The Last Gryffindor (Sirius Black)

Chapter XXXVI: In Petals Write My Epitaph

"But it's been what? Ten years? Fifteen? Your life has gone on without me in it."

She looked back and forth between them with mounting embarrassment. Compared to him, she was still an immature child, barely any older than twenty short years. He had gone on to live a life she'd never be a part of and grow into a man. He had been her whole life, but she was merely a fraction of his.

"I see you still have something against listening to me," he mused exasperatedly. "I couldn't move on. Not from you."

"Why would I bother listening to you? All that ever comes out of that mouth is hot air."

His lips curved into a wolffish grin that took years off his face and lit up his eyes.

"If I remember correctly, you used to love this mouth."

As if to prove a point, he leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on her brow. Seeing her disappointed expression, he barked out a laugh, one that resounded around the misty chamber. Only it wasn't the same shapeless room she'd grown so use to anymore. Without her realising, it had transformed to a place Lia recognised only too well. Home.

"Don't look so disappointed, troublemaker," he said, smiling broadly. "I don't care if you aren't actually real, I'm never letting you out of my sight again. There will be plenty of time for me to kiss you later."

Aeliana drew back from his embrace as the full truth of the situation dawned.

"Oh, Sirius," she whispered, horrified. "You're dead, aren't you?"

If he was laughing before, he was absolutely howling now.

"Sirius!" she snapped, trying to cut through his laughter. "This is, well.... serious."

"You aren't that quick on the uptake, are you?" he said, trying and failing to smother his mirth. "How you ever made Head Girl is beyond me."

"If you don't sober up real quick, Sirius, so help me, I'll kill you again," she threatened, fighting his contagious good cheer.

"I have no regrets about the way I died, Lia," he assured me, his hands clasping my shoulders tightly. "None at all. I only regret the way I lived. I should never have trusted Wormtail, or convinced James to change his Secret Keeper, but, above all, I should have never have let you go. I should have dragged you back to the Order with me! Made you listen to reason—"

Lia pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him.

"Don't agonise over my decisions. They aren't your fault. You said it yourself. I'm stubborn. My relationship with reason was dodgy, at best. I probably have never listened to you for more than three minutes total in my entire life. You couldn't change that."

He sighed, looking around at their surroundings.

"Don't you wonder why we would be here, at Grimmauld Place, of all hellish places, in the end?" he asked, staring pointedly into space with thinly concealed contempt.

"Is that what you see?" she mused, genuinely curious. After all, she was seeing her own home. There was something unmistakably wrong about her surroundings. It was so... empty. Almost plain. Nothing here was real, except for Sirius. Lia knew that for a fact, deep down, but why was it that they saw different things?

"So you see something else, I take it?" Sirius inquired. Not waiting for an answer, he continued, speaking fast, like he was getting something that had haunted him for awhile off his chest. "I can't seem to escape this place, this specific memory of this place."

"What memory?" She placed a hand tentatively on his arm. Immediately, the mist from before returned, and she could see everything as he saw it. The overcast sky, the dimly lit cobblestone street, the gaunt exterior of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, everything.