Next chapter! Yay! I'd like to say a special thank you to all my reviewers. Even just letting me know that you like this story is great for me - it's brilliant motivation and speeds the updates. In particular, aarimas has sent some really enthusiastic, detailed reviews, and I thank you for that!
This takes place just after the Christmas Holidays of the Marauders' fifth year.
I'm not keeping to schedule, so I don't have a James chapter for you. If you have any suggestions for the Marauders (James especially), please drop them in a review or PM! For now, here's more SIRIUS!
It's pretty long, and I took a while on this one, so please tell me how it went.
Phantom Family
Sirius normally quite enjoyed potions. The heavy scents were exotic, taking him away from the uniform and schedule and respectability that controlled his life. The general busy atmosphere was more comforting than a silent transfiguration class or a family meal. The damp, hot air flowed around him, so different from the dry, sterile air that sat in the Black household. The scents weren't dull and subtle but wild and strong and everything his parents had tried to push out of him. The steam that filled the classroom was full of illusion and a certain mystery that one couldn't find in a stuffy London townhouse, however large and ancient. The sting of some magical chemical in his eyes was arousing and sharp and real. Sirius liked anything unlike his home life, and potions provided all that.
Not anymore.
The class - smaller now that only NEWT students were taking it - filed into the room, and for once, Sirius kept his head down. He didn't want any more attention than he already had.
A howler had come for him at breakfast, screaming foul words and threats in his mother's voice. She had said such awful things about muggleborns and about Sirius himself that everyone had continued to stare in silence even when the blasted thing was reduced to a pile of ash. The very first day of sixth year, and already everyone knew that the heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had been disowned.
Of course most knew already. The Blacks were an extremely influential family in the wizarding world, and after the heir was disowned, it was in the news and everything. Sirius was either a hero or a coward to most of the British wizarding population. Everyone either praised him for breaking away, or sneered at him for backing out.
And Slughorn? Sirius braced himself, for the professor was surely going to tell the whole class how disappointing it was that Sirius couldn't follow in his family's footsteps to greatness.
He took a seat next to James, who frowned at him quizzically. Sirius gave him a small smile - that was all he could manage right now - and ducked his head to avoid Professor Slughorn, who was ambling past.
It wasn't as if he never saw the glances James gave him. Ever since he'd moved in with the Potters, James had been careful with him, as if handling delicate porcelain, worried that he would break. Sirius wouldn't break. He had told himself that the moment Remus had taken him to James', still covered in a layer of blood, still pale and shaking slightly. He would not break.
But it was hard. Ever so hard to suppress the memories and the thoughts that came with his family. Now that he'd left his family, the thoughts remained. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his mother standing above him with her face twisted with rage. When he fell asleep, he felt bursts of pain across his back, ghosts of the many lashings he'd bore throughout his life. Whenever he was alone, he heard screams of anger and pain that had so often echoed around the house. Ever so often, there was a twinge in his temple, a phantom of the cruciatus curse. His back still bore scars from some of the harsher whippings that his mother had neglected to heal. The hundreds of beatings had finally caught up to him.
Slughorn started the register.
"Philip Avery."
"Here, sir."
"Philip, my boy! How was your holiday? I heard about your mother's promotion - ever so exciting, don't you think? She'll be excellent for that job. I just know it." He gave Avery no time to reply and continued. "Sarah Atkins?"
"Here, sir."
Slughorn didn't say another thing to Sarah - he only spoke to his favourites.
"Sirius Black!" he exclaimed with faked surprise and enthusiasm.
"Here, sir." Sirius mumbled with none of his usual panache. He could feel the stares of the class cutting into him as he bent his head over the desk.
"I heard you were disowned, of course. Nasty matter … I understand your mother is terribly distressed, and your poor cousins will most likely miss you as well. And what of Regulus?"
"I'm sure my mother will be just fine, Professor - she didn't sound too bothered at breakfast, and my cousins will be weeping at such a loss." he packed sarcasm into his words without making too obvious to the professor, but there were mutters around the class. "And Regulus can take care of himself."
"And you have somewhere to stay, of course?"
"Yes, sir."
Followed by curious glances from around the room, Sirius made the assigned potion with a new violence. The whole school knew about his situation from the howler, and he just wanted to be left alone.
Distressed. Sirius snorted. That was one way to put it. They'd beat him bloody. Sirius didn't know why they resorted to muggle tortures, but he guessed it seemed more real to them, more satisfying to feel the shock of the belt racing up their arms as they beat their son and heir. Not any more. Never again.
Most likely miss you. Bellatrix would be angry that her chew toy was gone, while Narcissa would be overjoyed that she'd never have to see her irritating little cousin again. And Andromeda … Slughorn wouldn't have meant her, being disowned as well, but she'd be proud of his escape.
Regulus. That was the worry. Would he become a good little Death Eater like his cousins, or settle down with a respectable marriage like his parents? If Regulus joined them, Sirius didn't know what he would do. Could he fight against his own brother? No. No, it wouldn't do any good to ask those questions. He'd face them when they mattered.
But he couldn't concentrate. His phantom family stood at the front of his mind.
Lily didn't know what was up with Sirius. He'd been disowned, of course, everyone knew that, but shouldn't he be happy? Happy he'd got away from the family he so clearly hated?
Yet he walked with his shoulders hunched and his brow furrowed and his eyes dark, and Lily didn't know what to think. Usually Sirius Black pranced around the corridors with a lightness in his eyes. He would be casting spells off at random, generally being an idiot and breaking every school rule out there. Lily often resented him for his hatred of Severus, yet now she felt pity. Pity for the boy who had never had a proper mother or father, who had never been allowed to speak his own mind in his own home.
She had thought her life was bad, with Severus drawing further away towards Mulciber and Avery, Petunia hating the magical world, her father ill with a muggle disease. She was worrying about how she looked while Sirius was worrying about not having a house to live in.
And she wondered where he was living now - surely a sixteen-year-old couldn't live on his own? Lily couldn't even imagine the loneliness - not just literally, but metaphorically, too - of realising that the people who were meant to love you, who'd brought you up and nurtured you and taught you, didn't want you around anymore. The immense pain from that must be overwhelming, the sadness sickening.
Lily - and the rest of the school - didn't know what to think.
Over the next few weeks, James watched Sirius receive letter after letter. Each was enclosed in a black envelope, the name of the recipient printed on the front in a curling silver script.
With each letter, Sirius became more touchy, more bitter. He no longer had the spirit to perform pranks. He ignored Snape and his brother and Narcissa. He walked, slightly behind the rest of the group, with his shoulders hunched and his eyes dark.
Each letter he read, paused with a blank look on his face, then threw into the fire, watching it burn with a malicious glint in his eyes. As soon as the parchment was no more than a memory, the shimmer of anger simply burnt out, leaving his grey eyes cold and glassy. He'd then leave the other Marauders and lock himself in the bathroom. All that could be heard for the next half hour over the sound of running water would be cries of anger and loud crashes as he took his anger out.
James hated that these people could do this to Sirius. Could twist him into a hundred painful shapes until he cracked. He hated that even now they were gone, they followed Sirius in nightmares and in letters and in glares from Regulus and Narcissa. He hated seeing his friend go through so much pain for a family that he was no longer even part of.
He couldn't pull away. That was the problem. Couldn't stop reading the letters, couldn't stop sending answering glares to his old family members. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black still rested within his, a painful ghost of years past. Years - James now knew - full of scoldings and beatings and stiff dinner parties and talk of the rising 'Dark Lord'. He hated his old family, yet he couldn't get away from them.
Sirius pushed away anyone trying to help, becoming snappy and closed, yelling and arguing and generally making his own mood even worse. He no longer properly contributed to conversations, preferring to stare out the window or at the wall, lost in his own little world of sorrow.
And James watched his best friend fall down the pit of despair.
Then, very abruptly, the letters stopped.
Sirius, after a week with no letters, went quiet. When approached, he was polite and gentle. When included in a conversation, he merely smiled pitifully. He was quiet and still detached, still dazed and constantly staring at the walls, and somehow James hated it even more than the yelling.
"Sirius, what is up with you?" James asked one night after a particularly boring Defence lesson.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. You've been quiet and it's not right. Not right at all."
"I don't know what you mean." And with that, he walked off. Sirius Black turned his back on James Potter.
The whole school noticed something was up. No famous Marauder pranks were pulled, and it had been over a month. The question buzzed in everyone's mind: what was up with Sirius Black?
It took Regulus for him to finally snap. He was walking between lessons - just Sirius, because no-one else took Muggle Studies in their group - when he passed the new Black heir in the Charms corridor.
"Sirius." he said, voice coldly formal.
Somehow that cold voice struck Sirius' mind. What had his brother become? His brother who was always so gentle, always the thoughtful one. How had he changed into such a typical Black, and when? How had Sirius missed it? Maybe he was behind. Maybe he should have payed more attention to his little brother. Maybe he could've helped.
"Regulus."
"Mother burnt it off."
"What?"
"Your name. Off the tapestry. She blasted it off."
"Oh. How … how are things? With you … at home." Sirius didn't want to admit the pain he felt to hear about the tapestry. He didn't want to feel it - knew he shouldn't feel it - but it struck a chord in his heart. He was truly gone from them, yet the memory of his family haunted his every breath.
"Fine. I wanted to tell you … I ... well, I've been asked to join him."
Silence. A ringing tension. A numb feeling. Fear.
"Asked to join the Dark Lord."
Sirius stood there, feeling like his head had finally broken the surface of a deep lake of ignorance. Fourteen years old, and his little brother had already been invited to join a group of sadistic blood purists. Regulus, who hadn't had the heart to kill a spider, instead settling it outside on the grass. Regulus, always fascinated by the tiniest things: birdsong and snow and muggle devices. Regulus, who was still an innocent little boy in his brother's mind.
"Oh." Sirius choked out, feeling like a knife was piercing his heart, twisting slowly. "Regulus, whatever happens … I love you, okay? Be careful, and stay in one piece for me. I couldn't handle it if you … yeah."
"Same with you. Well, see you, I guess."
"Yeah."
And Regulus stalked off.
Sirius ran to the nearest bathroom. He didn't care who saw, he just leaned over the sink and wept. Wept for the brother who was no longer his brother. Who would inevitably die. Who would face Sirius on the battlefield eventually. Wept for the family he no longer had. Who were cruel. Who had twisted a gentle boy into a cold man. Wept for the stupid war. Which ensured death. Which meant Sirius had to fight against his own family. Wept for his whole cursed life. A life of pain and misery. A life that would surely end in grief and sorrow and the horrors of war.
In the cracked mirror, he could see his eyes were red, his skin was pale, and he was shaking. The previous inhabitants of the bathroom had fled, leaving Sirius alone in the room.
He kept crying, each tear taking his closer to the real world. He came to terms with the last few years. The pain, the anger, the sadness, all dripping slowly into the sink. They were gone. There would be no punishment for speaking without being spoken to. There would be no agonising lashings for rejecting their ideals. There would be no yelling from his demon of a mother.
Gone. All of it gone. Down the sink, in his tears. Until it all drained out of him.
He had no idea when his dry sobs ceased. The sky was dark through the windows, and the corridors were devoid of people. Sirius ignored curfew. If he got caught, what would happen? A detention. Nothing compared to what was to come.
Sirius knew, eventually, war would be upon them, and he would fight against his blood with all he had.
