AlwaysPadfoot

Author: AlwaysPadfoot

Summary: “It’s not easy, this crazy rebel life we lead. So why do we chose to do it–?”

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“Black. Stop!”

Sirius Black looked over his shoulder, if only for a moment, to identify just who thought he would stupid enough to think that he would actually stop. He wasn’t sure, but any of the group fit the the profile. Really, he’d been stupid to get himself ambushed. James was in the Hospital Wing, he had caught the Wizard Flu three days ago and was unable to leave the care of the nurse. Remus was visiting his mother - again, and Peter was back in the common room so Sirius had no back up when he was cornered in the dungeons after serving detention with Slughorn.

A flash of orange scorched past him, catching his cheek and making him quickly bring his hand to his face. He made an immediate turn down the next available corridor. Sirius would have to wait until James was better before they'd be able to plot revenge for the burn that was now streaked along his cheekbone.

Thirty seconds later Sirius had no choice but to burst in through the library doors. His pursuers probably never would have suspected that he had come in here and besides, the Librarian would go mad if half of Slytherin caused a ruckus by running in with their wands out. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration, but there were at least four of them. He slowed down a little when Madam Pince caught sight of him, shifting his bag slightly before hunting for a quiet place at the back of the library, out of sight.

Sirius didn’t understand why Remus spent so much time here; it was dark and smelt weird. The shelves towered upwards towards the ceiling, dust hanging in the air, illuminated by the sunlight beaming through single paned, narrow windows. He supposed it was a vaguely comforting hue of darkness, but maybe that was only because it was hiding him, for now.

He passed a few groups of people, mostly studying:

‘Is it Unicorn horn or blue beetles next?’

‘If Uriah the Ugly didn’t start the Goblin Wars of the thirteenth century, was it Urik the Oddball or Utan the Killer?’

‘All this Transfiguration is being to stress me out.’

And of course, he stumbled across people who weren’t working. More specifically, he spotted four or five Hufflepuff girls leaning over copies of Witch Weekly.

‘What about this polish, Annie?’

‘Hmm. You know, I don't think this gown and nailpolish really go together.'

‘Okay, so what about this gown?’

He listened curiously until one of them shot him a disgusted look and he turned away quickly, tripping over one of the shelving ladders. Ever so briefly he wondered why students needed a ladder to get books down from up there when they could just use magic. Of course, his thoughts were interrupted soon enough.

"Siri?"

Sirius spun around to see Andromeda looking inquisitively up from a table between the stacks of books at the back of the library. "Andy," he smiled, taking a few quick glances around before heading over to his Slytherin cousin. "You're not hiding too are you?"

Sirius grinned weakly before taking the seat next to her. She shook her head when he moved into the light, frowning at the burn on his face.  "And to think I wondered why you were in the library. Come here," Andromeda replied with an eye roll. She took out her wand and healed the burn on his face, "What happened?" "The usual Slytherin vs Gryffindor banter. I'm a blood traitor; they're half-snob half-troll. It's just a bad mix."

"You really are a Gryffindor, aren't you?" she smirked at her first year cousin, who returned a cheeky smile as he ran his finger across the newly healed skin. 

"And always will be. Besides, I heard you've started dating a Muggleborn, that's pretty Gryffindor of you." She laughed, "We've been dating for a year actually."

She looked back down at the work she was doing and added a few extra words to her Ancient Runes. Andromeda seemed as though she was debating whether to speak again or not.

"You helped me make the decision to make it public.”

Sirius looked surprised, confusion evident behind stormy grey eyes. How had he helped Andromeda with her boyfriend? He wrinkled his nose and stayed quiet, unsure of how exactly to respond. Andromeda looked up at him, her eyes still on the slightly pink skin of his newly healed cheek and sighed. The last few months had been hell for her, dealing with the cold shoulder from half of her house and one or two horrifying howlers from her family. She hadn’t made the choice lightly though; she had the full support of her boyfriend, Ravenclaw house’s Ted Tonks; her two best friends, Slytherin’s Liam Greengrass and Ravenclaw’s Kendra McDougal; and those occasional words of wisdom of her Gryffindor cousin, Sirius Black, had kind of made her mind up.

“It’s not easy doing what we do Sirius,” she told him. “It’s not easy, this crazy rebel life we lead. So why do we chose to do it–?”

“Because it’s right,” Sirius answered bluntly. “Because everybody should be equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re Muggleborn or Pureblood. Anyone can be anything.”

Andromeda shook her head at the innocence of her cousin’s words, but still looked at him with a smile. After all, he was only young, his naivety could stretch a little further yet before he realised what a truly horrible world they could live in sometimes.

“You may not realise it, but you helped me be who I wanted to be. From the moment you were sorted into the Gryffindor, I stopped being Perfect Pureblood Andromeda Black and started to be just Andy.”

Sirius’ eyes widened substantially as she spoke. He stared at his cousin; hardly believing that she was telling him that he had been the reason  for her being her own person. Andy had always been his favourite cousin; she’d taught him about equality; she’d taught him he could be his own person; she’d taught him there was more to life than just being a Black. How could it possibly, even just for a moment, be the other way around?

“You were always Andy. You helped me become me,” Sirius answered. “You’ve always been fair and friendly to everyone; you’ve always taught me what’s right and what’s wrong.”

He ran a hand through his hair, “Hell, if it hadn’t been for you I’d still be calling Muggleborns the other word.”

Andromeda had taught Sirius not to view the world through Black-tinted Glasses, therefore she had been one of the only parts of Sirius’ childhood he truly enjoyed remembering.

“But it’s only this year that everyone has seen that.” Andromeda retorted, ruffling his hair and making him duck away. “It’s only this year that I have chosen to be my true self, not what mum and dad want.”

“Then I’m proud of you. We’re both doing what we want to do and being who we want to be,” Sirius grinned, trying to get his hair back from messy to only somewhat messy. “I’d call you a liar if you didn’t agree that it’s the best feeling in the world.”

“Aren’t I the one who is supposed to be proud of you?”

She teased him lightly with one eyebrow raised incredulously, as if she were scrutinising her younger cousin. Sirius barely held back a laugh at his cousin’s expression; it was not unlike how Professor McGonagall would look if she suspected someone was up to no good.

“No, this was all you Andy,” he said, holding his arms out. “Think of it this way, without you I wouldn’t be the bane of my parents existence.”

Rain

AlwaysPadfoot

AN: For Liza in the Drabble Tag. Jily / Prompt: Rain

I'd like to say I was startled when a large droplet of water fell onto my Potions book, but the air had been thick with humidity ever since I'd shuffled out onto the roof three hours ago. With a heavy sigh I closed my book, I'd just gotten to an interesting bit, and chucked it back through my open window. I turned, staring across the fields at the back of my Grandma's house, watching as a downpour of rain raced across the grass.

I felt my lips twitch up into a smile as the first droplets hit me, a refreshing feeling racing through me as the raindrops slid down underneath my shirt and down my back.

There was something that I truly loved about the rain; it was my favourite weather.

It started to come down faster and harder, the noise as it hit the roof of the greenhouse beneath my dangling feet assaulting my ears. It blocked out every other noise that had been there once before, no longer heard over the buckets of rain that was falling from heaven above. I liked it.

I liked being alone with my thoughts with nothing else to worry about, except maybe getting a cold afterwards, which never happened because there was a difference between the rain and being wet, and actually being cold. I wasn't cold. It was summer, it had been hot all week and the rain was actually a relief because also everything in the garden was getting extremely dry. Grandma would be upset if her flowers died, even though they never died. I don't think I'd ever seen a dead flower within a two mile radius of my Grandma.

I sighed to myself before a voice made my heart skip a beat.

"Lily, what are you doing?" I turned to see James stood in the window, his hair all ruffled and his eyes sleepy, "It's raining and thats my shirt, you thief."

I grinned widely at him and outstretched a hand to him, "Don't be a wuss, Potter. Come out here, it's warm enough."

I had to bite my lip to suppress a giggle when he muttered something about finding a t-shirt. Waiting didn't bother me, I just closed my eyes and hummed gently under the noise of the rain. Some point in the next few second James clambered out onto the roof and sat beside me, taking my hand in his as we sat in a beautiful silence. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed deeply in, content. His thumb rubbed circles into the space just below my own, his own eyes closed and a lopsided smile falling across his face.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that two things happened at once: the windows on the floor above from my Grandma's room swung open and a playful taunt was called out, "If you two lovebirds want breakfast you better get dry fast. No water in my house."

Colin and I, we'd just grown accustomed to being brothers. We used to fight a lot. He'd been the nerd, the boy that did well in classes and I'd always been the type of guy to barely scrape Acceptable's. But this year had been different. Colin had been my confident, my best friend, my older brother.

Now the war was over and I was kneeling in the Great Hall in between rows and rows of covered bodies. My hands were shaking as I ran my fingers under the cover and after one deep breath, I pulled it back. Immediately I fell backwards, clasping my hands to my mouth to stop from yelling out in shock. My chest tightened causing me to choke out a sob at the sight of my older brother.

There was a skewed look of confusion in his eyes made him look about five years younger and I already had given up all hopes of trying not to cry. Tears slipped down my cheeks and with the difficultly of trying to avoid attention bearing down on me I put my face on his chest and sobbed like I'd never before.

My brother was gone, I should have stopped him from coming here. What use was that thought though? I never would have stopped Colin coming; maybe I should have followed and helped.

I'd lost the person I'd grown to trust the most. The person who'd helped me survive from the day we left our parent's house exactly three hundred days previous to the moment he left to join the battle of Hogwarts.

I'd respected that he thought it was worth taking a risk to end the war. I was never going get away with coming here, never. But Colin slipped through, my brother, the nerd that I would have teased before all this happened.

He'd been so brave, so protective, so unlike the Colin I thought I knew. So the question that was now haunting my mind was:

I admired my cousin. He's got the thing I always wished I had - the ability to step out of the shadow of the Black family name. I guessed the Sorting Hat helped him a little by placing him in Gryffindor, but everyone knows the hat gives most people a choice. I know for a fact that Sirius would have demanded to be anywhere but Slytherin.

When I was sorted, I was too scared to make a choice over the house my family had always been in that after much deliberation between Ravenclaw and Slytherin I was placed in the latter.

I caught Sirius' eye giving him a brief, yet inconspicuous, smile and a nod before he sat down grinning at the Gryffindor table.

I want to know how he does it. How he just saunters over and sits down with all the people our family hate? I mean, I know I do the same thing, but never would I ever be so obvious - especially not with Ted.

Callum Greengrass nudged me. "Proud?"

I shushed him, even though he spoke so quietly that no one on the table would have heard him. Callum was the only person who I could tell the truth. He smiled and made sure I was watching his little sister get sorted. She went into Ravenclaw.

I turned back to Sirius who was talking quite happily to Conner Jepson, the fifth year Gryffindor prefect, and he was soon joined by two other boys. One of them I knew to be James Potter, from various ministry parties, but the other I didn't recognise - he looked sick.

My mind drifted somewhat when the meal appeared, despite the fact I was trying to force myself not to think about how my favourite cousin had more bravery in his little finger than I have in my whole body. If only Ted and I could be together without the secrets, if only I could stop and talk to him in the corridor or kiss him goodbye when I went to Charms and he was off to Herbology. I'd be able stop shushing Callum, the only person who knew about me and Ted, when he asked how things were going or something like that.

I caught Ted's eye but stopped myself from smiling because seventh year Lucius Malfoy was following my eyeline. I sneered the signature Black sneer at Ted, who realised quickly that it was all a ploy. For a split second my brain filled with him, seeing him sitting there, mischievous eyes darting between his friends and me, looking very hot in his blue and black robes. It made my decision for me. I decided if I could do that one thing Sirius does do well, that one tiny yet significant thing, then I'll feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I was going to do it, I'm going to. That thing that my cousin does so well.

Hey guys!

This is my fan-fiction page and I'm just going to post FanFiction from my account on ff.net basically and HeadCannons too. It'll mainly consist of Harry Potter and Doctor Who FanFic, but who knows how that will expand further.