Author's note:

Dear readers,

another long update for you to enjoy. Thank you so much for reading, reviewing, favoriting and/or following my story. Your positive reactions are awesome.

Have a nice day,

Vani12

Chapter 5 – Heartbreaks can drive you into madness!

Sirius's flat, Soho, Muggle London, December 1978

Sirius had woken up with a splitting headache thanks to an earth-shattering hangover after a night of heavy drinking and partying with his Auror training mates. He knew that alcohol wasn't an answer to his personal issues, but he wanted to forget the heartbreak, haunting childhood memories and the feeling of not knowing who he was. He was a fucked-up, lost little boy in the body of a nineteen-year-old handsome bloke who hated his deranged, Dark Arts obsessed she-devil of a mum and was unrequited in love with his best mate, James Potter. It hurt like hell to think about James's impending marriage to the gorgeous, smart and lovely, Lily Evans, for he knew that their marriage wouldn't make them happy and end in a disaster. Sirius had discovered that he was attracted to men as well as women in his fourth year at Hogwarts. He had had his fair share of flings with boys and girls at Hogwarts, although he had kept his sexual affairs with males hushed up and hidden.

Same-sex relationships weren't accepted in the Wizarding world, because they didn't include biological children. In a world, where most wizards and witches were obsessed with carrying on their bloodlines and popping out magically powerful children, wizards and witches who had sex with the same sex and eliminated the possibilities of having biological children, were treated like criminal outsiders. Hence, Sirius had shagged his male conquests in hidden alcoves or broom closets at Hogwarts with Security Spells in place that would warn them of approaching teachers or students. While he had made out with his female flings on booze-filled parties in the Gryffindor Common Room, kissed them passionately in the Great Hall or danced closely with them at the Yule Ball, his affairs with male students were his dirty secret. Hell, he wasn't ashamed of his sexuality and talked with his Marauders' mates openly about it, but he could only live out his attraction to males openly in Muggle gay bars where nobody knew him. Besides that, he nowadays only used quick, meaningless sex with women and men to forget about his lost love.

If he was totally honest with himself, Sirius realized that he had a sex problem, for he used sex to feel loved and experience a high. The unloved, insecure little boy in him was addicted to sensing some physical warmth, desire-filled touches, and frenzied kisses. Merlin, he knew that he would never have his happily ever after because the love of his life was marrying a woman. Thence, he satisfied his sexual needs and feelings of loneliness, rejection and hurt with empty, frenzied sex. He knew that he couldn't love another human being as much as James Potter. Sirius loved him with a fiery passion, gentle compassion and touching selflessness. James was his one true love, his soulmate and the one person on earth who could make him laugh, feel safe and blissfully happy. He was his best mate and kindred spirit. Waking up in his arms and making love to him, felt like being home. And the little, abused and neglected boy in Sirius had always longed to feel loved and at home.

His wicked dark witch of a mum had tortured him with dark curses, starvation or imprisonment in the creepy, dark basement of 12 Grimmauld Place whenever he disobeyed her in private, embarrassed her in public or angered her with his rebellious, reckless behavior. And you only needed to refuse to maim your house-elves with dark curses, talk to your Pure-blooded playmates too loudly at the table or chase your little brother through Grimmauld Place with squirt guns to earn yourself a dark hex. When Sirius reflected on the hours spend withering on the floor in pain, suppressing his hungry feeling or crying in the dark basement, a hot hatred and nasty bile acid rushed through his body. He asked himself time and time again how a parent could abuse their own flesh and blood like this. Naturally, Sirius had known since his early childhood that Walburga Black wasn't a good-hearted, warm mum. She had never read bedtime stories out to him and his brother, nursed their scratched knees, played games with them or hugged them tightly, but his four-year-old self could have never imagined that she was capable of abusing her children until they begged her to stop with the promise of being the perfect Pure-blooded sons or blacked out.

His crazy harpy of a mum had used dark curses that didn't leave visible scars or healed their maimed flesh with a quick charm. Hence, their father Orion had never seen any signs of her abuse. Children are very perceptive to the moods and feelings of their parents. Thus, Sirius noticed at a young age that his parents loathed each other and only remained married to keep up appearances. There had been no love lost between Orion and Walburga Black, for they insulted each other non-stop, threw objects at each other in heated fights and tried to ignore each other's presence by hiding out in their personal studies. They had separate bedrooms and lived separate lives. They didn't talk about their daily affairs, spend family holidays with their kids in St. Moritz or St. Tropez or discussed the education of their children. They only looked at each other with hatred lightning in their eyes and disgust visible on their faces.

Orion had been a hands-on-dad in the first five years of Sirius's life, entertaining him with colorful, action-filled stories about his adventures as a curse-breaker, teaching him how to fly on a broom or playing Exploding Snap with him. Sirius loved his dad deeply. He wanted to be like him when he was grown-up. He read tomes on curse-breaking and trained his Quidditch moves to impress him. He longed to be embraced by his strong arms or to see a beaming smile on his face because he could forget his mum's abuse in his presence and feel loved. Sure, Sirius had noticed that his dad wasn't happy in his marriage, for he didn't smile often, hid his laughter behind a mask of coolness and looked at him with sad sapphire eyes. Sirius had realized that his dad's heart had been broken and that even spending quality time with his children couldn't heal his scars. He had observed how Orion indulged in too much Firewhiskey on lonely nights in his private study, looking wistfully on an image of an ebony-haired, dark-eyed, porcelain-skinned and happily smiling young woman and sobbing, "Oh, Eileen, why do I still love you, if you have ripped out my heart?". Besides that, he had noticed how Orion tensed up whenever he saw an advertisement for Prince Potions in the Daily Prophet or heard children gossiping about a Muggle sport called "football" in Diagon Alley.

In his naïve mindset, Sirius had thought that he could cheer his dad up with some magical tricks or funny jokes, but Orion's smiles remained forced. He wanted to blurt out how his she-devil of a mum punished him and Regulus for their misdeeds, trained them in the Dark Arts and indoctrinated them with the agenda of some bloke she called the "Dark Lord". But Walburga Black had threatened to kill their beloved dad with an undetectable, deathly poison, if they dared to go crying to their father. Hence, Sirius and Regulus kept their suffering at Walburga's hands secret to protect the life of their dad. Since Orion had needed to take over as the CEO of Black Investment due to their grandpa's illness when Sirius was six, he hadn't got as much time for his boys as before. He couldn't go flying with them every weekend, teach them nifty spells or entertain them with his prank stories from Hogwarts. Sirius felt abandoned by his dad, resented his work for Black Investment and withdrew from him.

Spending his daily hours being indoctrinated by his she-devil of a mum in the Pure-blood supremacy, hexed with newly created dark curses or educated on the proper behavior of a Pure-blooded heir of the noble and most ancient house of Black, Sirius began to hate the Dark Arts, loathe the Slytherin ways and resent his existence as the Black heir. He reasoned that her addiction to the Dark Arts had driven his mother into insanity, the pressure of being the Black heir had turned his dad into a bitter, unhappy man and that all Slytherins were cruel, dark wizards and witches. In secret, he had ordered his loyal house-elf, Ebony, to buy him Muggle comics, books on Muggle culture and a miniature toy bike. He wanted to educate himself on the Muggle world, understand their customs and way of life, to determine, if the Wizarding world should rule above them. Driven by the urge to learn everything about Muggles, Sirius devoured every comic, pop magazine and book he could get his hands on.

Naturally, he put himself on the line with his Muggle studies, for his she-devil of a mum would have had his head if she found out that he had developed a fascination with the filthy Muggles and their Muggleness. Thankfully, Sirius had managed to hide his Muggle items and books in an old trunk that only opened to his magical signature with the help of Ebony. Sirius learned in his studies that Muggles had their own magical inventions without having magical powers – electricity, telephones, cars, airplanes, TV, the radio, etc. He loved their comfortable-looking jeans and shirts, colorful comics and entertaining novels. Based on the pictures of happily smiling children, blissfully laughing parents and rollicking dogs, he decided that Muggles were empathetic, caring and happy human beings who weren't beneath wizards and witches because of their lack of magical powers. They didn't deserve to be tortured or killed by this maniac Dark Lord and Sirius vowed to protect them from his craziness and violence.

His crazy mum had always ranted about "worthless Blood-traitors" like the Potters, Weasleys, and Prewetts who advocated for equal rights of Muggle-borns, Half-bloods, and Pure-bloods in the Wizarding world and were fascinated with Muggle culture. She blamed "this old, senile fool Dumbledore" for indoctrinating them and alienating them from their Pure-blooded way of life. Sirius vowed to support Dumbledore's agenda, fight against the Dark Lord's inhumane, maniac ideas and persuade the Sorting Hat to not sort him into Slytherin, because he associated being a Slytherin with an addiction to the Dark Arts, sadistic nature and life in despair, unhappiness and sorrows. He had summarized that Gryffindor would be the house that suited him best because Dumbledore, as a former Gryffindor, favorited the members of Gryffindor and they were considered to be the most popular, daring and bravest students at Hogwarts. Sirius wanted to belong to a group that was admired for their courage, pranks and Quidditch skills instead of being singled out as a cunning, evil dark wizard. Hence, he had decided to abandon his Black heritage and be sorted into Gryffindor.

He knew that his she-devil of a mum would pay him back with dark curses, painful Slicing Hexes, and hateful Boiling Hexes during the hols, but he would endure them to have a chance on a better life. But before he could board his train to Hogwarts, his world came crashing down in the shape of a dark family secret. His dad had told him as a four-year-old that he needed to be more careful than other children when playing outside in the cold because he had been a premature baby whose lungs hadn't been fully developed. He had needed to spend some weeks in St. Mungo's as a baby to get well and struggled with pneumonia and asthma ever since. Mere months before he should board the Hogwarts Express, Sirius felt like he would suffocate. He couldn't breath and his asthma medication wouldn't help. Hence, he was rushed to St. Mungo's where the healers diagnosed a genetic pulmonary disease. To apply an effective remedy, that he would need to take for the rest of his life, they needed to determine his blood type and test his genes. He had the blood type AB negative and his genetic pulmonary disease was unknown for the Blacks. After Walburga Black had reluctantly agreed to test her blood, the healers identified her blood type as A positive and found no genes for his pulmonary disease.

Thence, Orion Black agreed to test his blood to see if he had passed the genetic disease on to his son via some recessive genes. But to Orion's shock, the healers uncovered that he wasn't Sirius biological dad, because he had the blood type O positive and no genes for his son's pulmonary disease. Thankfully, the healers were able to develop a cure for Sirius based on his genetic information and their prior experiences with his genetic lungs disease. Sirius had felt numb inside when he had eavesdropped on a fight between his parents some days after he had been released from St. Mungo's. He hadn't been able to sleep and wanted to nick a bar of milk chocolate to calm his nerves. But on his way down into the kitchen, he had listened in on a heated discussion between his parents. A furious, intoxicated Orion had accused Walburga of ruining his life and seducing him with a Love Potion and Fertility Potion into her bed to trap him in a loveless marriage and foist a mailman's child on him. Walburga had only laughed at his naivety and gullibility, mocked him for his puppy love to the Blood-traitor Eileen Prince and confessed that Sirius was the biological child of Sebastian Lestrange. She had had a sordid affair with the loyal, married supporter of Lord Voldemort in 1958/1959, got pregnant with his child and foisted its paternity onto her fiancé Orion. She taunted him for not figuring out that a two months premature baby couldn't weigh 6 lb and 9 oz. Baby Sirius had only needed to stay a month at St. Mungo's, for his lungs hadn't been fully developed due to Sebastian's genetic pulmonary disease.

A devasted Sirius had broken down in front of their dining room door, sobbing uncontrollably and rocking himself in an embryonic posture. This couldn't be right. He couldn't be the son of this sadistic, sinisterly smirking, Sebastian Lestrange. Hell, whenever he had encountered him on a social event, he had felt an icy shiver run down his spine. Sebastian Lestrange loved to practice the Dark Arts, go Muggle-Hunting and leer at beautiful, young women. This monster couldn't be his biological dad. Cause if he had two monsters as his biological parents, how could he turn out to be good? His genes were fucked up. He felt bile surface in his throat and cried louder. Suddenly, his dad was beside himself, picked him gently up from the floor and stroked his back soothingly. He mumbled calming words into his ear and chased away an embarrassed Walburga who wanted to hex her son for his breakdown. Orion carried him into his room, tucked him in and embraced him tightly. After Sirius had calmed down, he stated in his deep baritone, "Sirius, you will always be my son, your genes don't change anything about it. I'm the man who sang you to sleep with an old Celtic lullaby as a babe, taught you how to fly on a broom as a toddler and entertained you with my curse-breaker adventures as a boy. I love you to the moon and back. Never forget that, my son."

Sirius had clung to his dad, told him, "I love you too, dad," and fallen asleep due to his emotional exhaustion. Orion had tried to manifest his words with his actions. He had spent more time with Regulus and him during the next couple of months. He took them to Quidditch matches, played Wizarding Chess or Exploding Snap with them and bought them new brooms. Besides that, he also retold them stories about his best Hogwarts pranks, gifted them some silly smiles and honest laughs and embraced them tightly. Orion treated them equivalent, although only Regulus was his biological son. He had checked that with a Paternity Potion after the shocking revelation of Sirius's true paternity. He had even confessed to Sirius in a heart-to-heart that he was proud of his Muggle studies, for he didn't believe in the whole Pure-blood supremacy propaganda. His dad had spotted one of his comics and his miniature bike in his room and encouraged him to keep an open mind with Hafl-blood and Muggle-born students at Hogwarts. But he had urged him to hide his fascination with the Muggle world from his crazy mum and to always be the best wizard he can be. He had confessed to him in a broken voice that he had ventured into the Muggle world with the love of his life, Eileen Prince, in their youth, watching football games and Muggle movies as well as visiting Art galleries. But he had lost her in the end due to Walburga's schemes and her infatuation with some Muggle bloke.

The last months before his departure to Hogwarts had been his happiest in 12 Grimmauld Place because Orion had banned Walburga to their French cottage for her lies and betrayal. Hence, she couldn't torture her sons and poison their mind with her Dark Magic and the Dark Lord's agenda. Sadly, Orion needed to welcome her back to their home to keep up appearances and quell the rumor mill on the day of his departure to Hogwarts. So, a nervous, feeling lost Sirius Black dressed in his best slacks, dress shirt, coat and boots, apparated to Platform Nine and Three Quarters at the King's Cross station with his shiny, new trunk packed with school supplies, designer clothes and personal items in his right hand and the cage of his new familiar, a cute barn owl with sapphire eyes, called "Poseidon", in his left hand. He was accompanied by a sour-looking Walburga Black, who hissed into his ear that there would be hell to pay if he wasn't sorted into Slytherin, a proudly smiling Orion Black, who encouraged him to follow his heart and instincts, and a teary-eyed Regulus Black, who urged him to write regularly and confessed that he would miss him. Sirius had reassured him with an easy smile that he would tell him everything about his pranks and new Hogwarts friends, that he missed him too and that he would always be his best friend. After this heartfelt goodbye, he had boarded the train, happy to escape the abuse of Walburga Black and determined to be not sorted into Slytherin.

Here, he had met his best mates Remus Lupin, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew and his Slytherin nemesis, Severus Snape. He had hated him from the moment he voiced that he wanted to be sorted into Slytherin like his mum. Naturally, his hatred for anything Slytherin played a role in his instant hostility to Severus Snape, but with his sinister-looking obsidian eyes, greasy hair and dark aura he practically screamed "Death Eater in training". Besides that, Sirius had been able to spot the Princes' crest and engraving Eileen Prince on his old, threadbare trunk. He felt a rage rushing through his veins. This pale boy with the hooked nose, greasy dark locks, and tattered clothes was the son of his dad's one true love who had ripped out his heart and cheated on him with a Muggle? Sirius couldn't believe his eyes and vowed to hate this boy out of loyalty to his father. He would be the ideal test subject for his pranks.

Sirius stopped his journey down memory line and let out an anguished-cry. "Well, the pathetic Slytherin upstart Severus Snape isn't so dark and evil after all. Unlike you, he has managed to finish Hogwarts a year early, study at the prestigious Merlin Institue in New York in Potions and DADA, be acknowledged as the Prince heir and marry the love of his life. He has his happily ever after, while you are left heartbroken by James Potter. Who is the pathetic one now?", a taunting voice asked inside of his head. In the past months, Sirius had come to regret his bullying of Severus Snape. He admired him for his talents in Spellcrafting, Potions, and DADA, his loved-up interaction with his lovely new wife, Olivia Prince-Fawley, and his academic and strategic work for the Order. Sirius had to admit that Severus Snape was a stronger person than he could have imagined. Although their cruel bullying has left scars on his soul and his falling out with his boyhood crush, Lily Evans, cut him to the quick, he came back to Hogwarts in their sixth year like a reborn phoenix.

With his new-trained muscles clearly visible under his fitted new designer slacks and shirts, his styled-back, glossy, ebony curls, spot-less porcelain face, and his handsome smile, he was the new hottie at Hogwarts. And Sirius had to admit that his improved looks, his self-confident and powerful aura as well as his smart and witty charm were highly attractive. If he hadn't been so blissfully happy in his sordid love affair with James and known that Severus wasn't attracted to men and would rather hex him into oblivion than shag him, he would have asked him and his stunning girlfriend, Olivia Fawley, for a passionate threesome. He could admire a hot cuple when he saw one and to his utter disbelief, Severus and Olivia were the hottest couple in the Wizarding world right now. Sirius shook his head. Were did these thoughts come from? He wasn't attracted to Severus Snape. Merlin, he really needed to have an excellent shag in the near future, if his mind conjured up sexual images of him, Olivia and Snape between the sheets.

James final decision to break it off with him six months ago to marry Lily had really done a number on him. Sometimes, he feared that his heartbreak would drive him into madness, for he couldn't forget James's boyish smile, the feeling of his hands in his messy hair or his handsome face in post-orgasmic bliss. But he needed to erase their love affair from his mind to be able to be James's best mate and best man at his wedding, for he couldn't live without him. And if James noticed that he was still madly in love with him, he would cut off all ties with him to protect his romance with Lily. Sometimes, Sirius would drift off into a fantasy world where he could openly live out his romance with James without damnation and James's fiancée in the picture. But he knew that this was a dream that would never come true.