GOOD DOG || Sirius Black

(Twenty Five: Akrasia)

Akrasia- a lack of self control.

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There was something wrong inside Grimmauld Place.

Wrong, in this case, did not apply to the creaky floorboards and general odour of discrimination that wafted down the empty corridors like a stiff collar on a shirt chafed your neck. It didn't even apply to the perpetually frowning man and lady of the house, or the marks they had left on their children. Sirius couldn't even begin to attach it to the oddly grotesque choices of furnishings, or the ghost he suspected had taken up permanent residence in his en suite bathroom. 

In fact, all of those things the normal family might typically deem 'wrong' were regularly occurring phenomenons in the Black household, like the old man who always shot you some grade A stink eye as you passed by his front yard, even though you only trampled his flowers once, and that was by accident. To Sirius Black, the most 'wrong' thing about the New Year's Eve that year was the piece of paper lying on the dining room table.

The table itself was made of cut granite, sparkling coldly under the vast chandelier that glittered fragments of light along the carefully cut diamond and intricately crafted glass positioned in display cabinets along the walls. Sometimes Sirius thought he could feel his hate for this place thrumming through his bloodstream, echoed with every beat of his heart, stronger and stronger until all he could think about was lighting a match and watching it turn to ash around him. 

But today was different. 

Today, Sirius was leaving. 

He already had his bag packed, and stuffed in the narrow space between the top of his wardrobe and the ceiling. His jacket was laying across the arm of the green velvet chair in the corner of the room. The window was cracked open where he would soon climb out of it and onto the back of the motorbike that he and James had spent all summer working on. Half an hour. Half an hour and he would be free of this place.

Funny. He'd spent sixteen years waiting for this, but that last half an hour, that felt the longest. 

In the end, he decided that sitting around, tapping his knee and watching the window with an intent obsession was playing it a bit obvious, despite the fact that no one was actually in the room with him. Maybe, he decided, taking a look around would stir up some sense of nostalgia in him, maybe he didn't have to leave this home with nothing but bitterness.

It didn't get off to a great start.

The first thing he saw outside his door was the house elf tied in a bedsheet, and vehemently loosening a screw in Sirius' skateboard with the kind of passion he never applied to his housework.

"Evening, Kreacher." Sirius greeted the elf pleasantly.

Kreacher jumped, and then made a rather threatening growl, turning slowly on the spot to face the boy who would soon cease to be his master, "The young Master Black is still up."

"Well, it is only half eight, Kreacher," Sirius informed what a much younger self had considered to be his mortal enemy, "Although I can see that you are perhaps getting your years muddled again. You do realise that I haven't ridden that thing in months?"

Sirius gestured to his skateboard, choosing to omit the part where he had found a much more fitting set of wheels, curtesy of a cash payment to 'Hot Wheelers Motorbike Store'. He and Kreacher had been on opposite ends of a feud for as long as he could remember, probably ever since he had ordered the elf to tell Mrs Black not to use the word 'mudblood' when he was five, just to see what would happen.

Since then, it had been burned school uniforms and cold soup and suspicious wet patches in the corner of his bedroom where he stored the Gryffindor trophy. In all honesty, Sirius would have said that a good forty percent of his ideas for pranks sprung from Kreacher's grand gestures of hatred. This latest unscrewing-the-skateboard-wheels blow was just the most recent in a decades-long battle for superiority among the least valued members of the Black household.