Chapter Forty Four: Black Genes

"Do you want to talk to him?"

Marlene's voice startled Nathan and caused him to jerk up from where he lay on the hammock. Raising himself so that he rested on his elbows, he asked, "How is he?"

She sighed and climbed up to the hammock. "Well, aside from his burnt leg, twisted elbow, broken shoulder, his flesh coming out from his cheek where you'd hit him and his arrogant manner, he's quite fine, really."

Nathan drew his legs closer to him and wrapped his arms around them, bringing his right hand up to look at the palm. The pale skin was covered in spots of dried blood. He had hit Sirius impulsively, right on the spot where he already had a burn that wasn't healing, and the wound had opened and a few drops of blood had clung to Nathan's skin. He had noticed it only an hour or two after slapping Sirius.

"Is he mad at me?" he asked, looking up at Marlene again, as he began to pick up the flecks of dried blood out of his hand. For some reason, Marlene looked extremely worried at this.

"That's the thing," she said in apparent frustration. "He isn't. You would think he'd whimper and complain and be the perfect drama queen that he is, but he's acting like nothing has happened. He seems to have lost all forms of expressions and I'm so worried about him, Nate."

Nathan chewed on his lip. He wasn't really surprised at what his sister had just said. Sirius had changed. A lot. He was now less expressive about his feelings, and was far more reckless than he had ever been. He couldn't be sure whether this was an effect of the war, or something else. If it was due to the war taking its toll upon Sirius, then why hadn't it happened before? Why the sudden change?

The answer came to him the moment Marlene voiced his thoughts out loud.

"Do you think it's because of Remus?" They were already talking very quietly, for the piles of crates wouldn't stop their sounds from reaching Sirius, but she dropped her voice further, speaking in a whisper. "He has been acting strangely ever since we got separated."

Nathan shook his head a few times. "I don't know, Marls. I honestly don't know."

They remained in silence for several minutes. The sound of light sores reached their ears, showing that Sirius has fallen asleep. He untangled his limbs and looked at his sister, his eyes suddenly grim.

"How much food do we have left?"

She didn't answer right away, and instead looked up at the ceiling and stared at the wooden pillars with great concentration, as though she hasn't heard his question. Finally, she spoke. "I'll ration the food between the three of us and then I'll tell you how many days it will last."

"Okay," he agreed with a nod. "I'll go check on Sirius."

But he didn't. After Marlene had left, he remained seated on his hammock for several more minutes, trying to gather his thoughts and trying to justify hitting Sirius. He knew Sirius was an adult and even if he was older than him, he had no right to hit him.

Nathan wanted to weep, badly. He wanted to call out on the universe for all the injustice and everything that was going on around them. But he couldn't. He had kept his emotions hidden for so long that he had grown used to it. He couldn't cry even if he wanted to. He needed to look strong so as not to discourage or demotivate those younger than him, and he wasn't sure how long he would be able to keep up the pretense of being brave.

When he entered Sirius's room an hour later, he found him still lying on his hammock. He looked desolately weathered, his once shiny hair now lying in thick tangles all around his face, hiding the burn on his cheek, and his arm was lying stiff by his side, the shoulder bandaged. He was awake, and he didn't look at Nathan as he entered and stood by him.

"How are you?" he asked quietly, not really meeting his eyes.

Sirius didn't move or react in any way. After a long time, when Nathan thought he wouldn't speak, he said, "I'm doing great." There was no sarcasm in his voice, rather it was said in an exceptionally casual tone, making Nathan frown. He hesitated for a moment before moving to sit down on the side of his hammock. None of them spoke.

Marlene came in some time after that, and levitating a crate from one of the piles, she deposited it next to them and sat down. Sirius finally moved his eyes from the ceiling to look at her.

"What did you do to the death eater?"

She watched him with her jaws tight, and Nathan knew she was preparing herself for an argument. "I snapped his wand, modified his memories and left him in a muggle area. When he wakes up, he'll think that he was taken down in a battle and left to die there, and that's the story he's going to tell the other death eaters. He won't remember anything about us."

"How are you sure about that?" Sirius demanded. "How are you sure that Voldemort will believe him and will not torture him to extract his memories?"

"I'm pretty sure my magic was strong enough for his lies to be convincing," Marlene answered firmly. "Honestly, Sirius? Are we really arguing about whether or not we should have killed a child?"

"He's not a child," he said impatiently. "You left him to rejoin his friends, and you have no idea if Voldemort would be able to read through the obliviate charm. That was a huge risk you've taken."

Nathan had grown rather impatient by now, and before Marlene could snap out a reply, he said, "Sirius, don't pretend that you are afraid of taking risks." The two stopped and looked at him in mild surprise, having forgotten that he was there. "The plan you made – that was risky enough by itself, and you didn't even take our decisions into consideration. We were lucky that there were so few death eaters – given our small numbers, we would have been slaughtered if there were a few more."

Sirius scoffed. "At least it worked. We were able to demolish most of Knockturn Alley. That's far better than what Dumbledore has ever done."

"Two people died, Sirius," said Nathan in a firm voice. "Because we didn't take any precautions. They weren't skilled in the fire spell you instructed us to use, and they got engulfed in their own fires. This is the kind of risk we cannot afford to take."

"It's a war," Sirius scoffed again. "People die."

A heavy silence fell over them. Nathan glanced at Marlene and saw her face reflecting the same sense of shock he felt. But she didn't look at him, and instead kept her focus on Sirius, who was gazing down at his hands nonchalantly.

"What happened to you, Sirius?" she half whispered, her voice traced with bits of hurt that Nathan himself didn't feel. Despite knowing Sirius long enough, he wasn't as close to him as Marlene was, for she was friends with him since the very early years of their Hogwarts life. Nonetheless, he could understand what Marlene must feel, and he remained silent and listened as she continued to speak. "This isn't you, you were never like this. What's got into you?"

"Nothing's got into me," he answered in the same nonchalant manner with which he was looking at his surroundings, as though no serious matter was being discussed right now. Nathan had another urge to hit him. He didn't care that he was badly wounded; he had been stuffing up his emotions for so long, he felt that a little venting up his energy wouldn't hurt, and Sirius seemed like a very good candidate to release his frustration on.

"Nothing's got into you?" Marlene exclaimed in a shrill voice. "Have you looked at yourself, Sirius? Do you see how you are acting? Is this –" her voice faltered and she gazed at Nathan uncertainly, before continuing again, "– is this because of Remus?"

Sirius snapped his eyes in her direction, eyes suddenly burning with the same fire that had been lit up at Knockturn Alley. "What do you mean by that? This has nothing to do with him."

It was now her turn to scoff. "Oh, really? Do you think we're stupid? Do you think we don't see how much you've been hurting, ever since he left? What do you take us for, Sirius? You're only putting on this – hideous, vicious, mask to conceal your hurt and we –"

"You don't know anything," Sirius yelled all of a sudden, causing both Nathan and Marlene to jump up in their seats. Then, taking a few deep breaths, he said in a calmer voice, though his teeth gritted as he spoke, "I'm not using a mask or hiding anything. This is what I am, and this is what I've inherited from my Black genes. What I was before – that was the mask. Not this. I've been hiding my true self all along in an attempt to not be like my family, but now I've learnt that the only way to throw dirt in their names is to be like them and use their traits to do everything they loathed. I love being like this, so why should I hide?"

With that, he leapt out of his hammock and limped out of the makeshift room, leaving both Nathan and Marlene in a bewildered silence that would take them quite a few hours to recover from.

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why am I writing this? I should be studying. I shouldn't be on wattpad. someone help.