Interlude: Blood & Black
For him, it starts with her blood.
He watches her fall down a staircase one night, when for some reason it's just the two of them in the corridors of Hogwarts. She swears and stumbles to her feet. He doesn't think she fell that hard, but there's a gash in one knee, and it's bleeding dark and sticky across the luminescence of her skin.
Half-blood. Hardly tainted, but hardly pure. Caught forever in between. He pities her. Why, he wonders, can't everyone be a pureblood? Why do they even need Muggles at all?
But without Muggles there'd be no Mudbloods. Without Mudbloods there'd be nothing to blame every time the world doesn't spin the way it ought to.
Like right now. He's stunned by the ferocity with which he wants to go over to her. He's never been one to deny himself anything. So he does.
"Hello, McKinnon."
His trademark smirk, a lazy drawl, lithely dangerous swagger. She looks up at him with eyes that are too big for her thin face.
"Black," she breathes.
Once - before she knew him - she was amused by the aptness of his name. Sirius Black, with his black hair and heart and soul. Five letters that make up a single word to mark him out as royalty. And he takes it as his due – the adulation, adoration, admiration, all of it, he absorbs it into his very being and wears it like a cloak.
There aren't many people like that. So comfortable in their own skin. No doubt he's widely envied for that. Lily might share his surname, but this is something she hasn't inherited.
Or if she has, she hasn't taken to it. Not like him.
He's not entirely sure how it starts. How they start. When he fucks her the thought of the blood in her veins makes him go harder, deeper, rougher inside her, until she's raking her nails down her back and her fingers come away stained with scarlet. He watches her tongue flicker delicately to swipe it up.
Why does he do the things he does?
Because he wants to. It's the Black way.
AN: Old readers, you know exactly what's up with Sirius and Marlene. New readers, hang on for a few more chapters before you tell me that there was zero foreshadowing of the twist in the last chapter. That's because - from Lily's perspective, and what she knows - there really could have been very limited foreshadowing. I was a teenaged fanfiction writer, not Agatha Christie, so I'm not claiming the twists were well written/planned out by any means. But things aren't quite as they seem.
Review Responses
Shruthi - Thank you! Writing the duelling scene was really fun. I do imagine Snape lurking around somewhere, jealous and furious of Lily and James for being purebloods, but this story basically follows her perspective and she doesn't even really know he exists so I've kept him out of the fic. Is chat very spicy? I'm the kind of Asian who can only tolerate the most minimal kinds of spice sadly. I have white friends who can eat spicier food than me :(
B - yes. she will be! That's one of the reasons why I changed Alice to Marlene, because I knew I'd be doing this to Marlene at some point, and that frees Frank up for Alice. The joys of actually planning a fic out in advance for once lol. I quite like Marius :P