Notes: So, yeah. This is a bit of a writing exercise/character study.
...
Coming Home
(or Warm and Welcome)
...
Sirius had never known what it was like to feel at home until he was eleven years old.
Sure, he had the house where he and his parents and brother lived. But Sirius had never thought of that as 'home.'
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was just too dark and cold and intimidating and scary to ever be a home. He couldn't turn a corner without catching sight of the glittering, jeweled eye of some sculpted creature or the utterly unnerving severed head of a House Elf.
(He would never forget the day that Kreacher's predecessor died. He shuddered whenever he thought about his father with his wand held high over the shaking mess of a House Elf who had so loyally served the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, the words of the severing charm spilling from his lips.)
Home was supposed to be warm and open. Home was where he could feel safe, where he could feel welcome and wanted. He never felt any of those things at Grimmauld Place.
The only part of the house that he felt even remotely attached to was the landing which led to his and his brother's rooms. There, at least, he could get away from the horrors that plagued his every step, from the critical, judgmental eyes of his mother and father. His room was his fortress. There (and when he occasionally wandered across the landing to visit Regulus' room - with his express permission, of course) he could start to be himself.
But as much as he thought of his room as his fortress, he sometimes felt that he had been locked in an impossibly tall tower, serving a self-imposed eleven year sentence.
On the first day of September in the year of 1971, he broke out of his prison. He was free. And upon arriving at his destination - at Hogwarts - he felt for the first time in his life like he was coming home.
For the first time in his life, he felt as if he belonged. He talked and joked and laughed with his friends. He caused mischief and mayhem. He ran through the castle corridors as if he owned them. (And it was his home, after all.)
Gryffindor Tower: yet another tall tower, but this time not one in which he felt trapped. It was everything he had ever imagined home to be.
The Common Room was always illuminated by the warm, orange glow of a roaring fire. The air was usually thick with conversation between familiar voices. In the Common Room, Sirius was surrounded by people who truly cared for him. There was always a comfortable chair to sit in and a warm smile to greet him.
His favorite spot in the Common Room was the squashy armchair just to the left of the fireplace. It was always nice and warm (whether someone had been previously sitting in it or not), and in it, he could easily see all the goings on within the room. During his first few years at Hogwarts, his chair - because it was his - was very rarely left vacant, though he sat in it every chance he got. By the time of his fourth year, however, he had very well established it as his own. Whenever he entered the Common Room, if there happened to be a backside occupying the chair - his chair - it quickly removed itself and found a different, unclaimed chair.
Sirius felt no safer than in the comfort of his dormitory. He was no longer alone. (Though he had always had his brother back at Grimmauld Place, it just wasn't quite the same.) He had three best friends who were always there for him, who always put up with him even when he didn't deserve it. Whenever he had difficulty sleeping, all he had to do was listen to the steady, comforting breathing of the three other boys. In the years after Hogwarts, he often had trouble sleeping without it.
Seven years went by quickly - much too quickly. Soon, he was out on his own. He had a new house - his very own flat. But it wasn't home. The people for whom he cared weren't there with him. Remus and Peter and James and Lily (and, after July of 1981, Harry) weren't there.
And they weren't there with him in Azkaban, either.
After another twelve years locked in a fortress, he was able to break free once more. He was able to return home. But his visits weren't for pleasure, and Hogwarts didn't feel the same as it did when he was a student - he blamed it on the Dementors.
For two years he was constantly moving, constantly watching his back, and then...he found himself back in the place of his childhood nightmares, back in his very first prison.
Even with the Weasleys and Remus and Harry, Grimmauld Place was no better than it had been when he and his parents and his brother had all lived there together.
And as he saw the green light from his cousin's wand racing toward him, he knew he couldn't dodge it. It was too late. He regretted (like oh so many other things in his life) that he was leaving Harry behind when he knew the boy didn't have much else. He regretted leaving Remus behind again when he knew the man didn't have anything else.
But he couldn't help but think to himself that maybe, just maybe, he would finally be coming home again.
So he fell through the veil - he fell into death - with a smile on his face, the ghost of his last laugh marring his features.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself sitting in his favorite armchair in the Gryffindor Common Room, just as warm and comfortable as he remembered it. He could hear the fire crackling behind him and feel its warmth, but he didn't look back at it. Something much more wonderful, much more amazing - something that, had he been standing, would have made him crash to his knees on the floor - had caught his eye.
He saw everyone. Everyone for whom he had ever cared and who had died before him. And they weren't just his fellow Gryffindors. It was everyone: people of all ages and Houses.
His eyes scanned over long dead Order members, classmates, his Uncle Alphard... His gaze lingered on someone that he hadn't expected to be there. Regulus. His brother. His lips quirked up into a small smile as he realized that his brother had managed to make his way home, too.
He looked out over the rest of the sea of familiar faces slowly, taking them all in, because he knew who would be there to greet him at end of the group. He briefly closed his eyes in anticipation. And when he opened them again, he was staring into the eyes of the two people he had dreamed of seeing again for half his life.
James and Lily, hazel and green, were staring back at him. Their smiles were warm and welcoming (just like the Common Room, just like Hogwarts).
And for the very last time, Sirius Black felt what it was like to be home.
...
Notes: So this last little bit where Sirius sees all his dead friends and family is supposed to be reminiscent of one of the last scenes of the movie Titanic where, after dying, Rose walks back into the grand foyer and is greeted by all the people who had sunk with the ship. It's cheesy, I know, but the good kind of cheese.