Chapter Text
The stones underneath his back were uncommonly smooth. So flat that he couldn’t feel the characteristic prick of their sharp edges against his skin from where he lay on the shoreline with his feet in the water, tattered trousers rolled up to the knee. They were nothing like the rocks on the banks he was used to, much further down the river, all jagged edges and broken pieces and sharpened borders.
Absently, he wondered if he could skip one all the way across to the other side. The river was wider here, deeper here, but it flowed more evenly. Ideal for skipping rocks. However, the rocks themselves were apparently ideal for lounging across, basking in the infinite sky, and because they were so ideal for this, he couldn’t quite convince himself to get up to try skipping a stone just yet. He hadn’t felt this peaceful in ages. Not since the last time his cousin had told him a bedtime story. Years ago, now.
Eyes closed, he furrowed his dark brow at the unusual warmth he felt, lying underneath a sun that had lately been so foreign to him. From behind his eyelids, everything was pink, the light from such an astronomical star grasping through the heavens to saturate his skin so thoroughly that even the darkness was no longer dark. And it didn’t just warm him, it warmed everything it reached – the air that he breathed, the smooth rocks that he laid upon, the water he could feel rushing over his bare feet.
Still unwilling to move, he plotted his course of action. Should he bend his wrist inward toward his chest when he flicked the rock across the river? That would give him the most spring. But that might leave him with a distance problem. Potentially, he could get more distance if he stretched his arm all the way out and flicked his wrist only at the end of the throw. Would that be enough rebound to make it?
With a satisfied sigh, he stretched greatly, unsettling the smooth, flat rocks on the shoreline, and it was almost as if the earth herself didn’t want to give him up, because his movement created a perfect little niche, a perfect outline of him in the rocks, a cradle to keep him. Still, his mission could not be swayed, not now, not when he’d already made up in his mind what he wanted to do. He stood.
It took several minutes of hunting to find the most suitable skipping stone. All the rocks had flat edges, but this one was stretched thin, more likely to bounce on the water’s surface. And visually, they all looked smooth, but this was the one smoothest to his touch. It was flawless among the other stones.
Taking in and letting out an equal measure of breath, he decided on the full arm sweep, and he took a step back to facilitate the movement. He kept his elbow tight, his arm level to the shoreline, level to the surface of the water. With his torso facing the water, he twisted his hips, positioning himself like a spring, rearing back to launch his perfect skipping stone across the water. Like an arrow from a bowstring, he released, flicking his wrist at the last moment, the optimum moment. His perfect skipping stone plunked straight into the water without a single hop on the surface tension of the river water.
“That was absolute shite,” he heard from somewhere behind him. Immediately, his hands went up into defensive positions, the rune branded on the inside of his left wrist crackling and sizzling. He stifled the wince of pain it left in his skin with practiced vigor as his eyes met those of the stranger.
But it was a child. Well, not a child – no more a child than he was, at fourteen – but at least it wasn’t someone older, someone stronger. In fact, the longer he looked, the more he considered a preemptive attack. The boy standing in front of him was thin, lanky, possibly malnourished (though he wondered if the boy thought the same thing of him). If he struck first, he would likely win.
Instead, he stayed. And he studied. Unlike his own pale complexion, the skin of this boy was tawny, tanned, covered in the residual appreciation of the celestial sun in the form of splattered freckles across his cheeks, down his absurdly long throat, over shoulders that were bared by open fabric.
If there were runes on his skin, they were covered, hidden by his clothes – clothes that looked far too proper for a romp in the nearest river. His trousers looked pressed, fitted down to where the ankles were tucked into the laces of his shined boots. The neck on his collared shirt was high, as if compensating for the expansive stretch of his throat. While the sleeves were long, covering accessible skin where a Coven would place their most functional runes, they were strategically cut at each shoulder, displaying a continuous spackling of freckles. With a closer look, the freckles weren’t the only mark upon his skin.
In the place of visible runes were scars, too numerous to count even for the minimal amount of exposed skin they decorated, almost making up the entire composition of what copper skin was visible, connecting his freckles like they were intentionally etched into his skin for that purpose. Most seemed superficial, but there were a few that looked deep enough to have been life-threatening, like the gash that seemed to circle all the way around his throat, looking as if it had originally been deep enough to detach his head. With a sharp breath of discomfort, he looked up into the face of this strange child.
And he was smiling. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming smile. In fact, it looked a little pained, the furrow in his brow tightening and relaxing as if he weren’t sure what to do with his face. Eventually, it settled into something that wasn’t quite comfortable, but wasn’t quite dangerous. However, the next thing from his lips was dangerous, flagrantly dangerous, at least to some. “Got a name?”
Of course he had a name. But he had never spoken it aloud. Not once in all his life. The number of people who knew his birth name were those directly related to him. To give out one’s name to a stranger was practically punishable by death. Granted, he wasn’t sure on the actual law, but that was only because it had never occurred in the entire documented history of his Coven. Not in a thousand years.
In the beginning, he had learned as part of his training, names were not as sacred then as they were now. At first, a name was something to be shared, something to cherish, something to brandish like a weapon. However, the worse the infighting between the covens and the clans and the tribes became, the more dangerous it was to have a name, especially names that were traditional, names that were unique to a particular clan, because those were the names that were most often recycled through generations, and they became synonymous with that tribe. A name like Sirius was a clear indicator that he was from the Black Coven. In fact, he was the one-hundred-and-thirteenth Sirius Black in their history.
“Not one that I can give you,” Sirius stated tightly, hands still half-raised in mistrust, the ash-black rune still bubbling, slowly eroding the delicate skin on the interior of his wrist. There was something like recognition in the stranger’s expression, but it was gone in a flash. If it had been there, it had been intentionally washed away. If it was recognition, that meant this boy was from a rival clan.
But which one? It wasn’t any of the covens, that much he knew with certainty. The Blacks had formed alliances with all of the major covens – Malfoy, LeStrange, Greyback, Dolohov. The minor covens had long since been absorbed by their superiors. Rosier and Avery were now part of Malfoy and LeStrange, respectively. And Sirius knew all of them by name. After all, they were family now.
That left the tribes close to the mountains and the clans of the fields. The dominant mountain tribes that he knew by name were the Pettigrews, the Tonks, and the Weasleys. What was left of the Prewitt Tribe, after the death of the two eldest sons (a feat accomplished by Sirius’ cousin, Bellatrix), had been absorbed by the Weasleys. Last Sirius heard, the Weasleys had drawn away from the fight.
And as far as Sirius knew, this boy wasn’t from the primary Pettigrew Tribe – only the eldest Pettigrew child was Sirius’ age, but Sirius knew him well by then, considering Sirius had dealt a near-lethal blow to him the last time they encountered one another. His father had been exceptionally proud of him that day, but Sirius’ only pride in himself then was that he had managed to keep down the contents of his stomach until after regaling the tale of his victory. The memory of the scorching wound he’d burned into the left side of the eldest Pettigrew’s abdomen left him feeling sick for days afterward, even more so when he considered what his father would do to him if he ever found out that it had all been a mistake. An accident. That Sirius had been trying not to hit the Pettigrew boy. Until he had.
It had to be one of the ancient clans. Potter, most likely. It was the largest one, the oldest one. Of the Potters, Sirius had only ever encountered a single Potter boy, briefly at that, as Sirius hadn’t been able to catch him, much less inflict any damage on him. It had been several months since then, much had changed, Sirius had changed, but he was sure this boy wasn’t the same one. He wouldn’t forget those hazel eyes, the only telltale sign of his lineage. They haunted Sirius in his nightmares, the eyes of the boy he couldn’t catch. His father had come down hard on him for that. His mandatory training time requirement had gone from eight hours a day to twelve hours, for the three months that followed.
Ollivander, perhaps. They were such a secretive clan, Sirius had never even met one of their members, in battle or otherwise. The legendary craftsman Garrick was purportedly among their ranks, but many in the Black Coven considered him a fable. Apparently, he created an external device to channel an invocation, not a rune imprinted on the skin to direct force like the covens, not words spoken to summon power like the clans, not manipulating the energy within a material like the tribes, a conduit outside oneself. But Sirius didn’t believe such a tool existed. Power required work. Power required pain.
There were still quite a few clans – the Longbottoms, the Diggorys, the Lovegoods. The Meadowes and the McKinnons had formed an alliance, as had the Shacklebolts and the Vances. But, in all of those clans, he knew the face of everyone that would be close to his age. He’d encountered them all at one point or another. The boy in front of him was too tall to be the Longbottom boy, too lanky to be a Diggory, his skin tone too dark to be a McKinnon but too fair to be a Meadowes, his hair too long to be the eldest Shacklebolt, his facial structure too sharp to be a Vance. Who the hell was this kid?
“Guess I’ll have to call you whatever I like then,” the boy stated with an easy smile. There was a moment, just a moment, when the boy’s eyes darted down to the emerald crest tattooed onto the center of Sirius’ chest, partly hidden by the loosely tied silver collar of his black shirt, and Sirius went stiffly cold.
It was a symbol synonymous with the Black Coven, but one that they meticulously kept concealed, a clandestine method of identification to anyone who would know its meaning. A jade pawprint, an emblem that had always stood for the Black Coven, since the formation of covens and clans and tribes. The legend stated that the Black Coven was founded by a man who could reform himself into the shape of a black jackal, and that he defeated one of the elder beasts for control over darkness.
Finally, Sirius understood why his father consistently scolded him for being so careless with the Black Coven’s most sacred seal. As soon as that boy’s amber gaze moved back up to Sirius’ face, Sirius was certain he was ruined. He was going to have to fight. Alone. And, for the first time in his life, with the directed way that boy was looking at him just then, with irises of gold, Sirius wasn’t sure he could win.
Before Sirius could ignite the rune on his wrist, the boy’s expression molded into a comfortable smile, his eyes no longer a threatening shade of molten gold but a soft shimmer that reminded Sirius of orange blossom honey. Only once, those eyes flicked back up to level with Sirius’ wary, silver stare, and when they did, the cold that had been surging through Sirius’ veins instantly evaporated into steam, warming his skin from the inside until it moved out as a reddening of his otherwise pale complexion.
With Sirius watching through a furrowed gaze of concern and question, the boy knelt to the rocks and closed his eyes, letting his hand hover over the shoreline, as if he could feel, without touch, which rock would be the perfect skipping stone. Before Sirius could even raise an eyebrow, the boy snatched up a rock, immediately reared back, and let it go just as quickly. With six long skips, it landed on the opposite shore, skidding across and unsettling the rocks in its path. Sirius’ furrow fell into open surprise.
“What –” Sirius began to say, wondering how he did it with such ease, but he pulled his inquiry back into his teeth, recognizing that he was not about to strike up a conversation with a stranger.
“Your turn again,” the boy said, and before Sirius could argue, the boy was back to his knees, his eyes falling closed in solemn contemplation, his hand roving over the surface of the shoreline. When he chose a stone, it was sudden and sporadic, but decisive. Looking up, he reached out toward Sirius, expectantly, stone in hand. When Sirius didn’t take it, he expected the boy to pull away. He didn’t.
“I – I’m not –” Sirius began to try to argue his position. He was not going to do this – skip stones with a stranger on a foreign shore. It was bad enough he’d wandered this far from home. In daylight.
“You just need a little practice,” the boy said with a comfortable shrug. “And your form needs a little work, you’re just too stiff.” Again, before Sirius was ready to act, the boy was on his feet, and he effortlessly shifted his weight so that he was standing behind Sirius, before Sirius even registered that he was moving. “Relax your shoulders,” he said softly, sliding both hands up Sirius’ back and kneading softly at Sirius’ shoulders. Maybe it was the shock or maybe it was the confusion or maybe it was the fact that Sirius had never experienced a touch this affectionate in all his life. It felt strange. It felt … nice.
In response, Sirius arched his back a little, an unexpected measure of air moving into his lungs, though he couldn’t quite explain to himself why his once tightly regulated breathing had suddenly changed. The boy spoke again. “Better,” he said with a satisfied hum, and Sirius found himself oddly warmed by it, in some place deep in his chest. “Stand with your feet perpendicular to the shoreline.”
Wordlessly, Sirius adjusted his stance. “Like this?” he asked, finding his voice was a lot quieter than he expected it to be. For a moment, the stranger was silent, and Sirius could feel him analyzing Sirius’ posture from somewhere behind him. Without warning, he placed his hands on Sirius’ hips, and Sirius wasn’t sure he could give a name to the sensation he felt, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“Turn a little more to the right,” he said, his hands on Sirius’ body directing Sirius’ movements until he was satisfied with Sirius’ position. When he moved his hands, Sirius found himself missing the pressure of that physical guidance. “Widen your stance a little more, so when you lean in to throw it, you’re not off balance.” Keeping his feet pointed correctly, Sirius slid his right foot out a little further, receiving vocal affirmation from his teacher. “Now, when you throw it, bend your knees and lean backward, just a bit.” Finally, in his disbelief, Sirius glanced back, making sure not to change his footing.
“Lean backward?” he asked, a sharp whine of doubt in his throat. But when he turned to meet the amber eyes of his instructor, he found that face much closer to his own than he’d expected. With him this close, Sirius got an uninterrupted view of his features – an intimate survey of the faded silver of his scars against the deep copper of his skin, an introduction to the darkness of his curls contrasted against their softness as they swept around his face with every change in breeze, and Sirius felt a sense of familiar unrest at the casual sincerity of this boy’s smile. Because it just couldn’t be that authentic.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and Sirius felt the boy’s hand move between his shoulder blades, palm flat against Sirius’ back as he spoke a promise. “You won’t fall. I’ll hold you.” With that bolster to his confidence, Sirius turned his face to the shoreline again, letting out the rest of the air in his lungs. “Hold the flat edge of the stone against your forefinger,” the boy continued, as Sirius felt him place the stone he’d picked out into Sirius’ half-curled fingers, helping Sirius to wrap his hand in the right way, positioning Sirius’ first fingertip against a particularly flat cut of the stone. “Keep your arm level to the water.”
“Okay,” Sirius nodded, finding it odd that he felt an unusual sting when the boy’s hand left his own and recognizing that it wasn’t a sensation he could name, wasn’t a sensation he’d ever felt.
“Give your wrist a good flick when your arm is stretched all the way,” he coached, and if there had been a sting in Sirius’ chest when this boy pulled his hand away, it was sharper and more pronounced when he moved it back again. “Like this.” His voice was practically a whisper, but Sirius didn’t think it was that strange, considering how close his mouth was to Sirius’ ear. Carefully, he took control of Sirius’ hand, gliding his wrist back and forth to show the motion Sirius should use. “At the very last moment, catapult the stone with your forefinger against that flat edge.” His hand slipped away, the sting surged.
“Here goes,” Sirius said in an exhale, noticing that the boy had kept his word and kept his hand at the center of Sirius’ back. He kept his feet perpendicular to the shoreline, kept his arm level to the water, he bent his knees, he leaned backward, he stretched his arm as far as it could go and then … he released it, gliding his wrist the way he’d been instructed, propelling the rock off his fingertip at the last possible moment. The smooth, flat stone leapt three times before sinking under the surface of the water.
“That was perfect,” his instructor said with a subtle laugh. His hand was still on Sirius’ back. And Sirius felt strangely euphoric, though he didn’t think it was because of the stone. Before Sirius could turn, before he could thank this strange boy, before he could think of something else to say, the boy removed his hand from Sirius’ back, practically at the edge of the woods as soon as Sirius turned around.
“Wait, I –” Sirius started to call out, unsure of what he was about to say.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Little Padfoot,” the boy said, glancing down once more at the insignia in the center of Sirius’ chest before the amusement of his gaze moved down to Sirius’ bare feet, the ones that he had been soaking in the warm water of the rushing river. The boy gestured to the water, eyebrows raised, drawing Sirius’ attention to the scar that ran through the left one. “Practice.”
Without another thought in his head, Sirius knelt down to choose another stone as the boy vanished into the thick brush. Ghosting over the stones, he closed his eyes, waiting for the perfect skipping stone to call out to him. He was going to impress this boy tomorrow. He was going to practice until he could make it to ten skips. He was going to find a way to make his skin sting like that again.
He wasn’t sure how long he had to wait. Not that he minded, of course, for just as the day before, he’d nestled himself a spot in the smooth stones and they curved around him in such a way that their warmth reminded him of the touch of the stranger’s hands on his shoulders, their rigidity reminded him of the calluses he’d felt on the stranger’s fingertips against his wrist. So, he would wait a long time.
The evening before, after a very long walk back home, he was instantly greeted by his cousin Bellatrix, wearing her typical, arrogant sneer and standing directly in front of Sirius’ father, and leader of the Black Coven, Orion. Of course, he wanted to know where Sirius had been all day, why he had been out during the light of day when the only time any member of any Coven is allowed to leave is in the dead of night, when they are least likely to be seen, when they are least likely to be captured. As a result of this rule, all Coven members were nocturnal, sleeping during the day, active only at night.
And maybe that was fine for other members, but Sirius had grown to miss the brightness and warmth of the sun, the delicate blue of the sky, the bright green of tree leaves not masked in shadow. In daylight, everything seemed so much more transparent, so much more distinct. In darkness, everything looked the same, and all of those things that looked the same were all things that were trying to kill him.
He’d closed his eyes, at some point, enticed by that shade of pink behind his eyelids when the sun was directly overhead, lured by the soft warm glow of daylight contrasted to the tender cooling breeze that gently rattled the leaves. At night, it sounded so ominous. In broad daylight, it was like a song.
He wasn’t accustomed to being up at this midday hour, he stopped recognizing that bright pink colour behind his eyelids as he drifted off into some form of sleep where the rustle of tree leaves carried a cadence like mollified percussion, where the hum of the wind was that of a tattered woodwind, where the trickle of the river water mimicked the pluck of a string instrument. Together, they formed a lullaby to hush him into rest. He forgot that he was open here, exposed like an unbound wound.
However, he was sharply reminded of this when he heard, “Are you asleep, Little Padfoot?” whispered right into his ear, and he immediately sat up, twisting to his side, rune instinctively scorching his wrist. The familiar stranger reacted with nothing more than a smile in Sirius’ direction, lying in the rocks next to where Sirius had just been, fingers locked behind the dark curls on his resting head.
“It’s just you,” Sirius breathed out a sigh, letting himself fall carefully back into his stone nest, but in such a way that he could still look over at his … friend? Were they friends? Sirius had never had a friend before, at least not one that he wasn’t related to by blood or by blood pact. It was strange. And nice.
“It’s just me,” this new friend said, and he blinked slowly in Sirius’ direction with his starkly amber gaze. Despite the smile on his face, Sirius couldn’t help but notice the weariness in his eyes, darkened by black circles, and in the sunken pull of the skin on his cheekbones, like they were shaped to be fuller.
“Are you alright?” Sirius asked, and it was strange that this was his automatic response, because he wasn’t sure he’d ever uttered those words in genuine concern for the respondent. In fact, the last time he’d said that phrase, he’d asked it of Evan Rosier just after he’d been struck in the gut by some sort of blunt incantation shouted by a member of the Diggory clan, and he’d only really asked it to make sure Rosier could still move, that Rosier wouldn’t slow him down as they made their frantic retreat.
“Mm,” his companion hummed in a noncommittal response, closing his eyes. There was something in the violet circles underneath his eyes that spoke of an exhaustion that Sirius understood clearly, a heavy swallow in his elegantly elongated throat with which Sirius found himself commiserating against his intent. His hair, a deep brown not quite as dark as the black of Sirius’ own and splashed with a sun-bleached halo around his face, was matted and unkempt, which struck Sirius as rather strange since, only the day before, it had been softly tucked behind his ears, air-dried under a caring breeze.
Yesterday, he’d been in full feather, dressed in a way that reminded Sirius of the mandatory attire for the annual Black Coven conclave. Today’s garments suited him much more befittingly – grey trousers hastily shorn off just below the knee, a white linen shirt that was meant to be tied at the throat but was heedlessly left open to the center of his sternum, covered in a garment that Sirius would’ve otherwise called a dressing gown if not for the wide, quarter-length sleeves and the light, gauzy material.
Just underneath the collar of his shirt was a silver chain, the medallion it carried leaving an imprint in the fabric from where it was pressed against his chest. Absently, Sirius reached out, with every intention of plunging his hand into the open throat of his shirt and pulling the necklace from it, to see the insignia at the base. In fact, his hand was outstretched, hovering over his resting companion before he realized what he’d been about to do. With an odd flush in his cheeks, he pulled back, just in time.
Suddenly, with renewed energy, his new friend sat up, face level to Sirius’ own, and he let a mischievous smile wash over his features. It left an immediate reciprocation on Sirius’ face, though he did his best to smother it as quickly as he could. Before Sirius could ask what this burst of spirit was all about, the boy stood, glancing at Sirius with a curious smirk. Under furrowed brows, Sirius watched him.
“You practiced, right?” he asked. His expression was almost arrogant. “Let’s have a contest, then.” With one quick flourish of his wrist, he rolled one wide sleeve of his short cloak up to his shoulder in an instant, latching it with a buttoned tab before repeating the motion on the other side, the white sleeves of his shirt underneath peeking out from the underside. With the movement, Sirius’ eye caught a white marking on the inside of his right bicep, but before Sirius could get a closer look, he found himself being powerfully pulled to his feet. With the familiar warmth of this boy, a boy who had yesterday been a stranger, so close to him again, Sirius went rather still. It was becoming quite common around him.
There was something tender in the way this boy looked at him, in the way he held onto him, in the way he treated him. With his hand around Sirius’ wrist, even the roughness of the calluses on his fingertips and on the pads of his palms felt soft compared to the pain Sirius usually found there in the scorch of his first offensive rune. Ever since it had been branded onto his skin last fall, that rune had felt raised and angry and invasive to his own touch, but suddenly, it was like it wasn’t even there.
After only a single beat of silence and a quick swipe of the boy’s thumb across the rune on Sirius’ wrist, he spoke with a smile. “Find a stone. Then I’ll count us down.” The boy knelt, immediately closing his eyes and letting his hand hover over the stones, fingers shifting like they were playing a melody.
“Teach me how,” Sirius countered, dropping to his knees in the shifting stones. “How you do it.”
With a gradient pause, the boy peered open with one eye. “Give me your hand,” he said, a soft sort of command, and Sirius obeyed without question, slipping his fingers into the boy’s open palm. With Sirius’ hand underneath, the boy guided their hands over the surface of the stones. “Close your eyes,” he directed. Again, Sirius obeyed. Suddenly, their movement stopped. “Here. Right here. Do you feel that?”
Sirius paused, focusing fervently on … nothing. “No,” he answered honestly, furrowing his brows, but keeping his eyes closed, still trying to find that feeling, but all he could feel was the touch on his hand.
“It’s faint, but it’s …” The voice of his friend paused, in the middle was a softened breath, and then he continued. “It’s hard to describe. Like a tiny thread tugging gently at the center of your palm.”
“I still don’t –” Sirius began, his voice growing frustrated in his apparent lack of perception. His thought was left hanging as the familiar touch moved away from his hand. Before he could open his eyes to find out the reason, he felt the smooth surface of a stone pressed into the curve of his palm.
“Focus on the stone,” Sirius heard just to his right, a puff of warm breath in his ear. “Feel the shape of it in your hand.” Eyes still closed, Sirius did as he was told. And when the boy let the stone naturally fall away from the contact of Sirius’ skin, he felt it. That tug. Like a tiny thread in his palm.
“That’s it,” he said emphatically, his eyes darting open to immediately meet those of his partner, who was wearing a knowing, yet victorious smile. He pocketed the rock and nodded slightly.
“Now choose one for yourself,” he instructed. Sirius closed his eyes again. Holding his open hand level to the surface of the stones, he scanned over them slowly, pausing when his skin felt strange.
“This one,” he stated confidently, taking the stone into his hand with eyes still closed, recognizing how that tugging sensation seemed to feel less intense with the stone directly in the center of his palm.
“Show me what you can do,” the boy said, and as Sirius opened his eyes, he found that the uniquely amber gaze of his new friend had never disconnected from his. In the same way the pull of the perfect stone felt to the tendons of his palm, so did the urge to smile feel within the corners of his lips.
At once, Sirius stood to his full height, a bit taller than his mysterious new friend. With his feet facing the shoreline, his knees bent and shoulder-width apart, his arm level to the surface of the rippling water, he leaned back and shot the stone from the tip of his forefinger. It was different than it had been yesterday – now, it felt as if there were a physical string keeping the stone tethered to his palm. It was almost as if the stone had a will of its own, more reluctant to be released. At the same time, when Sirius released it, the invisible thread between his skin and the stone acted like the cord of a whip. The stone shot further in the first skip than it had the day before. One, two, three, four, five skips before it sank.
With wonder and pride, Sirius glanced back to the boy, who then looked down at the stones underneath his feet, grinning with a closed smile like he’d just won a silent, personal victory. Sirius felt a rush of something he couldn’t name at the sight of it. “I’d like to see you beat that,” Sirius said, goading his friend with intent, knowing the boy’s first throw the day before had already been more successful.
His dark brow raised, scarred side first, as he looked up at Sirius with a challenge in his glare. He didn’t rear back, barely even steadied his stance. With a simple stretch of his arm and a flick of his wrist, the stone that had once been in his pocket went whizzing along the surface of the water, following the course of the river. Sirius counted twelve skips before he lost sight of the rock completely.
When Sirius turned back to look in amazement, his eyes immediately fell upon the boy’s still outstretched arm, the white mark that Sirius had briefly caught sight of earlier now on full display. On the interior of his right upper arm was a slim crescent moon, his freckles forming the natural outline with the silver of long-healed scars connecting the points. The shape was indented into his flesh, carved out of it, and then refilled with some substance that had bonded to his skin, white and glittering and kinetic, alive and in fluid motion, as if the reflection of moonlight on the river’s edge had been implanted into his skin.
It wasn’t a rune, not the way Sirius knew them. It wasn’t charred at the edges with the remnants of eternally burnt flesh, it didn’t seem to breathe with life like cinders of a wood fire when a light breeze passed over it, it didn’t seem to hurt him at all, in fact. It was nothing like the rune on Sirius’ wrist.
The moment he noticed Sirius’ attention on it, he winced sharply, covering it instantly with his opposite hand. Despite the deepness of his skin tone, a subtle ruby flush raced through his cheeks, like hours of sun exposure condensed into a single moment, and strangely, Sirius found himself thinking that it looked much more captivating on this copper skin than it would have on Sirius’ pale complexion. Before Sirius could apologize, the boy was speaking, voice wavering. “I don’t think I can come back here again.”
“Wait,” Sirius called out on instinct as the boy began to rush past him toward the wooded brush that ran along the river’s edge. “Wait.” Without a thought in his head, he reached out and took hold of the boy’s wrist just as their shoulders collided, the momentum turning the boy in his place and doing the same for Sirius, leaving them face to face. With a purposeful tightening of his arm, Sirius drew him back in, drew him closer. There was something familiar about that mark, some memory triggered by that moonlight on his right arm, something that Sirius felt sure held a meaning he may have only understood in another life, but that wasn’t what kept him. It wasn’t what held his gaze. It wasn’t the reason the strength of his grip increased around the stranger’s wrist. It wasn’t the cause of the softness of his touch.
With a clench of his jaw, the boy spoke. “You and I both knew this was foolish from the start.” His argument didn’t loosen the hold of Sirius’ fingertips. In fact, Sirius added the strength of his free hand, holding carefully onto the boy’s forearm and pretending he didn’t revel in that familiar sting of contact.
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you,” Sirius stated plainly, enunciating specifically. As the boy started to argue, Sirius raised his brows and cut him off. “I’m just Padfoot. And you’re just … Moony.”
A look of surprise moved into the boy’s expression, followed by something that looked like pleasant realization, complete with a splashing of a slight smile between his freckles. That surprise moved into Sirius’ face as the boy took a sudden step closer. “We’d better keep those names between us alone.”
“I’ll swear it to you,” Sirius answered instantly, sliding his fingers down into the open palm of his secret friend, which was, at first, met with an unsettled breath and a startled jerk. Sirius just looked up and gave a nod of assurance before taking the boy’s hand into his own again. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to make a blood pact,” Sirius laughed softly as he straightened his fingers and coaxed his friend into doing the same, giving him some verbal direction as they moved. “Hold onto my wrist.”
“Like this?” he asked in a quieted voice, sliding his palm down over Sirius’ open hand, his fingers naturally curling slightly around Sirius’ forearm. With a nod, Sirius mirrored his action, loosely wrapping his fingers around the sharp bones of his friend’s wrist as he pulled the silk ribbon from his dark hair, sending it cascading down around his shoulders. There was a measure of silence between them as the amber gaze of this new friend scattered across Sirius’ expression, as if searching for meaning, for truth.
“This is lotus silk,” Sirius explained as he wrapped their joined hands in the emerald ribbon, matched to the now-hidden jackal crest underneath his ivory tunic. For a brief second, as Sirius glanced up at his new friend as he wrapped their forearms together, there was some combination of unsettling things in his expression that Sirius couldn’t quite name. Part surprise, part terror, part epiphany.
“Lotus flowers are extinct,” the boy said with wide-eyed conviction. Sirius just smiled.
“That must be why I was told it’s a priceless family heirloom,” he said as his fingers brushed across the back of the boy’s knuckles. “I don’t usually wear it, so it must’ve been fate that I met you today.” There was a pang of guilt in his chest at admitting out loud that he never wore it, when he once was made to swear he would never leave the manor without it. She said it would save his life one day.
“Why do you say that?” he asked, but the way he asked it made it seem like he already knew.
“Because lotus flowers are a sign of resurrection, of rebirth,” Sirius said, wondering if the boy would follow his meaning. They could start new here, they could be new together. “They also represent transcendence and an unwavering faith in oneself,” he quoted, remembering the words his favourite cousin had said to him the day she’d given him that ribbon, on his birthday. The day before she died. The day she made him promise that he would carry this silk with him everywhere he went. No matter what.
“Transcendence?” the boy clarified, watching Sirius with uncertainty.
“Rising above the circumstances of one’s birth,” Sirius answered. By the expression on his friend’s face, the sharpening of his gaze and the clenching of his jaw, it was clear he understood. They could be more than just their clan or their Coven or their generational name. “For us, faith. In each other,” Sirius finished with a solemn nod, keeping his silver eyes locked tight onto the golden gaze in front of him.
A quiet smirk moved over the boy’s face. “Maybe we should recite a vow or something,” he snickered playfully, and Sirius rolled his eyes, softly kicking him in the shin, eliciting a laugh of, “Ow.”
“Here’s your vow,” Sirius offered, intending to say something sarcastic, but getting drawn into the tenderness of that gilded gaze against the sting of the touch at his wrist. “Your name will die with me.”
Instead of surprise at Sirius’ sudden graveness or reverting back to cynicism for the comfort of it, the boy continued the thought, “Never to be written down, never given to anyone except its bearer.”
“Moony,” Sirius spoke the name aloud, to its bearer alone, writing it down only in his heart.
“Padfoot,” his friend spoke back. Moony spoke back. And he smiled unlike any smile Sirius had ever seen in his life, and Sirius knew then he would never see one like it again if not on this face.
Realizing their vow had long since been taken and they were still standing there holding each other’s hands and staring into one another’s eyes, Sirius grew unusually flushed, quickly unwrapping their contractual bindings. “I won’t be able to come back every day,” he said with a disappointed sigh.
“I know,” Moony nodded. “Can we choose a meeting day? A day of the lunar cycle?” he asked with a sardonic smile, flashing the white, glimmering crescent at the inside of his arm before unlatching the tab on his cloak and letting his sleeves fall down to cover it again. “Anything but the full moon,” he said, shooting a glance of warning toward Sirius to indicate he shouldn’t ask the reasoning behind it. And Sirius wouldn’t have asked, though he noted it was strange that he meant to give the same provision, considering the night of the full moon was when the activity of his Coven was always at its peak.
“What about the new moon?” Sirius offered as the silk ribbon slipped between their hands and they let their touch separate without bothering to place any additional distance between them. Moony watched as Sirius tied his hair back up, looking as if he would offer his help, but apparently noticing that Sirius wouldn’t have needed it anyway. “Midday following the first night of each new moon.”
“The new moon is in a few days, you know,” Moony said, looking at Sirius out of the corner of his eye, a smile tucked into his lips. He stepped toward the forest brush, pausing to pick up a stone. “Think you’ll be up for a rematch by then? You’ve got a lot of improving to do if you want to beat me.”
Sirius smirked. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” he said, kneeling to pick up a stone of his own, realizing he could feel that invisible thread now in every stone and that some had a stronger thread than others, recognizing that he felt that thread in Moony’s touch. Moony flashed both brows upward, the one with the scar etched out of it lingering a little bit longer than the other side.
“You’d better start practicing, Padfoot,” Moony grinned, holding up his hand to wiggle his fingers in a soft wave. All Sirius did was blink, but when he opened his eyes again, Moony was no longer there.
“Until then, Moony,” he said with a deep, sorrowful breath. In his chagrin, he swiftly spun on his heels and flung the stone downriver. It skipped thirteen times before he lost sight of it.