Echoes of the Black Heart

Chapter 5

The wind whispered through the trees like a lullaby, gentle but full of ghosts. Time didn’t seem to move—not in that space, not in that moment. The world beyond the graveyard might have kept spinning, but for the three of them, everything had stopped the day Sirius’s light had gone out.

Walburga still clutched the video player like a lifeline, as if pressing it hard enough to her chest could somehow will her son back to life. Her tears had soaked into the fabric of her cloak, but she made no move to brush them away. Her eyes were distant now—fixed on the headstone, but seeing something far deeper.

Orion had knelt at some point, his knees digging into the cold earth. His hand rested on the grave as if trying to anchor himself. He looked older, worn, like the years had suddenly caught up to him all at once. “He should’ve had more time,” he whispered, the words cracking under the weight of sorrow. “He should’ve been here.”

Regulus crouched down beside him, his own tears now falling freely. “He knew,” he murmured. “He knew we loved him. Even when we didn’t say it enough. He… he carried it with him.”

Orion reached for Regulus’s hand, gripping it tightly. Walburga joined them moments later, falling to her knees as well, wrapping her arms around both of them in a trembling, desperate embrace. It was the first time they had held each other like that in years. Grief, in all its brutality, had stripped them bare—but it had also stitched them together again.

A single candle flickered to life beside the headstone—Regulus’s doing. Its flame danced in the dusk air, defiant against the growing dark.

“Sirius would’ve hated all this crying,” Regulus said with a sad, soft laugh. “He’d have made some stupid joke to get us to smile again.”

Walburga let out a shaky chuckle through her tears. “He’d have probably worn something ridiculous, just to distract us. You remember that bloody jacket with the patches?”

“The one with glitter,” Orion added, eyes damp but warmed by the memory.

A long silence followed, but this one didn’t feel as empty.

The wind picked up again, a soft breeze that brushed over their shoulders like a touch.

Maybe it was nothing.

Or maybe… it was Sirius.

They stayed long into the night, talking in whispers, sharing stories, wrapped in the ache of loss—but also in the warmth of love that still remained.

And somewhere in that quiet, in that heartbreak, the stars began to shine.