It didn't matter that his friends were there. It didn't matter that the past could become a crutch upon which to rest. All that mattered was now, here, that look in those eyes.
A sheen of sadness is staining a handsome yet insecure face; bravado weeping from every pore yet still broadcasting a stunted breadth of insecurities. The sight of those constantly battling features, trying all at once to display happiness, grief, boredom, solace, loneliness…. It was too much for selfish youth to witness now. Especially as those emotions, so clearly written upon the face of another, were so obviously absent from his own outward appearance.
Harry envied him that, at the least; his ability to display his real thoughts so openly and without fear or fealty to those around him. Azkaban had granted Sirius that ability, and its price had been accordingly high. The days when his Godfather's gaunt yet striking face remained etched upon his memory were the very same days that his jealousy, for a life lived at all, hit its peak.
Of course envy had its limits. Not for him the mindless staring at four walls, hoping against hope for some sort of release, the impotence at being once again left in the darkness to be tortured by half truths. Those days thankfully had passed at the whim of his various manipulators sometime previous, and for that small mercy he could find it within himself to be thankful. What was the use in being jealous of another's obvious misery, how could he complain at his own lack of contentment in the face of it?
To be confronted with true suffering should always be a sobering moment, to truly understand the depths of human misery should leave one cowed, changed, mollified at least, surely? These questions Harry was not alone in asking, then forgetting.
Sirius' eyes were not a window to a soul, or a door to a fundamental truth. They were merely an advertisement of what lay beneath, a neon-lit sign of everything he and others were clouding in shadow. How wrong to be jealous of such a thing, yet how hard it was to stop being so. It became easier, then, to concentrate on fundamentals, on the security of times to come. Experience should already have taught him better.
So here at the prolonged point of goodbye, yet without the opportunity to say the needed words, the look in those eyes was everything and nothing. The sheen on the eyes was at once his own and yet belonged to another; an adult's stockpile of regrets envied and yet repulsive, the shell of a once-vivacious young man appreciated, mulled-over, finally filed away and ignored.
For as all the young know there is always the chance to re-observe and learn at a later date.
But all that was learnt from a future meeting was that jealousy of any kind, whether benign or malignant, informative or destructive, may also have its part to play in the construction of a self. To ignore what is granted at any given time is to lose it forever. To grasp at half-truths in delusions of future understanding is to retreat, yield, and allow empathy to diminish into something inconsequential. A look in a loved-ones eyes is easily discounted if we are all sure we will live until tomorrow, and yet the fact that we have no such assurance is consistently proven to be beyond our range of understanding.
Carpe diem. Last chances are only for the immortal.