hey darlings it’s samhain today so here’s a little fic i wasn’t sure what to do w for the occasion!! mwah sorry for the angst
when sirius was eleven, he walked up to the hat and requested gryffindor.
“your ambition will be the end of you,” said the hat, but put him into gryffindor anyways.
sirius, while in school, could not figure out what that meant, because he wasn’t particularly ambitious. he supposed he liked pranks well enough, but they weren’t his entire life, and he liked pissing off his parents, but he wasn’t going to make a career out of that either.
it came to him suddenly, and when it did, the world stayed the same.
james potter met sirius black when they were barely eleven and defended him against some snotty greasy boy on the train. james potter didn’t care that sirius was a black, didn’t care that sirius’ family was dark - he didn’t mind that sirius wasn’t all that light either.
see, sirius would lay down his life for just about anyone really. but there were only two people that he would kill for. that he would love until the end of time.
and one of those people were james potter.
when james died, all the bright and happy and good things in the world died with him. sirius was the one to find him first, his james lying spread eagle across the stairs, wand still in the living room. but james looked peaceful there, like he was ready and happy it was finally over, and sirius wanted nothing more than to go to the afterworld and yank that peacefulness away.
lily is upstairs. her usual bright green eyes are cold in death, red hair surrounding her head like a halo. her collarbone is bleeding something awful, and when he pulls down her shirt a little to see - to stop the bleeding, to stop the blood from sinking into her shirt because it was lily’s favorite sleep shirt, one of marlene’s old ones - he finds a rune, a cross between algiz and six he’s never seen before carved into her skin. her blood is sprinkled around the edges of the room and there is a matching rune on harry’s crib.
harry is alive. he is bleeding sluggishly from the forehead, and he is wailing something awful, but he is alive. sirius picks him up, closes lily’s eyes and closes his own when he walks past james. puts harry carefully into his sidecar, and then hagrid is there and sirius trusts him and and and
he is filled with a vengeance so deep there is nothing that could possibly stop him. he think he would kill dumbledore, voldemort, Lady Magick herself if they got in the way, and he goes after peter with reckless abandon-
it is such a slytherin move, such a slytherin move for little, mousy peter pettigrew that when the aurors find him he is laughing and laughing and laughing and then he is crying.
alastor is there, staring at him with nothing less than absolute disgust. his mentor, his and james’ mentor, thinks sirius killed james, and that just makes him laugh harder.
he is thrown in azkaban without a trial. it’s cold there, and they only give you one meal a day, and the vengeance still burns but not as bright as his grief.
bellatrix, his big cousin bella, takes him under her wing. she’s a little bit mad, and she tortured his friends to insanity, but she knows he didn’t betray the potters and she know he didn’t kill all those muggles and she still loves him. she protects him, with their cells right next to each other, by telling him story after story until her throat goes dry and she can’t speak another word, like they are children again and walburga and druella are screaming and banging on the other side of the door while they hide from their mother’s rage.
“why did you do it, bella?” he asks her one day, when his brain is particularly loud. “why did you kill all those people? those innocents?”
“i didn’t mean too,” she says, and she sounds terribly small. “the dark - it’s seducing, sirius. it pulls you in until you can’t get out.”
the death eaters all come from broken homes, homes where there parents were still together in loveless marriages and their mothers liked to scream and slap and fathers like stone cold silence and quiet crucio’s. the dark arts is a savior, a winning, something to help them get away from suffocating under the stress of it all.
it doesn’t help, sirius thinks, that muggle studies is so behind. sirius thinks a lot in azkaban and he thinks that muggle studies class should be mandatory, because most of the death eaters are convinced muggles are still burning witches and wizards at the stake.
“will you kill him?” asks bella another day. “the man who betrayed you, and cousin james?”
sirius thinks of all the people he killed during the war. he thinks about the small part of him that thought it had been fun, literally ripping out spines and burning them from the inside out and back again. he had insisted it was for justice, justice for marlene and dorcas and mary and gideon and fabian and benjy, but now he isn’t so sure.
“yes,” he says. “i will.”
when the ten year mark hits, bella screams in her cell, screams and screams and slowly the rest of prison fills with it too. the next day, in the courtyard, she shows him her arm, the tattoo that was almost faded and now is turning black again.
“he’s coming,” she says, but she does not sound happy. she sounds tired.
“promise me something,” she says later that night. “promise me, when we get out of here, because you know we all will - promise me you’ll aim to kill. i can’t keep going on mad, killing people just for their blood.”
he stares at her, his cousin bella. he remembers when they were just kids, reading in the library and skating on ice in bella’s back yard in the winter, and then later, in hogwarts, when he would find her cursing muggle-borns and half bloods and blood traitors alike. he didn’t recognize her then but he recognizes her now, as his scared, tired big cousin, more like his mum than his mum ever was.
“i promise,” he says. “now promise me the same.”
“you have a godson,” she says. “you must protect him.”
“promise me,” he insists.
the day before he escapes, he hugs her tight in the courtyard. she hugs him back, hands shaking, and when he sneaks out in dog form she gives him a shaky nod.
the ambition to protect james failed, so now he will do so with harry. the last potter.
harry flies like his dad, maybe even more, with completely recklessness and only the smallest amount of control. harry throws witty comments at draco malfoy and winks at cho chang in the air and all sirius can see is james.
“he’s a werewolf!” hermione granger explodes, pointing to remus, and sirius thinks he is the only one who sees harry’s look of yeah, obviously.
(later, harry will confide in sirius that he figured it out the moment he saw remus’ boggart.)
“i don’t think my dad would’ve wanted his best mates to become murderers, thanks,” says harry, still sarcastic and still so james even as he protects the man who made him an orphan.
sirius does not have the heart to tell him he already is one, and apparently neither does remus, but they back down anyways.
sirius thinks the next two years pass in a blue he barely remembers. he went to the caribbean for a little while, ate good until he was almost healthy and glowed with a light tan. he went back to dreary Scotland because harry was being hunted, again, and he remembers, distantly, living in a cave, watching harry in dog form as he slammed into the ground, a dead boy held tight in his hands.
dumbledore sends him right back to the dursley’s, and sirius wants to kill him. harry does not get grief counseling, or therapy, or to be surrounded by people he loves, because he is harry potter and it is not easy, being him.
sirius moves back into his old, childhood home, and stares at the spot on the living room floor where he had been tortured before he ran away. he throws up in the bathroom where he and bella used to hide.
he cleans the drawing room, where he and andi used to stare at the inter crossing lines, andi promising “i won’t be on there one day, just you wait.” he cleans the kitchen, where he and cissa used to flurry around with kreacher, throwing flour and sugar at each other while they attempted to make cookies.
he walks through the halls, where he and regulus used to chase eachother, to the stairs, where he used to slide down the curling banister, to the cell, where he used to get locked up.
harry comes to grimmauld and he yells at his friends - rightfully so - and then yells some more at dinner, and then he cries. he cries in the living room, in his bedroom, in the kitchen, in the drawing room, on the staircase. he cries when sirius hugs him and he cries when remus pats his shoulder and he cries and he cries and he cries and sirius just has to sit there and listen, because he can do nothing else.
it is quiet when harry leaves for school. sirius drinks a lot of firewhiskey and smokes a lot of hidden cigarettes and it is lonely even after harry comes back for yule time because then he leaves again.
hermione writes him a letter and says harry doesn’t cry anymore. now he’s angry all the time, at dumbledore for ignoring him and cedric for dying and his friends for not understanding and his parents for killing themselves so he could live, at himself for living-
on june eighteenth, sirius wakes up for the last time. he brushes his teeth and uses whiskey as mouth wash for the last time, eats blueberry pancakes for the last time, pets buckbeak and kisses remus for the last time and-
he hugs harry for the last time. there is a voice whispering in his head that he knows it is today, today he will finally rest, so he hugs his godson extra tight.
bella is there. she looks insane, with her hair spiked up and eyes bright, but when she looks at him her smile softens a little bit.
“you promised,” she mouths.
“so did you,” he says back, and they duel.
she doesn’t want to kill him. she hits him with a stupefy, but the veil is just behind him, and he falls through it.
harry is screaming bloody murder, heartbroken and pleading, and wrestles with remus who is trying to hold him back. it’s like the whole world stopped, and bella is looking at him, meets his eyes one last time, and says loudly, clearly, “i promise.”
he says thank you, i forgive you, i love you, with his eyes, and then he falls faster and lands hard on the ground.
“blimey, mate,” says a voice. “you really are clumsy, even when you’re dead.”
james potter grabs his hand and pulls him up, regulus holding his shoulder, and sirius begins to cry.
