[This Lordship Business Series]: I Have Been a Brother to OWLS, 12/?

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twelve—Alive

“Sirius told me.”

That’s all Remus says before he holds out his arms. Harry runs into them and leans against Remus for a long moment. Salazar is banging and rattling against his cage because he wants to be let out to look for shiny things, but Harry ignores him for the moment, safe in Remus’s embrace.

“We’ll get it out of you,” Remus whispers. His voice is warm and he smells of something that might be butterscotch. “I promise.”

Harry just nods. He won’t say that’s impossible until he tries and fails. He just fears it will be.

But for the moment, he’s home for the Easter holidays, and there’s no point in moping about things that can’t be helped. Harry steps back from Remus with a grin. “Did we tell you it was Salazar who found them?”

*

Harry gets an odd owl on the second day he’s home, and frowns at it as he unrolls it near his omelet.

“Master Harry is not getting omelet on his message!”

Harry rolls his eyes and moves the scroll further away. Then he starts studying it again, because he thinks the writing should be familiar—something about it is familiar—but he’s damned if he knows why.

Does Harry Potter wish to make allies of the werewolves?

“Morning, Harry.”

Sirius shambles into the kitchen with eyes so sleepy that Harry wants to go up to him, and hug him, and tell him to stop searching through the damn Black library for a solution to the Horcrux in Harry’s head. But he can’t tell him that, not without making Sirius upset and driving him further into the books.

Sirius doesn’t think the Horcrux in Harry’s head is his fault, exactly. But he seems to think he should be the one doing something about it, because he’s Harry’s godfather.

Well, Harry is Harry’s—Harry. He bears just as much responsibility as Sirius, and he’s the one who will have to make the ultimate decision.

Plus whatever terrifying but futile thing Theo and Susan are coming up with.

“Morning, Sirius,” Harry says, and makes a snap decision. He holds out the scroll. “I got this. The writing looks sort of familiar to me, but I don’t know whose it is. Do you have any idea?”

Sirius picks up the scroll with one hand. His fork is in the other. Then he stares at the scroll, and his fork clatters to his plate.

“Sirius?” Harry pushes his chair back from the table, and grips his wand, watching Sirius narrowly. He hasn’t seen his godfather look so pale since the day he told Harry about the Horcrux. “What is it? Who is it?”

Sirius gives a wordless yelp, to the point that Harry expects him to transform into a dog any second. But instead, he snatches up the scroll and rushes out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time. Harry wonders if he’ll yell for Remus, who might know someone who’s writing about werewolves, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t come back, either. Harry finishes breakfast by himself—Remus is going to be late getting up, this close to the full moon—and walks his dishes absently over to the sink, frowning, trying to search his memory. There was nothing particularly distinctive about the handwriting, no unusual punctuation or loops on the letters or anything like that—

“Master Harry is leaving the dishes to Kreacher!”

Harry jumps, and the dishes fly out of his arms. Kreacher snaps his fingers and catches them in midair. Then he stares at Harry with his arms folded until Harry gives up trying to explain himself and plods out of the kitchen. He goes back to his bedroom, where he has letters that he’s saved from his friends and some people who think sending demands and questions and petitions to Lord Slytherin is a fun idea, and starts going through them.

There must be some reason that he nearly recognizes that handwriting.

*

Sirius is quiet when he comes back down to dinner, and he sits there staring vaguely at the wall until Harry wants to shout at him. But he glances at Remus, and Remus shakes his head a little. He looks pale himself. Harry bites his lip and wonders if the letter is from a werewolf activist Remus knows.

Or just a werewolf. He doesn’t think Remus is on very good terms with any of the ones in Britain, really. They’re led or controlled or something by Fenrir Greyback.

There’s someone Harry would like to see in Azkaban.

His thoughts distract him until the end of dinner, when Sirius sets aside his plate and leans forwards with a hoarse little huff of breath. Harry promptly puts down his fork and turns to stare at him.

Sirius clears his throat a few times, shakes his head, and finally whispers, “Let’s go to the library.”

They almost never go to the library. That’s where all the books are that Sirius did the research on Horcruxes in. But there doesn’t seem to be a reason to deny Sirius if it will make him feel more comfortable, so Harry gets up. He finds that he has to lead the way to the library. Sirius is so lost in thought he comes up about ten stairs behind.

Harry manages to contain himself until they’re settled in chairs in front of the fire and Kreacher has popped in butterbeer for Harry and steaming mugs of what might be Firewhisky for Sirius and Remus. “What is it? Who is it from?”

“My brother.”

Harry is glad that he hasn’t taken a sip of butterbeer yet, because he would have spewed it all over the carpets and earned yet another lecture from Kreacher. “Your dead Death Eater brother? The one who died in 1979?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know ghosts could write letters.”

“We don’t think he’s a ghost.” Remus leans forwards from his chair next to Sirius, his face pale with concern. “We think—he may have faked his death, although I don’t know what method of faking it would have convinced a loyal house-elf that he had passed and make the date of his death show up on the Black family tapestry…”

“Maybe he’s a ghost who found someone else to hold a quill for him?”

“Harry,” Remus chides.

“Well, I’m sorry, it’s not every day that I get a letter from a dead Death Eater, you know?”

“Harry.” Sirius has his face in his hands. “Please stop calling him a dead Death Eater.”

“Okay, he’s an alive Death Eater.”

Sirius glares at him.

Harry raises his hands, swallowing. It’s just a lot to take in, and even as part of him thinks that he probably recognized Regulus Black’s handwriting because he and Sirius learned to write from the same people and their letters must look similar, his head is reeling.

What the fuck? What the hell?

Regulus would have been the last person Harry thought he would get a friendly letter from. Even below someone like Snape, because at least Snape is alive and has hands to write it.

“Why would he send it?” Harry asks. “Was he close to werewolves when he was alive or something? Was he a werewolf?”

“No,” Sirius chokes. He puts his hands over his face and shakes his head back and forth. “To know that he’s alive, that I thought he was dead…”

“We’ve talked about this, Sirius.” Remus sounds weary. “He must have put in a lot of effort to fool the tapestry and even to make You-Know-Who think he was dead. You couldn’t have known.”

“It’s not your fault you didn’t know your dead Death Eater brother was alive, Sirius.”

That gets him another glare, but Harry ignores it. His mind is racing, wondering how Voldemort got fooled and if there’s any way that Harry could contact Regulus and ask how he did it. Harry’s Occlumency is still not perfect, and at this point, Ernie is beginning to despair that it ever will be.

“You are very excited about something. What is it? Tell the best and prettiest snake.”

Harry smiles at Ahalam as the snake crawls out on his arm. “I got a letter from someone who seems to be Sirius’s brother. I thought he was dead, but I suppose not.”

“Do dead things come back to life? Will mice come back to life in my stomach? It is important that I eat cheese, which does not come back to life!”

Harry rolls his eyes and turns back to Sirius rather than getting into another argument with Ahalam about cheese. “Are you going to write to him? Or do you want me to reply to him?”

“My mother tried to send him owls when Kreacher first brought us word of his death,” Sirius whispers. “None of the owls would fly. That was how we knew for sure that he was dead. Owls can’t find someone who isn’t living.”

“But you haven’t tried sending him one now.”

Sirius’s eyes are so haunted that Harry feels bad about teasing him earlier, and reaches out to clasp his godfather’s shoulder. “I don’t—know. I don’t know what it means if the owl takes off, and I don’t know what it means if it stays.”

“We could try with Hedwig. Do you want me to?”

Sirius nods and turns his head away. “I don’t want to watch—well, no, yes, I do. But I don’t know what I expect to see happen.”

Harry makes his smile as gentle as possible while he stands. “I’ll go and write a letter to him now.”

*

Harry writes a simple letter, asking Regulus how he survived and why he wants to talk to Harry about werewolves, and gives it to Hedwig, who is tilting her head curiously in his direction. “Regulus Black, girl.”

Hedwig turns her head in another direction and refuses to leave.

There’s a long moment of agonized, breathless silence, and then Sirius turns and runs out of the owlery, his footsteps pounding on the stairs.

*

Stay safe. Do nothing without me.

That’s the whole of Theo’s letter, when Harry writes to tell him about the letter from Regulus. Harry shakes his head and picks up Ron and Hermione’s letters, which are at least a little longer and express genuine surprise.

It’s not like Harry’s going to run off in search of the alive Death Eater. If Hedwig can’t find him, Harry doesn’t have the faintest idea where he would begin to look.