Running Close to the Ground

Chapter Nine: Which Side Are You On?

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake.

Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.

In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand

In every leaf that trembles, and in every grain of sand.

- Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand"

There's been something uneasy about the atmosphere in Little Hangleton ever since they brought in Karkaroff, as if a storm were about to break. The Dark Lord tells us a few mornings later to prepare for a "special meeting" that afternoon, which is - as we all know - a euphemism for "torture session."

"D'you think he's planning to make an example of Karkaroff?" says Nott. "Can't say I'll shed too many tears over him if he does."

"Karkaroff is already with the spirits," Travers announces conversationally. Rabastan rolls his eyes. "He told me so. And he says they'll be seeking more company before long."

Avery and I reckon we'd better get our drinking in earlier than usual, but we haven't been in the Hanged Man half an hour before the Dark Lord taps my companion on the shoulder and leads him out of the pub and up the hill toward the old Riddle house. Poor Avery looks like he's about to faint. I finish off both our drinks, transform into a rat, and follow at a discreet distance, thinking maybe I can cause a diversion if he's in any trouble. (If I can find some way to do it without bringing the Dark Lord's wrath down on my own head, that is. I'm not stupid.)

The Dark Lord uses the front parlor of the abandoned house as a sort of conference room where he meets with his most favored lieutenants. None of us have been inside any of the other rooms and nobody knows what he keeps in the rest of the house, but it must be something of value. He never takes the keys off the sash of his robes.

Through the parlor window, I see the Dark Lord conferring with Avery and Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange. Strange bedfellows, I think. The Lestranges are two of his higher-ups and Avery's, well, Avery. About the only thing they have in common is that they were part of the same gang at school, back in the old days when we were enemies. Two of the other members have been dead for years, and the sixth is ... Severus Snape who plays dangerous games.

I think back to what Karkaroff said the other night. Something about valuable information straight from Dumbledore's own mouth, wasn't it? Yes, I'm beginning to see what this is all about.

Back at the Hanged Man, I find Snape sitting by himself in a corner, nursing a shot of something amber and potent-looking for a change. I don't know when was the last time I saw him drink anything stronger than coffee.

"Game's up, Snivelly," I hiss in his ear.

"What?"

"He knows. Get out of here before the meeting. And you didn't hear this from me."

He raises an eyebrow. "Forgive me, Pettigrew, if I do not fall down in awe of your powers of expression. Who knows what, precisely?"

"The Dark Lord. He knows about you."

"What of it?" he says evenly. "I have done nothing that I fear his knowing about. My loyalty has never wavered - unlike that of some people I could mention."

Cool customer, Snivellus. I can't really blame him for thinking my warning might be a trap ... but I'm still hoping he'll have the sense to Apparate somewhere far away before the meeting. I watch him from a distance, but he stays his ground and takes his place in the circle with the rest of us.

Damn him for a fool. Some days I think he could almost have been a Gryffindor, although I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate that observation.

The Dark Lord motions him forward. "Ever since the capture of Igor Karkaroff, I have been debating what ought to be done to a traitor to the organization. Tell me, Snape, how you believe such a man should be punished."

Looking at our master makes me think, for a fleeting moment, of the look in Crookshanks' eyes when he bats at his prey with sheathed claws. Cats' games end in blood.

"My lord, there is only one possible punishment for a traitor." Snape's voice is still steady, but his lips are bloodless. "Death."

"I beg to differ." The Dark Lord speaks almost in a whisper. "I have already given Karkaroff the luxury of a swift death, but that is more clemency than some crimes deserve. More than your crime deserves." His eyes roam around the circle of silent onlookers, searching for traces of fellow-guilt or empathy, but our faces are expressionless. "Karkaroff was a coward and a turncoat, but I have reason to think he was telling the truth when he named you as Albus Dumbledore's pet spy - information that came out during his trial seventeen years ago. You are his puppet to this very day, are you not?"

Snape is silent.

"Seventeen years, Snape. Seventeen years of double-dealing. Treason on such a grand scale ought to be paid with seventeen years of blood and suffering, but no man can survive that. Rest assured that I will deal mercifully with you - compared to what your actions merit." The Dark Lord beckons to Avery and the Lestranges. "The three of you were his companions once, but I do not suspect you of being his co-conspirators. As a token of my confidence in you, I will permit you to deal justice upon him."

Avery's face is white. Too white; I am afraid he's about to do something foolish, like refusing a direct order. But the Dark Lord doesn't notice. His eyes are on Bellatrix, the only one of us for whom he seems to feel something approaching fondness. "My Lord," she says with a slight inclination of her head, as if she were welcoming an honored guest to the house in Grimmauld Place, "will you do me the favor of allowing me to be the first?"

"By all means, Bella. It will be a pleasure to watch an expert at work." The Dark Lord's voice and manner are polite, almost courtly. In God's name, who do they think they're kidding?

She aims her wand at Snape. "Crucio!"

I stand on the fringes of the crowd, turning my face into a mask of false amusement, just like I used to do when my friends tormented him at school. Only this time, we all know he'll never walk away alive.

"Bella!" says the Dark Lord sharply. "Let up for a minute!"

She raises her wand slowly, as if unwilling to give up an exquisite pleasure. Her face, like all the faces of Azkaban's former prisoners, is a frozen mask much of the time; only torture seems to reanimate her.

"Permit me to interrogate the traitor before he loses his power of speech." The Dark Lord turns to the black-robed figure on the ground. "Tell us who your contacts are and where they have their headquarters."

Snivellus shakes his head, wordlessly, and struggles to get back on his feet, but his legs won't support him.

"Speak, you wretched piece of treacherous filth!" The Dark Lord orders Rodolphus to hit him with a short, sharp burst of Cruciatus.

I can hardly hear his voice. "Can't ... Fidelius Charm..." He is still fighting to stand up, as if it matters to him whether he dies on his feet or on his knees.

"Tell me who can, then! WHO IS THEIR SECRET-KEEPER?"

Snape shakes his head again, but he's swaying on his feet and looks like he won't be able to bear much more. He'll never give us the Secret-Keeper's real name, I think. It's like Moony told me when we were kids, torture can't distinguish between the truth and what the torturers want to hear. But we'll have to waste time capturing and torturing whoever he does name, and then go after whoever they name, and ... I feel a profound weariness, as if the cycle will never end.

"Avery! See if another taste of Cruciatus will loosen the traitor's tongue! Make it good and long, this time!"

Bardolph Avery steps forward and hollers "Avada Kedavra!" and before any of the rest of us know what's happened, Severus Snape's lifeless body crumples to the ground.

Avery crumples, too, shaking all over and crying out as the Dark Lord turns to him. "M-master, forgive me! It was an accident!"

The high cruel sound of Bellatrix Lestrange's laughter rises to the treetops. "Oh, did the widdow boy make another boo-boo?"

"Indeed," says the Dark Lord coldly. "You will have to have your fun with Avery instead, Bella and Rodolphus. I am almost out of patience with him. Do what you will, but do not kill or disable him. I cannot afford to lose another man, no matter how pathetic."

* * *

"Honestly, Wormtail, it was a mistake," Avery says defensively, over his fourth straight whiskey. "I really did mean to say Crucio, I just got mixed up at the last moment ... lost my nerve." His trembling hand sloshes liquor all over the table. Roo blots it up with a napkin and hands him another drink.

"We've all done it," I reassure him. "I did the same thing when they caught Emmeline Vance, remember. Easy to get the Unforgivable Curses mixed up." (Moony's Emmeline, remember her? Bit hard to torture someone you've joked with, drank with, shared meals with. Killing is another matter. Killing's cleaner.)

Avery gulps his drink. "You know how it is, then. I mean, Avada Kedavra, Crucio ... they sound a bit alike, really."

I nod gravely. "If you say them backwards."

"In Bulgarian."

"With a New Guinea accent."

For a moment we almost sound like Padfoot and Prongs, but there is no laughter here.

Roo brings us another round of drinks. "This one's on the house, boys. You look like you're having a rough day."

"Stay and have a drink with us, Roo," I say, feeling hungry for good cheer and honesty and generosity, all the things we can't get from each other.

"Can't, love, it's a busy day." Pretty much everybody heads down to the Hanged Man after a session like that. You've got to drink the edge off the memories. She pats me on the arm and lowers her voice. "Tell you one thing, though, boys, you two are about the only customers I like to drink with. Can't say I think highly of your other friends."

After several more whiskeys, Avery bends his head forward confidentially and asks me a dangerous question. "Wormtail? Which side're you on?"

Something icy tugs at the pit of my stomach and I wonder if the Dark Lord has put him up to the question, ordered him to sound me out. I give him a safe answer, one that does not encourage further confidences. "Same side you are, mate. The side that tries not to end up dead." It might even be an honest answer. Damned if I know anything about sides any more.

He raises his glass, spilling more whiskey on the table. "I'll drink to that. In the midst of death we are in life. Or somethin'."

"Yeah. Let's keep it that way." We clink glasses.

The Dark Lord interrupts us several drinks later, with a white-faced Travers following close behind. "May I remind you, Avery, that this is not the best time for you to try my patience by drinking yourself into a stupor - nor you either, Wormtail. You and Travers are to make yourselves useful. I want the traitor's corpse displayed in the market square so the others may take warning from his fate."

* * *

Three ravens circle overhead as we haul the corpse to its feet and sling it over the market cross. The Dark Lord stands off to the side, watching us without a word. We talk in undertones.

"This seems sorta ... blasphemous, somehow," says Avery, biting his lip.

"Let me get this straight," I say. "We tortured and murdered him and you're worried about blasphemy?"

"He would have cared," Avery insists. "He was sort of religious, you know. At least, he used to be when we were at school."

"What? Old Snivellus?"

"Have a look at this." Avery thrusts his hand under Snivellus' robes and pulls out a silver medal on a chain. It has an ugly relief of a man riding a horse. "That's St. Paul, that is."

"Why St. Paul?" I ask.

Avery shrugs, but Travers, unexpectedly, pops out with the information that Paul is the patron saint of public relations, the island of Malta, snakebite victims, and tent makers.

Snakebite victims. Yeah. We could all do with a little of that.

Travers drifts away, walking in a funny zigzagging line and humming "The Ballad of the Death Eaters" off key. I crouch down and hold Avery's head while he's sick all over my shoes. Funny, I think letting him puke on me is the cleanest thing I've done all day. Unless you count trying to tip off Snivellus, but that didn't work out very well.

The Dark Lord moves closer. "Leave us," he says to Avery. "How utterly disgusting. But I suppose I can expect nothing else from you."

I'm sorely tempted to remind him that I spent a year changing his nappies, if he wants to know about disgusting, but I haven't got a death wish. Not yet. "Evanesco," I mutter, waving my wand at my shoes as Avery staggers down the High Street. "May I go too, my Lord?"

"Not yet. I wish to speak to you." A twisted smile plays about his bloodless lips. "I am sorry you missed your share of the fun today, Wormtail. I do consider it more ... elegant ... to let former friends settle the score with one another. I am afraid that you have been cheated out of it twice, but you shall have your turn in the end. I rather think," he adds softly, "that it won't be long now."

I plaster a simpering smile on my face and try to ignore the way my heart is hammering in my ears, because of course I know what that means.

Game's up, Moony.