Chapter 24: S
The nightmares wouldn't end.
They simply wouldn't.
He had tried Dreamless Sleep Potions as well. Tried it as long as he could without risking the possibility of getting addicted to it.
It had helped briefly, but not for long.
And it had slowly yet steadily been taking a toll on him.
Naturally be was always tired and always on the short fuse. Many a time he had very nearly punched Snivellous in the face for his father cutting and flippant remark and had had to be restrained by the combination of Moony, Bill Weasley and Moody.
With some of the others pointing their wands at him to shoot off stunning spells if it was deemed necessary.
Dumbledore did seem to be concerned about his situation, but Sirius no longer trusted him. The combination of sleep deprivation as well as the constant nightmares and questions from the past eroded whatever little faith he had had in the Headmaster.
He had kept his interactions with him to the barest minimum possible.
Only in three people did he place his trust of which two were away at their school, the one that Dumbledore had literally abandoned and had surrendered to the most disgusting example of a hypocritical witch one could ever have the misfortune of meeting - Dolores Umbridge.
Granted, the Headmaster had had no choice at that moment (and he felt mildly guilty because it was his idea to start such a group in the first place, not that he had suggested such a name or had he known this was the course of action that was going to occur). But he could have done something from the sidelines, tried to pull some strings to help the students out, particularly the ones that were being persecuted, like Harry and Hermione. But he had continued to keep them in the dark.
Sirius sighed to himself. He knew he was fighting a losing battle. He knew where exactly this train of thought would lead him to. And he did not want that.
As it was his nights were filled with horrors from the past and possible atrocities from the future. He didn't need them in the day time as well to make his very existence Hell.
And to top it all off, here he was, stuck in the Black family home in London, unable to venture out anywhere, unable to even get a breath of fresh air. He hated being confined indoors. He hated being back to the very place which held bad memories for him. He had hated everything about this place in his past.
And he hated everything now as well.
Including that horrid house elf that deigned to be his most faithful servant and yet would probably kill him in his sleep if he could manage it.
Oh how Sirius wanted to be rid of Kreacher. How he hated him.
But Dumbledore had been firm. The house elf could not be allowed to go. He simply knew too much about the details of the Order that sending him away would be akin to signing their own death warrants.
That is what Dumbledore, backed by Moody had told him.
Sirius had not believed it.
He had tried time and again to point out that as the current Lord Black he could very effectively do a memory wipe of the house elf and ensure that no one got hold of the Order's secrets.
Not even other Blacks.
But the other two had been against it totally. Moody's argument had at least made a lot more sense - why tamper with memory and take a chance when you can keep the person with you and under you at all times and not have to take any sort of chance.
Dumbledore on the other hand and talked at length about the wrongness of such an action.
While Sirius still wasn't swayed to their argument, the rest of them had been, particularly Moony and particularly to Moody's argument.
And while he could have overridden them all and simply have claimed the whole thing as a private matter of House Black, Sirius did not want to do that. He did not want to antagonize the rest of the group even though he was sorely tempted to yell loudly at them and shake them all up until they could see sense.
And so Kreacher had stayed, with his memories intact. And with each passing day the taunts from the house elf became more and more severe.
It was during one such taunting session that Sirius lost it. He ranted at the elf for a good half hour calling him names that he knew no one else in the house would have approved. The elf had initially been surprised by the verbal rapid fire that Sirius was shooting but was soon grinning as he had managed to get under the skin of his supposed Master.
But when it got to the matter of Sirius' mother though, Kreacher's smile dropped. He very nearly wanted to kill Sirius for his words. And Sirius seeing that he was now getting under the skin of the elf, upped his ante.
When Moony walked in a couple of hours later, into the kitchen, he saw things strewn everywhere. For a moment he had been worried that the Death Eaters had somehow gotten in and had managed an attack on the Headquarters.
But then he saw Sirius engaged in a fistfight, a muggle style brawl if you will with Kreacher. Both had long scratch and bite marks at different places in their body.
Seeing the situation, Remus immediately knew who had thrown the first punch. As a house elf could not use magic to attack his or her Master, the only way left for him or her was physical assault. It also meant that Sirius had snapped and said something so dreadful that the house elf had decided to take the risk of death by attacking his master.
Remus stepped in and managed to pull the elf away from Sirius. He would have done it the other way, but this way was more respectful to the wizard.
The moment Kreacher realized who was holding him, he jumped out of his hands, scratching at Remus' hands till Remus gave up.
Muttering "Halfbreed" and "Dark Creature" loudly enough for both of them to hear, Kreacher quickly made his way out of the kitchen before Sirius could censure him. Just as he was closing the door though, he threw Sirius a look of undisguised loathing and hate, a look that promised that if he were in a position to be able to get Sirius killed, he would definitely do so.
Thankfully for Kreacher, his look had not been noticed by either Remus or Sirius, both of whom were busy staring at each other with the expression on Remus' face showing disappointment at the actions of Sirius, who in the meanwhile had an expression of defiance on his face.
Moments passed and still not a word was spoken between the two friends before Sirius abruptly left the kitchen as well, leaving Remus to his thoughts.
It was the last interaction that the two would ever have.
Sirius' night time horror show continued to run its course with nary an interruption nor an advertisement. He began to isolate himself even further, refusing to go downstairs and holing up entirely in either his room or the room that hoised Buckbeak. He skipped Order meetings as well, beginning to feel that they were exercises in futility and achieved nothing while the losses and the body counts kept mounting.
On that fateful day, Sirius had been away feeding Buckbeak and doing some thinking. He had found himself doing that a lot lately, especially as he was attending to Buckbeak. The knowledge he had gained from the books, and especially the spell he had seen in the Grimoire. In fact, the spell seemed to consume every spare bit of thought that Sirius had.
The more he had thought about it, the more the plan surrounding the spell had crystallized in his mind. He was sure that he was going to pull it off and he knew that he would pull it off.
Keeping away from the others had made this task easier for him. It wasn't that he was worried about the reaction of the others to his plans, he knew what their responses would be. He simply did not want to disclose it to anyone.
Not even to Moony.
This was something he was going to play close to his chest.
He had also begun to train himself. Not a lot mind you, but being unable to get out the house and move around had aided in the complete destruction of the physique and stamina that he was once very proud of. He had been a Beater for the Gryffindor team, well that wasn't strictly true, he was the reserve Beater for them, but the reserve was by his choice. And he had played with the team a fair bit.
It was also the reason why the bond between James and him was the strongest. Sure, the four of them had done a lot of things together, but by being a part of James' Quidditch exploits, Sirius had been able to forge a deeper friendship with him than Remus. Of course, the difference was quite subtle, but it was there nonetheless. If it had ever come to choosing between James and Remus (and Sirius was willing to bet his very freedom on that never happening), Sirius was sure that he would more likely side with James, even though Remus would probably the one who was right.
The Quidditch training had given Sirius another round of self-confidence and had improved his stamina considerably.
And that physique and stamina had been utterly wrecked by the dozen years he had spent in captivity and the couple of years he had spent moping after that. He had heard from Lily how muggle Healers or doctors had conducted studies and had made it clear that to a healthy body was the sign of a healthy mind as well. He briefly wondered why that tidbit had not struck him till date for if it had, then he would have been able to sleep better earlier.
But it did not matter. He trained and trained and trained and pushed himself to limits. In the beginning it was painful, and Buckbeak whose room Sirius often borrowed for his training would look on amused at the lack of strength exhibited by the human.
By the third or fourth day, he was able to push himself further. And if Buckbeak had eyebrows, he would have cocked an eyebrow at the effort and the improvement that Sirius had shown.
On that fateful day, a Patronus had come from Dumbledore telling him about what Harry had done and the risks he was up against. Sirius wasn't sure to who all the message had been sent to and frankly he didn't care.
All that had mattered to him was that his godson was in great danger and he needed him.
Before he left though, he knew it was time.
Time to perform the spell.
And as it was a spell from the House of Black, it required some preparations.
He grimaced at the thought of what was required for it. Some of the weirdest things that he had ever seen, such as the hair from the body of an acromantula and a bone of a goblin, were required.
And while he still couldn't roam out freely and buy the ingredients (not that these would be sold in ordinary markets in any case), he could always use his Animagus form, again in a limited capacity to wander into the shady and seedy areas and scope out for what was needed.
And for once, Sirius had had the foresight to get things in advance and keep them in Statis charms (there was always the risk that they would get contaminated and lose potency because they weren't fresh, but it was a chance that he was willing to take nevertheless. There was absolutely no way in which he would be able to gather the ingredients at the eleventh hour.
And so he had gathered them. And now had come the time to use them all.
Thankfully the preparation work was short. He had needed to make a paste, and then to smear the paste on his body. He had to trace out a heptagon, and the bigger it was the better.
As the two largest canvases on the human body were the torso and the back, and since he had no way of tracing it on his back (and it had to be necessarily done by hand and not by wand), he had to draw it out on his torso.
With his blood mixed into the paste.
It was quite literally Black magic after all.
And Black magic sans blood was about as common as playing Quidditch without a Snitch.
While anyone else might have been astounded at the speed at which Sirius finished drawing a heptagon, the man himself wasn't. Apart from training himself and the thoughts of implementing the spell, Sirius had been practising drawing out the heptagon as well. While he wasn't a prodigy at Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, he knew that the heptagon had to be as even as an odd sides number figure could be, and so he had practised and practised till he was sure about the length of each side of the heptagon. He had even crumpled pieces of parchment and then drawn heptagons on them to ensure that he would be able to get the figure right on irregular surfaces (such as his torso) as well.
And he had finished drawing it in under fifteen minutes.
Pulling on a dark T-shirt, Sirius put on his robes as well. It would do no good to let anyone know about any marking anywhere, unless they had seen it beforehand.
Nodding goodbye to Buckbeak and stroking his feathers a second longer than usual, Sirius walked out of the front door, past the portrait of his mother which he had half a mind to wake up and taunt, but in a moment of rare wisdom decided wasn't the best thing to do. He passed the troll umbrella stand, the very same that his niece Nymphadora (he enjoyed teasing her with that name, so long as she didn't have her wand in her hand) Tonks had tripped over on the night the Order had brought his godson for the first time to Number 12, Grimmauld Place and into the cool night air.
Anyone apart from him would have had to walk beyond the Anti-Apparition Ward to be able to Apparate, but because he was the Head of House Black, he could override the wards any time he wanted. And he decided that he wanted to do that.
One could not always Apparte directly into the Ministry. One had to Apparate to the checkpoint and then go from there. But the checkpoint also had a detection system in place that would warn the Aurors if any high profile criminals were trying to break into the Ministry.
Realizing that he could use that to his advantage, Sirius did exactly that - Apparating to the checkpoint, where he was not really amused to see that the alarm had already been activated and wondered if the Aurors were already there.
Deciding to check it out, Sirius took the lift to the Department of Mysteries level.
Once he got there he had no need to guess which direction he had to go in.
He saw many members of the Order as well as many of the Inner Circle of Death Eaters.
All had crowded in the room with the Veil.
Setting his jaw and hoping that his godson was safe and that the ones who had come with Harry were also safe (in particular a bushy haired young witch), Sirius walked in an joined the fray.
He fired off a variation of the Stunning spell that would keep the one hit with the spell knocked out for a larger period of time and they couldn't be revived with a simple Renervate spell. He wanted to take down as many as he could. Legally.
(He had gotten another wand, during one of his outings in his Animagus forms, again from the, he still chuckled every time he thought about it, black market. It wasn't as good as his original wand, but it was adequate and served its purpose)
Wading through the crowd, he spotted the person he was hoping to see apart from his godson.
And smiled internally.
Excellent.
He had known when he had seen that the alarms had already been tripped that it was very likely that it signalled the presence of another person.
And like his mind reminded him, the person he was looking forward to meet.
Bellatrix Lestrange
Oh, that woman was powerful but still not as powerful as the Sirius from about a dozen years ago. But the Sirius of the present? Well, he wasn't sure.
The Sirius before the training would have stood no chance with Bellatrix.
But this was a Sirius who had trained himself up to a decent level.
He was sure that he would be able to hold her at a stalemate, probably with great difficulty.
Realizing that, Sirius called out to Bellatrix.
And Bellatrix responded.
The grin on his face kept getting wider and wider the longer her duelled with Bellatrix.
The two of them were in their own world, completely oblivious to their surroundings all the while duelling each other.
Deciding to up the stakes, Sirius started to taunt Bellatrix
"Bella, my dear cousin, it seems like you are going soft! Is that the best you can do?"
Perfect.
The words had their desired effect.
While for most part he had been oblivious to his surroundings, Sirius was now very aware that he was in close proximity to the Veil. He needed to keep an eye out in case Bellatrix used something that he wasn't prepared for and part of her arsenal included using her surroundings.
Screwing up her face, Bellatrix put a lot of her power into the Stunning spell that she aimed at Sirius. While she was no longer a Black, having been married to a Lestrange, her magic would still not allow her to cast a lethal spell at the Head of House Black.
Sirius was momentarily surprised at the choice of spell. He had expected something far more sinister, but it was teh Stunning spell that was rushing towards him. Comprehension dawned slowly on his face as he realized that family magic would not allow a lethal spell to be cast at him, but that a simple spell for a lethal purpose had somehow escaped the magic's purview.
Surprise returned to his face as he realized that the Blacks had never thought of this eventuality even though they had tomes about magic being intent based. At the same time, the spell struck him square on the chest with enough force to knock him into the path of the Veil which Sirius gladly welcomed.
He carefully kept the surprised look on his face, lest anyone notice the grin he was sporting on the inside.
Thankfully for him, most were in utter shock as to what was happening to him to realize that the grin had escaped his tight confines.
Nobody noticed the grin, except for Moody, who had the best possible angle, but who was not convinced of what he had seen.
Sirius Black fell through the Veil, for the most part managing to hold the look of surprise, but extremely glad on the inside that his plan had worked perfectly, till he knew no more.
Playing probably the greatest prank the wizarding world would ever see.