#hpatootp

[caffeineheroes]

Harry shrugs. “I’ve probably done more dangerous things.”

Sirius shares an alarmed look with Remus, and Sirius clears his throat. “That might be, but it would gut me if anything happened to you.”

Harry gives Sirius a startled look. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Sirius replies. “You might have to do dangerous things. I might not be able to prevent it, or protect you. But I want you to take care of yourself as much as you can.”

Harry nods. “I promise.”

“Good enough for me,” Sirius replies. “I just need to know that you’re not going to hurl yourself into danger like a Gryffindor.”

Harry laughs. “I thought that was my job?”

“Try to think about it before you do,” Remus says wryly. “I think that’s all we can ask.”

--From Stronger at the Broken Places, "Part the First: In Which Sirius Begins to Prepare," by enigmaticblue (Part 3 of The Many Lives of Sirius Black series)

[barnabusthebarmyballetschool]

Think

@hinnymicrofic Day 13 | 288 words

With Cho, he overthinks.

He overthinks about how to ask her to the Yule ball, until it is too late and she has a date already.

He overthinks about how cool he looks next to Neville and Luna with sap from some weird plant in Neville's lap covered on his face.

He overthinks how to flirt. How to find the right funny thing to say that might make her smile.

He overthinks how to kiss her for the first time. Where he should place his hands, how much pressure should he put into his lips? Open or closed mouth? He waits for an excuse like a mistletoe to kiss her.

But with Ginny, everything comes naturally. It is innate, as easy as breathing. As if his body was wired to know how to be with her without even thinking how to be.

He doesn't think to ask her to the ball, but he subconsciously watches her all night long. How she winces when Neville steps on her toes.

He is not embarrassed sitting next to Neville and Luna with sap on his face because she is sitting right next to him, covered in it as well. She laughs at the look on his face before cleaning him with a simple charm.

He doesn't even consider it flirting with Ginny as they tease each other constantly that summer before his sixth year. Everything he says makes her smile. And everything she does makes him burst into a fit of laughter.

He kisses her without even thinking about it or without ever planning it. One look at her blazing gaze and Harry knew. He knew how to hold her, how to kiss her. 

With Ginny, he doesn't think. He knows

[blitheringmcgonagall]

I like reminding myself of this quote from hpatootp:

“Like the person Sirius cared the most about in the world was you," said Dumbledore quietly.

And this quote from the film (it’s actually Dumbledore in the book) I think fits really well for Sirius:

Harry: And what if after everything I've been through, something's gone wrong inside me. What if I'm becoming bad?

Sirius: I want you to listen to me very carefully, Harry. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. You understand?

This part really hits hard.

Because it’s heartbreaking hearing Harry think so badly of himself and have such self-doubt. And because Sirius shows what a fantastic godfather he is and how much he truly loves Harry.

And because surely he’s thinking of another lost teenager who bad things happened to.

And a grey-haired elderly wizard with dark skin who said the same words to him many years ago after he ran away from home.

[harrison-osterfield-appreciation]

| Anyway, trans rights.

[lemonemenom]

“Have a biscuit Potter. And sit down.”

@buginateacup

[barnabusthebarmyballetschool]

Harry was very aware of footsteps. He had to be.

He’d needed the skill to determine which of his relatives had come to wake him up every morning.

He’d needed to know if he’d receive dust coming down from the stairs as his cousin jumped up and down obnoxiously above.

Or perhaps the rapid knocking of his Aunt Petunia. Forever impatient with Harry’s groggy morning tendencies.

Or, worse still, Uncle Vernon’s lazy opening of the cupboard door. A mumbled “Get up,” as he shuffled off to the kitchen.

Harry had come to know Sirius’s steps as well. They were quiet. Years of sneaking around after hours and running from the Ministry had left him a master of going audibly unnoticed.

Though, when Harry caught it, it was always his heels that gave him away. Scraping on the floor as the man trudged down the many flights of stairs in his childhood home. His old prison regaining its title for caging the pride of Sirius Black.

That knowledge held within Harry’s mind was worthless now, however. Because as the June sun beat down on his tired skin, Harry knew that he’d never hear those footsteps again.

He’d never hear that lazy slide of a heel. Not from Sirius, anyway.

Because those footsteps were lost. Tumbling back behind a veil Harry no longer cared to understand.

It should’ve been Bellatrix, or Wormtail, or anyone other than the one man who had stood up for him. Who had reached through the darkness of Harry’s mind and pulled him to safer, warmer shores.

It wasn’t fair. None of this was. The prophecy, the war, the scars on the back of his hand.

It wasn’t fair to his friends, who had grown attached to a boy doomed to become a murderer, or die in his refusal to do so.

It wasn’t fair to his parents, who had sacrificed their lives for a chance at destroying a shell of a man too afraid to let the inevitable claim his wounded soul.

Harry’s eyes are closed. The light and colour of the world shuttered behind the impenetrable red glow of the back of his eyelids. His back pressed against a tree that had lost so much of its comfort in light of the memory of a boy tormenting his classmate. Of friends and future loves saying things only his nightmares could’ve imagined.

He didn’t care about that now, however. All he thought now was that Sirius had once sat here. His eyes alight with mischief and life. Something Harry had only seen glimpses of. Like a ghost at the end of an unending corridor.

The ebb and flow of the shallow waves from the lake kept his mind at bay. It’s murky depths maintaining his sanity. Letting them hold him up.

He hears footsteps, then. Grass getting pressed into the ground under determined steps. Twigs cracking and bending to the sheer will of whoever was coming.

Harry releases a pained sigh. The tranquility of the moment slipping away with each impending step.

They are neither graceful nor clumsy. Each fall is deliberate, understanding. They’re light, which means it isn’t one of the boys, unless Colin Creevey had come looking for an autograph.

It isn’t Hermione, who marched anywhere she went, while somehow managing to be delicate and hesitant.

Then, as the steps near his place, seated against a tree, they stop. He hears the rumple of robes, and the staticky sound of thousands of strands of grass being folded down under the weight of someone sitting down.

Harry’s irritation swells in his chest. He’d came here to be alone. To sink in his despair and let the world take hold of him. He’d made himself very clear without saying a word to his friends. They’d understood. He’d seen it in Ron’s eyes and Hermione’s frown.

He hears the creak of leather bindings, and the ruffle of pages. Then, the unfamiliar click of a muggle pen. A sound he hadn’t heard in years, really. Save for Mr. Weasley’s incessant questions on the things over the summer.

His throat dry, his voice harsh, Harry says, “I don’t want to talk,”

There’s no immediate response. Just the sound of someone scribbling away on parchment.

“I know,” his mysterious companion mumbled. Her voice like a song in the breeze. He shouldn’t be surprised now, after a year full of them, that it was Ginny Weasley.

She continues to write, and Harry keeps his eyes shut. He can feel the tickle of hair dancing on his right arm. The wind blowing it onto his bicep.

“What are you writing?” he asks as the dull scratching becomes a monotone ringing in his ears.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to talk?” Ginny’s writing stops, and Harry feels his lips quirk upward slightly.

He doesn’t respond. Instead choosing to shift his legs into a more comfortable position. Giving his knees a break and letting the blood move through them.

“I’m writing a story,” she explains after a long silence filled with the distant cheers of simpler lives and waves rolling up a gravelly shore.

“What’s it about?” Harry asks, his voice lighter this time.

Ginny huffs a quiet laugh. “You don’t get the details. You can read it once it’s finished,”

Harry unwinds his arms and let’s them fall comfortably into his lap. “Will I get a free copy?”

“Maybe,” is Ginny’s shrewd response.

Again a silence lapses between them. Harry’s chest rises and falls with every breath.

Every breath he is still here, on one side of a veil.

“It’s about a girl,” Ginny says eventually. He swears he can see her tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her freckled nose twitching in the breeze. “She’s awake and she knows what she wants. She’s happy,”

Harry nods slowly, his eyes stay shut.

“I hope you let me read it some time,”

“Maybe,”

And for hours there was nothing but silent writing, and Harry’s thoughts strayed from Sirius, from the prophecy, and from his parents.

He wanted to know about the girl who knew what she wanted. Who was happy.

[alicewonderful]

[its-a-constant-vibe]

[barnabusthebarmyballetschool]

Harry’s fifteenth birthday had been spent alone and angry.  Looking back a year later, he could remember how miserable he had been, how bad of a day it had felt.  A year later, he couldn’t help but wish he could go back to his fifteenth, even if it meant feeling that frustration all over again.  He hadn’t known at the time how lonely he could feel, even surrounded by loving friends.

On his fifteenth birthday, Harry had gotten a letter from Sirius full of love.  A letter with promises of “see you soon” and unspoken agreements that one day, birthdays would be celebrated together.  His present last year, whether he acknowledged it or not, had been the security of family in a way he had never had it before.  In a way he would never have it again.

Now, on his sixteenth birthday, his present is the promise that family of that variety was lost to him forever, not a single birthday that he was able to remember ever celebrated with Sirius, and no possibility of future years to look forward to.

Harry hadn’t known, last year, how lonely grief could feel.

On his sixteenth birthday, Harry had never longed more for a birthday spent alone.

[caffeineheroes]

Today is Halloween 2023. Do you remember where you were on this day in 2012?

Visualize it.

Now imagine your best friends were just murdered. You were betrayed and falsely imprisoned for their deaths.

You're still in prison and your name is Sirius Black.

Not until next summer do you finally escape, living off rats in a dilapidated house on your old school's property while hunting the man who framed you.

Freedom is snatched away a second time and you go back on the run, but at least you don't spend the summer in prison. Yet as the leaves bloom red and gold, you find yourself living in a cave, begging for scraps at a nearby village through frost and snow.

The following summer, you go back to the childhood home of your nightmares where you were physically and emotionally abused until you ran away for good. Or so you thought. You spend the next year locked inside, not allowed to leave. Visitors come and go, sometimes staying a few nights or even weeks. But the rest of the time you are alone with the literal screams of your mother's cursing and slurs echoing through the empty house.

Your last summer arrives, but you don't know it yet. You leave the house to save your godson and never return. You're 37 when you pass through the veil.

You were 33 when you escaped from prison.

And you were only 21 when your bright future was snuffed out.

---

We forget how young Sirius was when he went to Azkaban. Or what 12 years really means until we look back on how young WE were 12 years ago. How much we've changed and the experiences that shaped us. That whole time, Sirius was trapped in a time capsule of his darkest depression. And after all that time, he barely lived at all.

[asexualenjolras]

"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Harry. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. You understand? Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters." - Sirius Black to Harry Potter, 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.

What I love most about this quote from Sirius is that I can imagine Remus Lupin saying it to him during their time at Hogwarts.

Imagine: Sirius has just abandoned his family and finally run away, and is living with James and the Potter family. But before he did, his mother had screamed:

"You are a Black, Sirius - you have our blood in you. It runs deep inside you. You are one of us. You always will be."

And Sirius begins to believe it. He starts to believe that he is, too, a bad person. Like his family. And he tells the Marauders how he feels, and he is vulnerable in front of them for one of the first times in his life. And Remus shuffles forward onto Sirius' bed, kneels in front of him and touches his face and runs his finger across his cheek, wiping the tears and, very simply, tells him:

"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Padfoot. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. You understand? Besides, the world isn't split into good people and bad people. You're a Marauder. And we love you."

AND - I can also imagine Sirius having said it to Remus in return, after a particularly nasty transformation. Remus cries that he is afraid that he, deep down, is a bad person. And Sirius shuffles closer to him, placing a hand on his cheek and running his finger softly down his scar before saying:

"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Moony. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. You understand? Besides, the world isn't split into good people and bad people. You are my Moony. And I love you."

And Sirius remembers it and holds the words close to him. And then finally shares them with Harry, because that's the thing that got him through the torture of Azkhaban and the Dementors.

[weasleyapologist]

best fucking purchase of my life

[1outofmymind]

And not only students.

just read “snape’s worst memory” and i’ve got to say that if the rest of his backstory is along the same lines, that’s sad but it’s no excuse to be a dick to your students

[azoraahai]

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) | Avengers: Endgame (2019)

[alansrickman]

Hᴀʀʀʏ Pᴏᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴍᴇᴍᴇ: ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ➝ Dʀᴀᴄᴏ Mᴀʟғᴏʏ ↳ ǫᴜᴏᴛᴇs ғʀᴏᴍ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ

[everygif]

Fred and George in Order of the Phoenix•