The songs are a sound track.

PROLOGUE

Disappearing Boy — Green Day

A tall boy with shoulder-length shaggy black hair named Sirius Black sat on the bank of a stream flowing on the outer edge of Snape manor. Master Paul Snape had invited Claude Black, Sirius's uncle (and stepfather); Gertrude, Sirius's mother (and technically, also his aunt) and her two children, Sirius and his two-years-younger brother Regulus; to summer with Paul and his two children, Sophia and her younger brother Severus, in Kent. Sirius would have enjoyed his stay if Trudy had not recently informed her son that his father, Hamish Ambrose Black, had died. And that gave her license to marry his brother, Claude. It sickened Sirius, the whole situation, but here he had a playmate that would soon be a classmate at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Now, however, he was alone, lost in his favourite book; a story that had taken odd, autobiographical turns for Sirius, though it was hundreds of years older than he was. As he neared his favourite passage, he stood and prepared to recite.

"To be, or not to be— that is the question

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep,

No more. And by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished."

"You're so weird, Sirius," said Sophia from the tree above him.

Sirius yelled, lost his balance, and fell in the stream.

"Sev's right. You're an idiot," she said, leaning over to look at him underwater.

Sirius stood up in the Richmond /st1:place /st1:city 's icy waters and glared at the older girl.

"Don't go floating out to the Thames now."

"Go away, So-PHI-a," Sirius deliberately mispronounced her name. He fished his book and wand out of the water and waded to the edge. Sophia dropped from the tree like an oversized apple.

"It's SO-phia and you know it, SEAR-ius Black!" Sophia put her hands on her hips. She looked exactly like her brother, and it amused Sirius. However, he ignored the fourteen-year-old and walked toward the house.

"Perhaps Mrs Black should change your name to Hamlet after all!"

Sirius woke himself up. He was in Hogwarts School, and he was of age. He also had Drucilla Topham next to him in his four-poster. Hoping not to wake her, he sat up. Sophia. Why had he thought of Sophia? It had all happened seven years ago. Why now? What had reminded him of her? Too tired to consider it seriously, he sighed and lay back down. He kissed Drucilla on the cheek before falling back to sleep.

Jesus of Suburbia: I. Jesus of Suburbia; II. City of the Damned; III. I Don't Care; IV. Dearly Beloved; V. Tales Of Another Broken Home — Green Day

Soon, he was back at Snape manor, in his room. "Sirius Black!" his mother bellowed. Sirius purposely dishevelled his clothes and hair, got a detached look in his eye, and walked downstairs, singing a Welsh folk song quietly.

"Now, mother, what's the matter?" Sirius grabbed a shallow cooking pot off the sideboard and put it on his head. He sat at the table and grinned at her. Claude snorted.

"Sirius, you have greatly offended your stepfather."

"Mother, you have my father much offended," Sirius folded his arms.

"Come on. Don't be foolish, Sirius!" Trudy snapped.

"Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue," Sirius replied.

"Sirius, why are you acting like this?" she tore the pot from his head.

"What's the matter now?" Sirius cocked his head to side.

"Have you forgotten who I am, boy?"

"No, by the rood, not so," Sirius answered.

"Claude, why don't you go? I need to talk to my son alone," Trudy said dangerously. All but Trudy left. Sirius waved good-bye to his brother, Sophia, and Severus. They all gave him the strange looks he wanted.

"You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, and (would it were not so) you are my mother," Sirius continued. He giggled to himself.

"Ah, so you can speak logically, then," Trudy stood across the table from him and glared at her eldest son.

"Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge. You go not until I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you," said Sirius. He snatched the cooking pot back and placed it back on his head. His mother finally gave him the distinct impression that she was worried about him. "Leave the wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down, and let me wring your heart; for so I shall if it be made of penetrable stuff, if damned custom have not brazed it so that it be proof and bulwark against sense."

"What have I done to make you speak to me like this, Sirius?"

"Such an act that blurs the grace and blush on modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there, make marriage vows as false as dicers' oaths—O, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul, and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words! Heaven's face does glow o'er this solidity and compound mass with heated visage, as against the doom, is thought-sick at the act," Sirius explained.

"What act that receives such a violent introduction?" Trudy asked.

Sirius pulled a photo of his father and of his uncle from his pocket. "Look here upon this picture and on this, the counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow, Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, and eye like Mars' to threaten and command, a station like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, a combination and a form indeed where every God did seem to set his seal to give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband." In the photograph, Hamish Black puffed his chest out proudly.

"Look you now on what follows. Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed and batten on this moor? Ha! Have you eyes? You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble and waits upon the judgement; and what judgement would step from this to this?" Claude looked defeated in the photo. Hamish and he started Muggle-duelling.

"Sense sure you have, else you could not have motion; but sure that sense is apoplexed; for madness would not err, nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled, but it reserve some quantity of choice to serve in such a difference. What devil was 't that thus hath cozened you at hoodman-bluff? Eyes without feeling, feeling with out sight, ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, or but a sickly part of one true sense could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, if thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, to flaming youth let virtue be as wax and melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame when the compulsive ardour gives the charge, since frost itself as actively doth burn, and reason panders will."

Trudy stared at her son. She was speechless.

"Nay," Sirius continued again, "but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty!"

Trudy had heard enough. She stood. Sirius grabbed a wooden spoon from the sideboard, stood on his chair, and banged the spoon against the cooking pot on his head. He stepped from chair to chair, singing the Welsh folk song loudly and banging the spoon in time with the music.

"My son has gone mad," Trudy whispered. "His brain has fallen victim to ecstasy."

"Ecstasy?" Sirius asked, jumping down from the chair. He stopped banging the pot in time to the music and instead in time to the iambic pentameter. "My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music. It is not madness that I have uttered. Bring me to the test, and I the matter will reword, which madness would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering unction to your soul that not your trespass but my madness speaks. It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, whiles rank and corruption, mining all within, infects unseen." Sirius began marching around the room, and his mother gave chase.

"Confess yourself to heaven, repent what's past, avoid what is to come, and do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue, for, in the fatness of these pursy times, virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good."

Sirius marched through the parlour, walking on the furniture. His mother stopped begging him to get down and resorted to physically trying to capture the boy. "Good night," Sirius said in the middle of the afternoon, "But go not to my uncle's bed." He jumped from the sofa to the wing back chair, narrowly missing his mother's arms.

"Assume a virtue if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of habits devil, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he likewise give a frock or livery that aptly is put on." He jumped to the piano keys and played Rachmaninoff with his bared toes, then stepped onto the piano bench, all the while still banging the pot with the spoon. He spoke as loudly as he could.

"Refrain tonight, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence, the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature and either master the devil or throw him out with wondrous potency. Once more, good night, and when you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you."

His mother finally snatched him down from the furniture, capturing him while he danced on the fireplace mantle. She put a Binding Spell on him and put him back in his room. When the spell wore off, Sirius collapsed in a fit of giggles. He was successful at pretending to be mad. He sat on his bed, and read a book, waiting for someone to dare him into reciting Act Two, Scene 2, and Lines 187-239. But, no one came.

Sirius Black awoke, giggling and remembering his dream.

Yes, it had happened, but he thought, if I had only really used the Act 3 lines on Mum…. Sirius grinned to himself and stared at the ceiling.

Of course, said a calm voice from within him, while a success for you, it was also a day of tragedy for Snape.

Yes. Yes it was.

Shall we?

Must I?

Sirius yawned and rolled to one side. His stomach growled. Sirius stood and tiptoed down to his trunk. He pulled it open and found a box of Chocolate Frogs. Sirius stuffed five Chocolate Frogs into his pajamas then closed the trunk and tiptoed back over to his bed. Sitting on the windowsill between his and James's beds, he delightfully ate the Chocolate Frogs. As he lounged against the wall, stuffed, he smiled.

Longview - Green Day

Drucilla Topham sat on a small hill on the bank of Loch Lomond on the very same say Sirius Black took his little swim. It was early that morning, before most of the mist and fog had risen out of the glen and burned off in the summer sun, that she sat opposite the estate where her mixed family was on holiday. She watched from afar, waiting, anticipating. A bloated thing in the water floated to her bit of shore. She pushed it away with a long stick. "Terrible pollution," she muttered to herself as she sat back down.

Around the village, she was seen as an anomaly of sorts. Her mother, stepfather, stepbrother, and twin sister looked "normal," English. Their mousy brown hair and eyes fit in well with the general fair-skinned population. Drucilla had shiny black hair, dark brown skin and, though this was not the norm for most Latinas, grey eyes. She looked like a crude transplant from some exotic Caribbean isle, and had it not been for her thick Yorkshire accent, Drucilla may have begun to believe it, too.

The village's small police force zoomed down the road behind her in their cars, headed for the estate. Drucilla sighed, and rinsed her hands in the icy, murky water for what seemed the hundredth time. They were red and raw from the cold. She stood and walked back to the estate. How the small girl of eleven longed for a cigarette. Her stepbrother, Toby, had gotten her hooked on them three years ago when he and his father moved in. Drucilla decided she didn't need one after all and did a perfect grand jete followed by a pirouette on the hardwood floor of the entrance hall.

"Stop it, you stupid girl," her mother chastised her in Spanish. Leticia Miller was born near Barcelona, Spain, 25 years ago, to the unwed son of Italian immigrants and the daughter of a very traditional Spanish Catholic family. Needless to say, Drucilla's grandmother was none too pleased when fourteen-year-old Leticia turned up pregnant by some strange Puerto Rican-Welshman.

Leticia looked upset, as did her Richard, Drucilla's Muggle stepfather. She clung to her first husband. "Get to your room," she snapped at Drucilla. Drucilla was always her mother's scapegoat. Somehow, Drucilla was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in Leticia's life since her birth, especially in the past few years, because Leticia knew without a doubt that Drucilla was a witch. Her twin, Priscilla, was a witch, too, but she never used her powers, not even by accident. All Drucilla had to do was scratch her nose the wrong way and she broke windows. Drucilla wrapped her hand around her wand in her pocket in the entrance hall, but bowed slightly and followed orders.

In her room, Drucilla found an owl from her father. Jack Topham, International Man of Mystery, as employed by the Ministry of Magic. He was born Juan Carlos Rodriguez in a barrio in San Juan, Puerto Rico, about 37 years ago. When his mother and father divorced, Rosa took her eight-year-old son with her to Wales, where she met and married a wizard named Murray Topham. Having Murray around greatly helped a confused, Muggle-born Jack when he got his Hogwarts letter.

Drucilla excitedly tore open the owl from her father. He wrote her once a week faithfully. She sniffed the letter. Somehow, letters from Manhattan smelled different. She relished her father's words, giggling abut the silly goings-on in America.

She wished she could join her father, but knew her mother wouldn't allow it. Not after she had struck gold with Richard, he'd paid her and Priscilla's tuition to THAT SCHOOL. In the Miller household, it was not Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was referred to as THAT SCHOOL, and Drucilla was only going so her mother could be rid of her youngest daughter for ten months out of the year.

Drucilla lay back on the cool sheets and delighted in having her own bed for the first time in her life. She'd always had to share, but now she had space to stretch her long legs and had all the covers to herself. She dove beneath the warmth of the blankets and by force of compulsion (or perhaps just habit), she began to masturbate. She was sore, down there, a result of Toby's escapades the might before, thought that was nothing new. For three years, she had her sister had been methodically violated sexually by their older stepbrother. And for three years, her accusations had fallen on deaf parental ears. Priscilla became accustomed to it rather quickly and even began to welcome his advances. Stockholm syndrome, they called it. Drucilla, however, had always fought tooth and nail, but it usually brought on more violence. Sometimes, Toby forced the twins on each other. Her entire family disgusted Drucilla. Even herself.

She was in a light doze when a constable knocked on her door.

"Detective Truelove would like to have a chat with you, love."

"All right. Give us a minute, please," Drucilla asked as she put her dressing gown on over her pyjamas. She stepped out into the corridor where she met only her mother.

"You're to tell the detective nothing of your wild stories about," Leticia began to cry, "Toby, do you understand me, Reetza?"

"Yes, ma'am," Drucilla replied, not knowing why her mother was crying over him.

"And don't you dare tell him what you are!"

"Of course not, Mother," Drucilla promised in Spanish. She went into the dining room and sat across the table from a kindly looking man. A grandfather, most likely.

"Good morning, miss. My name's Herbert Truelove, what's yours?" asked Truelove as he smiled.

"Drucilla Maritza Topham," she stated loudly.

"Pleased to meet you, Drucilla. Now something very bad happened last night. Could you possibly tell me anything out of the ordinary you may have seen or heard?"

Drucilla thought back to the previous night. Toby had come to them, again. He had sex with Priscilla, then began to work on Drucilla. He unfortunately knew the right buttons to push, and she succumbed to him. She stared at the clock next to her bed and tried to put her mind off what was happening to her. She counted the seconds as Toby had sex with her, masturbated on her, then used the handle of her own broomstick on her. When Toby was falling asleep, Drucilla quietly pulled her wand from her bedside table and held it under the sheets. After his nap, round two began. As soon as Toby sat up, Drucilla shouted the only real spell she knew.

"Petrifucus Totalus!" He fell lifeless on her bed.

Priscilla lost her mind. She began screaming at Drucilla for what she'd done. She went to Drucilla's bed to see if Toby was still alive, but Priscilla didn't know how to check for a pulse. So, she assumed he was dead when she couldn't move him.

"You killed him! But I thought you liked him. He liked you," Priscilla said once she'd calmed.

"HE DIDN'T LIKE ME! HE NEVER LIKED ME!" Drucilla roared. "He didn't like you either. Toby were only shagging us for his own amusement and all!"

Reality hit Priscilla, but she would have none of it. "No! No, he loved me! He loved me, Dru. That's why he did those things." Priscilla fawned over Toby.

Drucilla rolled her eyes, "Chuffing Nora," and hit Priscilla with a Full-Body Bind as well. Drucilla stared at the bodies on the bed and floor, trying to decide what to do with them. She wiggled her nose and Toby rose off the bed and over to Drucilla's eye level. There was fear in his eyes as Drucilla looked upon him.

"Still reckon it's so chuffing exciting I'm a witch, any road?" She asked him darkly, knowing he would be unable to respond. "What if I made tha' disappear? Vanish without no trace, hmm?" Drucilla raised her eyebrows and her wand. Toby's attention turned to the wand. "I've a better idea. What if tha' looked into me eyes?" She stared intently at Toby's pupils, willing him telepathically into ending his own life. As the Body Bind wore off, Toby collapsed to the floor. He stood up and stared at the eleven-year-old. She pointed her wand at him, saying, "Do it, Toby. Do it, you daft bloody wanker."

Almost automatically, Toby walked, nude, out of the large house, and into the Loch, drowning himself at Drucilla's prompting. The charm on Priscilla wore off and she tore, sobbingly, out of the house behind her incestuous lover. From the window, Drucilla watched Priscilla try to find Toby and rescue him, and unheedingly saw her only sister succumb to the icy waters. Hastily, Drucilla wrote a suicide note in her sister's handwriting and slipped it under her mother's bedroom door, then poured her heart out, thought denying any responsibility in the recent deaths, to her father in an enormous owl.

That would be the last owl Jack read from his daughter. A month later, he was arrested, then tried, convicted, imprisoned, and five years later, executed for high treason, leaving to Drucilla his enormous wealth.

She — Green Day

Afterward, as if to confirm their deaths, Drucilla went outside in her nightgown and sat on the hill. Coming back to the present, Drucilla sighed and turned to Detective Truelove.

"I'm sorry, Detective, but I have no idea what happened last night. I reckon I slept through it, silly old me."

"Very well, dear. You may go."

Drucilla left the room, a suppressed smile on her face. She couldn't break her promise to her mother, after all.

Her grandfather, Murray Topham, walked into one of the paintings on the wall. "Samantha Stephens never did anything like that, my dear."

"Elizabeth Montgomery's character never had an incestuous brother," Drucilla replied. Another guest, the writer, who Drucilla had been told not to bother, suddenly went back into his quarters, muttering something about "Riffraff."

"You're not to perform magic around the Muggles! The Ministry of Magic is likely to expel you before you even start school."

"I did nowt more than a simple spell that me book says most other wizard children know by't time they're seven! Toby and Priscilla's suicides involved nowt magical."

Drucilla stomped off down the corridor. Her mother, who sobbingly told her that Toby was indeed dead, stopped her, but Priscilla, by a miracle, had a chance to survive.

"¡Dios Mio!" Drucilla responded. Her last memory of that horrible day was watching the ambulance taking her mother and sister to hospital, and the coroner's van taking Toby away forever. A surreptitious smile had spread on her face again, under her stepfather's watch, and she was smiling now, in her sleep, as Sirius looked on her from the windowsill with his Chocolate Frogs, hoping she was having pleasant dreams. She rolled over, and peeked at him with sleepy eyes.

Coming Clean — Green Day

"Come make love to me," she whispered into the darkness. As he climbed on top of her, Drucilla considered telling Sirius of her past. Even during their fifth year, when Priscilla was finally physically and mentally well enough to attend school, and she routinely accused her sister of murder, Drucilla adamantly denied any role in the tragedy. At any rate, who were you to believe? A stranger who tried to top herself because her abusive stepbrother did so, or the familiar, yet indignant face of an old friend?

All Sirius knew was she was a beautiful ex-ballerina who loved Hamlet as much as he and hated Remus Lupin's guts for violating her similarly one full moon night during their fourth year. And that she was the witch with the twitch, a distinct, though rare, American trait of being able to simply wiggle your nose to cast a spell. A trait that meant she was probably one of the most powerful witches who ever lived. She also welcomed him frequently into bed with her, an offer Sirius could not refuse.

When they were done Sirius lay in the comfort of Drucilla's spoon and glanced over at a sickly-looking Remus in the near-full moonlight. He saw that his friend's arm had flopped off his bed and was reflecting the moon. Sirius felt a pang of guilt when he saw Remus's scars. Old Moony had tried to kill himself after that fourth-year night and the following week when he'd spent a drunken night with Severus Snape and outed himself as Snape's new boyfriend, but wasn't ready for it, especially not the initial alienation from his friends. Sirius felt guilty, somewhat because he'd never really liked the thought of Remus and Snape together, but also because Drucilla hadn't felt any remorse for what she'd driven Remus to do either. Sirius couldn't understand how anyone could be that cold toward another person.

Suddenly (reminded of his uncle-stepfather), Sirius stood and dashed to the bathroom. His stomach rumbled and grumbled and eventually it reversed the Chocolate Frogs. Sirius then washed his cheeks and chin, and brushed his teeth until he could no longer taste chocolate. Sirius went to his room and fell onto his bed. His stomach growled incredibly loudly and it ached. "I know," Sirius said. "If only he didn't disgust me to this point. I have lost about twelve pounds in the past three months, though."

You were scrawny to begin with, said the calm voice. And this has been going on since you were six and figured out how to sicken yourself. If it was to rebel against your mother and your uncle, why did you hide it from them? They never knew you throw up your meals. And you then ignore your hunger pangs and blame your stomach's growling on a non-existent cat.

I refused to partake that of which I must be called his son to ingest.

Well, said the voice, I'm with you there. But why do you do it now? Even when the clod is not your motivation?

It's a hard habit to break, I guess.

I see. Sophia did the same thing.

Why'd you have to bring up her?

I reckon it's time for you to face it.

I don't want to face it. It's in the past and there it shall remain.

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, said the calm voice. Sirius lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Soon, Sirius was asleep and dreaming of his long-ago summer holiday once again.

That afternoon heralded the arrival of Mortimer and Alexandria Black and their daughters, Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa. Sirius stayed safely hidden in his room. That is, until he heard Sophia's outburst.

"Get away from me, asshole," Sophia shouted. Sirius opened his door and saw that Bellatrix and Narcissa had cornered Sophia in the corridor. Through the open staircase in the centre of the house, he saw Severus standing outside his door, ready to defend his sister.

"What's the matter, Sophie? Not happy to see your schoolmates?" Bella asked.

"I said to get away from me, Bella," Sophia demanded. She pointed down the corridor and Bella grabbed her wrist. She pushed Sophia's sleeve up and revealed red, superficial gashes on her forearm.

"What's this, Sophie? Trying out the new silver?" Bella laughed darkly. Sophia bristled and stared (with watery eyes) as harshly as she could at Bella. Bella took a step closer and lowered her voice. "Don't tell me that you don't drag that blade across your skin and beg for the courage to really press down."

Narcissa took a step away from her sister. Sirius ventured another glance at Severus. The other boy seemed to be sick to his stomach, from the sour expression on his face. Indeed, every one of Bella's words turned to acid and drizzled into his stomach.

"I have asked you to leave many times, Miss Black. Please do so," Sophia said in a light whisper.

"You think you're the lady of the house? Well, I guess that's no surprise," Bella said with disdain.

"Bella, please," Narcissa whispered.

"Because everybody knows—everybody knows—that he shags you. What they don't, is that you like it," Bella continued. Sophia began to cry and sunk to the floor. "You love playing Mrs-Bloody-Snape, don't you, Sophia?"

"You can't speak to my sister that way!" Severus jumped into Bella's line of sight.

"I can speak to her any way I wish! I am of age!" Bella asserted.

"My mother was a pure-blood witch!" Severus argued.

"Yes, but your father is a worthless Muggle, making you both disgusting half-bloods," Bella said venomously, "a worthless Muggle who's driven his daughter mad."

Severus raised his wand.

"Severus!" Paul Snape called.

"Cissy! Bella!" called Andromeda.

"Regulus!" Trudy called as well. The beckoned children headed down the stairs. Sirius vanished into his room, milling over what Bella had said.

Closure — Chevelle

There was a knock at the door of Sirius's quarters.

"Come in," said the ten-year-old. Sophia opened the door and stepped inside.

"Thought I should warn you," said Sophia. She had regained her sanity, for a moment at least.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"The parents are taking Severus and your brother and your cousins to Fortescue's for a treat. You're not invited after that horrid display downstairs, and I'm not because, well…" Sophia trailed off.

"You did it again?" Sirius sat up as Sophia nodded. She folded her arms and Sirius saw the fresh bandages up one of her sleeves. "Why do you do it?"

"Because I'm a terrible person. I'm told so every day. And I do it for the same reason you vomit after every meal." Sirius began to argue but Sophia said, "It makes me feel better."

Sirius sighed and nodded once. "Who tells you you're a horrible person?"

"Who else? My darling younger brother Severus Snape. And after I was the one who saved him from the row that drove Mother away." Sophia opened a window and lit a cigarette. She giggled when Sirius stared at her wide-eyed. "I got hooked on this at school. They're not allowed, but everyone has them. They're sort of like currency. Well, cigarettes and certain… favours."

"Oh," Sirius muttered. He sighed. "How did you know about my—."

"I heard you. You're not very quiet when you're in the loo, you know. Fact is, Trudy and Claude could care less," Sophia smoked out the window. Sirius looked at her, before looking to the floor.

"Sometimes," he said after a long pause. "I wish I had the strength, you know?"

"It's not strength," Sophia giggled. "It's bravery, courage, really. Taking a knife in your hand and begging, praying for the courage to press down. And when you finally do…. Ohh, that release? It's the best feeling in the world. Light-headedness as you slowly lose more blood, you can feel your life force draining from your body. It's delightful! I also recommend throwing yourself down the stairs. That can take care of other things."

Sirius could do nothing but stare at Sophia. What else could he do?

"What?" Sophia turned on him. "Do you think I'm mad, too?" Sirius couldn't respond. Yes, he thought her mad, but he couldn't tell her for fear of what she'd do. "Well, fine. You were the last one, Sirius Black!" Sophia stomped out of his room and slammed the door. Sirius opened the door to the corridor behind her.

"Sophia!" He looked up and down the hall. She was gone. Sirius shrugged and shut his bedroom door. He was nearly asleep when he heard Trudy shriek from the garden.

Scrambling from his bed, he ran down the steps to the dining room, where he saw Paul Snape hunched over the stream. Sirius opened the door and went outside as Mr Snape lifted something out of the water. Sirius ran to Paul's side, already knowing what had happened. Mr Snape turned and Sirius saw the lifeless body of Sophia in her father's arms. Mr Snape and his son began sobbing. Bellatrix found it impossible to choke back her maniacal laughter.

Sirius finally truly looked at Sophia. She'd dressed in her best robes, put flowers in her hair, and held a bouquet of weeds. She didn't look like Sophia, though, either. The body was pale white and blue and bloated from being in the water. Severus Snape reached into the water and fished out his sister's wand.

"Priori Incantato," Severus said quietly. He and the others saw a ghost-like image of Sophia Snape pointing her wand at herself and whispering, "Avada Kedavra." Severus threw his own wand down, in favour of his sister's. Sirius approached his friend.

"Severus, I'm sorry," Sirius said. Severus Snape stopped in his tracks and thought. He then turned to Sirius and said in his nastiest tone, which would come to be the only tone he regarded Sirius in, "You didn't help her."

Sirius stood in the garden, puzzled by what Severus had meant by that. You didn't help her.

Claude then began to usher Sirius inside. "I think it's time we went home, son. You've done enough."

The last image of Snape manor that played in Sirius's brain was the image of Mr Paul Snape cradling his daughter, holding her close to his body and mourning over her. Realising he couldn't sleep any more, Sirius got up, dressed, and left the dormitory.

Sophia. Sophia. Sophia. You didn't help her.