Here we are! Next chapter might be somewhat delayed since I'll be travelling next week. In the meantime, please enjoy this update.
Chapter four – Lack
They have taken refuge in the sagging armchairs. Hermione is currently outside, probably scowling, possibly inventing ways to hex Ron halfway to Antarctica. Which, in Harry's humble opinion would be awfully counterproductive but he is not too keen to tell Hermione that in this very moment, not when she is looking more and more like a thundercloud made of steel. Instead, he leans forwards:
"Tell me again."
Ron has pulled on a maroon jumper that clashes quite brutally against his red hair. For his part, he has been exhibiting an almost unnaturally perky attitude ever since they returned with the sword and the destroyed locket but, unfortunately, at Harry's question, he makes a face and his shoulders drop ominously. "I've already told you everything, mate."
Harry frowns. "But didn't they say anything?"
Ron shakes his head. "They wouldn't. Reckon they were afraid I'd let you know if I ever found you again. You'd risk your life, Harry, to see him and they know it."
"Course I would."
"Yeah… See?" He flashes a bleak grin.
Harry's fingers are itching like he needs to do magic but the blackthorn wand Ron has given him feels frightfully unfamiliar and dull in his hand. Frustration is lapping at him from all sides, eating its way towards his heart.
"Listen, all Bill could say is that he is being kept somewhere and that he's weak." In a pre-emptive strike to stave off a new flood of questions, he holds up his hands. "I don't know where that is or what that means."
Harry wants to pace, and maybe to scream, but he keeps to his chair as if glued to it. When Ron first confirmed Sirius was still alive Harry felt such relief and joy that his knees nearly buckled under him but now anxiety is crawling over him like a thousand spiders.
"Do you think he's at The Burrow?"
"Dunno."
"So how did it happen?"
"Dunno that either," says Ron, with another shake of his head. Some of his hair falls into his eyes. "Bill's got a theory though. Says You-Know-Who is using all kinds of Dark magic. Might be that he's trying to wake the dead and that somehow brought Sirius back. He's bloody lucky the right people at the Ministry found him when they did."
This is surely torture. Outside, the sun is peeking through the clouds and glinting off the frosted branches. It is a rather beautiful day but all the sunlight does to Harry is to grate on his patience.
"Listen," Ron says, earnestly. His blue eyes are beseeching. "I'm sorry, mate. You know I'd tell you more if I could."
"I know…" Harry sits back in his chair. "But maybe if I could…"
This, however, is apparently when Ron decides he has heard enough.
"Harry. Come off it. You're not going. You weren't going the first time and you're not going now." He fixes Harry with a sharp, and very blue, stare. "Even if we knew where they're keeping him, you couldn't: you'd jeopardise our safety the minute we got there. And Sirius', most like. We don't know their means of protection, what charms they're using. We could crash into them and– "
"I'm not asking you to come with me."
Ron dismisses this with a roll of his eyes. "Listen, mate, you'd not be going alone. Hermione and me would be coming with you. You know that."
Harry swallows. He cannot immediately find an answer to that. He is quite sure that they do not understand exactly how grateful he is that they have not abandoned him yet. Or, better put perhaps, that they are still with him.
"Plus, as soon as you found him you'd not be bloody likely to want to leave his side again, would you?" Ron continues, making sense and all. "Meaning, that nobody would be hunting for the Horcruxes." He holds out his hands in an explanatory gesture. "Obviously I couldn't do it on my own and Hermione – as brilliant as she is – couldn't do it either." He flashes a lopsided grin. "She needs us. To keep her grounded, you know. And as for you, you're the Chosen One who's meant to be doing all of this in the first place."
Harry nods. A streak of pain works its way through his chest and for a split second it is as if he can feel the way Sirius used to hold him: so very close, until they were almost sharing the same heartbeat. He pushes past the sensation and focuses on Ron instead. His friend's long face is softer now, his grimace more compassion than opposition.
"You're right," says Harry, and his voice sounds small in the tent.
"Yeah," Ron agrees. "Doesn't mean I don't get it, though."
He pulls his gaze from Harry and it settles on the opposite wall, where the entrance to the tent is. Harry looks, too, but he cannot see Hermione through the canvas.
-xxx-
Since Hermione still mostly refuses to acknowledge Ron's presence, Harry and Ron find plenty of time for catching up. As the days pass, the heady feeling of victory and finally-some-progress that followed the destruction of the locket gradually begins to dissipate, leaving a bitter taste on Harry's tongue. Where the other Horcruxes could be – or what they could be, for that matter – remains a mystery and time is ruthlessly ticking away.
To appease Hermione (and because she has a point) Harry keeps practicing with the blackthorn wand but it is as though his magic ties itself into a knot inside the wand and refuses to flow every time he attempts even the simplest charm. He feels clumsy and slow, and the wand alternately feels too heavy or too light, even slippery in his grasp at times.
"So…"
They are currently in a thick forest somewhere in northern England where crisp, white snow lies in heaps on the branches around and above them. Harry, who has been trying to Transfigure a frozen pinecone, glances up. The pinecone twitches and falls back into the snow, quite unchanged.
Ron is looking a bit awkward. "About that thing t'was in the locket, yeah?"
This they have not talked about. Not really. They briefly touched upon it when Ron had just stabbed the locket but then he had been crying and Harry had been half-frozen himself after that dive into the forest pool.
"Right." It is no use pretending he does not understand what Ron is alluding to. It is uncomfortable remembering the dreadful Riddle versions of himself and Hermione taunting Ron, kissing even. He shudders.
Ron reads him expertly. "Listen, I know it wasn't real. I mean, deep down I knew, really knew. I'm not an idiot. It was just that… It made me think about stuff in a weird way."
Harry nods. "It didn't want to be killed. It's part of his magic. It tried to twist your mind so that you wouldn't end it."
"Yeah…" The tips of Ron's ears have turned a deeper shade of red and he flashes a self-conscious grin. He pulls off a glove to scratch at his chin. "You know… it would've been easier if you'd only liked blokes."
Harry grins, too. Sort of. But something warm-cold and almost sticky slides through his stomach uneasily.
Ron picks up another pinecone and dusts the snow from it. "I know how you feel about Sirius," he continues, forcing Harry to plough deeper into these issues. "But when I wore the locket it was like I could only remember that you once went out with Cho."
The warm-cold-sticky something turns in Harry's stomach. He wishes Ron had never approached this subject. "I…" He swallows. "I wasn't being fair to Cho," he says, maybe for the first time.
Ron, however, only shrugs. "Well, honestly, she wasn't being fair to you either. She didn't want you, did she? She wanted Cedric." He makes a face. "No offence."
Harry shakes his head. "I don't know… You know… Sirius never said anything to effect of us being in some sort of relationship." He thinks back, the old stab of disappointment in his chest fresh as ever. "He even asked if I was going out with somebody."
"Sounds like Sirius."
"Yeah well… So I thought that maybe I should try it with Cho. I did fancy her, you know."
Ron nods. "She's pretty."
Harry produces a weary smile. "Except she's not Sirius."
"No, not exactly."
-xxx-
They are both asleep. Harry has been lying quite still, listening to their breathing for a good long while now. It is dark and the forest is quiet.
Sirius, Sirius, Sirius…
His thoughts spin in circles, always returning to his godfather, now supposedly alive. Out there, somewhere. Weak but alive.
He wonders what 'weak' means. He is, in fact, terrified that it means anything but 'will be perfectly fine'. Sometimes that fear threatens to drown out all other sensations and obliterate every thought that cannot be immediately tied to Sirius.
Hermione is persistent in her admonishments: they need to focus on the Horcruxes. Harry needs to focus or else they could just as well go back home. Except there might not be a home to come back to. And that would not do Sirius any good either.
He turns onto his side and stares into the blurry darkness. He has buried himself under both of his blankets and thus lies cocooned in warmth. His back is to Ron and Hermione.
He pretends. He pretends that Sirius is behind him, spooning up behind him and holding him tight. He imagines his godfather's mouth on his neck, just like that first time, and the night that followed (and the night after that). He imagines Sirius warm, too, and stronger and happier than when they last met. Sirius is holding him and smiling into his neck and leaving little kisses there that melt into Harry's skin to float just beneath the surface. Sirius is pressing up against him, and they are naked.
His godfather is hard. He is parting Harry's arse cheeks and allowing his arousal in between them. Then his hand slides to Harry's groin and he takes Harry in a firm grasp and begins stroking him. He is saying something, maybe asking if Harry likes it like this. If he could be even harder, for him.
Harry's body has changed. It is two years since they last touched each other. The wiry hairs around his cock are thicker now and there is the humblest dusting of dark hair over his chest. He is bigger, too. Sirius can feel as much and he hums at this discovery. He mumbles something else in Harry's ear before he reaches down lower and palms Harry's bollocks. He is pleased. No, he is delighted. He loves the heavier feel of Harry's cock, the way he is becoming a man, finally leaving his younger self in the past.
Harry stretches back against him, his hand joining Sirius'. He bites his lip to stop the moan from spilling over it into the dense night. His hand moves up and down, up and down, over his swollen cock in a desperate need for release. He needs to soar and to float and to be filled with all that light Sirius always conjured for them. His hand is slick now from his precome and he twists the blunt head just like Sirius did. He turns his face into the pillow to muffle his groan. Sirius is in his mind, in his heart. He is in his body. Somewhere, somehow, still there.
Harry slides the pad of his thumb over the slit at the tip of his cock and he can hear his godfather's breathing like thunderous waves in his ears. He can feel his smile on his skin. He comes, hard and fast, under the blankets, into yet another winter night. Into darkness.
-xxx-
It is early evening. Ron is fiddling with his wooden wireless while Harry is trying to Levitate small stones with the bloody blackthorn wand. This is when she climbs down from her bunk and stalks over to Harry, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore in hand.
"I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood."
And something finally causes something else to happen.
TBC