Exile
Exile
“Clear off, you scavenging lout!”
The heavy set man standing alongside the barnyard fence was holding a pitchfork. A raised pitchfork. Its curving blades stood out sharp and angry against the amber twilight.
I shifted my feet on the gravel road. Held my hands out from my sides for him to see. That they were empty. “Okay, okay! Look, I’m standing still, all right? Not moving a bit here. Only I have-”
A pain, every bit as sharp as those prongs looked to be, arrowed through my side and scattered the words in a series of coughs. I held up a hand- gestured him to wait, wait a moment. Even as I did, I saw that he was shaking his head. Still, I pulled a breath, gathered my voice and went on. “I have a couple of questions. That’s all. I want…”
“I don’t care what you want, I said, clear off!” The man lowered the fork a bit, shifted its angle so that its huge, fang-like prongs were turned to face me. He stepped forward, narrowing the distance between us to maybe fifteen feet. “We don’t need any of your lot comin’ round, our kitchen door, lookin’ for a handout.”
Close up, the prongs looked bigger, more pointed than ever. “My lot? What do you mean?” I asked, though by now I knew what he was going to say.
“What are you, daft? I don’t care what you want! You’ll not be findin’ it here! This is a respectable farm, this is! I don’t need no filthy tramp off the road dirtying up me dooryard or scarin’ me wife.”
Real big prongs. Real sharp. Fighting down an urge to shrink back as a last glint of sun flashed across the pitchfork, I held my ground. “Look, if you’d just point me in the direction of the quickest road leading to London…”
Oh, real good, Sirius, couldn’t you have picked a better word than “point”? This is one bloke you don’t want to give any ideas to.
“What kind of fool do you take me for, ya bleedin’ beggar?” He raised his voice over mine, took one more step forward. “Anybody with half a brain in his head knows where that is! Now get on with ya!”
Well, I’d been right about what he’d been going to call me. Daft. Tramp. Beggar. Another half minute and he’d be adding the name of thief. I’d heard it all before. Didn’t know how often. Didn’t think of myself in any of those terms, though I knew by now they must look like a perfect fit. As much as I’d have liked to protest one final time that I was a stranger in these parts, searching nothing more than a way home to my Godson, there was more than that fork to worry about. My prison photographs hadn’t only made the Wizarding papers three years ago, but the Muggle news as well, and lately, the reflection that looked up at me from ponds and puddles was starting to show a marked resemblance to it. Maybe he hadn’t recognized me, but the police might. They kept copies of photographs like that. I didn’t want this man setting the law on the trail of a trespasser who wouldn’t leave when he was asked.
Without another word, I turned away. Began walking one more slow, dusty road into one more gathering night.
I wasn’t certain anymore how many nights or days I’d wandered the countryside. Something more than a fortnight, I knew that much. Close on a month by now, I decided. At least if I was to believe the changing face of the moon.
From hedgerows, ditches, fields and forests, I’d watched that pale band of silver widen to a sickle, then round itself into a sphere. Having a friend who is a werewolf teaches you all about watching the moon.
That first night I’d landed in the alley, I hadn’t imagined that finding someone or someplace I knew would take more than minutes. Well, okay, maybe, since I seemed to be moving and thinking so, so slowly, it could be an hour. Or two. Or, I told myself at last, when exhaustion overtook me and I collapsed damp and shivering beneath a hedge in my dog form, it’ll happen sometime quite soon after I wake up in the morning. I’ll have my wits about me then… Figure it out like it was nothing. I’ll get my bearings. Laugh at how hard it was tonight because it’ll all be so easy tomorrow…
But when I awoke, the streets of the village still had names that were unfamiliar.
In the following days, I had walked a series of winding country roads, past wooded hills and farm fields, until I reached another town. Careful to not be recognized, I waited til twilight to venture in beyond its borders, but it wasn’t Hogsmeade either. Or any other place with a name that I knew. There had been still another town after that one. Just as strange. Just as empty of clues as to where I should go next.
It was hard not to grow discouraged.
If only I could make some sense of where I was, or what had happened to me…
But instead of growing clearer, after the first few days, my ideas and memories were becoming more and more tangled. The little voice in my head that had once encouraged me to climb the walls of Azkaban and, after I first came here, urged me to my feet and out of the alley, had gone silent.
More and more often I had to find a place to sit down and rest. The world didn’t tip and spin so much anymore, but I’d taken a chill that first night, and something seemed to have gone wrong with me since then. After only short travels, I’d find myself shaking and breathless. There was a strange sort of heaviness growing in my chest that didn’t feel like it had to do with Bella’s spell, and the dirt from the road seemed to be seeping in and clogging my muscles.
While I lay hidden under a hedge or behind a barn, waiting for strength to flow back into my limbs, I kept trying to sort out my surroundings. It was better than speculating on what could be happening to Harry or Remus or my lovely, sweet Hessia after the passing of- how many days now?
It was only days, wasn’t it? Only a week? A fortnight? Please, only a fortnight! It couldn’t be a month, could it? No matter what the moon said?
Maybe it wasn’t only werewolves that shouldn’t trust the moon…
Maybe the moon was a liar.
Sometimes I found myself waking stiff to my bones, and discovering that the moon, sun and stars were in the wrong positions. That couldn’t really mean I slept nearly the whole clock round, did it? No point dwelling on the question. Who was there to answer it for me?
Somehow, learning about my surroundings seemed to be the more urgent matter. It could have a great deal to do with getting back home. Back to Harry. I had this growing suspicion that there were problems here that wouldn’t be solved by a clearer mind or a body that didn’t feel like it’d undergone a triple-intensity case of the jelly-legs jinx.
Desperation had begun to outweigh the risks. I spent more daylit hours walking the streets and alleys, pausing to watch the goings-on of the towns and listen to the talk.
The confusing thing was that all of them really did look a lot like Hogsmeade. The narrow winding streets were uncluttered by automobiles and lorries. There was the glow of lantern-light that brightened to warm gold as the night grew dark. The quiet was allowed to lie easy in the streets, leaving room for the sounds of birds, crickets, laughing kids and barking dogs. There was no buzzing wall of noise that is so much the sound of Muggle towns.
Yet, I saw no robes, no wands. Children ran about on the ground, tossing dead balls to each other instead of taking to the sky for a good game of Quidditch. I kept adding more strange words- Muggle words they must be- to my list.
At first dawn I saw groups of young girls walking along the road to a two-story building at the edge of town. They called it a “factory.” They were laughing and exclaiming to each other about some new bit of “equipment” that had been brought in, and how “up to date” the owners liked to keep the “machines” there.
In the evening, a group of men on a street corner outside a pub talked about their mate who had an accident down “the pit”. He’d broken his arm, one of them said, but the “doctor” had “put him right” and he’d be just fine in only a month or two.
Only?
The guys in the alley had been right. I was a foreigner here. I didn’t know the customs, or the language for all it mostly sounded like English. A foreigner who didn’t have so much as a newt or a galleon or even a farthing to pay for a night’s lodging under a roof or a bite of food from a shop.
Of course, without my wand, I could still use my internal animagus magic to transform. That helped. I began spending more and more time in canine form. It was less tiring to walk on four legs than two. As a dog, I was spared the suspicious looks or open hostility that had been coming my way more and more often as my appearance became dirtier and more bedraggled. As a dog, I could curl up, hidden under a bush and sleep with a fur coat to keep out much of the night’s chill or the rain’s wet. I could prowl the silent alleys during the small hours and scavenge food from the refuse heaps as I’d done in Hogsmeade a year ago.
But there was never quite enough of it to fill me up and ease the hunger that plagued me more and more, or allow me to sleep deep and satisfied to wake clear-headed. Along with the hunger, that sense of urgency was growing bigger, even as, day by day by day, the limits of my endurance were growing smaller.
I had to get home. Make sure the people I loved were safe. Then I could rest.
If only I knew how to get there…
It was a bit past dark on a half-moon night, with clouds sailing in from the west, that I became the thief that farmer with the pitchfork had suspected me of being several days before. I tried getting eggs from a chicken coop. The rising wind that carried a promise of rain before dawn would also carry my scent away from the farmhouse I’d spotted at the edge of a small valley.
But the breeze was too light to blow away the crow of a startled rooster announcing the arrival of a big black dog, or the racket as the hen-house exploded with squawks and fluttering wings.
I came to alert as the farmer flung open his front door, lantern swinging in his hand. “Nellie!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Robber in the hen-coop! No, not a man, Nell! Huge, it is! I think it’s a wolf!”
A wolf? Ha! Hardly! He couldn’t mean me!
Behind him appeared a small woman in a long dress like in old portrait’s. She held up a strange, long wand to the man. There was a spark the colour of fire and a crack as loud as two Wizards apperating at once! Startled, I leaped to the side and felt the air of the spell’s passing as it made a rippling part in the fur along my shoulder.
I ran.
There was a volley of loud barking and the man’s voice shouting “Gypsy! Get back here! You’re not going after that wolf! He’s dangerous! Stay, I tell you! Stay!”
Gypsy must have stayed because the only thing that followed me was the sound of frantic barking which faded quickly as a line of fence-posts streaked past me and a grove of trees loomed up ahead.
I ran as the sound became distant and a familiar stitch began pulling tighter and tighter in my side, demanding that I slow down. When I could no longer hear any barking at all, I dropped onto a thick scatter of last-year’s leaves and lay panting hard. As soon as I caught my breath I’d be on my way again, running before the wildfire news that a wolf was in the neighborhood and menacing the livestock.
Should I resume my human form?
No- not a good idea. I’d been greeted with too much wariness, suspicion or hostility whenever I’d approached a shop or a farmhouse. Those words- daft, tramp, beggar! echoed too loud in my head. Even more frightening were the words a woman had shouted at me this morning, when she caught me picking apples from a tree beside a country lane. “Get away from here, you filthy madman, before we have someone round to take you away!”
Obviously, I’d landed (all too literally) in a very insular part of the country, that rarely saw a stranger. I hadn’t seen a paper since I’d been here, but, could it be that the growing uncertainty surrounding the possible return of Lord Voldemort was what made everybody seem so edgy and suspicious?
No, it would be best to remain a dog.
Besides, more miles could slip away beneath four paws than two feet.
The wind blew harder as I pulled myself up and onto the grass at the edge of a dirt road. I was more exposed here than in the woods, but travel would be easier. Easier was getting to be very, very important these days.
The cool, silver moon kept pace with me for a time until we were both overtaken by the clouds. Long before that happened, I realized I could not outrun the image of that farmer and his wife in the doorway. Had they been Muggle or Wizard? Muggle or Wizard? The question pounded over and over in the rhythm of my steps. He had a wand, the first one I’d seen since the Department of Mysteries, but it was a very odd looking one. She wore a Muggle dress but it had the appearance of an old portrait at Hogwarts. Now I came to think of it, all of the women’s dresses I’d seen here did!
Should I have put aside my apprehension, transformed and approached them? Even without the experiences of recent days, my instinct said no Even though I hadn’t been recognized up til now, it could happen any time. Besides, the place spoke of mistrust. And the picture of that couple in the lantern light summed up every confusing impression I’d collected since I’d come here.
From my first night on, I’d asked myself if there was something stranger about this place than could be dismissed as the after-effects of a zapping spell. Now I knew that the answer to that question was “yes.”
The jigsaw suspicions I’d been trying to piece together over the last days?- weeks?-were at last fitting themselves into place, one after another.
What they were revealing formed a very disturbing picture.
You’re leaping to conclusions, Sirius! I told myself. But who was I, ever to listen to what anyone told me? Why should this time be any different, just because the one doing the telling was me?
The answer I kept coming up with made too much sense to be ignored. Even my own protests grew as silent as the nighttime road.
The silence itself had been one of the puzzle pieces, hadn’t it?
Not one car had swooped past me as I walked down the edge of the road. I hadn’t heard a single growling motor since I found myself in the alley. No electric lights stabbed the darkness across the hills, not even from the “factory”, where the Muggles liked to keep things as up to date as possible. And that farmer’s wife in the doorway had been dressed like an old portrait…
I sank to my haunches in the long grass. Of course that factory was up-to-date. If that farm woman went to have her portrait done, her dress would be right in style.
Bella’s wand hadn’t sent me here! She’d zapped me, stunned me maybe, but that archway curtain I had toppled through hadn’t hidden an entrance to another room-
It must lead instead to another time.
A time before cars, or electricity. A time before I was born… Or James or Remus, Lily or Peter or even, perhaps, a Slytherin Prefect named Tom Riddle-
That’s impossible! The small voice in my head protested.
No, it’s not impossible! I retorted silently.
Why was I arguing with that voice when it was denying that I had found the answer to all my confused, half-formed questions of the last days and weeks? I wanted it to be right! Wanted the idea of being in another time to be nonsense! I wanted this to be nothing more than a very remote back-country village with a road that would eventually lead me home.
Here’s why it’s not impossible! I couldn’t stop myself from arguing, even while I tried to tell me to shut up. Magic defies the idea of impossible! It defies the idea of form being unchangeable or I wouldn’t be sitting here by the road wearing a shaggy canine coat. If magic limited a witch or wizard by place, none of us would have learned to apperate or use floo powder to travel the chimney networks. So why should the idea of landing in another time be impossible?
Because I didn’t want to be here!
Because I didn’t know how to get myself back home!
If my suspicion was right (and I was far too weary to come up with even one halfway decent argument to prove it wasn’t), I was caught on the wrong side of a channel wider than the one surrounding the Isle of Azkaban!
How could I ever swim this one? Back across the years to reach everyone that mattered in my life? Back to Harry? Back to Hessia? To Remus, to Ron, Hermione? To Cousin Tonks and Albus Dumbeldore…
It was only two years I’d gotten to spend with them since leaving Azkaban, and that in only in bits and pieces! How could I stand being cut off from all of them again?
The voice of protest fell silent. It hadn’t been trying to convince me I was wrong, only to hold back the moment of belief until I could absorb the full horror of it.
If it was true, how was I going to return to my own time? I knew no-one here that I could approach for help. I was a Wizard whose wand will be laying on the floor of the Chamber of Mysteries several years from now. Without it, I could use my internal magic to transform back and forth between canine and human form, but that skill wasn’t even providing me a proper meal, let alone a way home.
And I needed to be home, raising my wonderful Godson, Harry. I wanted to send him owls at school and cheer him on at Quidditch matches. I wanted to laugh with him, listen to his plans and his dreams and show him how proud I was to be his Godfather. I needed to help Remus, my Cousin Tonks, Hessia and all those other people I cared about in the Order of the Phoenix fight the growing power of the dark wizard Voldemort. I wanted to protect Harry from him.
I’m no wolf, and the light was hidden behind the clouds, but even a lonely animagus dog can cry to the moon.