A/N: Written for the Houses Competition. Thanks so much to 2D, Alixx, and CP for the betas!
House: Ravenclaw
Category: Short
Prompt: "I miss moments like this more than anything."
Word Count: 860
Their eyes meet across the darkened room, and no sparks fly between them. It stays black, heavy curtains shrouding them from the sunlight that used to stream into the room they all shared.
"What are we doing, Padfoot?" Remus murmurs from the window ledge he is perched on, and Sirius cannot tell if his voice is full of melancholy or regret. It's always hard to know with Remus.
"Living," Sirius replies, although he knows it is only half-true. They are nothing more than half-formed shadows, ghosts flitting from one person to the next.
Remus doesn't say anything, just takes a long slow drag from the harlequin cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. Ash falls from the tip, and Sirius can almost feel the familiar, poisonous taste of smoke on his tongue.
"That'll kill you, you know," he informs Remus, looking down at the scuffed red carpet. It's stained with chocolate, and potions, and memories of them. Sirius wishes he couldn't remember.
Remus laughs softly, but it sounds like broken glass. "Hypocrite." They all know that, more than any of them, Sirius smokes to die. "Do you want one?"
"I'm trying to quit," Sirius replies, but they both know it's untrue. Sirius Black has never quit anything in his life, only keeps going, and going, and going, until it all comes crashing down around him. But he is a man made of ruins, of broken glass and broken dreams, a marionette with broken strings who can't quite dance anymore, so it doesn't bother him. "James said I should, anyway."
There is that name - JamesJamesJames. A month ago, Remus would have flinched, but not now.
"Where is he?" Sirius suspects Remus already knows the answer, and he hates that he is the one most likely to know.
"Lily," he replies, and the world stills, with only the sound of two thumping heartbeats. Sirius looks down, traces his fingers over the paper-thin skin of his wrist and the veins that run blue beneath it. "I think he does love her," and with those words, the silence is split open.
Remus' mouth twists into a poor imitation of a smile around his cigarette, which is not burning as brightly as it should. It is like that for all of them in a way, dying stars leaving behind only darkness. "So then what was the point?"
Sirius doesn't have the answer.
Maybe there was never a point, never a reason, just two boys dancing on a cliff edge because they could, so why the hell wouldn't they? Maybe they were just counting scars like stars in the night sky, seeing how many they could collect before they broke. The only problem is, Sirius can't see where one scar ends and the other begins.
Now, one of Sirius' friends is kissing the red mouth of hurricane girl and not caring about the consequences, and the other is drowning in a sea of cigarette smoke and moonlight. Only Peter stands tall, watching his friends being knocked down like chess pieces - this is his victory, and Sirius knows it must be sweet.
What has become of them, four boys who met on a train and decided to conquer the world, and the girl who got caught in between them?
Loyalty is a funny thing, not quite as unbreakable as it looks.
"I miss moments like this more than anything," Remus says almost wistfully out of the silence, smoke rising from his cigarette and flickering and dancing in the air - a nicotine halo. Sirius can't quite work out what he means. Then he sighs, dark and heavy.
"Cheer up," Sirius says, too lightly for someone who's been fucking his best friend in empty classrooms and on top of the Astronomy Tower, while the one he is meant to be in love with sleeps soundly in the bed they are meant to share. "We'll be out of here soon enough."
Now, the other boy is in a different tower, pulling on a jumper while a flame-haired girl watches on and loves him, far too naive for the likes of them. What she doesn't know about towers is that they were made to fall from, and fall she will.
He almost feels pity for her, but not quite.
"That's what I'm afraid of." Remus pulls his moth-eaten cardigan around himself, and Sirius understands this time. Death has already started to settle heavily on Remus' shoulders and Sirius wonders if it is partly his fault. Even if now they are teenagers, ruined by love and lust, and the temptation of things just out of reach, he thinks that they will not always be this way. Soon they will be adults, destroyed by war and countless, inevitable funerals. At least now, breath still rattles in their lungs and their bodies can meet in a rush of promise and excitement, and we shouldn't be doing this.
They are together, and Sirius realises that he misses it too. "So do I," he replies and basks in the familiar glow that almost settles over the two of them. Then, James bursts through the door with a smile plastered to his face and Remus' cigarette flickers out.