All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

The Triwizard Tournament

It’s my own design

It’s my own remorse

Help me to decide

Help me make the

Most of freedom and of pleasure

Nothing ever lasts forever

Everybody wants to rule the world

Thursday 23rd August 1994

 

Dear Sirius,

 

Thanks for your last letter. That bird was enormous; it could hardly get through my window.

Things are the same as usual here. Dudley’s diet isn’t going too well. My aunt found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told him they’d have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window. That’s a sort of computer thing you can play games on. Bit stupid really, now he hasn’t even got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind off things.

I’m okay, mainly because the Dursleys are terrified you might turn up and turn them all into bats if I ask you to.

A weird thing happened this morning, though. My scar hurt again. Last time that happened it was because Voldemort was at Hogwarts. But I don’t reckon he can be anywhere near me now, can he? Do you know if curse scars sometimes hurt years afterward?

I’ll send this with Hedwig when she gets back; she’s off hunting at the moment. Say hello to Buckbeak for me.

 

Harry

 

“Harry says hi,” Sirius murmured, absentmindedly, reaching up to stroke Buckbeak’s head. The hippogriff leaned down into the touch, making a happy sort of chirping noise in the back of his throat. Sirius smiled, distractedly, before turning back to the letter with a frown.

This settled it. He had been hearing rumours all summer – correspondences from Dumbledore, clippings from the Prophet, bits and pieces of Le Monde Magique, when he could get it. The French newspaper was a local one, and not the most up to date on British news—still, reading between the lines, Sirius had begun to notice more and more scraps of unsettling information.

He gave Hedwig one of Buckbeak’s rats, and she hooted appreciatively as he sat down to pen a letter to Dumbledore. It was the Hogwarts headmaster who had told Sirius about an eccentric friend in Toulouse that kept an aviary of tropical birds in lieu of an owlery – a friend who was on extended holiday in Greece, and whose house would therefore be empty…

Sirius had been there for two months; the locals thought he was a distant cousin who the strange Monsieur Bernard had asked to look after the property. In that time, he had gained some weight, shaved his beard, cut his hair, and plumbed the depths of his patchy memory to recall his childhood French. He hated the language—it left a sour taste in his mouth, reminding him too much of hours spent in the Black family manor, knuckles raw where his tutor smacked them with a ruler every time he stumbled over pronunciation.