Requiem

4. Requiem

Jade stared out of the window of the boardroom at Obscurus Books into the fading light and sighed. Again. This interminable meeting was draining every scrap of patience she possessed. She pressed her fingertips hard against the dully throbbing headache lurking at her temples like an impending storm and cracked the tense vertebrae in her neck. It wasn't just that the board members seemed quite content to ramble self-importantly for the rest of the night; a vague uneasiness that she hadn't been able to shift all day was pressing steadily harder on her mind, like that feeling when you can't remember switching the iron off, but more foreboding. Jade tasted ink on her lip and realised that she has bitten her quill into a mangled and bedraggled mess. It looked more like the remnants of a drowned seabird than a writing implement.

Darkness had fallen completely by the time her boss began shuffling bits of parchment to indicate the close of the meeting. Jade slipped as quickly as possible to the adjacent hallway where there was another fireplace, and floo-ed directly to 12 Grimmauld Place. After a few long moments of whirling green smoke and ash, she scrambled out of the fireplace in Sirius's bedroom. It was long past dinner time, and she fully expected to see him lying on his back, staring morosely at the ceiling.

But the room was empty, looking as though a whirlwind had swept through it, taking Sirius along and leaving the detritus of his life in this room scattered like tumbleweed in his wake.

Except that Sirius would not have left the house.

Jade tip-toed down the stairs, not quite sure why she was holding her breath. The kitchen was empty; silence echoed in the shadows. The drawing room too was shrouded in gloom and deserted. Buckbeak lay alone in his room, twitching fitfully in his sleep.

Sirius was gone.

Jade ran back to his room, breath rasping in her chest, nausea roiling in her stomach. She tore through the whirlwind, searching for a note, a message, some indication of where he had gone and why. Something she could clasp in her hand and call hope. Nothing. She scored her fingernails down the soft flesh of her inner arms in frustration, as if pain would focus her search. And her desperate gaze fell on something small and tarnished lying deliberately amidst the chaos on the bedside chest. Sirius's photograph of himself holding baby Harry, James and Lily smiling beside him. The photograph that never left the inner pocket of his ragged robes.

If Harry was in danger, Jade knew - had innately always known - Sirius would have gone to him without a backward thought in her direction. But it was hard to see it undeniably proven. And harder still to accept what it meant. The jagged edges of the frame gouged Jade's palms and she stood in darkness once the light of her wand died as if all the magic drained out of her that instant.

The hours passed in that dark cold room like a second and like an eternity. Once again, Jade was consumed with the sensation of falling, but this time infinitely slowly, with the gravitational agony of a crucifixion.

When the first blades of dawn gleamed in the sky and Remus Lupin and Alastor Moody returned to Headquarters, they did not need to tell Jade what had happened. She read in their eyes what she already knew. And every part of her craved surrender to darkness and ultimate oblivion, except for an echo that was both prayer and covenant of a voice saying promise me.

**************

Harry Potter drew a ragged breath as he closed the door of 12 Grimmauld Place behind him. He set his trunk down on the floor, as silently as possible, still grasping his wand, and the old teacup Dumbledore had sent as a portkey for his flight from Privet Drive. He stood in the gloom of the hallway, overwhelmed by memory, recalling with an intensity that made him shiver the sense of foreboding, the foreshadowing of death he had experienced the first time he crossed this threshold. And Sirius's swift hug and gruff goodbye last Christmas, an eternity ago.

The house was silent. It seemed he was alone. Harry hoped wretchedly to find his godfather's presence lingering somewhere in the house. Lupin had packed Sirius's few possessions and sent them to Harry, but he could not find his godfather in the pages of his books...perhaps there might have been something left in his room. As Harry climbed the stone stairs, Sirius's voice echoed in his mind, 'God rest ye merry Hippogriffs...' He had been happy then, so happy, just to have guests at Christmas. Not to be locked up, alone, again.

Harry crept past Buckbeak, who looked lonely and miserable even in his sleep. A pile of dead rats lay uneaten on the grimy stone floor beside him. Silence hung oppressively in the dark house, and the door to Sirius's room creaked loudly as Harry opened it, his blood pounding in desperate anticipation. He didn't even know what he was looking for, but if he could find something of Sirius there....

The room was not empty. Jade Magellan lay on Sirius's bed, her eyes burning in her white face as she stared unseeingly at the ceiling. She jumped, startled, as he entered the room. 'Harry!' she exclaimed, her shadowed eyes stricken. 'I didn't know you were...' she trailed off.

'Um, sorry,' Harry mumbled, confused. His gaze was trapped in hers, his pain mirrored in her eyes and he paused, transfixed, as he realised... 'You and Sirius were...?'

Jade nodded, mutely. The she gave a tiny, ineffably sad smile. 'Since Christmas...It was the first time in my life I wasn't alone. But...' her words were tumbling out now... 'Harry, Sirius never loved anybody as he loved you. He'd rather have died saving you than been locked up here...'

'But he didn't have to die,' Harry said savagely. 'It was a stupid, cruel, evil, pointless...He never got to live his life. He was locked up in Azkaban and he was locked up here...he hated it...and now he's dead because of me.' He was crying now, past caring what this near-stranger thought of him, grief he could no longer constrain howling and tearing though him as he collapsed onto the low bed.

Jade put her arms around him. He felt her thin body wracked with sobs as his tears soaked into her hair. Eventually, when his misery had subsided, she sat back, reaching for something on the bedside chest. 'Sirius left this here that night. He carried it with him always, he had it in prison...he told me it was the only thing in Lily and James' house that wasn't destroyed...' She held out, a small, tarnished picture frame. The faded sepia photograph it contained showed Sirius, a young, invincible Sirius, tenderly holding a bundle in his arms, laughing into the camera. Lily and James stood on either side of him, their arms about Sirius, smiling rapturously at the bundle in his arms.

Jade took a shaky breath, 'I think Sirius knew he might not come back that night. He left this here for you.'

Harry nodded, unable to speak. Holding the small frame in both hands, he stared at it for a long time. 'Thank you,' he whispered eventually.

There was silence. The house was completely still. 'Harry, I need to tell you something...you have to be the first to know...'

Harry looked up. Jade seemed awkward, uncertain, absently tugging at a strand of long, dark hair. 'I'm going to have Sirius's child...in November...' She paused, unsure of his reaction.

Harry was quiet for a long moment. 'Did Sirius know?' he asked.

Jade nodded. 'I had it confirmed at St Mungo's a week before...the Healer said it would be a boy. Sirius was really happy...worried, but...happy. We decided to call him James.' She paused. '...James Sirius Magellan Black...' she mused. 'Do you think that's too long?'

'It's a great name,' Harry said gruffly.

'Er...' Harry wished Mrs Weasley or Hermione would open up his head and suggest an appropriate thing to say in this situation. 'Er...how do you...feel?'

She smiled wanly. 'Scared, sick, surreal, and scared again...but mostly happy. I never thought I'd have a family...I know it doesn't bring Sirius back, but it feels like part of him will still be here, still with us...Harry...I'll understand if you don't want to, or if you need to think about it...but...would you be his godfather...and his guardian, once you're of age...?'

Harry was too overwhelmed to speak. His throat was constricted and tears stung his raw eyes. With a bittersweet smile, he looked into Jade's rain-blue eyes and nodded.

In the dim silence, the old radio Sirius had been trying to fix gave a static crackle, then a muffled refrain echoed up the stairs...

Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I stared too long
I'd probably break down and cry

Sweet child o' mine
Sweet love of mine