Chapter 58: Paper Tiger
Harry stood on the banks of the lake until Sirius vanished over a rise. He stood until his muscles quaked and teeth chattered. He stood until the sun rose fully over the eastern hill and cast long shadows across the grounds. He stood waiting, but the ache never dissipated.
This was wrong.
They may not have been a couple or even lovers, but he and Sirius were, if nothing else, friends. Sirius should have wanted him near. He ought to have confided in him. He ought to have screamed and cursed at his family and demanded that Harry join him in the process. What Sirius should not have done was leave him standing shivering and alone.
It was that woman and her lecture, her threat. Sirius couldn't possibly have been swayed by just those few disparaging words she offered, could he? Others spoke ill of him all the time, students of every age in every house, even their own, but the boy never seemed to take notice. Thinking about it, he realised the reproachful comments from students always came with a grudging amount of respect, not for him but for the family to which he belonged; those who spent any amount of time in the Wizarding world knew the name of Black and all those who wore it. Possessing that name was a writ to do wrong.
What had that woman said?
Think for a moment about what you are without the family prestige holding you up.
Harry shivered again with the realisation that she hadn't just threatened the boy's inheritance. She threatened his entire world. If people knew he had been disowned and did not have the weight of that ancient line behind him, he would lose that reverence, the awe with which they looked at him. Sirius loved the spotlight; Harry had seen that first hand. He knew from talking to him at Grimmauld Place that Sirius could and would survive without the Black family, but that choice was made for him when Walburga struck him from the family tree. It hadn't been his decision. Harry didn't know if the boy could willingly choose to leave that life behind.
Harry shoved his shoes back onto his feet and took off across the late-March snows toward the castle. His pace only increased once he had solid stones under him. He charged up the stairs and threw the door to the McGonagall's office wide.
"Mr Granger!"
"What are you playing at?" Harry demanded of the woman sitting opposite the affronted professor.
That woman set her teacup back in its saucer before speaking. "Minerva, would you mind terribly if I asked for some privacy?"
McGonagall rose stiffly. "Never heard of such behaviour," she muttered. "Fifteen points from Gryffindor, Mr Granger, and I have serious thoughts of adding another detention."
"Another detention?" Andromeda repeated with something of an amused chuckle when the door had closed to McGonagall's personal quarters. "Sirius does know how to inspire trouble."
"Don't," Harry warned.
"What?"
"Don't try to be nice to me after what you've done."
"And what is it that I've done?" she inquired as she took up her teacup once more. "Offered you both a dose of reality. There aren't many who will celebrate the heir to the Noble and Ancient House of Black taking up with a boy of questionable breeding and lineage. If you were a girl that would be bad enough, but without any chance for producing children, you can't hope to be accepted by the wider Wizarding world."
Harry bristled. "The only people I care about don't give a damn about things like breeding and lineage, nor do they care if I produce noble and ancient children."
"Wonderful to live in such a world, isn't it?" She smiled as she refreshed her cup and began pouring a serving for him. "I can't tell you what a relief it was when I married Ted."
Harry blinked stupidly at the woman.
"Edward Tonks, my husband," she prompted, her tone implying it to be a fact the boy ought to have known.
After a beat, he realised it was a fact he knew. He remembered Sirius talking him through the Black family tree his mother had kept with fanatical devotion, pointing out the blackened spots where those family members Walburga disapproved of had been removed with extreme prejudice. Andromeda Black had been among those spots.
"You married a Muggle-born," he recalled.
"I did." She passed the cup to him, perhaps as a peace offering or simply because he looked like he could do with something warm and nourishing in him.
He drank the strong Oolong down, returning the cup to its saucer with a little more force than he intended. "Then you of all people shouldn't be lecturing Sirius on duty and loyalty to the family. Why would you do that to him?"
She sighed and some of the rigidity seemed to leave her. "Because I know precisely what they'll say to him. These people, our family, are some of the most horrid and manipulative you will ever encounter. They know precisely what insecurities to draw on to get what they want. It's better Sirius gets the first taste from me when the threat has no real consequence."
"It seems to have had some consequences," Harry muttered into his empty cup.
"Call it a test of sincerity, a trial to see just how much he is invested in the idea of you and him together," she said, the smile dropping off her face as she spoke. "It would have happened eventually anyway. It's easy to live the blissful world of Hogwarts, far from family and disapproving eyes, but it's quite another to have to take such a relationship public."
"I already said the people I care about aren't like your family," he reminded her baldly.
She did not answer immediately, but instead took her daughter onto her lap. The girl's hair flashed a delighted pink to be in her mother's embrace but shifted closer to red as the woman began to comb the painful knots from it. "My daughter," the woman said quietly, "is a Metamorphmagus. It's a rare and unique trait among our kind. So rare she'll be labelled a freak by many."
Harry knew by her tone just which people would be calling Tonks such names. "By your family, you mean."
Andromeda nodded. "They already have. I ran into my sister, Narcissa, just a fortnight past at Diagon Alley," she paused to keep the heartache from creeping any further into her voice, composing herself before she continued. "The people we expect to be most open-minded rarely are."
"You think Sirius is like that?"
"No, not Sirius, and I wouldn't presume to make assumptions about the true opinions of your family or friends, but, the rest of the world, they will never allow you to steal away someone as valuable as Sirius Black. My aunt, especially."
"What does it matter what she thinks? She's already scrubbed him from the family tree."
"She hasn't," the woman contradicted. "Not from what I've been told. She's allowing Sirius until summer to 're-evaluate his priorities'. He has a history of being difficult on purpose, making waves just to make them, and never thinking about the consequences until they've hit him. Running away was drastic, but nothing new for him. However, if his mother finds he's taken up with another boy… That would not be so easily overlooked."
"So you're testing him now to make sure he really means it. Maybe if he thinks about the costs beforehand, he might decide to act a differently? To leave me?" Harry scoffed at the idea.
Sirius may be brash but knew his mind and heart and was not about to be swayed after such empty threats. At least that's what he would have said until the boy left him alone at the lake's edge. Perhaps after spending the night together, he found that it really was the chase that mattered; now that Sirius had his quarry, he no longer wanted it, no longer wanted him. Perhaps Sirius wasn't about to risk the status that came with the family name for something as inconsequential as a sixth year fling that lasted no longer than any of this other relationships.
"I'm thinking of you as much as I am him, Harry," Andromeda assured him earnestly. "If Walburga believes Sirius is sincere in his affections, she will make it her mission to change his mind by any means within her power. And I assure you, her reach is long and her morals wanting. If it means killing you to keep Sirius under her thumb, she will do it."
"She can join the queue."
He wanted to say it didn't matter if Sirius chose his family over him. He wanted to say it would be for the best. He would be leaving soon. It was better to end their relationship, whatever it was, before it grew any stronger. But even as he thought it, the ache in his chest made it nearly impossible to breathe.
"Do you ever regret it?"
"My decision to leave the family for Ted?" she clarified. When he nodded, she frowned slightly in thought. He had expected a resounding 'no' to come without hesitation, but he found some comfort in her deliberation, as if she were reviewing every moment of her life since the choice to leave behind her ancient and noble heritage to see if she had ever had a single millisecond of doubt.
"No," she said finally. "I don't think I've ever been more confident in a decision. Hardships and fights are inevitable, misunderstandings happen daily, but on the whole I've never had any misgivings. I've never looked back and wondered 'what if'.
"Now I put it to you, Harry," she said, eyes boring into him once more. "Would you regret it?"
Regret what? Letting him leave? Or leaving Sirius in the past and returning to a world where the boy was dead? Whatever face he made as he considered it must have passed for an answer, because she nodded her acceptance.
"Well, then I will make your apologies to Minerva," she said as she stood, her spine seeming to stiffen and height to grow as she took on the role of matriarch once more.
"Uh, yeah, thanks," Harry replied and stood, moving uncertainly to leave.
As the door closed behind him, the boy was at a loss for what to do. It wasn't as if he could stay. There were too many people relying on him in his right time; he was the Chosen One after all. He couldn't take Sirius back with him, either. The boy had to stay, fulfil his role in history. That's what Hermione and Dumbledore would tell him. Harry, however, thought there was some room for alteration there. If Sirius vanished to the future things wouldn't be so very different; Remus would still be suspected as the spy, so the Potters likely would choose Peter as their secret keeper and all would be the same save the man's presumed death. It would be as if nothing had happened.
'No,' Harry chided himself sharply. 'You cannot know that.'
He was looking only at the big events, but there was more to life than that. The small decisions made in a day were equally as important. The compounded decisions of a lifetime, those could alter the whole world, too. There were countless things Sirius was meant to do, tiny and seemingly insignificant things that would change the course of another's day or life, and they would then go on to change the lives of those around them with their tiny decisions. He couldn't carry the boy back with him, not without altering innumerable lives. Things had to stay the way they were.
It was all rather a moot decision given that he wasn't even certain the boy would want to go with him