Relics

It was truly remarkable, in a sad, ironic sort of way, how very little and yet how much Azkaban had changed Sirius. Azkaban had no doubt made him many things, embittered and haunted being among them, but it never made him grow up. He was was always brash, headstrong, volatile, and always a rebellious youth at heart.

He was, essentially, still Sirius. The core of his being was as it always had been. He'd been twenty-two years old when he'd gone to Azkaban, and in many ways he was twenty-two when he came out: a brash, embittered, headstrong, haunted, volatile twenty-two year old in a withered body.

After all, how do you grow up incased by stone walls, with only your worst memories for company?

It struck me when I came to Grimmauld Place for the first time. With the great black dog at my side, I set foot on the creaking floorboards that had not felt human weight in years, and I smelled the distinctive staleness of the air as the dog became a man beside me. The moment his face was capable of human expression, it expressed that curious formula of hatred and regret I had only ever attributed to his family.

I don't think he was ever conscious of the expressed regret. I think he was careful to show nothing but hatred when it came to them. He usually did a good job of it, too. His father and brother died within months of each other and he didn't go to either funeral. In fact, he hardly mentioned it at all, and when he did his voice was harsh and bitter.

"It was only a matter of time, the brainless, self-righteous gits. I'm surprised they lived as long as they did." I knew he wasn't all anger. I just did. I just knew a part of him was saddened by their deaths, and that a part of him wished they had truly been a family. He would never admit it - not in a million years. But more than once he let the mask slip.

This was no different.

"God, I hate this place. It still feels the same. All cold and...and evil. Damn pureblood nutters, they've gone and let all the dust settle. I guess I should take it as a welcome sign that filthy elf's finally got himself killed..."

It was reminiscent of a rant I'd heard many times in the past, whenever he'd been forced to go home during our time at Hogwarts. He would always become unbearably moody during those weeks approaching summer holiday, at least until sixth year, at which point he was living with James. Rants about his family were more frequent than usual, and sometimes they were involuntarily tinged with sadness.

"I wonder if Regulus' room is still the same as ever. Mum always was the type to let useless relics clog up space...I'm sure she couldn't stand to discard any trinkets that had belonged to her precious little pureblood prince."

I had no way of knowing at the time that he would spend the rest of his life in that musty old hellhole, reeking of pure blood and dark magic. I did have an ominous feeling that Number 12 Grimmauld Place may as well have been Azkaban, and that its walls would hold him prisoner far longer than anyone was willing to admit. But no premonition or ominous twinge of heightened werewolf muscle would have swayed me from my course, and that was to keep Sirius alive and sane at any cost.

"I know you hate being here, Padfoot, but it's for your own good. You're the world's most wanted man - second in the wizarding world only to Voldemort. This is the most secure place there is...besides, it's only temporary."

I'd said it in that old cajoling voice, like I might've said "Lighten up, Pads, it's only summer hols, you'll be back at school before you know it."

I think he laughed sardonically then, but I never could recall with absolute precision. Sometimes I wonder if my memories of him are tainted by my bitter imaginings, which spanned the twelve years between his first death and his resurrection. For those years he was a cold-blooded killer, all red eyes and grisly grin, and as such he made enough appearances in my nightmares to transcend any fullness of memory, realness of touch, or genuinely recalled fondness I had ever known. I sometimes think, or fear, rather, that those bitter imaginings have lived on somewhere in the backroom of my psyche, only to seep through the self-made lines which separate them from actual remembrance.

And so, when I think of Sirius and I recall bitingly harsh laughter, I cannot help but wonder if I am remembering something real or something imagined. Perhaps it is a combination of both, each merging with the other to form a muddle of truth and falsity.

In any case, I was certain he didn't believe me. I was, and still am, certain he knew I was being my old cajoling self because it was what the times demanded of me. But it wasn't a matter of honesty, and even Sirius, tangled up in his arrested development and hotheaded egotism, recognized that. It was a matter of sanity, and hope, and staying alive through sheer force of will and wrath and wounded pride.

So he gave a barking laugh, short and callous, or maybe he didn't. But he did not challenge my indignant optimism any more than he would have challenged the very air he breathed.

When I watched Sirius, I would sometimes take notice of little things that heralded back to his former self - that familiar glint of mischief in his bright gray eyes, a cocky half-smile when he told me that I worried too much, or the way he would toss his head to rid his visage of a few stray dark hairs. His bark-like laugh was still loud and infectious, though it was heard less and less often with each passing day. And with each passing day it became more scornful than jubilant, so that it was nearly painful to hear at times.

But I held on to the things that were of the past, and I poured myself into nurturing them, for fear that they might vanish altogether and leave me with the imagined Sirius of my nightmares. I haven't stopped nurturing those things out of the self-same fear, and I doubt that I ever will.

When the Sirius of the lost years, with the red eyes and the grisly grin, appears in my dreams, I awaken with a start and I don't sleep for the remainder of the night. I get out of bed and look through old photographs of times when we laughed, not out of belligerent scorn but out of pure joy. Because that is the Sirius I strive to remember. Because it would hardly be fair to think of him in any other way: as the broken madman with haunted eyes, wronged and desperate for revenge, or else the grim-faced carcass, wasting away in the home of his tormented childhood memories. There are some who will think of him in those ways, because that is how they knew him. And years past now, when this war has breathed its last, people who didn't know him will look back and think of him as the murderer in moving photographs and headlines but nothing more. But when I think of Sirius, he will always be laughing.

Tonight I fall asleep with images of a bright-eyed laughing boy. When those images fade and morph into something terrible, I will turn them back again.

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