A Promise Worth Keeping

Chapter Seventeen

Harry stared up into the sneering face above him, and then glanced at the heavy, thickset man busy chaining Sirius' hands together. Sirius looked horribly pale, but the man wouldn't bother to do that if he were dead, would he?

"What? Nothing to say, hmm?" the tall, blonde man asked, reaching forwards and, pushing Harry's chin up with the tip of his wand, forced him to look him in the eyes.

Harry stared at the man, determined not to let him see just how scared he really was.

Another man came through from the kitchen. "Looks like we got here just in time, Malfoy. Any later and they'd have scarpered."

"Fortune smiles on us, then," the man called Malfoy drawled. He glanced out of the kitchen window. "Right, let's go, it's some distance away."

"It would help if you told us where we were going, Malfoy," said the man who had brought Harry through from the kitchen.

"I doubt the name would mean anything to you, Macnair. Just follow me." Malfoy grabbed Harry by the wrist, squeezing his bones in a painful grip. Despite himself Harry winced. The man noticed and smiled.

Harry was pulled outside. Malfoy put out his other hand, summoning a broomstick that looked sleeker and more powerful than any magic broom Harry had ever seen in a picture. He jumped onto it and pulled Harry up in front of him. "Better sit still, Potter, or you might fall off," he warned. However it seemed he had no intention of letting Harry fall, as he clasped him firmly round the waist, holding him still.

Despite being a prisoner, and not knowing what was going to happen apart from that it was unlikely to be good, Harry found his first broom ride exhilarating beyond anything. It was over all too soon, and just as the first spots of rain fell onto the rapidly thawing snow, they landed on the edge of a patch of scrubby woodland.

Malfoy's henchmen had followed on their own brooms, and Harry wasn't sure if he was relieved that they had brought Sirius or not, as they clearly didn't mean him any good either. They had put some spell on him and then pulled him behind them as if he was on a trailer. The men looked mystified at their location, but the tall wizard smiled to himself and said, "This way. We might as well have a look at it."

He set off through the trees, gripping Harry's arm painfully by the wrist once more and walking so quickly that the boy nearly had to run to keep up. The trees were birch mostly and their white trunks gleamed in the damp air, bare branches thrusting up into the grey sky. The wind had dropped completely and there wasn't a sound, apart from the noises of breathing and walking they made. They followed a path that ran straight, through the long, brown grass and bracken appearing through the snow melting underneath the trees. Then just ahead, Harry could see the trees open out into a clearing, and they walked out into the centre of a perfect circle about twenty metres across.

Harry had seen pictures of Stonehenge at school, of course, but this was different. It somehow looked older and the stones were smaller. They weren't cut or shaped in any way but they followed a pattern. The path had entered the circle between the two smallest stones, which were about the same height as Harry. But they got larger until, exactly opposite the entrance Harry supposed it was, two enormous upright stones flanked another resting on its length between them. Harry shot a glance up at Malfoy. What on earth were they doing here, he wondered.

Malfoy noticed the glance and smiled at him. It wasn't a smile Harry liked at all and there was no amusement in it.

It seemed the henchmen didn't know why they were there either. "All right, Malfoy, aren't you going to tell us what's going on?" one of them asked, as the others dumped Sirius' unconscious body on the ground beside one of the stones, giving him a quite unnecessary kick as they did so.

Malfoy considered for a moment, before shaking his head. "No, I don't think I will." Then as Macnair scowled at him, he continued, "At this stage you really don't need to know."

The three men looked at one another. "Oh come on, Malfoy, stop playing games," one of the others said. "All I want to know is how long this is bloody well going to take!"

Malfoy sighed and letting go of Harry's wrist, walked towards the three men. "That depends. We could finish on Tuesday or it could take until next Monday…" Harry heard him say, then his voice dropped as he approached them. Harry strained to catch what the wizard was saying but couldn't make out his words. From the way he could see the henchmen looking at him and over at Sirius, they seemed to find it quite amusing whatever it was. The three henchmen somehow reminded Harry of Dudley's gang the way they trotted after the tall wizard. Bigger and meaner of course, and Harry couldn't really imagine anyone who looked less like Dudley than the tall blond wizard, but there was something in the way they interacted that was the same.

"What about him?" One of them asked in a louder voice, pointing at Sirius.

Malfoy laughed. "Really, Crabbe. We won't need him until Tuesday, so I'm hardly going to be stupid enough to wake him up and give the only person who's ever escaped from Azkaban two days to plot how he's going to get away from us, now am I?"

It took Harry a moment to realise that Tuesday was Christmas Day. He did some quick counting. That meant next Monday was New Year's Eve. Why was that important? He supposed, gloomily that he would find out.

The men seemed to have come to the end of their discussion as two of them walked off out of the stone circle, and Malfoy turned back to Harry. "Come here!" he ordered.

Harry stayed where he was, a small act of defiance that he knew he would probably regret. He was right.

Malfoy smiled nastily. "How touching. I expect you would have been in Gryffindor. Pity we'll never find out." Then he muttered something under his breath and for a second Harry felt a flash of pain that was beyond anything he had ever known, and which left him slumped to his knees, shaking violently.

"Make me repeat myself again, Potter and that will last a lot longer than a second. Now come here!"

Considerably chastened, Harry climbed unsteadily to his feet and walked over to where the man was waiting. He had to exert all the will power he had to stop himself flinching when Malfoy reached out and grabbed his arm once more.

The wizard didn't say anything, but dragged Harry, unresisting, out of the circle. He walked for a few minutes until through the trees, Harry saw what looked like an ordinary, if quite large, tent. He tried to picture Malfoy with a family of sneering blonde look-alikes on a campsite and failed miserably. A glimpse of the wizard's expression told him then that it wasn't his tent.

"Is that the best you could do, Goyle?" he asked the other thickset man.

"Oh don't worry, it's quite different inside, Malfoy."

"So I should hope, but that's not what I meant. It's too conspicuous. Muggle repelling charms need something to work with. Put some bushes around it or something."

Goyle looked slightly mutinous. "I'll see what I can find."

"You do that." Malfoy turned to Harry who had been watching this exchange with interest. "Right, Potter, inside!"

Harry felt there was clearly something he was missing, as a tent didn't seem to be a terribly secure place to keep him. As he walked towards it, he saw that it was the sort of tent that would be ridiculously easy to get out of. Unless they tied him up, or knocked him out like they had with Sirius.

He ducked under the tent flap and stopped dead. He appeared to have stepped through a Gothic archway, that when he reached out and touched it was certainly made of stone. Guttering torches lined the walls of a corridor stretching ahead of him. It was like that time machine thing in that silly programme Dudley used to watch, what was it, Dr Who. Bigger inside that it was on the outside. In other circumstances Harry would have thought it cool beyond anything, but now he merely wondered what horrible things lay behind the iron bound doors he could see.

"Oof!" Harry exclaimed as Malfoy walked into him.

"Get a move on, Potter!" A hand gave him a push in the small of his back and he stumbled forwards, keeping himself on his feet with difficulty.

Malfoy strode inside and looked around. "Oh good grief! How original." He walked up to one of the doors, which Harry noticed had a large, iron key in the lock. Unlocking it, the wizard flung open the door and looked inside. He smiled at Harry. "This'll do nicely for you, Potter. In you go." He gestured imperatively with his wand and Harry walked up to the door.

As he walked inside, the door banged shut with a horrible clang. It was pretty much what he expected from the corridor - bare stone walls, a guttering torch, stone flagstones on the floor, a small barred window high up in one wall. It even had a completely disgusting hole in one corner that he supposed he would have to use eventually. He sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall and sniffed, hard. He really didn't know what to do now. At least in St Brutus and at Hogwarts, the people had pretended to care, but these people…

Suddenly the door was flung open again and Harry jumped, quickly wiping his eyes. It was one of the henchmen, and he had Sirius with him. He let him fall to the floor opposite Harry, then chained him by one ankle to a large iron ring fixed into the wall. "Just to be on the safe side," Harry heard him mutter. As he turned to leave he glanced at Harry and gave a nasty smile, but didn't say anything.

As soon as the wizard had gone, Harry scooted over to where his godfather was lying. He still looked dreadfully pale, Harry thought, and he watched for him breathing, but for a long moment couldn't see anything. He reached out and touched one of Sirius' hands, and it felt horribly cold and clammy. But he couldn't be dead, the wizard, Malfoy had said as much. Then Sirius took a breath, but there was another long pause before he took another one. Harry sat down beside him and shook Sirius by one shoulder. "Sirius! Wake up!" he said, trying to keep his voice down. There was no response, so he tried again. Then it occurred to him that if magic had knocked Sirius out, then magic might be needed to wake him up. Harry shivered; he didn't even know where to begin. It was cold in the cell and he shivered again. Instinctively he snuggled closer to Sirius, remembering what his godfather had done for him after the blizzard. After a while, Harry started to talk to him, and found himself telling Sirius about how his Uncle was always yelling at him to get his hair cut and how it always grew back immediately, and about the time his teacher's wig had turned blue. "I suppose that was me all the time," he said after a pause. "I wish I could do something useful like wake you up though."

Hours later, and Harry knew it had to be hours as the little patch of grey sky he could see through the barred window had turned dark, the door was flung open again. One of the other henchmen dumped a plate on the floor by the door. Harry stared at it listlessly when the man had gone. He wasn't hungry. Eventually he slept.

The next morning, Harry was woken by Macnair opening the door. He seemed to have brought some breakfast, but when he saw the untouched plate from the previous night he grinned and shut the door again without leaving whatever it was he carried. Harry didn't care; even though his stomach now felt hollow and empty he couldn't have brought himself to eat. But then Macnair came back, grinning. "Out you come, Potter," he said.

Slowly, Harry got to his feet, suddenly wondering if he could make a break for it, if they were going outside. No such luck, as Macnair firmly grasped his arm and steered him towards one of the other doors.

Harry blinked in surprise as he crossed the threshold. Against one wall was a large fireplace with a blazing fire. Sitting at one end of a long dining table in the middle of the room was Malfoy, eating breakfast. The other two henchmen were sitting at the other end having their own. The wizard smiled unpleasantly as he saw Harry and picked up his wand. He tapped the place setting next to him and said, "Sit."

Harry sat. Malfoy tapped the table again and a large bowl of what looked like porridge appeared. "Eat," he ordered. "And can I remind you what will happen if I have to repeat myself?"

Harry picked up a spoon, but he had to force himself to eat. It wasn't that the porridge was bad; it was just that he was horribly scared and the jumpy feeling in his stomach made him feel sick. He ate about half the bowl, before he felt the next mouthful would really make him gag. He put down his spoon and glanced up at Malfoy. The wizard looked at the bowl, but didn't say anything to him. Instead he spoke to one of the henchmen. "Goyle, take him back."

Goyle rolled his eyes, but stood up, gesturing with his wand. Harry pushed back his chair and followed him out of the room. Daylight streamed in through the open doorway, but it struggled to get round Goyle who was standing, blocking the corridor. No way out, then.

The day dragged by. Once more, Harry thought about the magic that was keeping Sirius unconscious. He didn't think you always needed a wand, as he certainly hadn't had one when he'd hurt Uncle Vernon, or when he'd escaped from St Brutus, but he simply couldn't figure out how he'd done it in either case. He tried staring hard at Sirius' body, willing him to wake up, but nothing happened, and he gave up.

Eventually, the patch of sky he could see darkened. Some time later, Goyle opened the door again and gestured at him with his wand. "Right, Potter, out you come."

Harry stood up, and followed the man back into the dining room. There was another wizard he hadn't seen before, standing before the fire. Harry thought he looked rather pale and ill, with feverish eyes. "Here we are at last, in the flesh," he commented to Malfoy, who was, once again sitting at the head of the table. "I hope this is worth it."

Malfoy smiled. "There has been so much er, interest from certain quarters that Karkaroff has agreed to hold an auction."

"Really? In that case, I take it back."

Harry wondered what they were talking about, and he didn't like the way this other man was looking at him. Once again he was forced to sit and eat. Fortunately it was only a bowl of soup. Anything else and he was sure he would have been sick. When he'd finished Malfoy commented, "You know, Potter, somehow I doubt that Father Christmas is going to pay you a visit tonight."

The other men all sniggered. Harry ignored them, just stared at his plate until he was taken back to the dungeon. It was hardly as if Christmas had ever been particularly special for him anyway. But as he sat down beside Sirius once more, he couldn't stop a tear trickling down his face. He'd really been looking forward to spending Christmas with Sirius. Then despite himself he smiled. He was doing just that, in a way, it simply wasn't quite how he'd pictured it.

The next day passed in pretty much the same way, until the patch of sky started to darken. Then Crabbe and Goyle came in and took Sirius away, and Harry felt utterly bereft.

---

With a sudden gasp, Sirius came to, eyes blinking rapidly in bright torchlight and head thumping in pain. A second later he had realised that while he was sitting in a carved wooden armchair, his hands were chained together, and he was shackled by the ankles to the chair legs.

"Drink this," a voice ordered.

Sirius looked up. A thickset man he couldn't immediately place, was holding out a large jug of some clear liquid. He stared at it suspiciously and the man said, "It's water, you moron."

Sirius cautiously took the jug, flicking his eyes round the room. He registered the sneering features of someone he took a second or two to recognise as Lucius Malfoy, sitting at the other end of the long table. Beside him, that worm Avery was lounging. He remembered him. Several other thugs stood around a room that looked as if it was located in some medieval castle. Sirius couldn't see any sign of Harry. He shrugged and drained the jug. Slowly the headache began to disappear.

"The infamous Sirius Black," Malfoy sneered. "Fallen Gryffindor and er, Animagus so I'm told."

Sirius ignored this. "What have you done with the boy?" he demanded.

"Potter is quite safe, for the moment. He is after all, as I'm sure you're aware, extremely valuable."

Sirius' initial relief at this disappeared immediately and he pulled against the chains restraining him. "Valuable! What do you mean? " he snarled.

"Simply that in certain quarters the boy has value. Of course that value is higher if he's dead…"

"NO!" Sirius struggled frantically, but the chains were quite secure.

Malfoy pretended to look disappointed. "You know, I had almost begun to think I had been wrong about you. But now that I come to think about it, this way is so much more… poetic."

Sirius' blood ran cold at this statement. "What do you mean?"

Malfoy smiled. "Well, you are the boy's godfather after all, aren't you?"

"So?"

"I thought you were supposed to be clever," Malfoy complained. "Azkaban must have completely scrambled your brains. Haven't you worked it out yet? It's not the boy's body that's valuable, it's his blood and the er, process of acquisition."

Sirius felt nauseated. "What are you going to do, gralloch him like a stag?"

Malfoy smiled again. "Oh I thought you would do that for me," he drawled.

What! Sirius felt a lurch of fear in his guts as he shook his head. "You're mad," he told Malfoy with utter conviction. "I'd never do that."

"Oh you will, and you'll do it willingly. Not gralloching of course, I've something far more artistic in mind. You'll either do it, or you'll be dead." Malfoy's eyes gleamed in amusement.

Sirius snorted in disbelief. "You really think I care about that? Go ahead, kill me."

"And then I'll kill the boy myself anyway. It won't be quite as effective of course. There's something very powerful in filicide even if it is symbolic. Naturally I'll be bound to take my disappointment at losing a few thousand galleons off the value of the er, product out on you."

Sirius snorted contemptuously. Malfoy took a sip from the goblet of wine sitting on the table and looked at him thoughtfully before continuing, as if re-considering his strategy, "Have you heard," he paused, "Oh I don't suppose you have, that Fudge has signed the authorisation that as soon as you're re-captured you're to be given the Kiss?"

Sirius swallowed, his throat suddenly dry again. This sounded horribly true. "No," he croaked, "I hadn't." He knew what was coming now.

Malfoy smiled again. "Refuse to do as I ask and I will ensure that the last thing the boy sees before I kill him, is you receiving the Kiss." He sat back in his chair and watched the effect of his statement on Sirius.

"Do this small task for me willingly, on the other hand, and you get to live with your soul intact."

"Really?" Sirius struggled to keep from laughing hysterically at the other man. "You think that would weigh with me at all?"

Malfoy shrugged. "No, I don't suppose I do, but it's a nice touch don't you think?"

The other men sniggered.

Sirius stared in horror at the man sitting at the other end of the table. What a dilemma! Refuse outright to co-operate and immediately condemn Harry or go along with it in the faintest of hopes that he'd be able to save the boy when the time came. He was realistic enough to know that it was a very faint hope indeed. At best he would be able to make it quick. A cold rage surged through him, beating down his first impulse to tell Malfoy to go to hell. He came to the conclusion he was sure Malfoy expected him to come to, and said, "You hardly leave me any choice."

"I know. Good isn't it?" Malfoy glanced at a grandfather clock standing against the far wall. "Time for something to eat first. It's cold outside, tonight." Then he conjured a couple of plates of sandwiches. "Avery, pass him the plate," he ordered. "Try one of the roast beef ones. The horseradish is excellent."

"Somehow I find I'm not hungry," Sirius said through gritted teeth.

Malfoy shrugged. "No? More for us then." It didn't take long for the plates to be emptied, and Malfoy smiled benevolently round at them all. "Time to go, I think. Goyle get the boy and then bring him outside." He nodded to the other two thugs and said, "Macnair, Crabbe, cover him." Then with a wave of his wand he released Sirius from the shackles chaining his ankles to the chair.

As they stood up, he said to Sirius, "And, Black in case you're thinking about trying any doggy tricks, or Apparating away, those manacles will stop you."

Sirius knew that - he'd already tried to transform.

"Come on! Move!" snapped Macnair, grabbing one of his arms. Crabbe took hold of his other arm and they marched him outside. As they walked through the wood and out into the clearing, Sirius tried to glean as much information from his surroundings as possible. At least there seemed to be plenty of cover…

When they got to the circle the two thugs simply flung him to the ground in front of the three stones at the head of the circle. The middle one, on its side was about three feet high and at least four times as long. It was a big lump of rock. Picking himself up, he looked more closely at the stone. In the moonlight he could see that at one end, it was dotted with a pattern of small depressions carved into it. Several of them were filled with tiny pools of melted snow. He felt sick. It wasn't hard to see what Malfoy would want him to do with some of Harry's blood.

"Sirius!"

Whirling round, Sirius saw Harry struggling in the grip of one of the thugs. To his surprise the boy broke free, or perhaps the man let him go, and Harry ran towards him, and hugged him round the middle. "I thought they'd killed you," Harry mumbled.

Sirius wondered if he should wish they had. He put a hand on Harry's shoulder and whispered, "I'm sorry, Harry, so sorry."

Harry pulled back and looked up at him a puzzled expression on his face. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Sirius could barely make out the boy's face, his eyes had teared up so much and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision.

"Sirius?" Harry was starting to look very scared indeed.

Sirius tried to smile at him, but it didn't really work. Instead he just took the boy's hand and squeezed it, trying to give a reassurance he didn't feel himself. He looked round. Malfoy's goons were standing in a semicircle around them. The only good thing was that Avery, the weakest of them, was standing at the end of the semicircle.

Trying to keep his voice steady, he asked, "So Malfoy, what now?"

"Sit him on the centre stone."

As he helped Harry, who was now looking more scared than ever, to scramble up, Sirius said under his breath, "Harry, if I yell, or bark then you move! Try and get into the trees and hide." Harry didn't say anything, but nodded to show that he had understood.

"There's a knife on the stone." Malfoy told him, walking outside the circle and standing on the other side of the group of three stones. "Pick it up."

The knife was an ancient looking ceremonial bronze dagger, encrusted towards the hilt with a brown film that was probably dried blood. Sirius swallowed hard and retrieved it, hand shaking. As he did so, he glanced behind him, and saw that the goons had moved closer. They all had their wands pointing at him. Then Malfoy pulled out a parchment and smirked. "Well I suppose we'd better get on with it. Be careful when you cut his throat, we don't want to lose too much of his blood now do we?"

As soon as Malfoy said this, blind terror flared in Harry's eyes, and at the same moment Sirius realised there was absolutely no way he could go through with it. Then there was a soft pop of imploding air and Harry was gone. Sirius didn't waste time wondering what had happened, immediately he leapt towards Avery, knocking him over. Even as he heard Malfoy's outraged yell, he forced the man's arm against the ground with one hand and grabbed his wand with the other. As soon as it was in his grasp he tapped the shackles and said, "Finite Incantatem!" The wand shot sparks and for a fraction of a second he didn't think it was going to work at all, just backfire on him. But the shackles disappeared, and with them the force that was preventing him transforming.

Instantly he flashed into the dog's shape, ducking to one side as the thugs started aiming curses and hexes at him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Malfoy raising his wand and pointing it towards him. He thought if he could reach him, he would be able to disarm the wizard. Then he almost didn't think at all as another curse narrowly missed him. But then his attention was fully taken up with dodging curses flung at him by the thugs. He ran, zig-zagging between the stones, trying to draw their fire hoping they would move apart so he could take them out one at a time. All the time he was scanning the area, trying to see where Harry had gone. Then he saw him! The boy was crouched down between two trees watching what was happening. Get down you idiot! He barked once, loudly and then ran straight at one of the thugs, pulling their attention towards him and away from where Harry was hiding.

The man aimed a hex at him and missing, staggered backwards, tripping in the long wet grass. Sirius didn't waste time going for the man's throat, although he would have cheerfully done so, instead he snatched the man's wand from his hands with his teeth. One down. He glanced round and noted Harry was no longer watching.

From the other side of the circle he heard Malfoy turning on Avery and snarling, "You fool! You told me he was a dog, not a fucking monster!" Sirius gave a mental smirk and darted into a patch of birch scrub.

He watched, catching his breath as the five men stood in a huddle, Malfoy gesturing angrily with his wand. The two goons that still had wands obeyed whatever command had been made, and started walking round the outside of the circle, casting some sort of spell at the undergrowth, but they were muttering the incantation rather than saying it out loud and he couldn't catch what they were saying. One of the thugs was going to walk right past where he was hiding, so rather than find out the hard way what kind of spell it was, he began to slither backwards. Then he got to his feet and moving back even further, began to circle round towards where he'd seen Harry.

He was focussing so hard on this that he didn't hear other sounds that should have warned him he was not alone. Suddenly he ran out in front of another group of men, running through the trees, towards the stone circle. "That's him!" a familiar voice shouted immediately, and he stumbled in surprise as he looked up at Remus.