Notes: Thank you very much for your feedback! I especially enjoyed the speculations on the ghost and Blackpool – and we're inching ever closer to the reveal, so keep 'em coming (I *think* I placed most of the cues - you guys will probably figure it out before our heroes. If not this chapter, then the next.)
As always, I look forward to reading what you think :)
Blackpool, Part 3/6
Hogwarts is underwhelming.
Definitely underwhelming, thinks Regulus, after the first night he shares a dorm with five respectable young Pureblood boys, one of whom snores and two of whom smell. Definitely, definitely underwhelming, he thinks after his first week of classes, where around him they shout and flourish, trying to get the hang of spells Regulus learned when he was six. Really quite extraordinarily underwhelming, he thinks after his first flying lesson, when he is informed that first years are not allowed to go higher than Hagrid's shrubs, because of that one kid in the 1700s that never came down.
Is it possible that, in his attempt to persevere in Grimmauld Place, he has adapted a little too well? Gone is the sedate drag of his family home, the one-on-one tutoring, the sleep like he switches off for the night. In the buzz and bustle of Hogwarts, he has to fight for every scrap of sleep he can find.
In fact, if not for the Astronomy Tower, he feels he may quickly succumb to a quiet, nervous, seven-year-long despair. But the stars are ancient, and very, very predictable, and, best of all, mercifully silent. Some nights – when the eternal Scottish cloud cover lifts and Regulus feels like he is half-way on top of his enormous sleep debt – he will sneak up here, ostensibly to catch up on his homework without the buzz of students around him. But more often than not, he will find himself simply watching the slow spin of the galaxies, something far bigger and older than himself.
He's not the only one keeping an eye out for cloudless nights. Many times, Sirius will already be here, comfortable with his back against the ledge, alternating between scribbling in his diary and chewing on the quill. And then he'll lift his head and smile and finally, Regulus thinks, someone is happy to see him.
Sirius doesn't think Hogwarts is underwhelming, and Regulus tries to explain about the noise. "Back home, it's just outbursts," he says. "It's loud -"
"- so loud –"
"but it's… predictable? Like punctuation."
"Punctuation," repeats Sirius, who doesn't seem to follow. Granted, his punctuation has always been on the unpredictable side. "You're writing too many essays, Reg."
"And here, the noise is like a run-on sentence," says Regulus, because he's worked hard on this analogy and will see it through to the end. "It's confusing and grating and it just never, ever stops. … Except up here, I guess."
Sirius just looks at him, and Regulus realises that it's not that his brother doesn't notice the ubiquitous noise of Hogwarts, no: He likes it. If it weren't for the fact that, quite clearly, Sirius likes the calm of the Astronomy Tower, too, Regulus would be worried for his sanity.
Sneaking up on the Astronomy Tower is the only forbidden thing Regulus allows himself. He's not worried about detention, or letters to Grimmauld Place - that inexplicable need to watch the stars is something even Mother understands. And fortunately, Professor Sinistra, whose birth precedes the discovery of Neptune, doesn't give a hoot if her best students are up here after curfew, and if asked, would probably respond when else were they supposed to be stargazing, at three in the afternoon?
They talk about school work, too.
"I know all this," says Regulus once. "How am I still so busy all the time?" Unfortunately, no amount of glaring at his Potions essay will materialise the missing six inches. That's what he gets for being succinct, he supposes.
"What's this one about?" says Sirius.
"Compare and contrast the four uses of Mandrake root in potion-making," says Regulus.
Sirius wrinkles his nose. "I can think of at least six."
"So can I," says Regulus. "Which ones does Slughorn expect to turn up in a first-year essay, you think?"
His brother gives this some consideration. "Maybe not the one that turns a person inside out?" he suggests.
Regulus rolls his eyes at him. "Oh dear," he says. "There goes my introduction."
"Or do what I do, and just don't do your homework," says Sirius. "You already know all this. Just convince them you're brilliant and it's amazing what the teachers will let slide."
Regulus racks his brain for some more fluff to pad his conclusions. "That would sound more convincing if it didn't come from the all-time record-holder for total hours spent in detention," he says.
"I'm not the one writing essays at two in the morning," Sirius points out. "As for your question – you're busy because they keep you busy. Think the teachers want three-hundred kids to get bored?"
Considering the haphazard magic he's seen from his peers, Regulus can't disagree with that logic. Just another example, he thinks distantly, of how magic is ruined by too many people -
Some nights, they don't talk at all. Regulus hadn't even considered it an option – had thought silence just came in two variants, solitary or awkward - but while Sirius may not understand about the noise, he just shrugs and accepts it. Regulus is surprised how easy it is, how comfortable, to watch the stars for hours on end, wrapped up in silence like a safe cocoon.
Whenever it's bright enough to read on the Astronomy Tower, Sirius lets him flip through his ever-growing diary, watching him all the while like he's gauging his reactions.
The diary has become a bit of a hybrid affair. More often than not, Regulus finds himself skipping the prose – when they're home in Grimmauld Place, Sirius writes a lot. There's not much else to do for him with all the time he spends locked away in his room or the cellar. Those entries make Regulus uncomfortable - he doesn't recognise any of those events, or remembers them differently, and if their mother ever figures out how to read Sirius's diary…
Here, in Hogwarts, it's a different thing: A diary of magic.
Around Hallowe'en of Sirius's second year, the moon chart returns, shrunk in size to fit on the pages, but extended in time to cover the entire previous eight years - all the way back to an October night in 1964. A tap of his wand zooms in on the details; legends pop up to give durations, moonrise, moonset.
Shortly before Christmas, Sirius is still making maps, but this time it's Grimmauld Place, with all its rooms and halls and impossible geometry. Little dots are moving between the rooms, labelled The Hag and The Tyrant and The Stooge.
(It turns out that map has an unfortunate time delay, because on Boxing Day 1972 it shows The Hag still in the parlour when she is in fact already bursting into the ancestor's room, where Sirius is riling up the paintings with his, quoth Mother, impertinent questions. Or, quoth Sirius, just questions. Either way, it doesn't end too well.)
And he draws. He likes animals, Sirius does, and he draws them a lot, always in movement, dogs in all shapes, playing puppies, swaggering Grims, wolves in attack, owls in full flight. He draws huge, skeletal winged horses, over and over and over, a weird, disturbing sort of beauty. Regulus keeps meaning to ask about them – but it's the sort of thing that slips his mind.
When Sirius draws his friends, it's more evident that he embellishes. Those are not the scrawny-looking Gryffindors Regulus knows from the Great Hall. Still, there's something about the drawings that makes them unmistakeable. Something about the deep, painful looking scars on Lupin's face, his curled smile; the squinty look Potter has when he peers through his glasses; the sincere, can-do-no-wrong face of Pettigrew.
"Who's that?" Regulus asks.
The face on the page looks like a Black – so much, in fact, it's almost a caricature: Pointy chin and aristocratic bones and bright expressive eyes, and if Regulus didn't know any better, he'd say it was a drawing of himself. Except Sirius does draw him, too, a very peculiar version of Regulus, all softness and quietness. All that is not Black.
Sirius peers over his shoulder to see what he's talking about. "The ghost, of course."
Oh. Once again, Regulus has almost forgotten about him.
"Doesn't look like him," says Regulus.
"Well, you know," says Sirius. "It's tricky, making images of ghosts. Besides, he is very blurry. I have literally no idea what that kid looks like."
It's like the ghost waited for this. Shortly after they return from their Christmas holidays, when Sirius is angry and closed-off and fidgets in their shared silence, the ghost starts joining them on the Astronomy Tower, just rises from the pages of the diary like he steps out of the sea. Sirius, so quick to snap at everything, doesn't seem to mind the company.
Regulus does, and it takes him a while to understand why: It's not because the ghost's milky-white light outshines the stars (even though it does).
"It's like we're babysitting him," he says one time, when the ghost isn't there. "He's a child and he's not growing older."
"It's not his fault," says Sirius.
"It's not our fault, either," says Regulus, and wishes he could find words that didn't make him sound so callous. He feels sorry for the ghost, he really does, but having him feels like an enormous responsibility. The ghost is not getting older, or wiser, or any more fun, and he cries a lot and flounces at the tiniest noise. How are they supposed to cheer up a child that died horribly and doesn't seem to remember much else?
Sirius tries relentlessly. He teaches the ghost subjects he doesn't need a body for: Astronomy and History of Magic and even some Arithmancy, just so they have something to talk about that isn't Blackpool, or drowning. Regulus tells himself he is perfectly happy in his own cocoon of silence, writing foot after foot of essays, solving equations, charting stars, but when he sees Sirius and the ghost on the other side of the tower, talking with their heads together – the first time the ghost makes Sirius laugh -
The burn behind his eyes is familiar, and yet it takes him the better part of two school years to identify – two years of scrambling for sleep in the dungeons under the lake, of casting familiar spells in frenzied classrooms, and later, of chasing Snitches on the best broom money can buy. He feels like a wandering star, already ancient, following the paths his ancestors have mapped out over and over, walking the same halls, learning the same things. Watching the skies, waiting, waiting, three, four, five weeks at a time, waiting, for the clouds to go away so he can spend the night under the stars with Sirius, only for the ghost to join them, too –
It is the same burn he feels when he watches Sirius across the bustling Great Hall with his best friend James, and shortly before his second year is over, Regulus can give it a name: Jealousy.
The noisier it gets, the quieter he becomes.
A number of things happen the summer after Regulus's second year, and Regulus supposes he should have seen them coming. Naturally, he's blindsided.
On the morning of Regulus's thirteenth birthday, their mother informs them gravely over their poached eggs that their cousin Andromeda has died in a terrible broomstick accident.
"Oh dear," says Regulus.
He is a bit shocked, and he's sure he isn't reacting appropriately. It's not really a Black way to die, isn't it? Blacks die of disappointment and resentment. They die clutching their pearls in the parlour room. They die by their own hand, or they drown in the Irish Sea. Nothing they do is an accident.
He throws a sideways glance at Sirius, whose entire face is scrunched up into a clear representation of the word "bollocks", but thankfully he doesn't say it out loud. This time.
Instead, Sirius says: "That is terrible. What will become of her child?"
Walburga raises an eyebrow at him. "What child?"
"Nympha – something?"
Walburga sighs. "Just like you to joke around on such a grave day."
It shuts Sirius up. But even if Regulus hasn't thought about his cousin Andromeda in almost a year, it does bring up a memory, one that Regulus is careful not to share: Andromeda, last summer, between her N.E.W.T.s and Blackpool, had done away with a lot of pretences, and her loose, heavy cloaks had turned out to be one of them. When she'd shed those, she was surprisingly pregnant, and proud, and happy. Even with everyone else pretending not to notice, Regulus had found it rather hard to miss. What with the bikinis and all.
Later, in his room, Sirius shows him a letter from Andromeda that arrived just the other day: An engagement notice, cut out from the Daily Prophet.
"So let me get this straight," whispers Regulus, careful not to wake the portrait snoring above their heads. "They're willing to overlook one bastard child –"
"- but marrying her Muggleborn father will start the Third World War," says Sirius. "Good to know, I suppose."
Neither of them has ever heard of Ted Tonks, but he wears a friendly smile on the engagement photograph, waving at them with one hand, the other clasped in Andromeda's. Their baby is in a sling, hidden from view. In the margin, Andromeda has scrawled I'm sorry and Don't believe a word she says and Still, do your Astronomy homework because I will be back to test you on it, you little Gryffindor toerag. On the other side of the notice is an advertisement for the newest Hobgoblins record, Seventeen and out. Knowing Andromeda, she probably bullied the Daily Prophet staff into putting it there.
"Oh, couldn't she have waited until after Blackpool?" says Regulus. "Wait, that's selfish, isn't it? Sometimes I can't even tell anymore."
"Extremely selfish, Reg," says Sirius, with a sigh. "I was thinking the same."
Their mother lets go of the whole Andromeda-fell-off-a-broom thing over the course of the day; clearly the story isn't quite dramatic enough for her liking. She tries out a few other versions, each death more gruesome than the last. Eventually, and to Regulus's great surprise, she settles for the truth, or what passes for it in the Black household: A screeching litany, many words beginning in dis-, dishonour, disgrace, disappointment.
Later, there's an hour long uncomfortable thing where they're all gathered in the drawing room, Walburga and Orion and Sirius and Cygnus and Druella and Narcissa with her red-rimmed eyes and even Bellatrix with her terrifying manner, and they reverse the ritual that binds Andromeda's life to the tapestry, and it burns for long minutes with a stink like human sacrifice, and at the end there's a hole in the tapestry and a tiny, charred milk tooth on the Persian rug. Kreacher cleans it away later.
On the whole, it is the most ridiculously overblown thing Sirius has ever witnessed in his life, as he tells him later, and in the very, very back of his mind, Regulus has to agree.
They leave for Blackpool the next morning, and nobody talks about it. It's as if Andromeda has never existed. It's unusual, this quiet and peace, and Regulus finds himself almost enjoying it –
- Except his family doesn't do that. Quiet and peace. Instead, they stew. They walk along the promenade, not talking. They have fancy afternoon tea in the garden, cucumber sandwiches and pink petit-fours, not talking. They go on carriage rides through the countryside, not talking. All the while, Walburga is watching Sirius like a hawk, as if he's about to tie his laces and run. Sirius's face is on lockdown, he looks at his shoes or the clouds or the Muggle-built city, and there's an explosion looming on the horizon.
"They're French, you know," says Regulus one night.
They're on the Black Pier, safely in the middle, as far as away from the water as possible. It's been an overcast summer, bad for stargazing, and Sirius has used the time to perfect a new spell he found: It produces tiny glowing spheres that hover in mid-air, some silver, some golden, some blue-white, some red, like fireflies. Right now, he's making constellations with one hand, the other occasionally reaching for a plate of pink treats they've liberated from the tea room.
"What's French?" says Sirius thickly.
"Petit-fours," says Regulus. "They're not called that because you're supposed to fit four into your mouth at once."
Sirius grins. "Next thing you'll tell me is they're not actually petty, either."
When he's made quite enough stars to see by, Sirius gets out his diary. He snatches up these rare unobserved moments, and he draws his friends from memory, he draws Hogwarts, the mountains, the lake, as if to convince himself that those all still exist. The ghost hasn't come out for weeks – it seems he really, truly, hates Blackpool, even more than he likes having company – and Regulus is secretly glad, because it's so rarely just the two of them anymore.
Later, just as the clouds rip open for the first time in weeks, Sirius lets him flip through the pages while he watches the full moon rise, an absent expression on his face.
His drawings get better, thinks Regulus. Or maybe not better, more realistic. Maybe they're even losing something, whimsicality, wonder - like Sirius is finally getting used to having these people in his life. He flips back and forth between two drawings until he notices something.
"Your friend," he says. "Lupin."
Sirius visibly flinches, face paling in the silvery moonlight. He doesn't say anything, leaves no toehold for a possible conversation. His hands, splayed out on the rough wood of the pier, clench just a little, and Regulus thinks he is on to something.
He wonders what that's like – to know someone so well he could draw them from memory, map their scars like a star chart. He wonders what it's like to be known like that.
"His family," Regulus says very, very softly, because while their mother looks like she's a safe distance away, her hearing can be quite supernatural. "Are they… are they like ours?"
Sirius breathes out, as if relieved. "They are nothing like ours," he says. "His mum's a Muggle. He knows loads of really interesting things. Like how planes stay up. Or how to darn socks."
That information hangs between them, like it's a test, yes, it's Sirius testing the waters, see if Regulus will react like their parents would. And Regulus sort of wants to let go of the conversation, but the truth is, he's testing the waters, too.
"No, I mean," Regulus says, and looks back at the drawing, then flips back to the older one. He's not mistaken. "His scars," he says. "I thought he must have been in an accident, but. Sometimes there's new ones. After the holidays. Or when he goes visit his Mum." He laughs, trying to take the tension out, but it fails miserably. "Or maybe you're just a shite artist."
Sirius looks at him then, like he's understanding something new about Regulus. Like they're sharing a secret, which they are, all the time, or better: Like they're acknowledging an elephant in the room: That this is not normal. That they're an exception.
"His family's nothing like ours," Sirius repeats. "They're nice."
Under his brother's unwavering gaze, Regulus nods. "Then how –" he starts.
Unlike basically everyone else in the family, Sirius has never made him stop asking questions, but it looks like tonight might be the night he starts. Again, his brother remains silent so that the conversation may fizzle out.
"Some curses do that," muses Regulus. "They just... keep moving about, under the skin. They're very hard to extract. But that's really dark magic…"
"Trust a Slytherin to know that," mutters Sirius.
Somewhere, a puzzle part slips into place, but Sirius continues to neither confirm or deny, emanating the sort of conflict in the face of which Regulus is not brave enough to continue.
Because dark magic means an attack, and that base layer of very, very old scars means an attack quite early in life, and Sirius's guarded answers mean an attack by someone not family, suggesting a feud or an argument or simply the worst of human nature, and if Sirius knows anything about that at all, he'll have promised not to tell.
And Regulus is in Slytherin, where traditionalism and secrecy have lived in symbiosis for centuries; he knows when it's prudent not to pry.
Instead, he gets out his own diary for the first time in at least a year, and writes down all the different accounts of Andromeda's disappearance (another word starting in dis-). He fills pages and pages and pages with his mother's mad stories, and then he puts the diary away and sleeps on it. The next day, there's just the one, true story, staring at him in his own handwriting.
A truly magical diary. It really helps him sort through the clutter of his own thoughts. He wonders where Andromeda got it from.
The explosion comes in August.
Like many explosions, it's premeditated. Andromeda was only the first sign, the smell of sulphur, the gas leak. One late night in August, Regulus is awakened rudely when his brother plonks down on his bed.
"It's changed," Sirius declaims dramatically.
"What?" says Regulus, whose brain is only just booting up.
"Up, sleepy sloth. Meet me in five." says Sirius with a meaningful glance at Auntie Ursa's portrait, who gives a pretend snore.
"What?"
"Try not to wake anyone," says Sirius and vanishes.
"I'll just follow your shining example," Regulus grumbles into the general direction of the still-open door.
When he makes his way up to the roof of Grimmauld Place, still in his pyjamas, he finds Sirius on the ledge, legs dangling, eyes narrowed. The diary lies next to him, and he's staring at it, but not with the usual reverie – rather like it's contaminated.
Regulus deposits a steaming mug in his hand, and Sirius takes an absent-minded sip before looking up, puzzled.
"Ran into Kreacher on the way up," says Regulus. "Told him I fancied hot chocolate."
"Sometimes I don't even know whose side you're on," says Sirius. He presses the diary into Regulus's hands. "Take a look."
The most recent pages are covered with layers of runes and spellwork, a new thing Sirius has been working on, something to record spoken words, the sound of leaves in the wind, and, Regulus supposes, the shreds of Muggle guitar music wafting over from the neighbourhood, the roar of their motorcycles.
"Not that," says Sirius. "Earlier. Can you see it?"
Still grouchy about his rude awakening, Regulus wants to brush this aside as Sirius's usual dramatics - but now, an uncomfortable but horribly familiar feeling settles in the pit of his stomach: What he sees doesn't match what he remembers.
It's like the drawings have shrunken, like all personality has left them. Lupin's scars are emphasised, ugly, no longer an intricate lattice but an uninspired grating. His smile has morphed from kind to predatory. Pettigrew's face has gone from open and honest to squinting dumbly at the observer, something about him suggesting chav. Potter no longer looks like the most fantastic person Sirius has ever met in his life. Instead he is still, lifeless, boring.
The drawings of Regulus and the ghost – not particularly distinct in the first place - have merged into one and the same person, not quite resembling either, generic like a cutout from Nature's Nobility.
"The text, too," says Sirius, reaching over to page backwards through the diary, until reaches an entry from years ago. "Those are not my words," he says, his voice shaking with barely contained anger. "That's not what I wrote!"
Regulus tries to see what set him off. The dense, slanted hand-writing is unmistakeably Sirius – a combination of years of calligraphy lessons and Sirius's typical lack of patience. But the patterns are missing: The scratched-out words, the insertions, arrows, footnotes.
Regulus recognises that entry. It's from the Christmas after Sirius's Sorting, and he remembers being horrified when he read it for the first time, a verbatim record of the things Walburga yelled at Sirius, a detailed account of exactly what went on in Orion's study, after. Sirius has a gruesome imagination that matches Bellatrix's.
"I now realise what a disappointment I have been," reads Regulus out loud. "I've really put my poor parents to the test! But through their guidance, I know now what I must do: Hold up our family values even in the face of – okay, it's changed, all right."
Sirius is silent for a long moment. Then he drags a hand through his hair. "Thank you. I thought I was going crazy," he admits. "Or that I was dreaming. Or both."
"Nah, the punctuation has improved drastically," says Regulus. "Sort of gave it away."
But his attempt to lighten the mood falls flat.
Sirius almost yanks the book out of his hands. "There has got to be a spell to turn it back to how it was," he says. His wand moves hastily, angrily over the pages, and the words shuffle and dance. Regulus watches for a moment, his first instinct is to retreat from his brother's mood – but no. He lays a hand on Sirius's wrist.
"Not when you're angry," he says, almost timidly. He can't say where it's coming from, this sudden protectiveness he feels for his brother's diary – it's just parchment and ink, he reminds himself, but suddenly it feels like everything. And everything will be lost if it is damaged beyond repair.
Sirius stops. "What?"
"Those spells you're using," says Regulus. "They're intent-based. They come out wrong when you're angry."
"How would you know?" says Sirius, and Regulus wisely shuts up about the intent-based spellcasting that goes on in the Slytherin Common Room.
"Do you even get angry?" adds Sirius. "Ever?"
Oh, what does Sirius know about unbearable noise. "Wait until tomorrow," says Regulus. "It's too important."
Sirius just looks at him, but he lets his wand sink. "You're a strange one, Regulus," he says.
"No," says Regulus. "Just careful."
They sit in silence for a bit, still pondering the diary, like a dead animal, held at arm's length.
"Mine changes, too," says Regulus after a while. It's like he's admitting something huge. "All the time. I write different things in it, like all the different versions of an event, and when I come back to them, it's just one story. Makes it much clearer what happened."
"Hm," says Sirius non-committally.
"I think the diaries are themselves magical," continues Regulus. "I wonder what Andromeda did with them, it must be really sophisticated. So maybe wait and see what it's trying to do?"
Sirius looks at him with all twenty months of seniority he can draw on, and suddenly Regulus feels as tall as a toddler. And about as clever. "It's not Andromeda's doing," says Sirius.
"Then whose?"
"Mother's, of course," says Sirius, and now he seems half amused, half desperate. "How have you not noticed? She screws with our memory all the time. She tells a different story every day. Remember that day she pushed you off the pier in Blackpool?"
"That's not – that's not what happened," says Regulus. "You pushed me –"
"Oh, is that the histoire du jour," says Sirius, his voice turning nasty. "No, she wanted to test your accidental magic, and you nearly drowned, and everyone was just gawking and I thought you were going to die –"
"No, that's not –" starts Regulus. "I remember it differently," he says weakly.
"You don't remember it at all, Reg," says Sirius. "You just know what she's told you since you were five, and it was something different every time. Five hundred anecdotes, remember?"
"And anyway, Mother can't get at the diaries," says Regulus, presenting his trump. "You need the pass-phrase."
Regulus's is still Toujours Pur, because he believes pass-phrases should be meaningful, and because he can be a tiny bit lazy. Sirius's changes all the time – but then, he unlocks his diary all the time, too, and come to think of it, there's hardly anywhere in Grimmauld Place where they won't be overheard -
In fact, Sirius is changing the pass-phrase right now. Regulus could swear he hears him mutter, I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good.
"What? It's not like she ever expects anything else from me," Sirius says in response to Regulus's questioning look.
"Okay," he adds. "If we're going on lockdown, I suppose I have to –"
He opens the diary on those innocuous-looking wave drawings from Blackpool – the ones were the ghost first showed up, two years ago - and taps them with his wand.
"Ghost," he says. "Ghost, come out. It's important."
There's a hint of hesitation coming from the book, but finally the ghost rises, pale and silent. Apparently he's been listening to their argument for a while.
He's not as blurry as he used to be, Regulus realises, features settling into edges and outlines. Ever-changing. Towards what?
"I need you to lay low for a while, do you understand?" says Sirius. "I think she's catching on to us. No weird noises, no strange lights, no puddles of water in the parlour. Okay?"
Wait, thinks Regulus. What? Weird noises, lights, water? Why was he not informed of this?
The ghost nods sadly. "Will she banish me?" he says. "I don't like Blackpool. It's so –" he flails. "I'm so alone there."
"I'm not going to let that happen," says Sirius. "Just – give me a few days. And really, I mean it - don't come out for a while, they've been watching me."
"Okay." The ghost has never sounded more like a child. So disappointed, so close to tears. Trying to be brave. He hesitates, on the brink of dissolving again, mouth opening and closing like he wants to speak.
"What is it?" says Sirius.
"Sirius-like-the-star," says the ghost in a very small voice. "You are wrong about Blackpool."
"What?" says Sirius. "What did I get wrong? Tell me."
The ghost retreats, dwarfed by his own courage, hovering an inch beyond the roof's edge. "I dissolve," he says, eyes screwed shut in concentration. "I dissolve, I –"
Thirty hours until the explosion.
To be continued.