Note: Cold Turkey is a term for sudden withdrawal from drugs. It is also used in German, but I wasn't so sure whether you actually say 'somebody is ON cold turkey'? Couldn't find it on the web ...
Thank you very much for your reviews!
8 Kensal Green
Remus has watched McGonagall pop in and out of the place, her fatigue forgotten, fetching them boots and newspapers, two wands which looked suspiciously new and some special things for Severus. He has watched Snape getting up, grumpy and unwilling to talk much. He has noticed how Minerva is worried �“ but won’t ask her colleague how he is. She isn’t exactly insecure around the younger man, she wouldn’t be insecure around a horde of hellhounds. It’s more like she fears to step over some kind of border between the two of them, Remus guesses.
He’s watched Snape walking in and out of the room, back with new black robes and a strange combination of belts and straps around his torso, hidden underneath those robes. In there he puts break-safe vials with basic potions and ingredients and some other things, like little knifes. That’s impressive, he thinks, but he doesn’t say anything as he sits in his armchair, fed and patched up by McGonagall and thankfully wrapped in his own new set of robes. He eats a little more.
They break and burn the wand they’ve stolen, wands are easy to spot by tracking charms. Thankfully, people aren’t. He knows that, from way back when he and Sirius and James and Peter created the Marauder’s Map. Damn tricky, those tracking charms. He sips on his tea, wincing at the pain in his finger. Or rather, where his finger once was.
He watches Snape rummaging around in the prison robes he has brought to burn them as well. Snape is moving in a strange, nervous way, sometimes he stops to stare at the wall or frown darkly at the dust in the air. His black eyes are brighter than usual then, and his hands are shaking, very lightly. Finally Snape throws the prison robes into the grate, where they burn slowly. It smells horrible, burnt wool and fish and everything. Snape gets up again, and opens an empty vial. He holds something small and crooked between his fingers, something like a ...
“That’s my finger,” said Remus, snapping out of his reverie. Snape looked up at him and smiled unpleasantly.
“You surely don’t need it anymore. Or are you hungry again?”
“No.” But still. That’s his finger! “But ... but what’ll you do with it? You won’t use it to brew some potion, will you?” Parts of people are very potent ingredients, not only for Polyjuice Potions. Parts of werewolves �“ who knows what they’re worth!
“I don’t know yet.” Snape put it into the vial and the vial into one of the belts. Strange, Remus thought. He’d have thought that Snape would rather throw away a very rare and expensive potion ingredient than keep a part of him around. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe something was wrong with Snape. He smelled off. Like fear, but not the panicky kind. The slow, creeping, confusing kind.
And again he fell silent and watched. McGonagall thinks the best course of action involves finding Albus Dumbledore. Snape thinks that the best course of action involves killing Regulus Black as quickly as possible. Remus thinks that the best course of action involves both, yet can’t decide which should be first. He has never been good at decisions.
But there is another problem at hand: Minerva should return to Hogwarts, to protect the kids and learn more about that fraud Regulus. But if she returns, Snape suspects, she’ll be back under the spell of that man. Because they have worked out that McGonagall was only able to see the truth when because she had been away from Regulus for some days. And Snape probably wasn’t affected because of the near constant Occlumency he keeps up. And Remus? But no one asks about him. Of course, Remus Lupin is a werewolf. He’s special.
“Lupin!” Snape’s unfriendly address wakes him from his daydreaming once more. “Are you asleep? We were asking for your opinion.”
“Sorry.” He draws himself up. “I think you shouldn’t go back to Hogwarts, Professor. You might tell Black about our whereabouts if you get back under his spell.”
“That wasn’t the question,” growls the potions master. “We were talking about the headmaster.”
“Albus isn’t dead,” explained McGonagall. “There are lots of signs that would tell us about his death and none has come true. But the most important of them is Hogwarts. If the current headmaster dies or resigns, the castle would announce it. The headmaster �“ and also the Deputy Headmaster �“ are bound to it by magical contracts that date back from the founders’ time. His portrait is still unanimated. And on the contract, his name isn’t crossed out.”
“I know something,” Remus suddenly announced. All the talk about dying had brought him an idea. “Wouldn’t it be valuable to know whether our current Defense teacher is really Regulus Black? Well, we could just look. Into his grave, I mean. He was supposed to be buried, wasn’t he? In that wild tale he’s fed us they buried the enchanted lion after the Death Eaters killed it. So if the body in his grave is a lion, then that part of his story is true. If it isn’t, we’ve got prove against him.” McGonagall nodded but pursed her lips in thought.
“I wonder ... why did none of us bother to do this when he showed up? It would have been a great way to prove or disprove his story. But as far as I know, not even Albus did.” She shook her head. “Where is he buried? Is it safe to go there?”
“I know where their crypt is,” Snape interjected with a dark look. “Kensal Green.”
“Kensal Green? But that cemetery was only founded in the 19th century. Why would such an old pureblood family have their crypt there?” she wondered.
“Kensal Green is the oldest public cemetery of London. Many famous muggles and wizards are buried there, even members of the muggle royal family. It was very fashionable to have a crypt there back in the Victorian Age,” Snape explained. “The Blacks were always a very fashionable family and deeply convinced of their own royalty. Despite the fact that the Kings of Britain have always been muggles, I must say. So they got a crypt there when it was fashionable, just like many other rich wizarding families.”
“Like yours?” He nodded grimly, sipping from his tea. The porcelain clattered when he put the cup down.
Kensal Green was the very picture of a Victorian cemetery. In summer it surely deserved its name, as grass and trees and flowerbeds were everywhere to be found. Weeping willows would spread their green shrouds and birds would lament beautifully in lush bushes. Dark ivy was coiling around stone angels and over the marble tombs. The grass was no stiff lawn, but almost a sweet meadow. Crypts like small houses were scattered loosely in this scenery, some a little crowded, some apart from the others. They were an eclectic but dignified mix of styles, from filigree gothic arches to medieval looking crosses, although most of them weren’t older than a century and a half. Crosses were everywhere, but also pillars and obelisks, greying white stone in the darkness.
The half-moon wasn’t yet high in the sky, and clouds were traveling over it, sometimes snuffing the white light out, sometimes revealing it. A soft fog was blurring all edges and distances, hanging between the graves.
In the centre of the cemetery stood the Anglican chapel, put Snape was leading him away from it. They passed by a huge tomb that was carried by at least eight sitting stone griffins, a small temple with Greek pillars, an obelisk with a flower-crowned urn on top. Praying angels as tall as real people kneeling in front of a simple gravestone and a marble bird of prey, chained to a rough rock.
Many symbols were Christian, but almost as many weren’t.
Snape was walking in long strides before him, his black cloak wrapped tightly around him. Wrapped in fog and moonlight on a nightly graveyard, he strongly resembled a vampire. They passed through a field were only small headstones and crosses stuck out of the ground, many of them at odd angles and finally found themselves in a remote and hidden part of the cemetery, under tall chestnut and willow trees, between dark yews. Now, the graves were decorated with different symbols.
There were magical creatures like unicorns and phoenixes, and many natural symbols, coats of arms of many old and famous wizard clans. Remus thought he saw the names Crouch and Cadogan, Dilys and Diggory, Parkinson and Prewett. Snape stopped in front of a dark, massive crypt. It was guarded by a black metal fence and looked powerful and menacing. The door to the fence was ornamented by seven silver stars and the family credo : Toujours Pur .
Remus stopped next to Snape, his hands buried in his pockets. It was colder and darker in this part of the cemetery, and the fog was thicker. It glided around them like a living entity.
“Are you sure we should just break in? The Blacks were obsessed with cursing everything in their possession,” he said softly and shivered.
“That’s why we came so early,” Snape answered with grim determination.
The moon stood high in the night sky and the clouds had become darker and yet they were still not a foot into the crypt. Since hours they had worked hard, had broken curses and destroyed deathly traps. Snape had burned his hands on the metal fence when it suddenly started to glow under his hands and a vicious scorpion had nearly poisoned Remus before he could crush it with his heel.
Now they were both sitting on a flat tomb next to the Black family crypt, sweaty and frustrated. Probably Miss Priscilla Goshawk would have been less than delighted about her nightly visitors, but she was dead since 1894.
“So your family has a crypt here, too?” Remus asked. Snape waved derisively into the direction of another crypt, much less pompous than the Black’s, almost hidden by dark ivy. Then he reached inside his cloak, took one of the vials and drowned it.
“It’s only waiting for me now,” he said softly. His face was nearly hidden by a curtain of tangled black hair. “The last time I was here, we buried my sister.”
“You had a sister?” Remus was genuinely surprised.
“A long time ago. And now you probably want to tell me about your family,” was Snape’s sarcastic reply. “Get over with it.” Remus shrugged.
“Nothing spectacular to tell.” He got up and walked back to the fence around the crypt. The silver stars were shimmering slightly in the moonlight. He could touch silver, even eat from silver dishes, but a silver bullet or blade would kill him.
“Toujours Pur,” he snorted. “Whoever came up with that?” And silently the door swung open. He raised a brow. Snape groaned quietly.
“It cannot be that easy, can it?” Remus mused, scratching his chin. “It’s probably another trap.”
“Well, try and go trough it,” Snape sneered. He gave the man a quick look, considering their options. If this was another deathly trap, then he would be better suited to survive it. Probably. Carefully, he put one foot over the threshold. It had proven impossible to climb over the fence or destroy it, but now nothing happened. Only the gravel crunched at little under his heel. He smirked, and glided through the door, then looked back at Snape.
“Seems safe.” He walked up to the door of the crypt, where the crest with the seven silver stars glimmered another time. Still, no evil had befallen him. Probably getting inside was as easy as that. It wasn’t as if anyone had reason to break into a crypt, anyway, besides the two of them. The Blacks had cursed their crypt for fun. Snape came up to him, his wand still ready. Remus put a hand on the old handle of the door, and to his surprise, it swung open with a painful screech. He examined the lock.
“I think someone has broken in here before us.” He looked up at Snape. The dark haired man wore a guarded look on his face. Remus shrugged and lit the tip of his wand, then he stepped inside the crypt.
It was a very strange place indeed. In the centre of the room stood a tree on a dais. But not a normal one. It was a filigree tree spun of gold, with silver leaves, each leaf bearing a name. The roots of the tree wrapped around a black gem as big as a human head. There were vaults in the thick black marble walls, not at all as many as there were leaves on the tree. Remus examined the tree a little closer. Most of the names on the leaves were alien to him, but then he came upon one, very near the crown, which he knew. ‘Phineas Nigellus’.
The crypt smelled strange. Of dead foliage, dust, old stone ... and something sharp. It smelled of animal. Blood and animal. He felt the little hairs on his neck rise in fear. Snape was walking around the room, examining the vaults. In one corner he stopped. Remus came to look what he had found and gazed over his shoulder.
Two vaults bore the name of Sirius’ parents. The one above them, the very last of all the vaults, said ‘Regulus Black 1964 �“ 1980’. But it was not closed. It hang open at a strange angle. They frowned at each other, then Snape pulled at the lid and it gave away. Behind it, the black mouth of the coffin gaped. It was dark as a pitch and you could impossibly tell if somebody lay inside it or not.
“Somebody’s been here before us,” Snape mused. “Black?”
“Why would he look into his own grave?” Snape made a superior face.
“To put a different corpse inside, of course. Or steal the original one. If he isn’t really Black, that is.” Remus shrugged and simply reached inside. It was obviously empty. But ...
“That’s strange.”
“What?” Snape demanded impatiently.
“There are ... scratches in here ... as if somebody had been �“ oh, and what’s this?” He closed his hand around it and pulled it out of the coffin. It was a splinter of wood, crusted with dusty blood and some hairs.” Suddenly Remus felt the blood drain from his face and he let go of the splinter.
“Gods,” he whispered hoarsely. “Somebody was put in there ... alive!” Snape picked up the splinter and carefully put it into one of his vials, but Remus was still thunderstruck.
Buried alive! Closed in a tight hull of darkness and solid stone, left to die, to suffocate, to starve. Completely alone, unheard, unseen, maybe not even knowing why you were in this deathly cave.
The person had obviously tried to claw out of the coffin, but probably failed. But now he wasn’t there anymore. Had Regulus Black killed another person instead of himself, by burying them alive in his own grave? He was cruel and cunning enough to do something like that to save his own skin when Voldemort discovered his betrayal. But why should he have returned now? Remus felt sick. He turned to leave.
“Let’s go ... this is a bad place.” Snape followed him into the moonlight and they both walked out of the crypt.
“What’s the matter, Lupin?” Snape asked with a sneer when they stopped to Apparate. “You look like a school girl who’s just found a spider in her hair.”
Remus threw him a dark look. Snape was sickly pale himself, with a sheen on sweat on his forehead, and dark rings under his reddened eyes. He had already looked bad this morning, but it became continually worse.
“Well, and you look like you’re...on cold turkey, actually.” Snape stared.
“Cold Turkey?”