Nox Redux

Chapter 3

When Remus and Snape apparated into the kitchen again, Remus immediately muttering, "Lumos!" the grandfather clock showed that it was after half past ten.

Remus shrugged off his threadbare cloak and held out his hand until Snape handed his own better quality one over. Hanging them on the back of the kitchen door he asked, "Tea, or perhaps something stronger?"

Snape seemed about to repudiate any further hospitality from the other man but after a moment said instead, "I wouldn't mind a glass of wine if you've got anything drinkable." His tone suggested it would be unlikely.

Eyes crinkling in amusement, Remus replied, "I'm sure I can find something that would satisfy your exacting palate, Severus."

Snape stared at the other man, as if unsure he was hearing sarcasm from such an unexpected source, but Remus looked blandly back at him. "That would be good of you," he said eventually, the ungracious tone belying the polite words. He sat down at the kitchen table without being asked, as the other man nodded and took a couple of wine glasses down from the dresser. He began to idly flick through the pages of the books Remus had been working on.

Suddenly he choked, "Good grief, Lupin! Haven't you got anything better to do than write treatises on Grindylows?" he exclaimed in disbelief.

Remus swung round, a wine bottle in one hand and a cold expression on his face. "No I don't, not since you were instrumental in ensuring that I no longer had a job, Severus."

"The parents had a perfect right to know that there was a werewolf running around the school," Snape responded.

"Accio!" snapped Remus and the cork exploded from the neck of the bottle with such force it hit the ceiling. He caught it as it fell and sighed. Plonking the wine bottle down on the table he sat down himself. "This isn't getting us anywhere," he said.

Snape said nothing for a moment then acknowledged, "I suppose you're right."

Remus poured out the wine and they sat in strained silence. "At least we know that nobody else has disappeared," he said at last.

"That would appear to be the case."

"And we know that Sirius had contacted all of the others, so was on his way to me when whatever it was happened to him."

Snape nodded. "That is correct."

"And we know he still had the hippogriff."

Again Snape nodded, but said nothing.

The silence stretched between them. Remus pursed his lips in thought, then he murmured, "I wonder…" and stood up, walking over to the packed bookcase by the door. He pulled out a large, spiral bound book with a brightly coloured cover and brought it over to the table.

"I don't see what use a Muggle road atlas is going to be," Snape remarked.

Remus ignored him and turned the pages until he found what he was looking for. "If Sirius was coming directly here, he could have crossed the flight path for Heathrow," he said.

Snape snorted. "I think if the hippogriff had flown into a Muggle plane and made it crash we would have heard about it by now, don't you, Lupin?"

"Probably, but perhaps we're approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe it's just been some freak accident. Maybe Voldemort's got nothing to do with this. Accidents do happen."

Snape's expression darkened. "Where Voldemort's concerned there's no such thing as co-incidence."

"Well I expect you would know all about that." Remus' tone was mild, stating simple fact. He continued, "All I was trying to say was that we should not exclude possible explanations because they are unlikely. If we eliminate other more likely reasons then we could come back to something like this."

He closed the road atlas. "Why don't you come back here first thing tomorrow and we can take things from there?"

"That's the first sensible thing you have said in the last ten minutes." Snape drained his glass, and stood up. Holding out his hand for his cloak he muttered, "Accio!" Nodding at Remus he said in a louder voice, "I'll bid you good night then." and disapparated.

---

Frantically Finn ran towards the campsite, hoping the man wasn't going to die. To his immense relief he met his Gran about a quarter of a mile from the bus. She seemed to know that there was something up with him in that spooky way she had, which had always so freaked his dad out. But at least she didn't waste time asking stupid questions or screeching over him, as his mum would have done.

"Well, what are we waiting for then?" she demanded, as soon as he had got enough breath to pant out the bare bones of what had happened. She immediately set off at a slow jog back the way he had come. Finn followed the fluorescent orange blob of her shapeless jumper into the dusk.

The man was still lying where Finn had left him, but he was very still. His heart gave a lurch; for a moment, Finn feared the worst. But his Gran quickly checked the man's pulse and shone her torch into his eyes to check the reaction, nodding to herself before she pulled back his jacket to have a look at his shoulder. She wouldn't bother if he were dead.

She clearly didn't like what she saw as she hissed through her teeth, but didn't say anything except, "Right, help me get him up, Finn."

Finn did as she told him, asking, "Is he going to be all right?"

His Gran pulled a face. Never one to shy away from unpleasant truths she said, "I don't know. He's lost a lot of blood. Now come on."

With the two of them it wasn't long before they came to the place where the stream widened into a shallow pool at the end of a muddy track. The old bus was parked to one side of the clearing, soft lamplight shining behind the curtained windows.

Inside, the passenger seating had long been stripped out. The area immediately behind the driver's seat was the kitchen, laid out galley style, with old kitchen units salvaged from a skip and a small cooker. Then beyond that, on either side, there were soft seats that converted to beds and a pull down table. Above, where the luggage shelf used to be was the bunk Finn slept in. His Gran slept in the curtained off area at the back of the bus.

Once inside, she directed him to pull down one of the beds, and they laid the man on it. "Right get his boots off, and then help me get these clothes off him, he's soaked. Don't want to get the bullet out of him and then have him die of pneumonia, do we?"

"No, Gran."

Eventually, the bloody bullet extracted and the bleeding stopped, Finn's Gran was satisfied that the man was in no immediate danger. She'd even managed to pour one of her foul herbal potions down his throat. She stood looking down at him thoughtfully. "Wonder who he is," she said. "Was there any ID in his jacket or in his pockets?" she asked Finn after a moment.

"I dunno, I never looked." replied the boy.

She grinned at him. "You never rifled his pockets? Well that's an improvement. Have a look now."

Finn glared at her, but went through all the man's pockets. He couldn't find anything and shook his head. "Weird, there's nothing at all." He stood beside his Gran, really looking at the guy for the first time. "He looks kinda familiar though."

"You know him? Two surprises in one day, I don't know if I can cope with this." But Finn just rolled his eyes - he was used to his Gran trying to wind him up.

"I don't know him, but I might know who he is. Hang on." He reached up onto his bunk and pulled his laptop down.

This time it was his Gran's turn to roll her eyes and she said, "I'll make us some tea while you're doing that."

Finn switched the computer on, checking the battery was OK. Then he connected to the Internet through his mobile. It didn't take long to find what he was looking for - a really interesting little database he'd managed to get into a month or so earlier. He found the section he wanted and then started searching for the specific entry. He had a feeling it was quite an old one he was looking for. Then he found it, dated two years previously. The picture was fuzzy but he could see it was definitely the guy. "Got him!" he exclaimed. "Sirius Black."

His Gran put a mug of tea down on the table beside the laptop. "Never heard of him," she said. "What did he do?"

Finn turned the laptop round so she could read the entry. She looked at the picture and glanced over at the unconscious man. "Right enough, it's certainly him." then she paused, as she read the rather sparse but damning detail in the paragraph about him, and made a face. But all she said was "Doesn't say much does it?"

"Oh that's just a summary, here, click on the link and you'll get the full story." Finn looked round at the screen. "Oh hey, that's weird there isn't any more," he sounded cheated. He looked over at the man. "Doesn't look dangerous though, does he?"

His Gran snorted. "He's not, for the moment anyway. We'll decide what to do with him when he's better."

Finn grinned. He knew perfectly well his Gran had 'views' about getting involved with the police. He looked back at the short article on the guy. "You remember the thing in Covent Garden though don't you?" he asked her. It must have been in all the papers, and the trial and everything."

She shook her head. "Well I don't always keep up with the news, and it was a long time ago." Then she grinned at him. "But you're always telling me you can find anything on that thing, why don't you look?"

"He grinned back. "OK," he said and set about going through all the newspaper archives he could find. Eventually he gave a grunt of frustration. "I can't find anything that would match," he said. " And I've looked through that whole year and six months on either side."

"There was nothing at all that could be it?"

Finn sounded doubtful. "There was one thing, but it was a gas explosion not a mass murder."

His Gran had a faraway look in her eyes. "Gas explosion, huh? I wonder…"

"What?"

"Oh nothing, just a thought." She sipped her tea then changed the subject.

---

It should have been peaceful in the ocean of dark he was floating in. But he was pinioned in one place by a splinter of white-hot agony in his shoulder. After a while it started to fade. When it did this, he felt he should have drifted free, and was mildly aggrieved that he did not. Instead, the splinter was replaced by a whispering voice. At first, he couldn't hear what it was saying, all he could understand was that it wasn't a pleasant voice, and he really didn't want to stay around long enough for the words to become clear. But he couldn't get away and he couldn't make it go away.

Then a second voice joined in, grovelling and placatory. He knew immediately who it belonged to. "Let me kill him, master. Please," it said.

He could make out what the other voice was saying now. It sounded amused, "Such urgency, Wormtail. For now I want him alive, he's more useful that way. He can do so much for us, can't you Sirius?"

"Wormtail!"

The man's hoarse scream woke Finn up and he sat up with a jerk, banging his head off the roof of the bus. "Ow! Bloody hell what's the matter with him?" he demanded.

He jumped down from the bunk as his Gran came through from the back. She put a hand on Sirius Black's forehead and muttered, "Well, it's hardly unexpected."

"What is?"

"Fever. All sorts of dirt could have got into that wound. And I shouldn't think his immune system's up to much at the moment."

"Should we take him to a hospital?" asked Finn, worried.

Finn's Gran shook her head. "I don't think he'd thank us if we did. Too official. Just a minute." she turned round and started to rummage in one of the kitchen cupboards at the front of the bus, pausing to check something in the book she always referred to as her 'special cookbook'.

"Finn I've got enough stuff for now, but I'm going to run out of some things. You'd better take your bike into town tomorrow and see if you can stock up."

"All right." He looked at where the sick man was now tossing and turning, muttering under his breath. "Is he dreaming?"

"Probably re-living what brought him here. Whatever it was that happened to him, I don't think it was very pleasant, do you?"

---

His task nearly complete, Sirius had been feeling if not happy then at least satisfied, especially as he had made good time. Somewhat to his surprise, none of the old crowd had needed any persuasion. They had treated what he had to say with utter seriousness and himself with a lack of hostility that he found as disconcerting as it was unexpected.

Although huddled into the warmth of Buckbeak's feathers, the night air was cold, and he couldn't stop shivering. But he was glad of this because had it been warmer, the soporific beat of the hippogriff's wings might have lulled him into a dangerous sleep. He looked down. He was heading west, following the curving ribbon of a Muggle motorway. Sirius grinned. He'd be with Moony for breakfast at this rate.

Suddenly, without warning, the world seemed to collapse. Buckbeak let out an almighty screech and reared back, beating his wings hard, trying to reverse. He was too late and they began to plummet towards the earth and the red sparkle of a magical flare.

Sirius didn't know how much later it was when he opened his eyes. It didn't make any difference. For a moment, he wondered in panic if he'd been blinded, but as his eyes adjusted, he could make out the slightly darker blobs of his hands as he held them in front of his face. The weight on his wrists and the chink of metal told him he was not going to walk out of here easily. Let's face it, he told himself; he probably wasn't going to walk out of here at all.

He felt the chains that encased his wrists. They had the slick feel of metal that had been treated with a magic dampening potion. This was confirmed when he tried to transform and nothing happened. Bugger. He gave the links an experimental tug, but they were fixed solidly to the dank, moisture-laden wall behind him. Oh, he might be able to scratch away at the mortar around them with his fingernails, and get free in about twenty years, but somehow he didn't really think he had twenty years.

The first rush of adrenaline died down and he began to think about what had happened. He cursed himself for a fool for not flying higher. Then he might have flown over the ward that had trapped him and never known it was there. And as to who had done the trapping well, he'd be willing to bet Harry's life that it wasn't Ministry of Magic aurors. He gave a mirthless grin as he realised that he might get another chance to kill the Rat sooner rather than later.

Then he began to feel out the boundaries of the space he was imprisoned in. He didn't think it was large, the slight echoes from the small sounds he made moving told him that, but he couldn't reach any other walls apart from the one behind him. Although he listened hard he could hear no sound apart from the occasional drip, and he wondered how long they were going to leave him here. The rational part of his mind knew that this was all part of the softening up process and was amused that they thought a few hours of this would have any impact on someone who had spent twelve years in Azkaban.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He wasn't successful.

Later, he didn't know how much later, the door of his cell banged open. He sat up, blinking in the torchlight, peering at the figure he saw standing gloating in the doorway. "Wormtail!" he snarled at the figure. And the way he said the name made it sound like the foulest of expletives.

The figure took a step backwards, recoiling from the blast of his rage, but recovered and smirking flicked its wand and said, "Crucio!"

Instantly there was nothing but pain, agonising pain that went on and on, as every nerve end in his body fired off simultaneously. He wasn't even aware he was screaming. When it finally stopped, he could only lie there on the floor, as his muscles slowly stopped twitching. He stared up at the small, gloating figure, and said, voice hoarse from screaming, "My word, Peter, we have been practising haven't we?"

"Shut up!"

"Or what?" Sirius gave the merest shadow of a laugh, "You'll do your worst? You wouldn't be able to touch me if I wasn't chained up and you know it."

"I said, shut up!" Wormtail's voice rose.

"Go to hell!" Sirius snarled before he could regret it.

Immediately, Wormtail snapped, "Crucio!" and there was nothing but the pain again.

It was worse this time. The cumulative effects of the curse tortured his frayed nerve endings to a level beyond bearing. But then, as merciful blackness took him, he was thankful that Peter never was that great a wizard, otherwise he would have been able to stop him losing consciousness.

When awareness returned, he realised there was someone else in the cell with them. Cold, hissing laughter swept over him, and a thin, high voice, reproved, "Really, Wormtail, you let him provoke you. Was that wise?"

Wormtail's snivelling voice replied, "He insulted me, master, and you said I could punish him."

"I believe I did. I wonder why? No matter."

Sirius forced himself to open his eyes. The creature that stared back at him out of livid red eyes was human in only the vaguest sense. It took a huge effort not to cringe away from it, but he glanced at Wormtail, and the rage he felt helped beat back the fear, or at least mask it.

"Oh dear, Wormtail, I do believe he doesn't like my new form," the reptilian thing remarked with an affectation of disappointment.

Wormtail giggled, nervously. Then he noticed Sirius glaring at him and smirked. "Let me kill him, master. Please," he begged.

Voldemort's thin lips stretched in a humourless smile. "Such urgency, Wormtail. For now I want him alive, he's more useful that way. He can do so much for us, can't you Sirius?"

Desperate not to show the fear he felt twisting his guts, Sirius began to pray his mind would break before he told them anything.

---

It was late. From Finn's bunk came the sound of gentle snoring. Finn's Gran stood looking down at the muttering man, face drenched in sweat as he tossed and turned in the grip of the fever. Every so often, his body would go appallingly rigid, almost as if he was having some kind of seizure, leaving him whimpering in pain. She was worried because the intensity of these episodes was increasing and glanced over to the stove with some impatience to where her potion was simmering gently. She sighed, knowing perfectly well that it would seem to take longer if she watched it. Try and rush a potion and you risked it not working.

Eventually it was ready. Now all she had to do was get it into him. It wasn't a particularly powerful potion, but it would have to do for now - she hadn't had the ingredients for anything more. To her surprise, he swallowed most of the potion without any difficulty and it seemed to help him rest easier. But it was going to be a long night.

TBC...