WHO: Devona Avery and Sirius Black. WHAT: Getting drinks turns sour. 🥂 WHEN: BACKDATED to Thursday, Dec 6. WHERE: Non-descript hole-in-the-wall pub. WARNINGS: None.
The first time he met up with Devona, Sirius had several shots before she arrived to focus him. Counterproductive, maybe, but it helped. His nerves were calmer and he’d been able to be the Sirius he’d wanted her to see. The one who laughed easily at Narcissa’s absurdity, and smiled naturally at her disguise, and was at ease in his own skin. The Sirius that was happy. Who knew what friends she was reporting back to, friends with masks in their closets that matched her father’s. Maybe she was even telling him about anything he said. He couldn’t know, not for sure, and so it was better to be the Sirius who had no regrets. And so he’d bought rounds of shots, he told ridiculous stories about his motorbike, and they’d both kept the night as superficial as they were able to.
But tonight was a little different. He couldn’t be that same Sirius, because this Sirius had just admitted he was annoyed. This Sirius had to figure out how to deal with his reactions about Brooke and Bellatrix and the message left to him. How to be angry enough, and irreverent enough, and above all have no regrets. It required a clearer mind.
Somewhat.
Instead of empty shot glasses, Sirius had a pint in front of him when she arrived at the hole in the wall pub he’d given her, and he was leaning back casually in the bar seat he inhabited on the nights he came to this place, his leather motorbike jacket slung over the back and his lips quirked into a smirk when he saw her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d apparate away the moment you saw this place,” he greeted, letting an impressed tone creep along the edges of his word.
"Ugh," Devona's reply escaped from her lips before she even had the chance to to take it all in. She had half a mind to leave this place and go back to one of the many reputable places she could have been, or hell, even go home. But she supposed that wouldn't have served her purpose of stepping away from the spotlight; swanky places meant more people she knew or more people that would recognise her as the daughter of the Minister. This dump, however, no one seemed to care. She didn't even bother disguising herself tonight, though she chose Muggle-inspired outfit for the night.
She removed her coat, placing it gently on the cushioned seat — ignoring the instant disgust that crept across on her face. A few fleeting seconds later, she pushed that thought away and cleared her throat. She'd have to try.
"I still might leave," she remarked, wrinkling her nose, as she reached for the pint in front of Sirius.
His smirk turned into a laugh as Sirius relinquished his own drink and signaled the barkeep for a round. “I thought we could do with a bit less pretension and subterfuge this time. The best thing about this place is one, no one knows it exists except for the people who come here and two, no one gives a shit who comes here,” he explained, taking his new beer with a nod. “It doesn’t even have a name, actually. Makes it a great place to come when you need a break.”
Clinking his new glass against his previous one in her hand, he took a long drink. “To needing a break, cheers.”
"To needing a break," Devona echoed, finally taking a sip of the beer, just enough to make sure it wasn't tainted with any potion. It wasn't that she didn't trust Sirius (well, not completely, anyway), she just knew she had to be careful about anything she would consume for various security reasons. A few seconds later, when she didn't start to feel weird and there were no obvious signs of tampering in the drink, Devona allowed herself to indulge. The cold beer felt so good.
She put the beer down and leaned back against her seat, her fingers tapping against the glass softly. "So, you've been feeling better, then?" she asked, her eyes shifting from the beer and to his face.
Sirius downed half his beer in an effort to avoid answering or making a facial expression immediately, setting the glass down slowly as he shrugged. “Comes and goes,” he finally said, perhaps more honest than he should be, but he let the small bits of vulnerability sit there anyways as he studiously looked into his glass.
"Comes and goes," Devona repeated. She wasn't sure if she should push him or not into talking further about it. She relented for the moment and decided she would come back to it later. She continued to drink her beer, pacing herself with the alcohol — unlike some people, she had a job to get to the next morning, and she didn't need to show up with a hangover.
A few seconds later, Devona decided to change the topic for the time being. "So Pettigrew was busy tonight, then?"
When Devona had suggested the change in meeting time the lie of saying he’d had plans with Peter had seemed easy enough. He hadn’t wanted to seem desperate, it would be suspicious if he was free both that weekend and Thursday. Of course then he’d entirely forgotten the whole thing until a few hours ago when he’d frantically DM’d her the coordinates and forced himself to look like he hadn’t been spying on the Malfoys as a dog all day.
“He got called into work,” he said instead, the corners of his lips twitching as he took another drink. “Big plans with your brother tomorrow? Picking him up at the station?”
"I might," she shrugged. "I don't know, though. Mum and dad might want to, and that's going to be overwhelming enough, with all the security." Devona exhaled loudly, drinking some more, with purpose this time, setting the glass down with a small thud.
"It'll be fun to see him, though, that little bugger."
“So how do you get out of having security detail anyways,” he asked, picking up on the forcefulness following the comment and glancing around the room. “Does he have private security trailing you or something? Are you going to get a lecture about slumming it with blood traitors in the morning?” Despite spending countless afternoons running around with the Avery kids in his youth, Sirius was pretty certain he was not on the top of the list of people the Death Eater Minister wanted his daughter hanging out at seedy bars with.
"Well, Sirius," Devona spoke, leaning in forward as though she were revealing a secret that was only meant for Sirius to hear, "if you die tonight, you'll know all about my private security detail." She looked away from him, and instead her attention focused on some nondescript man on the other side of the room and winked at him, before turning back to Sirius. And then she smiled.
It probably would have been funnier if Sirius wasn’t already certain her dad was a Death Eater and had already (briefly) considered the prospect of possibly being accosted and killed by an angry terrorist father who also happened to be the Minister. It was in the brief second Devona turned away that Sirius’ heart skipped a beat before he hastily grabbed his beer - what was left of it at least - and held it up to the very confused looking man. “Cheers to you too mate,” he called out, downing the rest of his glass and setting it down on the bar with a thump to signal he was ready for a new one.
Devona responded with a genuine laugh this time, grinning stupidly as Sirius called for another beer. "Slow down there, Black, I can't be responsible for you if you're drunk. I'm sure Pettigrew would love to hear from me, and how we were drinking together." Although if she thought about it, the reverse of that situation would definitely end up bad for Sirius, though she couldn't possibly tell who would be the worst of her friends. It made her feel momentarily fuzzy.
She finished her own beer finally, and mimicked Sirius's action, indicating another beer for herself, as well. "This needs to be my last one, really. I have work tomorrow."
“Hey you called for drinks on a Thursday,” he reminded her with a laugh, taking their refills and handing her one. “Besides, I’ve been able to handle more than one beer for several years now, thank you very much. And Georgie there,” Sirius winked at the barkeep who studiously ignored him to bring someone else a drink instead, “will call me a Knight Bus if I needed so Pete doesn’t have to plan your demise.” Georgie, naturally, would do nothing of the sort, but the role was believable enough to play up these days, and it was easy enough to lean into.
Tapping his glass against hers once again, he took a slower sip this time, setting it down and leaning an elbow on the bar to turn towards her more. “So why a second time, anyways?”
Why, indeed?
Even Devona hadn't come up with a proper reason for this meeting. She hadn't allowed herself to believe that she actually enjoyed his company — not enough to admit it out loud in this context, anyway.
She had taken the next glass, but hadn't yet taken a sip yet. "I guess I don't completely hate you anymore," Devona finally admitted, her fingers tapping against the glass. "Why did you agree?"
“Oh, because I’m a masochist,” Sirius said immediately, straight faced except for a glimmer in his eyes he couldn’t quite control. As he did everything she said — as he assumed she did to everything hesaid — Sirius puzzled out her words for what she wanted him to believe and what might be true inside them. The insult, the compliment, the flattery, the turn around. All things he should eagerly lap up and enjoy. And so he tucked it away, finally cracking a grin again and shaking his head.
“Probably because, when you’re hiding from your friends at least, it’s easier to forget you’re a Purist,” he started, glancing down to his beer and back to her again, “and when I forget you’re a Purist, I remember why we used to be friends.”
"I was always a Purist," Devona stated, a bit affronted at the insinuation that she wasn't. "And you've always known this."
“I mean,” he started slowly, looking down at his hands as he considered his words, “when we were little it wasn’t about Purism. Yeah we thought it was normal or whatever, but that wasn’t why we were friends. Muggleborns and Muggles weren’t like, real people. They were just stories our parents told us. It didn’t matter. Shuntbumps and trying to practice magic without alerting the Trace and tormenting the Elves and all the other shit we did. It wasn’t about being Purist. But then we went to school. And we met Muggleborns and they were real, and they weren’t some abstract scary story. Be good or a Muggle will steal your magic and turn you into a squib! And you went one direction, and I went another.”
Glancing up at her, eyes flicking around the points of her face to gauge her reaction, Sirius shrugged his shoulders. “But when you’re hiding from your friends, meeting up with me when you know they’d give you shit for it, it’s easier to pretend we’re just sneaking around one of our houses, trying to do stupid shit, and all that Purist talk about Muggles and Muggleborns are still just stories and not something that’s like. I don’t know. Defined us yet.”
Devona kept her face expressionless; there was truth to his statement, and she didn't want to admit it out loud, happy to ignore it for the moment. And then her eyes gave her away, as she looked away from him, her gaze falling on the beer in front of her. Her brows came together to form the smallest of frowns. "Did you join the Order?" she asked, her finger tracing patterns on the dew that formed on the glass.
“I want to.” His answer was immediate and honest, even if it wasn’t the full truth, and he held her eyes for a beat before shrugging and taking a drink. “At least I might feel like I’m doing something useful.”
"I —" Devona started, even though she hadn't fully formed what she was going to say yet. She paused, took a moment, and tried again, inhaling sharply before she did so. "I guess it's time to admit to ourselves that we are not the people that we used to be and try as we might, we'll never get that back. You're not the Sirius I thought I'd end up marrying and I'm not the Devona that followed you around agreeing to everything you said." She gulped away the lump that formed in her throat. "I don't think I can be friends with someone who —," she shrugged, "— wants to be in the Order."
A quizzical expression crossed Sirius’ face, and he set his glass down while she spoke, eyes flicking across her face for tells in her expression that would better illuminate him to what she was really saying.
“Devona, this,” he started, leaning in slightly more and gesturing between them, “was never about friendship. Friends don’t do the things we do to each other. At least, my friends and I don’t, I don’t know about what your friends do or how your friends treat each other.”
Shaking his head and glancing to the side, taking a sip of his beer and setting it down, he looked back at her once more. Calm, without the mania that sometimes seeped in and made him restless and anxious. “I can’t be friends with someone who supports Death Eaters, and before —” he held up a hand to cut off an angry objection before it began “— you tell me again that you don’t, you’re a self admitted Purist and whether you admit it or not, supporting Purism is supporting Death Eaters. They’re hand in hand. I’m not saying you support murder or anything,” although he doubted more and more these days where her moral compass was pointing, “but you support the ideology. My wanting to join the Order isn’t out of some desire to cause mayhem. It’s from seeing my friends attacked and nearly murdered regularly and feeling defenseless. And I mean, the Order probably isn’t daft enough to take someone like me so it’s beside the point anyways, but…”
Trailing off, he shrugged once more, his smile smaller and a touch sadder. “This was never friendship, Devona. It’s nostalgia.”
"Nostalgia is stupid," she shot back, reaching for her glass and downing the remaining liquid in as few gulps as she possibly could manage. "And I guess I'm stupid and naive for thinking we were building a friendship." Devona used the back of her hand to wipe away the excess alcohol as it dripped down from her lips to her chin. "What a surprise, being played by Sirius Black yet again." She laughed a bitter laugh, setting the glass down loudly.
Sirius rolled his eyes. “Do you always build friendships this way? I know you said you were mad at me during the Halloween thing, but you never even apologized for that. And sure maybe I was a dick to Hypatia, but you knew what that week was and aside from telling her I was hacked off about Halloween you didn’t do shit, did you? And if you really wanted a friendship, me being frustrated enough at this fucking war and Death Eaters literally leaving my friend bleeding to death in my flat that the idea of joining a vigilante group seems like my last resort option? Would not be the deal breaker here. But sure,” he shrugged, finishing his own drink and setting it down deliberately beside her. “I’m the asshole because I’m not trying to lie to you. If I was playing you why the fuck would I be saying any of this? Merlin.”
"Apologise to you? Why the fuck would I apologise to you for the Halloween thing? I didn't do anything to you," she lied through her teeth, knowing full well exactly what Sirius was talking about. Still, Devona had become a confident and professional liar now, having been used to various situations where lying was a constant need and necessity.
"You're so full of yourself, Sirius. It's amazing. You've never done anything wrong in your life ever, and you're just so perfect. The rest of us, though? We're fucked. We don't have any morals or principles or anything," Devona sneered, lifting her nose up in the air. "Unbelievable."
“There you are,” he greeted, and the grin reached Sirius’ ears before he accepted his third beer with a wink at the bartender before returning his attention to Devona. “This exercise in method acting has been really interesting, but I was wondering if I was ever going to see the real Devona tonight.” Never mind the fact that everything she’d said had been mostly accurate and he’d been lying as naturally as breathing for the most part. “Are you going to tell me what you really wanted with meeting me tonight then? I think we both know you had no interest in my friendship.”
All Devona could do was scoff. She was loath to admit it, but she was genuinely hurt by what had just happened here. She shook her head, reaching for her bag, digging through the contents to find the exact change for how much ever the beers probably were (she grossly overestimated the prices). She neatly stacked the coins on the table, then stood up, putting her coat on immediately.
"This has been a night," she commented, buttoning up her coat, and avoiding any eye contact, as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "See you around, Black."
“Next time you decide to tell me you can’t be friends with someone like me, try sounding it out in your head first,” he said in return, an edge to his words even if his body still leaned casually against the bar. “Like I said, I don’t know about your friends, but mine don’t do shit like that. Have a happy Christmas. Tell your brother I say hey.”
"I'd rather be murdered by the Order," Devona snapped back, throwing him one last look before leaving the place.