A/N: Some discussion of cycles of abuse.

xx

Chapter Twenty-One: Leeching Off You

There's nobody left in Sirius's life who acknowledges his real birthday, so when the letter arrives, he's not expecting it. It's been so long that he doesn't recognize the handwriting of his neatly lettered name on the outside of it, but when he rips it open, he figures it out pretty quick. He reads it, then reads it again, then puts a finger to the words like he can absorb them somehow if he can just get close enough.

"What you got there, Sirius?"

And he should be happy about this, shouldn't he? Isn't this what he wanted—for Andy to come back? And he is happy, at least for a moment—but then the joy gets drowned out by the resentment he's built up for the last two years, and he remembers that he's not allowed to forgive her, just like he can't forgive Mum or Dad or Regulus. It's not a choice: it's a necessity. If he ever let her back in, she'd just disappoint him again; she's never going to take him away from Grimmauld Place no matter how hard he begs or how many times Mum—

"Hey, you okay?"

"It's fine, Pete. It's Andy."

"Andromeda? But it's been, like…"

"Yeah. Yeah, it has."

"Were you expecting to hear from her? Are you and she—"

"No, we're not. It doesn't mean anything; it's still over."

"But—"

"It's none of your business. Shut up and eat your bacon."

He shouldn't take it out on Peter, but—if he's being honest with himself, he's been taking a lot of things out on a lot of people lately. It's gotten so bad with Regulus that it's not even fun anymore. How can it be when he doesn't fight back? Every time they see each other, Sirius hollers insults and hurls hexes, but Regulus just looks at him with his stupid, sad face and then keeps on walking unless Sirius curses him so that he can't anymore, and when that happens, Regulus falls to the ground and stays there until Sirius backs off or gets docked points by a prefect, if there's one around.

It almost makes him consider stopping—leaving him alone—but he can't do that. He made Regulus a promise that he wasn't done with him, and he's going to see it through and keep wrecking his brother until Regulus starts trying to wreck him back. The day Sirius stops is the day Sirius doesn't care anymore, and whatever he tells everyone else, he's never going to stop caring. He doesn't think he can—doesn't think he's strong enough.

"I'll be in the Owlery," he says.

When he stands, he attracts everybody else's attention, not just Peter's. "It's, like, quarter to nine," Mary points out. "You're going to be late to Herbology, and Sprout's going to take off points if you—"

"Then she'll take off points. I don't bloody care, Macdonald."

"But—"

"No."

He doesn't notice Em get up from the table after him, but thirty seconds later, when he's out of the Great Hall, she falls into step with him. "What's in the letter, Sirius?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me," she urges him.

"Fine. It's Andy, all right? It's because of my birthday."

"And you're mad at her for wishing you a happy birthday? You were a mess when you fell out with her. I thought you wanted—"

"You don't know what the hell I want," Sirius snarls.

Huffing, Emmeline drags him into the next empty classroom they pass and locks the door behind them. "You've been an arse this year, you know that? You and I—I thought—"

"Yeah, I thought, too, but—"

"But what? What, Sirius? What the hell have I done to you since June that's made you hate me so much?"

The thing she doesn't understand, though, is that it's not anything she's done—it's everything Sirius can't do. Every time he looks at her, he remembers kissing her, promising each other they would wait for one another—but he remembers, too, what they said about writing each other all summer, how they would be fine and stay friends and it wouldn't be complicated when they came back to Hogwarts. But it did get complicated. Of course it did.

It's not like they didn't try. They did write each other, every week—but Sirius couldn't tell her about Mum or Regulus in letters, in case Mum intercepted them, and Emmeline's words on parchment couldn't fill the hole that gaped inside him for every minute of the two-plus months he had to go without access to anyone who isn't a Black. He spent all that time imagining seeing her, being with her, kissing her again, and then when they got back to Hogwarts—

It shouldn't have surprised him. Emmeline had told him she was allowed to date starting in fourth year, but Sirius still technically had a fiancée, and more than that, he was still crippled with guilt that made it near impossible to picture a relationship with Em that didn't feel utterly wrong. Every time he's seen her since September, he's desperately wanted more than he can give her, and it makes him hate himself—and just like with Regulus, that makes him hate her.

It's not her fault—none of it is her fault—and he's still taking it out on her, and that makes him hate himself even more. And the cycle self-perpetuates.

"You promised," she reminds him now. "You promised, Sirius, but now it seems like…"

He did promise, and he never should have done that. He knows he might not be able to hold up his end of the bargain if he doesn't straighten himself out, and it's not looking like he's ever going to straighten himself out. But he owes it to her to try until the last second. He tries to tamp down the self-loathing and concentrate on how beautiful she looks when she's sad.

"Hey. Hey." Sirius grabs her hands. "Nothing's changed. In seventh year, we're still going to… it just might be messy until then, okay? It's complicated, but I'm still in this. I swear."

"And your cousin? Are you going to lash out at her, too?"

He rubs his eyes. "I should just—not respond, right? I should just go to Herbology and…"

"Yeah. Yeah, you should, and when you get there, you should apologize to Pett. Actually, while you're at it, you should apologize to everybody else, too, for the way you've been acting since the holiday ended."

She's right—he knows she's right—but by the time they get to the greenhouse, the anger has built itself up again, and he doesn't respond to James's muttered question when he takes his seat by him, Moony, and Peter. He can't be friends with Regulus, but when Sirius tries to vent his frustration, Regulus just stands there and takes it like he can will Sirius away. He can't have a relationship with Emmeline, but Sirius is to blame for that more than anyone, and there's nothing he can do to punish himself that he hasn't already tried. If the only satisfaction Sirius can find is to get his friends to shout back when he reviles them—well, he'll take what he can and hate himself later. It's nothing he isn't used to.

xx

He's been an absolute arse to Moony for the last couple of months, but that doesn't mean Sirius has stopped looking for information on becoming an Animagus. He's still sure that the answers they're looking for will be in the Restricted Section, but if they're going to do this illegally, they can't risk asking a teacher for a permission slip and letting one of them find out what the Marauders are up to. But everybody knows the books they want are booby-trapped, and so he and Moony—who's the best of the four at magic—have instead been working on a spell that will allow them to peruse the Restricted Section without provoking each book in there to start screaming at them as soon as they try to open it.

It means a lot of long evenings picking at spells in the dormitory with Moony while James and Peter are in the library. All the time he and Moony are spending together honestly makes Sirius feel sort of guilty—he hasn't exactly been pleasant to be around this year, and he knows it, but he can't seem to rein in his outbursts—but Moony, bless him, hasn't complained.

They've been at it for about an hour and a half a week later when Sirius lays down his wand and throws up his hands. "I can't anymore. This is going nowhere. We'll get there—I promise—but we're not getting there tonight."

"It's okay," Moony says, setting down his wand on the bed next to Sirius's. "Everything about this has been a long shot, anyway. I don't expect—"

"Oh, so you think I was lying when I said I'd help you with your transformations? You don't think I can do this?"

There he goes being aggressive again—and he feels even worse when Moony just closes his eyes and mutters, "I don't think you're a liar. I guess I've just always seen myself as—beyond saving."

"Well, knock it off. I'm doing this with your help or without it, and—"

"Sirius, for one night, can we just—not? Can we just sit here? I…"

"Yeah. Sorry," Sirius mumbles.

He's expecting Moony to be pissed or at least frustrated at him underneath his fatigue, so he's totally startled when Moony kicks their wands, quills, and parchment down to the foot of the bed and slumps against Sirius's shoulder. Sirius—doesn't know how to react. Sure, they share a cot the morning after every full moon, but the rest of the time, Sirius is always the one touching Moony—never the other way around. It's not like Moony seems to hate the contact, but he always gets sort of embarrassed when Sirius puts an arm around him in public, and when they're all in the dormitory, he's not particularly tactile, not like James always is.

Moreover, why would Moony go out of his comfort zone now, after Sirius has spent every day for nearly three months now biting his head off? It doesn't make any sense.

It gives Sirius another surge of guilt, and to deal with it, he sort of—he's not proud of it—grunts and puts a hand on Moony's arm and pushes. Moony jostles and then sits upright, and the look on his face appears totally betrayed. "Right. Sorry," he whispers.

And Sirius—

"No, it's—"

"Sirius, it's fine—"

"No. I'm a tosser."

"I said it's fine. If you're not comfortable with—"

"It's not that I'm uncomfortable, Moony; it's that I don't deserve you!"

They stare at each other. More and more often these days, Sirius can't read Moony's expressions, and the same is true now as Moony looks between Sirius's eyes and purses his lips into something halfway between a grin and a grimace. "You don't deserve me? You know I'm a werewolf, right?"

"So?"

"So—"

"I don't care that a monster takes over your brain one night out of every month," says Sirius hotly. He can tell that he's screwed up his wording—that Moony is stung by this—but he's too worked up to bother correcting himself. "You're still a good person. I've already told you—you're the best person I know. Don't you get it? I'm a Black. I'm a disaster, and I'm never going to be normal—"

"I don't need you to be normal. I can handle you. I just need you to… stay."

"No, you don't. You don't need anything from me. You'd be a lot better off without me."

"Is that really what you think, Sirius? You're—basically my whole life, and that's never going to change. Haven't you figured out by now how much I…?"

Moony actually puts his hands on his head like he can't take it anymore, and—

—Sirius crushes Moony's head against his chest and just holds on. "You're wrong," he says stiffly. "You're better off without me. I'm the one leeching off you."

Moony's voice is muffled by a mouthful of Sirius's robes. "Well, then, you're in luck, because I'm not going anywhere. I guess we'll just have to keep leeching off each other."

"I've been wretched. I fly off the handle at everything. I don't understand why any of you still hang out with me."

"Come on. It's going to take more than a little teenage angst to drive any of us away. You're stuck with us—with me."

"Well, good."

The seconds tick by; he keeps expecting Moony to let go and sit up, but he doesn't, and Sirius isn't about to let him go. He feels calmer—steadier—with Moony tucked against him. "Moony?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you just—talk to me? About anything? I don't want to live in my head anymore."

"But… I don't know what to say."

"Tell me about—I dunno, goblin wars, because right now it's looking like I'm going to flunk our History of Magic exam before break starts."

He gets up—Sirius feels a pang of disappointment—but Moony just says, "Be right back. I'm going to grab my notes."

When he returns a few seconds later with a thick stack of parchment, he nestles right back against Sirius before he starts to read aloud. Sirius tries to concentrate on what Moony's saying instead of how good it feels to have Moony warm on his chest or how guilty it makes him feel that he gets to have this.

xx

Christmas break keeps crawling closer, and Sirius is getting to be more and more convinced that he's going to have to go home for it. It's not that he wants to. Mum's temper is his worst fear in the world, and the thought of spending a whole seventeen days trying to dodge it makes his physical anxiety kick in full force. But he keeps thinking that if he can just get Regulus alone for a while—

—And he can't do that at Hogwarts. It's like Regulus is surrounded by a force field of brutish Slytherins at all times, and anyway, there's no way in hell that they're going to have an honest conversation without Mum's anger to drive them together. With how keyed-up Sirius feels all the time, he doesn't think he can stand to wait until June for Regulus to come back, to see where they're at with each other.

If—and probably when—he goes home, he genuinely doesn't know what to expect from Regulus. Will he do what he usually does—gravitate toward Sirius's room and grudgingly keep him company, even while hammering him with cutting insults and snide remarks? Will he go so far as to want to share a bed again? Or will Regulus keep doing what he's been doing since September and pretend that Sirius doesn't exist?

God, Sirius doesn't think he'll be able to stand it if Regulus keeps this up at Grimmauld Place. It's one thing if Regulus blows him off at Hogwarts, where Sirius has got friends that he can—well, he's not really doing a lot of leaning on anybody these days, but at least he can use them as outlets for his frustration, and he can use Snivellus as an outlet, too. At home, the only people he's got for companionship are Mum, Dad, and Regulus, and it's not like Mum or Dad has ever had a single conversation with Sirius that didn't make him feel—pissed off or terrified. If he goes home, and Regulus still doesn't want a relationship, even there…

"You think I'm mental," says Sirius when he tells this to James, Moony, and Peter on the Friday before the end of term.

"Completely off your bloody rocker, mate," James agrees, "but you're not going to change your mind, are you?"

"Well, it makes some kind of sense," Peter reasons. James starts to argue, but Peter adds, "You wouldn't be tormenting him like you have been if didn't still have—some kind of emotional investment in your relationship with him. He's stopped provoking you, and if you'd wanted that, you would have let him move on. But you haven't. And he's never acted like that with you when you were at home, so…"

"I just… I need my brother," Sirius admits quietly. "Everything that's wrong in my life—everything I've been feeling—how I've been… acting. If I can just get through to him, it all stops, and I can finally be…"

But he knows that this isn't exactly true. Sure, his relationship with his brother is probably the biggest problem weighing on his mind these days—the biggest thing that causes him grief and rage—but it's not the only thing or even the essential thing. It doesn't all come down to Regulus: it all comes down to Mum. Even his relationship with Regulus has always been all about coping with Mum's actions. When have he and Regulus ever had anything just for themselves that didn't stem from shared trauma?

It's Mum's fault that Sirius loves Regulus—Mum's fault that Regulus can't support Sirius in the face of their beliefs—Mum's fault that Sirius walks around every day with debilitating guilt about everything from his lack of a love life to his ingrained prejudices that he still finds himself fighting more than three years later. (Just look what he said to Moony about werewolves the other week.) But Mum isn't a problem that Sirius can do anything about. There's no changing her, and to be frank, there's no remedying everything that's fractured in Sirius's psyche because of her. He's pretty sure that he's going to fail Emmeline—that he's never going to be able to have a normal love life—and, more importantly, he doesn't think he's ever going to know how to deal with the rage he experiences from minute to minute. It's not like Mum ever demonstrated any strategies for coping with anger: she just takes hers out on Sirius and Regulus. And—

And—

That's the exact same thing Sirius has been doing to his friends for the last three months.

James is saying something about asking his parents if Sirius can crash at the Potters' if and when his Christmas plans blow up in his face in the first two days of break, but Sirius isn't absorbing a word of it. Regulus was right—but not for the reasons that he thought. Sirius is just like their mother, and he—he—

—Because it's not just about the way Sirius treats his friends: it's about the way he and Regulus treat each other. All of last year—all the brawls and duels they got themselves into—they were just mimicking Mum. And now, this year, when Regulus tried to break the cycle, what has Sirius done? He's gone after his brother with renewed cruelty—beaten him harder the more Regulus didn't fight back.

But—it didn't have to be this way. All Regulus had to do was be Sirius's person—befriend him again instead of treating him like he doesn't exist. If Regulus had just loved him—

—Would Sirius even have deserved it? If Sirius was capable of giving his brother this kind of abuse all along, even before he came to Hogwarts and got himself Sorted into Gryffindor, wouldn't Regulus still have been better off staying away from somebody like Sirius who had such potential to do him such harm?

"Sirius, mate? Are you…?"

He doesn't even really hear Peter say this, but he snaps out of his thoughts the moment Peter gets up off his bed and comes over to Sirius's. Gingerly, Peter sits down next to him and puts a tentative hand on Sirius's knee—because, Sirius realizes with horror, he's afraid that Sirius is going to react by lashing out at him.

Suddenly, all he wants is to throw his arms around Peter and hold on for the rest of the night. He doesn't deserve Peter's love or comfort—and he doesn't deserve James's or Moony's, either—and he tries to steel himself to drive Peter away, to walk out of this dormitory and never come back if he can help it. But if the Marauders won't push him away—Sirius doesn't have it in him to do it for them.

Because he's weak. Because everybody needs somebody, and this is whom Sirius has got. Because he feels restless and anxious and lonely whenever he's in a room alone instead of with one of his mates. Because they're so good to him—in such a way that he never got at home—and now that he knows how that feels, he doesn't think he can survive it if he loses it.

"Please," is all he can manage to get out. His voice cracks. It's stupid.

"'Please' what? Sirius?"

Sirius reaches up with both hands to smear wetness over the sockets of his eyes. Surprised, he pulls them away and stares at his fingertips. "I…"

Peter seems to figure out that Sirius isn't going to start yelling at him, and he gets a little braver, letting go of Sirius's knee and engulfing his shoulders instead. "Please don't touch me," Sirius whispers, but even as he's saying it, he twists so he can lay his head in Peter's lap and fling his arms around his waist.

"I—what?"

"Don't," says Sirius again, and it's so hard to get the words out. He chokes on his sobs and squeezes harder.

Peter rubs his back weakly, helplessly. Sirius hears footsteps, and then the bed depresses a little more as Moony piles onto it with them—James, too.

None of them gets much sleep that night.