In the summer of 1994, Sirius Black and Severus Snape are forced into an uneasy alliance to track down Peter Pettigrew before he can reach the weakened but surviving Voldemort. What begins as a manhunt across Britain soon uncovers a darker conspiracy and signs that Voldemort's network is rebuilding from the shadows.
Unwanted Partners: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14566926/1/Unwanted-Partners
A somewhat canon divergence story where Dumbledore ordered Snape and Black to pursue Pettigrew after the events of 3rd year and that changed things.
The first story is 8 chapters+epilogue.
Calais was wet, grey, and full of people who lied for a living.
Sirius liked it immediately.
Snape did not.
“This city smells of fish and criminal incompetence,” Snape said as they stepped from the shadow of a narrow alley near the harbor.
Sirius pulled his coat tighter against the rain. “You say that like it’s not an improvement over Hogsmeade.”
“It is not.”
The crossing had been unpleasant, unofficial, and expensive. Dumbledore’s contact had arranged passage through a smuggler who seemed personally offended by questions, sobriety, and basic hygiene.
Sirius had spent most of the journey on deck in Padfoot form, nose low to the wind, trying to catch anything useful beneath saltwater and smoke.
Snape had spent it below, apparently brooding at the sea.
Both methods had produced the same result:
Pettigrew had reached France before them.
Barely.
“There,” Sirius said suddenly.
Snape followed his gaze.
Near the end of the pier, half-hidden beneath a stack of broken crates, lay a strip of dirty brown cloth.
Sirius crouched and lifted it carefully.
Snape’s mouth tightened.
“Pettigrew’s cloak?”
“Maybe.”
“That is your expert conclusion?”
Sirius brought the fabric close, inhaled, then grimaced.
“Rat. Sweat. Cheap sleeping draught.” He looked up. “Yes. Peter.”
Snape stared at him.
“What?”
“That was revoltingly useful.”
Sirius smiled. “Careful, Snape. That nearly sounded like admiration.”
“I assure you, it was medical concern.”
But he took the cloth when Sirius handed it over, examining the torn edge.
“Cut,” Snape said.
“Not ripped?”
“No.”
Sirius stood, scanning the pier.
“So someone grabbed him.”
“Or Pettigrew cut it himself to leave a trail.”
Sirius shook his head. “Peter doesn’t leave trails when he wants help. He leaves trails when he wants someone else blamed.”
Snape’s expression shifted slightly.
Agreement, though he looked pained by it.
“Then he was taken or pressured.”
“Pressured,” Sirius said. “If someone dragged Peter through a harbor, every sailor within a mile would hear the screaming.”
Snape glanced toward the docks, where several sailors were currently pretending not to watch them.
“Fair.”
Sirius tucked the cloth into his coat.
“See? Investigation.”
“Your standards remain subterranean.”
They found the inn by following gossip.
Not Snape’s preferred kind of gossip, which involved coded payments, old wartime contacts, and people who spoke in half-sentences near fireplaces.
Sirius preferred louder methods.
He bought drinks for three dockhands, insulted a smuggler into correcting him, and let Padfoot frighten a pickpocket into revealing where nervous English travelers slept when they wanted no records kept.
Snape watched the process with increasing disgust.
“You are weaponizing charm and poor impulse control.”
“It’s working.”
“That is what disturbs me.”
The inn stood at the edge of a canal, narrow and leaning, with shutters painted a peeling blue. Its sign read The Crooked Gull, though the bird painted beneath it resembled something recently cursed.
The innkeeper was a square-faced witch with muscular arms and very little patience.
“No rooms,” she said before either man spoke.
“Good,” Sirius replied. “We’re not staying.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Snape placed a coin on the counter.
“We are looking for an Englishman.”
“Many English here.”
“Short,” Sirius said. “Balding. Nervous. Looks like betrayal learned to walk upright.”
The witch’s expression changed.
There.
Recognition.
Sirius leaned on the counter.
“He was here.”
“No.”
Snape placed a second coin beside the first.
The witch looked at it.
Then at Sirius.
Then at Snape.
“He was here.”
Sirius smiled. “Amazing what money does for memory.”
“Better than breaking doors,” Snape murmured.
The witch took the coins.
“He came yesterday before dawn. Wanted a private room. Paid too much.”
“That sounds like him,” Sirius said.
“Was he alone?” Snape asked.
The witch hesitated.
Sirius caught it.
Not fear of them.
Fear of someone else.
“No,” Sirius said quietly. “He wasn’t.”
The witch’s jaw tightened.
“A man came after.”
“Tall?” Snape asked.
“Thin?”
“Pale?”
The innkeeper looked between them.
“Yes.”
Sirius felt the air shift.
The same description again.
The watcher from York.
The organizer’s shadow.
“Did they speak?” Snape asked.
“Not where I could hear.”
Sirius studied her face.
Lie.
But not enough to push directly.
He softened his voice.
“Peter was afraid of him.”
The witch looked surprised by the name.
Then uncomfortable.
“He was afraid of everything.”
“No,” Sirius said. “Peter has different kinds of fear.”
Snape glanced at him sharply.
Sirius ignored him.
“There’s the fear that makes him hide. The fear that makes him lie. And the fear that makes him obey.” He held the witch’s gaze. “Which one?”
The innkeeper looked away first.
“Obey.”
Snape’s face hardened.
“What did the man tell him?”
The witch swallowed.
“I heard only part.”
“Say it.”
The witch’s voice dropped.
“He said, ‘The Ministry woman talked longer than you will.’”
Silence.
Sirius went very still.
Snape did too, but differently.
Sirius saw the anger first.
Then the calculation.
“The Ministry woman,” Sirius repeated.
The witch looked miserable now.
“I don’t know who he meant.”
Snape’s voice was soft.
“Bertha Jorkins.”
The name sat between them, not as certainty, but as a door opening.
Sirius remembered the newspaper from the ferry station in Calais that morning. Small notice. Missing Ministry witch. International Magical Cooperation. Last seen traveling in Albania months earlier.
He had barely registered it then.
Now it felt like a blade sliding into place.
“You think they had her,” Sirius said.
Snape did not answer immediately.
“No,” Sirius corrected himself. “You think Voldemort had her.”
Snape’s eyes remained on the innkeeper.
“I think someone took information from her.”
The witch looked frightened enough now that Sirius believed every word she had not said.
“What room?” he asked.
Pettigrew’s room was on the third floor.
It smelled of stale fear.
Sirius noticed that first.
Not the dirty blankets. Not the cold fireplace. Not the cracked washbasin.
Fear.
Sharp and sour.
Peter had spent hours in this room terrified.
Sirius stood in the doorway longer than necessary.
Snape moved past him and began inspecting the furniture.
“You recognize something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Sirius pointed toward the bed.
“The chair.”
Snape looked at it.
It sat wedged beneath the door handle despite the lock being perfectly functional.
“Pettigrew barricaded himself in.”
“He always did that when he thought someone might come in while he slept.”
“At school?”
Sirius nodded once.
Snape said nothing.
Good.
If he had made a joke, Sirius might have punched him.
Instead Snape crouched near the fireplace.
“Burned parchment.”
“Message?”
“Likely.”
“Can you recover it?”
Snape gave him a look.
“I am not a magician at children’s parties.”
“So yes.”
Snape’s expression promised murder, but he drew his wand anyway.
A thin stream of pale smoke rose from the ashes. It twisted in the air, forming broken fragments of ink.
Words appeared and vanished.
South. Signal. Woman. Memory. Master waits.
Then the spell collapsed.
Snape swore softly.
Sirius stared at the fireplace.
“Memory.”
“Yes.”
“That connects to the Ministry witch.”
“Likely.”
“Not definitely.”
“No.”
Sirius appreciated the distinction more than he wanted to.
He crossed to the bed and crouched beneath it.
Snape looked over.
“If you discover more scratch marks, I may revise my opinion of Pettigrew from coward to termite.”
Sirius ignored him.
There were scratches.
Of course there were.
But these were different.
Not random nervous lines.
Letters.
Tiny, cramped, carved into the underside of the bedframe.
Sirius leaned closer.
Then went cold.
“What?” Snape asked.
Sirius read aloud.
“Don’t sleep. He hears dreams.”
Snape’s face lost a little color.
Not much.
Enough.
Sirius stood slowly.
“That sound like Voldemort to you?”
Snape did not answer quickly.
That was answer enough.
They left The Crooked Gull through the back staircase.
Not because they feared the innkeeper.
Because Sirius had noticed the same beggar outside the front door twice.
Wrong posture. Wrong shoes. Wrong stillness.
Not a beggar.
Snape noticed too.
“I assume you saw him.”
“Before you did, probably.”
“Unlikely.”
“Painful for you, I’m sure.”
They slipped into the alley behind the inn and moved fast through rain-slick stone passages.
The false beggar followed badly.
Too badly.
Sirius frowned as they turned a corner.
“He wants us to see him.”
“Yes.”
“Decoy.”
“Yes.”
Sirius stopped abruptly.
Snape stopped with him.
Both turned at once.
A curse tore through the alley from above.
Not from the beggar.
From the roof.
Sirius threw himself sideways as stone exploded beside him. Snape shielded upward, silver light cracking against a second curse.
Three attackers.
One roof. One alley mouth. One behind.
Coordinated.
Better than the men in Yorkshire.
Sirius smiled sharply despite the danger.
“Finally.”
He transformed into Padfoot and launched himself at the man blocking the alley.
The attacker panicked.
Good.
People often did when a large black dog hit them at chest height.
They crashed into a stack of crates. Sirius heard ribs give way beneath the impact, shifted back, and seized the man’s wand before he could recover.
Across the alley, Snape fought with cold efficiency, pinning the rooftop attacker behind a chimney with rapid, silent curses.
The beggar tried to run.
Sirius saw the movement and reacted before thinking.
“Stupefy!”
The spell caught the man between the shoulders. He collapsed face-first into a puddle.
Snape dropped from a low balcony moments later, robes snapping around him.
“Show-off,” Sirius muttered.
“You turned into a dog and tackled a man through fish crates.”
“Effective.”
“Undignified.”
“Still effective.”
The rooftop attacker Disapparated before either could reach him.
The man with broken ribs was unconscious.
The false beggar remained breathing.
Barely.
Sirius rolled him over.
Young. Thin. Terrified.
Not the organizer.
Not even close.
Snape crouched beside him and checked his mouth immediately.
Sirius understood.
“False tooth?”
“No.”
“Good.”
The young wizard stirred weakly.
Sirius leaned over him.
“Who sent you?”
The man’s eyes fluttered.
“No names.”
Snape’s wand pressed lightly beneath his chin.
“Then descriptions.”
The man’s breathing grew ragged.
“Tall man. Pale. Mad eyes.”
Sirius looked at Snape.
The same description again.
“What does he want with Pettigrew?” Sirius asked.
The young wizard laughed weakly.
“Want? He doesn’t want the rat.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed.
“What does he want?”
The man smiled with blood on his teeth.
“He wants what the rat carries for 13 years.”
Sirius went still.
Not retrieve.
Not remember.
Carry.
Before he could ask more, the young wizard’s eyes rolled back. His body jerked once.
Then stopped.
Sirius swore and grabbed his collar.
“No. No, don’t you dare-”
Snape checked his pulse.
Dead.
Sirius slammed a fist into the wall.
“Another poison?”
Snape examined him grimly.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Binding curse.”
Sirius looked down at the corpse.
“So if he talks too much, he dies.”
“Yes.”
“Organized,” Sirius said.
“Very.”
Neither liked that.
By midnight, they knew Pettigrew’s next route.
Not because of Snape’s magic.
Not because of Sirius’s instincts.
Because both had worked.
Snape recovered enough from the burned parchment to identify a smuggler’s signal route heading south.
Sirius followed rumors through dockhands until three separate men mentioned a nervous Englishman boarding a wagon toward Marseille.
By the time they stood at the edge of Calais watching the southern road vanish into rain, Sirius felt the shape of the thing ahead more clearly than before.
Pettigrew was frightened.
The pale man was organizing.
The missing Ministry witch had known something.
And Voldemort, whatever remained of him, was no longer only waiting.
He was gathering pieces.
Sirius looked toward Snape.
“You think Peter knows what he’s carrying?”
Snape’s expression remained closed.
“Yes.”
Sirius looked back toward the road.
“But we don't.”
“No,” Snape said quietly. “Not yet.”
For once, neither insulted the other afterward.
They simply started south.
The first useful lead came from a dead owl outside York.
Sirius spotted it beside a stone wall while they walked the rain-soaked coastal road.
“Well,” he muttered, “that feels ominous.”
Snape crouched beside the bird immediately.
The owl’s feathers were drenched from the weather, but the body was still warm enough to suggest it had died recently. One leg bore the remains of a message tube.
Empty.
“The message was removed,” Snape said quietly.
Sirius glanced up the road. “Pettigrew intercepted somebody’s post?”
“Possibly.”
“Or?”
Snape’s expression darkened slightly.
“Someone intercepted his.”
That possibility settled unpleasantly between them.
The wind coming off the sea smelled of salt and rain. Somewhere beyond the hills thunder rolled low across the coast.
Sirius shoved his hands into his pockets.
“You know what bothers me?”
“The line forms alphabetically.”
“Peter escaped Hogwarts weeks ago.” Sirius frowned. “Why’s he still in Britain?”
Snape stood slowly.
“A fair question.”
“If he wanted Voldemort, he should’ve run immediately.”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t.”
Snape brushed mud from his fingers.
“Which suggests he was waiting for something.”
That sat badly with Sirius.
Pettigrew was many things:
cowardly
selfish
manipulative
But patient?
Not naturally.
Unless fear forced him to be.
They continued along the road in silence until the cliffs came into view beyond the fields.
Dumbledore’s contact lived nearby. A retired Ministry transportation clerk who supposedly helped monitor unofficial magical crossings during the first war.
The old man answered the door holding a wand and looking deeply irritated.
“What?”
Sirius immediately liked him.
“We’re looking for a traveler,” Snape said smoothly.
“Everyone’s looking for travelers these days.”
Sirius pulled out the photograph of Pettigrew.
The old man squinted at it.
Then swore.
“That twitchy little bastard.”
There it was.
Snape stepped forward slightly.
“You saw him?”
“Three days ago.” The clerk stepped aside reluctantly. “Came asking about coastal routes. Foreign ports. Illegal crossings.”
“To where?” Sirius asked.
The man hesitated.
Snape noticed instantly.
“To Albania,” he admitted finally.
The word landed heavily again.
Always Albania.
Always east.
The old clerk poured himself tea with shaking hands.
“He wasn’t alone, though.”
Sirius looked up sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“There was another wizard outside watching the road.”
“Describe him.”
The old man frowned.
“Tall. Thin. Dark coat. Kept his face hidden.”
“Did Pettigrew speak to him?”
“No.” The clerk shook his head. “Quite the opposite.”
“How so?”
“The little man saw him through the window and nearly bolted through my back door.”
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Because that meant Pettigrew was frightened of whoever followed him.
And Pettigrew only feared people stronger than himself.
Sirius exchanged a glance with Snape.
Former Death Eater?
Maybe.
But something about it felt off.
Most surviving Death Eaters would travel openly among allies.
This watcher stayed hidden.
Patient.
Careful.
Snape spoke quietly.
“Did you hear the man’s voice?”
“No.”
“Anything distinctive?”
The clerk frowned harder.
“Walked strangely.”
Sirius blinked.
“What does that mean?”
“Like he hadn’t used his legs properly in years.”
That made Snape go completely still.
Sirius noticed immediately.
“What?”
Snape looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t start that.”
“It is likely irrelevant.”
“Which means it absolutely isn’t.”
But Snape did not elaborate.
And Sirius, annoyingly, let it go.
For now.
They found Pettigrew’s hiding place less than a mile away.
An abandoned fisherman’s shed near the cliffs.
The door was locked.
Sirius kicked it open.
Snape sighed deeply.
“One day,” he said, “I intend to introduce you to the concept of unlocking charms.”
“You’ll ruin my reputation.”
The shed smelled of mildew, saltwater, and old fear.
Sirius knew immediately Pettigrew had been there.
Not because of magic.
Because Peter always left panic behind him like a scent.
A cot sat shoved into one corner beside several empty potion bottles.
Snape examined them.
“Sleeplessness draughts.”
“Peter hated sleeping alone,” Sirius said absently.
Snape glanced sideways.
“That sounded almost sympathetic.”
“It wasn’t.”
It wasn’t.
But Sirius remembered first year dormitories. Remembered Peter waking from nightmares after detention in the Forbidden Forest. Remembered James mocking him affectionately for it.
That memory hurt enough to bury immediately.
Snape crouched beside the cot suddenly.
“There.”
Small scratches marked the wooden floorboards beneath the bed.
Sirius froze.
“Oh, Peter.”
“What?”
“He used to do that when nervous.”
“Scratch furniture?”
“Everything.”
Sirius knelt and pried loose one of the boards.
Beneath it sat a folded scrap of parchment.
The handwriting was frantic and cramped.
> Calais. South route unsafe. Wait for signal. He said the Dark Lord grows stronger.
Sirius reread the final sentence slowly.
Not:
> The Dark Lord is stronger.
Grows stronger.
Present tense.
Ongoing.
Which meant Pettigrew had contact with someone already near Voldemort.
Snape took the parchment carefully.
His expression tightened.
“What?” Sirius asked.
Snape pointed toward the bottom corner.
A tiny mark sat beneath the writing.
Not a signature.
A symbol.
Three short lines crossing a circle.
Sirius frowned. “Recognize it?”
Snape hesitated.
Then:
“No.”
Lie.
Not a full lie.
But close enough for Sirius to notice.
Before he could push further, movement exploded outside.
Both men reacted instantly.
A curse blasted through the wall.
Wood shattered across the room.
Sirius transformed mid-motion into Padfoot while Snape shielded the doorway with a sharp Protego.
Two attackers charged from outside.
Not masked.
Not disciplined either.
Panic fighters.
The first wizard barely had time to scream before Padfoot slammed him into the cliffside hard enough to knock away his wand.
The second aimed wildly at Snape.
Another mistake.
Snape’s curse struck with surgical precision.
The wizard collapsed instantly.
The duel ended in seconds.
Sirius shifted back, breathing hard.
“That’s becoming disappointingly easy.”
“Only because idiots continue volunteering.”
Sirius hauled one attacker upright by the robes.
The man’s lip was bleeding badly.
“Who sent you?”
The wizard laughed weakly.
“Too late.”
“Wrong answer.”
“The rat’s already marked.”
Sirius frowned.
“Marked by who?”
The man grinned through blood.
“You think he found the Dark Lord alone?”
That sent a cold ripple through the shed.
Snape stepped closer now.
Dangerously calm.
“Explain.”
The captured wizard looked at Snape and immediately lost confidence.
Interesting.
“There’s someone organizing things,” he muttered.
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name.”
Lie again.
But frightened enough to be partial truth.
“What does he do?” Snape asked.
“He finds people. Loyal people.”
“Death Eaters.”
“Not exactly.” The wizard swallowed. “More like... survivors.”
That word lingered unpleasantly.
Sirius tightened his grip.
“What’s he look like?”
The man hesitated.
Then:
“Thin. Pale. Mad-looking.”
Snape went utterly motionless.
Sirius noticed instantly.
Again.
“What?”
But before Snape could answer, the captured wizard suddenly convulsed violently.
Foam spilled from his mouth.
Then he collapsed.
Dead.
Sirius jerked backward in shock.
“What the hell?”
Snape knelt immediately beside the body.
Then cursed softly.
“What?”
“Poison.”
“In his system?”
“No.” Snape looked grim. “In a false tooth.”
Silence filled the shed.
The dead wizard stared blankly upward.
Sirius felt something cold settle into place.
This was bigger than frightened remnants of Voldemort’s army.
Someone organized enough to:
track Pettigrew
recruit survivors
silence failures
And somewhere ahead of them, Peter Pettigrew was still running east.
Not only toward Voldemort.
Toward someone or something already preparing for him.
The first official meeting between Sirius Black and Severus Snape in the summer of 1994 after the events at Hogwarts took place in the least dignified location imaginable:
The Hog’s Head pub.
“You arranged this meeting,” Snape said icily, staring at the filthy table. “Did you specifically request a location with visible diseases?”
Sirius leaned back in his chair with infuriating ease. “You’d complain if it was the Ritz.”
“I don’t know what the Ritz is.”
“Exactly.”
Aberforth Dumbledore dropped two glasses onto the table hard enough to splash firewhisky.
“You paying or glaring?” he grunted.
“Put it on Dumbledore’s account,” Sirius said immediately.
Snape looked horrified. “You intend to drink before a manhunt?”
“You intend to talk during one?”
Snape opened his mouth.
Paused.
Closed it again.
Sirius smirked into his glass. Small victory.
Outside, rain battered Hogsmeade. Inside, the pub smelled like wet wool, goat hair, and ancient resentment.
Which suited both of them perfectly.
“You saw him,” Sirius said quietly after a moment.
Snape’s expression sharpened. “Near Knockturn Alley. Three nights ago.”
“And?”
“He’s looking for something.”
Sirius leaned forward instantly. “What kind of something?”
“That,” Snape said with visible annoyance, “is what we are attempting to discover.”
Sirius tapped fingers against the table. Fast. Restless. Azkaban had left certain habits carved into his bones.
“He’s scared.”
“He should be.”
“No,” Sirius said grimly. “Not of us.”
That made Snape pause.
Because Peter Pettigrew feared many things. Exposure. Pain. Voldemort.
But there was one thing Pettigrew feared above all else:
Being abandoned by whoever protected him.
“If the Dark Lord truly is returning…” Snape began carefully.
“He’ll go crawling back.”
“Yes.”
Sirius looked toward the rain-streaked windows.
“Then we find him first.”
---
The alliance deteriorated almost immediately afterward.
“You cannot simply kick doors open,” Snape hissed.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“You kicked down the wrong door.”
The furious witch currently throwing plates at them suggested Snape had a point.
“OUT!” she shrieked.
Sirius ducked a flying teacup. “Right, fair enough.”
They retreated into the alleyway under a barrage of screaming.
Snape’s robes were splattered with mashed potatoes.
He looked murderous.
“You are an incompetent catastrophe.”
“And you,” Sirius shot back, “spend twenty minutes interrogating people about cauldron thickness.”
“It is called investigation.”
“It is called being boring.”
Snape sneered. “Not every problem can be solved by transforming into a large dog and biting it.”
“Worked on Moony’s homework once.”
Snape stopped walking entirely.
“You helped Lupin cheat?”
Sirius barked out a laugh. “You really think cheating was the worst thing we did?”
Snape looked like he deeply regretted asking.
Then Sirius’s expression shifted.
He had spotted something.
Across the alley, half-hidden beneath a newspaper stand, sat a tiny silver cage.
Empty.
Snape stepped beside him.
“Rat cage,” Sirius muttered.
Inside the cage was a scrap of parchment.
Snape picked it up carefully.
One sentence was written in hurried ink.
HE KNOWS I SURVIVED.
Both men went still.
Not us.
Not the Ministry.
Not Dumbledore.
He.
Sirius looked at Snape slowly. “Voldemort.”
Snape’s face became unreadable.
“Perhaps.”
“That’s his handwriting. Wormtail panics when he writes fast.”
Snape examined the note again.
Then his eyes narrowed.
“No.”
“What?”
“This is deliberate.”
Sirius frowned. “Meaning?”
“He wants us to find this.”
A cold realization spread between them simultaneously.
Pettigrew was leading them somewhere.
---
That night, they returned to Hogwarts.
Neither liked the symbolism.
Sirius hadn’t walked these halls freely since he was sixteen. Snape, despite teaching there, now felt strangely displaced after everything that had happened in the Shrieking Shack.
The castle itself seemed uncertain what to make of them.
Portraits whispered furiously as they passed.
A suit of armor actually saluted Sirius.
Snape looked offended by this personally.
In Dumbledore’s office, the headmaster listened calmly while they explained the note.
“Curious,” Dumbledore murmured.
“He’s baiting us,” Sirius said.
“Yes.”
“Into what?”
Dumbledore’s blue eyes flicked briefly toward Snape.
“That,” he said quietly, “depends on what Peter remembers.”
Snape went very still.
Sirius noticed immediately.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Neither answered.
Sirius’s eyes narrowed.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Black,” Snape said softly, dangerously, “there are many things in this war you are unequipped to understand.”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”
“Enough,” Dumbledore interrupted.
The room fell silent.
Then Dumbledore stood and walked toward a cabinet filled with silver instruments.
“When Lord Voldemort fell,” he said carefully, “many loyal followers attempted to conceal certain objects, locations, and secrets.”
Sirius crossed his arms. “And Pettigrew knows where some are hidden.”
“Potentially.”
Snape’s voice was flat. “If the Dark Lord is gathering strength again, Pettigrew may be attempting to retrieve them first.”
“Or,” Sirius said grimly, “he’s retrieving them for someone else.”
Nobody said the name aloud.
Nobody needed to.
---
Later that night, Sirius found Snape alone on the Astronomy Tower.
The wind whipped violently around them.
“You followed me?” Snape asked without turning.
“You’re not hard to track. You billow.”
Snape ignored that.
For a while they stood in silence overlooking the dark grounds.
Then Sirius spoke.
“You really loved her, didn’t you?”
Snape’s shoulders stiffened instantly.
“That subject is not open for discussion.”
“She was my friend too.”
Snape laughed once. Bitter and sharp.
“You believe friendship grants you ownership of grief?”
“No,” Sirius said quietly. “I think it means we both lost her.”
That landed harder than either expected.
Far below them, the Forbidden Forest shifted in the darkness.
Snape finally spoke without looking at him.
“If Pettigrew reaches the Dark Lord first, people will die.”
“Then we stop him.”
Snape glanced sideways.
“For Lily?”
Sirius shook his head slowly.
“For James too.”
Something complicated flickered across Snape’s face.
Not forgiveness.
Never that.
But perhaps, for the first time in 13 years, recognition that they were mourning the same ghosts.
And somewhere out there, Peter Pettigrew was still running.