Chapter Nine

I found myself at a loss; there was so much I needed to say, and yet I could not find the words. Of course, the fact that I had an audience of three people more than I would have liked, did not help me. Andromeda had risen from her seat, and she took my two hands in hers, in that way of hers, and kissed me in an exquisite parody of the way Riddle had kissed me just minutes before, and I took it to mean forgiveness, if nothing else. I was too slow to stop myself thinking that it was not the way she would have kissed her Ted, too intoxicated by her presence not to take the moment to regret again that we were not alone, to see if I, too, could kiss her the way I had yearned to for so long that it had just become an aching part of me. It gave me the perfect excuse to sit down beside her though when she went back to her settee, and I was almost surprised to find that one of her hands was still in mine, and I never wanted to let it go, and then it was gone, leaving a void where it had been.

I felt Black watching me, and I wasn't fool enough not to realise what was going through his mind, and I suspected, despite his telling me he had not said anything to Andromeda before dinner, that he had said something after I had left. I felt a ridiculous kind of outrage welling up inside me that I had to stem quickly; it was something to do with it being my place to tell the woman I loved that I loved her. Yet I had not bothered to do that; I had left it to one man to take her from under my nose, and another to tell her I had loved her.

But thoughts of Black gave my scattered wits an opening, and I was grateful for at least that much. 'It seems you are wanted by Riddle almost as much as I am,' I said to him, pretending to myself that I didn't notice Andromeda's very warmth crossing the tiny space between us, pretending not think how I could close that space without seeming to.

Black said nothing, and I began to wonder just how much they had been able to see or hear from the other side of that photograph frame. I suddenly wanted to know what it had been like; if it had been three-dimensional, or a flat black and white place, as devoid of depth as it was of colour, but Dumbledore had begun to speak.

'He seems to trust you, Severus,' he said, moving from the fireside to sit beside Sirius on the opposite settee, and for once I didn't begrudge either man the fact that they had picked my favourite seat. 'I thought at first that he didn't, but you handled the question of Lucius being unable to find the house very well, indeed, in a way that makes me suspect Lucius will be loath to come back for another failure.'

'Do not underestimate Malfoy, Dumbledore,' I replied, 'nor overestimate his loyalties. I sensed veiled dissention in him, and I am beginning to suspect he may have an agenda of his own tucked away somewhere. Riddle certainly hinted as much. Could you hear everything of what was said?' I asked, changing direction.

The old man nodded. 'Yes, in fact in an odd way we could even feel the atmosphere, the tension. That was one of the things that drew me to send for Andromeda when he mentioned her. She is not safe in the outside world. She will have to be hidden.'

'What about Ted?' I asked, grasping the excuse to turn to face Andromeda, and managing not to choke on the man's ridiculous name. 'Will he be safe?'

'Oh, yes,' Andromeda replied quickly. 'He works in the Muggle world, Severus, and he can hide himself there.'

'How did you do it all so quickly?' I asked. 'Riddle was not here for long, a bare hour at the most.'

'You were hours,' Sirius replied, with his frown in place. 'In fact, I'm starving. I've been here all day and I haven't had a thing to eat.'

'Rubbish,' I remarked. 'I quite clearly remember you eating a scone.'

'Was that today?' Black snapped back. 'It doesn't feel like it,' he muttered, and I could see his point.

'Ethel has a talent for stretching time and dimensions,' Dumbledore said. 'It did feel like quite some time, Severus, although I know what you are saying is true. I summoned Fawkes to go for Andromeda,' he said, as though that explained everything, 'and Ethel kindly allowed her permission to enter through her picture. Anyway, for tonight we are secure; Andromeda is safe, and she will remain so until her child is born, and for however long afterwards as needs be.'

'At Hogwarts?' I queried, I could think of nowhere else really safe.

'With the children of Death Eaters?' Dumbledore scoffed. 'I hardly think so, Severus.'

'Where then?' I asked, mentally going through the safest places I knew, like the Longbottoms' home, and the Burrow, and the few other staunchly anti-Riddle campaigners I could think of.

'We thought of the Potters' family home,' he replied. 'It is protected by a Fidelius Charm, I believe, and the Potters are totally dedicated to our cause.'

'Too dangerous,' I replied, dismissing the reasonable option out of hand, as though it were my place to do so, as I thought of an alternative I wondered I had not thought of before. 'Too obvious. I have a far better idea.'

'And would you care to enlighten us?' the old man asked. 'Or were you thinking of spiriting her away yourself?'

'I shan't need to do that,' I replied. 'Where better to hide than under your enemy's nose?' I said, enjoying my moment for more reasons than I hoped they would guess. 'She must stay here.'

'Has your talk with Riddle softened your brains?' Dumbledore asked. 'He has just shown us he can call here at any time ... he has just done so.'

'I think he's right,' Black put in. 'This is the last place Riddle will think of looking ... and he has the safety of Ethel's picture if anyone unexpected calls.'

Dumbledore began to nod slowly, trying it this way and that, his head beginning to move more vigorously as he satisfied himself. 'You are right,' he agreed at last. 'This is the safest place.' He turned to Ethel, who had said nothing at all since Riddle had left, but just sat nodding to herself as she stared into the flames of the fire. 'Can you hide them both, if needs be?'

'Of course I can, dear. Did you doubt that?' she replied, after a tiny hesitation that I doubted the others noticed, apart from Dumbledore, of course. She turned to face the room, and I fancied for a moment she had conversed with someone else, someone unknown, before she replied, and wondered, unlikely as it seemed, if she too had a master.

'Has anyone thought to ask me?' Andromeda spoke up from my side, interrupting my thoughts, a faint trace of something not quite hostile, but clearly indignant, lacing her voice. 'I think I should like a say in this matter.'

'Of course, my dear,' Dumbledore replied. 'Is there somewhere safer ... perhaps somewhere you would prefer to stay?' he asked.

I felt the scald of disappointment, the all too familiar taste of rejection, as she eyed Dumbledore coolly across the room. 'No, not really,' she replied. 'I merely said that I should have liked a say. As it happens, I agree with Sirius,' she said, and turned to me, and I wondered just how often my emotions could stand being turned upside-down in the space of day. 'And Severus,' she added. 'I think the choice is wise, and I have more than myself to think of.' She glanced down to the still imperceptible swell of her unborn child, and it took me no little effort to stem the hot rush of envy that threatened to rise and choke me.

'That's settled then,' Black replied with some evident relief. 'We'll stay here. I'm okay with that.'

'We?' I asked, noticing the strangled tone in my own voice. When Dumbledore had asked if Ethel could hide them both, I had assumed he meant Andromeda and her child.

'That was another of the things I came to see you about in the first place,' Black admitted. 'I'll have to stay too. I'm not sleeping in the rain beside a dustbin with Lupin again. I've had enough of that for the last two days,' he concluded, with his annoyingly easy Gryffindor grin, the one that I had heard was reputed to melt the hearts of all and sundry; well, not mine, not today, thank you very much, I thought, rather more viciously than was appropriate.

'You're certainly not bringing him here,' I snapped, totally at a loss as to how my scheme had managed to come to fruition and fall apart in the space of a few moments. 'You can stay at the Leaky Cauldron, or some dive in Knockturn Alley, if the werewolf is with you.'

Black laughed. 'Get over yourself, Severus,' he said, in that cultured drawl of his, the one which suited him so well that I had no doubt it was no longer feigned; after all, he'd been practising it since his third year at Hogwarts. 'If you promise not to notice I'm untidy ... just sometimes, of course,' he added quickly, grinning again, as though he were already quite at home, 'I'll promise not to notice you spend much of your time drunk.'

'I do not,' I snapped back, even though I did; if the true were told, my ability to read and work whilst I had a goodly part of a bottle of malt whisky lining my stomach impressed even me. Then my thoughts stopped short again as Andromeda laid her hand on my arm, and I turned to her, feeling the frisson of even that small touch flooding the pit of my stomach in warmth that reached further than it really should have.

'He is only teasing you, Severus,' she said. 'We shall all get along just fine. I shall make sure he behaves,' she said, throwing Black an affectionately amused look that I grudged him more than was reasonable. 'You do have guest bedrooms here?' she asked me, her eyebrow rising in what looked vaguely like challenge.

'Of course,' I replied, a split second before Ethel enlightened me, although bedroom wasn't really a term I wanted to deal with in front of anyone else, not where Andromeda was concerned. Then I found myself doing something I hadn't done before. I reached out to Ethel's mind, the way she had reached out to mine so often of late, and suggested that perhaps it might be an idea if these phantom bedrooms became some sort of reality.

"Just this once, dear," she retorted back to me. "I'm more accustomed to making the suggestions though."

Ethel stood from her little chair and left the room, not before throwing me a reproving look. I watched her go, and found Dumbledore following her progress too, frowning after her. He waited for few moments, seeming to cast his mind out towards the hall, as though checking we were not being eavesdropped upon.

'How closely linked is she to your mind, Severus?' he asked.

'I ... I'm not sure,' I admitted, puzzled by his concern. 'Why?'

I felt the oddest sensation, as though he were speaking to only one part of my consciousness, and then realising that was exactly what he was doing. I wasn't sure then just how I did it, but I found I too was able to slip my thoughts aside, as though compartmentalising them from the rest of mind, but not in the same way I could close my mind down through Occlumency, and something quite different from the way Ethel and I communicated. This was something infinitely more subtle that I intended to explore later. "You don't trust her?" I asked.

"It's not a matter of trust, Severus," he replied, and it was only then that I noticed that neither Black nor Andromeda seemed aware that the old man and I were even having a conversation. "I just want you fully remember that whilst she was indeed Godric's wife, she was also Salazar's sister."

I nodded my understanding; he was telling me that Tom Riddle had almost the same relationship to her as I had, and that he was afraid she may be playing our two sides against some middle ground. And I remembered the thought that Andromeda had interrupted, that Ethel's staring into the fire had disturbed me in some way, and I found that unknown frightened me. It frightened me that if I had to hide Andromeda in a hurry that I could be putting my trust in the very person who could betray her when we most needed loyalty; perhaps putting up with Sirius Black's presence would be a price worth paying after all.

"Are you saying Andromeda, and Black for that matter, are unsafe here?" I asked, not bothering to outline my specific concerns, it was enough that he had his own doubts for now.

"I confess I do not know, Severus," he replied. "Let me think about it at Hogwarts. I shall speak to Fawkes and the Sorting Hat, and perhaps Nicolas Flamel; he knew her well. Between them I'm confident I shall find the answer."

I knew no time at all had passed, and that for all Dumbledore's assertion that Ethel could stretch time and dimensions, he was also able to do the same thing. I could hear Ethel's footsteps still climbing the stairs, as the old man began to slip from my mind, and I pulled away from his. He nodded to me once, in a kind of parting thought. "A very rare and useful talent, Severus,he said. "I was unsure that you had mastered that. Unusual in one so young."

I was unaware myself, but I wasn't about to tell him that, although on reflection I'm fairly sure he knew. He stood to leave shortly after that. Ethel had come back downstairs, and I was confident that she didn't know that we had talked about her behind her back.

"She doesn't know." Dumbledore's thought slipped into my mind as he made his way into the hall, and I pretended not to notice that the green carpet, which had admittedly been the colour of the Leaky Cauldron's infamous pea soup, had been replaced by polished Spanish mahogany.

"We shall keep this between us then." I sent the thought back, not that there was really any need to reply, but I wanted to check that I hadn't overestimated whatever new skill I had found. Ethel made no show at all of knowing that she was being discussed when I returned to the living room. It would have to do for now; I had no way of knowing whether she chose to ignore the fact for her own ends, and just found I had something else to worry about.

*****

I hadn't been into the kitchen since Ethel had made her tea, what seemed like days ago, but had in fact only been that morning. I managed not to make any show of surprise at the huge area it had become, pushing back the childish resentment that she seemed to be taking over Spinner's End rather more thoroughly than I would have liked. The floor was flag-stoned and scrubbed looking, and the mullioned windows looked out onto a torch-lit garden I didn't have. The crossed overhead beams were hung with gleaming copper pots and pans, and utensils upon whose use I wouldn't have ventured opinion. All around the walls ancient oak dressers were stuffed with jars and bottles and brown papers bags of I knew not what, and the smell of roasting meat issued from a large iron cooking range. In the middle of the floor was a round table of what looked like burred walnut; it was already set for four people.

Black had sat down, shedding the long leather coat he still wore to the back of his chair, revealing a confection of dark reds and purples which, whilst seeming overdressed and somewhat overdone, also suited him in an odd way.

'Oh, you've been busy ... good,' he said to Ethel, as though with relief that the imagined onset of starvation wasn't about to manifest itself into the real thing.

'Hasn't she just?' I commented, refusing to look in her direction as she began to ladle soup from a black cauldron.

Andromeda had sat down opposite her cousin again, and I wondered if she enjoyed looking at him. I resisted the urge to compare his dashing debonair Gryffindor charm, however effeminate that might have been, to my more staid way of dressing, and I wondered just what message one's attire really sent out to others. Did my myriad of tiny buttons, marching as they did along the cuffs and up the front of the frock coat I often wore, and even the white silk shirt I favoured that day, warn would-be invaders that there were obstacles in the way? Or perhaps the message was even stronger, more forbidding: stay away from me; I am closed.

Ethel had laid a plate of soup at each of the places, and sat down at Sirius's side where a variation of her odd little chair had appeared, leaving me my preferred option of being close enough to touch Andromeda. I wasn't sure what to expect, or how to conduct myself. Ludicrous, I know, for someone as sophisticated as I pretended to be, but the social graces I had always prided myself upon had deserted me, and I was left to either make up some ridiculously painful monologue, or make some pretence of eating my soup. Fuck it, I thought sourly, lifting my spoon, wondering why it was that no one else seemed to be uncomfortable; then again, it had been a long day, and they were probably hungry.

*****

At last Black pushed away his pudding plate, having eaten more than I would have thought possible for one human being, and stood up. 'I shan't be back tonight,' he announced. 'It's full moon, and I want to spend the rest of the night with Lupin.'

I thought about that for a moment, thought about how our low opinions of other people tend to make us feel they have not a shred of pity in their souls, and yet this was obviously a longstanding ritual, one which made me somehow ashamed of my judgement, reminding me of the way I so often felt misjudged by others. 'The moon will be up,' I said. 'Will he not already be secured?'

'I know where to find him,' he replied, pulling on the leather coat again to hide his sartorial excesses. He glanced once at Andromeda, and then gave me a long level look I didn't want to attempt to translate.

I knew where he would find Lupin too, the same place I had found him some eight years before. I nodded my understanding; he would go to the Shrieking Shack as his alter ego, he would be safe enough. And then another quite terrifying thought struck me somewhere around the middle of my stomach, and it was all I could do not to ask Black to take Ethel with him, so that Andromeda and I could be truly alone together.

I felt Andromeda watching me as Black left the kitchen, but I didn't turn to her, suddenly feeling self-conscious and gauche. All the small talk, such as it had been over dinner, had really come from Black, and it hadn't been much of an effort for me to make pretence of conversation, but now I was left without either props or script to make some type of endeavour of my own. It took me a moment to understand that Ethel seemed to have disappeared, Black wasn't hiding eavesdropping somewhere, and I was indeed completely alone with Andromeda ... for the first time in my adult life.

I tried to quell the flood of apprehension that I would make a mess of what I had so unexpectedly been given the opportunity to say. I still hadn't looked to where she sat at my side, not directly, and the longer I took, the more painfully obvious it would be, but I needed to compose myself, just to steal a few seconds to make sure I did it properly this time. As it happens, it didn't matter.

'You never came for me, Severus,' she said quietly, and I could feel her turn to me, and I had to turn to her now. 'I waited for so long, but you never came ... and then I just thought that you were in love with Lily ...' She trailed off for a moment, her blue eyes holding mine, flashing angrily. 'Why ... why did I have to find out from someone else? Why did I have to learn from Sirius that if I had waited longer still...?' She broke off again.

I shook my head in confusion, stunned by the implication of what she had said. I had no answer to the question I had asked myself a thousand times since I had come back from Malfoy Manor. I found I was watching her stand, and begin to move away from me towards the door to the living room, and I knew then that if I let her go that it would not matter if she lived under my roof for another ten years, she would be lost to me from that moment, and forever.

I have no idea how I forced the words from where they threatened to explode in unspoken fragments in my chest, but I did; they were just two, after all. But they had to hold so much: my peace proposal, my hopes and aspirations, and my castles in the air. This was no rehearsal, and I would be judged on this performance alone. If I failed there would be no encore, just a curtain falling on an empty stage.

'Andromeda, wait.'

*****