Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance/Fantasy
Warnings: See chapter 4
Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I'd be sitting at home writing the fifth book right now, NOT posting on a ff.n site. I mean really, think about it people. I don't own this, don't sue me.
Chapter 5:
Of Blood
Harry stared out the window of the train. Dumbledore had announced that the school would be closed for a little longer than was usual to enhance spells, and that students would be informed of when they would open eventually last night at dinner. The school had gone into an aftershock, but Harry figured that they should have thought something like this would happen eventually because f the Death Eater being able to break in. Of course the teachers at Hogwarts would want to get its guard more ready for an attack.
Dean was residing in their compartment, calmly playing a game of chess with Ron (and losing horrendously), as he had had a fight with Seamus. Hermione was reading some uninteresting nonfiction book that Harry wasn't really interested in. he had a sneaking suspicion that it was supposed to be about sylphs, or that she'd be researching them in the future. It was still hard to believe that he'd never see Hogwarts again; it was his beloved school that had gotten him through a lot in his life. He cringed at the possibility that he may never see it again.
"Hey, Harry? Could you help me? Please!?" Dean called over to Harry, breaking him from his musings. Harry smiled lightly and joined him.
* * *
"I still can't believe you beat him!" Hermione squealed.
"Gee, Hermione, thanks for the moral support." Ron muttered moodily.
"Oh! Ron! You can afford to lose at least once in your life!"
Harry lifted his heavy trunk and walked toward the end of the compartment. Ron and Hermione were still bickering playfully in the background; Dean had long since gone to change out of his school robes and into his Muggle clothes and they hadn't seen him since. He heard footsteps behind him and Harry knew it was Ron and Hermione running to catch up to him.
"I can't wait to see Sirius!" Harry said through his smile. He was positively certain that if he weren't carrying a heavy trunk behind him, he'd be bouncing off the balls of his feet. He knew he looked positively ridiculous, but he didn't care.
From the crowd emerged such a welcome face that Harry's face very nearly split into a grin, and he dropped his trunk to run madly through the crowd and jump on the person he was so happy to see.
"Sirius! Oh, Sirius, you don't know what I've been through!" Harry happily smiled into Sirius' shoulder.
"Well, hello Harry, it's very nice to see you in public." Sirius said through his smile. "Are you just never going to let go of me, or are you going to show me to your friends so I can say hello to them too?"
"Oh, come on then. You can put yourself to good use and help me with my trunk and Hedwig." Harry unlinked his arms from Sirius' neck and led him over to the abandoned luggage.
"Hello, Ron, Hermione." Sirius greeted them, a huge grin he could see playing across Harry's features.
"Hello, Sirius." They chorused, smiles gracing their faces.
"Oh, my! You got your hair cut!" Hermione gasped.
"Yeah, I went to a hairstylist after I got released. You would never believe! They looked at me like they had to cut around an extra hand growing out of my head." They all laughed, and Mrs. Weasley came over to join them.
"Well, hello Sirius. Enjoying freedom?" She commented, only stuttering slightly compared to the last time she had beheld the ex-convict in public.
"Hello, Molly. Yes, yes, I think I'm starting to quite enjoy walking around in a big crowd."
"How did you . . . " She asked, puzzled.
"After the . . . Triwizard Tournament . . . was finished, I was the dog as I'm positive you remember (Mrs. Weasley went red)) and I listened very closely to conversations and realized that you were called Molly. Are you married to Arthur Weasley? I vaguely remember, but I didn't know you all that well before . . . " His eyes clouded over slightly.
"Oh, well, that was an unforgettable night." Mrs. Weasley agreed gently, trying not to remind Sirius of that night too much.
"OI! Ronniekins!" A chorus of two voices floated over to their little group, signaling that the twins had found them. They came into view, dragging their trunks. "I can't believe you wouldn't introduce us to your friend's godfather."
"Yes, yes, I think it was very rude of you."
"What exactly should we do about?" At this point there was no stopping them.
"Well, I don't know, we'll have to think of something quite adequate over the break."
"Yes, yes, quite adequate."
Mrs. Weasley was about to tell them off, when Sirius started to laugh.
"You remind me so much of myself when I was your age. God, that sentence made me sound like I was old or something! But anyway, I would tell you stories, but that might give you ideas, and I don't think your parents would appreciate it."
"Or Ron, for that matter." Harry added.
"Oh, I wish I didn't have to go to the other side to meet my parents!" Hermione exclaimed wistfully. "But I do. There's nothing I can do about it. Goodbye, Harry." She sobbed lightly as a tear went down her cheek, and she hugged him quickly so she could hide them.
"Hey we'll see each other again sometime. It's not like I'm going off to die." Harry murmured, returning their companionable hug.
"I know, it's just, when I'm not sure about things like this, I freak out. Like, I don't know when I'm going to see you again." Hermione tried to say through her tears.
"I'll write. How's that?"
"That's fine."
Ron stepped up and offered his hand to Harry, who took it, and was thrown into a hug. "Don't forget completely about us now, will you?"
"Of course not."
* * *
The rain that the clouds had been holding back all day had finally burst them and was coming down in torrents. Sirius looked over at Harry, who was staring out the car window. He seemed quieter than usual. Sirius wanted to know what was wrong.
"Harry? What's wrong?" He asked.
"Nothing." Harry turned to his godfather.
Sirius gave Harry a knowing look, and continued. "When everything is 'normal' you aren't just staring out the window at the rain."
"No, really, it's nothing."
"Are you having guy problems? Because I really wouldn't know how to help you if you were."
Harry laughed at him. "No, I've just closed the book on a very important time in my life."
"If I wasn't driving, I'd hug you. But I am, so I'll tell you this. Dumbledore must've had a reason to expel you. If he thought it was best for you to stay at Hogwarts, you'd still be there. But he didn't think that. He thought it would be best for you to leave Hogwarts. He must know something."
"He knew it was okay to write the sylphs, so he must have been in contact with them for a long time. I just wonder how much he knew . . . " Harry trailed off into his thoughts.
There was silence for a while, then Harry noticed a small grin on Sirius' face.
"What?"
"I have a surprise for you!" He giggled a little, sounding a bit like a schoolgirl.
"A surprise? What kind of surprise?" Harry was torn between glee and suspicion. He still hadn't forgotten the Marauders' reputations from when his father was still alive.
"I think you'll love it!"
* * *
The car pulled in a long driveway leading to a small house in the country. It had vines crawling up the sides, and the blue paint underneath was starting to peel off. There was a stone birdbath in the middle of the front yard, and it looked like a long field was behind the house, just over the small brook. There was a looming barn off to the side, and a gardening shed just by where the car was parked. Sirius looked over at Harry expectantly.
"It's so pretty!" Harry gasped.
Sirius smiled. They ran through the rain with the trunk and Hedwig up to the house. Harry closed the door behind him, and stared around at the entryway. It didn't seem like his godfather had ever left. There was a coat rack with boots underneath it, a small mirror hanging on the wall, a welcome mat on the inside (Harry decided not to ask), and a doorless entrance into the main house.
But on a second look at the mirror, Harry saw something he didn't expect. Reflected in the mirror was a happy little girl with pink cheeks; she was taking off her long cloak, and smiling up at whomever was there in the room with her. When she took off her hat, Harry saw that her long hair was a striking blonde, and her eyes a startling green. On closer inspection, he realized her eyes were his own.
"Well, go explore! I'll get your things to your room." Sirius gave him a little push from the back.
Harry leaned forward toward what he presumed was the dining room, with a long table in the center. Just to the right of the table was a stairway that Sirius went up with Harry's things. He peeked over to his left. Harry ducked his head slightly to the left and crouched down a bit in order to see into the living room. Before he went any further, he took off his muddy boots, for fear he might just forget. He went forward, the doorless frame beckoning him toward it. The first thing he noticed was that the rug he was standing on was ornately woven in designs of red and gold, and he was severely reminded of an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. The walls were a deep red, a sort of morbid but still cheery cherry color. Then he saw it.
Right to the left of a fireplace was an elegant Christmas tree, its branches standing out proudly, declaring that it was the ruler of the living room. Harry walked up to it, the skirt red with green around the edges. But it wasn't decorated.
"Sirius-" Harry turned, only to see that the Animagi had walked into the room and was behind him.
"Yes?"
"Why isn't the tree decorated?" Harry tried to recover from the slight shock of not sensing Sirius behind him by casually putting a hand in his pocket.
"Well, Harry, this is my surprise to you.
"Let me tell you a story." Sirius sat down on the couch, and Harry took it as an invitation to sit down next to him.
"Well, actually, it isn't really a story. Or that exciting either. But you have to know it to understand this surprise." Sirius continued in a fatherly tone. "The first Christmas that your mother was pregnant with you, there was some tension around this time of year, because for one thing we were all seventeen, and Lily was one of the youngest Hogwarts students to ever get pregnant so early. Well, anyway, so Remus and I had an idea. We thought that it would be great if we could get everyone together to celebrate Christmas. Of course, we weren't living on our own, so we had to improvise a bit with the Shrieking Shack.
"It was his job and his job only to pick out the tree. I don't really think he trusted me enough to cut down the tree without hurting anything. Anyway, it was my job to collect everyone and get them out to the Shack. But when we got there, the tree wasn't decorated. All of the ornaments we had painstakingly collected were still in their boxes. I internally freaked out, but somehow remained calm. I asked Remus why the ornaments weren't up, and he said he thought it'd be a good thing for us to do together.
"When we were all done, the Christmas tree was about the sorriest thing we had ever seen; but we had had so much fun putting up the ornaments that we did it together every year until your parents died."
Sirius' voice faltered when he came to the end of his story, and Harry didn't know what to do exactly. His instincts told him to hug the man, and he did without a second thought. Sirius pulled away after their little moment was over.
"Well, anyway, I have a lot of the same ornaments and stuff we used back then in my attic, and I was thinking that today and tomorrow we could continue the tradition."
"Is Remus coming too?" Harry asked.
"Well, yes, but not today. He's just coming for the decorating tomorrow. All we have to do is dig them out of their boxes."
Sirius led him out to the stairs that he had taken Harry's stuff up on and the ascended them quickly. On the second floor, Harry barely had any time to look around before Sirius went careening up the second flight and up into a trapdoor (which he supposed was the attic). Harry followed his excited godfather up the stairs, shaking his head and smiling gently to himself.
Once he had stuck his head fully into the attic, Harry looked around, awestruck. He had never really been in an attic that was this cluttered before. Apparantly, it was used as a library as well as an attic. The walls were lined with dusty tomes of magic (mostly transfiguration, potions, and herbology), the bookcases wallowing in the dust. Off toward a window, there was a writing desk, and a very tattered one at that. It looked like something that may have come out of the Shrieking Shack (and Harry thought that it was very likely that it did.) After all that space was taken up, there was also a telescope next to the desk and voluminous boxes of anything and everything piled all around the middle of the floor. Then Harry noticed the red ropes that are often used for museums.
"Sirius, why are those ropes here?" Harry asked, brow furrowed, and trying to find his godfather.
"This was used as a museum while I was in Azkaban. They thought that I would be a famous criminal someday or something and so they preserved my house exactly the way it was the day of my arrest. People would come up here and just want to move everything, so they had to put up the ropes. I just haven't gotten around to moving them yet." Sirius explained, quickly making them disappear into nothing with his wand.
Harry climbed into the attic, unknowing of what to do exactly.
"Unfortunately," Sirius was saying, "I kinda forgot which one of the boxes the Christmas stuff was in, so we have to search through all of them until we find them." And with that, Sirius was off again, exploring into one of the corners of his house.
Harry sighed, looking down into the volumes of boxes yet to be looked through. He just knew the dust was going to get to him eventually. He shrugged, aware that he was talking to himself through body language. He stared down at what looked like a box full of books, but he was curious, and opened it anyway. The first book he came across was a huge 300-some page novel. It was entitled My Black Rose, and on the inside cover, he read a description of the book, and it was about what it'd be like to be a Death Eater's child while Voldemort was on the rise. He thought it looked like an interesting read. Then he looked at the author.
Lily Evans.
His heart stopped. Why hadn't anyone told him his mother had been an author? And, according to the reviews on the back, a rather good and best selling one at that. His world seemed to make sense now. She must have published some secrets that she wasn't supposed to, and so Voldemort saw it as a threat. Therefore, his parents would have been targeted.
"Sirius?" Harry leaned back onto his calves.
"Yes?" Sirius leaned over some boxes.
"What else did she write?"
Sirius was thoroughly intrigued now, and he crawled over to where the young half-sylph sat. He took the book in one of his hands, and he looked briefly at the cover, before his eyes returned to the far-away look they so often had. He turned to the back coverslip.
"There she is. Waving at us." He sighed.
Harry glanced at his godfather.
"She was always so liberal and sure of whatever she did. She had never seemed like the type that would have a child out of wedlock like she did. It was all a big scandal, parents wouldn't let their kids read what she wrote anymore, for fear she might have just passed something on and make them want to have children and be like her. Of course, she handled it with grace, and told newspapers that she looked forward to having you in her life. She was so beautiful." He quickly wiped his eyes.
"James was lucky. She wanted to be with him. I was always between girlfriends, and since she's died, I've thought about her more and more often. If only I had been more mature, or less wild, or something, you might have been our child. She was a genius, really. It only figures that she'd marry the one man that could challenge her ways of thought, that could keep up with her wild notions. Everyone says you look exactly like James, and act exactly like James did, but I was his best friend, and there's that graceful, merciful side to you that Lily gave you." Sirius took the box in his hands and took out all the books. They amounted to three.
"What she wrote was so challenging of our viewpoints, it scared many adults. She wrote the most bizarre things, mostly from her experiences as an aurer. People wouldn't admit that they were more closely related to Voldemort than they let on, as her books pointed out. They were threatened by her. With that, she became very popular all over the world in the teenagers, who were almost naturally rebellious. She was, supposedly, killed for her efforts."
Harry stared at the smiling picture of his mother at sixteen. She waved at him, green eyes sparkling, and he saw a part of himself in her.
* * *
Two hours later, they still hadn't found the Christmas decorations. They were apparantly stored away in some remote box that hadn't been out in ages. Just like all the other things that were up here at the moment. Sirius laughed at Harry, who was trying in vain to find his way out of the little fort of sorted things he had created, and life was at a standstill for the moment.
"Oh! Here they are!" Sirius almost shouted.
"You've known where they are this entire time, haven't you?" Harry accoused.
"Well, yeah, but I thought that this would be a cool thing for us to do together. Just because I knew where they were doesn't mean I can't have fun looking." He smiled to himself.
After much ado about nothing, the ornaments had made the precarious journey down the two flights of stairs and were happily sitting in the living room. Harry sat down in the windowseat, watching the snow that had once been rain, fall delicately to the ground. It felt so good, just sitting here, watching the snow falling, and not really having to worry about anything but what he was going to do next. He sat there for a moment, and suddenly realized that he still hadn't unpacked.
"Sirius! Where's my room?" He called into the delves of the house.
"Oh, yeah, when you go up the stairs, your room is the second one on the right. I'm sure you will want to make yourself comfortable." Sirius explained, from the kitchen.
"Thanks."
Harry climbed the steps and found himself in a fairly open hallway, considering there were several rooms on either side. The second door on the right still had a sign that said guestroom on it, and the guestbook was just to the left. Harry smiled as he opened it, looking at all the names of people who had visited this house, thinking they were in the home of a mass murderer. The Animagic dog downstairs was quite tame, no need to worry about him savaging anyone. Harry walked into his room, and plopped right down on the spacious double bed that was directly in the middle. His head lolled off to one side, his glasses bumping the heavy quilt gently.
He sat up, looking around the room for the first time. He was completely surrounded by a beautiful sky blue, but the wall behind him was a deep plum, with the word shhh . . . written in ivory. Harry didn't know that Sirius could be so . . . feminine. The furniture didn't consist of much, mainly a poofy chair to sit in, and a small bedside table. It was no wonder this was the guestroom. It seemed like the guests wouldn't be in their room long. Harry walked around the room in his bare feet, looking at the pictures on the wall. They were all rather tastefully done, in black and white, with the sun clearly shining off from one side. A few of them weren't moving, some were, but Harry had really always preferred the ones that didn't. Rather than being in the moment, among the people in the picture, you were rather looking at the beauty of the moment the picture was taken. Harry noticed that a lot of them were of a rather pretty woman, a young girl, of about seventeen. Harry resolved to ask Sirius who it was during dinner.
As there wasn't a dresser, he realized that there would be no unpacking, no anything, really. Harry resolved that he was tired, and flopped back onto the bed. He let out his breath, his arms and legs splayed out any which way. It had been an interesting day, to say the least. He turned onto his side, letting his eyes fall shut in the process.
* * *
It was nothing but a child. Nothing but a small, crying child. That is, a child without a face.
A screaming child. The shrill cries escaping the boy and ricocheting off the walls, he seemed to be having some sort of seizure. He lay there, convulsing on the ground, whimpering softly to himself as a shadow loomed over him.
And such a shadow it was. It wasn't only a shadow; it was the shadow. The shape was made up of miniature corpses of all the people that had been killed at the hands of this thing. This thing that loomed, that made the shadow. The one shadow that's very exitance depended upon that of the suffering and dying lives it led. Led into darkness. There was no stopping it. The boy was frantic, but his face wouldn't show.
Then, a taller man came into the picture. Neither of them had a face, but Harry thought he knew what that they were related.
With a will, what looked like an angel came hovering down to kneel beside the boy with no face. The boy who was afraid of his own father. Harry knew it was a sylph. He knew that much from the shape of the body, it was one of those things he just knew. It's dark hair flowed down its waist until it came to the point where it had just passed the upper body and was moving onto the legs. He couldn't see the sylph's face, but he knew it was in pain. Every streak of the sylph's body was wracked with pain; etched with horror. The sylph's flowing dark hair seemed somehow alight with an otherworldly hint of greatness, of goodness. He knew it was a ruler.
The dark shadow made a move as if to cover the boy completely, as if to kill him, but the sylph spit at its feet, and it retreated, but not completely. The father made a move as if to restrain his child, but found he didn't have to. The boy was on puppet strings. The darkness that surrounded them was starting to disappear, and the child was becoming uncomfortably comfortable in the sylph's arms. He returned the hug.
Almost instantly the sylph passed out, but the tears that had been bound to follow its wretched life fell freely onto the boy's chest. And the strings disappeared; and the father went off into the shadows, and for the first time the shadow completely left them. And Harry got a good look at the sylph's face.
It was himself.
* * *
Harry awoke, emotionally bruised and sweating. His scar was trying to tear itself off his head, but the rest of his skin wouldn't let it. He realized that he hadn't even been under the covers when he had dropped off. He shoved his hair away from his face, reliving every last second of it. It had been so real. Yet it had been so surreal. He thought he understood some of it, but he could never be sure.
He was pleased to see that Sirius had been in to check on him, but had decided not to wake him. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, and a note saying that he thought Harry would be thirsty. Harry greatfully drank it down to the last drop.
He already knew some parts of the riddle, he knew that the shadow was Voldemort, and that in the end the boy had been relieved of his own personal burdens as well as those of Voldemort. He turned once again towards the one window in his room, watching as the sun gently fell beneath the horizon. There was a slight knock on the door behind him.
"Harry?" Sirius poked his head in and Harry turned in one fluid motion. "It's time for dinner."
* * *
That morning, Harry slept in as late as was humanely possible, the worries that had followed him at school floating away on a wing and a dream. His godfather had treated him to many stories of mischief and the Marauders at dinner, as well as a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad. The hot chocolate had been superb, and, most importantly, comforting. He had chosen not to tell Sirius about the dream he'd had, it would only put a morbid feeling on his first night here.
When Harry awoke, dazed, the crisp sunlight was already flowing in through the window and onto his pillow. He turned his head, rubbing his eyes on his hand in the process, and stared at the blue winter sky. It was a nice day. He checked the time, ten o' clock, and quickly got out of bed. Hadn't Sirius said Professor Lupin would be here at noon?
After frantically finding his robe in the many piles of unsorted clothes in his trunk, he went down the hall and past the stairs into a large bathroom where he would take a shower. It was furnished like one of those really old Victorian bathrooms, all white, with a tub that had claws and wasn't attached to a shower. He sighed, realizing that he'd have to boil in his own filth, and turned on the hot tap (which was frustratingly close to the wall of the tub.)
He took off his clothes, feeling highly conscious that this wasn't Hogwarts, the Quidditch changing rooms, or his 'home' on 4 Privet Drive. He tentatively dipped his feet into the tub, leaving his towel on the sink. The water was actually quite warm, and he felt completely relaxed, well, compared to before he had gotten in. He closed his eyes, reveling in his meditation, and sighed deeply. And a thought struck him. The boy from his dream had to have been a Slytherin. Why else would he have been afraid of his father? He settled down to mull over this thought, and dunked his head under the water to further wash his hair.
That is, he tried to dunk his head under water, but it was blood.
He tried very hard not to scream, and calmed himself. He logically told himself that the blood had to have come from him, that he was the only thing other than the tub that had touched it. Looking down, he realized that it was pooled around his upper body. Now completely freaking out, he felt himself starting to pump adrenaline through his body, and he knew that his sweat was mixing with the water. Putting his face in his hands and rubbing at his eyes, he muttered incoherently for a few seconds, it was something about happy places, he looked down again and felt it.
There was something pouring down his face.
There was something, more specifically blood, pouring down his face from his eyes.
A/N: Sorry it's so short, I was planning to make it longer, but I figured I had to stop it here. Ha, ha! Cliffie! I thought it was powerful to end the chapter here. I will finish the next chapter soon, and it should be about the same size as this one, but it will take a while to get up because I'm going on a vacation soon.
I'm sorry if there are tons of spelling mistakes, but the spell check on my computer is really messed up. As I type 'boy,' it thinks it's spelled wrong.
And, just a note: in my story, sylph is pronounced 'SY-ilph,' not 'silf,' like the one in the dictionary. So, I am actually accurate. The pronoun, well, just interchange the name of the specific sylph with 'he' and 'she' and you have basically got it down. See the letter in chapter 2 for an accurate version of this. It's very confusing. And the whole 'pertaining to sylphs' is 'sylvan.'
One more thing. When I said that I said 'no pressure on the reviews,' I LIED!!!!!!! Pleeeeeeasse r/r, it would make me feel all special and appreciated.
Genre: Romance/Fantasy
Warnings: See chapter 4
Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I'd be sitting at home writing the fifth book right now, NOT posting on a ff.n site. I mean really, think about it people. I don't own this, don't sue me.
Chapter 5:
Of Blood
Harry stared out the window of the train. Dumbledore had announced that the school would be closed for a little longer than was usual to enhance spells, and that students would be informed of when they would open eventually last night at dinner. The school had gone into an aftershock, but Harry figured that they should have thought something like this would happen eventually because f the Death Eater being able to break in. Of course the teachers at Hogwarts would want to get its guard more ready for an attack.
Dean was residing in their compartment, calmly playing a game of chess with Ron (and losing horrendously), as he had had a fight with Seamus. Hermione was reading some uninteresting nonfiction book that Harry wasn't really interested in. he had a sneaking suspicion that it was supposed to be about sylphs, or that she'd be researching them in the future. It was still hard to believe that he'd never see Hogwarts again; it was his beloved school that had gotten him through a lot in his life. He cringed at the possibility that he may never see it again.
"Hey, Harry? Could you help me? Please!?" Dean called over to Harry, breaking him from his musings. Harry smiled lightly and joined him.
* * *
"I still can't believe you beat him!" Hermione squealed.
"Gee, Hermione, thanks for the moral support." Ron muttered moodily.
"Oh! Ron! You can afford to lose at least once in your life!"
Harry lifted his heavy trunk and walked toward the end of the compartment. Ron and Hermione were still bickering playfully in the background; Dean had long since gone to change out of his school robes and into his Muggle clothes and they hadn't seen him since. He heard footsteps behind him and Harry knew it was Ron and Hermione running to catch up to him.
"I can't wait to see Sirius!" Harry said through his smile. He was positively certain that if he weren't carrying a heavy trunk behind him, he'd be bouncing off the balls of his feet. He knew he looked positively ridiculous, but he didn't care.
From the crowd emerged such a welcome face that Harry's face very nearly split into a grin, and he dropped his trunk to run madly through the crowd and jump on the person he was so happy to see.
"Sirius! Oh, Sirius, you don't know what I've been through!" Harry happily smiled into Sirius' shoulder.
"Well, hello Harry, it's very nice to see you in public." Sirius said through his smile. "Are you just never going to let go of me, or are you going to show me to your friends so I can say hello to them too?"
"Oh, come on then. You can put yourself to good use and help me with my trunk and Hedwig." Harry unlinked his arms from Sirius' neck and led him over to the abandoned luggage.
"Hello, Ron, Hermione." Sirius greeted them, a huge grin he could see playing across Harry's features.
"Hello, Sirius." They chorused, smiles gracing their faces.
"Oh, my! You got your hair cut!" Hermione gasped.
"Yeah, I went to a hairstylist after I got released. You would never believe! They looked at me like they had to cut around an extra hand growing out of my head." They all laughed, and Mrs. Weasley came over to join them.
"Well, hello Sirius. Enjoying freedom?" She commented, only stuttering slightly compared to the last time she had beheld the ex-convict in public.
"Hello, Molly. Yes, yes, I think I'm starting to quite enjoy walking around in a big crowd."
"How did you . . . " She asked, puzzled.
"After the . . . Triwizard Tournament . . . was finished, I was the dog as I'm positive you remember (Mrs. Weasley went red)) and I listened very closely to conversations and realized that you were called Molly. Are you married to Arthur Weasley? I vaguely remember, but I didn't know you all that well before . . . " His eyes clouded over slightly.
"Oh, well, that was an unforgettable night." Mrs. Weasley agreed gently, trying not to remind Sirius of that night too much.
"OI! Ronniekins!" A chorus of two voices floated over to their little group, signaling that the twins had found them. They came into view, dragging their trunks. "I can't believe you wouldn't introduce us to your friend's godfather."
"Yes, yes, I think it was very rude of you."
"What exactly should we do about?" At this point there was no stopping them.
"Well, I don't know, we'll have to think of something quite adequate over the break."
"Yes, yes, quite adequate."
Mrs. Weasley was about to tell them off, when Sirius started to laugh.
"You remind me so much of myself when I was your age. God, that sentence made me sound like I was old or something! But anyway, I would tell you stories, but that might give you ideas, and I don't think your parents would appreciate it."
"Or Ron, for that matter." Harry added.
"Oh, I wish I didn't have to go to the other side to meet my parents!" Hermione exclaimed wistfully. "But I do. There's nothing I can do about it. Goodbye, Harry." She sobbed lightly as a tear went down her cheek, and she hugged him quickly so she could hide them.
"Hey we'll see each other again sometime. It's not like I'm going off to die." Harry murmured, returning their companionable hug.
"I know, it's just, when I'm not sure about things like this, I freak out. Like, I don't know when I'm going to see you again." Hermione tried to say through her tears.
"I'll write. How's that?"
"That's fine."
Ron stepped up and offered his hand to Harry, who took it, and was thrown into a hug. "Don't forget completely about us now, will you?"
"Of course not."
* * *
The rain that the clouds had been holding back all day had finally burst them and was coming down in torrents. Sirius looked over at Harry, who was staring out the car window. He seemed quieter than usual. Sirius wanted to know what was wrong.
"Harry? What's wrong?" He asked.
"Nothing." Harry turned to his godfather.
Sirius gave Harry a knowing look, and continued. "When everything is 'normal' you aren't just staring out the window at the rain."
"No, really, it's nothing."
"Are you having guy problems? Because I really wouldn't know how to help you if you were."
Harry laughed at him. "No, I've just closed the book on a very important time in my life."
"If I wasn't driving, I'd hug you. But I am, so I'll tell you this. Dumbledore must've had a reason to expel you. If he thought it was best for you to stay at Hogwarts, you'd still be there. But he didn't think that. He thought it would be best for you to leave Hogwarts. He must know something."
"He knew it was okay to write the sylphs, so he must have been in contact with them for a long time. I just wonder how much he knew . . . " Harry trailed off into his thoughts.
There was silence for a while, then Harry noticed a small grin on Sirius' face.
"What?"
"I have a surprise for you!" He giggled a little, sounding a bit like a schoolgirl.
"A surprise? What kind of surprise?" Harry was torn between glee and suspicion. He still hadn't forgotten the Marauders' reputations from when his father was still alive.
"I think you'll love it!"
* * *
The car pulled in a long driveway leading to a small house in the country. It had vines crawling up the sides, and the blue paint underneath was starting to peel off. There was a stone birdbath in the middle of the front yard, and it looked like a long field was behind the house, just over the small brook. There was a looming barn off to the side, and a gardening shed just by where the car was parked. Sirius looked over at Harry expectantly.
"It's so pretty!" Harry gasped.
Sirius smiled. They ran through the rain with the trunk and Hedwig up to the house. Harry closed the door behind him, and stared around at the entryway. It didn't seem like his godfather had ever left. There was a coat rack with boots underneath it, a small mirror hanging on the wall, a welcome mat on the inside (Harry decided not to ask), and a doorless entrance into the main house.
But on a second look at the mirror, Harry saw something he didn't expect. Reflected in the mirror was a happy little girl with pink cheeks; she was taking off her long cloak, and smiling up at whomever was there in the room with her. When she took off her hat, Harry saw that her long hair was a striking blonde, and her eyes a startling green. On closer inspection, he realized her eyes were his own.
"Well, go explore! I'll get your things to your room." Sirius gave him a little push from the back.
Harry leaned forward toward what he presumed was the dining room, with a long table in the center. Just to the right of the table was a stairway that Sirius went up with Harry's things. He peeked over to his left. Harry ducked his head slightly to the left and crouched down a bit in order to see into the living room. Before he went any further, he took off his muddy boots, for fear he might just forget. He went forward, the doorless frame beckoning him toward it. The first thing he noticed was that the rug he was standing on was ornately woven in designs of red and gold, and he was severely reminded of an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. The walls were a deep red, a sort of morbid but still cheery cherry color. Then he saw it.
Right to the left of a fireplace was an elegant Christmas tree, its branches standing out proudly, declaring that it was the ruler of the living room. Harry walked up to it, the skirt red with green around the edges. But it wasn't decorated.
"Sirius-" Harry turned, only to see that the Animagi had walked into the room and was behind him.
"Yes?"
"Why isn't the tree decorated?" Harry tried to recover from the slight shock of not sensing Sirius behind him by casually putting a hand in his pocket.
"Well, Harry, this is my surprise to you.
"Let me tell you a story." Sirius sat down on the couch, and Harry took it as an invitation to sit down next to him.
"Well, actually, it isn't really a story. Or that exciting either. But you have to know it to understand this surprise." Sirius continued in a fatherly tone. "The first Christmas that your mother was pregnant with you, there was some tension around this time of year, because for one thing we were all seventeen, and Lily was one of the youngest Hogwarts students to ever get pregnant so early. Well, anyway, so Remus and I had an idea. We thought that it would be great if we could get everyone together to celebrate Christmas. Of course, we weren't living on our own, so we had to improvise a bit with the Shrieking Shack.
"It was his job and his job only to pick out the tree. I don't really think he trusted me enough to cut down the tree without hurting anything. Anyway, it was my job to collect everyone and get them out to the Shack. But when we got there, the tree wasn't decorated. All of the ornaments we had painstakingly collected were still in their boxes. I internally freaked out, but somehow remained calm. I asked Remus why the ornaments weren't up, and he said he thought it'd be a good thing for us to do together.
"When we were all done, the Christmas tree was about the sorriest thing we had ever seen; but we had had so much fun putting up the ornaments that we did it together every year until your parents died."
Sirius' voice faltered when he came to the end of his story, and Harry didn't know what to do exactly. His instincts told him to hug the man, and he did without a second thought. Sirius pulled away after their little moment was over.
"Well, anyway, I have a lot of the same ornaments and stuff we used back then in my attic, and I was thinking that today and tomorrow we could continue the tradition."
"Is Remus coming too?" Harry asked.
"Well, yes, but not today. He's just coming for the decorating tomorrow. All we have to do is dig them out of their boxes."
Sirius led him out to the stairs that he had taken Harry's stuff up on and the ascended them quickly. On the second floor, Harry barely had any time to look around before Sirius went careening up the second flight and up into a trapdoor (which he supposed was the attic). Harry followed his excited godfather up the stairs, shaking his head and smiling gently to himself.
Once he had stuck his head fully into the attic, Harry looked around, awestruck. He had never really been in an attic that was this cluttered before. Apparantly, it was used as a library as well as an attic. The walls were lined with dusty tomes of magic (mostly transfiguration, potions, and herbology), the bookcases wallowing in the dust. Off toward a window, there was a writing desk, and a very tattered one at that. It looked like something that may have come out of the Shrieking Shack (and Harry thought that it was very likely that it did.) After all that space was taken up, there was also a telescope next to the desk and voluminous boxes of anything and everything piled all around the middle of the floor. Then Harry noticed the red ropes that are often used for museums.
"Sirius, why are those ropes here?" Harry asked, brow furrowed, and trying to find his godfather.
"This was used as a museum while I was in Azkaban. They thought that I would be a famous criminal someday or something and so they preserved my house exactly the way it was the day of my arrest. People would come up here and just want to move everything, so they had to put up the ropes. I just haven't gotten around to moving them yet." Sirius explained, quickly making them disappear into nothing with his wand.
Harry climbed into the attic, unknowing of what to do exactly.
"Unfortunately," Sirius was saying, "I kinda forgot which one of the boxes the Christmas stuff was in, so we have to search through all of them until we find them." And with that, Sirius was off again, exploring into one of the corners of his house.
Harry sighed, looking down into the volumes of boxes yet to be looked through. He just knew the dust was going to get to him eventually. He shrugged, aware that he was talking to himself through body language. He stared down at what looked like a box full of books, but he was curious, and opened it anyway. The first book he came across was a huge 300-some page novel. It was entitled My Black Rose, and on the inside cover, he read a description of the book, and it was about what it'd be like to be a Death Eater's child while Voldemort was on the rise. He thought it looked like an interesting read. Then he looked at the author.
Lily Evans.
His heart stopped. Why hadn't anyone told him his mother had been an author? And, according to the reviews on the back, a rather good and best selling one at that. His world seemed to make sense now. She must have published some secrets that she wasn't supposed to, and so Voldemort saw it as a threat. Therefore, his parents would have been targeted.
"Sirius?" Harry leaned back onto his calves.
"Yes?" Sirius leaned over some boxes.
"What else did she write?"
Sirius was thoroughly intrigued now, and he crawled over to where the young half-sylph sat. He took the book in one of his hands, and he looked briefly at the cover, before his eyes returned to the far-away look they so often had. He turned to the back coverslip.
"There she is. Waving at us." He sighed.
Harry glanced at his godfather.
"She was always so liberal and sure of whatever she did. She had never seemed like the type that would have a child out of wedlock like she did. It was all a big scandal, parents wouldn't let their kids read what she wrote anymore, for fear she might have just passed something on and make them want to have children and be like her. Of course, she handled it with grace, and told newspapers that she looked forward to having you in her life. She was so beautiful." He quickly wiped his eyes.
"James was lucky. She wanted to be with him. I was always between girlfriends, and since she's died, I've thought about her more and more often. If only I had been more mature, or less wild, or something, you might have been our child. She was a genius, really. It only figures that she'd marry the one man that could challenge her ways of thought, that could keep up with her wild notions. Everyone says you look exactly like James, and act exactly like James did, but I was his best friend, and there's that graceful, merciful side to you that Lily gave you." Sirius took the box in his hands and took out all the books. They amounted to three.
"What she wrote was so challenging of our viewpoints, it scared many adults. She wrote the most bizarre things, mostly from her experiences as an aurer. People wouldn't admit that they were more closely related to Voldemort than they let on, as her books pointed out. They were threatened by her. With that, she became very popular all over the world in the teenagers, who were almost naturally rebellious. She was, supposedly, killed for her efforts."
Harry stared at the smiling picture of his mother at sixteen. She waved at him, green eyes sparkling, and he saw a part of himself in her.
* * *
Two hours later, they still hadn't found the Christmas decorations. They were apparantly stored away in some remote box that hadn't been out in ages. Just like all the other things that were up here at the moment. Sirius laughed at Harry, who was trying in vain to find his way out of the little fort of sorted things he had created, and life was at a standstill for the moment.
"Oh! Here they are!" Sirius almost shouted.
"You've known where they are this entire time, haven't you?" Harry accoused.
"Well, yeah, but I thought that this would be a cool thing for us to do together. Just because I knew where they were doesn't mean I can't have fun looking." He smiled to himself.
After much ado about nothing, the ornaments had made the precarious journey down the two flights of stairs and were happily sitting in the living room. Harry sat down in the windowseat, watching the snow that had once been rain, fall delicately to the ground. It felt so good, just sitting here, watching the snow falling, and not really having to worry about anything but what he was going to do next. He sat there for a moment, and suddenly realized that he still hadn't unpacked.
"Sirius! Where's my room?" He called into the delves of the house.
"Oh, yeah, when you go up the stairs, your room is the second one on the right. I'm sure you will want to make yourself comfortable." Sirius explained, from the kitchen.
"Thanks."
Harry climbed the steps and found himself in a fairly open hallway, considering there were several rooms on either side. The second door on the right still had a sign that said guestroom on it, and the guestbook was just to the left. Harry smiled as he opened it, looking at all the names of people who had visited this house, thinking they were in the home of a mass murderer. The Animagic dog downstairs was quite tame, no need to worry about him savaging anyone. Harry walked into his room, and plopped right down on the spacious double bed that was directly in the middle. His head lolled off to one side, his glasses bumping the heavy quilt gently.
He sat up, looking around the room for the first time. He was completely surrounded by a beautiful sky blue, but the wall behind him was a deep plum, with the word shhh . . . written in ivory. Harry didn't know that Sirius could be so . . . feminine. The furniture didn't consist of much, mainly a poofy chair to sit in, and a small bedside table. It was no wonder this was the guestroom. It seemed like the guests wouldn't be in their room long. Harry walked around the room in his bare feet, looking at the pictures on the wall. They were all rather tastefully done, in black and white, with the sun clearly shining off from one side. A few of them weren't moving, some were, but Harry had really always preferred the ones that didn't. Rather than being in the moment, among the people in the picture, you were rather looking at the beauty of the moment the picture was taken. Harry noticed that a lot of them were of a rather pretty woman, a young girl, of about seventeen. Harry resolved to ask Sirius who it was during dinner.
As there wasn't a dresser, he realized that there would be no unpacking, no anything, really. Harry resolved that he was tired, and flopped back onto the bed. He let out his breath, his arms and legs splayed out any which way. It had been an interesting day, to say the least. He turned onto his side, letting his eyes fall shut in the process.
* * *
It was nothing but a child. Nothing but a small, crying child. That is, a child without a face.
A screaming child. The shrill cries escaping the boy and ricocheting off the walls, he seemed to be having some sort of seizure. He lay there, convulsing on the ground, whimpering softly to himself as a shadow loomed over him.
And such a shadow it was. It wasn't only a shadow; it was the shadow. The shape was made up of miniature corpses of all the people that had been killed at the hands of this thing. This thing that loomed, that made the shadow. The one shadow that's very exitance depended upon that of the suffering and dying lives it led. Led into darkness. There was no stopping it. The boy was frantic, but his face wouldn't show.
Then, a taller man came into the picture. Neither of them had a face, but Harry thought he knew what that they were related.
With a will, what looked like an angel came hovering down to kneel beside the boy with no face. The boy who was afraid of his own father. Harry knew it was a sylph. He knew that much from the shape of the body, it was one of those things he just knew. It's dark hair flowed down its waist until it came to the point where it had just passed the upper body and was moving onto the legs. He couldn't see the sylph's face, but he knew it was in pain. Every streak of the sylph's body was wracked with pain; etched with horror. The sylph's flowing dark hair seemed somehow alight with an otherworldly hint of greatness, of goodness. He knew it was a ruler.
The dark shadow made a move as if to cover the boy completely, as if to kill him, but the sylph spit at its feet, and it retreated, but not completely. The father made a move as if to restrain his child, but found he didn't have to. The boy was on puppet strings. The darkness that surrounded them was starting to disappear, and the child was becoming uncomfortably comfortable in the sylph's arms. He returned the hug.
Almost instantly the sylph passed out, but the tears that had been bound to follow its wretched life fell freely onto the boy's chest. And the strings disappeared; and the father went off into the shadows, and for the first time the shadow completely left them. And Harry got a good look at the sylph's face.
It was himself.
* * *
Harry awoke, emotionally bruised and sweating. His scar was trying to tear itself off his head, but the rest of his skin wouldn't let it. He realized that he hadn't even been under the covers when he had dropped off. He shoved his hair away from his face, reliving every last second of it. It had been so real. Yet it had been so surreal. He thought he understood some of it, but he could never be sure.
He was pleased to see that Sirius had been in to check on him, but had decided not to wake him. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, and a note saying that he thought Harry would be thirsty. Harry greatfully drank it down to the last drop.
He already knew some parts of the riddle, he knew that the shadow was Voldemort, and that in the end the boy had been relieved of his own personal burdens as well as those of Voldemort. He turned once again towards the one window in his room, watching as the sun gently fell beneath the horizon. There was a slight knock on the door behind him.
"Harry?" Sirius poked his head in and Harry turned in one fluid motion. "It's time for dinner."
* * *
That morning, Harry slept in as late as was humanely possible, the worries that had followed him at school floating away on a wing and a dream. His godfather had treated him to many stories of mischief and the Marauders at dinner, as well as a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad. The hot chocolate had been superb, and, most importantly, comforting. He had chosen not to tell Sirius about the dream he'd had, it would only put a morbid feeling on his first night here.
When Harry awoke, dazed, the crisp sunlight was already flowing in through the window and onto his pillow. He turned his head, rubbing his eyes on his hand in the process, and stared at the blue winter sky. It was a nice day. He checked the time, ten o' clock, and quickly got out of bed. Hadn't Sirius said Professor Lupin would be here at noon?
After frantically finding his robe in the many piles of unsorted clothes in his trunk, he went down the hall and past the stairs into a large bathroom where he would take a shower. It was furnished like one of those really old Victorian bathrooms, all white, with a tub that had claws and wasn't attached to a shower. He sighed, realizing that he'd have to boil in his own filth, and turned on the hot tap (which was frustratingly close to the wall of the tub.)
He took off his clothes, feeling highly conscious that this wasn't Hogwarts, the Quidditch changing rooms, or his 'home' on 4 Privet Drive. He tentatively dipped his feet into the tub, leaving his towel on the sink. The water was actually quite warm, and he felt completely relaxed, well, compared to before he had gotten in. He closed his eyes, reveling in his meditation, and sighed deeply. And a thought struck him. The boy from his dream had to have been a Slytherin. Why else would he have been afraid of his father? He settled down to mull over this thought, and dunked his head under the water to further wash his hair.
That is, he tried to dunk his head under water, but it was blood.
He tried very hard not to scream, and calmed himself. He logically told himself that the blood had to have come from him, that he was the only thing other than the tub that had touched it. Looking down, he realized that it was pooled around his upper body. Now completely freaking out, he felt himself starting to pump adrenaline through his body, and he knew that his sweat was mixing with the water. Putting his face in his hands and rubbing at his eyes, he muttered incoherently for a few seconds, it was something about happy places, he looked down again and felt it.
There was something pouring down his face.
There was something, more specifically blood, pouring down his face from his eyes.
A/N: Sorry it's so short, I was planning to make it longer, but I figured I had to stop it here. Ha, ha! Cliffie! I thought it was powerful to end the chapter here. I will finish the next chapter soon, and it should be about the same size as this one, but it will take a while to get up because I'm going on a vacation soon.
I'm sorry if there are tons of spelling mistakes, but the spell check on my computer is really messed up. As I type 'boy,' it thinks it's spelled wrong.
And, just a note: in my story, sylph is pronounced 'SY-ilph,' not 'silf,' like the one in the dictionary. So, I am actually accurate. The pronoun, well, just interchange the name of the specific sylph with 'he' and 'she' and you have basically got it down. See the letter in chapter 2 for an accurate version of this. It's very confusing. And the whole 'pertaining to sylphs' is 'sylvan.'
One more thing. When I said that I said 'no pressure on the reviews,' I LIED!!!!!!! Pleeeeeeasse r/r, it would make me feel all special and appreciated.
