Part 1/2: 31.10.1981
That night he takes me as if it was the last time.
He is standing behind my door fierce, tense, his eyes bright, and doesn't look like himself. The traces on his smooth face look like traces of crying, but they cannot be, because Sirius never cries. He has always been open laughter and quicksilver, my Sirius. He glues the pages of my books together with lockitium spells when he wants to get me away from them. He hides Steamy Greeting Cards in my teapot, and when the water boils, they write such messages on the air that any visitors will blush and choke on their biscuits. Sirius, whom I kissed one winter day under a tree heavy with snow near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and who has ever since been by my side shadow-like, even though he is not a shadow but made of pure light.
But that night I see immediately everything isn't right. Lately there have been many days and nights when everything hasn't been right. The ring of darkness is tightening around us and squeezing us. We try to live like we should, as if we were happy to be in our early twenties, to have each other and our friends. But our bodies have turned hesitant and angry, they entwine warily, hastily, suspiciously. Fear flows in through doorways and windows as wizards disappear, die and are revealed as allies of the Dark. Even the most familiar face can suddenly be strange and scary. We sleep in each other's arms like in a burning hut in the middle of snow: warm for a while still, but secretly waiting for the moment when we realise our lives are in a danger and there is no way out.
It has been weeks since he has been here. I want to ask where he has been and what is not right. However, he doesn't leave room for questions. He sweeps inside past me and I have hardly closed the door, when he pushes me violently against the wall, presses his slim body tightly to mine. He grabs my hair and exposes my throat, tasting it hungrily, furiously. His lips are shaping my name on my skin, Remus, Remus, and his touch burns as it melts over me. I'm trying to speak questions into the air between us, but they shrivel up, fall apart and fade away as my body responds to his closeness, because he has been away for so long, for too long.
He tastes of salt and wind, and the dark stubble on his chin is coarse below my tongue. Tangled and knotted around each other we somehow stumble our way into the bedroom, his hands all over and mine more so, our hips whipping and beating each other. Less wouldn't be enough, because we don't know if there will be a next time; everything has to be ferocious and memorable. He tears my shirt open and my mind registers fleetingly a button rolling under the bookshelf, but it is soon forgotten. I'm too busy opening his wide leather belt and moving my hand further down, closing my touch around him and admiring the desire on his face as he whimpers with pleasure. And then I sense only the arc of his body and the rhythm of his breath, the blood that flows in us alive, demanding, and the marks we leave on each other's skin.
We make love as if it was the only thing keeping the world together, and as he moves deep inside me, his face is alien again, because Sirius doesn't cry.
I'm sheltered by the slowly descending sleep, but through it I feel his skin drawing from mine as he moves away. I crack my lids slightly open and see him putting on dark velvet trousers and a T-shirt, the muggle clothing he wears under his cloak. I reach my weary hand towards him and stroke the small of his back, his buttocks. He turns around with a smile on his face, but his eyes are not smiling. I try to keep my tone playful, although an unpleasant and suffocating feeling is slowly creeping inside me.
"Padfoot... this time of the night? It's bedtime for good puppies."
He grins, but there is something jagged and painful in the corners of his mouth, in the stir of his eyebrows, as he replies:
"What about naughty ones?"
I slip my fingers through his and stroke the back of his hand with my thumb, saying quietly:
"You should sleep. You need it."
He turns his head and his hair falls in a curtain so for a moment I cannot see his face. Then he looks at me with bright eyes.
"Remus, I'm sorry. I have to go."
"Where?"
"Can't tell you. But I'll come back."
His eyes are too bright, and the flicker on his face is dark and heavy. He moves as if to kiss me, but stops, restraining himself. His fingers brush my cheek quickly and he says:
"Take good care of... everything, Moony."
And then he is gone. I put my palm in the dent he has left in the bed and his warmth is still radiating from it into my fingertips. I'm expecting to hear the sound of a motorbike engine starting, but it is quiet outside. I don't have much time to wonder why he didn't come by his bike, before I fall asleep again.
A clatter behind the window wakes me. The shadow of a bird is floating in the night, its wings beating an alarmed rhythm. Suddenly the darkness is strangling me coldly, spilling into my tired body and forcing it up. I let the owl in and it drops a roll of parchment on the bed. I open it, my fingers stiff with sleep. There is only one line scribbled on the parchment:
Remus, leave immediately. You know where to go. Be prepared for the worst.
Dumbledore
And the cold in my body concentrates into one thought, sharp and icy, that is cutting me up inside.
James and Lily.
And then:
if James and Lily, then also...
Sirius.
No one else knew where they were.
I want to be wrong, I want Dumbledore to tell me that no one has died, or that someone else has died, and no one is a traitor, a spy. But my body is heavy with fear and I know my wish is too much, because why should I be spared, and my friends, when everything is falling apart? Why should we have that privilege, if it is taken away daily from so many others, with no reason, no justification? The realisation is suddenly there clear and irrevocable and it is twisting me asunder so hard I cannot stand up for a moment.
Sirius is somewhere out there, my taste in his mouth, red marks from my nails on his skin, and there are long black hairs of his on my pillow. But he has gone to the Dark Lord and he is not coming back.
Ever.
I'm sitting on the edge of the bed paralysed, and there is no patronus or felicitus strong enough, not any spell strong enough to take this sharp-edged block of ice away from inside of me, they have all disappeared along with him. Slowly I force myself to move. I get dressed. I move one foot ahead of the other one. I step into the night. I take a step. I take another step.
On every step a small piece of the world crumbles away, and nothing is right anymore.