L'appel du vide: (French) "The call of the void" ; it is significantly used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

"…you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it." -Joseph Mitchell

Taking Sirius Black in was not unlike trying to care for a feral cat.

He was jumpy, skittish, and hated to be touched; hugs, so often exchanged in the Potter home, caused him to stiffen uncomfortably, as if he was about to be struck. He would never ask for food -perhaps habit had taught him better- but when it was placed in front of him, he devoured it like it was his last meal. He'd taken to wandering the house late at night, roaming the hallways, finding his borders.

And yet, he was Sirius. He had been through and ordeal and he didn't laugh quite as loudly, but he was Sirius and the Potters were glad to have him.

"I feel bad freeloading on your vacation," Sirius said gruffly one morning, watching the sunrise beginning to peek over the distant hills.

He was standing in the kitchen of the Potter's summer home: a sprawling manor on the Devon coast in an ancient pure-blood-only community surrounded by iron gates, enforced walls, and the open sea to the south. It had once served as a safe haven in the days when magic was grounds for persecution, but now served as both a status symbol and an escape from real life for those who'd had the homes passed down to them through generations.

Sirius's own family had a house only streets away but it served them in the last few years for appearances only, occasionally lodging on a weekend visit, but nothing more. The Blacks had more than summer holidays on their minds, in the past few years especially.

"Don't think of it as freeloading, dear," Mrs. Potter chided in that way she had- warm and loving yet teasing and sarcastic all in one. "Think of it as us not trusting you alone in the main house. Though I dare say separating you and James might save me some grey hairs."

"You don't look a day over twenty five, mum," James sighed obediently, but with a tone of affection he reserved for only her. He'd just stumbled in through a side door that led to an entrance chamber containing only an old brick fireplace and multiple pots of floo powder- the only true way in and out of the summer village.

James was dusted with soot and struggling under the weight of the trunk he carried, but looked otherwise cheerful. It was no secret that he'd known it was only a matter of time before Sirius left home. Though the runaway's skittish and cold behavior had originally put a damper on the excitement of adding a new unofficial brother to the family, James's elation at knowing Sirius was with them and safe had trumped all of the growing pains.

"If it's too much trouble, I could go ba-" Sirius began to protest, furrowing his brow in concern.

"I think a bit of a vacation would do you good," said Mrs. Potter matter-of-factly, cutting across Sirius. "It's high time someone let you know: you're not an inconvenience."

And there they hung in the air, the magic words he'd been waiting to hear without realizing it. It was like letting out a breath of fresh air he'd been holding in for years. He was not an inconvenience. He was a person. A person who'd finally found a place, outside of school, where he felt welcome. Not entirely comfortable yet, but welcome all the same.

"James will give you a tour of the house while I make dinner," Mrs. Potter sighed, giving the luggage-packed kitchen a sweeping look. "Hopefully that elf of ours is skulking around here somewhere to move these trunks out of the way."

"Oh Padfoot here doesn't need the grand tour," James groaned, shooting a sidelong look at Sirius. "He'll be alone all day, won't he? Bit of exploring will help pass the time. Give it a couple days, Sirius'll know the place better than we do."

"What do you mean he'll be alone- oh, Merlin, I'd forgotten about your summer job, James." Mrs. Potter pressed her mouth into a thin line, shooting an undisguised look of concern in Sirius's direction. In all of the bustle of Sirius joining the family full-time and

"Hey I'd be happy to take the summer off," James laughed with a wink. Mrs. Potter's eyes remained stern but the corners of her mouth turned up in an unmistakable suppressed smile.

"Nice try," she scoffed at her son, shaking her head and turning towards the kitchen. "Your father is really looking forward to you shadowing him at the Ministry. And it's like I've always said, you need to learn the value of gold before-"

"Before you drop the whole lot of it in my lap. Merlin, mum, I know." James sunk into the nearest chair with an exasperated groan, ruffling his hair so that it obscured the lenses of his round glasses.

"If we're being honest here," Sirius cut in, a shadow of his forgotten trademarked smirk crossing his lips, the first joking he'd felt up to in the two weeks he'd been living with the Potters full time. "James will be home by dinner time, and I sleep roughly until then anyway."

"Valid point," James said, breaking into a grin and pumping a victorious hand into the air. "See? He'll be perfectly fine. There's nothing around town to show him either. There's the clubhouse-"

"-where I won't go," Sirius jumped in, remembering both his own apprehensions and the Potters warnings about steering clear of places he might run into any extended members of his family.

They said it was out of good manners -they didn't want to seem as if they were "parading" him around- but he knew it went so much deeper than that. He was only sixteen still. Sirius's parents knew very well where he was, he was sure of it. But if he kept a low profile for long enough and didn't draw attention to his departure, they weren't likely to press legal matters. Anything to save face. He'd counted on that when he left.

"-and the beach-" James pressed on, with an eye roll that suggested obvious boredom.

"-where I also won't go-"

"-and the parties, which I'll go to with him. So really the only thing I need to do is show him to his room." James finished with a grand flourish of his hand, looking even more pleased with himself than usual.

"Always the least possible amount of work for you two isn't it?" Mrs. Potter sighed, shaking her head and beginning to rummage through a cabinet in the kitchen. She always insisted on cooking meals by hand. When Sirius had first starting coming to dinner at their home, he'd been perplexed as he watched her adding spices by hand and lugging heavy pots to the table all on her own. But once the food had touched his lips, he understood why she took pride in laboring over it.

Maybe that was what made the Potters so very different. They were pure-bloods like all the rest, but that wasn't what defined them. Even before the first inklings of war had appeared, there'd been a difference.

There were the pure-blood families who were pure-blood for a living, like the Blacks. They lived in the manors, did the waltzes, arranged the marriages, and did what they were told because that was how things had always been done. Good, evil, or couldn't be bothered, supporters of You-Know-Who or not- it had nothing to do with beliefs and everything to do with tradition.

And then there were the Potters, the Longbottoms, and others like them. They had the blood, and the money, and the homes, but each of them had different selling point. The Potters, for instance, were known for their hard work and warm attitudes. Both James and Sirius had been spoiled as children- Sirius with gold he had no use for or concept of, James with affection and praise. Now a runaway with nothing but a motorbike that barely worked, Sirius still would have traded their experiences if it meant having some of that gold around now.

They still participated in the culture of it all, but the traditions had more or less died out. James, Sirius was sure, had never been forced to learn a waltz a day in his life. James would be able to choose his own career path, not one that was chosen for him before birth. James, unlike Sirius, would get to choose who he wanted to marry, who he wanted to be, how he wanted to be treated.

But then again, Sirius realized with a quick start, that maybe now he could do all those things too.

The room was small, beige, and by all accounts completely forgettable. It was everything Sirius pretended to despise: the ordinary, the unassuming, the common-everyday-routine. And yet, as he hoisted his one bag of clothing onto the neatly-made bed in the corner, he realized with a pang that it was perfect. Unassuming though it may have been, he was finally able to fall asleep in a place he wouldn't need to plaster floor-to-ceiling with posters and muggle regalia just to prove a point.

He could finally fall asleep somewhere that was a real bedroom, not a battleground. Somewhere where he wouldn't wake up in a cold sweat every few weeks with his father standing over him menacingly, trying to coerce him into madness when he was still disoriented, or his brother timidly knocking as he was still entering, white hands and a fat lip.

It was four neutral walls, one square window over the headboard, and a closet just big enough to hold what he'd grabbed when leaving the house and the few things that he'd accepted from James as an alternative to the embarrassment of having the Potter parents take him shopping. It was wonderful.

He unpacked in a lightheaded daze; at school, he was never really unpacked. His trunk spilled over with the clothes he decided to grab for in the morning, bobbing and fishing until his hand hit an appealing material, tossing the rejected or worn items onto the floor between his bed and Moony's. But here he folded each of his few shirts carefully into the drawer of his bedside table, hung his robes and leather jacket gingerly in the closet onto wire hangers that were cold underneath his fingers. It wasn't like him, but he did it here. It didn't matter what any of the Potters told him over the dinner table or as they found a way to slip him another household convenience: he still felt like he was earning his keep.

With a resigned groan once all his clothes were away, Sirius sank into the soft mattress of the bed that was now his for the summer. He tossed back and forth uncomfortably for a long moment- it was perfectly adequate, as far as beds went, but he was still learning the house, the surroundings, the smells. He was fooling himself if he thought he could be comfortable right away. It would be a miracle if he ever slept soundly again.

His eyes drifted shut little by little, getting ever heavier as the sunlight streaming in through the window pressed down on them with a gentle heat. He thought, foolishly, that he had found it -at least one quiet moment where he could stop to breathe- but, as it always did, the past came roaring forward to catch up with him, as always.

He had it in his hand, he was clinging to it wildly: his first moment of peace since he'd left home. His hands slowly unclenched from fists, jaw finally slacked from the rigid position he'd forgotten he'd been holding it in. The relief was palpable.

Sirius concentrated stiffly on his breathing. In...out...in...out...in...in...in...out.

His chest collapsed and grudgingly rose again, forcing his heard to keep pumping oxygen through his bruised body. Forcing himself to stay alive was the closest thing to peace he'd been able to find lately. Somewhere deep in his brain, a hollow laugh rung out. If only everyone at school could see the golden rebel now. Even James pretended not to notice when he got like this- that was the agreement their friendship was built on, really. Inadvertent support that protected them both.

The quiet of the still house, far too vast for the mere three people it contained, enveloped him in an eerie warmness that had nothing to do with the white heat that streamed in through the windows and pressed down on his eyelids. It was silent, too silent, so maddeningly silent...he felt the buzzing in his ears pick up, the voices in his memory grow louder as the ghosts of home began catching up to him...

And then, suddenly, a shattering of noise.

"GET BACK INTO THIS HOUSE IMMEDIATELY!"

The voice sliced through the silence of the day, muffled and distant but loud enough to jerk Sirius out of his stupor. It was a woman's voice, high and clear, shaking with a rage that echoed into Sirius's ears with memories of his own mother, her yellowing face trembling menacingly. It was enough to rocket him up into a sitting position, abandoning his faux-calm just as quickly as it had come on. That wasn't Mrs. Potter's voice, he would stake his life on it. Where had this voice come from, then? Voices like that did not exist in the Potter home.

Somewhere, a door slammed, cutting off the rest of the shout.

Sirius pulled himself across the mattress, groaning with the effort as he got onto his knees, peering wildly in the in the direction of the disturbances. His gaze landed, squinting into the blinding-white sunlight streaming through, on the square window above his bed. It was coming from outside.

Sirius brought his face to the window, nose nearly pressed against the cold glass, fighting to see past the brightness that greeted him.

The Potter's backyard stretched impressively before him, gentle slopes of alarmingly green grass that melted into a grove of proud and sturdy trees in the near distance, a ramshackle treehouse from James's childhood perched precariously on one of the thicker limbs. Directly below him, a patio was made up of deliberately placed square stones. A little-used brick fire pit sat staunchly at the center near a table big enough for the family and, at the edges, the borders were marked off by a bright array of lovingly-grown shrubbery and flowers that encompassed every color he'd ever known.

But no source of a shouting voice.

He didn't know what caused it, but Sirius found his vision pulled to the right.

A dark wooden fence, well-tended and tall, stood alertly on the property line between the Potter home and its neighbor. The property on the other side was a swirl of grey flagstones that centered around the fixture of the yard: a glittering pool that dipped below ground level, sparkling a deep mediterranean blue that sent the light bouncing in a million directions. A group of outdoor lounge chairs sat in a hastily arranged semicircle at the water's edge, looking as though they hadn't been properly used in years. Now that he thought about it, the entire backyard seemed to be simultaneously well-tended and yet uncared for. Very much, in fact, like the home he'd left behind.

Sirius didn't have long to ponder this thought because there it was: the streak of movement he'd been waiting for. And there she was, whoever she was, making her way across the yard in a tangle of long limbs and dark hair that spilled down past her shoulder blades.

He inadvertently found himself leaning forward, somehow shocked that he'd seen exactly what he'd been looking for. She couldn't have been the one who was shouting; she was too young, he could plainly see. But just based on the way she carried herself across the swirling flagstones to the edge of the blue water, based on the way he could see, even from this far, the way her hands had curled into determined fists, the way she never for a moment turned her face back to the house: Sirius could tell that she was not the one who's shout caught his attention.

She was screaming on the inside. He would know that stiff-shouldered chin-down pace anywhere. That girl was a hurricane waiting to happen.

And Merlin, it didn't help that her legs seemed to stretch for miles from the hem of her shorts until they finally reached the ground below.

The girl, whoever she was, folded her endless legs into themselves, crouching down until she was sitting at the edge of the pool where land became basin, letting the water lap against her ankles. Still, all he could see of her was the curtain of wild hair cascading down her back and those pale legs disappearing into a series of widening ripples. However, there was something about her. Something familiar, almost. Something he felt as if he ought to remember but simply couldn't.

Her hands found the bottom hem of her shirt and Sirius found all shame leaving him as he watched her, entranced, begin to pull absently at it, tugging it upward toward her torso.

He'd just barely seen a flash of white skin before a knock from behind him -jarringly closer than the sounds from earlier had been- jerked him out of his stupor. Startled, Sirius found his forehead connecting clumsily with the pane of glass he'd been looking through. A quick pang of stinging pain was all that kept him momentarily deaf to the sound of his best friend erupting into raucous laughter in the hallway.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" James roared, leaning against the doorframe, his glasses tipped precariously to the side as his shoulders continued to shake with laughter.

"Who is that?" Sirius asked dumbly, all he could think of, still not fully shaken from the stupor of hitting his head. Confused, James strode across the room, squinting his eyes with great effort as he attempted to see over the other boy and across the two yards.

Instantly, an unpleasant look of disgust crossed his expression that still sat there contently when he turned back to face Sirius.

"Merlin, Padfoot, could you sink any lower?" James asked, the smirk slowly returning to his face as he addressed the state of Sirius's confusion. "Please tell me you're not talking about bloody Marlene McKinnon."

"I'm telling you, I'm going to gouge my fucking eyes out." Sirius moaned, slumping into his chair at the dinner table nearly a quarter of an hour later.

"Language, Sirius," Mrs. Potter chastised gently, but a smile sat affectionately on her face as she stood distracted on the far end of the kitchen, stirring the finishing touches into a stew by hand, pridefully working over it in the way she was so proud of.

"Believe me, mum, he has a good reason," James jumped in, shoulders still jumping with boyish laughter as he carried a stack of plates from the counter to the table and began setting them out. "Old Paddy here caught sight -of all people, mind you- of Marlene bloody McKinnon across the fence and just about leapt through the window before he realized who it was."

"Ah," Mrs. Potter said simply, and it was evident that she, as well, was trying to hold in a bubble of surprised laughter. "Yes, I suppose people are always more beautiful before you know anything about them."

"Surprisingly poetic, Mum." James sighed with a good-natured roll of his eyes, sliding into his seat across from Sirius and sliding his hands upon his hair with frustration, trying to flatten and smooth it in the exact opposite fashion he used to charm girls at school. Here, in front of Sirius and his mother, there was no need to show off. They were rare, unfiltered moments.

"I've barely laid eyes on her since I was ten," Sirius cut in defensively. "I was tricked, if anything. Last time I saw her she was a twelve-year-old titchy little blonde thing throwing a tantrum in my parent's kitchen. She doesn't exactly run in the same crowd as us, mate."

"Say what you want," James chortled, twisting around in his chair impatiently as he waited for the food to be brought forward. "Consider yourself lucky if I don't mention this to Macdonald next time I see her."

"One word to Mary, and you're dead." Sirius retorted, fiddling with the fork sitting on his placemat. He felt an unprecedented twitching in his chest at the thought of it; a feeling he didn't have a name for, one that he'd decided meant he liked her.

It made the most sense anyway; it was the same content almost-happiness he felt when he was drunk and felt a muted, spark interest in a new girl. Except it had lasted for a few months now- longer than any of the others. He supposed that equated to what should have been prolonged interest or even the baseline of genuine feelings. The most he was capable of, anyway.

"Got that right," James agreed, much faster than usual, dropping his voice to a tone his mother couldn't overhear. "Since you and Mary started dating, Evans has no choice but to talk to me twice as much as usual. Wouldn't want to ruin your love life and sabotage my own, mate, would I?"

"Always thinking about yourself," said Sirius, another bout of laughter taking over his handsome face.

"Must be talking about my Jamesie," Mrs. Potter made her presence known again, bustling over to the table with a pot of stew, dangerously close to overflowing, that she placed gingerly in the center of the table. A house elf darted around her ankles all the while, stubby arms laden with various other plates with meats and vegetables and high piles of potatoes and gravy.

"Or the devil-across-the-way," James muttered, casting a conspicuous look toward the far wall of the kitchen and nodding his chin in the direction of the double glass doors at the end of the room, which were now showcasing a perfect view of the McKinnon yard.

"James," Mrs. Potter scolded, in a much harsher voice than she'd used with Sirius. "Watch your language. Marlene has had...a tough year. That whole family has."

"I'd have a hard time, too, if I had to lug around a set of stuck-up kids like the McKinnons." James muttered, rolling his eyes and drumming his fingers on the edge of the plate.

"James is just carrying some residual anger," Mrs. Potter said as she took her seat, raising an eyebrow in Sirius's direction as if they were the only two people in the room, ignoring her son temporarily. "We've lived next door to the McKinnons for almost twenty years now. Him and Marlene used to play together when they were little."

"Play?" James interjected with a scoff, screwing up his face and thinking back on some particularly jarring memory. "She's the one that used to plop herself onto the floor when we were six, pinch her own arm until she cried, and then tell her mum that I'd kicked her over. And if the rumors are true, she hasn't changed much since then."

"Rumors?" Sirius asked suddenly, perking his head up from where it had been perching casually on the heel of his hand.

"Death Eaters on the rise as far as I'm concerned," James shot out casually, wiggling his fingers in front of his face teasingly, bearing a lopsided grin.

"Do you ever get sick of starting trouble just for trouble's sake?" Mrs. Potter cut in with a laugh, looking over at her son with a sigh. "The McKinnons are...very high strung. Sirius, your family's known them even longer than we have, but we've been close to them for a long time as well. Very into the blood purity thing, as I'm sure you know. But I wouldn't ever go so far as to call them evil-"

"Except for Marlene-" James raised his voice, trying to drown out his mom, but being well-versed in her son's tactics, she did the same, raising an eyebrow and speaking louder still.

"That entire family has had it tough this year, especially Marlene. Her sister is getting married in a few weeks, her mother has been jumping through social circles like they're hoops, and her father just lost his job at the Ministry..." she sighed and began to ladle mashed potatoes onto everyone's plates, muttering the last part to herself with an annoyed undertone. "Not that you would know, with the way they're carrying on, holing up in their summer house, hosting tea, while real things are going on in the world..."

"As thrilled as I am that you're finally showing a bit of that Potter fire," James cut in with a laugh. "I think there might be a little of the pot calling the kettle black here, no?"

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Potter asked, looking up at him through an expression equal parts stressed and blank.

"Said the tea-planning woman from the kitchen of her summer home," James retorted, clearly enjoying the challenge he was delivering to her, though Sirius just straightened up in his seat, genuinely curious.

"It's different, James, and you know it. There are just certain things that need to be done."

"Yes, because the Wizengamot Founder's Ball and bi-weekly dinner parties with murderous-"

"Not all of them are murderous, for Merlin's sake, James you can't walk around saying things like that. You're going to get yourself-"

"Killed?"

"Into trouble," Mrs. Potter huffed, clearly exasperated. "You're going to get yourself into trouble. I've told you time and time again that we are here to keep an eye on things. Alright? You've gotten that confession out of your father and I, and you'd do well to leave it at that. We're here to keep an eye on things."

"And why is that our job?" James pressed, leaning forward with a cocked eyebrow, clearly enjoying the fact that he boundaries were wilting even if it was only just so.

"Not 'our' job, James. My job. Your father's job. Your only job is to shadow your father at work, pretend that I don't notice when you come home from the Meadowses house drunk-"

"What's the catch here-"

"And to behave yourself when the McKinnons come over to tea on Saturdays-"

"There it is. There's the catch." James moaned, shooting her an injured look as if he'd just been sentenced to a punishment far worse than death.

"You wanted to help? Well, that's how you can help. The McKinnons are an extremely powerful family and they've been our friends for years, but we can't forget who else they rub elbows with. What with everything going on in the world right now...there's a lot of speculation about which way certain families will go. It's extremely important to get the right ones onto the right side."

"Is that what you're doing then?" Sirius burst out, earning surprised looks from both mother and son, both of whom seemed to have forgotten that he was sitting there listening. "Spying and recruiting?"

"Not even close," Mrs. Potter insisted, her stressed expression melting back into a motherly smile as she looked at him, exhaling with resign. "Like I said: we're just here to keep an eye on things."

"For who-" James tried to cut in again, but his mother wasn't giving him an inch anymore.

"Now, Sirius. What do you like on your potatoes?"

It was midnight and the walls were too beige.

The nondescript bedroom now felt strangely like a neutral-colored cell as Sirius sat propped against his headboard, head resting against the very window he'd been looking out earlier in the day, entranced.

The goddamn McKinnons. He remembered them perfectly well, and yet the image didn't seem to fit with the dark-haired ready-to-bolt figure he'd seen earlier. It just didn't fit.

But he knew Marlene McKinnon from his childhood: blonde hair tied up in a disgustingly pressed bow, sunken eyes observing from across the room, stick-up-the ass and eager to please the pureblood agenda. Always doing what her parents said, with that clench-jawed, silent expression...but then again, that had been him as well. Making fists, trying to remember which fork to use, hearing and regurgitating statistics about how blood purity made them better than the others, but also held them to higher stakes.

Ten-year-old Sirius and ten-year-old Marlene had been in the same boat for sure, but he had hardly laid eyes on her since then. She'd done what she was supposed to: gone down the Slytherin path, surrounded herself with the right people. It wasn't hard to overlook her when she was submerged in a crowd that he hated; it was safe to bet that James felt the same way. Even at a school so small, there had been no reason for their paths to cross. Why, then, could he not shake this feeling that there was something more to it? Something that he had to do, or know?

"Wotcher!" James's voice suddenly boomed from the hallway, followed a split second later by the kicking open of Sirius's bedroom door. "Heading off to bed already, Pads?"

"Yeah, I've decided to become an old woman in my spare time," Sirius scoffed, rolling his eyes and scooting over to make room on the edge of the bed where James was already bounding to, landing with a crash and sending his own glasses flying askew. "Sod off, Prongs."

"I can't help but feel gipped by this whole best-mate-moves in deal," James retorted, reaching over and punching Sirius in the shoulder. "When all you do is mope around in your bloody bedroom and gaze out windows like you're a dame in a painting."

"It's the first night, Prongs. Give it a rest, yeah? We've got the entire summer ahead of us."

"That we do, Paddy. That we do," James said with a content sigh, pushing Sirius even farther over and making himself at home, tucking his arms behind his head to use as support. "And a brilliant one it'll be. Merlin, I always wanted a brother."

Sirius found himself laughing in agreement and spending the rest of the evening awake swapping stories and nicking food from the kitchen, feeling much lighter than he had in years. However, at the mention of the word 'brother', he couldn't help but fall prey to a nagging sensation in the back of his mind, reminding him that somewhere out there he did have a brother...and he had no idea what would become of him now that he was here.

A/N: Blackinnon. Jily. Updated every Monday. Reviews make the world go 'round. -A