Shades of Black

Author's Note: Yes, I know it's been awhile, and for that, I apologise. (I got a little caught up in some other stories - mainly that of the sequel for Part IV: Recognition, entitled, Thoughts in the Abyss that has since been posted.) But, better late than never, right? Anyway, here's the fifth part for Shades of Black, finally edited and ready for posting. (Oh, and there is a slight language warning for this part.) A "Thank You" goes out to Broken_Innocence for looking over the initial version of this part. And now, without further ado, I present for your enjoyment, He Laughed.

~**~

He Laughed

By ForeverSirius77

~**~

The beginning of the new month brought nothing out of the ordinary to it, at least as far as the majority of people felt when they awoke on the first of November. Cool, autumn winds lent their breezes to keep the temperature at a degree where a jacket was usually needed, and the bright, orange sun had kept itself hidden behind clouds for the majority of the past week. Today's weather, if one happened to take notice of it, seemed to be no different than the previous days' forecasts had been.

As the morning stretched on, the many clocks around the city starting to report a far more 'reasonable' time for people to be awake, the traffic had steadily increased, the groups of people slowly growing. Children and teenagers had already started to head off to school for the day, while their parents made their own ways to their places of employment. There were people out for a simple day of shopping, not having any other obligations to take care of, while others were purchasing their weekly items for home.

Mothers tried to control their young children - most of whom seemed to be wanting to do nothing else but act as hyperactive as they could - while some of the more 'older' and 'dignified' shoppers looked on with a sneer marring their 'perfect' faces. Bells tinkled as doors to shops opened, alerting the storeowners to an arriving or departing customer, and the occasional sounds of a horn could be heard coming from the moving automobiles.

There were even the sights of some more eccentric people - or, if one wanted to be a bit rude, the 'weirdoes' - that travelled the sidewalks on this autumn morning. Now, the rare appearance of some of these individuals was not, in itself, very out-of-place for this large town. After all, it seemed to be common things with big cities to have a few odd people wander through.

But if it looked like there were more of those 'weirdoes' today than there had been in the past, or if it looked like they were particularly overexcited about something, people did not really pay it all that much notice. Everyone was, as was always the case, nearly completely focussed on their own business.

So, all in all, it was a very normal day.

Or so it seemed.

----

He was hurriedly making his way down the sidewalk, neither going slow enough to be considered "walking", but nor was his pace quick enough to be defined as a "run". The sun was currently peaking out from behind its cloud cover for one of its brief stages, and the crowds of people pushed in on him. He pushed his own way through the growing groups of Muggles, not paying them any attention - other than the attention required for him to try his hardest not to physically push them too hard out of his way.

The tall, dark-haired man couldn't spare his attention for something as trivial as acting politely towards the other people. He could not afford to travel at such a leisurely slow pace as everyone else wanted to do. His sight was instead focussed on a single individual that was several metres in front of him. The other man had not seemed to notice that he was being followed; he was too busy making his own way through the Muggles - and he showed even less regard to their well-being than the dark-haired one following him did.

Sirius Black followed the shorter man as he turned the corner, heading down another street and temporarily disappearing from Sirius's sight. "Damn it," he muttered, quickening his pace and ignoring the glares that the group of ladies he'd burst through had shot him. (Whether their glare had been because of his muttered cursing or because of his breaking through their group, he did not know. But, really, it didn't matter.)

Barely a few seconds had passed before Sirius rounded the corner, his searching eyes finding the man he'd been following, and he grinned when he took the few steps needed to catch up to him, Sirius's smile seeming to grow more predatory as he got closer.

His prey had been trapped. The street he had turned down in his haste was a dead end - a line of storefronts, the areas in front of them crowded with shoppers, stood at the shorter man's back, blocking any other way out other than the one he had entered from.

And that escape was, unfortunately for him, being blocked by his pursuer.

"Well, Sirius," started the shorter man, looking up at his friend - and his pursuer - but the taller man did not give him a chance to continue.

"I trusted you," hissed Sirius, stalking closer and closer to Peter Pettigrew, paying no attention to the fact that the groups of Muggles had slowed to watch the confrontation between the two of them. He could not really focus on anything except the man in front of him, after all.

Sirius held his ebony wand loosely at his side, incantations of spells flying through his mind as he stared at his friend - no, his former friend. His fingers kept clenching and tightening around the cool wood, like he wanted either nothing more than to lift the wand to curse Pettigrew - or to forget the wand altogether and physically strangle the man.

But he did not raise his wand, as much as a large part of him wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to. But no, not yet. He could not bring himself to raise the magical weapon just yet. There was another part of him, and it was a part that, though small, wanted to understand first. Sirius needed to understand.

"Why?" he asked, pausing for the first time in his pursuit. Peter still stood a few feet in front of him; he was not close enough to touch (and perhaps such was a good thing, as the temptation to physically harm Pettigrew was growing more every second), but neither was his former friend so far away that either of them had to shout to be heard. A quiet conversation between two men - one that could have been shared gathered in a parlour or at a dinner table - took place. Private, yet not. Separate, yet not.

"Why did you do it, Peter?" he continued. There was even just a small hint of pleading in his voice, but one would have had to know what to listen for to even hear it - and even then, they would have more than likely dismissed it. After all, Sirius Black just did not plead with anyone. "We all trusted you ... James, Lily, me ... Why?"

Peter started to shake his head. "It wasn't me, Sirius -"

That was it. That was the final straw for Sirius, the one that pushed him too far. How could Peter just stand there and deny what he'd done? How could he tell an outright lie to the one person who knew that it was a lie? How could he say that it wasn't him?

Sirius raised his wand, taking the final few steps to stand directly in front of Peter, his taller height causing him to look down at the shorter man. He pointed the tip of his wand directly at the chest of his friend, the spells and curses now flying through his head at a far faster pace than earlier. Just one spell, he knew, was all that was needed. Just one, simple curse - only two words - and the betrayer would perish.

He did not care about the growing crowds of observing Muggles on the scene. He did not care that the majority of them had completely ceased their own activities and movements to stand still on the sidewalks, street, and in front of store windows to watch the tense scene taking place between the two wizards. He did not care that any action on his part would cause the Ministry a world of chaos with having to deal with such an outright display of magic to so many Muggles.

Sirius Black did not care about anything at that particular moment other than Peter Pettigrew.

"You betrayed them." His voice was low, almost muttering, yet his tone was urgent. It was like he needed to get a great deal spoken in a short amount of time, like he had a lot to say but could not seem to find the right words to express it. There were too many thoughts fighting for dominance in his mind, too many emotions coursing through his blood, for him to think clearly. Anger - hatred - sadness - guilt - disgust - numbness - He felt them all.

Sirius's heart rate increased and his breathing grew ragged as he barely held the first two emotions in check. But the others interfered just as much, and he could not think. He could not believe everything that had happened in such a short time ... and that it was all the fault of the man in front of him - a man he had trusted with the life of his brother.

A man who he had also seen as a brother for over a decade.

A man who he would have died to protect.

A man who had utterly betrayed every bit of trust he had given him.

A man who was a traitor.

For that single, brief instant, Sirius's grip on his wand relaxed slightly and the weapon lowered just a few centimetres as he was lost in his thoughts - thoughts that were suddenly torn away by a forceful and giant shove that sent him stumbling back and barely managing to remain standing. As he struggled with keeping himself from falling, he barely managed to register the words of his friend.

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

What? he thought, his mind seeming to work slower to process the seven condemning words that were hurled loud enough for the entire street to hear. But when they did finally register, Sirius felt his anger shoot to an intensity that he could never recall feeling. How dare he? he thought. That fucking traitorous rat bastard! He looked up, glared at his friend, and raised his wand with the incantation on his lips -

But he never had the chance to utter it as the ground suddenly shook, the force causing him to lose his already very unsteady footing and fall to the ground, flying backwards with the force of the explosion and slamming into the ground. Rocks and other debris erupted into the air and pelted down on top of him and the rest of the street. Concrete cracked and screams echoed in his head as he tried to recover himself enough to sit up and see what had happened.

The screams and cries seemed to grow even louder, though, when Sirius managed to make it to his knees to take in the whole sight again.

The street that he and Peter had been on was now in complete ruins; it really didn't even look too much like a street anymore, if he was honest. A giant hole stood in the middle of the road, likely the centre of the explosion and looking like a meteor had crashed into it. Piles of rubble were all around the crater, and pieces of broken concrete and wood and glass fragments (it looked like a few windows had been blown in) from the nearby shops dotted the sidewalks. The previously calm, yet curious, watching crowds of Muggles were now crying and screaming as they, too, took in the scene of destruction. Many of them were also bleeding from their own injuries, stumbling around the destruction in the street as they wandered aimlessly.

Some, unfortunately, were not even moving anymore, their bodies crushed under the mounds of rubble.

It took Sirius a brief moment for his mind - still muddled as it was and taking an unusually long time to comprehend things - to wrap itself around all that had just happened. He blinked, shook his head, anything to try and convince himself that the sight before him wasn't real. Surely, things could not have gone so wrong again in such a brief time?

Peter.

The thought caused him to cease his denials and scan the area around him, his grey eyes trying to catch just the briefest glimpse of the short, blond man who was the cause of all of this - and more. But he couldn't see him. He wasn't there. He had managed to get away again -

But then, Sirius's eyes caught sight of the pile of cloth on the ground, laying only a few feet from him - and right where Pettigrew had been.

Peter's emerald-coloured cloak lay torn and bloodstained next to him. And on top of the damaged fabric was the only bit of his former friend that Sirius could see in all the destruction.

The bleeding bit of a forefinger lay on the cloak, its end cut clean and smoothly - a cut that was as clean as only one from a very sharp knife could be.

Sirius hesitantly reached out, his hand centimetres from discarded finger, but he jerked back suddenly as another sound caught his attention amidst all the screams and cries of the Muggles.

A loud squeak tore into his mind, and as he turned his head in the direction of the brief sound, Sirius caught a fleeting glimpse of a small, dark brown rat fleeing into the piles of debris, vanishing soon out of sight as it ran in the opposite direction of Sirius.

And Sirius laughed. He laughed at the fleeing rat. He laughed at the fact that the guilty party was going free - and as he heard the telltale signs of Apparition, he laughed at the fact that the innocent was going to pay for the guilty's crimes.

He laughed as the Aurors approached him, their wands focussed on his shaking form. He laughed as they looked at him with a combination of shock and disgust. He laughed as they bound his wrists and took his wand. He laughed as they led him away.

Sirius Black laughed at the irony of it all.

Because laughing was all that kept him from crying.

~**~

Author's Note: Well, there it is, and I hope you all enjoyed it! And yes, I'm aware of the fact that I wrote the confrontation between Sirius and Peter in the latter half of Part III: Success? and it was an interesting experience trying to both tell the same scene from the same point of view, without making it either too repetitive or contradictory. So, how did I do, do you think? Did it work? Please, let me know!

Also, feel free to go and check out Recognition's sequel. It's got the first two chapters already posted, and I'm really enjoying writing that fic (not that I don't enjoy writing ALL my fics, of course)! Yeah, I know, shameless plug ... But anyway, go check it out, and let me know your thoughts on it as well.

In short, though, thank you so much for reading this part, and I appreciate every review that I get, of course. I'm not 100% sure when I'll get Part VI: Innocent out, as there's some extensive editing that needs to take place with that particular part, but I'll try to not let it go by too long ... like this gap. *Apologises to readers once again*

~Megan