Adoris Integare
By megan_lupin
~**~
Part II: Escapes, Poems, and Time-Travel
~**~
Alex hadn’t needed to reply; her silence and appearance were answer enough. Questions ran through his mind, each tumbling over the other so as to make it impossible for him to figure out which one “ if any “ that he wanted to ask first. Memories of the past added themselves to the questions in his head, as well, the most predominate one being that of a summer day, just months before everything had gone to hell.
“I’m leaving,” she whispered, all six of them gathered around the table at the Potters’ home. James and Lily, her large stomach clearly showing she was eight months pregnant, sat on one of the sofas, while Sirius and Alex occupied the other and Remus and Peter each took up an armchair. They’d grown close over the couple years of fighting, of facing death day in and day out, and Alex, though a year younger, had quickly become a part of their group of close friends that was nearly family.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she continued, her blue eyes not meeting any of their own gazes but rather remaining focussed on the mug in her hands. “I’m leaving the country, going to France, and I don’t know when “ or if “ I’ll be back … I just didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
Silence had fallen then, leaving each of them in their own thoughts, for they had all thought of just running away at one point or another after joining the Order. But none of them had, and when it came down to it, they realised they wouldn’t be able to “ or at least, most of them believed that.
“Why?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, but it echoed like he’d shouted the word.
And it was the same question he asked now.
“Why?”
The same question received the same response: a startled, surprised, “What?”
“Why’d you join them?” he asked, and then he just let the words tumble out. “Why’d you leave the Order? Why’d you go to France, all those years ago? Why are you here, now, talking to me?”
“Sirius,” she started, her voice soft yet still forceful and in no way meek. “It’s complicated “”
“No, damn it, Alex, it isn’t that hard!” he exclaimed, ignoring the pain in his wrists as the ropes cut deeper with his struggles. “You didn’t answer me before, so you can tell me the truth now “”
“Don’t you dare “”
“What’d they offer you?” he said, interrupting her threat. “Had you already joined them when you left, or did you leave to join them? Were you ever really one of us, Alex, or was your soul always as dark as the rest of them?”
A part of Sirius knew, upon looking at the witch in front of him, that he should probably stop there and not push things too far. After all, he wasn’t exactly in the best position for a fight with a half-educated child, much less a grown witch as skilled in duelling as Alexandra Bonnet. But, regardless of his nearly thirty-six years of age, he never had learned when to rein the anger in on his own (and no one was here to help remind him).
“But at least tell me this, Alex,” he muttered, ignoring the way her grip tightened on her wand and eyes turned cold. His own steel gaze met her icy stare exactly, not flinching, not blinking. They did say that eyes are the windows to the soul, right? “ Was it possible, then, to lie through one’s eyes, or would the truth always be revealed there, no matter the words that came from one’s lips? Even as he spoke, though, Sirius didn’t have an answer, and for a moment, he wondered if he was only asking because he wanted to taunt the woman in front of him, wanted to somehow hurt his former friend “ someone who could have, had fate dealt them all a better hand, possibly been something more.
“Does it make you feel important? Does it make you feel powerful?” And then, before he could stop himself, that final question came forth.
“Was it worth losing what you had?”
The curse came before the words had barely left his mouth, his position keeping him from dodging the jet of light as it hit his shoulder, creating a bleeding gash and causing him to hiss in pain. His mind preoccupied with the new wound, Sirius hadn’t noticed that Alex had moved from her position across the room to stand just feet in front of him.
“Don’t you dare presume to judge me,” she hissed, her face inches from his own. “You have no right, Sirius Black, not with the mistakes you’ve made in your past “”
“You think I don’t know my mistakes, Alex?” he said, a bit of humourless laughter escaping with the words. “You think they don’t haunt me every goddamn day, and you don’t think that if I could, I’d give anything to go back and fix them?”
Quiet descended on the couple for a brief moment, only the sounds of breathing and shuffled movements audible. Sirius tried to get in a more comfortable position, though it was made slightly more difficult “ not to mention painful “ by the wound on his shoulder. He paid little attention to Alex herself, though the anger radiating from the witch was vividly clear to any semi-intelligent being that happened to come into the room.
“I extended the courtesy to you years ago,” she said, coldly and concisely while rising from the chair that she’d taken after Sirius's last statement, “to not judge you from where you came from. I’d think the least you could do now, Black, is extend the same to me.”
Sirius snorted. “You don’t want me to ‘judge you,’ however much you deserve it, then fine. A confrontation isn’t exactly what I need right now, Alexandra Sofia Bonnet. But don’t you dare to tell me what goes on in my head until you’ve gone through hell as I have.”
He might have noticed the way Alex froze up at his words, not in shock or surprise, but like they had sparked a level of understanding in her, like they’d called forth a memory and in them lay the answer she’d been seeking. But Sirius didn’t notice, his attention instead focussed on the glinting, golden hourglass hanging from a thin chain around Alex’s neck.
“Where’d you get the Time-Turner?”
But it didn’t seem Alex had heard him. She was searching through the pockets of her robes, muttering phrases like “confronted by he who spent the peaceful years in hell” and others that didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t until Alex removed a piece of parchment from her robes and, staring directly at Sirius, said, “You’re Loyalty”, that a bit of understanding dawned on him, too.
“What?”
Alex opened the parchment in front of his face, showing him the images and words upon it, and he bit back a gasp of surprise.
All seven symbols of Recolitus Optimus were on the parchment, exactly as they’d been on his own, save for one change: While his had the symbol for Canis in the centre, Alex’s held that of Ursus, the Bear. The words, too, were changed. The first two paragraphs were identical to his own, but the last three, while with some similarities, were different.
Will this night, with her past, confronted be
By he who spent the peaceful years in hell
And each will help the other to fully see.
In truth, Wise Loyalty as a team
Will achieve what one alone cannot.
And though many things won’t be as they seem,
Still other things will not be forgot.
The warning, too, for Wisdom goes “
Just as Loyalty has since been told “
Though many wrongs time can expose,
Without disturbance, some events must still unfold.
She still held the parchment in front of him for several moments, allowing Sirius to read through the poem multiple times before he lifted his gaze to meet her blue eyes. Alex’s face held little emotion; it was closed off and blank, a characteristic of hers for as long as Sirius had known the witch. He had no idea which emotion showed greatest on his face, but he would bet that confusion was dominant.
“Alex, where’d you get this?” he asked, settling for the first question that popped into his head.
Alex’s coldness seemed to have warmed up a (very little) bit; she wasn’t acting as hostile as she had directly after their argument, though the friendliness they’d shared nearly two decades in the past wasn’t anywhere near having returned, either.
“I received a message this morning,” she began, rolling the parchment back up and stuffing it into a pocket as she started pacing across the room. “I didn’t recognise the owl, and the only words on the message were just some cryptic type of riddle “ ‘Midday the gold shines high, and only then will Wisdom know why’. I thought it was just some stupid joke or something and was about to toss it out when I saw the little symbol in one of the upper corners of the parchment; it was the same one that’s on the centre of this piece here, with the poem “”
“That’s for Recolitus Optimus’s Branch of the Bear, Ursus, meaning ‘Strength’ “ It’s an ancient Order of the Wizarding World that was supposed to have died out years ago “”
“Yes, I knew I’d seen it before, I just couldn’t remember where,” said Alex, taking a moment and glancing at Sirius as if daring him to interrupt again. He shrugged “ at least, as much as he could with his hands bound and a bleeding gash in one of his shoulders. “Anyway, I guess it was because of that that I didn’t get rid of it; for some reason, I just didn’t want to trash it yet, though I made myself put it out of mind all morning. It wasn’t until around noon or so that I remembered it again “ and what I saw appear in my house at that time was what brought it back to mind.”
For a moment, Alex paused in her story, and Sirius didn’t make a noise to interrupt the silence that fell over the two of them. The candle’s flame was still flickering from its position on the nearby table, though the magical property of the candle kept it from melting, thus preventing Sirius from knowing exactly how much time had passed. Lucius still hadn’t returned, either (but Sirius was in no way wishing that fact would change any time soon).
“There was a woman just standing in the middle of my bedroom,” Alex continued, breaking the silence. “And I know I’ve never seen her before in my life; I had no idea who she was, but yet at the same time, I felt like I knew her … or like she knew me. She kept staring at me “ or it even seemed like she was staring through me. It was like she could see something in me that I couldn’t, something I didn’t know was even there, and it was as if she connected with that part of me.
“I tried shooting a spell at her, but it just went right through her, like she wasn’t there. But she wasn’t a ghost, either; she was solid, or at least looked it. So I asked her why she was there, asked her what she wanted, and all she did was say the same words over and over “ the poem there that’s on the parchment. She just kept repeating them, no matter what I asked her, before she cut herself off and looked directly at me again, saying ‘Find Loyalty’. When I asked why, all she said was ‘When Wisdom finds Loyalty, her task will truly begin’. And the next moment, she was gone, disappeared, like she’d never been there in the first place.”
No one spoke right after Alex’s pause this time. Alex had stopped pacing and returned to the chair she’d sat in earlier, while Sirius felt lost in his thoughts as he tried to digest the story he’d just heard. Though he didn’t want to believe it “ It just isn’t possible, he thought “ Alex’s tale had sparked Sirius's own memories of an event very much like this one.
“Alex,” he asked. “This woman … What’d she look like?”
The witch looked confusedly at him for a brief moment before answering. “She was pale, very pale,” she said. “Her hair was long, black, and straggly, while her eyes were like mine. But they were colder than any eyes I’ve ever seen,” she whispered. “Cold and dark, yet still beautiful … She looked like she could’ve been beautiful once.”
Unbidden, images rose to the forefront of Sirius's mind, images from memories nearly twenty years old. He’d only been seventeen at the time, but there was no way for him to forget her face as she stared out at him from the Chocolate Frog card, nor as she stood just metres in front of him and uttered the prophecy that he now fully understood, repeating it over and over without answering any of his questions. It hadn’t seemed to matter that the Dark witch, Melinda Maleficent, had been dead for a century.
But Sirius pushed the memories aside, deciding not to take up time now telling Alex who he thought her visitor had been. Instead, he latched on to the amount of understanding that he had gained from the story.
“So you think that I’m Loyalty,” he said.
“Who else fits with the poem?” barked Alex, sending him another of her customary glares. “And if you’re Loyalty, then that makes me “”
““ Wisdom.”
“Exactly.”
The conversation died out for barely a second before Sirius asked another question.
“The scroll, the one that has the poem on it, and the Time-Turner,” he said. “Where’d you get them?”
Alex glanced down at the hourglass swinging from her neck, its golden colour catching and reflecting the flame from the candle. “When I returned to the kitchen,” she started, “I found some things on the table. One was a bag that had several things inside, and beside it was the scroll; the other object was the Time-Turner.”
She took the mentioned object off and brought it closer to Sirius, dangling it in front of him to allow him to see it more closely. It looked remarkably like the one that was sitting in the brown satchel on the chair, save for one noticeable difference: Everything was reversed on it “ what was on the right of his Time-Turner was on the left of Alex’s and vice versa.
“This isn’t like my Time-Turner …” he began, before Alex took it back and interrupted him.
“I know it isn’t,” she said, bringing the object up to look at it herself. “It doesn’t go backwards in time, Black … It goes forwards.” But before Sirius could comment on this revelation, Alex continued. “Wait a minute,” she said, raising her gaze from the hourglass and glaring at Sirius. “What do you mean, your Time-Turner?”
Inwardly, Sirius let loose a string of curses as he realised the slip of his tongue. She’s a Death Eater! She can’t be trusted! screamed a voice in his head. But then he thought of the poem, of the way he and Alex had interpreted hers to mean that they had to work together on whatever this ‘task’ happened to be. This is probably going to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, he thought, sighing.
Sirius told Alex everything.
----
When he was finished talking and Alex had put all of his items back in the satchel, she looked right into his eyes, blue meeting grey, and spoke.
“So, you think that whatever task we have to complete, it has something to do with travelling through time.”
Sirius nodded. “We both have Time-Turners, so it makes sense. And since yours brings someone forwards, then it probably involves travelling so far back that we can’t just let the time catch back up.”
“I think I might have an idea of where “ or when “ we have to go,” she whispered, resuming her pacing across the room. “But I don’t know why, if we can’t change anything …”
“What are you thinking?”
Alex sighed, deliberately keeping her eyes from Sirius's. “I can’t tell you now,” she muttered. “Later, I will, but first, I need to get you out of here before Lucius comes back.”
“And just how to you plan on doing that?” he asked, watching Alex as she paced back and forth. “It’s not like I can just walk out of this room, and do you even know where he is right now?”
Sirius saw Alex search through her pockets once again, revealing a small, compact mirror and, placing her wand tip to the glass, muttered a spell. “The second part we can solve right now,” she said, and at Sirius's look of confusion, she sighed. “Scrying spell, specifically tuned into Lucius but also anyone else with a Dark Mark near him.”
They watched as the glass of the mirror rippled and swirled, like it was made of water, before clearing to show what Sirius assumed was the main area of the pub they were currently inside. Lucius sat at a table near the front door, a drink in front of him and his eyes alternating between watching the door and glancing back into the corridor that led to the back rooms.
“Finite,” muttered Alex, replacing the mirror as the image faded away and approaching Sirius. “Well, it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped,” she said, moving behind him and starting to untie the ropes binding his hands. “He’s watching everything too closely for just a minor distraction to do the job, and there are too many others in the room just to force our way out. There.”
Sirius brought his hands back around in front of him, wincing slightly at the pain that shot through the wounds “ both from the bonds and the gash on his shoulder. None of the cuts were fatally deep, of course, but that didn’t mean they weren’t painful. Rising from his position on the floor, Sirius grabbed his wand from the chair and with a few muttered incantations, the cuts were healed well enough for the time being.
He quickly gathered up the other objects on the chair, placing them either in the satchel or in his pockets, and turned back to face Alex, who stood in front of the door, her wand still drawn.
“Do you remember the way to that side door you entered the pub from?” she asked, and he shook his head before realising that she hadn’t been looking at him.
“No,” he said. “He Stunned me just after I’d entered and I woke up in here. Why?”
“Because that’s the only way we can both get out of here relatively unscathed, but the only way that I think it’ll work is if you leave Disillusioned while I’m distracting Lucius “ he’ll be able to tell you’re there, charm or not, if he’s focussed “ and then I can follow.”
A curse of frustration was on the tip of his tongue before Sirius cut it off, a possible “ and very probable “ solution occurring to him.
“I have an idea,” he said. “You can Disillusion me after I’ve transformed, and then I should be able to find the door by scent rather than sight. Everything else can work the same way.”
And as Sirius watched Alex think the plan over, twirling her wand in her fingers as she stared intently at the door, the years started to fade away, until it felt like none of the events of the past had happened. Alex wasn’t an enemy Death Eater he hadn’t seen in over a decade and someone whose trust wasn’t assured; she was a friend, a colleague, during a mission for the Order. She was someone that he would die for, just as she would be willing to die for him.
It was only her nodding response that ultimately broke him from his thoughts. “All right,” she said. “Transform, and we’ll do this.”
----
Nearly a quarter of an hour later brought both Alex Bonnet and Sirius Black to the opposite end of the town, glamour spells cast over both of them to alter appearances. Sirius, now significantly darker skinned with short, brown hair, sat next to a black-haired and tanned Alex, the two of them reading over several pieces of parchments atop a large book opened in their laps. A privacy spell also kept anyone from trying to scry their location.
“So, Alex, what was the idea that you had earlier?” Sirius asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over them for the moment. “The one where you said you thought you knew where and when we had to go on this task?”
But rather than answer, Alex shook her head. “Not right now, Sirius,” she said, turning another page of the book and steadfastly keeping her gaze “ now a dark brown “ from Sirius's. “I don’t think you’ll like it, first off, but I will tell you if that’s the right answer … I just want to be sure before I say anything.”
Sirius was about to argue when Alex’s gasp of surprise cut the argument off in his mouth. “What?”
“I think I found something,” she muttered, turning the book so that Sirius could read it.
The page seemed newer than the rest of the book, almost like it was added after the tome had already been made and been through many hands for decades. It wasn’t nearly as crinkled, nor did the ink seem as faded as the rest. And the page was filled with the seven symbols of Recolitus Optimus, those of Canis and Ursus larger than the others and sharing the centre, a part of each linked with the other. Words, though few, were written above the two images:
Of Dog and Bear
Lies code to ignite
By fire and air.
“Great. More poems,” sighed Alex, tracing her hands over the symbols and words. “And that is supposed to mean, what, exactly?”
Sirius let the words of the poem reverberate in his head, his mind trying to come up with the right solution. It was on the tip of his tongue; he knew it this time, and suddenly, the answer arrived and it clicked.
“There’s a message or a code written below these symbols,” he said, pointing at the blank areas on the parchment beneath the two central images. “And we have to use both fire and air to show it.”
Alex looked at him, almost as if doubting his sanity, before she sighed and removed her wand, pointing it at the parchment. With a few muttered spells from both of them “ a flame of fire from Sirius followed by a jet of air from Alex “ more lines of text appeared below the two images, the writing of these words looking like a hastily scribbled note rather than part of the original manuscript.
That “Loyal Wisdom must know the bond foretold.”
The two of them glanced at the words for barely a second before they both turned to each other, identical smiles on their faces. This was one bit of rhyming that wasn’t difficult to figure out.
Alex and Sirius rose simultaneously from the bench they’d been on and quickly Disapparated, reappearing an instant later outside a building that seemed a bit run-down “ and that was an understatement if there ever was one.
It was a miracle that the old pub, Eagle’s Wings and Leprechaun Gold, was still standing and still attracting some business. Absolutely filthy and in one of the worst areas of Wizarding Britain that it was possible to be, the pub had a very, shall one say, interesting history about it.
Therefore, it was with wands gripped tightly that Sirius and Alex entered the building together, their eyes scanning their surroundings and taking count of every exit, every possible avenue of either escape or cover, depending on what may be required. As the door shut behind him, Sirius followed Alex up to the bar, the complete emptiness of the pub unnerving him slightly.
When they reached the front, an aged wizard came forwards, his scarred hands twisting around the cloth he carried and a strong odour of very bad breath radiating from him.
“What’ll it be?” he croaked, his mouth seemingly in a permanent frown and his eyes staring unblinkingly at them.
“Loyal Wisdom must know the bond foretold,” said Sirius, speaking at Alex’s nod and returning the barman’s stare, his own gaze unfaltering. It was like trying to stare down a hippogriff, and if Sirius didn’t know better, he’d say that this particular wizard could have been Moody “ The barman’s gaze was just as unnerving as being glared at with Moody’s magical eye was.
But the old wizard broke the staring contest faster than the eye could blink, and he reached under the wooden counter, removing a box and shoving it towards Sirius. He patted the top of it once with his hand, muttered “Two turns should do it”, and turned away, ignoring both Alex and Sirius as if they weren’t even in the room.
----
After leaving the pub, Sirius and Alex, both still under glamour charms, immediately sat upon a nearby bench and opened the box. Inside was another Time-Turner, but this one differed from both of theirs (although it had more in common with Sirius's than Alex’s). In basic appearance, everything seemed to be on the same side as Sirius’s, telling them that this Time-Turner went backwards just like most. The size of it, though, was triple that of a ‘normal’ Time-Turner. At nearly 15cm, the magical object took up nearly the entire interior of the box and weighed too much to be worn around the neck unsupported.
Sirius lifted the Time-Turner from the box and held it in his hands, running his fingers over it and examining every inch of the golden and glass surface that was connected to the thick, golden chain that Alex was weaving around her own fingers.
“Two turns, right?” he said, tearing his eyes from the object and meeting Alex’s gaze.
“Yeah,” she answered, throwing the chain around both of their necks. “You ready?”
He thought about the question for barely a moment, mentally making sure that he had his wand and all the other items that had been in the satchel. His own individual Time-Turner also around his neck, and Alex’s around hers as well, he nodded.
And after receiving a nod from Alex in return, he lifted the heavy Time-Turner, turned it around once “ twice “ and both Sirius and Alex disappeared from the bench in a swirl of colour, leaving no evidence behind that the two of them had ever been there.
----
If anyone had been looking into the large field, they would have seen two people materialise out of thin air, popping into existence in the blink of an eye. If they’d been watching, they would have noticed the two strangely dressed people “ a man and a woman “ stumble upon their arrival, the man barely managing to keep the woman from falling to the ground. If a person had been close enough to hear the two speaking, several muttered curses would have reached that person’s ears as the woman pushed away from the man, each sending a glare in the other’s direction as they did so.
“Still have trouble arriving without falling, Alex?” asked Sirius, the smile evident in his voice as much as on his face. He paid just as much attention to her returning glare and curse as he always had in the past “ which was, of course, none at all.
“Do you have any idea where “ and more importantly, when “ we are?” she said instead, yanking the chain from their necks and motioning for Sirius to return the Time-Turner to the box.
He did so before placing the box in the satchel and looking around, his gaze taking in the sight of the large, wide open field that the pair was in, surrounded as it was by many trees. A bright sun shone from the highest point in the sky, signalling that it was nearly midday, and bathed them both in its golden warmth.
There was, however, no sign of any civilisation.
“I don’t know,” he said, still looking all around. “Time-Turners are supposed to bring you to the exact spot you left from, just a different time, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we had to have gone further back than just a few decades, since the town’s not here “ nor is there any sign of a town around.”
“No sign that we can see, Sirius,” said Alex, her dark brown eyes staring pointedly at him. “Transform. See if you can tell anything as a dog that we can’t as humans.”
And so Sirius did, his sense of smell barely picking up a slight smell of people and animals “ a home if not a town. He transformed back into himself. “There’s something to the west,” he said, pointing. “People and animals, though I can’t tell if it’s just a home or something more.”
“Better than just standing here, whatever it is,” she answered, and together, they headed off towards the west.
----
Sirius had no idea how much time had passed, though he figured at least a quarter of hour had elapsed since he and Alex had started leaving the field. They’d spent most of the journey in complete silence, each lost in their own thoughts, trying to connect their relationship of the past with that of the present.
“Alright, Alex, now you can tell me,” said Sirius. “Where did you think we had to time-travel to at first?”
Alex sighed but still didn’t answer, and it wasn’t until Sirius had opened his mouth, ready to stop her walking and demand an answer, that she did.
“I thought we’d have to go back to 1981,” she muttered, keeping her gaze towards the ground. “It was fourteen years to the day, and both of our poems seemed to hint at it, I thought. But then I didn’t understand why we’d go to then if we couldn’t change anything about what happened. And I didn’t want to tell you because I know how you still feel about James and Lily’s deaths, and “”
“Alex!” he interrupted her rambling, sighing himself as he stopped walking and saw her do the same. Neither met the other’s gaze, however. “I understand, and “ I don’t “ It doesn’t “” He sighed again as he tried to figure out what it was he was attempting to say. But no matter how hard he tried to figure out and organise his thoughts, it didn’t work. “No … Just forget it.”
“Sirius “”
“We’re here.”
Sirius was glad to see that his announcement had forced Alex to drop the topic. What happened fourteen years ago wasn’t something he wanted to think about right now, after all. So instead, he focussed his attention on the sights in front of him.
They were both on the top of a hill, looking down at a small village below. Brown and grey seemed to be the predominant colours in the scene, the buildings all made from either stone or wood and the roads a dusty, light brown. Thatched roofs covered the buildings, wooden carts stood along the road’s sides, and animals “ mostly horses, Sirius saw “ could be seen every once in a while, tied to a railing or bearing a rider.
“Um, Sirius,” started Alex, and Sirius turned to look at her. “I think we need to change; we’ll look a little out of place down there.” She motioned back down to the village, waving her hand in a sweeping action over the people. And Sirius, taking another closer look at the moving bodies below him, saw what she was talking about.
The Time-Turner had apparently hurled them back not just years or decades, but centuries “ It had to be the Middle Ages or something, judging by the primitiveness of the village. Alex was indeed correct; they would look extraordinarily out of place in their 20th-century apparel. (Well, Alex would blend in better in her robes than Sirius would in his Muggle clothing, but neither of them would exactly be inconspicuous.)
“So we transfigure these clothes to fit in,” he said, waving his wand and demonstrating as he changed his jeans and shirt into something more befitting, removing his glamour as he did so; there was not really a need for it, considering he wasn’t a wanted criminal centuries in the past. Alex quickly did the same, and within a few minutes, the two magical visitors of 1995 looked like they belonged centuries in the past.
Together, the two of them made their way down to the village, careful not to draw attention to themselves. The locals paid them little attention, only occasionally glancing their way for a moment before returning to their own business. And as Sirius and Alex walked through the village, they tried to figure out what to do next.
“So, any idea what we’re supposed to do now?” said Alex, watching a brown-haired woman yelling at an enthusiastic toddler, his own brown hair bouncing upon his head as he ran away from his mother.
“I don’t really know, to be honest,” he responded, his grey eyes scanning through the crowd, taking in everything like a Muggle-born seeing Diagon Alley for the first time. “Those poems weren’t precisely clear on what this task is, and “”
He broke off as he caught sight of a figure standing not too far in front of him, sun shining down on the man’s smooth, bald head. The tall man’s dark skin contrasted heavily against the light colour of his clothing, light reflecting off of the single, gold hoop hanging in his ear. He didn’t look out of place in the least, but there was no mistaking who the man was “ and Sirius knew that there was no way Shacklebolt should have been centuries in the past.
Damn.
Author’s Note: Well, the second part is finished, and now there’s just the third and final part in this adventure to go. Explanations are forthcoming, but will they be what Sirius expected? Find out in Part III, entitled, funnily enough, Explanations Given and a Task Completed that’s coming soon. For now, though, thank you for reading and please, let me know what you think!
~Megan