"Strange Ways" by Applecede
Story Title:
Author: applecede
Word Count: 2,609
Summary: People have strange ways of coping with the trials in their lives. A look at how Sirius and Harry deal with loss.
Disclaimers for Squicks: Character death, PG/PG13 rating overall
Years in Azkaban had made him accustomed to the cold, so even the cool nights of fall made him uncomfortable. Autumn nights found Sirius Black sleeping with the bedside window open, drapes pushed haphazardly aside. He knew when fall had finally given way to winter because a chill swept into his room. The sudden change in temperature woke him, and he sat up, his lower waist tangled in the sheets, passing a hand over his eyes to make sure he was awake.
It was the beginning of another winter.
* * *
The Order and the Weasley clan were occupying the derelict house a month later, and their presence was successful in distracting Sirius from his darker moments. Once Arthur Weasley was on the mend, the mood lightened considerably. The house was cleaned, Christmas decorations were strung about, and all in all, everything was very festive.
The day before Christmas, the Weasley’s and Harry launched a chess tournament. Harry was eliminated rather quickly, and it soon boiled down to Ron and Bill.
Bill trounced his little brother soundly, and Christmas Eve was spent with a lot of good-natured ribbing and teasing. Molly Weasley cooked up a storm, and nutmeg and vanilla chocolate and peanut butter cookies and peanut butter cookies floated out on levitated trays. Black-red cherry currant pie, crust thick and crumbly in the mouth, was the pièce de résistance.
Sirius was in the middle of it all, hearty and exuberant, and on one of his trips back from the kitchen, laden with a tray of butterbeer that Tonks had brought, he paused in the doorway.
Harry was sprawled on the rug, hair mussed, glasses askew as he tilted his head. His eyes were sleepy, but he was smiling widely at something one of the twins was saying.
Harry inspired loyalty in the people around him. James had had that same quality. Seeing Harry there, surrounded by his friends, Sirius felt drawn to James’ son as well.
Ginny Weasley passed in front of him with another tray, her eyes bright and cheeks brushed red. “Sirius, are you going to hold that all night?”
Sirius started and returned the smile. “Not all night.”
Maybe it was seeing Harry there, looking so much like James that Remus had noticed too, and Remus had had to glance away when Harry had laughed. Whatever it was, Sirius woke early in the night again.
He made his way down to the kitchen by a sense and feel of having lived in the wretched house for too long. One time, in a grim hour, Sirius had wished that he wouldn’t know when his foot would touch the last step and that he would break his neck on the stairs.
Sirius felt his way around in the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee, and sank into a wooden chair at the table. He pressed the hot cup against his feverish forehead and inhaled all the leftover smells from Molly’s cooking. He could smell the spice and the salt and the tangy sweetness of the single slice of leftover pie.
Sirius had always known that he and James had a fatal friendship-theirs had been a relationship that had been so self-indulged and so full of each other that it could exclude or destroy a third party without pause. They each had that implicit trust in each other, and it would only take the word of one to convince the other of a truth. Just like when Sirius had took it on good faith when James told him that Tiffany Pierce, a girl a year older than them at Hogwarts, was only interested in being the girlfriend of a Black and had designs on marrying into the noble house of Black. Or when Sirius returned the favor and told James not to trust the new boy, Kent, because he was a good-for-nothing who really would get James expelled. Both Tiffany and Kent had been spurned and turned on.
Remus had always said it was lucky that James and Sirius had each other’s best interests at heart.
Sirius had never known that that friendship could have been just as fatal to them as it was for an outsider. He hadn’t known that their immediate believing of each other’s words had a downside.
“You came quickly,” said Sirius.
James grinned. “You called.”
Sirius returned the grin with a lift of his lips and clapped James on the back. “I have an idea, Prongs.”
James arched an eyebrow as he followed Sirius into the house. “The last time you had an idea, we were fined several hundred Galleons.” He smiled, a man pleasantly surprised as he greeted, “Hello, Wormtail. Are you encouraging Padfoot in his antics again? You remember how dangerous that is.”
Oh, Merlin. If only James had protested-if only James had doubted Sirius-
Sirius recognized the light footfall outside the kitchen, and a pause later, the door swung open.
“Do you know what it’s like to trust your life with someone else?”
Harry blinked in the darkness, his hand reaching out for the light switch before he remembered that he was at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, and there were no light switches to flip. So he said, “Lumos” and the candles caught and flared, flooding the kitchen with dim but warm light, casting new shadows, and revealing Sirius, who was sitting at the kitchen table, elbows braced on the wood on either side of a cup of coffee that had, from the looks of it, long grown cold.
“What?” said Harry, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light.
“Have you ever known a friendship with ties so deep that it had the power to kill? Kill to defend it, I mean.” Sirius’s voice was thoughtful. “What sort of friendship must you have that you would entrust your life to someone else?”
“The kind you had, I imagine,” said Harry lightly.
Sirius ran a finger around the rim of his ceramic cup, peering into the murky liquid. “Yeah,” he said softly, “Yeah.”
Harry was silent a moment before he spoke. “I trust Ron and Hermione with my life.”
Sirius gave him a crooked grin. “Loyalty and brains. Good combination. It’s what I had, too, backing me up.”
“I’m guessing Moony is the brains,” Harry grinned.
“Well,” sighed Sirius, and the exhalation was fond. “Remus is the brains. James had loyalty in spades. But no one could ever call James anything but smart. He could be brilliant when he wanted to be. The first time I met him, on the first day of our first year at Hogwarts, he was surrounded by all these little maggoty kids because they all knew James Potter knew all the best jinxes. I guess that we would have ended up best friends, one way or another.”
That was nine months and six days ago.
* * *
Strange are the ways of the grieving.
Some people mourned silently and in private, and others were open and shameless with their signs of anguish.
But Harry was Harry Potter, and there was bound to be something different about him, and that must extend to how he grieved, too. Harry became reckless when he was pushed to an extreme; he lost his head and all self-control, and he became heedless of the consequences that he would have to sustain. There may have been something heroic about that, but also certainly something stupid.
There was that something about Harry. It was that something that made him run after Bellatrix Lestrange, completely mindless of the curses being flung around him, tearing after her around unknown corridors and suspicious rooms in the Department of Mysteries.
Kill, kill, kill pounded through his head, and he was just like the basilisk, single-minded in his intent to take life.
Harry had always been a very good runner. He supposed it was because he had a Seeker’s body - light, trim, agile, speedy. It was in his blood to want to go faster than anything else around him, to feel the wind race the blood pounding in his head as he arrowed down in a dive. Running away from Dudley and his gang of tagalong bullies probably had also helped Harry develop a runner’s form.
He was off, in a dead sprint, chasing Bellatrix Lestrange, running so hard that his feet hurt when they slammed down against the stone floor and he felt the impact shuddering up his legs and through his knees.
That was four months and eighteen days ago.
* * *
Everyone had seen what Sirius Black’s death had done to Harry. Always an intensely private person, Harry had become completely shuttered and preoccupied with the darker side of things. He became obsessed with mourning Sirius. He wouldn’t let anyone forget Sirius’ death. The collisions between Harry and Snape reached an entirely new number and level.
It was only a matter of time before Harry did something rash, and everyone around him knew it.
* * *
Harry had insisted on visiting the Shrieking Shack, and Ron had halfheartedly went along with him. They had tramped through the half-melted snow to get there, slipping a few times, and the entire walk had been silent. Once they stood before the rundown house, Harry just stared, eating his fill of the house.
Ron had just about to suggest that they return because he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, when the sounds of an Apparation happened around them, and the next thing he knew, Harry had shoved Ron down to the ground and Ron was tasting mud and ice.
Harry scrambled to his feet, and from his breathless position on the ground, Ron looked up at him and thought that this was the first time Harry had looked so alive in a year and that this was terrible.
Harry had been spoiling for a confrontation since Bellatrix had escaped him last year, and now he had finally gotten what he wanted.
* * *
“Hey,” said Seamus suddenly. “I think that’s Ron.”
Hermione paused, frowning, still miffed that Harry and Ron would have left her behind when she had told them she would only be a moment in the apothecary. When she looked up, every other thought flew from her head.
“Oh,” Hermione gasped. “They’re being attacked! Get Professor Dumbledore, someone!”
Her scarf came loose as she ran; Ron had only broken briefly into view as his duel forced him to the crest of the snowy bank, and now he had retreated again, gone from Hermione’s sight. And where was Harry?
Neville gave Seamus and Dean one look, and he took off after Hermione.
* * *
The hex knocked the Death Eater onto his back, his wand spilling out of his hand.
“Accio,” rasped Ron, and the Death Eater’s wand soared into his outstretched hand. “Petrificus totalus!”
He looked around crazily, anticipating another attack, but everything was quiet. Remus Lupin was nearby, bending over Neville, who was bleeding badly from the leg. Hermione was speaking rapidly to Lupin. Dumbledore strode by, face drawn tight, glancing at the few bodies that remained-most had escaped.
Animals began to land heavily around them, and in the moment of silence and stillness right after battle, they went momentarily unnoticed.
Thestrals pawed the ground, tossing back their manes, their reptilian bodies gleaming in the moonlight so that they looked armored in the pale light. They moved amongst those that staggered about in confusion, snuffing here and there, foraging for food.
One came near Ron and licked his elbow, near his funny bone, and Ron jumped, the freckles stark against the white of his face, his eyes wild. He stared at the ugly creature before he spun away, searching for Harry.
“Harry is over there,” said Dumbledore quietly, standing a few feet away. “See to him. I will look after Mr. Longbottom first…Harry is all right.”
Harry didn’t look all right.
Harry was leaning back against nothing, down on his knees. A black-robed body lay prone before him, bent at an angle unnatural in life.
Harry looked like he had just fought the most wearying, most trying fight of his life, and Ron deduced that he must have killed someone powerful, someone strong. Antonin Dolohov, or-Bellatrix Lestrange. The grief on Harry’s face certainly indicated that. Ron’s step quickened, and his face wrenched slightly at the throbbing in his ankle. For a second, Ron thought that perhaps it was only his old hurt, come to haunt him again as it sometimes did, but no, this time, he really was wounded there for a second time. He slowed to a limp, moving closer to his best friend and hoping to Circe, Merlin, let it be over for Harry, let Bellatrix’s death be enough. Let Harry be Harry again, the boy who always had to watch his step, a cautious and troubled boy, but still alive and capable of laughing when he went too fast on his broom and he got sick over it.
But as Ron drew closer, he saw he was two times the wrong with his deductions. The body was too heavy, too short to be Dolohov or Bellatrix. The mask had slipped on his face, and when he had slumped over, the hood had fallen back, and it wasn’t Bellatrix or Dolohov or even Malfoy, it was Wormtail.
* * *
The very act of swallowing his spit seemed to be too hard of a task for Harry to handle. He forced himself up, managed to lurch three steps away, swaying as though he were seasick, and threw up.
His sides heaved, and he tightened his stomach muscles, helping the feeling along. He wanted to throw up everything that was part of him. He wanted to feel empty and hungry inside when he was done and know that the poison was gone from his body.
Harry collapsed to the ground. He seemed to have lost all feeling in his legs. If only he could have run. It wouldn’t have mattered where.
All the bonds and ties and friendships that had been wrecked and broken and torn asunder. The death of Wormtail couldn’t have mended it. Death was neither gauze nor ointment. But somehow-somehow, he had had the convoluted idea that maybe, maybe it would be right. That the urge that woke him in the middle of the night to call Sirius’ name into the two-way mirror would be gone. That his dreams of reaching through the veil would be gone. It was supposed to be over. This was the death that mattered.
Someone came near him, and Harry looked up. Remus Lupin was gray, but there was a resignation in him that Harry couldn’t understand. Ron stood off to the side, wand held limply in his hand.
“Hate is stronger than the grave, and I think you’re beginning to understand that now,” said Lupin very quietly, looking at Wormtail.
“What does that mean,” said Harry dully, not really caring but knowing that Lupin wanted some kind of response to indicate Harry was still conscious.
“It means hate doesn’t stop at the death of someone you have sought to kill for so long. Killing someone doesn’t kill what you feel inside. Merlin knows, Harry, you’ve got a right to be angry. You’ve got the right to hate. But that doesn’t make you lose the feeling inside of you.” Lupin looked up as Dumbledore approached. “Come on, Harry, on your feet.”
* * *
The following fall found Harry at a nondescript cemetery. The leaves and branches of elms and birches waved and leaned in the wind.
“Sirius,” Harry told the headstone blindly, his hand running over the stone, “You should have been the one to avenge their deaths.”
This was now.
Author: applecede
Word Count: 2,609
Summary: People have strange ways of coping with the trials in their lives. A look at how Sirius and Harry deal with loss.
Disclaimers for Squicks: Character death, PG/PG13 rating overall
Years in Azkaban had made him accustomed to the cold, so even the cool nights of fall made him uncomfortable. Autumn nights found Sirius Black sleeping with the bedside window open, drapes pushed haphazardly aside. He knew when fall had finally given way to winter because a chill swept into his room. The sudden change in temperature woke him, and he sat up, his lower waist tangled in the sheets, passing a hand over his eyes to make sure he was awake.
It was the beginning of another winter.
* * *
The Order and the Weasley clan were occupying the derelict house a month later, and their presence was successful in distracting Sirius from his darker moments. Once Arthur Weasley was on the mend, the mood lightened considerably. The house was cleaned, Christmas decorations were strung about, and all in all, everything was very festive.
The day before Christmas, the Weasley’s and Harry launched a chess tournament. Harry was eliminated rather quickly, and it soon boiled down to Ron and Bill.
Bill trounced his little brother soundly, and Christmas Eve was spent with a lot of good-natured ribbing and teasing. Molly Weasley cooked up a storm, and nutmeg and vanilla chocolate and peanut butter cookies and peanut butter cookies floated out on levitated trays. Black-red cherry currant pie, crust thick and crumbly in the mouth, was the pièce de résistance.
Sirius was in the middle of it all, hearty and exuberant, and on one of his trips back from the kitchen, laden with a tray of butterbeer that Tonks had brought, he paused in the doorway.
Harry was sprawled on the rug, hair mussed, glasses askew as he tilted his head. His eyes were sleepy, but he was smiling widely at something one of the twins was saying.
Harry inspired loyalty in the people around him. James had had that same quality. Seeing Harry there, surrounded by his friends, Sirius felt drawn to James’ son as well.
Ginny Weasley passed in front of him with another tray, her eyes bright and cheeks brushed red. “Sirius, are you going to hold that all night?”
Sirius started and returned the smile. “Not all night.”
Maybe it was seeing Harry there, looking so much like James that Remus had noticed too, and Remus had had to glance away when Harry had laughed. Whatever it was, Sirius woke early in the night again.
He made his way down to the kitchen by a sense and feel of having lived in the wretched house for too long. One time, in a grim hour, Sirius had wished that he wouldn’t know when his foot would touch the last step and that he would break his neck on the stairs.
Sirius felt his way around in the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee, and sank into a wooden chair at the table. He pressed the hot cup against his feverish forehead and inhaled all the leftover smells from Molly’s cooking. He could smell the spice and the salt and the tangy sweetness of the single slice of leftover pie.
Sirius had always known that he and James had a fatal friendship-theirs had been a relationship that had been so self-indulged and so full of each other that it could exclude or destroy a third party without pause. They each had that implicit trust in each other, and it would only take the word of one to convince the other of a truth. Just like when Sirius had took it on good faith when James told him that Tiffany Pierce, a girl a year older than them at Hogwarts, was only interested in being the girlfriend of a Black and had designs on marrying into the noble house of Black. Or when Sirius returned the favor and told James not to trust the new boy, Kent, because he was a good-for-nothing who really would get James expelled. Both Tiffany and Kent had been spurned and turned on.
Remus had always said it was lucky that James and Sirius had each other’s best interests at heart.
Sirius had never known that that friendship could have been just as fatal to them as it was for an outsider. He hadn’t known that their immediate believing of each other’s words had a downside.
“You came quickly,” said Sirius.
James grinned. “You called.”
Sirius returned the grin with a lift of his lips and clapped James on the back. “I have an idea, Prongs.”
James arched an eyebrow as he followed Sirius into the house. “The last time you had an idea, we were fined several hundred Galleons.” He smiled, a man pleasantly surprised as he greeted, “Hello, Wormtail. Are you encouraging Padfoot in his antics again? You remember how dangerous that is.”
Oh, Merlin. If only James had protested-if only James had doubted Sirius-
Sirius recognized the light footfall outside the kitchen, and a pause later, the door swung open.
“Do you know what it’s like to trust your life with someone else?”
Harry blinked in the darkness, his hand reaching out for the light switch before he remembered that he was at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, and there were no light switches to flip. So he said, “Lumos” and the candles caught and flared, flooding the kitchen with dim but warm light, casting new shadows, and revealing Sirius, who was sitting at the kitchen table, elbows braced on the wood on either side of a cup of coffee that had, from the looks of it, long grown cold.
“What?” said Harry, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light.
“Have you ever known a friendship with ties so deep that it had the power to kill? Kill to defend it, I mean.” Sirius’s voice was thoughtful. “What sort of friendship must you have that you would entrust your life to someone else?”
“The kind you had, I imagine,” said Harry lightly.
Sirius ran a finger around the rim of his ceramic cup, peering into the murky liquid. “Yeah,” he said softly, “Yeah.”
Harry was silent a moment before he spoke. “I trust Ron and Hermione with my life.”
Sirius gave him a crooked grin. “Loyalty and brains. Good combination. It’s what I had, too, backing me up.”
“I’m guessing Moony is the brains,” Harry grinned.
“Well,” sighed Sirius, and the exhalation was fond. “Remus is the brains. James had loyalty in spades. But no one could ever call James anything but smart. He could be brilliant when he wanted to be. The first time I met him, on the first day of our first year at Hogwarts, he was surrounded by all these little maggoty kids because they all knew James Potter knew all the best jinxes. I guess that we would have ended up best friends, one way or another.”
That was nine months and six days ago.
* * *
Strange are the ways of the grieving.
Some people mourned silently and in private, and others were open and shameless with their signs of anguish.
But Harry was Harry Potter, and there was bound to be something different about him, and that must extend to how he grieved, too. Harry became reckless when he was pushed to an extreme; he lost his head and all self-control, and he became heedless of the consequences that he would have to sustain. There may have been something heroic about that, but also certainly something stupid.
There was that something about Harry. It was that something that made him run after Bellatrix Lestrange, completely mindless of the curses being flung around him, tearing after her around unknown corridors and suspicious rooms in the Department of Mysteries.
Kill, kill, kill pounded through his head, and he was just like the basilisk, single-minded in his intent to take life.
Harry had always been a very good runner. He supposed it was because he had a Seeker’s body - light, trim, agile, speedy. It was in his blood to want to go faster than anything else around him, to feel the wind race the blood pounding in his head as he arrowed down in a dive. Running away from Dudley and his gang of tagalong bullies probably had also helped Harry develop a runner’s form.
He was off, in a dead sprint, chasing Bellatrix Lestrange, running so hard that his feet hurt when they slammed down against the stone floor and he felt the impact shuddering up his legs and through his knees.
That was four months and eighteen days ago.
* * *
Everyone had seen what Sirius Black’s death had done to Harry. Always an intensely private person, Harry had become completely shuttered and preoccupied with the darker side of things. He became obsessed with mourning Sirius. He wouldn’t let anyone forget Sirius’ death. The collisions between Harry and Snape reached an entirely new number and level.
It was only a matter of time before Harry did something rash, and everyone around him knew it.
* * *
Harry had insisted on visiting the Shrieking Shack, and Ron had halfheartedly went along with him. They had tramped through the half-melted snow to get there, slipping a few times, and the entire walk had been silent. Once they stood before the rundown house, Harry just stared, eating his fill of the house.
Ron had just about to suggest that they return because he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, when the sounds of an Apparation happened around them, and the next thing he knew, Harry had shoved Ron down to the ground and Ron was tasting mud and ice.
Harry scrambled to his feet, and from his breathless position on the ground, Ron looked up at him and thought that this was the first time Harry had looked so alive in a year and that this was terrible.
Harry had been spoiling for a confrontation since Bellatrix had escaped him last year, and now he had finally gotten what he wanted.
* * *
“Hey,” said Seamus suddenly. “I think that’s Ron.”
Hermione paused, frowning, still miffed that Harry and Ron would have left her behind when she had told them she would only be a moment in the apothecary. When she looked up, every other thought flew from her head.
“Oh,” Hermione gasped. “They’re being attacked! Get Professor Dumbledore, someone!”
Her scarf came loose as she ran; Ron had only broken briefly into view as his duel forced him to the crest of the snowy bank, and now he had retreated again, gone from Hermione’s sight. And where was Harry?
Neville gave Seamus and Dean one look, and he took off after Hermione.
* * *
The hex knocked the Death Eater onto his back, his wand spilling out of his hand.
“Accio,” rasped Ron, and the Death Eater’s wand soared into his outstretched hand. “Petrificus totalus!”
He looked around crazily, anticipating another attack, but everything was quiet. Remus Lupin was nearby, bending over Neville, who was bleeding badly from the leg. Hermione was speaking rapidly to Lupin. Dumbledore strode by, face drawn tight, glancing at the few bodies that remained-most had escaped.
Animals began to land heavily around them, and in the moment of silence and stillness right after battle, they went momentarily unnoticed.
Thestrals pawed the ground, tossing back their manes, their reptilian bodies gleaming in the moonlight so that they looked armored in the pale light. They moved amongst those that staggered about in confusion, snuffing here and there, foraging for food.
One came near Ron and licked his elbow, near his funny bone, and Ron jumped, the freckles stark against the white of his face, his eyes wild. He stared at the ugly creature before he spun away, searching for Harry.
“Harry is over there,” said Dumbledore quietly, standing a few feet away. “See to him. I will look after Mr. Longbottom first…Harry is all right.”
Harry didn’t look all right.
Harry was leaning back against nothing, down on his knees. A black-robed body lay prone before him, bent at an angle unnatural in life.
Harry looked like he had just fought the most wearying, most trying fight of his life, and Ron deduced that he must have killed someone powerful, someone strong. Antonin Dolohov, or-Bellatrix Lestrange. The grief on Harry’s face certainly indicated that. Ron’s step quickened, and his face wrenched slightly at the throbbing in his ankle. For a second, Ron thought that perhaps it was only his old hurt, come to haunt him again as it sometimes did, but no, this time, he really was wounded there for a second time. He slowed to a limp, moving closer to his best friend and hoping to Circe, Merlin, let it be over for Harry, let Bellatrix’s death be enough. Let Harry be Harry again, the boy who always had to watch his step, a cautious and troubled boy, but still alive and capable of laughing when he went too fast on his broom and he got sick over it.
But as Ron drew closer, he saw he was two times the wrong with his deductions. The body was too heavy, too short to be Dolohov or Bellatrix. The mask had slipped on his face, and when he had slumped over, the hood had fallen back, and it wasn’t Bellatrix or Dolohov or even Malfoy, it was Wormtail.
* * *
The very act of swallowing his spit seemed to be too hard of a task for Harry to handle. He forced himself up, managed to lurch three steps away, swaying as though he were seasick, and threw up.
His sides heaved, and he tightened his stomach muscles, helping the feeling along. He wanted to throw up everything that was part of him. He wanted to feel empty and hungry inside when he was done and know that the poison was gone from his body.
Harry collapsed to the ground. He seemed to have lost all feeling in his legs. If only he could have run. It wouldn’t have mattered where.
All the bonds and ties and friendships that had been wrecked and broken and torn asunder. The death of Wormtail couldn’t have mended it. Death was neither gauze nor ointment. But somehow-somehow, he had had the convoluted idea that maybe, maybe it would be right. That the urge that woke him in the middle of the night to call Sirius’ name into the two-way mirror would be gone. That his dreams of reaching through the veil would be gone. It was supposed to be over. This was the death that mattered.
Someone came near him, and Harry looked up. Remus Lupin was gray, but there was a resignation in him that Harry couldn’t understand. Ron stood off to the side, wand held limply in his hand.
“Hate is stronger than the grave, and I think you’re beginning to understand that now,” said Lupin very quietly, looking at Wormtail.
“What does that mean,” said Harry dully, not really caring but knowing that Lupin wanted some kind of response to indicate Harry was still conscious.
“It means hate doesn’t stop at the death of someone you have sought to kill for so long. Killing someone doesn’t kill what you feel inside. Merlin knows, Harry, you’ve got a right to be angry. You’ve got the right to hate. But that doesn’t make you lose the feeling inside of you.” Lupin looked up as Dumbledore approached. “Come on, Harry, on your feet.”
* * *
The following fall found Harry at a nondescript cemetery. The leaves and branches of elms and birches waved and leaned in the wind.
“Sirius,” Harry told the headstone blindly, his hand running over the stone, “You should have been the one to avenge their deaths.”
This was now.