CHAPTER 21

Lucius was positively livid. Severus had known he would be, and was prepared for it. The anger rolling off the blond man like waves simply washed over his apathetic facade. Even though he didn't really know why, he cared about this situation. How Lucius handled it was very interesting to him, indeed. But he couldn't act like it. He had to be just as nonchalant and apathetic as he always had been where Lucius' "toy" was concerned, or it would raise suspicion. As it was now, however, Severus was completely forgotten. He'd delivered his lie seamlessly. He'd left Malfoy Manor, stumbled across Fenrir and his companion lying unconscious on the ground, woken them up, and taken them to the manor, where Lucius had been anxiously awaiting the return of Remus Lupin. He'd conveniently forgotten to mention that somewhere between leaving the manor and waking the werewolves he'd taken Remus Lupin home. It had only taken about five minutes to stun Lupin's captors, apparate them to his apartment building, and then go back to wake Fenrir, and in the grand scheme of things, five little unaccounted for minutes were easily forgotten.

But Severus wasn't in the clear yet, and neither was Lupin. Lucius and Fenrir had already gone back to Remus' apartment to see if maybe he was there, and they'd drug Severus along. His heart had been somewhere behind his adam's apple as they walked up the stairs to Lupin's flat. He'd told him he had an hour, two at most, but here they were barely 20 minutes later. He hoped to hell and back that Lupin had already left. Fenrir had his hand on the doorknob, and Severus was thinking Please, please, please, Lupin, be gone. Don't be here. Please be gone-

But there was a loud crack from inside the apartment before Fenrir had a chance to turn the knob. They'd all rushed in, but, Severus realized with relief, Lupin had already disapparated.

Fenrir was just as angry as Lucius that Lupin had escaped, but he had no one to blame. Lucius was convinced that it was Greyback's fault, and, Severus supposed, it was. If Fenrir had been a little more careful, Severus would not have been able to ambush them so easily, (not that he was complaining). And in his anger, Lucius was now asking the Dark Lord to punish Fenrir, or help him find Lupin, or something. More than anything, Voldemort was amused. Severus could see it in the way his eyes were shinning. He thought it very funny that Lupin had escaped Lucius again. The fact was, that the only reason he hadn't sent people to look for the werewolf was because Lupin really didn't matter that much. Voldemort said as much.

"But, my lord, he does," Lucius pleaded.

"How so?" Voldemort asked raising an eyebrow.

"If he tells anyone in the Order what happened, they'll know they made a mistake. They'll know he's not the spy, and they'll take him back, and when they do, the real spy will be in danger of being found out once again."

Severus barely held back a snort. Lucius didn't care about the spy; he just wanted to get his rocks off on someone he could smack around. Narcissa, while obedient and faithful, would not tolerate Lucius' darker... urges, and it was driving him crazy-

"This is true..." Voldemort said softly, and Severus felt a wave of fear wash over him.

"My lord," he said. "The only person in the Order who could possibly find out what happened is Dumbledore, and even that's a stretch. Trust me when I say that Lupin won't tell anyone. He's not stupid. His so called friends abandoned him. He's not about to go crawling back to them like a dog, because he knows he'll just get kicked."

"You're defending him?" Lucius sneered.

"No," Severus said sharply, trying not to think of how convoluted and ridiculous his expressed reasoning was. It didn't make any sense at all, he knew, but he was desperate, he had to try something. "But they will notice if he completely disappears or turns up dead in the river. Think about what will happen to our spy if that happens. The Order will think they were wrong. That he was found because they abandoned him, and while that is technically true, it wouldn't be very good at all for our spy's health."

Voldemort was looking at him thoughtfully. "So what would you suggest, Snape?"

"Leave him be," he shrugged. "Like I said, he won't tell anyone. He has no one to tell." He held his breath as Voldemort thought.

"I agree," the Dark Lord said.

"My lord-" Lucius began indignantly.

"Lucius," he said sharply. His eyes glinting with a kind of sadistic pleasure. "You heard me. Stay away from Remus Lupin, at least until after I've taken care of the Potters. After that, I really won't need our spy any longer. At least not that one, useless lump that he is. After the Potter's are dead, you can do whatever you wish with Lupin." He looked at Greyback to show that his words were meant for him as well, and then dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

Severus left, almost dizzy with relief, and ignored the glares Fenrir and Lucius were sending his way.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

James decided that two weeks was enough time to convince Dumbledore that he really had considered his offer. He hadn't, of course, he'd always wanted to use Sirius, but he figured he'd pretend just to make Dumbledore feel better.

So here James was at Hogwarts sitting in Dumbledore's office waiting, just like he had on so many occasions during his school years. The office was the same as it had always been. Cluttered with various shiny knick-knacks, but clean, and Faux was asleep on his perch. There were chairs in front if Dumbledore's desk, of course, but James was restless, anxious to tell Dumbledore of his decision and go home. He meandered around the office, looking at Dumbledore's things, and twisting the cloak in his hands. He'd been waiting for 45 minutes now. James understood that Dumbledore was busy, but this was getting ridiculous. It was getting dark, he should have been home over an hour ago, and L would skin him alive when he got home for worrying her, despite the fact that it clearly wasn't his fault. The thought occurred that if Dumbledore really was this busy, he should just go home and come back later, but he was already here, and he wanted the charm performed as soon as possible.

It was with extreme boredom that James made yet another lap in Dumbledore's study. He glanced at his watch. 7:00? Had it really already been an hour? He sighed and leaned against a cabinet that stood slightly open. He hadn't had the guts to see what was inside earlier, but from this angle, he could see the glowing, watery light coming from inside it, and he couldn't help himself. He glanced nervously at the door. It would be just his luck that if after an hour of being absolutely harmless, he got caught looking into this cabinet… but he didn't hear any foot steps, so he opened it.

Inside were shelves holding dozens of little labeled bottles; some empty, some not. That was kind of interesting, he supposed, if you read the labels and found something interesting, but they weren't glowing, so what had-? He glanced down and saw a Pensive. Instantly his face lit up with the child-in-a-candy-shop look that had always worried his closest friends because whenever he had that look, he did some incredibly stupid things. With a lot of help, he'd managed to work on his self control, but it was with an enormous amount of effort that he refrained from sticking his face into the swirling smoke just to see what there was to see. Instead he stood up, and took a closer look at the labeled bottles which he assumed contained memories. All of the ones on the top shelf meant absolutely nothing to him. He moved onto the second and was wondering just how old Dumbledore was- you had to be ancient to have this many memories- when he saw a bottle labeled: Remus Lupin.

He stopped and stared, his fingers itching to pick up the bottle, pour it into the pensieve, and see what it was... What could it possibly be? Information Remus had brought back from the Underworld? Evidence that he was the spy? Or, James thought, doubt and confusion welling up inside him, evidence that he wasn't the spy? Gingerly he picked up the little glass bottle, debating...

But he didn't debate for very long. He'd realized a long time ago that if you were afraid to do something, it was always best to just get up and do it. If you thought about to for too long you always come up with a million different reasons to not do it, even if you knew you should. And he was afraid to see the memory in this bottle. Afraid that he might find out that Remus really was the spy, but even more afraid to find out that he wasn't. If he wasn't, if they'd abandoned him for absolutely no reason...

James pulled out the cork and dumped the silvery, smokey substance into the pensieve. Then, after taking a deep breath to steady himself, he went head first into the memory.

He found himself in a small, dimly lit room that smelt of dirt and mildew. He looked around the room, searching for whose ever memory this was, but no one was there. Suddenly a door to hid right burst open and a man, naked with his hands bound behind his back, is shoved into the room. He trips and nearly falls on his face, but he saves himself, an effort of raw strength that is painful to witness. Instead he falls to his knees, and James sees the motley collection of bruises and cuts covering his back and chest, and he knows from the shallow, sharp way the man is breathing that he must have several broken ribs. He raises his head to look around just as another man enters the room and closes the door behind him, and James recognized them both. The tall, blonde man now circling the the shivering figure on the floor was Lucius Malfoy. The beaten man kneeling on the floor was Remus.

Malfoy was looking at Remus like he was a piece of particularly tasty meat, and it made James nauseous. Malfoy placed a hand on Remus' bowed head, a cruel parody of kindness, before he grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back hard enough to make Remus cry out. James leapt forward to stop him, but he remembered that this was a memory; it had already happened, and he couldn't change it no matter how badly he wished he could.

Lucius laughed. "Now, now, little wolf, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you weren't enjoying our... game," Remus jumped as featherlight fingers began to slide their way down from his throat, to his chest, and further... Once again James had to bite back the bile rising in his throat. But then Malfoy knelt behind Remus, unbuckling his belt. James stared, horrified and more than a little confused... What was he doing? That question was answered when Lucius forced Remus' knees apart with his own and pressed up against him-

James turned around pressing the heals of his hands to his eyes. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to see this, did not want to-

Behind him Remus cried out in pain, and James' hands went from his eyes to his ears, not wanting to think about why his friend had cried out. I want out, he thought desperately. I don't want to be here. I want out- And suddenly his feet left the ground, and he was rising up out of the pensieve.

He stumbled backwards into Dumbledore's office, still breathing hard-

"Hello, Mr. Potter,"

James whirled around and saw Dumbledore standing in the doorway, a look of surprise and exasperation on his face. James didn't care that Dumbledore might be angry with him, he cared about what he'd just witnessed, and he had a very hard time articulating that fact. "That..." he choked out, pointing to the pensieve. "And Remus was there, and they... What... Dumbledore, what...?" He paused for a moment, lost for words, before he finally settled on "What the fuck?"

The look on the old man's face softened, having caught enough of James babbling to understand what was going on. "Sit down, please, James," he sighed. Still a bit dazed, James went to the chair Dumbledore had indicated and sat down. "I should have known better," Dumbledore said, sitting down in his own chair, "than to leave you alone in my office for so long." He scrutinized James before continuing. "I take it you saw the message."

"Message?" James asked, completely baffled. "What message?"

"Did you watch the memory contained in the one and only bottle labeled Remus Lupin?"

"Yes, but I-"

"That," Dumbledore interrupted, "was the message the Death Eaters sent me last November when Remus first went missing."

"That was a message?"

"An unconventional one, but yes, it was," Dumbledore said simply.

"So they... Lucius Malfoy, he really... did that? To Remus?" James cringed at his own cowardice; he couldn't even say it, when it had actually happened to Remus...

"Yes," Dumbledore said sadly. "I take it you didn't watch the whole thing?"

"No," James said quickly. "I couldn't... I..." he trailed off, shaking his head.

"Why not?" Dumbledore asked.

"Why not?" James asked, again very confused. "Remus... is my friend, and no matter how cowardly it makes me look, I don't want to see him being hurt."

"It doesn't make you a coward, James," Dumbledore said softly. "Merely hypocritical."

"What? James asked.

"You say you don't want to see him hurt, but he was hurt. You saw what they did to him, what he endured, and I'll tell you right now that he endured it for you, not for the Order, or some higher cause. For you, and Lily, and Harry, and Peter," he paused, looking at James sadly, before adding, "And for Sirius."

"And we abandoned him..." James sighed holding his head in his hands. They were both silent for a moment, before James said, a pleading note in his voice, "But we didn't know. He said he didn't remember, so how could we have known that they..."

"Was it not enough that he was broken?" Dumbledore asked. "The fact that he is broken is undeniable, James." When James said nothing he continued, "How much does he have to give you for you to be satisfied?"

"What?" James asked indignantly, bringing his head up so he could glare at Dumbledore. "It was never... We weren't using him, or... He was our friend!"

"Then why did you leave him?"

"We..." James faltered. "Because we thought he was the spy." How stupid are we? James thought angrily. How the hell could Remus, Moony, have ever been the spy?

"And what do you think now?"

"That we were wrong," James said, his voice tight.

"All right," Dumbledore sighed and nodded.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Yes,"

"Can... can you tell me?" James asked. "I'd like to talk to him..."

Dumbledore smiled a bit at that, and said, "Yes, I can do that." He pulled a piece of parchment to him, wrote the address down, and handed it to James, who took it with a trembling hand. "But before you go," he said as James stood to leave. "What is it you wanted to speak to me about?"

"Oh," James said, suddenly remembering. "I came to tell you that Lily and I considered your offer to be our secret keeper, but we'd still like to use Sirius."

"Really?" Dumbledore said, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes," James said confidently.

"James, I really would be more comfortable if-"

"Dumbledore, please," James said. "I made the mistake of not trusting one of my friends once, I don't want to do it again."

Dumbledore stared at him for a good long minute before sighing. "I can respect that," he said.

"Thank you," James said, and left.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Remus had once heard the saying: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. He had thought long and hard about that statement, trying to decide it if was true or not, but he never could make up his mind. So lately, he'd been considering it's opposite: If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

He didn't think so. He'd been completely powerless for almost a year now, but he didn't feel pure. He felt dirty, and used, and... well... powerless. He wasn't in control at all. He couldn't keep a job, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn't keep Fenrir or Lucius or anyone at all from finding him, and if, when they found him, they'd do whatever they wanted to him, and he wouldn't be able to stop them no matter how hard he fought.

He didn't understand. Before... he'd been caught, he'd always been in perfect control. The wolf had always been firmly locked away in a tiny cage somewhere in the back of his mind. He'd been pleasant, and happy, and calm, and brave... But now he had absolutely no control over his life at all-

He stopped at that, and thought harder. He was in control of something...

He was at his front door without even remembering getting out of bed. He paused, his hand on the doorknob, as contemplated grabbing his jacket. He decided against it. He wouldn't really need it. Once in the hallway he turned right towards the stairs, but instead of going down like he always did, he went up to the roof. When he stepped out of the door into the night goosebumps rose on his arms and for a moment he wished he had brought his coat, but then he caught sight of the edge, and the cold went away. Suddenly he was at the edge, wondering if ten stories were enough to kill him... he thought it would be. A strange feeling washed over him, and it was a moment before he recognized it for what it was... He felt powerful. He didn't even know if he really wanted to jump or not, but this...

He could control this.

A/N:

another cliffhanger! hehehe! i love writing them. :D oh, and, i figured i should say that i'm sorry for any mistakes and typos. I'm absolutely horrible at proof-reading my own stuff.