Until Morning

by Magdalen-Rose

Rating: PG-13 for violence and suggested sexuality.

Spoilers: HBP.

Summary: A/U. The blast at Godric's Hollow did not destroy Voldemort's body – the Order is leading a rebel insurgency, and has captured Azkaban, where Sirius Black protests his innocence and tries to continue his work.

Disclaimer: Characters have infiltrated my brain from the work of J.K. Rowling, and I am not profiting from their use.

Author's Note: "He is all states and all Princes I" is John Donne; "I saw eternity the other night" is Henry Vaughan, and "if there were no such thing as light there would be no creatures with eyes" is C.S. Lewis.

"But I've seen your flag on the marble arch,

And love is not a victory march;

It is a cold and it is a broken Hallelujah."

Leonard Cohen

I.

"I am afraid," said the grey-bearded man solemnly, folding his hands on top of the rickety table, "that the celebrations of last night were perhaps a bit premature."

On his right, a slender man who looked older than he was rubbed his forehead with the base of his palm and sighed.

There were two other men at the table – a skeletal scarred man with a hood over his head and eyes that didn't quite match, and a dark man with a deep frown who was leaning his chair back against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

"The enemy," the bearded man continued, "is not defeated."

The scarred man cracked his knuckles.

"The explosion last night at Godric's Hollow damaged him, but talk of his destruction was sheer speculation, and he has regained control over key territories, including the Ministry. The celebrations last night, however, did prove useful in some regard, though tragic in others. First, they showed us that our public support is, in fact, as broad as we supposed, though there are some elements who I'm sure simply enjoy being on the winning side and will not stay with us through significant danger. Secondly, and quite coincidentally, the presence of large numbers of our comrades in the streets when the enemy returned meant that we were able to put up a fight and capture some key territory, including, I am pleased to say, Azkaban. The bad news, however …"

He bowed his head slightly and continued.

"The enemy has retaliated with a massive wave of arrests and executions."

There was silence, punctuated only by the sound of the slender sandy-haired man cleaning his glasses, which squeaked a bit.

"About a hundred of our people are missing. Mostly wizards, but a few centaurs have been arrested or killed, and some key owls are gone as well. I have spies out searching for survivors, but –"

The sandy-haired man put his glasses back on and walked restlessly to the window. Outside, a row of dented metal rubbish bins hunched awkwardly on the curb, and a ginger-haired cat stalked around them, her tail flicking impudently against their sides as she walked.

"Dumbledore," he said suddenly.

The bearded man looked up.

"What happened last night?"

"Remus –"

The man turned from the window.

"I know what happened, but – why was there an explosion at all? And why didn't it kill him? And where's the boy?"

"The boy is safe."

"I deserve more than that. Of all people."

Dumbledore pressed his fingertips against his forehead. Remus felt a brief pang – he looked so old, of a sudden – but he bit his lip and turned back to the window. Don't – you haven't the luxury – not right now. Not right now.

"Last night, Voldemort entered the Potter's residence at Godric's Hollow with the intention of killing whomever he found there. He had been made aware of a prophesy that might have referred to the boy, claiming only he could destroy Voldemort, and he intended to put a stop to this."

Remus couldn't stop the sudden image – James and Lily at the kitchen table he'd sat at only three days ago, Lily spoon-feeding the baby, the hallway behind them and Voldemort slipping unheard into the darkness, watching them from the corner, knowing they were going to die …

"He killed James almost immediately, as James had blocked his way to Lily and Harry."

James, who he knew so well, knew every shade of his voice in the ordinary way you know someone after ten years, James, screaming for Lily's life and pushing her out of the way as he stood up to Voldemort …

"Did he suffer?"

"No."

Remus turned back to the window.

"Voldemort then cast a killing curse at the child – we think he wanted to make Lily watch before he killed her – but Lily seems to have developed a protective charm and used it on Harry. Half of it backfired onto Voldemort, and half into Lily – we don't know whether it was because of her close physical proximity to the – to the target, because she was the origin of the spell, or because the spell could sense a protective spirit in the area. Alastor, I would like you to go over to Godric's Hollow and see if you can find any clues as to what she was working on. Take Kingsley with you for backup."

The scarred man and the dark man nodded without speaking.

"From what we can tell, Voldemort was badly wounded by the spell, and the boy himself received a scar from the force of it – this was supposed to be Voldemort's crowning glory, so undoubtedly he put more of himself into it than into an ordinary kill. He managed to get off another killing curse towards Lily and then apparated – the place is soaked in residual magic; there are some very dark spells clinging to the air that I haven't had the time to investigate further, but I am afraid –"

"I'll look into it, Albus," Alastor Moody said in a low, creaking voice.

"Thank you." Dumbledore cleared his throat. "This brings me, I am afraid –"

"Excuse me," Remus murmured and shuffled towards the door. "I need –"

"Stay. Listen," Dumbledore said, quietly, and Remus turned without a word and slid into his seat, his forehead resting on one hand.

"Voldemort was able to discover the hiding place of the Potter family because he had been fed information from the Potters' secret-keeper, Sirius Black. Sirius himself appeared at Godric's Hollow shortly after the explosion and begged for custody of the boy, but Hagrid stuck to his orders and delivered the boy safely to his relatives, where he is being watched by some friends of our cause. Having failed to obtain the boy, Sirius went about destroying other allies of his old friends' circle – Peter Pettigrew, I am afraid …"

Remus blinked against the sudden memory of Sirius, seventeen, lounging against the side of the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room, smoking, and sneering, "you're just too much of a baby, Pettigrew," before stomping off to sneak out to Hogsmeade for a beer.

Remus and Peter had fallen asleep together on the red leather couch that night, Peter's soft choirboy curls in Remus' lap, a bit of saliva slipping out of the side of his mouth onto Remus' thigh as they slept in a pile of mutual helpless adoration of Sirius. Though Remus doubted Peter's adoration was of quite the same nature as his own.

"We have it on reliable sources that he was heading for your house, Remus, when we apprehended him."

Remus could only nod.

I would have killed him, if I could have borne it.

"Black is now in Azkaban, and Voldemort's whereabouts are unknown, but he remains alive and he remains embodied."

II.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see him at the window.

Different windows – stained glass and lead-paned, half-hiding his sixteen-year-old face behind mottled blues and scarlets, casting the illumination of a phoenix across his cheekbone. Or a crooked window half-open on some piss-smelling London alleyway as he leans down and tosses the keys down to where I stand on the stoop worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. I wonder if perhaps it's because I spend sixteen hours a day staring hypnotised at the small patch of light in the stone here that I'm so transfixed by Remus at windows, as if holding the image could bring me to that watery border between freedom and confinement.

Does it bother you that I talk of him?

It's only that it's impossible to think of anything else. I can't work here. I am absolutely useless in terms of earthly power, but my mind – so far and thank God – is still mine. And in that mind is habited the pale sloping figure of a man I once thought I loved, that mind so corrupted by inaction and cut off from the work that would make it useful, that mind can still hold the fantasy and dreaming that encircles lovers in bed – he is all states, and all Princes I, nothing else is – and so I have lost nothing that matters by being here, nothing that a prince in exile has not lost. The essence of the thing still lives.

And yet –

I am so adamant on that because I admit I do doubt. There are two people in the world who know the truth behind my pathetic sort of innocence, because one of them is guilty and one of them is you. I didn't tell him, dearest boy, I didn't tell him. I should have. I would have been spared the knowing that he – if he is still alive, and I can't think but that he is – sits alone at night and believes that he shared his bed with a traitor. He would have been spared the hours in which he wonders, and I know he does, what part he had in making me so. There was nothing I could do, at the end, to save him from losing James and Lily, but I might have saved him from losing me.

But that particular torture is rested on the supposition that he is wholely innocent, and when the torturers here have done their work well, when it is dark and cold and I have not eaten, and I begin to fall into a sorry and maudlin self-pity, I do doubt that.

To be honest, I don't know if Peter had the brains.

Have you done the task I charged you to do? Let me know when you are safe.

Remember that light shines in darkness.

Sirius

Sirius,

I received your last letter rather late, I'm afraid. The bribe money is getting thin, and there was an arrest along the line. I'm sure you don't want to hear about it, suffice to say it was horrid in that sick, inevitable way that things are horrid these days.

Your account of the dementors' work frightened me. You know what sort they are, their deceptions are not unfamiliar, you are an educated man and a strong-willed one, and yet you already begin to fall prey to them.

I don't often speak of this, for reasons I know you understand, but do not doubt Remus. I have not heard his name spoken in that capacity, and while I do not claim to fully know everything that is done around here, I think I should know that, for your association to the Potters was well known, and mine to you, of course.

I hope I may be taken aside by a friend and filled with beer before I descend to becoming one of those middle-aged men who moans about his happy schooldays without ceasing, but you must remember it properly. You must remember that night just before Christmas your last year when we snuck into the edge of the Forbidden Forest (you had been there many times but I was younger and not as brave), and you gave me a sip of your firewhiskey (burning in the cold – I have never forgot it) and we watched the unicorns. They dipped their long necks down to nudge aside the snow and feed on the winter mosses that live close to the warm places below the leaves, and they glowed like phosphorus in the stark frozen night.

You must remember that.

And you must remember whatever it is of Remus that has borne you through mistrust before. You do not – I believe, though I know little of it – you do not love a man as long as you have without being given something to cling to.

As for the task.

I haven't yet, Sirius, because I can't. I need to know everything is set. The second part of the plan doesn't matter, but the first part has to be perfect.

I just can't yet. You don't understand.

Regulus

Regulus,

Thank God for Glimfeather; I see him at my window and I know the world outside this cell has not vanished completely. You must tell me how the war is getting on – as much as you can, that is; I understand the circumstances in which you live.

I watch the waxing of the moon, and I think of him. It is the only way I know time has passed.

Sirius

Dear Brother,

I have sent word through a long chain of spies to inform Dumbledore of my plans, but I do not know whether the message has reached him. And I do not know whether he would return my letter, or whether it might be too dangerous.

There were raids on some of our safehouses last night; they have closed down an underground newspaper and publicly executed six men thought to be responsible for it. Their wives and children have been brought into service – slavery – here; I have made some overtures towards some of the more intelligent women, and I think one of them may trust me. I will need two people, at least.

He has made the women his whores; he feeds them charms that take their minds away and they become vacant slaves to do his bidding. The children cry at night and their mothers sing to them with frozen smiles and do not sleep. Alice Longbottom has refused the charm and called him a tyrant and a murderer to his face, and she screams for her husband at night and the baby wails unattended in his crib. I do not know how long it will be until he breaks her.

Regulus

My brother,

I pray daily that your message reaches Dumbledore; just before I was – taken away – he confided to me that he was beginning to believe you had brought your loyalties around to your new master. "I choose spies carefully," he told me, "and I will trust him until I have absolute proof I should not." But he didn't meet my eye, and he plucked at his beard as he said it. And if he should send in another to do the task you are charged with, that will needlessly endanger another life, which are so rare these days.

So Frank Longbottom is dead. He was several years ahead of me at Hogwarts – I think you might have overlapped for a year or two – and I remember him as a boring and studious pupil. This transformed itself into the most unflinching and courageous service to the cause that I ever saw, and I admit I thought of him when they dragged me in here. He always thought me rather flighty and untrustworthy – he was a prefect when I was experimenting with breaking rules and flouting authority for the sake of a laugh – and I was ashamed to have disappointed him.

I do remember the unicorns. I stood with you at my right hand and Remus at my left, and the neck of the firewhiskey bottle dug gently at my fingers through the soft fur-lined leather of my gloves. I had been obsessed with pleasure; the illicit pursuit of drink and gambling and ill-advised sex. I disdained, with the luxury of the wealthy, the bourgeois and puritanical beliefs of duty and usefulness. A pursuit was worthwhile if it was pleasurable – if it brought your heart slamming into your ribs and made your blood burn with fire. I sought out warm opium dens and the beds of strangers – begging, seducing, and buying my way from pleasure to pleasure. At sixteen, I found myself leaning against a shopfront in Knockturn Alley, my legs braced against the uneven pavement, a beautiful boy with ten of my galleons in his pocket standing between my thighs.

And then Remus brought us out to the forest that night to see the unicorns, with the delight of a boy seeing a thing of true beauty, and all my pleasures seemed as hollow enchantments.

I tell you this because I must tell someone, and I truly believe I will never see another human being in my life. They will not let me out of here alive; if the enemy is victorious, I will take my own life before entering his service. It amounts to the same thing; at least, at my own hand, I will have been the master of my own fate.

Say you love me, and I may yet live in hope.

Sirius.

Sirius,

I would clasp your hand and swear devotion to you, slit my palm and yours with my dagger and remind you that our blood is bound together.

For God's sake, man, where is your fight? The dementors are hell's own agents; they speak lies and slander. You are stronger than they. You must be stronger than they, though you have only your own soul at your disposal and they have all the powers of darkness.

When you were born, you passed through the veil and a bit of its touch of death still clings to you – you are mortal, you decay, you die, and one day the veil will have its own back and swallow you alive. In that sense, our lives are but rented from the fabric of the veil, and we are its slaves, being made of it. But whatever it is of you that lived before will pass through unharmed; the veil cannot touch that – it can only seek to smother it with the slime of this life – and nor can its agents, though they smell of its chill and its dankness.

And even in the bleakest view, you are not alone, because we all bear the mark of the veil on us, we are all born through it and bear its curse on our heads. We may all be damned, but we are damned together.

Now bring yourself up like a man and fight, brother, for I have news of ill fortune which you must endure.

Last night, I was taken to dine with the Dark Lord, and presented him with a gift; our mother's locket, of which she was so proud, because it bore the mark of Slytherin on its face.

He smiled – do you know how wretched a sight it is to see the genuine, pleased, delighted smile of a man planning evil – and said, "why, Regulus, this will do nicely."

"It has been in my family for generations," I told him, to impress upon him the importance of the gift.

"But of course it has," he said, and then, "you and I are more alike than I knew," as one fingertip caressed the mark of Slytherin.

After dinner, he dressed in front of a flattering mirror that spoke lies of his greatness and promised him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them – he dressed in a velvet tunic and leather trousers, boots to his knees, a sword in his belt, and a cape across one shoulder – and his eyes glowed red in a face that used to be handsome, and with a voice slick as oil, he told me "as the gift is yours, so shall the triumph of it be yours also."

I followed him to the dungeons, and he had his slaves bring Alice Longbottom to him. When she wouldn't come without her child, they dashed him to pieces before her eyes. I heard her screaming from the other end of the dungeons, and all the women – poor witless babbling fools – joined in and clawed at their hair, and tore at the bars of their cells. The Dark Lord strode to his great hall, where Narcissa stands at the right of his throne and fawns on him and Bellatrix stands on the left and says nothing because she knows it is she and not her sister that has captured the Dark Lord's eye. Lucius has encouraged his wife to take to the Dark Lord's bed, as it would bring him the payment for her.

I have always wondered how I would aquit myself if I were brought to die at the hands of my enemies. I think he expected her to squeal like a trapped pig, but the poor woman was beyond grief.

He had sweets and wine brought, and ate lavishly while she stood before him, saying nothing. The horrors that must have been in her mind, watching the half-smile on his face as he watched her and knowing that there were no appeals she could make to his mercy, nothing she could do but wait and pray it would not last long.

His mistake was killing her child. She would have humiliated herself for their pleasure if she thought it could have saved the baby, but he had taken from her everything but her own life, and she knew that was beyond her saving. Narcissa urged him to ask her to dance for them, and Bellatrix (after he had asked her three times) said only, "the vermin gives me no pleasure; kill her and be done."

The Dark Lord stood and walked towards her, and her eyes darted to each of us in turn; my guts twisted as they lit on me, and I could not at the least give her the comfort of knowing she had an ally in that terrible room without giving away everything.

"Wait," Bellatrix said, and strode forward to meet him, taking his hand and running her blood-coloured mouth over its flesh. "Give her the locket to wear."

Bellatrix and Lucius and Rodolphus and the hordes of flattering slaves laughed, and Bellatrix took his thumb in her mouth and laughed darker and lower than all of them, before sliding the locket into the Dark Lord's hand and returning to her husband.

The actual murder was quick, and almost neat, and Alice gave a little gasp before crumpling on the floor, oddly peaceful.

The Dark Lord then leaned over her and held his wand to the locket, whispered words I couldn't hear, and then the most hideous – oh God, Sirius, the screaming of a man tearing his soul to pieces, a man whose soul is already twisted and sore and aching – a light burned from his heart and his wand and a shape I couldn't recognise seemed to pull itself into being between the wand and the locket, before disappearing completely, as the Dark Lord fell to the ground, panting and pale – but triumphant.

Tomorrow, we shall hide it, he says. "You shall come," he told me, "for the pure blood of the house of Black and the pure blood of the house of Riddle are two strands of the same cord, and there must be blood if I am to complete what we have begun." He then raised my arm in his gloved hand and gazed as though enraptured at the blue rivers of my veins below the skin.

I will write more tomorrow; in the meantime, warn Glimfeather to be careful where he goes, for I have heard rumours that the Dark Lord's spies are seeking our messengers, and they have many desperate widows in their custody who have nothing left to fight for.

And again I tell you I love you. Do you not believe me? You are my brother, my only comrade, my only hope. It is for your freedom I fight.

Regulus

Dearest boy,

It is not that I do not know they lie. It is that their lies – as are all the best lies – are grounded in horrible truth.

I have been selfish. My whole life, I have thought of nothing so much as myself; those few who have been so unfortunate as to love me have had various storms of anger and recrimination borne on them for no reason other than my own ill humour and lack of self-discipline. I remember one night in Gryffindor Common Room, when James and Remus were blamed for everything from my miserable OWL results to my response to alcohol, and they stood before me and bore it. And I despise myself for the arrogance I prided myself on, for the times I picked on those weaker than myself to prove I could, for the times I was short-tempered or impatient with Remus or with you (you were always younger and weaker, and I ensured you knew it) or with Peter. Especially with Peter. If I had been kinder to him – if I had been kinder to Severus – is all evil my doing? Is all evil the result of my thinking only of my status and my momentary pleasure?

It has all been such an empty waste, and I did not know it.

They begin with what is true, and they twist it, however they can, to drive the knife home. They tell me that because I have been selfish I have never truly loved. They tell me that because I have been careless all my loves have endured me only for the fear of my temper. They tell me that each moment of my happiness was a moment that belonged to some other man who is gone forever – and they tell me all this in my own voice.

I have wept until my eyes ached for Alice and her son. It is only luck that kept that from being Lily and Harry's fate; much as I wept for Lily, I thank God she was spared imprisonment and the dishonour of being the captive woman of the Dark Lord. And Harry – he may be in hell, but he is alive, and there is hope for him. There is hope that he may yet be raised by Remus, that he may yet live in a world that is free from this evil.

Keep me informed of all news. I live for it. The attacks of the enemy grow stronger each day; there are times when I am relieved to give into their ministrations. When it is as the loss of a burden to deny all that I have ever believed. When the world as they would have me see it, the world of anger and hatred and cold, the world in which I am a hollow shell of a miserable man, is more home than any other.

Fight for me.

Sirius

My brother,

Glimfeather is dead. I don't know any details. You hear them go by in the night, and in the morning one of you is gone.

I have Imperiused a small mouse and sent him to live near your cell. I want to cut my tongue out when I think of what I have done, but these are desperate times.

It is almost done. He has been cunning, more cunning than I believed, but I am no longer afraid. There is a clearness that comes before death; the fear of the thing is worse than the thing itself.

The shrine was already assembled when we entered it. Dumbledore was right; he has been planning such a thing for years. It is in a cave; I cannot tell you where. I know you understand. We approached the cave under a full moon; I could see it clearly, and I thought of those nights – not so very long ago – when you would come to my room in your other form and I would bury my hands in your fur and climb onto your back. Your feet were strong and sure, and I talked gently to you because I knew you could understand, and we rode together through the strange blue colours of the night as the moon shifted above us – harvest to paschal and back again, death and life in an endless ring of light. "I saw eternity the other night … all calm as it was bright/and round beneath it, time, in hours, days, years/driven by the spheres/like a great shadow whirled..."

I cannot tell you of the traps and precautions he has set up to guard the locket, though I will tell you that it is made easier for you if your blood is pure and of the lineage of Salazar Slytherin. I remember his glance as he gripped my wrist in his hand and raised my arm to slit it with his knife; I shall always remember it. It is a hollow courtesy, though, for any rescue attempt is certain to be fatal (unless you have two people – one of whom is an immensely powerful Wizard and the other of whom is either underage or Non-Magical). I have noticed that those who practice the Dark Arts give each other many privileges of status while constantly planning each other's downfalls.

My Slytherin blood has bought me a privilege that will aid in the death of Slytherin's most faithful servant.

At the end of the traps, there is a poison. It takes your life slowly, so he may think of your suffering for longer, but it does give you a chance to escape.

This may be my last letter to you. I will endeavour to destroy the locket – I have a cheap replacement that Mother used to leave in her jewelry box while putting the real one behind magical protection – but if I do not, it will be safe with Kreacher. He can do nothing on his own, and you are my next of kin.

Hold fast, brother.

Regulus

Regulus,

I know I may be writing to ghosts, but you are all I have.

Let me know if you are alive. Let me know if the locket is safe.

The demons grow stronger by the day; I try to bring Remus' face to mind, to recall the touch of his hand, and I cannot. They are taking him as they have taken you.

Sirius

Our mother did not love us, did she? Her protestations of love were always for her own sake rather than for ours.

Is that why I have turned to this side? Why I have followed Dumbledore and bound my blood with a half-breed werewolf? Spite for the unfeeling harpy who bore me?

Where are you, brother, in this silent darkness?

Sirius

Is there any difference? Any reason why I should have preferred one side of the fight to the other? Does each side believe they are good and are following as best they know? Can we truly ever say that one side is good – or even, imperfect but better than the other?

Does evil, in its heart, know itself to be evil, or is what we call good and evil simply a false paradigm imposed on top of endless and meaningless battle?

If you were here, you would tell me that the only reason we can conceive of good and evil at all is because they exist – that no figment of mankind's imagination has ever produced meaning where there is none. That if there were no such thing as light, we would have no eyes, and if there were no such thing as goodness, we would have no conscience. No conception not only of what is good and what is evil but of the idea that good and evil might exist.

But you are not here.

Sirius.

What happens to an Imperius curse when the man who has cast it is dead? The mouse has moved from the east wall to the south, and ventures out at night to collect straw and I give him threads from my sleeves to build his nest with.

Sirius.

III.

Remus Lupin

Twelve Grimmauld Place

Waiting by the fire

Into eternity

London

My love,

You don't know how dark the night is here, or how quickly it comes on.

The prison stands above a rocky cliff, and I can hear the waves breaking and receding below me. Over the years, they will wear away at the base of the mountain, and this dark palace will crash into the sea. And on its stones will grow new beings, green and slimy and with the beginnings of life in them, and around its ruins new deposits of sand will build up, and perhaps one day the pile of remnants and fresh growth will emerge from the waves, and men will map and explore it.

It comforts me today to think of impermanence. To remember that all things now present will one day pass away, and that the earth is each minute shifting – dying and resurrecting, giving life and taking it. It is comforting because I can believe that the troubles of today are but the troubles of today, that all things pass away. That one day the veil will be ripped from top to bottom and the world as we know it fall into fire and flame. And so what is my life next to that? What is this war next to that?

The earth cares little that the small and wretched creatures love each other.

She cares little that we have touched, that we have lain side by side in the embracing night and heard all her glories in a single sigh. There are Horcruxes that are made by taking life and Horcruxes made by creating it – in those midnights when we lay together and made a joined and beating life in the air between us, there is a deep and holy enchantment there, and it is lasting.

And that is the only part of my soul that will ever be worth saving; the part that you carry.

You must understand. What they tell me is true – the thing deserves to die. Not for what you think I have done, which I have not, I swear on your body Remus, I have not done it. But for what it is, what it inescapably and wretchedly is. I don't understand how you could ever have loved this man, and yet I count it my only blessing in a terrible life that you did.

And so that is why it doesn't matter, what I am about to do. Because all I am destroying is the darkness, the anger, the blood, the filth. The holy thing of me is yours, is in you and will live, will live as long as you live, as long as you ever once did truly love me.

By the time you read this – by the time the long and untrustworthy network of owls risking their lives and mice bearing Unspeakable curses brings my words before your sober and gorgeous eyes – there will be nothing left to do.

Except to know that I loved you, in whatever broken way I could.

And to know I love you still.

There is something that lives until morning.

Sirius