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I have late night conversations with the moon. He tells me about the sun and I tell him about you.
—S.L. GRAY
• — • — •
She left.
She was gone, leaving Sirius to ask himself why he hadn't stopped her. She had been so close. He had been so close.
Something in her eyes held him back, but fear and dread still rushed through his veins. He told himself that if he left right then, he could still stop her from whatever dreaded thing she planned. That's what he had been trying to do for the past few years, anyway. But this parting felt different from the others.
It was the first time she ever told him goodbye.
It shouldn't have been a big thing, but it was, though he couldn't for the life of him say why. Something in his bones, in his very core, warned him he would never see her again if he let go.
And he let her go anyway. He let her go, and now it was too late. So why didn't he stop her in the first place?
Aeliana had said that pursuing her was like chasing a ghost, but she was wrong. She was a bright light, shining through the cracks in between his fingers. No matter how far he reached, the light always slipped away, keeping him captivated by its brilliance. She was the sun, a million miles away. He would chase after her, even if it wasn't rational. Even if she was too far away to ever reach.
"Damnit, Lia," Sirius cursed. "What am I supposed to do?"
Of all the people in the world, why did he have to love her? It wasn't like he hadn't noticed all the appreciative glances other girls sent his way, hadn't succumbed to them from time to time, trying to forget. But, again, how could all those millions of other measly stars, simple pinpricks in the distance, compare to the brilliance of the sun?
He recalled the very day he realised it was all over for himself. The day he'd punched one his closest friends straight in the nose for all the school— all the professors— to see, right in the middle of the Great Hall. Even Professor Dumbledore had lifted his thin, white eyebrows in mild-mannered surprise.
When James recovered from his shock, he pulled his best friend back, but the damage had already been done. In the end, Remus went to the hospital wing and Sirius received the detention of a lifetime from Professor McGonagall, so draconian in its severity it would have made Argus Filch proud. Even the Deputy Headmistress' ear-splitting lecture didn't hold a candle to the words Lia had in store when she found him, however, but Sirius had been so furious, so stubborn, he didn't care in the slightest.
The way she had been with Remus, the way he'd looked at her, and the way she'd smiled back at him... Sirius couldn't explain it. He couldn't explain it to anyone when they asked. To them, it just seemed like he'd walked up to the Gryffindor long table and broke his friend's nose for no reason. What could he say, he punched Remus simply because he looked at her at the wrong way? It sounded ridiculous when he put it like that. All he knew was the way his blood thundered in his ears in that moment. The way his heart rebelled at the thought of her with anyone else.
Sirius got the impression that Remus knew why, in the shrewd glances he'd send Sirius's way when Sirius attempted to win Lia's attention through increasingly extravagant and foolhardy pranks. Sirius wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse. Especially in their seventh year when Sirius would pull out the Marauders Map to catch a glimpse of Lia as she tried to avoid him, only to find her name and that of a certain Remus Lupin practically right atop of one another. Or other times when they weren't speaking and Sirius would come up across them in dark corners around the castle, whispering in hushed tones, and they would spring apart immediately. Was that guilt? What were they trying to hide?
Why would she want to see Remus, and not him? Was there really something going on between the two, after all? Just the mere idea grated viciously at his mind, like sandpaper.
Had she still met up with him after she left Hogwarts and joined the Death Eaters? The anxious looks Remus tossed Sirius's way in the months since would suggest so. Remus was never a good liar. It was the same way he'd behaved before they'd discovered his little werewolf secret, his furry little problem, as James so fondly coined it.
Or perhaps Sirius's unease came from elsewhere. They'd been suspecting a traitor in their midst for awhile, and as much as he wished to expel the thought from his brain, it nagged at him. Was it just jealousy breeding that distrust? Was it warranted? Could Remus really be the traitor, after all? Was that why he'd been acting so bizarre? Or was that simply what Sirius wanted to believe, in hopes that Lia cared for him more than Remus, after all.
Sirius shook his head, trying to shake off his mounting distress. No, Sirius knew she loved him, and that he loved her.
It just wasn't enough.
After all, how could one man expect to hold the sun?