Hello all! Apologies for the delay. As I think I said before, I had a HUGE exam to study for taking up most of my time. Now I'm having a little writer's block. I thought it might be a good time for another interlude, which I had a much easier time writing rather than making you wait longer. Enjoy!
Chapter 14 - Interlude #2:
Harry was staring at the door and he was mightily vexed. It was not the door which was bothering him so much as what was behind the door: a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix.
Harry's best friend was missing for several days now, and it seemed all anyone wanted to do about it was hold meetings he wasn't allowed to attend. Even Fred and George were invited in now that they were done with school. That left just him, Ginny and Ron sitting about the living room waiting for that blasted door to open and Mrs. Weasley to announce dinner.
Ginny and Ron were, at that moment, playing a card game across from each other at the coffee table. Harry, too busy sulking in his armchair, wasn't paying much attention to which game it was. Every so often a blue eye would peek out from beneath a fringe of red hair to check on him. The boy hadn't moved in what seemed like hours. He just kept staring at the door.
The inhabitants of the room jumped at the sound of a hinge unlocking. The noise of scraping chairs and finals whispers filtered out from the door.
"Dinner!" Mrs. Weasley called, like clockwork.
Harry wasn't interested in dinner. He didn't think he'd felt hunger for food since that night in the Department of Mysteries, only hunger for information.
Order members were trickling out of the dining room to stretch legs and use the loo. Harry's two companions rose to join their mother at the dinner table and snag good seats before the others returned. When Harry didn't move, Ginny paused and turned back.
"Coming?"
"In a moment," Harry answered, urging her to continue on. Ginny shot him a skeptical look but exited anyway. Harry wanted to do something and it couldn't wait.
The teen weaved his way through the lingering Order members until he pushed through to the other side of the hallway. Up he went, skipping stairs two at a time, making a beeline for one particular bathroom.
As if summoned, Sirius walked out into the hallway, zipping up his pants as he did so. Harry knew Sirius' schedule by now, and knew his godfather would be rushing to use the loo as soon as the meeting was over. It was the perfect opportunity to corner him alone.
"Harry!" his godfather greeted him jovially. "Loo's all yours."
"I don't need the loo, Sirius. I need to talk to you."
"Oh, well, can it wait until after dinner? That meeting ran a bit long..."
"No," Harry snapped. He was trying, but failing, to keep his cool. "I need you to tell me what was said in the meeting."
Sirius looked suddenly exasperated.
"She's my best friend. My best friend! How could you just not tell me anything?"
"Harry, you have to be patient-"
"I've been patient!" Harry roared. "For days, I've been patient! And all you seem to do is sit around that damn dining room table and talk."
"Harry, we're doing everything we can to find her."
"It's not enough! What if she's in trouble? What if the Death Eaters have her? This is taking too long! You're my guardian… not Molly or Remus or Dumbledore. You have the power to give me permission to join the meetings. I can help!"
"You're not of age, Harry. You can't do magic outside school, and you're too valuable for us to just let you roam the streets aimlessly looking for her." Harry could tell Sirius was growing more frustrated by the way he gripped the door frame. This argument wasn't new, but usually Sirius was more on Harry's side of things. He couldn't understand why Sirius was suddenly so interested in keeping him in the dark.
"But I can help in the meetings," Harry insisted.
"Harry!" Sirius roared. Harry reeled back. "You have a direct connection to Voldemort's mind. So no, you cannot be privy to the meetings!"
"I thought you were on my side of that? That you agreed that Snape wasn't-" Harry could feel his cheeks begin to burn. Sirius never took Snape's side.
"Snape was being a right bastard as usual. That still doesn't change the circumstance. End of discussion." Sirius turned to walk down the stairs towards dinner and end the conversation for good. In a fit of desperation, Harry yelled at Sirius's back.
"It's like you don't even care she's gone!"
Harry knew the moment those words left his mouth he had overstepped. He was just so angry. It felt like they hadn't been making any progress, and he wanted his best friend home safe and sound. He needed to find some way to get Sirius to take him seriously. The man in question whipped around and thundered.
"You're not the only one who's worried about Maya!"
Harry blinked in confusion.
"Hermione. You mean Hermione. Who's Maya?"
Sirius froze in deer in the headlights fashion. In a flash he was gone. In the distance, Harry could hear a door slam upstairs.
/
He'd done it again. First it was Harry… muddling him with James. That one he'd explained away. It made sense, after all. The two were practically twins if you weren't staring into either one's eyes. Plus, he missed his best friend.
Then he'd slipped up and called Ginny by the name of Lily. Not in front of her, luckily. It was just in passing to Remus. His old friend spared him his dignity by ignoring the slip, chalking it up to tiredness and the red hair.
Now, maybe this was incontrovertible proof Azkaban had permanently messed with something in his brain. Why on earth would Sirius have confused Hermione and Maya?
Come to think of it, why think of Maya now at all? Sirius had pushed that name to the deepest possible recesses of his psyche. Of all the things that tortured his mind in Azkaban, nothing could compare to the unsolved mystery that was Maya Potter. It was pure self-preservation which had compelled him to lock her away so permanently.
Perhaps it was the de ja vu feeling that shot up his spine at the mention of another young woman in his chosen family disappearing so suddenly and strangely without a trace. In particular, a young woman who some Order members seemed hell bent on actively not searching for.
That was the true reason, after all, Sirius wouldn't let Harry into the Order meetings. The fact was, Harry was right. While certain members like himself and Remus were spinning their wheels day and night to find out what happened to Hermione, it felt almost like others in the group were doing all they could to distract from the mission. Dumbledore was no surprise, as he always had some sort of hidden agenda. What Sirius couldn't figure out, though, was why Sturgis Podmore and Mad-Eye of all people were so firmly in the Headmaster's camp. Molly Weasly as well, who seemed to be on the verge of tears a bizarre amount of the time. It was enough to have adults already arguing on Hermione's behalf… he didn't need a distraught, screaming Harry interrupting the process.
This whole thing was a nightmare, and Sirius was barely holding it together. The reminders of a girl he used to know wasn't helping matters.
Sirius ran his hand down Buckbeak's wing and the giant creature squawked for more.
"Right-o Buckbeak, a dram of firewhiskey is exactly what the doctor ordered."
/
Harry sheepishly returned to the dining room, hoping no one had paid too much attention to his absence or the yelling match upstairs. He entered as everyone was distracted with Molly's bustling back and forth to the kitchen to set food upon the table. He slithered into the seat saved for him between Ron and Ginny, ignoring a couple of side glances shot his way as he did so.
"Where's Sirius," Ginny whispered. Harry shrugged, pretending not to know or care.
The teen tried to sit and hop in to assist passing the plates down the table, but his curiosity got the better of him. Gryffindor impulsiveness waited for no man.
"Remus?" The man poked his head up. "Who's Maya?"
CRASH.
Mrs. Weasley stood between the door and the table, a pile of mashed potato and bowl shards at her feet.
"Oh, darling," soothed a confused-looking Mr. Weasley, pulling his chair back to stand and comfort his wife. Instead Ron's mom put a hand to her mouth, and held the other out in a motion to stop him.
"I just. I just." Mrs. Weasley apologized and backed out of the room. Mr. Weasley followed, as Bill waved his wand to clean up the mess on the floor.
A hush fell about the dinner table.
"Um. Where did you hear that name, Harry?"
"Sirius and I were," he paused, "I guess you could call it arguing about Hermione. But then instead of using her name, he accidentally called her Maya."
An interesting group of table members began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Harry would have thought Remus would have known this person, possibly from school. But why were Kingsley and Sturgis Podmore looking anywhere but at him? And why was Mad-Eye looking more gruff than usual?
"Maya was… well I don't really know how else to say it. Maya was your aunt. She was also your godmother."