6

Chapter 6 – The Ashes of a Burned Resource

Monday 11th January 1982

Courtroom Ten, Ministry of Magic

It didn't matter whether you were a supporter of Pure-blood traditions or of reform, it wasn't a pretty sight.

Many of the attendees at the trial sneered or wrinkled their noses in distaste as the prisoner was brought forward to be shackled into the chair that stood in the centre of the room. This wasn't a proud, defiant head of an Ancient and Noble house, but a weeping, quivering wreck of a man, pudgy and weak, with colourless, bedraggled hair that matted itself to his forehead as he was dragged to face justice.

Of all those who had come before this court, so many of them charged with heinous offences committed in the name of the Dark Lord, this was by far the most wretched-looking of them, and to many it beggared belief that he could have been of the slightest use to Voldemort.

The scribe stood to make his announcement, and the muttered chattering that the spectators had been engaged in slowly died away.

"This is the trial of Peter Pettigrew," he stated in a stentorian voice. "Accused of two counts of murder at the behest of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, of two counts of conspiracy to murder, and of belonging to an illegal paramilitary organisation. Presiding is Senior Judge Gerald Crossley."

The scribe sat back down and acknowledged the Judge, who had nodded his thanks.

"Mister Pettigrew, you have heard the charges laid against you." the Judge intoned, his pinched face giving his an austere look as he gazed down at the defendant, "How do you plead on the counts of the murders of Fabian and Gideon Prewett?"

Pettigrew just sat there, unable to form words as his lips quivered and trembled, merely shaking his head repeatedly.

"And how do you plead on the counts of conspiracy to the murders of James and Lily Potter?" Judge Crossley followed up.

Again, Pettigrew said nothing, though tears began to form in his eyes and he looked away from the Judge, unable to face him, either in the light of what he had done or in the dawning understanding that he was being held to account for his actions and the potential consequences that he might face.

His eyes flickered around the courtroom, but all of the spectators' eyes were on him, and he had nowhere to hide, his body shrinking back into the seat and back of the chair as he tried to escape their focus upon him.

"And on membership of the Death Eaters, an illegal paramilitary organisation?" the Judge asked.

There was a pause, then finally Pettigrew found a voice.

"I had no choice!" he wailed, the tears now flowing freely as he sobbed openly in front of the whole court.

Many watching found it a tough spectacle to stomach. Some mentally questioned whether this was really someone with the fortitude to commit murder? To betray his best friends to the Dark Lord? How had it come to this, that someone so weak and feckless could have been responsible for such crimes?

"In the absence of a formal plea, your plea will be entered as Not Guilty, Mister Pettigrew," the Judge informed him. "We will start with the least serious charge, please. Prosecutor? Your case?"

The next few hours only intensified how pitiful Pettigrew seemed to be. Questioning of Pettigrew brought out a story of a scared eleven-year-old leaving home for the first time, where he has brought into a close-knit group of friends who supported him and welcomed him for the person he was, yet he forever held onto his insecurities and feelings of inferiority.

Even in (as he saw it) his most triumphal moment, successfully learning to become an animagus and perform the complicated self-transformation, he felt belittled and devalued because his form was that of a rat, despite his friends' delight at him having such an excellent form to get around Hogwarts completely unnoticed, and their approval of his creativity and sneakiness which contributed to many of their successful pranks.

As the story was told, the Prosecutor implied that he could corroborate or rebut the defendant's tale, as necessary, with other witnesses, but forebore to question anyone else at this time.

It became clear from the words emerging from his own mouth that Pettigrew magnified even the tiniest of slights that he felt he had been subjected to in his consciousness, each rebuff of his affections for a girl, every unwarranted (to his mind) detention that he served, the most minor of brush-offs from his peers and he felt each as a slap in the face to someone who deserved nothing less. He felt shamed by his careless loss of The Marauders' Map to the Hogwarts' Caretaker, and aggrieved when Lily Evans finally fell for the charms of James Potter.

As his story evolved, the tears evaporated and bitterness filled his visage.

"Oh, the Great Albus Dumbledore invited me to join his vaunted 'Order of the Phoenix'," he told the court, " and I felt so honoured to have been considered worthy of being brought in to help in the fight against You-Know-Who. Except that it soon became clear that Dumbledore's idea of 'taking the fight' to the Dark Lord mostly involved passing on titbits of information picked up at work, in the Leaky Cauldron or in the street and doing nothing about it other than sending a few people to help defend if they heard about a possible attack on someone."

"You felt that more should have been done? That you could have prevented the Dark Lord from doing whatever he wanted otherwise?" the Prosecutor asked.

"Of course not!" Pettigrew spat. "Not with Lucius Malfoy greasing the wheels for him in the Ministry. That was where the rot needed to be stopped!"

"And exactly how did this lead you into joining You-Know-Who?"

"Somebody let it slip that I was the weak point," the bedraggled man said with a sneer. "That if they wanted someone on the inside, I would be the easiest to turn.

"Probably it was Snape. He always sneered at me like I was the lowest form of life, like dirt on his shoes. Yet he was the one who truly betrayed James, bringing the Prophecy to the Dark Lord in the first place."

"And yet, Snape was the first to turn his back on You-Know-Who, and bring information on his activities to the light, turning coat at great personal risk," the Prosecutor noted. "Albus Dumbledore vouched for his acts personally and requested leniency be granted."

"Of course he did," Pettigrew wailed. "He played both sides against the middle as soon as he could. A typical case of saving his own ass. Maybe he really was as good an occlumencer as he claimed, if he could fool both Dumbledore and the Dark Lord.

"Not that anyone else would have stood a chance," he continued. "Walden McNair accosted me in Knockturn Alley one evening, and demanded that I go with him. He was carrying that axe of his, so I didn't dare say no. It turned out that he was taking me straight to the Dark Lord.

"I thought that I might be able to bluff my way out of it; promise to bring him secrets and news, and I would be able to play both sides off against one another." he shuddered slightly. "He never even gave me a chance. The Dark Lord simply ripped the information out of my mind with legilimancy and then informed me that I was going to be his spy only – that I would be taking the Dark Mark imminently."

And finally, the Prosecutor was able to lead on to the charges that Pettigrew was specifically brought up on.

It appeared that his murder of the Prewetts was something of an initiation. On the evening in question they had been called in by another Order member, Dorcas Meadows, whose house was under attack by Death Eaters. She had long been threatened by Voldemort for speaking out against his supporters' moves in the Wizengamot, and it had been expected that Death Eaters would make a move on her at some point.

Pettigrew had been tasked with sabotaging any defence against that attack and his knowledge of who would be available and who would not had been taken from his mind by the Dark Lord, making the date for the raid key to its success.

Knowing that this was the night – Voldemort had selected it because many of the Order were elsewhere - and that the Prewetts had been asked by Dumbledore to be on call that evening should the worst occur, Pettigrew had sneaked into their house and slipped a slow-acting poison into their lunches earlier in the day.

When the call for aid came they were badly weakened by the poison, and Apparated to Dorcas Meadows' house to find themselves badly outnumbered, five-to-two, yet they had fought like heroes to give Dorcas time to escape, and had only finally succumbed to the poison after they had already been overwhelmed by the Death Eaters after a protracted pitched battle.

The faces around the Courtroom were bleak.

Pettigrew was then questioned about his involvement in the deaths of the Potters.

"They thought they were so clever, switching secret keeper, to try and trick the Dark Lord, but they outsmarted themselves. The sensible thing to have done would have been to make Dumbledore the secret keeper, safely ensconced at Hogwarts where not even You-Know-Who would have attempted to have breached just to get hold of the Potters' location."

"Why was You-Know-Who after the Potters? Surely not just because they were members of Dumbledore's 'Order'?" the Prosecutor asked.

"That was part of it," Pettigrew replied. "Plus, the Potters were big names in the Wizarding World and they had set themselves against him, that was enough really: to take them down would be another notch on his staff and the loss of another opposing voice.

"But that wasn't all. He seemed fixated on them for some reason. He'd heard, or heard of, a Prophecy that suggested that their son was destined to defeat him if he didn't dispose of the boy first."

"Little Harry?"

"Yes. I don't know what it actually said, but sometime before he turned his coat, Snape had brought word to the Dark Lord of the threat that the Prophecy laid out, and he took him off into private to hear the details.

"He seemed convinced that the Potters were the only ones that it could apply to. He'd been making plans to get hold of them for months, and when he found out that they had made me their secret keeper he laughed uproariously. Scared the hell out of everyone there, it did. He said that it just made everything so much easier as he now knew where to find them and would do so at his leisure."

"You don't sound particularly upset at the deaths of your friends, Mister Pettigrew." the Prosecutor noted.

"They weren't my friends. They just used me and then ignored me. I wasn't upset. I wasn't especially happy about it. I didn't have any say in whether they died or not, so why should I get emotionally involved?"

"Yet you led He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to their cottage in Godric's Hollow and gave him the secret?"

"What else could I have done? He would have used either the Imperius or Cruciatus curse on me to make me tell him had I not done so."

"And then you just walked away? Knowing that your childhood friends had been murdered, and that their killer had just vanished."

"They weren't my friends," Pettigrew insisted again. "And I didn't know he had disappeared until much later. Bellatrix told me. I didn't hang around when the spell-fire stopped – I heard Dumbledore and that oaf Hagrid approaching, so used my animagus form and hid before they could ask what I was doing there."

In the months since the Potters' deaths, Pettigrew confessed that he had been living at the Hangleton Manor house that Voldemort had been using as his base, and which the Lestranges and others had continued to use after the Dark Lord had disappeared. It turned out that the Lestranges thought even less of Pettigrew than his friends had, and his main task had been caring for Voldemort's familiar, a large viper which he had named Nagini and had ensorcelled in some way.

It turned out that it had only been pure luck that he hadn't been in the Manor House on the day that the Longbottoms had raided the place and subsequently had to be rescued. He'd made himself scarce earlier in the day as Bellatrix had been on one of her many rants about the Dark Lord not being dead and that he had taken steps to ensure his resurrection even if he was, which she knew because she had been entrusted with a valuable (unnamed) artefact to achieve that end.

All of which information was quite frightening to many of those present.

By the time that the Prosecutor had finished laying out the case, there were few in the courtroom that felt that Pettigrew had any chance of mounting a successful defence against the charges. And so it turned out to be.

The Defence Advocate provided by the Ministry seemed uninterested in trying to debate the validity of any of the evidence, the vast majority of which had come straight from Pettigrew's own testimony, and instead focused on trying to win his charge a more lenient sentence. He emphasised the inferiority complex that Pettigrew clearly had and how his client had always felt betrayed by people who pretended to be his friends but only used him for their own purposes. He laid it on pretty thick as to how more respected and resilient wizards had been unable to prevent You-Know-Who effectively controlling their lives and making them do as he wanted.

He also asked for consideration to be given to Pettigrew providing much of the case against himself, arguing that he had saved the Court and the Ministry considerable resources by doing so, rather than forcing the Prosecutor to rely on third party witnesses.

Ultimately, the man's efforts were not enough to prevent the jury returning a 'guilty' verdict on all counts, and his demeanour suggested that he had expected this. It did, perhaps, sway Judge Crossley in his sentencing, as instead of being immediately ordered through the Veil or to suffer the Dementor's Kiss, Pettigrew was sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban in a specially designed cell that would prevent his escape in his animagus form.

-AMCR-AMCR====AMCR-AMCR-

Monday 11th January 1982

Offices of The Daily Prophet, Diagon Alley

"But it's perfect!" Barnabas Cuffe complained loudly to the two men who were in his office. "Prophesied boy is attacked by You-Know-Who and defeats him! The public will lap it up!"

"You know full well that what the public will do is seize upon the slightest opportunity to relinquish their own responsibilities, Barney," Rufus Scrimgeour told him. "And if you print this story, both the Ministry and the Potter Trust will hold you personally responsibility for any harm that happened to befall young Harry as a result."

"But Pettigrew announced it at his trial!" the Prophet's editor continued to argue.

"Not like that, he didn't," Scrimgeour asserted. "What he said was that Voldemort believed the prophecy to be true and acted as though it were."

Cuffe had shuddered at the Head Auror's use of the taboo name.

"But that's the same thing!"

"No, I'm afraid it isn't."

"But-"

"Let's look at it a little more closely, young Barnabas," said the other man in the room. "and you'll see why the Prophecy that Pettigrew is referring to cannot possibly be about either Voldemort or young Mister Potter."

"What on earth do you mean, Dumbledore?" Cuffe asked.

"I was the one to whom this particular Prophecy was made, so obviously I am aware of its content. I also knew that part of it, at least, was being reported back to the Dark Lord – to my eternal sadness, given how he has apparently interpreted it.

"Part of the Prophecy – I will not divulge its entirety for security reasons – states that 'neither can live whilst the other survives'.

"Now, given that the Prophecy was given in November of 1979, and that Harry was born in July 1980, and both of them were clearly living and surviving, all the way until October 1981, then clearly it cannot be about either of them."

"But Pettigrew said-"

"Peter Pettigrew only knew what he was told by Voldemort on the matter, young man," Dumbledore said firmly. "That he placed a particular interpretation upon those words does not make them true.

"Consider this: I have been to the Hall of Prophecies in the Department of Mysteries. At the time that I visited, last year, there were nearly a hundred lines of shelves, each at least thirty yards long, stacked from top to bottom with Prophecy orbs. Thousands upon thousands of Prophecies. How many of them do you think actually come true? And, given how ambiguous the wording of Prophecy normally is, how would you even know?"

"But it's a great story!"

"That doesn't make it true," Scrimgeour chipped in, "nor does it make it in the public interest," he added before Cuffe could chip in with that argument. "It certainly isn't in young Harry's interest to have the public placing such a burden upon him at your demand.

"We don't know that the Dark Lord's disappearance was anything to do with the boy, and speculating about it is only likely to leave the poor lad with a life of misery trying to live up to the expectations of those who believe that he had something to do with it because you published it in the newspaper!"

Cuffe slumped down deflated in his chair.

"What about this other thing, that You-Know-Who made some sort of soul vessel which would prevent him from dying completely and he would be able to be revived by one of his followers?"

Dumbledore and Scrimgeour shared a look.

"We can't give you specifics," Scrimgeour said warily, "but yes, it's true to a degree. The Ministry, with Headmaster Dumbledore's assistance, has discovered and destroyed at least one such item and is seeking to discover whether there are any others out there."

"The people need to know if You-Know-Who isn't gone," Cuffe insisted.

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed, "but putting the full detail of our speculation in the newspaper isn't the way to go about it. At least for now. And that's another reason why you should leave Harry's name out of it. If Voldemort comes back, do you really want to be responsible for people thinking that Harry Potter will save them because you said he did before?"

Cuffe sighed. "No," he said. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But what would you have me write, then?"

"You need to stick to the line that you've been following ever since the Potters' murders: that Voldemort attacked the Potters but has since disappeared. We don't know what happened to cause that – Pettigrew's testimony was just speculation on what he thought the Dark Lord believed - but the public should stay alert for the possibility that he might return," Dumbledore said.

"You can say that the Potters may have done something that forced him away. You may also say that the Ministry is continuing to chase down and prosecute the Dark Lord's followers," Scrimgeour put in, "and is doing everything that it can to ensure that he doesn't return."

"And those that are claiming that they were placed under the Imperius and forced into following his orders?"

"They will be questioned under Veritaserum," the Head Auror affirmed, "to establish whether or not they are telling the truth." He scowled a little. "So far, we've not found anyone legitimately coerced using the Imperius. All of the key parties have been fully culpable."

"Even Lucius Malfoy?" Cuffe asked. "I understood that he was offered a lighter sentence in return for turning prosecution witness. Are we working with one law for the rich and another for the poor?"

"Mister Malfoy was key to us identifying the soul vessel that we referred to earlier, and turned it over to be destroyed."

"You made a bargain with him?" Cuffe asked.

"No comment."

"And the rumour that he was assassinated in one of your high security cells?"

"Still no comment, Cuffe."

The editor made a moue of disappointment. He could still probably publish that as a rumour – people would want to know why Malfoy had not been brought back to the court for sentencing - but it wouldn't make him popular with the Ministry, and above all else he liked to keep himself on good terms with those in power. After all, it made getting stories a lot easier when his sources were official and willing to bring him something.

"Fine," he agreed. "But you know where we are when we can actually release any of this stuff, he noted."

Scrimgeour nodded, and the two visitors were escorted out of the office.

Cuffe sighed to himself. Time to put some restraints on the most enthusiastic of his writers.

"Send Skeeter in, please, Mary," he told his assistant.

A few minutes later the young reporter was ushered into her boss's office. Cuffe looked her over carefully.

Her short blonde hair and square jaw gave her an aggressive appearance, not easily compensated for by the magenta robes or the jewelled spectacles. Not a particularly feminine woman, Cuffe thought, but one he already knew to be particularly tenacious and sometimes a little obstinate. He hoped that today wasn't going to be a day where he had to overcome the latter trait.

"Rita, my dear," he began carefully. "Your reportage from the court this morning was most alarming, was it not? Betrayal, Prophecy, Murder and Mayhem! I hope this level of controversy isn't going to stalk you your whole career!"

"On the contrary, Mister Cuffe," Skeeter responded with a smile and a fierce look in her eyes, "I rather hope it does. Being able to report on such events is exactly how I'll be able to make my name."

Cuffe nodded, more to himself than to his reporter. She was going to have to be carefully watched.

"What did you take out of this morning as the big story?" he asked, "The one that might headline tomorrow morning's news?"

"Oh! The tragedy of the poor boy! Just a year old and hunted down by the Dark Lord as the result of a Prophecy, somehow turning the villain's own evil back upon himself, saving the rest of the world in the process! What a heroic story! How it tugs on the heartstrings! How every Mother will mourn for the poor child – and his gallant parents, holding the Dark Lord off – and hope against hope that nothing every threatens their own child that way!

"And then the threat!" she continued. "The Dark Lord may not be gone! What malign ritual has he undertaken to tie his soul to the mortal plane and prevent himself from passing on in a natural fashion! How might he be restored and who could possibly stand against him if he were, knowing that his death might not be the end of his reign of terror!"

The young reporter's faced glowed with fervour as she recited how she thought the subject should be approached and was unaware of the lack of similar enthusiasm from her editor.

"There's some interesting takes there, certainly, Rita, but I think we need to take a more conservative approach here. The public are still reeling from the trials that have already taken place and the extent of the atrocities that have been committed against even the most important and well-protected families."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Well, although I very much appreciate the creative thinking you have clearly put into how we might sell the story, I think we need to be clear exactly what story we're selling. To wit: we need to be sure that we don't over-sensationalise things. Tensions are still currently very high, after all, and we want to appear thoughtful and reassuring, rather than dramatic.

"You'll have seen from our coverage over recent months that we've been taking a clearly factual approach to the disappearance of the Dark Lord," he noted.

"Yes, but this puts everything into a new light, surely, sir? New evidence of a motive, and a firm direction as to what actually happened. What an opportunity to put the public's mind at rest about what actually happened that night!"

"Except that much of it is speculation, Rita."

"It's not speculation, Mister Cuffe," Skeeter argued, "it's all right there in Pettigrew's testimony!"

"As has just been pointed out to me, Rita, Pettigrew's testimony is full of caveats, possibles, and guesses at what the Dark Lord might have thought. It's not corroborated in anything like enough detail by any of the evidence from the previous trials. He's a murderer with an inferiority complex. Do you really trust anything he says?"

"He had nothing to lose by lying, though. He must have known he was going to Azkaban at the very least, and more likely through the Veil."

"No, but he had something to gain by presenting his own story in his own words, no matter how self-delusional he was about how people treated him. However piteous and miserable he may have looked in that courtroom, he painted a picture of a world that didn't appreciate him, that forced him into following the Dark Lord, and enough people will believe that part of the story to gain him sympathy. After all, people might ask themselves, what if they were the one who was carted off by Death Eaters and ordered to serve the Dark Lord? Could they have fought back?"

"I see what you mean, sir. What does that mean for the news, though?"

Some of the light had gone out of Skeeter's eyes as she processed what her boss was saying. Cuffe was in two minds about that. It would make his immediate job in ensuring that she wrote what he wanted her to now easier, but he hoped that it wouldn't take the zeal out of her investigatory work.

"We need to keep it simple. Stick to the facts. Lead with the betrayal of Pettigrew of his best friends. Play up his contempt for them and highlight his self-esteem issues. Minor focus on his inability to resist the Dark Lord and the lighter sentencing.

"Sideline on how we still don't know what happened to You-Know-Who. Might not be completely gone. You can still speculate on the dark rituals that he might have performed in order to achieve that – put an even greater sense of horror and disgust at him onto people's minds and de-humanise him.

"Pettigrew suggested that other Death Eaters thought he had taken steps to prevent his demise, so look into what steps those might have been. The Ministry are still trying to establish whether he's really gone or not, and whether he might return. Warn people not to become complacent, to keep their wards charged et cetera; even if the Dark Lord is gone, there may still be some Death Eaters out there even if the Aurors are doing a decent job in catching them."

"Was that the Minister that was in here, himself," Skeeter interrupted. "Telling you what to publish?"

"No, Rufus Scrimgeour, the Head of the Aurors."

"No wonder we're going with good press for the Aurors then!"

"That and it happens to be the case. He's done a pretty good job rounding them up. And he was prepared to put his neck on the line when it came to using veritaserum because it wasn't a popular move, given the cost."

"What about the Prophecy?" Skeeter asked.

"Don't even mention it," Cuffe told her with a shake of his head. "It's a red herring."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been allowed to know a fragment of it. One line. Whatever it was that You-Know-Who took out of it, he seems to be mistaken, because even that one line alone makes it clear that it can't mean what Pettigrew said in court that the Dark Lord thought it meant."

"Why not?"

"Because it says that 'neither can live while the other survives'. That cannot be about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and one of the Potters, even their son, because all of them were living whilst the others were surviving too."

Skeeter frowned, and he could almost see the cogs beginning to whir in her mind as she pieced together how her article might now read.

"That doesn't make sense. It sounds like a load of old waffle. Who gave this Prophecy?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. But even if The Dark Lord believed in it, and attacked the Potters because of it, that doesn't make their boy the subject of the Prophecy. It just makes them all really, really unfortunate that he chose to interpret it that way."

Skeeter looked away in thought.

"Can I trust you to write something that follows those guidelines, Rita? Or do I need to get someone else to do it?"

-AMCR-AMCR====AMCR-AMCR-

Friday 15th January 1982

Above the Hog's Head tavern, Hogsmeade

Severus Snape was a young man whose self-assurance had taken a number of hits over the last two years.

Having left Hogwarts a couple of years earlier with very good but not excellent grades on his NEWT – other than Potions, on which he had scored an Outstanding – he had expected to have been able to walk into a well-paying job almost immediately.

As it turned out, his heritage worked against him. Whilst his peers in Slytherin had almost all been hired immediately, or had pre-arranged employment awaiting them, Snape's attempts to secure a job he might have actually enjoyed continually met dead ends. None of the best employers wanted to hire a half-blood, even one with such NEWT scores, and few of those he had known he could get a job with were offering the kind of work or remuneration that he was looking for.

He had ended up taking an assistant's job at the apothecary, Slugg and Jiggers, whilst beginning his studies towards a Mastery in Potion making. It was a compromise – the work was dull and uninspiring, filling orders from the ingredients in the store room and bringing them out for the customers – but it allowed him to work with and appreciate a range of ingredients that he might otherwise not have had the chance to. The sneers and condescending stares of the clientele almost made it intolerable, though.

He had joined his Slytherin colleagues in swearing allegiance to the Dark Lord that same summer, encouraged by his former prefect Lucius Malfoy, but instead of being considered a great asset to Voldemort, he had been disparaged and used as muscle alongside his fellow teenagers. He had taken a certain amount of glee in killing 'blood traitors' dedicated to the fight against his Lord, and they regularly reminded him of the attitudes of the likes of James Potter, but had been less enamoured with the muggle-baiting that the cohort regularly engaged in. It didn't really seem like much of a challenge.

The group had, however, been fairly successful, and so avoided the wrath of the Dark Lord that was visited upon those who failed him.

When his good fortune saw him here in the Hog's Head, a year or so later, and able to overhear Dumbledore interviewing Sybil Trelawney for the Divination post, he was delighted to be able to take his discovery to his Master, regardless of his incomplete information.

For some weeks he was seen as one of the Dark Lord's chosen, and was elevated away from the cannon-fodder missions that his peers continued to be sent upon in favour of researching esoteric brews that Voldemort had an interest in. That this helped his own studies towards his desired Mastery was an added benefit.

But he had presumed once too often upon his supposed favouritism, and when he discovered that the Dark Lord had interpreted the Prophecy to mean that the Potters were the subject, he had protested vehemently and had been rudely dismissed. Even when he had begged the Dark Lord to spare Lily's life as a favour or in return for the service that he had provided, his pleas had been rebuffed with extreme prejudice, and with derision that he had lowered himself to beg for the life of a Mudblood.

Finally realising what his service to Voldemort meant – and what it would cost him – he began looking for a way to save his childhood friend whilst removing himself from the Death Eaters. He despaired that any such outcome was possible. Nobody had tried leaving the Dark Lord's service – or at least nobody had ever heard of such a thing happening.

The only thing he could think of was to turn himself over to Albus Dumbledore and throw himself upon his mercy.

Thus he had arranged to meet Dumbledore in November 1980, alone on a wind-swept hill, and warned him of the planned attack on the Potters, effectively turning coat and opening himself up to abuse from both sides.

Dumbledore had accepted his reversal of feeling with good faith, and promised to support him should he be brought before the courts for his allegiance to Voldemort, and had been true to his word, holding off anything more than a fine for Severus with his unconditional support and guarantee that this was a reformed and repentant Death Eater.

The emotional roller-coaster of the last few years now led to what he hoped would be the best possible solution to his future: teaching at Hogwarts.

"Thank you for coming, Severus," Dumbledore said as he ushered him into the small room he was using for his interviews. "Please take a seat."

Severus did as bid and waited expectantly.

"Thank you for your application for the post of Professor of Potions," the Headmaster began. "We've taken note of your excellent NEWT score in the subject and the associated supporting classes, and also considered the additional experience that you have been gaining in the storage and preparation of ingredients at Slugg and Jiggers. Is there anything else you would like to add beyond your resume?"

"Just that I have been engaging in the preparatory work towards a Mastery in the subject, which I hope to complete in my spare time over the next five years or so."

Dumbledore's eyebrows rose slightly. That was quite a short period for a Mastery to be completed if one wasn't working directly to a Master full time.

"You've had sufficient time away from your work?" he asked.

Severus explained how he had apportioned his time, how his work with the Dark Lord had contributed to his increased understanding and how devoted he had been to the subject, and he could see the Headmaster nodding along at the points he was making.

"Indeed. Most thorough of you."

The interview continued in a similar vein for a short while longer, with Severus being asked about his approach to teaching and how he would handle classes, as well and delving into specific elements of his theoretical and practical knowledge.

It had gone pretty well, Severus thought to himself as the interview drew to its end, so he was a little surprised at the next words he was addressed with.

"Well, thank you for you time," Dumbledore said. "I'm afraid that given your lack of actual teaching experience, and the discussion we've had tonight, I don't think that I could offer you the post at this time."

Severus stared at the man in shock. He was sure that this would be it.

"Whilst I appreciate that you have some solid experience in brewing, understanding and creating potions, I'm looking for someone with a more... delicate... touch with young pupils.

"Now," he continued, "it may be that we end up with a more experienced teacher – or indeed, it is still possible that dear Horace might be convinced to stay on a little longer if there is no suitable candidate – in which case, I might be able to offer you the chance to work alongside them for a time, in order to build up your own teaching experience."

"I'm not sure what to say, Headmaster," he said quietly. "I had thought you were looking for an expert in the subject, rather than a teacher first and foremost."

Dumbledore shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Perhaps when I originally wrote the job description that was what I had in mind," he said, "but having read through the various applications it has become clearer to me exactly what I think we should be looking for.

"I think, also," he continued, "that there might be concern among the parents if I were to appoint someone to the post who so recently sat among the Dark Lord's Death Eaters, regardless of your change of heart or my reassurances to them, or to the Board of Governors, of that."

"I'm not quite sure why you invited me here for an interview, in that case," Severus said, slightly bemused.

"Well, I thought that it would be beneficial to hear what you had to say, in the first place," the Headmaster said, "but I also thought that I owed you the courtesy of both hearing you out and explaining face-to-face why I didn't think you were the person for the job.

"I must admit that I also wanted to check on how you were doing personally," he admitted. "After all, I feel certain amount of responsibility for you given that I vouched for you in front of the court."

"And I can probably never repay that debt, Headmaster," Severus said.

Dumbledore waved away the acknowledgement.

"Your courage in coming forward and alerting me to the Dark Lord's plans was recompense in its own. I'm sure neither of us will ever easily overcome our feeling of guilt that more could not have been done.

"In any case, by averting your incarceration in Azkaban, I'm afraid that we painted a target upon your back. Your former colleagues will not have taken kindly to your change of heart, and I wanted to ensure that you were taking adequate precautions to protect yourself against any who might come after you. If you needed my help..."

"Thank you, Headmaster, but even in my treachery it appears that I am beneath the notice of those who consider themselves pure of blood. I've not had so much as a threat uttered in my direction."

"Despite the fact that it was you who revealed the Prophecy to the Dark Lord, and led him down the path that brought his mind to the Potters? And his assumed demise?"

"Even so," Severus said.

"And you know of course that the Dark Lord is not truly gone?"

"I had... expected... that to be the case," he admitted with a heavy heart. "For several reasons, in fact. Not the least of which was the tone of the explanation of the Potters' deaths and the Prophecy in the Prophet's articles over the last few months. But also because I was aware that the Dark Lord was taking such steps."

Dumbledore's eyebrows rose again.

"You knew of the Horcruxes?" he asked.

"Their presence? Yes. Their efficacy?" He wobbled his hand about. "I'm still not so sure, though I agree with the line being pushed by the Ministry that the public should not be allowed to become complacent.

"The Dark Lord made it clear to his followers that he had taken steps to protect his being should his body be destroyed, and enhanced his claims to immortality. He claimed to have gone 'further than anybody ever had before' in pursuing immortality, which suggested that he had created more or better Horcruxes, if you read between the lines of what he said and did."

He sneered slightly at a stray thought.

"Bellatrix certainly wasn't shy about her pride in being entrusted with one of his 'key relics'. Some artefact of one of the Hogwarts Founders, as I understood it. The Dark Lord was quite fixated with them. He implied that he was the heir of Slytherin and held the key to the legendary Chamber of Secrets."

"I always wondered whether that was legend or merely myth," Dumbledore said. "Did he say any more about it?"

"Only that he had the means to control 'Slytherin's Monster', whatever that may be," Severus said. "I had initially thought that he was referring to his familiar, Nagini, but apparently not, and the outsized viper has merely been warped by one of the rituals that he was experimenting with."

"Rituals? You think he made a Horcrux from a living creature?"

Severus paused for a moment, weighing up the point that the Headmaster had made.

"So I had assumed," he said. "I had not considered the obvious risk of that."

Silence sat between the two men for a moment.

"Would you have gone back to him, had I asked it of you?" Dumbledore asked eventually.

"To spy?"

"Yes."

Severus weighed it up in his mind.

"I think I would have felt obliged to."

"And to kill the familiar?"

"I had assumed that would have been part of my mission, yes."

Dumbledore paused again.

"Then it is as well that I did not," he said, slowly.

Severus looked at him curiously.

"May I ask why?"

"As much as your redemption may have gone beneath the notice of other Death Eaters, Voldemort would not have stood it lightly, especially with me having sworn to your faith in public. Going back to him would have been tantamount to sentence to a long, agonizing death for you, and of uncertain value to the Light. After all, how could anyone – other than myself - have trusted that you had not simply resumed your prior allegiance? How could you have prevented the Dark Lord from knowing where your true loyalty lay?"

Severus was silent.

"Thank you," he said after a moment, "for not asking it of me."

-AMCR-AMCR====AMCR-AMCR-

Tuesday 19th January 1982

Hangleton Manor

"Explain to me again why we're here," Remus asked his friend, as they approached the burned-out manor house cautiously.

"I told you," Sirius replied, "Dumbledore thinks that Voldemort's familiar will be lurking around here as it's where it was being looked after by Wormtail. He thinks it might be the last Horcrux we're trying to get rid of."

The public outcry following The Daily Prophet's headline story about the Dark Lord having undertaken rituals to split off his soul had forced the Ministry's hand. Someone had leaked to the paper that Hufflepuff's chalice was one such soul jar, and the amount of pressure that was put on the Ministry to do something about it become phenomenal, especially when it was revealed that it was in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts and the goblins were holding it hostage.

Sirius suspected that his Grandfather, Arcturus, had provided some of the information rather than bow to the ongoing pressure that he was being put under by Dumbledore and Scrimgeour to pay the ten thousand galleon fee that Rockcrusher, his account manager, had quoted to release the item.

The result was that the Ministry had been forced to stump up the seizure fee, though the independent valuation of the chalice had softened the blow a little by coming in at just under two thousand galleons.

Nobody had been particularly pleased to destroy the Founder's artefact, but they all agreed that it had to be done, which meant that based on Slughorn's postulations it was likely that only one Horcrux remained.

Rockcrusher was not in good odour amongst his colleagues, having cost Gringotts a substantial amount of gold by being too greedy when setting the release fee.

"And we're here and he isn't because...?"

"Did you have anything better to do on a Tuesday afternoon, Remus? Dumbledore's got a school to run, whereas you and I are gainfully unemployed."

"I wouldn't go that far," Remus argued. "I'm supposed to be undertaking your duties as James and Lily's executor, which you know isn't done yet. Plus, I do have a part-time job myself, you know."

"Fine, fine!" Sirius agreed. "I'm the one who's got a life of leisure. I just like dragging you along on these little adventures because I need someone to moan to, alright?"

"Sounds about right," the third member of their party chipped in. "You were never happy without someone to perform for."

"Frank!"

"Hey, you dragged me along as well, and this is supposed to be my day off," Frank said with a chuckle. "But if you think I'm letting you loose out here on your own, you're sadly mistaken. Last time you were in this vicinity, half the forest burned down because someone let Fiendfyre loose."

"You know that was Bellatrix, not me!" Sirius defended himself. "I'm not the sort to fry myself alive, thank you very much!"

"Details, details," Frank waved him off. "You were there when it happened. That's good enough for me!"

"I'm glad you're not hearing my case in front of the Wizengamot!" Sirius said.

"Yeah. In the meantime," Remus put in, "can we keep a closer eye out for a whacking great snake?"

They focused a bit more carefully rather than bantering, and made their way in through the same doorway that Sirius and Remus had used to rescue the Longbottoms a few months earlier.

"Where did we see those signs of it nesting before?" Sirius asked as they proceeded through the old, burnt-out kitchen.

"Next room," Remus reminded him. "The dining-room."

"Yeah, not much of a dining-room, as I recall."

"Keep the noise down."

The door ahead was ajar, and Remus slowly opened it just a little further to be able to see through into the room. Quickly he pulled his head back.

"Damn! That's a bloody big snake!" he said softly.

"How big?" Frank asked quietly.

"It's head and neck are about as far around as my thigh," Remus responded with a shiver, "and although it's curled up, it looks like it'd be about ten or twelve feet long."

"Merlin!"

"No. Nagini, I believe, Dumbledore said she was called."

"She?"

"I didn't ask. I didn't dare, in case I didn't like the answer.

"Anyway, the good new is that it looks like she's sleeping."

"Looks like?" Frank wrinkled his nose. "Fine. So how are we doing this? You're not thinking of Fiendfyre again, are you? Because if you are, then can you let me get about a quarter mile head start before you cast?"

"That shouldn't be necessary," Sirius said with a frown. "We just need to kill the snake, and the Horcrux will be destroyed. We don't need to destroy the Horcrux in the same way that we did the others."

"Doesn't seem a very sure way of protecting it," Frank pointed out.

"No, but she's a venomous snake – she's her own protection."

"I don't suppose you've got a mongoose as another animagus form, have you?"

"Err. No."

"So, plan of attack?"

"Err... jump in and get busy with cutting curses before she realises we're there?" Sirius suggested.

Frank looked at him, then looked at Remus.

"I don't have anything better," Remus admitted. "We were expecting to have to come up with something on the hop. Catching her quiescent like this is a surprise."

Frank sighed.

"Fine. If we're going to do this, let's do this."

They returned to the door and Remus opened it quietly once more, allowing the three of them to slip into the room without drawing the snake's attention. They spread themselves out to get a good angle, and so that they weren't in the way of one another.

"On three?" Sirius asked.

Two nods acknowledged him.

"One. Two. Three. Diffindo!"

"Diffindo!"

"Diffindo!"

Three cutting curses sped out from their wands and struck the target.

"Oh shit!" Sirius shouted.

The three curses had struck true, but had dome little more than awaken and enrage Nagini, and she slowly uncoiled herself and moved towards them.

"Go again," Frank urged.

Another trio of cutting curses shot out, and this time some slices did appear in the snake's side, but seemed to do little to slow her down as she advanced upon Remus who was nearest to her.

Frank and Sirius scooted around to either side of her as Remus backed away quickly, and cast more curses, hoping to do more damage.

"Switch to blasting hexes?" Sirius suggested?

"No!" Frank warned. "There isn't enough room."

"Well I'm pretty sure that if I try Fiendfyre then we're all pretty much fried!" he shot back. "What else have you got?"

Nagini stalked Remus as he tried to shuffle off to one side and cast a Conjunctivitis Jinx at her that caught her in one eye. A dark lid slowly blinked over the damaged eye and the snake shook her head as though trying to clear it away, then reared back and struck at Remus.

The werewolf barely avoided the fangs as they came crashing down when he had been a split-second earlier, but down he was backed up into a corner and trapped.

Frank and Sirius had switched to even more aggressive spells, with Frank's Reductor curse barely chipping Nagini's scales, and Sirius's Crushing hex missing badly. The oversized snake closed in on Remus.

Scrabbling backwards, Remus reached out behind him, and felt the wall at his back. He suddenly realised that he was completely cornered, and the snake was about to strike. It would not miss him this time – he had nowhere to escape to, no room to twist or turn away from the venomous fangs that were about to impale him and no hope of his friends being able to prevent his death here.

Nagini reared to strike one more time, and in desperation, Remus reached out behind himself in one last attempt to find some room in which to manouver. Suddenly he found himself grasping at metal.

Chancing a look around, he was startled to see that he held a sword in his hand. With no time to think about how it had appeared there, he slashed round instinctively with it across the maw of the snake as it dove to bite him, cutting deeply into its neck and eliciting a fountain of blood. The mouth continued on its trajectory towards Remus's body, but a second, backhanded, hack with the sword re-directed it away from him as the head was severed from the neck and flew off to one side of him and into the wall, where it made a heavy, squelching sound as it splattered into the brickwork and dropped to the floor.

The snake's body in front of him continued to gush blood as it flopped away to his other side, covering the floor in the red, sticky mess, but Remus, Sirius and Frank didn't notice this. They were far too distracted by the unearthly scream that emanated from the body of the snake.

For a moment Remus thought he saw an inky form in the shape of a man's face drifting upwards, but on shaking his head, the apparition had gone, or perhaps had never been there in the first place.

"Are you alright, Remus?" Frank asked shakily.

"I... I... think so," he replied."I thought that was it, you know... you know..."

"So did we," Sirius chipped in. "I can't believe how resistant to our spells that thing was."

"What was that you killed it with, Remus?" Frank asked.

Remus looked down at the sword still in his hand.

"I dunno," he said. "I just reached out behind me, and it came to hand." he looked behind again at the wall, but there was nothing there. "I've no idea where it came from," he said quizzically. "It just appeared in my hand."

The three of them shared confused looks.

"I don't remember seeing it there when we came in," Sirius said, and the other two shook their heads as well. "So, it's a magic sword that just happens to appear right in your hand at the exact moment when you need it."

They all looked down at the sword. It gleamed with a silver light that was barely diminished by the copious splatters of blood that remained on it, and Remus guiltily cleaned the blade on his robe. The handle gleamed with massive rubies, each around the size of a small egg, and there was something inscribed just below the hilt.

"That's a lot of bling for a sword," Frank noted.

Remus lifted it closer and tilted it so that the light caught it well enough to read clearly.

"Godric Gryffindor!" he exclaimed. "The Sword of Gryffindor!" he said in disbelief. "But how?"

Frank's eyes widened. "I have no idea. That's something to ask Dumbledore next time you see him"

"Wow." Sirius said simply.

"What do you do with it now?" Frank asked.

"I have no idea," Remus responded. "I didn't know what to do with it in the first place!"

Sirius laughed.

"What? Other than slay a whacking great snake with it?" he asked.

"I barely knew I was doing that!"

Frank started laughing at that too, and before they knew it all three were giggling away, the shock of dealing with the massive snake abating and the adrenaline flushing from their systems.

"Dumbledore will be worrying, though," Remus said once they had all regained their composure.

"Why?" Sirius asked.

"Well this is normally in a case behind his desk in that office of his," Remus replied, carefully waving the sword. "He'll be wondering where it disappeared to!"

And that set them all off in another fit of giggles.

-AMCR-AMCR====AMCR-AMCR-

Monday 8th February 1982

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (multiple locations)

When he had heard back from Remus Lupin nearly three weeks ago that Voldemort's familiar had been despatched, Albus Dumbledore had felt a surge of elation. The telling of the story itself was amusing, but Remus's report of a strange smoky shape emerging when the snake had died had been the icing on the cake – the satisfaction that he had been right in his assumption that Nagini had been a Horcrux, that Severus's information had been good.

And the elation was even more profound because he was sure it was the last Horcrux.

Whatever remained of the soul of what had once been Tom Marvolo Riddle might now be whispering around in the ether, but it was no longer an immediate, existential, threat. Even if Voldemort regained a body somehow (and he could think of one or two – very nasty – ways that might happen), any subsequent discorporation would mean the ultimate end for any hopes of the Dark Lord returning.

Activity amongst his former supporters had almost ceased, leading both he and Rufus Scrimgeour to believe that most of them were now either dead or incarcerated, and that those who remained, as yet unidentified or unsuspected, were lying low.

And yet he still felt a sense on unease. There was still a 'riddle' to resolve, even if was no longer Tom of that Parish.

His discussion with Severus Snape had forced him to reconsider what might have occurred back in the early nineteen forties, when the Chamber of Secrets had been said to have been opened.

Snape's comment that the Dark Lord had claimed to be the heir of Slytherin had been no surprise. The Gaunt family were indeed descendants of the Hogwarts founder, so it was likely to be true. But that he had also claimed to have control of the so-called 'Monster of Slytherin' and that he was boasting to have been able to open the Chamber of Secrets was much more of a concern.

If it also was true, then it was almost certain that the furore that had surrounded the death of Myrtle Warren had been engineered by Riddle. Given the timescales, Dumbledore wondered whether this was what the boy had used in order to create his first Horcrux. It would certainly have had a symbolism to it.

That such a monster presumably remained somewhere hidden within the school was extremely worrying.

He had berated himself many times over the years for not having acted more decisively on his suspicions of the boy at the time. His framing of Rubeus Hagrid had been, with the benefit of hindsight, rather crude and obvious, and in re-visiting his own conversations with Riddle, Dumbledore saw obvious signs of complicity.

This had eventually led him, after his meeting with Snape, to review what he knew about the incident, and to a conversation with the ghost of Riddle's victim.

As always, the bathroom that Myrtle haunted was avoided by the students, knowing that the slightest slight would be taken as massive insult by the girl, who would go off wailing and weeping about the insensitivity of others.

As one of the few people that the ghost actually respected enough to listen to for more than a few moments, he knew this wasn't something he could delegate someone else to do. Not in good conscience, anyway.

"Hello Myrtle," he said gently as he opened the toilet door. "Are you around?"

"Headmaster?"

"Yes, dear girl."

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, it has been remiss of me not to visit you more often," Dumbledore admitted, "but I'm investigating a crime that took place forty years ago."

"Forty years ago? When I was still... alive..." the ghost said, trying very hard not to burst into tears.

"Yes, dear girl. In fact, it's that very moment that I wanted to ask you about?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, her lower lip still trembling.

"Well, it seems to me that it never occurred to anyone to come and ask you, yourself, even after all these years."

"Ask me what, Headmaster?"

"Myrtle – how did you die?"

"Ooh! It was dreadful!" she said with relish. "It happened right in that cubicle there. I remember it so well. I was hiding away from the rest of the class because that nasty bitch Olive Hornby had been teasing me about my glasses.

"I was crying in there and I heard somebody come in. They were speaking some funny language, but it sounded like a boy, in the girls toilet, so I peeked out and saw him, and was about to tell him off and to go and use his own toilet, and then... I died."

"This boy," he asked. "Was it Tom Riddle?"

"I can't remember his name. He was tall and handsome, though!" she said with a blush.

Dumbledore concentrated for a moment, and made an image of Riddle appear, from his memory of when the boy was aged around sixteen or so.

"Ooh yes!" she squealed. "That was him!"

"So what was it that killed you?"

"I have no idea. I just remember seeing a great big pair of yellow eyes. Then I suddenly seemed to freeze up and I was floating away..."

"What made you come back?" the Headmaster asked.

"Oh I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby," she said with a sneer. "She'd be sorry that she'd ever laughed at my glasses."

"Where exactly did you see those eyes?"

"Ooh! Over here," she said, floating over to one of the sinks. "That one. The tap's never worked on that one."

Dumbledore walked over and examined the object. It looked just like an ordinary sink. He looked at it inside and out, from top to bottom, trying to find a clue somewhere, before eventually he saw a tiny snake carved on one of the taps.

He tried turning the tap on, but no water flowed.

"See! It's broken," Myrtle said.

"Hmm," he considered. If Riddle had been speaking a strange language – with nobody else around – he must have been doing something that would open up whatever was here, presumably the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Claiming to have Slytherin's gift of tongues suggested that it was likely to have been parseltongue he was using.

Though a polyglot of some renown himself, parseltongue wasn't one of the languages he could speak, which meant coming back some other time with someone who did. In any case, his suspicions as to the identity of Slytherin's Monster were beginning to coalesce, and he didn't think he wanted to be facing such a creature alone.

"Thank you for your time," he told Myrtle. "You've been most helpful."

"You're welcome, Headmaster. Do come back and visit again soon," she said. "Perhaps you could bring the handsome young man back with you!"

A few days later, he had spent a large chunk of his own money to hire someone with the skill he needed, and had contracted a team of Hit Wizards to accompany him and the parselmouth wherever the tunnel in the sink led to, and whatever it contained.

As it turned out, the Chamber of Secrets itself was a little bit of a disappointment. It began as a very long and dimly lit cavern with towering stone pillars that were entwined with carved serpent motifs. The ceiling was high, and eventually the cavern gave way to a larger, open area where a statue that reached to the roof could be found.

They assumed that it was supposed to be of Salazar Slytherin, but it bore little resemblance to any of the portraits of him that hung in the castle. It was certainly of ancient design and had a monkey-like face with a thin beard that fell almost to the chamber floor.

Architecturally, it was fascinating, but if anyone had expected it to be a luxurious treasure trove of a hideaway, they would have been rather put out. Logically, they should have expected something created from local rock in the tenth or eleventh century to have been pretty spartan, but just the idea of a secret location created by one of the school's founders seemed to conjure up the idea of something rather more marvellous.

"There are other activation runes present, like the snake we commanded to enter," the parselmouth told him. "I would prefer not to speak any more parseltongue until we find them all and I can get some idea of what they might do."

Meanwhile, the Hit Wizards had spread out around the chamber and were searching it thoroughly.

"Shit!" came the exclamation from one of them, who was high above, examining the massive statue particularly closely. He backed away rapidly from where he had been looking, which was in the area of the statue's mouth, and dropped back to the floor.

"There's a frickin' massive snake in there!"

"A basilisk?" Dumbledore asked.

The Hit Wizard shuddered. "Merlin knows!"

"I'd better look for myself, then."

"Be my guest," the Hit Wizard replied, and turned to warn his colleagues what he had found.

They gathered together whilst Dumbledore floated himself up to the statue's mouth.

Yes, he concluded. As he expected, it was a basilisk. It appeared to be in some sort of enchanted slumber, he decided, having very carefully cast a few detection spells. Probably controlled by whatever the activation words were in parseltongue, as had been suspected. Fitting for it to be described as 'Slytherin's Monster' even if was nowhere near that old.

He calculated its coiled body carefully. The cavity it slept in was large enough to have been called a room, in its own right, and at fifty to sixty feet long, it would be one of the largest basilisk that had ever lived. It was a shame that it would have to be disposed of, but it was just not safe to house it here, where it was a threat to a significant portion of the heirs of magical Britain.

He returned to the group of Hit Wizards and spoke to their leader.

"Is it possible for it to be transferred somewhere else? Somewhere safe?" he asked.

The Hit Wizards shook their heads. None of them knew how that might be done, and even if the basilisk could be removed from here, they had no idea where it could live safely, where it would not be a threat.

He nodded sadly. "Then we should kill it now, whilst it appears to be dormant."