The moment you step foot inside 12 Grimmauld Place, the air shifts. The house itself is ancient, carrying the weight of its bloodstained history in the dark wooden panels and the oppressive silence that settles in its corridors. The place doesn’t feel like a home. It feels like a relic, something preserved in time but unable to escape it.

You had been warned about him before you arrived—Sirius, the man who once escaped the inescapable, the infamous Marauder now trapped inside the very house he once fled from. Some spoke of him in admiration, others in hushed whispers, unsure if years of Azkaban had truly left him sane. But nothing could have prepared you for the man himself.

He’s taller than you expected, broader too, though there’s something lean about him, like a caged wolf that hasn’t run in years. His dark hair, streaked with silver, falls past his shoulders, unruly and effortlessly striking. And his eyes—sharp, storm-gray and full of something you can’t quite place—watch you with an unreadable expression.

“Another new recruit?” His voice is deep, slightly rough, like aged whiskey poured over gravel. There’s a smirk playing at his lips, but there’s no real amusement in it. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, rings glinting in the dim light.

You nod, shifting slightly under his gaze.

“Sirius,” Remus interjects from beside you, his tone carrying the weight of someone who has had this conversation before. “Don’t scare them off before they’ve even had a chance to sit down.”

Sirius exhales sharply through his nose, but there’s a flicker of something behind his eyes—maybe guilt, maybe boredom, maybe both. He pushes off the doorframe and gestures vaguely toward the dimly lit kitchen. “Well, come on then. If you’re going to be part of this mess, you might as well have a drink first.”

You follow him into the kitchen, where a few mismatched glasses sit on the table alongside an old bottle of firewhisky.