Written for Round 9 of the QL competition as Chaser 2 for the Chudley Cannons with the prompts: "winter winds," "The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters," (this one is more of a theme) and "She's too quiet these days."

Thanks for reading! x

There was a man perched on the corner of the house with a newspaper stretched out before him and a cigarette tucked between his fingers. The paper was frayed at the edges and creased in the middle, as if it had been read a thousand times already. The paper was wearing thin where the man's quill had carved into it, words like a list coloring the white of the page and bleeding just hardly into the text. Occasionally he brought the cigarette to his lips, and one side of the paper would begin to fall till he let out a puff of smoke and grabbed it again. It was tedious work, smoking and reading and waiting, but he liked to think that he had his reasons.

The article he was reading was titled "WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIRIUS BLACK?" big and bold across the top of the page, photographs of two men side by side, one deranged and screaming, the other young and laughing. There was a stray arm visible in this second picture, wrapped deftly around the young man's shoulders, random and unidentified. But he knew whose it was. He could remember taking the picture.

Down the street, a car pulled into a driveway.

With a flick of his hand, Sirius Black discarded his cigarette, and the smoke from his mouth mingled with the scent of rain and pavement. He didn't quite look like either of his photographs in the paper anymore, which he made sure to fold and tuck safely into his coat. His hair was long, as he'd once liked it, like it'd been when he was twenty and had a motorbike and a leather jacket. But he had neither a bike nor a leather jacket, and was at least sixteen years past twenty. His jaw was more broad and colored with hair he hadn't bothered to shave. His eyes, too, were darker, more hard than bold, and he hadn't laughed like that—properly, carelessly, naively—in a very long time.

He began to walk, quickly. He was confident enough that he would not be recognized out in public, much less in this area of the country, but he didn't have time to take too many risks. It was strange changing shape again, like stretching into an old shirt he'd grown out of. But he remembered how it was done in no time, and soon he was nothing but a dog that'd escaped during the storm. His feet padded against the sidewalk as he approached from behind a bush, and he waited on the grass near where the car had pulled in.

"Dad!" something screeched inhumanely. "There's a dog! A really, really big dog!"

"What? Oh, Jesus," said someone else. "Just get in the house, Dudley, it'll go away."

"Mum!"

"Vernon!"

"What do you want me to do, Petunia? It's just sitting there."

"Just look at Dudley, sweets, he's gone all pale in the face."

"Fine," huffed the man called Vernon, who suddenly came into Sirius's line of sight. He wobbled out of the car, beady little eyes tight on Sirius. "I'll phone animal control when we get in the house. Are you two coming?"

In the car, he could see a woman, peering over her seat with her long neck stretched out like a giraffe's. "Is it watching us, you think? Look at it! It's staring at me!"

"Do you think it's one of them?" said the boy with the curiously high-pitched voice.

Vernon went red in the face and shouted, "Get in the house, now!"

"Vernon, honey, you think—?"

"Go!"

Without further question, the bony woman Petunia scrambled out of the left side of the car with her mini-husband in tow. Her eyes lingered on Sirius for a moment longer, before she scurried away and into her house without looking back. Meanwhile, the older man stood with his hands on his hips and a scowl twisting about his ridiculously large moustache.

"You're not one of them, are you?" he said, and pointed a finger in Sirius's direction. "Why won't you lot just leave us alone? It's been a year! We've got nothing to do with your kind anymore!"

Sirius let out a loud, vicious bark, without even fully realizing he'd done it; it was enough, however, for Vernon Dursley, who staggered backwards and eventually rushed out of sight.

For a while afterwards, he just sat there in the front yard, a black dog on a green lawn, staring in through a great, towering window in a frighteningly large house. This was where they lived before everything happened, he thought, but something about it seemed new. The paint at the top story of the house seemed brighter and more vivid than the bottom stories, and the house had smelled of fresh polish when the door had been opened earlier. He sat there, pondering this, understanding it far too well, and didn't move an inch until a car came up behind him on the street and Vernon's red face was watching from the window.

He sprinted round the corner, and by the time the lankly animal control bloke had caught up to him, all he discovered was a man reading a newspaper—a man who answered that he had not, in fact, seen a dog. He watched the truck drive around the block in circles a few times after that, but of course there was no dog to be found.

Sirius, taking another cigarette from his coat, turned the paper to the front page and read, "POTTER'S MUGGLE FAMILY MOURNS DEATH OF THEIR 'CHOSEN ONE': TO RECEIVE ENTIRE INHERITANCE IN HIS MEMORY."

He turned back to the page he had written in, and his fingers brushed the indents of 4. Dursley.

. . .

A few weeks later, two women were gathered around a window, staring at that same house. Only the Dursley house was far from what it had been that afternoon of Sirius's visit—now it was mere rubble, the wooden spines of the house jutting out from the crumbled, browned walls, a lonely and abandoned structure of a thing.

"I can't believe what's happened to the Dursleys. It's so terrible, after all that's happened to them. Can you believe it?"

Arabella Figg was staring blankly at her friend's kitchen window, not seeing through it for her mind was too consumed by other things. Quickly, realizing Sally had addressed her, she wet her lips and lowered her gaze to her feet. There was cat hair all around the hem of her skirt, and she scolded herself for forgetting to change into something nicer before she left her house. She was too quiet these days. She was forgetting how things were supposed to be done. Everything was just such a... mess.

"Arabella?" said Sally, a woman just a bit younger than she, with red fraying hair she evidently worked hard to make look decent.

"Sorry," she said with solemn softness, "it's just that I knew the boy."

"That strange one? Harry, was his name?"

"I was fond of him, and I don't believe he was as strange as his relatives led everyone to believe."

"Oh, they were so devastated by it. His death. Oh, poor Petunia Dursley. Heartbroken."

"Was she really?" Her posture had suddenly become quite stiff, her expression unreadable. "They certainly enjoyed the money they received from the state. Their house looked almost brand new."

"Certainly, oh, you know how they love their money, and it's so sad that it's all gone now. It still smells of ash outside when you pass by." She sighed loudly, slumping against the sink below the window. "And can you believe they don't even know what happened?"

"Wasn't it declared arson?"

"That's what they think, but who would ever set the Dursleys' house on fire? Perhaps it was a jealous neighbor. I would believe that if you told me. Did you know, Tim, my husband—you've met him, have you?—when we got our new car, we got dirty looks from the Winstons for weeks."

"The Winstons?"

"Three houses down. The wife's got long greying hair. She's younger than me and she looks so awfully old."

"I'm not familiar with them," replied Mrs. Figg, still looking out the window. "My husband died twenty years ago in a fire."

A look passed over Sally's face—discomfort, or disinterest—and she averted her gaze. "It's an awful way to die, isn't it? Vernon Dursley's in the hospital still, I heard. They're all fine though, which is such a miracle, considering they were all in the house when it went up into flames."

"Yes. Hm. A miracle," said Mrs. Figg, before she suddenly started to move from her spot. "Well, Sally, I've only just remembered, I forgot to feed my cats this morning. I keep doing that; it's quite awful of me. I should hurry home. I'll see you around then, shall I?"

"Oh, oh, certainly," said Sally, folding the dishtowel in her hand and discarding it upon the counter. "Tuesday for tea?"

"Sure, that sounds lovely. Ring me, won't you?"

"Of course. I'll make sure you come over when Tim's around so you can meet him. He's such a lovely man. Handsome, too. So handsome. Just like my sons."

"All right then, Sally. I'll be going then." They walked together to the door and said another good-bye before Mrs. Figg had set off in the opposite direction. The air that enveloped her was cold and damp like winter, but she thought perhaps it was only her that felt different, that maybe the feeling in her bones had seeped to the outer layers of her skin. She walked past the burnt house without looking at it. That was just how she was left to survive the truth of the world sometimes.

She arrived at her house shortly after, and struggled with the door for just a moment longer. When she managed to open it, she found a man with long, dark hair sitting behind it, and she let out a yelp.

"Oh, Merlin's beard—Sirius Black! Don't you have a telephone? Why didn't you just phone me ahead of time? Some sort of warning, at least? Of course I don't mind you staying here, you're a convict on the run, I don't expect you to stay at an inn or work a job, and you're plenty pleasant company and my house is much too large, anyway... But you should have the decency to tell me when you'll be over." She narrowed her eyes on him, and then threw her hands up. "My house is a mess! I haven't put the cats up; I know how you hate the cats..."

"My apologies, Arabella." He didn't look entirely apologetic, but that was just Sirius. "You know, you should really get a safer lock, especially in these sorts of times."

Rolling her eyes, she hung her umbrella on its hook and tossed her boots in the closet by the door. "These sorts of times, are they? That's what everyone's been saying, that it's all going to happen again, the deaths, the disappearances, the chaos..."

"It already is," he said. "You should know that better than most people. You were at the heart of it all the first time."

"I suppose, in a manner of speaking," she half-agreed. "You think that the incident at Hogwarts last year is related to the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"

"I do. So does the Order."

"Hm..." she murmured, brushing her thumb over her lips, eyes going distant. "But what you said about the Daily Prophet. Harry's funeral, all of that. They said he just died in the tournament."

Sirius fidgeted slightly. She knew it was a sensitive topic, but she had to know. "His and Cedric Diggory's bodies were never found. That's abnormal all in itself. That along with the uprising of Death-Eater related sightings... No one's safe from this, not here, not even you."

She crossed her arms; it was a grave matter, but she had already known it. Her mind turned to other matters. "Not the Dursleys either, it would seem."

His expression grew dark. "It was necessary."

"It was irrelevant, Sirius Black. Don't look like that; we both know you didn't have to for the good of the people. It's a vengeance thing, that list of yours." She nodded in the general direction of his coat pocket, where she'd seen him stash it before. "How many are on that list, anyway? When are you going to be done with it?"

"Soon."

"It's not going to bring Harry back," said Mrs. Figg, which Sirius seemed to acknowledge with his silence. Her chest ached watching his expression, which had slowly wandered away from her direction. She knew grief too well to recognize it as anything else. Gently, she asserted herself forward and said, "Let me see that list of yours."

He handed it to her, the paper with photographs that moved like the ones she'd watched in her parents' home as a child. She read the title about the Dursleys and then turned to the page about Sirius, where the list was written in his handwriting. Several names were crossed out or illegible now - except one, plain and visible at the bottom.

"Pettigrew?" she voiced.

"Yes," was Sirius's only reply.

"You told me he was in hiding."

"He is. Which is why he's still on that list. I haven't found him."

Her eyes lingered on the paper, where his photographs were. She watched his laugh, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners and his mouth was wide with muted sound and the way he fell over as if his happiness was too heavy for him to carry. She noticed the arm around his shoulder that no one else seemed to care about, and aloud she wondered, "Who is this?"

"The reason."

She wondered still what he meant - if it was Pettigrew, or what reason he could have for going after all these people. He'd told her stories that explained the things she saw in the papers or heard from the few wizards she was still in touch with, but she still didn't understand. She was disconnected from it all, an outsider looking in, and she was afraid to ask too much because she knew that she didn't really belong there anyway.

So instead she looked at the list and asked, "What do all these people have in common?"

"All of the people that have directly benefited from Harry's death."

She handed the paper back to him, eyes asking questions she couldn't bring herself to ask. Avoiding it again, she asked instead, "Will you be staying for a while then?"

"No," said Sirius, "I ought to be going. I'm a busy man, Arabella." He smiled a strange smile, one vaguely familiar to what it had been when she'd first met him.

"But why did you come at all?"

His smile froze momentarily, like whatever the reason, it made him too uncomfortable to share it. Eventually, though, his expression grew serious and he admitted, "I've been studying Fidelius charms. I don't really believe in them for obvious reasons, but if used in the appropriate practice, they're fantastic. And they're easy enough if you've got half the brain to do it. You see, generally, I don't believe that people get second chances. That's not the way the universe likes to work. But there are exceptions. And this is my thanking the universe for that." She opened her mouth as if she was to say something, but Sirius interrupted her before she could get the chance. "If there is a war, I wanted to make sure you are always safe in your own home. So I didn't ask and set up a Fidelius charm around your house. I hope you don't mind. You're free to leave and do as you please, but if you're ever wary or uneasy, you have someplace to go."

"So... you're my, ah, what do the wizards call it?"

"Your Secret Keeper," he said, a little pained, though he still smiled. "I was one before, for some period of time. But that went wrong, and now I'd like to get it right."

Mrs. Figg knew that story well - Dumbledore had delivered it to her the night that Harry Potter's parents had been murdered, and Sirius Black had told her the real story just a year ago when she'd started taking him in. Something warm bubbled inside of her chest, and she gave him a small smile in return, one that she could not prevent from spreading all the way across her face. She was thinking of her lost boys - Harry Potter and Sirius Black - and how happy they had made her with what little they had done. So she said, "Thank you, Sirius," and she meant it for everything.

He nodded. They had a moment then - an unspoken understanding, and he went towards the door. "By the way," he said as he'd opened it, the light from the afternoon spilling in over his face, "it was James Potter. The reason that started everything. Harry was my second chance at that, and I lost him before I could ever tell him how important he was. The list isn't about me. It's always about James."

This time, she nodded, and cried a little, too. He'd set his feet outside the house when she said, hands folded in front of her, tears clouding her vision, "I know."