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One shinny afternoon, out of nowhere, Black shows up at the doorstep of Number 12 Grimmauld Place.
He is covered with grime and dry blood, emanating a withered, wasted sense of starkness. His flesh is cut, healed and cut again, with scars on his chest and marks on his toes, and brown-red runes all over his body, in a strange, menacing, grim language that no one understands. He wears a decrepit shirt that once might have been white, but is now yellowing, browning even, with the threads that once wove promise gone and bared and worn out, emptied out.
He hair smells like disgust and crime, and his eyes are naked.
It is a sunny day, bright and glorious with summered heat, with a life force of its own, beating like the wings of sprites in fairyland; solid, confused, fugacious.
Molly is the one who opened the door, wiping her hands on her apron until she sees him, drops dead in her course and stops smiling. Her shriek wakes the portrait of Mrs. Black, who doesn't shout at her son this time, but screams in a sound so terrible and sinister that everyone who enters the house later can still hear it from the other side of the wall-the hanging, wailing madness of a woman; a mother screaming. They couldn't get the painting down after all, because it wasn't a spell that locked it onto the wall, it was history. A trapped shadow. It was the past with its forever-claws and cruelty that held everything in the house exactly as it should have been, because the house wanted it that way, because history left it that way.
Behind Sirius, the sun is caught in the dust.
How disconnecting.
The Weasley family-what is left of it-is cleaning the place up.
They aren't sure of what to do with it, the filthy, mildewed, sinking house. The war was over, everyone went to their own homes and thanked their god or gods for letting them pull through alive, their family for their comfort, their friends for being there. All the gushy stuff. Heroes got to do that afterwards, because they've saved the world. They held ceremonies for the dearly departed, and got on with their lives, or at least pretended to.
Now, Black comes back, stinking of the dirty past, fouling them with the grieves they've had to endure, of the world before this happier one.
Naturally, everyone tries to be polite. It is, of course, the least the could do-smiles, hugs with empty, parentheses-like arms, light, feathery kisses on his cheek. They ignore how dirty he is, how unpleasant a reminder he is; they don't mention that he looks worse than he did when he was running away from Azkaban, and they welcome him back to the House of Black, because, after all, it is his house.
A shame that it's such a brilliant day, with the reddened sky-like a blood-soaked shirt, ironically-and sunset and all. Shame that they couldn't be outside. Playing or something.
Ah, blink/clink, blink/clink.
They have offered to let him stay in their home, but realizes that he does not remember who they are, any of what they're saying, this madman, this bag of bones. Sirius would not go with them, and mutters incoherencies by his lips. So in the end, they leave him in that giant, hollow house, because they have their own wounds to lick.
There are things worse than being trapped.
There are things worse than being dead.
One of the Weasleys-he does not remember these people-comes once a week, twice sometimes, to take care of him. Make sure he hasn't killed himself and so forth. Although they pretend, no body wants to try to understand him, not only because he mumbles and rocks and talks nonsense most of the time, but because it hurts them too much anyway. And this man, this hollow reminder of a man, is insane. His fingers are like sticks glued together by children, spidery and grabby, always grimy, always dirty with pain and grief and craziness. His boniness does not disappear, instead, he grows thinner. He fades bit by bit by bit and he is still fading. And no one can see him in the eye. And no one says the word Remus.
This one day, one fine, cloudy, bleak day when it feels like it's raining without water, Sirius Black appears in the Weasleys' fireplace, covered in something like stolen genius and remembered memories and Floo Powder.
He grabs the collars of the first person he sees.
"What have they done with him?"
His voice starts out like a whisper, like a croon, like something invariably warm and vaguely safe, and turns into a scream.
"What did you do with him!"
Hands rush in and restrain him, and looks of sadness creep up on eyes. They seat him. They bring him coffee. They wait a long, awkward moment, fill the air with tension before they tear it up with their words.
"We're sorry, Sirius, but Remus is gone."
Now these are words he cannot understand. What do they mean, gone? What, gone like some flimsy-thing, some white paper, afloat and flying? Like a petal dropped into the river, borne into the ocean, what do they mean, gone?
"He died in battle."
There are larger, more ultimate pieces of things that should be told, and Sirius resents them for keeping this from him in the beginning. And yet later, he understands that there is also pity. They hate the look of pathetic insaneness he has, with his mangled hair and chipped nails, and they think sadly because of it.
Then take me to the grave.
But now they are silent.
"We never found a body."
Sirius does not care for their offered tears, because this is Remus, this is the one person in the world he was allowed to pour all his love and heat and passion into; and Sirius knows himself, because his love should be intense, so intense that Remus shouldn't, can't possibly hold onto the compassions of other people. Sirius knows it is selfish, but knows it is true.
He asks them how they can be sure Remus is dead.
Sometimes, he has this dream.
It always begin with him falling, through the air and through other people. He doesn't remember if they're people he knows, or people he cares about, he just remembers falling through them. But that's just it, he isn't a ghost. He's flesh and bone and skin, but he still falls right through, inanimate objects and all. And he'll land, with a dull thud and the sound of something breaking, in a basement. In a damp, dark place where even sunlight probably won't feel warm, and he'll be left there, with an almost divine force chaining him down so that the only thing he can do is feel a terror, almost a thrill, of being chased. And feel his legs go out on him, numb.
In dreams like this, he tries to remember who he is. He is Sirius Black, he tries to tell himself, he's survived Azkaban, he somehow came back from the realm of the dead and the thing that scares him is this. He'll sneer, he'll almost mock himself.
And the thing that scares him the most is the sense of being silenced, being disconnected. Being unheard.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
In dreams like this, he tries to remember the people he cares for, James and Remus and sometimes even Regulus. He'll draw out their form, he'll fill them with memories, he'll mend them and make them alive again, with fairy-dust, with magic-smoke, whatever it takes, and then it'll be all right and happy and he won't be alone. But he can't do anything right, he can't remember what Remus looked like. Remus, of all people, whose face his fingers had remembered so instinctively. You wouldn't think.
You would never think you can forget a thing like that.
But it always ends like this, with this frustration, this feeling of being opened.
My death boat went off course; a wrong turn of the wheel, a moment's absence of mind on the part of the helmsman, the distraction of my lovely native country
Sometimes, he can't move.
A light, pale, rotten air is gouging out his arms, that's all he knows, and that he can't move.
It's always a wide-eyed silence, always comes when he's asleep. When it does, it poisons the warm air beneath the blanket, wakes him, holds him there. It is like the feeling of being claimed. It is like being held down in the water basin, dreadfully aware but unable to do anything, as if his brain is disconnected from its nerves, its rightful limbs and speakers. If only he can remember to move, but his arms are too heavy for his muscles and his legs are not even there.
Wide-eyed silence.
But the most unsettling part is that he doesn't even know if this is a dream.
Harry Potter, such a young man now, steps through the threshold of the House of Black with such a force, such a liveliness that Sirius hears him all the way from the attic.
When Black meets him halfway in the stairs, he sees James Potter, impetuously and beautifully before him with clouded eyes behind flashing glasses. He stretches his arms and embraces him, his best friend in the guise of a god-son.
"I was away in a tournament, but I came as quickly as I could."
Pause. Blink. Sirius is still holding onto Harry, but Harry Potter has grown up, isn't the irritable boy he once knew, unconsciously and suddenly.
"Tell me, how did you.where did."
But Sirius isn't listening, he doesn't care about how he came back. He calls him James, and Harry can only look at him with teary eyes.
Harry says that both Hermione and Ron have died, and Sirius says he is sorry.
They show him pictures, pictures of the departed love, where Remus is smiling and waving and nodding, and it is impossible to believe that he is dead. It's too surreal, here is a man, waving at you, and here is the same man, believed to be dead. He hates photographs. Because they're such good liars, they're such brilliant, faithful frauds.
They want him to move again, but Sirius will not. He will stay here, because this is the only part of his past that he can cling onto now, and he hopes it will be enough.
There are voices from the walls.
They are part of the reason Sirius can't move out of the House; if he does and the voices does not go away, it would be the absolute verdict that he is insane. They do not talk mostly. but murmur in a soft, inhuman voice to each other.
He would like to kiss the voice, soft and hard.
When he jolts up from his bed, he is intense, condensed, brilliant.
When he wakes up, he is a child, he still hasn't grown yet and he is gawky with his limbs. Remus was somewhere nearby, breathy with sleep, and Sirius smiles.
There are times when he's not there, in the bed-it might have fleas, he's not sure-in the room he shared with Regulus-not because there was a lack of rooms, god no-in the mad existence, but somewhere else.
He is beside the Lake, the unbreakable, invulnerable, forever Lake, with its summered smells of youth, with its fallen petals and dim stars. And Remus is beside him, laughing, probably at Sirius but it doesn't matter, because this moment is perfection, because this moment is their once upon a time, their happily ever after. Now, the future bloomed so bright and lovely and rosy, now, everything is right and they are at the pinnacle of their lives, like kings of the mountain. The mountain peaked all the way up to the sky, and their land stretched forever.
He is swimming, as a dog, from the Azkaban Stronghold, smell of alkaline is surrounding him and all he can think of is how cold it is. How odd this is.
There's a maternal hold that pulls him down, thick and strong and swallowing, and he thinks this is mother-not the one with stern brows and voice like a governess-but the real mother, who would soothe wounds with a song and make fairytales come true.
The tide is always going away from Azkaban, as if the water knows something, some terrible truth about the people in that place; yet there is always water surrounding the ghost-palace, and it seems to remain there forever and drift away from land at the same time, like the way ghost ships or haunted mansions do. Sirius is still swimming, hoping that the morning tide will not carry him away, will not rip him away from land. Will not drown him in its mother-hands.
Millions of years of evolution and men are still lost without the ocean, stranded on the dryness and constancy of land, with its solid and miserable gravity. Millions of years of evolution and it all comes down to this, this strange water-sound, fake but rain-like, homelike.
There is no one around him, with an almost existential euphoria he realizes, he merges in epiphany, with chipped nails and dusty eyes and membraned walls. There is a fiery end, apocalyptic, yet it affects no one other than him, this catastrophe of wrongs, this cacophony of voices.
It is Ginny who discovers the note.
It says that Sirius is grateful for all they've done. He is hearing voices from the walls of the House, and even from the portrait of his mother. He thinks he is going insane. It says that who ever reads this, please tell Harry I will be okay. I'm leaving.
At first Ginny doesn't understand the note, because the portrait of Mrs. Black was taken down a long time ago, and Harry Potter died in the final battle with You-Know-Who.
And then, she gets it.
Sirius remembers his bike, sleek and leathered black, he wonders where it is and if he can still ride it, because Remus is in the moon and he'd like to see him again.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.