Where Laughter Dies

Where Laughter Dies

I

Sirius wishes, sometimes, that his room was less neat, wishes that his room could be more like Remus', where teetering stacks of schoolbooks vie for space with back issues of Roland Podmore: Undercover Janitor Hit Wizard, and piles of socks, scarves, and tattered robes adorn the floor waiting to trip up the unwary visitor, or like James', whose walls change colour almost weekly depending on the Quidditch team he fancies; this day an eye-searing orange for the Cannons, the next an equally garish purple for Portree, although James has stuck quite tenaciously to the Harpies for a while now (if only for the sake of their rather Evans-like Seeker, who has every whit of the green eyes and red hair that James covets, and the added attraction of being able to spot a fast-moving golden speck from a hundred metres across a field).

Perhaps he would not want a room quite like Peter's, where Mrs. Pettigrew's love for the pink and floral wage war with Peter's horror for cleanliness, order, and above all, girly things, so that the floor under its layers of sweet wrappers and Chocolate Frog cards and parchment is covered in an ankle-deep, pale pink carpet, and the curtains have roses on them . But even that would be better than the dungeon he has, with green-and-silver hangings and snakes everywhere he looks, and a quarrelsome portrait (Phineas Nigellus, commonly acknowledged as the most unpleasant Headmaster Hogwarts ever had, which is certainly saying something considering that one of the man's predecessors was Salazar Slytherin) mocking him from the wall, and house-elves tidying his belongings up almost before he drops them. Peter's room is ridiculous, but at least Peter's room is Peter's, and probably did not belong to a hundred generations of Pettigrews before him.

He tries, sometimes, to add an element of himself to his room; tossing his Gryffindor scarf here, leaving his cloak on the floor there, scribbling on the walls, but half an hour later the walls sparkle, the cloak is neatly folded and placed on top of his chair, and the impudent red-and-gold scarf carefully placed in an unobtrusive corner where it cannot offend anyone by being there and not being green; the family likes to pretend that both its sons are Slytherin, and that Sirius too wears green and silver and spends his time in a dungeon below the lake, where the walls are always frosted with a thin layer of damp and the stone floor could freeze an egg.

Green, green, green and red. Green is right and red is dead.

II

"Cut your hair," his mother snaps. "And change those robes. You look like a Muggle-loving lout."

He wonders what hair and robes have to do with being a Muggle-loving lout, and he wonders what is wrong with being a Muggle-loving lout. Maybe he is a Muggle-loving lout.

What's wrong with Muggles, anyway? Maybe they wouldn't understand Sneakoscopes or Floo travel, but he doesn't understand tellyvizzies and Parlymints and cricket either.

(Remus had tried to explain cricket to him and James once. The only sense he had made out of it was that when the batsman was in, he was out on the field, and when he was out, he was actually in the pavilion, and the next chap came out to go in, and when he was out he went in to go out.

"Salazar's beard," he had declared, "It's bloody crazy."

At this point, Remus had given up and told them about Monty Python instead.)

-

He looks at Regulus and thinks, He could be me; Regulus has slightly shorter hair and slightly better-fitting robes and is listening to their mother with no apparent trace of rebellion, but apart from that he could almost be Sirius' twin; they have the same faces and the same hands and the same way of walking (and even when they walk together now they have a way of eerily falling into step, which if they notice makes both of them flush angrily and strive to break it), and the same grey eyes as their father.

Their mother's eyes are black, black and Black and flashing; she stands in front of them stiffly, and Sirius realises with a pleasurable squirm that she is almost five inches shorter than him, even in the dagger-like heels that clatter as she walks. He tries to think of it now, think of it and not be intimidated while she surveys him, with a faint sniff of distaste as she takes in the overlong hair, the scruffy pair of Muggle jeans ('borrowed' from James) peeking out from beneath his robes, and the impudent Gryffindor scarf at his throat, and he impulsively wonders what she would say if he had come down the stairs humming one of the Muggle songs that Remus (who was the sort of half-blood with two magical parents, but still had access to the wonderful weirdnesses of Muggle music) sometimes sang when he was studying.

Na na na na, he thinks savagely at the portraits on the wall behind her, at the shrunken house-elf heads across the wall. Na. Hey Jude.

Muggle music always makes him think of Remus, Remus dishevelled and ink-stained and exhausted flopping into an armchair by the fire, Remus throwing an essay aside in exhaustion and half-singing, half-mumbling to himself.

Take a sad song and make it better.

Remus looking up at him with a faintly inquisitive expression, the scars from the last moon fading. Remus patting the seat next to him invitingly, Remus grinning and saying Don't look so scared, Padfoot, I promise not to bite, Remus with a sarcastic quirk of the eyebrow but a very real smile.

His own face shocked and startled flickering in the firelight, Remus laughing, Remus saying Well, of course I don't hate you any more. Let it go, Padfoot. I have.

(Remus didn't know that the only reprimand Sirius' parents had given him was a mild sniff of distaste that he hadn't finished the job, hadn't finished off both the half-bloods in one go. They did not, of course, know the exact nature of the action, but they did know the name 'Lupin', and his mother remembered Eileen Prince.

Remus didn't know that his own father, as he was leaving Dumbledore's office, had given Sirius one piercing, disappointed, heartbroken look, as though to say that this was exactly what he had feared, and left him there holding onto the rags of a friendship hoping for a miracle.

Remus didn't know that Sirius still had nightmares.)

He looks at his mother, unshakable in her belief, and tries for a moment to take her at her word, just to see if it is possible, tries to believe that Remus is inferior because his mother's mother was a Muggle, tries to believe that he is better simply because his was a Muggle-hunting bigot, tries to think of green and silver and only manages to think of a red and gold common-room, and a red and gold fire, and forgiveness in red and gold.

Na na na na.

III

He always takes the stairs three at a time, running up in silent defiance of the dark-haired, grey-eyed, disapproving ancestors who line the walls and mutter darkly among themselves.

Thump. Scrape. Thump.

This is for his grandfather, an imposing figure in green whose most important deeds involved 'donating' enormous, unspecified sums to the Ministry of Magic. This is for Araminta Meliflua, who in her last few years became increasingly demented and tabled several motions in the Ministry to legalise the mounting of Muggle heads on victory plaques. That is for old, batty Aunt Elladora, at whose Somerset mansion Sirius remembers the first time he ever saw anything die; he remembers the languid, golden summer afternoon which he was made to spend sitting stiffly straight in her drawing-room, when all of a sudden there was a screech and a whooshing thud and all of a sudden something small and black and wrinkly rolled out of the adjoining room, and he heard Aunt say in satisfaction 'There, that's the end of that', and it was the head of Aunt's house-elf on the floor, dripping dark blood that still makes Sirius sick when he thinks about it.

(He supposes he is a sissy for hating the sight of blood. But blood smells like fear and tastes like copper and defeat, and he hates it.)

Sirius knows them all by name, date of death, and so-called achievements, right back to whichever one it was who came over with the Romans (or perhaps the Normans; it has, after all, been some time since he was forced to repeat their names; he is sure Regulus would know, though, since Regulus is in fact the only student in the entire school who listens to Binns, with the possible exception of Remus Lupin on an exceedingly good day); Sirius knows and hates them all.

He reaches the door of his room and swings it shut with a scraping bang; he can hear, faintly, his mother's screech of annoyance at the noise.

A second later the door is timidly pushed open, and Regulus' dark head pops around it with a faintly apologetic expression.

"Mother says not to bang the doors, and she says to make sure you wear your nice dress robes and look decent before the Lestranges arrive."

"I'm always decent."

"That's not what she thinks."

He withdraws silently, leaving Sirius with no-one to say the words 'I don't care what she thinks' to but the walls and the rustling tree outside his window.

I don't care. I don't. I don't.

(A little bit, he does.)

(He does not remember when his relations with his mother had begun deteriorating; she had been extremely fond of him once (mentally, he adds 'upon a time', because it does feel like an eternity ago); he supposes that returning home with a red school tie and subversive, Mudblood-loving (he had used that word once, in his first week of school, and found himself on the receiving end of a James Potter Punch for the first and last time ever) ideas turned her slowly against him, to the point where, try valiantly as he might, neither of them can stand the sight of the other.

He does have a few golden memories, when he was six and Regulus was four and they had spent an entire summers' day with her in the garden rooting around in the mud, or when he was eight and Regulus was six and she had taught them how to fly, or when he was nine and Reg was seven and she had taken them to Diagon Alley and shown them how they would look when they went off to Hogwarts, and they had stopped for enormous ice-creams and arrived home laughing.

He ignores them, because looking at her now he does not want to remember. He wonders if she is growing mad, or growing old.)

Sirius gets dressed slowly, fiddling with the annoyingly stiff collar and the flapping wide sleeves, and wonders why he should bother making himself look decent for Bellatrix and her husband (who is not much of a husband; even Sirius, who hates and ignores and pretends not to care about them all, can see that he does whatever Bella says and nothing else). Bloody Bella, who laughs and gestures and, when she was in the mood, flirts and sparkles and charms, and who Sirius is fairly sure has murdered children before, Bella the Slytherin Prefect who worshipped the letters of the rules openly and flouted them the moment teachers' backs were turned, Bella who always had someone else around willing to shoulder the blame.

(James had run afoul of her at school a few times, and hoped she'd rot in hell.

Sirius hopes she'll rot on earth.)

IV

Bellatrix's diamonds gleam in the light of a hundred candles; she is dripping diamonds like water, sparkling stones dangling from her ears and on her ornate, horribly ugly necklace, and on her bracelet, all glittering expensive white fire. She has changed a little from the person Sirius remembers her as a few years ago, but only a little; she is slightly (but only slightly) less volatile on the surface, although Sirius is sure she is no less cruel underneath, but she talks the same way and laughs the same way; she throws her dark head back and laughs her throaty laugh at something Sirius' mother says, and her diamonds swing, and she is almost the same, and Sirius still hates her.

She is talking again. "My sister - " she begins, and Sirius knows that it is obviously icy Narcissa she is talking about, because Ravenclaw Andromeda is no longer Bellatrix's sister; Andromeda has a Muggle-born husband and a little girl and does not care about any of them any more, and they, for their part, do not know that she exists any more.

Sirius does not care about ice-cold, pale, pretty Narcissa, sparkling, charming, heartless Narcissa, has never cared enough about her even to bother hexing her at school. He does not listen.

-

The evening stretches into night slowly, and the night seems like it never will end; it seems to drag its heels with melancholy across the sky, as though unwilling to give up its place to the deeper blackness before the dawn.

Sirius wishes it would just get itself over with, wishes that Bellatrix and Rodolphus would just leave, wishes that it wasn't so hard to be a bloody good son, wishes he didn't have to try to, wonders why he tries. He hates them all; he has said it often enough.

He hates them. He hates them. They are all he has.

As if from a distance he hears Rodolphus: " - a pity the new werewolf legislation didn't come through, it would have made things much safer, can you imagine, some of them try to pretend they are human, between werewolves and Mudbloods the world is going to ruin - "

Sirius has read the new proposal, read it because he found a copy on Remus' bedside table while looking for his Arithmancy book, read it and hated it,

Item: No werewolf is allowed to come in contact, deliberate or incidental, touch or hold human children under the age of two.

Item: No werewolf is permitted contact with a human without notifying the other of the fact of his lycanthropy.

Item. Item. Item.

He slams his glass of wine down, hard, on the table, and watches the smoky, blood-red stain seep through the white, and he sees red everywhere, red-on-red, red-on-green.

It is then that he decides to leave, because he has had enough of this and because he remembers what dinners in normal families are like; dinner at the Potters', where Mr. Potter keeps them in silent stitches with a series of jokes, each worse and bawdier than the last, where Mrs. Potter proudly shows off the dessert, made entirely by herself, and everyone eats far too much, and the Potters' is also where he learnt that it is possible to come down to breakfast in one's pyjamas and not be considered peculiar, possible to laugh while at the table without being considered a lunatic.

Dinner at the Lupins', is marginally quieter but no less enjoyable, around the battered kitchen table where Mr. Lupin shows off his guitar and Mrs. Lupin does not bat an eyelid when Peter and James decide to make barnyard noises throughout dinner, and so Prongs oinks and Wormtail baas and Moony moos and Padfoot quacks away, and no-one mentions werewolves or laws or blood, and the most soul-tormenting question anyone discusses is whether or not Remus should be allowed to have a fourth piece of apple pie ('You'd never think he could eat so much, the way he looks,' James had said admiringly. 'Like a bloody horse.'), or whether Sirius should snatch it instead.

Dinner at the Pettigrews', where Peter's three younger siblings fling food across the table with gleeful abandon, and with a great effort of will Sirius restrains himself from joining in - until James does so, and he is hit in the face by rhubarb crumble with cream and custard, at which point dinner quickly degenerates into a culinary free-for-all, and Sirius does not regret it a bit.

His family is why Sirius has never invited any of his friends home for the holidays; home is not home, home is his parents' house, home is just a place where everything is black and silver and green, green, green, and nothing is less than five hundred years old, and where attempts at lightness and levity die, bouncing off the stony walls to be swallowed in the dark by the dust and shadows.

(James met his mother once at the station, when she had arrived in pomp and ceremony to see Regulus off for his year in Salazar's slimy dungeon.

He had looked at the tight lines around her mouth and her air of haughty tolerance and listened to her talk to Sirius, and on the train had informed him brightly that his mother was a 'right nasty old bat'.

Sirius had laughed bitterly and replied that now James knew why he hadn't wanted him to meet his mother.)

His parents' house is the place where laughter dies. To keep it alive, he leaves.

V

He is back in his dungeon of a room for the last time, throwing everything into his Hogwarts trunk; socks and books and quills and parchment lie in a tangled mess inside, when Regulus slips in, quietly (Regulus is always quiet), and just stands there looking, for a long moment.

He and Regulus have not been close for years, not since that bloody hat ripped them apart; Regulus has acquired the air of Slytherin superiority that Sirius detests, or perhaps Gryffindor has just taken it out of him. (But he hasn't noticed anything different about himself, so in his opinion it has to be Regulus.)

"What are you doing?"

"Leaving."

"You really are, then." It is a flat statement, not a question, and Regulus' voice is carefully toneless.

"Yes."

"I thought you were just saying that."

(Sirius wonders how thick Regulus is, honestly, considering that he had shouted at his mother and his mother had shouted back and forbidden him to leave the room, and he had told her that he didn't care what she said, he hated her and his father and their house and if he never saw them again it would be far too soon, and he saw her white hands flutter helplessly by her side and thought wildly She doesn't have her wand, she doesn't have her wand, and then he ran out of the room like a madman, raced up the stairs pausing only to make a universally-understood rude gesture at his ancestors hanging shocked on the wall.)

"I wasn't."

"Where are you going, then?"

Sirius pauses; he hasn't considered this.

"The Potters', probably. "

Better there, anyway; at least it saves James the trouble of sending his bloody Christmas presents at arse o' clock in the middle of the bloody night just because he's on holiday in Cyprus or wherever and hasn't got the faintest clue what time it is here.

Because he doesn't belong here any more, Sirius tries to joke, Sirius tries to laugh. His humour crumbles into the dusty walls and comes out hollow and bitter and nasty, a mockery of itself, and he wishes he had not tried.

Regulus does not laugh, Regulus does not even smile. Regulus shuffles awkwardly over to Sirius' bed and flops onto it; he seems to be having difficulty with his words. Sirius does not look at him; Sirius keeps on tossing things into his trunk; another quill, an Arithmancy textbook, scribbled notes on the Animagus transformation, Dungbombs.

"What's going to happen to us?"

Now Sirius looks up, shocked.

"'Us'?"

Regulus bites his lip and looks away.

"Don't you care about us? You're going to break Mother's heart, you know."

Sirius scoffs bitterly, and will not admit to himself that he has thought the same thing, will not admit that for a moment he has wondered whether his mother will miss him (although he doubts it; absence makes the heart grow fonder, but not by that much), whether his father will even notice he is gone.

(When Andromeda ran off with Ted Tonks, her parents had been on holiday, and it had been three weeks before anyone realised the middle Black daughter was no longer at home.

Sirius had found it funny and a bit strange at the time - why would anyone want to run away from home? - but now he was thinking Is three weeks a very long time for nobody to realise you're gone? and he was thinking is it worse if you're gone and they realise and they don't bloody care?)

"She doesn't have a heart, Regulus. She doesn't care about anything except her precious blood and her precious old family pride."

Regulus shuffles his feet and chews his lip again.

"But what's wrong with that? It's the Mudbloods - "

"Muggleborns," Sirius corrects automatically; after six years in Gryffindor, he cannot imagine throwing 'Mudblood' around with abandon the way his parents do, the way Regulus does, the way he used to until being taught manners by the wrong end of James Potter's capable fist at the Sorting Feast. Perhaps Gryffindor had changed him, after all.

"Who cares? It's just a word."

Sirius laughs, bitterly, morosely.

"It's just a word. Avada Kedavra is just two of them. It ought to be the same thing, shouldn't it?"

Regulus flinches uncomfortably, looking at Sirius with something close to fear, and for the first time during this conversation, Sirius looks straight at him. Sirius looks, and he sees himself again; imagines himself trying to watch someone who has been a fixture, however argumentative or annoying or bossy a fixture, in a fairly lonely existence (because Sirius has noticed Regulus in Slytherin, and Sirius has noticed that Regulus doesn't seem to have friends), and he is not quite sure why he says, impulsively "Come with me."

Regulus stares at him.

"Why?"

"Because." Sirius isn't quite sure why; none of his friends have ever liked Regulus, but then he has never given any of them a chance to. "Because you're my brother."

It is Regulus' turn to laugh, bitterly, despairingly, and Sirius can't help but notice how even their laughs are the same. "I'm not. I haven't been for the last six years."

(Sirius has to admit that he is right, because he has spent the last six years with James and Peter and Remus; it is James he has sneaked to the kitchens with for unscheduled snacks, Remus he has burnt the midnight oil with, cramming Transfiguration into his head, and held secret conferences with all three of them about this new and Most Heroic way in which Slytherin will be Mightily Humiliated once again, and with James and Peter he has planned with to make a friend's horrors a little easier to bear.

And as stupid as the sentiment sounds, he knows that they have been his brothers in fact, and Regulus only in name.)

Sirius shrugs elaborately and flings the last garish sock into his trunk.

"Well, see you at school, then."

Regulus shakes his head. "You know better than that."

(Sirius does know better than that, and knows that he will return to his pranks and his routine humiliation of his brother and his brother's housemates, especially one Severus Snape.

It surprises him that Regulus noticed. He wonders when his brother had grown up.)

Sirius looks at Regulus. "Well - take care. Stay alive."

Regulus tries to smile.

(By the time he finds the courage to open his mouth to speak, Sirius has already gone. )

-

Sirius races down the stairs, sliding his trunk down just for the vicious satisfaction of hearing it thump-thump-thump on the ancient wood and imagining his mother wince, and is out in an instant, past the house-elf heads on the wall that he is unutterably glad never to have to see again, and at last throwing open the front door into the swirling, misty, damp cold of a winter evening.

As he sets out towards James' house, the rain begins to fall. And he laughs, ignoring the damp spots of moisture on his robes and the brooding storm-clouds ahead; he forgets, just for a second, that he hates the rain more than anything; he forgets (just for a moment) the people he left behind (he can almost believe that he will never think about them again), and thinks only that he is out, and he is free, and that it is good to be able to laugh.

end