To whomever it may concern, Harry Potter does not belong to me

Precipice

He was insane, utterly out of his mind, honest-to-goodness crazy and it was wonderful. The sheer madness of his existence roared to life in his chest and beat along with his blood in his wrists. He had never felt more alive.

His black hair whipped across his face, reaching across his eyes so he could see, tangled and matted with saliva in his mouth. Cold pebbles of rain stung his face with hundreds of sharp sewing needles. It felt like Sixth-Year Charms class when he had accidently cast a Stinging Hex on his own face.

Sirius had never played much Quidditch. He'd never really been that interested. He'd been on a broomstick only a handful of times, mostly in first year flying class and because flying through the hallways of Hogwarts happened to be breaking a school rule.

He realized now how much he had been missing. This – this sweeping, swooping sensation of his gut fall away through his spine and being left hundreds of miles behind him – was bloody brilliant.

A Broken Broomstick's rock anthem screamed through his ears.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, screaming on a lion, riding on a dragon's back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, fighting with a spider, living 'til I can't get back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm dying cause I like it. Gonna fly 'til I hit the free fall….

Sirius was screaming, pitch of his voice lost with the roaring of his bike between his thighs. His voice scraped his throat raw. Blood pulsed through his heart, neck, and limbs, coursing like a mighty river and this – this was what it was to be alive. This was what it was to exist, to feel every molecule of his body vibrating in the wind, feel his eyes sting with tears, feel the very breath of his lungs torn from his mouth –

The bike straddled beneath his legs juddered with pulsing energy, a steady, rippling hum that filled his head with a thousand buzzing insects. It shook and buckled beneath him like something alive and untamed. His spine was almost lying flush against the back seat, so great was the force of wind and gravity that pounded against his chest. His hands gripped the handlebars, slick with the sweat from his palms, like a dying man's last lifeline.

Around him thunder boomed and lightening sizzled in the clouds. He could feel the electricity, feel it coursing through him like the blood within his veins, charging him, standing the hair on the back of his neck on end and raising gooseflesh on his arms. His breath choked within his throat. The color of his leather jacket flapped in the wind.

Life could simply not be experienced to the fullest if death had never been defied like this.

His body was seized as if with convulsions, shoulders shaking, knuckles bleached white, eyelids pulled backward by the wind. His head was going to explode and it was going to be so bloody brilliant…. The ground charged up to meet him at an alarming pace. It greeted him with gaping jaws, teeth dripping blood, waiting for its next meal….

Sirius jerked upward on the handlebars, threw his whole body forward in a great effort to pull up – the bike sputtered, she squealed in protest, motor coughed and crackled and then – with a great shuddering shriek – scraped parallel to the ground and soared upward in a mockery of death, cowardice, and gravity.

Sirius crowed.

He was insane. His black hair whipped across his face, became tangled in the dryness of his eyes and mouth. The force of the air pressing against his chest was making it hard to breathe. Something, cold, scrabbling hands, were pressing on his windpipe, strangling him.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.

Gonna fly 'til I hit the free fall.

Somewhere inside his head he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

I'm dying cause I like it.

He wondered if this was what death felt like, this rushing presence, racing shape of doom, coming closer at an speed to rapid to think of stopping or evading.

He is coming and he's dressed in black. He's got a letter and it's for me….

The ground was rising to meet him, branches and trunks of trees, patches of grass, grains of dirt being thrown into sharp relief. He wondered if this blank sheet that covered his mind, impenetrable, immeasurable, was what death was like. Empty and void and nothing….

He wondered if his still-beating heart, thudding dully against his ribs like a drum before an execution, was only a distraction, a delayed reflex, if it knew there was no longer any point. Perhaps it was trying to stall the inevitable.

He was already a corpse.

He was insane. He saw the green flashes as if it had been him who'd cast them. He saw their bodies sprawled on the floor and he knew – he knew he was insane. He saw James – oh God, James – with his glasses askew. He saw Lily – Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily – with a strand of her red hair across her forehead, lying over one of her still open, green eyes –

The bike lurched and Sirius was jarred out of the strange, gripping vision, the dream that had momentarily assaulted his senses and – had to be a dream, a horrid nightmare – wasn't happening wasn't happening wake up wake up wake up –

Sirius's hands gripped the throttle and he forced the bike onward. He would not bend to her will. She was his. He refused to let her buckle and break beneath his grasp. It was the only thing he still had – the only thing as even his sanity left him, slipped between his fingers, sand through an hour glass, water down a drain, the time had run out, the hand of the watch was stuck and Sirius tried – he tried to make it start running again but his feet could not move and his race had reached the end of the course had come and the end – the end had come and life, everything – James James James – everything ceased to matter and –

He fell. He fell. He fell.

Fin