Disclaimer: I own my plot and some characters. The canon and their places belong to JK Rowling and various companies. I am making no money from this story. The title comes from a scene in Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs. All of the italicized lines in the story are lyrics from U2's Walk On.
*The phrase "to take a piss" means to bullshit.
*I realize that my interpretation of some characters (Peter mainly) can be deviant from canon. I am just really tired of the way they are represented in fanfic, even in canon. I have decided that I would like to take these characters in a different direction. Even though they may seem very deviant from canon now, as the story progresses they will meld with canon.
Author's Note: This is a companion piece to my series, It May Be Raining, The Road To Nowhere and Where Madness Gives A Bit. It is as story that encompasses the tales of characters in the rich historical period of the 1960's through the 1980's. Other pieces to be published related to this series are: The Unsung Past set in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and chronicles the struggles of the Founders, and Bells In Winter to come later, which will tell the historical tale of those that lived through the Second World War and the downfall of a powerful evil that enveloped a continent. But now please enjoy The Way The Window Faces.
Chapter One
God Grant Me
And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong
Walk on…
"Oh, that I might have my request,
That God would grant me what I hope for,
That God would be willing to crush me,
To let loose his hand and cut me off!
Then I would still have this consolation—
My joy in unrelenting pain…"
Job 6:8-10, NIV
I see it only now as I pass along the crowded streets of a neighborhood that I have not visited since my childhood. There were people in the streets, blood, bullets, chaos, wailing. It was a dark day for the Irish people. I guess that's why I have not visited this neighborhood since my childhood; it's easier to forget that which is not in front of you.
But I see it now, as I am confronted with the memory of it. Most people would say they are defined as a person, as a human with worth, through the experiences in their life. In my own life, I now see, I am not composed in person by the things that I have lived through or have endured, or have wished to forget, but by the people that surrounded me. I am who I am, I now acknowledge, because of the friends I have known, and because of my enemies. I am who I am because I have loved a woman and lost her. I am who I am because I had a friend whom I worshipped, because of a friend who humbled me, because of a friend who betrayed me, because of a father who left me, a mother who stuck by me. And I now live for only one person; a boy who has just recently gotten to know me and is just learning how to trust me, and I him. He is the reason that I find myself today in front of the house of one of my childhood friends.
It looks as if it will rain.
I ring the doorbell and turn to look down the littered and gray street waiting for an answer.
The street ends at Free Derry Corner. There is a shabby terrace that looks Victorian on that corner. I stare at it dumbfounded. It's surreally astonishing to me what sort of lines one's memory can draw to the past in one split second. I remember it as it had been in 1972, the sounds, the smells, the tangible tension in the air. This was the barrier where the rule of Britain clashed with that of the IRA. The barricades are, of course, gone now. It looks bare and as a reflex my mind draws them in as if they should be permanent fixtures. I see it as I remember it. And Bernadette Devlin is still standing there urging the marchers to stand against the blatant disrespect that the Paras were heaping upon them, Sunday protesters on a peaceful Civil Rights march.
Now it stands as a wide, grassy intersection with a lovely ramp leading up to the city walls that were ancient as I remembered them, now too old to consider ancient even.
I listen and I can hear her charged voice, the youngest woman ever elected to the British Parliament, MP for Mid-Ulster. She was twenty-one and electrified me with her conviction. But as I strain to catch her fading words I realize that they had faded long ago, the sounds I am hearing now are of children down the street playing at football. This is Falls Road and I have been here before.
But now as I look around I am overcome by the feeling that in my long absence from this area of my childhood and of my past and of my person someone has taken the landmarks and the memories and brushed them under the rug of perpetual change. A slap in my face.
In revolt to this assault on memory a thousand defining moments, called memories, rush back into my head. I have time. I give them all consideration.
But if, like I had just now discovered, it had been the memory of people and not of events that have defined my existence, I guess I would have to start with my father and my first memories of him—my first memories of anything, really.
They must have been happy memories. But I seem to have colored them and seen them only as foreshadows to coming pain. I regret that this has been my first and most enduring memory of my father, but one cannot choose the things they will keep with them when they are as young as I was, and that was probably around four for five years old.
It was my birthday.
I know this because there were candles and a cake and my mother was there. I waited impatiently with a butter knife clasped in my hand because I wanted to put the frosting on the cake myself.
It was just me and my mother.
My father was not here. And my sister was gone too. She was three years older than me. Our father's favorite was always Cassie. I guess this was only because I was young. Sometime later I had convinced myself that it was because he just enjoyed being around my sister more than me. But now I realize that that was just the healthy surmising of an angry child.
They had adventures together.
Today they had left with ice skates in tow.
Our house was big when we lived there in England. But I wouldn't remember much of it after these few memories I have. But I don't regret not knowing it better. It had a pond at the back of it. Now it was frozen over in the wintertime.
I didn't even mind that they had been gone a long time. They usually were. And Cassie would come back and tease me about the adventures that she had had while I was here with mother. But I liked the stories and listened to them all.
She came back this time in the arms of my father. She was blue and wet and had fallen through a thin patch of ice.
There was a lot of frantic discussion when my father had carried her in. Mother insisted on using a quick charm to sustain her temperature so they could find her some proper treatment. There's no way a five year old could comprehend the seriousness of this discussion, and it would be only years later that the conversation would ever have a full and tangible meaning in my mind. But I had listened all the same.
He had been suspicious of her talents, always. It was his greatest hope that his children would not be inflicted with such gifts as she had. He did not understand them and insisted that her interfering would only cause more harm.
Mother would only insist in an accusing tone that she knew what was best for her child.
I have no memories of Cassie after that moment. I do remember a grave on a rainy day. And that same day father had been drinking. He was not in my memory of the grave on the rainy day. He must not have attended the funeral.
We returned home and my mother took my wet shoes and socks to the fire to dry. Wiping my nose, she muttered about the un-Christian way in which a man could ignore the funeral of his child. I thought he might just be too afraid to go. I went and I was afraid. They put her in the ground and then we left her there. I wondered while my mother muttered whether Cassie was afraid when they put her in there.
It's odd that what I remember most about the next scene was the furniture. I had been in that room many times before. It was a big house. But I knew how to navigate that house through many games of hide and seek. His office was on the third floor and I was nearly out of breath because I wanted to see of I could take the steps two at a time. I managed to make it, two at a time, all the way up to the landing where his office was.
The door was unlocked and I went in.
I guess we never heard anything because he had done it when we were outside in the rain putting Cassie in the ground.
But the furniture seemed darker now as I remember it. Everything seemed almost black, like all of the suits and dresses and hats and umbrellas that I saw outside in the rain this morning. The mahogany of the desk, the leather chair and sofa, the dark and cool grate of a fireplace that hadn't been used, the rug and the blood pooling from my father's right ear. It was all a dark black color. The whole scene could have been black and white for all I could tell.
We had another funeral and I had to stand out in the rain again and everyone wore black again and we had to put father in the ground next to Cassie. But mother was not muttering when she took my socks and shoes and hung them to dry by the fire. She was crying.
We didn't live in that house anymore.
We moved to my mother's town and I liked it better. We had a flat above a bakery that smelled of bread in the morning. And I grew to love Belfast.
But my father didn't come with us. He was in the ground with Cassie. I figured that he must have known that they would put him there if he shot himself dead. He wanted to be in the ground with Cassie, wanted it more than being here with mum and me. He was never a terrible man. He had loved me, I guess. But I only remembered that he left me. My mother never told me that it was any different. I guess she felt like he had left her as well. And he had. There was no mistaking that fact. Even a five year old understood it.
No longer on the stoop of the house on Falls Street I was wandering down to Free Derry Corner. The house disappeared behind me when I turned the corner. Up Rossville Street and I could see the rubble barricade. I saw a lot of things. It was to be my education of the world. The true and harsh world—the world as it really was. As I walk this street now it is hard to imagine it without the sound of high velocity bullets whizzing by. Many young students and workers had collected here. I had witnessed with one of my closest friends the death of someone close to us both. His brother died here, a few blocks from where he lives today. The death of Aidan is a more vivid and shocking memory and forced me to appreciate life lived for something and spent needlessly. His death shaped more of who I am than that of my own father.
But more died here. Yet, now that it is cleared of its dead bodies and the houses have fresh coats of paint and new flowers planted in the window boxes, the images, ghastly and vivid; the picture of Barney McGuigan's body by the phone box, lying in a pool of his on blood cannot be covered by the new exteriors. It only causes me to revolt further into memory.
But memory turns to more pleasant images now. The boy whose brother died there on Rossville Street, I met on a train.
I was to go to school. And I was eager to. It was a school, to my understanding, that my father would not have approved of. I was magical, my mother told me. And that suited me fine. It flew in the face of what my father had wanted for me. But he didn't get to consider my future as I saw it, he had left. My mother was the one that stayed. And she was pleased that I had been accepted. And so I was pleased too.
But as I boarded the train that would take me there, I realized that I would be going it alone. My mother could not come with me. I would only have my kitten and my violin, and nothing else I knew, nor did it look familiar to me.
My kitten, Aristophanes in my pocket, my violin under my arm and my trunk dragging behind me, I said goodbye to my mother with a brave face and watched her walk away.
He was asleep in one compartment by himself and my kitten's gray head peeked out of my pocket and hissed softly. I crept in and sat down, careful not to wake him. And if he did wake, I would got to another compartment and find another place to sit, as he was here first. But he didn't wake for a while.
I was staring, indulging my rude inclinations of which my mother would have scolded me for if she had been here. In revolt of the fact that she wasn't I scrutinized this boy for hours and he did not wake, which only made my study of him that much more thorough.
He wore glasses. I wondered if he got teased in school for them. Robert at my old school was teased for his glasses. A big kid broke them one time when he was pushed to the ground. But I didn't care. I wasn't picked on when they could get their hands on Robert. My mind started to wander to my new school, and were there big kids there too that wouldn't like me? And would this sleeping kid be pushed to the ground more than me?
I would like to think that because he wore glasses he would be the target of any bullying that may take place at our new school. But maybe he ran fast like Robert did, and then I would be the one that got it more often than not.
I looked to my violin and wondered if I could set it on fire or throw it off the train. Could I convince mum that it got stolen? I would shove it under my bed when I got to my new school and I would never take it out. Michael, a big kid at my old school, he was named after Michael Collins, he told me. And he said that he could kick my Protestant violin-playing arse. And he really could, that's why I believed he could kick my Protestant violin-playing arse. He had proven that he could on a few occasions. I was glad Michael wasn't going to be going to my new school.
Aristophanes arched his back and hissed again and I looked away from my cursed instrument.
"I don't think he likes me," the sleeping kid said. But he wasn't asleep anymore and he was staring at my kitten, which was really misbehaving and hissing and his fur stood up.
"Don't you like cats?" I asked.
"Oh sure," the kid said, taking his glasses off and wiping them on black robes. "But I haven't met one yet that likes me."
I hid an inward smile. If he were afraid of cats then surely any Michaels at my new school would like to push him down more than me. Maybe I could even hide my violin before anyone saw it and then I wouldn't get pushed down at all. And my mum wouldn't even notice that I hadn't been practicing.
It all sounded good. But in practice I knew it was a hopeless idea.
"Do you play that?" the kid said replacing his glasses and eyeing the case at my feet.
A sinking feeling and I realized that even the kid that was afraid of cats would make fun of me. And my mum was wrong. I wouldn't make any friends here. I wondered how fast she could be here to take me home if I told her I had broken my arm or had a seizure.
"I play a little. But I'm planning to burn it when I get to school," I said playing with my kitten.
"Don't be stupid," the boy said glaring at me.
I blinked and kicked the violin under my seat. "Are you in your first year?"
The kid glanced up momentarily as he opened a thick schoolbook. "Yes. And you?"
I set my kitten down on the seat next to me and nodded. "Did people at your other school give you a hard time because of your glasses?" I asked, immediately regretting it. He closed his book and stared at me hard.
"Depends on what you mean by a hard time. I was usually only teased by my brothers. But then they were the only other students that went to school where I did."
I furrowed my brow. "And where was that?"
"At my home," he answered looking at me as if I were a simpleton. "My mother taught me."
This piece of information sent me into all kinds of imaginings. I wondered why my mother didn't teach me and why I had to go to school with a bunch of big kids who wanted to push me down because I played the violin and didn't cross myself when I prayed. But I guessed that his mum probably didn't have to work and he probably had a father who did. I wish his mum could have taught me too.
We both looked up when a boy with red hair and wide eyes came into our cabin shutting the door quickly, crawling into the baggage hold above the other kid's seat agilely. I stared in wonder until a second later another boy, a very angry rough-looking boy, came in after him. He looked around and noticed only the boy in glasses and me.
He turned to me and asked, "Where did that redheaded bastard go to?"
I must have had a gaping expression, as I didn't answer him. He was about the same height as I was. I noticed this only when he hauled me out of my seat by the collar, his nose inches from my own. "Would it help if I said please?" he asked menacingly.
I pointed to the baggage hold and was immediately released.
"Give it up, Nancie-coward!" he bellowed, jumping onto the seat next to my compartment mate who sat unconcerned and looking on the scene with bland curiosity. "I won. Give me my money!" he continued, yanking the redhead roughly down by the back of his shirt.
I was even more frightened to see that the boy he was bullying was at least three inches taller than him and just as mean looking. He hopped down and made for me.
"Why did you rat on me, you sorry bastard?" he asked.
Backing away until the back of my knees hit the seat, I answered, "Because he said please."
The redhead who had me threateningly by the front of the shirt and the mousy-haired boy behind him both laughed.
"Are you taking a piss?" the redhead asked.
I blinked. "No…No, I'm not taking a piss," I answered shakily.
The boy behind him laughed.
The scene dissipated with another boy entering the compartment. I thought this might have been a gang that I had unfortunately gotten on the wrong side of. He was apparently their look out as he came in, pushing his round glasses up the bridge of his nose and saying, "Mundungus, Peter, Prefects! Come on!"
I was mercifully released. The redhead and the mousy-haired boys left with the boy with the glasses. I heaved a sigh and sat.
The kid across from me smiled and shook his head.
"What?" I asked angrily. "I think that kid really wanted to kill me."
"No," said the boy with a superior shake of his head. "He wanted what was in your pocket."
I felt in my coat pocket and with a sinking feeling I noticed that my father's watch was gone. I always kept it in my pocket, but not because it held any sort of meaning for me. It was just something I had picked up off of his desk when I found him with the gun and the blood.
The kid began to laugh. "My name is Remus," he said. "I'll help you get it back if you like."
"Yes, thank you." I sat down feeling sheepish and ill suited for this new school and its alien ways and even more alien students. "I'm Sirius."
Even now, I have to laugh when I think about that moment on the train. I look up and find that I have made my way to the old Bogside Inn. This is where the Provisional IRA had its headquarters then. In this town and in that moment, I know that is when I grew up.
But I did a lot of growing up before that. In many ways my friends each taught me something. But I think it was Peter who gave me my earliest education.
And with a bloody nose came the realization that I would one day have to fight for myself. Peter was a tough kid. He was not the biggest, nor was he the strongest, but he knew what God gave you fists for, and he was quick.
So it came down to it, one day soon after that train ride.
Remus walked calmly up to Peter and asked for my father's watch back.
"Sorry, mate," Peter said with a shrug. "I've sold it. Nasty luck. Had I known you wanted it…" He looked to his redheaded companion and smiled as both neared Remus menacingly. "Well, no. I still would have sold it. So, fuck off, squitty little bastard."
I would always remember with little ease the unconcerned way with which Remus cocked his head to one side and said, "Well now, God doesn't like a dirty mouth."
Mundungus laughed. "Is this kid for real?" he asked Peter.
Remus narrowed his eyes at the boy like a stern teacher. "Of course I am."
Peter pulled out his wand and neared. "I'll say it again. Fuck off!"
I was astonished at the speed of things. For a rather meek, soft-spoken and even tempered boy, Remus was quicker than Peter. But he didn't reach for his own wand. I don't think that it was a natural response for any of us, seeing as how we were all so young. I don't even think Peter knew how to use his. No, Remus deftly jerked Peter's out of his hand and threw it over his shoulder. The other hand flew at the boy in a balled fist.
When both boys jumped on Remus, I knew grudgingly that I should be helping out. It's funny how you can't remember some people's names, or some memories have been completely erased from your mind, but I can recall with crystal clarity the impossibly girlish scream that came from Mundungus when I landed on him. In a tangle of arms and legs, I couldn't tell which side came out more bruised.
When James attempted to break it all up, I thought that Remus and I were just as good as frog guts. But he was surprisingly objective and restrained Peter who had a smashed pair of glasses in his hand while Remus staggered backward with a cut on his brow.
"Remus," I said. I cannot now explain why I had. "Your glasses…"
"That's fine," he said. "I only need them to read." He wiped blood from his forehead and glared at Peter who struggled against James' grip while Mundungus stood dumbly by, bleeding from the ear.
Hindsight is useful only in idiotic postulating and so I'll put it to its only use: we should have left at that moment if not sooner.
Transfiguration hardass, McGonagall would not have made it her opportunity to take us all down to the clink…or more generally, her office, for dolling out punishment.
But she did. It's anyone's call whether that was a lesson learned or not.
We all thought twice about swearing in front of Remus.
I learned never to antagonize a Liverpool native with more of a right hook than a command of the third grade reading level.
And later in detention, we all learned that James had a near criminal intelligence, Remus new how to make gelignite bombs and other specialties of the mob, and Peter could lift Dumbledore's glasses right off of his nose while he slept. As I looked around us that night, bent over a scrub brush and soap bubbles on the Trophy Room floor, I knew we had the makings of a fantastic and terrible friendship.
And in some way, the memory of it hurts more now than the memory of my father.
I look up in surprise to find that I am not now standing by the Bogside Inn, but instead my feet have found an all the more painful place to rest outside of St. Eugene's Cathedral. Anyone would wonder at why I would find such a place painful, yet it is the people associated with the place that saddens me, and that sadness deadens my heart with a dull ache that's mournful. I think of Remus' face when he turned to me, quietly whispering while the priest was in the middle of Sunday Mass, "The Paras were seen on the Craigavon Bridge moving into the city. Aidan saw them on Lower Road."
I made to say something, but when I looked up, father O'Neil whom I'd met just outside came in and whispered into father Daly's ear. I knew it was much of the same that Remus had just told me.
It was only one day in the life of a city that had seen so much life and death and revolt and blood, but it stands out in my mind and I am struck numb even now, twenty-two years after the bullets have stopped flying, the memory of it still rivets me to the spot.
But I cannot visit that memory now.
And there are others that need my attention and so I give myself over to them one at a time, sitting on the steps of St. Eugene's Cathedral.
"Remus?" I asked one night when he had just come back from the hospital wing—the first night that I began to worry about him—it was dark and James and Peter had long ago dropped off to sleep.
"What?" he asked in a tired voice.
"What is that picture over your bed?" I really didn't care who it was. I knew he was someone that Remus admired, and he was American, he dressed like it. But I wanted him to tell me so that I could hear him and know that he was okay. Yesterday I visited him in the hospital wing with Peter and he was bruised and he had a cut from his ear to his collarbone. Peter insisted that it was a fight Remus had gotten into that he was trying to keep secret. Peter vowed to find the boy who beat Remus and "make him sorry". He turned earnestly to me after we had left Remus and said, "Someone probably did it because he's a Mic. But he's still the nicest Mic I know and he helps me with my history studies."
I disagreed. "Remus isn't a Mic," I said. "He's from Northern Ireland like me."
Peter smiled. "I thought I was the stupid one of the bunch," he said, ruffling my hair as if I were his kid brother. In actuality I was a month older than him. I was just smaller.
"I'm not stupid and Remus isn't a Mic!" I insisted.
"Look," Peter said, quieting me in the hall. "I don't care if he is or he isn't. Are you going to help me find out who did this to him?"
"How should I know who did it?" I asked helplessly.
"I didn't say you did know. I said we should find out. Are you in?" Peter asked with little patience.
"Sure. I want to help Remus. But what if he doesn't want any help?" I countered ineffectually. "Maybe we should ask him first."
"You are stupid, aren't you?" Peter asked. "He's not going to tell us what happened. You know who I think it was?"
"Who?" I asked with mounting terror. I could almost smell a new and more unpleasant detention on the breeze of the near future. McGonagall would have us polishing every suit of armor in the school if we were caught in another brawl for sure.
"That racists bastard Snape," Peter said with a militant glint in his eyes.
I wondered how he had come to this conclusion. I didn't see Remus losing a fight to Severus Snape. It would have been like Peter loosing to…well…me.
And maybe if I got Remus talking about other things, he might tell me who put him in the hospital wing for three days.
"It's Martin Luther King, Jr." Remus answered.
"Oh," I said, as if that cleared everything up for me. But I didn't want the conversation to end there. I felt the persistent need to know more. Even if he wouldn't tell me how he got the scar on his hand, or the one on his forehead, or the cuts and bruises that now colored him, I wanted to know something about him. He was really the only one I could consider my friend. I mean he helped me get my father's watch back, which Peter had returned along with his repaired glasses. And he didn't make fun of me because I played the violin or because my mother wrote to me once a week, even though the other boys didn't get letters from their mums half as often. And I realized that I was only beat up when I was unlucky enough to be cornered when Remus wasn't around. That must mean he was my friend.
But friends were supposed to know things about each other. Mundungus and Peter could even finish each other's sentences, even though Mundungus was a Hufflepuff and didn't even see Peter that often anymore.
James was different, of course. He was everyone's friend and no one expected him to remember even their names. He had a way of making conversation about nothing to someone he'd only met five minutes ago. And that was fine with him.
"Who's Martin Luther King, Jr.?" I asked. "A singer?"
"Don't be stupid," Remus said and I heard him roll over in his bed. "Go to sleep, Sirius."
I expelled a frustrated breath of air. "Okay."
There was quiet and I looked at the poster over Remus' bed. There was a microphone in front of him and his mouth was open. He looked like he was singing. Another banner under that poster said Derry Civil Rights Association. I guessed maybe he was someone in Londonderry that Remus knew.
"Remus?" I asked.
There was a deep breath and then quiet laughter and then: "What, Sirius?"
"Is he the priest at your church?"
He laughed louder now as if he could not help himself. "I don't think he's Catholic, Sirius."
"Then what is he?" I asked irritably. As often as I was laughed at by James and Peter, you'd think I was used to it. But never Remus.
"He's a civil rights activist in America."
"Do you want to be like him?" I asked, faintly admiring his sharp cut suit and the one shiny cufflink that stuck out on the wrist of his raised hand. I thought Remus could look like him.
"No. He's dead," Remus said decidedly. "I don't want to be a civil rights activist," he continued. "I want to be a priest."
"Why?"
"Because I don't think God's given me as many chances as He had for me to waste them. The way I see it, my life belongs to Him and I can't think of anyone better to serve," Remus said uncomfortably as if he wished to end the conversation.
"Did Martin Luther King, Jr. waste his life?" I asked dumbly.
"No," Remus said sadly. "He was a great man. A lot of people admire him for giving his life for the cause."
"What cause?" I asked.
"For the cause of freedom." Remus shifted again and I could tell he was tired. He wanted me to shut up, but I had too many questions.
"Isn't America free?" I thought this sounded reasonable.
"For some," Remus answered patiently.
"Does the Derry Civil Rights Association think Martin Luther King, Jr. was like them?" I asked more tentatively.
"What?" Remus said.
"Do they think they're not free?" I elaborated.
"You would say that everything is equal. But that's because you were raised on the majority side. Did you ever look around Belfast and wonder why the Catholics don't live where you live, and why all of your police are Protestant?"
"No," I answered honestly.
"The Derry Civil Rights Association just wants to make things a little more equal is all," Remus explained.
I thought about this for a minute. I hesitated, and then: "Remus?"
"What, Sirius," Remus sighed.
"Are you a Mic?"
Things were very quiet for a while. I thought that now Remus wouldn't want to be my friend.
But a moment later he said, "Yeah, I guess you would call me a Mic."
It's really hard to believe that things turned out the way they do. It's hard to believe people forget the things they do, gloss them over, rob them of their value.
I feel this very keenly. Because I cannot forget.
Maybe it is because this is the first time I have visited Derry since the streets ran with blood and the alleys rang with cries and shouts and bullets, but I cannot understand why people would transform a city that meant so much in that one day…in those few hours…with those thirteen martyrs…one of whom I knew. It becomes a grim, sad, aching reality—the new paint and the flowers in the window boxes. It's denial of a powerful thing…a moving thing. So much of me was changed here. It is an injustice that no one else feels such respect and I am indignant for old Derry that I thought I knew.
But I stop.
A cloud has moved in front of the sun. I do not notice this because I am looking at the sky. I realize that my shadow is missing as I am looking down at the street, at my shoes. The wind picks up and I know rain isn't too far off. But I race on in memory and trudge slowly in step, going nowhere with great certainty and purpose. From the steps of St. Eugene's where Aidan's memorial service had been held along with the other twelve I find myself in front of a deserted building. The Rossville Flats became my first acquaintance with this city and its struggles, my own struggles, and Ireland's.
Testimony to all things changing, this place has changed too.
Push past a door hanging on one hinge. It gives instantly.
I am immediately drawn to a place I have longed to be many times before. There is an alleyway behind these flats where five thousand people were housed at one time and no police had ever penetrated. It was a haven for Civil Rights, vigilantes, weapons collectors, the IRA (both Provos and Officials), and many Catholic families, members to all of these factions.
The alley is the same, I see as I stumble out of the deserted flats. And I am relieved to see it so. It is gray and wholly unremarkable in anyway. And here is where I kissed the first girl I loved.
I want to stay here even though I know it will rain. In all of the memories I have, this one, and this girl had never been anything but a treasured denizen of my mind. Other memories bring with them sad realizations of a person who left me, betrayed me, gave me up for lost, thought me capable of murder and worse, but she never did. In my mind she remains as pure and untouched as this memory.
Though she has left too, I can think on her with little sadness brought about because of something I did, or said, or didn't do or say. She left because she had to and it was her time.
But now my thoughts have become disorganized, my mind a jumble, as if I am still twelve years old, and she is standing in front of me, looking at me in that way that made me clumsy and dumb before her. She knew that she had that effect on me, and she loved to stare at me to get just that reaction.
Remus was the reason I came to Derry.
It was the stupidest and most rash thing I had ever done as a child. And it changed my life in inestimable ways.
Peter, as he had planned to do, cornered the small Slytherin boy, Severus Snape one afternoon soon after he'd told me that he suspected him of having put Remus in the hospital. There was no reason to like the boy or believe him when he said he had no idea what Mic Peter was talking about.
For some reason it was perfectly fine for Peter to call Remus that. I had even heard James use the term. I was quite excited one day when he called me a Mic too. But when Severus Snape had said it, Peter had broken his nose.
I knew that there would be no chance that he would go near Remus again. And I stopped worrying about him for a while.
But when only a month went by and we were visiting him in the hospital wing I began to investigate. Remus, however, was as closed off as if none of us had ever met him. James and Peter and I shared a room with him and not one of us had an explanation. Peter was still insistent on a secret school bully. James would only reply with superiority that it takes one to know one. His explanation, while a little more crude, was all the more logical: Remus' parents beat him. And Dumbledore was helping them to cover it up. We made use of the three evenings that Remus was in the hospital wing to iron out our conspiracies. While James' seemed the likeliest, he only entertained the idea for intrigue's sake. His solution to Remus' problem, at first, was to let him deal with his family on his own. There was no reason for us to interfere.
"But I still think it's got to be another student," Peter said. "He talks about his family like he loves them all. I even want his family."
"You'd want anybody else's family, Peter," James said pushing his glasses up unconcerned. "You don't have one. For you, you'd probably think it would be better to have a dad who beats you than no dad."
I felt indignant for Peter. I knew it wasn't true. And I knew that Peter must have missed having a dad. I did. But at least I had a mum. Peter only had an aunt. She was an aunt that loved him, I guess, but that can't replace a mum. But I didn't tell James that. A better friend would have stood up for Peter. I guess I would have just rather let James pick on Peter than me. Because I liked James, and if I were completely honest, I would have admitted that James' approval meant more to me than consideration for Peter. I know now that it was unfair of me to let James pick on him as relentlessly as he did.
But memories are only photographs, not windows. You can try as hard as you might to look through them, but you'll never see past your blindness in that moment and the truth of the matter. Now I can see that we all hurt Peter. It was only natural that he would want to lash back. But when he finally did, he lashed back very hard. And I can still feel the sting thirteen years later.
But that's another memory and another story for a later hour.
"Do you know his parents?" I asked equably instead.
Peter fell silent.
"No," James said. "But he's always saying that he has to go away to see a sick aunt, or his sister was hurt or his grandmother died. They sound like lame excuses to me. The very same evening he's in the hospital wing with all sorts of injuries. He'll end up dead someday."
"Don't say that!" I yelled. No doubt I had woken up a Prefect.
Peter put a restraining hand on my shoulder. "No, Sirius. James is just being stupid. He's pretending that this doesn't bother him. But he's really scared. Because he likes Remus. He's afraid for him." Peter was looking straight at James as he said this. "But he's just being stupid. It's what he does."
"Yeah," I said in a small voice. "I guess you're right."
"Well, Freud and Jung," James said in an impatient tone. "Now that you've psychoanalyzed me, can we get back to the issue at hand?"
"Yes," Peter said. "But don't call me names."
"If you're right and it's his father or his mother that beats him all the time," I said to stave off further argument, "maybe the next time he makes that excuse we can keep him here…somehow…not let him go."
"You're suggesting we lock him in his trunk, Vivaldi?" James asked with a sarcastic raise of his eyebrows, leaning back on his bed and glaring at me. If he wasn't a fantastic Quidditch player, or one of the brightest students in our year, I don't think half of his friends would like him very much, I remember thinking at that moment. But he always insulted everyone in such a disarming way. How did he do it, I often wondered?
"No, I'm just saying, if we're his friends then we should hide him so his parents can't take him home." I played with the hem of my school robes, waiting for James' deliberation on my ideas.
"There might be something to that," he said almost to himself.
I visited Remus in the hospital. I wasn't allowed to stay very long. This time was worse. His right eye was swollen shut and his head was wrapped in a bandage, an arm wrapped all the way up to his elbow.
I thought, while I sat by him, that if James and Peter didn't come up with something, if they didn't care enough, then I would have to think of something by myself. Remus was my friend. I had never had very many of them before I came to Hogwarts, but Remus was my friend and I didn't want his mum and dad to hurt him anymore. I wouldn't let his parents take him and hit him and bring him back to heal in the school hospital wing like nothing had happened. I would ask my mum to let Remus stay with us and he could be my brother.
I was almost out of my seat with the new idea, eager to see it come to fruition, when Madam Pomfrey bustled by with a warm smile to shoo me away. I looked on her with childish disdain and held back the biting words of disgust I had for her. How could she let that happen to a nice boy like Remus? She was an evil lady and I didn't ever want to be injured and have to come here because she would probably drug me and take one of my kidneys for experimental purposes. James told me she would.
As I was leaving I saw them. Remus' parents turned the corner. I passed them and knew I was glaring, but the tall man and the woman with a round face like Remus' pretended not to see me. I knew they must have and I imagined that they were very uneasy because they knew that I knew something.
When I was sure they had seen me round the corner and leave the hospital wing, I backtracked and like a spy, I trailed them to the doors, ducking below the glass when one of them turned around. I could hear them and I knew they wanted to take Remus home. And he couldn't say he didn't want to go, because he was asleep and had not woken up for maybe hours.
"I'll send someone to get his trunk and I'll ask all of his professors to hold all of his homework and tests," Madam Pomfrey said, oozing pleasantness and affability. I wanted to run in and hex them all. But I didn't know any hexes.
Another idea presented itself while I was rooted there in a blind rage: I could go with him if I could not keep him from going altogether.
Quickly, I raced back up to Gryffindor Tower. I had decided along the way not to tell Peter or James what I had planned. They would probably squeal on me if I had.
I worked quickly because I knew someone would be up shortly to get Remus' trunk.
I emptied it as fast as I could, throwing all of its contents onto my bed. Aristophanes meowed and watched from my pillow as I moved from one trunk to another, putting all of my books and things into Remus' trunk. All of them looked alike. I didn't think anyone would know the difference.
Mine had a loose board near the bottom on the right side below the handle, and it would be perfect for what I was planning.
Remus' stuff went into my trunk and I had enough room to put a few changes of my own clothes in as well.
Hurriedly I took a piece of paper from the desk by my bed and wrote a note to Peter asking him to feed my cat while I was gone. I kissed Aristophanes on his fuzzy gray head and moved to push my trunk to the foot of Remus' bed and his to the end of mine.
I heard footsteps coming up to the landing of our room and I knew that it must be Filch or Hagrid to fetch Remus' things. Everyone else was at lunch.
Ripping the tape from my own trunk that said my name, I switched it with Remus' and climbed inside, sliding the lock home just before the door opened. Inside the crammed trunk I breathed a little easier, my head toward the side with the broken slat where I knew I would have enough air.
I was not claustrophobic and so the confined space didn't bother me.
But I hadn't thought of what I would do once I was smuggled away from the school and to Remus' house. I gave no consideration to what I would say or whether I would be beaten to for stowing away in Remus' trunk. It was hot, probably because I was nervous. The weather was bleak outside as it was January the eighteenth and it was snowing.
My only consolation was that I knew Remus wouldn't be alone. And that seemed to me the most important thing.
Now I can laugh at it. I was a completely stupid and willful child. I knew James had believed wholeheartedly that Remus' parents would take him home to beat him on a regular basis. I believed it too once James had put the notion into my head. It kept me awake nights to imagine what my best friend had to suffer at the hands of the people that were supposed to love him.
What I found—the truth—was even more shocking and upsetting. The worse part was that I was helpless to save him from the reality of it.
I stowed away in my trunk disguised as Remus'.
Once I knew I was inside the house in Derry where Remus lived, I began to kick and yell and generally behave like a gorilla would.
An astonished man opened the possessed trunk and found me crammed inside trying to fight my way out from under a pile of books and scarves that had me tied down.
A stunned look to Remus who stood behind his frightened mum and I knew this was his father and I immediately lunged for him.
It must have been a very comical sight in retrospect.
Mr. Lupin was a very large man. And I clung around his neck like a demonic thing kicking and screaming.
"Sirius?" Remus had asked in a weary yet very shocked tone.
"Run!" I screamed while Remus' father attempted to pull me from him. "I got him. Get out before they beat you."
"Beat me?" Remus said with raised eyebrows looking incredulously at me.
I stopped struggling and dropped from Mr. Lupin. He stood by massaging his neck and regarding me as if I were a regular nutter.
Remus tried to hide a smile. "Sirius, why would you think my parents beat me? And what are you doing in my trunk?"
"It's my trunk," I said sheepishly massaging my cramped back.
"You got locked in your trunk and we took it by mistake?" Remus asked evenly.
"No, I hid in it so I could rescue you from your parents," I clarified, feeling even dimmer. I wished that I had planned this out better.
"My parents don't beat me, Sirius," Remus said in a tone that spoke clearly that I shouldn't have come.
"But, I thought…James and Peter said…you end up in the hospital wing all the time…" I said feeling like I'd slapped him in the face.
Looking from Remus I saw with a great deal of self-loathing the expressions that his parents wore: a mixture of horror at the thought and apprehension.
Mr. Lupin looked from me to Remus' mum and said, "Mae, set another place for dinner." He heaved a sigh and looked to his son and finished, "I think your friend needs an explanation."
Remus nodded grudgingly and gestured to a worn couch in the middle of a flat that I had just noticed was only about half the size of the place I shared with my mum above the bakery in Belfast.
I sat and my legs hurt from being cramped.
I looked to Remus and he didn't look happy to be having a friend for dinner. I wished that I hadn't tried to save him. He obviously didn't need me to. And I began to wonder what a friend does for another friend, if not save each other from constant danger.
The cold gray stone of this alley way begins to glint with water as the sky drips down on to it. Ireland knows rain. These alleyways look alien without the glistening of a good Irish soak.
In the dismal weather I cannot restrain a chuckle as I remember back on that moment. Remus' father would tease me as long as he was alive. I am forever Jack-In-The-Box to him. I hope Mae has forgotten that embarrassing nickname by now.
Remus understood my intentions, even if he could not believe my actions.
His explanation as to why he was in and out of the hospital was not funny, however. I felt a greater surge of sympathy for him. I wanted to help in some way. It only made things worse that there was no way I could.
There is one betrayal that I am not sorry for and never will be: betraying Remus the night I told James and Peter about his condition. It was a burden that I cannot even now justify letting him carry on his own. Friends first and foremost help with the bearing of such a weight. There was not a moment that Peter, James and I had hesitated in becoming what we had to help him.
But that is also a memory to visit at a later time.
Two days later was January 20, 1972.
A lot of people would talk about it with a detached formality.
But for those of us that were there…there are hardly any words.
Later it would be called Bloody Sunday. I thought it was the end of the world.
