good things fall apart • sirius black

I should be doing alright

Mealtimes at 12 Grimmauld Place were never an enjoyable event. They consisted of long awkward silences where Sirius stabbed at the unappetising food, and Walburga and Orion shared pointed looks over the dinner table. If it wasn't silent, Regulus was being asked about his studies, and Sirius had to pretend that he was completely invisible. He waited anxiously for one of his parents to bring up a controversial subject, one that would agitate him to the point where he couldn't be quiet any longer, and then usually he'd be sent to his room before the meal was even over. Every time it was the same. And every time Sirius struggled more and more to not argue with their disgusting views.

This time, however, breakfast was a lot different.  

"You have had enough socialisation with those Muggle sympathisers. How do you think it made us look when you didn't return for Christmas?" Walburga slammed her spoon into her bowl of porridge, sending some of it splattering upwards.

They'd been having the same conversation for nearly fifteen minutes, going round and round in circles - neither her, nor Sirius would concede.

It had been a long four months since Adelaide's funeral, weeks filled with depressing days and no visible light at the end of the tunnel. Sirius had counted every hour that passed, waiting impatiently for summer to arrive so he'd be able to visit the beautiful girl again. Whilst the time had gone so slowly, it had also seemed to merge into one blur in his head, and there wasn't one particular moment he could pick out of the last few months at school. It had been torturous, truly gruelling, but even now summer had finally arrived, Sirius didn't find himself any freer. Instead, he'd been carted back to his family home, and put back in shackles again.

Though, Sirius figured, he was getting quite used to feeling out of control, and he was somewhat numb to it all now.

If he wasn't spending time in detention for being absent from class, he was catching up on work that he was physically present for, but still mentally somewhere else. It proved an easy task really, for he didn't sleep anymore, besides a few naps here and there, so the midnight hours acted as his 'catch up' study time. He dropped off of the Quidditch team halfway through March, which caused more than one argument with James, but Sirius didn't really care. The sport had started to bore him and turning up to the practices in the evenings was such a chore that he'd began to purposefully get himself detention, just so that he didn't have to show - it was fair to say that Gryffindor didn't win the House Cup.

Sirius' whole world had exploded in just four months, and all he was left with was the remnants of what he thought made him who he was, but the handsome boy wasn't so sure.

Everyone noticed, for it wasn't difficult to miss his hollow cheeks and dark circles, nor the way that he was usually missing from every social event. Even by Sirius Black standards he was grumpy, and people had resulted in not speaking to him at all in fear of having your head bitten off - not even Peter dare look at him for too long. James tried his hardest to get through to him, but it was like speaking to a brick wall. The boy was empty, and his mind completely lost.

Now though, there was some form of silver lining. Whilst currently he was trapped in Grimmauld Place, he had two months of freedom from school. Two months to spend with the beautiful girl he was sure was only a figment of his imagination by now. The only thing that kept her real, was the fact she still wrote to him, and that was all Sirius had been clinging to.     

"Cubby's mum died!" He argued back, raising his voice the loudest he had done for the whole conversation.

Regulus had shrunk in his seat as small as possible, and Walburga was about ready to combust, but Orion was the one that replied.