The Marauding Maps: A Collection of Oneshots

When He Left

I held it my hands for a long time. The Gryffindor scarf. My brother's scarf. Siri's scarf. I didn't know why he'd given it to me, but he had. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it, but it was there. I didn't know that he was about to leave,but he was. Well, not until I heard him swear as he knocked over the umbrella stand with his trunk. And then I ran. He was leaving. I couldn't let him go. So I ran.

"Siri, what are doing??"

"I'm leaving, Reg. Forever." ...forever.

"But you have nowhere to go. You don't have any money. They'll burn your name off, Siri"

Our eyes locked across the threshold. My foolish fourteen year old mind actually thought that he might consider staying. Until he looked at the floor and muttered "I'm going to the Potters'"

"Sirius" he looked back and scanned my face with those calculating eyes. He was always better at that look than me.

"Please stay." I said.

At the same time, with his horribly annoying look of beautiful pity he said, "come with me."

And then, together, "I can't." Of course, I knew he was right. And I knew he wanted me to come, but I couldn't. I was fourteen. What if James's parents wouldn't take me?? I didn't even know James. If I went couldn't come back again. But I couldn't let him go either. He was my brother. He'd been there for me. The only person who had always been there for me. And now he was going and not coming back.

But he couldn't stay, either. He would have if he could, but since he'd been sorted into Gryffindor five years ago, it had been getting worse for him here. And now he'd reached his breaking point. But, fuck, I would miss him.

They say that, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes, and that kind of what happened here. I suppose I did die, in a way, at least some part of me did. The part that cared. And my life flashed before my eyes. My life with the only person who had lived me for me. Loved me because he was a genuinely nice person with no ulterior motives.

I saw us playing in the garden when I was five and he was six, and we were playing with sticks, giggling,

I saw us standing as we are now, when he was twelve and I was eleven, except he was coming in for the rest of the summer, not leaving for the rest of his life,

I saw him cheering me on at my tryouts for the quidditch team, when we were thirteen and fourteen, and every match when he wasn't trying to smash a bludger into my head,

I saw him come to visit me in the hospital wing after a particularly nasty match, or maybe it would be me visiting him, but either way, James Potter was there as well and we were laughing and eating Bertie Bots' and Chocolate Frogs.

And I saw us here, and now, at fourteen and fifteen, him about to leave, and me about to cry, and that was when vowed to never let anyone love me again. That's when that part of me, that had ever cared about anyone or anything, had died. When He Left.

"Goodbye, Sirius Black"

(A/N oh look, I made myself cry, whoops)