Chapter Four
Sirius brushed aside the grungy curtain covering the kitchen window and stared out into the rain. The drops fell thick and heavy, battering rapidly against the dingy glass. Behind him, the kitchen was quiet, save the occasional murmur of soft voices from those gathered around the table. He had no desire to join their conversation -- his mood was dark; he didn't trust himself not to explode into a worried rage.
The door swung open and he glanced over expectantly, his shoulders tensing, but he relaxed when it was only Tonks tripping through. Catching his eye, she smiled apologetically at him, and took a seat at the table next to Molly.
"Evening Molly," she whispered soberly. "Any idea what this is about?"
Sirius knew what this was about, loathe as he was to admit it. The voice at the back of his mind, which he seldom made a habit of listening to, screamed at him that this was about Harry, and he couldn't find the will to dispute it. It would be too much of a coincidence if it wasn't.
He turned slightly, leaning against the wall, so he could view the rest of the room. Molly was shaking her head, her face pale and her lips set in a determined line.
"Albus didn't say," she replied, "but I've a bad feeling about this--"
"Try not to think the worst, dear," Arthur leaned in and took his wife's hand reassuringly. "Let's wait and hear what Albus has to say before we jump to any conclusions."
"It's been five days, Arthur," Molly warbled shakily, "five days with no word. Something terrible has happened -- I can feel it in my bones!"
The loud gong of the grandfather clock in the hall struck suddenly, reverberating through the otherwise silent house at it announced one o'clock.
"He's late," Sirius growled. If Molly's intuition was right, if his own intuition was right, they didn't have time to waste.
The wizard standing next to him frowned reprovingly. "He'll be here in good time, Sirius. You know he's a very busy man."
Sirius scoffed, his irritation growing by the minute. "Molly's right, Remus," he growled. "We should have heard from them days ago. You can't tell me you're not worried about Harry too! We don't have time to sit around waiting, and you know it!"
At the table, Kingsley cleared his throat. "I admit the situation seems dire; we've no idea what may have prevented Severus from sending word, but it will do us no good to presume the worst. If something unfortunate has occurred, we'll be able to deal with it all the better if we keep a level head."
Bill Weasley nodded his agreement. "We don't even know that this is about Harry."
"If it wasn't about Harry, Albus wouldn't have called me back from Vienna!" Sirius argued, his voice rising.
The sound of the floo whooshing to life in the other room spared them from further argument. Dumbledore stepped through the doorway, looking tired and worn. Sirius's heart seized at the grim expression upon the man's face, and he clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.
"Albus," Molly rose from the table and rushed to the man's side. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and new wrinkles seemed to have creased her forehead overnight. "What's happened, is Harry-"
She broke off, her hand flying to her mouth as if she couldn't bear to speak her greatest fears aloud. Arthur stood and pulled her back to the table. She leaned against him, looking weary.
Dumbledore nodded to Arthur and took his place at the head of the table. He didn't sit, merely rested his palms against the scratched oak surface and bowed his head. He looked heavy, as if all the world's burdens had suddenly made their place upon his shoulders. Sirius wanted to scream at him; he wanted to shout and rant and rave and demand to know what the man had thought he was doing sending Harry to the other side of the world with Snape and Malfoy, of all people, but his voice stuck in his throat. He didn't want the Headmaster to acknowledge his worst fear; he wanted this all to be a terrible nightmare.
For a moment, they all waited, frozen in place. Dumbledore took a deep breath and looked up again. His eyes were dim.
"Harry's plane has crashed," he announced without preamble. "It is at the bottom of the sea."
For one breathless moment there was silence, then the room around Sirius erupted. The noise was garbled, battering his mind like a belligerent banshee. His vision swam dangerously, the faces and shapes of his guests blurring into a collage of sickening colors as dizziness surged inside him. Images danced in his head, horrible images of Harry terrified and alone on that plane as it burst into flames and plummeted into the ocean. He could see the flames and feel the heat of their breath as they danced mockingly around his godson; he could smell the acrid scent of burnt flesh and hear the screams of the hundreds of muggles trapped in the inferno, and it was too much.
He thought that he had been prepared to hear the worst -- Voldemort abducting Harry before he could make it on the plane, Voldemort reducing the airport to rubble with a well-placed Reducto or two, Voldemort discovering the location of the safe house and murdering all those within. Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort. That something else could go wrong, something so muggle, something they were virtually powerless to prevent, had never crossed his mind.
He'd been ready to seize up his wand and storm the dark wizard's lair -- wherever it was -- and fight to his death to save Harry, had any of the scenarios creeping around in his mind come true, but this -- he couldn't march down to the airport and demand vengeance from whomever was responsible for this.
"Will everyone please calm down?" Dumbledore boomed over the cacophony.
The sheer ridiculousness of such a request snapped Sirius's mind back into focus. Anger leapt into his throat, freeing his voice from its cage of shock. "Calm down?" he growled in disbelief, glaring furiously across the table. "You've just told us Harry is dead--"
His throat thickened around the words, his voice cracking into silence. Dead. His godson, dead. Drowned. After all they'd done to keep him safe, to hide him from Voldemort and Death Eaters and all those evil beings that would have liked nothing more than to do the honors themselves, his godson was dead at the hands of muggles and their preposterous technology.
Dropping into a seat, his anger faded. Ice crept through his veins, flushing out the fire and numbing his heart until all he felt was all-encompassing, soul-crushing failure. He'd failed James, he'd failed Lily, and now he'd failed Harry. He might as well have died in Azkaban; he deserved nothing more.
"Sirius," someone shook his arm and knelt down beside him.
He raised his head dazedly and found himself staring into concerned amber eyes. "Remus?" he asked, confused, his voice wavering.
"All hope is not lost, Sirius, not yet," Remus urged gently. "Albus does not believe Harry has... he believes that Harry is still alive."
"Is this true?" Sirius hissed, his eyes darting back to the head of the table.
Dumbledore nodded slowly. "I cannot be certain in any of this, you understand," he warned, "but I am confident that Harry, at least, is still alive. What has befallen Severus or young Mr. Malfoy I can only guess, though I am hopeful that where we find Harry, we will find the others."
Molly gave a strangled cry and wrenched her hand from her husband's grip. "How can you know this, Albus?"
"The wards at Harry's Aunt's house are still holding. They are weak and have been fading quickly since his eviction from the house, but they have not yet failed completely. Their nature is such that if Harry had perished for any reason whatsoever, be it caused by Voldemort or merely unfortunate circumstance, they would fall immediately. While they still hold, we can be assured that Harry still breathes."
Kingsley, who'd been relatively quiet since the shocking news, spoke up. "Do you think Voldemort had something to do with the crash?" he asked calmly. Of all those gathered he'd taken the news without much visible reaction, no doubt a quality he'd picked up from years of serving in the Auror Corps. One of the first things they taught was how to deal with any type of situation professionally and objectively.
"No," Dumbledore shook his head, "I do not believe Voldemort had any knowledge of our plan to send Harry away. This seems to be entirely a cruel trick of fate."
"These airyplanes," Arthur began after clearing his throat, "don't they have some sort of safety feature? An emergency exit or some such?"
"I confess I do not understand completely the mystery of muggle machinery, but I'm quite sure such a thing would not be possible," Dumbledore answered, "unfortunate as it may be."
"They don't," Tonks added definitively. "I remember my father using them once or twice when I was still in Hogwarts. Once you're up in the air there isn't any other way out than down."
Sirius slammed his fist down on the table, rattling the legs against the tile floor. "Enough," he rasped. "We do not have time to sit here and speculate whether or not these things are safe -- obviously they are not! Harry might be out there somewhere, injured or alone; we must do something Albus!"
"I intend to spare no effort in this Sirius, you may be assured of that," Dumbledore promised gravely. "However, before we proceed any further, I must impress upon you all how urgent it is that this information not leave this room. It is vital that Voldemort not have reason to suspect Harry is anywhere but in our care. If he were to discover Harry's whereabouts before we are able to, the consequences will most surely be disastrous. If Harry is alone, if somehow he has been separated from Severus's protection, he will be an easy target for any Death Eater looking to catapult his way up the ranks."
As much as Sirius wanted to disagree, as much as he wanted every available member of the Order out there looking for his godson, he knew that Dumbledore was right. Looking around at the faces before him -- Remus, Molly, Arthur, Bill, Kingsley and Tonks -- he knew he could trust them all to guard the information with their lives, if need be. There was too much at stake to risk someone less dedicated deciding Harry's life wasn't worth a bout of Cruciatus.
"What of the people at the safe house?" Remus asked suddenly. "They must have reasoned out by now that something's gone wrong; can we be sure of their cooperation?" He pulled out a chair next to Sirius and sat down.
"I've spoken with my contact overseas," Dumbledore said, shaking his head. "He will make certain his people do not divulge the information needlessly. He assures me those involved are all very reliable, and I believe we can trust him on this."
"Good," Kingsley added, nodding, his voice calm. He leaned forward and launched into what Sirius had previously dubbed, 'investigation mode'. "What are the facts, Albus? We've got to see what we're working with here."
Dumbledore pulled a large scroll out of his robes and unfurled it on the table, sticking it to the surface with a wave of his hand. It was a map, hand-drawn on aged brown vellum with ink of startlingly vibrant colors. The ocean lapped serenely across the paper in waves of bright cerulean blue, crashing into a flurry of white foam against the borders of the landmasses dotting the paper. As Sirius watched, a large eel-like creature rose from its depths and wrapped its tail around what appeared to be the bottommost tip of Africa.
Tonks whistled. "That's some map you've got there, Professor." She leaned forward and poked the bristling dark trees growing out of a stretch of land labeled 'Germania', but snatched her hand back when a flock of tiny black birds squawked at the intrusion and took flight towards the Asian border.
"Yes, yes, quite remarkable isn't it?" Dumbledore murmured and brushed aside a cloud hanging over the British Isles. It spat out a mist of grey ink and slid sulkily down to hover over France.
"Now as we know, Harry, Severus and Mr. Malfoy left here on the plane from London," he continued and tapped part of England with his wand. A pool of black ink welled up around the mark and spread across the paper into a thick black X, shaking its limbs dry before laying still. He made a similar notation over the northeastern coast of North America. Curling black letters accompanied the X, but Sirius couldn't read them upside down. "They were to arrive here several days ago."
Bill stood and craned his neck over his father's shoulder. "What does that say? Ipswich?"
"One of the more populated wizard settlements in America, I've heard," Kingsley remarked, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "My sister went there once on holiday; quaint little town, she said."
"That does us no good," Sirius protested. "We know Harry didn't make it there; we should be looking somewhere else!"
"Perhaps we ought to address possible explanations why they did not arrive," Kingsley suggested. "If we can reason out why they did not go where they were supposed to, it may help us determine where they did."
"Do you have any theories, Professor?" Tonks asked.
Dumbledore stroked his beard and hummed to himself for a moment. "Severus would not sit idly by and wait for the plane to crash into the ocean," he mused after a moment. "No, I am confident he would have done all in his power to get the boys out of there at the first sign of trouble."
Molly was nodding. "Yes, yes of course," she agreed. Her voice still wavered slightly and her cheeks were chapped with tears, but she took a deep breath and carried on. "He could Apparate them out of the plane, surely? The muggles wouldn't be able to prevent that, would they?"
"They do not have the means to establish any sort of muggle anti-apparition wards, no."
"But wouldn't he have come straight here?" she insisted. "How far can Severus Apparate, with two boys in tow?"
Sirius growled inwardly at the thought of Snape Apparating anywhere with his godson, emergency or no. "Has anyone stopped to consider that this is Snape we're talking about?" he interrupted darkly, tearing his gaze away from the wondrous map to glare at the man across the table. "Perhaps he wasn't as loyal as you thought! He could have taken Harry straight to Voldemort!"
Surprisingly it was Molly, not Albus, who launched the most strident defense. "Sirius Black!" she scolded, rising from her chair and puffing herself like an affronted hippogriff. "Severus Snape may not be a very pleasant man, but he is a trustworthy one! To think of all the danger he puts himself in, risking his life every day to spy on You-Know-Who, only to be rewarded with you disparaging his good name and sacrifice just to satisfy some schoolboy rivalry! I'd never believe for an instant he'd harm a hair on either of those boys' heads, and neither should you!"
"But--"
"Not another word!" she demanded shrilly. "If Harry's been injured, Severus may be the only one with him who can take care of him! It's lucky for you he's too honorable to take offense to your childish and petty insults and refuse to help him just to spite you!"
Arthur stood and laid a consoling arm around his wife's shoulder. "Now dear, there's no need to get excited," he soothed, throwing a significant glance in Sirius's direction. "I'm sure Sirius will agree Severus would never do such a thing."
"Quite right," Dumbledore agreed, looking slightly amused at the female Weasley's vehement defense of his Potion's Master. "No doubt Sirius is aware that Severus's considerable skills will be a great asset in keeping our two young students well cared for, wherever they may be. I, of course, have the most utmost faith he is doing everything in his power to ensure their safety."
Sirius scowled inwardly. There was no question Snape's skills with potions were near legendary, and that he was also a considerably fair hand at both offensive and defensive magics, and if he'd been a trustworthy sort of man those skills would be especially useful in keeping Harry safe from any danger that might have befallen him. That was just the problem -- he didn't trust the man. He was a vile, reprehensible wizard -- always had been and always would be. In Sirius's opinion, getting the Dark Mark tattooed on your forearm was an awful long way to go for the cause. He'd go to enormous lengths himself to ensure Voldemort's defeat, but willingly being branded with the evil wizard's mark was not one of them. In his mind, it took a particular type of person to do so, one that might not regard the mark as such an imposition in the first place.
He opened his mouth to voice further objections, despite the rather quelling glare Molly still shot in his direction, but a firm hand on his shoulder stopped him.
"He is on our side, Sirius," Remus declared softly, his eyes filled with sincerity. "Truly, he is."
It was this unwavering insistence from Remus that made him shut his mouth and silence his protests. He knew Molly was nothing if not a fierce and devoted mother, and that she would never intentionally put any child in harm's way, but that didn't mean she couldn't be fooled. Snape was a Slytherin -- cunning and manipulative to the core, the whole lot of them.
Dumbledore's faith in the man might have been enough for him at one point, had he not already questioned the man's decision to send Harry on this fool's errand to begin with. For his godson's sake, he was prepared to accept nothing but complete, irrefutable proof.
For him, that was Remus. He trusted him unconditionally, would take his word over any other in the world, and if the man was convinced that Severus Snape was truly on their side, he would concede.
"How can you be sure, Moony?" he pleaded softly, needing his oldest friend's reassurance more now than ever.
"We can never really be sure of anything, Padfoot," the soft-spoken man answered, smiling sadly, "but I trust him. More importantly, I trust him with Harry's life, and so should you."
Sirius stared into his friend's calm amber eyes, searching relentlessly for any sign, any stirring of doubt. When he could find none, he set his jaw in a firm line and nodded. Until they found Harry, he would trust his one-time rival, but if anything happened to his godson, if even one hair was out of place on his head when they did, he would walk through Hades itself to find Severus Snape and make all those years in Azkaban count for all they were worth.
"I don't like this Remus," Sirius growled after Dumbledore had disappeared through the floo. They'd broken up the meeting not long after the heated argument about Snape's loyalties without coming to a definitive conclusion about how they were going to find the missing wizards.
Tonks and Kingsley had gone away with a promise to make some discreet inquiries at the Ministry in the morning, to make sure there was no suspicion of wizard involvement or Harry's presence on the plane. They'd also pledged to look into any information they had on Ipswich or the surrounding area.
'We don't keep a whole lot of intelligence on every other wizard settlement in the world, but we'll contact you in the morning if anything suspicious comes to light,' Kingsley had assured them sincerely, and then the two Aurors disappeared through the floo.
The Weasley's had left soon after, Bill lending his distraught mother his arm while Arthur stayed behind to offer one last vow of assistance, and then he too was gone. Dumbledore stayed on, talking quietly with Remus while Sirius brooded into the fire. From the snippets of conversation he caught in between his dark thoughts, they'd been discussing possible ways to trace any of the three wizards using some sort of spell or charm, but from the sound of it they hadn't had much luck. Eventually the aged wizard had promised to come back in the morning after researching the matter more thoroughly in the Hogwarts library, and left the two remaining wizards in the empty house.
Remus spelled the fire out and sat on the sofa next to him, leaning back into the cushions and rubbing his hands over his eyes. "Nor do I," he admitted tiredly.
"How can we just sit here?" Sirius demanded, his voice betraying his frustration. "We should be out looking for Harry!"
Remus sighed. "We cannot search the whole world," he answered. "We have to have a place to start."
"Why not!" Sirius challenged angrily. "I'd go anywhere for Harry, anywhere in the world!"
A sad smile tugged at the werewolf's lips. "You're right of course. As would I," he admitted, "but you know it's impractical. If we start running off randomly to every corner of the earth we'll never find him."
Sirius scowled. Remus was right, of course, but it didn't make the truth easier to bear. "We will find him, Remus, won't we?" he asked, his anger fading into quiet despair. If anything happened to Harry, he'd never forgive himself.
"Of course we will," Remus promised. He sat up and squeezed his hand over Sirius's clenched fists. "We'll find him and we'll bring him home, no matter what it takes."
Home. Yes, they would bring Harry home, Sirius vowed to himself, his throat too thick to speak the sentiment aloud. His heart threatened to burst at the love that surged when he thought of Harry's smiling face. No matter what it took, no matter how long, he would never rest until his godson was safe. He would find him, and he would bring him home, if it was the last thing he ever did.