The spring after Klara's supposed "death," Sirius had spent many afternoons at the Potter's, minding Harry while his exhausted friends fit in a few hours of undisturbed sleep. There had been an echoing cavern where he used to feel things like anticipation and excitement, and only visits to the Potters seemed to add a touch of colour to his existence.

Lily had moved in all her muggle books from childhood, and Sirius often read aloud to the baby to amuse them both. Harry, despite his own limited vocabulary, seemed to particularly enjoy Alice in Wonderland and its sequel. Sirius, in turn, became acquainted with one of the odder creations of the muggle world.

In the days after Klara's visit with her friend Louise, Sirius walked about Grimmauld Place feeling rather like an Alice who had just fallen through a topsy-turvy looking glass. When she had said she was planning to redecorate, Sirius had thought she meant to move furniture around. Klara's idea of redecorating was nothing so mundane.

One afternoon, while Sirius and Remus finished scrubbing out the last bathrooms on the top floor, Klara's magically amplified voice floated in through the doors, asking Sirius to find her downstairs. Unsure what she had even been up to, he complied. When Sirius entered what was supposed to be his drawing room, he stopped as if he'd run into a wall. For a moment, he was certain he'd walked into someone else's house entirely, and nearly walked out again to make sure.

The darkly striped wallpaper was gone, the walls having been turned the lightest cream colour. The drapes were now a soft grey, and the glass-fronted cabinets were birchwood with gold detailing. The fireplace had been changed from black stone to a grey-veined marble, and the bulbous gas lamps and chandeliers were now tapered, dancing with sparkling magical flames. The armchairs and sofas, no longer grimy and misshapen, were cheerful and inviting with soft-looking fabric, coloured to match the room.

Turning to the wall that normally bore his family tree, Sirius saw that the tapestry now resembled an enchanted forest scene, complete with mythical flowers and a pair of unicorns resting among the trees.

In the middle of the room, perched on a cushy-looking ottoman, was Klara, twirling her wand and studying an enormous book on her lap. Beside her five other books lay scattered, equally enormous, open to various pages depicting design motifs and medieval art. She looked up and smiled serenely, as if she had not transplanted an entirely new room into his house.

"Ah, good. Sirius, I need your help with these ghastly serpent heads everywhere. I've been trying all sorts of charms to make them look like Flemish scrolls, but they won't budge." She pointed to the hardware on the sofa closest to her hand. Sirius felt his jaw go slack.

"You…Flemish…what?"

For a second, she tilted her head, puzzled by his bafflement. Then she seemed to follow his gaze around the room, and when she looked back at him, she was biting her very pink lip, almost nervous.

"I thought I'd start redecorating," she said unnecessarily, giving him a small shrug. "I hope you don't mind how much I've altered things. If you want I could—"

"No! I mean, no, this is…I just wasn't expecting…" Sirius swept his eyes around the room again, and felt his face break into a grin so wide his cheeks ached. "This is unbelievable. You're unbelievable. What did you need help with?"

Her cheeks darkened and a pleased little smile pressed at her mouth.

"These silver serpent heads. See, they're everywhere: on the sofa armrests, on the cabinets, on the lamps. Just transfigure them into something resembling this." She tapped her wand at where her book lay open to show a large scroll design, and Sirius crouched for a better look.

He smirked.

"What, you've transformed this entire room, not to mention that cursed tapestry, but you can't manage to change the serpent heads?"

Klara sniffed and turned her nose up.

"Naturally everything was done with permanent or self-renewing charms. These snakes are just impervious. I couldn't transfigure leather into velvet to save my life, and you know it."

"I still don't know how you managed to scrape an NEWT in Transfiguration."

Her dignified air evaporated. She shot him a serene smile, but her eyes lit with that mischievous triumph that had once accompanied their pranks and schemes.

"You and everybody else. Didn't you know? Louise started at betting pool in Ravenclaw about whether I'd pass. Made rather a killing, the conniving minx."

"You never told me how you did it."

"Oh, come now. If I've learned anything from you, it's how to charm a stranger."

Sirius felt his eyebrows climb up his face.

"Oh, you didn't! Is that even possible?"

She leaned towards him as if about to impart a secret, eyes sparking. For a moment, she let the question suspend between them, and Sirius found it suddenly hard to breathe.

"If I'm being honest…" she said, her voice dropping into a delicious register. Then she smirked back at him. "I have no idea. I'm certain I received a T in the practical. I just managed to ace the written exam is all."

Sirius felt himself smile reflexively, but as he met her very warm eyes, he felt his whole body freeze. She was so close like this, and even with his shallow breathes he could take in the velvet, woodsy smell of her hair. For a moment she was still laughing, that intimate curve of her bowed lips parted to speak. In the next instant, the shift in the air had caught up with her, and she too stilled, something darkening in her eyes. They stared at each other. Shared a single breath, then two.

Klara pulled back. He heard her jagged inhale as she looked away and smoothed her skirt over her legs. Sirius rocked back on his heals as if struck. He felt winded, like the grey reality setting in had knocked him square in the chest. When Klara looked at him again, her face had gone quiet, like the surface of an icy lake. Yet for a split second, he thought he saw regret under those still eyes.

But he was deluding himself. Hadn't he always done that with her, read and hoped too much into her words and tiny shifts of expression? Even when they were young, he hadn't known, not truly, where she'd stood on the spectrum between toleration and love.

How arrogant he was to hope for more now, when he had failed his friends, failed her—when he was as undeserving as he'd ever been. She said she trusted him, but trust was not forgiveness, and forgiveness was not love. For what he'd done, he deserved none of these.

Yet he still could not conjure a morsel of remorse, because at least his manipulation had prevented her sharing James and Lily's fate, even if he had not protected her entirely from danger. He wouldn't make that mistake again. Sirius had no idea how he would do it, but he had to see that nothing ever happened to Klara again. That was the only thing he had any right to do now.

Stretching an ugly, unnatural smile onto his face, Sirius pushed himself to his feet. He felt as if irons had been hung around his shoulders, but he stood anyway, and approached the silver snake's head she had pointed to.

"You said you needed help with these?"

O~O~O~O~O

Klara spent the days following her visit to Louise redecorating Grimmauld Place. In an attempt to bring Sirius out of the depression that his childhood home so obviously cast over him, she opted for a light and cheerful colour scheme, inspired entirely from various art and design books she had borrowed from her artist friend.

It was becoming obvious—not least because Sirius bemoaned his situation daily—that before her arrival, Sirius had literally been cooped up in a miserable house with nothing to do except lounge about with his Hippogriff and his nightmares. Klara found this entire situation beyond objectionable.

Remus was off on a short mission, and every day other Order members came through the house, busy with their work and reports and no doubt making Sirius feel terribly useless. Completely changing his surroundings would likely do him good, and to keep his mind occupied, she assigned him entire rooms to transfigure, though she often had to go over his work and re-charm wallpaper and furniture to look right.

To make matters more complicated, Klara had been appalled by her near slip with Sirius in the drawing room—really, she was past thirty, and such behaviour and impulses were unseemly, especially after she'd been so certain of herself in Louise's kitchen. More than ever now, she was determined to keep her interactions with Sirius cool and polite, even as she watched the disappointment he was unable to hide. Even as she lay awake at night, restless and irritated, the steady, intent look he had given her burning every time she closed her eyes.

Again, Klara felt the object of some cruel joke. It seemed the more she wished not to be in the same room with Sirius, the more she needed his transfiguration help. The more she tried to keep conversation polite and distant, the easier it was to slip and fall into that familiar, natural rhythm of teasing banter. Sirius noticed her distance, and she found herself ruthlessly ignoring the dull resignation in his eyes, reminding herself that this way was best for them both.

It was with a certain degree of relief, then, that Klara greeted her next visit to the Longbottoms. Her owl Franz had returned that evening, and after a long day of decorating, Klara shut herself into the library with the Longbottoms' files and her mountain of mind magic literature, trying to prepare for the healing session the next day.

If the unreasonable corner of her mind secretly wanted Sirius to interrupt and contrive to spend time together, it did not matter. He had disappeared upstairs after supper, and another bottle of liquor had vanished from the smoking room.

O~O~O~O~O

July 23

When Klara passed through St. Mungo's waiting room the next morning, the snippy blonde witch at the welcome desk stopped her with a sharp call of her name.

"Healer Montagu? That's you, isn't it?"

Klara whipped her head around.

"Yes, it is."

"Got a letter for you," she said, pulling out an envelope from a bottom drawer and waving it in her face. Klara didn't reach for it.

"Are you quite certain? Who would send me mail at St. Mungo's? I don't even work here."

"Well, I don't know, do I? Some bloke just walked in here like he was dreaming and asked me to hand you this. And you think I don't know you're not employed here? Had to keep this in my desk because you don't have a mailbox."

"But—"

"Oh, Merlin, Morgan and the other bloke, just take your letter. I'm not a post owl. Can't you see I've got a room of patients? Next!"

And she flung the letter in Klara's face, waving her hand as if shooing away a fly. Too shocked to even be affronted, Klara obediently took the letter, slipped it absently into a robe pocket, and made her way to the stairs.

Upstairs, Klara was dismayed to see that Mrs. Longbottom had again brought Neville to St. Mungo's with her. The previous week, she had tried to hint that the woman might like to keep Neville at home—some patients' physical reactions to her healing charms could be alarming—but it seemed she either misunderstood or did not think it necessary to shield her grandson.

"Mrs. Longbottom, do you think Neville would like to have some tea and wait upstairs?" she tried a final time. She'd never had a child present for their parent's treatment, and the idea unsettled her. She looked over at Neville's face, and sure enough there was an instinctive relief that seemed to pass over his features.

Mrs. Longbottom, however, only sniffed, affronted, and from the corner of her eye Klara saw Healer Willoughby flinch.

"Why ever would he do that? These are his parents. He'll be responsible for them one day. He ought to be present for their treatment."

Klara did not turn from Neville's face, watching him with her professionally neutral expression.

"I…um…" As he looked between his grandmother and his parents, then back at her, Klara saw something crystallise in the boy's eyes. He set his jaw, as if steeling himself.

"I think Gran's right. I'll stay."

Klara gave him a small smile. Very well then. Like parents like son. Frank and Alice were never ones to shy away from the uncomfortable and frightening.

"Very well. This first series of tests will target the neurone networks in the somatosensory and prefrontal cortices. I'll be trying various tissue-repair charms, reviving charms, and physical stimuli to see what kinds of potions might be useful."

"When they were first brought into hospital," said Mrs. Longbottom, looking dubious, "the Healers tried all sorts of potions and charms. Nothing worked. They said there was nothing they could do."

"I'm sure they did everything within their power," Klara said slowly, careful not to issue blame. "In their charts, I saw the Healers used a wide range of physical healing charms, but when cast without Legilimency, these usually aren't concentrated enough to make a difference on the neurone level. I will be using a specialised technique."

This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Longbottom, who nodded and leaned imperiously back into her chair. Neville, however, had scrunched his brow hard, looking as if he desperately wanted to ask a question, but could not muster the resolve. Klara turned to him, trying for an inviting expression.

"Do you have any more questions before I begin?"

There was a moment of dense silence before Neville spoke.

"When you say you'll use potions…does that mean…I mean, there was that time last year, when my mum needed to be calmed down, and…it was terrible."

His eyes had grown huge, and even as Mrs. Longbottom scolded Neville for bringing up the unpleasant episode, Klara realised exactly to what he had been referring. The most recent anomaly in Alice Longbottom's chart had been an entry in March of the previous year.

During a visit with the patient's son, the report said, something the boy said must have triggered a violent reaction in her brain. She began first to rock back and forth, making hoarse wailing sounds. Then, at a touch on her shoulder, she had torn off down the ward, pounding on the door and trying to get out. It had taken two Healers to restrain her, and a third had "forcibly administered a calming draft", after which she fell into unconsciousness. All this had played out before her young son's eyes.

Klara bit back her scowl. She did not like to make moral judgements on the methods of her colleagues, but really, some of these practices were barbaric. And to do this in front of her son? Alice was a woman who'd lost her sanity, not some wild beast. If the Healers hadn't done damage to their patient—and that was rather a big "if" in Klara's opinion—they'd certainly done damage to Neville.

She sighed. If she managed to make some progress with the Longbottoms, perhaps St. Mungo's might reconsider their complete disregard for mind medicine. But then again, the British wizarding establishments were nothing if not obstinately conservative, and most people still doubted the very existence of mental illness. If the use of simple Muggle remedies like stitches were still shocking, she doubted she could convince the hospital's board to add a department for mental health.

"You needn't worry, I promise," said Klara, putting on her reassuring smile. "We've found in our research that any sort of physical force and restraint can actually cause further trauma, so it's not part of my personal practice. I've never needed to physically restrain a patient, and I don't intend to start with your parents."

It did not matter that she'd never dealt with cases of trauma as bad as the Longbottoms'. Their minds still resembled minds, and Klara knew how to calm and soothe any human brain.

"Have I answered your question? Please don't hesitate to ask if there's anything else I can clarify. I want you to feel as comfortable as possible with this whole process."

At Neville's little shake of the head, Klara nodded.

"I will start again with the somatosensory cortex, where the damage originated."

Again she sat in the armchair facing Frank, this time with her wand notched under his chin. Ateeling herself against the onslaught of Frank's mind storms, she dove in.

She eased herself first into the sedate, barren wasteland of his somatosensory cortex. Thankfully, she would not have to deal too heavily with any unstable elements today. Professor Kowalski had expressed her bewilderment at the destruction of those storms, and had advised Klara to await her detailed review of the Pensive notes before attempting tests in that region.

Klara was not inclined to argue. After that first session, she had no desire to interact more than necessary with those violently swirling shards of memory.

They frightened her and stirred her panic, not only because she had never seen anything like them, but more so because of the way Frank's mind had cut into hers, pulling her own darkest memories, though she had thought them securely contained. She had rarely felt so out of control, and the feeling made her ill.

Though no longer a surprise, the wasteland of shrivelled neurones and connecting axones that greeted her mind's eye still drew from her a brittle breath. A cold weight settling in her stomach, she approached the closest tangled mass in an area meant to transmit sensation from the right arm.

Up close, the damaged neurones varied in colour from charred black to that light beige taken on by dead flower stalks. Though some threads resembled lifeless plants, other areas were so charred from the burn of prolonged overstimulation that Klara expected them to crumble into soot.

Most, however, had the distinct look and texture of earthworms that had dried on hot pavement. The image, now stuck fast to her mind, made the weight churn nastily in her stomach as she approached.

She began with general tissue-repair charms. This sort of targeted charm work required a special sort of focus. She lightly formed the Episky spell in her own mind, not casting it outright, but instead feeling the magic gather at the tip of her wand like blowing air into a delicate balloon.

Focusing on the shrivelled knot before her, she directed the magical energy at the damaged neurones, seeing the glowing burst of the spell in her mind's eye. The controlled ball of energy soared up from the mind's floor and settled in the targeted knot, and Klara let out the tense breath she had been holding in concentration.

The axons seemed to glow warm for a few seconds, taking on the colour of red baked earth, then returned to their deadened state. It seemed this most simple of healing spells had no lasting effects, but she had expected as much. This was only the beginning.

Beside her, she heard various intakes of breath. From the outside, it would appear that spots were lighting up on top of Frank's head, and Klara hoped their reactions would not escalate when her ministrations began activating Frank's motor reflexes.

In the same concentrated manner, she began cycling though the usual spells she'd used on damaged brains over the years: Charms to reknit the complicated protein mesh that made up neurones. Charms that mimicked the fatty makeup of the myelin sheaths. Charms that triggered the body's own recovery mechanisms. She then moved on to reviving charms and potions testing.

Frank's mental structures responded with various changes in temperature, colour, and shape—the knot even began to unravel itself, as if coming back to life, when she attempted a particularly sharp reviving charm—but the results were mostly as she feared. Minimal, temporary, and unlikely to lead to any visible change.

Over the years, Klara had treated various patients with sensory neurones damaged by a whole range of spells. However, they had been concentrated cases, and none had been the victim of prolonged Cruciatus exposure. The contrast was stark.

After an hour of testing, she had failed to elicit any reflexive movements from Frank's arm. Never before had she treated a patient with such thoroughly burnt nerve tissue, and never before had she failed to stimulate physical reflexes. Yet, all was not hopeless. Towards the end, the physical test mimicking the effects of potions seemed to trigger lasting changes in the colour and texture of her test field.

The area she had been targeting looked smoother now, maybe even glossy, and Klara was certain she had not imagined the subtle shifting of light, which indicated a slight return of electric signalling. This was an excellent development, naturally. Nonetheless, she found herself stifling a groan. It was just her luck. The damage in Frank's brain was too great for charms alone.

At Hogwarts, Klara had always been honest about her strengths, and equally so about her limitations. What was true Ravenclaw intelligence if not the unflinching knowledge of self? She was a good student—studious and a lover of books— and a fine witch, but certain subjects required a particular frame of mind she simply did not possess. Transfiguration was one of them. Potions was another.

She had no instinct for the "art" of brewing potions. In the same way her brother Hart could never get maths concepts to click with his brain, Klara never could internalise the patterns of smells, colours, and vapours that seemed to guide natural Potioneers. If given exact instructions and plenty of time to fail a certain recipe, she could train herself to make specific potions of a passable quality, but nothing more.

It was with this rote, tedious method that she passed her various Potions exams, and it was with this method that she still made any potion required for her patients. (Apothecary Healers could not be trusted to properly make mind potions, even in Austria.)

Klara had rather thought, with Nott and Voldemort and manipulating Fudge, that she had enough unpleasant endeavours awaiting her in the near future, but it seemed she would need to add another. She hoped Sirius would not mind her turning one of Grimmauld Place's magically enlarged guest rooms into a lab. Like it or no, she would have to make potions for the Longbottoms.

Thankfully, she had a much easier time with Frank's prefrontal cortex, despite the extended damage. These areas of tissue, though they looked the worse for wear, were infinitely more sensitive to her testing.

A simple Rennervate managed to flood colour and gloss over a small stretch of neurones, and another stimulation spell in Broca's area had Frank beginning to recite the alphabet backwards, albeit in a blurred monotone. In the room, she heard a more agitated series of gasps.

His chart had noted that Frank very rarely spoke, and when he did it was always in short, single words that rarely made sense. This was definitely the most promising thing that had happened all day, and Klara couldn't stop her smile. When Frank stopped speaking, a heavy silence clung to the air for a moment, and then the questions came.

"Was…was that really…I've never heard Dad speak for so long before." Neville's voice sounded flimsy, and over it, Klara could hear the heavy breathing from Mrs. Longbottom.

"This is a good sign. It does not mean he will suddenly start speaking, but it does mean he still has the capability. This is a very good sign."

And so Klara continued her tests, taking careful Pensieve notes. Though a seemingly uniform mass of desolation, different parts of the prefrontal cortex reacted to her test in different ways, and for the millionth time in her career, Klara marvelled at the hidden variety in the human brain.

She found that the areas responsible for memory formation and decision making were most sensitive to charm work, that those controlling emotional responses and rational thought could be stimulated into various stages of self-repair, and that those controlling strategic processes and impulse control seemed imperious to any spells.

When an enlarging spell bounced off this last area and nearly shot back into her own mind, Klara could barely keep from jolting out of Frank's brain. Frowning, hoping the others hadn't noticed her shock, she pawed around the neurones, looking for physical anomalies. Suddenly, the reason for the rebound dawned on her, so very obvious.

"Mrs. Longbottom," she said when she had finally vacated Frank's mind. "In our next session, would you be so kind as to bring Frank's and Alice's wands?"

Her sharply angled brows pointed towards her hairline, her forehead crinkling like tissue paper.

"Whatever would you need those for? Surely you can't make them do magic somehow?" The horror in the tone was nearly palpable. Ah. So Klara had thoroughly shocked her and her understanding of mind magic.

Klara smiled politely. She was not going to mention that anyone capable of casting the Imperius Curse could do precisely this. Instead, she explained,

"Nothing of the sort. It is only that the parts of Frank's brain that were most active in casting spells are now nearly impossible to work with. The spells I cast all bounced off without absorbing, and I am fairly certain it's because he doesn't have contact with his wand."

At everybody's skeptical looks, Klara continued her theory.

"You see, these areas are wired from an early age to channel magic through a connection with a wand core. I believe that, without his own wand present to open up the pathways, in Frank's condition they are impervious to any magical stimulation." Klara paused, wondering if continuing would undermine their confidence in her abilities. She decided that she owed the truth to the proud elderly witch and her brave grandson.

"Of course, as I have never needed to repair these specific regions of a patient's brain, I don't know anything for certain. However, I do have a lot of confidence in my hypothesis."

Another pause.

"As you've likely surmised, Mrs. Longbottom, I have never seen patients with damage nearly as extensive as Frank's and Alice's. I have never heard of patients who've endured this much Cruciatus damage and lived. With their minds, I am venturing into territory our field has never before encountered, and I must tell you that nothing I do here will yield certain results. I can only act to the best of my ability. Everything will be exploratory."

In the silence that followed, punctuated only by Healer Willoughby's nervous shuffling, Klara looked into Mrs. Longbottom's hard, drawn face. Beside her, Neville, who had been looking at her, eyes huge, had shifted his gaze to his mother as she flitted about the room, examining the wallpaper.

Finally, Mrs. Longbottom sighed.

"I suppose I had expected as much. No matter. Frank and Alice are survivors. It's only fitting they should survive what other people can't."

She turned her assessing gaze to Neville, who quickly snapped his head back to look at her.

"Neville is using Frank's wand," she said, turning back to Klara. "I believe he has gotten used to it, but if you really need it for your treatments, I will get him a new one."

Klara couldn't help her frown. She knew little about wand lore, but surely using someone else's wand was not ideal for any wizard. Not for the first time, her mind was flooded with questions about how little Neville Longbottom had been brought up all these years, effectively an orphan and living under the care of a most imposing woman.

But like so many matters, it was not her place to say anything, and so Klara simply nodded.

"That would be ideal, I think. It would do Frank and Alice good to have their wands near, even if they aren't using them."

The rest of the morning blurred by as Klara repeated her tests on Alice's brain, and by the time she left the hospital, she was feeling as if she had not slept in days. And yet, she walked briskly, energetically, because beyond fatigue, she was hopeful. Klara could not wait to write Professor Kowalski with her new notes.

Even though Dumbledore had implied the return of two talented fighters to the cause against Voldemort would be most fortuitous, Klara rather thought most important thing was for Neville Longbottom to have entities resembling parents once more.

And, despite her warnings to Augusta Longbottom, it seemed, as the morning had worn on, that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance Frank and Alice could regain, if not their full motor skills, then a majority of their personalities.

O~O~O~O~O

Sirius and Remus lounged in their usual spots in the kitchen, the remains of their breakfast strewn about the table. Rain pelted the high windows, the constant drum filling the empty kitchen. Remus, who had returned from a short mission to Wales that morning, rocked back and forth on his chair in a contented stupor, looking as if he would fall asleep right there.

Sirius was glowering into the dregs of his coffee, the familiar frustration at his uselessness once again rearing its insufferable head. Elphias Doge had stopped by first thing in the morning. After being assured by Walburga's screaming that this was indeed the right house, he had informed a scowling Sirius that Silas Nott had once again gone missing.

"I haven't seen him or his son leave the manor since last Friday," Doge had reported over tea, shaking his head and smacking his lips. "There's no movement in the house, so they must have left, but we've been looking all over the country to no avail. No houses with unknown owners and an unexplained magical presence, according to Dumbledore."

"He must be going abroad, then," said Remus, while Sirius gritted his teeth.

"I suppose he could be connecting his Floo abroad without Ministry knowledge and somehow bypassing our surveillance," agreed Doge. "Or he's got some illegal recurring Portkey. Still, we have no idea where he goes or why, and I haven't a clue as to how we should find out."

"Damn it!" Sirius had slammed his mug onto the table, sloshing hot coffee onto his hand, but he barely felt the burn. "Damn it to hell, I should be out there looking for him. He could be attacking Klara at the hospital right now."

The idea crystallised into graphic images the moment the words left his mouth, and at once Sirius had wanted to lunge for the door. Remus grabbed his sleeve, and for a second he tried to break free, cold fear running down his back like icy rain and urging him out the house.

"Now, now, Black, no need to worry about that at the moment. The magical tracking spells we've attuned to known Death Eaters in Diagon Alley and St. Mungo's are all functional. Every time any of them visits these places, we know. Nott definitely hasn't appeared."

Despite his reassurances, Sirius had glared at Doge for the rest of his visit, though the little old man, to his credit, hadn't let it bother him one bit. Sirius' reason told him that yes, Klara was relatively safe at St. Mungo's, but what about her trip back here? She'd always perversely liked walking in the rain. What if she insisted on walking back, and Nott accosted on her way? What if he had somehow figured out she was living at Grimmauld Place, and waited for her just on the corner?

And yet here he was, unable to leave. Unable to do anything to protect her. He had promised Dumbledore, later Remus, and most recently Klara herself that he would stay put, but the chains of his helplessness seemed to grow ever tighter around his body. It was hard to breathe.

Sirius heard himself let out a low growl, and across the table Remus started at the sound. Looking up, he saw his old friend, scruffy as always, half asleep with his scarred face resting in that expression of cozy contentment Sirius knew so well. How many times had he seen young Remus like this near the full moon, so tired by growing wolf agitation that he dozed off at mealtimes? Out of nowhere, a great surge of affection glowed in his chest, easing away some of his clawing frustrations.

"Oi, Moony," he said, his voice leisurely. "If you're going to sleep you might as well get yourself to your bed. Klara's charmed the mattresses too. They feel like clouds."

Remus half-raised one eyelid, a ghost of a smile lifting his cheeks.

"I can't believe how much she's managed to change this house. I've only been gone a few days," he said, rubbing his eyes.

Sirius made an indignant sound.

"I'll have you know, I did half the redecorating. She couldn't have done it alone."

"Yes, of course, Padfoot. Good on you. Job well done."

"Yes, I rather think it is, thank you."

A short laugh. Remus opened his mouth and closed it again. It was a few moments before he spoke.

"Have all the changes…I mean, have you been sleeping better?"

Sirius gave him a sharp look.

"Don't know what you're talking about. I've always slept just fine."

"Come on, Sirius. Please don't lie to me."

Sirius returned to studying his coffee dregs.

"I'm sleeping just fine," he muttered stubbornly. "Besides, it doesn't exactly matter how I sleep. It isn't as if I've anything useful to do with my day."

"Ding!"

Before Remus could say any more, he was interrupted by the muffled ring of the front doorbell. Buggering hell. In the sliver of silence, both Sirius and Remus cursed under their breathes, and then Walburga's voice was booming through the house, her words perfectly intelligible even through the floorboards.

"Right. You get up to bed. I'll go meet whoever's at the door." And with that Sirius bounded ahead of Remus and up the stairs, pushing all bitterness and despondency to the back of his head.

In the past weeks, Sirius had learned to hear his mother's screamed words without really understanding them. Her repetition of the same few insults made this easy, and everything about the situation was less infuriating this way. Today, however, she was diverging from her usual script, and it took some moments for Sirius to process her words.

"…AND HOW DARE YOU RETURN HERE, TRAITOROUS WHORE! SHAMEFUL ROTTON FRUIT OF MY AUGUST LINEAGE! YOU'VE LONG LOST THE RIGHT TO ENTER THE HOUSE OF YOUR NOBLE ANCESTORS…"

Frowning, understanding still elusive, Sirius half jogged towards Walburga's portrait. He couldn't think straight with her noise, and it was with great effort that he forced the curtains closed. Restored to tranquility once more, Sirius now turned to the cloaked figure who had entered the front hall and was stashing their umbrella in the new stand.

He stopped, his limbs suddenly stiff, his mother's words just sinking in. Traitorous whore…your noble ancestors. The set of her shoulders, the curve of her jaw—the entire aura of this woman. He would recognised it anywhere.

She looked up at him, a tentative smile on her face.

"Cousin," said Andromeda Tonks. "It's been far too long."

Her voice quivered.

And before Sirius knew what was happening, she had brushed a quick kiss on his cheek and pulled him into a tight embrace, her arms wrapped almost vice-liked around him. Never in his life had he seen Andromeda cry, not once, even in the family's must turbulent years; but here, in the newly bright hallway of their ancestral home, Sirius could only hold his cousin, dumbstruck, as she sobbed into his shoulder.