Eloquence

Eloquence

There was so much rain that winter.

It fell like so many nothings, vanishing into the ground or trickling down the stone walls of Hogwarts. It drummed against the windows.

I sat in the window seat, staring out on the grounds, turning a gold galleon in my fingers. It felt hard and cool on my skin, over my knuckles, under my fingertips.

The grounds were empty and green-grey, hazy in the falling rain. Down by the trees, my mind saw a great black dog, shaggy and dripping with the rain, emerge to gaze up at my window, tail wagging, body small and faraway below.

My eyes saw falling rain.

Blinking slowly, I turned my head. By the door, my mind saw a man with messy black hair and slightly hollow cheeks, leaning against the doorframe and grinning easily at me, a hand shoved carelessly in a pocket and a pair of dark eyes sparkling in the thin light.

The rain pattering on the window called me back, and I blinked slowly again, exhaling a half-held breath.

The doorway was empty.

There was a room high in the house of Black. It had a small window, shafts of weak light connecting the dusty floorboards to the grey sky outside. I only went there the once.

It was raining then, too. Early morning, and it was raining, and I was sat on the windowsill.

I gazed out at the street below, and wondered about things. I wondered about my life. Teenagers are said to be highly preoccupied with things like self-pity, ponderings of the universe, and the meaning of our existence. I guess, sometimes, we are. But then, isn't everybody?

I just wondered what it would be like, if my parents were still alive.

I wondered if I'd be walking downstairs to breakfast right now, seeing my mum standing by the window gazing at the rain, before she'd hear me walk in, and turn to me, a smile appearing on her face. If she'd sit me down as my dad walked in the room, my tall, proud dad with the messy hair just like mine, kissing my mum good morning and ruffling my hair until it was worse than his- if it would be an ongoing joke between us, who's hair was messier.

If they'd ask me what I wanted to do today, and how my homework was going.

I wondered if my dad would have played quidditch with me; proven to the world my skill was hereditary.

I didn't even feel the tears on my cheeks. I just noticed that I couldn't see the door properly, when I turned to look at it at the quiet knock.

I coughed, turning back to the window, panes cooling the air by my cheek.

Sirius came through the door, closing it quietly behind him.

"It's early," he said softly.

I just nodded, mutely. The tears felt suddenly obvious, like burns or paint or some other equally evident mark on my face. I wanted to brush them away, but then Sirius definitely would have noticed.

He walked over to me. I could hear the floorboards creak under him, and I blinked, but the tears hadn't gone away yet. The street outside was blurry, a haze through the rain and my tears for the parents I'd never known.

Sirius was close then. He reached out to ruffle my hair slightly, and... I wanted it to be my father.

No, I wanted it to be Sirius, but to know that my father was in the next room, or waiting downstairs, I wanted to know he and my mum were there and alive, but they weren't, and they never would be, they'd never ask me how my day had been or if I wanted to go to a quidditch match with them that weekend or if I was worried about my exams.

I couldn't help it. The tears came too quickly, I couldn't blink them away.

They rolled down my cheeks like abandoned children, dripping into my shirt and making my face feel hot and cold.

Sirius gazed down on me, and I couldn't look at his face. I twisted round, and buried my face in his shirt, wrapping my arms around his hips and shuddering against him. It was too much. His clothes felt soft and grainy against my cheeks. His body seemed strong and solid, like a force that wouldn't give way under my emotion.

He stroked my hair and back gently as I sobbed into him, and I don't even know how long we stayed like that. It felt like a long time.

Finally, he felt my body stop shaking, and knelt slowly, letting my arms brush up his back until they rested on his shoulders as he dropped within my embrace.

"It happens to us all, Harry," he said. His eyes were dark, and the bright sparkle was gone, replaced by a soft grey glow from the thin daylight behind me.

In that moment, everything became still. I saw every detail of the man crouched before me: the few strands of grey in his black hair, and the way it fell recklessly about his face; the thinness of his fingers as they reached out to smooth my hair back; the lines around his mouth and eyes, lines from the laughter of better, younger days, lines of harsh difficulty from dark times; the way his eyes told me he'd come close enough to death to know it, to understand it, but not to hate it any less.

I knew, then, that Sirius knew, but refused to know, that he would die. He knew it the way even a child sees summer, in all its brightness, and knows it will become autumn, and from then to winter- but does not accept the knowledge of summer's happy sunshine fading away. Sirius knew his time would not be as long as it should be, that his choices in life had led him here and even if he could, he did not regret those decisions; the things he believed in, the things he fought for. But I knew he did not want to die, in the same way I did not want to miss out on the simple experience of the everyday lives of those I cared about.

Sirius made time, from that which he had left, for the people who could not imagine living without him.

He shook his head ever so slightly, tilted to one side as he gazed at me. I could not decipher his message.

I needed him. He was all I had left, I knew. My final link to what should have been. I couldn't let him go.

I leaned forwards, listening to the drumming of the rain on the window, hearing it as if from another world, it seemed so far away.

I lowered my eyes, but did not close them as I moved forward farther.

And then, there he was.

Sirius. A warmth; a welcoming, comforting presence against my mouth.

His lips moved gently against mine, and I wondered if he could taste my tears as I could. And if he could taste me as I could taste him.

It was so gentle, and so brief. It was eloquence to me. One moment in time, flowing by and dripping through my fingers like the rain outside.

A single kiss from a dying man, whose death lay yet unknown, and so unexpected to everyone including him, off in a future I did not want to think about. A single kiss from the person I loved the most- 'the person I would do anything to save'.

But my kiss didn't save him.

As we let our lips lose their contact, he reached into his pocket, and drew out a single gold coin. He gazed down at it thoughtfully for a moment, making it dance over his fingers.

"If every moment that had any real meaning cost a galleon, Harry..." He didn't finish his sentence.

I've never known how that saying ends. I don't think it was even a saying. Just something a man told his godson one time.

I looked down at the gold coin in my fingers. It's weight felt like a lie, but there was nothing else to hold onto right then.

"Sirius." The empty room seemed to whisper the name back to me as I felt my hand go suddenly tight in a fist around the galleon.

My eyes hurt, eyelids closing slowly, opening slowly. Everything seemed to move in slow motion that day.

I cried for the emptiness inside me, for the pain that wouldn't go away, not even after years and growth and maturity; I cried for all the times my parents weren't there to ask about my day, all the times when someone had said, "You're parents would be so proud of you, Harry," but they hadn't been there to be proud; for all the hours I'd spent alone in my dorm, staring at photographs of my father; for the strength and recklessness and reliability of my godfather, who'd gone and would never come back.

I cried for the anger I couldn't even bring myself to feel, for the heaviness that dragged at me every time I lost the energy to fight it and tie it down inside me.

I wondered what it would have been like, if I weren't Harry Potter.

The rain drummed quietly against the window.