Become
Author's Notes: Feedback would be lovely. It’s nice to know that someone out there besides me reads Harry/Sirius ficclets.
Become
He only wanted an end.
Harry sat as though petrified, eyes fixed aimlessly at the world rushing past. The hills and trees and rivers were filled with laughter, with life, yet all he craved was a way out. His heart felt like a diamond - precious and beautiful but cold and abstract, its sharp edges sawing away at his few last scraps of sanity. He willed himself to be like the sky: empty and boundless and without pain. He wished that he could soar through those blurred clouds as a sprite, a being of nothingness. He longed for an end to his humanity. It hurt too much to think, to feel, to – be–.
Harry thumbed the blade in his hands, running numb fingertips over the cold gun-grey metal edge. The sharp edge cut smoothly through the skin without resistance, and droplets of garnet rose up to greet the knife’s kiss. They swelled and finally broke, spilling over and creating small streams of sweet, dark blood that flowed from Harry’s fingers to the valley of his palm and finally trickled past his scarred wrist to slip out of sight beneath the sleeve of his robes. With a small smile Harry traced his blood over the gleaming knife … the one Sirius had given him on Christmas in his fourth year. He remembered this unintentionally, and the wave of misery followed inexorably.
Sirius.
Harry had tried to not think about it. He had wanted to run so badly that day in Dumbledore’s office … the memory was as vivid as the red blood tainting the silver metal before him. Afterwards he had run … after everyone else was asleep. He had slipped out of the dorms and ran and ran and ran until he was beyond matter, legs flying silently over the stones and transforming him into an invincible blur of light. When he ran, Harry did not remember. He did not think nor feel. He went through a metamorphosis into an impenetrable shadow that shone with the light of moonlight glinting off dark waters. He was everything and nothing, an empty blue shell flying through space. He was cold and distant and had no need for anyone.
He was the sky.
Sirius…
Harry pressed his fingers against the blade, feeling satisfaction as the heat in his digits increased, the knife cutting into the flesh of his fingers evenly. There was a pounding numbness that surged through him when he touched this blade, and he wished it would consume him. More than once he had rested the cold, unfeeling steel against his bare chest and though of letting it become a part of him … of plunging it deep within his heart, to cut out the horror, and the memories, and the overwhelming ache that he knew he knew would never leave.
Just as he wanted to rip Sirius from his memory, from his soul, but he could not. Harry glanced sideways up at the door, but neither Hermione nor Ron had returned. At least they respected that he wanted to be alone. Harry closed his eyes against the flow of images floating up in his mind, but he could not suppress the choked, dry sob that escaped his lips.
Sirius was gone, all because of him.
If only he had opened that package, if only he’d used the mirror, if only…
Harry had expected that later Dumbledore would scold him. After all, he had tried to use the Cruciatus curse on Bellatrix. A bitter rush of hatred like he had never felt before swelled up within Harry. Never had he so badly wanted to hurt someone – to make them feel excruciating, utter pain The knife slid from his limp hand and hit the compartment floor with a dull *thud*, and the only other sounds penetrating the absolute silence was the metronome of Harry’s blood dripping onto the fallen blade. He blinked slowly, dull eyes fixed unseeing on the compartment door. Her mocking words still rang through his head, a taunting discordant melody.
~Aaaaaah . . . did you love him, little baby Potter?~
What did she know? What did any of them know? He had lost his godfather … he’d lost his hope, his friend, his connection to his father and mother. He had seen the only one who had ever been like a parent to him fall through an archway and into an untimely death.
But it was so much more than that.
It had been that Christmas when Harry finally realized. Something inside him felt so much more at ease when Sirius was around. He felt alive, able to do anything. He felt needed and appreciated. He knew that Sirius cared about him, and for some reason that knowledge made his head go light and this heartbeat increase.
Harry loved Sirius unconditionally.
He had still retained some of his good looks, though Azkaban had forever extinguished the fierce, rebellious joy that had danced in the boy’s eyes when Harry saw him in the Pensieve. But what Harry felt for him was something beyond physical attraction, beyond vows and romance and everything that bound people to their idea of what was an ideal love. It was more an intense affection, a raw and powerful need to be with Sirius.
And now that was all over. All of it.
Harry had wanted to tell Sirius. He had planned on confessing his feelings after that year was over, when he next saw his beloved godfather. But now he never would. Now Sirius would never know the way Harry had ached when Sirius had gently kissed his goodbye, lips whispering across Harry’s forehead like an angel’s wing. Hot, unbidden tears spilled from Harry’s eyes, sliding languidly down his nose and falling to mix with the small pool of blood on the floor.
Harry had had the feeling that Sirius might have returned his love. Harry knew that Sirius had probably been in love with James … and that was why he had looked so harshly upon Lily on that day he had seen in Snape’s memory. And Harry resembled his father so much, even Sirius had said so. Harry had been hopeful that Sirius would accept him. He’d had it all planned out in his head. He had decided he wouldn’t care if Sirius only loved him for his father, he wouldn’t care if when they kissed Sirius whispered his father’s name. All he had wanted was to be with him … to breathe in the scent of his godfather and to hold him until they became as one unbreakable being.
None of that mattered now. Sirius was gone, and it was all his fault.
Harry turned his head slightly to look out at the endless crystalline blue sky. He willed himself to dissolve, to become a part of that great nothingness. He craved an anesthesia of the soul, and amnesia so complete that he would never have to know misery or love again.
It had to be a dream. A nightmare. Soon he would awake, and Sirius would be beside him. He would awake and tell his lover of the crazy, torturous dream he had had, and then drift back into a peaceful, healing sleep in the man’s strong, warm arms.
But Harry could still hear the dripping of his blood as if from afar, and he knew it was all too true.