Easter Bunny #1
Apr. 3rd, 2005 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorYes. Something in chocolate that bites is a bunny, not an egg.
The first thing Sirius saw upon waking up was a bright blue orb rolling at him. It took him a few moments to register the face surrounding it, Moody’s. The Auror. Without thinking, Sirius opened his mouth to ask how he’d ended up whenever it was he was, and that’s only when the memory of his situation hit him – Azkaban, Fudge’s visit, Wormtail’s photograph, the flight as Padfoot... Its obvious failing, since Moody was before him.
He’d been caught by the Aurors, once again. He desperately racked his memory for something that might help him, anything. His heart missed a beat. Did they know how he’d managed to escape?... He almost snorted at the well-ingrained thought that he might be in trouble, being an unregistered Animagus... His kind of trouble ranked quite high on the scale. Presumably the ‘unregistered’ aspect wouldn’t come as such a shock as it could have before they’d decided he’d betrayed them to Voldemort.
What could they do to him, beside sending him back to Azkaban between two Dementors and shake their heads at how evil he was? They couldn’t touch his vault – bless his family’s hereditary greediness for having the right lawyers, Narcissa would throw such a fit if she learned there were chances her inheritance was slipping into the Minister’s pocket.
There was the possibility of the Kiss. Sirius wondered if it might not be best to be done with it, to put a final stop to the melodramatic godawful script of his life.
Then he remembered Peter, and he also wondered why he was taking this so calmly, not even wanting to bat an eyelid, so thoughtfully, rather than saying everything that was on his mind, rather than alerting Moody.
“What’s your name?” Moody’s voice broke through his reflections.
Surprised, he felt his lips forming the words as if out of its own will, in a monotonous tone.
“Sirius Herpo Black.”
The girl behind Moody sucked in a sharp breath. Sirius just had the time to notice how uncanny her resemblance to Lily was before his braincells gave a kick. Wha – oh. Truth Potion. A pretty strong one, judging from his unability to fight it. He wished he was still magically bound by the Order’s vows. But the Order must have dissolved, now. The vows were the reason he was in this mess in the first place, he reminded himself. They made their bearers immune to truth serums.
Of course, they didn’t protect from speaking voluntarily – so Sirius would have broken under the Death Eaters’ torture, so Peter could have betrayed everyone.
Moody nodded to the girl.
“Right, you can take notes.”
His blue eye was still fixed on Sirius.
The girl fidgeted.
“Er, Moody, I’m not sure –”
“You stay right were you are. You’re supposed to learn, so learn.”
As Moody turned his whole attention back to him, the girl glared at Sirius, loathing obvious in her Lily-like eyes. Sirius was taken aback. It was only James she’d looked at like that, and she hadn’t, not for years, right?
Surely, he reasoned himself as Moody asked his next question and his mouth answered, it couldn’t be Lily sitting in front of him. She was – she was dead, and that was his fault. Unless he’d had his head damaged somehow? Perhaps the last twelve years had only been a nightmare. Perhaps he was recovering in St Mungo, after having been tortured by the Death Eaters, as the Secret Keeper. And Moody and Lily were there, with a truth potion, to make sure he told them everything he remembered? But no, that made no sense, . Lily wouldn’t be angry with him, at least not before she’d made sure he was alright. Had the Aurors Polyjuiced someone to look like her, then? (Was that even possible, if she was -) Well, illusions would work too.
“The basic facts are sound,” Moody announced. He sounded satisfied – or as satisfied Sirius had ever heard him, at least. Lily sent him a look Sirius had never seen on her before. He wanted to ask if she was a long lost twin, because it was more believable.
“How did you escape from the fortress, Black?”
That’s when Sirius remembered how he knew Moody. Moody, who had been a member of the Order. If Sirius could somehow – tell him they’d switched Secret Keepers, Wormtail had been the traitor, everything would be alright. He only needed to be ambiguous in his answers, and then Moody would be bound to ask further.
His tongue wouldn’t him.
“I waited until the weekly visit was over and the Aurors had left, transformed and swam.”
“Transformed,” Moody repeated after a long time. Sirius would have expected him to exchange a glance with the girl, but he’d kept both his eyes firmly turned towards him, the normal one turning glassy. The girl started, then tensed, so much that Sirius could see it out of the corner of his eye. “You have no wand. How can you transform?”
“I’m an Animagus.”
Sirius could remember boiling with rage at family reunions, wanting to scream his mind but being unable to, his fury pacing in his mind like a tiger in a cage. He regretted he could not feel it today. He wished to say the truth, and, yes, there it was, the flicker of excitation that had sparked before. But it was as if he could only understand things in a distant way and only acknowledge them intellectually. He supposed it was a great change from his usual behaviour. Perhaps that was another reason why he couldn’t think of a way to deal with it? (and, the thought echoed in his mind, was that how Ravenclaws felt all the time?)
Moody closed his mouth with a sharp sound of teeth.
Sirius remembered when Lily, the real Lily, had been told about it. Whathowwhywhatwereyoumadorwhat oh James really...
Then Moody smiled. An evil, ugly smile.
“Well, well, well. Seems like the apple quickly found the way back to the tree. Rotten to the core.”
The girl looked up, then quickly down again. She was frowning at her quill. Now Sirius was convinced it was an illusion cast on someone to alter their appearance – her mannerisms were quite different from Lily’s. He wished he knew why the Aurors had decided to inflict the sight of – Oh. Of his victim.
Moody went on. Questions were short, brisk, to the point.
Sirius couldn’t have brought the betrayal up even if he hadn’t been under Veritaserum. Moody didn’t tolerate any digressions. Remus, he thought, would have danced around the truth and hinted at it until he’d manipulated them into coming to the point. Peter would have played stupid and stuttered and been unclear until he was allowed to tell things his way. James would have exploded with indignation and shouted everything at the top of his honesty. Sirius only had history about authority figures and not choosing the right battles.
A dog. Moody snorted.
I was fifteen. The girl was writing things down and occasionally glancing at Moody, or at him. There was now something akin to fear on her features, and anger. How being an Animaguc made him more despicable or frightening, Sirius didn’t know.
Moody never asked why he’d become an Animagus. Maybe he suspected James had been involved, who was dead now, a martyr. You couldn’t stir up ugliness about war heroes.
He asked other, long technical quesions. Even as she answered them, Sirius knew they’d be used to guard him better in years to come –anti-transformation wards and no windows in his cell, and a lead door... He noted that bile was rising in his throat, but his treacherous mouth was still replying in the same even tone as before.
Finally Moody stopped. Sirius took to wonder how he would say the difference the despair in his numbness from the neutral numbness of a moment before. He wondered if there would be tears, later, in his cell, and if he was likely to weep right now. It didn’t seem likely, else he’d certainly feel water running down his cheeks already. He remembered mocking people, who exactly he couldn’t remember, for crying when they were angry or upset, but now he could remember how Regulus hadn’t, at their father’s funeral, and Remus never did. He wished one of them was with him now. But both thought he was a traitor, and he was responsible for Remus’ life, which he didn’t want to imagine, like he was responsible of Regulus’ death, which he imagined only too well.
Did wallowing in self-pity mean the truth potion was wearing off? Sirius mentally checked himself. No, that was only logic speaking. Sirius had been walking a fine line between the two for twelve years.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Moody went to the door, but the girl didn’t move.
“Moody, can I?...”
He grumbled. “You Slytherins are so melodramatic...” But he didn’t deny her. Sirius had never heard him sound so mollified; Lily and Marlene were the only people he’d treated so well. Sirius realised Moody wasn’t comfortable around young women and didn’t quite know how to behave. It was an odd realisation to make, about Moody who saw him as a traitor.
The girl stood up. She was shorter than Lily had been, and her body looked different, with a longer neck. The rest was hidden under her heavy robes. Her hands were gripped so tightly over her clipboard that her knuckles were white. Once again, she was glaring at him.
Sirius was surprised that the hair on the back of his neck actually stood on an end. She looked... weird. Her lips were pursed with intense disgust, in an expression Sirius had been familiar with, once, and her eyes were now narrowed to slits. If Avada Kedavra could have erupted from Lily’s heavily-lidded steely eyes, then –
Andromeda’s eyes looked at him from Lily’s face, and Andromeda’s lips curled into the vicious sneer she’d shared with Bellatrix, and her eyebrows arched as Lily’s oval face shifted to her more triangular one, and the freckles disappeared to leave instead the trace of blueish veins, until the only thing that stayed the same was the long red hair that hid her from Moody, still waiting.
“Why did you betray them, traitor?”
She spoke with Andromeda’s raspy voice, and Sirius struggled to understand and retain his sanity and his mind was full of the frustration and incoherence he wanted to yell until his lungs were raw and what stung was that he was twice a traitor for her, and all of a sudden it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t.”
The first thing Sirius saw upon waking up was a bright blue orb rolling at him. It took him a few moments to register the face surrounding it, Moody’s. The Auror. Without thinking, Sirius opened his mouth to ask how he’d ended up whenever it was he was, and that’s only when the memory of his situation hit him – Azkaban, Fudge’s visit, Wormtail’s photograph, the flight as Padfoot... Its obvious failing, since Moody was before him.
He’d been caught by the Aurors, once again. He desperately racked his memory for something that might help him, anything. His heart missed a beat. Did they know how he’d managed to escape?... He almost snorted at the well-ingrained thought that he might be in trouble, being an unregistered Animagus... His kind of trouble ranked quite high on the scale. Presumably the ‘unregistered’ aspect wouldn’t come as such a shock as it could have before they’d decided he’d betrayed them to Voldemort.
What could they do to him, beside sending him back to Azkaban between two Dementors and shake their heads at how evil he was? They couldn’t touch his vault – bless his family’s hereditary greediness for having the right lawyers, Narcissa would throw such a fit if she learned there were chances her inheritance was slipping into the Minister’s pocket.
There was the possibility of the Kiss. Sirius wondered if it might not be best to be done with it, to put a final stop to the melodramatic godawful script of his life.
Then he remembered Peter, and he also wondered why he was taking this so calmly, not even wanting to bat an eyelid, so thoughtfully, rather than saying everything that was on his mind, rather than alerting Moody.
“What’s your name?” Moody’s voice broke through his reflections.
Surprised, he felt his lips forming the words as if out of its own will, in a monotonous tone.
“Sirius Herpo Black.”
The girl behind Moody sucked in a sharp breath. Sirius just had the time to notice how uncanny her resemblance to Lily was before his braincells gave a kick. Wha – oh. Truth Potion. A pretty strong one, judging from his unability to fight it. He wished he was still magically bound by the Order’s vows. But the Order must have dissolved, now. The vows were the reason he was in this mess in the first place, he reminded himself. They made their bearers immune to truth serums.
Of course, they didn’t protect from speaking voluntarily – so Sirius would have broken under the Death Eaters’ torture, so Peter could have betrayed everyone.
Moody nodded to the girl.
“Right, you can take notes.”
His blue eye was still fixed on Sirius.
The girl fidgeted.
“Er, Moody, I’m not sure –”
“You stay right were you are. You’re supposed to learn, so learn.”
As Moody turned his whole attention back to him, the girl glared at Sirius, loathing obvious in her Lily-like eyes. Sirius was taken aback. It was only James she’d looked at like that, and she hadn’t, not for years, right?
Surely, he reasoned himself as Moody asked his next question and his mouth answered, it couldn’t be Lily sitting in front of him. She was – she was dead, and that was his fault. Unless he’d had his head damaged somehow? Perhaps the last twelve years had only been a nightmare. Perhaps he was recovering in St Mungo, after having been tortured by the Death Eaters, as the Secret Keeper. And Moody and Lily were there, with a truth potion, to make sure he told them everything he remembered? But no, that made no sense, . Lily wouldn’t be angry with him, at least not before she’d made sure he was alright. Had the Aurors Polyjuiced someone to look like her, then? (Was that even possible, if she was -) Well, illusions would work too.
“The basic facts are sound,” Moody announced. He sounded satisfied – or as satisfied Sirius had ever heard him, at least. Lily sent him a look Sirius had never seen on her before. He wanted to ask if she was a long lost twin, because it was more believable.
“How did you escape from the fortress, Black?”
That’s when Sirius remembered how he knew Moody. Moody, who had been a member of the Order. If Sirius could somehow – tell him they’d switched Secret Keepers, Wormtail had been the traitor, everything would be alright. He only needed to be ambiguous in his answers, and then Moody would be bound to ask further.
His tongue wouldn’t him.
“I waited until the weekly visit was over and the Aurors had left, transformed and swam.”
“Transformed,” Moody repeated after a long time. Sirius would have expected him to exchange a glance with the girl, but he’d kept both his eyes firmly turned towards him, the normal one turning glassy. The girl started, then tensed, so much that Sirius could see it out of the corner of his eye. “You have no wand. How can you transform?”
“I’m an Animagus.”
Sirius could remember boiling with rage at family reunions, wanting to scream his mind but being unable to, his fury pacing in his mind like a tiger in a cage. He regretted he could not feel it today. He wished to say the truth, and, yes, there it was, the flicker of excitation that had sparked before. But it was as if he could only understand things in a distant way and only acknowledge them intellectually. He supposed it was a great change from his usual behaviour. Perhaps that was another reason why he couldn’t think of a way to deal with it? (and, the thought echoed in his mind, was that how Ravenclaws felt all the time?)
Moody closed his mouth with a sharp sound of teeth.
Sirius remembered when Lily, the real Lily, had been told about it. Whathowwhywhatwereyoumadorwhat oh James really...
Then Moody smiled. An evil, ugly smile.
“Well, well, well. Seems like the apple quickly found the way back to the tree. Rotten to the core.”
The girl looked up, then quickly down again. She was frowning at her quill. Now Sirius was convinced it was an illusion cast on someone to alter their appearance – her mannerisms were quite different from Lily’s. He wished he knew why the Aurors had decided to inflict the sight of – Oh. Of his victim.
Moody went on. Questions were short, brisk, to the point.
Sirius couldn’t have brought the betrayal up even if he hadn’t been under Veritaserum. Moody didn’t tolerate any digressions. Remus, he thought, would have danced around the truth and hinted at it until he’d manipulated them into coming to the point. Peter would have played stupid and stuttered and been unclear until he was allowed to tell things his way. James would have exploded with indignation and shouted everything at the top of his honesty. Sirius only had history about authority figures and not choosing the right battles.
A dog. Moody snorted.
I was fifteen. The girl was writing things down and occasionally glancing at Moody, or at him. There was now something akin to fear on her features, and anger. How being an Animaguc made him more despicable or frightening, Sirius didn’t know.
Moody never asked why he’d become an Animagus. Maybe he suspected James had been involved, who was dead now, a martyr. You couldn’t stir up ugliness about war heroes.
He asked other, long technical quesions. Even as she answered them, Sirius knew they’d be used to guard him better in years to come –anti-transformation wards and no windows in his cell, and a lead door... He noted that bile was rising in his throat, but his treacherous mouth was still replying in the same even tone as before.
Finally Moody stopped. Sirius took to wonder how he would say the difference the despair in his numbness from the neutral numbness of a moment before. He wondered if there would be tears, later, in his cell, and if he was likely to weep right now. It didn’t seem likely, else he’d certainly feel water running down his cheeks already. He remembered mocking people, who exactly he couldn’t remember, for crying when they were angry or upset, but now he could remember how Regulus hadn’t, at their father’s funeral, and Remus never did. He wished one of them was with him now. But both thought he was a traitor, and he was responsible for Remus’ life, which he didn’t want to imagine, like he was responsible of Regulus’ death, which he imagined only too well.
Did wallowing in self-pity mean the truth potion was wearing off? Sirius mentally checked himself. No, that was only logic speaking. Sirius had been walking a fine line between the two for twelve years.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Moody went to the door, but the girl didn’t move.
“Moody, can I?...”
He grumbled. “You Slytherins are so melodramatic...” But he didn’t deny her. Sirius had never heard him sound so mollified; Lily and Marlene were the only people he’d treated so well. Sirius realised Moody wasn’t comfortable around young women and didn’t quite know how to behave. It was an odd realisation to make, about Moody who saw him as a traitor.
The girl stood up. She was shorter than Lily had been, and her body looked different, with a longer neck. The rest was hidden under her heavy robes. Her hands were gripped so tightly over her clipboard that her knuckles were white. Once again, she was glaring at him.
Sirius was surprised that the hair on the back of his neck actually stood on an end. She looked... weird. Her lips were pursed with intense disgust, in an expression Sirius had been familiar with, once, and her eyes were now narrowed to slits. If Avada Kedavra could have erupted from Lily’s heavily-lidded steely eyes, then –
Andromeda’s eyes looked at him from Lily’s face, and Andromeda’s lips curled into the vicious sneer she’d shared with Bellatrix, and her eyebrows arched as Lily’s oval face shifted to her more triangular one, and the freckles disappeared to leave instead the trace of blueish veins, until the only thing that stayed the same was the long red hair that hid her from Moody, still waiting.
“Why did you betray them, traitor?”
She spoke with Andromeda’s raspy voice, and Sirius struggled to understand and retain his sanity and his mind was full of the frustration and incoherence he wanted to yell until his lungs were raw and what stung was that he was twice a traitor for her, and all of a sudden it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t.”
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-03 09:29 am (UTC)Excellent job. Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2005-04-03 09:41 am (UTC)I must tell you that this came thisclose to send him back to Azkaban.