dancing in the shadows (R.A.B)

selfish leather jackets

Eve shook her head. "I don't understand."

"I was ostracized by my own House," Sirius said bluntly. Eve turned to look at him, but he was staring straight ahead, right out into the dark forest. "Historically, no Black has ever been in Gryffindor. Which means that the Black family had no watchers, no secret spies, no one to inform them about me, when we were in the Gryffindor tower."

Eve understood so suddenly that she felt winded. It came to her with a disgusting amount of clarity.

Sirius turned to her, then. He met her eyes; his own were dark, and although he was staring at her, it was like he was looking right through her. "No witnesses," he murmured. "No proof. They were supposed to be my family."

"They tore my bed sheets. The older boys snuck into my dorm room and ripped my curtains until they were little more than rags. They covered my blankets in Itching Powder, filled my shampoo bottles with scratching creams," Sirius shook his head, and turned back toward the forest line. "At the same time, my blood family sent me letters everyday. Called me a disappointment, and worthless, and - and everything awful that you can imagine. I usually burned them - once, I forgot, just threw it in the bin on the way out of the Great Hall."

"Snape," and Sirius spit the name out like it was poison coating his mouth, like it was burning his insides, "shoved his nose into the bin and pulled out my letter. My failings. And my business was spreading around the school like Fiendfyre in an hour's time - so then, on top of being harassed by my own house, I had the Slytherin's on my ass too. They knew that my family had all but disowned me, and they took full advantage of it."

Eve felt sick. She had fooled herself, for so long - convinced herself that Sirius had been immediately accepted into his home, been inducted into the Gryffindor family so quickly that she hadn't even spent a moment to really look.

"James saved me," Sirius said, and he smiled, then. It was exhausted, dripping in its sadness, but it was genuine. "He told everyone I was under the protection of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, and anyone that messed with me was messing with the Light. He hexed Snape, too - made an example out of him. I don't know if you saw it - this was way back when you spent all your time in the Library - but James did some fancy enchantment. Snape's robes were covered in the words "Don't trust a snitch" for five days. Most of his Slytherin friends, the ones he gained from telling my secrets, left him after that."

"And the rest - well, it's all history, I think. We started talking to Remus and Peter, and we've all been inseparable ever since. But there was - there was always this little voice in the back of my head. Screaming at me for letting Regulus go so easily. But at the same time; well, all I could remember when I thought of my brother was the way he laughed at me when the contents of our mother's letter was spread around." Sirius ran a hand through his hair.

"You were just children," Eve said, and swung her legs slightly. The air pushed against her shins, and she pushed back. "You still are."

"Regardless," Sirius shrugged. "It stuck. So in third year, when my parents left for the week, they left Kreacher, our house-elf, in charge. He was strict, and I was restless - so I talked to my brother for the first time in two years, told him that if he distracted Kreacher, I'd go out to Muggle London and get him one of those muggle chocolates that he pretended to despise but secretly loved. Mars bars, they were called."

"He agreed. I didn't know why then, and I don't know why now - it was a shitty deal, but he did it anyway. I brought him back a Mars bar, though. And I bought the black leather jacket - I had seen it in a shop window, and it was so ridiculous that I knew immediately that my parents would hate it, and so I bought it," Sirius spoke distantly, still staring off into the sky, and Eve knew without having to ask that he was remembering the event. "He wanted to see what I got, when I came back. I showed it to him, and - and Merlin, Evelyn. The way he laughed, his eyes were so bright, and he did it from his stomach, laughed so hard he practically folded in half."