A/N: Well, after my long hiatus in the rugged New Zealand forest, I'm back and ready to begin the last leg in the marathon that my Lost trilogy has been. We are entering the final chapters (though there are still a good few left to go) and I admit I am relieved. Much as I have enjoyed this particular marathon, it will be wonderful to finish it.

Lost: One Godson, Answers to Harry

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Lupin was confined to the suburban muggle house until Dumbledore deemed that the threat from other werewolves had subsided, or at least until the new school term started and he could resume his post at Hogwarts. The thought of nearly two whole months trapped in a house – with Maud to cope with on top of everything else – would have driven anyone else, especially Sirius, completely mad. But Lupin, with his endlessly patient nature, showed no sign of frustration at the prospect.

Tonks might have had something to do with this. Certainly she was a more than regular visitor to Lupin's hideout.

Sirius brooded for a week over whether or not to tell Lupin that he and Hestia had gone to visit Fenrir Greyback, but in the end he could not face divulging Greyback's words to Lupin. He hitched a smile back onto his face and tried to forget what had happened that night, though Hestia tried to bring it up several times with him and was briskly rebuffed. Sirius could not keep himself from thinking – what if Greyback's still alive? You could still find him and make the bargain – but he forced this thought back down every time it reared its ugly head.

Those next few weeks felt like a strange calm between two storms. With Lupin free from work and obligations to the Order, Tonks' cheery presence a constant nuisance, and Maud finally making a grudging attempt to enter a room and not instantly make herself the enemy of everyone in it, life seemed almost – pleasant. It was summer, after all, and even if nothing was going right, it still made a change from everything going wrong.

Harry's thirteenth birthday was marked by a quiet toast in Lupin's house, without celebration or grieving.

Lupin seemed to have resolved to make full use of his spare time before he returned to teaching at Hogwarts. He threw himself into the tasks around him with an enthusiasm he had never shown before. Half of every waking hour was spent helping Sirius continue the search for his godson. The other half was dedicated to the rehabilitation of the feral cat that was Maud. Every other moment that could be spared was given up to Tonks.

Maud had progressed from the grimy, bitter, unwholesome little creature that Lupin had first brought back from the wilderness. She could almost complete an entire conversation without losing her temper, and her personal hygiene had improved as well. She even helped with the chores around the house. Lupin was doing his best to bring her level of education up to a standard that would allow her to enter the muggle workforce. The eventual goal was that of Maud's full independence and a life as an ordinary muggle – though, of course, she would forever rely on the Wolfsbane potion. But that goal was still a long, long way off.

Lupin's new ardour towards the search for Harry surprised Sirius. Of course, Lupin had always done everything he could do to help, but suddenly he was putting not just his means but his brain to the problem, and that was making all the difference. Being stuck in the house proved no obstacle. Accompanied by Tonks and Sirius or communicating through owl post, Lupin began researching and exploring new lines of investigation that would never have occurred to Sirius. He ordered archives of every copy of the Daily Prophet since Harry has vanished, contacted muggle police stations around the country, wrote pages of notes on the clues they had already collected in search of new connections, and delved into ancient spells for finding and locating.

"There must be other links," he mused aloud pushing aside piles of Daily Prophets and crossing out a line of unintelligible numbers with two swift slashes of his quill. Sirius was sitting on the couch across the room, completing some paperwork for his job at Gringotts, which he still held despite repeated threats of a sacking from his goblin bosses. Lupin tapped his lip with the sharp end of the quill, not noticing that he was getting ink all over his chin. "There's no such thing as an airtight prison. Someone, somewhere has to know something – if only we could find them."

Sirius very nearly burst out and told Lupin about Greyback at that moment, but his courage failed even as he opened his mouth to speak. By now, Greyback was most probably dead, he reminded himself, and any information he might or might not have held was dead with him.

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So August arrived without a breakthrough but with Lupin's assurance that they had narrowed things down and sooner or later they had to get lucky. Life was getting hectic again – Lupin was preparing to return to Hogwarts and Tonks was getting ready to sit her final Auror examinations which would take place at the end of the first week. If she passed these tests with high enough marks, she would be a fully-qualified Auror and ready to work full-time with the Ministry.

Hestia and Sirius put off their usual activities to give her as much last-minute practise in duelling and tracking as could be crammed into those final days. Tonks fluctuated between tearing her hair out over her own clumsiness and calm resignation that she was going to fail abysmally, no matter how much everyone else tried to convince her otherwise. She filled Lupin's kitchen with concoctions while she practised brewing antidotes and hexed Maud three times out of sheer bad-tempered spite.

On the day of the examinations, she dropped all pretence and sat quivering on Lupin's couch, staring at the wall with her hair drooping thick and black around her face.

"You're not going to fail," Sirius and Hestia told her, again and again and again. Tonks just moaned and dug her fingernails into her cheeks.

Finally Lupin sat down on the couch, put both arms around the shuddering young woman, and said, "Tonks, you are going to be fine."

And a few moments later, in a way that no one else in the room would ever figure out, she was. Her hair faded back to pink, her shoulders stopped shaking and she folded her hands in her lap. "You're right," she said. "I'm fine. I'm going to be fine."

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"Sirius, she passed."

"What?"

"Tonks! She passed her examinations! She's officially an Auror!"

"You're joking, Hestia."

"That's harsh of you! Did you really doubt her?"

"No…but all the same…"

"Come on, we're going down the pub to celebrate. You ready?"

"Alright. Where's Remus?"

"He's not coming. He said he's working on something tonight. Come on, I'm sure he doesn't like drinking much anyway. Tonks! An Auror! I can barely comprehend it."

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Sirius raised his head very slowly and groaned aloud. It felt as if there was hippogriffs charging around in his skull, ripping up the lobes of his brain into shreds. He opened his eyes and found the room was still spinning a little, and put out his hand to steady himself. It took him a few moments to figure out where he was – on his own couch in his small London apartment, with his jacket draped over him like a blanket, and a head-splitting hangover.

He lay prone for a few minutes to let the hippogriffs in his skull settle, along with his stomach. He hadn't been well and truly drunk since – well since that time all those years ago, before he and Harry had come back to London, when he'd gone into a rage – but that didn't bear remembering. When he'd come out of that he'd sworn to Harry that he would never drink again, and for the most part, he'd kept that promise.

Finally he summoned the strength to lever himself to his feet and totter into the kitchen to find his wand, which was inexplicably jammed into the toaster. Sirius splashed his face with water to wake himself up and summoned a strong cup of tea.

He'd just staggered back to the couch and was kneeling down to light the fire with a quick spell when an inferno of green flames rushed out at him and Lupin's head appeared in the grate with a small pop.

"Ow!" Lupin said, as Sirius' wand had just poked him in the eye. "Careful!" But he did not sound angry. In fact, he was positively beaming. Definitely more cheer than anyone deserved to have at this time of the morning.

Sirius put his wand aside and sat back onto the couch, looking rather as if he had been deflated. "Sorry," he said wearily. "What d'you want? I need to go to bed."

Lupin's head, with its collar of sparkling flames, grinned up at him. "Hung over, are you?"

"Gee, I can see you were a whiz at Divination."

Lupin did not even frown at the sarcasm, but merely rolled his eyes affectionately. "Never mind," he said. "I'll fix it when you come over."

This did have a gladdening effect on Sirius, because Lupin was good at hangover-curing charms. However, he was determined not to show his appreciation, so he said surlily. "I really don't fancy Floo powder with this headache, unless you like vomit spewing out of your fireplace at eighty miles an hour."

"You'll change your mind in a few seconds," Lupin replied smugly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's means," Lupin said, all the premature wrinkles that usually lined his face vanishing as his expression turned to one of gleeful triumph, "that I've figured something out. What they are doing."

Sirius sat bolt upright, his headache instantly forgotten. Lupin continued in a delirious tone.

"I'm almost positive I'm right – a heck of a lot of things would make sense if I am right. It's the Moly Essence, and Horace Slughorn, I don't know if you remember who he was – look, I don't think I should be telling you these things through the fireplace, we don't know who's listening," his voice grew low and serious. "Have a bite to eat and come straight over, alright? But don't…" he paused, cocking his ear with a puzzled expression.

"What?" Sirius leaned forward. "What is it?"

"Did you hear that just now? A kind of thump?"

"No – must be at your end-"

"Hold on," Lupin said quickly, and with a pop, his head vanished. Sirius was left staring at the emerald-green flames which were quickly dying down to nothing, waiting for his return. After about thirty seconds without any sign that Lupin was going to reappear, an involuntary shiver ran over him. Something – something was wrong.

He picked up his jacket up off the end of the couch and pulled it on over his robes. He lifted his wand, relit the fire, threw some Floo powder onto the grate and put one foot in the flames, "Remus Lupin's house!"

The familiar spinning sensation did not irritate his headache as much as he had claimed it would. Fear had replaced all self-pity about hangovers.

WHAM! It was as if he had crashed into a hard rubber wall. Sirius flew backwards out of the grate and landed on his back with a jolt that really did remind him of his splitting headache. He was staring at his own stained ceiling, in his own apartment. He sat up, clutching his wand.

There had been a barrier over Lupin's fireplace. It had repelled him. And it must have been cast in the minute or so since he had seen Lupin disappear back to his own house.

Something was very, very wrong.

Sirius apparated into Hestia's living room less than a minute later. He found Hestia in the kitchen, standing over her kettle with a mug of hot coffee in her hands and an ice-pack clutched to her temple. When she glanced up to see him barrel in, her cheeks flushed a deep pink. She was only wearing brown flannel pyjamas and a pair of thick woollen socks.

"You could knock," she said irritably, straightening her pyjama top. "Some people are still suffering from last night…"

"Come with me now," he said, dashing forward and grabbing her arm. "Now."

"What?" she lowered the ice-pack, blushing even pinker. "But I'm not even dressed…"

He waved his wand and one of her cotton dressing-gowns materialised in thin air. "Bring your wand. We're going to Lupin's."

"Lupin's? Has something happened?" Hestia snatched the dressing gown out of the air and fumbled it on, picking her wand up off the bench. He took her arm again and they both Apparated outside Lupin's squashed brick house.

"What's going on?" Hestia asked, waiting at the bottom of the steps while he pressed his ear to the wood of the door.

Sirius didn't answer her. He was listening for any sound from within the house, anything that might indicate someone was inside – but there was nothing. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from shouting in frustration. Once he felt he had calmed down, he beckoned Hestia up to the door, and she came, raising her wand as she did. Her face was pale but resolute.

He lowered his voice to barely a whisper. "We do this as a raid. Like when we were Aurors. I'll be forward, you cover the sides."

She nodded and steadied herself as he put his wand to the lock. It flashed green, and Sirius twisted the handle and pushed the door open, slipping through it with his wand raised.

The two ex-Aurors would have been ready to face a stampede of buffalo if that was what they had met in Lupin's hallway, but their caution was unnecessary. It took a bare thirty seconds to determine that the house was empty but for themselves.

No one was here now: but someone had been here.

Most of the rooms showed no sign of damage. But in Lupin's kitchen and living room, it looked as if a whirlwind had torn through and then vanished. Mugs and glasses had been swept off the cupboard shelves, so that the lino was littered with sparkling shards of glass. One of the cupboards had had its door completely blown off, definitely by a spell if the burn marks were anything to go by. The curtains had been ripped down; deep scratches scarred the wallpaper of one wall; more spell-holes had been blasted into the kitchen bench.

In the living room, the damage was just as complete. One of Lupin's little notebooks lay in tatters, its pages torn to shreds and scattered like confetti across the room, its cover hurled into the fireplace where it was not burning, because the grate still crackled with merry green Floo-flames. Lupin's much-loved couch had finally met its end: it had been knocked over and the wooden frame had been snapped by some inhuman strength. Great gashes were torn across it, so that its stuffing poured out to join the shredded notepaper. A chair had been hurled against the fireplace where a leg had broken off, and several of the photographs on the mantelpiece above had fallen to the ground, their glass frames cracked. Lupin's home-crafted bookshelf had been toppled and the precious books trampled and crushed into the wrinkled rug, their spines broken and their pages spilling out of them.

And there was blood: splashed across the tiles in front of the fireplace, so fresh it was as red as a sunset, probably still warm. There was dark blood soaked into the threadbare carpet as well, a little way away, and a scarlet smear of it on the wall next to where Hestia stood. She looked stupefied, as if she was expecting someone to jump out from behind the sofa and yell, "Surprise!" Her wand hung limply at her side.

Sirius looked at the blood for a moment: then, in the blink of an eye, he transformed into the great black dog and put his nose to the trails. He sniffed at the blood on the carpet, on the tiles, and he stood on his hind legs to sniff the stain on the wall. It was at this point that he became human once more. He leaned his head on his arm against the wall, staring at the red smear, but his eyes were not focussing on it.

"It's his blood in front of the fireplace," he said, in a dull, toneless voice. Hestia felt a lead weight drop into her stomach, and a hook jerk at her throat. Sirius was still speaking. "The stuff on the rug and the wall, it's not his. I don't know the scent."

"There isn't much of it…" Hestia said, trying to sound hopeful. It was just habit speaking, though. She felt sick, and frightened, and disbelieving: but the one thing she did not feel was hopeful. "…I mean, there's a good chance…"

"A good chance what?" Sirius raised his head, and his teeth were bared. His eyes flashed, and Hestia stepped back a pace. Sirius advanced on her. "A good chance what? That he's alive? Alive and captured? Better he was dead – better dead than what they'll do to him!"

And suddenly he covered his face with his hands and hunched his shoulders. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout at you, Hestia…" the voice coming through his fingers was softer, now. "Moony…" His mouth twisted bitterly as he spoke, so faint it was less than a whisper. "I can only hope it was quick – or will be quick."

Suddenly the colour returned to his cheeks and he pulled his lips back into a snarl. "Maud," he hissed. "Where is she?"

Hestia glanced around helplessly. "I don't know. Why does it matter?"

"It was her," Sirius said as he straightened up. "It was her. There were wards around the house…there was no way in except from inside…she lead them here. She must have been in contact with the other werewolves…"

Hestia began to shake her head in disbelief, and then stopped. Her eyes widened. "That night…that night we went to see Greyback. I thought I saw someone following us."

Sirius took only a moment to digest this news. "It was her. We walked from Lupin's house. She could have tailed us easily."

"But she'd locked herself in the bathroom! Don't you remember? And there were wards around that house! How did she get back without triggering them?" Hestia babbled desperately, unable to believe what Sirius was suggesting. Maud was foul, yes, but Lupin had taken her in and cared for her when no one else would even touch her. No one could be that ungrateful. No one could be that cruel as to make such a betrayal.

Sirius shook his head. "Lupin turned the wards off when we arrived, because they were too noisy. He had Dumbledore lay new ones the next day. But that night…if Maud had climbed out the window and followed us, she would have been lead straight to Greyback. How pleased he must have been to see her, when she could tell him exactly what he wanted to know…"

"We've got to tell Dumbledore," Hestia said after a pause, and she felt sharp tears prickling her eyes. No – I won't cry, she said to herself, not in front of Sirius. "He should know."

Sirius nodded, but whether he had actually heard her or not, she could not tell.

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He sat slumped on the bed in a spare room in Grimmauld Place, the curtains pulled and the lamp dimmed. He had locked the door, but everyone outside seemed to have taken that as an invitation.

Hestia's voice came several times. The first time she knocked tentatively and called, "Sirius? Maybe you should…come out…people want to talk to you…" But he ignored her and at last she gave up.

A few minutes later, Kingsley knocked more insistently. "Sirius!" his voice floated through the door. "Hestia has told us what happened. You must not lock yourself away."

He kept talking for a while, but when he failed to elicit a response, eventually he went away. Dedalus Diggle and Edgar Bones came next. Apparently the entire Order was congregating on Grimmauld Place. "Sirius, come out, please!" Diggle squeaked, and Edgar rapped sharply on the door and added, "You're being ridiculous, Sirius! Come out and talk to us."

When Sirius continued to ignore them, they too abandoned the attempt. Hestia came back later and knocked frantically on the door. "Sirius, Tonks has arrived – please come out – I can't face her by myself and someone has to tell her what we found…" Her voice was wavering as if she was on the verge of tears. Sirius did not reply, and at last she stopped knocking and her footsteps vanished down the corridor.

A few minutes later, Sirius thought he heard a distant sobbing that might have been Tonks. He couldn't be sure. He turned his head towards the curtained window and tried not to listen. It faded quickly away.

Hestia returned a third time, but she was not alone. Her voice carried through the door into the bedroom.

"He's in there, Albus. He's locked the door and he won't come out."

"Indeed," Dumbledore's soft voice replied. "He hasn't hurt anyone, has he?"

"No," Hestia replied. "We came to Grimmauld Place to contact the Order and he lost his temper and smashed some things in the kitchen, but he didn't hurt anyone. Then he went out, saying he was going to track down Maud and kill her, but he came back pretty soon. That's when he locked himself in the bedroom."

Once again came the knocking on the door, a commanding thud that could only be Albus Dumbledore. "Come out, Sirius, or I will have to come in."

Sirius didn't reply.

"Very well. You have had long enough," Dumbledore warned after a minute or so. There was the sound of a muffled spell, the clatter of barrels in a lock, and the door swung open. Light from the hallway spilled into the bedroom and exposed Sirius slouched on the scrunched bedclothes, his arms folded.

"You know, it's rude to force your way through locked doors," he accused Dumbledore in a hoarse voice.

The headmaster stepped through the doorway and waved his wand to light the lamps of the bedroom. He wore a long magenta robe edged in dark grey and his silver beard was tucked into his belt. There seemed to be a great many more lines on the old man's face than when Sirius had seen him last.

"I have been to Remus' house," Dumbledore said heavily, folding his hands in front of him. "You and Hestia already guessed, I assume, that it was the followers of Fenrir Greyback who took him."

Sirius could not meet Dumbledore's eyes, so he stared at the flickering oil lamp just above his left shoulder. He nodded and said bitterly. "He found something out. He knew something about Harry. He was just about to tell me when it happened. I looked through his notebooks but most of them were all torn up, and I don't know what it was. Is that why they took him? Because he knew something?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "What happened this morning was probably weeks in planning. Whatever Lupin found out, he only discovered it between yesterday and this morning. Fate is harsh…it was simply bad luck that Lupin could not pass on his revelation to you this morning."

Sirius twisted the ragged sheet under his hand, his face stony and his eyes deeply shadowed. He growled, "He was so stupid to trust Maud. Anyone could see she was devoted to Greyback," his mouth twisted as he said the name. "I should have made him chuck her out from the beginning. I could have stopped this."

Dumbledore gave one of his heavy sighs that always made Sirius feel young and stupid. He said sadly, "I wish I could defend that poor girl, but searching Remus' house, I was forced to come to the same conclusion. He could only have been betrayed by someone with intimate knowledge of the house and its defences. And there was an emergency portkey hidden in his bookshelf which I found to be missing. I can imagine Remus saw no harm in telling Maud what it was – unwitting to the idea that she would steal it to ensure he could not escape when she let Greyback's werewolves into the house."

"Greyback's dead," Sirius burst out angrily. "Hestia and I went to meet him. Weeks ago. He was injured badly, he said he was going to die."

"I know. Hestia told me the night after your visit," Dumbledore replied. He came across the room and sat down on the end of the bed. The ancient mattress sagged under his weight, the springs creaking in miserable protest.

Sirius felt stunned and a little betrayed. Was Hestia reporting his every move to Dumbledore? He pulled his feet further away from the old headmaster. "Then you know what he said. You know what I'm thinking now," he whispered.

"You wish you had traded Remus for Harry. You are thinking, if this was how it was going to end for him one way or another, it wouldn't have made a difference."

Sirius nodded.

Dumbledore's blue eyes flashed for a moment in the orange lamplight. "You must not think such a thing again. Perhaps you cannot imagine what it would feel like to betray someone who trusted you unquestionably. I assure you, Sirius, it would have made all the difference. The hatred you feel for Maud right now – that hatred would be directed towards yourself, and even if Greyback would have helped you with your search for Harry – and I doubt he would, or could, have – the hatred would never go away."

Sirius didn't answer. He knew Dumbledore was right, but he didn't want to admit that the headmaster could be right. Harry was what mattered – would Lupin have understood that? Knowing that his sacrifice might have saved Harry, would Lupin have willingly let Greyback take him? Sirius didn't know, would never know. It seemed so unfair, to have been given the chance to find his godson, and to have wasted it, only to lose Lupin anyway. And Lupin would never see Harry again. It was so unfair Sirius wanted to be sick.

He still wasn't looking at Dumbledore's face, and his eyes drifted down to the Headmaster's lap. Sirius noticed that Dumbledore was holding his wand in his left hand, because there was something wrong with his right. It was black and twisted like a branch that had been burning in a fire for some hours, the nails melted into contorted scabs and the ends of what might have been charred bone poking through the tips. It looked as if it had somehow died.

Dumbledore saw where Sirius was looking and flicked his sleeve down so that the dead, black fingers were covered.

Sirius' gaze was broken and he finally looked up into Dumbledore's eyes. "What happened to you?"

"A minor mishap," Dumbledore said casually. "We have other things to discuss. First, Hestia asked me to tell you that an owl arrived from Gringotts about an hour ago to inform you that unfortunately your employment there is terminated due to repeated absences and your failure to report to work today. I'm sorry."

Sirius shrugged. "Doesn't matter," he muttered, though he felt a brief flush of regret. It wasn't easy finding work during wartime.

"All the same, cruel timing," Dumbledore said apologetically. "But perhaps not so inconvenient. You are no doubt feeling very distressed and useless but if I might offer some advice, I always find that the best way to keep myself from sorrow is to keep myself occupied. There are things that need organising. Remus left his will in my keeping…"

Sirius bristled. "You're already thinking about that? Only a few hours ago I was speaking to him…!"

"I do not mean to offend you, Sirius. But I feel you are the best person to take charge of Remus' affairs. And I would ask you to do your best to think of your young cousin…"

"Tonks," Sirius remembered the sobbing he had heard and realised that however miserable he was, Tonks would be feeling three times as awful. "Is she alright?" he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but unable to think of anything else to ask.

"Hestia decided it was better she didn't return to Auror headquarters just yet. She has taken Tonks to your cousin Andromeda's house instead. Her mother will be able to look after her well enough. But you and Tonks are sharing a mutual grief. If you could support each other, it would lighten the burden for her greatly, I think. As to the matter of Remus' will: you, Tonks and Harry are the main beneficiaries of what small fortune he possessed, but Maud was also included in it, and as she has vanished, you must decide what to do with her share. And perhaps, if you could, you might be willing to organise the…" Dumbledore paused for the briefest moment as if he knew that from here on he could not take back what he was saying, "…the funeral."

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TBC

A/N: Um. Yes. Writing this chapter made me very, grimly sad. Er…but look…don't give up hope just yet, okay? No corpse, no death, right? Trust me on this one. Hang in there until the next chapter.

Thank you to all reviewers, as always.

I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can, but tomorrow I'm…gah…getting the results for my school exams in the mail. The very thought is giving my a stomach ulcer, so actually finding out my results will probably push me over the edge and kill me. How can you help? You can review! It only takes a moment, and it makes me feel a hell of a lot better about failing Statistics.

(If I fail Statistics, I will have to repeat it instead of doing Art Painting this year. Can you imagine a year of Statistics instead of Art? Yeah, that's what I'm facing right now. Bleh.)