Shadowed Souls

Chapter 3.

See previous chapters for disclaimers etc.

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed. I live for it.

Pie:  yeah, Sirius too he's just so …*goes catatonic*. Yum.

Hee hee – I think I'll torture you all a little longer about where I'm taking this story.  Why?  Because I'm evil and I need no reason.

Any feedback on whether you think it is too overdone to have Sirius return to Hogwarts as a teacher / protector with his name cleared, in Harry's fifth year would be so appreciated that I can't even begin to describe it.

Anyway, on with the story …

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Three times in all these years, I tried to start anew, to forget.  Three times, I tried to convince myself that love could be burnt from me with lust.  Three times, I awoke next to a man who was not Sirius, and buried my head in the pillow, and wept for the hopelessness of the whole situation.  Eventually, I gave up and resigned myself to this shadow-life.  It would seem that I am doomed to yearn for what will never return, for what I can never possess, for a man who does not want me.

Arabella always said that the world was a strange and broken place.  Only now have I learnt how much truth she spoke, and while I used to laugh at her cynicism, now my lips can only twist in recognition.  To have found him, when I thought that he was lost forever to me, only to lose him again, is a sour pain which wrenches at my mind.  How can I love Sirius so much, while he can walk away?  How can such strong love be unreturned?  How can we have come to this place, where life itself is only a phantom, and hope is beyond reach?  Once we were inseparable, and now Sirius has locked himself away in some place where I cannot breach the walls which surround him, where he does not even care to gentle the harsh words he speaks.

I gaze out of the window at the bleak Welsh countryside.  As far as the eye can see, the hills stretch away, blanketed in the sombre purple mantle of mourning.  The tears gradually drip down my cheeks, blurring my sight and stinging my cracked lips.  I realise what a foolish sight I must make to any solitary hiker:  a grown man staring at the monotony of the landscape, weeping unashamedly, his hands clenching and unclenching futilely, but I do not care.  I, too, am locked away in some place deep inside, alone with this awful realisation, and with the pain which feels as if it must rend me in two.  One word passes incessantly through my mind. Why?

The moon waxes, and the wolf rises inside me, barely perceptible at first, but then gathering power and urgency, and despair swamps me.  I slump in the chair, and as I stretch my legs out towards the glowing embers of the fire, the pain of what was, and what could have been, engulfs me.  A myriad of images dance before my reddened eyes, and I lose myself in them, too worn out to even attempt to end the agonising procession.  I remember the first time that Siri and I ever kissed, deep in the library stacks, OWL revision forgotten.  The ludicrous grins on Lily and James' faces when we told them.  Lying in his arms the first night we made love, entirely content with the world, drifting off to sleep in a tangle of limbs, his breath warm and tender in my hair.  Smiling with linked arms at Lily and James' wedding.  Young and unafraid.  Together.  They lie, those who tell you that happy memories are a comfort against the darkened years.  The very recollection that once I held Sirius in my arms only reminds me bitterly of the fact that I never shall again.

Oh Sirius, when did you stop loving me?  When did affection become contempt?  I saw that hostility, that pitiless disdain, in your eyes last night.  I could have sworn that when I embraced you in the Shrieking Shack last summer, you clung to me as if you would never let go, as if I was life itself.  But no – that must have been mere relief, a wave of elation at being believed innocent for the first time in years, nothing greater, nothing deeper.

Azkaban – twelve and a half years with nothing to do but reflect.  Perhaps, when the Dementors showed you the darkest recesses of your soul, you found there the strength to cast away the ephemeral attachments of youth.  Perhaps, you saw then that the love which you bore for me was fragile, less than a waking dream.  Perhaps, you realised that what you felt could not and would not last, would not withstand the trials of time and fate, and so you cast it aside as the worthless plaything of a forgotten childhood.  While my love will endure as long as I exist, perhaps you knew that yours would not stretch to encompass a greying, melancholic wreck of a werewolf.

You have turned away from me, but wherever you go, whatever you do, my love will accompany you.  It seems that I am fated to be bound to you, whether I will it or not.  In truth, no matter how it hurts, if I had the ability to choose, I would not forsake this path.  Even with my heart irrevocably broken, how could I decide not to love you, Sirius?

But time is fleeting, and the world is shadowed.  I shall not expend all of my waning energies on pursuing that which I can never have.  I may be weak, and foolish, but, Sirius, I am no longer the boy who wouldn't have given up until he'd pestered you into distraction, or you'd changed your mind.  I know that what we love the most so often collapses and passes away.  Things end.  Life is shot through with pain, and entropy, and loss, despite its many glories.  So Sirius Black, we will tread the path we have taken, even to death itself.  We will abandon the dance.  And your life and mine shall be entangled no longer.  So we have decided:  Moony and Padfoot are no more, I shall live out my time, separated from you by the bonds of free will.  My emotions, my desires, shall no longer seek to be expressed.  I shall not seek you.  So may it be.

Farewell, my love.

TBC

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Flames:  *starts to throw history textbooks*.  Positive reviews: *bounces up and down and hands out chocolates*.

Ach – just a word of warning:  I may not have time to update in the next couple of days, as I have an evil essay in on Wednesday, but I'll try.  Also, sorry that this chappie is really short – it just didn't want to be any longer. *smiles apologetically*