Prologue-
"When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I
Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.
-Coldplay's "Fix You"
Summer of '77
Beach on the southern tip of France
"Do you promise?" she asked. "I don't mean it in a clingy way. But just as a reassurance."
He weaved his fingers into hers and kissed the back of her hand.
"I swear."
She smiled because she trusted him. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone.
She'd do anything for Sirius Black.
And for once in his life, Sirius Black would sacrifice everything for someone aside from a Marauder.
He sent her 415 letters in one year. This was not counting the gifts which included three pieces of jewelry, two gowns, nine books, seven rare kinds of flowers, an item that, upon reflection, Remus politely told him was indeed too personal to be sent through the post, a pet monkey named Lou (a present that Remus also deemed not quite decent in the mailing world), and many other odds and ins.
Despite the strangeness of his presents, she was never ungrateful. She was never tired or troubled or bothered by the things he sent her. But she tried not to dwell either. In fact, she usually stuck with not thinking of him or his gifts or his letters at all. At this brave attempt, she found herself failing.
She tried not to think of it because she was afraid, if she did, she would learn that it had all been a dream and that there was no Sirius Black,
Naturally, she wrote him back. She missed him and she loved him. She wanted him to keep writing and sending. She wanted to hold on.
Her mind often lingered on the letters that ranged from the good ("I miss you as my hands miss the quill during the long hours I spend in between writing these letters") and the not-so-good ("You make me feel like I just threw up after eating cotton candy. Only I like it- the feeling, I mean, between the eating of the cotton candy and the throwing up").
During dull hours of studying, she found herself going back to the packages he sent that delighted her and made her laugh (the emerald and diamond necklace that would never loose its shine, the simple Muggle daisies, and the perfume that would last for days after only one squirt) or that shocked her, and made her laugh as well (the shoes that were many sizes too small, which he acknowledged in his letter but he said that he thought she'd enjoy looking at them, the candles that were hazardous due to the fact that the could never be blown out after being lighted, and the gift she'd rather not mention).
And then, of course, there was him.
He was reflected in all his letters. When reading, she saw the smirk at the corner of his lips, the muscle that would tense in his jaw, the unruly flip of his shaggy hair, his neck, the posture of his shoulder blades, the twist of his neck, his leg-muscles, his pigeon-toed feet, his stance, the lift of his chin and crease of his eyebrows. The thing was, she didn't even mean those things in a physical way, but just the way he did things. She could hear the words in the letter as though he were sitting next her, reading them.
She felt him through the countless things he sent her- an action that was so unlike him. Remus, the only one of the Marauders that knew what Sirius was doing, could never find the finger that pulled the trigger of this emotional gun. Of course, she was the trigger, but he never deciphered what brought her into the scene. After all, she was just a girl that Sirius Black happened to meet one day while James left him to spend the summer with Lily, Peter home with his mother, and Remus was eating breakfast. She was merely an accident. Their meeting was never supposed to happen.
But it did. And maybe chance was the finger on the trigger that pulled the gun.
A.N. Read the Author's Page for more about the story. If I get five reviews, I'm going to set up something special for you guys.