The Godmother

47. dead men can still breathe

The house felt empty again. Every noise: ticking clocks and the wind breathing against the house, made Elizabeth more and more uncomfortable. She felt as though she'd mistreated the holidays; that she hadn't soaked it up in the moment and now she was scattering to find the memories of Christmas.

For weeks she didn't do much. She hung around the house, watching flies fall too close to the fireplace. Cleaning spiderwebs from the corners of each empty room in the large house and tossing mouldy food from the back of the fridge into the bin.

Suddenly her life had hit a stasis. Almost like when she was couped up in the apartment while Sirius was in Azkaban, only this time she had him for company. Unable to go hunting, she only left the house to get food and necessities from the local muggle market. She found herself sitting on the used couch that Sirius bought from the op shop in his shed, reading books while he worked on broken motorcycles.

It was his new hobby. He'd buy muggle motorcycles that didn't work from farmers or the wreckers and fix them up. So far, his shed had a showroom corner with six shiny bikes. Anyone could swear that they were new, with the glossy paint and reflective engine.

Elizabeth sat in the corner, reading, while Sirius worked on his latest bike. She knew nothing about them, but Sirius had told her, "It's a rare bike from the 70's. Rusted body and a completely missing engine. Apparently the owner used it for parts... such a shame...", he said, stepping back to adore the rusted, old machine.

While Sirius ticked and turned tools, Elizabeth relaxed on the couch, reading books. She decided that since she couldn't go hunting or spend leisurely time outside of the property's walls, that she'd educate herself. Not that she was illiterate. Or had only a small array of vocabulary. Books were the new way to explore. To dive into a world while she sat on the couch in Sirius' shed.

And for the most part it worked. The first book she read was a classic; Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The love, the rage, she felt herself bridging over to the book before Sirius dropped a wrench on the ground, forcing her eyes to dart up to him in the jump scare of the loud noise. It was only then that she realised that hours had passed and that she was, in fact, still on her property and not in West Yorkshire. Her life flooded back to her: Harry, Sirius, baby, rape, James, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Regulus, Voldemort, war.

"Ready to turn in?", Sirius asked as he wiped his hands on a rag. Sweat beaded in pools across his forehead and above his top lip, where a small moustache was growing to Elizabeth's intrigue.

Elizabeth folded a crease in the corner of the page that she was on and placed the book in her lap, licked her lips as she looked out of the door to see that it was dark outside. It was only then that she felt a cool draft breeze through the open garage door.

"I didn't even realise that it was dark", she said, looking up at him. She put the book on the opposite cushion, knowing that if she brought it back to the house that she would stay up all night reading it and get no sleep.

Sirius closed and locked the door, turned the light off and grabbed Elizabeth's hand, apparating them back into the house. It was better not to walk through the field at night, not knowing what (or who) could be outside.

The next day, by 7am the two had returned to the shed. By 10am Elizabeth had finished Wuthering Heights and decided to go back inside to try and look through old boxes to try and find more material. To some surprise, they didn't have any books. There were none in the lounge room, only cooking books in the kitchen, none in the spare room, Harry had taken all of his books back with him to Hogwarts and there were none in her own room.

For some reason she felt disappointed. They had lived together for over a year and they still didn't own a book. The time that she had spent in the apartment while Sirius was in Azkaban, she had only kept a few books that she read over the years, but threw them all out when she moved from the old Potter house.