Sirius Sun

Sirius Sun

All children, except one, grow up.

It had been Remus's favourite childhood story. Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.

Like most boys, Remus had envied Pan's adventurous existence, had longed to be like that dashing, mischievous daredevil, that carefree, crowing boy. Not a boy forced to howl at the full moon, too many cares perched and pecking on his undernourished shoulders.

But unlike most boys, Remus had also envied Wendy Darling. Because Peter liked Wendy. And Remus liked Peter.

It worried him sometimes.

Peter was, after all, nothing but a storybook character.

But Remus was but a child and such worries can never quench the thirst of all children for a rich, fulfilling, challenging childhood; the drive to let imagination, play and pretend compensate an incomplete world.

In the absence of real friends, Remus befriended the unreal. Locked in a grimy, grim cellar, he soared past a coming full moon, floating and flying with the aid of a literary fairy dust. Peter Pan laughed and held his hand whilst somewhere far below, claws squealed against lichen-clad stone.

Still, it was only pretend and with every year that passed the fairy dust turned duller and duller until, one night, Remus brought the book into the darkness in a last, desperate attempt to fly free again. He stared long and hard and memorised each word, but as the moon began its cruel reign, the light went out and Peter Pan was ripped to shreds. Shreds that by morning were sprinkled with tears and crushed beneath a lonely twelve-year-old's heaving, human shape.

Then Remus came to Hogwarts, alone and dispirited, and found that fairytales, sometimes, really do come true.

Not that Peter Pettigrew was much of a Pan; he hardly even qualified as a Lost Boy sometimes. But Sirius Black, that dangerous boy his parents should have warned him about, he was the most reckless, roguish, rambunctious boy Remus had ever met. He sat on the windowsill, broomstick in hand, his eyes twinkling, hair that looked like the deepest of space come undone blowing in the evening breeze, luring Remus away from That Stupid Homework. What was it good for, anyway? Just practice, preparation, for growing up, for growing Old. Having fun was more important. Life was too short.

Remus always gave in.

They soared through the skies, they roared through the wild woods, they howled at the moon. They broke every grown-up rule.

They got drunk.

Sirius's smile shone like the sun and his laughter was like a clear, babbling brook, flowing steadily with but a few endearing hiccups along the way. Remus could have stared at him for hours. Perhaps he did.

Pet Peter and James Potter snuck off in the very wee hours of the morning but Sirius insisted on staying, trying to fall asleep on the hard floor. Shifting and turning, seeking a spot comfortable enough for drunken sleep, Sirius wound up, at long last, with an arm and a leg flung across the still, wide-awake boy beside him. They stayed that way for a long time. An uncomfortable position, but Sirius fell asleep as if resting on the very softest of feather cushions.

From the darkness of the old cellar, they arose the next morning to wobble into a world of water droplets, tiny enough to hover, minute enough to form fragile ribbons of pearls on weighted foliage. Embracing them was a silent, sometimes hooting, only once chirping, world clothed in shrouds of hazy white. Mother Earth was robed like a fairytale virgin. On that still morning, the clearing they strolled through, hand in hand, was more magical than any Wizarding Wonder of the World could ever hope to be.

It was unreal. The child Remus had thought dead and gone - ripped to pieces in a cold, dark cellar where no one had slept beside him - that child took a deep breath of cold, clear morning air and laughed like it had not done in years.

Sirius stared. The child in him that had never slept nor even dosed grinned back and soon they crowed with laughter and tussled in the high, damp grass, getting soaked to the bone with no care for any illness nor medicine that tomorrow might bring.

It was in this timeless moment, this fairytale mood, that Remus found he had a present he wished to give the panting boy sprawled next him, mud and grass and tendrils of black hair framing a face more otherworldly than ever before.

So, he gave Sirius his present. And it all went wrong.

Sirius leapt up and away while Remus drowned for a long, wretched moment in prickly, chilly, lonely, tall, tall grass. Heaving himself up from the harsh ground, Remus found an angry shadow circling, bursting forth from the fog to reveal the flushed face of a young boy puzzled by a present so fleeting it felt, already then, like a dream, an interrupted fairytale.

Demands for an explanation rushed around him, bounced back and forth, thumped the soggy grass, pushed at him, tugged his rumpled robe, whispered, shouted, growled, pleaded. What did it mean? What sort of a present was that?

Nothing. It was nothing. Just a whim. Nothing.

Sirius stopped then. Some fire in his eyes faded. His voice sunk low as he asked, once more, what was the meaning of it then? Presenting him with Nothing seemed a cruel and dumb thing to do. Was it a symbol of their friendship? Nothing? Had Remus only Nothing to give?

Beaten down by a barrage of bitter questions and accusations, Remus wasted far too much effort on staying upright to be either forthright or upfront about his true intentions. He stammered and stuttered and pleaded with his pricking, flickering eyes but to no avail. Sirius stood still as a statue, his voice grave and gravelly as it poured forth embers of red-hot emotion, rough diamonds of white-cold rejection. The mist thickened.

Sirius faded, retreated into the tree-blotched nothingness. The embers and diamonds ground to a halt. All was quiet, so very, very quiet. An owl hooted, wings thumped into the distance, the boy who stood desolate and small failed to make any sound at all as every trace of his fading friend was wiped away.

Later, in the still, mist-muffled silence, chilled to the heart and with a broken, erratic sense of passing time, Remus whispered to the watery wreaths of fairytale, funeral white that he just really, really liked them, that was all. Nothing else. Nothing.

The mist replied, in a hollow tone, that it liked him too. And then all was silent once again.

Remus made it back to Hogwarts alone that day and in that short long distance, the child inside him took its final dying breath of fairytale fog and faded into a long, grey, grownup night.

But Sirius never grew up, not really, not at heart. Not his heart. He stayed the indomitable rascal, the lost boy. For a long, long time more lost than ever before, sent to prison by a man who would one day have a hand of steel as his reward for devoted service to a Dark Lord, a sinister, hooded Hook.

But a new lost boy came, a godson. A young, bold hero.

Sirius became Father. He was growing Old.

And he hated it. Hated it till that very final moment of exhilaration when the two lost boys fought side-by-side against the Darkness. And then.

Then he slipped into the nevermore. The never, ever, Neverland.

And he would never, ever have to grow Old.

Or learn what it really meant.

That kiss.

That was his.

And only.

His.