Chapter 57: The Escape Artist
Harry lay in bed staring up at the scarlet canopy as he so often did in the early hours of the morning. Normally, he used this time to think on matters that he couldn't discuss with the others, fears of things to come and tasks still to be done. Today, he was trying desperately not to think, not to remember what he had done or who he had done it with. He was torn between pleasure and panic.
The source of his dilemma shifted in his sleep, burying his face into his neck and humming with contentment.
'What is happening to me?' he questioned, but he knew the answer. Sirius was happening.
From the morning of the first of September when they met in the common room, Sirius had waged a slow, and debatably subtle, campaign against him. He had set about systematically tearing down every barrier and inhibition Harry had put up to protect himself, and now that they were gone he had nothing. He was as unprotected as a crustacean without its exoskeleton, weak and vulnerable to all the predators of the world. What would happen when he went home and there was no one there for him to lean on? What was he supposed to do?
'Run,' he ordered himself. 'Forget the game, forget goodbyes. Just run before it's too late.'
He extricated himself from beneath the boy, feeling a twinge of guilt at the whine of loss that escaped him. Silently as he could, he slid his trousers on and escaped from the warm mattress to the cold, hard stones on the floor beside the bed. He sat, shivering, as he wondered what to do next. Without Sirius laying on him, it was easier to see the reality of the situation he had made for himself, though it was no easier trying to think of a way to escape it.
Harry scowled at the floor. "Stupid."
"Yames! Want hug! Hug hug hug!" a tiny and exuberant voice cried as Harry found himself thrown onto his back and under attack by what had to be a house-elf. One that seemed to have spent far too much time with Tildy Moorehead; every time he thought he had himself free, it managed to grab hold of him again.
After considerable effort, Harry managed to gain control of the excitable little creature and hold it where he could actually see the thing. What he saw was no house-elf. It was a girl.
"Hug!" she demanded again, her smile as enormous as her dark eyes.
"Okay," he agreed with uncertainty, and the girl attached herself to his neck.
Harry didn't understand. Last he checked, Gryffindor Tower did not have a day nursery and none of the professors had children running free among the dormitories. Was this a spell gone wrong? He would have thought the little girl Tildy made tiny, but the rat's nest of hair was light brown and not Tildy's deep chestnut. No, he didn't know who the girl was, or how she came to be in his room.
There was a rustle of bed curtains and the child was pulled from his neck. "How did you get in here?" Sirius asked, smile taking over his face as he spun her around the room.
"Again!" the girl cried, and the boy obeyed, spinning the girl through the air until she squealed.
He pressed his nose against the girl's. "Now, where should you be?"
"Wiff Sirius!" she answered. "And Yames."
Sirius followed her little finger to see Harry standing well back. "Ah, that's not James. That's Harry."
"Harry," the girl repeated. "You sure? He look like Yames."
The smirk that curled up the corner of his mouth was so obscene it ought to have been censored. No one should be allowed to smirk like that around children. "Trust me, that's not James."
"Okay, can I have hug?" She held her arms wide and smiled so adorably no one could have resisted her, not even Sirius. The boy let the girl latch onto his neck in what looked more like a chokehold than a loving embrace. As she hugged him tightly, her hair flashed a vibrant and cheerful pink, and Harry finally recognised the tiny creature for who she was.
"So, Nymphie, how did you get here?" Sirius asked, his tone changing to one that would have made any stern parent proud.
"Magic hat," she said and ran to the dingy porkpie hat that had gone unnoticed on the floor. She took it up and shoved the thing onto her head, grinning. "Mummy say it a porky and only for 'mergency, an' I had such bad dream I had to have hug."
"Couldn't 'Dromeda give you a hug?"
"Hug from Sirius make ev'ryfing better! I wear magic hat an' wish, wish, wish an' then I see Yames!"
"Harry," Sirius corrected. "Does 'Dromeda know you took her portkey?"
The girl's smile fell along with her eyes. "No."
The door to their room opened as a quiet knock sounded on the ancient wood; it would not have been enough to wake them had they been asleep, but standing in the calm quiet of dawn it startled them all and sent little Nymphadora running for cover behind her cousin's legs. Their head of house peered cautiously around the open door.
"Ah, boys," she said, somehow managing to sound commanding despite being taken off guard. "We're looking for a lost child." She opened the door fully, revealing both her heavy dressing gown that matched the tartan cap on her head and a woman Harry didn't know. The woman was tall and commanded a stately grace and classic beauty that made Harry certain he would have been terrified to meet her in any circumstance; half-dressed after a night with Sirius, he was practically petrified.
"There you are!" the woman cried. "We've been looking everywhere!"
"Mummy!" Nymphadora raced across the room, tripping on the rug and falling with a small 'thud' onto the floor. It was apparently a common enough occurrence that neither Sirius nor the girl's mother bothered to make a fuss, and even little Tonks made no cry; the girl stood and ran the rest of the way to her mother's waiting arms.
"Sirius, please put something on," the woman chided, turning her eyes from the boy, who wore nothing but a sheet. The dark eyes landed on Harry and instantly took in every detail of his appearance from the sleepy eyes and wild hair to the love bites littering his torso. Understanding flashed across her face as she turned back to Sirius, speaking in a tone heavy with meaning, "We have things to discuss. I'll be down in the common room when you're more presentable."
The door hadn't even closed before Sirius began cursing. "Fuck. Get dressed, you're coming with me."
"What? Why me?"
"I'll not be subjected to family lectures on decorum and duty on my own," Sirius spat. "You are coming with me. At least then the source of disgust will have a face and maybe she won't be quite so vicious. Now put some bloody clothes on!" He threw a jumper at him and scrambled to get dressed. "Do I look noble and ancient and all that rot?"
"Yeah, hickies are real noble," Harry scoffed and poked at the mark he had left on the boy's neck.
"Bloody buggery hell. It'll have to do," he groaned and pulled Harry down to the common room to face the ire of his family.
Harry didn't quite understand the boy's concerns, but his attempts to question him were cut off by orders to 'shut it'. Once they reached the common room, he felt no further need to question the boy's agitated state. The woman who was waiting for them was not the relieved and smiling mother who they had met minutes before. This woman was something different. She stood as they approached, towering over them in presence if not in actual height. She couldn't have been more than twenty-six years old but it was clear she knew the meaning of obligation and bore the burden of it as she stepped closer to them. Her dark eyes missed nothing as they passed first over Sirius, then Harry; as she looked, Harry was all but convinced the woman knew his every thought.
"Andromeda, I—."
The woman ended Sirius's attempt at explanation with barely a gesture. "Please, Sirius, I don't want to hear it. You might not care about the family, but you must still have some pride. Take a moment to consider what this sort of liaison will do to your reputation and future marriage prospects. What sort of parents would allow their daughter to be bound to a boy who has been—I don't even want to say it."
"Sleeping with other boys," Sirius ground out. "I sleep with boys. And I don't give a damn who knows or what they think."
Andromeda's eyes flashed a harsh warning. "Have a care how you speak to me. I am one of the few people you have on your side, right now."
"Clearly not."
"Sirius," she said, her tone stern but less demanding. "I just want you to think what will happen to you, to your inheritance and prospects if your parents deem you unworthy of being their heir. Your mother hasn't struck you from the family tree yet. There's still hope of maintaining a place in the family even if you don't return home."
Harry could feel the tingle of magic in the air as the woman spoke, as Sirius's grasp on control grew thin. It crackled around them and made the hair rise on his arms. He had never seen the boy so close to breaking, not when he fought with Snape in either decade, not even when he confronted Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack.
"Think for a moment about what you are and what you could hope to accomplish without the family prestige holding you up," she said, smiling as if providing a compliment.
The boy remained silent, jaw tightening and hands clenching into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
"I'm just asking you—" Her words erupted into an involuntary scream as a lamp exploded across the room.
"Fuck you," Sirius said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
Without a word or backward glance, he turned and left the room.
Harry glared his accusations at the woman before following. His self-righteous stomp quickly transformed into a panicked run the moment the portrait closed behind him. He had anticipated finding Sirius just outside the dorm, calming himself in the corridor and waiting for him; he ought to have known better, for the boy was rarely as predictable as that. The corridor was empty, the moving stairs were making their return journey from any number of floors below. It was tempting to return to the dorm to collect his Marauder's Map, but it would mean having to confront that woman.
'If I were Sirius, where would I go?' he wondered.
As he descended the stairs at a run, he thought hard about the words that woman had said. She was not offering a choice. The thing she offered was a chain, one that would bind Sirius to his family and their ideals while denying him all the things that made him who he was. If presented with such a thing, he – he, Harry – would be desperate for the feeling of freedom. For him that meant the Quidditch pitch, but Sirius had another option.
Turning from the path that would lead him toward the, doubtless empty, Great Hall, he ran through the entrance hall and out the open porter's door. The frigid air hit him like a fist, but he refused to slow as he raced down the hill to the lake.
He skidded to a stop beneath the great beech tree, catching his breath and trying to find Sirius. He could find the miniscule Snitch in a hurricane; he ought to be able to find a dog several hundred times its size. His eyes narrowed against the blinding light reflected by the snow and the smooth surface of the lake. As his breathing finally quieted, he heard the distant chatter of birds scattering from their perches. A murder of crows took to the air, their clattering and clacking beaks filling the sky with their disapproval of being shifted from their homes at such an hour. Harry ran toward the commotion, knowing what had forced the birds to fly.
The dog, massive beyond possibility and black as midnight, ran full blast chasing every crow foolish enough to land and, when that failed, simply running in mad circles after nothing at all. Harry had seen dogs running free around Little Whinging when their owner's lost hold of their leads; the canines had looked elated, tongues hanging out and smiles pulling at their mouths as they ran after cars and cats alike. This dog showed no such joy. Its mouth was pulled down, eyes narrowed and teeth bared as if it were bristling for a fight. Even as a dog, Sirius could find no peace. Lacking anywhere else to turn, the Animagus raced toward the lake and leapt into the water. He came up with a clump of weeds in his mouth, thrashing it with such uninhibited violence that Harry feared he might break his own neck.
Unsure what he was going to say or do, Harry ran to the lake's edge and shouted. "SIRIUS!"
The dog turned at the sound, dropping the poor proxy back into the water before leaping into the depths. Harry waited for the furry black head to appear on the surface, but it didn't. The ripples of the dog's violence spread and calmed until the surface held barely an undulation. He had no idea how long a dog might be capable of holding its breath, but he was sure Sirius ought to have come up for air by now.
As he wrestled his shoes off to dive in, the surface broke. What emerged was not the sodden dog that had leapt in. It was the boy who climbed up the bank, hair dripping and clothes soaked through.
"What?" Sirius demanded.
Harry tried to focus on the question, but he couldn't manage it. He was too busy following the water as it ran in rivers from the ends of the boy's hair, down the shirt clinging to his chest and trousers stuck fast to his thighs. Never had he imagined that he would be ogling another boy so blatantly.
He swallowed the lump in his throat that might well have been his heart and dragged his eyes back up to the boy's face. "I didn't think you'd want to be alone."
"Thought wrong," Sirius replied darkly, taking no notice of Harry's interest in his form.
"You want me to go?" He couldn't keep the disappointment from his voice.
"No, I'll go. I have something I need to work on," the boy replied and started back toward the castle. "There are no makeup assignments for this project."
"Oh," Harry said a bit stupidly as he watched the boy go.
His heart ached again as the distance grew between them. Wasn't he supposed to be the one walking away?