Dark against the flickering lake, Riddle stands like a flag against the storm, shoulder pushed back as if he's Icarus. The sky is sharp, iron grey, and the air is thick with the earthy smells of pine and rot. The man has this way of standing that, if you were to meet him without knowing him, would make you think he ruled the whole world, owned everything and every person. If you did know who he was, it might be a little less convincing, but maybe not.

Sitting on the rocks, Sirius watches him. He's freezing his arse off. Serbia - this rural stretch of it, anyway - feels so desolate that there probably aren't even ghosts out here. The quiet of this place is far too loud. Every shift and groan of the surrounding mountains casts long, groaning echoes down towards them, howling like ghosts. Across the greyish lagoon, long, black trees hang spectral over the water, their looming reflections stretching out against the reflection of the light sky.

Overhead, a bird of prey (a hawk, perhaps, but Sirius doesn't really know his Eastern European bird species, so he can't really be sure) soars low overtop the rocks. Riddle tilts his head up, sharp chin jutting towards the sky, and watches it. His dark hair has settled in thick tangles around his neck.

The amount of times Sirius has imagined throttling that pale throat. But he just keeps sitting. It's like a sort of mind control.

"Your birthday soon, isn't it?" Riddle calls back to him, after some time. The silence had started to stretch so long and loud that Sirius was close to asking why he'd been brought here at all.

Sirius coughs into his elbow. "Yeah. November, so, uh, a few months. I'll be fourteen."

Riddle peers over his shoulder at him. "Excited?"

"My dormmates and I usually have a party. They like stuff like that."

"Gryffindors."

Sirius wraps his arms tight around his stomach. He doesn't want to think about James and Peter and Remus right now. It feels like a betrayal. "Yeah. I guess."

Riddle nods. He goes back to staring serenely out over the water. One of his feet is planted slightly higher than the other, on a craggy jut of rock that sticks out over the lapping shore. It makes him look like a conqueror.

"It's good," Riddle says, after another long wait. Sirius is tired of many things, but if he had to choose one that ails him most, it would be waiting.

"Good?"

"That you have such close friends. I hear how you talk about them." This time, Riddle doesn't turn around. Sirius gets the distinct impression that he's still watching him, though. Perhaps out of the back of his head. "They're loyal to you, as you are to them?"

"Yeah." That one tastes like a lie. "Well. They're kids."

"I see."

"I don't think they… get it." Sirius thinks about Remus. "Most of them, anyway. They've got simple families. Simple lives."

"You talk like I did when I was younger."

What, like a raving loon? Sirius almost asks. He bites his black tongue. He's gotten sort of good at doing that. It concerns him deeply. James might notice.

"I do?" he asks, instead.

Riddle's shoulders jump. It's an approximation of a laugh. "Like you see further than your peers. Like you understand the world in a way that they don't."

"It's not like that."

"No need for modesty. You're smart. Smart in a way most of them will never be."

Sirius stares furiously down at the rocky ground beneath his feet and tries to figure out the right way to tiptoe through this conversation. "We're all smart in different ways. My best friend, he's… I've never met somebody that can do magic like him. Like it's something he's tamed and it obeys him." God, he misses James.

Riddle stills. "You've met me."

"Apart from you."

"That's what I thought." Riddle turns away from the lake and crosses back to Sirius, feet crunching on the rocks. Against the light sky, his face is dark, cursed by long, lingering shadows. "Maybe that's a difference between us worth exploring. I don't recall the names of my friends from Hogwarts. Not one of them. But you… you're rather good at getting people to fight for you, aren't you?"

And doesn't that feel like a knife in the chest. "I suppose I am," Sirius says dully, and thinks of James telling him to be careful on the platform, and Peter taking that hex for him last Spring that put him in the hospital wing, and Remus… Remus' everything.

Riddle crouches down in front of him. One of his white, spidery hands reaches into his white shirt and pulls out the locket. The sight of it makes Sirius want to flinch. He barely keeps himself steady and still.

It glimmers in the dull light, the stones set into its silver face blinking like tiny eyes. They stare at Sirius. Sirius stares back.

"You remember that night?" Riddle asks softly.

"How could I not?" Sirius whispers. "You sort of made it hard to forget, Tom."

Riddle's pale lips crack into a smile. "That's the first time you've willingly called me Tom, Sirius."

A taste like ash or bile fills Sirius' throat. "Sorry. Riddle."

"No. I like it. I've told you that."

Sirius bites his lip hard, hard enough that it hurts. Tries to let the pain drown him out and sweep him away. He'd give anything, he thinks, anything at all, to get away from here. To get out. To run.

"Yes," Riddle murmurs, scanning Sirius' face. "Yes, you're very good at making friends."

Across the lake, a few rocks come loose from the mountainside, cracking down across the stone, bounding across the shore and into the water. One of them skips twice, water spitting out from under it in broad, low circles, whipping out against the wind. The sound of the descent rattles around them both. The echoes echo.

Riddle stands up. His long, dark legs obscure the daylight, and he steps back and offers Sirius a hand up.

Sirius looks at it, then at Riddle. Locket hanging out of his shirt, black hair blustering, he looks just like he did the night of the ritual those weeks ago. It was less than a month ago. It feels like years.

His eyes have changed, though.

They were different right after, in the moment following the green flash of light, after the muggle man's body hit the ground. They're not dark brown anymore. Instead, they're yellowish. Slitted. They contract with each slow blink the man takes.

Riddle twitches his hand up. "Don't make me wait, Sirius."

Sirius grasps it and lets Riddle pull him to his feet, desperate to let go, thankful when he's able to. The skin Riddle touched burns like battery acid or wound-dressing alcohol.

They approach the shoreline together, Sirius in Riddle's shadow. He never likes to walk in front of the man, both because he knows Riddle likes taking the lead, and because he's remice to let the man out of his sight for even a moment, lest he get stabbed in the back.

It's hard to believe he only met Riddle this summer. Tom's got this strange ability to consume your waking thoughts, to fill even everyday tasks with a deep-set fear that never, ever goes away. Sirius doesn't know how he's going to survive the school year.

Riddle reaches the shore. Grey freshwater laps against the soles of his black shoes.

"You can't come to get me for stuff like this while I'm in school," Sirius bursts out, all in a rush.

Riddle doesn't react for a moment. Then, he rolls his head around to look at Sirius, slitted golden eyes stabbing through him. "You don't enjoy this?" he asks, edging on mocking.

Sirius chews his lip. "My friends will worry. They'll ask questions."

"And if you're a good enough liar, you'll get around them."

"I'm not. I'm not like you."

Riddle laughs, a throaty sort of sound. "So desperate to keep those friends you've made, are you? I might call you strategic."

"You might call me mad," Sirius contends.

"I might," Riddle agrees, teeth glinting.

"I'll go back to my parents' place over Christmas. You can collect me then. Just leave me alone over term time." Sirius isn't sure if he's gambling or begging. The difference isn't huge. "Please. Tom."

Riddle seems to like the precarious situation he's got Sirius in, because he takes a while to answer that. "You know," he says eventually, "If you were anybody else, I would make some comment about insubordination."

Heart pounding, Sirius swallows. "But you won't."

"But I won't."

Sirius shudders. "I'm not like you," he says again, before he can stop it from coming out.

Riddle kicks a stone into the lake and it sinks beneath the soft waves. Then, he looks down at Sirius. "You're very, very much like me," he says. Just like that, it's law.

Stomach sinking to the floor, Sirius looks away from those piercing yellow eyes. Looks to the looming black trees. Looks to the silver-grey steel mountains. Looks to the sky and far, far away.

"I don't want to be," he says weakly. "I don't want this."

"I'm not sure you're telling me the truth."

"I always do."

Riddle raises a sharp eyebrow. "If there's one thing about us that you'll concede is the same, Sirius, I think it's that neither of us is particularly well-versed in truthfulness."

That burns.

"I'd go as far as to say," Riddle says softly, "That for all that you're good at making people think they're your friends, they're not, really, are they? You've the patience to trick people into invisible snares. I've the wit and the skill to lure them into bloodier bites."

Tom turns around to Sirius, fully. The wind picks up and it threads through his black cloak and his dark hair, strands of it buffeting over his pale cheek. He's not beautiful, not like a pureblood, not sharp and tailored like a skirt or a knife. There's something striking about him, though. Striking like the last thing you'll ever see. Striking like a lucid nightmare.

"You and I," Tom says, and the dream folds blackened hands around his throat, "Are going to change the world."

The nightmare twists into itself, eats its own tail like a snake. Siris wakes gasping and hacking, the back of his shirt thick and sticky with blood.

The whine of metal; howling wind whipping through narrow openings, screaming like ghosts; the high, tiny sound of dripping and low, wet sloshing. The hull of the steel fishing boat dips low against the waves, the ocean crashing like drums against the sides. Impact rattles through the sides and sends every cage and wire in the belly of the beast trembling and screeching.

Sirius presses himself back against the wall. He's boxed between two wire crates, shoulders hunched to keep out the cold. He doesn't remember how he smuggled himself aboard very well. He's not sure where it's going, either.

The bleeding of his shoulder has slowed slightly, in the time he's been running. Hours, twelve of them at least. He doesn't remember how it happened - a stray curse at the wedding. Nobody was aiming for him, he doesn't think, or if they did, he didn't notice, just ran and ran and ran until he was right in front of Riddle, and then ran more.

Dumbledore. Dead. The memory runs him over like a train and leaves all the little bits of him gorey and soft.

You're rather good at getting people to fight for you, aren't you? Riddle's soft voice says in the back of his mind, rattling and reverberating around in his skull like a tuning fork. It sets each and every nerve on edge.

Sirius curls his shaking arms over his head and tucks himself into a very small ball. A part of him would exchange this for the cellar, but it's a very small part of him, a very quiet part, drowned out by the howling of the wind and the crashing of the ocean, and the fierce new beating of Sirius' rebellious heart, the singing of his hard, wounded soul.

The boat pushes on through the Atlantic. Soon, the sun will rise.

Sirius doesn't try to sleep again.

Jamie,

Okay, I have a lot to say, so sit tight. Get popcorn. Whatever you need. Grab Remus too. And Pete.

I'm writing this letter, though I know it's too risky to actually owl it to you, because I want something I can get to you quickly. I'm going to fold it up and keep it with me and if we see each other, even if it's only for a second like last time, I can give it to you and you can start to understand. Because I feel like a bloody prick for how I acted at Rosier Manor, but in my defence, I've no other option, so. Yeah. Read this and I hope it helps. It's been less than a week, so. I'm sort of an unreliable narrator, because I'm still a bit of a mess, but. That's just how it's going to be.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. I can't say much, but I'll explain what I can.

I met Tom Riddle (that's you-know-who, to you) when I was thirteen.

We were all just home from second year, and it was two weeks into the summer hols, and he came over for dinner to Grimmauld. He looked different to how he does now - more like a person and less like a lizard - and he was polite to my parents, in a diplomatic sort of way like world leaders are to each other when they meet at conferences and the like. He was smooth-talking and very smiley, and when they spewed their usual rot about blood purity and the like, he agreed with every word they said, in that eloquent way that smart bigots do when they want to affirm stupid ones.

I didn't think much of him for the whole dinner, honestly. You remember what you said to me when we got off the train that summer? You told me to stay safe, or you might just have to come rescue me. I think by then you knew something was very bloody wrong at my house, though I don't think you fully understood it. With how much time you spent in the first months of that year trying to hold the little bits of me together, I think you knew enough. God knows I tried to keep the truth from you, but you're smart. Not as smart as me, but you're plenty smart. Maybe more now. I don't know. I know it's only been a year, but it feels like it's been decades.

Anyway. I'm getting off topic. I've got a whole big pad of this cool muggle paper (it's yellow! I didn't know they made paper in colours!) and I nicked a pack of those black ink biro pens that Remus likes, though, so I've got the space to get off topic, I guess. I've got all the space in the world.

So anyway.

I was being careful that summer, so I bit my tongue and didn't start a fight at the dinner table that night. Riddle must've seen something special in me, though, or maybe he just thought I was soft enough to buy into his bull, because the next day, he owled my parents that he wanted me to come to France with him on a business trip, to some pureblood settlement on the south coast. It would be two weeks, he said, and amazing for helping me make connections. I almost owled you to come get me. You would have done it. I know you would have. But Reg cornered me, and he begged me to go, mostly so the house would be less of a warzone, I think, and… honestly, it was a whole load of things. Remus and I had had this big argument we didn't tell you guys about, and my father was getting sicker and sicker by the day, the old bastard, and I had a lot of shit on my mind, so I said yes. If I have one single regret in my life, it was that, but I did it.

A week later, I owled you that I was going on holiday with my family and he came to pick me up, and we apparated to France.

If there's one thing I can tell you about the man, he's stupid rich. It'll be all the pureblood donors, I expect, but we were well accommodated for. I had a room of my own the whole time, in some wizarding boarding house that checked your blood status at the door - bloody awful place, it was, stuffy as anything - and I ate well, all this fancy European mainland shit, and he made good conversation, Riddle did, and it was more awkward than anything else.

He was there to make connections with some of the French blood nobility. I speak French. Did I ever mention that to you? I don't think so. I don't like that I speak it. Horrible romance language with horrible spitty saliva-y sounds. I only learned it because they wanted me to, as a kid. He spoke French too, better than I did. Fancy and correct and shit. So he did most of the talking and I sat and watched, and at the end of every night, we would map out the progress he'd made that day, talking to men who would invest in him and women who would lust after his titles and his power (once he obtained them, that was. At that point, he had only barely gotten the Dementors' allegiance, had only been marking people for half a dozen years, so it was rocky).

He was calm. Calm and human. Awful, truly awful, and I make no excuses for that, but he talked and acted and thought like a person, even if he was a terrible one. He looked a little like me, enough that people thought us brothers. Dark hair and dark eyes.

You see what I'm getting at, don't you? Something about the man changed.

After that outing, I went back home. He said he'd owl me and then he didn't, which I thanked every god in the fucking world for. It was a little like a poison. I couldn't think about the guy for weeks after without feeling sort of nauseous. I think you might have noticed that I'd changed when we got back for fourth year. You didn't say anything, though. I'm grateful for that.

The summer wasn't over yet, though. I'm overshooting. It was early August, and he wrote to my parents again, asked for me one last time. Again, I wrote out this whole big letter to send to you, and again, Reg begged me to just go, and again, I did it. I think I was scared that if they weren't hurting me, they'd hurt him. I can't let that happen, Jamie, I can't.

End of this double sided page. Will pick this up again soon. My hands are fucking shaking and it's getting dark out, and I'm too paranoid to put a light on in here (I'm in a cave, that's all I'm saying about my location, even though you should burn this once you're done with it), so this next bit was short but I'm gonna take a break for tonight. I'm tired of nightmares.

Love you.

- Sirius Orion Black.

There are two important things: Atlas is, in fact, doomed to forever carry his weight alone, and god above, is the weight of the world an awful thing to bear.

Sirius spends the first week holed up in a cavern near the long ice flats in Iceland. It's cold, too cold for Sirius the boy, but it's nothing to Padfoot the dog, and thank god animagus transformations don't set off the Trace, or he'd be six feet under already, and there's simply no time for that. He lives on rats mostly, a rabbit one time that he gets very lucky, and on the sixth day of hiding, he sneaks off into a nearby town in dog form and begs for scraps until a harried looking butcher throws a raw sausage at him.

Iceland is nice. With no magic, it was one hell of a job smuggling himself onto a fishing ship to get up here. The first night was all blood and anguish, stuffed into the storage of the metal beast as it rocked on the turbulent Atlantic. Every time Sirius closed his eyes all he could see was the look on Dumbledore's face as he looked at him. That hasn't really worn off yet.

He thinks he'll stay for a while. 'Til that stops, at least.

On the seventh night, he manages to clean himself up a little in a public bathroom on the high street of the small Icelandic town nearby. Grindavik, it's called, and it sounds close enough to Grindelwald that it always makes Sirius flinch.

When he's sufficiently brushed up, no longer stinking like rot and blood, he shuffles into a muggle cafe and sits in front of a black coffee with his muggle pad of yellow paper, and starts making lists.

Trace-Triggering Magic:

Apparition

Floo (?)

Any verbal incantations, wandless or not

(Wordless spells? Find out more)

Portkey use

Safe (?) Magic:

Permanent transfigurations (animagus transformation)

Pre-charmed magical objects

Potionmaking?

Magical healing (applied)

What I've Got Right Now:

£53.40 in muggle cash, and a few Euros (~15)

One shirt, trousers, stolen boots

Pad and pens to write to James

Shock blanket from the muggle lady in England

James' mirror

Two broken wands

Start of a letter to James

'The secret that could make or break the world', he almost adds on the end, and thinks better of it. Secrets are fragile things. It doesn't take much to break them. For now, he's keeping it close to his chest.

Sirius has to stop himself for a moment. He counts back the days diligently, one by one. It's the twentieth of July, and he's alive. He's in Iceland, and it's cold and silent, and he's alive. Rosier Manor is miles and miles behind him, so far away it can't see him anymore, and he's alive. Pierre Rosier screamed and huffed and cried like a pig under the cruciatus curse, and he's alive.

He takes a deep breath. In. Out. In. Out.

He should have killed Pierre while he had the chance. A part of him had been scared of what James might say.

The waitress approaches the table, soft-footed like she's creeping up on him. Sirius leashes his paranoia like a rabid dog and smiles up at her. Tentatively, she smiles back.

"Uh," she says, remembering that he's not from here. "More coffee?"

"Yes, please," Sirius mumbles. If there's one language he's never had to speak, it's fucking Icelandic. "Thank you."

He pushes a few more euros across the table, and she shakes her head. She opens her mouth as if to say something, and the language barrier stretching between them is apparently too high a wall to climb, because she just shakes her head again, refills his coffee and pads off to the back of the coffee shop again.

Sirius figures he looks pathetic enough to warrant that. Or maybe that's just their way of roping in foreigners.

His lists stare up at him from the wooden table, their yellow too bright. To avoid looking at them, Sirius stares out of the window, over the grey twilight. It's always grey out here, the sky flat and mottled like drying paint. The ocean roars distantly, the shore breaking in the lagoon. This town is beautiful, even despite its name. It feels haunted, but everywhere feels haunted these days. Honestly, Sirius is just glad for the lack of sun. His skin feels tender like a raw nerve with all the time in that fucking cellar.

It's a lot to take in, the beauty of it. They don't have northern lights up here - not any that Sirius has seen, anyway - but it's quiet and pristine, like outside of the towns nobody has touched it. In the opposite direction of the lagoon, stretching out north, the ice flats span broad over the horizon, lilting with soft hills and shallow mountains, tipped with thick snow.

Sirius finishes his coffee. This place is open until late, and he really, really doesn't want to go back to the cave yet, so he puts his head down against the window pane and closes his eyes and drifts for a while, not sleeping fully (he's far too paranoid for that) but allowing himself a moment of respite in the quiet warmth.

Dumbledore's mangled, burned face, the hanging eye socket. James, staring at him from the floor in the cellar, bloody around the ribs, wearing Andromeda's face. Riddle's laugh two weeks ago, when Sirius saw him last before the wedding. How he smiled at him.

Sirius opens his eyes again. No time for rest. The world is going to haunt him until he does what he has to do.

Jamie,

It's a few days later. I'm in a cafe now, so that's something. Carrying on.

That next time, we didn't go back to sunny France. It was evening, and Riddle took me with him to a cavern. Somewhere near the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks.

There was an old muggle man lying on the stone. He sat me down on a rock and told me to watch and I watched as Riddle killed the guy, cold blood, one killing curse to the head without a second of hesitation. The man was alive and then he was just gone. Still and stiff and like he'd never been alive in the first place. He didn't even seem to enjoy it. Just did it and then turned back to me and said, like a magician, watch this, and I kept watching, because I couldn't look away. You don't really know what death looks like til you see it and I'm never going to forget it as long as I live which, hey, might not be that long, at the rate I'm going.

The ritual was long. I don't want to describe it, Prongs. Blood and bone and other such terrible things. It's weird but I can still remember how cold the stone I was sitting on made me, how much my back hurt with the way I was positioned. I don't remember the incantation, and I don't remember the light, what colour it was, how long it took. I just remember shaking and shivering as the damp set into the stone and watching something dark and coarse like sand whipping into a frenzy, loud and quick, and then he dropped a locket into my lap.

Stopping for now. Fuck, Jamie. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Love you. Hope you're thinking of me, wherever you are (Godric's Hollow or South Wales, I'd bet!). Hope you never let me out of your stupid head. That's only half a joke.

- Sirius Orion Black.

If there's a wizarding community in Iceland, it's well hidden. Sirius hitchhikes south the following day, crouched low in the back of a pickup truck, head bowed against the blistering northern winds. The grey Atlantic churns dark alongside the road, so wide it's almost monstrous. He isn't used to the ocean. London used to feel wide, when he was young, staring out of the top window of 12 Grimmauld Place. If only his younger self had known.

He makes it to Reykjavik by that evening, thoroughly windswept and stinking like dead fish. Sirius slips into what he thinks is a general store, bright and airy and aisled on the outside of the stout little seaside city, and steals a sweatshirt and a pair of oversized muggle jeans. If he was James or Remus, he might have left a few coins on the shelf in apology, but he's not, so he doesn't.

Food is too risky. When spying for thieves, muggles look for food, alcohol, razors, tampons. Sirius makes for the exit of the shop and nobody follows after him.

He gets changed in a public bathroom nearby and then just sits in a stall, head in his hands, for a long time. He keeps his head low for so long that all the blood rushes up to his ears and the white room seems to tremble around him, the floor almost shaking. Heat floods his face. He stays like that regardless.

Mangled face. Riddle's laugh. Fuck.

Sirius doesn't cry. As a rule, he doesn't cry. He's never cried in front of James or Remus or Peter, and in his memory, he hasn't cried in front of Regulus, either, though he might've when he was small, though in that case, Reg wouldn't remember it so it doesn't count. He can't remember the last time he cried for anybody or anything. He's not sure he's quite able to, at this point.

And in this muggle bathroom stall, bless his weary, exhausted heart, he still doesn't cry. That would break down every single wall he's forced up around himself since that evening in June last year. Since he was thirteen and met Riddle. Since he was eleven, realising he's going to spend his life fighting in a blood war. So he doesn't fucking cry.

(He comes close, though.)

When a stranger on the edge of the city offers him money-in-hand labour in exchange for his lifting power, carrying boxes on and off unregistered tankers in a blackened lagoon a few miles from a cheap hotel, Sirius agrees wholeheartedly. If his rotten old mother could only see him now, he supposes, and steals another change of clothes on the night he gets his first pay.

Jamie,

Carrying on. It's been two weeks now, since that night. Sorry it took me so long to get back on this. In my defence, I'm a bit of a mess right now. You'd laugh at me if you could see the sorry state I'm in.

I'm in a hotel now, not a cave or a cafe. Moving up in the world! A muggle man who boxes up contraband a mile off the port offered me a wage for my muscle. It's illegal, I think. Still, it's enough to get me a bed, and he speaks pretty good English, and he tells the wildest stories. Still not telling you where I am, but there's your tip, I suppose: wherever I am, they sell drugs here. Really narrows it down, huh? I love muggles. Bless their souls.

Anyway. The ritual.

Here's my disclaimer, because you love those, just conceptually: I am NOT telling you what this ritual did. I'm not telling you how he did it, or why, or what came of it. I know you wouldn't do anything with the information, Jamie, but bad people would, so I'm saying nothing, and you can't change my mind. You told me two weeks ago you didn't care what it was I knew. If you knew how important it was, you would.

Anyway, back to the story. Enthralling, isn't it? Real tale of woe.

After the ritual was done, and the man was dead, Riddle dropped this locket into my lap. He sat down in front of me and waited until I'd stopped freaking out. What a fucking gentleman, am I right? When I'd sort of gotten myself together, he grabbed my shoulder and he gestured around all grand and big and important, and he told me he'd like to change the world. I thought he was bloody insane by this point, but I also didn't want to die (a plus, honestly, because I'm not sure I feel like that anymore), so I didn't say anything. Just watched him.

To make a long story short, he explained what he had done to me in quite some detail. What his plan for the world was, what he was going to do to get there. His face had changed. Eyes. They were all yellow.

(You see where I'm going with this. Right?)

He changed that night. Changed at his very core. And he told me I was a smart man, I was hungry, hungry like he'd been at my age, so he wanted me to come with him while he made himself stronger. He wasn't going to stop at one, and he pressed this ugly awful locket into my hand and told me I could change the world with him, if I liked, because the traits in me that had landed me in Gryffindor were valuable, strong and unyielding, and he could sense something unique in me.

It wasn't an offer. That's the catch there, Prongs. It wasn't a fucking offer.

When he thought I'd gotten the message, he took the locket back off me, told me he was going to hide it. I almost asked him where and then figured I would rather keep my head on my shoulders, and he dropped me back home, on the rug in the entrance hall, and then he was gone.

For a long while, I think I convinced myself it had been a dream. Reg tried to get through to me for days and couldn't and I think it scared the shit out of him. I was still sort of in a daze when he came next, a week later, picked me up from my parents' house without warning them and dragged me out to the Eastern European diaspora, somewhere with a black forest and a huge lake. His eyes were different. I knew it for sure that time.

He sat me down at the lake and told me, again, he wanted to change the world with me.

When people talk about maniacs, I think we assume that it's a personality thing. Heads up, Jamie, and if you've ever learned anything from my awful self I want it to be this; it's got nothing to do with personality. It's not even really got anything to do with temperament, or how much you can stomach. It's all in how you look at the world. The categories you sort it into. It can be upbringing, sure, but I grew up a Black and I pride myself on not being a raging, racist lunatic, and Riddle grew up in the muggle world without two pennies to rub together, from what he's told me, so it's not only that. It's about who you're willing to sacrifice to build the world as you see fit. To create it in your image.

I learned a lot about Riddle in those visits. Not just what he's willing to do (watching him kill that muggle man told me a lot about that, though), but what his ideal future looked like. Who he wanted his new world to be populated with. I think I figured out how his brain worked, and I think a part of him wanted me to figure it out, you know?

I don't know what it was about me that drew him to me. I still don't and I never did. But I'm terrified of it, whatever it is.

I'm sort of scared of it all. Not just what he saw in me, but what he would've done to me had I not gone to Dumbledore. What he still might do. I don't care if he tortures me. He could've done that plenty already. In a way, he has. It's not really that bit that scares me.

It's what he wanted me to be. A mentee, I thought, at the beginning of it all. A protegee. Somebody to follow in his footsteps. But after I learned he intends to live forever, well, that sort of went out the fucking window, didn't it? And I can't stop thinking about it. The way he fucking looked at me. Like I could do half the things he could. Like I was like him. I'm nothing like him. Nothing at all. Or that's what I keep telling myself.

Anyway. My bloody stupid hands. Give me a sec.

Love you.

- Sirius Orion Black.

"Your son," Riddle says, in a dream. Eyes brown, not yellow. It's that first night again. Dinner table in the heart of Grimmauld. Low lights hanging over all their dark heads. "No, not the spare. Sirius, his name is? Your eldest. Bright boy, I've heard."

Sirius' sharp, bright, Gryffindor heart had shrivelled when he first heard that. Keep your head down, James' voice had spoken in his ear, and Regulus' eyes had born into him from across the table, the colour of deliverance, and it was wonderful, for that sharp, blinding moment, how in control Sirius felt. Like surely, he could do this.

"Thank you, sir," he mumbles. The dream again. Less memory and more mirage. It's a quiet sort of defeat.

Riddle eyes him across the black wood table, looks him up and down. Sirius feels distinctly undressed. It's the first time they've met, and he already wants to peel himself out of his skin. He's not even a third year yet. He's not ready to die at war.

"You're a Gryffindor," Riddle observes. Walburga winces. "I remember it. The scandal of that. Quite the hot topic of conversation. People speculated that your parents had gone soft, you know, Sirius."

"Four people tried to poison my food on my first full day, sir," Sirius says. "I've got lots of cousins." His stomach churns and he loses his appetite.

Riddle smiles mildly. "Please," he says, face distorting, hair ripping free from his scalp. "Call me Tom, Sirius."

"Tom," Sirius says. It comes out clear as a bell.

Riddle smiles at him indulgently. "I'm sure your parents have mentioned me."

They had. Not just them. Riddle's name had been following Sirius for most of his life by that point and it hasn't stopped yet.

"Yes, sir," Sirius says. "Yes, I know a little about you."

"Would you like to know more?" Riddle offers.

Orion clears his throat. "I'm sure Regulus might be more fitting, Mr. Riddle, what with their difference in temperament… we knew since his sorting, you see, that Sirius isn't quite the… the discerning type. Doesn't think his decisions through. Makes bad friends." He'll get himself killed and then we can forget he ever existed and Regulus can take his place.

Riddle doesn't look away from Sirius' face. "I was looking for a Gryffindor," he says pleasantly. "I find that some diversity in traits, in values, benefits any organisation. Even a family. Don't you agree, Orion?"

Orion's face goes bloodless. Sirius thinks he might slump out of his chair. "I can see what you mean," he says stiffly.

"Yes." Riddle's benign face melts with the decay of a bad memory. "I've been meaning to meet you for some time, Sirius Black."

Sirius wakes up shaking. Yellowish light from a streetlamp outside streaks across the bedsheets in sharp tendrils. Every shape in the room looms out at him like it's going to step into the light and reveal itself to have been Riddle the whole time. The sound of the ocean does little to calm his burning heart, his screaming lungs.

He shrugs on a sweatshirt and stalks out of the hotel for a walk to cool his head. The ocean laps high against the shore of Reykjavik, only a few streets down. Sirius slips through an alleyway bisecting two streets and then another, the dark seawall stretching into view in the distance, past the glare of the few streetlamps still bright this time of night. An economic country, Iceland is. Not too much of anything, except for Sirius Black, because any amount of Sirius is too much, he's found recently.

The railing overlooking the bay is cold under him as Sirius clambers over it to sit atop the thin, painted metal. Under his feet, black water stretches out towards the fishing boats, lined up under the bright moon. Waxing gibbous. Soon, it'll be a full.

Wind off the ocean whips him in the face, blowing the hair back off his face, cold in every crevice of his skin. It was never very windy in London. The air felt thicker, particles like dust and petrol fumes and weed smell clogging up all their lungs. When Sirius closes his eyes, he can still smell herb, can still taste blood. Home rots in the back of his throat, sticking like gum.

It's been three weeks now, since that night. Three weeks and nothing to do but cower. Sirius wonders if they have English-speaking therapists in Iceland, and then, retroactively, how much they cost to contract.

Well. Either starvation or the nightmares are going to kill him one of these days. Sirius supposes himself lucky that he gets the privilege of choosing his poison.

He sighs and stuffs his hands into his pockets, staring down into the murky black depths of the bay. One slip and the cold would consume him. One split-second decision and he could lose himself to the black for just a little while, like a contact high or blood loss or something else nobody really takes seriously.

Tucked into the inside pocket of his sweatshirt, the two halves of James' wand clink together. Their hollow, wooden sound crackles on the air.

Sirius reaches in and pulls them out, rolling them around in his hand. The mahogany is blackened around the break. Unicorn hair sticks out the end.

James laughing at his stupid jokes. James grinning over his breakfast at Sirius. James tagging Sirius on to the end of all his sentences, ever brag and every joke. James' warm hands. James' worry, deep like the Atlantic and twice as angry.

Sirius leans back and hurls each half of the wand into the ocean, watching them arc high through the air and land in the water of the bay with two deep plops. They vanish under the waves.

The sight of it makes him want to cry. But he doesn't fucking cry, so that's that, Sirius supposes, and watches the waves settle.

It takes him five minutes to feel the eyes on him. Which is a surprisingly long while, for how paranoid he's been for years now.

Sirius doesn't let himself stiffen. If it's a suspicious muggle, they'll soon move on, or get closer to interrogate him. If it's something else, then they're not approaching yet. Just observing. Maybe to find a weak spot. He won't give them one that easily.

Footsteps on the cobblestone, light and easy. Sirius doesn't move, still, even as they get closer, not right until they stop next to him and two pale arms settle atop the railing, five or six feet away.

Only then does he look over.

It's a woman - forty, fifty, maybe. Stocky, with silvery grey hair and a no-nonsense sort of face.

She looks right back at him. She's below him, standing at her short height while Sirius sits tall on the railing. She somehow manages to make him feel shorter than her anyway.

"We've heard it's bad in Britain," she says. "But I think throwing your wand away is a bit of a rash move."

Thick, Icelandic accent, with some Slavic in it. Sort of Russian-ish. It reminds Sirius of Serbia.

"You've been watching me," he accuses her.

"Since you got to Reykjavik, yes."

"How did you know I'm magic?"

"We didn't know for sure." She sighs, raking a hand back through her hair. Sirius sees now that it's not tied back like he thought it was, but slicked back with gel. Short and punkish. "But they've posted your wanted poster all over the British papers, and one of our own still gets the Prophet delivered. He buys pot from your boss."

"Oh."

"He wasn't certain. But we know now, I suppose."

"Do you plan on handing me in?" Sirius asks.

"Depends." The woman eyes him. "Do you plan on running from him forever?"

"I can run pretty fast."

She barks out a laugh. "I like you, Black."

Sirius forces a very tentative smile. "You're not going to apparate me back to London."

"No. No, not tonight." She sticks out a hand to him. "Galina."

"Sirius."

"Nice to meet you, Sirius." She's got a very firm grip. "There aren't many of us here. We've got beds to spare, if you need one."

Sirius shakes his head. "I've got my hotel room."

"Then we've got protection to share. Wandless as you are, you might need it."

He considers that for a moment. "Information?"

"As much as we can get you, yes."

"Why?" Sirius demands.

Galina looks at him, and her dark eyes are very sad in that moment. "Son," she sighs. "I would very much just like to see you come down off that railing, for now. The rest, we can deal with later."

I'm not bloody suicidal, Sirius almost says, but he doesn't think she'd believe him any more than he'd believe himself.

Instead, he nods shakily. Slowly, he twists and throws his legs over the railing and hops down onto the cobblestone of the pier.

Galina smiles at him. She's still shorter than him, but not by much. "Tonight?" she asks.

Sirius shakes his head. "Tomorrow," he says. "I'll come here again tomorrow."

"Alright, Sirius. I will, too."

She turns and strides off towards the streets. Sirius watches her leave and, for the first time since he ran from Rosier Manor, for a handful of sure moments, he doesn't fear death.

Jamie,

I'm on a break at work. Bloody hell, my arms ache. I'm not built for manual labour. Sucks being a delicate flower.

I sat down to carry on telling you my long, long story, and then I felt super fucking guilty about… everything, so. I guess this short one is just to say this:

I've kept a lot from you for the past two years. Three, now, I suppose. I was thirteen when I met him and I never told you. Or Remus, don't worry. Or Pete. Or anybody. Reg knew, but there's very little of anything Reg doesn't know about me, so.

It was a lot of stress. I worry that it changed me. I tried to stay the same as I'd been and I think I succeeded in being an arrogant arsehole, and a good friend once in a blue moon (hah!), and I hope none of you blame yourselves for how I turned out. Remus figured it out, I think, at least a little bit. That there was somebody hurting me. I don't think you ever did, Jamie, and Pete, no offence, but you're a lost cause when it comes to investigative thinking, so that was a bust.

'Hurting me'. Haha. Bad wording. Riddle didn't hurt me, not really. Not in essential terms. How can you be terrified of a person for years and never try to run? Not until you absolutely have to? I don't know. Guess it makes me spineless. So much for being the Gryffindor he needed to mould into a pet lion. I'm Black to my very fucking core.

How self-pitying this one is getting! Awful! I hate it. I hate all of this. I hate this stupid country and this stupid city and I hate that I stink of pot and fish all the time now. I hate knowing you all might already be dead, if you haven't been careful enough. I hate knowing he's looking for me. I spend an absurd amount of time imagining what he'll say when he finds me. That's not normal, is it? I shouldn't care. But I do. I do. I do.

Bloody hell. Bet you're all getting tired of my fucking sob story about getting fucking groomed by the fucking dark lord. It feels like a telenovela. Is that how the muggles spell that? The only English-speaking channel on TV here is BBC World News. Bless muggles, truly, for not knowing what's going on. Makes everything feel a little less shit.

I love you, James. I worry that with all the time I spent trying to act normal and not weird and not sad I didn't say it enough. But I love you. Thanks for trying to save me. It meant a lot.

Back to work. I'll carry on telling the stupid thing when I've got the strength.

Love you.

- Sirius Orion Black.

Galina meets him at the railing again that evening. Sirius isn't sitting on it this time, just leaning up against it, maybe to prove a point. She comes up alongside him and watches the dark ocean with him for a while. Together they listen to the seagulls caw, the hulls of the boats in the harbour swaying and groaning.

"You're looking healthier today," she notes. "Colour in your cheeks."

"You mother me like a babooshka. Knew you sounded Russian. Or some kind of Slavic, anyway."

"Been working?"

"Yeah. All day." Sirius fiddles with the wad of euros in his pocket. Thin though it is, it's enough to keep surviving. "Haven't figured out who your guy is yet. Guess I will be now."

"You're coming with me, then?"

"Just to see," Sirius warns. "Not to stay."

"Of course," Galina says graciously. "Follow me."

She leads him across the cobblestone, through a dark alleyway and onto a four-lane street, cutting through crowds of commuters. Sirius barely keeps up with her. Reykjavik is a short city, stout and without much variation in height, like it was built under a sky that sits lower than London's does. Squat grey high-rises shoot up around them both, skewering the grey sky as Galina leads Sirius down the high street and under a bus stop, and then across a blinking crossing, cars roaring impatiently on either side of them.

Sirius finds himself jogging to keep pace. He doesn't complain.

She and Sirius duck down through an underground parking lot and then squeeze back out into the daylight on the other side of it, around the narrow back of the tall office building the lot sits under. Here, she leads Sirius around the back of a steely muggle power box, sticking out of the brambles that leech out of the concrete, and then up a makeshift set of wooden steps and to a tall fence overlooking the next property over.

"You, first," she instructs Sirius. "Up and over. Hands over the top, like that-"

Sirius hauls himself over the fence and drops down into a patch of dewy grass. In front of him lies a strip of dying, flooded greenery and, beyond it, a grey block of flats.

Galina drops down beside him. "Come on," she says tersely, and starts off towards the apartments. Sloshing through the wet mud, Sirius follows her, feeling distinctly like a drowned rat, which is ironic, when he thinks about it.

At the door, glass and low, she buzzes the basement apartment, number 001. They take ten long seconds to answer, in which Sirius folds his arms around himself, tucking himself against the wall to hide from the bitter chill.

"Halló?" a man's voice asks, crackling through the staticky intercom.

"Það er Galina. Ég er kominn með flóttann okkar," Galina says in a low voice. "He doesn't speak Icelandic," she says in English, then. "So let's do our best to be inviting."

"Okay," the man's voice agrees, distinctly more amicable-sounding. "Come on in."

The glass door's hinge loosens, the lock sliding out of place with a sharp snap. Galina holds the door open for Sirius, who shuffles under her arm to get into the warmth of the entrance hall.

Down the stairs to the basement, Galina leads him. Neither of them speaks. Not for the first time, Sirius thinks himself an idiot for having walked so easily, so uncomplainingly, into his demise.

When the door to the basement apartment opens, Riddle is not, in fact, sitting inside waiting for him. What is inside is a man Sirius vaguely recognises, East Asian and smiling grimly at Galina, then Sirius.

"Come on," he says, voice faintly accented. "No use talking on doorsteps." Part Scots, part Nordic.

Galina ushers Sirius inside. When he gets over the threshold, he stops to stare around.

The apartment is small with no entrance area - the door opens straight onto a small, cramped kitchen, the walls and table pasted with maps and posters and other such memorabilia. The cupboards are scratched and aged. It smells of white tea, paper and tobacco. There are vinyl records stuck to the side of the fridge.

It looks every part the shabby, grassroots resistance headquarters. One of the wall posters, the largest, is hand-painted and reads, 'ET LAND BYGGET I BLOD DØR UNG' over an illustration of a red dog snapping at a white hand.

"That's Norwegian," Sirius recognises, before he can stop himself. "Dunno what it says, though."

"A state built in blood dies young," Galina quotes, pride burning up in her voice. "Welcome to the only resistance base in Iceland, Sirius Black."

"Thanks," Sirius mutters. He turns to look at Galina, then the other man. "Resisting what, exactly?"

Galina smiles grimly. Under the warmer light, the popped blood vessels around her mouth stand out. She looked bloodied and worn. "Britain isn't the only magical country under siege by fascist powers. Come, sit in the other room. Yí'ān, you don't mind making us tea? Something English."

Yí'ān grins at her. "When do I ever mind doing anything for you, Lina? Get our guest comfortable, I'll be right there."

The living room is even more crowded. In the corner, a converted coat rack holds five or six long rural rifles, the type farmers use to kill livestock, with dark wooden barrels that shine in the light from the bulb set into the ceiling. A long table sits between shabby couches, likewise covered in papers, notebooks, maps. A glass vase full of stolen wands sits on the floor by the empty fireplace. The walls are coated with more bright, hand-painted posters. Big, blown-up moving photographs too, of demonstrations, marches, murals. Arrests. Executions. One holds a gruesome depiction of a dementor's kiss.

Maybe not so cheery after all. There's a bloody history in these walls.

Sirius curls into a knot in an armchair in the corner, tucking his hands into his sleeves and staring around. Galina takes a seat on the opposite sofa, absently reaching out to straighten the papers on the big table. With a flick of her wand, the high window looking out over the wet grass, set into the top of the wall above Sirius, swings shut, blinds folding closed across it.

"Paranoid?" Sirius asks, half joking.

"You've no idea," Galina agrees. "You're comfortable there?"

It's an odd question. Sirius can't remember the last time he was comfortable anywhere. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Good. Good, that's… good." Her piercing eyes scrape over him. It's different from Riddle, though. Kinder, in a way.

Yí'ān shuffles in, balancing three mismatched mugs of white English tea. He hands one to Sirius and another to Galina, then cups his own as he sits down beside her, watching Sirius. Sirius gets the inexplicable feeling of a child being called into a wellbeing meeting with adult teachers.

"So," Yí'ān says. "I was the one that noticed you, by the way. I thought about not saying anything, for a bit, but… well, you look sort of pathetic, so."

"Thanks," Sirius says dryly. Then, "Scottish?"

"For some of my life," Yí'ān agrees. "My family are from Taiwan. I grew up in Newcastle. Went to Durmstrang for two or three years when I was eleven." He winces audibly. "Didn't last much longer than that. Decided to take a more independent route of education. I met Galina when I was, what, sixteen? Seventeen?"

"How old are you now?"

"Twenty-three."

Yí'ān doesn't look it. Sirius would have thought he was his own age. There's a levity to his face that is rare to see these days.

"Durmstrang," Sirius repeats. "Why didn't your parents send you to Hogwarts?"

Yí'ān's face drops, but only slightly. A cheery disposition all-round. Sirius is distinctly reminded of James. "Not a British citizen, was I? And my folks weren't about to send me back to Taiwan for school, and Beauxbatons requires French or German citizenship, too. Durmstrang isn't… well. It certainly isn't progressive, but it was willing to take me without papers. So when I was eleven, I went."

Sirius doesn't know a lot about Durmstrang, but what he does know… "It wasn't good."

"No," Yí'ān says easily. There's a sort of hardness to it, though. Like when comedians tell jokes about trauma. "Nah, it sucked. Nasty place, Durmstrang. Nasty principles. My dad died when I was twelve - cancer, would you believe it? - and my mother knew how awful it was for me there, so… well. When I dropped out, she didn't stop me."

"He ended up travelling with a group of for-hire cursebreakers," Galina says shortly. "When we met, he decided to stay in Iceland."

"So you're the one that started this?" Sirius asks. He waves his hand around the room. "This whole… thing?"

"That's me." Galina smiles faintly. "It's not just the two of us. We've got contacts all around the country, and a few beyond it."

"Used to call us the Durmstrang Survivors' Support Network," Yí'ān guffaws.

"You went there, too?"

Galina nods. "Most northern and eastern Europeans end up at Durmstrang. I'm Ukranian, and Russia's schools were an option for me, but unluckily, I suppose, I never spoke very good Russian, so Durmstrang it was."

"And it was… was really that awful?"

Galina's face hardens. She leans back slightly, appraising Sirius. "Almost every young witch, wizard and wizarding-person this end of Europe goes to Durmstrang. It's one of the only options for most of us, especially those from-" She smiles ironically. "Turbulent beginnings."

Yí'ān laughs affectionately at that.

"There's just something quite different about Durmstrang to Hogwarts. And I think you know what it is," she tells Sirius.

It hits him. "They don't accept muggleborns," Sirius says.

"It's not just that," Yí'ān says darkly. "It's a whole bloody blood-ranking hierarchy in there. Dirtier blood gets you lower marks. Lower marks gets you beaten or suspended. If they think you'll complain, they intercept your owls."

Sirius' heart clenches. Regulus. Soft, bookish Reg, stuck in a place like that. It's going to crush him like a butterfly in a wheel. He doesn't say anything, though. He doesn't trust them quite enough for that yet.

"This isn't about our bad schooling," Galina says, then, and waves Yí'ān into silence. "That's not what this is for."

"Then what is it for?" Sirius asks.

"Think about it," Galina says, and leans across the table. "Most poorer European countries don't even have magical authorities. No ministries, no regulations, no laws. No country to fight for. When wizards don't have a country to fight for, what do you think they turn to to find allegiance?"

Sirius thinks of Grimmauld Place. "Blood," he says grimly.

"And when the only education most of us get offered is bloody Durmstrang," Yí'ān says, "What'd'ya reckon that says about the political climate? With muggleborns going their lives never knowing, never learning. Wandless and anonymous. With all our power centralised in blood politics. It starts at school, y'know. Everything starts at school."

Sirius feels stupid. "Oh. Hence, resistance group."

Galina nods, jaw tight. "Hence, resistance group."

Yí'ān's jolly face falls. "When we heard about Dumbledore, about Britain falling, it… well. Guess it was a blow to morale. What's his name? Lord something-or-other? Another crazy bloody blood purist. We've seen it all before. Time and time and time again. Your ministry's gone under, by the way. In case you didn't know. Minister's imperius'd. They did that to the wizarding minister of Albania a few years ago, when it went under, too."

"Makes you wonder if it's ever due to stop," Galina says darkly.

Sirius' headache intensifies. "Riddle," he manages to croak. "The guy who's taken over. His name is Tom Riddle."

Yí'ān tilts his head to the side, sipping his tea. "Not much of a name. Doesn't strike fear into me, personally."

That makes one of us.

"Nasty piece of work, I've heard," Galina agrees. "Hogwarts educated. Pureblood finatic. White supremacist, by the sound of it. Intensely isolationist, at least, so we know he won't be making any allegiances with his greater European counterparts."

Yí'ān nods. "Though it'd be best to keep an eye on that, just in case."

"Think you can get in contact with Hanne?"

"Of course. They always answer my owls, they love me."

Listening to their banter, Sirius drinks his own tea in turn, feels it scald on the way down into his stomach. He puts his mug down on the floor and looks up at Yí'ān and Galina.

"I want to kill him," Sirius says. "Riddle."

Silence, for a moment.

"Well," Yí'ān starts, "I'd like to kill the lot of them, too, but it's-"

Galina holds up an aged hand and he falls silent immediately. She narrows her dark eyes at Sirius.

"You know him, don't you?" she asks softly. "He's hunting you. Riddle."

Yí'ān's eyes go wide. Sirius stares at the floor, then nods, just once.

"Tell us everything," Galina says. It's not a demand. More like an offer.

"We're gonna need more tea," Yí'ān says faintly.

Sirius nods. "We are," he says. "And you have to promise me you'll help me. Please. I can't say it all. There's stuff I can't share. But for what I can..."

Yí'ān's already stood up, and his hand lands on Sirius' shoulder, warm and large. "That's what we're here for," he says gently, and in that moment he sounds all his twenty-three years and more. A warmth fills Sirius' stomach that feels sort of like being safe. "We don't do this for kicks."

Galina nods from her place on the other sofa. She looks very tired for a moment. "The fight against imperialism," she says exhaustively, "It's not one war. It's lots of smaller wars, motivated by large, terrible things. And if we can win yours, we can win them all."

"Thanks," Sirius says. He really means it. "I was born into a pureblood family-"

Yí'ān waves his hand in front of Sirius' face. "Tea, first," he commands. "The British way. Then, traumatic runaway story. Okay?"

Sirius laughs for the first time in what feels like years. It comes gurgling out of his throat like blood in a drainpipe. "Okay. Okay, I can do that."

If James was here right now, Sirius is sure he'd be laughing, too.