Reluctant Empathy
Sirius opened his eyes and instantly regretted it as the sun shone through the glass window blinding him and he felt a sharp stab of pain somewhere behind his right eye. His head was pounding while his stomach turned over with nausea from a combination of too much drink and not enough food.
He shut his eyes tightly again - not seeing a point in powering through his unfortunate symptoms when there was nothing of importance on his agenda anyway. He rolled over onto his side and draped one arm around Buckbeak’s wing, resolving to fall back asleep and perhaps find a bit of peace for a little longer. Sirius might have managed it if the Hippogriff hadn’t begun persistently nipping at him with his beak.
“Shove off, I’m too tired,” he protested groggily, which was sadly the truth.
His energy levels were greatly depleted after weeks of inactivity and total isolation. Nobody had been by headquarters in the longest time as the Death Eaters' increased activity kept everyone busy on the ground with the resistance. Meanwhile, Sirius was left behind and forgotten by them all - or so it felt. Even Harry had not bothered to write since he’d returned to school after the Christmas break.
With nothing to do and nobody to talk to, there were days that Sirius didn’t bother to get out of bed at all. He had taken to oversleeping as a means of passing the endless hours that seemed to make up each long and pointless day. The more he slept, the more tired he seemed to become - continuing a vicious cycle that did not do anything to aid how lonely and depressed he was. Sirius could hardly believe that only a couple of months ago he had been celebrating one of the best Christmases of his life.
“Buckbeak,” he growled, as he received a sharper nip on his shoulder, but he was already sitting up - accepting that the creature was not to be deterred.
“Fine, fine, you win,” he gave in, as he swung his legs over the side of his mother’s grand bed and stood up.
His legs felt weak and his muscles were stiff. It was hard to swallow the truth that the only soul around to care if he ate or showered today was a Hippogriff. Feeling depressed and sorry for himself, Sirius went into the ensuite bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. As he stared at his reflection in the mirror he couldn’t help but grimace.
Perhaps it was a blessing that he’d been left in isolation, for he was quite an alarming sight at the moment. With dark bags under his eyes and the recent acquisition of a bruise on his left cheek that he’d gotten after a stumble down the stairs a couple of days ago. His clothes were wrinkled from days of overuse and already seemed too large on him - Sirius hadn't had much of an appetite lately and it showed.
"I'll be back," Sirius promised Buckbeak as he passed through the bedroom and out into the hall.
His footsteps creaked on each step as he went down the winding staircase and he was careful to be as quiet as possible, so as to not wake his mother's portrait in the entry below. When he was four steps up from the main level, Sirius leapt the rest of the way and landed silently on the tile floor crouched down like a cat. Practicing moves like that was one way he sometimes tried to alleviate his chronic boredom - though he regretted it immediately as every muscle in his body seemed to protest at once.
Straightening up slowly, Sirius’s eyes zeroed in on the long black cloak hanging on the hook by the front door. It had definitely not been there yesterday and Sirius’s heart gave a bit of an excited jault at the prospect of company - any company. A brief exchange with an Order member would be a welcome reprieve from far too much time spent in nothingness - though he still pulled his wand out of his sleeve as a precaution while he proceeded through the house in search of whomever was there.
Sirius glanced into the drawing room, the library, and the living room before he reached the small sitting room at the back of the house and discovered Severus and Harry fast asleep. At the mere sight of them, Sirius felt his elation at having people at Grimmauld Place, particularly Harry, rise quickly and then crash at the realization that the evidence suggested they had arrived a fair while ago and had not even bothered to tell him. Sirius felt his whole body grow numb and as his legs began to wobble threateningly, he sank down in an adjacent chair.
His eyes were boring into Severus so hard that Sirius was surprised that Severus couldn’t feel it. Despite all the growth they’d experienced as a single family unit over Christmas, the solitary months endured ever since had done nothing to alleviate Sirius’s feelings of inadequacy. How it burned him to be locked up in his misery while Severus got to see and spend time with Harry at Hogwarts every single day. It made Sirius feel like an outsider in his own house and family, but he couldn't look away.
Harry was practically cuddled in Severus’s arms and anyone who didn’t know better could easily have mistaken him for Severus’s own son. Not knowing what else to do, Sirius kept watching them and waiting to be noticed - not sure what he would say when they did.
It was several long minutes before Severus finally opened his eyes. He looked rather confused as he glanced around at his surroundings.
“Hello,” said Sirius coolly.
Blinking rapidly, Severus looked down at Harry and then back at Sirius, who was still watching him without speaking a word.
“What time is it?” he asked softly, wincing slightly as he tried to gently shift Harry more evenly across his lap so that his weight was better distributed.
“Ten in the morning,” Sirius replied. “I never heard you come in.”
"We got here late last night," Severus explained. “I got back from a meeting and needed to see Dumbledore right away.”
A shadow came over Sirius’s face. He had to remind himself that Severus Snape was no longer his enemy. The two of them had taken pains to be civil and tolerant to one another because that was what had been best for Harry - but over the holiday they’d gone much further than that. Severus had made him Polyjuice Potion - they had even sat up drinking whiskey together on Christmas Eve after all the kids had gone to bed. The Christmas holidays had made him feel hopeful and alive again - Sirius didn’t want to throw all that progress out the window now.
“You brought Harry with you, so I don’t think your meeting with Dumbledore was just about your own affairs,” he said slowly, working to keep his voice level and unaggressive. “Do you and Dumbledore think it appropriate to exclude me from discussions about important issues concerning Harry?”
“I didn’t say that,” Severus’s eyes narrowed. “Though I'm not sure you'd have been in any state to participate last night anyway - I can smell the alcohol on your breath from here."
“And?” Sirius scowled. “I’d like to see you try and do better, Severus - locked in this house with nobody to talk to and nothing to do…."
"I think I'd consider that a holiday," Severus said sarcastically.
Sirius stiffened in his chair and suddenly looked as stricken as if he'd been slapped. A holiday? This was merely a prison of a different form - Dumbledore holding the keys instead of the Dementors of Azkaban - a comfortable bed instead of a thin cot while he constantly was forced to reckon with how life for everyone else continued beyond these walls without him. A holiday?
The two men stared at each other confrontationally and then something in Severus’s eyes seemed to slacken.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he relented quietly, “of course, I know you are suffering….”
“I’m losing it,” Sirius snapped ferociously, tears of desperation burning in his eyes….I keep saying I can’t take much more of this, but nobody listens or takes me ser-’
“I do,” Severus interrupted. “I made you Polyjuice Potion…”
“Well Harry hasn’t reached out once since you took him back to Hogwarts,” Sirius said, hating how needy he sounded. “Nobody has - no visits or letters…”
“I hadn’t realized he’d stopped writing,” Severus said quietly, glancing down at Harry who was still asleep and then back at Sirius. “His silence had nothing to do with you though - of that I am certain…he’s had a very difficult start to the new term.”
“How so?” Sirius asked concernedly.
“Well, for one, Dolores Umbridge discovered his secret defence group and tried to expel him last night,” Severus replied.
“Tried to?” Sirius’s brows creased in concern. “Dumbledore was able to smooth it all over then?”
"In his way," Severus said slowly. "Dumbledore took responsibility for the group and is currently on the run from the Ministry of Magic, who tried to arrest him last night.”
That was not what Sirius had been expecting him to say. A Hogwarts without Dumbledore was a very frightening prospect indeed. Umbridge was going to have free reign more than ever and the Ministry interference would only get worse.
Silence fell between them as it often did. They looked in opposite directions, back at each other, and away again. Harry was still sleeping - Sirius thought this was strange. It was getting late in the day.
“We were awake all night," Severus explained.
“Oh,” Sirius did not know what to say.
“You were right before,” Severus said suddenly, “back at the meeting in September when you told Dumbledore that Harry deserved to be given more information - I should have spoken up and supported you then. You had Harry’s best interests in mind.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Sirius slowly. “Did Harry ever ask you about what Arthur was guarding in the Department of Mysteries the night that he was attacked?
Snape suddenly looked rather pale to Sirius. He seemed to be grappling with something inside his head. Sirius supposed that it was still uncomfortable for Severus to be talking to him so candidly after everything that had happened between them in the past. It was strange for Sirius too, though his discontent often came from a place of guilt as he was forced to reckon with the way he and James had abused and humiliated the boy who had then run off to join Lord Voldemort.
“Yes, he asked me,” said Severus.
“And?”
“And that’s why I insisted Dumbledore tell Harry the truth last night…I asked him to explain what was being guarded in the Department of Mysteries.”
“Well, I definitely should have been included in that conversation,” Sirius said tersely.
Severus moved abruptly. He got up from the chair - Harry stirred slightly as he was jolted from his lap and repositioned in the chair but slept on.
Severus walked out of the sitting room and Sirius followed.
“You’re just going to walk away like that?”
Severus paused and turned back to face him - still white faced, with his eyebrows raised.
“Do you have any idea of the hell I am going through? You say you do, but you don’t - you wouldn’t last a week with your own thoughts and nothing to distract you. You admitted that you could barely withstand the Dementors of Azkaban for a few days of negotiations - I endured them for twelve years. I’ve been left here alone and you get to sit with Harry and console him while he’s told important things. Did you forget I exist?”
"You don't think I understand suffering?" Severus whispered coldly. "I've just returned from a night in the company of the Dark Lord and Bellatrix Lestrange. The things I'm forced to do….the way he likes to play with me…."
“I’d sign up in a heartbeat if it got me out of this house,” Sirius said loudly.
His raised voice had disturbed the portrait of his mother and the curtains covering her frame flew open. He and Severus bolted down the hall at the same time to attack her with stunners - Walburga was silenced before she’d uttered a syllable.
“I’m going to make myself some tea,” Sirius announced stiffly, deciding to take a break before he said anything he couldn’t take back. “Let’s go downstairs…”
Severus followed him silently down to the kitchen which was dark and every surface was covered with empty bottles. Sirius vanished them quickly without comment and then used his wand to light the torches before he began steeping tea and toasting bread with butter for a simple breakfast that might soothe his agitated stomach.
“Oh, how his mother hated him….my poor mistress, she said he was no son of hers. A drunken blood traitor. They say he’s a killer….”
“I thought I told you to stay out of any room I’m in, Kreacher,” Sirius snarled, as his hunched over ancient house-elf skulked by.
Kreacher gave him a look of deepest loathing as he passed through the kitchen on his way to the boiler room where he slept. Feeling increasingly bad-tempered, Sirius opened a cabinet and took out two teacups.
“That’s another thing we have in common…”
“What would that be?” Sirius turned around to observe Severus sitting at the now bare kitchen table.
“We both know how it feels to suffer and we both had miserable mothers.”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
Sirius loaded the toast onto a plate and set it and the tea on the table between him and Severus. He was going to make himself eat two pieces of toast no matter how long it took him - in direct protest of his non-existent appetite. Concern for Harry was dominating his mind right now and that was enough to help Sirius clear his mind a bit. He now had someone else to concentrate on and be healthy for.
“Tell me what Dumbledore told you and Harry about what’s being guarded at the Ministry.”
Severus nodded as he absentmindedly stirred his tea.
“The thing being guarded in the Department of Mysteries is a prophecy that was made about him and the Dark Lord before Harry was even born. The essence of the prophecy is that the Dark Lord unintentionally marked Harry as his equal the night that he went to kill him in Godric’s Hollow. The reason he intended to destroy him was because the prophecy states that Harry is the one with the power to vanquish him.”
“Prophecies are just a load of nonsense,” Sirius protested.
“The Dark Lord believes in it most greatly and is acting on it,” Severus said softly. “Or rather - he acted upon the part of it that he heard and is desperate to hear the entire prophecy. There’s this one line - ‘Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives’.
Sirius stared at him feeling helpless and horrified. He didn’t believe in prophecy - but this one had already shaped so much of Harry’s life. He listened numbly as Severus recited the prophecy in its entirety to him from memory.
It sounded like Dumbledore was intending to offer Harry up as the face of a mission doomed for failure. Yes, Harry had evaded death before but much of that was chance and nobody could effectively explain why. Sirius suddenly felt the urge to take Harry and run. Nobody was sending him to his death so gruesomely, no matter what any prophecy said the contrary.
“Severus, you and I swore to protect him,” Sirius said heavily. “We both promised. We agreed during our talk on Christmas Eve that we’d work together -”
“I fully intend to keep that promise,” Severus replied. “I gave you my word, just like you gave me yours - soon the world will know you’re an innocent man and you’ll be recognized as Harry’s father…and I’ll - I’ll still be here. Like we agreed.”
Sirius stared into Severus’s eyes and knew that he trusted him. He was feeling perhaps fully awake for the first time in weeks. Knowing that there was a chance to get his life back was like being pulled out of waters that were about to drown him - he could breathe again now. He could persevere. No prophecy would override any of that.