Chapter 52: Unrestricted
James was positively beaming when they walked together into the common room, Sirius's arm thrown over Harry's shoulder as if nothing had ever driven a wedge between them. Given his threat to his best mate's bollocks for flirting, Harry didn't know why he was smiling quite so broadly.
"So, who caved?" he demanded.
"What?" Harry frowned.
"Which one caved and apologised first. I have five Galleons on Sirius. So who was it?"
Sirius snorted. "Prongs, you're an absolute prat."
"Am not," the boy protested. "I'm pleased my two mates have sorted out their differences, and I can't help if I am in for a small monetary gain depending on which of you gits finally stopped being obnoxious and apologised. Now who was it?"
"Wasn't me," Sirius smiled.
"Ah, bugger," James groaned and started digging into his pocket. "Five Galleons to Peter. That's just embarrassing."
"I said it would be you," the boy grinned, his cheeks growing even rounder and eyes sparkling as the money was held out for him to take.
"I didn't apologise," Harry said.
"What? But one of you had to or the door wouldn't have unlocked." James frowned, the crease growing ever deeper between his eyebrows as he fought to understand what had happened. His hazel eyes suddenly grew wide, and he turned to shout across the common room. "MOONY, YOU WANKER, WHAT DID YOU DO?"
He was up and across the room before the prefect even had time to hear him, prying him off Hermione and dragging him away, all the while slapping and shouting at him.
"Knew he would never have agreed to it if that was how the door unlocked," Sirius smirked. "So you, sir, owe me a kiss."
"The bet was for a Galleon," Harry reminded him.
"Yeah, but I'd rather have the kiss." He pulled the boy closer until their lips were barely touching.
"OI! LIPS OFF OF HIM, BLACK!" James cried, abandoning Remus to race back across the room to them. "I told you what would happen if you tried that again."
"It was all him," Sirius insisted, pointing his accusations at Harry. "He was all despondent and lonesome and I couldn't resist, and then he said he dreamed about me at night and imagined it was me kissing him instead of Alfie fuckin—"
"AUGH!" the boy cried, shoving his fingers into his ears and shouting a rude song at the top of his sizable lungs to drown out whatever else the Beater was going to say.
"Do you mind? Some of us are trying to study!" an aggravated fifth year called. Her complaint was chorused by several more harried-looking students, all of whom, Harry knew, were being overworked in preparation for the coming OWLs.
"Lily-flower," Harry said, and the noise of James's song vanished with him.
"Nice," Sirius grinned. "Any chance we can make that work for anybody's voice and not just yours and Prongs'?"
"You'd have to talk to Dumbledore about that."
They stood in silence a moment, before Harry sighed. He didn't really want to leave the common room or Sirius. Weeks without his company and attention had left him realising just how much the boy meant to him. He still didn't know if he fancied him, but he knew that he didn't like not having him around. But with the mention of Dumbledore, he knew there were more important things to be done than sit around pretending to do homework just to feel that arm around his shoulder or the warm weight of the boy's head on his thigh. "I need to go find that book Alfie was after. I'll see you later."
"I'll come with you."
"You can't. I'm going into the Restricted Section."
"Ah, well you see, I have this note," Sirius said slowly as he pulled a folded up bit of parchment from his pocket. "Got it weeks ago via owl. Apparently, someone told a certain headmaster that I knew his grand secret, and said headmaster seemed to feel that I was at once both completely trustworthy and absolutely brilliant enough to offer help in the quest for the spell of spells." He dangled the parchment in front of Harry's face.
"Dumbledore gave you unlimited access to the Restricted Section?" he gaped at the looping handwriting. "He didn't even give that to James or Lily."
"In case you didn't notice," he smiled and slid his arm back around Harry's shoulder, "I am fucking brilliant."
"Apparently."
"Now give us a kiss."
Harry obliged, though it was barely more than a peck.
"That was disappointing," Sirius complained but let Harry take them from the common room.
oOo
Sirius smiled his winningest smile while handing the note over to the pinch-lipped librarian. The woman was in no way charmed, but the parchment and signature it contained could not be denied. So, scowling, the woman led him to the gate of the Restricted Section, unlocking it for him as she had for Harry so many months ago. His fingers twitched as he reached out and opened the gate, half expecting it to give him a nasty shock. It just squeaked on intentionally noisy hinges, and he followed Harry in as if this were a perfectly normal and pedestrian doorway.
"I've never been in here," he admitted, his eyes touching on every book that his hands were still too nervous to approach.
Noting his apprehension, Harry laughed. "They won't bite. Well, most of them won't anyway."
He was too full of awe to bother trying to joke about it. He could only offer an open-mouth nod as he walked further into the stacks. Once, ages ago, this had been a dream of his, to have free reign among the books so dangerous that they had to be caged like rabid beasts; he had sat up for hours with the others imagining the sort of spells that might be hiding in here. Of course, being who they were, it quickly descended from brilliant and complicated hexes to spells that would make any girl become a sex kitten and want to do all manner of naughty things to them.
He snorted at their stupidity, but still couldn't help but wonder if such a spell really existed.
"Yeah, watch out for the dust, I swear there are tiny pixies or something hiding in it to make the sneezing worse," Harry said absently, mistaking his amused snort for a sneeze.
There wasn't much dust to sneeze at, Sirius noted. The place was immaculate, every title visible, every shelf free of even the tiniest speck. How many books must Harry and Hermione have read to make this place so clean? He remembered how the pair of Grangers would come to the Great Hall for dinner with great chunks of dust hanging from their hair and stuck to their shoulders like epaulettes. That had been months ago. He couldn't remember them looking anything but normal for the past month.
"How many of these have you read?"
Harry frowned at all the spines stacked around them. "The better part. Hermione's read more than me."
"Learn anything?"
He shrugged as he pulled out some books, searching for the title Alfie had given him. "Wasn't really what I was aiming for. We've been looking for spells that move people about in time or tear them to shreds. If I got caught up trying to learn stuff, I'd never have made it through a tenth of what I did," he paused, eyes narrowing as Lily's always did when she was giving a question serious consideration. "But I suppose some things stuck."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I now know of a lovely little charm that can turn a cat inside out for several hours. 'Ideal for All Hallow's Eve decorating'," he said with the cheeky air of a joke, but Sirius suspected he was being perfectly sincere and quoting one of the surrounding books verbatim.
"Git," he muttered, a little afraid of what else the boy might have picked up along the way. "Where haven't you looked? If that bastard's book isn't on your sister's list, it must be somewhere you haven't been yet."
"Next row over, top shelves," Harry said.
Sirius went where he was directed, pulling a ladder over and climbing to stand at eye level with the unread books. There was a marked difference in the sections where the pair had searched and this one. The books were barely visible beneath a blanket of grey dust. It was a wonder Madam Pince allowed such a thing to happen to the books she loved more dearly than anything else on this earth.
Refusing to leave the library looking as Harry or Hermione used to, Sirius took out his wand and cast a spell to blow the vermin-infested dust off the shelf and out through the bars. He couldn't resist sending it to settle over the table where Alfie fucking Quintain sat, attention fixed hungrily on Harry; the Slytherin's eyes twitched just before he sneezed so hard he knocked his book over and sent his hair flying into his face. It was childish, but it made Sirius smile.
Grin still fixed firmly on his face, he turned back to the shelf and studied the titles, his eyes landing quickly on the one he sought: Egilhard's Opus.
Fingers itching, he grabbed the book.
Nothing.
No scream.
No alarm.
No paralysing shock.
It was just a book. Old, heavy, but just a book.
Climbing down the ladder, he scowled and brought the tome around to Harry. "Found it."
"Why are you whispering?"
"You'll never guess who's watching," he replied, failing to keep the jealousy from his voice.
Harry shrugged. "He's always watching."
"Well, why don't we give him something to watch? Give us a kiss." The boy only rolled those impossibly green eyes. "What? Why not? You kissed me in front of the whole common room and your own dad. What's Alfie fucking Quintain to that?"
"I can't afford to lose him yet. We still might need him," Harry explained again in that same slow meter that James brought out when he was annoyed.
"What for?" Sirius pouted. "Anything he can do, I can do. And with far more style."
"Really?" Harry said, throwing his book back onto the shelf with rather more force than was necessary. "So you're suddenly an expert in obscure hexes and curses?"
"No, I never said—"
"So you've invented a new spell?"
"Well, no, I–"
"Then maybe you've managed to alter an old one?"
"Okay, no, but I could if I wanted to," he folded his arms across his chest, frowning his annoyance that Quintain was still useful and, worse, that he was better at something. He needed to repurpose a spell, create something new. Maybe he could turn Quintain's Wretched Heart spell into something beautiful. That was sure to win him points.
While Harry began the tedious task of putting one of the shelves back into an order both his sister and Madam Pince would approve of, Sirius moved to the end of the shelf where Quintain couldn't see him and opened Egilhard's Opus. He expected it would be like being found by his wand, a halo of light would fall onto him and the wild magic would rise up and pull at his clothes like a gale. But it was still just a book. He scowled down at the heavy letters and even heavier language. It was tricky, but after a few minutes he had the Middle English translating through his head as he read. Each page was as bad as the last, spell after repugnant spell. Egilhard was clearly a dark and vindictive sort of wizard, but just as he was ready to throw the book down he came to it. The Riven Heart.
The spell was as disgusting as he had imagined. Anything Quintain wanted had to be abominable, but this was so much worse. The woodcut image moved slowly, showing what was meant to happen when the spell was cast correctly. It turned his stomach to think that someone had ever thought to use it on Harry, his Harry. What would have happened if the vile prat had succeeded? Azkaban obviously, but what would have happened to Sirius if Harry had never turned up? Another year of dating someone new every fortnight, snogging and fondling in a broom cupboard until it became the same as all the rest and he moved on. More pranks for a quick laugh. It sounded so boring now. He didn't want that anymore, not when he had something so much more interesting, not when he had Harry with all his scars and secrets left to reveal.
His chest ached to think that this spell might help send him home, but Sirius could have one last shout. He wasn't sure precisely what he'd do yet, but he would make sure Harry James Potter would never forget him.
"How are we going to get the book to Dumbledore without Alfie seeing?" Harry asked quietly.
"Quintain's obsessed with you," Sirius said, forcing the smile into place, refusing to let him see just how fraught he was. "If you distract him, I can hide it in my bag."
Harry nodded and started to make a show of digging through a teetering pile of books, crying out and cursing when it fell on him. Sirius had enough time to stow the book in his bag before coming around the book case to help the boy up. They laughed about his stupidity as they left the library, not noticing the shadow hunting them until it had struck.
"So, how about w—." Sirius's words died abruptly as his lips clamped themselves together with a painful force. He hadn't been hit by a full body petrification hex in years. He had forgotten how much they could hurt. Sirius tried to see who it was that had bound him, but couldn't move his eyes, couldn't turn his head.
"What did you do?" Harry demanded drawing his wand on their unseen attacker.
"I was protecting what's mine." The smooth voice that came in reply would have set his teeth to grinding had they not been locked together like stone.
Alfie fucking Quintain.