Intended

[eighteen]

He has no idea what he is to do now that he has suddenly turned into a ‘filthy blood-traitor'. Everything he has grown up knowing seems to be wrong, confusing to him. Everything he does goes awry, his few attempts to reconcile himself to the ideals he had believed in so strongly only a year ago simply not working and his family's attitudes grating on his last nerve.

So he turns away. He knows very well what his parents expect and he disobeys every rule of being a Black that he had been taught because he hopes that he will end up out on the streets. Or anywhere else but this house, this house that threatens to strangle him and trap him within its walls forever, this house that he now loathes.

He feels as if the two months of the summer holidays are the two longest months of his life. Every day he finds himself checking in the mirror to see if he's changed… to check if he's still there. He tries to push away all the little nagging thoughts that tell him he could still gain back his parents' favor, if he just closes his mind and submits, like a good Black. Truth be told, he doesn't want his parents' favor- he feels an odd hollowness in his stomach whenever they are around that he can't explain, a pang of regret when he thinks of all the times he had laughed at their tales of Muggle-baiting. He feels horror at the odd sense of twisted pleasure that rises in him when he counts one more house-elf head on the wall, but he can't deny that the faint trickles of blood that stain the old, flaking paint are still appallingly fascinating… in a way that makes him want to throw up.

In a year, he has changed so much that he doesn't even recognize himself anymore.

It's so hard, to try and hold on, to try and be a Gryffindor, when he's surrounded by everything that makes him insecure with himself. Idly, he catches himself thinking about what snakes might do if a lion wandered into their midst, and then forces the thought away as he realizes that he doesn't want to know.

And every time he creeps into his- no, now, Regulus's room- he has to stop himself from looking down on the younger boy because he is afraid that he will see his old self. The hair is just as dark, and so neat from its regular trimming, and Sirius fingers a long strand of his own hair in the moonlight, just to check that it's still there.

In his sleep, Regulus mutters about Hogwarts and snakes and traitors and lions. Sirius looks out the window when he hears this, his mouth set in a hard line.

When Regulus says something that sounds suspiciously like ‘Mudblood', Sirius knows that he's heard enough, and he sneaks out of the room, hoping that no one will hear the sound of his stomach twisting itself into coils or of his heart, beating dully in his chest, because he knows.

He is always going to be alone.

*