Intended

[sixteen]

At the end of the school year, the Hogwarts express pulls into King's Cross Station, and Sirius finds himself staring out the window, his hands pressed firmly against it as he searches the crowd that has gathered on the platform for someone familiar. Some of them are people he recognizes as his father's friends, and some are alien to him. He is waiting for his parents, hoping, hoping, hoping so much that they have come for him, almost making himself believe that they might accept him back despite everything that has happened this year.

So when he sees the house elf, a little thing standing far away from the mass of humans, he pushes himself away from the window in disappointment. He has already recognized the tea-towel, wrapped around the house-elf's waist like an ill-fitting loin cloth, and is sure the little black blur he can see on it is the Black family crest.

Even if he's seen the crest so many times, the thought of it, the image of it, forcing its way, unbidden, into his head, just reminds him too much of a letter on yellow parchment and an ugly spot on a dungeon floor.

The house-elf gives him a withering glance when he steps off the train, and he can't help but feel a surge of anger he thought he had forgotten about when he sees the pitiful creature standing in front of him. It stares up at him, all large eyes and squashed ears and ugly face, but it is not the elf's appearance that makes Sirius's shoulders droop or the corners of his mouth turn downward.

He knew that his parents wouldn't have wanted to meet him off the train, but he had hoped; he had not ignored the small flicker of warmth that traveled over him when he imagined that maybe they would come after all. Now he knows that it is completely useless to hope, and he glares at the house-elf standing where his parents ought to be. He is only too aware of the slap James gives him on the back as he walks towards his parents, of the small wave from Lupin, as a sandy-haired man pats him on the head and gives him a smile. For a fleeting moment Sirius imagines that the blonde woman hugging his cousin Narcissa will wave at him, but his aunt doesn't even pause to look at him as the two pass by. Bellatrix only manages to glare at him, and he puts on a mask of indifference as she hisses an unintelligible threat at him before following her mother.

Only Andromeda hangs back, staring after all the backs that have been turned on them both. He doesn't object when she kisses him on the cheek and ruffles his hair; when she tells him to come visit over the summer he nods numbly and he does not answer her when she waves goodbye. He stares at the house-elf, and wishes that if nothing, he didn't have to go home that summer, because he is returning to a house that will be packed with strangers who do not know, and if they do know, they do not care about the eldest Black boy.

But even though he doesn't want to, he follows the little creature off the platform, not really noticing the Muggles outside pointing at the gloomy boy with the long black hair and the strange cat for a pet.

*

[seventeen]

Over the summer, Sirius learns what the word ‘alone' means. In the castle he had found friends; friends he is not allowed to mention in front of anyone. From the moment he arrives he is shunted away into a small spare bedroom; his old bedroom, with its regal black drapes and the silver bedstead is now occupied by Regulus. He is not allowed to eat meals with the family, and he can walk about the old house freely only at night, when everyone has gone to bed.

The old corridor is still bricked up, and he tries, more than once, to force his way in. He knows now that he needs to talk to the old portrait, to find out exactly what his namesake meant when he talked about blood not meaning much. He was too young to understand then. Without magic, though, it is impossible to get through.

He has all the time in the world to try, though. The only time when he is ever needed is when they have guests. He abhors these moments. He grimaces at the sight of his mother fawning over his younger brother while glaring at him; he flinches when he sees the tic that causes his father's left eye to twitch dangerously when he is in the room. He never says a word, not even when his father's friends mock him for being in Gryffindor and console his mother that maybe he will turn out like them all in the end.

‘ I will never be like you,' Sirius vows silently. The longer he stays in the sitting room, the more he feels as if someone is smothering him, holding him down and trying to force him into a mold that all the Black children have been shaped in for centuries. The tapestry is a mocking reminder, with its fresh burn and the acrid smell where his uncle Alphard used to be before he married a Muggle. The air in the house is as heavy as he remembers it but it is so much harder to breathe now, with hostile eyes glaring at him, almost daring him to defend himself as they call him names to his face.

He remembers a time when he had wanted to tell them to stop it, to stop looking at him but he had kept quiet, because that was all Blacks were taught to do. Now he takes a deep breath so that he can spew a few of the nasty words they have been saying right back at them because, as he reminds himself, he is no longer considered worthy to be a Black.

But he doesn't say anything. He can feel his father's hand on his shoulder, squeezing it a little too tightly as he refuses to bow to his uncle, and he knows that he will pay dearly when he refuses to kiss his aunt's hand because his father's fingers stray dangerously close to his neck.

The words can wait. Sirius will not be baited, will not be provoked.

But they should have realized by now that Sirius will not bow to anyone but himself.

*