Thanks to those who have expressed their interest in this story. I won't deny that I'm nervous about this one, as it's been a long time since I've written for a new series, and I have a very strange relationship with it.
I feel I should apologize for the fact that the characters so far haven't been very…British. I admit, I'm American. Yes, typical ignorant American, with no real idea of how to express things in any way but my own. I felt it would be more respectful to stick to my own style, rather than attempt a butchery of Rowling's.
I don't feel comfortable writing things I don't understand, and the ins and outs of English culture definitely fall under that particular category.
That said, let's head back to Grimmauld Place and see how things are progressing, shall we?
He didn't trust Kafell.
Being the final true heir of the Noble and Most Arrogant House of Black, Sirius—the third of his name—was hardly stupid enough to take the word of something that could only be logically described as an immensely powerful ghost. The more he saw of this creature, the less he liked. It was the general shape of a tall human man, certainly, but its clothing was in direct opposition to normal, and this coming from perhaps the most abnormal wizard to be born in recent centuries. The edges were not edges at all, but seemed to crackle with some sort of energy. Only its head, hair, and hands looked human, although even they looked entirely too pale.
Kafell sat on one of the chairs in Sirius's private study, which amounted to a stripped-bare room with no honest indication that anyone even visited it, and Sirius often spent the majority of his time there. Sirius attempted, through an alcohol-induced stupor that was still causing his thoughts to swim through his head like half-dead fish, to determine what it was about this…man…that bothered him so much.
He was condescending, for one. He lounged about like he thought he was some breed of god, he had a certain all-encompassing smugness that made Sirius think that he was too damned smart for his own good, and…
He's…just like me, Sirius thought with a sudden lurch. This was…me. When I was still in school.
The last Black could still remember, if he focused hard enough, what things had been like back at Hogwarts. It had been a lifetime ago, but he could still remember, though it came in hazes that made Kafell's smoke-and-whisper cloak seem clear as summer daylight. He could still see himself, long black hair framing a strong, handsome face in the latest Muggle style; eyes dark and sparkling with constant amusement; a thin mouth curved in a smirk that was so fundamentally contemptuous that it was impossible to tell that he wasn't a typical Black. He could still picture himself, walking with such swaggering confidence, as though he owned not just the school, but all of Britain.
Kafell was watching his cloak again. He pointed to it. "You see there? Look how concerned young Master Potter is." Sirius turned and watched. His godson was shouting at his friend, Hermione Granger. "Almost terrified, I daresay. Yes, yes, it's beginning."
Kafell flipped a hand again, and suddenly they could hear what was happening at Hogwarts. "...they're real, Hermione! Sirius is trapped, I've seen him, Voldemort's got him and no one else knows! And that means we're the only ones who can save him!"
"What?" Sirius asked. "What's he…? No one's got me. Unless the Dark Lord's got a new face." He scowled and narrowed his eyes at Kafell, who looked thoroughly amused. "Have anything to say to me, Kafell?"
Kafell's eyebrows raised again. "Oh, but that would be a fine trick, considering you've a Secret-Keeper of quite considerable power keeping Master Riddle from finding you." He winked. "But as I've said, Master Black, I've grown tired of these wizarding wars. I think I've found a way to circumvent many of the mistakes made on your organization's part. That is the final reason that I have shown myself to you."
There was a rather heavy, humid silence, and Sirius was almost positive that Kafell had just lied through his pale teeth.
"Listen, Harry," Hermione was saying, "we need to establish whether Sirius really has left headquarters—"
"I've told you, I saw...!"
"And what does this have to do with me, or a Time-Turner?"
Kafell smiled, and this time it wasn't a smirk. This time it was honestly pleasant. "Well, now. Here's the thing, Master Black. You know, of course, that when Master James Potter and his lovely wife were...taken, Albus Dumbledore was quite quick to place an impressive protective spell about the home of the boy's last living blood relatives."
Sirius flinched as Harry snarled: "Sirius is being tortured now!"
Kafell flipped his hand, and the room fell into silence again. "That is the crux of everything," he said. "The Dursley family is most unreliable. What we need—what I need," he amended quickly, "is for the young one to have a family willing to tell him. Willing to teach him. He's powerful, young Master Potter, but thoroughly unrefined. Most of his triumphs have been as a result of luck shining on him. I despise luck. I prefer...preparation."
Sirius leaned back in his chair. "What, you're going to go back in time? Stop Dumbledore from giving Harry to his aunt and uncle? You won't hear any complaint from me. The great sniveling idiots haven't done anyone any favors."
Kafell's grin widened. "I thought you would say that. Excellent."
"What's this got to do with me?" Sirius asked for what felt like the seventieth time.
"Well, now," Kafell continued, unabashed, "I could enter into the past myself, but...no. I feel there is a better choice. May I show you something?" He winked, and flipped his hand again. Always, the same precise gesture, the same exact placement. The shimmering image in Kafell's cloak vanished, replaced by another.
It was Harry still, but now he sat in his dormitory, on his bed. There was something about his face that felt...wrong to Sirius. It was a face he recognized far better than his own. It was the face of James, a man that was more a brother to Sirius than Regulus had ever been, the man who had saved him from nearly every hellish thing he'd ever experienced at the malignant hands of his family, and there was one thing Sirius had never seen on that face.
He realized that he was seeing it now, on the face of that brother's son.
Grief.
Grief, and madness.
Tears streaked down that face as Harry's vibrant green eyes went wide with sudden, psychotic hope. He was holding something in his hands, trembling hands that looked so much like claws. It was a mirror. The mirror Sirius remembered giving him at Christmas. It was the only means of reliable communication he could afford to give his godson, and it was now that he wondered with a jolt why Harry hadn't bothered to use it the last time he'd needed to talk. When he'd wanted to know—
Kafell flipped his hand again, and Sirius heard his godson's voice, racked with pain and sorrow and stark raving madness: "Sirius!" Tears had sprung from his eyes again as he called, almost shrieked for his godfather, and without thinking Sirius lurched over to the small table at his right hand and snatched up the partner to the mirror in Harry's white-knuckled, strangling hands.
He saw nothing.
He didn't see Harry; he didn't see himself.
He saw...well, he wasn't sure what to call the horrifying visage looking back at him.
His head snapped up, and he glared at Kafell. "What's this?" he demanded.
"As you mentioned, Master Black," Kafell said, gesturing to the cloak's image, "I can see the...future. I am simply permitting you to see it as well."
"Sirius!" Harry sobbed.
"What...what's going on?" Sirius asked, more slowly, through clenched teeth.
"I said before that you will die soon." The apparition gestured. "I am simply showing you...the aftermath."
"Sirius Black!"
Sirius felt a knife stab into his heart with each syllable as his godson—the only reason his miserable excuse for a life was even worth anything anymore—cried out for him. Begged for him. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. "...Beautiful," he growled.
"I simply wished for you to know," said Kafell, "how much your dearest godson loves you, Master Black. I want you to understand that however miserable you might feel, however useless you might believe yourself to be in your current situation, your existence has a deep, intrinsic value. And it is to this boy." He gestured. "The Boy who Lived."
"Oh, was this supposed to lift my spirits?" Sirius snapped.
"Not at all," Kafell said with a chuckle. "It was to redouble your willingness to take part in this experiment of mine. You see...I might be able to enter the past and...fix things. But it would afford me a much greater amount of reliability if I were to send someone else." His eyes were twinkling. "Someone like...you."
"Are you..." Sirius blinked. "What are you...me?"
Kafell's smile turned serene. "Of course, Master Black. Who better? James and Lily Potter appointed you to the task, after all. While Albus Dumbledore may have thought to do young Master Potter a kindness by his spell-work on the Dursleys' home, I personally believe it was much more a blunder than anything else. I believe, Master Black, that you can fix these blunders. Any number of them. And I believe that you will have more reason than anyone else to do the job correctly."
"Job," Sirius replied, in a soft voice; he wasn't sure what he was saying or hearing anymore.
"Being a godfather isn't as simple as the Order of the Phoenix has apparently forced it to become," Kafell said. "You've not been given the proper chance to fill the void your friends appointed you to fill. Your job was not to support Harry Potter, Master Black. Your job was to raise him."
And a sudden wild blaze of…something shot through the drunken stupor and blazed into Sirius's eyes. He leapt to his feet. "What are you saying, Kafell?" He scarcely dared to believe it. He beat down the savage hope that welled up in him, unwilling to let it rise. Not until…until…
Kafell looked positively fatherly; his eyes crinkled with his wide, toothy grin.
"…I am offering you, Master Black, the chance to deliver to your godson the life he deserves."
I'm sure the direction this plot is heading has been trod so many times that it's long since past clichéd. I'll admit that I've never really read HP fanfiction, and made a point to avoid it in order to keep this story…pure, so to speak.
So I apologize if you've all seen this before; I do hope that my particular take on it is interesting, and entertaining.
'Til next time.