Captive of Destiny
Captive of Destiny
The chandelier in the parlour was lit for the evening. All fifty black candles blazed as I followed my Mother from the flue. My Father looked up from the Daily Prophet as the fire’s green traveling light became its usual gold. “How was the trip to Diagon Alley?”
“Fine,” my Mother began. “Except that Sirius’s robes need alterations, and the tailor refuses to do the dress set until-”
“Great!” I waved a bag of Chocolate Frogs and Sourball Screamers. “There was a joke shop with boomerangs and one with the best sweets.” I didn’t add that a Muggle lady put them in a bag and traded with my friend for coins she put in a box that made gasping, coughing sounds before it swallowed them. I didn’t say how cheerful she was, or that if Cousin Andromeda’s Muggle-born husband, Ted Tonks was like that, I knew why she went against our family’s wishes to marry him. Instead, I rushed on. “And they had this display of broomsticks at Quality Quidditch…”
My Father set his paper on the table by his chair. “You and Lucius had a good time?”
“He went to Knockturn Alley with some older guys. This other kid and I went round to all the shops. He starts Hogwarts this year too. We got loads of stuff. See?”
He hardly looked. “What’s his name? Would we know his family?”
“It’s…” I began. “I don’t know! I forgot to ask.”
“You spent hours with who knows what kind of…” My Mother cried.
My Father ignored her. “Sirius, do you think you were acting responsibly?”
“Well- I didn’t spend all my galleons. I saved some for-”
“You must,” said my Father. “Select your friends wisely. Going to Hogwarts doesn’t, by itself, make someone a fit companion. Muggle-borns and Mud-bloods also attend. You were to spend the day with Lucius Malfoy-”
“He ditched me!” I said, though it was pointless. Once a lecture started, anything I said was as likely to stop it as a little soot could halt a Wizard’s journey through the Floo network. “He said I could wait around for him all afternoon at Quality Quidditch- ”
My father frowned. “That isn’t the point, Sirius. Association with anyone below your station will harm your reputation. Once Lord Voldemort’s ideas are in place, such persons won’t be attending Hogwarts anymore, so you need not concern yourself about these matters. Until then, however...”
I lowered my bag. Why did my Father pick tonight to start all this reputation stuff again? I wanted to show my stuff to Regs before all the excitement wore off it. He beckoned me closer. “Sirius, you’re a bright young Wizard with a head full of questions. You may think the Muggle world is a bigger one than ours. You probably think it’s freer than the carefully protected one you’ve grown up in-”
Did he believe what he said? “It’s not protected! It’s like a jail!”
“Sirius!” snapped my Mother. “That’s a terrible thing to say-”
“It’s true!” My voice was rising. “All I hear is- Don’t do this, don’t do that! It’s not proper to levitate pickles in front of the servants, I’ll humiliate myself! But it’s okay for me to be yelled at in front of them! It’s fine if I get spells thrown on me in front of strangers in shops-!”
“Silence!” she shrieked.
“Or what?” I took a step toward her. Looked into her purpling face. “You’ll take out your wand and-?”
“Stop, both of you!” My Father never shouted, but the silence after his words rang through the room like a slap. “Nocturna, he must feel free to speak his mind in the days to come, but…” He gave me a reproving look. “He knows better than to shout to make his views heard. Sirius, we’re speaking of choices you make in future. However limited your upbringing may seem to you, we tried to shield you from the ideas infecting our world these last years.”
“Like what ideas?” I challenged.
My Father sighed. “That the order which existed for centuries is unfair to some Magical creatures. That werewolves, Goblins or House Elves need the same opportunities as Wizards, whether they want them or would even know what to do if they get them. And, most dangerous of all, the notion that Mud-bloods or Muggle-borns could ever be equal to Pureblood Wizards...”
He shook his head. His eyes held impatience. “You must always remember, Sirius, that these creatures lack the talent and knowledge to handle Magic properly, especially the Dark Arts which have kept our family strong for centuries. Why do you think Hogwarts spends its time these days, not teaching those arts, but, rather, how to defend oneself against them? It’s because anybody whose Magic is unsure is someone not to be trusted.”
“I can trust him!” I shouted, remembering how we stood shoulder to shoulder. “I bet we’re in Slytherin together! I don’t know his name but he told me his family’s Wizarding pure all the way back to King Arthur!”
I stopped.
I’d’ve gone round the shops with him whoever his family was.
“Well, I’m glad you used some common sense before taking off with a strange child.” My Father didn’t sound glad. “You must not allow yourself to be lured into foolishness.”
Lured…? I didn’t get it. He’d said I’d used common sense. Nothing would make me ask him to explain. “Can I go show this stuff to Regs now?”
“Go ahead, he’s in his room. We’ll talk more later. Nocturna, tell me about your tea with Arachna. Have the Malfoys met Lord Voldemort yet?-”
It was my dismissal. I spun and dashed for the door on a wave of relief.
“Don’t run in the house!” My Mother’s spell lifted me and my hurrying feet off the floor for a moment before releasing me to walk from the room. “That child! I wish he had Regulus’s eagerness to learn instead of that rebellious streak. And he’s not the only one who doesn’t seem to know his place these days…”
I paused in the hall to glare back into the parlour. Why hadn’t they cared about my day instead of who my friend’s family was? Or looked at the things I got? When I went back to the Leaky Cauldron to meet my Mother, a woman with black hair like my friend’s, came out. Through the window I saw her standing with him on the cobbles. She reached into his bag, popped a Fizzing Whiz-bee into her mouth and laughed.
My Mother would never do that. Behind me she was still complaining. “I took Sirius to get his robes fitted. The tailor won’t do the dress set until he’s notified by Hogwarts of the House colours to trim them in after the Sorting. I said our family has worn the green and silver of Slytherin for generations. Arachna had the same problem last year at Lucius’s fitting. Silly, overbearing attitude for a mere merchant.”
“I know,” I could hear my Father’s long sigh. “These modern ideas are more harmful than I imagined before today. That’s why we need someone like Voldemort to inspire our community, especially young Wizards-”
I turned for the stairs. The words in the parlour faded as I started up. “Regs!” Out of range of my Mother’s spell, my feet moved faster. The day’s excitement returned. I burst through his door. “See what I brought home? Dragon Delights have a new flavor- Cinnamon Sizzle! You can shoot smoke out your nose while you chew them! And…”
He sat at his desk, staring down into a book. Standing behind him I held the bag above his head and poured the contents down in a stream over him. Chocolate Frogs, Dragon
Delights and Sourball Screamers bounced off his head, the shoulders of his red robes, onto the desktop and pages of his book.
“Cool, huh?” I grinned at the back of his head. “Try the Sourball Screamers! They have a sound that’ll make your face squeeze up just as much as the flavor…”
He pushed aside a couple of Chocolate Frogs and looked over his shoulder at me. He didn’t return my grin.
“Regs… You’re not still mad at me are you?”
He shook his head.
“Good. I had a real cool time!” Should I tell him about Muggle-London? The lady in the sweet shop? Or the man across the road with a garden full of shiny machines for sale? Ground-fliers was one name for them, my friend said. Or Motor-bikes. Maybe he’d get that bored look again, but he’d want to hear about Quality Quidditch.
I tugged at his shoulder. He pulled away. “I’m sorry, Siri,” he said.
“Me too. About yelling at you this morning and all...”
“This’s different.”
“What?” But I knew. That lecture hadn’t come from nowhere. Responsibility, our protected world, Mud-bloods at Hogwarts. “You were talking to our Father, right?”
“He heard us yell about dumb old Nymphadora, and asked why we were fighting.”
He looked very young sitting with his skinny wrists sticking out of his robes and his usually neat hair nearly as tousled as my Diagon Alley friend’s.
“So?” I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed with his big mouth, or sorry for his misery.
“I didn’t want to get you in trouble, Siri.” He looked at the bag in my hand, not me. “Really. I was mad when you left, but I didn’t mean to…”
“Look,” I said. “He didn’t tell me anything I haven’t heard before. Our Mother dishes it out a lot worse than him, y’ know that. It’s all right, okay?’
Every line of him said it wasn’t. As he stood up, a Sourball Screamer bounced off his lap and hit the floor with a shriek. He didn’t notice, only set his book on his bedside table. I wanted to grab him, shake him, or to hug him maybe, anything to lift that hunched look off his narrow, little-kid shoulders.
His voice dropped out of the hearing of any Elves passing in the hall. “I told him about you sneaking out at night.” As bad as I felt for him, I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I’d forgotten what a big deal everything was when you were ten. I reached out to clap him on the arm. “Regs, give over, I mean it. It’s okay.”
He ducked my touch but at last looked full at me. “I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble! But you could have been! You would have!”
I could hear the last of the laughter in my tone, but a sick feeling crept into my stomach. “Regs, what are you talking about?”
“He asked how you snuck out. I told him about the vine and that you wanted to see-”
“That’s stupid! It wouldn’t help me! Might keep you out of trouble, though, right?”
His words were sinking in. He said he wouldn’t tell and not an hour later he spilled his guts to our Father! The sick feeling was getting worse. I knew there were things Regs and I didn’t agree on, but he’d said… he’d said…
“I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble-” he insisted.
“Stow it!” I batted at the hand that grasped my robes. When I got to my room, I could slam the door before he saw how much his betrayal hurt.
His foot snaked around my ankle. The momentum crashed us to the carpet, Regulus on top of me. “Just listen then! It’d be worse if you got a chance to go out and-”
“Let go of me!”
“You’ll see I’m right!!” He didn’t try to keep his voice low. “In a week you’ll be at school! You’ll see our world’s better than the one out there! It’s changing you, just by your wanting to see it! Siri, you talked weird this morning! If you don’t stop, you’ll hurt the family like Cousin Andromeda! You’d be in more trouble if you got out there, or anyone but me heard what you said-!”
“Well, thanks to you, someone else has heard, hasn’t he? And by now our Mother knows, too! What’s the matter with you? You scared I’ll decide I like that other world more? Or I’ll come back and say the House of Black isn’t the big deal you think it is?”
“It is a big deal! We’re an old Pureblood family!” His voice rose over mine. “Father says when Lord Voldemort comes to power, we’ll take our rightful place in his court…”
“Well, he’s got to get there first, doesn’t he? Do you think everyone’s just going to let some strange guy come in and take over?”
“Father says-” Regulus loosened his grip, pulling back so he could look me in the eyes. “One day soon old Pureblood families will use their dark spells to bring him to power.”
“Maybe not all of them.” I thought of my friend laughing with his Mum, remembered how he liked Muggle-London and hated the dark arts shops of Knockturn Alley.
“But ours will!” Regulus let go and rolled to a sitting position. The anger in his voice gave way to excitement. “Father said it’s our destiny. That school turns you into a real Wizard, that learning Dark Arts teaches you what’s important. You’ll find what you’re best at, so you can help where you’re needed. Like I get to next year. It’ll be so cool, Siri, you and me at school together, learning all this stuff! He says-”
I got to my feet. He didn’t stop me. “Is that all you can do? Repeat what everybody else says? Well, listen to this then! I don’t care about Lord Voldemort! And you can go tell our Father that right now if you want to, ‘cause at least it’ll get you out of my sight!”
I turned and strode from his room. He caught the door before it shut, then padded after me down the hall. “You’d care if the world out there wasn’t trying to change you. It has a spell on you or you’d care about our family and what we can do together! So y’know what? I’m glad I told! You’ll be free of that spell! You’ll go to Slytherin and learn cool stuff and come home at the holidays and teach me! It’ll be like it used to be!”
Like it used to be. I heard longing in his voice on the last words. I stepped into my room, then turned. “How was that, Regs? How did it used to be?”
“We could have fun again.” He was looking up at me like he hoped I’d tell him a story or play a round of snap before bed. “We could tell each other stuff.”
It was what I wanted too. But I wasn’t ten now. I wasn’t sure it was that easy. Maybe our minds had already grown us too far apart. “I don’t know, Regs…”
“I do, Siri.” His voice was as kind as when he said I’d be able to remember all the ways to act at school. “Father said he’d keep you safe til you go off to Slytherin House.”
“Safe? What are you talking about?”
“He got his wand and took it down.”
“Took it…? Regs, what are you talking about?”
“Now you can’t go where that spell can get hold of you. So you don’t have to worry that it’ll make you hurt our family.”
I stared from him to the four walls of the candle-lit room that had sometimes been my haven in this dark, ancient house. It didn’t feel like one now. The only real haven was beyond my wood-framed window. This hateful place and the people in it were pressing in from all sides, trying to fit me to its mould. My Mother with her criticism and her quick, impatient cruelties. My Father, so sure that he knew the one way of being right. This House itself, with its centuries of proud, lonely tradition written in gold on a tapestry downstairs. And now Regs was trying to shut me in here too, because they made him believe it was for my own good! Even in my anger, I wished, as he did, for the earlier, easier times with my brother.
I turned, strode to my window. This place might be like a jail, but it was only a small part of a bigger world. My dream of freedom waited not so far beyond the glass. All I had to do was look at the tree with its branch leading over the garden wall to remember that. I rested my hands on the smooth sill and imagined the inviting feel of bark. “Do you think pulling down one little vine can keep me where I don’t want to be?”
The candle light blotted out the view, but as Regs came to stand beside me, his face was reflected close to mine in the night-darkened window. Pressing my nose close enough to the cool to block the light, I stared out. For a moment everything was lost in blackness. Then, one by one, familiar objects sorted themselves from the dark. The stone bench by the path to the door, a statue of a rearing centaur, an empty space by the wall…
It didn’t make sense. I’d looked out this window a thousand times. I blinked. The empty space was still there. I brushed away a blur of tears as I searched for the thing I didn’t see. The thing I wouldn’t see. Not tonight. Not in the morning. Or ever again.
Regulus’s hand was on my shoulder. His voice was kind. “I know taking down one little vine couldn’t stop you, Siri, ‘cause you’ll be a great strong Wizard someday. We both will! I don’t want you banished. Neither does Father! You’re safe now! And you’ll always belong to the House of Black!”