"We will be a formidable team in your service if you will but allow us," Snape retorted.
"Oh, very well," Albus muttered, walking towards the fireplace and lowering himself to his hands and knees with a great show of creaking joints. Harry didn't buy it. He knew the headmaster could be as spry as he liked when it suited him.
Albus turned his head to glare at them one final time. "You can speak with him now, as you wish. But be it on your own heads if you don't much like what you find out."
"Is Remus hurt, is that what you mean?" Harry pressed as Snape snatched Floo powder from the mantle and held it out towards the headmaster. "Did the other werewolves turn on him or something?"
"Wolves," Albus scoffed. "Oh, he's been among the wolves, all right. A sheep in wolf's clothing, as it were." Tossing a bit of Floo powder in, he shouted, "Nombre Cinq, Rue Bois de Marseilles, NÓmes, France!"
As the headmaster thrust his head and torso into the fire, Harry turned to his father. "France? I thought he'd gone to Germany."
"France," Snape slowly repeated, dark undertones colouring the word black.
Before Harry could make sense of that, the headmaster backed up into the room again, rising shakily to his feet as he murmured, "Prepare yourselves for a shock... Ah, Harry. Might I have your wand for a moment?"
Harry glanced at his father, who answered, "I will hold it."
Shrugging, Harry passed it to Snape.
The headmaster clicked his teeth in irritation. "And who will hold yours, Severus?"
Snape's eyes gleamed a fierce black. "I do believe I can manage to control myself, Headmaster."
"What, you think I can't control myself?" Harry questioned, confused. Then, to Severus, "Dad?"
At that moment, the fire flared again and a tall, lean figure was stepping forth into the living room of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. But it wasn't Remus Lupin who emerged from the flames.
It was Lucius Malfoy, his long blonde hair pulled back behind his shoulders, his grey eyes impassive as he looked at the wizards assembled to greet him. When his gaze settled on Harry, though, those eyes narrowed, a low hiss of noise escaping Lucius as all his features tightened with wrath.
He must have killed Remus, Harry thought, panic engulfing him. He forgot completely that the Headmaster had brought him through, that the Headmaster had demanded his wand... He even forgot about Fidelius, the spell that guaranteed Lucius could never, ever enter.
Harry forgot everything. All that mattered was that Lucius fucking Malfoy was standing there in his house, standing just feet away.
Harry couldn't help what happened next. Rage filled him, pure black rage like he'd only ever felt once before in his life, that time in Devon when he'd blasted the robe and mask. Of its own accord his hand jerked up, fingers splayed outward, fury building inside his belly, a fiery ache that had to be quenched--
"No!" Snape harshly whispered, grabbing his hand and yanking it down to his side, where he held it in a firm, warm grip that Harry couldn't shake. He pulled the boy in against his side, tucking Harry's face into his robes for good measure, similar to how he'd covered his eyes back in Devon to calm him down, and leaning down close urged, "A shock, remember? It's Lupin! The fool's gone and taken Polyjuice!"
"It's not Remus!" Harry screamed against the suffocating cloth as he struggled, Snape holding him back. "Remus wouldn't look at me like he hates me--"
"Harry, somebody's blacked your eye!" Remus pointed out, though he spoke with Lucius' characteristic snobbish lilt to every word. "If I look angry, it's because I don't much like what I see! Has Severus not been taking proper care of you, then?"
"You'll be lucky if I don't take proper care of you," Snape darkly muttered before glancing down at his son. "Harry, all right now?"
"Yeah," Harry croaked, but stayed huddled against his father. He could feel himself start to shake all over, a peculiar sort of trembling that started at his toes and quaked its way by fits and starts across every muscle in his body. "Oh, God. I think I'm going to sick up." And then when Snape made as though to reach inside his robes, "No, no draught. It'll pass."
Snape pulled him a little closer and rubbed his back as he grated, "To think you said I had no shame, Albus! The last time Harry saw this particular face and figure, he was having his eyes stabbed out--"
"No need to remind me," Harry gasped, gulping in some air.
Snape moved his fingers upward to stroke Harry's nape as though in apology for having mentioned it, but his tone was no less harsh when he spoke again to the headmaster. "I'd think you could have had the common decency to give us one word of warning, one word beyond prepare yourselves for a shock!"
"There wasn't time," the headmaster explained. "I'd hoped to find Remus out of character, so to speak, but as fate would have it..."
"There was time," Snape retorted, raising his voice. "All you needed was two seconds to say, By the way, Remus Lupin is the idiot who has been traipsing around the Pyrenees warning half-bloods and Muggleborns to escape before Voldemort can attack them. He's still on Polyjuice as we speak!"
"That would have taken considerably more than two seconds, Severus," Albus defended himself. "We needed to close the Floo connection as quickly as possible in case the fires were being watched. I would have told you in advance had I known for certain that Remus would be in this guise."
Hardly appeased, Snape growled, "Have you lost what little brain you used to possess, Lupin?"
"You're certainly as surly as ever," said Remus in Lucius Malfoy's voice. "Harry. What did happen to your eye?"
Harry chanced another glance then, and saw Lucius' silver eyes filled with things he'd never thought to see. Compassion. Caring. Concern. The sight so unnerved him that he immediately hid his face against his father's robes once more, and breathed in deeply the scent of clove and cinnamon that clung to them.
"Harry?" Remus questioned again.
"Oh, give him a minute, for the love of Merlin," Snape barked. "Shock doesn't even begin to cover it."
"No, I'm all right," Harry decided, pushing away. He was a little surprised when Snape resisted the move, but that only lasted a second; the Potions Master let him go.
Bracing himself, Harry looked "Lucius Malfoy" up and down. In one sense, he knew it was Remus. Snape believed it, and Dumbledore also, and there was no way in hell Lucius Malfoy would ever look at Harry with love in his gaze... but in another sense, it seemed like his emotions were slow to catch up to his mind. "What's the incantation to erase the Marauders' Map?" he demanded.
A genuine smile curled Malfoy's lips. "I think we've had this conversation before. You thought I was him," Remus indicated Snape with a wave. "And now you won't believe I'm me? 'Mischief managed', Harry. And the answer to the other question you asked me that time is 'Shrieking Shack.'"
"All right, you're you," Harry pronounced, though he still couldn't help but shudder. "Oh, God. No offence, but you look awful that way."
"I am very sorry it came as a shock." Now it was Remus who was glaring at Albus. "Severus is right. Once you saw that I was under the potion, you should have gone back and explained, and then asked me to Floo through. How could you let Harry think Lucius Malfoy had stepped into his warded house, after what happened here in November?"
"Two Floo connections would have doubled the danger to you," Albus softly averred.
"Be that as it may, Headmaster," Snape rasped, "I rather think you were letting your irritation with Harry's defiance show."