5
The Sixth of November
"It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up."
-J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The halls of Hogwarts were sound and still that night. Every footfall, if there were any, and every sweep of a wizard's heavy robes could easily echo against the tall stonewalls on any given day, traveling through the corridors like invisible pixies, mischievous only by their sound.
The only sound that night, however, was the soft snap from the torches lining those walls.
Even the wizard walking alone in the maze inside of Hogwarts left less noise in his wake. If any student who happened to be skipping dinner at that moment caught a glimpse of the ancient wizard through the cracks in the classroom's door or, peeking around the corner, being weary of teachers patrolling the halls for any rule breaking children, saw their Headmaster slowly making his way around his school, they might be spooked by the eerie silence that followed him. Like a ghost, smiling, despite his lonely walking, Albus Dumbledore made his way to his office.
Hogwarts wasn't the only thing quite and content that night. The entirety of the Wizarding World had found itself in its cozy corner. Even on the verge of a very harsh winter, Albus found himself comfortably warm, like a fresh brew of Rosemerta's finest Butterbeer was stirring in his chest. And looking at the smiles on his student's faces and on the faces of everyone else in Hogsmead and really, the entire world, he knew he wasn't the only one who felt this way.
The war had come to end nine years ago, the ninth anniversary of the Dark Lord's downfall having been six nights ago
In retrospect, Albus might have thought that that night, being as quiet as it was, might have been too quite.
And the thought might have crossed his mind then as the warm and light feeling in his chest stopped and made him shiver.
"Albus?"
The headmaster turned on his heal softly, pushing the sudden feeling of dread to the back of his mind. He smiled upon seeing Professor Trelawny slowly walking toward him. Her large glasses reflecting as many as five different torches in their lenses.
"Ah, Sybil," He said cheerfully. "Lovely night isn't it?"
She stopped right in front of him and Albus nearly chuckled as a strong whiff of the incense and oils she uses in her classrooms filled the air around him. When Sybil didn't answer he looked at her over his half-moon spectacles.
"Sybil?"
"Hmm?" She finally replied looking startled. "Oh, yes, yes very fine night, yes. Very… quiet."
Inwardly, Albus felt his heart jump into his throat at the words though he betrayed no sign of worry as he studied the young Professor before him.
"Is everything alright, Professor?" He asked.
"Fine." She nodded though she began wringing her hands and glancing over his shoulders. "Everything's fine." Trelawny looked up and met his eyes. As she quickly looked away she nearly stuttered. "There was a knock on my door today, during one of my lectures," she explained, her whispy voice trembling slightly. "When I went to look, there was no one there. Not even a hint that someone had even knocked at all."
Albus almost had to smile in relief but instead offered the ill at ease professor an encouraging look, one that made the skin outside his eyes crinkle good heartedly. "A student, it seems, has been trying to play a practical joke on you my dear Sybil." He said and he could see the young woman chewing the inside of her cheek. "Harmless, but indeed, bothersome."
"No, no…" She whispered, suddenly frantic. "It is an omen, Albus! An omen! One that predicts danger is currently waiting, readily on our doorsteps, hidden in the shadows until we turn our backs and it takes its chance to leap!" She inhaled sharply, her eyes slightly wild in fear and Albus gave her a hard look. He knew his Divination Professor was well known for her out worldly and ill-fated predictions, in fact, she was notorious for "foreseeing" a death of a student or family member of said student daily but it did not change the fact that she did, indeed, hold the abilities to foretell the future. Albus could not forget that it was she that had spoken the prophecy of the Dark Lord's downfall even if she did not know of it and Albus could not allow himself to not hear her words out entirely.
But at the same time, he could not let himself encourage her fear, less she start to believe her desk was made from the tree that guarded her late grandmother's grave and that her spirit had begun to possess her every night at midnight. Which she, regrettably, already talked to him about.
"Professor Trelawny," He started with a heavy sigh. "I believe, that perhaps, an early night is in store for you." He smiled warmly as the Seer looked up at him, her magnified eyes still incased with fear. "Come, I will make sure no troublesome students are hiding behind your door or any...," He quickly began to add when Sybil tried interrupting him. He waited until she deflated some to continue. "Or any sort of unseen danger seems to be lurking in the corners of your chambers."
Again, he smiled. "You are safe."
Sybil fidgeted slightly, before nodding her head. "O-of course," She whimpered and she tried mustering a small smile. "Of course," She still wrung her hands in front of her, causing her bangle bracelets to chime dully and Albus knew his soft words had done nothing to calm her fears, only, perhaps, quiet her tongue.
Something he had to mentally kick himself in the beard for.
Never quiet a Seer. He thought, Silence them, and you might as well blind them.
He looked around at a closed classroom door when he saw her eyes dart around to it. Watching it for a while and finding nothing wrong he looked back to his Professor to find her staring at it, her eyes just as unfocused and terrified as before.
She flinched and muttered something under her breath.
Albus strained his ear but couldn't hear her. "Sybil?"
"…Knocking."
Albus looked at her curiously again, suddenly aware of the cold suspense weighing in his heart he had tried so hard to ignore before.
"Knocking, " She said again, too scared to speak too loudly. "The door, Albus, it's knocking."
It was raining.
Raining, because whether Regulus could help it our not, he always thought it raining at the Fortress of Azkaban. Though the weather, remarkably, was cloudless and still that night, in his world, a storm rang high like the end of days on that fortress.
Pouring and drenching the wretched island with it's chilling hate and the thunder and lightning were ripped the air, hammering the world into a cage of utter darkness. The storm was waging war on that island and the island was loosing its battle.
The cobblestones leading up to the fortress were cracked and worn down by the rain until they were slick and sharp, a painful hazard to anyone willing to run along its surface. And the unlucky sea urchins, probably half dead, were stuck around the edges of the stone shores where they were continuously beaten with the heavy waves that kept crashing into them and the wizards guarding the entrance were gray and sickly looking from staying on such a soggy island for far too long.
Though, however ill the guards happened to look on any given day hardly compared to the prisoners locked away inside the cold fortress.
Ratty and dirty they were, with tortured eyes and lifeless faces. Their starved bodies, pressed against the bars that held them, reaching out for something, anything to hold onto other than rough stonewalls around them. Regulus could only imagine the corridors in which they were all caged up. Dank, dark… echoing with the hallowed cries of all the evildoers locked on either side and if that wasn't bad enough, listening to their pleas and confessions, the silence was surely deafening.
And amongst it all, one man sat in the corner of his cell, his eyes hallow, his clothes torn and sagging off his small frame, mostly silent, always undisturbed, listening deafly to the crashing from the storm outside…
The clock on the mantle piece donged suddenly as it struck the hour half gone, startling Regulus out of his gloomy, storm riddled thoughts and back to reality and back to the quiet room he waited in. The same room, in fact, he usually found himself sitting and dining in with the Malfoy's every Thursday. Only this time it was Tuesday and he was completely and utterly alone.
Perfect conditions, it seemed, for a person such as himself to dwell on such dismal things like brothers locked away in prison. And a horrible prison at that.
But he couldn't afford to think of such things at the moment.
Besides, he didn't think his heart could bear it.
He was slouched in his chair, enjoying a perfectly bitter bottle of Malfoy's finest wine, waiting for the inevitable to happen, the same inevitable thing he actually wanted to avoid happening. And actually thought wouldn't happen all together after everything.
Like the nearly forgotten Azkaban inspection, for example (on the Minister's part, heaven forbid Malfoy ever forgetting…). Or the muggle police almost catching Malfoy Apparating from Privet Drive, which would have unintentionally breached the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, inadvertently getting Malfoy locked in Azkaban (agreed that that was not the way Malfoy planned on getting into said prison), and among a few other things the number one reason though as to why Malfoy should have abandoned his plan altogether…
The four wands.
That was all Lucius managed to find.
Four wands to split amongst eleven escaped Death Eaters.
Against everything that went wrong on his quest to break eleven dangerous Death Eater's out of Azkaban, Malfoy was planning to go through with it all.
Even after Regulus caught Lucius, multiple times, pacing relentlessly, whispering to himself when he thought no one was around, trying to convince only himself that once the Dark Lord was back, everything was going to get easier. Regulus had even noticed the worry lines forming on the wizard's brow days ago and he could tell from the loose threads in Malfoy's sleeves that Lucius had been nervously pulling the hems while he paced and he could see the loose folds under Malfoy's collar from when he hastily dressed himself as his mind wandered else where.
It was the little details that Regulus had picked up on that gave him the tell tale signs that the wizard was suffering. It was obvious, to Regulus at least, that Lucius was under a lot of anxiety the past few days, though he did manage to hide it very well until now. His wife and son didn't even notice.
They did, of course, notice something a little off when Lucius had requested that the two of them leave for the rest of the week, to Venice, he had said, or Rome. Somewhere far away where the Dark Lord couldn't touch them.
Regulus tapped a finger over Narcissa's embroidered tablecloth as he watched the second hand on the clock tick the minutes away. Sometimes it seemed to move excruciating slow, other times it seemed to race around the face of the clock to the point were Regulus actually felt dizzy.
It chimed again, this time playing a fanciful song that reminded him of stuffy libraries and hollow walls. Eight O'clock he read and Regulus couldn't help but sigh.
Only two more hours left to go.
Things on Privet Drive had become strange the days that followed Halloween. Maybe not to the average passerby, perhaps, but to the residents of Number Four, things had become very curious. Even the odd and peculiar Harry Potter had to agree that the ordinary street had become a little more exciting that first week of November and if Harry Potter thought it was strange, then things had definitely gone mad.
And watching his Uncle turn from a walrus on two legs to a raging, red-faced walrus on two legs, Harry deduced that perhaps, 'mad or 'strange' weren't the right words for the situation. Scary, might fit the circumstances much better, he thought as he silently watched his Aunt and Uncle argue in the kitchen over a thin, long box on the dinner table.
Every night, for the past six nights, the same cloaked man from Halloween appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to watch the Dursley's house. He never walked up to their porch or seemed to have any sort of inclination that he meant to at some point, and Harry caught himself wondering a few times if the man could even step onto their lawn without some outside force stopping him.
A few times, Uncle Vernon had gotten up the nerve to phone the police, but when the cops got there, the man was nowhere to be seen. Vanished, apparently, into thin air. And after the third time the police had been called, Uncle Vernon had been charged a hefty fine for prank calling.
When the neighbors, much to Aunt Petunia's dismay, called the next morning to ask why there where sirens and cop cars at her house no one seemed to recall seeing a dark dressed man on Halloween or any of the nights that followed. After awhile, out of embarrassment, she began telling them that it was because of Harry the police had been called, that "Harry had been throwing a nasty tantrum that night because of a bad dream, scaring poor Dudley into locking himself in his room. " and she'd go on about Harry becoming violent and angry. "We had to call the police, we had no other option." She'd tell them. "We didn't know what to do."
It wasn't until that morning that Harry's Uncle had vanished in the early hours of the day without saying a single word on where he was going only to reappear later the evening around eight, that Harry first caught a glimpse of the box his Aunt and Uncle now argued over as Vernon pulled it from the trunk of his car. Along with it came pockets full of maps and bus schedules and pamphlets of old houses and hotels for rent that, when Harry got a chance to actually take a long hard look at them, where probably not inhabitable at all. One, he saw, was a secluded house in the middle of the ocean that, by looking at the picture, seemed like a single gust of wind would blow it right over.
But, as it were, it didn't seem Uncle Vernon's vacation plans were what made Aunt Petunia so upset.
"We're not taking that thing with us, Vernon!" She cried, just as red faced as her husband. "And I don't even want it in the house! Take it back!"
"Petunia-"
"Take it back, Vernon!"
Harry watched, alongside his cousin at the foot of the stairs, as his Uncle huffed angrily. "It's going to help us, Petunia!" He said furiously while Aunt Petunia crossed her arms. "What if we're followed? What if he follows us?"
"What if Potter touches it?" She shot back and Harry flinched involuntarily as he was brought into the conversation.
"He wont be touching it!" Vernon bellowed. "He wont be anywhere near it!"
"You think that matters with him?"
"We don't have much of a choice!" Uncle Vernon yelled matter-of-factly as he harshly grabbed the box from the table and Aunt Petunia flinched, wide eyed, while taking a step back from the table.
"I don't like it, Vernon." She whispered, after a long while, her eyes close to tearing up.
"You think I'm enjoying this, Petunia?" Uncle Vernon asked. "You think I like them watching our house?"
Aunt Petunia looked away, obviously seeing no way of changing her husband's mind and when Uncle Vernon used one of his pudgy fingers to break the packaging tape on the box she stormed into the hallway to see her son and nephew perched on the bottom stair listening to their conversation. She paled.
"What's in the box that Harry can't touch?" Dudley asked, his face at the height of curiosity.
"Nothing, Dudley," She said, obviously upset. She tried to smile. "Now, go upstairs and get ready for bed. We have a big day tomorrow. Daddy has lots of fun things planned for us."
"But I want to know what's in the box!" Dudley cried standing up and nearly knocking Harry off his step in the process. Harry straitened his glasses and gave his cousin a cross look. "Can I touch it?" His cousin whined.
Aunt Petunia's face flushed a much deeper purple than Harry had ever seen and he decided in a split second to try and duck around his Aunt. "No!" She hissed, and Harry froze at the tone of her voice and Dudley's mouth gaped open, not used to seeing his own mother use such a scolding tone with him. "Go to bed, Dudley."
"But-"
Aunt Petunia lurched forward before Dudley could finish his thought and grabbing her son's arm, dragged him kicking and screaming up the stairs.
Looking back around to the kitchen after notably being forgotten by his Aunt, Harry found that his Uncle had disappeared. The thin long box, now empty, was left on the counter in plain sight.
Without even thinking of the consequences, he decided to have a look, thinking the box would betray some sign as to what it was his Aunt and Uncle were arguing about. Turning it over and searching each side he found nothing as to what it was or where it came from. No stamp or label, not even a logo of the store he bought it from. Just a plain old brown box.
"What do you think you're doing?" His Uncle's voice suddenly asked and Harry jumped, startled.
"N-nothing!" He stuttered, stepping away from the counter. "Just… Just looking is all."
Uncle Vernon glared at him and Harry suddenly felt very, very small standing there in the middle of the kitchen.
"Just… looking is all?" His Uncle said sarcastically as he stepped closer to Harry and Harry nodded slowly wishing he could just turn invisible. "Just looking?"
When Harry didn't say anything back, Uncle Vernon furiously grabbed the box off the counter and slammed it into the bin as if by doing so it was suddenly hidden forever. Then turning back to his nephew he pointed his pudgy finger in Harry's face.
"If I ever… catch you snooping around again, doing anything… Anything! You're not supposed to…" Harry literally gulped as his Uncle's eyes began bugging out from their sockets in his obvious rage. "I swear I'll have you kicked out onto the curb, Potter, with nothing so much as a dish cloth to keep you warm at night, understood?"
Harry nodded mutely.
Uncle Vernon took in a deep shaky breath before ordering Harry to "Shoe!" in which Harry very happily obliged.
And locking himself back into his cupboard, with his mind reeling from his Uncle to the box to the rickety old cabin in the middle of the sea, Harry felt that the world had gone beyond strange at that point. It had gone insane.
Slumping down onto his bed Harry eyed Dudley's old alarm clock for the time and seeing it was twelve past nine he realized the streetlights had probably turned on outside. The time in which the strange man usually showed up.
Feeling, once again, daring, Harry chanced a quick peek out his cupboard, cracking the door ever so slightly so he could see out the front window. And just like he thought, the streetlamps were on, their golden bulbs lighting the street with that twilight glow but as Harry positioned himself higher to actually see the street, he noticed the dark outline of the man was no where to be seen.
Harry, thinking that maybe, perhaps, the man was between another set of lamps, opened the door a little more to see further down the street.
Nope, not there either.
Closing the door with a silent click Harry caught himself looking around his room nervously. The man was never late, he thought, so where was he?
Harry's mind wondered back to the box Uncle Vernon brought home and he hoped that whatever was inside it was enough to keep the man at bay because something told him, something deep down, told him the world hadn't gone insane quite yet.
Regulus woke with a start, not having realized that he had dozed off. And after a while of frantically looking around, remembering, exactly, where he was and what he was doing, he recalled Malfoy's mission and instantly groaned against his will.
Ten o'clock. That was when Malfoy said he'd be back with the others. He glanced at the clock and felt the nervous pit in his stomach double in size.
Nine fifty-eight.
Two minutes. Two minutes and Malfoy Manor will be harboring eleven of Wizarding England's most dangerous.
Regulus poured himself some more wine. He realized days ago, that the wine didn't help his nerves, not really, but he hated to admit it didn't help. He wanted it to help… He needed it to.
Nine fifty-nine.
Setting his now empty glass back on the table, Regulus stood, though a bit shakily, to his feet. He had to keep a hand on the back of his chair to keep himself steady, his wobbly legs not wanted to keep himself vertical. Something he wished he could hold the wine accountable for, even if it proved to not to be truth.
Thirty seconds.
The ticking of the clock was now hammering in his ears, reverberating in his head, like a mocking adversary taunting him with its unchallengeable power.
Twenty seconds.
Regulus caught himself straightening the collar of his robes and quickly stopped himself. What would the prisoners care if he was a little disheveled from his nap? Why would he care?
Ten seconds.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes. The ticking was suddenly beginning to sound more like the frantic beatings of his own heart.
Five seconds.
He swallowed, the bitter taste of wine still lingering in his mouth.
Four.
Regulus took a deep breath and held it.
Three.
Tick.
Two.
Heartbeat. Tick.
One.
The clock chimed, the hollow notes echoing around the near empty room and Regulus let out a hefty sigh.
Ten o'clock and no one, besides himself was there.
His eyes wondered to every corner of the room searchingly, half expecting them to be hiding. He listened for anything outside the dining room for any sort of new commotion but no, there was nothing.
No one was here.
He glanced at the clock once more. One minutes past. Lucius was not known to being late, not even by a minute. If anything, he was the most punctual man he knew.
And now, two minutes past Regulus began pleading to himself, hoping that they were never going to show up.
Please, He begged. Please let something have gone wrong…
Albus sat at his office desk letting his mind roam to a hundred different places. His back was perfectly upright, strait as an arrow despite his age. His fingers were laced together under his chin thoughtfully and his eyes were crisp, alert, and staring at his door.
'Knocking' she had said. 'The door was knocking.'
He had let those words wander around in his head a thousand and one times since he left Sybil Trelawney in her chambers with a sleeping draft. A thousand and one times it fluttered in and out of his thoughts like wind in a Hippogriff's feathers. But the prophecy, it was the prophecy she left for him right before he made his exit that went through his mind a grand total of a thousand and two.
Lost in thought, Albus stoked the gray hairs under his nose with a knuckle, letting his gaze roam to his Pensieve in the corner.
Sybil Trelawney was now a Seer of two predictions. Both of which she had made in his presence and both times he never expected them.
The first one, he had been in search of a new Divination teacher, and knowing her mother had been gifted with the third eye, he decided to track Sybil down. They both parted ways that night with something new: Trelawney, with a job, and Albus, with new insight that would change the world.
And this time, he was just getting used to how quiet the world had become.
He sat there unmoving for an eternity of time, only his wandering eyes and his occasional stoke of the beard stirred the air around him.
Dumbledore sat there pondering when his fireplace lit up green, something it hasn't had a need to do for many, many years. He felt his shoulders slump in defeat and his heart fell, a cold feeling of a deadly, oncoming storm weighing it down. He turned his head to meet a familiar face watching him from within the fire, knowing what sort of news it brought.
"Alastor," He greeted the wizard, though his tone sounded less than welcoming.
"Albus," Mad-Eye Moody grunted, his own gruff voice sounding grim and alert. "Thought I should warn you…"
Dumbledore nodded and stood. The twinkle in his eye was gone. "It has begun again."
He didn't need to see the wizard in his fireplace nod to know; he knew the second war was now upon them. He knew before Mad-Eye even fire called him and the words that had been playing in his head like an old children's nursery rhyme wailed in his ear like a siren:
"It will happen tonight… The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these nine years. Tonight before Midnight… the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The dark lord will rise again with his servants aid, great and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight… before midnight… the servant… will set out… to rejoin… his master"
He sighed, feeling suddenly very, very tired. "Tell me what has happened, Alastor."
It was nine after ten now, and still, Lucius and the others were nowhere to be seen.
He had been standing there, frozen to the spot for nine minutes waiting, holding his breath and yet, nothing happened.
It was strange that the ticking from the clock sounded normal, softer, and not so harsh. Thinking back, Regulus wasn't sure if it ever sounded so safe before. Almost friendly.
And the fireplace crackled merrily, it's soft light making the shadows dance against the walls, and the dinner plates decorating the table actually looked inviting.
Something went wrong, he thought with a smile. Something went wrong!
He didn't think he ever felt so happy and he closed his eyes in relief.
The hairs on his arms stood on end and Regulus' eyes shot open.
"No…"
As if they brought the storm with them, the air cracked and cracked again and one by one, the prisoners of Azkaban appeared.
Everything had gone right... he thought miserably as Lucius stood there smiling triumphantly. And yet, everything was wrong…
There was another crack! and blue eyes met blue.
Regulus froze as he met his brother's gaze.
So very wrong…
Well, hello there! Isn't this a… surprise? How long has it been, then? Like a year? A year and… four months? Ahem….
Eleven pages though… that should make up for some of it right?
So anywho! The moment you all been waiting for has finally arrived (as well as a long over due post)! The Death Eaters are out, Sirius and Regulus are standing in the same room, Dumbledore is feeling tired… (not that you were waiting for that part) and things are (hopefully) going to start moving faster!
Huzzah!
And because I was a little excited about posting the chapter I didn't get it proof read so please excuse all the rambling and poor grammar!
Next chapter will be out shortly! I have been waiting a very long time for this part (and so have you guys, I'm guessing) and maybe, because I feel awful about leaving you guys for an entire year… I'll leave an exciting glimpse into the next chapter for you! Yeah? Okay...
….
Chapter 6 Excerpt:
A spell hit the man across the face and Remus watched as the man, in a fit of pain, ripped the mask off.
His stride faltered.
There, holding his face as an ugly red welt began swelling on his cheek was Sirius Black. But as Remus watched him, he found he looked nothing like his old friend.
Stringy black hair fell around Black's face, dangling just below his shoulders, clad in Death Eater robes. His cheekbones stuck out on his hallowed face, and his eyes… his eyes were empty, cold… both pale and dark as he looked up grimly to meet Remus' gaze and they watched each other, frozen, both of them startled to see each other after what seemed forever and a decade ago they saw the other last.
And looking at his old friend, seeing how much he had changed, and almost feeling sorry for the man that looked so broken and starved, he had to remind himself, this was not his friend. This was a murderer.
The memory of Lily and James' funeral flashed before his mind, along Peter's, with his crying mother and the muggles… This isn't my friend, he told himself, this is the reason so many are dead...
….
So there you have it! Please read and review!