Chapter 37: Sirius, Processing
Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when Fred and George arrived at his cottage in Hogsmeade, grinning their identical grins and weighed down with bags of products that they no longer had space to store in their dormitory. They announced with great fanfare that Harry had said they could borrow his gold cauldron.
Sirius had already known that (Harry had used the mirror to warn him that the twins would be visiting), but he ought to have appreciated the flare with which the message was delivered.
"We may need a potion to go along with our patented daydream charm," Fred explained as George inspected the cauldron. "It's the first in our WonderWitch line."
"Daydream charm?" asked Sirius. Most of the twins' products, while amusing, were merely new spins on old Zonko's jokes. A daydream charm sounded unique.
Fred nodded. "Thirty minutes in the highly realistic daydream of your choice. It's undetectable unless you start drooling."
"I don't think a gold cauldron's going to fix the drooling, though," said George, running his finger around the rim of the cauldron with obvious admiration. "Might improve the quality of the daydream, but that's never been our problem."
"You've tested these on yourselves?"
The twins chorused that they had. "Much more fun testing these than the Skiving Snackbox," Fred added. He caught Sirius' eye mischievously. "Want a go?"
Sirius had spent the better part of a year refusing anything that magically altered his mind. He refused dreamless sleep potion even when the benefits were obvious. He rarely transformed into a dog. He had spent twelve years ceding parts of his mind to the dementors and he was loathe to do anything of the kind ever again.
But that had been before.
"Yes," said Sirius. "I'm your backer. I want to try it."
The twins looked surprised. "They're aimed at fifteen-year-old witches, mostly," said Fred. "Loads of swooning into big, strong, handsome arms."
Sirius politely decided not to tell the twins to make one for Dumbledore that would allow him to swoon into Grindelwald's big, strong, handsome arms while they plotted to protect men who thought babies ought to be murdered. Since Dumbledore apparently enjoyed that kind of thing.
"Of course, Angelina tested one and said that what a witch really wants is to throw bludgers at wizards," said George.
"She was quite rude about it, too," said Fred.
"But who were we to pass up a business opportunity?" asked George.
"So we do have a Quidditch daydream that's quite good in our opinion."
"And Angelina's." George rummaged through one of the bags and delightedly produced a pink-and-purple box emblazoned with a turquoise W. The words Quidditch Quest glittered across the top in curling letters.
"Should I try this now, or should I wait until you're out of my house?"
"Your choice, mate," said Fred. "If you're going to do it now, though, you wouldn't notice if we practiced a few things here?"
"Use the bedroom where you've been storing your inventory. Put out any fires you set," Sirius ordered.
The twins chorused their thank yous and left Sirius turning the box over in his hands.
At last, he settled down near the fire in the very spot where he and Harry had played games all through Christmas Eve.
"Enough," he told himself, and opened the box.
He was safe in front of the fire; he knew he hadn't moved.
He was also on a broom, flying swiftly across the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts.
It was like a Pensieve, but warmer and more immersive.
If he hadn't already realized that Fred and George were geniuses, he would have figured it out within thirty seconds of opening the box.
The sun was warm on his skin and the breeze was cool on his face. He glanced down to see whether he was wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes. As soon as he thought of it, he saw that he was.
Did he have a Beater's bat in his hand?
Of course he did. The twins were Beaters, after all, like Sirius himself had been.
The first Bludger came toward him so quickly that he couldn't swing at it; he had to roll over and over to avoid being hit. There was a sound of exasperation from the crowd. Had the crowd been there all along?
He was ready for the next Bludger, and the satisfying crack as it connected with his bat sent shocks of delight through his whole body.
They were playing Slytherin, of course. It was always Slytherin when emotions ran this high. With every crack of his bat, he sent another Bludger (apparently there were dozens of Bludgers in this game, but that didn't seem odd at all) at another green-robed Slytherin.
Sometimes it was Bellatrix, even though she had never wasted time on Quidditch.
Sometimes it was one of the foolish, inbred Lestrange brothers.
Sometimes it was pale, arrogant Lucius Malfoy.
But as the dream went on, more and more it was Severus Snape. Sirius sent one Bludger after another at his oversized nose. He pelted Snape's thin body with Bludgers. Bludgers whizzed through Snape's greasy hair.
Then Sirius thought that they were playing Quidditch so James must be there. He must have summoned James by thinking of him because the Bludger hit James in the face, because James was where Snape should have been, and James' glasses shattered, and James was falling falling falling, James who had never fallen off his broom, James who might as well have been born on a broom, James was gone and Sirius knew it was forever…
Sirius snapped back to reality and blinked at the fire in the fireplace.
He composed himself before the twins came pounding down the stairs. He didn't want them to think there was something wrong with their charmwork.
Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when he returned to the Dueling Club as a full-fledged member. Nothing was more important than Harry's safety, and Sirius couldn't keep Harry safe if he couldn't keep himself alive.
He worked diligently at casting minor spells with his left hand while casting major spells with the wand in his right hand.
"That's a real duelist's wand," said Jacob Garrison admiringly after he and Sirius were forced to call it a draw in the final match of the night.
It took everything in Sirius not to hex him.
It wasn't a duelist's wand.
It was his wand.
No, it wasn't his wand.
His wand had been snapped as punishment for killing James.
That wand had been black, and this wand was white, and he didn't understand why wands had to be so fucking on the nose with their symbolism.
No one had ever snapped Severus Snape's wand. All Snape had done was join the Death Eaters with the intent of murdering anyone of Muggle birth (a particularly rich life plan considering the bastard was a half-blood). All Snape had done was torture, kill, and maim. All Snape had done was slither off to his megalomaniacal overlord with the suggestion that he kill an infant. And when the megalomaniacal overlord hadn't quite managed it, Dumbledore had rewarded Snape with a job and a home while Sirius had submitted to torture and Remus had struggled to feed himself and James had been dead in the ground.
Sirius composed himself before Garrison saw the scowl on his face. He didn't want the Dueling Club to expel him until he'd learned everything he possibly could to defend Harry in a world where love was punished and barbarism was rewarded.
Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when he went to Andromeda's usual family dinner. He had a family. Not everyone could say that.
But Andromeda's cooking was worse than eating dirt. He missed those first weeks after Azkaban when he hadn't been able to taste anything, because Andromeda's cooking tasted like family.
She'd grown up eating what he'd grown up eating. She'd grown up to cook what they'd been raised to eat. Yes, she had adopted Muggle dishes that Ted liked. She had experimented. Her own tastes had evolved. She was cooking herself rather than ordering a house-elf about.
But she hadn't completely eliminated the foundation that had been laid for her. Some of the flavors, some of the textures, some of the choices, some of the techniques had become a part of Andromeda long before Andromeda had met Ted and seized control of her own destiny.
"Do you not like roast lamb anymore, Sirius?" Andromeda asked. "It was your favorite when you were a little boy."
It had been, and that was why she'd made it.
He didn't deserve that kind of thoughtfulness.
He wasn't a little boy.
He'd been bad even when he'd been a little boy, even though he thought he'd been good.
He remembered the first time he'd seen James on the Hogwarts Express. That had been the first memory he'd pulled out of his head and placed in the Pensieve for Harry on their very first night together in Remus' terrible cottage.
He couldn't remember whether he'd let Harry see Severus Snape enter the memory. He probably had. Harry had laughed so hard when Sirius had said Snivellus instead of Severus, and Sirius had been gratified, pleased to have the approval of James' doppelgänger.
At eleven years old, James had been in a train compartment with a woman he would marry and two men who would help kill him.
He couldn't say any of that to Andromeda, of course. "The roast lamb is delicious, Anna," he said. "I'm sorry, it's been a long day."
"Not too long a day to duel with me?" asked Tonks, bright eyed and turquoise-haired.
"I'm afraid so," he said. "You wouldn't get a good duel out of me today."
She looked like she might pout. She probably wanted to get him alone so she could swoon over Remus as if they were the stars of one of the Weasley twins' prepackaged daydreams.
He did not want to hear about how wonderful Remus was from Remus' inappropriately young bride.
He ought to tell Andromeda and Ted everything. How Remus was too old and too poor for their daughter. How he had traveled through time and changed reality. How he had once abandoned their pregnant daughter during a war. How he was a werewolf.
Ted and Andromeda wouldn't like that at all. They'd put a stop to things before things went wrong for Tonks and Remus like they'd gone wrong for Lily and James, thanks to Saint Snivellus, Dumbledore's favorite boy, and why wouldn't Remus just let Snivelly kill Dumbledore? Dumbledore could live with the consequences of his actions just as well as anyone else.
"You've never refused to duel with me," Tonks said. "Not even when it was a terrible idea. Are you cheating on me with another Auror?"
The sound of his own laugh startled him. "I'm cheating on you with an entire dueling club Horace Slughorn sent me to," he told her. "Take it up with your mother if you have a problem with it."
Tonks made a face at Andromeda and Andromeda made the same face back. It was strange to Sirius. Andromeda had not been raised to make faces.
The surprise jolted Sirius into remembering that he didn't want Andromeda or Ted or Tonks to think anything was wrong. He composed himself and drew his wand. "You're right," he said to Tonks. "Let's go." He rose and took Tonks' arm before she could trip over the table leg.
How Tonks could be so clumsy when she was standing up from a table or walking across a room but so steady when she was dueling was beyond Sirius' comprehension. He supposed that it didn't matter. All that mattered was that they both sharpened their skills so they would be ready to face whatever came their way if the Death Eaters rose again.
He was half-surprised that Dumbledore hadn't just hired Bellatrix to teach Herbology. If Harry had to learn from the man who had sent Voldemort after his parents, why not make Neville Longbottom learn from the woman who had tortured his parents into insanity? It was all the same in Dumbledore's eyes, no doubt.
He was distracted. Tonks' spell hit him hard, and he was only half-able to block her next spell as he tumbled to his knees.
He regrouped faster than she had expected and he used the opportunity to hit her once, twice, three times. She fell as if dead. The duel was over.
He hadn't expected finally defeating his upstart little cousin in their friendly matches to be so anticlimactic, he reflected as he helped her to her feet.
"Congratulations," she said, and she sounded genuinely pleased for him.
He ought to have been happy about it.
He knew that he ought to be delighted to be meeting with Félicité short hours before the March full moon. He didn't ordinarily look forward to their sessions, but this one was special because this one would be their last. He hadn't cared for the idea in the first place. He'd just wanted to convince Remus— and more importantly himself— that he had taken every opportunity to make himself strong enough to support Harry if Harry needed it.
Now he knew that he had been right all along. There was no making things better.
He decided not to tell Félicité that this would be their last meeting. She was merely doing research; one rarely knew where research ended. Soon she would be spending all of her time preparing her champion for the last task of the Triwizard Tournament. Their schedules would no longer match. There was no need for an argument or a goodbye.
She conjured the vibrating ball of light. "What color should it be?" she asked.
"Black," he said before he could stop himself.
She gave him a look that let him know that that was not an acceptable answer. It was nothing like as powerful as Professor McGonagall's look had been back when Sirius had been in school. "Blue," Sirius said to humor her. He could be polite to Félicité for a last hour or two. He could ignore her and look forward to moonrise. (Perhaps Remus would finally get it together enough to spar properly?)
"Picture a negative image in your mind," she told him. "Picture the image the dementors showed you the most often."
He'd meant to ignore her, but instead he remembered James and Lily lying in the wreckage of their house in Godric's Hollow. James in the front room; Lily in the nursery.
"How disturbing is the image on a scale of one to ten?" she asked.
"Ten." He might as well answer honestly. It wouldn't matter. In three hours the moon would be up, and he would be a dog.
"The blue ball of light began jumping between his left hand and his right. "Think of everything about the memory. What do you see?"
James' glasses askew. Lily's hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind.
"What do you smell?"
Smoke. Dust.
"What are you touching?"
He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn't matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet.
"What do you taste?"
He was inhaling the dust. His mouth tasted of ashes.
"What do you hear?"
He didn't hear anything. Voldemort was gone. James and Lily were dead. Godric's Hollow was silent.
"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?"
"Ten," he said, and his voice wasn't his own. That would always be the answer. No vibrating ball of blue light could make it otherwise.
"Are you ready for another set?"
"Yes." Nothing would ever change. Therefore, he would always be ready.
"What do you see?"
James' glasses askew. Lily's hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind. The collapsed wall. The broken toy broomstick in the middle of what had been the floor. The broken glass.
"What do you smell?"
Smoke. Dust. Citrus-scented shampoo. Potatoes that they must have cooked that evening. Harry's milky-baby powder scent.
"What are you touching?"
He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn't matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet.
The air was hot on his face. It was the end of October, and well into the night. The air shouldn't have been hot. But it was. The heat radiated from everything in the house.
"What do you taste?"
Dust. Ashes.
"What do you hear?"
He didn't hear anything.
"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?"
"Nine," he said, and it wasn't entirely a lie. It hadn't been as bad the second time as the first. He wondered if he was numbing himself to the memory. He wondered if he wanted that.
"How are you feeling? Physically?"
They'd done this before, and he knew that there were expected answers: tension in his shoulders, perhaps, or a headache or an upset stomach. He didn't feel any of them, and he told her so.
"Do you want to do it again?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. He would do this correctly, and then he would give up the game and go play with Remus.
"What do you see?"
James' glasses askew. Lily's hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind. The collapsed wall. The broken toy broomstick in the middle of what had been the floor. The broken glass.
There were books scattered the length of the house. They'd been trapped inside, in hiding; reading would have been a default activity.
The front room was coated with glass; photographs had exploded out of their frames. There was James and Lily's wedding photo. There were a thousand photos of Harry that had been arranged in a sort of collage. Harry eating; Harry getting a bath in the sink; Harry hugging a toy lion; Harry flying on a toy broom; Harry sleeping; Harry laughing.
There was also a photograph of the four of them: James and Sirius and Remus and Peter. It had been taken just before they'd begun their seventh year at Hogwarts. He'd seen it recently; Remus' father had had a copy and they'd made a copy for Harry. He'd told Remus he hadn't thought he'd seen it before even though he'd remembered posing for it.
He'd been wrong. He'd seen it.
"What do you smell?"
Smoke. Dust. Citrus-scented shampoo. Potatoes that they must have cooked that evening. Harry's milky-baby powder scent.
Burning flesh. Avada Kedavra didn't do that, but the explosion might have.
Blood. Urine.
"What are you touching?"
He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn't matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet.
The air was hot on his face. It was the end of October, and well into the night. The air shouldn't have been hot. But it was. The heat radiated from everything in the house.
The cat brushed against his ankles and he only just stopped himself from hexing it. How had the cat survived? Had it been outside, and then returned?
"What do you taste?"
Dust. Ashes.
"What do you hear?"
He didn't hear anything.
"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?"
"Eight," he said. He wondered what had happened to the cat. He wondered if he would remember. He wondered if he cared. "Let's go again."
The blue ball resumed bouncing between his hands.
"What do you see?"
Corpses. Debris.
His motorcycle was behind him. It had been too risky to Apparate anywhere near Godric's Hollow; the flying motorcycle had, oddly enough, been faster and safer.
"What do you smell?"
Burning flesh. Now that he'd noticed it, the more subtle smells had faded.
"What are you touching?"
The wand, the air, the cat.
A hand the size of a rubbish bin lid on his shoulder. Hagrid was there. Hagrid had gotten there before he had. Sent by Dumbledore, of course. What had Dumbledore known, and when, and how?
He'd known that Snape had told Voldemort about the prophecy and sent Voldemort to murder Harry.
Had Snape given him the date of the event? Had Dumbledore put Hagrid on standby just in case, without warning James and Lily?
Had he warned James and Lily?
No, James hadn't known. His wand hadn't been in his hand. He had thought he was safe.
"What do you taste?"
Dust. Ashes.
"What do you hear?"
A baby crying.
He'd heard Harry crying, but he hadn't gone to him. He hadn't stepped over Lily's corpse and gathered the living baby into his arms. Hagrid had done that.
"Give him to me, Hagrid. I'm his godfather. I'm his guardian. James and Lily wanted—"
"Dumbledore wants me ter take him ter Lily's sister."
Dumbledore had made the decision to take Harry away from Sirius before Sirius had ever done anything to get himself sent to Azkaban.
Sirius was shaking too hard to hold Harry anyway. Hagrid was holding onto both of them.
He told Hagrid to take the motorcycle. Hagrid didn't have any other way of getting into a Muggle neighborhood, and Harry had to be safe.
For Harry to be safe, Peter had to be caught.
No.
Snape. Dumbledore. In a magical war, there was no way to tell who could be trusted.
He never should have let Harry go.
He should have remembered Harry's cries.
He stared at the bloody gash on Harry's forehead.
Who tried to murder a baby?
Voldemort. Wormtail. Snape.
Who sent that baby to be thrown in a cupboard under the stairs when his godfather-guardian wanted him?
Dumbledore.
Who hadn't fought for Harry in the first place?
He hadn't.
Hagrid hadn't been a fully qualified wizard. He performed unpredictable magic with the broken pieces of a wand concealed inside an umbrella. Sirius could have taken Harry. Sirius hadn't had to listen to the directions of a man who coddled Severus Snape, who had sent Voldemort after Harry in the first place.
"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?"
"Six," Sirius lied. He knew the number was supposed to go down, not up.
"How are you feeling?"
"Fine. No changes."
"You're shaking, Sirius," said Félicité.
He'd been shaking in the memory. He hadn't realized that it had carried over to the present.
He made it stop.
Blacks knew how to control themselves. This was no different from a family dinner thirty years in the past.
You will wear the robes the house-elf has laid out for you. You will not put them on backwards. You will not skip any buttons. You will not add any accessories. You will not change the colors or the cut. You will not wrinkle your robes, tear your robes, or get your robes dirty.
The first one of you girls to complain that she can't breathe in her dress robes will find her dress robes to be spelled one size smaller. If you can speak to complain, you can breathe.
You will not speak until you are spoken to. When you speak, you will not discuss Muggles, Mudbloods, bodily fluids, anything that makes you unhappy, and above all you will not mention this conversation.
You will sit up straight. You will not squirm, wiggle, twist, swing your feet, or otherwise move other than as necessary to eat or to make eye contact with the adult who has addressed you.
You will not, under any circumstances, make eye contact with each other.
And by Merlin's green Slytherin tie, Sirius, keep all four legs of your chair on the floor at all times or you will find the chair stuck to the ground and yourself stuck to the chair. Again!
He looked Félicité in the eye. He had never cared much about his eyes one way or another, but he had always known that other people admired them. Many purebloods' eyes were grey, and the Blacks were said to have a shade all their own.
He saw Félicité look at his eyes instead of into them.
He'd been able to convince George and Fred that he'd seen nothing in their daydream but Quidditich. He'd been able to convince the Dueling Club that their matches were all on good fun. He'd been able to convince Andromeda and her family that he'd just been a bit tired the last time he visited.
He could certainly convince Félicité that everything was fine before she started asking questions the answers to which were none of her business.
"I think I'm shaking from sitting here for too long," he said with a smile. He arose and walked into his kitchen. "Would you like a drink, Félicité, before you walk back to the school?"
"No, thank you." He heard her stand up; he felt her watching him. "I don't know that we should end now. I won't ask what you were thinking about—"
"Good, because I shan't tell you," said Sirius with all the pleasantness he could muster.
"I think you were in the middle of something."
"Nothing we can't pick up next time." He had been wise not to tell her that there would never be a next time. "Even if you don't have plans tonight, I do." Plans that involved a bloodthirsty monster. Remus had better be ready to act like a wolf instead of a puppy.
He ushered Félicité out the door and prepared to spend the night at Hogwarts. He decided to sneak into the school through the Honeydukes tunnel rather than risk Félicité seeing him and asking why they hadn't walked from Hogsmeade together.
As usual, the students were easy enough to avoid. They were chattering about classes and dates and Quidditch.
A few of them were passing around what he recognized as Weasley products. One of the boxes— a sort of firecracker— exploded.
It smelled of smoke and dust.
He felt the heat on his face.
He forsook all thoughts of discretion and ran.
He let himself into Remus' office, and then Remus' inner rooms. (Current password: "pink hair.")
As usual, Remus' evening meal was sitting untouched on the shelf. The smell of potatoes mixed with the smell of smoke and dust.
Lily and James had definitely eaten potatoes a few hours before Voldemort murdered them. The smell had lingered in the air where the destroyed house had stood. No one alive but Sirius remembered that.
"Sirius?" asked Remus, voice laden with concern. Sirius hadn't heard Remus enter. But then, Remus hadn't entered. These were his rooms and Sirius had come in without knocking.
(Sirius hadn't heard Hagrid enter the house in Godric's Hollow, either, because Hagrid had already been there.)
"Sirius?" Remus repeated, closer this time. Sirius didn't look at him. He could stare down Félicité but he couldn't stare down Remus.
"I want Lily and James," said Sirius, and somehow a sob ripped its way out of his throat.
To be continued.