This is my first HP fanfic in five years, and it feels indescribably strange to be returning to the fandom. But Sirius Black has always been one of my favourite characters, and recently I was hit with the questions: What if he fell in love with a Muggle? What if a Muggle fell in love with him? So, what follows are my (rather long) answers to those questions.
While I love Marauders-era stories as much as the next person, I've always found post-Azkaban Sirius to be the most intriguing. This will more or less follow book canon from PoA on, although I will be taking some creative liberties because, hey, it's fanfiction, and Sirius deserves happiness.
DISCLAIMER: I am a broke Canadian twenty-something, not a middle-aged British billionaire.
"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
- Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII
5 August 1993
The glow of the television barely illuminated the dark room, its flickering, brightly-coloured lights broadcasting a children's programme in which a group of dancing forest creatures sang the alphabet in loud, cheerful voices. A toddler with flame-red hair sat on the floor watching them, clearly enraptured, while a woman dozed on the nearby sofa, snoring lightly. The overworked air conditioner hummed loudly in the background, occasionally giving a thump of protest, but she didn't wake.
It wasn't until the door of the sitting-room was flung open, flooding the room with light, and another woman entered with her lips pursed in disapproval that she finally started awake, blinking furiously as the sudden light nearly blinded her.
"Blimey, Coll," the woman on the sofa grumbled, surreptitiously wiping the trail of drool on her chin with her sleeve. "No need to startle me like that."
Colleen paused in her act of scooping the boy up to glare at her friend, her green eyes narrowing in annoyance. "Lia, I asked you to look after Ben for ten minutes while I made dinner. You could have told me you were too tired."
Celia winced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to. Work's been crazy lately. Anyway, Ben seemed to be enjoying himself."
The red-haired woman still looked put out, but something in her expression softened. "Nesbitt's been working you overtime again, hasn't he?"
"Yeah," Celia nodded, making an involuntary face; the boy in his mother's arms giggled. "He's been asking me to cover his shifts lately. Where he is, I have no idea…"
Colleen raised her eyebrows. "You could refuse, you know. You've been working there for over a decade."
A tiny smile appeared on Celia's lips. "What, and babysit Ben instead?"
"Sure," Colleen said encouragingly. "Sean and I would pay you well. You might even learn something while you're at it."
"I learned the alphabet a while ago, thanks," Celia replied, stifling a yawn and gesturing toward the overly-excitable woodland animals. "Besides, I don't need or want to be paid to spend time with my own godson. That is, if you trust me not to fall asleep again."
Colleen frowned, unimpressed by her sarcasm. "I'm talking about children, Lia."
"Oh, God, not this again," Celia groaned, getting to her feet and making her way to the door in a desperate attempt to flee the room. "You sound like my mother."
"Well, you're not getting any younger," Colleen pointed out, ignoring the squirming toddler in her arms. "Maybe it's time for a change—find a different job, meet new people…and Nesbitt is, well, funny."
Celia scowled. "I like where I work," she said, a bit too defensively. "I can afford a flat in London and I don't mind living on my own. What else do I need?"
Colleen looked about to list several things, but just then Ben let out a truly ear-piercing wail and his bright eyes filled with tears as his struggles to wrest himself from his mother's grip began anew. Reluctantly dropping the topic, Colleen said, "I'd better take him to bed," and disappeared upstairs, leaving Celia blessedly alone in the sitting-room.
She flopped back onto the sofa and reached for the remote, unable to stand the prancing creatures any longer. Still, it was difficult to admit that Colleen had hit a nerve, despite the same conversation occurring between them at least once a year. We can't all marry into money and live in a detached house in Surrey, Celia thought mutinously as she flipped through the channels, pressing buttons with rather more force than was necessary. She felt she would go mad if she was trapped in a place like Little Whinging, with its endless rows of twisting streets and identical houses, their small patches of garden tended to by overly-nosey neighbours. Colleen was more than welcome to it.
She skipped through several programmes, including a group of stony-faced newscasters discussing an armed, highly dangerous convict who had recently escaped from prison, before finally landing on a rerun of an American sitcom she and Colleen used to watch when they were at university. By the time her friend came back downstairs, Celia had already forgotten about their disagreement.
"It's nearly seven and Sean still isn't home," Colleen fretted, peering out the curtains at the empty driveway. "I told him you were coming for dinner…"
"Don't worry about it," Celia reassured her. "The London traffic gets worse every day—" She inhaled, frowning, as an unpleasantly acrid scent reached her nose. "Is something burning?" she asked curiously.
Colleen swore loudly and hurried out of the room, Celia jumping up and following hot on her heels, down the hallway to the kitchen, where smoke was pouring out from the closed oven door. Colleen wrenched it open and waved away the smoke, coughing as she reached inside and pulled out a singed, blackened pan, in which sat the congealed burnt mess of the casserole they were going to have for dinner.
"I forgot I'd already put this in the oven," Colleen said with a scowl, grabbing the spatula next to the sink as she began to scrape the casserole bits from the sides of the pan.
Celia hid a smile behind her hand; Colleen's disastrous attempts at cooking were the stuff of legend. She patted her friend's shoulder consolingly. "Let's just get takeaway, yeah?"
Sean arrived home at the same time as the food; he didn't appear at all surprised by his wife's sheepish explanation about burning the casserole, and instead dug into his curry with a weary acceptance, pausing only to tiredly greet Celia and kiss his son's forehead. He looked absolutely exhausted; Celia empathized with him.
"Tough day?" she asked sympathetically as she took a bite of lamb slathered in sauce. She'd already had the dish twice that week, since her flat was across the street from the best curry house in London (in her opinion), but she wasn't about to tell Colleen.
Sean dragged a hand over his face in response. "Like you wouldn't believe," he groaned, his thick Irish brogue more prominent than ever. "Canary Wharf has been swarming with police for days. You'd think the bastard had been spotted there with the number of them…"
"What was his name again?" Colleen asked, glancing up from where she was attempting to feed Ben an unappealing orange paste. "The one who escaped from that prison up north. It's been all over the news for days."
"Sirius Black," Sean said with a derisive snort, shaking his head. "Bloody lunatic name, if you ask me. Some people are just born round the bend and there's nothing you can do about it."
Celia went very still, a forkful of rice halfway to her mouth. Ice flooded her veins as if someone had poured a bucket of freezing water over her head. It was all she could do to keep her voice even as she slowly lowered her fork back to her plate and said, "S—Sirius Black escaped from prison? The man who killed thirteen people? But he had a life sentence!"
Colleen and Sean exchanged a puzzled look. "What are you talking about?" Colleen asked.
Celia swallowed, her dinner suddenly churning uncomfortably in her stomach. "It was twelve years ago. The day after Hallowe'en. In broad daylight near King's Cross. They said he just stood there and laughed when he was arrested…" She trailed off when they continued to stare blankly at her.
"But that was a gas explosion," Sean told her, his expression one of utter bafflement. "Wasn't it?"
Belatedly, Celia realized that she had revealed too much in her panic. "You're right," she said hastily, nodding as fervently as she could. "It was a gas explosion. I must have gotten it confused with something else."
Sean seemed satisfied, returning to his meal, but Celia could feel Colleen's eyes still on her. She did her best to keep her gaze averted from her friend, pretending to concentrate on the food despite her utter loss of appetite and previously cheerful mood.
After dinner had thankfully ended, during which Celia had barely managed to clear half of her plate, Sean went up to bed and she was quick to use his leave-taking as an excuse for her own departure. She had to work early the next morning, she told Colleen, and it was a ten-minute walk to the station where she would catch a train back into London. Colleen was visibly suspicious of her sudden change in demeanor, but Celia was able to say her goodbyes without incident. She paused at the end of the driveway, looking back at the house and seeing Colleen silhouetted in the doorway with Ben in her arms, warm light spilling out onto the porch, and something like longing envy washed through her. But she quashed that thought before it could become too powerful and turned away, pulling the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder and clutching the plate of leftovers in her other hand.
Magnolia Crescent stretched out before her, its large, uniform houses looming on both sides. Celia set off down the dark street, avoiding the pools of light cast by the streetlamps and tilting her head up so she could see the tiny pinpricks of stars in the inky black sky. It was unusually warm, even for summer, and the air was very still. She felt almost unnerved by the silence pressing on her ears, and quickened her pace, eager to get back to her small but cozy flat where she could take a long shower and not have to acknowledge the white-hot anger boiling inside of her, anger mixed with twelve years' worth of grief and mourning. After all the people he had betrayed, all the deaths he was responsible for, Celia had at least taken some comfort in the fact that Sirius Black would be locked up for the rest of his miserable existence, rotting in a cell in Azkaban. Now she didn't even have that.
She was going to have some very choice words for Nesbitt the next day—if he decided to show up, that was.
A thin trickle of sweat ran down her forehead as she turned into the alleyway that joined the crescent with Wisteria Walk, and Celia reached up to wipe it away, wishing it wasn't quite so hot. She wasn't looking forward to the ride back to London, the train sure to be every bit as humid and sticky as the air outside, filled with commuters all crammed together like sardines in a can. At least Colleen and Sean had air conditioning and didn't hesitate to take advantage of it.
Celia was so busy thinking longingly of the house she had just left that she didn't notice she wasn't alone in the alley until she sensed movement in front of her, shadows changing position, and she immediately stopped in her tracks, instantly on alert. She didn't think she would come across any trouble in such a dull suburb, but even so, her hand twitched toward the can of pepper spray sitting at the bottom of her purse—a necessity for a single woman living in the city. But she hadn't gotten very far when she was able to discern a pair of large, glowing eyes staring back at her, eyes that were decidedly not human.
It's just a dog, she told herself in relief, and began to move forward again. The circles of light from the streetlamps barely penetrated this far inside the alley, but she could see that the dog was enormous, even larger than the St Bernard her grandfather used to own, with shaggy black hair and luminous gray eyes. Her previous relief quickly dissipating, Celia moved forward warily, wondering what a stray dog was doing in Little Whinging of all places, especially one looking as wild as this did. She expected it to growl, or at least bark as she approached, but it only stayed very still, watching her as closely as she was watching it.
Pressing herself as close to the fence as possible, Celia inched past it, holding her breath, and relaxed as soon as she was in the clear, the lights of Wisteria Walk within jumping distance. Up close, the dog was much skinnier than she'd expected, its thin frame and matted fur obvious marks of neglect. It clearly wasn't being fed regularly, if at all.
Against her better judgment, Celia paused just before the lights and turned back into the alleyway, finding that the dog hadn't moved an inch. If she hadn't known better, she might have guessed it was waiting for someone—its owner, perhaps? Nevertheless, something about its malnourished state tugged at her heartstrings, and she knew she wouldn't feel like eating anytime soon, so she hesitantly held out the plate of leftovers and asked, "Do you want these?"
The dog's ears pricked up at her words, but it still didn't move. Celia's sense of curiosity only grew; it must be very well-trained. She took a step closer to it, unwrapping the covering so that the inviting smell of meat and spices wafted out. "You look like you need this more than me," she told it, as if it could possibly understand her. "I won't hurt you, I promise."
To her surprise, the dog moved forward and trotted over to her, its tail wagging. Celia placed the leftovers on the ground and straightened up as the dog attacked the food with a delighted fervour, delving into the meal as if it hadn't eaten properly in days. She wasn't sure how healthy it was for dogs to eat curry, but she figured anything was better than no food at all.
At a speed that was astonishing even for its size, the dog licked the plate clean until there wasn't a single crumb left before raising its head and giving a small whine that Celia interpreted as thanks. She reached out and scratched behind its ears, and it gently bumped her palm with a wet nose in acknowledgement, its tail now wagging furiously. Despite her current terrible mood, Celia smiled.
When she turned away, she half-expected it to follow, or perhaps hoped; she'd never had an animal of her own, and even though her flat didn't allow pets she was sure she could find a way around it, but the dog only retreated back into the shadows, returning to its silent vigil. Its eyes gleamed strangely in the half-light. "Well, goodbye, then," Celia told it, feeling stupid. "I hope you find your owner soon."
She saw it tilt its head to the side as if in consideration of her words, and she decided to take that as an affirmative. Celia headed gratefully onto the brightly-lit street again, making a mental note to ask Colleen if she knew anyone who owned a large black dog.
The bookshop was tucked away on a surprisingly quiet street corner, neighboring a hair salon and a chemist's that had both been there for as long as Celia could remember. Despite the location's relative tranquility, it was only blocks away from Piccadilly Circus and the Tube station (another aspect she appreciated, as the line took her almost directly to her flat in Hackney). Nesbitt's specialized in rare and limited-edition books, although one could usually find a copy of the latest bestseller floating around if they knew where to look. As such, the shop attracted many unusual and eccentric patrons, much of them regulars. Celia was so accustomed to the clientele that she often found herself taken aback when she encountered a customer wearing normal clothing, and would form a silent rapport with them, reveling in her own ordinariness.
But it never took long before she was reminded that to many of Nesbitt's loyal customers, she was the strange one.
"I can never quite believe that Xanthus has a Muggle working here," an elderly wizard by the name of Entwhistle chuckled as Celia rang up his purchase, the third in a series of ten volumes about Common Welsh Green breeding habits in Snowdonia. "Of all the places!"
Celia said brightly, "Well, it is a Muggle store, after all. Last time I checked, us non-magic folk were generally able to read."
If she hadn't been working for Nesbitt for as long as she had, she would never have dared to speak so frankly, but the look on Entwhistle's face was worth any rebuke. She handed his encyclopedia over to him with a cheery wave and quickly ushered him out the door, waiting until his magenta robes and custard-yellow pointed hat had disappeared before she allowed her grin to turn into a smirk. It was true that the majority of Nesbitt's customers were witches and wizards, looking for out-of-print and rare editions of books that couldn't be found in Flourish and Blotts, but they had the occasional Muggle customer as well, delighted to purchase an encyclopedia on ancient runes or flesh-eating trees. Colleen had long believed it was a New Age bookshop, an opinion Celia had no interest in altering. Her friend still refused to walk through the door, and always waited for Celia to come outside first whenever they met for lunch.
Finding herself alone in the shop again—a not uncommon occurrence—Celia moved to rearrange the display window so that the reference books on the healing properties of toadstools were more prominent, and had barely straightened up when the bell hanging above the door tinkled merrily and a windswept Nesbitt hurried inside, dressed in a pair of surprisingly nondescript black robes and a gold pocket-watch.
"Xanthus!" Celia exclaimed in surprise and relief at the sight of her manager. "I thought you said you wouldn't be coming in today."
"Yes, well, circumstances have changed," Nesbitt mumbled, hardly glancing at her as he shrugged off his cloak and headed straight for the backroom. Celia followed him, frowning; the cheerful, portly wizard was rarely short-tempered with anyone, least of all her.
She lingered in the doorway, watching him rummage through the stacks of books placed in precariously towering piles throughout the small room, dust whirling crazily around the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. "The Ministry has you working overtime because Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, aren't they?"
Nesbitt shot up so fast that the top of his head connected with the low-hanging lightbulb and it spun crazily on its chain, scattering the dust even further. "How did you know that?"
"It's all over the news. The Muggle news," Celia said pointedly, raising a challenging eyebrow at him. "How long were you planning to keep this a secret, Xanthus?"
He seemed to deflate at her words, some flicker of guilt crossing his face. "As long as I could," he admitted, looking decidedly sheepish. "I hoped he would be caught before you learned anything about it. Celia, I know this matter is very personal to you—"
"Of course it's personal," she interjected, disliking how pragmatic he sounded. "Black is the reason my brother is dead. What, is the Ministry thinking he's going to rejoin Lord Voldemort?"
Nesbitt visibly flinched at the name, the colour rapidly draining from his face. "Don't say that name," he hissed in a strangled tone. "But…yes, that is a likely option."
Celia nodded slowly, strangely calm. Nesbitt was many things, but he wasn't a liar. If he said that Black was planning to rejoin his master and possibly assist in bringing Voldemort back to his former strength, then she believed him. His high-ranking position in the Muggle Liaison Office also made him privy to information she would never otherwise have known. The news about Sirius Black had reached Muggle ears, and that meant the wizarding community was genuinely worried about the situation.
"I want to help catch him," Celia said evenly, looking Nesbitt straight in the eye.
His eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "But...you're a Muggle."
"Yes, I am," she acknowledged, trying not to sound offended by his aghast tone. "But my brother wasn't."
Nesbitt sighed audibly, as if he had anticipated this argument, and turned away from her. "He was as good as one in the eyes of You-Know-Who and his supporters."
Celia started forward, moving closer to him in her eagerness to get her points across. "A Muggle-born who also happened to be an Auror!" she exclaimed. "He knew what he was doing. If Black hadn't been passing information about the—the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry along to Voldemort, Oliver would still be alive." Seeing that Nesbitt wasn't moved by her impassioned plea, she lowered her voice and took him by the arm, speaking in a fervent whisper. "Let me help you find Black. Please."
But her heart sank as Nesbitt pulled out of her grasp, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose while shaking his head. "Celia, it was all I could do to convince the Minister not to put a Memory Charm on you after the first war. I don't want to risk that again."
"I don't care about Memory Charms, Xanthus! I care about—"
"Vengeance?" Nesbitt asked coolly. "Oliver would want you to be safe." He gestured to their surroundings. "Isn't that why he got you this job in the first place?"
"Well, I wouldn't know what he wanted, would I, because he's dead!" Celia snapped, feeling heat rising to her cheeks. She rarely spoke about her brother aloud anymore, and something in her chest constricted when she said his name.
Nesbitt's expression was full of pity when he replied, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and she hated it. "It's been twelve years," he said softly. "Perhaps it's time to—"
"Are you wondering why I'm still working here?" Celia interrupted, refusing to let him get the better of her. "You think I can't let go of the past?"
It was difficult not to remember Colleen's words to her the previous night, to recall her friend's suggestion that Celia finally move on with her life and seek employment elsewhere. And it was equally difficult to accept the fact that perhaps she was right, that perhaps some childish, unacknowledged part of Celia believed that if she continued working for Nesbitt, one day her brother would come walking through the door again, alive and whole. Maybe Colleen really did know Celia better than she knew herself.
The girls had grown up in the same Oxfordshire town, going through school together and moving to London for university. But Colleen had soon married the handsome and charming investment banker, Sean, and moved out to Surrey, while Celia continued to live the same life, the same routine, she'd had for fifteen years.
Celia was so preoccupied by her train of thought that she only realized Nesbitt hadn't responded to her outburst when he gathered up a thick, leather-bound tome and tucked it under his arm, regarding her over his pince-nez glasses and clearing his throat rather awkwardly. She quickly snapped back to attention when he said, looking as if he regretted every word, "If Black isn't caught by Christmas, I'll consider speaking to Dumbledore—"
Any jubilation Celia might have felt was overshadowed by a surge of confusion at the words. "Dumbledore?" she echoed in bewilderment. "What's he got to do with this?"
Nesbitt grimaced, clearly wishing he hadn't spoken at all. "Quite a lot," he muttered, and edged past Celia to return to the main room of the shop; it was ostensibly the end of the conversation, and she understood any other questions she asked about the subject would not receive answers, no matter how insistent she was.
Still, she found it impossible not to wonder exactly what Dumbledore believed was in one of Nesbitt's books that would help them find Sirius Black.
