Of Whisky and Knowledge

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe it was just Snape pissing me off. I know Snape was pissing him off. I heard them arguing over Harry in the kitchen, and I hung around, followed Sirius for a change when he stalked off upstairs.

Pretty unfair when you think of it, the guy goes through hell for the good of the Order, exists in his idea of Hell as a captive because nobody's got the time to push for a retrial under Veritaserum, and then has to put up with visits from the devil himself.

Good old Snape.

"All right, Sirius?" I hung off in the doorway. No man wants to be interrupted in a good cry--shouldn't have worried. Should have known Sirius wasn't the crying type. Drinking type now.

"Going to tell me your mum wouldn't approve?" He looked up, still on his guard after Snape, I suppose, not that I could blame him. I still remember how tense he was, like the muscles were jumping under his skin, wanting to run away again even though they couldn't.

"Nah. Mum likes to think me and Charlie don't drink either. Or dad." It's funny, looking back, how easy it was to talk to Sirius. Probably because anything we'd done and kept secret, he'd probably done himself--and more. Or worse.

Then he laughed--and that hurt to hear. It wasn't anything like the twins' laughs, or like Charlie's laugh, or even mum or Dad's. His laugh hurt to hear. I think I'd rather he'd have cried. "Pull up a glass." He held out the bottle, and you know, it didn't even occur to me to turn him down. It was something about Sirius Black.

"I heard the argument," I said, not wanting him to think I'd been spying. Sirius had enough of that--enough of people talking behind his back, even Mum--especially Mum. I guess I wanted to give him one Weasley he could depend on to look him in the eye and give him the respect he deserved.

"Snivellus was born to stick his greasy nose where it doesn't belong." Sirius grimaced, and passed the glass into my hands. He used water glasses for his whisky, I remember. And filled them to the brim. "Your mum know you're still here?"

I remember smiling at that, and the offhand, sarcastic way he said it. "No. Mum doesn't need to know where I am. We don't all live on butterbeer and fizzing whizbees and sneak around trying to make humorous explosions."

"Is this your way of saying you're the responsible one?"

"I guess it is."

He let out another bark of laughter, and I think I winced, but he was still grinning at me when he toasted me with his glass and downed a good half of it in one go. "Very responsible, Bill, getting drunk with an Azkaban escapee and madman. Arthur would be proud."

I loved how he said that, that "Arthur would be proud." Mum might have scolded him for insulting dad, but I know better--he liked Dad and it showed. Dad understood him, at least a little. I guess he thought I did too, and maybe I did. I wanted to. "So what else do you do when you're being responsible?"

"Escort young ladies to clubs, and trade them off for young men, mostly." I still don't know if that was the whisky loosening my tongue, or Sirius--I suspect the latter. He could wring rogue confessions from a saint.

"A man after my own heart," he said, and toasted me again with his glass before emptying it in a long smooth swallow. In that moment, the memory of blue eyes, flashing teeth, and a face stamped by the haggard memory of a handsome young man, he was absolutely breathtaking. I was still staring when I realized what he'd said.

"So it's true?"

"What's true?"

"You and James?"

He winced, cringed, even, and it was like a blow to the gut to see. He didn't have to say a word with a face like that. I wonder if it was Azkaban that stripped him of his ability to conceal his emotions or if he'd always been that expressive. "I wouldn't have killed James," he said, refilling his glass so full it slopped over the sides.

"I know."

He looked at me, and the look was only empty because he was. "But I did."

"No," I said. I could have told him it wasn't his fault, that mistakes happen, that Peter killed James. But I know how words lose their meaning the more they're repeated--and he'd heard those words too many times. "James knows you didn't kill him," I said instead, and in his eyes, something flickered to life. "And Harry knows. Reckon that's all that matters."

"Lily?"

I could only shrug, and drink. I never knew Lily. After watching Mum tear into Sirius, who knows what women think? "James'd tell her."

"You know," he said then, and the way he said it, the same smoky flavour that he'd had talking about James infused it.

I did. I do. And I did it.

Whisky gives men courage, excuses, and alibis--I leaned over and kissed him. "Yeah."

"Bill?" He said, and I could feel the whisky in the words against my mouth.

"Yeah?"

"Molly is going to come after me with a curse for this." I could feel the warmth of his hands at my waist, hovering, but not quite touching.

"So? I'm a curse breaker," I said--it'd been funny at the time, imagining the look on Sirius's face with me leafing through my books, trying to find the counter curse to some kind of castration hex.

He must've found it funny too--he kissed back, and this time, his laugh didn't hurt, just passed over my tongue and tasted bittersweet. He felt good.

I remember the first night better than other nights--some were worse. He'd have nightmares or lay awake staring at the ceiling trying to pretend he was asleep so I wouldn't worry. But the last night, he'd slept the whole night through--and I woke up so bloody warm and comfortable.

The stone of the Ministry floor is hard under my arse and I know I look ridiculous sitting here like a schoolboy with a pile of books in front of the veil. I open the top book to its marked place, point my wand at the veil, and cast the next counter curse I've marked with potential. There's a quill and ink on my left and I've been using it to make notes what works, what doesn't work, and what happens. If I don't have him back by the time I get to the last page of the last book, I'll find more books. I'm young--I've got time.

I know a lot more about him than the fact that he tastes good and he didn't kill James. I know more than what he feels like under me and what he sounds like in a nightmare.

I know he doesn't deserve to be given up on.

And I know he's alive.