The World Upside Down

"I'm out of colors, Sirius." Artie turned his luminous eyes up toward him, and Sirius lifted his head to look back. The boy had sprawled on his stomach near the fireplace; Blue and Delphine had tucked themselves against his sides, just far enough back from his elbows to avoid being in the way of his coloring. He put his palms either side of his parchment and pushed against the floor, forcing his back into a more severe arch.

"You've got two right there," Sirius corrected. Artie rolled onto one hip, and the dogs shifted away from him.

"But I don't need these two," he protested. He snatched up the red and blue crayons Hermione had given him at supper and eyed them dubiously. "I need orange." Artie pinned his eyes on Sirius again.

"Right," he muttered. "Don't spill this." Sirius changed a pot of ink to orange and set an old quill down with it next to Artie's parchment. His hand lingered near the edge of the drawing. "What's this, Artie?"

"It's the world." The boy's voice was cross, and Sirius peered at the oval on the paper trying to make the lines on it resolve themselves into a geography he recognized.

"The world, eh?"

"It's not the land on the world. You can't see England." Artie's voice took on a pedantic tone Sirius most often associated with Hermione. He tightened one hand into a fist and instructed himself not to laugh at the boy.

"If it's not the land, is it the water?"

"No, Sirius." Artie pulled himself into a cross-legged position and bent over his drawing. "This is the world—this whole part." He indicated the oval. Sirius nodded. "Then this is where the green part is, but I had to color it red."

"The land's not the green part?" Sirius could've kicked himself for asking. He knew getting sense out of the youngest Weasley was like trying to get Buckbeak to waltz.

"No." Artie looked affronted. "The green is in the air. You should know."

"The air?"

"Yes. Like it was when you came back." Artie's unwavering stare disconcerted Sirius, but not enough to keep him from tracing his fingertip down the red lines slashed and curled around the oval on Artie's parchment. He could hear an echo of Dempsey's voice in his head: who did this?

"What are these blue lines?" Sirius tapped his finger on the paper. Artie turned back to his parchment and pointed out the blue grid he'd laid underneath the tentacles of red.

"Hermione said they're how you know where you're going." Sirius let out a puzzled noise. "They're not real lines, Sirius," Artie continued. "They're so you know how far north and south you are. Like on a map."

"Right," Sirius grunted. "Why'd you need the orange?"

"For the fires." Artie turned away then and took the quill in his hand. Sirius watched him add long strokes of orange ink flaring away from intersections of the red lines. He leaned back in his chair and reached across his book to curl his fingers around his tumbler of Ogden's. The cool paper underneath his forearm brought his attention back to the page he'd left.

He'd never have thought he'd be doing this. He'd come back to London with the dogs, and since then he'd ventured out of the house only long enough to get more books. He couldn't say why—at least, not well enough to say it to anyone other than Moony—but he was sure the veil had reversed before. He didn't know when, but he felt sure it had happened. He just knew somehow.

A snarling quiet laugh escaped his lips; he chased it with a swallow of firewhiskey. No need to scare the kid. But damn it. Damn it, there wasn't a good reason he was still here. He was sitting at this desk on a hunch, on a gut feeling, and he had been for weeks. And during all that time Artie and the dogs had been on the floor beside him. He was hardly even going on guard duty anymore. Just like the old times at the House of Black.

Another laugh, this one louder, broke through his self-recriminations. Artie looked up at him. The boy's hand was poised above the paper, where he'd given the world a crown of flame.

"There's not much on the North Pole to burn, Artie," Sirius nodded in the direction of the drawing.

"It isn't north anymore." Artie blinked once, slowly.

"What is it, then?"

"No, Sirius," Artie shook his head. "It wasn't ever north. This is the south now, but it will be north when the fires start."

"The world's going to turn upside down?"

"First some other things," Artie said. He laid the quill neatly to the side of the parchment and capped the inkwell before standing. He shoved the book to the side and put the parchment down in front of them before crawling into Sirius' lap.

"What other things?" Sirius' thoughts ricocheted through the information he'd been reading for the last few days: theories about magnetic fields, news stories on the lights over London and Sydney, measurements of magnetic activity.

"First, all the land stays the same. That's why I didn't draw it." Sirius nodded. Artie stretched his hand atop the parchment next to his drawing of the world. "Then the green lights come down. They did already, but there will be more."

"Where the red lines are?"

"Yes." Artie's voice was serious and his expression far more mature than his years. Sirius nodded again. "The next part is where it crosses."

"Where the veils cross?"

"Yes." Artie put the tip of his finger on one of the cross points. "At first it doesn't cross. At first there are just veils, together. But the veils move. They turn around." Artie stretched his fingers out over the drawing of the world and rotated it, bringing the crown of flame back up to the top. "When they turn, the veils cross on top of the other veils."

"They start in one pattern and end up in another?"

"No." Strands of Artie's hair adhered to Sirius' stubble as the boy shook his head. "They start facing down, and they end facing up."

"Facing north?" Sirius tapped the top of the drawing and raised his eyebrows at Artie.

"Yes. But they cross when they move."

"But the fire…"

"No," Artie cut Sirius off with a firm yank on his sleeve. "People come out of them, like you did. Some of them fight, but most of them don't."

"Who do they fight?"

"Not you." Artie shook his head. "They don't fight you."

"But who do they…?"

"They fight because the world is upside down. Some of them want it to go back the other way, and some of them don't. They have to decide."

"Who does?"

"The people from the veils." Artie turned to give him an exasperated look. "If they don't put it back how it was, there will be fires. Like this." He tapped the drawing.

Sirius let his eyes drift up from the drawing, unfocused. "People come out of the veils everywhere you drew them?"

"No, Sirius," Artie corrected, "just where they cross when everything turns."

"And that's the only place the people fight?"

"Yes," Artie smirked. He crossed his arms in front of him and peered up at Sirius. "There aren't people anywhere else."

"Did you have dreams about all this?" Sirius shifted Artie on his lap so they faced one another. Artie nodded. "Were they like your other dreams?" Artie shook his head.

"All these dreams start the same. Delphine and Blue take me to the lady. She tells me the stories." As Artie talked the unnerving maturity left his face; Sirius felt even more unsettled as he watched the change. The boy was a seer, maybe, but he was also just a little boy born into a war.

Sirius had been relieved at first, when Dempsey's dogs had bonded so strongly to Artie. Now it seemed like even they were getting pulled into the half-dark world of Artie's gift. Sirius shifted Artie again and pulled him tight to his chest. One of his small hands rested on Sirius' arm, the fingers curled in a babyish grasp. Sirius had a powerful urge to tuck him away somewhere—hide him. Hide him until it was over.

But Artie started to squirm in his arms. Sirius let go, and Artie slid off his lap to the floor. He grabbed the parchment on the way down. Sirius raised an eyebrow at him.

"I want to draw on the back," Artie said. "Is it dry enough to turn over?" The young face looking up at him dried the words in Sirius' mouth. He just nodded, silent, and watched Artie arrange himself between the dogs on the floor again. For his part, Sirius dragged the book back to the edge of the table. He turned to an explanation of the magnetic poles, and bent to the task.