Sirius trotted 'round the building, clutching his rose, his whole heart just fit to burst with joy and disbelief at his own experience. He kept looking at the folds of the petals on the rose to reassure himself that the whole thing had been real.

He made it to the front of the venue, near the door where they'd gone in, and there was still quite a bit of crowd lingering. Many people stood about talking and he could see there was a traffic jam in the road past the lot, where all the cars were trying to go to leave. Somebody was playing Queen on a portable 8 track player and the sound of Freddie's voice - sounding so different to Sirius now than it ever had before, as though hearing it in life had made the tapes sound like a memory - filled the air as he looked around for Remus, James, and Lily.

He came to a stop under a street lamp that glowed a pool of warm light and stood there, craning his neck, trying to see over the crowd. He hated being so short.

"Excuse me, can I bum a fag?"

Sirius looked up and found a young man standing beside him. The guy looked... familiar. Sirius studied him a moment warily, then reached into his pocket and got the box of Marlboros out, shaking one free and holding it out to the guy. It didn't occur to him to wonder how the kid knew he would have a smoke on him. Sirius lit the cigarette with his silver lighter and he pocketed both the cigarettes and the lighter again.

The kid stood there, holding the cigarette, letting it burn without taking a drag.

"Good show?" he asked.

Sirius said, "The best."

"I'm Freddy Jenkins, by the way," the kid said. He took a smallest little breath of the cigarette, the smoke coming back out almost immediately. He still coughed.

"Alright?" Sirius asked.

"Yeah," the kid's voice pinched a bit as he slammed his chest, recovering.

"You never smoked before, huh?"

"I have!"

Sirius shrugged - letting it go. He was in way, way, wayyyy too good a mood to argue with a little twit like this. He turned to look around for his husband and friends.

"What's that rose for?" The kid asked. He was holding the lit cigarette at arm's length like it was a grenade.

Sirius couldn't help himself, it didn't matter if it was a total stranger, he was too excited to keep it in. "Freddie fucking Mercury gave it to me!"

The kid blinked in surprise. "He what??? No way. You met Freddie Mercury?!"

"Yeah I did!!! Just now, 'round back! He - he knocked me down in the back lot!" Sirius lit up like the sun. "And he was so fucking cool."

The kid's face was bright with excitement too. "I am so happy you got to meet him, Sirius, I - I really am - I -"

Sirius's face went funny. "How'd you know my name?"

The boy stammered, "Earlier. When we met in the lot. Remember? When the bus came and we were waiting on line. I was talking to your friend -- ?"

"Oh. Lily told you? Right. Sorry. I was distracted... What was your name again?"

"Freddy Jenkins."

Sirius nodded. The kid did look familiar  in a way he couldn't quite pace. If they'd talked to him earlier, Sirius reckoned that explained that, then. He didn't remember talking to the kid earlier but who knew - he barely remembered his name himself. 

But fuck - Freddie Mercury knew his name, didn't he?

Did anything else matter?

As though in answer to whether anything else mattered, Sirius suddenly heard his name shouted and he looked up to see Remus Lupin running across the lot, his eyes wild with relief, and Sirius grinned, running to Remus in return, his arms spread wide, the rose carefully clutched in his fist as he slammed into Remus, hugging him with one arm as Remus wrapped himself about Sirius. 

"Careful not to crush my rose!" Sirius commanded. "Freddie Mercury gave it to me!"

Remus's eyes darted to the rose. "What?" he was breathless. "You - you really met him?"

Lily had come running up behind Remus and now, hearing Sirius's words, she shrieked, "I KNEW YOU WERE ECSTATICALLY HAPPY! I COULD FEEL IT, I COULD FEEL IT! JAMES!!! HE MET FREDDIE!" she turned around to scream to James, who was walking up behind, rather than running like the other two had been. James broke into a trot at this and sidled up, "He actually met him, James!"

"Did you really?" James grinned, then, teasing, "Bullocks."

"I DID!" Sirius cried, and he held up the rose as his evidence. "Look, he's given me a rose. Freddie Mercury gave me, Sirius Black, a fucking rose."

"And so you're only here to bid us farewell before you set off on the tour with them as a professional groupie, yeah?" Remus asked, also teasing Sirius.

Sirius pretended to think a moment, twisting his mouth to one side, "Mmm, well, I told Freddie - I said to him - Freddie, darling, I'm very sorry, but I simply cannot come with you as your tour-whore, sir, I am married and my husband, Remus, has a great ass. And Freddie said he understood, but he did ask me to slap it for him."

"He did not," Remus said, flushing. 

"He really did, rather," Sirius said. "He really, really did."

Regulus watched his brother talking animatedly to his friends, watch Sirius's face as he recounted the entire encounter with Freddie Mercury to James, Lily, and Remus, and he stood there, holding the cigarette Sirius had given him, leaning against the base of the street lamp they'd been standing below before the others had found Sirius. Regulus felt his throat close up as they turned and started to walk away together without so much as a single glance back at him... and of course they wouldn't. They didn't have any reason to, he was just some random guy at the rock show.

He watched until they were at the far end of the lot, then he put the cigarette out on the cement. He thought fleetingly of taking it home with him - what he would do with it, he didn't know, but it seemed precious somehow because Sirius had given it to him. He left it there in the end, smoldering on the pavement, and he walked off the opposite way from where Sirius, Remus, James, and Lily had gone, headed for the train station.

He could've ducked down any alleyway - even behind the Palais was quiet now that the concert had let out and the band had left. The roadies were back there, packing things up into crates and loading the stage lights and equipment onto big trucks that were backed up to loading docks. Regulus wouldn't have had any trouble summoning Kreacher to come and get him... but he didn't much fancy going back to Number 12 Grimmauld Place just yet, so he wandered.

His mind wandered nearly as far as his feet and he found himself thinking about the conversation in the library he'd had with Cadmus Peverell about the horcruxes and what each of them would do with their own horcruxes, what they would use for them. He reckoned if he were to have a horcrux - some part of his own soul that would last forever encased in some object somewhere in the world - that he would use something he could leave here in this parking lot, where he'd last seen his brother happy. It would mean something only to him, but not be terribly obvious to just anybody else. They'd have to know him really, really well to even think about looking in a place like this for a bit of Regulus Black.

He paused. 

He was standing on a street corner, darkness of a quietly sleeping city around - no more signs that there had ever been a huge multi-thousand person crowd lingered. 

The Dark Lord did have a flare for the poetic, Regulus realized, thinking of all the long speeches and dramatics that had always been Voldemort's downfall. How many times had he watched as people got away and fought Voldemort's advances based purely on his inability to simply do what he'd planned without the dramatic twists and words? Regulus chuckled, shaking his head, of course Voldemort wouldn't simply chuck his horcrux just any old place, but it wouldn't be obvious, either. It wouldn't be any place like his own vault at Gringott's - it would be in some more impressive, more poetic spot. A place that meant something to Voldemort himself - the way that the Palais now meant something to Regulus.

Regulus felt new resolve and he looked about for a place to summon Kreacher, hurrying over and calling the elf. There was a crack and Kreacher had appeared and without further delay they disapparated back to Number 12. Regulus ran up the old stairs to the bedroom where he'd left Cadmus Peverell, who looked up from a light nap as Regulus entered the room with a flurry. He chucked his rucksack across the room and went to his desk in the corner, pulling out a quill and parchment from the drawers.

"You came back," Cadmus observed. "So soon? What happened to your important deed?"

"I did what I needed to," Regulus answered, "And I've realized something - I know where we need to look for the horcrux."

"You do?" Cadmus looked surprised. "Where? How did you find out?"

"I don't know the exact where yet, but I know the idea of what sort of where we're looking for..." Regulus started scratching out all the things he knew about Voldemort. "First, we find out everything we can about him. Then, we pin point spots that are important, but not obvious. Places that would mean something to him, but not necessarily blatantly so... Then we eliminate the places one by one."

Cadmus looked impressed now.

"And I won't bloody stop 'til I've got the stupid thing, 'til I've destroyed it." Regulus looked over at a photograph of Sirius that he had stolen from the mantel at the flat in East London. His brother's smile trembled across the magical photograph, his eyes blinking, hair moved slightly by a breeze that was blowing... "Then I can go back to my real life without being afraid anymore. Then I'll have my brother back."

"And his hand stuck out and he said, 'up you come' and I couldn't breathe, he was touching my skin and everything was like firecrackers around me, like standing on the Thames on New Years Eve and watching the whole world explode in color except the color was Freddie's face and my whole world was changed forever. I reckon I could've solved world peace in that second, I was so bloody enlightened," Sirius's mouth hadn't stopped moving all night. 

Lily was sitting on the balcony in Paris at the apartment with Sirius, painting his toenails with a tiny brush and bright red nail polish, his bare feet up on one of the chairs at the little table, his body lounging across another, which leaned back against the railing. Beyond him, the Eiffle Tower was glowing and the city skyline was dotted like inverted stars. 

Every time Sirius told the story, it got a little more dramatic, a little more extravagant, and Lily smirked to herself as he launched into yet another retelling.

James and Remus had long ago gone to bed and were well on their way in dreaming. They'd conjured an extra bed for the dogs and Roger lay curled up on James's back in the bed he and Lily had been sharing all month. Both James and Roger hadn't slept as soundly as they were doing now, each relieved to be reunited with the other.

"I'm so happy for you," Lily said for the umpteeth time. She meant it no less than she'd meant it the first time. "I'm so glad I got to go with you. It really was a very good show. I loved feeling your joy through it." She smiled, her eyes glowing happily.

Sirius said, "You could really feel it? My joy?"

"Yes." Lily smiled, "I knew you were alright when you were missing because I could feel your happiness and peace and then the elation when you met Freddie - it was so reassuring knowing you were alright. Poor Remus was worried and panicking and I told him 'no, Sirius is just fine, I can feel it'."

Sirius said, "Lily."

"Yes?"

"D'you think we could try at doing Remus? With the love magic?"

Lily bit her lip, screwing the lid back onto the nail polish. She glanced over her shoulders at the open door to the apartment, then her eyes glistened brightly. "I reckon we could give it a go if you'd like."

"I really would," Sirius nodded. "I can't imagine there being a better way to end all of this than being even closer to my Moony than I already am."

Lily smiled. "Alright." She got up. "Wait here. I'll go get my things."

"Alright," Sirius said, and he watched her get up and rush into the apartment.

He leaned forward, the chair coming down to normal angle on the floor. On the table lay his rose. Lily had helped him set a preservation charm on it so that it would never wilt and he picked it up and twirled the stem in his fingers, grinning at it, his heart so, so full...

You know this happiness won't last, don't you, Sirius?

He laughed. "Fuck off Achlys. Even you can't bring me down right now, you hag."