"Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
Or Murder with his silent bloody feet."
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"For each man kills the thing he loves."
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betrayal in four parts
I. Caina
James is very careful not to wake Lily as he creeps into Harry's room in the middle of the night.
The map and cloak are gone now-- the former locked up somewhere in Filch's office, the latter held by Dumbledore for the use of the Order-- so he relies on the light sureness of step that Sirius taught him years ago, his practiced swagger morphing gracefully into the silent footfalls of a trained assassin.
Lily would never understand; there's a complexity to this that only a wizard could grasp, and for all her complicated charmwork, Lily is still a Muggle at heart. No, Lily would never understand, so Lily can never know.
Dumbledore was grave as he explained the prophecy to them. "You'll have to go into hiding, James, there's no other way around it. You have to protect Harry-- until he's ready." Lily had gasped at that, at the idea of their month-old son being called to face the world's most powerful Dark Wizard. "We can never understand these prophecies fully, my dear," Dumbledore told her gently. "We can only face them the best we can."
But James understands this: if Voldemort comes looking for him, his life is forfeit. And there is no guarantee that it will do any good at all; Voldemort may win anyway, mowing down James and Lily and baby Harry on his path to power and immortality.
There will be other children, he tells himself. Harry...Harry was just unlucky. Unlucky to be their son, to be born at the end of July, a full two weeks early. Unlucky to be caught up in a war he knew nothing about. Unlucky to be the focus of a prophecy before he could even walk.
No, it's a matter of priorities. Harry was unlucky; James and Lily don't have to be. If there is to be a saviour, let it be the Longbottom boy.
James covers Harry's face with a pillow, and waits.
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II. Antenora
Dumbledore doesn't think of them as people anymore.
Maybe he can't, after Grindelwald, after Voldemort. Maybe it hurts too much to think of the people behind the names he sends out to die. Whatever the reason, Dumbledore commands the Order like living chessmen, silent and obedient.
So it's not as if they haven't seen this coming. The odds aren't with them, the four of them, what with the Order members dropping like flies. This week it is Gideon's brother, Amelia's husband. Next week it will be one of them. Law of averages. Sirius is prepared for that.
But it isn't supposed to be Remus.
The Order buggered it up, that's certain. Someone let slip that Remus is a werewolf, and so Remus leaves on a mission and never comes back. They find his body four days later, brutally beaten with his throat carefully slit. That's more practicality than anything else, really; it's incredibly hard to kill a werewolf. A silver dagger does the job better than any curse or hex.
Remus's death proves there's a spy somewhere in the Order, so Sirius campaigns for more precautions. The new rules don't make much of a difference, but it's worth it just to give a focus to the grief. Everyone is so easy to convince. Sirius is so obviously hurting--they'll do anything to make him feel better.
Persuading Dumbledore to let him be the secret keeper is the easiest of all, because Dumbledore doesn't think of them as people. He doesn't worry about what happens to people when their lovers die; soldiers don't betray their cause. Soldiers don't need vengeance.
But Remus Lupin isn't dead because some Death Eater spy wanted to curry favor with the Dark Lord. Remus Lupin is dead because the Order of the Phoenix killed him.
So when Voldemort asks him what he wants, who he wants killed, Sirius laughs. Dumbledore taught him that individuals don't matter, only the cause. Sirius intends to put that idea into practice.
Sirius doesn't want a murder; that's too easy. He wants utter destruction.
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III. Ptolomea
When Remus wakes, he can still taste the blood in his mouth.
Sirius is at his elbow, all hurried explanations and nervous laughter. He never quite gets around to apologizing, though he assures Remus that he wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been absolutely necessary. Snape was a menace, he explains, a future Death Eater. He had to die; there was no other way to do it.
James, who knew and did nothing, stands back and refuses to look Remus in the eye. When Dumbledore arrives, he lets Sirius do all the talking, nodding occasionally to confirm the story. Remus just stares at the ceiling, feeling nauseous and rather full.
In the end Sirius, ever resourceful, manages to pin the blame on Peter, who is quietly expelled the next day. He'll resurface some years later in a Muggle drug ring, where his unique talent for memory charms and Switching spells will catapult him to the top of a growing multinational organization.
Meanwhile, Remus is bundled off to Central America, where the wizarding prisons are equipped to deal with creatures like him. It takes all the influence Dumbledore can muster to keep him from being summarily executed, but as Remus surveys the dismal lines and dank corners of his new Guatemalan home, he wonders if maybe a sharp blow to the neck might not have been kinder.
Trailing two of Hogwarts's finest pranksters for seven years, however, has given Remus a particular eye for escape artistry, and he has plenty of time to engineer a plan. Two months later, he gives his security detail the slip and makes his way back to Scotland. He nicks a long-handled carving knife from Madame Rosmerta's kitchen, then sneaks into the Gryffindor boys' dormitory to test a theory.
James and Sirius were wrong. You don't need a werewolf to kill.
The knife works just as well.
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IV. Judecca
It's meant to be a reward.
The Boy is finally dead, along with his sniveling Gryffindor friends and the Mudblood-loving Headmaster. They've actually won, after all these years, and Peter Pettigrew is getting his reward.
Funny how it doesn't feel that way.
Voldemort understands what it's like to be kept down, so he gives Peter his old school rival as a prize. That, at least, is easy to understand. Snape betrayed them at the last, siding with Dumbledore even after it was clear the tide had turned against him. Voldemort tolerated his spying for years, half-admiring the way Snape played both sides, and desperately needing his services as a potion brewer. But Snape made his true allegiances clear, and now Voldemort wants him dead--not because he was a traitor, but because he was a fool.
The dungeons are nearly empty; the Death Eaters didn't bother much with taking prisoners. Snape has a cell to himself--a nod, perhaps, to his former position. There are no guards outside the cell; his wand confiscated and his body drugged with potions he probably brewed himself, Snape is no more capable of planning an escape attempt than a Troll is of reciting poetry.
Still, Snape is alert enough to recognize Peter as he stumbles into the cell and dismantles the wards with a wave and a mumbled spell. The traitor draws himself to his feet, a trifle unsteadily, but no less dignified for all of that. Peter trembles as he whispers Avada Kedavra, half-hoping that the man will yell or beg or try to resist--but Snape says nothing, just looks him in the eye and sneers and dies.
Voldemort doesn't even turn around when he enters the room. "Well, Wormtail," he asks, a trifle distracted, "Did you get what you wanted?" It is in that moment that Peter realizes killing Snape was not a reward. It was practice.
This time, when he says the words, Peter's voice is steady. Voldemort dies without a sound.
"Yes," Peter says, smiling, "I did."
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Author's note: The four stories are based on the four rings of the ninth circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno: Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca. The rings contain traitors to family, country, friends, and benefactors respectively. Both quotes are from the poetry of Oscar Wilde: the first from Libertatis Sacra Fames, the second from The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I had a great deal of fun writing this story--both as an intellectual exercise and a what if? flight of fancy. Let me know what you think.