Disclaimer: they don't belong to me.
It's easy to cry.
I don't mean that it's easy to weep, but that it's easy to cry. Subtle difference.
I've cried. I try not to make a habit of it, but I'll say that much. I've cried.
It's harder for me now, in here. I cried the first night I spent here, really cried, as in the floods-of-tears, cry-yourself-dry full blown sobs. But not without reason.
I was in mourning, for them. For my almost-brother, and my almost-sister-in-law. But not just them, no, but for my lover and close friend.
For another too. Not that he deserves my tears, rare as they are, no. But for how I believed he'd been. The person I thought he was, the person he could've, no should've been. The person I thought I knew, way back when, I thought was my friend.
We were never as close as we should have been; never had that relationship that the rest of us shared- where we knew the other better than we could claim to know ourselves. But we were close, or so I thought. I suppose in seventh year, we drifted a bit- I had the protective thing going on, protecting my almost-brother not to mention balancing that with exam stress and a blossoming relationship. I was panicky all the time, stressed out. I was trying so hard to keep my best friend from falling. Because I knew without me, without us, he would fall, and it would hurt.
In a time when I probably should have been protecting and looking after my interests and myself I was protecting someone else's. My grades (low at the best of times) were slipping and gods knew my health was ebbing with them. Teachers looked like they understood, some of them anyway, but it was only their pity I saw. Pity was something I could never cope with. So used to being my own person, and being damned good at it, I came to rely on him, my brother. We were holding each other up, but it was inevitable that soon one would fall, and the other with him. When school ended, I felt relieved. I didn't consider for a moment that maybe I needed that environment- I had no family; instead I had friends who acted as my family. But leaving there meant leaving that family and that was when I started to decline. I got through my apprenticeship because my friends were still pretty closely knit around me- we all went to the same college, and we shared rooms (two to each) right beside each other.
We finished college 3 months early, and I was made an integral person to my almost-brother. I was the only person standing between his family and certain death. Cunningly, or so I thought, I switched with someone, and kept a watch from a little more distanced post, watching the protector, helping to protect him as well as those he was protecting. I took my eye off the ball for one second and lo! The ball is gone.
So I hunted down the protector. He squealed all sorts of lies at me, spewing his venom to the people around. Then he disappeared, off into the night to somewhere I couldn't reach him.
Nobody thought I was innocent. Convicted without a trial, I was in prison before I turned 20.
So here I am, telling this to you, at the ripe age of 23. I should be out and looking after my godson – my almost-brother's baby – but I'm not.
I am a man with a story to tell; and so I will present it, with the hope of belief and a trial so I can be released. This is my story, but first I must make you understand one thing.
My name is Sirius Black, and I'm an innocent man