Chapter Five: Embers
Time: Late Evening, July 13, 1995
After the meal, Sapphire and Sirius sat alone in the kitchen watching the embers in the hearth burn themselves out. He was nursing the last ounces of a butterbeer, while she absently traced the engraving on her empty wine goblet with a finger tip. Although the others had excused themselves rather subtly, Sapphire thought it was a good sign that Sirius had not risen to go, or suggested that she must be tired and would want to get to bed early. Still, neither of them seemed able to begin a conversation.
She felt her stomach tighten around the remains of Molly's good meal. She stole a look at Sirius' face. The deep shadows of dying firelight etched tales of hardship there -- the years since their last meeting had been unkind. She wondered how much of the cold steel in his eyes, the anger that sometimes set his mouth when he looked at her, was really caused by her unexpected arrival. Maybe, after so long spent wrongfully imprisoned, it was just his habit now to be bitter. Surely this bitterness was only a shell, and the man she remembered as playful, protective and passionate, would be just underneath.
She took a deep breath, like someone about to dive into deep water. "It's such a relief to see you again. I'm sorry I had to surprise you. If I could have told you I was coming I would have. "
"I suppose fugitive murderers are often hard to contact." Sirius said mirthlessly, eyes fixed on his beer.
She smiled weakly and looked at her hands, which were twisting nervously into the blue cotton of her skirt. She shook them free, laid them in her lap and looked up at Sirius.
"You're angry. I wish you weren't, but I can understand." The forced smile returned as she added, "I still would have come even if I had believed you'd be mad enough to turn me into a toad."
"I never learned how to transform muggles into toads. Would you settle for being a coat tree?" he said, not smiling at all, though he did raise one eyebrow as he glanced her way.
Sapphire coughed out one nervous giggle, and protested that she was too short to be good at that. Then the tense silence descended again. The irregular ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to grow louder and the tightness in her stomach was extending it's grip to her chest. She took another deep breath.
"You said you were in prison twelve years for a crime you didn't commit ?" she blurted.
"I'd be there still if I hadn't escaped." he replied.
She saw his fist tighten as he set his mug down firmly on the table. "And in all this time, no evidence that would get you a new trial has surfaced?"
"Trial?" said Sirius with a harsh laugh. "I had no trial!"
"No trial! Do wizards not have courts of law?" Sapphire was incredulous.
"We have them all right," he snarled, "but there was a war. It's very important for the Ministry to display a number of properly punished villains during wars, you see."
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, nodding her comprehension. "This is the war that separated us in '81?"
"Yes."
"And you say a failed attack on your godson Harry ended it then?" Sirius nodded, his eyes now fixed on some private place beyond the dull flames in the hearth.
"You said that you expect the war to resume?" she asked.
"Any day now." After a pause he added, "You should get out of here before you're caught in the middle of it."
"I was caught in the middle when I gave my heart to a wizard," Sapphire said quietly.
Sirius turned his head; shadowed gray eyes engaged wide brown ones. Time stretched itself thin as spider silk while unspoken questions took shape in the space between them.
Finally, Sirius whispered almost to himself, "Why? After so long, why did you look for me?"
Now Sapphire looked away into the fire and swallowed hard before speaking. "The summer of '82, I stayed at the cabin waiting for you until I'd missed the first two weeks of the term. I would have lost my assistantship if two of my professors hadn't taken pity on me. Everyone could tell I wasn't myself. Most thought I was still grieving for Granny, and I didn't tell them any different. I left a note for you on the door when I finally closed the place up for winter."
"When I came back in the spring and found the note still hanging there, I cried for days. After that, for a while it was pretty bad. I'd come across the sword in my closet," (Sirius shifted and drew breath but remained silent), "or I'd be currying Blackie, and I'd just start feeling sad. Daddy would start singing "Danny Boy", and I'd have to pretend there was something in my eye." Here she smiled wanly and shook her head. "People must have thought me the worst sort of sentimental fool, but I didn't dare tell a soul what was wrong. There were days I truly thought I'd die keeping it all inside."
Here she paused and turned toward Sirius, but he had dropped his gaze to the floor. She shut her eyes hard and turned back toward the fire, swallowing twice before going on. "After a few years, I tried to tell myself that you were gone for good and I would have to get on with my life. I even pretended I wanted to date a bit, but the truth was it just made me think of you. I finally decided since I couldn't lie to myself about my feelings, I'd just have to try and forget - something I don't do well, as you may remember."
Sapphire turned back to Sirius with a tremulous smile. He looked again as though he were about to speak, but she went on quickly. "You understand, I didn't really want to forget, but it was the only thing I could think of to survive. I put all my energy - my feeling -- into my work. I got involved in a project to try and catalogue all the plants in the Appalachians; it seemed the perfect opportunity to be busy infinitely. Finally I almost believed I had succeeded in crowding you out of my head.
Then in July of '93 I woke up at the cabin, and smelled the rose. I was afraid to look at first, in case it was just a dream; but when I came out on the porch, I saw it was full of pink blooms. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but as I stood there, watching the morning sun slip through the canopy and burn the dew off those roses, I was convinced that you were still alive somewhere and that we still had a connection. I found hope again. Really, I think it never left, I had just drowned it out with business."
"So when the wizards and dementors showed up last year, I knew I had to act, even if I had to break my word not to come after you." She heard herself pleading now. "Sirius, please understand I just couldn't go on not knowing."
Sirius looked at her as though he had just noticed her. "The rose bloomed pink when I escaped Azkaban," he said slowly. Then he inhaled loudly and looked away again. "Well, now you do know. You can see for yourself what I've been reduced to. I don't see how you expect to go back to what we were after all this time, and in the middle of this trouble." He sounded as tired as he looked.
"I don't know what to expect; I'm just asking that you consider all the possibilities," Sapphire said, straining not to sound tearful.
Sirius jerked his head around to look straight at her. "You don't understand the possibilities!" he barked impatiently, bouncing a fist on the chair arm to punctuate his words . "People died in this war before; my best friend and his wife, two of Molly's brothers, my brother, not to mention plenty of random muggles who just got in the way! I wasn't kidding when I told you in '81 it would be dangerous to follow me. It just as true now."
Sapphire spat back, "People die everyday, Sirius; in wars, and in their beds at home! Blackie's dead and it was supposed to be me." She saw Sirius tense at her last remark. Moving her chair to face him more directly, she continued softly. "I don't mean to make light of your troubles, but why just roll over and be defeated by them? We may turn out losers in this war, or at least I might," she said with the grimmest of smiles, "but why give up without trying? Why shouldn't we see if there is something between us that's still worth fighting for?"
Sirius leaned forward in his chair, looked hard into her eyes and asked, "Are you still in love with me?"
She lifted her chin to match his gaze. "I think that is what I am here to find out."
There was silence except for the crackling of the dying fire and the limping clock. When Sirius resumed staring at the hearth and didn't speak again for some minutes, Sapphire, desperate to fan those sparks of feeling that had just erupted from below Sirius' icy facade, felt herself grow reckless with impatience. She blinked and suppressed a small shiver as she heard herself ask, "I suppose it is too much to hope you kept my pendant?"
Sirius sat back with a surprised sounding sniff, knit his brow and asked, "What's that?"
Sapphire was the surprised one now. "The heart shaped sapphire pendant I gave you as token of our engagement. It wasn't worth much money, I'll admit- certainly not compared with your gift to me," she explained, trying to sound more casual than she felt. "But it was a gift to me from daddy, and the best I could think of on short notice. After all, your first quasi proposal was something of a surprise to me,... See Sirius, you aren't the only one in this relationship who's been surprised by the other!"
She felt that she had added this last a little too triumphantly, and dropped her gaze to her lap. When, after a long pause, she looked up again, Sirius was sitting motionless with his mouth open a bit, as though wanting to speak but not able to.
Finally, he said, "I remember the pendant." He continued to squint into space, as though trying to recall some lost information.
"I should hope you would remember it." Sapphire felt slapped, and made her words cold rather than let the hurt show. "The sentiment with which it was given was...., sincere."
Sirius looked at her now, his tone soft but restrained. "It was taken from me when I was put in Azkaban. I don't know what was done with it."
"Oh!" She felt her face heating with embarrassment. "That must have been hard. I mean, to have nothing to remember me by." Her words sounded lame, and she looked away, wishing she had kept quiet.
"I couldn't remember you there." Sirius said.
She looked up at him, trying to understand what he had just said. "You couldn't remember me?"
"I couldn't think of you at all," he said.
Sapphire shook her head slightly. This wasn't making sense.
He leaned forward again, immobilizing her with his gaze. "I couldn't think of you," he repeated slowly, as though explaining something difficult to a child. "I couldn't even try to think of you. For twelve years I couldn't think of anything except the irony of my own situation."
Sapphire stared at him for a long minute, searching his impassive face for clues, then dropped her eyes. She was near tears and almost babbling. "You mean for twelve years you sat there being angry and found no comfort in knowing that I loved you and was waiting for you? Did you not believe me? Is that why you never sent a message to ..."
Sirius interrupted curtly. "You don't understand." Pushing his chair back with an obscenely loud scritch, he stood towering over her. "If you could reclaim all your memories of those dementors, you'd know that you could only think of horrible things while they were near. They get their sustenance from draining people of happy and hopeful feelings. Trying to think of you would have killed me."
He reached down one hand and firmly raised her chin until she looked straight into his eyes again. The gesture was without tenderness. Sapphire, holding her breath, felt her own eyes widen with apprehension; but she neither moved nor looked away.
His next words, Sirius articulated like teeth on a saw blade. "Feelings of love and hope attracted them like Red Caps to blood. If I had dwelt on any happiness we had known, they would have devoured my soul; I would have gone insane. Memory in that place is death."
As fragmented impressions of a darkness that froze the very marrow of her soul reasserted themselves, the first dawning of horrible understanding contorted Sapphire's face, and she squeezed her eyes shut with a shudder. He let go of her chin.
When she could speak, she addressed the floor. "You were forced to have unhappy thoughts for twelve years?"
"It isn't something I like to remember," he growled.
"And yet, here I am reminding you of it," she said softly.
"It wasn't my wish to forget you; but the few times I let myself remember, it almost cost me everything." He drew in his breath, as though surprised at his own words. Sitting again, he fell silent, staring at nothing.
Finally, she asked, "So... , I'm almost a stranger to you now?"
Sirius looked at her a moment before answering. "Not completely. When I saw you wearing that blanket and heard you sing, some memories began to return. I feel like I'm waking from a charmed sleep, sorting out the nightmares from reality."
"Are all the memories nightmares?" she asked, tremulously.
"The memories are of all sorts, but the remembering is painful. Having a single thought for 12 years had distracted me somewhat from the idea that those years are stolen from me and not retrievable." Sirius almost spat those last words.
Sapphire heard herself pleading again. "Maybe we can get back something of the years before those twelve?" She looked up, searching his face. He stared at nothing and didn't answer. A full minute passed.
"Sirius?" she said, sounding tearful again.
"Let's talk about it in the morning, " he said hoarsely. "I'll see you to your room."
_____________
In Arthur and Molly's room, the heatless fire they had set in the hearth was dying. In the big four poster, Molly snuggled against Arthur, glad of his company. During the day, housework pushed sinister thoughts from her mind, but at night, if Arthur was on duty and she lay alone in this unfriendly house, her worst nightmares paraded across the canopy above the bed. This night, however, she had something new to ponder. Thoughts that , blessedly, did not involve the welfare of her own flesh and blood.
"What do you make of our muggle guest?" she asked.
"She's something else, isn't she?" Arthur volunteered with obvious enthusiasm. "Finding Sirius in this house, and after all this time! I've always said muggles sometimes have a sort of magic all their own, and she seems to have it in spades."
"Well, she did have the sword that Sirius enchanted to lead her here," Molly pointed out.
"True, but she also inspired his, shall we say, 'inspired' enchantment. And I don't really think the thing would have worked without her remarkable determination."
"If she's interested in Sirius, she'll need remarkable determination, and a bit more," Molly snorted.
Arthur turned his head to see his wife's face in the last of the firelight. "Dearest, what do you mean?"
"Oh, I suppose after all the years in Azkaban and so forth, he really can't help being a bit, er, erratic. You've got to admit that Sirius can be difficult to live with."
Arthur was slow to answer. "I suppose he might be... sometimes."
"Most times," Molly said flatly.
"He's very generous to let us have this house," Arthur ventured.
"Well, yes, but ..." Molly decided not to pursue this course of conversation. "Do you think they have a chance?"
"A chance at love?" Arthur asked. "Didn't Snape discover they were engaged? That seems more than a chance to me."
"I'm not sure that either of them is positive about that engagement's having survived all these years. When Sapphire looks at Sirius, her brow furrows like she's trying to solve a puzzle, and when he looks at her..., well, he mostly avoids eye contact, but he looks like he feels very uncomfortable with her and not a little angry."
"Oh, I wouldn't put too much weight on a few scowls. After all, 'the course of true love' and all that," Arthur said dismissively and, Molly thought, naively.
"All is not well with those two." Molly persisted.
"When she thought he might be in trouble, she looked for him till she found him, even against all odds, didn't she?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, she did that."
"And Sirius summoned her in, you said."
"Only because Severus was about to cast goodness-knows-what to quiet her."
"Sirius could have quieted her himself, " he pointed out.
"Maybe," she allowed, "although I get the impression that Sirius learned the hard way to think twice before pointing his wand at Sapphire. But, I do know one thing. She wants desperately to show Sirius that she could live among us. I thought she would cry in the kitchen this afternoon when she discovered most of the cooking and cleaning is done with magic."
"Why would that upset her?" Arthur sounded genuinely puzzled; Molly found that truly fetching.
"If she can't do much cooking or cleaning, she probably feels he'll think her less desirable as a potential wife."
"Hmm." Arthur pondered this thought a bit. "I never thought of Sirius as the kind who was much interested in a woman's domestic skills."
"Maybe not up front, but I guarantee it figures in when a man is thinking of a permanent arrangement. 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach', after all." Molly patted Arthur's not too flat mid-section.
Arthur laughed, then captured her hand and, after kissing it warmly, folded it against his heart.
She burrowed her head into the pillow by his shoulder before speaking. "On short acquaintance, I get the impression she's got the spirit to stand up to him. If she stays a while, we'll soon find out whether she has enough nerve to live in a wizard's house. This particular house certainly tests my nerves." Molly felt Arthur squeeze her hand.
"Mollywobbles, I think Sirius has a fine woman there. It's about time something good came his way. I hope they'll be very happy."
@3270 words
Posted by Madmaxime at July 16, 2007 03:32 AM