Pensieve - Wolfstar Fanfiction

33

The vitrine door opened easily with the key. Sirius tried his best not to leave any notable fingerprints on the glass, as he pulled the huge floating dish out in front of him. The water was glimmering beautifully.
In the vitrine, behind the spot where the dish had been standing for years without use, there were little glass bottles. Inside of them was liquid that shone in shades of silver. Memories, some of them tracing all the way back to 16th century. Part of him was curious to know, what kind of memories would his ancestors bottle.
But he needed to get out of the study as fast as possible, so without giving the dust covered bottles any more of his valuable time, he began to finish off his mission.

He held his wand in his freezing cold fingers, trying to focus on all the most painful memories of his past.
Those memories took place after he was sorted, first one right after the ceremony, actually.
He needed to filter those memories.
Sirius remembered his father hitting him for the first time that night. He remembered Orion calling him a disappointment for the first time. He remembered how terribly those words hurt back then, as now they were part of his everyday life.
Then he remembered that time Walburga told him to stay away from Regulus before he started school. She was certain that Sirius would be bad influence and somehow make Regulus a Gryffindor as well. He remembered crying himself to sleep that christmas. And the next. And the one after that.
Sirius remembered all the summers his father forbid him from owling his friends. He remembered all those times he was spitting out blood to a bucket in his room after Orion had snapped at him for being disrespectful.
There were tears in his eyes as he remembered those things.
Or when Walburga yelled at him for every little thing he did, no matter if it was an accidental burp in the kitchen table, or bringing in just a little bit dirt, she would scream how she would have never given birth to Sirius if only she had known what kind of a disgrace he would grow up to become.
Then, of course, there was the diary incident. Taste of blood in Sirius' mouth as he cried for Orion to stop beating him. The man didn't stop. Walburga watched from the doorway, like it was some kind of a theatre play presented for her amusement.
And the final touch for the chain of memories that he spelled from the wand pressed against his temple, as the last addition to the silvery string of liquid, was the past two days. The dinner that ended with him laying on the floor in his own blood and vomit and the disaster of a christmas dinner. The treats. The fear. The pain.

Then he snapped out of it, trails of wet and salty tears on his cheeks. The memories were beautiful in their liquid form, he put them into the bottle from the tip of his wand.

He needed to see if it'd really work before moving onto the happier memories. He had never used a pensieve in his life.

So he poured the contents of the just filled bottle into the glimmering pool of water. It tangled and swirled like ink poured into a water glass, in a beautiful shade of dark blue on turquoise. He knew it was going to hurt, it would be literally like re-living his own worst memories. Maybe he needed that reminder. And Remus certainly needed the explanation, information that Sirius couldn't write down. So he dried his tears, breathing in that stale and cold air, and finally pushed his own head down into the bowl.

At first it was beautiful. Then it became painful.