good things fall apart • sirius black

Storm Sirius

With one final snip of the scissors, Ellie's hair had been cut back into that choppy bob, its colour a familiar bubblegum pink. Léa set the scissors aside and then fluffed the new style up to make sure it sat right, but the beautiful girl couldn't have really cared, she was just glad of the change.

Besides the brief stripping to model for the artist's club, her friends from Beauxbatons hadn't ever seen the girl they'd spent the last few days with, and it was as if they all watched her like a sculpture in a gallery now. Ellie had been cautious in the week she'd spent in France, trying to find her feet and make friends, she hadn't been the girl Hogwarts knew who challenged the Professors, skipped classes, and ran amuck in the corridors. But this trip, this weightless freedom, had the rebellious girl resurfacing, and it was rather spectacular. Lamar thought so more than anyone.

"This is who I knew you were." He hummed, perched on the side of the bathtub in the tiny bathroom Léa had cut Ellie's hair in, "But you were a good actor for a while."

"I've always had an affinity with the theatrical." She replied with a huge grin.

After Ellie had arrived at Nicolas and Lamar's in flood of tears, the couple had comforted her until she'd had no more sobbing in her, and she hadn't cried over Camille since. Her aunt remained in the forefront of her mind, but she knew that Camille wouldn't have wanted her wallowing, so she found a way to move forward. When Léa and Rabastan arrived too, nothing could've felt more normal, and moving forward quickly became easy in the break she was getting from the war.

They smoked more than Sirius did when he was stressed, got more drunk than even James could, and strutted around Muggle London like the public were obliged to clear the pavement for them. After a night out, they'd be home for five in the morning and still somehow make it to brunch as if they'd all had twelve hours sleep, ready to do it all over again in a different club that night. Rabastan would flag at around one in the morning and inevitably be sick in the toilets, Léa had a tendency to run off when she was drunk, Ellie and Lamar could dance until they were the only ones left, and Nicolas spent his nights keeping them all in check, but it was fun and they were teenagers. This is what they were supposed to be doing, not joining secret societies set up to fight a war.

And it wasn't all drunken escapades in the middle of the night, for the intervals around late afternoon, before they began to get ready for when the clubs opened, were filled with lazy conversation all draped over each other on the new leather sofas and sessions of painting. Ellie painted all of her friends, including the ones she'd left behind at home, and also including the boyfriend that she was very much angry with still. It was a type of therapy for her, art always had been, and there was something particularly soothing about focusing her mind on picturing Sirius clearly instead of allowing the chaos back in. If she was still for too long, she got sad again.

"Is this really what he looks like now?" Nicolas had asked her one afternoon, stood over her shoulder as she finished one portrait of her boyfriend. In it, Sirius was frowning, his eyebrows scrunched together. Ellie had nodded, "Why do you never paint him smiling?"

"Because he doesn't often." Ellie had shrugged. And the times he does smile are scared. I love you, Nick, but you don't get to see our relationship like that yet. The beautiful girl liked the idea of keeping her two worlds separate.

She remembered the way Nicolas had been silent for a moment too long before he'd spoken next.

"He loves you? Actually?" He'd asked, "Properly?"

"I hear your scepticism." Ellie had smiled.

"Is it wrong to be when the only thing we hear Sirius Black do is be a dick to you?"