Chapter 10
In the silence the two dimension travellers had left behind, Lucius raised an inquiring eyebrow, then drew a chair for his wife. Narcissa inclined her head gracefully and sat, arranging her robes carefully around her.
"Quite a welcome," she commented coolly. "Is this to be part of a new training regime for the Order? One of Mr Moody's ideas?"
Sirius exchanged a glance with Albus, then met Severus' eyes and pointed his head towards the door. The two of them left the office and descended the winding staircase, wands in hand.
"Any idea why?" Sirius asked
Severus shook his head, a clipped, abrupt gesture. He'd rather taken to Hermione, but Lucius had been his friend for almost twenty years, and Severus didn't react kindly to others threatening his friends.
Neither did Sirius, and when they found Harry and Hermione, locked in a very tight embrace not twenty feet from the entrance to Albus' office, he made his displeasure quite, quite clear.
"What the hell were you thinking?" He roared.
Because while Sirius might be easily amused, he was also an auror. And, right now, a very angry one at that.
"Do you even realize what you did in there? That was an unforgivable!"
Harry raised his head from Hermione's shoulder. His eyes were very green, and very cold.
"Leave her be," he demanded. "Just leave us alone for a moment."
Sirius's anger racketed up another notch. He would not be talked to like this in his own home, and he was quite finished with catering to Harry's and Hermione's quirks.
"The hell I will!" He yelled. "I could have you shipped off for Azkaban in an instant, Hermione, and no one would question my judgment!"
The Hermione Sirius had come to know would have responded to this with a wave of her hand, or perhaps a babbled explanation as to how the dementor's powers would most likely be warped in contact with memories from a different dimension.
This new, volatile Hermione did not lift her head from Harry's shoulder, nor did she try to turn around to them. She was crying, dry, heavy sobs that shook her body and seemed to vibrate in the silent corridors.
"Don't you dare threaten her," Harry hissed back. "You don't understand what is going on here, you have no idea what she's been through! You're lucky she didn't kill him and even luckier I didn't let her!"
"You're both mad!" Sirius shouted. "And she's dangerous! She shouldn't be allowed a wand if she behaves like this! Why didn't you warn us?"
Hermione shuddered against Harry's chest, her hands ghosting over his arms and shoulders, scrabbling for a hold, and the noises she made were not quite human. Harry's arms tightened around her and he began rocking her slightly, but his attention was on Sirius, and on Sirius alone.
"I swear, Sirius," he began slowly. "I love you dearly, but if you don't leave her alone right now, you will regret it."
"Don't you threaten me! That girl attacked one of my oldest friends for no possible reason! I will not tolerate that kind of behaviour!"
"Your friend!" Now Harry was shouting, too. "How can you be friends with a monster? How can you defend a man like Lucius Malfoy?"
"Lucius Malfoy is an honourable man, and has done more for the Order of the Phoenix than any other besides Albus!" Sirius yelled. "He's been a loyal friend for years! He can't have done anything that's so bad he deserves a Crucio…"
"He tortured her fiancé to death right in front of her eyes!" Harry roared, and Sirius heart missed a beat. He lowered his wand, took a step back, but Harry was too far gone now, his arms clenched around Hermione, his face white, lips pale with anger, and his wand hand vibrating with tension.
"He tortured her! For three weeks, and when I finally found her, she was as close to death as you can be! Her blood was all over my hands, and your friend had chained her to a wall, right opposite the corpse of Ron, and he wouldn't take him down unless she betrayed my hiding place! That's what your friend did, Sirius!"
It felt as if all the air had been sucked right out of the corridor. Sirius met Harry's eyes, narrow and full of wild rage, and realized that the other man was telling nothing but the truth.
"No," Sirius whispered, thinking about how Lucius had been fascinated by Voldemort's ideology when they had first met, how he had revelled in his pureblood status (and did to this day), how he had despised muggleborns until Lily came along and changed his mind by mere force of personality. "No. He wouldn't."
Harry snarled. There was no other word for the way his teeth were bared. His body hunched down like a protective cloak around Hermione. He readied his arms to move her out of the line of fire. He drew his wand hand back and up, ready to loosen a barrage of spells. In a second, he would attack Sirius, no doubt about it.
Then Severus stepped in front of Sirius, wand nowhere to be seen. His arms were raised in a calming gesture, and his voice was rich and controlled, despite the slight trembling of his shoulders.
"You do not want to do this, Harry. Think. This isn't your world, and it isn't your Sirius. He doesn't understand. You should take care of Hermione, not start a fight."
Sirius had always admired his friend's bravery, but never more than in this moment. Harry was shaking with rage, his wand now trained on Severus, but his stance didn't waver, and his eyes did not move from the two dimension travellers.
And after a long, silent minute that held the potential for anything, Harry lowered his wand.
He breathed in deeply, brushed his sweat-slicked hair away from his face, closed his eyes for a moment. His hands began rubbing circles into Hermione's back, stroking her hair. The girl still hadn't moved from his embrace, and still her shoulders were trembling with silent sobs.
When Harry looked back up at Sirius and Severus, he seemed almost sane again, or at least under rigid control.
"We'll take a few minutes, then we'll be back in the office," he said hoarsely. "Tell them we… apologize. This was a misunderstanding. It will not happen again."
Severus shifted, meeting Sirius' eyes in question, then nodded towards Harry and smiled.
"Take your time," he said. "And if there's anything I can do…"
Harry shook his head curtly, and without another word Severus took Sirius' arm and led him away, back to the gargoyle.
When they re-entered the office, it was right in the middle of one of those Gryffindor-versus-Slytherin games so many of the Order meetings turned into.
„I apologize for lacking my customary wit right now," Lucius was saying, and he sounded a bit sharp. "But are you actually telling me that the so-called 'solution to our problems' is, in fact, a ragtag team of dangerous children that look as if they haven't shared in the comforts of civilisation for quite a long time? Is this why I dropped everything and came here for a secret meeting?"
"Yes," Albus answered, twinkling happily. "Though there is also the planned attack on Voldemort's headquarters tomorrow morning."
Lucius sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked up when Severus approached the table.
"I gather an explanation for all this will be forthcoming?" He inquired.
Sirius let Severus and Albus do the explaining. He threw himself into a chair that stood to the side, ignoring the worried glances of Remus and Lily. While the newcomers were treated to a crash-course in dimension travels and guidebook for the interaction with unhinged teenagers, Sirius stared at Lucius and tried to imagine his friend doing the things Harry had spoken of.
There was the potential for cruelty in Lucius, he had to admit that. His friend came from an old family that had allied themselves with Dark Lords more than once, and despite the kindness Lucius and Narcissa displayed to their son and their friends, they could be cold to outsiders, their arrogance an almost tangible aura around them.
Yes, in a different world following different rules, Lucius might have done these things.
But so might all of them, really.
Sirius' family was as dark as Lucius', Severus' knowledge of the Dark Arts was extensive and he had in him a ruthlessness born from desperation that had frightened Sirius a few times in their youths. Remus was a werewolf. And Lily was as fierce in the defence of her friends as she was knowledgeable of rare magic and dangerous potions.
So who could say what they'd have done or become if things had been different. The thought chilled Sirius. Suddenly, he found it harder to be angry with Hermione for the unforgivable she had used.
Twenty minutes had passed and Lucius and the others were now fully aware of both the unusual situation they'd all found themselves in, and of Harry's and Hermione's plans to attack Voldemort's Welsh stronghold.
They were not amused by either.
"This isn't prudent, Albus," Kingsley said with his usual calm dignity, although Sirius thought he could detect a hint of bewilderment. While they had all gotten used to Albus' somewhat erratic behaviour, he was in general a more than careful leader. To accept two strangers' words in this was highly unusual for him.
"If you trust these people, information as valuable as the position of Voldemort's hiding place shouldn't be wasted on an attack that's doomed to fail. We should gather our forces, liaise with the Ministry. With luck, this could be the turning point of our struggle…"
"No," Harry said from the door, his voice absolute. "You could invade a thousand strongholds and it wouldn't matter. The only way to win this war is to destroy his horcruxes. And the only people who can help you with that are Hermione and I. So you will do as we say, Kingsley."
Kingsley bristled at being talked to like that, and by someone who barely qualified as an adult.
But Sirius was busy examining the two dimension travellers, and as always, he came up with more questions than answers. Harry was holding himself differently – he noticed that first. It reminded Sirius of that strange moment last night when he had threatened them all not to take his and Hermione's words too lightly. For one moment, he had sat before them like a man entirely comfortable in his own skin, like a man used to being the centre of attention wherever he walked.
He looked the same now, and the way his eyes moved, his hand was half-curled in the beginning of a snapping gesture that would slide his wand between his fingers, told Sirius that he was aware of every single person in this room and the potential threat they constituted.
It was a look that shouldn't have fit him, should belong to a man much older than this nineteen-year-old, and yet it seemed too natural to be a studied pose. It made Sirius wonder.
But it was Hermione who made him doubt his memory of the past hour. Despite the fact that she'd thrown an Unforgivable barely thirty minutes ago and had then spent considerable time sobbing hysterically into her friend's shoulder, she seemed entirely unchanged.
She studiously avoided looking at Lucius, and perhaps her eyes were a bit red rimmed, the line of her shoulders a bit stiffer, but her gestures were quick and sure as she spread a detailed map of Voldemort's stronghold and the surrounding area on the table and proceeded to fill them in on her and Harry's plan.
What little there was of it.
"Having a more detailed strategy wouldn't make sense," Harry shrugged away comments to that regard. "My plans never survive the actual situation, anyway. I think best on my feet."
"But we prefer our feet not being blasted to bits in a ridiculous attempt no one's bothered to think through," Lily retorted.
"Well, nobody forces you to join us, do they?" Harry asked. "Now to our questions."
They were surprisingly numerous and in-depth. It seemed that Hermione had used her day-long study session well, garnering a truly staggering overview over the differences between her dimension and theirs. But Harry hadn't been idle, either, and so their discussion ranged from shield charms to the Ministry policies on Voldemort, from Voldemort's known Death Eaters to the redistribution of their possessions after their trials, from their knowledge of Tom Riddle's history to the Hogwarts staff of the past years.
While Harry's and Hermione's questions were short and to the point, and their answers to counter-questions even shorter, the Order did their best to garner as much information from them as they gave, but in the end, the dimension travellers had made a much better deal. Unsurprisingly.
"Right," Hermione finally said and began collecting the sheets and sheets of parchment that were spilling over the table to the floor. "I think that's all we need, apart from a private word with the Headmaster. We'll leave for Wales at four a.m. Anyone who wishes to accompany us can meet us in the Entrance Hall."
"He had better not come with us, though," Harry said, pointing at Lucius, whose eyebrows were climbing to his hairline in reaction to their impudence. "I might forget he's on our side in the heat of battle and accidentally kill him."
Hermione just nodded. Passionately.
A/N: Thank you for all your comments and reviews, my lovely readers! The next chapter is being written as you read this, so the update should follow quickly. It will feature more Sirius point-of-view, the storming of Voldemort's stronghold, and a long awaited explanation for Harry's status as resident madman.
Review, please!