"Where are you going to spend the night looking?" I asked in surprise as I watched Sirius and Lupin gather.
"Into the woods," my godfather said shortly.
"Why?" Pat asked, too.
Remus, who had been looking unusually tired for the past few days, replied:
"Harry, it's a full moon." We'd been staying with Sirius for more than two weeks, and it hadn't occurred to me to ask what Lupin was doing when the moon was full. Although, it may not be tactful…
"And why should Sirius go with you?" my friend asked.
"Werewolves are dangerous to humans, but not to animals," said Lupin.
He was a good teacher, after all, and he never got annoyed when he had to explain commonplace truths to half-wits like Pat and me.
Besides, when Sirius is around, my consciousness remains intact аlmost human. Besides," said my godfather, grinning, " I'm not turning into a lap dog, and I can keep the Loonie away from me Impulsive actions." Strange, I thought.
Lupin and Sirius. Werewolf and animagus.
If you had told me that one of them turns into a wolf and the other into a dog, I would have swapped them out without a second thought.
"And how is it at school?" I couldn't resist asking.
Well, at school, our Potions teacher" (Sirius chuckled skeptically) "is preparing a special potion that keeps me going," Lupin said with a rueful smile — " I still have the ability to think straight… Then I lie curled up in my office like a harmless wolf, waiting for the moon to wane."
"Why don't you drink it here?"
I asked.
"I've never been very good at Potions," Remus said, " and it's very difficult to make it."
"And my specialty is Transformation," said Sirius, " so here we go." They went out the door, but a moment later Remus returned.
"Just in case," he said quickly, " lock the door and don't leave the house."
"OK," I replied, got up and honestly locked the door. The Sami slid off my arm and disappeared from view. Well, she wasn't afraid of werewolves.
A different weight class, I would say. "Harry, tell me honestly, doesn't it make you nervous to have this thing crawling all over you?" Pat asked.
"First of all, it doesn't crawl on me. And secondly, it's funny."
"She's a snake"
Pat said this in such a flat tone that it was clear he wasn't going to get used to my pet viper any time soon. I met Sami two days after arriving at Sirius ' house. While exploring a large but rather neglected and untidy garden, I almost stepped on a poor snake.
"Shit," I swore, getting really scared, " why don't you go anywhere else?"
To my surprise, the black snake slithered around my shoe, raised its head, and answered me:
"there is a good hunting here" Her voice was low and sibilant, but I understood it perfectly.
"Really?"
"there is a good hunting here"
"Well, good hunting, then," I said, still in a bit of shock.
"Thank you," the snake said, and disappeared into the thick grass.
My friends were standing in pillars and staring at me, as if I had suddenly grown another head. Or two. Even Lou was surprised, which was very rare.
"And what was that?" Pat asked.
"It was a snake"
"I guessed it wasn't a crocodile. Did you talk to her?" No, I fucking sang songs with her!
"Yes, she said she hunts mice here."
"Did she say that?" Pat said, slightly taken aback.
"yes. Haven't you heard?"
"We heard you whistling and hissing," Lou said, "and the snake agreed."
In the evening, the question of my ability to communicate with snakes came up sharply.
"Do you speak Parseltongue?"
Sirius was surprised.
"I'm talking to snakes," I told him, " but if that's what it's called… I remember talking to a boa constrictor in the terrarium at eleven.
He told me that he had never been to Brazil…"
"Did the Boa constrictor tell you that he's never been to Brazil?" My godfather asked, dumbfounded.
"Yeah," I said, " and he was bored out of his mind."
I didn't see anything terrible about dealing with snakes. And I also didn't tell you how I accidentally "removed" the glass in the terrarium, as a result of which the same boa constrictor was washed away. Although, it is unlikely that he reached his homeland…
"Actually," Remus said, " it's a very unusual and rare gift. Most often, it is transmitted in a hereditary way. Lily didn't talk to the snakes."
"James, too," Sirius assured everyone, " I remember Salazar Slytherin speaking Parseltongue… But James could hardly be his descendant." Lupin looked at him incredulously
, " So Lily was related to Slytherin?"
"Why should I even be related to a Slytherin? I just know how to talk to snakes, that's all!"
Lupin shrugged.
"Harry's right. It's just that he has a rare ability."
On that and decided.
And I made friends with the Sami people. She (according to her own words) turned out to be an unusual snake. Unlike its relatives, it was noticeably shorter and did not hibernate in winter, which brought it, as it turns out, a lot of problems. Yes, even vipers, as it turns out, are not honored to be different from everyone else. She was a good conversationalist, and she had a peculiar sense of humor. The Sami woman liked to wrap her arms around my wrist — Lou got used to it quickly, but Pat often flinched at the sight of such a bracelet.
I will not go into the details of the trip to Sirius's house, although it was also not without various adventures. For example, when an overly curious policeman was very interested in the question-where is a young pretty girl going in the company of four men?
The fact that Pat and I were still only a short distance away from childhood didn't interest him. After all, Lupin seems to have erased his memory. I hope not all of it.
My godfather had a great house. The way a house should be in my mind-lots of windows, lots of light, and a lot of clutter. No sterile kitchens, no scrubbed floors — just a bachelor pad. There was no electricity either… Lupin was staying with Sirius. Or, in his own words, temporarily resided. He lived at Hogwarts during his school days, and at his godfather's in the summers. He didn't have a home of his own, as I understood.
"I'll marry our werewolf and finally get rid of him," Sirius would sometimes say with a grin. I learned my godfather's terrible prison history. And you know what? Sirius is not a killer! He's innocent. In how!
"When I came to work at Hogwarts," Remus continued, " I accidentally saw a rat, a boy's pet. I recognized him right away, I'd seen Peter transform so many times… The rat was missing one claw… Then, by hook or crook, I managed to get a date with Sirius, and he told me what really happened."
"Good thing I did," added a grim Sirius, "but I was just thinking of an escape plan at the time."
Remus continued:
"Then I went to see Dumbledore, of course. We managed to catch Pettigrew, but Sirius was acquitted."
"I hope something terrible has been done to Pettigrew!" sometimes my bloodlust knows no bounds.
"They didn't," his godfather said angrily, " the little traitor managed to escape. The rat!"
Grim Rem summed it up:
"The main thing is that Sirius has been released. The scandal was huge. Fudge wasn't having the best of times. Imagine — an innocent man has been in Azkaban for twelve years! The Ministry was feverish."
"And Barty Crouch had a stroke," his godfather added without regret, " and he put me away without a trial."
"That was a surprise for this kid," Lou had said, " you know, the one with the rat."
"It was a surprise for the whole family, Pettigrew has been staying with them for the past twelve years," Remus said. "Weasley. They live nearby, by the way."
"The Weasleys?" I remembered, "This is the brother of the girl we went to the station with?"
"One of the brothers. She has six of them."
Pat whistled.
"Are they all redheads?" my friend asked.
"Yes," said my godfather, and out of the blue, " you remind me of someone, boy…"
It was a rhetorical question (and not even a question at all) and didn't require an answer.
Lou didn't stay with us very long, and after a week she left our strictly male society without female influence, having had time to criticize Pat and my attempts at witchcraft to her heart's content. It was one of her self-imposed trips to France to visit relatives whom Lou hated. Actually, Lou's relatives weren't French, they were Dutch, they just lived in Provence. But every time Lou tried to explain her background to me, I was completely confused, and the only thing I realized was that Lou wasn't exactly English.
Our vacation went on very peacefully. Lupin and Sirius were trying to squeeze as much information about the wizarding world as possible into our poor heads. And, of course, they taught me how to do magic. Pat and I did things differently. Sometimes easy, sometimes not so easy. Once we overdid it with Laughter, and it hurt everyone, and for twenty minutes everyone in the house was laughing like crazy. It feels like we've all been stoned on marijuana. In my opinion, Pat was doing better than I was. But sometimes he just got stuck and couldn't do absolutely anything. Lupin was sure it was because of someone else's wand.
But Pat once confessed —
" If I think aboutdo how it works, there's nothing I can do."
"Pat, but this is magic!" I laughed "here and you can not know "how", just… Just do some magic!"
"No," I said. Pat said stubbornly, " It's not magic! Spells, as far as I know, have real spells, a completely different verbal structure. They must appeal to certain natural forces. Magic is summoning spirits! For example, it is desirable to use the true name of the demon, the correct wording of its call, reliable protection of yourself, a clearly marked desire of the customer.…"
Remus and Sirius stared at him, dumbfounded.
"You'll have a bonfire, Pat," I said, " I didn't know you were such a big authority on black magic."
"Nonsense," my friend snorted, " I just read a lot!"
"And you're telling me," said my godfather, " that all this… Our whole world isn't magic?"
"Yes," Pat said cheekily.
"Then what is it?" Lupin asked, a little confused. My friend sighed, as if admitting defeat. Temporary.
"I don't know. But I'll find out, don't doubt it."
Personally, I had no doubt. I had known Pat for a long time, and I knew that the existence of magic was a blow to his worldview. My friend was a natural scientist. I didn't think I was that romantic, but all this magical stuff settled into my head pretty quickly. Magic? Well, let it be magic.
If it's magic, then there's no question, is there? But not Pat. My friend never believed in fairy tales. Or rather, we all stop believing in them at some point, but he DIDN'T WANT to believe in them, you know. For him, Darwin, Mendeleev, and Einstein were the holy Trinity, and he believed only in the theory of evolution, scientific and technological progress, and the limitless possibilities of the human mind. And if he promised to prove that magic wasn't magic at all, I had every reason to believe him.
And so we lived. They taught Lupin and Sirius how to play soccer. They told us in detail about our school and extracurricular life. They would tell us about quidditch and reminisce about my parents. As I understood it, their group called the Marauders was causing a lot of noise in and out of the school. Lupin, it turns out, knew Pat's mother.
"Well, Sirius, you must remember her," he pressed his godfather, " she was in the same year as us! She was still head girl at Ravenclaw! She's also - " he shot a quick glance at Pat, a look of sudden surprise, and then waved his hand.… You won't remember anyway."
"Sorry, Sleepwalker, I guess I'm getting old," Sirius said, spreading his hands and smiling.
"You just can't remember the girls who didn't follow you around," Remus laughed.
And for the rest of the evening Lupin kept giving Pat strange looks, as if calculating something in his head.
But he didn't say anything.
We sometimes had visitors. And often I got the feeling that they were coming to SEE me.
How do you like it? I, personally, don't like it very much. They all stared ritually at my scar, saying (well, with a few exceptions) that I looked just like my father and that my eyes were my mother's. I think I'll soon develop a nervous tic from saying that. Sirius's great-niece (or some relative), a young girl named Nymphadora Tonks, came to visit us more often than anyone else.
Quite a funny girl, I must say, despite the fact that she had some extraordinary abilities and she could freely change her appearance without using plastic surgery. Pat and I quickly realized that it wasn't exactly Sirius that she was coming to, and my godfather's hints about Lupin's marriage became quite clear, so traditionally the only person who didn't want to understand anything was Remus. Or maybe I didn't understand it all that much, because once I overheard a snippet of my guardians ' conversation.
"...too old, too dangerous, and too poor…" that's probably what Remus thinks of himself. He is generally very critical of himself. And Sirius told him that he was just an idiot. I agreed with my godfather on this point.
So, on the night of the full moon, Pat and I were left alone. I vividly imagined that soon a werewolf and an animagus would be running around the surrounding forests, scaring away the local animals, and I felt sad. Not for myself, but for them. How sad they must feel, remembering the past deeds of the marauding four, and realizing what happened to them all afterwards. In this melancholy mood, I was tempted to ask Pat about his missing relative.
"You think your father was a wizard?"
Pat snorted and looked at me.
"Of course! With such and such a name."
And then he added, anticipating my other question:
"And don't even think about it, I'm not going to find out anything about him!"
"Why not?" I asked, surprised.
Pat took out a cigarette and lit it with a candle.
"I already told you," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette, " that he might be a jerk. I'm almost certain of it now."
"???"
"Just think about it," Pat continued " how many people here have remembered-your parents, my mother, the Weasleys, the Longbottoms…"
"Well?"- I couldn't catch the thought.
"Have you ever heard anyone say, 'do you remember old Snape? He was a great guy! " No, I didn't hear him."
"Maybe they didn't know him."
I shrugged.
"Come on, there aren't many wizards, everyone here knows each other."
With that, he put down the Transformation tutorial and tried to transform the cup into something.I can't say exactly what, but as a result, the cup grew spider legs and she cheerfully pokhapala out of the room. We never caught the cup, and spent the rest of the evening laughing almost hysterically over the "recipes" from the Potions textbook.