Shelter • wolfstar au

41 ; straying

Chapter Forty One: Straying

9 December, 1982

The once silver pendant was now a dull bronze, the sharp edges flaked and the overall shape looking hardly like a P. Sirius's name etched in one corner in tiny letters was now scratched to form indecipherable lines. The message carved on the surface was clear though, as clear as they always had been, and Sirius could read them quite easily. Meeting - today 8 o'clock. He ran his fingers over and around the now course metal, wondering if things would have been different had he given one such necklace to Remus.

The hammock swung lightly as he rocked it on purpose. Above him was the ceiling converging to meet at a tip, and the wooden blocks provided little to no protection against the snowstorm raging outside, the only thing keeping them safe from it being magic. He could see the wind outside quite clearly through the gaps in the walls and the ceiling.

The walls were rickety, and would probably have been destroyed into tiny splinters had it not been for the protective enchantments applied. In one corner of the warehouse rose a shaky metal staircase, leading up to an equally shaky metal platform that circulated round the whole of the warehouse, with circular windows at frequent intervals. They provided no purpose other than allowing them to look outside, which, considering the barren wasteland that surrounded the area, was quite pointless.

Sirius stared at the pendant in his hands for a long time, for reasons he could no longer fathom himself. Part of him regretted not having given one such charmed necklace to Remus, but a bigger part urged that it was better this way. He was safe, away from the war. There was no need to ruin his life any more than they have.

With a sigh, he tucked the pendant under his shirt once again, and stared up at the pointed ceiling, one hand rested beneath his head. A dull ache was throbbing in his leg where he had been shot with a spell yesterday, but he couldn't care less. Things such as pain and despair had become so common that they have become a part of their lives - as common and as expected as a shower, even more in fact, for the lack of a bathroom and enough clothes have forced them to not shower for days.

His hand that was lying limply by his side moved to touch his left cheek, still badly bruised by the fire spell that a death eater had shot at him. It wasn't regular fire – he could tell the moment it had touched him, by the excruciating pain that had seared his skin and dug deep underneath the surface, eating away every cell, every fibre that formed his face, spreading away from the core to spread to his whole body, as though the fire was moving through him, desperate to reach his insides. It had taken Marlene five whole minutes to quench the small ball of fire, and all the while Sirius had been screaming like his insides were being turned to ashes.

He hasn't looked into the mirror, but he could tell that the wound was as fresh and as bright as it had been on the day he was burned, and he had no clue about when it would start fading, if at all. It didn't hurt, but there was always a constant uneasy sensation under his skin, reminding him every passing moment about the scar that has been inflicted on him. He wished he could get his hands on a spell book that might offer him insight into what could be done to heal the scar, but then again he didn't have any hope of finding any information about it. Stupid as they may be, the Sacred Twenty Eight members were skilled in not only creating new and dangerous spells, but also keeping the recipe concealed only among their luxurious mansions and menacing smiles.