All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Summer 1976, Part One ( The Potters )

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone

It’s not warm when she’s away

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone

And she’s always gone too long

Anytime she goes away

 

The Potters’ house was lovely. Sirius had his own room now, wallpapered with posters of quidditch teams and rock stars and pages torn out of muggle magazines. He had a shelf for his records, and a stand for his broom, and a chest for his clothes. He woke in the morning to the smell of breakfast wafting up the stairs and ate in the kitchen with James. He was allowed to go into town if he wished, and Mr. Potter even gave him money for the muggle cinema. He could fly anywhere on the grounds, he could read any books that he wanted, and he could blast his records at top volume in his room, or James’s, or the living room. For the first time in his life, he was free to do absolutely anything that he wished.

And he was miserable.

Remus hadn’t said a single word to him since the night of that awful full moon. He sat in a separate car from the rest of the marauders on the trip back to London and didn’t stick around to say goodbye; Sirius searched for him when they arrived at the station, but he’d already disappeared.

If he were a better person, Sirius might have accepted it. He might have acknowledged that it was possible that Remus would never forgive him, and that he didn’t have to, because forgiveness was not something that Sirius was owed. He might have accepted that he had broken his friend’s trust, and that apologising might not ever be enough to rebuild it, and that if Remus never wanted to talk to him again, then that was his choice to make. A better person might have resolved to move on, to focus his efforts on never, ever causing such gut-wrenching harm again, on preventing himself from hurting Remus any further rather than fixating on atonement.

But Sirius was not a better person. He was a teenager, and he was selfish, and he was angry, and he was scared. He didn’t know how to go on living with himself if Remus couldn’t forgive him—sometimes he thought he’d stop breathing if Moony never talked to him again.

He needed Remus to tell him that he could still be a good person. He needed Remus to take this, the worst parts of him, to examine them raw, unfiltered, and tell Sirius that he was not yet lost. That he was still something that could be salvaged. It was something that only Moony could do, because Moony was the only one who really understood him—the darkest parts of him.

Or maybe Sirius was just being dramatic. Either way, all he wanted to do was mope.

James wouldn’t let him, of course. He dragged Sirius out of bed, into the summer sunshine, where they’d race around the house on their broomsticks or see who could climb higher in the old oak tree or go swimming in the pond. It was harder to stay gloomy with the sun beating down on his face, bright behind his eyelids, although sometimes Sirius would still look at his friend’s smile and feel crushed by the weight of a love that he knew he didn’t deserve.

James’s parents, of course, didn’t realise that there was anything wrong, and Sirius did his best to keep it that way. He didn’t want Mr. and Mrs. Potter to think he was ungrateful, or unhappy—not when they’d gone above and beyond to make him feel at home.