the secret of Erised {s.b.}

chapter 19: reparation

Numb.

There was no other way Esmeralda could describe how she felt. Finally talking to Sirius after months of not doing it made her feel that way, numb. Although she had gotten a lot of anger and frustration off her chest, she didn't feel anything when she finished crying the night she yelled at the young Gryffindor to leave her alone.

For ten years she'd never been able to feel time passing by, and for the first time she realised what that meant and began to feel alone. Truly alone. Before Sirius she had always had hope for someone to eventually see her and pull her out of the Mirror without question, but after realising that none of the kids that interacted with her Mirror saw her she gave up. There was still a tiny spark of hope hidden underneath all of her doubt and sorrow, so when Sirius showed up that spark ignited something in her.

She felt as if that spark lit up a match that would eventually do one of two things. It would either turn on a set of fireworks, which Esmeralda saw as Sirius somehow being able to pull her out of the Mirror, or burn out, which meant that Sirius would leave her and never come back. November of 1966 wouldn't be the last time Esmeralda Dragonstone was seen, it would be June of 1976 by some Gryffindor kid who she didn't have the guts to tell that she cared for.

Sirius had brought so much light back into Esmeralda's life that she actually thought he was the one. After all, he was named after a star and the Mirror had said that the Star would come eventually and pull her out of the Mirror. She had always felt ashamed of her situation and never brought it up, not even once. Esmeralda thought that if she kept it a secret and never told him, Sirius would eventually figure it out on his own. How wrong had she been.

It's not that Esmeralda thought Sirius wasn't bright, he was one of the smartest people Esmeralda had met in her life, but she didn't quite understand the Mirror's prophecy at first. She thought that the Star that was coming would know what to do and do it's part of the job when they first made contact. That's one of the reasons Esmeralda doubted Sirius' ability to pull her out of the Mirror in the first place. After they first met, she'd try to get the Mirror to talk to her and tell her if she had done something wrong or if it had just been a mistake, but the Mirror did not reply.

Now, two years later, Esmeralda was exactly the way Sirius had seen her the first time he walked into the Room of Requirement with James while tracing the Marauder's Map. She was sitting in a dark corner, chocolate brown hair and hands covering her crying face, and alone. She became clueless as to why she was even crying, but it had become a routine for her to do so since there wasn't anything else to do or anyone else to talk to.

Esmeralda's muffled sobs prevented her from hearing a set of footprints walking into the Room of Requirement. The owner of the footprints stood in front of the Mirror not knowing what they were going to come across. The person saw a sobbing figure sitting in the back corner of the Mirror. A melancholy smile appeared on the person's face.

"Are you okay ?" The person asked in a familiar voice.

Esmeralda heard this and her face shot up. She was met with the piercing grey eyes of Sirius Black staring at her. Her honey brown eyes were puffy from all the crying they had done over the course of Summer break, but that didn't mean Sirius wasn't bewitched by them the instant she looked up at him. They did not speak for a while, neither one of them knew what to say to the other. A million thoughts went through their heads, but none of them carried hate, or resentment, or pain.

The girl inside the Mirror had missed the Gryffindor before, but this feeling was something she'd never experienced before. It wasn't like the first time they'd seen each other, but it felt like they were looking at each other for the first time. Each movement the other made, consciously or not, was carefully analised and appreciated by the other, it seemed like it was the first time they had ever seen another human being. They knew they weren't ordinary people that randomly stumbled into each others lives. Both of them knew that they shared a special bond that could not be explained by anyone, not even themselves.