Paths
Paths
The air was thrumming as we started up the hillside.
Low, subtle thrumming. It tickled my skin, rippled my hair like a small, teasing breeze, though, overhead, not a branch was stirring.
I drew a shallow, listening breath.
Magic? Was this Magic?
It skimmed cold fingers across the back of my neck. Here, gone, then back again.
Places have Magic, Willow had said.
There were some, I remembered thinking, that almost whispered of Magic as they were approached. Like the Chamber at the Ministry. This same gooseflesh feeling had shivered through me at that memory. Skrying pools, I’d said, looking for something to quell the uneasiness. And fields of standing stones.
Bright, hopeful imaginings those had been, visions under clear, wide skies.
But we weren’t going anywhere like that. Or to one of the places that she’d mentioned in return, where crops lay down to form messages.
Instead, she had told me, we were heading for a cave. Not like the small, cozy one I’d shared with Buckbeak, with only a short distance to its exit. But, from Willow’s description, a big one. A deep, silent cave where the air hung, forever still and close. A cave with high, cold, stone walls that stretched away into limitless darkness.
I urged my feet to move faster. Match their steps to the woman who moved ahead of me along the almost invisible path. Beyond that cave, I reminded myself, my Godson would be waiting. I could picture him, clear and vivid out past the silence and the darkness, beyond the flow of years. Yes, there was Harry, and beside him, my lovely Hessia. I could see my old friends, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore and my cousin, Tonks as well. Even my fellow fugitive Buckbeak… Only a bit further along the path… The century dividing all of us seemed smaller with every step now… Shrinking down to decades, to years. Months. Weeks. Days. My own time could be only hours away…
The ripple came again. Stronger this time.
If this was Magic I was feeling, it was no whisper.
It was an itch, a prickle, a pulse, pulse, pulse, beating in rhythm with my heart.
I paused for a gulp of air. Swallowed hard. Between the knot of apprehension in my gut and the yearning lump rising in my throat, it was a wonder there was any room left for the breath to get in at all. Narrowing my eyes, I watched Willow picking her way between trees and over the rocks. Her stride was so sure, so steady. She hardly slowed, even as the hillside grew steeper and I could hear that she, too, was breathing hard as she climbed the rough terrain. Looking up at the wild and rocky slope rising tall before us, I understood why she’d cautioned me to wait to undertake the journey to this place.
“You know,” I called, panting and laughing a little as I ducked under a tree limb before reaching up to brush the sweat from my forehead. “If we’d come last winter, at least it wouldn’t have been so hot!”
“No!” She laughed too, though her voice held a breathless quality of its own. “It would have been colder and a lot wetter! It rained from Solstice all the way through Christmas, remember? Don’t worry though! We’ll be out of the sun soon enough. Want to stop for a breather?”
“No, I’m fine!” I called back, though I made no effort to begin climbing again. Instead, I turned to look back the way we’d come. Along a path that stretched down between the rocks, out beyond the trees, across the seasons, to a small house whose windows were streaked by the drizzling rain of earliest winter…
I could still see how the morning firelight had glowed on her face as she outlined her plan for the months leading up to the next Solstice. See the hope shining in her eyes that something she said would catch my imagination and prompt me to stay. I could feel how stiff my hip and ribs had been and how grateful I was that, for that moment, I had nothing to do but sit and listen to her words as I watched her moving about the room, gathering up objects that would set the idea into motion.
Was Willow right that I wasn’t fit enough to make the journey through the passage? Didn’t want to think so. But then, I wouldn’t do myself or anybody else much good if I wound up dead, now would I?
Still, I couldn’t let myself be drawn, too easily, into the pictures Willow’s words were painting. But how intriguing her idea was! How useful it might prove. Mustn’t get too caught up in it though. Stay to satisfy my own curiosity and by delaying, betray some opportunity to help Harry and the Order.
The need for decision stretched my heart two ways across the years. What was right? To stay? To go? Come on, Sirius, freedom to choose! It’s yours now, remember! Wonderful, liberating gift, but, Merlin’s Beard!, not a comfortable one. And no scarlet and gold Phoenix is going to fly in the door to give you a sign this time!
I stared down at the things Willow had set on the table between me and our barely touched breakfast dishes. At the long feather quill, the fat bottle of ink and the rich, cream-coloured paper. Not familiar parchment, but vellum. Heavy, beautiful vellum with a texture as fine and smooth as butter. It reminded me of some of the old books in the Hogwarts library, their pages full of clear, black writing…
Writing. Writing to Harry! Yes! Among other things, Willow had talked about me writing to Harry. Describing for him what had happened to me on this side of the passage while I waited to travel back across it. I knew she believed it would help free my mind to concentrate on the rest of the plan. And, I could almost see how it would work. No, would was too certain for such a gamble as getting my story to him would be. But I understood that it was a good place to start and how it could- how it might- work!
There’d be no harm in crafting a message, would there? We didn’t need to leave for the passage at this precise moment, after all. Maybe putting my thoughts down for Harry would help me know what the best decision would be, for all of us. It wouldn’t take more than a little while to discover if there were words to describe what I needed him to know. First, that I wasn’t dead. That I was trying to find a way back to him. How proud I was to be his Godfather. Most of all that I loved him. I could feel Willow’s gaze on me as I reached for the ink bottle. Searching out those words, putting them on the waiting page wasn’t the same as saying I was going to stay, was it? Was it?
“I can’t do this,” I said, looking up at her a moment later.
She nodded. “All right, Stephen,” she said, shrugging a little. “It was an idea I thought might put some purpose into the days before the passage opens again. But I do understand why you feel you can’t stay. Six months is a dreadful, long time to be separated from someone you care about.”
“Like it was for you and Hal.” I returned the nod before I realized what she’d said. What she must think my words meant. Probably exactly what they would have meant before I’d picked up the rubber stoppered bottle.
“It’s a longish trip,” she said. “I’ll fix us up some food to take along and…”
“No, Willow, I mean I can’t do- This.” I emphasized the last word, gesturing to the bottle with my bandaged hand. Cleared the huskiness from my voice as the decision made itself and the sharp sting of regret brought a lump to my throat. “This! I can’t write this letter! I can’t grip to get this bleeding bottle open, hold the quill firm enough to write with or, if you haven’t seen under the table yet, to tie my own shoes properly so I can walk out this door without tripping and falling down flat on my face. I’m about as light on my feet right now as a troll, and,” I managed a laugh that was only a little bit cynical. “If we did go, I’m so slow and stiff this morning, I probably wouldn’t reach the passage til it had been closed for a week anyway! Bloody hell, Willow, I’ve done some really stupid, hot-headed things in my life. Usually trying to prove how right I was about something. But if you say the passage is too risky for me right now, I won’t try to prove you wrong about it. I’d rather prove you right about me wanting to bring Harry back a living Godfather. Especially,” I added. “When I think your plan is such a good one!”
“You do?” The resignation in her face gave way to uncertainty, then to reluctant hope. “Really?”
“I do. Really.” I nodded. Swallowed a sigh. The stinging regret over not leaving for the passage settled to an ache. It was something I would have to live with. Not as bad as the longing to get back I’d known these last months. At least, I reminded myself, I knew for certain now that there would be a way home. A day when I would see Harry again. Would talk with Remus. Tell Albus that I’d learned a few things about time-travel which might help the Order. Maybe even let Hessia know how I felt about her…
With Willow’s plan to put my attention on, the time might go quickly. More important, it might count for something useful, valuable. I managed a grin. Even heard a note of humour in my voice. “If you think the two of us can pull it off, that is.”
She smiled and her green eyes filled with their familiar teasing sparkle. “Now that I know you’re smart enough to listen to the expert, of course we can!”
Listen to the expert? She’d certainly been that, all right, I decided now, turning back up the trail and panting as I scrambled between two bushes and over a large grey rock. Even without injuries to slow me down, without the winter winds to battle against or rains to turn the earth into mud beneath our feet, this had been an arduous journey. One that was a long way from over.
Quite a long journey from that dim, overcast day at the heart of winter when, though I believed it to be the right one, the decision to stay tugged at my heart. Despite my determined words to Willow, each passing day that I remained here was going to feel like… Well, not quite like a lie. But like a withholding of truth. Or of a secret knowledge kept to myself when it should be shared with my Godson. I knew it was going to be like that til I could find a way to at least write the short note that would let Harry know I was alive.
Easier said than done.
I discovered that soon enough. Though I was in no shape to accompany Willow on a quick afternoon trip to check on young Timothy and his parents, the peaceful days were long past when I had only the strength to sit for hours, content to gaze out at the garden. Instead, I wandered through the quiet house, from the window to a warm spot by the fire, but kept finding myself back at the table, staring down at the sheaf of vellum pages.
What? I asked myself five, ten, twenty five times as rain began to fall in quiet patters on the window pane. What could I say that would give Harry, and only Harry, an idea who was trying to get a message to him? Where, in a hundred years, would he be certain to come across it? There must be somewhere it could rest, undisturbed til then.
The only place I knew he’d sooner or later look into and trust that whatever he might find came from me was that old candy tin in the closet of Grimmauld Place. Getting a message into that would be harder than finding my way to Diagon Alley. First, I’d have to locate Number Twelve. Might not be as difficult now as when my parents will live there. Nobody had been- will be- as keen on unplottable, unchartable or invisibility charms as my Father. But still… I could see myself finally locating the place, then walking up to the front door, using that repulsive old snake’s head knocker and introducing myself to whichever House Elf answered.
“Hello, I’m a member of the Black family. What’s my name, you may ask? Actually, you won’t recognize it because it’s not on the tapestry. That’s because I’m not really born yet. Even after I am, it’ll only be there for about sixteen years anyway, because I’m going to get myself banished. Thrown right out of this house and this family. The thing is, since that hasn’t happened yet, I’m probably still in reasonably good standings. With all that being said, I’m sure you won’t mind if I run upstairs for a minute. Visit the closet of the room that’ll be mine someday and set this letter here in a candy tin that…”
Yeah, right. Good one, Sirius. It won’t be there.
Andromeda won’t have given it to me yet. She’s not born yet, either.
Okay, so how could I get my message in among the parchments that would fill the tin before I carried them away with me to Grimmauld Place? I’d stayed at Remus Lupin’s house before I went there, of course! Yes! If I traveled to Remus’s, I could…
Wait, wait, wait! No, Sirius. Not a good plan, either! I had no clue how long that place had belong to him, or to his family. Besides, I’d only been there a short while and had never unpacked the small bundle of possessions I’d snatched up in those last hurried minutes before Buckbeak and I flew from the cave near Hogwarts.
Of course! That was it! The cave where the first several parchments had been written. There was a little ledge of rock in the far corner of it where I had stored them, along with old bits of the Prophet. Harry knew where it was. He’d been there, along with Ron and Hermione... Visited me there. Brought a wonderful feast of chicken…
I groaned. Well, that plan had sounded good! Except that I wouldn’t be able to take my message there til after I got to the future. That would be at least two years from the night I’d left that cave for the last time, carrying the rest of my correspondence with me. Harry would have no reason to ever visit that place again…
Still, something about the cave felt right. Like, if I closed my eyes and concentrated on the coming years, I could see the letter tucked up safe on that ledge. But how could that happen? Merlin’s Beard! How?
“Blast it all!” I growled at the paper that stared up at me, blank as my imagination. “There’s got to be a way to-!”
“To what, Stephen?”
I jumped. Winced. “To get a bleeding letter to Harry!” I snapped before I could grab hold of the impatient words. Sighing, I turned to look up at Willow. Found myself grinning, making a joke that would’ve been impossible even yesterday. “Sorry, I usually don’t bite when I’m not in my dog form. You startled me, that’s all. How’s the new father holding up?”
Willow accepted my apology with a nod and a smile as she glanced at the empty pages in front of me. She set her carry sack down beside them and went to hang her rain spattered cloak on its hook next to the door. “Almost as well as the mother and child. He said to tell you hello, by the way. You know,” she came back to the table, circled the neck of her sack with one hand as the other brushed my shoulder. “Composing that letter doesn’t have to be the first thing you do before we get our plan underway. You could set it aside for a while, until you decide what you need to say in it.”
“I know what I want to say. About how I’m going to write down all that’s happened to me since I came here for him to find and how we can arrange to meet once I get back to his time. Truth is, I don’t think I can settle to anything else til I do write that note.” Sighing, I pushed away from the table as I watched her set the sack beside the hearth and then hold her hands out toward the glowing flames. “But I did put the kettle on the fire in case you wanted tea when you got in To take the chill off after the rain.”
“Thanks, Stephen. Tea will be wonderful! I’ll set it to steep, then pour out a cup for each of us.”
Willow went about mashing the tea while I fetched the cups and set them at our accustomed spots. “The thing is,” I said, finding the jam pot and placing it between them, then moving to the sideboard for the unsliced loaf of bread. “I’ve been trying to come up with a plan for getting it to him.”
“Maybe,” she said, settling the steaming pot in the centre of the table, then sinking into her chair with a long, contented sigh. “The plan will form itself as you put your thoughts down on paper.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, adding the sugar bowl to the tea things before taking my place across from her. “So far, that’s been a much thornier problem than finding things I want to tell him. There are so many of those we’d need a whole book of vellum pages to say them all, even without describing all my experiences here! And, for that matter, it’s been harder to figure out than finding a way, with my hand like this right now, that I can put the words down on the paper in a manner Harry can actually read them!” I laughed. “Too bad I didn’t have a Speedy Scriber handy in my pocket when I fell into this time!”
“You’ll just have to learn how to plan better in the future then, won’t you?” She looked very pleased with herself at the comment. So, I wasn’t the only one to enjoy the humour springing from the new openness between us. “By the way,” she went on, beginning to cut the bread into neat slices. “Is that something new they’ve invented since I’ve been gone, or is what you said just now a wizard invention? The speedy thing? Or is it better if I don’t ask you something like that? I mean, so much of your Magical world seems to be hidden, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be kept secret.”
“Kept quiet, maybe,” I said after a moment’s thought. “So people won’t exploit it. Won’t think of seeking out a witch or wizard to find them a quick fix for their problems. Magic can create as many difficulties as it solves sometimes. I have a friend called Arthur who’s always trying to learn about how things are done outside our community. Says we need to bridge some of the distances between the worlds. So, no. It’s not secret.” I smiled at her. “Not from the people we trust- the people that we care about.”
The curiosity all but overflowed her bright gaze, but I knew she wouldn’t ask. Would leave the decision about what to explain up to me.
“A Speedy Scriber,” I told her, as I tried to get the lid off the jam pot. “Is a wizarding thing, rather like your quill here, only, when you speak the charm, it can drink up great quantities of ink. Like from an ice cream soda straw. Then, when you want to write a note or a report or something, you lay it on the parchment and say another charm that sets it going. It stands up on end and writes down every word you say. They’re banned at school, Merlin alone knows why. If they’d let us have them, we could’ve done our homework in half the time!”
Willow laughed as she took the jam pot and opened it. “If you were a teacher, how’d you like your students’ homework done so fast they had twice as much time for getting in trouble? Would you like me to spread some jam on that bread for you by the way?”
“Yeah, thanks. When I think about all the mischief my friend James and I used to get up to, even with a full load of homework, I see your point.” I smiled for a moment over the memory, then sighed. “Both the one about the homework and about perhaps coming up with the idea for getting the letter to Harry as I’m putting it together. If, Willow, I tell you what I want to say, would you write it down for me?”
“All right.” She said. “We can do it right now, if you’d like. While we finish our tea…” Her words trailed off.
“What is it?” I asked, watching the way her brow furrowed.
“Nothing.” The word was slow, drawn out in thought. “At least, nothing wrong. Just that, what you asked me to do reminded me of something… From a long time ago, I think it was…”
Again, her words trailed into silence. After a moment longer spent squinting into the past, searching for the memory, she laughed. Shrugged. Shook her head. Set her half finished cup aside and reached for the paper and quill. “Well, whatever it is, I’m not going to spend all evening looking for it. All right, Scruff, picture me as your very tall, rather slow Speedy Scriber then, even if I don’t stand up on my head to write. How do you want to start?”
“Well, maybe ‘Dear Harry’ would be a good place to begin.” I said, then stopped. “Wait! No! Don’t put that down yet! Let me think a bit!”
Now that the moment was at hand, everything I’d told Harry inside the quiet of my thoughts over and over throughout the afternoon became impossible, unrealistic rubbish. I couldn’t just say “Dear Harry! Hi, it’s me, your long-lost Godfather, Sirius, writing to you from a hundred years in the past.” Not only would it be confusing, frightening even. It could be dangerous. Who knew who might find that letter in the meantime? Might search out the manner by which I’d landed here? Twist the secret of the archway in the Department of Mysteries to their own purpose?
Of course, that meant Voldemort. I grimaced at the sound of his name, even in my thoughts. Quite a relief it had
been, all this time, not to deal with his shadow hanging over everything on a day to day basis. A luxury Harry hadn’t had.
That thought sharpened my resolve. Brought back the things I’d learned, under Allastor Moody’s careful scrutiny, when I’d trained as a spy against the Dark Lord. If I didn’t use names, kept my references vague, relied on things only Harry and I (and perhaps Ron, Remus and Hermione) knew, it would work. With a deep breath, I began.
“Write ‘No date’,” I told Willow. “That looks pretty innocent. I’ve started other letters to Harry like that. And it won’t give anything away. Then write ‘Godson’…”
She nodded. Her long hair swung forward as she bent over the page. I could hear the soft scratching of the quill.
After a moment, I went on, pausing every few words to consider what would come next and give Willow the chance to catch up.
“This letter is no fake, although the paper is different and the handwriting is not mine. I’m not certain it will reach you. It’s a desperate gamble, but more than worth a try. My first hope is that I grabbed it up with all the parchments, envelopes and bits of the Prophet filling the cave I shared with my feathered friend…”
I paused. Listened to Willow’s soft murmured words “my feathered friend” echoing mine over the scratching of the quill. I reached for my cup of tea. The quick scrabble of Willow’s writing stopped. Glancing at her through the rising steam, I saw that her eyes were very wide and green as she lifted her head to stare at me. “What?” I asked.
“No, go on.” Quill in hand, she gestured at the vellum, an almost impatient move.
After a moment’s consideration, I continued.
“I don’t mean to be vague, but I don’t know what the climate will be while this note lies in waiting for you and it will not be in my power to add any safeguards to it…”
We’d both hit a rhythm, I decided, stopping only long enough for a quick sip of tea. The words I wanted were coming in a smooth, natural flow, so easy to follow that Willow’s murmured phrases as the quill flew across the vellum were only a heartbeat or two behind mine.
“…All that said, I hope you’ll show this to someone you trust. Check it for residue of confounding charms, illusion powders or any other dark spell or substance. Decide whether it seems genuine. If you believe its real, or at least close enough to it to be worth investigating, please, please follow these directions.”
Across the table from me, Willow sighed.
“Am I going too fast for you?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. Only made that quick gesture toward the vellum with the quill again. Still, I gave her a moment by taking another swallow of tea before going on.
“East of the town where your parents lived is a winding road going up a hill…”
I described the cottage at the bottom of it with its wall and rowan trees. There was nothing all that special about the place aside from that it had been lovely years ago when Lily, James, the Weasleys and I had shared a summer picnic nearby. As it had still been lovely when I’d flown over it on the way to Remus’s house, a year and a half ago. It was a quiet spot, rather out of the way. A good place to store something secret like...
Another swift gulp of tea as I looked for the best way to describe what I intended, if all went according to plan, to set beneath a heavy stone near the wall just after Solstice.
“…a packet of papers hidden beneath it, wrapped in the black cloth of a Wizard’s robe. Vellum sheets, like some old books in your school library. Not parchments. They contain the last writings I’ve done for you about my life…”
Gooseflesh prickled over my back. This time the tea was to help a mouth gone dry.
Willow had to be reading my mind, didn’t she? Head bent over the quill, Willow was too intent over her writing to have noticed, but the words spoken above the quiet sound of the crackling fire were now coming in almost perfect unison.
I wouldn’t, couldn’t let that distract me right now. What came next was so important. Not only because of the directions, but as one more means of proving who the note came from. The old running jokes I’d shared with him over the years about avoiding schoolwork. The ha ha comment that had to make due as a chuckle on parchment because I’d never quite mastered the little charm for it that James had come up with
“I don’t know when you’ll read this, but the packet should be sought only after you finish your sixth summer term at school. Why this is so will be explained in its pages, not here. Suffice it to say there is no Magic that will have them there any earlier than that, so no excuses for skipping class. Ha ha.”
The next part was going to be hard. Painful in its possibilities. I drew a deep breath.
“If this reaches your candy tin, but there’s no packet waiting under the stone, don’t go searching further for it.” My throat tightened as I made myself consider how to say that, despite my best efforts, my plan to return to the future might not work. The passage might lead me to my death. Or to no place at all beyond the borders of this time. Before I could speak, the perfect words were spoken in Willow’s quiet, unaccompanied voice.
“If you don’t find it there, don’t search for it. It won’t be anywhere that can be found. In that case, please know that the most important thing written between every line of it is how proud of you I am, how much I love you and what a joy it has been to be your Godfather and your friend.”
I didn’t have to tell her how to sign it.
“Padfoot,” Willow said.
What was happening here? Shock, wonder and a good dose of fear sent chills rippling through me again. This was my friend. She had saved my life. I had no reason to mistrust her. My heart knew that. My mind believed it. But the tightness in my throat brought out brisk, sharp-edged words. “Where did you hear that name?”
“From you.” She lay the quill beside the vellum sheet.
“Me?” When had I told her that? In my fever, maybe? During its tangled memories and visions, I’d thought her green eyes belonged to my Godson. That I’d been swimming toward him through the waters surrounding Azkaban. When I’d made that journey some three and a half years ago, I’d been in my dog form. Had I talked about it? Had I? “Willow, when did I do that?”
When she looked at me, her face was a shocked and wondering as mine must have been and there was a catch in her voice. “More,” she said. “Than twenty years ago.”
“More than-” I stopped. “How can that be when we never met til six months back?”
“Didn’t we?” she asked, her gaze very sure and penetrating now. “Are you sure?”
There it was again. That sense that she was familiar. Someone I should have known. But… Someone I had known? A hundred years from now?
She picked up her cup, but didn’t drink. Just turned it round and round in her hands for a good half minute or more before she spoke. “It came to me so clearly when you asked me to write this note for you, that I knew what you were going to say. But I wasn’t really certain that it wasn’t my memory or imagination playing tricks on me until you got a few sentences into it. And then, I recognized it. Knew it. Word for word …”
“Willow! I don’t know what you’re talking about! Writing this was only something to do! A chance, a gamble, to see if we could find a way to get a note to Harry.”
“Well, yes, a gamble.” She sighed, but a slow smile was spreading itself across her face and a glimmer of humour sparked in her eyes as she set down her cup and rested a gentle hand on the ink lined vellum. “And there’s still no sure chance it will be received. But I know beyond all doubt that it was delivered. Or will be. And where. Remember that Historical Society in London I told you about where I found Hal’s name and mine?”
I nodded.
Willow’s green gaze never left mine, though her fingers stroked the edge of Harry’s note. Almost caressed it as she went on. “There was a collection of stories there as well. Ones I told my grandchildren. Some were written down by my granddaughter Iris who never had children of her own. Her contribution to the future generations of our family, she said in her own papers. Others were recipes for medicinal teas I’d come up with, and some other assorted notes that I’d set down in writing over the years. She probably believed this one was an idea for another story that I’d never gotten round to telling. I mean, what else could this letter be? It was in my handwriting, wasn’t it? And she knew I’d been nobody’s godfather ! I know it sounds odd, but when I found it, there was such urgency, such desperation in the words, that it rang to me truer than any made up story ever could have. So, more on a whim than anything else, I memorized it, sitting there at that historical society in London. When I left there, I stopped into a stationery shop and bought a bit of their finest quality vellum and copied out what I remembered. You’re daft, I told myself. This is just an odd bit of writing you’ll be doing a hundred years ago. Well, hearing that brought me up short. Those words sounded even more daft than what I’d just done with that note, but I knew that they were completely true. As soon as I’d seen Hal’s name and mine together I knew I’d be going back to him. So why would what was written on that vellum be any more daft, any less important? So, later that day, I went to the railway station at King’s Cross. All at once, I found myself wandering onto the oddest numbered platform, about to catch a northbound train to a little town I’d never heard of called Hogsmeade…”
I stared at the erect lines of her figure, the long sweep of her hair. And knew why, through all these months, I’d found her oddly familiar. Not because she’d had the eyes that drew me across the sea surrounding Azkaban, giving me the will, the purpose, to go on. But, because I’d seen her long before that. “When we met,” I leaned a little toward her, bringing out slow words as the picture came clear. “Was it a spring night? And did you notice whether the moon was just past full?”
“It was spring, yes. Late spring.” She raised her eyebrows. “But I don’t remember anything about the moon.”
I almost laughed. Of course, why would she? As far as I knew, she’d never had a friend who was a werewolf. I brushed that aside. Pressed on. “Did you meet a very tall, kind man going along a road…?”
I could almost smell the trailing aroma of flowers, tangles of scent from the trees rustling overhead, brisk birch, tangy pine, sweet dusty oak. There had been a lilting whistle weaving through the layers of sound filling the woods…
“Hello!” a woman’s voice had called out, just ahead. A stranger’s voice then, but one I’d been hearing every day for months now.
Beside me, Hagrid’s long strides slowed. Stopped altogether as she appeared round the curve in the road, a slender young woman with long, darkish hair.
“I need to find a place near Hogsmeade!” she’d explained amid tangled conversation and laughter that flowed back and forth above my head. I’d been too busy reading the scented tales her hands were telling my new canine nose to pay their words a lot of mind . Not when I could check out the meat pies and tea she’d had earlier. Wonder over the faint whiff of uneasiness and the much stronger tang of excitement. There’d also been something rather smoky I couldn’t quite name. Train, maybe?
“It’s my first time here, and just overnight. I’m running a sort of errand. Can you give me directions?” she’d asked as I followed the train smell across her shoe, then caught a hint of toffee clinging to the other one. Not from Honey-Duke’s, but a shop round the corner from the Leaky Cauldron. A Muggle shop I’d gone into with James. When I’d lifted my nose, I saw how her hair flowed, not over Wizard’s robes, but some kind of open jumper with buttons down the front along with a tee shirt and denim jeans.
Muggle clothes! Yet she’d been on the way to somewhere around Hogsmeade!
“I can do ya one better than give ya directions,” Hagrid was saying far overhead. “I’ll show ya the way. Goin’ there myself. Gotta take my friend here back home. When ya said ya needed to find something, I thought it might be him you were lookin’ for.”
“No, I wasn’t, but-” She’d seemed to notice me for the first time.
“’t’sall right,” Hagrid’s scent was full of reassurance. “He won’t hurt ya.”
“No, no it’s not that, it’s only…” Her hand reached out, caught the fur of my neck, slid up to touch my head, caress my ear. Such soft strokes. “Only that he’s… Well, I’ve read of dogs like this, so big and black, but I’ve never seen one before… ”
Gentle, wondering fingers. Their kindness stirred something deep inside me and I raised my eyes to meet hers. When had I ever been touched with such gentleness? To my surprise, she leaned forward then and cupped my face between her palms and smiled at me while that delicious aroma of delight rose around us both. “Well, look at what a fine, handsome fellow you are!” she murmured to me. “But you need to get yourself back home now, don’t you?”
Once, twice, my tail swished, then froze as an odd prickle spread down my back. For an instant I’d had the strangest feeling she was seeing the other me, the one hidden beneath the annimagous fur…
“You were the girl in the jeans and jumper asking Hagrid for directions!” I exclaimed, not waiting for her to answer. “But how did you know the dog with him was- was me?”
She was laughing now. Relief and amazement. “I didn’t know that that particular dog was you. I didn’t know you, Stephen, Sirius, existed back then! Only that, in the family papers I’d read, just that morning, among the stories Iris wrote down was one I told her father, Dylan, as he grew up. It was about how his mother, Iris’s granny, met a Wizard in the woods. Do you realize, Stephen, I read that tale more than a year before Dylan was born. That and one other.”
I reached for her hand. “But the way you spoke to me that night, I had the oddest feeling you recognized me as the wizard beneath the dog fur.”
“Not then.” Her hand circled mine. “I only saw the delicious possibility that there could be a wizard hidden under there. Even when I found you on the night of the storm I didn’t know who you were. When we’re living our daily lives, I don’t think we see how full they are of the stuff stories are made from. According to Iris’s tale, when Granny met the Wizard, he was very ill. She saved his life with herbs which were her Magic. When he was well and she found herself in danger at great risk to himself, he acted to save her life using his own Magic- that of becoming a big, black dog.”
My hand tightened on hers. “But there were two stories, you said.”
She nodded. “The other one was longer, stranger. Really not a child’s tale at all like the first one had been. It was about how the Wizard had been stranded far from his home and didn’t know if he would ever be able to get back to the people he loved. Especially to his beloved Godson. So, after he had saved Granny’s life, she told him that if he knew what he wanted to say, she would try to see that it got delivered to him.”
“Like we’re doing now!” I exclaimed. “And you know it got delivered because that’s what you were doing that night, wasn’t it? That was the errand you told Hagrid about!”
The last of the aching inside me eased. A sense of peace about the months I was going to spend in this time began, at last, to wash through me. Everything was unfolding in the way it was meant to! A grin was stretching itself across my face. The pieces all fit! The stories of Willow and I acting to save each other’s lives. The injury to my hand that caused her to set Harry’s note on paper for me. In a handwriting that her granddaughter, Iris, would recognize and preserve with the family’s heirlooms, then pass along to the place in London where a younger Willow would read and memorize them hours before we first laid eyes on each other! Years before we met on a stormy night in the woods. Became friends. Acted to save each other’s lives…
What an odd and wondrous circle of events! How intriguing to follow it round and round, tracking its finest details! Another way to fill the odd moments in the coming months when we weren’t working on Willow’s plan… And best of all, Harry would get his note! Maybe even the account I’d write of my life here. That was less certain. More risky. I might not be able to deliver that. But he’d know I hadn’t fallen at Bellatrix’s hands. Know how he’d brought pride and joy back into my life!
The note that would travel to that place in London was on the page across the table from me. The one that young Willow would copy. Take to a cave near…
The smile froze. “Willow! How did you?- will you?- know where to take the note?”
The amused lights were bright in her eyes as her reassuring hand brushed mine, then reached for the quill again. “Well, Stephen, that was in the one part of this letter you haven’t given me yet. I still need the set of instructions I found at the bottom of it! For getting from the train, through the town, along a winding road…”
My laughter mingled with hers. “You don’t need me to give it to you! You’ve already memorized the whole thing!”
“I know, but we need to do it right! Come on! From the train, through the town…?”
“Okay! Okay!” I laughed harder, and, despite the aching protest in my ribs, realized how great I felt. “You’re going to travel along a winding road, past a grove of oaks to where there’s a huge, bare grey rock. To the left of it starts a path that twists back and forth between the trees and up a steep hill…”
A steep hill? I thought now, turning to look up at where Willow stood, waiting for me in the shadow of a lilac tree. Yeah, right! Steep! Probably would’ve called it something like “a little knoll” or “a gentle incline” if I’d seen this one first! “I’ll be right there!” I called. With a final look, I turned away from the memories and set my feet on the path I’d traveled these last months. The one that led to the future.