Brightest ✯ Sirius Black

✯twenty-seven✯

"that's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt"

The house was like Cleo remembered it. When the horrible stretching feeling of apparation ended, Cleo opened her eyes to a quiet street. Dark clouds hung overhead, casting a shadow on the house that Cleo once had so many fond memories of. Now, it just looked barren, dark, and evil.

"This way," Ren's command cut through the breeze and the silence as she began walking into the home, her back straight and her shoulders rolled back. She looked dignified as if the murders of innocent witches and wizards made her feel powerful. Cleo shuddered and began to follow her into the home.

It was far too quiet for Cleo's liking. There wasn't a single light on, and goosebumps erupted on Cleo's skin the very moment she stepped foot into the house. Hushed whispers could be heard from upstairs, and creaking and groaning of the wooden floorboards made the house seem even more desolate.

Cleo swallowed hard as she stepped further into her house and examined it. Its usual brightness and flourishing life were now gone and all that replaced it was the sound of silence. The hallway no longer held vases of bright colored flowers; instead, the vases were chipped and cracked and the flowers now dead, browned, and soiled, just like the happiness that once resided there.

She walked past the open door leading to the lounge, seeing chairs that had been overturned, papers strewn across the floor, and books on the ground with torn pages. A table was even in ruins, the wooden spikes now in a heap of wreckage on the floor.

She continued to walk until she stood at the base of the stairs. Oh, the stairs. She remembered many years ago when Ren and she would take turns pushing each other down the stairs in a little wooden crate, their giggles echoing through the household. Their mother would tell them to be careful, and their father stood at the bottom of the staircase with a camera in his hand, catching the girls' looks of surprise as they came careening down to the bottom where they had piled a heap of pillows and blankets, huge beams and smiles on their flushed faces.

Ren was already halfway up them, but Cleo stood at the bottom, gripping onto the wooden post for dear life. "Come," Ren demanded, her voice cold. Cleo looked up at her and gasped, her eyes full of tears. She simply couldn't believe how much had changed in just one year. "Come," Ren repeated, quieter now, but no less cold.

Cleo followed the girl she no longer recognized as her older sister into the library. She had spent hours upon hours getting lost in this room during her childhood. She and Ren would sit on the floor surrounded by towering piles of books, both of them quiet as they escaped to different worlds. Sometimes, one of them would begin to laugh out loud, other times one would gasp in shock. Their father had stocked all four walls of the library with new books constantly, so they never ran out of new things to read.

Ren walked dignified through the double doors of the library. Cleo walked hesitantly in after her, her breathing labored and her hands shaking, for now, the room was cold and dark and had lost all of its light and wonder and luster. The great desk that sat in the front with the chair that her father always sat in was now occupied by a monster of a man, and the room, her room, was now full of imposters and murderers.

"Ah, Cleophus," a voice hissed, making Cleo's blood run cold. "We've heard so much about you." It was slow, its words careful, making every syllable pure agonizing torture. The great leather chair turned around, and Cleo gasped, for the figure before her looked less human than anything else she had seen before.

He had distorted features. His skin looked pale and waxy, as though his face had been burned and blurred. He looked warped, and his eyes were that of a snake, looking almost red rather than any other normal color. He looked positively dreadful, and the snake-like pupils were fixed upon her, making her involuntarily shiver.