AN: Hello everyone! I previously forgot to update this chapter so a hole was left between chapters 18 and 19, which have now become 18 and 20. Sorry for the inconvenience. As always, please review!!

Trigger warnings: curses and derogatory slurs (including the f-word that is not fuck), trauma-induced hallucination, child abuse, suicidal thoughts.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Sirius' forehead was pounding as if his racing heart were imbedded there, a constant, pulsing reminder of the panic sweeping through him.

He was so dizzy… all Sirius wanted to do was lay down and sleep. Forget.

It had been okay. They had been skating. His friends had laughed, had looked at him with such open joy; carefree for an instant.

But now there was no instant. Now he sat in Dumbledore's offices, glaring at the portraits of the past headmasters. Now all there was was an eternity.

"Mr Black, you do not have any witnesses to prove you innocent, do you not?" Dumbledore asked, his brow furrowed into creases, those piercing blue eyes always rising Sirius' instinct to pull his occlumency shield over his own eyes.

"I wouldn't do that!" he countered, tasting the terror that mingled with the fury in his mouth.

"You have a record of attacking Mr Snape."

"I didn't do it, I didn't do it!" Sirius was shouting, face heating up, throat already burning.

"Mr Black, please calm down."

I'm not like them! I'm not like them! Haven't I proved myself enough?

With a dramatic clashing sound, the door banged open. James stepped into the room, chest puffed out with an air of proud defensiveness

"Did you attack Snivellus?" James asked loudly."James, I'm not sure this is the best way to find out," Remus said quietly. "Sirius, why are you here?"

"I did not attack Sniv-Snape!" Sirius nearly yelled. His breathing was erratic, heart pounding in his chest in a way he knew wasn't supposed to happen, desperately shameful. "I-I heard a scream and found him lying on the ground...covered, covered in blood."

"Mr Black, I'm afraid this offense is too serious to take your word on it when you don't have any witnesses to prove you are not lying. You will be suspended for a week," Dumbledore said.

Sirius paled.

Remus' hand twitched, as though he thought to put a hand on Sirius' shoulder. He didn't. "No." Words edged with a growl, a warning that echoed of teeth splitting bone, splinters flying into gums. And then his eyelashes lifted, eyes widening in a guilty shock. "Please, Sir, why does it have to be suspension? Surely it would be much better to keep an eye out on Sirius at Hogwarts."

"Is there anything going on at home that renders you incapable of going back?" Dumbledore's half-moon spectacles slid slightly down his nose, catching the glitter that shone from the window's sun-spangled glass. "Anything that I should know about that is happening there?"

Panic was coursing up his body in strokes of vulnerability. A thousand images flitted through his mind, a thousand memories—under a table, knees raw against the wooden floor, as a storm cracked overhead; the hot breath of alcohol huffing down his neck; the taste of blood in his own mouth as a boot fell down sharply at his jaw; the leering faces of his captators, his parents—control, control.

Sirius deserved it; he knew he did. He had betrayed his family, let himself dishonor them, he was nothing but a piece of scum—

"Padfoot?"

James. Sirius stumbled backwards dizzily, almost knocking into his friends before they caught him. It took every ounce of his self-control to remember to not cringe away, to remind himself that they were only there out of duty. They wouldn't want his grasping, shriveling mess on their hands, of course.

Dumbledore fixed him with his piercing blue gaze. "I will alert your parents. Please pack up and come down here as quickly as you can."

Sirius nodded numbly and followed his friends out of the headmaster's office. No one spoke—there was nothing anyone dared to say. Not even Remus, with his blazing amber eyes, not even James, who looked, for once, frightened instead of outraged, not even Peter, who always had so many questions.

It was only after a few moments of wildly disoriented packing that Sirius began to imagine all the different scenarios that could occur once he arrived at his house. The stairs were always an option, he supposed, though surely his mother wouldn't want to have to occupy herself with cleaning up the blood for the hundredth time. They were impeccably polished by Kreacher every morning, Sirius knew. Another mistake sprawled out over the once-perfect wood. Dull.

"We need to go back," Peter whispered once they saw that he was standing in the middle of his door, unmoving. Swallowing his fear, Sirius donned his Black mask of cool indifference and walked to the headmaster's office, heart leaping in his throat with every breath.

Straightening his back—he didn't want to give his father yet another reason to beat him—Sirius paused before walking into the room.

"Don't come in," he whispered to his friends, meeting their eyes for the first time since the skating.

"Sirius!" James protested loudly.

"Please let us," Remus murmured.

"Please don't."

Orion was waiting for him. Sirius stepped next to his father and he grasped his arm so hard Sirius bit his lip to stop an intake of breath. He didn't look at his friends. His friends, with James' overeager smiles at Christmas, pestering his parents again and again for the holiday pudding and receiving nothing but a gleeful shake. His friends, with Remus too gentle, too gentle for him—didn't he know what Sirius had done, hadn't he seen the blood-slicked quill and cold Black mask? No, no, he didn't know about the time Sirius stood next to his father and watched a muggle girl's empty eyes as they hung from the end of a noose, his noose. His friends, Peter's shaky hands and watering eyes and he despised them, he loathed that weakness.

And his friends. Standing, arms limp at their sides, faces pulled away from him in a sickening blur. Then the apparition was over, and he was left home too soon.

Thin arms wrapped around him, long nails piercing into his fiery skin and leaving half-moon crescents. Frigid, blisteringly cold indentations. He froze.

Where was the blow? The blow had to be coming, it couldn't be this—this...what was it called? Sirius' muddled mind flirted through synonyms; affection and fear and confused bittersweet—those aren't synonyms, silly idiot, Remus would say. Only for you.

He could feel his breathe quicken, hitting the roof of his mouth with stinging force, raising the hairs on his arms and tightening his legs. Fight, flight, submit. That must have been Padfoot, Sirius reflected blurrily. He would lose, he always lost, there was no point in cracking his dignity for a battle that wouldn't serve, nor in fleeing. They found him, they always found him. He had known that since he was six; old news. Safety is relative, compromised, a myth. Always.

Submit. He blinked and blinked and tried to soothe the terror in his heart with lies.

But she was speaking, his mother—saying something about coming around and phases and habits finally broken.

"Your lessons served him well, Orion." Walburga sounded nearly happy, nearly proud.

Proud, proud, that was good, wasn't it? He hadn't had that in a while, not since he watched that muggle's body shrivel up in incandescent flames—

And he was off, burbling some nonsense into the crimson bubbles that his fast, slurred words had dragged from the blood gathering where his teeth had sunken into his cheeks. It was all guilt, guilt eating away at the shine of memories that wouldn't leave, that he deserved because goddammit, I let them die.

"No, no," his father was crooning. "Don't be sorry, you hurt him. You almost murdered."

His hands were quaking out of control.

"Kreacher! Go prepare a special dinner for our son," Walburga was ordering.

Get me out, stop, stop this! Sirius stumbled past Regulus and threw himself into his room, door closing behind him with a rattling crash. He gritted his teeth at his own flinch. The Blacks had gotten under his skin, they had driven their carved ebony-handled knives into him, wedged them between his bones and blood, taught him to cringe at raised voices and tie a rope around his own neck. Now, for the final act of tragedy and chaos, they would turn him into one of them. As Sirius' eyes drifted upwards into nothingness, a phrase written by a muggle man he shouldn't even know about sung leeringly in his mind. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

oOo

He was an actor, a player, nothing but a wax figurine who's mind no longer belong to him. Neither did any measure of control, he realized upon sitting down at his family's dinner table for the first time in years. He counted time in cigarettes. Between coming to dinner and ending up shutting himself in the bathroom vomiting bile into a toilet until he realized he couldn't throw his own memories down the ceramic basin: five cigs. After vomiting: ten cigs. Before dinner: one cig.

His hands were shaking again. They never did seem to stop. He didn't light another for fear of setting the room on fire instead of himself—though maybe leave that for a different day. Nicotine stained the inside of his fingers and the outside of his lips.

"Why aren't you eating?" Orion demanded of his son, fixing him with a steely glare from across the table. Sirius settled himself with staring just south of the gaze.

Walburga, however, was not discouraged from her pride. "You're finally becoming like us—I told you, Orion, he would turn eventually—"

"I didn't."

"What?" Regulus looked up from his dinner. His dark eyes flashed with something that, if Sirius didn't know better, he would have pegged as concern.

But he felt numb with the poison his family had wrought him into. "I never wanted to be like you, I didn't hurt anybody, I would never—" Sirius' voice rose in its certainty. One last fight, one last fight for what he knew was right. And then he would accept his death by hands other than his own.

"Say that again," his father snarled, eyes narrowing into their ever-familiar poisonous darts.

Out of the corner of his vision Sirius saw Walburga urging Regulus out of the room, casting her other son a disdainful glance before she exited.

"I don't want to be a vile, pureblood-obsessed, muggle-hating idiot! I don't want to be like you!" His screams were firm, proud, but instinctively he clambered out of his chair to stand, if a little dizzily.

"YOU-YOU FILTHY SHAME OF THE FAMILY!"

"Good. I want to be." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Crushing pain enveloped him and he fell before his fingers could fumble for his wand, earning himself repeated kicks to the stomach. Sirius threw up what little he had eaten, shaking uncontrollably. His throat burned rawly—he had thrown up more than four times over the past hours.

"NASTY LITTLE BLOOD TRAITOR! MUDBLOOD-LOVER! YOU FUCKING DEFECT, YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH A HALF-BREED!"

"Don't bring Remus into this! DO NOT CALL HIM THAT!" Sirius bellowed from the floor, anger blurring his vision, his voice breaking off in coughing hacks that shook his body, making his throat sting.

"Turn around," Orion ordered, his voice harsh venom.

Sirius clung to the floor with a whimper. It hurt too much to move, his head was spinning, he couldn't get enough air. He gasped, but it would not—could not—reach his frail lungs.

"Pathetic," his father sneered, eyes narrowing. "Now obey me."

Sirius retched out a cough, the world blurring around him. His father grabbed him roughly and flipped him around so Sirius lay on the floor, nose bleeding from the impact. He ripped off Sirius' shirt, a cry rising in the boy's throat when he felt a knife's silver blade tracing lightly upon his bare back.

"You will pay," Orion hissed. Then he plunged the knife into Sirius' back.

Sirius screamed, fingers curling into fists, his body spasming and contracting with the pain. Sobs rose in him, tears squeezing out from beneath his tightly closed lids. His mouth gasped open and closed with every cry.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Orion snarled, carving into Sirius' flesh.

"I-I'm sorry!" Sirius half-screamed, half-sobbed. "Please! I'm sorry!"

"Coward," his father hissed in his ear, driving the knife's blade deep inside Sirius' body. "Faggot."

A sound of raw pain, pleading and pure agony, tore from his throat in a howl and scream merged together.

When Sirius' father left him bleeding out on the dining room floor, fingernails digging into the wood and forehead shuddering against his own tears, he left not Sirius, but a broken star, it's light finally gone out.