Inês é morta.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin | “This Be The Verse"
o0o
In every way possible, Regulus Black didn’t lead an uneventful life.
It had its milestones, shaping who he was and who he would someday become: the day Mother explained to him the role of “the spare”, and what it meant to exist in the Black shadow; the Sorting Hat, barely on his head, declaring him a Slytherin to inaugurate the Sorting Ceremony; Bellatrix’s enigmatic smile when she opened the heavy door with a click, revealing to his eyeballs a man with a snake-like face, who probably assumed just with that ageless appearance (a no-match to his Father), shoulders draped by a giant anaconda (less impressive than any beast his family possessed), and a few luring, idle words of aristocratic witticism (hardly day-to-day communication in his household) –– just with those, the so-called Dark Lord thought he could bring a scion of House Black down to his quivering knees.
But Regulus would never forget that day. In the presence of a star, even a half-blood homicide dimmed in comparison.
He had been eight. His brother had taken him out of their summer house in Marseille to see a Muggle ballet.
Swan Lake, his brother had told him, after charming his way through the ticket gate. He had secured two seats for him and Regulus in an empty balcony, and while they were waiting for the ballet, Sirius had entertained him with a couple of lame jokes about Muggle spectators as they settled in their seats, only to stop short when the orchestral music began.
Years later, he would still remember how the word Mudbloods had slowly slipped from his mind the moment those ballet dancers defied gravity, rising above their own limitations with ethereal grace.
And then Siegfried fell for the black swan.
His brother had narrated stagely, clearly familiar with the tale.
When the ballerina leaped into the air, Sirius rose from his seat and mimicked just the same. But unlike her, he didn’t land so fast. Instead he hovered, descending in a slow curve just because he could, smiling as his feet touched the ground, full of mirth.
A wild, uncontained thing. Disorder.
“Don’t do that again.”
In response, his brother only gave a non-committal huff. They were walking back home, and he could hear the sound of Sirius’s melodic whistle vibrating through the night air. Whenever they walked together, Sirius was always the outward pedestrian, facing the world.
“Come on, it was fun,” Sirius said, but he had withdrawn that devil-may-care manner with a sigh. “Didn’t hurt anyone.”
“You could have fallen and broken your neck.”
Sirius stared at him. “That’s not your true concern. You know I’m full of magic.”
Regulus reduced his walking speed, fingers holding firmly his brother’s wrist. Sirius slowed down with him.
“I don’t know why you brought me there. But really, Étoile?” he looked into his brother’s eyes long and hard. “Black swan?”
Sirius chuckled, his voice muffled behind his hand. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in that buggering ‘prophecy’.”
His typical brother. Never took things seriously, nor believed in anything he couldn’t see with his own eyes. He couldn’t see a heart behind flesh. He couldn’t hear thoughts over the noises of his own. Mother always lamented about her son’s relish in breaking the hearts of many others, including her own. Do you even have a heart to break, Mother? would be the retort. He’d been struck on the face so many times that he wouldn’t even flinch when it happened, emotionless. Then he’d just wave it off when Regulus asked him about their fight. You know how she thinks about my ‘Muggly manners’.
When they crossed a narrow street, they’d heard someone greet them (“Bonsoir, jeunes messieurs,”) and saw a Muggle man with dull eyes and yellow teeth, reeking of cheap alcohol. Sirius returned the greeting (“Merci à vous”) with one of his most beautiful smiles (“Thanks to Mother’s backhand, my facial bone structure was arranged into shape.”) The Mudblood grinned broadly, but the grin faltered at once when his gaze fell on Regulus. Without another word, that thing clamped his mouth shut and hurried out of their sight.
Merlin Save the Blacks. They had been the most feared, hated, and envied people in Wizarding Britain, but their heir had just greeted a Mudblood like an equal.
“We no longer are,” Sirius had said when Regulus voiced his thoughts. “The most hated, perhaps, but not the most feared anymore. I’ve heard them talk through Papa’s library door. It seems even the stuffy old lords Lestrange, Rosier and Nott highly appraised this new politician. Some sod who calls himself the Dark Lord.”
As the heir, sometimes Sirius would be summoned to Father’s study, where he was expected to pick up bits and pieces of how to be a patriarch. But their Father was a distant man. When Sirius had still longed to be closer to Father, he would often try to eavesdrop on whatever Father was doing behind the thick door of his study. The way he said Papa was very sweet, staccato-ly, with an emphasis on the second pa. But Father hardly ever opened the door.
They walked past an old-fashioned townhouse, looking like it was ripped out of the last century. Nestled between the withered vines on its decaying walls was a nameplate –– Edmond Dantès, the only thing about the house that glimmered. Sirius’s eyes lingered on the name for a moment before he continued walking.
“House of Black is long past its prime. It will soon collapse.”
And his brother had said so easily, as if he were merely talking about weathers, as if he were barely related to that “House of Black” at all. Past its prime. As if sixteen centuries of its history were just about the career span of Celestina Warbeck.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Reggie,” he laughed. “One day you’ll understand what I mean today.”
Regulus doubted that very much. At that time, he’d forgone the idea “big brother’s always right” long ago.
“How about this…”
Sirius lowered his tone significantly.
“On this day, in the year 2000, if House Black still exists –– no matter what we do, we’ll meet each other here, in Marseille.” There was a special quality to his voice that made what he’d said momentous. “I’ll take you to Muggle ballet again, and afterwards we can go for drinks like adults do. I’ll pay for it all, of course, because you’ve been right all along.”
Year 2000. That didn’t sound like a real year at all –– the start of another millennium, another age ruled by the Mudbloods. Blacks weren’t ready for it. For them, all the beauty lay in the olden days. Only one of them craved change, and that person was right here, hand curling around Regulus’s, waiting for a response. His grey eyes were like evening mist.
And Regulus shook his hand, despite knowing it was just a silly childhood bet… Or was it?
“Come on, let’s go home. We can sleep together tonight.”
As time passed, Regulus found himself only more fixated with his brother’s words that day, even as their relationship had fractured beyond recognition. In his mind, the handshake had become less like a bet, and more like a challenge he had to win –– a promise he wanted to keep till the very end.
Deep within the core of House Black, a scheme had been brewing, for the family refused to sit idly by and watch his brother, with every passing day, stray further from the path they’d carved for him. Regulus let it happen, even putting his stake in it. What else did he have? The last scraps of his armour were falling down, piece by piece. No matter what, he had to be the right one.
Who was the architect behind this mad strategy?
Since when had there been a fatal flaw?
Artificial light no more. Theatre stage––no more. This time, his brother could no longer leap and land without scratches. But he still moved again –– like a black swan, all fierce grace –– shattering every glass on the long table in his wake.
It must be as fun as before, the way his brother was doing it.
There was shouting and screaming. Chaos spreading like wildfire. Guests detaching themselves from their seats. Flashes of camera from the press. Crumpled white roses scattered across the fine-cut grass of Berkshire. A rampage like this was something that should never happen in a Black establishment –– Wizarding world’s ivory tower. But it seemed that his brother, calamity’s child, begged to differ.
“Manipulators, fuck you all,” he laughed. “Try prying my freedom from my cold, dead hands.”
He didn’t linger to savour the effect of his words. With maddening calmness, Sirius removed the stopper of the Potion phial.
The next second Regulus whipped out his wand –– the cypress wood, dragon heartstring wand that had always served him so well –– ignored the flash of hurt in his brother’s eyes as the curse was released…
But this time, Regulus’s wand had failed him. His brother had downed that purple Potion in one go –– sparing only a few drops in the phial for evidence –– and bared his bobbing throat for everyone there to witness.
“What have you done? What about the betrothal?” The Portuguese Bruxa’s screeching voice tore through the chaos. There was an uncanny perversity to her blind eyes as they stared into the void. Sirius shook his head, meeting her gaze. His eyes were the void.
“It’s too late,” his brother shook his head.
Then he closed the curtains.
“Inês è morta.”
o0o
Petunia Evans had been crouched on the stairs for so long, her knees started to ache.
Mum and Da were still on their holiday, spending their Easter in the sun-drenched Mallorca. Now, sitting all curled up on the stairs, she started to regret not going with them –– there was a date from Vernon she simply couldn’t turn down. She knew her parents didn’t like him very much, but she didn’t care. Vernon was a hundred times a man compared to all the freaks her sister surrounded herself with –– hippie-coded, bat-shit crazy, devoid of all senses of decorum. They were the very reason why she had to stay hidden up the stairs, because one of them was currently sitting in their family’s kitchen like he had any right to be there.
Petunia always prided herself as a young woman with decency. She went to church every Sunday, she kept the kitchen spotless, and some boys at school thought she was fair-looking. She was perfectly ladylike, and most importantly, she was normal. Petunia never giggled too loudly, or made flower petals move without touching them, or brandished a freakish stick and disappeared off to a freakish school for nine months every year. She never hid frog-spawn in her dirty robe pockets, turned her family’s polished teacups into filthy rats, and she certainly never, ever, fraternised with oily, malnourished, freakish little whelps from Spinner’s End (what a hell-hole; why hadn’t they wiped that place off the earth already?)
And she would never, for the love of God, bring a boy from that freak school to their normal, sane house, polluting their perfectly respectable world with another intruder from that unnatural world. Another thing to gossip with her friends at school –– her degenerate sister had dragged home a boy without permission!
This one wasn’t that ugly freak from Spinner’s End, though. His black hair, though dishevelled, was clean and soft. He had a slight limp when Lily led him through the back door, but he was tall, and his gait was rather graceful. Petunia had never seen this boy before, but she supposed he wasn’t as penniless as that wide-eyed, fawning fool trailing after her sister like a lovesick mutt all the way from Spinner’s End.
“Please, Tuney, he’ll only stay here for a moment,” Lily had pleaded, trying to clasp Petunia’s hands in hers. “He’s in a bit of trouble, I can’t leave him out there. Mum and Da will understand––”
“Don’t you Tuney me!” Petunia had snapped, wrenching her hands away in disgust. The quiet boy still didn’t say anything, but something about him filled her with inexplicable hatred. “You always bring trouble to this house, what with your lies, your tricks, your freak friends! What would the neighbours say if they saw –– that this family doesn’t know how to raise their daughters? I hope Mum and Da will punish you when they get home!”
At the last sentence, the boy’s face snapped towards her in a jerky, unnatural motion. For the first time, Petunia looked at him –– really looked at him — and the indignation flooded her. So Lily had handsome boys surrounding her now? And what did Petunia have? Petunia had a kitchen to clean, a church to attend, and a boy she had to try to make an impression…
Now Lily had gone somewhere, and the boy was still in the kitchen. He sat perfectly still, utterly out of place, eyes staring into nothingness. From her hiding place, Petunia could safely watch him without being seen, or attacked –– who would know if the freaks from Lily’s world weren’t a bunch of rabid animals? But this boy was as quiet as a statue, making Petunia wonder if he could speak. What if he didn’t even understand English? Petunia wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t; that school must be full of uncivilised lunatics who communicated through barking and grunting and sign languages.
And what the heck was he wearing? A damnation, no less; he looked like he’d just crawled out of a sacrilegious witchcraft ritual. Petunia shuddered and muttered a quick prayer under her breath –– here she was, trying to be a god-fearing person, and all her sister did was open their door to the devil. His presence in their perfectly normal kitchen felt so wrong, like an eclipse on a bright day. Everytime small movement he made put Petunia on edge. A tilt of his head. A shift of his leg. A tug at his collar (she felt her cheeks burn). A swipe of his index finger over his upper-lip––
“Are you done watching me?”
Petunia flinched.
Not only did the boy speak English, but effortlessly so in a Queen-like accent.
Embarrassment and anger flooded Petunia in equal measure. She bolted upright on her feet and shouted down the stairs “You freak! My parents will know about this!” at the tops of her voice before stomping upstairs, as far away from the boy as possible. Even then her chest heaved, her cheeks still burning.
“Sirius! They’re coming soon!” Lily’s voice echoed downstairs, and Petunia sniffed. Serious? Sounded like the name of a psychopath. And who were coming soon? She swore, if her freak of a sister had the audacity to bring more of her kind to this house––
“Listen, Evans, about your parents––” The boy’s voice was taut with panic. “Are they going to punish you for real? For letting me be here?”
“Mum and Da? No way!” Her sister laughed, that awful, cackling laugh which always grated on Petunia’s nerves. “They are the best people. Now sit down and stop fretting, Black.”
The boy gave a relieved chuckle, and Petunia felt a coil of envy twisting her insides. Of course everyone was worried about Lily –– beautiful Lily, talented Lily, special Lily, the apple of everyone’s eyes –– Mum and Da and even a handsome posh boy from God-knows-where, probably from Rivendell!
No, Petunia’s eyes were wide-open, horrified. They’re not dating, they must not be dating. If they dare to start snogging in my kitchen, I’ll make sure she’ll be kicked out of this house and never allowed to come back––
“Sirius, your leg needs a Healer,” Lily said in a hushed, insistent tone, her footsteps echoing as she paced.
“I’m fine, Evans.”
“I can take a look––”
“Don’t touch me!”
The entire house froze in silence. For a long moment, there was no sound but the low buzz of the refrigerator.
“... I’m sorry,” the boy said at last, much quieter now. “Didn’t mean to lash out at you. You can, er, kick me out if you like. I must be overstaying your welcome.”
“It’s fine, Sirius. I’m not mad at you,” Lily reassured him tentatively. She did sound a bit annoyed, but she was trying her best to suppress it. “Your leg is worrisome, though.”
“Didn’t expect my brother would point his wand at me,” the boy mumbled. “Family’s code my arse. If the Portkey had been activated only half a minute later…”
“But you did it!” Lily switched her tone to encouraging. “It’s all done.”
“Yeah, I did it,” was the dull reply. If anything, he sounded drained, hollowed-out. “No more betrothals, no more weddings. Lifetime bachelorhood, what a bliss.”
Among the incomprehensible jumble of freak-talk Petunia would rather choke than wish to understand, the last phrase caught her attention.
Had this boy enrolled himself to be some sort of wizard priest? Did wizard priests even exist –– or was it a code name for some dangerous political cult? She knew it — those Far-Left berks from the Labour Party were out wreaking havoc again. And what did Lily have anything to do with it? What had her freak sister gotten herself into this time? The imaginative gossiper in Petunia went into overdrive, conjuring up all sorts of sordid details, each one more scandalous than the last––
The kettle in the kitchen whistled loudly. There was a sudden clatter of wood against tiles –– it seemed someone had jumped in their seat.
“Bloody hell, Evans,” the boy whispered, half fearful, half reverent. “I thought I heard my mother’s Dark heirlooms chasing after me. What is that?”
Lily tried to stifle a chuckle. The tension in the room lightened. “It’s an electric kettle. Made in Sweden.” She supplied that afternote as if it was something special.
“Right, Sweden,” the boy sounded a bit dazed, like he was holding onto the only word he understood. Was he staring at the kettle? “Nice country, that. Caught a lot of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks there one summer. Truly epic.”
“Never heard of those Crumple Snorgles,” Lily scoffed.
For the first time in her life, Petunia agreed with Lily on something –– and she didn’t know exactly what to feel about it.
“I’ll put on the radio,” Lily continued, already moving. “It can cheer you up.”
“I don’t need to be ch––”
“––Britain, once a global empire upon which the sun never set, continues to witness the retreat of its colonial dominion. From Africa to Asia, our former colonies are asserting their independence, accelerating the decolonisation process worldwide––”
Lily flicked down the volume. “Well, that was a bit intense,” she laughed nervously. “Wait! I know something you’ll like.” It was followed by the rattling sounds of Lily running her hand through the stacks in the drawer. “I don’t have a vinyl player, but this radio can play cassettes just fine.”
Petunia heard the cassette clicking into place, and she had to cover her ears from the upbeat of that hellish music––
Now I know just what you're looking for
You want me to claim that child you bore
Well you know that it must he not be
And you know the way it got to be
“Not this one!” Lily announced rather hotly, fumbling to shut off Evil Woman by Black Sabbath to skip to other songs. “Nope, not this either. No–no–– Oh, for God’s sake––”
“Evans, I’m fine,” the boy laughed openly this time. “Just cool down, okay?”
Petunia wanted to grab his collar and shake violently. This brat had no idea what he was saying. Was his brain mush? Didn’t he know that telling Lily to cool down was the fastest way to make her do something utterly crazy? Petunia wanted to storm down there and kick them both out of her house, but there was something repellent about the boy that made her afraid of facing him. That didn’t make her sister’s next words less appalling––
“You know what, Black, I think we should drink while we wait. We have fruit juice if you don’t mind — fermented fruit juice, that is.”
o0o
It was dull and dark when they arrived in Cokeworth. Even with the Knight Bus, their journey still felt unbearably long.
Small mercy, the Evanses’ family house was not difficult to find. That still did nothing to steady James’s trembling hand when he rang the bell.
“Come in!” echoed a giggling voice from the back of the house.
James raised his eyebrows high. He sent Remus a look, but his friend gave out no expression or comment whatsoever.
With every step closer to the backyard, they could hear the sound more clearly. It wasn’t just one person singing –– there were two, their voices a strange contrast to the bleak weather. It didn’t help loosen the knot in James’s guts, only made it tighter.
Then we'll blow the man up.
And we'll blow the man down.
Go way, way, blow the man down.
We'll blow him right over to Liverpool town ––
If James Potter wanted to imagine his best friend and his long-term crush in the same place, he’d picture the two of them in a cage match. He would not, in a million years, expect to see them dancing and singing in the Evanses’ backyard –– drunk –– like a pair of shipwrecked pirates gone mad on a deserted island.
Bare foot, arms linked, Evans and Sirius spun each other in erratic circles, kicking up grass and dirt with that horrible danse macabre. At some point, their movements became sloppy and off-rhythm, with which they looked more like staggering than dancing.
James considered yelling at them, but then he just gave up. He just wanted to know if Sirius was okay. Sirius looked like he’d just crawled out from Hell and left his sanity there –– obviously not okay.
Sirius had the decency to remember his presence. That, unfortunately, didn’t mean the bastard had sobered up.
“Well well, look who we have here.” He craned his neck backward to look at James upside down. Something fell to the ground as he did; a grey, crumpled rose petal. “Jim, what’s the long face?” He laughed sloppily.
James’s brain stalled.
It was the first time Sirius smiled at him in weeks, like the tension between them had never occurred. As if there hadn’t only been arguments and stretches of silence.
But this wasn’t right. Even for someone familiar to Sirius’s neurotic tendency, James knew this wasn’t right. Escaping from that hell should have felt like a victory, but James couldn’t shake off the feeling there was something wrong.
“What happened?” James demanded. Simple as that. Why hadn’t he got an answer yet? Why stressing him out and driving him crazy the whole time, why shutting him off in the past few weeks? Sirius looked so pale and pale, his eyes slightly sunken…
But he didn’t seem to be listening to James, and neither did Evans.
In fact, both of these cider-soaked lunatics insisted on entertaining at his expense.
Then we'll blow the man up.
And we'll blow the man down.
Go way, way, blow the man down.
We'll blow him right over to LIVERPOOL TOWN ––
“ENOUGH! BOTH OF YOU!” snarled James, hand twitching for his wand.
“Ooh, scary,” Sirius murmured to Evans as he scooted closer to her side. “Potter is mad at us, Evans. We are deeeep in trouble.”
“I’d watch out for Remus if I were you, Black,” Evans told him, her eyes held upon a quiet and stony Remus with contemplation. Out of the two, she seemed to be the more sober. “They both looked a bit distressed.”
“Distressed?” James hissed, yanking a letter from his pocket, written in Evans’s hasty handwriting. “You try getting walloped in the face by a firecall owl, then sending another owl to bloody Ireland to alarm Mum and Dad, then Floo-ing to London and grabbing Remus on the way here –– no time for stopping to catch a breath! You try all that, then we can sit down and talk about distress. Do you have any idea how worried Remus and I were? At least we deserve to know––”
He faltered at once when his gaze fell on Sirius’s leg. And the slight limp it bore.
“What happened with your leg?”
Snapping out from James’s outburst of fury, Sirius’s expression flickered. The drunken sloppiness receded a little. “Parting gift from Regulus.”
He pulled his trousers sleeve up to reveal the bandage, and James’s stomach dropped.
“Fired a curse at me right before I fucked off mid-ceremony, that little bugger. Evans patched me up afterwards when the Portkey delivered me to this backyard.”
James fixed him with a long, hard stare; Sirius’s smile still looked a bit wrong.
“Well, you look like shite,” he heard himself say.
“Why thank you, for being ever so polite,” said Sirius dryly. “Could have been worse. He first aimed at my chest, but I managed to dodge just in time.” He gave a low chuckle, still sounding a bit drunk and deranged. “Caught me off guard, really, after everything that happened last night and today. The first Black in history to run off his own betrothal, and the first Black in history to actively destroy his own capability of having children.”
Then, suddenly, he laughed. A sharp, jagged bark of sound.
“The first Black Sorted in Gryffindor, and many other firsts! Merlin and Morgana behold, I am myself a walking record book.”
At these raving lunatics, James felt his patience snapped.
“What are you drivelling on about?” he demanded, half-shouting.
“Oh, don’t be so mad, Jim,” Sirius cupped his hands around James’s neck, cooing, and had the gall to lean closer. At this proximity, James caught a whiff of mulberry cider and bad decisions.
“I drank it,” Sirius whispered, “right before they conducted the blood oath rituals, in front of everyone there.”
“Spit it out before I call St Mungo’s to heal your head,” James couldn’t stand this cryptic nonsense any longer. He gritted his teeth. “You. Drank. What.”
“It’s a complicated Potion called Sterilitaserum.”
It was Evans who spoke this time. James’s gaze flicked to her briefly before returning to Sirius. Sirius pulled that off again –– his patrician, blue-blooded smile that turned any observer to an awkward mess. Except this time, it felt a little strained. This time, it looked like he was waiting for James to laugh.
James did not laugh.
“It is in a book called Moste Potente Potions,” Evans continued, “You can only find it in the library’s Restricted Section. For many good reasons –– it’s banned. No apothecaries sell it.” She hesitated before adding. “Sirius had to brew it himself. With––well.” She swept her red hair over her shoulder, looking rather uneasy. “With my help.”
Something inside James snapped again. Bloody hell, his guts weren’t crunchy sticks to snap all the time. His jaw clenched, and he stared at Sirius, refusing to look anywhere else.
“And the effect of this Potion is?” His voice was unnaturally low.
Evans hesitated again. “It deprives the drinker of their ability to reproduce,” she said carefully, “Male and female both. In other words––”
“I’m asking Sirius, not you.”
But Sirius didn’t contradict her. “She’s right.” His expression was oddly calm. “No matter how many people I fuck — or how many times I fuck them –– I can’t knock them up. Not anymore.”
“Thanks for the graphic description, Black,” Evans muttered darkly.
James didn’t know what was worse –– Evans’s clinical explanation, or Sirius’s casual filth. His heartbeat was hammering against his ribs, and he felt, with a sickness in his stomach, like if he had to hear another word from them, his ears would start bleeding.
And Sirius added, not helping at all. “There are still records of Sterilitaserum brewing, only because of the steady demand from the brothels.”
Everything suddenly pieced themselves together, clicking into place with a horrific precision.
Sirius’s disappearance at odd hours. The stench of Potions ingredients when he returned from so-called “detention”. His sudden closeness with Lily Evans. And –– James felt a frigid hand wrap around his heart and twist it –– the strange look on Sirius’s face when he’d stared at the mother and her baby in the Muggle underground train.
James felt like he had critical trouble breathing.
“One question, Sirius, and you bloody well answer me truthfully.” He took a shaky inhale. “Since when?”
Sirius gave Evans a fleeting glance.
“Since Slughorn made her and me a study pair in Potions.”
James felt his blood run cold.
Since November last year.
The revelation sent him into a rush of vertigo. It’d been going on for five months, and none of them bothered to let him know. The sudden disorientation made him want to grab a hold on something so bad, but instead he was frozen in place.
“You can’t believe it –– she was brilliant!” Sirius carried on like nothing happened. “She was so smart and all and without her, I could never have finished brewing that damned liquid!”
His hands flashed out to hold James’s hands, but James didn’t hold his back. “Do you know that Sterilitaserum is so advanced that it can only be brewed by potioneers from higher institutions? Evans is a fourth-year at Hogwarts and she untied the most difficult knot in brewing it, James! If she’s not a Potions prodigy, I don’t know who is.”
James stared at that “Potions prodigy” dead in the eyes, and she looked back at him with a neutral expression.
She was so pretty, and her hair was so red that had it been the Mediaevel time, she would have been executed on a stake. The sight of her burnt his vision, until his cornea blackened and curled inward like paper in flame before it collapsed into weightless ash. And he stared and stared at her, like he’d never really seen her before, never quite acknowledged just how much this witch was capable of, with wonder and fear for her scientific excellence that could meddle with affairs beyond what wizardkind should. She held life in her one hand –– and destruction in the other.
He just wanted to throw up, then and there.
Suddenly he understood something about her –– something he’d never wanted to. He understood what had drawn Severus Snape to her, although the bigoted swine had all the wrong intentions, twisting his brilliance into something sinister and vile. In a way, they shared an academic appreciation towards each other –– an appreciation that James could only dream of, what with him being a hopeless idiot at Potions.
And James had never been more sure that, if he hadn’t liked her so much, he wouldn’t have felt this sick.
To make it even worse, Sirius carried on excitedly with his idiotic babbles. The pants-at-Potions James Potter wasn’t sure he wanted to know all the details about the impossibly complicated processes he and Evans had gone through to brew the Potion. Nor about their multiple rendez-vous in the Room of Requirement brewing Merlin knows what (James would never admit he was jealous). Nor about how they’d dealt with the growing suspicion (and jealousy; rotten luck that they had this in common these days) from Severus Snape. Nor about how Sirius had smuggled a Portkey into the betrothal right under Walburga’s wrinkly nose (okay, he might be a bit interested in this one –– how the fuck that old bat could have eaten up Sirius’s lie about Turkish unicorn eggs was truly beyond him).
“Why?”
James finally found his voice back, fighting to keep it normal. He pushed his glasses up his forehead, rubbing his nose bridge with shaky fingers. His facial skin was damp from a day old sweat.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why keeping this –– the Potion, the scheme –– all of this, from me?”
Hearing his distress seemed to have an effect on Sirius. His expression didn’t change much though –– still held that haughty smile ingrained into him since birth. Chin angled, nose sloped just right, so that he could regally look down on anyone. To no one’s surprise, his answer was nothing but outrageous:
“I didn’t want to bother you with it.”
And James saw red.
“Are you really that stupid or are you just naïve?”
Here they went again; they’d got to be arguing and arguing at every bloody chance they had. James’s voice sounded thunderous and wrong even to his own ears, but he just didn’t––couldn’t––care.
“You escaped from your fucking betrothal, damaged your own body –– and all you can think of is that it was just a little inconvenience that we, your best friends, couldn’t bother to know? Here’s the good news –– you shutting us out already bothers me, far beyond any problems entailing your great evil scheme that we could have faced, if you had ever felt condescending enough to just tell us!”
“But you need to understand––” Sirius began, starting to sound exhausted.
“No I fucking don’t, Black, I do not understand why communication never crossed your mind!”
“In my defence, it did cross my mind but––”
“Five months –– nothing. Not even ‘James, guess what, I’d really like to sabotage my doomed betrothal and plan a Gryffindor-ly escape out of there, reckon you can help me with that front while I concoct creepy tongue-twisting Potions with Lily Evans’. Who do you think we are –– Marauders or a bunch of marinated Mandrakes? What happened to ‘we do things together’––”
“All theories again,” Sirius seemed annoyed, “This isn’t about some pubescent camaraderie or some old-fashioned Musketeers code. For fuck’s sake, James, this is my life––”
James could feel his blood boiling. How dare he? He expected Apologies, capitalised, not the flagrant disregard of their friendship code. “You think we don’t care enough about your life?”
“It’s not about caring enough or not –– it’s because everyone has their own fucking problems!”
The explosion had, for a moment, taken James slightly aback –– Sirius had snapped at him with the ferocity of a beast tasting blood, his eyes cold and hard steel. He didn’t stop there, his voice growing louder and colder with every word.
“You, James Potter, have problems with your father because you don’t want to take over his Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion business, and with your mother because she’s ‘too Asian’ and her way of caring makes you feel you’d never grow out of it. Lily and Mary have massive problems with the Wizarding world because a good many of us are blood-purist arseholes who want them dead simply for breathing. Everyone in Gryffindor knows Gideon Prewett’s problem –– he’s been in love with Marlene McKinnon for years, but she can’t reciprocate because only women attracted her. Frank Longbottom has just been diagnosed with haemophilia because of the Blood Malediction curse Mulciber attempted on him, and no, we all know that I’ll never regret beating the shit out of that scumbag. Regulus has problems without realising it because he’s steeped too deep in our family’s nonsense, and Remus –– oh, don’t get me started –– he has to deal with more problems than any wizard walking or floating on this Earth ever should. So no, James, I don’t want to slap my problems against other people’s faces, because mine aren’t fucking special.”
And fuck if that wasn’t like a knife to James’s chest.
“You––you dunderhead––” For a moment he’d lost the ability to form coherent sentences, rage thrumming under his skin. “You fucking twisted––Who gave you the right to compare and decide––”
He both wanted to scream at his friend and crush him stupid in his arms. But then, someone tugged at his elbow, refraining him from giving in to impulses.
Remus. His wand hand was closing around James’s elbow in a firm grip, his expression unreadable, stony. His grip was surprisingly strong.
Since they’d arrived here Remus hadn’t uttered a single word.
James hadn’t noticed –– had been too caught up in this madness –– but now that he thought about it, maybe Sirius had noticed. His eyes had darted to Remus more than a handful of times, as if waiting for him to snap.
Remus tightened his grip. So, not yet.
His quiet presence was somehow still imposing, and that stretch of that silence alone was enough of a concern for anyone who knew him. For a moment James felt like a jam sandwiched between two cosmic forces that were his friends: the push and the pull, the stately cold moon and the scorching star.
Eventually, the moon with all its rationality won. Steadying his breath, James turned back to his pain-in-the-neck friend.
“No, your problems might not be special, Sirius,” he said with a forced calmness, “But you are.”
Sirius went very still, his pupils shrunken, like an animal that had scented danger.
And James must have misread the sign, because when he took a step closer, ready to reach for his friend, Sirius raised a palm between them.
“Don’t get near me.”
It startled James beyond measure.
He’d braced himself for an extreme reaction –– for Sirius to throw himself into James’s arms, or throw another fit. But this –– this wasn’t something James was prepared for. Because despite whatever Evans might think, he was never used to being rejected, least of all by Sirius.
With a flick he pulled his glasses back in place, and the sharpened vision of Sirius made him want to wage a war.
In James’s mind, his Sirius was bold, brilliant. A bit touched in the head, yes, but also unapologetically passionate. His Sirius was all gimlet eyes and effervescent, bark-like laughter, who spent hours till dawn mapping out Hogwarts and many more researching Animagery, who rode brooms at one hundred and twenty miles per hour and infuriated every adult with his rebelliousness, who danced like a Bohemian and sang Celestina Warbeck’s songs like they were rock n’ roll.
And who never hesitated to reach out to James Potter, whether for a fight or for solace.
James hadn’t realised how much the absence of that Sirius affected him until now, when a terror-stricken shell of his friend stood here in Evans’s backyard, looking so tense and afraid and withdrawn, an antithesis of almost everything James knew about him. He could handle Sirius being a reckless, arrogant berk –– hell, he even liked that about him –– but this, this didn’t feel like him.
“Levicorpus.”
A flash of blue light split between them.
Sirius shot upwards, hanging upside down in the air by his ankles, dangling like one of those chains and manacles hung on the wall in Filch’s office.
“What the fuck, Potter?” Sirius shouted, half shocked and half furious. “Put me DOWN!”
Blood started to rush from his body down to his head, the tide of colour creeping all over his pale neck and pale face as he was thrashing, cursing all of James’s body parts. But James just stood there, wand raised, waiting it out.
If Sirius needed time for his dramatics, James would let him have it. Right now nothing cheered him up more than watching Sirius struggling.
He barely registered Evans’s high-pitched yelp before she lunged at Sirius, trying to haul him down with a Herculean effort. When that (obviously) didn’t work, she whirled on James instead. The look she shot him was downright vicious, and part of him was pleased for finally eliciting from her a reaction. Within a split second all they could hear were two streams of threatening and admonishing running over each other in a rush of fury.
“––down this instance, or I’ll break your ugly fucking glasses and rip your eyeballs out with my bare hands––”
“––used to think you were an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter, but now I see you’re an arrogant, bullying toerag who won’t even spare your friend from your notorious streak––”
James cut through them. “He asked me not to be mad at him,” he sneered, flicking his wand. “But then he told me not to get near him. How am I supposed to interpret that now, dearest Evans? At least he never said I couldn’t use my wand on him.”
He jerked his wand up, and Sirius was pulled higher, as if an invisible cord had tethered his ankles to the sky. James knew he was acting mean, but he was too busy being in denial to care.
“You want a go, too, beautiful?” He flashed Evans a smirk. “All you have to do is ask.”
As he’d expected, Evans took the bait. “Let. Him. Down.” Her face was red with snarling rage. “You’re standing in my house, Potter, and you’ll fucking do as I say. Or I will sue you for illegal trespassing on private property.”
Sirius gasped out a dark laughter to encourage Evans. He had finally stopped thrashing, perhaps deciding that flailing about like a fish on a hook was the depth of inelegance. “James, what do you want? Because if you’ve turned into a modern-day Bathory and want to bathe in my blood––”
Before Sirius could finish his grim fantasy, James lifted the jinx.
He was very pleased, because instead of falling flat-arsed on the ground like an undignified heap, Sirius landed right into his––
Remus’s arms.
James couldn’t suppress a swear.
“Bugger it!” He threw his hands up. His fundamentally shitty mood had funnelled down to the point where Sirius accepted Moony’s contact without complaint and not his. “According to the script I was supposed to catch him, Moony! I was supposed to tell this wanker exactly where he could shove his ‘Don’t get near me’ once he stopped jumping away from me as if I were a pest!”
“And you planned to do that after dangling him like a plucked chicken?”
Remus scrambled up from the ground, and helped a still shell-shocked Sirius to his feet. “As much as I feel your frustration, James, I don’t care whatever trick you pull off to recover your cracked ego from being told No.” Evans snorted at this derisively. “Let’s bother Lily no longer and go back to Godric’s Hollow.”
“But I’m not done with him,” James felt the anger and embarrassment gripping him. He hated that Remus’s belatedly spoken words weren’t in favour of his side. He hated that Sirius still wasn't reaching out to him. And he hated chickens. “We aren’t going anywhere. Not before he tells us why.”
“Why what?” Sirius snapped, though the look he gave James had softened. “What do you want me to say? It’s all done for good. There will never be a wedding anymore.”
“Yes, I heard that loud and clear, but I’m not here to discuss yours and Miss Potions prodigy’s scientific success,” replied James coldly. “What’s really beyond me is what the fuck are you hoping to gain from that scientific success in the first place? Because despite how falling-behind I am at Potions, I at least know the principle: ‘the validity of every potion is determined by the purpose it serves’, Arsenius Jigger, Magical Drafts and Potions, Year One.”
Evans turned to him with a neck-breaking motion. Sirius opened his mouth to speak, but James dismissed it by talking over him. “While thinking about that question, I’ll ask you another: Why didn’t you just stop at escaping? Why did you have to drink that blasted Potion?”
Sirius ran his finger over his jawline, looking away. “It’s not as simple as you think.”
James was so done with this attitude. “Then fucking explain it to me,” he gritted out.
“Yes, I ran away, then what?” Sirius said flatly. “How long would it take before my eugenicist parents decided to arrange another match –– if not with Narcissa, then with another inbred pureblood girl? How long would it take before I had no choice but take an Unbreakable Vow or an Imperius Curse, giving my parents the power of life and death over me?” The fire that had died in his eyes once again arose from the ember. “Since when the House of Black started to give two fucks about morality?”
Pain sizzled its way through James’s chest. He admitted having never thought of those potential consequences, because such a level of cruelty was not something that easily occurred to James Potter. No, this was Sirius Black’s field. He was the one born and raised in the snake den –– he would understand most.
“I can’t make you, and I don’t want you to… You shouldn’t understand how twisted––how smothering, dehumanising––” Unable to convey it with words, Sirius gave up, his shoulders flexing and dropping down. “Last summer was my breaking point. I was disabused from my own illusion when Mother smeared her finger with my blood, and lifted it high for all her guests to see. I suddenly understood it, despite my being too stubborn to realise.”
“What did you understand?” James felt like an ice cube had slipped into his stomach, spreading the paralysing cold all through his veins.
“That gone were the days, if they’d ever existed, when I actually meant anything to my family. All they see of me now is the carrier of the Black bloodline.”
James stared at his friends, speechless, unable to comprehend how any human-being could look at Sirius Black and see him as a carrier of a fucking bloodline. It made dehumanising feel like an understatement.
“To answer your question, James, I have a counter question: why would running away from a betrothal matter to them?” Sirius gave him a thin-lipped smile, his hooded eyes dark and heavy under the weight it took to contain his anger. “Reproduction is the centre of blood purism. My family would fight for it. They would kill for it. There’s no limit whatsoever to the number of marriages that they could force me into, so long as I could give them what they want –– an heir and a spare. So what does that leave me with?”
Instead of providing the answer right away, Sirius averted his eyes.
“My family believes this to be Muggle propaganda, but there’s evidence that inbreeding will lead to recessive genes,” he said eventually. “Aunt Araminta Meliflua. Uncle Alphard. Both born incapable of reproducing. Both meant to marry each other before it was discovered. That’s why before any decision was made, my family had conducted a test on Narcissa and I, to make sure that neither of us had a similar predicament.”
He must have noticed the nausea that started to accumulate in James’s throat, because then he added, “I’ll save you the details, because how the test was done is quite grotesque. But I wasn’t relieved when the result came out as negative. That leaves me with two choices, James –– either do nothing and accepting my fate like a obedient little pureblood heir, or fucking take action to permanently deprive them of any chance to use me.”
James was feeling more ill than ever. No one could pull it off better than Sirius –– the perfect combination of logic and madness. “But with such an extreme measure…”
“What else could I have done? One cannot hurt the Blacks without hurting himself!”
Hysteria bled into Sirius’s voice, which was then forced to subside by his cold determination. He straightened his back, and with a startling realisation, James could see that Sirius was taller than him.
“I would rip my heart out if that meant I would be free,” he laughed, almost lightly. “I would fight and fight until I’m no longer in a cage. People can help me –– but in the end, only I can save me. I cannot count my fate on you, who’s as much a child as I am, or your parents, who had no legal claim over me, or the bloody Ministry of Magic, as Minerva has so helpfully suggested. Don’t you understand? Self-reliance is all I fucking have.”
“Not me, Sirius?” James said quietly. “Not even on me?”
Sirius paused for a while, which felt like an eternity.
Then he finally said, voice gentler. “This argument will lead to nowhere, James, and we both know it. There are a million things that I can count on you, but this is not one of them. It doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. It doesn’t even have anything to do with you, only me.”
And he looked directly into James’s eyes. “Besides, if I’d told you about my plan, would you have accepted it?”
Cheating bastard, fixing James with those large Bambi eyes and expecting him to pour his guts out. For a brief moment he was tempted to say yes just to see the shocking effect it would elicit, but deep down he knew it would be a lie. He was too irrational when it came to Sirius, whose batting of his eyelashes was all he needed to make James do somersault for him.
“Evans?” He sighed, finally turning to face her.
Despite their differences, James had always thought she had a heart that mirrored his own. He didn’t know how Sirius had sweet-talked her into becoming his co-conspirator. “Have you got anything to add?”
For the first time that afternoon, Evans gave out a small smile. She’d been watching the exchange between James and Sirius with something close to amusement on her face.
“I just want to say that yes, given the circumstances, that’s the only choice Sirius has.” She met his gaze directly, as she always did. “And I think families like the Blacks deserve to take the blow when a Mudblood and a rebel heir conspire against them.”
James grimaced at the word –– “Mudblood” –– but Evans said it without a flicker of shame.
“Don’t think because I’m a girl that I wouldn’t dare to do it, Potter. I’m not one for the simpering sentiments –– be realistic, and you’ll see any parenthood in the future will mean nothing if we are not our own person. When Sirius spoke to me about his plan, I wanted in. He’s a fighter to his core, so I knew he’d make it work.”
Sirius suddenly scoffed. “Come off it, Evans, we both know you agreed to do it partly because you’re a crazy scientist who wants to explore what more she can do.”
“Only when I’m approached with an even crazier scheme,” Evans half smiled, half grimaced. “And don’t make my motivation sound so one-dimensional. We had our arguments, remember?”
Sirius rolled his eyes. “I had this huge row with her when she ambushed me with her ethical crisis in the finalising stage of the Potion. Fantastic timing, really.”
“In my defence, you were acting like a neurotic prat, Black.”
“Don’t be so harsh, Evans. After all, if you hadn’t looked past our argument and charmed the Portkey so that it’d take me to your house, I frankly wouldn’t know where to shelter.” Sirius’s eyes travelled briefly through the window, to the cuckoo clock that hung on the wall of the Evanses’ kitchen. “It’s been five hours since I left. They must be scouring the land all over Britain to hunt me down. No Wizarding territories except Hogwarts are safe now, but Hogwarts is not where one can just Portkey themselves into.”
“Godric’s Hollow,” James said, realising a beat too late that he’d just repeated Remus's point earlier.
He clenched his jaw. Fine. This was no time to argue. With great manoeuvre he tried to pull himself together; it was time to think about everyone’s safety. “You’ve made yourself an enemy of House Black, Evans. The longer we stay here, the less you and your family are safe. We need to go back to Godric’s Hollow now.”
Come to think of it, he’d started to regret not listening to Moony and buggering off home right then. Evans’s jaw was set in a firm snap, a ghost of fear flitting across her emerald-like eyes. In awe with her bravery, he saw her put herself perfectly together and give them a tight nod.
“Go, then,” she whispered, her eyes wide and fixed on him mesmerisingly.
I still very much fancy you, Lily, he wanted to whisper back, I just don’t know how to make you understand it.
“Let’s take the Knight Bus,” Remus sounded like he’d been holding his breath for three hundred years to say this, with an unmistakable air of fucking finally.
James blinked. “I’m not sure it’s safe. The Knight Bus is wizarding transport.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that one,” said Sirius breezily, “The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is so high above there that they don’t believe such a peasantly, Mugglish thing exists, let alone step foot on it.”
“Your Cloak, James,” Remus’s voice effectively shook James from his emotional stun, sharp and no-nonsense. “Throw it over Sirius before we get on the bus.”
“Evans!”
Once all the security measures had been settled, they were all set out to go. But Sirius still had a few seconds to linger.
Evans jolted out from her rigid posture, only to see Sirius close the distance between them and took her slender wrist in his hand.
“You have my gratitude, Fleur-de-Lis,” Sirius said to her with a rare solemnity in his voice. “Just… you should know that.”
Then, without waiting for Evans to speak, he barged away, joining James and Remus towards the Knight Bus-stop.
James pulled out the Invisibility Cloak just before they spotted the moving dot that was the Knight Bus from afar. Right when the Cloak fell over Sirius, he saw Sirius’s hand, which only seconds ago had still been wrapped Evans’s wrist, now entangling his fingers with Moony’s long and firm own.
Slag, he thought viciously before the silky magical garment tucked his friend away from the world in its embrace.
o0o
The rest of the day expired in a blur.
Sirius felt disassociated from the world, disconnected from his own body. What was left behind a shell full of genetic failures, a dead thing somewhere inside its lower abdomen, bruises and blood.
When he moved, it was as if he were sleepwalking. Unawakened from a bad dream, fraught with a puppet-like passiveness. It was so foreign that he was almost glad for his torn-up leg, which had done a great deed in keeping the vestige of his sanity at bay.
But what actually kept Sirius together, was the sensation of Remus’s fingers slotted between his own.
The hold wasn’t too tight, wasn’t too loose –– just about the perfect pressure, fingers smooth and dry fastening themselves to his. Simple like that, but the hold was his anchor, steadily keeping the broken ship from being lost to the dark tides. He stood there, in the second decker of the rickety bus, an invisible, mute thing under the Cloak; a phantom. Remus must know that despite what he’d said, he was still afraid someone from his family would barrel into the bus and wring his neck out, so Remus had held his hand for the entire journey to Godric’s Hollow. He knew he couldn’t hide from them forever, could only manage off-leash until the summer break. But at least when he stayed here, in the safe vicinity of Remus, he could pretend everything would be okay.
It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I have each other at this moment, he thought.
Remus brushed his thumbs over Sirius’s knuckles reassuringly, which did some not very kind things to his heart. When he blinked up at Remus, his friend’s face still showed no expression, calm and unreadable. He always gave out the impression as the most polite friend, and at the same time the least affectionate. But the motions of his hand betrayed everything his face didn’t show, ambushing Sirius with heated brushes and almost possessive fondlings.
Sirius thought, absently, that he wouldn’t be washing his hand anytime soon.
James’s head dropped against the stained window-glass with a thud, startling Sirius from his rêverie. He seemed to have dozed off, his sleep-warm breath smearing the glass. They were now crossing an unfamiliar sprawl land –– dwarf-like wooden houses scattered atop the never-ending plain. The alien scenery, the constant movement, helped dull away the fresh cuts of the last twenty-four hours. Watching James rest, however, only reminded him why he hadn’t asked for his help in the first place. No one in the House of Black knew Lily Evans, but James Potter secured a steady position in his family’s blacklist. In this betrothal fiasco, James’s recklessness wouldn’t have done him a favour compared to Evans’s devious cleverness. And Sirius knew he would protect his friend from the Blacks’ claws at any costs.
Unlike James, Remus wasn’t asleep. His hazel-brown eyes glowed into hazel-amber in all their sunset-hour glory, like the reflections of luxuriant autumnal trees on a clear lake.
It was growing darker outside, transforming the window into a mirror. Sirius stared at the reflections, at Remus’s impossible eyes –– and at the empty space beside him, where his own reflection should be.
This thought brought his mind back to what happened last night. His heart hammered in his chest like a bird trying to break out of its cage, despite his effort to shush it down. And suddenly, he was still in Berkshire.
Can’t sleep? He’d asked Leta, when he found her wandering alone in the big, dark house, once again neglected by her parents. Come with me to the library. I’ll read you some bedtime stories.
She’d curled up beside him, entranced by the tale of Inês de Castro, lover of Pedro, King of Portugal. How they had loved each other despite opposition from the crown, how it had led to the tragic murder of young Inês. How Pedro had, once becoming King, vengefully killed all the men responsible for the death of his lover, exhumed Inês’s body and placed her upon the throne like a Queen alive, obliging all the great nobles of Portugal to kneel and kiss her hand. But all of that was for naught, as Inês’s heart had stopped beating and her hands had gone cold. “Inês é morta” (Inês is dead), they usually said, as an universal by-phrase for “It’s already too late”.
What a bedtime story. But, once again, it belonged to the Blacks’ collection, so no-one should be surprised here.
Sirius didn’t know why the story stuck with. Maybe because of the morbidity of it. The finality, the irreversible damage. There was no going back, of course; he knew what he’d signed up for. He had no regrets.
So, Sirius will-die-alone Black saw his future self squandering all his savings on James’s future sprog (hopefully with Evans). A worthy investment, he decided. A man’s financial planning should start when he’s fifteen, apparently.
And then –– after he’d waved Leta off to her bed chamber––
Stop. Stop right there. Don’t think.
The last ray of sunlight had disappeared beyond the horizon. They had arrived in Godric’s Hollow.
Now that his energy was depleted, Sirius recalled no clear memories of getting off the Knight Bus and settling in James’s cottage house. The night blurred –– he must have taken a shower, must have stumbled through the dinner with James’s parents. He tried to respond when when Mrs. Potter, ever so gentle, started talking to him while tending his bad leg with the practiced hands of a Healer. He liked James’s parents, especially the quiet and kind Mrs. Potter; he didn’t want to let her down after she’d taken him in her house and done what she could to keep him fed, clean, and patched up.
And he thought that would be it –– fewer questions, more hushed conversations behind his back, him alternating between faux smiles and the voice in his head that said he was too dirty to overstay their welcome –– he thought that would be how he’d spend the rest of his stay at the Potters’.
Entered Remus Lupin, case closed.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Sirius startled, one leg slipping from the window-sill where he’d been lounging. His friend didn’t wait for his response, stepping into the Potters’ library.
Moony was still formally dressed, save only a few missing shirt buttons. Tucked neatly into his grey trousers, he looked like he was about to defend a bloody thesis rather than ambush his friends with interrogation. Sirius looked at the clock. Thirty minutes before midnight. It was maddening. Why aren’t you sleeping, huh? What was he supposed to say? I can ask you the same question? Or, more truthfully: I’m not confident enough to close my eyes, because now I’m as incapable as a domesticated dog, and I’m fucked, Moony, both metaphorically and literally, and––
“Unfamiliar bed.” Instead Sirius heard himself answer. “Why? Do I reek of insomnia?”
“You reek of anything but yourself.”
Before Sirius realised, he’d sat up right on the sill. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I know what you normally smell like.” Remus tapped his nose –– a reminder of the werewolf’s heightened sense of smell. “Like bergamot and warm linen.”
Instead of being creeped out, Sirius had always thought it was rather attractive, even at his own expense.
“But now you don’t smell like that. You haven’t smelt like that since I saw you at Lily’s.”
The stretch of silence between them was almost unbearable. Sirius closed his eyes, bracing for what was coming next.
“You have the smell of someone else on you.”
Sirius ardently wished that he’d scrubbed himself harder in the shower, that he hadn’t hesitated at the thought of using Mrs. Potter’s Madame Glossy’s Floor Cleaning Product on his skin. He felt like a mat on the floor, and rotten luck that Moony had seen through his battered armour. Moony with his sharp werewolf’s sense and sharp deductive reasoning had declared the case closed.
“Sirius, what happened last night?”
He knows.
A criminal caught red-handed, however, still had to retain his last shred of dignity in front of the detective. Swallowing hard, Sirius put up his final wall. “Last night?” he scoffed, “If you want me to recount the glassful of wine Aunt Druella spilled on my shirt when she was busy glaring at Uncle Cygnus flirting with Aunt Araminta––”
He suddenly halted, watching Remus close the door behind him. The sharp click of the doorknob locked into place was almost too loud in the quiet library. He felt his blood freezing over. “Remus, what are you doing?”
Remus turned to him. “You think I’m here to ask about your dear old aunts and uncles’ infidelities?”
His eyes were scintillating as he stood there, half moonlit, half shadowed. With one hand in pocket, he took a few steps towards Sirius until he was wholly under the moonlight.
“You jumping away from James could have fooled him, but not me, Sirius. So I’ll ask you again: What happened last night?”