Disclaimer: None of the characters or places referenced in this story belong to me.
Sight
Sirius Black can't see the moon. He's tried pressing himself up against the bars, he's even tried slipping between the bars in dog form, but no matter what he does, he still can't see the moon.
So he tries to count. It had been a new moon on the 27th, so the next full moon must be the 11th of November. He waits, scratching the days into the floor of his cell, until he's sure that outside these godforsaken walls, the sun is setting on the second Wednesday of his incarceration.
He sits awake that night as Padfoot in memory of the nights the four Marauders spent running around the school grounds and the surrounding area. He thinks of his friends, of Remus, who he worries about constantly; even before Halloween, when he could still check up on him, when he could see the abject poverty his friend still described as "nothing that wouldn't pass", he wasn't this worried. Because he discovers that his imagination as to what could be happening to Remus is so much worse than knowing for sure.
He thinks next of James, the leader of their group, his best friend. And he remembers James' death, and how it's Peter's fault and how he'll make the pathetic lump of a man pay when he gets out of this place. He remembers Peter from school. An idiot, and a terrible prankster (even Remus could better him at it), but loyal, possibly even to a fault. Sirius wonders if he'll ever understand why Peter did what he did.
And as the tidal wave of emotions sweep over him, he has never been so glad of his canine form, his inferior neural pathways incapable of coping with the onslaught of emotion, numbing it.
Sirius was never superstitious, but when he works out that the next full moon falls on Friday the 13th of December, he can't help but worry for Remus.
The months pass slowly, a mass of fear and sadness and hatred and a sort of pain below his throat that strikes occasionally and stops him from breathing or swallowing or anything. And he looses count.
He forgets what day it is, then which day of the cycle, then when the full moon was, then how long he's been in this rotting cell. But he never once forgets Remus.
Sirius Black can't see the moon. But that doesn't mean he doesn't worry.
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