Muses Unhired By You

Notes: The title of this chapter comes from Elizabeth Bishop's Five Flights Up. If you'd like to know why, read the poem.

The first thing Sirius notices when he steps into Grimmauld Place at the start of Christmas hols is that the house is not cold. He's always known, in the part of his brain that houses logical fact, that Grimmauld Place has about a hundred fireplaces and even more heating charms, and that he never had to use more than one blanket on his bed during any of his ten winters here. Still, somehow, in his memory the house is inextricably linked with cold, with the kind of chill that frosts the air and makes the bones ache. If he aches now, it has everything to do with the way his father looked over his head on the platform and accomplished the side-along Apparition with a rough grasp on his wrist, and nothing to do with the temperature of the place he's supposed to call home. It is warm, and he hates it just a little bit more for that.

His father has already stalked off, vicious in his silence. His mother has obviously been lying in wait for their return, a snake poised to strike, because she sweeps into the entrance way with the pride of an Empress and the manner of a thunderhead. Sirius has forgotten in four scant months how very tall she is, a statue of alabaster and ebony and sculpted larger-than-life, and how she uses that height to dominate. She stares down at him, her eyes saying that he is grubby and unkempt and pathetic. Which, to be fair, he is. But is it really necessary that she stare like that? It's all Sirius can do not to fidget, but no, even at eleven he has his pride.

"My Gryffindor son," she murmurs finally, her voice like velvet, but he knows that if he presses he'll find the blade of a knife underneath. "Home at last. You'll find your room exactly as you left it."

He knows what that means, that his curtains are still green and silver and the carved adders on his bedposts are still there to give him nightmares. In this house, Gryffindor will not be countenanced. It is Slytherin alone that matters, and he will not be allowed to forget that. He recognizes, too, the slight- upon their first Christmas return from Hogwarts, each of his cousins found her bedroom redecorated, accoutered to fit the needs of the adult that the family now perceived her to be.

It doesn't touch him. The looks, the words, the silences rush past him like a dark wind that he is shielded from, stirring the air but not his heart. He's been preparing for this for months, building a fortress to withstand their fury. After all, he knew it was coming. The complete lack of letters, the utter silence from Grimmauld Place in the aftermath of his Sorting, told him that. He's been ready for ages. He knows now that he needn't have bothered, that he wouldn't have cared anyway.

And so Sirius only nods, once, flicking his fringe out of his eyes, determined to be casual in the face of his mother's frigidity. "Thanks, mum," he says, knowing that the familiarity will infuriate her further. It does, he can tell by the way her eyes flash, and for a moment it hurts- on the platform, waiting for a father whose lateness was obviously a statement, he watched James and Remus and even simpering Peter be scooped up into motherly arms, petted and cosseted in reward for joyous cries of "Hey, mum, over here!" He knew, he's always known, that his mother would never be pleased to hear the informality pass his lips. Still, it stings for a moment. But only for a moment.

He turns on his heel and starts up the steps, humming the tune of a rather dirty song that James taught him the second week of school. It's a minor rebellion in that nobody listening will know the words that go with the melody; only his seeming cheer will annoy. Still, it grants him a kind of dignity, this Devil-May-Care attitude. After all, what choice have they left him? It's prance up the stairs childishly singing his own spiteful song, or cower and plead for a scrap of good graces, for forgiveness for a thing that he didn't ask for. Well. He's got that much Gryffindor in him, at least. He isn't going to beg.

That these aren't the thoughts an eleven-year-old-boy ought to be having he knows dimly. He's had his first taste of childhood in the past four months, and he is slowly starting to realize that what he had in Grimmauld Place was not one. The thought is vaguely disquieting, too introspective, and he avoids it as much as possible. What choice does he have? It's one thing to be a kid in Hogwarts, to rage and laugh with his new friends, to mutter comments that he doesn't truly understand about sticks up pureblood arses, to think of nothing past the next glass of pumpkin juice and how to get out of that charms essay. If he thinks like that here, he's lost. And so he'll be the adult that they've made him on the inside of his head, and outside he'll be the boy that they never let him be, and somehow between the two he won't go mad. That's the choice, he reasons- think the adult thoughts that Grimmauld Place requires, no matter how much he hates them, or go mad. He'd rather be an adult than mad. He supposes that that will change someday, that he'll come to the end of his rope and start screaming, piss on the walls, paint his body red and gold and dance naked on his parent's separate beds. For now, he just sends a careless grin over his shoulder and gives a calculated rap to the top of the banister before disappearing down the hall.

Regulus ruins his plans. Regulus, the little brother for whom he's hidden broken vases and smuggled soiled sheets, the little brother who he's allowed to climb into bed with him on countless stormy nights. Regulus, who is framed briefly in his doorway as Sirius passes it. Regulus, who greets his smile with a look of utter disgust before slamming the door in his face. Regulus, who mercifully does not open it again to see that Sirius breaks into a run in the corridor and slams his own door.

He isn't ready for this. He should have spent all that time fortifying himself against the wrath of his parents instead on fortifying himself against the disgust of his brother. But he didn't, and as a result he nearly breaks.

He'd thought- oh, Merlin, what an idiot. He'd thought that Regulus would be secretly happy for him, would be thrilled to see him, would creep into his room to laugh about the look on Mother's face when she got the news and ask about the Tower. He'd thought that Regulus would, against all odds, join him next year- after all, hadn't his own Sorting been against all odds? And yet there it was. Why not his brother? And then there would be the two of them, together like always, leaving hidden notes for each other and laughing because they understood, the two of them, they understood.

But he knows, now, knows with the sort of certainty that only a child can muster that Regulus's Sorting will be swift and painless and will redeem the family, that it will be nothing like his own.

I recognize you, child. You're a Black. I suppose we know where you're going, hmm?

Just get it over with. I'm hungry.

Ah, ah, ah. I think I'll take my time with you.

Don't be stupid, just say it.

Well, you've got that Slytherin arrogance, that's for sure. Or is it Gryffindor pride? Some might say it's the same thing.

Oh, please.

I see intelligence here, for all your simple answers. Yes, you're brilliant, and you know it, more's the pity.

Oh, yes, make me a Ravenclaw. Right.

You'd certainly stir them up. But what else can I find? Oh, my, look at that loyalty. You're fierce as a dog when you love something, aren't you? Shall it be Hufflepuff, then?

Would you just shut up and say it?

Not many speak to me like that, young man. And such passion!

I'm not speaking.

But you're right. I know just what I'm going to do with you.

What a surprise. Just-

"Gryffindor!"

And in the split second before shock and mortification numb him for the walk to the red-and-gold table, the fierceness of his relief is palpable.

Not for Regulus, that. Only him. Alone.

And then, because no matter what he thinks he is really just a child, he sobs the scalding tears of a child broken-hearted with the loss of a toy, a pet, a best friend. He sobs, and the snot and the tears soak the green pillow that he clutches to himself, and they might as well be blood because in the end he is as exhausted as he would be had he dyed the pillowcase red with his own essence. When he sleeps it is in a tight curl, small, his position echoing some deep and hidden longing for a womb whose owner no longer has any use for him at all.

He wakes up like that, every muscle in pain from the tightness of the coil that he didn't relinquish all night. It is dark as pitch in his room because his ancestors liked to include the colour that they were named for in their decorating alongside Slytherin silver and green. Also, his curtains are drawn, a fact which he acknowledges with disproportionately incoherent anger. He flings himself from his bed, ignoring the bruised knee this affords him, and yanks them open with a violence that actually tears one from its rod. The panes of glass open out under his touch, and he leans into the night air, his eyes straining over the lights of the city to find the stars. He knows he's named for one, but he doesn't know which, and so in a ritual he's undertaken for every upset that he can remember, he chooses one at random.

"That's me," he whispers to the darkness. "I'm that." It allows him to lift his chin, to rub at his throbbing eyes with a dispassionate hand.

Then, with all the rash pride of youth: "And stars don't cry." Though he doesn't say it, he means that he's done, done caring, done hurting, done done done. Regulus can go hang. He is what he is, everything they've made him, everything he's made himself- small adult, reckless child, careless youth, dishonored Scion, Gryffindor. And to hell with all of them.

He pulls back in the window, and pads down to the bathroom, and then returns to test the meager knowledge he's gained of transfiguration. By the time the sun has risen, the bedroom carpet is a red with only a slight sheen of green to it, and the quilt is a startling shade of gold, and the snakes almost resemble lions, and he is calm, and he is proud.

His parents are both in the dining room when he goes down. Regulus isn't, but he doesn't care. At least he tells himself he doesn't care. Whether or not it's true can wait for examination, to be dealt with in a day or a year or never, whenever the time comes when he can be certain that it really is.

His father's eyes flick up and then back down when he enters; his mother's do not. And so it is to their foreheads rather than to their gazes that he speaks.

"I'm going back to school," he says, his throat aching with the effort it takes to control the tremble that wants to be in his voice. "Now, today. I've Owled Dumbledore and it's all right."

There is silence from the table for a century. Kreacher comes in with a tray, sends him a venomous glare, mutters as he leaves.

Finally, in that cultivated sneer that his mother calls a voice, "Running back to Gryffindor? My, that didn't take long. I thought you people," the word a delicate irony, "were supposed to be brave. Hmm, well, I suppose that thing had to put you somewhere, even if you weren't suitable for the true house."

"Maybe," he replied quickly, and he can't stop the tremble this time, can only stop the tears because he's sworn to, "maybe by this summer you'll have thought of a different way of handling this. If not, I'll find somewhere. Uncle Alphard would take me. Andromeda might take me." He hadn't meant to say the last name; it is a barb, unintended and unwise, the only spite he has to hand. It is a warning. He is what he is, as nasty as Walburga, and maybe he'll shame her the way her brother has been shamed. For now, it is only Gryffindor.

She does not, of course, respond. Her lashes do not so much as flicker. Neither does she dismiss him.

He leaves anyway, out the door and down the street and onto the train without goodbyes. Though it will be five more years before he officially flees into a strangely warm summer in a world gone mad, the true moment of his departure can be pinpointed to a freezing morning in December when a child on the edge of adolescence strolls with forced cheerfulness down a London street, and another boy watches him go with his hand on the window pane. Sirius does not look back to see his brother's wave.