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flowrs4opheliaThis is technically a sequel to "Preludes", but you don't have to have read that to understand it at all. If you just want to skip that one, here's a brief summary of what you missed: Lily had become friends with all of the Marauders and accidentally found out about Remus being a werewolf by having to be rescued from him by James. Lily and James's feelings for eachother grew over the next few months and their first kiss was a rushed one by the Whomping Willow right before James went down the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack to rescue Snape on the night of "the prank."
This sequel only really relates to "Preludes" in that a great deal of it has to do with the after-effects of what Sirius did to Snape and him finally growing up a little and learning his lesson the hard way. But before it gets to that, this story involves some romance between our favorite Marauders and girls they've met. But the couples aren't really the point, and it might actually be best to not get too caught up in the love stories (this fic is called "Requiems" for a reason - it's not a sunny, happy tale).
Somehow music has ended up being a bit of a motif in both "Preludes" and "Requiems." This one is more aware of itself as taking place in the 70s: the chapters are all named after classic rock songs.
Title: Requiems
Author: Sara Chapman (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flowrs4ophelia)
Characters & Pairings: James/Lily, Sirius(/OC), Remus(/OC), Peter, Snape
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What will it take for Sirius to grow up and learn to regret the prank he played on Snape? Well, it starts with a girl. Meanwhile, there's something Remus should probably know about the girl he's interested in, and Lily and James have their future to worry about as the Death Eaters are becoming a growing threat.
requiem: (1) a mass or hymn written for memorial and repose of one or more departed souls, usually played at funerals (2) a composition written in mourning of a deceased person
Requiems
Chapter 1
Helter Skelter
Some say that whether or not someone’s lot in life is sufficient for happiness can be determined by whether or not the person is happy during Christmas. If this is true, then Sirius Black was certainly one of the most unblessed with life’s joys.
He was lying sprawled on his back on the hard wood floor of his bedroom where a rather dreery-looking Christmas tree had been magicked into a corner, seemingly against its own will from the looks of it. Sirius had a small notion that his family had forgotten this was his bedroom while decorating the house for Christmas; otherwise they would have known not to waste their time. But Kreacher, the house elf, seemed to have remembered it to some extent because the tree was so crudely adorned with the least of care.
Christmas had come and passed and Sirius had hardly acknowledged it, sleeping in most of the day. His friends had sent him his presents by owl, and his mother eventually had to come in and throw something at him to make him wake up because she was sick of accepting his packages for him. Later he found the object she had thrown at him to be a shrinking paperweight, possibly the worst magic gift someone could give, and was flattered that his mother had gotten it as a present that morning and so quickly decided to pass it on to him. After all, there were some people who would be giving him presents late, but for the most part he wouldn’t be getting many gifts this Christmas, as usual.
But today was the day that the Black family celebrated the most during the winter. Traditionally his relatives would unceremoniously spend Christmas with their nuclear families, and then on New Year’s Eve Sirius’s entire extended family would reunite at his house to exchange late presents, have a big dinner, and then get drunk enough for the disgusting heinousness of their personalities to become too lucid for Sirius to watch without getting sick with the realization that he was related to these people.
Many, many times Sirius had regretted not taking up the Potters` offer to let him stay with them during the holiday this time. In fact, when he had told James that he was going home for Christmas even though he didn’t have to, he had looked at Sirius like he’d just said that Satan was an awfully pleasant guy to hang out with. But there was really only one reason that Sirius endured being with his family during the reunions, and in the end it always managed to make it worth it in one way or another.
There were no windows in Sirius’s bedroom, so whenever he heard someone arrive he had no way of looking out to see who it was unless he wanted to leave the room and remind the other people in the house that he existed, which would only result in them giving him a hard time. But eventually he heard the voice talking downstairs that he had been waiting to hear all day.
"Hello. Where is everyone?"
"Andromeda," Sirius heard his cousin Narcissa say, ignoring her question. "I’m surprised to see you. Mother didn’t think you’d be coming."
She didn’t sound exactly pleased about her sister being there.
"Oh," Andromeda said pleasantly, paying no attention to the lack of enthusiasm for her arrival. "Well, I haven’t seen you guys and mum for a while, you know...Where’s Sirius?"
"I don’t know," Narcissa said without a single note of care in her voice. She and Andromeda talked unanimatedly for only a few more seconds before Sirius had left his room and was coming quietly down the stairs. Andromeda seemed to know he was standing at the bottom of them, because as soon as her sister left the landing area she turned and smiled at him.
"Well, if it isn’t my favorite cousin," she said. "Come here and let me look at you."
Andromeda Black was the only person related to Sirius that he had met who he liked. She was twenty-three and looked a little like a pixie, though she also resembled a tall and skinny boy with her sandy blond hair cut very short. From ending up in many situations in which they were the only decent people to talk to, they had become more like brother and sister than cousins. In fact, the only reason Sirius ever stayed around at family reunions was because he was able to ignore everyone else and talk to Andromeda instead. They usually stayed very close in touch to decide which ones they would simultaneously show up for and which ones they would both skip. She was the one who had given him his flying motorcycle for his sixteenth birthday, which he had since used many times without ever bothering to get a license to fly it.
"You are looking handsome these days," Andromeda marveled with enthusiasm, messing with his nearly shoulder-length hair. "Tell me you’ve got a girlfriend."
He shrugged. "Sure. I have, you know...girlfriends."
"Not like that," she scolded. "I mean the kind whose names you remember after making out with them, at least."
Sirius laughed. "What about you?"
"We’ll see," she said, putting her hands together and starting to fidget with them a little.
"Oh, come on. I hate it when you’re all mysterious like that."
"Usually I’m just bluffing and have nothing to tell you about at all. Haven’t you figured that out by now?" He thought he saw her take something off of her finger and hide it in her pocket. "Hey, how about helping me unload the car?"
"Unload the what?" Sirius asked, his voice elevating in surprise.
"I have a car now. Didn’t you hear me landing?"
"It’s a flying one?"
"Of course. We Blacks are strictly magical," she started in an impression of a typical member of their family. "We don’t need any useless Muggle technology influencing our traditional and much more sufficient ways of life."
She had barely finished saying that by the time Sirius was headed out the front door to look at her car outside. It was a tiny, two-seater convertible with its lid currently up. It had an off-white color and gleamed brightly in the sunlight. It somehow seemed to fit Andromeda perfectly.
"Andy, since when did you...?"
"I’ll tell you about it later," she dismissed. "Let’s just get my stuff inside."
They unloaded all of her bags from the trunk and then Sirius was looking at the car thoughtfully. "Hey, I want to try something."
"What?"
Sirius got his wand out, pointed it at the top of the car and encanted, "Alohomora."
The hood of the car immediately opened up to reveal the inside.
"Nice leather," Sirius noted, looking at the seats. Then he noticed something sitting in the passenger seat: a big box wrapped in metallic green paper and white ribbon.
"I wonder what that could be," Andromeda said in her mysterious voice that he found annoying.
"Is it...?" He pointed at it unsurely, looking at her.
"Go on, have at it. Merry Christmas."
Sirius seized the package and started tearing at the paper. Inside was a leather case with a carrying handle that snapped shut, square-shaped and a little bigger around than a dinner plate.
"A suitcase?" he asked more in confusion than dissapointment, but then he opened it up and gasped. There was a round circular disk on the bottom and small speakers on two sides of the top lid. "This is a...! What do you call it...?" Sirius spouted in excitement. "It’s a turnable!"
"Turntable," Andromeda corrected with a smile.
"But...I don’t have any records!"
"You don’t yet. But from now on, I’m going to send you a bunch every Christmas. Believe me, Muggle music is the best nowadays. I think they’re way ahead of us with these record albums."
"Oh, you don’t have to tell me that." Sirius stopped. "Wait. What do you mean you’re going to send me records?"
"Never mind," she said, seeming a little nervous for a moment. "Anyway, you can learn how to play this with a spell instead of electricity so you can use it at the school without it going spastic on you. All you have to do is make it rotate and use an amplifying spell."
Sirius laughed at her description of how electronic devices would malfunction if used on the school grounds. "Good, `cause there’s no way I can use it here. Mum would do the old AK on me if she suddenly heard rock music coming from my room."
Sirius’s mother had slapped him across the head just a few days ago for wearing a pair of sunglasses around the house which he’d bought because they were just likes ones he’d seen Jim Morrison, the singer of his favorite Muggle band, wearing in a picture once. He couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she found something in his possession stinking of Muggle culture as much as a turntable.
"Geez, Andy...Thanks. I love it," he said. "Hey, you should come upstairs and see everything else I got. Unless you actually want to go in the cellar and visit with your ugly stepsisters."
She laughed. "Why do you call them that? They’re my real sisters, and they’re a heck of a lot less ugly than I am."
Sirius wrinkled his nose. "Oh, I don’t know about that. Bella wears way too much make-up. And Narcissa might look quite nice if she didn’t have that snobby look on her face all the time."
"Well, I’ll take that as a compliment as much as I can."
They went up to Sirius’s room where he showed her all the presents he’d gotten. James had sent him a chaotic board game called Dud, which involved trading wands back and forth between players so that someone was always left with the cheap dysfunctional one that came with the set, making it almost impossible to play their turns successfully. Peter had given him a large bag of Drooble’s gum and a long roll of edible parchment, which Sirius liked to use to write "confidential" notes to James that ended with "Eat this message as soon as you receive it for complete secrecy." Just for good measure, he had added a couple pairs of twin parchments, pieces of paper that were able to read whatever was written on the corresponding twin paper so that two people could use them to write notes to eachother without having to pass them. Lily had sent him a book of photos and descriptions of old cars because one Muggle thing that he was very interested in was automobiles, and he liked to study the names of the models. Finally, he had gotten somewhat of a prank gift from Remus, a kind of compass which had a red hand that would glow and point in the direction of any female that was currently checking him out or thinking about him in any way. Andromeda laughed a lot at the idea that someone would get him a "babe radar," while Sirius tried to tell her she didn’t even realize how funny it was since she didn’t know Remus, who was not the loudest person he knew about having a sense of humor.
"So how is James, by the way?" she asked him later, helping herself to some of his gum on the bed. Andromeda had been a Seventh Year when Sirius and James started going to Hogwarts, and James was the only friend of his she was very familiar with.
"Oh, he’s pretty good," Sirius answered. Then he put his hands to his face and batted his eyelashes girlishly. "He’s in love," he said with humorous emphasis.
"Really," she said curiously.
"Yeah. He’s completely clueless about it, though. He finally realizes that he likes her, but that’s about it."
"Maybe he’s just not solely interested in shagging girls like you are."
"Hey, excuse me! What evidence do you have that I behave that way?"
"What other kind of person would get a compass like that as a prank gift?"
"Oh, shut up," Sirius said, throwing a pillow at her.
This, of course, turned into an extensive pillow fight complete with screaming laughter, which was undoubtably of great annoyance to anyone near enough in the house to hear them, until they both got tired and sat back down.
"You seem kind of different," Sirius noted after they had been resting in silence for a minute.
"What do you mean?"
"I don’t know. It’s like I can’t decide whether you’re acting happier or sadder than when I saw you last year. But it’s one of the two." He looked at her unbreakingly for a moment. "There’s something you’re not telling me."
She stood up from the bed and bit her fingers, but said nothing.
"Andy?" he pressed.
"Not now, alright?" She didn’t seem to be hiding something just to get on his nerves. She sounded very serious.
No one bothered to come and get them when it was time for the big dinner, but they could tell when the time was getting near just from the smell of the food that drifted upstairs. For ten minutes or so they went down to the living room where they were eyed contemptuously by their relatives but rarely spoken to, and then finally everyone started to gather at the very long table in the dining room.
The middle of the table was where Andromeda’s family ended up gathered. Narcissa and Bellatrix sat with their mother on one side, across from Sirius’s mother. His father was next to her, who seemed to be stemming off into a male section of the table. The grouping of women away from men was too perfect for the ensuing of gossip for Sirius to be very comfortable with. But there were two empty seats by Sirius’s mother. Andromeda, all nerves of steal, went over and sat in one of them so that she faced her mother and sisters, and Sirius sat next to her.
"Well, well," mused Bellatrix, looking them over. "The two white sheep of the Black family."
Bellatrix, who was about Sirius’s age, was wearing a tight and low-cut red velvet dress and black nylons adding a dark tint to her shapely legs, and her raven hair fell in rich curls at the bottom. Her younger sister Narcissa was all in black, looking suffocated by her lace choker because of the lack of color in her face, and giving an altogether tightened look with her pale blond hair pulled up. Sirius’s aunt Elladora wore burgundy and a doll-like mask of make-up to hide her real age. Looking at the three, he couldn’t believe Andy was so closely related to any one of them. It was like someone must have switched his aunt’s child at birth. He wondered with amusement if it had originally been a boy and Andromeda’s real parents had ended up with a little Severus.
As everybody ate, Sirius and Andromeda were allowed to stay invisible but were regarded just enough to be passed platters of food. While eating with the delicate nature and manners of royalty, the Blacks engaged in monotonous and unbearably shallow conversation that was so obnoxious to Sirius’s ears that he started to stab at his food savagely as if it was all he could do to keep from lashing out and shouting at all of them. It was especially difficult for him to sit calmly when the subject came up of all of the Death Eater stories covered in the news lately.
"You know, it is unfortunate how many perfectly dignified people’s lives are being threatened by these protests," Sirius’s mother remarked, "but this is the price we’re going to have to pay for the wrongs that have remained present in our society for far too long."
"Quite right you are," said Sirius’s uncle Altus. "These Death Eaters, as they’re called - what a ridiculous name - may not be very subtle about showing their ideals, but I suppose it’s what you have to do to get anyone to pay attention. Hell, I can’t think of any time in history when reform didn’t come without some kind of sacrifice. But it is always for the better in the end, right?"
After the feast was over Sirius resorted to stuffing balls of the gum Peter had given him into his mouth and chewing it angrily since he had no more food to abuse. It was practically forbidden for anyone to rise from the table for at least another half-hour just because the adults would now enjoy some wine, so everyone carried on in the same way. Eventually Andromeda looked to the side at Sirius and her eyes widened; he had put more than ten balls of Drooble’s in his mouth and a gigantic wad of gum was bulging in the side of his cheek as he chewed vigorously.
Sirius had just managed to tune out what his family was talking about and make small conversation with Andromeda when Bellatrix boredly looked over at the the two of them. "So how’s dear little Evans?" she asked in a fake sweet voice.
"You can shut up about her," Sirius responded automatically, hardly even looking up at Bellatrix.
"What?" Andromeda asked confusedly. "Who’s Evans?"
"It’s nothing. Lily Evans, she’s just a friend of mine," he told her off-handedly.
She thought for a moment. "Oh! Your car book friend?"
"His Mudblood friend," Bellatrix emphasized darkly.
Andromeda looked across the table at her sister with a sharp and icy glare that could only express loathing as intense as that for a sibling. "Now really, do we have to use language like that at a dinner table?"
Sirius knew she was imitating the way her mother used to act when she and her sisters used to get into screaming arguments at dinner. He looked at her, then at Bellatrix, and then back, and then noticed that the table had gone a little more quiet than before and many of the guests were peering down the table at them.
"Well, it’s no surprise that Sirius has become such a retched example of this family," Elladora said to Andromeda, "seeing as you’ve had such a bad influence on him ever since he was very young. No offense to you, Lenora," she added quickly to Sirius’s mother. "No one can deny you did your best with him."
Sirius chewed his gum extra loudly.
"If Sirius has grown up to be the way he is because of me at all, I’m immensely proud of it," stated Andromeda stoically.
"Oh, honestly, Andromeda," her mother sighed in exasperation. "He may even be lower than you." She started to uncork a wine bottle to pour herself a second glass. "A Black...befriending such worthless filth of people like that...It’s unheard of. Could he sink any lower?"
Sirius straightened up in his seat as if he had sat on something sharp. "My friend is not-!"
But Andromeda grabbed his arm to make him calm down, and when he looked at her she had an expression like he’d never seen in her eyes before. She looked so determined and serious that she didn’t have to say anything for him to know to sit back and let her handle the situation.
Andromeda took in a deep breath. "Actually," she said, her voice almost sounding a little shaky, "I’m even worse than him." She was fumbling her hand around in her pocket, but Sirius got a feeling this wasn’t a nervous habit. Something was going on, and it suddenly worried him very much.
"What are you talking about, Andromeda?" Elladora asked with some impatience.
Sirius glanced to the side at her lap and then turned his whole head to look, his eyes widening. She was putting a gold ring on her left hand. Slowly, she lifted it so that Elladora could see. "I’m married, mother."
A kind of choking, solitary laugh escaped Sirius as his gum flew from his mouth onto the table cloth. But no one else reacted visibly; it just became horrifyingly quiet.
Elladora swallowed. "Surely you mean...you’ve gotten engaged."
Andromeda shook her head. "No. We eloped. Two months ago."
"...I see. And...who is your husband?"
"He’s a photographer for the Daily Prophet. We met when I went to apply for that writing job."
"What do I care about that? What’s his name?"
"Tonks. Theodore Tonks."
"Tonks," repeated Altus in a mildly curious tone, as if he was deceiving himself into thinking this was a light and pleasant discussion. "I’ve never heard of that family. What are they like?"
"Well," Andromeda said. "Mostly, they’re...Muggles."
Elladora`s wine glass shattered in her tight grip. Now the table erupted into exclamations of shock. Sirius turned to Andromeda and glared at her in a very different kind of surprise than most people there were now expressing. "Two months ago?! Why didn’t you ever tell me anything about it?"
"I’m sorry, Sirius. I just wasn’t ready to come out about it yet-"
"Andromeda," Elladora said in somewhat of a low growl which somehow vibrated underneath the loudness of the crowd so that she heard it. "I hope you’re damn grateful that your father isn’t alive to see you now! You’re right, you’re worse than a Mudblood lover like him," she said with a deadly look at Sirius. "You’re a shameful and absolutely disposable blood traitor!"
"I assume that with all of this now established," Sirius’s mother said to her coldly, "you don’t intend for your stay here to be very long."
"Oh no," Andromeda assured her. "I’m leaving tomorrow morning."
From everyone’s reaction, it was clear that that wouldn’t be nearly soon enough for them. As they all glared at her hatefully, Sirius stared at the tabletop, feeling like all of his shock and anger mixed together was going to make him explode any moment now.
"Well," said Elladora, "you can leave then. And you can never come back again to any gatherings of this family, and I don’t care to ever see you again either. I hope you enjoy your life with your filthy disease of a husband, because as of now you will never be a part of this family again."
"Yes, I know that," Andromeda said calmly. "That’s why I came here at all, you see. I came to say goodbye to you all."
All of the people at the table were apparently infuriated by her indifference to everything her mother said to try to make her feel guilty. And soon she was standing up from her chair looking quite unaffected by all of the chaos she had fueled at this dinner.
"I’ll just go upstairs now," she said. "I think I’ve had enough to eat."
And as she left the place where she had been sitting, Sirius automatically rose to follow her.
"Sirius, you sit down!" his mother commanded.
He ignored her and pushed his chair back so he could walk out from in front of it.
"Sirius Roderick Black!" she shouted. "I forbid you to follow her!" Her words had now stopped Andromeda in her tracks and she was standing in the entrance to the dining room, watching. "You need not mind her anymore. You will not. And you will not speak to her again. It’s time you grew out of the nonsense the both of you have in your heads. Now sit down."
"I will sit down and get up when I want to!" Sirius roared, the anger that had collected in him all night finally coming out. "And I’ll speak to whoever I damn well want to!"
"Not anymore! SIT DOWN!"
Sirius turned and started to walk from his chair.
"You ungrateful brat!" she screamed after him. "I should have known a long time ago that there was no fixing you. You’re an incorrigible disappointment! You should be on your knees thanking me for putting up with you this long, feeding you and raising you. But if I was smart I would have kicked you out of this house a long time ago."
Sirius had slowed his pace of walking, and now stopped and whirled around. "Well, let me save you the trouble then! I’m leaving!"
A small pause of silence passed. Then Lenora started to laugh hysterically. "You?! Leave?!"
Andromeda’s sisters started to giggle as well as she said it.
"And where exactly are you going to go?" she asked.
"Well, I don’t know," he said. "And I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter. Anywhere is better than here."
"Sirius!" Andromeda gasped, coming back into the dining room. "You’re being crazy. It’s the middle of winter. You don’t have anywhere to go!"
"Yeah, Sirius," Bellatrix said in a mocking, high-pitched voice, as she and Narcissa tried to contain laughing fits. "Don’t leave us."
"Why shouldn’t I go?" Sirius demanded of Andromeda, and then turned to his family and pointed to her. "She was the only thing I liked about this family, and now she’s not even a part of it anymore. By all means, I’ll be glad to stay if you can give me one reason I shouldn’t leave right now."
"Fine," his mother said stiffly. "Leave. The both of you in one night; it’s good riddance if I ever knew it. But when you come back here begging for me and your father to take you in again because you’re starving and freezing to death, you can forget about it and turn right back around."
"Believe me, that’s not going to happen." With that he turned and left the dining room, and Andromeda followed him.
"Sirius, I can’t believe you’re doing this! Just because I jumped into something a little quickly, it doesn’t mean you have to-"
"Don’t waste your time taking responsibility for this," Sirius said as they went into the landing area, which was dimly lit above by a chandelier with candles in it. "This is my decision. I just can’t take it anymore. The way they were talking to you in there...No matter how hard I try to live with it, I can’t just..."
"I know." She looked down at the floor quietly. "Funny, the two of us standing here, actually believing that it takes nothing but a fly away on a broomstick and we can be rid of our family forever. As if it’s something you can just sever away from yourself, like getting a divorce."
Sirius looked at her sadly, and could only sigh. "So what’s this guy like, anyway?"
"Ted?" she asked, starting to smile again. "Oh, he’s great. You’ve got to meet him some day. He’s taught me all about Muggle things. We’re going to go to America and Canada as a kind of late honeymoon. They’re the most devoid of magical establishments of all places in the world. It’s going to be be great."
Sirius smiled. "So that’s how you have a car now, and suddenly know where to come by a turntable."
Andromeda nodded. "Oh, Siri," she sighed, using the name she hadn’t called him since he was eight. "I can’t tell you how happy I am, though. You probably can’t tell, but I really am. I feel like Ted’s rescued me in a way. I’ve felt a kind of freedom in the past two months like nothing I ever could have imagined." She abandoned her reverie and looked at him again, patting a hand on his shoulder and keeping it there. "You know, Sirius, I am so proud of what you’ve become. And I don’t mean in spite of the kind of influence you’ve had to put up with. And I don’t mean how much you’ve become like me. I mean who you are just on your own, as a person."
"Stop it, Andy," Sirius said.
"Oh, come here." She brought him into a tight hug. As he hugged her Sirius realized that he was a little taller than her; he could remember vividly when he was young and she had been the taller one. And now she, his cousin Andromeda, was married. Where had the time gone? There had been no gradual transition. He could have sworn a couple hours ago in his bedroom she had still been the young girl he used to play with, and then at a dinner table everything had come out and everything had changed, just like that.
Andromeda tried to convince him to wait and leave with her, saying she and her husband would figure out a way to get him back to school when the time came. But Sirius was insistent about going to the Potters`. All of the disorder that had happened tonight was starting to make him really want to see his best friend again. However, his biggest concern was that if he left with Andromeda in her car he would have no way of taking his motorcycle along, and all of the possessions he left with tonight would have to be the only ones he kept.
So Sirius went to his room and started getting his things together. It didn’t take long, because most of his valued things had been left in his dormitory at Hogwarts. The most important thing he took was the turntable, which was held in a corner of his small suitcase by surrounding wadded-up clothes. He strapped the suitcase securely to the back seat of his motorcycle and then said a final goodbye to Andromeda.
"I suppose it could be a while before we see eachother again," he said.
Andromeda smiled unhappily. "I will write to you all the time. And if you do ever need a place to stay, or anything at all, you just send me an owl." She rubbed her hand over his head affectionately, messing up his hair. "Now, you keep having fun. But try not to get into too much trouble."
Sirius nodded. Andromeda stepped back and waved as he got ready to drive away. And then from the inside of the Black house, everyone heard the roaring of a motorcycle and the sound of it ripping away down the road, which was shortly followed by a sudden silence when it lifted from the ground, as if it had disappeared completely along with him.
Chapter 2
Gimme Shelter
James rolled over in bed and looked at the clock on his nightstand. The numbers forming 1:36 burned his eyes, the only thing giving off light in the whole room. It had been 1978 for more than an hour and a half.
James’s holiday had been pleasant but not exactly thrilling. He was an only child and had no friends away from school, and though he liked being at home with his parents, his days of Christmas break were getting increasingly dull. It had been easy to deal with, though, whenever he thought about what Sirius was having to go through. Clearly bored out his mind or having to do something to distract himself from going insane at his house, Sirius had sent him four letters ever since the beginning of the holiday. The last one had had a tone of unsureness about what the point of writing to him was, and had said only the following:
"Dear Mr. Prongs,
Yes. Well.
I would say that I hope you had a good Christmas, only I`m already sure that you did. Even if you think it was just okay, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Regulus keeps looking over my shoulder to see what I’m writing. God, it’s annoying having him at school now, isn’t it? At least he’s in a different house (big surprise) and as far away from me as possible. He was looking around in my room earlier when I wasn’t there. I think he wants to steal some of my presents I got from you and everyone. I wish I could hide them somewhere but my bedroom has close to nothing in it anymore.
Oh, I’ve kept forgetting to ask you every time Remus isn’t around: What’s going on with him and that girl Matilda? He seems to be talking to her a lot. Have you had any communication with Lily since school got out? I bet he’s opened up to her about it. She probably knows everything.
Write back as soon as you get this. -Padfoot"
James had not heard from Lily since the holidays started, or from anyone else besides Sirius, with the exception of getting all his friends` presents sent to him. He had thought about writing to all of his friends but had never gotten around to it.
But he had found himself thinking about Lily an awful lot.
It didn’t seem like a long time ago at all that the incident with Snape had, in a strange way of effect, brought out the true nature of their relationship, which had been merely a friendship before that. Since then he had gotten to know Lily much better. This had included becoming familiar with the more concealed and undelicate but quite likeable things about her, like the way she would put an entire half of a biscuit in her mouth at the same time but still chew it with her mouth closed, and how she wore a surprisingly unfeminine set of plaid pajamas to bed, and how she was so unconscious of herself that she was comfortable hanging around in the common room in her pajamas with the boys sometimes. All of these details about her were comfortable memories he had referred to often when he was bored, and maybe even a little lonely, ever since he had come home for Christmas.
James heard something tap his window. He sat up, yawning, assuming that it was an owl delivering another letter from Sirius, probably asking him why he hadn’t written back yet (James had started a fourth response letter but by then had completely run out of things to write to him about). He got out of bed, swearing when he stepped on the hard corner of a gift box on his floor just as the owl tapped louder on his window.
But when James looked out his window, there was no owl outside of it at all. In complete confusion he searched the sky for any movement. Then he looked at the ground and his jaw dropped.
"Good God."
Sirius was in his yard outside waving his arms to get his attention. In the snow beside him were several black rocks he had collected from the front of the house to throw at his window, obviously expecting that James would be asleep and that it would take a lot more than two.
James motioned to him that he would let him in the front door and went downstairs to unlock it. When he opened the door Sirius was standing there shaking with cold, his suitcase beside him.
"Sirius, what the bloody hell?" he tried to say quietly enough to avoid waking up his parents. "Get inside, you look half dead."
"Wait. Open your garage first."
"Why?"
"So I can put my bike in it."
James’s facial expression became more shocked, if it was possible. "You brought your motorcycle?"
"How else would I have gotten here?"
"You’ve got some serious explaining to do, mate. Come on."
They put Sirius’s motorcycle inside and then quietly crept into James’s room. Sirius had used a warming charm on his clothes for the fly over, but it had only helped so much, so James made sure he was wrapped in many layers of blankets before he started asking about the reason he was here.
"Look, I’m sorry about this," Sirius apologized. "But something completely unexpected happened...I got mad...I just had to get away from there."
"It’s alright, I understand. But I don’t even get why you went home in the first place anyway."
"Andy," he explained simply. "She made me promise I’d come this time. She said it was important to her. If only I’d known exactly what her plans were."
"What do you mean?" James asked. "What happened?"
Sirius explained the whole story about the nightmarish event at the dinner table, but he left out the part about dismissing himself from his family forever because he didn’t want James to think he was asking to stay here. He wasn't sure how he was going to ask that of him if it ended up being his only option.
"Well...what can I say?" James said after hearing the story. "I can’t blame you. Wow. So she had to completely sacrifice her family just because she wants to be with this guy? I can’t even begin to imagine...I guess I could never understand what your family’s like without living in that house myself. `Cause I never realized it was that bad." James put his legs up on the bed and hugged them to him, resting his chin on his knees.
Sirius looked to the side at him. "I’m sorry about just barging in like this. But I didn’t think about what I would do. I just knew I couldn’t stay there."
"I told you, it’s fine. My parents wanted you to stay here anyway. I just didn’t expect you to show up outside my window."
"No, Prongs, I mean...Never mind. Forget it."
James looked at him confusedly for a moment, and then said, "Wait a minute. You’re saying...You didn’t just leave to get away from them and cool down. You’re running away. You didn’t just come here for-"
"Don’t be ridiculous, I couldn’t ask that of your parents."
"But that’s why you came here, isn’t it?"
"It’s just for a while. We’re going right back to school anyway, and by the time we graduate I can figure something out."
"Oh, don’t be an idiot. Don’t you want to move in with me?"
"Of course I’d want to move in with you, but your parents-"
"They’d be more than happy to take you in. They know all about your family. Well, no one knows all about your family. But enough to be quite approving of you running away. And they like you."
Sirius crossed his arms thoughtfully. "Well. Your mom is a damn good cook."
James laughed. "Why didn’t we think of this sooner?"
He shrugged. "No kidding. Why didn’t my cousin meet Ted Tonks sooner?"
"His name is Ted Tonks? Blimey, I can already tell he’s perfect for her."
They stayed up the rest of the night playing a game of Dud, which was humorously pointless with two players, trying to keep their laughs down to a volume that wouldn’t wake up James’s parents. Then they put blankets on the floor for Sirius to sleep on, lay down to go to bed, and turned out the lights. Just before dozing off James whispered, "Sirius?"
"Yes?" he murmured tiredly.
"Are you...I mean...Are you okay?"
"Of course I’m okay," he said right away as if it was a ridiculous question. "I’m just mad."
But James knew his friend better than that. "Padfoot?"
"What?!" he whispered, obviously exhausted and trying to get to sleep.
"Happy New Year."
"...Oh. You, too."
It was almost 3:00 when they were finally asleep.
"Hendrix!" Sirius demanded, frolicking into James’s room the next morning after taking a shower. "Now!"
James had been awake for a few minutes and sat up in bed, yawning. "Isn’t it a little early for that?" he asked, looking at his clock.
"So we’ll wake the house up with a bang. Come on."
He pulled James out of bed by the arm and they went into the spare room in the house which was used as a combination office and "music room." This room was one of Sirius’s favorite things about staying with the Potters. James’s dad was a Halfblood, and one with very fine taste, so he had quite a large and varied music collection. Every time Sirius visited he invited himself to play the Doors, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and even Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley as loud as it was possible to without getting complaints from the neighbors.
If either of James’s parents had not been awake before, they were as soon the house came alive with electric guitar played at full blast at 8:40. Knowing that they were being annoying and could get yelled at extensively by his mother for this seemed to give James a nervous kind of excitement, and he dropped to the floor laughing as Sirius hyperly jumped around the room in a movement almost resembling dancing, flinging water off of his hair that was still wet from his shower. They stayed in the room for a while, afraid to come out because of what they were doing and because neither of James’s parents had seen that Sirius was there yet. After a while they heard a banging around of pans in the kitchen that told them Mrs. Potter was making breakfast, and heard Mr. Potter singing along to the music in the shower.
The two went downstairs, hardly having to creep around because the music covered the sound of their footsteps. Jane Potter, a delicately built but strong-minded woman with gold hair, was at the stove making pancakes. Sirius snuck up behind her and pointed to a big one in the pan, saying, "I get that one."
She smirked. "Hello, Sirius."
His shoulders fell in disappointment. "I was supposed to surprise you. How did you know I was here?"
"Are you kidding? Who in this family would begin the day by playing Jimi Hendrix as an alarm clock?"
"James would if he knew how to make a mate proud."
"So we did wake you up," James inferred, sitting at the table.
"Not your dad, but me," she informed.
"Sorry, Mrs. P," Sirius said, using the shortened name he always called her which wasn’t completely informal but still didn’t take a long time to say.
"Oh, that’s alright. It was kind of an early morning rush. And a pleasant surprise; it’s nice to have you here."
"Nice to be here," he told her. "I don’t get to spend much time in a house where the old lady wouldn’t do the AK on me for what I did this morning."
"Call me an old lady again and that’s gonna change," she said, jokingly holding her spatula up to him as if to slap him with it.
"AK?" James questioned, the only one who had caught the senselessness of what Sirius had just said.
"Yeah, as in 'Avada Kedavra,'" Sirius explained. "Sorry, I forget it’s only Andy and I who say that."
Eventually James’s father came downstairs in his bathrobe and whacked Sirius on the head with a rolled-up newspaper. "So it’s you who used up all the hot water. What do you think you’re doing with your ‘Voodoo Child’ wake-up call, huh?"
"Oh, admit it," joked Sirius, who got along with Mr. Potter very well. "You know you loved it. We could hear you singing from the other end of the hall."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he said with a hidden smile.
The others all laughed. Mr. Potter turned to his wife, said, "Morning," and kissed the top of her head in greeting before sitting down at the table with the two boys.
Jane and Michael Potter had always represented for Sirius a kind of happiness that was unattainable in his life. They were not a picture-perfect couple by most people’s standards, and argued a lot when they thought James and Sirius couldn’t hear them. But it was still always obvious that they were madly in love. Compared to what usually went on in Sirius’s house, their arguments were loving and affectionate talk.
Mrs. Potter had the magic radio station on, which had a wizard telling the news of an accident involving Apparition that had resulted in a woman stuck two feet from the ground with half of her body inside a building. As she was putting the pancakes on everyone’s plates, all of them suddenly became silent as they heard what the wizard on the radio spoke of next.
"...And the frightful subject that has everyone in the magic community concerned: the Death Eaters. All that has been known about these mysterious underground collaborators is that they are a terrorist group trying to bring attention to their ideals that Pureblood wizards and witches are rightfully the dominant members of magic society. It is even possible that what they want is complete isolation from supposedly 'unpure' witches and wizards like Halfbloods and Muggle-borns. The idea that these kinds of people are undeserving of their place in the magic world has been regarded as unprincipled nonsense for the majority of our history, which is what makes the Death Eaters` messages so intimidating. Varying in exact words, a written statement is usually left at the scenes of all their attacks demanding cleansing of the government and our society. There are often few or no survivors at the government establishments that the Death Eaters attack, but one thing always marks these scenes as the same: a skull with a serpent slithering through it, left suspended in the air like a foreboding warning.
"But as of late, new information is being uncovered which leads many to suspect that this terrorist group is something much deeper than meets the eye. Many Death Eaters captured by the Ministry have given the name Voldemort as the leader they claim to serve. The Death Eaters show blind and unbreakable loyalty to him, and some even swear that with the help of his followers this Voldemort is going to take over everything and that there is nothing that can be done about it.
"Ministry official Barty Crouch recently said to one of our interviewers, 'Most are viewing these Death Eaters as reformers. But I believe that they aren’t interested in changing our views and simply want us to submit to their wishes, whether or by will or by force. The destruction of Ministry workplaces that has made us all notice them is just a warning for what is to come. I think that these Death Eaters are holding something back. They seem to know that they can and will succeed in what they’re doing, and it is even possible that these attacks are merely warnings of how capable they will be of destroying us if we get in the way of what they want. Perhaps this Voldemort is their secret weapon; for whoever he is, he must be very powerful for all of these people to be serving him. It is of great importance that this group not be taken lightly. We will make the followers that we have give us the information we can use to crush them before they get close to what their real intentions are.'
"Meanwhile, some are talking about and even volunteering for efforts against Voldemort and his followers. Richard Karlstein, chief Auror at the Ministry of Protection from Dark Arts, and Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, are among some who are willing to form a group of protectors to infiltrate and destroy the Death Eaters. More information on this will be reported as it is found."
Mrs. Potter started moving again, going to the cupboard and then putting a bottle of maple syrup on the table. "There’s your syrup," she said before sitting down. "The butter’s out on the counter behind Michael there." There was a moment of awkward silence at the table, but soon they started talking casually again. No one asked Sirius why he was here. He was very grateful.
Continue to next chapter...
This sequel only really relates to "Preludes" in that a great deal of it has to do with the after-effects of what Sirius did to Snape and him finally growing up a little and learning his lesson the hard way. But before it gets to that, this story involves some romance between our favorite Marauders and girls they've met. But the couples aren't really the point, and it might actually be best to not get too caught up in the love stories (this fic is called "Requiems" for a reason - it's not a sunny, happy tale).
Somehow music has ended up being a bit of a motif in both "Preludes" and "Requiems." This one is more aware of itself as taking place in the 70s: the chapters are all named after classic rock songs.
Title: Requiems
Author: Sara Chapman (
flowrs4ophelia)Characters & Pairings: James/Lily, Sirius(/OC), Remus(/OC), Peter, Snape
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What will it take for Sirius to grow up and learn to regret the prank he played on Snape? Well, it starts with a girl. Meanwhile, there's something Remus should probably know about the girl he's interested in, and Lily and James have their future to worry about as the Death Eaters are becoming a growing threat.
requiem: (1) a mass or hymn written for memorial and repose of one or more departed souls, usually played at funerals (2) a composition written in mourning of a deceased person
Chapter 1
Helter Skelter
Some say that whether or not someone’s lot in life is sufficient for happiness can be determined by whether or not the person is happy during Christmas. If this is true, then Sirius Black was certainly one of the most unblessed with life’s joys.
He was lying sprawled on his back on the hard wood floor of his bedroom where a rather dreery-looking Christmas tree had been magicked into a corner, seemingly against its own will from the looks of it. Sirius had a small notion that his family had forgotten this was his bedroom while decorating the house for Christmas; otherwise they would have known not to waste their time. But Kreacher, the house elf, seemed to have remembered it to some extent because the tree was so crudely adorned with the least of care.
Christmas had come and passed and Sirius had hardly acknowledged it, sleeping in most of the day. His friends had sent him his presents by owl, and his mother eventually had to come in and throw something at him to make him wake up because she was sick of accepting his packages for him. Later he found the object she had thrown at him to be a shrinking paperweight, possibly the worst magic gift someone could give, and was flattered that his mother had gotten it as a present that morning and so quickly decided to pass it on to him. After all, there were some people who would be giving him presents late, but for the most part he wouldn’t be getting many gifts this Christmas, as usual.
But today was the day that the Black family celebrated the most during the winter. Traditionally his relatives would unceremoniously spend Christmas with their nuclear families, and then on New Year’s Eve Sirius’s entire extended family would reunite at his house to exchange late presents, have a big dinner, and then get drunk enough for the disgusting heinousness of their personalities to become too lucid for Sirius to watch without getting sick with the realization that he was related to these people.
Many, many times Sirius had regretted not taking up the Potters` offer to let him stay with them during the holiday this time. In fact, when he had told James that he was going home for Christmas even though he didn’t have to, he had looked at Sirius like he’d just said that Satan was an awfully pleasant guy to hang out with. But there was really only one reason that Sirius endured being with his family during the reunions, and in the end it always managed to make it worth it in one way or another.
There were no windows in Sirius’s bedroom, so whenever he heard someone arrive he had no way of looking out to see who it was unless he wanted to leave the room and remind the other people in the house that he existed, which would only result in them giving him a hard time. But eventually he heard the voice talking downstairs that he had been waiting to hear all day.
"Hello. Where is everyone?"
"Andromeda," Sirius heard his cousin Narcissa say, ignoring her question. "I’m surprised to see you. Mother didn’t think you’d be coming."
She didn’t sound exactly pleased about her sister being there.
"Oh," Andromeda said pleasantly, paying no attention to the lack of enthusiasm for her arrival. "Well, I haven’t seen you guys and mum for a while, you know...Where’s Sirius?"
"I don’t know," Narcissa said without a single note of care in her voice. She and Andromeda talked unanimatedly for only a few more seconds before Sirius had left his room and was coming quietly down the stairs. Andromeda seemed to know he was standing at the bottom of them, because as soon as her sister left the landing area she turned and smiled at him.
"Well, if it isn’t my favorite cousin," she said. "Come here and let me look at you."
Andromeda Black was the only person related to Sirius that he had met who he liked. She was twenty-three and looked a little like a pixie, though she also resembled a tall and skinny boy with her sandy blond hair cut very short. From ending up in many situations in which they were the only decent people to talk to, they had become more like brother and sister than cousins. In fact, the only reason Sirius ever stayed around at family reunions was because he was able to ignore everyone else and talk to Andromeda instead. They usually stayed very close in touch to decide which ones they would simultaneously show up for and which ones they would both skip. She was the one who had given him his flying motorcycle for his sixteenth birthday, which he had since used many times without ever bothering to get a license to fly it.
"You are looking handsome these days," Andromeda marveled with enthusiasm, messing with his nearly shoulder-length hair. "Tell me you’ve got a girlfriend."
He shrugged. "Sure. I have, you know...girlfriends."
"Not like that," she scolded. "I mean the kind whose names you remember after making out with them, at least."
Sirius laughed. "What about you?"
"We’ll see," she said, putting her hands together and starting to fidget with them a little.
"Oh, come on. I hate it when you’re all mysterious like that."
"Usually I’m just bluffing and have nothing to tell you about at all. Haven’t you figured that out by now?" He thought he saw her take something off of her finger and hide it in her pocket. "Hey, how about helping me unload the car?"
"Unload the what?" Sirius asked, his voice elevating in surprise.
"I have a car now. Didn’t you hear me landing?"
"It’s a flying one?"
"Of course. We Blacks are strictly magical," she started in an impression of a typical member of their family. "We don’t need any useless Muggle technology influencing our traditional and much more sufficient ways of life."
She had barely finished saying that by the time Sirius was headed out the front door to look at her car outside. It was a tiny, two-seater convertible with its lid currently up. It had an off-white color and gleamed brightly in the sunlight. It somehow seemed to fit Andromeda perfectly.
"Andy, since when did you...?"
"I’ll tell you about it later," she dismissed. "Let’s just get my stuff inside."
They unloaded all of her bags from the trunk and then Sirius was looking at the car thoughtfully. "Hey, I want to try something."
"What?"
Sirius got his wand out, pointed it at the top of the car and encanted, "Alohomora."
The hood of the car immediately opened up to reveal the inside.
"Nice leather," Sirius noted, looking at the seats. Then he noticed something sitting in the passenger seat: a big box wrapped in metallic green paper and white ribbon.
"I wonder what that could be," Andromeda said in her mysterious voice that he found annoying.
"Is it...?" He pointed at it unsurely, looking at her.
"Go on, have at it. Merry Christmas."
Sirius seized the package and started tearing at the paper. Inside was a leather case with a carrying handle that snapped shut, square-shaped and a little bigger around than a dinner plate.
"A suitcase?" he asked more in confusion than dissapointment, but then he opened it up and gasped. There was a round circular disk on the bottom and small speakers on two sides of the top lid. "This is a...! What do you call it...?" Sirius spouted in excitement. "It’s a turnable!"
"Turntable," Andromeda corrected with a smile.
"But...I don’t have any records!"
"You don’t yet. But from now on, I’m going to send you a bunch every Christmas. Believe me, Muggle music is the best nowadays. I think they’re way ahead of us with these record albums."
"Oh, you don’t have to tell me that." Sirius stopped. "Wait. What do you mean you’re going to send me records?"
"Never mind," she said, seeming a little nervous for a moment. "Anyway, you can learn how to play this with a spell instead of electricity so you can use it at the school without it going spastic on you. All you have to do is make it rotate and use an amplifying spell."
Sirius laughed at her description of how electronic devices would malfunction if used on the school grounds. "Good, `cause there’s no way I can use it here. Mum would do the old AK on me if she suddenly heard rock music coming from my room."
Sirius’s mother had slapped him across the head just a few days ago for wearing a pair of sunglasses around the house which he’d bought because they were just likes ones he’d seen Jim Morrison, the singer of his favorite Muggle band, wearing in a picture once. He couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she found something in his possession stinking of Muggle culture as much as a turntable.
"Geez, Andy...Thanks. I love it," he said. "Hey, you should come upstairs and see everything else I got. Unless you actually want to go in the cellar and visit with your ugly stepsisters."
She laughed. "Why do you call them that? They’re my real sisters, and they’re a heck of a lot less ugly than I am."
Sirius wrinkled his nose. "Oh, I don’t know about that. Bella wears way too much make-up. And Narcissa might look quite nice if she didn’t have that snobby look on her face all the time."
"Well, I’ll take that as a compliment as much as I can."
They went up to Sirius’s room where he showed her all the presents he’d gotten. James had sent him a chaotic board game called Dud, which involved trading wands back and forth between players so that someone was always left with the cheap dysfunctional one that came with the set, making it almost impossible to play their turns successfully. Peter had given him a large bag of Drooble’s gum and a long roll of edible parchment, which Sirius liked to use to write "confidential" notes to James that ended with "Eat this message as soon as you receive it for complete secrecy." Just for good measure, he had added a couple pairs of twin parchments, pieces of paper that were able to read whatever was written on the corresponding twin paper so that two people could use them to write notes to eachother without having to pass them. Lily had sent him a book of photos and descriptions of old cars because one Muggle thing that he was very interested in was automobiles, and he liked to study the names of the models. Finally, he had gotten somewhat of a prank gift from Remus, a kind of compass which had a red hand that would glow and point in the direction of any female that was currently checking him out or thinking about him in any way. Andromeda laughed a lot at the idea that someone would get him a "babe radar," while Sirius tried to tell her she didn’t even realize how funny it was since she didn’t know Remus, who was not the loudest person he knew about having a sense of humor.
"So how is James, by the way?" she asked him later, helping herself to some of his gum on the bed. Andromeda had been a Seventh Year when Sirius and James started going to Hogwarts, and James was the only friend of his she was very familiar with.
"Oh, he’s pretty good," Sirius answered. Then he put his hands to his face and batted his eyelashes girlishly. "He’s in love," he said with humorous emphasis.
"Really," she said curiously.
"Yeah. He’s completely clueless about it, though. He finally realizes that he likes her, but that’s about it."
"Maybe he’s just not solely interested in shagging girls like you are."
"Hey, excuse me! What evidence do you have that I behave that way?"
"What other kind of person would get a compass like that as a prank gift?"
"Oh, shut up," Sirius said, throwing a pillow at her.
This, of course, turned into an extensive pillow fight complete with screaming laughter, which was undoubtably of great annoyance to anyone near enough in the house to hear them, until they both got tired and sat back down.
"You seem kind of different," Sirius noted after they had been resting in silence for a minute.
"What do you mean?"
"I don’t know. It’s like I can’t decide whether you’re acting happier or sadder than when I saw you last year. But it’s one of the two." He looked at her unbreakingly for a moment. "There’s something you’re not telling me."
She stood up from the bed and bit her fingers, but said nothing.
"Andy?" he pressed.
"Not now, alright?" She didn’t seem to be hiding something just to get on his nerves. She sounded very serious.
No one bothered to come and get them when it was time for the big dinner, but they could tell when the time was getting near just from the smell of the food that drifted upstairs. For ten minutes or so they went down to the living room where they were eyed contemptuously by their relatives but rarely spoken to, and then finally everyone started to gather at the very long table in the dining room.
The middle of the table was where Andromeda’s family ended up gathered. Narcissa and Bellatrix sat with their mother on one side, across from Sirius’s mother. His father was next to her, who seemed to be stemming off into a male section of the table. The grouping of women away from men was too perfect for the ensuing of gossip for Sirius to be very comfortable with. But there were two empty seats by Sirius’s mother. Andromeda, all nerves of steal, went over and sat in one of them so that she faced her mother and sisters, and Sirius sat next to her.
"Well, well," mused Bellatrix, looking them over. "The two white sheep of the Black family."
Bellatrix, who was about Sirius’s age, was wearing a tight and low-cut red velvet dress and black nylons adding a dark tint to her shapely legs, and her raven hair fell in rich curls at the bottom. Her younger sister Narcissa was all in black, looking suffocated by her lace choker because of the lack of color in her face, and giving an altogether tightened look with her pale blond hair pulled up. Sirius’s aunt Elladora wore burgundy and a doll-like mask of make-up to hide her real age. Looking at the three, he couldn’t believe Andy was so closely related to any one of them. It was like someone must have switched his aunt’s child at birth. He wondered with amusement if it had originally been a boy and Andromeda’s real parents had ended up with a little Severus.
As everybody ate, Sirius and Andromeda were allowed to stay invisible but were regarded just enough to be passed platters of food. While eating with the delicate nature and manners of royalty, the Blacks engaged in monotonous and unbearably shallow conversation that was so obnoxious to Sirius’s ears that he started to stab at his food savagely as if it was all he could do to keep from lashing out and shouting at all of them. It was especially difficult for him to sit calmly when the subject came up of all of the Death Eater stories covered in the news lately.
"You know, it is unfortunate how many perfectly dignified people’s lives are being threatened by these protests," Sirius’s mother remarked, "but this is the price we’re going to have to pay for the wrongs that have remained present in our society for far too long."
"Quite right you are," said Sirius’s uncle Altus. "These Death Eaters, as they’re called - what a ridiculous name - may not be very subtle about showing their ideals, but I suppose it’s what you have to do to get anyone to pay attention. Hell, I can’t think of any time in history when reform didn’t come without some kind of sacrifice. But it is always for the better in the end, right?"
After the feast was over Sirius resorted to stuffing balls of the gum Peter had given him into his mouth and chewing it angrily since he had no more food to abuse. It was practically forbidden for anyone to rise from the table for at least another half-hour just because the adults would now enjoy some wine, so everyone carried on in the same way. Eventually Andromeda looked to the side at Sirius and her eyes widened; he had put more than ten balls of Drooble’s in his mouth and a gigantic wad of gum was bulging in the side of his cheek as he chewed vigorously.
Sirius had just managed to tune out what his family was talking about and make small conversation with Andromeda when Bellatrix boredly looked over at the the two of them. "So how’s dear little Evans?" she asked in a fake sweet voice.
"You can shut up about her," Sirius responded automatically, hardly even looking up at Bellatrix.
"What?" Andromeda asked confusedly. "Who’s Evans?"
"It’s nothing. Lily Evans, she’s just a friend of mine," he told her off-handedly.
She thought for a moment. "Oh! Your car book friend?"
"His Mudblood friend," Bellatrix emphasized darkly.
Andromeda looked across the table at her sister with a sharp and icy glare that could only express loathing as intense as that for a sibling. "Now really, do we have to use language like that at a dinner table?"
Sirius knew she was imitating the way her mother used to act when she and her sisters used to get into screaming arguments at dinner. He looked at her, then at Bellatrix, and then back, and then noticed that the table had gone a little more quiet than before and many of the guests were peering down the table at them.
"Well, it’s no surprise that Sirius has become such a retched example of this family," Elladora said to Andromeda, "seeing as you’ve had such a bad influence on him ever since he was very young. No offense to you, Lenora," she added quickly to Sirius’s mother. "No one can deny you did your best with him."
Sirius chewed his gum extra loudly.
"If Sirius has grown up to be the way he is because of me at all, I’m immensely proud of it," stated Andromeda stoically.
"Oh, honestly, Andromeda," her mother sighed in exasperation. "He may even be lower than you." She started to uncork a wine bottle to pour herself a second glass. "A Black...befriending such worthless filth of people like that...It’s unheard of. Could he sink any lower?"
Sirius straightened up in his seat as if he had sat on something sharp. "My friend is not-!"
But Andromeda grabbed his arm to make him calm down, and when he looked at her she had an expression like he’d never seen in her eyes before. She looked so determined and serious that she didn’t have to say anything for him to know to sit back and let her handle the situation.
Andromeda took in a deep breath. "Actually," she said, her voice almost sounding a little shaky, "I’m even worse than him." She was fumbling her hand around in her pocket, but Sirius got a feeling this wasn’t a nervous habit. Something was going on, and it suddenly worried him very much.
"What are you talking about, Andromeda?" Elladora asked with some impatience.
Sirius glanced to the side at her lap and then turned his whole head to look, his eyes widening. She was putting a gold ring on her left hand. Slowly, she lifted it so that Elladora could see. "I’m married, mother."
A kind of choking, solitary laugh escaped Sirius as his gum flew from his mouth onto the table cloth. But no one else reacted visibly; it just became horrifyingly quiet.
Elladora swallowed. "Surely you mean...you’ve gotten engaged."
Andromeda shook her head. "No. We eloped. Two months ago."
"...I see. And...who is your husband?"
"He’s a photographer for the Daily Prophet. We met when I went to apply for that writing job."
"What do I care about that? What’s his name?"
"Tonks. Theodore Tonks."
"Tonks," repeated Altus in a mildly curious tone, as if he was deceiving himself into thinking this was a light and pleasant discussion. "I’ve never heard of that family. What are they like?"
"Well," Andromeda said. "Mostly, they’re...Muggles."
Elladora`s wine glass shattered in her tight grip. Now the table erupted into exclamations of shock. Sirius turned to Andromeda and glared at her in a very different kind of surprise than most people there were now expressing. "Two months ago?! Why didn’t you ever tell me anything about it?"
"I’m sorry, Sirius. I just wasn’t ready to come out about it yet-"
"Andromeda," Elladora said in somewhat of a low growl which somehow vibrated underneath the loudness of the crowd so that she heard it. "I hope you’re damn grateful that your father isn’t alive to see you now! You’re right, you’re worse than a Mudblood lover like him," she said with a deadly look at Sirius. "You’re a shameful and absolutely disposable blood traitor!"
"I assume that with all of this now established," Sirius’s mother said to her coldly, "you don’t intend for your stay here to be very long."
"Oh no," Andromeda assured her. "I’m leaving tomorrow morning."
From everyone’s reaction, it was clear that that wouldn’t be nearly soon enough for them. As they all glared at her hatefully, Sirius stared at the tabletop, feeling like all of his shock and anger mixed together was going to make him explode any moment now.
"Well," said Elladora, "you can leave then. And you can never come back again to any gatherings of this family, and I don’t care to ever see you again either. I hope you enjoy your life with your filthy disease of a husband, because as of now you will never be a part of this family again."
"Yes, I know that," Andromeda said calmly. "That’s why I came here at all, you see. I came to say goodbye to you all."
All of the people at the table were apparently infuriated by her indifference to everything her mother said to try to make her feel guilty. And soon she was standing up from her chair looking quite unaffected by all of the chaos she had fueled at this dinner.
"I’ll just go upstairs now," she said. "I think I’ve had enough to eat."
And as she left the place where she had been sitting, Sirius automatically rose to follow her.
"Sirius, you sit down!" his mother commanded.
He ignored her and pushed his chair back so he could walk out from in front of it.
"Sirius Roderick Black!" she shouted. "I forbid you to follow her!" Her words had now stopped Andromeda in her tracks and she was standing in the entrance to the dining room, watching. "You need not mind her anymore. You will not. And you will not speak to her again. It’s time you grew out of the nonsense the both of you have in your heads. Now sit down."
"I will sit down and get up when I want to!" Sirius roared, the anger that had collected in him all night finally coming out. "And I’ll speak to whoever I damn well want to!"
"Not anymore! SIT DOWN!"
Sirius turned and started to walk from his chair.
"You ungrateful brat!" she screamed after him. "I should have known a long time ago that there was no fixing you. You’re an incorrigible disappointment! You should be on your knees thanking me for putting up with you this long, feeding you and raising you. But if I was smart I would have kicked you out of this house a long time ago."
Sirius had slowed his pace of walking, and now stopped and whirled around. "Well, let me save you the trouble then! I’m leaving!"
A small pause of silence passed. Then Lenora started to laugh hysterically. "You?! Leave?!"
Andromeda’s sisters started to giggle as well as she said it.
"And where exactly are you going to go?" she asked.
"Well, I don’t know," he said. "And I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter. Anywhere is better than here."
"Sirius!" Andromeda gasped, coming back into the dining room. "You’re being crazy. It’s the middle of winter. You don’t have anywhere to go!"
"Yeah, Sirius," Bellatrix said in a mocking, high-pitched voice, as she and Narcissa tried to contain laughing fits. "Don’t leave us."
"Why shouldn’t I go?" Sirius demanded of Andromeda, and then turned to his family and pointed to her. "She was the only thing I liked about this family, and now she’s not even a part of it anymore. By all means, I’ll be glad to stay if you can give me one reason I shouldn’t leave right now."
"Fine," his mother said stiffly. "Leave. The both of you in one night; it’s good riddance if I ever knew it. But when you come back here begging for me and your father to take you in again because you’re starving and freezing to death, you can forget about it and turn right back around."
"Believe me, that’s not going to happen." With that he turned and left the dining room, and Andromeda followed him.
"Sirius, I can’t believe you’re doing this! Just because I jumped into something a little quickly, it doesn’t mean you have to-"
"Don’t waste your time taking responsibility for this," Sirius said as they went into the landing area, which was dimly lit above by a chandelier with candles in it. "This is my decision. I just can’t take it anymore. The way they were talking to you in there...No matter how hard I try to live with it, I can’t just..."
"I know." She looked down at the floor quietly. "Funny, the two of us standing here, actually believing that it takes nothing but a fly away on a broomstick and we can be rid of our family forever. As if it’s something you can just sever away from yourself, like getting a divorce."
Sirius looked at her sadly, and could only sigh. "So what’s this guy like, anyway?"
"Ted?" she asked, starting to smile again. "Oh, he’s great. You’ve got to meet him some day. He’s taught me all about Muggle things. We’re going to go to America and Canada as a kind of late honeymoon. They’re the most devoid of magical establishments of all places in the world. It’s going to be be great."
Sirius smiled. "So that’s how you have a car now, and suddenly know where to come by a turntable."
Andromeda nodded. "Oh, Siri," she sighed, using the name she hadn’t called him since he was eight. "I can’t tell you how happy I am, though. You probably can’t tell, but I really am. I feel like Ted’s rescued me in a way. I’ve felt a kind of freedom in the past two months like nothing I ever could have imagined." She abandoned her reverie and looked at him again, patting a hand on his shoulder and keeping it there. "You know, Sirius, I am so proud of what you’ve become. And I don’t mean in spite of the kind of influence you’ve had to put up with. And I don’t mean how much you’ve become like me. I mean who you are just on your own, as a person."
"Stop it, Andy," Sirius said.
"Oh, come here." She brought him into a tight hug. As he hugged her Sirius realized that he was a little taller than her; he could remember vividly when he was young and she had been the taller one. And now she, his cousin Andromeda, was married. Where had the time gone? There had been no gradual transition. He could have sworn a couple hours ago in his bedroom she had still been the young girl he used to play with, and then at a dinner table everything had come out and everything had changed, just like that.
Andromeda tried to convince him to wait and leave with her, saying she and her husband would figure out a way to get him back to school when the time came. But Sirius was insistent about going to the Potters`. All of the disorder that had happened tonight was starting to make him really want to see his best friend again. However, his biggest concern was that if he left with Andromeda in her car he would have no way of taking his motorcycle along, and all of the possessions he left with tonight would have to be the only ones he kept.
So Sirius went to his room and started getting his things together. It didn’t take long, because most of his valued things had been left in his dormitory at Hogwarts. The most important thing he took was the turntable, which was held in a corner of his small suitcase by surrounding wadded-up clothes. He strapped the suitcase securely to the back seat of his motorcycle and then said a final goodbye to Andromeda.
"I suppose it could be a while before we see eachother again," he said.
Andromeda smiled unhappily. "I will write to you all the time. And if you do ever need a place to stay, or anything at all, you just send me an owl." She rubbed her hand over his head affectionately, messing up his hair. "Now, you keep having fun. But try not to get into too much trouble."
Sirius nodded. Andromeda stepped back and waved as he got ready to drive away. And then from the inside of the Black house, everyone heard the roaring of a motorcycle and the sound of it ripping away down the road, which was shortly followed by a sudden silence when it lifted from the ground, as if it had disappeared completely along with him.
Gimme Shelter
James rolled over in bed and looked at the clock on his nightstand. The numbers forming 1:36 burned his eyes, the only thing giving off light in the whole room. It had been 1978 for more than an hour and a half.
James’s holiday had been pleasant but not exactly thrilling. He was an only child and had no friends away from school, and though he liked being at home with his parents, his days of Christmas break were getting increasingly dull. It had been easy to deal with, though, whenever he thought about what Sirius was having to go through. Clearly bored out his mind or having to do something to distract himself from going insane at his house, Sirius had sent him four letters ever since the beginning of the holiday. The last one had had a tone of unsureness about what the point of writing to him was, and had said only the following:
"Dear Mr. Prongs,
Yes. Well.
I would say that I hope you had a good Christmas, only I`m already sure that you did. Even if you think it was just okay, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Regulus keeps looking over my shoulder to see what I’m writing. God, it’s annoying having him at school now, isn’t it? At least he’s in a different house (big surprise) and as far away from me as possible. He was looking around in my room earlier when I wasn’t there. I think he wants to steal some of my presents I got from you and everyone. I wish I could hide them somewhere but my bedroom has close to nothing in it anymore.
Oh, I’ve kept forgetting to ask you every time Remus isn’t around: What’s going on with him and that girl Matilda? He seems to be talking to her a lot. Have you had any communication with Lily since school got out? I bet he’s opened up to her about it. She probably knows everything.
Write back as soon as you get this. -Padfoot"
James had not heard from Lily since the holidays started, or from anyone else besides Sirius, with the exception of getting all his friends` presents sent to him. He had thought about writing to all of his friends but had never gotten around to it.
But he had found himself thinking about Lily an awful lot.
It didn’t seem like a long time ago at all that the incident with Snape had, in a strange way of effect, brought out the true nature of their relationship, which had been merely a friendship before that. Since then he had gotten to know Lily much better. This had included becoming familiar with the more concealed and undelicate but quite likeable things about her, like the way she would put an entire half of a biscuit in her mouth at the same time but still chew it with her mouth closed, and how she wore a surprisingly unfeminine set of plaid pajamas to bed, and how she was so unconscious of herself that she was comfortable hanging around in the common room in her pajamas with the boys sometimes. All of these details about her were comfortable memories he had referred to often when he was bored, and maybe even a little lonely, ever since he had come home for Christmas.
James heard something tap his window. He sat up, yawning, assuming that it was an owl delivering another letter from Sirius, probably asking him why he hadn’t written back yet (James had started a fourth response letter but by then had completely run out of things to write to him about). He got out of bed, swearing when he stepped on the hard corner of a gift box on his floor just as the owl tapped louder on his window.
But when James looked out his window, there was no owl outside of it at all. In complete confusion he searched the sky for any movement. Then he looked at the ground and his jaw dropped.
"Good God."
Sirius was in his yard outside waving his arms to get his attention. In the snow beside him were several black rocks he had collected from the front of the house to throw at his window, obviously expecting that James would be asleep and that it would take a lot more than two.
James motioned to him that he would let him in the front door and went downstairs to unlock it. When he opened the door Sirius was standing there shaking with cold, his suitcase beside him.
"Sirius, what the bloody hell?" he tried to say quietly enough to avoid waking up his parents. "Get inside, you look half dead."
"Wait. Open your garage first."
"Why?"
"So I can put my bike in it."
James’s facial expression became more shocked, if it was possible. "You brought your motorcycle?"
"How else would I have gotten here?"
"You’ve got some serious explaining to do, mate. Come on."
They put Sirius’s motorcycle inside and then quietly crept into James’s room. Sirius had used a warming charm on his clothes for the fly over, but it had only helped so much, so James made sure he was wrapped in many layers of blankets before he started asking about the reason he was here.
"Look, I’m sorry about this," Sirius apologized. "But something completely unexpected happened...I got mad...I just had to get away from there."
"It’s alright, I understand. But I don’t even get why you went home in the first place anyway."
"Andy," he explained simply. "She made me promise I’d come this time. She said it was important to her. If only I’d known exactly what her plans were."
"What do you mean?" James asked. "What happened?"
Sirius explained the whole story about the nightmarish event at the dinner table, but he left out the part about dismissing himself from his family forever because he didn’t want James to think he was asking to stay here. He wasn't sure how he was going to ask that of him if it ended up being his only option.
"Well...what can I say?" James said after hearing the story. "I can’t blame you. Wow. So she had to completely sacrifice her family just because she wants to be with this guy? I can’t even begin to imagine...I guess I could never understand what your family’s like without living in that house myself. `Cause I never realized it was that bad." James put his legs up on the bed and hugged them to him, resting his chin on his knees.
Sirius looked to the side at him. "I’m sorry about just barging in like this. But I didn’t think about what I would do. I just knew I couldn’t stay there."
"I told you, it’s fine. My parents wanted you to stay here anyway. I just didn’t expect you to show up outside my window."
"No, Prongs, I mean...Never mind. Forget it."
James looked at him confusedly for a moment, and then said, "Wait a minute. You’re saying...You didn’t just leave to get away from them and cool down. You’re running away. You didn’t just come here for-"
"Don’t be ridiculous, I couldn’t ask that of your parents."
"But that’s why you came here, isn’t it?"
"It’s just for a while. We’re going right back to school anyway, and by the time we graduate I can figure something out."
"Oh, don’t be an idiot. Don’t you want to move in with me?"
"Of course I’d want to move in with you, but your parents-"
"They’d be more than happy to take you in. They know all about your family. Well, no one knows all about your family. But enough to be quite approving of you running away. And they like you."
Sirius crossed his arms thoughtfully. "Well. Your mom is a damn good cook."
James laughed. "Why didn’t we think of this sooner?"
He shrugged. "No kidding. Why didn’t my cousin meet Ted Tonks sooner?"
"His name is Ted Tonks? Blimey, I can already tell he’s perfect for her."
They stayed up the rest of the night playing a game of Dud, which was humorously pointless with two players, trying to keep their laughs down to a volume that wouldn’t wake up James’s parents. Then they put blankets on the floor for Sirius to sleep on, lay down to go to bed, and turned out the lights. Just before dozing off James whispered, "Sirius?"
"Yes?" he murmured tiredly.
"Are you...I mean...Are you okay?"
"Of course I’m okay," he said right away as if it was a ridiculous question. "I’m just mad."
But James knew his friend better than that. "Padfoot?"
"What?!" he whispered, obviously exhausted and trying to get to sleep.
"Happy New Year."
"...Oh. You, too."
It was almost 3:00 when they were finally asleep.
"Hendrix!" Sirius demanded, frolicking into James’s room the next morning after taking a shower. "Now!"
James had been awake for a few minutes and sat up in bed, yawning. "Isn’t it a little early for that?" he asked, looking at his clock.
"So we’ll wake the house up with a bang. Come on."
He pulled James out of bed by the arm and they went into the spare room in the house which was used as a combination office and "music room." This room was one of Sirius’s favorite things about staying with the Potters. James’s dad was a Halfblood, and one with very fine taste, so he had quite a large and varied music collection. Every time Sirius visited he invited himself to play the Doors, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and even Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley as loud as it was possible to without getting complaints from the neighbors.
If either of James’s parents had not been awake before, they were as soon the house came alive with electric guitar played at full blast at 8:40. Knowing that they were being annoying and could get yelled at extensively by his mother for this seemed to give James a nervous kind of excitement, and he dropped to the floor laughing as Sirius hyperly jumped around the room in a movement almost resembling dancing, flinging water off of his hair that was still wet from his shower. They stayed in the room for a while, afraid to come out because of what they were doing and because neither of James’s parents had seen that Sirius was there yet. After a while they heard a banging around of pans in the kitchen that told them Mrs. Potter was making breakfast, and heard Mr. Potter singing along to the music in the shower.
The two went downstairs, hardly having to creep around because the music covered the sound of their footsteps. Jane Potter, a delicately built but strong-minded woman with gold hair, was at the stove making pancakes. Sirius snuck up behind her and pointed to a big one in the pan, saying, "I get that one."
She smirked. "Hello, Sirius."
His shoulders fell in disappointment. "I was supposed to surprise you. How did you know I was here?"
"Are you kidding? Who in this family would begin the day by playing Jimi Hendrix as an alarm clock?"
"James would if he knew how to make a mate proud."
"So we did wake you up," James inferred, sitting at the table.
"Not your dad, but me," she informed.
"Sorry, Mrs. P," Sirius said, using the shortened name he always called her which wasn’t completely informal but still didn’t take a long time to say.
"Oh, that’s alright. It was kind of an early morning rush. And a pleasant surprise; it’s nice to have you here."
"Nice to be here," he told her. "I don’t get to spend much time in a house where the old lady wouldn’t do the AK on me for what I did this morning."
"Call me an old lady again and that’s gonna change," she said, jokingly holding her spatula up to him as if to slap him with it.
"AK?" James questioned, the only one who had caught the senselessness of what Sirius had just said.
"Yeah, as in 'Avada Kedavra,'" Sirius explained. "Sorry, I forget it’s only Andy and I who say that."
Eventually James’s father came downstairs in his bathrobe and whacked Sirius on the head with a rolled-up newspaper. "So it’s you who used up all the hot water. What do you think you’re doing with your ‘Voodoo Child’ wake-up call, huh?"
"Oh, admit it," joked Sirius, who got along with Mr. Potter very well. "You know you loved it. We could hear you singing from the other end of the hall."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he said with a hidden smile.
The others all laughed. Mr. Potter turned to his wife, said, "Morning," and kissed the top of her head in greeting before sitting down at the table with the two boys.
Jane and Michael Potter had always represented for Sirius a kind of happiness that was unattainable in his life. They were not a picture-perfect couple by most people’s standards, and argued a lot when they thought James and Sirius couldn’t hear them. But it was still always obvious that they were madly in love. Compared to what usually went on in Sirius’s house, their arguments were loving and affectionate talk.
Mrs. Potter had the magic radio station on, which had a wizard telling the news of an accident involving Apparition that had resulted in a woman stuck two feet from the ground with half of her body inside a building. As she was putting the pancakes on everyone’s plates, all of them suddenly became silent as they heard what the wizard on the radio spoke of next.
"...And the frightful subject that has everyone in the magic community concerned: the Death Eaters. All that has been known about these mysterious underground collaborators is that they are a terrorist group trying to bring attention to their ideals that Pureblood wizards and witches are rightfully the dominant members of magic society. It is even possible that what they want is complete isolation from supposedly 'unpure' witches and wizards like Halfbloods and Muggle-borns. The idea that these kinds of people are undeserving of their place in the magic world has been regarded as unprincipled nonsense for the majority of our history, which is what makes the Death Eaters` messages so intimidating. Varying in exact words, a written statement is usually left at the scenes of all their attacks demanding cleansing of the government and our society. There are often few or no survivors at the government establishments that the Death Eaters attack, but one thing always marks these scenes as the same: a skull with a serpent slithering through it, left suspended in the air like a foreboding warning.
"But as of late, new information is being uncovered which leads many to suspect that this terrorist group is something much deeper than meets the eye. Many Death Eaters captured by the Ministry have given the name Voldemort as the leader they claim to serve. The Death Eaters show blind and unbreakable loyalty to him, and some even swear that with the help of his followers this Voldemort is going to take over everything and that there is nothing that can be done about it.
"Ministry official Barty Crouch recently said to one of our interviewers, 'Most are viewing these Death Eaters as reformers. But I believe that they aren’t interested in changing our views and simply want us to submit to their wishes, whether or by will or by force. The destruction of Ministry workplaces that has made us all notice them is just a warning for what is to come. I think that these Death Eaters are holding something back. They seem to know that they can and will succeed in what they’re doing, and it is even possible that these attacks are merely warnings of how capable they will be of destroying us if we get in the way of what they want. Perhaps this Voldemort is their secret weapon; for whoever he is, he must be very powerful for all of these people to be serving him. It is of great importance that this group not be taken lightly. We will make the followers that we have give us the information we can use to crush them before they get close to what their real intentions are.'
"Meanwhile, some are talking about and even volunteering for efforts against Voldemort and his followers. Richard Karlstein, chief Auror at the Ministry of Protection from Dark Arts, and Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, are among some who are willing to form a group of protectors to infiltrate and destroy the Death Eaters. More information on this will be reported as it is found."
Mrs. Potter started moving again, going to the cupboard and then putting a bottle of maple syrup on the table. "There’s your syrup," she said before sitting down. "The butter’s out on the counter behind Michael there." There was a moment of awkward silence at the table, but soon they started talking casually again. No one asked Sirius why he was here. He was very grateful.
