Sounds of laughter and friendly conversations leaked from the kitchen of number twelve Grimmauld Place as dinner was being served, but the mirthful noises of people enjoying themselves was separate from Sirius and made the drawing room seem even more dismal and bleak. But he had no intention of joining them.
It was dark in the drawing room. So dark it was almost pitch black. The only illumination came from the door which stood slightly ajar. A beam of dusty light shot through it from the hallway and threw itself against the wall he was facing. The wall on which hung the ancient tapestry of his family tree. "The most noble and ancient house of black" it read across the top. Sirius glared up at it.
Not all of its members are so noble now are they? He thought, placing his index finger over a small scorch mark in the bottom of the tree.
That was where he would have been. If not for his mother's obsession with keeping family tradition, Sirius would still be there. He had been an outcast even before his imprisonment in Azkaban. His own family had shunned him and eventually disowned him, all because he was different and refused to be like them.
Generations upon generations of Blacks had belonged to Slytherin house at Hogwarts. He had been sorted into Gryffindor. Where most of his relatives prided themselves on being purebloods and anti-muggle, he couldn't care less if he had been born half house elf.
I don't want to be anything like them anyway. He thought.
Why should he care what they ever thought of him? Most of them were gone now anyway. He wished he wasn't related to them. He wished that his picture had never been on that tapestry for his mother to scorch off in the first place. She would have been happier without him as her son anyway. They were cruel and heartless the lot of them. Mounted the house-elve's heads on the wall for God's sake! A family only to be ashamed of. As far as he was concerned he had never had a mother. And James was more of a brother to him than Regulus had ever been. So why was he still standing here in the dark staring at the family that had rejected him and not enjoying dinner with the rest of the Order? He sighed.
The horrible truth of the matter was that, as much as we all wish it wasn't so, the world had a terrible tendency to reject what is different. Like that muggle saying: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. He stood out from the rest of them and they had disowned him because of him.
But I shouldn't be complaining. Look at what Remus has to deal with.
In his school days Sirius had never had trouble making friends or being accepted. He was only ever unpopular with his family. Remus however, until he befriended James and himself, was quiet and kept to himself. Sirius knew now that this was because Remus was afrais of the ridicule that followed him because of what he was. Blimey he almost couldn't get into school because he was a werewolf! No, Sirius was being self centered. Where he only had a family he was ashamed of that rejected him for what he had chosen to become, Remus had the entire world to contend with over something he couldn't help.
Sirius turned and stalked out of the drawing room. Surely he was being unreasonable. It didn't matter what a family as awful as his thought of anyone let alone himself…but his own family…..
No. He never needed a family to tell him who to be.