A tall man with dark hair that swung into his tanned face barked with
laughter as he dodged yet another green light from the lady in front of
him. It was amazing how alike they looked; yet, there was a dark gleam
that loomed in the lady's charcoal eyes, which didn't exist in the man's
eyes. With another stroke of her wand, a flashing blue light sped out and
darted towards the man, who easily leaned to one side in order to block it.
" That the best you can do, Bella?" The man scoffed at her in only a way that he could. He had always been on his cousin's nerves, ever since he gave her identity up as a Death Eater, and now she wanted him dead.
" Not at all Black, not at all...." A cynical grin spread onto the lady's thin, pretty face while her sunken in eyes glared with the utmost sincerity. The two rounded about each other, but only the lady, Bella, had her wand out. Black obviously needed one, as she continued to shoot spells at him, sometimes missing him by centimeters. Light after light, the man dodged it, sometimes the end of the spark would hit his hair, causing a simmering sizzle at the end of the raven strands of hair. But even as Bella drew closer, cornering him, Black still laughed.
The thin man was bent over, moving slowly, only speeding up when a light came towards him. Occasionally his head would turn to look at a young boy who was teetering the edge of the thought of jumping towards him. Another man held the boy by the arm, refusing to let go. The boy kept screaming a name, " Sirius!"
' Now you've gotten the boy attached have you, Blackie?" The woman neared him with every step she took. The irony in her babyish voice tore at the man, reminding him of days when his cousin Bella hadn't been on the dark side, she had been innocent. With a sneaky grin, the man pulled out a wand from behind his back and pointed it at Bella.
" Think I'd go against you without a wand now? How stupid do you think I am?" With that he shot out a spell that missed her by millimeters, causing her to squeal like a frightened child and back away a few feet. Her eyes widened, and a confused look overpowered her thin, wasted face. For a few fine seconds she looked at the ground, her face drenched in sweat, and her arms down. She looked as if she'd given up, and Sirius gave into that. Slowly and warily he lowered his wand, laughing slightly, he thought he had won.
The pursed lips of Bellatrix LeStrange opened just slightly to mutter a curse, a deadly curse that was sure to hit her cousin, which she detested. A smoky mist swept up from the tips of her fingers, which gripped her wand, and spun clockwise; it was a tornado of death that lingered ever so closer to Sirius. It sped up, twisting itself into a tight spiral and becoming a jet of light. Sirius, in his ignorance, had not seen this, and was facing the boy to show him he was alright- that he had won. As he turned back around with laughter filling his tight face the spell hit him square in the chest.
The man, Sirius Black, took a deep breath like he was getting ready to dive into water, but the breath was scattered. His dark eyes widened with shock while his feet danced around the floor, stumbling and tripping over them. Through his lips, which were turning a deathly blue, he whispered his last words.
" I'm so sorry, Harry."
His bodies finished shutting down in an instant as he gave weigh to the weight of his body and fell behind the veil he had been battling Bellatrix near. The floor gave a thud as his body hit it, and with that thud the lady let out a cackling laugh at the top of her lungs. It sounded like what Sirius' laugh had sounded like, but darker.
" SIRIUS!" Harry Potter let out a tremendous scream as he saw his Godfather die before his very eyes, only to find out that he had dreamed what he had seen. Still, the horrible images that had played against his eyelids made his shudder violently. With an enormous amount of strength, Harry tried to calm himself down while hoping that the Dursleys did not hear his screams. But sure enough, a raspy, high-pitched voice rang out outside his bedroom door.
" Harry Potter, what on earth is going on?" The shrill voice sent Harry straight up, only to fall out of the bed. He crawled around on the floor for a few moments to find his glasses, which had fallen, off the bedside table during his sleep. After his fingers grasped the rims of his glasses and he had replaced them to their natural place on his face, he answered his Aunt Petunia in a low, quiet tone.
" I'm alright.it was just a dream." His voice still shook with suppressed emotion; he hadn't been dreaming. The dreadful scene that had played back in his head had actually happened. His Godfather, Sirius Black, was dead. Every night since Harry was let out of school he saw the same thing, the same dream. Every time he witnessed the same last words that he could only imagine Sirius having said, since he couldn't hear him when he was killed. Harry had never avenged his Godfather's death; Bellatrix LeStrange had gotten away, or rather Voldemort had taken her away. Harry wished with all her might that the Dark Lord had killed the nasty woman by now. Just the thought of her made his whole body shake with anger. She had killed the one person in the world whom Harry loved most.Sirius.
Aunt Petunia hadn't answered, which could only mean that she had left him alone again. Lupin, Tonks, and Mad-Eye had warned her about keeping Harry locked up. For that Harry was extremely grateful. His room had been flooded with letters from all of his friends, the Order members, and some people he had never come into contact with before. It was all so overwhelming; sometimes he wished that he could be left alone. All the sympathy cards and ' I'm so sorry" letters just made the hole in his stomach grow more rapidly than before. Unlike last summer, he was flooded with news- the Daily Prophet had been coming daily to deliver more news on the immense number of murders that had taken place in the wizarding world. He thought it would make him satisfied to know about what was going on, but the constant headlines of " 20 DIE IN MASSIVE ATTACK" or " VOLDEMORT STRIKES AGAIN" caused Harry's stomach to ache most unpleasantly.
His green eyes covered in black-rimmed glasses peered around the room at the mountain of cards, chocolate frogs, and letters. The straight-lined lips and the bored expression on his face changed gradually to a deep frown as he inspected one letter from his ex-professor and friend to his late Godfather, Remus Lupin. It didn't even mention Sirius in it, but flirted dangerously with the subject of the Animagus. In a few sentences Remus mentioned how Sirius would have wanted him to do this or that. Anger boiled up inside of Harry; how could Lupin know what Sirius wanted for Harry? It wasn't like the two sat down and talked about what he had wanted for Harry just in case he died. He didn't know he going to die. It was Harry's fault. Just the mere thought of this caused Harry's eyes to burn with tears. It wasn't enough that his parents had been taken away from him, but now Sirius, his second father, had been killed protecting Harry. One downcast look at the parcels in his room reminded him of how much he longed for a letter from Sirius to be delivered as it used to. He yearned to hear just a few words from him, and he would give anything for his father like figure to come back to life. To spring up from the veil with a sly grin on his thin, wasted face.
With a few tears trickling down his face, Harry closed his eyes as hard as he could and attempted to shake off the need to cry. He needed to cry, he needed to scream as loud as he could, and he needed Sirius back. Sometimes, he would sit up in his bed staring at the ceiling, talking to Sirius. He knew that he wouldn't talk back, but just to try to get through, to tell him his troubles with Dudley, to spill everything that had been going on to the only one that understood, was comforting. At times he would lie there and close his eyes, imagining Sirius' dark and mischievous face gazing at him and laughing, speaking of Harry's resemblance to James. If anything, Harry promised himself he would never forget Sirius' bark of a laugh, or his lopsided grin, or the way he pranced around like the happiest man of earth when they spent Christmas with him last year. He had to keep alive the spirit of Sirius even if he was gone.
Harry choked slightly on his own tears while wringing his hands together. His train of thought was broken as Aunt Petunia screeched up the stairs that dinner was ready. Weakly, Harry stood and regained his balance before he went to the door. He wasn't hungry, but why ruin the way the Dursleys were treating him? For once, he wasn't the disturbed boy who lived in Dudley's old toy room; he was another boy in the family. In a rather selfish way, he wished that they would go back to hating him. He already felt sorry for himself about losing one of his best friends and mentors, he could add on another few fits of sobs with self-pity to fill the gap in his heart that only his Godfather could fill. In one of Hermione's letters, she had begged him not to feel sorry for himself, and to try his best to put Sirius' death behind him. At first the letter had disgusted him; she was telling him to try to forget such an important person in his life. But in a few weeks time, he had started to understand what she was saying.
With his hand on the wooden rail of the stairway, Harry made his way downstairs and turned to the kitchen where he would attempt to ignore the depression he felt and eat something.
Three pairs of eyes glanced his way as he entered the kitchen. For a few seconds he felt like a circus animal, put on display for others to gawk at. He so badly wanted to snap at them, tell them off for staring at him like he had tentacles growing from his head, but he refrained from the urge and sat himself down. With a fork he prodded his eggs into a pile after nibbling at bits and pieces of the bacon. No one spoke, it was almost silent save the loud smacking of food which was performed so grotesquely by his pig of a cousin.
A glance at his Aunt almost made Harry spit his food out with laughter. She sat impatiently, her lips pursed into a tight line, and her eyes were large white and grey plates. He knew that look. She only gave anyone that look when she wanted to start a conversation she dreaded. Harry saved her her breath as he got up and without asking if he could be excused, left the silent table. Immediately after he left the room a soft chatter started. He had predicted this; all three of the voices he knew so well muttering, no doubt it was about him, or " his kind."
With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, Harry mosied back upstairs to plump onto his bed. The bed shook slightly as he let his body fall down on top of the covers. Hedwig hooted softly at him, but he ignored her. With his face in his pillow, he inhaled and exhaled, hoping that whatever rain cloud that hovered above him would fade. For about twenty minutes he just sat there in the dark of the room, smelling the covers which had just been washed. His eyelids drooped every now and then as his mind and sleep had a tug-of-ward fight.
Through the silence he heard distant voices he knew were not the Dursleys. With one swift movement his head and shoulders were upright and staring out his bedroom window. While cocking his head to one side, Harry slowly and silently got up and tip-tied towards the window. With his hands on the windowsill and his head peering out the window, Harry spotted two figures in Mrs. Figg's side window. They seemed to be arguing. A deep look on interest crossed over Harry's face as he leaned closer, as if trying to reach Mrs. Figg's window from his. That was a mistake. A loose board cracked loudly and with a large THAWP, the board split from the windowsill and dropped into the bushes below.
The sound of the board crashing seemed to slice the silence that inhabited the sleep road. Just as Harry had dreaded, the two figures in the window of Mrs. Figg's house stopped dead in their argument and both stared towards his direction. Harry made a desperate move to get out of the view, but two eyes caught sight of him first. The figure's mouth dropped open at first and muttered something vague that was in no way within hearing distance of Harry. The eyes squinted, now slits in the figure that glowed relentlessly. With piercing eyes on Harry, the figure muttered something else hurridly before turning, disappearing in the house, and running out the front door into the night. A wave of sleep came crashing in on Harry as a tidal wave would, and knocked him straight off his feet into his bed. He fought as hard as he could to keep awake, but sleep prevailed. Before slipping into unconsciousness, he muttered something to himself that he would have to find out.
" What the hell was that?"
" That the best you can do, Bella?" The man scoffed at her in only a way that he could. He had always been on his cousin's nerves, ever since he gave her identity up as a Death Eater, and now she wanted him dead.
" Not at all Black, not at all...." A cynical grin spread onto the lady's thin, pretty face while her sunken in eyes glared with the utmost sincerity. The two rounded about each other, but only the lady, Bella, had her wand out. Black obviously needed one, as she continued to shoot spells at him, sometimes missing him by centimeters. Light after light, the man dodged it, sometimes the end of the spark would hit his hair, causing a simmering sizzle at the end of the raven strands of hair. But even as Bella drew closer, cornering him, Black still laughed.
The thin man was bent over, moving slowly, only speeding up when a light came towards him. Occasionally his head would turn to look at a young boy who was teetering the edge of the thought of jumping towards him. Another man held the boy by the arm, refusing to let go. The boy kept screaming a name, " Sirius!"
' Now you've gotten the boy attached have you, Blackie?" The woman neared him with every step she took. The irony in her babyish voice tore at the man, reminding him of days when his cousin Bella hadn't been on the dark side, she had been innocent. With a sneaky grin, the man pulled out a wand from behind his back and pointed it at Bella.
" Think I'd go against you without a wand now? How stupid do you think I am?" With that he shot out a spell that missed her by millimeters, causing her to squeal like a frightened child and back away a few feet. Her eyes widened, and a confused look overpowered her thin, wasted face. For a few fine seconds she looked at the ground, her face drenched in sweat, and her arms down. She looked as if she'd given up, and Sirius gave into that. Slowly and warily he lowered his wand, laughing slightly, he thought he had won.
The pursed lips of Bellatrix LeStrange opened just slightly to mutter a curse, a deadly curse that was sure to hit her cousin, which she detested. A smoky mist swept up from the tips of her fingers, which gripped her wand, and spun clockwise; it was a tornado of death that lingered ever so closer to Sirius. It sped up, twisting itself into a tight spiral and becoming a jet of light. Sirius, in his ignorance, had not seen this, and was facing the boy to show him he was alright- that he had won. As he turned back around with laughter filling his tight face the spell hit him square in the chest.
The man, Sirius Black, took a deep breath like he was getting ready to dive into water, but the breath was scattered. His dark eyes widened with shock while his feet danced around the floor, stumbling and tripping over them. Through his lips, which were turning a deathly blue, he whispered his last words.
" I'm so sorry, Harry."
His bodies finished shutting down in an instant as he gave weigh to the weight of his body and fell behind the veil he had been battling Bellatrix near. The floor gave a thud as his body hit it, and with that thud the lady let out a cackling laugh at the top of her lungs. It sounded like what Sirius' laugh had sounded like, but darker.
" SIRIUS!" Harry Potter let out a tremendous scream as he saw his Godfather die before his very eyes, only to find out that he had dreamed what he had seen. Still, the horrible images that had played against his eyelids made his shudder violently. With an enormous amount of strength, Harry tried to calm himself down while hoping that the Dursleys did not hear his screams. But sure enough, a raspy, high-pitched voice rang out outside his bedroom door.
" Harry Potter, what on earth is going on?" The shrill voice sent Harry straight up, only to fall out of the bed. He crawled around on the floor for a few moments to find his glasses, which had fallen, off the bedside table during his sleep. After his fingers grasped the rims of his glasses and he had replaced them to their natural place on his face, he answered his Aunt Petunia in a low, quiet tone.
" I'm alright.it was just a dream." His voice still shook with suppressed emotion; he hadn't been dreaming. The dreadful scene that had played back in his head had actually happened. His Godfather, Sirius Black, was dead. Every night since Harry was let out of school he saw the same thing, the same dream. Every time he witnessed the same last words that he could only imagine Sirius having said, since he couldn't hear him when he was killed. Harry had never avenged his Godfather's death; Bellatrix LeStrange had gotten away, or rather Voldemort had taken her away. Harry wished with all her might that the Dark Lord had killed the nasty woman by now. Just the thought of her made his whole body shake with anger. She had killed the one person in the world whom Harry loved most.Sirius.
Aunt Petunia hadn't answered, which could only mean that she had left him alone again. Lupin, Tonks, and Mad-Eye had warned her about keeping Harry locked up. For that Harry was extremely grateful. His room had been flooded with letters from all of his friends, the Order members, and some people he had never come into contact with before. It was all so overwhelming; sometimes he wished that he could be left alone. All the sympathy cards and ' I'm so sorry" letters just made the hole in his stomach grow more rapidly than before. Unlike last summer, he was flooded with news- the Daily Prophet had been coming daily to deliver more news on the immense number of murders that had taken place in the wizarding world. He thought it would make him satisfied to know about what was going on, but the constant headlines of " 20 DIE IN MASSIVE ATTACK" or " VOLDEMORT STRIKES AGAIN" caused Harry's stomach to ache most unpleasantly.
His green eyes covered in black-rimmed glasses peered around the room at the mountain of cards, chocolate frogs, and letters. The straight-lined lips and the bored expression on his face changed gradually to a deep frown as he inspected one letter from his ex-professor and friend to his late Godfather, Remus Lupin. It didn't even mention Sirius in it, but flirted dangerously with the subject of the Animagus. In a few sentences Remus mentioned how Sirius would have wanted him to do this or that. Anger boiled up inside of Harry; how could Lupin know what Sirius wanted for Harry? It wasn't like the two sat down and talked about what he had wanted for Harry just in case he died. He didn't know he going to die. It was Harry's fault. Just the mere thought of this caused Harry's eyes to burn with tears. It wasn't enough that his parents had been taken away from him, but now Sirius, his second father, had been killed protecting Harry. One downcast look at the parcels in his room reminded him of how much he longed for a letter from Sirius to be delivered as it used to. He yearned to hear just a few words from him, and he would give anything for his father like figure to come back to life. To spring up from the veil with a sly grin on his thin, wasted face.
With a few tears trickling down his face, Harry closed his eyes as hard as he could and attempted to shake off the need to cry. He needed to cry, he needed to scream as loud as he could, and he needed Sirius back. Sometimes, he would sit up in his bed staring at the ceiling, talking to Sirius. He knew that he wouldn't talk back, but just to try to get through, to tell him his troubles with Dudley, to spill everything that had been going on to the only one that understood, was comforting. At times he would lie there and close his eyes, imagining Sirius' dark and mischievous face gazing at him and laughing, speaking of Harry's resemblance to James. If anything, Harry promised himself he would never forget Sirius' bark of a laugh, or his lopsided grin, or the way he pranced around like the happiest man of earth when they spent Christmas with him last year. He had to keep alive the spirit of Sirius even if he was gone.
Harry choked slightly on his own tears while wringing his hands together. His train of thought was broken as Aunt Petunia screeched up the stairs that dinner was ready. Weakly, Harry stood and regained his balance before he went to the door. He wasn't hungry, but why ruin the way the Dursleys were treating him? For once, he wasn't the disturbed boy who lived in Dudley's old toy room; he was another boy in the family. In a rather selfish way, he wished that they would go back to hating him. He already felt sorry for himself about losing one of his best friends and mentors, he could add on another few fits of sobs with self-pity to fill the gap in his heart that only his Godfather could fill. In one of Hermione's letters, she had begged him not to feel sorry for himself, and to try his best to put Sirius' death behind him. At first the letter had disgusted him; she was telling him to try to forget such an important person in his life. But in a few weeks time, he had started to understand what she was saying.
With his hand on the wooden rail of the stairway, Harry made his way downstairs and turned to the kitchen where he would attempt to ignore the depression he felt and eat something.
Three pairs of eyes glanced his way as he entered the kitchen. For a few seconds he felt like a circus animal, put on display for others to gawk at. He so badly wanted to snap at them, tell them off for staring at him like he had tentacles growing from his head, but he refrained from the urge and sat himself down. With a fork he prodded his eggs into a pile after nibbling at bits and pieces of the bacon. No one spoke, it was almost silent save the loud smacking of food which was performed so grotesquely by his pig of a cousin.
A glance at his Aunt almost made Harry spit his food out with laughter. She sat impatiently, her lips pursed into a tight line, and her eyes were large white and grey plates. He knew that look. She only gave anyone that look when she wanted to start a conversation she dreaded. Harry saved her her breath as he got up and without asking if he could be excused, left the silent table. Immediately after he left the room a soft chatter started. He had predicted this; all three of the voices he knew so well muttering, no doubt it was about him, or " his kind."
With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, Harry mosied back upstairs to plump onto his bed. The bed shook slightly as he let his body fall down on top of the covers. Hedwig hooted softly at him, but he ignored her. With his face in his pillow, he inhaled and exhaled, hoping that whatever rain cloud that hovered above him would fade. For about twenty minutes he just sat there in the dark of the room, smelling the covers which had just been washed. His eyelids drooped every now and then as his mind and sleep had a tug-of-ward fight.
Through the silence he heard distant voices he knew were not the Dursleys. With one swift movement his head and shoulders were upright and staring out his bedroom window. While cocking his head to one side, Harry slowly and silently got up and tip-tied towards the window. With his hands on the windowsill and his head peering out the window, Harry spotted two figures in Mrs. Figg's side window. They seemed to be arguing. A deep look on interest crossed over Harry's face as he leaned closer, as if trying to reach Mrs. Figg's window from his. That was a mistake. A loose board cracked loudly and with a large THAWP, the board split from the windowsill and dropped into the bushes below.
The sound of the board crashing seemed to slice the silence that inhabited the sleep road. Just as Harry had dreaded, the two figures in the window of Mrs. Figg's house stopped dead in their argument and both stared towards his direction. Harry made a desperate move to get out of the view, but two eyes caught sight of him first. The figure's mouth dropped open at first and muttered something vague that was in no way within hearing distance of Harry. The eyes squinted, now slits in the figure that glowed relentlessly. With piercing eyes on Harry, the figure muttered something else hurridly before turning, disappearing in the house, and running out the front door into the night. A wave of sleep came crashing in on Harry as a tidal wave would, and knocked him straight off his feet into his bed. He fought as hard as he could to keep awake, but sleep prevailed. Before slipping into unconsciousness, he muttered something to himself that he would have to find out.
" What the hell was that?"