You feel strange. You feel angry. There is something you’ve forgotten to say, and you’ve forgotten why you wanted to say it. There is someone, or someplace, or a moment (something or anything anyway, because you know it isn’t nothing) that you’ve forgotten to remember. And you’ve forgotten why.

You can remember that it is dark and cold out and that the people on the street that walk past you are just a hundred fleeting others that you will never walk past again (although there is a chance that you will, but you’ve never trusted such small probabilities). You remember that you’ve packed up your life into a black bag and you remember to wonder how much of it is worth dragging along behind you under the faint glow of useless street lights; too little. You don’t remember to wonder whether there is something that you didn’t have the time (or the space in your bag) to bring along with you.


You were seven and your brother was five and the world still revolved around collecting cards and favorite colours. You were bored of all your toys and you’d migrated to the kitchen, waiting for life to excite you again. There had been a knock upon the door and you and your brother had your ears against a wall, listening for adventure. The sounds of your father and another unknown man waft in through the little space you risked leaving open, coming closer.

“…caused you any inconvenience by coming here…don’t like leaving the house for these things…”

“…not at all, not at all…Always a pleasure to do business with you, Orion…somewhere private for the exchange…”

“Of course…Right this way, Terrance…”

“They’re coming in here!” Regulus whispered in his helplessly soft voice, sounding torn between excitement and terror, backing away from you and the door way.

You smiled as your heart picked up speed. “Quick! Let’s hide in Kreacher’s room.” Your voice isn’t torn like your brother’s. He’s never known how to make choice and you’ve never known how to compromise.

Regulus hung onto your arm for a while as you both crouched behind the shuttered door in the dark room, but you shook him off, so he resorted to clutching a wall. You both kept your eyes on the two men entering the kitchen and locking the door behind them, as they continued speaking with words that sounded like printed signatures, and artificial looks you could half-see through the shutters.

“Sirius, what if-”

“Shh, Regulus! Just be quiet!”

You could see a box had been placed on a table. An innocent black box that looked light enough for even your brother to hold. You felt impatient for your father to open it, but he continued to talk in that rehearsed way and the other man continued to listen and smile his crooked teeth.

“…I’ll have to have her finalize it with you when she returns. She left us what she thought was appropriate pay.”

“…I’m sure the assortment will please her…When should I expect her?”

“…I could average a guess at a couple of weeks...”

“…guarantee her of the quality. I choose the very best for honorable, esteemed customers. The Blacks have always been…”

“…mutual respect…pure origins…”

“Sirius,” Regulus began in the smallest of voices, interrupting a flow of words you knew by heart.

“What?” you snapped.

“I heard Mum ask Dad to receive something for Aunt Araminta while she was away. Maybe that box is it.”

“Must be something bad,” you whispered back as the pointless conversation about business and money and blood carried on. “The fat old hag.”

Regulus didn’t reply. You grinned; your mother would have slapped you if she’d heard. Your brother just squirmed.

You both watched as your father took a satchel from an inner coat pocket and handed it to the man with the crooked smile, who put it away safely into an inner coat pocket.

“You won’t count?” your father asked, raising his eyebrows, keeping his voice as soft and unalterable as ink.

You saw the crooked teeth again. “I trust she’d have more to lose from dishonesty.”

Orion reached out his hand and pulled the box toward him. With a smile, the deal was closed and you were left to reckless curiosity as your brother wondered in hesitation and childhood began to creep away in the dark dusty corners of the closet-bedroom.


As you make your blind, angry and confused way down the street, as someone bumps into you and tells you to watch it (you ignore them, because you’ve gotten good at ignoring advice you simply can not take) , it is easy to remember that the doors and windows never seemed truly open and that none of the pictures on the walls smiled.

They were disappointed, you remember and you can’t remember the time when that disappointed you. Perhaps it was very long ago, perhaps it was yesterday, and perhaps it didn’t happen at all. Perhaps it has all been a dream, or perhaps the dream started when you walked out the door. Does it make a difference? You’ve forgotten to ask yourself that so many times that it feels no longer like a question.


There was the box, hidden behind what would be useless trinkets on the highest shelf in your father’s forbidden study, innocently disguised as useless too. Your grey eyes watched it with vengeful interest and Regulus’ darker grey eyes watched you with fearful fascination.

Your parents were busy entertaining downstairs and you’d never been able to stand their make-believe lives. Regulus had never been able to tell you ‘no’.

You closed the door behind you as softly as you could. The room was not fancy, to suit your mother’s fancies; your father always liked things simple and direct. He never wasted time with ornamentation. There was a desk of dark wood and cushioned chair to match. Bookshelves lined one of the walls, and the disguised junk lined the other.

“Sirius, I really don’t like this. I wish we could just-”

“You didn’t have to come along, Reg. It’s up to you. I’m going to find out what’s in the box.”

Regulus took a deep breath and pleaded. “But, why? It’s nothing for us in there. And Father-”

“Father is busy enough with his guests and I want to have some fun. You can go back, Reg,” you added, knowing Regulus wouldn’t.

You picked up your father’s heavy study chair and forced yourself not to put it down until you reached the shelves, even if it killed your back to not take breaks.

You climbed onto the chair, but you still weren’t tall enough. You tried to climb up the shelves, but they protested and groaned under your half-formed weight.

“You can’t get up?” Regulus as he came near to you, trying to hide the hope in his voice.

“No,” you admitted, looking down at him. “I need your help. Come up on here.”

Your brother’s eyes widened as you yanked on his arm. “What do you want me to do?”

You continued to yank on his arm and his eyes shifted toward the door. “I just want you to climb onto my shoulders and see what’s in the box. If it isn’t anything interesting, then we’ll just leave.” You managed to get your brother on the chair with you and you noticed he was trembling. “That’s what you want, right? To leave the box alone? Well, here’s your chance: just peek inside it. I would myself, but I can’t reach it without your help.”

Regulus glanced once more toward the door, and then nodded his little head brusquely. “All right. I’ll just peek.”

You grinned at him as you crouched down to let him mount your shoulders. He held onto your hair with his hands and you lifted him into the air, carefully, slowly, far enough for him to reach Aunt Araminta’s box.

“Okay, now, just pull it over,” you told him soothingly, shaking his leg a bit. “Let go of my head.”

Regulus’ hands rose hesitantly from your head, like birds first leaving their nests, and he gripped the shelf tightly with one while the other grasped the edge of the little black box. Lifting the wooden lid with surprising ease, he stretched his neck to see inside it.

“Er, there’s a load of Muggle stuff, Sirius,” he whispered down to you as his little hands groped around the box. “There’s a yellow pendant, an old envelope, a fancy pen, some Christmas decorations and this weird thing…”

You shifted your head around, trying to see. “What weird thing?”

“Well, it’s sort of oval and thin and it looks like silver. It’s got black at the top though, and this little thing I think you’re supposed to spin…”

“Regulus, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m going to put you down so I can see too. Hold on, I’m putting you down.”

His hands returned to gripping your head, but that time there was a little metal something in one of them. He hopped down onto the floor from the chair and you followed down.

“See?” Regulus held up the funny little object.

You could remember having seen one like it before as you watched the people on the street from a curtained window. A man was holding the little silver cylinder that seemed to sprout fire from touch and smoking a skinny little cigarette as he stood there on the sidewalk, waiting for something that wouldn’t come.

“I think it’s supposed to make fire,” Sirius muttered as he took it into his hands. “But I don’t know how.”

Regulus had reached over and taken it back, and before he could spare you a moment to interfere, he’d rolled his pointer finger over the red spinning thing at the top.

Without another second to breathe, a fire burned into your brother’s finger, spreading up his arm as if it wanted to swallow him and you couldn’t have told whose scream was more afraid.


You come to a street corner and there are no lights to your left. You remember that is where you are supposed to turn. You wonder why you hesitate, but you can’t remember to consider that maybe the street lights weren’t so useless after all. Will the darkness swallow me whole? You think that maybe if you take another step there will be someone somewhere at sometime when things were different who will forget you. And you can almost remember why you don’t want that to happen…


You were surrounded by four white walls. You kept your eyes on the clean white floor. You did not want to look at the Healers with the kind smiles. You did not want to look at your mother’s tearful face. You did not want to look at the broken stone of your father’s eyes.

You did not want to look at the horrible blackness of your little brother’s arm.

It’s my fault. You knew it. Regulus knew it, even if he was asleep. Your parents knew it, even if they did not scold. The Healers knew it, even if they smiled and told you as if it was all you needed, “Everything will be all right.”

You’d been sitting in the plastic white chair for hours avoiding things while your parents watched Regulus, so intent upon making sure his chest went up and down that they didn’t stop to ask the Healers their status. You almost believed something mattered more and you’d been fooled your entire life.

But only almost.

The light from the little window across from the little bed was changing colors. The light was getting redder and brighter and you knew somewhere the moon was getting higher. Somewhere in a simply furnished study, there was an innocent little black box locked away in your father’s desk and somewhere in your passionate heart you hated yourself more than you ever hated all of them.

You blinked away stinging tears as a gentle hand patted your knee. Your blurry eyes looked at your father’s as your brave mask fell off your frightened face and childhood crept back through the window with the light of a dying day.

“I’m sorry, Father. I made Regulus come up there with me. I was the one who wanted to open the box. It’s my fault! I’m sorry, Dad,” you cried because you couldn’t help it and maybe your father didn’t take his hand off your knee because he couldn’t help it either.

“Sirius, it’s not your fault. I should have locked my study. It was an accident.”

Your mother had turned to watch you and she whispered as almost never before. “It wasn’t your fault, son.”

You shook your head. “It was. It was my fault. Regulus will never forgive me,” you wailed, the space in your heart divided by fear and shame.

“Of course he will,” your father soothed, stiffly continuing to pat your knee. “He knows you didn’t mean it.”

“I wouldn’t forgive me if I were him,” you confessed and the tears slid down your face as the light slid from the streets.

“You would,” whispered your father and you thought that maybe his eyes didn’t look like crystals; they just looked like eyes. “There are things more important than blame. It’s not that hard to forgive.”

You watched him and you did another thing you couldn’t help. “You wouldn’t hate me?” you asked, not fully knowing what you meant.

Your father said, “You’re my son.”

It wasn’t a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. It was something he couldn’t help, and neither could you, and neither could time. It was enough to forgive and enough to condemn.

You stayed there a long time, much after the moon had come up to fill in for the sun, and it was the closest you ever came to caring for the statues, safes and painted walls hiding in the innocent black box somewhere in your heart that you wished you could open.


Your feet take you halfway down the street before you remember. In the middle of the dark, you see that it’s special. You know you can’t leave it behind, and somehow you know you don’t want to. But the life waiting for you at the end of the road is so much bigger and truer and the memory is so little and faint and surrounded by walls. There is only one window to the heart of this many-walled room and the voices inside your innocent, windowed black box have gotten tired of repeating what none of you will ever understand.

So you stow it away in a spare pocket and it’s your past all packed up (the only part of it you know is worth bringing along, because you’re sure it’s the only part you know your adventures won’t erase) and you walk down the street to the bigger and truer.


The streetlights stayed on for the rest of the night, the year and time. As you wandered through life they witnessed a million footsteps of the passers by, forgotten at the bend of the road and the Sun and a million pieces of left-behind souls.

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