The summer returned in all its vengeance, all too soon. Amidst spending the Christmas and Easter holidays at James' house, earning more detentions than he could count, and beginning his, James', and Peter's endeavor to become Animagi, Sirius' second year at Hogwarts sped by even faster than his first, and before he knew it he found himself once again trapped within Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. In dismal contrast, however, the summer seemed to stretch on forever.

Once again, Sirius found solace only in his friends' letters. As each day endured almost past endurance—dull, stifling, tinged with fear—each was punctuated by the longing that separated the arrival of one letter from the next, and the leap of joy that accompanied every subsequent owl. Peter seemed to have grown weary of written correspondence, for Sirius received fewer packages of sweets this year, but James wrote just as often as before, and Remus even more so. So much more so, in fact, that his little owl Apollo became increasingly irritable at the number of times he was now asked to fly between Leicestershire and London.

Sirius did not attempt to redecorate his room as he had last year. He knew his mother would only force him to undo it all. If only he knew how to perform a Permanent Sticking Charm, he'd show her. . . The thought of how it would infuriate her, and how there would be nothing she could do about it, always made him grin.

Most of the time Sirius kept himself locked in his room, and did his best to avoid the other inhabitants of the house. Since Grimmauld Place was a known Wizarding dwelling, he was able to amuse himself magically without getting angry notices from the Ministry, as long as his parents did not find out about it. He had become quite adept at Transfiguration and Charms, and so he whiled away the time transfiguring his quills into centipedes and back again, making his textbooks sprout limbs and attack each other, and producing brightly colored rings of smoke that danced about the room. He also considered hexing Regulus just for fun, but decided that the consequences would be too severe to risk it.

One afternoon in July, a piece of paper slid through the crack beneath Sirius' locked bedroom door. Looking over at it from his bed, Sirius recognized his brother's large, obnoxious handwriting, and he ignored it decidedly—that is, until the note rolled itself up into a ball and started bouncing off the side of his head. With a flick of his wand he turned it into a paper airplane and made it zoom about the room. He was just debating what to have it do next when the door flew open.

In shock and outrage, Sirius whirled around to see Regulus standing in the corridor outside, wearing the new Hogwarts robes he had just gotten from Madam Malkin's.

"I locked that door!"

Regulus merely shrugged, looking annoyingly glum as ever.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Sirius snapped. "Don't you have Kreacher to play with?"

"Mummy says she put your books on the kitchen table and she wants them picked up before dinner."

"Fine. Is that all?"

Biting his lip, Regulus took a tentative step forward. Then he said, very quietly, "How do you ask?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The hat. The Sorting Hat. How do you ask it?"

Before Sirius could give a scathing reply, Regulus caught sight of his unread message hovering in midair, and he followed it with his eyes as it flew around the room. Sirius noticed where he was looking, and with another flick of his wand the paper airplane burst into flames. Regulus watched it smolder and fall at his feet with a strange expression on his face. For a moment Sirius thought he was going to cry. Then he turned on his heel and left, the door slamming shut of its own accord behind him.

After taking a few minutes to fume irritably, Sirius retrieved his new schoolbooks from the kitchen. He was halfway back up the staircase, and relieved that he had not met anyone along the way, when his mother's voice reverberated, magically magnified, through the house.

"SIRIUS ORION BLACK."

Sirius froze, heart jumping madly. He willed it to shut up, but it ignored him.

"I WANT YOU DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT."

Furious at himself for starting to tremble, Sirius retraced his steps back downstairs. His mother met him on the landing and steered him into the drawing room with nothing but an irate look. She might have been about to spit fire. As she shut the door and began to pace the room before him, Sirius noticed a letter clenched tightly in her fist.

At last she stopped pacing, turned to face him, and spoke. "Why have you done this to me, Sirius?"

Sirius had no idea what he had supposedly done, but knew better than to say anything.

His mother continued. "After what you promised me last year—I thought I had made myself quite clear then. I thought we had come to an understanding. So tell me." Her voice was calm but deadly. "Why do you insist upon disgracing our family?"

Without waiting for an answer, she thrust the letter under Sirius' nose and Sirius, with a thrill of horror, saw that it was from Remus.

Dear Sirius,

Apollo refused point-blank to carry another letter to you, so I had to hire an owl from the post office. I hope he reaches you all right—I mean, I know professional post owls are supposed to know what they're doing, but I couldn't help noticing that this one didn't look particularly trustworthy. I haven't—

She snatched the letter away again before Sirius could read any further. Instinctively he reached out to take it back, but it was already beyond his grasp. Catching sight of this, his mother's eyes narrowed dangerously. Then she turned towards the door and shouted, "Regulus!"

Almost immediately there came a scuffling sound from directly outside, and the door swung open to reveal Regulus, who had evidently been listening at the keyhole.

"Come in, darling. As you'll be heading off to Hogwarts as well this year, I'd like to make an example of this." She glanced disdainfully at the letter in her hand. "Despite my warnings, despite everything I have tried to teach you two, your brother has decided that he would rather consort with—lesser beings—than honor our values."

Sirius' stomach clenched. Lesser beings?

His mother looked at the letter again, then turned it around and pointed at a spot on the parchment. There, written in Remus' clear hand, unmistakably, was the one damning word—

"Werewolf. 'Now that you know I'm a werewolf,'" she quoted, looking back up at Sirius. "I will not have it. Trust Dumbledore to let something like that into a school in the first place. And of course the ministry will cover it all up for him, they worship that mudblood-loving fool," she spat. "Now, I may not be able to control who—or what—you choose to spend your time with while at school, but I will not have you defiling the house of my fathers with this filth. I will not have it. Do you understand?"

The room buzzed with deadly anticipation. Sirius could not extinguish the rage boiling its way through his body, and though he remained paralyzed, rooted to the spot by mounting panic, he refused to allow himself to submit to this.

"I asked you a question, boy," Walburga Black hissed. Sirius noticed the wand in her hand, and realized that something more than mounting panic was keeping him rooted to the spot.

"Do you understand?"

A moment's hesitation. Then: "No." He was being reckless; somewhere a corner of his mind acknowledged this, but the blood pounding in his ears had deafened him to it.

The ire flashed in his mother's eyes like a silver dagger. "'No?'" She snarled. "You will give up your place in this family for those creatures?"

"I won't give up my friends." No sooner had the words escaped his lips than he regretted ever saying them. He knew he had crossed the invisible boundary that had hung over the house since before he was born. There could be no taking it back, and he knew he would pay dearly for his impulsiveness.

"Very well."

Despite knowing full well what was to come, a fresh wave of panic surged over Sirius when he saw her heading for the grate.

"No. Please—"

"I can only hope that in the future you will come to recognize your mistake. In the meantime," she said, tossing the letter into the fire, "you will know the consequences."

Unable to move, fighting back tears, Sirius watched Remus' handwriting burn and curl into ash. Walburga flicked her wand, and Sirius' right hand—his wand hand, his quill hand—clenched shut of its own accord.

"I will not have it," she repeated. "Go to your room."

That evening at dinner, not a word was spoken. Sirius hardly touched his food, and avoided looking at anyone. He was not the only one: Regulus had not even bothered to pick up his fork. From the muffled sound of his incessant sniffling, he had apparently fallen victim to a tongue-tying curse. Sirius didn't bother to ask what his brother had done to deserve such a punishment, and he was too absorbed in his own predicament to care.

/ / /

Walburga went even a step further and magically locked Sirius' bedroom window, so that he was now incapable not only of responding to his friends' letters but of receiving them at all. As days turned into weeks, his frustration only grew. Last summer, all that had kept him from going mad had been James' and Remus' letters, and Peter's boxes of sweets. Now—without them—he felt as if he was hanging over a precipice. If this continued much longer, he would either resort to something dreadful or revert back to being his family's puppet. He decided he would rather go to Azkaban for the rest of his life than abide the latter.

Every so often Sirius would hear an owl tapping on the glass outside. They each made a valiant effort to reach him, but all ultimately gave up and headed for the drawing room instead, landing right in his mother's clutches. Sirius tried every spell he could think of—even some he had not yet learned in school—but his left-handed spellwork was always clumsy, and the window did not budge. Since then he had taken to throwing something at it every time he reentered his room, but that did not work either.

By August, Sirius was at his wit's end. He avoided his family at all costs and remained shut up in his room as much as possible, emerging only to use the bathroom and sneak food from the kitchen. Usually he was able to steer clear of Kreacher as well. When he arrived in the kitchen to find the house-elf making for the fireplace with a stack of letters, however, he dropped all pretense of secrecy.

"Stop!"

Kreacher froze. "The boy has given Kreacher an order, but Kreacher must not obey, Kreacher must obey his mistress first…"

"Give me those letters."

"…Oh how disappointed she is…"

"Kreacher! I order you to give me those letters!"

Kreacher's face contorted in pain from disobeying Sirius' command. Nevertheless, he remained intent upon his cause. "Kreacher must not," he croaked. "Kreacher must not give Master Sirius the letters, Kreacher must burn them like his mistress said, and keep Master Sirius away from them, no matter what he may order Kreacher to do."

As he started toward the fireplace once again, Sirius lunged at him. They fell to the floor in a heap, and the letters flew out of Kreacher's grasp. Sirius tried to reach for them in the struggle, but Kreacher snapped his finger and the parchment burst into flames. Sirius caught glimpses of Remus' and James' handwriting as each page was consumed, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Dear Sirius, I hope you're not angry at me. Only you never responded to my last—

Dear Sirius, We're all getting worried. Remus says—

Dear Sirius, Are you all right? James hasn't heard from you either and—

Sirius! Mate. Siriusly (haha). No but actually seriously mate, what's going on?—

Sirius, Please write us back as soon as possible. James was saying he'll fly to London personally if you keep—

And then they were gone. It took Sirius a moment to notice the hot tears pouring down his face.

"Master Sirius must return to his room now," Kreacher said firmly. "Mistress said he ought to stay there, the ungrateful brat." He took hold of Sirius' wrist, turning on the spot with a crack. They emerged from the stifling medium of apparition in Sirius' room, and with another loud crack, Kreacher had gone again.

Sirius was bursting at the seams. He could not contain himself, even if he had wanted to. He overturned his desk, and tore down his curtains. He threw everything he could lay a hand on. He smashed his inkbottles and ripped apart his textbooks. And when he screamed, he could feel the magic exploding from his body in one tremendous blast. The curse on his right hand was broken almost instantly. Then there came a deafening crash as all the windows in the house shattered.