Jamie,
I've come to terms with the fact that this story is going to be non-chronological, and you're just gonna have to put up with that, I'm afraid. Every letter I've written for you in the past month I've ended up burning, so. I'm just gonna. Start with the easiest stuff. I think.
Regulus was eleven when he first told me he's going to get the Dark Mark someday. That's sort of when it actually started.
"He's asleep, I think," Yí'ān's soft voice murmurs from close by.
Orion registers that he's curled up on Galina's sofa, in the basement apartment she shares with Yí'ān and every other traumatised queer halfblood in Iceland. It takes his every effort not to stiffen. He doesn't remember falling asleep. The last thing he does remember is telling them… telling them about him. About Riddle. His blood runs cold. Stupid.
"Yeah." Galina sighs from somewhere near the doorway, heavy and tired. "Thorbjǫrg above, Yí'ān."
"I know. I know."
Galina laughs hoarsely. "You know," she says in her half-slavic voice, "There must be something I'm doing wrong, to keep drawing strange, runaway teens my way. You were just like him, when you found me."
"Same age, too," Yí'ān says. He says something in one of their common languages - Norwegian, Sirius thinks. Galina laughs like it's the last time she's ever going to laugh again.
"Always knew it'd be a matter of time before Britain fell," she says, in English again.
"I would've thought we'd have more time."
"That's war."
"Right." Yí'ān pauses. "Remind me to kill Tom bloody Riddle if we ever run into each other. What a…" He trails off. "You don't do that to a kid. Y'know. You saw the way he..."
Sirius' back prickles with a stare and he gets the distinct impression Galina is staring at him. "He knows lots. Too much. Enough that he might try to go back."
"Hero complex. All our types've got it, you don't need to tell me that."
"Well," Galina murmurs. "Let's hope we can keep him here for now."
"If he wants to go back, will you let him?"
"You're miles west. Of course. I'm not in the business of tyranny."
Yí'ān snorts, standing up from the sofa. "You're not in the business of anything. You hate capitalism. You're in the commune of tyranny. The co-op of tyranny. Plus, you despise the West."
"Ha. Come, you. Let's let him rest." A hand ghosts over Sirius; a blanket lands over his shoulders, draping down over his legs. The light flicks off and the door closes.
In the darkness, Sirius stares at the wall. For once, he isn't cold.
He was just a baby, Reg was. We were back for Christmas break of my second year (remember how much you fretted when I had to go back? Ha) and he snuck to my room in the middle of the night and we sat in the wardrobe so nobody would hear us, and he told me he was going to get the Dark Mark someday, because the Slytherins had been talking about how it was the proper way to honor your family, if you seriously cared about purity and honor. He said he would get it so I didn't have to, and I don't cry, but if I'd ever been close, it was then.
We argued. Argued loud enough that our parents came and kicked him out, and I said it'd been me, that I'd blackmailed him out of his room, so I got a smack but nothing more. Guess they were worried about leaving marks. He didn't mention it to me again, but I knew that I couldn't change his mind, that he'd decided it was what he was going to do.
I couldn't let that happen, though, so that was the moment I properly started researching who Riddle was. I hadn't known much about him before, not beyond my parents saying he was the second coming of Christ and the papers saying he was some foreign loony mad about blood politics, but it wasn't hard to find more once I knew what to look for. Funny thing about crazy fascists is that they don't often do a great job of covering their tracks. I figured out his old name pretty quickly (that was why we broke into the records room at Hogwarts in the last week of second year! I lied when I said it was for a prank. Sorry, Prongs). He grew up in a muggle orphanage. I don't think many knew that. Maybe it was just me and Dumbledore. Poetic irony, that.
When he came to our house for dinner in the summer after second year, the first time we met, I knew a bit about him then. Enough to get his ideology and what type of person he was. Overcompensating, maybe, and the type of bigot who doesn't have a specific ideology outside of hating Lesser Folks, so any bigots with specific ideologies can rally behind him because his ideas are vague enough to appeal. And the moment Reg asked me to go with him I made myself a promise: if either of us was going to get the Dark Mark, it'd be me.
(I'm not Marked, by the way. I don't think I would have been able to hide that from you. He always said he'd give me a Mark someday. Guess I got out of there just in time. Reg never got his either! Not yet, anyway. Not as far as I know. Fuck, Jamie.)
That first summer, when I was thirteen, he conducted one ritual, the one in the cave where he killed the muggle man. For a while after that, he left me alone. He would visit that next Christmas, a few times. To tell me stories of the things he was doing, the world he was building. The following summer, too. But he wouldn't conduct another ritual again, not for more than a year.
I was stupid for thinking I was safe, because things picked up quite quickly after that, and I suppose they never really slowed down.
The second was during the Christmas break of our fourth year. He came to our house on New Year's Eve, and Reg looked at me across the kitchen and I couldn't say no to either of them by that point (and I know I'm a rotten coward, and I'm sorry), so I went with him.
I'm not going to go into details because I still get nightmares about this one, quite a lot. But here goes nothing, I suppose.
Yí'ān rolls up a spliff, legs dangling off the side of the roof, heels slapping the concrete as he looks out over the dull underside of Reykjavik city. Pressed up beside him in one of Galina's heavy snow coats, Sirius watches the lights of a nearby gas station blink through the icy mist.
"Ah, fuck," Yí'ān mutters. "No lighter."
"I got it," Sirius says, fishing in the pockets. Galina gave him one of hers the other day and he carries it everywhere. He leans over to light the blunt. The dragon emblazoned along the outside of the stubby metal lighter lashes out its tail happily. Sirius loves magic.
"Thanks." Yí'ān takes a long, deep drag, then offers it to Sirius.
"Thanks," Sirius echoes. He puffs. Herb and rolling paper and the smell of pot smoke, heat ballooning in the back of his throat like a curse - it's all so familiar. He hands it back.
He's been staying with Galina and Yí'ān for two weeks now. Summer must scorching hot like gunpowder back down south, back home. Soon it's going to shrivel up into a cool Autumn. That first night, he fell asleep on their sofa and slept for fifteen hours, and after that he just sort of stayed there. All his worldly possessions fit into a backpack - a handful of change, a shock blanket, paper and pens, letters, the mirror - so he doesn't go back to the hotel, nor to the off-licence lagoon a few miles out of the city where he'd been working.
"Galina's going to Latvia next week," Yí'ān comments absently. "She's meeting up with an old wandmaker friend she knows. She's gonna see what she can do about that nasty Trace on you."
Sirius stiffens. Even the burn of smoke in his sinuses isn't enough to phase him out yet. "She doesn't need to do that."
"She knows." Yí'ān shrugs. "She wants to. Small wars, remember?"
"I've done fine without magic so far."
Yí'ān rolls his eyes. "You would've died if you weren't an animagus." He takes another drag on the spliff. "Didn't know they taught that sort of magic at Hogwarts."
"They don't," Sirius says. "My friends and I learned it ourselves outside of the classroom. We're unregistered."
"Really?" Yí'ān squints at him. "Show me your form? You said you were a dog, right?"
Sirius rolls his eyes. He shuffles away from the edge of the roof and transforms, feeling the large, warm body of the big black hound take him over.
Yí'ān stares. "Wow. You're big."
Sirius changes back. "That's what your mum told me the last time I saw her," he mutters, and shuffles back to the edge of the roof. "Gimme." He makes grabby hands at the blunt.
Holding the joint out of Sirius' reach, Yí'ān asks, "One more question. Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you want to learn? Just for kicks?"
Sirius shrugs, wrinkling up his nose. "For a friend," he says.
"Didn't think you had those," Yí'ān jokes. "Are they still alive?"
"I…" Sirius trails off. He thinks about what he knows; about the Trace, about the Ministry takeover, about soft, creative Remus, always reading, good at drawing, never quite sure whether it was his turn to speak.
Yí'ān seems to understand that the subject is sensitive. Wordlessly, he hands Sirius back the joint.
He brought me to a shack outside a small town. Somewhere in the southeast, I think, though don't quote me on that, I'm not certain about it. An overgrown little hovel, abandoned for years, the roof falling in. Old snakeskin pinned to the door.
His next target was already there. Some retired Ministry official called Bob Ogden. Riddle kneels down in front of him - he'd got him tied up - and he says
"You remember this place, don't you, Bob?" Riddle asks, voice extraordinarily smooth. He crouches in front of the quivering man.
Bob Ogden is eighty or eighty-five, maybe. He's trembling like a leaf, shackled to the rotting wooden floorboards, staring up at Riddle like he's looking into the face of god.
Sirius is fifteen years old. His birthday wasn't even two months ago. He wishes he was someone else. Anyone else. Back pressed against the grimy stone wall, falling apart with age and weather, bleached out by years of acid rain, he closes his eyes and prays for James to come crashing through the far wall and grab him and whisk him away.
"Answer me," Riddle says sleekly.
"Whatever you want from me," Ogden stutters, "I don't have it. If it's money you want-"
"You've been here before." Riddle stands up straight and stalks across the tiny shack, gesturing his arms out wide and grandiose. Even in this place, he manages to look like a king. Sirius watches him, not willing to let him out of his sight for a moment, so as to not get bitten. "You remember it, don't you?"
Any remaining colour drains from Ogden's face. He stammers for a moment. "That was years ago-"
"Did you," Riddle spins around on his heel. The walls shudder with pure power. "Did you, or did you not, threaten the family of Marvolo Gaunt with incarceration and prosecution in this very house, not thirty years ago?"
Ogden stares, his small eyes bugging. "I…"
"I know." Riddle looms in large. He seems to expand out of his body with anger when he's lie this. Sirius dreads the day he has to face Tom angry. "I've seen it, Ogden. You were the reason my grandfather was sent to Azkaban; you were the reason Merope Gaunt felt the disgusting desire to marry a muggle, and dragged him like a common whore into her bed. I've seen the colour of your soul, and you're dying tonight, though you surely deserve much worse, for what you did to one of the sacred twenty-eight, to the last descendents of noble Salazar Slytherin-"
Sirius rushes forward and, like he's trying to defuse a bomb, grabs Riddle's wrist. "Tom!" he yells. The howling of the wind against the walls goes deadly silent.
Riddle looks over his shoulder at Sirius. Anger bleeding from his voice, he says, "Yes, Sirius?"
"You can't-" Sirius staggers over his words, forcing them out even though he knows he's making a dangerous, dangerous mistake. He forces the image of Regulus' face out of his head. "You can't. Please. Not another person. I can't do this again."
Riddle stares at him, like he's not quite sure what Sirius is saying.
"Please," Sirius says again. It makes every ounce of Black bone in him and every drop of Black blood ache to be so undignified, but he doesn't care. He thinks if he sees another person die he'll shatter into lots of tiny little pieces. "Just let him go. Tom. Please."
Riddle's dark eyes shutter from Sirius' hand on his arm up to Sirius' face and then back again. In a faint, dangerous voice, he says, "Are you questioning me, Sirius?"
"No, that's not- no. Never." Sirius swallows back his fear. "Please-"
Quick as a viper, Riddle whips a hand back and slaps Sirius across the face, backhanded. Sirius staggers hard, head cracking backwards against his shoulder, and hits the mouldy stone wall. His cheek burns like fire. His back finds the cold, uneven brick and he slides down it to the floor, staring up at Riddle, hands clutching at his face. He can taste blood where one of his teeth has cut into the inside of his cheek.
"You do not," Riddle says, quiet rage in every single syllable of it, "Question my judgement. You do not presume to know better than I in affairs of war. You do not insubordinate me. You spoiled, arrogant, egotistical wretch-"
"I'm sorry!" Sirius yelps. "I'm sorry," he says again. I didn't mean it. Any of it. I'm sorry."
You're a coward, a voice that sounds like James tells him. You're a rotten coward.
Riddle kneels before him, gathering a fistful of Sirius' shirt in his hand and wrenching Sirius up to face him, their noses inches apart. The grip is strangling. Sirius tries to draw breath and can't get enough oxygen. It takes the defeat of every instinct he has to keep him from grappling with that thin, white hand. Like stepping into the open jaws of a snake and letting them snap shut. Bloody bites, he remembers. I've the wit and the skill to lure them into bloodier bites.
Gaze flicking between both of Sirius' eyes, Riddle nods slightly. "That's what I thought."
He slams Sirius back against the wall hard, then sweeps to his feet and returns to loom over Ogden, whose round, terrified face is blotchy and purplish.
"Now," Riddle tells Sirius, without looking back at him. "You watch, and you learn."
Sirius comes awake from the nightmare shouting, body vibrating with the phantom pain of his shirt cutting into his throat, his cheek burning, the hard stone wall at his back. The yell catches in the back of his throat and he realises he's lying on the sofa in Galina's apartment.
The door slams open. The lights blink on and Galina is hovering in the doorway, wand out, staring at him. She's in her travelling clothes, a thick coat and heavy boots.
"I'm okay," Sirius gasps. "I'm okay. Sorry. Nightmare." His hands scrabble against the sofa cushions as he pushes himself up to sit against the arm, shaking hard enough that he thinks he might just shake out of his skin.
"Can I come closer?" Galina asks, surprisingly gently.
Sirius thinks about that one for a second. She's not anything like Riddle, though - not a man, not as tall as he was, not as composed. "Yeah," he says.
Galina shuffles her bag off her shoulder and sits beside him on the sofa. The cushions sink. Sirius feels moored by nothing, like the world could shift by a single degree and he'd go flying off into nothingness, out of orbit. The yellowish bulb in the ceiling sways and lurches.
She takes his arm exceedingly gently. If she was Remus, she might have said, it wasn't real. Instead, she says, "I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for?" Sirius sniffs. "You don't need to be sorry. Didn't do anything."
Galina shakes her head. She looks old beyond her years. "During the first war," she says stallingly, "I was a Durmstrang student. The school was not a pleasant place to be then, especially not for those of us who were of impoverished European countries, those of us from the east, those of us who suffered so greatly only years later, during the muggle war. Polish, western Soviet, Latvian, Luthianian, Hungarian. I am a halfblood and that put a target on my back, too, for not many halfbloods were so brave as to try to survive a place like that. It's still like that today."
A prickle of guilt surges up Sirius' back. Unbidden, he remembers Lily Evans. God. She's probably dead by now. James is going to be devastated.
"Many of my friends," Galina says, "Had nightmares, then. When I joined the fight against Grindelwald, they snapped my wand, took my magic away. For some time, I was like you."
"Oh," Sirius says.
Galina nods. "I've spent fifty years fighting fascism," she tells him, warm hand squeezing his arm. "And I've seen a lot of trauma, and a lot of pain, and none of it have I ever blamed anybody for except for the people who inflicted it. You're as much a warrior as any of us are. Nightmares don't change that. Remember that for me."
Sirius nods, suddenly desperately sad. "You're leaving?" he asks breathlessly, gesturing towards her travelling bag.
Galina cracks a smile. "We're going to get the Trace off you," she promises. "Then, you're joining the fight. And you're not doing it alone." She laughs, an airy sound. "Yí'ān likes you. I daresay I do, too."
Sirius's eyes burn. He scrubs his face with a hand. "I bring bad luck," he warns.
"We're all bad luck this side of the war," Galina dismisses. She tidies up his hair with a hand, brushing it out of his face, tucking it behind his ears in thick, dark strands. "Now. Back to sleep with you. Warriors need their rest if they're going to fight the power."
Sirius fights back a smile. "Bye, Galina."
"Bye, Sirius," Galina tells him, and Sirius watches her sling her bag over her broad back and step out of the room, turning off the light. Out in the hallway, her voice mingles lowly with Yí'ān's, both of them speaking in shards of Icelandic and Norwegian. The sound of their throaty, Nordic tongues is sort of like home.
and he kills him, and I watch, because I don't have a choice.
For the second time, Riddle did the ritual. I saw more of it this time - a broad, alchemical array, scratched into a breastplate of bone and iron, and honey in a dark sucrier. The thick smell of blood. He finishes the incantation and the whole room lights up bright white. I hear him scream. The floor bubbles under us like lava and then it's over, and he's holding a black signet ring.
He's bleeding this time - not from anywhere specific. Just bleeding. Like he's melting. He crawls to me and puts the ring into my hand and tells me he's going to be unkillable, and I could be, too, if I wanted to be. Because I'm angry at my mother like he was. Because I'm young and brave and good at lying like he was. Because the two of us are the same.
Fuck, Jamie.
I'm going to keep writing. I can't stop now. I just can't.
I go back to school. Remus confronts me, because he can tell something's awfully wrong with me (ha, funny, that, something's awfully wrong with me in a way he'd never be able to fix, I don't think anybody could), and I yell at him and he doesn't stop. We finished our animagus transformations that month, remember that? End of January, just in time for the full moon. I think he only forgave me for that fight then. Neither you nor Peter noticed anything was wrong. You were busy in a prank war with Severus Snape, and Peter was busy following you around. I don't blame you. I don't think I could hold a grudge against you if I wanted to.
Halfway through February, Riddle owled me. He'd promised not to while he was at school but it wasn't like I could say no to him, right? And with his letter he included this diary, which he told me not to open. Grubby old thing, honestly. Looked like it was made during the war, for how shitty and thin the paper was. He told me to deliver it to a student - Amelie Bullstrode, that second-year Slytherin, remember? And I never did know what came of that whole thing, why he wanted it delivered, but I slipped it into her bag anyway.
I think deep down I knew what the diary was. It was the third of those… things he was making. The locket. The ring. The diary. Those were his first three.
Galina doesn't come home for a month. Sirius wonders if she's dead. When he tells Yí'ān that, Yí'ān laughs at him.
With September comes a brief period of maudlin, Sirius moping around the apartment with no idea what to do with himself at the idea of Hogwarts restarting. It's been almost a year and a half since he last saw the castle - that hot June morning, he remembers it like you remember a bad injury - and he still misses it like a limb. James and Remus won't be going back, and knowing them, they've warned Peter, too. Sirius spends a lot of time imagining the three of them together. Safe somewhere far from Riddle, where he can never get to them.
"You're going to worry yourself into an early grave," Yí'ān warns him.
"I'm already headed towards one," Sirius groans. "What's a few less years?"
"Less time spent with me," Yí'ān says promptly. "And I'm a delight."
Later that day, a friend comes around, buzzing in on the intercom. It's a cold, steel-grey day outside. Sirius hovers behind Yí'ān as he converses with them in tense Icelandic for a few minutes, the stranger's voice all staticky through the little speaker by the door to the flat.
Eventually, in English, Yí'ān says, "We've got a friend here, by the way. You might have heard about him. You speak English, don't you?"
"Not well," a heavily accented voice rings back. French. "I do my best."
"Okay." Yí'ān smiles reassuringly at Sirius, then says. "Come on down, Claude."
Claude is the tallest person Sirius has ever seen. They've got to be at least seven feet tall, and they stoop to get in through the door into the flat, scooping Yí'ān into a hug. Yí'ān's feet actually leave the ground. Sirius hovers nearby like a misplaced house plant and tries not to look too conspicuous.
"Sirius," Yí'ān introduces. "Meet Claude, my favourite dealer of unscrupulous magical artefacts and substances. Old friend from my cursebreaking days. Claude, this is Sirius Black."
Claude smacks a huge hand to their forehead. "Where do I know your name from…"
Sirius clears his throat. In French, he says, "I'm the most wanted person in magical Britain. That might be it…"
Sirius trails off. He doesn't know whether to say monsieur or mademoiselle and settles on monsieurmoselle, which Claude roars with laughter at.
"Most wanted," they say, in smooth, easy French, "And apparently for your linguistic decorum. I like that one. I'll have to use it."
"Sorry," Sirius says. "I couldn't tell…"
They grin at him. "That's sort of the point, monsieurmoselle."
"Oh," Sirius says. "Oh. I didn't know you could do that."
"Lots of things you don't know," Claude says, switching to Icelandic briefly to throw a comment at Yí'ān, who bursts out laughing. "Including," they say, in English now, "All the interesting things I have brought for you both. Shall we sit?"
"I've been saving up some good booze for this," Yí'ān says. "Let me call Galina, I'll tell her you're here, and then we get down to business. Sirius, welcome Claude into our humble abode?"
Sirius clears his throat. "Uh, yeah. This way, this is the living room-" All his worldly belongings (the largest volume of it being made up of mostly stolen clothes from Yí'ān and Galina) are piled up around one sofa, which he sits on, and Claude take the other, long, tree-trunk legs stretched out onto the shaggy carpet.
"It's been a year since I was last here," Claude tells him, back in French again. "Yí'ān and I have been friends for almost a decade now, and still, he never invites me over."
"They've been great to me," Sirius says sincerely. He can't stop staring at Claude. They've got a long mane of coarse, black hair and blackish bronze skin, darker than James and Yí'ān. Their skin is weathered and pocked. They're effortlessly androgynous, like it's what they were put on this earth to be. There's a strange, unknown thing spreading its wings in Sirius' stomach and taking flight.
Claude doesn't seem to pay their new admirer much mind. "How long have you been in Iceland?" they ask, spinning a long, thin wand between their fingers.
"Uh," Sirius says, "Just over a month now? Month and a half, maybe. I'm meant to be in Hogwarts now, but…"
"But Lord Voldemort has got his claws in Great Britain," Claude says. "I know. Up in the Nordic parts, they can get away with knowing a little less about British politics. Down in France and Belgium, our brand of wizard commie sort of has to stay in the know."
Sirius laughs despite himself. "Sorcières le camarade. I like that one. I'll have to use it."
"See to it that you do." Claude eyes him. "He's eager to get his hands on you, you know. You must've done something to piss him off. Real god complex this one has, doesn't he? A different sort of… public appeal than Britain's last major facho."
"I wasn't alive for the last one," Sirius admits. "My family liked him, though."
"Oh?"
"Crazies, the lot of them. Glad to be away from it."
Claude cracks a smile. "None of us talk to our families out here. You'll fit right in."
"Because they're… like that, too?"
"Some of us." Claude shrugs. "Others of us were just a touch ahead of the times with our families." Their eyes flicker to Sirius' long hair and back to his face. There's a question in their eyes.
Yí'ān interrupts before Sirius can figure out what that means. "Galina says you owe her fifty francs."
"Yes, well, she owes me ten rubles," Claude says, switching to English. "Does that make us square?"
"Don't make me do conversion rate maths." Yí'ān plops down on the sofa beside James. "I haven't even had a drink yet."
Sirius expects them to get down to business quickly, but Yí'ān and Claude spend the first few hours of the night talking and drinking and catching up with one another. They evidently have a long, long history, switching between Icelandic, Norwegian (which by now, Sirius has gathered is the language spoken at Durmstrang, no kidding, since it's in Norway, he really should have figured that out already) and English. Sirius doesn't learn much about Claude's occupation, or the illicit substances they sell, but he does learn five new French curse words.
Claude tells wild, extravagant stories of distant battles - of fighting dark wizards on the northern coast of Australia; of cutting supply lines to ex-Soviet AnCap potioneers blockading off towns in Svalbard, Norway; of the battle over an illegally smuggled barrel of unicorn blood that divided wizarding Liechtenstein last year, as the Italian mob, the French fachiste state, Belgian counter-imperialists, and a band of halfblood Liechtensteiners duked it out for months over the precious cargo. They've got a brilliant, animated way of talking, hands moving at a mile a minute, face lit up. The world feels so much wider with them in the room.
"You make me miss being out there in the field," Yí'ān tells them enthusiastically. "Galina's made a house-husband out of me, I swear."
Claude swigs back the last of their third pint of lager. "As if you wouldn't have become one anyway. Isn't she more like your mother?"
"Nah." Yí'ān wrinkles his nose. "She imprisons me here, Claude. You must rescue me, at once! Before she makes Sirius into a house elf!"
Claude cracks a joke in Norwegian. Yí'ān falls apart laughing. They glow in one another's company. Sirius takes a sip of his drink to hide his grin. His heart throbs with the lack of James, but it's felt that way for so long that he can almost ignore how much it sucks.
When, eventually, they get onto the conversation of cargo, it's already dark outside. Claude cracks open a tall crate of strange bottles on the tabletop in the kitchen, and Sirius peers inside.
"None of them are labeled," he says, confused.
Claude winks at him. "Only I can see what they are," they say. "Clever little charm I learned from a black tar dealer I met in Suriname last year. What will you be after, Yí'ān?"
"Depends what you're offering." Yí'ān examines the bottles interestedly. "Looks like you're well-stocked."
Claude considers their bounty. "Boomslang skin, bursting mushroom - almost all out of those, since they're used for fire protection potions and also for getting as high as the human body allows, and everybody needs one of those two things in these times. Wartizome, malaclaw tail, couple of human eyeballs, erumpent horn, griffin claw, got a few werewolf teeth too. And lots of dittany, too, I assume you are needing some of that?"
"Oh, definitely. Far too cold to grow it ourselves up here. What'll it be going for?"
"Currency?" Claude asks.
"Oh, I get the option? You're too kind to me, truly, I missed you dearly…"
As they start to haggle prices, Sirius peers through the rows of bottles. Some of them have contents that are swirling of their own accord, bouncing around in their jars. He's never seen that before. One particular jar at the very back is more fortified than the others, its bottle apparently triple-walled, caged in with iron webbing and, for good measure, wrapped in a plastic Intermarché shopping bag. The contents are pure black, blacker than midnight.
"What's that one at the back?" Sirius asks interestedly.
Claude glances up at him. "That one? Basilisk venom. Rare as anything. Don't look at it too long. Dangerous."
"Who got it?"
"No idea." Claude pops each of their knuckles in and out of place one by one. "Some strange fellow I met in Colmar last year. He wouldn't tell me where he got it. I didn't ask…"
"Huh." Sirius stares at the bottle. He feels distinctly like it should evoke something in him. Like there's something he's not remembering.
It doesn't come to him. Maybe that's the alcohol.
He made the fourth over Easter break of fourth year. By the time he'd finished three, he looked properly different. His eyes were more slitted, darker, the yellow all wide and covering up the whites, and his skin had gone grey and cold. Scaly to the touch. The rituals were doing something to him. He was still… striking. But different. Less like a person, more like a knife.
This time it was a forest in Albania. A tiara, bright and sparkling. His victim this time was a wizard I didn't know. An ex-DADA professor. Only served for a year, years ago now. I don't know what Riddle's… motive was. For all I know, he didn't have one. Suppose he didn't need one, did he?
He does it, and I watch the third death of my life, and I'm screaming like a baby, like a wimp who can't handle it, and Tom laughs at me. His blood hits the tiara and the whole forest lights up white and when I come back to myself, Riddle's on the ground and I can- I can see
Tom's spine is twisting and writhing and clicking under his skin, distending it outwards grotesquely. The grey flesh leers out from between the ribs, stretching and reddening, so taut Sirius is sure it's going to tear apart.
Riddle lets out a piercing scream, loud enough to shatter the static air. Bird rise shrieking from the trees. Without thinking, Sirius runs to his side, collapsing onto his knees there, and Riddle contorts backwards, head snapping back against his neck so far it doesn't seem human. His ribs ripple outwards like they're going to fold out of his chest.
"Sirius," he groans, voice rasping out of the front of his throat. "You watch…" He screams again and just as quickly, stops, wrangling the sharp, terrible cry inside his throat and turning his slitted yellow eyes back to Sirius' face. All the bones in his neck crack. "And you learn…"
Claude is there when Sirius wakes up this time, choking on a shout as he topples off the sofa. They don't try to approach, just watching Sirius with soft, imperturbable eyes.
"Sorry," Sirius gasps. He swears violently. "I'm okay. I'm okay. Sorry."
"Do not apologise." Claude stands silently, leaving the room.
Sirius' back finds the front of the sofa and he presses against it just to hold himself together, some large, angry part of him scared his back will start to twist and contort, too. The floor seems to sway like the belly of a heavy-laden ship. He buries his face in his hands and tries to remove the image of it from his head. You watch and you learn.
Claude reenters. They hand Sirius a glass of water, then take their place on the other sofa again. "We all have nightmares," they say. "There is no shame in it."
"I didn't mean to wake you."
"I would have woken anyway." Claude cracks a smile. "We tend to do that, most days."
And it's true. Outside, dawn is already starting to rise. "Oh."
Claude eyes him for a moment. "It must be quite bad," they say. "In Britain. To warrant such fear. Iceland, of all places."
"I needed somewhere I could run to, and quickly," Sirius says. He sips his water again, liquid splashing up over the rim with how violently his hands are trembling. "I'd been… I'd been captive for a year. More than a year. If I didn't get out then…"
He trails off. Claude watches him with their piercing, questioning eyes.
"We've heard rumours," they say, in stalling French. "Rumours of old magic. Bad magic."
"I can't talk about it."
"You don't have to." Claude glances out of the window. Out past the city and far away. "But if you ever need to talk to anybody who could help you to understand, I know a lot of very smart sorcières out there. Just give Galina the word."
"I don't know if anybody can help with this," Sirius admits. "If anybody finds out... " He trails off. "It's important that nobody knows. Nobody except me."
"You intend to die with the secret?"
"I intend to kill the secret myself."
"You're sixteen."
"Almost seventeen."
Claude laughs without any humour at all. "If you think war spares the young, I have some unfortunate news for you, Sirius Black."
"But they wouldn't be able to help," Sirius defends. A lump grows in his throat and he swallows it down like poison. "Nobody can help. I was the only one he ever told, and that makes me the only one that should ever know, because if other people do, they could… they could…"
"They could fight your war for you?"
"No. They could make their own."
Claude nods interestedly. "I see."
"No you don't. You don't see anything." Sirius scrubs his face. "Fuck."
Claude gets up and kneels down in front of him. Their piercing, black eyes stare right into his soul. "The sooner you learn to trust us," they say gently. "The better we can help you. The lesson children learn at war should not be that they can't trust their friends." They smile a little. "The lesson they should learn is that wars are won by people, not armies. And we might not have any of the second, but we have plenty of the first."
Sirius can't find anything to say to that. "Oh."
"I'll be on my way in the morning." Claude lies back on their sofa. "If you need me, Galina can get you in contact with me. It was good to meet you, monsieurmoselle."
He was four in, then. Locket, ring, diary, diadem. That's what he called it. A diadem. I saw that word on the side of a shipping truck leaving the city the other day and had a bloody panic attack. Pathetic, right?
So I went back to school. Remus could tell I was snapping into millions of tiny little pieces and he did his best to hold the bits of me together, and only half succeeded. You discovered drugs that term, remember? Sitting out on the ledge outside our window smoking pot with you was the only time I really felt like I existed in those last few months of fourth year. Hard to believe it was a year and a half ago. It feels like it was yesterday, watching you cough on weed smoke and laughing as it came out of your nose like a dragon. I would remember that time a lot when I was at Rosier Manor. It helped.
The last time I saw you all was that final day of that year, on the train. I think a part of me knew, even then, that I wouldn't be coming back. You gave me this great big hug on the platform and told me to stay safe, and Remus looked at me with this LOOK I'll never forget. We'd argued earlier that day about me. He wanted me to come back to Wales with him. I didn't want him to die. I hope he's not still angry at me. I know it's stupid to think he is, but… I can be a right bastard when I want to be. I'm sure I said something awful and irreparable that I can't take back.
And then you were both gone, and that evening, like clockwork, Riddle came to get me from Grimmauld, and he took me to a rocky cliffside in the highlands, lighthouse blinking in the distance, and like I'd done before, I sat down and I watched and I said nothing as he killed a muggleborn in front of me. She had red hair and all I could see when I looked at her was Evans. I've never hated myself more than I did then. You're never going to forgive me when you read these, James. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself.
And once the whole awful thing was done, Riddle crawls to me, hair coming out in clumps - bits of his eyebrows and flakes of skin all down his face, chunks of his hair falling into my lap - and
"I'm proud of you," Riddle murmurs. His grey hand snaps up Sirius' wrist. They breathe in the same air. Over the side of the rocky cliff, waves crash against the shore, and the night sky above swirls with the beginnings of a storm.
"You are?" Sirius asks. It comes out like a dry sob.
Riddle nods. He squeezes, on the edge of painful. Sirius feels his bones creak. "You've been strong. Strong enough to honor your blood. Suffering made me stronger, when I was your age. Now, it will mould you, too."
Sirius stares up into the clouds. He can taste blood. Save me. Save me. Somebody, please fucking get me out of here.
Riddle's free hand ghosts down the side of Sirius' face. The tips of his fingers are bloody. They leave a sticky trail like war paint. "I know how this hurts you. Strong though you are, you are still soft-hearted and weak. I was, too, once."
"You were?" Sirius asks.
Riddle grips his chin. "I was. But the world changed me. I grew outside of myself. I see it in you, now, too-" His yellow eyes flash. "You're changing, too."
"I don't want to change," Sirius whispers.
"Sometimes, we don't have a choice."
"You could forget me. Let me go home. Find somebody else," Sirius offers.
"Why would I, when I've found you to be perfect for the job?"
Perfect. The sour taste of bile flowers in the back of his mouth. "I don't want this."
The grip tightens. For a terrifying moment, Sirius is sure Tom is going to snap his jaw in his pale, cold hand. "But I do. And you answer to me. Until you are old and strong and pure enough to answer to yourself, you answer to me. You learn from me. You grow."
"And if I don't want the world you want?"
Riddle laughs. It's a high sound for his voice, the cadence changed. "You expect me to believe that? Sirius, you know as well as I do that if you want a new world, you have to build it yourself. You know as well as I that magic, for as perfect as it is, as wonderful, needs protection. Preservation. Heritage."
"I've got friends. Friends who are muggleborn. Friends who are half-breeds."
"But they're not your friends." That hand shifts to gather a handful of flesh at the back of Sirius' neck, digging in. Riddle's sharp teeth glint in the dim light. "They don't understand you. Not like I do."
Involuntarily, Sirius thinks of James, of Peter. How neither of them noticed. How neither of them seemed to care. Of Remus' fierce anger.
"Get out of my head, Tom," he snaps.
Riddle shakes his head. "I wasn't in it. Whoever hurt you, the pain is yours alone. I would only ask whether you want to be hurt again."
"They would care," Sirius says desperately. "If they knew. They would care. They would come here and… and…"
Unbidden, rushing thoughts. James, safe and comfortable in the Potters' house in Godric's Hollow. Peter, tucked into bed in his mother's apartment, dead to the world. Remus, telling Sirius during their fight only this morning, sometimes you act as though you're the only person in the world who matters, Sirius, you know that? Regulus, comfortable as the spare. Less hated. Less hurt.
"And?" Riddle asks, almost mocking. "They're not here now, are they?"
Hand snapping out, he grabs a fistful of Sirius' hair and yanks hard. Sirius rolls with the motion like he was born to spend his life fighting, trying to hook his legs up over Riddle's hip, and they wrestle for a moment. Riddle gets the upper hand, forcing Sirius down onto his front on the sharp rocks, and drags him to the cliff's edge by his shirt. The rocks recede and a wide, dark universe opens up under him. For a dizzying moment, the black, churning ocean below lurches up at Sirius and he hangs, suspended, over open air. Magic curls its tendrils around him and he dangles there.
"Are they coming to get you?!" Riddle demands. Sirius yells wordlessly, levitated up into the air by his feet, hair dangling around his face, whipped up by the northern winds. "Well, Sirius?!"
"Fuck you!" Sirius hurls at him. The words are lost on the roar of the storm. "Drop me, then! See if I care! Like I haven't wanted to die since you first walked into Grimmauld Place two years ago-"
The tendrils of magic let him go. Sirius screams, falling through the whipping wind, and the rocks lunge up towards him. He closes his eyes against the blistering cold and waits for death.
But Riddle's wild, untamed magic snares him inches from the cliffs, dragging Sirius like a ragdoll up through the storm and atop the cliffside again, where he hovers, arms and legs spread wide, in the air in front of Riddle.
Rain lashes down around them. As thunder rumbles, a flash of lightning into the ocean behind Riddle lights him up around his edges, an outline of bright white misery.
"If any of them cared about you," Riddle hisses, and now he truly does look inuman. The last flaky pieces of hair he has whip around his head. "They would have done everything to keep you safe. They would have come. Wouldn't you have, for them?"
Sirius can't find the words to answer. Rain and sleet and hail lash at his face, the colour and flavour of judgement.
"Or are you truly not the friend you thought you were?" Riddle sneers.
He drops Sirius. Sirius hits the ground and crumples, and Riddle leaves him lying there in the howling wind, in the bitter storm.
This time, when Sirius comes to, he doesn't shout. His face is wet with cold sweat, but he's silent, curled into tiny ball on the sofa, wrapped in one of Galina's coarse, knitted sweaters.
From outside the door to the living room, golden light streams in under the crack. Soft voices drift through the wall.
"Be safe," she's saying. "He'll miss you."
"I know," Yí'ān's voice says softly. "But I can't wait much longer, not with that distress call, and I don't want to wake him up. Tell him I said bye, okay?"
"You're sure you want to take this one?"
Yí'ān pauses. "It's home, isn't it?" he says wistfully. "If somebody in Scotland needs help, I've sort of got to me the one to take it."
"Only if you want to."
"I do."
"Okay," Galina says simply. "I'll hold down the fort. The castle."
"Muggle sayings," Yí'ān laughs breathlessly. Somebody moves. Yí'ān's voice is muffled as he says, "Small wars. Small wars."
Sirius gets the impression they're hugging.
"Small wars," Galina agrees. "Now. Go."
And so I went to Dumbledore, and I told him everything. Dumbledore heard me out, and he nodded and made notes, and then he sent me home again. Just like that. To this day, I don't know what he was thinking. Guess I'll never know.
I can't go into detail about my time in Rosier Manor. I just can't. But here are the things you should know: Riddle knew, the moment I told Dumbledore. He was waiting for me, back at Grimmauld. He didn't say one word to me. Just lit up the floo and tossed me right into the fire.
I was there for a year and a month. They didn't hurt me, if that's what you're wondering, not in the ways that count. It was lonely, more than anything else. Tom came to visit occasionally, once every few months. He made his seventh (sixth, if you don't count himself) alone. A great snake that tried to throttle me the first time I saw it. I imagined the lot of you were worried about me. It was a fucked up cope, but… well. Maybe you all were.
And I can't go into details, I can't. But yeah.
You came to get me. I don't think I knew what love was until then, looking at you across the hallway above the cellar.
The apartment without Yí'ān isn't the same.
Maybe it's just because he reminded Sirius of James, but not having him around makes everything heavier. It feels less like a sanctuary and more like a wartime trench. Galina sets Sirius to work at their communications desk in the converted second bedroom, perched in a creaky desk chair over a table of various radios, muggle telephones and transmitters, noting down messages from all over the wizarding world.
Some of the contraptions are wizarding (like a sheet of paper that fills itself every hour with the movements of different wizarding pirate ships through the Atlantic, noting their coordinates; and a whirring, spinning ball of electricity in a jar that glows red whenever it senses a muggle death by magical means in the surrounding thousand square miles) and some are muggle (like the telephones, always babbling with strange languages and frantic shouts that Sirius has to pass off to Galina for her to translate), but most are somewhere in the middle (like the cloudy crystal ball in the centre of the table that flashes morse code as it notes the movements of the American muggle military).
It's brilliant. Sirius loves magic. He also despises it, because as well as being wonderful, it's very lonely.
Galina rushes in and out. She spends the odd night sleeping in the other bedroom, but most evenings she's on the move, apparating from crisis to conflict around wizarding Europe. There's a mob coup going down in Southern Italy, involving the muggle mafia and a gang wizarding drug smugglers. The fascist maniac wizarding dictator of Luxembourg is trying to assimilate southern Belgium. Small wars, indeed.
Whatever Yí'ān ran off to do (something to do with a distress call in Scotland), he isn't back within a week, and by that point, Sirius is properly worried. When he tells Galina, she doesn't seem concerned.
"I've taught him well, he knows how to stay alive," she waves him off. "Now, back to work with you. I want that whole letter from the magical president of Cyprus transcribed by the end of the day. Use the translator at the back of the shelf, the blue one. It's charmed not to waste as much ink."
For all that being an antifascist rebel is great, and Sirius is glad to be doing it (at the very least it serves as a good distraction), it isn't quite as grand and adventurous as he would like.
At the very least, Galina has promised him more exciting work once they can figure out a way around the Trace. Which, doesn't that sound bloody wonderful right now.
On the tenth day since he left, as September rolls into its grave, a letter from Yí'ān arrives.
Galina is taking a rare nap when the owl swoops in through an open window, sleeping on her stomach in the other bedroom. The owl makes for Sirius instead, who is making his fifth cup of tea of the day in the kitchen, perching on his shoulder and holding out its leg.
"Ah," Sirius says, putting down the milk bottle. "Thanks."
The owl tweets in his ear and takes off out of the window. Inside, the letter is short and very simple.
Rebel mother + black puppy,
44218FM. 8PM, TUE. 'Horace'.
Cheers!
- Scotsman.
"Galina?" Sirius calls. "Galina! Come look at this!"
A momentary pause. Then, Galina shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing her face. "My old bones," she says, "Are not made to put up with you young people. What is it?"
"Yí'ān wrote," Sirius says. He shoves the letter at her. "Today's Tuesday, right? D'you reckon he means eight, like, eight British time? Or…"
He trails off. Galina has already crossed the room and slipped out of the door. She returns moments later with one of her dozens of muggle radios in her hands, setting it down on the kitchen table and flicking it on at the back. Then, she gets to work twiddling the dial onto the right frequency.
"Sit," she tells Sirius, not quite severe, but not soft enough that Sirius can argue with it.
"Yes, boss," he murmurs, and takes a seat perpendicular to her at the table, setting his tea down in front of him.
Galina gets to tapping, trying to find the right rhythm against the top of the plastic contraption with her long, willowy wand. When she's punched in the password - 'Horace' like Slughorn? Sirius wonders - she sits back in her chair, staring at the radio like she's trying to will it into sound.
"If it is British time," she says, "We should have another hour. Back to work, you."
"But-"
Galina quirks a smile. "But?"
"But nothing," Sirius agrees. "On it, boss."
"I never told you to call me boss."
"I like it. Makes me feel like I've got a real job," Sirius jokes, leaving his tea for her to finish as he makes his way back to the communications desk.
An hour later finds him and Galina gathered together around the radio again. Wind whips up against the high windows of the basement apartment, and the radio crackles with static. Wordlessly, Sirius makes them both tea. Then, they wait.
Eight. Eight-fifteen. Eight-thirty. The clock on the wall ticks ominously loudly. Sirius had been excited when the letter first arrived, mostly just because it confirmed that Yí'ān was alive. Now, foreboding grows in his stomach, leaping like a jungle frog.
"He might have meant eight our time," Sirius starts.
Suddenly, the radio blares to life. Sirius flinches. Galina doesn't even startle.
"Apologies for the late start, folks!" says a female voice Sirius vaguely recognises, though he can't place it. "We've had some light trouble with some Auror types, you all know how things go. Luckily, our location has not been compromised, and we're good to go!"
"And a good thing, too!" joins in a male voice. "Since tonight, we're joined by a very special guest. But before we get into that…"
"For any new listeners," the woman takes over again, "Welcome one and all to the fifth weekly broadcast of Direct Action, your number one source on all things magical Britain that the Prophet doesn't want you to hear about. As always, I am your host Gambit-"
"And I'm your co-host Lyric, the far more attractive one-"
A faint noise of impact and some laughter in the background. "And as always!" Gambit takes over again, "We are going to start with the unpleasant stuff first, get it out of the way before we bless you all with a wonderful new guest, who surely brings bright, uplifting news. Alright, Lyric, if you will."
"Not too many new deaths this week, comparatively," Lyric says. "And thank goodness for that, I suppose. As many of you know, since this one actually made the Prophet, Horace Slughorn's body has been found in a suburb of Greater London. The best potions master Hogwarts has had in recent memory, he will be greatly missed."
Sirius' heart throbs. He sits back in his seat. A part of him wants to turn the radio off, not to listen to any more, but a louder, hungrier bit of him wants to turn the volume louder.
"As well as that," Lyric carries on, "We've had it confirmed that Ministry worker Fennel Staghart has been killed on his commute home, by unknown magical means. We don't know much, but from the reports, we suspect the killing curse. Our deepest condolences, as always, to his family."
"That's all our deaths for this week, thankfully," Gambit takes over. "As for new missing persons, Verda Pertinger, a Canadian-born robe seamstress based in Scotland, has been reported missing by her family. At the moment, her connection to the conflict is, as of yet, unknown. Her story hasn't made it to the Prophet, though, so I suppose most of us can make a well-reasoned guess."
"We've also had it confirmed that Rubeus Hagrid is alive and well," Lyric exclaims. Sirius breathes a long sigh of relief. "Based in mainland Europe, he's alive and kicking, and thank Merlin for that. Most of us miss him quite dearly, but here's to hoping we'll see his great lovely face again soon, I suppose."
"Right," Gambit agrees. "Still no word on the Black brothers, especially not our undesirable number one…"
Galina elbows Sirius in the ribs. She catches his eye and grins. Tentatively, he smiles back.
"And that brings us onto our lovely young guest!" Lyric says. "If you'd like to introduce yourself, Antlers…"
Antlers. Sirius feels his body freeze up.
"Hi," James Potter's wonderful voice says cautiously, slightly too close to his microphone. "I'm Antlers - or, that's what I'm going by here - and I'm very happy to be here. Uh. I lead another resistance group. We're called Padfoot's Army."
Sirius slumps against the back of his chair. "Oh," he says softly.
"You know him?" Galina asks.
Sirius nods. "That's James," he murmurs. "That's my best friend."
I miss you like a limb, is what I'm saying. And I'm sorry. And I'm tired. And I'm going to kill Tom Riddle.
"We started up after Sirius disappeared," James explains. "He was my best friend, and it sort of made us all realise that this really was going to be a war. So we had to do something. We gave duelling lessons to other kids who knew a war was coming, who wanted to fight on the right side. We know lots of them haven't gone back to Hogwarts - that they're in hiding, like us - and we want to find them. We want to start recruiting again. Haha. Like the, y'know. The paint said."
"The graffiti was genius," Lyric says, laughing. "When we saw it- it lifted all our spirits, it really did. Graffiting the inside of the Ministry atrium with muggle spray paint… ingenious. Truly."
"Thanks," James says. Sirius can hear the grin in his voice. "It helped us to let off some steam, too. Me and the other leaders."
"They're here with us right now, in fact."
James laughs. "They're waving at us through the glass recording booth wall. What were the code names for them? Lykos and Red."
Remus and Evans. Evans, of all people. She's alive. Sirius' face burns and he forces himself to keep paying attention. He can have a great, dramatic, trembling breakdown later, and it'll be fantastic, bright like a storm, but for now, he anchors himself, so as to not float away on the churning ocean.
"The three of you represent the sort of vibe we're going for at the Friends of London," Gambit says modestly. "Young rebels like yourselves, fighting for what's right."
"We've not done much fighting yet," James admits. "If you don't count those two guards."
"Which of you was that?" Lyric asks.
"Me," James says bashfully. "I had the element of surprise, though. I wore muggle nightclub clothes- it's a long story."
"You'll have to tell us later," Gambit says. "What are you and your group's plans, Antlers?"
"We've got a lot of them." James clears his throat. "We want to connect with other resistance groups in the area, and we want to do so soon. We want to get the old lot back together, too - start properly rebuilding Padfoot's Army. Uh, we want to keep the morale up. Keep looking for Sirius. We know he's out there."
"Surely, if he's made it this long," Lyric agrees. "The most wanted person in wizarding Britain."
"He's wonderful," James says. Sirius gives up his effort not to break down, folding his shaking hands over his face and sucking in sharp breaths through his fingers. "He's wonderful, and he's fighting so, so hard to take you-know-who down. Harder than any of us. And we're going to find him, if it's the last thing we do."
"Do you have anything to say to him, if he's listening?"
"Pads," James says immediately, like he doesn't have to stop and think about it. "You're not alone. You never have been. We're getting you back, and we're winning this war. All over wizarding Britain, people are standing behind you. Fighting to take him down like you did. No more secrets, okay? We're gonna find you, and there'll be no more secrets. I love you."
Galina drops an arm around him. Sirius shakes until he thinks he'll shake out of himself. "Oh," he says again.
"You're very loved," Galina observes simply. Like it should have been obvious to him.
"I guess I am," Sirius whispers.
I'm going to finish this letter and tuck it and the others into an envelope and seal it, now, so I don't go insane. But these are some important things:
Tell Remus I love him, so much, and I'm so sorry
Tell Pete I hope he's okay, and I'm sorry I was a bad friend
Tell Mr. and Mrs. Potter I'm okay
Tell Reg (if you see him, he's at Durmstrang now) that I wish I'd been a better brother
Remember how sorry I am. And if you never want to speak to me again I don't blame you. But I'm sorry.
I love you. I hope that's enough.
Yours, then and now,
- S.O.B
That night, as she comes in to wish him goodnight, Sirius curled up under a blanket and Galina sitting beside him on the sofa, he stops her from going.
"One sec," he tells her. "I just… I had a question. A request, actually."
Interestedly, Galina raises an eyebrow at him. "Yeah?"
"I…" Sirius swallows. "I wanted you to call Claude. If you can. They made me an offer and I want to take them up on it."
Galina's face breaks into one of her crafty, fox-like grins. "Funny you'd mention it," she says. "I wanted to talk to you about something a friend of mine has told me about the Trace. And I rather think somebody like Claude could lend a hand."