THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Twenty-Seven: TYCHE

"I warned you endlessly not to trust him. You valued your friendship with them over ours, and that has always been the truth since we were children," Alastiare jumped forward, sneering with ice cold eyes. "I was the one who vouched in your name despite the eyes that leaned against me, Sirius! The others could have murdered my entire family for the interferences I made in your defense! It was ME who continued to ask about your well-being from the Aurors at the Ministry, ME who constantly badgered Crouch about sentencing you without certifiable evidence! It was not your friend Lupin who tried to put you on trial to prove your innocence, it was ME! And you would call me the traitor!"

Sirius stared at him vacantly. "You're lying."

"Because that is all we Slytherins are good for, aren't we? Nothing more than a placeholder for you to point your finger at in cases of evil, am I right?" Alastiare scoffed loudly, his heated stare only withering down the man before him. "I was not meant to know about his plan with the Potters. He only revealed it to a few, and I was not one of them. Not even the Prophecy―"

"You are lying," he interrupted again, through gritted teeth. "You were always following behind his every move. His right-hand man, one of his most trusted. You're just as bad as―"

"As who? Severus? You compare me to a man whose loyalties run parallel to mine, Sirius. You can't find it blind coincidence that the Dark Lord's most loyal were also the most gifted in Occulumency and Legilimency―"

"So what then, Alastiare? You're on OUR side?" Sirius barked out a laugh, shaking his head. "You're just covering your own scared ass now that I've escaped, that's it, isn't it? Trying to weasel your way into my trust again like the rat you are, pretending you have been fighting for us when you just watched as we fell―"

Alastiare's eyes sharpened, glaring. "I had a family to protect."

"So did I. Now they're dead. Harry's got no one―"

"And you want to pin their deaths on me?" he asked harshly. "Does that give you the satisfaction that you missed when you tried to kill Pettigrew at Hogwarts last year? Does it make you feel a little bit less guilty, thinking it was me who held the responsibility instead of your fellow...what is it you called yourselves, Marauder? You chased after the man in the same school they went to, Sirius! My daughter feared you...and what, would you rather her be the orphan instead of Potter's son? Let Andromeda suffer that fate instead of your precious godson? Need I remind you, you have more than―"

"They would have both been protected, safe, if you had chosen us from the beginning!"

"You say that, but how many died in your Order at the end of the War, Sirius? I was not going to let that be my wife. Not my little girl. If it is the Dark Lord I have to betray to protect them, I will do it. Even if it is you who I must sacrifice, I will for them," Alastiare declared without an ounce of passion losing its hold. His cold, calculating eyes waited on Sirius. "Lily and James died so that their son could live. They are not the only ones willing to make such a sacrifice."

Sirius narrowed his eyes on him. "What happened to your values on self-preservation? Did they fall off the deep end, too?"

"Loyalty comes before life, Sirius, and I would gladly give mine for those I love."

"Then you must have lost all loyalty in me," he snarled. "Unless you failed to have any in the first place, and I was the fool who believed you...after all, that is what my gift is, is it not? Believing in friends that turn out to be enemies."

"You once believed in the opposite. In an enemy becoming a friend."

A shiver of cold air passed between them at Alastiare's reminder of their beginning as they stood so dangerously close to its end. Years and years, sitting on emotions and unspoken thoughts that only resulted in an ugly argument. Bitterness―deep, deep, deep―and so emotionally intertwined with hate and betrayal that neither Alastiare nor Sirius could get over it. Perhaps, at one point in his life before the first War, Sirius could look the man in the eyes and call him a friend. That was before he lost two more in process to another's betrayal.