Unofficial Portkey Archive

"I've crossed the last line
from where I can't return
where every step I took in faith
betrayed me
and led me from my home"
-Sweet Surrender, Sarah McLaughlin

Chapter Twenty

James jumped a little bit on the balls of his heels, trying to garner the nerve to knock on Lily's office door. He had heard through the grapevine that Håkan had decided to cut his stay early, and had hiked back to Sweden with his minister. However, no news on how Lily's date with him went.

So here he was, and here he'd been for the past five minutes. He raised his hand to knock on her door, but then retracted it. He bounced some more and raised his hand, then retracted it once more.

Finally telling himself that he was either going to knock and find out or walk away and wonder, he raised his hand to knock, but the door moved.

Lily looked up at him, startled to see him standing there. "H-Hi..."

"Hi..." James said, smiling.

After a few minutes of silence, Lily prompted, "What's on your mind?"

"Oh! I wanted to know how your date went," James said, finally, rubbing the back of his head nervously.

"Oh..." Lily said, not looking at him. No matter if they were 'over,' she could never lie to him while looking at him. "Went fine, I guess."

"Are you going to go on another date?" James asked.

"Probably....not..." Lily shrugged, looking up at him. "Didn't really work out that well, I suppose."

"Oh," James nodded, looking down and trying not to look too happy. "Why not?"

Because I bloody moaned your name when I was shagging him! Lily thought, but she just shrugged. "Just one of those things, you know?"

James nodded. "Where're you headed?"

"Coffee break," Lily nodded. Because I was up all night thinking of you, bloody idiot.

"Care if I join you?" James offered.

Yes. "Not at all."

They walked in relative silence for a bit until they passed Sirius' empty office. James paused for a minute to look inside.

"He hasn't been in all day," James wondered. "That I've seen."

"I haven't seen him either," Lily shook her head. "Is he sick?"

"No, he would have come in anyways," James thought aloud. He walked into the office and snooped around. "He came by for coffee this morning, and..." He stopped when he saw an open letter.

"What?" Lily asked, walking inside.

"This explains it," James showed her. "He's gone to meet Regulus."

"Regulus...who's that?" Lily asked.

"His younger brother who apparently is leaving school to become a Death Eater."

<

Sirius never doubted that Regulus would want to show up at the Hogs Head. He knew that he would want to come either because of the chance to get inebriated underage for free, or, by some miracle, because he actually missed Sirius, and he wanted to discuss his choice of a future profession.

He only doubted his brother's craftiness of getting out of the castle.

Which was why his faith in his gene pool was restored when Regulus came slinking into the Hog's Head, as if he wasn't supposed to be there at all. Sirius rolled his eyes and motioned for him to come sit with him at the bar.

"Get over here before you attract any more attention," he grumbled.

Regulus stepped up to the bar, sitting erect on a barstool, and looking around as if Filch was going to jump out any minute to grab him by the throat and drag him off to detention.

"In the first place, I got Dumbledore's permission for you to be out of school," Sirius said, grabbing him by the shoulder, and forcing him to slump over. "So stop looking like an Erumpent in the middle of mating season."

Regulus, not used to slumping over, adjusted himself accordingly and looked over to Sirius, speaking for the first time, "So...where's my firewhisky?"

"Spoken like a true brother of mine," Sirius chuckled and slammed his fist down on the table. A giant bottle of firewhisky and two small glasses appeared by his hand. Sirius opened the bottle and poured Regulus a cup.

"So," Sirius said, after watching his brother down the cup in one gulp (and have a horrid reaction to it). "Wanna tell me why you decided to become one?"

Regulus snorted and tapped his cup against the bottle, asking Sirius to pour him more.

"Dad and Mum mostly. Well, mostly Mum, I guess...and Dad..." Regulus shook his head.

"But why are you leaving school?" Sirius asked, watching him interested.

"They're making up for lost time," Regulus winced when he finished off his glass. Sirius didn't wait before pouring him more. "You know, with you leaving and all...and becoming an Auror..."

"So they want you to quit school so that you can be me?" Sirius quirked his eyebrow.

"Yes, and they don't think that I really need my final year anyways," Regulus brought the cup to his lips. "Father said that I'd learn more useful things being a D-...one of them...." He shook his head and put down the cup. Sirius put his own cup to his lips, but didn't drink.

"It's all right, nobody's listening," he smirked. Regulus was too interested in drinking the firewhisky to question further.

"So...what all have you done?"

"Nothing yet," Regulus sighed. "It's mostly Rabastain's doing...he's the one who brought my name up."

"Why'd he do that?"

Regulus shrugged. "Probably Mum talked with Auntie and Auntie talked with his mum about dropping her name. We're related to them somehow..."

"Bella's married to his brother," Sirius filled in the blank for him. "Or so we think."

"They did get married, now I remember," Regulus nodded. "I went to the wedding."

"They had an actual marriage?" Sirius blanched.

Regulus nodded. "It was a big deal among the pure-blooded families. Though there was a lot of money that exchanged hands to keep it hush-hush."

"Apparently," Sirius snorted.

"There's a lot of money that switches hands to keep a lot of things quiet," Regulus thought aloud. "Like, a few weeks ago, there was an Auror that was killed on her boat. I don't know how the information about the boat got to him, but Rodolphus paid off the dockmaster and several other people to hide them up on the boat."

Sirius said nothing, but poured himself a little bit of firewhisky.

"I've heard that they're going to start going after Aurors themselves, now that they've got that Order of the Puffskien or whatever it's called."

Sirius resisted snorting, because it would make the firewhisky come up into his nose.

"You aren't a part of that, are you?" Regulus looked over as Sirius poured him another glass.

"No, no, of course not," Sirius shook his head.

"Good, 'cause I'd hate to think that you'd be apart of something that I'd someday probably have to kill..."

"Yes, that wouldn't be good would it. Drink up, drink up," Sirius said, pouring his firewhisky to the top of the glass.

"Stuff tastes like shit."

"Yes, drink, drink," Sirius nodded. "Anything else about the money that's keeping everything quiet?"

"They've got a spy," Regulus said, suddenly. "In your ranks. I don't know who he is, nobody does...he's just gotten us a lot of information."

"You don't know anything more about him?"

"I know he's big and scary and has red eyes and a white face-"

"No, not Voldemort, you wanker, the spy!"

"Oh...no, nothing really. I've not gone to a meeting yet...I don't even have my mark yet..."

"When will you get it?" Sirius asked, conversationally.

"End o'school," Regulus muttered. "Rabastian says that it doesn't hurt, but I think he's full of shit, personally."

"Yes, well, we all do," Sirius said. "Drink more, drink more."

"There's none left," Regulus observed, looking into the bottle from the head.

"Oh, well...more firewhisky!"

"Don't you think that you've done enough damage, Black?" came a snarling voice from behind them.

Sirius turned around, and to his dismay, he found Severus Snape glowering at him.

"Drunk, much, Snivellus? This is the second time you've interrupted my private conversations at a bar."

Snape was holding a piece of parchment in his hand, which was telling him that something of interest would be at the Hog's Head. He was surprised to find the two brothers there, and even more surprised (and very pleased) to find Sirius doing something quite evil indeed.

"Go get somewhere else greasy, git-face."

"I wouldn't have thought that you would be that low as to pump your own brother for information," Snape growled. "That's low even for you."

"Is it now?" Sirius stood up and lazily turned around to face Snape. It was just starting to sink in what he'd been doing was pumping his brother for information. But he wasn't about to let Snivellus know that what he had said bothered him. "Too bad it's none of your business."

"I think it is, seeing as how your brother and I belong to the same side," Snape growled. "And I don't think that the Dark Lord would appreciate some foolish teenager telling all of his secrets."

Sirius' eyes narrowed. He wouldn't put it past Snape to skettle over to the Dark Lord and tattle- tale on Regulus. But that would also mean that Regulus would be killed for his treachery. All sorts of nasty possibilities were falling into place in Sirius' mind.

"Of course, should I kill you right here, the Dark Lord need not know that any of this had occurred," Sirius brandished his wand.

"To save his skin, or save your own?" Snape gestured down to Regulus whose head was bobbing up and down at the bar. "I wouldn't want to be my brother's killer."

Sirius' eyes narrowed dangerously. "I will not be my brother's killer." Snape looked as if his birthday had come early.

"So...this is interesting..."

"What is interesting?!" Sirius said, a bit more frantic than he meant it to sound. His attention was taken when Regulus fell off the bar in a drunken stupor, and landed on the floor. Sirius turned to help him onto his stomach, so he didn't choke.

He paused when he heard Snape chuckling.

"Funny, is it?" Sirius asked, dangerously.

"Immensely. I so enjoy seeing those who believe that they are high and mighty thrown off of their pedestal."

"Only because you're too slimy to get up on there yourself," Sirius shot back, checking Regulus over before he stood up again.

"Sticks and stones, Black, but guilt will always rack you," Snape taunted.

Finally tired of listening to Snape tell the truth, Sirius whipped out his wand to hex him into eternity, but Snape had disappeared. Now that he was gone, Sirius took a minute to clear his thoughts of the jaunting words of that 'greasy bastard.'

He lifted Regulus up and put his arm around his shoulder and threw down a few galleons for the bottle of firewhisky before walking to the door.

On the way towards the Hogwarts castle, Sirius' mind was replaying everything that had happened in the past thirty minutes. How he had relentlessly pumped his own brother for information. He was starting to feel sick himself, and he was sure it wasn't the firewhiskey.

The sheer possibilities of what could happen were terrifying Sirius more than anything. What if Snape was good on his word and went to the Dark Lord? What if he sent people out to kill Regulus? If anything happened to him, it would have been Sirius' fault.

And to think, he brought him out here to try to dissuade him from becoming a Death Eater. Well, so much for that plan.

After dragging Regulus up the hillside, and up the front stairs, he hoped that everyone would be in class when they walked through the castle to the hospital wing, for he didn't want to answer any questions.

Once they were inside, he only encountered one person.

"'lo Dumbledore," Sirius said, quietly.

"Hello Sirius," he said, eyes slightly twinkling. "I take it your brother enjoyed your-erm- 'alternate methods'?"

"Yeah, he did," Sirius nodded.

"Apparently, your methods of persuasion were a bit too much," Dumbledore nodded to Regulus' head, which was lolling about like a doll.

"Yeah," Sirius cleared his throat. "Can I put him in the hospital wing until he wakes up?"

"Certainly," Dumbledore said. "I shall accompany you."

"Thanks," Sirius muttered.

"Did you accomplish what you set out to do?"

"Worse."

"Ah, I see..."

"I'm..." Sirius started. "I did something very stupid, and I'm wondering if it will have...bad consequences."

"I see," Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling slightly.

Sirius grunted, and shifted his brother on his shoulder, wondering when the walk to the hospital wing had gotten so long.

"From all of my years, I do know one thing," Dumbledore said, when they had finally reached the door. "One cannot foresee all ends from where he stands right now."

"Yes, but it's the ends I can see that make me worried," Sirius muttered, walking past him. Dumbledore continued to watch him, eyes still twinkling.