firecracker ???

SIRIUS

Grimmauld Place never really went quiet.

Even in the dead of night, when the halls were hushed and the fire had burned low, the house seemed to breathe around him. Not peacefully — not like a living thing — but like a tomb. Heavy with memory. Waiting to be remembered.

It wasn't his house anymore.

It hadn't been for years.

It belonged to Regulus now.

Not inherited like a gift, but claimed. Maintained. Guarded. Their parents had left it to the son who never ran. The one who kept his name clean and his wand steady. Regulus had stayed behind when Sirius fled, and for that, the house had passed to him.

And somehow, Sirius had come back.

He and Harry had moved in at the end of third year — after everything at the Shrieking Shack, the truth about Peter, the hospital wing. Regulus had stood on the edge of the school grounds with that calm expression of his and simply said, "Come home."

No apologies. No fanfare. Just an open door.

Now they lived together — Sirius, Regulus, and Harry — like a family reassembled by accident.

It had been strange at first — like trying to live inside a memory half-erased. Regulus was still precise and composed. Sirius was not. Harry had walked into it all with wide, wary eyes, caught between two brothers who were two sides of the same coin.

Now, over a year later, they were something like a family. Awkward. Uneven. Held together by responsibility and a kind of tentative understanding. The Order had come soon after. Dumbledore had asked. Regulus had agreed — privately, behind closed doors, as he always did.

The Order of the Phoenix had made Grimmauld Place its headquarters. Meetings echoed through rooms Sirius barely recognized. Molly Weasley and her army of children moved through the staircases with an ease that disturbed him. Hermione tucked herself into corners with books and parchment. Moody barked orders. Snape hissed in shadows. Regulus watched it all with a glint behind his calm.

Sirius didn't mind the noise. Better than the quiet. He hated the quiet. The house was full again — sometimes loud, sometimes stifling, always awake.

Sirius, for all his complaints, didn't mind. The house had been too empty for too long. He preferred it like this — cluttered, chaotic, alive.

Still, tonight, he had slipped away. The fire in the drawing room had burned to embers. His glass had gone warm in his hand. And his feet, without meaning to, had taken him here — to the corridor he used to race down as a boy, robes billowing, laughter echoing off marble floors.

He stopped in front of the tapestry.

The Black Family Tree.

He hadn't looked at it in years.

Not properly.

As a child, he used to trace the lines with his finger. Following the curling script. Wondering who he was meant to become. Hoping to find someone who looked like him — someone who might have wanted something different, too.

Now, older and burnt away, he stood before it like a man revisiting his grave.

His name was still gone.

Burned out. Violent. Final.

It didn't hurt anymore. Not in the way it used to.

He let his eyes drift upward.

There — Regulus Arcturus Black. Neatly stitched. Proud. As if nothing had ever been out of place.

To the world, Regulus had never faltered. He had never strayed. He had survived the first war with his name intact and his role cemented. He wore loyalty like a second skin — not just to Voldemort, but to the entire ideology of legacy.