"YAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!"

The motorbike soared into the sky, spinning fender over wheels as it shot up - up - up, taking a spinner 'round about Big Ben's tower and through the spires of Westminster, following the path of the Thames toward East London. Sirius's hair flapped behind him as he clutched the handle bar and Jasper clung tightly to Sirius, arms wrapped about the other boy's waist as he peered down at the lights of the city.

"Won't somebody see us?! Aren't we breaking about a thousand laws right about now?" Jasper worried, shouting over the wind that whipped his hair about his forehead and threatened to throw him off the back of the motorbike.

"Invisibility charm!" Sirius called over his shoulder, proudly, "I set it up so that it goes on automatically once the motorbike's taken off. Pretty clever, inn'it?"

"Very impressive!" Jasper admitted, then, "But what about that muggle in Trafalgar Square?"

"You know muggles! If they can't explain it, they certainly aren't going to tell anybody about it. Everyone would think he's a nutter if he said two kids took off from the top of the lion statue on a flying motorbike and then disappeared as they flew off toward Westminster!"

Jasper nodded and turned his attention toward enjoying the motorbike ride, rather than worrying about it. Sirius seemed to know what he was doing alright, and Jasper's mind a wee muddled from the ale.

Sirius drove the motorbike along, dipping down over the Thames so that the wheels nearly skimmed the water, and taking back off into the sky as they went below Tower Bridge and turning back in a wide arch toward Elephant and Castle. The motorbike lowered to the ground on a quiet side street, roaring as the wheels bumped on contact to the roadway. Sirius pressed a button and there was a belching sound from the exhaust pipe behind Jasper, and he glanced back to see a confused looking cat peeking 'round a parked car on the side of the road, and realized Sirius must've done away with the invisibility charm.

The bike roared along the road and Jasper watched lights of late night pubs whiz past, the music from within them blending together into a terrific stream of sound, and he laughed, smiling, enjoying the feeling of the world becoming a blur.

"This is brilliant!" he yelled.

"I know!" Sirius yelled back.

They were speeding along, Sirius cutting down side streets and making a show of his driving skills - something he'd been itching to do, really - and even popped a wheely at one point, which made Jasper clutch on even tighter, his panic making Sirius laugh. Then there was a horn and Sirius glanced at his little round mirror on his handle bar and was greeted with the brilliant blue of a muggle police car's headlamp.

"Now you've done it," Jasper said, "You've got a jam-butty after us."

"A what?" Sirius asked.

"The policyman! The muggles call them jam-buttys."

"Why?"

"I haven't the foggiest!"

"Bloody muggles..."

"You're supposed to stop for them when they flash their lights like that," Jasper advised, glancing back over his shoulder as the police car.

"What for?" Sirius asked.

"So they can give you a ticket!"

"A ticket? I don't like those." He wrinkled his nose, "Bloody hell, what are they policeymen doing giving out drugs like that for? Aren't they supposed to be against that rot?"

"What? No, Sirius -- It's an order to pay a fine."

"Well, why the bloody hell would I purposely choose to stop to be punished?" Sirius crowed with laughter and Jasper floundered for words to give him a proper answer before Sirius continued, "It's alright. We can lose them." He sped up.

The police car put on it's siren and sped up as well.

This only seemed to enthrall Sirius all the more and he grinned wildly as the motorbike continued on through the streets.

It was very late indeed. Lily was laying across her bed, flipping through a very large magazine full of different styles of wedding hair. Petunia was sitting on the desk chair, her foot balanced on Lily's school trunk, painting her toe nails the colour of red that graced the Union Jack. "Are you wearing your hair up or down for your wedding?" Lily questioned.

"Oh I don't know, I haven't decided yet. I think up, though, perhaps..." Petunia replied, pausing her painting to admire her work. She puckered her mouth and blew air on her toes carefully, aiding them to dry, then continued, "Vernon always says he rather likes my neck. Says it's very beautiful."

Lily had to bite back a quip about it being a good thing there was so much of it if he liked it so much. Her lips tucked between her teeth and she took a deep breath through her nose and stared very hard at the magazine's pages.

"What about you?" Petunia asked.

"Down, I think," Lily replied. "What do you think of this?" She held up the magazine, showing a picture of a blonde haired bride with long hair that hung over her shoulders, a crown made upon her head with a braid and tiny white flowers.

"Won't the flowers make you sneeze, though? What if you end up sneezing during your vows!"

Lily laughed at the idea of it.

There was a knock on the door and then Mrs. Evans stepped inside. "Sorry to interrupt you girls," she said, looking pleased to find them both sitting and laughing like old times together. "You've a phone call, Lily."

"A phone call?" Lily glanced at the clock on her wall. "At this hour?" She didn't even know anybody who owned a telephone, she thought.

"I think it was Sirius," Mrs. Evans replied.

Lily dropped the magazine and scrambled from the bed, sprinting down the stairs to the receiver in the kitchen. "Sirius?" she said into the phone the moment she'd gotten to it.

There was a pause. Then, "Evans."

"What are you doing? Why are you phoning? You know you could just floo over. Since when do you boys have a --"

"Evans? Can you come to the policey station?"

Lily's knuckles were white 'round the wheel of the car as they drove away from the police station two hours later. Sirius sat still and silent in the back seat. Jasper stared out the window, his face flushed and sheepish, as Lily drove.

"HONESTLY," she said finally, shaking her head. "The pair of you! You're lucky the Aurors didn't come for you and throw you both in A--" she stopped before she said the prison's name, seeing Jasper glanced back at her, eyes wide with a flare of panic. "Aaaa--cell at the Ministry."

Jasper turned back to the window.

"We were just having a bit of fun," Sirius drawled, shaking his head, "It isn't as though we were hurting anybody. Dunno what that muggle policey man got his knickers all in a jumble for."

Lily glanced at him in the rear view mirror, "Don't know what he got his knickers in a jumble for?!" she exclaimed. "Bloody hell, Sirius, you were clocked going twice over the regular limit is 'round Elephant and Castle!"

"Bloody hell, everyone's so obsessed with that."

"BECAUSE YOU WERE SPEEDING!"

Jasper stared at his feet.

"WE WERE HAVING FUN!" Sirius repeated.

"Well next time have fun doing something a normal person would do. Or for Merlin's sake at least ride the motorbike with your invisibility charm on! How many times have I got to tell you that?"

"We were, 'til we touched down!" Sirius argued.

Lily shook her head. She stared at the road ahead.

Sirius sighed.

When they pulled up to the Leaky Cauldron, it was to find Ethel waiting on the curb for them. Jasper got out of the car, hesitated in the doorway, and bent down. "Thanks for picking us up, Lily."

Lily nodded stiffly.

"Goodnight, Lil." Jasper paused and looked at Sirius, "Night."

"See ya," Sirius answered, winking.

Lily's eyes narrowed.

Jasper slammed the door shut and walked 'round to where Ethel was waiting and Lily could see the frustration and anger in the muggle girl's face, reflecting the same feelings that she could feel swirling about just below her skin.

Sirius climbed over the seat into the front, nearly kicking Lily as he fell over and rolled into the deep seat of the passenger side. His heavy black boots clunked against the dashboard as he struggled to right himself. "Sorry," he apologized for his obnoxious entrance to the front of the car.

Lily stayed quiet.

They rode in silence for a few moments; Lily not looking away from the road, Sirius staring out the window. He half wanted to ask her why they couldn't just disapparate off to the flat,  or fly the car home, but he got the feeling her response would be that he'd done quite enough flying in vehicles for the evening.

Finally, after a very tense, very long feeling ride, they arrived to the Evans house, and Lily turned omto the carpark. The engine ticked, cooling, once she'd turned the car off. They sat there, staring at the house, silent.

"He needed it," Sirius said. "He needed something fun, something crazy. He needed to let go of worrying and thinking and just feel free, just for a few minutes."

"Yes, but -"

"No, Lily. Listen. Jasper needed it like he needed air.
And bloody hell like it matters if we got arrestoed by the policeymen! That doesn't really matter, not to us. It's some muggle thing that wizards don't even give a damn about. But Jasper --" Sirius shook his head, then continued, "I know what it's like, Lilith. Being trapped in yourself, in your own thoughts, so badly that it feels as though you've been buried alive. The pressure is so fucking deep, you feel it in your bones, and there is nothing but dark all around you. You're swallowed up and the pain just works you and works you until there's nothing left of you."

Lily shivered. She closed her eyes, and she pictured it a moment, the feeling Sirius was describing, and it made her start to cry. Tears softly rolled over her cheeks.

"Jasper needed release," Sirius said. "And so I gave it to him as best as I could. You saw his face, when we left him just now? There was a crack in the darkness, a ray of light he desperately needed to be able to hang on."

Sirius paused, staring at the house, at the lit up windows of Lily's bedroom and the living room, glowing softly through curtains. The shadow of Lily's mum, or perhaps her sister, crossed by as they walked about inside. Sirius thought about shadows, then, how they are cast from light, and if we're trapped in the dark and see only shadows in our minds, then we must remember that shadows can only be cast by light, and that the very existence of a shadow means that there's light, just 'round the bend as well.

"I won't apologize for helping him, Lilith," Sirius said firmly. "So you can be pissed and think what I did was real immature and punish me for it, but I'm not apologizing. I'm not sorry, and I won't ever be."

Lily sighed. "You shouldn't be."

He smiled just a wee bit, tentative. "So you understand then?"

"Yeah, I understand," Lily replied.

"Excellent," Sirius said, and the smile became a grin, the spark in his eyes lighting up.

Lit up nearly as brightly as the Evans's living room window did.

The flash was so bright both Sirius and Lily instinctively shielded their eyes as the fluorescent glow seemed to roll across the lawn, a wall of heat and color, and Lily shrieked as the power of it rocked the car slightly. She ripped the seat buckle from holding her back and pushed out of the door, her wand clutched in her fist as she ran blindly across the grass toward the door.

Lily could feel glass crunching beneath her feet, the windows blown out. Sirius was directly behind her, wand also out, but where she went through the front door, Sirius leaped through the empty space where the window had been, directly at the shadows.

"MUM?? TUNEY???" she screamed, rounding the door way to the living room. She found Sirius, sitting atop a man who was struggling to throw him off.

Sirius jabbed his wand against the man's throat and he stopped moving, hands splayed on the carpet in surrender.

"What is going on?!" Petunia came down the stairs, eyes bright with fear, wearing a horrible pink nightgown. She saw Sirius and the man on the floor, Lily running past them into the room, and the mess of the usually tidy home... Glass and knick-knacks lay scattered, broken picture frames, and the overturned couch. The telly was shattered and throwing sparks and there was a dull, ashy smoke coming up from the dying embers of the fireplace.

Outside, the night sky glowed green as sparks shivered to life in the clouds above - a dark mark's tongue unfurling in heinous triumph.