halt the clock —that syncopates our love II
"Will you take me to the station tomorrow, cousin?”
Pansy bats her eyes at him. He looks down at her, raising an eyebrow. She pouts.
“Pleaaaase,” she whines. “Father has been so jumpy since the Mark disappeared. He’s embarrassing. If he starts throwing hexes in public again, I am going to scream.”
“What about your mother?”
She looks away. “Mother is cross with me because of the incident.”
“What incident?”
“You know, the incident.”
“Pansy.”
She hides her face between her hands.
“I freed Quippy by accident. I didn’t think, I just handed her the clothes I wanted to wear in the train. She cried so hard it woke all the portraits and they yelled even harder. It was four in the morning.”
Calix chuckled. “Circe’s braids, Pansy, you’ll never cease to amaze me.” He pauses and puts down his book. He takes off his enchanted glasses. The bejewelled chain keeping them on him shines as he shifts. Calix squints as the light of the end of summer burns the sensitive skin around his left eye. “I suppose I could come with you. I haven’t made a public appearance in, what?”
“Three years,” she sing-songs. “Since Sirius Black’s trial and the Azkaban debacle, Father said. The one that got Aunt Sage released too.”
Aunt Sage is Marked, but it was determined to have been against her will. As far as Calix is aware, it is even true; her husband, Louis Rosier pressured her into joining by threatening their son Felix. She ended up taking the fall for one of his crimes, though the bastard was caught by the Aurors soon after for another atrocity.
He didn’t know that when he set things in motion, however.
He had just gotten done with what he needed to do for Harry Potter to be safe, and he had been able to start making sure he was not only unharmed, but also happy. Making sure he was raised by the godfather he so loved had done a lot to quiet the part of him that still remembered being Hedwig.
And now he was known in the wider magical community as the Man who Ruined Azkaban.
They said he stayed home because he feared the dementors’ retribution. That had nothing to do with it, and everyone in House Parkinson knew it. But they had sworn an oath, and they would stay silent.
“So you’ll come?” asks Pansy eagerly.
“I will. But you know I will be your...”
She hushes him.
“Don’t say it. Do you want your first public appearance to be at the Great Feast, with no press to see it? That is sad, cousin.”
He makes a sound of understanding. “I see. You want me there because you want to be in the papers, is that it?”
She flushes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Calix sends his little cousin a knowing look.
“If you say so.”
Pansy ignores his doubtful answer.
“Onto more important things.” She claps her hands. “Can I choose your outfit?”
The next day, he is tapping the end of his cane against the tiled floor of the Platform 9 ¾. He wears a lilac open robe over baby blue trousers and a white shirt subtly embroidered with a lace thunderbird adorned with purple flowers. He smiles at his little cousin, smothering a wince at the pain lancing his knee. He hadn’t expected Horcrux hunting to be restful, but he came out of it significantly more hurt than planned. The curse damage in his knee and left arm are extensive even if they do not cause him constant pain. The Gaunt shack did numbers on him; he should have let the old man take care of it. Still, it usually is not this bad. The eye Voldemort’s wraith partially blinded when he confronted it is what tends to cause him pain.
Today is not his lucky day, however.
(The less said about the wounds he incurred when he hunted a chimera for its blood’s corrosive properties, the better. Kreacher had enjoyed pouring it on the locket, though. Sucking up to Old Walburga Black was almost worth it for the gleeful cackle the elf let out when he realised that it was working.)
He puts a hand in his pocket, running a finger on the wax seal of Headmaster Dumbledore’s offer letter. A small hand latches onto his elbow and pulls him out of his thoughts.
“Come on, cousin, Draco’s here!”
He sighs. “Did it really have to be the Malfoy heir?”
“Duh. He’s an idiot and a braggart, but he’s handsome.”
“Stop that sound, little cousin. You know Grandmother will wash out your mouth with a Scourgify if she catches you doing it.”
“It’s the Wand of Justice!”
Calix cringes as the press gets closer, cameras in hand.
He had not heard this particular moniker out loud yet, though he has had to read it in his second cousin Rita’s articles.
Pansy cackles at his side. “You could have left it alone after setting things in motion to free Aunt Sage. But noooo, you had to prove a point.”
She is right. He didn’t have to steal the Dementors’ allegiance in front of the Minister to prove that Azkaban’s guarding system was flawed. But the soulless creatures were much less scary to him after he realised that they found his mind too animalistic to use their usual tricks. The shadow of Hedwig protected him, and so he tried out the theory that got his parents killed.
(What they were doing with a Dementor, he doesn’t know. But he will find out.)
The prisoners had to be relocated to Nurmengard while they came up with a better solution. Now Azkaban is guarded by a collection of Newt Scamander’s most dangerous creatures who take their role very seriously, and the magizoologists taking care of them make sure that no prisoners get eaten.
(They hadn't had any idea what to do with the Dementors until Sirius Black had revealed that the Isle of Avalon had a containment enclosure meant for them, and that House Black used to guard it on behest of the Lady Morgana.)
“Must you rub it in my face?” he sighs.
“It is my privilege as your favourite cousin.”
“You are not my favourite cousin. That’s Felix.”
Felix Rosier, Aunt Sage’s only son and the future Lord of his House was adorable, and only one year younger than Pansy. The two had some sort of rivalry for his affections that he doesn’t quite understand but finds very funny.
She gasps. “That little worm? I’ll kill him.”
“Why don’t you go flirt with the baby peacock instead? You’re giving me a headache.”
Rather it was the sound of the camera shutters that was getting on his nerves, but he couldn’t quite say that with the press so close. His cousin understood, though.
Pansy peers up at him with concerned eyes. “Should I write Grandmother?”
He shakes his head. “No need. I’ll be fine in an hour or so. Now, run along, I’ll be right behind you.”
His cousin shrugs and skips towards the Malfoy heir while Calix follows at a leisurely pace.
“Hedwig?”
Calix turns without thinking and finds himself facing Harry Potter.
Yellow eyes gaze into green.
Does he... remember? He wonders, half-panicked and half-thrilled at the thought.
But Harry only blinks in confusion and turns to his godfather, who nods at Calix, though not before observing his bewildered godson intensely.
“Lord Parkinson.”
“Lord Black, Lord Potter.”
“I didn’t get to thank you for my freedom,” starts Sirius Black with a crooked grin.
“The only thing I did was threaten to eat a rat,” he replies smoothly.
The events leading to Sirius Black’s trial were comical to say the least. Calix had written to Amelia Bones about the lack of trial for his Aunt, and his fears that many like her had been skipped over by the previous administration.
That had been done a year prior and amounted to nothing, not with Cornelius Fudge impeding the Head of the DMLE in any way he could. He didn’t want the competence of the post-war Ministry to be called into question.
Then Calix had waited for Percy Weasley to make an appearance in Diagon Alley with his rat, and had Pansy throw a tantrum and claim to have been bitten by the Animagus in disguise. Calix, who had completed the Animagus transformation to deal with the body dysmorphia his memories of Hedwig gave him, turned into an owl and caught the offending rat in his claws and did not release him until he turned, fearing for his own life.
“You did quite a bit more than that from what I’ve heard,” refutes the stubborn man with a gleam in his eye.
Calix has to physically restrain himself from gulping. He remembers Sirius Black from his Hogwarts years if not from Harry’s time with him. They were only three years apart after all. He knows that the man is like a dog with a bone when he gets an idea.
“That is a matter of perspective, I suppose,” he says primly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my little cousin is terrorising the Malfoy heir. I should probably check on that.”
Black chuckles. “You go do that.”