The Digs
The Digs
“No, James, it’s not like a broomstick!” I called over my shoulder, above the rumbling sound of the motorbike. “Don’t counter-balance me! Lean in again, same way I am. That’s right! Hang on tight, man! There comes another car round that corner! Merlin’s beard, that was close! How does anyone begin to make sense of this traffic?”
I couldn’t hear if he answered, but felt his grasp tighten around me as we swung wide to avoid an on-coming double decker bus with glaring bright headlight eyes and swept onto an almost deserted side street lined with large, boxlike buildings, mostly holding shops that were already closed up for the night. At the middle of the block, we coasted through the dazzle of a large sign that flashed purple, green, then orange by turns.
How did Muggles sort out all this glare to negotiate all that traffic?
Beneath the sign was a battered wooden door that reflected the changing colour of the words. The Digs said the purple flash. Alonzo’s Fine Beers and Ales said the green. Spirits served here, proclaimed the orange.
“Spirits served here?” I shouted to James as I spelled down the motor sound a little and slowed the bike. “You sure this is a Muggle place?”
“Thought so, according to the message!” he said in my ear. “I’m just following what it said in the parchment. Looks like there’s a spot for your bike round the side there.”
A narrow alley held probably a dozen bikes of different shapes and sizes. Any other time I’d’ve been drawn over for a long look. Not tonight. There was the weight of too much business on my mind and too much confusion around my heart since leaving the Leaky Cauldron a little less than an hour ago.
He hadn’t come.
Six fifteen. No problem. Could’ve lost track of time. Been delayed. Was talking to someone, couldn’t break free. I ordered a dish of bean and bacon soup. Stirred it round and round, watching the steam rise while I waited.
Six thirty. Blast it, he’d chickened out, changed his mind, remembered I’d been kicked out of the family. I made myself eat some of the tepid soup. Told myself I’d need the energy for later even though the stuff, far as I could tell, had no flavor to it.
Quarter to seven. Had he had an accident?. Gotten lost? Forgot where he said he’d meet me? I pushed the bowl aside. Shifted the position of my chair. Watched the door.
Seven o’clock. What if it was me who’d mixed up the hour? Seven, not six? I pulled the bowl back to me. Ate a bite, then two, then three, of the congealed liquid. A little longer, a little longer. He was going to show up any moment now, all in a rush and bubbling over with excuses, explanations and apologies. That was okay. I still had some time to talk.
He was going to be here. He’d said so… he’d said…
It wasn’t the first time Regs had said one thing and done another. He’d once said he would keep the secret of my sneaking out of the house and then told our Father how I did it. But we’d been kids then, and he’d thought he was acting for my good…
Seven fifteen. If only I knew how to reach him.
Seven thirty. I hated to think something could have happened to him. Hated to think he’d stood me up. Hated to leave not knowing.
Twenty minutes to eight. James would be waiting for me in his orange and green striped rugby shirt and leather jacket…
Ten minutes to eight. Lily would be waiting to check our shirt sizes and wish us luck.
Five to eight. My bike would be waiting beside the rosebush, all ready to speed James and me to another place to wait…
Two minutes to eight.
I walked out of the Leaky Cauldron without looking back, around the corner into the alley where I apparated back to the Potters’ house.
Now it was five to nine. There was no time to think about Regs, be annoyed with him, worry over him. I secured my bike next to the lamp post at the head of the alley outside The Digs, taking only long enough to note how it was positioned among the other bikes.
“Dodgey looking place, isn’t it?” James glanced sidelong at me as we pushed open the front door and stepped into swirling blue light, gold light, white light and red.
“Wow, James, look at this place!” I leaned close to his ear, as I squinted up at the spell-bright flashes overhead. “With all the streaking lights, doesn’t it look like a whole class of wizards studying charms for their O W L exams? Or having dueling practice?”
James laughed as his hand grasped my elbow and tugged me forward. “Let’s get ourselves a seat.” I followed him as the dazzle began reshaping itself into a line of booths, a scatter of tables, a small area cleared for dancing and a long bar at the far side.
Didn’t look so different from some of the pubs along Diagon Alley, except for those explosive bright lights and the lack of a fireplace glowing warm and golden in the corner. Had I ever seen a Muggle place with a good, cozy fire in it rather than that excel-something we’d learned about in school? Hadn’t really been in enough of them to be sure. Something to ask Lily sometime…
The place was crowded with talking, laughing people. Through the shifting colours, most of them looked to be about James’s and my age. Was there anyone here I knew from school? Recognized from Diagon Alley? Anybody who looked a little out of place here- aside from James or me anyway? But then, we really didn’t look different than anyone else here, did we? No. Best as I could tell, we didn’t. No reason beyond apprehension to believe otherwise. Lily would have done her job well. I studied James as we walked toward a booth on the side of the room away from the entryway, but offering a good view of the door. “You’re right about this being a dodgy looking place,” I told him. “You look like you fit in just fine!”
“Yeah, you too.” He grinned as he gave me a quick glance up and down “But then, Sirius, I always thought you looked a bit dodgy yourself. You could pass as a regular”
“That was the plan, wasn’t it?” I asked as we slid into the booth and sat, facing each other, watching the people at nearby tables or lining up at the bar. The music was loud. It seemed to come from a large, glowing box in the far corner. A girl with her hair half in orange and half lavender was feeding something to the box. It managed to sing on even through its own coughing and gulping. I nodded in her direction. “My Cousin Tonks would love to come here. Lots of ideas for her transformations.”
James leaned across the table to make himself heard. “You’ll have to bring her when she’s a bit older. There’s a guy over there with his hair all sticking up in spikes. Looks like it’s been coated with bubo tuber pus, doesn’t it? By the way, Sirius, there’s something I wanted to ask you-”
“Wait, here’s the barmaid…” I cut him off as a tall girl with blonde hair piled high on her head and about ten long, shiny earrings dangling from each earlobe approached our table with an empty tray in her hands.
She divided a smile between us. Made her voice carry over the music without seeming to shout. “Hello, loves! I’m Bronwyn! Welcome to The Digs. I’ll be taking your orders tonight!”
This wouldn’t be the contact would it? Already? No. Of course not. Not so quick as this when unseen eyes might still be examining the newcomers to the room. It wouldn’t come in any manner so obvious as a server who would be noticed if she stayed too long to chat at one table. Still, I waited a moment, just in case. “A butter beer each for my friend here and me.” I said at last as I gestured from James to myself.
She gave a quick nod before she spun lightly in the direction she had come, her body swaying in rhythm with the booming pulse, pulse, pulse of the music.
I turned back to James. “I wanted to ask you before, if this person, whoever he or she is, is supposed to know us by the colours of our shirts, or what? How are we supposed to recognize them?”
“It was in the note. I should’ve brought it for you to see once it was decided you’d be one of the contacts, but when it arrived, Allastor thought it should go straightaway to Albus for his opinion. Anyway, the person who wrote it said that they’re supposed to be wearing red and when they come over, they’ll drop a line, a password…” He didn’t tell me what it was, but stopped abruptly and sat back as Bronwyn returned with two tall glasses of amber liquid on her tray. She gave us each another smile as she set them between us. No, she was definitely not the contact, then. She wore blue so bright it was almost blazing.
Picking up my beer, I watched her weave away through the tables and the swirling lights. Looked past James’s left shoulder at the door as a couple of guys came through it. I studied the way they shook off the flash and dazzle of the lights as if they barely noticed it, before they broke into a matched set of grins and hurried toward a nearby table where two girls sat waiting. None of them wore red.
I felt the weight of James’s gaze resting on me before I turned back to him. He was leaning toward me, his elbows on the table top. “Okay, Sirius. You’ve been stalling all the way from my house. How’d that little meeting of yours go?”
“It didn’t happen,” I said.
“I kind of figured that by the way you looked when you walked in my front door. Sorry she stood you up, mate.”
“It wasn’t really a girl, James. It was Regs.”
James’s eyes widened. “Your brother? You were meeting Regulus?”
“Yeah! Stupid me, right?” The fist that had been curled round my insides since I’d heard the door of the Leaky Cauldron clunk shut behind me, gave a good, hard squeeze. Though my throat had gone tight enough to strangle over each word, they poured out in a tumble of concern, pain, confusion, and bitterness. “I thought he was serious! That he’d really be there! I waited! Oh, man, James, I waited nearly two hours for him! He never showed!”
I curled my hand tighter round the glass of cold amber liquid. Stared down into the bubbles. “Sorry, James. Don’t know why I expected different… but there was a time when the two of us were, well, you know, close…” I raised the glass. Took a rapid swallow and lost my words in a series of coughs. “Bloody hell! This isn’t butter beer!”
James didn’t laugh at my sputtering, but gazed at me with serious eyes before giving me a small, wry smile. “Well now I guess we know this is a Muggle place,” he said.
I gathered my breath and composure. Made a careful business of mopping up every drop of the bitter beer that had splashed across the table. Then, drawing a long breath, I led the subject away from my brother. “So what was up with Lily this afternoon?”
“Lily?” James sat in silence for a moment, then allowed the subject to be lead. He looked at me over his glass. Raised it, took a careful sniff, made a face and set it down on the scuffed table top. Waited for me to elaborate.
“You know, your wife?” I asked. “That green-eyed girl you used to call Luscious Lily when we were back in school?”
That got a real smile out of him. “Remember that, do you?”
“Yeah, just like you remembered Pony Tail! Good thing you brought the subject back to business this afternoon before any more came out about her!”
James raised his eyebrows. “Haven’t seen her since you left Hogwarts then?”
“Little Hessia Nightingale? James, last time I saw her, she was fifteen years old! She was two years younger than we were!”
“That didn’t stop you tugging on that pony-tail every time you saw her, did it? Guess that means you haven’t tried to look her up since she left school?”
“No, I haven’t. Maybe I will after I get my shop set up. But even if she hasn’t already hooked up with somebody else, she’s probably changed so much I wouldn’t even know her! Anyway, come on. Tell old Uncle Sirius, is Lily all right? She looked exhausted”
A flush was creeping up James’s face. “Yeah, she’s fine. Actually, she’s more than all right.”
“Well?”
“Sirius… we’re… well…” James’s eyes sparkled. The flush deepened and a huge white grin flashed in the middle of it. “Next summer… next July… we’re… well… we’re having a baby! I’m going to be a father!”
“James!” I felt a smile stretching across my face, even as a series of images flashed through my mind. The skinny tousle-haired eleven year old kid I’d tramped with round Diagon Alley. The gawky Fifth Year who talked bravely to me about Luscious Lily Evans, then fell into stutters, stammers and every shade of red known to artists whenever he set eyes on her. The proud, beaming man I’d stood beside as he watched her come down the aisle toward him at his wedding. James. After all these years, still my friend James! He was going to be a father! “That’s great! That’s amazing!”
“Yeah!” the smile held a moment, then faded, along with the flush. His eyes were weary, almost sad. “Only wish we were living in different times. I’m starting to think that things are going to get quite a lot worse before they get better. I’m not sure it’s a happy time to bring a kid into the Wizarding World.”
“You’re really worried, aren’t you, James? Is it because he… You Know Who… is getting up to something new?” I pulled the glass toward me, then thought better of it and pushed it aside. “Maybe something that came up in the meeting before I got there?”
“No. It wasn’t anything at the meeting,” said James. “Nothing in particular anyway. Just something that’s been on my mind lately. A heavy feeling in the air. Maybe it’s Voldemort’s nasty influence seeping through and putting a cold cloud over everything. But, Sirius, have you noticed how much more talk of dark Magic there is now than there used to be?”
“More than before we went to school, do you mean? Or since we finished?” I asked.
“Both.” James’s eyebrows raised at the question. “Why? Does that make a difference?”
“Well, yeah. It could. Because I may not be the best person to ask. Lily says I have a blind spot where Voldemort and his followers are concerned, since I knew so many of them growing up.”
James cupped his chin in his hand. “You think she’s right?”
I considered. “Yeah, probably. Dark arts were a fairly routine part of the talk around my house. All those glorious old traditions that gave our family its wealth and power. Dead tedious load of rot it was, too. All caught up with proper behaviour and upholding our noble position in Wizarding society forever and ever and blah, blah, blah…”
James gave me a brief grin, then made a gagging sound.
“Yeah, right!” I nodded agreement, returning a small smile of my own before I went on. “Everything was about maintaining that. The dark arts supposedly assured our family of being respected. House Elves waiting on us at home, goblins bowing and scraping when we had business at Gringots Bank. Waiters rushing to prepare us the best tables at any restaurant we went to in Diagon Alley. But I think I understand what you mean about that cold cloud, because those dark arts never seemed to make my parents into particularly happy people. They were like prisoners of the need to keep their power. I didn’t want to be held in like that, so I tried not to listen to a lot of what they said. Maybe if I had, I could give you a real answer to your question. Maybe I’d know what to believe about all the rumours we’ve been hearing lately.”
James nodded. “Guess we’re all trying to figure out that sort of thing, mate. Oh, nothing more for us just yet, all right?” All of the earlier sparkle had gone from his eyes. He waved Bronwyn away as she, her tray and her swinging earrings appeared at his elbow. He leaned close across the table. “I mean, when I first joined the Order, it was half a lark. All in a good cause, you know, but… Well, wandering round Diagon Alley picking up bits and pieces of information didn’t feel so different than prowling round Hogwarts after lights out. Or that night when we sneaked down to the hallway outside McGonagall’s office door under the invisibility cloak with those cups of tea leaves and tried to divine the answers to her Transfiguration Exam. Remember that?”
“Yeah, I do!” I laughed, though it did little to ease the restless knot still riding low in my gut. “When I joined, it was a way of saying I stood with Tonks against my family’s snobby, outdated ideas. I never realized, growing up, how hard they must’ve been on Cousin Andromeda for marrying outside the select pureblood circle of Wizarding Society. But it was all stinging words as far as I could tell then. Vicious, hurtful snubs, needlessly cruel, but not dangerous to anything except one’s precious reputation. Or, at very worst, one’s power and position within the Ministry of Magic.”
I shook my head, wished I had something to do with my hands. “Now, with all these rumours… the talk of disappearances, the chance we have a spy in the Order… I’m not sure what to believe. Or what I need to be doing. Being disgusted, that’s easy. I’ve had years of practice with that. But are we supposed to be scared now as well? I don’t know if we’re all just getting edgy and suspicious or if you’re right and there is more dark activity going on than there used to be. It makes me wonder how far that lot of Voldemort’s will go to get power. Lily told me this afternoon I should ask myself what my Mother would do…”
“Scary thought,” James said as he pulled a folded stack of strange looking papers from his pocket and laid them on the table by our two amber filled glasses. I recognized the Muggle currency Lily had gotten for him and resisted the urge to lean forward for a closer look in case the barmaid was still watching us.
“Yeah, real scary,” I agreed, taking a deep swallow from my glass, grimacing and then setting it down between us again. “I don’t really know what she’s capable of. I’d want to say even she has her limits. But that’s that blind spot talking, I think. What was it that got you thinking how things may be changing?”
“Well,” James said after a moment. “It was how I began noticing how people talked about Lily. Or treated her. There were kids we knew at Hogwarts that started snubbing her a couple of years after we finished school. Because she was Muggle-born. At first it was only a rude little comment here and there when they’d see us together. Not often. Not from that many people. I still don’t think most people feel that way, but those who did began getting bolder and nastier. Said stuff about what should be done with Wizards who weakened the Magical force by mixing their blood with…” An angry flush rose in his cheeks and his eyes squeezed shut as if the memory hurt. “No way. I’m not going to repeat what a couple of them said, like they didn’t think, or just didn’t care, that she was standing right there, hearing every word of it. Stuff we’d never have heard said out loud on the street a few years ago. Let’s just say it was bad enough to get me thinking…”
James’s eyes became fond and wistful for a moment. “You know, my parents never talked that way about anybody, so I always half thought at school that tossing insults back and forth was something we’d naturally grow out of, like last year’s robes. That it would get boring once we were fully qualified Wizards with more interesting things to do. Sounds kind of daft, looking back, doesn’t it? But, you know, I probably spent my first couple of years out of school wondering when some of those people would finally grow up. Then- I’m not sure when it happened- I realized that they actually were grown up. They were fully qualified Witches and Wizards, still talking that way. Only now they were equipped with power to put more behind their words than spells for sprouting cauliflowers out your ears, splatting you down face first in a mud puddle or hitting you with a jelly-legs jinx… ”
“Guess we’re both learning to see round a few blind spots,” I said, nodding. I could’ve told him the day we started Hogwarts that being an adult didn’t have anything at all to do with leaving attitudes like that behind.
I stared at James across the scuffed surface of the table. We’d left his place amid a flurry of activity and apprehension, but, even then, there had been a certain sense of adventure fueling us as we roared off down the road. That was gone now and I saw a reflection of my own confused weariness in his eyes.
We both had so much to learn! Was it blind spots we had? Or were we starting to see our own lack of experience? Watching the last of our childhood innocence fading?
How was it I could feel both centuries younger and older than the laughing couple sliding into the booth behind James? James, my old childhood friend, who would soon be fathering a new life into the world. Would our work for the Order be able to protect the happy innocence of that little unborn child?
Merlin’s Beard, I hoped so!
I picked up my amber filled glass, raised it to him. “Here’s to us making a world for your baby where people think more like your parents and less like mine!”
“To that kinder, brighter, safer world,” nodded James. “And to your soon to be Godson or Daughter!”
“My…? My Godchild!” Before I could do more than feel the grin of delight stretching my face, he picked up his glass and clinked it against mine. Their rims chimed a clear, bright sound as we raised them to each other and drank the bitter Muggle beer.
Over his shoulder, off to my right, the door opened again.
Two Wizards walked in.
It wasn’t their clothes that gave them away. Didn’t know who they were right off, either. Only recognized the way their heads raised as mine had done, their gazes caught and dazzled by the lights flashing spell-bright overhead.
This could be it then! This meeting might really be about to happen! Were they wearing red? Couldn’t tell as the red flash, blue flash, gold flash disguised the colours of their clothes. Then the light spilled glaring white over one head of shining pale hair and the other one, dark and greasy. Almost before I saw their faces, I knew them.
James must have seen something change in my face. “What is it?”
“Don’t look round.” I said, resisting the urge to slam down my glass and leap to my feet. “It’s Malfoy and Snape.”
“No way,” said James. “It wouldn’t be one of them we’re meeting.”
“No.” I agreed. “Either we’ve been set up by whoever it was who wanted us to come here, or someone tipped off that lot that one of their own was meeting us and they want to find out who it is and what they were after…”
“Well, for our own sake,” said James. “And that of the person in red, in case he or she is on the level, we’d better make a point of adjourning this little meeting. Before we get caught or before they show up and walk into a trap!”
No need to say more. We set down our glasses and slid out of the booth. James pushed Lily’s pile of numbered papers into the middle of the table as we turned away, then wove our way toward the door, through tables, chairs and knots of people. Likely it was a futile gesture, but as I moved, I closed my jacket over the telltale orange and green rugby shirt, lest it gave me away before my face did. I fumbled with its odd, toothy fastening strip, then gave up and touching the wand in my pocket instead, I muttered a stealthy “adhero!” Beside me, James was closing his jacket too- with fingers only, no wand. It would only be moments before the disguising dazzle faded from Snape’s and Malfoy’s eyes and our faces would be revealed as clear as theirs had been to us. But every thought, every action seemed to be slowing, taking on sharp detail. Oddly, there was time for me to think that Lily must have taught James how to work that fastening, and someday it would be helpful to have someone show me how to do things like that, too. Then Bronwyn and her tray full of glasses glided into our path.
The knot in my gut twisted. Was her arrival an accident, or was she as much a part of this as Snape, Malfoy, James or I?
“Something wrong, love?” The four amber filled glasses on her tray tinkled against each other as she shifted it to one arm and touched James’s sleeve with her free hand. “To have you leaving so soon?”
“Someone I’d rather not meet just came in,” said James, not missing a beat as he stepped around her and gestured toward the door. “Especially not in a crowd. Not in a place with lots of breakables.”
“Money’s on the table,” I added as she glanced from him, to me and then to the booth where we’d been sitting. “Keep the change.”
Her eyes widened. “All that? Say, you want me to distract them for you?”
Before either of us could answer, she was slipping, fluid as water between the tables. I glanced to where Malfoy was shaking his head to clear it and stepping forward into the crowded room with Snape half a step behind.
“Here we go! Got your order!” Bronwyn tossed the loud and cheerful words ahead of her across the room toward several clusters of people standing in front of the large glowing music box in the corner. “’cept I’m sorry to say we’re all out of the dark ale, so you’ll need to- Oh, no! Oh, Sir! Excuse me!”
She let out a cry of dismay as she swung round the closest table to the door, nearly colliding with Malfoy. The tray skimmed his elbow. Glasses danced in mid-air for an instant as the tray began to tilt, to tip, to slide, out from beneath them. Bronwyn managed to snatch one as the rest tumbled toward the floor.
At my shoulder, James was moving faster. By instinct, Malfoy turned away from us, his gaze following the mess sailing past his chest. Motionless, he watched it hit the floor with a tinkle of glass and a splatter of ale.
“Oh, Sir! I’m so horribly, dreadfully sorry! Did I spill anything on you?” Bronwyn fluttered apologetically in front of him. “Such a clumsy thing to do!”
Snape’s dark eyes swept up, over her head. No dazzled look in them now. I saw them widen in recognition.
“Out of my way, foolish girl!” he exclaimed, snatching at her arm.
But she bobbed away, just beyond his grasp, babbling and brushing at the front of Malfoy’s blue silk shirt. “Wasn’t paying near enough attention to what I was doing, was I, love? Such a careless, silly thing for me to’ve done! You sure I didn’t get any of it on you, now, love?”
Lucius didn’t answer, just grabbed her shoulder to swing her out of his path. The remaining glass of ale in her hand came up, quick and on target. In one smooth motion, she hurled an amber spray of liquid into his face, then jerked away from him. Coughing and grimacing, Malfoy staggered sideways into Snape as Bronwyn dived into the cover of the crowded dance floor and disappeared amid the pulsing lights.
It only took the two of them a moment to recover. But James and I were already moving past them, our feet almost flying the last several steps toward the entryway.
The cool night air washed over us as James pulled the door open. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Malfoy had disentangled himself from Snape and the two of them were whirling round in our direction before the door swung shut, blocking the view.
“Come on, Sirius, run!” shouted James, leaping out into the green, purple, orange flooded night.
No need to tell me twice!
There was the loud clatter of wood as the door swung wide behind us and crashed into the wall. “No, you idiot!” I heard Snape fifteen yards behind me. “Not your wand! Orders were to keep them out of sight!”
“As if you’d think anyone would notice amid all that flash and noise!” a furious Malfoy shouted as two sets of pounding footsteps echoed along the sidewalk behind us. “Anyway, the Ministry can just go ahead and modify all those Muggles’ memories…”
Almost to the end of the block now. Chasing our shadows across the changing colours on the sidewalk. Round the corner. Into the dimness of the alley. Running as the footsteps echoed closer behind us. Searching among the bikes along the side of the building. Which one? Which one?
Red light washed the cobblestones ahead of me, red as blood. The last glow from the pub? The flash of a spell? I risked a glance over my shoulder. Malfoy had sprinted ahead of Snape. His pale hair glimmered in the light streaming from the tip of his raised wand. James knocked me sideways as the spell shot by between us, scoring a dark, smoking line on the bricks at shoulder height. “They’re gaining on us!” he cried, grasping my arm and pulling me upright as I stumbled.
“Not for long they aren’t!” I shouted. My hand was already slipping into my pocket. Bringing out my own rowan wood wand. Drawing an arc with it in the air, I pointed toward the lamp-post, released the tether and shouted. “Aseo my motorbike!”
Soundless, it separated itself from the others lining the alley and leaped toward us. Now it was me snatching at James’ arm, pulling him forward as I swung myself aboard the leather seat. For an instant I felt the drag of his weight and then he was surging up behind me, his arms circling my waist, vice-tight as we sped up. Malfoy and Snape fell back a step as we swept past almost on their toes.
Another red spell streaked by, brushing, feather light, at the sleeve of my jacket before vanishing into the darkness ahead of me. There was a clatter and a curse and another spell speeding past, far to my left this time. Then we were rounding the corner, skimming the smooth surface of the ground. The sign washed its colours across the sidewalk and spilled them into the empty street.
“Silencio!” I shouted. The motor’s roar was swallowed up in its own echo, even as I added the charm to reflect the lights around us and create a bubble of invisibility that, at night, especially, was almost as good as a cloak.
In the ringing stillness, I heard Snape’s shouts fading “Wait, Lucius, you fool! I told you there must be no use of a wand! Let them go for now!”
Then we were lifting, taking to the sky in a soaring burst of speed. The night wind whipped in our hair, in our eyes, driving away any talk, any thoughts except those of getting ourselves home.
“They knew!” James exclaimed in a breathless voice, even as we touched down in the Potters’ welcoming side garden. “Oh, man, Sirius, they knew! That lot wasn’t running around in Muggle clothes for the fun of it!”
“You got that right!” I said, as we scrambled off the bike and I tethered it beside the rosebush with a wand that I realized was shaking in my hand. “And those weren’t jelly-legs jinxes Lucius was shooting at us either. Bloody hell, James! I thought that first one as we rode out of the alley was the cruciatus!”
“I don’t just think so! I know it was! I heard it!” The breathlessness in James’s voice as we stared at each other, wasn’t all from the wind, but the result of appalled shock. The spell for causing unbearable pain that Lucius Malfoy had flung at us was among the three darkest known to Wizardkind. One of the so-called “unforgivable” curses, its use, even once, was good for a life sentence in Azkaban Prison.
Around us, the trees sighed in a gentle breeze. The sound was clearer, more real to me than that of my own voice, which seemed to be coming from a long way off. From somewhere in a dream, maybe. Or a nightmare. “Merlin’s Beard, James! This makes me think the Prophet really is onto something when it says how bad things are getting. And, much as I hate to believe the idea, I guess this seals it. Malfoy and Snape showing up like that, right after we did, as good as seals it. There’s got to be a spy somewhere in the Order.”
James ran a thoughtful hand through his tousled hair. “Well, unless it really was all the person in red who was trying to score points with his master by laying that trap for us. Who was trying to draw us out into the open. Start identifying those of us who are working for the Order. Blowing our cover, Lily calls it ”
I considered the idea. Being manipulated that way- and so successfully at that, was not a pleasant thought, but better than believing one of those laughing, familiar faces in the study this afternoon belonged to a traitor. “Well,” I said after a moment. “You’re the one who got a chance to read the note. What do you think?”
“No, I don’t think it was a trap. I think it was genuine,” he said after a moment, then turned to walk away from the bike and round the corner of the house. He stopped on the front step, his hand on the knob, but he made no move to go in. “And, for that matter, it might not mean we have a spy, or even that there was a trap. At least not one set for anybody in the Order. That person we were supposed to meet could’ve slipped up. Gotten careless or desperate enough to make a mistake that made their own people suspicious. I think whoever it was that wrote that note had some serious questions about what Voldemort and his Death-Eaters are getting up to. He or she didn’t exactly say so on the paper, but I think whatever the Dark Lord is planning, is going to get a lot worse than anything that’s happened up til now. And it’s more than this person can stomach.”
I shuddered. “Who can blame them, if Voldemort’s followers are resorting to the unforgivable curses? Malfoy certainly didn’t think twice about using that spell for inflicting pain. Makes it seem bloody well possible the Death Eaters would use the imperious curse to make people act against their wills, too, doesn’t it? If they’d do that, would they hesitate to use the killing curse as well? James! Allastor’s going to need to hear about this! And Professor Dumbledore as well.”
“They’ll have had several reports already, at least that it was Malfoy and Snape who showed up at the contact point.” he sighed. “Before you got to the meeting, Moody was going around to various people one by one, and arranging to have The Digs and several nearby streets watched. Both to offer you and I some protection and to get an extra chance of verifying the identity of the person in red. But none of them will know what went on inside the place, and probably not about the curse either. Look, I’ll go ahead and get a couple of owls sent out.” James shrugged. “After all this, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight anyway. I’ll have Lily read them, too. Hear her take on all of this.”
“Okay. Good idea. Lily’s a wise Witch.” I said, then fell silent as I thought of her waiting somewhere just beyond the door to the quiet house. It was so unfair. If we were living in different days, she and James would be spending their time making happy plans for the birth of their first baby, instead of helping devise urgent ones to stop Voldemort.
James and I stood looking at each other for a long time through the faint glow of a candle shining down from an upstairs window. There was so much to say and yet no words that could say it any better than the silence of old friends that hung in the darkness between us. Less than an hour ago we’d both believed our work for the Order had led us a long way from the bright, adventurous idealism with which we’d entered it. That journey had been only a few steps compared to the miles of ominous, darkening road we’d traveled together since then.
“Guess I’ll shove off then.” I said at last. Before I turned away, I had an impulse to tell him to be careful. I swallowed it back when I saw my thought already reflected in his eyes and in the motion of his hand as it reached toward me, as if to restrain me from leaving. It wavered there an instant, in the air between us, before James sighed, shook his head and let his hand drop.
“Okay, good night then, Sirius,” he said. Opening the door, he stepped into a warm bright stream of candlelight. Glanced over his shoulder, gave me half a tired smile. “Stop by tomorrow, will you? Let us know if you get that lease for your shop.”
“All right. See you tomorrow, then, James. Say good night to Lily for me,” I said, walking into the darkness where my bike waited, then swung myself aboard. Had it only been this afternoon when I’d talked to the man about that nice little space for let? I’d thought at the time that I might fly by there this evening after my meeting with Regs. Enjoy another proud look at the place where my bike shop might be one day soon, then take the memory of it back to my flat to dream over through the night.
I’d didn’t do either, though.
Visit the shop. Or go back to a flat that would be too full of silent, lonely questions.
That meeting, that thought, even that pleasant little dream of a bike shop, seemed too many years old now to be quite real anymore. The man they’d belonged to had been decades younger than the one who went speeding in grim silence up toward the flat and indifferent stars.
Instead, I flew as high, far and fast as I could, leaning over my handlebars. Squinting into the wind as if I might catch one last glimpse of that younger Sirius. Thinking, wishing maybe, that, if only for one final moment, I could fit myself back into his sweet old eager and innocent world. Realizing that, if I managed to reach that space at all, it was really no more than a brief detour along the way to a future full of uncertainties. Knowing above all else that, like James, I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
It wasn’t until the sun rose over the horizon and began its climb through the eastern sky that I tethered my bike in it’s usual spot beside a building off Diagon Alley. Tired enough to tumble headlong onto my pillow and from there into dreamless sleep, I made my heavy footed way up the stairs to my little flat.
As I swung open the door and stepped inside, I was greeted by a repeated tap, tap, tapping sound at the window.
A large, brown barn owl was fluttering on the sill. As I crossed the room, it leaned in close and again rapped on the glass with its beak. One, two, three, quick, impatient taps. Even before I could raise the sash and gather it in, I saw my name written loud and black across the parchment fastened to its leg and recognized the spiky writing.
It was my Mother’s.