Sirius Expelled

Sirius Expelled Part 24

A quick flash back to Sirius, it's a shorter chapter but darker so please read with caution!

TW: self-harm, infection from cutting/self harming, mentions of vomiting, slight notices of child abuse, and thoughts of suicide.

Okay here is the next chapter! There will be one more Jegulus chapter, a quick time skip of around a month and a half, and then we are on to Winter Break. Just to warn anybody who might need it, Winter Break is going to be several dark, longer, dangerous chapters. Our first MCD will be coming up and it's just a big, angst, painful two-three weeks.

Anyways, that's the warning, thank you for reading! Hopefully I can start pumping chapters out, since they get so angsty I have most of them fully written and all I have to do is finish writing and editing them before posting.

Sirius had a problem. A problem that he hadn't thought about until now.

He was slitting his skin open with an old knife, never cleaning it or the cuts it left. He merely dabbed the blood away and let it scab and scar. But one cut that was particularly deep, deep enough to see the white of his skin underneath the blood, wasn't healing. It turned almost a yellowish-green color and pus was beginning to squeeze out of it. It began to swell a bit and began to turn a darker red.

Infection.

Sirius didn't know what to do. He didn't have his wand, he didn't have any ointment, he didn't have anything to heal it. He also couldn't find it in himself to care. However, the cut wasn't leaving his skin. The longer it sat, the worse it looked. The skin turned darker, almost green. One morning he woke up with a burning fever, vomiting onto the ground. When he mustered the energy to stand, he tore off his shirt and stared at his arm. Deeper red streaks were forming underneath his skin and the swelling hadn't gone down at all.

For several minutes, Sirius stared at his arm, not knowing what to do about it. Finally, he headed into his bathroom, running a clean cloth under cold water. He began to gently dab at the cut, gritting his teeth as it throbbed. Sirius wiped away the greenish pus and sighed, setting the cloth down before sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom. His skin was burning with heat and exhaustion but the icy floor was sending a chill through his body. Sirius shut his eyes, breathing heavily as he fought his tears.

He didn't want to live anymore. He was so tired of living-not living, surviving. He knew he was giving up, but that didn't mean he was able to keep fighting. It wasn't possible. All Sirius was doing was barely surviving, hanging onto life by a thread. Remus was gone, James was gone, Regulus was gone. He was completely helpless, stranded at home with his mother. There was nothing left. A small sound of sorrow broke out from his throat as he stared at the blurry white tile around him. A singular tear fell and Sirius looked down in guilt. What was so wrong with him? Why was he doing this? What was happening? It had been a year- not even that long- since he'd returned and now... now he was lost.

Sirius's teeth clattered as he shivered, his skin burning with heat but icy cold at the same time. Time went by, again and again, but he didn't notice. Most of his day was spent, bleary and dull, occasionally washing out the cuts on his arm, stinging with soap and the caress of water until it somehow healed, leaving only a jagged scar behind, but he didn't care. He didn't feel anything anymore. The pain in his arm was beginning to lose its appeal. It was never enough, he always needed to go deeper and deeper. Yet he also didn't care. Sometimes he'd pick up the knife, looking for relief, but he was too weak, couldn't even slash the knife at his arm. However, he was falling.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Sirius spiraled, falling deeper into his misery. Time blurred, his body slowly decaying. He began to skip meals again, most days not even getting up from his bed. The sun rose and fell, stars coming and going. The moon came and then vanished, growing and shrinking with time.

He was still falling.

You would think he'd eventually hit the bottom. That he'd stop falling and be stuck. But the tunnel wasn't ending, he fell and fell, deeper and deeper every day. The end couldn't be that far away, could it?

It was.

He was still falling.

Kreacher began to appear in his room with strength potions again, just enough to keep him alive. At first, Sirius resisted them, fighting back. But his parents were relentless.

"We cannot let him die!" Orion had shouted from his parents room. "You know that, Walburga!"

"He'll be fine." she responded, coldly.

"No. We need an heir. His spirit is broken. If we don't interfere, he will die. And then where will we be?"

"There's still Regulus."

"Regulus is only half an heir, compared to Sirius. He is weak. Cowardly. He will never be as good of an heir, even if we break Sirius." Orion snapped back.

The words surprisingly hurt Sirius. His brother was so different, yet he wasn't a failure. Hearing his father speak like that was strangely painful. He was angry at his brother, yes, but Orion's words were cruel. Still, he didn't move as his parents bickered, letting his mind begin to wander again. The next time Kreacher returned with a potion, he didn't fight. He didn't take it himself, but he didn't fight it as it happened. He just didn't care. Why should he? If his parents wanted him alive, that was their problem. He didn't want to be here anymore. He had nothing left, no point in continuing.

What he truly missed was the feeling of safety. Sirius put up a wall, a mask, that protected his feelings. He acted overconfident, loud and a prankster, but he thrived in the attention, the feeling of being loved. People's laughter, the way they high-fived him and cheered at everything he did, it gave him reason. Nobody in Gryffindor cared that he was the Black Heir. If anything, they enjoyed having him, making a fool of the Slytherins and Sacred 28. However, here, at his house, he was alone, both emotionally and physically, driving him down the path of insanity.

Sirius was hanging on to a thread of hope that Regulus would talk to James or Remus. Even though he'd hurt him, Sirius was begging him to do something, anything, about him. He needed his brother to be brave for just once in his life. To go to someone and ask for help, letting his pride go for just one minute, to save him.

To save both of them, actually. Sirius wasn't going to stay but he wasn't leaving his brother here. That wasn't what he would do. Deep down, underneath all his anger, Sirius cared for Regulus. He shouldn't, he knew that; his brother had betrayed and hurt him. But hadn't Sirius done the same thing to Remus? Betrayed the trust he'd been given. If Sirius wanted any chance at Remus forgiving him, he needed to understand what Remus thought.

He wasn't ready to forgive Regulus. He knew that. The amount of torture and cruelty that his brother had put him through, wasn't forgivable, not yet at least. It had happened too soon, the pain hadn't vanished, the nightmares hadn't succumbed. The cold claws of fear didn't let him go and for that, he couldn't let his anger go.

Not yet at least. Eventually, but not yet.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

I'm sorry, Remus.

Sirius fell asleep to the full moon, tears tracing silent tracks down his face. He didn't dream, his mind too frayed to even imagine love. There was no point in love, anyways. It always came back and hurt. It hurt more than anything you could ever imagine.

Love was pain. Sirius didn't know if he was strong enough to love. At this point, all he wanted was to survive. Love was out of the question; survival was the only thing he could strive for. He had no hope, nothing left to keep him going. All he could hope for was survival.

Sirius would survive.

He had to.