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Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, and only the story line and any OC's belong to me.
I'm sorry about this chapter.
Sirius Black made a grave mistake. He had had several lapses in his judgement over the years, but this was by far the worst thing he'd ever done. It was so bad that Remus wasn't talking to him, and Sirius frankly couldn't blame him.
"What the FUCK were you thinking? I could have seriously hurt him! I could have killed him!" Remus screeched, shoving Sirius, hard.
James stepped in between them, and in a soothing tone, attempted to calm Remus down. "Moony. It's okay. Snape is fine, it's all fine—"
"That is not the point! How can you defend him right now?"
"I'm not, I'm trying to stop you from doing or saying something you regret."
"What? ME?! I can assure you that nothing I say now will be met with regret later," Remus yelled, the vein on the side of his neck bulging, and his golden eyes ablaze.
"I knew you weren't going to hurt him—you're on the Wolfsbane potion," Sirius said weakly, cowering behind James.
That only infuriated Remus further, "I suggest you get as far away from me as possible, or I'll take a chunk out of you in Snape's stead."
Sirius flinched at the abrasive threat, and quietly he whispered, "I'm sorry, Remus. I'm so sorry."
Ever since James's incident, Snape was being revered by a particular group of Slytherins; Slytherins Sirius heavily suspected were recruits for the Dark Lord. Hermione and Draco had both dismissed his suspicions when he brought them up—Draco adamantly demanded that Sirius drop it, whilst Hermione outright refused to engage him on the topic.
Last week, Snape began taunting Sirius with a haughty curl of his lip whenever they came into contact. At first they were pathetic attempts to ruffle Sirius's feathers, and there were a few slur hurled at the other Marauders, but they pointedly ignored the greasy haired git.
A few days ago, Snape touched a nerve.
"You aren't dating that little badger any more...or are you?" Snape strolled past Sirius and rounded the corner.
Sirius had just been on his way to go see the girl in question down in the Greenhouse, and once he turned the corner he slowed his pace to come to a halt beside Snape; the Slytherin was leaning up against the stone wall, arms folded, ankles crossed.
"Funny, a little bird told me about a lion and a badger getting rather cozy in a greenhouse not too long ago. It would be a shame if the lion were to say…receive that badger's head in a box," Snape said with a sneer. He knew about Sirius and Riley somehow, and he was not only gloating about his possession of said knowledge, he was openly threatening bodily harm would befall Riley.
Impenetrable darkness: Sirius didn't see red, he wasn't consumed with his anger. Sirius's rage was icy, it was clinical, and with a roar he grabbed Snape by the scruff of his shirt and shoved him up against the wall. He didn't recall much else, but he'd apparently given Snape a black eye and broken his nose.
Sirius didn't make it to the greenhouse. He sent Hermione in his stead to let Riley know that he was drowning in work. (He tacked on that OWLs were coming up, and he didn't want to distract her from her studies.)
As Sirius laid in bed that night, his mind played through a terrifying reel of disturbing scenarios. The image of Riley's decapitated head being delivered to him in a bright coloured box plagued his night terrors that night. He woke up the next morning with a plan.
Remus's headaches were his inspiration, as they reminded him that the Full Moon was in a few days.
I'm going to scare him into silence, and that way he'll leave Riley alone, Sirius thought at the time. Remus is taking his potion, it will all be okay. Snape will leave us alone, and everything will work out, everything will be just fine.
"It will all be just fine."
Now Sirius could admit to himself that he was by no means thinking rationally; he'd concocted this plan with the idea that Snape was one of Voldemort's followers in the back of his mind—he'd twisted hearsay and supposition to fit his convoluted perception of reality. Snape might be a Death Eater, but Sirius had no concrete proof of such.
Thankfully, Sirius's conscious got the better of him, and he confessed his entire ill-thought out plan to James as the moon grew full in the sky—hidden behind a thick screen of clouds. James bolted down to the Whomping Willow, and stopped Snape before he could venture into the tunnels.
(Normally the Marauders would already be down in the tunnels, but Remus insisted they all get some studying done for their upcoming exams before joining him in the Shrieking Shack.)
James was irate. Sirius put not only Remus and Remus's future at stake, he put all of them at risk as well.
Sirius confessed everything to Remus the next morning, and it was one of the worst moments of Sirius's life.
The evening after the Full Moon the Marauders were scattered across the Castle: James had gone to try and calm down Remus, Peter had anxiously scampered off at the first sign of conflict, and Hermione was thoroughly disappointed, but she'd been stroking Sirius's hair and hugging his head to her chest for the past half hour. Sirius didn't know where Draco was.
Hermione tugged Sirius into an unfamiliar room on the Seventh floor, not that far from the Gryffindor Tower. A room whose sole piece of furniture was a plush, cream sofa with an overabundance of throw pillows. A sofa that he never wished to leave.
"I didn't mean to, Mione—Riley…" Sirius sniffed, burying his regret and shame as he clung to the witch that always made things better.
If Remus had mistakenly missed a dose of Wolfsbane potion…I…I could have killed Snape...fuck, I am an abhorrent human being, Sirius thought, burrowing into Hermione.
"I know, Sirius. It's okay, I know," Hermione said in a tiny voice, her warmth seeping into him; her cocoon of chamomile and vanilla was protecting him from all exterior influences.
Their sanctuary was breached: Draco abruptly entered the room with a grave look on his face. He was dressed in black from head-to-toe, and Sirius wondered if that was because he was prepared from Sirius's funeral, but then recalled that Draco always favoured black, grey and white clothes to everything else.
As Sirius was pondering the ratio of intermittently splashes of emerald green, maroon and crimson in Draco's wardrobe in comparison to the remainder of his closet, the wizard in question let out a heavy sigh of relief.
"It worked?"
"Yea, I went to talk to the old codger. By some miracle, Severus didn't get there first," Draco heaved out, tiredly plopping onto the ground.
"Thank, Circe," Hermione exhaled, tightening her grip on Sirius.
Sirius gently tapped Hermione's arm, and hesitantly left the safety of her embrace as he sat up, "you went to talk to Dumbledore?" Dread pumped through his veins. He was going to be expelled, forced to pain for his crimes with blood, and thrown in chains and hauled to Azkaban.
"I did," Draco confirmed, his head falling into his hands.
"I'm going to Azkaban aren't I?" Sirius asked.
Draco flinched, and for a long moment Sirius could taste the tension threaded through the air. Draco's head rose, and he met Sirius's eye, "what?"
"For what I did—even if I didn't mean for him to get hurt, I'm being sent to Azkaban," Sirius croaked out, his throat dry, gravelly and lined with coarse wire.
"I sorted things out with Dumbledore. You aren't getting in trouble for this," Draco deadpanned, eyes swimming with something that Sirius couldn't identify, even if his expression was hard as stone.
"I'm not?"
"No."
"How did you—"
"The less you know, the better," Draco snarled, baring his pointy canines. A moment later, he shook his head and regained his composure. "It's just easier if you don't know any of the finer details."
"Paws...what did you do?"
Severus Snape had been spitting pure vitriol for the past ten minutes, demanding blood, demanding that Sirius Black pay for what he had done. Dumbledore at first had played the part of a man caught unawares, completely ignorant of the events that had transpired.
Dumbledore interjected politely here and there, nodded, and made all the appropriate responses he deemed Severus wished to hear. Although, Severus was so blinded by his enmity of Sirius Black, that Albus was uncertain as to whether the Slytherin had heard a word he'd said.
"I want to see him in chains and shackles!"
"I highly doubt that will be necessary, Severus. Mister Black will receive detention for the remainder of the school year, and will be dealt with accordingly."
"You aren't expelling him?"
"No," Dumbledore responded calmly. "After all no harm actually came to you."
"So attempted murder isn't a punishment equal to—at the bare minimum—expulsion?" Snape snarled.
"I did not expel you for your earlier transgression this year with James Potter, who I am told stopped you from entering the tunnel tonight—thus keeping you out of harm's way."
Snape worked his jaw, spitting on the ground in Dumbledore's direction, "he only did that to keep his filthy mutt's secret." Fury was balled up in his beady, dark eyes, and his greasy black hair fell forward onto his face as the boy's body quaked with ire.
"Ah, Severus, so kind of you to bring him up. I feel it may be necessary to warn you off telling anyone about young Mister Lupin, because there will be severe repercussions if you discuss what happened last night with anyone." Dumbledore fiddled with his thumbs of his clasped hands that were resting on top of his desk.
(Dumbledore was a bit stunned that Severus hadn't graced his doorstep the moment the incident had occurred, but he supposed the young wizard was probably in shock; he had what he thought to be a near death experience after all.)
"He's a monster! He could have ripped me to pieces!"
"If Mister Lupin had a malicious bone in his body then I suppose he could have, but as he is currently taking Wolfsbane Potion, I believe him to be as harmless as you or I," Dumbledore replied.
"Wolfsbane Potion. That hasn't been perfected yet, there is no way it's reliable—"
"I can assure you, Severus. It works, and Remus Lupin has been using it for almost two years now," Dumbledore supplied in a tranquil tone of voice.
"Bollocks," Snape said, a dubious look on his face.
"It's true, now you must never speak of tonight's events ever again," Dumbledore lost some of the unperturbed quality to his voice, and there was a slight edge in its place.
"Why do they always get away with everything? There are never any consequences for their reckless, dangerous behaviour," Severus caught the shift in Dumbledore's disposition—only a fool wouldn't have, but he chose to press his luck regardless.
Dumbledore was silent, as if mulling over Severus's words. However, instead of addressing Severus's last statements, the old wizard reticently said, "Severus…I know that you have joined him."
In a very deliberate way, Dumbledore's gaze flicked down to Snape's left forearm. For a moment, Snape was startled into silence, but he soon recovered. With unparalleled wrath, Snape responded as he clutched his arm, "you are going to regret this, you old codger."
Severus flicked his hair over his shoulder, and he pivoted on his heel before marching out of Dumbledore's office; his dark robes billowed out behind him.
Dumbledore sighed heavily as the boy left, and he recalled his brief conversation—if one could call the aggressive statements that had been thrown at him a conversation—with Draco Potter before Severus Snape's arrival.
"Aside from the fact that you owe Hermione and I—"
"I thought Miss Potter already requested a favour in lieu of—"
"Okay you old bastard. Don't try to use fancy jargon and excuses to get you out of this one. We need you to do this, or it will fuck with the timeline. How about that? That is what you value most, even above our lives," Draco spat acidly, pacing back and forth in front of the Headmaster's desk.
"That is an unfair assessment; it saddens me greatly that this war will bereave you of many of your friends and loved ones—"
Draco flew into Dumbledore's face, wand pointed directly at Dumbledore's right eye ball. It was a dark smudge across the man's vision, and he was careful not to budge an inch. He would remain calm in the face of Draco Potter's raging storm.
"Snape almost killed my brother. His spell actually did find its target. That coward hit James in the back." Draco paused long enough to narrow his eyes and draw in a shuddering breath. "Sirius realised his mistake, and intervened before it was too late. The only thing of Snape's that is injured is his pride," Draco said, venom dripping from every word.
"The Severus Snape that I knew growing up was a much more noble man. He was a deeply flawed individual and a bit of a prick, but he was a brave man. Perhaps, if things were different...this could have been the moment where his life changed and he switched sides, but it isn't. If anything this will only fuel him to fully commit to the Dark Lord's service."
Dumbledore's brow puckered, "then why wouldn't you wish me to stop that?"
Dark laughter spilled out of Draco's lips, "I would fucking love for you to do that, but, that would alter your precious timeline. He has to become a Death Eater. In time, something happens that will cause him to come to you, begging for your help, when that time comes, I want you to swear to me that you will."
"Well, my boy. That isn't a hard request to agree to. Of course I would help him," Dumbledore nodded, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request.
"Not after what he is going to do. He—" Draco next words were caught in his throat, and he lowered his wand and clasped his neck, his eyes clenched tightly shut in agony.
"The Vow?"
"Yes, you twat."
Dumbledore supposed there was nothing comforting he could say to that, so he reiterated his intentions to aid Severus. "I swear on my magic that I will assist Mister Snape when the time comes."
"Good," Draco rasped, pure hatred radiating off of him.
"Is there anything else I can help you with, Mister Potter?" Dumbledore asked serenely, waving his hand, and the delicate silver spoon in his still piping hot cup of jasmine tea began to stir the fragrant drink—clinking against the sides of the china as it did.
"No, I'm finished here," Draco bit out, and with one last scornful look thrown his Headmaster's way, he sauntered towards the exit.
He truly hoped that Draco Potter was right—he truly hoped he'd done the right thing. He was wildly out of his depth in this situation. Draco assured him that this all needed to happen so that the timeline could remain intact.
Thus Dumbledore had placed all of his faith in the young wizard, and he would just have to trust that it was not misplaced.