"I will give you two weeks. Harry's friends are coming over at the end of the summer, it will be cramped enough as is. Look, I was guilt-tripped into getting you back into good health. And it is not healthy for you to cling to Harry like this. He cannot fix you. You need to figure out what you are going to do with your life now that you're out of prison."
The thought of being separated from Harry was very concerning. What was he supposed to do with his life besides being there for his godson? Alabasandria had a point, he needed to get his shit together, badly. But what could he do? Sirius had been twenty-one when he'd been thrown into jail. His entire life before then had been goofing around in school and then being a soldier at war. He hadn't had any long-term goals or dreams besides surviving. Thoughts about careers, starting a family, these were all things he'd put off until some nebulous concept of later happened. Later, when things were fine and better. And now it was later, and he was a wanted criminal, with no one left in his corner. Nothing to live for. It's not like the aurors were likely to take him back, not that he wanted that job again. And anyone he'd considered family was dead. All except Harry. Harry was all he had.
"You're right. I'll find my own place, I promise. I just - I don't know how I'm supposed to do anything or be anyone anymore."
"I imagine it will take some time to adjust. Once you get some independence, I'm sure things will start to click. You need a hobby or something, you can't just read and nap forever. And don't panic. Harry likes you, for some reason, so I'm not trying to say you can't ever see him again. I'm sure he'll make you visit as often as possible before he goes back to school. I just need you to get off of my couch."
"'For some reason' - don't act like we aren't friends now." It was his turn to roll his eyes. It had been an odd month on the necromancer's couch, but he thought that once they'd gotten past all the evil human sacrifice-y stuff, they'd gotten along rather well. (Alabasandria could not disagree more.)
She gave him a genuinely confused expression. "Friends? No, I don't have those. Get over yourself."
Well there, that would be a rather interesting hobby to keep him busy. He'd simply win over Harry's very terrifying mum so that he could - (stow away in a trunk to Hogwarts) - be allowed to spend as much time with Harry as possible. It was a better hobby than anything Alabasandria did. She was one to talk. All she did was spend her time reading and looking at bones and being weird. He told her as much.
"Firstly, no, you are not going to pester me until we become friends," She shuddered at the word. "That is not what I meant. Leave me alone. And secondly, necromancy itself isn't a hobby, idiot. I don't go kill people for fun. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the purpose of necromancy is. It's a serious and delicate art and -" She said this all in a haughty tone that would have reminded Sirius of Hermione had he known who Hermione was. But he didn't, so instead he thought about whether befriending such an… interesting woman was a good idea. For his sanity, that is.
"Well, what is the point of it then?" He interrupted. "I just sort of figured uhh-" he decided at the last minute not to say what he'd assumed out loud. That didn't seem like a friendly thing to do.
"That I'm completely insane? A sadist, a psychopath? Something of that nature, I suspect. Honestly, you Light-aligned wizards are so uncreative. For some, yes, necromancy is about power and killing and all that nonsense. But for me, it is about knowledge. The things you can divine from a sacrifice or two! None of this 'guess what these tea leaves mean' business. And there are centuries of lost information at your fingertips if you can find the right corpse! It's absolutely fascinating."
Yeah… and that was why she was still pretty terrifying. A normal person did not get this enthusiastic about dead people. Of course she wasn't insane. Still, rule number one of friendship dictated that he had to at least try to engage with her interests, and creepiness aside, how often did one get to talk about necromancy? Of course he was interested to learn more, despite how concerning it was that Harry was raised by such a bloodthirsty individual. So he let her enthuse about how much fun it was to dig up the graves of ancient mages and steal all their knowledge and ideas and yeah - once again, he was secretly very terrified.
"Why haven't you done anything with what you've learned?" He asked. Here he was without a purpose or reason, while Alabasandria had it all at her fingertips, and yet did nothing with it. "They say knowledge is power, after all. You could be a very powerful Dark Lord, if you wanted."
"Oh, I've considered it from time to time. But, if I did that, then I suppose I'd have to talk to people. And that sounds rather awful," she said, completely serious.
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