The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

What Needs Saying

By the time Sirius Black and Dorcas Meadows passed through the doorway into the Prewett twins' office, Sirius was completely calm. Dorcas looked at him warily as she thanked Gideon and Fabian and they stepped out. She locked the door behind them and sat behind Gideon's desk, looking at Sirius, who sat opposite her.

The desk was covered with paperwork waiting to be done and filed, teetering in stacks. She spotted a framed photo of herself and Dorcas groaned and put it face-down to the table, then leaned forward and looked at Sirius carefully. "Sirius," she said, "Are you alright? Please talk to me. Tell me what you're feeling."

Sirius was kind of half grinning at this point, staring off into distance with a vacant look of deep thought. 

"Sirius?" Dorcas asked. He was making her so nervous, being so quiet and suddenly calm, especially compared to how he'd been downstairs just moments before. His mood was like a swinging pendulum, she thought, unstable and unpredictable. And of course it should be right about then, what with everything going on, but that certainly didn't make Sirius's flights of rage any less intense. 

He suddenly blinked his eyes and turned his head as though only just realizing she was there. "Dorcas, darling, I must ask you a question."

"What's that, Sirius?"

"It's about your tattoos."

"Sirius," Dorcas sighed, "I don't know if this is the time to be talking about this. I don't want you to repress the things you feel, sweetheart. I know it hurts, but you can't just make it go away..."

"Funny you should say it like that," Sirius said, and he chuckled, shaking his head. Then, "Can you make magical tattoos vanish, Dorcas, dear?"

Dorcas's eyebrows knit together. "Sirius, --"

"Can you?"

"Yes," she murmured. "But it's a very painful process, depending how deep it is..."

"Yeah, yeah, ink... epidermal layer and all that shite... but it would leave a scar, yeah?"

"A terrible one."

"Not something that would just... vanish... in, say, a couple of hours?"

Dorcas gave him a look.

Sirius raised his eyebrows back at her, imploring her.

"No, not something that would just vanish in a couple hours. It's an extremely painful process."

Sirius nodded, though he'd stopped listening after the first part of the sentence.

"I know you've been through so much, Sirius, and I'm so sorry for everything that you've had to endure. I really want to help you process this properly, so that everything we've worked so hard to achieve over the past few years isn't undone... You've grown a lot since we first met, don't you think so? I'm very proud of you... and I just don't want you to go repressing the things you're feeling right now. I'm here for you, and it's safe here to talk about how you're feeling about your brother's death."

Sirius looked at Dorcas, having just tuned back in, though she'd been talking for several long minutes. "I'm not feeling anything about my brother's death. My brother isn't dead."

Dorcas frowned, her eyes sad, "Sirius, honey, he is dead. The body --"

"Isn't Regulus," Sirius said firmly.

"Sirius..."

Sirius shook his head, then he paused, realizing he was in the Ministry for Magic, realizing he was in the Auror offices, realizing that perhaps this was not the place to be talking openly about things - just in case, for one never knew whether the walls had ears or not. He looked at Dorcas squarely. "Can't I just go home? I want my Moony."