CHAPTER 10
There was a time you let me know
I don't have to open my eyes to know I'm home. The sea scent on warm air sweeps through the trees. I don't open my eyes though. I don't want to open them and see that my world has changed. That the dark mark lies over the old capitol ruins or that the white sands have blood in them.
Percy will be here any moment. I open my eyes. From the thick leaves a small shiny pair of black eyes in a round olive face watches me with interest. Tiny hands part the bushes with no fear and a small girl pokes her head through, thick shining gold encircling her slender throat and dangling from her ears. I smile at her, a vision of home in her tiny vividly orange dress.
I kneel down, smiling at her as she walks out of the bushes and ten minutes runs out. With a crash I'm face down in the dirt, Percy's foot in my rib and the shrieking laughter of more then one child in my ears. With a few muttered curses Percy rolls off of me, brushing himself off and I pull my face from the ground.
There are three of them, two boys and a girl, none older then ten and they all crowd around us, staring at Percy's hair and me.
" He looks like one of us." The boy's heavy accent is sweet in the ears. " But what's with the Paccea?" I stifle a snort in the grass, standing.
" Does your madae let you speak like that?" A blush crosses his face and he opens his mouth to protest when a woman voice carries desperately through the twisting moss and vines secluding us from the outside.
" Thalia!! Lysander!! Epifiano!!" I know that voice. Almost twenty years and that voice is the same as it was when she was seventeen. She comes running thorough the hanging greenery, sarong tied low on her hips, thick golden brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Her eyes are still the same color as the ocean as she dashes between us and them, wand in one hand, A black bladed knife in the other, the light glinting off it's deadly curve. She bares her teeth as she spits a long string of curses at Percy in a mixture of Greek and the old tongue, threatening to turn his insides into his outsides and drape them across the Paccea camp where the others can see them and then…. I wince as she begins telling me what she intends to do with my body parts.
" Massiah… My…it's Sirius." Her wand never wavers as she jerks the blade towards Percy. Who is wisely keeping his hands palm out in front of him.
" Sirius Black is dead." A small shudder runs through me at the way she says my name, not quite Cyrus, not quite Sirius, something in between. I turn my head so that the vulnerable skin of my neck is bared at her.
" Move my hair, right there at the base of my neck and shoulder is a scar from where you were learning to throw knives and I moved. You wouldn't talk to me for a month cause you were angry at yourself." Her wand hand flicks to the left and my hair blows back. Her lips ease themselves out of the hard line for a moment.
" Okay, Sirius…If you weren't dead, why in the name of the temples didn't you ever come home?"
" I did. I hid in the old capitol for a year." She shoves the knife in a sheath and glowers at me.
" You…simple bastard!" She launches herself at me, arms tight around my waist as she embraces me. I'd forgotten how small Massi was. Her nose fits against my solar plexus. Her curses are mixed with endearments now as she steps back, eyeing Percy with a smirk. " Who's the Paccea?"
"This is Percy Weasley. He's here to help me with something." I shoot her a look, cutting to the children with my eyes. She nods, stepping back and wrapping her arm around the oldest boy.
" Siri…this is Epifiano, " She lightly tousles the hair of the middle boy, "Lysander, and Thalia, my children." She turns a glare on them that makes the girl pull her shirt over her eyes. " My children who are in a lot of duwa when I get them home." Thalia peers with one eye out of her shirt.
" Madae shouldn't cuss."
" You're madae will say whatever she wants. Look at you three! You're on the edge of the jungle! We're going home right now!" She turns them in the direction of the town. " Come on Sirius and bring…Percy with you." She rolls the R's in his name out, lengthening it just enough to make the man next to me shiver.
" I love it when she does that." He follows me unresistingly as my hand catches the crook of his arm, pulling him out into yards of jungle that separate the old roads from the new town. He looks at me with a sardonic eyebrow when we step into the sunlight half an hours walk later.
" That was the edge of the jungle?" Massi hears him and turns, flashing him a teasing smirk.
" Of course. Don't they have trees in England?" His eyes are wide and earnest as he lifts a hand, fingers stroking over the pale green petals of a blossom the size of a dinner plate.
" Nothing like this." His hair blazes in the sunlight, glowing gold and bronze and copper and rippling like lava in the wind. I can't resist putting my hands to it, slipping my fingers through it. He shifts his head so that there's the slightest tension against his skull when I pull my hands free.
Why didn't I leave England when I had the chance and brought Remus home with me? Why do I have to bring Percy here to die, when the awe on his face as he stares over the crystalline blue green oceans and gold and marble ruins, twisted through with overgrowth, shows so clearly he hasn't lost his will to live yet.
Thalia breaks my reverie, pulling on Massi's sarong.
" Madae, he has fire hair! Look!" Her smile is wide as she picks the girl up, sitting her against her hip.
" Yes Darling. He has red hair."
" Can I touch it?" Her chubby hands stretch out as far as they can reach for Percy's hair. Massi thwarts her with a half step back, turning her feet back on the road.
" You can ask him when we get back home…" Her voice trails off as a flock of large white ibis' take flight with loud screeching cries. " It's them." Quickly I grab up her oldest boy.
" Percy, get the other one. Death Eaters are coming." The child isn't even settled in his arms before we're tearing across the grasses towards the bend in the road where the road begins to climb sharply up a rocky ledge towards the plateau where the town lies. Percy is panting lightly when we reach the rocks, urging the children up a steep path.
" Is now a bad time to mention I never played Quidditch because I can't stand heights?" He hisses, watching the children scramble among the rocks, climbing up and up.
" Very bad time as we have no time." He takes a deep, trembling breath and follows Massi on the path, hands gripping tightly to every rock he passes. We're sixty feet in the air when the path ends and Massi gathers up the trailing skirt, trying it safely around her legs and reaches up, beginning to climb up the last fifteen feet of rock wall. I can hear her children running towards the town gates, screeching in the old tongue. Percy's hands shake as he reaches for a rock too far down.
" Shh." I take his hand in my own, reaching up and stretching us both full length against the wall. " This one." He shivers beneath me. " Now lift your left foot as high as you can and there's a crack there." He gets himself wedged firmly in and pushes up, eyes trained determinedly on a crack a few feet up for his right hand. Several moments of tenseness and I can hear his breath of relief as he throws himself over the edge of the cliff face onto the grass. I follow Percy's path quickly, rolling onto the grass and then to my feet. Massi's already halfway to the gates. Percy's legs almost give out on him as he takes a step before he scowls and pushes off from a sprinters position, long legs flying to catch up to Massi and myself. Just inside the gates his legs do give out and he stumbles, going down and flipping once before rolling onto his back, shoulders heaving and face pale.
I kneel down beside him.
" Sirius Black… I hate you." He mutters. " I hate your cliffs and your shortcuts, and the way your road goes from large cobblestones to bloody fucking small ones!" It's so hard not to laugh at him as I ease him up, touching him gently to make sure he isn't hurt. He shivers in my arms as he comes down off the fear and adrenalin but nothing is broken. Blood is seeping rapidly through his pants leg however. I pull on them when he grabs my hand, grinning at me. " Skinned knee." At the fountain Massi is talking to half a dozen men, pointing towards where the birds had taken flight and gesturing towards Percy and myself. I over hear my name and the older men go still before one runs off towards the center of the town.
And then she's there and I thought I'd never see her again.
" Madae?" Her black hair had a long streak of white at both temples and the laugh lines at her eyes and cheeks have deepened, but her voice is the same as it ever was.
" Sirius." She comes over and I bury my face in her stomach, holding her as tightly as I dare. Her hands flit like ghosts over my hair, muttering reassurances and love as she gestures to Percy, giving orders about food and medical attention to be sent to our home. People scurry to comply and it strikes me that my mother, regardless of how she looks is almost a hundred now. That would make her a member of the Madae Tokana. She runs the town now.
" Madae…" I thought I had forgotten much of my native tongue but it's all there as I apologize for years…decades of mistakes. She steps back, pulling me to my feet.
" Bring your friend and come home Sirius. We have so much to say before you go again." Percy stands beside me, eyes wide as he looks my mother in the eye. She smiles at him before turning, leading us back through the town.
Home is exactly what it was when I left. The villa is grown over with flowering vines and thick mosses. The arch of the entryway dangles thick sweet grapes so dark they're black. I grab a handful from the top, popping them into my mouth and swallowing the thick sweet warm juices. Beside me Percy gives a small moan of appreciation as he follows my example.
Beside the door beta as large as koi swim placidly in swirls of jewel rich color. My mother rushes us down the hall towards where the master bedroom once was. Inside the large silvery wood that made their bed soaks up the sunlight.
" You both need to rest." Her voice is warm but tired as she backs towards the door. " tonight will be busy. Your cousin has taken her bad children home, but the entire family will be here tonight and they'll all want to know what you're planning." She hesitates in the door before rushing back forward and pressing her lips to my cheeks and forehead. " I am so glad you came home."
The bed is soft and warm in the sunshine as I lay back, toeing off my boots. Percy is sitting on the edge, staring off over the water. I crawl up behind him and stare down past the depths of clarity to the large sprawling shadows of black there, the silhouette of the remains of the great city that had sprawled on the other side of the jungles.
" What is the actual plan anyways? I know you Percy. You've got more planned than run in, blow it up, grab the boys, run away, run back and blow it up some more." His muscles are tight where I lean against him.
" You're right. Most the things in that bag are just for distraction in getting in and out. The rest are ingredients."
" Ingredients?" He nods, pulling the leather satchel onto the bed and pulling out several vile looking potions and a few vials of assorted powdered substances.
" Yeah. Dresdeniare takes quite a bit of stuff." My stomach clenches and I don't know why.
" Dresdenaire?" He nods, setting up a portable cauldron by the window and laying out the various tools and potions on the old desk where my Father used to write his letters back to his family and friends in England. " Percy…I've never heard of any spell called…" He shoots me a look, cutting me off.
" Of course you haven't. Technically Dresdenaire doesn't exist."
" The bomb curse." The still sweet after taste of the grapes goes bitter and mossy in my mouth. " You know the bomb curse."
" Actually it's a mixed spell, part curse, part potion and considering that I helped invent it…yeah, I know it." For a moment I think I might actually vomit. The bile rises in my throat and my stomach gives several good attempts to empty itself. My minds eye is trained on the images of the smoldering rubble that Hogwarts was when the rescue wizards apparated in. My stomach gives another vicious heave at the memory of the smell of burning stone and flesh and then they drug Remus from the rubble where Hagrid's hut had been, freeing him from under the protective bulk of the half giant.
And Percy had helped do it all.
" You…" He turns on me with a sardonic grin that's more like a snarl.
" Yes Sirius. I did it. I helped blow up Hogwarts, I helped us start losing the war, I helped kill my lover and I didn't do it alone." His deep brown eyes are wide as the blood drains from his face and he turns back to the cauldron, adding things and saying incantations in a shaky voice.
" Remus. You and Remus and Cam…worked together on this didn't you?" His hands tremble as he silently adds an entire vial of powdered ash winder eggs from the color and scent. In a rush I'm off the bed, his wrists in my hands as I pin him to the wall. I'm snarling down at him and his tears and I don't care because he knows things that I need to know. " Didn't you?"
" Not for all of it. We'd just started working with Professor Lupin on the theory of a trigger word for the spell."
" But why?!" He shoves me off and I'm reminded all over again that he's not small or fragile as I land on the thick carpet.
" Don't be so fucking sodding stupid! Why do you think?! We were working with the ministry! Every fucking one of us. We were doing all of it's most dangerous work inside what should have been the safest place in England and the curse was the most challenging and dangerous thing they were working on."
" But how in the fuck did you plan on using it?!" Percy shrugs, going back to his mixing with .
" Never even thought of it until after Hogwarts when I realized they were planning on doing the same thing the Death Eaters did to us. Capturing spies, getting information out of them and then sending them back to kill entire camps, prisoners and all…but don't worry." His hand is fast and his wand movements intricate as it dances through the thick smoke before it slips out of the window. " Dresdenaire dies on this island."
The port key pulls me sharply through space and then Sirius is under me, sprawled on the lush green grasses and the laughter of children echoing in sweet warm air. I'm over dressed. I can already feel the beginnings of a fine line of sweat forming in the back of my collar. I roll off Sirius, getting to my feet and brushing the dirt from my trousers. In front of us are three children, their skin a bronzed tan giggle and actually jump around with amusement. A small girl in a bright orange dress takes a half step towards us and is grabbed backwards in a protective grip by the oldest boy who cocks his head in the direction of Sirius, still sprawled on the grass and, for some reason, in no hurry to stand.
" He looks like one of us...but what about the Paccea?" He gestures towards me, spitting out the word in three contemptuous but oddly pleasant sounding syllables. Pa-K-uh. Sirius snorts laughingly into the grass and stands slowly.
" Does your Madae let you speak like that?" The child hangs his head slightly in embarrassment, blushing. I want to ask Sirius exactly what a Paccea is, when a low sweet voice carries beseechingly through the thick circle of trees.
" Thalia!! Lysander!! Epifiano!!" As one the children wince and a woman comes running out into the clearing. Her eyes aren't the same glittering black as the children, but a deep aquamarine, hair the color of light mahogany framing a heart shaped face.
And then how pretty she appears is of very little consequence as she has a wand in one hand and in the other hand, much closer to me is a knife, long bladed and black. The sun glints off an apparently razor sharp curve.
Her voice is rough and angry as she spits a low musically alternating mix of what could possibly be Greek and a low sibilant language I can't even begin to identify at me. Beside me Sirius pales a bit, keeping his hands palms upward and facing her.
I think I should be glad I don't know what she's saying.
" Massiah. My, it's me, It's Sirius." His voice is coaxing and he moves ever so slightly towards her.
That blade is a lot shinier this close to me.
" Sirius Black is dead." Her accent makes his name a small song. Sa-RE-us. He shivers slightly, turning his head towards me so that the side of his throat is bared to her. Already his words are taking on the same musical lit of hers, slipping back into his native accent ever so slightly.
" If you move my hair right there at the base of my neck and shoulder is a scar from where you were learning to throw knives and I moved." Slowly her face relaxes as he continues to tell her the story, the animal fierceness slipping into a more wary expression. Her lips are very full as her mouth slips out of tight line of a snarl and into a semi pout as she waves her wand, blowing the hair from his face. Yep, there's the scar…and there's a bite mark around it. Oh, that scar.
Her expressions remind me of Ginny.
" Okay…Sirius." Her voice is a mix of hope and disbelief and the knife is still far to close to me. " If you weren't dead why in the name of the temples didn't you ever come home?" He straightens up slowly, and actually smiles at her.
" I did. I hid in the old capitol for a year." Her knife arm tenses and I take a deep breath before she shoves the blade in a small sheath underneath the flowing blue and green fabric she has wrapped around her hips and hurls herself against him, cursing him in English and the same tongue as before. Against him the top of her head just barely reaches his shoulder. Funny, standing there she looked a lot bigger.
But maybe that was the idea of a messy demise talking.
Stepping back she shoots me a smirk, eyes cutting quickly from his neck to my mouth.
" Who's the Paccea?" I lift an eyebrow at her and her term.
" This is Percy Weasley." The overwhelming urge to kick him in the ankle comes from nowhere. Shouldn't he insist I'm not a …whatever that is? Then again, maybe it's all in the way you say it.
In that case she's called me something tremendously dirty.
They exchange a look as he stresses that I'm here to help him with something, his eyes straying to the children. She steps back, wrapping her arm around the tallest boy who's head rests under her chin.
" Siri, this is Epifiano," She reaches out to run her fingers through the smaller boy's hair. " Lysander and Thalia, my children." She hardly looks old enough to have a boy who must be at least ten. Her proud half smile gives way to a glare and the girl pulls the neck of her dress up over her eyes. Oh yes, she's definitely their mother. Only a mother can give that kind of glare. " My children," She continues " Who are in a lot of duwa when I get them home." The girl peers one eye from her dress.
" Madae shouldn't cuss." She whispers. The corner of the woman's mouth twitches.
" Your Madae will say whatever she wants. Look at you three!" Any humor she may have had is gone. " You're almost on the edge of the jungle! We're going home right now!" She turns them towards a random gap in the trees and gives them a little shove, looking over her shoulder at us. " Come on Sirius and bring," She seems stuck on my name for a moment. " Percy with you." I shiver a bit as she rolls out the R in my name just long enough. Sirius laughs, taking my arm and leading me out of the circle into a forest so thick I can't see the sky.
" I love it when she does that." His face is striped in thick shadows and small rays of sunlight as he stands there for a moment, taking a deep breath before leading me out through close to a mile of thick jungle.
When we step out of it I lift my eyebrow, giving him a look.
" That was the edge of the jungle?" In front of us the woman stops and gives me a small smirk, a true smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
" Of course. Don't they have trees in England?" She teases. I look over at a limb of wood so deep red it's almost purple with it's thick glossy leaves as big as a sheet of parchment and a blossom of pale white with light green undertones. It's as big as a dinner plate as I run my hands over it's silky petals.
" Nothing like this." The wind catches my hair and the salt scent mixes with the perfume of the trees around me. From behind me Sirius threads his fingers in my hair and I pull against him as he runs his hands through, a small shiver going down my spine at the pressure on my scalp. I can see the ocean from the edge of the jungle. Life here must be wonderful.
Beside me Sirius sighs.
Before I can turn to him Thalia, who has been trudging several feet before me comes over, pulling on her mother's skirt, which is already hanging off her hips and looks ready to fall off. The cloth stays firmly where it should as the little girl points to me.
"Madae, he has fire hair! Look!" Self consciously I brush it back behind my ear as the woman, Massiah…I think he called her, swings the child up into her arms.
" Yes Darling, he has red hair." Her voice is amused as the girl squirms in her arms, reaching her small chubby hands towards me.
"Can I touch it?" Before I can step closer she steps back with a small twist and puts her child on the other side of her body away from me.
" You can ask him when we get home." She says in a placating voice that means absolutely not. I'm nut sure whether or not to be offended when a flock of large snow white cranes take off from inside the jungles a few miles to our right. I follow their flight with my eyes, looking back down in time to see her go pale. " It's them." Without a thought Sirius scoops up the oldest boy, settling him on his hip.
" Percy, get the other one. Death Eaters are coming." And he's off running. The little boy, Lysander, is an awkward bundle in my arms as I run through the high grasses after them, finally managing to shift him across my back despite the death grip he's locked himself into across my neck.
The woman leads us over what is obviously a small cart road, her bare feet churning up dust as she runs with long strides. There's a bend in the road leading behind a large boulder and from there is a steep hill, maybe eighty feet up with a winding cart hill. I'm not sure if I can carry a child up there at a run and not pass out from the height. Instead the woman veers to the left running down towards the beach and stopping by what is a very narrow footpath of rocks leading up the face of the rocky ledge. I'm panting slightly as I let the boy slide down and scramble over to the rocks, running up them like they were a flat path in the park. My stomach falls to my feet as I watch the woman follow them. Oh no. No, no, no.
" Is now a bad time to mention I never played Quidditch because I can't stand heights?" My voice is a hiss because other wise it would be a squeak of terror. Sirius pushes me in front of him onto the path.
" A very bad time as we have no time!" I'm not sure why we're running so fast, the death eaters would barely be out of the woods…unless they flew. Bloody hell. I grasp a rock and follow the woman ahead of me, forcing my feet to go at a dangerously fast pace on the narrow ledges, clinging to the wall with one hand until we come to a larger ledge and the children fit their little hands into cracks and start climbing straight up the remaining fifteen feet. We watch as they scramble up the ledge and take off running, screeching in the same language their mother cursed in, voices getting softer as they run further away from us. Tying her skirt up so that it wraps around one long leg, leaving the other bare, Massiah reaches up and begins climbing the face as well, making short work of the wall in just three minutes.
Sirius nudges me towards it and my hands shake as I reach for the closest rock, trying not to burst into tears as I look up and definitely not down towards the rocks I'm going to fall on when I slip.
" Shh." Sirius presses himself against me, taking my hand and stretching us both upwards until my hand slips into a crack. " This one." I tremble as he whispers more instructions into my ear and I lift my leg as high as I can, finding a gap for my foot.
Calling on every God I know, Nana knew, and some I think I may have just made up, I pull my feet off the ground and begin the longest seven minutes of my life. When I pull myself onto the grass, I collapse there and shake…until Sirius, the bastard, rolls almost onto me less than two minutes later. Massiah, who waited anxiously, eyes trained on the children who are close to the towering gates of a town, is already running. My knees almost send me onto my face as I stand and try to follow her. Sirius pauses in his sprint before I Drop down into a runners crouch and take off to fast for my nervousness to sprawl me flat. I've almost caught up to them, shoes clacking as I join them on a road of large cobblestones.
Just inside the large wooden gate the cobblestones change becoming smaller and my foot catches on one as the gates close with a slam. My balance is shot, my nerves are raw…and I spill forward, rolling over the hard street in a tumble and scrape my knee before I roll onto my back, shaking and gasping for breath.
I didn't die yet. Life is fairly good.
Sirius is kneeling beside me, eyes concerned as he touches me gently, helping me upright.
" Sirius Black," I make sure he's looking at me. " I hate you. I hate your cliffs, and your shortcuts and the way your road goes from big cobblestones to bloody fucking little ones!" I'm shaking so hard as I come down off the mix of fear and adrenaline that my teeth chatter. He's trying not to laugh as his fingers probe over my body feeling for anything I may have pulled, strained or broken in my run and fall. His hands still against the sticky warm blood on my trousers and he starts to pull at them. I stop his hand. " Skinned knee." For a moment I lean against him, letting the warm sun touch my face and feeling him breath beneath me, when he stiffens, breath caught in his throat.
Standing before us is a woman, barely sixty and very beautiful. Her hair is thick and black, falling in an intricate braid down her back and streaked with silvery white at the temples. Her mouth is open in a small o of wonder and the slight wrinkles at her eyes and the corners of her mouth deepen as she smiles down at us.
Or more accurately him.
" Sirius." Again with that singing pronunciation. I move from his arms as he lunges forward, wrapping his arms around her tightly as he buries his face in the deep violet of her dress. His shoulder shake as she strokes his hair, whispering to him in one breath and giving order in the next, motioning towards the gates, back through town and then to me. I tense for a moment until she gives me a brief small motherly smile.
" Madae…" Sirius is whispering out broken sentences of the native language and I turn my eyes towards the other towns people, attempting a pretense of privacy for the reunion between Sirius and the woman who could only be his mother. She steps back from him finally, hands wrapping around his arms to pull him to his feet, speaking for the first time in clear and beautiful English.
" Bring your friend and come home Sirius. We have so much to say before you go again." I scramble to my feet, easily looking the woman in the eye with just a slight downward tilt of my head. She must be six feet tall. She gives another smile, this time showing a mouth full of white teeth before turning and walking with grace through the streets.
Sirius is thrumming with excitement beside me as we wind through narrow streets, getting further away from the narrow two story houses and finally coming to a large villa at the end of the road. It's iron gates twist into elegant spirals covered with thick glossy grape leaves. The grapes that dangle just above our heads are large and purple/black. Sirius reaches up and grabs a handful, eating them with a grin. I grab a few myself, giving a small moan as I swallow the thick sweet juices. I don't think I've ever had anything quite so good. Sirius grins at me as we draw closer to the large sprawling house, covered over in vines and flowers. At the door a small fish pond is filled with what appear to be beta as large as a carp, their bright colors flickering between flashes of green/white water lilies.
Inside the walls are the rich golden wood and Sirius' mother ushers us down a hallway to a large bedroom overlooking the ocean. In the center is a king sized bed of a silvery wood that I've never seen before, spread over with thick soft looking blankets that soak up the suns heat.
" You both need to rest." Her friendly voice is vaguely tired sounding as she backs towards the door. " Your cousin has taken her bad children home…" She continues as I sink onto the bed gratefully and it's just as soft as it looks. Cousin. In retrospect I can see it. She didn't have the same height as Sirius, or his mother, but the fine bones in her face with the ever so slanted cat like eyes and full mouth are much like his. I turn my head as his mother rushes back in, whispering a final declaration of love before leaving in a sweetly scented breeze of competence. I like Sirius's mother very much. I think she would have gotten along wonderfully with my own mum. I stare out over the waters, looking at the large shadow lurking far under the surface out there. He crawls up behind me, arm warm around my waist as he stares with me and for a moment his breath on my neck seems to suggest sex he sits up further.
" What is the actual plan anyways? I know you Percy. You've got more planned than run in, blow it up, grab the boys, run away, run back and blow it up some more." I tense up slightly. It was too easy to think that I could get away with fooling him long enough to get him, Harry, and Ron away from the island and taking care of the rest myself.
" You're right." My voice is distant, even to myself as I pull the leather satchel up onto the bed, aware for the first time that I very well may have broken some of the precious ingredients inside. My voice is a mutter as I ansewer him, pulling vials and potions out of the magically enhanced bag. " Dresdenaire takes quite a bit of stuff." My voice catches on the name and suddenly sitting here is too much to ask of me. I swing off the bed, pulling a portable cauldron from the bag's seemingly bottomless depths. Setting it up and arranging the potions and powders around the desk closest to the window.
" Dresdenaire…Percy I've never heard of any spell called.." I can't let him finish. I turn, cutting him off.
" Of course you haven't. Technically Dresdenaire doesn't exist." I close my eyes for a moment, savoring the silence while he tries to speak, letting my mind wander.
:: His hair's slipped out of the clasp in the back and the pieces in his face are matted down my the heat pouring off the cauldron. His eyes shine with excitement as he stares down at the thick opal fire liquid.
" Percy." I look at him and his eyes are glowing in the half light. " I think we did it!"::
" The bomb curse." His voice is a horse whisper. " You know the bomb curse." The accusations in his voice are dulled only by the ringing notes of betrayal. Good. Maybe if this hurts him enough he'll stay here in the safety of this wonderful town. He'll be here for Harry to come back to.
" Actually it's a mixed spell. Part potion, part curse and considering that I helped invent it, yeah, I know it." My stomach heaves as I force the words off my tongue. For a moment I think Sirius may actually break down into tears, his eyes are that bright and unfocused.
" You…" The innocently wounded look he gives me rips my heart out by the roots. I spin away from my work, tempted to laugh through the grimace of pain on my face.
" Yes Sirius. I did it. I helped blow up Hogwarts, I helped us start losing the war, I helped kill my lover and I didn't do it alone." For a moment I wanted to go on. To tell him everything. My heart skipped a beat as his eyes focused on mine and I could see the pieces falling into place in his head. I turn away, hands shaking as I add more vials into the cauldron, trying to keep every word straight in my mind as I work.
" Remus." His voice is hollow as I grab up the powdered ash winder eggs. " You and Remus and Cam…worked together on this, didn't you?" I almost spill the powder as my hand shakes. Thank god I measured this all out beforehand otherwise I might have blown this beautiful house apart by now. He knocks the empty glass out of my hand, not heading it's crash to the floor as he knocks me to the wall, snarling down at me as I gulp for the air he knocked out of my lungs.
The salt of a tear slips past my lips. I didn't realize I had started crying. His eyes are cold and almost dangerous as he lowers his face to mine, his hands pushing my wrists almost painfully against the wood.
" Didn't you!?"
" Not all of it." I can see Cam standing there, wolfs bane potion in hand for the professor as they talked. "We'd just started working with Professor Lupin on the theory of a trigger word for the spell."
" But why!?" He rages. I shove away from the wall and catch him in the solar plexus with my shoulder, sending him sprawling on the thick carpeting.
" Don't be so fucking sodding stupid! Why do you think?! We were working with the ministry! Every fucking one of us. We were doing all of it's most dangerous work inside what should have been the safest place in England and the curse was the most challenging and dangerous thing they were working on." I glare down at him and for a moment I almost hate him for not knowing, for making me tell him and then all I feel is regret as I step over his legs back towards the cauldron. It's funny that this has to be cold concocted. Ironic really.
" But how the fuck did you plan on using it?" I shrug, stirring. It's funny how we'd never thought of that. Idealism.
" Never even thought of it until after Hogwarts when I realized they were planning on doing the same thing the Death Eaters did to us. Capturing spies, getting information out of them and then sending them back to kill entire camps, prisoners and all…but don't worry." My hands are finally steady as I draw all my resolve, weaving my wand through the smoke and incorporating the final step, the one we never tested, the trigger, into the spell. " Dresdenaire dies on this island."