Chapter Text
The third Sunday of Advent was Gaudette Sunday. Every Catholic, devout and seasonal, was dressed in pink. It was the day of rejoicing and Sirius Black was standing before the grave of two of his best friends, drunk on firewhiskey at ten in the morning. Bells announced the time, sending fresh pain into Sirius’ temples.
The snow beneath his knees had turned to freezing slush seeping into his pants. Sirius ignored it. The numbness was nothing compared to what James and Lily would’ve done to him if they had known he had lost their little girl. If they had known Helina had run from him.
He could still see her, in the back of his mind. Lina had been standing in the third row of his the Black’s library, shaking as she held a book in a white-knuckled grip. There had been marks gouged into the cover when he picked it up off the floor and the pages had been half torn from the spine, crumpled around the impressions of her fingers. Lina had gone still after he’d spoken and her eyes had been so blank when she’d looked back at him. Sirius had hated those eyes; maroon instead of Lily’s green. And she had loomed as she demanded to know where Dumbledore was. James and Lily had been tall, but neither of them had been that tall and neither of them had ever used to height to loom. Not when they had been adults, at least. Maybe a few times when he and James were kids, but that had always been in good fun.
Then between one heartbeat and the next Lina had disappeared, leaving only after-images flickering in the air. The stairs had rattled and he’d heard doors slamming upstairs, rushing to the library door he saw a flicker of movement as he was pushed back while the stairs had rattled a second time. His mother The painting of the hag started screaming as the front door swung back and forth on its hinges.
Sirius had run into Lina’s room and found everything left behind. Her trunk was open and her birds were gone. He hadn’t found her in the street either.
When the Order had finally listened to him and rallied to Hogwarts they found the castle in disarray. The head table splintered upon its dais, claw marks torn into the Great Hall’s foundation. Pieces of jewelry lay fragmented and tarnished in the apex of the gouges while they bled dark puddles.
Snivellus had declared the locket to be the lost heirloom of Salazar Slytherin himself. Dumbledore had appeared and confirmed it.
Sirius had never seen his old headmaster so—human. Human and wrecked. Dumbledore had been openly crying, tears trailing down the lines in his face to dampen his beard. He was quiet as he sat down besides the wounds in Hogwarts’ mighty stones. Quiet and old. Sirius hadn’t stayed for long and left to find Lina. Professor McGonagall had pulled him back into the Great Hall when students started coming out of their dorms.
McGonagall, Moony, and Moody had ordered him back to Grimmauld, reminding him that Fudge would try to place the blame on Sirius if he kept running around like a madman. Sirius hated that word.
Lina had been officially reported missing the next day and Sirius had torn apart his room before walking around the house in a daze, waiting for Lina to come home. When she hadn’t come home on Christmas and Dumbledore was found dead in his bed the next day, Sirius had visited James and Lily to beg for forgiveness. Remus had pulled him away from the grave long after the moon had grown high in the sky. In July, Sirius had gone back to sob at the grave when Lina was still missing on her birthday. Then he had gone back in September when Lina wasn’t at Hogwarts and his hope that she had run away for the summer was shattered. Remus had stopped taking him home when the visits turned into a monthly occurrence. When Teddy was born, Remus stopped talking about Sirius’ graveside visits all together. Sirius hadn’t seen Remus since Teddy’s second birthday, when the other wizard had tossed Sirius out after he mentioned Lina had been the same age when James and Lily were murdered.
Now Sirius was five years into the visits. Five years of coming month after month to the graves of his friends to beg for a forgiveness that never came. Five years since Helina Potter had been seen alive. The world ignored his grief, ignored his missing goddaughter. Molly and Arthur had their own children to raise. Remus had finally gotten his head out of his arse to marry Tonks and now they were busy raising Teddy. Minerva and Hagrid had Hogwarts, and Cissy had taken her son and moved to France after Lucius had been thrown into Azkaban. She’d sent a postcard, a muggle postcard of all things over the summer. Sirius alone was left to remember Lina, to keep her alive when everyone else would.
The bells of St. Jerome announced eleven in the morning, and Sirius slumped sideways to bury his throbbing head in the snow. The bottle in his hand was empty, so he threw it further into the graveyard. It smashed and scattered out of view. He watched the grey sky before rolling on his back when his ear went numb from the cold. Small snowflakes that melted at any touch fell from the sky. In his drunken state Sirius began to watch them slowly race in the sky. One of the snowflakes landed on the tombstone his shoulder was digging into. It had appeared before his third Christmas visit. He knew it was smooth granite; he had collapsed against it enough times to recognize the feeling while emptying his stomach but had never bothered to read the name. As he watched the flurries land and melt against the marked granite, Sirius found himself reading the name. He should get acquainted with James and Lily’s neighbors after all, just like he had with old Bathilda.
He scrambled back with a cry of horror and slammed into an old tombstone that crumpled beneath his weight. Sirius stayed on his back as he cried, head raised just enough to read the words on the tombstone besides James and Lily’s through the tears.
HELINA LILY “LINA” POTTER
BELOVED DAUGHTER, GRANDDAUGHTER, AND GODDAUGHTER
31 JULY 1980 — 31 JULY 1997
REST WELL