Adoris Integare: Part III
Title: Adoris Integare
Rating: PG-13
Length: Three-Shot
Pairings: Mention of James/Lily, Implied possibility of Sirius/OC
Era: Hogwarts (fifth year)
Summary: Finally, the answers are given and everything is explained.
Awards: First Place in "Gauntlet Writing Challenge V" on MNFF
~*~
Part III: Explanations Given and a Task Completed
Sirius immediately ducked off the main street and out of sight, grabbing Alex behind him. They had both barely made it behind a tall, nearby cart when Alex whirled on him, yanking her arm from his grasp as she did so.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, glaring at him.
But Sirius didn’t have a chance to answer her. He had barely opened his mouth to reply when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and a dark shadow was cast over both him and Alex. Eyes shutting and sighing, Sirius turned around to face the other wizard.
However, it was not Kingsley Shacklebolt that had approached him - at least, not directly. The man whose hand was on Sirius's shoulder was short, thin and blond, while Shacklebolt stood a few metres away, his dark eyes watching the scene with an expressionless face.
“Who are you?” said Sirius, but the blond man simply shook his head, before motioning back to Shacklebolt and increasing the grip on Sirius's shoulder. Sirius turned back to face Alex and together, they followed the man as he brought them towards the other Order member. Kingsley was the first to speak.
“Sirius,” he said, his voice low and rumbling.
“Kingsley.” Sirius motioned to Alex. “This is Alex Bonnet,” he said as the witch nodded and Kingsley returned the greeting.
“What’re you doing here, Kingsley?” asked Sirius.
The dark-skinned wizard motioned for the other man to leave the trio in private, and as he walked away, Kingsley led both Sirius and Alex to another path on the road, fairly deserted and a good place to have a conversation without great threat of being overheard.
“So you are the ones sent?” he asked, looking at the two visitors from the future for confirmation.
Sirius was confused, and a quick glance at Alex showed she felt the same. “What do you mean, sent?” he said. “Do you know what our ‘task’ is?”
Kingsley shook his head. “I was not told everything,” he muttered. “But I do know another step in the journey, if you will - or so I believe I do.”
“Which is … what?”
“Follow me, Sirius.”
----
The three magical visitors from centuries in the future walked down the empty path for nearly a half hour before they reached a large, stone building, its walls seeming to tower to the skies and the massive roofs held up by great columns. Large, oaken doors barred the entrance, but they were opened soon after Kingsley pounded upon them thrice. A small creature - it looked like a mixture of house-elf and goblin to Sirius - greeted them with a bow and led them down several long corridors and through many more doorways.
Upon entering the final room through silver-studded doors, the creature left the trio of wizards and witch with a bang - a lot louder than the tiny pop of a house-elf’s departure. Sirius's attention, however, wasn’t on the creature. His gaze was busy trying to take in everything in the wide and large room.
Inside, shelves upon shelves covered the floors, documents and scrolls littering the wood and everything else around. Some looked ancient, while others still had the ink glistening on the page as it dried. A few were unrolled, like they’d recently been read, while others seemed as if they’d been undisturbed for years, thick layers of dust having settled on top of them. A few quills also dotted along the tables.
Remus would love it in here, Sirius thought, his mind thinking back to his research-loving best friend. Remus had always loved finding the most obscure references that the others needed for a prank to be pulled off just the right way, or that one spell that would get the Map to do exactly what they wanted. A room full of historical documents such as this one, filled as it was with knowledge that had probably been lost through the centuries, would be a treasure.
But then his gaze returned to Shacklebolt and Alex, who were also both surveying the destruction of the room - for the multitude of scrolls lay as if a great wind had ripped through the room - and he sighed.
“So you’re saying that we have to fix all of this,” he said, staring at the others. “And without using a quick spell to do so, but in doing it, we’ll find out the next part?”
Kingsley nodded, having already told both Sirius and Alex what he knew: He had arrived a millennium in the past, in the year of 995, right outside the doors to this building. A cloaked figure had told him to go and wait in the town for two more visitors from his own time, who would be on a task, and together, they’d have to return here, help out the owners of the building without the use of magic, before the next part would be answered. The figure had shown Kingsley the room, just as torn apart as it was now, before leading him back to the centre of town to wait for the others.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, then, we’d better split up,” said Alex, starting to head off towards the right of the room. “It should go quicker that way, I think.”
And so they did. Alex went right, Kingsley went further ahead, and Sirius walked opposite of Alex, each getting lost from the view of the others before long.
----
Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly, as far as Sirius was concerned, and with every scroll he placed on its proper shelf, the job never seemed to get any easier, the piles never seemed to decrease in size. For a moment, Sirius even wondered if the scroll piles were enchanted to never decrease.
But the wondering was torn from his head as he heard the approaching sound of footsteps among the scrolls. Tensing slightly as the sound increased - for the steps were too light to be Kingsley’s and too heavy to be Alex’s - Sirius dropped the documents he held in his hands and spun, withdrawing his wand immediately and pointing it directly in front of him, its ebony tip directed at the chest of the new figure.
Long, black hair curtained her gaunt and pale face, the dark strands contrasting greatly with her light skin tone, and icy blue eyes met his own grey gaze unblinkingly. Her thin form was instantly recognisable.
“Sirius Black.”
The fact that the figure had identified Sirius by name did nothing to calm him, for he, too, knew the identity of the woman. And there should have been no possible way for Melinda Maleficent, a Dark witch who hadn’t been born until 1799 and who Sirius already had previous memories concerning, to be with him once again, this time in the year of 995.
“What do you want?” he asked, his wand still pointing at Melinda.
The witch ignored the magical instrument and walked regally towards him, a smile lining her gaunt face. “Why don’t you put your weapon away, Sirius?” she asked, nodding towards the wand. “It will do you no good in here.”
Sirius adjusted his grip, but did not lower the ebony wood. “I said, what do you want?”
“Very well.” And with a flick of her wrist, the wand vanished from Sirius's hand, only to reappear in Melinda’s, who placed it in a bag hanging from her shoulder. “I do not wish to speak with you while you’re pointing a weapon in my face, Sirius,” she said. “Such is not the proper way to conduct a conversation.”
“I’m not usually in the habit of calmly conversing with Dark witches who shouldn’t even be alive yet,” Sirius responded. He hadn’t moved from his current position, not even when Melinda motioned for him to take a seat, and he kept his gaze focussed on her. A part of him briefly wondered where Kingsley and Alex were. Had they not heard the arrival of Maleficent?
“Your friends …” the witch responded, a slight sneer appearing as she uttered the word, “won’t be able to hear us,” she said, almost as if she could read Sirius's mind. “We are no longer in the same room as they.”
“What do you mean? Of course we -” But he broke himself off as he gazed around. Melinda was right. While the room still contained shelves upon shelves of scrolls and documents, everything was in perfect order, not a single thing out of place, and there were many pieces that hadn’t been present before. Several heavy, leather tomes had been added, the wood of the desks had been changed …
“Where are we?” he asked.
Melinda smiled. “Perhaps the correct question would be when we are, but the answer, Sirius, is unimportant. As I said earlier, I wished to speak with you, and I did not want to be interrupted.”
Sirius opened his mouth to speak, but Melinda immediately silenced him - either with magic or something else, Sirius did not know.
“And I was including you in that statement,” she whispered harshly, her icy blue eyes glaring directly at him, just as they had so many years ago from a Chocolate Frog card in the Gryffindor Common Room. It was easy, when Maleficent appeared like this, how one could see her capable of orchestrating the Massacre of 1845 that resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people.
“Now, please, sit down.” Her voice was back to its kind tone, and she motioned once again towards the chair.
Sirius thought briefly of ignoring her, but then realised that acting like a rebellious teenager wouldn’t do him any good here. And so he took the seat.
With a nod and a smile, Melinda continued. “What do you know, Sirius, of your friends? The two you were with before in the Learning Chambers?” At Sirius's still-confused expression, the witch spoke again. “Do you believe you can trust them?”
Sirius was shocked into silence, an answer of “Yes, of course” wanting to come out of his mouth, but Melinda’s words had caused some of his previous doubts to return. About Kingsley, there was no question; Sirius knew he could trust him - the man was a part of the Order and keeping the Ministry from finding him, after all. He was intelligent and had a sense of right and justice that many seemed to lose as they climbed the ranks in the magical government. Dumbledore trusted him, and he was dependable; one couldn’t help but to trust the Auror -
But Peter was dependable once, too, hissed a vicious voice in his head. Sirius tried to block out the words - He didn’t need to hear it right now - but the voice wouldn’t disappear. He was a part of the Order and had Dumbledore’s trust before, you know, it said. Everyone couldn’t help but trust Peter, either … You did, and remember what happened -
His eyes squeezed shut, Sirius shook his head, as if the movement could physically knock the voice from his mind. It didn’t completely work, however. His thoughts had left Shacklebolt but had instead turned to Alex.
And Bonnet, the voice whispered, snorting. You should know that you can’t trust her anymore - probably shouldn’t have in the first place, all those years ago. She never did say how long she’d been a Death Eater, after all. Alex was probably never loyal to the Order … or to you. Sirius mentally screamed at the voice to shut up, to quit, but as it had done with Kingsley, the voice didn’t listen.
She was just acting for all those years, and you know it. And she’s acting again now, yet you just believe her again, following her to centuries in the past and accepting that she’s telling the truth about her ‘task’ - The sneer in the voice was obvious. Your poem said nothing about her, after all, and it was more than likely just by chance that the two of you met up again -
His thoughts were only broken when he heard Melinda’s voice.
“Do you believe, Sirius, that they are really helping you to complete this task that you are meant to do?” she said, leaning forwards in her own chair, her gaze never leaving his face. “Do you believe that your trust was not misplaced?”
Sirius, who had generally prided himself in the past on being sure of his decisions, couldn’t seem to erase the thoughts from his mind. There was a part of him that defended his friends - Kingsley was dependable and trusting, and there was no way that Alex had been a Death Eater before she left for France. But then that internal, damning voice would hiss the doubts at him again: And how well do you really know them? After all, Peter was dependable and trusting; there was no way you thought Peter would have been a Death Eater, either.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, sighing. “I don’t know anymore.”
Silence fell over both Sirius and Melinda after he had admitted to his doubts and confessed his fears. His head bowed and eyes focussed on the floor, Sirius did not see the small smile that crossed Maleficent’s pale face, disappearing almost as quickly at it had appeared. Nor did he notice as she rose from her chair, picked up the brown satchel that he had discarded before starting to work on organising the room, and began sifting through the objects within.
It was not until the Dark witch stood directly in front of him that he lifted his gaze and met her own, though with a motion of her hand, he brought his eyes downward to see the object that the woman held out before him.
Clutched in her hand, the topmost runes barely visible on the object, was the egg-shaped glass ornament that had originally sent Sirius on this entire journey he’d travelled. Light reflected off the glass - or what could be seen of it - and the etchings of the runes were clearer than ever before. Despite the fragile appearance of the object and its rough handling during Sirius's recent adventures, however, the glass remained perfect; not a single break or chip could be seen.
Sirius's gaze drifted from the object and back up into Melinda’s face, his stare meeting her blue orbs unblinkingly.
“Take it,” she whispered, extending her hand once again and nodding. “You have a task to complete, Sirius, and you are now ready to do so.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, jerking back the hand that had, subconsciously, risen to hover just above the glass egg. “I just confess to not being able to trust my friends, and you say that that makes me ready to accomplish this ‘task’ - whatever it is? I thought Alex and I were supposed to do it together? And why should I even trust what you say to me?”
Melinda did nothing but maintain her glare, her eyes hardening only slightly as she looked at Sirius. “Yes, Sirius,” she said. “Certain things had to be accomplished before you were ready for the next part -”
“But I thought -”
“The preparation was never in organising a room, Sirius,” interrupted the witch, shaking her head as if amused at the entire situation. “All of the travelling through time was never the ultimate goal of your journey, but you had to overcome certain obstacles before that final step could be taken. And you have done so, Sirius.”
Sirius knew his confusion showed clearly on his face, knew Melinda could tell every thought that floated through his mind, every emotion that he felt. “So what was the point of all the different Time-Turners if we weren’t meant to do it all?” he asked. “What was the point of having Alex come along, if the ‘task’ was only my own to complete?”
“Your female friend, Alexandra, played her own part in the matter,” she answered. “The ultimate end to the task was yours, that is true, but her poem was correct when it said that both of you would be needed to complete it. And as for the Time-Turners, Alexandra was quite close in her own ideas about what the ‘task’ was, though not truly in the way that she believed.”
“What -” But Sirius didn’t need to finish his question, memories of what Alex had said earlier already floating to the forefront of his mind as an answer. “I thought we’d have to go back to 1981.” Fourteen years, she had said. Fourteen years to the very day. And the whole thing had started with him awakening from a nightmare about that night. “She thought we’d have to go back to Halloween,” he muttered.
A slight nod from Maleficent told Sirius that he had answered correctly. “You had to overcome the desire to change what cannot be changed,” she whispered. “Before you could move on, before your journey could end, you had to accept that what happened fourteen years ago should not be altered.”
Sirius opened his mouth to disagree, to tell the witch that she didn’t understand, that what happened shouldn’t have occurred and that it, more than anything, should be changed - but she silenced him just as she had before, continuing on as if nothing had changed.
“And you did,” she said. “You had everything at your disposal to go back to that night and try to stop what happened.” She motioned to the Time-Turner still hanging around his neck. “That object goes back seven years for every turn. Two turns would have taken you to 31 October 1981. Alexandra’s works the same way, only it takes you forwards, so you would have been able to return to the present just as easily.
“But you did not take that path.”
“Only because I didn’t think of it!” Sirius exclaimed, slumping down in the chair he’d abandoned earlier and placing his head in his hands. “The idea never even entered my mind; I didn’t interpret the poems the same way Alex did! I didn’t do anything only because - because -”
“You didn’t do anything, Sirius,” she said, “because deep down, no matter how much you wish differently, you know that meddling with Time can sometimes bring results that are more disastrous than the original events created. You understand that some events must still unfold without disturbance …”
Sirius's mind wandered as Melinda Maleficent kept talking. Her last words had brought back earlier memories of the night, of the poems that he and Alex had received, of the warnings inherent in both of them to not interfere with certain things -
“That’s why you added the warnings,” he said, cutting the witch off in her statement. She turned her blue gaze to him, and he elaborated. “The poems you sent - they had advice about not interfering with the past. They were there in case we decided to go back.”
A long moment passed after Sirius spoke when Melinda didn’t respond at all - not a word, not a movement, not a sigh. Sirius was just about to open his mouth to continue when she answered with a very slight, almost-impossible-to-see nod of her black-haired head, before silently holding out her hand again, revealing the glass egg just waiting for him to take.
And, exhaling as he rose from the chair, Sirius reached out his own hand and picked up the object, the same bright, white light of before encompassing both him and the room before he disappeared.
----
When Sirius next opened his eyes, it took him awhile to realise that he had done so, for no sight greeted him. He was surrounded by pitch-black darkness, barely able to see his own hand as he held it out in front of him. Blinking, he tried to make his eyes adjust to the blackness. Sirius stubbornly pushed back the memories and fear that threatened to rise up and paralyse him as he stood there - an effect of twelve years trapped in the heavy and unyielding darkness of Azkaban where even the smallest of lights, if it somehow managed to penetrate the shadows, barely lasted a second before being overcome again.
But not even the warmth of wherever-he-was was enough to completely calm him, and a moment later, Sirius had changed into Padfoot, the dog not feeling the fears in the same way his human counterpart did.
He walked forwards, not really having any sort of destination in mind - It’s not like Maleficent told me what to do here, he thought - but moving felt marginally better than standing still. It at least made Sirius feel like he was doing something, at any rate. He had no idea where he was, and nothing had appeared that gave him any type of hint to figure the entire puzzle out. Supposedly, this was the last part of the task, the final step in his journey.
Sirius was unsure of how much time passed before he froze, his eyes catching a brief glimpse of what looked like a light shining through the darkness. It looked no brighter than a candle flame, but somehow, the twinkling, white tongue of fire seemed to penetrate the dense blackness like something ten times its size would. He felt a mixture of hesitancy and joy at the image, but he quickly pushed the conflicting emotions aside and ran towards the light, Padfoot’s four legs getting him there in barely a moment.
Upon reaching the white flame, Sirius transformed back into himself and, giving in to the compulsion to throw caution to the winds, tentatively reached out a hand to hover it over the fire. The fire did not feel like he’d expected it to: it wasn’t hot and burning. It felt cold, like ice, yet it wasn’t painful in the least. Rather, the feeling of the light was cool and refreshing, like it was just the very thing he had needed and longed for, though he had been unaware of it until now. A great calmness washed over him, his entire body feeling a peace that he knew he hadn’t felt in years. Every last part of his earlier fears was swept away, pushed from his mind almost as if they had never been there.
He didn’t even realise that he wasn’t alone.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?”
Jerking his head around and withdrawing his hand suddenly from the fire, Sirius laid eyes on the owner of the voice.
She was a young girl, her hair almost as white as the flame in front of them and shining like the full moon would on a clear night. Her skin was completely opposite in colour from her hair, for it was darker than even Kingsley Shacklebolt’s. Large, silver eyes, stared up at him, meeting his own surprised gaze unblinkingly. Thin and short - she couldn’t have been older than seven or eight years old - the small child nevertheless seemed almost as knowledgeable as Albus Dumbledore.
“What?” he asked, startled.
“The Adoris Integare,” the child replied, lifting a hand to point a small finger at the white flame. “The Healing Flame.”
Sirius turned back to face the fire, his eyes resting on its flickering light. A tiny part of his mind vaguely recalled there having been legends of just such a thing, though the number of versions of the tale all differed on what, precisely, the powers of the Adoris Integare were, and it had been so long since he’d heard any of them that Sirius couldn’t recall anything other than the fact that legends had existed. As for what those legends told - any of the versions - the Animagus had no idea.
He stared into the flame’s depths, his gaze seemingly drawn to the very centre of the fire, and what he saw within made him jump back in surprise.
Swirling and twisting in the deepest, central part of the flame had been black smoke that was curled tightly into the shape of a round, solid ball. Tendrils of the smoke tried to separate from the main entity every once in a while, their strands stretching out like snakes as they sought freedom from both the rest of the smoke and the fire itself. But even the ones that reached the furthest, the ones that were the closest to achieving their escape, were pushed back into the centre by the fire before it could penetrate the outside of the flame.
“Don’t worry,” said the girl again, her voice startling Sirius. “It won’t escape again.”
“What is it?” His gaze was still focussed on the smoke, entranced as he was by its constant bids for freedom.
“Well, it’s not so much of a ‘what’ as it is a ‘who’, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
The girl didn’t reply right away, and her silence made Sirius turn back to face her. Only when she had his constant gaze did she answer. “It’s you, Sirius Black,” she said. “Or, I suppose I should say that it was you.”
Sirius had no idea how much time passed while he just stood there, staring at the small child in front of him. To say that he was confused would have been a grand understatement, as far as he was concerned. His eyes only broke away from the girl to glance back at the flame and the smoke within - which, he was surprised to see, seemed to be shrinking ever so slowly - before they refocused on the child.
“Me?” he said, finally finding it in him to speak. “How?”
She nodded. “It was the malignant part of your soul,” she said. “It was the part that felt all the guilt, all the shame, all the helplessness. It held the fears and powers that paralysed you before, earlier in the entryway, and it was the part whose strength was gained by nothing but hatred and a desire for vengeance. It was the part of you that was destroying you from the inside, so to speak.
“And it had to be removed so that you could be healed.”
----
When Sirius next looked back at the smoke, he saw that it had almost completely vanished. Only a ball the size of a marble remained within, and even as he watched, it became smaller and smaller until, with a poof, it disappeared, leaving the white flame as clear and bright as when he first saw it.
“Congratulations, Sirius Black,” said the girl, and Sirius tore his gaze from the fire. She had a large smile on her face and her eyes twinkled, the entire appearance making her look like a child would who awoke on Christmas to find an entire room filled with gifts and all of them addressed to her. Sirius couldn’t help but smile back at her, even as he pushed some of her earlier words to the back of his mind - He’d think about them later, he figured.
“Your journey - and your task - is complete.”
With that, the girl handed him the objects that had, somehow, appeared at her feet the very moment she had finished speaking. (Or, if they’d been there earlier, Sirius hadn’t noticed.) He looked down at the objects he now held.
In one hand was the glass egg, the runes having faded to the point where they were barely visible, while in the other hand, he held the old parchment that he’d received in the very beginning of his journey - the parchment that so closely resembled the Marauder’s Map, save for the identification charms they had used. As he watched the lines stretch over the map in black ink, he also saw a clear line of bright, red ink trace a path through the drawn corridors, a matching version appearing at his feet and stretching out in front of him.
“Just follow the red line,” the girl whispered, “and you will be able to return home.”
“And the glass egg?” he asked, holding the object up.
The girl just smiled at him. “You need something to remember that this wasn’t a dream.”
----
A sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door tore first tore Sirius Black from his sleep. Though normally a very heavy sleeper - on the nights that he did manage to sleep well - the light sound was enough to return the nearly thirty-six-year-old to consciousness. Rolling over in his bed, he faced the door, opening his eyes just in time to see the wooden barrier swing inwards and Remus Lupin enter the room.
“Sirius?” he asked. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Just woke up, why? What time is it?”
Remus glanced at his watch. “It’s almost lunch,” he answered. “Which, by the way, is ready downstairs, and Dumbledore’s also called an Order meeting for later this afternoon.”
Sirius nodded. “Thanks,” he said, sitting up and rubbing the remainder of sleep from his eyes. “I’ll be down in a minute.” As a giant yawn escaped him, Sirius almost missed the concerned look that his best friend shot him, but was able to catch a glimpse of it before Remus could fully hide it.
“What’s wrong?”
Remus opened his mouth, almost like he was about to say something, but then shook his head, thinking the better of it. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Never mind, Padfoot. I’ll see you in the kitchen.” And he turned and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
After Remus left, Sirius shook his head, sighing slightly at the still unsolved mystery that was Remus Lupin. He threw back the blankets on his bed, and was about to stand when a tiny, twinkling light caught his eye.
Turning back to face his bedside table, he saw the small, egg-shaped glass object, its runes etched cleanly into the smooth surface, the noon sunlight streaming through the opening in his curtains to reflect off of the dust-free ornament.
~*~
And that, everyone, is the end of not only the third part, but the story!
~Megan
Rating: PG-13
Length: Three-Shot
Pairings: Mention of James/Lily, Implied possibility of Sirius/OC
Era: Hogwarts (fifth year)
Summary: Finally, the answers are given and everything is explained.
Awards: First Place in "Gauntlet Writing Challenge V" on MNFF
~*~
Part III: Explanations Given and a Task Completed
Sirius immediately ducked off the main street and out of sight, grabbing Alex behind him. They had both barely made it behind a tall, nearby cart when Alex whirled on him, yanking her arm from his grasp as she did so.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, glaring at him.
But Sirius didn’t have a chance to answer her. He had barely opened his mouth to reply when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and a dark shadow was cast over both him and Alex. Eyes shutting and sighing, Sirius turned around to face the other wizard.
However, it was not Kingsley Shacklebolt that had approached him - at least, not directly. The man whose hand was on Sirius's shoulder was short, thin and blond, while Shacklebolt stood a few metres away, his dark eyes watching the scene with an expressionless face.
“Who are you?” said Sirius, but the blond man simply shook his head, before motioning back to Shacklebolt and increasing the grip on Sirius's shoulder. Sirius turned back to face Alex and together, they followed the man as he brought them towards the other Order member. Kingsley was the first to speak.
“Sirius,” he said, his voice low and rumbling.
“Kingsley.” Sirius motioned to Alex. “This is Alex Bonnet,” he said as the witch nodded and Kingsley returned the greeting.
“What’re you doing here, Kingsley?” asked Sirius.
The dark-skinned wizard motioned for the other man to leave the trio in private, and as he walked away, Kingsley led both Sirius and Alex to another path on the road, fairly deserted and a good place to have a conversation without great threat of being overheard.
“So you are the ones sent?” he asked, looking at the two visitors from the future for confirmation.
Sirius was confused, and a quick glance at Alex showed she felt the same. “What do you mean, sent?” he said. “Do you know what our ‘task’ is?”
Kingsley shook his head. “I was not told everything,” he muttered. “But I do know another step in the journey, if you will - or so I believe I do.”
“Which is … what?”
“Follow me, Sirius.”
----
The three magical visitors from centuries in the future walked down the empty path for nearly a half hour before they reached a large, stone building, its walls seeming to tower to the skies and the massive roofs held up by great columns. Large, oaken doors barred the entrance, but they were opened soon after Kingsley pounded upon them thrice. A small creature - it looked like a mixture of house-elf and goblin to Sirius - greeted them with a bow and led them down several long corridors and through many more doorways.
Upon entering the final room through silver-studded doors, the creature left the trio of wizards and witch with a bang - a lot louder than the tiny pop of a house-elf’s departure. Sirius's attention, however, wasn’t on the creature. His gaze was busy trying to take in everything in the wide and large room.
Inside, shelves upon shelves covered the floors, documents and scrolls littering the wood and everything else around. Some looked ancient, while others still had the ink glistening on the page as it dried. A few were unrolled, like they’d recently been read, while others seemed as if they’d been undisturbed for years, thick layers of dust having settled on top of them. A few quills also dotted along the tables.
Remus would love it in here, Sirius thought, his mind thinking back to his research-loving best friend. Remus had always loved finding the most obscure references that the others needed for a prank to be pulled off just the right way, or that one spell that would get the Map to do exactly what they wanted. A room full of historical documents such as this one, filled as it was with knowledge that had probably been lost through the centuries, would be a treasure.
But then his gaze returned to Shacklebolt and Alex, who were also both surveying the destruction of the room - for the multitude of scrolls lay as if a great wind had ripped through the room - and he sighed.
“So you’re saying that we have to fix all of this,” he said, staring at the others. “And without using a quick spell to do so, but in doing it, we’ll find out the next part?”
Kingsley nodded, having already told both Sirius and Alex what he knew: He had arrived a millennium in the past, in the year of 995, right outside the doors to this building. A cloaked figure had told him to go and wait in the town for two more visitors from his own time, who would be on a task, and together, they’d have to return here, help out the owners of the building without the use of magic, before the next part would be answered. The figure had shown Kingsley the room, just as torn apart as it was now, before leading him back to the centre of town to wait for the others.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, then, we’d better split up,” said Alex, starting to head off towards the right of the room. “It should go quicker that way, I think.”
And so they did. Alex went right, Kingsley went further ahead, and Sirius walked opposite of Alex, each getting lost from the view of the others before long.
----
Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly, as far as Sirius was concerned, and with every scroll he placed on its proper shelf, the job never seemed to get any easier, the piles never seemed to decrease in size. For a moment, Sirius even wondered if the scroll piles were enchanted to never decrease.
But the wondering was torn from his head as he heard the approaching sound of footsteps among the scrolls. Tensing slightly as the sound increased - for the steps were too light to be Kingsley’s and too heavy to be Alex’s - Sirius dropped the documents he held in his hands and spun, withdrawing his wand immediately and pointing it directly in front of him, its ebony tip directed at the chest of the new figure.
Long, black hair curtained her gaunt and pale face, the dark strands contrasting greatly with her light skin tone, and icy blue eyes met his own grey gaze unblinkingly. Her thin form was instantly recognisable.
“Sirius Black.”
The fact that the figure had identified Sirius by name did nothing to calm him, for he, too, knew the identity of the woman. And there should have been no possible way for Melinda Maleficent, a Dark witch who hadn’t been born until 1799 and who Sirius already had previous memories concerning, to be with him once again, this time in the year of 995.
“What do you want?” he asked, his wand still pointing at Melinda.
The witch ignored the magical instrument and walked regally towards him, a smile lining her gaunt face. “Why don’t you put your weapon away, Sirius?” she asked, nodding towards the wand. “It will do you no good in here.”
Sirius adjusted his grip, but did not lower the ebony wood. “I said, what do you want?”
“Very well.” And with a flick of her wrist, the wand vanished from Sirius's hand, only to reappear in Melinda’s, who placed it in a bag hanging from her shoulder. “I do not wish to speak with you while you’re pointing a weapon in my face, Sirius,” she said. “Such is not the proper way to conduct a conversation.”
“I’m not usually in the habit of calmly conversing with Dark witches who shouldn’t even be alive yet,” Sirius responded. He hadn’t moved from his current position, not even when Melinda motioned for him to take a seat, and he kept his gaze focussed on her. A part of him briefly wondered where Kingsley and Alex were. Had they not heard the arrival of Maleficent?
“Your friends …” the witch responded, a slight sneer appearing as she uttered the word, “won’t be able to hear us,” she said, almost as if she could read Sirius's mind. “We are no longer in the same room as they.”
“What do you mean? Of course we -” But he broke himself off as he gazed around. Melinda was right. While the room still contained shelves upon shelves of scrolls and documents, everything was in perfect order, not a single thing out of place, and there were many pieces that hadn’t been present before. Several heavy, leather tomes had been added, the wood of the desks had been changed …
“Where are we?” he asked.
Melinda smiled. “Perhaps the correct question would be when we are, but the answer, Sirius, is unimportant. As I said earlier, I wished to speak with you, and I did not want to be interrupted.”
Sirius opened his mouth to speak, but Melinda immediately silenced him - either with magic or something else, Sirius did not know.
“And I was including you in that statement,” she whispered harshly, her icy blue eyes glaring directly at him, just as they had so many years ago from a Chocolate Frog card in the Gryffindor Common Room. It was easy, when Maleficent appeared like this, how one could see her capable of orchestrating the Massacre of 1845 that resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people.
“Now, please, sit down.” Her voice was back to its kind tone, and she motioned once again towards the chair.
Sirius thought briefly of ignoring her, but then realised that acting like a rebellious teenager wouldn’t do him any good here. And so he took the seat.
With a nod and a smile, Melinda continued. “What do you know, Sirius, of your friends? The two you were with before in the Learning Chambers?” At Sirius's still-confused expression, the witch spoke again. “Do you believe you can trust them?”
Sirius was shocked into silence, an answer of “Yes, of course” wanting to come out of his mouth, but Melinda’s words had caused some of his previous doubts to return. About Kingsley, there was no question; Sirius knew he could trust him - the man was a part of the Order and keeping the Ministry from finding him, after all. He was intelligent and had a sense of right and justice that many seemed to lose as they climbed the ranks in the magical government. Dumbledore trusted him, and he was dependable; one couldn’t help but to trust the Auror -
But Peter was dependable once, too, hissed a vicious voice in his head. Sirius tried to block out the words - He didn’t need to hear it right now - but the voice wouldn’t disappear. He was a part of the Order and had Dumbledore’s trust before, you know, it said. Everyone couldn’t help but trust Peter, either … You did, and remember what happened -
His eyes squeezed shut, Sirius shook his head, as if the movement could physically knock the voice from his mind. It didn’t completely work, however. His thoughts had left Shacklebolt but had instead turned to Alex.
And Bonnet, the voice whispered, snorting. You should know that you can’t trust her anymore - probably shouldn’t have in the first place, all those years ago. She never did say how long she’d been a Death Eater, after all. Alex was probably never loyal to the Order … or to you. Sirius mentally screamed at the voice to shut up, to quit, but as it had done with Kingsley, the voice didn’t listen.
She was just acting for all those years, and you know it. And she’s acting again now, yet you just believe her again, following her to centuries in the past and accepting that she’s telling the truth about her ‘task’ - The sneer in the voice was obvious. Your poem said nothing about her, after all, and it was more than likely just by chance that the two of you met up again -
His thoughts were only broken when he heard Melinda’s voice.
“Do you believe, Sirius, that they are really helping you to complete this task that you are meant to do?” she said, leaning forwards in her own chair, her gaze never leaving his face. “Do you believe that your trust was not misplaced?”
Sirius, who had generally prided himself in the past on being sure of his decisions, couldn’t seem to erase the thoughts from his mind. There was a part of him that defended his friends - Kingsley was dependable and trusting, and there was no way that Alex had been a Death Eater before she left for France. But then that internal, damning voice would hiss the doubts at him again: And how well do you really know them? After all, Peter was dependable and trusting; there was no way you thought Peter would have been a Death Eater, either.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, sighing. “I don’t know anymore.”
Silence fell over both Sirius and Melinda after he had admitted to his doubts and confessed his fears. His head bowed and eyes focussed on the floor, Sirius did not see the small smile that crossed Maleficent’s pale face, disappearing almost as quickly at it had appeared. Nor did he notice as she rose from her chair, picked up the brown satchel that he had discarded before starting to work on organising the room, and began sifting through the objects within.
It was not until the Dark witch stood directly in front of him that he lifted his gaze and met her own, though with a motion of her hand, he brought his eyes downward to see the object that the woman held out before him.
Clutched in her hand, the topmost runes barely visible on the object, was the egg-shaped glass ornament that had originally sent Sirius on this entire journey he’d travelled. Light reflected off the glass - or what could be seen of it - and the etchings of the runes were clearer than ever before. Despite the fragile appearance of the object and its rough handling during Sirius's recent adventures, however, the glass remained perfect; not a single break or chip could be seen.
Sirius's gaze drifted from the object and back up into Melinda’s face, his stare meeting her blue orbs unblinkingly.
“Take it,” she whispered, extending her hand once again and nodding. “You have a task to complete, Sirius, and you are now ready to do so.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, jerking back the hand that had, subconsciously, risen to hover just above the glass egg. “I just confess to not being able to trust my friends, and you say that that makes me ready to accomplish this ‘task’ - whatever it is? I thought Alex and I were supposed to do it together? And why should I even trust what you say to me?”
Melinda did nothing but maintain her glare, her eyes hardening only slightly as she looked at Sirius. “Yes, Sirius,” she said. “Certain things had to be accomplished before you were ready for the next part -”
“But I thought -”
“The preparation was never in organising a room, Sirius,” interrupted the witch, shaking her head as if amused at the entire situation. “All of the travelling through time was never the ultimate goal of your journey, but you had to overcome certain obstacles before that final step could be taken. And you have done so, Sirius.”
Sirius knew his confusion showed clearly on his face, knew Melinda could tell every thought that floated through his mind, every emotion that he felt. “So what was the point of all the different Time-Turners if we weren’t meant to do it all?” he asked. “What was the point of having Alex come along, if the ‘task’ was only my own to complete?”
“Your female friend, Alexandra, played her own part in the matter,” she answered. “The ultimate end to the task was yours, that is true, but her poem was correct when it said that both of you would be needed to complete it. And as for the Time-Turners, Alexandra was quite close in her own ideas about what the ‘task’ was, though not truly in the way that she believed.”
“What -” But Sirius didn’t need to finish his question, memories of what Alex had said earlier already floating to the forefront of his mind as an answer. “I thought we’d have to go back to 1981.” Fourteen years, she had said. Fourteen years to the very day. And the whole thing had started with him awakening from a nightmare about that night. “She thought we’d have to go back to Halloween,” he muttered.
A slight nod from Maleficent told Sirius that he had answered correctly. “You had to overcome the desire to change what cannot be changed,” she whispered. “Before you could move on, before your journey could end, you had to accept that what happened fourteen years ago should not be altered.”
Sirius opened his mouth to disagree, to tell the witch that she didn’t understand, that what happened shouldn’t have occurred and that it, more than anything, should be changed - but she silenced him just as she had before, continuing on as if nothing had changed.
“And you did,” she said. “You had everything at your disposal to go back to that night and try to stop what happened.” She motioned to the Time-Turner still hanging around his neck. “That object goes back seven years for every turn. Two turns would have taken you to 31 October 1981. Alexandra’s works the same way, only it takes you forwards, so you would have been able to return to the present just as easily.
“But you did not take that path.”
“Only because I didn’t think of it!” Sirius exclaimed, slumping down in the chair he’d abandoned earlier and placing his head in his hands. “The idea never even entered my mind; I didn’t interpret the poems the same way Alex did! I didn’t do anything only because - because -”
“You didn’t do anything, Sirius,” she said, “because deep down, no matter how much you wish differently, you know that meddling with Time can sometimes bring results that are more disastrous than the original events created. You understand that some events must still unfold without disturbance …”
Sirius's mind wandered as Melinda Maleficent kept talking. Her last words had brought back earlier memories of the night, of the poems that he and Alex had received, of the warnings inherent in both of them to not interfere with certain things -
“That’s why you added the warnings,” he said, cutting the witch off in her statement. She turned her blue gaze to him, and he elaborated. “The poems you sent - they had advice about not interfering with the past. They were there in case we decided to go back.”
A long moment passed after Sirius spoke when Melinda didn’t respond at all - not a word, not a movement, not a sigh. Sirius was just about to open his mouth to continue when she answered with a very slight, almost-impossible-to-see nod of her black-haired head, before silently holding out her hand again, revealing the glass egg just waiting for him to take.
And, exhaling as he rose from the chair, Sirius reached out his own hand and picked up the object, the same bright, white light of before encompassing both him and the room before he disappeared.
----
When Sirius next opened his eyes, it took him awhile to realise that he had done so, for no sight greeted him. He was surrounded by pitch-black darkness, barely able to see his own hand as he held it out in front of him. Blinking, he tried to make his eyes adjust to the blackness. Sirius stubbornly pushed back the memories and fear that threatened to rise up and paralyse him as he stood there - an effect of twelve years trapped in the heavy and unyielding darkness of Azkaban where even the smallest of lights, if it somehow managed to penetrate the shadows, barely lasted a second before being overcome again.
But not even the warmth of wherever-he-was was enough to completely calm him, and a moment later, Sirius had changed into Padfoot, the dog not feeling the fears in the same way his human counterpart did.
He walked forwards, not really having any sort of destination in mind - It’s not like Maleficent told me what to do here, he thought - but moving felt marginally better than standing still. It at least made Sirius feel like he was doing something, at any rate. He had no idea where he was, and nothing had appeared that gave him any type of hint to figure the entire puzzle out. Supposedly, this was the last part of the task, the final step in his journey.
Sirius was unsure of how much time passed before he froze, his eyes catching a brief glimpse of what looked like a light shining through the darkness. It looked no brighter than a candle flame, but somehow, the twinkling, white tongue of fire seemed to penetrate the dense blackness like something ten times its size would. He felt a mixture of hesitancy and joy at the image, but he quickly pushed the conflicting emotions aside and ran towards the light, Padfoot’s four legs getting him there in barely a moment.
Upon reaching the white flame, Sirius transformed back into himself and, giving in to the compulsion to throw caution to the winds, tentatively reached out a hand to hover it over the fire. The fire did not feel like he’d expected it to: it wasn’t hot and burning. It felt cold, like ice, yet it wasn’t painful in the least. Rather, the feeling of the light was cool and refreshing, like it was just the very thing he had needed and longed for, though he had been unaware of it until now. A great calmness washed over him, his entire body feeling a peace that he knew he hadn’t felt in years. Every last part of his earlier fears was swept away, pushed from his mind almost as if they had never been there.
He didn’t even realise that he wasn’t alone.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?”
Jerking his head around and withdrawing his hand suddenly from the fire, Sirius laid eyes on the owner of the voice.
She was a young girl, her hair almost as white as the flame in front of them and shining like the full moon would on a clear night. Her skin was completely opposite in colour from her hair, for it was darker than even Kingsley Shacklebolt’s. Large, silver eyes, stared up at him, meeting his own surprised gaze unblinkingly. Thin and short - she couldn’t have been older than seven or eight years old - the small child nevertheless seemed almost as knowledgeable as Albus Dumbledore.
“What?” he asked, startled.
“The Adoris Integare,” the child replied, lifting a hand to point a small finger at the white flame. “The Healing Flame.”
Sirius turned back to face the fire, his eyes resting on its flickering light. A tiny part of his mind vaguely recalled there having been legends of just such a thing, though the number of versions of the tale all differed on what, precisely, the powers of the Adoris Integare were, and it had been so long since he’d heard any of them that Sirius couldn’t recall anything other than the fact that legends had existed. As for what those legends told - any of the versions - the Animagus had no idea.
He stared into the flame’s depths, his gaze seemingly drawn to the very centre of the fire, and what he saw within made him jump back in surprise.
Swirling and twisting in the deepest, central part of the flame had been black smoke that was curled tightly into the shape of a round, solid ball. Tendrils of the smoke tried to separate from the main entity every once in a while, their strands stretching out like snakes as they sought freedom from both the rest of the smoke and the fire itself. But even the ones that reached the furthest, the ones that were the closest to achieving their escape, were pushed back into the centre by the fire before it could penetrate the outside of the flame.
“Don’t worry,” said the girl again, her voice startling Sirius. “It won’t escape again.”
“What is it?” His gaze was still focussed on the smoke, entranced as he was by its constant bids for freedom.
“Well, it’s not so much of a ‘what’ as it is a ‘who’, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
The girl didn’t reply right away, and her silence made Sirius turn back to face her. Only when she had his constant gaze did she answer. “It’s you, Sirius Black,” she said. “Or, I suppose I should say that it was you.”
Sirius had no idea how much time passed while he just stood there, staring at the small child in front of him. To say that he was confused would have been a grand understatement, as far as he was concerned. His eyes only broke away from the girl to glance back at the flame and the smoke within - which, he was surprised to see, seemed to be shrinking ever so slowly - before they refocused on the child.
“Me?” he said, finally finding it in him to speak. “How?”
She nodded. “It was the malignant part of your soul,” she said. “It was the part that felt all the guilt, all the shame, all the helplessness. It held the fears and powers that paralysed you before, earlier in the entryway, and it was the part whose strength was gained by nothing but hatred and a desire for vengeance. It was the part of you that was destroying you from the inside, so to speak.
“And it had to be removed so that you could be healed.”
----
When Sirius next looked back at the smoke, he saw that it had almost completely vanished. Only a ball the size of a marble remained within, and even as he watched, it became smaller and smaller until, with a poof, it disappeared, leaving the white flame as clear and bright as when he first saw it.
“Congratulations, Sirius Black,” said the girl, and Sirius tore his gaze from the fire. She had a large smile on her face and her eyes twinkled, the entire appearance making her look like a child would who awoke on Christmas to find an entire room filled with gifts and all of them addressed to her. Sirius couldn’t help but smile back at her, even as he pushed some of her earlier words to the back of his mind - He’d think about them later, he figured.
“Your journey - and your task - is complete.”
With that, the girl handed him the objects that had, somehow, appeared at her feet the very moment she had finished speaking. (Or, if they’d been there earlier, Sirius hadn’t noticed.) He looked down at the objects he now held.
In one hand was the glass egg, the runes having faded to the point where they were barely visible, while in the other hand, he held the old parchment that he’d received in the very beginning of his journey - the parchment that so closely resembled the Marauder’s Map, save for the identification charms they had used. As he watched the lines stretch over the map in black ink, he also saw a clear line of bright, red ink trace a path through the drawn corridors, a matching version appearing at his feet and stretching out in front of him.
“Just follow the red line,” the girl whispered, “and you will be able to return home.”
“And the glass egg?” he asked, holding the object up.
The girl just smiled at him. “You need something to remember that this wasn’t a dream.”
----
A sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door tore first tore Sirius Black from his sleep. Though normally a very heavy sleeper - on the nights that he did manage to sleep well - the light sound was enough to return the nearly thirty-six-year-old to consciousness. Rolling over in his bed, he faced the door, opening his eyes just in time to see the wooden barrier swing inwards and Remus Lupin enter the room.
“Sirius?” he asked. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Just woke up, why? What time is it?”
Remus glanced at his watch. “It’s almost lunch,” he answered. “Which, by the way, is ready downstairs, and Dumbledore’s also called an Order meeting for later this afternoon.”
Sirius nodded. “Thanks,” he said, sitting up and rubbing the remainder of sleep from his eyes. “I’ll be down in a minute.” As a giant yawn escaped him, Sirius almost missed the concerned look that his best friend shot him, but was able to catch a glimpse of it before Remus could fully hide it.
“What’s wrong?”
Remus opened his mouth, almost like he was about to say something, but then shook his head, thinking the better of it. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Never mind, Padfoot. I’ll see you in the kitchen.” And he turned and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
After Remus left, Sirius shook his head, sighing slightly at the still unsolved mystery that was Remus Lupin. He threw back the blankets on his bed, and was about to stand when a tiny, twinkling light caught his eye.
Turning back to face his bedside table, he saw the small, egg-shaped glass object, its runes etched cleanly into the smooth surface, the noon sunlight streaming through the opening in his curtains to reflect off of the dust-free ornament.
~*~
And that, everyone, is the end of not only the third part, but the story!
~Megan