Chapter four:
Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was just as awful as Sirius's last memory of it. The only difference this time around was that this once grand town home was decrepit and dark. Dust half an inch think lined every available surface, and cobwebs hung like heavy curtains from chandeliers and doorways. The lights were dead in their grimy sconces, and Sirius was sure there were a few nameless creatures living in the filthy darkness.
So it was true. His mother was dead. That made him the last Black left.
The stolen wand was slow and hesitant to respond, and felt alien in Sirius's hand. He made his way through the dark house toward his old bathroom, leaving a trail of footsteps behind. Several times he had to blast away thick sheets of cobwebs, trying to fight the creeping feeling on the back of his neck. Sirius's old bedroom was on the topmost floor, and the staircase creaked loudly in protest at Sirius's unwelcome footsteps. He half-expected some monster to come charging out of the darkness, but everything seemed to retreat from the light of his wand.
The bathroom door had to be forced open—it had frozen shut in its hinges with time. The grime was just as thick here, but at least the taps worked. Sirius wracked his fragile memory for whatever cleaning spell he knew—he used to be good at this.
"Scourgify'll likely get rid of the worst," James supplied, sitting on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub.
Sirius stared at him for a long moment.
"Why am I seeing you?" he asked aloud. His voice was hoarse from twelve years of disuse, and sounded completely alien to him.
James shrugged, a casual air of disregard about him. It reminded Sirius of the James he knew from school. "Dunno, mate. But you ought to clean up a bit here, otherwise you'll end up a right sight dirtier than you are."
Sirius looked down at the wand in his hand. He knew how to use magic. He was a wizard. Sirius tried to remember the right movements for the cleaning spell, practicing them before he was certain he had it right.
How painfully slow his memories were returning to him.
Sirius pointed his wand at the filthy tub first.
"Scourgify!"
The webs and bits of peeled wallpaper disappeared instantly. The tub didn't exactly gleam in the poor light, but at least it was tolerable.
Sirius made a job of the rest of the bathroom, already feeling drained by the time he was done. He allowed the shower to run, the old pipes creaking into life as the temperature shifted. Sirius rummaged through the old drawers—it was exactly how he had left it almost twenty years before. His parents had never bothered to come up here after he ran away. Sirius found a pair of old scissors in the top drawer and pulled them out. He grabbed a random length of his hair before cutting away blindly, sawing through the tangled mess. Curtains of it fell to the floor around his feet, years of neglect removed with one swift cut.
When the worst of it was gone, Sirius glanced at himself in the mirror and stared. It took a moment for him to realize that the reflection was his own. He looked nothing like himself.
"You've had a rough time of it," James noted from the bathtub.
Sirius was little more than a living skeleton. Bones protruded sharply under his ghostly skin, and his eyes were hollow in their sockets. Sirius glared at his reflection until the steam overtook the bathroom and shrouded the dirty mirror.
Next came the process of removing the filthy prison robes. Sirius pulled them over his head roughly, yanked the bottoms over his bony hips, letting it all fall into a heap onto the floor. It was the first time he had been able to see himself properly in years. Dark numbers and letters glared back from their tattooed brands on his arm, and the blue veins were exposed like a roadmap under his pale skin.
Sirius stepped into the tub, recoiling back from the hot water. Warmth was still so unfamiliar to him. Once his bones had relaxed a little, Sirius began to scrub—his hair, his body, everything. He felt an overwhelming need to get the dirt of Azkaban off his skin.
"A drying spell," James suggested when Sirius turned off the rusty tap almost an hour later. "I don't reckon you'll want to touch the towels in here."
Sirius stepped out of the tub, dripping onto the tiled floor.
"Don't put those awful robes back on," James continued, eyeing the mess on the floor. "Go find something in your old bedroom."
Luckily the room in question was only across the hall—Sirius wasn't exactly keen on the idea of walking naked through this old house. Sure enough, his room was exactly how he remembered it. Or rather, the memories came back to him like a crashing wave when he caught sight of the muggle posters of girls and motorcycles and the huge Gryffindor banner. Sirius dug through his wardrobe for the clothes he had left behind years before. Most of them were old suits and dress robes, the clothes he didn't have any use for once out of the control of his parents. Buried at the bottom were a handful of forgotten t-shirts and trousers, socks without partners, and a pair of well-worn trainers.
"I wonder if Kreacher is still around," James mused from the four-poster, looking around. "You know, I've always wondered what your old room looked like. You never told me you liked girls in bikinis so much."
Sirius just stared at the hallucination blankly. "Why am I seeing you?" he asked again.
James turned to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"You're not real," Sirius said hoarsely, frowning. "You're dead."
James shrugged. "Then why are you talking to me?"
There was a long pause. "I don't know," Sirius replied flatly, looking around his old room. The hot shower had zapped him of his energy, and he knew he would collapse soon if he didn't sleep. "Is there anything here that'll kill me?"
"Why do you ask me?"
"You seem to know everything."
James shrugged again, straightening up. "Probably not," he said, finally. "I'd still clean the shit out of that bed before you lay in it, though."
Sirius made a quick once-over of the bedroom, which had sat empty for far longer than the rest of the house. The bedding was moth-eaten and smelled musty, but at least the thick coating of dust and peeled wallpaper was gone. Sirius sat down on the foot of the bed, glaring darkly into the cold grate of the fireplace on the other side of the room.
"Incendio, remember?" James offered, miming the movement. "We learned that spell in first year—used to give the Slytherins a tough time with that one."
Sirius pointed the stolen wand to the fireplace roughly, almost angrily. Bright blue flames erupted in the grate, and the image of James disappeared.
It was a difficult night of sleep, if one could call the nightmare-filled mess Sirius endured sleeping. Several times he awoke and couldn't remember where he was. The heavy shadows cast from the dying fire looked like dementors more than once, and so finally, before the sun had quite come up, Sirius climbed out of the tangled mess of blankets. He pulled on his old childhood trainers and grabbed the wand from under the moth-eaten pillow before heading into the hallway.
There was just enough light to see by, creeping in through the grimy windows and illuminating the dusty cobwebs. Sirius began his hesitant descent to the main floor when something on the third floor landing caught his eye. Creeping amongst the filth was what could only be described as an equally filthy creature. It was hunched over, muttering something it itself that Sirius couldn't quite hear. It turned around sharply when it heard the floorboards under Sirius's feet creak, large eyes narrowing and bat-like ears flapping against its skull.
"It cannot be," muttered the old elf to itself. "Nasty blood-traitor is in Azkaban!"
James appeared just under the periphery of Sirius's vision. "I can't believe he's still alive," he mused aloud. "Sure hasn't cleaned a damned thing in years."
"Kreacher." Sirius said it aloud like a sentence rather than a question.
Kreacher took a few steps forward, glaring up at Sirius hatefully. "Nasty blood-traitors come back! Nasty blood-traitor isn't welcome in this house, no he's not! Oh, what would my poor mistress say if she knew—"
The familiar insult stirred something inside of Sirius, bringing clarity to his mind. "Kreacher, shut up!" he commanded hoarsely, irritated.
The house elf glared hatefully at Sirius, but did as he was told.
"You are not to speak a word to anyone that I'm here," Sirius continued, forcing his vocal chords to work. "You are to communicate to no one that you've seen me. Understand?"
Kreacher shot Sirius another withering look before dropping into a ridiculous bow. "Of course, Master," he said, then added under his breath, "Ungrateful swine's come back from Azkaban—Kreacher wonders how he did it—"
Sirius rolled his eyes and continued down the landing. James followed.
"What're you going to do now?" James asked. "I mean, are you going to turn this house into your hide out?"
"I need to get to Hogwarts," Sirius said automatically without much thought if it was directed toward himself or his hallucination of James. "I have to find Peter."
"Yeah, that's true," said James slowly. "But what about what you overheard last night? Some book, and two goons bringing Voldemort back?"
Sirius stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face James directly. "What do I do?"
James shrugged. "What you always do. You'll think of something clever."
Sirius's heart tightened in his chest. "The last clever thing I thought of got you killed."
James looked at him more seriously. "Peter won't touch Harry unless he has a reason to—I'd say Voldemort returning is a pretty good one."
"So I go after them first?"
"If you say so."
Sirius swallowed, thinking hard. His brain still felt heavy and slow, and trying to focus was difficult. He transformed back into his dog form, where it was so much easier. Sirius took the last several flights of stairs briskly before heading out the front door. The sun was just beginning to rise, but the quiet street was still dark. Sirius took off running toward the center of London, where Diagon Alley was located. He hurried through the empty streets, sticking close to the edges of buildings as he made his way toward Knockturn Alley. Sirius found the old shop quickly and ducked into the same alley as the previous night, waiting.
The old shopkeeper arrived shortly thereafter. Sirius heard keys jingling in the heavy lock, and crept forward, as low to the ground as he could get. The short, balding man from the night before was yawning as he opened the door. He wasn't paying attention.
Sirius slipped past him so quietly that he was sure the man didn't register him as more than a shadow.
Sirius didn't wait for the man to set his things down—it was easier to overtake him if the man didn't have a free hand to reach for his wand. In one swift movement Sirius had rendered the shopkeeper unconscious. He quickly locked the door and pulled the limp form of the man into the back of the shop, out of sight of the windows.
Sirius took a steadying breath, every nerve in his body on fire with anticipation. He gripped the stolen wand tightly in his hand as he searched the man's pockets, removing everything he could find. Then, finally, he muttered the counter-curse.
The shopkeeper opened his eyes blearily, and every second it took for him to recognize his surroundings felt like an hour to Sirius. Finally, when the shopkeeper's eyes widened in panic, Sirius raised his wand threateningly.
"I overheard you and your friend last night," Sirius said quietly, his voice still hoarse from disuse.
The man tried to scramble to his feet but Sirius aimed a Leg-Locker hex at him. The shopkeeper fell back, looking up at Sirius with wild fear in his eyes. "S—Sirius Black!"
"You're trying to bring Voldemort back," Sirius continued. "How?"
"D-don't know…don't possibly know what you mean!"
Sirius raised his wand threateningly and the man recoiled back.
"You can tell me willingly or I can force it out of you," Sirius warned him coldly.
"No! No—I'll tell you everything!" the man gasped. "O—of course you'd want to know! You-Know-Who was our greatest Master!"
Sirius felt his eyes narrow, but he waited for the man to continue.
"A book! I'm supposed to wait for some kind of book—"
"A book about what?" Sirius interrupted coldly.
"I don't know, I swear I don't know! He didn't tell me!"
"Who? Your friend?"
The shopkeeper nodded, looking around the room wildly. Sirius noticed the way his eyes lingered on the windows and doors on the other side.
Sirius kicked him in the foot. "Focus—I'm not letting you out of my sight until I have what I need. Who was your friend from last night?"
"I—I don't know his name—"
Sirius sighed in irritation, turning the wand in his hand slightly. "Don't lie to me—"
"It's Macmillan," the shopkeeper said, changing his mind. "J—John Macmillan!"
Sirius frowned, trying to think if the name was familiar. The Order had kept tabs on several Death Eaters in the past, but he was sure he had never heard of a Macmillan.
"Maybe…maybe we can help you!" he tried desperately. "We can bring back the Dark Lord…and you can continue…as his Right Hand…"
Sirius stared down at the man on the floor, brows knitted together in disgust, when a sudden idea occurred to him. "Help me?" he repeated slowly. "Surely you don't want to be Voldemort's second-in-command yourself?"
"N—no!" stammered the shopkeeper. "No, that was never the plan! I—I don't even have the Mark! I wasn't worthy the first time!"
"What's your name?"
He hesitated for a split second. "F—Flavius Owen…"
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Is that your real name?"
"Yes, you can check all around this shop!"
Sirius gave Owen a long, suspicious look. "And why would two wizards who, as you put it, were not worthy of becoming Death Eaters, suddenly have an interest in bringing Voldemort back?"
Owen opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to find his voice. "Th—the wizarding world has gone to hell!" he finally decided. "Race-mixing is killing off pure blood lines, there're mudbloods in half the wizarding jobs out there—someone needs to purify it!"
"So you want somebody else to do it for you?" Sirius asked coolly.
Owen stammered again. "You-Know-Who had it right last time!" he settled on. "We have to bring him back!"
Sirius took a deep breath, thinking of how he was going to proceed next. He had never pretended to be a Death Eater before, but he supposed it was now a given as the entire wizarding world thought him to be one. "We?" he asked slowly, looking at Owen in the same calculating way his father had always looked at him growing up. "Flavius Owen, are you telling me you want to be a Death Eater?"
This was clearly not the direction Owen had been hoping the conversation would go. "If…if You-Know-Who thinks I'm worthy, then…then I will take the Mark," he said, tripping over his words.
"Then say his name."
Owen looked up at Sirius fearfully. "W-what?"
"Say his name—out loud."
Owen opened and closed his mouth several times like a fish out of water.
Sirius looked at him contemptuously. "Do you have any idea what Death Eaters do?" he asked quietly. "I'm a murderer, Flavius Owen. Every last one of us—we won't hesitate to kill or torture to get our way. I can curse every last one of your family members and make them blow themselves up without blinking an eye. You say you want to bring Voldemort back to power—but you're too scared to even say his name. How can you be expected to murder for the Dark Lord if you can't even say 'Voldemort'?"
Own had tears streaming down his white face now. "I'll do anything!" he gasped, groveling at Sirius's feet. "Anything you ask!"
"When you get that book in—I want it. And I want a word with your friend Macmillan," said Sirius coolly.
"H-how will I know how to contact you?"
"I'll be watching you, so I'm sure you'll think of a way," Sirius replied. He searched through a rack of cloaks nearby, choosing the one with the oversized hood. He pulled it over himself—he couldn't leave the shop disguised as a dog—and turned back to Owen. "So if you even think about telling anyone you've seen me, I can guarantee it'll be the last thing you do." With that, Sirius left the shop swiftly. The street out front was still empty, but he didn't take his chances. He swooped into an alleyway where he was out of sight.
"That was…unexpected of you," James noted. "Pretending to be a Death Eater?"
Sirius gave his hallucination of James a long look.
James shrugged. "I reckon you could play the part well enough—but what will you do with it?"
The Death Eaters and the low-life scum of the earth were more frightened of Voldemort than they were of Dumbledore. Sirius knew he had better chances of getting his hands on that book pretending to be Voldemort's second-in-command than he did as an ex-Order member and falsely-accused murderer. Sirius transformed back into his dog form and waited just out of sight in the alleyway. He would have to make sure Owen didn't attempt to flee the shop that day.
"So you're going to sit here until dark?" James asked, sitting down next to him.
He did. Shoppers passed up and down the street all day, but Sirius kept his eyes trained on the door to Owens's shop. It wasn't until well after the other shops closed that Owen finally turned off his shop lights. Was he afraid to go home? He looked over his shoulder nervously as he locked up, hesitating in the roadway before taking off briskly.
"I guess we're coming back tomorrow," James noted.
Sirius stood up stiffly, heading the opposite way out of Knockturn Alley. He returned to Grimmauld Place and made a straight line for his old bedroom. Suddenly exhausted, Sirius collapsed onto the bed and pulled the messy covers around him. Tossed on the filthy rug in the corner were his shoes and the stolen cloak. Sirius pulled the musty duvet over his head, trying to block everything out.
It was impossible to relax enough to sleep in spite of how drained he was. He kept seeing images of himself breaking into Flavius Owens's shop only to find Peter in there with this book, whatever it was. Sirius slipped in and out of an uneasy sleep, feeling worse by the time morning broke than he had the previous day.
"You have to eat," James greeted him when Sirius crawled out of the old bed. "It's been two days, mate. You're naught but skin and bones."
That's how the next several days unfolded. Sirius took up his post in the alleyway across from the old shop in Knockturn Alley each morning before daybreak, and remained there until after Owens locked up. He kept his eyes trained on the shoppers that came and went. He tried to ignore James's commentary whenever he showed up, but he had to admit—the company was nice.
The nights spent at Grimmauld Place were used to practice magic, and Sirius was both exhausted and frustrated with how unpredictable his skill had become.
"You just need to focus," James offered from across the drawing room.
How Sirius could possibly be expected to keep a clear head when he was still hallucinating conversations with James was beyond him. But he kept at it, trying to master the most rudimentary defensive and survival spells before the magic drained his energy completely.
Finally, five days after his conversation with Owens, a suspicious-looking package was dropped off in front of the shop. Sirius sat up straight, watching the scene carefully. Owens yanked open the door immediately, looking around nervously before disappearing inside.
"You gonna run in there, mate?" James asked.
It was tempting to say the least. In truth, Sirius hadn't exactly planned this out. It was just spur of the moment, fueled by rage and fear. Those were the only two emotions he seemed to be able to feel anymore.
"How far are you going to go?" James whispered.
Sirius straightened up, still in his dog form.
I don't know.
"Does it stop at getting a hold of this book, whatever it is?" James continued seriously. "Or are you going to play the role of a Death Eater in the long run?"
It was always the same words. The same sentence that got him out of Azkaban and allowed him to survive thus far.
I have to protect Harry.
