So Close, Yet Miles Away
I had known Sirius since I was eleven years old. He always astounded me, even if, at the time, I didn't like him. He always was so interesting, so composed, so…different. It fascinated me. But he was a Black, a member of possibly the darkest family in our generation. How could I like someone like him? The very thought was absurd. I had been told my entire life that his family was bad, so why change my view then? Not even after he was sorted into Gryffindor did I talk to him. At least, not for a while.
Then I got to know him and we became friends, no, best friends. We would do everything together, prank the Slytherins, laugh at each others jokes, disrupt the classes…everything. However, Sirius never lost that mysterious hold over me. He would always be the one who always had a dazzling smile, always never seemed to lose his calm composure, and he would never just blend into the crowd. And despite all of our similarities, I knew that we would never be alike in the slightest bit. We were so close, yet miles apart.
Then,in the third year,I learned of his home life. The life that he tried so hard to mask with a shrug and a joke, a laugh and a smile. His life was hell, to put it gently. His parents were cruel, they yelled at him and hit him. They misunderstood him and persecuted him for being different.Yet, through it all, he remained the things that always captured my attention, interesting, composed, and…different, the very reasons that madehis parents soloathed him. I hated how he had to suffer at home and I desperately wished that I could help him. But what could I, a spoiled only child with loving parents, possibly do for him, an outcast with a "perfect" little brother and parents who hated him?
So I did the only thing I could do. I comforted him. Through the unshed tears, the forced laughter, the distracting jokes, the pointless pranks…I comforted him. I knew he was falling apart by the internal pain he was going through. It was all a joke, a lie, a good deception. His life was no more than a painful charade that he felt the need to put up. I tried to help him see that it wasn't necessary, but emotions were forbidden for Blacks. I learned that, but I couldn't understand it. There were so many things I couldn't understand about his life, so many things that just seemed…so different they were out of this world. I could never understand what had been engraved into his mind over the past few years, never in my entire life. We were so close, yet miles away.
So, it was the summer before our sixth year when things got interesting. Sirius always came over for some amount of the break. That was just how things were. This year he was supposed to come at the end of the break. My parents absolutely adored Sirius. Who could really blame them? They hated his parents and wished that they could help. But they, like me, knew that it would not be even possible for them to first comprehend what he was going through and then help him sort through his own emotions. Our family was just so different from his. We were so close, yet miles away.
Much to our surprise, Sirius came to our house a month earlier than he was supposed to. Opening the door, I was the first to see what a horrible statehe was in. Blood streamed from a wound on his cheek, a bruise was on his arm, and his eyes had a dull look about them, one that I had never seen on my friend before. It hurt…it burned, it physically ached to see Sirius Black like that. To see Sirius Black hurt and broken.Sirius Black. The person who always had a smile for anyone, who always seemed so calm, whomarched to the beat of his own drummer, was standing on my doorstep trying to hold back tears, seeming to be at emotional turmoil with the world, and looked like anyone else who had gone through any amount of pain or suffering…only a little bit extreme. That was one thing Sirius Black would always be, extreme.
I invited him in and got my mother immediately. She started tending to his wounds, and when she was done she gave him a tight hug, telling him that he was more than welcome in our house for as long as he wanted. He cried. He just sobbed, letting everything out that he had been holding in for the sixteen years of his life. He cried as if his heart were breaking, as if he were holding onto life by a thin thread of hope. I just watched, afraid, shocked, andfilled with sorrow.My friend…my strong friend, the one who seemed to accept life and the way things were without question, seeming to not care what happened to him. Here he was, proving my assumptions wrong as I watched him cry. It wasthe first time I had seen him cry.
Everything I had ever thought of Sirius came crashing down. I wasn't sure if I was disappointed or not. It just didn't seem possible, completely unrealistic, as if I were suddenly in a dream sequence. For six years he had shown no trace of a negative emotion and here he was…sobbing in my mother's arms. In a mother's arms, something he had never experienced before. It was then I completely understood my friend, which was shocking to me. He wanted what everyone else did. He wanted to be loved, accepted, and cared for. He wanted parents like mine who would comfort him when he was sad, laugh with him when he was happy, and listen to him when he was talkative. Sirius Black was simply human, nothing special, just human, different in his own special way. I smiled slightly at this thought and moved forward to comfort my friend. Maybe we weren't so close, yet miles away. Maybe we were as close as we were going to get. And that was just fine with me.
A.N. there was a nifty little short story. Um…please review if you liked it in the slightest bit, and please review if you didn't like it at all. Thank you!