Fantasies at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place

Fantasies at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place

The moon hung high against a starry night when Hermione's eyes bolted open, staring up at the ceiling. Outside, an owl hooted. The mattress squeaked beneath her weight. From the corner emanated a snore, followed by another, and another, and another. Ginny, she thought. I'll look up a remedy for snoring tomorrow, if not for her than for my own peace of mind.

Why am I awake?

Hermione slipped out of bed, casting a furtive glance at Ginny. Might as well be dead. The wood creaking underneath her feet, she reached the goblet of sleeping potion sitting on her nightstand. Ridding the house of vestiges of the old, aristocratic Black culture - as well as of rats, doxies, and other such infestations - had proved to be a tiresome task, one that left Hermione exhausted until she fell into bed. Tossing and turning for hours, she could hardly sleep.

Her hand passed over the draught and settled back into her lap.

Again the question presented itself: Why am I awake?

Frustrated, Hermione crossed her legs, letting her head hang. She had thought that living in Sirius's house (well, it wasn't really his, as his mother's portrait would constantly remind them) would inject some much-needed exuberance into what was otherwise a rather dull summer. Though she had only been in the house for a week, staying in the same building as so many others, however, was starting to wear down her patience. The sight of Fred and George whispering to each other irked her. Listening to Mrs. Weasley sob over Percy's picture made her want to rip up the damned photograph and throw the shreds of his Head Boy badge and ubiquitous knitted sweater into the rest of the garbage they were tossing out. Were they pleasantest of thoughts? No, but she conceded that they kept her sane. In a stifling atmosphere such as Grimmauld Place, sanity was a commodity short in supply.

Her patience had again been tested when the twins approached her and Ginny about a room change.

"Room change!" she had shrieked. "Why would you need a room change?"

"Private matters, Hermione," George told her with a wink.

"Besides, we're both bigger than you and Ginny, the two of you have the larger room, so logically, it should be ours," Fred added.

Hermione would have prolonged the argument but Ginny gently persuaded her that this was not the fight to pick, that others could be fought if she wished it such - but not this one. "They're not worth it," she hissed as she led a fuming Hermione away.

A room change, however, clearly had not ameliorated the issue of constant sleeplessness. The moon is pretty, she thought that night as she looked out the window. It is keeping my company.

Then it caught her eye. Small, black, almost invisible in the dark. A book, she deduced as she felt for it, but not mine. It was early in the clean-up process: Mrs. Weasley warned them not to be surprised should they stumble upon pureblood heirlooms in unlikely places. Hermione retrieved her wand and murmured Lumos. The fading gold text on the cover read "Photographs of the Latter Century Blacks." She opened it, a cloud of dust flying up from its yellowed pages. It was waved away immediately.

Black and white photos of sleeping figures, slumped over various pieces of furniture, some dressed in eclectic attire charmed from history books. These were his relatives, Sirius's relatives, the ash and bone of the House of Black, pure in life and pure in death. Were these people aware that it was a despised Mudblood that was looking at them, a Mudblood that was opening them up to a world beyond two black covers?

The pictures became colored, and Hermione found faces that she could connect to names. The brooding of Bellatrix Black juxtaposed against her sister Narcissa's royalty, Andromeda's impetuousness, the three of them in matching blue hoops skirts. A death eater in a ball gown (Hermione laughed silently). And, look, there was Sirius, a little Sirius, pouting even as he slept in a severe gray suit. The next page, a much older Sirius, but still sullen, still asleep. And the next page...

Hermione scratched her head. She didn't recognize him, the young man in the picture sleeping on the floor of what appeared to be an empty room, his long elegant hair (black) spread about his shoulders haphazardly. Who was he, this alien member of the family of Black, appearing no older or younger than Andromeda or Sirius? She touched her finger to the photo's glossy surface. What was his story, she wondered, mass murderer, You-Know-Who sycophant, or both?

The man awoke with a start, looking directly at her. "Why, hello, little lady." His voice was delicate, almost a child's.

Yelping, Hermione snapped the album shut and threw it into the corner.

He had talked to her.

Well, of course, she reasoned. Figures in pictures and paintings talk. It's natural. But something...there was something horribly disconcerting about him, his mannerisms, his other-worldliness, yet it was the fact that he seemed friendly, friendly in family known for its hostile xenophobic madness, that disturbed her most.

Hermione decided then that it was time to go back to sleep.

-

Uncured curiosity is a horrible sensation, nibbling away at one's conscience until it is fully satisfied, and Hermione found that the little black book she had discovered the night before was arresting her thought and concentration more than anything else had the entire summer. Perusing through it, she realized, was the product of an irrational action and lack of foresight. After all, hadn't Tom Riddle's diary started as an innocent-looking journal? Was her pining for the pictures - one in particular - the charm of them consuming her, slowly destroying her? Many objects in Grimmauld Place were laced with deadly magic.

Hardly thinking, she flipped it open. He was already waiting for her. "Why did you leave me last night, my love?"

She closed it with a thud and curled under her sheets, hoping that Ginny couldn't hear her heart thudding erratically against her chest.

-

The next night, Hermione didn't even wait for him to ask if she would like some tea.

-

She was more prepared this time, having slipped the album under her pajamas before turning off the lights, and when she at last heard soft snores from her roommate, Hermione dashed into the neighboring bathroom. Hoping that the house was still sleeping, she whispered Lumos and crept towards the toilet, where she lowered the cracking seat cover and sat down. She sighed. First part perfectly executed.

"My love, I see your light at last!" he exclaimed. "Why have you avoided me all this time?"

Hermione greeted him with a wan smile. He had not given up calling her "my love" and it frustrated her - she was no one's love (though Viktor occasionally addressed her as such) and certainly not a photograph's object of desire! Her keenness to learn more of the stranger, though, made her bite back her sharp retort. Perhaps it was best to play along.

"I - I did not know it was you!" Hermione whispered. "I am sorry if I have displeased you in any way."

"Don't waste your words, dear." Beaming, he extended a hand. "Do join me."

She paled. Was this the Dark Arts at work? You-Know-Who luring her through the façade of a suave debonair? "Pardon?"

"Join me."

"But you are in a photograph and I am in the real world!"

"What says that you cannot be with me? Here, love, take my hand."

Every magical instinct within her told her to drop the book immediately and incinerate it as quickly as possible but, oh, all of this was so intriguing - and who was he and why did he know her?

Shaking, Hermione touched a finger to where his miniscule palm lay, outstretched, waiting for his beloved, and she felt herself being pulled away, not unlike a thread through the infinitely narrow eye of a needle. When she opened her eyes, his hand was on her arm, and when she looked at him, he wasn't wearing a set of wizard's robes but something that wouldn't have looked out of place at a seventeenth-century English court.

Leaning in, he murmured into her ear, "You look marvelous."

Hermione's mouth fell neatly into an o shape as she took in the cream-colored dress that she now stood in. "How is this possible?" she asked. "I was wearing my pajamas and now - " She executed a small spin before his appreciative laughter " - I'm wearing this."

He suddenly seized her and kissed her full on the lips. She was confronted with a pulsing warmth over her mouth, and being both repulsed and curious, Hermione simply ended up limp in his grasp until he set her upright again. "This is my photograph, dear, and when you stepped in here to join me, you did not enter the photograph. You see, once the photograph is magically developed and the correct spells are cast on it, the photograph itself becomes the domain of its subject. I control all that happens here because the photograph is my mind, the very person that I am."

"So this is all - "

" - in my mind, yes. Look around you, love."

Waltzing couples and a string quartet, garlands of roses strung across the walls between the arching French windows. "It's a, um, very romantic setting, I think," she stuttered.

"It's what I wanted, so it is what we have." His breath was hot on her skin. "You are in my fantasy now. I could make you the Queen of England or the most despicable house-elf."

"And what must your name be?" Hermione jested, remember what it was that originally enticed her to pass into photograph (his mind, she reminded herself).

He bowed curtly. "Regulus Black, who is only too pleased to be in my love's companionship again. Anna, I have missed you greatly."

With that, Regulus led her out into the dancing and the muted couples, and though Hermione had never waltzed in her life, she miraculously proved light-footed and adept at the dance, and though Hermione had accomplished what she had set out to do, she also realized that she was no longer Hermione in this world submerged in a photo album but a girl named Anna, that Regulus had mistaken her for this Anna, a mere whisper in the halls of history but everything to this man named Regulus Black. It was an escapist thrill, really, playing a carefree and probably quite spoiled pureblood to a charming beau as her real world became an evermore unwelcome place as the government refused to come to terms with the truth, her best friend was knowingly kept ignorant, and a dark wizard flourished from the complacency of wizarding Britain.

So she chose not to leave and played instead a battle of wits and coquettish flatteries with Regulus as they twirled around the room and in between people that later became no more than passing smears of color, twirling as the (imaginary) clock read four o'clock, twirling as the sun rose and each of the couples disappeared one by one, twirling until they were the only ones remaining on the ballroom floor.

When Hermione awoke the next morning, her arms were curled protectively around her pillow and the album was back on her nightstand, closed and inconspicuous.

-

Ron slumped against the wall, a sponge in his hand. "This is boring. Even with this special cleaning solution Mum said would work better than the old one, it's taking forever."

Hermione looked up, an eyebrow raised. "Do you really think so? You could be working harder. Ron, you missed a spot over there."

Swearing, he kicked the wall as he resumed scrubbing. "Since when have you been brimming with energy every morning?"

"Oh, I don't know," she replied, beaming. "I supposed I slept very well last night."

-

"What do you want, my dear?"

"I'm quite fine the way it is now, to be honest with you," Hermione said, absorbed in the mellow chatter of the neighboring stream, the pleasantly discordant flock of birds above. It was another night, another fantasy, and it was a peaceful one, an excellent relief for her exhausted body.

"This is what I wanted, though. Anna, I want to make you happy. That is all I want to do. I feared that you had died or suffered because of me." Hermione's back stiffened: Regulus was speaking of the real Anna. "When you turned away from me, I was heartbroken. It felt like you had left me for the second time."

"Well, the first time," she lied, praying that what she was saying had at least a dash of truth in it, "it wasn't through our own faults, was it?"

He rubbed his chin and nodded, much to Hermione's relief. "Back to the original question, shall we? Is there any place that you would like to visit?"

"I'll have to think on this..."

"Anywhere at all, really."

Could he instantly transport them - or their minds, or whatever it was of them that was actually in the photograph - on a caprice? Finding it fascinating magic, Hermione decided to give it a try. "You know, when I was younger, I had always wanted to gallop across Spanish Andalusia on an...an Arabian stallion. A childhood dream, I think. Would that be possible?"

"Possible, my love?" he laughed. "Anything is possible here."

The next time she looked, the broken melody of shallow water rushing across fragments of stone had disappeared, replaced by the hollow sound of silence. Blocking the sun with her eyes, she surveyed the landscape, taking in its hilly contour. Andalusia, she thought, truly impressed.

"Would you prefer to ride on your own?" a voice came from behind her.

Turning around, she spotted Regulus holding the reins of a sturdily built horse, pawing the ground and tossing its sandy mane into the air.

"Oh, it's beautiful," she gasped, approaching the animal. "He won't hurt me, right?"

"Here, let me help."

She placed one foot in a stirrup, and with his hands tight around her waist, she swung her other leg over, straddling the horse. As she shifted her weight on the saddle, it abruptly occurred to her that she had never ridden a horse in her life - but she had never waltzed in her life, either. Regulus appeared at her side, astride his own stallion.

"Are you ready?" he asked her. "I'll race you down the hill. One...two..."

Hermione imagined the thrill of the warm air brushing past her skin; her mount, however, was even more restless than she was and jolted into motion instantly. That's a false start, I guess, she thought vaguely before the ground beneath her melted away. Only semi-conscious of doing so, she let out a scream of unadulterated freedom, one that lingered in the sky long after it had passed.

-

"Hermione?"

"Yes, Ginny?"

The younger girl propped herself up on her pillow. "Can I ask you something?"

Hermione pulled up the sheets around her body, sighing deeply. "Always."

"Do you have a fancy for Ron?"

"Wha - what?" Hermione spluttered. "Of course I don't!"

"See, you've been acting rather strangely for the past few days, walking around the house as if you were flying and being excessively cheery about all the work we've got to do. And Ron's...well, don't tell him I told you this, but he's always - "

"Ginny, I don't care what Ron's been saying, but I don't like him."

"Okay," Ginny said, but she looked unconvinced. "Well, g'night then."

Swallowing the desire to say something sarcastic back at her, Hermione merely huffed and turned out the light. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and spotted the nondescript book that lurked by her side, Ginny's words refused to leave the forefront of her thoughts. Her feelings towards Ron was one matter but Ginny had seen something. Maybe she wouldn't have mentioned it if she knew it didn't involved her brother, Hermione thought.

Even as sleep lulled her away, her gnawing stomach told her what her mind refused to admit.

-

She did not look at his picture that night or the next. She hoped that the cover would be gathering dust before her discipline broke.

-

Although Hermione knew for certain than Sirius Black was not a Dark wizard and that he was one of the most devoted members of the Order, she still had trouble approaching him. Adventurous and autonomous, he had not taken well to being excluded from whatever it was the Order was doing outside of Grimmauld Place, and it manifested in the lines he wore constantly on his forehead. It was with great trepidation that Hermione tapped Harry's godfather (his friendly, friendly godfather, she reminded herself) on the arm and mumbled, "May I talk to you for a second?"

Sirius pushed away the dessert in front of him and smiled congenially at her. "You can talk to me for minutes, if you have to, seeing as I have nothing else to do."

Hermione gave herself a mental kick. Just ask it. "Who's Regulus Black?"

Sirius covered his face with his hands. His voice was heavy. "Why do you ask?"

"I saw his name on a few things when I was cleaning today. I've heard of a lot of Blacks before but I had never come across a Regulus Black."

"Regulus Black was..." He looked up at her, and what was it in his eyes? The ghosts Azkaban had not left him - they never would - but something had twinkled past the hollowness of his gaze. The only word Hermione could associate with it was nostalgia. "Well, Hermione, Regulus was my brother."

"Your...your brother?" She held onto the table for support.

"Yup, my brother. Dear old Regulus. My parents loved him, the whole family loved him, especially when compared to the family traitor that was his brother. Eventually joined the Death Eaters and killed when he tried to pull out. You don't ever pull out from Voldemort's service."

"So he was like the rest of them," Hermione said, her voice cracking.

He smiled. It was a mournful smile. "I guess."

-

Insomnia hadn't left her; it had only taken temporary leave. It was, after all, a part of reality, and reality, Hermione realized, could never quite be cordoned off. Reality could not be ignored, regardless of how tightly you clamped your ears, how tightly you shut your eyes. Reality found its way back to you - always. No fantasy would stop it.

-

Traveling Grimmauld Place was eerie by day and absolutely frightening by night, in spite of the light shining from the tip of Hermione's wand. She hated venturing out of her room after the sun had set. In the pocket of her robe was the one place that had offered her solace, but it had turned out to be a false solace. I danced with a Death Eater was the only coherent thought in her mind. Then she remembered what Ginny had said to her. Had she been infatuated with a Death Eater too?

Hermione preferred to leave that question unanswered.

Whispering the incantation that she knew so well, a contained blue fire shot out of her wand and into the fireplace. Flickers of light and shadow filled the living room. Hermione walked towards it. Should I say goodbye? she thought. Tell him that he made me happy?

She tossed the album into the flames.

Hours later, lying on her bed, sleepless, the image of Regulus mouthing Anna! as orange tendrils licked his feet, his legs, his arms, until they engulfed his body and...

Hermione turned over again and again.

The image would not leave her.

-

"Hey, Hermione."

She looked up from the cabinet she was clearing out, a glass goblet in her gloved hands. "Mr. Black - Sirius?"

"I hadn't thought of my brother for ages until you mentioned him last night. Do you know what I remembered about Regulus last night?"

You were ephemeral, you would have hated me, she repeated silently. "Um, what?"

"The two of us had an interesting story, you know. Neither of us lived up to family standards: I was the blood traitor, placing my lot in with the Gryffindors and Muggle-borns, and Regulus might have been a Slytherin and worn his name with pride, but he turned out to be disappointingly lukewarm about denouncing the mixing of blood and the scourge of Muggles - at least in comparison to other Blacks, namely my cousin Bellatrix."

"Sirius, what are you getting at?" Hermione snapped. "I've got a lot of cleaning to do."

"Are you okay?"

"Just...really tired. Didn't sleep well. I'm sorry for losing my temper with you, really, I am. Continue with what you were saying."

"Well, we both ultimately shamed the family. I severed myself completely from them when I ran away. Never came back and I can't say I regret it. Regulus, on the other hand, didn't have enough backbone to do what I did."

Despite her vows to forget everything, Hermione started at this new revelation. "So what did Regulus do?"

Sirius let out a long whistle. "Turned out that as he was getting cozy with Lucius Malfoy and his ilk, Regulus was having a bit of a serious fling with a Muggle-born Hufflepuff. A girl named Anna."

The goblet fell to the ground and shattered. "Anna?"

"Don't bother fixing it. This junk is worthless."

"Her name was Anna?"

"I think. In my year, so she was a bit younger than Regulus. She was a lot like you, Hermione - studious, generous, not nearly as strong academically, but certainly not hopeless at magic. She even had brown hair, if I remember correctly, that was a bit curly."

"Is...is that...is that true?" Hermione croaked.

"In any case, Mum found the letters they had been exchanging and made them stop seeing each other. Regulus never quite recovered, I don't think. Ever wondered why he attempted to shirk his responsibilities as a Death Eater? A stupid thing to do, don't you think?" Sirius stuffed his hands in his pockets, gazing into the distance. "He was forced into it, though it was more like blackmail. Mum swore that she would cut him off from ever using the name of Black and from the all the money and prestige associated with it. He liked and maybe loved Anna, who knows, but he was still a Black, desperate for glory and recognition. So he joined."

"Um, Sirius?" Hermione got to her feet, swaying slightly. "I need to run to the loo - it's urgent."

"Oh, Merlin, my apologies. I shouldn't have been bothering you with the story."

"It's all right, Sirius!" she shouted as she ran down the stairs.

What a convenient lie, she told herself as she veered not to the bathroom but to where she had destroyed what she had taken to be a delusion. No, Regulus didn't hate me, or Anna, or whomever it was that was in the picture with him, she thought frantically as she fell to her knees before the fireplace. He loved me - no, he loved her, and he wasn't evil, no, he wasn't evil at all. It was a mistake. Forgive me, please.

But the ashes were already gone.