DISCLAIMER: THE BOOK BELONGS TO J. I HAVE ONLY BORROWED BOTH CHARACTERS AND PLOTLINE.
CHAPTER 4
"First things first Potter, we need to find out the components of this bloody potion and then try to create an antidote of sorts that would nullify its effects" Draco picked up the black box containing the wolfsbane potion gingerly with his slender, long fingers and eyed it thoughtfully.
"We need to find a potions master for that, Sir" Harry reminded him while trying not to look at him caressing the box so lovingly. 'I'm going crazy; stark, raving mental as Ron would say. Maybe Mungo's will accept me for succumbing to Veela allure and going loony' he thought desperately.
"Yes, and I know just the person who's up for the task" Draco grimaced, not at all looking excited about the prospect.
"Who Sir? If you don't mind me asking" Harry asked him curiously.
"Professor Severus Snape, potions master extraordinaire and my prat of a godfather" he revealed tucking the box into his robes.
"Also do me a favor while I make a Fire-call to Hogwarts and write out a request to the Archive section asking them to deliver the book on Convicts and Criminals Who've Been Killed by the Department of Law to the office by the evening. There is something that I need to get clarified and I sincerely hope that Lupin is wrong about this or things are going to get real messy from here onward's" he said cryptically.
Harry cocked his head questioningly but let it go when Draco ignored him and went to the Floo Network Authority Department to make to make the call.
An hour later they were sitting in the shady confines of the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmaede and drinking butterbeer out of dubious looking glasses, waiting for Hogwarts's most lovable curmudgeon, Severus Snape to arrive.
"Mr. Malfoy" the owner and barkeeper of the Inn, Mr. Aberforth Dumbledore, sat down beside him without any preamble and looked at him with his clear blue eyes. "I've heard about the werewolves that you're up against from Mundungus who was in Knockturn alley recently. He said that the potion they've created is so vile that even he could not imagine cashing in on it, even though he'd been offered a pile of money to sell it."
"Wait Ab," Draco said closing his eyes and frowning, wondering for the nth time just how vast this man's connections really were and how he'd known about the case so quickly, "Who tried to sell it to him?"
"He doesn't know, but he said that he was surprised to see that it was a respectable looking bloke who 'spoke real fine' as he put it."
"Can you describe him to me?"
"Can't really say much, but he did mention that the chap was very handsome. Tall, dark-haired, with an undercurrent of powerful magic, which set his bones practically vibrating."
"That's it? Nothing else?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Blast it! Getting hold of Fletcher the slimy bastard will take ages, but thanks anyway Ab" Draco said sipping his butterbeer pensively.
"Glad I could be of help" the second Dumbledore son said sincerely, "When I heard that they were going about killing little children, I just had to do something about it" the man said and turned to look at the portrait above his bar of Ariana Dumbledore his sister, who had died by the hands of Gellert Grindlewald the darkest wizard ever known to the wizarding world.
Draco patted the man's shoulder sympathetically while Harry looked away from the depth of the sadness in the bar-keepers eyes, feeling somehow encompassed by it.
Suddenly the door flew open and they saw Snape with his billowing black robes standing at the threshold wearing his famous scowl on his face. 'The man has to be using some kind of wind charm on his robes' Harry thought not for the first time 'no one else's robes ever does that!'
"Draco," he said sitting down on the chair that Aberforth had just vacated, pointedly ignoring Harry. "What's the problem then?" He asked him while gesturing for a glass of mead.
"Drinking during class hours is strictly prohibited uncle" Draco smirked, looking deliberately at the man with a single raised eyebrow as he thirstily swallowed his drink.
"Fuck that!" the man said churlishly, guzzling down another glass "It's my defense mechanism against stupid students that need to die painfully!"
"Always the ray of sunshine aren't you Sir" Draco laughed and pointed to Harry, "This is Harry Potter" he introduced him "A student of yours actually and now my apprentice."
Snape nodded but still refused to acknowledge him, looking steadily down at the contents of his glass instead.
"We know each other" Harry offered after an awkward pause "And he's never liked me for some reason" he said openly, smiling the memories of being yelled at on countless occasions by the man in front of him.
Snape grunted and finally looked at Harry with those dark unfathomable eyes of his, without even a hint of remorse in them. "Yes, well you were terrible at potions if I remember correctly" he said evasively while Harry grinned knowingly at him.
"Not the words my father used to explain it" he said trying not to smile when he saw the man turned pale with anger.
"James was an arrogant moron and you seemed to have imbibed his personality to a 'T'" Snape said coldly.
"Actually my father did tell me that he was a bit of an arse to you those days and that he regrets it even now, which is why I accepted your poor treatment of me, hoping that you'd feel somehow vindicated. My mother still sees you as her best friend you know? Before you became estranged from her and ran off to France to complete your masters at Potions."
"Is Lily well?" Snape asked him, quietly feeling a tiny bit impressed by his straightforward manner that was akin to his own.
"She's doing great, but if you visited her she'd see it as Christmas and her Birthday all rolled into one happy occasion!"
Snape looked away from him and turned to Draco instead "So what is it that you wished to see me for?"
Pulling out the box containing the vial, Draco told him about the potion but kept the other facts about the case to him-self, watching as his godfather's face went from mildly interested to ravenously hungry as he eyed the vial with fervor. 'Oh yes,'Draco thought happily 'Give the man a challenge and he'll forget to eat.'
"I'll see what I can do" Snape said pocketing the box trying to look supremely bored. "Oh and I've been meaning to ask you this for some time now Draco, have you been to the manor to see your parents recently?"
"Uncle, you know that father's still angry with me for becoming an Auror and that he hasn't yet forgiven me for taking a stance against him on the matter. If I went home now I'd just be thrown out again, you know how stubborn he is."
"What about Narcissa then? She still wishes to see you."
"I do meet her from time to time" Draco said looking a bit sad, "But at restaurants or in my apartment only so that father doesn't find out about our trysts."
"Stubborn fools the both of you" Snape chuckled while getting up.
"Not very different from you it seems" Draco smiled pleasantly at him "At least from what Potter here had to say."
Snape did an about turn and strode off not bothering to reply while muttering under his breath about smart alec nephews and their sharp tongues.
"So what next?" Harry asked his mentor shaking his head at potion masters retreating back.
"Well I'm hungry, but the food here might just send us to our early graves and I don't really want to take that kind of a risk." Draco said while Aberforth snorted loudly behind him at the insult to his Inn and said something that sounded suspiciously like 'Nancy Boy!'
"So you're saying we should go out for lunch?" Harry asked him just to clarify the doubt.
"Yes, to that steak house on Charing cross road."
"Huh…okay" Harry barely managed to say while maintaining a calm façade. His innards however protested by doing a frantic Congo dance. 'Wonder if I'll eat at all' he thought and then shook his head violently. 'I'll eat! I'll eat two peoples share of food and enjoy it, goddamn it!' He screamed to his wishy-washy self and disapparated to Angus's steak house.
Usually the steak house was jam packed with people as was the case today and the wait for a table could go on for about fifteen minutes. But a cute young waitress who took one look at Draco saw to it that they were seated at one of the most coveted places in the restaurant by the window in a matter of seconds.
"Smug bastard" Harry muttered while examining the menu sneaking a peek at Draco who was now conversing politely to the same waitress who looked like she'd died and gone to heaven.
The food came in record time and as they were eating, Harry asked Draco the one question that had been bugging him all morning "Why did you ask for that book from the Archive section? What was it that made you hope that Remus was wrong?"
Draco looked into those inquisitive eyes for a long moment and came to a decision, if Potter was going to be involved with the case than he had a right to know. "The Fenrir Greyback that I used to know was supposed to have died when I was nine years old" he said slowly "So the news that he's alive and an alpha of a pack came as somewhat of a shock to me."
Harry stared open mouthed at the man sitting opposite him and calmly eating his food like he hadn't just told Harry something totally absurd. "What are you saying? How on earth did you know Fenrir when you were a child?"
"He worked for my father as his bodyguard for nearly five years" Draco revealed, continuing to talk, completely undeterred by Harry's startled exclamation of 'Bloody hell!'
"Lucius knew that he was a werewolf when he'd hired him but he was inordinately proud of it rather than afraid. He used to flaunt him in front of all his chums like he was some sort of prized possession" Draco shuddered involuntarily, remembering the leering looks the man shot at him.
"I on the other hand always hated the bastard! There was this inexplicable stench of death around him that I just couldn't get out of my mind and when I told my father about it he just laughed and called me a child. So every time he'd turn away, Greyback would lick his lips and stare at me like was a gourmet meal cooked especially for him and I just had to put up with it."
Harry's grip on his steak knife increased imperceptibly and he wondered how any child who saw that kind of thing would not have nightmares.
Chewing on a french fry as if he couldn't be bothered, Draco concentrated on his meal but carried on talking and Harry admired him for it, knowing how difficult it must be to relive your worst memories.
"It was when I was nine years old and Fenrir's fifth year with my father that crazy rumors about a beast roaming our estates in the dead of night came to his notice. In the beginning Lucius ignored it and said it was just that, a rumor. But it was only when a child went missing from one of the families living on our estates, whose mangled remains turned up on our grounds the next week, did he sit up and finally take notice."
"He used his influence with Cornelius, the Minister at that time and managed to hire several hit wizards to patrol the grounds and even then he never suspected that it was Fenrir himself until they found a pattern in the killings. You see all of them took place at the time around the full moon, and that's when Lucius started to get suspicious of Greyback."
"One night, not long after that, the bastard probably getting anxious I suppose of being found out, attacked me in the supposedly safe confines of my own house! It was while I was playing in my room as I usually did before going to bed, when he snuck in past the wards on my door and entered it in a partially transformed state and stood over me saying sick things like 'I was beautiful', that 'he'd savor my flesh for a long time.' I felt so afraid that I couldn't even scream" Draco said unabashedly.
"Luckily, my mother who had come to see if I was asleep or not, saw what was happening and screamed bloody murder!"
"The hit wizards were there in a heartbeat and they caught the cretin and dragged him off the premises before anything could really register in our minds and the next day Arnold Peasegood the Head Hit wizard at that time told father that they'd killed the fucker and that it was over. And now nearly sixteen years later, Lupin tells me that he's alive and kicking and I just don't want to believe that."
'I can't look at him' Harry thought, 'Oh my god, what do I say to such a story? Should…should I console him? No he'll fucking kill me! Cripes, but I want that wolf bastard good and dead!'
"Um..so what are you going to do if it is him?" Harry asked him bravely.
"Dunno, guess we'll have to see when the time comes?"
Harry nodded and fell silent. 'Fuck! I could really fall for a man like him' he thought, 'Not many people could come out of an incident like that and be so normal, he just spoke so matter- of- factly about it!'
Back at the Ministry they found the book they'd requested for, lying on Draco's table and when they flipped it open to the names under the letter 'F' they saw it, Fenrir Greyback, deceased. It was signed and sealed by Arnold Peasegood himself.
"Then it's not him" Harry said relieved.
"Maybe, or maybe not" Draco said "But I've always trusted Lupin's information, so either someone fucked up his capture royally and let him escape, or someone's out there masquerading as him right now as we speak."
"Let me guess you think it's the former theory don't you?" Harry asked him when he saw Draco's face tighten with resolve.
"Yes" he said simply. "It's time we paid Arnold Peasegood a visit and extracted the truth out of him."
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