An exploration of a name. And none of it's mine. Like you didn't know.
Black
Black.
The house at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place lives up to its name, he thinks. His name. It is dim and dark, as if the natures of those who had lived in it for so long had left their mark on its very walls and furnishings. The house itself is black, inside and out.
Sometimes he feels that so is he, that he has been trapped here for so long that he has begun to turn the very color that gives him his name.
He gives a short, unhappy laugh and leans his forehead against the cool, grimy window that looks out on a black and gray world of rain and dingy streets. Night is falling outside.
It isn't exactly his favorite color, he thinks, seeing a twisted smile curve of the lips of his reflection in the dirty glass of the window, for all that James used to tease him over it. He doesn't smile like he used to, he notices. Even that has been tainted and shadowed by Azkaban. He hates his reflection these days.
And he's always preferred other colors. Colors that glow and live and dance, not suck everything into themselves, into limbo, into darkness, like black does. His parents were as sadistic as ever when christening him, he thinks. Sirius Black? Seriously black. Gravely black. Intensely black.
He stops himself in the middle of the thought. He used to play that game with Prongs and Moony; he doesn't want to play it any more, not with himself, by himself.
He wonders what his parents were thinking when they gave him that name.
He wonders if they thought about him at all, after. Not that he'll ever know, now.
Not that he wants to know. He supposes they did; the vitriol his mother's portrait screams at him on a daily basis certainly seems to support that conclusion.
He doesn't care. He's used to people screaming at him. A lot of people screamed in Azkaban.
It's so dark in here, but this room doesn't have any lights. What it does have is a window, and that is enough for him these days.
He hates being back in this house. Hates it so much he thinks he'll go mad from it sometimes.
Or maybe he's already mad. He wouldn't really be surprised. He wonders if he's been a little mad ever since he lost James. Sometimes he feels like it.
James was the only one who didn't care he was a Black. Who saw past the name and the reputation, and cared about something else. James, and Harry. And Harry is so like James it hurts. Maybe Moony could see past it, too, once. But after that night under the Whomping Willow things changed between them. Even now . . . .
He can't blame him. He was a wanker back then, there's no way around that. He can't expect Remus to forgive him, not when he can't forgive himself.
That's another memory that had a lot of replay value in Azkaban.
Being here again is like being back there. Or maybe Azkaban was like being back here. He didn't spend the whole twelve years reliving the night of James and Lily's deaths and his pursuit of Wormtail, after all.
He shakes his head at himself. And he'd thought he'd never come back here. Now he thinks he never left. He still remembers that last fight with his mother, the night he ran away. The words he'd hurled in her face.
Youthful bravado, he thinks now.
Not that he's outgrown it, really. He would like to think he's more mature, but even he knows better than that.
But he's different now, he thinks. Not better. Maybe just broken. And he thinks maybe he can't be fixed.
The sky is dark now, leaving the room in shadow. He sighs and closes his eyes.
He's been in shadow his entire life. In the shadow of his name, in the shadow of this house. He knows what they said about him after he went to Azkaban. I knew it all along. It's all anyone could have expected. He is a Black, after all. What can you expect? I could have told them he'd turn on them . . . .
He wonders if they were right. He will never escape his name; he was born with it, it's a part of him. A part he hates, but it's still there. He can no more deny it than he can deny who he is.
For he is Sirius Black. It is a name, a past, a reputation, that is part of him, even though it is not him. Even if he is not the murderer everyone imagines he is.
But he would have killed Pettigrew. He would have. He wonders what that makes him anyway. And he doesn't care. He doesn't think he ever really cared.
The rain's stopped. The stars are out now, and it's an old habit he hasn't been able to break to seek out the one that bears his name.
It's still shining, of course, bright as ever. Brightest star in the night sky. James would have told him that meant something, then followed it up with a wicked grin, and said that the light of his idiocy would never burn out.
Sirius smiles grimly and pushes himself away from the window. Enough thinking. He's afraid that if he thinks too much, he won't be able to stop. And he's not the sort who does it well.
He thinks he hears Kreacher talking downstairs. Better go keep that little monstrosity from sneaking off with another pair of his mother's old knickers or something.
The stars are still shining as he leaves the room.