Chapter 17 – Trapped
"Enervate," said a woman's voice from far away.
Pain. Red hot pain in his chest, his head, his arms and legs. His eyes burnt as if they had been torn from their sockets, boiled like hard eggs and stuffed back inside and they refused to open. His heart was stuttering, beating, stuttering, then slamming inside his chest like a crazed wild animal trying to get out of a trap. He recognised the typical after-effects of at least two stunning curses and moaned.
"Sirius! Sirus, can you hear me?" said the woman, her voice gentler now.
Sirius? Oh yes, that was his name. He was Sirius. The woman's voice was familiar and triggered mixed feelings of relief and annoyance. It further brought up half-forgotten memories of good cooking, red hair and constant nagging due to her obsessive need to mother grown men as well as every kid not bright enough to evade her authoritarian way of taking charge. To her defence, it was probably not really her fault, that she had become like that; Sirius remembered the short, sweet and shy girl she was back at school. Bringing up six young wizards and one witch had changed her into a short, plump and kind-faced woman, who managed her red-headed swarm of kids and her husband, Arthur Weasley, with the efficiency and fuss of Mother Goose.
"Sirius, I think you are awake. Open your eyes, dear, and let me check if you have a concussion," insisted the voice; a little louder this time and with a commanding edge to it.
It was the sort of voice that can make the dead sit up in their grave, open their eyes and feel bad for being unkempt and wearing a dirty sheet. He did not stand a chance. He opened his eyes a slit and winced at the blinding headache.
On the second attempt he managed to croak her name, "Mol-ly."
Molly Weasley sniffed once, a bit teary-eyed, and wiped her eyes on her flowered apron. Then she seemed to pull herself together and was now beaming down at him, as if he was about five years old and just had done something very smart. She had lost weight since the last time he saw her; her shabby witch's robe was a faded blue from too many washings, but she was wearing a brand new looking, midnight blue, glittering witch's hat, that looked slightly comical above her freckled face. He tried an answering smile, and discovered that he was genuinely glad to see her.
"How many wands am I holding up?" asked him Molly Weasley.
+Good grief. She hasn't changed at all.+ As he squinted up at her chubby hand, his headache increased slightly, but his sight was not altered, so that probably meant that he had no concussion.
"One. Molly, where are Remus, Alastor and Shacklebolt?" said Sirius after clearing his throat twice and tried to sit up. "What happened? We were talking in the kitchen and then… oh bloody hell." He grew pale as he remembered exactly what had happened then.
"You really should try not to swear," chided Mrs Weasley.
"Tonks," groaned Sirius. He would never be able to face his young cousin again. +She must hate me now.+
"She is quite angry at you," admitted Molly and pushed a cushion behind his back in a practised and not too gentle move. "With good reason I should say. Remus told me how you attacked her-"
"That wasn't me!" snapped Sirius angrily. "That was that … + Killer. + " … other man, whose body I'm sharing." he ended lamely. "It was Riddick, who-"
"Well, you should have stopped him from doing that," interrupted Mrs Weasley. "I'll go now and fix you some sandwiches and tell Alastor and Kingsley that you are awake for questioning."
"What? I couldn't… there was no way to…" began Sirius angrily, but by then she had already bustled out of the room. Furious, he could hear her resolute steps fading in the staircase.
He looked around his old, dark bedroom with the high ceiling and the now empty portrait of his Great-great-grandfather, Phineas Nigellus Black, and scowled. How he hated this place! And especially this room. His old bedroom. In all the years after his escape from Azkaban he had avoided sleeping in here. He remembered the time, when the old portrait had been the only person to address him in a nearly friendly, if very arrogant manner.
Number twelve, Grimmauld Place. The one place he never ever wanted to set foot in again had to be the first place his own best friends had dragged him to again. He should not be angry at them for doing so, as the old Black family house had been the Headquarters for the Order of Phoenix for a several years now. But he was. He was angry.
To Sirius, the house only held years of bad memories. His childhood as the only Black child going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and not getting selected for Slytherin House, where every pure blooded Black child was supposed to go, had not been a happy one.
To the world and the other children at school he was the pampered heir of one of the oldest and richest wizarding families. He wore the best robes money could buy, he was a brilliant student (anything else would have gotten him severe beatings by the hand of his father); girls loved his looks. Only his best friends, James, Lily, Remus and …the other one… only they knew the truth. Even now, Sirius could not bring himself to think the traitor's name. The traitor lived. He still lived.
To his family Sirius was a freak, a less-than-nothing, an error of nature, that had to be corrected as often and as much as possible. He had been made very aware that his Sorting into Gryffindor House was a big disappointment to his family and that frequenting blood traitors' children like James Potter and Arthur Weasley and mudbloods like Lily Evans had changed his status in the family somehow from being the proud heir of the Black fortune into something barely better than the house-elf; something that should be punished and rejected until he 'saw reason.' His hated cousin Bellatrix and his younger brother Regulus had made very sure that his parents were kept up to date on his every movement at school. The Black Family Motto really said it all: Toujours pur ("always pure"). Yeah, right.
These people had never been 'family' for him. He did not behead house-elves, he refused to torture Muggles for fun, he did not sympathize with the rising dark power, Voldemort. He had fought back with every weapon a teenager can think off and at sixteen he had enough of his parents' pure-blood mania and had run away to live with James Potter's parents for a year. At seventeen he had inherited gold and a house from his Uncle Alphard. His loving 'mother' blasted Uncle Alphard's name from the tapestry showing the Black family tree when she heard about it. How she would have hated learning that he finally got the house after her death. Nearly as much as he hated having it.
Sirius swung his legs out of his bed and stood on shaky legs. He was still wearing the same wizarding robe that Riddick had worn upon his arrival at the house, but his shoes were standing beside the old wardrobe. He walked over slowly, carefully, the muscles in his legs were still cramping from the after-effects of the triple stunning spell. Somebody had cleaned his shoes, and Sirius was certain that it was not Kreacher. The old house-elf would have put scorpions in there, if he had thought he could get away with it. Sirius was still tying the second lace, when the first wizard walked in.
"And just where are ye thinking ye're going, lad?" asked Alastor Moody. He was not smiling and his hand rested upon the pocket Sirius knew held his wand.
"Alastor. It's me," said Sirius warily. He did not bother going for his own wand. He knew that there would be no wand in his pocket.
"That's what I'm going to find out," said the old Auror in a voice that Sirius had never heard from him before. Not directed at him. Sirius' eyes widened slightly at the sight of Moody's wand pointing at his head. He was very careful not to make any sudden movements. Behind Moody, the tall silhouette of Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped forward, blocking the door. His wand too was pointed at Sirius. In Sirius head, something seemed to stir to life. Something that reacted to the threat directed at him, no, not at him. At his body. +Riddick.+
"Alastor, is this really necessary, couldn't you wait for Arthur," came the worried voice of Molly Weasley from the staircase. "I know that this is Sirius, I've talked to him and-"
"Mrs Weasley. Please go back to the kitchen and stay there," came Kingsley's deep, slow voice firmly.
Somewhere in the house a lone wolf started howling.
Author's note: I'm sorry, there has been a mix-up in the older chapters and I think that one chapter must have been missing. Please browse back and see if you really have read everything… you might have a pleasant surprise of one chapter you never read before. Don't forget to leave feedback. And now you'll have to have patience, because this is as far as I have written so far…