Disclaimer: Characters and situations of the Harry Potter series are the property of JK Rowling and associated companies. Some characters are my own and still others were actually participants in these events. My source for the facts presented in this story is from the research of Peter Pringle and Philip Jackson in their work, Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972. The opinions expressed in this story are first hand accounts or strictly belonging to the author. The song Sunday, Bloody Sunday is the property of U2.
Author's Note: Of the thirteen people who died, I felt they must be mentioned. As this is a fiction, some characters are involved that were historically absent. My character(s) that appear on the casualty list at the end will be denoted as such: *. The first half of this chapter was written before the release of The Order of the Phoenix and as I have been writing with a clear goal in mind, I will not be deterring from my original plan. However, some of the background that Rowling has given Sirius will prove very interesting and I am reworking some aspects of this to incorporate them. As of now, though, I will have to classify this story an A/U (as if it wasn't already slightly A/U to begin with).
Chapter Three
Never Turn Your Back On A Para
And it's true we are immuneWhen fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die…
Another ringing shot had come so close to me that my hearing became cotton in my ears and I was dazed.
Aidan fell forward on the youth that they had been trying to save.
Ebhlin jumped with the sound of the shot, no doubt as shocked as I had been. She wheeled around in the crouching position that she had been keeping over the boy bleeding into the alleyway gutter. Facing down the approaching soldiers she shouted, "Don't shoot, Red Cross!"
Further down the alley than I had expected the distant voice of the soldier came back: "Your white coats are great targets but your red hearts are even better!"
I saw her face and the shock it held. Placing two fingers on Aidan's neck to check his pulse, she responded, "Are you mad?"
I expected gunfire to answer her question. None came.
She did not wait for his response either. Leaning around me, over the two lying in front of her she asked, "How's it coming, Father?"
I turned to the priest next to me to see what she had meant.
Trapped as we were behind those pails in the alley, Father Bradley had taken both hands to the job of untwisting the chain links of the fence our backs were up against. He had made a crude tunnel from the wire, smeared in places with his own blood from the desperate work.
"Nearly done," answered the holy man. "How goes your work, child?"
Busy with his task, Father Bradley did not turn to see how it went for himself.
I glanced in her direction still. The woman next to me, all of us hidden for the moment from gunfire, was praying; a rosary twined in her fingers, moving from bead to bead with speed and alacrity. Ebhlin, Aidan's Red Cross partner, hesitated to answer when she saw that I waited eagerly for her answer. I saw the blood too, though Aidan had fallen face down, I knew her answer.
But a tug from the diligent Father pulled me away.
"You first, my son," he said, pushing me toward the hole in the chain link. "Make haste!" he continued forcefully, "They are upon us!"
Not wanting to leave Aidan behind, I meant to protest, but the Father's strong grip had thrust me out of the small place we were crouching and I now found myself kneeling, waiting for the others to escape behind me.
Father Bradley came out last and grabbed me roughly. He pulled me by the wrist as if I had been a rag doll until we had turned the corner of the alley. Ebhlin divided from us and soon afterward, the woman with the rosary had left.
"Get you home, lad," Father Bradley said when we had made a trip of two blocks at a pace that was likely to burst my lungs had it continued any longer. "Do not come back to that place. The soldiers will not hurt the dead. You need not worry about him."
I felt sick at this pronouncement.
"Well?" Father Bradley asked, staring at me hard. "What do you wait for?"
I blinked, hardly knowing that I was whom he was talking to. "I don't know my way," I stammered.
A sympathetic smile lighted the old man's face for a moment. "You're a little old to be losin' your way, son."
I nodded but said nothing.
"Where do you live?" he asked, softening a bit.
"I don't live here. I'm staying with someone," I admitted.
His shoulders sagged and he looked as if he wanted to be rid of me. No doubt he wanted to get back to his parish, wherever that may be in this godforsaken city. "If I knew their names, child, perhaps I could point ye there?"
"Lupin," I said slowly. I didn't want to be pointed anywhere. I couldn't go back there now. Not while Aidan lay bloodied to death in the alleyway, and I might have done something to help him. I couldn't tell Mae, who had been kind to me, that her son lay dead because of me.
The priest's face darkened. He knew them. He must have known Aidan. "I am…I am sorry, my son." He turned and made a distracted movement to leave. Turning to face me as if he had just now only seen me standing there, he pointed. "The Rossville Flats are just there. Safe journey to ye. Stay out of the way of the soldiers, do." And he left me there.
I looked over my shoulder and, indeed, now I recognized the building. I had sat up there on that ledge last night with Margaret. A shudder went through me and I thought perhaps I should go to wait with Aidan until someone came for him.
But no. There were two soldiers there.
I beat a hasty path up to the Glenfada Flats car park, or at least that's what the sign read. I wouldn't have known where I was. But I saw the spire of St. Eugene's and my heart lifted a little for the only moment that day, a day filled with many more terrible moments. Without even feeling it, my feet immediately took me there, a lost sheep to a shepherd's crook.
Maybe an hour or two I sat without moving on the steps of the cathedral, not a movement disturbed the stillness. A book I had read once came bidden to my mind. I don't doubt that the scene had relevance, but thinking back on it, thinking about a book I read when so much was going on around me, seemed absurd. I wondered, hearing the shouts, pleas, curses, cracks of periodic fire, the roar of army trucks down civilian streets; had the participants of the 1830 revolution in Paris heard some of the same noises, distant or near? Had they felt the fear that had wracked me when the sappers broke through the makeshift barricade? Had any of them been as confused as I had about what all of this was for? Where there any heroes that couldn't decide on what side of the barricade they should rightly be?
I had no answers for myself. It was more of an exercise in calming my breathing and my heart rate to ask myself distracting questions. But now I desperately wanted the answers to them. I felt that my actions, the experiences I had just had, were of little value. I could not accept that I had been in the thick of all of this if not for some purpose. The purpose was growing ever present in my mind. It told me that I should become acquainted with the world. What is the world? I asked myself.
The answer came back in terrifying earnest.
What you hear is the world.
I listened. The fire had ceased but the ambient noise of a battleground did not cease several blocks over. Then the sound of voices: a grave voice of a girl in a white robe, a bag slung over her shoulder. There was a boy in glasses and shaggy long hair with her.
I held my breath and tried to focus closer on them as they passed the steps ahead of me.
Aidan?
I sat for a moment longer and studied them.
No. It was not Aidan, of course.
It was his friends Ebhlin and Charlie Glenn.
I sank back down to my step and looked away.
The sun was setting over the Inishowen. The wind was picking up and so I reached a shaking hand to zip my coat. And in the short space of time that I had looked away an army truck pulled up, just at the steps of St. Eugene's.
Two soldiers leapt lightly down before the truck was fully stopped and ordered Charlie and Ebhlin to stop.
"I'm with the Red Cross," Ebhlin stated and turned to continue on her way.
The rifle came from one Red Beret's shoulder. He did not aim it yet.
"You're under arrest," the first one ordered. "Stop I tell you!"
Charlie and Ebhlin turned.
They did not see me sitting behind the truck watching on the second step from the top.
"Up against the fucking fence," he commanded. Laying a hand on Charlie's shoulder, he roughly shoved him to the chain link on the opposite side of the street from mine. Charlie made no protest. It struck me then that maybe this hadn't been the first time he had taken part in similar scenes.
No one touched Ebhlin, probably because she was Red Cross—Protestant, that is. "You too. Up against the fence."
"I'll never turn my back on a Para," she replied with a defiant raise of her chin. Sterner stuff I had never seen from any other girl. Her green eyes glinted as she stared. Her pigtails in Irish red made her slightly comical to the soldier.
"I'll shoot you!" He was inches from her face. To her credit, I never saw stern Hibernia flinch.
"You'll have to do it from the front, sir," she growled barely moving her lips, so tightly were her teeth clenched.
Roughly he hauled her to the truck by her elbow.
Charlie made a move toward her, easily knocked back into the chain links that sang like coins falling with the impact. Suddenly I was on my feet, moved by some stupid thought that Aidan's friends needed me. What could a twelve year old do?
I never thought of anything but charging across the street and flinging myself at the Red Beret and knocking it from one stunned lieutenant's head. With a curse, he dropped his weapon, stunned. I hung on to his shoulders, never letting him get his arms behind him to pull me off. A third Para came from the back of the truck. He allowed me a small struggle with my adversary for a moment, helping to load Ebhlin and Charlie into the full truck before pulling me from the back of his comrade, laughing and nearly doubled over with amusement.
I tried at one last contemptuous kick and was knocked against the head with a gloved fist for it.
"Little bastard," the lieutenant said, wiping a spot of blood from his mouth.
I hoped that I had done the damage. Probably not.
"Put him in with the others. He'll see the inside of Fort George with the rest of the fucking wogs!"
Inside of the four-ton army truck, I was shoved to my knees against Charlie, crouched in a similar position. His hands were bound behind him, as Ebhlin's were bound in front as she knelt beside him. Mine, however, had not been tied. I was slightly frustrated by this. I was no threat to them—that was what not being tied meant.
The lieutenant slid into the truck beside me, sitting on the bench that lined both sides with his comrades, the one that I had jumped next to him.
We prisoners knelt, each one placed facing the front, the next one crammed in behind until we formed two rows. I looked around, noted Ebhlin's seething visage of defiance, Charlie's face appeared very calm. He reminded me in that moment of the poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. that Remus had hanging over his bed at school. There was passion, and there was anger, but nowhere on his face was there a line of vindictiveness, of blinding rage.
There was none of the suggestion of violence on his face, that is, until the Para that I had jumped leaned his rifle between his knees and touched a hand to the floor of the vehicle. He put his fingers to Ebhilin's cheek and smeared blood on her face. I realized as he did this there was blood all over the floor; we were kneeling in it, a few centimeters of it. I lurched and almost lost my balanced. Charlie was struggling at his bonds, carefully watching the soldier with Ebhlin.
"You know," the soldier said as he traced a bloody finger across her freckled cheek. He turned a crooked smile to his mate and then laughed, looking again at Ebhlin predatorily. "We must have killed at least fifty people today."
Ebhlin turned a brief cold glance on the man. There was blood on her own hands, bound so tight they must have had little circulation. It was Aidan's blood, some, I imagined. She held them up defiantly, turning her face on the man. "Do you think you're dealing with a bunch of ignorant wogs, lieutenant?" She spat the last word like an insult.
He leaned inches from her face and moved his bloody hand from her cheek to her throat, grasping hard enough to cut her air supply. "You lot are worse than fucking wogs!" he sneered, thrusting her backwards into Charlie, knocking him over as well.
The two men filled the back of the bloody transport with raucous peals of laughter. When they both had caught their breath again, he followed this up with, "If you don't shut your fucking mouth, you'll be eating soft food for a month," fingering the rifle placed between his knees for effect.
"It's all right, Sirius," Charlie said close to my ear, picking me up off of the bloody lorry floor and setting me back on my knees that now began to ache as the truck bounced along the streets and out of the town. "It's not a nice place, where we're going. So I need you to stick closed to me, okay?" he said urgently, looking up every few syllables to check that the Paras did not take notice of him.
"Where're we going?" I asked slowly and ominously. My acquaintance with living nightmares had expanded so far in just a few short hours that the realm of possibility that lay within the words "not a nice place" seemed too vast to fully comprehend.
"Fort George," answered Charlie.
"Just stick with Charlie, love," Ebhlin said, taking one of my shaking hands in both of hers. I focused on the rough twine that circled her wrists, paying attention to the coarse feel, the smooth skin of her palm, the blood warm between her fingers and mine. I was unaware of how long it took to actually get to Fort George. My exercise in tuning out the soldiers and the pain in my knees, the bitter CS gas in my lungs, focused as I was on Ebhlin's hands had made the trip shorter. Only when I was handed down from the lorry by the same guard whose nose I had bloodied, did I wish that the trip had taken longer.
Out of the relative safety of the lorry, I was now met with the sight of high barbed-wire fences all around me, dogs viciously growling and straining at their leashes in the hands of guards who looked as if they would enjoy nothing more than letting the beasts on us. I recognized the Royal Ulster Constabulary in uniform, a bit of home familiarity where everything else was frighteningly new to me. They were not shouting at us as the rest of the soldiers were. The Paras roughly threw Charlie down next to me, but were minimally gentler with Ebhlin. She was separated from the rest of us and was taken past the guards with another woman, the only other woman on the transport.
Charlie seemed to be less worried about where they were taking her than I was. I took this to be a good sign that she was safe for the moment and so was a little easier to see her go myself. There was little time, however, to stare after her and Charlie ushered me ahead of him where the men were being led between two rows of shouting soldiers, screaming at the tops of their voices, and we could hear the dogs not so far away barking fiercely. For all the world this is still what I think hell must sound like.
The two lines of paratroopers were wielding batons, rubber hoses and rifles, waited eagerly for our lorry to be unloaded and for us to be corralled between them. Charlie was bent over me as much as possible to take the blows that were meant for both of us. The butt of a rifle connected with his thigh. In front of me an older man with a large cut at his hairline was struck with a baton, lacerated again and again with a hose. A few times I felt the blows reach me. One nearly knocked me over—a fist against my cheek, I guessed it was. All the while Charlie forced me forward and nearer the entrance. I was unsure how long the line of Paras and their lighting agile weapons could last. I was dizzy with all of the hazing; I didn't remember making it through the gauntlet. I was given a hefty shove through the doors, Charlie following. The bleeding man before me, Barry Liddy, Charlie finally informed me, was collapsed on the ground, lethargically trying to pull himself up under the motivation of a violent baton-swinging soldier.
We were all forced spread eagle against a wall, a cold wall, some relief to my stinging cheek. Everyone of us was searched, systematically made to remove each item of clothing as if we were hiding incendiary devices under our very skin. Even then, blows did not cease to fall on us. Next to me, Charlie was becoming increasingly concerned for Barry Liddy. He was now being propped against the wall, rather than standing of his own free will. A stinging feeling seemed to slice my bare back into two equal parts; a rubber hose had been introduced to the skin of my back and my shoulders. Two boys about my age were receiving worse, four people down the wall from me and I became thankful that the hose was all that was stinging me.
The command was given and we all turned. My back was now given the cool surface of the wall. When one of the boys, the fourth down from me, turned he was kicked in the groin and doubled over with the pain. I stood a little straighter and looked forward. I could hear him being pulled to his feet and made to stand. Charlie tensed next to me.
Not long afterward we were given our clothes and a command to put them back on. I was quick about it, not wanting to be caught by a baton at unawares, plus, the cell wasn't heated and so a jumper and some trousers were welcome comfort. But we remained rigid against the wall, waiting for the soldiers that brought us in to give their statements and to identify us. I didn't look anywhere but forward, at the opposite wall, for fear of a renewed hiding. I remember wondering if the RUC here in Derry was the same as that in Belfast. If so, they had forgotten themselves, for they didn't even attempt to stop the Paras' abuse of the prisoners. I didn't think it could get much worse.
Identification seemed, to me, a farce. The soldiers sort of peered at us once we were all herded into a cell. Through the bars they seemed to point and pick people at random. A Lance Corporal pointed to Father O'Keeffe, and seemed to be embarrassed when O'Keeffe was identified as a priest. "Why aren't you wearing your dog collar?" the soldier asked gruffly as his mates gave a sort of muffled snicker. "I wear my fucking uniform and so should you."
"Would it have made a difference?" O'Keeffe replied coolly.
There were no specific details to accompany the accusations of Charlie Glenn and Sean McDermott, another of the Knights of Malta, no time or place. Details that were offered by the soldiers were sketchy at best. When the Identification was completed, we waited in the same position against the wall for processing or release. I estimated that it was around eight o'clock in the evening before one of the RUC finally uttered the words, "At ease!"
Now we were allowed to lean against the wall rather than stand rigid, as we had for hours—two of those hours spent at attention naked.
As I blinked blood out of my eye, Charlie stepped forward and addressed the RUC officer. "Sir," he said, edging closer to the bars, "Permission to attend that man." He pointed to Barry Liddy, slumped against another prisoner. He had been relieved of his paramedic's bag and his glasses during the search and I had no idea how he intended to help the man. He was identified as Lance Corporal Glenn of the Knights of Malta by the paratrooper that had lied saying he was picked up for being among a group throwing rocks, and the guard considered this for a moment.
"Denied, Lance Corporal," the RUC guard said, giving the bloody and despondent Liddy a cautious glance before leaving his partner to look after the prisoners as he moved to a neighboring room. He returned with an army doctor, unlocking the cell. Liddy was lifted up from the floor by the guards and left with the doctor.
Everything was quiet for an hour or so.
Next to me, my only friend, Charlie, sat still when we were given permission to do so. He was looking over his slashed forearm.
"Thank you," I heard myself say in a small voice. I don't know where that came from. I hadn't even thought to say thank you, though it was very appropriate for all of the care this stranger had shown me.
Charlie turned and the corner of his mouth twitched up into the ghost of a smile.
"Don't mention it. It's my job," he said. As an afterthought he added, "You're not Catholic, are you?"
I shook my head and then looked around hastily as if I had just let a dirty secret slip. I opened my mouth to speak and then shut it just as quickly. "You've been here before?" I blurted out the next second.
Charlie nodded sadly.
"Remember what you've seen here, Sirius," he said after a long pause. "This is what happens when people are so full of hate they forget to be human."
I couldn't say anything and so nodded again dumbly.
I was released with Charlie around midnight. He demanded to be escorted out of the compound by the RUC guard and safely past the Paras and the dogs.
He walked with me to the bridge where I had been standing that morning with Remus. It seemed like days ago, not hours. A sick, sinking feeling filled my empty stomach as I thought about my friend and how I would be the one to tell him his brother was dead.
Charlie clapped a hand on my shoulder and pointed me toward the Rossville Flats. A moment later he asked, "Do you want me to come with you?"
"No," I said weakly. "I can go on my own."
He smiled a fleeting smile and shoved his hands in his denim jacket, reminding me of Aidan. "Of course you can, mate." He turned and left me at the bridge.
I leaned over the side gingerly. My back, legs and arms had been lacerated and bruised by a rubber hose; every limb was stiff with the day's exertions. I heaved a very tired sigh and wondered how long it would take me to get home if I hitchhiked.
"Sirius!" I heard an overjoyed, nearly hysterical voice call from behind somewhere.
I turned to see Catherine approaching at a run.
"Sirius! Thank the Virgin!" she exclaimed throwing her arms around me. I bit my lip to keep from yelling out as she squeezed my tender shoulders tightly.
"Let's get you back. We're all worried about you. Your mother will want to know you're safe. Have you seen Aidan?" Catherine seemed not to draw a breath since she had first called my name. I wished more than anything that she would shut up now.
I didn't answer her. It was all over now. I would have to go back with her and explain to Remus and to Margaret and Mae that Aidan had died trying to get the others and me out of the alley. And my mother was waiting for me. She would be angry with me, of course. I could see the disappointment on her face before I even entered the front room of the flat.
My mother let out a startled scream and ran over throwing her arms around me. Again, I was nearly driven to my knees with the pain of the embrace. I could feel the cotton of my undershirt caked with dried blood grinding against the sores on my back and opening them anew. Tears of pain tricked from the corners of my eyes, washing trails where the blood had stained my cheek. Mum saw this and gasped. "My love! Did I hurt you?" She kissed my wounded cheek with great care and apologized over and over. No matter how much I wished to grow up, to be thought of as a man rather than a boy, Mum's great attention to healing my hurts was never discarded. That made me a great mamma's boy, I knew. At the moment the thought never crossed my mind.
Over Mum's shoulder I saw Remus and Margaret kneeling at the small shrine of the Blessed Virgin at the entryway of the small flat. Remus didn't look up when I had come in. I guess he knew that it had been me, not Aidan who'd walked in and, apparently, it wasn't a relief to him. Margaret stayed in the same attitude of prayer, but her lids fluttered open and she looked at me without raising her head. Her look was dark and it spoke far more than words could have communicated.
"Come, Sirius. Let's go home," Mum said, standing abruptly, a shaking hand grasping mine possessively. Turning to Mae she offered, "I hope Gerald can find your boy. Our thoughts and prayers are with you." She swept me from the room immediately and out the door.
I fell asleep with my head in my mother's lap as we rode home in a taxi. The scent of her perfume calmed me and lulled me into unconsciousness. She did not speak and so I didn't feel the need to explain myself to her just yet.
It was still dark when my mother roused me and I climbed sleepily up the stairs to our flat above the bakery. It must have been sometime in the early morning. O'Roark was starting to bake the day's selection and I could smell it wafting outside of the shop.
The next sound that woke me was my mother's gasp as she pulled my jumper and my shirt up over my head and first saw the marks that Fort George had left on me.
"I shall write to Prime Minister Faulkner about this!" she said snappishly, brushing my hair away from my forehead to sponge some blood from my cuts.
"No, mum!" I answered, mumbling with the effects of deep sleep. "He doesn't care. And neither did you until I was involved!" I didn't mean to sound so accusing, but I felt that I had been deliberately left out of a conflict that was happening all around me. I was shocked at what I had found out that day in Derry. But I would never ignore it again. I was angry that I knew nothing.
"I do care," Mum said, hurt. "I care about Mae and Gerald's boy. I care about their children, Remus and Margaret. No child should have to live like that. That's why I did what I did."
"What?" I asked angrily. "Is that why you complained at the school that kids were beating me up everyday? So they could beat me twice as hard the next day for being a snitch? Is that why you never let me outside? Is that why I never had any friends? Why we always move around?"
"Sirius," Mum said wearily, "you don't understand, lamb. I want to keep you safe. There are a lot of people out there that want to hurt you. Like you were hurt last night." She folded my bloody shirt, I didn't see why. She would probably have to throw it away. That blood wouldn't come out. She wouldn't look into my eyes, though I glared angrily at her.
"It's my fight, too. Remus is my friend and Ireland is my country, too," I growled.
"Lamb, I wish you could understand," Mum said patiently, tucking her bare feet under her as she crouched on the tile of the bathroom floor while I sat on the rim of the tub violently seething for reasons that I couldn't fully explain. "Your name will probably turn up in the paper. We'll have to leave. We'll have to find someplace else to live."
My anger melted at this sudden pronouncement. "Why?" I asked with stunned wide eyes.
"Don't ask me that just yet, my love. I can't explain." She stood and pulled me to my feet, pushing a shirt down over my head and arms, the top two buttons unbuttoned to let my head through, just like she did when I was five. "Come now, Sirius lamb. Time for bed."
She turned the light out and pushed me through the door and down the hall. "Come on. Get in," she commanded gently, turning down my bed for me. I climbed heavily in, considerably stiff. Mum began to tuck my covers around me and kissed my forehead. Under one arm with my bloody and sodden clothes was tucked a paper. I imagined that it was today's, just delivered as we got in. It was probably there. A huge story. Or maybe things like this happened too often to make the news. I didn't know. I had always lived blind to the world, I was now realizing.
Mum made to turn out the light in my room.
"No, mum!" I shouted, alarming myself. "Don't leave me."
Mum turned, surprised. She stared for a moment and dimmed the lights, not turning them out completely. She climbed under the covers beside me and I tucked my head under her chin as she gathered me into her arms.
She laid the paper down on her lap. It was there on the front page: A list of the casualties of what the media was referring to as Bloody Sunday. The Casualty Roster read:
Patrick Joseph Doherty
Gerald Vincent Donaghy
John Francis Duddy
Hugh Pius Gilmore
Michael Gerald Kelly
Aidan Francis Lupin*
Michael Martin McDaid
Kevin Gerard McElhinney
Bernard McGuigan
James Gerard McKinney
William Anthony McKinney
William Noel Nash
James Patrick Wray
John Pius Young
I closed my eyes. So Aidan's family knew he was dead now.
I fell asleep to the sound of my mother's voice as she hummed the Irish Lullaby.