The Greater Good
by Kiana Unei
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling. I am making ten billion pounds of thin air, okay?
Thank you, very, very much for being nice!
no feel good. 'tis short today. Appologies.
Chapter VIII (continued):
Desperate Attempt at Mind Games
The ultimate in lazyness. No, quiet! Sirius forced the thoughts from his mind. He had been sitting with his legs foulded in a crossed position, his hands on his knees, staring blankly ahead into the darkness for a long while now. A day? A minute? Impossible to tell. Time streached infinatly out on end here.
Thinking of absolutly nothing was comparable to holding your breath under water, but it was nesscissary if he planed to survive. Dementors fed on emotions. If he had none, if he kept his mind blank . . .
"CHEESE!"
If he managed to, by miracle, ignore the prisoners. His thoughts kept wandering. Sirius glanced down at the floor of the cell, studying the make of it. Rock. Granite? Keep your mind focused.
He was physically shaking. Cold. Azkaban; Dementors. For a moment he had forgotton. Oh, yes- Azkaban. A country? Pakastan, Afganastan, Azkaban? No, it's a jail . . . this isn't a country. Island. Azkaban is an island.
With a start Sirius realized that he had been slipping. Why? He had survived for twelve years . . . this would make thirteen.
No, wait. How long have I been in here this time? Harry was here! Harry was at Azkaban. Why? What did he do? Sirius couldn't remember.
Harry was here to help him get out! Sirius swore mentaly, pinching himself hard. Focus.
He could hear the Dementors passing outside of his cell more than usual. They were getting excited. A death was comming on. Focus.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five . . . er, six. Seven. Eight. N . . . nine. Ten." Now French: "Un. Deux. Trois. Quatre. Cinq. Six. Sept. Huit. Neuf. Dix. Frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Somma- lemon-tina, somm . . ."
That crack looked like a canyon, if he tilted his head . . . neat. A canyon. Maybe he could escape through the canyon.
He moved closer to it, feeling a rush of exhilleration. He was getting out.
CRACK! Did he fall off the edge?
Bloody Hell! Sirius rubbed his forehead, cursing. I ran into the bloody wall!
He scooted backwards across the hard floor of the cell, worried. I'm losing it. I'm really losing it. Maybe there was a limit to how long a person could survive in Azkaban, innocent or not. Keep focused.
"Once upon a time there was a man named . . . er . . . Brandon. Brandon decided he wanted to visit the North Pole. Brandon got on his broom and flew to the North Pole. On his way he found an island called Pakast- AZKABAN. Brandon landed. Brandon saw some odd-looking things wearing black cloaks. Brandon called them tick-a-bines. Brandon saw a little boy with black hair and a scar. The little boy was cleaning the island because it was dirty.
" 'Hello' said Brandon.
" 'Hello' said the little boy.
" 'Hello' said the tick-a-bines. 'Are you hungrey? I am.'
"So they ate some food.
"My God, this is a pathetic story." Sirius grinned slightly to himself.
"Once upon a time, and then, the end." I'm gone, Sirius thought. After all these years, this is the end. It was me that the Dementors were sencing. Strangely, he didn't feel upset. Only somewhat giddy.
"You've got to be bloody KIDDING me!" The Minister of Defence glared daggers at Wesson.
"I wish I were, Sir! Believe me," the man replied unhappily, "if there was anyway to mend the situation . . ."
"Great! Just bloody great. Now what?"
"Well, his son is still there. We could use the boy."
"Fine." The minister sat down heavilly on his coushined chair, rubbing his temples. He flicked a hand at Wesson, shooing him away.
* * *
Azkaban was deffinatly not Nathanial Wesson's favourite place. It wasn't his least favourite, though; that honour belonged to the area immidiatly sourrounding his ex-wife. He had been married only a short time before their devorce, afterwards he had continued on his work at the Ministry, and Catherine had packed up and taken the two kids to Germany to get away from him. He didn't miss them. Not really.
"What are you planning on telling the boy?" Doctor Maelani's voice murmured in his ear.
"Donno. Does it matter?" He rubbed her bare back distractedly, staring out the window at the wide ocean. "Can't imagine Sirius Black having been too good of a father."
"Still . . . he might take the loss kind of hard. Kids." She smiled intently, the same look she had whilst questioning Black. The look of eager anticipation. "What do you think kept him sane for so long, though?"
"Who knows?"
"Sir, with your permission, could I preform an autopsy on Black, pick the answers out of his brain myself?"
"He isn't dead," Wesson stared at her. She stared right back. "Well . . . I suppose . . . since he's as good as dead anyway . . . oh, all right."
Maelani looked delighted. "Thank you, Sir. We'll finally put an end to this mystery plaguing the psycological department for years!"
He grinned, both horrified and facinated by her eagerness. One thing, though, was clear; he may have been pond scum, but Maelani made Wesson look like purified bottled watter.
Sonna Ibse was disgusted with the both of them.
* * *
"Mr, eh, Deneb," the man said, figeting with the end of his royal blue dress robes.
"Yes?" The boy blink curiously up at them with wide, green eyes.
"Do you remember the plan we gave to you?"
"Yes."
"Well-"
"There's been a change." Maelani interupted, much to Wesson's releif. "We think it would be much simpler if you just retrieved the . . . object . . . yourself, rather than worry about the Dementors and such."
"Er- okay."
"Excellent!" Wesson handed him a clear, glass orb the size of a Remembrall, and explained, "This will light your way. Be carefull. You activate it by shaking it."
Next, Deneb was given a tiny, jewl-sized, ruby-coloured bead, closely resembling a single drop of blood.
"This," said Wesson, "will tell us when you have found the object and brought it back to Azkaban's lower level. The password to activate it is 'Severus Snape, Nathanial Wesson, and Wormtail are ugly warty Death Eaters, and smell like the entire London Zoo'."
All occupants of the room turned to stare at him.
"Black made it up," Wesson mumbled.
Sirius Black had his knees tucked into his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. He made no move to notice when three guards grabbed him roughly under the arms and hauled him from the cell; his eyes were slits dispite the dim illumination.
They dropped the man carelessly onto the hard floor in the interrogation room, where he slumped forward listlissly.
Wesson wrinkled his nose from the metaphoracle stench of filth. Of Azkaban; of this once-man.
Maelani grabbed Black by his hair, tilting his face twoards her. With her perfectly manicured thumb and second finger, she pried open one of his half-colsed eyes. The pupil dialated automatically in the sudden light; but he didn't seem to see anything.
"He's gone," she stated, dropping him.
"Great." Wesson looked disgustedly at him. "Let's just hope the boy . . ." He warped his sentence into a cough on rememberance of the three guards.
Chapter IX:
Decent, and Fractured Plans
Harry raised the sphere of light, casting the glow against the rock guarding the entrance to the catacombs.
" 'Let this be a warning to the unwary'," he mumbled, reading the inscription carved into the arch of the heavy door. " 'In certainty, you will find naught but death seeking to dishonour the underworld. For here rests the dead of the past, and the shape of the future. Ever wise be he who treads lightly on stolen ground'.
"Meaning this place has traps. Wonderful." Harry placed the light at his feet, then pushed at the door with both hands. Nothing. He threw his meager weight into it, and got no further than a bruised shoulder.
"Okay. So there's some sort of trick to it . . ." The problem was, what? As far as he cold tell, there was absolutly no distinguishing marks of any sort about the entrance. Just the heavy block of stone, and the writing.
He ran his hands over the rock, searching for a seam. Again, nothing.
"Oh, come on, open up, will you?"
Maybe there was some sort of password. "Open Seseme. 'Open,' says me. Isis. The Crest of Isis. Golden Ankh Thingy. Let me in. . . .Please?"
He read the inscription again, and again.
"Oh, wait, I didn't see this part." Carved at the foot of the block was a second, smaller carving: De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda
" 'Dee h onicle you is-but-are-feet-oh ft-ee-da'?" Another language? Ancient Egyption, maybe?
Benieth that was a set of odd marks Harry had origionally mistook for scratches: /~ ////// of ///~ /
"One to six of three to one?" He scratched his head, and decided to work on the second inscription instead.
"Dee h oni- wait a minute. This is suppose to be simple, if you have the key, and requires no special knowlage." All riddles worked around the facts of common knowlage. So if the first inscription was English, the second should be too, right?
Harry tried reading it backwards, struggling again with the unframiliar group of sylables, "Adeetf oteff-rat-bsee you el-see-no. Well that doesn't make any sense."
He glanced again down at the numbers- well, presumed numbers. From his standing position, the little wiggly symble could be made to replace a zero, making '/~' instead '/0'.
"Ten? Ten-six- er, sixteen, of thr- thirty one? Sixteen of thirty- one? Thirty-one what?"
He made a rough estimate on the dementions of the stone block in metres, then in feet, just in case. Nothing came close to fourteen, let alone thirty-one.
Harry counted the letters of the second inscription. Twenty-five. He did it again, this time adding in the spaces. Thirty.
He recounted. Thirty. One short. 'De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda' had thirty positions in it.
"Wait-" there seemed to be a bit more distance than normal between 'onicle' and 'u'. Two spaces? If he looked at it that way, sixteen spaces from the beginning put him on the 'i' of isbtarfeto.
"I." Nothing happened. Feeling betrayed, Harry recounted spaces and letters. Same thing. I.
"I." he insisted. He scanned the nonsence setense, using i as his reference point. Isb- wait. Isb, then over to the 'u', then back over to isbtarfeto's 't'. Isbut. Is but.
Harry continued that way, deciphering the sentense by skipping back and fourth from letters on alternating sides of the 'i'.
When he finished, the inscription read: isbutareflectionofthedead. Is but a reflection of the dead. What was, though?
He looked back up at the first inscription, and saw it almost at once. Each of the capitalized letters, when read out, spelled the answer.
Sure of himself, Harry took a deep breath, then said clearly, " 'Life is but a reflection of the dead'."
The block of stone dematerialized before him, revealing an open mouth of darkness.
A/N: !!!!!!!Sirius has a plan, it is going to work, so DO NOT FLAME ME! I AM NOT ABOUT TO KILL OFF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER!!! If you do not listen to me on this, and yell at me, you won't get to see what Sirius' plan is (yes, he wasn't just saying that to make Harry feel better), Pettigrew getting his butt kicked, or what happens with the Crest! Get it?! Good!
I'd tell you more to reassure you further, but then you'd flame me for giving his plan away. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I'll tell you this much, though: Sirius is going to call Fudge "Fat Head".
P.S: Yes, Wesson is going to get his comuppance.
P.P.S: And, yes, I know that 'somma-lemon-tina' is not how the song goes. Give Siri a break.
P.P.P.S: No insane guys screeming 'Cheese!' every five seconds were harmed during the production of this chapter.
by Kiana Unei
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling. I am making ten billion pounds of thin air, okay?
Thank you, very, very much for being nice!
no feel good. 'tis short today. Appologies.
Chapter VIII (continued):
Desperate Attempt at Mind Games
The ultimate in lazyness. No, quiet! Sirius forced the thoughts from his mind. He had been sitting with his legs foulded in a crossed position, his hands on his knees, staring blankly ahead into the darkness for a long while now. A day? A minute? Impossible to tell. Time streached infinatly out on end here.
Thinking of absolutly nothing was comparable to holding your breath under water, but it was nesscissary if he planed to survive. Dementors fed on emotions. If he had none, if he kept his mind blank . . .
"CHEESE!"
If he managed to, by miracle, ignore the prisoners. His thoughts kept wandering. Sirius glanced down at the floor of the cell, studying the make of it. Rock. Granite? Keep your mind focused.
He was physically shaking. Cold. Azkaban; Dementors. For a moment he had forgotton. Oh, yes- Azkaban. A country? Pakastan, Afganastan, Azkaban? No, it's a jail . . . this isn't a country. Island. Azkaban is an island.
With a start Sirius realized that he had been slipping. Why? He had survived for twelve years . . . this would make thirteen.
No, wait. How long have I been in here this time? Harry was here! Harry was at Azkaban. Why? What did he do? Sirius couldn't remember.
Harry was here to help him get out! Sirius swore mentaly, pinching himself hard. Focus.
He could hear the Dementors passing outside of his cell more than usual. They were getting excited. A death was comming on. Focus.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five . . . er, six. Seven. Eight. N . . . nine. Ten." Now French: "Un. Deux. Trois. Quatre. Cinq. Six. Sept. Huit. Neuf. Dix. Frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Somma- lemon-tina, somm . . ."
That crack looked like a canyon, if he tilted his head . . . neat. A canyon. Maybe he could escape through the canyon.
He moved closer to it, feeling a rush of exhilleration. He was getting out.
CRACK! Did he fall off the edge?
Bloody Hell! Sirius rubbed his forehead, cursing. I ran into the bloody wall!
He scooted backwards across the hard floor of the cell, worried. I'm losing it. I'm really losing it. Maybe there was a limit to how long a person could survive in Azkaban, innocent or not. Keep focused.
"Once upon a time there was a man named . . . er . . . Brandon. Brandon decided he wanted to visit the North Pole. Brandon got on his broom and flew to the North Pole. On his way he found an island called Pakast- AZKABAN. Brandon landed. Brandon saw some odd-looking things wearing black cloaks. Brandon called them tick-a-bines. Brandon saw a little boy with black hair and a scar. The little boy was cleaning the island because it was dirty.
" 'Hello' said Brandon.
" 'Hello' said the little boy.
" 'Hello' said the tick-a-bines. 'Are you hungrey? I am.'
"So they ate some food.
"My God, this is a pathetic story." Sirius grinned slightly to himself.
"Once upon a time, and then, the end." I'm gone, Sirius thought. After all these years, this is the end. It was me that the Dementors were sencing. Strangely, he didn't feel upset. Only somewhat giddy.
"You've got to be bloody KIDDING me!" The Minister of Defence glared daggers at Wesson.
"I wish I were, Sir! Believe me," the man replied unhappily, "if there was anyway to mend the situation . . ."
"Great! Just bloody great. Now what?"
"Well, his son is still there. We could use the boy."
"Fine." The minister sat down heavilly on his coushined chair, rubbing his temples. He flicked a hand at Wesson, shooing him away.
* * *
Azkaban was deffinatly not Nathanial Wesson's favourite place. It wasn't his least favourite, though; that honour belonged to the area immidiatly sourrounding his ex-wife. He had been married only a short time before their devorce, afterwards he had continued on his work at the Ministry, and Catherine had packed up and taken the two kids to Germany to get away from him. He didn't miss them. Not really.
"What are you planning on telling the boy?" Doctor Maelani's voice murmured in his ear.
"Donno. Does it matter?" He rubbed her bare back distractedly, staring out the window at the wide ocean. "Can't imagine Sirius Black having been too good of a father."
"Still . . . he might take the loss kind of hard. Kids." She smiled intently, the same look she had whilst questioning Black. The look of eager anticipation. "What do you think kept him sane for so long, though?"
"Who knows?"
"Sir, with your permission, could I preform an autopsy on Black, pick the answers out of his brain myself?"
"He isn't dead," Wesson stared at her. She stared right back. "Well . . . I suppose . . . since he's as good as dead anyway . . . oh, all right."
Maelani looked delighted. "Thank you, Sir. We'll finally put an end to this mystery plaguing the psycological department for years!"
He grinned, both horrified and facinated by her eagerness. One thing, though, was clear; he may have been pond scum, but Maelani made Wesson look like purified bottled watter.
Sonna Ibse was disgusted with the both of them.
* * *
"Mr, eh, Deneb," the man said, figeting with the end of his royal blue dress robes.
"Yes?" The boy blink curiously up at them with wide, green eyes.
"Do you remember the plan we gave to you?"
"Yes."
"Well-"
"There's been a change." Maelani interupted, much to Wesson's releif. "We think it would be much simpler if you just retrieved the . . . object . . . yourself, rather than worry about the Dementors and such."
"Er- okay."
"Excellent!" Wesson handed him a clear, glass orb the size of a Remembrall, and explained, "This will light your way. Be carefull. You activate it by shaking it."
Next, Deneb was given a tiny, jewl-sized, ruby-coloured bead, closely resembling a single drop of blood.
"This," said Wesson, "will tell us when you have found the object and brought it back to Azkaban's lower level. The password to activate it is 'Severus Snape, Nathanial Wesson, and Wormtail are ugly warty Death Eaters, and smell like the entire London Zoo'."
All occupants of the room turned to stare at him.
"Black made it up," Wesson mumbled.
Sirius Black had his knees tucked into his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. He made no move to notice when three guards grabbed him roughly under the arms and hauled him from the cell; his eyes were slits dispite the dim illumination.
They dropped the man carelessly onto the hard floor in the interrogation room, where he slumped forward listlissly.
Wesson wrinkled his nose from the metaphoracle stench of filth. Of Azkaban; of this once-man.
Maelani grabbed Black by his hair, tilting his face twoards her. With her perfectly manicured thumb and second finger, she pried open one of his half-colsed eyes. The pupil dialated automatically in the sudden light; but he didn't seem to see anything.
"He's gone," she stated, dropping him.
"Great." Wesson looked disgustedly at him. "Let's just hope the boy . . ." He warped his sentence into a cough on rememberance of the three guards.
Chapter IX:
Decent, and Fractured Plans
Harry raised the sphere of light, casting the glow against the rock guarding the entrance to the catacombs.
" 'Let this be a warning to the unwary'," he mumbled, reading the inscription carved into the arch of the heavy door. " 'In certainty, you will find naught but death seeking to dishonour the underworld. For here rests the dead of the past, and the shape of the future. Ever wise be he who treads lightly on stolen ground'.
"Meaning this place has traps. Wonderful." Harry placed the light at his feet, then pushed at the door with both hands. Nothing. He threw his meager weight into it, and got no further than a bruised shoulder.
"Okay. So there's some sort of trick to it . . ." The problem was, what? As far as he cold tell, there was absolutly no distinguishing marks of any sort about the entrance. Just the heavy block of stone, and the writing.
He ran his hands over the rock, searching for a seam. Again, nothing.
"Oh, come on, open up, will you?"
Maybe there was some sort of password. "Open Seseme. 'Open,' says me. Isis. The Crest of Isis. Golden Ankh Thingy. Let me in. . . .Please?"
He read the inscription again, and again.
"Oh, wait, I didn't see this part." Carved at the foot of the block was a second, smaller carving: De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda
" 'Dee h onicle you is-but-are-feet-oh ft-ee-da'?" Another language? Ancient Egyption, maybe?
Benieth that was a set of odd marks Harry had origionally mistook for scratches: /~ ////// of ///~ /
"One to six of three to one?" He scratched his head, and decided to work on the second inscription instead.
"Dee h oni- wait a minute. This is suppose to be simple, if you have the key, and requires no special knowlage." All riddles worked around the facts of common knowlage. So if the first inscription was English, the second should be too, right?
Harry tried reading it backwards, struggling again with the unframiliar group of sylables, "Adeetf oteff-rat-bsee you el-see-no. Well that doesn't make any sense."
He glanced again down at the numbers- well, presumed numbers. From his standing position, the little wiggly symble could be made to replace a zero, making '/~' instead '/0'.
"Ten? Ten-six- er, sixteen, of thr- thirty one? Sixteen of thirty- one? Thirty-one what?"
He made a rough estimate on the dementions of the stone block in metres, then in feet, just in case. Nothing came close to fourteen, let alone thirty-one.
Harry counted the letters of the second inscription. Twenty-five. He did it again, this time adding in the spaces. Thirty.
He recounted. Thirty. One short. 'De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda' had thirty positions in it.
"Wait-" there seemed to be a bit more distance than normal between 'onicle' and 'u'. Two spaces? If he looked at it that way, sixteen spaces from the beginning put him on the 'i' of isbtarfeto.
"I." Nothing happened. Feeling betrayed, Harry recounted spaces and letters. Same thing. I.
"I." he insisted. He scanned the nonsence setense, using i as his reference point. Isb- wait. Isb, then over to the 'u', then back over to isbtarfeto's 't'. Isbut. Is but.
Harry continued that way, deciphering the sentense by skipping back and fourth from letters on alternating sides of the 'i'.
When he finished, the inscription read: isbutareflectionofthedead. Is but a reflection of the dead. What was, though?
He looked back up at the first inscription, and saw it almost at once. Each of the capitalized letters, when read out, spelled the answer.
Sure of himself, Harry took a deep breath, then said clearly, " 'Life is but a reflection of the dead'."
The block of stone dematerialized before him, revealing an open mouth of darkness.
A/N: !!!!!!!Sirius has a plan, it is going to work, so DO NOT FLAME ME! I AM NOT ABOUT TO KILL OFF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER!!! If you do not listen to me on this, and yell at me, you won't get to see what Sirius' plan is (yes, he wasn't just saying that to make Harry feel better), Pettigrew getting his butt kicked, or what happens with the Crest! Get it?! Good!
I'd tell you more to reassure you further, but then you'd flame me for giving his plan away. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I'll tell you this much, though: Sirius is going to call Fudge "Fat Head".
P.S: Yes, Wesson is going to get his comuppance.
P.P.S: And, yes, I know that 'somma-lemon-tina' is not how the song goes. Give Siri a break.
P.P.P.S: No insane guys screeming 'Cheese!' every five seconds were harmed during the production of this chapter.