scars || sirius black

60 - missing, under suspicious circumstances

More people joined the Order every day, fuelled by the death of a loved one, or needing justice served faster than the Ministry was offering. There were new faces at each meeting and old ones too.

Their charms professor, Miranda Farley, hurried in late for a meeting a month after James and Lily's wedding having just arrived back from successfully recruiting centaurs in the north-east of England. She looked worse for wear but beamed with pride as Dumbledore congratulated her in front of the Order.

Moral was low these days and their grief reached a new level with each Order mission that passed. The guilt and heartache haunted everyone.

Many people had died but most had simply vanished. Emmy's letters to Mira had continued to go unanswered and after a few strongly worded letters to the French government, an investigation was carried out.

As of two days ago, she had been announced 'missing, under suspicious circumstances' in the newspapers, her family along with her. Emmy wondered if sometimes it was worse not knowing what had happened to them. In six months, they would become 'missing, presumed dead' as in times of war, and that would certainly be worse.

And while the Order had been gaining new fighters, so had The Dark Lord, or Voldemort as his death-eaters had now begun to call him. The thought sent shivers down Emmy's spine, he seemed almost more real now that he had a name. In all these years fighting his death-eaters and everything he stood for, Emmy had never even been in the same room as him. Very few had, though Sirius recounted his memories of him to her one night and she had never been able to look at a death-eater quite the same. It made it more real somehow, knowing that there was a physical, tangible being that had influenced every one of these people to the point of cold-blooded murder.

Sirius spent most of his nights tossing and turning, haunted by the bloodshed and torment that had followed him the last two decades. Emmy lay by his side every night, holding him, watching to wake him if the nightmares became too real. She now lived almost nocturnally, catching sleep when he went to work in the afternoon. Her shifts at the hospital became fewer and further between as she was assigned more missions with the Order but it was still a toll that weighed heavily on her, exhaustion threatening every decision and action.

It was one day in mid-December that Emmy awoke around 1 o'clock and pottered through to the kitchen. An unfamiliar owl was waiting impatiently to be let in and Mac hissed at it in indignation as he wound his way around her ankles.

She unlatched the window quickly and reached for the letter in its beak. It gave what appeared to be a curt nod before swooping off the windowsill into the smog.

With trembling fingers, she traced the all too familiar wax seal, the one she had seen many times in ancient textbooks and family trees.

It fell to the table as she finished reading, feeling an overwhelming wave of disappointment. After all this time waiting for a reply, she was sure he wasn't going to write back, but this letter was worse than no reply. He didn't want to see his brother, he didn't want anything to do with them.

Emeline,

I made my choices a long time ago, some of those I regret every day. Some I do not.

Sirius is one of those.

He is not worth the consequences of Lord Voldemort finding out we've been in contact and I say that for all involved, including you. You'd be best distancing yourself from him once and for all, I see that now.

Regulus

As she read it for the fifth time, she felt the anger that had been gradually gathering momentum begin to bubble over and she roughly pulled out a chair and her writing supplies.