tell all the truth

              followed close behind, lead by a single Death Eater. The man cackled cruelly                 as he repeatedly stomped over the creature’s bare heels from behind. There                 was really no need for magic — their prisoners were already rendered utterly                 helpless. With each kick, Dobby squeaked, but barely loud enough to hear. 

                Dobby was still as shocked as he was the day Voldemort & his army first                 claimed victory — over Hogwarts, over the Ministry, over the Wizarding world.                 It was unthinkable — Hogwarts could not have fallen. Harry Potter could not                 be dead. It just couldn’t be. 

Swallowing down the terror bubbling up in her throat, she glanced at the door and crept along the dim expanse of floor between them. Something clicked against the stone floor as her foot landed on it, and she looked down, her breath catching. There was just enough light to see that it wasn't bone, as she'd feared, but wood: a broken wand. She let out her breath in a slow exhale.

She hurried the rest of the way to the other prisoner and knelt beside it (him?), her hand hovering just over a bony shoulder. "Are you...all right?" she asked. (Not that she could do much about if the answer was no). "Injured at all?" she clarified.

    “The sorting feast——?” he croaks, weakly. “No. No, that’s not right, it’s — it’s summer, it’s still summer, Harry is still sitting his OWLs —”

New fear begins to unfurl little tendrils in his mind, creep along his spine. His wide-eyed terror is almost child-like in its absolute grip. Where did he go, when he fell through that veil? Where is he now?

   She hesitates, frowning, her eyes on Sirius' face.

   Alarm bells are ringing in her head. His story is confusing, strange. Everything she has heard about him tells her to expect a wily enemy, a man who accomplished the impossible by escaping from Azkaban and then went back, breaking out his murderous cousin and the rest of that nasty pack. 

   But. But. Her mind races, returning to that headline, putting it together with his words. 

   It has been almost three months since that day, the terrible night that shattered their illusion of safety, and this is not the climate in which to collapse on strangers’ doorsteps. Especially not when one is a wanted criminal. (And why isn't he ever mentioned in the papers anymore? If he was in the Ministry, if he had fought on the Death Eaters' side, then the headlines about the hunt for Bellatrix Lestrange would include him, too. But they don't.)

   Fear crawls up the back of her neck in a prickling of spiders' legs. She already knows what she’s going to do, and she’s not at all certain it’s not going to get her killed.

Independent, semi-selective Sirius Black     ✫ Primarily Marauder’s Era but with multiple ‘verses      ✫ Adaptive; from gif/icon chat to multi-para     ✫ AU & crossover friendly     ✫ In search of IC & OOC shenanigans

ben barnes wouldn’t be a terrible fit with the others? i mean wrong age but people use him for sirius all the time, haha.

“I will agree to your interview on two conditions. The first being that I will be the first to receive a copy of your article, the first to read it and the first to approve of it.” He paused to see if there would be any objections to this before continuing. “The second being that if I do not care to answer one of your questions you will drop it. You will not push me and you will not test my patience. Or I am gone.”

His mind flashed to that Skeeter woman who had always respected the Malfoy family before the war but slandered their name after. She was a poor excuse for a journalist, not to mention human being. The very idea of her caused his lips to curl.

"I agree to your conditions," she said, meeting his eyes squarely. With that said, she let herself relax a little, her hands once again folded on the table in front of her. 

"I wanted to start by talking about what life's like for you right now," she said. "Nothing too invasive; I just want to get a feel for where you are. There's the apothecary, yes?"

Still in London. That’s something, at least — if he tried to apparate long distance as he was right now — all shuddering limbs and over-firing synapses and weak fingers — he has no doubt he’d only succeed in splinching himself.

He tries to stand, finds that he can’t.

   "The Ministry." Her mind is abruptly yanked forward, to last May. Because the last time she heard of Harry Potter at the Ministry, the Daily Prophet headline had read, 

                         Hᴇ-Wʜᴏ-Mᴜsᴛ-Nᴏᴛ-Bᴇ-Nᴀᴍᴇᴅ Lɪᴠᴇs.

                                 Was this something new? Something worse?

    His laugh is hoarse at her accusation, and though he can feel his wand in the pocket of his robes, he does not go for it even when she fumbles for hers. He’s just died once (he thinks, perhaps) and he’s no desire to do so again.

            “Guilty,” he rasps. “Of being myself, if nothing else.”

    Now why had he said that? It seems important, but he can’t quite put a finger on ——

                 ——it all floods back. Not James. Harry.

   There is a kind of knowledge beyond facts, a place inside where such knowledge dwells. Once she called it magic, for it is only when she knows a spell there that she can cast it. Now she calls it intuition, understanding. And there, out of a soup of the past year's ever-changing facts, of his touch, his tone, his very expression, grows a hunch.

             And her fear cracks aside,                              just for a moment.