Even as a girl I thought he was the strong one. My cousin Sirius was always laughing, always defiant and never backing down. My sisters and I had to obey. Even Regulus, else we'd be broken; destroyed by our parents. But Sirius...his parents tried, but he refused to be broken, the fire in his eyes was never dimmed by them, he would not be broken.
So while the four of us would play, he would be punished for whatever misdeed he'd done this time. Through the walls of the playroom we could often hear the high pitched shrieking of our Aunty and the lower pitched rumble of Uncle as they ranted about Family Pride and how Sirius was no son of theirs. Then would come the muffled thumps, or the sound of rattling chains somewhere buried in the depths of the house.
We ignored it. Cowards that we were, we were just glad it wasn't one of us. We were weak, unable to speak up for what was right, toeing the line, like the good little purebloods we were expected to be. We ate nicely, kept our fine clothes clean, sat up straight and spoke only when we were spoken too. Sirius didn't and secretly we all wished we could be strong like him. But we weren't. We accepted the chains put upon us, we didn't even try to fight them like Sirius did, pushing them off in an attempt to be who he wanted to be.
As we got older, things still stayed the same. Eleven years old he sat under the sorting hat and shocked the whole school by going into Gryffindor, soon becoming fast friends with James Potter, a boy from one of the lightest families in Britain. Us four? Well, we did as expected; we were sorted into Slytherin, made alliances with other rich purebloods and sneered at the other houses in a suitably disgusted manner. Even away from our parents we were bound by what was expected of us, if not from fear of punishment, then fear of our fellow snakes.
Then, even later, after the fall of My Lord, when Sirius was dragged into Azkaban, shouting that he was innocent, he never went insane. I shivered, backing myself into the corner, so desperate to remember. I just wanted to remember what used to make me happy... wondering if I ever was happy. I dreamt of freedom, or at least what I thought of as freedom...in my imaginings there were no fields of grass, no seaside paradise, the sand in my toes or the breeze in my hair. No, I couldn't imagine them because I never experienced such things. To me, my freedom was in glowing red eyes, the screams of children and the flashing green light reflected in scared and hopeless eyes.
But while I whimpered and wailed, screaming as all my hopes and dreams poured into the rattling mouth of each new dementor, he was curled up in the corner somehow immune to them, doing the bloody crossword. That rankled me I'll admit. I who had killed many was unable to stand it, and yet, somehow, he was still stronger, still better than me.
But in the end Andromeda ran away, settled down with a boring, plain muggle called Ted; Narcissa became the trophy wife to Lucius, but me? I killed, I tortured, I suffered and screamed. Oh yes, how I screamed. But as I watched Sirius fly backwards towards the softly swaying, almost hypnotic veil hanging in the stone archway, I felt a fiery exultation build within me. Finally, I was stronger than him. After years of being weak, cowardly and inferior, I was, at last, the best.
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As he fell backwards, his eyes filling with horror and realisation, she knew that she really was the strongest now. And so she laughed, and laughed and laughed.