Chapter Thirty-Eight

'There was no such order from the Wizengamot, not even a meeting,' Dumbledore said, confirming what I had already suspected. 'That said, Severus, Lucius has few friends, and I could not find anyone willing to rescind the charges laid at his door.' He shook his head. 'The death squad orders were, after all, issued by Lucius... he is the man with the mandate.'

I raked my hands through my hair as Black stuck yet another cigarette in his mouth, but Dumbledore hadn't finished.

'There was another meeting though, a quickly called one,' he said, nodding to Sirius and Potter. 'There wasn't time to call you two when Arthur heard from his Ministry sources that Lucius was under arrest.'

'The Order of the Phoenix?' Black asked.

'Yes, the Order, Sirius,' Dumbledore replied. 'Many of them want to move now. They feel, and I understand their thoughts, that the time for waiting is over, the time to take the fight to Riddle has arrived.'

'What about Lucius?' I asked. 'We can't just forget about him as though he is already a casualty... just another statistic.'

Dumbledore's look made me understand that he felt that was exactly what Lucius had become. 'Lucius has few friends, Severus,' he said, repeating his earlier sentiment.

'Perhaps,' Potter said, surprising me a little, 'but he has Severus and Sirius... and truth be known, over the last while, me too.'

'Are the Dementors still guarding Azkaban?' I asked.

'Yes, the Dementors and a few, shall we say, lower orders of human beings,' Dumbledore murmured, and I knew what he meant. I knew the kind of thugs and hooligans who were the warders there; they were men who were one short step away from being on the other side of those bars. 'But I forbid you to go to Azkaban, Severus, without Riddle's consent. It would be foolish to court any more suspicion that you have already done.'

'You're not in a position to forbid me to do anything, Dumbledore,' I snapped back at him, 'any more than Riddle is a position to grant me consent.' I turned to Black, catching the half smile of approval he shared with Potter. 'I want to carry out a quick experiment, Black,' I said, crossing the space between us, and plucking a couple of hairs from his head before he got the chance to realise what I was doing.

'That was sore,' he gasped, wincing as though mortally wounded, but I wasn't listening to him; someone else had my attention.

"It's quite possible," Ethel said into my mind, breaking her silence for the first time as she leant out of her picture. "The real trick will be making sure that Sirius doesn't follow you, dear." 'Now don't be such a baby, Sirius dear,' she said fondly, in a way that did nothing to hide the anxiety she shared with the rest of us. 'Godric would be very disappointed if his brave Gryffindors had become such...'

'Wimps?' Potter finished for her.

'Not the word I would have chosen, James dear, but you've got the idea.'

*****

I knew the logistics of the Animagus change, but I'm sure Black over-complicated issues in the hope I would just relent and let him go to see Lucius himself. 'I do not need to get the curls on the coat exactly as you want,' I muttered, 'I just need to slip past the Dementors.' My stomach was already roiling from the Polyjuice; I was allergic to the damn stuff and was not looking forward to the aftermath my guts were already threatening me with.

'Have you got the potion?' Sirius asked me for the tenth time.

'Of course I have,' I snapped. 'The reason I am going to Azkaban is to give it to Lucius in the first place.' I couldn't wait any longer. I had no way of knowing if Lucius had been permitted to keep his own clothes, and if he had not he would not have the Veritaserum buffer secreted about him, and if he didn't, he would already be suffering the shocking withdrawal symptoms I had experienced on the few occasions I had tried to wean myself off it. That apart, Lucius telling anyone who asked what he wanted them to know was poor enough defence for him, for him to spill every secret he had under a truth serum would mean death for all of us: his wife, my wife, his baby son; I doubted anyone would be spared Riddle's wrath.

I was just about to leave when Narcissa and Lucretia came into the room. Narcissa was exhausted, pale and wan, red-eyed from weeping, and despite the beloved babe with the shock of white-blond hair she carried, none of the joys of motherhood shone on her pretty face, and it struck me again just how young and vulnerable she was. She crossed to me and handed me a tiny locket.

'It has a lock of the baby's hair inside it. I've charmed it so that when you leave this house the only people who will be able to see it are you and Lucius,' she said, whispering so the words would not catch on the lump in her throat. 'Make sure you give it to him, Severus... just in case.'

I kissed her tiny hand and took the locket, avoiding Lucretia's troubled look.

*****

I couldn't Apparate to Azkaban, not without a Ministry permit, and I didn't want to risk Arthur getting caught issuing one, so I raised an Invisibility Shield about me, one that would at least fool the wretch of a boatman who was ferrying warders on and off shifts. Once I got to the other side it didn't matter; I had slipped into Black's Animagus form. It was a while before the guard at the front gate changed to just Dementors, but when it did I was able to slip past them with an ease that still surprises me. All I had to do then was find Lucius, and I thought I would have to do that by scent alone.

There is no over-estimating the horrors of Azkaban, no exaggeration of the maddened howling and wailing from behind those bars, or the stench of despair. I was glad of the dog form; at least the sense of human suffering was lessened. I couldn't sense Lucius at all though, not mentally, or even by scent, which above the stink of piss and refuse and ordure was hardly surprising. I felt panic well up inside me as I wandered the dripping rock-walled corridors and down into the bowels of the very rock that Azkaban had been carved into four centuries before. I knew that the higher risk prisoners were kept underground, and until then I had no idea of what the depths of despondency were, what hopelessness meant; it was something so meaningless that it didn't even have a name.

I padded down stone steps, ducking into ever present shadows whenever I heard something other than the tortured moans of desperation. It was a place where even fear cowers from some greater evil. I had reached the fifth level below ground, the Roman numeral for five had been carved into the rock lintel, when I felt him. It wasn't his scent, or a conscious thought, and I almost fancy it was the white stone letting me know somehow that he was there, or what was left of him at any rate. I had just rounded a bend, when a door grated open on iron hinges, and then slammed shut again, the echoes bouncing off the uncaring rock.

'He's to get nothing else tonight,' a rough gravely voice said.

'If he's lucky,' another voice replied with a harsh ugly laugh.

'Just be careful,' the first voice replied. 'Riddle wants him presentable for his trial, no marks on his face, and he's got to be able to stand unaided.'

'I'm sure the mighty Dark Lord can fix him up,' the second voice said.

'And I'm sure that neither one of us wants to be the one to give him any extra work,' the first voice said, as the two men drew nearer. 'He's in a bad enough way anyway. Let's not court trouble we don't need.'

They passed out of hearing, and I slipped further down the passage to the door they had slammed shut. I was going to have to be very careful; there was a powerful ward on the door, and it could get noisy if I had to slice through it. That apart, I didn't want anyone to know that I, or anyone, had gone there. I waited for what seemed like hours, and was just beginning to fret that I wouldn't get to see him that night, when two Dementors glided down the corridor, obviously heading for the only occupied cell in that part of the prison.

I hardly exaggerate when I say that, even knowing he was Lucius, I didn't recognise him. He was naked, bound, blindfolded and gagged... and filthy, but even secured as he was, he managed to shiver, whether in fear or cold or shock, or all three, I didn't know. My heart felt like lead in the knowledge that I would have to leave him the same way as I found him. At the same time my mind shied away from the suggestion Potter had made that he gave me some of his own hair, and that I took Polyjuice to Lucius and let him escape past the Dementors in James's Animagus form. It weighed heavily on me even then, and to this day I have never learned to bear the burden of guilt that I didn't just succumb to that most basic human decency, and let him escape. We could all have gone into hiding... forever, and let our world become what Tom Riddle wanted it to be, and I had been the one to make that choice, to take that choice away from Lucius, and I shall never forgive myself for that, whatever the price tag might have been. I had sworn once that I would not sacrifice Lucius, and I knew I was doing just that, and had I had the capacity to think my thoughts through at that time, I would have wondered if life had become as cheap to me as it was to Riddle.

I waited in the cell, not daring to move, until the Dementors had been gone for about five minutes; then I slipped into the form of Sirius Black. I kicked a curious rat away to scuttle under the door, and knelt to one of the few men who had ever called me friend, to administer the scant comfort I had brought with me, and to let him see at least a lock of his son's hair, and to hear from his own lips what he wanted the boy to be called.

*****

The public gallery was packed. I sat with Narcissa on one side of me and Arthur Weasley on the other. Weasley ignored me of course; it would not have done for him to acknowledge me in any way. There were a few cases before the one the world's wizarding press awaited with bated breath, and loaded quills and cameras, and I remembered another time they had waited for Lucius Malfoy, when Abraxas had died, and we had left Spinner's End to go to his triumphal return to Malfoy Manor, but I pushed the thought away as the doorway at the back of Courtroom Ten was opened, and four Death Eaters brought Lucius in. He was pale and tired looking, but despite that he held his head high, as I knew he would always do, not even deigning to notice the excited babble and the popping flashbulbs. Humiliation was below Lucius Malfoy; it was a thing of lesser men.

Orion Black stood, in the absence of Barty Crouch Senior and Titus Longbottom, who had both refused to join the bench for the trial, yet seemed quite content to sit on the fence. I felt Sirius slump, even though Weasley sat between us, and I knew the shame he felt that his father was the one to mete out whatever rough justice was about to be dispensed. I had no comfort to offer him; my own culpability in whatever Lucius's fate was to be was something I could not turn from.

Orion read out a lengthy speech; one aimed at a middle ground of those with whom he hoped to curry favour, and the few reasonable doubters who still attended any public event of any sort when Riddle was present. Riddle himself took no active part in the proceedings, content to let his puppets dance to his tune instead.

'You may be under the illusion that your tributes to what you saw as your undisputed power, and the arrogance of assuming yourself above the law was done in secret, Mr Malfoy, leaving others to take the blame for your despicable acts,' Orion stated, as he struck a pose for the popping flashbulbs, 'but the truth will out, as it has done, and that which dominated your imagination, will now dictate your future. Let this be a lesson,' he said, turning to address the court, 'that it behoves us to be very careful what we worship, for what we worship we are likely to become.'

He didn't even make sense, unless his intention had been to take a swipe at himself and the rest of Riddle's sycophants, and it showed me just how brainwashed even supposedly powerful men like the Blacks had become, and just how potent the threat of Riddle's wrath really was. That said, Orion achieved what he set out to do; he deflected the public blame for any of the recent atrocities from Riddle to Lucius, and that was all he really wanted.

For a moment he conferred hurriedly with the bench of judges, and I realised that not a single one of them was a member of the Wizengamot that had been present at my trial, the true Wizengamot. It was made up of the hierarchy of Riddle's Death Eaters, and the friends of Abraxas Malfoy. At last Orion seemed to feel that he had spun out his moment of glory for long enough, and he unrolled a scroll and began to read, and it was then that I noticed he had placed his black velvet cap on his head of black hair.

'Lucius Malfoy,' he declared, in a strident ringing voice, 'you will be taken from this place to Azkaban Prison, thence at noon tomorrow to Hangman's Common. Once there, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May Merlin have mercy upon your soul.' But unlike my own trial, no young woman stood from the back of the court in an eleventh hour bid to free Lucius.

As Narcissa's scream was stifled to Lucretia's breast, Arthur stiffened and let a tiny moan escape from his lips, and Black slumped forward to put his head in his hands. I looked across the court to where Dumbledore had been relegated to the public benches, and I felt a rage rise up inside me that he didn't even have the courage to catch my eye. A couple of rows behind him sat Henry Potter with James at his side, and I saw the younger man take his father's hand and whisper something to him... and all I could think of was that last humiliation: a public execution. I felt the fury rise another notch higher within me as Lucius was led from the courtroom between Walden Macnair and Rodolphus Lestrange, and found I was on my feet, with Arthur Weasley tugging furtively at my robe.

'This is wrong,' I yelled above the babble of voices, some of which had already begun to catcall at Lucius's back as he disappeared behind a door between the two Death Eaters.

I saw Orion Black bend to share a word with his brother, and Cygnus's smile of satisfaction, and I knew no one was interested in justice; all they had gone there for was another public relations exercise in cleaning up the Dark Lord's image for his final assault.

*****