Chapter Thirty-Six

I wrote to Riddle immediately to ask him to come to see me. I wasn't even sure if that would be quickly enough, but I had to keep my cover in some way, and there was nothing to be gained by keeping James and Lily's secret if everyone knew about it. Riddle didn't call until late the next day, and I wondered if he were trying to score some point over me by keeping me waiting for so long.

'You have news for me?' he asked, glancing to my desk as though he didn't know why he was there.

'Yes, I have news, Tom,' I said. 'Lily Potter is expecting a child.'

'Indeed!' he exclaimed, and even knowing that he knew I still could not detect any insincerity in his surprise, something that should have warned me to be very careful if I ever thought I could tell what Tom Riddle was thinking about. 'A boy?' he asked, and I suspected that at least was an answer he didn't know.

'I have no idea,' I replied. 'I suppose it is a little early to tell.'

'Well, we shall hope for the best then, Severus,' he said.

'What would you have me do?' I asked, trying to force him into the open about his intentions.

'Do?' He looked surprised. 'You have informed me over the past few weeks that we have no real use of our host child for fifteen years, Severus. Would you have me saddled with a babe in arms?'

'Of course not,' I murmured.

'Unless...' he said, robbing me of any false sense of relief I might have had, '... unless you have reason to think that James Potter is unworthy of my trust.' He gave me a level challenging look. 'Or unless you have been lying to me.'

'Not at all,' I replied, ignoring the barb he had pointed in my own direction. 'I was only surprised when Potter saw fit to tarnish himself with Muggle blood in the way he did.'

'Quite,' Riddle responded. 'And yet so convenient for our plans.'

'If it's a boy,' I said.

'If it's a boy,' he concurred.

*****

I should have got Dumbledore to help me with the Fidelius Charm; I know that now, but for what it's worth I doubt that would have made any real difference to the outcome of events.

It was a complex spell, involving not only the Potters, but their Secret Keeper too, and I had to spell the other people they wanted to have access to them peripherally to the main spell. It took almost a whole morning of standing in the rain in Godric's Hollow, until Lily was satisfied that everyone she trusted had been included. I thought the list far too long, and yet I could pick no single name from those whom she had chosen, as a direct threat. Her parents were Muggles, and she always visited them, instead of the other way around, but them apart, it seemed to me that everyone she knew was included in the Charm, although to be fair, none of them could get past the front door without her or James permitting entry... or the Secret Keeper of course.

When I had finished the first part, I then had to bind everyone to the Secret Keeper, and my unease grew when Sirius shook his head.

'Not me, Severus,' he said, sticking his ubiquitous cigarette in his mouth. 'It's too dangerous. My work could make me unavailable for any amount of reasons; I couldn't risk that.'

'Lupin then?' I asked, but the werewolf shook his head too.

'What if I'm needed when it's... inconvenient?' he asked, glancing to the rain-sodden sky.

'I assumed it would be you,' Potter said, a puzzled frown on his face. 'Isn't that the point of all this?'

To say I was taken aback was an understatement. 'I... I cannot do that, Potter,' I said. 'I cannot cast the spell and be a part of it. It's specifically third party,' I added, resisting the urge to add the couple of dozen other parties that Lily had included.

'But... but when I asked you, you didn't say that,' Potter objected. 'Why didn't you say that? Who can we trust enough?'

'What about Dumbledore?' Sirius asked.

Potter made a face. 'Not that interfering old busybody.'

'I can do it,' a small whining voice said from behind Potter. 'I'd like to be of some kind of service, James.'

It was Peter Pettigrew, a man I couldn't stand, but Potter had wanted him included in the peripheral spell as they had been boyhood friends. He had been hanging about all morning, much the way he had hung about Sirius, James and Lupin at Hogwarts, and I'd noticed Sirius barely resist turning up his nose at Pettigrew's ingratiating manner.

'No one would suspect him, I suppose,' Lupin remarked, and that much was true, or so I thought then.

As I finished casting the charm I added a little precaution of my own. It wasn't so much that I didn't trust Peter Pettigrew, more that I detested him, so I Obliviated his knowledge of who had cast the spell, quite probably out of nothing more than spite.

*****

Riddle still feigned no interest in the Potters' child, and I truly believed that he was biding his time in the knowledge that when we needed the boy, if indeed Lily's baby was a boy, that he could find him then. He began to spend more and more time in public, courting the doubters and coercing the weak and frightened, yet polishing his sullied image, and seeming to distance himself from the Ministry's more outrageous actions at the same time. He was remarkable orator, and I have few doubts that many of his rallies were little short of mass hypnosis, as men began to turn against friends and neighbours, pointing their fingers at those who had even slightly diluted blood, in attempts to win his favour and another step up his complex hierarchy. Cygnus and Orion Black were with him frequently by then, as were Darius Shield, and occasionally Igor Karkaroff: Abraxas's friends and Lucius's enemies.

I began to worry that the time would soon pass when I held any feeble sway I might have had over Riddle. I had resisted appearing in public with him, and he had seemed to accept that, but then I wondered if I had allowed him to become too distant, as though in his madness he thought there were two Tom Riddles: the Dark Lord, and Severus Snape's Dark Lord.

I took the step of going to Hogwarts to consult with Dumbledore, but he seemed to be of the opinion, like I was too, that to make any attempt to cut Riddle off from his closet followers would only result in his guard tightening around him, and that did not suit us at all. I knew it was up to me to let him become confident enough of me to call without his guards, or even to let his caution slacken enough to a couple of Death Eaters so that Sirius, Lucius and I could take an opportunity to rid ourselves of Riddle at least. I knew that concerned Dumbledore, that we would only remove a snake's head, and leave the rest of its body writhing around, wreaking whatever damage it saw fit. I knew he worried that someone else, like one of the Blacks, would think his shoulders broad enough to assume Riddle's mantle. We had to get rid of them all, before they got rid of us, and I had an uncomfortable notion that it was going to be a race.

*****

Black and Potter were still at the Ministry, ostensibly heading up two of the death squads, and as the culls began to spread throughout the country they were hard pressed to keep up with the covert evacuations they were actually doing.

It was only when Arthur Weasley called at the manor under heavy disguise one evening that I really understood the depth of the way in which Lucius was double-dealing Riddle too. Weasley had come to see Lucius, but he wasn't home yet, and I stifled my annoyance when he shuffled into my room in that way he had.

'Got a moment, Severus?' he asked, nodding his head eagerly, as though I would be delighted by his presence.

'Just a moment,' I replied much more curtly than I should have.

'I don't want to leave this message with an elf,' he began, 'but it's too important not to leave at all.'

'Yes, yes,' I said. 'Just tell me what it is.'

He drew back at that and seemed to square his shoulders. 'You know, Snape, I'm not a message boy,' he said. 'That said, I do have an important message for Lucius.'

I resisted the urge to strangle it out of him, and bit back the obvious retort about his lowly status. 'Would you please deliver the message... Mr Weasley?'

'Let Lucius know that the documents he left for me were changed.'

'Left for you?' I asked, regretting my initial hostility. 'What do you mean?'

'You don't really know what he does do you?' Weasley accused, leaving me feeling rather small. 'You have no idea what everyone else does.'

'Speak plainly, Weasley,' I replied, and I know that he read that I was backing down.

'Every night Lucius leaves certain sensitive material amongst the general chaos I have to clear from his desk,' Weasley replied. 'We have never discussed this, and there is no formal agreement between us, not even a spoken arrangement.'

'And?' I invited, noticing with some relief that he had sat down, and that I didn't have to backtrack to the extent of asking him to do so.

'Since he has become Minister of Magic, Lucius Malfoy has probably saved around a hundred souls from certain slaughter, by just leaving little titbits of information which we both very well know I will read and act upon.'

'I see,' I replied. 'And how does this not come to light?'

'Much in the way James Potter and Sirius Black's death squads are a sham,' Weasley replied, nodding as I unscrewed the cap of the Glenfiddich bottle and splashed him a hefty slug. 'Burnt out empty houses, funerals with empty coffins, crocodile tears.'

'So what... what is the problem?' I asked, pushing back the all too familiar lump of humility. 'What has gone wrong?'

'I think someone suspects,' he said. 'I had gone through most of the stuff on his desk this evening, and I remembered that I hadn't let Molly know I was going to be late. I went down to send her an owl, and when I came back Cygnus Black was leaving Lucius's office.'

'And?' I repeated, not at all liking where this seemed to be going.

'There's nothing so unusual in that,' Arthur admitted. 'But what is unusual is that there had been another name added to the list of names that Lucius had left me.'

I felt something cold run through me, a feeling of danger that was becoming horribly frequent. 'Can you remember the name?' I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

'Oh, yes,' Weasley replied, 'I can remember the name.'

'And?' I asked for the third and last time.

'Henry Potter,' he said quietly.

'I don't understand,' I whispered. 'I... I mean, why add someone of his own to the list..? What could he hope to gain..? Or prove?'

'If Henry Potter goes into hiding, I'm sure Cygnus has something up his sleeve to implicate Lucius in some type of treachery,' Wesley replied. 'I know he saw me, and I suspect he will have known I was in Lucius's office earlier. I'm sure he has something devious to present to Riddle, something which would bring Lucius down and elevate himself at the same time.'

'You're right,' I admitted, much less grudgingly than I would have done a few minutes before. 'I wonder...' I said, as much to myself as to Weasley, '...I wonder if Henry would join us too.'

'As a Death Eater?' Weasley asked. 'Or should I say, as your version of a Death Eater? Would Riddle accept him? After all, was it not Riddle who had him dismissed from the Ministry?'

I shrugged. 'In truth I don't know from whom that order came. It could just as easily have stemmed from the Blacks; after all, they had aspirations at the Ministry.' I mulled it over again, satisfying myself that if Henry Potter joined us, he would not only save himself from the Blacks' manipulations, but pull Cygnus's teeth too. Whatever we did was going to have to be quick though; I knew that much.

*****

Lucius was late that night; late as we were by the time Arthur left, he even missed dinner, and when he came in he went straight to the library on the first floor, just off the minstrels' gallery. I had been sitting in the drawing room with Sirius and Narcissa and Lucretia, listening to the ladies tell us about their day of visiting, when it occurred to me that I hadn't paid enough attention to what I thought of as their good work.

'Just who exactly are you visiting?' I asked, as some belated suspicion crossed my mind, possibly as a result of Arthur showing me how badly I had underestimated Lucius's part in undermining Riddle's schemes.

'Well...' Lucretia replied, in a way that made me understand she was about to launch into some prepared little speech.

'Do not trouble yourself with the fantasy, my dear,' I said.

Lucretia gave Narcissa a long look, and then one to where Ethel was pottering about in her picture, pretending she didn't know what was going on. 'Really, Severus,' Lucretia said at length, 'if you're going to be tiresome, I shall refrain from discussing our work with you.'

'What work?' I asked, as Sirius sat up straight from where he had been lounging half asleep at the end of the couch I sat on.

'Now, Severus,' Ethel said, 'don't be meddling in other people's affairs. We're doing just fine here.'

'Doing what?' I asked, turning to give my wife as hurt a look as I could summon up at short notice. 'And who are we?'

'We can't just leave everybody, you know,' Narcissa put in somewhat reproachfully. 'And you've got enough to do. Just you keep your eye on Riddle, and that nose of yours out of our work.'

'What are they on about?' Black asked, and I was at least pleased that he seemed to be as in the dark as I was.

'We're just moving a few people to safety,' Lucretia murmured.

'Who?' I asked. 'And where, for that matter?'

'Just the innocents, Severus,' Narcissa replied, flattening her green gown across the swell of her child, as though including him too. 'Just the sick and the old, and the youngest children.'

'But where are you taking them?'

'Here, of course, dear,' Ethel replied, poking her head out of the picture it seemed everyone but me had been in.

I looked into the picture properly and gasped out loud. There were old-fashioned deckchairs sitting on the lawn, with elderly witches and a few old wizards nodding away to one another; and in the background I could see beds on a veranda, much the way the old clinics would let the less poorly patients take the fresh air; and there were women and children playing on the grass, with magical balls and bright blue stars flying around in the black and white picture; and I couldn't think of a single thing to say.

*****

I left them not much later and went to where I knew I would find Lucius. I wasn't surprised to find he was, perhaps not drunk, but well on the way to being so. I felt a stab of guilt that I hadn't just left the ladies when I'd heard him arrive, that I had allowed him to sit up there alone with whatever tortured thoughts consumed him.

'I'm sorry,' I said, hardly realising I had spoken aloud.

He looked up slowly, and I saw it again. He was growing old in front of my eyes, and I hadn't taken the time to notice properly. 'Yes, we're all sorry,' he said, his brow faintly creased in puzzlement.

'Arthur came round earlier this evening,' I said. 'I think you might have a problem.'

'My problems don't really weigh that heavily on me, Severus,' he said, swirling is brandy around in the crystal balloon. 'It's the hate that drags me down.'

I sat down beside him, perhaps to offer him some comfort, perhaps to glean some for myself. 'Why didn't you tell me what you were doing, Lucius?' I asked.

'Haven't we all got enough to do without watching one another?' he asked. 'I had thought the point of working with men you trust was that you didn't have to keep tabs on them.'

'We all need support,' I argued, thinking of time when he had gone there to Malfoy Manor to help me on the night Abraxas died.

'I can't stand the hate,' he repeated, going off on his own tangent. 'What... what do you think this is doing to Narcissa?' he asked bitterly. 'What do you think my child will think of me?'

'Come with me,' I said, not even understanding my words until I realised I had my hand around the white stone, but unlike the day I had taken him to lay his parents to rest, it was the stone's idea that I take him to disturb them.

Sirius was in the hall when we went down the back corridor leading to the stairs to the catacombs. He shot me an enquiring look, but I just shook my head.

It was different to the last time the ghosts of Malfoy Manor came towards us, this time it was as though we had summoned them.

'Lucius,' the ghost of Atticus Malfoy murmured as it flitted towards us.

'Grandfather,' Lucius replied, and I stepped back into the shadows; I was not needed there. 'Grandfather, the last time I asked you if I could speak to my parents, you refused me permission.'

'I did, and with good reason, boy.'

'I need a reason to go on, Grandfather,' Lucius went on. 'I need a reason to turn my other cheek to the hate.'

'You have Narcissa, Lucius,' Atticus replied. 'A worthy and loving wife... and soon to bear you a son, if I am not mistaken.'

Lucius nodded, and I began to wonder if the tales of his womanising were just another fabric of lies woven about him by those who hated him. 'And what will my son think of me?' he asked.

'He will see you as your wife sees you,' Atticus replied, 'as your sister sees you, and indeed the men who call you "friend" see you too.'

I held my breath as two more ghosts floated up behind Lucius, and laid a hand on each of his shoulders. 'Your son will honour his parents the way you honoured us,' the ghost of Valerius Malfoy said to his son. 'Now leave your guilt here, Lucius. As your grandfather said to you once before, it does not belong to you, and does not serve you well.'

*****