Chapter 8: An extraordinary rendition of extraordinary rendition
Graham was allowed to leave St. Mungo's the following morning, in defiance of the protests of the healer on duty at the time that he was in no fit state to travel, and certainly no state to use magic for the time being.
Reluctantly, Graham had to admit that there was some truth to this diagnosis; he could tell that apparition was off the books, and walking was more problematic than he'd have liked. But he had far too much to do for that to stop him from painfully making his way to the Ministry.
He had cried, in the quiet of the ward, for the loss of his friends, and for Sirius' betrayal. If the Death Eaters knew what he'd been planning, the consequences would be beyond catastrophic - for him, and for the hundreds of children he might have sentenced to death. He had to know why Sirius had done what he did, and how much he'd told his master about what Graham had been up to.
Graham had only had recourse to visit the ministry on two previous occasions; his application for an apparition license, and the time he had collected the official transcript of his NEWTs. Luckily, though, the public entrance had not changed, and he found the old phone-box in Whitehall without too much difficulty.
"Thank you for visiting the Ministry of Magic." A tinny voice came from the handset. "Please state your name and reason for visiting."
Graham thought for a moment. "Graham Longshaw - Finding out whether a bastard sold me down the river, I guess?"
With a clunk, a badge rolled into the change slot; picking it up, he snorted at the text (Graham Longshaw - Aquatic Affairs) and affixed it to his jumper, as the telephone box dispensed him into the main atrium.
The frustrating reluctance of the ministry to deal with his request was no less than Graham had expected. He spent fifteen minutes (better than last time, he thought) waiting at the lobby for someone to let him go up to the Aurors' reception; another hour passed in their dingy waiting-room while he waited for a receptionist to appear at their desk. Things only got worse, once frustration had bested his caution and he'd gone around the reception's counter to bang on the break-room door.
"The department can't give information about ongoing cases, and that's the end of that." The dumpy witch who'd refused to serve him insisted, after five painful minutes of dispute. "Doesn't matter why, doesn't matter who you are."
That, Graham thought sourly, was a particularly galling lie. One of the biggest gripes that Remus had had in the war was the fact that it was so easy for the Orders' opponents to get out on bail, or to be excused their crimes on the basis of the Imperius curse - he had, on one particularly bitter occasion, complained that the holding cell doors hardly stopped swinging, so easily were the friends of Death Eaters getting them out on bail.
Luckily for Graham, fortune was on his side; he happened to recognise one of the aurors hurrying out of the bullpen that was the department's interior. Although he hadn't known Amelia Bones particularly well (She was six years older than him), the Hufflepuff prefect had always had a reputation for scrupulous fairness while they'd been at Hogwarts together.
"Miss Bones!" he said, turning away from the receptionist, who scowled at his back. "Can I have a quick word?"
The witch in question turned to him with a look of slight confusion; after a moment, recognition dawned. "…Longshaw? What are you doing here?" she asked.
Sending a silent prayer of thanks, Graham strode over to her. "I really, really need to talk to an auror. Do you have a minute? We could walk-and-talk, if that worked for you."
Although she still seemed faintly confused to see him, she nodded nevertheless. "Walk with me. As you can probably tell, it's not exactly a quiet day for anyone."
Graham followed her to the elevator, and they stood by the door.
"With the ridiculous celebrations going on across the country? I can imagine." He said.
Graham had seen the articles about what wizards had been getting up to in the aftermath of Voldemort's defeat; but he had more pressing concerns.
"Sorry to be abrupt, Ma'am - but I'm here to ask about Sirius Black."
"Black?!" She bit out the word more harshly than she'd intended to. "What on earth would you want with him, beyond his head on a spike?" Graham was briefly reminded of Sirius' attempt to proposition her, some months before - clearly, Black was something of a sore spot for her.
His reasons were, of course, the delicate issue for Graham, so he lied as best he could. "I was working in… well, against You-Know-Who, and one of the results of that was that Black knew where my family - muggles, to be clear - were living. I have to know whether they need to relocate, and as quickly as possible - please, please tell me you can at least get a message to him." He couldn't prevent the quaver in his voice as he spoke; the story wasn't real, but the emotion certainly was.
Amelia hissed. "That's… unfortunate. I'm sorry to hear about that - but it doesn't change the fact that it'd be nigh on impossible to get you into contact with him. You don't have the influence - or the heritage, I'm sorry to say - to secure that privilege."
Graham's face fell (although he was hardly surprised that being a muggleborn would make something else harder in the magical world), but Amelia hadn't finished.
"I, on the other hand, would fare a little better. Shall we take a trip down to the holding cells?"
Graham thanked her profusely as they took the lift down to the second basement level of the ministry - strange, he thought, that an underground building could have a basement - and through to the holding cells. For all that the ministry had been lax with the release of their prisoners, the corridor itself was thrumming with magic - this, at least, was one area where they'd put some proper thought into their wards.
Amelia left him at the entrance, and walked down to the end of the corridor, where she had a quiet word with the auror on duty. To Graham's surprise, the conversation went on for some time, and Amelia became increasingly agitated; finally, she span around and stalked back down to rejoin him, looking rather troubled.
"I'm not sure how this happened," she said, beckoning Graham to follow her back to the elevators, "but Black - isn't here. Hasn't been here, even; apparently he's already in Azkaban."
"What?" Graham hadn't heard of anyone being remanded to Azkaban without trial, but to think that he of the Most Noble and Ancient Blacks would have been simply made no sense at all.
"I'm as confused as you are." Amelia said, as they stepped into the lift, "but I'm going to follow up on whatever's happening here - something's very strange about all of this."
Privately, Graham agreed with her. For Sirius to have betrayed the Order was strange enough; but it made no sense whatsoever for him to have helped Graham the way he had, not only in terms of his generosity, but also the simple fact that the muggleborn register had remained in Graham's possession for the whole of the war.
"There is one advantage of Black being in Azkaban, though." Amelia said, looking sidelong at Graham. "There's an actual visitors' policy that doesn't exclude anybody, there - if you want, I can get you the forms to apply for a visit yourself? Not today, mind you. I know about you and the Longbottoms, and I'm surprised you're even up and about; but you're definitely in no position to be around Dementors, at least for the moment."
From London, it would have been a seven hour train journey back to Devon, and Graham had no inclination to risk his life on the knight bus to speed the journey. So instead, he found himself on the train to Oxford, later that afternoon. He'd only had enough money for the slow train, so he sat on his uncomfortable seat and stared out at the suburbs as they began to fade into the green belt. It was a Saturday, so with any luck Jessica and David would be off duty for the day; Graham had no idea how to get in touch with Remus, and he really needed to not be alone for a while.
The train ground through Reading, and was held for ten minutes at Didcot; by the time Graham stepped onto the platform at Oxford, the sun had almost set, and Graham felt ready to collapse. He almost picked up a copy of the Evening Standard at the station, if only to enjoy the bafflement that the non-magical media was displaying about the slightly embarrassing exuberance that the magical world was displaying; but he was struggling to walk, let alone manage the concentration to read, so he made his way - painfully - to his old flat, instead, where - mercifully - he found that his friends were home.
"You-Know-Who's actually dead?" Jessica asked, wide-eyed; besides her, David - who'd taken to reading back-issues of the prophet, which Graham had taken to dropping off whenever he visit - was equally surprised.
Graham had thought it best to start off with the good news. "Well, nobody seems to know how it happened, exactly, but... yes. That's the positive side of things, anyway."
Jessica and David's smiles faded at that; they hadn't asked why he was in the condition he was, but neither of them were blind.
"Something happened to you as well, mate - didn't it? Don't tell me you were there when he was offed?" David asked, brown eyes wide with worry.
"No, it wasn't that." Graham sighed, heavily. "You know how I've been doing house calls for the Order? Well, a few days ago, I was at the Longbottoms' place - you remember Alice and Frank, from school?"
Jessica nodded. "They've just had a kid, right? Wait, you're not saying that -"
"Well, he wasn't at home that night, but yeah, I am. There was an attack while I was there, and - well, Frank got the worst of it, and they're saying he might never wake up from his coma. Alice was hit pretty badly as well, but - all three of us were put under the Cruciatus curse for a pretty long time, and I was out until last night."
Jessica let out a horrified gasp, and rushed to hug Graham. David took a little longer to catch on to the unfamiliar term, but he gave a groan of realisation a few moments later.
"I think we could all use something to drink, but you in particular, mate - I've heard enough about that bastard of a spell from you before." David said, and hurried over to the kitchen cabinet.
"Jess, you're literally crushing me like a grape." Graham griped, and his friend drew away from him, blushing.
"There's more, though." He continued, quietly. "However Voldemort died, he was trying to kill the Potters, again; and - and he managed. James and Lily died, Jess - and then Harry somehow bounced the killing curse back at Voldemort, or something, I have no idea. Nobody does, really."
He looked up at Jessica, tears shining in his eyes, to meet her own shocked expression; both of them seemed to have run out of words. David had been quietly listening as he poured drinks, and he rejoined the two of them, handing them both a tumbler of whisky.
"I know I'm an outsider to all of this, to say the least." He said, taking a seat across from them, "but I did get to meet James and Lily, if not the others - and I know they'd want us to be commemorating, not commiserating. Let's make a toast to their memory, okay? And to everyone who fought in the bloody war - you included, mate. We're both so bloody proud of you."
Graham woke up the next day on his friends' sofa, horribly hungover but somehow still feeling better than he had the night before. They'd stayed up until the early hours of the morning, drinking and talking, and that alone had been incredibly cathartic.
It was still quite early, and the others hadn't woken, so he made himself a cup of coffee and started to struggle through the administrative nightmare that was the application to visit Azkaban. Five pages into it, he was joined by Jessica, who helped herself to some coffee, before perching on the table, and frowning down as she read through the first page of the document Graham was filling out.
"Is it really worth going back to Lockwood, now?" She asked, softly. "There's no way he won't have told someone about what you've been up to. Why don't I apparate us both down to Devon later? We can get a moving van, take everything you want, and you can come back up to Oxford for a while, perhaps."
Graham smiled at her, a little wearily. "I - I know that if he really did what he did, then there's not a chance in hell he didn't tell. But it just doesn't make sense, you know? Why would he give me the bloody house, not to mention the register, instead of just stealing it?"
He frowned, and took a sip of coffee.
"I mean, he definitely had the chance to get rid of me," he continued, "there was a time when he led a death eater to my house last year - he said he was running away. But if he'd wanted to, he could easily have got rid of me then, pretended it was the death eater that did it, and kept his cover story in the order up to scratch. It doesn't make a lick of sense, and the whole thing's eating away at me."
They sat there in silence for a few moments, as Jessica watched him worriedly.
"Well," she said at last, "at least promise me you're going to practice the Patronus before you go to Azkaban? I can't bear the thought of you in that place."
Graham promised, a little sheepishly, before moving the topic onto how Jessica and David were doing (well, it transpired, although they were planning on holding off on the wedding front until university stresses died down a little); he knew that he'd need to face the stresses of the magical world sooner rather than later, but a few hours of thinking about something - anything - else was something he sorely needed.
It was not without a degree of trepidation that Graham apparated back to Lockwood, later that day. He'd hardly expected a contingent of Death Eaters to have been waiting on his doorstep - but the place held none of the tranquility he'd found there in the year before the end of the war.
Luckily, though, the house seemed as resolutely untouched as ever, and Graham warily busied himself in the office he'd made for himself in the old living room of the groundskeeper's cottage. Aside from the issue of Black, he desperately needed to start warding the manor; he wanted to track down Remus, wherever he might have been (if he was still alive, Graham thought morbidly); and he was more than a little curious about what, exactly, had happened to Harry Potter, who - the papers had claimed - was to be raised away from the public eye according to the wishes of his parents.
Of those issues, the only one Graham felt he could muster a practical response to was the wards; he'd need Amelia to give him the go-ahead on his visitors' permit to Azkaban before he could do anything on that front, and he hadn't the faintest idea about the others. So he busied himself in the book on warding which Black had passed onto him along with the portkey license some months previously with Lily's regards; he realised, with a fresh frisson of guilt, that it had been the last time he'd had any communication with the Potters whatsoever before their deaths.
It was late in the evening before Graham looked up from his work; he'd only had cups of tea made with stale milk that afternoon, but he couldn't find it in himself to bother going out to get a proper meal. He would have carried on working into the night, but his focus was interrupted by the arrival of a barn owl at his window; surprised to see it, he took the message, and let it go on its way. Opening it up, he was surprised to find that it was from Amelia Bones, who had clearly not let the issue of the missing prisoners lie fallow.
Unsurprisingly, the note was short and to the point:
All Death Eaters in captivity (inc. Lestrange, Carrows et al) remanded to Azkaban without trial, work of Crouch/Bagnold after fall of You-know-who. Aurors not pleased this went over our heads; will follow up, but in meantime have cleared visit to Azkaban tomorrow evening; good luck. Best, Amelia.
Graham went through a kaleidoscope of emotions at the thought of Death Eaters being sent to Azkaban without trial; a moment of vicarious vindication at their punishment was quickly supplemented by unease at the concept of imprisonment without trial (under any circumstances), only for an uncomfortable understanding to dawn about why Crouch and Bagnold had done such a thing. For most of the war, the tacit understanding - on both sides - was that the ministry was hardly effective enough to convict well-connected death eaters (or, on the few occasions that the issue came up, members of the Order). By getting around normal procedure in the chaos of the war ending, the ministry would actually succeed in bagging some of the biggest threats to the post-war magical world.
None of this, of course, made Graham any more confident about visiting Azkaban. He had no idea what access he'd have to Sirius, and less about what he was going to say. But there wasn't much he could do but worry, and he'd had enough of worrying for a lifetime; so he worked through the night on engraving the wardstones he'd need to protect Lockwood, and was so tired that he slept through the the following afternoon once they were finished, leaving him with just a couple of hours to spare before he needed to present himself at the dock from which the ferry to Azkaban would depart.
"So, above all - do *not* approach the prisoners, and do *not* leave the conference rooms where you'll have your meeting. If you enter the prison proper, the dementors won't be able to distinguish between you and their wards, and at that point your idiocy will not be our concern. Any questions?"
The guard who was ferrying the paltry collection of visitors to Azkaban was not a particularly humorous man; then again, Graham thought, he didn't have a particularly humorous job. As the boat - an old fishing trawler, Graham fancied, or something similar - swept across the North Sea rather more quickly than it should strictly have been able to, he glanced sidelong at his fellow passengers, and resolved to carry on trying to not be noticed by them. Perhaps he should have expected a less-than-savoury crowd, given the population of Azkaban, but it was still hard to sit still when Desdemona Nott and Pamela Parkinson were perched on the bench opposite him, talking quietly, and the man on the seat next to him looked very much like Vincent Crabbe.
As far as Graham knew, none of the three recognised him, although Mrs. Nott had certainly cast an appraising gaze over him before seeming to lose interest; but he knew that Nott's and Parkinson's husbands had been among those apprehended and sent to Azkaban, and he was aware that the order had strongly suspected that Crabbe was a death eater. Although he refused to let it show on his face, the attack he'd failed to repulse still burned in his memory, and he found himself wondering, not for the first time, if bothering to visit Sirius was nothing more than plain idiocy.
Still, Graham thought, there was some small triumph to be found in the faces of his companions, for all three of them looked thoroughly miserable. Graham hadn't found much time for rejoicing, but, privately, he couldn't help but enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing such hateful figures looking so unhappy with their lot.
"Alright, we're just a couple of minutes out, now." The guard announced, abruptly. "If you've got a patronus, as discussed, you're welcome to use it once we've hit land, until you're in the building proper; after that, you'll need to dismiss it, so that you don't alarm the dementors."
Graham steeled himself, and gazed up at the sheer lines of the fortress as they drew closer. As they'd been told to expect, a cold began to steal over him, as the dementors' distant influence started to manifest. He hadn't expected the phantom pains of the cruciatus to reappear, though; he supposed that it made sense as another side-effect of dementors, but by the time they made landfall, he was itching to cast his patronus, if only in the vain hope that it'd do someting for the pain.
The walk up from the jetty was steep and slippery. To his surprise, Nott had actually been able to cast a patronus, though her compatriots were less successful; Graham did his best to let the excitement and joy of his plan suffuse him, and cast his own. To his immense relief, his spell went off without a hitch, and his sparrow patronus perched on his shoulder for the walk, soothing his nerves as well as lessening the pervasive ache that had set in.
Once they'd arrived at the guardhouse which was to be the site of their meetings, Graham was separated from the others, and led to a small room, bare beyond two chairs and a desk. In the corner, a guard slouched against the wall, a scowl embedded on his face; again, Graham reflected that, however cheerful they might be outside the prison, Azkaban was not exactly a positive working environment.
He was left there for almost half an hour, but - finally - a hunched figure was led into the room, and shoved down into the chair across from Graham.
For some reason, Graham found himself disappointed at the sight of the man who sat across from him. Sirius didn't seem to have acknowledged that he'd been moved, or that Graham was sitting across from him - some part of Graham, he realised, had been hoping for a maniacal laugh, screaming - something more than this blankness.
"Sirius," he began, quietly, "I need to talk to you, please."
There was no response.
"Sirius?"
Still nothing; a precious few minutes passed this way, and it felt increasingly clear to Graham that, whether it was Dementors or some sense of guilt, Sirius was hardly present at all. Finally, impatience conquered caution, and Graham turned to the guard; he'd only a fifteen minute time slot, and he couldn't let the time simply drift away.
"Do you mind if I cast a mild shocking spell? I'm not getting anything out of him like this."
A proper guard in a halfway decent prison would say no, Graham thought, but Azkaban wasn't the latter and wasn't staffed by the former, so he wasn't particularly surprised by the guard shrugging, and indicating that it was no skin off his back either way.
"Salebra Successum!" Graham incanted, and Sirius jerked as a spark leapt across the table and struck him in the chest. The spell wasn't exactly a shock; it simply stimulated the neurons in the brain, and conveyed a few minutes of hyperactivity upon the recipient; it was really meant to prevent people from going into shock, but it seemed to have done the trick for Sirius.
"Graham?" Sirius asked. "What are you - how are you here?"
The man seemed bewildered, but he'd already proved how skilled an actor he was, so Graham wasn't sure if this meant anything; he took a deep breath to calm himself before he replied.
"Sirius." He said, carefully. "Is it true? Did you kill Lily and James?"
The man's face crumpled, and he looked away, tears tracking down his cheeks.
"It's all my fault," he moaned, "my stupid godsdamned sodding fault they're dead. I never should have said - I never -"
He sniffled, piteously, and something snapped inside Graham; he slammed his hands against the table, and couldn't stop himself from shouting.
"They were your friends, you prick!" he yelled. "Your friends, and you sold them out to a murderer because you liked the idea of people like me being slaves to proper wizards like you - you killed them just as much as You-Know-Who did, Sirius, not to mention those poor muggles you probably don't think of as people at all."
He panted with the exertion of shouting, and drew back. He hadn't expected Sirius to burst into tears however - great, wracking sobs of anguish. Sirius fought through it though, and composed himself enough to speak.
"It wasn't betrayal," he said, eyes cast downwards, "it was idiocy - and that bastard, Peter. I shouldn't - shouldn't have told them to switch, shouldn't have trusted that rat, and now - oh, Merlin, Harry's on his own as well, and Peter could be anywhere -"
Graham had been confused before, but he felt only more confused now - none of this was making sense.
"I'm sorry - switched? And - Peter's dead, Sirius, because of you. Nothing but a thumb left, I heard - you're thorough, if nothing else."
A switch seemed to flick in Sirius as he heard this - all of a sudden, the wild-eyed man was gone, and the Sirius Graham thought he'd known was back.
"No, no, no, it's all gone wrong," he said, looking up at Graham, "And Harry needs me to be better than this."
There was silence, as Sirius stared intently at Graham, who felt as if he'd lost the ability to speak, all of a sudden; he felt almost trapped under the intensity of the other man's gaze.
"Graham, I'm guessing you're here because you're confused, right? Why would I give you a plot of land, break into the ministry, and all the rest, when I'm a spy for Him?"
Graham nodded, hesitantly, and Sirius ploughed on.
"Listen. James and Lily were put under a spell called the fidelius charm - it's old magic, but the principle is that you can keep a place a secret, and only the person chosen as secret-keeper can reveal it. It's how they were hiding from You-Know-Who for the past year; remember how you couldn't apparate to them?"
Sirius took another breath; but his newly acquired sense of purpose didn't desert him.
"James and Lily got Dumbledore to cast the spell, but he couldn't cast it and be the secret-keeper - so they thought they'd ask me. And that's what we told people - I was the one guarding the Potters' location."
Graham was reminded of Remus' slightly bitter claim, a few months earliier, that only Sirius and Dumbledore had access to the Potters - he nodded, again.
"Okay, good." Sirius sighed. "The thing is - it was bollocks. We put it about that I was their secret-keeper so that we'd distract attention from Peter, who was the real one - we figured nobody would suspect him, and we were right. And then - and then, on Halloween…"
Graham frowned. "So you're saying that Peter was the one that betrayed the Potters, and you hunted him down afterwards?" He said. "So you're only guilty of killing thirteen people, not fifteen?"
"No!" Sirius burst out. "After I'd heard about James and Lily, I rushed to theirs, and found Harry there; and then Hagrid arrived, so I passed Harry on to him, and went to track Peter down. You can check it with him - I swear, it's true. I found Peter, but he got me with something when I confronted him - some kind of confundus, I think - and blew up the place himself. He's an animagus - a rat - it would have been the work of a moment to disappear."
His speech seemed to drain him of whatever energy had possessed him a few minutes before, and Sirius sagged back into his seat. By the wall, the guard, who'd not been moved in the slightest by this claim of innocence, held up two fingers to indicate that their time was running out.
Graham hadn't really been able to process the information, but he found that he desparately wanted to believe Sirius' claim. It would solve so much of his confusion, and - more importantly - if true, would give him something to salvage out of the misery that was the end of the war.
"Sirius," he said, intently, "I want to believe you - Merlin knows, I do. But I need you to give me something - whatever you can think of - that'll let me verify this, and bring it to Amelia Bones. She was the one who got me in here, and she's the best chance I'll have of getting you an actual trial, you know."
The two of them sat in silence, as Sirius thought for a minute that seemed to drag on far longer. Finally - the guard held up a finger, indicating how close they were to the end of their time - he spoke up.
"Remus can tell you that Peter was a rat animagus, prove that bit of what I'm saying true." he began. "And if you check my wand, you shouldn't find the kind of spell on it that'd do what Peter did - so you'll need to track that down at the Ministry. Dumbledore can tell you about the Fidelius, too, if that's anything, and Peter's thumb I remember he cut off with a knife, so it shouldn't look… exploded? It's circumstantial, but it's a start."
Graham had scribbled these points down on the pad he'd brought along while Sirius spoke, and he nodded, slowly.
"Well, I can only say how much I hope you're right." He said, standing up. "If you are - stay strong, Sirius. One way or another, I'm going to do my best to find out."
Sirius smiled weakly at him, as the guard who'd pulled him into the room re-entered it and ordered him to his feet.
"Thank you won't go far enough, Graham." he said,as manacles were slapped onto his wrists. "But - more than all of that, please track down Harry, okay? Even if I'm stuck in here, I need him to be alright. I - I swear that -" but the guard had dragged him into the corridor, and he was gone, leaving Graham with far too many questions and none of the answers he was hoping to find on his visit.
AN: Thank you for reading! I can't say how much the fantastic response to the last chapter has meant to me - every time I see that I've received another review makes my day, but thank you in particular to those of you who left detailed replies and critiques, because they're especially lovely to receive.
Apologies, by the way, for breaking my prediction about posting dates immediately after writing it; I'm just enjoying the fact that the muse is back for this story, hence my early publication of the next chapter. I'm actually on something of a roll, so I'll be posting the chapter after this next week; I suppose I'm pulling off something of a NaNoWriNope, starting this late, but it's better than nothing. My goal is to publish a chapter a day, leading up to Christmas - for now, though, watch this space.
As you can probably tell from this chapter, things aren't going to be as simple for Graham as popping down to the wizengamot and getting a flask of veritaserum; some actual work's going to have to be put into all of this, and more of that in the future. For now, though, thank you again for reading, and all best in whatever you're up to!