The Road to Hell

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, he thinks as he walks down the crowded road he paved himself. The tears are gone now, nothing but streaks of clean down his dirtied face. There is nothing but hate and rage in their wake. Sirius Black breaks into an all out run as he realizes that the rat has seen him.

He has no care for the people who shout at him as he pushes through them. He knows nothing but the sound of his feet on the pavement and the thousand curses on the tip of his tongue. All for his Judas.

Catching up is easy when Peter trips in the street, clumsy as always. But Sirius will not laugh and offer a hand to pull him up. It will never be that way again.

Sirius reaches Peter as he frantically tries to stand. He places a hand on the traitor's shoulder and pulls him around with violent haste. There is such fear in those pale and watery eyes. Something rises up in Sirius, demanding that he comfort this man who was his brother. With a murderous heart, he crushes it.

The tip of his wand to the coward's throat, he snarls. "Going somewhere, Wormtail?"

It is easier for him to pretend that Peter is dead and gone, replaced by Wormtail. Peter was the friend he would have trusted with his life. The boy who laughed with him at stupid jokes, the man who stood by him when he had nothing left. This was neither that boy nor that man. This thing shaking before him was simply Wormtail. Not Peter.

Never Peter, he told himself.

"Sirius, you--you don't understand! I didn't--"

Sirius presses the tip of his wand further into the fleshy throat.

"Didn't what?" He snarls again.

"Didn't become a Death Eater and betray your best friends? Didn't offer a one-year-old for sacrifice to save your own fucking skin?"

His voice breaks now, and the tears are back, running races down his cheeks. Peter doesn't move. He isn't yet fool enough to mistake this for a weak moment.

"Didn't swear to me on everything you know that you would never betray them?"

His voice hardens to ice, chilling to the bone.

"Or me?"

A long moment passes, and Peter is paralyzed with terror. But when the gleeful shriek of a little girl distracts Sirius for a split second, he takes his chance. A split second his all he needs.

He pushes Sirius away from him with all his strength. Sirius does not fall, but stumbles far enough. In the time he needs to recover himself, Peter takes out his wand, and suddenly they are on even ground. There is no longer blind terror in his eyes, only the glint of fearful determination.

And the spark of an idea.

"How could you, Sirius?" He shouts for the whole street to hear. People are turning to watch the skirmish in the middle of the road. Sirius only understands when Peter speaks his next words.

"Lily and James, Sirius. How could you?"

It is as if all the oxygen has been sucked from the air. Sirius cannot breathe through his anger and fear. With a quick swipe of his wand, Peter lets one of his own fingers fall soundlessly to the ground.

There is no time to think, so Sirius Black tries to act.

"Avada--!"

He only gets through half of the curse before the world explodes.

He comes to a few minutes later with the sound of screaming. Everywhere around him, screaming. The little girl, the source of his distraction, lies lifeless at the top of the crater. He pulls himself to his knees at the center of the hole in the world. There is nothing left.

No. There is something, he realizes as his eyes fall to the ground a few feet off. A finger.

When he sees the rats crawling through the carnage back to the sewer, Sirius feels something burning like fire in his throat.

He thinks it is vomit, but when that burning rips its way to the surface, Sirius Black laughs. It is sound both broken and hysterical. Not the laugh of a sane man.

He is still laughing when he hears the first crack if apparition. The aurors pull him roughly to his feet, still laughing madly when the flash of a camera goes off in his face.