Chapter 2: A Long Summer Slumber

A semblance of light infiltrated the room through the heavy velvet curtains that had retained their navy blue colour, in contrast to the maroon banners and miscellaneous memorabilia that shouted Gryffindor in Sirius Black's teenage room–all relics of the past. He also felt like he was a bit of a relic too, since only a few months ago he was apparently supposed to die.

Sirius got out of bed with a groan. As he stood for a minute, he rubbed the nape of his neck a little more roughly than usual, trying to ease the soreness that rested near his shoulders for what seemed to be too long lately. Sirius sighed at the mundane feeling of heaviness he felt every morning.

It has been almost two months now since the events at the department of Mysteries and he still had the same wretched dream every night. In fact, Sirius knew the dream by heart by now.

He would walk through the same long corridor with the gray walls adorned with a faded, unbearable tapestry. He could swear that this eerie place felt like Grimmauld, the family home he grew up hating so much. It had the same entrapping feeling, the same sense of time being sucked in by the darkness of the house.

At the beginning his steps were guarded but calm, his breathing even, as he took in his surroundings. But then the doors would fly open, one after the other, violently, as if they were provoked by a gust of wind Sirius Black could not feel or hear. As the doors would open and close on whim, the voices would appear–and that was when his heart rate would increase; he would accelerate his place, his steps heavy on the wooden floor, the sound of his footing echoing on the walls–but he could never have the time or the chance to see what was unleashed from the open doors.

Eventually he would be running, panting, his shoulder-length hair flying in all directions and his brow sweaty.

Sometimes he was not sure of the things he would hear or see. Sometimes his mother's dark figure would glide through the corridor and turn to look at him with a cold expression. He could see his eyes in hers, the same pale gray-blue. She would always tell him something he could not make out in full, her gaze piercing him as he would sweat profusely, which unnerved him, since in his life, his real life, he never sweat.

Sometimes there were whispers, not even voices and they would mock him, very much like the whispers of people, when he first walked in Diagon Alley, after his exoneration last month. This made Sirius Black feel like a wild animal in danger, pointing his wand at the nothingness and yelling back inaudible curses, profanities at ghosts. What was most unnerving was that he could never properly make out what the voices said. It was as if they were speaking to him from a distance, and he was left to catch the echoes.

Voices and apparitions of the ones lost–loved or hated. That's what the dream seemed to be about.

But recently something changed. The same corridor was waiting to be walked, but instead of the nasty faded portraits and his mother's apparition, there was a young woman coming out of one of the doors, at the very far end, and she was running toward him, coming closer and closer, with a pained and urgent expression on her face,tears running on high-cheekbones as she yelled at him something he could not hear. Sirius was uncertain and startled, but not afraid of her. It was a strange feeling he was not accustomed to. Although his wand remained raised, Sirius was panicking, he wanted to do something, to go to her and ask her what the matter was, to help her.

But she would vanish too, pointing at the door, urging him to look at something that he was not sure even existed. Suddenly, it would be cold, as if the Dementors were near, or boggarts. He would take out his wand and yell something he could not hear. He could never hear his own voice in this dream either.

That's when paranoia would kick in into his system, like adrenaline in his veins, and he would wake up.

As he stood and wore a fresh shirt and trousers, Sirius momentarily thought of writing to Dumbledore about the change in the dream, about this new mysterious figure in the dream.

He eyed the fresh stack of parchment on his desk for a minute, and he made up his mind with an abrupt brush of his hand on his dark wavy hair. No. He would not tell Dumbledore, Sirius thought. He knew, though, that this was a bit childish, an attempt at extending a grudge he held against the old man for keeping him in confinement, like a ticking bomb, a loose cannon.

Sirius's resentment for Dumbledore reached its zenith when Harry and his friends went to the Department of Mysteries, when his godson almost died at the hand of Death Daters after the prophecy, when he himself–when he fell in the veil.

What baffled Sirius was that the dream was very much unlike the experience of the veil itself, which he could only conceptualise temporally and less materially, as a short dive somewhere where whispers were filling his ears, echoes of voices and inaudible sounds that pierced his eardrums.

But he was also not completely certain–in fact, he was uncertain about most things nowadays–primarily because his senses seemed to be faulty, not operating as everyone else's. What for Sirius felt like a split second, was two whole weeks. That was the amount of time he was unconscious, in a comatose state that no one could explain. Eulalia Shacklebolt certainly tried though, as she tended Sirius in secret for two weeks in Kingsley's place, since the headquarters was compromised because of Kreacher who had run to Narcissa Malfoy. How he had ended up on the other side of the archway, landing on the cold stony floor of the department of mysteries and not some other dimension, or the world of the dead, was befittingly, a mystery to the whole Order, and especially Dumbledore. Albus had procured Eula Shacklebolt, a high-ranking Healer, to be in charge of monitoring Sirius during those two weeks, where he seemed to have fallen into a long slumber, while all his vital signs remained the same, as if he was willingly asleep, willingly refusing to get up.

This, in a way, exacerbated the climate of resentment Sirius felt for the old man. He was to remain under control, even when he was asleep, unconscious, not able to be the master of his own volition.

He knew, of course, from Remus, that Harry was also upset with Dumbledore, and although Sirius was a little ashamed to admit this out loud, he felt a sting of sardonic pleasure that the young boy had shouted at the old Headmaster.

The fact that his own actions had caused his godson anguish, however, was something that Sirius still grappled with, and although he never discussed it openly with boy, in the numerous letters and fireplace calls they exchanged so far this summer, Sirius knew this was simmering in the background, that it was another wound for the boy, and this one was tragically caused by Sirius' own recklessness–his desire to be useful, to live, to have a semblance of honour. It was his fault that his deranged cousin had cursed him on the chest, when he was too preoccupied or too arrogant to notice.

So, while everyone, and especially Dumbledore, were still expressing the need to find out what had happened to Sirius in the veil, Sirius wanted to forget about it. The fact that he had slept for two weeks, falling into some kind of long unexplainable slumber. And just like that, one morning, he opened his eyes, groggy and disoriented and in a foul mood, ready to attack, to jump back into battle, as if he would turn around and see Bellatrix Black.

Sirius winced at the memory. He winced at the memory of an ill-looking Remus running toward him with astonishment etched on his lined face, and then a small marker of relief, as he rushed to fetch someone and pronounced frantic inaudible syllables to Sirius.

He did not want to remember the veil–or whatever had happened to him. He knew what it had done to Remus, to Harry, how his godson thought that Sirius had died and how the whole Order was sure he would not recover from the fall in the veil, or he would never wake up. In fact, Dumbledore's latest letters, and a few from Molly Weasley, would not let him forget about it.

Sirius was now pacing around his room, looking at the stack of letters, some of them opened and read briefly, only to be discarded quickly by Sirius and his quick tendency to anger.

Who did these people think they were? Dumbledore–the old bat, was at fault too about what went down at the Ministry. Did he honestly think that Sirius would stay behind, sit back, while his godson was at the hands of Death Eaters? Of course, Dumbledore had acknowledged some of his misguided attempt to protect Sirius, to keep him alive as the old man said, but Sirius was still furious, he was harbouring a resentment too long and he had an impulsive temper that was too hot–he would not be contained this time.

And Molly–with all her unwanted admonishments and insistence to have Harry over to the Burrow for the remainder of the summer. It angered Sirius. He felt judged by the fellow-Order member, a nice woman after all, who had cared for Harry as well.

Harry.

Harry had written to him numerous times, and he was also patiently waiting for his godfather to finally take up his role, to have Harry stay with him and be a normal family. As normal as they could during a war, and under the circumstances. The boy was waiting at Lily's sister's home and Sirius knew that he was not treated well by Lily's cold and narrow-minded sister. He owed it to them, to James and Lily to give a home to their boy.

So Sirius decided to go with Dumbledore's plan yet again. To keep a low profile after his recovery and his exoneration, so as to not draw attention to the Order's work nor to Harry. The headlines would definitely roar if Sirius practised his formal guardianship of Harry, and this would definitely make them targets for Death Eaters, for Peter also, who was still officially missing but at least was now declared a wanted Death Eater, in Sirius' place.

Perhaps telling Dumbledore about this different detail in the dream was wise. Perhaps he should do it for Harry, for the promise he had made to the boy almost three years back.

At the same time, the dream seemed to have been the only permanent symptom he still carried from this experience, and although he had informed Dumbledore of it, he did not wish to relinquish this detail about this new apparition to the headmaster. Instead, Sirius tried to compromise and be in Dumbledore's good graces because he could finally get Harry for the remaining weeks of the summer, before school started.

Albus' latest letter said so. The headmaster would be needing Harry for a visit to his old Potions professor, to Sluggy, and the Harry would be free to spend time with his recently exonerated godfather, and his friends, which included Ron Weasley, the youngest son of the Weasley clan, and Hermione Granger.

Sirius looked irritatedly at the letter of Dumbledore, as he conjured his cup of tea in his room. Dumbledore would not say why he was so keen on having Horace Slughorn out of retirement, but Sirius could gather, of course, that the headmaster was using his godson to lure old Sluggy back to Hogwarts. He remembered how the old Potions teacher would gather trophy pupils and use them to pet his ego, and his ambition, of course, and Sirius was no fool. He knew he would not get a word from Dumbledore on why Slughorn specifically had to be back in a post, but he was certain that Harry's fame had a key role in whatever was Dumbledore's plan. And although this irritated Sirius, he knew he had to remain amenable and stay put if he wanted to have his godson over again.

With another deep sigh, Sirius finished his last gulp of tea, and he threw Dumbledore's and Molly's letters in the simmering fire in the fireplace. With another stressed sound, he straightened his back, and left his room to meet Kingsley Shacklebolt at a pub near Islington and discuss the next mission that was about to start in the fall when Remus was to return from the werewolves.

Harry Potter's heart had leapt when Dumbledore mentioned that after the brief errand they needed to run, the boy could go and visit Sirius. Harry was actually pacing all around the room from excitement and he vented his frustration by destroying a horrible handkerchief given to him by Hagrid this year.

Harry had not seen Sirius since his exoneration hearing in July, when his godfather had seemingly recovered from his two week slumber, while he remained hidden in an Order member's home, as everyone was unsure as to whether Sirius would make it unscathed and as the Order was waiting to assess the political climate behind the events that occurred at the department of Mysteries. And this was all good, thankfully.

The prophet was roaring with Voldemort's return, and with the tragic and bizarre events surrounding the miscarriage of justice surrounding Sirius' long twelve-year imprisonment.

Although Madame Bones had ensured that Sirius' long-awaited trial was conducted in closed rooms, away from the prying eyes of reporters and the press, it was impossible to keep it a secret or discreet affair. Sirius' weathered and tired face was no all over the news of the wizarding world again, but this time not as a notorious criminal, a madman who had betrayed his best friend and had executed a dozen muggles in cold blood, but as a tragic hero, an unlucky but honourable man entangled in a history of betrayal and back-stabbing, fatally damaged by one man he considered a friend: Peter Pettigrew was now the personal non grata, the ruthless and ambitious Death Eater who had sold his friends and their infant son to Voldemort, had infiltrated their ranks and spied on the Order, and eventually, had spent twelve years in hiding in his animagus form, as a coward, while an innocent man was framed for his crimes.

The press, in fact, was now, in a twisted way, more obsessed with Sirius than before and this would panic and infuriate his godfather who sometimes was not making the wisest choices and was prone to impulsive outbursts. It was all over the papers, especially the ones that were more interested in Sirius' personal life after Azkaban, than the return of Voldemort and its impact in the wizarding world.

Harry cursed irritatedly when he read one recent caption:

Black roughly handled one of our reporters while Nick Sedwyck was respectfully soliciting a statement from Mr. Black.

Which probably meant that reporters were following Sirius like flies would follow a carcass and he roughly told them to bugger off. Harry's guess was that probably wands were taken out, since he knew his godfather's fuse was short. It made sense. Didn't these people understand that this man had spent twelve years in prison, and another two in hiding? Hadn't he had way too many experiences of surveillance and confinement than made him edgy, uneasy, neurotic?

An image of Rita Skeeter's beetle-like visage came to Harry's mind and he laughed bitterly. He knew that obviously the press did not care about Sirius' wellbeing, just like it did not really care about his one. He was after all, the Boy Who Lived and he understood what Sirius must be feeling like.

Harry tried to shake off the sad feeling, however, and focus more on the excitement. He took out his quill and wrote a quick word to Sirius, confirming that he would be coming to Grimmauld right after Dumbledore would finish their common errand.

Harry then decided to also send Mrs. Weasley a short letter, declining politely what was the third letter trying to convince him to stay with them for the remainder of the summer, since Hermione would also be at Burrow. Harry, however, was desperate to reunite with his godfather, and he knew that Sirius was probably also a recipient of those nagging letters. The boy was aware of Mrs. Weasley's continued distaste for Sirius, both from Harry's own observations about his godfather's interaction with the Weasley matriarch, but also from the sly, indirect remarks made by Ron and Hermione over the summer, which clearly conveyed Molly Weasley's irritation with Sirius for duelling Bellatrix and giving everyone a scare, especially Harry, who stayed at the Burrow for the two weeks following the battle, when the Order still did not know what would happen to Sirius after this fall in the veil. Harry was very well aware of Molly's pursing lip and bitter tutting sounds when Sirius' name was brought up, but out of respect for Harry the woman at least tried to be sympathetic to the boy's plight, if not to whatever was happening to Sirius during his long phase of unconsciousness.

Harry wrote to Ron that if Sirius let him, for which he was sure he would, he would visit Ottery St. Catchpole one of the next weekends–with Sirius to escort him.

He then gave Hedwig the letters. "Take this to Sirius, and be nice to him these days," muttered the boy, as the white owl made a soft chirping sound.

Harry stared as the white puffy owl flew away from his aunt and uncle's home and onto the horizon, bringing his godfather a note that was due to resolve their long period of separation.

As Hegwig flew away in the horizon, the boy started packing his things with giddy excitement, shoving his clothes and books abruptly into his trunk and waiting for the Headmaster to arrive that evening to pick him up.

He was excited to leave the Dursleys, at last.