cxxxvi. jupiter's chosen
The black dog scratched through the leaves at the forest's edge and sighed when his pawing turned up nothing useful.
Of course, he thought, bitterness warring with the hunger in his middle as he sank onto his haunches and laid himself down. The old leaves caught and tangled in his long strands of black fur, but he was more comfortable here, shielded from the snow and hidden from view. Of course, there's nothing to bloody eat. I'll have to forage through the bins in Hogsmeade, if I can find any about. Trips to the village had to be spare, lest he tempt fate and get caught, and though scavaging animal carcasses was hardly better than eating rubbish, both beat the food in Azkaban.
The dog peeked up through the spindly branches at the looming castle in the distance and thought of the food served inside, the great feasts laid out by the house-elves every morning, afternoon, and night.
His thoughts inevitably turned back to the rat, and Sirius Black rose, growling.
Peter Pettigrew, that sodding piece of Thestral shit. He paced through the underbrush, paying no attention to the gorse grabbing at his body, the faint howl of memories rattling about his scattered head. Fallen boughs snapped and creaked under his weight. He thought about the rat more and more, until rage festered with the bitterness and the hunger, his lips pulled back over sharp teeth. He swiped his claws at the dead foliage.
How DARE he? How COULD he? What kind of coward lives life as a fucking rat? Oh, he knew Peter came off as harmless enough; he had the mien of a soft-hearted Hufflepuff, watery-eyed and feeble-mouthed, timid and tentative and round-shouldered like a lamb, but Peter had always been shrewd and quick when need be. He was patient and could endure, just like he'd endure the gentle teasing of his friends all through school. When had the descent begun, Sirius wondered? When they were lads? Did he or James or Remus say something that planted the seeds of hatred in Peter's heart? When did it happen?
Or did you simply grasp at the opportunity, rat? he sneered. I don't know what's worse; plotting their deaths or simply throwing them away without a thought.
Peter was soft and quiet and not very handsome. People had never thought or expected much of him—but Sirius knew better. Sirius knew. He was fucking dangerous. Gryffindor courage could translate into an unrestrained daring, the kind that crossed lines of morality even Slytherins couldn't fathom, because that's what Gryffindors did. They checked barriers, pushed boundaries, and in a gutless bottom-feeder like Peter Pettigrew, that meant unpredictability. Backed into a corner, Peter wouldn't hesitate to blow up half the children in the school if it meant he could escape, and all it would take was one mistake on Peter's behalf. Or Sirius'. One moment of sloppiness. He'd kill the entire Weasley family. He'd hurt Harriet—and Sirius couldn't bear it if anything happened to that girl. It would kill him.
How had life with the Muggles treated her? Did she enjoy living there? He knew Hagrid had taken Harriet to her relatives on Dumbledore's orders—right after the half-giant smacked Snape so hard the greasy git hit the ground bloody and unconscious, an image Sirius would cherish until his dying day. Little Harriet should have gone to him, to Sirius, but he couldn't—he had no right. He couldn't fail Lily and James worse than he had already had. He'd already lost one daughter.
Sirius took a shaky breath and lowered his muzzle, shivering, letting the memories roll off him.
Whenever the Dementors made their rounds in Azkaban, Sirius used to sink into the mire of his own worse memories, and he'd remember the sight of the cottage in Godric's Hollow blown to bits, or he'd smell the odor of burnt flesh at the McKinnon house, hear the investigator say "No survivors" without inflection, see Remus' scrunched face and his cracked voice shouting, "How could you do this?!"
Don't think about it, he ordered himself, giving his head a hard shake, though the depression lingered with substantial weight. That was the problem with Dementors; they didn't just make you miserable, then drift away. No, they gouged out all sensations of happiness, thrashed your whole way of thinking until you became your own Dementor. Sirius no longer needed those hovering, ghoulish fucks flying around him to feel miserable because he did it to himself now.
He forgot he didn't have hands for a moment and clawed at his head, scratching his nose, wanting to tear himself to pieces just to be rid of the unending torment and the irritating bite of fleas. He'd almost take Dementors over the bloody fleas. Almost.
Not until I find him. Not until I find Peter, that fuck, that—that—.
A noise brought Sirius' head up, his paw hitting the ground again with a thump, ears swiveling forward to chase the sound. Given the weather and time of day, no one should be about, not that Sirius dared wander too close to the castle in the middle of the afternoon. He'd watched Hagrid putter around his garden in the morning, digging out weeds to apply mulch and prep it for the spring before he returned to his hut, so Sirius knew it wasn't the groundskeeper. Wary, he kept his body low to the ground and crept closer to the line where the trees thinned and faded into grass, peering through the brown, winter brush.
The Sundial Garden loomed more ghoulish than usual in the sickly weather, great, colorless stone risen from the earth, exuding an almost pungent taste of old magic like bitter sea salt and dirt. Sirius scanned the area, nose working against the odor, and spotted a girl just on the cusp of the hill, sitting on the broken rocks. Sirius' breath caught.
Harriet.
She'd appeared from nowhere like a fae thing pulled out of the ether, dropped among the stones and dolmens older than Hogwarts itself. Sirius had only ever seen his goddaughter at a distance—playing Quidditch, running on that old track cutting close to the lakeshore—but here, she lingered no more than a few feet from him, playing with a curious toy ring or bauble. She didn't look much like Lily or James if he were to tell the honest truth. James had been everything one might expect from an old pure-blood House's scion—good-looking, confident, and invariably well-dressed, while Lily had been unbearably prim and neat and pretty, comfortably middle-class. Harriet looked as if she'd had a row with a laundry basket and lost, wearing two thick, knitted jumpers, mud on her robes' hem, a pricey black cloak thrown over the top that accentuated all her rough edges. The gold of her spectacles' frames flashed in the weak light, her green eyes narrowed in thought, part of her fringe sticking straight up in direct defiance of gravity. Someone had tamed the rest of her untidy hair into a plait.
At once, Sirius was excited and—and angry, furious because what in the fuck were they thinking, allowing Harriet to wander so far on her own? With the Dementors out in force, with Peter—.
I'll kill him, he howled, lip curling over canine teeth. I'll kill him, I'll kill the rat bastard before he touches one fucking hair on her head—.
He didn't realize he'd come out of the woods, not until Harriet shot to her feet, wand in hand, trained on him.
Shite.
"Erm, hullo?" she said, voice uncertain and fidgety, though the aim of her wand remained unflinchingly rigid. Sirius spared the toy in her other hand a thought, but like a lot of things in his head, it pinged about and failed to find purchase, his attention honed on her presence, on the wand pointed toward his face. They surveyed one another for several wary, tense moments. "…good boy?"
Sirius wagged his tag and approached, and when she extended one hand toward him, he wanted that touch more than anything—no, not anything, not more than he wanted to shift forms and embrace his goddaughter for the first time in nearly twelve years. Where had the years gone? They seemed to disappear in a second—or an eon—in the Dementors' loving care, and James' girl was thirteen, looking at him with suspicion, dressed in Slytherin green. Slytherin green. Merlin help him.
Harriet fidgeted and patted about his neck, fussing as she nattered and mumbled. "Oh—here." She reached into her cloak, and Sirius' stomach growled when she pulled out a squished bread roll. "Have this."
He snatched the bread from her and could have groaned at the wonderful, starchy flavor and baked crust. The taste of pocket fuzz mingled in there, too, but Sirius didn't care. His goddaughter held up empty hands when he finished, and he sighed, wanting more. Just find the rat, he retorted to himself. Find the rat, and then—.
"I don't think I have anything else. I'm sorry. I just have sweets. Hermione says I have a fast metabolism, so I carry extra snacks for when I get hungry, else I get headaches. She reckons it has something to do with my magic. Why am I telling you this?" Harriet rubbed her face, her right-hand bare, fingers pink and chapped from the cold. Sirius spotted the glove on the ground. "Spending too much bloody time talking to my snakes…."
Snakes? What ruddy snakes?
Harriet coaxed him from the Garden and over the covered bridge despite his reservations. The forest didn't loop into this section of the grounds, the only possible vantage for escape provided by the cliffs, rocks, and the tunnel under the Whomping Willow, if he could manage it. Sirius bumped into Harriet as they walked, savoring the affectionate way she scratched his ears, knowing he'd have to run from her soon, that he might never have the chance to approach her again. Pain lurched in his gut.
She's a weird kid, he thought the longer Harriet spoke. She jumped from topic to topic and never finished an idea, unaffected by the lack of conversation partner or the growing chill burdening the wind. She looked at Hogwarts with wonder and curiosity, tracing the high walls and towers with her eyes. James would have loved her. Sirius already did.
They came under the arms of the Willow, too far for it to react, but close enough for the branches to tense, the bark creaking and groaning as it contracted like living flesh. Sirius hated that nasty, bludgeoning tree, but Remus had confessed a certain fondness for it. It was his tree, after all.
"I guess a fur coat isn't everything, though. If I were a dog, I'd much rather be at home, eating my supper." Harriet had that odd toy in hand again, peeking at the Willow through the glass, flickers of blue filtering by the bronze rim. She tucked it back into her pocket. "Or maybe sleeping in front of a nice fire. Maybe that's why Elara always passes out by the hearth in the Aerie—."
Sirius stopped, paws digging into the cold, solid earth. It seemed to heave underneath him.
What did she just say?
He stared at Harriet, and she at him, an intense roar building in his ears. Had he been a man, cold sweat would have formed and dripped from his skin.
He had to be hearing things. He had—it couldn't—!
"There were no survivors, Mr. Black." Ashes on his hands like the fingerprints of angry, grasping ghosts—.
"How could you have done this?" Remus cried. "How could you? She's dead, Marlene's dead! Elara's—."
"No survivors."
"—dead!"
Harriet Potter stared at him with Lily's green eyes. He couldn't breathe.
When he sensed someone coming down the hill and Harriet turned her head to answer their call, Sirius lurched into motion and ran for the tunnel under the Willow. He did not look back.
x X x
Sirius Black was not a man who believed in coincidences.
He had been, before. Before the war, before Azkaban. He'd relished in his devil-may-care, laissez-faire attitude, riding Muggle motorbikes and smoking their cheap cigarettes, indulging in flings with girls and boys before deciding he liked the taste of monogamy best of all. But then people started dying—dying faster—and suddenly, the enticing glimmer of bachelorhood didn't shine quite so bright, and Sirius embraced the warmth of domesticity.
He blamed coincidences for the faults he refused to acknowledge. It'd been a coincidence that Remus missed class after the full moon. It'd been a coincidence that Regulus started hanging around future Death Eaters—a coincidence for Peter to always been conveniently absent when they needed him most. It took war and imprisonment for Sirius to receive a nice dose of cynicism, and now he didn't believe in coincidences one fucking bit. It wasn't a coincidence the rat in the Daily Prophet resembled Peter Pettigrew. It wasn't a coincidence Greyback, located in the cell across from him, managed to recreate Sirius' escape—and it wasn't a coincidence when Harriet Potter chattered on and said the name "Elara."
A mistake, a mistake, a coinc—.
Just a name—but a name chosen and deliberated and argued over, the final choice on a scroll covered in discounted options. Hours and hours of lying on his belly in bed, looking through star charts and family records by candlelight. Long, stressful nights consumed by warfare, staring into the night sky, constellations tripping off his tongue in hushed breaths. Just a name. Aquila, Danica, Lyra, Vega, crossed in slashes, ink dripping on eagle feather quills—.
The weight of a child in his cupped hands, nine months of deliberation.
Elara. Elara Andromeda Black. Jupiter's moon. He used to repeat it to himself, quietly, like a secret, and then in the grips of madness howled it into the salt-encrusted rocks of Azkaban like the foulest of curses—blaming himself, Marlene, Remus, Peter, God—.
After leaving Harriet, Sirius spent hours in the Shrieking Shack. He didn't know how long he allowed himself to weep and rage and tear at his own thoughts, replaying Harriet's words again and again and again, until the syllables stopped making sense and he considered it all a fever dream. Then, Sirius calmed. Flat on his back, staring at the warped, wretched ceiling above him, he whispered, "Elara," into the dust. His heart thumped against the floorboards.
Harriet knew someone who bore the name of his late daughter. A voice suspiciously like Remus' reminded Sirius it was within the realm of possibility for a separate Elara to exist. The exact context of the conversation escaped him—something about dogs and hearths and naps—but the name Elara had not been made in error, and if he was construing information right, Harriet was familiar with this person. Friends, even, meaning it had to be a student. It was a Black name, but not one ever used in the family before; Merlin knows he went through the annals three times over, determined his kid wouldn't share a moniker with one of his cross-eyed, inbred cousins. Yet, it was a Black name—just as the Lestranges used avians, and the Malfoys favored Romans. Elara, Elara, Jupiter's moon.
It could be a Muggle-born, or it might not. It could be a coincidence—but Sirius did not believe in those.
He had to see with his own eyes, just once, just once—.
Learning Harriet's schedule proved harder than Sirius expected it to be, and not only because he was a wanted felon who couldn't access the castle's interior without excessive risk. He simply couldn't figure out how she got around! Holy Helga, Sirius regretted his temper toward her minders, because Harriet seemed to vanish and reappear on a bloody whim, navigating the castle with ease, passing through all those niches and secret places the Marauder's spent years searching for as if she'd always known they were there! He kept following her, kept chasing, kept pressing his luck despite knowing every step he took closer to her meant dipping into the gaze of those who'd see him drawn and quartered and Kissed if they had a choice. Twice he had to hide from old McGonagall and Flitwick in a convenient broom cupboard.
He really missed the Marauder's Map.
Eventually, Sirius pinned down enough of his goddaughter's timetable to know she'd be in Herbology in the morning on Tuesday. He settled in the courtyard as a dog to watch the greenhouses, hidden from sight behind a thicket of yew hedges and dormant rose bushes, the thorns catching and tugging his fur. Grunting, Sirius crouched in the bracken, held himself still, and kept to his vigil until the bells rang, and he saw a group of Ravenclaws and Slytherins returning to the castle's warmth.
He changed forms, back hunched, the roses tearing at his skin, but he could see better as a man than as a dog—and Sirius needed to see. Reckless, reckless. He searched the group, gaze darting from face to face until he found his goddaughter, Harriet chatting with a bushy-haired chit carrying an overstuffed satchel. They bypassed the courtyard, climbing the steps into an outer cloister framing the castle wall, and through the thin pillars, Sirius watched another young witch come up behind the pair. His breath caught even before the trio crossed through the watery sunlight, before the third witch turned her pretty, familiar face toward the light, and those silver eyes flashed—.
Sirius remembered the autumn of 1980. He remembered pumpkin juice and Yorkshire pudding, too many diapers and weddings rushed a bit too quickly thanks to the war tightening around their necks. But it had been a happy time, the happiest in his entire life. In hindsight, it seemed like some sick joke that 1980 would be the year he loved best, while 1981 would be the one to ruin everything.
He remembered visiting the cottage in Godric's Hollow, orange leaves sticking to his boots, his hands full as he passed through the front door.
"Hey, James!" he called.
"That you, Padfoot?"
"Yeah." He shut the door behind him just as the other wizard came into view. James' face broke out in a wide grin as he stashed his wand back into his belt.
"And you brought my favorite little goddaughter for a visit!" James crowed, and Sirius readjusted the toddler leaning against his chest, drawing her far enough away for her to turn speculative silver eyes from him to James. "Did you miss me, hmm?"
"No."
James gasped, and Sirius laughed, a rough, barking sound as he jostled the girl in his arms, her tiny hands squeezing his fingers for all their worth.
"What's this, then? When did you start talking and giving me back-chat? Who allowed this?"
"She started earlier in the week," Sirius told him, dropping the satchel filled with nappies and clothes on a convenient bench in the foyer. Lily chose that moment to appear from the kitchen, and she flicked her wand to send the bag floating up the stairs. "Suddenly it's 'no' this and 'no' that—no, no, no. It's her favorite word."
"I bet Remus is pleased. Is he coming later?"
"He should be, and definitely pleased. Isn't that right, love?"
A tiny nose turned up at him. "No."
Lily cackled.
Sirius remembered friendship and conversation, supper and maybe a bit too much elf-wine, dozing by the fire. He remembered the weight of two children in his arms, resting on his chest, his daughter and goddaughter—Harriet snuggled into his shoulder, fast asleep, the other awake and staring into the crackling hearth. "Elara," he'd said, and she'd turned to him. The fire reflected off her pretty eyes—his eyes, those eyes—when she'd smiled.
Elara.
A harsh, keening gasp escaped Sirius, the brambles tight and cutting as they dug into his flesh.
Sirius barely had a chance to notice the shadow moving at his back before the wand was already at his neck, the tip sharp against his pulse. His heart leapt in horror.
"Don't. Move."
A/N: Elara's first word was "No," and absolutely no one was surprised.