Always~Sirius Black

prologue

Envy. The feeling when you can't help but crave something that someone else has. It can drive you to the brink of insanity. It can be deadly.

But Elsie Crawford wasn't didn't want what these girls had with every fiber of her being, she simply didn't want them to have it. So maybe she wasn't envious, but whatever it was, it was certainly maddening.

Loyalty. Elsie had the loyalty of a Hufflepuff, willing to fight for her friends, but there was one thing that differentiated her from the yellow and black house; She was reckless, willing to die for her closest friends, well one in particular.

Sirius Black had been childhood best friends with the girl, but she didn't come from a pureblood family, she was a half blood. Her late father had been highly respectable among the sacred twenty-eight, until he had an affair with a muggle. That muggle was Isabella Crawford, Elsie's mother.

Family. That's what Elsie and Sirius were to each other, neither really having much of a biological family. You see, Isabella may have been Elsie's mother, but she wasn't much of a mum to her young daughter.

At the age of seven the children made a vow to always be there for eachother, no matter what, and as the pair aged they never really broke that promise, but it did change. Evolve, if you will. As emotions surfaced and children became adults they were bound to view each other differently, but at some point they realized their jokes were more foreshadowing than they had assumed.

Love. It's a tricky emotion really, one of the hardest to navigate, but above all, it's powerful. It comes slowly, steadily and then in an instant, in one singular moment, it is all consuming. Love sneaks up on you when you least expect it, easily visible to those who are simply spectating, yet hidden from those who need to understand it most.

Sometimes childhood friends aren't completely platonic after all, and maybe they never were, but one thing is for sure, love only makes bonds grow stronger. Always, to infinity and back.