There was no music playing, but Sirius still danced. He swayed his body to the nonexistent melodies and harmonies. His hips moved, smooth and softly, his hands above his head, fingers stretched outwards to the sky, he was reaching for it. For the stars, for the moon, for the whole sky. Because he was greedy and of course he wanted the whole sky. He would steal it. One day, he would. One day he would fly up there, touch the stars, sit on the moon, and he would conquer the sky. He would be a thief, an honourable thief, whatever that was.
His friends laughed at him, laughed at his dancing and the vacant look in his eyes. They didn’t know. How could they. He had never let them in, not truly. They sung for him, drunken and happy, they sung ABBA and QUEEN and Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie and all of his favourite bands and singers. Though he could never really tell if it was them singing, he didn’t even know if they were really there. He might have been dreaming. He felt like he was in a dream. His body was full of helium, ready to float away once he removed the chains and anchors of human life.
He could feel the tears in his eyes, threatening to spill and ruin his perfect performance. They would see him. They would really see him. See his scars and his torn apart heart, they would rip him open and see that he had no soul, there was a pathetic emptiness within him that nothing had been able to fill. Contentment wasn’t enough anymore, had it ever been? He wasn’t so sure what would make him feel alive again. The moon. The stars. The sky. All of it. He needed to be alive, alive in space. A space oddity, thank you Bowie.
He took careful steps forwards, closer and closer to the edge. He remembered where he was. The Astronomy Tower, where he could see all of his family. Where he could see all of his failures and his deepest darkest desires painted up in the sky. He could touch them. He would touch them. Delicately, he stepped over the wall preventing people from falling. He held on to the walls, gripping firmly onto the bricks that stuck out and were wonky and wrongly placed. His fingers reached out, stretching so far outwards that if he so much as breathed any of that helium out, he would have fallen.
No. He would have flown.
The moon and stars and the whole sky, everything he had ever wanted, were so close. So close. He could do it. He really could. The singing and laughter and music inside his head had ceased, and he was alone. Maybe his friends were never there at all.
He could steal the sky. He could touch the stars, so gently, and then rip them from their firm place in the sky and place them in his pockets, take them back down to Earth or maybe just stay way up there and keep them for himself. Maybe he didn’t want to share his sky.
“Let me up.” He whispered to the endless sea of blackness, peppered with white, burning lights. “Let me fly to you.” He begged. “Let me be with you.”
He slipped. He hadn’t meant to slip. Not yet, anyways. He wasn’t supposed to go like this. And yet, there he was. He was falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and-!
He was flying. He could see the moon, coming closer to him. He could touch the stars, like they were fish in the sea. He could dance with them. He could sing with the meteors. He could sit with the moon and watch everyone way down there. Where he had never really belonged.
The next morning, his body was found at the bottom of the astronomy tower, crushed and torn apart from top to bottom, bleeding out on to the sacred grounds of Hogwarts. Smiling, smiling and happy to have reached the sky, Sirius Black had died. He had died further away from the stars, moon and sky than he had been when he lived.