'Shuttered', Sirius/Ginny, 15+
I have written fic! It’s an odd little story I started years ago. Enjoy!
Title: Shuttered
Ship: Sirius/Ginny
Summary: Do you remember his eyes, Harry? Ginny tells her husband about a past lover. Canon compliant.
Rating: 15+. Flagged for adult concepts.
Warnings: This is a canon-compliant Sirius/Ginny story, and as such, is set in Order of the Phoenix, when Ginny was fourteen and Sirius was approximately thirty-five and thus will not be of interest to everyone. It is a story for adults; it contains sexual content but nothing too explicit and as such I’ve rated it as 15+. Consensual.
Word Count: 2262
Notes: I wrote the first draft of this story (to which this final draft bears little resemblance) the night Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London, while I was drunk and listening to Johnny Cash. So I dedicate it to him. I’m sure he’d enjoy it.
As often happens with rarepairs, I’ve cross-posted this in many tiny little communities; I’m sorry if you’ve seen it a bazillion times!
Shuttered
Harry.
I’m writing you a letter. It feels weird, as I’ve lived with you for years, but never mind. I have to write it. I’m sitting in the office. The children are asleep. I should be writing an opinion piece on Muggle-born prejudice in Quidditch but I’ve started writing this instead. Bear with me.
I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told you: I’m going to tell you about something that happened in my fourth year at Hogwarts.
It was one night in the Christmas holidays, sometime after Christmas Day. We were all staying at Grimmauld Place - remember? Dad was in Mungo’s; it was when he got bitten by that snake.
I was about to write that what happened was this: I walked into the kitchen late one night and found Sirius sitting alone at the kitchen table. But to be honest (and there’s not much point to this if I’m not going to be honest) that’s not quite the truth. I went down to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water, but before walking in I heard raised voices, so I stopped at the door to listen. (I remember being a bit thrilled that whoever was arguing had forgot to put the Imperturbable up; I was probably excited that I’d have some exciting gossip to bring to you, Ron and Hermione.)
I listened: it was Sirius and Lupin - or so I thought; but I couldn’t quite believe that Professor Lupin was capable of swearing that much. It wasn’t that I was still particularly thrilled by swear words anymore, by that age - in second year, I’d had the giddying experience of telling Percy to fuck off, and since then, I hadn’t really stopped - but I’d never heard those two adults swear as much as they were, especially Lupin, and I’d never heard them swear so aggressively, or at each other, and I’d certainly never heard anyone swear as creatively as Sirius Black had just done.
I heard one of them storm out of the kitchen through the other door, the one that led to the back staircase. I hovered a minute, and then curiosity got the better of me: I went in. I found Sirius sitting at the table, pouring himself a glass of Ogden’s. I explained, awkwardly, that I wanted a glass of water. He shrugged.
‘Why were you fighting with Lupin about Snape?’ I asked.
‘No reason,’ he muttered. ‘Order stuff.’
I tried to think of something to say that would keep me in the kitchen. I came up with nothing. ‘Can I sit down?’
He nodded, so I did, but sitting opposite from him, I still couldn’t think of anything to say.
I decided to try and distract him; he seemed so miserable. ‘Did you hear what Fred and George did to -’
‘Moony’s problem,’ he interrupted brusquely, ‘is that he desperately wants to father Harry but he keeps his desire to actually do it so rigidly in check that he keeps himself from doing anything nice - anything decent - for Harry at all. He’s so desperate to do the right thing that he doesn’t intervene in Harry’s life when he should, and he pretends he likes Snape when he doesn’t -’ Abruptly, he stopped.
‘Moony wants to father Harry?’ (I remember thinking: I shouldn’t have called him Moony.)
Sirius snorted. ‘Moony was born to be someone’s father.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to be someone’s dad?’ I asked. (Oh, I was an idiot, Harry. Fuck was I a silly girl. Forgive me.)
‘Never really got the chance,’ he said with a grim smile.
My insides shrivelled with their own stupidity.
After a moment, he said, ‘I’d make a terrible father,’ in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘No you wouldn’t!’ I protested. ‘I’m sure you’d be … great. Really.’
Great was the sort of word Sirius used, I hoped. With someone my own age I’d have used cool or maybe a more understated good, but Sirius didn’t use words like that. I got the feeling he’d never used the word ‘cool’ in his life, and as for understating anything - no, no way. Nothing was good in the world of Sirius; everything was brilliant or magnificent or fucking fantastic.
‘Nah, my parenting abilities are abysmal,’ he said, oblivious to my internal drama. His lips twitched bitterly at his glass. ‘Just ask Harry.’
A few nights later, it happened again. We found ourselves sitting in the same places, at the same time of night, with the same loneliness.
‘You have Weasley hair,’ he was saying with a dark humour in his eyes that I couldn’t understand. ‘It’s not red. Everywhere you go people will call it Weasley hair.’
‘I’m dyeing it the second I leave home,’ I said, and with a bark of laughter he threw back his whiskey. ‘Well,’ I asked with a bit of a grin, ‘do people make jokes about you having Black hair?’
His laughter turned into a fatherly smile and immediately I felt like an idiot. I’d been trying to be funny in an ironic or sardonic way or something, but it looked like he’d taken it as a really bad attempt at a pun. I remember wondering, bitterly, how old you had to be before people started to assume the best of you rather than the worst.
Then his mouth quirked up at the corner again. ‘Never dye your hair, Ginny,’ he said. ‘Leave it just the way it is.’
He told me, later, that he’d always had a thing for redheads. I try not to think about that too much.
I shouldn’t have written that last bit.
That night, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, when my door cracked open.
Through my lashes, I could see his shape against the dim candle-light from the landing. Hermione must have been with you and Ron, because she wasn’t in bed; I remember being pleased.
I kept my eyes shut as I heard him walk towards my bed. At one point, I thought I heard him stumble. (I had to try very hard to stop myself from smiling.)
Finally, I could sense him hovering over me; I tried to make my breathing even.
Three inhale-and-exhales later, I felt him lean over me and then an itchy and slightly whiskey-infused kiss had been planted on my forehead. ‘Night, princess,’ he whispered.
It happened a few days later.
It was late at night, and I was sitting at the desk in my room, writing a letter to my boyfriend at the time, Michael. (Remember him? I bet you don’t.) If Hermione had been there, we would probably have both been asleep; but Hermione was closeted upstairs with you and Ron, as usual, so I was trying to keep myself awake. If I was awake when Hermione came to bed, I usually got told a little bit of what the three of you had been discussing, you see. Unfortunately, writing to Michael wasn’t the most thrilling of things to do - because, as you probably don’t remember, Michael Corner wasn’t the most thrilling of people. I’d recently been trying to figure out whether or not to have sex with him, but I couldn’t help thinking that losing my virginity to Michael seemed likely to be incredibly boring.
Sirius knocked on the door. ‘Come in,’ I said, thinking that it could be Bill or Charlie - it was too late for Mum or Dad, Hermione’s knocks were different, and no one else ever knocked.
He pushed open the door and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Good evening,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I said. I pushed back from the desk and looked at him. He looked like he’d been drinking.
‘Thought you might be in the kitchen,’ he said, ruffling his hair and smiling lopsidedly. I remember realising how attractive he must have been when he was at Hogwarts, before his face got gaunt: do you remember his eyes, Harry? Do you remember how there would be a spark of black brightness and you’d suddenly see what he used to look like, but then the spark would fade and his eyes would go back to being shuttered with the stone portcullis of Azkaban? Sirius’s eyes: that’s the reason I’ve never felt the need to visit Azkaban. I’ve already seen it.
I also remember wishing, desperately, that I was old enough to get drunk whenever I felt like it.
‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked, because he looked a little self-conscious in my room. I tried to grin cheerfully.
He walked in, shut the door behind him, and sat tentatively on Hermione’s bed. After glancing at the two beds, he asked, ‘Where’s Hermione?’
‘With Ron and Harry.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘All on your own then?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
‘Pretty much, yeah.’ I crossed over and sat next to him. ‘Has everyone gone to bed?’
‘Yes.’ He looked at his hands. ‘Just me on my own, as well.’
‘It’s lonely, isn’t it,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked up at that. He quirked that half-smile at me. Then he leant forward and kissed me.
Do I have to go on, Harry? Do I really have to keep writing this? I’m sorry I told you Dean was the first. He wasn’t; that was a lie. I’m sorry. I don’t remember it very clearly. I remember that it didn’t last long. I remember a small detail: when we were lying down, he muttered, ‘You’re wet.’ And do you know what I said? I whispered, ‘Yeah. It’s for you. All for you.’ God knows where I got that from. But he didn’t laugh at me: he kissed me bruisingly and I realised, then, that you can say what you like when you’re making love to someone and it doesn’t really matter; that maybe characters in romantic novels speak that way for a reason; that a kind man will never laugh at you. Afterwards, he kissed me, whispered gruffly, ‘We’ll do this again,’ pulled on his clothes and slipped out. One more thing I do remember, which you should know: I consented. I wanted it.
Dark and dingy groping on staircases, a few times he slipped into my room late at night - that is how I spent my Christmas holidays that year. Nobody noticed anything. Why would they have? The war had just started, and Dad was in Mungo’s, and there was you and the visions you were having and your Occlumency. Besides, everyone trusted me, more or less, even if they didn’t trust Sirius.
Don’t shake your head, Harry. Think about it. Did you notice?
Don’t worry about me. When I was older, what happened with Sirius Black when I was fourteen stopped mattering to me - I learnt to recognise it for what it was: a crush on an older man; a brief flirtation with an authority figure. It was put into perspective by the rest of my life and everything I went on to do and think and feel, of which there was a lot: I won a war; I rebuilt the world; I became a sporting hero, then a household name, then a successful journalist; I married you and had babies. What happened with Sirius Black changed from a major incident to what it was, in truth: just a phase.
I wouldn’t worry about Sirius, either. He was dead within six months; and in truth, Harry, I don’t think he ever felt that guilty about it.
The last time it happened was the night before we went back to school for the spring term. That was the day Snape came round to tell you about your Occlumency lessons, remember? We all walked into the kitchen and found Sirius and Snape at each other’s throats, with you in between them.
Sirius fumed all that night; he was in a foul mood all through dinner. I’ve never asked you what Snape said to him.
Harry, you have to remember: I only ever knew him a year. Until the summer Voldemort came back, he was Sirius Black, Mass Murderer, to me. And suddenly, sitting at that kitchen table, watching him pretending to laugh at something Mundungus said before lapsing back into that brooding expression, I was angry: why had no one ever told me he was such a mess? Why had no one ever told me that he was far, far more screwed up than I ever was, Tom Riddle and all?
I should’ve known that. I remember being indignant and also oddly despairing at the same time: I should have known that he was the screwed up one. Someone should have told me. Ron could have told me.
At night, when everyone had gone to bed, I went up to his bedroom for the first time. I slipped into his room and shut the door behind me. I crossed to the bed, lifted the heavy, velvet cover and slid onto the mattress next to him.
He didn’t say a word: just looked at me with that pale face and that Black hair against a snow-white pillow and those red, red eyes.
‘Just one more night,’ I said.
I’m sorry if this letter is clunky, or disjointed; I’m sorry if it tells you too much or too little. It doesn’t really matter, Harry, because I’m never going to give it to you. I’m going to burn it now. There’s really no need to tell you. No need to ruin the few good memories you have of your godfather. Ruin our marriage, maybe.
I just thought you should know.
Ginny
END
Title: Shuttered
Ship: Sirius/Ginny
Summary: Do you remember his eyes, Harry? Ginny tells her husband about a past lover. Canon compliant.
Rating: 15+. Flagged for adult concepts.
Warnings: This is a canon-compliant Sirius/Ginny story, and as such, is set in Order of the Phoenix, when Ginny was fourteen and Sirius was approximately thirty-five and thus will not be of interest to everyone. It is a story for adults; it contains sexual content but nothing too explicit and as such I’ve rated it as 15+. Consensual.
Word Count: 2262
Notes: I wrote the first draft of this story (to which this final draft bears little resemblance) the night Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London, while I was drunk and listening to Johnny Cash. So I dedicate it to him. I’m sure he’d enjoy it.
As often happens with rarepairs, I’ve cross-posted this in many tiny little communities; I’m sorry if you’ve seen it a bazillion times!
Shuttered
Harry.
I’m writing you a letter. It feels weird, as I’ve lived with you for years, but never mind. I have to write it. I’m sitting in the office. The children are asleep. I should be writing an opinion piece on Muggle-born prejudice in Quidditch but I’ve started writing this instead. Bear with me.
I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told you: I’m going to tell you about something that happened in my fourth year at Hogwarts.
It was one night in the Christmas holidays, sometime after Christmas Day. We were all staying at Grimmauld Place - remember? Dad was in Mungo’s; it was when he got bitten by that snake.
I was about to write that what happened was this: I walked into the kitchen late one night and found Sirius sitting alone at the kitchen table. But to be honest (and there’s not much point to this if I’m not going to be honest) that’s not quite the truth. I went down to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water, but before walking in I heard raised voices, so I stopped at the door to listen. (I remember being a bit thrilled that whoever was arguing had forgot to put the Imperturbable up; I was probably excited that I’d have some exciting gossip to bring to you, Ron and Hermione.)
I listened: it was Sirius and Lupin - or so I thought; but I couldn’t quite believe that Professor Lupin was capable of swearing that much. It wasn’t that I was still particularly thrilled by swear words anymore, by that age - in second year, I’d had the giddying experience of telling Percy to fuck off, and since then, I hadn’t really stopped - but I’d never heard those two adults swear as much as they were, especially Lupin, and I’d never heard them swear so aggressively, or at each other, and I’d certainly never heard anyone swear as creatively as Sirius Black had just done.
I heard one of them storm out of the kitchen through the other door, the one that led to the back staircase. I hovered a minute, and then curiosity got the better of me: I went in. I found Sirius sitting at the table, pouring himself a glass of Ogden’s. I explained, awkwardly, that I wanted a glass of water. He shrugged.
‘Why were you fighting with Lupin about Snape?’ I asked.
‘No reason,’ he muttered. ‘Order stuff.’
I tried to think of something to say that would keep me in the kitchen. I came up with nothing. ‘Can I sit down?’
He nodded, so I did, but sitting opposite from him, I still couldn’t think of anything to say.
I decided to try and distract him; he seemed so miserable. ‘Did you hear what Fred and George did to -’
‘Moony’s problem,’ he interrupted brusquely, ‘is that he desperately wants to father Harry but he keeps his desire to actually do it so rigidly in check that he keeps himself from doing anything nice - anything decent - for Harry at all. He’s so desperate to do the right thing that he doesn’t intervene in Harry’s life when he should, and he pretends he likes Snape when he doesn’t -’ Abruptly, he stopped.
‘Moony wants to father Harry?’ (I remember thinking: I shouldn’t have called him Moony.)
Sirius snorted. ‘Moony was born to be someone’s father.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to be someone’s dad?’ I asked. (Oh, I was an idiot, Harry. Fuck was I a silly girl. Forgive me.)
‘Never really got the chance,’ he said with a grim smile.
My insides shrivelled with their own stupidity.
After a moment, he said, ‘I’d make a terrible father,’ in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘No you wouldn’t!’ I protested. ‘I’m sure you’d be … great. Really.’
Great was the sort of word Sirius used, I hoped. With someone my own age I’d have used cool or maybe a more understated good, but Sirius didn’t use words like that. I got the feeling he’d never used the word ‘cool’ in his life, and as for understating anything - no, no way. Nothing was good in the world of Sirius; everything was brilliant or magnificent or fucking fantastic.
‘Nah, my parenting abilities are abysmal,’ he said, oblivious to my internal drama. His lips twitched bitterly at his glass. ‘Just ask Harry.’
A few nights later, it happened again. We found ourselves sitting in the same places, at the same time of night, with the same loneliness.
‘You have Weasley hair,’ he was saying with a dark humour in his eyes that I couldn’t understand. ‘It’s not red. Everywhere you go people will call it Weasley hair.’
‘I’m dyeing it the second I leave home,’ I said, and with a bark of laughter he threw back his whiskey. ‘Well,’ I asked with a bit of a grin, ‘do people make jokes about you having Black hair?’
His laughter turned into a fatherly smile and immediately I felt like an idiot. I’d been trying to be funny in an ironic or sardonic way or something, but it looked like he’d taken it as a really bad attempt at a pun. I remember wondering, bitterly, how old you had to be before people started to assume the best of you rather than the worst.
Then his mouth quirked up at the corner again. ‘Never dye your hair, Ginny,’ he said. ‘Leave it just the way it is.’
He told me, later, that he’d always had a thing for redheads. I try not to think about that too much.
I shouldn’t have written that last bit.
That night, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, when my door cracked open.
Through my lashes, I could see his shape against the dim candle-light from the landing. Hermione must have been with you and Ron, because she wasn’t in bed; I remember being pleased.
I kept my eyes shut as I heard him walk towards my bed. At one point, I thought I heard him stumble. (I had to try very hard to stop myself from smiling.)
Finally, I could sense him hovering over me; I tried to make my breathing even.
Three inhale-and-exhales later, I felt him lean over me and then an itchy and slightly whiskey-infused kiss had been planted on my forehead. ‘Night, princess,’ he whispered.
It happened a few days later.
It was late at night, and I was sitting at the desk in my room, writing a letter to my boyfriend at the time, Michael. (Remember him? I bet you don’t.) If Hermione had been there, we would probably have both been asleep; but Hermione was closeted upstairs with you and Ron, as usual, so I was trying to keep myself awake. If I was awake when Hermione came to bed, I usually got told a little bit of what the three of you had been discussing, you see. Unfortunately, writing to Michael wasn’t the most thrilling of things to do - because, as you probably don’t remember, Michael Corner wasn’t the most thrilling of people. I’d recently been trying to figure out whether or not to have sex with him, but I couldn’t help thinking that losing my virginity to Michael seemed likely to be incredibly boring.
Sirius knocked on the door. ‘Come in,’ I said, thinking that it could be Bill or Charlie - it was too late for Mum or Dad, Hermione’s knocks were different, and no one else ever knocked.
He pushed open the door and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Good evening,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I said. I pushed back from the desk and looked at him. He looked like he’d been drinking.
‘Thought you might be in the kitchen,’ he said, ruffling his hair and smiling lopsidedly. I remember realising how attractive he must have been when he was at Hogwarts, before his face got gaunt: do you remember his eyes, Harry? Do you remember how there would be a spark of black brightness and you’d suddenly see what he used to look like, but then the spark would fade and his eyes would go back to being shuttered with the stone portcullis of Azkaban? Sirius’s eyes: that’s the reason I’ve never felt the need to visit Azkaban. I’ve already seen it.
I also remember wishing, desperately, that I was old enough to get drunk whenever I felt like it.
‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked, because he looked a little self-conscious in my room. I tried to grin cheerfully.
He walked in, shut the door behind him, and sat tentatively on Hermione’s bed. After glancing at the two beds, he asked, ‘Where’s Hermione?’
‘With Ron and Harry.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘All on your own then?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
‘Pretty much, yeah.’ I crossed over and sat next to him. ‘Has everyone gone to bed?’
‘Yes.’ He looked at his hands. ‘Just me on my own, as well.’
‘It’s lonely, isn’t it,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked up at that. He quirked that half-smile at me. Then he leant forward and kissed me.
Do I have to go on, Harry? Do I really have to keep writing this? I’m sorry I told you Dean was the first. He wasn’t; that was a lie. I’m sorry. I don’t remember it very clearly. I remember that it didn’t last long. I remember a small detail: when we were lying down, he muttered, ‘You’re wet.’ And do you know what I said? I whispered, ‘Yeah. It’s for you. All for you.’ God knows where I got that from. But he didn’t laugh at me: he kissed me bruisingly and I realised, then, that you can say what you like when you’re making love to someone and it doesn’t really matter; that maybe characters in romantic novels speak that way for a reason; that a kind man will never laugh at you. Afterwards, he kissed me, whispered gruffly, ‘We’ll do this again,’ pulled on his clothes and slipped out. One more thing I do remember, which you should know: I consented. I wanted it.
Dark and dingy groping on staircases, a few times he slipped into my room late at night - that is how I spent my Christmas holidays that year. Nobody noticed anything. Why would they have? The war had just started, and Dad was in Mungo’s, and there was you and the visions you were having and your Occlumency. Besides, everyone trusted me, more or less, even if they didn’t trust Sirius.
Don’t shake your head, Harry. Think about it. Did you notice?
Don’t worry about me. When I was older, what happened with Sirius Black when I was fourteen stopped mattering to me - I learnt to recognise it for what it was: a crush on an older man; a brief flirtation with an authority figure. It was put into perspective by the rest of my life and everything I went on to do and think and feel, of which there was a lot: I won a war; I rebuilt the world; I became a sporting hero, then a household name, then a successful journalist; I married you and had babies. What happened with Sirius Black changed from a major incident to what it was, in truth: just a phase.
I wouldn’t worry about Sirius, either. He was dead within six months; and in truth, Harry, I don’t think he ever felt that guilty about it.
The last time it happened was the night before we went back to school for the spring term. That was the day Snape came round to tell you about your Occlumency lessons, remember? We all walked into the kitchen and found Sirius and Snape at each other’s throats, with you in between them.
Sirius fumed all that night; he was in a foul mood all through dinner. I’ve never asked you what Snape said to him.
Harry, you have to remember: I only ever knew him a year. Until the summer Voldemort came back, he was Sirius Black, Mass Murderer, to me. And suddenly, sitting at that kitchen table, watching him pretending to laugh at something Mundungus said before lapsing back into that brooding expression, I was angry: why had no one ever told me he was such a mess? Why had no one ever told me that he was far, far more screwed up than I ever was, Tom Riddle and all?
I should’ve known that. I remember being indignant and also oddly despairing at the same time: I should have known that he was the screwed up one. Someone should have told me. Ron could have told me.
At night, when everyone had gone to bed, I went up to his bedroom for the first time. I slipped into his room and shut the door behind me. I crossed to the bed, lifted the heavy, velvet cover and slid onto the mattress next to him.
He didn’t say a word: just looked at me with that pale face and that Black hair against a snow-white pillow and those red, red eyes.
‘Just one more night,’ I said.
I’m sorry if this letter is clunky, or disjointed; I’m sorry if it tells you too much or too little. It doesn’t really matter, Harry, because I’m never going to give it to you. I’m going to burn it now. There’s really no need to tell you. No need to ruin the few good memories you have of your godfather. Ruin our marriage, maybe.
I just thought you should know.
Ginny
END