House tour
Sirius felt slightly stressed as he rose from his chair. True, he had nothing to hide, but he was a little ashamed of the house he had grown up in. He didn't know how much there was to hide and what he might discover. Deep down, he feared that his family had even worse secrets than he had ever known, and the presence of Severus by his side both reassured and strained him. The summer clean-up by members of the Order had made the house habitable, but it was neither completely clean nor free of danger.
As they left the kitchen, Sirius turned suddenly to Severus, who had followed him.
“Ah, I haven't said anything about the kitchen, which everyone knows. It's huge, of course, and the idea was to be able to accommodate all the members of the pureblood families if the need arose. But I have to say that, deep down, most of my memories of it, which I hate, are of the four of us. Each of us sat on one side of the table, my parents at either end, my dad facing the door and my mum opposite him at the other end.”
Sirius pointed to the edges of the table each time.
“My brother sat there, on the edge to the right of my father, and I sat here, to his left.”
“But this table is huge," Severus remarked, frowning. “Could you hear each other talking?”
Severus's ironic tone was not lost on Sirius, who laughed bitterly.
“Talk? I don't know what we'd have to say to each other. Of course, when we were children, Regulus and I were given a whole speech about table manners, the use of cutlery and all sorts of conventions for behaving properly in pureblood society. Incredibly boring and pointless. My mother always found something to blame me for.”
“I can't imagine why...”
“Regulus learnt everything by heart and stuck to it,” Sirius continued, ignoring Severus's remark. “He should have been born before me, it would have saved us a lot of trouble. He was perfectly trained, incapable of thinking for himself, he always took refuge in tradition and absorbed everything my parents said. It's so much easier to accept things as they are without having to question them, to want to keep them rather than change them.”
“That's not exactly the image I have of Regulus," Severus interjected. “Your brother was... well, he was really liked in Slytherin. He was clever, he was funny, he played Quidditch... he was a lot more like you than you think. He also looked a lot like you, physically.”
“Regulus was a little wimp who had nothing in common with me but the family ties I chose to deny," Sirius spat.
He saw Severus shrug and glare at him.
“He wasn't intelligent, he learnt everything by heart, he had no imagination, no creativity or independence of mind.”
“He eventually turned away from the Dark Lord”, Severus remarked. “No one asked him to.”
“What do you know?" asked Sirius, turning to look Severus straight in the eye.
“Because he came to me with his doubts once," Severus told him with what sounded like sadness or regret in his voice. “But I wasn't the right person to talk to, I... I didn't want to hear anyone doubting at that time.”
Severus sighed and Sirius realised that the man looked overwhelmed. A fleeting vision of Severus naked in the bath he had made him take when he was unconscious earlier in the summer flashed through his mind. Sirius saw again the mark of Darkness etched by magic on Severus's lean, white arm.
“What did you say to him?," Sirius asked.
“That he should have thought twice before joining the Death Eaters, that there was no place for the weak and that only those most dedicated to the cause stood a chance of survival. I didn't want him to put me in danger by coming to talk to me, the Dark Lord would always find the traitors in the end and get rid of them. Needless to say, I've changed my mind now," Severus added in a dead voice.
Sirius felt a mixture of anger and indignation burning in his gut. He did not want to hear about his brother, his mistakes, Severus's mistakes and those of the Death Eaters. He didn't understand how anyone could have belonged to the circle of Voldemort's most fervent supporters, he didn't want to think about the fact that Severus had deliberately chosen to be part of it because Sirius hated anyone who had made that choice.
“Let's get out of here," Sirius said gloomily and walked through the entrance hall where the torches lining the walls cast their bluish glow permanently on the portraits of the Black family ancestors.
They made their way discreetly into the great hall, the one Sirius hated because of the tapestry depicting his family's huge family tree.
“Oh no, let's not go in there," he said, taking a step back.
Severus nearly bumped into him.
“I think Molly's done a pretty good job of cleaning up around here.”
“Toujours pur," Severus said suddenly, reading the Black motto at the top of the family tree.
“Yeah, that's a very clever motto," Sirius quipped.
“You've never translated it into English.”
“No, my parents, especially my mother, made a point of preserving all the most absurd traditions. What could be better than a family motto in French?”
“Did you learn to speak it?" asked Severus.
“A little, I've never been very interested," Sirius replied with a shrug. “There are all sorts of old customs and rituals in French in the old wizarding families. For centuries, the language of communication between the Purebloods of Europe was French. I suppose in my mother's eyes it was a sign of prestige.”
“I like this language," Severus remarked.
“Do you speak French?”
“No, but I like the sound of it,” Severus replied, blushing slightly.
“Well, I can't try to seduce you by speaking French, because I don't like the language," said Sirius.
“Why would you want to do such a thing!," Severus choked, blushing all over his face.
“Speak French?”
“No! I mean the other thing... what you said..." Severus stammered.
Sirius had a genuine smile for the first time.
“It was a joke, breathe Severus," he said.
Deep down, Sirius was pleased at the effect his words had on the other man. He felt a wave of warmth wash over him as he watched Severus look away, his face as red as a Gryffindor flag. He realised that he hadn't really looked at Severus since he'd arrived: how come he hadn't seen how handsome the other man was, with his straight black hair falling on either side of his face as if it wanted to close like curtains over the theatre of emotions playing out on his features? Sirius stared at Severus, realising that deep down, the mere presence of the Potions Master beside him was enough to make him think things like 'that's why I'm alive'. Why hadn't he noticed it before? Now was the time to tell him about what he had been up to that had been overshadowed by the revelations about the existence of the prophecy. Sirius wanted to use the weekend to open his heart and...
“Let's go somewhere else," Severus said and hurried out of the room.
Sirius followed obediently, his heart beating faster than usual.
“What's down here?" asked Severus, pointing to a door at the far end of the corridor, just before the kitchen.
“The cellar," replied Sirius. “There's nothing interesting in there, I've already taken out all the bottles of elf-made wine and old Firewishy that were in there.”
“And you drank them?," Severus couldn't help asking.
“Not all of them," replied Sirius with a smile. “We can open one tonight if you like.”
Severus didn't answer, but Sirius had the impression he'd mumbled something through his teeth.
“Why is the picture of your mother always screaming?," Severus whispered as they climbed the stairs to the first floor, where their rooms were.
“Because she's true to herself,” replied Sirius. “She was quite the type to lose her nerve if conventions weren't followed and to use the house as the Order's headquarters, to have me come back and move in... I suppose it's too much for her. So, she just screams because she can't do anything else. A bit like..." he paused suddenly, as if lost in thought, then continued, "a bit like when my nerves gave out after Pettigrew killed all those muggles and... well, you know what I mean. It's true, you know, that I started laughing and completely lost my sense of reality. I literally howled with laughter, it was all I could do, it was as if my brain had stopped working. The worst moment wasn't discovering the bodies of James and Lily, it was that moment when I almost caught that dirty traitor and he got away from me. Because everything became real and I lost my mind.”
He turned suddenly to Severus, who looked petrified and stared at him with an expression of horror on his face. There was no blush left on his face, which was strained and pale.
“I'm sorry," Sirius said hurriedly, looking contrite, "I keep going over the past, it must be very boring for you.”
“It's not that," Severus replied in a low, soft voice. “It's just that I'm wondering how you ever stopped howling with laughter and came to your senses.”
“You know, I'm not sure I'm entirely sane," said Sirius, trying to joke.
“I don't think anyone can be totally sane after going through all this.”
“It's nice of you to make excuses for me," said Sirius with a faint smile.
“I don't think it's boring,” added Severus, “can you talk about it to some... friends?”
“I've told Moony a lot, of course. I don't want to talk about it with Harry, he's got too much to do and too much to think about.”
Sirius saw the fleeting shadow of a grimace pass over Severus's face. *
“But you were asking me if my mother used to shout," Sirius continued, "and to tell you the truth, she did. She wasn't a very affectionate kind of mother, in case you hadn't guessed. I think her portrait is a pretty good imitation of the Howler she sent me when she found out I'd been sent to Gryffindor.”
Sirius paused thoughtfully.
“What about your mother?”
“What about her?" Severus answered sharply.
“What was she like? Was she shouting too?”
“I... no.”
Sirius saw Severus swallow. A closed expression on his face.
“She wasn't very affectionate either. My father was the one who shouted, it happens when you spend your time drunk. But they were shooting at each other.”
“Oh... so you know about fucked-up families.”
“Yeah, well, my mum and dad fought all the time, it was unbearable," Severus said in such a low voice that Sirius had to strain his ear to hear what he was saying.
“Didn't she use magic?”
“No. But she did teach me a few things. She gave me access to books that I read several times before going to Hogwarts. Not children's literature, as you might imagine.”
“Dark magic books," Sirius said at once and then regretted it.
“Yes, Black," Severus replied, his eyes blazing, "books of dark magic, but also history.”
“How did she die?" asked Sirius, unable to contain his curiosity.
“Of an illness, a few years after my father. He died just after my last year at Hogwarts, during the summer. An accident when he was drunk, he drowned.”
“Oh," said Sirius. “Muggle deaths.”
“What about your parents?" asked Severus, certainly with more vigour than he would have liked.
“My father was killed just after Regulus," replied Sirius. “Probably by Voldemort, but we never found out the truth. It doesn't really matter. My mother killed herself a few years later.”
“What?" exclaimed Severus.
“Yes, she drank poison. I found out about it when I was in Azkaban, sometimes a visitor would give me the Daily Prophet and I'd seen an article about her death. I imagine she thought suicide was a form of control she would maintain over her own death when her darling son had been taken from her, followed by her idiot husband, and to learn that her eldest son had been locked up in Azkaban for killing all those people... it was too much. The disgrace of the family.”
“She never visited you?”
“No, I'm sure she didn't believe I was guilty, but you see, she didn't do anything to get me out of there. She must have thought I was going to die in Azkaban.”
Silence fell again between the two men. It was Severus who broke it after two long minutes.
“Why do we have to talk about our families?”
“We're visiting my house," Sirius pointed out, "and it's hard to avoid the subject. Do you have a house somewhere?”
“Of course," Severus replied grumpily, "but I'd rather not think about it. It's also the house I grew up in and I hate it there.”
“I don't blame you.”
“No, but you see I didn't grow up in a villa in the centre of London, my home certainly fit in the space of your living room, Black," Severus retorted.
“The size of this place doesn't make it any nicer.”
“At least you were never poor," Severus snapped.
“What's that got to do with my family always hating me?”
“Welcome to the club,” scoffed Severus, “except you never lacked for anything.”
“It's not a competition to see who had the shittiest childhood," Sirius pointed out. “I'd love to see your house one day.”
“Oh no, you wouldn't," Severus exclaimed. “You'll never set foot in this shithole.”
“I'd like to see where you grew up.”
“What good would that do?”
“It's just that I'm interested in your story," Sirius replied.
“I assure you there's nothing interesting or remarkable about my story and I'm ashamed of this house. No one has ever been there and that's not going to change.”
Silence fell between the Gryffindor and the Slytherin who were facing each other. Sirius had lost all desire to talk to Severus about his feelings. The man was far too closed off and defensive. He suddenly didn't even know if he'd been dreaming the tender moments he'd spent with him or if they'd been real.
“I don't feel like this house tour anymore," Sirius muttered wearily. “I'm tired.”
Severus made no reply and Sirius, feeling a headache coming on with the speed of a Firebolt, wandered off towards his room with the vague idea of lying down. He was about to turn his door handle when he heard Severus's voice behind him.
“Black, I'm an idiot.”
Sirius turned round.
“I'd be delighted to have a glass of elf-made wine with you after you've rested, if you still feel like it.”
Sirius didn't understand a thing about this man. His ignorance didn't stop his stomach from lurching when he realised that this was Severus's way of apologising.
“You can see the rest of the house by yourself," Sirius told him. “Watch out for Kreacher lurking about.”
“I think I can defend myself against him," Severus muttered.
“I don't doubt it," Sirius said with a smile. “See you then.”
He saw Severus nod at him and he pushed open the door to his room, shut it again and threw himself on his bed. Sirius clutched his head in his hands. He wanted to give up. There was nothing to gain from Severus... and yet Severus kept coming back to him when he least expected it. Was it possible that the Slytherin had never known any form of affection in his life for him to be so blind and recalcitrant to the one Sirius wanted to offer him? In fact, was he so blind to it or had he deliberately chosen to reject it?
Sirius massaged his temples to try and get rid of the headache. The prophecy came back to him. He desperately wanted to find out what was in it and who had handed him over to Voldemort. He hated being locked up here so much. Even his room offered him little comfort. Instead of Muggle girls flaunting their bulging breasts, Sirius would have liked to see the figure of a slim man with long black hair hanging on either side of his face.
In the midst of a whirlwind of despair, Sirius felt an urgent, almost painful urge rising within him. He imagined Severus's body lying on his bed and what he would do if he could do anything. He saw himself leaning over the Slytherin and bringing his lips to his, Severus's big black eyes hanging on his. He remembered the feel of the soft skin of his face on his mouth, the smell of him that he had only breathed in for a fraction of a second. He wanted to kiss him on the back of the neck, behind the ear. Sirius thought that Severus must be the kind of person who made no noise, who let out only the most necessary sighs and moans, and then he would know that every breath Severus breathed a little louder was like a secret meant for his ears alone. With his eyes still closed, Sirius felt the blood rush to the middle of his legs and for a few moments he allowed himself to forget everything, including his headache, and feel only the most trivial but sincere happiness.