The Rise and The Fall Of a Cut Open Chest
“–then Panda just started speaking Italian back at the professor! I didn't even know she knew Italian!” He snorts letting his little sister rant for as long as she wished.
He stretched his arms upwards, resting them on the back of his head as he leaned back on his chair.
“I finished.” He smiled gyrating the chair towards his bed where his sister jumped up, looking extremely curious.
“Already? Don't you have like, two weeks to send the documentation?”
He sighed satisfied in himself, it had been a rough couple of weeks, trying to keep everything under the wraps and misleading their parents to think he was going to study management, but now as he looks at his application scores, he knows he got this.
“What can I say? I'm eager to start.” He smiles cheekily and his sister raises her eyebrows.
“You're... eager. For engineering? You literally hate math.”
Sirius' smirk drops to a frown. “I don't hate math, I hate that math has letters. It's a whole different thing that you'll learn when you get to middle school.” He can't dodge the pillow plummeting into his face.
“I'm a second year! We're two years apart, asshole!” She punches his arm repeatedly.
“Hey! HEY! Stop it!” He rises from the chair and she stops, immediately assuming a defensive pose. He sneakily strikes her sides as she mocks a punch to his stomach.
“Siri, no! Bwahahaha!” She squeals in laughter. “Let me go!” She tries to kick him but he expertly dodges her legs.
“No.” He laughs in delight as she cries. He eventually does let go of her, and he barely has time to recover before she's throwing herself on his back and they both fall to the floor, rolling around.
“You little bitch! I almost pissed myself!” She slides an arm under his throat squeezing another behind his nape, her legs wrap around his stomach and suddenly he can't breathe.
“Let go or I'm gonna beat you up!” He wheezes.
She giggles strained by the amount of unnecessary strength she's using to make him unmovable. He waits a few seconds until her arms are too exhausted to hold on any longer and turns around, cackling as he's laying his back on top of her, knocking the air out of her lungs.
“What is going on here!? Sirius stop smothering your sister!” They immediately stop laughing, Sirius gets dizzy with how quick he's on his feet helping his sister up. “Honestly, Sirius, she's not one of your little friends! Look at that! She's all bruised up already.” Their mother pulls his sister's sleeve up disapprovingly looking at the reddened spots.
“We were just playing around, she's not made of glass, mom.” He's quick at the chime back sneering.
“She's a lady. And rough housing is not lady-like!” His mom directs the last part to the silent girl who looks away. “Come on, darling. You have your piano lesson in less than an hour, let me pick a new dress for you.”
They leave, his sister silently following his mother as she goes on lecturing her on her behavior.
At least, there was no yelling, or punishment today. Probably because of the piano lesson.
Sirius sighs long and deep, he couldn't wait to leave this house and pursue his dreams. He pulls out his phone and smiles as the screen lit up a picture of him and his mates.
They had met in the college campus when their schools had taken their students to introduce their courses to them. He had bumped into a blond haired boy who was so shy he ended up having to use his notes app to communicate for a few minutes before the boy, Peter, felt comfortable enough to tell him about how he had lost his best friend at the veterinary block.
They do a few rounds until a black haired boy literally runs up to Peter and tackles him in a hug, dramatically recounting the last fifteen minutes he'd been lost. The best part, was that the boy didn't even judge Sirius' poshy uniform before introducing himself.
They spent four hours together between the college stations and their bus ride back to their home towns talking and having fun. He then discovered that Peter and James lived two cities over and they both would be attending Gragocious University.
Sirius' doubted himself a lot over the months that passed. Gragocious had a lot of wonderful courses, but especially, it had a music course. With his background, knowing how to play a numerous amount of instruments and compose, he felt himself ready to finally challenge his parents.
And he just needed to wait two weeks to leave this grim, old house and never come back.
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Punishment is something that happens when you've done something wrong.
Except when you're just a kid trying to practice and your overachiever father is standing next to you, cane in hands, ready for when you make mistakes. And Sirius makes lots of mistakes when pressured, especially when threatened with pain. It causes his fingers to tremble over the piano keys, mistake after mistake until white turns to red, the melody turns into hitching sobs and the smell of his mother's favorite air freshener is overused to diffuse the scent of blood.
“Again, Sirius. Stop bitching about some papercuts or I'll show you how painful it could be.” And again, the threats take the best of him. He doesn't remember being pulled from the seat and shovel to the ground. But he does remember his father's cane repeatedly coming down onto his back.
He comes to himself laid with his back up somewhere, he recognizes it as his bedroom. His mother is cleaning his wounded back with angry tears in her eyes. When her eyes do a double take over his open eyes, she realizes he's awake, her first words aren't ‘We're leaving’, or ‘The police is coming’. No.
Walburga Black would never hurt their family's good name with such a shit show. It doesn't matter that Orion Black will one day go too far with their punishments and kill their children when their beatings turn into torture sessions. No. She's a good wife, mother and an upstanding member of society. She'll hold the family together, like a piece of duct tape attached around repelling magnets. Forcing them together.
“Why do you anger your father so much, Sirius?” Those are the first words he hears before succumbing to the pain.
In a few weeks, the tape will be torn off and one of the magnets will fly away. Depending on the repelling strength, it may never be found again.