Chapter 60: Lacklustre
"Wait for it." Morven's voice echoed and re-echoed off the stone walls as he shouted out the direction.
The man stood above them on the small landing outside his private quarters. Harry remembered Lockhart using the same landing to make a grand entrance his first day of teaching. Unlike that strutting oaf, Morven was not aiming to astound and awe or even to impress; he simply needed something tall to stand on. From his elevated position, he could better gauge their ability in the task at hand. Practicality, not pomp.
All at once the fourteen pillows the man had been holding aloft with his wand dropped, plummeting toward their heads. Most of the pillows froze in mid-air, halted by the silent spells sent to arrest their movement. Harry grinned up at his pillow, a ghastly green- and orange-striped thing with tattered purple fringe around the edges. It was floating like one of the candles in the Great Hall some ten or more feet above him. His eyes travelled across the other pillows, each one equally as hideous and most far closer to the floor than his, save Hermione's which still hung exactly where it was before Morven released them.
With his eyes pointed elsewhere, he failed to notice the fuzzy baby blue mass until it fell square in his face.
"Oi!" he cried, throwing the pillow at its owner. He expected the boy to laugh and throw it back, to smirk or otherwise show that he had allowed the cushion to hit him intentionally. Instead, he watched as Sirius's eyebrows welded themselves together in a look of absolute confusion.
"Damn it," Sirius muttered.
"I thought you already knew how to do non-verbal spells," commented Harry, failing to hide his unease.
"I dunno," the boy said in a humourless voice. "I just can't. Too distracted I guess."
Harry watched as he tried again, throwing the pillow high, his face contorting as he put more effort into the spell than seemed necessary, certainly more than someone possessing his effortless talent should have needed. Still the little cushion fell to the floor.
Morven's voice came from on high, interrupting Sirius's next failed attempt. "The assignment is on the board. Twelve inches means twelve inches. No cheating, Rutherford, I'm on to you and your 'misspellings'! Mr Granger, collect the cushions. The rest of you may go."
Harry took the pillow from Sirius, watching his handsome face fold and crease into something painfully similar to the man he would become. Frustration turned to anxiety and then desperation before the boy finally fled the room.
"That friend of yours should have been able to get it first try," Morven observed. "Something the matter with him?" The question sounded as if it had been tossed into the air as lightly as the pillow he now threw onto the pile near the wall, but Harry knew there was honest concern behind it.
"He has a lot on his mind," Harry said. "He's got to make a choice that will change his whole life."
"All decisions seem as if they'll do that at sixteen," the man replied, not unkindly.
Normally, Harry would have corrected him, informed him that the choices Sirius was wrestling with would have consequences the man could never fathom. Yes, Morven's life had been turned upside down when he had been sacked from his job, but Sirius would lose the adoration of an entire world; he wouldn't just be stripped of a title, but of his identity. Such a loss would hardly be insignificant. He wanted to make him understand, but he was in no mood to talk about Sirius. The boy had barely spoken to him since leaving him by the lake eleven days earlier. He had thought that in those eleven days Sirius might spare him some time, but he disappeared for hours on end, returning to the dormitory too exhausted to do anything more than fall into bed and snore. There had been no repeat of their night together; the only time they spent in one another's company was in a classroom.
"Well, you'll be heading home soon," Morven said. "Whatever decision that boy makes can't bother you too much, now can it? He can tell you all about it once you're back home."
Harry was quite fond of the incongruous Aloysius Morven, but he couldn't keep the cold severity from his voice when he retorted. "He's dead there, Professor."
The man's face took on the look of someone sceptical of what he had just been told. "Harry," he spoke slowly as if to ensure his student would grasp each word, "you have to understand that being here for as long as you have, interacting with these people – your family, Sirius – will have had an effect. You can't know the long-reaching influence your presence might have had."
Morven's voice echoed in his head the same way they did around the walls during class, repeating and growing in magnitude until he heard nothing else. Changes. Family. Sirius.
Hope stirred in him. He had felt it before, inflating like a balloon in his chest. He felt it when he first met Hagrid, when he made his first-ever friend in Ron, when Sirius suggested he leave the Dursleys to live with him, when he imagined telling his parents about the future; though in those latter moments the hopefulness was tempered by a sharp pang of guilt. Now that balloon swelled as he imagined finding his parents. It grew to point of bursting at the idea of Sirius alive.
He clenched his eyes and forced the picture from his mind. "Don't," he warned.
"It's not entirely without precedence, Harry. There have been—"
"No! I've already lost him once. I'm about to lose him a second time. I will not mourn him three times when I get there and see that nothing has changed," he all but shouted. Refusing to listen to any further arguments the man might make, he stole from the classroom, running as fast as he could away from the excruciating false hope he was being offered. He raced through the corridors, not caring who he was shoving out of his way, until he reached the one person he knew would talk sense: Hermione. He latched onto her, pulled her from Remus and into a dim corner as far from the other students as possible.
"Harry, what's the matter?" Hermione demanded, her eyes darting over every inch of him. "Are you hurt?"
"Hermione," he gasped, pushing at the stitch in his side, "have we really mucked it all up?"
"What?"
"Being here, talking to them, being with them – has it mucked everything up?"
She did not offer assurances or damnation, not overtly anyway. Her mouth pulled into a pout as she studied him. "Harry," she sighed. "There are bound to be some consequences. We knew that. I can't even being to calculate what they might be, but I am hopeful that once we're gone Dumbledore will work to ensure the damage is minimal."
Harry braced himself against the wall, too exhausted to hold himself up any longer. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"Why afraid? That's a good thing."
"Not for Sirius," he answered dully.
"Dammit, Harry! Sirius was a grown man. A brilliant man. One clever enough to choose his own path," she hissed. "We cannot intentionally alter anything as significant as that."
"No, I wasn't going to, but I thought," he groaned and tore at his hair. "I thought that if he really did care… he would stay alive to see me again."
"Oh." The girl seemed to soften as understanding took over her anger. She moved closer, wrapping him in her arms and pulling him close.
"It's daft, I know, but I just—Never mind. I was being childi—"
She hugged him tighter, cutting off his reply. "No, it's good to have hope. I want him to be alive for you, too, but I don't want you be hurt if nothing has changed."
Harry had wanted the girl to tell him with absolute conviction that their presence had altered things enough that Sirius would still be alive in their right time. He wanted her to say that Dumbledore would wipe the memories of every student so all traces of Hermione and Harry Granger would be gone. He wanted her to give him a solid answer one way or the other, but he knew she couldn't know the future any more than he could. They just had to muddle through and hope for the best, just like everyone else.
"Are you okay now?"
"No, but what choice do we have?" Harry asked with a sorrowful smile.
Hermione took his hand and pulled him to the Gryffindor table. He had no appetite for food, but knew that James would not allow him to skip an entire meal this close to the final match of the year.
"Fashionably late, Messer Granger. I approve!" Peter cried dramatically as the pair sat down. "Never be the first to arrive, it gives the impression of being overly eager."
"I cannot abide an eager eater," James added in a tone of equal absurdity.
"Well, then, you'll love me, I'm in no mood for food," Harry said, hint of a smile on his face once more. "Shall I go?"
The boy's hands were on his shoulder instantly, pushing him down onto the bench with a bruising force. "Don't you dare! Two days, Granger. Two days until we face Slytherin."
"Is it just two days?" Sirius asked from Harry's other side. Harry smiled at the question, expecting him to play at not having known, to poke fun at James for waking them up with a countdown each morning and keeping the T-Minus posted above the fire in the common room. His smile fell when he realised that the question had been an honest one. Sirius truly had not known.
"Shut it," James snapped. "You're likely going to warm the bench you've been such rubbish this week. Honestly, Pads, I don't know what's gotten into you."
"Me neither," the boy muttered and turned back to his plate.
Harry watched as he ate, scowling at how little life was left in him since his cousin had made her empty threats. The effort of deciding whether to fully break from his family seemed to be using up all his brilliance. He had never known Sirius to be so cautious in his decisions before; he leapt first and looked later, if at all. Why was he being so damned wary now?
"Practice after Herbology," James informed them. "Be ready."
"Yes, sir," Harry muttered without taking his eyes off Sirius.
"Yeah. Hm. What?" Sirius looked up from his plate.
"Quidditch practice. You do remember what Quidditch is, right?" the Chaser demanded with biting sarcasm.
The boy nodded. "'Course I do."
Sirius may have remembered what the game was, but he certainly did not remember how to play it. His aim was terrible, his bat missing the bludger more often than it made contact. Not that it mattered since his arm was so weak he couldn't hit the ball more than two broom lengths. If he played half this bad in the real game, he might as well personally hand the trophy over to the Slytherins.
"SIRIUS! I SWEAR ON MY FUTURE SON'S LIFE, IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR ARSE INTO THIS GAME I WILL MAKE YOU WISH THAT COW OF A MOTHER NEVER GAVE BIRTH TO YOU!" James bellowed across the pitch.
The boy nodded his understanding but continued to play appallingly. It took a further fifteen excruciating minutes before James finally saw fit to intervene.
"BREAK!" the boy shouted.
The players flew their brooms down to the ground, touching down and muttering their annoyance at the way the game would likely end if a certain beater did not start doing his job properly. Sirius, seemingly oblivious to their hard glares and barely veiled threats, put his broom on his shoulder and walked off to the locker room.
"Sirius, where are you going?" Fenton called after him. "It's just a breather, you twat!"
"Let him go," Silvia said. "He's so rubbish lately, we're better off without him."
James, the boy's dearest and oldest friend, offered no argument or defence. Instead, he turned to each player and analysed their performance, told each one in turn what they had been doing wrong in each of the plays.
"All right, let's try it again," he said. "Formation B, take it from Chaos in a C-Cup."
"What? I don't get a pep talk?" Sirius questioned, startling his teammates, who had not heard his return to the pitch.
The Captain recovered his composure and glared. "You haven't earned one. You're rubbish. If we were allowed to bet on the games, I'd be putting money on Slytherin after seeing you play today."
Sirius nodded his understanding just as he had at lunch, but the gesture was somehow not the same. "That good, eh?"
"Worse. Now get up there and try not to make me regret being your friend," James ordered, kicking off and flying to centre pitch.
From his place overlooking the players, Harry could see the stark contrast between Sirius before the break and after. He was playing to win now, hitting each bludger hard and fast, never missing a ball or his target. Even his broom work had changed; it was not the lazy drift he had shown in earlier practices of the week or just ten minutes ago, but a seemingly haphazard way of flying that was at once both elegant and completely wild. In short, he was playing like himself again. Harry was so distracted watching Sirius, he forgot to look for the Snitch and lost it to Lewis, the second string Seeker.
"What the hell are you playing at being so rubbish?" the Captain demanded, marching toward him the moment they landed.
"Sorry," Harry muttered.
"Not you! Although, I ought to shout at you for letting her win, you git," James said, pushing him away and continuing on to Sirius. "I'm talking to you. You have been absolute shite for a week and after a ten minute breather you're fine again. Why?"
Sirius shrugged. "Thinking deep thoughts on important matters. It uses a surprising amount of grey matter."
"What kind of answer is that?"
"An uncharacteristically truthful one," the boy replied. He paused and let an impish smile take over his face. "Would you rather I lied, said I was befuddled by a hex or had a dim-witted doppelgänger running about the place?"
"Shut it," James ordered, offering the boy a forceful shove that belied the grin fighting to take overtake his face. "Are you done thinking deep thoughts? Can you turn that overworked grey matter to more important things? Like Quidditch."
Sirius's mouth pulled down into a frown as he considered the question. The look might have been identical to the one he had been wearing in recent days were it not for the brilliant twinkle in his eyes. "I believe I can put a bit of thought toward the match," he replied, that twinkle turning devious as his eyes turned toward Harry. "Among other things."
"Git," James muttered, glaring his annoyance at his friend before disappearing into the changing room, leaving Harry and Sirius alone on the pitch.
Silence reigned for several agonising minutes as Harry tried to decide what to say, and Sirius ogled and smirked. The longer and more blatantly the boy eyed him, the harder it became to find words that said all he thought needed saying. Sirius spoke before he managed to find anything even close to sufficient.
"So," he said casually, "I've been a pretty terrible boyfriend these last few days, haven't I?"
Once, when Harry was six, he had stumbled on Uncle Vernon changing a plug in the sitting room. While his uncle went to retrieve the gaffer tape and turn off the electricity, Harry stupidly put his finger to the exposed wire. The shock on his fingertip had quickly turned to burning then to numbness, but the tingle that ran through his whole body was almost pleasant. It was the closest thing he could find to how he felt on hearing Sirius call himself his boyfriend; it was shocking and painful to think he was officially involved with another boy, but the rush of delight more than compensated for the initial discomfort.
"I was thinking I would whisk you away after dinner to make it up to you," Sirius smiled, sliding close.
"Can't," Harry groaned. "I have detention every night this week. It's the only way I could get Saturday off for the match."
"After the match—"
"Sirius, we're leaving after the match. Don't you remember?"
The boy's face, even in the low light of the distant torches, showed clearly that he did not remember. As he watched, Harry swore he could see the boy's mental state shift, not back to moronic or angry, but into a calm consideration that bordered on stony. "I thought I'd have more time," he said quietly, so quietly Harry was certain he was talking to himself.
"What?"
Sirius cleared his throat and replied with a detached determination. "Listen, Harry, I don't want you to get shouted at on account of me. You go on. I'll catch you up later."
"Are you all right?" Harry questioned.
He nodded solemnly. "Yeah, just realised there's something I have to do."
"Can I help?"
"You already have," the boy assured him, leaning in close and kissing him.
Given his desire to make up for lost time, he expected Sirius to keep him close, stay with him in the changing room and through dinner until he had to leave for his detention, but he was wrong. The boy pulled away and left him outside the locker room. Harry watched the other boy move purposefully up the hill toward the castle, completely lost for understanding when it came to the many moods of Sirius Black.
Despite his confusion, one thing did stand out to Harry as he stared at the vacant grounds: Sirius had once again left him standing shivering and alone.
"Strike two," he told the empty night.