THC Year 9, Round 4
House: Slytherin
Class: Defense Against the Dark Arts (stand-in)
Category: Standard
Prompt: [Scenario] Sirius Lives AU - Sirius is not killed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. [First line] Sometimes, running away [isn't/wasn't] the cowardly option.
WC: 1002
Beta:
A/N and Warnings: War, aftermath of war, loss of a child, grieving
Sometimes running away isn't the cowardly option. Still, Sirius wonders if the joys of self-preservation have served anyone well. Sirius knows how to resist, to go against the grain. To walk with a chip on his shoulder. He has never known peace, his life has been a series of traumatic experiences, one after the other. So this feels strange to him, to see that they have won the war he has been fighting for all his life.
It feels strange that all that there is left to do is to rest and rebuild. Sirius was not meant for life so idle. Sirius was not meant to be anything other than a cog in a war machine. He expected to die young. He had classmates with children and families to look after. And although his friends had become the closest thing he has had to one, they are not here anymore. There is no one to catch the pieces Sirius allows himself to become at the bottom of a Firewhiskey bottle. He is uncertain and anxious. So unsure of anything, he does the cowardly thing. He goes to Molly.
Molly does not exactly welcome him with open arms. Not that he loves her much either. Her brand of love is suffocating, with lots of words of affirmation and gifts. She shows her love through her cooking, but since her son died, there hasn't been much cooking going on. Nor love or laugh or joke, or anything that makes the Weasley household home. Sirius however, in a somewhat twisted way knows her grief. He empathises with it because it is similar to the brand of absolute devastation he has gone through.
He has lost his entire generation to war, not of their own making. He feels untethered because of this, he needs to tie himself down, to make himself feel useful. Because, if he is being honest with himself, Sirius has never thought that far. He has never thought about what the world should look like outside of trying to survive. That was for the dreamers, for people like James and Remus, who worked towards a better tomorrow, rather than looked today in the eye.
But Sirius has been running, straight toward things, and he feels a kinship towards the running Molly has had to do to survive.
"I don't have anywhere else to go," he tells Arthur as he makes a bed on one of their lumpy couches. The quilt has got little baby beanies stitched onto the fabric and he lets Molly quietly fuss over him. It is something his own mother has never done.
As night washes over the Burrow, Sirius wonders how he will face the morning.
The morning is glorious. It seems like something out of a fairytale. Sirius hasn't had a morning this loud and chaotic outside of when the Order camped in his ancestral home for that year. Ginny is making French toast, while Hermione along with Percy furiously writes long letters. Harry looks shell-shocked and Ron keeps his hand on his friend's arm, as if to ground him in the present. There are lots of things that growing up in a war does to you, but it makes the mundane act of daily life feel so surreal.
Sirius joins Ginny at the stove to prepare coffee. He finds a set of beans, they are green and unroasted. He remembers how to do this much. He remembers how to make coffee, the only useful skill Bellatrix ever taught him. So he lets the world fade into the background and begins to roast the beans. It is labour intensive, tiresome, and far more indulgent of an activity than he has allowed himself in quite some time. He isn't really sure whether the rest of them drink coffee and it's kind of too late to ask. When he had done roasting, grinding and boiling, he pours a fresh cup for Molly. When he gets her nod of approval, he turns to Ginny and smiles. He isn't quite sure why he is here, or what he is searching for, but somewhere between Hermione's exclamation that it tastes exactly like the coffee she drinks with her parents and George's want for seconds, he feels useful.
There are a lot of broken, jagged edges to fix after the war. So he takes a leaf out of Remus' book and starts to focus on himself. He feels like a teenager living under Molly's roof as she interrogates him when he comes how too late or forgets to do the chores on his chart. He wonders if she is treating him like some kind of substitute for Fred, but then doesn't look too deeply. They are all Gryffindors, and if they do not want to face the truth together, then there is very little point in battling the demons by themselves.
Sirius is searching for himself. He is trying to find what he wants to be. What does he want his future to look like, in a world that has promised him neither. He enrols in a teaching course. It is a night school course in the little village that the Burrow is resides in. He makes friends with people, real friends who are not bonded by their shared trauma and lack of control. It is lovely. It is frightening, it is hopeful.
He has run away from London. Run away from the life he never wanted for himself. Sirius allows himself to be loved, to feel the deep love of other people. Molly and Arthur are wonderful parents. They are the kind of parents Sirius wished he had. They are his friends too, after all, in the world they live in, there isn't much of a population older than thirty. They talk about music and old quidditch games. Sirius learns to knit a Weasley sweater, and he takes Arthur wandering around hardware shops. The three of them make magic in their mundane lives, but most importantly, they heal. And with that, Sirius lives.