To Dwell On Dreams
"No one remembers that life, I'm just history...Nothing more than distant little memories," ~ Revive, "Distant Memories"
If he were a Muggle, he would compare himself to a funhouse mirror’s reflection: recognizable but distorted, and somehow so deeply wrong on some level that it unnerves a person. But as it is, he is a pureblood wizard, and he can find no words to describe what he really thinks of himself (who is that, again?). It’s just as well, though, as he hasn’t the heart to tell the people around him that they’re making fools of themselves. He is instead stranded alone in his bathroom at odd times of day or night, mirror before him, showing him the face that he no longer associates with himself.
It isn’t exactly the way that he looks, really. He looks older, surely, but that’s to be expected. It had taken ages, too, after the escape, to make him presentable again. He had been supremely discontent as the others poked and prodded him, feeding him up to a healthy weight, scrubbing him clean, and detangling the rats’ nest that had become of his once perfect hair. “
Rats’ nest” was Molly’s phrase, but the metaphor was lost on him; he had spent too many nights batting away rodents and insects and creatures that he couldn’t see but could feel, creeping and malevolent, and so there was nothing humorous in the words for him. He couldn’t have counted the nights that he felt the bite of the rat and thought more and more vaguely of Peter Pettigrew and his betrayal (but what was it he had done again? It all seemed so long ago).
Yes, it had taken time, but his appearance eventually cleaned up and was, in fact, more well-kept than it had been in the old days, the school days that he remembered but didn’t think about. So it wasn’t the features of the face in the mirror that made him realize that everything he said and did was a lie. He could look into the reflection and see those eyes, grey as a storm approaching, and know that they were in his body. But were they a part of Sirius Black? No. Or perhaps it was the other way around, maybe the eyes still belonged to the name, and it was the mind which no longer fit the title.
They had joked that he was vain, in Hogwarts, winking roguishly into the mirrors while he fussed at his lengths of waving hair. The jokes didn’t resurface when the Order started to notice him staring raptly into the reflective silver of the tea tray, or spending long hours alone in his quarters, mumbling quietly to himself. The gaze that he fixed himself with was neither admiring nor appraising; it was the sort of look you saved for a long-forgotten friend or a distant relative whose name you couldn’t quite remember. He was fascinated when the words he spoke moved those lips; lips that belonged to someone dead. Surely he could not be Sirius Black, Padfoot old pal, because wasn’t he gone all these long years?
He was very nearly delighted to discover that Remus was long gone as well. The body was the same, if a little worse for wear; greyer and lined with worry and regret, littered with scars both familiar and new. The mouth said all the right things, logical and sane, in that Moony-voice that sounded like so many years of tea and dust and boredom. The hazel eyes were still knowing, but without that spark of interest that had once fueled the knowledge. Their bodies still reacted to one another in the same old ways, but they took it for what it was. It did not make them remember, but only served to distance them further from the foggy dreams that were the past. The sex was like forgetting, and that was agreeable to both of them. They didn’t particularly desire one another anymore as they seemed to have once, lifetimes ago. It would’ve been a bit ridiculous, really – they were strangers. They spoke of old memories together like students reading from history books, and wondered if they had ever really been a part of it at all.
So, Remus was gone as well. They soldiered on like small, broken toy models of themselves. Their bodies carried out the actions expected of them, while they felt distant and out of place with the people who were once friends, family, everything to the people they used to be. With Harry around, too, who was James but was not, it seemed like they could form a set: not-Sirius, not-Remus, and not-James, all together again. They were missing their fourth, but Peter hadn’t changed a whit in all his days; he was a rat and that was all he had ever really been. Perhaps if he were still the real Sirius Black, he would have thought differently, remembered a time when Peter was synonymous with trust. But what was the use? Who was Peter anyway? He was supposed to care about that, right?
It amused him, sometimes, to see how well he played his part, but at others he felt a sense of guilt over playing along with the lie that could not be properly explained. How could he tell Harry that his godfather was by this point a figment of their imaginations? That when he spoke of James, he spoke of
nothing, nothing but ashes and memories that he was no longer a part of. It was difficult. He was not Sirius Black, no one was anymore, but he couldn’t very well be anyone else. So he and Remus carried on, a shared silent secret between them that kept them, if not bonded, at least together.
He was having a good laugh, that night at the Ministry. He fought the woman, Bellatrix, knowing that the same blood was pumping through their veins as they dueled. There were memories of her, of course, but they were even more grey and faded than those of James, of Lily, of Peter and the
real Remus. He was thinking brightly of how he ought to hate her, ought to at least feel something, when a hex finally struck him. He thought,
Well, then, that’s my fun over, and dreaded the thought of the Order members prodding him afterwards, making sure no damage remained.
And then, a brush like fabric or a breath or a soft caress against skin. Everything went dark. Light. Dark again. He realized he was blinking. James, in front of him, waved a hand before his eyes. “Okay then, Pads?” he asked as Lily flipped a page in her book beside him.
Oh, he thought, and continued what seemed to be an ongoing argument on Quidditch.
So, people mourned the death of Sirius Black. Silly, really, more than a decade late and just after he’d finally found himself again. He would’ve thought it strange, but they were a dim sort of world, like reading from an ancient book, or revisiting a dream from years past. He was Sirius Black, but who were they? Wasn’t he supposed to care about that? He didn’t.
He hadn’t noticed he was waiting for Remus until he was suddenly there, falling into his arms all shy smiles and boyish angles, patches at the elbows of his jumper and the knees of his trousers. “Moony! Tell James the Cannons haven’t had a winning season for at least forty-seven years! Tell him!” No one paid much attention to Peter Pettigrew, puttering about nearby, but that was usual, wasn’t it? Quiet boy he was, but a trustworthy sort when you got right down to it. One of the grey pages of memory nudged at his mind, disagreeing, but he pushed it away with the feeling of Remus’s hair soft beneath his hands. It wouldn’t do to dwell on dreams.
