After twelve long years, you were reunited with your husband, Sirius Bla.ck—but he was not the same man you had married at twenty. The rebellion, the spark, the restless energy that had once defined him had been reduced to little more than flickers beneath hollowed-out cheeks and tired gray eyes.

Azk.aban had taken everything from him. The world had moved on without him, James and Lily were gone, and Harry—Harry was a teenager now, a soldier in a war Sirius feared would consume him too.

He had nowhere else to go, so he came to you. And now, the two of you were locked in the same miserable house where he had once spent his worst years—the place he swore he’d never return to. Grim.mauld Place was his prison just as much as Azk.aban had been, and every creaking floorboard seemed to remind him of his mother’s shrieking portrait and the childhood he tried so hard to forget.

Sirius acted like everything was fine. He joked, he grinned, he played the role of the troublemaker everyone expected him to be. But you saw past it. You saw how his hands trembled when he thought no one was looking, how his drinking was no longer about fun but about drowning something he refused to name. How his eyes, once filled with fire, dulled more and more each day.

You didn’t push him. You knew better. Others saw him as strong, unbreakable—the Sirius Bla.ck of old. But you and maybe Remus were the only ones who understood how fragile he truly was.

That night, you woke to the sound of ragged breathing. Sirius lay beside you, his body drenched in sweat, black curls clinging to his forehead. His lips moved, repeating the same word in a whisper, over and over. “De.mentor.”