The morning of May 27th dawned cold in London. It was also alight with beauty – rays of gold and red streaking boldly across the sky, painting it with their bright love for everything; gentler hues of violet, ice blue, creamy pink woven in delicate strands along clouds strategically spotting the sky. A man, sweeping the pavement before his cafe as he prepared for the day, shielded his eyes and watched with a smile on his face that mimicked the complex yet absurdly simple picture before him; a woman, rushing to her office to finish work on the day of her deadline snapped a hasty image of the reflections in the row of tall, glassy buildings, ready to rediscover this wonder later; a mother and a new born took a momentary pause to inhale the sweetness of the new day, identical eyes fuzzed over as they tried to take it all, before the baby's cries shattered the calm.
In the park outside of Grimmauld Place, Sirius hugged his thin legs to his chest and waited. He was not meant to be outside – he had been forbidden from roaming these streets by Dumbledore. But how could he resist this? It was a welcome, a perfect greeting, from someplace that he needed a desperate connection to. He didn't feel the chill biting at his numb frame; he didn't notice the city become alive around him – parents, children, employers and employees rushing near him, surreptitiously avoiding the strange, haunted man on the park bench – and he wasn't aware even of the melted, golden sun becoming free of its horizon and taking off into the sky – banishing the fantastic colours as it did so. He didn't really think of anything – except what was not there.
When the city had calmed slightly – adults having gone to work and children to school – he roused from his daze, noted the hour and headed across the street to 'home'. How ironic that after wishing for so long to be rid of that place, and being so overjoyed at having received his wish, that he should be stuck there.
They were waiting. He supposed he was lucky that no one had come to retrieve him – many must have wanted to. But they hadn't – Remus' doing, he supposed. Not that Remus seemed particularly pleased at Sirius disobeying Dumbledore's direct orders, either.
'Where have you been?' Molly started her voice a quavering fury. It was a dummy question, he knew, because he had been perfectly visible from most the street facing windows in the house. And when they had begun to look for him – calmly at first and then more frantically as he refused to appear – someone would have noticed the eye of the storm outside, the circle of still around him. Perhaps they just wanted to see whether he would lie.
'Outside. On the park bench.' Sirius wished he could talk fluently, easily; make them understand or convince them that they didn't need to know.
'How could you, Sirius?' Hermione burst out. Sirius was surprised – he was not sure if it was in a pleasant way or not, simply surprised. He had never thought that Hermione had it in her to be so judging. She had always been a peace-maker. Of course, the occasional spat with Ron, or Harry, or Ginny didn't count, because they had a valid reason for the argument. He waited for her to put forward her valid reason. 'You can't be seen! All the muggles know what you look like, all the wizards know what you look like; that's everyone! And if you're seen here it'll be a short matter of time until the Death Eaters know your rough location, figure out you used to live here and start watching the house! We could lose the entire headquarters, valuable spies at the ministry, just because you went outside!' Ah, there was her valid reason – his leaving the house for a few hours jeopardised their whole mission.
He couldn't defend himself, not really. He had gone outside because he couldn't not go outside. He had to – simple as. They would not understand that though – calling it selfishness rather than obligation.
'Lunch time.' Molly said it quietly. Sirius knew their tactics. They weren't going to get annoyed at him, yelling and screaming and threatening. They were simply disappointed. Sad and regretful and ashamed. Clever, but pointless; Sirius would go out every year for the rest of his life to watch the sunset.
They ate in silence, every slow second meant to dig into his aching heart and wear him down to regret and apologies. They didn't; they only gave him gratefulness that he didn't have to pretend cheeriness.
The food tasted bland and grim on his heavy tongue; or maybe he just didn't pay enough attention to notice it. That day, he wasn't there.
It was only when Molly planted a stunning three layer chocolate cake, with sauce running thickly all over it, butter icing fluffing up the middle of each layer perfectly and tiny curls of melt-in-the-mouth, Honeydukes' finest chocolate adorning it, that Sirius sat up. He had not seen a cake to rival it in nearly 19 years. He had not seen a cake to rival it since James' 17th birthday.
The word was suddenly out in the open expanses of his overworked mind – James, James, JAMES! It screamed at him all over, his heart stopped beating for a second and then raced on. At last, his topic all day was able to be thought of. Having broken free of the barriers in Sirius' mind, memories of James overwhelmed him. 10 too fast years raced by in a flash. Imprints of his arm brushing against Sirius, his shoulder bumping his playfully, his laughter etching its way into Sirius' mind came to light again. And Sirius' heart began to bleed all over again.
'What's wrong, Sirius?' The too painful, too realistic, to delightful imaginings halted dramatically as Harry brought him back to the present.
Ah, Harry. Sirius sometimes wondered whether God had it in for everyone, or just him; whether He was twisted in himself, or just in his sick sense of humour. Why else would he give Sirius a godson who symbolised everything he had lost? Why else would he have made Harry, the boy who he was meant to love as his own child, grow with a face that would never allow Sirius to love him for himself? It was a cruel joke, Sirius had often thought, to play on the poor boy that had so few people who loved him in his life – giving him the dysfunctional Godfather who didn't want to know him. Sirius loved Harry, he did, but only because it was kind of obligatory – the way you love any relative that you don't hate enough not to love. But as long as Harry thought that Sirius loved him, that was what counted.
Molly knew, he knew. Molly had seen that Sirius did not see Harry for who he was – so like his mother in personality – but idolised him as his father reborn. But Molly could not know that Sirius needed James like shadows light needed a source. Because Sirius was defined by James. He didn't know who he was, without James to tell him. It sounded stupid and pathetic, to put it like that, but he did not know how else to describe him. It wasn't like Sirius was a lost puppy with a strict master – it was that, sitting on the train to Hogwarts for the first time, James had completely turned around all his beliefs and he had taken on James' as his own. He had never told anyone that, had he not been remarkably early and so taken one of the many empty cabins, he would have been sorted into Slytherin. Had James not been the first of the new year to walk past, Sirius' colours would have been green and silver and all of history would have changed. And Sirius' new life, new attitude, had James at its centre; what would the solar system do, without the sun to orbit around?
He looked up at Harry and felt the familiar hope and pain ritual dance enticingly across his heart. A stray thought flitted through his mind on whether Molly knew that every time Sirius saw his Godson he was happy, because he thought he was James for a moment, and that when his brain caught up a second later a little more of him died. How could he love Harry as Harry deserved if just by talking to him a little more of him was killed off. Harry was like his own, personal Dementor.
'I'm...' He had intended to say "fine", originally, but found his words choked off by a half sob. He shook his head, unable to continue and aware of what felt like hundreds of eyes boring into him.
Awkwardly, Hermione reached over and rubbed his slumped arm, 'Hey, we forgive you for going out earlier, if that's what this is. I don't know how you can stand being in here day after day, and it's not like anything happened.' Sirius nearly laughed – Hermione simply couldn't understand that some people were more selfish, and complex, than they seemed – nearly, but never a chance of it.
'You want to know why I went out this morning?' He found himself saying, unexpectedly. Everyone stiffened, apart from Remus – Remus, who already knew because he felt the same. 'It's May 27th,' Sirius laughed now, hollowly and without any humour but a sick, awed amusement that anyone could not know the significance of that date. 'It's James' birthday.'
A ripple of understand passed invisibly around the group, linking him to them and making him feel more like an outsider than ever – he knew that they would never really understand. Fred had never lost George, so how would they even empathise?
'And there was this fantastic dawn, you see?' Sirius was aware that he sounded crazy, but he had to finish; had to word what was drowning him. 'Dawn was James' favourite part of the day and I knew, because of the date and the dawn, that it was a message from him. And I needed that link, because it was all I have left.' He looked round at his family, a mismatched bunch of Order members, a werewolf, a metamorphagus and some neither adults nor children, and knew they would never compete. How could anyone compete with James?
Pushing back from the table, Sirius left. He left because he knew that in a minute, fat tears would be pushing down his face and his breath would catch in a swollen throat; he left because if he stared at faces which would never get it any longer he would scream; he left because he knew that, even though people needed him here, he would take the risk of death being just eternal nothingness for the chance to see James in an afterlife, if only James would ever forgive him for destroying that which he had and James had lost. But mainly, he left because this was James' day, and the others were just detracting from the glowing brilliance of it – it was the best day of the year; the day James had entered the world.