Mists of the Future
Part Two; Grimmauld Place
To: Harry Potter
Gryffindor Tower, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
From: Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, London
Mid-January, Harry’s fifth year at Hogwarts
Dear Harry,
Since owls are nocturnal, this one- (His name’s Dapper by the way, since he’s such a handsome fellow) has likely arrived as you sit surrounded by books and parchments, breaking in on your studies tapping on the window of your dormitory. I’m sure you regret the interruption, ha ha! That’s not why I sent this parchment, much as I’d have liked someone to do me a favor like that in my school days.
I’m writing to answer another question, one that came up before Christmas. You, Hermione, Ron and his family were here while Arthur Weasley was in St. Mungo’s Hospital, recovering from that intruder’s attack at the Ministry of Magic. You and I sat at this table where I am now, sipping spiced tea and recalling the night we met in the Shrieking Shack. The night you saved my life and your own by conjuring a patronus to drive off those dementors on the Hogwarts grounds. You said one happy memory you used in your attempt, was thinking you’d come live with me instead of with your relatives. After all I’ve learned of your life at the Dursleys, I wouldn’t like staying with them either. (Not that I imagine they’re planning to invite me anytime soon!)
Then you asked me what memory would work best for me. If you saw my attempts, you’d know I haven’t got that spell down yet. My patroni are pathetic looking things There’s hardly a silver shimmer, let alone a glowing creature strong enough to banish a dementor. So the answer is- “none… yet!”
I saw concern in your face when I didn’t answer right off. It didn’t mean I lack happy memories or the dementors stole them all during my years in prison. The way your face lit when you said you’d like to live with me is one of my happiest! (Of course you hadn’t seen this place yet!) After a swallow of tea, you asked another question, probably hoping it’d spark an idea. “Well, Sirius, for example- when you were a kid. What day was the happiest one of your life?”
I was surprised for a moment you hadn’t guessed. Then I realized how limited our time together has been and how much of our correspondence has been quick notes to arrange meeting times and places. My only long letters described my time in Azkaban. You’ll have heard little about my life growing up.
Before I could answer, Ron and Ginny burst in, exclaiming that the Christmas tree was ready for decorating. We hurried to the parlour to help choose the colour of the lights.
Between then and now, it kept coming back to me you never got an answer. I tried to decide between two days which stand out the sharpest for me. They’re so bound up together I finally realized there was no separating one from the other.
I won’t say either was full of happiness. You know all too well what a tangle of feelings any day can hold. But they were the most significant days of my life up til then. And they set me on the path which led me to being your Godfather.
So I’m at the same table with another cup of tea. Nobody’s in the house tonight but Kreacher and I. That nasty tongued House Elf has taken his complaints to his bed. The curtains in front of my Mother’s portrait are closed so I don’t have to listen to her shrieks and curses. The quiet’s a relief. Still, I wish it was the holidays again and I could tell you this tale rather than stare at a parchment, wondering how to begin. It was so full of talk and laughter here then, it hardly seemed like the same house I grew up in.
I’m glad Albus Dumbledore took me up on the offer to use this place as Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Voldemort and his followers would hardly suspect the home of one of the darkest Wizarding families to be put to such a purpose. Only wish Albus hadn’t ordered me to remain here. I hate this place. I try to make it as pleasant as possible when members of the Order pass through to deliver scraps of information, or gather for meetings. Difficult task. Kreacher spatters insults on my guests as he tends the fire. My Mother’s portrait erupts with shrieks whenever a sound in the hallway brings it awake. Hardly welcoming.
I suppose I sound ungrateful. This isn’t Azkaban, there are no dementors. It’s warm, Buckbeak and I have food. But last summer when Albus sent me to Remus with a request to reunite the old gang ‘cause Voldemort’s back in town, I thought I’d be needed to help stop the spread of his evil influence. Seeing tea prepared or counting chairs to make sure there are enough for everyone hardly fills the bill.
Worse, I’ve been nowhere since I went with you to the train, frolicking and frisking in my dog form and chasing my tail as you laughed. I was so proud, seeing you head back to school. How I loved watching you smile and wave in the window as I ran along the tracks, barking my goodbyes to you under a fine blue sky. How could I know Albus wanted me to stay here, not only for the summer, but all the months since? I know he thinks it’s for my protection from those at the Ministry who hunt the criminal Sirius Black, but confinement is confinement. The stillness presses tight around me. The walls grow closer and closer. Often I think I’d trade my warm, dry bed and kitchen fire for the cave Buckbeak and I shared last year. Though always with great stealth, in the disguise of my dog body, I miss that bit of freedom I had, to come and go at my own will.
Sorry for the complaints. This House has a bad effect on me. Almost always hated the place, except when my brother Regulus and I were very small. Not ‘cause it was full of dirt and neglect. It wasn’t then. It had a cellar of fine wine, was richly curtained, luxuriously carpeted, lavishly furnished with ornate tables and chairs, and filled with enough House Elves to keep everything and everybody spotlessly clean and dust free!
I’m describing it since some of what’s in these parchments takes place in the rooms of this House. I’ve enclosed them- (the parchments obviously, not the rooms, ha ha)- with this note, if you want to read on. They involve some people you know and some whose names you saw embroidered in gold on that ancient tapestry upstairs in the parlour. We won’t start here though- or you might elect to stop reading. (I almost certainly would!)
Instead we’ll start with something I’m certain you can picture in vivid details. It’s not only the place that you’ll know- or one of the people who couldn’t help but figure largely in my tale (in more ways than one!)… If you close your eyes and look back, I think you’ll even recognize the weather…
The World Beyond the Window
Chapter One: The Mists of the Future
Half an hour ago, at the railway station, I’d only been wet.
Now I was soaked to the skin and shivering.
This morning the rain had only been a tapping on the windows of the train. By midday it was drumming on the roof. As we reached our destination it was a downpour.
Pulling the collar of my robes higher, I had stepped from my compartment and hurried onto the platform. Then stopped. Where should I go? Several other students were clustered around me as they gazed this way and that, as I was doing.
Not the older ones though. Robes flapping in the wind, they dashed to a line of waiting carriages. I started after them.
“First year students over here! Step lively now!” A voice boomed from the other end of the platform. There, with a lantern in his hand, stood the largest person I’d ever seen.
“That’s Hagrid!” A girl said behind me. “He’s the groundskeeper at Hogwarts.”
A merry grin appeared in the middle of Hagrid’s wild black beard as he beckoned. In the glow of his lamp I looked for more carriages.
“My sister,” another girl replied. “Says he always rows us first years across the lake to school.”
“He can’t mean to do that in all this rain, though… Can he?” gasped her companion.
“Of course he can! And he will! It’s tradition.”
Now, sitting near the front of Hagrid’s boat, I could almost hear that word repeating between the sloshing waves. Tradition, tradition…
I brushed dripping hair from my face and lifted my arm to watch water stream off my sleeve. Pointless wiping my eyes on it, they’d be no drier afterward. And with the fog rising off the lake there was nothing to see. Still, I couldn’t help searching through mists for some sign of the place that would be home for the next seven years.
Home. There was no welcome in the word. On the train I’d almost forgotten where I was going. Not the place’s name, but what going there meant. Then that girl’s word “tradition” brought back to me why I was here tonight.
School, Wizarding school. Learning Potions, Broomstick Flying and Transfiguration. What transformations might be taking place inside me as I studied them?
The future my family wanted for me was looming closer and larger with every stroke of Hagrid’s oars. Were the shivers rattling my bones coming from a slow wordless rage at its approach, a sense of growing dread or only a result of the cold?
I didn’t know, wasn’t sure it mattered. I sat straighter and turned my face up into the rain. I laced my fingers together and clenched my jaw against the shaking. Any moment that future would become my present. The only thing to do was face it.
What I did know was that the idea of being a student Wizard in Slytherin House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry hadn’t seemed so real to me since the day my Mother took me to tea in Diagon Alley.