aroma
Number 12 Grimmuald Place is a lost house inhabited by a broken man.
It's not something they talk about – they being the Order of not-so-broken soldiers waiting to battle the big bad snake-man – as they wander through the crumbling halls (oh and how the mighty have fallen). The house is as black as its owner's name, coloured by years of dark magic and poisonous personalities, and they're just glad to leave when the clock strikes just so.
The house seems like one big taboo, they think. Talking bad about the owner will probably cause it to spontaneously combust, though, so they sit at the long dining table with knife sized gouges in the surface and try to save the world.
(Unsuccessfully, perhaps, but they should receive an aware for effort anyway.)
And he sits at the scratched table with them, never at the head seat – his father sat there and he is not him, no, no – with half dead eyes and a defeated smile and a glass of firewhiskey.
Somewhere in this story, there's a boy with a lightning bolt scar and a destiny but the broken man can't see beyond the bottle of his glass to look into the future. Looking beyond the glass means looking into the phantom eyes of a dementor and the soulless walls of Azkaban with the burning truth that you don't deserve it – traitordeadtraitorhelp – and hasn't he spent long enough doing that?
He stays sat at the damaged table as they file out like the sheep they are, idly tracing memories along the wooden surface. He hates this, hates seeing Regulus brushing past him on the stairs and Bella chanting in the tapestry room and Andromeda reading in front of the fireplace and Cissy sitting across from him at the table, those blue eyes staring and staring-
"Sirius."
The last true Black, trapped within a decaying present, makes a noise in the back of his throat.
"Dinner's in five minutes."
And he nods absently because he is absent. In five minutes – 300 seconds, 300 lifetimes flashing – he will slump into that dark kitchen and shovel food into his mouth because food is life and life is worth living sometimes.
It would be a sad sight if anyone bothered to watch. He's left alone at the table, glass empty as he is. There's a humming in his head and it sounds like Lily hovering over baby Harry's cot all those years ago and wouldn't it be nice to just be there again, to just be alive and happy and okay for one moment.
Baby Harry's a big boy though and Lily's dead and Sirius is beyond broken.
Lacking any alcohol, his skeletal fingers fumble in his pockets for the half empty pack of cigarettes he's not supposed to have. If his mother was alive – perish the thought – she would scream at him for fouling the house and he smirks at that thought as he lights the tip with his wand.
Inhale, hold, exhale. Let the smoke surround you, consume you like the dementors reaching out because James is dead and Peter is dead and this island is where you'll die Sirius goddamn it why won't Lily stop humming you're going insaneinsaneinsane.
"Shit." He throws the still lit cigarette onto the ground, stands up, stomps the butt into the carpet. The sizzle of burning tobacco grinding into the ancient carpet amuses him briefly.
Places to be, paste that fake smile on old boy.
As he enters the kitchen, he smells like failure and broken dreams and everyone knows it. His smile doesn't fool anybody. He's not sure how long he's going to be allowed to wallow and he doesn't care. He grunts a greeting to his godson, remnant of a past that should've lasted forever (but didn't because life doesn't stop for anybody, least of all Sirius Black).
He lets the chatter of his houseguests wash over him. This is normalcy, there are no memories here in this moment.
Breathe Sirius, breathe (but all he can smell is burning).
