In Lines of Charcoal

In Lines of Charcoal

In the beginning there is the touch of a forehead against mine. Sensing all my dimensions with him as a measure, for the first time ever I receive the gifts of my renewed mind and body secure in the knowledge of who I am. He's been reckless, not only in once again escaping the house. I love him.

Thanks to him there's no warm trickle of blood from wounds, and I can ignore the echo of the transformation pain still pulsating through me - all I have to do is open my eyes. The first light of dawn draws his eyebrows and hollow cheeks like in lines of charcoal. Yes, this elusive sight will remain another treasure to be transferred into a new sketch for the portrait I've been trying to craft secretly. Now I can no longer see more than the shock of his hair against a blurry white background, and white flakes in the black. He is breathing his heat against my neck.

"So tired," he mumbles. "And you must be."

In December the night is long for a dog plagued by the human sense of time. In his company I, in turn, have again approached a connection with the wolf's differently conscious mind... as mine, almost. I'll be able to relive some of the pleasure. But this is not the moment to do that - when my furless body inevitably contacts with the frozen ground, despite his attempts to protect me.

Our bodies are so entangled that there's no doubt he's been holding me close all through the change. What if the two of us are now irrevocably twirled into one? No, he separates himself, also unfastens the cloak from around his shoulders and wraps it around me only.

I feel too weak and too blessed to protest when he struggles to lift me up, then stumbles down the slope. The dog has guided me wisely: there are only a few yards to the old sheep shed where we stayed a month ago until my body became stable enough for Apparition.

Now we are finding warmth in each other, under this thick fine fabric. He asked me to get a cloak like this for him with his gold, and only I wear it, except these nights when neither of us can resist ignoring Dumbledore's orders - which keep him in the house, and me mainly away from him.

"I wish," he says, "we could just not go back."

I stop myself from saying why I need to be back in the house soon: only in order to leave once again without him. I don't want him to worry about my next mission. I could say we are both needed in this new war - that Harry needs us. But he's too concerned about Harry, as well, uselessly. All that concern, while the isolation in the house that frightens him hardly allows him to recover from the horrors of his lost years. And I'm too tired to think, but I know I'm already scared. Due to the full moon, last night has been the only time in the month when we could hope there would be nobody around hunting fugitives. Despite the threat outside of and within him, I often catch myself rejoicing in the home I've finally found in this love.

He now turns his face up, to look for a response in mine. The only one I can give is lips pressed hard over his mouth. My mind closes in a circle of concern around his.

***

It's not long before Christmas when I'm allowed to return to him. I'm selfish enough to feel a jolt of joy as well when I hear from Dumbledore that there's no one else in the house - that Harry, too, is supposed to spend the holidays at the Weasleys'. My silly cheerfulness is overshadowed by distress as soon as I enter the frigid gloom. How could I expect the shine of my brilliant Sirius's extraordinary lights to welcome me - the charmed benevolent moon on the top of his tree?

An icy draft guides me to the backyard door, and I find him where I once took him to sit - when it was still summer. He must have heard me enter, as he's not startled when I say his name, step close behind him, and ruffle his hair. The stone steps are not exactly inviting, but I move ahead to sit down next to him - and have to pick up a book left lying right there... No, it's the album with the corny picture of two puppies on the cover.

"You've decided to look at the photos, after all," I say.

Could he finally have agreed to let these few pictures I kept through all those years help him regain more vivid memories?

His face is covered by a veil of unwashed hair, and he still does not react by turning his head.

"No," he says. "I hate photographs. Muggle photos - the garish colours. And the silly movements in the magical ones - they repeat in my mind and I can't see anything real. But that thing... your great art... that's worse."

He reaches to grab the album from me and that's when I see the ragged cuffs he's pulled over his hands from under the sleeves of his robes. He's wearing my ancient sweatshirt, the one that was falling apart and that I ditched on his demand.

Perhaps that's not such a bad sign. He's talking more than usual, too, and I can't see any bottle. Finally back so close to him I find it hard not to cling to the hope that there's life still waiting for both of us, shared life.

"I just," he continues, pressing the album against his chest, "wanted to touch this."

"You've made great progress in touching since I got you back in June," I say playfully, lifting my arm across his shoulders and reaching to stroke his face. When I feel him tremble I can no longer hold myself back. I try to pull him into a tight embrace, but he remains stiff.

"That is worse," he repeats.

Uncomprehending, I stare ahead, then lower my eyes - and end up following his persistent gaze. There's a sheet of thin paper on the patch of snow in front of his feet. It takes an effort not to focus on the fact that he's wearing only slippers, no socks.

For a brief moment I'm afraid he's found some of my recent secret drafts. But no, this sketch has fallen from between the pages. I bend to pick it up. He shudders, and when I turn to examine his face, he's closed his eyes.

Instead, four young men stare at me from this quick charcoal drawing I must have made in May 1981. There's hardly any perceptible movement here, as I hadn't quite mastered the magic of real portraits yet. Besides, my three best friends did not exactly pose for me, not to mention allowing a physical and emotional contact at the moment of drawing the final lines.

Peter's suspicious frown is frozen and lifeless like the stalk of grass between his teeth: in the charcoal stroke there's nothing left of the once hopeful green of spring. The stiffness in James's originally relaxed, cocky pose is as uncompromising as that in the tree trunk against which he leans, with his arms crossed over his proud chest. The other two are sitting on the ground side by side, not quite touching. The aspiring artist himself - for a moment carefree, despite the war, and finally bold enough to attempt a tentative self-portrait: newly emerged from a winter's hardships he believes can't be surpassed, his figure is frail and the eyes too big... Yes, here I catch a silly movement, as Sirius has just called them: while the fingers of the artist's free hand stealthily brush those of his lover on the lawn, he lowers his eyes - not bashfully, and just for a second, to depict the two hands, perhaps the movement, as right now he's in full contact with his emotions, happy in his mind and body - whereas his incredible Sirius... This is the smile I carried with me through the years, as a proof that he had once loved me.

"What I am now," he says, "is not more alive than they here."

Before I manage to reply, his eyes open and the sullen statement is followed by more fervent words. "I don't want to leave behind another twitch of a smile like that. Don't ever touch me when you draw, if you can't just give up drawing me. So perhaps you'll remember me - all of me like this."

"I do remember and I will remember everything as long as I have my human mind, and with your help, perhaps the wolf will share the ability, too..." I'm talking too much, but I can't leave it at this. "But that's not the point. It's no time for remembering, at least not for remembering this - here and now... This is where we are living and we'll continue to live a better life, too, yours and mine."

"For me it is - it's all about remembering or not remembering. I still just gather memories of you right here and now. Can you understand: each little thing you do... it carves its marks - too significant marks in the empty mind I was left with."

"Perhaps because I'm your significant other, and you're mine." I throw that in too easily, almost cheerfully, compared with the breathless desperation in his nonsensical argument. I don't want to believe that his mind is so hopelessly damaged - that he can't even realise mine doesn't work like that. Perhaps I'm growing impatient, because I've been out in the cold for too long, for too many years. Whereas he... well, the cold has inhabited him. "Please, let's go in, and under some warm covers. I'll hide this silly sketch. But you shouldn't declare you hate all art. I know you still can't remember - but I made a real portrait of you, a water colour, just before... I mean, at the end of October back then. In that painting you were definitely more than a twitch of a smile. I lost it at the same time when I thought I lost you forever. But just because I worked on countless sketches of you, and I was so ambitious about the magic of moving images in the background, too, that it took me months - to capture the change in those birch trees next to our balcony (and I promise someday we'll go together and check how they have grown) - just because of my devotion to that work, I have never been able to forget a single detail in you... "

And now I manage to stop. To stop myself from saying, "Not even when I wanted to believe you were dead - that all these four young men were dead."

Standing abruptly, I grab his arms, which are still squeezing the puppies, and I pull him up and close, under the cloak. When I no longer hesitate to rub his skin, and to trace all the lines of his face with my lips, I trust that I can show him the two of us as very much alive.