Chapter 63: Sirius, Fighting
Sirius had been the one to tell Harry to check in with his mirror in the first place, but when Harry had actually done it (because Harry was that kind of kid), Sirius found himself seething with rage.
Harry had clearly called him out of a sense of duty, out of a sense that his lonely pathetic godfather needed looking after. He didn't doubt that Harry and Remus had had a conversation about how sad it was that Sirius didn't have a life outside of them, and that they were allowed to spend the year at Hogwarts because they were fully actualized people and Sirius was not.
In Sirius' humble opinion, he had handled his incarceration extraordinarily well. He hadn't broken under the torture or the cold or the loneliness. He'd always been decent at being alone; as a child, he'd certainly preferred his own company to that of his family. Even in school, he'd found only a small subset of his classmates truly tolerable in large doses. James was almost the only person of whom Sirius had never, ever tired.
On any given day in Azkaban, Sirius hadn't felt lonely at all. He'd become accustomed to solitude, and the state of being alone had been completely natural.
Now, though, it was painful. Eight weeks of being with Harry almost all day, almost every day, had reminded him keenly of what he had lost.
He should have had Harry every day for ten years.
During those ten years, he should have had the opportunity to build a home and a life.
But even though he'd been a member of Dumbledore's Order, even though he'd fought harder against Voldemort than almost anyone else in wizarding Britain, no one had bothered to confirm that he belonged in Azkaban. Actual Death Eaters didn't go to Azkaban; they lied like Lucius Malfoy or hid like Peter Pettigrew or traded secrets like Igor Karkaroff.
Dumbledore, who had handpicked Sirius for the bloody Order in the first place, and who enjoyed almost infinite power, hadn't explored the possibility that Sirius might have been falsely accused.
A voice in the back of Sirius' mind— a voice that sounded suspiciously like Remus— politely suggested that he ought to remember how perfectly he'd framed himself, how wonderfully his own plan had worked to convince Dumbledore and everyone else that he was guilty, how long his history of impulsive and dangerous behavior had been by the time he'd been accused of blowing up those Muggles.
Another voice in the back of his Sirius' mind— this one sounding a bit like Félicité Palomer—reminded him of exactly how bad it had looked when Wormtail had blown up the street. He remembered the sorts of questions she had asked when she'd instructed him to think about finding James' body:
What do you see?
November 1, 1981, had been a dull, mild day. The night before he hadn't been able to see the moon; now he could see the faint outline of the sun, but the light filtered half-heartedly into the grey streets of London.
Peter had Muggle relatives and had perhaps thought that he could blend into the Muggle world so that Sirius would never find him. But Sirius knew London. Sirius had spent his formative years in London, never quite so isolated from the diverse energy of the city as his parents would have liked. Even better, Sirius knew how to follow a magical trail as a human and how to follow a rat's scent as a dog.
He saw the dull greyness— he knew that the world would always be dull and grey now— but he also saw the brilliance of Muggle London, the city he had loved even before he knew that that love was forbidden.
He saw brick buildings pressed up against the pavement. Dozens of sets of steps led to dozens of doorways. Above the dozens of doorways were dozens of windows in which were hung dozens of curtains. Most of the curtains were white; one set, Sirius remembered in curiously vivid detail, was bright orange. He would always wonder about the family that had hung the bright orange curtains and think that he might have liked to have known them.
He saw cars lined along every inch of the street.
He saw a crater in the middle of the street, deep enough to have pierced the sewer below. He saw flames and smoke.
Above all, he saw bodies. There were twelve corpses. He was numb to them, but he saw them.
Three young men— close to Sirius' own age— in Muggle business suits had been tossed in an undignified heap at the bottom of the crater.
An older man and woman had been thrown over the top of a car and slammed into the brick wall of the nearest building. Their bodies lay on the pavement, twisted in ways that bodies should never be twisted.
A woman about his mother's age had somehow, in the split second before the street exploded, thrown herself over three children. All three were girls. They wore matching uniforms that no doubt signified one of the local schools. The blonde girl wore pink ribbons in her hair; the dark-haired girl clutched a toy horse even in death. The last girl stared vacantly at the dim sky.
Another woman had been thrown close to Sirius' feet. Her body had been cut neatly in half. Her blood coated the street.
The man on the other side of the street had been decapitated.
The last body was so thoroughly disemembered that Sirius couldn't tell whether its owner had been male or female.
Every one of the twelve corpses meant that at least one more person was now just as devastated as Sirius had been ever since he'd seen James' body.
What he didn't see was Peter, because Peter had taken his rat form and vanished into the sewer.
He knew that Peter's finger must be on the ground, because he'd seen Peter cut it off, but it had blended into the debris to be found later by an overeager underling from the Department of Magical Catastrophes.
What do you smell?
The smoke and dust coated his throat, just as they had short hours before when he'd stood in the wreckage of the Potter's house in Godric's Hollow. The stench of the sewer made its way through the smoke. The tangy, iron smell of blood would not be ignored.
Beneath it was the smell of cars: petrol and rubber. There a faint whiff of perfume and a fainter whiff of eggs. The Muggles had been beginning their mornings, leaving for school and work, when Sirius and Peter had interrupted their day with a quarrel of which they'd known nothing. Would never know anything.
What are you touching?
Again, he was clenching his wand too tightly, just as he had in Godric's Hollow. His fingernails were digging into his own palm.
His robes were clammy with sweat and the air was thick against his skin.
What do you taste?
Bile. It had replaced the dust and ashes. It seemed that he had been inhaling dust and ashes for an eternity.
What do you hear?
Peter was gone, but Sirius heard his voice still. Shrill, loud, accusatory.
Sobbing.
Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?
Other voices joined Peter's. A woman shouting for a man named John. A child shouting for his father. Two or three screaming incoherently; two or three more calling for help.
He could hear the Muggle sirens. Soon help would be on the way, both magical and Muggle. Soon the witnesses would repeat the words, over and over.
Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?
They wouldn't be right, but they wouldn't be wrong, either.
Sirius laughed.
He heard his laughter in the past; he laughed, too, in the present.
He laughed until he sobbed on the floor of the horrible house he'd bought to be closer to the boy he'd orphaned
Before he knew it, he'd left the little house behind— he hated that place, hated it almost as much as Grimmauld Place and Azkaban— and stomped into the Hog's Head. It was as filthy as always and that suited Sirius' mood.
Behind the bar, Aberforth's mouth twisted to the side. Sirius stood up even straighter. He didn't care what Aberforth thought of him. "Fire whiskey," he said, with no pretended pleasantries and certainly no explanation.
Aberforth served the drink without comment. The glass bore an array of fingerprints and a previous patron's lipstick as well as the usual grime. Sirius didn't care. He was beyond niceties. He had been born beyond niceties.
He drank the fire whiskey in one swallow and asked for another.
"I'll join you." Aberforth produced another glass, no cleaner than the first, and sat beside Sirius.
"I didn't ask you to join me," said Sirius.
"I own the Hog's Head and I will join anyone I care to join."
Sirius grunted and drank the second fire whiskey, carefully not bothering to acknowledge that Aberforth was drinking as well. "Another."
Aberforth poured a third drink. "Drink this one slowly because I'm not giving you another one for half an hour."
"That's ridiculous."
"You're free to leave. You know the way to the Three Broomsticks."
Sirius grimaced. He did know the way to the Three Broomsticks. He knew that it would be crowded enough that Rosmerta and the girls she employed wouldn't be able to keep track of how much he'd drunk, and they certainly wouldn't cut him off after a paltry three drinks.
He also knew that the Three Broomsticks would be sickeningly loud and cheerful. He didn't want to see happy people. He thought that he might hex any happy people who crossed his path.
Sirius let the first half of his third fire whiskey rest in his mouth. He didn't swallow. He let the flavor, such as it was, course over and around his tongue. The insides of his cheeks started to numb; the rest of his mouth burned. He wished the fire could consume the rest of his body and drive out the memories of the summer he'd had with Harry.
"The roof of your mouth is going to blister."
Sirius swallowed reluctantly. "You've got a lot of rules. First you think I'm drinking too fast, and now you think I'm not drinking fast enough."
"You know the way to the Three Broomsticks."
"You don't like business?"
"I don't like your sort of business right now."
"I don't like your brother right now."
Aberforth raised his glass in a silent toast to Sirius. "I often don't like my brother."
In spite of himself, Sirius chuckled. "I often didn't like mine, either."
"I always had some sympathy for Regulus. Younger brother, always in the shadow of the brilliant older brother. I know the feeling."
"Your sympathy is misplaced." He drank that second half of his fire whiskey and regretted it bitterly. Now there would be no more for half an hour unless he went to a pleasant place and interacted with pleasant people. "Our parents never hesitated to tell him that he was a much better son than I was."
"As you like." Aberforth broke his word and poured Sirius another drink, which Sirius felt he'd more than earned.
An owl swooped into the room just then and dropped a letter in front of Sirius. Sirius flipped it over in his hands. It was from Remus, of course. Remus pitied him like Harry pitied him, but he supposed that he preferred their pity to Aberforth's implication that Regulus had somehow deserved better from Sirius.
Dear Mr. Padfoot:
My older students are in great need of dueling practice. In addition to their classes, I would like to allow them to attend a "dueling club" several times this year. I think a proper demonstration is in order before we open the club, and you happen to be the only person I know who is currently a member of an actual elite dueling club, would you be willing to be my opponent? Two weeks from tonight?
Regards,
Mr. Moony
P.S. If you don't go to bed tonight I will know.
He went back to the cottage and turned back the quilt on his bed. Propped against the pillow was a book of crossword puzzles and a chocolate frog.
He set them on the table and fantasized about disemboweling Moony in front of the whole school.
(He did know the counter-spell for re-emboweling, so it wouldn't be that big a deal.)
The next morning, he found that the roof of his mouth was raw and swollen. The fire whiskey had burned until it blistered.
He considered hexing Aberforth for being right, but instead he wrote to Remus.
Dear Mr. Moony:
Thank you for the crossword puzzles and the chocolate frog.
I will, of course, be delighted to defeat you thoroughly in front of all of your students and colleagues at your little children's dueling club. You will recall disgracing me in front of my godson and his friends at a garden picnic about a year ago and will understand that you deserve payback rather than mercy.
Regards,
Mr. Padfoot
He had nothing to do and no one to see for the next three days. His burned mouth made eating painful, but he cared very little; he had no appetite. He sent a message to Andromeda informing her that he would miss the next family dinner.
He was unsurprised when Tonks appeared on his doorstep within the hour.
"That didn't take long," he said as she pushed through the doorway, knocked over an abandoned teacup, and settled herself on a chair.
"That's the thing about desk duty." Her words were tinged with a bitterness he could appreciate. "I'm not doing anything worthwhile, so it's easy enough for me to keep regular hours. Or no hours. Or run errands for Mum."
"You're an Auror. You don't need to be scared of your mother."
"I agree with my delightful, wise, and intelligent mother," said Tonks as primly as she could, which wasn't really very primly at all. "You ought to come to dinner with us."
"Why?"
"Because we're fun."
"We have different ideas of fun."
"I'm almost sure we don't."
"Anna can survive without me for one week."
"She survived without you for a month while you were busy taking Harry all around the world." She paused, considering what she had just said. "Are you angry with Mum?"
"No. Why would I be angry with her?"
"Just on principle, because she named her only daughter Nymphadora Vulpecula?"
"I admit that I don't know why an ordinarily sane woman who do such a thing. Feel free to tell Anna that that's why I won't come."
"I'd prefer a real reason."
"I have a prior engagement."
"Every night this week and next?"
"I'm extremely popular."
"You ignore almost everyone who isn't Harry or Remus, and both of them are at Hogwarts."
Sirius felt his eyes narrow at the mention of Remus' name. "Did Moony send you to check on me?"
"Mum sent me. I thought we'd established that."
"You could be killing two birds with one stone. I know Moony told you to look after me last year." In fact, he knew nothing of the kind, but he was willing to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to find out.
"He did, last year," said Tonks, and Sirius inwardly congratulated himself for his cleverness. "I haven't spoken to him since we returned from Florida."
"Why not?"
She screwed up her face the way she usually did before she morphed but didn't say anything.
"You have a chance at happiness. Why won't you take it?"
"Why won't you come to dinner?"
"I'll answer yours if you'll answer mine," he offered, determining that there was no real reason not to tell the truth and that he might as well help out his friend and his cousin if he could.
"Fine." She gave him a hard look. "Why won't you come to dinner?"
"I burned my mouth drinking fire whiskey. Hurts too much to eat."
"That's really possible?" she asked interestedly.
"I didn't think it was until it happened. If you drink at a normal pace, you'll be fine, but if you hold it in your mouth for too long…" he shrugged.
"There has to be a potion that can help with that. Mum's good at healing potions, she can make something, or if not she'll just serve you yogurt or cucumber soup or something."
She had worn him down. "All right. I'll come. Your turn."
A bright smile flashed across her face, making her pink hair seem even pinker. "Brilliant. Mum'll be so pleased. You know how much it means to her to have you back."
He did know, and he felt like an arse, now, for refusing the invitation in the first place. "Answer my question, Nymphadora."
"Don't call me Nymphadora."
"Don't fail to hold up your end of our bargain."
She sighed and suddenly looked several years younger. "I don't want to feel like I'm fated to do something. Like I'm not in control of my own life. Like I'm destined to fall in love with this man instead of being able to choose him. My parents— my Mum— she was supposed to be one thing. The pureblood princess, the perfect Black. She ignored what everyone told her she had to be and decided to be someone else, the woman who chose a Muggle-born and left her family behind. I always admired that. I always wanted to be my own person. I chose to be an Auror even though the program hardly admits any applicants. I chose to be a Hufflepuff even though the Sorting Hat offered me— offered me other paths. I chose my friends even when it seemed like we wouldn't fit— Tulip's parents still don't like me. I thought I chose Remus, but I didn't. He set things up. Or the universe set things up. I want to know that I'm the one responsible for my own life, that no one and nothing else decreed that I had to be Remus' wife and Teddy's mother."
"He told you about Teddy?"
She nodded. "I know he wants him back. I can't blame him. I don't want to hurt him. I— I'm confused. Is that enough of an answer?"
"It is."
"Can we duel now?"
He grinned. "We can."
Their duel ended in a draw when a stray spell struck the neighbor's kneazle. They had a nice time anyway.
Andromeda did, as it happened, know how to cure fire whiskey-induced burns. Sirius realized how much he'd missed her over the summer.
He still felt hollow and useless without Harry.
He tucked his hair behind his ear and thought perhaps he would let it grow long again. At the very least, he wouldn't cut it until Halloween.
When it was finally time for him to visit Hogwarts and throw some nasty hexes at his last surviving friend, he no longer felt like doing it. Lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling felt much more appealing. But he had given his word, and he dragged himself toward the castle as promised.
It appeared that the entire school had assembled for the dueling exercise, and it felt as if every student turned to stare at Sirius as he entered the Great Hall. Eyes widened; jaws dropped; tongues whispered behind cupped hands.
He was a common enough sight in Hogsmeade that his neighbors had mostly stopped doing startled double takes when he passed by. The people he chose to meet outside of Hogsmeade— largely Andromeda's family and the members of the Flagstone Dueling Club— treated him casually enough. The Muggles he'd seen when he'd spent the summer with Harry were sometimes openly curious about him, but in a way that spoke of interest, not terror.
At least half of the children in the Great Hall were afraid of him. He couldn't entirely blame them; he had broken into their school and caused a bit of a crisis less than two years before.
He'd kept to himself so much since his name had been cleared that he'd forgotten that he was still notorious.
The Death Eater.
The man who betrayed the Potters.
The escaped prisoner.
The killer.
He made his way easily through the crowd to Remus; students flinched and stepped out of his way.
"You required the entire student body to give up their Thursday evening to be here?" he asked by way of greeting.
"I only required it of the fourth years and up." Remus was beaming, and Sirius had to be pleased about that even if he hated everything else in the universe. "The younger students asked to be here. Begged, in some cases."
"And now they'll have to watch as their beloved Defense professor is completely humiliated."
"I'll demonstrate how to be graceful in defeat if that's the case. And I expected the same from you, Padfoot. Don't be funny." If Sirius hadn't known Remus very, very well, he would have thought that Remus actually didn't care if he lost the duel.
"No wonder you didn't ask Snivellus to help you demonstrate," whispered Sirius. "Grace in defeat was never one of his strong points." It wasn't one of Sirius' own strong points, either, but he didn't feel the need to mention that.
Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?
He shoved the memory out of his mind. He'd never underestimated Remus' strength the way he'd underestimated Peter's. He had incontrovertible evidence that Remus didn't want anything bad to happen to him.
He still felt the blood drain from his face as he remembered again the day he'd tracked Peter down.
He watched again as Peter cut off his own finger.
He almost grabbed Remus by the arm and told him that he would not, could not, do this. Half of the professors in attendance were perfectly qualified to help Remus demonstrate a proper duel.
No.
He wouldn't disappoint Moony— nor Harry, who had to be in the throng somewhere with Ron and Hermione.
Remus, meanwhile, was directing a dozen people at once: professors, prefects, students. Sirius managed to compose himself completely before Remus launched into his introductory speech, telling students what to watch for and assuring them that they would have their own turns soon enough. He told them that their grades would rest on what they observed while watching their fellow students (and their professor, too), not on how far they advanced in the tournament themselves.
Sirius thought that that was a lousy way of evaluating students, but he wasn't the professor.
"Sirius," said Remus, and even though he'd barely been half-listening, Sirius knew that it was time to take his place across from Remus.
The other professors were situated at likely spots around the Great Hall, ready to intercept spells that might go astray lest Sirius or Remus hit an eleven-year-old with a Stunner.
(To be fair, it would probably be worth it to the eleven-year-old. He could dine out on the story of being knocked unconscious by the infamous Sirius Black for the rest of his life.)
They drew.
They bowed.
They fought.
Remus hit him in the chest straight away, and the Great Hall erupted in cheers. Either the students really loved Moony or they absolutely despised Sirius. Quite possibly both.
Sirius rolled to the ground as he recovered and conjured hundreds of birds to circle and disorient Remus. It was one of the easiest conjuring spells, but it was also damn impressive when done on a grand scale. The students should have cheered.
They booed.
It reminded him of the day he'd been Sorted. He'd had hundreds of Hogwarts students booing him then, too.
He hadn't cared when he was eleven and he didn't care now.
He threw a series of stunning and binding spells at Remus, hoping he was too distracted by the birds to block them, but no such luck; Moony was quick to recover.
They circled each other again, warily.
No doubt for his students' amusement, Remus set a series of the silliest spells in his repertoire at Sirius. He didn't succeed in making Sirius sprout boils or quack like a duck, but he did manage to turn Sirius' hair a glittery purple.
Sirius didn't care if his hair was purple, per se, but the glimpses he kept catching of it as he and Remus continued to exchange spells were an unwelcome distraction. Perhaps he should reconsider his decision not to cut it?
He would think about that later.
He cast Stupefy with his wand and Incendio with his free left hand.
He'd been practicing for months at Flagstone to get that combination right. Hestia had laughed when he'd bunked it up and let her win the championship in July, but no one was laughing now. Remus expected the Stunner; he didn't expect the burning charm. As his robes caught fire, he turned for just long enough—
"Expelliarmus!"
He wasn't certain what Remus cast— he must have cast it nonverbally— but the end result was that they both lost their wands.
They threw themselves to the ground unceremoniously, punching and clawing and wrestling as they tried to grab the wands. It was wonderful. It was just like being in the woods, or in Remus' room, on the full moon.
It was even more wonderful when Sirius grabbed both wands with his left hand and trussed Remus up like—
Like Remus had trussed Peter on the night Sirius had finally found them both after twelve long years.
Professor Flitwick shouted that the duel was over. There was a roar from the students (some of whom were now rooting for Sirius, the bandwagoners).
"Finite Incantantem," said Sirius, and he pulled Remus to his feet, returning his wand as he did.
"Finite Incantantem," Remus answered in turn. For a split second Sirius wondered why; then, as he felt a cool ripple across his scalp, he remembered the purple hair. He considered making a very dirty joke about how much Remus obviously missed Tonks, but he supposed it wasn't the time and place. He had, after all, promised to be graceful, win or lose.
They bowed, and Remus launched into a series of questions to the older students: what had he done wrong? What had Sirius done wrong? How many nonverbal spells had they noticed?
Then, quickly, the students divided themselves into groups in the four corners of the Great Hall. Sirius quickly realized that the students had been divided by year, and he hastened to the fifth years' corner to watch Harry.
A few of the fifth years— the ones who had attended Harry's party— greeted him as pleasantly as could reasonably be expected while they were working themselves up into a mock- murderous frenzy.
Sirius evaluated Harry's classmates quickly as he watched. Most of them were hopeless. (Remus would have said things about how they were still learning and had many strengths, but Sirius wasn't Remus. Most of them were rubbish and would always be rubbish.)
A few, Hermione and Ron among them, were decent and had the potential to be good.
Harry was head and shoulders above the rest. He dispatched his classmates quickly, but not unkindly, and Sirius recalled that Harry was used to sparring with two or three of his classmates at once.
The only other fifth year who might challenge Harry, Sirius realized with no pleasure, was Narcissa's brat. Draco knew what he was doing even without Snape's occasional whispered instruction.
Harry still dispatched Draco with little trouble.
Sirius let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding and pretended that his attention was partially on the seventh years. Cedric defeated Fred for the seventh year championship, but the Weasleys were not without success; Ginny had become the fourth year champion rather easily. A dark-haired Slytherin girl about whom Sirius knew nothing prevailed among the sixth years.
Remus called the students to attention again and reminded them that their essays evaluating the duels they had watched would be due at their first Defense class next week. He then asked the prefects to ensure that everyone returned to their dormitories and common rooms with the utmost alacrity.
Sirius was making his way toward the door when Harry appeared beside him.
"You were great," said Harry. "You lit Lupin on fire."
Sirius chuckled. "You were better," he returned honestly. "Though if I were you, I'd watch my back around Narcissa's little shit."
"I always do."
Of course he did. The greatest dangers weren't always the obvious ones.
Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?
Sirius hated September the way he hated November. They were both much too close to October.
To be continued
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