Chapter Five: Down the Gray Sky

Chapter Five: Down the Gray Sky

"S'io credesse che mia riposta fosse

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo."

-Dante, Inferno

Remus has been to the Longbottoms' before, of course. There had been Order meetings there in better days, and a first-birthday party for Neville four months earlier during which Sirius had charmed the candles to keep re-lighting in honor of some Muggle novelty product he'd come across a week earlier; but he's never paid much attention to the houses next to it. Now the whole street is blocked off, and Remus can recognize the Ministry-faked police uniform on the wizard guarding the barricades.

Suddenly, the Accipio Charm he's successfully used to avoid notice in sticky situations since sixth year seems less of a protection. If he is caught poking around this particular crime scene, not even Dumbledore will be able to get him out of Ministry hands.

This is not, he realizes belatedly, simple make-work designed to keep him occupied and out of the way. He should have known it would be something real. After all, Moody is not one to waste an offer of help from someone that he can trust – and that had certainly been a surprise, a declaration of trust from Alastor bloody Moody. Remus has never been particularly close to the man, and they have only been in the field together twice, but he's always gotten the distinct impression that Moody makes the most severe paranoid seem friendly and open by comparison. Still, he won't deny that he's grateful for it. He's spent the past three months being treated as a traitor by everyone he knows, and to have Moody acknowledge that he is trusted is balm to an unhealed wound.

It also makes it a dead certainty that he will try his damnedest to do what Moody has asked of him. Remus is cynical enough to wonder if that is the reason Moody said it in the first place, but he decides that he doesn't care. Manipulation or no, he recognizes truth when he hears it.

The Accipio Charm is a Marauder specialty, like the Map, and a dozen or so other spells that one of them invented and only the four of them ever knew. Accipio is one of Peter's, a variation of the Confundus Charm that makes the gaze of even the most alert watcher slide right over the caster, who seems unimportant and as though he belongs wherever he happens to be. The spell has its weaknesses, and it works best in crowds, but both the Great Hall and the Slytherin common room had become a great deal more interesting once James and Sirius had worked out their difficulties with the spell. Sirius had been particularly frustrated by it, especially once Remus had mastered it nearly as quickly as Peter had done.

Pushing down memories, Remus casts the charm on himself and walks towards the barrier. It works, of course. The Auror even gives him a slight nod of acknowledgment as he passes through the barricade. Close up, his uniform is even more obviously faked, though any Muggle looking at it will see it as authentic. The spell is very similar to the one Remus is using on his person. He makes his way down the street – the Aurors have blocked off the entire thing – slipping around cars and random officials from both the Ministry and the local police department. The sense of confusion in the air is nearly palpable. He slips behind two empty ambulances, which are presumably waiting in vain for patients already sent on to St. Mungo's, and makes his way up the sidewalk.

Despite the winter-grey light slowly making its way into the morning, every window in the house nearest the Longbottoms' shows the reflected blaze of rooms that have every lamp inside of them turned on. The woman who answers the door is seven or eight years his senior, but the fresh wounds of terror in her eyes make her look older. Fortunately, Remus has been pretending to be harmless for most of his life now and has gotten so good at it that he even believes himself most of the time. Not long after he knocks at the door, he is being ushered into the brightly-lit parlour and taking a seat on an overstuffed armchair patterned jarringly in red and gold. For a moment he stares blankly at the colours, the familiar combination stripping him of everything but grief. When she speaks, he nearly jumps out of his skin.

"You're one of them," she says flatly. She isn't screaming in terror, though, so Remus supposes it's better than nothing. He can, however, imagine Shacklebolt's expression at being termed 'one of them' in such tones and knows that he's stumbled on another of Moody's reasons for sending him rather than anyone else. Remus is used to being 'one of them.' He's used to being all sorts of 'thems.'

"I suppose so," he agrees, and extends a hand. "Remus Lupin."

She considers his hand for a moment, then takes it as hesitantly as if she expects to be transformed into something nasty.

"Marjorie Bingham."

"Your husband's going to be all right." Remus can't help himself, though it's not his place to tell her. He knows the worry in her eyes far too intimately, and the subtle easing of the brittle lines of her mouth and neck is proof enough that he's made the right choice by doing so. Witnesses are more reliable when they are not terrified.

"What did they do to him?" she asks.

"I don't know," he admits. "I'm not an official representative of anything." Suspicion colours her face and voice.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"I came to say thank you." He doesn't plan the words. They fall almost unintentionally from his mouth, but he realizes as he says them how very much he means them. "Frank and Alice are friends of mine." The present tense feels forced on his tongue, after having seen what is left of Frank with his own eyes. "It was very brave of your husband," he continues, then stops, because it feels like a platitude, and it isn't. The idea of going up against Bellatrix is deeply frightening, even with a wand. Remus has been terrified of her since his first year at Hogwarts. The thought of a Muggle going after her is almost impossible to quantify. "It was very brave," he says again.

"We couldn't just listen to it," she says. "They were screaming." Remus has never seen Cruciatus used on a human being, but the horror in Marjorie Bingham's eyes is eloquent enough to make up for his lack of experience.

"Was that the only thing you could hear?" he asks, refusing to let himself linger on the sheer awfulness of the entire thing.

"At first," she said. "After Mark went over there, and I'd called the police, I followed him." She gives a dry, choking kind of sob. "It was awful. Mark must have gone round the side, because he wasn't there yet. That woman – she kept asking them questions, over and over again, but they couldn't answer, and she kept asking." She's looking at Remus, but he can tell that she's not really seeing him. "She just kept asking," she says again, almost to herself.

"What was she asking them?" She starts at his voice, seeming to come back to herself.

"What? Oh. She wanted to know where she could find her cousin – a something Black. And someone named Pettigrew. Wanted to know what the – Orrors? – had found out; what leads they had." Her mouth curves in a grim half smile that reminds Remus of Moody's expression outside of St. Mungo's. "Then Mark came. He shot them both, the man twice, but the woman still managed to hurt him badly." The distress is evident in her features, sharp and fine, memory coming back to claim her. "They ran after that. I heard some noise outside, but I couldn't leave him."

"What happened then?" Remus asks, trying to keep the growing excitement out of his voice. Bellatrix was asking about Peter, and the only reason for her to have done so is that Moody was right. Sirius is innocent, and Remus no longer needs to hold the careful distance between himself and hope that he has maintained for the past three days.

"There were all sorts of people there, very suddenly," she says. "Your sort of people. They were all over Frank and Alice, and then one of them noticed Mark lying there, and me sitting next to him. He told one of the others to take care of Mark, and then he took me home. He said someone would be along soon to tell me what was going on. I thought, when you showed up--"

"The one who took you home," Remus asks, "what did he look like?" When she describes Kingsley Shacklebolt, Remus has to suppress a smile. Moody certainly has his hooks deep in the M.L.E. despite Crouch's increasing efforts to push him out.

The rest of Marjorie's story is a simple one. Remus expects that he will read something very similar in the Prophet tomorrow – with suitable embellishment, of course. Marjorie doesn't know wizarding terminology, but Remus can read between the lines well enough to know that the Aurors are bloody lucky that they showed up late to the party. From the sound of things, Bellatrix hadn't reacted well to being shot, and the Muggle policemen unfortunate enough to get in her way had wound up in even worse shape than Mark Bingham. Remus hears her out anyway, because if he misses a detail that might help Sirius, he will never forgive himself. When she's finished, he reassures her again that her husband will be fine and casts a slight Cheering Charm on her before walking calmly out the front door.

The scene outside is still pure chaos. Remus mingles with the Aurors and Obliviators for a few minutes, listening to conversations without taking part in any of them, but no one says anything that Marjorie Bingham hadn't mentioned. No one says anything about Peter, and Remus can't help but wonder what will happen when the Aurors finally do get to her. His best guess is that she will be Obliviated and forgotten. Crouch isn't interested in alternate theories on anything; it's one of the reasons he and Moody have had such problems. Remus could try and prevent them from Obliviating her – another variant of Accipio, perhaps, to keep them from noticing her in the first place – but that puts him at risk of getting caught, and Pensieved memories will be just as effective as her actual testimony, once Peter and Sirius are found.

If they are found.

***

The Vitae Invenire is an incredibly complex spell. There are elements of both potions-making and charm-work to it, in addition to blood-magic that Sirius remembers only the most basic elements of, and he experiences a moment of sheer panic when he realizes that neither James nor Remus will be there to help him with it. One or both of them has been present for every serious bit of magic he has attempted since he was eleven years old, and for all of his self-sufficiency, Sirius is not used to doing things alone.

For a moment, as he stares down at spell books and components, he can imagine that they are both there after all: that he will look up and Remus will be in the chair across from him, absorbed in the dustiest, most obscure book in the library while Prongs leans over Remus' shoulder and makes up chapters and characters and dialogue that get more ridiculous by the page. It is a habit that he begun in their first year and never lost, though as they'd grown older, the stories had gotten decidedly obscene.

When Sirius' mind tries to add Peter to the picture, though, he forces it back to the present with one long look around the empty library. Even Phineas Nigellus has gone off somewhere. Sirius hasn't seen him since his first night in the house. He tells himself firmly that he's glad of the solitude, that he can't afford any distractions, but a spasm of loneliness grips his chest for long moments despite himself, and he turns to his work with a grim determination that he hopes will leave no room for grief.

Fortunately, Sirius has plenty of his main ingredient. Vitae Invenire, like most blood-based locator spells, is designed to work with a minimum of actual blood. The liquid then acts as both the anchor for the search and as a catalyst, sparking the magical reaction between the spell's other components, which in turn draw greater power from the amount of blood used than would otherwise be possible. One of the spell's strong points is that there will be enough of Pettigrew's finger left for repeated tries. Sirius will cut the rest of what he needs from Peter's body when he catches the traitorous bastard.

With a knife.

The true beauty of Vitae Invenire, however, is that if the spell's target is an enemy, the blood serves a third purpose as well. If the spell is properly cast and the intent behind it dark enough, the inactive link between the target and his blood will be reactivated, and the spell will cease drawing its power from the caster and begin to pull it from the target instead.

Sirius is looking forward to trapping and tracking little Peter with his own power, his own blood. It is a suitable punishment for a betrayal of this magnitude: to make Peter's magic, his body, betray him in turn, and he can feel the grim smile curving his lips as he works.

Vitae Invenire works along lines somewhat similar to the Marauder's Map. In fact, part of the final tracking spell that had gone into the Map had been based on some of the principles that operate Vitae Invenire, though Sirius had kept that particular source of inspiration strictly to himself. For this spell, Sirius is using his grandfather's collection of leather-bound atlases. They are spread out open across the floor, and Sirius winces at the thought of what Moony will say about putting books like this on the floor, then clenches his jaw on the next thought, which is that Remus will no longer have anything to say to him on that subject or any other. If they ever see each other again, Remus will most likely do his best to hex Sirius into oblivion, and his treatment of a few old books will have nothing to do with it.

Luckily, whichever of Sirius' relatives stripped the house after his grandfather's death neglected to take any of the potions equipment. It hadn't taken him long to dig up the brazier and silver bowl required to brew the ink for the spell. He pulls the bowl to him and taps it twice with his wand.

"Nolo Conflare," he mutters, before putting the bowl on top of the brazier. He clears his mind, breathing falling into the automatic patterns learned in class after class at Hogwarts. Blood magic responds to emotion, particularly to strong, negative emotion, and letting grief or anger rule him could easily cause the spell to fail. When he does reach for the first of the components, his hands are steady, and his mouth is set in a grim line.

Sirius had always been good at Potions while at Hogwarts, despite his distaste for Slughorn; still, the first three ingredients to go into the bowl are fennel oil, essence of Murtlap, and Lobalug venom. The latter two create an unstable reaction that is only slightly controlled by the fennel oil, and within seconds Sirius can sense the gradually expanding magical fumes that waver unsteadily upwards from the mouth of the bowl. The next two components are Clabbert's pus and Re'em blood; as Sirius adds them, the magical fumes surrounding the bowl expand and strengthen.

There is a faint smile on Sirius' lips as he reaches for the next ingredient. Three drops of Peter's blood are required for the Vitae Invenire, placed in the bowl at different intervals. The potion turns a gleaming silver as the blood hits it, the surface of the liquid nearly matching the bowl that contains it, and Sirius' smile becomes more distinct at the colour change.

The next ingredient is the yolk of a Snidget egg, which shines as gold as the potion does silver. As he cracks the egg over the cauldron, Sirius begins the incantation that will bind his intent into the spell. From this moment on, concentration is critical. A misplaced syllable could collapse the increasingly strong magical field in front of him with devastating results; a loss of concentration may prove just as dangerous.

"Vindictus pro plagatus pectus pectoris nostrum," he begins, "Vindictus pro saevio meus."

He adds Shrake spines and Jobberknoll feathers, and the potion's colour changes to the dark, rusty brown of dried blood.

"Gratia trado infestus obviam meus hostilis."

The second drop of Peter's blood turns the potion jet-black.

"Accerso super patientia quod poena vacuus subsisto, et exstinguo meus moeror per suus vita cruor." Hair of Demiguise, hair of Niffler, four drops of Quintaped blood, and the magical fumes around the bowl are shimmering like heat waves over pavement. Sirius does his best to keep his face out of them and pushes on.

"Pro odium meus, quod saevio meus, rabies meus quod meus moeror." He adds the final drop of Peter's blood, and the potion takes on the unmistakable crimson shade of fresh blood, Gryffindor red. Sirius' voice trembles on the last few words of the incantation.

"Supremus totus, pro meus votum pro ultionis, parumper cruentus mendicus nex in proditor mors capitis! Peracto!" The wavering magical field surrounding the potion hardens suddenly to knife-blade sharpness, then contracts inwards with vicious swiftness. There is a cracking sound, and a flash of light over the surface of the bowl. Suddenly all of that wavering, blood-tinged magic is emanating from the potion itself, which has become the ink he needs to complete the Vitae Invenire.

Sirius lets out a nearly inaudible sigh of relief and reaches with the tongs to take the bowl off of the glowing brazier. He places it on the marble-topped side-table that he'd brought in from the parlour for just this purpose, and sinks, trembling, into the hard-backed oak chair beside it. He can still feel the faint residue of dark magic in his veins and on his hands, and the ink next to him gives off a psychic stench as it cools.

"That was surprisingly acceptable work," drawls a voice from behind him, "given your total lack of formal background in the field. Frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't blow yourself and the house to smithereens. Congratulations."

Sirius is on his feet before the third word hits his ears, wand in hand, his eyes flickering wildly, before he recognizes Phineas Nigellus' dry, sarcastic tones.

"The next time you sneak up on me like that," he snarls, "I'll bloody well set you on fire."

"Such gratitude," Phineas murmurs. "Would you have preferred me to interrupt you mid-incantation? Or perhaps while you were transferring your ink to the table? A fine mess that would have been, had you dropped it in surprise."

There's nothing Sirius can really say to that, so he settles for glaring furiously at the portrait and dropping heavily back into his chair.

"I've no need to ask why you've resorted to dark magic," Phineas' drawl continues, "though I will admit to being surprised at your effectiveness. I wasn't aware that you'd kept your hand in. The level of intent in that incantation was almost impressive."

"What do you want?" Sirius asks wearily. Phineas' voice is grating along his nerves like nails on a chalkboard – Lily had been fond of that particular trick – and Sirius wants nothing more than to catch an hour's rest while the ink cools.

"I can't simply be checking up on the last of my House?"

"You could always go visit my mother," Sirius suggests, in the same tones that he would use to say 'go to hell.'

"Your mother," Phineas says, "is not being hunted by both the Dementors and your cousin Bellatrix."

"What?!" Sirius sits bolt upright in his chair.

"Oh, yes," Phineas continues. "They've set the Dementors on your trail."

"Not that," Sirius says, "I knew that already. What's this about Bellatrix?"

"She and that idiot husband of hers are looking for you. They spent last night torturing a couple of Aurors into insanity trying to get information." Phineas' curled lip speaks volumes.

"Why is she after me?" Sirius demands.

"Because, dear boy, you are after Pettigrew, and she wants him. She blames him for the fall of her Lord." The portrait sneers. "She gets her servile streak from the Rosiers, of course. Still, one can almost feel sorry for Pettigrew. You and Bellatrix – despite your deficiencies – are the most formidable Blacks in two generations. He can't be comfortable with both of you after him."

"I'm nothing like Bellatrix," Sirius growls.

"No?" Phineas asks, one eyebrow raised. "You're both headstrong, impetuous, arrogant young fools, and you're both rushing headlong towards your own destruction because neither of you will stop to think. You're both Blacks. Getting blasted off the tapestry doesn't alter the blood in your veins, no matter how much you might think it never belonged there in the first place. Besides," the portrait says with a thin smile, "you two seem to be the only ones to have figured out on your own that Pettigrew is still alive. It certainly wasn't her moronic husband that set them on his trail."

"I have to get to him first," Sirius says.

"No," Phineas says, "what you have to do is think. There's no trial waiting for you in England, boy, just the Dementor's Kiss. If Bellatrix finds Pettigrew first, her revenge is almost certain to be public. It might prove public enough to make the Ministry reconsider–"

"I don't give a damn what's waiting for me in England," Sirius says furiously, pushing away any stray thoughts of Remus. "I'm not about to let Bellatrix kill him instead. I want to do it myself."

"Do you really think that anything you could do to him will be worse than what Bellatrix will do?" Phineas snaps. "She drove two Aurors permanently insane with Cruciatus less than twenty-four hours ago, not to mention the fact that she has spent her entire life learning creative and interesting ways to wreak vengeance on traitors."

"Pettigrew is mine," Sirius snaps back. "I'm certain I'll figure out how to punish him. I am a Black, remember?"

"One who's spent the past ten years turning his back on his heritage. You came running back to family ground when you were pursued, and you've turned to family ways to take your revenge – as you damned well should have – but that doesn't make you Bellatrix's equal in the Dark Arts!"

"Then I'll have to start practicing, won't I?" Sirius snarls. He glares fiercely at Phineas, barely registering that Phineas is glaring too, both of them having abandoned hauteur in favour of fury.

"The Dementors – "

"I'm not about to cower here while Bellatrix takes my vengeance for me! Not for fear of Dementors or anything else!"

"Gryffindors," Phineas says in tones of deep disgust, his eyes gleaming with anger. "An elegant solution falls into your lap, but instead you prefer to dash about risking life and limb because it's brave." He sneers, some of his composure returning. "By all means, Sirius. Run out into the night and get your soul eaten. That will certainly avenge your friends, and care for their son." He turns on his heel and stalks out of the frame, flickering briefly in the portrait of Sirius' great-aunt Dorea before vanishing altogether.

"You certainly put his back up," Dorea says.

"Shut up," Sirius tells her, then remembers that she's James' cousin as well and apologizes. She sniffs, mollified.

Sirius leans back into his chair, tilts his head back and closes his eyes. Just before he drifts off, he realizes that he'd forgotten to ask where Phineas Nigellus had gotten his information or which Aurors Bellatrix had gone after.

***

(Very Rough) Translations from the Latin:

My Latin is very, very bad. Anyone who can help and is willing to do so will receive my undying gratitude.