Intended

[eleven]

The letter arrives at breakfast. Sirius opens it with anticipation, his fingers trembling, his eyes scanning the parchment. The words leap out and grab him by the throat, shake him hard and leave him almost unable to breathe.

Sirius-

I had warned you about mixing with those unworthy of even being called Magical. Unfortunately, it seems as if you do not wish to listen. You have proven yourself unworthy. I am ashamed that I could ever have given birth to such a disobedient and disgusting child.

Your behavior is appalling. Your cousins say that they have caught you associating with Muggle filth. They say you talk with them freely and you even allow them to touch you. Such disgrace! What is more, they report that you shun them when they try to talk to you, to help you. You behave in an absolutely degrading manner, shaming not only yourself but the name of Black as well!

Do not expect any favors from us in future. From now, you are not considered worthy…

*

[twelve]

Sirius scrubs the floor, his back aching and his arms so tired he's sure they're going to fall off. He splashes the already dirty water on his clothes and grabs the brush from beside the old bucket and scrubs at a dark patch on the dungeon floor. He imagines the face of his mother instead of the patch and he claws at it angrily, seeing his nails raking down her skin and hearing her screaming in pain, and he scowls.

‘Shut up! Leave me alone, leave me alone!' he growls. He thinks he sees his mother's face staring at him through eyes that were once beautiful but now have the cruelest of gazes. It is as if he has only just realized that he has never really felt much for her, never anything but awe and a sense of timid respect. He tries to think of all the times he has seen her and realizes they are so few… after all, he has only see her, this formidable woman, during important occasions. All he feels for her now is hate, a hatred that he has never felt for anyone before. He wants her out of his life; he wants to eradicate her from his heart and from his mind as he is sure she has done the same for him. He scrubs away at the old stain on the stone as if he could scratch away every unpleasant memory he has, every memory he has with it, only pausing in his fantasized torture of his mother to flip a strand of black hair out of his eyes.

The hair just slips back to where it was before. It sits on his head awkwardly, rough and shapeless like an ill-fitting wig. In a fit of rage he had picked up a pair of scissors to try and cut it all off, but settled for snipping it haphazardly so it is now shaggy around the edges. He knows that his father would have a fit if he saw him with hair that wasn't impeccably neat, and he feels a rebellious pleasure in just this small fact. The spot on the floor has his father's face now, and he savagely attacks it with the brush, imagining that his scrubbing can erode the image, that he's wiping it away from his mind. He wants to see his father cry out; he wants to see the blood running down his cheeks and the fingernail marks that he's seen in the mirror from clawing his own face in his sleep.

The letter sticks out of one of his pockets. It is stamped with the Black family crest, an imprint of silver in wax on yellowing parchment. He knows that the words were written with his father's special black quill, the same one he had once used when he and Andromeda were bound together. He knows that his father only uses the quill for important documents, and the document that he has shoved into his pocket is indeed important, for it contains a formal announcement of his disinheritance.

What it doesn't contain is just as important, for, in the Black family, to be disinherited is to be disowned.

When he first read it, he laughed, and made as if to tear it up, but found that he hadn't the strength to.

When he read it again, he laughed dryly and forced himself to ignore the prickling feeling behind his eyes, because he was always told that tears are a weakness and he is not weak. He sat in the darkness of a small, empty classroom, with Andromeda gently running her fingers through his hair and listening to his angry words and his vows that he would never return to his father's house. After everything, to be disinherited just because he was sorted into the wrong house…

The third time he read it, he laughed in the middle of a Transfiguration class, and when James Potter tried to snatch the letter away so he could know why Sirius was laughing, the two of them ended up in a fist-fight that made sure that they were banished to the Hospital Wing for the better part of the day, and to the dungeon for a detention at night. Their Head of House thought that maybe, just maybe, they could sort out their differences if they worked together at something.

They're working, definitely. Together… that might take a while.

He tries not to listen to the other boy, scrubbing as furiously as he is but in the opposite corner of the dungeon. He can hear him, though, against his own will, muttering away; there are savage insults against the name of Black ringing in his ears, but what really grabs Sirius's attention are James's protests about how he's going to complain to his parents about being given a detention in his very first month.

Sirius expects to feel angry when he hears this.

But he doesn't. Instead, there is a powerful ache inside him, scratching away within his chest and clawing its way up until he thinks he can actually taste his own unhappiness, an unpleasant sensation of acid on his tongue. It's a taste that he's gotten used to in the past few hours, a taste that makes its presence known to him every time he tries to think of his parents and remembers that for them, he is no longer fit to be called son.

‘Well, Black, now I know why this bloody detention's taking so long! You've stuck your arse in that corner and not moved the whole time!'

Sirius doesn't say anything. He's seen enough of James Potter in the past few days to know that he's probably got his wand out and is gong to hex him right now, even if his back is turned… just because he can.

The slight whisper and the jet of light that rushes past him, way off track, is enough to confirm it. Sirius's hand is in his pocket even as the first words of the spell leave the other boy's lips and he whips out his wand but waits until the light has hit the stone wall in front of him before he does anything.

He isn't impressed by Potter's bravado, and he isn't about to follow suit. Hexing someone when their back is turned is something that he's seen his father do, but he's never really thought it was fair.

He still doesn't.

‘Some other time, Potter,' he snarls, his wand pointing straight at the other boy. ‘If this was anywhere else, I'd have blasted you with something that even your father wouldn't know anyone could do.'

He can barely make out the sneer that is directed towards him in the dark. ‘You're just saying that so I'll get all… scared. You can't do anything.'

Fury boils within him, but Sirius forces himself to remain in control. After all, he has no parents to run to who will get him out of trouble if he lets anything get out of hand. Eyes narrowed in concentration, he mutters the spell, only directing his aim away at the last possible moment so that the blue stream of light that erupts from his wand hits the wall beside James Potter's head, leaving a smoking hole in it.

‘If you don't want your overblown head to be next, you'll shut up,' he says curtly before going back to scrubbing.

‘Well… at least I'm not the only person who can't aim.' The retort hangs weakly in the air, like the acrid after-smell of the spells cast only moments before.

But Sirius doesn't allow himself to say anything now.

‘Wonder what crawled up his arse and died there.'

And still, Sirius does not say anything, refusing to be provoked, but continues to scrub at that one little spot, ignoring the pain as his fingers scrape against the stones, the heels of his palms red and raw. He is not used to such work, the soft skin of his hands breaking easily with his palms repeatedly grazing the ground. He tries to forget, to shut out everything except the action, except the tiny pinpricks that make his hands tingle and leave the water tinged red.

But he is not scrubbing hard enough to drown out the footsteps that come towards him, and he makes a mental note that the Potter boy's shoes squeak and that he really should do something about it if he's going to sneak up on people. He knows that it takes exactly twenty three steps for him to get across the dungeon; he's counted them. He knows that the Potter boy is looking at the parchment that sticks out of his pocket, and he knows that in about two seconds, he will feel the same parchment being slid out of his pocket because James Potter is the most curious boy he's ever met, and one who has never been able to keep his hands to himself when there is something else, something more interesting, to be seen.

But he doesn't say anything, because suddenly he just feels too tired to even bother.

‘Fine. He wanted to know what was written… let him see it. Let the whole bloody world know.'

But he doesn't really care because now everyone will know how worthless he is… so worthless that his own parents have abandoned him. He doesn't know if James Potter has a big mouth, but he certainly expects him to… he'd like to say that it probably matches the boy's overgrown ego, but at this moment in time he feels too miserable to say anything.

He is still scrubbing the floor, but with a weariness that only comes with acceptance of something that cannot be changed, so when the brush is gently pried from his fingers he doesn't look up or even resist. He kneels there, sullen, his hands soiling his robes with soapy water and tiny trickles of blood, and pretends not to hear a word that the Potter boy is saying to him. He pretends not to hear the righteous sounding words about friendship and hope and the apologies and steadily ignores him because he doesn't want to be preached to.

What he can't ignore, however, is the hand that is suddenly thrust upon him. It waves in his face and then hovers in front of him, a hand that is similarly covered in soap suds but without the pain he feels. He looks into the other boy's face, confused, for he has never been offered a hand in friendship before.

‘Come on.'

Still, Sirius stares at the hand suspiciously. ‘What do you get out of it?' he asks, fully expecting the boy's nervous smile to falter, for him to stumble over his words. He does not expect the smile he sees to grow.

‘I don't know. Maybe I get an enemy. Maybe I get a sullen git who needs to have his arse kicked so he can stop moping around. Maybe I get a friend.'

Sirius stares. He has never heard much about the Potters. He knows that almost everyone in their family is an Auror, and if the rumors are to be believed, they hate Dark Wizards- and their families- with a passion that could put anyone to shame. He's heard that they are Muggle-lovers of the highest degree, but right now he couldn't care if the boy in front of him was even a Muggle, his loneliness gnaws at him so. He can hear his mother's voice warning him about mixing with the wrong sort at Hogwarts, then a clenching feeling in his stomach as he realizes that, maybe, she's the one who's with the wrong crowd; he sucks his breath in sharply as he realizes that he cannot call that woman his mother anymore. He wants to take the hand that has been offered to him, he wants to hold it and laugh in his mother's face and spit on his father's shoes. He wants to accept this offer he is being made, because he knows that pride is a hard thing to ignore and he has to grudgingly admit that maybe the Potter boy isn't such an idiot as he had thought before, if he can actually apologize. He can see his smile beginning to tire, he can see the disappointment in his eyes and even as the hand is drawn away, Sirius swallows because he knows what he wants to do is against everything he has ever known.

‘What do you get out of it?' he asks again, but this time more weary than suspicious. ‘Isn't your family afraid of you mixing with us… Dark Wizards?'

He can see the hesitation on the face in front of him. ‘Well… yes. But… I mean… you got into Gryffindor, right? You can't be so bad… besides…'

‘Besides what?' Sirius prompts; even though he knows what is going to be said, he still wants to hear it with his own ears.

'Well, your family's definitely not… very nice…'

Sirius laughs ruefully. ‘Understatement of the year,' he growls.

‘Look, I said I'm sorry… I shouldn't have tried to hex you. I know I've been a git to you just because you're a Black, but what did you think I'd do? I've always been told that you Blacks are the worst of the lot when it comes to the Dark Arts,' he says quietly, almost… regretfully. ‘I didn't believe that any Black could even be halfway decent.'

‘They aren't.'

‘You are.'

‘I'm not supposed to be.'

‘But you didn't hex me back.'

‘Er, in case you didn't notice, I did.'

‘But you missed! You did that on purpose, didn't you?' he insists, and Sirius can tell that there is some sort of awe in his voice; a small tingle starts up in his stomach because there's a hint of the respect that he craves so much right now.

‘What if I did?'

‘You've got your ideals straight… you didn't hex me behind my back.'

‘But you did,' Sirius drawls. ‘You attacked me, despite all that… crap … your family's taught you about honor and morals and stuff ,' he adds in a condescending tone, and he can't help but let some of the pride he feels show.

‘I'm not all that bad,' is the defensive reply.

‘I was under the impression that you like throwing curses at people when their backs are turned,' he says, but he hopes that the other boy can see his smile. He feels nervous, but he forces the smile to stay as he steels himself.

What he is going to do is going to change everything; he knows that he's going to have to forget everything he's ever known.

‘All right, so I take it that you don't want me as a friend, Black.'

Sirius stretches out his own hand.

‘I never said that,' he replies. ‘James Potter, you're probably the biggest arse I'll ever have the pleasure of meeting, but I think I can live with that.'

He wraps his fingers around the hand that has been offered to him and gets to his feet. The two boys grin at each other nervously.

‘You're okay… Sirius,' James says, clapping him on the shoulder, and Sirius can't help but grin as he revels in the smile of one he now calls a friend.

*