Harry Potter Caged Bird

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything here but my own original ideas. The rest belongs to their respective parties.

**A/N:** I do not write fiction very often, so this story may have some minor grammar errors. I was hesitant about posting this as it is was written more for me than an audience, though I do hope someone somewhere gets something out of this. I do not have a beta and hope to find one soon.

I wrote this a while ago.

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

_July 17, 1995_

The news of new deaths hung heavily in the air. A couple, merely starting out, perfectly average by most standards besides a small consequential fact. They were now nothing more than a memory and two cold bodies.

Death was nothing new to the solemn members of the Order of the Phoenix who held a vigil for the muggle couple that none of them knew. Death was expected and ultimately accepted in a time of war. New deaths were never surprising, especially in regards to the climbing death toll of Muggles. Yet, when a young couple with seemingly everything ahead of them were murdered for no other reason than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the sadness and anger was felt heavily. Even the most jaded of the group could not help but feel deeply for the lives lost and surprised at the sheer senselessness and brutality of the crime.

Slowly, spread out through the hours, one by one members of the Order had departed or drifted to their designated room in the now derelict building (always a building, never a home) that the group now used as headquarters. The hours passed as the dimly lit dining room slowly emptied until only Sirius Black and Emmeline Vance remained. They were both as different as two could be. One with dark, curly hair who tried much too hard to be fashionably sensitive but was usually too cool to care, the other with sleek, fair hair who was rarely flinching in her stoic demeanor but felt more than she cared to admit.

Emmeline stood near the head of the dining table, chin raised, shoulders back, dignified, strong and unmoving.

Sirius sat half slouched, an arm slung over the back of the chair. His posture was too casual to be accidental.

Minutes passed as only the two remained, quiet and not speaking. To Emmeline the silence was deafening, wishing he would say something, anything to make the painful lull cease. Silence made you think, reflect, feel. Something she had spent too many years trying to avoid. Something nights like this and being near him forced upon you.

On the other side of the room, sitting in the chair that had once been his mother's customary spot, Sirius silently cursed Emmeline. Out of all the members of the Order he could have been left alone with, Emmeline would have been his last choice. He detested the way her eyes pierced his very being, searching, questioning, trying to understand. He detested the way her much too-familiar amber eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed in thought when she looked at him.

Most of all he detested knowing that even with her strong need to analyze and understand the parts of the past that bonded them she hated him for stirring emotions she fought so hard to repress.

He fought against his desire to say something, anything shocking or humorous. He strained against his need to lighten the air in the room, or to say something that would make her storm out and away from the building that was in many ways more of a prison than Azkaban. It was a technique he employed whenever placed in an awkward situation or when a topic hung in the air that he wished to avoid. More often than not if accompanied with a sideways grin or enough cruel truth it would allow him a pass. Not tonight, he told himself. He couldn't help but see parallels between the muggle family and what happened to James and Lily.

More long and silent minutes passed, marked by nothing more than the slow movements of a dusty hand on a dirty clock hanging near Emmeline.

"They were both so young..." It was Emmeline who finally spoke first. "Left out in the open..."

Sirius nodded as Emmeline trailed off. He knew she had been one of those called to clean up the Death Eater's mess. As much as he despised being confined to his ancestral home, tonight he was happy to not to have been one of those asked to sort out the dead bodies. During the first war he had seen enough bodies of friends and of strangers to last a lifetime.

"The girl had long auburn hair." Emmeline began speaking again, doing her best to sound emotionless, as if recounting the day's weather opposed to the violent visions of death. "She looked so much like... curled up in a ball... reaching out..."

Again Emmeline trailed off as if words failed her need to express what was running through her mind. It was rare Emmeline was ever at a loss of words. Visions of the dead body, the way the young woman's hair framed her face, hair that was so similar, raced through her mind bringing back memories she wished would leave her in peace. She kept several bottles of wine in a cupboard in her kitchen for unexpected guests (not that there were ever many), always the prepared, always just polite and engaging enough to pass as happy, but she knew tonight she would be opening the strongest for herself. She would drink and drink tonight until she could no longer see the auburn hair.

Emmeline wondered if Sirius understood the significance of the auburn hair, if he remembered as freshly as she did. Auburn hair... such a strange colour, at one time Emmeline envied it, but now the colour reminded her of a mixture of blood and dirt.

Sirius remained silent, and it incensed her. Emmeline had the sudden urge to run to him and shake him until he told her she wasn't crazy, that she wasn't the only one in the world who still ached in spots that time never numbed. Instead she took several deep breaths waiting until the desire to scream, to shake him, to pound at the wooden floor until her hands bled and the colour of her blood and the brown floor mixed (until auburn surrounded her physically as much as it did in her thoughts) subsided. Emmeline never indulged in theatrics, at least not publicly.

When her breathing returned to normal, she turned to leave, to go home to the comfort of the wine bottles, but she couldn't take that first step away from him and her memories. She needed to know, she needed an answer to something that had haunted her for a while.

"Did you love her?" Emmeline asked facing away from, unable to make eye contact when the words escaped her mouth.

It was a question that she had been forcing herself to swallow for weeks. She had tried to tell herself it wasn't important, it was the past, but she wanted to know. The sight of the dead girl and being alone with him made her want to know, to understand even more. Life was so fleeting and it left so many questions in its place.

She slowly turned back to Sirius who was now staring at a grimy window as if he could see through the layers of filth. She knew in his fragile mental state (though Black would kill you if you even hinted at the idea of his mind being any less than he was before) she shouldn't have asked. It was unlike her to push and prod with any issue, let alone to bring up topics that made others uncomfortable, but tonight she could not let the question go unasked.

"Who?" Sirius asked, tearing his eyes from the window and towards Emmeline.

Though appearing oblivious to any prying eyes, Sirius knew whom she referred to. Her. The other Vance girl. The one that by all laws of probability should be alive, where as the one who stood in front of him should have been dead. Evident by too many witnessed events, he knew fate never cared about probability and is rarely, if ever predictable. Especially, he thought dejectedly, when I am involved.

Her question had hit him like a cold splash to the face. Tonight was the second time she had asked him the very same question. It was an echo spread nearly a decade and a half apart that carried the memory of the day she first asked. An echo of a cruel and unseasonably cold summer day when he had stormed away without answering her.

Emmeline's shoulders sagged for a brief, almost indiscernible moment before she pulled them back and raised her chin to the stately and dignified stance Emmeline had perfected after too many years of trying to be a much stronger woman than anyone expected of her.

"Athene." She replied in an attempt at a controlled voice, but the name was spoken too softly and painfully out of character for the woman who prided herself in never exposing the slightest vulnerability.

A simple question really, one asked in a too-soft voice, yearning to understand. A voice reaching out for something, anything, some knowledge that would make everything more bearable. Her desire, no need, to catalog and categorize the entirety of her past in to a tidy box she could finally file away was evident.

Mentally, Emmeline rebuked herself. Even after all of the years of polishing her too cool demeanor, she knew the mere mention or thought of Athene was enough to threaten the stoic resolve she fought so hard to maintain. She looked towards Sirius, regretting asking, but her need to understand rooted her to the floor across the room from the only person who could give her some of the answers she desperately needed.

In spite of his sharp tongue, his uncanny wit, his often too-cruel honesty, Sirius could not give her an answer.

Was it mere obsession or love? A fine line exists somewhere between both, often crossing, entangling, twisting in to one. Sirius knew his feelings for Athene had fallen somewhere on the spectrum, but he could not honestly say where. Just like the first time she asked, he could not find the words to make her understand that to Sirius it was just another question he could not find a satisfactory answer to.

Even during his thirteen long years spent in a dank and dark cell in Azkaban, left with nothing but his thoughts, he had never fully come to a conclusion. Perhaps if he could answer that simple question he could absolve himself of the guilt he felt. Guilt has a way of gnawing and eating away at a man, and Sirius felt more guilt than he cared to admit. Andromeda, Benjy, James, Lily, Harry, Athene... the beginning of a long list of names that threatened to swallow him in a pit of guilt and self hatred until his soul was as dark and empty as his surname.

He wished he could tell Emmeline he had loved Athene, he knew that she could take comfort in the fact it was more than a game to him, more than obsession, more than him simply not knowing when to leave well enough alone that had led to Athene's eventual death. As much as he wanted to reassure her that he had loved Athene, truly loved her, he couldn't say for sure.

Sirius replied with the only honest thing he could. "I don't know."

His answer offered little to Emmeline who headed towards the door and disappeared before he could explain himself or to offer something, anything to her to help her understand the events and the role he played the summer Athene died.

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><p>AN: Please review.


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Harry Potter, Angst, Romance