Sirius led Remus across the grounds under cover of James's Cloak, the stars and crescent moon of the midnight sky glowing overhead. "Would you like to tell me where we're going?" Remus asked.

"I told you," Sirius replied; "we're going on our second-ever date. To celebrate us getting our Apparating licenses and everything."

"Are we going on date in Hagrid's hut?" Remus wondered, nodding at the hut's silhouette up ahead.

"Yeah, I asked Hagrid to put out tea for us."

"Oh, Merlin." Remus wrinkled his nose. "Anything but Hagrid's tea."

Sirius laughed. "Come on." He led Remus around the hut and towards a shack behind it, throwing its door open with a simple wave of his wand.

Remus widened his eyes, impressed. "Nonverbal magic. Flitwick would be proud."

"It's all he's been teaching us for the past month," Sirius replied. "It would be a shame not to use it." He pulled the Cloak off the two of them and motioned for Remus to wait outside as he ducked into the shack and rolled out a shiny black motorbike with a similarly-colored sidecar hitched to the left of it.

"You brought that thing to school with you?"

Sirius grinned. "I brought it here after the Easter holidays," he explained. "Used a Shrinking Charm to fit it in my suitcase and convinced Hagrid to let me keep it behind his hut. I just have to pick daisies for his Knarls on occasion." He tapped the bike's sidecar with his heel. "But look at this, Moony! I bought it off a trader in Hogsmeade with some of the money I got from my uncle."

Remus frowned a little, his hands in his pockets. "We never really talked about that," he said. "Your uncle, I mean. I know you liked him."

Sirius made a noise deep in his throat. "I did, but I hadn't heard from him in years. It doesn't feel too different now."

He clearly didn't want to linger on the subject, so instead Remus asked, "Why did you want to add a sidecar to your bike?"

"For you, of course."

"I can just sit behind you."

"Not this time." Sirius hopped onto the bike and kicked it to life, raising his eyebrows expectantly. "Come on. We're going for a ride."

"Where?" Remus asked.

"The sky."

Sighing, Remus stepped into the sidecar and folded himself up inside of it as best he could. It certainly wasn't the most comfortable seating in the world. The car shook violently beneath him as the bike's engine roared and sputtered.

"Someone's going to hear this thing."

"I don't care. Hagrid won't sell me out." Sirius leaned down over the handlebars and urged his bike forward, taking it around Hagrid's hut and picking up as much speed as possible before yanking it up into the air. Remus gripped the edges of the sidecar as it angled sharply upwards, the both of them climbing quickly through the sky. It was almost like flying on a broom, only Remus had no control over where he was going. He had to trust Sirius not to get them into a collision with a tree, which was not necessarily the easiest thing to do.

"Look at the castle, Moony," Sirius said over the growl of the engine once they levelled out about a hundred yards above the ground. The towers and turrets of Hogwarts Castle cast sharp black shadows against the glittering night sky, the glow of fires in its windows creating little flickers of orange light that almost resembled stars themselves. Remus had never seen the castle from up so high before.

"It's beautiful, Pads," he said.

"Come on." Sirius revved up his engine and took Remus on an unexpectedly stomach-turning ride over the castle, swerving and diving at breakneck speed. Remus held on as tightly as he could while Sirius swooped down, pulling up only a second before he would have faced a nasty collision with the Astronomy Tower. He spun his bike in dizzying circles, his long hair streaming out in all directions as he did, and raised his arms to the heavens as if reaching for stars.

"Merlin's beard," Remus said when Sirius finally finished with his maneuvers, leaving the bike hovering in midair. He felt more than a little nauseous. "I wasn't thinking you'd do that."

"Well, what would a second date be without a little bit of death-defying fun?"

Remus shook his head bewilderedly. "You're quite something, you know."

"I know." Sirius leaned to the side then and grabbed fiercely at the front of Remus's shirt, pulling him up and towards him. Off-balance, Remus found his footing in the wobbling sidecar and gripped Sirius's arms, feeling the tightening of his muscles as the two of them held each other in the middle of the sky.

Sirius brushed back Remus's wind-tossed hair and kissed him, biting down on his lip in a way that made Remus moan. Remus dug his hands into the fabric of Sirius's clothes and kissed him back until Sirius was moaning too.

And as they made out like that beneath the stars, the entire world dropping out beneath them like it had never been there at all, Remus came to realize exactly why Sirius had installed the sidecar.