Chapter 4
Andromeda slammed a tray down on the coffee table, causing a significant amount of tea to flop out of the teapot spout and splash into the sugar bowl.
“Ah – Mrs Tonks, we’d like to apologise once more for last night’s… confrontation,” Harriet Vance started, accepting the cup and saucer being shoved into her hands. “Henry Bones is not the most diplomatic member of our organisation. It was certainly not in his orders to try and melt the locks off your front gate.”
“Bit bloody late for that, Harriet,” Andromeda said, aggressively pouring milk into Eleanor Johnson’s tea. “We didn’t have a chance to fix it before the neighbours saw, Ted had to tell them some yobs took to it with a blowtorch when he was getting the paper this morning, now the entire neighbourhood watch is up in arms about it. They’re making leaflets. It’s unbearable.”
Harriet and Eleanor exchanged a bewildered glance.
“I – we are. Very sorry?” Eleanor tried, surreptitiously dabbing some spilled tea off her knee with her sleeve. “Henry seems to think that if someone is warding against alohamora, it’s simply an invitation to find a more creative way of breaking in. He’s a bit of a tosser, to be honest.”
“Yes, well,” Andromeda sniffed, throwing herself into an armchair across from where they were perched on the sofa. “You’re here to ask about my cousin as well, I assume?”
“We are,” Harriet confirmed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could elaborate on what you yelled – ah, told Henry last night?”
Andromeda took a gulp of tea as if to fortify herself. “The last time I saw Sirius Black,” she said tiredly. “She was seventeen years old, piss-drunk, giving James Potter a piggyback and legging it away from Ted’s Aunt Bess, who was screaming hysterically about the tiny mole creature hanging off her earring. She wrote to me maybe a week later, telling me that Lily Evans had threatened to shave her eyebrows off while she slept if she didn’t apologise.”
“And that the last time you had any contact?” Eleanor asked.
“It was the last instance of any regular correspondence. We exchanged a few more letters over the years, more sporadically than before. She sent us a live salamander one year for Dora’s birthday, that was a fun party to clean up after. I think she mentioned maybe dropping by to see us once or twice, once she’d left Hogwarts, but we never got around to making any concrete plans. Then she disappeared. I assume she was working for you lot.”
“She was. Her and her friends all joined up as soon as they left school.”
“Stupid little shits,” Andromeda sighed. “And now I hear everyone thinks Sirius has betrayed James and Lily?”
“It certainly seems that way. She was the only person who knew the whereabouts of the Potters’ hiding place, where they were murdered on Saturday evening. The fact that she is still alive and functioning indicates that the information was given over willingly.”
Andromeda didn’t look convinced. “How do you know she’s alive?”
“Because shortly after the murder took place she appeared at the scene, where she assaulted one of our agents and kidnapped Harry Potter.”
Andromeda paused at that. “The baby actually survived? I thought Mariella was having me on.”
“He survived,” Harriet confirmed. “No one has any idea how, but it’s true. It is also true that He Who Must Not Be Named did not survive.”
“Merlin.” Andromeda stared into her tea. “Merlin.”
The sitting room was silent for a long moment.
“So, what, you think that Sirius is a Death Eater, then? That she took the boy as revenge for somehow defeating the Dark Lord?”
“All the evidence certainly points that way,” Eleanor said, almost apologetically.
Andromeda nodded slowly. Then she shook her head. “No. No. There must be something your lot aren’t seeing. There has to be… what have her other friends said? Lupin, and the Pettigrew boy?”
“I’m afraid most of the information is classifi-”
“Bollocks. You cannot come into my home, accuse my cousin of being a traitor and then refuse me information. That’s not… no. Tell me. What have they said?”
Eleanor and Harriet exchanged another look. Eleanor shrugged. Harriet nodded.
“We have been… unable to reach Mr Pettigrew,” Eleanor said carefully. “He hasn’t been seen for over a week now. We have people out looking for him, but it’s possible he’s dead.”
“And Lupin?”
“Remus Lupin was briefed on the situation shortly after the incident, and promptly fell out of contact. We thought at first she’d gone to finish off Black herself, but all attempts to reach her have failed. When her flat was searched, there were lingering traces of a Patronus thought to be from Black, and it seemed as though she’d packed and left in a hurry. It’s looking increasingly likely that they’re working together.”
Andromeda frowned. “Then… hang on. Does that mean that Lupin is a suspected Death Eater as well?”
“It isn’t outside the realm of possibility,” Harriet said. “She spent the majority of the past few years undercover. She is known to have contacts – friends, even – throughout the wizarding world’s underbelly. It wouldn’t be the first time an assignment like that has resulted in an agent changing their loyalties.”
Andromeda dumped her teacup onto the coffee table with a clatter and rubbed her eyes. “What the four-fold fuck. None of this is… I mean. It’s not surprising that there have been instances of people changing sides. But that group? Those kids were family to each other. Did you know, when Sirius left her parents’ house she went straight to the Potters? I was going to offer her my spare room, but by the time I found out what had happened, she’d already been living with James and his parents for over a month. The idea that she’d betray him and Lily…”
Harriet nodded sadly. “It’s an awful thing to contemplate. But this war… it’s changed things. Turned the world on its head. No one has made it through unaffected.”
“That’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” Andromeda muttered.
Harry would not stop crying.
Sirius had been hoping that a proper meal and an actual bed would help settle him, but it was obvious that he didn’t understand why he wasn’t at home, why his parents still weren’t there.
Remus put muffling charms and protective spells over their room’s door and windows while Sirius walked up and down between the empty beds with Harry, shushing him gently and humming lullabies. Harry cried, and cried, and cried.
“Fuck this, I’ll take him,” Remus said after nearly an hour. “You should try and sleep.”
“You’ve been awake at least as long as I have,” Sirius argued, in spite of the exhaustion dragging on her limbs.
“Maybe. But I’m not the one who spent last night duelling a half-giant and then tearing halfway across the country in a traumatised state. Go to sleep, Sirius.”
She held out her arms. Sirius hesitated, but then handed Harry over, feeling her eyelids drooping shut where she stood.
“We sleep in shifts,” she insisted, even as she plopped down on the nearest bunk and started prising off her boots. “Wake me in four hours, okay? And if, if-” She broke off to yawn. “If he gets sleepy, make sure he has his blanket when you put him down.”
“Got it,” Remus nodded, holding Harry close.
She resumed walking him around the room. Sirius sank down onto the ratty pillow provided with the room and closed her eyes, letting herself drift off to the sound of Harry’s fading whimpers, of Remus whispering to him under her breath – something about a walrus, and cabbages and kings.
Sirius only woke once during the night. The room was quiet at last. The only light was the faint orange glow of the streetlights outside the window, casting strange shadows on the walls. Somewhere outside there were a few drunks yelling to each other and a couple of alley-cats fighting, their shrieks echoing off the endless rows of concrete and brick.
She could just make out two lumps on the bed across the narrow room from her – Harry, curled up between two pillows, presumably to stop him rolling off the edge of the mattress, and Remus, sitting up at the end of his bed, legs crossed and wand in hand.
Sirius managed a sleepy kind of questioning noise, lifting her head.
“Go back to sleep,” Remus whispered. “It’s alright.”
Sirius wanted to argue, but she was already being pulled back under.
When she woke again, it was to daylight and the sound of the wide-awake world outside – buses and cars rumbling past, bin lorries beeping as they reversed up side-streets, Manchester stretching and cracking its neck, getting ready for the day ahead.
Remus was still sitting up at the end of Harry’s bed, staring at the wall, fiddling absently with her wand.
Sirius, vaguely annoyed, wiped drool off her cheek and sat up, glaring. “You didn’t wake me.”
Remus shrugged without looking at her. “You needed it more than me. And I – I wouldn’t have been able to. Sleep, I mean. I needed.”
Sirius waited, but no further explanation seemed forthcoming. “You’re a fucking idiot,” she informed her. “What are we supposed to do later today when you pass out in the middle of the street?”
“Werewolf,” Remus reminded her calmly. “I can keep going way longer than you can.”
Sirius huffed and reached for her boots. “Whatever. What time is it?”
“Just gone half seven. We should get going soon. I was gonna wake you up in a minute – I heard them down the corridor go in the kitchen for breakfast a while ago.”
“Let’s wait ‘til they’re gone to leave the room,” Sirius said, tugging on her laces. “Last night was bad enough, if we’re somehow being tracked then we can’t afford to make an impression on anyone.”
“Good shout. So once they’re gone we eat and then we’re off again, yeah?”
“Yeah. Where do you think we should go?”
“I reckon we carry on north, up towards the Lakes. There’ll be enough tourist spots that we might not have to stop in Lancaster to find somewhere to stay.”
Sirius nodded. “Alright. Am I right in assuming these places we’re going aren’t any more tolerant than Urmston was?”
“Right, shit,” Remus mumbled, looking down at herself. “We really need to change. Not least because both of us fucking stink.”
“It’s not that bad,” Sirius protested, lifting her arm to sniff. “It’s – oh. No, never mind. This place has showers, right?”
“Yep. Bagsy going first.”
Sirius moved over to the door and cocked her head, silently willing Pol, Rick and Sally to stop bantering at each other and leave. “So in your head, does the bagsy thing actually work? Like, if you used that on a muggle, would they just… go along with it?”
Remus gave her an incredulous look from where she was rooting through the backpack for a clean shirt. “Mate. Law of bagsy is binding and sacred. That’s one of the first things you learn in primary school, right after the rules for British Bulldog. God, this explains so much about purebloods, no wonder so many of you end up slytherins if you can’t even trust in bagsy.”
“Would have made all those Christmas get-togethers a lot less explosive if we had. Bagsy not being the one to wake Harry up, by the way.”
Remus stared at her. “Fuck. I’ve created a monster, haven’t I?”
“Best just give into it,” Sirius agreed.