I. Coming
Sirius is coming.
Today, he is an eight year old, confused and upset. His mother has told him about Hogwarts. And what she has told him, he does not like.
She has told him about a magnificent school, beautiful and old (just like us, Sirius), corrupted by a group of people who do not even deserve to be alive. People called Muggles.
How can someone not deserve to be alive? Why are they alive at all?
In Sirius's life, there is no God. There is no higher purpose, no reason to do what you do. There is only family obligation. That is what is important. That is why, says his mother, he lives.
The Muggles go against Sirius's family. This is why they should not live.
Sirius does not understand this.
To Sirius, the people on the street are all the same. The cold, pure-blooded woman in the cloak, who stops to nod to his mother, is the same as the beggar running after them, pleading for change.
Later, Walburga tells him that such things do not happen to pure-bloods, and he nods and looks away; not wanting to think about the man that he so easily could have helped with one of the Galleons jangling in his pocket.
"Mother," he asks, "will I like Hogwarts?
"It is not a matter of liking," she replies. At this point in her life, Walburga Black is still beautiful. It is, perhaps, a faded beauty; that of a girl who, at seventeen, could take your breath away with thick, dark hair (Sirius's hair), and piercing, silver eyes (Sirius's eyes), but it is still beauty. Sirius wonders how she went through life so beautiful.
He thinks the falling stars and the comets are beautiful. He wonders if his mother will ever plummet, spiraling down, down, down onto the ground. He wonders if she will ever skid out of existence.
He thinks the fading embers will be beautiful.
II. Burning
Sirius is burning.
In his entire life, he has never been this happy, this ecstatic, this… content. Not when he received a horse for his ninth birthday, not when he received a broom for his tenth, not when he received a Hogwarts letter for his eleventh (even freedom was not worth this much to you, Sirius)… No, this is the best birthday ever.
It began ten hours ago, and he looks back and remembers it with a contented smile.
Peter and James had woken him up, by jumping. And no, not just on his bed. No, they had been jumping on him. To be more specific, they had been jumping on his legs. And it had hurt. Like hell.
But when he had woken up, after the screaming and the yelling and the cursing of their great-great-grandmothers (he cursed often, more than he should have, enjoying the freedom of the forbidden words on his tongue), and he had seen Remus standing with a gigantic, gaudy cake and James and Peter trying to hoist themselves up off the floor, he hadn't been able to help but grin.
'Happy Birthday, Sirius!' had been written in bright green icing on top of the chocolate cake, and there had been purple and blue fireworks frosted around it. His three fellow Marauders had stood around watching him, eagerly waiting for his reaction.
"Wow," he had said finally, unable to quell his laughter at the cake's ridiculousness, "the house-elves are really good bakers."
James had laughed back and, brandishing an enormous knife, cut the cake into four sections-three of equal size and one much larger. Peter had picked up a stack of plates with orange, yellow, and red balloons-they didn't seem to be repeating colors, Sirius had noticed, and he had wondered where they could possibly have found such perfect things-and had handed them to James.
They had sprawled around the room and ate the cake greedily, not caring that they hadn't had breakfast yet. "We don't even have to go down to meals," James had explained. "The house-elves will do anything. The only words I had to say were 'picnic', 'Sirius', and 'birthday', and they gave me this." He had stood up, revealing a huge, Muggle picnic basket, and had smiled eagerly.
("Yes, I did ask about that," Remus had admitted later, when Sirius voiced his curiousity over the odd choice, "but they just said that Muggles had good ideas sometimes and asked me if I wanted another pastry.")
"We're doing whatever we want today. It's Saturday. Nothing, and no one, will stop us. Not Snivellus, not Pringle, not McGonagall-nobody," James had declared. "So, what do you want to do?"
It had turned out that Sirius wanted to spend the entire day exploring the grounds, and so they did just that.
Then, as the sun sets they lounge on the lake, tired but happy. James rolls over to Sirius and asks, unable to wait any longer, "Did you like it? It was good, wasn't it?"
"It was," Sirius agrees, and decides that he and his friends are even better than the sun.
They stay there for a long time and watch the sun disappear into the horizon, flames pooling in the lake. And then, when the stars come up, Sirius looks at himself and thinks that he will burn forever.
III. Falling
Sirius is falling.
Now there is no home. Now there is no cozy common room to laugh in or feast to go to or homework to avoid or star to lie under. Now there is only work and missions and attempting to get by on whatever they can and, above all, trying to stay alive for another Christmas that will not be happy.
Except this Christmas is happy. Or, at least, there is happy news to mask the sad (Marlene McKinnon is dead, Sirius). James and Lily are getting married. They are nineteen years old.
Somehow, this seems too young.
But never mind that now. Lily has a beautiful ring. It is made out of diamonds and rubies and never-tarnished white gold, and, according to James, it has been passed down through the generations of Potters. She is the first Muggle to ever wear it. Hopefully, she will not be the last.
"It's a lovely metaphor," Remus comments, as he and Sirius stand in the shadows of the room, watching the flock of Order members coming to congratulate the pair. A lifetime ago, Sirius would not have been in the shadows. He would have been with James and Lily, taking his happiness from theirs. He would have been far more alive than he is today.
But a lifetime is a lifetime. School is one life. War is another.
Sirius turns to Remus, and smiles wanly. "It is," he agrees. Then he says nothing, and the silence stretches between them, a seemingly unbreakable barrier.
But Remus is stronger now. He does not want it to break. Not yet. He will hold onto it with all his strength. "Sirius," he turns to his friend, blocking out the images of momentary happiness, "what happened to you? Where have you gone? I don't need a fellow watcher. Someone needs to live."
"They're not doing enough living?"
"Not your kind of living, Sirius. They're getting married. You're never going to get married. You're the wild one. But now you seem determined to fade out of existence." Remus's voice is breaking, but he is whispering. This is a party, after all.
"Maybe I don't want to be the wild one anymore. What did I ever get from being the wild one? A broken family? What happiness is there in that?" Sirius is bitter. He was never bitter before. He is not meant to be bitter. He is meant to be Sirius, the unmovable fortress. The only one unscathed by the storm.
Remus stares at him, and the despair is evident on his face. "I once thought," he says hoarsely, "that nothing could last forever. I see I was wiser then. Who would have thought that the one thing that seemed permanent would die? I thought that lights kept burning when they were already gone."
Sirius turns away. He does not want to face the end. Isn't falling supposed to be beautiful? Don't people wish on falls?
But there is no beauty in this fall.
IV. Dying
Sirius is dying.
Tonight, the rain is pouring down. Yesterday was a beautiful day. Today is November First. The first day of the end.
Crouch has decided not to give him a trial (you are irrefutably guilty, Black). Sirius says nothing. What is there to say? He is dead. It does not matter where his hell will be.
Sirius wonders why this happened. He wonders why he was so stupid. What did he not see? What could he look for?
What had there been to see?
Peter was his friend. James was his friend. Lily was his friend. Remus was his friend.
Remus will never be his friend again.
"They're going to Azkaban," James had said over breakfast and The Daily Prophet. "Those people who killed the Muggle girl. What were they called, again?"
Sirius had stabbed moodily at his sausage with a fork. Remus had looked over, worried, but had supplied the information anyway. "Death Eaters. They're called Death Eaters."
"They'll get what's coming to 'em!" Peter had crowed. "Those Dementors'll suck the life right out of 'em!"
Could the boy who had laughed at the fate of those men be the same person he had faced in those last moments on the street, the man who had hissed that the downfall of Voldemort didn't mean a thing?
Beneath the cool mask Sirius had felt the hatred gushing up, but it was not the time for it yet. "Why'd you do it, Pete? We weren't good enough for you? You needed a bigger boss?"
Peter had stared back at him, and there had been no mask on his face. The hatred, and the fury, had been plain. "What do you know, Sirius?" he had scoffed. "You, with your talk of good and evil? You know nothing!"
And with that, Peter had lunged at him, and the whole world had blown up in Sirius's face.
Sirius looks up at the ceiling of his cell, gray and dank (so unlike the ceiling of the Great Hall, so unlike the ceiling of the only home he has ever known), and wishes for the stars. He wishes for the comfort, and the promise of immortality, that they once brought him.
There are no windows in Azkaban. There is no light but the faint flickers from the magical lamps that bring no warmth, no hope, and no home.
What is the point of the light, then? He would sooner have blackness; blackness where he can shut his eyes and sleep forever.
He has become his name. Black. Black hair and black name and black heart.
He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the stars. He fails.
Sirius has lost the stars. He plummets, and now-now he has shattered.