HARRY IS SILENT FOR A MOMENT, and he wonders what his father would say, how he would act. There is a thought of bravado and arrogance that crosses Harry’s mind ; anything to cover the fear, the hopelessness. To break through the heaviness that has taken over, and is slowly suffocating the world. Squeezing it dry until all life has bled away. His gut turns. Harry shrugs. Sighs. Tips his head back and closes his eyes. He is not his father. Harry has come to realize that the closest he’ll ever get to him is through Sirius. Through Sirius’ eyes and love.
❝ I’m afraid. ❞ His voice is rough when he speaks. The truth of his emotions is being choked out of him. Harry’s hands curl into fists on his thighs. He turns his gaze to Sirius. ❝ I’m too tired to pretend to be happy during another dinner — and I was thinking about your brother, who he was, what made this room feel so desperate, so sad. ❞ There is music being played downstairs now, and it climbs the stairs, Harry wants to close to door.
There is an anger in him, at Ron, at the others. He wants to scream and punch, he wants to hurt. Not truly. But when the shadows along the walls begin to tighten their hold on him, he doesn’t know how else to fight them away. His parents are dead, and how does he not know that he isn’t supposed to join them soon. Harry thinks that it may not be that bad. He doesn’t fear death necessarily, it is the destruction and the pain that reverberates around it. An un-winnable war that is spiraling out of control.
❝ Do you miss your brother? ❞ Both Remus and Sirius have remarked about James being a brother to them, but what of Sirius’ blood brother. The one who slept upon the bed they are sitting on. The one who’s hands moved along the furniture and the walls of this house the way Harry’s do. Who’s voice used to carry along the hallways and who’s life was threaded into the very fabric of this foundation. Harry needs to know.
Fear is something Sirius understands intimately. He spent years fighting in a war, and then twelve more locked in a prison cell with every terrible memory he had brought to the forefront of his mind, over and over again. Detementors are not known for their generosity and kindness, after all. Still, Sirius doesn’t know what to say to Harry at his admission. ‘I understand’ is trite and not entirely true, and anything else feels like it would only be patronizing. “You don’t have to pretend,” Sirius settles on finally, and shifts on the old mattress to rest a thin hand one of Harry’s shoulders. “You know that, yeah? No one here expects you to not be afraid.” Not when they all know the burdens that have landed squarely on this young man’s shoulders.
When the subject turns to Regulus, Sirius blinks in surprise. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that particular question, and he’s not sure he has an answer -- not one that paints him in any decent light, anyway. Stormy eyes drift over the room, and Sirius chews for a moment at the chapped surface of his lower lip, considering. “You have to understand, Harry,” he says quietly, staring toward one of the covered windows. “Regulus and I were never very close. He was everything my mother wanted in a son, and I was the rebel. And Reg saw me the same way my parents did, and made no secret of the fact.” He considers again, then adds, “When we were very young, though, that wasn’t true. So I suppose I miss the people we were then, the boy he was then, more than anything.”
Sirius blows out a breath, then smiles half-heartedly. “Your dad was always more of a brother to me than Reg was. I never really stopped to consider who that left Regulus with, though.” A pang of regret runs through the older man’s chest, and he grimaces. “Maybe things would have turned out differently if I hadn’t abandoned him to them.” To their parents. To the Death Eaters, to Voldemort. Sirius will never know the answer, and he supposes that is just something he’ll have to live with. It doesn’t worry him over much; with all the other sins to his name, abandoning his brother is sadly minor.
