Padfoot's Daughter

Padfoot's Daughter

Prologue: The Last Visit

December 25^th, 1981

SHE has visited me six times since the Wizengamot threw me into Azkaban.

HER visits mean getting out of my cell. They mean getting away from the screaming and the crying and the Dementors, even if it is only for a few minutes.

HER visits keep me alive.... they keep me in reality.

Two Dementors glide along either side of me as I pass by the other cells, glancing at each one as I pass; some of the prisoners huddled in corners, muttering to themselves, and others sit with their faces---hollow and dead-looking---gazing out at me through the bars, their eyes glazed over.

They're almost gone. I am still here. There is something still...human...inside me and I will not let that go. As long as there is breath in my body, I will not let that go.

Bellatrix is in the very last cell; staring out at me haughtily, her eyes still retaining their regal view of the world from their dark, lined sockets.

"Blood traitor," she hisses as I pass her, but I pay her no mind. SHE is in the next room, separated from me by concrete and fear and some pathological need I have to run back into my cell and tell the guards to throw away the keys.

The Dementors hand me off at the door to another guard, (who is) armed with a wand that I so desperately want to steal. He roughly pulls me into the next room, where a table and two chairs wait for me, and he shoves me into one of the chairs and tells me to wait.

So I do.

I sit and I wait and I breathe and I relish the fact that my dear, "respectable" Cousin Bella is trapped in her cell while I am out in the semi-open air and am thinking of ways to steal the guard's wand , when the same guard brings HER into the room.

"Jeanie..." I croak. I haven't used words much since they put me in here.

"Hello, Sirius." She smiles weakly and sits across from me at the table.

"I've missed you." She nods her head and looks like she's about to cry. I reach across the table and I try to take her hand but she shrugs me off.

"This is the last time I'm going to come here, love." She won't look me in the eye when she speaks and instead stares at the table.

I nod. I knew that as soon as she came in here.

"I still love you, Siri, and I always will...but I can't keep coming back here. It's getting to be too dangerous. I won't let our daughter lose both her parents."

I nod again. My throat burns with all the words I want to say, but I keep quiet.

She digs through her purse and pulls out a chocolate bar, one of Honeydukes' finest, and a small piece of paper and places both of them on the table. The chocolate is fat and it seems to be calling my name from underneath its brightly colored wrapper.

"Eat, Siri...you look like Hell."

I rip the paper off in two second flat, and three bites later it's gone. The chocolate warms me from the inside out and I feel like I am able to speak again.

"Every time the Dementors come near me, I see you and her," I say softly.

"They said you call out our names in your sleep."

"What will you---?"

"Do with her? She and I are going to stay with Papa in Devonshire. It's safer with him."

"Of course..." I lick the chocolate from my fingers and I keep my eyes on her. I want to memorize every blonde hair on her head, every freckle, every line on her fair-skinned face, every hue of color in her black- brown eyes.

"Don't be so bitter, Siri. It is safer with him. Papa's influence in the Ministry is the only thing keeping you from getting the Dementor's Kiss." Jeanie picks up the piece of paper and presses it into my hand. She leans in and kisses me gently, and I can smell the ever-so-faint aroma of her lilac perfume.

She pulls away and all I can do is look at her, my words lost.

"Don't hate me," she whispers as she gets up to leave.

The guard comes back into the room and pulls me away, the paper still in my hand. The doors lock behind me and Jeanie is gone.

"Traitor, Fiend, Mudblood lover!" Bella screeches at my retreating back as the Dementors take me down the hallway to my cell. Other inmates howl and scream and cry around me, rattling the bars of their cages like animals in the zoo, riled up by the high-pitched tone of her voice.

It is only in my cell that I dare look at the paper clutched in my hand: it is the photograph taken at my little girl's first birthday two Februarys ago. Jeanie and I are sitting on our sofa with our little girl laughing and giggling between us, our grins matching hers. Jeanie's father had taken the picture and made faces at us from behind the camera.

On the back, words are written in Jeanie's curving script:

Katie Bell

~*~*~*~

December 25^th, 1994

Jeanine Bell smiled to herself as she watched her daughter and her father argue pleasantly over that afternoon's tea. The sun shined down through the kitchen window and snow was falling gently onto the windowsill, just in time for Christmas.

"It's dumb, Granddad," Katie said, her grey eyes wide as her mother poured more of the steaming liquid into her cup. "All these people clamoring over something as stupid as dead relatives! It makes no sense!"

Jason Bell sipped his tea and smiled.

"You don't understand, Kate; you're a different generation. In the old days, being a part of such a long lineage was something to be proud of. To be a part of a family that had helped shape the world as we know it, why, it's an honor!"

"Papa, I think Katie's talking about the people who take it too far, like You-Know-Who's followers." Jeanine patted her father's arm lightly and helped herself to a biscuit.

"Death Eaters..." He harrumphed as he leaned back in his chair. "Say their name, Jeanie. If you're going to talk about them at all, use their proper name."

"You sound like Professor Dumbledore, Granddad." Katie smirked.

"And he has the right idea! But it's these people, people like the Malfoys and the Yaxleys and the Mulcibers.... it's all that bad blood trying to make themselves out to be better than everyone else. Your fathers' family, they were like...that..." He trailed off, a dark look from his daughter sending him into silent submission.

Katie dropped her spoon into her cup, the sound deafening in the dead silence that had fallen over the room.

"Granddad, you...you knew my father's family?" she asked. "How...how did you know them? Were they purebloods? Did they work for the Ministry; is that how you know them?"

"Katie, no more questions. Go outside." her mother commanded softly, her knuckles bone-white as she gripped the handle of the teacup.

"Mum, was my dad a Death Eater, is that why you don't want to talk about him?"

"Katie, now."

"Mum, please! I want to know!"

"Katherine Claudia Bell, if you are not out of this room in the next three seconds, I will hex you into next Tuesday!" Her mother shot out of the chair, knocking it over in the process, and pointed at the folding doors that lead into the sitting room, the teacup still clutched in her hand.

Katie looked at her grandfather for help, but he only shrugged and mumbled that she should listen to her mother.

She was barely out of the room before the doors slammed shut behind her.

"How long can she keep doing this?" Katie thought as she sank to the floor and pressed her ear to the space between the door and the carpeting, desperate to hear anything her mother and grandfather were talking about. "How long can Mum continue keeping me in the dark?"