November 1st, 1981
I'm not the one with the right to cry.
If anyone, it should be Remus. Remus, and Dumbledore, and the other ex-Gryffindors. His friends. I was never his friend. I'm fairly sure he knew my name. Certainly he knew me by sight. But that was all. That was all we ever had.
Even so, the headlines in the paper this morning were a shock. No, more than a shock. They reached out from the page and slammed into my body, impacted on my chest and stomach. Caused me physical pain. I came so close to throwing up that I had to run for the front door and stand for a few moments in the silent garden sucking in deep lungfuls of cold morning air.
And I wondered like the air is like in There. Dead, stale, dry? Or dank, mildewy and foul? Whatever it's like, it cannot be pleasant, and Sirius Black is in there, breathing it. Choking on it. Condemned to it.
I suppose I have always been a tiny a bit in love with him. That shouldn't come as a shock to anyone - most of the girls at Hogwarts were to various extents. I had other crushes, and experienced far more consuming love affairs over the course of my school years. But Sirius Black could always make me blush a little, just by walking past. Black hair, dark eyes and the devil's own smile. Clever and wild. Absolutely untameable. A personality so intense and expansive and complicated that rooms never seemed large enough to contain his presence.
And now one tiny cell in the dark depths of a hellish fortress will have to.
Not Sirius. No. Please. Not Sirius.
That's all I can think.
He loved his friends. He did! I know it. I used to watch him. James, Peter, Remus, Lily... There was something between them, something that seemed to bind them together, something that spoke volumes even when no words were being said. And Sirius would have died for any one of them! Would have given every breath in his body, drained every vein dry, done anything he could do, just to keep them safe. That's how he was. That was the kind of passion he possessed. That was the force in him that drew the heat from my body and flushed my skin whenever he was near. I couldn't have mistaken that. Eyes and ears can be fooled, but how could he have tricked my body? My most inherent instincts? It's not possible. It just can't be possible.
Peter, Lily and James. Dead.
That in itself is difficult to comprehend, but then, there has been so much death lately. But dead by Sirius's betrayal? I cannot believe that. There's something hard and fierce in the bottom of my stomach that won't let me believe it.
But he will go to Azkaban. Is already there. Is at this moment sitting in the dark, in the cold, trapped indefinitely within the pain of the most hellish moments of his life. His hope and sanity draining away. Beautiful, wild, crazy, brillant Sirius. What can I do?
Nothing.
He is guilty, they say. What proof have I that he is not? Am I deluding myself? Was I more in love with him than I admitted, even to myself? The evidence against him is sound, is damning in fact. And yet every time I picture Sirius now my stomach turns and I want to scream that something is wrong. Something is so very wrong with how this has all turned out.
Remus.
Remus is the only one left, the only one still free. Thought I don't know how appropriate that word is now. I don't know if he can ever expect to feel free again.
I am badly, badly shaken by all of this, and by my own admission I barely knew the people involved. So when I think of Remus... Oh God, poor Remus. It's the memory of that 'something' I sensed between him and his friends that tears me now. The way they all seemed part of one other. More than ordinary friends. Those bonds have been wrenched apart now. Brutally ruptured, all in one night, by death and by betrayal.
So I cringe when I try to imagine how Remus must feel right now. Ripped apart, I think. His love for his friends went so deep... He will be bleeding. Haemorrhaging deeply, somewhere out of sight.
Remus has the right to be crying. I do not.
Yet I am. I am. I can't bring myself to look again at the paper, to read beyond the first paragraphs. It makes me too sick. I cannot bear to think of Sirius in Azkaban, of Remus in pain, of Lily and James and Peter lying cold in the earth.
Most of all, I cannot bear it that no one will question this. They will accept that Sirius is guilty. They will be angry, furious, and heartbroken, and all their hate will direct itself at Sirius Black. They will forget the boy he was. They will remember a criminal of the lowest order.
He doesn't deserve that. I wish I could stand between him and the world. Between him and his fate.
But I can't. No one can. I can't help Sirius now, can't help Remus. I can't help Lily or James or Peter.
Only Harry remains. Little Harry Potter, whom I have never seen, whose existence I was only vaguely aware of before now. Harry, who is a little part of all of them. Harry will live on.
Well, I am grateful for that much. Perhaps someday, I will have the chance to help him where I failed to help his parents and their friends.
And until that maybe-day, I will remember Sirius as I knew him. I will remember the hot blood he sent rushing under my skin. I will remember the fiercely handsome boy whose friends were all to him. And I will cry. Even if I have no right.
Right doesn't mean much now, anyway.