Sirius flipped through the newspaper the Minister of Magic had handed him through the bars, the one that would lead him to Peter. Hogwarts… he would be at Hogwarts.
But there was something else in this paper… The picture of a young woman, one who had clearly seen more in her life than any person should. Sirius's fingers grazed over the picture. Marie, Miss Marie Stainthorpe was the name of the woman in the picture, speaking on some minute Ministry issue. His Marie… It had been twelve years since he had seen her, the day she had signed his orders from Azkaban, and though there wasn't a lot he remembered about that day very clearly, he would never forget the look of horror in her eyes as Crouch told her that she would have to choose between going with what she thought was right and her entire way of life as she knew it.
Sirius didn't blame her. What else would she have done? A Muggleborn witch, working her way up the ranks of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement… she couldn't let that all go down the drain for him, someone she no longer loved, someone who had an apparently airtight case against him. But he had to admit, he didn't mind that it looked as though it hurt her to sign that order, because it hurt him that she would sign it, even if he knew it was what she had to do.
After all these years, she was still single. Perhaps she hadn't been sleeping with Remus after all, or perhaps it hadn't worked out between them. At least he wouldn't have to track down some husband and really earn his years in Azkaban. Peter's death would be justified. Murdering someone just because they married the love of his life wouldn't be, as good as it would feel.
He wondered if she had ever dated, ever tried to move on, ever did move on. That picture in his mind of her begging Crouch not to make her sign the order, it had been his one flicker of hope, while standing there, that she had still loved him. But she signed the order. She had put him in this hellhole, and she wasn't going to help him get out. Maybe now she believed their stupid lies, that he was a Death Eater, that he killed Peter and those Muggles. She probably thought he'd killed Lily and James, too. Maybe she even thought he'd been there when it happened, he was that sick. What he wouldn't give to hear her say those things to his face, to have a reason to hate her, to want to kill her. He felt responsible for their deaths, but she ought to as well. If she hadn't left him, if she hadn't begged him to switch… he would have been the Secret-Keeper and they would still be alive.
Years ago Marie had visited Azkaban, checking up on some maximum security prisoner… something to do with the Death Eaters. He didn't care why she had been there, only that she had passed by his cell. She had tried to appear nonchalant as she walked past, but he could see the fear in her eyes, the tears welling up, the shock and disgust when she looked at him. Sirius had made sure to press his face to the bars, to watch her pass, to hiss at her. He wanted her to see what she had made him into, what she had forced him to become, by leaving him, by letting them take him away… She hadn't looked at all her beautiful self, either. She had looked… empty, lonely, and maybe even a little regretful. He hoped she did regret, he hoped she did wish she hadn't done it, any of it.
For days, for weeks, he thought of little more than Peter, the fact that the little piece of scum responsible for the deaths of Lily and James was effectively running free, too close to Harry for comfort, biding his time, no doubt, for when Voldemort was truly returning to power, gathering information. Occasionally, Sirius would think of Marie and he would frown, wonder what she was doing, and then instantly return to thinking of Peter. It was far less painful.
When he finally transformed into a dog, realized there was a way out, Sirius spent more time thinking of Marie. He would slip through the bars, run away as a dog, swim the North Sea… There were things he needed to do: See Harry, see Marie, maybe even see Remus, then find Pettigrew and kill him like the scum that he was. Harry wouldn't recognize him. Marie and Remus might, even as a dog. It was dangerous. Seeing Remus, it wasn't necessary. He could explain once the filth was dead. Seeing Marie… he had to know, he had to see how she was, where she was, what she was doing. She would be older, different. He had to see her, despite the risks.
The escape was a blur. Somehow, he was in a little Muggle suburb, looking for Harry Potter. He couldn't really remember how he had gotten there, how he had known where to go. Had Hagrid mentioned it, all those years ago? Perhaps. It didn't matter. Across from him, across the street from where Sirius was hiding in the bushes, there was a boy, about thirteen, and he looked just like James.
It all happened so fast… Harry was startled, and then the Knight Bus appeared and whisked him away. Sirius would have time to look at him later. Harry would be at Hogwarts, just like Peter. Marie wouldn't.
The article blurb hadn't said where she was living, but he recognized the place. It was in Hogsmeade, near a spot he had taken her on many a date in seventh year. He wondered if she realized just how close it was. He doubted she bought the place for sentimental reasons.
The front door was closed, as were the windows and curtains, but the back door was left hastily open, as if she had been inside and had been called in quickly to attend to something. Transforming back to his human shape, Sirius slipped inside. No one was on the first floor, but he could hear voices on the second floor. The voices were getting louder. They were coming downstairs. Quickly, he slipped into a closet, leaving the door open a crack to hear and see.
Marie came out into view, thinner than he remembered, but still beautiful. And she was wearing little more than a thin silk nightgown, one he didn't recognize. It looked rather expensive. She had never had expensive tastes. But that was explained when her companion came into view.
A man, tall, distinguished, with long, blond hair flowing behind him as he strutted into the room, the voice of Lucius Malfoy spilled from his mouth exactly as Sirius remembered it.
"I told you to look at me when I'm talking to you, pet," he drawled. "Or had you forgotten?"
"N-no," she whimpered.
Whimpered. Sirius's strong, beautiful, confident girl was whimpering for the likes of Lucius Malfoy. Something was very wrong with the picture.
"So you're purposely defying my instructions?" he said smoothly, and before she could stutter out a hasty protest, he grabbed her by the arm, yanked her around to face him, and hit her hard across the face. Sirius had to use all his strength not to move or make a sound when she cried out in pain. The sickest part was that she didn't even seem shocked or repulsed that she had been struck. She seemed almost resigned.
Lucius kissed her hard and demanding on the mouth, then tossed her roughly onto the couch and grabbed his cloak, which was draped over the back of a nearby chair.
"I'll see you at the St. Mungo's Charity Ball, then," he drawled calmly, no indication that moments ago he had assaulted someone. "Wear something I bought you."
"And your wife?" Marie choked out through the obvious pain.
"Knows her place," Lucius said, a bit of a hard edge in his voice. "You ought to follow her example. Oh, and Marie," he said, his hand on the front door, "if you do happen to run across Black, being in Hogsmeade and all, give him a good kick from me."
At the mention of Sirius, Marie visibly cringed, but she didn't break down into tears until Lucius had stepped outside and she heard the crack of his Disapparition. Then she collapsed into a sobbing mess on the couch. For several minutes, Sirius simply watched her, his heart breaking in two. He had wanted so badly to blame her for everything, but standing in her closet, watching what she had become in his absence, he couldn't bring himself to despise her in the way he had wanted to.
When she had calmed down a bit, she went to her fireplace and firecalled someone.
"I need you to come over, please, just for a little while."
She stepped away from the fireplace, curling back up into the fetal position on her sofa as someone came through the Floo. As the man dusted off his shabby robes, Sirius realized it was Remus, who certainly looked worse for wear.
"Are you all right?" Remus said hoarsely. "Full moon's soon. I've got to have my things ready to go for when it's over, because I may not have the strength to pack until the morning I have to leave otherwise."
"That's what you used to do," she said in a thoughtful voice, picking at a loose fiber on the couch. "You boys always waited until the last second and scrambled the morning of."
Remus's expression darkened as he saw the condition she was in. He slid onto the couch and took her face in his hands, turning it toward him and examining it.
"Your face is bruising again. Care to explain?"
Marie looked down, not meeting his eyes as she whispered, "Fell down the stairs."
"Again," Remus said dryly, sighing. "Marie, are you sure it doesn't have more something to do with the fact that a certain married man keeps finding himself in your bed? Or are we still denying that that's happening?"
Marie's fists balled up and she turned her back to Remus still curled into a little ball as she muttered, "Those are just rumors, Remus. You know how rumors are created so easily at the Ministry."
Sirius could tell from Remus's face that he had heard this particular excuse a dozen times before, and that he didn't believe a word of it, but Remus merely rubbed her back thoughtfully.
"Do you think he's really coming to Hogwarts?" she finally whispered. "Do you think he's really after Harry?"
For what felt like a lifetime, Remus didn't answer. Then he sighed, "When it comes to him, Marie, I'm at a loss for what to believe. I really still don't want to believe it, but after so many years, after even Dumbledore's belief in his guilt… I suppose he must be."
She began to shake violently, fresh tears streaming down her face.
"He hates me," she moaned. "I'm going to have to face him if they catch him here, if he comes to Hogsmeade, because I'm the closest representative. But he hates me, Remus, more than he hates anyone else. What if he hurts me?"
Sirius could see Remus struggling with a thought, as if trying to decide whether to address an elephant in the room, probably her being beaten my Malfoy, but he seemed to come to the conclusion that it wasn't the right time to confront her about that again, and shook his head.
"Dumbledore won't let anything happen to you, Marie. Are the nightmares back?"
She nodded, sobbing violently as Remus wrapped his arms around her.
"I loved him so much," she said finally, when she had calmed a little. "I was such a fool, thinking for so long that he was in love with me. Remus, I begged him not to be their Secret-Keeper, and he insisted that it was the best thing to do. Was he really so selfish? Had he been waiting for the opportunity for so long? Even after all these years, Remus, it just doesn't feel like the man I knew would do something like that."
"I know," Remus sighed, kissing her forehead. "Come on, you have work in the morning and I have to get my packing done. I'll tuck you in. Do you have any dreamless sleep potion around?"
She shrugged.
"Go on up to bed," he ordered kindly. "I'll check."
He went into the kitchen and she went upstairs. After a few minutes, Remus came back carrying a nearly-empty vial, and then went upstairs, his face grim. Sirius waited, heard voices, then Remus came back downstairs and Flooed back to his flat.
For a moment, Sirius stood in the closet, breathing deeply, gathering his thoughts. He had truly come to Hogsmeade prepared to hate Marie, but that had been foolish. For even if she hadn't been this broken, dispirited woman she had become in his absence, Sirius could never hate Marie. He loved her too much. Azkaban had made him forget that, but now it came back with more force than he could handle.
Shaking with anticipation, Sirius crept out of the closet and up the stairs to her bedroom. She still slept on her side, curled up in a little ball, just like he remembered. It was almost too easy to remember the days when he would curl up beside her, enveloping her frame in his own, reveling in her warmth and the beautiful way they fit together. But she wasn't his anymore, and it wasn't him she was lying in bed with late at night, it was the husband of his cousin, a Death Eater, and obviously someone who didn't love her as Sirius still loved her. He moved closer.
Remus had healed her face. He had gotten quite skilled with healing charms after their time at school, wandering the grounds during the full moon. Marie still had beautiful hair, but the thinness Sirius had perceived from the distance of the closet, through the sliver of vision he had from his perch, was underestimated. She was incredibly thin, too thin, and paler than he remembered. The beauty was still there, but only because she was so naturally gorgeous to start with. She obviously wasn't taking care of herself, not eating right, not sleeping well, and while this might have surprised him before, it didn't in the context of what he had seen from her closet.
The irony was that she was better dressed than he had ever seen her before. It seemed as though she traded the beauty of herself for the beauty of her clothing, her material goods, but he knew that she didn't care about those things. There was some other reason she was sleeping with Malfoy, although he couldn't figure out what it was. This was hardly the girl he had known. She was a strange woman with a similar voice and the same name. She was a ghost, a lesser version of herself.
He made his way over to a desk in the corner. There were pictures all over it, of her and Remus, mostly, and several from school of her and Lily. There was a single picture from Lily and James's wedding, Marie with the happy couple, eating cake and laughing. Sirius wasn't in a single picture.
She couldn't have gotten rid of all of their pictures, surely. He began to panic. When she had spoken to Remus, she had sounded terrified. What if she didn't love Sirius anymore? What if the lie she had convinced herself of had replaced any love she had ever once felt for him? What if that fear had caused her to get rid of all of their memories?
There was a small room next to hers, just down the hall, that bore the unmistakable signs of Remus. He stayed here at times, probably when he was in between jobs, unable to pay his own rent. Being a werewolf would never be good for a career. Sirius looked around the room for a sign of him, but was again disappointed. He opened the closet, and it was, as he expected, empty.
That is, it was empty but for a dust covered box in the back corner, labeled, "Him."
Him.
Could it be?
Sirius carefully lifted the lid and set it aside, gently, so as not to displace too much dust. Tears filled his eyes instantly.
In the box were stacks of parchment letters, dozens of pictures, a pair of earrings he had bought her for Christmas of 1980, a ring he had gotten her for her seventeenth birthday, a necklace he had bought her on their first anniversary… All of her memories of him, left in a box in the guest room closet to gather dust and fade away.
The pictures were a bit faded, but not terribly. His hands shook as he sifted through them, remembering all of their happy days together. It seemed every picture with him in them, not just the ones of the pair of them, was placed in the box. It was truly too painful for her to encounter his memory, it seemed. Silent tears rolled down his cheek as he remembered the fight, refusing to let someone else be the Secret-Keeper, mostly for his pride, because of his stubbornness, not wanting to do it just because she told him to.
But if he had been the Secret-Keeper, Lily and James would still be alive. He might have lost Marie anyway, but maybe Lily would have been able to make them see reason, to put them back together again. But maybe they would have fallen apart anyway. Maybe they were meant to fall apart.
Sirius replaced the box gently, crept back to her room, and watched her sleep for a few moments, wishing he could show her how much he had missed her. Finally, he knew it was too dangerous to stay where he was. He needed to prepare for his task, the reason he had broken out of Azkaban in the first place. Gently, he kissed her forehead, running his fingers along her cheek, taking in the scent and feel of her skin, and wishing it didn't feel so much like a good-bye as he slipped away, back out into the night, back into dog form, and set off toward the Shrieking Shack.
He had already failed with Marie. There was nothing he could do about her, but he would kill Peter Pettigrew if it was the last thing he did. He would set one thing right. He owed, owed them all that much.