Possibilities
Possibilities
“Really?” I stared at her.
“Yes.” The light in her eyes went out. “That’s what I wanted to tell you yesterday. Why do you think I could hardly look you in the face when we got home last night? Or why today I said I owed you an explanation? I knew where you wanted to be. The fact you couldn’t have acted on what I know doesn’t matter. My decision denied you the chance to plan, or prepare. My heart’s been whole, living in this time. Yours has been tearing itself apart because you’re here and it belongs there.”
“I couldn’t have acted on what?” I asked. Each word was a step over thin winter ice that could shatter if I weren’t very careful. “You mean it’s not just you that can travel through time? That maybe… Maybe-?”
Faces from tangled dreams over the past half year came as clear as if they were in the room with me. Remus, Tonks and Albus Dumbledore seemed almost close enough to touch. There was Hessia, with her pansy blue eyes and Harry with his bright green ones. And then cutting through that sweet vision, came the sound of his voice, the last memory from my own time- “Sirius… Sirius!”
“Tell me… how did you get to the future and back here again?”
Willow let herself be guided onto ground that was safer, more solid. “The week before Christmas, Hal invited me to take my half-day and go to the market fair in the next village. When we got there, he said he wanted to buy me something. A ribbon or a necklace maybe. So we walked over to this peddler’s cart. After only a minute the man said he was off to get some lunch, but could I come back later? He had something he particularly wanted to show me, but it was packed away in one of his boxes and he would need to fetch it out. I didn’t think anything much about it, but later while Hal was looking at some Jersey cows, I went back.”
“What did he show you?”
“A picture.” She said. “Not a portrait. A photo. It was him. Years younger, but I knew him, right off. He was standing there, leaning on the bonnet of an automobile.”
“An automobile? Do you mean he was…?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “He was from the future. I wonder if there are lots of us scattered throughout the years. Maybe that’s how the great inventions come into being. People carry knowledge back with them and when the need arises, they make these great so-called ‘discoveries’. Anyway, he said if I wanted, he’d show me the way home. The fair would last three days and I must decide before it ended. I thought about it all the next day and the next. I felt dreadful over leaving Hal. But on the last morning, I got up before first light and went to the fairgrounds.”
“And he-?” I held my breath.
“And,” she said. “He showed me how to get home.”
I couldn’t bite back my eagerness this time. “Was he a Wizard? Was it a spell?”
A grin fought through the tension in her face. “Has anyone ever said anything to you about Wizards being arrogant?”
“Well,” I said. “I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I’ve been known to be. Why?”
She snapped her fingers. “Oh, that’s right! You had servants! Well, you arrogant Scruff, did it ever occur to you Wizards don’t possess all the Magic in the world?”
“Well, yeah. Unicorns, centaurs, dwarves and House Elves all have Magic quite separate from ours.” I grinned. “Not to mention pixies, dragons, phoenixes, nifflers and-”
A glint of mischief lit her eyes. “You’ve left something out.”
“Ancient runes?” I asked. “Trolls? Ghosts?”
“Places have Magic too,” Willow said.
Of course she was right! There were places that almost whispered of Magic as they were approached. Like the Chamber at the Ministry. Gooseflesh rippled down my back at the memory. I looked for more cheerful possibilities. “Oh, like small skrying pools on the hillside or the circles of standing stones.”
“Yes,” she said. “Like those. Or fields where the crops lie down in patterns to form messages. But I’m not talking about anywhere so obvious.”
Places had Magic! And the man from the fair had taken her to one of them. Somewhere it might be possible to reach from here. “Did he take you back to your cave?”
“No. If he had taken me there, this would be easy, even now. I can’t say that where we went wasn’t connected to it though. Caves have as many twists, turns and side passages as time itself does.”
A cave. A different one than she had slipped through all unknowing. A place as sure and solid as the rock from which it was formed! I could see it taking glorious shape within my mind. See us walking toward it, gazing into its dark opening. It was so simple! So much more straightforward than anything I’d thought of . “But it was a real place he took you to, right? One we can reach from here?”
I was on my feet, laughing, stiffness altogether beside the point. Three strides round the table and I’d be swooping her up into a hug. Five minutes, she’d said! Give her just five minutes! “Willow, this is great! You can show me? Like he showed you?”
Her hand came up, waved me away even as I reached for her. “Wait!”
“What?” I staggered back a step. “But- but you said…”
“It can be done, yes. At certain times! That’s why I had to meet him before the fair ended, so we could go while the passage was open. When I wanted to come back here, I tried, three times before it worked. I don’t know why. Maybe you do, you’re the Wizard! But it’s not always open…”
“Okay, that makes sense.” I said, knowing it was true. “Potions have ingredients that must be blended in the right order. Spells must be said or thought in the right way, not too fast or slow. Stands to reason a place’s Magic would have conditions for using it, too. Do you know when the passage will open next?”
“Of course I do. It’s open for three days at the summer and winter Solstice.”
Solstice! Right! So many things happened around the summer and winter solstice! The longest and shortest days of the year, steeped in strong and ancient Magic.
Total sense! It was late June when I left Grimauld Place for the Department of Mysteries and fallen through that curtain into what Willow called the passage!
From that day til this it had been- “Willow! Winter solstice is tomorrow! Is this place very far? We could go…”
She wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, Merlin’s beard, Willow, I’m sorry.” I gazed into her upturned eyes. Reached for her hand, then sank stiffly to one knee beside her chair, so that now I was the one looking up. How thoughtless I’d been! First keeping silent about the nature of the stranger she sheltered, then in my eagerness to leave her behind and be gone. “See what I mean about being arrogant? My friends told me how impulsive I can be. Called me a hot head. I hated it, but they were probably right. I’m still the rich kid who never had to think past what he wanted at the time, and I’m doing it again!” I forced a laugh. “One of the dangers of being a town scruff growing up with servants!”
She was silent.
It was a feeble joke. I hadn’t expected her to laugh. But I wasn’t prepared for her to jerk her hand from mine and sweep from her chair in a swirl of skirts. Still less prepared for her to shout. “Don’t apologize to me! You can’t go now!”
“What?” I clambered up, started after her. “I don’t get it! Solstice is tomorrow, right? The passage will be open!”
“You need to wait!” she moved to the window. Gazed out at the morning sky of a world she lived in by choice. How could she say her earlier silence had denied me the chance to prepare, then tell me I must stay put, must wait, wait, wait?
“Bloody hell, Willow! Not you too! For fifteen years, I’ve done almost nothing but wait! Twelve, in a cell in Azkaban Prison! Waiting for a trial. Waiting for my name to be cleared! Sometimes waiting only for madness or death to put an end to the horrible, useless days!”
I was shaking. “When I escaped, I waited in hiding for another year, trying to catch the man who betrayed my dear friends James and Lily, to a Dark Wizard who’s threatened our world for years, the man who set me up to take the blame for what he’d done. All that time, I was a wanted man, always looking over my shoulder, just waiting to be recognized, captured, taken back to prison. There wasn’t much I was able to do, but from a distance, I could watch over my Godson! Write him letters, encourage him! Hope I was helping to protect him. Imagine I was doing what I promised his parents before they were killed!”
I saw the look on Harry’s face the night we walked from the Shrieking Shack before Peter escaped. Remembered the eagerness in his green eyes when I’d offered to have him come to live with me and the resolve that filled me later that night as Buckbeak and I fled across the stark silver of a full moon sky, that someday I’d give that home to him.
I didn’t know if my words were making sense to Willow, but I couldn’t hold back .
“Years ago, I made a vow that my life was going to count for something. Before prison, I was a spy in the resistance against that Dark Wizard I mentioned. That was a lot of waiting, too, but with a purpose to it. Watching, listening and reporting what he and his followers were planning.”
I could see the Order of the Phoenix scattered comfortably round James’s and Lily’s study. Hear the plans taking shape. Remember the bursts of laughter. Laughter, even as Voldemort’s shadow grew dark over our world. “It was so much more dangerous than we knew in the beginning. So many of us were found out. Captured. Killed. My younger brother, Regulus… My dear friends, Harry’s parents James and Lily… all died for defying that so-called Dark Lord. But, for thirteen years it seemed he’d been defeated. Then the deaths and disappearances started up again. A year and a half ago, nearly two years after I escaped from prison, I wanted to join the resistance again. My friend Remus and I were asked to get what was left of the old gang back together. I thought, now there’s something I can do to help. But once everyone was summoned, what’d they tell me? Look, Sirius, if we can use your old family home as resistance headquarters, you’ll have done your part! What could you do to help after all these years? Prison could’ve spoiled your nerve! Anyway, how could you ever be a spy? You’re the famous wanted criminal, Sirius Black, aren’t you? Everyone in the Wizarding world knows who you are! So you just wait here safe, like a good boy!”
Willow stood motionless under my torrent of words. “Meantime my wonderful Godson was in more danger each day! But I did as the head of our Order requested. Fool that I was, I waited! Day after useless, pointless, purposeless day, I waited! Was I following orders? Or being a coward? I don’t know! I only know I waited til I couldn’t sit by the fire any more! Waited as my skills rusted to a point where, when it was time to do battle with some of Voldemort’s followers, my Cousin Bellatrix bested me in a duel and zapped me out of my time and into yours! And now you tell me there’s a way home, but, like everybody else, you want me to sit back and wait! Well, I can’t! Not again!”
“Stephen- I’m sorry. I mean… Your name is Sirius, right? Sirius? Like the star?” There was no reproof for my outburst in her voice, only a note of pleading. “I’m not telling you to wait because I don’t believe you can help your Godson. Or you don’t have the nerve to risk the trip through the passage. If anyone knows better than to say that, I do! It was a brave thing you did last night. But by doing that, you were wounded-”
“Flesh wounds!” I snapped, advancing to meet her, defying the stiffness I’d almost managed to dismiss before. My voice rang in protest against the argument of her silence. “All right, I’m stiff, I’m sore. That’s all. In only…” My words trailed off.
Only…? I recalled the man who had an accident “down the pit”. And my illness. How long did “only” take? I had no idea how fast injuries healed without the Magic of a Medi-Wizard. I threw out the first desperate thing that came to mind. “In a week you wouldn’t know this happened at all! I can travel!”
Those faces had grown so vivid these last weeks, my restlessness to find a way home was more urgent than at any time since my fever. Was that because, as Solstice approached, even without the focusing power of a wand I was sensing the veil thinning between this time and mine?
Merlin’s beard! It was one thing to wait as I gained strength, helped Willow ready her place for winter, or searched for a plan to guide the start of my journey. But I was not ill, the house was snug against the weather and someone stood less than ten feet away who could point me on the road home.
Willow’s voice rang as defiant as mine. “For the kind of travel I’m thinking of, give it a fortnight! Even if it was only a week, the passage will have closed by then!”
“Bloody hell, what’re you saying? To wait for the next solstice to open the passage? No way, Willow, that’s six months!” I was pacing, the need to move thrumming through me with every heartbeat. To move, to trace the edges of the room, the borders of my world. Back, forth, back again, hating how, after her words, I was aware of the soreness in my ribs and hip as I traveled the small space.
That old ache swelled in my chest. My way to the dream being cut off when I thought it was within reach. Not over a wall to a Muggle street now, not past Cousin Bellatrix’s shouts to the Gryffindor table. Only through a bit of discomfort to get home to Harry…
Willow stepped into my path. “What if waiting is the difference between bringing Harry a living Godfather or entering the passage without knowing if those injuries leave you enough strength or endurance to cross it?”
She didn’t stop me as I sidestepped past her to the window. My hand stroked the warm wood of the sill while I gazed out at the garden as if I could read the answers I needed written in the bare, winter soil. Was it only yesterday I stood here, trying to capture the memory of this place to take with me when I left? Or argued with her over the trip to Donald’s? My regret-filled words echoed across the hours. “Risks are the things we are certain we can handle… until the instant we discover that we can’t.”
“I’m sorry I put you in this position,” said Willow behind me.
“What position?” I asked, still staring out at the muddy earth.
“You didn’t want to take that shortcut through the pasture last night.”
“What?” Surprise brought me round to face her. “What does that have to do with anything?” But a squeeze in my gut that matched the way she was clasping her hands together told me where this was going. “Hey, Willow! I took it! Did you see me running along the wall outside there to get round?”
“Well, I didn’t give you the chance to speak your mind, did I, Stephen? I gathered my skirts, scrambled up the wall and dropped my bag at your feet…”
“What difference does it make?” But I knew. So what if I followed her, laughing about all the walls I’d scaled in my life? She felt responsible for some part of this.
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “All I’m sure of is that if we hadn’t taken it, you wouldn’t have had to fend off that bull. We could be on the road already, not standing here arguing about why you shouldn’t go.”
“There’s nothing to argue about,” I said. “Whatever I did last night, you’re not responsible for. Didn’t you tell me that, if I gave you five minutes, whatever I wanted to do, you wouldn’t stop me?”
Silence. Three, four five seconds of it. No sound but the crackle of the fire. I walked to it, held my hands over its rising heat, without feeling the warmth. Bloody hell, I hated trapping her in her own words like that. It was a cruel bit of cleverness. Hardly a fit return for her kindness of these last months or her concern this morning. But I wouldn’t let it happen again. Nobody was going to tell me where I must be, should be, needed to be! Nobody was going to say I must wait, wait, wait, to hold off putting purpose into my life again. Especially over something as meaningless as a flesh wound or a few bruises…
Except… The idea nudged its way through my jostling thoughts. Maybe those wounds hadn’t been so meaningless…
Behind me, she managed a rueful laugh. “I did say that, didn’t I? All right. It is your decision to make, after all. Not mine. But it’s not so far to go as all that. We don’t have to rush out the door to make it in time. We certainly won’t do anything til we’ve eaten.”
My decision. She’d said it was my decision!
How long since anyone said that to me? Your decision, Sirius. I’d made hundreds a day before I went to Azkaban. Big ones, good ones, bad ones. To walk out of the House of Black rather than follow its dark traditions. To determine where the most discrete places were to rendezvous with other members of the Order of the Phoenix to exchange information. To ask Peter to be James’s and Lily’s Secret Keeper. Lots of decisions. I never questioned my right to make them. After years lived in numbing despair under the watch of the dementors, I still made hundreds a day. Whether to start out by putting on my right shoe or my left. Whether to begin breakfast with a slice of bread, or with a sip of tea. Whether to de-gnome Grimauld Place’s garden in the morning or put it off til afternoon and go down the cellar first to catch a few extra nice fat rats for Buckbeak.
How often I asked myself if I stayed in Grimauld Place from cowardice or loyalty, but it never occurred to me to ask by what authority Albus decided the size of the world I lived in. Even when I dashed out to find Harry in the Department of Mysteries or transformed to chase the bull away from Willow, those were acts more of desperation than thought out decisions…
On the shore across from Azkaban Island and in the woods near Hogwarts, I learned to trust again the big sky spread wide above me. In a meadow near here, I learned to trust the idea of living out from under the shadow of pursuit. Looking at Willow, I realized I could trust her words when she said leaving or staying was my decision. Whether she liked it or not. I sighed as the room seemed to grow larger around me and the thrumming drive to trace its boundaries began to fade.
Hundreds of decisions. All mine. Mine! The first would be to follow Willow back to the table and eat the breakfast she’d prepared for us. A few minutes ago, she’d said I wasn’t trapped in this time. Now I knew, as I hadn’t since the night I’d been Sorted into Gryffindor, that I could not be trapped by anyone’s will but my own.
“Would you like me to bring the bread?” I asked, glancing from the empty platter to the sideboard as I reached my place. “Toasted or not, we never did get it on the table.”
“Yes, thanks,” she nodded. As I passed her chair, I could see the tiredness in her eyes, the crease in her brow that spoke of being worried or, perhaps, perplexed and thoughtful.
What was it, I found myself wondering as I gathered up the warm fragrant loaf, about my crossing the passage that worried Willow? Unlike me, she’d freely traveled between times herself. To ask her wouldn’t cost me anything. Not when it was me who could choose how to respond to her answer. Me who could use the information to plan, to prepare, the way she’d talked about earlier…
I had, after all, to be clear…
Harry was no dream. He was a flesh and blood wizard, my beloved Godson, whose feelings must be considered at least as much as my own. I could hear again that desperate cry. “Sirius! Sirius…!”
Harry… What would he want me to do? Need me to do?
Yeah, I had to be clear, for both of us. Did he think I was killed in that fall through the curtain? Grieved for me like I was dead? Awful thought, him being put through that after losing James and Lily, after seeing Cedric die. There’d been no way to reassure him I was alive. All I’d been able to do was hope he was the strong, resourceful person I believed him to be. That he’d found a way to gather his strength and his friends close round him and go on. That he’d discovered those things almost six months ago now...
As much as I wanted to see him, were they Harry’s needs I was thinking about this morning, or my own? Probably both. But which path would serve the both of us best? So many things to consider that wouldn’t have mattered if I’d known about it yesterday! All because of a few injuries that were slight enough as to be almost meaningless…
Except, the thought pushed to the front of my attention again as I set the bread on the table. They weren’t meaningless. There was a purpose to the actions that produced those wounds. A clear, direct purpose. Like I’d wanted strength and energy to have during the cold, dark years in prison. Like I’d yearned to find in my empty days at Grimauld Place. It had been so long since I knew what it felt like to have it, I’d lost track of where to look. It wasn’t a dream waiting out beyond my reach, past the bars of Azkaban, the walls of my parents’ house or on the other side of the passage. It had been waiting within me, like the freedom to decide what were the borders of my world. I could look for it, could find it, create it, wherever, whenever I was, whether by keeping Willow safe from the hooves and horns of a bull in this time or by watching out for Harry in my own.
As I sank into my chair across from Willow, I could almost feel the last of those old, barred prison doors swing wide before me.
Now that the loaf was on the table, neither of us reached for the bread platter. I found myself studying Willow’s face, even as her gaze settled on me. That thoughtful, almost perplexed look was still in her green eyes. Was she thinking about our journey to the passage? Wishing I’d consider her advice, change my mind and stay?
To go? To stay? Your decision, Sirius.
I drew a deep, considering breath. Felt the twinge of ribs. But the deeper ache, that old painful yearning for something beyond my grasp was gone. What remained was the need to come to the best decision I could. And a sense of purpose glowing warm inside me. Filling me with strength that told me I could set my stubborn will aside long enough to ask questions that would let me make that decision be a wise one.
Okay, time to be clear. For Harry’s sake, for my own, and for Willow’s as well.
Hadn’t I told myself as I dressed this morning that the one thing I would not, could not, regret was that I’d acted to save Willow’s life? Did I want to give her cause to regret that I’d taken those actions? Of course, she’d said whatever I wanted to do, she wouldn’t stop me. But if I got her to take me to the passage, whether I made it across or not, I’d have no way to let her know, any more than I could have done with Harry. Would I leave another person to worry or to grieve because of my impatience?
Willow must have seen something change in my face. Maybe saw the tight set of my jaw relax. Recognized that the driving urgency of a few minutes ago had gone. Watched it give way to a slower, more thoughtful weighing of choices.
Pushing back her chair, she got up and came round the table and at last allowed her hand to rest on my shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, almost tentative.
“Stephen… That is, Sirius. I meant what I said. I’ll abide by whatever you decide to do, but-” She paused. Waited. Probably wondered if I could, or would, hear her out.
Her hesitation fluttered something cold deep in my gut, but the trust in my freedom to choose, didn’t shatter. I drew a careful breath and nodded for her to go on.
“Would it make a difference?” asked Willow as something that sounded like excitement crept into her tone. “If I told you that, should you decide to stay til the next Solstice, I have an idea how we could put that time to an excellent use?”