Slow Burn

I open the door to our flat and am slightly alarmed to find it dark – you should be home by now. I don’t want to startle you if you are sleeping, though, so I don’t call for you yet. Instead, I seal the door behind me and walk through the flat on tiptoes, searching for you.

I find you in the living room, sitting on the floor in front of the fire – your legs are pulled up to your chest, your arms wrapped around them; your shoes are still on, your Gryffindor sweater and silken black hair are rumpled. You look up at me from behind your glasses as I enter the room.

“You’re home,” you say blankly, looking at me but not seeing me.

“It’s late, I know,” I say softly, pulling off my long cloak and draping it across the arm of the sofa. “You look tired.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” you reply out of habit, and turn your face back to the fire.

I look at you – the slump of your shoulders, the narrowness of your body, for you have lost weight again – and I listen to your hollow voice, and I am concerned. More than concerned – I am afraid for you.

“Harry?” I ask tentatively. “Are you alright?”

You don’t answer, but I can sense that you’re not just ignoring me. You need something, some measure of comfort, but you don’t know how to ask for it. You never ask for anything, even what you need, but I still know. So I slowly and softly sit down beside you, mimicking your posture with ease even in my forty-year-old body. Now our bodies are barely touching at all, yet the nearness of you is warmer and deadlier than the fire before us.

“Bill,” you say finally, still staring into the fire. “We lost Bill Weasley today. In an ambush. He took out two of them, but the third Death Eater AK’ed him before he could—”

You stop; your voice breaks. The Weasleys are your family, and to lose Bill, who had only just begun to spy for us – to lose Bill is hard, for the family and for our side.

“Oh, Harry,” I whisper, placing one of my hands on your shoulder. My hands are too large for your thin shoulders. You carry enough on them already without my hands to weigh you down. But I touch you anyway, as if to steady you, or draw you into my embrace.

“Ron and Charlie took it hard. Molly, too, especially after Arthur—” But you stop when your voice breaks again at the too-raw memory of Arthur Weasley’s death. After a moment you are able to continue, “I don’t think the twins know yet, though.”

“Harry…” I whisper again, dumbly. There are no more words of comfort or hope or encouragement – those words were all gone years ago. All I can say is this one word, your name.

“Sirius,” you finally say, and you turn to me with green eyes grown depthless from loss and numb from shock. “I don’t know what to do anymore. There’s nothing I can do anymore. It’s – it’s like a slow burn. Like all these past twenty years, the fire of it all never died, it was just a slow burn – and we never noticed til now, when we’re burning alive in it…”

“But it did die. You know that. It was gone for a long time—"

“No, it wasn’t,” you say, your voice rising in pitch just slightly. “Even if Voldemort was gone, there were still sparks left over – all the Death Eaters who weren’t put away or who went into hiding – and now they’ve returned, and he’s returned, and everything that was burning slowly lit into flame. And we’re burning now, Sirius,” you finish, your wide eyes staring into mine.

I let you talk – I know you need to vent, you need to get these things out of yourself and into the open, where you can examine them and put them away and find the strength to go on tomorrow. Your life is the hardest of anyone I know, myself included, because you grew up this way. I had a great life, lost it to Azkaban, and regained it; you never had a life of your own to begin with. You don’t belong to yourself, but to all the witches and wizards of the world who count on you to save them now as you did twenty years ago. I don’t understand this, but I understand you, Harry, so I let you talk.

“You think everything’s safe one day, and then the next the world’s gone up in flames – here, where we live, in this terrible town. And walls have eyes, and doors have ears, and nothing is safe or sacred or good any longer.” You hug yourself tighter, closer, like you could pull into yourself and away from the fire you talk about. “And they’re just playing with us now, you know that. Voldemort and all of them are playing with us now, until we’re not strong enough to fight any longer.”

“Harry, we’re going to win,” I say abruptly. I can let you talk, but not if you’re going to say these things and convince yourself of our own defeat. Yes – I know, just as you do, that we are facing such defeat. But facing it does not mean we have to welcome or accept it yet.

“Are we?” you ask blandly, and your voice holds the importance and sad wisdom of all the stars. “They led us on, and now we’re going round and round trying to solve it – and who are we to solve it? We’re so small, we’re so small in times like these…”

I can’t hold back any longer – I take my hand from your shoulder and pull you into my arms, holding you tightly, like I always want to hold you. I wrap you in my arms and let you lay your head on my shoulder, and I hold you close to me – to keep you from that fire, to bring your fire close enough to warm me, I don’t know. I just hold you.

“Harry,” I whisper, not sure of what to say to you, “these are the days – these are the strangest of all. But we can’t give up yet.”

“Why?” you ask.

And I can’t answer you. Finally, I murmur, “I don’t know,” and close my eyes, leaning my cheek against your hair, where your head falls onto my chest. “I don’t know.”

“It’s not true,” you say quietly, but you don’t move from my arms. “These aren’t the days. They’re the nights. They’re the darkest to fall yet.”

The dark poetry in your words, the hopelessness of it all, frightens me. Truthfully, it does. I hold you tighter to me, wanting to take this away or take you away from it, somehow…

You see, you are not the only one who knows about things that burn slowly but dangerously. You may never know, but there is a slow burn for you in my soul, a feeling that never died but grew steadily with time. I could never let you know, could never show you, but it has lit on fire and caught me now – so you see, I do know what you mean by burning. I burn for you.

“I love you, Harry,” I say firmly, knowing you will not know all the ways in which I love you, but hoping my useless words can impress my feelings upon you somehow. “And yes, times are dark now; and yes, there’s fear all around us; but we’re still alive, and we’re still fighting. And you and I will not give up. We’re at the center of it all, but we won’t give up.”

“Sirius,” you whisper again, and I notice your arms have crept around me now in return. “Please – I need…”

You don’t finish telling me what you need, but I can guess – you need love, you need your parents, you need your friends, you need a different life.

I can’t give you any of that, not in the ways you’re looking for it. But I can give you something else.

You tilt your head up and look at me, and our eyes meet. You raise your face slightly and our lips meet in a kiss that grows to fire, a fire burning with sadness and the escapist desire in us all. I know it is wrong, and I know that you are looking for something other than what I have to offer you, but we still do it. In times such as these, what does it matter, anyway?

We kiss and the fire threatens to consume us, this slow burn that has built and will be the end of us all.