No one is ever too lucid in Azkaban.
I wrote this tiny little thing slowly over the summer months, while reading just about all the Remus/Sirius fanfiction the internet can provide. As I am incapable of not writing, all this Maraudersness seeped into my head and onto my word documents in little bursts. It sounds like it MUST be all doom and gloom (being Azkaban and all), but I don't like writing pure angst.
The Swimming Star
When Sirius Black dreams in Azkaban, when he sees his life in a million little pieces, it goes like this:
First there is his mother, so beautiful, bending over him, touching his hair, and whispering, "Crucio."
A flash of James Potter grinning in Diagon Alley before they were even friends.
A flash of green light.
The imagined terror of a tattoo.
Remus Lupin, asleep in white sheets.
A baby in his hands for the first time, wailing, with James's awful hair and Lily's stunning eyes.
Tiny nose, tiny fingernails. Terrible babysitter. Lily said he did well.
Remus, holding him.
Remus Lupin.
Remus and James and Peter, casting lazy tickling hexes at the giant squid, taking piss out of Peter, imagining the fabled mermaids.
Peter and hatred and Peter and betrayal awful mad mad mad horror fury
Peter giving them all a quick smile and shifting down small, scurrying under the branches of the willow, and "don't we work well together, mates?" on James's lips.
Peter Peter kill him killed James killed Lily Harry Harry Harry who cried in his arms but finally stopped and slept then woke and smiled at Sirius like 'what are you talking about, Godfather? There is no war'.
Peter Pettigrew who killed killed murdered them all, murdered Sirius murdered himself, murdered Remus because who are they if they're not together, didn't Peter realize that none of them would shine quite like they did without the others, that it wasn't just him and his insecurities. And now Peter was with Harry, so close, so close.
He's at Hogwarts.
.
Somewhere in a mad fantasy, Sirius is caring for Harry. He's in Grimmauld Place, but it's not the burning pit he remembers. It is altered. There are drapes over the unpleasant things. Everything disgustingly expensive is gone.
And Harry, no more than five, is there, in a bedroom.
He doesn't know if Lily and James are alive but away, or if this is a little closer to reality, but somehow, somehow there was something close to justice and closer to revenge and Peter is caught and gone, and Sirius is free.
He lies in bed next to Harry, who snorts out a giggle.
Remus is there.
Remus has some stupid storybook in his hands.
"Read to meeeeee, Remus!" Sirius whines next to Harry, rolling around on top of the blankets. Harry is grinning to see an adult act like a little kid.
"Read to me! Read to me!" he chants, loud and boyish, because if Sirius did it he can probably get away with being annoying.
"The both of you!" Remus sighs in exasperation. He looks bemused and disapproving and very much in love.
.
"Did you know," one of them whispers, schoolboys again, under the covers together now, very keen on not thinking about how this looks. "Did you know," and it could've come from Remus's lips, or Sirius's. Both. "Marauder can mean 'vagabond'."
They whisper, "Vagabond," and press their fingers lightly on safe places, like arms and shoulders. Such lost boys.
Sirius can feel the tough tightness of scars under pajamas.
They've known he's a werewolf for days.
You're not allowed to feel love when you're twelve and under the covers with another schoolboy.
You can't feel love in Azkaban.
.
James is saving him. This could be anything. James spent a lot of time saving him. The Dementors rip it away.
.
He is Remus, for some uncharted time. The Dementors take the chocolate. They take all of it.
Sirius comes back and laughs.
.
There is another funny thing.
It's that he never saw Remus's reaction to any of this. Never saw the betrayal, never saw the pain. Remus could be dead, and Sirius wouldn't know it. Remus could be dead thinking that, while they hadn't been getting on perfectly, Sirius was loyal.
If Remus was dead, he never felt this betrayal.
If Remus was dead, he probably wasn't sad.
So funny, when dead is the best one can hope for.
James is not around to tell Sirius when laughter is uncalled for.
Well, James is dead.
.
It is rare, but sometimes Sirius remembers his own name. His first name. His parents could never have known what it was to name a child Sirius.
When he cannot remember his own name, Sirius can remember one thing about himself.
My name is a star.
My name is a star.
I have a friend named after a King, and another named for a Saint, and another is a founder of Rome.
My name is a star.
They call that place The Immortal City.
All roads lead to Remus.
If I can just
Find a road
So simple, right?
Stars burn and burn and burn.
Some cities never fall.
That is what he remembers.
.
Remus is saying, "I wish I were!" and laughing at him, laughing hard.
Sirius is seething. Sirius is more than that.
Sirius is barely more than eleven and, in a first attempt to explain the disappearances, has just asked if Remus is dying.
This happens a lot when a Dementor glides by.
.
When Sirius was a child at Hogwarts, he had nightmares about Supernovae. How one volatile star could end Kings and Moons and Saints.
And then some nights, he wishes he could reap that sort of destruction.
J'irai decrocher la Lune.
It is funny to still have French in Azkaban.
In the end, Sirius Black is not clever, he is lucky. It's just that he makes his own luck. He made his own luck when he looked at a group boys with stars in their eyes, and twisted his shape, twisted his body, out of loyalty to that brotherhood.
He is the dog star adrift in the waves.