Banishing the Ghost

Of all the time spent purging Grimmauld Place of its horrors, some rooms were given momentary glances and then ignored, described by the unwilling master of the house as not worth the attention. Nobody questioned it but one puzzled man, and even he kept the words to himself.

He came in on his own time instead, well-armed and quietly tense, and hoping no one would find him.

It was night; it was dark; it was a house that was eerie in daylight. A lumos barely cut through at all. The light didn't reach the walls, but instead glowed off in hazy spheres, touching on boxes and sheet-ghosted sofas, and making specters of objects that should have been ordinary. All it seemed to be, though, was discarded rubble. As the light panned across it, he looked for anything familiar, finding little that was -- until the glow finally hit something known, and flared.

He held his wand still to stare.

Don't bother with all this, Sirius had muttered, his voice low and gruff. It's just old junk. He'd said it and left, shutting the door with a swift, indisputable slam the instant the others were out of the way. Off-limits, this was. He couldn't have put a clearer keep-away sign on it if he'd tried. The thought had to occur that this couldn't really be junk, if it wasn't permitted at all....

Remus thought it over again as he studied the aged, locked trunk.

"Stubborn bugger," he said under his breath.

Sirius wasn't there to answer, but in his memory, their own younger voices kicked in with the evidence.

"What's in here?" he'd asked, years and years before, the one time he'd been allowed into this house before Sirius' parents discovered what he was. He'd kicked one foot lightly against the base of the trunk. It sat at the end of Sirius' bed, half-covered with blankets and scattered papers; his broomstick was propped up beside. If it weren't for the gleaming lock, it might have just looked like a table. Sirius had looked down and sniffed.

"It's just furniture," he said, and threw something else onto it, covering as much as he could. "Nothing interesting."

But the lock still gleamed, hinting at something....

Remus bent down and held his wand to the keyhole. Over the last few days, he'd shied away from standard spells; nearly everything they'd had to disable and destroy was booby-trapped against those. But this trunk -- unless anything had been done to it after Sirius left, which he had to admit was possible -- was something that belonged to Sirius, and shouldn't be inherently vile....

Even if Sirius didn't particularly want it in the first place.

"You still just a piece of furniture?" he murmured, touching the tip of the wand to the lock. It didn't protest; there was no sense of anything hostile. Remus sighed. He knew he could just leave it alone -- Sirius had been trying to make him do that, after all, since they were teenagers....

He ignored the mental image of a younger Sirius glaring at him. Instead he prepared a raft of defensive spells and held his breath.

"Alohomora," he murmured.

The trunk popped open instantly -- to reveal only clothes.

I told you to stay out of there, he could hear Sirius snarl, as clearly as if he were standing there. Remus whipped around; the room was empty. Only dust was moving, drifting through his wandlight as he sharply cast it around. Nothing else spoke. It took a minute to steady his heartbeat before returning to the trunk, and when he did, nothing had changed. There were just shirts, trousers, dress coats, a pair of gloves...

Remus reached in, puzzled, to draw something out. Only when he could see it in full light did he begin to understand.

These were Sirius' clothes -- Sirius as a young man, still growing, slim and gangly -- but Sirius as his parents had meant him to be. The fabrics were rich greens and silvers, patterned with serpentine embroidery that clearly illustrated all the hopes and ambitions of a noble family of Slytherins, and all they'd intended for their princely heir. Remus found initals stitched into the sleeve, tracing a snake's head on the S with his thumb, and sighed.

Sirius as he could have been flickered into his head, his bright grey eyes gone cold and sharp, the sound of his own name hissing from those lips in tones of pure disgust....

Behind him, there was a creak, and the sound of quiet, sullen footsteps. Remus held himself very still. The voice that actually spoke aloud was older and tired, far too much so to be accusatory anymore.

"Never worn," Sirius muttered. "Mum wouldn't alter them."

Remus carefully refolded the jacket, as if he'd disturb another memory if he shook it too hard. "Why do you keep them now?"

He took a while to reply. "They aren't mine, really."

But they were, Remus thought. And you lived with them for year after year, keeping them around like some shadow self was just waiting to put them on....

Remus shut his eyes and saw the Slytherin Sirius leering at him, so like Regulus had looked in his brother's stead, but worse for being him -- then he shook his head sharply to clear it away. His fingers itched. He put the jacket back into the trunk, closed it, and stood.

"If they aren't yours," he said quietly, looking at the real Sirius at last, "you shouldn't be keeping them."

And he handed over his wand.

Sirius' face looked gaunt and haunted in this light, but his eyes were sharpening at the possibility of what Remus was offering. After a long moment, his bony fingers reached out to wrap around the staff. He'd always coordinated well with Remus in magic; the wand didn't spark or protest, only made a soft hum before settling into agreement. Sirius lifted it speculatively.

"So what do you think?" he asked it, his voice rough but slanting toward dry humor. "Banishing? Unraveling? Death by summoning a thousand hungry bugs?"

Remus watched him, suddenly picturing that stance of wounded pride transformed into something else entirely -- pure-blooded arrogance in black and green and silver, turning those questions on Remus instead: halfblood, he'd have whispered as he pointed the wand for a curse -- beast and mongrel... not worthy to be here, not worthy to breathe...

He gulped, stepping back, feeling unarmed and exposed and suddenly terrified -- until Sirius smiled, and the man he knew said, "On the other hand, the classics exist for a reason."

He flicked the wand toward the trunk with a whispered "Incendio."

Flames struck the trunk, crawling up its sides and biting into the wood like fangs -- or, now that Remus thought of it, claws. Red-gold light consumed it from the outside in, going deep to singe the fabric, then destroy it. Phantom-like smoke curled upwards from the blaze; it looked for just an instant like the form of a young man, raising a fist in anger -- then there was one final, defiant flare, and it vanished. It was over in seconds. The fire, tightly controlled by Sirius' spell, went to embers and ashes and died.

The room went dark in its absence. Belatedly, Sirius muttered another lumos. Somehow, it seemed to reach further into the room than before.

"That's done, then," he said around a cough, either from awkwardness or lingering smoke, Remus couldn't tell. He slowly handed the wand back, his fingers uncurling only reluctantly. "I don't know why I didn't do that ages ago."

Remus felt a little better with the wand in his hand, but not much. He rubbed his forehead with the other. He couldn't help but think both of Sirius' comment and the specter he'd seen -- or, he hoped, just imagined -- when he replied, "This house... it'll do things to your head."

Sirius' grunt of agreement was short and bitter. He looked down, kicking something aside before turning around. He hadn't really needed to do that to have room, but Remus could understand the sentiment. "Come on," he said, putting one hand to his friend's shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

Remus nodded, letting his own hand slowly drop. It was impossible not to imagine the scope of what Sirius really wanted when he said that, but he said nothing of it, only turned to go with him. He knew he had to keep Sirius from the gloom of this place. If there was anything he could do to divert him, he would.

Which was why he angled for something brighter, waving his illuminated wand for a bit of punctuation as he spoke.

"If you have anything else around here that needs toasting, you know," he said, "you can consider my services on permanent offer."

Sirius chuckled. Remus expected he was thinking of flinging books of dark magic atop a bonfire, burning instruments of torture until they were useless, threatening his horrid mother with it until she finally, finally shut up --

What he said was something else.

"I'd like to hope," he murmured, leaning in, "that that's not the only service you've got on permanent offer."

Remus stopped short in the hallway, startled into a laugh. And the warm touch and words finally jarred the last bit of gloom from his own mind. He wasn't a phantom, this Sirius -- not the cruel specter he'd seen. This was someone real and present and here, and his, despite everything. The tension that had been bothering him all day finally began to unknot. When he'd collected himself enough to speak again, his voice had turned a little mischievous.

"If you can suggest a room that isn't infested by phantoms or ghouls or shrieking portraits," he said, "I'm all yours."

Sirius turned an answering grin on him. "Our options are pretty slim, but I think I know just the place...."

"Lead on, then," Remus murmured, stepping closer.

They turned together down the hall, letting the door swing shut behind them. And in the echo of its passing, the smell of ghosts and dust and lingering nightmares at last began to fade away.