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Harry thought they’d already cleared much of 12 Grimmauld Place’s dust back in August, yet a thick layer of it covered the drawing room anyway, from the flat, moth-eaten sofa cushions, to the threadbare curtains, to the piano that sat at the edge of the room.
Absently, he moved further inside and sat on the long piano bench, staring around. He could hear muffled voices from the kitchen below, where the others were congregating for dinner. He expected to join them eventually, but he wasn’t quite ready yet. While he might not be possessed by Voldemort after all, he hadn’t completely shook his desire to be left alone.
Harry pivoted on the piano bench and faced the black and white keys. Some were cracked with age, and they were as grimy and dusty as the rest of the room. A unwanted memory arose, of his Aunt Petunia pulling him along in a department store. He had seen a gleaming black piano, and he’d wanted to play it. But his aunt had grabbed hold of his arm, yanking him forward and speaking to him sharply, while the piano had started playing by itself. It hadn’t been a tune, more like a stream of notes in a random order, and Harry knew now that it had been accidental magic, that there was no other explanation for it.
After, Aunt Petunia had screamed at him for misbehaving in public, and he hadn’t been taken to a department store ever again.
Harry sighed, lifting his hand and hovering his fingers over the keys. He still wanted to play it, but he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself from the group downstairs, either.
“Going to play us some Mozart?” said a familiar voice from the doorway.
Harry turned and confirmed that it was Sirius. His godfather was wearing a dark cloak and leaning against the door frame.
Harry’s face twisted into something halfway to a smile. “Nah. Don’t know how.”
Sirius’s mouth quirked, too, and he walked over to Harry, the floorboards creaking under him. He stood next to the piano and looked down at Harry, which was when it dawned on Harry that his absence downstairs had been noticed. The realization made him feel a bit too exposed.
He cleared his throat, desperately searching for a topic to bring up. “Can you play?”
Sirius nodded, smiling a bit.
“Really?” said Harry, sitting up straighter. He froze for a moment, considering. “Can you play something now?”
Sirius barked a small laugh, his eyes fond. “Yeah, I suppose I can try.” He sat down gingerly on the bench to the left side of Harry, testing that the wobbly legs could hold his weight, and Harry scooted over a bit to make more room for him. “I haven’t played in ages, though. Just a warning.” Then he placed his hands on the keys, clearly thinking for a moment, and started pressing the keys.
The song was slow, a waltz. Harry could tell by the smooth way that Sirius’s fingers moved that he’d had many hours practicing this. When he hit a few notes that sounded wrong to Harry, he laughed in a relaxed sort of way, and backed up to try again.
The sounds coming from the piano were beautiful, even though Sirius’s playing wasn’t perfect and Harry suspected the piano was out of tune. He watched in slight awe, thinking how unexpected it was that Sirius would be skilled at something like this, and wondering what else he didn’t know about his godfather. Probably a lot, in all honesty.
After what Harry guessed was the end of the song, Sirius dropped his hands from the keys and into his lap. For a moment, he appeared deep in thought, his face grim, but then his expression cleared and his grey eyes turned to Harry.
“That was brilliant,” said Harry.
“Well, thanks,” said Sirius. He smiled. “Suppose I remember more than I thought.”
Since Sirius seemed to be in a decent mood, Harry asked, “How’d you learn?”
Sirius raised his hands to the keys and started playing again, softer this time. “I had to take lessons from the time I was really young, maybe five years old. I didn’t play while I was at Hogwarts, but my parents signed me up for lessons during the holidays even when I was older.” He paused, his expression growing grim again. “They did the same for my brother Regulus. He was a better player than me.”
“Oh,” said Harry. The Dursleys had never signed him up for anything, but it sounded like a nice idea to learn something at a younger age. Still, Harry sensed that Sirius might not have been too fond of it at the time. “How do you play with both hands at the same time?”
Sirius shrugged. “You just learn, really. They start you with learning the notes, reading simple music, scales... Eventually you start playing chords with your left hand while your right plays the melody.”
“That sounds like a lot,” said Harry.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” said Sirius. He paused. “I can teach you the first few measures of that song, though, if you want. It’s not too difficult.”
“Oh,” said Harry, surprised. “Sure, yeah.”
Sirius spent a while teaching Harry the notes and rhythm for the right-handed part of the waltz and watching him practice. He gave him tips along the way, and Harry got increasingly better, at least until Sirius started to play the left-handed part at the same time. Then Harry got very confused, laughing as Sirius tried to continue without him.
Sirius bumped Harry’s shoulder with his own playfully. “We’re supposed to be playing on the same beat.”
They tried again, and again, until it actually started to sound pretty good to Harry’s ears. “That was better,” said Harry. “Who wrote that?”
“Frédéric Chopin,” said Sirius. “A wizard, believe it or not.”
“Oh, really?” said Harry, distractedly playing his part again, faster this time.
“Yeah, the only known wizard composer,” said Sirius. He was watching Harry’s hand move over the keys, but then he went eerily still.
“What—” started Harry, as Sirius reached over to grab his wrist.
Harry’s heartbeat sped up as he realized why, and he wrenched his arm from Sirius’s grasp, setting it on the piano bench instead. His hand had been mostly covered by the sleeve of his sweater, until it hadn’t been. And Sirius had seen.
“Harry.” Sirius’s face had gone pale. “There was something on your hand.”
“No, there’s not.”
“It looked like words—”
Harry shook his head.
“Then why are you hiding it?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” said Harry, but then Sirius shot him the sharpest look he’d ever given him, and Harry felt the sudden urge to gulp.
The next few moments were a standoff, with Harry’s heart racing, until he finally withdrew his hand from his side and placed it on the keys again. Sirius leaned over to see it, and his mouth moved silently with the words, I must not tell lies. His intense eyes grew very wide, then looked directly into Harry’s. Harry tried hard not to look away, but failed.
“Did you do this to yourself?”
“No!” said Harry. His own eyes grew wide. “Well, technically. It was Umbridge—”
Sirius’s eyes narrowed. “That woman from the Ministry?”
Harry nodded, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “I keep having detention with her. She makes me do lines.” His chest had frozen up, and he wondered idly how he was even able to get the words out. The world felt like it was falling around him, for how intently Sirius was watching him.
“Lines?” All remaining color had washed from Sirius’s face, until he looked like he had the first time Harry had met him, in the Shrieking Shack. “You mean—” Sirius looked utterly devastated, and then very, very angry. “Harry, I need you to explain.”
So Harry did, haltingly. He explained how and when he showed up for detentions, and what Umbridge had him do. He explained the feeling the first time he’d written with the quill, and had realized, with horror, what was happening to his hand. He told Sirius about the murtlap essence that Hermione had prepared, how that had helped, and how he suspected that other students were having similar detentions with Umbridge, too.
Sirius listened without interjecting, but Harry could see that the line of his mouth was tight with anger by the time he had finished talking. In the silence, Harry felt a rush of desperation, and before Sirius could say anything, he cut in, “Look, please don’t do anything rash, Sirius. I’m fine. Really, I am.”
“Harry, this is really serious.”
“I know.” Harry looked down at his hands. “I mean, she shouldn’t be doing this. But the Ministry gave her the power—”
“Harry, no.” Harry looked up. Sirius’s eyes were boring into his. “Not even the Ministry would stand for this. It’s child abuse.”
Harry didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help but think that what Sirius was saying didn’t sound quite right, although he didn’t exactly want to examine it, either.
“Dumbledore will be getting a visit from me.” Sirius’s voice was chilling, and Harry was relieved that at least it didn’t seem to be directed at him. “Do you know who else has had detentions with her?”
Harry reluctantly nodded.
“Then I want you to write down their names for me tonight. Okay? Merlin, Harry.” He ran a hand through his hair in an agitated sort of way, then faced Harry again, his expression much softer. “Are you okay?”
Harry shrugged. He looked down at his hands again. “Been better, I suppose,” he said quietly.
Crookshanks had slunk into the room, and he jumped onto the top of the piano, sitting in front of Harry. Harry reached up to scratch him around the ears, partly as an excuse not to look at Sirius, whose expression was so earnest that Harry was afraid to look his way again.
Sirius gave a heavy sigh. When Crookshanks moved across the piano and over to him, he reached up to pet him, too.
“We should probably talk about why you didn’t tell anyone,” said Sirius quietly.
Harry was silent. He knew that it was pointless to point out that he’d told Ron and Hermione. He knew that in Sirius’s eyes, they didn’t quite count.
Sirius didn’t push him further, but Harry didn’t feel good about it at all, knowing that he was disappointing him. He wished he could open up more, as Sirius clearly wished that he would, but the instinct to remain silent was even stronger in the face of the conversation they’d just had.
So Harry scratched his head, feeling dejected and wishing that their happy moment hadn’t been ruined, once again, by things that he couldn’t control.
He looked up, not quite meeting Sirius’s eyes. If anything, he felt wrung out, and he just wanted to have someone else take care of things for once.
“Can you play another?” he said weakly.
Sirius’s face scrunched in confusion, until he must have realized what Harry meant.
“Yeah, Harry,” he said softly. He reached out to give Harry’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. The feeling of his hand, solid and warm, made Harry's eyes prickle.
And then he played.