Stories
@blackinnonmicros
word count:661
It deals with themes of grief and the death of a close relative; read it at your own risk.
The smoke from the fireplace rose slowly, as if it, too, were in mourning. Sirius slumped into the armchair, his eyes swollen from crying, his jaw clenched, as if he were still fighting his own demons. Marlene watched him from the doorway, not daring to speak. “He’s dead,” he said, without looking at her. “Regulus.”
Marlene stepped forward slowly and sat down beside him. She didn’t try to comfort him with empty words; she knew Sirius hated easy sympathy. She simply brushed his hand, and, surprisingly, he didn’t pull it away.
“I always thought it would end this way,” he continued, with a bitter laugh. “But not so soon. Not so… alone.”
The fire crackled. Sirius closed his eyes, and then, as if he needed to cling to something other than anger, he began to speak.
“When we were kids, Regulus followed me everywhere. I was the oldest, the rebel, the one who defied my parents. He… he was different. He wanted to please them. But even so, he sought me out.”
Marlene nodded, listening intently.
“Do you know what she always did?” said Sirius, with a smile that quickly faded. “She’d sneak into my room at night, even though she knew that if we were caught, we’d both be punished. She’d ask me to tell her stories. ‘Tell me something, Sirius,’ she’d say. And I’d make up stories.”
Sirius’s voice cracked, but he continued.
“I’d tell him about dragons living on the rooftops of Grimmauld Place, about secret passageways leading to an enchanted forest. I’d tell him that one day we’d run away together, that we’d fly far away on a magical motorcycle. He’d laugh—he believed me.”
Marlene squeezed his hand.
“He always wanted to believe in you,” she whispered.
Sirius nodded, his eyes shining.
“Once, I told him that the portraits in the house weren’t cursed—that they were actually guardians protecting a hidden treasure. We spent hours searching for that treasure. We never found it, of course. But Regulus looked at me as if I were capable of anything.”
The silence returned, heavy. Sirius took a deep breath.
“And then we grew up. I left; he stayed. I hated him for that. I thought he’d chosen to be like them. But now… now I realize that maybe he was just trapped. That maybe he still believed in my stories, even though he couldn’t live them.”
Marlene looked at him tenderly.
“Maybe those stories were the only thing that kept him alive for so long.”
Sirius laughed—a harsh sound.
“Do you know which one was his favorite? The one about the fire butterfly. He used to tell him that if he ever felt lonely, a butterfly would appear to guide him to me.” He looked for it in the garden, in the hallways. He never found it.
He brought his hands to his face, and for the first time, he let the tears fall.
“And now I wonder… what if he did find it? What if, at the very last moment, that butterfly led him to do the right thing?”
Marlene hugged him tightly, as if she could hold him steady in the midst of the storm.
“Stories don’t die, Sirius. They live on in you. And now in me, too.”
He looked at her, his eyes filled with pain and gratitude.
“Do you want to hear them?” he asked, almost like a child.
Marlene smiled.
“All of them.”
And so, in the middle of the night, Sirius retold the stories of dragons, hidden treasures, and fire butterflies. Stories he had created for a lost brother and that he now shared with the woman who held him close. These stories were his way of keeping Regulus alive—a way of not letting the darkness erase him entirely.
As he spoke, with the words filling the air, Sirius felt the weight on his chest grow a little lighter. Because the stories, in the end, were all that remained. And they were enough.
