dissolve into a single second

dissolve into a single second

1. There's a simplicity of purpose as he dodges the curses, hears the shrieks and cries and gasps and moans, as the children fall aside, the others detain each other and he can stare into her eyes, filled with the same moment of rage as years ago. They're scarred by prison, the years caked on their faces in wrinkles and grey-ashy colour of those who've hid inside until the sun hurts their eyes.

But it's simple, and he dances, as he watches her dance.

2. They stand outside and she lets him take a puff on his cigarette which tastes faintly of lipstick mixed in with the nicotine.

I'm too old for these, she says as she takes back the cigarette.

Me, too, says Sirius puffing his head up as if a cocky smile makes him older.

You're too young, she says with a laugh though she's only three years older.

Her gaze is inside through the French doors, candlelit torches, onto the dance floor where Narcissa stands on Lucius's polished-shoes, trailing along suspended step after step even though Bella has told him she knows every dance by heart already - she just prefers to be taller.

Sirius watches Bella as she watches them. Narcissa is eleven, she says, starting Hogwarts next month (and she won't get herself sorted into a house full of blood traitors and misfits like Sirius did) and already has it planned out for her.

There's a light of recognition in Bella's eyes as if there's something she wants and can't quite asks him for. He thinks that maybe he should ask her for a dance, but the music is muffled through the glass and the mid-August heat is sticky on his fingers.

But he's only just turned thirteen and she's pulled out another cigarette.

3. Sirius walks into Hogwarts at eleven, everything written out and ready. The thousand-year old hat is placed on his head and Sirius can feel the magic tingle in his fingers, mingled with the centuries-pure blood in his veins.

Gryffindor, the hat decries, and his stomach turns.

4. Regulus is a sickly child, even at twelve. He's come home early, and when Sirius returns home on the train with the rest of the children, Regulus has faded pale inside the grey room with the drawn curtains.

Their mother makes him a bath of ice and water, and Regulus looks like he's drowning in the cold as he's lowered into the water and dragged up again, placed between the warm woollen blankets as the late-June sun tries to sneak through the curtains.

5. It's eerie-quiet at night and Bella is staying over, though she's no good with the cooking or cleaning. Sirius is fourteen and suspects by now that she only likes the scent of sickness and death.

He's not going to die, says Sirius, as he walks by the bedroom on his way back from a piss.

This isn't life, she says, stomping her foot down petulantly. This is nothing, a waste of blood and breathing.

That's my brother, says Sirius, but it's without passion because no one can think to raise their emotions on Regulus nowadays.

Have you ever wanted to taste death, says Bella. It must be like blood and dirty and wine.

No, says Sirius, no! and he's afraid that he's woken his brother, but before he can muffle an apology, Bella's lips are on his.

She fucks him against the wall, and with every rhythmic creak-boom against the doorway, Sirius is afraid Regulus might be pushed from the world.

The fear mixes with the need and there's something surreal, as if he too is dying in her arms, against her chilly-cold fingers.

6. Gryffindor is quidditch and cheering and drawing out the map in Peter's neat-clean hand. They have the castle, have the house, and it's all songs and laughter.

7. Bella comes back to him sometimes, and he can't help but feel her touch him, can't help but wash himself clean with scalding-hot water.

He used to sneak into the prefect's bath so he could flirt with the mermaid, but his reflection in the mirror reminds himself of his brother, ghost-pale and weakly, and he can't stand to look at himself this way.

8. He catches her eyes between attacks and wonders whether they have a reddish tinge now, a hint of black and beyond as if she's almost already gone.

He never wanted to save her; he never meant to save himself.

But he hears Remus scream out a counter-curse and his reverie is lost with the urge to survive.

9. There was sunshine and clover and lying out in the grass beneath the blue sky, blowing smoke circles one after another after another.

James was laughter and fun and Sirius couldn't get enough of it, clung closer and needed more and more away from the cold silent muggy death of his home.

10. Late nights after parties, this time no dancing save for the desperate thrusts of teenagers when the parents weren't around. The sun comes up on the hill and they sit with a smoke and a half-empty bottle of tequila. Remus is comfort and James is passion and naked sweaty flesh from a half-dozen too many dances.

Peter is there, too, and Sirius is always thankful for him and his perfect notes, always legible, never laced with snide comments and false information and for his gift with cleaning charms.

Sirius feels a twinge of guilt, a moment of maybe, as he kisses James and feels Remus's tongue against him more and closer dearer need you there and there's sunlight and no one's dying here, no one's dying to take that last glimpse of life between her lips and blow it all away.

But Peter's just not very attractive, and, besides, it's all so efficient this way.

11. Sirius sits in the dark and has time now to remember it all, to remember what he was supposed to be when he walked into Hogwarts like generations past, following behind and in front and surrounded by his mother's praise and father's stories. It was all laid out like Narcissa with her perfect-matched husband as he shared a drink of wine with Bella that they shouldn't be having but that always tasted so right straight from the bottle.

There was a purpose somewhere and maybe he's missed it, gone astray with the burning flame of a half-dozen loves lost that he never really had anyway.

12. He watches James and Lily as they cradle a child, a child he maybe could have had in another lifetime with cold blue eyes and straight black hair, another line of perfect-pure blood set down in expectation with only a small risk of frailty, like Regulus who's disappeared and no one quite will say why.

He stands at the window and can't quite make himself go in even though he knows that there's something special that they let him in this far as they hold the cooing child.

Sirius, says a voice as there's a hand on his shoulder.

He looks back and it's Peter, watching like he is, watching and waiting and, together, they turn away.

13. They lay the bodies out in flowers as the dawn comes red and burnt and he's on the ground now. He's given away his motorbike and he can't take a moment to Apparate, so he walks and walks away and can feel himself drowning as the moon fades to sunlight and he wonders where Moony is now, if maybe it's easier not to be truly human after all.

It was all set, chiselled in supple stone and he changed things. Again, and again, and again, and it's gotten him nowhere but a Muggle village where only the Church is open at early-quiet-dead-dawn.

14. He can feel the purpose, feel the hatred growing hotter in his gut, can feel the paths he never took, the moments he remembers like rooms in Narcissa's dollhouse, manipulated and placed just so pretty, just so perfect. It's like the motorbike by a white picket fence just before he gets airborne.

Her eyes are cruel if lowered by years, her mouth taut just like he remembers, wrapped around a cigarette or wine glass or around him.

You, he says, you ruined it all, but he's not sure who he's talking to.

He trips a moment, falls backwards, and time seems to hold sticky one two three again he sees it all before him and maybe there's a reason, maybe there's an end. She has a triumphant look as if she's claimed him once again. But the song, the word, the rhyme that was just always out of his reach seems to be coming closer, clearer. It's almost in his hands, fluttering its golden taunting wings, and he starts to laugh as he loses himself in the heavy-dark curtain.