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You’re Not My Mother


Sirius stood in the corridor outside of Professor McGonagall’s office, staring at the door as though it were an ominous creature, for several long minutes. He ran his hands over his sweater-vest, flattening it down and straightened his tie and drew a deep breath, then knocked.

“Come in, Mr. Black,” McGonagall’s voice rang crisp from within.

He pushed open the door and closed it behind him and walked across the room, putting his books down on the table in the corner, where she usually had them sit during detentions. The chairs there practically had James-and-Sirius-shaped grooves in the seats from all the time the boys had spent there. He didn’t look at her, he stared instead at the textbook and parchment he’d dropped down and went to sit.

“Before you have your seat, come over here. We need to have a bit of a talk, Mr. Black.”

Sirius walked over and stood before her desk, still refusing to look up, his eyes trained very carefully on the edge of the surface of her desk, his hands behind his back. He could feel her staring at him, waiting for him to look up, willing him to, even. He swallowed and pursed his lips, stubborn.

Finally, McGonagall sighed. “You are making this very hard Mr. Black.”

He stared at his feet. “What am I making hard, Professor?” he asked in a monotone.

“Feeling sorry for you. Helping you. Your choice.”

He didn’t reply.

The seat behind the desk creaked as McGonagall stood up and she went over to the shelves that lined her wall and she picked up a black tea cup with white cross hatching along the edge with a deep saucer beneath it. She turned around and walked back to the desk and put the teacup down. “Do you think, Mr. Black, that I save every student’s teacup?”

“No.”

His was one of ten that sat on the shelves. He recognized James’s blue deer pattern, Lily’s rosebud pattern, and Remus’s royal blue with gold filigree. The others he didn’t know. There was a tartan patterned one, one with an opalescent sheen to it like a mother of pearl shell, and a cream coloured one with mint leaves all over it, and a near matching pair of silver tea cups with tiny gold hearts, and one that was plain white. She stared down at the black, crosshatched cup before her. “Mr. Black, I would not have enough room to save all of the teacups that my students make. I keep only the teacups I am given by the students that I most love.” She ran her fingertips over the edge of the cup slowly. Her eyes traced the cup, then moved slowly up to look at Sirius again.

He didn’t look up.

“Mr. Black.”

Sirius closed his eyes.

“Young man, if you think I will put up with this sort of behavior from one of my boys --”

“You aren’t my mother!” Sirius shouted suddenly, cutting into the middle of her sentence. “You aren’t my mother.” He repeated the words a bit more calmly.

McGonagall scowled, “That’s right, I’m not!” she said, ruffled, “I am not your mother and you best be thanking your stars for that, Sirius Black, because if I were -- if -- if you were my son, you would not be going about acting the way that you are!”

He stared very, very hard at the desktop.

“Of course, if you were, you would have no reason to be,” she ceeded.

This made Sirius look up.

“I’ve seen the Black family owl making deliveries, Mr. Black,” McGonagall said, “And I have seen the correlation between the appearance of the owl and the days when you are most prolifically horrible.” She paused, watching for any sign of a reaction from him, but his face never even so much as twitched. She said, “Sirius… what has she sent you?”

“Nothing.”

“Mr. Black.”

“Letters.”

“Just updating you on the latest family news?” McGonagall said with a bite of cold to her tone.

Sirius looked away again.

“Sirius, please. Let me help you.”

Tears were in his eyes. “I just want to study, Professor.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “You owe me an apology for this afternoon.”

The tears in Sirius’s eyes trembled on the edge of his eyelashes. He drew a deep breath, blinking rapidly up at the ceiling as he did, and said, “I’m sorry.”

McGonagall contemplated it a moment.

“Really,” he said after a moment, his voice shaking. “I didn’t mean it. You aren’t a --” he stopped, unable to even repeat it. “I’m just… tired. I’m tired is all.” He turned around and went over to his textbooks and sat down. He started to lean back in the chair, like he usually did, but thought better of it and kept his feet on the floor, firmly planted.

McGonagall took up the teacup from her desk and put it back on the shelf, staring at it for a long moment, turning it carefully so the handle pointed just so. She turned back to see him. Sirius had pulled open his Transfiguration book and flipped to the page they’d been studying that afternoon and now sat, bent over the book, reading intently. She picked up her teacher’s copy of the text and went over and lowered herself into the chair that was usually James’s seat and opened her copy to the same page and cleared her throat, “The operative theory behind any Transfiguration spell is essentially the same - whether you are changing a mouse into a teacup or a man into a penguin. No matter what, you are taking up a piece of matter, a collection of atoms, and rearranging them, remolding them - though the atoms are the very same as they were before you began, you have reordered them to create the illusion of a new or different thing. The effects of a transfiguration are permanent until otherwise specified; where many charms will fade and stop, the effects of transfiguration are not so fickle….” She tapped her finger against the textbook, “That’s important, Mr. Black. You’ll want to underline that in your notes. It will be on your O.W.L.”

“Yes Professor,” he drew two lines beneath the sentence.

She stared at hm for a long moment. “Mr. Black - do you understand what that means?”

Sirius stared at the sentence for a long time, then, “It means whether it looks like a mouse or a teacup, it’s still the same atoms. But rearranging them makes it mouse or teacup, depending on how they’re placed. When we transfigure them we’re just messing with how the atoms are placed and that’s what changes the appearance.”

“And if we apply that theory to a larger scale?” she asked.

It was this question she had asked him earlier - specifically him - when he had not been paying attention. This point that she had wanted him - specifically him - to understand.

Sirius stared at the sentence longer than he had before, even, and he looked up at her, “I don’t know, Professor.”

She paused, then she said, “It means, Mr. Black, that if we can take the atoms of a mouse and rearrange them to make a teapot, so, too, can we take the atoms of the sun and make a moon. It means we can take the atoms of a man and make a horse. It means, Mr. Black, that we can take the atoms of a negative and make a positive. It means, Mr. Black, that no man nor woman is confined to being what they were born, it means that every one of us in this world, good and evil and tall and small and brave and afraid and light and dark… we all have the potential to be anything in all of the world. We all have the power within us to change the things that appear to be unchangeable, to overcome what we are. The atoms just need to be placed in the right order and we’re something else entirely.” She waited for a long moment. “Do you understand this Mr. Black?”

Sirius thought about it, and he stared at his knee, at the black trousers of his barely worn uniform and ran his palms over the fabric. He reached up and wiped his eyes, which were threatening to leak...

McGonagall said, “It means that as much as I believe that a mouse can become a teacup, I believe that you can become something great, whatever background you have come from. And you should believe this about yourself, too. You are not destined to be good or evil, you make a choice to become whatever you become. No man is forced into the path that they follow. There is a moment - a pivotal moment in each of our lives - one that we are not always conscious of, sometimes even more than just one - that defines what we will be.”

“Yes, Professor,” he whispered. Sirius looked away across the room again at the teacups and he remembered the fat little mouse that had run across his desk that had ended up being that teacup and he wondered whether that mouse was happy being a teacup and had a sudden desire to go over and transfigure all the teacups back into mice and free them from their teacup prisons. “Except The mice didn’t have a choice about their atoms, they were turned by a wizard that was more powerful than they were. They became teacups because somebody, somewhere, a god to their perspective, decided that they were to become teacups.”

McGonagall frowned.

“You don’t believe that I’m not a teacup, Professor,” Sirius said. “You questioned whether I was a teacup or a mouse. You thought I might have been going dark, like they say about me. You felt the need to check my wrist when the rumors started about the dark mark.”

She looked very upset, “That day, Mr. Black, I was not looking for a dark mark upon you. I do not operate by rumors and hateful spewings that go about through this school. It’s nonsense, utter nonsense. Do not listen to the rubbish which people whisper in these corridors. There have been so many tall tales passed about these walls…” She shook her head. “I was looking after your scars, rather. Looking to see if what Mr. Lupin had told me was true, if you were hurting yourself. It terrifies me, Sirius, that it is true. Have you no idea, boy, how terrible it is, what you’re doing?”

Sirius’s voice was quiet, “About as terrible as I feel, Professor.”

McGonagall frowned. “And how is it that you feel, Sirius?”

He stared at her for a long moment. He almost told her. He almost said the words. It was on the tip of his tongue. But then he could feel Achyls in his chest and he knew he couldn’t explain her presence without telling McGonagall about the dementors in the woods back in January, the night of the full moon and he couldn’t tell McGonagall about that without telling her about going out with Remus, which meant telling her about the animagi.

And Achyls whispered, Yes, see… you can’t tell anyone. You’re alone in this. You’re all alone. You belong to nobody but me. You have nobody but me. I am your only friend, Sirius. It’s you and I against all of the others and this terrible old woman is trying to take me away from you! Trying to take away your only true friend… Don’t tell her, Sirius, or she’ll think you’re mad. Don’t tell her or she’ll send you to Azkaban for being an illegal animagus… she’ll send you away and let you rot in a cell for all of your life. I, Sirius, would never do that to you, I who am always here for you… You can’t tell anyone or they’ll take me away… Do you want them to take me away, Sirius? M, your only ally? The only one you can trust?

Sirius shook his head, answering Achyls out loud, “No.”

“Pardon?” McGonagall asked.

Sirius looked up at her, “I don’t want to talk about it.” “It would help.”

Sirius shook his head. “No it wouldn’t.” He looked down at his textbook, “Are you going to teach me or what? You said you weren’t going to deprive me an education and so far we haven’t covered anything worth talking about.” His eyes bore into the page.

Yes, Sirius, that’s right. Protect us, Sirius. Achyls whispered.

His hands shook.

Professor McGonagall’s jaw set. She took a deep breath, “Very well. Read your textbook, take notes. I expect a 25 centimeter parchment on the theory presented in this chapter. And if it comes in Remus Lupin’s handwriting, then so help me Merlin, Mr. Black.” She stood up. “If you need me I will be at my desk.” And she walked away.

Sirius watched her go, then kicked off his boots and curled up into a ball on the chair, turning so his back was to her, his stocking feet against the edge of the table, and balanced the textbook on his knees and pulled the two-way mirror from his pocket.

James had his propped up on his night stand and was sitting on the bed, playing with the snitch from his drawer absently while he read what looked like his Potions textbook.

Sirius cleared his throat. “Muffliato,” he whispered. “Professor?” he tried but she didn’t react, unable to hear him because of the spell. But James had looked over from the bed. “Well, I’m not a gnat yet,” Sirius murmured.

“Jolly good,” James replied. He held up a bright yellow flyswatter. “I borrowed this from Filch’s supply cabinet just incase Minnie needed it.”

“Very funny.”

James grinned and put the swatter down. “Was going to leave it on your pillow.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You know it would’ve been funny. Besides, you hate bugs. Would’ve been right useful. More useful than trying to reducto them,” James added.

Sirius said, “At least I’m not afraid of pigeons like Wormtail.”

“Hey!” came a voice behind James. James held up the mirror so Sirius could see Peter and, beyond him, Remus. Peter was sorting smarties into color groups, dropping them into plastic cups. There were several ripped opened bags of on the bed and he had a pool of them in the pulled out hem of his shirt. “Pigeons are quite nasty when they want to be. One chased me about the square by Big Ben once when mum took me and Maggie to see the big clock when we were little and it was trying to peck me and --”

“Bloody hell,” Sirius shook his head.

Remus, who was reading, didn’t even look up from his book. “Pigeons are one of the most intelligent birds, along with ravens, and hawks. They can all be trained to communicate on a higher level than creatures like parrots, that’re always thought to be smarter because they can be trained to mimic sounds, and therefore are perceived as being able to talk and --”

“Behold,” James said, turning the mirror back to himself, “The Remcyclopedia.”

Remus looked up as Peter and Sirius laughed at the term Remcyclopedia. “I’m not sure if I hate you for that or am amazed by the brilliance of it.”

James grinned.