Chapter 7: When All You Know Ends
Jenny watched the quiet, desperate whispered conversation between the three men with a certain degree of anxiety, distractedly passing Harry toys as he demanded them.
"No, Jenny, not the ball, the frog!" Harry whined, pulling at her sleeve. "Jenny, you listening?"
"Yes, Harry, I'm sorry, the frog, I know," Jenny said, returning her attention to him for the moment.
"See my frog, Jenny?" Harry said gleefully, setting it down in front of her. The little toy quivered for a moment and then started hopping around very realistically. Despite herself, Jenny started to laugh, trapping the toy in her hands as she picked it up and it continued to kick. "Just like real, right?"
"Yes, Harry, just like a real frog," she replied, setting it down again. "You know, Colin and Dennis' toy animals don't move."
"'Cause they not magic, Jenny," Harry answered semi-disdainfully. "I not allowed my toys at Colin house." He left her to ponder that for a moment, then said confidentially, "You know what?"
"What?" Jenny asked.
"When I big, I going to have a wand," he told her. Harry got to his feet after that statement and started wandering back towards Sirius, reaching up insistently to his godfather. As Sirius obliged and swung Harry up into his arms, Jenny joined them hesitantly.
"What's going on?" she asked softly.
"They're still out there," Remus replied quietly.
As she looked from him to her husband, Jenny asked, "So what does that mean?"
Sirius sighed. "It means we're going to have to leave."
"This is ridiculous – Sirius, you guys are wizards! Can't you fix everything? Put security charms or something on the house, wipe people's memories…"
Sirius paused in the middle of his rocking – Harry was going down for his afternoon nap. "It's not as simple as your Muggle fairytales make it seem, Jenny," he replied quietly. "The other side can do magic too, you know. Disguising charms only work for short periods, and a skilled wizard can see through them, the right spells can undo them as soon as you step into them. There's not a spell in the world to wipe an entire planet's memories, and especially not something like this. I had the best security charms in the world on our house. Security charms can be broken through and deactivated, just like your alarm systems – "
"Would you stop saying 'your' like we come from two different worlds, Sirius?" Jenny exclaimed frantically. "My God, you act as though we don't both live in the same – "
"Like it or not, Jenny, we do come from two different worlds!" Sirius burst out angrily. "And I don't know about yours, but in my world, people die if they ignore the dangers!"
Jenny ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head. "My God… My God… I can't deal with this. I can't. I just can't. I-I-I've married into the bloody Twilight Zone."
"I won't tell you 'I told so'," Remus said quietly as the two friends stepped into the dark, silent room apprehensively. The rooming house's landlord had been a little too casual in giving up the keys with no questions asked.
"Shut up, Moony," Sirius growled, resettling Harry's dead weight against his shoulder. "I want my bike."
"You want Jenny to come back, is what you want," Remus corrected softly.
"I said shut up, Remus!" Sirius snapped. Harry stirred at his raised voice, letting out a soft whine of discontent.
"Go to sleep, Sirius…" he mumbled sleepily. "No more arguing."
"All right, all right," Sirius murmured to his little charge. "I'm sorry, buddy."
The next morning, Remus woke up to see Sirius still fast asleep on the other side of the bed (the room had only one king size; they'd ended up splitting it – they were tired, damn it, and screw whatever anybody walking in would think), Harry tucked securely into his arms. Smiling slightly, he got to his feet and went to open the curtains.
Sirius didn't even stir as the sun hit his face, and Harry kept right on sleeping, his face shielded by Sirius' head. Remus shook his head and nudged Sirius cautiously. He had a temper when he was woken early. "Hey, Sirius. Wake up."
"G'way…" Sirius groaned drowsily.
"Sirius. Get up, now," Remus repeated, nudging him again, a little more firmly.
"G'way, s'too damn early…"
"It's 10 AM, Sirius, and we need to get going." Remus went around to the other side of the bed, prying out Harry from Sirius' arms. "Come on."
"No… no, sleep time, Remus…" Harry whined, even as he nestled down against Remus' shoulder, closing his eyes and popping his thumb into his mouth. "No waking up."
"Yeah, you can keep sleeping," Remus told him with a slight laugh as he finally shoved Sirius off the bed none too gently with his foot. "Sirius Nigellus Black, get your lazy ass up and moving."
"Jenny's nice to me when she wakes me up," Sirius mumbled drowsily as he sat up, rubbing at his eyes. Then the room went deadly silent again. "But you, unlike she, are in for the long haul, so all right, then. Give me my kid. Where are we headed?"
Jenny got to her office at about 2 AM, having spent the night sobbing at her mother's house. She couldn't bring herself to go back into her own house, where the reminders of Sirius and Harry would hammer at her conscience.
Had they done the right thing, splitting apart like that? She returning to her normal life, back to her world of consults and assessments while he took Harry and went on the run? Had she made the wrong choice, abandoning her wedding vows: for better or worse…
Sighing, she dimmed the lights in her office, leaving just enough to read by, and pulled out a pile of week-old progress reports. First on the list would be Rachael. Her mother would be bringing her in for another appointment at nine this morning. Then Nicholas, and Damion, and Anna…
She worked without disturbance for about an hour, until she heard the door open behind her.
Remus had wondered how long it would take before Sirius changed his mind and went back for Jenny. As he passed Harry another toy, he kept an ear tuned to the door of his home.
"Remus, where Sirius?" Harry asked, getting to his feet and heading for the window.
"Harry, come away from the window," Remus said quickly, pulling his unofficial godson back by the hand. "Sirius went to go find Jenny. Come back here, don't stay by the window."
"Why?" Harry asked, though he obediently did as he was told. "Jenny get lost?"
"No, no, Jenny isn't lost," Remus replied quickly. "She just didn't come with us when we left. Sirius went back to get her, they'll be here soon."
Jenny whirled around to see a group of dark-hooded figures in the doorway. Heart stopping, she said, more bravely than she felt, "Can I help you with something?"
One figure stepped forward, and a well-manicured man's hand emerged from the sleeves of its robes. "You're Jennifer Black?" came the condescending drawl from beneath the hood.
"That's the name on the door," Jenny replied, backing up slightly. "Who are you?"
"Married to Sirius Black?" the man repeated, a skeptical tone in his voice.
"That's right," Jenny said.
"It's an outrage!" a woman's voice shrieked from one of the other figures. "A disgrace to the family! A Muggle?!" She strode past the first figure, her hood falling back, and she put a tight hand around Jenny's throat as she shoved the young woman back against the wall.
Jenny struggled to free herself as the woman's flinty grey eyes examined her face, the blood-red lips pursed in a disgusted expression and jet-black hair cascaded elegantly down her back. She had to be some sort of relation to Sirius. "Let me go," she rasped.
"I don't even understand what's so special about this Muggle," one of the other figures, a man, spoke up.
"Rodolphus, we are talking about the family cast-off," the woman said icily. "He consorts with all sorts of disgusting creatures. Blood traitors, Mudbloods, werewolves… Muggles." She eyed Jenny again. "Merlin, I feel the need to bathe just knowing a Black's been with her."
"Let her go, Bellatrix," came Sirius' steely voice as he pushed through the other men. "Before I drive your mind from your head like you did to Frank and Alice."
The woman dropped her hold on Jenny carelessly, letting the young woman crash to the floor. "Well, Sirius, it's been a while. Life been treating you well?"
"What do you care, Bellatrix?" Sirius growled as he pulled Jenny to her feet and placed himself in front of her protectively. She leaned her forehead against his back, trying to control her breathing. "Aurors are on their way." He paused as Bellatrix grinned. "Sure, you can kill me. But you can't escape. This place is guarded against Apparition and Floo. I've sealed the exits. They'll only open for the Aurors. Do you want to add another hundred years onto your Azkaban sentence?"
Remus sighed as he lifted Harry's sleepy weight up into his arms again, looking out the window worriedly. "Come on, Sirius, where are you?" he murmured, scanning the empty horizon. "We can't risk staying here much longer…"
Harry stirred just then, and he cast another look at the toddler wrapped around him possessively. How was it possible that fear and disaster followed this innocent little boy everywhere he went? First James and Lily, then Frank and Alice, now potentially Sirius and Jenny? What had he done to deserve all this tragedy before he was even 3 years old? Nothing seemed to make any sort of sense anymore.
Finally, Remus turned away from the window and flicked his wand at the radio, turning on music as he sank down into a chair. If Sirius hadn't arrived by sunrise, they would go.
"That was Ruharah with 'A Vampire's Kiss'. Now for a breaking news flash from the Ministry of Magic. A Muggle office building in London has exploded in what Magical Law Enforcement is calling a 'wizarding-related event'. While officials aren't sure who is responsible for the explosion, the bodies of a number of known Death-Eaters and two other unidentified people were recovered from the debris. Magical Catastrophes is on-scene distracting Muggles.
"The office building was the location for a Muggle therapy clinic run by Jennifer Black, the Muggle wife of wizard Sirius Black. Speculations are that the unidentified bodies are in fact the Blacks. If so, the new question is: who has Black's two-year-old godson Harry Potter? There has been no comment from any of Black's acquaintances – Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has repeatedly requested that the media leave the family and friends alone, and there has been no success in reaching known companions…"
Remus snorted slightly. "Trying to avoid saying my name?" he muttered, even as he closed his eyes. They couldn't stay any longer, not if they were in imminent danger of being swarmed by the media. "All right, Harry, let's go," he murmured, careful not to disturb the sleeping little boy.