The Other Side Of The Dark: Chapter 24

There was a tense silence. Moody stared at the Pensieve with an unreadable look in his normal eye. Harry glanced quickly between the elf and the wizard, then down at Snape. Somehow, he couldn't imagine Snape being happy with this exchange. However, Snape had his eyes closed, apparently oblivious of what was going on.

Dobby held the Pensieve out towards Moody. 'Severus Snape's freedom for Severus Snape's memories.'

Moody stumped around the side of the bed towards the elf. 'He'll need them back again.' He looked up at Dobby with a calculating look in his eye. 'I'll leave the wards where they are until I've –'

'No!' thundered Dobby. 'Remove the wards now! Severus Snape will not leave without his memories!'

'Indeed, he cannot,' Dumbledore interrupted mildly. 'Everything Harry has told us about his experiences of the charm suggest Severus removed far too many to keep his mind intact. Too many, in fact, to allow him to answer any of your questions to your satisfaction, Alastor.

'But I am not happy with this exchange. A man's memories are private and sacred, Alastor. This is a high price.'

Moody glowered. 'It was a high crime, Albus.' He reached out for the Pensieve.

Dobby gazed intently at him, the black dish cupped protectively in his massive hands. 'Know this, One-Eyed Wizard,' he growled. 'Dobby was entrusted with a sacred purpose, and to this end Dobby will give you Severus Snape's memories. But you must honour Dobby's price. Severus Snape is to be freed, unharmed and intact, in exchange for all the answers that lie within his Pensieve. Do you agree?'

Moody returned the elf's gaze, his normal eye narrowing. 'I agree.' Dobby gently handed over the Pensieve – then disapparated silently into thin air. Harry gasped and took a step forward, but Dumbledore placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

'Time for bed, Harry,' he said quietly, as Moody swept some bottles to one side on the table under the window to make room for the Pensieve. He steered the boy out of the room, a grim expression on his face.

Shacklebolt came to stand next to Moody, who was gazing almost greedily at the silver surface of the Pensieve. Behind them, Snape lay unmoving and forgotten.

'Okay,' Shacklebolt murmured. 'So you think it was worth the price?'

'Don't know yet,' Moody muttered back. 'I'm going to finish his back first, then have a look. Chances are there's nothing in here that will help me, but you never know. Might give me some clue as to why he's in such a mess, if nothing else.'

He turned awkwardly to face Shacklebolt, shuffling himself into one of the chairs. 'You said you needed to speak to me? Might as well make it now.'

Shacklebolt sat down in the other chair. 'I went through some documents from the period of You Know Who's downfall to the attack on the Longbottoms,' he said without preamble. 'I think I may have found something – something that could be relevant now.

'Up until just over a year before the Dark Lord's downfall, the Ministry had been struggling to gain any ground. Aurors getting picked off, ambushes by groups of Death Eaters, etc. Then around March 1981 we start having some real success, thanks to tip-offs about where the Death Eaters were planning to strike next, who they're going after, that kind of thing. So far, so good – success, but nothing notable.

'Then suddenly, about a month after the Potters' deaths, the Ministry start scoring real successes. The arrest of suspected Death Eaters and Dark Lord sympathisers increased by a huge amount. I haven't done the maths, but it looks like almost seventy percent.'

Moody's normal eye narrowed as he realised where Shacklebolt was going with this story.

'In most of those cases, especially the ones which led to convictions – the Auror responsible was Alice Longbottom.'

There was a pause in which Moody said nothing. Shacklebolt let the information sink in, before continuing. 'Everyone thinks the Lestranges went after the Longbottoms for information about what happened to You Know Who. And now I think that is strange – why did they wait all that time? Why not use the Imperious curse on some Ministry employee to find out? They tried that enough times before. Why did they wait six months, and why the Longbottoms?

'Mad-Eye, I don't think they were after information about the Dark Lord. I think they were looking for the spy.'

Harry sat cross-legged on his bed, leaning against the pillows. Dumbledore sat on the edge at the other end, at a slight angle so they were facing each other.

'I suppose sleep is the last thing you want,' Dumbledore said.

Harry nodded, gazing down at the crumpled bedding and the book half unwrapped in the middle. Dumbledore withdrew it gently from the mess and opened it, flicking through the pages.

'I realise this is not your favourite subject,' he continued softly, 'but I cannot stress enough the need to learn. And you may find it easier now than you did before.' He held out the book, and Harry found himself looking at the title clearly for the first time. It said, "The Theory and Practice of Occlumency. Redacted by A.P.W.B. Dumbledore."

'Okay,' Harry muttered, not wanting to reject a book written by Dumbledore. 'But I can't see the point now. Voldemort got scared off being in my head, didn't he?' Snape's words on that subject seemed unreal, now he was out of that peculiar dream world.

Dumbledore smiled gently. 'Learning to control one's emotions can never be pointless, Harry. Please try.'

Moody sat in silence, digesting Shacklebolt's theory and measuring it against his memories of fourteen years ago.

It made a lot of sense. Why had he never considered that possibility before?

Because he hadn't known about the spy.

The sudden increase in arrests hadn't seemed extraordinary. Voldemort, the very devil incarnate, had been inexplicably defeated and his followers thrown into disarray. People subjugated by the Imperious curse had been released, and the information they had been able to give had been instrumental in many arrests. Surely the correlation with Alice's return to work was pure coincidence?

Shacklebolt shook his head. 'On the surface, yes, but when you go deeper into the reports, Alice's name crops up a lot. And it's strange – she was away from work for almost four months before her baby was born, and then didn't come back until two months after the Potters were killed. She was gone for over a year, she was way out of the loop – then suddenly she's back and she's getting all the bad guys? What did she know that the rest of you didn't?'

'Now just a minute,' Moody frowned. 'She wasn't as isolated as that. Frank wasn't happy with her being on active service after Neville was born, so she took an admin transfer so she could work from home. She was too good to lose – it was the only way I could keep her.'

Shacklebolt's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. 'Frank wasn't happy so she gave up her job? But you didn't want her to go?'

Moody shrugged. 'She didn't want to go either. But it was very dangerous, and she had a baby to think about. So she gave in. And she was still doing important work, for the Ministry and the Order.'

'And then, after the Potters were killed, she went back? How did Frank feel about that?'

Moody pursed thin lips. 'Well I had the impression that they had argued about it. But I didn't pry into the personal lives of my staff, and I … ' Moody's voice faltered as his memories filtered through Shacklebolt's theory. '… I thought the danger had passed. Alice was an excellent Auror, and so was Frank. I didn't realise…' He paused, anger and grief glimmering in his normal eye.

'I didn't know about the spy,' he said in a harsh whisper.

At first, you may find it difficult to clear your mind of emotion. Indeed, the more you try, the more difficult it will seem, but this is an illusion. Rather, one becomes aware of how busy one's mind is, for the human mind constantly teems with thought…

Harry blinked rapidly, and pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose with a finger. He had never felt less engaged by any subject, and focusing on the page for more than a paragraph at a time was hard work. He flicked the pages idly, hoping something might seize his interest, and found himself skimming a paragraph about breathing exercises and meditation.

The word 'redacted' was unfamiliar, but gave him the impression that Dumbledore was not the actual author. He wondered why neither Dumbledore nor Snape had suggested he read this six months earlier, and a familiar darkness stirred in the pit of his stomach. With a scowl he threw the book aside, screwing his eyes shut.

'Harry Potter sir?'

Harry jumped. At the end of his bed was Dobby, normal sized and wearing fresh clothes. Next to him was a very large parcel, badly wrapped.

'What happened to you?' Harry asked, moving closer. 'Your transformation earlier – is that what elves are meant to look like?'

Dobby looked slightly anxious. 'Dobby doesn't know, sir. Dobby was very angry and it just happened. Severus Snape once told Dobby that elves were once much different, when they were free, sir, but Dobby didn't know what he meant, until today, sir.'

Harry stared at the anxious elf for a moment; then he grinned. 'Whatever happened, it was fantastic!' he said. Dobby smiled shyly.

'Dobby has brought you something as well, Harry Potter sir.' He pointed to the parcel.

Harry unwrapped it. Inside was a huge book, even larger, older and mustier than Dumbledore's book on Occlumency, and a heavy, metal object, wrapped in a square of red silk.

There were no titles embossed on the plain leather cover, and when he pulled it open to a random page, he was intrigued to find that it was hand-written in a foreign language. He gazed at it in puzzlement, then picked up the silk-wrapped object. The cloth fell away to reveal what looked like a hand mirror made from a long black string of woven metal, bent into an oval shape with the ends wound together into a handle. But there was no glass. Harry held it up, turning it, running his fingers over the wrought metal.

'What is it?' he murmured.

'Hold it in front of the book,' Dobby said.

Harry did so. At once the unfamiliar letters formed themselves into perfect English within the black frame.

Hours after Shacklebolt had left, Moody was working in grim methodical silence. He had taken only a cursory glance through his books, but his concentration had narrowed to a point of extreme focus. Beneath his wand, damaged nerves and blood vessels, missing flesh and muscle, flourished and grew at a rate that belied the old man's fading powers. Snape was silent, but Moody no longer cared if his patient had passed out or not. Absorbed by his thoughts to a state of near trance, he worked with mechanical precision as his deeper mind seethed with memories.

When had they started winning in the war against Voldemort? The Order had suddenly started getting some acute information, stuff that could only had come from the inner circle of Voldemort's court. Moody pondered it, letting his mind wander back to that time as he gently wound out a new tendon to secure fresh muscle fibre to a bone. There were, as he recalled, two versions of the Prophecy given to the Order. The full version Dumbledore had entrusted to only a handful of people: Moody, the Longbottoms and the Potters. To everyone else, there was an edited version – the part of the Prophecy Dumbledore suspected Voldemort knew, overheard in Aberforth's pub. And this, Dumbledore had confided to the select few, was because a new source had revealed that the Order had been betrayed. Someone in their ranks was reporting to Voldemort.

A slight flick of the wand, and the new mass of muscle suddenly turned from grey to pink, infused with a rush of blood. Moody gently stroked it, healing away tiny bruises caused by the process of re-creation.

A new source. Moody had never asked, because there was too much at stake to risk losing such a valuable asset. If sometimes this person's information had come to him via Frank or Alice, he had never given it another thought. Ultimately, it was coming from Dumbledore, who would be careful what he let them use.

Now this perception of the past had been slanted by the revelation that the spy had communicated directly with the Longbottoms. Dumbledore had allowed Frank to disseminate this incredibly sensitive information, without reference to anyone but his wife, and …

… they had overused it. Lily, who had been a close friend of Alice's since Hogwarts, had been murdered. And Alice in her grief had obviously become careless with the information she was receiving. She had gone after the Death Eaters, armed with crucial information that could only have come from someone in the very centre of their organisation, with a vengeance so desperate it had led them straight to her.

Moody put his wand down. His hands were shaking violently with grief and anger. If only Alice and Frank had come to him! WHY had Dumbledore made them exclude him? All his years and years of experience of dealing with this kind of filth equipped him to protect them from precisely this kind of folly, this all too human folly.

He buried his face in his hands. So many Aurors, broken by the horrors they had seen, had become almost as bad as those they hunted. He knew of many, decent people, who had gone after the villains with murder in their hearts, and come back with dead bodies instead of prisoners. And a terrible void where their humanity once had been.

Moody had worked so hard to keep himself from ever falling to that frailty, and it had been so hard. But he had done it. The idealist who had wanted to be a Healer had held fast to the belief that all life, however seemingly evil, was sacred.

Moody drew a deep breath, fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief, blew his nose, pulled himself together. In front of him lay the spy, the space between his shoulder blades an ugly mass of exposed, skinless flesh. Skin was easy. Moody picked up his wand, concentrated, and waved it over the wound. Within seconds, Snape's back was healed as if it had never been injured.

Moody began mashing herbs for a fresh infusion of the vitalis potion that was replenishing Snape's lost blood and keeping his body alive. He would pour another dose into the little rat, and then….

And then he would enter the Pensieve.

Thank you all for the reviews! Hope you enjoyed the latest chapter - my longest yet. It's going to be a couple of weeks before I update again though - very busy start to the year! Glad Dobby was appreciated - I loved writing the bit where he changes! I've been wondering since GoF whether there might be something like that waiting for us in books 6 & 7 - if the elves are powerful but subjugated, what would they be like truly liberated?

So, huge thanks and fluffy hugs to Knitekatz, Kyer, Silverthreads, duj, Hermione the Slayer, BekaJWP - as well as:

Oya - no, Moody's too good to resort to torture. But possibly too human to pass up a chance to make Snape uncomfortable?
TA Salmalin - you'll have to wait an see!
Lilith11 - actually I've never seen Gremlins, although I've heard a lot about it! Is that what Dobby looks like?
Barbara Kennedy - yeah, I think it's trying to decide how they're going to handle formatting. BTW, I had a look at Potions and Snitches - you're in there too!
Persephone Lupin - you're on Potions & Snitches as well! Check it out here: Sadly for me, the link to my author page is wrong - but there doesn't seem to be a way of contacting the webmistress about changing it. Ah well.
Romulus - you need to be a member of and list me among your favourite authors or favourite stories to get email alerts. But because I'm greedy for reviews, I shall be sure to email you!
Crockywock - I believe you've mentioned it, lovely person! hugs
Beornthryth - thanks for the observation on Moody. I love that character, but it's difficult to really know what's in character and what isn't. In the books, what we get most of is the imposter Moody - and Crouch Jnr may have made mistakes in his impersonation. I suspect that he did something which gave himself away slightly, in the scene where he and Snape meet on the stairs in GoF. Maybe Snape didn't know it was really Crouch, but I think he realised that it wasn't really Moody, or that Moody had changed in some significant way.
x - I've reread your comment and my chapter 1 several times, and I can't see any way you might construe what I've written as the suggestion that the Longbottoms' torture happened before Voldemort's fall. As for Snape being off the hook - that would depend on who knew he was spying. The impression I get is that nobody did - after all, the Order had just worked out that they were compromised by someone spying for Voldemort - if they had someone doing the same to him, they weren't about to make it public, where they? But that Karkaroff's trial, and that of the Lestranges, happened after all of it, is in no doubt from book 4.