A Dangerverse Datebook
17 September 1998: Every Story
By Anne B. Walsh
That which is JKR’s or Elton John’s and Tim Rice’s is not mine. Feel free to look for clues about how the DV will end!
Sirius Black peered more closely at the explanatory plaque about Egyptian numerals.
So three of those, two of these, and one of the little things right there, and that makes how many days we’ve been Voldemort-free. Nearly a year... Merlin, peace feels good. Takes maintenance, of course, but so does everything else in life.
He and Remus were doing their part for that with this day out. They’d started to notice Danger and Aletha looking a little worn recently (parenting might be like riding a broomstick, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t still fall off) and this morning had invoked their rights as the men of the Pack to declare today a cub-free time and drag their wives out of the Den for a trip to London. Aletha had started humming before they’d gone more than a mile down the road, and Danger had initiated a bad-joke-telling competition shortly thereafter which had lasted most of the way to the city.
It’s taken us a while, but I think we may finally have got the hang of this marriage thing.
Though it was only September, the day was a bit too crisp to spend much time outdoors, so the Pack-adults had elected for a trip to the British Museum. They were currently in a section devoted to ancient Egypt, at least Sirius and Aletha were. Remus and Danger had disappeared somewhere near a display of scarab beetles.
We’ll find them at some point, or they’ll find us. No rush.
He turned to look at the rest of the room. The central display was a life-sized mannequin of a woman dressed in royal finery, but there were several other cases around the room, and the hem of a cream-colored skirt had just whisked past one...
Looks like someone wants to play.
Pretending great interest in the contents of the nearest case, a collection of papyrus fragments, Sirius worked his way around it, tossing glances at random towards the other end of the room where Aletha was earnestly studying the reproduced wall paintings. Every time he looked, though, she was in a different spot, and once their eyes met. Both of them froze, as if caught looking at a stranger, then quickly looked away again. Sirius moved to the next case, and heard Aletha doing the same. In a moment, he could begin to look for her again.
Like tag, only with eyes instead of hands.
Finally, he came around the front of the central case, only to find her there, studying him as she had the artifacts. "Do I know you?" she inquired.
"I’m not sure." Sirius played along. "I do seem to recall you from somewhere."
"Yes, but I’m sure we haven’t met before." Aletha eyed Sirius’ white shirt and tan slacks, then her own calf-length ivory dress. "Though we match rather well, I think."
"Yes, we do, don’t we?" Sirius abandoned the game and threaded an arm around Aletha’s shoulders, looking up at the mannequin. "I like powerful women," he said. "They make me feel at home."
"You’re improving. I could tell that was a compliment without having to think about it for more than ten seconds." Aletha leaned her head against his arm, following his gaze to the mannequin’s plaster-white face, sculpted into sternly beautiful features. "Bit off-color, isn’t she?"
"They probably don’t want scholars telling them she’s the wrong shade." Sirius let his mind paint the face behind the glass with different colors of skin and animate it. The resultant picture tangled itself up with his earlier thoughts about peace and what had come before, and the conglomerate thought tumbled through his game with Aletha, growing like a snowball as it did.
"You have your Valentina Jett look on," Aletha commented. "What are you thinking?"
"Just wondering what the world would be like if Voldemort had won after all."
Aletha shuddered. "Don’t even joke about that. Please."
"You’re right. Too soon." But the story now blossoming in his mind refused to be denied. "So what if Grindelwald had won, then? What if he’d gone through with his ‘wizards must rule for the greater good’ scheme?"
Aletha laughed. "I’d be a peasant. Or a slave."
"Slave princess, maybe."
"Slaves don’t have princesses."
"They do if they were princesses before they were slaves."
"And how exactly would I get to be a princess?"
"Work with me here. Let’s say your father was a leader of a secret rebellion, a movement to give Muggles power again. They might want to crown him king—I’m sure Grindelwald would have done it, and the only proper opponent for a king is another king."
"My father, a king." Aletha shook her head. "Tell me another one."
"I’d probably be a prince, or something close to it."
"Going to marry the princess?" Aletha glanced at the mannequin again.
"I might have been," Sirius said, struck by the idea. "If Grindelwald made himself king, he’d need an heir, and the best heir is always one of the bloodline, especially if he was hoping to rule the purebloods. So whatever his actual preferences, he’d have tried to father a kid or two. Probably hoping for a son, but what if all he got was a daughter?"
"Marry her off to the purest blood they could find, and hope for better luck next time," Aletha supplied. "And I’ve seen your family tree."
"And by extension that of most of pureblood Britain. So as long as I’d never done anything too disqualifying—and I probably never would have run off if they could have given me something fun to do, something like shutting down Muggle rebellions—I’d be prime princess-marrying material." The story began to unfold in Sirius’ mind, playing out in flashing scenes, moments between people, notes of music. "Until I met this beautiful slave girl, and stopped her from being sent off to a work assignment that would kill her because, although I could never admit it even to myself, I was wildly attracted to her."
"Would you give her to your fiancée as a gift?" Aletha said archly.
"That would be unethical. Not to mention a horrible thing to do to both of them."
"That sounds like a yes."
"It is," Sirius acknowledged. "Would the beautiful slave princess be attracted to me in return?"
"She’d never admit it to herself either, but yes, I think she would. She might have a few half-friendly conversations with you, then realize she was fraternizing with the enemy and snap at you before running off." Aletha hummed a few notes of a song. "Would you know she was a princess?"
"No, but my personal slave would."
"You have a personal slave?"
"Of course I have a personal slave. And he comes from the same place as the princess, so he knows who she is. He’s almost always with me, and sometimes tries to find ways to hint to me that I shouldn’t be involved with this slave girl, it’s too dangerous."
Aletha looked sideways at him. "And who are you thinking would be this so-helpful slave of yours?"
"Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a man I spend a lot of time with, one who’d have been not much more than a slave under the rules Grindelwald wanted established..."
"That’s what I thought. Promise me one thing?"
"Hmm?"
"If you ever tell him about this, I get to watch." Aletha grinned. "I want to see what he thinks up to do to you for casting him as that."
Sirius laughed. "I promise. And just think, he comes with a built-in lady friend who’d hail you as the princess when he takes you out to the camp where your people are living in squalor. They bring out the closest thing they have to royal finery for you to wear, and you realize how terrible it is of you to even be thinking of me that way, that you have to be the princess of the downtrodden and not the mistress of their conquerors’ prince..."
Aletha lifted an eyebrow. "Mistress?"
"Possibly a bad choice of word?" Sirius hazarded, hearing the dangerous tone in his wife’s voice.
"Possibly."
"‘Paramour’ work better for you?"
"It will do." Aletha gestured broadly in front of them, as though indicating a path. "Please, continue."
"Well, sooner or later the wizards are going to catch up with the Muggle leaders. One of whom would be your father. So you’d have a dilemma on your hands."
"Do I cling to the terrible oppressor whom I happen to love, or do I fight for the father whose cause is almost certainly lost?" Aletha stopped at her own flippant tone. "That’s not as funny as I thought it would be."
"No, it’s not, and I’d have troubles of my own; I’m supposed to marry the princess, remember. The magical princess, not you. But I wouldn’t want her."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes," Sirius said firmly. "I’m sure. No matter what world I was in, if you were there too, I would never want any other woman."
Aletha smiled lazily at him. "We need to go out on the town more often, if it makes you say things like that."
"We need to go out on the town more often if it makes you look like that." Sirius returned the smile and told a few other parts of him that they were just going to have to wait. "So I’m in love with you and you’re in love with me—I’m sure I’d tell you sooner or later, but not to your face, I’d write you a letter or some such—but I’m under parental pressure to not blow our family chances at a throne and you can’t turn your back on all your fellow slaves."
"And since when did parental pressure get you to do anything?"
"Good point. I’d tell them off and storm out. But my parents weren’t stupid. Bigoted beyond a doubt, but not stupid. They’d figure out about you, and decide the best way to get me back would be to get rid of you. So off go the Hit Wizards to find you, at the camp with the other slaves..."
"And when they call for me, another steps forward in my place," Aletha murmured, eyes half-shut.
"Hey, who’s telling this story?"
"Am I wrong?"
"No, you’re right... it’s just..." Sirius shook his head. "Never mind. So a particularly brave Muggle woman, or more likely a certain Muggle-born witch, dies in your place, and you get away, and come to see me one last time."
"To tell you goodbye." Aletha clasped Sirius’ hand. "And that if you really love me and want to help me, you’ll marry the princess and try to change the way the world works. But that can’t be all there is to that moment..."
"It isn’t." Sirius saw it as plainly as he could see the museum room in front of them. "The princess would be listening. She’d hear everything. And she’d know she’d lost me forever, that even if I married her I’d never love her. Because I love you."
"I feel so sorry for her," Aletha said, gazing up at the mannequin’s impassive face once more. "She’d probably have been dreaming about you since you were both children, and suddenly to have you taken away, by a slave, no less? It would hurt her, hurt her more than I can understand, because I’ve always expected I’d have my own life, but she’d have been trained to subsume her whole self into that identity of ‘wife’..."
Sirius pulled himself out of pity for a person who had never really existed. "So you’d go to free your father, but the guards catch up with you, and my slave and I catch up with the guards..."
"Your slave protects us with his life, and you free my father yourself, so that he can keep fighting to free the Muggles from the wizarding tyranny." Aletha smiled at his half-open mouth. "I’m starting to catch the rhythm of how this works. At any given crossroads, you do whatever hurts most, because that’s how you keep the audience’s attention, by forcing the characters to make hard choices."
"Not quite how I’d put it, but more accurate than I like to admit." Sirius heaved a sigh. "And that would blow my cover completely. I’d have no choice but to admit I loved you, and I was willing to betray wizards to help Muggles. And they’d kill us both for it."
"I’d like to think the princess would intervene for us, though." Aletha’s eyes were closed now, and Sirius wondered if the look of intense concentration on her face resembled his own as he thought out his plots. "Not enough to spare us, she couldn’t do that, we’re dangers to her people, the people she’s going to have to rule on her own now, but maybe enough to let us die together..."
"And I’d make you a promise first." Sirius caught Aletha’s hands in his, meeting her eyes as she opened them and seeing the same memory in them he was living himself, the memory of a stone room and cold laughter as they were forced to pervert the vows they had sworn in love. "No matter what happens to us, no matter how long I have to search, I’ll find you again. Always. I swear by my magic."
"And I by mine," Aletha whispered, gripping his hands tightly. "And I by mine."
They stood gazing at one another for a moment, then began to laugh, albeit shakily.
"But since Grindelwald did not win, and neither did Voldemort, we don’t have to worry about it," Sirius said, releasing one of Aletha’s hands but keeping the other in his grasp. "What we do have to worry about is finding our alphas, and then finding some food. I’m famished."
"We ate three hours ago, Sirius."
"But that’s twenty-one hours in dog time..."
It might have seemed to the Blacks, had they looked up as they left the room to the sound of their own affectionate banter, that the features of the mannequin had taken on the faintest of smiles.
But then again, it might not.
For those of you who may not know, the story being referenced in this chapter is that of the musical Aida. I've used a few songs from it in various DV
stories and felt like working up the whole thing tonight. Thanks again for reading.