astronomy

Sirius gets a Howler the next day. 

Every single person in the Great Hall watches as he ignores it and then proceeds to show no expression whatsoever when the shrill voice of Walburga Black fills the room, calling him a disappointment, a disgrace to the family name.

He gets a Howler the day after that too. 

Every single person in the Great Hall watches as he ignores it, eats his meal and then walks out of the hall as if nothing ever happened. 

He gets a Howler every single day for the next whole week, and every single person in the Great Hall is used to his routine by now. 

Regulus writes Bella every day. 

He writes to her about everything and anything. He tells her what happens, he tells her how their mother gets worse whenever Sirius is even mentioned, and he tells her how he suffers for it. 

He tells her how Sirius Black never breaks promises, but he broke the promise he made the very first day at Hogwarts, the one where he said he would write every week. 

Two weeks have passed, and he hasn’t written to him once. 

She writes back. She tells him everything and anything too. She tells him how his brother hasn’t talked - or even done so much as looked in her direction ever since the Sorting. 

She tells him how she thinks she has a fever, and how she almost never sleeps at night, or how he’s always laughing with his friends, the same friends they met on the train, the same people she laughed with too.

She tells him how everything is so fucking painful. She tells him how she cries every day. She tells him about the first time she went to Sirius to try and talk, it didn’t really go as expected. 

“No, Bella, stop .” he had said, glaring at her as she blinked back her tears. 

“Sirius, what did I even do?” she replied, “How is it my fault?” 

“I don’t know, okay?” His voice was getting louder with each passing moment. “Just, stay away from me.” 

“Sirius-” 

He had turned on his heel and walked away without a second glance. 

She tells Regulus everything, sending him tear-stained letters almost every two days, and still, she doesn’t know how to fill that gap in her heart, she doesn’t know how to shut up the part of her that asks her “Ooh, would Sirius like this?” or says “Sirius would’ve absolutely died at this joke” every single day as if it was a ritual. 

She doesn’t know how to stop her eyes from automatically finding him at the Gryffindor table at every meal. She doesn’t know how to stop herself from looking towards him every time she hears the bark of laughter that is a bit too familiar for her liking. 

She doesn’t know how to stop herself, and she doubts she ever will. 

• • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

She finds herself on the Astronomy Tower almost every night, staring up ahead. Somehow, every time she goes, it’s always a comforting reminder to her that reads among the lines of: Oh well, at least the Black family isn’t messed up in one universe . 

Bella didn’t know how soothing that could be until she thought about it one day and found herself smiling at it. 

So here she is, in the first week of October, staring up at the brightest star in the sky, telling it everything she can’t say to the person that’s named after it. 

“It’s your birthday in some time, what should I get you?” she asks, and the star twinkles. 

“Remember last year, I got you that leather jacket? Out of my own pocket money ? You never took it off. Do you still have it?” 

She hopes he does. It looked so good on him, and he always looked so happy wearing it. 

“It’s getting late, Sirius. I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise. Tell James to seriously stop making a fool out of himself in front of Evans, Malfoy and Mulciber could really do with  better topics to talk about.” she says, standing up and walking towards the door to the Astronomy Tower. 

She stands there, with a hand on the handle as she remembers something. She looks up at the brightest star in the sky. Her face softens, her voice grows quieter and she can practically feel her eyes starting to water. You used to be best friends, what happened ? she asks the star in her head before whispering “Reg misses you, Sirius. So, so, so much.” 

A tear falls out of her eye and she swipes it off with the back of her hand swiftly. “Don’t talk to me, I wont mind, but at least talk to him, Sirius. He’s your brother, he misses you.” she says, pleading to the star as if somehow, the real Sirius can hear what his namesake star hears. She wonders if that could actually happen, what would Sirius have to say about the things Reg told it? 

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts before leaving the Astronomy Tower and all its stars behind. 

It’s okay. She’ll get through this. 

She’ll try to. 

• • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Bella wakes up with her breathing heavy and uneven in the middle of the night on a Tuesday in the middle of October and looks around frantically. 

Okay, maybe not middle of the night. 

Two thirty-four, to be more precise. 

She puts on her dressing gown as she mumbles a feeble, unconvincing excuse to Lilah, her dorm-mate, already half-way down the stairs. 

Great, now I have nightmares about him , she thinks as she makes her way towards the Astronomy Tower, although she could quite literally walk there in her sleep, based on the amount of times she’s been there. 

Quite grateful for the short time of peace she would have on her own, she takes the steps two at a time and opens the door to step inside quickly; coming to the Astronomy Tower at two thirty-four in the middle of October without a jacket or coat was not a good idea, and she’s realising that just as the wind outright slaps her when she opens the door. 

Bella’s not expecting anyone to be there, seeing as all the times she’s been here, no-one ever has been except her, so she’s rather shocked when she steps inside and takes a deep breath just to come face to face with the one and only, Sirius Orion Black. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, wiping the tears off of his face with the back of his hand, and it takes Bella a total of four whole seconds to process what that means,  he was crying . 

Ignoring the pang in her chest and the bile rising in her throat, she swallows and tries to muster some amount of confidence to actually say something back. 

“I could ask you the same thing.” she says, tucking her hands in the pockets of her gown partially because of the cold and partially to hide the force with which they were shaking. 

He lets out a humourless laugh, and this is when Bella realises that this might be the most they’ve communicated in weeks. “Yeah, well, unlike you , some people actually receive Howlers every fucking day and have to deal with the aftermath.” 

“Sirius-” she begins, but he cuts her off before she can even say anything. 

“Now answer my question.” he says, his grey eyes dark with something Bella can’t pinpoint, and something in her tells her she doesn’t really want to know. “What are you doing here?”

“I-” she falters just for a second, and she’s already missing the bond they used to have with each other; him, her and Reg. They used to be inseparable, and yet, here they are. “I couldn’t sleep.” 

Bella swears she could’ve seen a glimpse of concern in Sirius’ eyes before he shut it off. That wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Out of all of the Black cousins, Sirius had always been the most expressive, never hiding what he felt, instead, he would declare it to the world with pride none of them could ever muster. He was never one to shut his emotions down, and yet, here he is. 

“Why?” he asks, and maybe the concern was true. 

She hesitates for a second. What was she supposed to say? That she had nightmares of what would happen when they went home? That every night, she would hear Walburga Black screeching the words she addressed to Sirius in her ear? 

“I don’t know,” is all she manages to say, and she doesn’t know if it’s the nervousness about the aftermath of her reply or not, but she suddenly feels so dizzy, the floor is spinning beneath her feet, she feels cold, and the last thing she sees before the black of the world envelopes her is Sirius concernedly approaching her. 

• • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Fuck. Sirius thinks, This wasn’t supposed to happen. The thought almost makes him laugh. He forgot a crucial detail. Since when did life go according to plan anyway? 

Sirius staggers under his cousin’s weight as he carries her limp form towards the Hospital Wing. 

When was the last time she fucking ate anything? he asks himself, practically begging his brain to conjure up some memory, but to no avail. All he remembers is trying so, so hard to avoid her gaze at meals, in classes, anytime she was in the same room, or in close proximity to Sirius. He really wishes he hadn’t been so stubborn though, because the mental image of Bellatrix falling to her knees, unconscious, is not one that will escape his memory for a long, long time. 

He reaches the Hospital Wing with his breathing heavy, and knocks on the door hard enough to wake Madam Pomfrey up if she’s asleep, which she probably is. 

It takes two more rounds of knocking to wake her up, but she wakes up nonetheless and springs into action as soon as she sees Bella’s limp body over Sirius’ shoulder. 

He can’t do anything but watch them as she fusses over her, muttering spells to herself with a crease between her eyebrows. 

“Have you seen how bad this fever is, Sirius?” 

“When was the last time this person ate anything ?” 

“When was the last time she slept properly?” 

Sirius feels that pang of guilt in his chest, the one he’s all too familiar with, because of the amount of times he feels it in a day. He can practically sense when Bella’s looking at him during meals, and he feels it when he ignores her. He feels it when he acts like she doesn’t even exist. He feels it when he acts like she isn’t calling for him. He feels it every night when he wakes up from nightmares of his mother making her and Reg suffer for him being in Gryffindor. 

And he feels it now, when he knows that the reason behind her being in the Hospital Wing in the hours of the day when she should’ve been asleep, is him. 

“She’ll be okay, right?” he chokes out, gazing at Madam Pomfrey nervously. 

“She’ll be okay,” she says, not looking up from the potion she’s mixing, and Sirius visibly deflates out of relief, “but she’ll be weak, so I’m not sure if I’m going to send her to class today, maybe keep her in here for some time.”

He sighs. At least she’ll be okay. Some time. 

Sirius scoots a bit closer to the bed, close enough to lay his head on it, but not close enough to make her uncomfortable when she wakes up. He crosses his arms underneath his head and tilts it so that he’s facing her. 

He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to process what happened. Yes, he had gone to the Astronomy Tower because he knew she went there most of the time, but was he expecting her to be there when he was there? Absolutely not. 

He wracks his brain, trying to remember the last time he had seen her eat anything, but no memory enters his brain. When was the last time he had even seen her smile? 

Bella shifts, and Sirius opens his eyes again to come to see her face scrunched up in unease. Her hands have gone stiff by her side, and oh, Sirius is so familiar with this. 

He can’t do anything is the part of this that actually gets to Sirius, because he heard somewhere that waking someone up from nightmares only makes them worse. He doesn’t know what he would say, either, after waking her up, and so, despite all of the parts of him that are screaming “ Do it! ”, he doesn’t. 

He sits there with his head near her hand, and he wants  to hold her hand and tell her that it’s okay, that she’ll be okay, that they’re okay. Only, Sirius doesn’t know how much of that would be true and how much wouldn’t, so he doesn’t. 

It’s foolish of him, but Sirius wants to go back in time again. He wants to go back to when they were okay, her and him and Reg, to when there weren’t any houses or family members trying to pry them away from each other. 

He knows he’s practically at fault for this, that he’s the one ignoring her and not reacting to anything she does or says. He knows he’s the reason behind how she is right now, he knows he’s the reason everything is practically falling to pieces in front of his very own eyes, but the truth is, he doesn’t know what’s going on in him anymore. 

He knows he has no right to be angry at her for something that isn’t even her fault, but he is. He is, and he doesn’t want to be, but he is. People have told Sirius he feels too much, that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and Sirius had always thought that that was a good thing. 

Now, when he’s at Hogwarts and at fault for everything that’s wrong with his cousin, the first best friend he ever had, he’s starting to think maybe it isn’t always a good thing. Because Sirius does feel. He does feel, and feels too much, and he knows that. What he doesn’t know though, is how to handle his feelings. 

Sirius thought he was above not feeling anything and shutting his feelings and problems away when he was at home, but if he’s really honest with himself, now, he doesn’t really know if that’s how it is anymore, because that is what he’s been doing, right? Ignoring his problems, cutting all ties with them and everything that reminds him of them? That’s why he’s been ignoring Bella right? 

Oh, Sirius thought he had everything under control. 

Since when did life go according to plan anyway?

• • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Sirius , she thinks as soon as her eyes flutter open. Her breathing’s heavy again, and she can feel a bead of sweat forming on her forehead. 

Bella wants to cry, because this is too much. This is too much, she doesn’t know what to do with it, she doesn’t want to feel anything.

She’s so fucking irritated by the constant nightmares that aren’t leaving her alone. This is why she doesn’t sleep if she can get away with it. Because every single fucking time she closes her eyes, she sees her aunt. She sees Walburga Black and Sirius, and he’s on the floor unconscious, and there’s a pool of blood around him. 

She sees Reg standing next to her, and he doesn’t do anything to help his brother either, just watches as their mother rips Sirius to shreds, wearing the most calm expression, as if his heart’s not breaking on the inside, because Bella knows it is. 

She wants to move, to shout, to hit her aunt. She wants to shake Sirius awake, to tell him to get up and fight back, because that’s what he always did. That’s what he did when he didn’t want to go to a family event, or when he didn’t want to eat what Kreacher made, or when he didn’t like the clothes his mother picked out for him. He always fought back, and he isn’t doing it now, and Bella wants him to, but he won’t fucking move , and it drives her crazy. 

She wants to scream at her aunt to rip her to shreds too, if she’s doing it to him. She wants to feel the pain he’s feeling, because he doesn’t deserve it. She wants to go through what he’s going through, she wants to be hit and she wants to be called a disgrace too. 

Because she isn’t being called a disgrace, and she isn’t receiving Howlers every day of the week, and she deserves to too. She deserves to be hit, and shouted at, and be silenced, and she wants to be brave like Sirius is. 

She wants to feel it too, because he doesn’t deserve what he’s getting just because he’s in a different house. 

And if he does, then she does too. 

Because she remembers what the Sorting Hat had said to her the very first day, before she begged it to put her in Slytherin because she was afraid of the consequences. 

She was afraid of the consequences, and she begged the Hat not to, and so it didn’t. 

“You are just as much a Gryffindor as Godric himself was, Bellatrix.” 

She was afraid of the consequences, and Sirius was facing them. 

Bella deserved to face them too.