The Blacker Side of Light
In 3rd Year, when Marlene McKinnon grabbed Sirius' hand as they watched James careen wildly around the Quidditch Pitch during the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match, she felt the thick scar that crawled from the inside of his palm up to just below the thin skin of his elbow.
Brushing her fingers along his arm, she leaned close, and whispered under the roar of the crowd, "Sirius? What happened?"
Sirius didn't take his eyes off James' tiny form as it darted across his vision, pretending with all his 13-year-old might to focus on his best friend, and not the question the prettiest girl in the year had just asked him.
"Well, McKinnon," he said, grinning, as Sirius knew he would, if what he was going to say wasn't actually a great flaming lie. "It's Black family tradition. Before you go to Hogwarts, you've got to fight off a manticore." He lifted the arm she still grasped. "That's the result of the fight."
She had believed him, at least a little bit, because who knew, exactly, what the Black family might do to its scion and heir, and anyway, Sirius Black himself was impossible and absurd, so it did not tax the imagination to picture him doing something as impossible and absurd as fighting a manticore.
Sirius, desperate to get himself away from Marlene's question and the memories it prodded at, wrapped his fingers around her arm and dragged her out of the stands. They tripped over their classmates and Sirius leered outgrageously as they stumbled down the steps, letting everyone know that he was bored with Quidditch and had better, more grown-up things to attend to.
Because talking about his scars made him feel the way he had when he got them; powerless, and helpless, and always afraid that more would be coming for him, ready to leap out at him when he least expected it. He wanted to feel like the opposite of that. So, he pulled Marlene deep under the stands, into the darkest corner, and pressed her up against the splintery wood, feeling her body curve into his, as he forced her against the wall.
"Sirius..." she gasped, and then his lips were on her neck and his hand was pushing her hands above her head and holding them there and his other hand was unbuttoning her robes and he was licking his way down the slope of her breast and she was panting with pleasure. She could feel Sirius grinning against her skin and whispering her name as he moved his mouth, and she shuddered, forgetting everything but the deliciousness of the moment. Which was exactly Sirius' goal.
Just before the end of 4th Year, when Eleanor Bones unbuttoned the last button of his wrinkled white shirt, which always hung so carelessly from his frame, she found the scar that looped around his bellybutton and disappeared into the trousers that rested on his hips. She traced her fingers down the line of the scar, and looked at him, a question forming on her lips.
"Slytherin duel," he told her, hoping that would be enough, wondering why girls always wanted to know, why they had this insatiable desire to understand the things that happened around them, instead of simply living them and not really ever doing any sort of thinking about them.
"Ohh, from earlier this year?" she asked, and Sirius shivered as she lowered her head to rest it on his hip, her lips and tongue only inches away from his scar.
" Course, Ellie. From when the Marauders took on the pathetic Slytherin Quidditch team who wanted to put James out of commission for the match."
"Why didn't Madam Pomfrey heal it?" Her eyes widened. "Were their curses that Dark, that she couldn't fix it?"
Sirius laughed. It wouldn't do to give the Slytherins too much credit. "Not even a little bit. I wanted to keep it. A battle-scar, you know."
"Right, Sirius. But wha-"
Sirius groaned softly. "I'm bored of talking about this," he announced, and suddenly flipped Eleanor off his body and on to her back. She was still wearing her white shirt and wool skirt and nylons, and Sirius was suddenly frantic to have her just as exposed as he was, which would, he felt, require a lot more nakedness on her part than on his.
With a flick of his wrist he ripped open her shirt, smirking as the buttons pinged and clattered across the 4th-year Gryffindor Boys' room. He kissed away her protest, and ran his hands up her thighs, stroking and rubbing the smooth curve of her legs. Deftly, he pulled her nylons down her legs in one swift motion, and trailed his fingers back up her thighs, pausing just at the edge of her bunched up skirt, giving her the semblance of a choice.
"You want me stop, Ellie?" he murmured, taking the edge of her skirt in his teeth, letting her feel his breath as he inched it up her body. He could see the thin skin of her thighs trembling, and he chuckled, deep in his throat. She had completely forgotten about his scar.
After the Welcome Feast, at the beginning of 5th Year, after Amelia Marchbanks yanked him into the perpetually out of order girl's toilet on the 2nd floor and nearly ripped his trousers down his legs, she, as she dropped to her knees in front of him, found the ridged scar that traveled from the edge of his knee up his thigh to his hipbone.
She gasped, and pulled back, clearly startled by the angry cavern that raced its way up Sirius' leg.
Tentatively, she brushed her lips against it, steadying herself with her hands on his hips, and murmured, "what happened here, Sirius, love?"
Sirius scrubbed his hands against his eyes, and exhaled. The topic wasn't open for discussion, and he knew Amelia Marchbanks only well enough to cheat off of her in Herbology. Even James, who Sirius knew like he knew his own skin, had never gotten a straight answer off Sirius. Maybe James deserved one, but this girl staring hungrily up at him deserved nothing, and anyway Sirius wanted to never talk about this again, so he muttered, "an accident, Vivian," and put his hands behind her head and gently pulled her forward.
He winced when her nails dug into the tender skin of his hips and she jerked her head back.
"My name is Amelia, you twat," she informed him, obviously furious he'd forgotten.
"Whatever," Sirius said. "Can you just suck me off already?"
Her mouth dropped open and she leapt to her feet, stumbling in her desire to get away from him.
"Fuck you, Sirius Black," she nearly shrieked, and fled from the bathroom, already in tears.
"Sorry, Amelia," Sirius whispered to the empty bathroom, dropping his head to avoid the sad grey eyes of the boy in the mirrors that hung across from him.
There were no storied and traditional Hogwarts initiations in the Black family; Sirius' scars were the results of mundane things. He'd gotten one when he crashed a toy broom with Regulus on the back; he'd gotten another when he tossed a chess queen through the parlor window after Regulus had defeated him; he'd gotten the thick scar that stretched down his leg from falling out of a magnolia tree and into his mother's favorite rose garden.
His mother had Healed all of the minor bumps and bruises he sustained in the falls and accident, and patched up the parlor window; she had made sure he was perfectly healthy and whole, before she turned her wand on him in punishment. Sirius' scars were the consequences for (not of, and the distinction is so important) the mundane accidents of his childhood. And that certainly didn't fit with his carefully cultivated rebel-without-a-care (but with a cause) image, so he just didn't tell anyone.
Boys never asked, and if they did, telling them to shove off once was enough. Girls were more insistent; they wanted to know your history and your stories and they wanted to crawl around inside your head and talk about everything they found there. And that simply wasn't an option for Sirius.
Sirius Black had a whole swath of girls he kissed in corners and fondled under desks and fucked in empty classrooms, but very few of them ever came back. And he was fine with that. His skin was nice and thick.