Chapter Text
my castle crumbled overnight
SECOND YEAR
“Do you think his family is like ours?” Regulus whispers timidly in Sirius’ ear.
“What?” Sirius asks, whipping around to face his little brother, who’s snuck up on him after finally managing to extricate himself from the hissed warnings of his parents to act right, think right, be right in his first year at Hogwarts. “Who are you talking about?”
Regulus is practically covered by Sirius’ slightly taller, slightly broader frame, the tip of his nose peeking hesitantly out from behind his older brother’s arm as he extends a hand of his own to the left.
“His face…” is all Reggie says, but Sirius feels his stomach clench anxiously. Lupin’s scarred face is smiling at him from the window of a train compartment to his left. Remus looks tired, a little under the weather, but overall happy. He’s got a new cut thrashing a line through his sharp collarbone, red and jagged.
Sirius has got his own fresh scar hiding under the layers of his sickeningly stuffy tailored robes. It charts the course of his back, a wide line connecting his shoulder blades, wreaking havoc on his nerves each time he straightens his back to implement the good posture that was quite literally beaten into him. It’s courtesy of his father. He prefers lashes and bruises, lasting marks that mar the porcelain skin, turning the ugly violence into a physical mark.
His mother’s specialty is psychological scars. It figures. She always did have a sharper mind than their father. One less generation of inbreeding in her lineage or something. Her marks last longer, claw deeper, burn fiercer. They are also, conveniently, invisible.
“No,” Sirius answers Reggie, quietly. “No, his family isn’t like that.”
“But he’s got all those scars.” Reggie’s voice is full of childish confusion.
“They’re not like –” Like mine. “They’re from something else. His parents don’t –” He exhales sharply, cutting himself off.
“Most people’s parents don’t, Reggie.” He says it quickly, desperately, a sudden urge overwhelming him for Regulus to understand the wrongness of it all, to never accept it the way Sirius had begun to before coming to Hogwarts and having his eyes opened for him, before James had stared wide-eyed at the mottled, purple bruise on his shoulder and called it evil .
“You know that, right? That it’s not normal?”
Reggie looks confused again, like Sirius’ desperation is an overreaction.
“Yeah, Sirius. I know.”
Sirius thinks about yesterday evening, the way the scream had left his lips as if someone had shoved their hand into his throat and ripped it out of him, dragging it out of his mouth until he didn’t think he’d ever breathe again. The way it echoed afterwards, flitting around the frigid halls of 12 Grimmauld Place until it had bounced into every room like a sneering beach ball. The way Regulus’ mouth scrunched up bitterly like he’d tasted a lemon when he saw Sirius walking stiffly up the stairs, bleeding back exposed to the whispering portraits of long-dead relatives lining the walls. The way he was waiting on the landing for his beaten-down brother, summoned by the cries of a cursed child, concern and horror and a deeply buried sense of resignation painting his face.
And Sirius realizes that maybe his sweet, kind, innocent little brother is already light-years ahead of him, has already built his own protective walls around his heart, has already begun safeguarding the parts of him he never wants to see crumble.
Sirius was always too late. He never learned the rules quickly enough, could never understand the point of the game.
But Reggie, at only 11 years old, is already playing like an allstar.
So Sirius nods at him, wishing with all his might that Regulus didn’t know, didn’t understand, didn’t have to understand that even though it’s so, so normal for them, it’s still not right. It’s still evil.
Then he plasters on his own smile, waves brightly back at Remus, and steps onto the train, making sure Reggie is following safely behind him.
***
FOURTH YEAR
Sirius slumps into the train compartment next to Remus. James and Peter haven’t arrived yet and Sirius isn’t sure why Remus was as ungodly early as he was to show up for the Hogwarts Express, but he’s not going to start asking questions. He would like a nice, quiet, question-free train ride.
That shatters as soon as Remus opens his mouth, closing his book to focus on Sirius’ annoyed face.
“All right?” he asks. Even sitting down, Sirius can tell he’s grown about four inches over the summer, his long, gawky legs curled awkwardly under the small bench. It’s not fair, because it’s only going to make him more beautiful, and Sirius is definitely not in the mood to think about even more things he can’t have this school year.
“Fine,” he grumbles back.
Remus looks like he’s about to disagree, but then James bursts into the compartment, Peter trailing along behind him.
“What’s up with you?” James asks, taking in Sirius’ slumping frame.
“Nothing,” he hisses out in a tone eerily reminiscent of his mother. It makes him want to scream and punch something, but he can’t risk injuring himself any further.
“Sirius?” James asks in a much softer tone now. “Are you okay?”
Fuck James Potter and his soft words and his stupid pitying concern. How could Sirius ever be fine after two and a half months in Grimmauld Place?
“I’m just tired,” he huffs out. Peter’s brows are now furrowed in question too, and Sirius closes his eyes and leans his head against the cool glass of the windowpane just to show them all that he’s not in the mood to chat about his hellish summer.
“Okay,” James finally says. “We’ll wake you when we get to Scotland.”
Sirius doesn’t bother to respond.
***
Things start to go south (or more south, at least) when the welcoming feast ends and James tries to drag Sirius out of the Great Hall by his wrist, claiming they need to “get to the portrait hole quickly to avoid the maddening crowds of confused first years trying to navigate the castle’s moving staircases.”
Sirius yelps as James’ fingers close around the tender flesh of his left wrist and yank.
James instantly drops his hand, crouching down to stare wide-eyed into Sirius’ panicked eyes.
“Sirius?! Are you hurt?”
“No,” Sirius gasps out, but dammit, it really does hurt, the pain making his eyes sting and his heart jump wildly. Head Boy Frank Longbottom is looking questioningly over in their direction from his place a few seats up the Gryffindor table, one eyebrow raised. James gives him a weak smile, waving him off with his hand.
The pain is overwhelming, and it’s not getting better. It’s been thrumming absentmindedly beneath his skin all day, all summer, and no matter how much time passes, it never lessens.
Sirius squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block out all the noise of the dying feast around them, trying to find the strongest surge of pain, locate its location, and tuck it away behind his own crumbling protective walls. It’s futile. James’ mischievous eyes, Remus’ amused smirk, Peter’s encapsulating hugs, they’ve worn down his defenses.
You can’t build a fortress with a hidden doorway. It’s pointless. An entrance is an entrance. A leak is a leak. And it’s all spilling out.
“Upstairs,” he bites out, eyes still closed.
James understands intrinsically, telling Remus and Peter to “give us a minute, maybe check out the library for a bit?” and then walking steadily by Sirius’ side as he exits through the Great Hall’s looming doors. On the way out, Sirius chances a glance towards the Slytherin table, something settling low in his chest as Regulus’ eyes lock with his. He wants to tell him he’s fine, that there’s nothing to be worried about, but Reggie had been there when it happened, had heard the snap, had begged Sirius to go to Madam Pomfrey as they walked across platform 9 ¾.
There’s no use lying. Reggie’s always known too much.
James practically kicks down the door to their dorm in his haste to get inside. Then he whirls around to face Sirius, his eyes still impossibly wide, but now determined.
“What happened?” It’s quiet, but firm.
Sirius sighs heavily, sitting down on top of his monogrammed trunk.
“James,” he starts slowly, wanting desperately to tell the person he trusts most in the world but also not wanting to tell the person who always tries to fix everything. “I don’t want you to do anything about it, okay? You have to promise me.”
“Not until I’ve seen it,” James responds, calmly.
“It looks worse than it is.”
James just nods, his eyes flitting to Sirius’ left wrist.
Sirius sighs again, then rolls up the sleeve of his robe, averting his own eyes as his black and blue wrist is revealed. It’s as if someone took a paintbrush and swept a wide, black streak across the thin joint. It’s impossibly dark, standing out sickeningly from the fair skin around it. The bone is pressing into the skin at an odd angle, making Sirius’ hand look crooked, like a doll whose parts weren’t put together quite right.
It’s disgusting.
James inhales sharply. Sirius feels a ball of nausea gather in his throat.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he whispers.
“Yes, it is,” James says back, defeated. Then, after a pause, “What happened?”
Sirius shrugs halfheartedly. “She broke it.”
James just nods as if Sirius doesn’t know that that statement makes his blood hiss in his veins.
“She didn’t fix it.” It’s not a question, but Sirius still feels like James is looking for an answer.
“Wouldn’t be much of a punishment if she fixed it.”
James deflates, all the air in his lungs rushing out in one big whoosh of distress.
“That must hurt like hell.” Sirius can hear the tears in James’ voice.
He just shrugs again.
“I mean it though, you can’t tell anyone.”
This seems to spark James out of his stupor of sadness.
“Like hell I can’t! You’re hurt, Sirius. You need to go to Madam Pomfrey. She can fix it. She can give you a pain potion.”
“I said it doesn’t hurt!”
James rolls his eyes in frustration. “You’re not supposed to be in pain, Sirius! You’re not supposed to go around hurting all the time! You know that, right?”
It hits him like a belt on his back. Isn’t that exactly what he’d said to Regulus only two years ago? That all this was so wrong, wrong, wrong?
But there’s a difference between knowing and understanding.
“Of course I know that,” he replies, with more force than is really necessary. “But if Madam Pomfrey tells McGonagall and McGonagall tells Dumbledore and Dumbledore tells someone at the Ministry and someone at the Ministry comes and knocks on my parents’ door and tells them I’m over here tattling on them then it’ll be worse than a broken wrist, James!”
He slumps back so his head is resting on the edge of his bed and huffs at the ceiling.
“At least get some pain meds, Sirius. You can’t go through the whole school year with your wrist like that.”
“Why not? I’ve already got it all figured out.” He uses his good wrist to cover his eyes, resting his forearm over his forehead. “I’ll have to give up Quidditch. Can’t grip a broom correctly.” Something itchy prickles behind his eyes, and the lump is back in his throat. “That’s okay, though,” he manages to say in a steady voice. “I’ve already accepted that.”
“Sirius…” James sounds devastated, hopeless. “Please,” he begs. “We can come up with a lie, say something happened on the train. Hell, we can tell them I broke it! I don’t care; I’ll suffer the consequences. But you can’t just walk around with your wrist looking like –” He cuts himself off. “You just can’t. Please.”
The words linger in the warm September air.
“I want to be alone, James,” Sirius says finally. James makes a noise of protest, but Sirius cuts him off. “I can’t talk about this right now. Just not right now.”
The silence stretches on, but eventually Sirius hears James’ retreating footsteps, then the gentle click of the door closing. He sighs into the noiselessness, letting a couple tears trace paths down his cheeks, into his dark hair.
***
Remus finds him next. Where James is determined yet gentle, Remus has always been honest and impatient. He drinks his tea black, swallows his medicine dutifully, and tells it like it is.
“Show me your fucked up wrist,” he demands as he pushes the dorm room door open.
“No. Fuck off,” Sirius huffs out.
“I showed you my bite mark,” Remus counters, and Sirius thinks back to the smooth, waxy indentations of teeth littering Remus’ side. There’s something so reverent about them, about the way they’re stretched like a constellation from the taller boy’s rib down to his hip, how they weaved and shimmered in the moonlight that May evening of first year when Remus hesitantly lifted the hem of his pajama shirt.
Sirius swallows thickly.
“That’s not the same.”
“Frankly, Sirius, I don’t really care.” Remus sighs as he sits down on the edge of the bed next to Sirius’ head. “You’re hurt, you’re in pain, and you’re being too stubborn to let anyone help you.”
Sirius whips upward, turning in a flash to face Remus, but Lupin cuts him off before he can argue.
“And I get it, I do. But I can keep a secret. And so can Madam Pomfrey.” He gives Sirius a pointed look.
Sirius deflates a bit, but he’s not ready to give in just yet.
“What if she has to report it,” he whines. “What if there’s some rule or something? Some requirement to report…” He can’t quite get himself to say the word.
“Abuse?” Remus supplies, and Sirius physically flinches.
“We’ll tell her you hurt it falling off your broom at home but didn’t want to tell your parents because you weren’t supposed to be flying without supervision. It’s dumb enough to be something that you’d actually do, so she won’t question it,” Remus adds, a small smirk pulling at his lips. Lupin’s plan is better than James’, but Sirius still has doubts.
“Maybe,” he says, noncommittally.
He can feel Remus’ eyes running over him, and for a split second he glances up to meet his hazel gaze.
Gosh , he thinks, he’s lovely.
“It must’ve been scary.”
Sirius just shrugs, plucking absentmindedly with the fingers of his good hand at a loose thread in his bed’s comforter.
It had been terrifying. Every tiny movement of his left arm had made fire race through his limbs, had stolen his breath from his lungs. His wrist had hung there limply, like the blood flow had been cut off and the appendage was just waiting to fall off completely.
And then it had started healing, fastening in place with his bone jutting out under the thin skin and every time he looked at it he’d wanted to puke. It hadn’t made sense at first. Broken bones, physical pain, that was so much more his father’s speed than his mother’s.
Then it had made so much sense. The slow, aching realization that his wrist would be like this forever, twisted and mangled and utterly useless, that was the psychological torture Walburga excelled at.
He couldn’t lift things or put his hair up or grip his broom one-handed. She might as well have cut him in half.
“If I get you a pain potion, will you at least take that?”
When Sirius doesn’t answer right away, Remus takes his own hand, laying it gently over Sirius’ right one, stilling its movements on the blanket.
“Please,” he whispers. “I don’t want you to be in pain.”
His face is closer to Sirius’ now, only inches away, and Sirius wishes he wasn’t a coward who let his mother break him and his best friend pity him and the most beautiful boy in the world get this close without leaning forward to kiss him.
“Okay,” he chokes out, and he feels Remus’ relieved exhale brush his cheek.
“You still haven’t shown me your wrist,” Lupin reminds him, his voice still quiet.
Sirius stares for one second longer into Remus’ eyes, then slowly but steadily rolls up his left sleeve, shifting his arm so Remus can get a clear view.
Remus just blinks at it, a hard look coming over his features. He nods sharply once. Then he gets up, rummages around in his own trunk, and comes back a minute later with a small glass vial full of brown-ish liquid.
“Pain potion.” He holds it out to Sirius, who accepts it, then gives the taller boy a questioning look. “Madam Pomfrey always gives me a bit extra in case I need it before or after a full moon.”
“Then you should keep it. You might need it,” Sirius counters, already extending the vial back to Remus.
“I do need it. Right now. For you.” Sirius begins to shake his head, but Remus cuts him off with a firm, “I can always get more. Drink it.”
Sirius gives him a skeptical look, but eventually uncorks the vial, raises it to his lips, and swallows it like a shot of alcohol, his features softening and his shoulders slumping ever-so-slightly as the constant fire under his skin lessens a bit.
Remus takes the empty vial from him. “Better?”
Sirius just nods.
And then Remus leans forward and wraps his long arms around Sirius and guides him to his chest.
And Sirius could cry, he really could. Because Remus is warm and steady and smells like ink and mothballs in a sort of endearing way and he spent so long in his cold, unfeeling room alone with his dying hand and his curdled wrist and the fear that this wasn’t the worst yet to come.
But he doesn’t cry. He just rests his chin on Remus’ shoulder and lets Lupin’s heartbeat dictate his own breathing and feels the smooth, warm waters of the pain potion trickle through his aching body.
And maybe it can get worse. The logical part of him knows that it probably will. But there’s a tiny spark deep down in the recesses of his mind that thinks that maybe, just maybe, it can better, too.
***
FIFTH YEAR
They’re all called into the Great Hall for a school-wide assembly one month into the new semester. Dumbledore stands at the front of the hall, flanked by all of the Hogwarts professors, Hagrid, and Filch.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor steps forward as the last students filter into the hall. He’s a thin man, very stern looking and deadly serious, with dark, beady eyes and a sharp chin.
Sirius imagines he could be a distant cousin of the Blacks if he wasn’t so adamantly anti-dark magic.
“A scourge on Wizarding Britain,” he calls it often. Sirius finds it slightly ironic that his parents say the same thing about Muggle-borns.
Everyone knows why they’ve been gathered here. The gossip mill runs very efficiently at Hogwarts, and, more times than he’d have liked, Sirius has been at the center of one nasty rumor or another. Usually because of the pranks; sometimes because of the bruises.
This time, it’s because of Bellatrix. Because she Crucio’d a sixth year Slytherin for reasons that could’ve ranged from a simple misunderstanding to the fact that Bellatrix is just batshit crazy and would Crucio anyone for fun.
She’s managed to convince the professors that it was an accident, that she didn’t know what it would do, that she didn’t know it was an unforgivable.
Maybe she’s a really good actress.
Or maybe for her, it is. Forgivable.
She is a Black, after all.
Dumbledore silences them all with a grand sweep of his arm, then bows back to let the DADA professor take over.
“It is very important that you all pay close attention for the next hour,” he begins in a stern drawl. “We are going to discuss magic of the darkest shade, magic generally considered unforgivable.”
Sirius zones out during the section on the Imperius curse. He knows what it feels like to have someone invade his mind, break past his boundaries, disregard his screams and pleas and wild thrashes, and while Legilimens is not nearly as extreme as Imperius, he knows that if he can’t even stop his mind from being read against his wishes, then there’s no way he’ll ever break free from under the influence of the Imperius curse.
Not that he thinks his mother would use it on him. It’s too easy. Not nearly painful enough.
Things start to get interesting when the DADA professor starts in on the Cruciatus curse. Sirius and Crucio have been well-acquainted. Just like him, it’s always been an odd one out.
Avada Kedavra’s place in the unforgivable trio is obvious. Death, to most, is the most awful fate. The greatest crime.
Imperio makes sense, too. Taking away someone’s free will is extreme, unnatural, and cowardly.
But Crucio? What’s a little bit of pain doing up there with the two worst violations of someone’s freedom? It just doesn’t quite fit.
“The Cruciatus curse is the worst pain one human can cause another,” the professor adds.
Sirius snorts. Worst pain, my arse. Remus’ head turns so quickly toward him that Sirius thinks he might’ve gotten whiplash from the motion. Lupin’s eyes are questioning, his brow worried. Sirius feels an uncomfortable tingle shoot up his spine. Like there’s a rabid dog around the corner that everyone else can sense except him.
“If used long enough, it can lead to insanity and then, eventually, death.”
Oh. He didn’t know that part.
But death? Death has always felt so foreign to Sirius. Pain, fear, feelings of impending doom, these are all well-known to him. All comfortable. But death only happens to old people. Or bad people. Or people whose sadness goes too far. Death isn’t the consequence of physical pain. They’re practically opposites.
Pain shapes, teaches, motivates. Pain invigorates. His mother uses pain to make him act right, think right, be right, live right . Not to die.
“Sirius?” Remus’ voice is barely there, so quiet it fades into the gentle breeze running through the hall, but the concern is echoing off mountains.
Sirius ignores him, turning instead to find Regulus’ face in the crowd of green robes to the right. Reggie’s staring right back at him, his face sheer as lace. Regulus’s stare is so intense that his eyes are watering, his back stiff but his fingers yanking frantically at the sleeve of his robes.
And it is at this moment that Sirius knows that no one else will ever know or understand like Regulus does. Partially because Sirius can’t talk about it, because he couldn’t even find the words if he wanted to, but also because no one else was there.
But Regulus was. Regulus was there in the doorway, frozen by Sirius’ manic screams, eyes flitting wildly between his mother’s wand and his brother’s spasming body, blood from Sirius’ bitten tongue staining the pristine carpet.
Regulus was there in Sirius’ bed afterwards, holding his hand loosely, listening to Sirius’ uneven sobs, bearing witness as his brother gasped and sputtered over his choking tears.
Regulus was there, through it all, when Sirius had wanted so badly to keep it together, to not scare Reggie, even though everything had hurt, hurt, hurt; when he had wished Remus was hugging him and James was telling him he was brave; when it was so fucking cold but he didn’t know if his shivers were from the temperature or because he’d never really stopped shaking even after the curse was finally lifted.
And Regulus was there, when it happened for the second time, and the third.
He was always there.
But neither of them had known how close to death he’d been.
Sirius chokes out a wretched little sound at this revelation, unable to suppress the pure horror he feels.
This time it’s James whose head whips around at breakneck speed. “Sirius?!”
But Sirius is already on his feet, lifting his still-somewhat-mangled wrist into the air.
“Professor,” he calls out breathlessly. “I have a question.”
“Yes?” The stern man doesn’t seem pleased by the interruption, but he doesn’t seem annoyed either. Curiosity seems to win out; what on earth would a fifteen-year-old be wondering about the Cruciatus curse so vehemently that they’d ask it in front of their peers?
“How many times does it take?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I fully understand your question.”
“Until you –” Sirius breathes. In. Out. There’s no blood in his mouth. No sobs in his throat. “How many times does it take, until you…die?”
Murmurs break out in the crowd. Remus stands up instinctively just to be near Sirius. Dumbledore opens his mouth to say something, but the DADA professor beats him to it.
“The quickest death by Crucio recorded lasted 57 minutes.”
Sirius gives a sharp nod. Then he looks at Regulus. It might’ve been two minutes, it might’ve been 42. Sirius has no idea how long the pain lasts. It’s impossible to measure anything when every knife in the world is slashing through your bones, muscles, tendons, stabbing and slicing and fileting you like a cut of meat. But Reggie would know. She always makes him watch.
Regulus looks like he might throw up, which Sirius finds odd, because Reggie always hates the uncleanliness of puke.
Regulus doesn’t give him a number, just keeps staring at him, looking sickly, but Sirius decides he doesn’t need to know anyway. He’s alive, isn’t he? So it must be under 57 minutes. And he’ll just have to find a way to never let it get that close.
Sirius moves onto his next question. Remus hovers by his side, ready to catch him, tackle him, or hug him depending on what he says next.
“What are the exceptions?”
“Again, I’m sorry, but –”
“To ‘unforgivable’. For whom are these curses forgivable?”
“No one. Anyone using unforgivable curses should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, no matter their wealth, status, or political influence. Unforgivables are the great equalizer.”
It takes a second for the professor’s words to fully hit him.
And then Sirius can’t help it; he starts laughing like a maniac.
After a stunned moment of silence, Bellatrix joins him, her own shrill laughs piercing the air like arrows from a bow. Sirius thinks that although they must be laughing for very different reasons, she still gets the joke.
She is a Black, after all.
***
“Three times. All this summer. Not for that long, I don’t think.” Reggie would know.
“It doesn’t leave scars, though.” At least not like the other stuff.
“I didn’t know you could die.” I still don’t.
“It wasn’t that bad.” It was worse than it’s ever been.
“Yes, it was,” James counters. They’re sitting on his bed in their dorm, somewhere between 3 and 4 AM, red velvet curtains drawn closed hiding their bodies, a silencing spell sealing their words. Sirius will tell Remus in his own time. James had to be first. He just did.
“It was that bad,” James continues. “Even if it didn’t hurt, even if it didn’t scar, even if you didn’t know it could –” His hand clenches into a fist for a second before relaxing. “Could kill you,” he finishes in a rush, like the words cause him physical pain to say.
“It was bad, and it was wrong, and you can’t go back. I won’t –” A high-pitched noise escapes James’ throat, seemingly without his permission. “ Please don’t go back there,” he begs Sirius.
Sirius thinks of Reggie, counting passing seconds, ticking off blood drops, laying silently next to him, staring sickly up at him. He thinks of silence and hiding places and the utter translucence that is Regulus.
He thinks of his brother’s naive hope back in second year that someone else might’ve known what it was like to grow up in a family like theirs, of his simultaneous broken understanding even at eleven years old that it was all so terribly bad and wrong and not normal.
“I have to,” he realizes out loud.
He’s not sure Regulus would last 57 minutes.
He just knows he doesn’t want to find out.
Regulus has always played the game better than he has, has always understood the rules more intimately, has always wanted the pride that came with the victory more desperately.
But he hasn’t been playing alone. And Sirius isn’t about to let him start.
Not now that he knows the game is rigged.