Disclaimer: yeah...
Hey! I'm back in Black (haha, i had too) so anyways, this chapter takes a weird turn at the end, but it's what came organically as I wrote it, so I didn't change it.
Remember, this is still Sirius' POV!
Read and Review
Love, Essie
A few days later, it's one of those nights. It's one of those nights I can't sleep. I can't sleep for the life of me so I just stay in bed, eyes closed, hoping that I'll go to sleep eventually. Then one minute I'm waiting to go to sleep and the next I'm smack in the middle of Natalia Holmes' dream. What the hell?
"Nattie, Sweetheart you have to go to school today, okay?" A woman is saying to an obviously young Nat. She looks confused. I don't blame her. I'm confused for her.
"Mommy, I don't feel good; my belly hurts. I want to stay home today." Young Nat says. Her mom kisses the top of her head.
"No, honey you have to go to school. School is the most important thing in the world. Nothing is more important than going to school." Nat's mom says and I understand; this was the day her mother had died.
"Mommy? Why is school so important?" She asks with giant eyes and her mother hugs her and kisses the top of her head.
"Because school will give you a future." She whispers into her hair and walks her daughter to the door. "You best be going. I see Sarah and her mom waiting for you." She says and leans down to look her daughter in the eye. "I love you so, so much Nattie, you know that?" Nat nods and looks kind of confused.
"I know you do, Mommy. I love you too." She says and hugs her mom.
"You'll never know how much I love you. Now, you better go. Sarah shouldn't be late to school just because we're dilly dallying." Her mom says and Nat runs off with her backpack that's half her size and her bouncy blonde pigtails. She was a cute kid. Suddenly, the dream warps and Nat is walking back in the house alone the same day, judging by her clothes.
"Mommy?" She says quietly and puts her book bag by the kitchen table and gets her workbooks out, obviously thinking that she'll be doing homework that night, which is depressing. No one answers so she slowly walks upstairs. "Mommy? Are you home?" She asks quietly and then Nat's head turns and I hear the muffled sounds too. Nat opens a door. "Mommy, is everything okay?" She says before looking in the room. I, tragically, recognize my distant cousin Pollux that has a knife at Nat's mom's neck. Nat looks terrified, hell I'm terrified and I'm not in any real danger.
"I love you so much, Nattie. Now close your eyes, honey." Her mom says, but Nat doesn't look away in time to miss her mother's throat be slit. And suddenly I'm back in Hogwarts. Well, that's disturbing. I give up on sleep and walk to the common room. I don't make it all the way there before I hear someone else. I walk down and see no other than eighteen-year-old Natalia Holmes sitting by the fire, crying.
"Nat?" I say and she turns around, wiping her eyes. I notice she has something in her hand, a piece of paper, but I don't ask about it. "Are you okay?"
"Sirius. What are you doing up?" She asks, pretending that she wasn't crying.
"Um, I think we should probably address the fact you're crying before we address my sleeping habits." I say, wanting to put off telling her what I had just seen.
"Oh, it was just a bad dream. I get them every now and again." She says and I sit down next to her on the floor. "What about you?"
"You know how you asked me if I ever pick up on dreams?" She looks at me.
"No…you didn't see that, did you?" She says, horrified.
"It was an accident. I was just laying there waiting to go to sleep, when I ended up in your dream." She closes her eyes and sighs.
"And? Did you enjoy the startling and insightful trip down memory lane?" She asks hollowly and I raise an eyebrow.
"Hey, Nat I didn't go looking for it. It fell into my head and I don't know how to wake myself up." She nods.
"I guessed as much, but I never wanted anyone to see that. It's bad enough I have to remember her like that, let alone everyone else…she should be remembered as happy and beautiful. She shouldn't be remembered as scared, in a pool of her own blood." She says and I feel really bad for her.
"Well, no one ever has to know." She looks over at me and her eyes look rather hollow.
"I woke up before I killed your cousin…and got a good look at both the bodies. You got lucky this time. Sometimes I can't stop seeing them." She says and looks at the paper in her hands. I realize it's a picture.
"That's her." I say quietly. She looks down again and hands me the picture. It's Nat when she was only six or so and she's sitting on her mom's shoulders in what appears to be an amusement park. Nat has some weird hat on that she had probably picked herself and is caught mid-laugh. They both look so happy it almost hurts, knowing that the woman in the picture is dead.
"That's her. This is who she was, not the day she died. She was the woman that took me to the circus and ate popsicles outside when it was hot because according to her, you weren't doing it right unless you ended up wearing it. She was a great mom and a really good person and she died. She died because of me." Nat says and puts a hand over her mouth, obviously trying not to start sobbing.
"Nat…she didn't die because of you. She died because of psychopaths like my parents. What happened to her isn't your fault." I say and she shakes her head.
"If I hadn't sucked up all of Hayden's power, if I hadn't accidentally become twice as powerful, no one would have come looking for us. She would still be alive and I would be normal." She said and she was no longer trying to hide her tears. They were dripping down her cheeks.
"You couldn't control any of that. This isn't your fault, okay? This isn't because of you." I say and she shakes her head.
"They all die. Everyone I love dies; they all leave me somehow." She whispers quietly. I realize that Dorea and Charlie were the second set of parents that had been stolen from her. Like the first time wasn't bad enough, she had to lose them again.
"Oh, that's not true. I don't see James going anywhere and you love him, right?" I say and she looks over at me, but still nods. "And Lily?" She nods again. "See, not everyone is going to leave you." She doesn't seem comforted and I remember something randomly. "I'm going to give you some third-hand advice." She looks over at me.
"What?"
"Well, if you'll recall, my uncle died at the beginning of the year and this one person, she looked kind of like you actually. Short, blonde, too sassy for her own good—" She smiles a little despite herself and whacks me on the shoulder, "Anyways, she told me that the ones we love never truly leave us. They're always with us and if you go looking for them, they'll be there." I say and she smiles a little. I look back down at the picture and hand it back to her quietly. She takes it and looks down at her mother and smiles sadly.
"She was so beautiful. I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful person in the world, when I was a kid." She whispers. Nat was right; her mother had been beautiful. She had long blonde hair and big blue eyes and a very pretty face, but it was something else about her that made her really and truly outstanding.
"You look just like her." I say absently and she looks at me.
"What? She was so much…more than I am."
"I don't know. The hair's definitely the same and so are the eyes; it looks like you have her nose. You have different mouths though." I comment, looking back and forth between Nat and the picture. She smiles a little and wipes her eyes.
"That's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me." She says and I shrug. It doesn't seem like a huge compliment to me, but then again every time someone tells me that I look like my parents, all I want to do is hit the person in the face.
"It's the truth. She lives on in you, Nat. From what I saw, she knew it was coming and she got what she wanted. She protected her baby girl." And she's crying.
"Hey, Sirius?" She sniffs.
"Uh, yeah?"
"I don't know if I've ever told you this, but you're a really good person."
"No one has ever told me that so you definitely haven't." I say and she shrugs.
"Well, don't let it go to your head. You don't need a bigger ego." She says with a smile and I grin back. The tears had passed.
"Aw, I've been pretty humbled ever since a certain blonde put my personal life in the newspaper." She blushes a dark red. It's actually a little cute.
"Yeah…sorry about that." She mumbles and I shrug.
"I think I've given you enough hell over that. Besides, it was kind of funny. I would have thought it was bloody hilarious if it was someone else." She smiles. "You released a recording of me having sex." I add on and she blushes deeply again.
"You were asking for that. You're just begging to be overheard if you're that loud." She says, obviously trying not to laugh. It was a nice change from the tears.
"Please Natalia, the root of the loud sex is that I know how to make a girl scream." I say with a grin and she rolls her eyes. Sex is the ultimate distractor; she was totally falling for the conversation change.
"I'm sure that's it." She says and shakes her head a little.
"Don't believe me?" She shakes her head again.
"I've been with a quite a few guys and none of them have ever made me want to scream. If they're being that loud, they're faking." She says with a shrug. Now she's just being insulting.
"They were not faking. You've just been with the wrong guys." I say and she shrugs.
"I really doubt that they were all bad." She laughs and I wonder something.
"How many guys have you slept with? You, obviously, know my number."
"How many do you think?" She asks with a small smile. "Come on, take a guess? What if you're right?" She's trying not to laugh and I oblige her.
"Um…fifteen?" She laughs.
"Thirty-nine." I feel my mouth drop open. Thirty-nine guys.
"Seriously?" She nods. "And none of them really did it for you?" She shrugs.
"Sex is great, but no I've never been screaming and tearing my nails into his back, begging for more." Well that isn't making me think with body parts that aren't my brain or anything.
"Where did you find all of these guys? Because they're not from school."
"Over summers I would sneak out and go to bars. When we were fighting during Christmas, I went out every night." She shrugs. I stare at her blankly. "What?"
"Thirty-nine? Really?"
"Hey, I'm twenty behind you and is it that hard to believe?" She asks and I shrug. On one hand, yes: she's James' sister and she's just…Nat. On the other hand, not at all: she's pretty and if she were willing, most guys would be thrilled to oblige.
"No, I'm just surprised is all. Have you ever faked?"
"Faked an orgasm? No. He doesn't get to think he's better than he is." At least she's honest. "She was totally faking. No one actually makes that much noise."
"I could just be that good."
"Uh-huh. Go take a survey of all those girls and come talk to me." She says.
"You know you could just find out yourself and round that thirty-nine off to an even forty." I say and her mouth drops open for a second before she recovers. I totally meant it, but it was supposed to stay inside my head. Well, there's no going back now.
"You really think that you're that different from all thirty-nine other guys?" She asks.
"Maybe. There's really only one way to find out, isn't there?" She smirks.
"Is that a proposition, Sirius Black?"
"Is it? You tell me, Natalia." She shakes her head a bit, obviously amused.
"I think it is. I think you just asked me to shag you with absolutely no commitment." She says with a smirk. "I didn't know that you felt that way about me."
"What can I say? You insulted my ability to make a girl scream." She laughs.
"It's not an insult if it's true."
"Want to put your money where your mouth is?" She looks at me like I'm crazy. "Scared?" I don't know why I'm goading her; sure I'd like to sleep with her, but I never had felt an inclination to do this before. Maybe because it's getting her to laugh instead of cry.
"Of what? Your mediocre talent in bed?" She laughs. She never could turn down a bet and we both know it.
"Rude. Are you taking that bet or no?" She hesitates.
"What would be the bet exactly? I want to know what I'd be putting my money on."
"That I can make you tearing your nails into my back, begging for more happy." She thinks. "You have nothing to lose. Either way you either win money or have incredible sex." She shrugs.
"No strings attached?"
"Nope."
"Just sex?" She clarifies again.
"Just sex."
"No one ever knows?"
"If that's what you want."
"Deal." Did she just say deal?
"Five galleons?"
"Fifteen." Wow, she's confident.
"Ten."
"Ten it is." We shake hands and stare at each other. "I think right here and now would be a bad idea." She says absently.
"Yeah, the common room in the middle of the night would be a bad idea. How do you feel about the free period we both have tomorrow? Everyone else will be in class." She shrugs.
"That's fine. No matter how shitty the sex is it'll still be more fun than whatever they'll all be doing." She says and stands up. "See you tomorrow, Sirius."
"Nat. Wear something fun." She snorts, but winks before walking away.
For such a serious topic, Nat and Sirius can't stay away from each other, can they? Hmm...I wonder what other people will think about this happening?
Essie