Chronicle of A Teenage Obsession

She's just realized - at first, it's really only because he's hot.

Alicia's mom went to school with him, and in fifth year, when this…business began, it was Mum who pronounced, shaking her head over the newspaper, "It's a real shame, is what it is. He was so handsome in school - All the girls fancied him."

And, yeah, she's curious.

And, yeah, she flips through her mum's old albums (While suppressing a shudder, that is. The seventies were a fashion nightmare).

And, yeah, he's hot.

Really hot.

So… okay, he's, you know, a psychotic murderer and stuff, but she's fifteen. Her hormones are allowed to get the better of her in situations involving attractive males, right?

And then, she sort of (well, definitely) digs up all the articles she can find of him in the newspaper. And, you know, instead of taking notes in History of Magic (Okay, seriously, does anyone take notes in History of Magic?) she posts in newspaper cutouts – like a scrapbook, you know? (You don't know, how could you? You're not the nutter obsessed with a maniacal killer.)

The newspapers all go into detail about how he was from this huge family of Death Eaters and stuff, and then he abandoned the family and ran off and joined up with a gang that mostly ended up being war heroes (and then, you know, he joined You-Know-Who and killed people. But, hey, it makes for a nice story, right?)

She imagines that he was driven mad by the strain of the war, and then he cracked and went berserk. It sounds terribly exciting in her head, and she likes to imagine what would have happened if he had, oh, met a charming, self-deprecating, but absurdly attractive teenage Quidditch star at the right time (not her, of course.)

And maybe all that's made her a little biased in the dorm room discussions with Angelina about 'Oh-Merlin-there's-psycho-loose', and not just because she actually believes everyone deserves a chance.

And maybe it isn't until she hears that he was actually in Hogwarts, and she actually sees what happened to the Fat Lady (There were strips of painting hanging out of the frame. The Fat Lady's portrait was torn to bits) that she realizes that the tormented, tragic Sirius Black she's built up in her head isn't safe, isn't sane, isn't right at all.

She begins to understand what the words psychotic murderer really mean.