By Oscura
Warning – slash, unrequited.
Disclaimer – I do not own or make any profit from these characters, they are the property of J. K. Rowling. The poem ("Nuits de Juin") belongs to Victor Hugo.
"L'été, lorsque le jour a fui, de fleurs couverteLa plaine verse au loin un parfum enivrant;
Les yeux fermés, l'oreille aux rumeurs entr'ouverte,
On ne dort qu'à demi d'un sommeil transparent.
Les asters sont plus purs, l'ombre paraît meilleure;
Un vague demi-jour teint le dome eternal;
Et l'aube douce et pale, en attendant son heure,
Semble toute le nuit errer au bas du ciel."
It is too hot to sleep this year; the hottest June you have ever known. The heat slips under your skin and makes you restless and hungry. At times you can't help feeling that the weather is simply reflecting your own mood, your conviction that this – this – is the culmination of everything that Hogwarts has been to you.
In the day, the heat becomes oppressive, the sun glares and blisters tender skin if you remain outside too long; the air is heavy with flies, dank with sweat, almost fetid. The NEWTs are over and all the strain, the frenzy of past weeks has abated. You should be calm, but you are not calm, you are entirely too restless, (perspiration rolls off you, you feel… uncomfortable). This long burning empty month is by way of marking time, you think. The words that come into your head are "suspended animation" – you have not stopped, but you are halted and stilled by some outside, unnamed force.
Then at night, you and Sirius lie on the dry brown grass next to the lake; then all the air is perfumed with night-scented stocks. One night you are delayed, talking to Professor McGonagall, and you see that Sirius is there already, spreadeagled on the cropped sward, arms flung out. And he is like an angel. Sirius never gets a tan, Sirius never seems to sweat, Sirius's long dark hair is flung out around him like a halo and his eyes are wide, upturned to the pale towering sky. Sirius looks brittle and white as sugar (the black robe has fallen back, revealing a swathe of pale-lit skin, his slender blue-veined arm), and in an instant you shiver, to behold him like this unconscious. He sits up jerkily (Sirius always does things quickly) and the spell breaks, his wild eyes go still when he sees you; he's wearing eyeliner, which looks – on Sirius – not silly or embarrassingly camp, but somehow whimsical and wistful.
On the grass next to Sirius there are peaches, and he hands you one, puts it carefully into your hand, lightly closing your fingers around it. (It is soft and dusky, sweet to your fingertips.) This tenderness is, you know, for the peach (Sirius knows all about bruising, it's not something he takes lightly), but of course you pretend it is you he is caring for.