My recent Harry Potter fanfiction kick (which can be completely blamed on my best friend) drove me to write something for my favorite character in the HP series: Sirius Black. Mild late night insomnia also contributed. Remember to feed your authors with a review: We need love too. :)
They said that, in the moments just before you died, your life flashed before your eyes. Sirius Black had no idea who 'they' were, but he'd always thought the mass, anonymous grouping had to be off their collective rockers. There was no possible way that an entire lifetime of memories could really manage to make a full trip through one's consciousness in those brief, flickering heartbeats between the end of life and the beginning of.. well.. not life. It just wasn't feasible.
Sirius Black III was proved horribly, horribly wrong on the night of June 17th, 1996.
Time seemed to slow down exponentially as he saw Bellatrix hurl the curse at him. At first he was.. amused. It seemed terribly, painfully ironic that his cousin should be the one to finally bring an end to the reign of the infamous Padfoot. Disbelief followed quickly on the heels of that awful amusement when he staggered backwards. Surely there was some mistake. He was Sirius bloody Black! He wasn't going to go down like this.. never!
That was when it happened.
It was like some great unseen hand reached down and smashed open a dam in his mind, releasing a torrent of images, sounds, tastes, and even smells. They swamped his senses, causing dark brown eyes to go glassy as his consciousness immersed itself in the overwhelming rush of remembrance.
And yet, for all the clamor of his past speeding by unseeing eyes, most of the imagery was.. misty. Faded, like an old photograph. Barely substantial enough to deserve more than a nanosecond of attention. Some were a bit more hardy: Getting sorted into Gryffindor, rather than the expected Slytherin. The first time he'd met James and Remus. Their first successful prank. Meeting Lily. A particularly nasty knock-down-drag-out fistfight with James, that had left him nursing a black eye and James a broken nose. His graduation from Hogwarts.
A select few, however, were agonizingly potent.
Harry's birth. The aftermath of James and Lily's deaths. His first and last days in Azkaban.
From the rush there leapt a face into his thoughts. In that brief moment, barely half a second, he was confused. Who was this fresh-faced young woman, her hair long and slightly curly, so dark an auburn it was nearly brown? Why did her grey-green eyes seem to sparkle with some secret he should know? How did he know that her skin, the color of rich cream, was as soft as silk? That her laughter sounded like tiny little silver bells? That the freckles sprinkled across her pert nose and high cheekbones were a never-ending source of amusement for him, as well as a sure way to embarrass her so those pale cheeks would flare with a fetching blush? That her full lips tasted like strawberries and mint, no matter what she'd eaten?
He saw her again and again. Sitting beneath a tree on Hogwarts grounds, her attention immersed in a book. Looking up at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Smiling at him, glaring at him, and even crying. Her face flushed and head tilted back, hair tousled and sweaty, kissable lips slightly parted as she moaned.
In those moments when he staggered backwards, mere heartbeats from falling through that seemingly harmless stone arch with its tattered veil.. all the breath left his lungs, and Sirius wished it hadn't. He wanted to yell, but the word that passed his lips was even less than a whisper.
Morrigan.
"Oy, James." Sirius nudged his companion in the side, garnering the bespectacled Potter's attention. He gestured towards a lone girl, sitting beneath a tree not far from the lake. "Who's that?"
"Who?" James sounded puzzled, squinting in an effort to see past the early afternoon glare.
Padfoot rolled his eyes, grasping James' head in two ink-stained hands and turning his gaze to the girl seated beneath the lively tree. "Her, you dimwit."
"Oh! Her. I haven't a clue. Some Irish Muggleborn, Gryffindor in our year, I believe." James yanked his head free of Sirius' grasp, shooting his fellow animagus a mild glare before trying to smooth down his every-unruly hair. "You're a right wanker sometimes."
"Right, wanker, got it." Sirius was obviously ignoring James, and soon abandoned his friend to cross the thick lawn. The girl didn't look up as he approached, not even when he came to lean against the tree that was her current shelter from the bright springtime sun. "Hi."
She still didn't look up, only calmly turned a page as she spoke, her lilting Irish accent tainting her words with a certain allure. "To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the infamous Sirius Black?"
Sirius arched a brow, unable to help a smirk. "You know my name, but what's yours?" He wanted to touch her hair. Shafts of sunlight that managed to pierce the foliage overhead alighted on her dark auburn curls, making them seem to glow with hints of Lily's fiery red.
She finally looked up at him, and he found himself taken aback by the nearly metallic threads of grey that threaded through her rich, mossy green irises. "Morrigan McCullough."
Flash.
"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times." Morrigan whirled around to face him, her lips pulled into a frown. Sirius wanted to reach out and rub away the line that had formed between her brows, even as her eyes seemed to spit fire at him. "I will not be the latest in a long line of conquests, Sirius Black. So you can just sh--"
"You're beautiful when you're angry." Cutting off her rant with the softly spoken words, Sirius took advantage of the situation and grasped her shoulders, pulling the stunned girl close and pressing his lips against hers. For a moment, he thought she was going to fight him.. then she melted into him, her lips moving shyly beneath his. Just as he closed his eyes and relaxed his grip, she struck, slamming her heel firmly down on the toes of his left foot.
When he yelped and released her, she stepped back, her blazing eyes a sharp contrast to the icy tone of her voice. "When you start thinking with your heart instead of your bits, you know where to find me."
Flash.
He wasn't sure if it was charming the stars on the ceiling of an empty Great Hall to form a heart with their initials, or the late night broom ride over the placid lake, or the way he'd kissed her when they landed atop the Astronomy tower, but he'd somehow managed to end up in bed with Morrigan McCullough. Watching as she slept, her hair still damp from their romp in his prefect's bed, the milky skin of her throat and perky breasts marked from his teeth and lips, Fae-like features dominated by the glow of a woman well satisfied in the candlelight.. Sirius felt something tug at his heartstrings.
Most girls just fell into bed with him. He never had to do much wooing. It was his natural animal magnetism, not to mention the fact that he was Sirius fucking Black. Lots of girls would kill to bed, let alone marry, the heir of the illustrious Black family.
Morrigan cared nothing for that.
She'd fought him tooth and nail, refusing to give up her body until she knew his heart was in the right place. What she didn't know, was that place was in her dainty little hands.
Lost in his musings, Sirius didn't realize she was awake until he felt her tucking stray strands of wild brown hair behind his ear. Her eyes searched his, seemingly asking a question as he looked down at her, a lopsided smile curving slowly on his lips. His head leaned down, and he kissed her softly. "Go back to sleep, love. I'll wake you in the morning."
She nodded, snuggling up against his bare chest as he doused the lone candle with a flick of his wrist. His hand descended to rest on her lower back, thumb carressing her spine while her soft breaths feathered against his shoulder. Darkness and silence reigned for several minutes, and he thought she'd gone to sleep by the slow, even pattern of her breathing.
"I love you, Sirius."
Apparently not.
The chill that seized him was painful. He couldn't believe a few meager heartbeats had passed while he lost himself in memories. His fingers and toes seemed to go numb, and beyond the haze of memories, he thought he saw Harry, with a horrified expression on his face. He was crying, and Sirius thought he felt wetness on his own cheeks.
He shouldn't be following her. He knew that. Those blissful years in school, and in the days of the Order of the Phoenix, before everything had gone to hell and he'd been thrown in Azkaban, were far behind them. And yet when he'd smelled a scent so torturously familiar, he couldn't help himself. He'd tracked her down, and watched her as she walked a park in Muggle London, seemingly lost in thought. The years had treated her well, he noticed. Her face had lost its youthful innocence, but instead had taken on a sort of dignified maturity. His heart ached as he remembered how she'd looked when she laughed, and the way her skin felt beneath his fingertips.
When she stopped and sat on a bench, he darted behind a bush, hoping she hadn't seen him, and crouched down to wait. He felt.. depraved, like some horrible stalker, but he just couldn't make himself stop.
"I know you're there, Padfoot."
He stopped breathing. She was looking right bloody at him! Those familiar grey-green eyes seemed to draw him to his feet and out of the bushes, canine form becoming that of the semi-bedraggled Sirius Black, post-escape from Azkaban. Her eyes softened as she stood, and for a moment, they only stared at each other.
She was the one to breach the distance, her hands - those same tiny, delicate hands - rising to brush a leaf from the collar of his coat, and absently dislodge another from his brown hair. Sirius was at a loss for words. Here was one of the few remaining pieces of his past, standing in front of him. Living. Breathing. Touching him. Looking up at him with those sparkling eyes he remembered so well.
And then she smiled.
"You look a good deal better than you did in those wanted posters, Sirius."
He choked. The words wouldn't come as he wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in the thick waterfall of eternally unmanageable auburn curls, much as he had the night James and Lily had died. Tears came hot and fast as he cried, his shoulders shaking with the force of silent sobs, and her hands gently rubbed his back.
"Sirius..." When he didn't respond, she sighed, turning her head to nuzzle the spot just behind his right ear. "It isn't safe, Sirius. I know you're innocent, but as far as the rest of the wizarding world is concerned.. you're still an escaped murderer."
He seemed almost to sag against her in relief. A part of him had been terrified Morrigan believed the atrocious tale, that she honestly thought he'd betrayed James and Lily. Knowing she didn't... He breathed a sigh, and lifted his head, looking down at her. She was obviously glad to see him again, but there was a sadness lurking beneath the joy. "Morrigan, I--"
"Shh." She placed her fingers over his lips, shaking her head. "Don't. Not now. When your name is cleared, and we don't have to hide..."
Sirius could've died happy right then. She still understood him, the way no one else - not even James or Remus - had. In that moment of understanding between them, he nodded, and as soon as her fingers fell away, he kissed her softly. It was brief, yet sweet and almost unbearably poignant. It seemed to last forever, but at the same time, not long enough. When he drew back, he almost caved at the sight of tears in her eyes, hovering on the edge of falling and making her thick lashes sparkle like the stars above. He caressed her cheek, unsurprised to discover her skin was as soft as ever. "When that day comes.. nothing will ever take me away from you again."
She didn't speak, only nodded. He drew away from her, and melted back into the familiar form of Padfoot, the large black-furred shape slipping off into the night.
Two nights ago. It had only been two nights since he'd seen her, but it felt like years now, as the veil fell across him. He got a final glimpse at the others, and had the feeling belief that maybe, just maybe, he would fall through the other side of that arch. He would land on his back on the cold, hard stone of the Ministry building, the fight would continue, and later they would all have a laugh over butterbeer and firewhiskey, joking about how scared they'd looked.
But in a brief moment of clarity, Sirius knew that was folly. Wishful thinking as his feet left the world of the living, and he felt cold hand of Death wrap around his heart. Blood stopped flowing as the final breath he'd managed to drag past chapped lips escaped in a whisper.
"Morrigan..."
Sirius Black was gone.