Chapter Seventeen

As Strong as the Weakest Link

"DUCK!" growled Moody suddenly, and Remus wasted no more time in contemplation, throwing himself onto the ground as a flash of light missed him by inches.

Remus had not been paying attention to his surroundings, as lost in thought as he had been, and that had nearly been fatal. By the time he had got to his feet again, Moody and Bill had engaged the curse-flinger in a duel and promptly made short work of him by dint of simple outnumber. Remus looked down at their ambusher as Moody bound him by magic, tugging the wand out of his stunned and petrified hand. It was Yaxley, who seemed to be anywhere and everywhere within the Ministry at any given time, dripping poison into the ears of the politicians and spreading misinformation as if it was going out of fashion, sowing the seeds of fear, doubt and discontent. Bill stood alert in the hallway as Remus helped Moody finish the binding in knots that he would never be able to wriggle out of without the aid of magic, watching out to make sure that Yaxley had been alone when he had attacked them. His once-handsome face, now so irretrievably marred, was a picture of concentration, but in what little light he could garner, Remus could tell that the younger wizard had the unhealthy pallor of worry about him. He had argued with his mother and with Minerva long and hard about his coming with them – both witches were determined that no more Weasleys would be endangered until Arthur was safe amongst them once more. Bill had won in the end with a grim but undeniably accurate point. They had no real idea what sort of a state Arthur might be in once they found him, and Bill's skills as a cursebreaker might be required as a matter of urgency. As much as he hoped Bill's expertise would not be required, Remus could not help but be glad that Minerva and Molly had relented at this, despite the emotional involvement that might hinder his judgement in a heated moment.

"Come on," said Moody after a few moments of fraught silence had passed. "Let's get on. The sooner we find Arthur and get out of here, the better."

"Where do we start looking?" asked Bill.

"Harry said that Arthur was being kept in a cellar, the entrance to which was in the drawing room, which should be…" Remus looked around the forbidding entrance way, trying to orientate himself according to the description of Harry's dream that he had heard. "That one."

He pointed to a door and it opened seemingly of its own accord, causing all three men to jump slightly. A voice, vaguely familiar although disembodied, reassured them that there was in fact someone there.

"Yaxley?" It was Draco Malfoy, sounding puzzled and worried in equal measure. "Yaxley, is everything alright?"

The youngest of the Death Eaters extricated himself fully from the room and stepped into the hallway, unaware of the disturbance until he saw the three wands pointed at his chest. The panic that shot across his face was clear to see, and he floundered for a moment before drawing his own wand in retaliation.

"Boy, you're outnumbered and we've taken care of Yaxley," growled Moody, taking a step or two closer, his own wand unwavering. "Besides, we already know that you aren't the killing sort."

Draco looked petrified, inching his way back into the drawing room. Remus wondered what he would do; whether he would try to call for help from the other Death Eaters; whether there were any other Death Eaters around or whether he had been left virtually alone to protect his castle.

The boy opened his mouth, but he did not call for back-up in that sense.

"Mother," he said warily, evidently at a complete loss for what to do, backing up and looking around the room for the obviously absent Narcissa.

Moody rolled his magical eye and cast the disarming spell before Draco had had time to even think about providing himself with any sort of defence. Now wandless, he appeared to give up the fight before it had even started, and it only took a few moments for him to meet the same fate as Yaxley, gagged and bound by magic.

"I've dealt with a lot of Death Eaters in my time," said Moody as they made their way onwards through the drawing room towards the door which, according to Harry's dream, would lead them to the cellar and with it to Arthur, "but he has got to be the most inept."

Remus thought about the Draco Malfoy that he had known in his one year teaching at Hogwarts. He remembered a cocky, unpleasant thirteen-year-old, pride and arrogance and genuine malice all mixed in and mingled with each other until they were virtually indistinguishable. He had not been stupid, by any manner or means, his marks had always been fairly good. What had happened to turn him into the nervous, jumpy young man that he was now? Remus continued to think back, and he realised he knew exactly what had happened. In the third-years' first lesson he had taught them about boggarts. With the Gryffindors, he had prevented Harry from facing the boggart due to a primal fear of Voldemort appearing in the room with them, and that had always been his most prominent memory of his first week of teaching, but it was not the only third-year class that he had taken to face the fear-mongering creature. The Slytherins had also faced it, a morbidly fascinating exercise in seeing what the fiercely defensive bunch was really afraid of. Unlike the dread creatures (and Severus) of the Gryffindors, the fears of the serpent house had been subtler, more psychological. For one girl, the boggart had seemed to disappear completely, leaving Remus to think that it had somehow escaped the staffroom, until the sound of fingernails scraping at a wooden coffin lid filled the room, making everyone jump suddenly. It was only the sound that she had feared, and so the boggart had duly remained in the shadows and just made noises.

Remus remembered Draco's turn and remembered the genuine unease that had filled his face. At the time, Remus remembered with embarrassment, he had felt a little surge of triumph at seeing him so unnerved, bringing him down a peg or two, but once he had seen Draco's fear, this had vanished. The boggart had become Lucius Malfoy, gaunt and corpse-like, chained to within an inch of his life. Imprisoned in Azkaban. Then the metal had become daisy chains and Draco had stepped aside to let his next classmate face their fears.

The adult Draco was so different from his young teenage self because his worst nightmare had come true.

"Here," said Moody, tapping the cellar door with his wand and taking a step back as it swung open. Remus peered into the darkness beyond, letting his eyes get accustomed to the gloom that seemed to be even more oppressive than the darkness in the rest of the house that they had already traversed had been. He could see nothing, hear nothing, nothing that would tell him if Arthur was alive, or if he was even there. There was still the terrible possibility, one that none of the rescue party had voiced, that it was all an elaborate hoax, a trap for the Order, in which they would become prisoners themselves whilst trying to save one of their colleagues. Remus looked at the door cautiously, wondering whether it would snap shut and lock of its own accord once they were inside. Moody, ever the Auror, seemed to be thinking along similar lines and muttered a spell to stick the door to the wall before venturing into the darkness and lighting his wand to show them the way. At any rate, at least they would now have warning if the door was about to betray them, the slow and wholly unique noise of glued surfaces being prised apart, and that would hopefully give them enough time to run hell for leather for the door before it closed.

"Arthur?" hissed Moody, as the light from their wands roamed all over the walls, revealing nothing. "Weasley, where are you?"

"Dad?" Bill's voice sounded worried for the first time since they had entered the building, as if the possibility that his father was not there and their mission was fruitless had just caught up with him. Remus could not even begin to wonder how the younger man was feeling at that point in time, so he concentrated his efforts on searching the vast subterranean space in which they were ensconced.

"Arthur?"

"Dad?"

"Bill?"

The voice was weak and rasping, the voice of a man who had withstood much and could not withstand much more, but it was a voice that was undeniably alive, undeniably hopeful and undeniably Arthur's. The light from Bill's wand bounced up and down in sporadic patterns as he ran towards the sound and Remus and Moody followed as fast as they could, the latter muttering something about being caught out by traps.

But then, they had found him, crumpled and tortured but alive and compos mentis and locked in an embrace with his eldest son.

"Come on Dad, we've got to get you out of here," Bill said when they broke apart, the relief in his voice clear to hear.

"We can't apparate out. Can you walk?" asked Moody.

Arthur shook his head.

"I don'… I'm not sure…" He paused and looked up at his rescuers blearily. "I'm not the only one," he said. "Ollivander's here too."

Ollivander, missing for a year. Had he been in this cellar all that time? Remus shuddered to think of it.

"He's in a bad way," Arthur continued. "Worse than me."

"Like that's possible," muttered Bill, but Remus was already moving onward, searching out the wandmaker in the depths of the gloom.

"Ollivander?" he called softly. "Mr Ollivander?" It seemed strange, calling him like this, but the stalwart of Diagon Alley had always been simply Ollivander. His first name had never come into the proceedings of his work. Presently the light from Remus's wand reflected off another heap propped up against the wall. It was Ollivander, unconscious and deathly pale, succumbing to illness as well as curses. It was hardly surprising, thought Remus, given the cold and damp of his surroundings and his old age.

"Ennervate… Ennervate…"

It took several attempts before the wandmaker's unnaturally pale eyes finally flickered open and he stared at Remus.

"Remus John Lupin," he croaked, his voice barely audible around the cough that was trying to escape his throat. "Oak, thirteen-and-a-half inches, phoenix feather core. Durable."

Remus nodded, a little taken aback that this should be the first thing that Ollivander had said upon seeing his saviour, but at least it had confirmed his identity.

"Don't tell me they got you too," Ollivander continued. "First Arthur… There'll be no Order left at this rate…"

"No, we're here to get you and Arthur out," Remus interrupted said, casting an eye over the wandmaker's near skeletal frame and knowing that he would not be able to support his own meagre weight. He cast a lightening spell on the man and took one thin arm around his shoulders, pulling him up and making his way back towards the steps, following after Moody and Bill who were supporting Arthur between them.

Halfway along the corridor that would lead them back to the drawing room, Remus stopped dead in his tracks. He had heard something, something a long way away but something nonetheless. Over the years, thanks to the animal within, Remus had found that his senses were heightened at night, particularly that of hearing. The thing that he had heard that had made him stop so suddenly was a scream, a scream in a tone that was still familiar. It was a slightly squeaky tone, like the squealing of a frightened rat.

"Something's happened," he said to the others, who had paused when he had stopped, looking back at him with concern. "I just heard Wormtail scream, I'm sure of it."

"Then you can bet that the others won't be far behind," growled Moody, readjusting his grip on Arthur and stomping onwards through the corridor. Remus nodded his agreement, but he could not get the scream out of his mind. What had happened? Why would Wormtail scream in such a way, unless the London operation had been aborted early and the others had come to the Manor in the wake of the Death Eaters realising that they had been duped. But if that was the case then surely the Death Eaters would already have arrived and…

Moody echoed his thoughts.

"Come on; let's get out of here before we're overrun."

The suggestion would have been an excellent one had they not been met with a hail of curses once they emerged into the drawing room. For a moment, Remus thought that the entire corps had indeed arrived at the house once more and congregated in the drawing room, but after Moody had cast a shield to protect them, they saw their attacker was in fact alone. It was Narcissa, her eyes narrowed and fingers at the grab-ready, the grip on her wand so tight she looked to be in danger of breaking it in two. Whilst Moody might have remarked that Draco was not the killing kind, he certainly could not say the same about his mother. Narcissa looked nothing short of murderous, and Remus was reminded of the old sayings concerning the she-bear when her cubs were threatened, or the swan pen protecting her cygnets. Remus, Moody and Bill had invaded Narcissa's nest, attacked her baby and now, with feathers ruffled, she was more than ready to take revenge, ignoring the obvious disadvantage of outnumber.

"No time to be chivalrous lads," growled Moody.

However ferocious Narcissa was prepared to be, odds of three against one were never going to work out in her favour. Their combined power forced her to retreat further into the room, leaving their exit path clear. Remus looked over her shoulder and through the window, out into the darkened grounds. He could see the gates, and beyond them the shadows of the Death Eaters appearing. Whatever had happened at St Pancras and King's Cross, the ploy was over far before it was meant to be. Remus felt his blood run cold, praying that their friends had been able to get to safety and that the reason for their foes' early return was not to deposit more hostages in the cellar.

"Moody," he warned.

"I've seen them," the older Auror replied, and Remus reflected that he should have known, really. Moody could see everything, including when a hasty retreat would be profitable. Bill sent Narcissa flying head over heels with a final curse and the contingent of Order members passed out into the hallway and out of the front door. As they left, Remus felt a sudden jerk from his inside pocket and the wands that he had taken from Yaxley and Draco flew out of it, disappearing into the heart of the Manor. Remus did not waste time in thinking about the action; he knew it was simply another weapon in the house's arsenal, a simple magnetic effect that drew all magical objects stolen from the house back towards it. He focussed instead on their goal, the gates and freedom, praying that they could reach the twisting iron before the Death Eaters did. They were running towards certain doom, going pell mell towards a crowd with greater strength of numbers and absolutely no moral reservations.

The gates shimmered in midair, becoming tangible and traversable. There was only one thing for it. They simply threw themselves into the melee as the first Death Eaters came through the gates in front of them, praying that the element of surprise would give them the split-second they needed to disapparate. Remus felt the sting of a hex hit his cheek, and he turned to defend himself against the mass of masked black that was pressing in around him, but then a hand grabbed his collar everything vanished.

Remus found himself standing outside the boundaries of the Burrow, the hand that gripped his neck belonging to a grim-looking Moody, who insisted on spending several minutes checking to make sure that they had not accidentally brought any Death Eaters with them, but Remus paid little attention in his state of utter relief. They had made it.

Arthur was home.

Note: And now, you lucky, lucky people, the fun doesn't end there! Oh no, as a special treat to make up for my missing a week, you have an extra chapter in this week's update, a chapter that was never really intended to exist! Oh, it's a long story. Just read and enjoy.