
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/371221.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Sirius_Black/Bellatrix_Lestrange, Sirius_Black/Remus_Lupin
  Character:
      Sirius_Black, Bellatrix_Lestrange, Remus_Lupin
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-03-29 Words: 7084
****** Better The Devil ******
by sirius
Summary
     For the BFF, because the best present for one's birthday is clearly
     Blackcest. I played fast and loose with First Wizarding War canon
     here, i.e. switching the Longbottoms for the Potters. And, uh, the
     Marauders all survived.
Notes
     Please note, this fic contains: incest, triggering sexual content,
     violence, angst and rude language.
“What was the happiest moment of your life?”
 
                                      ---
 
June '79. Probably the 18th, but Sirius isn't counting. Or caring. The sun is
so high in the sky that it looks just about ready to float away. The grass is
warm and clammy-smelling, wondrously intoxicating. There's nothing like the
thick scent of grass. Enthusiasm isn't something he does unless it's Quidditch
because, well, he's a teenage boy – but the feeling is there nonetheless. A
little crystal of sensical thought. He wants to offer it to Remus wrapped in
ribbon. One of the many things he wants to offer Remus wrapped in ribbon. Remus
has a book. James has his fingers in his hair and his eyes somewhere off in the
middle-distance and it doesn't matter, because Remus has a book and Remus is
reading it, as if it doesn't matter that James is finger-combing and Sirius is
staring at Remus like an idiot. His long fingers turn the pages. The paper
takes a small breath as it falls. There's a breeze in the air but it doesn't
touch the paper – maybe Sirius has added the detail afterwards – and Remus has
loosened his tie and the top button of his shirt so as to take advantage of it.

                                      ---
 
This is a question that's been fucking with him for nearly three hours. Partly
because he knows the answer and it simply hurts. Partly because the happiest
moment of his life happened roughly twenty minutes before the unhappiest. This
moment is one of the many that have marked him out as somehow unsanitary;
normal people have normal happy memories, not ones spoiled by initial
humiliation and a subsequent grudge.
 
                                      ---
 
It's so hot. Hot enough to cook a person, Sirius thinks, and that's a crystal
too but Remus isn't in the mood for Sirius' wisdom. So Sirius kicks James'
ankle with his foot, once and twice and then and only then does James tear his
eyes away from Lily Sodding Evans. His face is indignant and pained, though,
and Sirius curses him for being able to feel like this; so pathetically open,
so above criticism and shame.
“It's hot enough to cook a person,” Sirius says, adds “a Slytherin person.”
Because James, unlike Remus, cares less for sensical thought than for great
mental imagery.
“I'm being cooked right now,” Peter says. He is lying almost with his head in
the lake and all kinds of pond life are likely crawling into his hair. Remus
doesn't even look up. Sirius eyes Peter briefly which Peter almost seems to
sense as he draws his shirt down a bit.
“Right you are,” James says. “Cooking grandly. Should've done that spell for
stopping your face from burning, what's it called?”
The book must be bloody good because Remus doesn't answer. And that means that
Sirius doesn't care about Peter's face, burnt or otherwise.
“Snivellus' hair is probably on fire by now, what with all the cooking fat,” he
says. “They're probably using him to heat up their entrails.”
“Who is? Whose entrails?” James says. “What're you on about?”
“Slytherin people. Hufflepuff entrails. I don't know. Stop looking at me to
provide conversation. It's too hot.”
“I wasn't – you started talking. I was busy and then you were talking. I
thought you had, you know, a thought-”
“You were busy stalking,” Sirius says. “I did have a thought. About cooking
people. Which makes my thought a whole ton better than your thoughts.”
James' face is so unimpressed that Sirius thinks it might reject him and them
and life itself. Slide off into the lake. Or Peter's hair. Whichever is
closest.
“You have decried all that is holy and good.” James says. “Shame on you.”
And he turns his head back, fingers hungrily poised – and then he grunts, loud
and cross, because of course Lily Sodding Evans has better things to do than be
stared at by lunatics all day. “Fuck,” he says, which Sirius catches only on
the edge of the breeze. He's back to looking at Remus' long fingers and
wondering if he really is being cooked alive, because every organ feels like
it's being slowly licked by a dragon.

                                      ---
 
Why anyone thinks this shit is consoling, he'll never know. He's starting to
really worry about Dumbledore. Not that he ever wasn't, really, but. Kansas has
gone and he isn't at Hogwarts anymore. That and Dumbledore's happiest memory
apparently involves being locked up in his bedroom for weeks on end and writing
letters to some other boy. Sirius has been there, done that, burned the t-
shirt. There are people who probably relate to it, though. People Sirius
doesn't really want to think about. “It helps to think about these things in
times of one's need,” Dumbledore is saying. “Lighting a candle in the mind, you
might say. I'll leave you to chew on it. Need to steal a moment of Alastair's
precious time- you know, I think there's a spell in there somewhere, happy
thoughts. Hm. Well, must be off.” Mad, Sirius thinks. Completely mad. It
doesn't even help. There's nothing that will help. He's so fucked that he's
glad to be doing what he's doing now, if only to have a reason to feel so angry
all the time. The war is over, the right side won – if you call what happened
'winning' – and yet he still feels precisely the same as he did three weeks
ago, when they were right in the thick of it. At least working on Bellatrix's
trial gives him an excuse. He's tired of faking happy, of thinking happy. One
thing all these people should know by now is that there's no point in happy
thoughts; things just happen, life just turns, the world just shits on people
at random. You could carry an umbrella all the time but that takes effort and
who wants to live in a world where you have to have an umbrella on you all the
time. Where you have to always expect rain. Fuck, he thinks. Now he's wondering
what the happiest moment of Remus' life is.
 
                                      ---
 
He doesn't know right there and then that this moment is it, not exactly.
Nobody does. Nobody lives through a moment completely aware of its
significance. It's only after, with the music playing in your mind and the
extraneous details added, that a moment begins to form meaning. But he wasn't
entirely ignorant of its importance. At the time he sensed that something about
it was different; like the way magic feels thrumming through a wand when it's
working versus when it isn't. He sensed that he was on the precipice of
something. The world stopped turning, if only for a second. A whole lifetime of
moments were immediately condensed into one or two seconds: a life, his life,
was crammed down into one tiny amazing box. All of the breaths he'd ever taken
smashed together into one great gulping one. All of the heartbeats he'd ever
felt ran the ladder from his stomach to his mouth. That's the kind of thing he
wishes he'd said, at the time, because he knows now that it would've made the
difference between what happened and what could've.

                                      ---
 
The thing about Bellatrix is that she defies understanding. On the surface
she's very simplistic and the headlines in the Daily Prophet have capitalised
on it with catchphrases. Psychopath, sociopath, hedonist, lunatic. Even sexual
sadist, that week in September when the journalists were feeling especially
fruity. Sirius gets it. Nobody wants anyone to relate to this creature, not
after everything she's done and every Dark Mark she stood for. Plus to add
extra offence, she's a woman. It revolts people, disturbs them; makes her the
kind of societal smudge that they can all agree should be rubbed away. They
couldn't catch Voldemort. He had the decency to dissolve into vapour, to
vanish. Bellatrix's feet are still lodged firm in the Earth. Her eye is on the
sky, her brain is thick with desire, her voice is a landslide of devotion.
She's a good and necessary target. The victors will pursue her execution with
just as much fervour as she pursued theirs. And he one of them. He's staring at
the blank parchment and the quill is nudging ink onto the curve of his hand.
This should be a lot easier than it is. Everything about this should be a lot
easier than it is. All he's being asked to do is write notes about her. About
their childhood. Evidence of her early madness. Little titbits of
totalitarianism. Lovely crumbs of cruelty. Shit like that. It's not that he
can't think of anything. He can think of lots of things. It's just that his
quill stills in his hand and he can't commit to any of them. He files the paper
away in his drawer and he stands to leave; legs unsteady, brain unfocussed,
dreams unrealised.
 
Name: Bellatrix Lestrange
Born: 1951, to Cygnus and Druella Black
Siblings: Narcissa Malfoy, Andromeda Tonks
Childhood tendencies: fuck this
 
He slopes back to his place feeling so exhausted that he can't even be bothered
to fix dinner. He can't even be bothered to draw the curtains. So he doesn't.
He just falls into bed and wonders, dangerously, whether Remus and the
uselessness he describes as his fiancee are lying awake, right now, discussing
the uselessness that is getting married.
 
He's eight and his shoes don't fit, much to her Majesty's displeasure. Whilst
his mother is wailing to some unlucky lackey, he's outside on the street
barefoot. The rebellion feels cool and sharp but he can't make himself run.
He's trying, but whatever part of him recognises his own insignificance glues
him solid. The part of him that knows that without this family, he is nothing.
He won't survive. Still, the shrill tremor of his mother's voice, locked in the
slippery dark walls he's left behind – it's enough to make him want so hard to
try. Then there's a hand on his shoulder and it's a hot hand which enables him
to quickly identify it. He hasn't learnt to flinch away from it yet but he
will. He knows immediately that the only other person in this family who feels
warm to the touch is his aunt Bella, and he knows it because she so often draws
him close. It's something he still trusts. One of the only things. The clouds
are grey and there's a threat of rain because the air is stony in his lungs.
She's crouching down now and looking him up and down, from the bare feet to the
hair pulled tightly back. Her Majesty's pleasure. He feels suddenly embarrassed
at his lack of shoes.
“Well,” she says. “I suppose you don't have a garden to play in.”
And that was that. She stands with him for some time, a strange couple waiting
for something. His mother's voice grows dimmer, as if sucked in by the black
hole that is 12 Grimmauld Place. He knows Bella will have to leave soon. He
never looks forward to her visiting, but when she leaves it makes him feel sad.
“Wanting to run away?” she asks. He finds it in himself to nod.
“I don't blame you,” she says, with a satisfied nod. “It's tough for boys to
grow up, I'm told. Regulus will find out soon enough. You're becoming quite the
man, Sirius.”
The compliment means so much when he only hears 'boy', spat soft and gently
cold. He doesn't recognise in that moment how big and dangerous the gap between
the two.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Mmm, but no more compliments today. I couldn't possibly be caught spoiling
you.”
He wants another compliment more than he wants anything in the whole world, so
he turns his face to her. And she's so vibrant, not like the dark walls and the
cavernous caves in the house. Her hair is a disgruntled cloud around her face,
her eyes wickedly bright. Her mouth seems huge and red and succulent. She's
tall and she's got curves, curves that Sirius has never seen on anyone else,
curves that make him curious about everything and nothing. And she's all of
sixteen, which makes her seem incredibly adult. He wants her to give him a
compliment more than anything.
“No no,” she says, laughing, her voice folding out like a new bedsheet. “Not
falling for that. No, you'd have to really impress me. I don't want you to grow
up strutting around, you know, like some kind of peacock. Not like that Malfoy
prick. Couldn't have that, couldn't have that.”
“What can I do?” he asks.
“Hm,” she says, looking out into the road and the cars and all of the people
who don't glance at them twice, the people Sirius can't understand. “Well, you
could – no. No, what am I thinking? You'd have to be at least as brave as an
eleven year old. Maybe even braver.”
“I can be brave,” he says, because to be brave is almost as important to him as
it is to earn her favour.
“I know, but you're only eight. This is too much for you. Maybe when you're
older.”
“I can do it now,” he pleads, on the verge of grabbing her hand, something he
hasn't done since he decided that it was too childish for words. “Tell me. Tell
me, I can. I can do it.”
“Hm,” she says again. “Well, I don't blame you if you can't, understand –
you're still so little. But you shouldn't stand here like this, just wanting to
do something. You should do it. You know? Like now, I can tell that you want to
run. You should just do it.”
“Run away?” “Sure,” she says. “You want to, don't you?”
“Yes,” he says. “But I-”
“Oh, I knew, Sirius. I knew you were too young for this.”
“No, it's not – I'm not too young, I'm not, but how will I- who will. I don't
know how to-” He can feel the flush on his face.
She shrugs, delicate, her whole body moving in an undulation. “It's got to be
better than here, hasn't it? With the mother who favours your brother, your
father who's just dying for an excuse to punish you? Don't you think that I
want what's best for you? I love you, cousin. Go on. Be brave. I'll keep them
from chasing you. I'll protect you.”
And he looks at her as she folds her arms, the picture of determination,
rebellion, protection. He doesn't understand anything but he understands that
he has to do this. So he forces himself to pick up one foot, then the other and
at first he's walking but then it's a run, and halfway down the street he
regrets not holding onto her one last time because he'll never see her again,
because he's free and that's all that's ever going to matter, ever again. And
of course, he runs only for a street or so before he runs right into his father
and he can almost hear the bell of her laugh, spinning him down into the dark.

                                      ---
 
He doesn't go into work the next day because he doesn't see the point in that,
either. Waking up in a cold sweat will do that to a person. So he sits and
smokes and watches the world go by, faintly wishing he were part of it. That
his main concerns in life were tedious, that he could bore people to tears.
When Remus asks him to go for a drink, he goes. Even though it's barely 1pm.
Even though he's supposed to be at work. It's Remus, after all. He just hopes
that he won't bring Rebecca.
 
                                      ---
 
“It's going fine,” Remus says, with the edge of the defensive he always gets
when he talks about anything non-straightforward. He's toying with the beer
mat, turning and touching its corners. Sirius feels incredibly old, like
they're having the conversation sixty years from now.
“When's the wedding,” Sirius says. He's watching the beer mat turning.
“We're thinking maybe autumn,” Remus says. “October might be a bit cold,
though. I don't know. Rebecca's sort of – she's taken over a bit.”
“It's probably more her thing than yours.”
“Why, because she's a woman?” Remus laughs, only it isn't funny and neither is
his tone.
“No, because she actually wants to get married,” Sirius says.
“That isn't fair,” Remus says. “I asked her. There's not – this isn't. It's not
your place. Can't we just settle this? Nobody should be fighting now. Nobody.”
“Oh, spare me,” Sirius says. “I've heard enough of 'We're All In This
Together'.”
“The war is over,” Remus says, aghast. “Can you not just be happy for that?”
Sirius shrugs, a lot more brutal than he intends to be. Not that it isn't true,
just – stealing happiness from Remus is like taking money from a homeless
person. He has so little of it, it doesn't seem fair. But Sirius always thought
Remus understood. James, James was meant to be a clueless adorable heterosexual
man, bumbling his way around a serious relationship, blundering through
marriage and kids and emerging triumphant. Remus was supposed to understand the
darkness that comes with loving someone awkwardly and with dark fire. With fear
and jealousy.
“I don't understand,” Remus says and Sirius wants to nod, ain't that the truth.
“No, I mean – I don't understand why you're. Last week you were fine. Is it the
trial?”
“Yeah,” Sirius lies. “It's the trial.”
“Well, it's not on you. You know that, right? It's not up to you what happens
to her. Everything that happens to her, she brought on herself. They orphaned
Neville Longbottom, Sirius. He's only a year old, and-”
“I know that,” Sirius snaps, sharp and weirdly delicious in the pit of his
stomach. “Of course I know that. Jesus, Moony. We all know. Be thankful you
didn't see the fucking photographs.”
“Well, I didn't – I didn't mean. I know that you know, I just. I'm trying to do
the best I can. And life's too short.”
“For what?” Sirius says, honestly wondering what the fuck life is too short
for.
“To be alone, I suppose,” Remus manages, with a weak smile. “To not be with
someone. To not be trying.”
“So you're achieving some kind of ambition here, are you? Working at the
library, marrying some tedious woman who's only thinking of babies and doesn't
even know about the rest of it, the thing, your thing. Is that your idea of a
perfect life?”
Remus draws back, stung. Sirius would think he's gone too far, but sometimes
there are things that need to be said. He almost can't find it in himself to
care, which is how he knows he should care, more than he's probably able to. A
long silence passes, Remus returns to turning the beer mat. Sirius resumes
watching him do it.
“I think perfection is relative,” Remus says eventually. “I'm alive and I'm
grateful. And I'm grateful for her because she's kind and patient and she
understands some things that I don't say. She loves me and it's good to have
that. Life's too short to search for more than the simple things.”
“Wonderful,” Sirius says, standing up. “Glad we cleared that up.”
“Oh, don't leave,” Remus says, rubbing his face. “This is – fucked up, that we
can't even talk to each other anymore.”
“No, don't worry about it,” Sirius says. “People change. I get it. Just do me a
favour, eh, Moony? Make that little speech your vows. See what she thinks of
you then.”
Remus opens his mouth as if to retort, then something in him falls and fades
and it's as though the words – once his great weapons – fail him. Sirius
leaves, before he has a chance to rearm.
 
                                      ---
 
It's the 18th of June 1979. Sirius isn't counting except that he is, because
this life is almost over. And life is too short. Life is too short to be
watching a man turn over the pages of a novel and to be thinking about his
fingers in your mouth and hair and arse and ohfuckbollockseverywhere. So Sirius
waits for James to inevitably get bored and for Peter to inevitably follow him
back up to the castle and he watches the pair of them slope off in the
distance. He notes that Remus' arms are gooseflesh and he knows that his moment
is fleeting. He watches James turn around while walking, watching them – and
realises that James understands more than he lets on. As always. He looks back
at Remus, who is stretching out his left leg, which he's been sitting on all
this time even though he knows it makes it go to sleep. He doesn't seem
conscious of the fact that Sirius is still there, watching him – though he
isn't stupid, he must know what's going on. For all that he's been, Sirius has
never been subtle.
“Moony,” Sirius says, softly.
“Mm,” Remus says. “I know it's hot, but you can't go in the lake again. I know
it's your namesake, but it's full of germs. Trust me.”
“No, that's not what I was going to say.”
“I don't have any food either,” Remus says, turning a page. He reaches up,
scratches his neck. Long fingers, immaculate nails. The gesture is so small and
yet so perfect, it makes Sirius' heart ache.
“I'm not talking about food,” Sirius says.
“You can't read my book,” Remus says. “I'm just getting to a good bit.”
Sirius just looks at him. “Moony, look at me,” he says.
“What?” Remus says. “I'm nearly at the end of this chapter, promise. Just give
me a minute.”
“Moony.”
“Oh, God, Sirius, can't you be just a little bit patient? Even as an
experiment? Bugger this, you're distracting me.”
“Well, you're always distracting me.”
“Dust distracts you.”
“Well, alright, fine but – I'm trying to speak here. Moony. A man is trying to
talk.”
“I wouldn't go that far.”
“Remus, for the love of Merlin.”
Remus near-explodes. Never come between a werewolf and his book, Sirius thinks.
“What?” he says, smacking his book shut with only the barest smudge of regret
on his face after. It makes Sirius want to laugh and also, kiss him.
“Are you blind?” Sirius says.
Remus narrows his eyes. “No,” he says. “Is this a prank? It's not my birthday.”
“No,” Sirius says. “But. I mean. How can you not see what's going on?”
“What? Oh God. Has it got to do with James and Peter? Did they only pretend to
leave? Sirius, this isn't funny, it's-”
“No, it hasn't got anything to do with James or Peter, thank fuck,” Sirius
says, impatiently. “Just shut up for two seconds, please.”
“I feel a bit ill,” Remus says.
“That's because you've not the Gryffindor stomach,” Sirius says. “We can't all
have it. I sympathise. But no, shut up. I need to talk. I need to tell you that
despite James' accusations, you are definitely not heterosexual. At least, I
think not. And that's probably something you should continue not being because
I have an interest in it. And I think you could be convinced that I am worth
the, er, being glad. Of the interest thereof. And so on.”
Remus is watching him with either confusion or indigestion or both.
“Sirius,” he says, eventually. “What are you talking about?”
“I'm talking about you,” Sirius says, exasperated.
“And my not being heterosexual and you finding that interesting?"
"Are you denying it?”
“Which part? My sexuality or your interest?”
“Er.”
“Look, Sirius, I'm sure you're handling this with all of the aplomb you know
how to but really, you're not someone I want to discuss the intricate details
with. I'm fine. Really. Handling it. You can stop being fascinated.”
“That's not what I meant.”
“We can't all be like you and James, womanising everywhere.” Remus picks up his
book once more, and Sirius feels the moment falling away.
“That's not. Fuck. Fuck, Moony. How is it you understand History of Magic
perfectly but you can't understand this?”
“Well, Professor Binns doesn't talk like you, thankfully, but-”
“Remus. I'm trying to tell you that I fancy the pants off you. What is wrong
with you? I'm trying to. I'm trying to be very clear. But you're distracting.
As previously mentioned.”
Remus looks at him for the longest time and Sirius matches it, desperate to try
and translate the movement of his eyes, the wrinkle in his nose, the way he
checks his jaw with a crooked finger. Half a scratch and a swallow. An entire
language belonging to another person.
“Sirius,” he says eventually. “I don't think this has anything to do with us,
more – the timing, you know. Everyone's leaving, everything's changing. Anxiety
is understandable. But everything will be fine.”
Sirius just looks at him.“You think I can't be, because you are. And the way
you are is the only way anyone can be.”
“Don't start again,” Remus says, amiably. “You were just starting to make
sense.”
“I was being serious,” Sirius says.
“I know that this is how you deal with difficult situations,” Remus says.
“That's all. You won't feel the same way after school. You'll get over it.”
Sirius sits back on his heels, utterly horrified and unable to think of a way
to proceed, because this is not what he thought was going to happen when he
found the right moment for the effortless confession that he'd planned in his
head. Remus is back to his book and the moment, if it were ever there, is gone
altogether.
“I've felt this way for years,” he says.
And then Remus looks up at him. He opens his mouth and he breaks his heart.

                                      ---
 
He's twelve and it's his first dinner party. He's in dress robes custom-made
not to drag on the floor and despite the fact that he's scared of his father
and loathes his mother, he's excited to see something adult. Something he might
be able to exert some control over. He's overheard the parties, of course,
they're especially loud and exciting from two floors up. But this is different.
Being somewhere that Regulus can't, for one, but also being considered
something more than the son who's failed the entire family. Bella is late, as
is her wont, but she swoops in as if it doesn't matter. Sirius' mother purses
her lips in displeasure but says nothing, because she's brought Rodolphus and
Sirius knows that his mother wants this match more than almost anything else in
the world.
Bella nods at everyone and Rodolphus watches over her, as if he's hoping for
something. The distance between them is striking. Bella sits down without
waiting for him to move out her chair. If it irritates him, it's barely
perceptible. It irritates Sirius' mother, but nobody is looking at her. All
eyes are on Bella. They eat. Conversation is made. Sirius is bored beyond
reason. So he too watches Bella. Watches the way she turns her head away from
Rodolphus, allowing him greater access to her neck, which he resists with an
obvious struggle. She turns her voice down to a purr when conversing with him,
which makes Sirius grapple his fork. She turns her eyes to him from time to
time and there's a hint of a smile around her face. He doesn't understand
anything. After dinner, she catches him in the hallway. She has to hold the
train of her dress as she walks, but when she's standing she's surrounded by a
dark pool and it gives him the feeling of drowning.
“He wants me something terrible,” she says. “And I've a mind to give in to him.
To let him take me. It's so hard to turn a man down, you know. When you can
feel the weight of his desire in his eyes. When he's watching you all night.
When you hold the key to everything that he wants.”
And when Sirius steps towards her, she pulls back and then she's gone. And
Sirius, hooked on rage – he follows her, back into the dining room. And when
she turns to watch him lose control he feels the blood rushing downwards, the
fear squirrelling away in the dark.
“Fuck you,” he manages, though his voice comes out high and shaky. “Fuck you,
fuck you, fuck you, fuck you-”
And then all he remembers is the feel of his father's huge hand in the back of
his shirt and then the close four walls of an upstairs storage closet, the
formal finality of the lock turning. He's in there for too long for him to
recall, though at times during the night he's sure he can hear a soft female
“hush, hush, hush” at the door.

                                      ---
 
He goes in to work the next day because there's no reason not to. As usual, the
Ministry is buzzing with activity and a kind of anxious relief that's been
there since everything ended. People feel a kind of guilty joie de vivre, a
terrible pleasure in being alive. There are probably others who wish they'd
died but it's not acceptable to mention it, so Sirius just sits and pulls out
the parchment from the bottom drawer once more. He doesn't suppose he can write
on it, “once convinced me to run away”, because that's – they were kids. Even
Bella was a child once. But she was only a handful of years younger than he is
now and he can't conceive of the difference between them, the things they saw.
It makes him feel sick. He sits and he holds the quill until it drips ink all
down the page and then he begins to write.
 
                                      ---
 
He's fifteen and a hair's breadth away from being disowned, though he doesn't
know this yet. He sits at the wrong end of the table, far from his father and
mother's reach and the fall of their eyes. Regulus sits by his father's side,
the highest but for his senior, his back ramrod straight with pride. Sirius
sits on the corner with his cousins, minus Andromeda – and he tries to make eye
contact. Mostly because his brain is twenty-five and knows more than any brain
should about the way the world he knows is starting to fall – but his dick is
fifteen and can't stop noticing the tiny emerald Bella is wearing between her
breasts. She doesn't eat at the table. He's long known that. She drinks more
than enough to compensate, though, much to Cissy's disapproval. Lucius is
there, too, pale and fastidious. Sirius hates him, but no more than he hates
anyone else sitting around the table. He focusses his eyes elsewhere. He's
learnt to deal with this now. It feels tedious and familiar, like a game
they've been playing since childhood. He's had some experience at school and
that's – he's glad of that, because it means that when he watches Bella flirt
with him he's able to recognise it, to steadfastly ignore it. Mostly. Sometimes
he wonders just how many cousins have married to grow this poisonous tree.
She is leaning back in her chair and her dress – green silk – is a loose v
shape over her breasts. He can see their fullness, the shape of them clear and
trembly through the soft fabric. When she breathes, he can see them moving and
he can almost feel her around him, on him – things he thinks about at night
even though he knows he shouldn't. He wonders what it's like to be mounted by a
woman, to be taken forcefully, to have her heaving breath so close to you. To
feel her tighten around you. He tries not to, because there's no place less
appropriate for arousal than this, but then she's opposite him and whenever she
moves, the light catches her dress and the stone in her cleavage and he finds
himself drawn to it, like a fish on a hook. There's a moment when everyone is
talking, probably about Cissy's plans for children, and everyone is elsewhere
and there's nothing between Bella and Sirius but air. And suddenly he finds his
attention caught by the glint of silver on the wooden floor, where she's
dropped her fork. And as his eyes travel upwards to her face, she's moved a
sliver of silk over her thigh, the split in her dress revealing one of her
long, supple legs – clad in its stocking, black and smooth with a tight cuff of
lace and black diamonds. And her hand toys there, on her pale tight thigh,
stroking a small circle. And he can't, can't, can't draw his eyes away. Not
until she throws the silk back over and he finds himself meeting her eyes, his
skin pulsing with shock. She holds his gaze with her big dark eyes, and then
she turns her elegant head away without so much as a smile.

                                      ---
 
He knows almost as soon as he arrives that it's a terrible idea. A long line of
many, in his case, but that's besides the point. There're just too many
unanswered questions, too many tiny moments that have guided every step of his
stupid sorry life. And despite everything that's happened, he can't condemn
this woman without so much as a conversation. She's always been the one part of
his family that blew too hot for comfort, not too cold. She's being held in the
underground compartments of the Wizengamot. The top-level isn't a place that he
enjoys visiting, so he's unsurprised to see that the bottom-level is much
worse. It reminds him of Grimmauld Place, dark and festering. Sinisterly quiet.
His steps echo as he's guarded by a nameless, faceless warden and there's
nobody else there. This is the big one. The big trial. The chance for public
retribution. He walks down to her cell, unsure of what to expect. She isn't
standing weirdly, or praying, or doing anything he might've considered if he'd
paid it any thought. She's sitting, she's quiet, but there's God in her eyes.
She regards him with a casual interest, as if she expected him. He came under a
falsehood, so he knows she didn't, but it's always been Bella's knack to
pretend otherwise. The guard notes his pause, cocks his head to one side. Asks
if he's certain. He'll never be certain. But at this point, he has nothing to
lose.
“Sirius, my darling,” she says. There's a thin layer of sarcasm, muddied by the
tug right back to his adolescence. “Haven't you done well?”
He enters, tries to dominate the space. The cell isn't big and it's very dark.
He can just make out her face from the light in the corridor. She's still, even
now, beautiful. The price of the family looks, paid by their genetic
disposition towards insanity. He watches her watching him and then, finally, he
speaks.
“Better than you, I'd say.”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” she says, idly. She brushes a stray hair off her
thigh, twines it between thumb and forefinger and drops it to the side.
“Well, I'd say you're about to be imprisoned for life. If not executed. Hoping
to join your master?”
“He's not dead,” she says. Her voice solidifies onto a point, like a trembling
guitar string. “And neither will I be. You'd be a fool to think they'll execute
me. And imprisonment – that I will bear. I will bear it for him.”
He looks at her. She's ridiculous. Nobody, nobody, is this stupid. “Of course
he's dead,” Sirius says. “By a toddler. What else do you think happened to
him?”
“He's not dead,” she simply repeats. “Certainly not at the hands of that – that
little frogspawn. You wait. You wait, cousin, you'll see. He will rise again
and he will take what's rightfully ours.”
“I thought maybe, maybe you'd feel something.”
She rises, then, still holding his gaze. “Like remorse?” she sing-songs, her
lip turning down into a pout. “Walk around all sorrowful and sad, like a little
puppy? I'm not Lucius. I won't. I don't feel anything except anticipation. I
feel alive, Sirius. Do you even know how that feels? You're even more pathetic
than I remember you as a kid.”
“Yeah, because what you've done is really brave.”
“Bravery matters only to Gryffindors, I'm told. So really, you've only failed
yourself, Sirius. Isn't bravery your thing? Isn't that what you so desperately
wanted? You must feel very foolish. What a silly boy. If only you'd been more
like Regu-”
“Don't say his name,” Sirius snaps. She's right up close, close enough for him
to see the curl of her lip and the dark waves of her hair. She looks older.
She's wearing cruelty all over her face but it just adds strength to her
beauty. An assertiveness to her sexuality. It's impossible to tear his eyes
away and he senses, then, that he's made another terrible mistake.
“Why?” she says. “Because you can't bear the fact that you gave up on our
family for the one you made. Yes, with James Potter, married now, has no time
for you. And Peter! Useless, spineless Peter who came over to our side. Oh, and
your werewolf. The one I think you had a little thing for? The one who didn't
like you any more than we did? Mm. Yes. I suppose I see why you wouldn't want
to remember your brother, who-”
“The family I made is one hundred times the family I ever got from you,” Sirius
spits. “People – school, it's not the same but it's not. It's not as though
we're not close, it's not as though we wouldn't die-”
“Oh, everyone says they'd die for someone, but who really knows. You don't know
that. I can see it in your eyes. James has his own family now. He'd sooner die
for them than you. And Remus? He'll go the same way. That's the trouble with
normal people, Sirius. They do normal things.”
“And us?” Sirius rages. “What is it, exactly, that we do?”
She's breathing hard, now. Her eyes are on fire. Her chest is heaving and her
fingers are trembling over it, over the buttons of her dress.
“Oh God,” he says. “Oh God.”
She looks at him and looks at him and looks at him, undoing a button for every
beat of his stupid canine heart. And then she says, “we keep it in the family.”
 
                                                                                                                               
---
 
This is another moment he knows that he'll come to regret. They're in almost-
darkness, sniffing each other out. She's against the wall in the darkest corner
of the cell, the loose wooden shelf bearing half of her weight. His hips take
the other half. And as she wraps her legs around, her hands flutter down,
undoing his trousers, freeing him and taking him in her hot little hand. And as
she strokes him hard, she lids her eyes at him; black and fluttery like
spiders, like every fantasy he ever had growing up, every moment of forcing it
all back as he fucked his own hand. She moves her underwear to the side and
then, wrapping her legs around tight, she pulls him in. Her body is taut and
tight and ringing with it, a little sound emerging from her lips. He doesn't
know how to be. He doesn't know what to do. His instinct is to kiss but he
can't, so he buries his head against her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder.
He feels her nails on his scalp and he feels the way he's pushing into her, so
hot and so wet and so fucking tight, and he feels like the world might be
ending but at least he's aware. His nerves are throbbing. He's alive. He's
fucking alive.
She has his face between her palms and she's looking right at him, her lips
parted and her breath full and thick. And she's crooning at him, just sounds,
just bearing her hips down and taking and taking and taking, and he can tell
when the pleasure intensifies because she says oh! like he's the first and his
ego just swells. She's taking her own pleasure and he's okay with that, unable
to maintain eye contact, unable to vocalise anything but the ache of need
within him. To be fulfilled, to be satisfied, to come. To come home. It has to
be quick. They both know it. If they're caught, he doesn't even want to think
about it. But the feel of himself inside her, it's enough. It's more than
enough. And when he ducks his head down and he takes her nipple in his mouth,
first soft with pliant lips and then a snappy little bite, she tugs his hair so
hard he's surprised it remains intact. And then she moans into it, pleased and
surprised, and she coos, “oh, my sweet boy.” And really, that's all it takes.
He moves his mouth back to her jaw, her throat – bites down, down, down until
she's tearing at his back, until she's crying out into the back of her own
hand, until their hips are clanging together and he's sure that the entire
building must be aware of them both. And it's perfect, it's raw, but it's
touching the part of him that's desperately afraid of everything and he knows,
then, that he'll never be afraid again.
 
                                                                                                                              
---
 
“I've felt this way for years,” he says.
Remus looks up, holds the book open with the crutch of his fingers. He's
looking, really looking. And there's a moment when Sirius thinks that he
understands, that he truly knows, and that everything's going to be alright.
“I need you to understand,” he says. “That I need normalcy. I'm a – you know
what. I'm going to have enough strange chaos in my life. I need stability. I
need someone to make me feel safe. You don't make me feel safe. I'm not what
you think I am. You might be, but I'm not. I never will be. I can't allow
myself to be. I've got enough strife as it is. Can you please try to
understand?”

                                      ---
 
Just as she's about to come, she slaps his face. The shock makes him pin her
arms above her head and then, as her body starts to beat around him, she kisses
him. It isn't romantic and it isn't nice, but the feel of her mouth on his is
everything that he needs and he kisses her, kisses her, kisses her until he's
brave and bold and done.
 
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