#--drabble;

Snow had fallen so gracefully upon London. The muggle homes that lined Grimmauld square had bright, twinkling lights and Christmas trees that glittered in their frosted windows. If he listened closely, Sirius could make out the faint notes of ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ playing on their static-filled radios.

He sat on a snow covered bench, his un-gloved hands red with cold, listening to the barely audibly music:

I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love Even more than I usually do And although I know it’s a long road back I promise you

The boy, just eleven, had only been home for three days and was already longing for the warmth of the Gryffindor Common Room, with its fire built up and roaring, or the snowy grounds where he and James and Remus and Peter had made poorly-crafted snow-elves (and then proceeded to have a snowball fight that ended with a snowy-faced Professor Kettleburn and a last-minute detention under all their belts, though it had been Sirius who’d thrown the fatal snowball).

His parents’ greeting at the train platform had been frosty—but that wasn’t entirely unexpected—and Regulus had lurked behind them, ever watching, ever the observer.

He heard the sharp shout of “Sirius!” though it was muffled behind heavy oak doors. Of course his mother was calling; he had to look smart for the annual Christmas party. He didn’t move, knowing it would more than likely result in a lack of dinner this evening; he was rooted to the spot. Frozen by the cold? Perhaps. Frozen to the spot because, for once, he craved silence, craved a moment’s peace that was not punctuated by mutterings of “My poor master and mistress, oh my poor mistress. Such a troubled, disgraceful boy.” Or worse, his mother’s shouting and heavy hand.

He still bore a dark welt across his cheek, though three days’ time and basic healing salves had helped it fade to a pale pink. But the imprint of a hand was still visible.

“Sirius?”

He hadn’t even heard the heavy oak door open, hadn’t heard the creak of the hinges or the soft crunching of boots over snow, “Mum’s looking for you.” Of course, of course, it was Regulus. Who else would be able to sneak up on him as easily and noiselessly as a ghost? His little brother was a head shorter than him, and just a year his junior, but he looked as close to a man as a ten year old could get.

Regulus’s dark hair, that same same ebony shade as Sirius’s (though the latter’s was flecked with ever-falling snow) was shorter and perfect styled to be kept out of his face. He wore a child-sized pair of bottle green dress robes—Sirius suspected he had a matching set hanging in his wardrobe—and those luminescent, gray eyes that were too wise for one so small, watched Sirius. Ever the observer.

“Sirius,” said Regulus again, his quiet, high voice tentative as he trudged through the snow, soiling his perfectly polished shoes, “Are you alright?” And there he sat, next to his brother, the snow dampening the seat of his freshly pressed robes.

“Mum’ll have your head if you ruin your outfit, Reggie,” Sirius muttered, his shoulder knocking a bit into his little brother’s. “And ‘m fine, really. Just needed a second. Y’know, before everyone comes in and I’m either the living freak show or a new piece of furniture that everyone ignores.”

A soft, small, warm hand gripped onto both of his chilled ones, holding fast for just a moment, knowing that, really, they didn’t have much time before they’d be parted once more—Regulus, after all, was to be paraded around as if he was Slytherin’s own bosom pal.

“You miss them. You miss being there.” They weren’t questions posed by his little brother, they were statements. He’d always been a little too smart for his own good.

“I miss being anywhere except here,” Sirius’s tone was harsher than any eleven year old’s should have ever been; for a moment he sounded nearly like a man. But those cold words had caused his little brother to stiffen in the slightest, and he sat up straight and tall. “I-“ Sirius’s voice, just a moment ago filled with such resentment, broke, and hot, fat tears rolled down his red-with-cold cheeks. “I just don’t like being back here. They hate me, Reggie. That’s never going away. I-I like it better at Hogwarts than here because… because people at Hogwarts like me,” A watery laugh and a stifled hiccup broke off his sentence.

In a barely audible voice, so quiet that, really, he wasn’t speaking to Regulus, but to himself, he whispered, “Nobody likes me here.”

But that little boy, with his intelligent gray eyes and, the ache in his chest of idolizing his older brother, just squeezed Sirius’s hand once more, and whispered back, “I still like you. You’re my brother. I’ll always like you.”

But the door opened—crashed open—and there stood Walburga, her dark hair elegantly done up and dolled up in a dress that matched Regulus’s plumage, her face white with anger.

“Regulus Black! Get up this instant, you’ll ruin your clothes!” And she took his free hand, and pulled him up and briskly, efficiently, brushed the snow from his robes. She send the younger Black inside, and he went obediently, with only one backward glance towards his brother.

Then Walburga turned her steely eyes to Sirius. “Get inside, I won’t tell you again.” For once, she was not yelling—it seemed her fury had surpassed even that—but her tone was deadly quiet. When Sirius didn’t move, just looked at her with red-rimmed eyes and a snow cold face, she walked and clasped his face with one taloned hand, so tight he couldn’t have moved his jaw if he’d wanted to. “Inside, boy. I will not tell you again.”

But Sirius’s quiet-for-once defiance, his heartsickness, left him still immobile.

“Fine!” His hard-lined mother shouted, inches from his face, that one syllable echoing and bouncing around the square. He flinched. “Fine! Stay out here all night! Freeze to death! At least this way, no one will have to look at the boy I raised and see what you’ve become.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the house.

He heard the click of the lock on the heavy door, and knew that, now, it would be no use trying to get back inside for a while.

He closed his eyes, ears listening hard, and heard it once more, so faintly, taking him to a large stone castle with suits of armor and pesky poltergeists and friends.