sirius’ story makes me so sad.
he grows up in an abusive household surrounded by bigoted people and tries time and time again to prove he’s different and undo all the things his family has done to give the black name that reputation.
he only finds solace at the age of eleven when he meets james and subsequently when he escapes his home and effectively abandons his family at sixteen, not even a legal adult yet.
immediately after finishing school he’s thrown in the middle of a war, a war meant for adults and fought by children, and not even three years later he realises that he put his trust in the wrong person, and because of his mistake the one person who had helped him through it all for the past decade is dead. everything falls apart. james is dead, lily is dead, remus is god knows where, peter is a traitor and hagrid is refusing to give him his godson. the godson he had sworn to protect, the boy james and lily died to protect, the last fickle trace of them in this world, the godson he was ready to take up and raise and protect with his life, that is being taken away from him too.
he has nothing left to lose, tracks down the traitor, the man he trusted who now has such precious blood on his hands, and he gets framed. no trial, no investigation, not even a chance to speak up for himself, because after all he is a black and that last name speaks louder than a thousand words and no matter how much he’s tried to undo it, his name will always precede his actions in the eyes of everyone watching.
he spends more than a decade locked up, being sucked dry of every happy memory until he’s forgotten how james moves, how he smells and how he laughs and quickly he can’t remember anything that makes james alive and all he can remember is the corpse he’d seen that day, just a few days before his twenty-second birthday, untouched laying on the ground, so untouched he could have mistaken it for his sleeping form if not for his eyes open and brown and devoid of life. he rots away at azkaban, decides to rot away in there because the more he thinks about it the more he feels that is the right place for him, he decided to switch with peter, he is the reason his friends are dead, he deserves every nightmare filled night and dirty look from the minister each time he visits. and then, one day, he sees it. his reason to escape. peter alive and relatively well off on the front page of the daily prophet written down in ink the promise he will be at hogwarts in the near september, the same place his godson, his harry will be and he cannot take it anymore, he escapes.
he sees harry, alone in the streets after running away from his muggle family and that feels so, so familiar. he sees harry longing after a broomstick and there is so much of james in that. he is at hogwarts and hiding under the bleachers of the quidditch field and he gets to see how skilled his harry is, he’s all james, there is so much of james in the way he holds himself on his broom, in the air, and in the way it is so apparent he loves playing.
when he finally, finally, gets pettigrew, and the rest, alone in the shrieking shack he can finally taste it, the revenge he’s been agonising for over a decade, his chance to avenge james and lily. remus shows up, snape shows up and the kids knock him out cold and that is probably the best night sirius has had in the past twelve years because his godson, his harry believes his innocence and he is about to finally avenge james, with remus.
harry stops them, he doesn’t want them to become murderers and yet again sirius marvels at how much of james is still alive in this small boy, james wouldn’t have wanted that either.
they leave the shack with a promise of making him a free man, finally, and with a smaller promise, just between him and harry, to finally be together once this is all over, to be a family, just the two of them. everything he’s ever wanted is so close, getting his revenge, getting back his freedom, getting to be a family with harry; it’s almost too good to be true, and it all slips away from his fingers in seconds.
suddenly pettigrew is gone, and he is locked up waiting for the kiss, to say goodbye to the soul that had kept him anchored to sanity all those years and say goodbye to all the promises made mere minutes prior. and harry is saving him again, helping him out, setting him free. those promises still cannot be kept but that’s alright, because harry knows he is innocent and they will figure something out, they always do.
he lives on the run, he lives in a small hideout near hogsmeade while worried sick because that dumbledore bastard couldn’t possibly find a way to pull harry out of that bloody tournament, could he? and suddenly voldemort is back.
voldemort is back and sirius is stuck inside the house he had grown to hate, the house he had desperately escaped when he was just a kid. he hears his mother’s yells and has to look at the tapestry with his missing face and hear his elf remind him of everything he’s hated and everything that has tormented him. the walls bear memories he’d rather throw away and burn and harry is in danger.
harry is in constant danger, everyone is in danger and he can’t do anything to help. when news struck that harry is in the department of mysteries, facing off death eaters, he doesn’t care anymore, doesn’t care for orders because dumbledore’s orders have never been his priority, harry is.
he shows up, finally, and he gets to save harry, stand up for him, and fight by his side for the last time before his own very cousin, a member of the family that has done so much damage and harm to him all of his life, puts an end to his life.
he dies with a smile on his face, ghost of a laughter still present as harry watches the last part of a family he never got to have die forever. and just like that sirius is gone.
he didn’t get to avenge james and lily, he didn’t get to be a free man again, he didn’t get to raise harry, or to be a family with him. just like that his life is over and only ten of those excruciating thirty-six years haven’t been absolute torture for him.
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