Style // Sirius Black

Chapter XLVI

What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean for someone to own your heart like it's their own and have the power to crush it with a flick of a wrist? Is it supposed to be terrifying? Or should it be comforting, knowing you trust someone so absolutely that it doesn't matter what they do–you know they won't hurt you? Falling in love with someone is the most perilous thing you can do because it signifies giving up your control and letting someone else dictate this new route of your life.

On the flipside–what does it mean for someone to fall in love with you? Is it a newfound responsibility for you to now handle? Or is it an ego trip to know that someone in the world finds you the most desirable out of everyone? If anything, it may be scarier than falling in love with someone. You are now the one in control of the person's life and its trajectory in the future. It brings about anxieties and the feeling of dread if you're not enough for the person or if you don't live up to that person they fell in love with.

The evolvement of self is something that can be detrimental if you fall in love with someone and if they fall in love with you. It takes sacrifice to love someone and constant adaptation to them. When you fall in love with someone, you're not just falling in love with them. You have to constantly fall in love with new versions of them because there will be a million more. You have got to be prepared to continuously fall in love with someone new as both you and the other person grow throughout life.

Sometimes it doesn't work like that–but every so often, you find just the right person.

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The snow had started to fall as October slipped away from the camp Lyra and Sirius had set up. It'd been almost two weeks since the last attempt to get into the manor where the ring was supposedly hidden, and neither Sirius nor Lyra felt like risking a venture towards it just yet. So far, no one had come searching for them. The latter of the two had managed to sleep peacefully through the night with no visits from the Dark Lord. In all honesty, the silence and lack of interference were more unsettling than anything.

Anytime Lyra woke up, she expected to find herself back in Hogwarts, curled under her heavy duvet with the other girls around her. It was when the cold of early November set into her aching bones that she remembered where she was–and what she was doing. It reminded her that she had let her ego get ahead of her and allowed herself to show off instead of thinking logically when duelling Bellatrix. She had allowed her guard down, not even bothering to consider that there were others there. If she had just acted rationally, they might have gotten the Horcrux and been back at Hogwarts by now–that wasn't the case.

Now, Lyra sat outside the tent with a blanket beneath her to keep the snow off of her pants. She held a steaming cup of tea in her hands, a winter jacket nestled tightly around her with Sirius's jumper underneath. She watched from the safety of their camp, admiring the fawns running through the trees unbridled by threats. Two seemed to snuggle just beside the base border, one with dark fur and the other with much lighter. Their mother wandered not too far off, watching as the babies played.

"Lyra?" Sirius called from inside the tent, but the girl didn't flinch.

She just kept monitoring the blonde baby deer and the brown-furred one nose at one another. A warm feeling relaxed into her heart as she marvelled at the scene–only to have it interrupted by the sound of a muggle car's engine revving not too far off. The baby fawns took off in separate paths, the blonde running towards where the noise emanated from, the darker one taking off the other way. It didn't matter, though, because the car came closer through the path of the woods, directly towards where the latter fawn ran.

The blonde ran towards the danger–but the darker one would pay the price.

Lyra rested her chin on her knees tucked up to her chin, sipping at her tea. She prayed that the fawns found their way back to one another, or at least that their mother was able to corral them. Her heart was no longer light and feathery as the car noises droned out. It sat heavy in her chest as though something was pulling it down. She worried that it would soon splinter, leaving her corroded and growing stagnant.