Pot, Kettle, Black 2/2
Sirius stares at the rectangular hole in the floor, feeling out of place, out of time in the shadowy chill of the Black mausoleum. He bows his head. His fingers are itching, hell, his brain is itching, for him to do something truly symbolic and horrendously stupid. Like getting out a can of Muggle spray paint to graffiti the tomb slab.
Let it be known for posterity what exactly he thinks of Orion Black.
He can't, he can't. He's not sixteen anymore, and has since developed at least a rudimentary notion of impulse control. Sirius conjures a single, white orchid, and lets it flutter down on the closed casket. Good riddance, he thinks. Rot in peace.
When he turns to Walburga Black to grasp her hand and tell her he's sorry for their loss, his mother doesn't let go of his hand. Instead she keeps him there, her grip iron-strong, her eyes flickering over his face as if she's trying to find something she's lost.
The face Sirius wears today is of a near-stranger on the other end of the family tapestry, and he holds Walburga's gaze. The Polyjuice is expertly brewed by Lily, as always, and Sirius's Occlumency is on point. He's not quite sure what's gone wrong today. Something in the way he holds himself? The way he flicks his wand? He's quite thorough with his disguises, but then, Walburga can draw on sixteen years of scrutinising her former heir's every move.
Dear god, is he ever going to be done running from this family?
Walburga beckons him near, much too close for comfort – of course, to him, a comfortable distance from Walburga Black is about two hundred miles - and speaks softly in his ear:
"One wrong move, and I'll tell them."
He nods almost imperceptibly. No point in denying this, no matter his acting skills, because his mother will not admit to being wrong. She doesn't have to say who. Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband are looming silently close to the only exit, flanked by Antonin Dolohov and a haughty-looking man whose features Sirius has memorised en passant. He won't stand a chance.
Walburga lets go of him. "Thank you for coming," she says curtly, before dismissing him. Sirius is most decidedly not a planner, but right now he'd like to take a moment to make up an escape plan or six – he really doesn't like being at his mother's mercy - but the queue moves on, and there he is.
Regulus.
Sirius startles, but it's not exactly surprise. He hasn't had a proper look at his brother in at least a year – since Hogwarts, he thinks, the memory of which is already as distant and jumbled as a dream. And Regulus looks terrible. He's too pale, he's too thin, like he's wasting away – no, like something's eating him, quite literally eating him - and he looks like he's been crying.
Sirius takes a wild guess it's not for their late father.
Very rarely is he thankful for his Pureblood upbringing, but he has to admit that having an autopilot for this type of situation is occasionally helpful. Thus, he grasps Regulus's hand and tells him he's sorry for his loss, that the passing of Orion Black will leave a void, and that he's sure Regulus will step up admirably. He half wishes that Regulus, too, will see past his face and know Sirius is there. But his brother hardly looks up.
"Thank you," Regulus says, hoarsely and on the same kind of autopilot that Sirius is running on, and Sirius wants to scream: At Walburga, at his twisted family and their revolting peers, every single one of which Regulus has worked so hard to make happy. Because they're not, they take and take and take and they're still so bloody miserable, and Regulus is miserable, too.
He wants to scream at Regulus, too, tell him to run while he still can, while there's still life in his body and a conscience in his head. To take his hand and run until he's free of them. Sirius briefly, madly, considers an Imperius, just for ten minutes, just to get the boy to safety. The very thought makes him sick in a way he can't begin to describe.
Sirius feels Bellatrix's gaze bore into the back of his head, and, in this near-stranger's brain, the impulse dies a long and well-considered death. He lets the autopilot take him away.
Because it's too late, he's seen it in the paleness of Regulus's face, the tremor in his hands. There's nothing his side has to offer Regulus anymore, except a life sentence in Azkaban.
Mr Black, have you ever engaged in behaviour that could be considered self-destructive, such as self-harm, excessive or underage drinking, or drugs?
Remus comes home late that night, his skin cold and his hair wind-swept and smelling of campfires. He finds Sirius on the sofa.
"Isn't it time you stopped?" says Remus softly.
Remus has got it wrong, of course. Sirius has stayed in the near-stranger's body for eight hours after he left Regulus at the funeral, because he's honestly not sure what he'd do if he were tied to his own idiotic, impulsive brain. This is him being careful.
But for now he's run out of Polyjuice. The near-stranger's features are fading from his body, and his skin becomes his own again. Remus traces the tattoos that are coming through on Sirius's bare arm, new tattoos over old scars. Sirius put them there with a paradoxical notion of change – of changing his own volatile self into something stable, something permanent. Something that can survive. Something that can protect those he loves. Something like Padfoot, but human.
He understands now that he is on a journey, but he can't see the end. Yet. Maybe when they have won the war, in that golden, impossible future when they won't need to be invincible. Maybe then he can stop changing. Until then, he'll inoculate himself with ink, blood, and the bodies of strangers, and he'll welcome the pain.
"Stop," says Remus again.
"Not yet," Sirius replies.
He's starting to think the Aurors might have been right about him.
That summer turns into autumn and Remus is hardly around anymore, but it's clear what he'd have to say. Sometimes, Sirius almost agrees with the Remus in his head: Surely, spending six weeks disguised as Mr Borgin, the evil antiquarian from Knockturn Alley, is not a normal way to cope with stress.
The very idea is typically Sirius, brilliant and ingenious and insane. As Mr Borgin, people are actually inviting him into their homes, eager to show him their most fucked up possessions, a shrinking Victorian corset, a flesh-eating bed, a carpet with a trapdoor – and he listens to himself reciting about their hidden beauty, their elegance, deriding the Muggles whose lives these things claimed.
It's horrifically easy to be Mr Borgin. All he has to do is open a door in his head and step back into Grimmauld Place, and the words come to him, the precise gestures, the stiff gait. But that's just surface. That's what the others see, the Malfoys, the Selwyns, the Notts of this world. Surface is enough for the job.
But the body he inhabits is not just surface. It's old and aching and its liver hates alcohol and its stomach hates everything, and its brain…
Borgin's brain is a pond, no, a swamp, infused with a foul and festering mind. Whatever comes out of that mouth has been considered for centuries, and what emotions he has are as ancient and leathery as a bogman. Sirius is used to feeling like he's someone else on Polyjuice, but then again, on a mission there's no place for his inner idiot, Sirius Black, and his insanity, his lack of foresight, his terrible decision-making.
But this is new. Polyjuice changes bodies, yes, and these bodies have brains, and these brains hold minds, but Sirius has always thought it's still him. Now he's not so sure.
In the evenings, when Sirius changes back for the night, it all comes rushing back, his old life, The Prank and his brother and Remus out cold on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. In the mornings, when he takes the first dose of Polyjuice, it flees to make place for different things, driftwood, swamp monsters, the dead and the drowning. Mr Borgin scares him more than anyone before him.
("Don't you ever worry you'll get stuck as a bad person?" Remus has teased him, once, but frankly, that ship has pretty much sailed the day Sirius was born.)
Mr Black, are you currently experiencing, or have you ever experienced intense, persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or guilt?
He's glad they haven't practised Crucio on each other. In all honesty, Sirius is not sure whether he would have continued with the Order, had he known what was waiting for him at the end of a Death Eater's wand. He's panting heavily, his throat raw from screaming. The temporary respite is so welcome he has to resist the impulse to kiss his torturer's boots.
Somewhere beside him, he hears Remus talking, he's using his prefect voice, lying and lying and lying, their cover story complete and compelling. Sirius is not sure he could even remember his own name at this point.
The next Crucio hits Remus, because he probably shouldn't have used his prefect's voice, he should probably have gone for stuttering and broken and scared. Remus stops talking, in fact he stops breathing, or moving, or making any noise whatsoever, until the curse is lifted.
"We're not with any Order, do we look like monks to you?" says Remus, because sometimes he's an even bigger idiot than Sirius. He receives another Crucio for his trouble.
Meanwhile, Sirius slowly regains his senses, just in time to feel his disguise fade, and he tries to turn away from them, keep his head lowered, stick to the shadows, but of course the Death Eaters recognise Sirius bloody Black in the end.
That's not good, that's really not good.
That's, in fact, how they end up in a ramshackle hut, bound together for the last four hours. Sirius's every nerve ending is on red alert, perceptions rushing in. He can smell the cracked wood of the hut, the forest beyond. A lone Death Eater guards over them, immersed in the Daily Prophet. Their wands lie at his feet, on the other side of the world.
What the fuck is he waiting for?
Sirius is slumped forward, this time not trying to hide himself from view, but Remus. He tries to be thankful that they're not in the city, that there's no-one here but a Death Eater, and that said Death Eater is probably not going to kill them in the next four minutes. Four minutes is all they'll need. But Sirius is not thankful. He's too busy being terrified.
Remus isn't calm anymore. He is pale and sweating and starting to shake. Words, prayers, break out of him in waves, the moon's tide crashing onto a willing shore. He's currently going through the Lord's Prayer for the third time. Remus only gets religious in the twilight before the moon.
The newspaper is folded away and the masked Death Eater saunters over to them, nudging Sirius's shoulder with his boot.
"What's his problem?" he asks Sirius.
"Thy kingdom come; thy will be done – "
"You tell me," says Sirius. "You tortured him."
"But did I?" The Death Eater laughs. "Didn't even scream, the little bitch," he says. He speaks with a pleasant Southern inflection, an accent that could be from a hundred places. "I bet you could make him. Isn't that right, Black?"
Sirius declines to comment, and the man crouches down in front of him, grabbing him by the lapel. "You're a bit of a celebrity in certain circles, Black," he says. "Is it true that you're a shirt-lifter? Is that why they threw you out?"
"Oh, I'm gay," says Sirius, looking the masked man up and down. "But for you, I'd be willing to make an exception."
And that is probably not the sort of joke he should be making when he's Sirius Black and captured by Death Eaters. Fortunately, the man has decided on a different form of torture.
"Of course, your brother isn't much better," he says. "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black mates with itself, and what do they get? A nancy and a coward."
His gloved hand is suddenly out, caressing Sirius's cheek. "That's right, nancy boy," he says. "Your brother is a failure and a fucking coward, and if you knew any shame, you'd be ashamed. But we are generous. We'll let him prove himself. Let him prune the family tree."
"Let him –"
The Death Eater smiles down on him. "Don't be scared of death, Black," he says. "You'll be helping him."
Sirius takes a deep breath. So that is the fate they have in store for him. For them. Together at last. "And where is my brother now?" he says.
"It's not where he is, but what he is," says the Death Eater. "And what he is, Black, is late."
Regulus has never been late to a thing in his life. But Sirius doesn't have time to ponder what this could possibly mean, because a heavy blow explodes in his face and he knows nothing. Some bone in his face just gives up and cracks.
So much for the proverbial Black beauty, he thinks through the haze of pain, maybe Regulus can be the pretty one now. At least, this makes him feel marginally better about what is going to go down in here in less than a minute.
"Father," says Remus, and Sirius is sure there's an eyeroll somewhere behind the Death Eater's mask.
"Your loony's starting to get on my nerves, Black," he hisses. "If he misses his dad, maybe he shouldn't have gone and played war."
"Oh, don't mind him," says Sirius. "He just thinks he's Jesus right now. Don't worry, it'll pass."
"Father," says Remus again, taking deep gulps of breath, "if thou be willing, remove this cup from me –"
The Death Eater strikes him, too, and Remus laughs shakily around the blood in his mouth. "Nevertheless," he starts. "Nevertheless –" and then his voice is too far gone.
"- not my will, but thine, be done," says Sirius, who has heard all this before.
Remus breathes out, and his entire body stills, and for a moment, there is peace.
Peace.
Then a scream rings through the silence, a long, drawn-out confession of pain and despair. Mercilessly, it shifts resonance, timbre, pitch, until the beast emerges, free of the ropes that held it, free of human boundaries, free of a conscience.
With his last human thought, Sirius is thankful that Regulus isn't here.
Then Padfoot joins the wolf and tonight, he lets it kill.
This was different, and of course the aftermath is different, too. Their friends worry around them like so many mother hens, James with the food and complicated thoughts he brings, and Lily with her potions and healing spells and endless cups of coffee, and Peter with his increasingly emphatic suggestions that maybe they leave Sirius and Remus alone now.
At the end of it, Remus is still face-down on their sofa, which he hasn't left except to throw up in the bathroom, ridding himself of black mangled things that came with him when he turned back, and Sirius is in front of a mirror that he wants to bash in. His skin still tingles with the aftershocks of what was done to him, bones aching, joints cracking, lungs burning. Half his face is bruised black, but it's not enough, it's still his face and he wants none of it.
The Prank is filling the silence between them, and Sirius finally understands the enormity of what Remus has forgiven him for.
It takes him a while to realise the silence is there because he is waiting for Remus to say something profound, or at least to tell him to get the fuck over himself. But then, it's usually Sirius sulking on the sofa. Since the roles seem to be reversed for this one, Sirius starts off by making tea, then tries to think of something helpful to say.
"They'd have cut off your fingers," he points out eventually, when the tea has gone cold. "If you'd warned them. They'd have cut off your fingers and hanged you with a silver wire."
"Maybe they should have," says Remus. "You've seen what I'm capable of when I'm the wolf."
"Yes," snaps Sirius. Is he really this insufferable when it's his turn? "And you've seen what they're capable of when they're fully human. They were going to have Regulus kill me, is that sick enough for you? They tortured us. You must have noticed, you were there."
All very good arguments, Sirius thinks, but Remus isn't having any of it. "What do humans know of pain," he says.
"Oh, just drink your tea," says Sirius.
He really isn't very good at this.
What is it, Auror Vance, have you finally run out of questions? There's so much more to the story, you know.
November 3rd, 1979. Sirius decides to take the day off, not because it's his birthday but because he's exhausted.
It is stupidly early and pitch-dark when he awakes to a warm body wrapped around him and a mouth pressed to his, and somehow that isn't a surprise even if he's sure he's gone to bed alone, and before his muddled brain can think of a dull security question, his arms tighten, his mouth kisses back, his back curves and his legs fold so he's touching, touching, skin to rough wool and cotton and jeans. His hand tangles in a shock of hair that is cold and wet with drizzly rain, and he breathes in and smells pine trees and earth and the forest.
"Missed you," he says. Eventually.
"Happy birthday," murmurs Remus against his mouth. "Congratulations, you survived your teenage years."
"How long?" says Sirius.
"Portkey," says Remus. "Ten minutes. I'm sorry."
"It's been a month," says Sirius groggily. "I assure you, ten minutes will be plenty." Remus laughs, and he cups Sirius's face in his hands and kisses him again, soft and warm, as if they have all the time in the world, and he takes his hand and turns it over, and then he laughs again.
Sirius is confused. Until he remembers about his ever-changing body. "Like it?" he says. His newest tattoo is probably his most stupid yet, a raised middle finger on the inside of his arm where the Dark Mark would be.
"At least I don't need an N.E.W.T. in Ancient Runes to get it," says Remus. "You'll be the first against the wall, love," he adds, and that's not really a word they use between them, not yet, but Sirius's limbs are still sleep-heavy, and Remus burrows against him, and exhaustion takes over, and the next time he opens his eyes, he's alone.
It's still dark, and that is not part of the plan, but there is a persistent tapping outside the window. He doesn't really get owls anymore, they are too easily intercepted.
In fact, the last owl he got was from his mother, informing him curtly of his father's death. Oh god.
Sirius is up like a shot to open the window, and the owl – a black, shiny, pedigree thing, sickly and moody – drops a black-rimmed letter into his shaking hand. The copperplate address, the seal, the heavy parchment: Same as last time.
Maybe it's Mother who died, he thinks desperately, maybe she finally died, and Regulus thought I should know -
It's not his mother who died.
Of course he's known for a while. Regulus was a dead man walking when he failed to turn up for Sirius's murder. The letter doesn't say dead, it says missing, but these days, it's all the same, isn't it? Sirius has seen what the Death Eaters to those they deem cowards.
There's a post-scriptum at the end of Walburga's letter, a cryptic note that says Find him, and he wonders what the fuck that's supposed to mean when a fine dark hair falls out of the envelope.
He stares at it.
His first thought is that this has got to be a joke. But his mother isn't exactly renowned for her sense of humour. And if there's one thing he never had reason to doubt, it's her love for Regulus. No joke, then.
Sirius keeps his stash of Polyjuice in Remus's muggle fridge, where it turns cloudy and takes on the taste of leftover curry. But perceptions deceive. Polyjuice belongs with the Dark Arts – Sirius has read Moste Potente Potions in its horrible entirety – it's just so darn practical for spying that the Order has conveniently ignored this.
But if the past year has taught him anything, it's that Polyjuice is subtly evil, the kind of evil that his family understands on a deep level. Maybe that's how Walburga knows. Maybe that's why he's drawn to it so much.
It doesn't just change appearances. It changes thoughts, it melts things together. It forms bridges. For no two perfectly identical things can exist in this world without resonating. If one of them changes, the other must, too.
Sirius should really have bloody guessed, because Regulus has been his near match for so long. He was brought into this world as his spare, his equal, his saviour – his replacement. They resonate, too.
When he adds the hair, the potion turns into a pleasant ruby colour, like old wine, or blood, and it tastes like memories, bittersweet and heavy. It burns all the way down.
The change is gentle, there's barely half an inch and maybe a pound difference between them. The ink in his skin runs together, forms rivers, currents, whirls, before pooling elsewhere. Some of his scars smoothen out, others travel.
His first thought is darkness. His second is that he's drowning, and he knows the feeling, it feels like Grimmauld Place, and his third is calm, like the bottom of a lake, and he knows that's where his brother is, weighted down by stones or dark magic, too heavy to float. The death of a traitor.
He thinks of Mr Borgin and his swamp thoughts, of Dr Meredith Fawley and her cold determination, of Avery and his disturbing nonchalance. Regulus's thoughts are dark, heavy, but there is resolve, there is purpose, and above all, there is courage.
He grabs that courage by the throat and, very slowly, he pulls up the sleeve of his robe and reveals it, the Dark Mark, the ugly skull and the even uglier snake on the pale skin of his forearm. But the tattoo is not moving under his skin. A deep, deliberate cut splits the skull in half, beheads the snake.
"Oh, brother," he says with Regulus's voice.
There are whispers, then, echoes, Oh, brother, they repeat and degrade, slip past a veil to return to him. Brother.
"I'm sorry," he says, and lets the echoes in, sorry, I'm sorry, so sorry, they're his words and they're familiar, he's said them often enough, but when he hears them in his brother's voice, they're so much more. So full of meaning.
The third is the hardest, but Sirius thinks of Remus, aged sixteen, who said them first, who took a leap of faith and dared to be an idiot. "I forgive you," he whispers, I forgive you, forgive you always, and he almost collapses with relief, but he's not done yet.
"You're an idiot," he says, and listens, whispers of idiot, idiot, pot, kettle, Black. Regulus first made that joke when he was six, and he never really stopped.
"Come then, idiot," he says. "To the roof."
His body is heavy with grief as he moves towards the fire escape and climbs four flights of stairs. The building's roof is like the Astronomy Tower, but rougher, less picturesque, and with the city glow of London there are never too many stars. A faint pink glow announces the sun, and he is reminded of so many nights at Grimmauld Place, a place that made children seek comfort in things that couldn't possibly be farther away.
"You don't smoke, brother, do you?" he says into the crisp early morning air, shaking out a cigarette from the beaten pack he's found in his pockets. "Let's share one anyway."
He lights up with shaking fingers and tells Regulus not to be scared. And when his hour is up, he lets his little brother fade from his skin, from this world, not the way he did, but the way he deserves.
With the sun in his eyes, and without regret.
The End.
Note: I had planned to write something Christmas-y, a sort of fix-it with a maybe almost happy ending, but then this one decided to jump the queue. Happy holidays anyway, and let me know what you think :)