Prologue
The night air is cold and Sirius can still taste smoke in the back of his throat, burning. The trees rush past so quickly that they become one uniform blur of dusky green, looming at the edge of his vision.
Sirius is running so quickly that he can’t even hear anything over the rush of the wind in his ears, not even his blood pumping furiously as his heart struggles to keep up with his frenzied sprinting. He has no idea how far he has run, or for how long. But it’s not far enough.
His black hair is whipping his face, and branches tear at his eyes, and his arms are covered in scratches. Sirius keeps running. His legs feel like jelly, his feet sore and his lungs burning from lack of oxygen. Sirius keeps running. Perhaps it’s the combination of the darkness and the mess of hair in his eyes, or maybe he’s just unlucky, but Sirius doesn’t see the ditch just ahead. He doesn’t see the branch blocking his path. He just runs blindly ahead, panting and wild, like a terrified animal.
He doesn’t see it, so he doesn’t know to avoid it. But he feels it.
Feels the lurch in his stomach as the ground disappears beneath him.
Feels the branch collide with his ankle.
Feels the sickening twist of his muscles as he tumbles down the slope.
And now Sirius is no longer running. The trees are no longer a blur.
Sirius Black lies crumpled in a heap at the bottom of a ditch, staring up at the branches overhead and trying very very hard not to concentrate on the fact that his entire body is on fire from the pain. And then his oxygen starved brain finally gives up, and the branches blur again as his eyelids droop closed.