Into the Mouth of Hell

Into the Mouth of Hell: Chapter 14

So when the moon disappears, heaven is over

It was January before Severus received his instruction.

"The Dark Lord will meet you," Lucius said simply as he sat down in the study. Over the past two months, he had grown frail and tired-looking, using the days to maintain the name of Malfoy and the nights to rally the troops in the name of the Dark Lord. Narcissa fretted over him terribly, and even Severus noticed he was the worse for wear.

Severus nodded. This is the way it worked, he knew. He would be told of the intention, but never the details. The Dark Lord's schedule was run on the Dark Lord's time, and the Dark Lord's time was precious.

"Severus," Lucius began tiredly, pausing to yawn, "I hope you have a plan."

"Sorry?" Severus asked.

"Narcissa wanted you to think on it. She said you would know what she meant." Lucius yawned again, stretching his long arms above his head and leaning back in his desk chair as he did so.

Severus nodded. He did have a plan: don't get caught. To put it gently, things had been going downhill for them lately. A few months after Karkaroff was captured and Rosier and Wilkes killed, Dolohov was hauled in and Mulciber and several others were regularly being brought in for questioning. The Ministry was having a hard time getting confessions, that much was true, and an even harder time getting names out of those already in Azkaban. Those that were in Azkaban were held on such weak charges that the Ministry wouldn't even bring their cases to trial. The Dark Lord himself had gone into hiding, which had sent a ripple of alarm through their ranks. But Lucius had a counter for every bit of bad news: a new spy at the Ministry, information regarding the outcome of the war, a fresh batch of new recruits. After each arrest and every death, Lucius always had just enough hope to get the ranks fired up again to go back out into the night.

"There is a point when one crosses the threshold."

"Sorry?" Severus peered quizzically at Lucius. Often times during these late hour chats, Lucius would wax poetic about his childhood, share humorous political anecdotes, analyze the finer points of articles he had read in Wizard Quarterly, or engage Severus in detailed strategic planning. Severus had an inkling that some part of Lucius bent back toward humanity, and Severus thought perhaps that he, at home with Narcissa and Draco all day, was the thing that anchored Lucius to the domestic sphere. And so they spent the darkest hours of night, those before dawn, in Lucius' study, talking.

"There is a difference between sucking the marrow out of life and letting life suck the marrow out of oneself. And I have begun to question," Lucius said, yawning again, "on what side of that equation I now stand."

Severus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "You are tired, Lucius, and should get to bed before you say something regrettable."

Lucius rubbed his eyes. "You are right, Severus." He stood up and slowly made his way out of the room. He stopped at the door. "Would you like to hear my plan?"

Severus turned in his chair to face him. "Not really," he answered truthfully.

Lucius laughed a bit. "It's awfully clever. Are you sure?"

Severus sighed. Lucius, for whatever reason, really seemed to want to tell him. "All right then."

"Don't get caught. Beauty in simplicity." Lucius laughed a bit more, shutting the door behind him.

Severus turned back around in his chair to face the fire. He pulled out a small advert he had torn from the Daily Prophet that morning, a call to fill the vacant Defense Against the Dark Arts post at Hogwarts. He stood up, rounding Lucius' desk and sitting down lightly in his chair so that the leather did not creak. He quietly pulled open the second drawer, withdrawing parchment and a quill. This would be his back-up plan. Just in case.

* * * * *

He felt the cold first, which caused him to wake. Blinking into the blue light surrounding him, he tried desperately to locate the cause of the sensation. He sat up in bed and turned to his left. Then he looked down at his arm. He pulled up the sleeve of his dressing gown. It seemed that the cold was coming from the Dark Mark. Then, quite suddenly, as Severus watched, it pulsed red, and his blood exploded with heat. He clasped his right hand to his left forearm, and felt the world tip as he was transported to the side of the Dark Lord. He felt the skeletal hands grip his skull as the Dark Lord searched for what he wanted.

* * * * *

Severus stirred his tea thoughtfully at breakfast the next morning. His meeting with the Dark Lord had been short and rather uneventful, excepting that his big purpose in life had finally been revealed: he was to wait for further instruction from Lucius. More appropriately, he was to idly loaf around Malfoy Manor, unburdening Lucius of his domestic responsibilities. He had never considered himself one to wear a pink apron and mop up after infants, but if that was how it ought to be, who was he to complain?

So Severus had decided he would not complain. He would do what was asked of him, meanwhile circling adverts in the Daily Prophet for any positions he might be qualified to fill. However, Narcissa had been right: the current political turmoil had left the wizarding world in one of the harshest recessions to date, and chances for employment for someone with a fairly obscure degree in foundational theories of classic potions were rather slim.

The second week of February he received a reply from Hogwarts, telling him that they were highly impressed with his vita and always encouraged alumni to apply for teaching positions, but had hired another candidate with more experience in the field. The next day, he read an article on the third page of the Daily Prophet that Vindictus Viridian, author of a terrible little book of dumb little schoolboy curses, was hired as the new Defense professor.

The spring passed, as springs have a tendency to do, in a rush of rain and sun. Severus kept one eye trained to the adverts in the Daily Prophet, and one eye aimed at the drawing room floor. He slept very little, spending many of his nights awaiting Lucius in his study. Lucius, during one of his pre-dawn orations, had decided that Severus should be informed of major happenings on the front so that in case something did happen to him, Severus could easily step in. Severus rarely saw Bella, and when he did, she was strictly business. Their relationship was all but over. Bella was thoroughly removed.

"It is important to bear in mind," Lucius expounded, "that only the Dark Lord himself knows the names and faces of all his followers. We only know who we must know, and then we do not know that we know them."

Severus nodded drowsily. The first orange splashes of dawn were igniting the sky, and still Lucius was rambling on. He was in a right state over something, and had been going on for hours about plot-points and technicalities that seemed to circle back in on themselves. It seemed to Severus that Lucius was talking in circles around a point he was dying to make. It was just like Lucius to draw out the dramatic.

Finally, as Lucius was launching a diatribe of loyalties and transgressions of various unnamed Death Eaters for the third time, Severus had decided that he couldn't stand Lucius' pontifications any longer. "Enough, Lucius."

Lucius stopped pacing and turned to look at Severus as if he had forgotten entirely that he was even in the same room.

"Just tell me what it is already, and let's get on with it. Neither of us has slept all week, and I am afraid that I just can't go on like this anymore." Severus stood up slowly and made his way around untidy piles of books and countless ledgers to the windows.

"It's," Lucius paused, "well, there is something of great importance and the utmost secrecy of which you should be informed." Lucius stood beside Severus at the windows overlooking the gardens.

Severus did not turn to face him. "Go on."

"There is a prophecy," Lucius paused again.

"A prophecy?"

"A prophecy of the birth of a child who has the power to vanquish the Dark Lord." This Lucius said in a whisper. Severus saw the reflection of his troubled gray eyes in the window.

"What action does he plan to take?" Severus asked quietly.

"To seek out the child and destroy it."

Severus knew by his voice that Lucius was thinking of Draco. "This on top of annihilating the Order of the Phoenix?" It was an unspoken truth that the hit squads' main sights had long ago shifted from political targets to counter-offensive actions against Aurors and members of the Order of the Phoenix, who were working outside of the Ministry to eliminate the threat of the Dark Lord and his followers. One of the great accomplishments that Lucius had shared with Severus was the allocation of a spy working within the Order, which had made it much too easy for them.

Lucius nodded. "We have a team tracking the movements of the target."

"And Bella is still stationed with the Dark Lord?"

Lucius nodded. After some erratic decisions recently, Bella was taken off her post as a hit squad captain and made part of a team that acted as personal bodyguards to the Dark Lord. Lucius had justified that it made sense to have Bella in the last line of defense. Not that any of them believed it would ever come to that, of course.

"Well, then, all our bases are covered, Lucius."

There was a long pause.

"What are your thoughts on entropy?"

Severus looked wearily at Lucius. Apparently, divulging one secret had not cured Lucius of his desire to prattle on. "How do you mean?"

"Suppose," said Lucius, "that one has a finite amount of magic in oneself, and there exists, outside of oneself, an undetermined amount of magic. How do you measure that magic?"

Severus, who had a habit of answering rhetorical questions, did not pause long to ponder this. "Not with a really big stick, I'd wager."

Lucius smiled faintly. "Some believe that the magic outside of oneself cannot be measured: that it is a fluctuating, arbitrary force answerable only to its own random navigation. Others believe that there exists a flow of magic from oneself to things outside of oneself, so that at any moment, both the magic within oneself and the magic outside of oneself are immeasurable because of the very nature of magic transferal, much like trying to mark the water of the sea at the mouth of a river."

"Some would have that as a very liberal definition of the Dark Arts: magic used to tap the magic held in others."

Lucius nodded and continued. "Still others argue that from the moment magic is conceived, it cannot be defined, measured, held, bought or sold, harvested or sown. Some believe that eventually, the magic inside a person will wind down because it will cease to commingle with other magic, thus becoming obsolete. And still others believe that magic is a commodity in the same way that life and death can be bought or sold for outside gains; that the nature of magic lies within the intention, not within the invention."

Severus had always been somewhat baffled by Lucius' philosophical streak. "And what do you think, Lucius?"

Lucius shrugged. "I don't often think on magic, but I believe some are doomed from the get-go and others adapt to survive."

"That's rather a Darwinistic view."

"Often it is not the fit who survive, Severus, but the furtive and the forewarned." As Lucius said this, the sun broke the tree line, and the horizon exploded in a deep orange that seemed to enflame every shadow.

Severus raised his hand as a visor to his eyes, thinking, It is at times too much for me. A rush of birds flew from the bushes, roused by one of the hounds. "My mother spent all her afternoons measuring time in teaspoons."

Lucius propped an eyebrow. "I had never pictured you for the sentimental sort."

"I am flattered that you pictured me at all." Severus turned from Lucius at the sound of Draco awakening with a cry the morning of his first birthday.

* * * * *

At the meeting that night, battling sleep deprivation, Severus swayed slightly, sickened by the third helping of birthday cake he had after dinner. He cursed his fate as Lucius picked him out for a mission, his first since before he left for school. He would be traveling with four others to check on the activities of two prevalent Order members: Gideon and Fabian Prewett.

As Lucius dismissed the squad from the meeting at half past midnight, he placed a gentle hand on Severus' shoulder in a brotherly fashion. Severus nodded in recognition of the affection. For his first mission in nearly two and a half years, Severus figured he was getting off rather easy by being chosen for a reconnaissance post. But he didn't mind, given his state.

The team Apparated to the location: a run-down neighborhood of London near the river without streetlamps. Severus guessed it was exactly the kind of neighborhood in which no one looked out the windows and everyone minded their own business. His stomach gave a violent lurch and, feeling as though he were about to heave, he leaned against the brick wall of the warehouse. A hand came out to steady him.

"Bit odd of them to be sending out a team of five for some search-and-discover, isn't it?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar to Severus, although he could not place it.

"Hush it, you!" another voice hissed.

They stood quietly, wands drawn, as two men suddenly came into the street from an alley, walked for half a block, then disappeared inside an abandoned textile factory of some sort.

One wizard motioned for the two closest him to follow, pantomiming that Severus and the semi-familiar voice beside him should stay as lookouts. Severus nodded to show assent, hand still clutched to his stomach, and watched the others stealthily cross the dark street and vanish into the factory.

For several minutes nothing happened. Then Severus saw what was unmistakably the flash of spells in an upper-story window.

"Did you see that?" the wizard beside Severus asked. He took a few steps toward the street.

Severus nodded. "We should go in, then?"

The wizard nodded resolutely at Severus, and together they crossed the street and entered the factory. Inside all was dark. Trying to be as quiet as possible, Severus and the other ran up several flights of stone steps until they reached the floor where they had seen the spells being fired. Not knowing how many were inside, and not being a very fast dueler and much out of practice anyway, on top of having a belly ache from too much sugar, Severus was altogether not looking forward to passing through that door. He took a deep breath, and when his companion's counting reached "three," they both burst through the door.

On the floor lay one of their comrades, the other two standing with their backs together, dueling with the Prewett brothers circling them. Instantly, it was as if Severus' brain turned off. He began firing spells at one of the brothers instinctively; his partner casting curses at the other. Obviously caught off-guard, the brothers pulled back further into the room behind some wooden crates, which were blasted apart by the force of the four wands being fired toward them. Severus leapt aside as a red bolt just missed his shoulder, then ducked behind an exposed steel post. He caught his breath, then flew out from behind the post, advancing on the brothers. His team circled in on them again; the Prewetts were aiming hexes so effectively that Severus had to several times run for cover. Eventually, they got the wizard Severus had come in with, leaving them fighting three to two. The brothers were indeed skilled duelers, and Severus knew it was only luck and the adrenaline of fear that had kept him alive thus far.

He caught the sight of something purple knocking one of the brothers to the floor, and the other, distracted momentarily, just barely missed a jet of red, gashing his wand arm. Taking his wand up in his other hand, he battled on long enough to postpone his death by another five minutes.

Panting, Severus surveyed the corpses of the Prewett brothers. He looked down into the blank face of the first brother to be killed, noticing he was holding something in his hand. Prodding the dead wizard with his foot, Severus moved the arm just enough so that it flopped out from under the cloak. Looking over at his comrades, who were tending to the two fallen Death Eaters, Severus knelt quickly and plucked the roll of parchment from the lifeless hand and stashed it into his own robes. Then he moved to the second brother, stepping around the puddle of blood spreading outward from the torn shoulder. He tilted his head and looked into his face, which was still carrying the last look of the wizard. Severus thought it odd that bravery, once dead, still kept its shape in the determined set of the mouth and the hard look in the eyes. Crouching down beside the last brother, Severus looked on as death took its final hold of the body, slackening the face so that it was as blank as the cold floor it lay upon. The smell of the blood was becoming overwhelming; as the black puddle grew larger Severus withdrew from the dead men.

"That one's Gideon, and that one's Fabian," one of the Death Eaters was saying to the other. "We went to the World Cup together in sixty-six. Just kids then." He shook his head.

"We should get back with these two," the other said.

"Are they dead?" Severus asked.

"Nope, just knocked out. The Prewett boys never cared for violence."

* * * * *

Lucius paced in his study, poring over the parchment Severus had taken from Gideon Prewett's dead hand. "Did you read this?" he asked, stopping behind his desk.

"Yes."

Lucius regarded Severus with steely eyes for a moment, then looked back down at the parchment. Severus wasn't sure, but it looked as though Lucius was shaking.

"Is it true then?" Severus asked.

Lucius looked back up at Severus, then took again to pacing. "It's impossible," Lucius said quickly. "It is a scheme."

"It is possible. We have several in the Order," Severus said evenly.

"If there were a spy amongst us, Severus, I would know it. The Dark Lord would know." Lucius stopped in front of the fire with the note held out before him. Severus thought for a moment that he was going to toss it in, but then he continued his pacing.

"Not if he were skilled in Occlumency."

Lucius snapped to look at Severus, who pointed to a bookcase behind Lucius' desk where several volumes on that magic were held. Lucius looked at the case, at Severus, back down at the parchment, and then again to Severus. "You have been reading up on the subject?"

Severus nodded slowly. "My left hand likes to know what my right hand is doing, Lucius, how about yours?"

"Are you accusing me?" Lucius roared, tossing the parchment down onto his desk, then moving to stand before Severus.

Severus did not rise, but stared placidly at Lucius from his chair. "No more so than you are accusing me."

Lucius opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. "I was not accusing you of anything Severus. All of your time is accounted for, besides." Lucius sat down behind his desk, moving the parchment off to the side. "It is a ruse, nothing else."

"Will you be telling the Dark Lord?"

Lucius did not reply. His eyes rested momentarily on Severus, who slowly stood and approached the desk. He put his hands on the mahogany top, between the silver framed photos of Narcissa in her wedding gown and Draco in a pile of Christmas trimmings, and leaned forward toward Lucius. "There is safety in secrecy," Severus whispered, picking up the parchment. "Do you mind?" he asked. When Lucius did not protest, Severus tossed the parchment into the fire, where it turned black and curled up on itself. "Let that be the end of it, then."