Sirius could see their lifeless faces in his mind. Wandering through his flat in Piccadilly Circus lost in thought, Sirius barely spared a glance for his surroundings. The way that his best friend had been and how Lily had been. As he stepped into his bedroom, Sirius looked into the old, full-length mirror that hung on the wall opposite the door.
He could see their faces in the mirror. They were as they had been at Harry's first Christmas. The Marauders had all been there, James, Remus, Peter and himself. Of course others had been there as well; Lily, Alice, Frank, baby Neville and Dorcas had all been there. The absence of the friends that should have been there was felt like an old battle scar. Sirius ticked the names off in his head:
Marlene McKinnon, a contemporary of Andromeda. As such had been three years ahead and in Slytherin. Marlene had been from another old Slytherin family. She'd overcome her upbringing just enough to acknowledge that muggleborns have as much potential as pureblood wizards. She knew even in the beginning that that change of view wasn't nearly enough. Marlene had still been cold towards those she saw as beneath her. Sirius smiled in memory, in her sixth year the Marauders had given Marlene a copy of the muggle book A Christmas Carol. She'd been forever quoting the ghost of Jacob Marley. ("I wear the chain I forged in life; I made it link by link, yard by yard.") She quoted the book so much in fact we started calling her Marley and the name just stuck with her until her dyeing day. Marley had always been dead-set on becoming the Minister of Magic.
Benjamin Fenwick wasn't even at school with us. He hated being called Ben, said it made him feel respectable, so we called him Benji. Remus said there was some American movie or other about a loyal dog that saved some kids from a kidnapper. Not so much our Benji, he was our black market guy. You name it he could get it, from dodgy potion ingredients to rare liqueurs. He used the implied respectability of being a chaser on the national side for Ireland.
Edgar Bones, good old Eddie the only Hufflepuff of our year to join James and me in Auror training. He was a damned good gobstones player; beat the trousers off everyone regularly. James, mighty quidditch captain and great strategic mind that he was, could never touch Eddie at gobstones. This was a great source of disappointment to Peter, though Remus thought it was good for James to be beaten at something, I just thought it was funny.
Gideon Prewett was head boy in our second year, and became one of my teachers during Auror training; he was dammed good teacher, for all he was the quiet type. Gideon taught me how to fight with my head rather than with my temper. Everything I have done every good choice I made was because of his influence. I already knew the deprivations of man; he taught me the importance and power of hope and love.
Fabian Prewett he was in Gryffindor and three years ahead of us at Hogwarts. He was the only pure-blood I knew who was interested in muggle martial arts. He taught himself several different disciplines. He learned how to throw one hell of a right-cross, which Lucius Malfoy learned to his very great dismay in their seventh year. Fabian certainly wiped that stuck-up prig's annoyingly superior smirk off his face.
Dorcas Meadows had been next to join the posthumous heroes of the Order of the Phoenix but that day she still smiled at Sirius and gave him warm kisses. That day they had celebrated life and left the war hanging with their cloaks in the closet. The games and childish pranks of the Marauders had ruled for those few short hours, making everyone smile at the simple and innocent pleasures of the four friends.
How can that have been almost a year ago?
The faces in the mirror disappeared to be overwhelmed by Peter's smiling, laughing face. Peter's eyes seemed to mock him. Sirius's fist contacted with the mirror and it shattered; blood and glass went flying scratching his face and torso.
Sirius swore and sank to his knees his cheek bleeding and his robes slowly being stained red from numerous cuts on his chest. Sirius's own blindness hurt far more than Peter's betrayal. How could Sirius have suspected Remus, of all people?
Sirius knew exactly how he could have and that thought made his stomach sick and his head hurt. Peter Pettigrew, whom he had always dismissed, so slick and so smooth, in retrospect Sirius saw how Peter had always been manipulating people to get the desired responses. Peter Machiavelli. Peter should not have been a Gryffindor. He belonged in Slytherin with all the other Death Eaters. No, unjust, a part of his mind whispered, not all Slytherins are evil. Merlin knew his own cousin Andromeda was living proof of that.
Against family tradition and backing, Andromeda had dated and married Ted Tonks. Ted, a good bloke, was a powerfully magical muggleborn who specialized in experimental charms for the Ministry of Magic.
Looking around the room Sirius saw the picture he had taken of Lily and James during Halloween last year. Lily had insisted they all dress up in costumes like muggles. So James had decided to dress the three of them up as Merlin, Morgan le Fey and Ywain. Sirius stared at the picture for a long time not moving. The colours blurred before Sirius's eye. Why is my face wet? he thought, surprised. Reaching a hand up Sirius brushed his cheek. His fingers came away covered in blood and something else. Tears? I didn't even realise…
Sirius looked at the Halloween picture again, this time though instead of seeing the smiling happy faces of the Potters; Sirius flashed back to barely an hour earlier when he had found James and Lily dead amongst the smashed rubble and debris that had been their house in Godric's Hollow.
Two emotions slammed into him then. The first, sorrow, he forced aside with annoyance; he would deal with the grief later. The second, anger, would not be pushed aside. This wasn't just anger either; this was a full blood-rage the kind that rabid dogs went into in the last fortnight of their suffering. There was a loud crash, and Sirius looked up sharply startled. Every single picture with Peter in it, and there was several around the flat, all fell to the floor, glass breaking and pictures smouldering to ash. Sirius sat up straighter; Peter had to be brought to justice. Sirius should call the Ministry and…
No, dammit I'm an aurorI'll bring Peter in. After all why not? With a dog-like growl and deliberately ignoring Alastor Moody's oft repeated dictum against about taking any case that he had such strong emotional connection to, Sirius stood and strode out of his flat.
Sirius's one clear memory of what happened after he left his flat was of cornering Pettigrew in a muggle street and the immediate aftermath. Now Sirius's life was a blaze of pain, blood and endless questions about Voldemort. Sirius, who had spent the last three years fighting Voldemort and his entire childhood fighting ideals very similar to Voldemort's creed, could actually answer some of the questions asked of him by his interrogators. Which, looking back on his interrogation, probably had not helped matters.
For the first time in his life, Sirius regretted his life-long ambition to become an auror. Aurors were conditioned to resist Veritserum. That immunity was not benign, anaphylactic shock and death would follow, a dose of any kind of truth serum would have killed him. And so the "questioners" had used torture.
Sirius lay in his stone walled cell; he was far too injured and bone-weary to even attempt to sit up. So as he lay there aching and dizzy with pain and his body's reaction to pain, Sirius wished for many things.
Revenge of course, he also longed for freedom, but most of all he longed for his godson so he could fulfil his promise to James. But even if he had all three of these things he would give them all up for James not to be dead. But then if James were not dead then Peter wouldn't have been a traitor and Sirius wouldn't have a life-sentence in Azkaban. But no, that was circular reasoning, wasn't it. Or was it? Sirius could barely think straight.
The dementors couldn't take these thoughts from him because they were not happy thoughts.
Sirius finally understood why solitary confinement was considered a punishment in every culture the world over. Or maybe it was the dementors that were having this effect on him. Then again maybe he couldn't control his thought because he hurt all over. Did it really matter which one was true?
Maybe I'm just going crazy but every time I think of James, Remus Peter or Regulus…no mustn't think about the rat or my dead brother. Must think about Remus…
I must think about something beyond my own pain that will make it go away right Or will that just make it more bearable?Maybe I should think about my mum, she would finally be proud of me. Gruesome thought that, but it's true. I never wanted approval from her maybe because I knew, even as a child I would never receive it. My mistake lay not in rebelling but intelling her I wanted to be an auror when I grew up. I think I was four or there abouts. It was James' influence and his parents
I never understood why my parents let me play with a Potter when I was a kid. So far as I know the Potter family has always been aligned with the light side. I'm glad that they did though,we were so close; brothers we were
When an image of James' dead body flashed across his mind's eye Sirius blacked-out. Although sleep was an escape from physical pain, his dreams were far worse than the torture he had endured the hands of the ministry.
Sirius's body would heal eventually but his mind would be a different story. Sirius had never been, even by Hogwarts standards, a sane man. His parents caused this; their rejection of Sirius hurt him far more then he would ever willingly admit. When Sirius finally escapes from Azkaban, he would have an even more tenuous hold on his sanity.This would be Azkaban's mark upon Sirius, a mark that would stay with him through the last three years of his life. And in turn Sirius's death would become a scar on the last two people to be truly close to Sirius: Remus Lupin and Harry Potter.