31 Days of Fic: Twenty-One
Here we go -- only ten more left now. Sorry for the missed day -- my body decided that it had to sleep, and did not consult with me first. It's been doing that lately.
day twenty one -- in which Sirius has an epiphany.
May 21, 1976:
Sirius spends most of the next afternoon under Prongs' Invisibility Cloak, hexing the flagstone outside the Slytherin portrait hole so that anyone who steps on it is instantly teleported to a spot three feet above the lake. It's a complicated piece of spell-work, especially as he has to coax it through Hogwarts' anti-Apparition wards, and as such is exactly what Sirius needs to occupy his hands and leave his mind free to think things through.
He's suspected since the Sorting Hat yelled 'Gryffindor' that he wouldn't be following in his father's political footsteps, has known it since he figured out Remus' secret, but there's a difference between finding his own way and actively opposing everything his family stands for. If he sides with Dumbledore now, he'll have made his choice and he won't be able to unmake it - but one sentence of the Headmaster's keeps running through his mind. The Order believes that we are all equal.
We are all equal.
Sirius had wanted to ask if that included werewolves, but the calm reassurance in Dumbledore's face had made the question unnecessary, and now Sirius has spent the whole day thinking about a world with no Registry. About a world where Remus wouldn't have to live under Ministry control, or keep himself a secret just to go to school, and while Sirius doesn't care much about the Muggles, he does care about Remus, and that sort of world sounds like it's worth fighting for. Remus is worth fighting for. Worth fighting for, worth dying for, worth spitting in his father's eye over, because even though James is Sirius' best friend, Remus is his --
Is his --
Oh.
The shock of the realization makes the castle tilt and spin dizzily around him, and Sirius sits back against the wall with an audible thud. A few seconds later, Leonard Bulstrode makes the mistake of coming out to investigate, and vanishes with a startled cry when his foot hits the hexed flagstone. Sirius doesn't notice.
"I am so screwed," he whispers to himself.
( day twenty)*(day twenty-two)
Author's Notes: Feedback rules. So does Daniel Craig.