Nox (The Marauders, Wolfstar, Jily)

17: this is a long ass chapter

Sirius found himself watching the day begin from the owlery tower. It was one of the highest points in the school, leaving him with a scenic, kind of picturesque view of the sunrise, letting the morning settle into the world around him as if this was a movie, or an oil painting, set perfectly on canvas, as if his morning was perfectly planned and arranged with beauty and perfection intent. The reality however, was very far from that, as although the view might have been wondrous, what had brought him there certainly wasn't.

He reckoned he was at least doing a pretty decent job of holding himself together, of not breaking down, of not bursting into tears, of keeping himself together, keeping his head on his shoulders and focused on what it was that he had to do. Sirius had been very particular in deciding just what it was that he had to do. Often he let himself skirt around responsibility, avoid everything that wasn't pressing, just push every off, push everything away, to an infinite number of tomorrows; he found that he was awfully good at it all, and in fact found himself rather frequently getting away with it. But things were different this time.

This time around things mattered. This time around it all held an awful lot of weight, and it was the fact that the weight it held wasn't just on Sirius himself, but on people he cared about, on other people around him, and to a lesser extent everyone he knew. He'd come to conclude that deciding what he should do wasn't a matter of fancy and choice, but instead based on what was right, and what overall, he had to do, to fix things, to try, to at least attempt to make everything better, even if up in his head, he couldn't visualise a world in which he'd ever managed to fix things.

He stood idly beside the owlery window for a good few minutes. It wasn't that he was wasting time, although in his heart he might have been, instead, he found himself waiting. He ended up waiting for perhaps a little longer than he would have liked to, but he excused Regulus, his brother, who was only thirteen, far too young for all of this, far too young to be getting up so early in the morning to meet him secretly, and that was only the start of it.

Regulus met him with a small, almost timid, smile and a nod, closing the door to the staircase behind him as he entered the room, his eyes darting across to the owls resting up on their perches. He found himself watching them for a moment, entranced by what Sirius had even given a second's thought to. Sirius only came to pay the dozens of owls any kind of proper attention at all as he followed his brother's gaze over to them.

The two brothers were different in many ways; Regulus was attentive where Sirius was not, for instance. They definitely shared more similarities than they would perhaps care to: more similarities than they had noted at least. Two opposing houses meant nothing compared to blood - they were still very much brothers, and they still loved each other, even if the ways they thought to show it were suppressed and hidden, even buried deep underneath the mess of prejudices and loyalties they had been smothered with - it was far too much for two teenage boys really. It was all far too much for two teenage boys really, yet still, there they stood, in the owlery that morning, watching the sunrise.

Sirius finally grew comfortable with the idea of breaking their silence, growing tired of watching Regulus' eyes dart between the birds, as if indexing each and everyone of them to his memory. Sirius couldn't deny that he just didn't think they mattered that much: it was perhaps something he would have cared little enough to voice aloud, if perhaps they found themselves in entirely different circumstances, if perhaps he hadn't come to realise that life wasn't so much about picking people apart on the basis of how they differed to you, but more so about focusing on the things you had in common, the things that brought you together - good or bad.

What had brought the two brothers together that morning still lay unspoken, like a cool breeze in the autumn air. Sirius couldn't fight the instinct in the back of his mind, the overwhelming want to just will it all away, his wish for more than anything, it would all just disappear. Needless to say, it wasn't something they could treasure, yet still, it wasn't something they could hide away from - not anymore. Sirius had recently found that it did matter, even though of course it had before, suddenly it just had weight, reason, gravity, and a baring sense of responsibility no longer wavering over, but pressing directly into his chest.