Chapter 45: Steps to Take

Big, dark rainclouds moved in over the weekend, the lamps throughout Number 12 remaining lit during the day to dispel the gloom – and in the ground floor and first floor corridor, it worked well. As the rain came down outside, dampened Order members hurried through the front door here and there to be greeted by what was now a much more welcoming house: clean, fresh, warmed by many crackling fireplaces, and more often than before filled with chatter, laughter, studious students, or the noises of enthusiastic renovations. And if no one else was there, there was almost always Sirius.

Showered and dressed, Hermione headed down for breakfast on Monday. It was a metamorphosing descent through the house, the third floor corridor, not yet renovated, looking particularly horrible even in comparison to the stripped-down second one. Going up the stairs had become an experience in spirits being dragged down. With every floor Hermione dropped, however, she felt she could breathe more easily and stand taller.

She stepped onto gleaming dark wood boards on the first floor, and stopped at the top of the ground floor flight of stairs.

Sirius was squatted at the bottom of them, staring very intently at the staircase. Hermione stayed where she was, not sure she wanted to walk on something that had his attention quite so intensely held.

Glancing up at her, Sirius indicated she should come down. He returned to gazing at the stairs as Hermione did. She stood beside him in the entry and considered the stairs. They looked as they always had. Carpeted, one side curving gracefully up to the first floor where the next set of stairs could be seen curving up higher beside it, leaving a gap between four flights in the shape of a vesica piscis. Sirius hadn't stood up.

Hermione squatted down next to him, and joined his silent stair-gazing.

'Are…' she said after a minute, 'the stairs about to morph into a giant pink elephant?'

'… No,' Sirius answered distractedly.

Hermione tried to return to contemplating the stairs, but they didn't hold her attention long. She'd set her elbows on her knees the way his were, though she doubted she had quite the same ability to look like squatting was a natural stance for her. Hermione shifted a little, trying to position herself the way he was: half-sat on one heel, the other heel flat on the floor. It was the second part she couldn't quite do, and nearly tipped over trying.

She'd snagged Sirius's top to stop herself falling. He looked at her, an eyebrow quirked.

'Are you mocking me?' he asked.

Hermione started laughing, slumping onto the floor.

'No,' she sniggered. 'I'm trying to imitate you! I have no idea how you sit like that!'

Sirius swivelled around, pivoting on one foot, to face her. He looked down at his stance.

'Just do,' he responded simply.

'What are you looking at?' Hermione asked, gesturing at the stairs.

'I'm trying to figure out what to do with it,' Sirius answered.

Hermione organised her limbs on the floor.

'What do you have so far?'

'Well,' Sirius had looked back at the stairs, 'I've run though a list of options. Replace it with floating planes of glass or large disks cut from tree trunks stacked offset on top of each other… which made me think of stairs made out of records, but Remus said they're not so easy to find anymore, so that might not be practical. Stairs charmed to move like Dumbledore's staircase… A pole to slide down, combined with a ladder and… maybe a slide…'

Hermione found herself nodding, trying not to start laughing again.

'A platform charmed to work like a lift…' Sirius went on. 'Bouncy steps like hopping stones…'

'And…' Hermione prompted, 'you can't make your mind up, or you don't like any of these options?'

'Aside from being able to hear you thinking they're all ridiculous…' Sirius said. He turned a look on Hermione as she started laughing. It made Hermione laugh harder. 'I admit you may have a point,' Sirius conceded. 'Teddy will be crawling soon, and, if he's anything like Harry was, he'll want to go up and down stairs ad nauseam. Dora and Remus's place doesn't have stairs… And Crookshanks would probably have a hard time with some of those options.'

It called a halt to Hermione's laughter. She eyed him.

'You're considering them?' she asked.

'Mm…' Sirius hummed. He stood up from the floor. 'Harry took a tumble down the stairs once. He'd looked steady, so I'd let him go on up ahead of me and took my eyes off him for a minute to chat with James. Don't think I've ever moved faster in my life – when I heard the first thump. He was okay. Think James and I both had heart attacks, but we checked him over, and when the shock wore off he stopped crying… Probably best to keep these steps simple. I hate the carpet, so it's going, but I'll put traction charms on the wood, I think…'

Hermione had gotten more slowly to her feet. Sirius noticed her staring at him and frowned at her.

'What?' he asked.

'That's really sweet, Sirius.'

'What is?' he said, confused.

Hermione sent her arms around him, resting her cheek on his chest.

'That you're planning the house around Teddy and Crookshanks,' she answered.

Sirius had wrapped his arms, in turn, around her. It seemed to have become an automatic response she could get easily from him.

'Of course I'm considering them,' Sirius said, still sounding confused. 'Crookshanks lives here and Teddy stops by often enough.'

Hermione squeezed him.

'Exactly,' she said. 'That's why it's sweet.'

Sirius had started chuckling. He looked down at her, eyebrows raised. Hermione didn't let him go. She started rocking him side to side. Sirius chuckled more and gave her back a pat.

'Why am I being rocked?' he asked.

'For the same reason you're being hugged.' Hermione kissed his chest. 'Because you're sweet.'

'Is that a thing?' Sirius said. 'Is there a hug threshold for sweetness?'

'I'd say so,' Hermione agreed. 'There's certainly a squish threshold of cuteness.'

When Hermione let him go, Sirius walked over to the outcropping wall that turned whatever was under the stairs into dead space. It was the only staircase that had its underside closed off completely. The ones on the floors above had a covering about a foot and a half deep underneath their curving lengths. The ground floor could hold a cupboard under the stairs, perhaps, Hermione thought, if Sirius put a door in it. There was already a cupboard nearer the front door, but it held a troll's leg.

'I don't like this,' Sirius said, stood before the under-stair wall.

Hermione stepped up beside him.

'The wall?' she said. 'That you painted just the other day?'

'Yeah…' said Sirius. He peeked under the protruding lip of a step. 'The steps are wood,' he said, 'under the carpet.' He fetched his wand and poked it just under the lip. There was a popping noise and the top of the bit of wall protruded a little. Under the influence of a localised blasting charm, the wall buckled inwards, sending the released bit at the top bending out toward Sirius.

'There are nails!' Sirius said, surprised, peering at the buckled-out bit of wall.

Hermione took a look.

'It must be part of the original Muggle construction, then,' she said.

With the use of a few more blasting charms, Sirius crunched a hole out of the wall, spilling plaster dust onto the newly finished floor. Beyond splintered wood laths and crumbling plaster edges was a very dark space that stank of century-old stale air. Hermione took a step back.

'If you find a skeleton in there,' she said, 'please don't tell me.'

He didn't, just a bunch of decayed rats. Sirius was back to the task after breakfast. He left Hermione to feel alone in the big house for only a couple hours when he went for a run, returning to bash out more of the under-stair wall before going up to do the same to the coverings under the higher staircases. Over the first day, he kept his tools magical. That had been a good thing.

Armed with the tricks and tips Sirius had used with her (though not inclined to cut herself) Hermione served as a significantly better Healing tutor to the other students on Tuesday than she had previously. She'd spent the entire time they practised feeling decidedly ill, but she neither vomited, nor started downing the contents of the Weasley's liquor cabinet. She and Harry returned from the Burrow together, wet and shivering from the persistent rains.

Headed for the staircase to race up, change out of wet clothes and dump her bag in "her room", Hermione took a moment to heed the warning from Sirius's disembodied voice. It registered at the same moment she noticed the four-step-wide hole in the stairs.

Hermione grabbed the handrail, jerking to a sudden halt. Sirius's face was visible through the hole.

'Careful, Hermione,' he repeated, looking up at her, 'there's a hole.'

'Yes,' Hermione agreed, 'I see that.'

Harry had been rather more observant than her. He ducked under the stairs beside Sirius and gazed up at the wide hole.

'What happened?' he asked Sirius.

Sirius shoved his hands in his pockets.

'One of the steps became un-nailed,' he said.

'And the other three?' Harry asked.

Sirius was trying not to grin.

'Turns out,' he said, genial, 'sledgehammers pack more of a punch than beaters' bats.'

'They're heavier than beaters' bats!' Hermione exclaimed. 'Surely you could work that one out before taking out a pack of steps!'

Sirius nodded solemnly.

'You'd think I would,' he agreed. He cracked a grin. 'There's a small chance,' he admitted, 'I just had a bit of fun with a sledgehammer.'

Hermione huffed and Sirius laughed.

'Don't worry,' he told her. 'I've already ordered an owl post delivery of wood from a home fixer-upper shop Remus knows. Right size and everything. If the wood doesn't match perfectly I can transfigure it a bit. It'll be delivered soon.'

'Don't worry?' Hermione said, staring up at the landing she was trying to get to. 'How am I supposed to get upstairs?'

Sirius pulled his hands out of his pockets. He held them up.

'I'll help you,' he offered.

He was mental.

'I'm not standing on your hands!' Hermione cried. 'You'll drop me – or wobble!'

'Nah,' Sirius said. 'I'm pretty strong, Mione.'

His use of the nickname gave Hermione momentary pause. Harry was looking up at her, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sirius. Hermione was fairly certain Sirius had never called her that around other people before. She shook her head and placed a cautious foot on the step just below the hole.

'Is this one okay?' she asked.

'Try it and see,' Sirius suggested.

'Sirius!' Hermione whined. 'I don't want to fall!'

'I'm right here, Hermione,' Sirius said. 'If you fall, I'll catch you.'

That one Hermione did trust. She stepped up, braced on the balustrade, and the step held – though the balustrade shifted worryingly. She glared down at the unconcerned man below her.

'Levitate me?'

Sirius had had his hands ready again. He dropped them disappointedly and pulled out is wand.

'But do it smoothly!' Hermione called, gripping the balustrade tightly, as she felt the spell take hold of her.

Sirius did, thankfully. On the other side of the hole Hermione turned around and peered down at him again.

'You are planning on getting this patched up by the end of the day, right?' she asked.

'Not really,' Sirius said, face a picture of innocence. 'I thought I'd leave it for a bit and erect a sign before it that says "Caution: hole".' With gesturing hands, he depicted the sign in the air before him. 'It'd be a good way to test how well people notice warning signs.'

Hermione glared and Sirius smiled back.

'I'd put a mattress under the hole!' Sirius called after her as Hermione continued up the stairs. She heard the sound of Harry's laughter all the way up to the second floor.

To Sirius's credit, he did fix the hole by the end of the day. The wood didn't match, but Sirius had a good few ideas about staining the wood before varnishing it. What had Hermione more up in arms was the mountain of wooden planks he'd ordered to fix just four steps. When she'd asked why he'd stacked a few dozen beams' worth of the stuff in the dining room, he'd just answered, 'It might be useful if more things get irreparably broken,' and there was little that was reassuring about that statement.

The end of the following day saw the ground floor staircase completed – without any depletion in Sirius's stockpile of hardwood construction timber. The underside now exposed, Hermione could see it was held up by nothing more than two diagonal beams the steps were set into – which Sirius demonstrated were sufficiently strong by standing in the middle of the staircase and jumping on it. It only looked weaker, he said, because all the adornments were gone: the carpet that had run down it and the section of the corridor that had been walled off under it. The entry corridor looked much wider with the extra space exposed, and, for a wizard's house, conspicuously modern.

Sirius continued avidly with his project whenever he was in the house, steadily stripping back the stairs higher and higher up until, when Hermione stood in the entry, she could see the wooden undersides of steps continuing way up above her head and a fair amount more of the landings the steps lead to. The ground floor staircase, at least, was up against one wall. The one from the first floor looked like it floated in the air, secured on two beams to no more than the floors above and below it. It was enough to give Hermione vertigo, and enough to leave her to shriek when she saw Sirius dangling off the perilous thing to polish the underside. It took her all week to get used to climbing it.

Watches, though tolerable with Sirius, had become less interesting now they weren't the only times Hermione got to spend alone and chatting with him. All the same, Sirius reaching out for her to walk the county lanes hand in hand with him… was very nice. Hermione would have taken that again over Sirius leaving for an entire half a day on Friday to meet the mysterious Brian Voigt with Kingsley. Apparently, the Order's best plan for testing the man's allegiance and capability… was to get him drunk.

Sirius shrugged when Hermione questioned it that morning.

'Bill says his defences drop when he's had a few,' he said. He was lying flat on his back on the bed, Hermione on top of him, her chin pillowed on a forearm she'd rested across his chest. Sirius hooked his hands behind his head, propping it up to see her better. 'I wanted to see it for myself, and Kingsley reckons it's a good idea. I want to know why this wizard from the other side of the world wants to sign himself up to be our spy.'

'Leonora did,' Hermione said. 'Join the Order, I mean. And it's not so strange, I suppose. Voldemort didn't only affect us, we were just the hardest hit.'

'France is one thing,' Sirius said. 'It's right across The Channel. South Africa is a lot further than that.'

'And they've had their own issues,' Hermione said. 'Bill wouldn't be his friend if Brian was in favour of the Apartheid. If Brian's father was, well… his motivations would mirror yours quite closely, Sirius.'

'His father,' Sirius said, 'Clement Voigt, seems to have been a powerful figure in their old Ministry. Created and ran several notorious prisons for non-white traditional Healers when being one was outlawed.'

'Well there you go then,' said Hermione. 'Those prisons were horrible.' Hermione trailed a finger along one of Sirius's prison tattoos. 'Though… erm… perhaps… not worse than Azkaban.'

When she met Sirius's eyes again, he didn't look offended. Azkaban was a slow torture of the body with a steady and horrendous torture of the mind. The Sangoma Prisons Hermione had read about sounded the other way around. Dementors didn't live in the southern hemisphere. For all the brutality of the Sangoma Prisons, Azkaban seemed… well, of the prisoners who had been kept there for anything longer than a sentence of a year, Azkaban had a death rate frighteningly near 100%.

Hermione kissed the middle of Sirius's chest. He retrieved a tendril of her hair and wound a curl of it around his finger.

If Kingsley was keen on Sirius joining him in the… get Brian drunk venture…

'Sirius,' she said, 'are you a Legilimens?'

'No,' he said easily. He let the tendril of hair go and tucked his hand back behind his head. He met Hermione's gaze. 'But I can tell if you're hiding something, or if you're being completely honest with me.'

'… Can… you tell what I'm hiding?'

'Not really,' Sirius said. 'I can get a general sense about it on a rare occasion… Nothing more than that.'

Hermione watched him. He was looking straight at her – into her eyes. She called to mind an image of Harry in a terrible state and waited for a reaction from Sirius. There was nothing.

'Okay,' she said, letting it go for now. She followed another of the ink black lines on his chest with a finger. 'How'd you learn?'

'I haven't, really….' Hermione looked at him and Sirius conceded. 'Dumbledore,' he said. 'He tried to teach me Occlumency – teach me a bit of self-control, frankly, was what he was after. I got nowhere with it until he figured to teach me a bit of Legilimency. Reckoned I'd do better if I understood the mechanics of what I was defending myself against. It worked. I had a bit more practise with Legilimency – wand-aided – in the first Order. It's… a lot faster to get the information you want if you just go looking for it yourself.'

Hermione nodded.

'It's one of the reasons they considered me such a threat,' Sirius added. 'One of the reasons Nott used to wave my right to trial: I'm a decent Occlumens. Dumbledore told them that.'

And that was one of the reasons, Hermione suspected, for why Sirius had had such a hard time listening to Dumbledore when he'd gotten out of Azkaban.

'They don't seem to believe it now,' Hermione said.

'Funny that,' Sirius said.

'I suppose,' Hermione said, 'you've never proved it.'

'I have,' Sirius said. 'But only to a few select people who aren't here anymore and Dumbledore.'

And Dumbledore wasn't a person Umbridge had ever wanted to listen to. Hermione met his eyes again.

'So, I guess,' she said, 'I'd get nowhere trying to see inside your head.'

Sirius watched her gently.

'If you wanted to, Mione,' he said quietly, 'I'd let you. But there's a fair amount in there you wouldn't want to see.'

It was enough for Hermione. She let the subject drop.

The house felt very quiet and lonely after he'd gone. For all Hermione no longer needed to wait for watches to have some time with him, just waiting for his return that evening felt more than long enough.

Sirius brought out something in her. Mostly just... a sort of confidence. A freedom. Something that had appeared before as little more than a seed to be shown here and there – largely when she'd been alone, no one around to make her rethink or filter herself. Now, Hermione had a hard time feeling that part of herself when she was alone. It seemed to depart with the unusual man. She tried to focus on her studies, but found her mind wandering and wavering. Alone to focus was how she'd worked for so much of her life. And here she was, finding it easier to do so when sat not far away from wherever Sirius was banging, scraping, and, on occasion, swearing at.

'So?' Hermione asked him when he finally returned home.

Sirius sat down at the table and declined Kreacher's offer of dinner on the grounds Kingsley had fed him quite well already.

'I think it may work,' he answered.

It was a hopeful start.

'The plan's further along already than I'd thought,' Sirius went on. 'I thought Brian had a job interview scheduled with the Hitters' Office. Seems, instead, he's waltzed into the Ministry like a foreign dignitary and had a meeting with Blishwick. Asked for a tour of the Ministry and met a few of the other department Heads – Flint and Rowle in particular.'

'How'd he get a meeting with Blishwick?' Hermione asked, surprised.

'Arranged his residency as one sought through political curiosity – said he wanted to come work over here for a bit in Law Enforcement to gain an understanding of how Umbridge's Strategy for a Revitalised Wizarding Society could be applied in his home nation. So it became something of a foreign relations matter – one Umbridge has already taken interest in.'

The idea had been one concocted by Bill and Kingsley, Sirius explained. Brian Voigt's position in South Africa had been as a Hit Wizard for their constabulary – nowhere near a position of power. Brian had made no secret of that. The impression he'd given Blishwick was of political aspirations and a future, in his own country, in policy making – like his father had been, but better. And "better" could mean a lot.

'He's a sufficiently notable political figure,' Sirius said, 'despite never having been in a position of power himself. As a youth he was toted around by his dad and the papers covered everything they did. He can sing both tunes at once: a silenced history of being in favour of open persecution, or a figure you could sympathise with who'd been forced to be part of his father's nefarious acts when his own views were for unification, tolerance, and acceptance of human differences. It's a duplicity that worked for Umbridge.

'So he can sell himself to her as someone who'll happily swallow and support any bull she comes out with,' Sirius went on, 'and she could sell him as someone motivated to do well by persecuted populations – that aren't part-human,' Sirius added wryly, 'because he's seen firsthand the atrocities caused by bigotry. Plus, there are a lot of influential people in the Ministry you can bet will be right chuffed by the idea of a former colony eager to come back to mother Britain and learn from her.'

'So,' said Hermione, 'when you say you think it could work, you mean Brian taking Smith's seat in the Wizengamot?'

Sirius had leant his chair back on two legs. He lit a cigarette and blew the first lungful in a direction away from Hermione.

'It's not the best option,' he said. 'The moment that seat's filled Umbridge can do whatever she wants – and if Brian takes it, he'll have to vote with her to keep her trust. A spot as a Head of an Office in Law Enforcement would be a better position for us, but there isn't one open, and taking a prized position of power like that wouldn't endear Brian to the power-hungry cohort that surrounds Umbridge.

'No,' he continued, 'the Wizengamot seat is the one that's most open for him. He's outsider enough that Umbridge wouldn't be playing favourites with her supporters by appointing him. It's long been considered a good idea to have the odd foreign national in a high court that's supposed to be a cosmopolitan collection of varied opinions. And, like I said, Umbridge can sell it. Brian may even be announced to the public as a nominee for the seat – giving Umbridge the first new arse-on-seat she adds to her Wizengamot arsenal that was nominated the way convention has dictated for the past century. That's a good public relations move, and promoting Brian for it would help her with her endeavour to appear like she really is trying to make Wizarding society less of a pureblood-mania-driven cock-up.'

Hermione set her fork down on her finished plate. All of a sudden they were on the cusp of a new and very risky development.

'Do you trust him?' she asked seriously. 'Trust him enough to serve as the Order's spy?'

'I trust him to be able to play sycophant,' Sirius said, and Hermione sensed disdain in the words. 'It seems his natural role and he's already succeeded in it.'

Sirius met Hermione's gaze and sighed.

'I trust his motivations,' he answered. 'I saw the frustration in him. He itches to differentiate himself from his father, and was getting nowhere with it in South Africa. Everyone knows him as his father's son, and he's about as hated over there as his father was. It's been five years since the end of the Apartheid Ministry, and he's barely gotten himself a job as a low-grade lackey in Law Enforcement.

'And,' Sirius added, 'I trust Kingsley. I don't think Brian was unaware of what we were testing him on, but he was completely compliant and Kingsley's good. Kingsley's more convinced than I am, so I'm betting he's seen enough to validate that.'

'You don't like him,' Hermione stated.

'No,' Sirius agreed. 'I don't.' He scraped his hair out of his face and went on, 'Kingsley did his background research. I had a look through the paper articles Brian has appeared in. It'd be a story on the opening of a new prison for Xhosa traditional Healers and he'd be stood there, smiling and waving at the camera, beside his dad. Or one at a township that had been cleared so white witches and wizards could take prime land, and, again, he was smiling and waving at the camera. And he's smarmy.'

Yet Sirius trusted Brian's motivations. That said a lot to Hermione.

'How old was he in these pictures?' she asked.

'I donno,' Sirius answered. 'Teenager.'

So it wasn't so much Sirius disliked Brian because he believed Brian wanted to be a bigoted tyrant. Sirius just disliked him because Brian hadn't shown a defiant backbone from the age of four. Hermione nodded.

'And the Ministry knows nothing of his friendship with Bill?' she asked.

'We don't think so,' Sirius answered. 'Brian was, essentially, a guide and security guard to the Curse Breakers when Bill was down there. The Curse Breakers were mostly southern African nationals, Bill the exception. By nature, Curse Breakers are a ragtag group united by their interest in crawling through dangerous places. They didn't need a security guard. Brian was chucked the undesirable formality because it'd mean he was stuck in dank caves for a while, out of public sight.

'If the Ministry does find a record of Bill being down there, they'd be able to tie the two to the same place at the same time, but not deduce a friendship. And both Bill and Brian think it unlikely the Ministry could get a hold of a record at all – South Africa doesn't seem so great at keeping accurate detailed records in general, and, when they do, they don't seem to like letting them out the country – don't seem to like letting anything out the country. Brian had to bring his money over in a sack to get by all the restrictions on transferring it abroad, and their Ministry thinks he left on a travel arrangement.'

Sirius stubbed out his cigarette.

'You'll meet him tomorrow,' he said. 'He's coming to the meeting.'