"Do you understand the sadness of geography?"
Michael Ondaatje, 'The English Patient'


In the evening it is almost as though Sirius is folding in on himself, crumpling inward and buckling like delicate old paper, collapsing into the hollows at the ends of his bones, slackening into something unreal and forlorn. The air is still and heavy, oppressive. There's something of the surreal about it all, and the dark descends in a sidling sort of way that is somehow imprecise -- things are defined about the corners and blurred in the middle, and everything's shades of grey and dust, and perhaps if he listens hard enough he might be able to hear the things the shadows are muttering inarticulately to each other in their sleep.

It's always different, and always the same; sometimes he goes out into the street to watch the night settle round the city (or the city settle about the night; it might be the same thing, and it might not). The spent embers of a day. The roads and footpaths feel neglected, lost, because there is a sense of the times and a sense of desperate clinging to them; in the orange glow of the streetlights, they look as though they might lead into different places and lifetimes, as though they are something more than what they are in daylight. No-one's ever walked down them, and no-one ever will, but they're waiting.

He doesn't go down them, and in the morning it is almost all of it gone; the sky and streets are bright and newly-made and for a moment or two it is though the world has untilted its axis, which of course it cannot do.


(This isn't the way things were supposed to be; life was meant to be more glorious and more wonderful and it wasn't meant to be the sort of thing that you don't even want to face when you struggle out of bed in the morning. And damn, but that's a pretentious thought. A whole slew of pretentious thoughts. Life's ugly sometimes but there are things in it worth fighting for even when the fight wants everything you have to give: friends. Ideas. Justice. Free will. Those moments in the dead of night when you wake up and everything clicks and it's like you've always known exactly how everything in the world fits together.

And he thinks: this isn't the way things were supposed to be, but this is the way they are, and that's it, you live with them and you set them right, isn't it? Isn't it.)






London in the early morning is crisply white, frosted over, a monochrome study in geometry and angle and shadows like lace or like shutters across the icing-sugar snow (falling gently, even now). For a few minutes it's pristine, undisturbed, unstirred; carte blanche, tabula rasa. The sky's grey like steel or someone's eyes or memories, contemplative and silent; the leafless trees lie flat against it, branches meandering across in organised asymmetry. It's all very stark, outlines defined and definite. Then something shatters, and it might be because of an impudent robin twittering to himself in the bare branches of an apple-tree, or a yellowing sheet of ragged newspaper fluttering across the street caught in a breeze, or the creak of someone's front door being dragged open slowly. The city comes to life only ponderously, drawn into words and existence and gleaming with forgotten light about the edges. Everything's disturbingly bright; the fog has not yet settled itself about the buildings, and the people on the streets are defined only by their hats and overcoats and the way they drift across the footpath like leaves blown over a leafless plain.

Sirius feels washed out by the snow, overexposed, reduced to an outline of himself, or a cipher, or a silhouette. It's all a bit unreal, a bit like a scene from a book that he's inadvertently stepped into and become a part of, as though an author paused for a moment and then wrote a figure and footsteps into a pristine snow-scene. If he were in his flat he'd be cursing and stumbling over piles of old books and discarded clothes on the floor, and trying very desperately to coax the old oven into producing a sputtering flame; because he's outside he's watching the world being tossed by him, and listening for something that he cannot quite name, and brushing the snowflakes impatiently from his hair.

In December, he dreams.

----

order (n):
1. the arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular pattern.
2. overall state or condition.
3. a state in which everything is in its proper place. (antonym: chaos)






Albus Dumbledore to Peter Pettigrew, May 1978:
Dear Mr. Pettigrew,
The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is located at --















James Potter to Sirius Black, December 1980:
They're planning something Dumbledore said. Islington. Tomorrow or
the day after. Talk about it later -- tea at four?




----

Marlene McKinnon's funeral is a pitiless thing; there's a straggling group of mourners blending into one indistinguishable creature of black velvet and white lace handkerchiefs and bow-ties and elegant gloves, but for all that it's almost impossible not to feel bitterly alone, abandoned.

Remus is twirling a half-hidden sprig of something green between his fingers; he looks up, flashes something that could be a grin or a grimace. "Rosemary. For remembrance." It's fitting in a quiet sort of way, and it smells delicate and sombre. The sky is grey and overcast, boiling with the masked light behind the looming clouds. There should be music, there should be something trembling and sad and haunting on the violin to provide a glistening counterpoint to the universe, but the only sounds that can be heard are the rustling of the wind and the vicar's halting diction; he pauses and falters with apparent irregularity, and it's a little jarring. He's stumbling over the words, trying to reconcile a prepared pastiche of euphonious clichés with the fact of a girl's mother frozen still at her grave (she was very young, after all), and as charming and beloved and dearly missed float into the air, it is almost difficult to imagine that she was ever really alive --

-- Marlene McKinnon was twenty-one and had short dark hair and a very wide mouth that laughed often and too long. She was fascinated by Muggles, and watched their films and smoked long cigarettes and wore a leather jacket dragged from a half-off sale whenever she was down at the pub; sometimes she took the Tube, though she confessed that she didn't really understand it and usually had to Apparate back to the place she was intending to reach, but she loved the feel of the crowds around her and the way the trains whistled through the tunnels. She lived alone in Notting Hill, in a flat with a red door surrounded by people and streets. She'd walk into a pub all elegance and flair, and she'd turn heads with the quirk of an eyebrow. She did undercover work, and dived deeper and deeper until she was surrounded by cobwebs of her own creation, carefully gleaning snippets of information -- a meeting here, a comment there, the faintest shards of a potential plan -- until there was nothing left to find; in the end she was careless just for a moment, and they came after her with calculated efficiency. She went very quickly, outnumbered eleven to one in an alley, but she was proud and unyielding and there are very few people alive who understand exactly why it was she died when she did, and what it was she died for --

The point isn't supposed to be that she's dead; the fact that she lived is meant to be the glorious overriding truth. But she's going into the dark and into dust, and it's pointless. It's so very pointless.


(In the evening, the candle-light and the wine flicker in Lily's eyes; the conversation is not so much harsh as stuttering, abrupt and awkward and uncertain, interrupted by tension-ridden silences, and Sirius wonders how they have let themselves reach this. Remus's hand trembles very slightly as he reaches for his glass, but his voice is steady as he says: sooner or later, we might all have to give up. We might not even have the chance to go down fighting.

Sirius will remember very little of the evening, later, but he will remember the way he now slams his hand onto the table and announces that he intends to go out and get himself 'thoroughly plastered' at every single pub in the greater London area, when what he's really thinking is this shouldn't be happening, and maybe we shouldn't exist.)


----


I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
T. S. Eliot, 'Preludes'


Now it's raining with a sort of impotent fury, as though the sky is hurling itself at the ground; the sky is dark with the weight of the clouds, piled into a tower of old memories. The streets are damp and glistening brightly in the orange glow of the streetlamps, water pooling itself in the pits of old scars in the asphalt; the buildings cast crooked, rippling shadows, shifting with the trickle of water into the storm-drains.

This is how you survive: one foot before the other, settling into an orchestrated rhythm; one, two, one, two. You exist because you have to, not cogito ergo sum but simply sum. Ergo sum. Perhaps you could have had a different life; it might have been a better one, might have been gentler, more beautiful, less tempestuous. It might not. Either way, the world would keep on inexorably turning, and you would keep on walking; one, two, one, two, straight on into the sunset or the ending of the world.