Chapter 55. Arcturus scape

Arcturus Black sipped his tea as he considered his options.

Draco had proved to be a failure.

He knew Altair's potential. In time, Bellatrix's son could obtain the information Lord Black sought. His connection to Lily Evans was not well known in the wizarding world. But the patriarch was no ordinary person. He knew who Bellatrix had turned to after betraying her master. He knew who had saved the boy, and He knew that Evans owed him a debt.

According to his reports from Hogwarts, Lily Evans showed a weakness for the boy that many thought was just compassion. But once you know the past, it's not hard to figure things out.

When he started having escapades with Harley, he knew their relationship was more complicated.

The Marauder's map lay on the table. He had acquired it a few years ago; one of his informants in the castle had stolen it for him.

It was a magnificent creation of James Potter and Sirius Black. Arcturus ignored the werewolf and the rat, feeling they were unworthy of his acknowledgement.

The map showed Hogwarts Castle and the positions of all its inhabitants. Seeing Altair's shoes among the shoes of several girls was enough to know that the boy had a libido, unlike other wizards.

Like Sirius, his wayward grandson turned out to be another of the rare exceptions in the wizarding world. Another disappointment.

Arcturus had planned to use Draco to take control of Harley, to make her sign a binding contract or something that would bind her to him. He knew it would be complicated; the girl was a Potter and a Gryffindor. They were almost natural enemies.

Arcturus gave him blackmail material and the idiot turned it into gossip. He massaged his temples and cursed his great-grandson.

With Harley he could have had Lily Evans. But that was unlikely now.

The other girls could do it, but it wasn't the same. Lily could guarantee his goal, Altair was a maybe.

"It's better than nothing," he thought, about to give the order to scare the Browns. The Malfoy boy took a more aggressive, though not entirely wrong, approach. But he made one mistake: he gave them time. Time to prepare and time to act. Only yesterday he had seen Altair and Cassiopeia's shoes together.

Arcturus knew nothing of Altair's plans. He doubted he could do anything alone to stop him from harming the Browns.

But Albus would stand up to him.

Arcturus gritted his teeth at the thought of his old friend. A man he had fought with in the war against Grindelwald.

He knew how ruthless he could be, even if he had mellowed with age. He believed he had lost the part of himself that made him so ruthless when necessary.

He thought he was a retired man who didn't want to be in the spotlight as much as he once had. He believed he would simply operate in the shadows and try to get in his way.

The newspaper article had come as a surprise, revealing his connection to Evans as her daughter. Though he had made up some details, such as the woman's mother being an unknown Muggle who had died in childbirth.

If Arcturus were to act against the Browns now...

How would Albus Dumbledore react?

The old Headmaster seemed to be waiting for an excuse to take action against him.

Arcturus would not admit aloud how much he feared facing Albus. Years ago he might have thought he had a chance, that they were in the same league.

After Dumbledore's duel with Grindelwald, he knew his ideas were an illusion. At first, he had wanted to fight alongside him and defeat the Dark Lord together.

He remembered Albus's eyes when he looked at him. Not with contempt or smugness, just indifference. It was a hand gesture from the great wizard that pushed him away from the battlefield. In that moment he felt betrayed.

He soon understood. Both of them could kill him easily They wouldn't need their skill, which was also supreme, just brute force.

With politics he could match him, perhaps even surpass him. But in a duel...

He couldn't be aggressive. He couldn't give him an excuse to use violence.

He finished his tea and told Kreacher to clear away.

He went to his bedroom.

A beautiful woman slept on the bed. Her black hair was tousled.

She was thin, not so thin that she looked sickly, but still looked weak.

Her chest didn't rise or fall, her breathing was inaudible. Anyone looking at her would have thought she was a corpse.

Melania had been struck by a curse that left her on the brink of death. The curse stole her life force.

Without an antidote, Arcturus put her under a spell of ecstasy, even though she begged him to let her die in peace. He left her frozen in time while he searched for a solution.

Arcturus believed that the cure for the curse would be found along with the key to immortality. That was why he was so interested in Lily Evans, a product of alchemy, a semi-artificially created person.

Albus and Grindelwald had long sought immortality. And one of their products was Lily Evans.

'If I could get my hands on that information... I could cure her,' he thought.

'I could be immortal too.'

If magical creatures could live indefinitely, what was stopping wizards from achieving immortality?

The Patriarch dreamed of a life with her. A life where he could hold her again. A life in which he could continue to love her.

Where he could continue to abuse her. Torture her.

Arcturus continued to have relations with her, even when she slept. But it wasn't the same.

She didn't fight or cry like she did when she was awake. He couldn't get the same satisfaction.

He couldn't satisfy his sadism.

He had taken many lovers after her. None were the same. They broke too quickly. They chose suicide or simply became shells of what they once were. His wife might cry and scream during the act, but the next day she would look at him with the same hatred and defiance in her eyes. His other lovers looked at him with fear.

They were boring.

"We will be together again, my love," he said as he gently held her hand. "You can't escape me. Never," he kissed her hand with sickening affection.

Arcturus left the room and went, as was his routine, to a dark room in the dungeons. Looking at Melania and remembering their time together always aroused his libido.

Arcturus, like many magicians, did not find pleasure in the act of sex. Rather, he found pleasure in hurting others, in inflicting pain. In the cries of hatred and curses they hurled at him.

A girl was bound and gagged. She looked young and vibrant. She was barely twenty.

The girl had black hair, like his wife.

The girl had blue eyes, like his wife.

The girl was thin, like his wife.

The girl looked at him defiantly, like his wife.

"I hope you don't break so easily. Like the others," the girl looked around. Dozens of skeletons littered the room. Her jaw trembled with fear. Yet her eyes still sparkled.

Hope?

"Kreacher!" The old house-elf appeared without being called. "You better have an explanation, or your head will hang in the hallways of this house," the elf seemed honoured that his head was considered worthy of being part of the decoration.

"Master," he began, head bowed. "The traitor to the blood, Sirius Black, has entered Grimmauld Place," the elf replied quickly. He brought guests," Arcturus sighed. He hated being interrupted in his spare time.

"You're in luck," he said to the girl. She let out a snort of contempt. She looked at him with something unreadable in her eyes. Arcturus found it strange. He would get the answer out of her later.

In the living room, Sirius Black and six others. Arcturus recognised them as Aurors. Even Madam Bones was there.

If the woman had black hair, the Patriarch would have tried to take her officially as his second wife. He always believed she would be tough and hard to break.

"You're here... have you come to arrest me?" Arcturus tried to call the house defences to crush the five extras. He wanted to speak to Sirius and Bones alone.

"Have a seat, Grandfather," Sirius said with a complicated expression. "Don't make this any harder."

"Where's Albus?" he asked carefully. He didn't think this was just a coincidence.

"Probably at Hogwarts. We don't need him for this." One of the aurors said confidently.

"Enough," Madam Bones interrupted. "You are under arrest on suspicion of kidnapping, torture and murder. As well as blackmail, extortion and vote rigging in the Wizengamot."

Arcturus looked at them in silence. He wasn't worried about being arrested. He looked at Kreacher and mentally ordered him to clean the house of the remains of his leisure activities.

The elf nodded as a clean cut separated his head from his shoulders.

"Auror Black!" Bones reprimanded him.

Arcturus looked at him in surprise. His grandson was as bold as ever.

"I've always wanted to do this," he said as he lowered his wand. "Lord Black, cooperate, we have Evidence."

"Evidence?" he asked. The evidence would be easy to manipulate, though it would take time. Now he was worried that they would find his dungeons, not because of the skeletons he could pass off as mere decorations. It would cost him a few galleons.

It was the girl in the dungeons that worried him. She was alive. She would give them more credibility.

Then there was Albus. If he wasn't involved now, he would be soon. The man knew when to take a chance.

"Auror Tonks played her part perfectly," Madam Bones said.

"Tonks?" Arcturus remembered the name; she was Andromeda's half-blood daughter. "I see," he said. She was the girl in his dungeon. "You already know." With black blood she would be able to move freely in the house. It shouldn't be difficult for an Auror who was also a Metamorphmagus to free herself from her chains and escape. "She's disabled the defences, hasn't she?" he said as he drew his wand.

"Don't make this any harder," the Aurors took up a defensive position. "We don't want to hurt a war hero," Madam Bones said. Even if her face showed no respect for the war hero.

Arcturus smiled coldly. He only feared Albus Dumbledore. The other wizards were nothing to him. Not even his grandson.

He waved his wand and a gash opened in the chest of one of the Aurors. He could have killed him, but he had learned in war that it was better to leave people wounded.

Sirius immediately moved to cover his companion as they began to exchange spells.

"Predictable," he muttered. The hero complex would be his undoing.

"Call for reinforcements!" Bones ordered.

The Aurors present were an elite force. Which actually meant that they were slightly stronger than average wizards. Only Bones and Sirius could be considered truly elite.

And even then they were easily outmatched. One by one, their companions fell wounded. Soon they were reduced to making sure their companions didn't die.

Arcturus blew up the wall behind the Aurors. The debris distracted them long enough for them to cast a stunning spell on Bones.

He would later dye his hair black.

Sirius fell quickly. He landed on his back on what was left of the wall. His face was covered in cuts and blood.

"Too weak," he said, decapitating the Aurors who accompanied him one by one.

"Stop!" he shouted, trying to stop him.

Arcturus grabbed the last of the Aurors, who looked like a recent graduate. He placed him in front of Sirius. Tears were streaming down the boy's face.

Sirius watched the boy's eyes pop out of their sockets as his head exploded.

"You should thank the Ministry for cutting the budget of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement," he said with a smile. He wasn't unscathed. He ended up with a burn on his left hand. Arcturus looked at his grandson, almost nostalgically. He felt no pity. He had loved only one person, and now she lay in a bed. 'How will she feel when I tell her all this?' If he weren't a man capable of controlling his facial expressions, he would be licking his lips with desire. "Avada ke-"

"Bombarda," he had to duck to avoid a spell.

"I forgot about you," he said to Tonks, who had left her previous appearance behind.

"Dumbledore's on his way," Arcturus' mood soured when he heard that. A few seconds later, he could sense the Headmaster's presence outside his house. He tried in vain to appear.

Suddenly he felt a pull in his stomach. One that made him move his legs all over the house. He dodged his granddaughter's spells. He didn't know why, but he ran into Regulus Black's room.

In one of the drawers he saw a pendant. It was oval, made of gold and looked old. It had an ornate, serpentine S on it. Arcturus could feel the oppressive, dark aura it gave off; it was a dark artefact. "Why did Regulus have it?" he wondered, recognising the Slytherin pendant that was supposed to be lost.

"Touch me... I'll get you out of here," the pendant seemed to say, not through speech, but through a feeling that gripped the heart.

Arcturus shook his head, controlling his impulses. He had emergency Portkey in his and his wife's room. He wasn't going to be at the mercy of the locket. Nor would he leave his wife behind.

Or so he thought.

The footsteps on the stairs made him panic.

His hand reached out and closed around the locket. With a tug, like a hook in his stomach, he disappeared.

Albus Dumbledore found an empty room.

The old Headmaster couldn't help but feel a little resentful that he hadn't been warned of the attack. He could have saved the lives of those five Aurors.

As he turned to leave the room to give Sirius medical attention, he felt a presence in the air. One that quickly disappeared.

"Voldemort," he whispered, frowning. 'Altair,' he could feel Altair's magic mixing with Voldemort's. In the past, he had been able to defeat the Dark Lord. But he had never faced him after the Ritual.

The sound of a flash of fire snapped him out of his thoughts. A red phoenix landed on his shoulder and chirped apologetically.

"Don't blame yourself, old friend. We didn't know this was going to happen." With the phoenix, he could have bypassed the Aurors' anti-apparition devices. "There's no point in blaming ourselves," he said, though it was partly to console himself.

"Headmaster," he heard Tonks' high-pitched voice.

"Let's focus on what we can do now," he said, his mind filled with doubt.

He knew Voldemort was alive. But he had no idea how he could have sensed his presence in the room. 'Is he back already?' he wondered. 'A Horcrux?' That idea seemed more likely. He'd given one of his Horcruxes to the Malfoys, so it wouldn't be surprising if the Blacks had one. He glanced at the name on the door. He shook his head. If there was a Black who could have had one, it would have been Bellatrix, before her children. Regulus was too young to be trusted with something so precious.

He walked toward the black-haired man.

"He graduated last year," was the first thing Sirius said when the professor approached him.

Albus didn't recognise the body. He sighed sadly.