The Unforgivable Curses
Sirius remembers vividly the day that Professor Voxten taught his class about Unforgivable Curses. He remembers sitting next to James, swatting at his hand that kept prodding Sirius’ hair because he tried out a new style, pinning it up with his wand like he saw Marlene do sometimes when she was focused. He memorised the efficient but lazy way she threw it together and tried and tried until he could do it too. He remembers glancing at the chalkboard where the professor wrote out a neat checklist. One. Two. Three. He remembers the way that Trelawney girl whispered behind him that the worst things always come in threes. He remembers how James picked fun at her and how Lily’s fiery glare from across the room shut him up right away. He remembers the professor quieting the class to a calm lull.
“The subject of today’s class is sensitive. The magic I will teach today is not designed to be instructive, but rather I will teach it as a warning, for something I hope none here will experience.” Voxten turned solemnly to the board. The professor always was quite dramatic in his teachings, but of the range of Dark Arts professors Sirius saw over the years, Voxten seemed well-intentioned. And SIrius wasn’t one to speak on dramatics, really. When the professor stepped away, Sirius’ breath hitched.
The Unforgivables.
1. Imperio
2. Crucio
3. Avada Kedavra
“There are three unforgivable curses, as named on the board. Can anyone enlighten the class as to what result these curses inflict, once wielded?” Voxten’s voice seemed distant to Sirius, a background noise to the memories that swarmed his mind. No one raised their hand. “Miss Evans,” he picked from the class. “Might you take a guess?” This wasn’t part of the curriculum, as far as Sirius knew. There was nothing about this in the textbook.
“Um- I’m not too sure, professor,” Lily answered hesitantly, not used to being unsure of herself in class. “If I were to guess based on the Latin meaning, Avada Kedavra relates to destruction… maybe death?” Sirius gave it to her, she was smart. The professor hummed.
“Certainly, Miss Evans. Five points to Gryffindor.” At that, James tapped Sirius on the leg in excitement. Sirius flinched. “Avada Kedavra is the killing curse,” Voxten explained, writing this on the board. “With the intent to kill and the right execution, these words will instantaneously take the life of another being.”
Sirius remembers the first time he saw his mother use the killing curse. Some house elves he genuinely believes she learned to care for, in her own twisted way. Like Kreacher, the nasty thing. But their first house elf, Tinny, she hated. He was fretful, and clumsy, and too scared. Sirius was six. Tinny dropped a small stack of plates which he collected after a family dinner. It was simple, it was quick, and no one even blinked. Walburga simply took a deep breath, flicked her wand, and Tinny was dead in a green flash, slumped on a pile of shattered ceramic.
“Shall we go out shopping for more crockery tomorrow, Walburga, dear? I think new plates were in order nonetheless, hm?” Sirius’ grandmother murmured while Orion sighed and snatched Tinny’s lifeless body away like a ragdoll.
“Mr Crouch,” Professor Voxten picked out next, and Barry sat up straighter in his chair. “If you were to guess?” he prompted. Barty cleared his throat, and Sirius noticed a complex look behind his darkened eyes, though he couldn’t place a reason behind it.
“I believe the Imperius curse is used to control another’s mind,” Barty explained through gritted teeth. “To bend one’s will completely.”
“I couldn’t have explained it better if I had suffered it myself. Five points to Slytherin,” Voxten praised, and Barry looked away, his eyes growing darker still. Voxten scribbled away with his chalk, oblivious.
Sirius remembers the Imperius Curse less clearly. His parents were too creative to simply bend his will without challenge. They preferred to do so with pain. With punishment. Sometimes, though, they used it on Regulus. To render him powerless. To make him watch. Sirius hated it, the way his eyes would go blank, all signs of worry gone, his body slack, like he didn’t have a care in the world for the pain Sirius was treated to. Afterwards, when Regulus would sneak into his room to patch up his wounds and shoulder his tears, he would apologise.
“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything, I’m sorry, Siri, I’m sorry.”
Sirius would shoulder his little brother’s tears in return.
“Mr Black,” Voxten said and James nudged his shoulder. He turned to James, confused, dazed.
“Voxten,” James whispered, glancing to the front of the room and back at Sirius.
“Mr Black,” he repeated. “Can you tell us about the last Unforgivable Curse?” Remus was sitting with Lily across the room from him, but Sirius could feel those piercing eyes. He wanted them off of him. He cleared his throat. His voice still came out in a hoarse whisper.
“Torture.”
Sirius remembers the first time his mother used the Cruciatus Curse against him. Named aptly, it resulted in excruciating, blinding, inexplicable pain. Sirius could never find the words to describe it, not to James, not to Remus, not to anyone, no matter how hard he tried. His mother was cruel in that way - stealing Regulus' will and robbing Sirius' words. She was never shy to clip Sirius on the ear or mistake his hands for a batting post when his mouth got the better of him, but torture? It was never a possibility.
Until it was.
Sirius returned from Hogwarts after his second year, fourteen years old. He'd managed to stay at school year round, and by the time summer arrived, for Sirius as dreary and dreadful as London's winters, his hair was almost past his chin. He refused to cut it. That was all. He stayed put when his mother called him downstairs to the home-call barber, and he led her in a chase around Grimmauld Place when she herself had brandished a pair of sharp scissors in his face. He absolutely would not let his mother cut his hair.
Until he did.
It was never a possibility that his mother could be so cruel because- yes, she was nasty and bitter and cold, but- she loved her sons. She must have. Sirius kept telling himself that when the lingering pain throughout his whole body made him slump in the chair he sat in, scissors clipping by his neck and fingers clipping his ear, hissing at him to sit straight. The pain would last all summer, and the torture would continue, but he told himself that some how, some way, somewhere hidden and tangled in thorns and barbs, his mother's love still existed.
Until it didn't.
Professor Voxten watched Sirius warily. “Uh, yes. Torture is correct Mr Black, thank you.” He turned to the board again. “The Cruciatus Curse elicits a blinding pain unto the person it is administered. When it is administered too long, its effects can lead to insanity.”
James nudged Sirius again, though he didn’t respond. He pursed his lips and slumped in his desk and tried to block out the sound of the memories ringing in his ears.
“These are the three Unforgivable Curses, though, I will reiterate, I do not teach of these dark tools of magic lightly. I teach them only as a warning. Can anyone tell me why I am not worried for virtuous children such as yourselves to learn of these curses? Why I believe knowing these might be of no risk?”
Sirius remembers James raising his hand. It sticks out in his memory, though he doesn’t know why. Maybe because it was rare for James to raise a hand in class, rare for him to show off all that he knew rather than the more immaturely attracted parts of his inflated ego. Maybe because the words James said crawled through the trenches of Sirius’ veins, all the way to his heart and shattered it, just like the crockery Tinny died upon.
“The unforgivable curses require a person to have intent. A real and hateful desire to do harm to the person, strong enough to have an effect.” James elicited a suffocating air of nonchalance as he delivered his best friend’s killing blow.
“Yes, Mr Potter!” Voxten praised, scrambling to pick up his chalk again. “Five points to Gryffindor!”
“Sorry, sir-“
“Ah right, ten points overall, for Sirius’ contribution too,” Voxten corrected himself, and James held his hand below the table to give Sirius a high five. Sirius didn’t even blink. He’d become slowly accustomed to heartbreak, to death, ever since that night Tinny died. He was Sirius’ favourite house elf. “An unforgivable curse is extremely powerful, and therefore requires the person behind the wand to have a very powerful intent to kill, control or hurt their victim. The most abject pain exists in hate, the absence of love." Curse Voxten and his woeful dramatics. "Now, I hope I am not wrong in this belief, but I am unaware of any in this room that might have such powerful and dark motivation within them to successfully execute these curses."
Sirius remembers the previous summer, after his 15th birthday, when he held up his wand to his mother and dared to scream her words back to her. She only laughed. She didn't hunch over in pain, or crack her bones in an effort to crawl from the room, our cry out and beg, beg, beg, for Sirius to stop his torment. The curse didn't work. Regulus’ frozen body had done little to hide his wide-eyed expression, though there was no will-binding curse to keep him in place that time. No, he stood still all on his own and watched quietly. Willingly. Sirius couldn't understand why it didn’t work. His mother never gave him time to ask, and it worked plenty well when she tried.
He needn’t have pondered it so long. Not when Voxten would break the news so carelessly. Sirius supposed the answer should have been obvious, although a small voice in the back of his head told him he’d known all along. A child’s voice. Maybe five years old, no more than six. No older than he’d been when the image of his mother’s love should have shattered alongside that ugly crockery. The voice told him he loved his mother. The voice wanted his mother to love him too.
James nudged him again. He finally looked up.
“You alright, mate?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing behind thick glasses, and Sirius nodded without meaning to.
“Oh yes, okay, go on then,” Voxten’s murmur drifted along with Remus’s light approach. Sirius hadn’t seen him stand up.
“Come on, Pads,” Remus said, handing him a note. It was a call to McGonagall’s office. A slip excusing his and Sirius’ absence from class. Confused, Sirius stood, following Remus out of the classroom. He didn’t think he’d ever look at that room the same again.
Uncomfortably numb, Sirius shuffled alongside Remus, who relieved him of the books weighing him down. He still felt heavy.
“‘Dunno how my handwriting can be so shit but I can be so good at mimicking McGonagall’s,” Remus joked. Sirius didn’t laugh at his forgery, and Remus didn’t mind, and Sirius would, eventually, be thankful for both.