Curse of the Black Family Rose
Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and do not own the copyright to Harry Potter or any of its characters; I do not make any profit from writing fanfiction.
Author's note: Written in alternating Sirius and Hermione POV. First chapter is set in Prisoner of Azkaban from Sirius' POV, the rest picks off in Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince. Eventual romance when Hermione is older, nothing underage, sorry. Warning: will be very dark, not a light romance for the faint-hearted. Expect surprises, deep cutting emotions and action scenes. Harry and Ron are also important parts of this story, so don't think I'm just going to ignore them. They will all play their parts.
"Sirius, to me, he's kind of on the edge, do you not get that feeling from Sirius? He's a little bit of a loose cannon... But Sirius had his flaws — I've sort of discussed that before — some quite glaring flaws. I see Sirius as someone who was a case of arrested development. I think you see that from his relationship with Harry in "Phoenix." He kind of wants a mate from Harry, and what Harry craves is a father. Harry's kind of outgrowing that now. Sirius wasn't equipped to give him that."
—J.K. Rowling
"I dream of rain, I dream of gardens in the desert sand. I wake in pain, I dream of love as time runs through my hand. This desert rose each of her veils, a secret promise."
-Sting, Desert Rose
Prologue:
Fate's Warning
1994 Forbidden Forest, Hogwarts perimeter (Prisoner of Azkaban)
He stood at the edge of the Forbidden forest, in the torn rags of Azkaban still on his emaciated form. Every bone in his body achingly stuck out underneath his clothes, his long hair matted and filthy like a vagabond or madman. Pick or choose one, everybody thought he was either evil or insane as the entire world tried to hunt him down. Sirius Black, the murderer.
There was mass hysteria about his escape.
Posters everywhere of his face. With warnings to report him immediately to the Ministry. That he was extremely dangerous. That he must be caught at once. And stories filled the papers of his supposed crimes, filling the public with mass fear of him. His life hung as tentatively as if by a loose string, dangling before a sea of sharks. Everybody wanted to kill him. If only they knew who they were really after.
But they only got one thing about him right: he was coming to Hogwarts and he was coming for Harry. Nothing could prevent him from getting to his godson and protecting him from the rat crawling in his midst. Only he knew the rat was there. and he couldn't let Harry suffer the consequences.
Nothing could stop him from protecting the boy.
Not even a hundred dementors.
It did not matter that this was in many ways a suicide mission and that Hogwarts was protected by at least a hundred dementors stationed around its grounds. Waiting for him. And that unlike Azkaban, there were no bars preventing the dementors from taking his soul this time.
With one deep breathe, Sirius crossed the threshold of the castle and trespassed some invisible ward dividing the edge of the forest with the castle.
The early night air was silent for a moment, filled with only the sounds of crickets.
Then the dementors, which had been slowly drifting in the air, stilled as they sensed his presence. Their long wispy black cloaks turned in his direction.
Sirius made a run for it. He'd change back into his dog form but he had to have his wand to unlock the secret passageway and it was only a few meters away...
But the dementors wasted no time now that they found their prey.
The dementors swarmed down on him, their cries filling the air with sucking sounds and terrible screeches.
Just before he could reach the entrance to the secret passageway, the dementors blocked his passage.
Sirius stood still for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, surrounded by Dementors on every side.
The dementors swirled around him like a black cloud.
As they drew closer, their rattling breaths echoed in his ear and filled him with that familiar sensation of ice cold dread. Since his escape from Azkaban, he hoped to never see let alone be so close to a Dementor again but they were everywhere and there was no turning back. He must pass through. There was no more time to waste.
He tried to concentrate and mutter the incantation for the Patronus charm but was in a cold sweat and already he'd let the dementors get far too close. Against his will, he could feel his mind shutting down into despair as the cold darkness enveloped him. Suddenly it seemed impossible to think of one happy or hopeful thought.
Frantically, Sirius shut his eyes to try to get them out, but their rattling, sucking breaths rang in his ears.
Focus, focus, focus.
He tried to focus on his happiest memory of James at Hogwarts, trying to remember that feeling of complete elation and invincibility they had felt as youths. As James and him wandered over Hogwarts under James's invisibility cloak, laughing at their own jokes, and it felt as if nothing could ever harm them under that cloak.
He concentrated on James' laughing face as he said the spell.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Blue flames shot out of the wand in bright short bursts but his patronus failed to appear. Then the flames extinguished completely into darkness.
Before he could try again, his happiest memory of James turned into his worst memory of James. To James' dead face.
"No!" He tried to shut them out, to say the spell again, but it was useless. The dementors were already in his mind.
Without any control, Sirius covered his ears as he felt the worst memories of his life replay in his mind with painful realism, as if he were reliving them all at the same time.
~Lily and James were dead. ~The sorting hat placed him in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin.~ His father was beating him up for what must be the 1000th time, and he was bleeding on the floor while Walburga shouted at him to clean it up. His mother screaming at him that he was an abomination.~His face red as Bellatrix humiliated him in front of the Slytherins after his family disowned him.~Peter betrayed them. Everyone was after him. But he was looking for Dorcas.~ They sentenced him to life in Azkaban. Perpetual darkness. ~The constant cold of the dementors. Living nightmares. He was breaking his body against the bars of his cell, breaking and dislocating his bones, to try to squeeze through. ~Dorcas' last words were 'I wish I had never met you' and then Antonin, what Antonin did-
For a moment, the despair cut him so deep, in a familiar place that never healed, he flinched backwards and almost dropped his wand.
Drop his wand and let go.
It's what the dementors wanted. It's what they always wanted as they sang their siren's song to destruction.
Just let go, Sirius. You don't need your soul.
Just let go. What has having a heart ever cost you but grief?
We know your sorrow.
They were right weren't they? There would never be any peace or hope or happy ending for him. Even if he got away, he still wouldn't be free. He'd still remember. He would always remember.
He'd be lying if he said he didn't want to end it many times, after he had the blood and shit drawn out of him for twelve years. The human soul could only take so much pain and constant torture before it started looking for the exit.
But no matter how much he longed to rest, each time he felt the light fade out of him, he remembered two things: Peter Pettigrew and Harry Potter.
He could not die until he did his duty by them.
Like a ghost cannot leave the place he haunts, he had to stay on earth for two things. To kill Peter Pettigrew. And to protect Harry. He made a promise to James Potter that he would protect his son. They were his last words to him before James, Lily and Dorcas were murdered on the same night. His promise to James and his vow to revenge their murders is what kept him every time from giving into the dementors and death.
Though death could be so tempting.
It was a commonly known fact that there a better world waited on the other side. Another world where Dorcas, Lily and James went to, but he had been forced to stay behind.
Time and time again, he had been pulled back from near death, insanity and the dementor's kiss. He was the only in the history of the world to escape from Azkaban and with his sanity. If he survived the Dementors a thousand times in Azkaban, he could survive them now.
Sirius looked at the Dementor currently trying to suck the life out of him.
Even as he looked into its empty eye sockets and rotten flesh, all fear had gone from him.
He knew this demon could not harm him. It could not take his soul though it tried like a vacuum to get it out of him.
Fate was protecting his survival, he knew that now.
Fate was a fickle bitch that did not want to let Sirius Black go.
Her magic bound his soul to the earth by many strings and held him by his unfulfilled vows.
She would not let the Dementor take his soul.
'You cannot leave here Sirius Black until you have fulfilled your tasks,' Fate growled warningly in his ear.
Fate held the glowing white orb of his soul in her bony hands where the Dementors could not snatch it. Sirius narrowed his eyes at it. There were three fine strings tying his soul like a balloon to her hand so it didn't fly away.
"I know. But when I am done, I will finally rest in peace," he said with longing for the moment when he could reunite with Dorcas on the other side.
Fates laughed wickedly in his face. 'When you die Sirius Black, you will no longer want to. And it certainly will not be by choice.'
'It will always be my choice! I have freewill,' he shouted madly, despite knowing full well that Fate had far more power than a mere mortal like himself.
Fate lowered her voice and whispered hauntingly in his ear, 'Wait a little longer, Sirius Black. Something is waiting for you that will make you never want to leave earth,' she chuckled, 'Only then will I allow you to die.'
Damn her and her infernal games.
He would almost try to die now to spite Fate, to prove her wrong and laugh at her face, but it was impossible.
His love for the dead keeps him alive. He could not rejoin James, Lily and Dorcas until he fulfilled his vows to them or died attempting to fulfill them.
As the dementor's hollow face drew closer to his face, the black void of its mouth ready to suck out his soul, he thought of his love for James and Dorcas, and uttered 'Expecto Patronum!'
A blast of bright blue light emitted from his wand and in an instant his patronus banished the dementors to their dark recesses.
Barely taking a breath, Sirius hurried inside the tunnel into the castle.
He must protect Harry and kill the rat crawling in his midst.
He barely paused to notice that the first patronus he conjured in over 12 years without a wand had changed forms. It was now an otter.
He felt so close, so incredibly close to fulfilling his tasks that his whole being bristled with new life despite his physical weariness.
When he finally met his godson, Sirius genuinely smiled for the first time in a decade.
He expected to care for Harry, to want to protect him, but he wasn't prepared for the sweeping love he instantly felt for the boy.
It almost was like having James back.
Almost.
It almost compensated for not killing Pettigrew when they had the chance. A chance he waited 12 years for. If Harry had not shown mercy to that worthless vermin, he would have fulfilled both his tasks in one night and been free to rest. Instead he gave in to Harry's wish to not to see Remus and he become murderers.
Perhaps it was because he was feeling so close to fulfiiling his tasks, that he started to become careless.
But he complied to Harry's request because he thought Azkaban and the Dementor's kiss for Peter would suffice as fulfillment of his revenge...death being the quicker and easier alternative.
He did not forsee that Peter would escape within the hour as Remus turned into a werewolf and he was forced to defend Harry and his friends against him.
He did not forsee that his mistake in judgment would again see Peter betray them again, and help bring Voldemort back from the dead. No, he was not counting on these things.
For now his tasks had become nearly impossible and there was no possibility he could ever rest while Voldemort was alive.
.
.
.
A/N: This story is currently being rewritten in third person past tense, so that is why there used to be more chapters. Thanks I will try to rewrite the first 14 chapters as quickly as possible but it's not always easy to change something from first person present tense to another tense, but I'm doing my best. Would love and appreciate to hear your thoughts! (and spot any of my errors where I left 'I'/'my' instead of he/his)