i.
It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
He wanders aimlessly down the boulevard, allowing himself to be jostled by the rush-hour crowd. It is Christmas Eve, 1994: his first Christmas Eve away from England. He finds it utterly confusing.
Bright lights shimmer from shop windows, trees, and lampposts. All around him, people speak excitedly in a foreign tongue—Spanish, he guesses, but given his state of mind, it could be English and still he would not understand it. His dark hair hangs in thick mats around his face, concealing him from the world, the world from him. Sirius Black will commit no murders tonight.
ii.
It's the season of possible miracle cures
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
Where time begins to fade
And age is welcome home
Somehow, he has ended up here—spires and towers and grotesque animals carved from stone. He looks up at the glorious architecture with indifferent eyes. Too much like Hogwarts, he muses, but this particular structure has a certain elegance that the aged castle does not. He touches the wall lightly with his fingertips; the stone is smooth, cool, and pulsating with some sort of magic that he cannot place. His brow furrows in bewilderment.
“Never seen a church before, I presume?”
He looks up, startled. A Muggle woman dressed in torn jeans and a long-sleeved top leans against a nearby lamppost, watching him with amused eyes. The yellow glow from the lamp highlights her features: olive skin, dark eyes, full lips. Sirius finds himself staring.
iii.
It's the season of eyes meeting over the noise
And holding fast with sharp realization
“Atheist or foreigner?” she asks him in heavily-accented English, the corner of her mouth tugging upwards. He smirks, turning away from the wall to face her.
“Connoisseur,” he responds, with a swagger he thought had already left him. He allows himself a self-reassuring smile that feels both foreign and familiar. The sense of a thrill hangs poignantly in the air.
The woman smiles back, holding his gaze for one electrifying moment, and then she turns on her heel and walks slowly into the shadows. He hesitates for a breath or two, a pool of heat spreading from his navel to the rest of his body, and he wonders if he should.
Around him, the world continues; for him, time has stopped. Guilt can no longer be measured in minutes and hours of self-pity. His life is already one long and agonizing metaphor for regret—and who is he to break that chain?
In the end, he follows her.
iv.
It's the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention
The room is decrepit and filthy. Outside, the chatter perpetuates, interrupted every now and then by the roar of a motorcycle. Inside, his body comes alive.
Her skin is rough beneath his fingertips—not sandpaper, but felt: soft, yet unfamiliar, and therefore dangerous. She allows him to overpower her, and he does so willingly; suddenly thirteen years of isolation pour out of him, squeezing him dry. Their breaths come in short gasps, faster and faster and faster, and the light explodes within his head, fills him up, spreads to the farthest corners of his limbs, ignites his veins, shatters his loneliness, and for one quick moment, renders him completely undone.
And then it recedes. Slowly, ever so slowly.
The woman—he doesn’t even know her name—touches his face lightly, smiles at him in the gloomy light. He tries to smile back, but finds that he can’t.
The black hole where his heart used to be is still there.
v.
You are safe here
You know now
He wanders again.
The dusty clock hanging in the hallway read 11:48 when he left. Twelve minutes to Christmas. He puts his hands in his pockets, wondering vaguely if the woman has anyone with whom to spend the holidays. He feels a small twinge of self-loathing when he considers that he could have been her companion. But he does not turn back.
The streets are empty, finally. He wanders back towards the church, drawn by the lights and the sound of music faintly drifting on the breeze. There is some sort of ritual going on inside. He peers through the stained glass window, curiosity getting the better of him.
vi.
Don’t forget
Don’t forget I love
I love
I love you
“Sirius?”
He whirls around, so fast that he nearly trips over his own feet. Standing just a few yards away, Remus Lupin regards him with an expression of relief and incredulity.
“Thank God I found you. I’ve been looking everywhere,” he breathes. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Here being Majorca, or here being beside this church?” Sirius replies with a smirk.
Remus rolls his eyes and says, “Well, I know about the former. Why are you spying on poor unsuspecting Catholics?”
“Oh, so that’s what you call them.” Sirius looks over his shoulder, back at the stained glass window through which he could glimpse a man speaking behind a pulpit. “Strange name. Meat or vegetable?”
Remus sighs. “Non-edible.”
“Really?”
“Kingdom Mammalia, subset religious. Species of Muggle with great faith in a higher power. Would prefer not to play victim to wizard cannibalism, thank you very much.”
“Oh, right. What a damn shame.”
“Indeed. And your real answer?”
“Deciding whether I’m atheist or not,” Sirius quips, folding his arms across his chest. Ignoring Remus’s bewildered look, he continues, “What are you doing here?”
“Wondering why you’re trying to decide whether you’re atheist or not,” Remus counters, raising an eyebrow. Chuckling, Sirius bows his head and scrapes the toe of his ragged shoe against the ground.
“Long story.”
“I figured.” Remus smiles wryly. “If you really must know, I came to find you. Christmas and all.”
It is Sirius’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Pretty long trip from England, eh, mate?” he remarks. Remus promptly holds up a rusty tin can, and he laughs again.
“You were always the clever one, Moony. I’d forgotten.”
“Understandable.” Stowing the Portkey safely in the inside pocket of his coat, Remus eyes him with an expectant look on his face. “So . . . how about catching up with an old friend?”
“Hmm.” Sirius takes a few steps forward until he is standing right in front of him. He inclines his head in mock scrutiny. “Yes, you are getting rather old. Is that gray hair I see?” He lightly brushes the long bangs from Remus’s face, which remains impossibly stoic.
“Are those ticks I see?”
“Eh. You have old crone hair and I have doggy bits. Just like old times. We are one smart pair, Lupin.”
Remus smiles, his eyes almost silver in the lamplight. “That we are.”
Don’t forget
Don’t forget I love
I love
I love you