http:www.tinaling.ca/mwppmap/art/memorial.html I saw that picture, burst into tears, and decided that this had to be on paper before I recovered from my fever and decided it wasn't worth it. nods I'm sick as a dog, probably the only reason I'm willing to post this, but I think it's worth reading for the last paragraph, and for one or two memories in between. I don't usually write MWPP, but this isn't quite that either…
Disclaimers: Me no own Potter. Make a sick girl happy, don't sue.
Not Remembering You
Of course I remember Sirius. Not remembering him is like not remembering the feel of Christmas, or not remembering what your mother smells like. Not remembering Sirius is like not remembering what chocolate is, what it feels like to be in love, and not remembering just how much pain you were in when he was hauled off for murdering his best friend. He's impossible to forget, it's just the way things are.
The day he died was a punch in the gut for all of us, Hermione wouldn't stop crying, and I couldn't stop wishing I could join her. So there we were, it was Wormtail and I, I felt like such scum. If I'd let Sirius in sooner, if he'd come to me, if I'd just made Harry wait on the floo while Sirius came… he'd still be here. If he hadn't gone off to kill Peter, if I'd've stopped him, if it hadn't been a full moon the night James died, he would still be here. It was all my fault.
It was just so impossible to believe, so outrageous a claim, 'Sirius Black is dead' was absurd. He isn't, it's just too abstract. Prison was conceivable, we were wild in our youth, extended vacation more so. In the month before our N.E.W.T.s, Sirius disappeared. No one could find him, not Dumbledore, not our head of house, not his best friend, not me. Peter and I worried ourselves sick, Jamey sat back and laughed. He showed up two weeks later, scruffy and smelling of the most rot-gut wine imaginable, sat down for the exam, and slid through with a full 7 N.E.W.T.s, which by his standards was pretty damned good. I got 8, he had me panicked for weeks before the exam, I blamed it all on him and he gave me a noogie.
I'll never forget it, I'll never forget how real it was when Peter snickered behind his hand, or I'll never forget the stupid grin on my face when I realized t was just Sirius being Sirius. That he hadn't been dismembered, that he wasn't lying dead in a ditch from an attack by giant spider. Forgetting a moment like that is like forgetting which shoe belongs on which foot.
I can't forget what Sirius felt like. I can't forget what his shoulders looked like when he was asleep. I can't forget how he always wanted a cigarette at three in the morning, when we were too young to buy them. It was the only thing that Hogsmeade denied him, he charmed the birds out of trees, he charmed Rosmerta out of an astounding amount of gin and firewhiskey, he got showered with gifts from all sorts of women, and free candy from the fellow that ran Honeydukes, but he never got tobacco. Sirius pled and begged until he was beyond pathetic, but it was an elderly gentleman that managed the only tobacco shop in town, and he refused to be blinded by Padfoot's charisma. It was a good thing, I always thought because I would've been right there with him like I always was when he wanted one; cold, sweaty and in the open air of the astronomy tower, the only place a kid could sneak a fag without the draft carrying it through to a professor and the rest of the school. Not every night, but at least once a week he'd say "Moony, I could really bloody use a smoke," then he'd get up and open a window.
The night Sirius turned 18, he swaggered to the little store, and as little egotist swaggering as one can do after crawling out of a statue hole, swaggered back to bed with a pack and a ridiculous grin. I won't ever forget his giddy excitement as he laid them on the nightstand, almost more eager for the cig than the preceding shag. The moment he lit it up, though, he coughed and spat it out, vowing never to touch them again, but at least once a Wednesday in the five years following, he'd say "Y'know Moony, I could really go for a fag."
His voice continues to haunt me; he had a voice for everyone and every thing. The 'uncle' voice where Harry was involved, the conspirator's drawl, the sweet-talker tone, the lover's timbre. Sirius had a voice for everything. In the pub, in the pub after one-too-many drinks, when he was talking about his family, when he ate sweets, when he wanted to kiss me, he had a voice, a tone for every conceivable emotion and scenario. He spent twelve years in Azkaban, I'd forgotten perhaps ten percent of the sounds he made. Now I wish I could forget them again.
Two days after he fell through the veil, a stupid and anticlimactic way to die, he would have said, when the Ministry was still a hubbub of activity and the antechamber wasn't being watched, I spent at least five hours at that veil. I would swear in any court that I heard his voice, not the lover's voice, or the 'I miss you' voice, he was using the 'I'm in deep shit, Moony' voice, which I'd only heard twice before. Once was the day Harry was born, "I'm a Godfather Rem, I don't know what to do!" the other was about ten minutes before the ministry caught up to him after having 'killed' Peter Petigrew.
I remember everything; that only his left cheek had a dimple because his smile was always crooked, and I remember how frizzy his hair used to get in the humidity because it was oh-so-slightly curled, especially at the nape of his neck, where he loved to be rubbed if he was bored and I was otherwise occupied. So many years ago, and I still wake up expecting he'll be next to me, until I roll over and the cold side of the bed smacks me in the face like the sledgehammer of reality. His arms were so soft, there's just not a better word for it.
"Hey you're kindof a loner aren't you?" He said one afternoon, James gracefully sat down next to me, Sirius practically sat on me. I didn't actually say anything, I was twelve-years-old, alone in the library during lunch, it was pretty self-explanatory. Ten months later, Sirius really did sit on me, "So you're a werewolf? I don't see a problem," he said, "I'm a Black." Which was also pretty easy to see.
Padfoot was a bit of an idiot, but he was my idiot. I spent two weeks not talking to him after the incident with Snape. Stupid, stupid Snape, and stupid, stupid me, I'd give the world and everything in it to have those two weeks back. It's probably a good thing I don't have those two weeks to spend, because we'd argue through them anyway. There was always arguing, we fought like cats and dogs… well, almost, and then we made up like only two people can. I'll never forget the day he tried making gouache, blew up the kitchen, and I didn't speak to him until he fixed everything. I am a passive aggressive bastard.
I wish I'd been more understanding, I wish I hadn't been so self-centered and so paranoid. It's easy to say "I wish I'd appreciated you more" when a person is gone from your life, and hard as hell to do it when they're there. If I'd hidden him, instead of kicking him out when he came to me about Wormtail, I am such a sodding shit. I should have listened, I should have made him apparate to Timbuktu. I should have done anything but what I actually did, and what I'm doing is kicking myself in retrospect because he took me in like a stray, and I was too blind not to return the favor. I should have at least looked at his left arm, but I didn't.
He was my first friend, the only person ever to make an effort, my first lover; I'll remember his face, his ridiculously scruffy eyebrows, the way his eyes lit up after his first cup of coffee, the difference between his un-provoked giggles and his sarcastic laughter, I'm always going to remember what a bastard I've been, and just how much I'll miss him, because memory charms don't work for guilt.
If there's one thing to be said for Sirius Black, it is that he is absolutely unforgettable. To not remember him, would be to shame his memory, it would be a crime against Wizardom. But I wouldn't mind forgetting that he's never coming back.
End. For now, because true angst and guilt never ends.
A/N: If there were spelling mistakes, I'm sorry, and I suck. If there were grammar mistakes, I deserve to be shot. Please, put me out of my misery.