Chapter Two

Chapter Two

'I can bring him to you,' Malfoy remarked to Sirius as the wine waiter hovered at his shoulder. He turned slightly, addressing the man without bothering to look at him. 'The St Emilion 1974.'

'The Grand Cru, Mr Malfoy?' the waiter enquired solicitously.

Lucius looked at him this time, his eyebrow raised only slightly. 'Is there another one?'

Sirius waited until he had had his little show of lapping the gravy from the platter of the Muggle world he pretended to despise. 'I sense there is a rider,' he said as the waiter walked away, snapping his fingers at a minion, letting the world see that he too was at the top of his own particular pecking order.

'If I do,' Lucius replied, 'we both know that the search for me will be next. The Aurors are beginning to trawl for minnows, Black; the big fish have either all been fried or have fled to safer waters.' He sipped at his neat vodka and let his pale grey eyes meet Sirius's.

'I'm sure you've got a point somewhere in that manifesto,' Sirius said as his hors d'oeuvres were laid in front of him.

'I want immunity from prosecution.'

'I'm sure you do,' Sirius replied. He spread a little bit of foie gras on the warm brown toast, topping it with a small piece of pickled pear; he wasn't sure whether his taste buds or Malfoy's obvious doubts gave him more pleasure.

'And?' Lucius enquired. 'Do I get a quid for my pro quo?'

'And I'll see what I can do,' Sirius replied, as though he needed to think about it. 'Did you know about Snape and James?' he asked, hoping to catch Malfoy off guard.

Lucius said nothing for a moment, and Sirius had a feeling the affair had been a bone of contention between him and Snape. 'Yes, of course I knew,' he said at last, lifting an oyster shell to his mouth in an attempt to hide the fact that his lips had twisted, in distaste or bitterness; Sirius wasn't quite sure which. 'It was all over though,' he said, once he'd allowed the oyster to slide down his throat. 'It had been for a while.'

'Are you sure about that? Lupin doesn't think so.'

'I know for a fact, Black,' Malfoy replied. 'He had been staying at the manor for weeks, Severus I mean, and I know he ignored Potter's owls. He wasn't going back to him this time ... not since the boy was born.'

Sirius digested that; for some reason he had assumed that James would have been the pursued, perhaps that wasn't the case. 'Why did they split up? It's not as though it weren't a well kept secret,' he pressed, sensing he would get a lot more out of Malfoy than he would out of Lupin.

'I don't think this is any of our business, Black,' Lucius replied, disappointing him, as he laid down his last oyster shell. 'It was over; I know that much.'

Sirius smiled. 'Severus knocked you back, didn't he?' he said in sudden insight that Malfoy's bitterness stemmed from the fact that he had been passed over, perhaps not for the first time.

'My personal business is just that. It has no place in this conversation,' Lucius snapped, his temper rising. 'Now do we have a deal?'

Sirius nodded. Malfoy had already begun to distance himself from Voldemort; ever one to pick the winning side, he had taken the opportunity of Narcissa's death to make overtures to Dumbledore. He was low on the priority list; Sirius knew he could swing this with Dumbledore to get Snape in before there was a warrant issued for him. He sat back as the waiter cleared the plates and whisked away the imaginary crumbs from the pristine white linen. He could see Malfoy was ill at ease; he wondered just what else he had on his mind, perhaps it was a clandestine fuck in the back of his Mercedes.

As the waiter approached the table again another thought occurred to Sirius. 'Are you hiding Regulus?'

Malfoy looked genuinely surprised; Sirius suspected it was his first unrehearsed emotion of the evening. 'I thought he was staying with you.'

'He was,' Sirius replied, 'but by the time Remus and I put the fire out and checked Peter had been properly burnt, both he and Snape had taken their leave.'

'That was careless of you.'

'Well, we had to make sure that we didn't need to light the fire again,' Sirius said, letting a grim grin of satisfaction cross his face, 'but he'd made a good job of it.'

'Yes, he would have,' Lucius replied.

'I was wondering if you knew why Regulus would have taken the time to shop Severus to the Ministry before he dropped out of sight.'

'I haven't got the vaguest idea.' Malfoy frowned, but Sirius could see his mind was elsewhere; he thought he needed to know what was troubling Lucius so deeply. He let the waiter go about the fussy business of laying the main course in front of them. He certainly couldn't fault the choice of restaurant; he knew his Muggle stuff, did Lucius, none of the Leaky Cauldron's dodgy pea soup for the Master of Malfoy Manor.

'What's wrong, Lucius?' he asked at last, as he watched Malfoy toying with his steak tartare, moving it about the plate as though he'd made some attempt to eat it.

Malfoy pushed his plate away, and for just a moment Sirius thought he was going to stand up and walk out. 'Voldemort,' he whispered instead.

Sirius saw the fear he'd seen in the Three Broomsticks on the day James and Lily died. 'He's fled the country, hasn't he?' he asked.

Malfoy nodded. 'He may have fled, Black, but that hasn't stopped him trying to call his faithful around him again.'

'How strong is he?'

'He's very weak,' Malfoy replied, shocking Sirius by unbuttoning the gold snakehead buttons on his cream silk shirt cuff, and pulling the sleeve back to reveal the Dark Mark scorched into the taut creamy skin of his left arm. It was faint, but for all that Sirius could see the abomination of the snake creeping under Malfoy's skin as it undulated through the eyes of the skull. 'But if he succeeds in gathering those true to him, who are still at liberty, he will not remain so for too many years.'

'And you think Regulus is one of them?' Sirius asked. 'I thought he wanted out?'

'He didn't want out, Black,' Malfoy snapped. 'We wanted him taken out.'

'We? Who are we?' Sirius asked.

'Me for one. Since Narcissa was killed it has only been a matter of time before he continued culling those whom he considers less than able to carry out his most, shall we say, extreme commands.'

'And Regulus was one of them?' Sirius asked quietly. 'What was the extreme command he had to carry out?'

'He had to kill you,' Lucius replied. His grey eyes were concerned, uncomfortable, not emotions that sat easily on his sculpted features.

Sirius felt the knot in his throat as he swallowed. 'And he didn't fancy that idea?'

'Oh, I'm afraid he may have fancied it, as you put it, but we pulled him before he was put to the test.'

Sirius looked down. 'We? That's twice you've said "we". Who else was my mystery defender?'

'I think you know the answer to that, Black, though why he ever bothered with any of you I really do not know.'

'We know Voldemort's not gone forever,' Sirius said, turning the conversation again to more comfortable ground. For a moment he forgot he was speaking to a man he should consider to be a mortal enemy, but being faced with Lucius's urbane looks and polished manners always caught him slightly off guard. 'Can you resist that?' he asked, nodding to where Lucius was rebuttoning his cuff.

'Just now, yes. But later, in the years to come ...' He trailed off and let his pale grey eyes rest on Sirius again. 'I need Severus's help for that, Black. I need to know I can keep Voldemort away from my son, and Severus is the only one strong enough to really resist him. Look at the years of practice he's had.'

'Not that long,' Sirius replied before he really thought about it. 'He only turned spy a few months ago.'

'Severus Snape had never changed sides,' Malfoy said with a flash of anger. 'How could you think him so shallow?'

'What do you mean? He's still a Death Eater?' Sirius flared in renewed shock and stood, pushing his chair back angrily, without noticing that one or two of the diners at closer tables had turned to watch him. 'I'll kill him with my bare hands if he had anything to do with James's death.'

'He was never a Death Eater, Black,' Malfoy hissed, and it was his turn to don the familiar cloak of superiority again. 'Sit down; you're making a spectacle of yourself.' He shook his head in what looked to Sirius like disgust. 'How little you know him; none of you ever knew him, not even Potter. You didn't deserve what he did for you, you shower of ungrateful bastards.'

Sirius found himself mouthing in confusion as he slumped back in the seat. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'And to think he once harboured a fancy for you,' Lucius said with another shake of his head. 'Before Potter that was. He was only a boy at the time ... and you all treated him like shit. God, if you knew how I hated you all for that.'

'I don't know what you mean,' Sirius repeated.

*****

Kingsley Shacklebolt interrupted Sirius's meeting with Dumbledore as he slipped in the door of the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts. Before he closed it Sirius could see another two men standing in the small anteroom at the top of the stairs. One of them was Sturgis Podmore; he had a man chained to his right hand, it was Severus Snape.

Sirius hadn't wanted to go to arrest him; he didn't think he could face him since his last meeting with Malfoy, not since Dumbledore had confirmed what Lucius had told him. The old man had been remarkably unmoved by Sirius's accusations of keeping him, and indeed the rest of the Order, in the dark, explaining the necessity of doing so. The more reasonable his arguments and explanations had become and the more Sirius understood them, the angrier he had become. He vented his own fury at everyone around him until Lupin walked out of Grimmauld Place without taking the time to borrow anything, and Kreacher fled under the floorboards, leaving him no option but to allow the anger to come home to roost.

'You found him, I take it?' Dumbledore asked, and heaved a sigh that Sirius knew was no small measure of regret.

'He wasn't hiding,' Shacklebolt replied. 'He answered the door of his family home.'

'Has he said anything?'

'Nope,' Kingsley said and frowned. 'We did exactly what you said. We asked him nothing, and he obliged by saying nothing in return. What will we do with him?'

'Take him to the Red Tower,' Dumbledore replied. 'I shall see him there shortly.' He watched Shacklebolt close the door.

'You will get him off, won't you?' Sirius challenged. 'You promised.'

'That is rather up to him, Sirius,' Dumbledore replied and gave him an annoyingly knowing look.

*****

Barty Crouch swaggered to the middle of the floor, waiting until the chatter of the assembled scribes from the "Daily Prophet" and the foreign wizarding press died down. It was the last case of the morning, and he supposed that lunch was more on people's minds than the eventual fate of the man who had only done what the rest of the respectable wizarding world wanted to do anyway; he felt sure the verdict would slip through almost unnoticed. He suspected that what had been arranged with Dumbledore and the rest of the Wizengamot would satisfy even the brimstone-breathing hardliners. They should surely have sated their bloodlust already this week, what with sending some fifteen Death Eaters to Azkaban and hinting darkly that the same fate awaited the rest of them, as the Aurors continued to round them up like so many cattle.

Crouch placed his hand on his hip and let his black robe fall dramatically behind him, rewarded by the renewed pop of flashbulbs. 'Bring in the prisoner,' he said for the fifth time that morning. He was mildly surprised at the babble of excitement; it seemed that Severus Snape's destiny was of more interest to the assembly than he had assumed.

He watched as Snape walked into the courtroom between Kingsley Shacklebolt and Sirius Black. He was chained between them, his head high, looking steadfastly ahead as the flashbulbs popped again, this time, preserving the image of the Death Eater turned spy, and Order Member turned murderer, for posterity.

'Severus Snape,' Crouch began, 'you have been brought before this court to answer the charge of murder of one Peter Pettigrew, by the means of setting the deceased on fire.' He paused for theatrical effect. 'How do you plead?'

'Guilty,' Snape said tonelessly, raising his eyebrow slightly in what looked to Crouch like veiled amusement.

Damn, Crouch thought to himself; Dumbledore had warned him of this. He lifted the sheaf of parchments from the table at his side, and waved them at Snape. 'The testimonies of the witnesses to this act state that you acted in self-defence. Is this true?'

'No,' Snape replied, and the murmur of excitement grew as the courtroom sensed more fresh blood. 'I killed Peter Pettigrew because he was a gutless spineless piece of shit, who betrayed the people who had seen fit to befriend him throughout his worthless existence.'

Barty Crouch banged his gavel to silence the renewed ripple of anticipation that flowed round the courtroom; lunch, it seemed, had been postponed. 'The court has been led to believe he had turned his wand on you, Snape.' He tried gamely to feed Severus his lines. 'I have testimony to support the fact that he was about to kill you.'

'Kill me?' Snape replied incredulously. 'That slimy little rat couldn't kill me. How dare you insult me thus.'

Crouch had to bang his gavel several times on the block on his table to restore order this time. He was becoming just a little put out with Severus Snape; it wasn't his place to steal the limelight.

*****

'That's enough, Snape,' Sirius growled from his side. 'Enough of the martyr shit.' He'd already threatened Snape with everything he could think of from a one-way trip to Azkaban, to death by slow poisoning; he knew one had had as little impact as the other. He knew Severus Snape had already decided he was dead anyway; he didn't seem to care what took up the time between now and his body ceasing to function. For some reason Sirius hadn't fathomed out, he wasn't going to let him do that.

'Are you now trying to tell the court that Peter Pettigrew was unarmed, Snape?' Crouch asked as he leaned forward, squinting in suspicion. Sirius could tell he was becoming a little pissed off with Snape; he could hardly blame him, he was a bit pissed off himself, he was one intractable bastard when he wanted to be.

'I said no such thing,' Snape replied.

'Ahhh,' Crouch said in a hurry, as though more to stop Snape digging himself a deeper hole than necessary, than any real satisfaction. 'So it was self-defence as we already know.'

There was a murmur of protest from the bench. Sirius hoped Crouch would get on with it. He knew a few of the hardliners had only been coerced into letting Snape walk by Dumbledore's assurance that he had been acting as an extension of his own orders, and that Pettigrew's death was a political assassination. Sirius suspected that one was wearing a bit thin; every Auror with an itchy wand hand had pleaded the same at one time or another over the past two weeks since the Dark Lord had fled, himself included. The peace was taking almost as long to mop up as the war had; it was providing nearly as many casualties too.

Sirius could see that Snape had decided to keep his own peace; he hadn't defended himself, but at least he didn't seem intent on hanging himself now either. Sirius just wished it weren't because he couldn't care less what happened to him.

He winced as Aurelius Marchbank stood from the bench; to Sirius's mind he was one of those bleeding-hearts who turned executioner when he felt the occasion merited, and was all the more ruthless for it. He had already spoken out about his belief that Snape should not be spared.

'Are we to understand that the testimony of the witnesses has to be accepted?' Marchbank asked with a meaningful look at Sirius and one at Lupin, who sat in the public gallery with Arthur Weasley. 'And that the testimony of the accused has to be disregarded?'

'The accused is clearly confused,' Crouch responded.

'Aren't we all?' Marchbank asked, and he too strode forward for his own piece of limelight, as the press murmured to one another and the public gallery tittered in amusement. 'In that case, I have a witness of my own to call in this matter, Crouch,' he delivered in what looked ominously to Sirius like triumph.

'No further witness are required,' Crouch said and banged his gavel again in a vain stab at regaining some authority over the proceedings, as the flashbulbs gobbled up the spectacle of the prisoner standing with a cool smirk on his face, and the Wizengamot Vice President and the Clerk of the Court argued his fate amongst themselves, seeming to have forgotten they were on the same side.

'I demand to call Regulus Black as an eyewitness to what actually happened at the House of Black on the day in question.' Marchbank's strident voice overrode the general chaos of sound that had broken out.

'Order in this courtroom,' Crouch yelled, his eyes bulging and the veins in his forehead popping dangerously. 'Or the prisoner will be taken from here so that this matter can be deliberated in private. Order, I say,' he screamed, as he banged his gavel, missing his block and hammering a large chunk of wooden trim from his table instead. He was quite clearly as mad as a hatter. He turned to Marchbank once the noise settled to a level he felt he would be heard over. 'Regulus Black? Would that be Regulus Black, the Death Eater, who seems to have mysteriously disappeared since we had word that Voldemort fled abroad? Would it be that Regulus Black?' Crouch asked Marchbank, as though he were slipping his last ace from his sleeve.

Marchbank was clearly disappointed. 'I was led to believe you had him at the Ministry,' he said. 'He was at the Ministry when I questioned him.'

'Yes, well, he's not there now,' Crouch snapped. 'He had come in to volunteer information; he wasn't in custody. However, if you have any idea as to his current whereabouts, I suggest that you inform the Wizengamot immediately or you may find yourself in contempt of this court.'

Marchbank backtracked in confusion, as Sirius winced again. The world's press were now watching this display become a childish bickering match; they were going to want a result. He caught Dumbledore's eye and saw he felt the same.

'Gentlemen,' Dumbledore said as he hefted himself to his feet in a rustle of dusty silk robes. 'Gentlemen, we all have an enormous strain on our shoulders, what with trying men we thought we knew and forgiving strangers we did not. Let us return to the matter in hand.'

'Quite right, Dumbledore.' Marchbank seized on the lifeline as a more respectful hush descended on the court. 'This has been a trying week for us all.' He gave a sly look at Crouch. 'None less than Barty. But,' he said, 'I cannot find it within me to allow the prisoner to go free when such a big question remains unanswered and such a key witness is missing.' He nodded over to where Snape stood between Sirius and Kingsley, with the air of man who is a watching a little tableau being acted out for his personal amusement.

'What is your suggestion?' Crouch asked, seeming to feel he was on slightly safer ground as the press bench leaned forward in anticipation, and the scribes scratched furiously on their parchments, recording every detail for the annals of the court.

'Custody until Regulus Black can be brought before this court,' Marchbank replied.

'I cannot send an untried man to Azkaban,' Crouch objected.

Dumbledore had remained on his feet, nodding in his sage and placating way at both men. 'I agree,' he said, 'with both of you. There is an option which should be acceptable to the court in a case like this.'

Marchbank looked somewhat mollified. Crouch looked relieved; he didn't seem to have noticed that Dumbledore had taken over.

'Let the prisoner be placed under house arrest until such times as Regulus Black can be found and questioned by this court,' Dumbledore said. 'However, as the chairman of the Wizengamot, I am putting a timescale on this matter. If Regulus Black is not found within two weeks, the previous testimony will be brought to bear.' He nodded to Crouch, who obligingly banged his gavel.

'House arrest,' Crouch repeated like a parrot now. He looked around the court; his feverishly glittering eyes alighting on several candidates, all of whom looked quickly away. 'I need a volunteer for house arrest.'

Sirius Black released the magical chains binding him to the prisoner, and stepped forward from Snape's side.

*****