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The Sudden Light and the Trees, Part 3
It took only a memory to summon the dead.
That it took so little was incomprehensible to most in the wizarding world, and likely for the best, as a memory could be both a force of good and one of ill. A memory could be one of the most monstrous things, the most damning things, a man could own. And it took only a memory to summon the dead, yes, but it also took time. It took time to hone the memory, time to focus the need for contact to an excruciating peak. Most of all, it took time to grow old and ever-nearer the flimsy veil that divided one world from the next. It took only a memory, yes, but at a cost few were ready to pay.
Remus had been summoning for years, years being the only thing he had in great supply; years to think and to reflect. Years to dream.
He dreamed still, out of habit, though Sirius now stood as a spirit by his stove. Remus dreamed the dream that held what kernel of truth had brought Sirius here at all, though the link had been years in coming, and though the real dreaming could only now ensue.
Remus’s summoning dream began first with coldness, an intangible creeping ache best likened to the Dementor’s chill. Not all could truly feel in dreams, but for those able, the sensations would often be very distinct and not always pleasant. They could be overwhelming, too, as dreams did not have the limitations of wakeful nerve endings. So at the start of his dreams Remus stood shivering in swirling, muted darkness at the end of a long corridor. It was so cold he knew he had to move to stay warm, and so he walked.
He walked along a space narrow as metal tracks, until in the distance he saw light and heard the long, sonorous note of a whistle approaching. He kept walking. He could hear the impending train but he moved straight for it. It was dark save for that one unwavering light, the blue-grey dot on the tracks. As he neared the glow a heaviness settled inside him. He could still hear the train; it was all about him, but now it was clear the glow came only from a figure, from something human, though in shade on the tracks. Still he heard the whistle coming.
In the soft swirl of falling snow, which pricked at him like ice despite the gentleness of its descent, Remus could make out the glint of glasses, the flush of blue cheeks, the unruly mess of hair. The figure’s back was turned, a shadow in shadows. Remus’s mouth formed a name he couldn’t hear, and he reached for a shoulder, his heart swelling with implacable grief as he moved. He wanted to run. The need to run was overpowering. But the need also to touch this creature was more overwhelming. He laid his hand to a shoulder and the figure turned, glassy-eyed, its mouth a maw of unfathomable darkness, its skin an empty white, and Remus stumbled back as if struck, tripping now on the track and in his sleep falling, falling, his arms flailing until they caught hold of cloth.
Curtains. Remus held tight, his eyes shut, his body shaking. It was only a dream, he said, knowing even as he said it that he was still within a dream. The curtains were of a soft material, velvet perhaps, and dark. The bed was large, but he couldn’t see the bedsheets or the pillows for the deep red of the curtains he still clung to for dear life. He knelt on the mattress in his ratty evening robe and somewhere a clock chimed the hour. The curtains fell open, and away, and he fell to the floor, groping desperately at the tumble of cloth.
Then the Sirius of his dream laughed, a rich and forgotten sound. Out of bed, Remus knew this to be no house he’d ever visited in the waking world, though the architecture remained resolutely English. Victorian and dark, save for the still-glowing embers in the fireplace, it dwarfed Remus, who crawled helplessly to his knees on the rug, his hands clasped together, pleading without speech at the spirit hovering by his bedside.
“Come on then!” Sirius cried, his face still bright and amused. He caught at one of Remus’s wrists and tugged him, stumbling, to his feet, moving towards the window. Remus could make out the tops of nearby houses and a grey, snowy sky; they were at least a floor up, if not more.
“Spirit!” he cried, falling to his knees only to be tugged again to his feet. “I am a mortal, and liable to fall!”
“Nonsense!” came the cheerful retort. The grip on his wrist became vice-like, and with a sharp pull Remus was drawn to the window, where Sirius passed through blackened curtains and frosted glass with the greatest of ease. “You’re with me now!” Sirius called, the sound muffled by the divide. Another hard tug and Remus fell, still protesting, toward the panes.
He struck them hard. Only his free hand, braced tight against the wooden frame, spared him from breaking the glass and falling through. The room was different now; Sirius was no longer floating outside the window and Remus, his forehead pressed to the winter-cold glass, was no longer in a robe. Perched upon the windowseat, in a thick cardigan and heavy trousers, a book upon his lap, he watched his schoolmates tussling in the snow.
This was where the real memory began. It was quiet in the hospital wing, and his scars still throbbed with last night’s release. He was drowsy, sleep ready and waiting on his eyelids, in his head. He rested a gauze-swaddled hand on the sill and looked out. The day was a glorious white, the sky-blue nothing against the dazzle of pristine snow, fallen in the night. Surely even Sirius and James, for all their roughhousing, could not disturb the smoothness of all the snow upon Hogwarts land, not if they played all night and day, so great was the expanse.
Remus was too far away to hear their laughter, but he could imagine it and, unthinking, he touched the scarf loose about his neck, a twinge of longing in his throat. He bit his split lip, touching his tongue to the tenderness of it, as he watched Sirius and James toss each other about. Peter, groundhog-small, crouched and hopped about them, tossing snowballs at James’s back until Sirius and James each took him by an arm and dunked him, laughingly, into a drift.
Peter out of the picture, Sirius turned on James, and they fell to scrapping in each other’s arms, stuffing snow down their shirts and into their faces. James knocked Sirius onto his back and crammed a snowball into Sirius’s hair; Sirius kicked and flailed and the tables were quickly turned. Sirius shoved James hard into the snow beside him and onto his belly before sitting astride him, pinning him from the waist down and holding one hand firm at James’s neck, to keep him in place.
And then with his free hand he gathered snowball after snowball, whipping each carelessly packed handful at the back of James’s head. Peter, still shaking the snow out of his trousers and stumbling towards them, was laughing so hard he was red in the face. Remus could see Sirius tipping his head to the sky, basking in this moment of supremacy. It was a freeing sight. Even James seemed to be enjoying himself, making a show of writhing under Sirius’s grip, his arms and legs flailing before suddenly, theatrically, falling still, and limp. And still Sirius’s face was tipped to the heavens, and still he glowed with elation, his hand still firm on James’s unstraining neck.
Remus’s weary eyes snapped open. A foreboding tightness in his chest, he pressed both hands to the glass, The Three Musketeers falling from his lap to land a loud and crumpled weight on the floor. His heart was in his throat as he watched Peter stagger towards the pair and fall into Sirius, unintentionally knocking him from his mount. His face pressed to the glass, Remus peered desperately at the mess of snow where James lay, still unmoving. Until Peter noticed and stared, slack-jawed with incomprehension. Until Sirius noticed, and laughed only louder. His mouth moved, and Remus could guess what was being said.
“Oh, quit fooling, Prongs. Oldest trick in the book.”
But James still did not move, and now Remus was hardly breathing himself. He wanted to call out, to tear from the room, but he couldn’t move. Weakened by last night, he was now paralysed as well with fear, and in the dream-state his paralysis was complete. Blood rushed to his head, a veritable roar in his ears as Sirius’s grin fell, until the expression on Sirius’s face became one of great sobreity; until he stood, slowly, and approached James’s body, one hand carefully outstretched. Again Sirius's lips moved, and again Remus could guess at the words:
“Eh, Prongs, this isn’t funny any more.”
The wing was silent, empty save for Remus by the sill, and the yard was just as empty, save for those three. Please, Remus remembered thinking, Please don’t make me cover for this too. A loathsome thought to be flitting through his head, but also heavy in his mind was that image of Sirius, his head tipped in euphoria to the glinting sun as James writhed and fell silent beneath: that fatal ease and recklessness so typical of Padfoot. Please don’t make me tell on you, Remus remembered thinking at the time - such a small and petty and inconsequential thing - as Sirius crouched by James’s body and laid a hand at James’s unmoving back.
Such a shameful thing, with a friend’s life on the line. Surely even Peter, standing so rigid and dismayed by the scene, no doubt for the first time realising that his hero was indeed a mortal, and weak in mortal ways, was thinking more important things at the time than tattling.
Indeed, it seemed no one was breathing as Sirius, his hand yielding no response, started to roll James, still ominously limp, onto his back. Remus’s hands and face were pressed tight to the glass as Sirius moved to cup James’s face, peering for life. Remus's chest tightened further, this time flush with guilt on top of fear. Sirius laid his palm to James’s cheek and patted it gently. Remus, praying now to what greater forces he knew, wizarding and muggle alike, could make out the slightest movement of lips. “Prongs…?”
Wham. Kneed in the gut, Sirius fell back, wheezing, doubled over and protesting wildly. James leaped up, laughing as he whipped snow at Sirius’s face and chest and sides. His mouth moved in triumph. “Oldest trick in the book, and you fell for it!” Peter laughed now, though he was babbling, too, and Remus knew it was likely something about how ‘good’ James had fooled them. Sirius, still curled up on the ground and evidently groaning, whipped a leg out and toppled James in turn, and soon enough they’d fallen again to scrapping, red-faced and dripping water in the brightness of the snow. Soon enough they were again just three boys tumbling at ease on a clear winter morning, as if nothing of great importance had just happened, as if an unspoken boundary hadn't been recognized and almost, irrevocably crossed, as if the balance had been perfectly restored or never lost at all.
But still Remus sat pressed to the window, his hands gripping, as best they were able, at the chill glass. Skull pounding, he rested his forehead on the cool windowpane; shutting his eyes in humiliated exhaustion, his heart sank, heavily, to where it belonged. Shame was Remus’s memory: shame, and the glorious sight of one man with his face tipped a freeing glow to the heavens as another lay still in seeming death. This was the memory Remus had brought himself to recall each night, for years now, to be followed always by dissolution to fragments of other lives, other hauntings, other secret guilts.
Of every moment they’d ever shared in the fleeting scope of mortal life, this was the memory that, in time and at the cost of a thousand and more restful nights, had successfully summoned the spirit of Sirius Black.