you and i are all thatâs real.
a bella & sirius microfic
She told him that when he was born he didnât open his eyes for a week.Â
Bella was a liar. They both told lies in that house,  the words soft whispered things that twisted around the stairs as they ran through the halls. Simple thingsâno I didnât push Reg, no I havenât seen Cissaâs hatpins, no I donât know why theyâre cryingâbut he was always in on the lie. That was the magic of it before they could do actual magic. A whole world of them.Â
So when Bella told him that he didnât open his eyes for a week when he was born, he believed her. Why wouldnât he? It was his Bella telling him.
Kreacher also told him that story when his mother imposed silence upon the house like a punishment. She had been locked in silence in the house for 25 years last he had checked and she made sure everyone in the house felt the weight of every one of those years. Where she had never smiled at him with warm maternal affection, she smiled seeing him suffer her silence. But it didnât matter, he had never needed her.
Kreacher said when he didnât open his eyes for a week his father thought her a failure and his mother was ready to discreetly get rid of him. She later used to say he had done that to spite her, to humiliate her in front of the family. She thought better a dead heir than the mother of a blind one. At least then she could be hallowed in grief.Â
The only person who was silent with him those seven days was Bella. She had stayed faithfully by his crib that week, refusing to leave.
âI was waiting for you to wake up,â she would say again and again when he asked her what she thought that week. âYou were born for me.â
She had sisters, friends, family, but Sirius was always hers. And she was his.Â
When he opened his eyes a week later, the first person he saw was Bella. There was no way he could remember that. He knew. He knew if he told anyone he would sound mad. But that was his first memory. Looking up to see Bella with her eyes like him and her curls, even at that age and her smile. He saw her before he ever saw the sun, his very own star smiling down at him.Â
When she enters Azkaban itâs been months since heâs been in there. Grief is a tangible thing when youâre surrounded by manifestations of darkness who stick their tongues down the crevices of your mind intent of sniffing out any semblance of a happy memory you may have had. He doesnât have any, not with James and Lily gone. Not when it was his fault. Sitting there in the cell, he deserved this. He knew he had. Lily had said he should be secret keeper and she had been right. Lily was always right. He and James thought they were so clever picking Peter instead because no one would go for Peter. And now they were gone.Â
She enters Azkaban and for a second he is breathless. Bella had come for him like Death had come for the three brothers. That was his first thought. His second was that he was happy.
Even there in the gloom and dark. There in the midst of his grief seeing her was like seeing the light. He didnât believe in a heaven, and if there was one it wasnât for people like him but when she walked into a room he almost believed that it could exist.Â
He heard her before he saw her. The steady measured steps. The click of her sensible boots because she liked to spin out of a spell instead of putting up a shield spellâa bad habit they both sharedâand in a duel the heels made her lose balance despite the cushioning charms she put in them. He thinks first he dreamt her, made up a Bella in his head to torture himself. Then she comes into view and he knows sheâs real. Their eyes meet and her expression doesnât change but he knows her. Knows sheâs digging her nails into her palms in the manacles the dementors have her by. Knows he will hold her breath a second after a quick breath in. His bella could be made of porcelain and he would still be able to tell what sheâs thinking.
She walks in and despite the dementors and the cells and the everythingâof Azkaban she is resplendent. When the dementors push her by his cell because she slowed down he can see her shoulder turned towards him. Like the invisible tie binding their souls was pulled taut. He could build up a thousand metaphors to say what they were but what they were could only be approached obliquely because now they were nothing.Â
Once he had been Bella and she had been Sirius.Â
Now they were just inmates in this prison.Â
She walks by and they both donât say a word.
