There were always whispers about there being a certain madness passed down throughout the Black family. Sirius had never paid it much thought. To him, it seemed like an excuse someone deep within the ancestral tree had conjured up for being a terrible fucking person that was later twisted to be projected on those that turned their backs on pureblood society. He’d heard the jagged comments before he left: Andromeda’s gone a bit mad, hasn’t she? No one in their right mind would marry a muggle. Essentially, he used to think that the “Black Family Madness” was bullshit. But after the past year, he’s starting to wonder if there was some validity in the old wives’ tale. Paranoia was an old friend. He was used to seeing shadows in corners full of light, to suspecting those with a record far cleaner than his own. Hypervigilance was a character trait by now (oh how proud Moody must be), but over the past few months, paranoia had begun to feel less like ghosts and more like a genuine threat. He’d be more than happy to fight it off, turn it to cinders with the swish of his wand, but it looked too much like her. Marlene McKinnon was dead. He’d buried her, and he’d drunk his way through her funeral to the point he was hoping he just wouldn’t wake in the morning. Yet she haunted him. She showed up in his dreams first, and he’d been able to meet her like an old friend. He’d told Lily, and she’d sworn that it was a coping mechanism of sorts, nothing to worry about. But then she started to materialize in other places. The corner of the Leaky, atop the stairs to his flat. She never looked quite herself, and Sirius began to accept that perhaps the key to Black Madness was loss coupled with an inability to let go. He learned to live with her ghost. When Dumbledore suggested he take the mission to America, Sirius didn’t expect to carry her ghost with him. And for the first month, he didn’t. Feet on new ground, a purpose spread in front of him for the first time in months, he felt more centered than he had in ages. Maybe it was the beginning of moving on, or maybe he was mentally stealing himself for the next loss of his life. He may have been disowned from the Black family, but he’d never lost his glaringly affectionate spot for Regulus. He’d been sent to retrieve the Horcrux at all costs, yet there was a small part of him that was holding out for the possibility of making an even greater difference. Whatever the reason, Sirius had peace. It was him, the Norton, and weeks of tracking his brother from town to town. It was him stopping at various wizarding libraries to see if he could uncover any new information on the nature of Horcrux’s. It was him getting his life back together -- and then she started appearing again. But she was different this time, less translucent, less willing to stay in one spot. He only caught glimpses of her before she was gone again. This time, he wasn’t living with her ghost: he was running from it. The paranoia settled in yet again, and he felt as if he were the one being tracked. He wouldn’t put it past Regulus to try a trick like this to shake him off the trail, yet Sirius plowed forward, devoting all his energy to the chase in hopes it would relieve whatever was after him. It worked, until it didn’t. It was the anniversary of Marlene’s funeral, one year of life without her, and Sirius took himself out of commission. It was a joint on the corner, a bottle of vodka from a gas station, and a cheap hotel room with a television set inside. He turned the volume up so loud that his neighbor came banging at the door. For five minutes, he ignored it, yet anger began to mount within him as the banging continued. Didn’t they know he was far too gone to care about niceties? “Hey, asshole!” Well, if the fight came to him. Sirius sprang from the bed and swung open the door, brow cocked and head tilted. “What?” he asked. Then he saw her. It was just a flash of dark hair that quickly stepped inside a door on the ground floor, but he knew it was her. His neighbor was still shouting at him, but Sirius pushed passed him roughly. “Fuck, mate. Go on in and turn it off if you want, see if I care,” he said just before running down the stairs and across the parking lot. He paid no mind to room numbers or privacy, just tried the door immediately. Locked. It was locked. Someone was in there, someone that looked startlingly like her. He slipped his wand from his back pocket and cast a quick alohomora under his breath. The lock clicked, and he stepped inside. Her. It was her. After a year, after running, after moving on, her ghost was back. And this time it wanted nothing to do with him. There was irony in that, how he’d chased her for years before her disappearance and how he was chasing her even now, in the afterlife. Between such cruel irony and the vodka, he laughed. He even dared to take a seat on the bed, making himself at home, because he knew she’d be gone again in an instant. “I thought I’d finally shaken you, Kitten.”
