Chapter Twenty-Eight

November the Second, Nineteen Hundred Eighty-One

"Where is he?!"

Davie stormed off of the rowboat that had transported her across the choppy seas to the isle of Azkaban Prison, where Advisor to the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was waiting to meet her.

The instant Davie had set foot in Bulgaria, a security alert was raised, forbidding travel in and out of the country - the letter had been a fake, though Alice Longbottom had received one and answered as well. There had been no call for aid from the Bulgarian ministry - the sighting of Romnic Digby seemed to have been a ruse. Davie had been sulking and complaining to Alice in a Bulgarian hostel for more than entire day before hearing the news about Lily and James being murdered in their home in Godric's Hollow, and Harry had been taken elsewhere for safekeeping. The Potters' hiding place had been revealed and as everyone understood, Sirius was the only one who could have betrayed them. Sirius killed Peter Pettigrew - the idea of Sirius killing them, when just nights before, they had been together, and he'd expressed his hatred for all of this, for the pain his friends were being put through, was ludicrous in Davie's mind.

"Let me pass!" Davie yelled, her wand drawn as she stormed past Fudge and into the tall wooden doors of the prison, into a throng of Dementors; Davie's expression was wild and infuriated as she raised her wand. "Expecto --"

"Miss Maddux." Fudge said, reaching out and forcibly lowering Davie's wand arm with his hand, and she immediately turned to face him. "Do not manhandle our guards. I understand that you were very close to the Potters, and to Mister Black. I know this must be difficult for you --"

"Difficult!" Davie scoffed shrilly. "Don't any of you understand? What happened to a trial? Veritaserum would solve everything! This isn't possible --"

"All roads lead to the same destination - Veritaserum is rare, and costly. I am not going to waste Ministry resources to prove what we already know. The Potters are dead. Peter Pettigrew is dead." Fudge said, his voice blunt and cold, sending a sensation akin to being bludgeoned in the stomach with an ice pick through Davie's body. "Someone's responsible for it - who else would you accuse?"

Davie had nothing to say - no answer. And it hit her that there was no Lily to help her find it. Davie's hands shook, and she felt tears well up behind her eyes.

"I want to see him," Davie said shakily. "I don't care what any of you say he did - I want to see him. Ministry privilege," she stated through gritted teeth, her hand curling around her wand unconsciously - Davie consciously had to stop herself from doing something hasty, as Sirius was now unable to do it for her. "I'm an Auror. You're obliged to let me through."

For a moment, Davie and Fudge seemed to stare one another down - a tiny young woman, a newly-pledged Auror, locking eyes with the right-hand man to the Minister of Magic. But something in Davie's expression - the wildness and the desperation, it must have been - could not be turned away. Fudge raised his wand, and the dozen or so magical locks on a nearby door clicked and slid and turned apart, allowing the doors to open just enough for a person to squeeze through. Not glancing back or giving any thanks, Davie walked through into the cell; the doors shut behind her.

"Sirius!" Davie said, seeing him sitting in middle of the floor, staring up at the ceiling - he had only been here two days, and it seemed that the Dementors were already taking their toll on his. He looked haggard as though he hadn't sleep at all since arriving. He seemed not to have eaten. He was blank and sullen, but underneath it all, he was still her Sirius. She knelt down next to him, placing her hands on his shoulders and shaking him slightly.

"Please tell me it wasn't you!" Davie pleaded, though Sirius only stared blankly at her, lips slightly parted as though he were starting to have trouble breathing. "Sirius, please! You didn't betray them, you didn't kill Peter! Lily and James, Sirius!"

The last phrase seemed to set something off in Sirius, as for a moment, a glint of coherence appeared in his eyes; his gaze snapped up to meet Davie's, and suddenly, he had grabbed her tightly by the shoulders, his eyes boring into hers as though even in this state of madness, there was something he wanted desperately for her to understand.

"LILY AND JAMES, SIRIUS!" he repeated, his voice hoarse from disuse, and Davie shook at the mere sound of it. Why had he chosen to repeat those words? Davie hadn't heard witness accounts of the scene of Peter's death, she didn't know the way hearing Peter's words repeated struck a cord with him. "It was him! You knew - you knew not to believe him! PETER --"

"You didn't kill him?" Davie asked, groping desperately for an answer -- what had she known? What was Sirius trying to tell her? "Sirius - Sirius, come on! I need you to tell me - I need you to make sense or I can't help you," she pleaded, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. "I need you to tell me -"

"PETER!" he barked hoarsely, eyes wide, though it seemed to take effort, as his eyes were sunken and swollen from the conditions of the prison. "Wormtail --"

"Sirius, I know --"

"YES!" Sirius said, giving Davie's shoulders another frantic shake. "You know! You told me --"

"Sirius, you're not making any sense!" Davie said, shaking herself free from his grasp and standing in front of him, staring at him in complete incredulity. "I'm going to find out what happened -- if you can't tell me, I'll find it. I'll get you out - but I can't --

Davie's voice cracked as the tears began flowing more quickly. She could no longer look at him like this - she let out a muffled sob and turned back towards the door, banging on it with her fist to be opened.

When she returned to her home, where she'd last seen Sirius before all this, the feeling of complete and utter loneliness sank in. Voldemort seemed to be defeated. Harry was still alive. But to what end had everything been done? James, Lily, and Peter were dead. Sirius was in prison. And for the first time in a long time, Davie was alone in her family home, a sort of loneliness she hadn't even felt right after her parents had died. She couldn't go upstairs to the study, or the bedrooms - she felt trapped in her own house. She couldn't move, she couldn't look at the pictures of her family and friends without feeling as if she were being suffocated by their absence.

It was late in the evening, and Davie sat on a sofa, staring into a fireplace with no fire lit, as though it would suddenly roar to life, and one of the people she cared about might appear out of nowhere. No one came.

Davie found herself crying without restraint - if she hadn't gone to Bulgaria, if she'd just stayed with Sirius, maybe she would have been able to stop him from whatever had happened. She couldn't wrap her mind around any of it, but in her mind and in her heart, she truly believed that Sirius should not have been in Azkaban, and certainly did not deserve to be there alone.

"OPEN THE DOOR, MADDUX!"

Davie's head snapped up as a loud voice arose from outside, accompanied by loud banging on the door - and Davie recognized the voice immediately. She wiped her eyes furiously and strode over to the door, wand already drawn before even opening it, and as she yanked the wooden door open so forcefully that

its old hinges gave a wretched squeak, she laid eyes on Severus Snape for the first time in a very long time.

Snape had never shown himself to anyone in the Order after the news of the prophecy broke, and for good reason. Davie's fury at him was still fresh, still painful, like a wound being licked by salt water at the shore of the sea.

"I'll kill you!" she said, raising her wand and pointing it at his chest with a sharp jab. "How dare you show your face here, how dare --"

"I tried to save Potter's life --"

"Which one?" Davie hissed spitefully, her eyes narrowed and, for the first time in all the years Severus had known this scrawny, spineless girl, filled with the desire to cause hurt. "James? Harry?" she asked, then, after a pause, she added with a sneer, "Lily Potter, Severus? Either way, you failed --"

Snape winced visibly. "Don't ever --"

"You destroyed her life," Davie hissed angrily. "You destroyed the life she would have wanted to give her family by betraying her. You killed her --"

Now, Severus winced as though he had been burned, and his eyes narrowed in response - every time he saw Davie, her hatred for him seemed to grow tenfold , and yet, he continued to come back because now she was the only tangible link to Lily that remained. "The letter --"

"When have you ever deserved her? She never saw it," Davie hissed, and immediately, she was met with Snape's wand pointing at her own chest as well, locking them in a stalemate, both bearing wild, infuriated expressions full of pain.

"Do it," Davie snarled. "Go ahead, kill Lily's best friend just like you killed her --"

"I did not --" Snape hissed in a choked voice. "I would've thought you'd be in Azkaban, fawning over your murderer of a boyfriend. Never speak as if you understand, you selfish, worthless --"

"Selfish!" Davie mocked shrilly, and unconsciously she sent a flurry of yellow sparks crackling from the tip of her wand that caused Snape to leap backwards in fear that she might cast one of the hexes at which she had become so gifted. "I may be a lot of things, but -- I gave up having a godson, a husband -- I gave up everything because of this!" Davie cried, her free hand jetting out and clasping itself around Snape's other forearm, where she knew the Dark Mark would still lie. "I gave it up so no one would be hurt if I died, so everyone could start over -- but now, none of them can because of you. It's all been for nothing, so do not ever call me selfish, Snape. Not you."

For a moment, they simply stood there with their wands drawn on one another, with wavering hands and pained expressions, and a part of Davie validated Severus' pain - whatever had transpired, he had loved Lily, and was entitled to that pain, no matter how evil Davie thought he was, no matter how much she could not help but loathe him. They had nearly been friends once, a strange sort of friendship that had only occurred because of voids that could not otherwise be filled.

"Why did you come?" Davie asked in a hoarse voice, her eyes still narrowed, though her outstretched wand arm relaxed slightly. "To rub in the fact that I've lost everything --"

"I came," Severus interrupted, "because I've been acquainted with you long enough to know that you're prone to doing bloody stupid things, and I don't need it on my conscience --"

"Oh, heavens, no -- Merlin forbid I make you feel any worse," Davie said darkly, lowering her wand slowly. "You think I can't read you? The only reason you tolerated me at all was because I'm -- because I was Lily's best friend," Davie said, changing the tense to reflect Lily's absence among them now. "That's the only reason you're here now."

"You're going to ask about her son," Severus said stiffly, lowering his wand as well and not so much as acknowledging her statement. "You're going to -"

"Remus wrote me. You're too late to play the hero, you have no leverage over me," Davie hissed. "And I know I can't see him. I can't go near him - I know I have to stand down, knowing my best friend's son was handed off to that horrible Muggle woman. I know what Petunia's like --"

"As do I." Severus nodded. "But he's safe there --"

"For your sake, he better be." Davie growled. "If one day I found out they're not being good to him, you'll be the one I come after. This is your fault --"

"I'm not the one who's in Azkaban for murder."

Davie's nostrils flared unprettily, and her hand clenched around her wand at the statement. "Sirius isn't a murderer," Davie said in an angrily yet at the same time frail tone. "I don't know what happened - I don't know how to prove it, but I will. Even if I need to give my life for it, I will --"

"You're being stupid," Snape said coldly - but beneath the coldness was a strange motive that Davie could sense, but not decipher. It made no sense why he would bother correcting her, or why he did not simply allow her to throw her life away to help Sirius.

Snape's intentions were not the best or the purest - he only did this because of the way perceived Davie, still the same idealistic child she had always been. Despite the weariness and paleness of her face that could only have been attained through trials such as those the Order had been through, Snape saw her as the same child who thought the world could be changed through sheer will. This was the reason Lily had developed such a deep friendship with her. His conscience could not allow Lily's best friend to do this to herself, to become another casualty of his selfishness and blind loyalty to Voldemort.

"I want you to leave," she said stonily. "I don't care how many times you switch sides. I don't care why - here onward, you will always be my enemy, Snape," she finished, stepping back into her house and slamming the door behind her.

Severus Snape didn't matter. Being an Auror didn't matter. Dumbledore and Fudge and Hogwarts and the Ministry didn't matter. Nothing mattered except trying to find a way to prove Sirius innocent, to get him out, to find the truth.

But days turn to weeks, to months -- and as many times as Davie roved the street where Peter Pettigrew and those Muggles had died, she could find nothing. She spent sleepless nights trolling through every newspaper, magical or otherwise, trying to find any modicum of evidence that would get Sirius free. Every week she used her position as an Auror to edge into visits in Azkaban more regularly than should have been allowed. Even though Sirius grew more and more frantic, more and more unstable, she persisted. There were times when he seemed not to even recognize her, and yet she still continued to promise him she'd find a way to find out what had happened, and to get him out.

Everyone worried about the girl - Remus checked on her from time to time, the Weasleys and their growing clan paid her the occasional visit, but apart from a brief friendly embrace and the usual pleasantries, they hardly managed to get much out of her. Even Severus Snape, who by this point had started actively working at Hogwarts, under Dumbledore's constant supervision, lurked by the Maddux home on occasion, though he never darkened the doorstep to speak so much as a word to Davie.

Things continued this way for a year - a year of nothing but disappointment and heartbreak, until one day, when Davie arrived in the rowboat at the threshold of Azkaban, passing through the throng of dementors, she had decided on something more drastic. More grave.

"Hullo, miss." Sirius said in a hoarse, almost drunken-sounding chuckle, and Davie could feel the familiar sensation of her heart shattering the instant she walked through the doors. "I find it terribly isolated in this place. You wouldn't have a paper I could read, would you?"

"No." Davie said stiffly - and suddenly, the words began to trickle out of Davie's mouth uncontrollably. "Sirius - I can't stand seeing you like this anymore. I've tried a whole year, and I can't find anyway to help you - so if I can't find a way to be with you out there," Davie said quietly, looking up at the tiny window of his cell. "Then - then I'll find another way to be with you--"

Davie choked back a sob, shaking her head and looking away. She reached into the pocket of her traveling cloak and pulled out a small, shining object - the snowflake necklace Sirius had given her during their sixth year. Grabbing him by the wrist, she shoved it into his hand shakily. He held it in his palm, but his expression remained blank - not a flash of recognition, or emotion. Davie let out a small, tearful laugh.

"The one good thing about you being like this," Davie said breathlessly, backing away towards the door, "is that this time, you can't stop me from what I'm about to do. I know you would have."

Davie stared at Sirius for a few seconds, took in every line on his face, before leaving as quickly as she could, not caring if she walked past the dementors. At the moment, it felt that there was very little joy or hope they could take from - even the hooded figures seemed to turn away from her, sensing little to feed from.

As she left, she did not see Sirius tuck the small silver chain into his pocket, a tear sliding down his face. All Davie knew was that she had a plan to be with Sirius again. It was nonsensical. It was dangerous. She did not know if it would work, but she also did not expect to be stopped.

***

A/N's

Sorry everyone for the delay - I've been having internet troubles as of late, plus another round of exams, so it's been a hectic time. Plus, this was a tough chapter, the last chapter before the big time jump - the next chapter skips ahead to just before Order of the Phoenix.

Thanks to silverfox8080, Risiska, and wildgirl1991 for subscribing/favoriting. Also thanks to Wateranddarkness666 for reviewing! I'll keep this note short and sweet and try to get back to work tweaking the next chapters. For now, cheers!