Contains spoilers for future chapters of To Love and Quidditch and its un-named, un-written sequel.
A/N: This is a companion peace to A Dead Man In Our Bed, where Remus told the story of the time after Sirius' death. This is Cat's part of the tale. It's a bit different in style, because Cat is chatty and likes to analyse things to the point of the absurd. Read and comment!
English is not my first language.
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As The Wedding Bells Are Ringing.If anyone had told me twenty years ago that I would stand bride on my fiftieth birthday, I would have laughed at them, yet here I stand in the front of the mirror, examining myself in my own wedding-glory. I'm not dressed in white, of course. I'm not an innocent bride. I never was innocent. And white never suited me anyway. My wedding robe is a very sensible and proper shade of blue, and Hermione has helped me to put my hair up.
I suppose most brides spend their wedding day with thousands of little butterflies fluttering around in their stomachs, both nervous and happy. At least that's what Lily felt like, or so she told me. I don't feel like that. I'm actually a little sad on this big day. Not for marrying Remus, oh no! But I keep thinking back on the years that lead up to this day and keep turning them over and over in my head, trying to bring some order into them so that I can step into this marriage without any regret.
xxxxx
Painful as it is, I'd better go straight to the point. When Sirius died, I thought I was going to die too. I wanted to die, for I thought that there could be no life worth living without him. I felt devastated, abandoned, left to float helplessly with nothing to hold on to. And most of all, I was angry. Angry, because he had promised. I watched my mother go mad from grief after my father's death. I watched her slowly loose her mind until she was nothing but a frail ghost. I always feared that the same would some day happen to me. That I would find myself depending on someone so much that I could no longer live on without that person. Sirius had promised not to leave me alone, and in the end, that was exactly what he did. Not when he died, but much earlier.
That year in Grimauld place, the time I refer to in my mind as W.S. – With Sirius, was nothing but a raging roller coaster of emotions. I had spent twelve years apart from my friends, the friends who had believed me dead. How strange it was to be back. Back in the Order, back at the Department of Mysteries, back with Sirius.
I think it was that whole 'back with Sirius'-business that blew it in the first place. Stupid as we were, we though that we could just pick up the threads and continue where we left fourteen years before. We were two thirty-somethings playing teenagers again, trying to recover a relationship that long ago had been lost amid Death Eaters and Dementors. You can't build a life on memories and dreams. You can't play happy. We got back together, to everyone's joy, because we were Sirius and Cat, star-crossed lovers, meant for each other. What everyone seemed to forget was that the persons we had been were not the persons we were. Fourteen years had changed that.
Today there are three persons who has betrayed lord Voldemort and lived to tell the tale. I am one of them. Those years are a part of my life I'd rather not speak about, because no one can possibly understand what it means to be a Death Eater, or at least pretending to be one. Voldemort offered power, and power corrupts. It corrupts everyone, even me. You cannot possibly escape a life like that unscathed.
The same goes for Azkaban, though I have never occupied one of those cells myself. It breaks down a person completely, leaves no happiness and no hope and no freedom. Even for someone who has managed to escape it, the soul stays trapped forever.
I think you can figure out where all this ends up. Sirius, lost and fragile after Azkaban, needed me to be my old self. His Sapphire girl, the strong, caring, supporting Cat. I needed him to be the old Sirius. My Padfoot, the one who could always make me laugh and see the beauty and the hope in the world. Needless to say, it didn't work out. Voldemort made me cold and hard instead of strong and caring. Azkaban took away Sirius' free spirit and happiness, leaving only a bitter shell. None of us could be what the other needed, and so started our wild ride into disaster.
There is nothing as painful as watching the one you love more than life itself suffer and not being able to help. Nothing tears at your heart more than knowing that whatever you do, it won't be enough. Some wounds goes too deep to be healed. Love does not conquer all.
The first few nights when we went to bed, I thought it was cute and caring, the way Sirius transformed into Padfoot to keep my feet warm while we slept. That's what he always used to do back then, and I have always had cold feet. It was not until a few weeks later that I realised that the real reason for why he did it every single night was that he couldn't sleep as a human anymore. Even in dog shape, he had nightmares. The times he tried to sleep as himself, he always woke up screaming, in his mind back behind the bars of Azkaban. I could do nothing but watch, and hold him while he cried in my arms. I thought that given time, he would get better. He would be the way he had used to be. But the time passed, and by Easter that year, I think I began to understand that he would never get well again. He was just too broken inside, with no strength left to draw from, and the little I had to spare was not enough.
Sirius was a pest to live with that year; Remus is my witness to that. He was irritable, picking fights over trifles, sulking like a child, shutting himself up with Buckbeak when we had time to spend with him. We knew why he acted like that. We understood very well how that house made him feel, and it hurt every time I had to leave for the Department and leave him alone with no one but Kreacher for company. Sirius escaped from one prison, only to be put into another, one where his best friends acted as wardens.
I should have expected it, really. I should have seen the signs, but I didn't. Maybe I didn't want to see. But finally the bubble burst, and he went where I couldn't follow.
xxxxx
Remus can tell you everything about his death. I wasn't there, so I don't know. They told me everything afterwards of course, but it was just words, and words was no comfort then. Words could do nothing about my grief and my anger and my guilt, the feeling that I let him die. That if I had only tried a little harder, maybe I could have prevented it. The truth is that I had nothing more to give. I can't fix everything, even if there are some people who seem to think so.
I refuse to remember Sirius the way he was that last year, that year when the only jokes from his lips were in dry sarcasm, and the only laughter I ever heard from his was in bitter self-irony. I refuse to remember him broken. I won't remember the way he died, but the way he lived. I want to remember his motorcycle, and the leatherjacket he had, the one he let me borrow even though it was much too large from me and smelled faintly of dog. I want to remember us playing Quidditch at Hogwarts, practicing our Dopple-beater Defence until our arms ached. I want to remember him on James and Lily's wedding, slightly drunk from too many toasts, persuading me to dance with him, even after I told him repeatedly that I can't dance. I want to remember him arguing with me about homework, or Quidditch-teams, or David Bowie-lyrics, or some other of those small unimportant things we used to fight about. That's my Sirius. When I picture him for my inner eye, I want to see him smiling and telling me: It'll be all right, Sapphire girl. You're not alone.
But it took a long, long time before I was able to remember him that way. It took my death as well as his. I never get used to thinking of it like that, but I can tell you; coming back from the dead isn't all it's cracked up to be. I had a choice that time. To be dead together with those I had lost, or to stay alive with those I still had left. That choice was the hardest I've ever had to make, but as I stand here in front of the mirror, I'm glad that I choose to live. The phoenix rose from the ashes. We defeated Voldemort. It was time to create a new world from the remnants of the old one, and into that world we carried the memory of a smiling, laughing Sirius instead of the broken man Azkaban made him.
I think that Sirius somehow knew that he would not survive the war, because he had written a will. He left nr. 12 Grimauld Place to me and Remus because, as he wrote: "You're the only one's who can keep the damned place in check. Burn it or keep it, I don't care." To Sirius, The House, as he used to call it, was a living, breathing enemy he had to fight. I was resolved to defeat the enemy for him. I moved in, took it over, chucked out everything relating to the Noble and Ancient House of Black, and brought in the good memories, the light and the happiness. Remus helped me of course, mostly by just being there, but also with the painting and cleaning and re-decorating.
Harry still doesn't like the place. To him, number twelve is the house that killed Sirius. I know that it isn't. Grimauld Place might have been the last push that drove him over the edge, but the Sirius Black I knew and fell in love with so many years ago died in a cell in Azkaban, or maybe even earlier, together with his best friend, the friend he promised to protect with his life.
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So why do I spend my wedding day thinking of another man than my husband-to-be? Maybe it's because I know, though we never talk about it, that Sirius will always be a very important part of my life, just as he is an important part of Remus'. I think back on all these memories because I want to move on. Push away the dreams about what I could have had together with Sirius and replace them with the happiness over what I do have together with Remus.
Love is a peculiar thing. Some of my colleagues at the Department of Mysteries have studied it for a lifetime, and they are no closer to an answer now that they were when they started. I have long ago ceased to try figuring it out, despite my fondness for analysing things. I know my limits.
I loved Sirius. I loved him with a passion more burning than fire. A love like that might work when you're young and idealistic, in the middle of a war. But it doesn't work for any length of time, when the grey dull everyday life rolls in. For that kind of love, it takes two mature adults, something Sirius and I were not.
During the fourteen years we spent apart, I grew up. He didn't. I can't blame him for it. He was thrown in Azkaban at age twenty-one, and the next twelve years, the years during which he was supposed to grow up and become an adult; he was forced to spend every day fighting to stay sane. He came out of that place, a thirty-three year old man with the mind and the sense of responsibility of someone much younger.
During those days at Grimauld place, when I came home with a problem, something that needed solving or working out, it wasn't Sirius who helped me. He'd listen to me of course, while I told him of whomever it was causing me trouble, and then he'd rave for a while, telling me that if he only could, he'd go straight to the Ministry and tie them into a knot for me. That was always his answer to problems.
Remus was the one who offered me constructive solutions. Remus was the one supporting my work. Remus was the one who listened, and Remus was the one who stayed.
When Sirius was gone, we stuck to each other. Remus was the one who kept me alive. And I did not leave him alone. The power of a promise from almost twenty years ago bound us to each other, and out of that bond grew a love that had somehow always been there, only overshadowed by the passion between me and Sirius.
It took two adults to see the love, because the youths could not. We were too inexperienced then, too afraid of what a relationship between us would have meant. I told Remus many, many times back then, that it didn't matter to me that he was a werewolf. Today, I'm ashamed to admit that it did matter, and that's probably why I went for Sirius instead. Laura always accused me for playing it safe, and she was right, in her own scatterbrained way. It was safer to be with someone who appeared to be wild and dangerous, but in truth was nothing but a big fluffy loyal puppy-dog inside. Remus was kind and calm and friendly, but the puppy-dog inside him was a bloodthirsty monster, and that scared me, mostly because I was beginning to sense the darkness inside myself and was afraid to face it. Sirius was afraid of it too, and always refused to discuss it. I was his Sapphire girl, and could do nothing wrong.
We're adults now, and Remus has seen the monster inside me, the Cat who knows more of the Dark Arts than is good for one's soul. He wasn't afraid, and neither am I, not anymore. We can keep each other's monsters at bay. It's by no means a normal relationship, but no one has ever accused us of being normal anyway.
We keep living at number twelve, no longer The House, but just nr. 12 Grimauld Place. I keep working at the Department of Mysteries. Remus keeps writing, taking the odd consulting job and fighting for werewolf-rights. The progress is slow, but it goes on, especially with Hermione and her never-ending energy to help him. She and Ron are expecting their first child in the autumn, an event that the whole Weasley clan is looking forward to. Percy and Penelope's twins can't talk about anything else than their new cousin.
What else can I say? Harry and Ginny finally got married last Halloween, turning that day into a day to celebrate instead of one to mourn. It was a wonderful wedding. The sun was shining, and Ginny had a crown of autumn leaves in her red hair, and even a cynical old bitch like me had to wipe away a few tears. It's good to see Harry happy. That boy has been through so much and lost so many loved ones, but he has Lily's way of getting up again after every blow. That day, Remus and I caught each other's eyes and smiled, and then we decided that maybe getting married wouldn't be so silly after all. So we set a date, my fiftieth birthday, the twelfth of July, which is today.
xxxxx
Hermione is knocking at the door, telling me that it's time now. The wedding bells are ringing outside, and everyone is waiting for me. I take a final look in the mirror and I decide that it could have been worse. I've never been a beauty, and I will probably never be, but my eyes still has that same bright blue colour, and my hair is still soft and brown, though I have been dyeing it for the past ten years to make it look that way. There are wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, many of them from worry, but also from laughter. If I take my glasses off and squint, I'm almost pretty. Not too bad for a fifty-year-old bride, I say to myself, as I walk towards the door. I'm ready now, and content to live may happy years as Mrs. Remus Lupin.
The End