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Summary: He grasps for pieces of her. Even the worst of ways is better than nothing at all. Sirius comes to terms with his old ghosts. Set sometime between book 4 and 5 and in the Lonely Choices Universe like a Reminisces chapter.
AN: For je suis une pizza who's been following Lonely Choices for years: not exactly an LC update but I hope this stand alone makes up for the delay in that story. This is a strange thing that's part horror story, part romance, part tragedy and part psychological study. And I'm dedicating it not because it's weird- although it is- but because I really like this piece. And I hope you like it, too.
Old Ghosts
He is used to the old house with its creaking floorboards and its eerie night sounds and its obnoxious portraits of his self-important ancestors following his movement with their eyes. Years away hasn't eradicated sixteen years of indoctrination from previously living here. He is not scared despite being in what can only come across as a house with too many skeletons.
On his first night home, after a tiring cross country trek with Remus and Buckbeak, he leaves the former to choose his own room and the latter to wonder on his own in the halls. His exhaustion precludes hospitality and Sirius trudges up the stairs to his own room, mutters a few cleaning spells and drops into bed. His mattress retains a strange memory of his old body and he falls quickly in position into the small dip that his more substantial youthful frame had created, fitting comfortably although slightly a bit off.
He falls, quite possibly the first in a long time, into a dark, dreamless sleep.
Remus, on the other hand, is another story; it takes him some time to get used to the house.
The morning of their first day back, they are awakened by screeching and loud mutterings. Bleary eyed, the two of them stumble into the hallway to find Buckbeak holding a house elf in his mouth.
While Kreacher impresses Sirius with his colorful vocabulary, Remus snaps into action by extricating the elf and marching the hippogriff into Sirius's room. But he is too late and the once slumbering house realized their presence and shook to the rafters with the promise of new life. Stoic portraits that would have usually regarded them with silent imperiousness actually deign them with mumbles. Sirius could almost hear the strange dark artifacts his family kept for centuries buzz with life.
The last to awaken is his mother and the curses she shouts throw him back in time to his first Christmas holiday of his first year in Hogwarts. He remembers stepping out into Platform 9 and ¾ and instead of his parents he finds his Uncle Alphard, hands tucked in his coat and wearing an expression on his face that's a cross between pity and affection.
She's a bit ill, your mum. Asked me to get you, Uncle Alphard said with an apologetic smile and an outstretched hand.
He remembers thinking, Ill. Not mad. And this causes a lightening of the weight on his shoulders as they make their way to Grimmauld Place while his Uncle regales him with strange tales from his shop in Knockturn Alley. On the way home, Sirius forgets all the angry letters from his mother and the absent ones from his father, precipitated by his Sorting. He begins anticipating a wonderful Christmas back home.
The briefly held hope that his mother would welcome him home shatters with her first words.
You should have stayed there, blood traitor.
Her portrait shouts the same words now and he is once again the abandoned eleven year old boy stepping down from the Hogwarts Express at Christmas holidays.
He has forgotten all this and the memories rise up suddenly and he ends up just as defenseless now as he was then. He decides to hang a curtain in front of his mother's portrait. He says it's to keep them from turning deaf, a valid reason of course, all the while ignoring the constricting of his heart.
Long after the portrait has been silenced, his heart continues to beat erratically, kept time by the malicious chatter of the house elf. Clutching a hand to his chest, Sirius has a strange premonition that Kreacher will be the death of him.
There are nooks and cranies, cabinets, standing glass cases and a dozen other places in the room where dark artifacts could be found but Sirius finds himself standing in front of the tapestry.
Old, dusty and doxy eaten in places, it still is an imposing part of the room. It is beautiful, really, quite a piece of art, fitting the Black heritage.
The embroidered names are meant to look like the branches and the lines blur elegantly such that the names become invisible and transform into the tree. Yet it's the scorch marks that stand out amongst the gold thread and velvet, making the viewer aware of the blanks between the names. Aware that these are placeholders for actual people and that it is in their absence that they make their point more felt.
Sirius rubs the mark where Andi's and Uncle Alphard's names used to be. Then his hand moves down and hovers briefly over another scorch mark before settling over Regulus' name.
It is then that he notices Remus' throat clearing and judging by how loud and obnoxious it is he supposes that it has been going on for some time.
Sirius nods in acknowledgement despite keeping his back to Remus.
"Padfoot." Remus' voice is gentle. "We don't have to clean this room yet. We'll make a project of it for the kids."
"Thanks," Sirius replies although he doesn't know how long after he actually spoke because when he turned around, the door was closed and Remus wasn't there.
They decide on cleaning what feels like ten million guest rooms next.
They do this quickly. "No need to be thorough," Remus says nonchalantly. "Molly Weasly will redo everything anyway. We just have to make sure there's nothing deadly in here."
They push around a box and, after an unnecessarily prolonged discussion regarding whether a snake embellished candle holder is a dark artifact or not, they decide to stick to a simple rule. Anything that looks dubious goes in the box.
It says something about his family that they spend four days cleaning all of the guest rooms and fill nearly three boxes.
888
One of the guestrooms contains a familiar, heavy, wooden trunk that Sirius couldn't quite place. It is sealed shut with an antique padlock covered with intricately carved iron snakes.
"Twelfth century." Sirius states matter-of-factly, demonstrating his wide knowledge of dark artifacts.
Remus expresses that he is suitably impressed.
"Those locks are designed to last ages. They need a specific spell to open." Sirius states after Remus exhausts an impressive number of unlocking spells.
"Thanks for telling me after I run through all the spells in my arsenal," Remus remarks dryly.
Sirius holds back a smile. "You're welcome, mate. At least now I know who to run to if I ever need a spot of breaking and entering."
Remus rolls his eyes. "You mean those seven years in Hogwarts didn't give you enough of a clue?"
Sirius gives a huff of laughter. "Well, if we can't break it, I doubt any of the kids can. And the adults remember my family enough to know better than to open locked things in this house."
"True," Remus replies thoughtfully. "Though if we want it to stay locked, we probably have to keep Fred and George away from it."
"They're the ones that got the map from Filch and gave it to Harry?"
Remus nods. "They're Molly's sons. Splitting image of Fabian and Gideon at that age."
Sirius stops short.
Fabian and Gideon died in a massacre at King's Cross. Fabian's body was never found.
It feels like yesterday.
His stay in Azkaban has contracted time for him. He feels like the princess in the fairy tale, the one that falls into an enchanted sleep. Every death, every wound, every loss has just happened. Then he's sent to Azkaban and sleeps for a hundred years. When he wakes up, the world around him has changed but he stays the same.
"Sirius." Remus places a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's been a long time."
"It feels like yesterday." He says the words that he's been turning over in his mind and is ashamed by the rawness of his voice. There is only so much vulnerability that he wishes Remus to see.
888
They move their collection to the kitchen so that they can study them by the light of the fireplace. Knives, dirks, jewelry that constricted once worn, gaudy silver antiques, instruments used in blood spells- their haul is impressive.
"We could open a shop," Remus eyes the pile while sipping his tea. "Voldemort's Armory."
Sirius picks up one of the deadly jewelry. "Death Eaters' Outfitters."
"Blackest Market."
"Kreacher's Wanking Toy Store."
Remus snorts his tea. "Truthfully accurate. Frighteningly so, in fact."
They stare gloomily at the boxes. It feels like the contents suck the light from the room, as if the shades of all the lives these things have taken have decided to haunt them with their presence.
They magically seal the boxes and move them into the attic.
When they have their dinner later, the kitchen feels normal again.
The next day, Remus leaves the cleaning materials outside the closed door of his parents' room and when Sirius spots them, he wonders if he can find a way to effectively skive off the task.
It's as if Remus reads his hesitation and he opens the door and ushers Sirius in with a sweep of the hand, the universal 'after you' sign.
He gets a strange feeling of taboo. He realizes that he's only been inside this room a handful of times and knows it's because of some old fashioned, old world, repressed, high class crap that his parents believed in.
Jumping into bed with your parents on a Saturday morning has never been what the Black Family is about.
There is, of course, another reason why he didn't want to step into the room.
888
He was in Azkaban when the news reached him. He heard that after Voldemort's downfall and after his own arrest, his parents committed double suicide rather than be taken into Ministry custody. They were supposedly found by Aurors lying side by side in bed, holding hands and clutching matching goblets containing the dregs of a sleeping potion laced with poison.
He tries to imagine their last hours. He tries to imagine the kind of resolve involved in taking ones' life. He tries to imagine what kind of feeling permeates at the end: Is it calm? Is it euphoria? Is it regret? He knows that these questions are pointless because they are unanswerable and will forever remain speculation. Yet he hopes, despite having been constantly told of what a blood traitor he was, that during their last moments, they had thought about him.
It is possible, he realizes suddenly- struck by an insight brought on by years of anger and hatred tempered by loss- to love and hate something in equal measure.
888
His parents' bed is huge and occupies most of the room but what draws the eye is the tall, ornately framed foe glass resting against one of the walls.
Remus peers into the glass and shudders. Sirius speculates what his friend saw, wonders if there was a time after he broke out of Azkaban when Remus looked into a mirror like this, afraid to see him.
He avoids looking into the mirror and turns towards the bed. The black and silver bed curtains were drawn to the side, revealing a neatly made bed. A fleeting, irreverent thought crosses his mind. He wonders if it was Kreacher or the Aurors that made the bed.
Taking a deep breath, he makes a quick turn around the room and searches for any innocuous piece of furniture. He settles for the table on his father's side of the bed.
He opens the drawer looking for possible dark artifacts. He sees a parchment bearing the Hogwarts crest. It looks old and brittle and has the crumpled look of too-often handled paper. When he unfolds it, the parchment cracks along one of the creases and a panel falls away from the rest. He holds the pieces together and something eases in his chest when he realizes what the parchment is.
It's his N.E.W.T.s. He didn't know if his father had asked Dumbledore for it or if the Headmaster had taken it upon himself to send it. Regardless, his father apparently kept it.
He replaces the parchment back into the drawer, wondering why he was taking care in doing it.
He continues his search and his hand closes around the glimmer of silver buried halfway under the moldy book that must have constituted his father's bedtime reading. He pulls out a signet ring and feels an answering twinge in the tiny scar under his eye. His father's palm print may have faded after the first few hours but the ring marked him for his lifetime.
It happened the night he ran away.
It was the only time his father hit him. While his mother was liberal with corporal punishments, his father usually stood back and parried his curses with curt replies, if he answered Sirius at all. The silent looks of disapproval cut more than his mother's heavy handed use of the cruciatus.
Sirius slips the ring on and, despite the weight he lost in Azkaban, it fits as if it was made for him.
His hand trembles and he removes the ring. He stares at the Black Family Crest for a long time. He looks back into the open drawer, then deciding, he puts it in his pocket instead.
He closes his eyes and relives that night when he ran away to James's house. He remembers declaring with an arrogance that only a sixteen year old can have that his parents was dead to him. It was the last time he saw them. They were alive when he was sent to Azkaban and dead when he escaped.
Despite his grievances and his hurt towards them, his parents had loved each other and died with each other in this room. They had created and destroyed in this room. And there was something beautiful and respectable about that.
"There are enough rooms in the house without having to use this one," Sirius declares, his voice unnecessarily rough.
He ushers Remus and the meager artifacts he found out. A wave of his wand plunges the room into darkness and the door closes with a thud.
He is old enough to recognize bravado now. He does not wipe away the wetness in his eyes. This is the first time he acknowledges their death. This is the first time that it is tangible and the first time that he truly grieves.
As they progress with their cleaning, Remus gradually acclimatizes to Grimmauld Place and he wakes up in the mornings healthier and increasingly well-rested.
The reverse happens to Sirius. The familiar house noises that had initially lulled him into dreamless nights are no longer effective and he succumbs once more to insomnia.
He notices a strange thumping one night, muffled mostly and not overtly disturbing, and he realizes that he probably wouldn't have noticed if he isn't plagued with the intermittent insomnia he's acquired since leaving Azkaban.
He chalks it up to Remus addressing an increased libido nearing the full moon and teases his friend about it the next day.
Remus throws him a funny look but does not dignify him with a reply.
"We don't need to clean Regulus' room." Remus announces on their sixth day. "We can make do with only the guest rooms."
Sirius nods in agreement, grateful for his friend's understanding. "But I still want to look inside."
Remus nods in return.
888
The room looks as if Regulus stole every wall hanging, every bed curtain, every decoration in the Slytherin dorms and common room and hung it in there. It made Sirius smile which then made his chest hurt.
He never regretted his ideology but he always regretted the wedge it placed between him and his brother.
He never learned how his brother died. He wishes fervently that it was not painful, that he went with no regrets, that he was at peace. But there was no way of learning these things, just like there was no way of knowing the means and ways of his brother's demise.
He scans the room quickly for potentially dangerous artifacts and is mildly surprised when the search leaves him empty handed.
About to leave, he gives the room a once over and ends up in front of the wall where his brother has placed various pictures. He takes the one of interest to him- with two very young, dark haired, light eyed boys eating ice cream, most of which were on their faces rather than the cones. This was before Hogwarts and Sortings and talks about blood purity. He had one arm around his brother.
He flips the picture over and reads Andi's dedication and wishes almost desperately to go back to a simpler time when ice cream could cure almost every pain.
The thumping gets worse.
He mentions it to Remus who chalks it up to his sharing a room with Buckbeak. He knows it's something else but when Remus's face falls into the expression he gave Frank and Alice after they were attacked, Sirius stops talking about it.
The next time he notices the sound, he steps into the corridor and tries to locate the source. It takes him away from the direction of Remus's room and towards one of the guestrooms a floor below. It's the one where they found the trunk they couldn't open.
He flicks his wand towards one of the wall scones. The miniscule stub of wax sputters to life then dies so he casts a single faint blue bell flame that hovers steadily above his head.
Something clicks in his mind and the memory unexpectedly comes to him, like a key that finally slides home into place.
He holds the snake encrusted lock in one hand and pricks his thumb with one of the embossed metal fangs. His thumb bleeds and he feeds the snakes a drop each then whispers: aperire.
The snakes slither around the lock, their metal bodies screeching noisily against each other, leaving a fine dusting of rust on the floor. When they settle into silence, Sirius lifts the lid and peers into unbearable darkness.
The trunk was empty, unlike all those years ago.
He remembers his old Uncle Alphard standing in the middle of the room with an open suitcase on top of his bed, packing by all appearances. His uncle opens the chest, with slow deliberate motions as if to teach him how and pulls out something covered in cloth. With infinite care, his uncle unwraps the communicating speculums and explains their use. Then he hugs Sirius and tells him to take care.
You're the best of them, his Uncle whispers into his hair before he pulls away from the embrace.
That was the last time they talk. At that time, he didn't recognize the goodbye for what it was.
His uncle dies during Sirius' last year in Hogwarts. He leaves Sirius a fortune that gets him blasted off the tapestry. Banished from the record, wifeless and child less, it felt like nothing of Uncle Alphard remained, as if he never existed except in Sirius' memory.
"You're the best of them," Sirius whispers back, lovingly, into the abyss of memories.
888
Something flickers in the darkness and Sirius blinks a couple of times, trying to clear away the tears. His eyes capture the movement again and he concentrates, trying to figure out a form in his mind.
Then he sees her, the woman he loves, the one that Regulus claimed to have cared about as well. He tries not to hold it against his brother. He repeats a mantra to himself that certain old ghosts need to be laid to rest.
He blinks again, and she remains. He wonders if he wished her into existence.
Her doe eyes look at him searchingly. Her brown hair floats around her fair face, as if lifted by an invisible gust. Her lips are a shocking red, swollen, the way they always look after their kisses.
His mind tries to repel the image and he is assaulted by the memory of her gray, lifeless body.
But here and now she looks so real and so lovely, as lovely as his mind can make her.
She reaches out a hand to stroke his cheek and all he could feel is air.
Then she speaks.
"Regulus."
The name slips past her lips in the low, throaty voice he's heard the handful of times they've shared a bed and a sob escapes from his own. He gazes at the amalgamation of what he loves and fears the most.
Then her real nature becomes apparent to him and he feels his heart ache once again.
Lie. Lie. Lie. The words echo.
"Riddikulus."
He transforms her into a faceless mannequin, gives the token 'ha ha's' as repellant and drives her back into the trunk.
He goes to her a second night, then a third, then a fourth. He goes to her enough times that he figures out how to make it work. When she reaches over to touch his face, he fights against the urge to close his eyes and lean his cheek into her palm. With eyes open, he imagines the warmth and weight of her hands. He tries to recreate the touch from the few nights that they shared more than thirteen years ago. He concentrates on keeping his eyes open because he knows that seeing her reinforces the illusion. He knows that if he closes his eyes, her caress will feel like a brisk wind blowing over his face and the tiny hairs of his skin will rise and he will break into gooseflesh.
It is by the sixth visit that he learns to control his need to spend as much time with her; by then, he can cast the spell and return her to the trunk before she says his brother's name.
He knows he has to give her up, knows it has to happen soon.
There is a war going on and it is bigger and more important than the one he is waging in his head.
Order members will move in. Meetings will be held.
Yet the loss of her always feels new to him. He grasps for pieces of her. Even the worst of ways is better than nothing at all. He recognizes the insanity, the desperation of it. But the initial moment of seeing her- not in his imagination but actually seeing with his own eyes- is worth the constriction in his chest afterwards when his mind realizes the deception and reality finally takes over.
It is by his ninth visit that he finally speaks to her. The three words are ripped from his throat in an anguished voice. Afterwards, he casts the spell so violently he thought he finally kills the creature for good.
He stays in that room the entire night, curled on the floor in the darkness and he feels the house pressing in on him with all its old ghosts.
"Aperire"
The iron snakes slither almost soundlessly, the rust now worn clean by the repetitive motion. Anticipation is tangible and settles on his skin like the embrace of a former lover.
She rises from the trunk all grey at first, her eyes the only thing with color. Then gradually it leaches and covers her entirely and she becomes solid.
Then she smiles. Warm and genuine and leisurely. As if this moment isn't stolen and would last forever.
It takes him a while to respond. His returning smile is melancholy.
The shade opens her mouth to speak. She is voiceless because it feels like a betrayal of her memory if he lets her- this thing- say the words. Instead, he lets her eyes speak volumes because he knows how this creature works, knows that his mind is supplying the information.
She's a poor copy.
He keeps his own eyes on her, fights against the urge to squeeze them shut and cry.
He promises to himself this would be the last time. He hopes that after tonight he will finally be able to keep his promise.
Good bye.
The words leave his lips soundlessly.
Because even though the world is invariably unfair to him, if he keeps doing this he will only be unfair to himself.
And to her.
888
The door opens quietly and Sirius wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the light spilling in from the hall.
"It is time now." The voice is gentle and is followed by movement.
She vanishes in a whirl of smoke, her doe eyes being the last to go. When Sirius gazes up there's a bright heavenly orb hanging incongruously amongst the brocade bed hangings.
"Riddikulus."
Remus' voice echoes in the dark.
Then there is nothing left.
The darkness is thick and heavy around them; Remus breaks through first.
"The first Order meeting will be tomorrow. Members will sleep here. The rooms have to be safe for habitation." His voice is neutral, no judgment, just fact.
He wants to nod, to voice agreement but his body and throat seem stuck. Then he feels a hand grasp his shoulder reassuringly.
Sirius is grateful that in the blackness he could not make out Remus's expression. In his mind's eye, he could still see her and he conjectures how soon he, himself will join all his old ghosts in the dark.
fin