Diagon Alley's sunset arrived right on schedule. It was the last day of Sean's week-long break.
After today, he would have to return to Hogwarts.
Slytherin's locket was still being kept in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, waiting for the wizard who would draw the sword.
So today, before Sean left the Leaky Cauldron, Sirius had spent the entire day hesitating.
"There's a story I want to tell you," Sirius said at last.
Night had settled over England, quiet and still. The Leaky Cauldron had very few customers left; aside from the dozen or so witches and wizards staying there, there was hardly another sound.
Sean already knew what Sirius wanted to say, but he still nodded.
"It happened a long time ago. If you're willing to trust me, then take my wrist."
Sirius held out his arm. Oddly enough, since escaping Azkaban, this was the first time he had truly felt nervous.
Fortunately, he was usually a good judge of character. That had always been one of his gifts.
Though of course there were exceptions, and he had paid terribly for one of them… No, his mistake had cost him almost everything…
And yet now, he was willing to trust again.
To trust the wizard standing before him.
To trust that he would lead them toward the future they were fighting for.
Before Sirius could properly react, the young wizard had already taken hold of the edge of his robes.
"Let's go, sir," Sean said.
"Oh…"
Sirius couldn't suppress his surge of joy. A twist of magic later, they had left the Leaky Cauldron behind.
And arrived instead at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.
This house could not be marked on any map, and no one should have been able to come visiting, yet in the past few days it had been almost haunted by people appearing there.
Sirius stood before the tapestry, and Sean could see the melancholy in his eyes, a sadness that never quite left him.
"I haven't looked at this thing properly in years.
That's Phineas Nigellus… my great-great-grandfather, see?
He was the least popular Headmaster in Hogwarts history…
And there's Araminta Meliflua… my mother's cousin… she tried to force through a Ministry law making it legal to hunt Muggles…
And my dear Aunt Elladora… she started the family tradition of beheading house-elves when they grew too old to carry trays.
Of course, any time someone halfway decent showed up in the family, they'd declare them cut off."
Sirius spoke slowly, and Sean found himself thinking that nearly every member of the Black family would probably count as a terrorist even in the wizarding world.
Really, the whole family was one long terrorist organization.
"The one slight exception, I suppose, is that I notice my niece Tonks's family isn't on here.
Andromeda, her mother, was my favorite cousin.
Andromeda's not there either, see—"
Sirius pointed at another small burnt hole between the names Bellatrix and Narcissa.
"Andromeda's sisters are both still on there because they married lovely, respectable pure-blood wizards, while Andromeda married a Muggle-born—Ted Tonks—so… well…"
Sirius mimed blasting the tapestry with a wand and laughed bitterly.
Sean's attention, however, had already moved to the names just to the right of Andromeda's scorched mark.
A double golden thread connected Narcissa Black to Lucius Malfoy, and from their names a single golden line dropped straight down to Draco.
"You're looking at that… As you can see, pure-blood families are all connected to each other somehow," Sirius said.
"If wizarding families insist their children can only marry pure-bloods, their options get very limited.
There aren't that many of us left anymore. Molly and I are cousins by marriage, and Arthur is probably my great-uncle's great-grandson or something like that.
Though there's no point looking for them on here—if any family was full of blood-traitor degenerates, it'd be the Weasleys."
This time Sean looked to the name just left of Andromeda's burn mark:
Bellatrix Black, connected by a double golden line to Rodolphus Lestrange.
"As for those people, they're in Azkaban," Sirius said shortly.
Sean watched him in silence.
"Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus went in with Barty Crouch Junior," Sirius said in that slow, stiff voice of his.
"Rodolphus's brother Rabastan was with them too."
Of course Sean knew who they were. Bellatrix and Rodolphus were the ones who had tortured Neville's parents into madness.
"Every one of the people you see there has committed acts of cruelty that can't be tolerated," Sirius said with a grim smile.
"No one with a conscience could accept them. And if they do, it only means they lack the courage not to.
As you know, once I turned sixteen, I left them for good.
In the summer of 1976, I ran away from home and went to James's house."
Sirius's face flushed with emotion, his eyes shining.
"James's parents took me in and treated me like I was their own son.
Yes, I was disowned for it, and my name was blasted off the family tapestry by my mother's magic… but you can't imagine how much James's way of thinking, and the acceptance and affection his parents gave me, meant to me.
For the first time in my life, I had somewhere to belong."
Then suddenly his tone shifted.
"And later, I destroyed everything…"
His voice broke.
"They say I betrayed James and Lily to You-Know-Who, and they're right.
I might as well have killed them myself… When You-Know-Who was hunting them, when they needed someone to serve as Secret-Keeper under the Fidelius Charm…
At the very last moment, I persuaded James and Lily to use Peter instead of me.
To make him their Secret-Keeper, not me.
On the night they died, I went to check whether Peter was still safe, but when I reached his hiding place, he was already gone. There were no signs of a struggle.
I knew something was wrong. I panicked and went straight to James's house. And when I saw the ruins of their home, when I saw their bodies…"
Sirius's eyes were wet now, his voice thick and broken, his face drained white.
"It was my fault they died, my fault they never got their peace. And yet what about them?
I've never seen them again in my dreams.
Why don't they haunt me?
Aren't the dead always supposed to cling to the ones who killed them?"
~~~
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