"Mia," Charlus said, pushing his way through the Healers. "They're only here to
help. You've done wonderfully." He slowly reached for her, lowering her wand hand before
pulling her into a tight hug.
Dorea did the same to James on the other side.
Charlus kissed the top of her head as she broke into tears. "You did wonderfully,
my girl."
"What happened?" Dorea finally asked, watching as the Healers moved around
Sirius's bed, a few muttering admiringly about Mia's healing, but one looking carefully at
Sirius's left arm while another waved his wand over his body.
Looking up at her mother through her tears, Mia whispered, "They... tried to force
the Dark Mark on him."
They had been at it for hours, but Sirius would not break.
He had known, when his parents met him at King's Cross Station, that something was not right.
His friends had known something was wrong as well, and he clung to the images of their faces as his
weakened body hit the floor—again and again. He looked down and watched as droplets of blood—from
the recent wound to the side of his head—fell on the hardwood floors of his family home. Consciously, he
pivoted his body so that his head hung over the twelve-hundred-year-old Persian rug, grinning as he bled
onto one of his mother's favoured possessions, staining it with his blood.
Pure blood. He snorted at the thought. Pure blood spilt in his own home.
"You informed me that he would be ready, Orion," a chilling utterance came from the corner of the
room.
Sirius had not seen the man speaking, nor had he seen the faces of anyone, save for his own family
members.
He had arrived home a week earlier and was immediately thrown into and subsequently locked
inside his room. It did not bother him, of course, not until it became clear that food was being withheld from
him. He called for the elves, though Kreacher was the only one to come to him, instructed to only give Sirius
water. By the end of the week, cut off from food and the world, Sirius was starved and barely able to stand.
They wanted him weak and broken.
But Sirius would not break.