The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. And on the wall, all around Sirius, the family tree--his own name, repeated, a name that goes so far back that being born was like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
His father, his grey eyes just like Sirius'. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and Sirius tenses when his father turns a gaze on him. Thirteen years old and he has this feeling, deep in his gut, that his father might smile or he might show nothing at all, but God, he hopes for a smile; he hope for approval. In the corner is his mother, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick and smells of burning. His mother is singeing Andromeda's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of their lives--because it is their lives, collectively, because for better or for worse they are meant to be a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Regulus is standing at the other side of the sofa. Sirius can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby, and his skin has never lost that papery quality. Sirius used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired. Mother would come and take Regulus from the nanny, and Sirius would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way he couldn't remember. He is hers; Sirius is Father's, and when Father crosses toward Sirius, now, he straightens up, correcting his posture, so automatic he doesn't even think about it until after it's happened. It's only second year and he is rankling at the weight of everything, at the coldness and expectation and all that whispered hatred that does not fit with what he has learnt at school. Muggle-lover, blood traitor: James Potter, the flash of his eyes behind his glasses. Say that again and I'll hex your eyebrows off, Black, and Sirius already loves him.
And yet he does not let his shoulders drop as his father passes by. He stands, eyes forward, watching his mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. He can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And his father drops his hand on Sirius' shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and he feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying, until it's sickening. It's all he has, and he holds on to it, clutches it to himself, hard.
ii.
"She smells," says James, "of cantaloupe."
"Antelope," Sirius corrects, and puts his index fingers to his forehead with a high and lovelorn grunt, "an antelope in heat."
"Sick," but James laughs when he kicks Sirius under the table.
They are early for Defence, a minor miracle--early enough that no one else is around, just the two of them in the airy classroom. A collection of first year gytrash diagrams are pinned to the bulletin board beside them. Two of the diagrams sport moustaches, an artistic liberty from last Defence class: one by James, one by Sirius. Sirius touches one of them with his thumb. "Needs a beard."
"She doesn't."
"This, git." Sirius picks up his quill and starts to scratch a beard onto the gytrash. "But Eloise McGovern would still look fetching with a beard. Silky. Nicely arranged over her tits. What about Evans?"
"What about her?"
"Well?"
"She'll be in Hogsmeade, won't she." James pushes his fingers through his hair, a gesture that he tries to make look casual--and fails, as always. "And so will I."
"The stuff of romance." Sirius scratches extra hard at the beard, with a smirk. "You and McGovern and Evans. Only I need you in Hogsmeade."
"Ah. Real romance. For what?"
"Hmmmmm." Sirius turns a look on James, arch--raises his eyebrows, strokes his chin. All significant gestures, a clear telegraph of Great Plans. James laughs, and rolls his face onto his arm, flattening his nose against his bicep.
"All right," he says, agreeably, "you twit, but if this is just about trying to get Rosemerta to give you fire whisky--" and Sirius smiles coolly and goes back to drawing on the gytrash diagram, privately amazed--like he always is, still, maybe always will be in a way that he will never say--that twit feels like an endearment, that he has James Potter at all, that nothing else matters but this.
iii.
Remus' skin is the same colour as the parchment of the Marauder's Map. On the Map, the lines of the corridors and classrooms are done in black ink. Remus' scars stand out red and angry, but the older ones are pale, like ink that has faded.
And Sirius feels uncommonly like shit. Wrung out, useless. His eyes burn in the way they get after crying. He isn't crying now. He hasn't cried very recently. The feeling persists, and so does the heavy twist in his chest, all that anger and regret and disdain and fear before he careens back into anger again. Mingled together, it makes his mouth taste like he's swallowed cigarette ash. His hands fisted around the crisp sheets of the hospital wing bed, and his eyes miserably focused on Remus' hand, pale and scarred and still. Just like always, but worse.
It's hours later and the sun has come up and washed out the night. It feels more like years. The sting is real enough to justify the hyperbole. The memory of the cool night air, Snape stepping in too close, close enough to make Sirius' skin crawl--Snivellus, with that mad gleam in his eye, and Sirius is still angry, not sorry enough that he's forgotten the pinch of that feeling. In Dumbledore's office, there had been moments where Sirius wondered if he would be expelled, wondered it in so distant a way that it felt almost unreal, which meant it would probably happen. But it was a joke, a horrible vicious joke--just the way they treated Snape, and that was only because he was a horrible little tit, because he was a stain on the general world, a jumped-up cruel snot who deserved what he was given.
Remus' thumb moves, rubs rough against the bedsheets. Sirius looks at it, tracking the movement. Dirt under his fingernail. He thinks about holding Remus' hand, and he doesn't do it. Tightens his grip on the sheets, keeping that feeling deep and contained. He turns his head only so he can rub his nose against his shoulder. James had punched him, hard, in the corridor, and Sirius' nose had started to bleed and he'd shouted at James, what the hell and James hadn't apologised, only shouted back, what the hell, you fucking twat, that was Remus--
But the hospital wing is very quiet, with a stillness that feels like a mausoleum. Like always. Only there's no conversation, no chocolate frogs or James and his gobstones, no Peter laughing so hard he falls off of his chair. Not even Madam Pomfrey, glaring around the corner. They are very much alone, and Sirius feels like he might vomit. And he is still angry.
When he looks, at last, at Remus--he finds that his eyes are open. He's probably been awake a great deal longer than Sirius thought.
i. There is just one step to the pavement in front of the tall narrow house. The heel of your shoe crunches when you step down, unnecessary force. There is a hot feeling fixed high in your chest, a feeling that could rip its way out of you, inside to out. It makes it hard to swallow and hard to speak, but the street is empty and the door is shut behind you and no one is looking out after you. You do not look back but you know the house without it. Tall narrow windows, the panes dark. All the drapes pulled shut. Dark brick and dark door, and a heavy silver doorknocker, like the heavy silver of your father's rings, and the heavy silver of the fucking watch you've still got in your pocket, the one with the family crest carved on the front, the one you got for your eleventh birthday, the year before they put you on the train to school, before you knew any better--before, when it seemed like an honour to open that watch and stare down at the face of it, with your own face reflected back at you. The steady ticking of the minutes, and the clock of each hour, time marching forward as long as you kept that watch wound. The planets and the stars that spin at the edge of the face, charmed so they shimmer in the dark.
Now you are sixteen and the hatred that you feel for that watch is ridiculous and out-of-hand. It's a watch, heavy in your pocket--but still just a watch, nothing, an expensive heirloom that you want to throw it through one of the windows of that house. Your great-great-grandfather made it so that those windows would never break, protecting himself against threats, insulating himself, wrapped in a mantle of superiority that has been passed down, generation to generation, an heirloom of being better than everyone. Physically throwing anything at the house would be an exercise in futility, and you will not make a futile gesture, you will leave, right now, and you do--with your hands balled into fists at your sides, and your shoulders forward, never once turning around to look back at the house where you've lived, sixteen years, fuck it all, fuck them and everything, you do not know where you are going but the hot feeling in your chest fuels you and you stride forward. No gold, no possessions but the clothes you've got on, what you've got in the pockets of your jacket,and you might even rip that off at the next alley and set it on fire, you don't know, you don't know anything, what you're going to do next or where you're going to go except anywhere but here, a thought as desperate as it is angry. You might vomit and you might break the window of the car you're walking past. The hot feeling in your chest is starting to feel like a punch until you swallow it down.
And you say it to yourself again: fuck it all.
ii. The air smells damp, and cold, and good: a favourite smell, a smell that makes you want to take off running now, right now. This is the best night since the last night like this. The trees have been standing here for thousands of years, time before there was time, a forest grown so close together the branches knit together over your head, keep out the silver light of stars and moon.
It is not quiet, it is never quiet here--but you are so sharp in your senses that you can hear so much. Listen. In the soft dirt, you can hear the leaves rotting. Damp. In the brush, you can hear a hundred tiny heartbeats, little creatures that move in the dark--the whir of insect wings--hives of movement on your periphery, and if you turn your attention to any one you could fix on your target and kill it, easy. It's a feeling as free as the wind as it blows past you, carrying past scents from deep in the wood. You twist, following the wind, bright with smells so sharp you can nearly see them, colours painted in the air. Snap at the wind, revel in this moment for a moment, joy so unbridled you feel like you could swallow the full moon whole--but there is a duty, an obligation beating at your chest, in time with your heartbeat. Go to him, now, find them--you can smell them, too, not so far off. First things first: establish that you were here, let anyone else who comes in know that this is your forest--sniff at the base of the trees and the damp earth till you find one to mark, and then mark it. The smell is yours, sharp, acrid--and it's done, and with a huff of breath you drop your leg and take off running, tearing at the soft earth, kicking up new smells as you go. Long and lean and bright-eyed and ready for this night, the long night.
iii. When you see him punch the manticore, you nearly can't believe it. It's so mental, so fucking mad, and you laugh. The moment is bloody and desperate; the other boy is injured, his face very white under the blood. You should not laugh, but you can't help it.
It happens so fast: the punch, and then you laugh, and your action is next: kill the manticore after, a neat disposal. You haven't really killed before, not yet--little animals, here and there, mostly by accident, carelessness; you do not think of yourself as heartless, or as a murderer. It's a little surreal. This isn't even what manticores look like. You have never seen them in person but you know that.
He looks scared, even more frightened than the boy who is bleeding. You only just became friends, you and him. Jack. He won't last here but you don't know that yet. You liked him nearly instantly. But the bloke who punched the manticore--you did not like him, and you still don't, really, but you like him for punching a creature in the face like it was a sensible thing to do; he probably panicked but you like it anyways, and when you grin over at him and say well done, you actually do mean that.
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carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: 2015-05-29 03:59 pm (UTC)The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. And on the wall, all around Sirius, the family tree--his own name, repeated, a name that goes so far back that being born was like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
His father, his grey eyes just like Sirius'. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and Sirius tenses when his father turns a gaze on him. Thirteen years old and he has this feeling, deep in his gut, that his father might smile or he might show nothing at all, but God, he hopes for a smile; he hope for approval. In the corner is his mother, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick and smells of burning. His mother is singeing Andromeda's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of their lives--because it is their lives, collectively, because for better or for worse they are meant to be a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Regulus is standing at the other side of the sofa. Sirius can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby, and his skin has never lost that papery quality. Sirius used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired. Mother would come and take Regulus from the nanny, and Sirius would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way he couldn't remember. He is hers; Sirius is Father's, and when Father crosses toward Sirius, now, he straightens up, correcting his posture, so automatic he doesn't even think about it until after it's happened. It's only second year and he is rankling at the weight of everything, at the coldness and expectation and all that whispered hatred that does not fit with what he has learnt at school. Muggle-lover, blood traitor: James Potter, the flash of his eyes behind his glasses. Say that again and I'll hex your eyebrows off, Black, and Sirius already loves him.
And yet he does not let his shoulders drop as his father passes by. He stands, eyes forward, watching his mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. He can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And his father drops his hand on Sirius' shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and he feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying, until it's sickening. It's all he has, and he holds on to it, clutches it to himself, hard.
ii.
"She smells," says James, "of cantaloupe."
"Antelope," Sirius corrects, and puts his index fingers to his forehead with a high and lovelorn grunt, "an antelope in heat."
"Sick," but James laughs when he kicks Sirius under the table.
They are early for Defence, a minor miracle--early enough that no one else is around, just the two of them in the airy classroom. A collection of first year gytrash diagrams are pinned to the bulletin board beside them. Two of the diagrams sport moustaches, an artistic liberty from last Defence class: one by James, one by Sirius. Sirius touches one of them with his thumb. "Needs a beard."
"She doesn't."
"This, git." Sirius picks up his quill and starts to scratch a beard onto the gytrash. "But Eloise McGovern would still look fetching with a beard. Silky. Nicely arranged over her tits. What about Evans?"
"What about her?"
"Well?"
"She'll be in Hogsmeade, won't she." James pushes his fingers through his hair, a gesture that he tries to make look casual--and fails, as always. "And so will I."
"The stuff of romance." Sirius scratches extra hard at the beard, with a smirk. "You and McGovern and Evans. Only I need you in Hogsmeade."
"Ah. Real romance. For what?"
"Hmmmmm." Sirius turns a look on James, arch--raises his eyebrows, strokes his chin. All significant gestures, a clear telegraph of Great Plans. James laughs, and rolls his face onto his arm, flattening his nose against his bicep.
"All right," he says, agreeably, "you twit, but if this is just about trying to get Rosemerta to give you fire whisky--" and Sirius smiles coolly and goes back to drawing on the gytrash diagram, privately amazed--like he always is, still, maybe always will be in a way that he will never say--that twit feels like an endearment, that he has James Potter at all, that nothing else matters but this.
iii.
Remus' skin is the same colour as the parchment of the Marauder's Map. On the Map, the lines of the corridors and classrooms are done in black ink. Remus' scars stand out red and angry, but the older ones are pale, like ink that has faded.
And Sirius feels uncommonly like shit. Wrung out, useless. His eyes burn in the way they get after crying. He isn't crying now. He hasn't cried very recently. The feeling persists, and so does the heavy twist in his chest, all that anger and regret and disdain and fear before he careens back into anger again. Mingled together, it makes his mouth taste like he's swallowed cigarette ash. His hands fisted around the crisp sheets of the hospital wing bed, and his eyes miserably focused on Remus' hand, pale and scarred and still. Just like always, but worse.
It's hours later and the sun has come up and washed out the night. It feels more like years. The sting is real enough to justify the hyperbole. The memory of the cool night air, Snape stepping in too close, close enough to make Sirius' skin crawl--Snivellus, with that mad gleam in his eye, and Sirius is still angry, not sorry enough that he's forgotten the pinch of that feeling. In Dumbledore's office, there had been moments where Sirius wondered if he would be expelled, wondered it in so distant a way that it felt almost unreal, which meant it would probably happen. But it was a joke, a horrible vicious joke--just the way they treated Snape, and that was only because he was a horrible little tit, because he was a stain on the general world, a jumped-up cruel snot who deserved what he was given.
Remus' thumb moves, rubs rough against the bedsheets. Sirius looks at it, tracking the movement. Dirt under his fingernail. He thinks about holding Remus' hand, and he doesn't do it. Tightens his grip on the sheets, keeping that feeling deep and contained. He turns his head only so he can rub his nose against his shoulder. James had punched him, hard, in the corridor, and Sirius' nose had started to bleed and he'd shouted at James, what the hell and James hadn't apologised, only shouted back, what the hell, you fucking twat, that was Remus--
But the hospital wing is very quiet, with a stillness that feels like a mausoleum. Like always. Only there's no conversation, no chocolate frogs or James and his gobstones, no Peter laughing so hard he falls off of his chair. Not even Madam Pomfrey, glaring around the corner. They are very much alone, and Sirius feels like he might vomit. And he is still angry.
When he looks, at last, at Remus--he finds that his eyes are open. He's probably been awake a great deal longer than Sirius thought.
Neither of them say anything.
LEAKY MEMORIES
Date: 2015-06-19 04:23 pm (UTC)There is just one step to the pavement in front of the tall narrow house. The heel of your shoe crunches when you step down, unnecessary force. There is a hot feeling fixed high in your chest, a feeling that could rip its way out of you, inside to out. It makes it hard to swallow and hard to speak, but the street is empty and the door is shut behind you and no one is looking out after you. You do not look back but you know the house without it. Tall narrow windows, the panes dark. All the drapes pulled shut. Dark brick and dark door, and a heavy silver doorknocker, like the heavy silver of your father's rings, and the heavy silver of the fucking watch you've still got in your pocket, the one with the family crest carved on the front, the one you got for your eleventh birthday, the year before they put you on the train to school, before you knew any better--before, when it seemed like an honour to open that watch and stare down at the face of it, with your own face reflected back at you. The steady ticking of the minutes, and the clock of each hour, time marching forward as long as you kept that watch wound. The planets and the stars that spin at the edge of the face, charmed so they shimmer in the dark.
Now you are sixteen and the hatred that you feel for that watch is ridiculous and out-of-hand. It's a watch, heavy in your pocket--but still just a watch, nothing, an expensive heirloom that you want to throw it through one of the windows of that house. Your great-great-grandfather made it so that those windows would never break, protecting himself against threats, insulating himself, wrapped in a mantle of superiority that has been passed down, generation to generation, an heirloom of being better than everyone. Physically throwing anything at the house would be an exercise in futility, and you will not make a futile gesture, you will leave, right now, and you do--with your hands balled into fists at your sides, and your shoulders forward, never once turning around to look back at the house where you've lived, sixteen years, fuck it all, fuck them and everything, you do not know where you are going but the hot feeling in your chest fuels you and you stride forward. No gold, no possessions but the clothes you've got on, what you've got in the pockets of your jacket,and you might even rip that off at the next alley and set it on fire, you don't know, you don't know anything, what you're going to do next or where you're going to go except anywhere but here, a thought as desperate as it is angry. You might vomit and you might break the window of the car you're walking past. The hot feeling in your chest is starting to feel like a punch until you swallow it down.
And you say it to yourself again: fuck it all.
ii.
The air smells damp, and cold, and good: a favourite smell, a smell that makes you want to take off running now, right now. This is the best night since the last night like this. The trees have been standing here for thousands of years, time before there was time, a forest grown so close together the branches knit together over your head, keep out the silver light of stars and moon.
It is not quiet, it is never quiet here--but you are so sharp in your senses that you can hear so much. Listen. In the soft dirt, you can hear the leaves rotting. Damp. In the brush, you can hear a hundred tiny heartbeats, little creatures that move in the dark--the whir of insect wings--hives of movement on your periphery, and if you turn your attention to any one you could fix on your target and kill it, easy. It's a feeling as free as the wind as it blows past you, carrying past scents from deep in the wood. You twist, following the wind, bright with smells so sharp you can nearly see them, colours painted in the air. Snap at the wind, revel in this moment for a moment, joy so unbridled you feel like you could swallow the full moon whole--but there is a duty, an obligation beating at your chest, in time with your heartbeat. Go to him, now, find them--you can smell them, too, not so far off. First things first: establish that you were here, let anyone else who comes in know that this is your forest--sniff at the base of the trees and the damp earth till you find one to mark, and then mark it. The smell is yours, sharp, acrid--and it's done, and with a huff of breath you drop your leg and take off running, tearing at the soft earth, kicking up new smells as you go. Long and lean and bright-eyed and ready for this night, the long night.
iii.
When you see him punch the manticore, you nearly can't believe it. It's so mental, so fucking mad, and you laugh. The moment is bloody and desperate; the other boy is injured, his face very white under the blood. You should not laugh, but you can't help it.
It happens so fast: the punch, and then you laugh, and your action is next: kill the manticore after, a neat disposal. You haven't really killed before, not yet--little animals, here and there, mostly by accident, carelessness; you do not think of yourself as heartless, or as a murderer. It's a little surreal. This isn't even what manticores look like. You have never seen them in person but you know that.
He looks scared, even more frightened than the boy who is bleeding. You only just became friends, you and him. Jack. He won't last here but you don't know that yet. You liked him nearly instantly. But the bloke who punched the manticore--you did not like him, and you still don't, really, but you like him for punching a creature in the face like it was a sensible thing to do; he probably panicked but you like it anyways, and when you grin over at him and say well done, you actually do mean that.