- Text Size +
The Moon and Star


“I found your jumper, Prongs,” Remus said that night in the dormitory as the Marauders were getting into their pyjamas and preparing for a night of studying. Peter was laying out sweets and bottles of butterbeer that he’d knicked from the kitchens and Sirius was getting out firewhiskey from the desk drawer.

James looked up. “What? Where? Give it here!” His voice rang in excitement.

“I don’t have it, exactly, see,” Remus said carefully, “But I know where it is.”

“Where?” James asked, and he grabbed his wand, determination to go and get it on his face.

“Lily Evans has it,” Remus replied.

James stared at him. “....what?”

Sirius and Peter both looked up at this, too, Sirius’s eyebrows raised. “What the fuck’s she doing with Prongs’s juumper?”

James looked like he was thinking the same thing.

“Wearing it,” Remus replied.

“Lily Evans is wearing my jumper?” James looked torn between being upset and being pleased, like he just couldn’t decide which emotion to feel.

Remus nodded. “She had it on in the library this afternoon when we made these.” He pulled some flashcards out of his pocket and climbed up on Peter’s bed next to the other boy, the sweets between them, leaning against one of the posts at the foot of the bed and grabbing a bar of double fudge from the pile of snacks.

“Where’d she get it from?” James asked, grabbing a licorice wand for Sirius and a box of Jelly Slugs for himself.

“Dunno, I didn’t ask. We were in the middle of talking about something else and I didn’t say anything about the jumper to her because of that, but it’s missing the button and has the patches and your cologne all over it.”

“I saw it the other day at your last practice when Lily came out to the stands, too,” Peter confessed as he cracked open the butterbeers and started passing them around. Sirius declined one and opened a bottle of firewhiskey instead. “I mentioned it was yours to her and she thought I was mad and Alice Prewitt told me to bugger off.”

“Well bloody hell,” James said. “She’s right going to give it back.”

Sirius lowered the firewhiskey bottle, which he’d just taken a long pull from, and said, “You’d think you’d be excited, Prongs, that she was wearing your clothes and going about smelling like you.”

James bit the head off a jelly slug and chewed slowly.

“I’d be rejoicing,” Sirius continued. “Bet Jasper loves her going about smelling like another man. Bet he finds that right annoying.”

James said, “Jolly good and all but I want it back.”

“It’s a jumper,” Sirius said, “You’ve got four others just like it in your trunk!”

“Not like that one!” James answered, “She could have any other of my jumpers she wants but not that one.”

“What the actual fuck is so special about that bleedin’ jumper?”

“It was my dad’s!” James answered. “It was his when he was in school and he gave it to me when I was a kid. We had warm coffee and sat in the kitchen late one night after mum had gone to bed and I had a cold and I had woke him up and he told me stories about when he was at Hogwarts to cheer me up, and I said I was cold and he went and opened up his magic trunk and he got that sweater out and he gave it to me and it’s very important that I have it back!”

The other three were quiet.

“Very well,” Sirius said, “How do we get the jumper back?”

“Ask her for it, obviously,” Remus said, “If you told her all that, she’d understand and she’d give it over I’m sure.”

Peter said, “I dunno, she really likes that jumper.”

Sirius was shaking his head, “Nay! I say we steal it back. We change into our animagus forms and we go up to her dorm - the stairs won’t chuck us if we’re animals and -”

“They will,” James argued, remembering in the other timeline when he’d tried to go up to her room in stag form, how the stairs had thrown him across the room. “They aren’t stupid, those stairs.”

Sirius frowned, sucking on his licorice wand and Remus had to look away from him, a lump rising up in his throat. “Seriously, just ask her for it,” Remus repeated, keeping his eyes diverted.

Sirius shook his head, “Give me a few minutes and I’ll have a plan. No worries, Prongs.”

Remus rolled his eyes.

James was troubled, but he was relieved at least that the sweater had been located and that, of all people, it was with Evans. At least she would take care of it until he could get it back.

The boys set to studying, and it quickly became evident which of them had paid more attention i classes as Remus was basically tutoring Peter while James was helping Sirius… and then it became all three of the others were helping Sirius, and Sirius’s face was red and he was getting frustrated… “C’mon, Sirius, you got this,” James said, holding up a flashcard with the words used for making the drinker tell the truth. “You know this one, c’mon.”

Sirius frowned, “I don’t… Gods. I’m never going to pass this bleeding test. I don’t know.” He covered his eyes. “I’d so fucking stupid.”

Peter knew he shouldn’t have, but he actually felt a little good because for once it wasn’t him who was the stupid one.

“You’re not stupid,” said Remus, “You just should’ve paid attention in class better.” He handed Sirius the potions textbook open to Veritaserum.

Sirius took the book and stared down at it, tears in his yes, though he was trying not to let the others see, Remus could see them glistening as they clung to his eyelashes. “What happens if somebody doesn’t get a single O.W.L.?”

“You’ll get O.W.L.s,” James said, “You’re brilliant at Defense and you’re alright at Transfiguration and Charms and Magical Creatures and… and decentish at Herbology…”

“Great, I can be a groundskeeper like Hagrid,” muttered Sirius.

“Stop it,” James said, “You’re going to be a healer, I truly believe that. You’ve got to stop being so horribly down on yourself! Stop saying things like that. You just need to get you through this and you’ll be able to study on. C’mon. Here, here’s another flashcard.”

Sirius sighed and they continued working, though the bottle of firewhiskey slowly drained and Sirius got more and more surely and had more and more struggles with getting the right answer… and he started getting weepy as the firewhiskey went to his head and he rolled about on the bed and moaned, “Guys, really, just let me be stupid, don’t hold back on studying what you need to do without me… study the smart people stuff and I’ll go to my corner and study alone for the stupid..” and he slid off the edge of the bed and fell onto the floor with a thump.

“Just a thought,” Peter spoke up, “Perhaps the firewhiskey wasn’t the wisest studying snack?”

James got up and tugged Sirius to his feet.

“...not going to amount to nothin’... couldn’t’ve been nothin’ ...just born without any brains is all… disappointment to everyone, disappointing…” he stumbled and James caught him by the shoulders and guided him to his bed. “...absolute filth just… rubbish… and… just so… its pointless… all of it, isn’t it? We all just die in the end, all of us, the whole world is dying! The sun is dying! Even the bloody sun is dying! Oh, Achlys!”

Peter stared down at his fingers nervously.

Remus went over and helped James to get Sirius into his bed, mumbling all of the way about Achlys and his own wretchedness, crying and choking on sobs and strings of words that made no sense to any of them...

He fell asleep in no time at all and James held up the nearly empty bottle of firewhiskey and looked at the other two warily.

“That’s it.” Remus’s voice was hard. “I’m finished with this rubbish!” He went over to the desk and he yanked open Sirius’s drawer. The bottles of firewhiskey clinked against one another, the liquid sloshing. The bottles were laying in a rat nest of papers and notes and Remus pulled the bottles out, lining them up on the floor beside the desk. Bits of paper fell out of the drawer as he dug, folded up sheets of parchment, which fluttered about the floor of the dorm. Remus gathered up all the bottles. “Get the Map.”

James got the Map. He unfolded it. “I solemnly swear I am up to no good,” he told it, and the corridors and footsteps bloomed across the page.

The three boys went down through the castle, Remus leading the way with James’s instructions from the Map, all the way down to the little boat dock and there, unceremoniously, James and Peter watched from the shore as Remus uncorked and poured out every one of the bottles of firewhiskey, right into the black lake. He then shattered the glass bottles into a fine powdery mist that sank between the stones that lined the shore. He stared at the other two and he said, solemnly, “Sirius Black does not drink another ounce of firewhiskey until this rubbish about the dementor in his chest is finished.”

James and Peter nodded.

They went back to the dormitory to find Sirius was still fast asleep, sprawled exactly as they’d left him across the bed, his face flush from the alcohol. James pulled his duvet over him to cover him up and sighed as the other two stood watching. Peter turned and started collecting the bits of paper that were scattered about the floor and tossing them back into the now mostly empty drawer… then one that wasn’t particularly folded very well came undone and Peter squeaked, “Guys.”

Remus took the page from Peter’s hand.

It was a poem or a song or something, written in Sirius’s hand.

More and more each day I pray
For the gods to take this pain away
A precipice hangs before, I can fall or I can fly
And the Moon hangs before me in the sky
Oh imperfections! I am an imperfect man
I jump and fall and fall eternally, I strike no land
Mistakes I can’t erase them, a past I can’t undo
Achlys all I have is the darkness and you


Remus handed the parchment to James and grabbed another one.

Stardust…
Stardust…
I’m made of stardust
I’m nothing more
But this star is burned out
I have no light in me to shine
I’m darkness


And he snatched up yet another parchment from the floor…

Fair Moon, shine on me again
Before I lost myself you were my friend
Oh Moon I’m broken without your touch on my face
Fallen from my starry place
Falling too soon…
When I was young I thought that falling stars were for wishing
I never thought that they might just be missing
Their place beneath the Moon…


Remus’s hands shook.

James shook his head, pushing the parchments back to Remus, “We oughtn’t be looking at these. These are his private things.”

Remus watched James collect the parchment bits up from the floor and shove them back into the drawer. But Remus kept the last one, the one about the Moon, and he lay in bed long after James and Peter had fallen asleep, staring at Sirius’s letters, his fingers tracing the quill strokes.

He wished he knew how to make Sirius come back.

But how can the Moon stop a shooting Star from falling?