Padfoot's Place

Sleepless

2008-04-04T15:30:11Z

I'm trying not to think about it. But every time things get too quiet or I shut my eyes, there it is.

I think Muggles equate it to an elephant in the room. It's there, you know it's there, but nobody really wants to mention it because...really, what can you say? It's a bloody big problem that, presumably, will need to be dealt with, only not just now, because nobody's talking about it.

We will. I know that. But it can't happen fast enough for me.

I've been playing too much guitar again. Starting to hope that Tonks was serious about getting that drum set; I could use the distraction.

Bloody hell. A little firewhiskey and this would all be easier. I'm going to have to settle for a few cigarettes.

Laughter

2008-01-30T01:04:40Z

Washing bleeding fingers again so I don't get blood on the guitar.

I'm not sure yet if this is healthy or not. I feel kind of giddy.

Music

2008-01-28T21:13:45Z

{hexed from Snape}

Is it weird to be in love with an inanimate object? Even if it is, I don't care. I'm not sure this guitar qualifies as inanimate, anyway.

It's strange; I can't seem to put it down. I haven't played since school, but I find myself wanting to play again, wanting to be as good as I was, wanting to have...

Have what? A way to express myself? A way out? A way to escape that doesn't involve stupors and blackouts?

I don't know what I want, but I'm happy. I've been playing until my fingers bleed, and I'm happy. I don't want to lose this feeling.

{/hexed}

Echoing

2008-01-05T19:31:04Z

{hexed from Snape and Molly}

It's strange, being alone. I know it's only for a few days, but it still feels odd to wake up in the morning and have coffee alone, and to fall asleep on the couch with nothing for company but a record or one of those books Moony keeps trying to get me to read.

I'm not having trouble with it, not the way I was afraid I would. Above all, I think, I find it puzzling. I spent so many years alone, and to suddenly find that I'm no longer used to it makes me think about the relationship in a different light.

It's been so long since anything felt even close to as important to me as she does. Without her, what am I? Without her, what is my life really worth?

I've never thought like this before, and I can't decide if I like it or if it scares the hell out of me. Maybe a little of both.

{/hexed}

Moving up

2007-12-15T23:43:22Z

{hexed from everyone except Remus, Tonks, and Samantha}

A new flat. Words I never thought I'd be able to utter. Finally free of that dump of a house, finally in a situation where I have some chance at happiness.

My only regret, I suppose, is that James and I never got to be immature adolescent roommates outside of school. Then again, knowing us, we probably would have burned down, blown up, or otherwise decimated anywhere we ended up staying. It was best not to trust us with anything valuable in those days.

Anyway, the flat looks good. The new furniture ought to be delivered within the next couple of days, and I don't think the landlord is ever going to bother us for anything.

No more stinky, dingy, boggart-infested rat trap of a family house. No more of my bloody Mum's bloody portrait flipping out if I walk too loud. Finally, finally, space, and someone I don't mind sharing it with.

{/hexed}

{side note, hexed to Molly}

Molly, just so you know, I've moved out of the house. Also I think it would be a good idea for Arthur to come to the next meeting if at all possible. And I'm dying for more of your cookies.

{/hexed}

Things are looking up.

...

Things are looking up.

I had to write it twice to believe it. For once, I don't hate my life. It's a strange, unexpected, but welcome change.

Battling

2007-11-16T17:44:01Z

Dear Merlin, sobriety is overrated.

When is this going to end?

Six days and counting. I feel like I'm going to die.

Merging

2007-10-29T04:12:06Z

{hexed from non-Order members and Snape}

Much as I try to forget, I remember when the Order started talking about Lily and James having to go into hiding. I remember the first time the words "Fidelius Charm" turned up in conversation. At that moment, I somehow knew that there would come a time, very soon, that I would never see them again. It was like someone dumped a bucket of ice on me, and I couldn't for the life of me explain why. It was a feeling I spent weeks trying to beat back, only to find that I should have listened to it all along.

After today's Daily Prophet, I'm starting to feel the same way. It's only a matter of time before everything closes in on us.

We are well and truly screwed.

{/hexed}

Halloween

2007-08-30T02:05:31Z

{hexed from Snape}

I hate Halloween. All the Muggles running around, laughing, pretending it's some great game, and all I can think about is...that night. Even in Azkaban, when I'd lost track of the days completely, I somehow knew when Halloween was coming. There was an extra chill in the air, an edge to everything, like the world was going to explode again and it was just waiting for the most damaging time.

There's always that edge, every year. It's like having a razor blade drawn across the inside of my skull. I can't avoid it, and I can't ignore it. It's one of the things I've never been able to make go away, no matter how much I drink. It's the worst time of the year to be alone.

I think I'll go out. I can't stand being in this house. Not tonight.

{/hexed}

In the dark

2007-08-18T21:28:47Z

{private to self}

I guess it's impossible to get drunk in peace and privacy these days. Next time I find the need to, I'll have to remember to lock myself in one of the bedrooms beforehand. Hangovers are worse when people insisit on being concerned...

{/private}

{hexed from non-Order members}

This thing with the dementors in the bookshop has me uneasy. It doesn't help that the Daily Prophet keeps reporting inexplicable Muggle deaths and strange patches of cold up near Charing Cross. Just reading about it gives me goosebumps, like there's something bigger going on that we don't understand yet.

{/hexed}

It's too dreary for September. The weather's too damp, and the house is too dark. I'd swear there were things whispering in some of the more remote rooms. They're just on the edge of hearing, even if I turn the record player all the way up.

Seems a bit late in the game to be losing my mind.

Cleaning

2007-07-31T21:49:45Z

{hexed from Snape}

I decided to take Molly's advice and start cleaning the house a bit. This was, of course, a lot easier to accomplish once Snivellus's drunk arse was off my kitchen floor. I'll be damned if I let him get rat-arsed here again; that's not what I agreed to.

{/hexed}

I think I found where the spiders are coming from. Figures they'd hang out in Regulus's room. I'm not sure whether to laugh or be disgusted. It was hard to get rid of the webs without destroying things or making a huge mess, but I think I did pretty well. That's not a sight I'm keen on seeing ever again.

I finally managed to get rid of that boggart in the upstairs closet, and there was one skulking in the shower in the upstairs bathroom, of all places. I hate those things. I actually prefer it when the fear of the day is dementors; they're easier to deal with than some of the other things I'm apparently afraid of.

The record player has been serving me well. Having music has made it so much easier to sleep. And it gives me something to do when the house is too damn quiet. If I had a coffee maker, I think I'd be set.

Catching up

2007-07-23T16:27:43Z

I was right. Muggles do call it contrecoup. In other words, my brain is bruised.

Let's see. It's been a while since I wrote anything in here. I haven't seen or heard from Tonks since the party, which is worrying but I'm not sure I should bug her just yet. As for Moony...we've got to stop fighting so much. I know most of it is my fault, and I should work on that, but--well. It's a good thing he's forgiving. We're pretty much all the other one's got at this point, and it would be stupid to mess with that.

Been treating the brain bruising with Muggle painkillers, rest, and a lot of water. I wish I knew someone who was good with healing charms. Oh well. At least I can see straight now, and I've stopped passing out quite so much.

Which reminds me, I think the filter charms on the house taps need to be re-cast. I really need a wand.

{hexed from everyone except Dumbledore and Remus}

I've been trying to do some reading between bouts of semi-consciousness, but it's difficult. All the books in this house with any information on horcruxes are either so old that they're barely in English, or hexed shut. One of them tried to bite my finger off when I picked it up. But the ones I've been able to look at all seem to agree on one thing: horcuxes are dangerous, stupid business. Even the ones that happily yammer on about the theory behind the Unforgivable curses warn against trying to make one.

What, exactly, am I supposed to be looking for?

{/hexed}

Oh, and there's a boggart in one of the upstairs closets. I can hear it rattling around in there, and it's driving me crazy, but I really don't feel like taking it on right now. I'd rather not meet the fear of the day.

Realistic

2007-07-18T04:13:42Z

I think...

Yes. I can accurately say that I hate everything right about now.

I need to stop sleeping when I'm sober.

Alone

2007-07-15T02:26:08Z

{hexed from Snape's view}

It's occurred to me that the very same things I try to forget are the things that make me keep fighting. James and Lily's deaths, the injustice of my time in Azkaban, all the horrors of the first war...everything I try to suppress that never really goes away.

I fight for what I've lost.

{/hexed}

{private to self}

I want to be useful because of all the things I didn't do, or couldn't do, all those years ago. I went through the whole plan of staging my death so that I could finally do something, and for what? Dumbledore has completely disappeared, Harry hates me, and Remus...he's my best friend, but sometimes I feel like he only comes by the house to humor me, because he feels sorry for me.

I don't want to be pitied. I don't want to go on being the one who's been through an ordeal. Everyone has baggage from the first war; I just happen to have a little extra. Sometimes I draw on it, or complain about it, or use it as an excuse, but never to the extent of shirking something that could be useful to the Order's cause. People can say what they like about me, but if there's one thing in my life that I've been dedicated to, it's the Order.

And, years ago, I screwed up. All I ask now is for a chance to redeem myself.

{/private}

soulless_sailor @ 2007-07-11T08:13:00

2007-07-11T12:13:16Z

Honestly, would it kill the kid to answer a damn letter?

This isn't about whose life sucks more or what I did or didn't do. I'm not going to take that rubbish from a teenager, even if I would've behaved the same way at his age.

Neither of us knows what the other is going through or has been through, and that would be all right if he didn't keep making an issue of it.

I offer him a family and he spits in my face. Stupid kid.

Hung over

2007-07-10T14:05:11Z

It never ceases to amaze me that, no matter how many times I wake up with a hangover, I always go back for more.

{private to self}

I am never, ever doing that again. Ever. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough, and now that thing is in the house and having it here is making me feel like I'm being watched.

Sometimes Muggles are so bloody stupid. So many won't believe anything unless it's proven to them, unless they study it until all the meaning has been drained away, and even then, sometimes, they dismiss it. Like if they can't understand it, it can't possibly exist.

They rebuilt the house. I just can't get my mind around that. How anyone could desecrate a spot like that, making it just another part of just another town...

But them and their stupid legends, taking the most horrible night of so many people's lives and turning it into a ghost story. "Oh my, yes, the lights go on by themselves and people hear screams, isn't that quaint, ahaha." Arseholes.

I don't care what it was, house memory or ghosts or echoes of the past...there was something in that house, and nobody, especially not those idiotic Muggles, can possibly know how that made me feel right down in the pit of my stomach.

Well...maybe Moony knows.

Bollocks. This is all so ridiculous.

{/private}

Personal fear

2007-06-27T01:40:49Z

{private to self}

Godric's Hollow.

To most people, even to people who know the publicized and glossed-over story of what happened that night, it's just a place. Just some village. Just the spot on the map where the Boy Who Lived got his title.

I hate those people. I hate them, and I envy them. All they know is that, on Halloween in 1981, Voldemort fell, and that made the world a bloody slaphappy place with flowers and rainbows and whatever the hell else people come up with when they've got their rose-color glasses jammed over their eyes.

They don't really know what happened that night. Nobody does. I was there and I don't know. I certainly never told anybody what I saw. It was almost sixteen years ago and I still can't bring myself to think about it. You'd think Azkaban would be the source of most of my nightmares, but no...it's that night in Godric's Hollow.

I am definitely going to have to get drunk before Moony and I do this. And then again afterward, only more so.

{/private to self}

Out of cigarettes, out of beer, Harry's still not answering my letters...what else do I have to look forward to?

Smoke

2007-04-12T19:40:11Z

So here I sit, encircled by a cloud of smoke in the rotting remains of my family's home. A familiar place, a familiar schenario, a familiar feeling deep in the pit of my stomach.

Anyone who thinks a Black has no capacity for eloquence has never spent a night in the bowels of this wretched place, alone with my memories, cheap beer, and cigarette smoke.

My death...it's strange. I spent twelve years thinking about death--my own, James and Lily's, Wormtail's if I could ever get my hands on him--and yet, now that I think of my death as something that's already happened, I can't seem to get my mind around it. I'm alive. I'm here. But to the outside world, I'm a dead man.

It's freeing and terrifying at the same time.

The plan was my idea, but Dumbledore orchestrated everything. Neither of us could have foreseen the exact circumstances in which the opportunity to enact the plan would present itself, but somehow he had everything covered. Nothing went wrong; I didn't actually die. Bellatrix did manage to curse me a bit, the rotten little bitch, but nothing that a few hex reversals and some rest couldn't fix. The Ministry knew ahead of time, Harry and Remus and anyone else who had to be left out of the loop were informed afterwards, and everything went along smoothly.

Well, not exactly smoothly. Harry hated me for weeks. I tried to explain how my death had to look genuine, right down to the reactions of those closest to me, in order for the plan to work. Dumbledore tried to explain. Remus even took a crack at it, but Harry wouldn't hear it. It took him ages to realize that what we were saying had some merit, and that I wasn't being selfish in wanting to be able to move about without any of the Death Eaters looking for me.

I love Harry like a son, but sometimes I think he believes that Voldemort and the Death Eaters are only after him. Like none of the rest of us are in danger, like Wormtail couldn't have pointed his ratty little finger at any time and let slip that a certain big black dog bore a striking resemblance to someone who was a staunch supporter of the Order of the Phoenix, particularly the Potters, during the first war.

We're all targets, every one of us. Even as a dead man, I'll have to be careful.