Regulus Black the Potions Master

Capítulo 51

Sirius Black

Being inside Hogwarts is overwhelming. Sirius imagined with his faint hope that the overwhelming emotions of melancholy, nostalgia, guilt, and anguish would be eased by the time he spent in the area, or looking at the school from afar. He was so wrong.

He was terribly wrong, and the weight of being inside his old school again is like being buried under thousands of rocks. Difficult to breathe as if an invisible hand was compressing your chest, crushing your heart and lungs.

How could it be possible that the school was exactly the same as if he had graduated two days ago instead of fifteen years ago? Everything was hauntingly the same, even the decorations, the abandoned statues near the passage of the hunchbacked witch's statue.

He didn't intend to attack the portrait of the Fat woman, that wasn't in his plans, he just wanted to enter the common grab a certain sneaky rat that was probably hiding inside, and then disappear into the night with the rodent corpse between his teeth. But she didn't want to cooperate and he was never really known for his patience. He regrets stabbing the portrait with the knife he stole weeks ago, but it appears intact as he runs away to another painting.

Sirius ran away as quickly as he could, only turning into a dog again when he was sure that nothing and no one could witness it.

Annoyed he made his way back to Honeyfingers through the secret passage.

Two months ago he was buried in his guilt and self-loathing in Snape's stodgy company - he even accepted that this was yet another way for the universe to punish him for all his mistakes - but then Minister Fudge decided to visit Azkaban. Sirius didn't care. He didn't even know why the man was there, but he came to meet him, perhaps to have the chance to say that he had looked the dreaded traitor and murderer Sirius in the eye at least once.

Sirius doesn't know why he bothered talking to the idiot, but he still answered him and at some point, he asked for the day's newspaper.

He hadn't had any news from the outside world since Snape's arrival in what he discovered was early 1982. Time is easily lost in a place like

In Azka.

He heard about what Bellatrix, her husband, and brother-in-law did, attacking the Longbottoms. This would have made him furious if he himself had not been numb to his self-loathing. Then seeing the newspaper, the date "July 29, 1993" shook him. Harry's birthday was just a few days away.

Another year that the boy completed without his parents.

Sirius would have backed away and cried for that reason, and the photo on the front page hadn't shown him something that lit a raging fire in his chest.

He stared at the photo of the Weasley family in Egypt for hours. They were all equally redheaded, their main differences were height and age. He didn't really care, his focus was on the hand of one of the boys, apparently the youngest among the boys, there was a girl there next to Molly too. But again his focus was not on any of the children, but on the mouse in one of them's hands.

Centuries may pass and he will still remember what that damned bastard Peter Pettigrew was like. He spent years watching him transform, countless nights running alongside him, Prongs, and Moony.

The bastard was alive and closer to Harry than he imagined the man could be.

That same night he used what was left of his magic, unused for over a decade, to transform.

Completing the entire process of transforming into an animagus is difficult, it took him almost three years to achieve it, but after that, the transformations were quick and simple. However, he only did so with the use of his wand, so without that, it took him a long time.

It was exhausting in many ways, his magic was already weaker thanks to lack of use, the deplorable diet, and the unsanitary nature of his current days. But he did it, he became Padfoot and thanks to a bad diet and how much weight he lost in recent years he managed to get through the cell bars.

Before leaving he looked one last time at Snape who stared back at him with wide eyes before out of nowhere he started laughing like a lunatic. As he escaped under the dementors' non-existent noses, he heard Snotlout's haunting laughter.

Ranhoso finally went crazy. Sirius concluded.

[...]

The weeks passed faster and faster, and mid-November came with the pre-winter cold.

Talk about Sirius Black's invasion permeated the students for several days, but at some point, it lost momentum. Maybe because of the Quidditch games, or because of the lessons and schoolwork piling up, or maybe because there was no real attack, no one saw the perpetrator and the painting of the Fat Lady was the only real victim.

After that night they slept in the Great Hall, the painting was replaced and now the guardian of the entrance to Gryffindor Tower is Sir. Cadogan, a strange medieval knight gets the job done, so everyone is able to return to their rooms and sleep in real beds instead of sleeping bags.

So things were relatively normal, but also after all the mystery about the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk last year, there was little that could scare most students. This is because everyone is saying that Sirius was after Harry and not the other students.

It wasn't comforting really, but he let himself get distracted by Quidditch and Wood being more manic every day about winning the house cup this year. Which unfortunately included waking up very early for training, and even practicing on rainy days.

As Harry and no other player ended up with a terrible flu, it was only thanks to Madam Pomfrey and her large supply of anti-flu potions.

Even though I don't love playing in the rain, training was great when on the afternoon of the Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff game the weather was terrible. The constant rain and wind made the game more difficult, as if it wasn't already difficult to find a small golden snitch in the middle of a sunny day, now among the lower clouds everything got worse.