The Unknown Witness

Chapter Seven: Spies and Souls

As Ron descended the stairs to join the group, Harry rounded off his tale. All the way through, he'd been looking desperately into his godfather's eyes, desperate for some kind of authorisation, a scolding for his irresponsibility, anything. But Sirius had remained impassive, his own sight focused on some unknown object too far away to reach. It was as if he was letting the words seep over him like he had the Dementors at Azkaban: The effects seeming minimal due to a barrier of natural defence, a simple blockage that drained his face of all reaction. But somehow, underneath it all, Harry knew he was screaming.

'So let me get this straight...' he said, stretching the skin across his forehead with his coarse and ageing fingers. 'This woman, Claudia. She saw everything and didn't get her memory wiped. She can confirm my story from the quad.' His face seemed pale from merely listening. Sirius looked at Harry, barely believing him and using the darkness of his stare to challenge the truth. But Harry stared right back as his Godfather continued. 'You tracked her down, talked her round, and you turned up this morning and...'

'Found the house like this,' said Hermione, shaking her head sadly. 'She's gone. And I have a hunch it wasn't of her own free will...'

Ron shuffled into the room at this point, hands deep in his pockets looking as downcast as the rest. He looked on the verge of speech, but one fearful eye cast around the room showed it was inappropriate. He shoved a few broken bits of china to one side with his foot, a scowl of anger and distaste gracing his normally cheerful face. It didn't suit him.

'It's the same upstairs,' he muttered quietly before the conversation proceeded.

'What I don't understand...' said Arabella, who was perched on the windowsill, her brown bark-like hair being illuminated by the summer sun. 'Is how you tracked her down. It was fourteen years ago, for Merlin's sake... The Ministry wouldn't have any records if they didn't wipe her memory. And unless you've all turned into computer hackers overnight and trounced over the NHS, I can't quite see your angle.'

Harry was frowning a little, his expression aimed at Sirius in particular. 'But I thought...'

'Thought what?' came his reply, as sharp as anything.

Harry looked at Hermione, a little unsettled. She picked up the mantle. 'So if it wasn't him...'

'If what wasn't me?' Sirius said, his voice beginning to be trickled with alarm. 'Harry, if there's something you're not telling me...'

'No, no,' he trembled, his own hand now digging for an object in his pocket. 'It's not like that. You see, I did more than find the witness, Sirius- ' the object was finally revealed. 'I went back to the scene of the crime.'

He held out in his palm the time turner, turning it slightly and exploring the mahogany joints with his tender fingers, each part as he examined it melting into the other with a horrific sense of ease. It chilled him to hold it now, so he was very relieved when he plucked it from his own grip and laid it to rest on the broken coffee table. Remus was staring at it with a look of peacefulness residing in his face. For him, something seemed to be making sense.

'I went back to 1981,' said Harry hurriedly. 'I didn't mean to, I didn't do it deliberately. I was just looking at the time turner and turned it over in my hands... it just happened. I went back to the hospital and found her, right after the explosion. She was in an awful state, so confused I thought she'd just explode right there, scream herself into nothing. I told her it would be all right, Sirius, that she'd be safe. She must be so scared, and it's all my fault...'

'No!' Sirius almost leapt out of his chair as this statement, but instead reached across and placed a brotherly hand on Harry's weakened shoulder. 'No, Harry, it's not your fault. These things are never anybody's fault, and if you spent all your life sheltering the blame, you wouldn't be fit to solve it.'

Harry sighed heavily, his shoulders drooping under his godfather's grip as he allowed the words to seep into his paranoid brain. But Hermione still sensed his apprehension.

'He's right,' she said, now sitting on the arm of the chair Harry rested in. 'Don't blame yourself, otherwise we'll never get out of this in one piece.'

He smiled back at his friend, and then turned to face responsibility. 'The time turner. I thought you'd sent it, Sirius. I thought it was a belated Birthday present or something. Hedwig brought it, so I just presumed- '

'Never presume anything, Harry,' said Arabella. 'That's the first thing they taught me at Oxford. Didn't get my first for nothing...'

This seemed to push a pin into Hermione's academic mind. Her eyes flashed with intrigue as she sat up and addressed the stranger. 'You went to Oxford?'

'Yeah, years ago. Post-grad stuff, mainly. Impossibly difficult transfiguration and so on...' Arabella grinned a little at Gryffindor's brightest. 'It's amazing what you can get away with when you say you're doing a Metallurgy degree...'

'But that's beside the point,' said Sirius, hurriedly. He wanted to get to the bottom of this. 'Whoever sent it to us was either giving you a push in the right direction...'

'...Or pushing you into the shit.'

'Thanks, Babs. But like she said, we need to treat it with caution. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain...'

'My father always says that.'

'Then he's a sensible bloke, Ron. Magic is a wild, untamed beast. We may have it, but it doesn't mean we understand it. We don't control it, it controls us. It creates the good with the bad. It's much more deep-rooted than most people care to realise. I don't know what to make of it, Harry,' he said, shrugging his shoulders a little as he glanced at the object again. 'But I sure as hell don't trust it. Don't let it out of your sight. But for now I could murder a cup of tea. Where's Remus?'

Arabella frowned, not having noted his absence and craned her neck to look out the patio doors. 'I think he just stepped out for a bit...'

'I'll go put the kettle on,' said Harry suddenly, a surge of energy suddenly grasping his weary frame. Ron and Hermione frowned at his sudden urge to fuse eastern spices. He shrugged it off. 'Then we can plan the next move.'

'Metallurgy?' Ron muttered as Harry left the room. He was shaking his head in a haze of disbelief. 'That isn't even a word...'

***

Remus was sitting on a garden chair in the scatty back yard when Harry came to ask him how he took his beverage. He held his head in his hands, his shoulders sagging, and failed to notice Harry's hesitant approach. Harry stood behind him for a while, uncertain what to say now the tale had been told. But then he didn't need to.

'I knew it was you,' said Remus suddenly, raising his head to turn and stare penetratingly at Harry. 'Back at Charing Cross. You were the kid in the corridor, weren't you?'

Harry hung his head, his mind flooded with a mix of sadness and shame. He hadn't known what had possessed him to approach the elder figure that night, the strangeness of the day overwhelming him into a number of actions he'd never be able to explain. But Remus picked it up.

'You didn't do anything wrong, Harry...' he said solemnly, looking up at the fifteen year old from his twisted position on the bench. 'You didn't put a toe out of line. You're a boy who acts on instinct, and that instinct tends to be horrifically accurate at times. Do you know what I was thinking before you came to talk to me?'

Harry shook his head, a slight prickling feeling emerging deep in his throat. Remus took a deep breath, as if he'd been wanting wanted to say this for a long time.

'That this was it. I thought I'd reached the end of the road. What you've got to understand, Harry, is that by the time you encountered me, everything seemed lost. The rug had been pulled from beneath my feet and I was on the verge of falling. Lily, James and Peter, all dead in a week. Sirius as a traitor seemed as lifeless as the rest. I had nothing. I was perfectly prepared to walk out of that hospital, stride out into the middle of Westminster bridge and just end it all there.'

All Harry could do was stare as he felt a strange swell of emotions in the pit of his stomach. He'd always regarded Remus as one of the strongest people he knew, the tireless professor who could always solve a problem, the reassuring voice in the mist of a crisis, the mediator. What he tended to forget when looking back to the struggle of the third year was that Professor Remus Lupin was a human being too. And one that was certainly more prone to being pushed to the edge.

'There was one thing I always regretted in the madness of that week,' he said suddenly, breaking the stunned silence that had brewed between them. 'I never got the chance to say thank you. Whoever that boy was, the boy with the piercing green eyes who looked so much like James, there is no doubt in my mind he saved my wretched life. Don't lose the faith, he said. And you know what?' he smiled genuinely. 'I didn't.'

He stood up with an air of measured urgency, as he turned to face Harry once again and offered his ageing hand. Harry took it.

'Thank you, Harry,' he almost whispered, clasping his second hand warmly over Harry's and giving it a grateful shake. 'I owe you a life debt...'

Harry smiled sullenly, suddenly remembering the cowardice in Pettigrew's gruesome face, all that time ago back in the shack whilst trying to take in the professor's words.

'And I'm sure, some day, you'll be aware how useful they can prove to be,' he finished, bringing his eyes up to Harry's. 'The wizarding world has owed you a debt for years, but somehow I think that it will never be repaid.'

Harry smiled quietly at the professor but didn't make to reply, merely standing up to answer the scream of the kettle.

***

But somewhere else, someone was screaming too. A blood curdling scream, one of complete devastation, desperation and pure and utter torment. It was the type of inhumane sound that caused people standing by to pluck up their ears, wrench with a pain of their own and try to soothe out the agony that caused it. But deep in another cell, surrounded by the torment in the darkness of her mind, there was no such peace for Claudia.

She shuddered awake. No one around. Time and space seemed completely alien entities to her at that moment, the floor unfamiliar below her aching fingertips as she struggled to her feet, her whole body shivering with a sense of dread and unknown doom. Was it all a dream? No, someone said firmly, it was a choice. She walked slowly, one foot tenderly in front of the other until she reached the bars of her prison, freezing metal poles that encased within their grace her freedom and her sanity. She enclosed a bar in the palm of her hand, feeling its coldness secure itself to her flesh like ice, sticking right there and refusing to let go. Let her go. And then she began to think.

Thinking was always a dangerous occupation. She had spent too much time thinking in the past, in the fresh darkness that engulfed the early eighties for her, being confronted with little else to do as she followed the doctors orders to adjust and recuperate. That pushed her to the edge of madness, having to reconsider every little step she'd made and analyse its purpose. It was all about herself.

She supposed it was all part of the torture, having to decide her own fate. Betray herself, her natural drives, for the life of an unknown stranger, or leave him and everyone who depended on that justice in the cold. Having to stand in front of that man, that half man whose evil protruded the air and pierced her soul itself, and admit which way you'd turn churned her stomach like nothing before it. She shivered with the thought. There was so much she didn't understand. How was she supposed to make a decision when she only had half the facts?

She breathed out again, the air that escaped easily defined from the dungeon draught by its warmth and vibrancy upon her paling skin. It was a shaky sigh, one that personified the doubt that eclipsed her mind at that moment. Everything depended on her. So she listened.

She didn't know what she was listening for, but it was the only prompt she ever relied on. The whistling of the wind was often a muse, whispering ideas into her receptacle brain that she'd long to get down on paper before they evaporated into the unstable air, rejoining the natural forces that caused such rage in inspiration. But the wind was whispering fear. It whisked around the stone walls of whatever abode she was in like a circus trainer whipping the bear, causing moans of anguish what didn't seem possible in the human sphere of ability. She wondered from whom they originated, and felt her stomach churn as it dawned on her that her beloved Lucy was down here to.

Lucy. Poor, confused, frightened Lucy. The sister who just over a year ago had fizzed the bacon in the pan, telling her that wizards belonged in Fairy tales, in best-selling children's books that got almost banned for their apparent pagan values. And now they were living it. Claudia remembered for a moment the vision, the cruel, heartless sight the dark lord bestowed upon her mind of Lucy, her sister's dirty blond hair smeared horribly across her face, pale with the effort of existing in a circumstance she knew nothing about. Her sister was sharing this with her, possibly just metres away. Separated by stone. She was close.

Close. The thought suddenly dawned on her.

'Lucy?'

The loudness of her voice was startling for an instant, in the context of nothing being able to halt its echoes as the sound of her cry gradually filled the empty cavern. She held her breath, not daring to release it again in case she missed it, the smallest of replies, the smallest of mummers, of hope.

Tap.

Her heart ceased to beat for an instant, too aware of every creak to take in the necessity of living. She listened again.

Tap tap tap. Pause. Tap tap tap.

She smiled. A broad, wide grin that wasn't the emblem of unsuitable happiness in the face of such uncertainty, but something of justice. Something of a job well done. Something was going to work. Morse code. She and Lucy had perfected it as kids, their coded conversations through the paper wall between their bedrooms often spreading their conversations well into the night. The darkness had eaten them again. She held out a finger that was encircled with a ring and held it against the metal bar.

Tap tap tap.

They would work it out.

***

'We should tell him.'

'Why? It's got nothing to do with him...'

'It has everything to do with him. We don't know what we're facing here. It could be a couple of evil wannabes or the genuine article himself. I think Dumbledore has a right to know if we're going to jump into the abyss, don't you?'

Sirius growled at his friend, a little annoyed that old age seemed to have robbed him of his sense of danger. Remus was obviously tired, his face still attempting to register the unfamiliar sight that greeted him in the form of his school days chum whilst wearing his current attire. Very painful but exceedingly necessary.

Arabella had done a wonderful job, and the persona was working a treat. Sirius scratched at his snowy white beard thoughtfully as the wrinkles around his eyes became even more so with the remnants of a marauder's grin. He looked at Remus with a sparkle in his eyes. It was the only way you could tell it was Sirius. Sirius in forty year's time, in an aged body wrought with aches and pains that seemed unfairly bestowed upon the wisest souls among us. That was the perfect disguise in the hustle and bustle of Diagon alley.

It was only a pit stop. Arabella said she hadn't been prepared for a full scale reconnaissance, and needed to pick up some stock from the various outlets that packed out the street on that warm summer's day. They'd left Harry, Ron and Hermione back in the Leaky Caldron, and surprisingly to Remus they had all readily agreed, and straight away requested a private room to disguise their presence among the witches and wizards up from the country for a day of magical shopping. They didn't want to be seen. They didn't want to put anyone else in as much danger as they had already put themselves in. Like the age that seemed to hold Sirius in a pincer, it just didn't seem fair. But as soon as Sirius reached he pub in London, he'd asked Arabella to do him this one last favour to allow him to wander freely.

'I still don't like this, Sirius...' muttered Remus as they emerged from Flourish and Blotts. 'I don't like this at all. Anyone could be along here, and you're perfectly content to walk around in broad daylight...'

Sirius sighed with a hint of annoyance. He looked at Remus with some degree of clarity. 'What is the point of being free if I had to spend it hiding from the world? ' he spat a little bitterly. 'You tell me that, Moony. Did I spend twelve years gazing at four stone walls just to emerge and hide from the sun itself? It's not going to burn, not just this once. And it's Grandad to you, OK?'

Remus grinned back. How could he argue with that? He knew exactly how Sirius felt. To be trapped and unable to emerge as yourself into the world was a common feeling he held in his heart. Every full moon in fact. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at a steady attention at the mere idea of what the milky shadow could do to him. He sighed wearily in reply.

'I wonder where Arabella's got to?' he mused, kicking a stone along the street like a little lost school boy, hands deep in the pockets of his tattered robes. 'I thought she only needed a few bits and pieces...'

Sirius raised a grey and wispy eyebrow, eyeing his companion's concern with a dash of intrigue. 'And you're so bothered because?...'

Remus frowned at him, realising what he was getting at. He swiftly changed the subject. 'I just don't want to stay down here longer than we have to. Every second here is another minute lost on Claudia, and one more Harry is in target range.'

This seemed to sober Sirius up some as his face dissolved into a mass of grey wrinkles again. It always haunted Remus the way his friends face could change as suddenly as the wind, hardened against the terrors of the world yet still able to grin in the face of absurdity. But right now he was showing his serious side, a man with a sparkle of his eye that could go from mischief to vengeance quicker than a house elf would serve you tea and biscuits. The sparkle became almost malicious, chilling Remus a little as he stared into his friend's wrinkled face. This wasn't the Sirius he went to school with. But he knew that the little boy with the never-ending bag of adventures was still occasionally allowed to rule the roost.

'We'd better get back to the pub,' he said, surrendering to responsibility. 'Check on the others. Arabella will be with us soon enough.' Then he paused, swallowed with a mixture of apprehension and fear, and muttered 'Then we can get Claudia out of there.'

Remus didn't even attempt to agree. Heads down, they walked (or in Sirius' case in the old man's body, shuffled) down the small and crowded alley, avoiding all eye contact as they passed the establishments that seemed untouched by age from their youth: Madam Malkin's, the Owl emporium, Gringotts and the old hag's apothecary. But they failed to notice the one pair of eyes they possibly should have been most wary of. They had both felt its gaze as children, and had like every child that passed before this individual felt a slight unease with his pale, moon-like stare, seeing into the very soul of the being and then finding its perfect match. But on this occasion, his stare just passed them by. And this individual cleared his throat, finished fluffing up the satin purple cushion, replaced the wand on it with a father's tender care and reached for his can of floo powder.

***

Lucy had been tapping in reply for what felt like days. She couldn't be sure that it was Claudia. She couldn't be sure whether she knew exactly what she was saying to the tapper, the difference between save our souls and sausages for dinner seeming so subtle in the darkness of the cells. But she had a feeling. There was some underlying tone in the taps, something that depended on their sound in a way she could never comprehend. She felt almost reckless, flouting her talent for translating the sounds into words right in front of a captor who could snap her body in half without a second thought. It was a power.

Damien hadn't come in yet. He always left her alone at night, although his departures had been growing steadily later as the time wore painfully on. Some small part of the young man seemed to despise her sight, his lip occasionally snarling in distaste at her feeble state as if it were the proper way to behave. But then she would meet his eye again and the façade would fade into the dark, and he would talk to her. This had come as something of a revelation, but she welcomed the sound nevertheless. It wasn't ever about anything in particular, as he was always careful to avoid any questions about his life outside the fort. Lucy couldn't even imagine one. But Damien was young, he must have been. His shoulders failed to give the more sturdy impression that the elders came to rely upon, their broadness portraying a strength that was supposed to scare her into submission. He would try, but along with the snarl, a little more than eye contact would melt it away like butter in the sun. He seemed young, he seemed impressionable. But something nipped at Lucy that Damien was able to make up his own mind.

She was tapping anyway. She was using the face of her watch, useless in the dark, to produce a sound slightly higher in pitch to the one she longed to hear in return. She was able to use her spare hand to muffle its ring for short or long tones, each sequence of taps making up a precious letter in their codified language of hope. Something so childish in youth being so useful in age. So far it had proved invaluable.

'What are you doing?'

She hadn't even noticed Damien enter, for now he stood and pressed his face almost against the bar she was tapping, his breath hot and likely sticky against her frozen, well-worn hand. His voice was blank, a little like his expression which she still had no idea about in its shelter of black hood. It put her more on edge that she didn't know whether he was outraged or just plain curious. He could have been both. But he wasn't going to give anything away.

But the taps did. She could hear the reply, a little frantic, tap tap tap, Claudia desperately asserting why Lucy had been cut off in mid sentence. Are you ok? What's happening down there? Are you safe?

Damien was listening. His eyes narrowed a little, the chips of ice become like icicles in the dark, concentrating with an expression that could have been just plain interest or murder. He was listening, and muttering dangerously under his breath. Lucy instantly backed off, covering up her watch with a tattered sleeve as she looked at him with dismay, with uncertainty of his reaction. She had learnt already that he wasn't a man of many words, those that were spoken only a recent revelation and very carefully chosen and phrased. He never said anything without some form of meaning.

'What are you doing, Lucy?' he repeated softly into the dark air.

'Nothing,' she replied shortly, nervously, not wishing to reveal any more than she already had. But he hadn't taken any notice. He was watching her with more intensity than anyone had in her life. Her scolding mother, her sister, not even her beloved Paul had greeted her with such a flash of indescribable emotion sweeping across their eyes. It unnerved her even more. Especially as he stepped forward and decisively opened the cell door.

'Get up,' he barked.

Lucy, despite her apparent lack of energy, bounded straight onto her feet, wavering a little as they seemed so unused to the weight after days on the dungeon floor. This didn't deter Damien one little bit. He was under his own instruction.

'Come with me.'

She didn't dare to argue. She felt herself stumble as she followed the dark shape out of the cell. It felt odd to move her limbs, which in their own mind had submitted to being stationary in the cell and were beginning to rather enjoy it. They didn't appreciate sharp, sudden movement of her shifting her weight away from the isolation of the room. She followed. It occurred to her that Damien didn't even walk like a man: He remained slightly slouched, uncertain of his movements as they walked along the corridor, flanked by her chains as they chinked with every step. Damien was almost timid.

'In here,' he said, opening another large oak door that looked into the abyss of metal bars beyond. He flicked his wand and the bars evaporated. But Lucy didn't move. 'Five minutes, no more. You're not worth more than that.'

He shut the door behind him, but Lucy was certain that he was still standing in the corridor outside. She sighed heavily. The room seemed darker possibly than her own, as if there was no need for light. Was this some form of punishment? He hadn't lashed out at her for what she was doing. She wasn't even sure if he knew what she'd been up to. The purpose of the exercise seemed entirely lost in the plot. What was he up to? The answer came soon enough.

'Who's there?'

She could feel her nerves screaming with delight. 'Claudia?'

'Right here, sis. I'm all right...'

And as Lucy fumbled in the dark and brought her into a hug, she knew that somehow too.

***

A head appeared silently in the fireplace.

'Yes?'

'I've just seen them, sir. Out in the alley, Mr Black in disguise walking with the werewolf.'

'And?'

'They were going back to the inn. They were going to meet the boy.'

'Harry's with them?'

'I'm certain.'

The listener paused and appeared to be thinking hard. He hadn't expected this.

'Any idea where they were heading?'

'I'm afraid not, sir. I just thought you should be aware.'

'And on that count you would be correct. Thank you.'

The informer's head disappeared from the fire, and the listener fell back in his chair to ponder. This gave the whole outing a very different angle indeed.

***

'So what's the plan?'

It was an innocent enough question. Harry, looking at Sirius with a mixture of pride and expectation, seemed to his Godfather still as young as the day he'd picked him from the ruins of his home. That day so long ago when he placed the babe in Hagrid's arms was the first in the rest of another life. He hoped that the next dawn would be the first of his own.

'I'm not entirely sure...' he replied, a little shamed-faced through the wispy grey beard and liver spotted cheeks. He was still heavily disguised. 'But I don't like just sitting around here. And what are you doing there, Babs?'

'Well, if you two weren't so loud maybe I'd pick up a signal!' was the angry reply. Yet again, Arabella the ex-Auror was bent over one of her many devices, fiddling with checks and balances and trying to make sense of something or other. She was looking more frustrated by the second, occasionally sniffing the air suspiciously as if she were seeking a very bad smell. Hermione, however, was letting her cat like curiosity get the better of her.

'What are you trying to do?' she quizzed the older woman.

'When we came up here, we had a bit of a job tracking you down. We were following your Veneficium trail, see. You know, your magic track?' she addressed the look of bafflement on the faces of the boys, but carried on nevertheless. 'The reason we were able to pick out where you ended up after you got yourselves thoroughly lost on the estate...'

Ron, on the other side of the private parlour in the depths of the Leaky Caldron, blushed furiously at the memory of his less that adequate navigating skills. He turned away and continued to help clear up the glasses of Butterbeer with Remus. 'Was that there was another trail with you. It went from Rochester to here, and that's why I was willing to make the pit stop. It was really, rally faint. Purple - that's a rare trace of Magic to produce, you need to understand - and after listening to your little saga, I think I can guess the source.'

'Claudia...' said Harry immediately.

'Got it in one,' Arabella replied grimly. 'No one is really sure what curse Wormtail used back in 1981. Totally off the registers, probably something new You-Know-Who hadn't quite finished cooking up. May have had some transferring qualities. She can't be all Muggle, that's for sure.'

'What makes you say that?' Hermione asked instantly, a frown of unsettling naivety taking up residence across her brow. Arabella beckoned her toward another instrument she had out on the bar.

'A Muggle detector,' she said simply. 'If there wasn't a trace of magic in the air back at Claudia's to start with, then it would've been making more noise than a seagull in season.'

Hermione then looked at the detector intensely, as if she expected it to burst into song at the will of her eye. Not a chance. The whistle shaped ornament stood still, its silver casing catching the sun and causing her to squint. She acknowledged defeat and sat back down.

But Harry was remembering something. He narrowed his eyes against the memory and watched the relative stranger out of the thin slits his eyelids created. She way she was fussing over the instruments on the beer table was so familiar. She was like an old lady with her pets, all groomed to perfection and as loved as a prodigal child. Strange. The woman, with her long brown hair tinged with the occasional silver glint, just seemed so out if context sitting in the Leaky Caldron with her Auror instruments, handling them like a professional. Harry was surprised the shadow of suspicion hadn't cast itself across him before. He knew Arabella. He just didn't know where from. However, she caught his gaze and questioned it.

'Something up?'

He looked away, suddenly ashamed. 'I just...' he stopped and composed himself, seeing how irrelevant his hunch was in the view of the dire situation. 'Nothing to bother about,' he said quickly and quietly. 'I just get this feeling I've met you before... '

For a reason Harry didn't understand, Sirius, Remus and Arabella suddenly exchanged a series of looks that made him feel even more uncomfortable than he already was. She cleared her throat with a sense of unease.

'That's because you have,' she said, almost in a whisper even though there was nobody in the room to overhear the conversation. He frowned, confused for a moment, but then she removed her wand and tapped herself once on the nose.

Ron almost fell backwards out of his seat, and Harry perfectly understood his reasoning. For as Arabella lowered her wand, she was suddenly basked in an aura of golden light, which appeared to have the worst effect possible on her previously flawless figure. Wrinkles began to gather around her eyes, instantly adding twenty years to her delightful glowing face. The grey in her hair suddenly engulfed her roots, spreading across her scalp like the paintbrush of God, as she seemed to shrink a couple of inches and hunch slight over the table which the bent back she now developed. Her eyes faded a little into delicate slates of grey. She yawned.

'Mrs...' Harry gasped. 'Mrs Figg?'

She grinned toothlessly, a hint of guilt in her voice as she spoke in that familiar, raspy croak. 'The one and only. Sorry,' she immediately said as she tapped her nose again and regained her much more appealing appearance. 'I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. I wanted to Harry, I so wanted to. But I was following orders.'

Ron gaped even more. 'Orders?'

'Orders Ron. I'm an ex-Auror. To most of the magical world anyway. I was working for the Order. They had to keep a watchful eye on the boy who lived, didn't they?'

'The Order?...' Hermione questioned. But she was interrupted by a screech of one of the many machines that littered the table.

'Aha!' yelled Arabella in delight. 'I've got it! Fifteen clicks due northeast. Somewhere in East Anglia I'd say.'

'That's our cue,' said Sirius, standing up quickly and tapping his own nose, regaining his more appeasing form but swiftly covering it up with his dark, bulky helmet. 'We've got a damsel in distress to save!'

Arabella rolled her eyes dramatically. 'You'd think he was descended form Lancelot, the way he goes on...'

'Fourteen times great grandfather once removed actually,' he said proudly, pushing out his chest like a boastful five-year-old. The look Remus gave him however soon deflated it. He continued to mutter. 'Come on.'

Harry didn't even bother to finish his drink, just pausing long enough to flatten his hair down across his scar to avoid unwanted looks from the visitors of the pub. They strode out into the unjust sunshine of the muggle street ahead where Sirius had parked the bike. After a quickly glance, he zapped off the clamps the police so thoughtfully placed on the wheels and everybody clambered in. Sirius had been on a double yellow line, after all. He and Arabella sat on the now roaring machine and everyone else miraculously fitted into the sidecar. After all he'd heard today, Harry thought nothing else could ever possibly surprise him. He was too dazed to fully comprehend it all. He sighed and remembered with a smile. He was dealing with the marauders after all. Mischief and mayhem would never leave them alone.

***

Lucy and Claudia bathed in each other's relief for as long as each of them possibly could. Claudia wasn't sure who was comforting who, both overcome with large, inaudible sobs that were created upon their reunion. She didn't care that the room was cold. She didn't care that all her available energy was gradually seeping out of her legs and onto the frozen floor below her. She didn't care that she didn't honestly think she'd survive to smell the dawn. Lucy was safe, breathing and alive. She hadn't killed her yet. She didn't deserve all this, she was a pawn. It wasn't her battle. Claudia felt it was her own.

'I'm sorry, Claudia...' Lucy was muttering between desperate breaths. 'I'm so sorry...'

'What about?' Claudia replied, one hand grasping a handful of Lucy's locks just to assure her that she really was there. 'It's my fault we're in this mess...'

'I'm sorry I never believed you...' she continued, looking sadly into Claudia's ice-like irises and getting the usual blank stare back. 'All the stuff about wizards and wands... It's all true, isn't it?' Claudia nodded without a hint of superiority, merely acknowledgement in the acceptance of the truth. Lucy merely sobbed even more. 'Why didn't I believe you? You seriously had all this going round your head? For fourteen years?' she gasped, almost as if Claudia had started telling her anew, and then hung her head in shame. 'I should have listened to you.'

'Don't be stupid!' Claudia cried in return, hugging Lucy even closer. 'It wasn't exactly a believable trail of events, was it? You were right. It did belong in a fairy tale. And I just wished it had stayed there. If it weren't for me, we wouldn't be in this mess. I'm the one to blame, Lucy. I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm wanted property.'

'How?' Lucy whispered, clearly in distress at the idea of her sister in mortal danger. So she explained. For the first time in her life, she told her sister everything. The dog in the quad, what she saw of Wormtail, the hospital visit that had been a blur but since Harry's prompt had come back in glorious colour. And how that meant she was the most important person in the world to a certain, magical fifteen year old boy. His last stab at happiness. His last hope. And Sirius'.

'There's lots of it that I don't understand...' she said, her voice now hoarse from lengthy explanation. 'But I want to. I really want to. There is a whole new world out there, and if I can do anything to prevent it falling into the hands of that, that thing....' She shuddered, finding herself afraid of uttering the name herself. 'Then I'll do it. I'd do it a million times over.'

'Be thankful, Claudia,' said Lucy, quietly. She was trembling too. 'At least we're still alive to have that option. At least we have the choice.'

The blind woman sighed, blinking heavily in the dark. 'At least I haven't the ability to cry.'

Both then jumped back away from each other as the door to the room swung open. Claudia was vaguely aware of the warmth of light now sweeping over her chilly legs, the burst of life it seemed to provide her limbs being as sudden and unexpected as any electric shock. She sat stiffly, afraid. But Lucy instantly relaxed.

'It's OK...' she said soothingly, 'It's only Damien. He's...' she paused, thinking of a definition. She settled on one. 'he's capital a friend.'

If Damien was surprised by this statement, he showed no sign of it. Instead he stood like an impressive shadow in the doorway, his almost gangly figure being amplified many, many times in the light and seeming almost intimidating. But Lucy had seen the gaze underneath the hood. She knew there was more to it than that. And he knew it too.

'Come on,' he said abruptly, something mischievous almost underlying his false, harsh tones. Lucy staggered to her feet while Damien addressed her sister.

'Don't worry,' he said with a surprising amount of calm. 'You'll see her soon enough.'

And with that, he took Lucy firmly by the elbow and led her to the corridor outside, the heavy, oak door slamming firmly shut, cutting Claudia off from the invisible world for good. Lucy let out another muffled sob.

She could've sworn they were walking slower than before, each step slowly measured as if Damien wanted her to be far more aware of them. He seemed a little scared himself, so she felt through the grip he had on her shackled arm. It was trembling. He wasn't any more than a little boy, given the responsibilities of a man. Entrusted with her life. He suddenly pulled her up to a stop and took out his wand, his pale slate like eyes never once leaving her face.

'Oops,' he said, tapping the shackles once with the white tipped rod and allowing then to disintegrate around her wrists. 'Didn't mean for that to happen. I'm not to be trusted with my magic yet, it seems...'

She froze, unable to pass any form of judgement on his actions. What was he playing at? He simply smiled slyly in return, scratching his chin absently with his other hand. She continued to stare as he leant in closer to her puzzled and snow-like face.

'She's in the thirteenth door on the right. Gargoyle knocker. Password's Amadaus.'

And he made to slink back down the corridor and simply leave her to it. But Lucy had learnt in the past few hours to certainly not leave anything to chance. She wanted answers. She grabbed Damien's sleeve and tugged him back towards her.

'Why are you doing this?' she hissed quietly without a hint of anger in her voice. More like concern. 'I thought you were one of them. I thought you were my guard. Won't you get in trouble if...'

'Who says that was my role?' he muttered, arching an eyebrow with an air of mystery that made her want to thump him. 'I might have just been doing that for kicks. Go on, get out of here.'

And he turned swiftly on his foot and disappeared into the dark depths of the opposite corridor, leaving Lucy to it. She didn't have time to take it all in. She began to breathe again.

'Thank you.'

Then she ducked skilfully out of sight. She had her own mission to complete. And she wasn't going to let her sister down.

***

To be continued...