Resolutions

By Neurotica

Thirteen

The night before Arthur Weasley's funeral, the Evening Prophet was sent out with a large bold headline reading, Prisoner Drowns Outside Azkaban! The article went on to explain how Draco Malfoy, seventeen-year-old son of Death Eater Lucius Malfoy and his wife Narcissa, had been on his way to Azkaban Prison after attacking the Ministry of Magic and causing the death of a Ministry official. According to Head Auror Sirius Black, the young wizard had somehow broken his magical bonds and struck the Auror in the back of his head before diving out of the wooden boat used to transport witches and wizards to the prison. Black had tried to get Malfoy out of the below freezing waters, but the high waves of the sea overwhelmed the boy, and he was lost. A search was immediately commenced, but no traces of Draco Malfoy had been found—the Ministry did not seem optimistic about finding him.

Remus read the article twice with his eyebrows long past his hairline. He hadn't heard from Sirius since early that morning, but he was sure his best friend would have sent him a message about something like this. He wondered how many facts in the article were accurate—Sirius never would have allowed a prisoner to strike him or to escape. He hadn't been chosen as Head Auror for nothing—he was the best in the department and he hadn't gotten that reputation by letting prisoners escape...

Remus looked up as Emmeline and Naomi made their way down the stairs with Mira. "Have either of you read the paper this evening?" he asked in a conversational tone that made both witches suspicious. Remus exchanged the newspaper for his goddaughter and waited for Naomi and Emmeline to finish the article.

"I would believe Sirius killed him before I'd believe he escaped," Naomi said flatly, handing Emmeline the newspaper. "Sirius is twice that boy's size, and three times as powerful—there's no way in hell Sirius would have let that little pillock get away."

"Didn't you once tell us, Naomi, that Narcissa Malfoy came to you wanting you to keep him safe?" Emmeline asked.

Naomi nodded. "She wanted me to perform an Unbreakable Vow, but I came up with some rubbish about only promising my life to the Dark Lord. She bought it, and took me at my word that I'd keep her boy safe."

Remus' eyes left Mira's tiny face and landed on the Head Auror himself as Sirius was making his way down the stairs slowly, looking at his family warily. The only new injury he seemed to have sustained was a black eye. "Evening, Padfoot," Remus said evenly. "Were your ears burning?"

As always when Remus used a Muggle phrase he'd never heard before, Sirius looked confused. "My ears are fine," he said slowly. "It's my eye that's bothering me..."

Remus stared at him oddly for a moment. "He meant we were just talking about you," Emmeline said. "Have you seen tonight's headline?"

"No," Sirius said. "But I assume it's something to do with Draco Malfoy and myself."

Naomi nodded. "Now we want to know what really happened."

"What was in the papers was what really happened," Sirius said, not meeting their eyes.

"You used to be a good liar, Padfoot, but it seems you've lost the skill over the years," Remus said coolly. "What happened with Draco Malfoy?"

Sirius looked around at the faces of his wife and friends, who looked back with absolutely no amusement in their eyes. He sighed and turned, pointing his wand at the kitchen door, and muttered an Imperturbable charm. He turned back to his family. "He's in hiding," he told them quietly. "Dumbledore wanted to take him somewhere safe, far from his father, and Proudfoot and I helped."

The others stared at him. "Have you lost your mind?" Remus asked in his normal calm tone. "Don't get me wrong; I'm all for helping young witches and wizards get on the right track. But when the witch or wizard in question has caused the death of a man I considered one of my best friends, my sense of concern is less than zero."

Sirius rolled his eyes and started to turn towards the door. He stopped halfway and stared at the wall opposite him as he spoke. "Look, I'm just as upset about losing Arthur as you are. But none of you saw the look on that kid's face when he was talking about Azkaban compared to Voldemort. And unless you've all forgotten, I spent five years in Azkaban, with dementors. For him to prefer that place over anything else... that's pretty pathetic. It's not like I've adopted him—Dumbledore took him to a safe house, and I don't know, and don't care to know, where. With any luck, we'll never see him again."

Remus didn't know what to say in reply to that. Sirius turned and stared at the three of them as though he was challenging them to argue with him. When none of them said a thing, the Auror went to the door, took down the charm, and left the kitchen.

Naomi looked at Remus and Emmeline, opening and closing her mouth a few times, before getting up to follow her husband. Remus looked at his wife, who shrugged unsurely, and looked down into Mira's sleeping face.

"You know, Mira," he said, flattening the girl's hair. "I do love your father, but there are times when I wonder how it is he's lived so long."

Mira responded by yawning.

Arthur's funeral was rather short, only lasting forty-five minutes before the attendees—mostly consisting of the wizard's co-workers and family—gave their condolences to Molly and her children, and left the cemetery. Both Remus and Sirius gave eulogies attesting to Arthur's kind, giving nature, and his overall love for people in general. Sirius spoke a bit more lightly about the assignments he and Arthur had gone out on to investigate cursed Muggle artifacts over the years—specifically a story from about a year before pertaining to a toaster that burned obscenities into the food it cooked.

After the funeral, Molly and her children decided to go back to the Burrow to have some family time alone. Hermione had offered to go back to Number Twelve for the night with Sirius, Remus, Emmeline, Naomi, and Harry, but Molly put a quick stop on that—she told Hermione that she was family, as were the others. But Remus told Molly she needed to be with her family, and should not have to worry about a bunch of other people that night. Despite her arguments, Remus and his family said good night to the Weasleys and Hermione, promising a visit to the Burrow before the kids left for Hogwarts, and led the way out of the cemetery where they portkeyed back to Number Twelve.

Once there, the six of them (Naomi carried Mira) went to the drawing room and collapsed in various positions in various spots. "I hate funerals," Sirius muttered, loosening the collar of his dress robes. "I hate seeing so many people cry and not being able to do anything about it."

Remus nodded in agreement, sat beside Emmeline, and massaged her shoulders. "Of course, I've never been to a funeral that I actually wanted to attend," he said dryly. "But as far as funerals go, that was one of the nicest I've been to in a while. I never knew Arthur had so many friends; I was rather under the impression people outside our group of acquaintances thought him fairly useless."

"Arthur was far from useless," Emmeline said quietly. "My first day at the Ministry, he was the one who showed me around. And he told me anything I needed, come to him. Every time I did, he did everything within his power to help me."

"He took Ron and me out in his flying car before second year," Harry said just as quietly, smiling reminiscently. "He even let us fly circles in the orchard."

"He was definitely one of a kind, Arthur Weasley," Sirius said hoarsely. "I'll miss him terribly."

"We all will," Naomi said, supporting Mira's head while she looked around the room. "It's not going to be the same without him..."

On 31 August, the eve before Harry would leave for his final year at Hogwarts, he and Remus were in the library—the older wizard was going to teach Harry how to communicate by use of his Patronus. It was advanced magic only used by the Order of the Phoenix, but the number of times Harry found himself without a two-way mirror to contact his guardians was almost alarming, and what if the time came that he needed them and he had no way in which to get help? Remus was confident that Harry would be able to cast the charm with no problem.

He had Harry conjure his stag-patronus a few times, mostly for practice, but also because Remus always enjoyed seeing this particular patronus. Harry rolled his eyes every time Remus said to do it again, but indulged the other wizard and had his stag trot all around the room before stopping it in front of Remus.

Remus couldn't help but smile. "'Lo, Prongs." He chuckled, admiring the patronus' antlers. When he looked up and found Harry grinning at him, he cleared his throat, looking away from the stag as it faded into nothing. "Right... Harry, for the charm I'm going to attempt to teach you, you will need a few different abilities. The obvious one is, of course, the Patronus Charm itself, and for even more obvious reasons, it is the most important. The second is the use of non-verbal spells. This is important because if you've found yourself trapped or hunted, and speaking aloud would give yourself away, no one would ever hear you speaking the charm."

"But wouldn't they see a patronus?" Harry asked. "They are rather bright..."

Remus nodded. "That they are. But your patronus will make itself known only to the person or persons it is intended for. For example, as we both quite clearly remember, I'm sure, Emmeline and I were lost in France for a good amount of time. We could have sent one of our patronuses to the Order for any one of the members to retrieve. All we would have had to do was tell our patronus who to go to. As it was, both of us were unable to conjure a toothpick let alone a corporeal patronus, and after we both so conveniently lost our wands, we had no choice but to wait and see if we were found."

"So the moral of the story," Harry began; Remus could hear the teasing in his voice, "is never lose your wand in France when there are Death Eaters after you?"

"Har har," Remus said dryly. "As I was saying... This charm is used only by members of the Order of the Phoenix, but Professor Dumbledore suggested we teach it to you, should you get into a tight spot and need it."

"Why don't others not in the Order use it?"

"Others don't know about it," Remus said simply. "Dumbledore himself invented it, and taught it only to those of us he trusted enough to be in the Order."

Harry furrowed his brow. "Wormtail knows it, then..."

Remus nodded slowly. "He did, but he always had a bit of a problem conjuring a regular patronus, let alone one to send messages across England—he could never get the pronunciation correct, even though James, Sirius, and I showed him hundreds of times." Remus had a sudden thought that Peter had only acted like he couldn't understand the patronus-communication spell—He lied about everything else, Remus thought bitterly. "Regardless, a patronus can only be conjured by very happy thoughts; as I highly doubt there's a Death Eater in existence who could think of a happy memory that doesn't pertain to their most recent murder, it's nearly impossible for them to use this."

"So... what? A patronus knows the difference between genuine happiness and happiness over something evil?"

Remus shook his head. "Not the patronus, Harry, but the soul. For purposes of this lesson, I'll use Lord Voldemort as an example. He is by far the most evil being in existence. Dementors probably fear him just as the rest of us do, and so he's no use of a patronus. But if he was to produce one, it would most likely be a black-patronus—or as James called, an anti-Patronus. Those are the opposite of the patronus you conjured just now, and it would roughly cause the same effects as a dementor would. Grindelwald was the first wizard to ever conjure one, and used it to terrorize small villages during his reign in the early 1900s."

"Thought this was a patronus lesson, not History of Magic," Harry groaned.

Remus chuckled. "Don't be cheeky; this all has a point. I swear, you and Sirius are exactly alike—he never appreciated magical theory either. But as you insist, I will get on with it.

"The spell for the communicative patronus is only a little different from the Patronus charm. As you know, the incantation for that is Expecto Patronum. The incantation for this new charm is Expecto Defero Patronus. Roughly, you're telling your patronus to communicate a message."

Harry nodded and muttered the new incantation a few times until he was sure he'd gotten it correct. "Okay, what now?" he asked eagerly.

"Now, you say the incantation in your head, and think about the person you wish to communicate with and what you want that person to know. That's what makes this spell so difficult; you've got to think about so many different things and still concentrate on the spell. Go ahead and try when you're ready..."

Harry thought for a moment and grinned. Remus raised an eyebrow at the expression—that grin, on a different face, had gotten him more detentions than he cared to remember. A minute later, Harry's patronus burst from the boy's wand tip and galloped off through the library wall.

"What did you do?" Remus asked cautiously.

Harry, still grinning, responded, "You'll see..."

Remus looked up at the ceiling. "Merlin, help me," he muttered.

A few minutes later, heavy footsteps that could have only belonged to Sirius were thundering through the hall and the library double doors burst open. The Auror looked around until he found Harry and said, with narrowed eyes, "Irreparable long-haired git, am I?" Both Remus and Harry burst out laughing; Sirius joined in a moment later. Once they calmed down a bit, he said, "Not bad, Harry. The only bit of advice I could give you is to make sure the patronus fades away instead of exploding. Scared the hell out of Naomi, Emmeline, and me; Mira slept right through it..."

"With practice, that will be corrected," Remus said certainly. "I'm impressed, Harry. You've caught on to this pretty quickly. It took most of the Order a lot longer to get it right..."

After a few minutes, Sirius went back to the kitchen and, using his own eagle-patronus, exchanged messages with Harry for a good thirty minutes until Emmeline sent up her wolf-patronus and told Remus and Harry if they weren't in the kitchen within the next five minutes, she was going to let Sirius eat their dinners.

On their way to the kitchen, Harry asked, "Can people who don't know this charm receive messages? Say I had to get a message to Ron and an owl wasn't fast enough, could he understand the Patronus?"

Remus thought. "I suppose he could," he said slowly. "Personally, I've never had to send a patronus to anyone not in the Order, so I couldn't tell you for fact. You might ask Professor Dumbledore, though; I'm sure he'd know."

Harry nodded. "I don't think I've ever seen your patronus, Remus..."

Remus smiled mysteriously. "No, you haven't, have you?"

Leaving Harry bemused, Remus quickened his pace to get down to dinner.

The next morning, Sirius and Remus were finally able to take Harry to King's Cross Station after an hour of Naomi and Emmeline wishing him luck in his last year and Harry saying goodbye to Mira. The three wizards went to the station by way of Ministry car as they did every year (it picked them up at the corner of Grimmauld Place), and met the Weasleys and Hermione just outside. Molly looked to be in slightly better spirits than she had been since Arthur's funeral, and Sirius mused it was because she'd been filling her time with getting her children prepared for another year at Hogwarts.

Trolleys were located and loaded, and Remus led the way to Platform 9 ¾ where Tonks was standing guard with Auror Savage that morning. "Wotcher," she greeted as they moved through the queue behind other families. After a short amount of chitchat, Tonks searched all the trunks and bodies before they were allowed to pass through the barrier to the Hogwarts Express.

In preparation for the year, Ministry charm experts had been sent to King's Cross to perform Muggle repellent charms. None of the Muggles saw the witches, wizards, owls, or cats, and if they came too near the magical barrier (fifteen feet being the limit), they turned around and went another direction entirely. Sirius amused himself during the wait in the queue by watching one Muggle businessman, who was deeply immersed in his morning paper, hit the invisible line that separated him from most of the magical community, turn around, and repeat the process no less than ten times.

By the time they'd all made it through the barrier, it was still only ten-thirty, and they had another half hour before the train left the station. As he passed through, Sirius could hear the complaints of other parents who hadn't been allowed to see their children off.

Ah, I love being Head Auror, he thought.

It was mostly for Molly that an exception in the only-students-may-pass-through-the-barrier rule. Minister Bones, who'd done everything she could to help the family since Arthur's death, had made the allowance—she'd sent Sirius and Remus as "security." (They were to do a quick inspection of the train to be sure there were no stowaways.)

The Minister's tone had been light and joking when she'd told Sirius about his new "task," but the Head Auror could see she was worried over something. Sirius had also assigned two Aurors to stay on the train until it reached Hogsmeade after the Minister's insistences. Had she gotten information that she was keeping from the Auror department?

Regardless of this cynical thought, Sirius and Remus loaded the trunks of their four Hogwarts students, and temporarily left them with Molly while they walked about the train. All the other students who'd already arrived were impatiently waiting to board, and Sirius didn't miss any of the looks from a certain group of students Remus later confirmed to be Slytherins.

"I hope Harry doesn't catch any heat for what happened with Malfoy," Sirius told Remus as they looked through the windows of the train's compartments.

"Well," Remus said, opening a bathroom door and peaking in quickly before shutting it again, "if he does, it's because he's the only student at Hogwarts who's so closely associated with you. Anything they say to him, he'll be able to take care of himself."

Sirius nodded, unconvinced, looking inside the luggage compartment.

As they finished their search and turned to leave the train, Remus gave Sirius a sideways glance that the other missed completely. "You're really taking Molly to Azkaban to see Percy today?" he asked quietly.

Sirius sighed, looking at Remus warily. "Who told you?"

"Molly," Remus replied. "I don't remember how the subject came about, but the general idea I got from it was that you've agreed to take her out there today."

"And let me guess," Sirius began wryly. "You think it's a horrible idea, and I'm a moron for agreeing to it?"

"Quite the opposite actually," Remus said lightly. "Molly's looking forward to it in an odd sort of way. She hasn't seen Percy since the day he was taken to Azkaban."

Sirius nodded. "Let me ask you something, Moony. Would you want to see your son if he was in Azkaban convicted of being a Death Eater?"

"I don't know," Remus said. "If I raised my sons the same way Molly and Arthur have raised their children, and one of them turned out like Percy... I'd be heartbroken, but he would still be my son..."

"I understand that, but after what Percy said about his parents, the complete disgust in his voice... That's about the point I'd start trying to convince people that I have no son."

Remus snorted humorlessly. "Either way, I think it's very good of you to indulge Molly with this. It's very admirable, Padfoot."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "It's not admirable, Moony, it's fear. You try saying no to Molly Weasley."

Remus laughed. "No thanks. I rather value my life." He grinned.

"C'mon, we better get these kids on board before they start to riot."

Molly had finished fawning over Harry for the time being, so his guardians pulled him aside to give the Weasleys and Hermione some alone time. They went through the usual pre-term ritual—Remus telling Harry to be good, Sirius telling Harry not to listen to Remus, both wizards wishing Harry lots of luck for that year, and making him promise to write the moment he found out about the Defense teacher that year (Snape still hadn't been heard from). Hugs were exchanged, eyes were hastily wiped, and the eye's owners claimed dust or allergies or some other such nonsense. By now, it was ten till eleven and the kids had to board. Remus and Sirius stood on either side of Molly and waved at the four Gryffindors until the train turned a corner and disappeared.

Azkaban never changed. Over the years, no matter how many times Sirius had gone to the island for one reason or another, it was always the same—it always froze his insides, bringing back memories of the five years he'd been stuck there. The waves surrounding the island still threatened to rise up over the little wooden Muggle boat, giving off the impression that the raging sea was going to swallow it. The rain, thunder, and lightning never let up; it was forever dark. And the blasted rock wall up onto the island was so slippery with algae and water that it took a good long five minutes to climb up it.

But somehow, Sirius managed to safely pull both himself and Molly up onto the muddy, rocky shore of Azkaban Island. Sirius conjured a large umbrella to shelter them from the rain as much as he could (no one could stay completely dry out there), as they trudged their way to the large stone doors where Auror Johnson waited for them. The other Auror nodded to his boss and Molly, already knowing why they'd come, and led the way inside.

Molly was searched just as every other visitor to the prison was and was instructed to wait in one of the interrogation rooms. She'd wanted to go along with them to fetch her son, but Sirius put his foot firmly down on that train of thought.

Inside the maximum-security ward, Sirius located Percy in a cell that was all too familiar to him—it was the cell he'd spent his five years in. Ignoring this, he stepped up to the bars, spotting Percy staring broodingly at the walls, taking no notice of the Aurors outside his cell, just as the most of the other prisoners did. Somewhere behind him, the Head Auror could hear the angry hissed curses of Lucius Malfoy, and longed to turn around and curse the bastard—he resisted with great difficulty.

"Up you get, Percy," Sirius said. "You've got a visitor."

Percy started a bit and turned his head. "Who?" he asked hoarsely.

"You'll see when you get there." Sirius tapped his wand on the bar three times and used the very complicated non-verbal unlocking spell, and the door on Percy's cell slid open. With an Auror on either side of him, Percy made his way out of the maximum-security ward and down the freezing cold stone corridors. None of the wizards said a word during the walk—Sirius' mind was flying through all the scenarios that could possibly take place during Percy and his mother. None of which ended too well.

Johnson opened the door to the interrogation room and moved aside for Percy to enter. The younger wizard stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted his mother, causing Sirius to collide with the back of him. Resisting yet another urge, this time to slap Percy in the back of his head, Sirius pushed the other into the room and placed him in a chair across the table from Molly. The Head Auror could see tears welling up in the witch's eyes as Johnson activated the chains around Percy's arms and legs—Sirius tried not to look at her.

The two Weasleys stared at one another silently for long minutes as the Aurors retreated against the wall to give them the sense of semi-privacy until Percy very hoarsely said, "I'm sorry about Father."

Molly took a deep, rattling breath, and closed her eyes tightly. "Thank you," she said a few moments later.

Sirius looked over at Johnson and silently communicated for his Auror to follow him out into the corridor. "What are you doing?" Johnson hissed.

Sirius didn't reply; instead, he tapped his wand against a bare stretch of stone wall. A small door appeared and the two Aurors entered an observation room where they could look in on Molly and Percy, but the redheads wouldn't be able to see them.

Sirius stopped Johnson from allowing sound in from the interrogation room—there were still some things that should be private moments between only a mother and her son.

Some sixty minutes later, after a very lengthy conversation between the two Weasleys, Molly stood and walked over to her son, attempting to flatten his now long red hair—it would have looked something like Bill's if it hadn't been dirty and tangled. The witch wiped a smudge of dirt off Percy's cheek with a handkerchief and bent to kiss the reddened area.

The Aurors took this as their cue to go back in and make their presence known. Johnson escorted Percy back to his cell, the younger wizard looking over his shoulder every few steps to where Sirius stood with Molly. She wasn't crying as he'd expected her to be doing, but standing tall, watching her third son disappear around a corner.

Sirius waited a few moments before clearing his throat and saying, "Time to go, Molly."

The witch nodded silently, allowing the wizard to awkwardly put an arm around her shoulders and steer her out of Azkaban Prison.