The Immeasurable Marauder

The Pledge

Sirius

I held her while she cried. There was a wet patch on my shirt where she lay until she eventually fell asleep. I was such a dick. Really, how could I do that to her. And fucking around with Marlene, what the fuck was I thinking. And then here I was, holding her, which is all I really wanted to do. From the moment she looked at me in the train, I had wanted her, pressed against me. And here we were, but in typical Sirius style, it wasn't quite right. Why did I have to ruin everything? 

I lay there for longer than I needed to but I just couldn't let her go. I cared for the other girls I was with but it was never for long. They were never as they first appeared to be. Maybe I was just a very poor judge of character.

Deep down I had thought that even though I distanced myself from my family, I was more like them than I cared to admit. I could be heartless and ruthless, conniving and fickle. I tried to be more than the mother and father I had who hated everything and left destruction wherever they tread. 

But wasn't I doing exactly the same thing. Something strange occurred to me, that here, even though I hated myself for saying those things to her and playing her like she was a thing more than a person, I couldn't be anything but exactly what she needed me to be when she really needed it. 

I had to be here to hold her while she cried the tears I made happen. I tried to leave but I couldn't, the minute I heard her crying, I couldn't will myself to leave her even though she had asked me to. Just like I couldn't leave her alone the last time she was in the hospital wing, here I was, at her side. How I couldn't leave her alone to read her letter.

I clinched my fist harder trying to forget. How could I do that? How could I say something like that to her? In front of everyone? How could I do that? I tried to breathe evenly but I was getting myself more and more worked up. What the hell was this feeling? Anxiety? What the fuck?

When we were younger, she was so tiny compared to me. It was before, when I still sort of had a family. Her family was never any better than mine so the first moment either of got to escape we took it. I think somewhere inside both of us we realized that we were unlike them, even though we were so young. We played in the green grass, staring at the fish in the ponds, jumping from rock to rock to cross the stream that led into a small wood at the bottom of her families property. She would stop to look at the mushrooms and small insects on trees, she liked to look because she thought everything she saw was beautiful. 

Even then, when I was with her, everything was beautiful. Reg had tried to keep up with us but I made her run faster, hid her away behind trees or run into a valley, being sure to keep her out of sight. I didn't want to share her. I didn't want to share her now either.

And then in typical Sirius style, I had ruined it. 

I would be lucky if she ever spoke to me again.

I had to admit to myself, that even though she had only just come into my life again, she'd always been there. I was terrified to have her around and even more terrified not to have her around.

Even though James and Lily weren't together yet, they would be. I could feel it in my bones, I could see their future together when I looked at the two of them together. I felt the same way when I looked at Yves. But I was scared. I couldn't have her. She was too good for me. I was afraid I would hurt her and then, true to form, I did. In the worst way.

She saw me on the train and didn't recognize me. I would recognize her in a sea of a billion faces. There was only one like hers. But she hadn't recognized me and I was more than a little disappointed. But I saw the moment she did and I saw fear on her face, not the joy I was expecting. She was afraid of me. After that first day I had tried every ploy I knew to try and get her to notice me. Every now and then I would get a rise out of her, she would play back, but she would immediately close up again.