Disclaimer: See previous chapters.

King of the World

Once upon a time I lives to protect
I had rules to change
And wrongs to set right
And there were people at my side
And there were rivers I could guide
I wanted nothing in return

Once upon a time... Sirius had never had much time for fairy tales, even as a child. None of them had ever ended with the handsome hero being falsely shut up in jail for the rest of his life. If the hero ever had been so imprisoned, it was only for a short time before he found a way to escape and continue on his adventuring. No, fairy tales ended with "happily ever after," which hardly ever happened in prison. Sirius had given up on imagining this as a merely inconvenience many years ago.

He'd become convinced that he'd been in a fairy tale, though. One that had started on a train in London when he'd met another dark-haired boy who would become the hero of the story. And then there were four of them, and their adventures grew in scope and fame. And all the while their task—they couldn't be a proper hero-and-retinue without having an impossible task to complete—had been to catch a bit of fire, shaped like a girl and named for a flower, and save it from itself, and marry it to the hero. Worse than Herculean, that. If they were still in school he would have had to have asked Moony what you called a task worse than Herculean, and Moony would have known the answer: Sisyphean. But somehow they had succeeded, and for a time they were all improbably happy.

Let me out of here
Give me back to the wind
Let me out of here
Let me please see the sun
Let me out of here
At least tell me what I did wrong

He could remember running. The Muggles would call Azkaban cruel and unusual punishment; Sirius couldn't recall the last time he'd actually been outside, much less with enough room to run. But he could remember it, and he did, many a night, and many a day, too. At first he'd tried not to think of freedom and his old life, convinced that it would only make him mad faster to dwell on the things that he would never see or do again. But over time he'd come to realize that he would have to remember those things, because they were what made him human. The Marauders had known all too well what separated human from beast. It was more than a full, glowering moon; it was the ability to think and feel and act and know. So Sirius had let memories slip in, and he relived his favorite moments.

He'd loved running. Four legs beat out two for that any day, and he'd loved being so fast. Of course, Prongs was faster, but he also had longer legs. The wind in his hair, and the feeling of power, as if he had the ability to do anything, as if he could nearly fly... They were more than just happy memories. They were sublime. Sirius cursed the hindsight that showed him that those were great days that he had taken for granted.

I'm king of the world, chief of the sea
I am the wind, at least I used to be
I'm king of the world, please set me free
Let me remind them of my promise,
Live my given destiny

If there were any memories Sirius would have liked to let go, they were the ones of seeing a hero and his wife dead, their baby son lying nearby. Rage would make him mad before happy memories did, and he fought to control the burning hatred that threatened to consume him. How dare they take away their happily-ever-after. How dare their once-friend betray them and take away Sirius' true family? His vows to avenge James' and Lily's deaths were suitably fairy-tale-esque, he thought, but that made them none the less true.

Although the odds of him ever getting out were quite slim, Sirius allowed himself to make plans for when he did. They'd never expected to win a million galleons, either, but that hadn't stopped the Marauders from sitting around talking about what they would do if they did. Sirius had spent quite a deal of time debating a particular point: Should he first find Harry or Wormtail? He would want to know that Harry was all right, but surely Moony and Dumbledore had taken care of him properly. The problem with disposing of Wormtail first was that there was no telling how long it would take to find the little traitor. But he would find him, and kill him, and reclaim his rights as Harry's godfather. He had to.

How could he have taken such happiness for granted? Had he always thought that things would be so perfect? Why hadn't he told his friends how much they meant to him? He'd always assumed they'd known without having to be told, but it couldn't have hurt anything to say it aloud. Especially after Harry was born—Sirius could have easily slipped it in then and, if called on it later, said that he'd been caught up in the moment. Once upon a time, Sirius Black knew that he had been bloody lucky, far more so than he deserved to be. Once upon a time, he had been a king.

At least I used to be