Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Fifty-Eight

"Balderdash!" I told the Fat Lady, who was snoozing in her frame in front of the portrait hole.

"If you say so," she muttered sleepily, without opening her eyes, and the picture swung forward to admit us. We climbed inside.

"How are you not out of breath?" Harry wondered.

"I run around a lot?" I shrugged. "I dunno, why are you out of breath?"

"Because I don't run around a lot?"

"Well, now you know what to do. Run around a lot."

"Pfft."

The common room was deserted, and, judging by the fact that it smelled quite normal, Hermione hadn't needed to set off any Dungbombs to ensure that Harry, Sirius, and I got privacy.

Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and threw himself into an armchair in front of the fire. I perched on the armrest of the chair. The room was in semidarkness; the flames were the only source of light. Nearby, on a table, the Support Cedric Diggory! badges the Creeveys had been trying to improve were glinting in the firelight. They now read POTTER REALLY STINKS. I snorted.

"Look," I said, picking one up and showing it to Harry.

"I think the Creevey brothers were trying to improve them. Clearly didn't work."

"Unless you're Malfoy."

"Yeah." Harry looked back into the flames, and jumped. I looked, too.

Sirius's head was sitting in the fire.

"Good Morrigan," I wheezed.

Harry scrambled out of his chair, crouched down by the hearth, and said, "Sirius!"

I kneeled beside Harry and got a good look at Sirius.

Sirius looked different from my memory of him. When we'd last seen him, Sirius's face had been gaunt and sunken, surrounded by a quantity of long, black, matted hair — but the hair was short and clean now, Sirius's face was fuller, and he looked younger and healthier.

"Aisling," Sirius said when he saw me, his face breaking out in a fatherly grin.

"Hi, Siri — er, Dad." I'd almost forgotten that I was supposed to call him that. "How are you doing?"

"Never mind me, how are you?"

"Okay, I guess."

"Harry?"

"I'm fi—"

I elbowed him. He didn't need to say he was fine. Now was not the time. "Tell him."

So Harry did. Before I knew it, he was talking more than he'd talked in days — about how no one believed he hadn't entered the tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn't walk down a corridor without being sneered at — and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron's jealousy...

". . . and now Hagrid's just shown me what's coming in the first task, and it's dragons, Sirius, and I'm a goner," he finished desperately.

Sirius looked at him, eyes full of concern, eyes that had not yet lost the look that Azkaban had given them - that deadened, haunted look He had let Harry talk himself into silence without interruption, but now he said, "Dragons we can deal with, Harry, but we'll get to that in a minute — I haven't got long here. . . I've broken into a wizarding house to use the fire, but they could be back at any time. There are things I need to warn you about."

"What?" said Harry.

"Karkaroff," said Sirius. "Harry, he was a Death Eater. You know what Death Eaters are, don't you?"