Sunrise
Sunrise
The trip back to Gryffindor was faster than the one to the Hospital Wing had been. Our footsteps echoed along the early morning halls. “James,” I asked as we climbed the stairs to the Tower. “I thought Remus would be angry over what happened, didn’t you? Maybe he was at first. But… I don’t know… Then he wasn’t.”
“Does that surprise you?” James stopped halfway up the stairs to glance at me.
“Yeah, kind of. I mean, he was still speaking to me when we left.”
“Well, what did you think?” James started up again. “Of course he was.”
I hurried after him. “But I did something stupid. Really mean and stupid.”
“Yeah, so?” James asked, reaching the landing where the portrait of the fat lady guarded our common room door. She looked to be drowsing, a half smile on her face.
“So,” I said, pausing on the top step. “He still wants to do things together. And don’t tell me it’s ‘cause he wants my notes from charms! He’s already read the book, clear ahead til the end of term!”
“Why shouldn’t he? Want to do stuff, that is. You’re his friend aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah. Of course I am. Even if he didn’t want me to be, I still am.”
“Well, he wants you to be. Like I want you to be mine.” James moved toward the fat lady, gesturing me to follow. “Wouldn’t you keep being his friend, or mine, if we did something stupid?”
I stood still as the meaning of his words hit me. Not like a bludger. More like a huge, surprising pillow that whooshed the dread out of my guts . I got it! At last I got it! “Stay Remus’s friend? Yeah, I would, even if I can’t see him doing anything stupid.” I laughed. “As for whether I’d stay yours… Well, I think I’ve proved that part a long time ago!”
James looked at me over his shoulder. His laughter mixed with mine as he turned to the common room door and called the password to the fat lady’s portrait. “Vernal-.”
“James! Wait!” I leaped forward and grabbed his arm, half spinning him to face me. “I have one more thing to ask you!”
“What did you say?”
“I want to know-” I began.
The voice didn’t belong to James. Over his shoulder, the fat lady’s eyes blinked open.
“Not you, sorry.” I laughed, turning to the portrait and pointing to James. “Him. I need to ask him something…”
“What do you want to know?” asked James.
“The password!” The fat lady’s voice sounded blurry and confused as she stretched in her frame. “Did somebody begin the password?”
“I did,” said James.
“Well then?” she yawned. “What is it?”
“Wait a minute,” said James.
“That’s not it,” she said, coming a bit more awake and sounding cross.
“I know,” said James, turning to me. “What is it, Sirius?”
“If it was you who began it, I should think that you’d remember…” she grumbled.
“It’s vernal…” I began, laughing harder.
“No!” exclaimed James. “I mean before she woke up, what were you going to ask-?”
“Don’t you ever go to bed?” The fat lady’s painted eyes were wide open now. “The way you lot come and go at all hours, you’d think I’m hanging around here with nothing better to do!”
“This place is full of ears!” I glanced from James to the portrait and back. How had we ever managed to keep Remus’s secret quiet as long as we had with all the portraits, poltergeists and ghosts around, not to mention students or teachers? “Come on!” I said. “We’ll do this in the common room if it’s empty.”
“Okay,” James nodded. “Got it. Vernal equinox!”
“Well, it certainly took you long enough!” The portrait swung aside to let first James, and then me, climb through the hidden opening before slamming shut with a loud exclamation. “Now I want to finish getting my beauty sleep!”
“Yeah, and she needs it, too!” James leaned round to whisper to me before heading for his favorite chair by the crackling orange fire. “Now, what did you want to ask?”
This time it was me who made a tour of the room. A book on a couch here, a quill and parchment on a table there. No students. Coming back to the hearth, and dropping to the rug beside James’s chair, I stretched my hands toward the blaze. The rising warmth was delicious against the chill early morning air. “What,” I asked, after a moment. “Did you mean when you told Remus about keeping a better watch?”
“Well, what did you think I meant?” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He was grinning. Beneath his tousled hair, his eyes sparkled.
Did he believe we were ready? We’d gone through each step of the spell, adding one part to another and another. How often had I seen James work to reshape the tips of his ears, then their position on his head and finally their entire form? How many times over weeks, over months, over nearly three years, had I heard him murmur charms to alter his legs, his face, his feet? When had little changes begun to melt together into big ones?
I wasn’t sure. Not for James. Or myself either. I only knew how far we’d come when one night I noticed Peter still stumbled on the phrases of the transforming spell, but I hadn’t heard James say a word before he began to reshape himself. Had my chanting of the spell also faded into silence? Well… yeah, maybe it had! Because I understood, without knowing how to explain it, that the idea of transforming had turned into a clear intent to transform. Later it was an inner image, then a sensation, of myself having been transformed. After that, for both James and me, the first slow changes came smoother and smoother, faster and faster.
Already I knew I could pass through the ache that came with shifting the shapes of my bones, could delight in watching my hands turn to black paws, see the brightness of colors retreat a bit as smells leaped forward to meet me. But it was still classroom stuff, a spell performed over and over for the sake of learning it. One waiting for the moment it would be put to real use, like every other charm, jinx or spell I knew had waited before it!
“James! Are you talking about the animagus charm?”
“Of course, you twit!” he said. “What else would I be talking about?”
“But, James, you wanted to do our final test run after our O W L exams next month.”
“Yeah, right.” If his grin got any wider it would touch his ears. “And you said we were ready to try it a month ago!”
Oh, yeah, he meant it! This was going to be so cool, so cool! “Well, you and I are ready anyway. Peter’s not. He’s too slow with the incantation.”
I could see it clearly. James and I. Patrolling the school grounds in our animal forms. From the castle to the Whomping Willow and back again. From the Willow through the tunnel that led to Hogsmeade and into the Shrieking Shack. Taking turns checking on Remus. Keeping him company. Staying with him so he wasn’t left in delirious solitude. Keeping him safe so he didn’t hurt himself during the pain of the moon madness. Guarding him against anyone who might sneak out of the castle and begin tampering with the Willow. Against snooping gits like Snape...
Snape!
The visions faded. Were we ready, or did I only want us to be? Like I wanted to scare Snivvelus, with no thought about what it could lead to? I managed half a laugh. “Man, James, after last night, are you sure you want to be listening to me?”
James shrugged. “No. You’re right. I guess that leaves Peter, Remus and me to choose when the test run should be then, doesn’t it?”
“What?” I scowled. He didn’t have to agree with me so fast, did he? After all, I hadn’t said I didn’t want to help with making the decision!
Sighing, he flopped back in his chair. “This means shelving the plan til Fall then, at least. Because neither Peter nor Remus will move on my word alone. You know Peter!. A month’s too soon for him to decide what he thinks we should do. Look, he can’t even make up his mind how to answer the yes and no questions on exams for fear he’ll get them wrong!”
Was this James talking? I turned all the way round from the fire to stare up at him.
How could he put aside our whole brilliant plan just like that?
His head lolled on the chair cushion as he gazed at a spot somewhere between the mantle and the ceiling. His words seemed to drag themselves out, slow and heavy with resignation. “And Remus thinks we’re taking too much risk on his behalf already, by learning the charm in the first place. I don’t think he’d ever say he thinks we’re ready. It’s too bad, y’know? After spending all those nights in the library, not to mention those Saturday afternoons! By the time the two of them think we’re ready, we’ll have beards long as Dumbledore’s!”
What was with him, anyway? Two minutes ago he was talking about using the spell to help Remus, like we’d planned for years! How could he let it drift away into some far off future when we had come so close?
“James!” I protested. “It’s crazy to wait! We said we don’t want Remus to be alone at the full moon! We know this is the only way! He’s not dangerous to us as animals when the moonlight transforms him!”
“But, Sirius, everything’s changed with old Snivvelus in the picture and all. What if last night didn’t really scare him off?”
I let out a sigh of exasperation. “James, have you gone mad? I thought the whole point you were making in the Hospital Wing is that it’s more important than ever to protect Remus from Snape or anyone else who’d try to come after him! And, for that matter, protect them from him as well! Even if it’s for Remus’s sake and not their own?”
James laughed. “Right you are,” he said. “So when do we start the test runs?”
“Night after tomorrow.” I said without hesitation. “Tonight we catch Remus up on the classes he missed. Tomorrow after supper we quiz each other one more time on the spell. Next night, we do it. Not in our dormitory this time, but outside under real conditions…”
My words staggered to a stop. “You twit! You never meant to put the plan off at all!”
He laughed, then slapped me on the shoulder. “Took you long enough to figure that one out, didn’t it, mate? So, you did something totally stupid with Snape last night. Man, Sirius, we can’t have you chewing on yourself because of that every time you get a new idea, can we? I mean, you do come up with a good one now and then! And if you’d feel better about making up for last night by taking a lead part in keeping the watch we’re talking about, I have the perfect plan as to how you can do it!”
There was enough leftover regret lurking in my gut that I couldn’t be sure if he was joking, but I treated it like he was. “Well, if you think I’m going to write ‘I will not be an impulsive, hot headed git’ a hundred times, you can forget it…”
He laughed and waved the idea aside. “No! Nothing like that! You’d probably ask to borrow my quill and I’m almost out of ink. No, Sirius. What I was thinking was this. When we go outside night after tomorrow to do the test run, I think the very first one to transform himself completely should be you!”
So, Harry, there’s my tale of loyalty, betrayal, cruelty and kindness, all tangled up in one long, awful night and a very humbling morning.
Looking back, even after all this time, I see the spreading ripples started by the rash choices I made that night.
Almost to James’s, Remus’s and my surprise, Severus did honour his promise to Professor Dumbledore. He kept the secret for the rest of the time we were all at Hogwarts. As I understand it, he never revealed the nature of Remus’s condition to anyone til the morning after you and I first met in the Shrieking Shack nearly two years ago now. But that revelation cost my old friend a teaching position he’d hoped for for many years.
Though your Dad and Remus were kind and forgiving toward me about what happened, it took me a long time to really win back their confidence. Not in my loyalty. They knew they had that in full measure. It was my judgment they had good cause to wonder about.
Though the details never leaked out beyond the walls of Professor Dumbledore’s office, like most secrets at Hogwarts, it was soon all over the school how I’d done something wild and risky that put an unsuspecting student in serious danger. That had a lot to do with me getting the reputation as a reckless hot-head that I still live with today, here in Grimmauld Place.
Those events also lie near the heart of the ill feelings between Snape, your Dad and me. Obviously, I know they don’t account for all of it, but, as far as I can tell, they’re what rankles deepest under Severus’s skin. I don’t have to like him to regret what I did. Or to understand why he feels as he does about me.
What I’ve always wondered about is his attitude toward your Dad. The depth of dislike Severus had for James always seemed out of all proportion to his envy of him as a Quidditch player, or the way he stood up for me against Snape our first night at school. All I can guess is he can’t forgive James for acting with such speed and courage to save both our lives in the tunnel, while he, Snape, was petrified with fear.
Only wish his dislike didn’t extend down to you. If what I did that night contributed to the way Snape has treated you since the day you started at Hogwarts, I’m sorry. Still, Snape has had the choice of looking at you simply as Harry, not only as James’s son. Seems to me a whole lot of the turmoil stirring in our world right now comes from misguided loyalties- of generation upon generation holding onto old grudges like that.
Easier to recognize, maybe, than to change. You haven’t heard me inviting old Severus over for Sunday tea, have you?
Even Hogwarts is becoming affected by turmoil and tangled loyalties these days. It troubles me that your school is not the haven it once was. Despite the loyalty you’ve given Albus Dumbledore, I saw last summer how angry you were at his unwillingness to tell you what Voldemort may be up to. At Christmas he asked you to study Occlumancy, but then appointed Snape to teach you instead of doing so himself.
Then there’s that Umbridge woman, using the authority of the Ministry of Magic to set herself up in power, giving out punishment for even mentioning Voldemort and his possible return.
I can only guess at the questions tugging on you these cold winter days. Does loyalty urge you to speak of what you know to be true with your friends, thereby putting them at risk from her? Does it urge you to keep quiet to protect them from what she dishes out? Or would you see silence as the true betrayal when it denies them a chance to prepare for what the next months may bring? Especially as you endeavor to go forward with your defense against the dark arts group. (Did you ever find a place for it? No, I don’t want an answer. Don’t want to risk you giving me one, anyway.)
There are so many questions I’m sure you’ve asked yourself in the weeks since I saw you. Hardly pleasant distractions from writing a two foot parchment for History of Magic, especially when none have an answer that’s reassuringly right or wrong.
All I can tell you, Harry, is that whatever decisions are confronting you these days, whether, ultimately, I agree with your choices or not, I am, and always will be, proud of you.
With my deepest pride and affection,
Sirius