good things fall apart • sirius black

Who's to blame?

She looked like an angel amongst all the white. To Sirius she was an angel - his angel.

He was starting to think that he may have to pull himself together better if she was going to keep acting like his Patronus, for too many times now, she'd leaped in front of him as protection. And the guilt that what had happened to her, should've got him instead, was still sickening. Sirius would've taken all of it, all of the pain, if it meant she didn't have to feel even an ounce of it, for it was his fault. It was his wretched relatives, it was his disobedience, it was his lack of strength over keeping Ellie at school.

James would kill him, he was sure; Remus and Peter would be mortified; Lily and Marlene would do everything in their power to keep her away from him.

Sirius wasn't even sure how Cyrus could look at him, how the father of the girl he'd practically fed to the wolves could stand to be in his presence. But Cyrus had not once blamed him. In fact, he seemed grateful, and when Sirius asked him why, he'd simply hugged him tight in reply.

    "You got her out of there. You did everything you could." He'd said vehemently.

But sat in front of the beautiful girl now, clutching her hand tightly as she slept, Sirius couldn't feel any guilt, for peace flooded the whole room instead. He'd asked Clementine to help him bring some of the plants that lived in pots up to her room in the house because she couldn't be in the Orangery, and because he knew she'd appreciate it when she was awake properly. Camille had also sent beautiful bouquets from France, all full of the types of wildflowers Ellie loved, and so the room was a heady mix of all things earthy and floral. Calming and serene, it was just what both of them needed after how explosive their last minutes at Grimmauld Place turned out to be.

But that was three days ago now.

Ellie slept the rest of the day after Euphemia managed to heal her, and since then she'd been drifting in and out of slumber as she recovered. Now it was very clear that her wounds would never fully heal.

All up her right arm there were scars. From the tips of her finger and the palm of her hand, right to her shoulder - jagged lines that looked like crooked trails of water that flowed on top of her skin. Some white and raised, some pink and indentations. But the most noticeable were the ones on her cheek. Her face had taken the blunt of the spell Walburga had cast, and now there a collection of scars on the right side of her cheek. One stretched from the bridge of her nose, right down her neck, and other smaller ones were scattered around it like an abstract spiderweb.

Tracing the new patterns on her palm and up her forearm, Sirius studied them carefully, for he'd promised himself he'd imprint them on his brain. He knew everything about Ellie, and could paint her picture so vividly in his mind that sometimes his dreams only ever consisted of her. But now she looked different, and he needed to make amends to the figment of his imagination so that he always had a perfect mirror image of her.

She was his favourite person on the planet after all.

Not being able to speak to her, to apologise, was killing Sirius slowly and so he'd taken to spending every moment by her side. Every now and then, someone would come to try and drag him away so that he could eat, but they'd never succeed - Euphemia had now taken to bringing him sandwiches up in Ellie's room. He waited patiently as the hours ticked by for her to come round enough so that he could see those big sea green eyes of hers again. Sirius had never been patient like he was for her.

    "Pa-foo..." Voice croaky and weak, Ellie's hand closed around his fingers where he was still tracing the scars on her palm.

Sirius shot forward in his seat immediately, eyes wide and expectant as she came round more than she had done for three days. Her head rolled around on her pillow a little and she grumbled incoherent words restlessly, chocolate waves falling everywhere. Reaching carefully to brush her hair out of her face, Sirius let his fingertips linger over the scars on her cheek, committing them to memory just as clearly. Shuffling around as her other hand gripped the bed sheets, he'd never seen her so frustrated in her sleep, almost as if she was trying to wake and her eyes wouldn't open. Brow scrunching together as her lips jutted out in a pout, she grumbled something again, but still, Sirius couldn't make it out.