"Of course you can't open it, son!" Manole laughed heartily"Wizards can't open it. You're a wizard too, aren't you, darling? Wizards can't open it…" he repeated it once again, brushing his fingers against the trunk's lock. "Only people like me can open it- or maybe only I can, in fact... I don't know why, I don't know why." he shook his head, before offering Sirius a toothless smile.
"She was funny that way, Hedda was. Half of the time, I had no idea what she would do or say next, and half of those times, I had no idea why. I courted her for almost ten years, until she decided to take pity on this fool of a man and marry me. Why she finally did it, I'll never know!"
"Can you open it for us, grandpa?" Magdalena bent down to the same level as Manole, and whispered her question softly. Sirius couldn't hear the answer the gave, but noticed the small, trembling, oblique nod of his head.
Manole looked up at the both of them, putting a hand on Magdalena's shoulder and using it to prop himself up, legs shaking as he did so. He looked around his run down house as if it was the first time he noticed he was inside it. As Lena lifted herself up as well, he intertwined his arm with hers, and looked at her with misty eyes.
"I want to look at the moon, first, my children - I haven't looked at the moon in years."
Sirius followed behind them, watching the old man and Lena in front of him slowly exit the decrepit house and sit down nearby. He took a seat himself on the left side of Manole, and raised his head alongside them, staring at the sky full of stars.
For the longest time, no one spoke as they watched the sky above and valley below, the sky above shimmering with its stars, and the valley below slowly starting to light up as a small group of people lit up a fire, shortly before welcoming what turned out to be a couple of musicians.
Sirius closed his eyes as they started, one by one, to play, first a guitarist, then a flute player, then a violinist, as a small group of young people started gathering around the fire. He couldn't help but recall the music he would hear when at Lena's place, and the trances it could put him under. He wondered if the musicians were Muggles or wizards, as he felt the soft, warm tendrils of their music creeping in his heart.
He watched the old man murmur alongside the music, and could have sworn, when the wind would swipe the hair from her face, that Lena was doing the same.
"What are they singing about, gramps?" Sirius heard her ask the old man, as she turned her head and caught his gaze. Yet he was sure that she knew exactly what they sung about.
"When I die and I'm gone, bury me where I tell you,'twixt chest and two breasts, 'cause that's where love is sweetest!" Manole answered in a raspy sing-songy voice, before falling quiet. He sat deep in thought, and this time, when Sirius raised his head to look at Lena, she looked just as confused as he felt.
"I'll open it for you, on a condition." Manole finally spoke, wiping at his wrinkled forehead with the yellowed sleeve of his shirt. "When I die, bury me like a wizard, alongside Hedda, right next to her. With full rites, like they do for your kind."
"We'll find you someone who will bury you like that when you die." Sirius said after a single moment of pondering on his request. "Don't worry about it."
"No." Manole stated with an assured tone, almost cutting his sentence off. He raised a trembling hand, and wagged his finger in front of each of them, before continuing to speak. "I asked them all when they buried her, and they all refused. So I told them fine, have it your way, but then lock me in the house with the slab of marble then… because I couldn't bear it otherwise! I mourned for- for-... oh, years, is it now?"
"Ten years, gramps."
"Is it?" his eyes lit up at Lena's answer, and he nodded to himself. "Ten years, look at that. And fate brought you along, my children…"
Sirius looked towards Magdalena, and raised his brows in disbelief as he saw great big tears at the corners of her eyes. What a sap - he thought to himself, watching how she hung onto each of the old Muggle's words.
Yet he had to admit to himself, that there was something strange, something compelling, in a Muggle that somehow survived ten years in a locked, dilapidated house, doing nothing but waiting for the perfect moment to die and be buried with his wife, just like her, as a final act of devotion.
"We'll bury you." he finally answered.
Who was he to deny this man, who had spent a decade waiting for someone to fulfil this wish of his? After all, what did he care that a Muggle would be buried like a wizard?
Manole nodded, as if he had expected them to agree all along, and explained what full rites were for a wizarding burial in those parts.
Those who bury the body should be dressed only in white linens, and be purified in a stream alongside their clothing. Manole pointed towards west, and advised them that was the same stream the wizards who buried Hedda had purified themselves in.
The body itself needs to be purified with water from the same stream, water which has boiled with a handful of pine needles from a tree near the stream, herbs, as well as three silver coins. He advised them that there were some cauldrons of Hedda's left in the house, and that he had saved a pack of herbs used for burials and hid it under the left corner of his bed, when they were gathering everything to bury his late wife.
The body needs to be stretched and cracked, like good dough, until it loses its rigidity, and when buried, needs to be wrapped in the white linens of those doing the rites. Manole stretched his arms, legs, and torso, motioning on himself, as if he were doing excruciatingly slow morning stretches.
During this entire process, the body must have in its mouth one of the three silver coins used for purifying the water. The other two must be buried by the mourners north of the buried's head and south of his feet.
"Then you bury me. There should be money in the trunk - Hedda had most of her wizard money in the trunk. Buy a marble, a rock, I don't care, I don't care!" Tears pooled in the old man's eyes, and he wiped at them vigorously with his shaking hand, before nodding to himself, as if he had finally made up his mind. "Let me open that for you, then…" Manole finally said, and Sirius helped him up, before motioning for Magdalena to stay.
"Let me handle this."
He entered the house with the old man again, who bent down slowly, and looked to see where to place his fingers at the rim of the trunk's lid. Sirius looked over to Hedda's grave, and with the tip of his shoe, started rubbing the dirt off the epitaph, only stopping when he heard an enormous creak. He stepped over to help Manole open the trunk fully, before aiding the old man in getting up and helping him back on the bed, holding him by the hand as one would with a small child.
"What's written there?"
'That's how life is, ephemeral.' Manole replied. "One is born, one dies, and so on. Hedda used to say that often. She shrugged at death. That's how life is! She said. She told me, there were wizards who sought eternal life… she pitied them so, she did."
"But wouldn't you have wanted to live more with your wife?"
"There is eternity in the ephemerality of our lives. I lived my eternity with my Hedda, and she lived many eternities in her life." Manole explained, holding Sirius's hand tightly in his own. His hands were cracked and blistered, eternally sunburnt from when he'd been a young man, as they wrapped around his palm and wrist. "There is eternity. Most of us don't live it, led astray by mundane cares, troubles and worries. But some souls see beyond it, and they manage to live an eternity in an ephemeral human's life, on this earth. And isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful, my son?"
Sirius couldn't answer. He knew the words, he understood everything that was said, but he could not find it within himself to agree. He had lived and rotted in his own personal eternity in Azkaban, and found himself unable to agree with the wonder Manole was seeing in life. He simply nodded, more out of a sense of duty than anything, as with his free hand he dug into the small leather pouch he had brought with him, taking out the small vial that Mina Ablai promised offers a dreamless, perfect little sleep.
"It's to help you sleep, grandpa." he whispered, feeling odd not only talking in French, but addressing someone with a familiar term, in as calm and warm of a tone as he could. The old man continued to hold his left hand tightly in his own, as if he were afraid to fall asleep on his own as he opened his toothless mouth as Sirius opened the vial.
When Manole's grip lessened on his hand, he finally pulled his hand away, and gave the trunk one look before leaving the house, using his wand to lock the door in place. It was too late to start examining its contents, and he felt it was only appropriate to give the old man the dignity of privacy.
So he left towards the sound of the music, and let it inundate his mind once again as the musicians, in their white linens and long cloaks wrapped around their shoulders, continued to play, and as an enormous jug of warm summer wine passed around, floating around with seemingly a mind of its own.
When it reached him, he drank from it heartily, to the cheers of the musicians and young people alike. Around the fire, they all seemed to have a warmth in their cheeks as they spun around with their arms outstretched. He moved alongside them, and almost from the warmth of the fire emerged Lena, in her translucent summer shawl and dark hair among them all. She had her arms outstretched as she slowly moved in a circle around him, shimmying her shoulders as she did so, and he outstretched his own arms widely, slowly spinning on his heels as he followed her circle.
He drank, again and again, alongside musicians and dancers alike, and he could not help but notice, for how drunk they were, how their voices were still clear, each of their chords lulling him into a sense of ease. Time and time again, he would put the jug to Magdalena's own lips, having her drink as much as he did, as if it was his own sins he was asking her to drink, to drink and to absolve him of each and every one of them with each swallow.
"I wonder what they're singing about." he asked, as the guitarist launched into a song which led the young dancers in hysterics.
"Of love, and lost youth, and being sent to lands where all women are beautiful, and their husbands are never at home, and of dying in the arms of who desires them most."
"How long have you been speaking their language, then?"
"All along." she confessed.
She was drunk, he declared with a grin, and she agreed. He was drunk, she alleged, and he lied with the same grin, saying he was as sober as always. But he was drunk indeed, because otherwise he would not have held onto her so tightly as they continued to dance. He would not have gotten himself involved in their circle dance, before breaking off to dance with one of the wizards or another. He would not have asked Lena what she would give him in return when she took away the endless jug of wine from his lips.
When the last of the dancers left and the musicians came by to ask them for a small pay, to which he obliged. He still held Lena by the waist as they were left alone by the fire, until the only music he could hear was the creaking of the logs. He closed his eyes as she placed her palms on his cheeks, and, both drunk and amused, let her fingers dance on his face, still holding her close as she continued humming the tunes of the long-gone music the musicians had been playing.
When she asked him to close his eyes, he only barely did so, distrustfully watching her from under the thicket of his eyelashes. He watched her hands, gracefully and tenderly caress his face, applying more and more pressure, her palms pressing against his forehead, pushing his hair away. He felt tired, yet refreshed, and finally fully closed his eyes as she placed the tips of her thumbs over his eyelids. Her humming stopped, and he focused on her breathing, matching it with his own. So close to her, he could feel her warm exhales on his skin, in his nostrils, and breathed them in, inhaling the aroma of fallen leaves and summer wine.
He did not know how long he had been there, lulled by her warm breath and the tips of her fingers. Yet he woke up from his reverie and became aware of his body once again she reached his shoulders. With her fingers on his clavicles, playing his muscles as if he was an aching, rusty piano, Sirius thought, slowly, as if this thought had not occurred to him in many, many, years, that he was a man, that he had been a man all along, and that he was yearning to be one once again.
He remembered her gaze that night of the Quidditch Cup, when his palm had grasped the fullness of her thighs, and found that he could not bear to look at her, to see what was hidden in her eyes, and he instead pressed his chin on her shoulder, shoving his head in her dark hair, inhaling her earthy scent. Deciding to follow his instincts and forego thinking about his actions, he pulled her down to the ground, until he was on his knees and she was underneath him, and his fingers looked to reach and glide under the hem of her robe, and his fingers, as he had a few days ago, once again dug into the flesh of her thighs, pulling her closer to himself.
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" she asked him once again, and the memories of that night flooded to him, amalgamated in his drunken haze. He avoided looking at her as he answered.
"No, but I have to know."
She was warm and soft, and held onto him with patience as he grabbed at her, hungrily and voraciously, barely knowing what to do with himself and with her alike. In his stupor, Sirius had barely noticed she was helping him undress her until his hands had started grasping bare skin, and his fingers trailed against her many buttons, now all shoved to the side. Sirius raised himself above her, continuing to avoid looking in her eyes. He wondered, if he were to meet her gaze, or if she were to speak above the soft groans she gave as he thrust into her, whether the moment would pass, whether he would wake up to his senses, whether the sane and sober part of him would realise that this was simply an exercise in ego.
But the warmth of her thighs pressed against his waist, and her deep exhales, smelling heavily of sweet wine, kept him in an ecstatic, drunken reverie that night, from which he did not wake up until the morning.
And the arrival of the morning sun was indeed when his senses returned to him and he woke up, next to a pile of ashen logs. He remembered only fractures of the previous night, and hoped Lena remembered even less of it. As he watched her laying in the dewy grass on her side, bare-breasted and deep in slumber, he pondered for a long time how she would look at him. He remembered how seamlessly and effortlessly she took off the buttons of her dress, how she had not spoken a word after her question and allowed him to do as he wished, how tight held tight onto him, and how she tried in vain to reach and touch his lips, and his refusal to allow her the intimacy.
He took out his wand and waved it as the buttons of her dress closed and she was dressed once again, still softly snoring the alcohol away.
Facing her closed eyelids, he pointed the wand between her eyes, and mulled over his next move with greater consideration than when he had offered the old man the sleeping potion, before finally muttering, in a low enough tone it was almost wordless-
"Obliviate."