The Summer of the Phoenix

Chapter 8

Later that night - Sirius couldn't tell whether he had slept or not - he finally dragged himself to his feet and stumbled up the remaining stairs to the second landing. The house was very quiet now. Sirius dropped on the dusty old sofa in his father's study, not bothering to even take his shoes off, and lay staring at the dark wooden ceiling for a long while, until sheer exhaustion finally let him close his burning eyes and carried him off to sleep.

But sleep brought no relief.

Sirius dreamed. He dreamed he was back in a dark prison cell, watching rats crawling around his feet, sniffing at him and squeaking in high voices. He kicked at them with his foot, and one of the rats - Sirius noticed it had a toe of its front paw missing - sat up on its hind legs and squealed, "Under no circumstances is Sirius to leave the house!" He lashed out at it with his hand, but the rat was quicker, dancing out of reach... "Fidelius," said a deep, solemn voice, and the rat gave Sirius a wicked toothy grin and slipped out between the bars of his cell. He had to catch it! He knew he had to catch it before it was too late, and he lunged forward - but there was a blinding flash of green light, the force of a great explosion threw him backwards into the wall, and there was a high, cackling laughter in the air, a mad laughter of triumph. "You killed them!" the voice cackled. "It was your doing!" "No!" Sirius wanted to shout, but all that came out of his mouth was a rattling, rasping breath, and he felt cold, cold as if his insides were turning to ice... he couldn't move, he was paralysed... then he was suddenly seized by a dozen hands at once. He was saved - no, not saved, but caught! Faceless shadows were grabbing his arms, pushing him around, all the time shouting in shrill voices, "Disgrace of the Order! Traitor to your own friends!" Someone hit him hard in the back between his shoulders, and he fell, he was falling into a pitch dark bottomless abyss, into a void where there was no light and no sound, no beginning and no end, falling, falling...

Sirius woke with a start. He sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat, breathing very fast and looking wildly around the unfamiliar and yet familiar room, slowly remembering where he was and why he was here.

If dreaming was painful, waking was even more so. The darkness was gone - there was daylight behind the dusty curtains - but the voices where still echoing shrilly in his throbbing head.

For a long time, he didn't move. Then he put his head between hands, closed his eyes, and concentrated very hard. A moment later, a large black dog had taken his place on the sofa, its shaggy head resting on its paws, lying very still.

* * *

It grew dark outside, and light again, before the dog moved again at all. Finally, it opened its eyes, blinked a few times, and transformed back into Sirius's human self. He got up from the sofa with a sigh, swaying so heavily he had to catch himself on the edge of the heavy oak desk. He stood there for a moment to make sure his legs would carry him, and then driven by hunger and thirst, he left the room to make his way downstairs to the kitchen.

"Good morning," a friendly voice greeted him when he arrived in the hall. Sirius blinked. Just inside the front door, Remus Lupin was sitting cross-legged on the frayed carpet, with his back to the stairs and the sleeves of his robes rolled up, poking at the heavy mechanism of the lock and bolt with his wand.

"I saw you were still asleep when I arrived earlier this morning, and I didn't want to wake you up," said Lupin, and turned around. The smile faded from his face. "Good heavens. You look terrible."

Sirius checked his reflection in the cracked wardrobe mirror next to the door, and had to admit that Lupin was right. His face, very pale under the dark stubble of three days without shaving, looked back at him out of swollen red eyes in deep dark hollows, half hidden behind the tangles of his unkempt hair.

"Are you ill?" Lupin asked.

"No," Sirius said, his hoarse voice almost failing him. "Only - only dreams." He turned to find his friend looking at him with a very concerned expression. "It's nothing, really," he lied.

Lupin raised an eyebrow.

"Look, I'm sorry about last night," Sirius said very quickly. "I was - I don't know, I was just - I didn't want to shout - I mean I did, but - " He shrugged helplessly.

"That's all right, Padfoot, old friend," Lupin said lightly, and the smile was back on his face. "It was very late, and we're all under a bit of strain at the moment. Never mind. And for your information, it's the night before last you're talking about. It's Wednesday today. Around ten in the morning. And there's still some breakfast left down in the kitchen." He gestured towards a chipped mug of tea, placed conveniently on top of a very battered old suitcase next to the door. "And there's tea today, too. Only tea bags, I'm afraid, but tea nonetheless."

"Are you staying then?" Sirius asked, referring to the suitcase rather than to the mug on top if it.

"If you ask me nicely," Lupin said with a grin.

* * *

"What exactly are you doing there?" Sirius asked when he came back from the kitchen with a mug of his own in one hand and a piece of toast with strawberry jam in the other, and found Lupin still sitting by the front door.

"I'm working on the lock, obviously," Lupin replied, "since Dumbledore asked us to do that first. Once more people learn about this place, we shouldn't just leave the door unlocked."

Sirius realised with a pang of guilt that there had been work to do for the Order, useful work, urgent work even. Work that he had neglected, preferring to stare at the ceiling and wallow in feelings of futility and despair.

"But I haven't got very far," Lupin admitted, interrupting his friend's thoughts. "I've always been useless with technical stuff, really. I think the door was password-protected anyway. We might as well start guessing."

"I think it was a family thing," Sirius said. "Anyone in the family was easily able to unlock the door with just a tap of their wands. All the others had to ring the bell."

"Then why didn't you get us in in the first place?"

"Make that 'family' in my mother's definition, Remus," Sirius said with a wry grin. "I've never been able to get back in just like that, once I'd moved out."

"I wonder," said Lupin thoughtfully, "if we could teach the door to think of us, of the Order I mean, as the family? So it would open to us, and to us only?"

"Knowing the Blacks, it's probably a blood thing. Like, the door looks inside you and only opens if you're a Black, or at least a pure-blood."

"How did they seal the door to you then?"

"Oh. Right." Sirius frowned. "Same with my cousin Andromeda, by the way. She's a Black, too, but she married a Muggle-born, and had to ring the doorbell ever since. Not that she called very often, if she could help it. Very decent person, my cousin Andromeda."

"Everyone else had to use the bell?" Lupin mused. "Did anybody ever use the knocker?"

"Not that I recall," Sirius shrugged. "It's probably just a piece of decoration."

"Maybe." Lupin ran his hand over the cracked paint on the inside of the door. "Look, this must be the other side of the knocker - it's actually a serpent, too." He pointed at the metal plaque in the centre of the door. It was engraved with the picture of a snake, its raised head facing to the left.

"Don't tell me you're surprised about that," Sirius grunted. "Regulus used to have fun counting all the snakes in the house. It was a different number every time, but it was always more than fifty."

"What does a door knocker need this plaque on the inside for?" Lupin wondered. "It wouldn't even sound properly that way." He tapped the picture of the snake softly with his wand. "Hello, Snake. I was wondering if you have anything to do with the sealing mechanism of the door, you know."

"I never knew you were a Parselmouth, Remus," Sirius said in an amused tone and took another bite of his toast.

"I'm not. Just thinking aloud." Lupin turned back to the snake. "Suppose we asked you to open the door to someone, would you do it, Snake? Let's say, Sirius Black?"

Sirius snorted impatiently, but just then something very odd happened. The snake on the plaque gave a quick but unmistakeable nod.

"Did you see that?" Lupin exclaimed excitedly. "It heard me! It understood! I bet this is how it works. Let's try again - what about Remus Lupin?"

There was another nod.

"At least the snake doesn't care whether you're a Black or not," Sirius said, trying to hide his surprise behind a grin. "Go again. Albus Dumbledore?"

The snake showed no reaction.

Sirius sighed. "Maybe it doesn't like me."

"Maybe it doesn't like Albus Dumbledore. Or maybe you can only have two names at a time."

"Or you have to be there when the name is said," Sirius suggested. "At least be in the house or something. Like the Fidelius, only the other way round."

"Quite likely so," Lupin agreed. "We'll try again once he's here himself. Now let's find out whether it's working for us. I'll just go outside, you lock and bolt the door behind me, and I'll try to get back in."

They did as Lupin had suggested. Sirius secured the door behind his friend, but it only took a tap of Lupin's wand to make the lock click open and the bolt slide back as if controlled by invisible hands.

"It's working." Lupin looked very satisfied when they came face to face again. "Try again."

There was a minute of silence this time, then Lupin was hammering on the door with his fist. Sirius quickly opened to him.

"The knocker on the outside is the reverse mechanism," Lupin reported excitedly, rubbing his hand. "I said my name to it, the knocker nodded, and I couldn't get back in. Then I said your name, but it didn't move. I suppose that's because you were still inside. So simple, and so brilliant."

"No, you're brilliant, Remus. Just how many wizards would start talking to a snake although they knew they couldn't?"

Lupin blushed slightly. "I'd better put my things away somewhere upstairs, now that we're done here," he said, wiping his oily hands on his robes. "And then we can see about the less academically challenging part of our preparations for Friday."

"Cleaning," said Sirius, rolling his eyes. "Come on, then. I'll take your stuff. You choose your bedroom. They're all free and none of them is haunted, at least as far as I know."

"I'd best have one with a heavy bolt on the inside of the door," Lupin said practically. "Just in case I get into a bit of a haunting mood myself, at the full moon."

"Best have my father's then," said Sirius. "It's right next to the study. Locomotor suitcase."