HELIACAL RISING

Title: Heliacal Rising
Author: franticbabbles
Pairings: Remus/Sirius
Word Count: 4305.
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: Blah blah not-my-characters-cakes.
Author's Notes: This is part of the same universe that my other fics are all part of, but it's not a continuation of my latest mini-arc. Post-OotP, Harry and Remus deal with each other and Sirius's death.
Warnings: Jesus Christ, this fic is not humorous at all.

A little explanation before the fic.

The ancients believed that the Heliacal Rising (the first time during the year that the star is visible) of Canis Majoris (Sirius), the Dog Star, signaled the most searing heat of summer because the star was in conjunction with the Sun at that time, adding extra heat to the earth. That is why the period of time between July 3rd and August 11th is called "Dog Days".





It’s three weeks after Harry has come to stay with him, in the first hot, thick days of July, that Dumbledore visits. The latter is not a surprise- the former was. Opening the door at a rainy half-past midnight to find a wet, shaking, grim-faced boy on his doorstep, pulling his trunk with one determined hand and holding a snowy owl in the other, was quite a shock indeed. Not that he should have left those ghastly Muggles, of course, but that it was him Harry turned to, and not the Weasleys. You’re the last one left, Moony, Sirius’s voice had reminded him at the time. It’s up to you to take care of him now the rest of us are gone, so stop being such a standoffish wanker and do it. So he led Harry to the spare bedroom and made him some cocoa after he’d changed out of his wet clothes and was still shivering, and he hasn’t asked any questions in the time since. He’s been trying to let Harry just be, hoping that the calm and the quiet will help, but after three weeks the expression of stark pain that makes Remus wince to look at it has only deepened, until the boy’s face is one white, pinched circle of agony.

Thus, when Dumbledore comes, it’s both expected and welcomed. Of course he would show up, to check on Harry- to check on Remus as well, he knows, although he’s perfectly fine, Sirius’s voice in his head notwithstanding. For an organization bound in such secrecy, the Order is remarkably bad at being subtle- he knows perfectly well that they think he and Harry are going quietly insane, tucked away in this cottage as they are.

He’s very glad that Harry is still asleep, though it’s well into the afternoon, when he hears the light, firm tapping on the door (the cottage has a fireplace, and used to be connected to the Floo Network, but it has been out of use for nearly a year now).

“Tea?” he asks after Dumbledore has settled himself into one of the mismatched chairs at the table. He remembers helping his mother paint it one rainy afternoon while his father was away so they could surprise him when he got back, and giggling when she swiped some blue paint across his nose. The previous summer, before they had moved to Grimmauld Place, Sirius had been fascinated by the idea that one could paint things with brushes. One hot day they had repainted those faded chairs, Sirius humming and slopping paint everywhere and making a general mess. Remus had laughed at him until his stomach hurt, and they kept finding paint in strange places on their bodies for days afterward.

“Oh, certainly,” Dumbledore replies, pulling him from his memory as neatly as if it were a string he were cutting. They’re silent for a few moments, each man lost in his own thoughts. Then, bluntly, “How has Harry been, Remus?”

He sets his cup down with a small metallic clink. “Not well.” Enormous understatement. “He’s not eating, he sleeps most of the time, and he’s immune to any and all hints that I do, in fact, have a working shower in this cottage and that he may want to consider using it.”

“All normal habits of teenaged boys, so I’ve been told,” Dumbledore says gravely, although there’s a small twinkle in his eye. It’s not up to his usual standard, but it’s there just the same.

“Having been one of that kind, I do remember that,” he replies, smiling slightly. “But…he’s not well, Albus. And it’s getting worse every day. Perhaps he should go to the Weasleys'- I’m a rubbish sort of guardian.”

“It’s not a guardian he needs right now, Remus. You know that.”

He picks up his tepid tea again- his heating spell was half-hearted at best, and the tea is bitter and nutty because he’s forgotten to buy cream- to avoid Dumbledore’s keen, piercing eyes. “Any new Order business, before Harry wakes up?” he asks lightly.

Dumbledore narrows his eyes a bit at the change in subject, but only says, “Yes, actually, there is. However, it’s something you and Harry may want to hear together, so if you would be so kind as to wake him I should very much appreciate it.”

He nods and scrapes his chair back from the table. The spare bedroom is the farthest away from the kitchen, and is locked. He knocks first, and when he receives no answer, performs a quick, unregretful Alohamora, hoping Harry's not doing anything that will scar either of them for life. Harry’s curled in a ball, the quilt kicked off the bed and the sheets twisted around him, his face exhausted even in sleep and vulnerable without his glasses. Shadows spread like bruises under his eyes. Poor child, he thinks suddenly, surprising himself. Harry’s not a child anymore, not really, but something in him still sparks protective urges.

A sudden, vivid fifteen-year-old memory makes him smile- visiting Prongs and Lily and Harry, who was just learning to toddle around shakily on chubby legs, for dinner one evening. He strongly suspects Lily asked James to invite him because he was looking like death warmed over; cooking, perhaps because of its similarity to Potions, has never been his strong suit, and without Sirius around he tended to forget to eat. While Prongs was getting some butterbeer and Lily was checking the stew, Harry worked his way slowly over to where Remus sat on the floor, his back against the sofa. When he was two feet away he stopped, enormous green eyes staring into dark brown, and without any warning overbalanced. He fell solidly on his nappied bottom, and after one startled second, screwed up his face and began to wail like a mandrake. Remus looked around in alarm for Lily or James while plugging his ears, but they were still in the kitchen. “Er,” he muttered, trying to see what was wrong with the shrieking child and finding nothing. He was terrified someone was going to come out and yell at him for having broken the baby. Still howling, Harry crawled toward him and clutched his tiny, dimpled fingers in Remus’s jumper. Glaring round as though he could bring James or Lily into the room by force of will, he tentatively tried to pick him up, and when he did, Harry snuggled himself firmly onto Remus’s chest. Something he had never thought existed in himself flared in his heart at the contact, as the mild sour-milk infant smell filled his nostrils.

“Adadadada,” the baby had sobbed miserably, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Right then, I know exactly what you mean,” he murmured, and jostled the small body in what he hoped was a comforting manner until the sobbing dissolved into whimpering, and the whimpering into hiccups. By the time James came back in, grinning and saying, “Fell on his arse, did he?” Harry’s eyes were drooping. “There’s a sleepy lad,” James said softly as he plucked him out of Remus’s grasp and took him off to bed, and Remus remembers gentle envy mingled with a strange sense of loss. The end was very near, then.

Looking down at the drawn, pale face, Remus reflects with a small quirk of his mouth that Harry would probably not appreciate it very much if he did the same thing now. It is very hard to reconcile the sweet, sunny baby he remembers with this sullen creature who looks so much like James, but the desire to shield him from anything that could possibly hurt him has never wavered.

“Harry,” he says clearly, and the boy makes a cross, indignant noise into the sheets. “Wake up.”

His eyes open quickly, a flash of dreamy, myopic green in the late-afternoon light before the weight of a thousand worlds seems to drop onto him and he reaches for his glasses, his mouth a tight line of misery. “Yes?” he asks hoarsely.

“Dumbledore is here and wants to talk to you,” he replies, and Harry nods. It’s been like this the entire time Harry’s been here- two words per sentence are his maximum. It seems to hurt to say anything more, and Remus hasn’t forced him to. But perhaps it’s time he did, he thinks, blanching at the idea of a bellowing teenager. Harry’s not his son- he hasn’t got any right in the world to treat him like one. In case you don’t remember, Moony, Prongs made us both promise. Should anything happen to him or Lily, we’d both look out for Harry. So stop making excuses, you’re the closest thing he’s got to a dad and he needs you. Wanker. Sirius’s affectionate voice makes him grin a little and he can practically feel Sirius's fingers goosing him while he waits for Harry to roll out of bed and walk down the hall with him.

Harry’s just this side of rude to Dumbledore, his arms crossed over his chest in an almost combative manner. If it weren’t for the fact that Remus can see his chin trembling a little bit before he grits his teeth together, Remus would kick him under the table to remind him of his manners.

Dumbledore clears his throat. “I’m terribly sorry to have dragged you from a peaceful slumber, Harry,” he says solicitously. “But I have some news. The Ministry has issued an official pardon for Sirius Black. Apparently recent events have convinced them that he was, in fact, working for the common good all along. Fudge appears to have retracted his former stance comp”-

The red chair Harry was slouching in is suddenly on the floor- Remus winces as he sees a chip of the paint Sirius applied so diligently fly off- and Harry is stalking out of the room in furious silence. The only noise is the padding of his bare feet, followed by the gusty slam of the spare bedroom door.

Dumbledore rises with a faintly bitter smile on his lips. “Thank you very much for the tea, Remus. I shall see you next Wednesday, then?”

He nods and follows him to the door, about to open his lips in a polite good-bye, but Dumbledore stops him. “Condolences from an old man who has seen too much are not, I’m sure, helpful, or even appreciated. But for what it’s worth, Remus, I’m very sorry he’s gone.” Then, after a short sigh, “Will you be all right?”

“I’ll deal with Harry, Albus. I’ll let him cool down first, though,” he murmurs. The red chair is still on the ground, and he has to fight off an urge to go over and right it.

“Remus,” Dumbledore says sharply, and he looks up, startled at the tone. “Will you be all right?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “I’m fine,” he says, with a note of finality in his voice. “Until Wednesday, then.”

Dumbledore is gone, then, and Remus rights the chair, murmuring a quick, "Reparo" when his fingers find the chip in the wood. He’s scrubbing the dishes mercilessly without magic when he hears the unfamiliar sound of the shower running. Good, then. Harry’s finally realized that he can’t fight off Death Eaters with his smell alone. The knife he used to cut bread two nights ago bites into the tender flesh on the pad of his left index finger, and before he can stop it blood is dripping from the injured digit into the water in the sink.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, fuck, bloody buggering fuck.” And he realizes he’s been washing the same dish for the past ten minutes with a steel mesh scrub, and a plate that was once blue is now criss-crossed with yellow scratches. He sits down abruptly, blood spattering on the floor, and puts his hot forehead on the cool table, breathing heavily. He stays that way for a long while, even after the screen door in the back of the cottage bangs shut and he knows Harry’s gone outside.

Eventually, though, he knows he has to go see if Harry has run off as quickly as he arrived. That would be like him. He hasn’t, though- through the window Remus can see that Harry is merely lying on his back in the yard, staring up at the sky.

He takes a deep breath and pushes the door open. Harry twitches at the noise but doesn’t turn to look at him, even when he stretches out beside him on the grass. It really is a lovely night, he thinks. He opens his mouth and suddenly Sirius’s voice hisses, Don’t you even dare say that aloud, Remus John Lupin. I know you’re pants at normal conversation but there's such a thing as taking it too far. So he moves his arms behind his head and stares at the sky, too. To the west the sun is setting in a sea of pink and orange and gold, to the east the velvety blue of night is encroaching, and in the in-between a few stars are already twinkling merrily. Sunset has always made an unbearable loneliness rise up within him- there is such enduring sadness in the black lace of the trees etched against the horizon, choking him with stark melancholy. He hates the ends of things.

Finally, he says, “I’m sorry, Harry.” He doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it comes out of his mouth.

Harry turns his head to look at him, one eyebrow raised, the planes of his face sharp like James's but softer around the eyes like Lily's, that combination that provoked endless fascination from Sirius. His voice is deeply suspicious when he asks, “Why are you sorry? You haven’t done anything.”

“That’s precisely the problem- I haven’t done anything,” he sighs, withdrawing a hand from under his head and rubbing his eyes wearily. He wants so badly to go back inside and finish washing the dishes, or to go to sleep, or to read a book. But it's time- past time- for Harry to be given something from an adult other than neglect- benign or otherwise. “I haven’t talked to you about...so many things that need to be talked about, Harry."

“Stop,” Harry says in a low, trembling voice, his eyes wide and wary like a bird on the verge of flight.

Part of him does want to stop, because he doesn't really want to have this conversation any more than Harry does. He has been coping with the reality of his life in his own way, alone, for a very long time, and he doesn't really feel like sharing the particulars of the coping with anyone else. The fact that he wears Sirius's shirts to bed because they still smell like him, although the scent is becoming less and less sharp as time goes by; the black dog hair he finds on everything that he refuses to brush off; the way he uses Sirius's favourite teacup instead of his own now, the pale green one with the yellow polka dots on the bottom; the book Sirius was reading the night before, the bookmark untouched since Sirius last put his warm careless fingers on it, now sitting on his bedside table- these are all things that he wraps around himself at night like the thickest blanket against a chill, and he doesn't want to share them with anybody, not even Harry. He knows, however, that Harry is unfamiliar with the language of grief, and that he, Remus, is fluent in it, and so he must be the one who teaches Harry how to navigate it or he will be lost.

"No," he shakes his head, determined now to speak at last, no matter how it makes his heart feel as though it's being squeezed by a freezing hand. "We must talk about Sirius sometime, Harry. We can't pretend he didn't exist"-

“Please stop." Harry's lips are bloodless, pressed together tightly.

"-we can't pretend he isn't gone," he pushes on, his voice rising over Harry's, firmly. They're staring at each other, and Harry looks as though he wants to hit him, his fists clenched. There's a spark of hatred in his eyes. "That he's not dead."

“God, stop!” Harry cries in a furious, astonished voice- Why are you doing this to me? rings through his entire being. His fists thump the ground.

“He's dead, Harry," his repeats flatly. He's been cold for the past twenty-seven days without Sirius's body heat, and is shivering violently despite the night's warmth. Goosebumps are breaking out on his arms where he pushed his jumper up to wash the dishes. "Dead."

"STOP IT!" Harry's voice breaks. His face is twisting in rage.

He won't stop it. He can't, not when Sirius has become an invisible third person in the cottage, a vague, morbid phantom. "He's dead. And the two of us not talking about him, ignoring the subject, isn't right. He deserves more from us, from the two people who loved him more than anything on earth."

That halts Harry just as he's crouching, poised to either attack or run. He trembles in the balance. Remus is holding his breath, bracing himself for either fists or giving chase- and he will go after Harry if he runs. From somewhere nearby, a cricket begins to chirp, and that and the sound of Harry breathing are the only noises.

The long, quivering moment breaks when Harry lowers one knee to the ground, then the other.

“You- loved him?” he's halting, tense. Still perilously close to fleeing.

Not breaking their eye contact, he says with deliberate exactness, "I love him." In those three words he has revealed more to Harry about his relationship with Sirius than he ever has to anyone before in his life. He wonders wearily whether he should feel a certain sense of relief, admitting it to someone besides Sirius- but he doesn't. The words were never the important thing.

“But- like I love Ron? Or. Is there”- Harry fumbles, and Remus could almost smile if the moment were not so tightly wound.

“I love him," he says again, with enough emphasis in both words and eyes that comprehension suddenly breaks over Harry's face in a wave. A flush floods his cheeks and he sits down, hard.

He wonders if Harry has been raised to hate his kind, much as most of the wizarding world has been raised to hate werewolves. If so, it's very likely that he has just in fact destroyed Harry's memories of his godfather, and his good opinion of Remus. Harry has never followed tradition or authority or anything resembling a crowd mentality, but then this is quite different, at least to most people- even those who can accept his lycanthropy could shun him for loving another man. It was worth being shunned- always, worth anything- but he will never forgive himself if he's made Harry hate Sirius when he could have kept silent.

But he need not have worried, as Harry only murmurs, “Oh,” in a small, bewildered voice, rubbing the hem of his t-shirt between his fingers, high colour still burning in his cheeks. After a few minutes, he says, so low and fast it’s barely audible, “You must hate me then.”

He gapes at Harry, who refuses to look at him now and is looking up at the darkening sky. “Hate you? Whyever would I hate you?”

“Because I…becauseit’smyfault,” he says, jumbled together as though he rather hopes Remus won't hear it. His upturned eyes are over-bright in the fading light. His voice is trying to be calm, but Remus has had a lifetime of practice at it, and Harry can’t fool him.

He is quiet for a bit, wondering how to answer Harry best. “I can understand why you might think that.” Harry doesn’t move at all, his eyes trained on the sky, but Remus feels the tension in the boy’s body coil abruptly. “But I’ll tell you why I don’t hate you and I never would.” He pauses and removes the stick that’s been jabbing into him with every movement from underneath his thigh, glad to have something to do with his hands.

He speaks softly, because this is such a delicate subject that too much firmness will break it. “I can’t hate you, among myriad other reasons, because if it had been me and I was seeing Sirius tortured, I would have done the exact same thing. I wouldn’t have been able to think straight, the only thing I would have been able to do is try to save him. Even if I wish things could have ended differently, it all comes down to the fact that Sirius was a grown man and made his own choices, Harry. His death is not on your head- or if it is, then it’s on my head too, on all our heads, for not holding him back, or for letting him be sealed inside that tomb of a house for so long when I knew how miserable he was. I'm only rather surprised you don't hate me.”

After he’s finished the first sentence, Harry’s gone rigid, both hands cupped over his mouth, pressing down tightly as if he’s trying not to let something escape from him. Halfway through, his face crumbles, and by the end he’s crying silently, bringing his knees up so he can rest his forehead on them.

At first he’s unable to touch the boy, cursing himself. Sirius was really the only person in the world he felt completely comfortable touching and being touched by, from the very first- probably because he wouldn’t be kept at arm’s length- he burrowed in everywhere, a human Disarming spell. With everyone else he’s at least mildly uncomfortable, itchy and nervous and feeling stupid, fearing rejection even as he rejects. But this is not a situation he can safely ignore- a pat on the back just will not do. He sits up and pulls Harry close to him, and perhaps this isn’t so new or strange or uncomfortable after all- he’s done this before. He’s reminded of his thought earlier that Harry would resent being treated like his infant self, and apparently he was wrong because Harry curls up against him in much the same way, desperate for comfort. His hand hovers over the boy’s back, hesitating to rub it, wondering if it will be too motherish, but in the end Sirius decides for him, Go on, Moony, let yourself coddle him. If anybody deserves to be mothered it’s Harry. So he lets his hand rub circles over the back bowed in misery that a child should never have to suffer, and the sound of choked, desolate weeping rises above the crickets.

The sky is completely dark when Harry shoves his glasses up and wipes his eyes, pulling away and sniffing mightily. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so stupid”-

“Sssh,” he hushes him. “You’re not stupid and I should have been here for you to talk to a long time ago.”

Harry tentatively leans his head against Remus’s shoulder, his eyes flicking up to Remus’s as if asking permission. He feels the same flare of warmth in his heart that he had when Harry was a small thing, the urge to protect and hold safe, and also a terrible aching sadness to pile atop the rest, because that one gesture speaks worlds about the level of affection Harry has been shown before now. When James and Lily had been alive, there was no baby more adored in all the United Kingdom than Harry- Lily kissing his fat little waving hands, James tickling him under his chin, both of them enraptured with their child. The thought of that same child having never been touched in kindness in the fifteen years since is enough to make him put his arm around him, albeit the gesture is a bit creaky with long years of disuse. No, Harry is not his son. But the least he can do for this boy who is so like and at the same time so unlike James is give him what James would have given him. So they sit in thoughtful silence that reminds him, somehow, of times with his own quiet father.

“Did my dad know?” Harry suddenly asks, gnawing on his lip and looking a bit uncomfortable. “About you and Sirius?”

Remus looks down at his hand and smiles. “Yes. I don’t know how he knew- we never told him- but the day you were born, he let me know that he knew. We never discussed it, but I understood that he had given me his…tacit permission, I suppose…to love his best friend. Sirius never knew, unless James talked to him later, after things had- ended- between us.”

“What happened- the day I was born?” Harry’s voice is full of restrained eagerness, and for a moment Remus is shocked that Harry doesn’t know, that in all this time neither he nor Sirius have ever told Harry something so small and simple that most children grow up knowing about themselves. He, for instance, knows that his mother had him in the very bed Harry sleeps in, and that he looked a bit like a monkey at first. Harry, however, knows nothing, and he is the only one left alive who can tell him.

So he does. He tells him of sitting in front of the fire reading a book one chilly night in late July of his twentieth year. He tells him how Sirius, who had just returned from some training or other and was absolutely dead exhausted, was asleep using Remus’s lap as a pillow, while Remus idly stroked his tired dark head, when James Apparated in front of them. There was no time to remove the softly snuffling burden from his legs, and he stared at James apprehensively, frozen with his arm curled around Sirius's broad shoulders in automatic protection. An unnamed emotion drifted across James’s sharp, intelligent face- he sometimes thinks it was exasperation, or perhaps hurt, and a tiny part of him thinks it may have been jealousy, but what it definitely was not was surprise.

They had stayed that way for a few moments that seemed like years, and words were passed between them unspoken. A thousand things were unsaid and still understood. At last James had smiled slightly and said, his voice measured, “You should wake him up, Moony. There’s someone waiting to meet you both, looks quite a bit like a House Elf actually…”

“Did I really?” Harry asks with a small laugh, the first Remus has heard him utter since the previous summer.

“You did, a bit. More like a baby, though,” he reassures him.

He tells him how James nodded to him and pounded him briefly on the back before Disapparating to St. Mungo’s again. James always was a pounder of backs when emotions ran high, and Remus had known in that one gesture that things were all right between them- James had given his approval. He had gently shaken Sirius awake and told him that it was time to go to the hospital because the baby was here, and they joined Peter at the waiting room outside the Maternity Ward of St. Mungo’s. Peter looked as exhausted as Sirius did, and when James came out with the baby the three of them gathered around the tiny bundle of blue blankets as though it contained all the secrets of the world, awestruck at the product of nine months of Lily's utter insanity (as James confessed, he hadn't known whether he was head or arse up the entirety of it). James proudly showed off his son, and the amount of Skele-Gro he'd had to take after Lily broke his hand during the delivery. They let Wormtail hold baby Harry first, and he had quickly passed him off to Remus with a nervous, "I'll break him, Prongs, and Lily will castrate me." Remus hadn't felt any more steady than Peter, so at last he had given him to his overwhelmed god-father.

“And Harry, don’t tell anybody this- Sirius would kill me for even bringing this up, I promised it was a secret that would die with me- but he cried when he met you,” Remus says, grinning. From somewhere in the universe he can almost hear Sirius roaring at him, and it makes him laugh.

“He did?” Harry looks pleased and embarrassed at the same time.

“Like a baby,” he says smugly. He will never tell anyone how it made him feel, but that is a memory that has been used a few times against Dementors- the tall, handsome black-haired man sitting in one of the waiting room chairs, holding the tiny baby tight with one arm and wiping his cheeks with his free hand, sniffing in embarrassment while Prongs and Wormtail laughed uproariously at him for being a big soppy nance. “He couldn’t get over how tiny you were and how much hair you had, and how your fingers wrapped around his thumb.”

They’re both silent for a moment. Then he finishes the story, telling Harry that when they went back to the flat, after hours of boisterous, excited conversation with James, and Lily when she woke up, they curled up in bed and talked in quieter tones. Sirius said, his voice breaking because it had been an emotional night for all of them and he was very tired, “I want to be that person for him- that person that he can always come to, y’know? If Prongs is being an arsehole- he’s bound to at some point, all dads seem like the enemy once you realize they’re not God- I want to be the one he can come to and just be…himself. I never loved anyone that quickly, Moony, not even you. I just- love him.”

He doesn’t tell Harry that they hadn’t much time left together. The sly shadow began to steal between them shortly after; a shadow that at first could only be seen out of the corners of one’s eyes and disappeared when one tried to stare at it directly. The insidious, cancerous chill spread rapidly, pushing them farther and farther apart until it seemed a frozen tundra divided them even though they slept inches away from each other and made love to each other desperately when they had time, which was rarely. He had moved out of their flat when he couldn't bear to look at Sirius's white, miserable face anymore. Really things were so hectic and chaotic at that point that it didn’t matter, it had hurt in a numb sort of way but he had just shoved it down inside himself until they could deal with it- when the war is over, he had thought, a phrase they all kept as a mantra in the face of almost-certain defeat. Then Lily and James and Harry went into hiding, and Sirius and Peter followed, and the shadow was upon them, consumed them. Destroyed them.

He only says, “He loved you very much, Harry, always. We all cared about you; even Peter was quite fond of you, no matter what became of him later. But Sirius, especially.”

He tactfully looks away when Harry brushes at his eyes, and they’re quiet again for a bit. Then, “It hurts, doesn’t it,” Harry says softly.

“Yes,” he replies, and adds automatically, as he has to every person who has spoken in hushed, sweet, overly considerate tones to him, “But I’m fine.”

Harry puts a faltering hand on his arm and tugs on his sleeve to make him look up. “You’re not fine, though. You’re crying.”

He touches his face and realizes his fingertips are damp. The salt burns the cut on his index finger for a moment, before he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I suppose you’re right, Harry,” he tells him, thickly. “I’m not fine. I’ll never be fine again, not for the rest of my days.”

He pulls his hands away and lets the wetness on his lower lids spill over, daring himself to be unashamed of it. He stares up into the twinkling night, the stars doubling and trebling in dazzling prisms. “I was so lucky, though. Not everybody has what I’ve had. I think- I think I always knew that I couldn’t keep it. But I was so lucky to have him while I did.”

He and Harry sit and watch the stars the rest of the night, the only wake that will ever be held for the mercurial man they have both loved, and when the dawn twilight comes they can see Canis Majoris for the first time. Dog days are upon them.