written for: the houses competition
house: slytherin
category: drabble
prompts: "I never saw him/her again," [Speech]
word count: 723
warnings: death mentions (canonical)
notes: this is set during ootp
disclaimer: disclaimed.
It's the kind of night built for memories.
Sometimes, they comfort.
Sometimes, they consume.
Sirius is sitting at the dining table in Grimmauld Place. He hasn't had a cigarette in years—twelve years in Azkaban and two living as a dog will do that to you—but he feels a craving now.
He raps his fingers against the table: once, twice, three times. He takes out a cigarette, but does not light it.
A moment later, Emmeline Vance is there. He feels her approach before he sees her, but by the time he's raised his head to glance in her direction, she's already there.
"Always the fast one, Vance," he says.
Emmeline shakes her head, sitting down in the chair beside him. "No," she says, in a softer voice than he can ever remember her using. "That was always Marlene."
Sirius' breath hitches for a moment, before he inclines his head slowly. "She always was the fastest of us," he says, agreeing.
"She could outrun anyone," Emmeline says, so sadly. "Sometimes I just wish she had run away."
Sirius pauses. "What are you doing here, Emmeline?" he asks gently.
Emmeline looks at him. "I don't know if I want to remember or to forget," she says, sounding lost in a way that he can't reconcile with the Emmeline Vance he knew before. Before this year, before Azkaban, before everybody they knew and loved died.
Still, he nods. He understands that. He is constantly caught between the pain of remembering and the terror of forgetting.
"Do you remember," Emmeline asks, "that night James and Marlene came back from a mission, looking like absolute wrecks, like bleeding and exhausted and muddy, the whole nine yards—and yet, they started that absolutely ridiculous dance?"
Sirius starts. He had forgotten that moment until she'd reminded him, but it had been a good one. There had been a traitor in their midst, they all knew, and he'd believed it was Remus, and the war was dragging them all down, because it felt like it might never end and that their friends might have died for nothing, but still, James and Marlene had started that dance and refused to let anyone or anything take the potential of that night from them.
"It was a golden night," Sirius says, smiling slightly.
"It was," Emmeline agrees after a moment's pause. "I never saw her again," she says quietly, eyes glistening. She doesn't even try to make it nonchalant, like Sirius might when thinking about the times that break his heart; she just says it like it's a fact, which it is. It's also a truth which breaks her heart, Sirius thinks, and that twists his for her.
It wasn't the last time he saw Marlene alive, but he doesn't want to say that. That's not a memory for this moment. Instead, he thinks about his brother for the first time since Harry asked about him, and lets himself think about him in all the ways he truly existed, instead of just the Death Eater box Sirius has had him in for years to make it easier to ignore.
"I remember once, in… Wiltshire, I think, there was an ambush. It was James, Marls, Benjy and me… and we were against Malfoy, Dolohov, a few others… and Regulus." His voice hitches, and he can feel Emmeline looking at him steadily, but she doesn't say anything. "I was so angry to see him there," Sirius says quietly. "So angry. He was eighteen and—my family's fucked, you know, but he was still my little brother."
He pauses. Emmeline reaches her hand out across the table. After a moment, he takes it.
"I think I hexed him—I didn't want to fight him, I didn't, but I didn't want my friends to either. Either he'd hurt them, or they'd hurt him. I didn't know what was worse," he says. He swallows. "I still don't."
Sirius wants to look her in the eyes, the way she looked at him when she was talking about Marlene, but the memories and hurts are too heavy right now, and his eyes drop to their clasped hands under the weight of them.
"I never saw him again," he says, still unable to look up.
After a moment, he feels her squeeze his hand. A moment later, he squeezes back.