Sirius Black loves the rain.

As a child, whenever it started raining, he would come back to the house(because if it wasn't raining, he was always as far away as he could get) and sit in the big, empty library of the house and watch the rain come down. And he'd feel like he was home.

"Damn, it's 6:30 already," he mutters as he shrugs on a worn black jacket and grabs some spare change. He had promised to meet Remus at 7:00, and if he didn't hurry up, he'd be very late.

As he strides toward the door, he hears dripping. His footsteps halt, and though his brain tells him he needs to open up the door and get out of there, his feet take him to the window.

When he opens it, he sees sheets of rain pouring down outside. He watches, entranced, as it falls past the dripping trees and into the light of the lamp in the street.

He knows the time, but now he's not quite as concerned with it. In fact, he's considering bagging going out altogether and spending the night inside.

"I can just pretend I'm sick," he says to himself, now tracing raindrops down the window with his finger.

But then he thinks about Moony out there, waiting for him, and the smile that he'll get when he walks up; when Moony turns around and sees him and smiles without thinking. And then he'll walk over to Sirius and right after he stops in front of him, he'll look at his feet. When he looks up again his expression will be calm and merely pleasant, but that won't matter because Sirius will be grinning by that point.

And Sirius realizes that he doesn't need the pretense of a home anymore.

So he opens the door and walks out, leaving just a handprint on the window that will fade as soon as the rain stops.