Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Sirius dropped his wand to his side and exhaled. 'Well?' he asked. 'How bad is it? Is Lucius all right? Have you left him at the Manor?'

'Bad, yes and yes,' Snape replied, and nodded to Harry's crib. 'Put him back in his cot, and come downstairs.' He saw Sirius hesitate. 'He's safe here, Black, safer than anywhere else on earth, I suspect.'

Sirius nodded doubtfully and laid Harry down; he hadn't woken at all, and apart from snuffling as he settled again, he didn't wake then. Sirius felt the cold space where the baby had nestled against him.

He listened to Snape without interrupting him, becoming more and more alarmed as he described his meeting with his recently resurrected brother. Sirius wasn't worried for himself particularly. Regulus wasn't the first person to want him dead, and if he survived this threat as he fully intended to, he wouldn't be the last. He knew Snape could probably look after himself too, and he had hidden Harry in such a way that only the three men who would willingly die before betraying him could get to him. Sirius was worried about Lucius: how he would cope when he didn't produce the results that Regulus wanted, how he would manage if Severus didn't get to the Manor quickly enough one day, what would happen if Regulus, or someone working for him, came across Lucius somewhere else.

'We've hung his arse out on a flagpole, haven't we?' he said bitterly.

'I said I'd protect him,' Snape replied, 'and I shall.'

'How?' Sirius asked. 'How are you going to stop him coming up against someone hostile for the next ... I don't know ... thirty years?'

Snape looked away. He hadn't quite worked it all out yet, but he was sure he could do it, for a bit at least, to get over this next while and let the dust settle again. He felt Black's hand on his, felt the swoop of warmth at the contact. When he looked at him again he finally understood what he had been denying to himself. He felt his lip twitch without his permission; maybe Sirius felt the same. The long slow undemanding build-up had been good for both men. Maybe it was right to acknowledge him in a time of crisis; he had no way of knowing when fate would snatch one of them away. He let his eyes rest on Black's for a rare unguarded moment, an unspoken reply to an un-issued invitation.

'Whenever he leaves the safety of the Manor, we shall swap identities,' he said quietly.

'Shit.' Sirius looked away. 'You'll have to move to the Manor.'

'I'll change places with Lupin,' Severus agreed quietly. 'It will keep Lucius safe.'

'What about you? What about Harry?' Sirius asked and let his eyes look to the ceiling to where the baby slept above them; it was better than watching the regret cross Snape's face.

'The boy will be safer in that room than anywhere else.' Snape gave a self-deprecating little laugh. 'Perhaps I wasn't ever destined to hold on to anything I cared about,' he said, and Sirius couldn't remember ever hearing anything so bitter.

Sirius looked to the ceiling again. He couldn't understand how all of his careful planning had come tumbling down around his ears so quickly. 'But I only did it for you,' he whispered. 'I brought him here for you. You can't leave us now.'

Severus looked at him, first in confusion, and then in mild shock. He tried to speak, but couldn't think of anything to say. 'You what?' he gasped at last.

'I brought him here for you,' Sirius admitted; his shattered plan had seemed so perfect, so flawless. 'The day I brought you from court I thought about it. Dumbledore didn't like it at first, but I could tell he'd been trying to work out something for the boy himself.' He shrugged uselessly. 'I thought it would give you back something of James. Mind you,' he said, with a poor attempt at his Gryffindor grin, 'I hadn't expected to bring him back this week. They dropped that one on me like a bombshell.'

Severus sat wordlessly. He had no way of expressing what he felt; that someone had done such a thing for him was too big to contemplate. He had never imagined what it would be to experience such a selfless act; nothing in his life had prepared him for how he felt ... gratitude was too mean a word. He watched Black stand and walk slowly to the back of his seat, felt his hands on his shoulders and wondered why they had waited so long, as he felt his breath in his hair, on his neck.

'You don't have to go tonight, do you?' Sirius whispered.

Severus shook his head; no, he didn't need to go that night. 'You manage to slip out to see Lucius, don't you?' he asked, surprised that he sounded like his cool self.

He felt Sirius nod. 'Sometimes.'

'About four times a week, but who was counting?' Snape replied dryly.

'Oh, I wasn't with Lucius all those times,' Sirius said. 'I usually went to see Harry ... well, not to see him, just to stand outside and be near him. No one really notices a black dog, no one except Minerva a couple of times,' he admitted. 'She enjoys materialising at my side from nowhere, but I think that's just to see if she can make me yelp in fright.'

Severus felt the breath catch in his chest; how badly he had underestimated so many people.

*****

It was a different man to the one who had taken him when he had been here the first time. This Severus needed to give as well as take, but not in the way Lucius gave like a generous whore; this was infinitely more subtle. His gift was pleasure, excruciating in its intensity, almost unable to be borne, until a further frontier had beckoned, leaving even the impossible behind.

Sirius lay below him, conquered but not crushed, in the chains of willing enslavement. His was an honourable surrender, humiliation without degradation, his body but a vessel for the bequests of a benevolent master of his game. His chest still heaved, although his hammering heart had already begun to slow to a more measured beat. He closed his mind to thoughts of whether James had lain with Severus like this; somehow he didn't think so.

He felt Snape stir as he too returned to himself: spent, exhausted as Sirius was, but mindful of the fact that the man below him might need to breathe in the near future. Sirius pulled into the heat of his body again, not wanting to lose the contact, as Snape moved over onto his back, wisps of black hair plastered to his pale face.

'Can I ask you something?' Sirius whispered. 'I was going to ask Lucius ... but it didn't seem right. It felt like eavesdropping.'

He could tell Snape knew instinctively what this was going to be; he almost felt him clam up. This was private; it was Severus's own dark secret. He suspected the only person who knew anything about it was Lucius, and Sirius had a feeling he knew very little.

'You know what I'm going to ask you, don't you?' he murmured when Snape didn't reply.

'About Alexus?'

'Was that his name? Your brother? I didn't know, sorry,' he said. It felt personal to Sirius now too; a name, Alexus, not just any brother, or a mystery boy lost in the forgetfulness of time ... Severus's brother, Alexus.

'I can't talk about him.'

'Okay,' Sirius said in acceptance, but he knew one day Snape would. 'I just wondered if he were still alive ... and where he was.'

'No, he's ... he died.'

Sirius let the silence drift; it was heavy, loaded with questions. He pulled Snape a little closer. 'I shouldn't have asked, I'm sorry,' he said in an attempt to close the door.

'How did you know I had a brother?'

Sirius told him what he remembered Lucius saying, how his memory had been jogged at Spinner's End. 'It was just an unfinished story,' he admitted, 'and then, well, I noticed that you ... I don't know, you seemed to disapprove of the way I felt about Regulus. I just wondered, and there was no one to ask but you.'

He let the silence draw out again. He knew Snape had been relieved that Lucius's indiscretion had been so long ago, when it could hardly even have been deemed as such. Sirius didn't think he was asleep; his breathing was too slow, too measured. He suspected he was coming to terms with the fact he had given his anonymous memory a name, that it was demanding its right to be remembered, that he had already begun to unburden his story, to share its weight. He let him come to it in his own good time.

He listened without comment as Severus told him things he knew he had never told another living soul, things Sirius suspected he did not even know that he knew. Things about James and Lucius and Alexus, and Spinner's End and Hogwarts, and the Death Eaters: little slices of other people's lives, all jumbled up, all mixed in a pie labelled Severus Snape; as though he were the sum total of other people's experiences of him, of whatever thing they had stolen from his life. Sirius said nothing for a long time after he knew Snape was finished. He wondered if he would ever have the courage to do the same thing, to bare his soul's tortures as Severus had done, for another to pick over.

'What age was he?' he asked eventually, as he sensed the tension drain away. 'What age were you?'

'He was twelve, and I was fifteen.'

That surprised Sirius, made him realise that there were even more unfolded horrors. Alexus had never been to Hogwarts that he knew of, and he would certainly have noticed another Snape slipping in; there must have been a reason for that.

'They wouldn't let him go,' Snape answered the unasked question. 'My father wanted him to stay at ... at Spinner's End. He said he could learn everything he needed to know there, and he didn't need any other damn wizards in the family,' he said flatly. 'He was right about that much.'

Sirius knew the hesitation had been his reluctance to call it home. There was just one more thing he felt he wanted to know, something he knew wouldn't hurt Severus. 'Did you kill your father?' he asked into the darkness.

'Yes,' Snape replied, and Sirius could hear the degree of satisfaction in his voice. 'But only indirectly. I frightened him into drinking himself to death.'

That was good, Sirius thought; that much at least was good. 'Can you put it away, Severus?' he asked. He turned his head to look at Snape at last, watched him nod, unwilling, unsure.

They were quiet for a long time; but for the occasional pressure of a hand, or the brief caress of lips on a shoulder, they might have been asleep.

'This is what we're going to do,' Sirius whispered at last into the long black hair. 'We're going to give Regulus a little dose of his own medicine.'

'I had wanted to suggest that,' Snape confessed dryly. 'I must say I was not sure how to ask you to stage your own death, so soon after your brother's tragic demise. It has been such a trying time for the family.'

'You can move Harry's Charm, can't you?' Sirius asked, pleased that Severus seemed to be more like himself again. He vowed to himself that he would never refer to anything they had talked about again, unless Severus brought it up.

'No,' Snape admitted. 'But it will allow me to create its sister in a location of my choosing, as long as it approves.'

'So we're all moving house?'

'I've heard Wiltshire is pleasant at this time of year,' Severus replied, and even in the darkness Sirius could see his smirk, 'as long as one can avoid the natives as much as possible.'

*****

'All of you?' Lucius looked across the laden breakfast table as Lupin ambled in, giving Sirius, Snape, and the small bundle Sirius had in the crook of his arm, one of his mildly enquiring looks. 'What d'you say, Lupin?' Lucius went on, as the werewolf stopped to tickle under Harry's chin.

If either of the other two men were surprised that Lucius had seen fit to ask Lupin, they didn't show it.

'I think he looks like Lily actually,' Lupin replied.

'Yes, yes, you would, of course,' Lucius said testily. 'But I meant about Severus's master plan.'

'What is it?' Lupin asked, as he slouched comfortably and familiarly into a seat, and helped himself to coffee. 'Personally, I think they should all move over here. We can get Dumbledore to arrange one of Minerva and Andromeda's fancy Charms to keep part of the Manor inaccessible, the same way Grimmauld Place is. That way I don't have to rush all over the place looking for Severus when we need him ... he'll be right here.' He looked at Lucius's blank expression. 'Oh, don't be difficult for the sake of it, Lucius. You've got rooms here you've never been in.'

Malfoy sighed theatrically. 'That was the master plan.'

'In that case, I approve. It's a good idea,' Lupin said with a smile, before turning to Sirius and winking at him in a way that suggested he could handle Lucius Malfoy, probably better than anyone else. Sirius had a suspicion that Malfoy only pretended not to notice; he was quite intrigued.

Malfoy's attention was reluctantly diverted from his breakfast as an elf handed him four scrolls. He looked absently at the first three, laying them aside, and tapped the fourth one across his hand. 'This is from your brother, Black. I confess that even before I open it, I am somewhat relieved that he has seen fit to send an owl rather than deposit himself in my drawing room. He gave me quite a turn.' He unrolled the scroll and read it, frowning as he did so. 'It's just a reiteration of what he told you last night,' he said to Snape. 'I wonder why he saw fit to write. I trust it is not because he knew he wasn't speaking to me. You didn't make a mess of things, did you?'

Sirius flashed Snape an anxious look, but he didn't look terribly concerned as he scanned the letter for himself; he hadn't even deigned to respond to Lucius. 'He is backtracking,' he said with satisfaction. 'He has couched this in very different terms to the way he spoke last night.'

'It's still a death warrant,' Sirius said flatly.

'Indeed,' Snape replied, and seemed to lose interest as he looked to the window to where a great grey owl was trying to find a way to open the snib from the outside with her hooked yellow beak. He let her in, and detached the scroll from her leg, unsurprised when she accepted his gift of a piece of bacon rind from Lucius's plate, but made no move to leave. He unrolled the scroll and began to read it out loud, as Lucius gave the owl a threatening look when she eyed his plate again.

"My dear Severus,

Regulus Black."

'Too fucking right it's inconvenient,' Sirius snapped. 'Who does the snotty little upstart think he is? A time of your choosing as long as it's noon tomorrow, indeed.'

'Tell him you're not going, Severus. How can we both go at one time?' Lucius added. There was something panicky about his voice. For a man who had come through the war years on the tightrope Lucius had walked, he seemed to be terribly nervous about the peace; perhaps that was why.

'What are you going to do?' Lupin asked when he saw that neither Sirius's nor Lucius's comments had any effect on Snape.

'Either you or Black will accompany me, if I decide to agree to going at all. Perhaps you would be the better bet, Lupin; your turn of phrase is less likely to arouse suspicion.'

'Fuck you, you arrogant prick,' Sirius snapped. 'I can speak just as well as Lupin can. I'll just stick a few marbles in my mouth; it'll be no bother after that.'

'That is as may be, but I would not care for your brother to recognise some little nuance or mannerism as your own,' Snape said with a smirk, 'not when you are number one on his hit list.'

'Well, that's all right then,' Sirius agreed grudgingly, and gave Lupin a wink. 'Just ask me anything you want to know about him.'

'I do, however, agree with Black.' Snape nodded to Lucius, ignoring Sirius's attempt at humour, whilst acknowledging his input. 'I, for one, do not intend to jump just because some ... "snotty little upstart" ... says I should. He's not ordering me around. Get one of your elves to bring me some parchment until I fire off a few lines. Green ink, if you don't mind.' He seemed oblivious to the fact that he wasn't above ordering people around himself.

"Regulus.

Severus Snape."

'That's better.' Lucius smiled his expensive smile from the top of the table as Sirius finished reading out Snape's jagged scrawl. 'I confess to being rather pleased that everyone is here. We were a little isolated out here, weren't we, Lupin?'

This time Snape and Sirius exchanged a quick glance. For one moment it was though there were something going on between Lucius and Lupin, but one look at the werewolf denied that. He was sitting with Harry tucked into the crook of his arm, paying little or no attention to anything else. At that moment a small person scuttled into the room on his hands and knees; he was so remarkably blond that he couldn't be anyone other than Draco Malfoy. He was a couple of months older than Harry, and had noticed the other baby. He crawled across the room and hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, up Lupin's leg. Lupin scooped him up into his other arm, and the two boys regarded one another warily, until Draco pointed at Harry and clapped his hands together, before reaching over to grab a fistful of Harry's dark brown hair.

Snape watched them, as Harry began to cry; and Draco began to cry in sympathy, as Lupin untangled the hair from his fist; and Sirius made to rise from his seat, as though he were about to issue some sort of divine retribution to the little blond boy; and Lucius reprimanded him, saying Draco was only a baby, and Sirius should stop acting like a Gryffindor bullyboy; and Lupin told them both to sit down because they were upsetting the boys; and the babies began to howl in earnest. Severus wondered if this was what it felt like to be a family.

*****