Crack in the Line
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything pertaining to that series, they are the property of J. K. Rowling. The idea for this work is also not my own, it belongs to a book called A Crack in the Line by Michael Lawrence as well as being influenced by a fellow author of this site, MaxFic (Harry Potter and the Otherside). I do own my OCs and their lives, that is all.
"…speech…"
'…thoughts…'
"…reading…"
Chapter 3: Dinner
Tom glanced at the brooding young man over the fire as he stirred some kind of stew that he had thrown together. Oddly enough, the young man wasn't as averse to sharing his food with two strange people who seemed to just show up out of nowhere. He almost seemed- pleased to be sharing in their company.
Quite a turnaround from trying his hardest to slice one of them into tiny pieces only hours before.
He sighed as he thought of the recipient of such hatred. Sirius hadn't taken things as well as he would have hoped. Almost dying quite frequently had really done a number to the man's sense of humor it seemed. He shrugged to himself. He had been like that, once. Taking things a little more seriously (no pun intended). Life had seemed to be up against him at every turn and there was nothing he could do about it.
He had learned from his little feathered friend to find the humor in the most bizarre of occasions. She was forever lilting out one tune or another when she was amused, which was quite often. Life had been extra hard on her, more than most others he had met, yet she rarely allowed it to weigh her down or silence her joyful songs. Oh there were times where she mourned for one reason or another. However, she never allowed such mourning to dampen her high spirits.
After all, if you don't take the time to laugh at yourself, then someone else surely will, and that could hurt a lot more than anything else.
He knew what it was like to be the outcast. To be the one everyone made fun off and laughed at while he nursed some wound he had taken when falling particularly hard on the ground. But he also knew what it was like to find humor in your own defeat. To find joy in a sorrow.
To find something that could heal him from a wound so great that it threatened to destroy your very existence.
Sirius was slowly relearning this. For Tom was positive that he had known something similar to this philosophy at one point or another in his short life. But times had seemed to be continuously conspiring against him, taking all that he held dear to him and destroying it before his very eyes while leaving him with nothing.
It would take time, and care, but Tom was certain that Sirius would recover from the hand that fate had dealt him. It wasn't in the man's nature to concede a defeat. He'd only known the man for a year, but even he knew enough about him to know that he wasn't the kind to take anything lying down.
He wasn't so sure about the sandy-haired youth now ladling up portions of the stew for each of them, on the other hand. He didn't know the young man, had never come across him in his travels, but he seemed too familiar.
Scarily familiar.
As if he was a 'what if' question that Tom had asked himself once upon a time. As if he was the kind of person that many a couple had thought, "What if our child looked like this?" or "What if our baby had lived to adulthood?"
Now Tom himself had never had any children. He never would, as it turns out, no matter how much he himself would want one. But he had been a teacher, a mentor, an uncle.
He knew what it was like to have someone who has like a child, as close as he could get to having one of his own, and have them die at a young age. Or to watch a nephew and his girl friend giggle and laugh about how their child was going to look once they were married. He had played those 'what if' games himself. Imagining what a grand-niece or nephew looked like or what the child of one of his precious students would be like.
That was why this amber-eyed young man seemed so familiar yet so foreign at the same time.
He was a 'what if' that Tom had once asked himself of one of his students.
...
John glanced up at the young looking man sitting down across the fire from him as he carefully ladled three bowls of stew from the pot he normally carried in his pack. There was just enough stew for each them with a little left over. The phoenix wasn't figured into the equation at all; he had seem the beautiful bird munching on some dried fruit and nuts that the youth had retrieved from somewhere on his person. Said bird was now contentedly drowsing to the side and in between where john himself had set up a place to sit and the youth she had been perched upon when he had first taken notice of her. She had made a comfy looking next out of said young man's cloak.
He passed the bowls of stew to the others silently before taking up his own portion and retreating to his own sitting place beside the fire. He noted absently that the bird shifted minutely until she was slightly closer to John then to her wizard, if indeed she was a familiar and not just a friend.
He said nothing as he ate his stew mechanically; his eyes seeming to stare off into space while in reality, they kept careful tabs on just what was going on around him. It was difficult to suppress his rage every time he caught sight of the older man.
Sirius Black.
He clamped down on the surge of killing intent as quickly as it began to build up and pointedly looked away from the black-haired man.
He didn't want a repeat of what had happened earlier. When he wasn't looking at the man, when he was merely using all other senses besides his eyes, he could tell immediately that this man wasn't the same one that had so brutally murdered his father in front of his very eyes.
But emotions were very fickle things, and it was difficult to tell his heart to keep peace when he saw the countenance of that-!
He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. This was getting him nowhere. A hand made its way to his face and he rubbed tiredly at his eyes before placing his empty bowl in the ground next to his perch. He had traveled long and hard over the last few weeks and he was tired. He glanced once more about at his surroundings, taking in the broken down and abandoned castle before turning back to his current company. In truth, though he couldn't stand the reminders that the elder one gave him, he was happy to have company once more. It had been a long time since he had spent enough time even eating with another. The strange bird that had danced for him and released him from the ropes binding him fluttered over to his side and gazed up at him with adoring eyes, accepting anything that he fed it, mostly some of his crusty bread.
They ate in silence and once they'd finished, he cleaned out the bowls in some sand that was nearby. The elder of his company cleaned out the small pot he'd made their stew in, though he used magic instead of sand and a cloth. The man who looked an awful lot like his greatest enemy handed the pot back to him silently before retaking his place by the fire. He was silent, had been silent since they had all agreed to spend the night together to gain information from one another.
John's lips didn't twist, though it was a very near thing. The only reason he had taken them at their word that they would not harm him in any way purposely was because of their third companion, the bird.
The phoenix.
...
He was silent as he watched the fire flicker in the night. He didn't look around at the crumbling castle that surrounded them, didn't look at his companion and his strange phoenix that seemed more human than she should and yet not human enough to be considered one. He most especially didn't look at the young man who sat across the fire from him. He knew that it wasn't something he had personally done to him, but his crazed attack reminded him too much of another young man, almost a boy really, who had attacked him because of something that he may or may not have done.
He usually tried not to let his thoughts get mired down like this, but every now and then he almost couldn't help himself. Couldn't help feeling sorry for himself. He was aware that feeling sorry for himself wouldn't change anything, knew that if it did somehow change something it would probably be a change for the worse. Yet he couldn't bring himself to care, not yet anyway.
Sirius pulled one of his daggers out from its sheath inside his left boot and went about sharpening it ever so slightly. He had been meaning to do it today anyway, but now it would double as a way to get his mind off of his circumstances. He hadn't expected it to take quite this long to get home, back to his godson and his friend. Maybe it was time to face the facts, maybe he wasn't ever going to get home, and he'd just wander from world to world, as long as Tom would want to, and never really get home. He quickly put such thoughts from his mind and concentrated on his dagger. The other two found similar tasks to occupy their minds and hands, though they were very different from one another. The young man that they'd met set about putting away the dishes he'd shared with them before cleaning the weapons he'd used earlier. Tom entertained himself by recording something in one of his many journals. Sirius noticed out of the corner of his eye how the professor sketched parts of the castle courtyard that they had found shelter in. Sirius knew that they would have a little question and answer session as soon as everyone was done fiddling with whatever they had in their hands.
The phoenix continued to stare at the young man whose name they still didn't know.