Brielle Anderson had always been a happy child, full of questions and a never-ending pit of things to say. But on the evening of August seventeenth, just days away from returning to Hogwarts, a terrific tragedy changed her life for good.
Being sent...
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— P R O L O G U E —
IT WAS AT ONE in the morning on November first that Sirius Black found himself at a loss for everything. The world seemed as if it was crumbling down around him and his heart felt as if it had shattered into a million pieces inside his chest.
It felt wrong, so totally wrong. The delicate snowflakes dancing in the wind outside the window and the stars twinkling across the night sky; Sirius thought bitterly that the world shouldn't look so incredibly happy on a night that was so incredibly sad.
He let out a shaky sigh and ran a hand through his hair, taking a small step across the Potters' living room and away from the front door toward the fire place. A row of picture frames had once lined the mantel, but now lay shattered on the floor around his feet.
All except for one.
Sirius' heart panged as he saw it, a very familiar scene. He reached out his arm and ran his fingers softly over the glass, hand white and trembling. The marauders. Four of the few people he had let into his life and the only people he had truly loved.
Their arms were around each other and their heads tilted back in infectious laughter. Remus stood on the left, his sandy-blonde hair falling in his eyes and long black cloak blowing in the wind. And then there was Sirius, of course, his right arm around Remus and his left...
His left arm around James.
A tear trickled it's way down Sirius' cheek as he ran his fingers over the frame. The world seemed to be hushed without James Fleamont Potter in it, without the messy black hair and glasses, or the loud obnoxiousness and laughter that he carried around with him wherever he went. The image of his best friend's body outside the front door came back into his mind in a burst of fractured pieces, and he desperately shook them away.
"You git, James," he whispered, voice breaking on the edge of every syllable.
But then his finger halted on top of the last marauder. Peter. Just an hour ago, Sirius had gone to his friends' house to make sure he was alright, for he hadn't answered the Orders' weekly check-in call. Only Peter hadn't been home. The Secret Keeper of his best friend's location hadn't been home, and Sirius remembered the unease that had creeped its way throughout his body as he had walked through Peter's empty house.
He had been the most scared he'd been in his entire life when he had left the house frantically. Not James, he had thought to himself, panic setting his heart to a beat that exceeded any musical capacity. Please, please, please not James.
The first thought Sirius had as he had hunched over his best friends' body was why? Why him? James Potter had had the kindest heart in the entire world, the happiest, the purest. He had brought Sirius in as if he was a brother, had given him the life he'd always wanted. He had known Sirius more than Sirius had known himself. And now he was gone forever. Why?
The second thought was Peter.
Peter was the reason James and Lily were dead. Peter was the reason Sirius' whole life had started to crumble down around him again, after everything had finally been close to perfect. Peter was the one who had given his friends' lives over to the Dark Lord.
And he was going to pay.
Sirius grabbed the picture frame from off the mantel and opened the back, taking the photograph out from inside. It was heavier than he thought a photograph should be, and realized after he turned it around that a bunch of crumpled parchment had been folded behind the picture, so many pieces stuffed together that only an expendable charm could've held it.
He shook his head and stuffed it all into his bag, wanting to have a piece of James with him as he went to find Peter, even though he knew that his best friend would always be right inside his heart.
Seconds later he was gone, the back door slamming shut behind him and the sounds of his heart breaking scattered across the wind.
• • •
His fault, his fault, his fault.
Over and over again those two words turned in his mind, reminding him that his friends' lives, plus thirteen innocent muggles', were all thanks to him. He shouted out and sobbed in agony, but soon it turned into emotionless laughter as two aurors grabbed ahold of him. Emotionless laughter, for his life truly was a joke. The universe just didn't have happiness planned for Sirius Black.
And then he began to hate his name, which would no doubt be in every newspaper known to wizard kind, plastered to every wall, to every street pole, to everyone's minds as a bad guy. He hated his name because maybe if he hadn't had the title of a Black, he would've been given a trial. Maybe he could've explained that it had been Peter...
"Grab his bag," one of the black-robed men called to someone behind him.
"No," Sirius croaked, stopping in his struggle to shake off the arms that held him. He closed his eyes shut and thought with all his might, hoping his wandless magic would work. He hadn't practiced in weeks.
Sure enough he heard the sound of crinkling paper slip into his open fist. He clumped the photograph and parchment together and slid it into the hem of his trousers, wanting to keep something to remind him of home. Or what he thought of as home, for the marauders and Lily were the closest he ever got.
The aurors tore his bag off his back and threw it hastily to the stone ground, kicking out its contents and spilling everything he owned across the street. Once they had confirmed there was nothing dangerous, the men grabbed ahold of him once more and disapparated from town, bringing Sirius to a place he had never once imagined himself going...
To Azkaban.
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