The Last Gryffindor (Sirius Black)

Chapter XXX: I Will Wait for You All My Life

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If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
-OSCAR WILDE

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Aeliana landed, feeling at the same time as exhilarated as a child in a candy store and as doomed as someone volunteering to test out the guillotine. Looking up on the doorstep of the so-called Noble House of Black, she hesitated with her hand wrapped around the door handle, aware that this house no longer welcomed her, not that it had ever been very welcoming in the first place. Pushing down her doubts, Lia entered anyways. She no longer had the leisure of time.

"Kreacher?" she called in hushed tones. If she didn't have to encounter the lady of the house, she didn't want to.

Looking around the hall, from the troll-leg umbrella stand to the disturbing house elf head wall decor, she noticed minute changes from the last time she had trekked through. Most notably, a thin layer of dust grew upon every surface, something Kreacher would never have let happen before. What was he doing?

"Kreacher?" Lia repeated, moving into the kitchen. "Kreacher, I know you can hear me with your bizarre house elf magic! Quit ignoring me!"

She waited with baited breath, but the silence didn't break. Kreacher, of course, had no obligation to obey her orders, seeing as she wasn't his master, nor was she a person he held a particular fondness for.

"Damn it, Kreacher," she growled, a bubble of hysteria blooming in her chest. "I need to ask you what he did with the locket, so come out already!"

Lia didn't want to have to say Regulus's name. That wound was still too fresh. His name would sound foreign in my ears, an inexplicable wrongness. Nonetheless, Kreacher refused to show his face.

As much as she needed to find Kreacher to ask if Regulus managed to destroy the locket before he died, each tick of the grandfather clock in the dining room reverberated like a gong in her head. Lia couldn't allow herself to waste more time if Kreacher was so intent on avoiding her. She couldn't help the sneaking suspicion, the unshakable feeling, that Voldemort could somehow track the Dark Mark, if he so wished. It was best to constantly be on the move, just in case.

Cursing the fickle nature of bitter house elves, a specific one taking the brunt of her abuse, she pushed her way back out from whence she came. The door slammed behind her slightly more forcefully than necessary.

"Look who we have here," whistled a voice from the shadows in the street behind her, making her nearly jump out of her skin.

How could they have found me already? I've not even been here a couple minutes!

Heart pounding almost painfully against her rib cage, Lia swung around, wand falling readily into her grasp and a curse at the tip of her tongue.

Instead of some Death Eater intent on decorating the cobblestones with her insides, however, Sirius stepped into the dim light of a street lamp, which cast ghoulish shadows across his normally handsome face. He held his hands up in mock surrender, and continued walking casually forward, completely at ease with the knowledge that she had been ready to blow him to smithereens.

Warily, Lia lowered her wand.

"What are you doing here?" she asked hoarsely, eyes still darting around the gloomy street for enemies.