Trapped!
Trapped
The sound of rain was still there when light squeezed between my eyelids and announced that day had come. Wafting above me was the spicy aroma of sausage. My stomach rumbled as I sat up slowly, following my nose. Cold air burrowed beneath my blanket and drove me back down.
“Finally awake, I see.” My hostess looked at me from a chair near the fire where she sat with a basket of clothes and balls of yarn on the floor beside her. “Are you hungry?”
I nodded and pulled the comforter higher around my chin.
She laughed. “Oh, sorry. Your shirt and your- I suppose it’s a sort of coat, isn’t it?- are still drying. I left you your jeans last night, but I found a pair of my husband’s trousers if you want to change. There’s a shirt and socks as well. If you’d like a bit of privacy, I’ll just go and gather the eggs. It was raining too hard to do it earlier. I set some water on for tea a moment ago. Listen for the kettle, will you?”
I was dressed and the tea was ready when she came in. Making that tea was a lot of work. There was no wand on the sideboard to help prepare it. Since I wasn’t about to poke through her things to find one, I had to draw on the two years of Muggle Studies I’d had at Hogwarts. A lingering fatigue slowed every movement and tangled my concentration. I kept having to repeat the steps of the process out loud, over and over again like when I learned my first year spells, to make certain I got them right.
By the time the tea was on the table, I was more than relieved to sit down. Every muscle in my body was scratchy and stiff from so much travel and my throat had a scraped raw feel and my mutterings had been hoarse croaks that sounded as if I’d barked too long and loud last night, but the fragrant steam rising from the mashed leaves in the pot brought a sharp moment of pleasure. I smiled up at my hostess as she closed the door. “Your tea is served, Madam.”
“Thank you, Sir. I’ll bring the bread and, I cooked some sausages earlier. I’ve got butter and raspberry jam as well if you’d like.”
As ravenous as I had been the last days and as delicious as everything was, the flavor began to fade for me the further we got into the meal. The room was telling me things I didn’t want to know.
They were the same kinds of things that had come together to make an uncomfortable jigsaw picture last night and that I had hoped would have resorted themselves into a better one this morning.
I was all right with the fire crackling in the hearth and the lantern hooks on the walls. They were more familiar than an electric heater and lamps would have been. There was the soft, cozy tick of a clock and from the corner of my eye I could see hands on a round face like the ones most Wizarding houses had.
Yet almost certainly, this was a Muggle home.
My hostess had brought out no wand to set her scrub-brush massaging the odds and ends of silverware in a pan of water on the sideboard. The face on the mantle clock was edged with numbers, not the normal place names telling where the members of this household might be.
Mostly it was that the portraits- all painted, no photographs- that began stirring up the trapped feeling that had sent me running down the road last night. The pictures were completely silent. Not one commented about my presence here, called a greeting or given me so much as a wave or wink. They sat in their frames over the mantle as stiff as if they’d been through a petrifying charm.
And the ladies’ gowns! I’d never paid too much attention to Muggle clothes, but to me they resembled those worn by some of the older portraits at Hogwarts. Except for looking way too uncomfortable to be anything but formal best, the painted dresses were almost indistinguishable from the gown worn by the woman in the farmhouse doorway last night or the one sitting across from me this morning.
“You haven’t finished your tea. Is it all right?”
“Yeah, but,” I realized I was still holding on to my scarcely touched cup that was now cooling in my hand. “May I ask a question?”
She shrugged. “Ask away.”
Clearing my throat, I stared hard into my teacup. Beads of sweat were breaking out on my forehead and my face flushed hot with apprehension. I had to ask. But how would I learn anything I needed to know without labeling myself a madman?
“I’m on my way to London, to see my Godson. I don’t remember… Did I say that last night?” I took a long swallow of tea, cleared my throat again and watched my hand set the cup aside. “I’ve been on the road for… well, for days and days and-” To my own ears, the sound that rose in my throat was more of a strangled flutter than a laugh. “I’ve lost track of what day it is…” I looked up at her, both hoping and fearing that she had heard the urgency in my tone. “I mean, I know it isn’t June any more. But it is still July, isn’t it?”
Her eyebrows rose. Otherwise she was motionless, her green gaze remaining fixed on me for several loud ticks of the clock. But she didn’t look as surprised by my question as I thought she might. Maybe I hadn’t sounded as desperate to her as I had to myself. “Yes, we’re still in July now. It’s the thirty first.”
“The… thirty first?” My few bites of breakfast dropped like a stone into my stomach.
Oh, Merlin’s beard, no! The moon hadn’t lied. It was a month I’d been gone and now it was Harry’s birthday! Harry’s sixteenth birthday, and where was his Godfather to help him celebrate it?
He’s on his way home to him, that’s where he is! I told the panic tightening its vice-grip on my breakfast. I might not like the fact that it’s been so long, but since I had no choice anyway, I could make myself deal with the idea of it being the tail end of July. But when she named the year, her words rang through my bones like the echoing slam of cold iron gates.
“I- I didn’t know so much time had passed!” I said.
That was true! But she probably thought I had traveled with it in the usual direction.
“Well, it’s no surprise! You were so worn out last night I’m amazed you knew anything at all about how long you were traveling!” With a scrape of her chair across the floorboards she was up and around the table. Her hand was on my shoulder. “Look at me! You’re white as a sheet and you’re shivering again! Perhaps you shouldn’t have gotten up so soon…”
“I’m fine!” I interrupted her. “I just need…” My words trailed off.
What did I need? To get to London? To Hogsmeade? For what? The places I knew wouldn’t exist for years!
“I think you’re a lot more worn out than either of us realized.” Her hand was firm on my arm, but her words were little more than a far away distraction as I tried to shake off the strangle-hold feeling of being trapped.
You’re not trapped! I told myself. You’ll be okay! You were trapped in Grimmauld Place, and when you were in Azkaban. Nobody ever escaped from Azkaban back then, but you did! You’re not trapped, got it?
“No, I’m all right.” My words sounded as distant as hers had, out somewhere beyond the shouting arguments of my own thoughts.
This isn’t like Azkaban! That was just an island! I don’t know how I can get back home from another time!
You didn’t know at first how you’d get away from Azkaban, either! But you escaped! You did it! Slipped through the bars and-
Fingers tugged at my sleeve. “Come on back by the fire and warm yourself. Your skin is like ice, even through your shirt-”
This won’t be like escaping Azkaban…
Something had been there then, that wasn’t with me here, now.
It hadn’t been only my need to be gone from that island, but something in my head that spoke to me, helped me plan. Sounded like James. And there had been a place to go to, then. The mainland. It was one I knew how to reach…
You can swim there… James had said.
Well, there was no swimming from here…
“You know,” her hand was tighter on my arm, as she tried to draw my attention back to her. “Last night we were so busy dragging ourselves in out of the storm that-”
Still, there must be a way. You slipped through the bars, remember? Transformed into a dog and slipped through the bars. You made your way to the beach. It’s supposed to be impossible to get off that island, but you swam and you swam and-
“-That I never even got a chance-” Her voice was rising and falling, soft and distant, mingling with the thrum of the rain.
I didn’t remember leaving the table, but I became aware that my companion was pressing me back onto the settle.
You swam until you got to shore. Then you traveled all the way to Hogwarts School. You found Harry! You can do it again. You can make your way to-
To where? There was nowhere to go! No one to go to. Remus? Hessia? They aren’t born yet! Back to Harry? There’s no Harry yet either.
Prompting fingers squeezed my shoulder. “-to ask you your name.”
“Sirius!”
For me, Harry was only the memory of a voice that will be crying my name perhaps a century from now.
“Sirius!”
His voice had faded as I found myself, not on an island with water I could swim through, but in a strange, confusing time that was not my own, a solitary, wandless Wizard in a Muggle world.
The part of me that had argued the possibility of escape conceded defeat at last. Okay, okay. You’re right. This isn’t like Azkaban at all.
The absence of my loved ones ached in the very air around me. A lump rose in my raw throat, carrying an urge to howl out my misery again. But I didn’t. I wasn’t a dog and Wizards don’t howl. Neither do Muggles
I had to remember how Muggles acted because I had no wand. That meant I had almost no Wizarding ability. History of Magic was never my best subject at school, but if I was right about the time I had landed in, speaking or acting like I expected myself to have those abilities would get me labeled as mad. And that could get me locked up behind bars again.
Trapped behind bars of metal.
Trapped in a prison of time…
I had to remember how Muggles acted and act that way. Remember how they thought and how they spoke...I had to become a Muggle.
How would I be able to do that when I was born a Wizard and trained to be one, act like one, think like one, since my earliest childhood?
“So tell me,” my green-eyed hostess was cupping my chin in her cool, smooth palm and turning my face toward hers, as she tried to capture my attention again. “What should I call you?”
There were other words, spoken in another voice. I could hear them as clearly as I heard those of my hostess. “You’ll need to be called something when you go out.”
It was my beautiful Hessia’s voice.
We were sitting with my old friend, Remus, in the dark, dreary kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Over tea we’d tried to lay a plan to convince Dumbledore to get me out of there and away somewhere I could live in hiding from both Death-Eaters and the Ministry and be useful in stopping Voldemort’s regaining power. To my bitter disappointment, the plan never came together. Dumbledore had insisted I stay where I was, and, fool that I had been, I’d remained there as long as I could…
Out of loyalty? Or out of cowardice, as Severus Snape had said?
It didn’t matter any more.
Now I almost smiled, seeing again Hessia’s graceful hands circling her teacup and the birth of an idea lighting up her pansy-blue eyes. That had been almost a year ago. Or- the smile faded and the lump grew tighter in my throat. It would be happening how many years from now?
Mustn’t think about those years. Only the smile that had come next. Hessia’s voice, full of humour and warm with affection. Almost warm enough to melt away the shivers now rattling my cold bones. “Maybe we’ll cut your hair! Set you up with a whole new identity. Didn’t you say once you had cousins who sailed away to Canada a hundred years ago to get away from all the traditions in the House of Black? What was their name? Maybe you could use that! It might explain a family resemblance if anybody happened to notice it.”
“It was Burin,” I’d said, then raised my eyebrows at Remus’s sudden grin.
“Didn’t quite shed all the family traditions, did they?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s still a star name,” he replied. “A constellation, actually. Burin, the Chisel. A tool for sculpting or carving.”
“Well,” Hessia smiled and raised her teacup in salute. “Here’s to our sharp Mister Burin and the Dark Lordless future he helps the Wizarding world to carve out.”
With the sound of those words still echoing in my ears, I looked over at my hostess. “I’m called Stephen.” I said. “Stephen Burin.”
She got to her feet. “Well, Stephen, lie back. I’ll get this blanket over you so you can get warm. Then I’ll bring your cup so you can finish your tea.”
Stephen. Right. That was me. I had just told her that was me. “Thanks,” I forced myself to nod. “What do I call you?”
“My name is Willow,” she replied, turning away to fetch the tea. “Now, I want you to stay there til that chill passes. Maybe when you feel better, you’d like to read a book or something until you fall asleep.”
“Maybe.” I stared into the fire. The book didn’t matter. What mattered was to be warm. What mattered more was for the rain to stop thrumming on the roof and the windows, to quit reminding me how small this place was and how closed up inside it I was. Closed up in a house, closed up in a time… Mustn’t think about it. What mattered was to go home, greet Harry with a bear hug, talk to Remus, rest my buzzing head on Hessia’s shoulder!
Those things were impossible.
All that remained was to get by best I could in this time. To remember I was a Muggle. To answer when someone said “Stephen”. To turn toward the fire so I could feel some heat on my face, reach toward it so the warmth would touch my hands. Maybe move the settle a little closer…
Leviosah! I thought.
No! Wait! Muggles didn’t levitate furniture.
Cold… terribly cold. Hadn’t been so cold since Azkaban! Or so trapped.
“Here’s your tea, Stephen.”
I wanted to lift the cup Willow set in my hand and feel the rush of warmth down my rusty throat I wanted to say “thanks”.
The cup was heavy. As heavy as my eyelids, heavy as the dementor-cold despair that poured through me with the sound of the rain.
From somewhere a long way off I heard the sound of shattering china as the light of the fire dimmed and its feeble warmth faded, leaving nothing but bone-deep cold.