Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Regulus went up the stairs again. He wondered when Sirius would be back; he'd like a long serious word with his older brother. He hoped Lucius hadn't taken him on his word and killed him yet; that would be a trifle inconvenient. Anyway, he didn't particularly want to have Sirius killed just now. If Sirius had the Potter boy, he might end up back in Dumbledore's hands if he died, just when he seemed to have slipped out of them. Having Sirius killed hadn't been his reason for calling on Lucius anyway; he had only wanted to check if it were indeed true that the werewolf had taken up residence with the smug Slytherin, and to see if Lucius knew anything about the Charm which had excluded him from Grimmauld Place ... and of course, the current place of residence of the Potter brat. He had not imagined just how interlinked two of the answers would be.

He let his mind flit to the werewolf and Malfoy, as unlikely a combination as there was; he wondered what was in it for Lucius, perhaps he was amused by a bit of rough, he thought with a disgusted twist of his lips. He would let Malfoy squirm a bit more, and send him an owl tomorrow to let him know that it had now become inopportune to kill Sirius. It would be unwise to deviate from his master plan; there was no real point in having one if he didn't intend to follow it. So much of his planning depended on things settling quietly back to a pre-war footing, and Lucius Malfoy doing his bit; in fact Regulus had only been tempted to come back to Britain when Vernon Dursley got in touch with him.

Perhaps it would be better to keep an eye on Lucius for a while though, now that he was here anyway, just in case his absence let Malfoy forget to whom he was answerable. That was one thing he was just a little uncomfortable about; Malfoy usually had so many irons of his own in the fire that there was rarely room for anyone else's. Regulus was finding it difficult to come to any hard and fast decisions; there were too many pieces missing, that and the fact that the constant battering on his mind of Voldemort demanding to have his own ideas recognised, was becoming very trying. Sometimes he found himself wondering whose thoughts he was thinking; it was quite disconcerting.

He found his thoughts slipping to Severus as he unknowingly passed the room Snape had occupied up until a few nights before, when he had returned to Sirius's bed. Severus was a dark horse in all ways. Regulus had been stunned when Sirius had let slip that he was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, that was until the embryonic scrap of inhumanity that was Voldemort had informed him that he had been acting as his spy, just before Regulus had shut him up for a while, by taking what he needed himself and shipping the rest off with that idiot Karkaroff, hopefully to moulder into dust, being worshipped by the sycophantic fools who watched over him.

Regulus had tried to work it out. Sometimes it sat comfortably and other times it didn't; there were too many contradictions: the Sirius connection, the Potter brat, James Potter himself, if that were indeed true. And yet Snape seemed, on the face of it at least, not to have curried favour in any quarter since Voldemort had been brought down; in fact, he had appeared for a time to be more interested in going to Azkaban than saving his skin. But he had killed Peter Pettigrew, and every time Regulus factored that little item into his equation he felt the unease. He was left with the distasteful notion that Snape had indeed been having a relationship with James Potter; it was the only way it all stacked up ... unless Snape was his enemy, and that didn't suit Regulus at all.

He found himself walking back along the upper hallway, stopping at a door and frowning; for some reason it looked nearer the bedroom door next to it than it had in the past. He tried to recall what it was; a storeroom, a cupboard, whatever it was it was locked, and nothing he tried would open it. He went into the room next door and frowned again. The room went back as though the other door should open into it too; he went back into the corridor to check his eye had not been deceived. He wondered why he had not known there was a secret chamber in this part of this house of secrets, but it was new of course, that was why he had noticed the door in the first place. He had an insight that someone had been hidden there; he wondered if it had been the Potters' son ... perhaps he was still there.

'Kreacher,' he shouted downstairs.

The elf shuffled up the stairs, and gave him a baleful look.

'What is behind that door?'

'Doxies,' Kreacher whispered loudly. 'Kreacher has hidden them.'

Regulus kicked him and made his way back down the stairs, berating himself for becoming so paranoid. Damn it, where was Sirius? He would have liked a word with him. It was quite late when he came to terms with the fact that his brother wasn't bringing the boy back that night, and even later when it occurred to him to ask the elf when he had actually left.

'Two days ago, Young Master,' Kreacher said with a sly grin.

Regulus closed his eyes. It was his own fault; he should have known by now that he had to be very specific. He ran up the stairs and into Sirius's bedroom, pulling open his wardrobe door. The ancient mahogany gave way grudgingly, revealing the fact that wherever Regulus's brother had gone, it didn't look as though he was coming back for a long time.

*****

'I should have told the fucking elf to stay at home,' Sirius muttered again; he'd been going on about it for a whole day now, and everyone would have forgotten about it if he hadn't kept bringing it up himself. 'I can't believe I forgot.'

'You were in a hurry, Sirius, don't beat yourself up,' Lupin remarked, tapping a spoon on a boiled egg, and managing not to shoot Snape his version of a warning glare, which admittedly wasn't up to much anyway. 'It's almost become boring.'

Sirius gave him a hurt look and then grinned as something seemed to occur to him. 'At least he knows what to say if anyone asks what's in the nursery.'

'What did you tell him?' Lupin asked.

'I told him to tell anyone who asked him that it's full of Doxies.'

Snape rolled his eyes. 'Was that the best you could do, Black?'

'Actually yes,' Sirius snapped. 'I didn't even hear you coming up with an idea at all.'

'Quite,' Severus snarled back. 'I made the monumental error of assuming some things could be left up to you. Now behave, Black, you are putting the boys off their breakfast.' He looked back down to the task he had taken in hand, and the small boy blinked back up at him and opened his mouth. 'In fact eat up your own; you'll need your strength for the cleaning you have to do today.'

Sirius gave him a hard flat look. 'I suppose I'd better bring him back here,' he muttered. He didn't really want Kreacher at the Manor, but at least he could keep his eye on him, and the elf couldn't refuse the call of the master of the House of Black. 'I'll wait until after breakfast ... I wouldn't like anything else to put you off.'

'Don't you ever think?' Severus asked blandly, and yet another spoonful of egg yolk disappeared down Harry's throat, as the boy watched him, seemingly only blinking when absolutely necessary, in order not to take his eyes off Snape for any longer than he had to.

'Yes, and right now I think I've had enough of your smart mouth.'

'Oh, stop it!' Lupin interjected. 'Just listen to the two of you.'

'I agree.' Lucius raised his head from where he was sorting his morning mail into that which he would read and that which he wouldn't bother to open; it was an assortment of owl post and Muggle mail. 'We're not used to noise and bickering at the breakfast table, are we, Lupin?' He glanced across to them, then looked to where Lupin was trying to persuade Draco to eat, before dropping his head again to sift through his correspondence. He stopped only when he got to a scroll addressed with the now familiar hand of Regulus Black. He scanned it with a puzzled frown on his pale forehead.

'What's wrong,' Sirius asked. 'Who've you to kill now?'

'No one, no one at all. He seems to have changed his mind,' Lucius replied. 'You have been given a reprieve.'

Sirius watched Snape look up sharply from where he had been feeding Harry the softly-boiled never ending egg; there was something as pleasingly unselfconscious as it was unaffected about the way he carried out the mission, admittedly using quite a lot of magic to remain an egg-free zone himself. Sirius thought that Harry looked like an expectant baby bird, watching Snape carefully as though wondering whether to let him know that he should be dipping the stag horn spoon back into the yellow stuff. He looked across at where Harry's white-blond counterpoint sat on Lupin's knee, in exactly the same pose; they looked to Sirius like a bizarre pair of sparrow chick bookends.

'Has he indeed?' Snape said, depositing Harry and the egg on Sirius, and relieving Lucius of the scroll. 'I had wondered at the order; it didn't make sense in the first place. As Dumbledore said, it was out of context with his long slow plan.' A smirk crossed his harsh features. 'Now write him a nice letter, Lucius, and tell him he is too late.'

'I'd better not call the elf after all,' Sirius said with a grin, as Harry decided he'd had enough egg and spat the last mouthful down his shirt.

*****

Sirius watched over Lucius's shoulder as he wrote the message Snape dictated to him; he hoped Severus wasn't just poking Regulus with a stick for the fun of it. He knew he was a little concerned that he hadn't had a reply to his own message; the time of Regulus's proposed meeting at Godric's Hollow had come and gone, and they were well into the week that Snape had offered to meet him at Florian Fortescue's. It looked as though Regulus didn't intend to submit to someone else's pressure any more than Snape did. Sirius got the uncomfortable feeling that Snape was hoping to rile him into coming head to head with him; he would have liked to place a bet on that little battle for supremacy.

Lucius scrawled his name at the bottom of the letter and summoned his eagle owl. When he wafted through the door, he had company; Albus Dumbledore had come to tell Remus Lupin of the tragic death of his friend Sirius Black. But for the fact that Sirius was sitting at the end of the table, it would have been a truly emotional scene.

'It will run on the front page of the Daily Prophet tomorrow, Sirius. Please remember not to leave the Manor now,' Dumbledore murmured. Sirius could see he was still unhappy about the situation, and that wasn't allowing for the fact that he didn't know that Regulus had written to Lucius to withdraw his request; he had a funny feeling none of the tight-lipped men around the table were going to tell him. 'And now I have news of a serious nature, I'm afraid,' the Headmaster went on.

Sirius was going to ask what could be worse than his own death, but something about the old man's gravity stopped him. 'What's happened?' he asked instead.

'There has been a mass breakout at Azkaban,' Dumbledore replied. 'Evan Rosier, Barty Crouch Junior, and Bellatrix, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange have all escaped.'

'God, I hope they don't come here,' Lucius remarked. 'I hate Bella.' He gave Dumbledore a look of appeal. 'They don't know, do they? You promised they wouldn't.'

'I am not in the habit of breaking my word, Lucius,' Dumbledore replied.

'Know what?' Sirius asked.

The Headmaster glanced at Lucius before he answered, but the blond Slytherin just shrugged and cast an anxious look to where his own son now sat playing on the floor with Harry; there seemed to be a lot of hitting and shrieking involved. 'It was Lucius's evidence that put the Lestranges in Azkaban in the first place,' Dumbledore murmured.

Sirius wondered if he were the only one who noticed that the Headmaster had almost ignored the two little boys playing on the floor; he thought that was strange, so strange that he was about to ask Dumbledore why, until he caught the warning look the old man gave him.

*****

Regulus unrolled the scroll with a frown. He had told Malfoy that he would get in touch with him; he hadn't expected Lucius to presume to write unsolicited letters to him. He hoped Lucius's attitude wasn't going to become tiresome; he hadn't cared for the flash of superiority he had shown just as he left the Manor. He hadn't cared for the cool way Lucius had listened to him at Godric's Hollow three months before either, but his sources reported to him that Malfoy had indeed embarked upon some sort of courtship with Dumbledore, and Regulus had contented himself to pass it off and wait for results.

Lucius's detached arrogance could, of course, be bravado; then again it could be the legendary core of steel that had managed to preserve some last vestiges of respectability for the House of Malfoy during the final mad days of Voldemort's reign, when the Dark Lord had begun to show signs of what Regulus recognised as insanity, and he had begun to make his own plans. And yet he knew Lucius would not be at Dumbledore's beck and call, any more than he was at any man's; it had been Lucius after all who had agreed to get Regulus back into mainstream wizarding society to spy for the Death Eaters, he'd been with him in the Three Broomsticks when he'd met Sirius. Lucius played his own game; it was just up to Regulus to make sure the odds were stacked against him when the final hand was dealt.

Voldemort had fouled up his own plan by picking that very time to dispose of the Potters. What a fool he was, Regulus smirked to himself; he had ever been the one to rush into things, not content to let his tide come in in its own good time. He wasn't going to make that sort of mistake; it could take ten years, maybe even more, and Regulus wasn't in any hurry. He smiled to himself, unrolling Lucius's message, as he felt the part of Voldemort that was within him gnashing his teeth in impotent fury.

"My Dear Regulus,

Lucius Malfoy."

Regulus hurled the screwed up letter across the kitchen in fury he knew he could only direct at himself, then forced himself to be calm. He would not do what Voldemort had done; he would not embark on a trail of useless destruction in a knee-jerk reaction to something that was his own fault. Perhaps he would have been better just telling Lucius he had called at the Manor to find out if he knew where the Potter boy was; sometimes the truth was easier than the web of deceit. But for now he would let Malfoy do the wondering; he had a bigger fish to fry.

He cleared a space on the kitchen table. Sirius might have taken his clothes on his final departure from Grimmauld Place, but he seemed to have left his mess behind. Regulus had a letter to write, and he was toying with just what tone he would set. Perhaps condolence would be trite, dictatorial wouldn't work; he contented himself that a simply worded missive was his best course of action.

"My Dear Severus.

I have been unable to respond until today and trust that you are still available to meet me at Florian Fortescue's this week. I hesitate to suggest a day ..."

... No that wouldn't do; he wasn't going to hesitate to suggest anything. He started again.

"Severus.

I am writing to inform you that I can be available for a short time on Thursday at Florian Fortescue's in Diagon Alley. I shall, of course, be under Charms. If you could pick table twelve outside, I shall meet you there. I do not know if you will be under Charms yourself, so if I see a man alone, I shall presume him to ..."

... He stopped again; why was he explaining himself? What need did Regulus Black have to explain himself to anyone, far less a half-blooded pauper? He knew the answer to that; Regulus needed Severus Snape, he needed his power and his brains and the fact that Snape was the only man he knew of who would probably be able to fuse Voldemort's magic within the awareness he already held. Of course, there was the added bonus that the magic was quite possibly neatly within Snape's grasp.

Regulus smiled to himself; perhaps his brother had proven to be of some use to the cause at last, it was just a pity he wouldn't be around now to witness it. His brow creased in suspicion he knew had come from Voldemort's awareness inside him, and he found himself on his feet, walking into the hall.

'Mother,' he said to the still, flat portrait, watching in disgust mingled with satisfaction as it awoke and gave him a fawning look. 'Mother, I have been told that Sirius is dead. Is that true?'

Her eyes went flinty with rage. 'Yes,' she hissed, 'the traitor to my womb and your father's loins is dead.'

He winced at her choice of words, and turned away satisfied, to finish his letter.

*****

Snape opened his eyes and let them drift to the steamed up bathroom window. He'd almost been asleep; the warm water scented with cinnamon and orange blossom had pervaded his senses to the extent that he was nearly nodding off. He had noticed that Sirius's cleaning efforts had mainly concentrated on using his magical skills on getting the sunken bath usable, without bothering to notice that he hadn't objected much to that himself. He let his toe dig the man opposite him in the ribs.

'Open the window, Black, you have an owl,' he said lazily.

Sirius looked round. 'It's for you.'

'You can't know that,' Snape argued mildly.

'Of course I do; I'm dead.'

'Not everyone knows that yet though. Now let the owl in.'

'Why can't you do it?'

'Because I am quite comfortable here, and it may be cold out there,' Snape said reasonably, 'and you're on top.'

'Only when it suits you, I notice,' Sirius snapped and began to haul himself out of the warm water. 'You're one lazy tart. You're as bad as Lucius,' he grunted, as he flung open the window.

The owl wafted over to where Snape sat in the deep water with his hand already reaching out to her. 'Hurry up and close the window, Black. You're letting a draught in,' he said, laying the scroll on the chair beside the bath, as the owl settled on the towel rail to await a reply. He watched as Sirius began to dry himself; he was wearing a petty wronged look and seemed to have slipped into a sulk. 'Don't be like that,' Severus said with a frown. He hadn't meant to break the mood; he just hadn't wanted to get out of the bath.

'I'm not being like anything,' Sirius replied and nodded to the scroll. 'Are you going to open that?'

'When my hands are dry. What's wrong, Black? Regretting shuffling off your mortal coil already?'

'Don't get too clever, Severus,' Sirius replied. 'I'd prefer if you didn't end up like James.'

Snape nodded slowly and took the towel Sirius handed to him, reluctantly separating himself from the warm water; it really had felt very good. He sensed the pale blue eyes watching him. He didn't know what to make of Black at all, but he suspected he might be struggling to be under the same roof as Lucius, without any of the fringe benefits he might have hoped for. Whatever it was, Severus had felt the ... coolness wasn't quite the right word ... but he felt that Sirius had gone off the boil since he had arrived there, and Severus did not intend to be on the receiving end of a rejection. He knew he had backed away himself, until that very afternoon in fact, until Sirius had decided to join him in the vast marble sunken bath he had put so much effort into. The whole bathroom reminded Severus a bit of the Slytherin prefect's bathroom at Hogwarts; he had a suspicion that was what Sirius had modelled it on and wondered just which Slytherin prefect had entertained him.

He unrolled the scroll and read it quickly, stifling the little thrill of danger that he thrived on, as he stifled the regret that he had not got out of the bath to get it himself. 'Thursday,' he said. 'At Fortescue's.'

'I'm going with you,' Sirius replied.

'You can't,' Snape said, shaking his head. 'Anyway, I want you to stay with Lucius. Regulus seems to have forgotten that he wanted me to bring him along, unless he got a separate invitation.'

'You're not going on your own. I'll cast a nice Charm, perhaps a curvy blond for you for a change?'

'Black, Regulus would see under any Charm you care to cast if he had any suspicion you were yourself ... and he will be checking. The little fact of your death being reported will not completely satisfy him; he will have doubts if he is half as smart as he thinks he is. You're not going.'

'Yes,' Sirius replied, 'I am.'

*****