Requiem

3. Solace, Sanctuary and Freefalling

Sirius leaned against the front door, listening to the retreating footsteps of Harry and the others, on their way to catch the Knight Bus to Hogwarts. His mind was clouded with cold despair, and anger towards himself for being unable to find the words he wanted to say to Harry. There were so many things he needed to tell his godson, but he had been frozen by the desolate sense of...premonition, that he would never see Harry again. He had never told anyone that he loved them; he could not find the words in that brief moment of farewell. His limbs ached to run after them in the snow, to leave this dark, oppressive house, to run outside, to grasp that fleeting moment of illusion in which Padfoot was running with Prongs again. But he stood still and leaned his head against the door, closing his eyes.

A cold hand grasped his in the dimness. 'He knows, Sirius,' said Jade softly. 'He knows'. She reached up and put her arms around his neck, holding him as if she could draw his pain into herself. The sound of Harry's footsteps walking away echoed in Sirius's head. If his tears had not all been shed an eternity ago he might have wept.

The stood in the hallway, the darkness and silence of the empty house enclosing them. After a long moment of stillness, Sirius stood back, and looked into Jade's eyes, seeing his isolation and longing reflected there. He ran his hands down Jade's back and felt her shiver. Tangling his fingers in her long dark hair, he raised her face to his and kissed her, first gently, tentatively, then with deepening intensity as she responded to him. He gasped softly, it had been so long...

The sound was just enough to awaken Mrs Black's portrait. Her eyes flew open, instantly filled with rage. 'ABOMINATION OF MY FLESH AND HIS MUDBLOOD WHORE!'

Sirius wrenched the curtains closed, cursing harshly. Panting, and sweeping his hair from his eyes, he turned to Jade, expecting to find her angry and mortified. To his surprise, she was laughing, her eyes mischievous. 'I hardly expected her to approve,' she whispered, grinning as she reached for him again.

Sirius laughed too, almost without bitterness this time. He took her hand and they ran softly up the stone stairs, falling onto Sirius' bed, two lone stars colliding, burning a fiery path toward their oblivion.

Jade was running frantically down a corridor. Fluorescent lights reflected coldly off the gleaming, green tiled floor, flickering ahead of her. Her feet were sliding on the polished surface and she couldn't sprint any faster. Heavy footsteps echoed behind her, closer and closer, drumming in her head as they closed in on her. Cold, strong hands clamped her arms. She tried to wrench herself free, but a needle pierced her vein and a dull, deadening sensation flooded her limbs, her brain. She tried and tried to scream, but could not make a sound.

'Jade, wake up...' Sirius's voice penetrated her nightmare. She opened her eyes. By the light of the embers glowing in the fireplace, she could see the outline of his face, etched with concern. 'You were trembling...was it the same dream?' he asked softly.

She nodded, taking a shaky breath. 'Sorry I woke you.'

'Don't be sorry,' Sirius said, hugging her to him. She could feel the warmth of his body slowly diffusing the iciness inside her, as he stroked her hair tenderly and gently kissed the top of her head. After a few moments, he turned and leaned on his elbow to look down into her eyes. 'Jade...'

She looked at him questioningly.

'Promise me...you won't ever try to...hurt yourself again?'

Her eyes widened in surprise. 'That was a really long time ago - you don't have to worry about it.'

Sirius frowned. 'I know...but promise me...please.'

'I promise,' Jade said sleepily, curling into the circle of his arms.

Jade woke several hours later to the drumming of cold February rain against the dark windows. Iridescent grey light filtered through the heavy curtains. She sighed, wishing she didn't have to wake up and engage with another day. Being in this room with Sirius was like a sanctuary, where the world couldn't touch them. An unspoken consent between them said that no one else should know of their relationship. Things were just too complicated...And both of them knew, even if they didn't say it, that secrecy was a compelling element of the addictive physical attraction between them.

Jade had never believed in love at first sight, and she didn't now. What she had at first felt for Sirius was a surreal emotional connection combined with desire that shocked her with its intensity at the slightest contact between them. Somewhere between freefalling into oblivion as she submitted to lust and loneliness, and waking up to a voice that banished her nightmare for the moment, Jade found herself in love with Sirius Black.

Eventually, Jade knew, reality would intrude on their refuge, but for the moment their stolen hours and nights together signified an enchanted respite from the tensions of work, the Order, Sirius's confinement to the house and the sullen bitterness that overcame him...a quiet place in the midst of the storm, where thunder and rain passed them by.

Sirius regarded her sleepily. 'What time is it?' Since it was impossible to Apparate or Disapparate into or out of 12 Grimmauld Place - only within it (to the constant amusement of Fred and George) - Jade used the fireplace in Sirius's room to leave for work undetected.

Jade glanced at her watch. 'Oh God, I'm going to be so late!' she exclaimed, leaping out of bed and scanning the passage for passers-by, before darting across the landing to run the bath. Sirius sat on the edge of the claw-footed bath tub while Jade bathed and washed her hair, on the pretext that it would appear suspicious for his bathroom to be occupied whilst he was still in bed. Jade dressed quickly, her hair dripping down the back of her robes. She reached for the Floo Powder, only to find the canister empty. 'Damn it! I forgot I finished it yesterday. Now what?'

Sirius frowned thoughtfully. 'I'll see if anyone is in the kitchen. If I'm not back in five minutes, Apparate downstairs, and you can use the fireplace there.'

A few minutes later, Jade appeared in the chilly kitchen. Recklessly, Sirius slid his hands around her waist, and drew her towards him for a devastatingly sweet, lingering kiss. 'Do you want us to get caught?' Jade whispered, trying to sound reproving, though her pulse had quickened.

'This is my new version of living on the edge,' Sirius murmured sardonically, tracing his finger down the curve of her neck. Footsteps were approaching the kitchen. Jade just had time to step towards the fireplace and attempt to assume an innocent expression before Severus Snape appeared in the doorway. His cold eyes swept the room, taking in Jade's wet hair and flushed cheeks, and Sirius's fading smirk. 'Black, busy as usual?' he said snidely. 'And Miss Magellan, don't you have some i's to dot somewhere?'

'So you'll give Dumbledore that urgent message as soon as he arrives, Sirius?' Jade requested in a business-like tone. She threw Snape a filthy look as she took a pinch of Floo Powder. 'I have to get straight to work. Surely you're needed at Hogwarts, Professor? Don't you have some pupils to torment this morning?'

Jade glanced back at Sirius as she stepped into the warm green flames. She was dismayed to see that the laughter had already faded from his grey eyes, leaving only the dull and bitter hauntedness that had become so familiar.

'I'm bored.' Sirius was lying with his head towards the foot of the bed, tousled dark hair falling carelessly over the rumpled covers as he drummed his feet against the wall, like a petulant child cooped up in its room on Saturday afternoon. 'Wish it was full moon,' he grumbled, taking a swig from a three-quarters empty goblet of red wine. 'Wingardium leviosa,' he muttered languidly, and the goblet hovered obediently at a convenient spot within arms' reach.

'It is full moon,' Jade pointed out helpfully, waving her wineglass in the direction of the window, where the heavy curtains were drawn back to reveal the moon, smiling smug and round from behind a smoky film of cloud.

Sirius snorted. 'I can't believe I forgot. It's just not the same without Moony around.'

'Where is Remus anyway?' Jade asked, absently tangling her fingers in Sirius's already messy hair. Her head felt sleepy and smoky with the vapours of red wine.

'Doing something important for the Order, I suppose. I wouldn't know,' Sirius replied snarlishly.

'How does he cope at full moon when he's away?' Jade tried to divert his anger with a question.

'He's been taking Wolfsbane for a few years now. It makes him safe when he transforms,' Sirius explained.

'That must make a huge difference to his life...' Jade reflected.

'It does, but...'

'But what?'

'Oh, it sounds stupid. It sounds like I just miss the adventure.' In his fleeting grin, Jade glimpsed the boy Sirius. The boy you couldn't call selfish because he didn't know anything else. Not pain, not fear, not death, not consequences. 'But sometimes I wonder if he doesn't miss the freedom. He loses the pain but he loses the ecstasy too.'

'I know what that feels like,' Jade smiled wryly.

'I know you do,' Sirius affirmed softly. He lay in silence staring at the ceiling, perceptibly exuding frustration, like heat shimmering off a pavement. He was jealous of the freedom Remus knew as an untamed werewolf. As a very small child she remembered visiting London Zoo with her parents. The image etched in her mind from that long ago day was of a tiger pacing its enclosure. Latent power and energy contained in a suburban cage.

'Oh God and Merlin I'm bored.'

They had been through this game before.

'Let's go see a movie,' Jade suggested, in an attempt to get him to smile at least. The ridiculous held some appeal sometimes.

'Ack, there's only chick flicks on,' Sirius said snidely. 'Plus there's me being an escaped mass murderer and you being an escaped lunatic and all that.'

'If we could go somewhere no one else could see us...' Jade wracked her brain, and took another gulp of wine as if it might provide inspiration or drown the infectious fidgetiness spreading through her.

An irritable scuffle was heard from the next room. 'Buckbeak's bored too,' Sirius observed dismally.

At that moment a gust of wind ruffled the curtains, and moonlight streamed through the window. Sirius's eyes glinted metallically manic. He jumped off the bed in a frenetic rush of energy, downing the last of his wine as the goblet followed him haphazardly across the room. He tossed Jade's cloak at her. 'We're going out, like people do.'

'What?' Jade asked dazedly. She had definitely had too much wine, because in about 30 seconds flat she found herself Disillusioned, clinging to Sirius's waist for dear life, her hair flapping in an icy wind that ripped through the fabric of her cloak, as an invisible Buckbeak soared beneath them through the night sky in the manner of a very old car with no suspension driven at breathtaking, license-revoking speed.

Eventually, they descended to earth in a style reminiscent of a novice pilot landing a 747 for the first time, and tumbled to the ground in a tangled of limbs, cloaks and feathers. Jade had no idea where they were, except that there were trees and bush all around, and the pinprick lights of London were barely visible in the distance. As soon as Sirius lifted the Disillusionment charm, Buckbeak lumbered off, presumably in search of ferrets, leaving Jade and Sirius alone, in literally the middle of nowhere.

Their wild flight had left adrenaline throbbing through Jade's veins. The beat of her pulse was audible in the silence that surrounded them, and somehow it felt as though they had never been alone until now.

'Are you cold?' Sirius slipped his arms and the folds of his cloak around her from behind, and his breath was hot against her neck, his lips a whisper from her skin.

'No,' she murmured, her breathing ragged. About a moment before Jade expected to combust with electric desire, Sirius's lips were on hers, bruising her with their intensity but she craved that sensation His tongue possessed her mouth with the taste of red wine and adrenaline and as he laid her on the ground, Jade felt as though she was falling forever, their two bodies, the beginning and the end of the world, fused into an eternal moment and all sanity was lost.