Falling Slowly (A Hogwarts Lovestory) - Fred Weasley Fanfiction

35 | Looking Too Closely

When I reached the hightest tower, I was completely out of breath.
I have never been up here before and I reckoned the view would be amazing by day, but right now it was dark and I couldn't see much besides the misty silhouette of the mountains.
The square prison cell where Sirius Black was kept in captivity was small and locked with a massive metal grid. I approached slowly, but my foot steps weren't as quiet as I had hoped.
"Who's there?", a male voice came out of the cell. He sounded tired but I also noticed a little bit of hope in his voice, which was probably because he knew the footsteps he had heard were human and not the ones of a dementor.
I didn't answer though since I had no clue how to introduce myself to him anyway. Good evening Mr Black, I'm your dead cousin's secret daughter, I'm very sorry you're about to die soon?

Sirius Black walked slowly over to the other side of the grid until he was standing right in front of me. His face was still hiding in the shadows of the darkness so I knew mine was too.
"Who are you?", Sirius asked. In that exact moment, the clouds moved aside and revealed the bright full moon. The moonlight illuminated both our faces.
Sirius looked as grey and shabby as I saw him in the newspaper, but when he finally could see my face, his otherwise tired eyes suddenly turned wide open and disbelieving of what he saw. He stepped back out of surprise.
"This is impossible", he whispered.
"I'm not her", I said fastly.
"I know you're not her. Sienna's dead. But she didn't had any children before she died."
"Well, she had me apparently."
"That's what I meant is impossible."
"I tell you my story if you tell me her's. But I reckon mine's not as interesting as you think."
Sirius frowned at my words, but he didn't look upset.
"It's funny", he said and tried to get a better look at me. "You look like Sienna and you talk like Sienna, but I can still feel that you're different. She'd never offer me something in return, for example. She'd demand."
"How was she?", I asked. I didn't even plan to ask that but my mouth once again was faster than my brain. After all I was still curious about my birth mother and a little part of me wanted to know more about her, about how she was; a little part of me somehow still hoped she wasn't entirely insane.
"She was loud", said Sirius. "Stubborn. Emotional. She didn't know how to feel things small. Everything was a tidal wave to her or nothing at all. I guess manic depressive is the appropiate term."

I kept quiet for a while.
Not knowing how to feel things small sounded exactly like one of the problems I had to face since I was a little child.
"She was also the most passionate person I ever met. No one else could ever be so keen, so profusely as she was. I admired her for that when she was a child. But when she got older, arrogance replaced all this. Arrogance and contempt for everything that scared her. For everything she didn't understand. Her older sister, Bellatrix, had a rather bad influence on her."
I still didn't say anything and gave him a sign to go on, but apparently he had other plans.
"I think it's time you tell me something, now. How about you start by telling me your name?"
"I'm Julie", I whispered. Tears were rolling down my cheeks.
Sirius grinned. "Funny, though. Sienna had a doll named Juliet when she was a little girl. She used to carry it everywhere she went."
"I don't want to be like her", I blurted out. "I don't want to be evil."
"What makes you think you're evil?"
"I don't know. I have this strange feeling sometimes about myself ever since I found out about it... that I'm not who I thought I was. That I'm not me."
That I'm evil like every other member of the Black family. Like every other Slytherin. Like every other parselmouth. But I didn't say that out loud.
"It's your choice, Julie. You decide who you want to be. You decide who you are. Your actions decide, not your past. Not your family name. Not the House Slytherin the Sorting Hat put you in."
I wiped my tears away and was even able to smile a little bit this time.
"I'm in Gryffindor", I said proudly.
Sirius' face brightened.
"Really?", he asked. "That's awesome! I was in Gryffindor too, you know. Guess we're the only Blacks who ever were."
He said we like we were family. Which we were, of course, but suddenly I felt it too.
"If I ever get out of here", Sirius said. "I would like you to visit me sometime. We'd get along pretty well, I believe. I invited Harry too. I know the dementors are coming any minute now, but a man can wish, can't he?"

Sirius looked yeaningly out of his cell into the night sky.
"I wish I could free you", I said, full of sorrow. And I really did. I wanted to get to know him better. "I could break this cell and set you free, but I don't know how you'd get out of here unseen. How'd you do it in Azkaban?"
"I'm an Animagus", he said. "I can turn into a dog, that's how I did it. But I'm too weak now. No, I guess my days are finally over. I just wished I could feel the wind in my hair one last time."
"At least I can help you with that", I said, pulled out my wand and pointed it towards the grid.
"Bombarda", I yelled and the grid exploded.
Sirius stepped out of the cell and walked slowly over to the balustrade. I joined him and we enjoyed the view from the highest tower together.
"Here's where she did it", said Sirius quietly.
"Where who did what?", I asked confused.
"Sienna", he answered. "Here's where she jumped."

I gasped out of shock and Sirius looked at me bewildered.
"You didn't know", he concluded.
"No, I didn't. Why'd she do it?"
"That's a good question. Some rumors say it happened after a manic episode. Some others say she was pushed. We can only assume what really happened."
"Why do you think she did it?"
Sirius made a long pause.
"I always thought I knew why she did it. But now I'm not so sure anymore."
I looked at him expectantly.
"She came to me a few weeks before that. Wanted my help, which immediately made me wary, since she barely talked to me over the recent years. I hadn't lived at home anymore by that time and was living with James Potter instead. But this time she was the runaway."
"What'd she run away from?"
"She was pregnant."
"B-but you just said she didn't had a baby...", I stuttered.
"She asked me for my help to get rid of it, but I refused", Sirius went on. "When she jumped down this very tower just a few weeks after that, they found two dead bodies on the ground. Hers. And a smaller one. The body of an infant."
"Why did she want to get rid of it?", I asked. My voice was not more than a quiet whisper anymore.
"Still, I can only assume. But the rumors that said she was pushed - they didn't came out of nowhere. She was having an affair with her sister's husband."
"Which one?"
"Either Bellatrix or Narcissa, I can't tell you for sure."
He must have read my thoughts because the next thing he did was to look me directly in the eyes and say "Stop worrying. It won't change who you are, you are you no matter if there's Lestrange or Malfoy blood flowing through your veins. Do you understand me?"
I nodded and tried to hold back my fear.
"Good", said Sirius and smiled.

"One last question", I said when I found my voice back. "Do you happen to know if there were any parselmouths in either the Lestrange or the Malfoy bloodline?"
Sirius frowned. "No", he said, "why-"
He was suddenly inrerrupted by a loud noise. It was a human voice (cheering?) and the sound of flapping wings in the wind. It was Buckbeak (alive!) and Harry and Hermione were riding on him.
Merlin's beard, how did they mamage to save the hippogriff? The execution must have been accomplished hours ago. And why did they look so... dirty? Their clothes were completely ripped and full of mud and grass, worse than they were when I saw them just a couple of minutes ago down in the hospital wing.
"How did you-", I started but Hermione interrupted me right away. She looked down on something that looked like a golden clock and said "We have to hurry, there's not much time left."

The rest of the night was the most confusing thing that I ever experienced. It turned out that Harry and Hermione used a time turner to save both Buckbeak and Sirius succesfully.
But despite all that, none of us felt like celebrating. Sirius was rescued, but he was now still on the run, together with Buckbeak, and still nobody but us knew the truth about him and Pettigrew. And sadly, neither Harry nor I would be able to visit him soon. We didn't say it out loud but I knew he felt the same way. I knew we both felt like we lost a part of our family tonight.
I was glad on the one hand to have finally heard the truth about my past, but on the other hand it left me behind with an unpleasant feeling. Maybe I had looked a little bit too closely into my past.
How on earth did I survive to fall down from the highest tower?

This is a song about somebody else
So don't worry yourself
The devil's right there in the details
And you don't wanna hurt yourself
Looking too closely
- Fink