Author's note- I know, I really need to write Summer '96 and The Next Great Adventure, but I've had too much going on and too much writer's block to continue them at the moment. I doubt there are very many people left reading those anyway since I haven't updated in ages. Sorry about that, as always. I do fully intend to finish them though. And here is something a little different for me…. I think I'd like to call it the one useful thing I ever did in chemistry class. Hope you like, but whether you do or don't, please review.
Dark Light
An angel. Just like an angel. If there was only one definition for Heaven on Earth, he would've been it. You couldn't always see it, of course. Most of the time there was nothing too amazing about him at all. He was attractive. He was talented. He was funny. But it was the moments in between, the moments when he didn't know he was any of these things, that he was beyond anything else, just like an angel.
Is it possible to know someone and never really know them? Can you be so close to a person and at the same time so inexplicably far away? Sirius Black had always seemed transparent; a person so open and so outgoing that he couldn't possibly be hiding a thing. It had infuriated me even more than the way his good looks and extraordinary abilities attracted every girl – and several guys – at Hogwarts. I couldn't understand how someone could live his life so openly. I had always had a secret, and to see someone who seemingly hid nothing was absolutely unfathomable.
The day I really met Sirius was the day I fell in love with him. For six years I had known him only as one of my first, and best, friends. He was always there for me, in every form I took. Sirius, along with Peter and James, was my life-line.
Each of us knew that Sirius never had a wonderful relationship with his family. We had all seen him depressed, despondent, and angry to a breaking point that couldn't be fixed. He would never talk much about it, though. His boundless personality and independence incited a process of self-reparation. A few minutes after a hateful letter from home, a scathing comment, and the dog star would make himself and everyone else forget that anything was ever wrong.
That is, of course, until the night I couldn't find him in the common room. It was nearing midnight and I had not seen Sirius since dinner. Even Padfoot, with his ever-so-slightly reckless and defiant attitude, was usually back in Gryffindor Tower before nine 'o clock. Unless he was on a prank, or snogging some Hufflepuff in a broom closet, Sirius didn't tend to leave the Tower without the Marauders.
Throughout my years at Hogwarts there was always one definite way to find someone – the Marauder's Map. Surprised to see that James was already asleep, I slid the large, folded parchment out of his trunk and spread it out on the crimson covers of my bed. Whispering the words, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," I repressed a shiver at the completeness of the silence in the room. The spidery lines crept across the map in the dim light created by my wand, and my breath came softly as I began to scan for Sirius' name. But after checking and re-checking every corner, every secret passageway, it was evident that Sirius was not within the castle grounds. And there was only one other place I could think of where he'd be, although I had no idea why he'd actually be there.
Closing the map and wiping it blank, I reached once more into James' trunk and pulled out a long, flowing invisibility cloak. Glancing at the strange fabric for only a moment, I threw it around me and set off down the spiral staircase to the common room below.
The grounds were quiet, disturbed only by the occasional breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees of the Forbidden Forest. The air was brisk and smelled clean – a fresh scent after a spring rainstorm. I approached the one place I would've loved to avoid more than the Slytherin common room, guided by the light of the crescent moon in the night sky. Pressing the knot on the trunk of the Whomping Willow, I slid down the passageway and began the path toward the Shrieking Shack.
When I at last stepped through the tattered hole into the dust-clogged house, I immediately turned down the hall toward the stairs. If Sirius was in the shack he'd be on the second level; the first was littered with broken furniture and demolished objects, reminders that I pointedly attempted to ignore.
The stairs made no noise as I ascended, but the bedroom door I pushed open at the end of the hall squeaked horribly. Sirius jumped up from his position on the bed and spun around, squinting in the darkness.
"Who's there?" he said loudly, shattering the quiet.
Realizing that I hadn't taken off the invisibility cloak, I hurriedly apologized and removed it.
Sirius sighed with relief. "Geez, Moony, for a minute there I thought this place really was haunted."
"Sorry," I repeated. He made no further comment, so I moved around the bed to sit beside him. I watched him as he stared straight ahead, gazing through a large crack in the boarded up window. It was dark in the room, but a slice of Sirius' young face was illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through the crack.
"Sirius?" I asked tentatively.
"Hmm?"
"Why are you here?"
He didn't answer for a moment and turned to look at me. It was then that I saw something on Sirius' face I had never seen there before. His gaze was almost desperate. There was something in his eyes that just didn't fit with his personality at all. It was fear. He hesitated, sighed, then spoke. "Regulus is a Death Eater," he half-whispered.
I could feel my eyes go wide with shock. "Oh, but Sirius," I began, not believing what I had just heard, "how can you – well, how…?"
"Can I know?" Sirius finished. "The little git was kind enough to tell me."
"But he had to be lying! He'd too young, Voldemort wouldn't – "
"He wasn't lying," Sirius interrupted through gritted teeth. "Blacks may be many things, but we're not liars."
"But why would he – "
"Why wouldn't he? He does what my mother says, what the family says."
Not knowing what else to say, I murmured quietly, "Sirius, I-I'm sorry."
"I sort of expected it," he breathed. "Is that horrible?" He looked at me imploringly before continuing. "This war is tearing everything apart. People are changing and everything's different, and – "
"Sirius," I said firmly, grasping his shoulders with my hands, "calm down."
He paused for a minute and began more slowly. "It's just, this is our last year, Remus. This is the last year of Hogwarts. It's the last year we'll ever be sure of anything in our whole lives, the last year we'll be safe. At the end of this year we grow up. We become different people, and I'm afraid of the person I could become. Everything's different," he repeated.
"You're right," I said simply, "we will change. But Sirius, you choose who you want to be, you make your own decisions. Regulus may have had his choices made for him, but if you don't want to be the person you're afraid of, then don't."
He didn't say anything, just kept looking at me. The moonlight still on his face, emotion shining from his grey-blue eyes, he looked pure, he looked real. The Sirius I had known throughout the years had merged with something else, and I realized that the person in front of me had always hidden a part of himself so effectively that I never knew it existed. In that moment I saw Sirius Black, and he was beautiful, just like an angel.
We didn't speak for so long, and I suddenly realized that my hands were still resting on his shoulders. I made to remove them, when Sirius stopped me, abruptly raising his hands to grip my wrists. I looked at him, confused, and something strange seemed to pass across his face. He leaned in to me and caught my lips in a gentle kiss. Surprised at first, I felt myself gasp slightly before deepening the kiss, lifting my hands from Sirius' shoulders to his face – wanting air but refusing to take it. We moved apart slowly, breathing heavily, and I looked into Sirius' eyes.
"Well," he began, "that was different."
I smiled slightly. "Everything is different."
Sirius was always the most beautiful in the moments he didn't realize he was. And years after I first loved him, after I first met the person he really was, he would continue to be. At James and Lily's wedding, every time he worried about Harry…. As he fell through the imperceptible blackness of the veil, curved elegantly with mild surprise and a lingering laugh, how could he resemble anything other than an angel?