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starfishstar ([personal profile] starfishstar) wrote2014-10-31 01:01 pm

Sirius...Black (Six Drabbles)

(cross-posted from [livejournal.com profile] sirius_black)


SIRIUS...BLACK (SIX DRABBLES)

Summary: Sirius Black, and the most important people in his life. Six moments.

Characters: Sirius, Remus, James, Peter, Lily, Harry, the Black family

Rating: T / PG-13 (no pairings, but mentions of violence, grief, death, all that canon stuff)

Words: 6 x 100

Notes: This is a little challenge I set myself – six drabbles (each 100 words precisely), each set five years apart, each starting with "Sirius" and ending with "Black" – for “The Day of the Black Dog,” a Sirius-centric event happening today over at the [livejournal.com profile] sirius_black community. Thank you to [livejournal.com profile] huldrejenta for pointing me to that event!

Each heading shows Sirius' age/the year, and the person who's the focus of the drabble.

Story:


Sirius/11/the Black Family
[1971]

Sirius had always liked Bella’s name, of all the cousins. Bellatrix Black – it rolled so dramatically.

Bella’s wedding, that spring, was the biggest party Sirius could remember, fun despite his starchy midnight blue robes.

Ducking beneath elbows in the crowd, on the trail of a house-elf bearing a silver tray of Floating Flaugnarde, Sirius heard Mother’s shrill tones. “That’s that,” Mother was saying, satisfaction in her voice. “Bellatrix is a Lestrange now.”

Sirius wondered at that, because Father always told him and Regulus: To be of this family is an honour borne for life. Was Bellatrix no longer a Black?


Sirius/16/Remus
[1976]

Sirius stayed in Animagus form every moment he could, skulking the school grounds in the dark. Avoiding Remus.

Sirius would never forgive himself for that prank, the thing he had let slip to Snivellus, so why should Remus?

He was curled up as Padfoot in the shadows of a school courtyard when a door creaked open, followed by two sets of familiar footsteps, and a familiar voice.

“I do forgive him, James,” Remus said. He sounded sad and weary. “I just don’t know how to tell him that.”

Sirius had never been more grateful for his fur, its camouflaging black.


Sirius/21/James
[1981]

“Sirius,” James said, “You know you’re not actually the family pet, right? Much as you have about the intelligence for it…”

Still as Padfoot, Sirius pretended to bite James. James thwacked him on the nose. Padfoot did bite James’ calf, but gently.

James massaged his leg and Sirius transformed back.

“I just mean…” James said, softer. “We know you care. You don’t have to curl up on our doormat all the time to prove it.”

Yes, I do, Sirius thought, but he gave James a carefree grin and let him complain about all the dog hair turning their carpet black.


Sirius/26/Peter
[1986]

Sirius learned not to hate the endless cold, the endless gloom. It was right that he not be comfortable here. It kept him focused. In dog form, in human form, he paced his cramped cell, thinking of one thing only: revenge.

However many years it took, he would escape this place. He would catch that rat, the rat that had taken everything.

Lying at night under the tattered blanket on his dank cot, not noticing how he shivered in the cold, Sirius gazed unseeing, insensate to anything but visions of vengeance to come, as he stared out into the black.


Sirius/31/Lily
[1991]

Sirius never knew how much time passed, but after what must have been years, the memories grew a little softer.

Yes, he still dreamt mostly of revenge, bloody and bitter. But sometimes, gentler thoughts surfaced, scraps the Dementors hadn’t taken. James, scoring without the Quaffle even touching the hoop, from halfway across the pitch. Remus smirking, raising an eyebrow as only he could do. Lily, head thrown back and laughing, as she and Sirius tested each other’s knowledge of obscure glam rock, playing record after record on her old turntable, Sirius mesmerised by that magical Muggle wheel of whirling black.


Sirius/36/Harry
[1996]

Sirius heard Harry screaming his name, and his heart broke. If he thought it had broken before – for James, Lily, Remus, even Regulus, fool though he’d been – he’d been wrong.

There was nothing like hearing wrenching grief from the boy he loved like a son.

Take care of him, Remus, Sirius thought as he fell. James and Lily, if you’re out there, somehow, look out for him.

In the end, he saw, it wasn’t family that mattered most, but friendship. Because Sirius’ last thought, as the veil fluttered behind him, was for Harry, who was a Potter, not a Black.


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