Brielle Anderson had always been a happy child, full of questions and a never-ending pit of things to say. But on the evening of August seventeenth, just days away from returning to Hogwarts, a terrific tragedy changed her life for good.
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— s i r i u s —
Brielle.
Brielle Anderson.
The name echoed through his mind like a shout bouncing off the walls of a cavern. It circled and circled until he could see her again, a portrait of a beautiful face in his mind. Until he could see her light hair and amber eyes and freckles across her nose.
He cursed himself for being such a jerk in school. For letting all his so-called problems take over his mind instead of being aware of the many tragic things that were happening to people around him.
Leaning against the humid wall of his cell, Sirius closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He held tight the pieces of parchment in his hands and inhaled. And then he exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. He repeated the process until he could think clearly, and then he felt his heart shatter into even more pieces inside his chest.
Brielle Anderson, the small happy girl he had joked around with in History of Magic. The feisty blonde who had never cared what people thought of her, even if someone said something right to her face in front of hundreds. The young first year who had found Sirius crying in the empty corridor that first night at Hogwarts, and had sat down beside him silently and stayed there for hours. The beautifully young and pure soul of a girl.
In third year he had wondered why she had stopped talking to him, why she had left him just like almost everyone ever had. His young thirteen-year-old self had been heartbroken that she had decided he was a no-good troublemaker from a horrible family, that she had left because of what his name had portrayed about him.
But now looking back at it, Sirius realized that she hadn't just stopped talking to him. She had stopped talking to everyone. Now reading these letters, he remembered. He remembered reading that article in the paper, hearing her shout out in the loud great hall that first day back in third year, as if the sounds around her were breaking her apart.
He remembered watching her sit at the far side of the History of Magic classroom for a year, not even sparing him a single glance. He remembered the dark circles beneath her eyes every morning, as if she had gotten no sleep at all.
And he remembered that after a while Brielle had molded back into someone that looked as if they had it all together. He now remembered how no one had questioned again if she was okay, believing her facade of calm seas when behind the mask she was probably miles beneath the waves.
He remembered scattered nights spent with her on the Astronomy Tower, both of them upheaved from sleep by nightmares. He remembered her comforting words and kind heart. But then one night Sirius had gotten too scared of the closeness, too scared of the growing relationship, too hurt that she had stopped talking to him before, and had stopped going.
And now tears pooled in his eyes, for she had come to comfort him when he was in pain. When he had been sitting alone in that dark corridor in the middle of the night, a small, lonely first year who had felt completely lost and afraid, hidden in the shadows and out of reach of any kind of love. When he had been plagued by nightmares on those scattered nights.
But only once in the five years of her pain at Hogwarts had he gone to comfort Brielle. And he wondered if she hadn't felt lost and afraid only then like he had, but still felt it, because no one had come to save her the way she had come to save him. Because he had run away from her like he always did when he got scared.
Sirius reread the letter, freezing as he noticed for the first time the tiny splotches where tears had fallen. He clenched the crinkled piece of parchment to his heart and leaned his head back against the wall of his cell. Maybe he deserved this feeling of desperate loneliness in the dark terrors of Azkaban, with no hope of a happy future.
If such a perfect and kind person like Brielle Anderson had to endure the pain and loneliness of her life forever, what sort of tortures awaited someone like him?
