Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.
He would never admit it, but Sirius Black was sometimes jealous of his best mate.
It struck him at the strangest of times, catching him unawares – at King's Cross when they met for the first time, at Christmas their third year, at Diagon Alley with the Potters their sixth year. At the pub with Lily and James. Holding Harry in his arms for the first time.
He always shrugged it off whenever the feeling pervaded his mind, but sometimes, when he was too drunk or tired to even try, he was left with a feeling of intense guilt – How can I grudge my best mate the very things that make him happy?
He didn't, not really. Back in their school days, when he watched James with his parents, he knew that no matter what, he was never going to have that level of trust and happiness with his own parents. He wasn't going to have those same childhood memories as his mate did, and he was fine with that, because even as an eleven year old he knew that they were Blood Traitors and his family were Purebloods, and there was a world of difference between them.
And as for Lily and Harry, well, if a fellow could manage to find so much happiness even in the middle of a war – in his opinion, it was well-earned.
No, what he really envied was the ease with which James could utter those three words – I love you – three words that he himself had never said in his entire life.
The first time Sirius saw him, he was leaning out of the window of the train compartment and waving to Mr. and Mrs. Potter and yelling, "I'll write you when I get there! I love you!"
I love you. I love you. Every time he said goodbye to his parents. To Lily. To Harry. And it drove him wild with longing to just say those words for once, but he'd never had anyone to say them to.
There was never any question of saying them to his parents – until he was Sorted into Gryffindor, because of propriety and decorum, and afterwards – well, because they were disgraced by his very existence and he was disgusted by theirs.
The Potters – there he could have. He truly did love the fun-loving Mrs. Potter, from whom James had inherited his mischievous streak and the gentle, soft-spoken Mr. Potter, far more than his own biological parents. But no matter how much they treated him as their own son, he knew that he wasn't, and that was enough to make him feel uncomfortable even considering saying those words.
He'd never been lucky enough to find someone like Lily. He'd had flings with hundreds of girls, left a trail of broken hearts behind him wherever he went, heard those words from panting mouths so many times that the accompanying faces blurred together. But those words had never dropped from his lips.
And he never would.
Yes, Sirius Black was sometimes intensely jealous of his best mate. He wasn't proud of it. But he was human too, regardless of the mask that he wore ever since he was old enough to talk, and that was just the way he was.
Just a random idea that came to me when I got off the phone with my dad yesterday. It occurred to me how we always end our conversations with "I love you" and it's kind of become routine for us, but there must be a lot of people who don't.
Please review and let me know what you think about it!