The Spell of Sealing
Casting Blame
By Anne B. Walsh
Under the light of a waning gibbous moon, Padfoot the dog trotted out of a small secret passage in Hogwarts's outer walls and headed for the statue of the Three Fates, each holding the symbol of her power over human lives.
I can't get too excited, he reminded himself. This isn't necessarily what I want it to be.
But the fact remained that only four people in the world had ever known Sirius Black had a fur-bearing form, and of those four, two were dead. Albus Dumbledore knew the truth as well now, but Dumbledore had no need to send Sirius cryptic notes asking for midnight meetings.
Though he might if he thought it was funny. He's got a weird sense of humor from time to time. Still, I don't think this is him.
Reaching the statue, he paced once around it, sniffing. If this were a real rendezvous, and not a prank or a joke, he was the first one to arrive for it.
May as well get comfortable.
He lay down, cushioning his head on his paws, and looked up at the night sky, remembering wistfully the nights he'd spent romping these same grounds in this same shape, Prongs galloping beside him, Wormtail scurrying to keep up, and Moony out in front, running off some of the boundless energy full moons brought him.
Though I think they stole it from the rest of his month to dump it all into that one night. Padfoot bared his teeth at the annoyance that spiked in his memory. We joked about it, called it his furry little problem, said he was dating Phoebe and Diana and Artemis, but it wasn't easy for him, not even with us there to help. He always looked tired, and older than he should be. And of course he never could hold down a job, not when he'd have to be absent three or four days a month at the best of times, and he hated accepting charity…
He frowned, dog-style, wrinkling up his nose and forehead. How has he been able to take care of Harry all this time, then? Babies cost, and little boys cost more. And Harry was an active kid, he never stopped moving except when he was asleep, and even then he was a squirmer. How could Moony have kept up with him?
{Are you asking?}
Padfoot was on his feet before he recalled moving, his hackles up, his teeth not quite bared at the stranger, the strange wolf, who had managed to get to within ten feet of him, practically beside him. {Who the hell are—} he began heatedly, then stopped in confusion as tone, body language, scent, all finally registered with him.
{"Speak of the devil, and lo, he appears."} The wolf's silvery tail described metronomic arcs in the air, ticking off his amusement. {It's nice to see you again, Padfoot. For more than a few passing seconds while battling an overgrown arachnid, that is.}
{But—} Padfoot sat down hard, and looked up at the sky to reassure himself that he hadn't somehow lost track of most of a month. {This is impossible. Full moon was last week. How are you still—} He stopped as another incongruency made itself known. {And you're talking! You never used to be able to talk, not like this—the change took your mind away, we had to herd you around like an actual wolf with a grudge against humans—}
{It's all part and parcel of that same story.} Moony sat down as well, tilting his head in a familiar gesture to look levelly at Padfoot. {Are you going to listen, or just splutter all night long?}
{Oh, you haven't heard spluttering.} Padfoot shook his head hard, making his ears flap back and forth. {Damn you, Moony, you went and disappeared on me for four bloody years, with my godson, I think I'm due a few seconds of shock—and where is Harry, for that matter?} He looked around, scanning the scenery behind Moony's back for the shape of a little boy not quite six years old, a boy with his father's face and his mother's eyes. {Is he all right?}
{He's alive and well, yes.} Had he been human, Moony's words would have been clipped and curt, a tone expressed in his wolf form by the sharp angle of his ears and shoulders. {And as for disappearing on you, Padfoot, I thought you were dead until a few months ago. Lily assumed, when she brought Harry to me, that Voldemort breaking the Fidelius could only mean that both you and Wormtail had been found out and killed. And of course James was already dead at that point as well, and Lily died that same night. Leaving me the last man standing. The one who had to make the decision for both of us.}
{Decision? What decision?} Padfoot dug his paws into the ground, trying to fight the feeling that it was being dug out from underneath him, the world shifting its boundaries. {Moony, what the hell did you do?}
{You're looking at it.} Moony raised one paw and brushed at his head, his chest, his hindquarters. {This is who I am now, Padfoot. Who we both are. The change is irreversible.}
"Are you insane?" Until the words emerged in a shout, Sirius didn't realize he'd reverted to human. "What the hell could possibly make you think—what right did you have—"
{What right do you have to second-guess me?} Moony's ears flattened, and he growled low in his throat. {You weren't there, Padfoot. As far as I knew, you'd never be there again.}
"You could have waited a couple days, at least!" Sirius curled his hands into fists, as the preferable option to drawing his wand. "Found out what was going on, asked somebody what happened to me—"
{With the Death Eaters going off like a load of jostled fireworks? When I had no idea who might be safe to approach and who might not, or even who was still alive?} Moony snorted, a sound of contempt Sirius had seldom heard from him. {Never mind. I don't know why I bothered to tell you all of this. Except that it's unnecessarily cruel to leave you in the dark forever. So, now you know. We call him Grasseye, if you were wondering.}
"Merlin's bootlace." Sirius had to fight for breath as this second revelation punched into him. "That wolf cub, in the Forest—not the little tiny cub, that was a girl, but the older one, the one who was playing with Hermione—I thought those eyes looked familiar!" He stopped, hearing again the precise phrasing of his friend's communication. "Wait. We?"
{Apparently I make a more attractive wolf than I ever did a human.} Moony's eyes softened momentarily, as he glanced back towards the Forest. {Her name is Smokepaw. She's more than I deserve. And that 'little tiny cub' you noticed is our daughter Ashtail.} His teeth flashed in a wolf's grin. {Surprised, Padfoot?}
"Maybe a little." Sirius pressed his fingertips against his forehead, trying to take it all in. Moony's alive, he's all right—hell with all right, he's married with a kid of his own, he's damn well fantastic! And Harry's alive and all right, he's even got a family again, father and mother, a baby sister to pick on—it ought to be the greatest news I've heard in years, and in a lot of ways it is, but there's just one itty-bitty little problem—
"So where do I come in?" he asked when he thought he could say it without whining. "I'm still Harry's godfather. I ought to have some right to him."
{Oh, well.} Moony scuffed a bit of dirt idly underpaw. {If we're going to talk about rights.} Despite his speech being silent, his tone nonetheless managed to be as withering as Sirius remembered it from a certain episode in their sixth year involving Severus Snape and the Whomping Willow. {Who might have had the right to know what you and Prongs and Wormtail cooked up among the three of you with regards to that Fidelius Charm?}
"What the hell?" Sirius stared at the silver-furred wolf. "That has nothing to do with this!"
{That has everything to do with this!} Moony snarled aloud, so fiercely that Sirius flinched. {You didn't trust me then. Why should I trust you now?}
"Because—" Sirius floundered in a morass of half-developed thoughts. "Because I'm your friend, dammit!"
{You were my friend. And I was yours. But then you decided I might be too risky to tell the truth.} Moony flicked the dirt off his paw, the gesture as contemptuous as his earlier snort. {You decided there was a greater chance I was the spy than Wormtail. You had a fifty-fifty chance, Padfoot. One in two. And you blew it.}
"Merlin's balls, you think I don't know that?" Sirius shouted back, losing his temper at last. "You think I don't live with that every day, dream about it every night? You think I haven't beat myself up for that decision a million times, begged the universe to make it not have happened, wished I could trade the entire rest of my life for just those two damn minutes to live over and do it differently? But it doesn't work like that, Moony. All the wishing in the world won't change the past." He blew out a breath, tiredly, and leaned back against one of the Fates. "Prongs and Lily are dead. I killed Wormtail myself. And you did—whatever the hell you did. I'm not asking you to tell me the details."
Moony's tail swished left, right, left, then curled with precision around his front paws as he sat down. {What are you asking for?} he said quietly.
"Forgiveness, to start with." Sirius shut his eyes. "For the dumbest thing I've ever done. Not to mention the one that managed to hurt everyone I cared about but let me off free as a bird." A shaky laugh forced its way out of him. "How stupid is it that I almost would've liked it better if I hadn't got to Wormtail in time? If he'd blown the hell out of that street and got me blamed for it, and probably stuffed in Azkaban without so much as a trial? At least then I'd feel like I was doing a little of the suffering, instead of getting it spread around to everybody except me, when it's my fault to begin with…"
A cold nose against the side of his neck made him yelp and jerk away.
Moony thumped his tail against the side of the statue, wolf-grinning once more. {That's for all the times you did that to me,} he said, then sobered. {We're neither of us being fair, are we, Sirius? To ourselves, or to each other. We made the decisions we thought were best, at the time, with what we knew, and now here we stand casting blame and deciding who 'ought to' suffer.}
"Trouble being, 'ought to' has damn-all to do with 'is'." Sirius ran his hands through his hair, sighing. "Moony, I'm sorry. I should've told you what we were doing with the Fidelius. Hell, I should've asked you to be Secret Keeper instead! But I didn't, and we both get to deal with the fallout of that for the rest of our lives."
{And if you're not going to classify that as suffering, what is it, exactly?} Moony snorted, this time with a great deal more humor. {A walk in the park?}
"Maybe one designed by Snivellus." Sirius cast an unfriendly glance back towards the castle. "He's here, did you know? Dumbledore hired him on as Potions professor after Slughorn left. And he keeps applying for Defense every year, and he keeps getting turned down in favor of the most god-awful parade of losers—which is where I come in, as assistant Defense professor…"
{Oh, is that what you're still doing here?} Moony smirked, a peculiar expression to see on a wolf's face but nonetheless the only word which could be applied. {I thought McGonagall finally figured out how much of your N.E.W.T.s you copied from James and me, and hauled you back here to retake your seventh year classes until you could pass them by yourself.}
"Hey!"
Moony ducked Sirius's swat easily, panting laughter. {My turn,} he said, sitting down, the amusement dying out of his eyes. {Sirius, I'm sorry. I should have checked on what Lily told me before making any irrevocable decisions. But I was alone and frightened, far more for Harry than for myself, and I did what I thought was best for us both.}
"And you baffled the hell out of everyone in the process, which can't be too bad a thing, given the cult that's grown up around the both of you." Sirius looked his friend over, head to tail. "Has Dumbledore told you about any of it? The Boy Who Disappeared, that's what they've decided on calling Harry. There isn't really one solid name for you, but the Mysterious Friend is the best one I've heard."
{Now with extra mystery.} Moony snickered. {And as petty as it may be, a bit of revenge on Lucius Malfoy for all those cracks he used to make about shabbily-dressed Gryffindors. I'm just as glad he's the age he is and not a year younger—if we'd had another year at Hogwarts together, I can't help but think he might have figured me out. Whereas now…}
"You've got a hold of the one thing in the world he might actually like more than himself." Sirius grinned. "How is he? Little devil?"
{Surprisingly good-natured, as it happens.} Moony tilted his head and scratched one ear with a hind foot. {He can understand us, the way you can, so he knows we're not animals, but we're shaped like animals, so he doesn't feel he has to be on his pureblood best manners. It's probably the only time in his life he's been able to behave like a normal child, and to him, it's one big adventure. Especially with Alcyone including him in the cubs' magic lessons. I doubt he'll want to leave.}
"Yeah, well." Sirius shrugged. "I sort of promised Narcissa I'd ask about that. She's going a bit mad over it. Been imagining all kinds of horrors. Like what would've happened if any of us hadn't turned up in time to fight that damn acromantula. Hell, if Hermione hadn't been there with those rocks she was throwing!"
{That's the little Muggleborn girl?} Moony's eyes half-lidded as he thought back. {I liked the look of her. And Grasseye hasn't stopped talking about her, about how much she knew about the magical world even though she'd only just learned about it.} Opening his eyes fully, he caught the tail end of Sirius's skeptical look. {What?}
"Do you have to do that?" Sirius shifted in place. "He has a name. So do you, for that matter."
Moony sighed. {Sirius, I want this to work,} he said patiently. {But if you're going to harp on the things that don't really matter, it won't. He's been Grasseye a great deal longer than he ever was Harry Potter, and it's the name that's most appropriate for the person he has to be in his everyday life. When in Rome…}
"I know, I know." Sirius sighed in his turn. "Light a Roman candle."
{I'm not sure that's quite how the saying goes, but all right.} Moony brushed this mode of discussion away with one front paw. {Have you stayed in touch with her? With Hermione?}
"Yes, and that's another reason I'm so damn glad to see you. You were always better on theory than I was, and she's got loads of questions about how magic works, where it comes from, what it can and can't do…" Sirius shook his head, baffled. "Girl's not even seven, and already asking about things we never so much as thought about until we were third and fourth years!"
{And you said Narcissa is worried about her son, and wants him back?} Moony seemed to be doodling on the stone plinth of the statue with a claw. {What is she willing to do towards that end?}
"Honestly? Just about anything, provided she can swing it without tipping Lucius off to what she's doing." Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Mr. Padfoot would like to know what Mr. Moony has in mind."
The wolf finished his drawing and regarded it calmly. {Mr. Moony wonders why Mr. Padfoot thinks he has anything in mind.}
"Mr. Padfoot requests that Mr. Moony stop thinking four years apart has completely dulled his brain."
{Mr. Moony would like to express his astonishment that Mr. Padfoot has one of those articles on hand.} Chuckling, Moony dodged a thump between the ears with Sirius's fist. {All right, all right! Let me get my Fwoopers in a row, and then you can start throwing spells.}
"Fair enough. But one question first." Sirius waited until Moony looked up, blue eyes meeting gray. "When do I get to see him again? And meet your wife and kid, for that matter? They're your and…and Grasseye's family, they ought to be mine too."
Moony's tail raised a small cloud of dust behind him. {Now that sounds like the Padfoot I used to know,} he said, getting to his feet. {Plans can wait. Let's go now.}
A moment later, two canine figures were loping through the night towards the Forest.
So the first ten chapters or so have been set-up. Getting the main players onto the stage that sort of thing. Next ten maybe will cover time before Hogwarts, with an option for ten more if needed, and then onwards from there. Sound good?
Yes, it's turning into another epic. I'm sure you're all horribly disappointed.