A/N: Quick update on my life, for those of you not reading/reviewing any of my other work…my flash drive was broken last week and I've still yet to hear back how/if it can be fixed so until I know if I can retrieve those files, a few things (namely my Amy/Sirius trilogy) are on hold, and other things I wasn't too deep into a new chapter of like this story are being pushed to the foreground. Lucky you!
I hope it gets resolved soon.
-C
"Excuse me, Harry's been what?"
"Attacked by Dementors," Tonks said in a voice that was entirely too calm. "Look, I really don't know the details, but Mundungus-"
"I'm going to rip out his throat," Sirius growled in a way that seemed almost feral. Chara smirked into her coffee in the corner.
Only Chara had a right to do that. Chara understood how important Harry was to him now. Of course, he'd been important before, but now Sirius had lost Lily and James and Gabby…. Sure, he had Remus, but Harry was all that was left of all he had lost, and Remus could never amount to any of what was gone forever. He was a good friend, but it wasn't the same.
"He was on duty until midnight," Tonks said, smirking a little. "Apparently there was some sort of deal he couldn't pass up, and he left Arabella alone with her kneazles to deal with the matter. Thankfully that was enough. Anyway, you know how it is with underage magic, usually, there's a warning. Improper Use of Magic issues it. But I guess Fudge jumped on the opportunity and tried to expel him."
It was pretty obvious what the purposes of that were. For one, it would separate Harry from Dumbledore's immediate influence, make him do something crazy like he did in his third year after blowing up his aunt, and then probably arrest him. Also, if he was expelled from Hogwarts, he wouldn't be allowed use of a wand. It would be snapped. Perhaps that thought made Fudge feel safer.
Dumbledore had gone straight to the Ministry, and Arthur was already there informing on what was going on.
"You should write to him, Sirius," Chara said softly. "Make sure he stays put, doesn't do something stupid."
Sirius wanted to believe that Harry was clever enough to understand the importance of staying put, but he knew she was right.
He wrote a quick letter to Harry and came back down to the kitchen, where Chara was the only one left present.
"Where's everyone gone, then?"
"Oh, here and there," she said, not looking up from her newspaper. "Things to do with Harry, you know. Fudge is really a fool if he thinks Dumbledore is discredited enough that he can actually get away with this. I mean, they're working very hard, but really, not hard enough if you ask me. If I were them, Harry would probably be in the loony bin by now."
Sirius sat across from Chara.
It no longer made him uncomfortable when she said things like that. For one thing, he was getting used to her company, and being around people in general – not just Buckbeak and letters from Harry. Somehow, having Chara and Remus around softened the pain of being cooped up in his childhood home, although how long it would take for him to start really feeling trapped he didn't know. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
"Anything good in there?" he asked, nodding at her paper.
"Not really," she snorted. "There hasn't been anything good in years, and it's only gotten worse with Fudge's paranoia."
"I bet Rita's having a field day, though."
"Strangely," Chara said, tapping her finger to her lips, "Rita hasn't written anything in a long time. I can't quite figure it out, you know, because she lives for ruining people. You're right, she ought to be eating up this environment, and you would think Fudge would want to get her on his side. However nutty she is, people do seem to believe her. I've thought about checking in on her, making sure she hasn't had an accident or something. She likes me because I was friends with Gabby."
Every time Sirius thought he was getting better, that he could think about Gabriella without feeling a sense of pain and loss and guilt, someone else would mention her in conversation and he would feel an urge to cry and vomit and throw things across the room. He gripped the table, trying to play it cool, but he knew that Chara could see his struggle. She was one of the more perceptive people he knew. A moment later she took one hand off her paper and set it on top of one of his comfortingly.
"I'm not going to lie and say you'll get used to it, or get over it," she said. "But it will get a bit better, a little bit easier, as you start to come to grips with it and know there was nothing you could have done."
She kept saying that, that there was nothing he could have done. But Sirius would lie awake at night thinking of all the things he could have done differently, from barging in and saving her instead of going after Peter to being faithful and attentive to her when he had her as his own. There were dozens of things he had come up with that could have saved her, so many he had thought a few times of making a list. Not that it would have done much good, but it made him feel a little better, knowing that he was thinking about it, serving his penance.
"Sirius?"
He turned and Chara took away her hand, turning back to her paper. It was Remus.
"Yeah?"
"Did you send Harry a letter?"
Sirius nodded and Remus came in and sat down. Perhaps Remus had been expecting him to be the irresponsible godfather Sirius often felt like.
"I hate the feeling that there's nothing more I can do," Sirius sighed, glancing back at Chara, who seemed engrossed with the newspaper. Sirius knew that she was actually listening to them, perhaps not even reading the paper at all, but he appreciated her feigned lack of interest in his talk with Remus. She was sensitive in ways her brother had never been. Perhaps this was something she'd always had, or perhaps it was something she had learned over the years, living in the aftermath of a war that had changed her life forever. He thought often of how much he had lost, but she had lost just as much.
"This is how war is, Sirius," Remus said with a shrug. "You should know that by now."
"I did more when I was a teenager."
"But there was still plenty you couldn't do," Remus said. "Don't forget all the things you couldn't accomplish. When the war is this quiet, it makes our jobs harder."
"And easier," Chara chimed in casually. The men blinked at her and she looked up at them. "Well, it makes things a bit easier because the Death Eaters are being very quiet, right? So we're not combatting the sort of fear you lot were in the first war."
Chara made some good points, but it was more complicated than that. Sirius had noticed in meetings that she was only just beginning to understand the intricacies of war. It always seemed so simple, watching Muggle films. There was always someone else to think of the heavy stuff, to tell you what you didn't have to figure out for yourself.
"They're not going to mess with Harry," Sirius said, determined. "If I have to walk into the Ministry myself-"
"You'd be arrested before you too two steps," Remus said impatiently. "You're not going to caution Harry not to be stupid only to turn around and be utterly stupid yourself."
"Well, there's a positive to him being expelled," Chara said with a grin. "He could always move in here with you, keep you company. Who knows, you could be fugitives together."
Sirius grinned.
"Don't encourage him, please," Remus said with a groan, rubbing his eyes. "He's bad enough without thoughts like that. Now he's likely to start planning their adventures for when they're both convicts, and next thing you know it won't be this house they're sharing – it'll be a cell in Azkaban."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Chara said, turning back to her paper. "Sirius won't be taken back to Azkaban. He's going to get the Dementor's Kiss, remember?"
And just like that, she went from lightening the mood to killing it entirely and Sirius had half a mind to excuse himself from the kitchen and go throw things upstairs in the attic. But then, he wasn't sure what all was in the attic and decided it was better to wait until they'd properly cleaned it to start throwing things up there. He didn't want to wake up something angry and dangerous.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Remus grumbled. "Tea, anyone?"
Sirius nodded, picking at a small dent in the table, wondering if the old dining room was as big as he remembered. It would probably be safe to throw something in there. Perhaps the family china. He'd always wanted to throw those hideous plates at something.
A few minutes later, Remus was setting tea in front of Sirius, and Sirius grunted his thanks while Remus set another in front of Chara. She barely acknowledged the cup, nodding as Remus sat back down with his own tea.
The waiting was the worst bit.
"News!" Tonks finally cried, running down the stairs. "I've got news! Oh, by the way, I just ran into Molly. She wants a shopping list. She's trying to stock the pantry, says there's not enough here to keep them all fed for the week. Anyway, Harry's not been expelled or anything. He's getting a hearing with Madam Bones and then I'm sure he'll be cleared and back to Hogwarts. Oh, is that tea?"
Remus poured her a cup and she sat down next to Sirius happily as Remus went off to check the pantry for a list for Molly.
"Mad-Eye has me working on a way to get Harry here," Tonks continued cheerfully after a long drink of tea. "I've got to come up with a way of luring the Dursleys away so we can break in and get him out. I've got a few ideas. Have any of you met them?"
"Yes," Chara and Sirius both said, and Sirius frowned.
"Well, I mean, sort of," he admitted. "A very long time ago. Chara probably knows them better."
"I've watched them," Chara said with a small smile. "You've done as much. And Harry's told you about them, Remus said."
So Sirius and Chara began explaining the Dursleys as best they could to Tonks, who quickly came up with a few ideas for luring away the terrible Muggles, all of which Sirius was immensely proud of. She was clever, taking after him and her mother and…. Well, the whole Black line was clever and talented. Sirius hated admitting that because it meant admitting that his mother and father and brother were all clever, although perhaps not so much as himself. There was no denying that Bellatrix was clever, and Narcissa was in her own way, although she hid it well.
Tonks left not too long after, and the voice of Hermione Granger was heard in the stairwell, timid.
"Sirius?" she said. "I'm sorry, I don't want to shout."
"Yes, Hermione?"
"Well, Harry's sent letters for you and me and Ron and I think he expects replies, because Hedwig won't leave."
Sirius turned to see Hermione coming off the bottom of the stairwell, holding out a letter in her hand. Remus frowned.
"What happened to your fingers?" he asked, concerned. "Was it something in the house?"
"Ah, no, it was Hedwig," Hermione said, frowning as the owl flapped in after her, looking ferocious.
Sirius quickly took the letter from Hermione, opening it to find Harry's writing, a bit of a scrawl with surprisingly dark ink. He was upset, perhaps even angry at everything that was happening to him. Sirius's eyes grazed the words and he sighed.
Harry wanted answers, wanted to know what was going on, but Albus had given very specific orders not to tell him anything he didn't need to know. Sirius didn't fully agree with the orders. After all, Harry had fought Voldemort more than most of the adults in the Order. He deserved to know a few things.
"You and Ron haven't replied?" Sirius asked.
"No," Hermione said, shrinking away from Hedwig, who was pushing her way through to Sirius. "Careful, she's probably going after you next."
"He wants a reply," Sirius sighed. "I just…don't know what to say to him. We can't give him proper answers."
There were some rules Sirius would be willing to break. For the right reasons, he would risk his own safety and sanity, for example. But he was not willing to hurt his godson, the last bit of James and Lily left in the world. If Albus said it was dangerous for Harry to know more than necessary, then Sirius had to trust him.
"You can't tell him anything, Sirius," Remus said slowly, frowning at Hedwig, who had begun to peck at Sirius's fingers. Chara was simply sipping her tea, smirking around the rim of her cup. "You know that."
"Of course I know," Sirius said. "Go on, Hermione. Go back upstairs, see if you and Ron can find a way to write without saying anything. And get Molly to look at those wounds, will you?"
Hermione nodded, and as she hurried up the stairs Hedwig hesitated, clearly uncertain on who to pester now that the three objects of her attention were in different parts of the house once more. Hedwig decided to follow Hermione back upstairs, and Remus took his leave, going upstairs to get some sleep in one of the guest rooms. Chara set down her teacup.
"What are you going to tell him?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "That ruddy owl won't leave us alone until we say something, but…what to say? I'm not very good at deception."
Chara snorted.
"Sirius, you were always excellent at deception. If I recall correctly, it took two incredibly intelligent girls to eventually see through you."
He got up and poured out the rest of his tea, watching the dark amber liquid swirl down sink, into the drain. Would the rest of his life be a reminder of what he had done to Gabriella, an attempt to atone for his part in her pain and her death? While he would have been the first to say he deserved it, he didn't think he could live like that, year after year, plagued by reminders of what he had done.
"I'm sorry," Chara said. "That was cruel of me."
"Cruel but true," he said, rinsing his cup. "Chara, I'm not seventeen anymore." He turned to face her as he set the cup on the counter. "Twelve years in Azkaban changes a person."
"Does it?" she asked, standing. "Some ways, perhaps, you have changed. But in a lot of ways, Sirius, you're still exactly the same as the day you were taken away. No, you're not the same as you were at seventeen, but at twenty-one?"
He frowned looking down at his hands.
"A lot happened between seventeen and twenty-one."
A war, Gabriella's…madness, Lily and James getting married, Harry's birth, Bellatrix torturing Gabriella….
Of course, as he reminded Chara, Harry was something very different. He was a godson, almost family. And one of Sirius's greatest failings within his own family – and his greatest boon with the Potters – was that he never lied to them. Family were people who didn't lie to each other, as far as Sirius was concerned. For better or worse, the only way to be that close to someone was to tell the truth.
That was where he went wrong with Gabriella. He had been young, stupid, and he'd half-believed that if he could just lie long enough that she feel in love, when it was time to tell her the truth she would stay. He really had first kissed her with the best of intentions, the best ones he'd ever had. With things falling apart beyond repair with Coral, building something with Gabriella seemed the most logical thing to do.
He only wished he could have told her, made her see how much he really did love her. But by the time everything happened, he doubted she would have believed him. And he couldn't blame her. He would have let go much sooner if someone had treated him like that, put him through that hell.
"I'll talk to Albus before I send anything," he said. "It's a delicate balance, because the boy obviously is desperate for news. But I did promise to play by the rules."
Chara nodded, finishing her tea. She got up and rinsed her cup and for a split second, looking at her fingers, Sirius was reminded of her brother, Vin, who had died looking for Gabriella after she'd gone missing. Vin and Sirius had never gotten along, but the mess with Gabriella had only made things worse.
Sirius should have gone looking for her, too. He should have looked for her instead of Peter, and maybe he could have saved her. Or maybe he would have died trying, too.
There was no fair way to judge the past, he knew. If he had gone after Gabriella, what would Peter have done? There was no changing any of it, but that didn't mean he didn't lie away most nights, wishing he could have done anything at all to fix it.
"I'd better be going," Chara said, smiling at him, her round face so full of kindness that he read as pity. "Take care of yourself, Sirius."
He watched her go and wondered how to do that, to take care of himself.
