Still Fighting to Walk Towards the Light
Chapter Two
The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Stripped down to the bare bones, and it should simply be a house. Yet the more Remus and Sirius stripped, the more it was clear that something else existed here.
Below the layers of dust and grime, the worn layer of disuse, the sporadic infestations, there was still…something. Something that made this house, in Sirius' opinion, evil.
He could tell Remus thought he was crazy. What house could not be cleaned? If not of memories, at least of everything else? But Sirius knew better. The very foundation of this house bore the scars of dark magic.
These scars, the type that felt like ground glass in his joints, aching increasingly every day, these scars were the ones that set all his previous scars aflame. The first night, when he lay down in his old bed, listening to the still-familiar sighs of the noble and most ancient ancestors, he could feel it all over again. The abuse. The neglect. The fear.
He didn't sleep. He cleaned the kitchen. Top to bottom.
Elbow grease. No magic. Scrub harder. What would your father say? Scrubbing the floor until his knees were black with bruises, until his muscles quaked with exhaustion. Until his stomach contracted hard on the empty space and that familiar wave of dizziness swept him from his pain to that transcendent state.
This time, he ate exactly four bites of an apple to remind himself that now was not then, and then he scrubbed until his body ached.
"How's Harry doing?" Remus stood at the stove, idly stirring soup on the stove.
"He's okay. Pretty frustrated that no one will tell him what's going on."
"We'll be able to fill him in soon," Remus promised, noting Sirius' own frustration.
"I know. It's just, the fact that he's so vital to everything we are doing, that he is the one who had to fight Voldemort, yet he's the one we're leaving out? It's wrong." Sirius crumpled up his fourth attempt at a letter to Harry and threw it at the cold fireplace. "He shouldn't have to go through this alone. Cedric's death is hard on him."
"He'll be here in just a few weeks." Remus set a full bowl of soup in front of Sirius, and sat down with his own. Sirius mumbled a thanks and slowly stirred it without taking a bite.
"Do you ever wonder…if Dumbledore really knows what he's doing?"
"No."
"Not at all?"
"I think Dumbledore has the best plan. If anything will work, it'll be through him."
Sirius chewed his lip and was silent.
"C'mon, Sirius, we've got to believe in something."
"Yeah." Sirius trailed his spoon through the liquid.
"Molly is going to force feed you when she gets here tomorrow. You know that, right?" Remus gave Sirius a scrutinizing look.
"I've been eating. I just…"
"I know. Azkaban, and a year in the wilderness. I understand. But, Pads, I haven't seen you look like this since…" he trailed off. Sirius filled in mentally: since they were sixteen and he was on the verge of death. Since he relapsed at twenty.
Sirius cringed unwillingly. He knew. He knew that from now on, he would always be suspect. That no matter how hard he tried, the first meal he skipped, alarms would sound. That even though his stomach had shrunken the point that he could barely manage a third of what anyone else could eat, his best attempt would still be labeled anorexic.
Frustrated and determined to prove himself, Sirius gulped down more than half the bowl of soup as quickly as he could, until he knew he couldn't eat anymore. He looked pleadingly at Remus, who nodded his approval.
They spent the rest of the day cleaning out the bedrooms, though the best they could do was to remove most of the dust. Though the rooms were, technically, clean, they still held that air of disrepair, the dimness of the rest of the Black house.
Shortly before dinner, Remus announced that he had to leave, that there was soup leftover for Sirius to heat up, that he'd be there in the morning to help everyone move in. He stepped into the fireplace, and spun into disappearance.
Sirius looked at the soup on the stove, then walked upstairs to the living room door. The doors were on rollers, able to slide open and closed. He slid the door open just an inch and peered in.
The room still resounded with memories. On the carpet, he could still almost see the shape of his own frail body where it had fallen so many times. The slight fracture along the leg of a chair, where he had crashed into it once. Though his mother had fixed it, the line of it still remained, just as a subtle reminder. The faint glow of dark spells from his mother's wand glancing off the walls. Sirius slid the door shut. Someone else would have to clean that room.
Upstairs, the plaque on the door still read his name. Despite all he had expected, though his name, he was certain, was no longer on the family tree, his room remained intact. Possibly due the permanent sticking charms, but regardless, all his Gryffindor banners, pictures, pinups of muggle girls.
He stripped his old robes over his head, kicked off his shoes, and flopped over on the bed. Rolling over to face the wall, he came face to face with what used to be his favorite picture. The four Marauders, out by the lake at Hogwarts on a June day, arms about each other's shoulders.
Sirius stared at the photo. At the less-scarred, livelier Remus, whose smile did not yet have to work to erase frown lines. At a Peter Pettigrew so far from the shabby grey traitor he had seen a year ago that he wasn't even recognizable. At Sirius himself, young and almost happy, though still noticeably thinner than the others. And finally at James, the glint of the stolen snitch in his hand matching the twinkle of mischief in his eye as he and Sirius shared a long, amused look. If Sirius recalled, they had thrown Peter in the lake very shortly after Lily had snapped this picture.
It was as though they were inseparable, as though he was unable to see where one stopped and the next began. Yet, if he looked closely, he could see the fault lines, much like that fracture in the chair's legs, left not as a reminder, but a warning, of what was to come.
One dead. One a traitor. One a fugitive and a traitor of a different sort. One aged beyond his years.
Sirius tugged the photo off the wall, slipped it under his mattress and prayed to forget what would never be.
