CHAPTER 14
HOW ARE YOU?
Sirius' kitchen at number twelve, Grimmauld Place steamed peppermint aroma and jitteriness ahead of the Order meeting. Some of the members had arrived, others would join soon, and all the while, outside, the winter night had long since settled.
Three seats at the long, wooden table in the kitchen were already occupied: Sirius, Tonks and Fletcher. Remus and Arthur Weasly hadn't made it as far, enthralled in conversation in the hallway, while Molly was busying herself around the kitchen and busying Bill with indications as she went along.
Seated at the kitchen table, Sirius found himself presented with a cup of peppermint tea and a heartfelt smile from Molly. He thanked her silently and returned to regarding, with an inexplicable sense of nuisance, the bleak darkness that stretched on the other side of the kitchen window. He tried and couldn't pin down what was bothering him. Something felt off.
Or maybe the nocturnal sight was simply boring, and he should have left his late mother's floral curtains in place to block it off. The floral curtains, on the other hand, had been hideous. Sirius had taken them down a week ago, and that was that.
He brought a hand up to brush his dark hair away from his eyes and rub his tired brow. The ambush in Longmoon Forest had left him more ruffled than he cared to admit. Moving hurt, breathing ached, even thinking felt painfully sore, and now he was contemplating his mother's ugly curtains. That was something.
He hoped the Order meeting would start soon and end even sooner. Though, frankly, all odds were stacked against his wishes.
"Your bandage still needs changing," Molly told Sirius hastily, tugging at her apron to arrange it around her plump waist. "I'd rather do it now than after the meeting. So — off the shirt!"
"Molly, that's not necessary. I'm fine. The bandage is fine. Everything's fine, really."
Sirius would have swung his injured arm to prove the point, but it wasn't that fine.
Molly's ginger eyebrows drew to a frown of disapproval, her full face flushed rosy and stern, and Sirius knew better than to beat the wind. It was perplexing how, at six feet two, Sirius could feel intimidated by someone of Molly's stature. Well, he knew his limits.
He admitted defeat, and ten minutes later, the shirt was off, the old bandage too, the ugly gash below his shoulder was cleaned anew, and Sirius was fighting to keep a straight face as Molly wrapped a fresh bandage firmly in place.
"Did you get to see any of them?" Bill asked, pulling up a chair to sit next to Sirius.
"Leave him be," Molly dismissed her son. "You'll hear it all in the meeting soon."
"Mom, I only —"
"It's all right, Molly," Sirius said.
"It isn't, and that's not your call. You need your rest, whatever bit of it you can get."
Sirius was grateful and humbled by Molly's care; truly, he was. At the same time, it made his flesh creep, made him feel inadequate to the core of his being.
He nodded and smiled, reasoning it would bring the topic to its briefest end.
Molly smiled back, understandingly, and walked away for a moment, only to return another moment later with a plate of shortbread that she placed on the table before Sirius, with another kind smile.
"Thank you," Sirius replied, wishing he could crawl in a hole under the ground and hide until the Order meeting was over and everyone had left. His house, unfortunately, was not equipped with any holes.
"Bill, go fetch him a Yarrow potion from the cabinet, will you?" Molly said.
"It's alright, I'll get it," Sirius said, but Bill was already off.
Sirius resigned himself to putting his shirt back on, moving stiffly and doing his best to disregard the nuisance of his broken ribs, and his injured arm, and, really, every bit of his body.
After Longmoon, Molly had been God-sent, or more likely Dumbledore-sent, with a medical kit and an arsenal of patch-up-fix-all magic tricks she got from being a mother of six sons. It was nothing compared to a visit to a Healer, but it was good enough and in any case more than Sirius could ask for. She had even made him soup.
It only added to his guilt that the only person he truly wanted to talk to for the time was Remus.
Remus, though, was still in the hallway, wrapped up in Arthur's exuberant presentation of his latest Muggle artefact.
"A lighter, they call it," Sirius could hear Arthur proclaim, "It's like magic, only without a wand. Look!"
Remus' eyebrows arched in amazement, and a smile lifted his hazel moustache as he regarded Arthur's hands.
From the angle, Sirius couldn't see much, but he knew what the fuss was about: the pocket-sized fire-making stick. Arthur had gifted it to Sirius beforehand to cheer him up. Then, he had borrowed it back to present it to anyone willing to listen.
Over Arthur's shoulder, Sirius intercepted Remus' glance and understood the apologetic mien to it. He couldn't blame him, not really. No one had the heart to tell Arthur off — he was, in all honesty, the kindest of them all.
If anything, Rem and Arthur's chatter was proof that the newly imbued curtains covering the painting of Sirius' late mother were doing a fine job keeping her from screeching profanities at anyone who dared set foot in the residence of the noble Black family. Even so, just knowing she was there, in life-size proportions, crept Sirius out.
"Here," Bill said, placing a small blue vial on the table. "Yarrow, you said, right?
"Thank you!" Sirius replied.
"Need a glass of water for that?"
"I'm good. I'll get it."
"On it already," Bill said, walking up to the sink behind Sirius, and a moment later, Sirius was presented with a freshly refilled glass of water.
He nodded in silent thanks.
"You don't need to do all this for me, Bill. You know, right?"
"It's only water." Bill scratched the back of his head, ruffling his ginger hair. "Need help opening that?"
"The vial? No, Bill, really!"
"Sorry, sorry, that was too much!" Bill laughed, amused.
"A bit."
"But seriously, are you going to take that?"
Sirius glanced at the Yarrow potion in his hand. "I think I'll hang on to it a bit longer… until after the meeting, maybe."
Bill frowned quizzically.
"Well, it's fantastic for relieving the pain," Sirius said. "But it tampers with magic."
"More like: takes away all imaginable pain but makes your magic utterly and completely useless for a whole good day, you mean?" Bill laughed.
"More like."
"Say, what do you need magic for now?"
Sirius shrugged. That was a good question. "You never know…"
"Think it will come to wands with Snape?"
Sirius chuckled grimly. "Well, that you truly never know."
"Bill," Molly called from behind. "Would you mind getting the teapot from the cupboard for me?"
"Yeah sure."
"No wand," she said, "or you'll knock over the bowls. It's up there on the last shelf. Do you see it?"
"Mm-hmm."
Bill reached up with ease, took out the copper teapot from the cupboard and handed it to Molly. She looked very pleased.
"You've seen better days," she mumbled to the tarnished teapot and cast a swift polishing charm that left its copper surface shining brightly.
Sirius took advantage of the distraction to shove the plate with shortbread further away from him towards the centre of the table.
"I'll have one," Tonks said, leaning over to grab a piece of shortbread. "Delicious, aren't they?"
"Yeah," Sirius replied, taking her in.
She was too young for this mess. Why hadn't anyone told her that and told her off, sent her home? What was she… twenty? James and Lily and Rem and he had been as young in the first war — fifteen years ago. James and Lily weren't here anymore. Were they?
"Pass it when you're done, please?" Fletcher said from across the table and flashed a placid if heavily crooked smile that somehow fitted his raggy face just right.
Tonks smiled back and did that.
"How are you feeling?" She asked Sirius, shifting in her chair one seat away from him.
"I'm good, quite good. And you?"
"Nothing special, you know. Busy week at the Auror office with Alastor being away these past couple of days. Apparently, anyone can assign me anything with a very kind 'you take care of this, Tonks, while your boss is away'." She laughed. "I must have heard that one a dozen times this week."
Sirius smiled and nodded in acknowledgement as she glanced over his shoulder to the hallway, where Remus and Arthur were still conversing. She brushed a pink strand of hair behind her ear and straightened her posture, just a little.
"How are those broken ribs healing?" she asked.
"Barely feel 'em," Sirius lied. "I'm fine."
"Are you really?" Moody asked. He had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, despite the clonking of his wooden leg that usually gave away his approaching a good twenty feet ahead.
"I am, I am. I'm fine," Sirius shrugged off the discomfort of Moody's magical eye scrutinising him from head to toe, through the wooden table.
"Real heroes never complain, do they?" Moody's scarred face scrunched up in a smile as he sat in the free chair between Sirius and Tonks.
How the hell should I know?
Sirius had failed his mission and had brought home nothing but two bruised ribs and a scathed shoulder. By all means, someone point him to the heroes of tonight because he knew of none.
"Severus," Arthur's voice boomed in the hallway, and Sirius felt a headache coming on. "It's good to have you."
Wonderful! Since when such enthusiasm with Snape's presence? It was Arthur, after all; a poodle could walk through the door, and he'd still be enthused.
Well, Padfood would be enthused by that, too.
Sirius turned his head to find a particularly bitter-looking Snape standing face to face with Remus and Arthur in the hallway.
Snape greeted both with a curt nod before disregarding them altogether to concentrate, fully, on taking out his black travelling cloak and meticulously placing it on the hanger, all the while moving so stiffly he looked like he had swallowed a broomstick.
If self-absorption was a virtue, Snape had mastered it. Tonight of all nights, he was outdoing himself.
He strutted into the kitchen with his back straight, almost unnaturally so, and his steps perfectly measured, spared Sirius the briefest glance, gave everyone else no time of day, pulled out a seat — the furthest possible from Sirius — and sank in it with just about the grace and the rigidity of a centenary monarch.
"Would you like some coffee or tea?" Molly asked him, and Snape nodded in response, not bothering to mention which one.
"Who else is missing?" Tonks asked.
Sirius glanced around the room. "I guess it's only Dumbledore and Emmeline… and Shacklebolt."
"I'm here," came a deep voice from behind, accompanied by a hand on Sirius' shoulder.
"Kingsley," Sirius had to turn his head to catch a glimpse of the tall, broad-shouldered wizard. "Hello!"
"How do you feel?"
"I'm well," Sirius replied.
Shacklebolt, not one to take words for granted, surveyed him attentively before his dark face lightened, and he concluded, "It's good to see that."
Sirius could only give another nod and hope there would be no more questions about his well-being.
"He bested four of them!" Moody told Shacklebolt as the latter took the seat to Tonks' left. "Showed 'em what we're made of!"
Uh-uhu, running away — quite something he'd shown them, indeed.
"How's the investigation at the Ministry, Kingsley?" Sirius asked in an attempt to steer away from yet more uncomfortable remarks. "Still searching for me in Tibet?"
Before he could get an answer, though, the room hushed, and through the doorway stepped Albus Dumbledore, aged face tensed in immediate anticipation. It surprised Sirius; he had informed Dumbledore personally of his escape from the ambush — thoroughly and timely.
Even more surprisingly, Dumbledore seemed not to mind him. His gaze drifted across the room and stopped not on Sirius but on — Snape?
He scrutinised Snape closely, and there was a flicker of something in Dumbledore's visage: the troubled lines on his brow deepened in a trace of a frown, so well-hidden Sirius had nearly missed it.
For a few more seconds, Dumbledore's otherwise limpid gaze was darkened in uncertainty as he surveyed Snape — every edge of his inscrutable face. Eventually, the tension ebbed away, and he turned his face to Sirius.
"It's good to see you," Dumbledore said, slightly distracted, as though his mind wasn't fully with Sirius yet.
A moment later though, the distraction was gone, and he took in Sirius attentively, and his face lightened, and he spoke softly.
"I could not come to see you earlier. How are you?"
"I'm well. There's no reason for concern," Sirius answered.
Dumbledore nodded in diligent acceptance and took his seat.
It was only now that Sirius noticed Dumbledore was wearing thick, grey robes, no odd colours, no eccentric accessories, even his crinkly silver beard was tucked almost neatly in his belt. Was he leaving on a journey?
From the hallway, Emmeline Vance slid into the kitchen and took the last free seat, straightening out her already flawless dress in the process.
"Good evening," Dumbledore greeted everyone in the room.
Remus, who, in the meantime, had found his way into the chair to Sirius' right, leaned over to whisper into his ear, "We'll speak afterwards."
"Uh-uhu," Sirius nodded.
Dumbledore's cautious, inquisitive glare at Snape had not gone lost on Sirius. He couldn't help wondering, had the surprise assault in Longmoon shaken Dumbledore's trust in Snape? That would be quite something.
The end of the 'Dumbledore trusts him' era, possibly?