Disclaimer: don't own any of this
You know there's a reason I never came to see you in all those years. A reason I'm avoiding you like hell now. And it's not the reason everyone else seems to think. Oh the poor bastard, they think - and I know, I see it in their pitying expressions and offers of jobs - betrayed and alone. He must really hate Black.
I don't.
Because I know why you did it. And I have a fair idea of the how as well.
You went missing six days before James and Lily were murdered. I remember whirling through the flat like a madman, intent on finding some clue of where you'd gone. A note, perhaps, saying that you were out of the country with the Aurors and couldn't contact me. Maybe you'd just gone down to the chip shop on the corner. I didn't sleep that night, sitting up with a cup of tea cooling slowly in my shaking hands in the excessively large double bed.
I tried to go to James the following morning, but couldn't find him. And realisation hit. They'd performed the Fidelius Charm. You were the Secret Keeper. I could only hope you'd gone into hiding without trusting me. It was a painful thought, but the least painful of a whole range of frightening possibilities.
Six days later I knew the truth. Knew you'd been captured. Knew that after hours and days of unimaginable torment, you 'd finally broken. Death Eaters, or perhaps Voldemort himself, merely had to stroll through the shattered pieces of your mind and pick out the necessary information. And then - as if to prove his cruel ingenuity to the world - the Dark Lord reconstructed you all over again. Not as the brave, ridiculous, loving man I'd grown to almost depend upon, no. Voldemort had taken all the hardness and cruelty within you - a cruelty I'd only ever caught glimpses of - and magnified it so as to create a powerful and willing servant.
And I never want to see my Padfoot destroyed like that.
AN: would love some concrit on this ;)