Chapter Forty-Three

The move to Spinner's End didn't take long, not with Ethel's talents, and I confess I didn't even wonder then why she had made such a fuss about having to use the ladies to help her to uproot everything she had planted there, from her roses to Godric, to take them to Malfoy Manor in the first place. I was just on the point of beginning to chivvy her along, when she told me to look out of the window of my living room, and I don't suppose I was surprised to see not the gardens of Malfoy Manor, but the rain-washed little northern street, halfway along the road to nowhere.

'And the ladies?' I enquired. 'And young Draco, for that matter?'

'Should I have left them in Wiltshire, Severus?' she asked. 'That aside, dear, I have left the manor uninhabitable. It is no longer the place it was.'

'And the ghosts?' I asked.

'Oh, the shades of the manor will see only the reality,' Ethel replied in her usual cryptic way, nodding to the doorway as Lucretia came into the room, with a wan but otherwise calm-looking Narcissa. 'They will be quite at home.'

'I see we've moved already, Ethel,' Lucretia said, as though houses, contents, and inhabitants moving four hundred miles without as much as a jolt were something quite ordinary. 'That's good. I confess I've been anxious for Severus to distance himself from the manor.'

'Lucius will find us here, Ethel, won't he?' Narcissa asked with less anxiety than I would have expected, and Ethel's confident nod and the way she led the younger woman to the table made me wonder if she had already spoken with Lucius, something that gave me a quite unexpected pang of envy.

Black was still sitting at the table, and I saw him shoot a worried look at Narcissa, which I suspected had to do with whatever explanation he had still to foist upon us about his father's death. Of course, I was wrong about that, which just went to show how badly I still tended to underestimate most people.

Narcissa had sat at the table beside her cousin, and it was only when she lifted the Daily Prophet that I realised that she didn't have Draco with her.

"I borrowed a few elves; there is no work for them in the manor now," Ethel remarked blandly before I could even voice my question, in that way she had of imparting little titbits in my mind to save wear and tear on my larynx.

I was watching Narcissa though, and the look she gave Sirius. It was one that made me suspect that she had been party to whatever plans he had laid for the night before, and I warned myself to keep an eye on her. It was one thing for Black to be out and about and plunging whatever dagger he saw fit into whichever breast he deemed most deserving, but quite another for Narcissa to take the mantle of what I recognised as revenge onto her shoulders. Perhaps it sounds overcautious to have worried about a bereaved slip of a girl, who had just become a mother, running out to commit murder, but I remembered the single-mindedness of her pursuit of Lucius, and how she had mentioned that she may 'come back for dessert' on the matter of her father's downfall.

'Is Cygnus next?' she asked, confirming the worst, and I noticed she didn't ask if her 'father' were next, as though she had long ceased to have such feelings about him. Of course, given what Andromeda had told me of the abuse she had suffered at Cygnus's hands, I could hardly fault her on that count.

'There's no specific order,' Black replied, sticking the ubiquitous cigarette at the corner of his mouth.

I was about to make some comment or other along the lines of taking care to make sure that the only Blacks relieved of life were those of our choice when an owl tapped at the window. Her message wasn't for me though; it was for Black from Alastor Moody, to let him know that a dozen men and women faithful to us had surrounded a small Death Eater gathering in the old Riddle house in Little Hangleton, and asking for me to owl Riddle to come to Spinner's End on some pretext so that they at least didn't have to deal with him. They would stay in hiding until they had a message from Sirius that Riddle had arrived in Spinner's End, before launching an attack.

I complied with Moody's request, albeit a bit uneasily, and sent off the owl to Riddle after breakfast. Then I spent some time with Black, trying to find a way of allaying Riddle's suspicions about him and James Potter, and formulating a reason for my asking Riddle to Spinner's End in the first place. The plan was hasty, and I thought ill-prepared, but like so much of our planning we were marching to Riddle's beat and not our own. Much of its success would depend on Riddle's vanity, and his remarkable ability to see what he wanted to see.

I went through to my work room and began preparing a new batch of Veritaserum buffer. There were quite a few of us taking it by then, and I'd always found the preparation of a potion to be conducive to thinking, especially the ones I prepared so often that the making of them was almost automatic. Once I had everything in the cauldron, and the potion was stable and simmering, I went back into the main kitchen. Ethel was just looking up from whatever she was doing at her stove, the way she did when she was following someone's progress along Spinner's End.

'The Dark One is approaching, Severus dear,' she said. 'Try to stall him, and let us see if we can use this visit to our advantage instead of his.' She gave Black a look; it was one that spoke of shared confidences that rather left me feeling out in the cold. There was no time to think what they were up to though; I could feel Riddle walking up the path.

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At first I thought he was going to ignore the fact that Orion Black was dead, or maybe wait until I mentioned it, but he approached it from an oblique angle. 'I have decided to consider Henry Potter's request to join our number, Severus,' he said, and that made me realise that he was still doubtful of his ultimate control in the Ministry, and Orion's death had left a void larger than he cared for.

'Indeed?' I murmured, content to wait to hear what else he had to say, not least of all how he would reconcile that with James Potter's implied desertion.

'I would like him a little closer, and what with Orion Black's untimely death, I would like someone else I can trust at the Ministry,' he went on, and I could feel him gauging me, perhaps to see if I had known about Orion. 'Just to keep an eye on whatever Blacks remain.'

I made neither show of surprise nor any kind of regret. 'I had thought that that was what you had placed Lucius in the Ministry for,' I said, not much caring whether he became angry or not, as I began to realise that he really meant that Henry's unborn grandchild was whom he actually wanted to keeps tabs on. 'That aside,' I went on, 'I thought you were staying with Cygnus Black.'

'Have you asked me to visit to attempt to score points off me, Severus?' he asked so lightly that I was not left in any doubt of his fury. He gave me a cool look as those two tell-tale spots of colour, the ones I had come to recognise as warning, rose on his pale cheeks, and they cautioned me to take even more heed of Riddle's mood than his words. 'I understand how badly this has upset your life, my love,' he said, and it was as though he were puzzled at my attitude, as though he could not comprehend that Lucius's death was anything to me but an inconvenience which left me lumbered with his sister, his widow and his child. 'I should have listened to you when you told me you needed to be alone to work. I admit to the error of foisting the fool upon you,' he said magnanimously. And that reminded me of what Ethel had warned me of a long time before, that Riddle had almost total recall.

'Are you sure that Sirius Black and James Potter have deserted their posts?' I asked, turning him aside from belittling Lucius before I lost my temper.

'Black?' he asked, lacing his voice with incredulity. 'You were present, Severus, when he killed Lucius.'

'Lucius had a rope around his neck at the time, if you care to recall, Tom,' I reasoned, and began to go down the road I had mapped out in some sort of effort at a damage limitation exercise I had planned for Sirius, and to a lesser extent James Potter. 'Lucius and Black were lovers, Tom,' I said offhandedly, my mouth twisting in what I hoped he would take as distaste; the lie would not matter to Black, and nothing mattered to Lucius anymore. 'Black merely sought to spare his final anguish.'

He seized on that, as I had expected him to. 'And just when did you see Sirius Black, Severus?' he asked, smiling the dangerous smile, and holding up his hand to stifle whatever my reply might have been. 'You may answer that after you tell me why you have not informed me that you have seen him.'

'This is the reason I asked you come, Tom,' I said, daring reproach. I unrolled the scroll I had had Black write earlier, and Riddle read it aloud.

"Severus,

SB

'And murdering his impeccably bred father was in furtherance of his aims?' Riddle asked. 'Really, Severus, how naive do you think I am? I'm not disappointed in Black, not really; I am, however, disappointed in you for believing this rubbish,' he said, repeating a line he had used to me before, just substituting Black for Lucius. He thrust the scroll back at me. It was no more than I could have hoped for; I had sown a seed, and one such as he would see what he wished, and his own self-belief would make him accept the lies as he accepted all the sycophantic offerings that fed his ego, and twist anything he didn't care for to his own meaning.

'Black killed Orion?' I asked, as though it didn't concern me whether he believed Sirius's assertions as to his ultimate loyalty or not.

'It is Cygnus's belief...' he said, trailing off as one of the elves Ethel had brought from Malfoy Manor tapped on the door and came in with another scroll of parchment, this one still tied as though just delivered.

It happened in just the same way as the time Riddle had intercepted Lucius's message from Brighton, that awful day when I had cursed Ethel, and I felt a horrible chill of déjà vu as Riddle took the scroll addressed to me, and unrolled it, and the frightened elf backed away.

"Severus,

Sirius."

He said nothing for a long few moments, just rolling the scroll up, and tapping it against his hand, and I resisted slumping relief that it wasn't some indiscretion from James Potter, or anyone else. I detected Ethel's hand in the writing of the message, and understood just what she and Black had been cooking up between them, or perhaps I was still underestimating Sirius. Whichever it was, Black would not have sent the elf through unless he had word that the swoop the Order had made in Little Hangleton was, not necessarily successful, but at least over. I reluctantly agreed that the opportunity and the timing of Riddle's visit were too good to miss.

I crossed to my work bench and stirred the batch of Veritaserum buffer that I had been in the process of making, drawing my thoughts together, and it was only then that Riddle unwittingly handed me yet another spoke to my wheel.

'You seem particularly concerned about whatever that is, Severus,' he said, as though he either had no interest or belief in the contents of Black's last scroll, or had forgotten about it already. 'What is it?'

'Nothing yet, Tom,' I said carefully, my gaze flicking to where "Die Letztendliche Wahrheit?" lay open on my desk, and I smiled to myself in the knowledge that the little book had been closed but a few seconds before, and I felt something rise up inside me, something like victory in wrong-footing him in so many ways at one time, and I supressed the feeling even before Ethel's warning knock on my mind.

He had risen from his seat, and I could feel him beside me as he too glanced to where the little book lay open, his eyes alight with his inner madness. 'You have found the way?' he asked, peering into the cauldron as though it were indeed Aqua Vitae. He took Mordestone from his pocket, and for a moment I wondered if the stone of death would refute his belief, but it just glowed and throbbed in his hand, an ugly red for a moment, and then became the flat black shiny stone it was. Riddle took that as a sign of course, and I understood that however sceptical and indeed disbelieving he was, he had such certainty in his own supremacy that he would read any sign as being indication of his greatness. It was the weapon I would use against him; it was the only one I had.

'I... I'm not sure, Tom,' I said, wondering when, if ever, he would address the matter of the Death Eaters at Little Hangleton, or if he just didn't care. Then he knocked any foolish notions of whatever petty successes I might have harboured, with his own brand of triumph, without even saying a word, as his very silence on the matter gave rise to another more unpleasant thought, one which I then suspected was a likelihood: we had a traitor in our midst, and he had already known.

'I knew he would be the one, Severus,' he said, drawing a hand down my cheek in a way that made me shudder, pulling my unease in another direction in a way he did so easily.

'Who?' I asked. 'What one?'

'James Potter's son, of course,' he replied. 'Do not pretend to me that you don't believe so too.'

'We do not even know if the child will be a boy, Tom,' I said.

He nodded to where the little book lay on my desk, and drew Mordestone from his pocket again. 'We may not know, my Severus,' he said, 'but the book and Mordestone do.'

I had found my hand in my pocket, the way it always was when he drew Mordestone, and the white stone throbbed, whether in anger at Mordestone, or in agreement with Riddle's assertion, I couldn't tell. In that moment I was uncomfortably sure of one thing though: Lily Potter's child would be a boy.

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