Sirius Black

Hey, kiddo.

Just checking on you. I know it was a lot to absorb.

Hope you're coping all right.

I think he'd have been pleased to know that we know, actually. Probably not as pleased to know you've fallen in with dangerous criminals and blood-traitors, but pleased that someone will remember why he died and that he chose to use his death as some kind of strike against Voldemort.

He didn't succeed in what he was attempting. But you finished it for him. I know it was hard for you but you managed, which is all anyone could have asked and more.

And I know he would have liked how fitting and poetic it was that it all turned out as it did. The sodding girl's blouse.

Anyway. If you want to talk more, don't stand on ceremony.

Charlie, take extreme caution when you go speak to the centaurs again. As you may have gleaned from other journals at Hogwarts, one of the young women in Voldemort's ridiculous competition went and ran afoul of them over the weekend.

Pansy, Draco, Hydra, Ron and I went into the forest shortly after the Quidditch match (as soon as Draco and Ron were ready, that is). We found Hagrid without too much incident. (Allie, he says he's willing to take on jobs for us, if we want him. He can leave the forest without being noticed and I trust his ability to travel overland undiscovered, as well. I'm just not certain what you might want him to do.)

Hagrid knew of a spider that had recently met with an accident and took us to the spot. Luckily, the rest of the creature's clan hadn't finished devouring him, so there were pieces left for us to harvest. We'd just finished there and were collecting some less impressive findings for Ron and Pansy when two 7th-year Slytherins came crashing through the trees. They seemed to be in the middle of an urgent discussion. I changed back to Padfoot as soon as we heard them, so they never saw me as anything but a dog - but beyond that, they were far too preoccupied to worry much about proper introductions. As soon as they saw Hydra, they begged her to help find where their friend had gone. Between Draco and Hagrid, they were able to get the young wizard to start at the beginning and tell them what had happened: They were looking for creatures and found the centaurs. Three of them - two girls, one boy - but this is the couple who are expecting. The young witch's pregnancy is starting to show a bit. The centaurs must have seen that, as well, or smelled it. They let her alone and abducted the other young woman. It seems they spared the bloke because of his bravery in protecting the pregnant girl - Lizzie Stevens, I think that is.

Anyway, they escaped with only minor harm done but their friend was in the hands of the centaurs. They asked Hydra to find her 'by tracking her thoughts' - as if that's possible, but that's neither here nor there. Hagrid said he knew where they'd likely have taken her and led us in that direction. When we got there, he told everyone else to stay well out of the way and went in alone. He even left Fang behind, leaving me to stay close to the big girls' blouse. (He took a lot of convincing to stay put and protect the others but I got him to understand eventually.)

Well. We waited for probably twenty minutes. It was getting quite dark. Then Hagrid came out of the grove, crossbow on his back and Miss Montgomery in his arms, in quite bad shape. He carried her to the edge of the forest and then Vaisey and Ron took her from there, though she was well nervous of males, but she bore up in order to get to Poppy.

In the hospital wing, Poppy removed the memory of Hagrid, Fang and the other black dog who was with them, so all they'll remember is that they ran into Pansy, Draco, Hydra and Ron, and together they convinced the centaurs to get her back.

I don't know how long she was in their possession but she was clearly the worse for it. I can't imagine your negotiations will be any easier as a result. Hagrid did tell me that it's better to go sooner rather than late, however, since the longer we wait to tender our regrets over the incident, the more the centaurs will misinterpret our silence. You know how they get.

And I highly recommend that you take Hagrid with you when you do go. He has better luck with them than anyone I've known and he'll be able to straighten out any selective memory they might have over this encounter.

Been thinking about you all day.

You'd hardly recognise the house, especially after using it to hold lessons here at Easter hols. And everything we've had to do to make it safe for Bea. Couple days ago she decided to pull herself up by the curtains in the parlour - you remember the ones Mother loved and Father thought were far too dark for the room - and the bottom of the drape tore away in Bea's hands. Went right back down on her bum, started to sniffle a bit but then looked at the fabric in her hands and stuffed a corner in her mouth instead. (And then spit it out in disgust. With quite a commentary on how it tasted.) Dora kept trying to look stern and busting out laughing instead. I didn't even bother with the looking stern part. I could just imagine how Mother would have shrieked about it. (Well, Kreacher did a fair impression for us, when he saw the uneven rags, anyway.) Makes me wish we'd taken a knife to the bloody things years ago. Father might not even have punished us too harshly, either - he hated those awful drapes, anyway.


Say. If you were our locket, where would you have hidden yourself? I looked on your bookshelves and in your bedside table drawer but I couldn't get much further. Too many ... dust balls. I'm not giving Kreacher the satisfaction of asking about it, either. But she's asked again. It's almost as if it wants to stay lost just so Miss Parkinson can accuse me of not looking hard enough.

She's got some idea she can find you with the lock of hair. Or what's left of you, I guess, to put it more accurately. Not sure that's a clever idea - or well, perhaps it is but I suppose I'm not sure she really wants the answer she might get.


Probably going to get a proper teasing, writing to you like this. At least I'm not including song lyrics and poems, Mordred, you couldn't pay me to be 16 again for all the salamanders in Arabia.

Still. Teasing or not: Three years.

Remus says it was already too late by then, you know. That nothing I could've said those last two years would have made a difference. It's not those two years, though, that were the problem.

I suppose what bothers me the most is that even at the end, when you were like a man drowning, you continually refused to take the hand I offered. So maybe Remus is right and this was always the way it had to be.

But.

The thing is I know that people can change. Opinions evolve. Mac's have done, since he's come to work with the Order. And even bloody Snivellus can't deny that the Lilys and the Hermiones of the world are just as powerful and talented as someone with nine generations of magic to the family name. Merlin, apparently even our cousin Draco sodding Malfoy has come to see the futility of the Protectorate. And you did too, even if you were too fucking proud to say so. Or too frightened.

So .. Why? Why disappear or kill yourself or get yourself killed? Just to end your own suffering? Why when you could have just let me help you? Or is this your final revenge, Goblin, for all the times I wouldn't - play with you or listen to you or do whatever you wanted, for making my escape when I could do, and not ever really checking to see if you wanted to come along?

You know, the dead ironic part is she thinks it's a mark of how strong you were. And she thinks she knows you without ever understanding how smug, how superior, how snide or how much of a bastard you could be. But the thing is that it means she can mourn you and the only anger she feels is toward Voldemort for twisting you and breaking you. Not that I don't feel that, too, but I can't seem to separate it from the other anger. Toward you for taking the coward's solution. Toward me for not being more insistent with you - or persistent, take your pick - about your friends and your choices, about Mother and Father and their stupid games. I mean, yes, Voldemort broke you. But they're the ones who malformed you first.

Circe.

I can't even apologise properly. But that's the problem. I'll never be able to apologise because I'll never be able to fix the damage. I'll never have the chance.

Except by making sure he doesn't get another single one of the Blacks. Or anyone else, if I've anything to do with it.

To be honest, it's not MLE and the Council that worry me.

It's all those members of the Jr Aux who were at the Burrow.

Did you hear them all greet Pomona, Kingsley? Sounded like a primary school class.

I smelled Justin soon as he arrived; tried to get out of sight in a hurry but I can't be sure whether or not he saw me. The problem was that every time I moved away from him, I came near to being spotted by Pansy Parkinson.

And Kingsley, was it me or was Mac staring at the young woman who came with Justin, the one carrying the hamper? Poor girl looked like she hadn't an idea how best to make herself useful. I think she wound up in the kitchen most of the afternoon. Maybe we ought to ask what was so fascinating? Don't know if he'll take that as teasing about his tastes or what.

Alice, you and Frank had gone but you ought to know that Neville and Evelyn both came by Floo, mid-afternoon or so. Then all of them - Pansy, Justin, Hydra, Ron, Sally-Anne, your two - went up to Fred and George's room. Can't be good, whatever that means (though the twins were seen going up and down the stairs from time to time. Nicked a platter of sandwiches on their way back up, too).

Mordred, it's nearly time to go. Look, I know we said we'd let things alone and they can figure it out in their own time but .... I just think that time is coming much sooner than any of us planned.

Well?

You wanted to see it.

Let's have it. I mean, I see I've been a right git, as she says (well, from her side) but what now?

Is it good or bad that no matter what she quotes (and Dora, that's Uriah Heap, that last bit), all I can hear whenever she starts on lyrics is 'Go Ask Alice' - and no, not just because Allie's usually my first line of defence when it comes to girls. Because I wish it had been on one of the albums she'd nicked. Perhaps I'll send her a copy of Lewis Carroll, as well.