What if they all lived?

Chapter 16

So, big mention of trauma, chilhood abuse and some implied violence. Not pretty.

Athena Balck

It was four in the morning and she couldn't sleep. She had started reading Emma, but couldn't concentrate past two in the morning, so she stopped. Now, for some reason, she was thinking of her house. 

She hated her brain for doing this to her.

 For bringing up old memories, memories she thought she buried. thoughts that she thought dead. But now she was thinking. It happened often, that she found herself having flashes and sometimes she wondered if Sirius had them too, maybe she was overdoing it, maybe other kids had them too. But she couldnt help but ducking her head when someone raised a hand or someone touched her. 

She thought back to when she was seven and Reg was six. Poor Reg had wet the bed-it was an accident, just kid stuff, a nightmare. Even at seven, Thena was old enough to understand that. She was old enough to understand that a mother shouldn't scream at her child for that, shouldn't dig her nails into his arm and drag him off the bed and pull down his trousers, pointing her wand at his legs like she was going to-

That was when Athena had vomited. She had been there, she told Reg he could sleep with her, he had some sort of plague in his room brought in by their old house-elf after some task outside the house. Walpurga had turned to him with hellfire in her eyes, her anger like a blade. Only now, it was pointed at her, and not Reg. But that was alright. She had got her first scar ages ago. It wasn't anything she couldn't live through. But seeing Regulus's unblemished legs, still chubby with baby fat, smooth and vulnerable-seeing her mother's wand pointed at them-that was what had made her sick. Sirius was asleep. He didn't know. He doesn't know.

After that Sirius kept on taking their mothers attention so that they wouldn't get in trouble and she kept taking the blame for them. She spent the rest of the summer rebelling in every small way she could think of. She tracked mud through the house, she snuck out of her room at night and crept around the library until Kreacher found her, she nicked more muggle magazines. It was a delicate balance, inciting her mother's anger but ensuring that it was focused solely on her. 

Sirius wasn't far back, stealing important things and making their mother believe that she lost them, he made Cissy hair turn pink at reunions and talked with simple vocabulary in front of important Ministry people. Regulus had no idea what they were doing. There couldn't be any spill over; they needed to make sure that Reg looked like an angel once they left, and not a punching bag for any pent up frustration with the Black heir.

Then it was the goodbye at the station. They liked to say they left immediately but they snuck a few words with Reg before.

"Look, just play nice, alright? You're good at that." Sirius had said.

Regulus pulled back, nodding and sniffling, a wary confusion clouding his eyes. He blinked, then started to say, "Sirius, you don't-"

"Keep your chin up, you're a saint compared to us, yeah?" she interrupted.

She ran through the memory for the millionth time and finally decided to go to sleep.

Sirius Black

As winter approached, the boys spent less and less time outside, preferring to work huddled around the fire in the common room.His sister spent time with him then, but rarely on any other occasion. He could understand, he missed Reggie too and he was mad for not seeing him on Christmas, but he wasn't guilty of that, and she was treating him like he was.

When Sirius wasn't spending time with James (and Peter, who never seemed to leave his side), he was reading with Remus. It took them just under two weeks to finish A History of Magic, and Sirius then started alternating between A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration and Magical Drafts and Potions. He even started reading aloud when they worked on their homework in a group, although it led to scowling from James, who preferred silence. Athena had been giving them weird looks since then. Maybe she knew something but he doubted it, she didnt share a room with him, so she had no way. In classes he did his homework, although he didn't read when asked to, well maybe she did know.

Truth was that Sirius had decided he no longer cared about schoolwork. It was all so easy anyway—he could get passable grades even without studying or taking notes, and do better than half the class if he bothered to glance over his books—and Bellatrix had made it very clear during his birthday that something as frivolous as good marks would never be enough to win his way back into his parents' good graces. He studied enough in between reading to Remus and listening to Thena. The girl passed around his room, walking in circles reciting the subject in question or explaining it to the wall as if it cared, but helped him too.

Sirius found other ways to occupy his time. Namely, researching—ever since they had started reading together, Remus's marks had skyrocketed, and Sirius was sure that if he could just figure out the right spell the boy would become a bonafide genius in no time. But the research was just such tedious work he wanted to tell Athena so badly, but he wouldn't dare, not without Remus' blessings, and he had not the balls to ask him either.

Sirius spent most of his spare time in the library, looking over cognitive interpretation spells that were supposed to be OWL level, but didn't seem all too complicated, once you grasped the basics.

It was much more interesting than his classwork, anyway.Remus had started to grow more comfortable around the other boys, as well, and around Sirius especially. He began to spend more time with them, and stopped sneaking off on his own so much. He even started to share his musical knowledge with Sirius, revealing that he'd actually seen the Beatles perform.Remus knew all about muggles, and patiently weathered Sirius's many questions. He told him that his sister had asked him countless times of it as well.

 Thena had told the boy that she too had a record player, and she told Remus that he could always ask him to play anything and that he wouldn't care. She was right. The boy loved listening to music with people who knew what good music was. He missed doing it with Thena, who now did it with Marlene (that girl was stealing her away) so now he did it with Remus.

By the end of the month, Sirius truly felt as though they had all become fast friends. Well—Peter still got on his nerves sometimes (a lot of the time), but that was to be expected. He discharged the mad energy Peter gave him with Athena who was always glad to talk shit, especially about Peter.

 The Marauders would end most nights around the fire in the common room, plotting pranks and playing games of gobstones or exploding snap, laughing until their sides hurt before trudging upstairs to bed. He enjoyed it madly. He told Athena whenever Remus was in too bad of a mood to help with pranks and she would prove herself another mad mastermind for plotting mischief. It was wonderful.