"Of course not—"
Bryan smiled, voicing his agreement with Severus's unspoken judgment, which did not ease the knot forming in Remus's chest.
Caught between the two of them, watching some secret understanding pass back and forth without a word of it at him, Remus sank once more into confusion, his eyes began moving from one man's face to the other's.
If Bryan was worried about whether Voldemort had mobilized every last Death Eater to disrupt his and Tonks's wedding, and was also, somehow, worried about whether Harry would show up for it—then—oh!
A flash of thought cut through the fog gathering in his head all at once, and Remus's brow snapped into a sudden, sharp frown.
That truly didn't add up. None of it sat right when turned over properly.
That Voldemort would see his marriage to Tonks as a defilement of pure-blood sanctity—that much didn't strike Remus as strange at all.
But mobilizing every Death Eater for it, every last one of them pulled from whatever other business they had, just for this—wasn't that using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Of course, if the true goal was to take Harry, all of it would make perfect sense.
But that was exactly where the problem lay.
His friendship with Bryan was no secret to anyone, least of all Voldemort, and by the time the wedding actually happened it would already be a matter of public certainty that Bryan would be attending as a guest, standing in the thick of it.
With Bryan there, in the flesh, at full strength—mobilizing every Death Eater in existence still wouldn't be enough to take Harry. Everyone at this table knew that. Voldemort, of all people, knew that best.
Unless he meant to act in person himself, rather than send others to do it for him?
But after the Battle of Diagon Alley, Voldemort ought to know perfectly well, that even coming in the flesh himself, succeeding through layer upon layer of magical protection with Bryan standing right there beside the altar, was next to impossible.
He was not quite stupid enough for that, surely.
Severus glanced flatly at Remus, watching him work through it all in real time on his own face, then fixed his eyes back on Bryan, waiting.
"What do you think the Dark Lord intends to do?"
"I can't say for certain, but—"
Bryan turned back to Remus with a small, reassuring smile. "Whatever he intends, I don't think it should change your wedding plans, Remus. Nothing pleases Voldemort more than watching people go sleepless with fear over something that may never even come to pass. Don't give him that satisfaction for free."
If Voldemort only meant to kill him, personally, there'd be nothing much to fear in it beyond the ordinary—Remus had faced that danger for years now.
But—knowing full well that Voldemort might move against Tonks instead, and going ahead with the wedding regardless while she was carrying their child—Remus gritted his teeth hard, his face was darkening with a fresh wave of rising hesitation.
"Ward the house first, with the Fidelius Charm—"
Startlingly, it was Severus, watching coldly from the sidelines with his arms folded, who suddenly offered the suggestion.
"As long as you don't choose the wrong Secret-Keeper this time, nothing should go wrong before the wedding, at least."
Remus gave a bitter smile at that.
Truth be told, the situation he faced now bore more than a passing resemblance to what James and Lily had once faced.
Bryan nodded as well.
Most likely—no, almost certainly, if he was being honest about the odds.
Among Tonks's relatives, there were probably some who had already fallen under the control of Voldemort and his followers.
Which meant that on the day of the wedding, screening the guest list would be a matter demanding particular, careful attention.
"All right. You're right, Bryan—"
After a long moment, Remus drew a slow breath steadying himself.
"I ought to show a bit more backbone about this. I really shouldn't change my plans just because Voldemort's taken some sudden interest in my wedding—Tonks would be disappointed in me, deeply, if I let that dictate anything. Still—"
Remus shrugged, a bit of genuine regret was creeping into his voice now, softening the resolve.
"Given the situation as it actually stands, I'm afraid it wouldn't be wise to invite Harry and his friends to the wedding after all. I hope they won't be too upset about it—Harry's had precious little in the way of ordinary happiness, and I hate to be the one taking even a small piece of that away from him again."
"At the very least, they shouldn't miss the birth of your child."
Bryan's smiling remark offered lightly, lit something almost delighted across Severus's face.
"Is that everything you wanted to say, Severus?"
Skipping past the subject before it could linger, Bryan asked the question already anticipating the answer.
Gathering his turbulent thoughts back in, and composing himself, Severus reached into his robe pocket and fished around for a moment. When his hand came out again, it held a small, irregularly shaped fragment of wood, no bigger than an infant's palm.
Bryan had been leaning back in his chair the whole conversation, entirely at ease, one arm draped loose over the back of it—even hearing that Voldemort meant to move against Remus and Tonks hadn't stirred him much beyond careful calculation—but at the sight of the wood fragment now sitting in Severus's palm, his gaze turned suddenly sharp.
"Do you recognize who this came from?" Severus asked lightly, watching Bryan's face rather than the fragment itself.
"What happened?" Bryan didn't take the fragment right away—he asked the question softly instead.
Then, in a flat, even voice, Severus began his account.
He told it from the very start—from the Death Eaters' gathering, the tense meal—all the way through to his sudden attack on Cliodna, leaving nothing out.
"—I suspected she might be trying to use me to pass you some kind of message. I had no way to approach her alone afterward, and under those circumstances, the only thing I could do was attack her—"
Severus said, "By the time I left the manor, every fragment of wood on me had vanished—except this one."
Cliodna.
At the mention of the powerful dark witch, even Remus's expression turned grave.
"If they don't move out, all will die—one would die even by staying " Remus's brow knit tight, working through the strangeness of it. "What was she and Voldemort even discussing … what—"
Remus had meant to ask why Cliodna would take such a risk, just to pass a message to Bryan through a man she barely knew.
Was it because—like Severus, she'd already turned over some new leaf? But at the grim, closed-off look settling now on Bryan's face, Remus shut his mouth in time.
"She said it had only chosen Voldemort—not submitted to him. Is that right?" Bryan asked, considering. Once Severus nodded in firm confirmation, his expression eased a little.
"That grey mist shrouding the place—plenty of people have talked about it privately. The Death Eaters all assume it's simply that the Dark Lord's protective magic there carries some evil property. Nothing surprising in the assumption—" Severus said, his face solemn throughout,
"But Dumbledore doesn't think it's that simple, and neither, I'll admit, do I. He told me you might know the actual answer. What is it, Bryan? Some new power the Dark Lord's trying to master, that he hasn't yet fully controlled?"
That Voldemort had, up to now, still failed entirely to win the Twin Serpent Staff's true loyalty was without question excellent news—the single best piece of it Bryan had heard in weeks.
But the confusion that followed close behind it was this: if the Twin Serpent Staff refused to let itself be used by Voldemort, then why would this intelligent, ancient, incredible staff be willing to let him so much as hold it at all? Why not refuse him outright?
That grey mist—Bryan had known about this all along, had suspected its nature from the very first report of it. It was, in all likelihood, the death-force contained within the Twin Serpent Staff, gnawing out at life around it out of sheer, mindless instinct.
If this state of affairs kept on, indefinitely, forever uncontrolled by anyone capable of actually managing it—it was entirely possible the staff itself would end up doing far more lasting damage to the world than Voldemort ever could on his own.
But how, then, could it possibly be stopped, once loosed this far?
The death the Twin Serpent Staff commanded was a wholly different fundamental force, nothing like ordinary dark magic.
Never mind Bryan—even Merlin, more than a dozen centuries ago, at the very height of his power, had only managed to confine it to the isolated island of Avalon, suppressing it with the power of the Sword of Gryffindor held in one hand, while with the other leaving behind countless lives for it to devour instead of the rest of the world—just to keep it from rising in revolt against everything living.
Under Severus and Remus's watching eyes, Bryan slowly reached out and took the fragment from Severus's palm.
Contrary to what one might reasonably expect, given everything that had just been said about it, no burst of light erupted the moment it touched his hand, there was no visible reaction of any kind. It simply lay there in his palm, quiet and unremarkable as any ordinary splinter of wood might.
Inside this fragment—
Bryan narrowed his eyes, his gaze was piercing straight through whatever illusion of ordinariness the thing presented, down toward the source beneath it.
Clatter—
After a long while spent in that fixed, silent concentration, Bryan abruptly rose from his seat, the sudden motion startling Fawkes badly who'd been perched contentedly on his knee and now flapped up in a bout of scarlet feathers, letting out a sharp, indignant cry.
"It seems my travel plans are about to change again—" Bryan said, looking over at Remus, who'd risen along with him out of instinct, gripping the edge of the table, his face had also gone grave with the sudden shift in the room's whole mood.
"There's somewhere I need to go take a look, Remus. And there's something I'm afraid I need to ask of you, before I leave—"
"You've worked out what the fragment's hinting at?" Remus asked, curiosity cutting through his own concern.
"Perhaps—"
Bryan beckoned toward the table with two fingers, and a palm-sized wine flask sitting beside the candelabra rose and flew across the room in a smooth arc, landing neatly in his outstretched hand.
Tossing the flask over to Remus, who caught it a little clumsily, Bryan spoke quickly now.
"I need you to get to Paris as soon as you possibly can and hand this to Vice President Dreghorn of the International Confederation of Wizards. He'll know what it is—"
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