Harry Potter Imagines

Sirius Black 》Like Tomorrow Won't Arrive

Summary: How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive? How do you write like you need it to survive? How do you write every second you're alive?

Warnings: Reader Death, whoops, big angst

A/N: I had Non-Stop from Hamilton stuck in my head and I wanted to do something with it! So here you go! Be sad!

Words: 826

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Sirius' lips brushed over your shoulder. "Come to bed," he whispered lowly, almost purring.

Your quill, which he had been listening to the scratching of all night, barely slowed at his attempts to tempt you away from it. He didn't know what you were writing or to who, if anyone. He rarely did. Usually he found that it was things he considered boring — opinions on micropolitics and letters riddled with metaphors that he couldn't always wrap his head around. Besides that, if he bothered to read everything you wrote, he'd never have time to do anything else. He couldn't remember a time, even when you were just children in Hogwarts, that you weren't spending all your free time writing. He was lucky enough you made time for him, and even that seemed to be fading these days.

"I'll come in a few more minutes," you promised, repeating your sentiments from a thousand nights prior. "I'm almost finished."

He let out a small sigh, shaking his head exasperatedly. "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" he asked.

You laughed lightly. "When it comes to things like this, you never know how much sand is left in the hourglass," you joked.

It was only two weeks later that he discovered how right you had been. How were either of you to know how little time you had left?

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Sirius sat at the table at 12 Grimmauld Place, staring at the wall. He hated this house, his first cage and his last. What was the difference between this and Azkaban? What was the point of having escaped? Either way he was left by himself with only his worst memories to keep him company, and the knowledge that Peter Pettigrew was still alive, working for Voldemort once again, trying to kill all the people he loved?

All the people that were left.

He didn't look away when he heard the front door open. He didn't even look away when he heard Remus call his name. Of course Sirius was here — where could he possibly go?

He finally shifted his gaze when Remus stopped in the dining room's doorway, shifting awkwardly on his feet, carrying a rather large box.

"What do you have there?" asked Sirius.

The corner of Remus' mouth twitched, not entirely happily. "When it was all over and everyone was gone, I started collecting things. Pictures of them, of all of you, you know; wands; pocket-watches..." the man held the box slightly higher, "and Y/N, she... well, she wrote quite a lot, didn't she? It took me a long time to find all of this, and I'm sure it's only the tip of the iceberg, but it's still thousands of pages. I haven't read all of it." He took a few careful steps forward and sat the box on the long table, directly in front of Sirius. "But I figured you'd like to."

Sirius didn't touch the box until Remus had left, but he did indeed find it filled to the brim with perhaps more pages of parchment than he'd ever read in his life. There were other things in there, too — photographs and pressed flowers, a necklace you wore every day and the ring he'd given you when you were thirteen, promising to marry you one day. You'd laughed, but he never changed his mind. He always thought that someday he'd make you his wife.

But 'someday' never came.

He began to read what Remus had given him. Sometimes it was as boring as he remembered — five strongly-worded pages on troll rights weren't exactly his idea of leisure reading, but it didn't stop him from consuming every word. It was the closest he had to your voice.

After a while, it would always become too much and he'd have to stop. His eyes would hurt and the words would run together, or he'd find himself crying as he read stories of your everyday life that you'd written to your family. Stories of you, stories that reminded him of exactly who you were — devastatingly beautiful inside and out. He would, however, always come back to the writings, needing more of you.

What hurt the most was reading the things you'd written about him. There were letters from the summers of your childhood, recounting to Lily your visits with him in vivid detail, or your longing when you hadn't seen him soon enough; and, worse yet, there were half-written love letters from your teenage years, attempts to confess your feelings that never got past the first few sentences. They were funny and awkward and cut him like a knife.

He spent hours upon hours drinking in your writings — the beautiful, the cryptic, the boring — holding on to the last bits of you he had. He kept you alive by learning more about you, thanking God for every word.

You really did write like you were running out of time.