"Is that . . . the Daily Prophet?" Amelia asked her mother incredulously, looking down at the moving pictures on the kitchen table.
"So what if it is?"
"How can you be reading that? With everything they've been saying?"
"I've always had confidence in the Prophet."
"Mum! Have you listened to nothing I've told you?"
"The Prophet has a point," Clarissa said stiffly. "The wizarding world cannot simply jump every time the Potter boy tells us too. The boy's clearly – troubled."
"Rita Skeeter? You believe her too? Mum, the woman conjures scandal out of thin air when she can't find anything else sensational to write about!"
"I can't believe – "
"What? You can't believe what, Mother? You can't believe the wizarding world buried its collective head in the sand for the past decade and a half? That the Ministry would deny an unpleasant truth because they don't want to believe it? You can't believe that no one would want to go back to the dark times and would rather vilify a teenage boy than admit it could return? Is that it? That's why I left the wizarding world after the war. I couldn't stand the bloody fools who wanted to party and forget all those who died in the war. No one had any problems ignoring inconvenient details then, why should they have such qualms now?"
"No one's saying – "
"Aren't they? What about all those Death Eaters?" Amelia pointed an accusatory finger at the headline of the offending newspaper. "If You-Know-Who hasn't returned, why'd they all escape from Azkaban, huh? Why now? And how'd they escape anyway? A dozen, well-guarded dark wizards? Only a few months after Harry Potter claimed to have witnessed the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Pretty coincidental."
"Sirius Black – "
Amelia laughed. It wasn't a pleasant laugh.
Clarissa glared at her daughter. "I know he was your friend at one point but – "
"But he hated his family. Hated them. The Blacks disowned him. You really think he'd go through the trouble of rescuing his dear cousin from Azkaban after he's made a clean escape? And even if you wanted to follow that flawed line of thinking, again, why now?"
"I don't – "
"Of course you don't! He's still facing a Kiss, why would he go confront the dementors? The Ministry is hardly going to catch him now!"
"The Ministry is hardly as incompetent as you make them out to be!"
"The Ministry never gave him a trial!" Amelia shouted.
Clarissa stopped, her eyes wide, staring at her daughter.
"Twelve years in Azkaban and the Ministry never gave him a trial. I hardly call that 'competent.' They were bloody idiots long before June, but that's when they shoved their heads up their arses and refused to even pretend to listen to reason," Amelia snapped.
"Amelia – do you know where he is?" her mother asked softly. "Have you had contact with Sirius Black?"
"So what if I did?"
"Amelia, the man is a murderer. He was a servant of You-Know-Who. You have no idea of how many people he probably killed!"
"Wrong on all counts there, Mum. He's not a murderer and he never served You-Know-Who."
"Oh, he told you that did he? He told you that and you believed him? I know he was your friend, but a lot of good people were destroyed by You-Know-Who and his followers. Frannie. Alice and Frank. Lily and James. Your father."
"Don't talk to me about that! Have you ever gone to visit Alice and Frank? No? What about to memorial to Lily and James in Godric's Hollow, huh? No? Too busy playing with the Muggles to remember the witches and wizards? I haven't forgotten. I can't ever forget. Sirius never killed anyone."
"And you believe him? I never thought my own daughter would be such a fool! Where is he? Where is he hiding?" Clarissa demanded.
"I couldn't tell you if I wanted too. Not that I particularly want to. I never thought my mother would be such a fool. The Ministry is being run by bloody morons! Dumbledore knows what he is doing," Amelia replied assuredly.
"Dumbledore is going senile! The Wizengamot and the International Confederation of Wizards sacked him!"
"The Ministry should have sacked Fudge!" Amelia shouted back.
The two women glared at each other for a moment before Clarissa broke the silence. "Where is Sirius Black? If he hurt you – or threatened you – "
"I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I was an Auror."
"So was Alice!"
"Alice wasn't a Legimens."
"Legilimency is hardly going to stop a dark wizard."
"No, but it will tell me if someone is a dark wizard or not. Sirius isn't."
"He let you read him?" Clarissa asked, taken aback.
"He didn't exactly have much choice at the time," Amelia answered.
"I'd say," Sirius noted dryly, leaning against the kitchen counter. "I believe I was unconscious at the time."
"I sought him out for answers, and I found them. Sirius no more served You-Know-Who than I did." Amelia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She sat down at the table, staring out the window. Clarissa sat down across from her.
"You are certain?" her mother asked gently.
"Yes. Harry's not a liar, Dumbledore is not a fool, and Sirius isn't a murderer. The Ministry and the Prophet get a lot of things wrong. Especially when they don't want to listen to the truth."
"You really believe – he – has returned?"
"Yes. Dumbledore brought the Order of the Phoenix back. So many people didn't make it out of the first war alive."
"The first war?"
"What do you think is coming? Especially with Fudge and the Ministry ignoring it all and letting the Death Eaters establish a foothold? Another war is inevitable, and eventually the Ministry will realize this. I sincerely hope it isn't too late when that finally happens."
"It's really as bad as all that?"
"The Order lost much of its former power. And we're having a bloody hard time recruiting when the Ministry is doing its damnedest to discredit Dumbledore and Harry."
"Recruiting wasn't exactly my concern. I just wanted to get out of my bloody house!" Sirius exclaimed.
"Hush," Amelia told him. "This is when I convinced my mother to talk to my grandparents and try to get them to prepare. 'Stubborn' is a good descriptor of my family, but 'eccentric' is also appropriate. She also spoke with some of my father's old colleagues, keeping an eye on Muggle affairs."
"Your family had close ties with Muggles, didn't you?" Sirius asked.
"Well, yes. My father was a Muggle, my mother pretended to be one most of the time. My brother turned out to be a Muggle, too."
"You ever talk to him about what was happening?"
Before Amelia could answer, the scene dissolved.
"What do you mean 'dangerous'?" William demanded.
"Remember when I went to Hogwarts and Mum and Dad were worried because the wizarding world was having problems?"
"You mean that nameless guy?"
"Yes."
"What nameless guy?" Sarah asked.
Amelia motioned for her sister-in-law to sit down. "Do you remember how, about twenty years ago Britain wasn't a very happy place?" Sarah nodded. "Yeah, well, we had a sort of wizard civil war going on. A group of wizards were severely anti-Muggle. You know what a Muggle is, right?"
"Yes, you explained that. Non-magical folk. I'm a Muggle, Will's a Muggle. I'm not stupid," Sarah added.
"Not saying you are. I fought for the other side. But this group, they called themselves 'Death Eaters.' Their leader was a man who was so feared; no one wanted to say his name. 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,' or You-Know-Who, for short. His name was Voldemort. Lord Voldemort. Don't repeat that, though. Witches and wizards still flinch at the name and he's been gone fourteen years now. But he's back. The problem is, most people are denying it," Amelia said with a sigh.
"Why would they do that?" Sarah asked.
"It – it was a bad time. Our dad died, a lot of my wizarding friends died. Wanded folk didn't know who to trust. It was a very bad time that no one wants to go back to." Amelia neglected to mention just how bad it was.
"How do you know this – unnamed fellow – is back? Where was he all this time?"
"Most people thought he was dead. Halloween 1981, Voldemort tried to kill Harry Potter. I was friends with his parents; I went to school with them, and I fought with them. We were in the Order together."
Sarah gave her a blank look.
"Sorry," Amelia confessed, "I'm explaining this badly. The Order of the Phoenix opposed the Death Eaters. We were the front lines. Alastor found a picture of us recently. Most of the people in that picture are gone."
Sarah gasped.
"Yes, well, it was war. Our mortality rate was high. It was worse because there was a traitor in our ranks. Voldemort got word of a child who had 'the power to vanquish' him. He believed Harry Potter was this child, and although Lily and James Potter went into hiding, they were betrayed and Voldemort found them."
Sarah raised her hand. "I thought you said people were too scared to say his name."
"Most are. I am of the opinion, an opinion shared by most of the Order, that being afraid of his name only makes you more afraid of the man himself, makes him less a person and more a nightmare. Not that I would quite call him a human anymore. He – he killed James, killed Lily, and when he tried to kill Harry, the curse backfired. People thought he was dead, and Harry became famous. Poor kid. Voldemort – did something – that enabled him to survive, half alive. Last June, he came back. Tried to kill Harry again, but Harry escaped and announced his return."
Amelia paced the kitchen before resting against the counter by the sink. "There is a Ministry of Magic. Our current Minister is – not capable of handling these types of situations. To call Cornelius Fudge 'incompetent' is being generous. He didn't believe Harry, didn't listen to Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of the wizarding school Hogwarts, who is widely believed to be the only one Voldemort ever feared. Fudge didn't listen to Severus Snape, the Potions Professor at Hogwarts and a former Death Eater, when he supported the news Voldemort was back. Fudge – he just – he's turned most of the wizarding world against Dumbledore and Harry."
"Did you ever learn who the traitor was?" Will asked.
"We thought we knew. Remember a couple of years ago, when the news kept on about escaped convict Sirius Black?"
"He was a wizard?" Sarah exclaimed.
"I went to school with him. He was James Potter's best friend. Everyone thought Sirius was the one who betrayed the Potters'."
"Did you catch him?" Will demanded. "The news never announced a capture."
"He was caught . . . but Harry and his friends helped him escape."
"What?"
"With help from Dumbledore." Amelia shrugged sheepishly. "He wasn't guilty. The real traitor faked his own death and set Sirius up to take the fall for it all. And James' death unhinged Sirius a bit, so he wasn't strong with a defense."
"Unhinged me a bit?" Sirius repeated in disbelief.
"Laughing your head off on a ruined street filled with screaming Muggles? Yeah, I would call that unhinged, mate," Amelia retorted.
Will waved a hand at his sister. "And the real traitor was . . ."
"Peter Pettigrew. He was a member of their clique. It was James, who died, Sirius, who was imprisoned, Peter, who is believed dead, and Remus Lupin, who – well, he's a werewolf."
Her brother and sister-in-law gaped. "You never told me there were werewolves," William accused.
Amelia shrugged. "It never came up. Anyway, Peter got away again, and there is no evidence, so Sirius is currently still in hiding."
"You know where he is," William said flatly.
"What is it with you people? You. Mum. Is it really that obvious I know where he is? Yes, I know where he is, no I can't tell you. And not because I don't trust you. I literally cannot say where he is, it is bespelled."
"Bespelled?" repeated Sarah.
"The Ministry may be in denial, but Dumbledore awoke the Order and we have to protect ourselves. Our headquarters is hidden from everyone else."
Silence descended upon the kitchen before William asked, "Why are you telling us all this?"
"Because the country's going to hell again and you are part of it. Because I'm putting myself on the frontlines again, and because Heather starts Hogwarts come September and this is what she's going into."
"Your niece was supposed to start Hogwarts this September?" Sirius asked.
As Amelia nodded, she separated from her memory-self. "You know, I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that." Then she sighed. "Yes she was. She might have already gone. There is no way to be able to tell how time is passing on the other side of the Veil. The only indications are when Harry and Dumbledore speak in the Pensieve. It could have been a week or a year."
"I'm leaning more toward the year than the week," said Sirius.
"Yeah, well, so am I." Amelia sighed and paced the kitchen, watching the three figures in her memory. "This must be hell for them. No body, no explanation – I just disappeared. I don't even know if anyone knew I was at the Department of Mysteries that night. Dumbledore knew I was going, but I was Disillusioned!"
"No one saw you?"
"No! I – I don't know." She was making wide, uncertain gestures with her hands. "It was a battle, they were distracted, fighting for their lives." She clenched her hands into fists and forced them down to her sides. "Dumbledore knew. He told me about the battle. He always seems to see my owl, even Disillusioned. He would have known I was there. He would have understood when I disappeared." Then, almost inaudible, she added, "I hope."
"Dumbledore is – is – he's a genius. Remember, he masterminded my escape from Flitwick's office with very little warning. And – oh. I wonder who's taking care of Buckbeak."
Amelia managed a laugh. "He's probably just as happy to be out of that house as you were."
Sirius grinned at her. "That's a fair bet."
Amelia managed a smile, but it faded as she stared at the image of her brother. "I missed watching her start Hogwarts."
"But, you know, you're not dead," Sirius offered. "That's a good thing."
"Yeah," Amelia said half-heartedly.
The gray mist swallowed them.