The Warning
The Warning
Late. Late, late, late. I knew it. Oh, man, oh man, oh Merlin’s beard, I was late and Lily was gonna do for me! Probably twice over. Once for being late, then again when she knew I had someplace else to be this evening and could only stay for a short while.
Just a little further to go now… A minute, two at most and I’d be swooping into her side garden… But that wasn’t going to be soon enough. There’d be no slipping into the meeting and finding a nice dim corner to lurk in.
Oh, no. Lily Potter would have none of that. She was going to stick a spell on the door again. Have it play a full trumpet fanfare when I opened it. Or one that would make it exclaim “Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen! Your attention please! Now presenting the one and only Mister Sirius Black!!”
Still, even that would be better than the time James rigged the door with a dung-bomb. At least I knew that wouldn’t be happening again. Ever. Not after the thing backfired into the meeting instead of out into the hallway where I stood, completely unaffected!
Closer. I could see the green roof of the Potter’s house. It grew brighter, larger. And that was their street below me now- and their garden coming into view! Half a minute, no more! “Descendo!” I murmured, clenching my fists around the handlebars of my bike, tighter and then tighter still, as if the strength of my grip could hurry the landing.
I was tempted to try the new spell I’d been working to perfect last night. Streaking silent and invisible beneath the stars was one thing. But for the adventure of riding Muggle-style on a flat road, it needed the sound of a motor. I thought I’d gotten a pretty good one going. It would sound so cool for my landing! But how much noise did I want to make to announce my arrival if I was the last to get there?
Well, maybe, after all, I wouldn’t be the final one to arrive. It was too bad more witches and wizards hadn’t taken up travel by motorbike. Then there’d be other vehicles by the house to offer me a clue! Wouldn’t be bad for the little shop I was trying to start up, either! There was no way to tell from outside whether the others had already come through the Floo network or simply apperated here already!
Of course, chided an annoying little voice in my head, if I’d used one of those more common means of Wizarding travel, I wouldn’t be late in the first place!
Coming down faster now, passing the green shuttered windows of a second story bedroom… I murmured the spell for resuming visibility as I angled around the corner of the house toward the side garden. Didn’t need a shadow to land safely- not strictly speaking. But at this speed it made it easier to judge the angle of descent. My silhouette appeared beside me, flicking fast along the wall above the kitchen door and then it was coasting across the ground beneath me, dark green across the grass, brown on the garden path. It slapped up under the tires of my bike, bouncing me up and down on the seat. Gravel sprayed up around me as I swerved to miss an oncoming rose bush before it could get me stuck in a thorny situation.
“You’re late, Sirius.” The voice behind me was Lily’s all right. There was none of her usual humour in it. “The meeting started fifteen minutes ago.”
“Sorry.” I climbed off my bike. With a tap of my wand I secured it beside the bush, then looked up at her. “I had to go see someone about...”
Lily wasn’t listening. She had turned away and was walking up the front steps. I followed her into the hall. Behind the door that led to their small study, I could hear the murmur of voices- James, Remus, James again. Frank Longbottom, Peter Pettigrew, Allastor Moody. Lily stopped me as I put a hand on the knob. “No. Don’t go in there.”
“But, Lily, it’s why I’ve come.”
“Is it?” There was a set to her jaw and something hard in her bright green eyes I had never seen before.
“Well… yeah. Why else?”
She shook her head. “That’s what I keep asking myself. I mean, if you took this seriously, you wouldn’t be turning up late half the time.”
“But Lily…”
“Oh, come off it, Sirius. Don’t play innocent with me. I’ve known you since we were all at school together, remember? When have you ever taken anything seriously except maybe that silly bike of yours?”
That stung, though I wasn’t sure if it was more her slur on my character or the insult to my pride and joy. “Look, you’re not being fair. I wasn’t off, larking around. I was talking to someone about the shop I’m trying to start. There’s a space for lease finally opened up just off of Diagon Alley. Not far from my flat, either… ”
I kept my voice low, so I wouldn’t disturb the talk on the other side of the door. Allastor Moody still, I noticed with half an ear. Sounded like the Auror was giving a lecture of some kind, probably something to do with his work catching Dark Wizards for the Ministry of Magic, though I couldn’t quite catch the words. “Look, Lily, I mean it, I’m sorry. I know this is important. I hate it that Voldemort has so many people in an uproar over power being given to those whose Wizarding blood is purest, when we all have the same Magical ability to do spells and charms! But this is the first really good location that’s come available and...”
She was shaking her head. The anger had gone out of her face. What I saw there was worse. Deep shadows of tiredness under her eyes. Strain that gave her features an unusual look of fragility. “Magical ability? Yes, maybe we all have that. But power? No, Sirius. Don’t lump the two things together! Maybe for now we can all do our spells and charms, but if Voldemort has his way, it’ll be a lot worse than arguments! Any child James or I might have is going to be barred from Hogwarts because I’m Muggle-born.”
“But that’s what’s so stupid!” I gestured her into the tiny sitting room across the hall from the closed study door, then moved to the window and stood looking out into the afternoon garden. After a moment, she came to stand beside me. “Lily, say whatever you want about me not taking Voldemort seriously enough. You’re entitled to your opinion. But look, we both know there’s no sense, no reason, in the things he says! Never has been. I used to listen to my family go on and on about his great ideas for years and they never made sense to me! Didn’t then, don’t now. Pureblood, Muggle-born, mixed blood, I dunno… It always seemed to be an argument about nothing, especially once I got to Hogwarts and saw how little a person’s background had to do with how formidable their Magical talent was! Isn’t the only difference between all of us the way in which we were raised? We’re all Magical aren’t we? Look, I’m not saying this to get round you for being late. But Lily, there is nothing, nothing wrong with how you were born! You were one of the cleverest Witches in the class at school, and even if you weren’t, you’re one of the bravest, most honest people I know!”
Glancing toward her, I saw the gleam of tears on her cheeks before her dark red hair swung forward to hide her face. Her shoulders shook with silent tears and she was hugging herself as if she was cold.
“You’re such an idiot, Sirius,” she said, but there was no anger in the words, nothing bitter or hurtful. Only a hint of a smile and something like pity. “You came from a family that’s among Voldemort’s biggest supporters and still you can’t see how bad it is, even though you hated it so much you felt you had to either leave home or go mad.”
“Well, yeah.” I nodded. Waited to hear what she was getting at.
Lily sighed. “James says that sometimes you talk about seeing parts of the House of Black in yourself, like having your Mother’s temper. It seems to me, no matter how much you resented them, because you see your family in you, you also see a bit of yourself in them. Maybe even in their friends. You see the good in them because you think underneath their talk, they’re all basically like you are.”
I rested a light hand on her sleeve. Gave her a grin. “See some good in old Sirius, do you? Hey, Lily, I think that’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I was rewarded with a fleeting grin, before she swatted my hand away. “Well, don’t let it go to your head! Sirius, you look at the crowd around Voldemort and you see your family. I’ve heard you say they waste time on stupid, outdated ideas, that they’re ignorant or misguided.”
I nodded. Outdated ideas? Yeah. I remembered seeing something like sadness in my Father’s face when he told Cousin Andromeda it would be unfair to send her daughter to Hogwarts, because her mixed heritage would make her unable to keep up. Still, though he was Head of the House of Black, he hadn’t tried to stop Nymphadora from going.
Ignorant? Sure. I could almost hear my Mother listing off countless ways that wizards were different than, cleverer than, worthier than, more honourable than, in short, better in every way than, Muggles. Not that I’d ever really known a true Muggle, but the ones with whom I’d had brief conversations- in shops or pubs with James- seemed like perfectly nice, ordinary people to me.
Misguided? I’d seen that too, in Reg’s worried eyes, after he told our Father the world beyond our garden was casting a spell to lure me out of the family.
“Yeah…” I said. “That’s probably right.”
“But, Sirius, it isn’t!” she exclaimed. The last of the tears were still shining in her bright green eyes, but there was no sign of tiredness or fragility in her now. This time it was her turn to raise a hand and lay a light touch on my arm. “I don’t know if it was something you were born with or you developed while you were at school, but you had a line you wouldn’t or couldn’t cross. One that made you walk away. Not everybody has that line, Sirius! Or they get so caught up in looking at all the promises Voldemort dangles in front of them they eventually lose track of where they drew it. That’s especially true for his closest supporters.”
“Lily, if we keep talking about us and them, aren’t we doing the same thing they are?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Only if we try to lump all Voldemort’s followers together. Like if we say it’s all the old Pureblood families that want him in power.” Lily sighed. “That’s way to simple. We can’t say all of them from Slytherin are with him either, and we can’t rule out that he may have gathered some followers from among the other Hogwarts Houses. That’s why we are trying so hard to put together a complete list of all those in Voldemort’s innermost circle, those so-called Death-Eaters of his.”
I shuddered. “Merlin’s beard, that’s an awful name.”
Lily nodded. “Awful people. They won’t be content for long with keeping mixed blood or Muggle-born children out of schools or deciding who’ll be able to get what sort of shop! They’ll want to control the jobs in the Ministry of Magic, get people in place to make Wizarding law! And we can guess who those laws will favor can’t we? Now, with all these stories in the Prophet that some of Voldemort’s enemies have been disappearing over the last few months, I’m not certain even those laws will satisfy his thirst for power.”
I’d read those stories too. All of us had. We’d been spending more and more time in Order of the Phoenix meetings, discussing them. Speculating over whether or not there was truth in them. Such wild tales. Dreadful. Terrifying. But hearsay. Gossip. Impossible rumours of illegal, unspeakable spells- even the three so-called “unforgivable curses”- being used to torture information from Voldemort’s opposition, or to demand obedience from them.
Would any wizard, no matter how dark, really resort to that sort of thing? While the memory of a glass case full of dark arts objects on proud display in my parents’ house was enough to make my skin go crawly all over, I couldn’t quite imagine them being used on anybody. Well, maybe, if my Mother lost her temper, she might, in the heat of rage, be more than tempted to snatch one up and-
A harder shudder this time. Horrible, sickening thought.
But could even someone as cruel and arrogant as she was, lay out a plan in cold blood to use a dream bender or thought-extractor? That seemed like something out of an ancient, half nightmare lesson in Professor Binns’ History of Magic class. Not something that would happen nowadays…
The sense of murky unreality was enhanced by the fact that, to date, none of the names mentioned in the Prophet were ones we’d recognized, though the newspaper’s reports suggested they were witches and wizards from other parts of the country. People belonging to other groups like our own. Resistance groups.
It was only in the late hours of night that I couldn’t quite shake the feeling there was more than a little truth in those reports. That they were more than stories designed to have those of us who disagreed with Voldemort’s ideas so frightened we’d do nothing to oppose them. Lying wide awake, staring at the shadowed ceiling of my rented flat, I felt the growing possibility that someday we might learn much more than we ever wanted to know about how Voldemort dealt with his enemies…
But on a bright afternoon those shadows seemed smaller, further away and all those horrible stories mainly the stuff of tangled dreams.
Almost anyway. Not quite.
I curled my hand into a fist inside my pocket, before it could start playing with the folded parchment resting in there.
Maybe, if I could trust what was written there, we’d be learning a bit more truth, inside truth, really soon now… Find out what we had to fear from the Dark Lord and what was the product of our imaginations…
Or, maybe not. My meeting at the Leaky Cauldron might yield no new information at all about the Death-Eaters and their intentions, give me nothing more than the same old Voldemort line I’d heard for years and years at home.
But information wasn’t really what I was going there after anyway, was it?
“Lily,” I said, defying a moment’s ripple of unease. “You know as well as I do, you can’t believe every rumour you read about in the Prophet.”
“Oh, Sirius!” Lily shook her head. “I thought you were supposed to be so bright! Just try for a minute thinking about… well, sorry about this, well, someone like your Mother. When you left home, she said you’d never be welcome back in the family. You could’ve starved and she wouldn’t have lifted a finger. I couldn’t see you doing that to a child of yours, no matter how angry you were.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s not a very convincing example, is it? I mean, I think she knew I wasn’t really about to lie down and let myself starve.”
Lily stared at me for a moment. Then, to my surprise, she burst into a gale of laughter. “Oh, Sirius! Did I hear you actually defending her?”
“Hardly.” I said, shaking my head. “She really is a truly dreadful person. And you’re right. I don’t know how far she’d go to feel real power in her hands.”
Behind us, there was the creaking of wood as the study doors opened, then closed.
Footsteps crossed the hall, then James was coming into the sitting room. “Sirius! I thought I heard you come in! What are you two on about? Come on in to the meeting! There’s something Allastor’s brought to our attention that I think you should hear.”
I looked at Lily. She nodded at me. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not really angry with you. I had some news yesterday that, well, with so much going on right now, it’s got me a bit on edge. I think I took it all out on you. I know you care about what the Order is doing. But, Sirius, please, I mean it. Think about what I said, won’t you? About the way you look at Voldemort and his followers?” Her hand brushed my chest, rested there for a moment, just above my heart as she looked at me with solemn green eyes. “Don’t let your loyalty blind you to what they might be capable of. I don’t want to see you set yourself up to get hurt.”
Then, turning away, she gestured me to follow her husband into the meeting.
But James was moving further into the study, following his gaze as it rose toward the top of the window behind us.
“Owl post coming in,” he said. His words were followed an instant later by a light tap, tap, tap on the glass. Stepping past me, he opened the window and gathered in a small silvery owl. “Great!” he exclaimed, staring down at the writing on the envelope tied to its leg. “I was expecting to either see or hear from Professor Dumbledore about a note that arrived here this morning. Go ahead in, Sirius. Help yourself to something to eat. Lily and I’ll be right in.”