The Untouchable

C12: A crazy little thing called love

Understandably, Sirius was Not Happy.

As soon as the pair floo'd into Grimmauld Place's kitchen from the gala, the man whirled on Harry with a gleam of madness in his eye.

"Him?" Sirius hissed. "Does it really have to be him?" The man seethed.

"I guess," Harry answered fairly easily.

"But – that – it's – him?" Sirius stressed once more, furious. A red blush of rage flushed the man's neck and he paced furiously, always the Grim.

"Yes," Harry confirmed as he sat down heavily onto a creaking wooden chair, wondering if Sirius was about to have a heart attack. That wouldn't be pleasant.

"Harry," Sirius then said, stopping, eyes full of insanity and rage and something Harry couldn't quite decipher. "He killed Lily and James, your parents. He's killed so many people. Oh Godric, Malfoy's head," Sirius said, hands coming up to grip his skull. The words rang in Harry's head.

"Yes," Harry said again. He knew.

"But – you – I just," Sirius babbled then, waffling in the face of Harry's frankness. "Get out!" Sirius then roared, voice shaking in hatred as he threw a hand towards the door.

"Okay," Harry said, realising that this should have been expected. It wasn't, but it should have been. Something inside his chest shattered. Harry stood to leave.

"No, wait," Sirius then said, wringing his wrists, snapping from rage to fear in a heartbeat. "Don't go – just listen to me, please," he pleaded.

Harry sat back down.

"I can't disown you," Sirius whispered in sudden contrast to his catastrophic rage, collapsing into a wooden chair on the other side of the kitchen table as if all fight had left him. "Not how my parents did. Not how my mother did. I... It just feels like the opposite. Me kicking you out for something dark when my parents kicked me out for something light."

Harry doesn't know why Sirius is telling him this.

He knows.

"Why, Harry?" Sirius asked then, eyes welling with tears and words exposing the raw breaking of his heart.

Harry looked at his godfather, then – or father, was it now? – and sighed.

"I don't know," Harry answered, wishing he did

------------------------------------

"What's wrong?" Voldemort asked, face pinched in irritation. Well, as pinched as the emotionless mask could be. "I can feel your despair. Stop it."

Harry watched the man from across Doctor Welsh's desk. He didn't speak.

"You're acting like a child," Voldemort hissed, sharp nails digging into mahogany and splintering the hard wood, face alight with contempt. "You're two minutes away from summoning green slime. It's revolting."

Harry didn't respond other than to tilt his head and wallow in the hollowness eating at his chest.

"Potter," Voldemort then said Very Seriously, eyes brighter than smelting steel. "If you don't stop this tantrum, I will kill you. Horcrux or not."

Harry knew that his anguish was transmitting to Voldemort. Voldemort did not do well with emotions. Harry felt a lot of them, but they were often supressed to the point they exploded in a dramatic array of colours at random intervals. This was one of those times.

"Sirius is mad at me," Harry said into the dark room.

"I'll kill him too, then," Voldemort sneered back. It was said in cruelty but Harry knew the man wasn't joking. Voldemort doesn't jest when it comes to death.