Chapter Eight

When the owl arrived with the Sunday Prophet, Remus was still in bed. It was the full moon that night and he was already feeling achy and under the weather and Sirius thought it best to leave him to sleep. So him and Harry were alone in the kitchen when the owl tapped on the window with its beak.

He let it inside, put a knut in its pouch and shook out the paper to read it, just as the owl flew away again.

...

He stared at the headline:

The Ministry's Elite Werewolf Unit on High Alert for Full Moon Sunday

His eyes skimmed the first few lines:

Following the revelations that known Death Eater and Spy, Remus Lupin, is also a werewolf, fears are growing for the safety of little Harry Potter; whom Lupin helped to kidnap the night You Know Who fell.

Knowing that Lupin will turn into a slavering, dangerous beast without will or control this night, the Department for the Disposal of Dangerous Beasts are sending out a squad of their most experienced hunters in the hope of capturing the transformed Lupin before he can harm the child.

If caught in his wolf state it is likely he will be put down …

...

Sirius stopped reading - and once more shredded the newspaper before Remus could see it.


Over in London, in his room at the Leaky Cauldron, Severus was reading the newspaper with a growing feeling of satisfaction. Not that he thought this elite squad of werewolf slayers would catch Lupin, and not that he wanted them to - for he wanted the satisfaction of catching both men himself - but it pleased him no end that the beast was finally being exposed. After all those years, keeping it hidden from everyone around him, after the school's decision to hush up his attempt to kill Severus … it felt sweet to see the truth brought to life, and to see the horror, panic and disgust the wizarding world felt on discovering it.

Lupin was a monster - and now the world knew it.

But he didn't have time to sit here lingering over his cup of tea and feeling smug, he was going over to Grimauld place today, to interview Walburga Black.

...

He had never met Walburga - though he knew the whole Black family by reputation. They were a proud family, thought very highly of themselves and were big into the pure blood elitism that the Dark Lord so favoured … though the older Blacks had never been Death Eaters themselves. They were the sort of family that had a lineage a half blood like Severus could only dream of coming from … and he knew that his relative position might make it difficult for him to get Walburga to talk.

...

Fortunately, he had started out on his quest fully prepared and - as he finished his breakfast - the collapsible cauldron he had packed came to a boil over the fire. He had started brewing this potion weeks ago for an upcoming NEWT class, but last night he had taken time to add the final ingredients - and now the cauldron was filled with a clear, colourless liquid that gave off no taste or smell. A few drops of this into Walburga's drink and she would tell him everything she knew, no matter how much she looked down on him.

Before he left, he dipped a vial into the potion, filling it up and stoppering it. Then he dropped the vial into his holdall, put his cloak on - and apparated to Grimauld Place.

...

Grimauld Place was a small square in Islington; there was a patch of grass in the middle, fenced off by railings and then tall, Georgian houses surrounding the edge. Most of them were owned by muggles - broken up into flats or used as offices - but Number Twelve, squeezed right in the middle, remained intact and belonged to the most ancient and noble House of Black.

It was squeezed too - seeming narrower than the other buildings - and yet no smaller. The large, grand house squashed into a space too small for it.

And, standing in the middle of the square - watching muggles pass by - Severus got the distinct impression he was the only person on the street able to see it. The Blacks had enchanted their house so it was invisible to prying, non-magic eyes - and so its neighbours either side stretched out to touch each other - leaving the narrowest gap for Number Twelve to lurk unnoticed.

It was a fascinating bit of magic.

...

As a young boy - and how it hurt his heart to remember this - but he had once been inside Lily's house when the moving picture box her parents had in their living room had been on. Her muggle sister had been watching the pictures - and they'd told the story of a mad man who lived in a blue police box which was larger on the inside than it was on the out.

Severus hadn't understood what it was he was seeing - but for some reason the story had always stuck with him. Perhaps it was because it showed the awareness muggles had of magic - that it was on their periphery - they almost had a rudimentary understanding of it, like cavemen and fire, and yet it remained so completely out of their reach.

Looking at Number Twelve, both taking up space and not, Severus was reminded of that mad, muggle man and his flying, blue box so vividly he could almost see it again, as if the moving picture box was right in front of him once more.

But, as with anything that was a reminder of Lily, the pain was too sharp, too new and too intense that he could not bear to dwell on it - and so, he put the distant past from his mind and went up to the imposing front door and rang the bell. He could not waste time looking at what he had lost - he had Lily's murderers to catch.

...

He heard the doorbell echo inside the house - and waited impatiently as nothing seemed to happen. Then, eventually, the door creaked open slowly to reveal a stooped and ancient house elf, clad only in a filthy towel wrapped like a loincloth around its waist. It blinked in the sunlight - weak and watery as it was - as if it was unused to natural light.

'A young wizard is at the door,' the house elf wheezed. 'Kreacher wonders who it can be and what brings him here to this house of suffering.'

'My name is Severus Snape. Take me to your mistress, elf, I need to speak with her about her son.'

'Master Regulus is not here. Master Regulus is lost - no one knows where he has got to.'

'Not Regulus, the other one.'

'Oh. Him.'

The house elf spat in disgust - and Severus felt himself warming to the creature. 'I assure you, I feel quite the same way and have done so for many years - but I must speak with your mistress.'

'Master Sirius is good for nothing. He has broken my poor Mistress's heart.'

'He has broken many hearts,' Severus said sourly. 'Now let me inside.'

...

Kreacher stepped aside to allow Severus past, and Severus swept inside - his eyes taking in the long hallway and tall staircases, the troll's foot umbrella stand and the portraits of long dead Blacks hanging on the walls - watching him as he went by.

So - this was the home Black had grown up in, was it? How very different to the small terraced house, in the small muggle town that Severus had been raised in. How very different the lives of the pure bloods were. No wonder they felt as they did about those from lesser bloodlines.

...

'Mistress is in the drawing room - if you'll follow me,' Kreacher said, his voice as creaky as the front door had been. The elf started to climb the stairs - and Severus followed - as did several of the witches and wizards in the portraits, flitting from frame to frame to see what was going on.

When they reached the top of the stairs, they walked past a display of House Elves heads - stuffed, mounted and stuck on the wall. Severus looked at them curiously - and then looked at Kreacher, noting the similarities between him and some of the grisly ornaments.

'My master and mistress are very good to their house elves,' Kreacher told him, seeing him looking. 'They preserve my line like they preserve their own. We can all be proud of where we are from in this house - and one day, I will join my ancestors on the wall.' He looked positively delighted by the fact.

...

Oh … Sirius Black must have hated it in this house. This place was the antithesis of everything prissy Potter and soppy Sirius had stood for. Defenders of the weak and meek, warriors of the pure and true … This place reeked of the dark arts and Black must have been miserable every moment he was in here, so different was it from what he believed in…

The smile of satisfaction at the thought of Black's unhappiness suddenly slid from Severus' face. But that had all been a lie, he reminded himself. Black had turned out to be darker than all of them, Voldemort's right hand man, people were saying. A spy and a traitor. Maybe he hadn't hated it here, maybe this was just the place for him and his werewolf. Maybe this house had got into his soul and twisted it.

...

God, but Severus had hated the priggish goodness of the four of them (although it was selective goodness - they certainly never wasted any of that blessed sanctity on Severus - instead preferring to attack him four on one whenever they got the opportunity). But to then find out it had only ever been a cover for two of them, it was always a lie - and to hate them even more for their lies, for what they had caused to happen … it was difficult keeping track of this new truth. And not all of it seemed to make sense. But he had to do his best to keep it straight - to follow the trail … He needed to catch these two kidnappers, these two murderers, these spies and traitors. Whatever he thought he knew of them didn't matter- he couldn't let it cloud his judgement or confuse his mind, as he hunted them down.

They were Death Eaters - and when they had turned their coats, or if they had always been that way inclined did not matter. What mattered was finding them, hunting them down and making them pay for what they did to Lily.

And to that end he was here to talk to Walburga.

...

He paused outside the door to the drawing room and spoke to Kreacher: 'bring us up a glass of wine each, this conversation may take a while.' And then, after Kreacher had nodded silently and disappeared, he tapped on the door and entered the room.

...

The room - like everywhere else in the house - was dark. The curtains were drawn, though it was early in the day and the only light came from the fire in the grate and one, dim lamp.

Severus struggled, in the intense gloom, to make out the woman sitting in the high wingback chair. But there she was - Walburga Black - Sirius' mother.

...

She was a woman nearing sixty, but the grief on her face seemed to have aged her several decades - her dark hair was shot through with streaks of grey, her skin was papery and her eyes were tired.

But her head still snapped around when she heard the door- and those tired eyes flashed dangerously. 'What is this imposition?' she demanded in an imperious voice.

Severus nodded his head to her, 'forgive me my intrusion, Mrs. Black - my name is Severus Snape, I work for Albus Dumbledore and I'm here to speak with you at his behest.'

Walburga snorted in disgust, 'that muggle loving, meddling, old fool - what business has he sending people into the House of Black?'

'We're trying to find your son.'

'Regulus is gone - he's probably dead.'

'It's not Regulus I'm looking for.'

'Oh.' She didn't quite spit, as Kreacher had done, at the mere mention of the elder Black boy - but her face twisted up and she looked like she might want to.

...

'If I may -' Severus gestured to a chair beside the fire and then sat down, before she could answer. He put his leather holdall by his feet. 'I am sorry to bring up a matter which must be painful to you - it is indelicate of me, I know - but I assume you are aware of what they are saying Sirius has done?'

'He is nothing to me. He never was. I do not care what he has done or what becomes of him.'

Severus wondered if this was true - he would know soon enough… His foot stretched out surreptitiously and touched his bag, checking it was still in reach. 'When was the last time you saw him?'

'Sirius? I haven't seen him in years - and don't wish to see him ever again. He was another muggle lover. The gravest of disappointments. He ran away from home at sixteen - I cut him from the family tree…' She gestured to the far wall, where an extensive family tree curled across a tapestry. Down near the bottom there was a little blast mark, where Sirius' name had been burned away. 'And I never saw him since.'

'I need to track him down,' Severus told her. 'I need to know anything you might know of where he might go - or who he might turn to.'

'I know nothing. I cannot help.'

...

The door opened and Kreacher sidled in, bearing two glasses of red wine upon a tray. He slid the tray onto the side table and then backed out of the room - bowing.

Severus seized his chance. 'Perhaps you will indulge me - ' he said, reaching for his bag. He appeared to root inside, palming the vial of clear potion and hiding it up his sleeve and then taking out his scrapbook. He opened the scrapbook and took out the picture of Black and Lupin at Slughorn's Christmas party - and handed it across to Walburga. 'Your son kept this photo by his bed - I wonder if you might be so kind as to look at it, tell me if it means anything to you.'

She took the photograph from it and studied it - squinting in the dim light - and, while she was distracted, Severus slipped the hidden vial into his hand, unstoppered it and dripped three drops of potion into one of the wine glasses. Then he put the lid back on and hid the vial once again.

...

'Anything?' he asked pleasantly, reaching out to take the photo and handing her her glass of wine at the same time.

She took a sip.

Severus held his breath.

'It means nothing to me,' she said.

He felt his heart sink. 'You don't know why he would keep this picture in particular in his room, away from the others?'

Walburga snorted in disgust once again. 'That would be the halfbreed would it? The other boy in the picture? I never met him - I'm glad to say. Even my worthless, muggle loving son would not dare pollute this home with one of his kind.'

'It is Remus Lupin in the photo,' Severus agreed. 'A known werewolf - and the man your son has gone on the run with.'

'Yes I'm sure he has…'

...

There was a knowing smirk playing on Walburga's lips, put there by Severus' words and which he did not understand. 'Disgusting,' she said. 'He kept a similar photo of the two of them in his room, here - you can see it if you like. The stupid boy stuck all his pictures - his muggle girls in their underwear, the muggle machines he loved so much, his inferior friends - stuck them all to the wall with a permanent sticking charm, so we couldn't take them down when he was at Hogwarts. Then he ups and leaves - and just as he's preparing to run, I find him desperately trying to tug this one photo of him and the wolf off the wall. He couldn't do it of course - he had to leave it behind. That seemed to upset him. Nothing else about abandoning his home and his family bothered him… but that one photo.'

She snorted again, 'did he really think all the half naked photos of all the muggle girls in all the world could hide what he was - what we knew he was?'

Severus didn't understand. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean my eldest son - the heir to the most noble and ancient House of Black - had more perversions than just his muggle loving. He was in love with that other boy - if you've ever heard of anything so shameful, disgusting - ridiculous. I could see it plain as day, whether he knew the truth of it or not. Two boys! And one of them not even a human - but a filthy halfbreed!'

...

She came to stop - looking unsure. 'I have never told anybody that,' she said slowly, 'never admitted the deepest shame of my son - even as I openly cursed him for everything else that he was …' Her eyes widened in realisation and her expression turned furious. 'What did you put in my drink?'

...

Severus took that as his cue to leave. He slid the photo back inside the scrapbook and then stuffed both it and the vial back into his bag. He picked the bag up and got to his feet. 'Well - I'll not trouble you anymore, if there's nothing else you can tell me about Sirius' current whereabouts...'

'I have no idea where he would go - where he would take that werewolf - though I shudder to think of what the pair of them will do together, away from the world and with no one watching…' She brought her hand up to her mouth, as if to try and stop herself from speaking - from blurting out more truths.

Severus shuffled backwards towards the door, 'well, thank you for your time - I'm sure I'll find Sirius in the end.'

'When you do, you can ask him from me when he stopped being a dirty muggle lover. We supported the Dark Lord in his early days, in this house. We thought his aims were noble, sure enough but we wizards shouldn't be living in secret while the muggles act like they own the place. But he went too far. We wanted order to be restored, we wanted magical supremacy - but he was killing people. What's the point of being at the top if you've killed everyone underneath? The longer it went on, the more we saw the Dark Lord did not care half as much about purity of blood as he did about power for himself, he was more interested in hurting people than he was in bringing us out of hiding. Regulus saw it - that's why he left, he saw the Dark Lord for what he was … And yet, and yet they say my filthy, muggle loving eldest son - with his inverted proclivities towards that creature - he joined up. Well, that was not the son I knew, but both versions of him were disgusting disappointments to me and I hope to never hear his name again.'

Again she clapped her hand to her mouth, realising she had said too much.

'I fear you will hear it all too often once he is caught and arrested.'

Wallburga took her wand out then and actually pointed it at Severus - threatening him. 'If you ever mention what I have said here today, to anyone - what you tricked out of me... If you ever tell anyone about my son - what he is - him and the halfbreed - then I will use all the power and might of the House of Black to make sure you regret it.'

Severus nodded his head. 'I'll not tell anyone - it doesn't benefit me in any way to expose your son as a … well, it isn't why I'm after him.'

He hurried out of the room - and then out of the house, apparating once more back to the Leaky Cauldron.


Sitting at a table in the bar, a glass of mulled pumpkin juice at his elbow, he considered what Walburga had said to him. So - she truly had known nothing of Sirius becoming a Death Eater - and it was not a move that would have been welcomed by the family, once they understood more of what the Dark Lord was about.

This had not been something he had done to ingratiate himself back in with his parents. He had kept it a secret from them, he had kept it a secret from Dumbledore - from James.

As far as he knew, it had been a secret from everyone but the Dark Lord himself. Certainly, during his own time as a Death Eater, Severus had never heard so much as a whisper that the heir to the House of Black had joined their ranks …

Sirius' betrayal had been one of the best kept secrets in the whole of the wizarding world, it seemed.

The werewolf's too…

...

That was all Severus had really learned today - his mouth twisted sourly as he contemplated it. So that was the meaning of the photo by the bedside - nothing more. He grimaced again - wondering how two men could possibly …? He wondered if James had known, if - if Lily had known ... or if this … proclivity was yet another totally buried secret kept hidden by the two of them.