panicking. If anything, she was a little distracted, watching out of the corner of her eye as the receptionist whispered into her hand, gaze darting between the two of them. Cathy considered being concerned, but Lupin seemed to take it in stride.
She put a hand on Lupin’s unaffected arm. “I’m sorry again,” she said. “I hope they can fix your hand. And I hope you manage to sort out… whatever this is.”
“Thank you. Seriously, thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if you two hadn’t helped me. Take care, Cathy.”
“You too.”
They shook hands, and Cathy left the office to head back down the stairs, back to the camper where Judd was waiting, feeling as she went a truly shocking amount of kinship with Alice when she climbed out of the rabbit hole.
“-already broken through, their numbers are more than double what we expected, get as many people as you can out here now!” Ursula Shacklebolt’s voice rang through the office, cutting through the already-mounting chaos as almost every auror in the department argued and fact-checked while they organised themselves into contingents. Her patronus dissolved into silver mist and spun away out of sight.
Savage and Proudfoot were at the centre of it all, trying to stay on top of people’s questions as to why exactly the Death Eaters were attacking some random family in the middle of nowhere, why Moody was already on the scene and where the fuck Crouch was. At least, that’s what Savage was doing. Proudfoot was staring over at Harris where he was arguing with the fireplace they used for inter-office communications.
“You can’t just tell me that and no other information, we need some verification!” he was telling them, half-shouting to be heard over the hubbub going on behind him.
An accented voice that carried a significant note of tension echoed back through the flames. “I said, I want to talk to Moody, Longbottom, Shacklebolt, Savage or Proudfoot,” they said. “Are you any of them?”
“Harris!” Proudfoot called. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Howlett from the Aberystwyth office, she wants to talk to you!”
Proudfoot shoved her way over. “Howlett? This is Proudfoot, what do you need?”
“A woman called Remus Lupin is here and asking to use this network to access your office. She said you’d vouch for her.”
“Lupin’s there? What the fuck? How…?”” Proudfoot shook off her confusion. “Unimportant. Is she alone?”
“She was with a woman, blonde, middle-aged, who apparently just left.”
Not Black, then. Proudfoot frowned.
“Does she have a baby with her?”
“No? Should she?”
Proudfoot ignored that. “How sure are you that she is who she says she is?”
“I’ve never met her before, couldn’t tell you. I will say she isn’t using any concealment or transfiguration magic, I’ve got someone making sure and passing along their notes as we speak. But she seemed fairly sure you would know her – early twenties, scarred face, injured but pretending not to be, terrible clothes-”
“Oh yeah, that’s Lupin. Send her through.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve got an office full of freaked out aurors behind me, even if she tried something she wouldn’t get very far. Send her through.”
“Hm.”
The flames died down briefly, and Proudfoot waited patiently, ignoring Harris while he poked her in the arm with a ‘what the fuck’ expression on his face. After a moment, the fire flared a brighter shade of green.
“Heads up!” she called over her shoulder.
“Proudfoot, what are yo-” was all Savage got in before Remus Lupin appeared in a flurry of ash and corduroy.
“Merlin’s balls, where the hell have you been?” Proudfoot asked, giving her a hand out of the grate and taking in the state of her, cut and bruised nine ways to Sunday with her arm wrapped up in what looked like muggle-standard hospital dressings. “Wow, you look like shit.”
“Yeah, thanks Proudfoot,” Lupin said, not really paying attention to her as she scanned the scene before her. “You heard about an attack already, then?”
“You did as well?”
“Yeah, I don’t know when or where-”
“Right now, the Burrow.”
“The Burrow?” Lupin’s face creased with confusion. “The Weasley’s place?”
“Long story, we’ll catch you up when it’s done, right now we’re scrambling-”
“Proudfoot, what are you doing?” Savage barked, breaking free of the throng and leaving them to sort themselves out. “Wait, is that Lupin? What the fuck happened to you? Where’s Black, where’s the kid?”
“We got separated. Long story,” Lupin shot back. “I’m not actually sure if you lot still want to arrest me, is that what’s happening here?”
“Oh, no, we figured out about Pettigrew, you’re fine. He’s actually the one heading the attack, we should really…”
Proudfoot trailed off at the murderous look that came over Lupin’s features.
“Take me with you.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Savage said hastily. “You’re still technically under investigation since we haven’t had a chance to update the paperwork, and can you even see straight right now? What’s with your arm?”
“Savage.” Lupin’s tone spoke of someone who was already having an atrocious day, and was very close to hitting their limit. “Take me with you.”
“…Yeah alright.”