On Fire

In all his fifteen years he could not remember crying.

Here he stood outside the parlour, he could hear his moher's screams resignating through the room. He stood with his back flush against the wall and listened to his brother screaming back.

With the bang of the door he jumped from his place in the hall and sprinted up the steps and to his room. He heard footsteps a moment later and looked around his door frame to see his older brother rush into his room and slam the door. He thought of knocking.

The door flew open again and the elder boy came out of his room carrying a burlap bag in one hand and a wand in the other. He thought of caling out. Of begging him not to leave, not to condemn him to this fate. It was too late though, their paths had been chosen years prior and he was not strong enough to change that.

With his brother went also the courage and the bravery that he had once imagined he had. With the slam of the door left his voice and his words. He no longer knew who he was. He knew nothing but what he heard and what they told him.

Later that night he made his way into the parlour. He ran his pale hands over his brother's blown-out picture on the wall. In all his fifteen years he had never cried. Black's don't cry. But as he crumbled to the floor the tears welled and over-flowed.

He laid there in the dark, supported only by the wall beside him. He sobbed and sobbed and didn't see when a figure opened the door and came to tower over him. He didn't even regesiter is father picking him up off the ground and hitting him, telling him how disgraceful he was. He only knew that nothing anyone said or did could change the bitter feeling of emptiness inside him.

They tell you where you need to go

Tell you when you need to leave

They tell you what you need to know

Tell you who you need to be

But everything inside you knows

There's more than what you've heard

There's so much more than empty conversations

filled with empty words

Give me one more time around

Give me one more chance to see

Give me everything you are

Give me one more chance to be near you

In all his 18 years he could not remember crying as hard as he had the night Sirius left. He had felt as though he could die that day and that night. He watched as the boat left the cave and he let the tears fall down his cheeks.

This was it, he told himself. He was finally free. He would finally prove to his brother-to his family-that he was not some cowardly idiot. He knew the right way out and he was going to take it, even if it took him in return.

When everything inside me looks like

everything I hate

You are the hope I have for change

You are the only chance I'll take

I'm standing on the edge

of everything I've never been before

And I've been standing on the edge of me

I'm on fire when your near me

As he drank the potion the only thing he could see or hear or recall was Sirius. And with that, and the tears that overwhelmed him, he drank and he smiled.

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