Prisoner of the Past by ThessalyRose
Sirius Black was distantly aware that he’d done something foolish, but it had felt so good, he didn’t care. Quite aside from physical satisfaction, it was the first time in years that he had felt the contentment of lying in bed and holding a woman in his arms, breathing the faintly gingery smell of her hair. It had been months since he’d even lain down in a bed, and then it had been what passed for a bed in Azkaban. For an instant, he was willing to trade the heat of his revenge for this new peace, even though he didn’t understand it. Why was he so drawn to this woman? She was beautiful, yes, but he had observed beautiful women since his escape and forgotten them quickly. No matter how he searched his memory, he could find no trace of her, yet every curve of her body and even her faint Scottish accent were familiar to him.
She stirred gently in his arms. Sirius absently ran a finger across the tattoo that encircled her navel and scrolled elegantly upwards to her breastbone, the runes in it making a love spell. The same love spell was inked into his own body, in the same place and with the same script. He couldn't remember how that tattoo had come to be there. Furthermore, she had known he was an Animagus, and as far as he knew, there had only ever been four other people who knew that. It hardly seemed possible that she had learned it from one of them “ James and Lily were dead, Peter was a rat, and Remus … Remus hadn’t betrayed him, for whatever reason, or they’d have watched him more closely in Azkaban.
Sirius sighed, his mind continuing to gnaw on the problem as he drifted to sleep. In his dreams he saw a scrappy-looking girl with shaggy blond hair. He crept up behind her in the library at Hogwarts and tapped her shoulder. When she looked round at him with big eyes, he grabbed her and kissed her lips. She shoved him away from her, squealing, as he laughed. Then she drew back her fist -- he tried to duck, but too late -- and punched him in the jaw.
“Still, you can’t fault her aim,” a sixteen-year-old James commented drily, leaning on the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room as Remus applied salve to Sirius’ bruise. “She’d make a good Chaser if she wasn’t quite so runty.”
“Runt or not, I’d say her methods are rather … er … effective,” Remus said, as his patient winced under his rough ministrations.
“I think she’d be a liability,” Sirius growled, “going around sucker-punching people for no good reason.”
“Did you not kiss her?” Remus asked, raising his eyebrows. “I’d say that was a good reason to punch you.”
Peter sat up from the floor, where he’d fallen down during Sirius’ reluctant explanation of what had happened, wiped a tear from his eye and stifled his laughter long enough to choke out, “I’d definitely punch him if he tried to kiss me.”
“Did you say sucker-punch?” James asked. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have sucked quite so hard.”
Peter fell down again and rolled around on the floor, clutching his belly and laughing.
Sirius turned around and leaned on the handlebars of his flying motorcycle in an alley in Hogsmeade. The girl with the shaggy blonde hair was taller, more womanly, though she still wore a Hogwarts uniform. “I don’t know,” she said, examining her fingernails in a disinterested sort of way. “I’ve already got a couple of boyfriends.”
“Well, all right, McGonagall,” Sirius said, feigning reluctance. “If a schoolboy is enough for you … .”
She let a moment go by in silence. Then, when he didn’t repeat his offer, she said, “How high did you say?”
He leaned in close, to whisper in her ear. “High enough to see the ocean.”
Her gaze ventured up toward the clouds above them. “All right, then,” she breathed. “But just once.”
Sirius grinned and lifted her onto the seat. He knew full well that it wouldn’t be just once.
The next moment, he was pacing irritably in the flat he shared with James and Remus. “Absolutely bloody insane, Prongs!” he was shouting. “Yesterday it’s ‘I can’t live without you,’ and today it’s ‘You’re wasting my life and I don’t want to see you anymore!’ What the hell’s the matter with her?!”
James had shrugged negligently without looking up from the latest issue of Holidays on Broomstick. “Sounds like a perfectly normal woman to me, Padfoot.”
“She’s not a normal woman!” Sirius said indignantly. “She’s Tess. How can she say I’m wasting her life?”
“Well, it’s fairly obvious that you are.”
“What?”
“Wasting her life.” He looked up seriously, ignoring Sirius’ stunned expression. “Look, she wants to get married. If you’re not going to marry her, you’re wasting her time.”
“I -- but -- I --,” Sirius spluttered. “I’m too young to get married,” he said, in a very small voice, and sank into the bean bag opposite James.
“Don’t be stupid.” James put his magazine down and folded his long legs under him on the couch, his face lighted in a way that could only mean one thing -- .
“You have a plan?”
“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll take them out on a date. We’ll do all the stuff they like to do that we don’t.”
“You mean --?”
“Yes, ice skating.”
Sirius grimaced.
“There’s no help for it, mate. So we take them ice skating, and then we’ll get something to eat.”
“French, I suppose.”
“Yes.” James suppressed a shudder. “I’ll even eat frog legs if I have to. Then, when they’re all softened up, we strike.”
“We explain to them that we don’t want to get married?”
“Of course not. We pop the question.”
“Pop the question.”
“Yes.”
“Both of us?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought we were figuring a way out of this.”
“What was it you told me? True love is a woman who’ll tell you you’re an idiot rather than let you go on being one?”
“Yes, but “ “
“And doesn’t Tess tell you you’re an idiot on a regular basis?”
“So do you and Remus, but I wouldn’t want to --.” Sirius stopped. He knew that fanatical expression. It was the one James usually reserved for Quidditch strategy. Sirius’ eyes fell on Holidays on Broomstick. “You’re already planning your honeymoon, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Padfoot.”
Sirius regarded his friend solemnly for a moment. “The next time I’m a dog, Prongs, I’m going to bite you.”
“I can live with that,” James said cheerfully, and returned to his magazine.
Sirius turned around and found himself in the kitchen of his own shabby flat. “You said you were just going shopping!” he roared.
The shaggy-haired girl, a woman now, regarded him coldly with crossed arms. “I did go shopping.”
“And then you met him!”
“Bumped into him. At Flourish & Blott’s. Completely by accident.”
“Stop lying to me!” He flexed his fists, resisting the urge to shake her. “I hate it when you lie to me!”
“Honestly, Sirius.” She turned back to the dishes ruthlessly scrubbing themselves in the sink. “I wouldn’t have to lie to you if you could control your blood pressure when you heard his name.”
“I have a right to be jealous when my own wife prefers the company of another man!”
“Oh, stop with the righteous indignation!” She whirled round to face him again. “It bloody well doesn’t bother you when I have lunch with Remus!”
“That’s because I trust Remus!”
“Well, you ought to trust me!” She turned on her heel, threw her apron on the floor, and stalked out of the room. The dishes dropped with a clatter into the sink.
“Where are you going? Come back here!” He chased her into the living room, reaching the front door as the screen swung back into place. “Tess! Wait! Theresa!”
There was a knock on the door, and then something big and floppy hit him in the face. “Get up! Get up!”
Sirius sat up, disentangling himself from his dreams and the robes she’d thrown at him. “Huh?”
In her run-down Muggle hotel room, Tess was dressing frantically. “” Shouldn’t have let you go to sleep, I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it ”.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, watching with amusement as she tried to force her head into the sleeve of her sweater. He felt light as a feather.
Then someone pounded on the door again, and his heart dropped like a stone.
“I knew he was coming, and I shouldn’t have let you sleep and “ why aren’t you getting dressed?” She went to the door with her wand ready. “No time now “ take your robes and hide in the toilet! Hurry! Don’t forget your shoes!”
Sirius scrambled out of bed and obeyed, closing the door behind him. Outside, he heard her remove his locking spell and the creak of hinges. “Sorry, I was getting dressed.”
He put his clothes on quickly, grinning despite his situation. Theresa McGonagall ” Tess ” Theresa McGonagall-Black ” he remembered it all now, every bit of it. That was why he couldn’t stay away from her. He loved her. And she still loved him ” she’d waited for him, all these years, and when she learned he was free, she’d risked everything to come to him. He cracked the door open and peeked out.
“” Let me fix my makeup,” she was saying as she crossed the room to the mirror. Sirius watched her lasciviously. She’d been the most beautiful girl in Hogwarts. He’d pestered her to date him for three years before she’d agreed to that ride on his motorcycle. They'd gotten those tattoos on their honeymoon. She was still beautiful.
“Have you been wandering around in the forest?” the other person asked sharply. Sirius moved around to get a look at him.
“No, of course not,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”
“Your wand. I thought you’d lost it in the forest.”
Sirius felt the hackles on the back of his neck stand up. It was him ” Snivellus, the man they’d been arguing about that day in the kitchen. He whipped his head back to look at her, his face heating. She’d known he was coming. She’d had plans with him. But she belonged to Sirius. He felt his knuckles turn white on the doorknob.
“Oh. Well, I “!”
Sirius exploded through the door and sprang over the bed before Snape had time to do more than turn to face him. Sirius relished the look of shock on the sallow, hook-nosed face as he collided with him, throwing him back against the wall. “NO!” Theresa shrieked.
Taking hold of Snape’s throat, Sirius punched him and drew back for another blow, but Theresa caught him by the elbow. He turned, allowing Snape to drop to the floor, and shoved her so hard she fell backwards. “You lied to me!” he roared. “You’re a liar, you were always a liar!”
She scrambled backwards away from him, terror written on her face. “No ” no ”.”
“How can you touch that disgusting ” slimey ” ?!” He faltered, stricken by the fear in her eyes. What was he doing? He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.
“No, Severus!” Coming to her feet, she hurled herself past him. He turned and saw Snape upright, leaning hard on the wall, pointing his wand at the two of them.
“Get out of the way!” Snape panted.
“No! Don’t hurt him!”
“He’s a murderer!”
“Look, you want to be together?” Sirius shouted, seizing Theresa from behind, “then here you are!” Lifting her bodily, he threw her into Snape. Crashing backwards into the little breakfast table, they collapsed to the ground. Sirius opened the door and bolted into the chilly afternoon, leaving them to each other.
*•••••*•••••*
Severus sat up and tried to shake the fog out of his head. Theresa was beside him clasping his shoulders, like she’d been trying to wake him. For a moment, he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there.
“Severus? Are you all right?” she asked tearfully.
“Black!” Severus sprang to his feet and looked around, but they were alone in her hotel room.
“It’s all right ” he’s gone ”.”
He dashed out the still-swinging door. There was no one on the balcony, so he thundered down the stairs to the parking lot. No one there, either, except a bewildered-looking Muggle. “Did you see which way he went?” Severus demanded.
“Who?”
“Severus, come back inside.” Theresa stood at the top of the stairs behind him. Admitting defeat, Severus turned and followed her back up to her room.
Theresa immediately sat down on the bed, pressed her face into her hands, and began to sob. Severus massaged the back of his neck, where he could feel a nasty bruise rising, and cursed himself for a fool. He’d just had a brilliant opportunity to defend her, and what had he done? First he’d played Black’s punching bag, and then he’d nearly hexed her by accident. “Are you all right?” he asked, going to her and placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Y-yes,” she sobbed. “I’m s-sorry, Severus!”
“Hush. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yes there is! I knew you were coming, and I didn’t get him out of here in time, and he h-hurt you and you could have killed each other!” Tears choked out her voice.
Fighting the throbbing in his head, Severus sat down beside her. “I’m sure you did all you could have done. You were his prisoner.”
She lifted her head and stared at him. Slowly, the truth began to dawn on Severus. He stood up abruptly. “You mean to tell me that this was a ” a rendezvous?”
“No! I didn’t invite him. He came to me because he couldn’t remember who I was, and it disturbed him.”
“Disturbed him? He’s a murderer!” Severus strode to the door angrily, turned and paced back. “He was using you! He probably thought you’d give him a bath and a good meal.”
“No, no, it wasn’t like that. He just wanted to ” to talk.”
Severus caught the guilty note in her voice. They had done more than talk. He felt blood rising in his face. “They’ll send you to Azkaban for this.”
She looked terrified. The same way she’d looked at Black. “You’re going to turn me in?”
Severus’ mouth worked noiselessly. How could she ask this of him? It would make him an accessory ” and furthermore, he had no wish to protect Black. Quite the opposite, in fact. But as he glared at her, he realized that he could not be responsible for sending her to prison. Reluctantly, he came to a decision. “I will keep your secret ” for a price.”
She stiffened.
“You will come back to Hogwarts with me. Dumbledore will give you a room, and you will remain on the school grounds until Black is captured.”
He watched her struggle with the idea. At length, her shoulders sagged and she whispered, “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
Severus sat next to her and took her hand. Was it so painful, he wondered, for her to stay with him? “All I want,” he said quietly, “is to know that you are safe.”
She met his eyes defiantly, but seemed to think better of it and lowered her gaze. Severus grimaced, jealous beyond speech that Sirius Black could inspire such loyalty in this woman.