Joining the Fold

By Duckflesh

Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor any of the characters used in the story to follow. The characters and all other Harry Potter trademarks are used here without permission.

Chapter 7

Snape woke up to a pounding head, a dry mouth, and an overall feeling that, despite getting several hours of sleep, he'd had virtually no rest. This was hardly foreign to him; he hadn't slept well in years. After first arriving at the hotel, Snape had hoped that being in the Dark Lord's presence would help him sleep better, and, for a while, it had. But that had left him, now, and once again he woke up every morning feeling as terrible as ever.

Snape lay in bed for some time, trying to convince himself to get up. It took a knock at the door to motivate him to accomplish the task. He pulled on his robe, then ambled over to the door and swung it open. Travers strode in. He had a satchel over his right shoulder, and his left hand was layered thickly with bandages.

"Snape! How'd you sleep?"

"Fine," Snape lied. "Yourself?"

"Oh, you know, same as always."

Snape stared uncomfortably, unsure of what else to say.

"Well, look, I have a favor to ask," Travers said, finally.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I heard you're real good at potions, right? Even helped the Dark Lord out with some brewing a few nights ago?"

Snape suppressed a laugh. It figured that a story which Yaxley hadn't wanted to get out was making its way around the Death Eater gossip circuit within just a few days.

"Yeah, I guess," Snape said.

"Well, great. Do you think you could brew me some Felix Felicis?"

Snape raised a brow. Suddenly, the bandage on Travers' hand made sense. Snape had worn a similar one for a week or so during his fourth year at school. That kind of bandage signified that its owner had tried to make a potion far above their skill level, resulting in a cauldron explosion. Snape had worn his after his first attempt at trying to brew Veritaserum. His hand had been pretty badly burnt, and he had to stay overnight in the hospital. Lily and come to stay with him.

He shook his head, dispelling the memories. "I suppose," he said. "I've only made it a few times. How much do you need?"

Travers, grinning now, opened up the satchel and took out two empty one-liter flasks.

"This much worth, if possible."

Snape's eyes widened. "That's going to be quite expensive… what do you need so much for?"

"Erm," Travers said, avoiding eye contact. "Personal use."

"I see," Snape said.

"All the ingredients you'll need are in this bag, Snape, so you don't have to worry about cost."

"Alright. I may as well get started now, I suppose… but it won't be done for months."

Travers looked almost giddy. "Great! Great. Hey, I owe you one, Snape."

"Sure," Snape said, and began sorting items out of the satchel. Travers turned to leave. Though Snape knew he should remain silent, his conscience started to gnaw at him. He found himself speaking up just before Travers had shut the door behind him.

"Travers?"

"Yeah, Snape?"

"You know, some people abuse this potion. They start taking it every day, and build a tolerance. Worse still, they stop being able to produce their own luck. They can't even operate without taking Felix Felicis every morning. It's… not good."

Travers smirked. "I'll keep that in mind, Snape."

Snape worked for hours; it was quite a task to successfully brew so much Felix Felicis, an exceptionally difficult potion to make. Once he'd finally gotten the potion simmering, he glanced at the clock, and was shocked by the time. He needed to head downstairs.

Formed up in the hotel lobby was quite a congregation of Death Eaters. Yaxley, Travers, Karkaroff, Dolohov, the Lestrange Brothers, the Black sisters, and Malfoy. As Snape joined the group, Travers tapped him on the shoulder, raising a brow inquisitively.

"It's underway," Snape said. "I'll have it ready as soon as I can…"

Travers grinned. "I owe you one, Snape. Really."

"Alright," Yaxley announced loudly before Snape could reply, "The gang's all here. Now, has everyone been to the bathroom? And does everyone remember who their buddy is? If we have an uneven number, I could get Mulciber down here to be someone's buddy. Narcissa, maybe. I bet Mulciber'd love to get to know you, eh?"

Narcissa shuddered, Bellatrix and Travers both cackling softly at the juvenile humor.

"Alright," Yaxley said, a bit more seriously. "Diagon Alley. Let's go."

Before they could apparate, however, two figures appeared in front of them. Half of the group had wands drawn before the slightly taller of the pair, his hands up, could say a word.

"Hey, hey! We're friends! I'm Avery! This is my son! We've been operating for the Dark Lord in the north!"

"Oh," Yaxley said, sounding almost disappointed as he put his wand away. "Yeah, I remember you. What do you want?"

Snape made eye contact with the younger Avery, who he'd gone to school with. The thick man nodded back, looking as bored as ever, if a bit sweaty.

"Our office was raided," Avery senior said, clearly quite distressed. "They got the others, including Lestrange."

Rodolphus stepped foreword, interrupting Yaxley, who had been opening his mouth to say something. "They got my dad!? Is he okay? We have to go rescue him!"

"The Dark Lord and Lestrange are old friends," Avery senior said reassuringly. "I'm sure he'll mount a mission to free him from Azkaban very soon."

"Eh," Yaxley said, "I kind of doubt it. Lestrange has seen better days. I doubt the Dark Lord will think that freeing him justifies any real commitment of resources."

Rodolphus looked like he'd have very much liked to punch Yaxley in the face, but Bellatrix grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. Snape hoped that he wasn't about to witness a fight between the two in which Bellatrix insisted that the Dark Lord could leave Rodolphus' father to rot if he saw fit to do so.

Yaxley, however, was apparently in a rush. "Alright, fine. You two are coming with us to Diagon Alley."

"What?" Avery senior asked, clearly disoriented. "Why are we going to Diagon Alley?"

"Testing the waters, dammit, and that is the last time I explain it. Let's go."

Yaxley disapparated on the spot. Avery senior, looking tired but also resigned to his work, followed after, and so too did the rest of them.

They came out in the middle of Diagon Alley, standing on the sun-baked cobblestones. It was late afternoon on a weekday, and the district wasn't particularly crowded. The few shoppers that were present began making hasty exits when they noticed the mass of black robed figures.

Yaxley led the group to what appeared to be a brand new building. Its colorful sign revealed that it was home to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. The Death Eaters clamored into a large outdoor seating area, lounging around tables shaded by giant parasols. A woman who Snape assumed was Florean Fortescue emerged, looking so nervous that it was amazing she was able to stand up. She quietly approached Travers.

"Can I… help you, sirs?"

Travers glanced at her boredly. "Cup of tea."

"Certainly, sir… that'd be three knuts…"

Travers laughed in her face. "Three knuts? Go make some tea, you enormously stupid girl, before I murder you and your entire family."

The look on Fortescue's face suggested that she was barely able to resist fainting, and she hurried back to the main building.

"Oh, hey, I want a sundae!" Rodolphus called after her.

Snape sighed, running a hand through his matted hair. This was all a tad surreal; Death Eaters at an ice cream parlour. He had sat at a table with Rodolphus, Bellatrix, Rabastan, Malfoy, and Narcissa. Tensions had finally calmed down enough for Malfoy and Narcissa to make eye contact with Bellatrix without looking as though they wanted to throttle her.

"So," Rodolphus said cheerily, "The wedding is set for two weeks from Sunday. You're all invited!"

"Snivelus Snape is not invited," Bellatrix said coldly.

Narcissa snickered. "Wow, Bella, borrowing terms from our disgraced traitor of a cousin? I didn't know you and he were so close."

Bellatrix looked stunned that her own sister had presented the counter-insult that Snape had always used in the past. Lucius laughed, and Snape allowed himself a brief smile.

"You know, Sev," Rodolphus said, ignoring everything that had happened in the last thirty seconds, "don't you think it's time you think about settling down? Bella has got another sister, maybe you and her could get together."

Bellatrix and Narcissa snorted in disgust in perfect unison, then looked away in embarrassment, apparently disgusted that they agreed on something.

"She's currently, erm, seeing a mudblood," Malfoy said in a low voice, and Rodolphus turned red for having made the suggestion.

"It's a stupid idea anyway, Rodolphus," Narcissa said. "Sev should get together with a girl he knows already. What about that girl from school, Sev? Lily Evans?"

"Erm…" Snape stammered, "What about her?"

"Lucius says you used to be close friends, and I always saw you looking at her during dinner…"

"Erm," Snape said.

"She's a mudblood," Malfoy said matter-of-factly, sipping on a cup of tea that the terrified host had presented to him.

"Oh, she is? Jeez, Severus, what's wrong with you?" Narcissa asked, though there was no real cruelty in her voice.

"I'm not surprised," Bellatrix chimed in. "He's always seemed like a mudblood lover to me. He's only a halfsie himself, you know"

"You guys are all nuts," Rodolphus said, rolling his eyes. "She never meant anything to him. Right, Sev?"

"Of course she did," Narcissa insisted. "Here, look. Sev, what color are Lily's eyes?"

Green, Snape thought.

"How should I know?" he said.

"See?" Rodolphus said triumphantly. "He doesn't give a shi—"

Yaxley's booming voice chimed out from the next table, interrupting their conversation. For this, Snape was incredibly thankful.

"Listen up, everyone," Yaxley was saying. "We're all gonna stay put until the Aurors or the Order of the Phoenix show up. When and if they get here, we're gonna fight. I want most of you to disperse, make them come after you. We can maximize property damage that way. Me, I'm going to face them down head on. I want two of you flanking me."

He looked around briefly, no doubt wondering who he'd have the most fun putting into danger. "Ah, the Averys. You'll do. You'll be taking point with me."

"But…" stammered Avery senior before trailing off, apparently coming to the conclusion that there was no point in protesting any further. Snape rather felt for the man, who was by far the oldest person present.

Narcissa sighed. "This could be a long wait, guys. I doubt anyone's coming for us."

Alastor Moody was not pleased. He growled audibly as he stared at the massive bulletin board which occupied the wall next to his desk. Tacked all over it were the files of Ministry employees, each complete with a photograph of the individual in question. Moody was getting intensely tired of all those faces smiling down at him. He scanned each photo, saying the name of each person to himself before moving on. By the time he finally found the mole, he reckoned, he'd know every single person employed by the Ministry, from the Minister of Magic on down to the fellow who cleaned the toilets on the Atrium level. He shook his head and grunted. He had been carefully considering the files on the board for the past week, and hadn't been able to find any real reason to suspect any of these people as traitors.

Well, that eliminated about a dozen possibilities, anyway. Now all he had to do was deal with the stack of five times as many files sitting on his desk. A month of this, and virtually no progress.

Who are you? Moody wondered. Why can't I find you?

With a sigh, he decided for what must have been the fiftieth time that month to start over from the beginning. The Ministry employed several hundred people. Maybe half of them would be handling the kind of information that the mole seemed able to obtain. Of those, only a handful had any link to Voldemort. But Moody had interviewed everyone from that handful several times. He'd caught one of them for embezzlement. Two more broke down under interrogation, revealing that they'd been stealing office supplies. But passing information to Voldemort? Moody grunted again.

I've got no goddamn clue.

A head popped up over the wall of Moody's large cubicle. Moody had to suppress the impulse to spin on his heel and blast the intruder with a Stupefication jinx. As any Auror who had ever worked with Moody could tell you, that habit had taken years to kick, and few were the co-workers of Moody who hadn't found themselves locked in a full-body bind after accidentally sneaking up on him. If you were going to work for the Auror's Office, you had to develop a kind of humor about this kind of thing.

Moody glanced at the head floating over the partition. It was Kingsley Shaklebolt, his assistant, and one of the youngest people to ever be accepted into the department. Moody mostly had him make coffee.

"Shaklebolt? Shouldn't you be out at the playground?"

"Mhmm, hilarious, sir. Crouch wants you to know that he's going to put you on probation if you miss any more paperwork."

Moody growled. "I wouldn't be missing my paperwork if you'd just do it all, like I told you to."

"That'd be dishonest, sir," Kingsley said, smirking.

"Yeah, well, no one ever caught any Dark Wizards filling out paperwork. If Crouch wants to put me on probation, so be it."

He turned back to the files on his desk nonchalantly. He heard Kingsley groan, but knew that the young man would stay up all night finishing the backlogged work. Good kid, that one, Moody thought.

Moody jabbed a meaty hand at one of the photographs hanging on the bulletin board. "Him. Erm, Donald Weber. Magical Games and Sporting. I've got a feeling the information might be coming out of there. Bring him to me, I want another interview."

"That could be a problem, sir."

"Eh?"

"He's dead. They found him this morning, house was a mess. Dark Mark was present."

Moody grunted. He wished it wasn't so easy to take such information in stride, but this kind of report had become so common lately…

"Well, I suppose he's not the leak, then. Or, if he was, he's not anymore."

"I suppose not, sir."

Moody pulled the photo and file off the board, tossing them into the dustbin.

"I could bring you Ludo Bagman, if you want, he worked closely with Weber."

"No, I've interviewed Bagman four times, and he knows about as little about the leak as he does about… well, any other subject."

Kingsley snickered. Bagman gaining his position by being a former famous athlete hadn't exactly made him popular around the Ministry.

"Oh," Shaklebolt added, "Payroll sent an airplane up. They want Rookwood's file. Are you done with it?"

Moody stopped what he was doing and glanced at the lone file sitting on the top shelf of his desk. Augustus Rookwood. Rookwood had had a run in with the Death Eaters just days before the new leak had sprung up. But Moody had interviewed him six times, and even though his story seemed a little off, Rookwood didn't seem to be lying. He also wasn't in the Department of Sports and Gaming. Moody grunted.

"Did you ask Crouch about letting me use Veritaserum?"

"He says it's a good idea, but it's not currently legal. He's going to push for it next time he sees the Minister."

"Hrm. I guess that's something."

"Aren't the Sneakoscopes good enough? God knows you have enough of them."

Moody glared at Kingsley. There was no such thing as too many Sneakoscopes.

"No," he said, "A good enough liar will fool a Sneakoscope every time. Hell, Veritaserum probably won't even work… there are plenty of ways to get around it, and someone as skillful with potions as Voldemort will know all of them."

There wasn't any response. He glanced up at Kingsley, who was grimacing. There were a lot of upset exclamations coming from outside the cubicle.

"That name, sir…" Kingsley said.

"That's his name, people!" Moody roared. "Voldemort! Get used to it! I'm not scared to say it, and neither should you be! You're Aurors, for God's sake!"

Kingsley rolled his eyes, no doubt thinking about how much trouble he'd have smoothing this little incident over. Moody felt a bit of gratitude. He'd probably have been out on the street long ago if he didn't have Kingsley around to explain away his outbursts.

Granted, that feeling of gratitude didn't mean he'd stop making outbursts. If anything, Kingsley being around meant he was free to say whatever he wanted.

His eyes found that lone file again. Augustus Rookwood. It was time to make a decision.

"You can take it," he said, finally. "It's not Rookwood."

Kingsley nodded, coming around the wall and into the office and grabbing the file.

"You're going to payroll?" Moody asked.

"Aye, sir."

"I'll go with you. But we'll need to send an owl off first."

"Why's that?"

"Well, to check with your mommy that it's okay. And we'll want her to send you your toothbrush and your jammies."

"Honestly, sir, every time you make a slight variation of that same joke, it just gets funnier and funnier."

"Mhmm, agreed."

"What do you need at Payroll, sir?"

Would you believe that on my last paycheck, the bastards charged me for property damage?"

"You did go a bit far chasing that Death Eater, sir. The owner of the potions shop claimed 800 Galleons of damages after the duel."

"Well I caught the bastard, didn't I?"

They had left Moody's alcove, and were now headed down a long row of cubicles. Near the end, a head maned with fiery red hair appeared over a partition. It was Rufus Scrimgeour, and he was grinning. Moody grinned back. He knew that Kingsley and the other younger Aurors liked to joke that Scrimgeour and Moody were such good friends because they both looked about twenty years older than they really were.

"Alastor!" Scrimgeour hollered "Guess who caught the elder Letrange this morning!"

Moody grinned. "You son of a bitch! I had dibs on him. Did he survive the encounter?"

"Aye, I barely touched him. He's not doing so well health-wise, though. He won't last long in Azkaban."

"Good riddance," Moody grunted.

"You know what this means though, eh?"

"What's that?'

"It means that I'm at seventy-four captures, which puts me ahead of you."

Moody snorted. "That'd be because half of your captures are old men like Lestrange. You leave all the hard ones for me."

"Keep telling yourself that, Alas—"

One of the many devices hidden in Moody's coat began emitting a high-pitched whine, cutting off Scrimgeour and causing an aide passing them to drop a pot of coffee, which shattered on the carpet.

Scrimgeour was covering his ears. "What does that one signify, Alastor?"

"That," Moody said, unable to contain his grin, "Means that my contact at Diagon Alley has spotted Death Eaters. The dumb bastards have made their move!"

Scrimgeour's eyes widened. He threw himself over the partition, brown Auror's robes swirling around him.

"What!? That's big! Let's go!"

"My thoughts exactly. Go round up all the senior Aurors. No one with less than five years of experience."

Kingsley was about to protest, but Moody cut him off.

"No, Kingsley, it's too dangerous for you. But I have a job needs doing. Get to a fireplace, and take the floo network to Dumbledore. Tell him what's going on."

Kingsley nodded sharply and turned on his heel, headed for the elevators.

"Wait!" Scrimgeour cried, causing Kingsley to stop in his tracks. "Damn it, Alastor, have you forgotten that you're an Auror? You answer to the Ministry, not to Albus Dumbledore. Telling civilians about this is highly inappropriate."

Moody shook his head. "Without the Order, Scrimgeour, we don't stand a bloody chance in hell. There's more to life than the Ministry, especially these days. You'll get that, eventually."