Chapter 55

Night Cap

"Come on! Early to bed Moony, wouldn't want to be to tired for the big day tomorrow." I slid down the banister from the third floor of Grimmauld place to the second and plodded heavily down on to the landing hearing Remus's polite footsteps pottered down the stairs behind me. Things between Remus and I had improved greatly over the last year. It had been strange at first, the mystery of what went on that first week after my side of Azkaban prison was blown off remained steadfast. There were a few things I remembered from my escape, I remembered the look in Remus's eye when he realised I was innocent, I remembered staring out over a lake searching for something, I could remember but all of our memories were damaged in the blow at the lighthouse and how most of my return had been achieved was unknown to anyone.

Not that it mattered, I was still a fugitive, I had to stay in Grimmauld place and keep my head down as the Prophet span tales of my misdemeanours and I could only go out as Padfoot. Not to mention that just because Remus believed I was innocent didn't mean he forgave me, it was exasperating really, that emotions were so close to catch up to everything else. I hated Grimmauld place most of the time but the kids were due back from their Christmas holidays the following day which was almost good enough news to have me hugging Kreacher. Harry was incredible, just like James had been Harry was a true and honest companion, although sometimes I could spend a moment to long staring at that stomach turning scar on his forehead or when we laughed his fathers names would just fall out of my mouth and in moments like those I felt like we were to ghosts meeting in limbo. Harry's friends and there family had become so deeply involved in the newly formed order that they would be joining us for Christmas as well. It was going to be a good few weeks, I was determined. For once the house didn't smell of must, it smelt of Christmas pudding thanks to Molly Weasleys not entirely unwanted although overtly irritating fussing.

The only thing that made staying in this house of hell bearable was that I felt like I had a real family forming in it. Whiling away the days teasing Moony over his blustering crush on recent Order devotee Nymphodora Tonks and arguing with Molly over my drinking had made Grimmauld place feel less like it had when I was a kid and more like a house for good company.

Unfortunately in truth there was often no denying it, when an entire week would pass with just me and mothers echoing screams and then I would really start to feel it. I would feel a sense of foreboding that no amount of fire whiskey could stave off. I would sit across from the biggest mirror on the first floor on this strange dark stain on the carpet and ring my hands together and stare down the wall. It was the most disconcerting spot in the house with the roof creaking dangerously over head but it felt important. Like I had a reason to be there. Molly insisted that the dark symbols written on the wall in blood here must have been a poltergeist and had insisted it was washed off before anyone got tricked by them. I made myself look like a right loon when I tried to convince her to leave them be but there was no stopping that woman once she had made a decision, even if it isn't her house. Sometimes I wished it was, I certainly wasn't overjoyed that it was mine, the Noble and Ancient House of Black getting blacker with filth everyday, I wrinkled my nose.

"I'll pick up Harry at the station around one o'clock Sirius, I'll see you when we get back." Remus called from the first floor before making his way to the ground floor quietly trying not to rouse Mothers horrid painting.

"Right, stay out of trouble you great dusty moth." I called back to him just as a particularly large and dusty moth batted my clumsily. Remus just hummed distractedly before letting the front door click closed behind him. I turned into my room and tried to ignore the growing sense of panic I often felt when alone. Especially in these last few weeks, I had been having strange dreams almost every night. I began to turn the old ring I wore on my pinky finger around in circles as I had formed a habit of doing since I had found it beside some charred cloth the day I met Remus after the blast. It was a traditional Black family engagement ring but I could tell from the strips along the side that it was meant for either Regulus or me but no amount of research through dodgy old accountancy files of the Ancient house of shit there was no trace of who commissioned it. I was uncomfortable that such a ring even existed when I really though about it. Most likely one of my mothers relics of hope that I might suddenly return to whatever form she had expected of me. Or perhaps even more disturbingly it belonged to Regulus, thinking of it that way only made me want a drink or to punch something so I usually refrained from thinking of it that way if I could. I was drinking like it was a wedding every working day as it was.

The ring felt heavy on my hand, it wasn't something you could forget about wearing, no matter how many ways you turned it, it still meant to much for that. When I reached my room I climbed into bed and stared at the flat packed rafters above. I didn't really want to go to sleep to have another nightmare but then again, spend enough time around Dementors and it's a wonder that nightmares don't start having you. I shuffled in the bed and decided I would perhaps be better off after a night cap, fortunately I always kept some liquor within arms reach.

I fell right into the dream as I slipped into unconsciousness, as if I blinked and opened my eyes somewhere else. Like apparating in your sleep, I was standing down the hall from the room I had just fallen asleep in staring into the large poshly framed mirror. My reflection looked the same as always, too old and too weary and a little drunk.

"Sirius."

"Wha-?" my head span to the source of the cool deep feminine voice, there was no one there. I turned back to the mirror and suddenly my reflection was gone. The frame was empty except for the symbols that had once been written out on the wall were scrawled on the wall in the mirror. They made me panic, I realised I was holding onto the mirrors gilded edge.

"Oh, fuck." said the voice and I was going to question it further when my legs gave out and I collapsed heavily on the floor.

I shot up into a sitting position a moment later in a loudly creaking bed in an oddly round room. A fire smouldered on in the corner, and a single dim muggle bulb hummed toward the back of the room I fell back onto the bed and frowned. None of my dreams had been like this, they had been smoky and ashen and terrifying. Visions of dead loved ones and what felt like a warning or a threat. I sense of premonition, I woke up and the ring weighed heavily on my hand, none like this. With this presence.

"Relax." I jolted as I felt the breath of the woman sweep across my chest. "Can you hear me?" she asked and it sounded oddly tender.

"I can feel you." my voice hissed out in a whisper, and I could of course, a flush flowed up my body as I realised her soft pliant weight was lavished over my side, she was holding my hand. No one had held my hand since I was twenty one, maybe younger. "Who are you?" I asked and she chuckled silently to herself. I had never been so conscious during a dream without being closer to waking up. It was more like a vision.

"I'm a friend of a friend." she answered mysteriously before eventually emerging from beneath the blankets to stare down at me. Not without allowing her body to rub sensually off mine however. She looked very pleased with herself, she was that strangest looking girl I had ever dreamed into my bed. Her white blonde hair was greying and her dark lashes drew out an attack for her startling near white irises, she was very young and violently beautiful, I just wanted to stare. I was suddenly very afraid that I might accidentally wake up before I could memorise everything about her. She looked at me like I was something she was half pushed to buy. Like she was deciding if she wouldn't prefer something else. Needless to say when it came to girls I was in bed with it wasn't a look I was used to receiving.

"You don't remember her." the nymph stated and I wondered if a faery of some sort had found its way into my dream. She looked a little disappointed.

"What's your name?" I asked just so that she would talk some more.

"Juno," she smiled a little, "but your friend calls me Jude."

"Which friend of mine?" I asked curiously and she bit her lip before giving my bare chest a thorough once over and shifting closer;

"A very lucky girl by the looks of things." she stared into my eyes and smiled mischievously; "Let me remind you." she slipped her hand out of mine and brushed her fingers up along my chest before raising herself up slightly and pressing her mouth to mine. It had been a long time since I had had a dream like that, a beautiful dream, a dream girl. I held her at her waist and pulled her closer sighing slightly and feeling her cool skin relax against me. She moved with a sure confidence, her mouth slightly parted against mine the pressure measured, her breasts pressed against me brazenly as I ran a thumb gently across her ribs. She smiles against my mouth, sucking erotically on my lower lip as she shivered underneath my hands and pulls us up so that I was sitting up straight with her in my lap. She moves back just a millimetre as a shudder runs through my skin;

"Hot." she sighs over my mouth and I realise we are some place else, that we are on a large old fashioned bed and a taste of sugar resonated in my mouth. I clear my throat as a blush creeps into my cheeks;

"I…" I didn't know what I was planning to say but I'm sure something smooth was on its way out before she cut across me.

"Don't you ever let me do that again." the girl smirked at me and I quirked an eyebrow before continuing; "Now tell me if you remember anything now Sirius Black." Juno demanded and I shrugged as I realised I was wearing a cotton shirt and she still lay draped across me, mostly naked. I shook my head;

"Sorry." I admonished and she climbed off of my to sit beside me, sighing wearily.

"Well, even though there is literally no indication that that was going to work it was worth a shot, don't you think?" she smiled at me again and I was captivated by her strange eyes. I said nothing.

"She did say you were a good kisser, I was just making sure she hadn't deluded herself." I frowned down at her but my vanity couldn't help but ask;

"Was she?" the sprite glanced over my again coyly before suddenly seeming to sober greatly.

"Before sunset tomorrow you will go to the Ministry of Magic Sirius Black." suddenly the dark presence that haunted so many of my dreams felt disturbingly close, I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Why?" I asked quietly and felt the beginnings of anger rise in me as I grew weary of the faeries tricks.

"Because I know destiny and if you don't go now by choice you soon will by fate and then it will be you who needs saving." a slightly manic smile flitted across my lips as she said this and I felt the beginning of fear. There was nothing more laughable to my broken soul then fear the girl put her hand on the side of my face and turned me to her as she spoke. She was so strange but she made me feel safe, I felt like she was really trying to warn me. Everything about her seemed so true as she continued.

"Their will be no one to save you if you don't save the one before the setting of the sun. come with me." she took my hand and pulled me from the canopied bed, as she opened the curtains we stared out over a stone atrium, in the middle stood an arch and in the arch stood a monster.

"It can not see you." said the colourless girl standing beside me in a pair of my underwear and a t-shirt with a muggle cartoon on it I used to wear to annoy my Mother brushing the tops of her thighs. She held my hand again, she was such a steadfast being, her touch was firm and assertive as she guided me toward the veil. I tried not to look at the demon, I tried not to stare at the large hunched skeletal creature bathed in its smoking black cloak as its red eyes stared at the girl beside me with a large feral grin.

"Can it see you?" I asked and she did not turn away from the monster as she answered;

"Yes." I blanched as the things hovered closer toward her and gnashed its teeth at her. She smiled frighteningly at it and for a moment she looked equally inhuman as she hissed threateningly.

"But it can not understand me, or hurt me as long as I touch you." I nodded slowly before my heavy terrified tongue shifted to ask a question, I hated not having the answers;

"Are we really here?" I asked, recoiling slightly as my voice bounced off the atrium;

"I'm as here as I can be, you are at home in your bed, I am there too, watching over you. I am with her and so is it, it is watching over her." I shuddered as I imagined the grotesque creature whispering to someone in there sleep, and suddenly the dark manifestations sickly aura felt familiar and I felt nauseous, I was equally as misfortunate.

"He will bring her here and carry her through there unless you stop it, you are going to have to take that ring and put it on her finger and save her with true loves kiss. Her life is in your hands." A charred skeletal hand which reeked of burning flesh reached out for the girl as she said this but she simply took a step back and flipped him the finger before shuddering into smoke. I was have way between incredulous laughter and crying don't leave me here when I realised I had shifted with her and we were sitting in a closed muggle restaurant in a booth that smelt strongly of cigarettes.

"But to do that you will of course have to fall in love with her first." the girl stated as she threw her feet over the edge of the table, she was dressed in an ankle length old fashioned blue grey witches dress and wiggling her toes at me.

"I don't know if I can fall in love at all never mind to some girl I've only just met." I hissed heatedly, starting to feel more then a little animosity toward the dream walking woman, she lent across the table and smiled as she put her feet back on the floor and lifted my shirt, I was about to question her as she shifted further across the table and spoke right into my ear;

"I knew you'd say that, but don't worry, you're already inlove with her, you have just been a fucking idiot about it." she moved the front of my confused face for a moment and smiled as she pressed a shockingly cold finger the curved tattoo above and to the right of my naval and applied painful amounts of pressure. It felt like a thousand painful and small knots were attaching and tugging along my body forcefully making me cry out as my head felt ready to pop.

"Just one more for the road, you really are a beauty." exhaling shakily I received another bizarre kiss from the beautiful woman before feeling the pain dissipate and falling away from the dream.

I sat up in bed with a start my head buzzing and my hair on end as I clutched at my sweat drenched shirt over my fast beating heart and stared at the faded stationary muggle girl glues permanently to the wall. The sun shone into the room as I remembered the sweet smell of her skin and the sizzle of misunderstood magic in her every touch. How she had changed my entire heart;

"Jodie."

A/N: thanks for reading and PLEASE REVIEW!