July 31st, 1976.
London has never been so beautiful and terrifying.
It's all Sirius can think as he weaves through winding streets, down crumbling pavements, up snaking alleyways, hands clenching the handles of the motorbike as rain and wind lash his face. People in trench coats under rainbow umbrellas jump as he races past; a staggering drunk throws a bottle; an indignant couple break their embrace, the woman's blond hair whipping; he who dare be so uncaring as the dead never lives long.
There's blood on his shirt, shards of Edwardian vase in his cloak, a seething grin on his face — the air smells of smoke and wet gravel.
A delirious laugh breaks the patter of the rain and the cold pain in his throat tells Sirius it's him, the disgrace, insane. Ha.
City lights blur, the rumble of the engine and the shapeless noise of the streets like fog. He streaks past a series of expensive boutiques, faceless mannequins in gaudy dresses and trousers waving their jewel-clad hands and Sirius thinks: this. This is what he's been starved of, all these years in a world spiralling mad and we Blacks must make that known, prophets to the undeserving ignorant. It's better than magic, better than sleep, better than whatever joy Walburga finds in rage or Bellatrix in pain.
He swerves to a stop next to a series of derelict flats, ragged curtains and dirty bricks galore, and down a slope to the parking lot. A bright ivory square lights his way from a nearby window, a blurry face watching with dark hair and black discs for eyes. Reluctantly, Sirius parks and turns off the ignition, slumped on the soggy leather seat, staring into the dingy darkness.
He could use a drink. More than one, if he's reckless with what money he has. A bark sounds behind him — a stray, a surprisingly sturdy thing with matted fur and hooded eyes. It inches closer, bares yellow teeth. Sirius springs off the bike, lands on four sharp-clawed paws and growls. The dog scuttles away with a whimper, slipping on the wet ground.
He transforms, wrestles off his sodden cloak, sighing all the while. A slice of flowery porcelain falls out and he crushes it underfoot, hands deep in the pockets of his robes.
"James." The eyes in the mirror are red, glaring pure silver and purer blood. He struggles to light a soggy cigarette. "James." It's no use — he throws it with a huff. "James." The lighter works though, so he sits down and watches the willowy flame. "JAMES!"
"God, wha -" a muffled voice, a vague shape moving in the dark. "Sirius? What is it?"
A raindrop falls on his chin from the ceiling and he looks up at a green wire dangling precariously, dripping dirty water.
"Merlin, where are you?" James mumbles, squinting around the empty parking lot, his hair a wild mess.
"Not far enough."
"... right." He's frowning, more Euphemia than Fleamont, glasses lopsided. "Is that a motorbike?"
Sirius grins, it stretches his mouth oddly. "Yeah," he pats the bike with pride, "the old neighbour let me have it." His son died on it, is what he doesn't mention, not wishing to diminish the late Mr. Tollow's generosity, nor send James into a panic.
"Wicked."
There's a short silence, punctuated only by the drip-drip of raindrops left behind by the storm. Sirius listens, tries to keep his mind blank but it's like holding onto water.
"Mind if I stay at yours for a while?" He knows the answer, knows James knows the answer, yet he asks anyway (see, Mother, I do have manners.)
"'Course you can, you tosser," James says immediately, already staggering out of bed and into a travelling cloak. "Where are you again?"
"Not far from the Cauldron."
"I'll meet you there, yeah?"
"Yeah."
The mirror turns reflective again. Sirius dons again his wet cloak, shakes rainwater out of his hair, loops a charmed chain around a nearby pillar and the gleaming motorbike's wheel.
The woman in the window is gone when he strolls into the street and the night — crisp, cool — the wail of sirens in the distance and a haze obscuring his path.
James stumbles into the Leaky Cauldron covered in soot and coughing ash. The barman eyes him warily but James simply grins, gaze raking the pub. Sirius is outside, leaning on the wall next to a window, a cigarette in his left and a whiskey in his right.
"Morning," he greets as he walks over. Smoke wafts between them, rough and warm. Sirius raises a brow, sardonic. Oh, I see. He looks like he hasn't slept in days, and if James's eyesight isn't getting any worse, hints of glass glimmer in the folds of his soggy clothes. Either that or Sirius has developed a proclivity for sequins over the summer. Stranger things have happened.
"Anything interesting in there?" asks Sirius, eyes on a black cat slinking across the street.
James is confused before he remembers the newspaper he grabbed. "Remember Sylvia Lloyd? Silver, bit nutty." A blurry picture shows the woman striding into a fireplace at the Atrium, wearing a large white hat and accompanied by stony faced Aurors. ' DISASTROUS!' the headline reads, 'HEAD ASTROLOGER LLOYD FAILS TO PROFILE BRISTOL KILLER.' "She's under investigation."
"Pity."
"Yeah ... matter of time till she gets the sack, Crouch won't be having more of this."
Vaguely, James remembers perpetually wide-eyed Barty from Ravenclaw. "Well, c'mon," he discards the paper and tugs Sirius inside, fishing a few sickles out of his pocket and buying him a large muffin. Sirius drops the cigarette stub in his empty glass, a fizz of steam rising from it. He eats and they prattle on about something or another, ignore a blushing waitress who stumbles when she walks by Sirius with a laden tray, tea and ale sloshing onto her glittery green heels. There's a thin cut on Sirius's cheek and it occurs too late to James to take his soaked, heavy cloak but he does so anyway and throws his significantly drier one over Sirius's shoulders.
They laugh as they leave, entering the Potters' home in the heat of emerald flames and shaking soot off their shoes. His parents are asleep but the mansion echoes their jokes as they climb upstairs, Rho's tiny shadow trailing just out of sight carrying bandages and Essence of Murtlap.
It's three in the morning, his bedroom lit by the waning gibbous moon and a single candle as Sirius tugs back his sleeves and jerks out bits of glass and china from his arms. He's gritting his jaw, pulling out far too quickly a sliver of bloody silver, placing it with the rest on a once-white-now-red towel. James busies himself with sorting out Sirius's trunk, a pile of dirty laundry gathering next to it.
"How's Regulus?" he asks after a while, studying the way Sirius stills.
"The heir of the noble house," Sirius says, nonchalant, "I'd hope he's happy."
James does not comment, tries not to feel; this has happened before, this odd night of relief, tentative hope, and inevitable anger, and he does not need the Inner Eye to warn him off of such gambles. He bites down on his inquiries, blunts his frustration by sorting Sirius's old textbooks.
"Any word from Drea?"
James nods, now rummaging through containers of potion ingredients. "She sent a few letters for you ..." A jar of long-expired ginger roots is set aside when his fingers brush against cool glass, engraved with wildflowers. "Didn't write the last couple of weeks though," he adds, picking up and holding the bottle to the light, out of Sirius's line of sight. A familiar rose gold liquid gleams inside it. Pasithea's ... he moves aside a heavy velvet robe — seven more bottles, all unopened, shine promisingly — and suddenly, James knows: there will never be such a night again. He blinks, clears his throat, surreality lapping at the edges of his mind.
It's well past four when they make for bed, Sirius sitting and fidgeting on the same mattress he's always used here. James pours the dose ascribed, stirs water into it, and wordlessly hands it to Sirius, who stares.
It's an unspoken thing, a silent resolution, but James has never been more relieved in his life than when Sirius takes the glass and drinks.
September 3rd, 1976.
The grounds are cool and quiet, silver light bathing the trees with inky shadows dripping from hanging branches. The gamekeeper's shack is darkened, dredges of smoke whirling from the chimney and life drawing momentarily into sleep, the leaves of the distant forest as still as morning dew. A solitary figure sweeps toward the Black Lake, that black cavern crawling into endless quiet, the night sky painted upon it.
Owls observe with moonlit eyes the young boy intruding the nocturne, his shadow billowing like a trailing cloak.
Sirius reaches the shore, his breath leaving him a little cool and a hint fast, the wintry air blooming into clouds of snow in his lungs. Hastily, he opens the clasp of his cloak and lets it fall on the wet grass, stepping out of his shoes onto the stony sand comprising the ground, shivering.
Spiralling across the hill are the faraway boughs of the Whomping Willow, lining the sky like a hag's hair, knotty roots reaching afar on the ground below. Sleepless eyes blink away from the sight, drinking in the pit of the lake before him — there is movement within, faint sways of shadow and soft blurs of light — as he watches, tiny ripples seep from red Betelgeuse all the way to Aldebaran and unconsciously, Sirius takes a step forward.
Toujours pur.
Without much hesitation thereafter, he edges into the water — it swirls like blue velvet. Something flits off below, a brief flash of narrowed eyes and little claws and, knowing he'll never be able to follow it, Sirius plunges into a dive — a loud splash, then abruptly, silence. The world is green and blue, familiar and foreign, clear and murky. Bubbles of air dance about him, the crescent moon in rippling threads of silver above while he swims deeper, pure in this pocket of lost time. His chest, hollow before, compresses, a tightness closing his heart, pained and desperate. Black hair streaks about his head and he twists around to rise gently on his back, blinking water from his eyes until the constellations become apparent again, breathing harshly.
It's cold, so, so cold, and might've been unbearable if not for the fact that summer has been nought but abrasive isolation, drowning in blurry anxiety and needling frustration, in London at its worst and Grimmauld Place at its best — so he lies there, eased like he never could be in any bed, the caress of the lake on his back and the air's soft contours on his face. He might have been asleep, except sleep has been known to elude him, but it's close, enough that he can pretend it's all a dream: a saturnine illusion, a dark, distant fantasy, instead of just another fucked up chimera of his Ancient and Most Noble House and perhaps —
I know you.
I know them, too.
Emptiness stretches below him, the stark lack of anything very much a presence of its own, and floating there in the midst of morose contemplation and starry night, Sirius wonders if he might simply fall, relieve the delicate balance he's in and drown, drop below and within until all there is left is blackness, no more the colour of his heart, his blood, his magic, no more the creaks and cries of labyrinthine Grimmauld, no more the eyes of his Mother or the subtle edges of his brother, just numb and boundless non-existence.
He's just not entirely sure he wants to.
So he lies there, dredging up a smile that is bitter, smug, relieved, because Merlin fuck them, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out, and he truly is — he's grazed death by the fingertips and escaped, on a dead Muggle guy's motorbike, of all things. A hoarse laugh leaves his throat and dies a quick, shaky death in the thin air. He lets his thoughts dissolve before swimming out of the lake, sopping, shuddering, water sloshing from his feet and trickling warmly from his nose.
Frigid fingers find the pack of cigarettes buried somewhere in his cloak, lighting one with the tip of his wand and inhaling the grey heat. He folds down on the ground, one arm draped across his knee while the other holds the cigarette, a blot of glowing gold at midnight's heart. His hands quiver and he doesn't know if it's because of the weather, the rage, or the blazing ecstasy but it doesn't matter because here he is, freezing and dreamless and so damn fucking free he couldn't truly care about anything.
When the moon reaches its peak above North Tower, Sirius Black disappears like a ghost, into looming Hogwarts and its hazy firelight, puddles of lake water in his wake.
James can't say how long he's been sitting there staring listlessly at the dormitory.
There is no one here but him and slumbering Peter and, at this unholiest of hours, a dreamy silence like the air is oil. Remus is in the Hospital Wing, bone-tired but well, most probably asleep but perhaps delirious on his cocktail of potions like they joke about, and in the bed near the largest window there is a discrete lack of someone that James has decided to categorise as a presence of its own, the flask of Pasithea's Concoction repeatedly calling his attention in the dark. Like a black hole.
A Black hole.
Ha.
He plops back on his bed, feet rapping once against the trunk. A crinkle of parchment complains of an unfinished essay but James hasn't written one on time since first year, so he rifles about the covers until the Marauder's Map is staring at him like some sort of judgemental enchanted object, which it might just be for all they know, and it reminds him so much of the Sorting Hat that he snorts a little too loudly for this late at night.
Two dots, one labelled Lily Evans (his heart flutters) and the other Severus Snape (it rapidly shrivels), linger in Clocktower Courtyard.
Mouth in a grimace, James leafs idly through the map until he's peering at the Willow, flicks of carefree ink from a ridiculously ornamental quill they'd all found absolutely hilarious in First Year and a familiar block of dense, coiling writing titling the tree.
He tosses it away, lies down with a huff, glasses sidling out of place. Through the lopsided lenses, he stares dimly at the canopy of his bed, wondering, wondering.
You know, at first, I thought she was dead.
Bits of glass, shining in the yellow streetlights; speckles of blood and a bitter, crooked grin.
They never mentioned her.
At some point, James falls asleep, but only for a few minutes before the dormitory door creaks open, a blurry silhouette stepping in. Bleary-eyed, he sits up, wringing hair out of his face. The figure comes near, seeming not to have noticed him, and James can't help a slight frown because it's Sirius and the idiot's been gone the whole day, only for the irritation to devolve into confusion because he is dripping wet.
"Bagged a date with the Giant Squid, eh?"
Sirius peels off his cloak, the sound of water droplets hitting the floor between them.
"Went for a swim," he answers after a beat, the corner of his mouth flicking up wryly.
"In your clothes."
He shrugs, long hair glistening in the blue light of night. James raises his brows but lets it go because this is Sirius, unpredictable in his own very predictable way and more impulsive than even himself, so he lies back down and waits for him to prepare for bed.
Only, Sirius doesn't. He just stands there, looking out of the window as distantly as the star he's named after. Pools of water have collected on the floorboards now, creeping into the edges of the bedcovers. There's a glaze to his eyes, that same one he's worn in the past two days since term began, eyes on the Slytherin table, hands twitching restlessly, twirling his wand about — stiff, volatile, silent.
I'd hope he's happy.
He deliberates for a moment, imagines Remus rolling his eyes, then the sock hits Sirius right in his silky, dishevelled hair and the boy turns, looking mildly perturbed.
"Excuse me?" He holds up the (probably smelly) sock by the tips of his fingers and sweeps it to the floor. It's a rare moment, a flicker of plummy vowels and precise elocution. James grins.
"If you wish," he sings in the same accent.
"Wanker," Sirius murmurs, turning away, but James has another sock and laughs at the look on Sirius's face. He gets up, swings an arm around him — this boy who knows him better than James knows himself — ignoring the stiff, cold cloth, and holds him for as long as the edicts of male affection could plausibly allow (which is longer than would normally be acceptable because they've known each other for half a decade, thank you) while water oozes into his shirt and Sirius's breathing grows slower.
Outside, two owls flutter in a circle, strokes of pebble grey and briny brown feathers.
"Hard to believe we're leaving next year," Sirius says. The owls tackle each other.
"Yeah," James hesitates, finding the prospect far more unfathomable than he would ever admit. "Any loose threads you think need tying?"
Sirius hums, then swiftly shakes his head. James doesn't know if he's disappointed or relieved.
"None ... 'cept maybe you and Evans."
James groans.
"Leave it be, alright? I've —"
Sirius laughs his bark-like laugh, the sound pleasantly clear in the odd, painted night.
"Never thought I'd hear you say that."
"Well," James says, only a little bit defensive, "it is our last two years here ... we hardly have time to waste."
"Aiming for the Quidditch Cup, I see ..."
They stand there for several minutes, James's arm around Sirius's shoulders, watching the darting owls without seeing them, before a throat is cleared awkwardly and they begin preparing for bed, James pouring Sirius's dose of Pasithea's and attempting to tidy the lagoon of chaos that is his bed while the boy in question changes into something dry. It's quiet when they both lie down and begin to drift off, a calm, friendly sort they've both grown to appreciate over the holidays. James is on the edge of sleep when Sirius says something unintelligible. "What?" he mumbles tiredly, turning on his side.
"I said I love you," comes the slurred reply.
"I can see why you would."
"Say it back, you wanker."
"I love you. Now go the fuck to sleep, you need it."
"Mmhmm."
Author's Note: excerpt from a Marauders era story I'll probably never write. Oh, well. Please review, it keeps me alive.