Summary: "The disaffection of youth is the first malady suffered by decaying empires."
Notes: for barefootboys spring 08 prompt #13 (same as summary)
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I do own these words.
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By October it will all be over.
Even in August, Sirius will know that dropping feeling in his stomach that something irreplacable has been lost.
But today it is the first day of May and the weather tips almost on the edge of summer, and they're wandering the Muggle streets like desperate mutts. The Marauders. Determined but almost defeated. At two in the morning Pete leaves because he says he's tired, yeah right tired, and within another half an hour Remus wanders off too. He doesn't kiss Sirius, doesn't even touch him, before he leaves. They're standing outside of a bar, loitering, awkward. Sirius imagines that Remus's breath would smell of booze and cigarettes.
"I'm leaving him," Sirius says. This is the first night it's warm enough to wander without jackets but he shivers just the same.
"Yeah okay Pads," James answers. "You've only been saying that for a year."
James has a ten month old son. That, Sirius thinks, is absurd. James is a little boy. James can't keep his hair out of his eyes, even now that he bothers to try. James still sits around his house looking over Prophet headlines and catching a runaway Snitch with his left hand.
Sirius doesn't want to argue so for a long while he is silent. They don't walk anywhere, they don't move. Sometimes Sirius thinks the wizarding world is crumbling. It's too full of people like his parents, or like Regulus, people who don't know what goes on in front of them. Oh, they could have had so much, too, all of them; they don't understand, he thinks, what it means to let magic surge through you. When he transforms he feels it through his whole body. But this darkness, it will destroy magic.
He's barely 20 years old and he's lost his hope.
"You're not going to leave Remus and I can tell you why," James says.
Sirius would laugh but James is all proud of himself, all ready for his audience to be amazed. Doesn't care anymore if his audience is only Sirius and Sirius is half-drunk and dizzy and tired from no sleep and so wretched that when Remus puts his arms around him he doesn't know how to feel it anymore. James will talk to anyone.
"You're not going to leave him because every time you get drunk you start grabbing at him—even in public, mate, it's disgusting. Even when you fight we can all tell you don't mean half the things you say. You're each other's punching bags but at least you know it.
"You hold his hand at funerals. You were the only one who knew how to talk to him when his parents were killed. Fuck, if I had tried—"
He doesn't say anything more. Not for a while. The people walking by don't know about them: don't know that they are wizards, don't know that they are fighters, know only their age and even that, he thinks, is becoming less obvious by the day. When Remus goes out people call him "Sir" and he comes home and lies on the couch all evening and tells Sirius he feels old.
"You're not going to leave him," James says, "because you love him."
Sirius would argue. But he's tired and it's late. James sees he won't answer and says, "Yeah okay Pads, let's go."