Whoa. Another long chapter. Oh, but I do love Lupin's point-of-view.
I have to thank Marble Meadow for her fantastic beta-ing. She's a real trooper, as she's been waiting several posts longer than everyone else to find out what happens. I hope y'all enjoy.
(coeptus)
He heard Ginny first.
Even from within his room, Lupin recognized the heightened emotion in the girl's voice as she exploded in the front door downstairs. He set aside the book he'd been reading and sighed. There was no use in trying to relax now. He'd expected the kids to return excited from the crowd and fanfare of the concert, but he didn't think he could stand Ginny's present hysteria. Lupin retrieved his wand from the bedside table and was halfway through the act of throwing around a few muffling charms when he thought distractedly of the hour and the sunshine still streaming in through his window. It was far too early for the concert to have concluded….
Suddenly he realized it was not excitement he heard in Ginny's sobbing.
It was terror.
Lupin bolted through his bedroom door, wand in hand, just as Molly's voice shrieked, "Arthur!" in a panic to match her daughter's. He took the stairs two at a time and arrived on the landing in the same moment that Arthur burst in from the living room with Alastor limping stiffly behind him. Ginny was still wailing in the arms of her mother, and nearby Harry wore a look of studied calm like the one James had occasionally assumed when too deeply furious to properly express himself. Ron was very pale. Nymphadora was closing the front door behind the party, but Lupin's eyes did not stay long enough on her to gauge her expression. Kingsley was not among the group. And where was…
"Hermione!" the youngest Weasley sobbed into Molly's shoulder. "She's gone!"
There was a sickly, swooping sensation in his stomach and Lupin demanded, "What happened?" His voice cracked more sharply than he'd intended.
"She was taken," Harry supplied, and the short, clipping inflections of his tone demonstrated how very like his father he'd become. "She was with us one moment and then was gone."
"The girl couldn't have simply disappeared," Alastor growled, hobbling forward. "What's missing from the story?"
Harry tuned to look expectantly at the last member of the party with her hand still limp upon the doorknob. His example was followed by everyone who wasn't sobbing and soon all but Ginny were staring at Nymphadora. She met their gazes with wide eyes and the tormented expression of a hare caught in a wire that knew it was about to be strangled to death.
"Tonks, dearest," Molly coaxed gently, though her voice was strained, "just tell us what happened."
"I—she said she had to use the loo," the pink-haired witch replied helplessly. "She said she'd be back in a minute…"
"You let her go alone," Arthur said tonelessly.
A shocked silence fell over the group for a brief moment as this information was absorbed. Even Ginny's weeping went quiet. Then Lupin exploded: "God damn it, Nymphadora! Can you do anything right?"
At his rebuke, her expression fell from panic to despair almost instantly. The pink shade of her hair flashed shockingly bright, then plummeted into a deep, scandalized fuchsia before settling into a dingy mud-brown.
Molly shoved her listless daughter into Arthur's arms and rushed to Nymphadora's side. "Never mind, my girl—no one's blaming you," she fussed, taking hold of the younger witch's shoulders. Then she shot Lupin a nasty look and hissed, "How dare you, Remus!"
Arthur ignored Lupin's and Molly's electrified glares at one another and mumbled, "How could this have happened?"
"There's no use pointing fingers about it now," Alastor said. "We need an account of what happened, and then we need to act. First of all—Arthur, get to Hogsmeade. Our contact in The Hog's Head can pass information along to Minerva. The rest of the Order needs to know about this."
Arthur obediently disentangled himself from his daughter and marched out the front door. "Be careful!" Molly pleaded just as her husband disapparated on the step. She shut the door behind him and then took hold of Nymphadora's elbow, saying, "Come, dearest. We'll sit you down and talk some more. Ginny—you, too." She led the distraught procession into the living room.
Lupin caught up at Alastor's shoulder as the other man was demanding of Nymphadora, "When did you notice the girl was gone?"
"Twenty minutes ago," she said weakly as she sank down into a chair, looking dazed. "She stepped away I think…maybe four or five songs before. It's been around forty minutes in all."
Lupin's nails dug into the palm of his wand-free hand with the effort he was exerting not to throw curses at her. In his anger, he wanted to make something bleed for the crime of abducting Hermione—if abduction was indeed the scenario they now faced.
"Kingsley stayed," Nymphadora murmured. "You know, in case…."
Lupin thought of a hundred endings to that sentence: in case Hermione happened to wander back to her party an hour later asking what she'd missed, in case some Death Eater conveniently walked past dragging a gagged and bound young woman, in case someone at the concert discovered her dead—
Lupin ended the train of thought out of necessity and said, "We have to go after her. Now."
"If the girl was taken," Alastor said sharply, "the chance is unlikely she'll still be anywhere in Diagon Alley. Don't let your personal feelings complicate this, Remus."
Lupin recognized the open-endedness of that comment and the invitation it created for someone like Nymphadora or Harry to infer what they wished. He was surprised to realize he didn't care who found him out just then.
"I won't stand by while one of our own is in danger. I'll scout the trail myself if I have to!"
"I'm going with you," Harry said firmly.
"You'll do no such thing," Alastor barked. "This is exactly the situation Voldemort and his Death Eaters would use to bring you into the open. You'll stay put, Harry. As for the rest of us," — he fixed Lupin with his magical eye— "we need to convene with the Order before making any rash decisions."
Molly gave an affirmative nod of her head, Ginny sank onto the couch by the window and Harry's clenched jaw began to turn white. As Mad-Eye went on instructing Molly to alert more members of the Order, Lupin realized how absurd it was that they should stand around having a conversation when every precious second that ticked by was a second wasted. He tried to imagine where Hermione might be at that moment—whether she was hurt or giving her captor hell—and then felt disgusted with himself for so much as thinking of her in harm without acting. There was no reason Lupin should have a conversation when she was possibly hurt somewhere. There was no reason anyone in the world should have something as mundane as a conversation, now that Hermione Granger was missing.
"Accio cloak," he murmured without thinking.
"—What did you say?" Alastor demanded, rounding on him briefly. The electric blue orb was stationary in its socket.
"Nothing," Lupin said a bit louder, not in an effort to be deceptive, but only because it was too late now to explain himself. Mad-Eye seemed satisfied with the answer, and an instant after he turned his back, Lupin strode from the room. He counted four steps before anyone in the living room could react. He was at the front door, and his patched traveling robe—which had flown down the stairs—threw itself obediently into his hand just as Molly's shocked cry caught up with his departure.
Alastor roared, "Remus, get back here!" but Lupin was already on the porch. He threw his arms into his cloak and shrugged into the shoulders even as he turned in place. The world contracted around him and then dilated violently into a shadowy side street off of Knockturn Alley. He shoved his wand into the deep outer pocket of the robe and stepped into the sparse vein of traffic as though he belonged there.
How could he have explained the need for his cloak to Alastor? The truth was that Lupin intended to become invisible when he reached Diagon Alley, and nothing in the world could make one as unremarkable in a crowd as a set of ordinary, gray traveling robes.
He made his way through the growing throng of traffic toward Diagon Alley and eventually emerged into the swarm and clamor of the concert. The sun had already plunged below the hedge of tall buildings, casting the square in bluish shadows. Fans and performers alike were still shouting their enthusiasm. Lupin knew that Kingsley was somewhere in that mass of people, and he would have recovered Hermione by now if the answer were as simple as standing in place.
Lupin favored a more progressive tactic. As he skirted the crowd, keeping to the closed storefronts, his sharp ears filtered the mess of noises for anything telling. There was an incessant keening of instruments, lyrics and cheers. Those were easy to listen through. The babbling undercurrent of private conversations proved more difficult to separate. Lupin tried to pick out the words that a harsh, male voice punctuated over the general murmur, but the bass of the music had already begun to desensitize his eardrums.
Probably nothing relevant there, anyway, he thought.
He expanded his search outward to the surrounding buildings. Most businesses were closed, their owners having likely joined the throng. Gringott's was operational, of course, but a high-security bank would be a conspicuous setting for abduction. That left The Leakey Cauldron. Assuming Hermione had actually gone in search of a restroom—and Lupin had no reason to suspect otherwise—the pub was a promising suspect.
Lupin found Tom manning the bar. He shouted over an imagined ringing in his ears a yarn about a niece with bushy, honey-colored curls of hair and dark brown eyes who might have passed this way. Tom apologized; he hadn't seen anyone like that, but he'd just taken over for the night shift.
"Nate's already gone," Tom said when Lupin wondered if the day shift worker would have seen her. "I sent the bloke home early; he didn't look all that well. Wasn't even manning the front when I showed up—sometimes I don't know why I keep him around…."
Not caring for idle chat at the moment, Lupin hastily thanked Tom and excused himself to the small restroom, which he found just as orderly as he'd expected. There was no evidence of a struggle, no flashing sign telling him Hermione had even been there. Perhaps she had not come this far, he thought. As Lupin turned to leave the bathroom, his eyes passed over a sliver of pale wood wedged between the trim and the floor.
It was a wand.
All the strength went out of his knees and Lupin was kneeling before he realized he'd begun to move. His numb fingers closed on the handle carved in delicate vines and leaves. He slid the wand from under the trim and gently turned it over in his hand. It was intact to the softly rounded tip. He withdrew his own wand from his pocket, swallowed a knot that had risen into his throat, and murmured, "Prior Incantato." An echo of the wand's last act of magic appeared in the air before Lupin and then flickered out; the shadowy image of a steaming cup of tea mocked a moment days ago when they had sat together at the dining room table.
The echo was proof.
Hermione hadn't even defended herself.
It was as if a crushing weight settled in his chest, and Lupin found it difficult to breathe for a moment. Then he slipped the precious sliver of wood into an inside pocket of his robe, stood with effort from the floor and strode from The Leakey Cauldron.
(intercapedo)
There was a man whom Lupin knew of through his work for the Order—a disreputable, paunchy little man who worked for the Ministry as a mid-rank security officer. Seven other guards worked the Diagon Alley beat under his authority, and a girl going missing between all eight of them seemed highly suspicious. Lupin thought it prudent at that point to pay this man a visit, and he would have felt wrong calling upon a perfect stranger without some kind of offering.
Quality potions came from honest—and prominent—places of business, and Lupin couldn't afford to be seen in such places until this was over. He bought cheap Veritaserum from a vendor in Knockturn Alley who swore it wasn't watered down. Then he used all of it on the small, paunchy man whom he found in the corner of a shadowy pub. Lupin pretended to be intoxicated; he stumbled to the bar, slurred a couple of choice curses about kids and their damned rock music and loudly invited the little man to share a pint or two. The other man didn't realize his tankard held a bit more than butterbeer until his third round when he began spouting intimate secrets. The man's eyes were bugging in alarm by the time his lips stumbled over a confession of a rather defaming business deal he'd made with a back-alley witch the previous night.
Lupin quickly and wordlessly cast a subtle muffling charm around them, combined with a mild aversion spell to keep away unwanted listeners. Then he dropped the pretense and sobered immediately. It wasn't difficult; he had been vanishing the brew from his tankards all along instead of drinking it. Lupin needed a clear head.
The low-grade Veritaserum would not last long. Time was running out for him in a handful of ways, and he could not bother with tactfulness just then. "Listen to me, friend," he told the man. "Something very valuable was taken from Diagon Alley tonight. You are going to help me recover it. Tell me what sort of supplementary instructions you received about security measures for the evening."
The man swallowed once. "I was paid to keep my men away from The Leakey Cauldron during the Weird Sisters concert," he blurted. "He would kill me if I showed within a block of the place."
"Who was it that bought your services?"
"A Death Eater. A tall fellow with a drawl. I never saw his face. He paid me in Galleons, and I asked if there was any other way I could help relieve him of his gold. He refused, said it would be an inside job by a Squib who valued his gold a lot more than I would."
The way it had spilled from his mouth informed Lupin he was telling the truth.
"Thank you for your cooperation," he said quietly after a moment. He gestured obscurely with his wand, altering much of the man's memory of their conversation. Then he took one last draft of butterbeer—actually swallowing it this time—got to his feet and left the dumpy little man to blink in his daze. It was past midnight when Lupin left the pub and stalked out from the side street back into Knockturn Alley.
He spent a long and trying night drifting among other shady pockets of magical London which were steeped in Dark Arts. Lupin discovered nothing useful but kept away from Tom on the night shift and any suspicion that would have arisen by returning to The Leakey Cauldron so late after the concert. He thought he saw Arthur Weasley once, walking in the opposite direction down a wide avenue in an inner London Borough near King's Cross station. Lupin ducked into a shadowy alcove between two narrow, brick buildings and waited for him to pass.
He found little evidence the following day to suggest the bartender called Nathan was overtly evil. After a while of slipping unheeded between regulars, Lupin deduced that the man was expectedly unpleasant for a barkeeper, generally disliked, and also a Squib. It was common understanding and even a bit of a joke that Nate could not produce a spell to save his life.
Lupin found that very interesting information, indeed.
He occupied a bench in one dim corner of The Leakey Cauldron and spent most of the second day there. He knew his unkempt appearance and the patched condition of his clothing lent to the illusion of someone often homeless and even more frequently drunk. He did not buy much drink that day, partly because he felt no desire for butterbeer and his meager funds were quickly running out, but more importantly because Lupin did not wish to give Nate the opportunity to become familiar with his face.
When the shift finally changed that evening, Lupin allowed the large man a bit of a start and then rose from his bench and pursued Nate's shaved head out the door into the London streets. He eventually followed his prey into a shabby apartment building and threw open Nate's door just before it clicked shut. Lupin's wand was out and the tip pressed firmly into the ridge of the large man's spinal column. Nate had not even switched on a light yet.
No matter.
His wand hand never strayed from where it held the spell in place as Lupin closed the door softly behind him. The click of the bolt striking the plate was deafening to Lupin as he strained to pick up signs that other occupants of the building had heard or suspected anything amiss. He stepped up very close behind Nate and leaned in toward his ear.
"I know you're a Squib and incapable of defending yourself by magical means, so I'll make this brief and then release you," Lupin said quickly and under his breath. "I've cast a binding spell on you, as I'm sure you've noticed. It's a little something of my own design. You may speak, but not with excessive force. If you raise your voice at all, a nasty property of the spell activates, atrophying your vocal folds. You would find it difficult to speak at all after that, and I would prefer we avoided this unhappy alternative. I don't like you, Nathan, and therefore I would feel no obligation to linger and reverse the damage."
Lupin knew the bluff was indistinguishable in his tone. It was a trait he had cultivated with care over many years. He depended on fear alone to keep the man from attempting to wake the building.
"Do we understand one another?" he asked softly.
"Yes," Nate said just as quietly, though his voice trembled.
"Very good. I am in possession of some disturbing knowledge. I know that you recently accepted gold as payment for taking something of great value from Diagon Alley during last night's concert—"
"—I've got an alibi," Nate choked. "I was working the whole time."
"I know with certainty that's a lie," Lupin said, twisting the tip of his wand against the man's spine and willing a mild Cruciatus curse.
Nate shook with rasping sobs that he impressively kept under the decibel of normal speech.
"I spoke with Tom myself," Lupin continued, "and he said you went home ill before the end of the concert. He also mentioned that you had stepped away when he came to relieve you last night. Let's try it again, without perjury. You were paid to steal something quite valuable, but this was something you did not even have to leave your workplace to steal. This was something that walked right into your hands. Am I getting warmer?"
"I was paid…to deliver…something. That's all."
"You aren't being very helpful, Nate. This thing you stole is very precious to me. I intend to be reunited with it." He paused to let the emphasis sink in. Then he asked, "Where is the girl?"
"I don't know."
Lupin punctuated the next, harsher Cruciatus wave with a smart jab of his wand into the man's vertebrae.
The large man whimpered. "I swear, mate," he gasped when the curse eased off. "I swear I don't know where she is. I didn't hurt her or anything like that."
"Enlighten me on what part you actually did play in this event."
Nate gulped noisily, probably fearing more pain. "I startled her, is all," he said. "Knocked her wand away—winded her, you know, so she'd go quietly. Bagged her up and carried her to the drop point."
"That's it?" Even Lupin was surprised by the dispassion in his voice despite the rage that flared within him at the image of this man handling Hermione Granger unkindly.
"He offered to pay me gold—the Death Eater—half in advance and the other half when it was done," Nate said quickly. "It was supposed to be Potter's lady friend, the little redhead. In the end, I couldn't pick her off the crowd, and when the other one wandered back alone—well, I knew it was the last chance I'd have. Didn't get all the gold I was promised, but that's because I brought him the wrong one. He could have killed me. I was lucky."
"That's a strange word to describe it," Lupin said dryly. "Now tell me about this drop point. Where was it you took the girl?"
He listened intently as Nate told him of the patched lane in the outskirts of a London Borough bordering Kent. It was an old, wooded neighborhood situated outside the heavier-populated area of Bromley. Nate told him how he'd had to go there on foot in the dead of the night, taking the back roads to avoid suspicion. Lupin would take a more direct route. He thanked Nate stiffly, silently longing for the excuse to hurt the man some more. Then he apparated directly out of the darkened apartment and into Bromley, aware that his spell had released Nate as soon as Lupin had gone.
He was somewhat familiar with the area and did not search long for the road he needed. It was a pitted, grassy, forgotten lane that broke away from a side street and wandered away behind a small church. It led him through a grove of trees toward another stone structure, some sort of pub. After several minutes of following the lane, Lupin drew up short and sighed.
The large, shaved Sickle of the moon shone overhead, even now stirring the beast within Lupin that would howl for human flesh in a matter of days. The irregular orb shone down mockingly on him, illuminating the broken, weed-choked pavement that had led him to the culmination of his search.
It was a dead end.
(intercapedo)
Lupin waited in the Hog's Head through that night and well into the next morning for the appearance of his last contact, a fellow werewolf by the name of Hamilton who fostered loose ties with the Death Eaters for the prospect of an occasional odd job. If anyone within Lupin's reach would know of dark activity in the Death Eater circuit, it was him. Lupin could not ignore the risk posed by meeting with Hamilton. He would become vulnerable to Death Eaters if he announced his presence to one of their informants, but Lupin had to take the chance. He was running out of sources on his own, and time was not in his favor. Soon he would transform and could be of no help to Hermione.
Lupin recoiled from thoughts of her as he sat alone with his head in his hands at a sticky, wooden table within the smoky Hogsmeade pub. He could not seem to banish her name or the memory of her face from his mind. He remembered the warmth of her and the smallness of her frame as she'd fallen asleep on his chest days before. He could picture her soft and keenly intelligent features as clearly as though she were standing before him. He imagined the way her lips parted and the contours of her small nose became sculpted and sharp whenever she assumed that furiously thoughtful expression.
Hermione could not be dead, he told himself. If Lord Voldemort or his Death Eaters wanted her dead, they would have simply killed her instead of plotting this elaborate abduction. She had been captured, but anything else would have been conjecture at that point. Lupin had to trust her Muggle blood to keep her safe from any roving intentions of her captors, but he could not protect her from whatever purpose the Death Eaters had in store unless he got an idea of where she was, and quickly. The alternative was staggering.
Lupin dug his palms against his eye sockets, hoping the pain would help reign in his imagination.
He had been waiting for the backlash. He had walked around blindly those last days, smiling vaguely in public, kissing her in secret and all the time waiting for the other boot to drop. Here was his punishment for believing he could ever find some shred of contentment in Hermione's affection. He'd kept her at arm's length for the sake of the monster within, and then he'd sent her off alone to face the real monsters out here. He had failed her as a teacher, as an admirer and a friend. She was gone—taken—and she hadn't even defended herself.
Suddenly Lupin couldn't breathe. There was a strange, sharp scent lingering in the back of his sinuses. A tight pang wound the muscles taut across his back. Not here, Lupin thought as if he could will away the pain of being so close to his own transformation. He had to be alone for this, to avoid the attention and the questions. He shot to his feet and stumbled toward the restroom, knocking into chairs, tables, and another bar patron as he went. He couldn't help his suddenly impaired motor functions, and Lupin depended on the illusion of simply being intoxicated. He also depended on the one-stall restroom being empty by the time he got there.
It was.
"Colloportus," he growled between clenched teeth, and not a moment too soon. The stone floor rose to meet him with alarming speed. He went down on his side and arched rigidly in pain. His muscles seized in silence, contracting with agony as Lupin thrashed on the floor. It lasted for several minutes this time. He gasped once, tasting blood in his mouth, as the worst of the pain went out of him. Lupin felt immensely heavy as he lay on the ground, as though he would sink right through the stone tiles if they were a bit less dense.
After a while he hauled himself up with tremendous reserves of strength, his every muscle screaming protest, and inspected himself in the dingy mirror. He'd bitten deeply into his tongue, but Lupin spluttered a charm and the wound healed. He spat a mouthful of blood into the sink and then splashed his face with cool water.
The pain of becoming a werewolf had progressed exquisitely throughout the course of Lupin's life. His pre-transformation discomfort had evolved into energy-draining episodes like these. Normally he'd rest for a while after one of his seizures. That morning, however, he could spare no time for himself. Lupin had to keep his wits about him. He smoothed his shirt beneath his robes, fixed his part and returned to his table to discover that the barman had gotten him a fresh butterbeer while he'd been gone. Lupin sighed. He didn't have any money left. He was going to have to walk out on the tab again. But not yet. He sank down into his chair and began kneading one aching shoulder, half-asleep where he sat.
Soon, a man with shoulder-length, sandy hair and green robes swept over to Lupin's table. The man took an unbidden seat across from him and plunked down a tankard onto the tacky tabletop as he sat. "You've been spooking some people in my circles, Remus," he said without introduction. "Your friends in the Order seem to be making a considerable racket in comparison."
"Glad you could make sense of the owl I sent you, Hamilton," Lupin said shortly, feeling irritable and sore from his seizure. "So you're familiar with my search. Let's save ourselves the pleasantries and talk about Death Eater involvement in the disappearance of this thing I'm looking for."
Hamilton chuckled. "Not so hasty, friend," he said. "The Death Eaters had nothing to do with her disappearance. But you already knew that. Their worthless Squib hireling did all the work of that nature. I imagine he thought it would bolster his standing among the Death Eaters."
"I've already spoken with Nate. It's gotten me nowhere. I need your help."
"My employer forbade me from telling you anything," said Hamilton with a shake of his shaggy, blond head.
"Who is your employer?"
He lifted the beer to his lips and took a long draft before answering, "Someone who pays me a hell of a lot more than you ever could."
Lupin's hand moved absently in one deep pocket, brushing against the empty phial of potion he'd bought in Knockturn Alley several nights ago.
"Oh, don't even think of using Veritaserum on me," Hamilton said, chuckling as Lupin's eyes widened. "My employer told me you'd come looking for answers. I'm to give you this instead." He thrust his hand inside his robe and produced a sealed sheet of parchment, which he held over the sticky tabletop toward him. Lupin took it with nerveless fingers. "That's all I can do, my friend," Hamilton said with a helpless lift of his shoulders. He took another swig from his tankard. "So I assume we won't be seeing you underground this month?"
Lupin chose not to answer. He glanced up from the roll of parchment and said, "I have to remind you of the utmost discretion…"
"—A fellow werewolf's secrets are always safe with me, Remus. I won't even name a price for my silence. How's that for brotherhood?" Hamilton stood and dropped a few coins for their beers. Then he took Lupin in with a sweep of his eyes and murmured, "You should sleep. You look like hell."
When Hamilton had gone, Lupin broke the seal on the parchment, unrolled it and read the words printed there in neat, compulsive script:
"The Shrieking Shack, eight this evening.
Don't try anything foolish, Lupin."
(intercapedo)
Lupin found himself scratching the same patch on the back of his left hand over and over again. The itch had long since been abated, but the scrape of his nails on raw skin helped to keep him awake. The creaking boards of the old house complained while Lupin sat stiffly near the gaping doorframe of a dusty room. He hadn't moved in several hours, his bum tingled numbly where it contacted the hard floor and his back ached. He knew he'd be too exhausted to defend himself if this whole thing was a trap, but Lupin had to go through with it.
The sun had begun to set beyond the jagged fragments of glass clinging to the windowpanes when Lupin heard footsteps on one of the lower floors of the house. His eyes snapped open; he must have forgotten to keep scratching his now-bloody hand and had nearly dozed off. He straightened from his slouch against the wall, carefully and soundlessly got his feet under himself and stood. He waited without breathing beside the door until the floorboards creaked in the hallway outside. Lupin kept his wand hand raised as the cloaked figure rounded the corner.
"Expelliarmus!"
The other wand, which had been held loosely at the newcomer's side, flew away into the corner of the room. The man's pale face sneered at Lupin between curtains of greasy, black hair. "I see you anticipated me," he said, his voice a sharp, slow and sibilant whisper that lacerated the groaning of the house.
"Severus. You hired Hamilton," Lupin accused, keeping the tip of his wand leveled at Snape's chest.
"Quite the deduction. I trust you did not strain yourself in arriving at that conclusion," he mocked in a silky voice. The highlights of his eyes flickered in silent satisfaction, and he continued, "Hamilton's intentions are honorable enough, but I felt he needed a bit of guidance to keep him out of trouble."
Lupin failed to keep the sarcasm from his voice as he said, "And I'm sure you know everything about honorable intentions."
Snape blinked. "My reasons for doing what I did transcended any obligation to explain myself to the likes of you," he said. "Didn't you wonder why I had not returned to headquarters with the Death Eaters in full force?"
"Probably because you knew we had set so many protective spells against your presence that you'd splinch yourself trying to get away."
"I foster delicate ties to the Dark Lord," Snape explained casually, tugging at the long, black sleeves of his robes as though speaking to Lupin might somehow put wrinkles into them. "This puts me in the situation of making unpleasant choices. I cannot expect you to understand why a man like Dumbledore would sacrifice himself for my credibility."
"Albus Dumbledore was murdered. You killed him. Harry saw it."
Snape sighed and pursed his thin lips in a gesture worthy of McGonagall. "We're straying from the subject," he clipped in his soft, hissing voice. "A group of Death Eaters recently took it upon themselves to lure Potter from the protection of the Order by making off with one of his friends. This operation is being conducted outside of the Dark Lord's authorization, which is the only reason I am able to come to you with the information you need."
Lupin shook his head obstinately. "You're trying to mislead me. It won't work."
"Granger has been promised to Fenrir Greyback if Potter doesn't show himself. She's to be made an example of. In little more than a day—on the night of the full moon, of course—she will be given to Greyback to have her throat ripped out…or worse," he finished with a suggestive lift of one severely arched brow.
All the breath left Lupin's lungs while he coped with that image. At last he swallowed the bile in his throat and asked, "Why are you telling me this?"
"I had to make certain you'd not be a waste of my time. You are serious about saving her life, aren't you?"
"I don't need the help of a traitor," he growled.
Snape spread his palms in mock appeal. "My mistake," he pronounced deliberately. "Or isn't that what you told Hamilton this morning? You said you needed help." He paused as though to allow Lupin to disagree. When his challenge went unmet, Snape continued calmly, "Dumbledore left me to look after the students and unfortunately the little know-it-all falls under that category.
"I can't trust you," Lupin said flatly.
"You don't have a choice. Surely you don't think the rest of the Order stands a chance of finding her first? You made sure to snatch up the leads before the others could react. They remain days behind you and you'll soon transform. You've already put yourself in the position of being the only one who can help her. Do not fail by being selective about your sources now that so little time remains."
"What do you want in return?"
"A bit more respect from you wouldn't hurt," Snape observed pointedly. "I also require the Order's cooperation in the months to come. Hogwarts is in my care now, and I won't have you sniffing around in my backyard. You'll know when you are needed. Tell the others to stay away until the proper time and in return I'll give you the girl." He sneered. "It's your decision."
Lupin sighed. He was so exhausted.
Hesitantly, he lowered his wand hand although his fingers remained tensely wrapped around the handle. "If anything's happened to her," he said hoarsely, "so help me, I will come after you and kill you myself—protractedly. And I won't need a wand; I'll use my hands." He thought he saw the other man's dark eyes widen briefly as he judged the merit of that promise. Then Lupin demanded, "Where is Hermione?"
Snape's sneer twisted into an unwholesome smile as he said, "I can tell you exactly where to find her."
