Chapter Four

With a Name Like Bathilda, What Did You Expect?

They Disapparated as a group the next morning, not as bright and early as Harry would have liked. Tonks had been feeling ill again, though not as severely as yesterday, and Lupin refused to move her, though she'd made some halfhearted protests. Ron and Hermione had taken the opportunity to sleep in a little, though Harry muttered to himself a bit.

"Characteristic," Tonks had remarked dryly of that particular advent.

When they arrived, it was snowing ever-so-slightly. Harry and Ron were under the Invisibility Cloak, Tonks had turned her hair black and acquired a pair of glasses that made her look a bit older, and Lupin and Hermione had made small attempts to disguise themselves and were relying mostly on their general anonymity. The five made their way across a square - Harry and Ron first, so that their footprints would be wiped out by the others'; Lupin with an arm around his wife, adjusting the fedora he had low over his face; Hermione trailing them with her bushy hair tied back in a braid, reasonably supposable as the couple's daughter.

A lot of partially-stifled arguing and the sound of a few slaps and yelps issued from a perfectly normal, transparent spot of air, and phantom footsteps veered off towards the church graveyard.

"It figures," Tonks remarked, changing her course to follow them.

"Guess it wouldn't kill us to give him a moment," Lupin responded mildly. "If it were me, I think I'd want one."

"But you wouldn't throw a hissy fit if someone told you it was too dangerous," his wife noted calmly.

Remus Lupin smiled as the latch on the churchyard gate rattled. There was a horrendous screech as the rusty hinges yielded, and a horrendous half-muffled curse from Ron.

"You flippin' idiot—" Ron started.

"Shut up. Where… Look for Potter."

"No, I hadn't figured that out, genius. I was gonna look for, y'know, Malfoy or something."

"Shut up, we're supposed to be invisible."

The little family crossing the square hastened their collective step a little, and the man's face struggled not to succumb to a frown in the shadow of his hat brim.

"Potter… Potter… Potter…" Harry was muttering, very audibly for a nonentity.

"…rhymes with water…" another voice muttered back.

"Shut up, Ron… Potter…"

"Here," Remus Lupin said quietly. The kids looked at him, surprised - or, at least, Hermione did; he presumed the others followed suit - but Tonks looked like she'd predicted this. Like she'd known with complete certainty that a man like Remus Lupin would have been here before, would have sought the gravestone before which he stood now, his head bowed, his hands in his pockets. Tiny, glimmering flakes of snow swirled around him like angels' tears.

After paying their respects and quietly leaving the cemetery, the small group gathered to discuss their next move. Seeing the Potters' gravestone had been a sobering experience for all present - it reminded them of the consequences of failure, and of just how much they had to lose. Harry and Hermione were discussing things calmly and quietly for once, Ron was staring off into the distance worriedly, and Tonks was sniffling slightly, no doubt imagining the loss of her own loved ones.

Hold her, you idiot, Sirius whispered, prodding Lupin fiercely. His victim glared at the empty air over his shoulder for a moment before wrapping both arms around his wife and addressing the little group.

"Do we have a consensus as to our next move?"

"Harry thinks we should look for Bathilda Bagshot," Hermione informed him. "I've been trying to convince him that it could be dangerous."

"But the danger doesn't matter," Harry insisted, "if she's the one who has the sword! We need it, Hermione, or else it'll be pointless to find any of the other Horcruxes. We're supposed to be destroying them, not collecting them!"

Lupin sighed. "I think Harry may be right this time."

Harry's lips formed the words Told you so as Hermione mouthed That'll be the day.

"And," Lupin interjected before an altercation could break out, "it would be wise of us to keep an eye out, just in case it is more dangerous than we think. We…" Unconsciously his eyes flickered towards the cemetery. He hadn't meant for anyone to notice, but they saw. They all saw. "..can't… afford to make any mistakes."

"Seconded," Tonks announced.

"Thirded," Ron put in eagerly.

"Don't be—"

"Intelligent?" Hermione muttered.

"—ridiculous," Harry finished, glaring at her, peeking out from under the cloak.

Lupin managed a tight smile. "Maybe we should get going."

Down the lane they went, shuffling through the snow, Harry and Ron concealed again beneath the cloak, bickering occasionally when one or the other tripped and almost jerked the cloak off of the ungainly pair of them.

Lupin's gaze wandered of its own accord. How many times had he come here then, in the years before? Could it possibly be almost two decades since he'd gone running down this road, holding his hat on his head, cloak trailing behind him, snow spraying around his feet, Christmas presents tucked securely under his arm?

Sirius had given him a mock-lecture for a good ten minutes, punctuating it with the word "punctual," repeating the refrain, "Promptness is next to godliness" until James and Lily were in stitches…

"You all right, dear?" someone whispered in his ear.

He didn't have to look up to know who it was, and not just because none of the teenagers would have addressed him as 'dear'. But he did anyway, and there she was - smiling at him, kindly but with a hint of worry, melted snowflakes caught in her dark hair like dewdrops shimmering out of a spiderweb. His angel, his reason for living.

"I'm fine," he murmured back. He smiled hesitantly, and then he lifted a hand to tuck a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. She returned the smile delightedly and caught his hand before he could pull it away, and the two laced their fingers together as they continued to stroll down the lane in the wake of their invisible companions, both smiling quietly and delightedly.

Aww, the ghost of Sirius smirked. You two are too cute to live. I'm so glad I stepped in to set you up.

Like you had anything to do with it, Remus thought back, smiling to himself.

Excuse me? Sirius cried indignantly. You forget your PLACE, young man! Why, I oughta…

The name on the mailbox had mostly peeled away - B SH T, it read.

"'Be shit'!" Ron was heard to giggle helplessly.

The sound of a fist colliding with a shoulder emanated from beneath the Invisibility Cloak.

An impossibly old, impossibly frail woman stood - or, rather, hunched - in the center of the snow-swathed cobblestone path to the door of the looming house. Eyes bubbling with milky white cataracts seemed to focus on the group of people loitering hesitantly by the mailbox, and Harry whipped the cloak free. Ron bit back a "Yipe!", but the woman by the door seemed unperturbed.

"Are you Bathilda Bagshot?" Harry asked.

The woman raised a crooked hand and beckoned once. Then she turned and shuffled into the house, leaving the door open wide behind her. Snowflakes spiraled down, slipped beneath the eaves, and darted in to melt on the rug in the foyer like dying stars.

Tonks's hand tightened around Remus's arm. "I don't like this," she whispered.

"Neither do I," Lupin replied grimly.

Harry was already halfway across the threshold. They had little choice but to run and catch up.

When they entered the dark, musty hallway of the house, the old woman was standing at the foot of the stairs, waiting. She pointed to Harry, then beckoned.

"I think she wants to speak to me alone," Harry informed his friends, sounding more confident than they felt. "Dumbledore probably told her not to let anyone else see the sword."

"Harry, I'm really not liking this…" Hermione muttered.

"Hang on a bit," Tonks suggested. "Let's confer outside a moment. Then we'll let you go, Harry."

"All right, then," Harry reluctantly agreed. "Just a moment, Ms. Bagshot."

The small group retreated outside. At the foot of the staircase, Nagini the snake hissed with pleasure. Her master had been right - the stupid boy had come. And now here he was, edging his way through the doorway, glancing nervously around as he stepped into the hallway alone.

"I've… uh… left my friends outside," the boy muttered, his voice pitched a little higher than usual. She could almost taste his fear. "So… did you have a message for me…?"

"Follow me upstairs; the sword is there," Nagini told him in Parseltongue, indicating the staircase behind her.

"Um… right." The boy looked even more nervous. "I'll… just… let my friends know it'll be a few minutes, and then I'll come… uh… follow you."

A moment later, the dark-haired boy practically ran out the door and closed it behind him, trembling a little.

"She hissed at me!" Tonks whispered. "She didn't even speak - she hissed!"

Harry's jaw dropped, and Hermione's eyes widened. "Parseltongue!" she gasped. "Harry's a Parselmouth!"

They exchanged glances nervously.

"We've got a few choices," Lupin declared quietly. "We can run now, before she suspects anything. We can search the rest of the house and see if we can find the sword before she comes back."

"Why don't we kill the snake?" Hermione proposed hesitantly. "Isn't it a Horcrux?"

Lupin smiled a little. "What with?"

"Oh," she conceded faintly. "Good point."

"Well?" Lupin prompted.

"I say we look for the sword," Harry announced bravely just as Ron squeaked, "Let's get the hell out of here!"

"I…" Tonks began hesitantly. She paused, swallowed, and adjusted Harry's glasses. "I could go and follow her, and, if I see where the sword is, I could try to grab it and… and try to fight her… I might be able to destroy…"

Her husband smiled at her sadly, looking pained. "You are more courageous than I ever thought was possible," he told her softly. "I just don't know if… if…" His tormented gaze flickered back and forth between her face and her abdomen, and it couldn't have been plainer that he was struggling with the crippling fear of losing both his wife and his unborn child in one serpentine lunge.

"Yeah, don't talk crazy-talk," Ron put in incoherently, his eyes flickering towards the door. "We don't want to have to, like, sacrifice anybody or something. I mean, how would You-Know-Who have gotten the sword and stuck it here anyway? Y'know? I mean, Dumbledore would've known if Bathilda wasn't going to be able to keep it safe, and he wouldn't have put it here. Y'know?"

Hermione wondered how she ever could have thought Ron was stupid. Well, there was the "don't talk crazy-talk" part of the argument, but the rest was, logically, pretty sound.

"We've got to find it," Harry pressed nervously. "I mean, think about it. Without that sword, we're helpless. We can't get rid of any of the Horcruxes."

"I really just think we should get our asses outta here," Ron countered, glancing wistfully out the door at the snow once again.

"Well, fine," Harry frowned. "Go ahead and get out of here. I, personally, am going to go look for the sword."

"Harry, don't be ridiculous!" Hermione replied, her voice a little tight. "Ron's right. And if You-Know-Who's snake is here, who's to say he isn't lying in wait nearby? It would be safer to go fight another basilisk than to walk into such an obvious trap."

"Wait!" Ron exclaimed suddenly, in an excited whisper. "We don't need to find another basilisk - I'll bet the body of the one we killed is still in the Chamber of Secrets; why don't we just go get one of its fangs?"

"Ronald Weasley," Hermione breathed. Ron flinched away in preparation for a tirade, but instead, she threw his arms around his neck.

"You're a genius!" she told him, her whisper a little shrill. "Oh, what would we do without you?"

Ron blushed happily.

"D'you think," Tonks began hesitantly, "that we could somehow trick the snake into staying here until we can come back and kill it?"

Lupin scratched behind his ear absently. It was a bit of a dog-like motion. "I'd only vouch for that if we can do it without leaving someone behind," he said after a moment. "If we were to tell it that we'll be back soon and leave it waiting here, I wouldn't be too averse to that idea, but somehow I doubt that such a plan would have any hope of succeeding."

"I think you're giving the stupid snake too much credit," Harry remarked.

"Better to err on the side of caution, I'd say," Lupin responded. "We don't know how detailed its master's instructions were. I think our best bet is heading for the basilisk. We need weapons, and we're defenseless in the middle of a prospective battlefield as it stands now."

At that moment, the door opened, and Tonks - who had luckily already changed back into herself and returned Harry's glasses - grabbed his arm. The old woman's head had reappeared around the door.

"Um… hello," Hermione stammered. "We were… uh… going to come back, you see, and…"

"We have an errand to run at Gringotts," Ron put in suddenly. "And we were telling Harry that it might not be a good idea to waltz into a bank carrying a sword - they'd probably think we were robbers or something - so we were wondering if you could keep it for us for just a little while. We'll be back in a couple hours, but this errand is important. Would that be all right?"

The woman - the snake - blinked at them. There was a slightly suspicious cast to the tilt of her head, but she nodded slowly. There wasn't much else she could do without speaking in any case. They'd backed her up into a corner that way.

Ron led the mad dash down the walk, out the gate, and back to the village square.

Lupin started pacing in the snow like a caged animal. He itched at the edge of his hair again, compulsively, seemingly without even noticing that he was doing it. Tonks glanced up at the pale, callous face of the moon. Sure enough, it was edging towards full.

"We can't Apparate into Hogwarts," Lupin was murmuring to himself, his feet tracing four long paces up the lane, twisting through a swift turn that sent his cloak spinning, and then taking the four long paces back. "And they'll have Dementors everywhere now that he's got control of it… Severus, being Severus, will have effective barriers in place and students patrolling the halls…" His tongue darted across his teeth. "Going by night might be safer… But going by day would be less predictable… Losing a whole night, however, would also set us back temporally, and time is something we're facing a bit of a shortage of…"

"Well," Tonks suggested, sounding a little worried and stopping him with a hand on his arm, "how would it be if Thicknesse just strolled into Hogwarts and had his people inspect the castle? If we dressed you up as Ministry workers or something, we might be able to walk right in… I mean, you know what they say about the safest place to hide being in plain sight… We could just wander around the castle inspecting stuff until one of us got the chance to duck into the Chamber of Secrets and grab a few basilisk fangs."

Her smile widened a bit, hesitantly, as though attempting a joke that she hoped wouldn't offend. "I could even be Umbridge," she suggested. "I'm sure nobody would dare to refuse her."

Harry rubbed at the back of his hand. "Y'know," he mumbled, "this one time, in detention—"

"WE KNOW," Hermione and Ron said.

Lupin looked up at his wife, blinking, as if almost surprised that she was there. Tentatively at first, then more fully, he smiled. "I think that's an excellent idea," he decided. "You're quite right. I guess we could head back to 12 Grimmauld Place for the night and start out with that early tomorrow morning, couldn't we? Or, at least, as early as we're willing…"

She smiled, relieved at the change in his mood. "As early as you want," she promised. "We could even go this afternoon - I mean, I don't think it's past two. Though it'll take a little time to find disguises for you four - I suppose if we just knocked out some tough-looking muggles and used Polyjuice Potion, I could say you were my Squad for the Investigation of…" She faltered, but Ron was ready.

"Public enemy number one!" he finished brightly. "Say you heard from someone that Harry Potter was hiding out in the castle, and we've come to look for him! Snape and his Death-Eater cronies can't object to that!"

Hermione beamed at him for a brief moment before becoming businesslike. "Well, why don't we split up? One team can get the hair, another can find some appropriate robes, and we can meet back at Grimmauld Place at… say… three? An hour long enough for everybody?"

When everyone nodded, she folded her hands and tapped her fingers against her chin a little. "I suppose someone should take the Cloak and get hair… And the others should find some robes. We might have some back at Grimmauld Place, even… Why don't Remus and Tonks work on the hair for the Polyjuice Potion? I think we'd get into less trouble stealing robes than assaulting people, knowing us… I mean, we'd probably accidentally assault somebody too hard and kill them or something…"

Tonks and Lupin smiled.

"Sure," Tonks agreed for the both of them. "And I can always make myself look like somebody's friend or spouse and yank some hair out during a quick improvised conversation." She grinned. "And there's less chance of me tripping over my own feet."

Her husband smiled adoringly at her, and, before Harry had time to protest, Hermione had tossed his cloak to Lupin, grabbed his arm, and brought the two of them and Ron back to their familiar hideout.

"I don't see," Harry was complaining, "why I have to do the laundry while the two of them go off - with my cloak - to—"

He realized he was talking to an empty hallway; both his friends had vanished in pursuit of robes. Harry heaved a deep sigh. Sometimes it was difficult, being the Chosen One.