Style // Sirius Black

Chapter XLVIII

What does it mean to give up? To have everything you had once held so dear stripped from you and then scarcely be able to handle the destruction that whirred around outside your immediate life? Having a childhood robbed from you at an age where you should be fussing about what to wear to graduation instead of lining up an arsenal to fire upon approaching troops is not how people should spend their final years as a teenager.

Yet it seems you can't control some aspects of your story or narrative, even when you get what you wanted, and everything you could desire is waiting at your door to walk you into a new life. Fighting for the lives of people outside of your own story isn't how someone should be spending their first weeks outside of school or worrying why it is your friend keeps sneaking off around corners or missing meetings.

Giving up is finally understanding that life isn't your best friend or lover but the very thing parents warn you about. Life is the monster that hides under your bed or the person that spreads a nasty rumour about you. It is the revenge of the devil when someone gives up. It's the person that stole your spark and blew it out into the wind. Of course, this is all true if you stop trying. Life isn't just a game of chance, but one of power moves and counterattacks. You are the only one who can control whether or not it strikes true, or you deflect it.

Sometimes, fighting isn't worth it.

—

He'd been dead for five months. Regulus Black had died five months ago, on New Year's Eve, while the students of Hogwarts partied and rung in the new year with drinks and kissing. It had been six months, and still, Lyra Potter couldn't open the letter that now sat on her nightstand. Her name was written prettily, like a bow wrapped around a bomb. She could hear it ticking, waiting for the pin to spring free and tear her to pieces, each fragment at a time.

She had graduated two weeks ago. She was no longer a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and spent her days in the home where she watched her parents die, and her brother's spirit roam past the fences. Lyra now spent her days packing boxes and sealing them before floating them over to the trolley that awaited her. The sun beat down on her as the pressures of adulthood shrouded her view of the beauty life laid out for her.

Lyra Potter now watched as her brother severed their attachment, Lily on his arm and keys to his new cottage dangling in his fingers. She stood at the edge of the property, cold arm wrapped around her as Sirius watched longingly at the two. Her heart shattered each time Lily and James walked further away, personal suitcases towed behind them as they giggled into one another's shoulders. Lyra stood at the gate, broken and severed.

"She'll find them eventually," Sirius whispered as the wind blew between the two, "She may not have done anything during the school year, but now, we're in the war, Lyra. I told you it wasn't safe for you to encourage him to–"

"Of all times to lecture me about the looming blonde threat that you used to share saliva with," Lyra sneered under her breath, "Now is not it, Sirius. Not as he leaves."

"Low blow, Ly."

"Not as low as you deciding to bring that up now."

Lyra turned out of the boy's arms and wandered off towards the manor again. A letter had arrived from Pierre the day prior, but the younger Potter twin didn't have the mental capacity to deal with whatever he had to say now. Not with Sirius up her ass and James leaving her in the dust. She had scarcely time to process her brother moving out before he was off. They were freshly graduated, and James was already working on the twin's father's business, leaving Lyra to grasp the straws of their final moments together.

It had been tense between Lyra and Sirius since Regulus died, neither knowing what to say about it to one another. Lyra knew it had to do with what she knew about the younger of the two and what she elected not to tell Sirius. But it was Regulus's last order for Lyra to follow, not to give him the letter until she thought he was ready. She knew that now of all times, he wasn't. Neither was she, in all honesty. The younger Potter twin didn't have much room for growth during the last blur of her school career, not with the impending war growing closer and no one being able to do anything.