The Last Gryffindor (Sirius Black)

Chapter VI: Heart, We Will Forget Him

Lia broke the silence first, muttering, "I think I'd take a few more Death Eaters over this."

Sirius leaned back, stoic as ever, folding his arms over his chest. Unamused did not even begin to describe the look he was giving her.

"Why." Not a question. An order.

All of a sudden, it all came back to her. Everything that had happened. The Horcruxes, the Hufflepuff Cup, Tom Riddle, being jumped by Death Eaters prowling just outside my house.

"How... How am I even alive? They had me, I know they did."

"You tell me what I want to know and I'll tell you that."

She paused, considering. "What do you want to know?"

"Where did you go?"

"An old friends house."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"You seemed tired and it was a personal visit."

"You stole my wand."

"Not a question."

He slammed a fist against a wall, doing more damage to himself than the brick. "Stop doing this, Aeliana. And don't say you don't know what you're doing, because you do. You're pushing me out by not answering my questions."

"I told you, this has nothing-"

He cut her off. "-to do with me?" He pushed his long raven locks out of his face in exasperation. "And I told you, you have everything to do with me! You brought me into this the second you stole my wand! Not to mention when I had go rescue you in the dead of night!"

Sirius paced back and forth across the room, wearing holes into the thick plush carpet. She watched him silently from the library couch where she awoke, slightly unnerved by his uncharacteristic seriousness.

"I woke up to the sound of an explosion and when I got outside, there you were, lying on the ground bleeding, with some creep leaning over you. You weren't moving! I thought you were dead!"

She was bleeding? It must have happened when she caused that explosion. Gingerly, Lia reached up to feel a long cut stretching across her left cheek.

For a moment, the expression on Sirius's face looked haunted, as he said, "I think I might have killed a man... But he was going to hurt you and I was so desperate... it was like I lost control. I kept on biting him until he stopped trying to get up. Then I changed back into a human because I had to get you to safety. I carried you all the way back; I'm still not sure how I managed to do it."

He slumped back into an overstuffed chair, holding his face in his hands.

"I thought you were dead," he whispered, again.

"They weren't going to kill me."

Aeliana wasn't  sure what possessed her to say it, but she knew it was true. The Death Eater shouted for them to "capture" her, and the other Death Eater said he'd "got" her. Not to mention the fact that if they really wanted her dead they could have used the killing curse instead of one that merely caused temporary paralysis. They definitely weren't above killing people- Death Eaters weren't know for their strong moral backbone- so they must have wanted her alive for some reason.