• Serena Black •

„Just because you have the picture
doesn't mean you have
the whole story."

The teenagers hadn't hesitated a second after the Minister had strolled into the pub together with Professor McGonagall and Hagrid. Hurriedly, Serena, Harry and Nate had disappeared under the table and were now squashed together between their friends' feet. Unobtrusively, the dark-haired girl tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening between the legs of the chairs and found that the three adults were approaching them.

"Mobiliarbus!" she could hear Hermione's voice above her, only to witness moments later the Christmas tree rising a hand's width from the floor, floating to the side and finally landing with a slight rustle directly in front of their table.

Thus hidden, Serena peered through the dense lower branches. Four by four chair legs at the next table were moved across the floor, then she heard the teachers and minister settle down with groans and sighs. In that abrupt moment, she couldn't help but think how much her anticipation of growing old was in check.

"Thank you, Rosmerta, m'dear," Fudge suddenly said in a sucking voice, seeming downright enthusiastic, "Lovely to see you again, I must say. Have one yourself, won't you? Come and join us..."

"Well, thank you very much, Minister," it replied, and again wood scraped across the stone floor.

Serena's heart throbbed painfully in her chest and the pose in which she crouched under the table was not comfortable. She was already sure that her leg would not fall asleep only once. How long would they have to hold on like this? After all, they would have to sneak back into the honeypot before closing time if they wanted to get back to the castle that day.

"So, what brings you to this neck of the woods, Minister?" asked Madam Rosmerta finally, almost making the Gryffindor groan aloud. If she had to listen to the entire conversation, she would prefer something more interesting than the usual small talk. Serena saw the minister's abdomen squirm left and right in the chair, as if to make sure no one was listening in. Then he said in a hushed voice, "What else, m'dear, but Sirius Black? I daresay you heard what happened up at the school at Halloween?"

Serena swallowed and abruptly took back her previous thoughts. Small talk now seemed to be the better choice after all. She could feel Harry's sideways glance, which made the skin on her right cheek tingle. She promptly pretended to find the leg of the chair in front of her more interesting than the subject they were talking about.

"I did hear a rumor," the landlady finally admitted and, after a moment's hesitation, asked in a lowered voice addressed to the minister, "Do you think Black is still in the area, Minister?"

"I'm sure of it."

"You know that the Dementors have searched the whole village twice?" asked Madam Rosmerta finally in an increasingly exasperated tone, demonstratively waving her tea towel in the man's face, "Scared off all my customers, not good for business at all, Minister!"

"Rosmerta, dear, I don't like them any more than you do," Fudge tried to placate her, "Necessary precaution. . . unfortunate, but there you are... they are here to protect you all from something much worse... We all know what Black's capable of..."

"Do you know, I still have trouble believing it," she replied thoughtfully, shaking her head, "Of all the people to go over to the Dark Side, Sirius Black was the last I'd have thought. . . I mean, I remember him when he was a boy at Hogwarts. If you'd told me then what he was going to become, I'd have said you'd had too much mead. "

"You don't know the half of it, Rosmerta," the minister replied grimly, lowering his voice ominously. An effect to match his next words, "The worst he did isn't widely known."

Serena felt an icy chill spread across her fair skin and finally disengaged her gaze from the chair leg. Curiosity - though she wasn't sure she actually wanted to know - had taken hold of her and once again she peered through the branches with bated breath.

"The worst?" asked Madam Rosmerta curiously, "Worse than murdering all those poor people, you mean?"

"I certainly do," Fudge confirmed, "You say you know him from his time at Hogwarts, Rosmerta. Do you remember who his best friend was?"

"Naturally!" she replied with an abrupt laugh, smiling at the memory, "Never saw one without the other, did you? The number of times I had them in here - ooh, they used to make me laugh. Quite the double act, Sirius Black and James Potter!"

Harry's mug fell to the floor, clinking loudly. Ron went to give it a shove, but it hit Serena, who gave a short yelp and kicked him back. This was before she had realised what the words just spoken meant.

"Ouch!" the redhead now cried out too, who then took another kick from Hermione, "Shhh!"

For a few agonisingly long seconds, Serena's and Harry's eyes met. Hastily, the girl averted them again and began fixing the table leg once more.

"You'd have thought Black and Potter were brothers," Professor Flitwick's cheerful voice now spoke up, seeming rather out of place to Serena considering the situation, "Inseparable!"

"Of course they were," Fudge confirmed sombrely with a dry laugh, "Potter trusted Black beyond all his other friends. Nothing changed when they left school Black was best man when James and Lily got married. Then they named him godfather to Harry. Harry has no idea, of course. You can imagine how the idea would torment him."

"Because Black turned out to be in league with you-know-who?" whispered Madam Rosmerta, already sensing disaster, but the minister shook his head regretfully, so that his hat slipped, "Worse even than that, m'dear... The Potters knew that You-Know-Who was after them. Dumbledore advised them they had best use the Fidelius Charm."

"An immensely complex spell," Flitwick interjected, squeaking, "involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person, or Secret-Keeper, and is henceforth impossible to find -- unless, of course, the Secret-Keeper chooses to divulge it. As long as the Secret-Keeper refused to speak, You-Know-Who could search the village where Lily and James were staying for years and never find them, not even if he had his nose pressed against their sitting room window!"

Serena already had an inkling of where this was going, which is why she would have preferred not to hear the rest of the story at all. Cautiously, she dared to give Harry a fleeting glance, but he was still fixated on the conversation. Not Nate, though. The Ravenclaw returned her gaze and for an abrupt moment it seemed to her that he was wordlessly conveying to her that she should not let what they had said get to her so much. Years of friendship probably paid off in the fact that they understood each other without a single word, and at that moment Serena was incredibly grateful for it.

"So Black was the Potters' Secret-Keeper?"

"Naturally," Professor McGonagall, who had kept a surprisingly low profile during the previous conversation, spoke up. Now the wrinkles on her forehead seemed deeper and the eyes behind her glasses sadder, "James Potter told Dumbledore that Black would die rather than tell where they were, that Black was planning to go into hiding himself. . . and yet, Dumbledore remained worried. I remember him offering to be the Potters' Secret-Keeper himself."

"He suspected Black?" Madam Rosmerta asked breathlessly, as if she couldn't wait to know more. Unlike Serena, who would have preferred to cover her ears.

"He was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements," the teacher for transfiguration replied gloomily, "Indeed, he had suspected for some time that someone on our side had turned traitor and was passing a lot of information to You-Know-Who."

"And then, barely a week after the Fidelius Charm had been performed."

Serena prayerfully closed her eyes and hoped that what she suspected would not come. She would not be able to bear it.

"Black betrayed them?" gasped Madam Rosmerta, seeming as horrified as the Gryffindor who was crouched under a table just a metre away, hidden behind a decorated christmas tree.

"He did indeed. Black was tired of his double-agent role, he was ready to declare his support openly for You-Know-Who, and he seems to have planned this for the moment of the Potters' death. But, as we all know, You-Know-Who met his downfall in little Harry Potter. Powers gone, horribly weakened, he fled. And this left Black in a very nasty position indeed. His master had fallen at the very moment when he, Black, had shown his true colors as a traitor. He had no choice but to run for it."

Serena felt a stab in her heart. She kept her eyes closed, because she couldn't look anyone in the eye. Especially not Harry. How could she continue to be friends with him now that she knew it was her father's fault that he no longer had parents? It seemed simply impossible to her. Like an unwritten law.

"Filthy, stinkin' turncoat!" shouted Hagrid so loudly that half the guests fell silent and Serena winced, "I met him!" he said grimly, I musta bin the last ter see him before he killed all them people! It was me what rescued Harry from Lily an' James's house after they was killed! Jus' got him outta the ruins, poor little thing, with a great slash across his forehead, an' his parents dead. . . an' Sirius Black turns up, on that flyin' motorbike he used ter ride. Never occurred ter me what he was doin' there. I didn' know he'd bin Lily an' James's Secret-Keeper. Thought he'd jus' heard the news o' You-Know-Who's attack an' come ter see what he could do. White an' shakin', he was. An' yeh know what I did? I COMFORTED THE MURDERIN' TRAITOR!"

"Hagrid, please!" warned Professor McGonagall sternly, "Keep your voice down!"

"How was I ter know he wasn' upset abou' Lily an' James? It was You-Know-Who he cared abou'! An' then he says, 'Give Harry ter me, Hagrid, I'm his godfather, I'll look after him.'Ha! But I'd had me orders from Dumbledore, an' I told Black no, Dumbledore said Harry was ter go ter his aunt an' uncle's. Black argued, but in the end he gave in. Told me ter take his motorbike ter get Harry there. 'I won't need it anymore,' he says. "I shoulda known there was somethin' fishy goin' on then. He loved that motorbike, what was he givin' it ter me for? Why wouldn' he need it anymore? Fact was, it was too easy ter trace. Dumbledore knew he'd bin the Potters' Secret-Keeper. Black knew he was goin' ter have ter run fer it that night, knew it was a matter o' hours before the Ministry was after him. But what if I'd given Harry to him, eh? I bet he'd've pitched him off the bike halfway out ter sea. His bes' friends' son! But when a wizard goes over ter the Dark Side, there's nothin' and no one that matters to em anymore..." A long and awkward silence followed Hagrid's story, which the landlady finally broke, "But he didn't manage to disappear, did he? The Ministry of Magic caught up with him the next day!"

"Alas, if only we had," Fudge retorted bitterly, "It was not we who found him. It was little Peter Pettigrew - another of the Potters' friends. Maddened by grief, no doubt, and knowing that Black had been the Potters' Secret-Keeper, he went after Black himself."

"Hero-worshipped Black and Potter," added Professor McGonagall, "Never quite in their league, talent-wise. I was often rather sharp with him. You can imagine how I... how I regret that now..."

"There, now, Minerva," Fudge said encouragingly. "Pettigrew died a hero's death. Eyewitnesses - Muggles, of course, we wiped their memories later - told us how Pettigrew cornered Black. They say he was sobbing, 'Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?' And then he went for his wand. Well, of course, Black was quicker. Blew Pettigrew to smithereens. . . . "

Serena had to stop tears from flowing from her still closed eyes and her entire body began to tremble. Her throat was constricted, depriving her of breath. She didn't want to hear any more, she just wanted to get away from there. She wanted to go back to her soft bed from which she might never emerge.

"Well, there you have it, Rosmerta," Fudge sighed grimly, "Black was taken away by twenty members of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad and Pettigrew received the Order of Merlin, First Class, which I think was some comfort to his poor mother. Black's been in Azkaban ever since. "

"Is it true that he's mad, Minister?" asked Madam Rosmerta, tensely taking a sip from a mug of butterbeer, which might have been for another customer.

"I wish I could say that he was," Fudge put in thoughtfully, "I met Black on my last inspection of Azkaban. You know, most of the prisoners in there sit muttering to themselves in the dark; there's no sense in them... but I was shocked at how normal Black seemed. He spoke quite rationally to me. It was unnerving. You'd have thought he was merely bored - asked if I'd finished with my newspaper, cool as you please, said he missed doing the crossword. Yes, I was astounded at how little effect the Dementors seemed to be having on him."

"But what do you think he's broken out to do?"
she continued to probe, not seeming to want the conversation to end. Perhaps, as a landlady, she depended on such stories to keep her customers happy, Serena thought grimly.

"I suppose you know he has a daughter?" asked Fudge, to which the woman looked around the room, "Serena? Oh yeah I saw her with her friends earlier."

The Gryffindor tried to make herself even smaller under the table, hoping McGonagall wouldn't ask any questions about it. After all, she had banned her from the village mere days before and would certainly not be too pleased to find her in this very village now.

"It was no coincidence that Black, of all people, tried to get into Gryffindor Tower," the Minister continued, seeming to have overheard what she had said earlier, "She and Harry are at the top of his list."

Madam Rosmerta slapped her hands over her mouth, "They don't know about the story, do they?"

Serena almost laughed at that moment. It just felt so surreal and ironic to her that she thought this only could be a bad joke.

"No, and I want to keep it that way!" he retorted, furrowing his wrinkled brow, "To be honest, I don't like the fact that they're such close friends."

"What do you mean?" inquired McGonagall sharply, fixing the Minister with her flashing eyes behind her glasses. The man now seemed a little embarrassed and hesitated before replying, "Well, someone must have helped Black into the castle, after all."

The glass clinked as the teacher for Transfiguration set it down on the table and she said with a sharp undertone in her voice, "You know, Cornelius, if you're having dinner with the headmaster, we'd better head back to the castle now. You seem to have had enough to drink anyway."

Serena would have loved to throw her arms around her favourite teacher's neck for not believing the minister's nonsense. She could still remember how Harry had told her before the school year had even started that Fudge saw her as a security problem at Hogwarts. Harry. He would possibly hate her now and would want nothing to do with her and she couldn't even blame him for that. Pair after pair of feet suddenly started to move, cloak hems swung past the table and Madam Rosmerta's glittering stilettos disappeared behind the bar. The door to the Three Broomsticks opened, once again snowflakes swirled in and the group disappeared.

Ron and Hermione's faces appeared from under the edge of the table. They stared at Harry and Serena, unable to produce a word. Serena had opened her eyes again by now, but was not looking at either of them.

She felt paralysed, she couldn't understand what she had heard and didn't want to. Slowly, a huge emptiness and coldness spread inside of her and she would not have been surprised if a dementor had been nearby.