Daria Ravenclaw: The Year of the Owl. Sirius Gets A Package
DISCLAIMER: As I've said before, I do not own the rights to either Daria or Harry Potter. They belong to MTV Viacom (Daria) and JK Rowling, Wizarding World, and Warner Brothers (Harry Potter). Nor do I own the rights to Beavis and Butthead.
Daria Ravenclaw: The Year of the Owl* Daria Ravenclaw: The Year of the Owl* Daria Ravenclaw: The Year of the Owl
Azkaban Prison North Sea
Late March, 1990
"Mail call!" said the guards.
"Any letters?" asked Sirius.
"None for the likes o' you," sneered Jennings
"There's a package for you, Black!" said the other guard. Stebbins, if Sirius remembered his name right. "If you want it, you'd better follow the drill."
His grandfather had started writing him: occasionally, not too often. He usually wrote about his travels, old acquaintances, occasionally people he thought that Sirius might know, but nothing about his daughter in Texas. The lack of information about the girl hurt. Was his grandfather trying to twist the knife in his heart by saying nothing, or did he have other motives? Sirius didn't know, but suspected the former,
His grandfather had also started sending him the occasional package: clothing, mostly, although he did send him some wizarding treats. This might be one of those times. Sirius decided he'd co-operate with the guards despite the humiliation, fresh underwear, woolen socks, and a jumper was a great help against the cold and damp of his cell.
He backed against the far wall of his cell and a guard unlocked his cell. Two guards stepped in: Stebbins and Jennings stepped inside. Hennings smiled cruelly at him and said "I don't know why anyone would want to send anything to the likes o' you. T'were me, I wouldn't bother." Jennings dropped the package, drew his wand, then backed out of his cell. The cell door closed and Sirius could hear Jennings turn the key to lock it.
He stepped away from the wall, then bent down to the package to see what was in it.
The package had been opened, its contents examined. For some reason or other the guards hadn't vandalized the contents. He'd received new socks, new underwear and a jumper. The latter hung loosely on him; his grandfather must have guessed his size from clothing he or his father had worn before he'd been sent to Azkaban.
For some reason or other, the guards had also left some of the packaging. He'd learned to appreciate it in the last couple of years: his grandfather had used old, wadded-up newsprint for padding, and he'd learned that it provided him with glimpses of the outside world as well as material for wiping his bum.
Most of the newsprint had been British. He learned to his disgust that Lucius Malfoy had working on his rehabilitation despite the fact that he was as committed to the Death Eaters as he had been while wearing his mask. Minister Bagnold was also in trouble, which also pleased him. He didn't read it all at one go; instead, he saved some for later.
He didn't discover where else some of the newsprint had come from until the following day. There were several pages of announcements and news articles from Tex Arcana, a paper he'd never heard of. Boredom as well as the knowledge that his daughter was alive somewhere in Texas prevented him from throwing it away.
It wasn't until he saw the picture of an older dark-skinned witch and read the headline "Marta Ocampo: Still Going Strong" that he realized that his grandfather might have had a purpose in sending him pages from the Texas newspaper. Madam Ocampo lived in a town called Highland and taught potion-making to young wizards and witches among her many other activities. The article included a photograph of Madam Ocampo and several youngsters standing behind a line of small cauldrons, none of them looking older than twelve. Three of them were dark-skinned like Madam Ocampo and Sirius was certain he wasn't related to them. He was also positive that he wasn't kin to the vacant-eyed boy on the end. The gaunt-faced dark-haired girl didn't look like anyone related to the Blacks or the Rosiers either, but the auburn-haired girl, the one that had the look of a Barksdale…
He wondered if that was a message. He'd long hated his grandfather along with the rest of his family, but his grandfather had less of the cruelty his mother had possessed, the madness from his mother's cruelty replaced by a cold, ruthless logic. Not that his grandfather was prone to softness or compassion: his grandfather had painfully rebuked him several times for being a fool of a Gryffindor and lacking any of the subtlety that had allowed the Blacks to flourish over a thousand years.
Subtlety. Was his grandfather trying to send him a message as well as clothing? He checked the date of the tabloid. That issue had been printed in early March, a scant couple of weeks ago. His daughter had been born in 1979. She'd be nearing her eleventh birthday now. He looked at the photo of Madam Ocampo's potion-making class and remembered a tall, auburn-haired American woman propositioning him at that inn over a decade ago. The auburn-haired girl looked like she could be ten or eleven: she could well be the woman's daughter. That meant…The old bastard might have been cleverer than he'd thought.
An idea roused from dormancy. Maybe he ought to start thinking of ways to escape.
-(((O-O)))-
Author's notes: The gaunt-face girl is an eleven year-old version the tall brunette with shoulder-length black hair and prominent cheekbones from Beavis and Butthead. To my knowledge, she never had a speaking part.