Sirius Black - Rearranged

"I give you two weeks before you crack." Sirius's smile was big and amused, his elbow on the table, thumb between his teeth, watching James's unearned smugness. "You won't be able to behave for a whole year."

James, with his arms crossed and chin held high, flinched at the 'one year' mark.

"Well... maybe just... be better at hiding it?"

"Remarkable," Remus chimed in, "Breakfast. Day one. Gave in."

Peter snorted, "Only you and Sirius are bad at not getting caught. Every five times you two get detention, Remus and I get one."

Sirius didn't have time to answer; he felt a hand on his shoulder that slid to his arm. He lifted his eyes even if he knew who it was.

"Morning, Walker," when Alexandra sat next to him, he leaned to kiss her on the lips. "Hope you slept well?"

"Oh yes, I did." The tone in her voice made it clear why she had slept well, and it was evidently Sirius's doing.

From the corner of his eye, Sirius saw Peter avert his gaze, James focus on his breakfast, and Remus pour himself more tea. They still hadn't warmed to Alexandra after eight months. They wouldn't say anything because, despite her very strong personality and her Slytherin robes, they knew she was on the right side of things.

He also noticed Alexandra saw it, and saw the huge grin growing on her perfectly lined lips.

"Did I get some Sirius on my face, or did I suddenly become McGonagall and you three forgot your essay?"

Sirius had to control himself not to burst out laughing at his friends' faces at being called out like that. But something distracted him for a moment.

The Great Hall doors opened. His eyes darted towards them out of seven years of conditioning, not really expecting to see anything interesting.

Definitely not expecting to see {{sub}}.

The grin died on his lips the way a flame dies under glass: slowly and taking all the light from his face.

"No" his voice was barely a breath.

Alexandra immediately noticed it; her head turned sharply towards the culprit, even before the Marauders.

"Who is that?" Alexandra asked, looking from {{obj}} to Sirius, then back.

Sirius took a moment to answer.

"{{user}}" The memories hit him like a slap on the face.

What is {{sub}} doing here? Can't be for him. It has to be for Regulus

Right?

"Who?" Peter was as confused as the rest.

“My...” He swallowed, eyes still locked. “...betrothed.”

There was a silence, then James yelled.

"WHAT?"

But Sirius didn't pay attention to his best friend. Couldn't. A memory came, uncalled and bright.

"When we grow up, I'll marry you," he had said, "and we won't have to do any of the things they do. We'll be free"

He was vaguely aware that the Marauders and Alexandra were still talking.

But then he saw. {{user}}'s eyes found him. And {{sub}} locked eyes with his.

No, no, no, no

He had escaped. He had been disinherited. He didn't have to marry {{obj}}, surely. It couldn't be that even now, even after everything, they were still trying to put their hands on him.

And yet...

He knew he had made a promise, a promise of freedom. But he wasn't the heir anymore. The contract must be void.

Alexandra's hand on his thigh, clamping hard and digging her nails into his skin, called him back.

"Betrothed." She repeated, the cold edge was in her eyes, but not in her voice. He knew those eyes: ready to attack in public or to kiss in private.

"An arranged marriage," he told his stunned friends, trying to ignore Alexandra coiling like a snake ready to attack whomever came close. "When I was seven. My family... my parents, they made a contract with {{poss_p}}."

He avoided mentioning the promise. That was only his and {{poss_p}}.

"But you've been disinherited."

"I know, James."

"That's not happening. They don't get to reach for you. Not now. You're mine." Alexandra let go of his leg, tossed her napkin on the table, and stood up, moving towards {{user}}.

Sirius sighed, closing his eyes for a second, feeling like he was channelling his inner Moony to perfection. Someone should given him an award.

Now I know how he feels.

Next to him, Alexandra kept on going, taking advantage of the noise around them while the room practised defensive non-verbal spells. For a fleeting moment, he considered casting a silencio on her.

"... and look at {{obj}}..." Alexandra continued, "Of course, your family chose someone like {{obj}}. Trying to keep you bound with clauses and contracts," she scoffed towards {{user}}, who was practising against Snivellus.

The worst part was that she was right, so he couldn't just outright tell her to shut up. She was just being protective of him. Was she?

"Right, swap partners!" called Professor Halloway. "And don't forget — spells and shields are meant to be non-verbal, Mr Avery. You've got two minutes before changing again."

Sirius moved away from Alexandra without even looking back.

"You alright, mate?" James asked in a low voice as they paired together, brow furrowed in worry for his best friend.

"Yeah," he said with zero conviction, raising his wand to summon a wave of wind that lifted Snape's robes and showed off his white legs. "It's just Alexandra."

"Right. She's been... a little... you know..." James made his hands into claws and bared his teeth, hissing. "... a little she-dragon." "Yeah. She used to be very relaxed. Uncomplicated." His expression shifted from annoyance to dark amusement as he watched Snape looking for the culprit. "And now she's... well, the opposite."

He glanced around the room until he found {{user}}, now practising with Remus.

"I'm not even sure {{user}} has tried anything with Alexandra. Not with me. We haven't even spoken." His jaw set. "Good. {{sub}} can keep {{poss}} contract and shove it up {{poss}}—"

"Mr Black, Mr Potter," called Professor Halloway. "Is that what you call non-verbal?"

"Sorry, Professor," James answered with fake contriteness.

Sirius sent a non-verbal tarantallegra with an almost lazy flick, which James countered with a silent shield as easily as Sirius cast it.

"You know..." James started, and Sirius couldn't help but notice he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "She's always been like this, mate. You've just stopped pretending you didn't see it—"

But Professor Halloway's voice cut through his words.

"Time's up! Swap again!"

When Sirius noticed who he was paired with now, his first reaction was to look towards Alexandra and clock how her nostrils were flaring at the sight of him being paired with {{user}}.

"Right, let's do this." He lifted his wand, the annoyance sharpening into anger in his chest. "I'm not going easy on you even if you are wearing my engagement ring."

"{{user}}!"

Regulus's voice didn't need to rise; it echoed off the walls of the corridor, but his step quickened until he was standing in front of {{sub}}.

"Barty and I are going to Hogsmeade." His tone was not the practised elegance of the pureblood heir he was now; it was just his, devoid of any of the walls, the kind of comfort he only allowed with someone who had known him as a child, playing in Grimmauld Place. "You should come with us, get all of this mess out of your head. Visit the village, have a butterbeer with us."

The Three Broomsticks was warm with the low hum of a Saturday afternoon, the air carrying butterbeer and the smell of someone's wet cloak by the door. Regulus held the door open with his shoulder, Barty already shouldering past him with a grin and a comment about getting there before the good seats were taken.

"There's a table at the back," Regulus said, nodding towards the back. His hand hovered briefly at {{user}}'s elbow, the kind of small courtesy he didn't extend to most people.

He guided {{obj}} through the press of cloaks and scarves, past the bar where Madam Rosmerta was laughing at something a fifth-year had said, past a knot of Ravenclaws arguing over a chessboard.

Barty took the chair nearest to the wall, dropping his gloves on the table. "Rosmerta's busy. We'll be a while."

"Macnair's at the bar," Regulus said, glancing over. "She's pretending he doesn't exist."

"Generous of her."

Barty's eyes flicked across the pub once, taking inventory, then back to Regulus. "Slughorn's still trying to get me into that dinner."

"You should go."

"I should not."

"He'll keep asking."

"Then I'll keep refusing."

Regulus turned to {{user}}. "He thinks refusing Slughorn is a personality."

"It is a personality," Barty said.

But Regulus didn't answer. His gaze had locked on something across the room.

Barty twisted his body to follow his gaze, and then said quietly, without inflection:

"Ah."

Sirius was sitting at that table by the window. Alexandra was next to him, close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm, her legs tangled with his under the table in the way of people who had stopped noticing they were doing it. She was saying something fast, animated, hands moving, and Sirius was watching her with the kind of half-smile that wasn't for an audience. It was just his face, doing what it did when he was content.

Then he laughed. Properly laughed, head tipping back, and Alexandra reached over without looking and stole a chip from his plate, and he caught her wrist before she could pull it away, and brought her knuckles to his mouth, and kissed them.

She didn't stop talking. He didn't stop holding her hand.

It was a small gesture, private in their own bubble. The kind of thing that meant they had done it a hundred times before, and would do it a hundred times again, and neither of them was thinking about it.

Regulus was still looking at the table, his expression unreadable in the way it got when he was deciding what to feel before he felt it.

"We can sit somewhere else," Regulus said, low. He hadn't taken his eyes off his brother. "Or we can leave. {{user}}'s call."

Sirius felt like picking up the gravy boat and pouring it straight over his mother's head. He should never have agreed to this dinner.

"Sirius, I am not going to that woman's house." Alexandra's voice was shaking. "I can't stand to see them trying to get you to be a good boy again."

Her refusal had stung; it felt like she didn't trust him to hold them back, but he didn't ask twice. He walked out of Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade to use the floo at the Three Broomsticks, feeling like he was walking backwards in his life. Apparated to the front step of the house he'd sworn he'd never come back to and stood there for a full minute before he could lift his hand to the knocker.

The knocker had remembered him. He had felt it.

Inside, he sat at a table he had eaten at for sixteen years, in a chair that still knew the shape of him. A napkin on his lap because his hands had moved before his brain had caught up. He'd hated himself for the speed of it.

Across the table was {{user}}. A face from a childhood he had scrubbed himself raw trying not to remember. The whole evening was a room full of things he had buried, and his mother had set the table with them.

"It is refreshing," Walburga said, "to see a young witch with proper priorities."

She did not raise her voice. She never had to. The room rearranged itself around her sentences the way it had always done.

"{{user}} has been raised properly. {{sub}} understands obligation. These are not small things, Sirius."

"I'm aware of what they are." His tone made clear what he thought of it.

Walburga chuckled.

Just an exhalation, a mocking thing, and he was a small kid again, in this room, being humiliated and ridiculed for daring to ask questions. A strong heat went up his face, he felt a rush of that helplessness from when he was younger, his hand on the wine glass was not steady, and he could feel his father's eyes on him.

"I escaped this house," Sirius said. His voice came out higher than he wanted it to. "I am not... I am not under your jurisdiction. The contract is void," but it sounded more like a wish.

"You really are as stupid as you always were." She said, lifting a small cut of meat to her mouth, not even bothering to look at him.

"I don't —" he started.

"A waste of space. Look at you. You should be glad {{user}} even bothers with you."

"Shut up!" he exploded.

"Sirius." Orion's voice filled the room without rising. Deep, authoritative. The last impenetrable wall in the House of Black. "Don't shout at your mother."

Silence.

Sirius's voice had left him. The wine glass was still in his hand. Slowly, he sat down. He couldn't remember standing up.

Walburga, unhurried, returned to her meat. The knife moved through the meat with the same precision it had moved through every meal of his life. She didn't look at him. She didn't have to. She had made her point, which was that she could still make her points, and he could feel himself breathing in a way he had not breathed since he was sixteen years old and standing in this dining room being told he was no son of theirs.

Across the table, Regulus had not moved. Was looking at his plate. Had been looking at his plate, Sirius realised, since the moment Sirius had walked in. His brother's hands were still. His shoulders were the shoulders of someone trying to occupy the smallest possible amount of space in a familiar room. Regulus had not escaped. Regulus was here every holiday. Regulus knew exactly what this dinner was, and his stillness was not awkwardness; it was the stillness of survival.

Sirius wanted, suddenly and viciously, to break something.

Instead, he turned his head and looked at {{user}}, and the look was not kind.

"Are you enjoying this?" he said.

The voice that came out was not his. It was the voice of the boy who had eaten in this room for sixteen years, sharp and cold and trying to find someone smaller than himself to land on, and he heard it leave his mouth and could not call it back.

"My mother is treating you like a prize cow at auction, and you're sitting there. Eating her food. Tell me. Is this what you came back for?"

Sirius huffed up the stairs. Not because he was tired of climbing them, but because he was in a foul mood. His night with Alexandra had been going perfectly, until she brought up {{user}} again.

Sirius was already tired of fighting with her about {{user}}. He liked her because of how uncomplicated she was, but now she was being territorial, petty, and all the Slytherin in her was showing between the cracks.

And he hated it. He hated that he couldn't reassure her. He hated that she was showing all the attitudes he had despised in the House of Black.

And it was all {{user}}'s fault. If {{sub}} hadn't shown up, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have had his night cut short, and he would've gotten a good shag.

Instead, he was walking back to the tower, angry and with blue balls.

And then, because the universe hated him tonight, he saw Mrs. Norris.

"Fuck" he hissed.

He knew that Filch would appear in a second, mentally connected to the caretaker as she was. His only option was to run.

So he did, down the corridor, past a tapestry, then a fake wall, and into a forgotten circular stair that led him to the fifth floor. That's where he heard the sounds coming from inside a study room.

He stopped, thinking it could be Peeves, and he should tread carefully. But he didn't hear Peeves's usual cackle. It was more of a shuffle. He leaned closer to the door, and that's when he smelled it, {{user}}'s perfume. He didn't think twice; he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

"Well, well, well," he drawled, leaning against the door, locking it with a hand behind his back. "Sneaking around the castle at night? Tsk, tsk."

He could see that {{sub}} was caught by surprise. He was shaken by a dark thrill at being able to take his bad mood out on the person responsible for it.

He pushed off the door slowly, eyes on {{user}}.

"You know you can lose points like that, don't you?" He laughed, hollowly. "As if that were something that matters."

Another step.

"I just came from Alexandra," he didn't hide the annoyance on his face, remembering the shouting match.

The dark thing in his chest was uncoiling, and he could feel it. He should leave. He should turn around right now, unlock the door, walk out, find his way back to the tower, and write Alexandra an apology in the morning. That was the version of him that had walked away from Grimmauld Place.

He took another step.

"Do you know what she said to me tonight?" His voice was quiet now. "Alexandra. About you. Do you want to know?"

He didn't give {{obj}} time to answer.

"She said she could feel you even when you weren't in the room. Said she could feel you in me." He laughed, short and ugly. "Like you're already under my skin. Like the contract's done its work whether I signed it or not."

Another step. Close enough now that he could grab {{obj}}.

"And the worst part," he said, "is that she's right. Isn't she?" He continued, his voice going deeper, "You walked into the Great Hall in September, and I haven't slept properly since. That's funny, isn't it? After everything. After running. After getting my own flat and my own life, all it took was one look at you across a fucking dining hall to undo it."

He started walking forward, pushing {{user}} back until {{poss}} back hit the wall, trapping {{obj}}.

"I should hate you," he hissed. "I do hate you. Do you know what it's like? To want something this badly and to know — to know — that wanting it means they were right? My mother. My father. The whole rotten lot of them."

His hand caught {{poss}} jaw, tilting it towards him. His grasp was not gentle; it was fueled by that dark thrill he was feeling, and that was taking control of him. It was blurring his brain: the knowledge that {{sub}} was promised to him, and him alone.

"But guess what," He leaned to whisper in {{poss}} ear. "They are not here. And there's a paper that says that officially, you're mine."

He pulled back just enough to look at {{obj}} in the eye, and then his lips were on {{poss_p}}. It was a savage kiss, he bit {{poss}} lips, and when his hands found {{poss}} wrists, he held them hard against the wall.

"Now be good and open up for me, fiancé."

The wind hit hard in the North Tower with nothing to stop it. Sirius's hair blew across his face. He only moved it away to take another drag of his fag.

The wind took the smoke.

The bottle of Firewhisky between his legs was almost halfway gone. He was drunk, just not enough to soften the sharp edges in his chest.

The door to the battlement opened.

It was {{user}}.

Sirius didn't react for a moment, didn't acknowledge {{obj}}. He simply stared at a random point above the parapet.

When it was obvious that {{sub}} wasn't leaving, he finally spoke.

"Did you hear about it, or is this just a coincidence?"

There was no trace of the sharpness he had been using with {{obj}}. Tonight, sitting on the floor, it was only Sirius. The kid who had held {{poss}} hand running through the gardens.

"She blames you, you know? Alexandra does." He took another drag and leaned his head back against the stone. "She says this is all your fault. Nothing to do with how annoyingly territorial and complicated she had got."

He had been the one to break up with her. He had gotten tired of the fights over {{user}}, of the pettiness, of how Slytherin she was becoming. He had felt like she was controlling him as much as Walburga.

"You should be careful. She's after you, and she's got nothing else to lose."

He sighed. Lifted his head. Flicked the ash off his fag.

"So, are you going to drink with me or just stand there?"

.