Titanic

Titanic

Sometimes a story is like a puzzle and the characters are pieces and sometimes one of the pieces stops fitting but this is not what happened to Sirius Black. Sometimes a story is like a movie with the characters queued up outside waiting to go in and one of them loses interest and walks away but this is not what happened to Sirius Black. Sometimes a story is like a sieve and the imperfect bits that are too small to keep fall through and are lost but this not what happened to Sirius Black. Sometimes a story is so sad that it breaks your heart and you can't bear to read anymore and maybe that is what happened to Sirius Black. Maybe one day it just got too hard to fight, maybe it stopped being worthwhile. It would be nice to imagine that Sirius is tucked up in a cozy little cottage in Wales right now, watching Wimbledon on the television and having a bet with Remus Lupin but of course that is not what happened.

There are more ways than one to stop; you can throw down a book in disgust, take it back to the library unfinished with its pages bent from being used as a doorstop. You can burn it the way the Nazis did and the protesters do, as if books were symbols, as if they stood for something outside themselves. You can cry until your eyes blur and you sting and you can't make out the words in front of your face. Except, of course, if you are a character in the book; then you more or less do as you are told and subtly test the boundaries while the author isn't looking. You grow sad and sullen and withdrawn and eventually you lose your place.

A list of stories that are not meant to end happily: Harry/ Draco, because at the end of the day hate is stronger than love; Sirius/ Remus because werewolves do not mate for life; Hermione/ Ron, because they have nothing in common. All of the ships are meant to sink in the end and no doubt the rats will desert them just in time. Sometimes stories make you doubt that happy endings are even possible.

After the first Voldemort war ended the families of the dead flew white flags with black skulls and black borders in memory of their loss like a thousand dead pirates rolling back time. Sirius Black had no family and it was a child's foolish mistake that killed him. He foundered on an indifferent shore and one day he could no longer keep his head above water and so he drowned. Oh, he went bravely and defiantly at the last; no one can say he did not. But he was not unhappy to die.

Sometimes a character leaves a story behind, moves on to other things. Sometimes this is more of a blessing than a tragedy. Dumbledore is an old man and he has seen it all before.