Title: "Silent Scream"
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: HP
Rating/Classification: PG-13, Sirius/Molly.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling, not I.
Summary: Perhaps a prequel to "Paint it Black"? Setting during OoTP, so the spoiler warnings apply. Sometimes cleaning can get out of hand.
Notes: Um, Annie? Yeah. Here I go. *g*
She'd been a passably pretty girl once. And he...he'd been an absolutely stunning boy. When his hand covers hers as it closes around her wand, they are neither and the kitchen is dark, a jumble of dishes and pans and maps.
"Molly, that's enough. Why don't you go to bed?" he suggests, quietly, and she can't remember ever hearing him speak so politely. That's Remus. Always well-mannered even when he's bone-weary.
Sirius...well...Sirius Black is, as her sons would say, a bit of a git.
And after meetings, he is usually the first one off. To boot Kreacher in the arse or scrape doxy dung off a curtain. Anything to make himself feel useful in this house, where he spent most of his childhood feeling anything but.
It is never him who stays behind to help her clean up the aftermath of boisterous dinners. To watch her be what she is and always will be. A wife, a mother, first. A wizard second. A woman last.
"It'll just take a half hour," she fusses, absently. "I don't want anything untoward out of place when the children come down for breakfast."
He glances towards the door...still shut after Mundungus lurched out, mumbling about cauldrons. There are no little pitchers with big Ears. She checked. And they've reinforced the door several times just in case.
"Anything out of place?" he murmurs with a bitter tint to his voice... and an odd look in his dark eyes. "Not even this, Molly?" he wonders, reaching out to tug, gently, at one of her awry red curls. She is mesmerized, struck silent, by the simple feel of her hair sliding through his smooth fingertips.
"S-sirius," she manages, finally, as her wand clatters to the table. "Please. Let me do my work."
He releases her, almost...regretfully...but the moment does not last.
For which she is thankful.
"I wouldn't dream of interfering with something so vital," he assures, lips twisting with his characteristic malice.
***
When she finds herself alone with him again, it is after she's been sobbing her heart out. As the horrors of her dead children cling to her eyelids even though the boggart is banished, its power over her negated.
She doesn't want Arthur told. She knows this is one burden her husband can't share. Her most vivid nightmares are too much.
But Sirius understands the soul-sucked pain of such loss. Of a dementor's kiss.
There are no happy thoughts in Azkaban. No assurances that everything will be all right. That, this time, no one will die.
And perhaps that is why he shuts the drawing room door firmly behind a still-soothing Remus and a jumpy Alastor, locks it, and pockets the key.
"What did you see?" he asks, leaning against it with the same casual grace he must've used in the Hogwarts halls as a youth. "What did the boggart become for you, Molly Weasley?"
"You *saw* what it became!" She wipes at her flushed cheeks, still damp, knowing her eyes must be swollen to twice their size. "All of them... all of them dead. Gone." She stares, sickly, at the empty drawer. "What does a boggart make *you* see, Sirius?"
"Nothing at all," he says, smoothly. "I've long since stopped being afraid of anything." The untruth beneath the staggering arrogance is barely detectable. Just a subtle syllable. But it is enough.
"You're lying." He is surprised by her insight. Steps forward as if to disagree and she continues. "It's Harry, isn't it? You see him being killed? By He-Who...By *Voldemort*?" Saying it, defiantly, is like being burned by cooking oil. Sharp and hot. And she shudders.
"I'll never have what you have, Molly. Children, family. A home. Lily, James...they were...but...they're...and now Harry." He looks away, hiding the myriad of emotions that she knows must be playing across his face. "He's all I've got."
"*Sirius*." She half-expects it to sting like the dreaded name when she reaches out to put her hand on his arm. "You have us. You have the Order. You still have...Remus..." She says it tentatively, as if the bedroom that the two men share is not common knowledge in a house this size.
And he laughs, both hollow and unkind. "Remus...I don't know why he stays when I have nothing to offer." He moves around the compact room, suddenly restless. "Nothing but a house full of shrieking portraits and reminders of all that we've lost." When he glances up at her, there is everything macabre in his smile. "All that we *could* lose. Isn't that so?"
She flinches, hand pressing, instinctively, over her heart. Yes, it is clear that this man came from a long line of Dark Wizards. He knows just how to play to her fears.
This time, when he passes her, jittery and unsettled, she grasps his wrist. "Sirius, please..." Her voice catches like it did that night in the kitchen. With his warm fingers on top of hers..."You won't lose Harry."
"Isn't that what you want?" he counters, staring down at their joined hands. "Don't you think I'm a terrible influence? That I'm not fit to guide him? That he's your boy, not mine or James and Lily's? Your *eighth* precious baby?" He closes his eyes. "Eight." And a chill of dread forms at the base of her spine. "Is it good, Molly?" he asks, almost inaudibly. Taunting. Yet not. Edged with a sadness that keeps her from yanking her fingers away and reaching for her wand. "Is it good between you and Arthur?"
She loves her husband. Dearly. It's a stupid question. "That's enough," she admonishes, sharply, as if he were Fred caught with a Wizarding Wheeze.
But he's not her son. Not cowed by her 'Mother' voice and her empty threats. "Does he make you feel alive?" Sirius continues, his thumb rubbing absent circles against her pulse. "How do you muffle the noise in a house that crowded? Silencio? A silent scream in the dark?"
"*Sirius.*" But there is nothing she can do to combat the abject misery in the man's face. The pallor of his cheeks. The emptiness in his eyes. No spell. No charm. Nothing she can think of...but... "H-how do I muffle the noise? Like *this.*"
And he understands the soul-sucked pain of such a kiss.
--end--
June 22, 2003.