To Be Loyal
Chapter Twelve
Disclaimer: I wish I owned the Troll Tapestry... and you will, too, if you look it up on the wiki. I bet it's a great conversation starter.
"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." —Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
"I don't know what your problem is this semester, Black, but you need to stop attacking Slytherins who have done nothing to you." —Cynthia Nott to Sirius Black, spring 1976
December 22, 1976
Sirius slowed to a fast walk once he was sure that James wasn't following him. He passed the Great Hall, where students were beginning to trickle inside in twos and threes for the Christmas Feast. The normal roar of dinnertime at Hogwarts soothed his shattered nerves, although the sight of Snape whispering with his usual associates ruined his appetite. He forced himself to eat as quickly as he could and left as soon as the other Marauders approached the Gryffindor table. I need some time and space to think.
Sirius roamed the halls for hours alone, exploring empty classrooms and familiar secret passages and occasionally passing groups of students who gave him odd looks. I suppose it is weird for me to be without any bodyguards. After what he had done to Snape, he would be surprised if any Slytherins attacked him anytime soon. The thought sickened him.
He ran into the other Marauders once, but they didn't seem to be looking for him. James cast a lingering, inscrutable glance in his direction, but he didn't try to force a conversation. While Sirius was glad that the others were giving him some time, he knew that he would need to talk to them soon: the next morning at the latest.
Around nine o'clock, Sirius began to make his way back to the Common Room. He was nearing the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy when he heard a boot scrape loudly on stone behind him.
His stalker was nowhere to be seen-no, Sirius caught a flash of movement halfway down the corridor. Disillusioned, then-and fairly well, especially for a Hogwarts student.
A flash of an idea crossed Sirius's mind. "Sonor Terrus!" he muttered, pointing his wand at the tiles near where he had seen the movement.
When the mystery student took their next step, the sound echoed down the corridor, though it was hard for Sirius to pinpoint their location. He fired half a dozen General Counter-Spells from his wand to cover the corridor, and grinned when a powerful Shield Charm expanded perpendicular to the wall on his left.
Three of Sirius's Stunners cracked the surface of the shield, but when he opened his mouth to cast another spell, he found that his opponent had managed to cast a Silencing Charm on him without him noticing. Sirius cast a silent Shield Charm that blocked his attacker's Body-Bind, but then his invisible opponent-female, by the voice-shouted her first verbal spell of the duel: "Ligus Levicorpus!"
Somehow, she managed to hit Sirius's right foot, which wasn't covered by his shield. Sirius felt a rope wrap itself around his foot and drag him up into the air, turning him upside-down.
Sirius's Amplifying Spell allowed him to track his opponent as she slowly approached him. "Nice spellwork, that," he complimented. "Did you adapt Snape's Levicorpus and the classic Incarcerous?" Conjured ropes leapt forth from his wand at where he thought she was standing and were deflected by a Knockback Jinx.
The mysterious student passed out of the range of the Amplifying Spell, and Sirius kept a tight hold on his wand as he continued to focus on his hearing, trying to pinpoint her location. Staying in a battle-ready position is much more tiring when I'm upside down, he thought as he craned his neck.
"You can keep your wand, Black," the invisible student told him, a faint note of amusement discernable in her tone. "I just want to talk to you."
"I have good reason to be a little jumpy," Sirius replied defensively. "If you want to talk, don't sneak up on me."
"I'm probably just used to sneaking around and hexing you," she said flippantly.
"You mean, you're the one who keeps hitting me with creative jinxes?" Sirius asked. "The Slytherin attacker who doesn't work with the others, but is more successful in spite of it?"
"Yes, that's me," she admitted, a touch of pride entering her voice. She was directly to his side now, and Sirius hurriedly cast a Shield Charm between them.
He heard her pace back and forth a few times in front of the wall opposite the Troll Tapestry, and then a large, solid wooden door appeared in the blank wall next to her. The rope holding Sirius moved toward the entrance as his invisible attacker opened the door and held it wide, and Sirius realized that she was directing it with her wand.
"I suppose I thought you could use a little humiliation after what you did to Snape," Sirius's captor said impertinently as she levitated him through the door.
Sirius opened his mouth to retort, and the words died in his throat. He felt a sudden urge to confide in someone, anyone, if only to affirm what he wanted to say to himself. "Maybe so," he acquiesced. "It was wrong." A long silence followed, and Sirius thought he'd taken her by surprise.
Bright light washed over Sirius, making him squint to make out the contents of the room. He taken aback by the sight of a bare metal table and two chairs on a concrete floor. "Just what exactly is a stereotypical Muggle interrogation room doing in Hogwarts?" Sirius inquired politely as the mystery student lowered him slowly to the floor and untied the rope around his ankle. Despite swaying slightly from dizziness, Sirius got up and sat down in one of two hard, straight-backed chairs. If she was just going to jinx me, she wouldn't have let me down, and she would've tried to disarm me. Still, Sirius kept his wand ready in his hand.
"How do you know what it is, Black?" was the only answer he got. Sirius saw a ripple of movement across the table as the Disillusioned Slytherin sat down.
"I enjoy certain elements of the Muggle world," Sirius explained as he tipped his chair back on two legs. "A few books and machines. Also, Grimmauld Place is in a Muggle neighborhood."
Sirius saw a flash of motion as the mysterious Slytherin touched her wand to her head. "I prefer movies," she said as her Disillusionment Charm dissolved, and Sirius found himself face-to-face with Cynthia Nott, a Slytherin he had dueled with several times during fifth year. "Absolutely fascinating, aren't they?" she remarked as she untied her long, dark hair from a ponytail and let it flow freely over her shoulders. Her hair was remarkably similar to Melania's, and Sirius felt a pang of grief. Nott's bright blue eyes, however, were even more striking than Mel's light gray irises.
"Quite," Sirius said, playing along with her attempt at casual conversation. "I've never actually seen one."
"That's a shame. Perhaps I'll show you sometime."
Sirius blinked in stupefied confusion. "I'm sorry, but aren't you supposed to be mad at me for whatever I did that made you decide to hex me all the time?"
Nott threw her head back and laughed. Then a serious expression replaced her smirk as she asked, "I forgave you a long time ago, Black, which is why we're having this conversation. Let me explain," she requested, and a thoroughly baffled Sirius sat back in his chair and nodded.
"For some reason, after winter break last year, you decided to wage a one-man war on Slytherin House, and I kept having to stand up for the younger years because you would hex any snake that crossed your path. Remember all those duels we had?"
Sirius grimaced and nodded. Now that he thought about it, he realized that Nott had stepped in to stop him from hexing young Slytherins more than a few times.
"I pretty much hated you for a long time," Nott said flatly, staring down at the metal table and tapping her fingers against the surface. "I even started studying and training regularly to try and get to where I could beat you in a straight fight. I worked hard this summer, but this year, you surprised me.
"You haven't cast the first spell against a Slytherin all year," Nott continued, her eyes boring into Sirius. "After a few months, I decided to let my grudge go, and started firing harmless color-changing and other charms at you instead of hexes." At Sirius's questioning glance, she smiled slightly and added, "It was good practice. You have more situational awareness than most Gryffindors."
Her tone turned serious again. "However, after today, I'm worried that you were just falling in line with Potter and are about to go back to how you were in prior years. That's why I brought you here, but you seem to be sorry about what you did. You're quite an enigma, Black. Care to explain yourself?"
Sirius stared down at the table. "Would you call me Sirius?" he asked as he put his one elbow on the table and began rubbing his forehead with two fingers.
Nott shrugged. "Sure. You can call me Cynthia." She placed both elbows on the table and propped her head up on her hands. "So talk to me, Sirius. If you want, start at why you started picking fights with Slytherins in the first place."
Sirius did so because part of him was grateful to find a sympathetic, unbiased observer to confide in. "James made a speech to the other Gryffindors that got them all to start guarding me in the halls after the big fight. Remus, Peter, James's parents, and I helped him plan it out. He wanted to include something about how picking fights with the Slytherins was wrong, and it struck a chord in me, you know?" Sirius glanced up and saw that Cynthia was listening intently. "It made me think to hear him and Remus talk about how we-well, mostly James and I-had sometimes stepped over the line from discouraging the bigots in Slytherin to bullying anyone in the House. Took some time for me to accept it, but I think part of the reason I did it in the first place was to go along with James."
"What about fifth year?" Cynthia asked intently. "Something made you furious, and you went after the whole House."
"Fifth year was another case entirely." Sirius ran a hand through his hair and decided to give his answer in vague terms. "A relative of mine, the only one I could trust, was kicked out of the family and sent away just for being a Squib. I hated my family and the pureblood ideals they held. Slytherin House was the only part of that culture that I could strike back against." He felt tears welling up in his eyes again and tried to blink them away.
"I'm sorry, Sirius," Cynthia reached out and laid one of her hands on his arm, and for some reason, it didn't put Sirius on edge. "Being a Nott, I know how much damage Voldemort's cause can do, but I've never had a family member taken away from me."
Sirius breathed deeply and curled his hands into fists. I just need to finish. Then there will be someone who knows why I did it and understands, even though it was wrong.
"That's why I attacked Snape today," he said in a rush. "He was telling me how she's a servant at some manor. He taunted me and insulted her, and I snapped and made him tell me where she was. I-I have to rescue her someday. It was horrible, but-you understand why I did it, right?"
"Yes," Cynthia said softly. "And I can tell that you're sincere."
Sirius sighed in relief. "Thank you. Then maybe they will too."
"Your friends?" Cynthia asked incredulously. "Of course they will. Go tell them, and tell them the whole story. You'll feel better if you get it all out."
Sirius nodded and stood up from the table. He paused on his way out the door. "Thank you, Cynthia. For standing up for the younger Slytherins, and for helping me out."
"Aw, sure, Sirius," Cynthia said, grinning. As he walked out, she called, "Now that we've cleared the air, let's hang out sometime, yeah? You need to experience the joy of a good movie."
Sirius threw her a smile over his shoulder. "Sure," he agreed, and walked out into the corridor.
A/N: I'm curious to know: how long have you all had Mel's exact identity figured out? Did you guess Cynthia's?
I kind of love the way Cynthia is introduced…sneaking up on him, tying him up, and bringing him into an interrogation room is characteristic of a villain, but she's not. Please let me know what you think of the conversation between the two-I'm worried that part of it still isn't set up enough and is out of place from the rest of the story. Also, is the pacing of the story bad? Should I have had scenes covering the details mentioned in conversation? Feedback for me makes the story better for you.
By the way, I made up the incantations Mortaer, Sonor Terrus, and Ligus Levicorpus using Latin roots. Two are modifications of real HP spells.
Also, Finite Incantatem seems kind of OP to me, so I'm making it so the average wizard has to walk around and do some extra wandwork to Finite a whole corridor that's been charmed.
If you have any Muggle movies, books, etc. that would be good for me to use in future conversations between these two, please drop them in a review! Have a nice day!
