Mattelle: Glad you enjoyed the Lily scene as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please keep reviewing.

Chapter 4: Soon

"Sir Cadogen, don't let Harry run you ragged now. And please keep him away from Peeves"

Lily smoothed her formal robes nervously. The portrait certainly wouldn't have been her first of babysitter, but she had arrived smack in the middle of the Christmas holidays and the corridors were sparsely populated.

"Harry will be fine, Lily," Dumbledore assured the young mother. Both watched as the squealing toddler paused his race with the knight to go down the slide that had appeared where a steep staircase once stood. "Hogwarts will take care of its ward. If it is your wish to free Sirius…"

"I know," said Lily as she scooped Harry up and nuzzled him. Only one other desire could come close to not letting Harry out of her sight and it was to see Sirius with his own daughter and godson as a free man. She had that opportunity now because the other day she had received a summons to take James's place on the Wizengamot at a hearing requested by convicted Death Eater, Igor Karkaroff.

"Come," said Dumbledore, holding out his arm.

Lily took it. "I thought you couldn't Apparate or Disapparate inside of Hogwarts."

"Ah, but being me has its privileges."

The light from the torch brackets hanging around the windowless dungeon did nothing to warm Lily as she watched Karkaroff being led into the room by two Dementors. The man looked as though he was about to faint as he was deposited in a chair. Chains snaked up his arms binding him there, and the dementors blessedly departed. Lily saw that she was not the only one who had recoiled in their presence.

"Igor Karkaroff," said a curt voice to Lily's right. She turned her attention to the speaking Barty Crouch. "You have been brought from Azkaban to present evidence to the Ministry of Magic. You have given us to understand that you have important information for us."

Karkaroff straightened himself as best he could, tightly bound to the chair. "I have, sir," he said, his voice scared. "I wish to be of use to the Ministry. I wish to help. I know that the Ministry is trying to—to round up the last of the Dark Lord's supporters. I am eager to assist in any way I can."

Lily had no doubt Karkaroff was eager all right, eager to save his own skin.

"Filth," growled Alastor Moody from the headmaster's other side. "Crouch is going to let him out. He's done a deal. Took me months to track him down and Crouch is going to let him go if he's got enough new names. Let's hear his information, I say, then throw him right back to the Dementors."

"Alastor!" Lily hissed.

"What's the matter, Lady Potter, don't like the Dementors."

"No, I don't

But she was spared from saying anything else when Crouch spoke again.

"You say you have names, Karkaroff. Let's hear them please."

"You must understand," said Karkaroff, hurriedly, "that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named operated always in the greatest of secrecy...He preferred that we- I mean to say, his supporters-and I regret now, very deeply that I ever counted myself among them—"

"Get on with it," sneered Moody.

"—We never knew the names of all of our fellows. He alone knew exactly who we all were." "Which was a wise move, wasn't it, because it prevented someone like you, Karkaroff, from turning them in," muttered Moody.

"Yet you say you have some names for us?" said Mr. Crouch.

"I-I do," said Karkaroff breathlessly. "And these were important supporters, mark you. People I saw with my own eyes doing his bidding. I give this information as a sign that I fully and totally renounce him, and am filled with a remorse so deep, I can barely—"

"These names are," said Mr. Crouch sharply.

Karkaroff drew a deep breath.

"There was Antonin Dolohov. I—I saw him torture countless Muggles and—and non-supporters of the Dark Lord."

"And helped him do it," muttered Moody.

"We have already apprehended Dolohov," said Crouch. "He was caught shortly after yourself."

"In—Indeed? I—I am delighted to hear it."

But he didn't look it. Lily could tell that this news had come as a real blow to him. One of his names was worthless.

"Any others?" said Crouch coldly.

"Why, yes," said Karkaroff hurriedly. "There was Rosier—Evan Rosier."

"Rosier is dead," said Crouch, "he was caught shortly after you were too. He preferred to fight rather than come quietly and was killed in the struggle."

"No more than Rosier deserved," said Karkaroff, a real note of panic in his voice now. Lily watched Karkaroff's eyes dart to the closed door, where the Dementors were undoubtedly waiting.

"Any more?" said Crouch.

"Yes, there was Travers—he helped murder the McKinnons…"

"And may he burn in Hell for it," Lily seethed, visions of a smiling Lyra that Marlene would never see filling her head.

"…Mulciber—he specialized in the Imperius Curse, forced countless people to do horrific things! Rookwood, who was a spay, passed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named useful information from inside the Ministry itself."

Lily could tell that this time Karkaroff had struck gold. People were murmuring around her.

"Rookwood?" said Mr. Crouch, nodding to a witch who scribbled on the piece of parchment in front of her. "Augustus Rookwood of the Department of Mysteries?"

"The very same," said Karkaroff eagerly, "I believe he used a network of well-placed wizards both inside the Ministry and out to collect information—"

"But Travers and Mulciber we have. Very well, Karkaroff you will be returned to Azkaban while we decide—"

"Now," mouthed Dumbledore to Lily.

"Not yet, Mr. Crouch. I'd like to question Mr. Karkaroff."

Crouch looked stunned. "Lady Potter, this is highly irregular."

"I understand that. It will only take a minute."

"Very well."

"Mr. Karkaroff, have you ever known Sirius Black to take the Dark Mark, attend a meeting of the Death Eaters, or do the bidding of your precious Dark Lord?"

"I have not."

"But he just said he doesn't know every Death Eater there is," spluttered Crouch.

"Surely this honored body will investigate Lord Black's innocence with the rest of Mr. Karkaroff's claims..."

Sirius Black was dreaming. He had to be. There was no other way to explain it. Sure, the Aurors had been making fun of him waving Lily's complimentary editorials in his face and reminding him that putting her under the Imperius Curse (which he hadn't done, of course) was worth another life sentence, but even they couldn't conjure a doe Patronus. And yet, here one was standing in front of him:

"Lily?"

It was her Patronus all right, casting away the dementors. He was thinking more clearly than he had in two months. And just in case he needed any more convincing, it spoke it her voice.

"In a short time, four letters."

"Soon," he answered.

The Patronus winked and disappeared, just as an Auror appeared.

"Black, Minister Bagnold wants to see you."