Afraid of The Dark

As a child, you were afraid of the dark.

From the time you were old enough to protest, you cried for the smallest bit of light in the silent, empty nursery. At first your mother obliged; you were so young, after all--just a baby. She charmed a small stone for you, a faceted crystal that glowed gently through your childhood, chasing away the night.

It was surprising, but the shadows, strange shapes thrown against the rich wallpaper of the room, did not bother you. Instead, you were comforted. They were creatures of the dark, yes, but they were born of the light and died by it. They danced in the soft glow of the stone, but were always, without fail, chased away by the first blush of the rising sun. You believed then that light would always defeat the dark.

In time your father took away the precious stone, demanding you face the night as a man, though you were still but a child. You screamed in terror the first night as the darkness smothered you with its heavy cloak of silence and fear. You were alone: there were no shadows to keep you company, no light to chase away the dark. Your father hit you when you wept, and you cried yourself to sleep, but a spark grew within you, determined to fight the darkness.

And so you snuck a candle into your room the next night and smiled as the shadows returned, joyfully dancing about the walls, pushing the darkness into dim corners.

Your father came in, his rage unequaled in being defied by his eldest son and heir. It was such a small thing, that tiny flicker of light, yet the consequences were so much worse. It was not about the candle, it was about obedience, about character, about strength.

The next night your father took you to the cold attic to sleep. He left you with only a blanket as he locked the door behind him. There was a ghoul in the attic, and spiders, and any other number of creatures a young mind might conjure in its imagination, cowering in the dark. You cried until your tears ran dry. And when they did, you grew angry.

You screwed your eyes shut against the suffocating darkness surrounding you, against the mind-numbing visions of terror that played against the back of your lids, and focused only on the hatred you felt for your father at that moment. Strong and proud, yet that strength made him cruel and ignorant: Orion Black was all of those things and more, and you would be none of them. You did not even want to be a Black at that moment.

You rejected the very darkness of your name.

A light sprang up before you, a minute pinprick of red flame that grew as you fanned it with your determination and hope to be none of those things he was, to be better. The tiny blaze chased away the dark, and the shadows returned to comfort you. They kept you company through the long night, until daylight returned and you were released from your attic prison.

Your father thought he had won, but in reality he had lost. The darkness would never conquer you, not when you had even smallest bit of light within. That light was the knowledge that you were different, you were more. You were not really a Black.

From that day on, you did not ask for your rock, nor did you sneak in candles. You were not afraid of the dark, because you knew you could always create the light you needed to chase it away. It was within you, and the darkness was without. With one, the other could not hurt you.

When you went to school, your newfound confidence served you well: with a wand of ash, you could easily create light whenever you needed it. It let you explore the deepest, darkest parts of the castle with your friends. It let you roam the Forbidden Forest late at night, when the moon hid behind the clouds and the strange sounds of the woods frightened away lesser men. You carried your light within and aloft, and you were not afraid.

Once, during fourth year, the Defense Against The Dark Arts professor procured a boggart from deep with the castle. The class had been studying the unusual creatures for a month, and he felt it was time for everyone to practice the banishing spell on a real specimen. Each student stood to face their deepest fear; most shuddered, some grew pale and shook. A few even failed, unable to cast the charm that would turn their fears into something they could laugh at instead.

You stepped up to the boggart with confidence. You knew your greatest fear and had conquered it long ago, in the attic. The creature began to shift shape as you stood there, a black cloud of cold shadows that slowly extended snaky dark tendrils throughout the room. You let them drift about, enjoying the rush of adrenaline as they wound themselves around you. The other students gasped; even the professor coughed to indicate you should attempt the charm before the darkness enveloped them all.

You grinned. You laughed. And you shouted, "Riddikulus!" at the black shadow slowly filling the room. The smoky tendrils became simple bits of string that you quickly and easily tied into a large knot. It then burst into a raging fire that reached to the ceiling, red and gold flames licking the rafters. The class gasped once more as the boggart was banished, and the professor stared at you. Yes, you had truly conquered your fear.

You were no longer afraid of the dark.

* * *

Azkaban took that victory away from you.

It was complete darkness, within and without. It was bleak desolation made reality, icy cold and alone and despairing. It was more than a dark nursery begging for shadows, more than a locked attic demanding light: it was defeat, bitter and never-ending.

The light within you dimmed as you struggled to cope with the death of your closest friend. You did not see or feel the darkness around you, so enveloped by shock and grief and even madness instead. Yet it did not bother you; in fact, you let the dark tendrils embrace you, wrap you in a cocoon that shielded you from the cutting reality of your loss. Light would only remind you of the spark of fire that had been your friend, the light of James's life that had been his wife and child.

But as the days turned into weeks, you began to long for at least the shadows to keep you company, as they had when you had been young and afraid. The light within you began to burn once more as you let hope grow, that one day you might escape, or be freed, and see justice for your friends, both killer and killed.

Yet the gruesome guards of Azkaban sucked it away, leaving you with only pain, misery, and the overwhelming darkness. Each time you tried to conjure the smallest spark of fire, it was smothered by the Dementors outside your cell, snuffed out before it could blossom into more. Not even the tiniest mote of light was allowed to live in Azkaban.

And so you curled up as a dog and tried to keep alive the spark within. It was so fragile and weak, though, that you could only lie in unmoving silence day after day, year after year, certain it would one day sputter and die.

But it didn't. You realized then that perhaps light was born of darkness and not the other way around. Because it was your anger alone that kept it alive now--not hope, not strength. Your hatred for the rat who had murdered your friends grew into an unyielding flame within. You would avenge them; you would find and destroy Peter Pettigrew, even if you died trying.

With that realization came something you had not felt for years: where once you knew you could conquer the darkness surrounding you with the light from within, now you feared you could not. The darkness was within you now, the anger and hatred so entwined with the light that had once been hope and determination that you hardly knew where one started and the other ended. What if it consumed you? What if you became the darkness, a creature of hate? A true Black?

And then one day it suddenly exploded: both the darkness and the fire within.

You saw him, saw the rat, staring at you from the front page of a newspaper. He was alive, he was in hiding, and he was going back to Hogwarts.
To James's son--to Harry.


You escaped. You had to stop him from getting to Harry. Although you did not realize it at the time, a deep love for your best friend's son drove you to physical and mental extremes; you attributed it to the unrelenting anger in your heart. You let yourself do terrible things, all in the name of that anger, that need for vengeance. And for one brief moment you succeeded: the rat was revealed. You would have justice and freedom, and your light returned, blazing bright under the glow of the full moon.

But in that same instant it was cruelly snatched away once more. Still, you were free, and the light remained, though dimmed with bitter hopelessness at times.

The darkness within did not die.

* * *

Two months.

For two months you have been trapped in the house you hate, the home that was never truly a home. Cleaning and listening and watching and just listening some more. Occasionally leaving only to be ordered back, knowing you shouldn't be out but unable to resist.

It is dark inside. It always has been, or perhaps gloomy and depressing are more appropriate words to describe the shadowy hallways and empty rooms. You crave the light and try hard to keep it burning: candles, fires, lamps, your wand. You even find your old stone and place it on the table beside your bed each night, casting the charm that will set it glowing, then falling asleep to the dance of the shadows across the old, peeling wallpaper.

Yet too soon the inner darkness grows. You feel it within, poisoning your thoughts, but there is nothing you can do to stop it: you can't leave, you can't fight. You are a housemaid, or worse--a prisoner among witches and wizards who can come and go as they please. They are free, while you are not. You are still trapped by your past and a crime you didn't commit. At times you feel invisible, as if they can't even see you in the dark.

After a few weeks you begin to put out the stone. You let the darkness envelop you, as it had in Azkaban. And at times the spark that inconceivably survived your captivity there burns faintly within you once more, but you nurse it with bitter resentment this time. Sometimes you feed it with Firewhiskey, finding it fittingly appropriate that such an aptly named substance somehow keeps it alive.

There are people around, however, and activity, and you carry on as best as you can in silent suffering. And soon the young people arrive, including the godson you never had the chance to care for. Harry, who looks so much like James, who has suffered his entire life, who now carries his own dark connection to Voldemort within. Watching Harry's strength in the face of being expelled from Hogwarts--for fighting off a Dementor, no less--makes you feel ashamed: if he can be so strong at such a young age, you can do better. You're a grown man, have fought battles and lost loved ones. What is a bit of darkness within compared to bearing the fate of the wizarding world on shoulders too young to carry such a burden?

You try to be stronger, for him…but it's hard. Because all too soon the holiday is over, and he will return to school. And you will be alone, trapped once more, darkness within and without.

Molly Weasley faced down a boggart in the drawing room earlier in the night. You remember your boggart at school, the nebulous shape it took, and the immense satisfaction you felt in defeating your fear of the dark with a simple knot and blinding, blazing fire. You idly wonder what form it would take now, so many years later. Everything is so different now, so confusing.

The drawing room is empty; when Molly struggled to banish the creature, Remus stepped up and destroyed it. You wonder if there are more, or if one might return. You are curious--recklessly curious.

The boggart has not returned, so you wander the other rooms, determined to find one and face it and banish it as you have before. You recognize it as merely a way to distract yourself from losing Harry again, even if he is just going off to school. Still, it's better than getting lost in a bottle of Firewhiskey in the cold kitchen, waiting and wanting and hoping someone will find you.

The old desk in your father's study rattles, and you grin eagerly. It could be anything--a Doxy nest, a ghoul--but you pull open the drawer with a sense of irresponsible anticipation anyway. It will be a boggart. You will face your greatest fear and laugh at it once more, just as you did at Hogwarts.

Wand raised, you watch as the black shape emerges from the desk. Like it did in school, smoky tendrils of darkness flow from the boggart, winding across the walls, filling the room with icy fear. And as you did at Hogwarts, you laugh as they wrap themselves around you, pulling you closer, a dark embrace that burns your skin even as your blood runs cold with exhilaration.

The shape before you begins to coalesce into a more distinctive outline. You let it, careless fascination driving you forward. It appears human, and you laugh once more. Your father, perhaps? The rat? Voldemort? None of these things truly frighten you anymore, if they ever did. No, they anger you: you hate them.

The human outline appears familiar. Your breath quickens as you watch it settle: it has your height, your build. The same black hair, the same grey eyes, the same dead smile.

It is you.

You gasp and stumble backwards, forgetting you are even holding a wand as the shadow figure reaches for you. It grasps your shoulders, cold fingers clutching at your robes as you try to twist away. But it holds tight, pulls you close--or are you letting it take you, embrace you? Consume you?

The figure laughs cruelly, a bitter slant to the grin on a face that is identical to yours. It's you, a man who has lost everything and has nothing left to lose. It's a man filled with anger and hatred and resentment and bitterness: nothing else. No love, no loyalty, no sense of right of wrong, no sense of humor: all the things that you used to be, gone. It is a man who is a true Black, and he revels in it, embracing the darkness.

"NO!"

You wrench yourself away, force your wand toward the dark mirror image before you. You shake your head in denial as your shadow smiles at you, as if daring you to try.

"Riddikulus!" you stammer, but it's not strong enough because you cannot laugh at this crushing vision of your deepest fear. The man before you steps forward once more, reaching toward you, and it would be so easy to let him take you, give in to all he represents because you are so tired of fighting it, that you hold out your hand and brush your fingers against his. You take that first step forward before a shout from behind you wakes you from the trance, bringing you crashing back to reality.

"Sirius?" asks Remus, standing in the open doorway. "Everything all right?"

You grunt a wordless response and order him back, determined to do this on your own. You will defeat the darkness within you, just as you've always conquered it without. Once more, you raise your wand, take a deep breath, and close your eyes.

You are not a shadow.

Remus murmurs something behind you--something about that prank you once pulled on Snape sixth year, the one where you turned him into a scarecrow, only he turned your arse into a pumpkin. And then Lily Evans up and carved it into a jack o'lantern. And then you and James got them both back with a brilliant bit of sleepwalking and a Repelling Jinx.

And you laughed the entire time.

The shadow stops as you remember your past self. When you loved and laughed. When you stayed true to your friends, to your enemies, and to yourself. When you conquered your fear of the dark with the light inside of you. That light wasn't hatred, it wasn't bitterness: it was all those other, better things, burning brightly in your heart. You were never a true Black.

You were light. You are light.

With a determined slash of your wand, you shout the spell with every fiber of your being, and the shadow bursts into a gleaming golden pumpkin. You gasp in relief and carve a grinning face into the dimpled skin before it explodes in a dizzying flurry of red and gold sparks. You blow out the breath you didn't even know you were holding and nod: it's over, for now.

Behind you, Remus gives a low whistle. "That was impressive," he says. You turn to him and shake your head, suddenly and completely exhausted.

"You have no idea."

"Interesting boggart," he says as you leave the room together. "Are you sure you’re all right?"

You're not sure, no, but you don't say anything. Instead you put a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you for reminding me of who I used to be."

Remus nods and you know he understands, somehow. "I think you needed that reminder." You don't reply, and so he continues. "You're still that man, Sirius. Never forget that."

"So much has changed," you murmur, closing your eyes.

"And so have you," he says. "But not in the way you think--the way you fear. Believe that, Sirius."

You ask why, and he smiles as he walks away. "Because I do."

You watch him leave, wondering how he has kept his faith, his strength, for so long and through so much. Yet again you are ashamed at your own weakness, and yet…you banished the boggart. You defeated the darkness. Perhaps there is hope.

That night, you do not go back down to the kitchen for a glass of Firewhiskey. Instead you go to your room, find your childhood stone, and place it beside your bed. You cast the charm that sets it glowing and lie down, gazing at the shadows dancing on the walls. You smile as you drift off to sleep, for tonight they will keep you company, another gentle reminder of the past.

Like a boggart, darkness is always chased away by light.

You are the light.

You are not afraid of the dark.

* * *