Ayyye, it's me again, what? It's been a better week for me, what can I say? An early update due to the holiday, and everything I've got going on this weekend. Just easier this way.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates! I'm grateful for each and every one of you who follow/favorite me or this story, and for every review you all take time to leave me.
This chapter is a lot longer than I expected, so sorry!
Gi-L-Ha: Hahaha, I'm sorry! A fighting George is hard to pass up, I know, but there was just too much happening to include it. I appreciate you!
Chapter Thirty Nine
It was a true testament to Tori's reluctance to meet Sirius that they didn't leave the castle until nearly one-thirty the next afternoon. She'd become suddenly very concerned about her O.W.L.s, and the sudden concern that it might possibly rain them out of their visit. Nessa pretended that she didn't notice how the prospect made Tori almost sound hopeful for horrid weather, nor did she point out that there was no chance of rain in the forecast as far as she could tell.
There was a weak silver sun shining down upon the grounds, peeking out behind grey winter clouds, and the weather was milder than it had been all year. By the time they'd made the trek into Hogsmeade, all four of them had taken off their cloaks and shoved them in their bags. The food they'd nicked from the kitchen for Sirius was in an extra drawstring bag that Fred had borrowed from Lee; they'd advised the house elves that they were having some sort of picnic with friends, and they'd practically shoved mounds of food at them — several dozen chicken legs, a few loaves of bread, flasks of water and pumpkin juice, and several corn cobs and apples that Nessa had insisted upon in an attempt to give Sirius any sort of nutrients he was likely lacking.
Fred had found this information particularly amusing, and had been calling her "mum" for the entirety of the morning. She'd kicked him in the back of the knee in retaliation, but she was only mildly annoyed by the endearment — he was joking with her again at least, and he'd made no snarky comments to her about Cedric, so she was counting it as progress.
It was more than she could say about George, who was talking to her about anything that wasn't the problem between them. She'd expected that to be relieving in itself, considering she liked avoiding her problems, but it was really just very awkward. She wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be saying to him or if he was even in the mood to have the conversation yet. He hadn't been for the entirety of the day yesterday, and he'd been in his dorm by the time she'd managed to make her way back to the common room. Her anxiety had been horrific, and she'd been tempted to just go up there and force him to talk for the sake of calming her frazzled nerves, but he'd always given her space when she'd needed it, so she'd attempted to return the favor. It was her fault they were even really in this position to begin with.
So they all just simply avoided talking about the two rather sizeable elephants in the room as they made their way down the street toward Dervish and Banges as if they weren't about to go and speak with a convicted murderer despite the awkward tension between her and George, and the whispers and laughing that were being directed in her direction. It made trying to get out of the village much more difficult without being noticed when people were too busy pointing and hurling insults in her direction, though they mostly ignored it. They were running late as it was due to Tori's dallying, or she suspected one of them would have done something more than send rude gestures in the direction of the students who said something particularly nasty.
It was a relief to finally reach the outskirts of the village where so few students wandered. Nessa had not been out so far, but the twins and Tori appeared to know exactly where they were going. The winding lane was leading them out into the wild countryside around Hogsmeade. The cottages were fewer here, and their gardens larger; they were walking toward the foot of the mountain in whose shadow Hogsmeade lay. Then they turned a corner and saw a stile at the end of the lane, but there was no one waiting for them.
"Kind of them to wait," Tori said sarcastically with a huff. She was particularly tense, her steps becoming slower as if she could avoid the meeting altogether by slowing her pace entirely.
"In their defense, you refused to say if you were coming or not," Nessa said, forcing her forward. "They haven't gotten that far. You can see Ron's hair from a mile off."
Tori snorted, but didn't say anything as they continued after the three Gryffindors in front of them. Ron's vibrant hair was a beacon on the empty road in front of them. They were too far ahead to hear them behind them, but close enough that they were able to follow behind them casually without being left behind. Though Nessa hadn't said so, it likely made more sense for them to have come in smaller groups, especially because the seven of them were all coming to meet a black, shaggy dog in the middle of nowhere at the end of the road. It was much less conspicuous for there to be four of them than seven, particularly because Harry was always in some sort of trouble.
Well, Nessa supposed they all were, weren't they?
Tori looked behind them anxiously to make sure they weren't being followed as the group of Gryffindors ahead of them led them toward a scrubby patch of ground that rose to meet the rocky foot of the mountain. The ground was covered in boulders and rocks, and Tori gaped up after them when they reached the edge of the mountain.
"Is he joking?" she said, rounding on Nessa indignantly, who grimaced in displeasure. "He wants us to climb this? He didn't think that was worth mentioning? I wore a skirt!"
Personally, Nessa thought the heeled boots Tori had worn would be more of a hindrance than the skirt, but she didn't say so. Tori liked not being confined to her school uniform on weekends, and though Nessa wasn't wearing heels, she certainly wasn't anywhere close to prepared to hike a mountain herself.
"I don't see the issue with that — you just need someone to block the view. You go first, and I'll go after you," Fred said jokingly, swearing viciously when three hands came out to smack him upside the head in reproach. "Bloody hell," he muttered, rubbing his head and pushing his way forward. "Serves me right for being a gentleman —"
Tori snorted.
"Don't play stupid, we know what you were suggesting," she said, waiting for Fred and George to go above her before she began an attempt to climb up herself. "You pretending to be a gentleman is as far-fetched as if Dumbledore had made you Head Boy."
"I'd have dropped out," Fred grunted, pulling himself up the mountain nimbly.
Nessa climbed after George reluctantly and tried not to look down at all. This was a nightmare for her on a number of levels, the smallest of which is that she was neither accustomed nor dressed to climb a mountain. It took a great deal of effort on her part not to panic every time her foot slipped on the rock and sent some of it scattering down the side. She didn't know why she'd tried so hard to get Tori here in the first place, and she had sincere regrets about the entire thing now. The twins and Tori were fit enough to pull themselves up the side of the peak without much more than heavy breathing, but Nessa felt like her breath was burning her throat at every exhale. A bit embarrassing because she did still run with Fred every morning, but running on flat ground and scaling a mountain were clearly very different things.
They climbed for nearly half an hour, until Nessa's hands were scraped raw against the rough rock, and Tori's winded swearing had become the new normal. The path up was steep, winding, and stony, and it didn't get any easier as the sun continued to rise, sweat beating down their necks and the straps of their bags digging into their shoulders.
"I swear to Merlin, I will break his neck," Tori puffed out next to her, pausing briefly to lean against the rock face in exhaustion. "He's not going to make us climb the whole thing, is he?"
"Don't think so," Fred said, reaching down to help pull her up to where he was standing. "I think I saw Harry disappear up there."
Nessa let George pull her up to stand next to him, and stood as far from the edge of the precipice they were resting on as she could manage. Fred smirked at her, but she spoke before he could say something that would freak her out.
"We should have put more thought into skipping this entire thing, and just asking Harry what happened," she panted, eyeing her scraped palms in distaste. They were burning incessantly, spots of pink and red peeking out from her skin in the places she'd scraped herself too deep.
Fred had been right, however, that they were near the end of the trek because they eventually reached a narrow fissure in the rock. They squeezed into it one by one, following the sounds of voices that could be heard from the inside, and Nessa tried to pretend that she didn't notice how tightly the rock squeezed her back and chest until they found themselves in a cool, dimly lit cave. Hermione, Ron, and Harry had frozen, wands out in their direction as if they were expecting a malicious presence, all three of them circled around a very skinny, shaggy, black dog with matted hair.
"Merlin," Ron said in relief, lowering his wand at the sight of them. "I thought you weren't coming. We thought it was Snape."
Harry was looking at Tori with narrowed eyes.
"I thought you didn't want to be here," he said accusingly, and Nessa shot him a look full of warning, but Tori wasn't even listening to him, her eyes trained at the end of the cave where Hermione had been standing.
Tethered at the end of the chasm, one end of his rope around a large rock, was Buckbeak the hippogriff. Half gray horse, half giant eagle, Buckbeak's fierce orange eyes flashed at the sight of them, his gaze locking with Tori's as she bowed low, keeping her eyes locked with his. When he didn't immediately bow, she snapped, "Bow," to her, Fred, and George, who rolled their eyes and obeyed. Buckbeak eyed them imperiously for a moment before he bent his scaly front knees. Tori seemed far more interested in the creature before her than she did Sirius, who had transformed back into his human self and was tracking his daughter's movements closely.
Tori reached into her bag and threw a chicken leg toward Buckbeak, grinning widely when Hermione shrieked in surprise when the bird rose to catch the meat with a loud chomp of his beak. He allowed Tori to make her way forward to run her hands through his stormy gray feathers, eating happily on the treat she'd given him and nuzzling her hand when it made a pass over the side of his face.
"Such a pretty thing, aren't you?" Tori cooed at him as if he were an infant. Personally, Nessa found him slightly odd-looking, but she wasn't stupid enough to have said so. If Buckbeak didn't take her head off for it then Tori certainly would. "Does he even feed you, you poor thing?"
Buckbeak sniffled derisively as if he were offended by his choice of meat now that he was on the run. Sirius rolled his eyes when Tori fed into the creature's dramatics and gave him another chicken leg from her bag.
"There's nothing wrong with him," he said, sounding half-amused. "He eats everything in sight."
Buckbeak eyed him haughtily over his chicken wing, sitting himself on the floor to finish his meal. Tori turned to look at Sirius, her entire body tensing completely as if she were half expecting him to say something emotional the moment that her gaze met his. He was wearing ragged gray robes; the same ones he had been wearing when he had left Azkaban. His black hair was longer than it had been when he had appeared in the fire earlier that year, and it was untidy and matted once more. He looked very thin.
Tori's gaze was quick in surveying him critically, ignoring the way that Sirius was doing exactly the same to her, though his seemed to stem less from concern and more in a greedy way to consume the sight of her as if he half expected her to vanish if he looked away from her. Nessa tried to ignore the pang in her chest, raising a hand to wrap at the base of her throat as if it would protect her from the sheer sadness of the situation before them.
Tori threw her father the bag filled with food without a word, and made her way back toward her and the twins, her heels clicking against the stone. She crossed her arms across her chest as she eyed him haughtily, covering her obvious tension and concern behind her well-practiced facade. If she hadn't moved to stand so close that she was touching all three of them, Nessa might not have even suspected that she was worried to be here at all.
Sirius sat himself on the cave floor, dragging the bags of food that they'd each brought him toward himself, and picking up a chicken wing that he'd clearly been eating before they'd interrupted the four of them.
"Thanks," said Sirius, tearing off a large chunk of chicken with his teeth. "I've been living off rats mostly. Can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade; I'd draw attention to myself."
They were all looking at him in disgust, but Fred leaned forward to mutter, "How many of those rats do you think he's pretending are Wormtail?"
Nessa coughed to keep herself from snorting, and Tori elbowed Fred in the side, but her expression didn't change much, even when Sirius looked up to grin at her and Harry. Harry returned the grin very reluctantly and Tori's facial expression remained blank.
"What're you doing here, Sirius?" she said baldly.
Sirius flinched at her use of his full name, and there was a moment of awkward silence, but he recovered quickly.
"Fulfilling my duty as godfather," said Sirius, gnawing on the chicken bone in a very doglike way. "Don't worry about it, I'm pretending to be a loveable stray."
He was still grinning.
Nessa was beginning to understand where Tori must have inherited her disregard for rules and personal safety. Looking at him now, she'd have thought he was living it up in this cave, not hiding out so that he couldn't be captured and killed by the dementors. His utter disregard for the danger he posed to himself in being here was something she'd have expected from her best friend, even despite the anxious look the girl shared with Harry, as if they weren't sure he was taking the entire thing very seriously.
Sirius caught the look between his daughter and godson, and spoke more seriously.
"I want to be on the spot. Harry's last letter…well, let's just say things are getting fishier. I've been stealing the paper every time someone throws one out, and by the looks of things, I'm not the only one who's getting worried."
He nodded at a pile of yellowing Daily Prophets on the cave floor, and Ron picked them up and unfolded them. Harry, however, continued to stare at Sirius, and Tori didn't appear concerned by the papers at all.
"What if they catch you? What if you're seen?" Harry demanded.
"You lot and Dumbledore are the only ones around here who know I'm an Animagus," said Sirius, shrugging, and continuing to devour the chicken leg.
Ron nudged Harry and passed him the Daily Prophets. Harry scanned them for several minutes before he held them out to Nessa. The twins and Tori gathered around her as she skimmed the information. There were two papers: the first bore the headline Mystery Illness of Bartemius Crouch, the second, Ministry Witch Still Missing — Minister of Magic Now Personally Involved.
Nessa wasn't terribly interested in the article about Bertha Jorkins as she sincerely doubted that there would be any new information, but she scanned the story about Crouch greedily. Phrases jumped out at her: hasn't been seen in public since November…house appears deserted…St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries decline comment…Ministry refuses to confirm rumors of critical illness…
"They're making it sound like he's dying," Harry said slowly when she lowered the paper to look at him. "But he can't be that ill if he managed to get up here…"
"Our brother's Crouch's personal assistant," Ron informed Sirius, gesturing between himself, the twins, and Tori, who tensed, sharing an uncomfortable look with Fred at the prospect of them being lumped together as siblings. "He says Crouch is suffering from overwork."
"Mind you, he did look ill last time I saw him up close," said Harry slowly, looking at his sister for support. "The night my name came out of the goblet…you were asking him if he felt alright, do you remember?"
"I do," she said, nodding when Sirius looked over at her for confirmation. "He was looking a bit peaky, but he said he was fine."
"Getting his comeuppance for sacking Winky, isn't he?" said Hermione, an edge to her voice. She was stroking Buckbeak now, who was crunching up the chicken bones he'd been left. "I bet he wishes he hadn't done it now — bet he feels the difference now she's not there to look after him."
"Hermione's obsessed with house-elves," Ron muttered to Sirius, casting Hermione a dark look. Sirius, however, looked interested.
"Crouch sacked his house-elf?"
"Yeah, at the Quidditch World Cup," said Harry, and he launched into the story of the Dark Mark's appearance, and Winky being found with his wand clutched in her hand, and Mr. Crouch's fury. Every time he told the story, it made anger burn in Nessa's chest for the elf, but she was more than mildly surprised that the story appeared to have agitated Sirius as well. By the time Harry had finished speaking, Sirius was on his feet again and had started pacing up and down the cave.
"Let me get this straight," he said after a while, brandishing a fresh chicken leg. "You first saw the elf in the Top Box. She was saving Crouch a seat, right?" They all made sounds of affirmation. "But Crouch didn't turn up for the match?"
"No," said Harry. "I think he said he'd been too busy."
Sirius paced all around the cave in silence. Then he said, "Harry, did you check your pockets for your wand after you'd left the Top Box?"
Nessa's jaw dropped that she hadn't even considered that. She turned to look at Harry, who was thinking hard.
"Erm…No," he said finally. Nessa swore under her breath. "I didn't need to use it until we got in the forest. And then I put my hand in my pocket and all that was in there was my Omnioculars." He stared at Sirius. "Are you saying that whoever conjured the Mark stole my wand in the Top Box?"
"It's possible," said Sirius.
"Winky didn't steal that wand!" Hermione insisted.
"She wasn't the only one up there with us," Nessa reminded her calmly. She didn't know if Sirius was implicating the elf, but she severely hoped not. She didn't tend to be as up in arms about their treatment as Hermione did, but it would certainly piss her off, and her mind was already reeling.
She should have considered that Harry had lost his wand before they'd gone into the forest. They carried their wands everywhere by habit, but he'd said he'd dropped it, and she'd simply believed him, even though it made no sense that Winky would have taken the wand, even if she'd seen it on the ground.
Elves were so deeply ingrained to obey wizards, so severely brainwashed into believing that their treatment was just, that they didn't deserve to use magic in the same way as wizards. Disobeying was more severe for them than simply being told off, as was clear in the fact that Winky had been fired for her disobedience. She'd not have risked it, would she?
The odds were low. And yet this alternative left a lot more open questions. The biggest one being, why would they have stolen Harry's wand at all when they'd had wands of their own?
"Who else was in the box with you?" Sirius said, his brow furrowed.
"Loads of people," Tori said, crossing her arms. "Cornelius Fudge was talking to some Bulgarian ministers…the Malfoys —"
"The Malfoys!" Ron said suddenly, so loudly that his voice echoed around the cave, and caused Buckbeak to toss his head nervously. Nessa jumped and eyed him distastefully. "I bet it was Lucius Malfoy!"
"Anyone else?" Sirius asked his daughter.
"Ludo Bagman," she said with a shrug. The twins shared a dark look with each other.
"I don't know anything about Bagman except that he used to be a Beater for the Wimbourne Wasps," said Sirius, still pacing. "What's he like?"
"He's okay," said Harry. "He keeps offering to help me with the Triwizard Tournament."
"Does he now?" Sirius said, frowning. "I wonder why he'd do that?"
"Says he's taken a liking to me," said Harry.
"And only Harry," Nessa said to Sirius. "Because he hasn't been helping Cedric at all —"
Sirius paused in his pacing to look at her. There was a momentary suspicion in his gaze before he eyed her carefully.
"This is Cedric Diggory?" he said, nodding when she nodded as well. "That's a bloke that's taken a liking to you, if those articles by Rita Skeeter are to be believed."
George snorted derisively from behind her, and Nessa gave him an exasperated look before looking back at Sirius.
"Is that relevant?" she said.
"You haven't written back to Remus," he said. "Did you do something to piss off that Skeeter woman?"
Nessa rolled her eyes. She hadn't written back to Remus. He'd assumed that she'd irritated Rita Skeeter, and while it was true, she hadn't appreciated the assumption. Or the scolding he'd placed within his last letter. Even if he had warned her not to antagonize the reporter to begin with, and she'd clearly not listened.
"I told her to mind her own business around Harry," she said dismissively. Sirius raised an eyebrow as if he severely doubted she was telling him the entire story. "I'd rather it were me than him."
Sirius' mouth twitched at the corners.
"You remind me of your father," he said. "He was thick like you too. Rita Skeeter isn't the sort of woman you want working against you, Vanessa —"
"Don't call me that," she snapped in irritation. Sirius raised his hands in placation. "And I could care less about her. Being painted as a slut is really the least of my concerns at the moment. There's nothing going on with me and Cedric, and I don't know how we got on this subject to begin with."
Sirius snorted, and gave her an impatient look.
"I could have guessed that there was nothing going on between you and Diggory," he said dismissively, looking over at George, who had a dark expression on his face still. "The way the two of you look at each other, I'd be surprised if you noticed anyone else at all."
George's expression gentled some, his eyes meeting hers briefly before she cleared her throat, blushing to the roots of her hair and looking away from him.
"We were talking about Bagman," she reminded, ignoring the sniggering of Tori and Fred. "And his interest in only Harry as a champion. That doesn't seem odd to you?"
"It does," Sirius conceded, allowing the change of subject.
It was Hermione who took pity on her, though.
"We saw him in the forest just before the Dark Mark appeared," Hermione told Sirius. He raised an eyebrow. "Batman, I mean. Remember?" she said to Harry and Ron.
Harry nodded, looking thoughtful and Nessa tried not to find this annoying. He hadn't mentioned a single thing about Bagman being there that night though she supposed that he might have not considered it at all worth mentioning.
Ron, however, seemed annoyed that Hermione had brought it up at all.
"Yeah, but he didn't stay in the forest, did he?" said Ron. "The moment we told him about the riot, he went off to the campsite."
"How d'you know?" Hermione shot back. "How d'you know where he Disapparated to?"
"Come off it," said Ron incredulously. "Are you saying you reckon Ludo Bagman conjured the Dark Mark?"
"It's more likely he did it than Winky," said Hermione stubbornly.
"Told you," Ron said, looking meaningfully at Sirius. "She's obsessed with house —"
Tori rolled her eyes before Sirius could cut him off, seeing Hermione opening her mouth to retort.
"What is going on with you two?" she said, looking between Ron and Hermione. "The bickering is driving me half-mad. Is it because of Krum again?"
Ron turned to glare at her and Harry made a frantic motion with his hand in front of his neck, but Tori ignored him.
"Why should I care what Krum is doing?"
Tori smirked, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms across her chest.
"Don't play stupid," she said. "If you fancy her, you can just say that —"
Ron spluttered, Hermione went crimson, and Harry groaned as if he were in pain. Nessa covered her mouth to keep from laughing when Sirius rolled his eyes to the ceiling, giving Tori a reproachful look for distracting them from the reason they'd met to begin with.
Personally, Nessa didn't know why he bothered. She'd seen such difficulty in Sirius' behavior before and she suspected that Tori had inherited her insubordination from the man before them.
"I do not fancy her!" Ron said emphatically.
Tori snorted.
"Please," she said incredulously. "You bicker constantly. What else would it be?"
"I — well, that's — it's not —" Ron pointed at her accusingly when her amusement grew as he tried to find the words to speak. "You and Fred bicker all the time! How is that different?"
George coughed, shoving his hands in his pockets and grinning at the cave ceiling when Fred and Tori froze and looked at each other briefly. Sirius' eyes bounced between Hermione and Ron before he looked between Fred and Tori, his eyes narrowing when Tori refused to meet his eye. Nessa grinned at her best friend's sudden awkwardness.
"Yes, Tori," she said lightheartedly. "How is that any different?"
Tori turned slowly to give her a look full of warning before she turned back to Ron.
"Suppose you've got me there," she said casually. "Now what were we talking —"
"There's something going on between you two isn't there?" Sirius said, clearly in no mood to skip over this information. Fred shoved his hands in his pockets, whistling idly in a way that Nessa did not believe for a moment that he thought was casual.
"No one said that," Tori said. "We were talking about —"
"I knew there was," Sirius growled, looking at Fred as if he might set him ablaze. "I asked them last year and they all said there wasn't —"
"There wasn't," Tori said hastily. Sirius raised an eyebrow.
"But there is now."
It wasn't a question, but he was looking for an answer from one of them anyway. Tori rolled her eyes, crossing her arms again.
"You're like a dog with a bone, aren't you?" she muttered.
"Is that supposed to be funny?"
"Happy accident," she said with a snort. "How did we start talking about this again?"
"Why are you evading?" Sirius said. "Is there something going on with you two or not?"
Tori hesitated, meeting Fred's gaze again with a grimace. Nessa had no idea what they must have been thinking, but Fred rolled his eyes and shrugged, clearly not finding the conversation altogether too pressing.
Nessa didn't think that Sirius was going to drop the entire thing until one of them answered him anyway, never mind the fact that the rest of them were all looking wildly uncomfortable. All except Ron, who was shaking his head with a grin as if he were in the middle of a funny joke.
"Well?" Sirius pressed when Tori said nothing.
She turned slowly to face him.
"No," she said before grimacing when Fred gave her an incredulous look. "Except not no." She paused, shifting uncomfortably. "So basically what I'm saying is that…"
Nessa rolled her eyes.
"This is ridiculous," she said impatiently. "They're dating. They just haven't said anything because they were afraid that Ron would be…himself."
George snorted, but Ron didn't even appear to have heard. His jaw had dropped and he was looking at them all as if he didn't quite understand English.
"Quit joking around," he said when the silence continued. When none of them said anything, he turned green. "That's — that's — no, absolutely not. You're family —"
"For Heaven's sake, no, she isn't," Hermione huffed. "She lives with you, there's a big difference. Personally, I don't know how you didn't notice before now. Even Harry noticed."
Ron whirled on Harry, who grimaced as if he had swallowed something disgusting.
"You knew?" he said incredulously before shaking his head hard. "No, absolutely not. You can't — I'm going to — to —"
"Since when?" Sirius said flatly. Ron nodded fiercely, pointing at him.
"Yes," he said. "Since when?"
Tori rolled her eyes.
"December."
"December?" Ron said. "You're joking. This is a joke."
Sirius wasn't even looking at him. He was eyeing Fred distastefully.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" he demanded.
Tori gave him an incredulous look, and Ron nodded at his brother as if he was happy someone was speaking some sense. Fred met Sirius' gaze without flinching.
"I'm not going to apologize to you for being with her," he said seriously. Ron snorted derisively, but Sirius didn't appear to find these words amusing at all. "And not just because she'll hex my bollocks off, and I find her far scarier than you, but because I don't feel like the way I feel about her is anything to be ashamed of —"
"Strongly disagree," Ron interjected, silencing when Nessa gave him a hard look.
"Your opinion," Fred continued, shooting his brother a withering look. "Nor anyone else's will change how I feel about her, so if we could get back to what we were talking about before like Tori asked, you'd be saving us all a lot of breath."
Ron scoffed as if the possibility of moving on now were entirely outside the realm of possibility, but Sirius merely stared at Fred for a long time without a word as if he were weighing his options.
"You're taking this seriously?" he said eventually.
"For Merlin's sake," Tori snapped. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And I don't know where you get off —"
Fred interrupted her before she could say something that might start another awkward moment.
"Yes."
Sirius looked between them several times, his daughter's silent fuming not even appearing to faze him at all. He nodded at Fred once, and then turned back to Harry, picking up the conversation as if there had never been an interruption.
"When the Dark Mark had been conjured, and the elf had been discovered holding Harry's wand, what did Crouch do?"
Ron stared at him, his mouth half-open, pointing at Tori and Fred frantically.
"Now wait a second, what about —"
Sirius held up a hand to silence Ron.
"Went to look in the bushes," said Harry. "But there wasn't anyone else there."
"Of course," Sirius muttered, pacing up and down again. "Of course, he'd want to pin it on anyone but his own elf…and then he sacked her?"
"Yes," said Hermione in a heated voice. "He sacked her, just because she hadn't stayed in her tent and let herself get trampled —"
Ron, who was still shocked and disgusted by the news of Tori, seemed to take his frustration with the fact that Sirius had dropped the conversation so easily out on Hermione instead.
"Hermione, will you give it a rest with the elf!" said Ron heatedly.
Sirius shook his head and said, "She's got the measure of Crouch better than you have, Ron. If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
The words silenced Ron with a scowl, and Hermione gave him a haughty look that he deliberately ignored. Sirius ran a hand over his unshaven face, evidently thinking hard.
"All these absences of Barty Crouch's…he goes to the trouble of making sure his house-elf saves him a seat at the Quidditch World Cup, but doesn't bother to turn up and watch. He works very hard to reinstate the Triwizard Tournament, and then stops coming to that too…It's not like Crouch. If he's ever taken a day off work because of illness before this, I'll eat Buckbeak."
Buckbeak made a noise that was clearly intended to convey how offensive he found this remark, and Tori pursed her lips to keep from laughing. Nessa was more focused on the way that Sirius was speaking about Crouch, however, sounding far more familiar with him than she'd expected from someone who had been locked away in Azkaban with little to no human interaction or news of the outside world.
"You sound as if you know him," she said, voicing her thoughts aloud.
Sirius' face darkened immediately. He suddenly looked as menacing as he had the night when they'd first met him, the night when they'd all believed him to be a murderer. Fred shifted.
"Perhaps I should be more afraid of him than I am, eh?" he muttered to George and Nessa, eyeing Sirius with hesitation. "You don't think he could eat me, do you?"
Nessa snorted, elbowing him in the side and giving George a hard look when he started sniggering.
"Oh, I know Crouch all right," Sirius said quietly. "He was the one who gave the order for me to be sent to Azkaban — without a trial."
"What?" said Ron, Hermione, and Nessa together.
"You're kidding!" said Harry and the twins, affronted.
It was Tori, however, who seemed to find this news the most upsetting.
"They didn't give you a trial?" she whispered, her entire body appearing to cave in on itself.
Nessa grimaced, squeezing her hand in support. It was not at all surprising that Tori took this news the hardest, and not only because he was her father and he hadn't been given a fair trial. But because, only the day before, she'd been raging against him for his choices the night he'd been arrested, and had been angrier still that he'd said not a word in his defense.
To find out that he hadn't even been given the opportunity to mount on, that he had just been thrown into a cell like trash…it altered her worldview a little. It warped the image she'd had of how that night had looked…and whether her father had really fought to be with her as much as she didn't want to admit that he had.
"No, I didn't," Sirius said, taking another bite of chicken and eyeing Tori in concern. "Crouch used to be Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, didn't you know?"
They all shook their heads.
"He was tipped for the next Minister of Magic," said Sirius. "He's a great wizard, Barty Crouch, powerfully magical — and power-hungry. Oh never a Voldemort supporter," he said, reading the look that Nessa and Harry shared. "No, Barty Crouch was always very outspoken against the Dark Side. But then a lot of people who were against the Dark Side…well, you wouldn't understand…you're too young…"
"That's what my dad said at the World Cup," said Ron with a trace of irritation in his voice. "Try us, why don't you?"
A grin flashed across Sirius' thin face.
"All right, I'll try you…" He walked once up the cave, back again, and then said, "Imagine that Voldemort's powerful now. You don't know who his supporters are, you don't know who's working for him and who isn't; you know he can control people so that they do terrible things without being able to stop themselves. You're scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing…the Ministry of Magic's in disarray, they don't know what to do, they're trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere…panic…confusion…that's how it used to be."
He paused, letting them imagine it for themselves, but Nessa wished that he wouldn't have. She often felt like she felt too much, tried too hard to understand the motives and emotions as others. Sometimes it made her feel good — like she had the ability to empathize in a way that others didn't, like she could understand someone enough to forgive and forget or help them process their emotions or give them advice. Other times, like now, it felt like a curse.
She didn't want to imagine what any of that was like. She didn't want to wonder what it would be like to wake up one day and hope she didn't see her brother's name among the list of dead in the paper. She didn't want to wonder if Tori was in hiding or dead or forced to follow a man she despised down to the core of her. She didn't want to wonder if she'd live to the next day or the next week or the next month, if they'd give her the mercy of death or torture her until she wished that they had. She didn't want to question the loyalty of her friends or wonder if the woman she got her coffee from in the morning was going to alert Voldemort that she had been spotted in the area. She didn't want to imagine being so terrified for the safety of her brother's life that she couldn't eat, sleep, or breathe without dread building up in her chest.
Her entire body tensed, her heart pounded, her throat constricted at the mere thought of it. The reality would be breathtaking. She nearly jumped out of her skin when George stepped up so close behind her that she could feel the heat of him. It was still so awkward and tense between them, but she didn't care; if he was going to so willingly give her comfort, she was going to take it. His hands slid to her waist when she leaned back into him, trying to remind herself that Voldemort had not come back. He was as close to dead as a person could be, and she was worrying about nothing.
"Well, times like that bring out the best in some people and the worst in others," Sirius said after a moment. "Crouch's principles might've been good in the beginning — I wouldn't know. He rose quickly through the Ministry, and he started ordering very harsh measures against Voldemort's supporters. The Aurors were given new powers — powers to kill rather than capture, for instance. And I wasn't the only one who was handed straight to the dementors without trial. Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorized the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side. He had his supporters, mind you — plenty of people thought he was going about things the right way, and there were a lot of witches and wizards clamoring for him to take over as Minister of Magic. When Voldemort disappeared, it looked like only a matter of time until Crouch got the top job. But then something rather unfortunate happened…" Sirius smiled grimly. "Crouch's own son was caught with a group of Death Eaters who'd managed to talk their way out of Azkaban. Apparently they were trying to find Voldemort and return him to power."
There was a resounding silence within the cave at this news, but it was Hermione who came to her wits first.
"Crouch's son was caught?" she gasped.
"Yep," said Sirius, throwing his chicken bone to Buckbeak, flinging himself back on the ground beside the loaf of bread, and tearing it in half. "Nasty little shock for old Barty, I'd imagine. Should have spent more time at home with his family, shouldn't he? Ought to have left the office early once in a while…got to know his own son."
He began to wolf down large pieces of bread as Nessa's mind reeled at the news. She'd never have guessed it. The man who was so proud of the fact that he had followed every rule in the book…
Not only had he bent many of those rules by allowing people to use Unforgivable Curses — spells that were always illegal, under all circumstances — as a means to control the spread of darkness, but he'd also raised a son who had joined the ranks of the people he so despised. It was almost unbelievable. And while she understood what Sirius was saying, she refused to believe that him working so often could have been the reason that he'd become a Death Eater. Certainly not?
Parents gave their children tools to be successful as they got older, and the decisions they made after the fact were solely their own. And while she might believe that being at home more often or getting to know his son on a more personal level could have prevented him from rebelling, from feeling resentful and angry…it was entirely another to turn those feelings into such deep hatred. Not just for his father, but for basic human life. Could a person hate their father so much for being ambitious that they threw themselves into torture and murder just because they knew that he would despise it? Just to stick it to the man?
"Was his son a Death Eater?" said Harry.
"No idea," said Sirius, still stuffing down bread. "I was in Azkaban myself when he was brought in. This is mostly stuff I've found out since I got out. The boy was definitely caught in the company of people I'd bet my life were Death Eaters — but he might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like the house-elf."
"Did Crouch try and get his son off?" Hermione whispered.
Sirius let out a laugh that was much more like a bark.
"Crouch let his son off? I thought you had the measure of him, Hermione! Anything that threatened to tarnish his reputation had to go; he had dedicated his whole life to becoming Minister of Magic. You saw him dismiss a devoted house-elf because she associated him with the Dark Mark again — doesn't that tell you what he's like?"
"But it's his son," Nessa said, wrapping a hand around her throat. She didn't know what for — her throat felt tight from the despair of it all. "Surely he…Even if they weren't close, he had to have cared for him somehow."
"Crouch's fatherly affection stretched just far enough to give his son a trial, and by all accounts, it wasn't much more than an excuse for Crouch to show how much he hated the boy…then he sent him straight to Azkaban."
"I think I'm going to be sick," Tori whispered, her hand gripping Fred's forearm as if he were the only one keeping her standing.
It was hard for Nessa to tell if it was because Sirius hadn't been granted a trial, Crouch's son being thrown to the dementors by his father, or that Crouch was so ambitious that he'd have shown such hatred toward his own family. Perhaps it was all three. Nessa herself couldn't bring herself to understand it.
She hated Voldemort. She hated Death Eaters. She hated what they stood for, what they represented. But would she have done the same thing? She didn't think so. She hoped not. She didn't have children, of course, but it was hard to imagine having a child, loving them unconditionally, raising them and watching them grow…and then tossing them aside to the worst of society without even a care. It was hard to imagine how it would feel to love someone so deeply, and then send them to a place that caused grown men to shudder in fear. How did a person do something like that? How did they simply…turn off the love they felt for someone because they'd done something horrible? No regrets, no doubts, no second thoughts? There was no question that if he had been a Death Eater, he deserved to be in prison, but to have no one advocate for him? To have no one love him? To have no one care if he lived or died?
It was a horrible, heartbreaking thing to imagine.
"How could he have —" Tori shook her head as if she were dislodging ugly thoughts. "How could he? Why wouldn't he have let someone else handle the trial? He gave his son to the dementors?"
Sirius didn't look remotely amused anymore as he looked at her.
"I don't know why he did it," he said. "It was a lose-lose situation for him either way, but it — it's hard to imagine there was anything that you could do that would make me stop loving you enough to subject you to a fate like that."
The words were spoken quietly, without even an ounce of doubt, and it tugged on Nessa's heart, watching him and Tori stare at each other silently, one of their faces open and honest and the other heavily guarded. After a long moment, Tori squeezed Nessa's hand hard and she cleared her throat to get Sirius' attention. She almost thought it wouldn't work, his gaze remaining on Tori as if he couldn't find the strength to look away from her, but eventually he looked over at her in question. She hadn't thought about what she was going to say — she'd only done what she'd needed to keep Tori calm — so she asked the first thing she could think of.
"How old was he?"
"Couldn't have been more than nineteen, by my estimation" Sirius said grimly. "I saw the dementors bringing him in, watched them through the bars in my cell door. They took him into a cell near mine. He was screaming for his mother by nightfall. He went quiet after a few days, though…they all went quiet in the end…except when they shrieked in their sleep…"
For a moment, the deadened look in Sirius' eyes became more pronounced than ever, as though shutters had closed behind them. Tori took a shaky breath beside her.
"So he's still in Azkaban?" said Harry.
"No," Sirius said dully. "No, he's not in there anymore. He died about a year after they brought him in."
"This has got to be the worst story I've ever heard," Fred muttered. "How did he die?"
"Despair, madness, hunger," Sirius said with a shrug. "Who can tell? He wasn't the only one. Most go mad in there, and plenty stop eating in the end. They lose the will to live. You could always tell when a death was coming, because the dementors could sense it, they got excited. That boy looked pretty sickly when he arrived. Crouch, being an important Ministry member, he and his wife were allowed a deathbed visit. That was the last time I saw Barty Crouch, half carrying his wife past my cell. She died herself, apparently, shortly afterward. Grief. Wasted away just like the boy. Crouch never came for his son's body. The dementors buried him outside the fortress; I watched them do it."
There were no words to explain how horribly depressing that was. Sirius threw aside the bread he had just lifted to his mouth and instead picked up a flask of pumpkin juice and drained it.
"So old Crouch lost it all, just when he thought he had it made," he continued, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "One moment, a hero, poised to become Minister of Magic…next, his son dead, his wife dead, the family name dishonored, and, so I've heard since I escaped, a big drop in popularity. Once the boy had died, people started feeling a bit more sympathetic toward the son and started asking how a nice young lad from a good family had gone so badly astray. The conclusion was that his father never cared much for him. So Cornelius Fudge got the top job, and Crouch was shunted sideways into the Department of International Magical Cooperation."
There was a long silence as they all weighed the information they'd been given about Crouch. It made more sense now: why Crouch had overreacted to Winky being caught with Harry's wand. It had reminded him of his old scandal and his fall from grace within the Ministry. He'd done the only thing he'd been good at at that point — gotten rid of the thing that had the potential to smear his name again.
"Moody says Crouch is obsessed with catching Dark wizards," Harry told Sirius.
Nessa's head whipped around to look at him. When in the hell had he told him that? Was Harry meeting with Moody outside of classes? And if he was, why would he be telling him something like that?
"Yeah, I've heard it's become a bit of a mania with him," said Sirius, nodding. "If you ask me, he still thinks he can bring back the old popularity by catching one more Death Eater."
"And he sneaked up here to search Snape's office!" said Ron triumphantly, looking at Hermione.
Nessa rolled her eyes.
"He didn't sneak up here to search Snape's office," she said with an eye roll. "He took ingredients from the store room —"
"How do you know?" Ron said. "Snape said someone broke into his office too. That's what he told Harry —"
"Come off it," she scoffed. "He could have thought that it was where he kept the ingredients. It has nothing to do with Snape being a Death Eater —"
"You're always defending him!"
"It doesn't make sense for him to have searched Snape's office, Ron!" she said in frustration.
"Yeah it does!"
Sirius shook his head.
"No…it doesn't," he said, agreeing with Nessa. The fact that he wasn't blaming Snape as well would have sent Nessa reeling backward if George wasn't still letting her lean against him. "Listen, if Crouch wants to investigate Snape, why hasn't he been coming to judge the tournament? It would be an ideal excuse to make regular visits to Hogwarts and keep an eye on him."
Nessa huffed. The entire thing was ridiculous. It was always Snape they were blaming. Moody was practicing Unforgivable Curses on students, and yet they were arguing about whether or not Snape was a Death Eater simply because he hated Harry.
"So, you think Snape could be up to something, then?" Harry said, but Hermione broke in.
"Look, I agree with Nessa," she said. "I don't care what you say, Dumbledore trusts Snape —"
"Oh, give it a rest, Hermione," said Ron impatiently. "I know Dumbledore's brilliant and everything, but that doesn't mean a really clever wizard couldn't fool him —"
"Why did Snape save Harry's life in the first year, then? Why didn't he just let him die?"
"I dunno — maybe he thought Dumbledore would kick him out —"
"What d'you think, Sirius?" Harry said loudly, and Ron and Hermione stopped bickering to listen.
"I think they've both got a point," said Sirius, looking thoughtfully at Ron and Hermione. "Ever since I found out Snape was teaching here, I've wondered why Dumbledore hired him. Snape's always been fascinated by the Dark Arts, he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid, he was," Sirius added, and Harry, Ron, Tori, and the twins grinned at each other. Nessa and Hermione rolled their eyes. "Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in seventh year, and he was part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters." Sirius held up his fingers and began ticking off names. "Rosier and Wilkes — they were both killed by Aurors the year before Voldemort fell. The Lestranges — they're a married couple — they're in Azkaban. Avery — from what I've heard he wormed his way out of trouble by saying he'd been acting under the Imperius Curse — he's still at large. But as far as I know, Snape was never accused of being a Death Eater — not that that means much. Plenty of them were never caught. And Snape's certainly clever and cunning enough to keep himself out of trouble."
Nessa scoffed.
"This is ridiculous," she snapped, pulling away from George. "You're trying to blame a man, who, by all accounts, has kept Harry safe for the last four years —"
"He hates me," Harry scoffed.
"There's a big difference between hating someone and wanting them dead!" Nessa argued. "I hate Dudley, but I'd never kill him!"
"Snape knows Karkaroff pretty well, but he wants to keep that quiet," said Ron to Sirius as another reason why she could be wrong about him. Nessa threw up her hands in frustration — it was like talking to a wall.
"Yeah, you should've seen Snape's face when Karkaroff turned up in Potions yesterday!" Harry said quickly. "Karkaroff wanted to talk to Snape, he says Snape's been avoiding him. Karkaroff looked really worried. He showed Snape something on his arm, but I couldn't see what it was."
"He showed Snape something on his arm?" said Sirius, looking frankly bewildered. He ran his fingers distractedly through his hair, then shrugged again. "Well, I've no idea what that's about…but if Karkaroff's genuinely worried, and he's going to Snape for answers…"
Sirius stared at the cave wall, then made a grimace of frustration.
"There's still the fact that Dumbledore trusts Snape, and I know Dumbledore trusts where a lot of other people wouldn't, but I just can't see him letting Snape teach at Hogwarts if he'd ever worked for Voldemort."
"Thank you!" Nessa muttered.
"Why are Moody and Crouch so keen to get into Snape's office then?" said Ron stubbornly.
"I don't really think Moody is the one you want to be relying on here, Ron," Tori scoffed. "He's one hex away from being admitted."
"He's a brilliant man, Moody," Sirius said.
"He's out of his tree, mate," George said with a snort.
"Totally demented," Fred agreed.
Nessa and Tori turned to look at them in disbelief. As far as they'd known, the twins were quite fond of Moody.
"What?" Fred said defensively. "Just because we think he's cool doesn't mean we're stupid."
"You'd have to be one sandwich short of a picnic to think he's got all of his Quaffles in one basket."
Fred grinned, and hit George on the arm playfully.
"One slice short of a loaf —" he said.
"Here we go…" Tori said when George grinned back at his twin, looking up at the ceiling in a plead for patience.
"Lights are on, but no one's home," he said.
"Dumb as a sack full of rocks."
"Fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down."
Fred guffawed.
"Good one," he said, opening his mouth to say some other ridiculous idiom that Nessa was half sure they were making up at this point. Tori covered his mouth with her hand before he could say anything else.
"Please, put me out of my misery," she said to Sirius, who was looking between the twins as if he thought they might actually be dumb as a sack full of rocks.
"Well," he said slowly. "I wouldn't put it past Mad-Eye to have searched every single teacher's office when he got to Hogwarts. He takes his Defence Against the Dark Arts seriously, Moody. I'm not sure he trusts anyone at all, and after the things he's seen, it's not surprising. I'll say this for Moody, though, he never killed if he could help it. Always brought people in alive where possible. He was tough, but he never descended to the level of the Death Eaters. Crouch, though…he's a different matter…is he really ill? If he is, why did he make the effort to drag himself up to Snape's office? And if he's not…what's he up to? Why does he need ingredients for a Polyjuice Potion? What was he doing at the World Cup that was so important he didn't turn up to the Top Box? What's he been doing while he should have been judging the tournament?"
Too many questions, and not nearly enough answers. Not a single answer actually, which Nessa so despised. Sirius lapsed into silence, still staring at the cave wall. Buckbeak was ferreting around on the rocky floor, looking for bones he might have overlooked. Finally, Sirius looked up at Ron and the twins.
"You say your brother's Crouch's personal assistant? Any chance you could ask him if he's seen Crouch lately?"
"I can try," Ron said doubtfully, sharing a look with Fred and George. "Better not make it sound like I reckon Crouch is up to anything dodgy, though. Percy loves Crouch."
Fred snorted.
"Worships him, more like," he said. "I wouldn't get your hopes up. If he tells us anything, it won't be much."
Sirius nodded, frowning.
"And you might try and find out whether they've got any leads on Bertha Jorkins while you're at it," said Sirius, gesturing to the second copy of the Daily Prophet.
"Bagman told me they hadn't," said Harry.
"Yes, he's quoted in the article in there," said Sirius, nodding at the paper. "Blustering on about how bad Bertha's memory is. Well, maybe she's changed since I knew her, but the Bertha I knew wasn't forgetful at all — quite the reverse. She was a bit dim, but she had an excellent memory for gossip. It used to get her into a lot of trouble; she never knew when to keep her mouth shut. I can see her being a bit of a liability at the Ministry of Magic…maybe that's why Bagman didn't bother to look for her for so long…."
Nessa did not like the sound of that.
If she didn't have a good memory, didn't know how to keep her mouth shut, liked to gossip, and had been in Albania at the time of her disappearance…that didn't exactly bode well in Nessa's mind.
Sirius heaved an enormous sigh and rubbed his shadowed eyes.
"You'd better get back to school," he said, getting back to his feet. "Now listen…" He looked particularly hard at Harry. "I don't want you lot sneaking out of school to see me, all right? Just send notes to me here. I still want to hear about anything odd. But you're not to go leaving Hogwarts without permission; it would be an ideal opportunity for someone to attack you."
Nessa relaxed. At least she wasn't the only person on edge about Harry these days, and she appreciated that Sirius was being serious with him about his rule-breaking. He was just stupid enough to sneak out to see Sirius, knowing that he was so close.
"No one's tried to attack me so far, except a dragon and a couple of grindylows," said Harry, but Sirius scowled at him.
"I don't care…I'll breathe freely once this tournament is over, and that's not until June." That made two of them. Nessa wasn't sure at this point if she worried about anything that wasn't Harry. Except maybe her current fight with George. "And don't forget, if you're talking about me among yourselves, call me Snuffles, okay? I'll walk to the edge of the village with you —"
"We shouldn't go down together," Tori said hastily before he could finish. Nessa looked at her carefully, under the impression that she was merely trying to make an excuse to get away and clear her head, though she was also sure that some of what she said was steeped in concern that they'd be caught. "There's too many of us to not be noticed —"
"She's right," Sirius said to their surprise. Nessa knew he didn't know Tori very well, but it didn't take a genius to see that she was trying to get away with not walking down to the village with him. "You three go first," he said to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. "I'd like a word with your sister about writing back to Remus."
Harry grinned at her cheekily, waving to Sirius as the three of them made their way toward the exit.
"As long as I'm not the one being yelled at," he said. "She likes yelling at me so much, you should really just lay into her —"
"I will push you down the mountain, Harry," Nessa said with an eye roll.
Harry laughed loudly before he, Ron, and Hermione disappeared through the fissure they'd come through originally. Sirius waited a long moment before he spoke again.
"You should work harder at acting," he said to Tori. "I know you're just trying to get away from me."
Tori huffed.
"That's not what I was doing —"
"Tori, listen," Sirius interrupted. "I understand that I don't know you very well and you don't know me, and while I'd prefer to have this conversation alone, I've doubts that these three would allow it anyway. And I'm not going to lie to you, but I think Vanessa might have unresolved anger issues that are a bit frightening —"
"She's got a bit more than unresolved anger issues, I'll tell you that," Tori snorted, ignoring Nessa's scoff from beside her.
"So we'll just have to have the conversation in front of them because I'm at a loss at what to do about this," he said, running a hand down his face. "I understand that you don't see me as a father figure, and I don't have any right to be demanding anything from you, but I — you are my daughter, Victoria," he said imploringly. "I would like to know you. There's a lot of whispers going on outside, and I want to know you — and have you know me — in the event that any of them turn out to be true. You deserved a father, and I couldn't be there for you then, but I'm here now and it —"
Sirius paused with a loud exhale, trying to find a way to express how he felt.
"You aren't my father," Tori said bluntly. They both flinched at the words. "That came out wrong," she said, looking at Nessa in a panic. Nessa squeezed her hand and nodded at her to continue. "I mean that…well, I don't have a father. I went my whole life without one, and I — I don't need you to act like one for me. I don't — I don't think I want that."
"Victoria…" Sirius said, brokenly, but Tori raised a hand to silence him.
"Don't," she said shakily. "Please don't make this harder for me. I — I know that none of this was your choice, but it wasn't mine either, and you can't…you can't just come back into my life expecting to pick up where we left off. You don't know me, and I don't know you. But I —" She looked at Nessa again and grimaced. "I'm really not good at the emotional stuff," she said apologetically. "But you are here, and I — if you can be okay with the fact that I don't need you to be a father to me then I — I'm okay with…trying…to have some sort of…relationship."
There was an awkward silence as they looked at each other and Nessa was sincerely wishing that this was a less complex situation that wouldn't have required her to be standing there waiting for Sirius to decide if he could do what Tori was asking.
It was a difficult ask. On the one hand, he got to have a relationship with his daughter. On the other, it wasn't anywhere close to the relationship he wanted with her, and Nessa could see that particular detail weighing on his expression, the pain of the thought evident on his face.
For her part, though, Tori stood tall and resolute, despite her shaking hands, and Nessa was at least proud that she'd agreed to try and have some sort of relationship with Sirius, rather than continuing to run from it, and that she'd had the guts to express herself out loud.
Sirius broke eye contact with Tori briefly to meet Nessa's eye as if he were trying to get a read on if she thought this was what was best for his daughter, before he looked back at Tori.
"Alright," he said, sounding slightly put out. "I — I can try that."
Tori relaxed immediately.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
There was another long silence between them all as they tried to find something to say to end the awkward tension between them all before Sirius sighed loudly.
"I'll go down with you four in just a moment, but I would like a word with you," he said, turning to Nessa.
Nessa rolled her eyes.
"Look, I'll write to Remus when I get back, alright —?"
"No, not about that," Sirius said, waving her away dismissively. "I trust that you will when you're ready. I want to get your opinion on something — Remus says you've got a good head on your shoulders, you get a good read on people."
She blinked at him in confusion.
"Okaaay," she said slowly.
"How do you feel about this Crouch fellow?"
She shrugged.
"I don't know much about him," she said truthfully. "He's very stuck up, incredibly rigid. A rule-abider as far as I can tell, and I don't imagine that he's the one that's got it out for Harry. Other than the fact that he hasn't been at the tournament to even see Harry in any dangerous situations, he just doesn't particularly show much interest in him. Even at the World Cup — he did the usual double take at his name, but he hardly spoke or looked to him otherwise."
Sirius nodded, scratching his head.
"I agree," he said slowly. "I don't think he's got it out for Harry, but his behavior is certainly odd. And you still don't believe that it's Karkaroff?"
"No," she said. "Dumbledore trusts him, and he seems like too much of a coward to be doing anything untoward. I think his desperation to speak with Snape about…whatever it is…is proof enough of that. He doesn't want to rock the boat — not like that anyway, though he favors Krum in all of the tasks." Sirius frowned, thinking hard, and Nessa couldn't help but say, "What aren't you saying?"
Sirius blinked, a sad smile lighting his features.
"You remind me of your mother," he said sadly. "She could spot a secret from a mile off." When she didn't respond, he sighed heavily. "I don't want to alarm you…and I don't want Harry distracted. The tournament should be his only concern at the moment."
"Tell me," she demanded.
She could decide for herself if whatever it was would distract Harry from the tournament or not.
"The whispers," Sirius said after a moment's hesitation. "They're more…alarming than I led him to believe. It's beginning to feel like it did the last time Voldemort rose to power. It's an odd…unsettling feeling."
"You don't think he's coming back, do you?" George said, looking as horrified as Nessa had ever seen him. Sirius shook his head slowly.
"I'm not sure," he said. "And I'm only telling you this because I know that you're the only other person in the world who has Harry's safety as a top priority. If Peter went back to Voldemort, there's a good chance that they're working on a plan to bring him back to power."
"And you really think he'd have done that?" Tori said. "Even knowing how angry he'd be at him for abandoning him in the first place?"
"He hasn't got much choice," Sirius said darkly. "And Peter…you don't know him well enough. He needs to feel protected by someone powerful. I've no doubt he's gone back to him. I'm just not sure whether the plan they've got will work or if Dumbledore can manage to thwart it, but if he comes back…"
Nessa felt like her world was tilting, like her heart was going to pound out of her chest, like her stomach was dropping out.
"He'll come after Harry," she said shakily, though there was no doubt in her mind that this was correct.
Sirius nodded.
"It is the very last thing I want," he said grimly. "But if he comes back…Harry will be in more danger than he's ever been. It's possible that more than one of us may have to protect Harry with our life."
You know, I'm writing this and I can't help but see the parallels between Crouch leaving his son and Percy leaving his family. Gross to both of them. They can never make me like Percy.
I've got some RandR and a chapter of Fait to write (and a lot of turkey) on the horizon, so I'll see you soon!