Chapter One
Sirius Black flicked his wand back and forth. At the low end of adolescence, he spoke in shades of static. Someone had replaced his heart with a muggle's radio dial, twisting toward a song he'd never heard, but nothing was close enough for clarity.
"Oy, Padfoot, what's got you in such a mood?" James lobbed one of the three snitches he stole from the quidditch shed at Sirius's head. Sirius didn't bother to duck.
"I'm not in a mood you bloody wanker, I'm just trying to summon some of Remus's disgusting resolve so I can study for this history of magic test."
"Nowhere in the history of any kind of magic have you ever studied for a test." James said, shining his glasses on his shirt.
"People can change. Just look at Grunge the Gritty in the fifth goblin rebellion." Remus didn't look up from his notebook.
"For Merlin's sake Mr. Goody Two Paws, Pads and I here need to get you laid." James squinted, spat on his glasses.
Remus snatched them, tapped his wand on the top of each lens. "I don't suppose you'll start studying now that you can see. "
"Alright, alright moony, Sirius and I will just have to enjoy the prime of our youth in the common room without you."
"Actually I'm bloody tired. I think I'm just going to sleep through the next-I don't know, three tests?" Sirius pulled the covers up past his collar. James shrugged, stomped down the dorm stairs. Peter was probably in the common room and would be more than willing to write twelve inches on the first section of the secrecy statute for a few chocolate frogs.
Sirius didn't hear Remus leave, but he rolled over hours later, used light cleaving his eyelids. Someone had left him a glass of water on the bedside table. He opened the curtains on his four poster, James would never let him hear the end of checking himself out, but he had to make sure he was more than bones and questions, that no one else would leave him in search of something more solid.
He couldn't talk about this with his friends. Remus would worry, James would scoff, and Peter would gape.
He turned the shower on as hot as it would go, slid like a sluice to the slick bottom. His hipbones arose to erode and he wanted to drown himself so still.
He waited a minute to make sure his friends had gone down to dinner, cast a quick silencing charm around the bathroom and searched his throat for the hollow that got sore after shouting. It was like spitting up sunburn. He rinsed his mouth with the flask of fire whisky James had hidden in the cabinet, looked both ways before exiting the bathroom. James wouldn't bother to bring him back anything from dinner; for all he knew Sirius was still hung over from the wizard chess drinking game last night.
James never asked anything he didn't already know the answer too. It would be fine.
He went back to the dorm, pressed his forehead against the window pane. He was named after a star, and he stood in awe at the endless clash of space dust and dark matter. He didn't close his eyes to make a wish.
He'd seen more eclipses than he cared to remember.
