This is a one-shot that came to my mind and that I couldn's leave there, I had to write it down.

As usually, THANK YOU for reading.

This story happens when Sirius is about to be killed by Bellatrix at the battle of the Ministry of Magic on the fith book.

This is the first one-shot I publish, I hope you like it; please, REVIEW, I'd like to improve my writting so I think that constructive reviews are very useful and they are welcome here.

Too Late to Understand

When all seemed to have finished, a jet of green light was coming straight towards me, it was all too fast; so fast that I couldn´t do anything to stop it hitting me right on the chest. I knew I was less than seconds away from dying, but I wasn't scared at all; no, that wasn't what I was feeling. I was sad for several reasons, the most important was, of course, Harry; I was leaving him alone again, with no family, just as he was before we met. That made me also feel guilty, because I had made him love me as a son loves his father and now I was leaving, making him suffer that pain again.

The other origin of my no-fear sadness was seeing who had been the person to cast the curse that would suppose the end to an existence of misery and pain; the existence of somebody who hadn't been able to do anything to save his friends from an unfair death; the existence of someone who hadn't been able to help the only person of whom he had ever felt responsible of. I was somehow disappointed that it was that person who was going to kill me.

Then, I started remembering. Everybody would think I started remembering my life with my true friends, the Marauders; yes, James, Remus, Lily… But I didn't. Those weren't the memories a failure like me brought back at the moment of his dead. She had been more important, the one to listen to me at the beginning, the one that was there when I was hated by my family. She had been special to me for some time, a forbidden love that didn't end in anything because of her logical Dark-Side attraction and my completely illogical Gryffindor inclinations.

Bellatrix Black, my cousin, hadn't always been a Death-Eater or evil. There was a time when we were close to each other. We were very young when we first met. It was, of course, during a family reunion. My mother's brothers came home for dinner – it was before my uncle was disowned for helping me escaping – and uncle Cygnus brought all his girls. They were all very pretty, but there was one that stood out. It was her. Bellatrix Lestrange, my cousin. She is nine years older than me, but for a little kid like I was the problem wasn't the age, but the fact of being cousins. That had always been a problem, actually.

At first we didn't talk a lot, she was a teenager, I still a child. Nevertheless, some years passed and we became friends. She – incomprehensibly – understood me, because in those times I was beginning to be hated by the Blacks, I family of pure bloods, almost aristocratic; and I was in Gryffindor and had muggle-born friends and the worse was that I flaunted it. Bellatrix, was even jealous of me, she wished she could had a personality like mine and not fear what the family would say if she told them she wanted to hang out with all kind of people, that she wanted to meet people from other houses, but she was weak then.

That's why we became friends; she secretly – so secretly that even her Slytherin friends who she later joined to be a Death-Eater didn't know it - was like me, a "revolutionary" in the Black family, one of the oldest pure blood ones. Whenever there was a reunion, we went together, to my room to talk about everything we couldn't say in front of the others. It was one of my happier periods of life, I had someone close to me when my Gryffindor friends weren't around, and that made me feel safe and loved.

After a year, during the Christmas break of my second year at Hogwarts, she visited me one night. She was looking a bit scared, like if someone was following or watching her. She was obviously not supposed to be there, with me. Then she told me what she had come for.

"Sirius, hate me"

"Don't be silly, Bella, why would I hate you?" I was puzzled.

"I've done something for what you won't ever forgive me…" She was almost crying when she said that, but I still didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Then, I saw it.

A horrible thing was engraved on her forearm, a mark I would never forget, the skull with the interlaced snake.

"Why… How… I… I thought…" I closed my eyes, "I THOUGHT YOU MEANT IT WHEN YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE LIKE ME!"

She was crying heavily then, she couldn't even look at me.

Now I understand, maybe I's too late, but, after this instant of remembering, I've understood what I wasn't able to see once, what I blamed the pressure of the family for. She lied to me all that time, we were never friends, she was just pretending during my whole childhood, after all she was already an old teenager when I was still a child, an innocent child. She's always been evil, she was just having fun when she told me all those things, she didn't understand me, she hated me as much as the others did, but she was the most wicked of all and played with a little kid who fell in her trap. I fell stupid now, but, maybe for the fact that I'm moments away from death, I secretly laugh inside my head, it's funny how it all ends.

Now that I'm going to die by her hand, I understand it; it is the final game she's playing with me. But I don't care anymore, I've lived two wonderful years with Harry, and those have been the most happy years of my life; I just wish that me leaving won't stop him living his own life, that he's going to finally defeat Lord Voldemort and have the normal life he's always wished.

Finally, everything comes to an end. The green light jet that tenths of seconds ago had sprouted from her wand and had seemed to wait for me to remember is now hitting my chest, everything goes black and the Ministry, Harry, Bellatrix and everything else fades away. I am dead and it was Bellatrix, the evil liar who did it.

I hope you liked it, please REVIEW it :D