With a barely audible growl in the back of his throat, Sirius positioned himself between Remus and the interloper. Remus put a hand on Sirius’s arm. “It’s all right, Padfoot,” he murmured. “He won’t harm me. Not now.” He looked over his shoulder at Ron and Harry. “You two, though—“

Ron’s face was grim. “We know how to handle a Malfoy,” he said.

With a casual arrogance that was all too familiar to all four men and a sense of superiority that had been passed with almost eerie exactitude to his son, Lucius Malfoy slunk towards them across the cave. “We’ve been wondering how long it would take the Order to send someone to try to kill us.” Sirius and Remus both stared in alarm, and Lucius laughed. “Ah. I see you hadn’t yet heard that we knew of the spy in our midst.” The pale, blond man snorted. “A rogue vampyre. Surely you could have done better – he gave himself away with every move.”

“He fooled you long enough to get his message to us,” Sirius spat.

“Oh, yes, you received your message perfectly.” Lucius nodded. “My Lord determined that whoever would be sent in Galderon’s wake would be a far better prize than Galderon himself.” He looked the four men over. “As always, my Lord was most correct in his calculations.”

“And what do you intend to do, now that we have arrived as predicted?” Remus sounded calm enough, but Harry could hear the slight shake at the edges of his voice.

Lucius shrugged languidly. “I suppose I’ll kill you.” He raised his wand as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “Expelliarmus.” Nothing happened. Lucius looked suspiciously pleased. “An excellent spell, werewolf,” he said softly. “But what good are inaccessible wands when I can still do this?” He pointed his wand at Ron. “Crucio.” Ron’s face crumpled in agony, and he collapsed onto the floor.

“RON!” Harry dropped beside him, murmuring useless words of comfort, dividing his glance between concerned sweeps of Ron’s writhing body and murderous stares at Lucius.

“Stop it, Lucius.” Remus’s voice was surprisingly calm and authoritative.

To the others’ shock, Lucius didn’t argue. He looked down at Ron and Harry and shrugged. “Oh, if I must. Terminus.” Ron stopped convulsing. He looked up at Harry and immediately blacked out. Lucius walked a lazy, possessive circle around the quartet. “My, my. What remarkable presents for me to bring to my Master. He will be most pleased.” He looked down at the figures on the floor. “The so-called Boy Who Lived and his Mudblood-loving Weasley boyfriend.” A pause behind Sirius. “The most wanted criminal in the wizarding world.” Then he came around to stand in front of Remus, and his voice dropped to little more than a low, throaty whisper. “And of course, the great Remus J Lupin.” He reached out his hand and trailed it down Remus’s jaw line. Remus flinched but did not give ground.

“Did you know,” Lucius said, addressing the group at large but never taking his eyes from Remus, “that Lupin and his brother were bitten on their fifth birthday? The youngest in the recorded history of lycanthropy. Although you can’t go entirely by the records; Dark creatures aren’t renowned for their overwhelming honesty.” He withdrew his fingers and clasped both hands behind his back. “But Romulus simply wasn’t as strong as you, was he, Remus? He survived the Becoming, barely. But the first full moon proved too much.” He leaned just slightly towards Remus. Harry’s skin crawled. “It must have been awful for you, watching your twin dying in a cage...and not being able to do a single thing to stop it.”

“Cut it out, Malfoy.” Sirius’s warning growl cut the air.

“No, I don’t imagine I will,” Lucius said, the smile on his lips making Harry want to vomit. “The Lupin children showed such great promise, you see. Great musicians, they were going to become. Only the year before, Romulus had taken to the piano as an eagle takes to the air, and the first time Remus had picked up a violin, the stars themselves had wept at the sound. Everyone called it a miracle – a sign of great, great magick in the Lupin veins. Suddenly, they were the most sought-after family in the wizarding world.” He waved his hand angrily. “Bah! Fools. The Lupins, with their free ways, and their love of Muggles, and their flaunting of wizarding propriety. There are some who will say that the twins did not even have the same father.”

“That’s a lie!” Remus gritted out.

Lucius laughed gleefully. “Of all the things I have said, werewolf, this is what raises your ire? Oh, yes, I had forgotten how fiercely you always would defend your family. Still, what good did it do you, in the end? Poor little Romulus, dead in a cage at the age of five, and Remus – the last hope of a once-proud family – well, we see the fate he will meet. A hunted and reviled Dark creature, dead at the word of a Malfoy, hand-in-hand with Sirius Black.”

“Jealous, Malfoy?” Sirius sneered.

Remus rammed his elbow into Sirius’s side. “Now’s not a good time for that, Padfoot,” he murmured.

But Lucius only smiled wider. “Not at all,” he said airily. “My hand was promised to Narcissa before you had learned your first spell, Black – which was, when, just after puberty? But I wonder if you aren’t the tiniest bit jealous, every time you fuck your little werewolf, knowing that I was there first?”

Harry looked up at the three standing men in absolute shock. Remus had turned deadly white and was gripping Sirius’s arm like a vise. Sirius had turned a mottled purple and was being restrained only by Remus’s hand.

Lucius chuckled. “Oh, this has been enjoyable. But now it is time to put an end to such games.” He raised his wand and pointed it at Sirius. “I was not there to see your face while you watched your brother die, werewolf. But I will relish every second of seeing your face as you watch your lover suffer a much more lingering fate.” And he smiled. “My Lord will be very happy to see you.”

Only, he’d made the one mistake that no follower of Voldemort could afford to make. He’d forgotten Harry. Harry, who couldn’t get at his own wand without drawing Lucius’s attention, but had pretty clear access to Ron’s. ‘You don’t get nearly as good results with someone else’s wand,’ Ollivander had told him, so many years ago, but in desperate times he would take any results that were handy. Reaching into Ron’s sleeve, he yanked out the wand and pointed it at Lucius. Catching the motion from the corner of his eye, the Death Eater turned, but he was too late. “Petrificus Totalus!” Harry shouted, and Lucius froze, with an expression of astonishment on his face that would have been comical under any other circumstances.

Sirius and Remus sprung into motion immediately. “Bloody excellent thinking, Harry,” Sirius said, pulling out his wand and initiating the mobilus corpus on the frozen man. Lucius bobbed sedately above the floor; he looked almost normal without his perpetual sneer.

Remus knelt beside Ron and touched his own wand to the redhead’s temple. Ron stirred, and his eyes fluttered open uncertainly. “Harry?”

“I’m right here, Ron,” Harry said, squeezing Ron’s hand.

“Feel sodding awful.”

“That’ll be from a Cruciatus curse, courtesy of one Lucius Malfoy,” Remus said darkly.

“Malfoy!” Ron rubbed the sides of his head. “Where is he?”

Harry pointed. “Floating along over there.” He held the wand out to Ron. “Had to use your wand; hope you don’t mind.”

Ron snorted weakly as Harry helped him to his feet. “If it stopped Malfoy, I wouldn’t care if you’d had to use me as a weapon.”

Grimly, Sirius started leading his floating Death Eater towards the mouth of the cave. “Watch what you say around here, Ron. It may come to that yet.”

*

PART 14: The Things Ron Carried
A Very Convenient Thing happens in this part. Call it contrivance; call it Deus ex machina – I call it a Princess Bride moment, for which you may thank Perpetual Motion.

The four sojourners made their way cautiously up the tunnel, Lucius still floating along ahead of them.

“D’you know where they are?” Harry whispered.

Sirius nodded grimly. “I’ve a fair idea.” He pointed up ahead, where the fork in the tunnels they’d come to earlier was just coming into view. “If we follow the other path there, it should lead us right to them.”

“Great,” Ron deadpanned.

Remus smiled sympathetically and squeezed Ron’s shoulder. “It’s almost over,” he said.

“One way or the other,” Sirius added, a bit unnecessarily. Ron and Harry shuddered.

“What’re we going to do about him?” Harry asked, jerking his head towards Lucius. “Won’t he have to be awake when we perform the spell?”

Sirius nodded. “He will. I guess we’ll sort of work that out when we come to it.”

Ron stared at him, eyes wide. “We’ll sort of work it out when we come to it?” he demanded. “That’s your big plan?”

“Ron,” Remus said patiently, “Lucius showing up threw our plans off a bit, but we don’t have time to stop and restrategize. We’re working on the fly now.” He shrugged. “We’d none of us have chosen these circumstances, but it’s what we have to work with.”

Sirius held up his hand. “We’re here,” he said, his blue eyes glittering intently.

A dark silence descended over the group. Suddenly, as it had not before, not even during their confrontation with Lucius, the four men realized what they were proposing to undertake. What the risks were. What they were walking into, voluntarily, eyes wide open. Ron swallowed hard, and when Harry’s hand slipped into his, he squeezed it as though trying to press it into his own body.

“What now?” Harry whispered.

Sirius and Remus looked at each other helplessly. “I’m not sure,” Remus admitted.

Looking at his godson mournfully, Sirius said, “What I wouldn’t give for your father’s invisibility cloak, Harry.”

Everyone’s attention was on Harry, but it was Ron who suddenly blushed and started fumbling in his pack. “Ah—“

Remus turned to him, his amber eyes widening. “Don’t tell me—“

Ron stared at his shoes and cleared his throat. “That story I told you about forcing Headmaster Dumbledore to tell me where Harry’d gone?” Quickly, he looked up at Sirius and Remus, then away. “It, ah, it wasn’t so much true.”

“How much not true?” demanded Sirius.

“Not at all.” He grinned hopefully, but Remus continued glaring. “I, ah, I had the map, you see. After I found Harry’s note, I took it out, and when Harry wasn’t anywhere on it, I worried.”

“I knew I should’ve left a better note,” Harry muttered.

“So I took the cloak and went to see what I could find out. Somehow, I ended up at Dumbledore’s office.” He grimaced; the others suspected his ‘somehow’ wasn’t nearly as accidental as he wanted them to believe. “The door was ajar, and Madam Hooch was inside.” Remus and Sirius exchanged glances. “She was asking if Harry’d gone, and Dumbledore said he’d Flooed all right, and that everything else was up to him. I could’ve gone in right then and demanded Dumbledore tell me where he’d sent Harry, but I, ah, didn’t want Madam Hooch asking too many questions.”

Sirius chuckled quietly. “Whatever you didn’t want her asking, she already knows. That woman has powers you can’t imagine.”

“You waited until they left, didn’t you?” asked Remus.

Ron nodded. “And then I...” Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen Ron blush so deeply. “I picked up one of the spare wands Dumbledore’s always got laying about and did a Floo Follow spell.”

“Ron!” The other three men practically shrieked his name.

There was nothing inherently dangerous about a Floo Follow. Sort of the wizarding equivalent of last-number redial on a Muggle phone, the spell allowed travel to the last place on the Floo Network reached from a given fireplace. The spell itself was simple enough. Still—

“What if Harry hadn’t been the last one to use that fireplace?”

“Or if I’d Flooed to someplace dangerous?”

“You don’t think the middle of a fight with a river troll was dangerous?”

“Honestly, Ron,” Harry huffed, his anger overriding, for the moment, his shaking fear at the thought of everything that could have happened to Ron because of that spell. “I ought to slap you silly for pulling a stunt like that.”

“Look,” Ron said testily, holding out a handful of shimmering silver cloth, “I have the cloak. Do you want it or not?”

Wordlessly, Sirius yanked the cloak from Ron’s hand. Motioning the others closer, he draped it over all four of them, though it was a near thing with the packs. They shuffled around to a jutting in the rock wall, hiding behind it as best they could. Remus pointed his wand at Lucius and mumbled, “Terminus,” reversing the spells they’d set on him.

The blond man crumpled to the floor with a hoarse shout of pain. Less than two seconds later, he was on his feet again, wand at the ready, whirling around in search of the intruders. “Where did you go?” he demanded. “Werewolf! Black! Show yourselves!”

Bloody likely, Harry thought. Did Lucius really expect the four of them to just jump out and say, ‘Boo’?

Realizing his quarry had, for the time being, evaded him, Lucius broke into a run, screaming, “Intruders! Intruders!”

Slipping along silently behind him, the four struggled to stay within the edges of the cloak, but once or twice Ron saw the tip of a wand or the toe of a shoe appear for an instant before being hastily drawn back into the circle of invisibility.

Lucius had run into an enormous room with a high domed ceiling dotted with imposing, dripping stalactites. The walls here were made of a redder rock than the rest of the caves, lending an air of the macabre to everything. A room of great power, no doubt, and Ron wondered how they ever hoped to defeat the cell here.

But they were gathering. Drawn by Lucius’s frantic call, the members of the cell were racing into the large room, their own wands drawn and ready. Harry recognized only one of the other Death Eaters: Draco’s mother, Narcissa.

*

PART 15: Mesmer Infidelis
Violent goings-on, here.

“Lucius?” Narcissa was asking, sweeping across the room to her husband’s side. “What’s happened? Who’s here?”

His gray eyes glittering coldly, Lucius replied, “Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter.” A ripple of shocked murmuring ran through the room, until Narcissa silenced them all with a withering glare. “They’re close by, I think.”

“You’re absolutely right, Malfoy.” So saying, Sirius threw the Invisibility Cloak off of them all and pointed his wand, not at Death Eaters, but at Harry, who was racing across the room to stand at the East side of the room. The Death Eaters started yelling orders at each other and spells at the four invaders, but the four had the advantage of surprise; they had caught Voldemort’s supporters off-guard – even now they were unsure what was about to happen to them.

In very short order, even while easily dodging spells being cast at them by increasingly panicky Death Eaters, thin steams of magickal energy connected Sirius’s wand to Harry’s, Harry’s to Remus’s, and Remus’s to Ron’s. But the bands didn’t look right. Even Harry, who hadn’t been present for the Marauders’ first performance of the Mesmer Infidelis, could tell that it wasn’t going the way it was supposed to. The light was too faint, too thin, too pale.

“It’s not working!” he yelled. “The energies must not be matching.”

“We’re not done yet!” Remus shot back. “Now, Ron!” If Ron’s wand couldn’t remedy the imbalance in the energy streams, the spell would fail – and most likely, the Death Eaters would kill them.

So, basically, Ron’s had damned well better work.

Too many things happened at once for anyone to really be sure of them. As though they’d all simultaneously been struck by lightning, a horrified epiphany came into the eyes of the cell members as they realized what the Order’s agents were attempting. At once, they stopped leveling their wands at the four men on the outside of their circle and began leveling them at each other.

Tilting his wand so it pointed at Sirius, Ron spoke the words of the spell.

A malevolent orange light flashed inside the circle.

A blinding silver light flared outside of the circle.

The four travelers were flung to the ground, still gripping their wands.

A deathly silence fell over the red room.

Ron was the first of the four to recover. He sat up slowly, groaning, his free hand holding the side of his head. Unwilling to speak, in case the Death Eaters were lying in wait to blast him with another Unforgivable Curse, he held up his wand to counter any attack. And very nearly dropped it.

His wand was glowing. “What the hell...”

“Mmmmph.”

Ron looked to his right. “Sirius?”

The older man was sitting up now, as well, scanning the room as Ron had done. “Why is my wand glowing?”

“Funny,” Ron said, crawling over to Sirius’s side, “I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Remus and Harry?”

Ron shook his head. “I don’t know.” He gestured into the room. “And the cell...”

“We’ll deal with them in time,” Sirius said, squeezing Ron’s arm. “Go check on Harry.”

Nodding, Ron clambered to his feet, wincing and swearing several times on the way up. Some instinct telling him to avoid the center of the room, he skirted along the cave walls to where Harry lay, just now beginning to come around. “Ron?”

“I’m here, Harry.”

Harry raised his wand hand to rub his forehead but stopped with his hand hovering several centimeters in front of his eyes. “So, my wand’s glowing.”

“Yeah, they do that.” Ron held out a hand to help Harry to his feet. Looking down at his own wand, which was a normal piece of wood again, he added, “It goes away.”

On the opposite side of the room, Remus was having a harder time regaining his equilibrium. Still sitting, he leaned his head against the cave wall, his hand clasped tightly in Sirius’s. “Harry and Ron?” he asked weakly.

Sirius rubbed the back of Remus’s hand with his thumb. “I think they’re all right. At least, Ron was, and I haven’t heard him screaming, so I assume Harry is, as well.”

Remus shook his head. “All right, then.” He held his hand out. “Help me up.” Sirius gave a tug. Smiling tightly at the man in his arms, Sirius said quietly, “Are you ready to face whatever’s in there?”

“Nope.” Remus shook his head. “Shall we?”

Sirius turned them towards the center of the room. They caught the gazes of Harry and Ron on the other side of the unnaturally silent circle of Death Eaters. By silent agreement, they began moving among the bodies on the ground. Kneeling beside them one by one, they touched wands to temples, wrists, hearts, anything to revive them. But it was a wasted effort.

Harry was the one to speak it; this horrid, unspeakable thing. “They’re all dead.”

The four men stood, staring at each other, appalled, speechless. “It didn’t work,” Ron whispered, staring at the wand in his hand. “It wasn’t supposed to kill them.”

Remus drifted around the room until he found Lucius. Kneeling by the body that was little paler in death than it had been in life, he stroked thin blond hair almost tenderly from Lucius’s brow. “The spell worked perfectly,” he said quietly. “I saw the light – your wand balanced the energies.”

“But they’re all dead,” Harry whispered, clinging to Ron’s arm for support, though Ron scarcely looked strong enough to hold himself up, let alone Harry.

Remus looked up at Sirius, his eyes dark with tightly reined grief that was about to break free anyway. Sirius frowned, but he knelt at Remus’s side and turned Lucius’s arm slightly. “Death before capture,” he said grimly.

Just when he’d thought the day couldn’t worsen, Harry’s world rocked again. “They all killed themselves?”

Remus simply nodded. Ron’s arms closed tightly around Harry, as though trying to convince himself that Harry was still here, still alive. Suddenly, Sirius was on his feet, rushing towards the back of the room. “Sirius!” Remus called, startled, “where are you going?”

“They didn’t all kill themselves.” Reaching a natural pillar of rock, Sirius pulled a small, sniveling man out from behind it. He had thin, curly light brown hair and small, pudgy hands. He didn’t really look that much like Peter, but from their vantage point on the other side of the room, the other three knew that Peter was what Sirius was seeing when he looked at this pathetic enemy. The man cowered in Sirius’s grip, twisting and whimpering feebly.

“Didn’t have the guts to do it, eh?” Sirius spat. “Too weak even for suicide? Well, congratulations; your inability to act at the moment of crisis has made you a pawn of the Order.” A laugh that was half snarl burst from Sirius’s lips, chiliing Remus. “Not the prize we’d hoped for, but better than nothing, I suppose.” Immobilizing the man with a contemptuous flick of his wand, Sirius tossed him to the ground beside his dead comrades. “Contact the Order; tell them to come clean up this mess and bring this weasel in before any of Voldemort’s other lackeys notice they’ve had a whole cell go missing.” He was already stomping towards the exit of the complex. “We’re going home.”

Ron and Harry looked at Remus, who shrugged, gave one more rueful look at Lucius, and rose. “Come on, then,” he said, walking towards their packs, still lying just outside the red room. “Let’s go home.”

The two younger men could do nothing but shoulder their own packs and follow. Someone from the Order would have the unenviable task of cleaning up the mess left by their own unenviable task. No doubt there would have to be a report made to someone at some point, but really, their part of it was done. Just like that. All it had taken was an entire cell of dead Death Eaters.

Harry shivered, leaning closer to Ron as they followed Remus and Sirius, who clung to each other as though they were being tossed by a great storm at sea. Which, if they felt anything like Harry did, they might just have been.

Going home had never seemed such a welcome prospect.