Chapter Text
The bass thudded so loud it rattled the windowpanes of the two-story house, some sophomore’s older cousin’s place out near the woods, far enough that no one would call the cops. Somewhere between the garage and the kitchen, Sirius Black lost his friends.
Sixteen, half-drunk off some sickly sweet spiked punch, he drifted through the bodies—dancers, smokers, couples pressed into dark corners—and found himself on the back porch where a small group of older guys lounged around a glass table, a thick fog of smoke hanging over them.
They weren’t school guys. Not Hogwarts Prep or even Slytherin Tech. These were the city kids. The ones with calloused hands, tattoos hidden under sleeves, mouths that curled around every word like a challenge.
Sirius hovered by the doorframe, trying to look cool. He had that look, always had—dark hair, leather jacket, a born rebel—but something in his eyes always betrayed him. Always too wide, too uncertain.
One of them noticed. The ringleader. Shaved head. Slouched posture like he owned the world.
“You’re Black, yeah?” he asked, dragging his words like a cigarette. “From the big scary family.”
Sirius swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Reputation’s all bark, huh?” the guy said, holding out a joint, burning slow between his fingers. “Try it.”
Sirius hesitated.
He thought of Remus, probably somewhere inside arguing about books with Lily. Of James, who always had his back but could be too busy playing king of the world to notice when Sirius drifted too far. Of Peter, already puking in a bathroom somewhere.
He thought of his mother. Of her voice in his ear even when she wasn’t there.
You will never amount to anything. You are filth. Weak. Worthless.
He reached out.
The guy grinned, sharp teeth glinting in the porch light, and handed it over.
The smoke burned like hell going in, and Sirius coughed, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as laughter erupted around him.
“Atta boy,” someone said, clapping him on the shoulder.
He did it again.
And then again.
He smiled. Pretended he liked it. Pretended it didn’t twist something inside him, that it didn’t make the noise in his head louder.
Later that night, lying half-asleep in someone’s basement on a stained mattress with a stranger passed out beside him, Sirius stared at the ceiling tiles. He could still hear his heartbeat in his throat, the buzz under his skin like something electric and wrong.
He didn’t know the names of those older guys. Didn’t know what else they were smoking. He just knew he wanted the silence. The weightlessness.
He would chase it again. Not because it felt good—but because it made everything else stop hurting.
That was the beginning.
And no one noticed.
Not then.
2 Years Later
ate August.
The last Saturday before senior year.
The air was thick with heat and humidity, the kind that stuck to your skin and made you feel alive in that buzzing, summer's-almost-over kind of way. The party was at Kingsley Shacklebolt’s lake house this time—every window glowing gold, every dock post wrapped in fairy lights, music rolling off the water in waves.
Sirius Black stood on the edge of the dock with a bottle of beer in one hand and someone else’s lighter in his pocket. His hair was longer now, curled at the edges, unruly like the rest of him. Tattoos ran up his arms—ones he didn’t explain. His leather jacket was slung over someone’s lawn chair.
He hadn’t used in a while.
Not really.
Not unless you counted the odd spliff when things got too loud in his head. Or a pill or two at a show in the city. He didn’t crave it anymore. Didn’t need it. He was good. He was fine.
Remus was somewhere by the firepit, talking to Marlene. James and Lily were probably making out by the boathouse. Peter was passed out in a hammock.
Sirius felt restless. Empty. Like the world was playing in fast-forward and he was stuck in slow motion.
That’s when Rabastan Lestrange showed up.
Older, tanner, grinning with all the smooth cruelty Sirius remembered from that party two years ago. The kind of guy who remembered everyone’s weaknesses and never once forgot how to press them.
“Black,” Rabastan drawled, walking over with a girl on his arm and a small plastic bag in his hand. “Didn’t think you’d still be alive, mate.”
Sirius scoffed. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Rabastan held up the bag, half full of pale tablets like candy hearts. “Come on. You look like you need a reminder that life isn’t all shadows and moaning poetry.”
Sirius hesitated.
The dock swayed under him.
The world buzzed louder than it had a moment ago.
“It’s MD,” Rabastan said casually. “Pure stuff. You’ll feel golden. Like you’re made of light.”
Sirius had heard of it.
He’d also promised Remus he wasn’t doing anything stupid anymore. That was last spring. When Remus found him trembling in a bathroom stall, blood under his fingernails, eyes blown wide. That was after Sirius had gone quiet for three weeks and James had punched a hole in the wall and begged him to come home.
That was the last time.
But this?
This was just… a party.
He could handle it.
He took one.
It hit about forty minutes later.
Like the world opened up and let the light in.
Colors were too bright, music too sharp, the wind on his skin a miracle. He was laughing, dancing, pressed between bodies on the dock with the lake shimmering beside him like glass. His teeth hurt from smiling. He hugged James so tightly he almost knocked him into the water. He told Remus he loved him—really loved him—and meant it in a way that felt more like truth than friendship.
Remus blinked at him, slow and confused. “Are you… okay?”
“I’m so okay,” Sirius said, and meant it so deeply it was almost holy.
That night he didn’t sleep.
He lay on the roof of Kingsley’s boathouse with his shirt off and the stars painted above him like they’d been placed there just for him. He was alone, finally, but he didn’t mind. He felt full. Weightless.
He swore he could still feel Remus’s hand in his.
He’d never felt that kind of high before.
And even as the come-down started to claw its way through him—jaw tight, skin crawling, chest aching—he made himself a quiet, secret promise.
He would feel that again.
He had to.
Just once more.
Just once.
The next time was almost accidental. Almost.
It was the third Friday of the school year, a party at Fabian Prewett’s place, everyone crammed into the kitchen or out back near the garden lights, shouting over the music and pretending they weren’t already tired of being seventeen and expected to have it all figured out.
Sirius leaned against the sink, half-listening to Lily talk about college applications and someone’s new band. His heart wasn’t in it. He laughed at the right times, nodded, drank something warm and fizzy from a red cup—but it was like watching himself from outside his own body.
He kept thinking about that August night. The lake, the wind, the way his skin had felt like fire and light. The way he'd loved everyone—really loved them—and how for once in his life, his brain had gone quiet.
That night had been magic. He hadn’t freaked out. He hadn’t lost control. He hadn’t ended up puking in someone’s tub or crying in a bathroom stall.
He’d just been free.
So when he bumped into Rabastan again by the staircase—grinning, shirt half unbuttoned, like a devil with perfect teeth—it almost felt like fate.
“You look bored,” Rabastan said, already reaching into his pocket.
Sirius hesitated. “Just one,” he said. “It’s not like it’s heroin.”
Rabastan snorted. “Relax. You think too much.”
It tasted like nothing and hit like everything.
The colors came faster this time. The warmth unfurled inside him like heat from a fire he didn’t remember lighting. He danced, he kissed someone (maybe two someones), he told Fabian his freckles were constellations. He pressed his forehead to James’s and told him he was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
James laughed. “Alright, alright, get off me,” he said, good-natured and easy, not noticing how Sirius’s hands trembled slightly or how his pupils were blown wide.
Remus noticed.
Remus always noticed.
He pulled Sirius aside later, under the porch light, voice low and cautious. “Are you…? Did you take something?”
Sirius gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t freak out.”
Remus’s eyes narrowed. “Sirius.”
“I’m fine. Better than fine, actually. I just needed… I needed a night off from being in my head.”
Remus didn’t speak for a long time. Then: “This isn’t the same as weed, Sirius.”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you acting like it is?”
Sirius rolled his eyes, but it didn’t land right. His heartbeat felt strange now, a little too fast. The music inside was starting to feel loud again.
“It was just once more,” he said, brushing past Remus, already lying to himself as much as to him.
It wasn’t a big deal.
He wasn’t spiraling.
It wasn’t like last time.
It wasn’t.
But the truth clung to the inside of his skull, quiet and heavy:
He’d already started chasing the high again. And he already wanted more.
-; ━━━
For a while, Sirius was okay.
School picked up. College essays were due. There were Quidditch practices and classes and weekend drives with James and Peter, all of them yelling at the top of their lungs to the mixtape Lily made for Sirius’s birthday. Remus started coming over again, sprawling on Sirius’s bed like nothing had happened, picking the strings of Sirius’s old acoustic guitar and humming softly under his breath.
The memory of the pills didn’t vanish, but it faded like a bruise. Sirius didn’t touch anything for weeks. Not weed, not drink, not Rabastan’s voice in his ear. He buried it all under jokes and clever essays and late-night conversations. He told himself it was a fluke. He told himself he wasn’t that guy anymore.
He even started sleeping again—deep and dreamless, for the first time in months.
And then October came.
The trees turned red. The air chilled.
And Sirius started to crack at the edges.
It was small things at first. He couldn’t sit still. He started tapping his pen during class, shaking his leg under the desk. He’d start a sentence and forget how it ended. He forgot to eat. He felt like his skin didn’t quite fit right, like he had too much energy boiling underneath it and nowhere to put it.
He didn’t tell anyone.
Why would he?
He liked the energy at first. The buzz under his ribs. The way he could go three nights without sleep and still show up to school early, write three essays in one sitting, charm the socks off the new Charms teacher. He was on fire.
He called James at 2AM just to tell him about a new idea he had for a band name even though they didn’t have a band.
He organized a spontaneous midnight drive out to the cliffs, blasting Bowie and chain-smoking the whole way, laughing so hard he nearly cried when Peter’s hat flew out the window.
Remus stopped him by his locker one morning.
“You okay?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Sirius snapped, too sharply. His hands were trembling a little, half from the coffee, half from nothing at all.
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Because you haven’t blinked in like, three minutes. And you’re sweating.”
“I run hot, Remus. Christ.”
But the truth was starting to claw at the edges of his good mood.
He couldn’t focus. His thoughts raced too fast. His hands shook. The lights in the hall felt too bright. His chest ached, constantly. He didn’t feel golden anymore—he felt stretched. Like elastic. Like something about to snap.
One Thursday, he walked out of class halfway through and didn’t come back.
He wandered for hours. Sat on a bench in the old park near his childhood house. His mother used to take him there when he was little, when she still pretended to love him.
The sky turned gray. Rain started to fall in soft sheets, soaking through his hoodie, his shirt, his skin.
He didn’t move.
He couldn’t tell if he was crying.
His phone buzzed in his pocket: Remus 💬: Where are you? You missed everything today. I’m worried.
Sirius stared at the screen.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t go home that night.
He didn’t go to school the next day.
And by Saturday, the noise in his head was back, louder than ever, and he was desperate to quiet it.
He showed up at a party that wasn’t even a real party—just a few college guys at someone’s cousin’s flat in the city. The lights were dim. The table was glass. The bag was open on the counter.
He hesitated for exactly three seconds.
Then he reached.
Because the silence was worth anything.
Even this.
He didn’t know. Not then.
The guy who handed it to him had ink on every finger and eyes like oil slicks. “You want quiet?” he said, voice low, already sealing the deal before Sirius even nodded. “You want peace? This’ll get you there.”
Sirius was soaked to the skin, rain still clinging to his eyelashes, hoodie sleeves damp and sagging down to his knuckles. He was shivering, buzzing, half-starved, and something inside him was begging for silence. For stillness. For anything that would slow his heartbeat or speed it up or stop it entirely.
The pill looked familiar. Not exactly like MD, but close. Off-white. Chalky.
“You’ve done this before,” the guy said. Not a question.
Sirius nodded.
Then swallowed.
The first thing he noticed wasn’t the high—it was the quiet. The noise that had been clawing at his skull all week, all month, went dead silent in seconds. It was like a warm room after a blizzard. His lungs stopped clenching. His jaw loosened. His shoulders dropped for the first time in days. He could breathe.
He smiled.
He danced.
He talked to people and said things so fast and clever he felt invincible. He stayed up all night pacing the walls of the flat, tracing circles into the wooden floor, sketching on the back of receipts, making plans to change everything—his future, his name, the universe.
He didn’t sleep.
Not the next night either.
Or the night after.
Three days later, his hands were shaking so violently he couldn’t hold a pen. His lips were cracked and bleeding. His eyes burned in their sockets. His thoughts were unraveling—spinning too fast, too sharp. He hadn’t eaten since Thursday. His skin crawled. His jaw ached from clenching.
The crash hit like a wrecking ball.
He was curled up on the floor of his bedroom, hoodie twisted around his waist, sweat pooling at the base of his spine. The lights were off. The curtains drawn. His phone was dead, thank God, because it had been vibrating all night and he couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn't hear Remus’s voice through the voicemails. Couldn’t hear James knocking on the door, again and again and again.
Because he knew.
Somewhere in his bones, he knew.
That wasn’t MD.
It was stronger. Meaner. Hungrier.
He remembered the guy’s eyes. The way he said “You want quiet?” like it was a deal with the devil.
Sirius curled tighter.
It wasn’t MDMA.
It was meth.
He’d taken meth.
And he wanted more.