SDS - Changelings - Prologue (0/13)
CHANGELINGS
[ masterpost]
Prologue
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren't worth what a pig can spit
and it goes by the name of London.
* * *
He wants out of Islington. It's too dark in the nighttime, when even the candles in his father's study have gone out, and his mother has finally been tempted to bed. He hopes she won't wake up at the sound of his footsteps to roam the halls of Grimmauld Place, raving and shouting, spittle on her lips.
There is a window on the end of the hall after Regulus's room. Its drapes are almost too heavy and ancient for a seven-year-old to claw away from the window, but Sirius is stubborn. He'll own this house someday, won't he? He should be able to do what he likes with the furniture.
The cobwebs which have stitched the curtains together rip apart in perfect silence. Sirius reaches for the rusting latch, encrusted with an onyx, and forces it open. Flakes of rust float upwards and pepper his waxy skin. All Blacks look the same, except for a few of his cousins. Dark hair, pale skin, gray eyes spinning with inbred madness.
Even at seven, Sirius knows he would run forever if it meant he could escape that madness.
He thinks he hears a sound in his mother's room below the floorboards and freezes. Of course, Sirius would rather be caught by Mother than Father or Kreacher, when it comes down to it. They're quicker than Mother with the curses, nowadays.
He pushes open the window and his palms come away black with grime. There is no horizon, just the tower block that abuts the garden. Orange and pink lights, Soho's calling card, are just barely visible in the London smog if Sirius climbs half out of the window and stands on the cracked ledge, black hair whipping in the wind. He feels like a gargoyle, so he braces his hands on the crumbling windowsill and arches outwards.
Sirius breathes, just to hear it whistle through his lips. Sometimes if you spend too much time in Grimmauld Place, or Islington, you are apt to feel like you can't fill your lungs.
And then you go mad.
It is 1967, and somewhere the last stragglers of a protest are breaking up. Sirius can still hear them, but whatever Muggle cause they're chanting for is lost on him. Only half the words make sense.
Sirius itches to be with them. He doesn't care what he would be marching for, just that he would be going somewhere with a lot of people who agreed with him.
The heir of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black could never do such a thing.
He cranes his neck a little to see over the tower block that's placed opposite their back garden, its occupants oblivious to the hidden Grimmauld Place. From what he can see of the sky, it's as if Soho is burning. The light it sends up into the smog is ominous, but it is light. Sirius needs light. Sometimes, when he's in the basement, he thinks he might run into fiendfyre if it meant seeing light again.
In four years, Sirius Black will be out of Islington; better yet, out of London. He knows it, his family knows it, and even the crummy old house knows it.
Sirius kicks the ledge and sends a little fall of loose cement and dust down, down to the garden below.
His cousins have all told him about that castle up in Scotland, of course. Mostly, they bore of explaining it to him within minutes, but Andromeda gets all wistful about how fresh the Hogwarts air is.
Sirius scoffed at the time, but in truth he hates London air. It is simply disgusting. So, maybe Scotland air would be an improvement.
Four years is too long to contemplate. Here, hanging in the window, testing the trellis with one foot, it seems as far away as death. He can be in Golden Square in twenty minutes if he runs. Soho is still London, but a different kind of London. Sirius really, firmly believes that even if the world goes black and the seas boil and everyone falls to insanity, the lights of Soho will never go out.
He once told this to his Uncle Alphard, before he learned that Blacks do not trust others with their secrets, even other Blacks. Normally his Uncle understands. This time though, he stared away from Sirius and murmured about wars and something called a blitz, and evil men - wizards and Muggles alike. Uncle Alphard knows things, but that time he'd just said "Of course, Sirius. But be careful in Soho," and patted Sirius's knee.
Heirs do not have blankets or stuffed animals to cuddle when they cannot sleep. Soho has been Sirius's nightlight ever since he spied it lighting up the clouds.
Sirius nestles both feet on the trellis by the window, hands clutching the crumbling sill. The trellis seems to be holding up. There used to be a honeysuckle vine wedded with the wood, but one afternoon Bellatrix dug up its roots and carefully slit each of them lengthwise, until it looked like the garden had been struck with some strange and disturbing disease.
The trellis is a little less stable without the vine, but Sirius swings his entire body onto it anyway. It bends and cracks, but does not betray him. He grins against the bricks of Grimmauld Place, and they brush dirt on his lips. Sirius is very lucky.
He is already a meter down before he sees the curtains flapping in the open window, like a bat's wings above his head. They are terrible to look at. He remembers, too late, that Regulus tends to wake up whenever there's a draft in the house. But he's six now, has been since April, and maybe he'll sleep sounder.
Sirius is not going to hang there in the dark forever, clinging onto a trellis still shot through with bit of dead vine, waiting for his brother's face to appear in the billowing curtains. There are lights waiting for him, and the crowded sidewalks of Soho, where even a seven-year-old wizard in robes of the darkest azure can walk unnoticed if he's clever about it.
Sirius's feet hit soil and he hops down. As much as he loves the jailbreaks that are his night-time flights from Grimmauld Place, Sirius scowls when he thinks of what comes next.
He'd rather take the front door, of course, and walk out right under their noses. That's no longer an option. Mother has found out about his wanderings, and has sealed the front door thoroughly. The wards are probably simple enough, but he'd need a wand to ever find his way through them. Sometimes Blacks get their wands a little young, but Mother and Father don't trust Sirius just yet.
He refuses to admit that they may have good reason.
The tiny back garden is walled in on all sides with high fences and higher shrubbery, and the tower block across the way. It feels like standing in the bottom of a pit. The trick to Grimmauld Place is that it is designed to keep people out - not keep little boys in.
Sirius hates - really hates - the new escape rout. It is a hole he's dug behind the dormant Venemous Tentacula, and leads under the fence. It is the type dogs dig, and he has to lie down on his stomach to squirm to freedom, flailing in the earth. It is humiliating, but as much as Sirius hates any blows to his pride, he hates pits and prisons much, much more.
So it is a dirty, scratched, and moody seven-year-old Sirius Black who strikes out on the London streets, drawn to the only light he can see from the gaping windows of Grimmauld Place.
Sometimes, everything is about a light in the darkness. Everything. One learns this quickly in the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black.
They're playing some song in Soho, and it's spilling out the door of some place called The Intrepid Fox . Sirius can't figure out all the lyrics, but it's something about how no one can get out of London, and no one should try.
Sirius wants to kick something, break Father's chess set that's been passed down in perfect condition since 1386, get into a screaming fight with Regulus, scream himself.
There are only neon lights here in Soho, and Muggles everywhere. He can't see the stars. The only place Sirius has ever seen them was a garden party at Malfoy Manor, where everything smelled like heather and roses. Andromeda would love it, all that nice-smelling air. He hates Andromeda, and even Cissy and Bella, because most of them are at Hogwarts now, that fabled castle in the North, and Sirius is in London, far from even the safety and familiarity of Diagon or Knockturn.
It will be four years trapped in Grimmauld Place, trying to please his parents when he really, really doesn't want to but really, really has to. Sirius Black has never seen anyone stand up to Walburga and Orion Black. He assumes they would be sent to St. Mungo's in a sack, with a bill for their relatives. Mrs. Black's time is valuable.
Sirius does his best to be good, and when that fails he tries to do as he pleases, but they know how Sirius likes his light. They know it, and they have a very dark cellar.
Just thinking about it sends Sirius running all the way to the Thames without stopping. He nearly vomits on one of the Muggle beggars before he catches his breath. The air is colder by the river, burns going down, but it smells like things are moving here, and there are lights on the water.
Behind him is the alien circus of Soho, the more stately old buildings on either side, the tower blocks, London halved by the river. Water and rats on the banks.
Lights on the water.
Even this fabled school, this Scottish castle that rises out of the forest, would be dark this time of night. Even in fairy tale places like Hogwarts, there are nights unbroken by the faintest light. Every place, person, thing, has its darker side. Understanding this is what it means to be a Black. That is the payment he gives to live as royalty in his world.
Sirius feels like he cannot breathe. It's not worth it, he thinks for the first time. The rot of madness seems tangible, throbbing in his stomach, behind his eyes. He presses his palms into the eye sockets, then takes them away and looks at the sight before him.
Someone has smashed the light and flung it carelessly out onto the Thames.
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