Reintegration
News had come slowly at first—a press release here; a short blurb in the Prophet there. Then it had become a trickle, then the flood of op-eds and talk radio shows: SIRIUS BLACK NOT GUILTY.
Andromeda had wanted to visit him immediately, but Ted maintained that her cousin would need time to heal first, to re-acclimate himself to the world outside of Azkaban. And, loath as she was to admit it, he was right. Christmas, she decided. She would go and see Sirius then.
After the obligatory brunch with Ted's family, she'd excused herself from the day's festivities so she could skip over to Mungo's. The now-legally-minted Nymphadora, fully settled into life as a (sometimes violet-haired) young lady, had insisted she be allowed to go along. Andromeda placated her with the offer to bring a Christmas gift and so, armed with Dora’s favorite doll, she braved the frigid London day.
A helpful young wizard directed her to Sirius’s room. The door opened at her knock, and never in her life had she been more pleased to see Sirius's cocksure grin, to hear his bright “'Lo, Andy.”
He was hard at work with a therapeutic wand. Apparently, the goal was to make the glow at the tip shine with various colors and intensities as he stretched and flexed his magical reserves. He looked absolutely ridiculous.
Once he’d finished his exercises satisfactorily, she chatted with him and his friend Remus for a short while, regaling them both of the now-infamous siege she had lain to the DMLE. As evening drew on, though, she'd had to return to Ted and Nymphadora.
The visits continued over the next few weeks, and he grew stronger all the while, spoke easier, laughed more. Early February brought the first fair morning of the year, and the healer overseeing his progress presented him with a treat: a bit of time outdoors. It was, she said, the first step in properly releasing him into society. If he fared well over a series of short outings, they could move on to longer excursions and then his eventual discharge.
Which was how she, Remus, and two members of Sirius's medical team found themselves in the Mungo's lobby, bundled against the crisp day. Though Sirius himself seemed ready—even eager—for the outing just moments before, his bravado seemed paler under the watery winter sun. One member of his care team went through the doors day first, and a whisper of a breeze crept in behind her.
“I'll wait for you outside?” Remus asked, giving Sirius's shoulder a friendly squeeze. Then he, too, slipped out onto the grey London street.
“You next, Mr. Black,” the other healer said. “Whenever you're ready.”
He reached for the door, his shoulders stiff, jaw tensed, but he flinched away before he managed to swing it open. Huffing an aggravated sigh, he started forward again. And again recoiled from the threshold rather than cross it.
People were staring now, some more subtly than others. A current of stifled laughter ran around the perimeter of the lobby as onlookers clustered to gossip. This was the fearsome Sirius Black?
Sirius stepped back from the door after yet another aborted attempt to force himself outside, cursing under his breath.
“Some Gryffindor,” Andromeda muttered pointedly, pushing past him. “Afraid of a bloody door.”
She shoved the door open wide and strode purposefully out into the day.
“Where's—” Remus began, craning to see over her shoulder.
Andromeda gave a short shake of her head and stepped to the side. As she'd thought, the door opened again, and her cousin took a halting step outdoors.
“Well?” Sirius demanded, casting a look at his gathered companions. “Are we going or not?”
And then he was away, collar turned up against the mild February wind, Remus a half-step behind. Andromeda allowed herself a satisfied smirk. Like everyone, Sirius was easy to steer if you knew which button to press.
The little park they went to was quite picturesque, actually, the evergreen branches and sculpted shrubbery dusted lightly with pristine, glittering white. The snow crunched delicately underfoot, and still more drifted from above to settle on their shoulders and in their hair. And through this serene moment crashed Sirius like an overgrown child.
He kicked his way through snowdrifts, knocked crystalline icicles from overhead, leaped up on benches. When his escort drew a warning breath, he bounded forward and jumped up onto a picnic table, his arms thrown wide and face to the sky as if he meant to shout to all the world that he was back.
“Get down from there, Padfoot,” Remus shouted after him, but the chuckle ruined any heat he may have meant it to have.
Sirius spun, the grin tugging at his mouth part mischievous and part—Andromeda wasn't completely sure. Something like fondness, but that didn't seem adequate, somehow.
“Make me, Moony,” he dared. Then he caught a faceful of snow.
On the one hand, it did indeed get Sirius off of the table. He toppled to the ground, landing on his back in a puff of powdery snow. On the other hand, now he was armed.
They all raced toward him, clamored to see if he was all right, and ended up directly in the line of fire. Andromeda didn't see Sirius lob the first volley, but the snowball caught Remus square in the nose.
There was no saying who threw what at whom in the chaos that followed, only that snow and ice ended up down everyone's coat, in everybody's face. Even Sirius's medical team wasn't immune; if anything, they ended up taking the worst of it when the three others teamed up against them.
They might have gone on forever that way, filling the park with shrieks and laughter and indignant squawks as they chased each other down, but the timer signaled the end of their outing.
“All right, Sirius?” Andromeda asked, offering a hand. He took it, and she helped lever him out of the snowbank he'd fallen into.
“All right, Andy,” he said.
He gave himself a mighty, bodily shake and sent snow and wet flying. His hair was a wreck of damp tangles, his face flushed, and coat soaked through. But for right now, for this one hour, he'd been smiling and laughing again. And that was enough for Andromeda to let herself believe he was going to be okay.
~ ~ ~
Mr. Black, Maple decided, was a marvel of magical medicine. Even with the now-disgraced Liam Abbott's meddling, her patient was showing wonderful progress. His outings into the city continued, gradually growing longer and more frequent. Before long, Mr. Black was able to navigate stores, restaurants, even a trip to the cinema. Though he was still skittish with loud noises and the press of a crowd, he seemed to be able to weather them so long as Mr. Lupin accompanied him.
Mr. Black had responded well to the therapist she'd assigned him, a brilliant young woman who had been working on integrating Muggle and Wizarding methods of processing grief. So, Maple had every confidence that he could be released and that he would continue to fare well, provided he could move on from the events of that night.
The question then became: Was Sirius Black ready to say goodbye to James and Lily Potter?
She broached the subject with him gently, at their weekly progress evaluation. It wasn't as sharp of a swing as she'd seen from him before, nowhere near as severe. Still, his grey eyes shuttered, smile dimmed.
“I won't force you,” Maple said evenly. She straightened herself in her seat, hands folded primly on the surface of the desk. “You know you're welcome to stay here as long as you feel you need it. However, we both know that you're not meant to be chained to their memory forever, and they wouldn't want you to.”
Mr. Black plucked at his wristband, his gaze anywhere but on her.
“It was supposed to be me, y'know,” he said, a mirthless smile twisting his face, “if one of us was going to die. James was the one of us with the bright future. All-star Quidditch player. Head boy. Married to the girl of his dreams; son he'd have moved the stars for. What's my life next to all that?”
“Whatever you make of it.”
She held up a hand before Mr. Black could stammer an objection. It didn't happen often that someone managed to shock him into gobsmacked silence, and she wasn't going to waste the opportunity to say her piece.
“We all made our choices during the war,” she said, “You. The Potters. You-Know-Who. You don't have any control over what anyone else did or the fallout of those decisions. All you or I or anybody else can do is make the best of this new world we've found ourselves in and try to build a better one from it.
“But it all starts with a choice. You can choose to stay here, let everyone else make the decisions that shape the world outside this hospital. Nobody would blame you for it after all you've been through. Or. You can be one of the people shaping it. What do you say?”
He was silent, still twisting his wristband between two fingers, and for a long and dreadful moment Maple thought he wouldn't answer. Or, worse, that her pressing had set him back some measure, that they would have to begin again as they had after Healer Abbott's interference.
Then he lifted his attention back to her, grey eyes alight with the mischievous humor she'd come to admire from him. “If I'm going to shape the world,” he said, “guess I'd better get myself a chisel.”