cxxxix. futile
Sirius Black sat on the stone floor with a fire at his back, contemplating the possibility of dying from overeating treacle tart. Patting his middle, mouth tasting of golden syrup, he decided it wouldn't be the worst way to go.
The door opened, stiff iron hinges grating and groaning from the cold, and Sirius held himself wire-tight for a breath, then relaxed when Remus' familiar smell met his nose. The other man reentered his quarters, pulling off his hat, his eyes darting first to the table, then to Sirius sprawled by the hearth.
"Do I even want to ask why you're eating on the floor?"
Sirius stabbed a flake of crust and put it in his mouth, biting down on the tines of the fork. "It would look strange if someone suddenly came in and found a dog at the table."
Remus scoffed, tugging off his cloak. "No one is going to come in here."
"Now isn't the time to get cocky, Moony. I didn't escape that hellhole just to get caught out by an eager house-elf."
Sitting on the edge of the tidy bed, Remus muttered something under his breath and balanced his elbows on his knees, slumping with exhaustion, the moon beyond the curtained window swelling more with each passing night. Sirius studied him, staring with the same intensity he'd revisited often these last few days shut tight in the other wizard's quarters. The space didn't lend itself toward any kind of communal living, but Sirius had spent twelve years in a cell no bigger than a closet; the luxury of having a window and a dedicated loo was a decadent novelty.
He'd been away from Remus for longer than he'd known him, the whole of his twenties spent crouching in the dark, battling his terrors—and from the look of things, Sirius' erstwhile love hadn't fared much better. Gray limned his rumpled hair, and different scars decorated his face—different, not new, the color gone dark red with age, never reaching that soft, off-white of a healed wound.
Sirius had caught one glimpse of himself in the loo mirror and hadn't looked again.
"The house-elves don't come in here," Remus explained, rubbing at his eyes. "I don't want there to be any accidents when I curl up in here during the full moon."
"What, here? You don't use the Shack?"
"I haven't the need to. The Wolfsbane Potion allows me to keep my mind during the transformation."
Sirius whistled, then chewed another piece of tart. "I've never heard of that. The Wolfsbane Potion? Is that something new?"
"It was developed while you were—away." Remus cleared his throat. "It's not common. The ingredients are worth more than I am, and it's apparently a very challenging recipe. I'm fortunate Snape agreed to brew it for me."
The fork clattered onto the plate. "Snape? As in Snivellus Snape?"
"Yes."
"Godric's great gonads, Moony! Are you trying to be fucking poisoned?!"
"Sirius—."
"Is—is he here? Is that sneering arsehole here, at Hogwarts? Jesus, I thought he'd have his own cell in Azkaban by now. Has Dumbledore gone senile or what—?"
"Sirius!"
The volume of Remus' voice cut Sirius' furious rambling short, and the Animagus stared at him, Remus' jaw tight and his eyes fever bright. "I know you've been…gone for a long time," he said through clenched teeth. "But things are not as they were before. Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Snape—us. We are not like we were before."
A phantom pain floated through Sirius' chest. He knew that. He did.
"This isn't some fun adventure or sneaking out of the dorms past curfew to cause a spot of mischief."
"Of course it isn't," Sirius snapped. "I didn't—."
"The situation in Hogwarts is more fraught than either you or I fully know. The world didn't pull itself back together while you were shut away, Sirius—it's never mended, and we're no longer children who have the luxury of sniping at one another for the sheer thrill. We didn't win when You-Know-Who fell. There is no winning. So, for the love of Merlin, shut up."
Remus rose from the bed and stalked to the window, the flat of his palm coming out to slap the stone sash as if he really wished to punch the glass. Sirius' eyes followed him as he leaned against the fire-warmed wall, biting back the need to argue. Arguing was a novelty. The only people he'd had to talk to for years had been Death Eaters—and that hadn't been talking, more screaming and shouting and revising his gutter-mouth.
When his temper cooled, Remus said, "I still think you should reconsider, and we should go to Dumbledore."
"No," Sirius barked, his response automatic. "No."
"Sirius—."
"You're the one who wants to talk about not being children anymore, Moony. This isn't some afternoon lark—this is murder. We're planning murder. We can't go to Dumbledore with this. If he believes me, and that's a big if, he'll want to bring the rat in. He'll either stop us or send us to bloody Azkaban, and I'm prepared to go back, I'm prepared to rot—but not before I fucking kill Pettigrew. We can't go to the Headmaster."
Remus shut his eyes, the lines deepening around his eyes and temples. Sirius knew he was struggling; Moony had always been a swot, intent upon the rules, though not without his reasons. He'd lived his entire life as a werewolf and had always been afraid of it being held against him. Sirius didn't doubt his friend's conviction in their goal—only his stomach and conscience. Sirius had already spent twelve years in prison for the death of a man he fully intended to reap.
"The game will have started by now," Remus said, gaze fixed on the horizon, as if he could see the Quidditch pitch far out in the distance. He couldn't, but it settled his mind and his warbling nerves. "I saw the rest of the staff out before doubling back. Dumbledore's down there as well."
"About time." Sirius reached into his robes and felt for the folded parchment stashed there beside the newspaper clipping. "I've got the passwords for the entire week to get past that barmy knight."
Remus turned. "Where on earth did you get those?"
A roguish grin curled over Sirius' mouth. "A cat."
"…a cat."
"A kneazle, if we want to get technical. Clever little bugger nicked the list off some poor first-year."
Remus frowned as Sirius got to his feet. "This kneazle wouldn't happen to be ginger, would it?"
"Yes? How'd you know?"
Snorting in disbelief, Remus shook his head. "When all is said and done, it appears we'll owe Ron Weasley an apology. Miss Granger's familiar apparently does have it out for his pet rat."
"Miss Granger? Is that who owns that great ginger furball?"
"Yes." Remus paused, eyes sliding toward Sirius, mischief glinting in their depths for the first time since their reacquaintance. "Hermione. She's best friends with Harriet and Elara."
A pleased sound escaped Sirius, joy warming his middle. "Well, girl has good taste in friends, obviously."
Remus rolled his eyes. "This might be pointless. This excursion. Mr. Weasley is under the assumption his rat is dead."
"We won't know until we look, eh? Peter isn't dead and you know it." The warm feeling sat odd and incongruous next to Sirius' misery and hatred, not lasting long under the weight of what he must do. He looked down at his wand—a wand—and the parchment, both clasped tight in white-knuckled fists. "I need to get going."
"I'm going with you."
"Like hell," Sirius barked, grabbing Remus by the wrist. The other wizard jerked away from his touch, and Sirius averted his eyes, his face warm. "You don't have a plausible reason to go poking about the tower. If you get caught—."
"And it'd be better if you did?"
"Yeah."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm never ridiculous, always Sirius," the Animagus replied, though his brittle smile did little to alleviate the tense atmosphere. "Listen. If you get caught snooping about, you could lose your job. Hell, we'd both be out of a place to stay, wouldn't we? If I get caught—well, I'm just some poor wayward dog."
"And you don't think people would find that suspicious?"
"Well, sure. But I've gotten out of tighter spots in the past. So long as the blame doesn't come back to you, it's fine, Moony."
Remus took a minute to absorb this information, and Sirius couldn't help but watch the familiar way his eyes moved—even if those eyes refused to glance in his direction. "You may have a point," he conceded. "But I'm still going to escort you as close to the tower as I can." Before Sirius could argue, he added, "Not all of the staff attend Quidditch matches—Filch is about somewhere, and a few of auxiliary professors. Gryffindor Tower will be empty, however, given it's an important match for them."
Sirius couldn't fault Remus' logic—he never could, really, never in their boyhood years—and so he relented with a slight grunt, reaching out to touch Remus' hand. He couldn't help himself. It'd been so long since he'd touched or been touched by anyone, and though he'd delighted in the feel of Harriet's mittened fingers petting his ears and fur, that hadn't presented the same tangibility as touching Remus did. The skin under his fingertips was warm—so warm—the skin delicate over the gentle protrusion of bones, and Sirius inhaled as he brushed the rougher scarring on Remus' knuckles.
Neither wizard moved, staring at Sirius' hand on Remus'—until Remus cleared his throat and went for the door. Sirius didn't protest. Instead, he gripped hold of the magic inside of him to change forms and followed. His paw continued to tingle.
As expected, the corridors were near empty, the rapid shuffle of their feet and paws echoing against the cold stone walls as they hurried along. The daylight spilling through the windows filled Sirius with a sense of urgency—and dread, the pressure of discovery like the weight of a hippogriff's stare on the back of his neck. "At times like this, I miss our old map," Remus commented, voice almost too soft for Sirius' ears. "I looked for it, of course. I checked Filch's office, but he probably destroyed it long ago."
Sirius growled. Rotten old sod.
Noise ahead of them drew the pair of wizards to a stop, and Remus opened an empty classroom, shooing Sirius inside before locking the door. The sound of shoes and conversation approached, and Sirius listened closely as he crouched in the dark and waited for them to pass by.
"Hello, you three," Remus said, muffled by the barrier between them. "Why aren't you at the Quidditch game?"
There came a distinctly annoyed huff in answer, followed by a girl saying, "Don't mind her, Professor Lupin, she's still upset."
"I'm not upset!" said Harriet. Harriet!
"Definitely upset," came a third, amused voice.
"Are you all right, Harriet?" Remus interjected into the building argument. "It's perfectly okay to be unhappy about not being able to play."
Sirius' goddaughter grumbled in reply, and feet slapped on the stone floor as someone stomped away. "Sorry, Professor. We really should—."
"Go ahead, don't mind me. I hope she feels better in time."
"I hope so, too…."
The two other students retreated, and Sirius changed forms, using his wand to slap a Disillusionment Charm over himself as Remus eased the door open once more. Sirius pushed by him, earning a soft sound of exclamation, but his attention fully centered on the pair of retreating back hurrying down the corridor until they vanished out of sight. Elara. His heart thumped loud and fast in his chest as Sirius wondered which of the voices he'd heard belonged to her. And the other witch? Granger, Remus said?
"What are you doing?" Remus hissed.
"Why isn't she playing Quidditch?" Sirius asked. He'd seen his goddaughter fly, had seen how she took to the air with such ease, just like James, despite the green and silver on her robes—.
"No one on staff is entirely sure. It's apparently down to some inner Slytherin House politics."
"That's bloody ridiculous!"
"What's bloody ridiculous is having this conversation now of all times! Hurry, Padfoot!"
A fumbling grip on his invisible wrist yanked Sirius into motion, and he stuck close to Remus' tread, masking the rippling lines of his illusion with the other man's shadow. Not that it mattered; they encountered no one else on their journey up through the galleries, even the portraits sparing the lone History of Magic professor little attention. At the corridor just out of sight of what should have been the Fat Lady's portrait had Sirius not taken a knife to the canvas in a moment of frustration, the pair of wizards stopped and held their breath, listening. The parchment felt sticky in Sirius' thin hand.
"Go," Remus whispered, face stony and immobile. "I'll attempt to delay anyone coming this way."
"Stay out of trouble, Moony."
Sirius strode past the wizard, coming into the corridor proper, the muted thump of his feet audible in the otherwise silent passage. He paused in front of the snoring knight guarding the common room and, glancing around, gave the frame a single, firm smack.
"Eh?!" the knight yelped, visor clapping down over his eyes. In the background, his fat pony looked up from grazing, then went right back to it. "Who's there? Show thyself, knave!"
"Haberdashery," Sirius retorted.
"What?! Oof—!" The portrait swung forward with force, jostling its resident, and Sirius clamored through the revealed entrance, shaking with expectation.
The common room hadn't changed much since Sirius last saw it so many years ago. The furniture had shifted about and gained a few new scars, but the chairs and couches were the same, the carpet the same, the drapes over the windows familiar in a way that caused Sirius' heart to ache. The mixture of smells burned in his nose—old shoes and perfume, broom polish and oxidized cauldron, sugary sweets and wood smoke. Someone had left their homework on a table, ink dripping from an untended quill, and a Fanged Frisbee snarled from beneath an ottoman by the hearth.
How many times had he envisioned this room during the darkest days of his imprisonment? How many hours had he spent curled up as a dog, placing himself there with the people he'd loved best in this world? So many of them gone, so many dead—.
It was all his fault, all Peter's fault—.
"Where are you, you son of a bitch?" Sirius breathed, knuckles tightening around his wand.
He stormed up the steps to the boys' dormitory, pausing only long enough outside the door to the third-years' room to make certain none of the lads were there. He eased inside, a growl trapped in his throat, and locked the door behind him, sealing it against any bloody rodents trying to escape. "Come out and play, you little rat…."
Sirius tried going through the room without disturbing anything, intent on leaving as little sign of his presence as possible despite the room already being in an abysmal state. The longer he searched, however, the angrier he grew, and soon he'd torn the hangings from the Weasley boy's bed and had upended someone's trunk. He changed into a dog and felt madness ride him, claws in his mind digging deep as he snarled and tore through sheets and blankets and clothes. Where, where, where—?
He was out the door and into the next room before he had time to give it another thought, tearing through the trunks and bedding, gritting his teeth hard enough to shatter diamonds. Unbearable desperation welled in his chest like a firestorm when Sirius realized the rat wasn't there. What had Remus said? The boy—the Weasley lad, thought the rat dead? But no—an Animagus doesn't stay an Animagus when it dies, Gamp's law coming into play, the natural state of being overcoming the broken magic—.
Where, where, where—?
Peter Pettigrew's dead body hadn't suddenly shown up in the school, so the bastard wasn't dead, and he wouldn't run. He didn't have anywhere to go, and Peter might have been a coward, but he wasn't stupid enough to abandon the Wizarding world and strand himself without news. He was here, somewhere, somewhere—.
The sound of voices stopped Sirius' mad, pillaging quest, and he looked up from where he'd been ransacking the common room, upending couch cushions and chairs. Chatter neared the covered portrait—student chatter, and with a yelp, Sirius realized he'd been here for far too long, had raided half the bloody tower without a single thing to show for it, and the sun beyond the windows had lowered considerably toward the thicket of trees—.
Laughter and singing grew in volume—chants of "Longbottom! Longbottom!" echoing until they morphed into a confusing roar. The portrait came open, the cacophony pouring in like the morning tide, and Sirius darted across the common room as a dog, whimpering at the stinging burn on his elbows and arms as he slid on the rug. A shadowed alcove adjoined the main floor—and through it a portrait and a door waited, both of which Sirius had seen open often enough when his Head of House came storming in from her office to tell her unruly lot of Gryffindors to shut up and go to bed.
"Hey—what happened in here?"
"What a mess!"
"The party hasn't even started—!"
"Oi, mate, are those your textbooks? What're they doing down here—?"
Sirius transformed and remained crouched, easing his foot through and over the raised threshold of the thistle meadow painting, listening to the growing alarm of the Gryffindors. In their haste to check their own belongings, none gave the second entrance any thought, and Sirius was quick to unlock the door at his back and retreat. He backed inside, and when the door closed with a soft, discreet click, he released a gusty sigh.
A noise behind him had Sirius whipping around with his wand raised.
Minerva McGonagall stood at the side of her desk, the candles not yet flared, staring at him as if she'd seen a ghost—her pointed hat splattered in red and gold confetti, the witch in the middle of shedding her outer cloak. Sirius' Disillusionment Charm had fallen off ages ago, and he knew—without a doubt—McGonagall would have had him dead upon the floor if her arms hadn't been trapped behind her back by her own bunched sleeves.
Sirius thanked Merlin for small miracles.
He gave her a cheeky grin. "Sorry, Professor."
McGonagall swore, going for her wand, and Sirius shouted, "Stupefy!" The red light barely had a chance to fade before he bolted for the office door, running for his life.
A/N: Someone asked how many more chapters for PoA; about 15? It'll probably be less than that, but we'll see.
If Sirius had any interest in justice or the law, he wouldn't have gone off to kill Pettigrew in the first place; he typifies that more impulsive, Gryffindor recklessness, and I think Remus is just angry and disillusioned enough with the system to go along with him.
Sirius: "Stupid Snivellus Snape. Zero stars, would not recommend."
Remus: "Be quiet, he'll hear you."
Snape, somewhere in the dungeons: "Someone's talking JUNK."
