Intended

[thirty eight]

Summer sneaks up on Sirius, and with it comes the usual worries of any teenage boy: incomplete assignments, revision for exams and the troubled thought that soon, he will have to leave Hogwarts for the holidays.

Soon, Andromeda will leave Hogwarts forever.

She is still bound to him, bound by blood and by the old magic they share. But he feels alarmed at the prospect of not being able to see her, of not having her comforting, if slightly distant presence always there.

She is the only part of his old life that he will allow himself to keep, if only because he loves her too much to lose her.

Every night, then, becomes an adventure, becomes an attempt to hold on for just that little bit longer. He leads Andromeda into secret passages behind tapestries and rooms that are hidden under trapdoors. His feet are light on the stone floors and he often turns back to glance at her shyly from under his lashes until they reach their destination for the night. She usually smiles back at him, smiles that never quite reach her eyes as she pockets the glittering prefect's badge that she should be wearing on her robes.

He hasn't forgotten everything that he has heard in the past few months, but he has realized that there are things more important than petty arguments in the corridors; there are things that he must learn to bear as he grows into a man.

His little-boy fingers have grown longer, stronger, but he still holds her hand as if it is something delicate, his rough fingertips brushing against the snakes on her ring. He shivers with all the excitement a teenage boy can have. He no longer has to tip-toe to reach her; tonight, he lets his hands rest on her shoulders as he buries his face in her hair. He can feel her hands against his back, and when she sighs against his pulse it shoots sparks like he has never felt before over his skin.

He lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her with everything he has, with an urgency he cannot even begin to describe. All he knows that he needs this, her lips on his and her hands at his back and their hair around them like a thick black curtain that blocks out everything else.

Now their kisses are no longer just his comfort; they are his need.

Sirius whispers stories to her as they share the same breath, worries that should belong to someone much older than him; he laughs when she tells him that he has no idea. He is as arrogant as a teenage boy can be, and delights in her quiet gasps when he presses his lips to the small spot below her ear because then he can whisper to her all those thoughts that he really shouldn't be thinking and lose himself in the feeling of silver scratching on the back of his neck and the scent of the dungeons where she sleeps.

He closes his eyes when he feels Andromeda breathing against his neck, because there is nothing else to do... he can feel the funny twisting feeling of excitement in his stomach, tingling, feverish jolts that blossom from within him. He basks in the feeling of the cold stone wall behind him and leans his head back, his fingers lost in her hair and her face buried in his robes. The feel of her breath on his skin is vaguely comforting... even if she is the only reminder of his past he will allow himself.

And he is sure that he would do anything not to lose her.

When she feebly tries to push away, when he feels the hot tears against his skin, when he feels her shudder in his arms and the familiar sound of a muffled sob, Sirius only lets his fingers trail down, through her hair, smoothing out the tangled darkness and stroking her back.

He can't cry; he has never been able to allow the tears to run, so she has always cried for the both of them. She's always been the stronger one, unafraid to let her emotions show; he has always let her cry, thankful that she can still feel. He has never asked why, though...

He might wish that he had.

'I can't... Sirius... I can't do this,' she mumbles, her voice so small, so lost in the thick folds of his robes. She sounds, almost... ashamed...

She has never sounded this broken to him before... she has never hidden something from him, but instinctively, he knows that her tears are not for him tonight...

'Why?' he hears himself ask. It is as if his lips move of their own accord, his voice is not his own; the words I can't hit him like a blow to the stomach and the echoes slap him hard across his face.

'I... there's...' and Andromeda pauses, her breath nothing more than a mere hiss. 'Sirius, I've got to... I wanted to tell you that... this can't work.'

'What? But... we're Intended! It has to work, otherwise... why would...'

She sighs. 'You're too young... we were both too young to understand then. I just...' she trails off and Sirius feels his hands balling up of their own accord, his whole body tensing for whatever she has to tell him. 'I don't believe in this anymore. I can't be your Intended. I can't let myself follow some stupid tradition.'

He sucks in a sharp breath, realization descending on his brain in a fuzzy cloud that he refuses to acknowledge. 'You don't...'

'No, Sirius. I don't want this... because I've found someone I want to be with, and it isn't you.'

It sounds so forced. It sounds so rehearsed. It sounds as if she has struggled with the words for days and can't hold the secret back from him any longer.

It sounds so... genuine, her words and the sparkle in her eyes tearing his heart into two.

Sirius swallows. He can hear Snape's words ringing in his ears.

A boyfriend...

A boyfriend. A Mudblood boyfriend...

Your little lovebird's got a boyfriend. A Mudblood boyfriend...

He shivers, not from the cold that is slowly seeping through his robes, but from the realization. He remembers the harsh laughter and the embittered looks and the reluctance and he knows he should feel angry.

He should feel angry, he should demand that his Intended remains his only, he should 'put things right', Black-speak for 'beating the rival boy into a bloody pulp to preserve the Black pride.'

He should... but he doesn't. He vaguely remembers a dungeon on a night just as cold as this one, a dungeon and soapy hands and the air heavy with the telltale stench of spells cast in anger. He doesn't know why he remembers this now, just that he does.

That night, he had found someone. A friend.

Tonight, he's going to lose someone else. Someone who's much dearer than a friend.

'Who is he?' Sirius asks, his voice hanging in the still air, but he knows that this is all just a formality, that he does not really need to know. He can hear Andromeda murmuring a name that he does not care about. He knows that he should feel something, something, but the ability to feel seems to have left him all of three minutes ago.

Instead, he just stands against the wall, not sure what to do. He is aware of the arms around his waist, arms that once rested there in a semblance of comfort but now feel like two heavy weights that are dragging him down. He feels the cold now, the biting cold of the wall chilling his skin, and the bitter chill from being abandoned running through him to his very bones.

And just as he starts to wonder how numb he has really become, he realizes that the tears on his face are his own, and he hastily reaches up to try and wipe them away. A hand that is freezing to the touch and a ring of snakes scratches his skin, and he covers the delicate fingers with his own, squeezing his eyes shut as if this could actually stop the tears. He squeezes them so tightly shut that his head hurts, but he doesn't care. All the emotions that he seems to have lost are rushing back to him, all of them, the hurt, the anger, the despair, and suddenly he feels like the little child locked in a bathroom again, a little child who has been punished for someone else's crime.

'Who is he?' he asks again.

'Ted... Theodore Tonks.'

This time the name brings with it another memory. A memory of a coaxing Hufflepuff prefect with a bright yellow badge on his robes. A memory of a blond-haired badger. A memory of a little boy staring after the retreating backs of two prefects and realizing that he was being left behind.

'I'm sorry, I'm... I'm so sorry, Sirius,' Andromeda whispers as she leans back. He can see her face now, eyes that used to shine for him now sparkling for someone else, and he pushes down the urge to shove her away. 'I never meant to... it just happened... I just... I'm sorry, it's not fair to you, I'm sorry...'

'Don't be,' he says weakly. 'You... no-one can help these things...' The words sound forced, he knows, but right now he can't trust himself to say anything else. His head hurts too much; his heart hurts too much. The words repeat themselves, grabbing at him so that he cannot breathe; he cannot do anything but reflect on them, growing angrier and more desperate by the second.

You're too young. But oh, how he had tried, how he had tried to be older, to be someone he wasn't. I've found someone else... it isn't you. But what had he done wrong? Hadn't he been the good boy, the good friend, the good Intended, the good... no. No, no, no.

This isn't fair.

'Sirius?'

He blinks, seeing her through some haze, and he realizes that she is already too far gone to come back. He sees his face in hers, the expression so anxious, and he hates himself; he hates his name and his family, and everything that ties him down. He hates himself because he could never see, because he never wanted to see, because he has nothing now.

'Go,' he says coldly, letting his arms drop to his sides, feeling her step back from him. 'Go, Andromeda.'

'Sirius-'

'Just go, alright!' he screams, this time really pushing her away. The dim light in the room throws her shocked face into relief and he can see the hurt etched on it, but he doesn't care. His anger takes over his mind. In his head he hears the thoughts he had been pushing away, in his heart he feels the crushing feeling of being abandoned.

Again. He has been abandoned all over again, because of things he just can't be.

The air is too heavy for him to breathe and his head hurts from the thoughts that are pounding their way through his brain. He screams at her, he screams with all the ferocity of a wounded animal, words and curses mixing themselves together but all of them incomplete, just as he feels.

He is barely aware of her leaving, her cloak whipping through the door he had led her through. It swings shut quietly, only making the slightest of sounds. He would rather have had it slam loudly, have heard the angry echo, have had an excuse to scream louder, because it just seems fitting for the situation.

But once the door shuts, the only thing in the chamber is the silence. His angry words die away, swallowed by the darkness and the still air; he is left without anything to say, think, hear, feel; he is left, completely alone. Only now does he let his façade drop, only now does he allow himself to slide to the floor, dejected. He wipes at his eyes, wanting to control the tears, wanting them to stop, because he feels even worse. To cry is to show weakness, and he grits his teeth against the sobs that threaten to burst out of him because he does not want to be weak.

But in the silence, there is no one to watch him. His only witnesses are the eyes of the snakes that twine themselves around his finger, cruel eyes that laugh at him in their utter stillness. He finally buries his face in his arms and lets the tears flow. There is no need for heroics now... there is no need to pretend, to act older than his thirteen years, to try and be bolder than he really is. There is no need, only a longing... for a simpler life. A longing for innocence.

And Sirius knows that, despite his tears, there is no use crying for his innocence... it was never there to begin with.

*