A last hurrah.
Jul. 15th, 2005 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cygna_himeOr, one last piece of fic before all I've been working on gets Jossed, and I have to start all over.
Sirius awoke in a completely black landscape. He could see less than nothing. The air around him was as dark as his cousin's eyes, with none of their mad light. He could see himself glowing slightly, but the small light was lost in the crushing dark.
"Where am I?" he asked, not expecting an answer. He didn't get one. "I was fighting--Bella must have hit me with something, and I fell..." Sirius could almost see himself falling backwards, toward the archway he had noticed behind him-- "Oh. Shit." He was dead. If half the stories they told about that thing were true, he was very dead indeed.
"So," he said to himself, "what to do next? There's nothing here. May as well go on and see where I am."
He started walking in no particular direction. The night thickened around him. He could almost hear owls, and wondered if there were monsters here. It was probably just his imagination. He didn't think monsters could hurt dead people, anyway. As he went further, the solid darkness around him acquired the tone of a hallway, like some of the passages that curved through the walls of Hogwarts. Sirius could see a door at the end of the hall. He walked toward it, sure that behind it was his destination, whatever that was. Briskly, he turned the handle and swung it open.
The light from inside was so bright, Sirius found himself temporarily blinded. The first thing he did see was an elderly wizard coming toward him with a wide grin on his face, a face Sirius could recognise without effort though it had been twenty years since he had seen it last.
"Hello, Uncle," he said easily.
"There you are!" said his Uncle Alphard happily. "We'd been wondering what was keeping you!"
"We?" said Sirius stupidly.
"Of course! It's only polite to have friends here to greet the newly deceased. Come on, I'm sure there are some you'll be very happy to see again!"
Sirius grinned. His uncle was exactly the same as he had ever been; jovial, energetic, and kindly.
The first person he saw among the crowd of relatives and schoolmates was the one he had been hoping most to see: James Potter, hair still perenially askew, grinning as if his face would burst.
"Prongs!" Sirius exclaimed, feeling the same expression on his own face. He threw his arms around his best friend and hugged him fiercely. James hugged him back, just as jubilant.
"We've been waiting for you these fifteen years," James said cheerfully. "Took your time about it, didn't you?"
"Now, James," Lily said reprovingly from behind her husband, "Sirius can't help it. He's always been a bit slow."
"Why, you-!" Sirius growled in mock offense.
Time, or something like it, wound on in that room. Sirius found himself being introduced to some relatives he had never met, and reintroduced to many he had. He told Lily all about Harry's progress in school and the war; though the dead could watch the world around them, it wasn't the same as really being there. He nodded cheerfully to his cousin Alhena, who had been a Ravenclaw a year younger than he, and to her sister Mahala. He assured Uncle Alphard that he had willed all the property he could away from his immediate family. All the while he talked and laughed, however, Sirius caught himself looking around for someone, he did not know who, and waiting for something, he did not know what.
It happened when the crowd of distant relatives and remote acquaintances had thinned away, and only his true friends were left. From a corner, a pale-haired young man whom Sirius vaguely recognised as one of the innumerable second cousins stood up, tugging another young man by the hands.
"Come on," he heard the fair boy say, "you should at least say hello. What's the worst that can happen?"
His companion said nothing, but permitted himself to be led up to Sirius. Only when they were practically touching did he raise his face, turning up to Sirius a set of features that had always been almost freakishly like his own.
"Regulus," Sirius breathed.
"Sirius," said his brother coolly, in the tone that had once meant he was nervous and too nervous to show it. "Hello."
Sirius gaped at him. "What're you doing here?"
"I'm dead, Sirius. What do you think?" Regulus's dark blue eyes glittered with something that could almost have been humour. "It's a very popular occupation in these parts."
"You know what I meant!" Sirius snarled, irritated in the way only his little brother had ever been able to irritate him. "What are you doing right here, now?"
"According to Mordred, trying to make things right between us. Look, Sir-Sirius," and there it was, the catch in Regulus's voice that only appeared when he was being far more honest than any Slytherin ought to be, "I know you never understood me, and I never understood you. Can we...agree that we're just different, and neither of us is wholly right?"
"I don't see why I should," Sirius replied. "You chose the wrong side. Everyone knows it. You were wrong, and that's all there is to it."
Regulus stole a glance sideways at his cousin, sighed, and began again, "I know. I was on the wrong side. We all were. I know that now. But can you at least believe that I didn't know it then?"
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I told you a dozen times. How could you not know."
"I told you a dozen times that you were wrong to deliberately antagonize our parents, but that never made you think I was right, did it?"
"Fine." Sirius could see the justice in his brother's words, little though he wanted to. "You still should have listened."
Regulus looked at him. "Yes, yes, I should. I should have listened when you told me, I should have listened when I started to hear the rumours, I should have listened when Father was killed. I didn't. It doesn't matter. 'Should have' can't change anything.
"I believed we would survive, Sirius. I believed we would survive, and the radicals would be the ones to die. I was wrong. So were you."
"What?!"
"You thought you could come out unscathed, with all your friends by your side. You thought wands would win the war. You thought nothing could hurt you. So, you see, you were wrong too." Regulus spoke flatly, as though he were reciting a prepared speech. Perhaps he was.
"What," Sirius said grimly, "are you trying to say?"
"I--" For a moment, Regulus was dumbfounded. Then he found his voice and said, "I can't say exactly. Maybe that we were not as different as you thought? That there are more than two sides? That...that we don't have to be enemies?" The last was said in almost a whisper. He refused to look at his brother.
"Is that all?"
Regulus looked up, startled. "What do you mean?"
Sirius grinned. "Regulus, you are the most annoying person on the face of the earth--or wherever. You'll do anything to avoid taking a firm side, you think over everything you say twice before you say it in case someone gets offended, you look so much like me yet act like my complete opposite--and you're my little brother. Nothing ever changed that."
Regulus offered the small quirk of the lips that passed as his smile. "Good." Without warning, he was hugging Sirius, still-frail arms holding him tightly. Sirius wondered for a moment why they hadn't touched like this more when Regulus had been still alive.
"So," Regulus said, cheerfully for him, "are the calls of family still too strong for you, or would you like to come meet my friends? We're almost all here," he said, with a flicker of the sadness Sirius had been used to seeing.
"Your friends?" Sirius realised two things almost at once: that he had never even thought about Regulus's friends before, and that he did indeed want to meet them. "Do you think your friends would want to see me?"
"Mother disapproved of them."
"I don't remember that!"
"That would be because she only managed to disapprove for five minutes at a go before your even less respectable friends distracted her."
Happier than they had been together in years, the two brothers walked off down the dead hallway, arm in arm.
I love my Black boys. Okay, I love Regulus, and I will put up with Dead!Sirius for his sake. Teen!Sirius, fortunately, neither I nor Regulus can stand.
HBP minus fifty-three minutes.
Sirius awoke in a completely black landscape. He could see less than nothing. The air around him was as dark as his cousin's eyes, with none of their mad light. He could see himself glowing slightly, but the small light was lost in the crushing dark.
"Where am I?" he asked, not expecting an answer. He didn't get one. "I was fighting--Bella must have hit me with something, and I fell..." Sirius could almost see himself falling backwards, toward the archway he had noticed behind him-- "Oh. Shit." He was dead. If half the stories they told about that thing were true, he was very dead indeed.
"So," he said to himself, "what to do next? There's nothing here. May as well go on and see where I am."
He started walking in no particular direction. The night thickened around him. He could almost hear owls, and wondered if there were monsters here. It was probably just his imagination. He didn't think monsters could hurt dead people, anyway. As he went further, the solid darkness around him acquired the tone of a hallway, like some of the passages that curved through the walls of Hogwarts. Sirius could see a door at the end of the hall. He walked toward it, sure that behind it was his destination, whatever that was. Briskly, he turned the handle and swung it open.
The light from inside was so bright, Sirius found himself temporarily blinded. The first thing he did see was an elderly wizard coming toward him with a wide grin on his face, a face Sirius could recognise without effort though it had been twenty years since he had seen it last.
"Hello, Uncle," he said easily.
"There you are!" said his Uncle Alphard happily. "We'd been wondering what was keeping you!"
"We?" said Sirius stupidly.
"Of course! It's only polite to have friends here to greet the newly deceased. Come on, I'm sure there are some you'll be very happy to see again!"
Sirius grinned. His uncle was exactly the same as he had ever been; jovial, energetic, and kindly.
The first person he saw among the crowd of relatives and schoolmates was the one he had been hoping most to see: James Potter, hair still perenially askew, grinning as if his face would burst.
"Prongs!" Sirius exclaimed, feeling the same expression on his own face. He threw his arms around his best friend and hugged him fiercely. James hugged him back, just as jubilant.
"We've been waiting for you these fifteen years," James said cheerfully. "Took your time about it, didn't you?"
"Now, James," Lily said reprovingly from behind her husband, "Sirius can't help it. He's always been a bit slow."
"Why, you-!" Sirius growled in mock offense.
Time, or something like it, wound on in that room. Sirius found himself being introduced to some relatives he had never met, and reintroduced to many he had. He told Lily all about Harry's progress in school and the war; though the dead could watch the world around them, it wasn't the same as really being there. He nodded cheerfully to his cousin Alhena, who had been a Ravenclaw a year younger than he, and to her sister Mahala. He assured Uncle Alphard that he had willed all the property he could away from his immediate family. All the while he talked and laughed, however, Sirius caught himself looking around for someone, he did not know who, and waiting for something, he did not know what.
It happened when the crowd of distant relatives and remote acquaintances had thinned away, and only his true friends were left. From a corner, a pale-haired young man whom Sirius vaguely recognised as one of the innumerable second cousins stood up, tugging another young man by the hands.
"Come on," he heard the fair boy say, "you should at least say hello. What's the worst that can happen?"
His companion said nothing, but permitted himself to be led up to Sirius. Only when they were practically touching did he raise his face, turning up to Sirius a set of features that had always been almost freakishly like his own.
"Regulus," Sirius breathed.
"Sirius," said his brother coolly, in the tone that had once meant he was nervous and too nervous to show it. "Hello."
Sirius gaped at him. "What're you doing here?"
"I'm dead, Sirius. What do you think?" Regulus's dark blue eyes glittered with something that could almost have been humour. "It's a very popular occupation in these parts."
"You know what I meant!" Sirius snarled, irritated in the way only his little brother had ever been able to irritate him. "What are you doing right here, now?"
"According to Mordred, trying to make things right between us. Look, Sir-Sirius," and there it was, the catch in Regulus's voice that only appeared when he was being far more honest than any Slytherin ought to be, "I know you never understood me, and I never understood you. Can we...agree that we're just different, and neither of us is wholly right?"
"I don't see why I should," Sirius replied. "You chose the wrong side. Everyone knows it. You were wrong, and that's all there is to it."
Regulus stole a glance sideways at his cousin, sighed, and began again, "I know. I was on the wrong side. We all were. I know that now. But can you at least believe that I didn't know it then?"
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I told you a dozen times. How could you not know."
"I told you a dozen times that you were wrong to deliberately antagonize our parents, but that never made you think I was right, did it?"
"Fine." Sirius could see the justice in his brother's words, little though he wanted to. "You still should have listened."
Regulus looked at him. "Yes, yes, I should. I should have listened when you told me, I should have listened when I started to hear the rumours, I should have listened when Father was killed. I didn't. It doesn't matter. 'Should have' can't change anything.
"I believed we would survive, Sirius. I believed we would survive, and the radicals would be the ones to die. I was wrong. So were you."
"What?!"
"You thought you could come out unscathed, with all your friends by your side. You thought wands would win the war. You thought nothing could hurt you. So, you see, you were wrong too." Regulus spoke flatly, as though he were reciting a prepared speech. Perhaps he was.
"What," Sirius said grimly, "are you trying to say?"
"I--" For a moment, Regulus was dumbfounded. Then he found his voice and said, "I can't say exactly. Maybe that we were not as different as you thought? That there are more than two sides? That...that we don't have to be enemies?" The last was said in almost a whisper. He refused to look at his brother.
"Is that all?"
Regulus looked up, startled. "What do you mean?"
Sirius grinned. "Regulus, you are the most annoying person on the face of the earth--or wherever. You'll do anything to avoid taking a firm side, you think over everything you say twice before you say it in case someone gets offended, you look so much like me yet act like my complete opposite--and you're my little brother. Nothing ever changed that."
Regulus offered the small quirk of the lips that passed as his smile. "Good." Without warning, he was hugging Sirius, still-frail arms holding him tightly. Sirius wondered for a moment why they hadn't touched like this more when Regulus had been still alive.
"So," Regulus said, cheerfully for him, "are the calls of family still too strong for you, or would you like to come meet my friends? We're almost all here," he said, with a flicker of the sadness Sirius had been used to seeing.
"Your friends?" Sirius realised two things almost at once: that he had never even thought about Regulus's friends before, and that he did indeed want to meet them. "Do you think your friends would want to see me?"
"Mother disapproved of them."
"I don't remember that!"
"That would be because she only managed to disapprove for five minutes at a go before your even less respectable friends distracted her."
Happier than they had been together in years, the two brothers walked off down the dead hallway, arm in arm.
I love my Black boys. Okay, I love Regulus, and I will put up with Dead!Sirius for his sake. Teen!Sirius, fortunately, neither I nor Regulus can stand.
HBP minus fifty-three minutes.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-15 10:33 pm (UTC)HBP has come out, my-friend-who-I'm-staying-with-and-who-is-letting-me-read-it-after-her has gotten it, and I'm...online, waiting to go to bed because she certainly ain't planning to for a while. *stolen internet time, yay!*
...not to nag, of course, but did you recieve my story? *worryworry* I'm leaving early-in-the-morning Sunday, and the story isn't formatted at all, and it's an awful story which I'm quite ashamed at attaching my name to and...okay, stopping now, as I've no doubt I'm getting annoying. *sigh* *worries anyway* ^_^ Thanks again for doing it; hope you enjoy HP#6.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-16 09:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-16 10:08 am (UTC)