Family Album: The Sparrow in the Hall

The Sparrow in the Hall

CECILY: When I see a spade I call it a spade.

GWENDOLYN: I am glad to say I have never seen a spade.

It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

Sirius Black had never used a spade. In the garden of his childhood home the house elves had done the lighter work, and there had been expensively enchanted shovels for the rest. Hands-on experience in Herbology at Ordinary Wizarding Level had been limited to trowels, which required a wholly different technique, and Sirius had declined to waste his time taking the subject for NEWTs. His decision had been vindicated early on when James Potter stumbled begrimed and reeking into the Gryffindor common room after the first lesson of the sixth year to announce that NEWT Herbology was not in fact the doss subject so richly promised by their OWL experience, but likely to prove the toughest four hours of the week. Apparently there was a pact among the older students not to reveal this to the younger ones, nothing relieving suffering like the thought of handing it on to others. Nonetheless, James had not given up Herbology and fled to the dry but calmer fields of Sirius and Remus's! Ancient Runes class, confiding instead that Herbology was all part of the plan, that suffering only enhanced it, and above all that women liked to see a man performing manual labour. Sirius was somewhat bemused by this; certainly at the rate James was going it seemed likely that his labour would continue to be solely manual for some time to come.

It was interesting, Sirius thought. These thoughts of James, of Lily and Remus and their Hogwarts days would once have qualified as happy. Now they were what the Dementors left him, part and parcel of the growling, grinding guilt that kept him sane in Azkaban, where he so richly deserved to be. He had destroyed them and the Dementors made him remember them, Lily rolling her green eyes at yet another of James's attempts, Remus's awful innocence of treachery, Peter's smile when Sirius made the fatal suggestion. You know I'll do it, Padfoot. You don't have to ask. I'd be glad to. Sirius certainly never forgot Peter, though the rats had long ceased to enter his cell. He didn't forget any of them. How could he? They kept him sane. They were not happy thoughts, James in his scruffy outdoor work robes with a carefully smeared smudge of dirt down his jaw, leaning on the wooden handle of a spade and staring at the girls over by the castle wall as his friends flicked acorns ! at his head. Sirius had never volunteered to lend him a hand. It was more fun to watch.

Nevertheless, Sirius reflected, much as he had never used a spade, he was convinced that he could have handled one rather better than the Dementors were managing, even in his present state. He could see the Azkaban guards from his cell window, several of them gathered in the bleak graveyard that occupied much of the shelf of rock between the fortress and the sea. It appeared that the Ministry budget either did not run to enchanted shovels or that the Dementors were unable to use them. Which would have been interesting, if he had time to think about that sort of thing. Instead they scraped away at the rocky soil with blunt tools, shifting a bare few inches each time. It took them all day from dawn until late afternoon for the grave to be finished and the body brought out. Not everyone who died in Azkaban was buried there. Those who had committed only petty crimes were usually claimed by their families or managed to make it to the end of their sentence alive, if not necessa! rily healthy and sane. In the more serious cases, shame, or the lack of any family at all (consequent on the brutalities of both sides in the late war) was more likely to leave the bodies to the rock.

Sirius had seen a lot of burials in his time. He wondered which poor sod they were doing for now. A couple of Squib guards brought out the coffin and Sirius craned his neck to see. A short, portly man stood observing from a distance, flanked by a couple of Aurors, his lime-green bowler hat a jarring note against the blue, black and grey of the island. Sirius had never heard that Cornelius Fudge had any relatives in Azkaban; it was hard to imagine him gaining his present position were it so, which suggested another official visit. A rolled up newspaper stuck out of a baggy pocket in his robes. Good. If he had been reading the paper Fudge might be in the mood for looking tough, in which case Sirius would be in for a personal visit and who could deny even such a killer as himself a chance at the Prophet's crossword? The newspaper itself was absolute trash, but the crossword was always worth a go and the newsprint was pretty absorbent. Fudge and the Aurors moved forwar! d across the rocky ground as the coffin came closer. It was quite small - a woman, perhaps, or an old man. It was not young Barty Crouch. No, that had been years ago, a day much like this and a light coffin easily shouldered by the four Squibs. Crouch had not come for his son's body, and though in consideration of how his wife had looked when the pair had come on that deathbed visit Sirius might have been generous and allowed that the man had grief enough at home and another funeral likely to have to organise and perhaps out of sight out of mind was sometimes better, he really didn't feel like it. It was not as if the man had been generous to him. Crouch did not have a generous nature.

Sirius remembered the noise in the corridor, the distant rattle of metal and wood and then the screaming, the panicked babble of shrieks and wails coming closer and closer, the rush of cold as the Dementors hurried past his cell, the sense of the prisoners around him waking up, shaken out of their torpor by the rawness of the sound. He stood a couple of feet back from the barred door looking out into the corridor, slouching against the wall and meaning to give - what? Some wink of solidarity to the poor unfortunate dragged by? He had certainly not expected to see young Barty Crouch.

The boy was sobbing, so far gone that the Dementors were actually having to drag him bodily along the corridor as he twisted feebly and wailed.

'Father! Father...please... I didn't do it! I swear it Father...please...please'

And Sirius stood there dumbfounded, barely able to imagine what the boy might have done to find himself brought here, not just to Azkaban, but here. He looked out as the boy passed, straw-coloured hair tangled over the wet, white face, and speculated as to whether Schadenfreude counted as a happy emotion. No doubt he would learn soon enough. So Crouch had sent his own son to Azkaban. In some men that would have been honour, but not in Bartemius Crouch. Oh, no doubt there had been a trial, which was more than Sirius himself had received of course, and Crouch would have stood there and listened and accepted the vote, and so far as Sirius knew no trial had ever gone against old Bartemius's way. The screams were growing fainter now. The boy must be tired. So it hadn't all ended; perhaps it would never end, the rot in the Wizarding world sunk too deep and Azkaban at the heart of it, the cowardice, the corruption, the abdication of responsibility, and little Barty Crouch pleadi! ng with the far away father who would never hear him.

Another clang of metal and more footsteps sounded over the dying screams. Sirius turned to look. Another man was stumbling along the stone floor, barely picking up his feet yet trying to hurry, to keep the Dementors as far away from him as possible. In his prison robes he looked short and stocky and familiar Rabastan Lestrange, a man about as different from Barty Crouch as one could find, and a much more plausible candidate for Azkaban. Lestrange stumbled past Sirius's cell without looking up as Sirius stepped back away from the Dementors, feeling the brief chill as they glided by. Again the clash of iron on wood, and Sirius thought grimly that he hadn't had this much excitement in years. It was a shame there wasn't a bit more time and any contact whatsoever between the prisoners on the wing; they could have run a book. He would have won. He couldn't say why. The events of two years before had proved once and for all that he had inherited his family's well-known lack of t! alent in Divination, but this he knew. A change in the air, perhaps, a shift in the ground, one of those funny little side-effects of the dog, and no surprise at all to see the rangy form of Rodolphus Lestrange white and retching as the Dementors forced him on with scaly hands upon his shoulders. Sirius felt his own gorge rise in sympathy, felt the press of the dry, cracked slimy fingers at the back of his neck and before he could look back they had gone, and he heard the door open once more to admit the last prisoner, surely the last, and the so heard the tread of smaller, lighter feet on stone.

She looked older, of course. He hadn't seen her in years, since she had been barely more than a teenager. So he should expect her to be older, and looking in many ways exactly as she had when they were very young. The Azkaban robes, cut to her measurements, seemed slightly too big, the mass of thick dark hair sweeping back over her shoulders shone against her pale face. She walked more slowly than the others had, almost sauntering, and he hated her like Hell, but God! To have walked liked that in Azkaban, the Dementors trailing behind one, despised! Her head was high, and it was only knowing her that Sirius could see the tension in her straight shoulders, the strained cords of muscle in her neck framed by the wings of the stiff leather collar as at last she drew level with him and saw him and turning her head just a little, commanded,

'Wait.'

And the Dementors did. He had never seen anything like it. One might have thought they were humouring her, but he didn't believe they could have thought of it. Bellatrix stood in front of his barred cell door, her thin lips curved in a faint smile, looking at him through those heavy-lidded eyes.

'Well, well, my dear cousin! This is a surprise. What a long time it's been since we met, and to find you here...' The smile grew broader as she spoke. 'So they lied, when they said that happy things could not happen in Azkaban. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. What a pleasure. '

There was a roar of blood in her voice, as if the veins in her throat ran open, and something dark, soot on a mirror. She was the closest thing he had seen to a mirror in two years. He wondered if she realized, and hoped not. He must be looking rather worse for wear, which was what two years of cold water, coal tar soap, and nights spent sleeping as a dog would do for a man. No, she wouldn't have thought it. The Blacks might bear a strong family resemblance, but the women had yet to run to beards. It had been years since he had seen her, since Narcissa's wedding, the last occasion on which he had bothered to make a pretence of feeling part of the family; the last occasion he had been desperate enough to feel that he had to. He could remember it very well. It had not been, from his point of view, a happy occasion: bizarre, fun, and a streak of terror running under it all, oh yes, but definitely not happy. They had all been there, his parents, his aunt and uncle, his brothe! r, the three girls, and everything running so horribly, horribly wrong and he hadn't realized, hadn't realized anything. He hadn't wanted to see it. It was a character flaw, he realized that now, another thing he shared with her, that ability to look and not to see where he didn't want to, and look where it had brought them both. He lounged back against the rough stone wall and curled one hand tight around a bar in the door.

'Oh, the pleasure's all mine.'

Collected from Hogwarts the previous night, Sirius had arrived in Wiltshire with his family, his mother still fussing over Regulus's dress robes as Andromeda swept down on them, determinedly polite to the others and practically frog-marching him into a quiet corner. She was, perhaps fortunately, on her own, her disgrace-to-the-family-name husband called away on some hazardous journalistic assignment.

'You are going to behave, aren't you?' Andromeda had hissed, the tip of her wand mere inches from his face. 'Because we're all trying very hard not to talk about politics, the MacKinnons actually refused to come, Mr Malfoy has about a month to live, and I'd like my sister to at least have a chance of enjoying her wedding day without any amusements from you, understand?' Sirius had understood, nodding and belligerent.

'I'm in the sixth year, Andromeda!'

'Yes, and I've heard about what you sixth years think is funny.'

She narrowed her dark eyes and the cold wood brushed his jaw, and he suddenly felt rather sick. How did she know?

'That wasn't...'

'Funny? No, it really wasn't. I've got my eye on you, Sirius.' She lowered her want and laughed. 'After all, I need someone here I can talk to without wanting to scream.'

'It's that bad?'

'It's hilarious. Frank Longbottom's heard of Afghanistan. He generously hopes Ted won't run across any landmines while he's there. Bellatrix just cries every time I try to talk to her, Alastor Moody's convinced I'm about to raise the dead, and mother's desperately trying to upstage Johanna Malfoy without looking too obvious about it.'

'You're sure you don't want me to stage a distraction?' he grinned.

'Quite sure.' She hooked an arm around his neck. 'Just don't annoy your mother, do chat up that girl from Beauxbatons - she's got a boyfriend, but you could take him - congratulate Narcissa, and if you go anywhere near Severus Snape, I'll kill you. OK?'

'OK.'

There hadn't been a congregation like it in years. Andromeda's wedding had been small and personal - fortunately Ted Tonks's grandmother had just died, providing a convenient excuse - and even here the crowd was not as big as it might have been. The wedding had already been brought forward by a month and relocated to Wiltshire in deference to Philip Malfoy's ill-health, and no-one wanted to over-crowd things. The cream of Pureblood society was there, of course, but one couldn't help noticing absences, faces that two years ago one would certainly have seen. Still there were a few impressive oddities: Snivellus and his horrible father, though they had left immediately after the ceremony, of course, and the Flamels in ludicrously old-fashioned hats.

Narcissa might not have thought much of her cousin, but she had at least sat him and Regulus apart from their parents. Regulus had not done so well - his table included as Griselda Marchbanks quizzing him about his OWLs, as well as all three Crouches - but Sirius's table of ten had the Notts, Broderick Bode, and the indefatigable Patils, just back from a holiday of broomstick mountaineering in the Karakorum. Mrs Patil even made Sirius promise to dance with her later, which was unbelievably embarrassing. For one thing, she had to be nearly twenty years older than he, although his cousins aside she was probably still the best-looking woman in the room. At the top table, Andromeda and Bellatrix were seated on opposite sides of the happy couple. It had been like that all day, at the ceremony with their mother between them, in the photographs afterwards where they stood on either side of the bride. After the meal, Sirius noticed that Bellatrix left the table as Andromeda was s! till talking to Malfoy's sister, and did not re-emerge until the floor was full again. Meanwhile Andromeda swanned around in crimson dress robes, her black sash of the Scholomance challenging all scorn, and a wicked politeness in her mouth.

'Did you really have to race monsters through the dungeons to graduate?' he asked her.

Andromeda twitched the hem of her robes aside, revealing a shining burn spread half-way up her calf.

'Oh yes. Watch Moody next time I go past him. He keeps trying to check whether I've still got all my shadow.'

'Cool!'

Andromeda had always been Sirius's favourite cousin. Of the three closest to him in age she was less restrained - less boring - than Narcissa, less weird than Bellatrix, and though always slightly scary, these days less terrifying than her elder sister. The only one of the three sisters to have anything like what he would consider a sense of humour, Andromeda had threatened to kill Sirius on a regular basis throughout his childhood, but she had generally been decent otherwise. She had married Muggle-born Ted Tonks a few months after leaving Hogwarts, whereupon Sirius's mother had actually burned her off the family tree, and at the same time she had spent the year studying openly at the Scholomance, the finest School for the Dark Arts in the world.

'Of course, it's largely theoretical,' Sirius had heard his uncle telling Arthur Weasley outside the concert hall at Christmas, only to have the effect rather spoiled by Andromeda blasting a passing pigeon out of the gutter with her new wand and an unmistakeable green flash. She was flashing the wand round at the wedding now, and he had made the mistake of asking for a look.

'Bet you say that to all the boys,' she had said with a poisonous grin. Sirius had handed it back quickly; it was antique, made of black wood inlaid with tortoiseshell and some kind of ivory in the handle, and he really didn't want to know what was in the core. He couldn't help notice that Andromeda always put it away whenever she was near Bellatrix.

Bellatrix herself was being rather elusive. Oh, Sirius had seen her across the room talking to Narcissa, to her mother, to her uncle, to Philip Malfoy, even dancing with Rodolphus Lestrange, but he'd barely spoken to her at all. Only once she had whisked past him as he was downing a glass of champagne in self-commiseration after his miserable failure with the Beauxbatons girl (she'd gone off with Avery of all people), and suddenly her hand was on his shoulder and her low voice full of laughter,

'Oh come on now, Sirius, don't be downhearted. She's barely Pureblood. You can do better than that.' He'd turned and wanted to say something back, but she had gone, her robe whipping out of sight behind a door. Sirius was having an extremely unusual sense of fellow-feeling for Bellatrix, losing another sister - albeit to what she presumably considered a better cause - and clearly having a pretty rotten day. He had overheard at least three witches asking when she would be married herself; Bellatrix wouldn't want to be left the maiden aunt, his mother had advised. He could see her now at the other end of the gallery, cornered by her sisters, Narcissa moving away and then just the two of them, Bellatrix and Andromeda facing each other, Andromeda speaking, the slash of raised wands, then Bella's arm extended, pushing into air, and Andromeda falling back as Bellatrix broke and ran.

He found Andromeda later lounging in a corner with the Notts and a glass of something sticky. He sat down, watching the newly-weds pirouette across the dance-floor, and found her seating herself along the other side of his otherwise deserted table. She pushed her glass across to him.

'Here, finish that. I've got to Apparate home later.'

He took a cautious sip. Ogden's Old Firewhisky and something else, probably best not risked, not with his mother still around. Always his mother, his father, someone to see that family honour was preserved, and Andromeda sitting here and all she had to worry about was being sober enough to Apparate home to a Mudblood husband the family despised.

'I don't know how you do it,' Sirius said.

'Do what?'

'Not care.' He rubbed his fingers into his eyes, feeling slightly drunk. 'I mean, they're all there talking about you, the disgrace to the family name, practically saying they wish Ted were dead, and you just take it and don't care.'

'Oh I take it,' said Andromeda, 'though I like to think I return it with interest.' She leaned forward on her elbows, fixing him with a serious look. 'You see, I'm a Black, and they know it, and much as some of them would like to think otherwise, and Alice Longbottom gets that faintly nauseous look at the thought of Mudblood hands on innocent flesh, no-one can do anything about it. Mum and Dad came to my wedding, and Narcissa hasn't had a Knut more than me in cash, even if she did get the jewellery, and it's really quite hard to call someone a blood traitor when I could take on any one of them in a Dark duel and win before they had their wand out. Except for maybe Crouch,' she qualified.

'Or Bellatrix,' said Sirius.

'Or Bellatrix.' There was a nasty pause.

'But Mum still burned you off the tapestry.'

'So?' Andromeda reached for the glass and took another sip. 'Forgive me, Sirius, if I don't admit your lovely mother as the last word on membership of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.'

'Maybe not,' he shrugged, 'but you can hardly claim to be upholding Toujours Pur, can you?'

Andromeda dropped the empty glass on to the table and ran a hand through her dark hair.

'Oh Sirius,' she sighed. 'You really do need to learn a little about us. The motto's nineteenth century. It's a joke. French, Sirius? For the Blacks, so proud to date back before the Conquest? Our esteemed great-great-grandfather Phineas Nigellus made it up - some sort of sarcastic gesture against all those Johnny-come-lately Lestranges and Pettigrews setting themselves up as keepers of the faith.. Blood is tradition, Sirius. That's what Bella doesn't understand.

'You've got to face it one day, Sirius; you're a Black. Doomed for it. You can't run away; the blood'll get you in the end. It's better to make it on your terms.' She stood up. 'Come on. Do you think you can be polite to Lucius while I say goodbye?'

They had crossed the floor to Lucius and Narcissa standing talking to the girls' parents and Andromeda kissed cheeks and shook hands as Sirius stood apart and saw behind the glassy shadow of the window the shiver of a pair of shoulders and the hem of Bellatrix's robes.

Years ago, Dumbledore had stood and told the students that there were things worse than death, and at the Gryffindor table James had hissed immediately,

'Yeah? Name three.' The people around them had laughed, but Peter had said quietly,

'Azkaban,' and the four friends had shivered.

'Being innocent in Azkaban,' Remus had added, and then it was Sirius's turn and there was only one thing left and he had known it, to be innocent in Azkaban, and still deserve to be there.

Of course, he hadn't said that at the time. He'd said 'Snogging Severus Snape,' and everyone had laughed and things had gone on as usual. Now he knew better. He would have done anything, anything at all, anything he could imagine, and a man could imagine a lot in Azkaban as long as it was unpleasant, and he would have done it all to turn back time and change what had happened, and he knew he could not. It had happened and he was not really innocent. Not when he had been so bloody stupid.

He didn't believe for a second that Bellatrix was innocent.

'Oh, the pleasure's all mine,' he said, and she took a step towards him.

'Now don't be selfish, Sirius. Leave a little for me.' Despite himself, he almost smiled. They had never really liked each other very well, but it had been an enjoyable enmity - if more so on his side than hers - at least until the day when all that power of hers was suddenly harnessed, and he realised in a moment that things had changed forever. Both had pretended things were the same, because such realizations were dangerous to tell, but they had known, and the hexes were more cautious after that, Bellatrix had left Hogwarts, and then there was nothing. Until now.

'So,' Sirius asked mildly, 'what brings you here?'

'The same as you, cousin,' she said quietly. 'Things went wrong.'

She moved forward again, taking hold of one of the bars in her left hand, and then the lids lifted on her hooded eyes and she looked straight at him.

'Although,' she said, with a low cruel laugh, 'perhaps not quite so wrong as they went for you.' The sound of her laughter echoed off the stone even as her gaze dropped and she fell silent. Sirius stretched out his hand between the bars, and Bellatrix seized it, clamping her fingers round his own, and leaned suddenly close, whispering urgently.

'Is it true, that one can hold on to strong unhappy thoughts? That they can't be taken away - that you can, can stay in them?'

'Yes. It's true.'

The hooded eyes lifted again.

'That's all right, then.'

Her grip on his hand relaxed, and she shook it, properly, and let go. Her glance flickered sideways to where the Dementors were hovering.

'They don't like to be kept waiting,' she said. 'I mustn't push my luck; I might need it one day. Until next time then, Sirius.'

'Next time?'

'Oh, there will be one, cousin; I'm sure of it.'

'Until next time, then.'

She nodded her head at the Dementors and turned to lead them away, her dark hair trailing out behind her, the Dementors gliding in her wake. Sirius held the bars as they went by, flakes of rust cutting into his palms as the cold washed over him, the voices poured into his lungs and he forced his way back up to see Bellatrix nearing the end of the hallway turn to her left, a flash of her set face sideways and then gone. He slumped down onto the floor. His hands were bleeding, unnecessarily.

He had run away; he had denied them all, not his family, he had said, not his, not him. Not even Andromeda, who refused to be other than that she had been born. Yet here in Azkaban after all they had him, the Blacks with all their familiar hauteur, their penchant for histrionics and Bellatrix like a mirror and her voice like smoke. That was the last time he had seen her. He heard her sometimes, but not often. She was strong, and had unhappy thoughts of betrayal. Nor did she often hear him.

The shabby little funeral was over. Fudge was walking away from the graveside, the Aurors ahead of him, none of them deigning to assist the shovelling of earth back in the grave with a wave of their wand. No, Fudge wouldn't want to sully his hands with the muck of Azkaban. Still, Sirius would be polite. Fudge had had a newspaper in his pocket, and though there was never much worth reading in the silly season it had been a long time since Sirius had done the crossword.