Late at night (or is it early in the morning?), Sirius Black sits by a dying fire in the Gryffindor common room and twiddles a quill between his fingers. Nominally, he is studying for the charms exam they have tomorrow, but he’s not actually accomplishing anything-- hasn’t been for some time. He supposes he should got to bed, but the chair is comfortable annd the fire is warm, and it would take more energy than he has to extricate himself from his piles of notes to go upstairs.
It’s moments like this when he’s homesick.
For all that he departed dramatically last summer, swearing never to return, Sirius Black misses his family. He misses the camaraderie between cousins. He misses the pride in his father’s smile. He remembers being defended by Bellatrix and defending little Reggie in turn, and he misses that, too.
And then he feels guilty for it, just like he feels guilty for the first few months of first year when mudblood tripped off his tongue with ease, and the shame and guilt and bitternerness settle heavy in his gut, a roiling, twisting mass that makes him want to puke. Or perhaps that’s the firewhiskey.
The quill goes spinning off his fingers to land atop The Evolution of Wand Techniques in the 19th Century, resting complacently beside a crumpled piece of parchment and a suspicious Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bean. It’s a stupid trick, the spinning, that he learnt at James’s over the summer, but it works better on muggle pens. On quills, it doesn’t work at all, really, because nothing in his life ever does, it’s all just trash and he’s probably going to fail this stupid test that he can’t even be bothered to study for. Suddenly, irrationally, he’s angry, because he’s a Black by birth, and that carries a legacy he’ll never escape. From his perfect penmanship to his fluent Latin (Latin, for Merlin’s sake, it’s bloody useless), he was raised a Black to die a Black, and he is terribly, horribly afraid that without that, he is nothing.
He wishes one of his mates would come downstairs so he wouldn’t feel so alone. Then he doesn’t, because here he is fretting about dead languages and cursive, which is stupid, the fretting not the cursive, he means. Absently, he notes that the fire is well and truly out now, and he is cold. Glancing down at the text in his lap, he tries to focus, but the words slip through his grasp, gone so quick, just like Bellatrix’s sanity and Andromeda’s smile and Narcissa’s kindness. His head falls forward to meet his fist, and he groans, because he is definitely going to fail.
Footsteps on the stairs, but he’s to numb to care. Raising his head, he sees not James or Remus or Peter, but Lily Evans, the girl who stole his best mate. He’s instantly defensive. He’d rather not have company, least of all the girly kind that pries and prods and can’t leave well enough alone. He waits for her to say something, but to his surprise, she does not, just takes the seat across from him and mirrors his attitude, staring at the fire.
They sit like that for a while.
Almost without any conscious decision, he finds himself talking, all the muddled-up messes of his life flooding out in one great rush. He doubts it makes any sense, yet she just sits there and listens and doesn’t interrupt, and for that, he is grateful. When he is finished, she offers no other comment but, “I’m sorry,” and he wonders when she learned to understand grief. For the first time, he thinks maybe he understands what James sees in this girl.
It turns out that Evans knows quite a bit about Charms. Her explanations makes much more sense to him that Flitwick’s, which are, to his view, overly theoretical. Before he expects it, the sun is rising in a flurry of reds and oranges, sending rays of sunlight through the curtains. Lily stumbles upstairs to shower; he, downstairs, in search of breakfast. He is halfway thorugh his toast when he realizes that he never thanked her, but it is alright, because somehow he’s sure she knows. His mates join him at breakfast. Peter has blue hair-- he wonders how that happened-- and James’ tie is crooked, just like his smile, and it’s perfectly imperfect. In between bites, he thinks that this is as good a family as he’ll ever need.
also another article I wrote about how I viewed Sony’s E3 conference. if you wanna check that out, do that. Also if you missed it, I did include a link on it to the youtube video of the entire conference.
The rocking chair swayed in the middle of the room. Back and forth, back and forth. A large, faded window looks across a dirty backyard. A phonograph, stands in the corner, thin spider webs wrapped around it, causing it to shimmer when the sun shown against it. Soft, quite music played from the dusty brass horn. Music ran over the white walls and out the creek of the old fashioned door. Quick steps ran up the stairs, the heel tapping the creaking floor. The feet ran down the hall and stopped in front of the door. A tarnished door handle turned to the right and creaked open. A little girl, around the age of 6 walked into the dawn filled room and straight toward the rocking chair. As the rocking chair continued swaying, the girl stood in front of it. A faint sound came from her lips, ‘’I couldn’t find the object, granny.’’
Her deep, green eyes were fixed on the empty rocking chair as it stopped swaying. Everything was quite so the girl immediately added on, ‘’but maybe daddy hid it…’’ A quick rush of air hit her face like something had slapped her and her eyes watered. Pink, shaped lips began to shiver and her breathing turned loud and deep. A thought came to her; like someone planted it in her mind and she pushed herself to the wall. Scratching the wallpaper away, black writing appeared beneath it and she stared at it. ‘’I am very disappointed in you,’’ as she whispered the words to herself, the rocking chair started swaying again. Tears ran down her white face as she fell to the floor and clapped her hands together. ‘’Please forgive me, granny. I will do anything…’’ Suddenly a little yellow cylindrical object appeared on the floor next to the girl's face. It was plastic and smooth along the edges. Her foggy eyes slowly researched the object and her fingers raced towards it. Her fingers traced the lines on the object and suddenly she realized what it was. A kaleidoscope. She picked it up with her little shaking fingers and looked through it. Everything looked different. Like another world. She turned the first slide and everything turned. Her green eyes were glowing, amazed to see anything other than this. In the world she was looking at there was no pain, no feeling sorry, nothing like this.
