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It’s dark.
It’s so fucking dark. Sirius isn’t sure how far into the Forbidden Forest he’s wandered, but he knows it’s far enough to stop the moonlight from filtering through the foliage that has yet to fall. The crisp autumn air is heavy with the earthy smell of decaying leaves and the sweet tang of overripe fruits, overwhelming to Padfoot’s nose but a pleasant odour to Sirius when he transforms back into his human body. He’s standing beside a small pond he vaguely remembers swimming in as Padfoot; he thinks there’s a hot spring streaming slowly out of some rocks on the far side. Sirius tries to apparate home, but he must’ve stumbled within the boundaries of Hogwarts because all he accomplishes is looking stupid with his silly little twirl.
Sirius is royally fucked.
He had separated from Prongs and Moony shortly after Moony had wrestled him to the ground, growling and snapping, the fifth time. Sirius heard an alarming crack and felt a pain shoot through Padfoot’s front shoulder, and after he tested his weight and discovered it wasn’t injured, just a little sore, he thought it would be best for him to leave them to it. James must have agreed because he stomped his heavy hooves around Padfoot and shooed him off with his ample rack. Wormtail wasn’t there; he’s apparently on some guard duty or other for the Order and wasn’t able to make it for the October moon.
They’re two years out of school, what feels like ten years into the war, and everyone is exhausted and struggling. Peter’s working his entry level job at the Ministry, taking orders from arseholes who don’t know their quill from their Quibbler. Lily was forced to drop out of healer training as soon as she was competent enough to be a field medic; she and James are trying to juggle parenthood and Order missions, and Sirius knows they’re planning to go into hiding soon. They seem to have personally offended Voldemort in some way, and he’s coming after them with a vengeance.
Sirius has no fucking clue what Remus has been doing since they left school. Sirius assumes he’s been with the wolf packs up north, if the alarming weight loss and added scars are any indication. He spent months at a time away on missions, always returning a little more feral and dead in the eyes, until two and a half months prior. He crashed through the wards into their shared flat after a debriefing with Dumbledore he refused to discuss, flopped into his bed, and had hardly left it for anything but missions since. Frankly, he still looks like shit. Sirius doesn’t know what he all suffered, but Remus looks like he needs the rest.
And Sirius? Sirius is a fucking mess.
He’s exhausted. He’s been running missions at all hours of the day and night, trying to cover for the Order’s dwindling numbers, and Sirius is afraid he’s becoming as obsessive as Mad Eye Moody. Maybe that grizzled fucker’s paranoia is contagious. Things started going downhill when his brother disappeared, and it has never stopped.
Regulus’s disappearance broke Sirius; he had searched for months and got nowhere, and no one else in the Order seemed to see him as anything other than one less Death Eater to fight. James, Remus, and Peter understood he was upset, of course, and did their best to comfort him, but after almost a year with no leads, Sirius had accepted his brother’s likely fate and refused to get out of bed for a week. Peter spent a week in September in Sirius and Remus’s flat, making sure they didn’t starve and forcing them up for the occasional shower, until Sirius finally accepted that Regulus wasn’t coming back and managed to drag himself back into Order meetings of his own accord.
And suddenly, in the last couple months, the Death Eaters always knew what the Order was doing and where they were going to be. Order members have been dropping like doxies. First Marlene and Dorcas were killed, then the Prewetts, then Caradoc Dearborne disappeared. Sirius and Benjy Fenwick had been casually fucking, the only feelings between them the constant adrenaline of fighting and fear, until a couple of weeks ago when Benjy got blown to smithereens on a mission that was barely known within the bounds of the Order, much less outside it. Benjy, James and Sirius had planned it in the living room of Sirius and Remus’s flat while Remus slept. They’d gone to Birmingham to track a lead on some illicit potion supplies, and of-fucking-course there were six Death Eaters waiting for them. After Benjy, there was only one reasonable conclusion they could come to.
There’s a spy in the Order.
And Sirius is terrified he knows who it is.
Who else could it be? The orders for that mission came from Dumbledore himself, and the only ones in the flat during planning were the three members assigned to it, Remus, and the mice in their shitty, rundown muggle flat’s walls. Sirius can’t remember for sure if they used silencing charms; he throws them up so frequently these days, he can’t recall one from the next. But he must have missed it, Benjy paid the price, and Sirius can barely restrain himself from binding Remus in his sleep and turning him over to Moody.
But apparently Remus can tell because Moony is pissed off with him, and now he’s fucking stuck in the fucking middle of the fucking Forbidden Forest, and he can’t go back the way he came because there’s a fucking werewolf who has it out for him, and he can’t fucking apparate out because he’s wandered onto the fucking grounds of fucking Hogwarts.
There’s a distant pattering, and Sirius looks up to the treetops, hoping it isn’t starting to rain. That’s the last thing he bloody needs.
But Sirius stays dry as the thumping grows steadily louder, closer, and starts to match the thundering heartbeat in Sirius’s chest. He recognises hoofbeats, and his pulse ticks up higher still. Sirius hasn’t been afraid of the Forbidden Forest since his fourth year; Prongs, Padfoot, and Wormtail knew they had to steer Moony clear of the acromantulas and centaurs, but everything else quickly accepted the animagi as their own kind. If he’s lucky, a unicorn is about to burst into the clearing and maybe let him stroke its soft, silvery mane.
Sirius hasn’t had a spot of luck in years, and the twang of a bow string has him throwing himself down onto the forest floor. The arrow misses wide to the right by far enough Sirius suspects it was merely a warning shot, and then Sirius is staring up at palomino forelegs and a blond beard that glows silver in the filtered moonlight.
“It is perilous to be in the Forest beneath a full moon, Sirius Black, though you well know this.” The centaur’s voice is deep and melodic, and its tone combined with his impressive stature inspires a sense of awe in Sirius, though he knows showing it would put him at great risk.
“How do you know my name?” Sirius asks as he cranes his neck upward.
“I know much more than that. You court the beast in an attempt to tame it, draw it to yourself and keep it as a pet. But it is a wild thing, and it wishes to run freely beneath the moonlight, and no canid friend, no matter how loyal, can keep it chained.” The centaur tilts his head to the side and studies Sirius’s wide eyes and dirt-streaked face. He’s still lying on the ground, eye level with a pair of delicate ankles and hooves beneath a towering, muscled torso. “But you, Sirius Black, have not the fortitude to run alongside your lupine companion in his hour of need. I have seen it in the stars; the lack of trust between Dog and Wolf has been foretold.”
“And what do the stars have to say about the wolf?” Sirius curls his lip to cover the guilt twisting through his belly. “How do the centaurs concern themselves with him?”
The centaur exhales quickly, something that may have been a laugh if his kind weren’t so stubbornly stoic. “The centaurs in the stars concern themselves greatly with the Wolf, Sirius Black. So long have you been running from the family of your birth that you’ve forgotten their stories?”
Sirius’s mind sifts through the many lessons his family taught him about the stars via their ancestral tree; the legends explained in the context of their lineage’s great deeds and immense power. The Black family, though, cared little for the stars themselves, and even less did they believe in their powers of prognostication.
“Despite my heavenly reputation, I’ve never bothered losing myself in the stars,” Sirius snarks at the centaur as he slowly stands; if he was going to be trampled beneath murderous hooves or slain by an arrow, it would have happened by now.
“Such is your error, Sirius Black. They have much they desire to tell you.” The centaur shifts and stamps his back hoof, and his tail swishes across his flanks.
“If it’s so important, why don’t you teach me, mister…” Sirius trails off, hoping the centaur will provide his name. There’s power in names, Sirius knows, and right now the centaur retains his dominance by withholding his own.
The centaur chuckles darkly, a low, dangerous rumble in his chest that makes Sirius shiver. “A transparent ploy, Sirius Black, but I will indulge you all the same. I am called Firenze, and I risk much by sharing as I have. The herd merely observes; they do not interfere.”
Sirius studies Firenze’s face. He’s always been fascinated by centaurs. They’re the ultimate union of beautiful and terrifying, cantering across the line between human and other. He stashes his wand and takes a slow step closer, hands visible and heart racing.
Firenze snorts, a sound much more equine than Sirius expected, and he edges his long body nearer to Sirius in return. “Your fear is wise, Sirius Black, even as it is unnecessary. I have observed you and your namesake both for many moon cycles, shining more vividly than all others. Harming you would bring me no more joy than snuffing out the brightest star in the night sky.” Firenze reaches out a broad hand and strokes his long finger down Sirius’s cheek. Sirius closes his eyes and shudders.
“Why are you telling me this?” he whispers, drawing closer still to Firenze’s tall form; Sirius barely reaches the centaur’s shoulder and is significantly less broad. The power radiating off him is intoxicating.
Firenze hesitates. “The others believe the stars are unchanging, set in their paths and undeniable in their fate.”
“But you disagree,” Sirius states, his wide grey eyes meeting Firenze’s startlingly blue ones.
“How can the stars be static when we learn their teachings through movement? How can we acknowledge the light of a supernova, the brilliant death throes of an expiring star, and deny the ability of the heavens to change?” Firenze throws his head back to examine the sky, eyes searching steadily. Sirius mirrors the movement but can discern little through the thick canopy of leaves overhead. Firenze sighs. “No, Sirius Black, I do not believe cold complacency toward the fate of the universe serves centaur or man. It’s possible by attempting to prevent our misfortunes, we only ensure them. But how would the centaurs know? The herd does not interfere.”
“The stars tell of misfortune?” Sirius is entranced; enthralled; awed by this mystical being calmly informing him of horrors yet to come.
“Great unhappiness awaits you, Sirius Black, if you do not tread lightly. A good man doubted in favour of a deceiver, a life of devotion forsaken by a man who knows love as only pain and betrayal, dire and unalterable consequences for those you wish to protect.” Firenze fixes him with a piercing stare.
“Help me,” Sirius begs. “Show me how to see what you see.”
“Do you truly wish to See, to Know, as the herd knows?”
“Godric, yes,” Sirius breathes, and he’s close enough to feel the heat radiating from Firenze’s strong chest, his warm breath brushing across Sirius’s face. Sirius feels himself start to tremble with trepidation and excitement.
“Close your eyes, Sirius Black, so that I might show you.”
Before he realises what’s happening, Sirius is swept off his feet by Firenze’s huge hands. The centaur lifts him like he weighs nothing at all and braces Sirius against his torso with one arm, using the other to position Sirius’s legs firmly around his waist. Firenze vanishes his clothes, and Sirius can feel smooth skin between his thighs while wiry horsehair scratches at the back of his knees and calves. Firenze smooths Sirius’s hair behind his ear with his free hand and bends his head to kiss Sirius roughly, and Sirius is reminded that while horses are prey animals, centaurs distinctly are not. Firenze’s teeth catch on his lower lip until Sirius can taste a tinge of coppery blood, and then a broad tongue is licking a hot stripe over his pulse. Sirius tilts his head back to give the centaur access, allowing him to take what he needs. Firenze’s imposing size makes Sirius feel delicate and breakable, and the danger makes Sirius’s skin tingle from his scalp to his toes. Every point of contact is a crackling lightning strike.
Sirius lets the sensation of being pressed against Firenze engulf him, turning himself over entirely to the centaur. A warm hand is supporting his hips, fingertips digging deeply into his thigh to hold him in place. Water is trickling from the hot spring into the pond, a faint sound that provides a steady countermelody to their panting breaths and Sirius’s quiet whimpers. Sirius is squirming in Firenze’s grip, achingly hard in spite of—or maybe because of—his instinctive fear. The animal scent of Firenze’s musk surrounds them, wild and fresh and tinged with the heady tang of arousal; Sirius isn’t sure if it's the adrenaline or the creature nuzzling his jaw bringing his animagus senses to the surface, but he feels heightened to another plane of existence. Sharp teeth nip at his collarbone, and Sirius’s moan echoes off the rocks surrounding the pond.
Sirius’s eyes fly open when he feels strong, cool fingers probing at his entrance, circling it slowly before pushing inside. “Wha—Merlin! Are you going to fuck me?” His voice is panicked and his pulse ratchets even higher, and Firenze chuckles quietly into his neck.
“What were you expecting, human? The knowledge of centaurs would come without a price?”
“I thought there was some blood magic or something, maybe a ritual. Won’t this kill me?” Sirius tenses, his whole body alert and ready to run. If he can get his legs free, will Padfoot be able to kick himself far enough back to avoid being crushed by Firenze’s angry hooves?
“No, Sirius Black. Centaurs have knowledge of healing magic far exceeding that of wizards that dates back millennia. Who do you believe sired the satyrs, little human?” Firenze looks more amused than Sirius has ever seen on a centaur, and he feels a flare of shame and heat at the mild chastisement. “And what is a carnal union, if not a ritual? I can feel your need, Sirius Black; already it fills the space between us. Do you wish for me to stop?” Firenze pauses his steadily stroking hands, and Sirius feels himself flush as he shakes his head.
“No,” he answers, voice ragged and rough with desire. “Please. Please, keep going.”
Firenze rewards him with a nip to his collarbone and works his finger slowly past the tight furl of Sirius’s muscle. A gentle, pleasant warming sensation spreads throughout him, and Sirius finds himself relaxing into Firenze’s body, mouthing along his jawline and nuzzling into his neck while Firenze works him open.
Soon, Sirius is whimpering and rocking into Firenze’s hand, digging his nails into broad shoulders as his body aches and begs for more. His weeping cock slides between them and Sirius arches into Firenze’s body, searching for more friction, and more pressure, and more and more and more.
The centaur catches his earlobe between his teeth and chuckles as he slides another finger inside. “So nice and eager for me, little human,” he whispers in Sirius’s ear, and Sirius relishes the exquisite stretch and burn at his hole. “You’re doing so well; I’ve never known another human vessel so ready to be filled.” Firenze crooks his fingers to press against Sirius’s prostate, and Sirius’s vision almost whites out as a thick stream of tacky precum leaks from his slit. His hips jump and stutter against a well-muscled abdomen, and Firenze slows his strokes.
“Not too soon, Sirius Black. Patience is the key to truly Seeing.” Firenze scissors his fingers for a moment before slipping a third finger past the tight ring of muscle, and Sirius collapses against his sweat-sheened chest. He mouths along the joint between Firenze’s neck and shoulder as he gives himself over completely, lost in the feeling of long, thick fingers buried deep within him.
There’s a quiet clopping sound as Firenze carries Sirius toward a pile of rocks on the edge of the pond; the stones grind together when Firenze magically shifts the pile to a solid, flat surface and lays Sirius upon it. A thick carpet of velvety green moss spreads outward from where his fingers brush, and Sirius is surprisingly comfortable on the soft, springy cushion. The centaur kneels before Sirius and props his feet on his broad shoulders, Sirius’s knees falling wide of their own accord.
Firenze licks a long stripe through his crease and up his shaft, and a wanton moan spills from Sirius’s lips. A warm, wet tongue circles his stretched entrance before thrusting inside; Sirius’s flushed cock twitches against his stomach as he tries to ride Firenze’s face, but the centaur lays a heavy forearm across his stomach to keep his lower back flush against the stone beneath him. Firenze works two fingers back inside, then a third, and a fourth, and Sirius has never been so full or felt so desperate. Firenze lets Sirius’s torso free and he’s inundated in a deluge of sensation, thrusting back on Firenze’s hand and searching for friction in the empty air, whimpering and keening and pleading to be touched, and Firenze drags his fingers across that spot inside Sirius that makes him see stars one more time and he loses control, crying out as his vision goes white and his mind goes blank, overcome with pleasure as he spills across his belly.
Firenze slows his fingers, though he doesn’t remove them, and the pleasure-pain-too much-but-still-more-please sparks of hypersensitivity fly up Sirius’s spine as he licks Sirius’s spend off his stomach. Sirius arches his back as his body tries to both chase and escape Firenze’s touch, and when the centaur takes his cock in his mouth to work him back to full hardness, Sirius screams.
Firenze pulls off and removes his fingers from Sirius’s arse, placing soothing licks over his hole with the flat of his tongue. “Hush, little human; the responsibility of knowledge must have a cost. It is only through both great pleasure and great pain we may see what the stars have in store for us.”
Firenze lifts him from his lying position and flips him so he’s standing, bent at the waist with his cheek pressed into the soft moss, back arched with his legs spread widely apart. His heart is racing and he’s terrified and eager; he’d pay any price to protect those he loves, and this is really no hardship. He’d have wanted to fuck a centaur years ago if he knew it was a possibility.
Sirius braces his hands against the boulder, the rough stone cutting into his palms, and he feels the centaur’s healing magic sweep through him before heavy hooves land on either side to frame his body. The blunt, thick head of Firenze’s cock slides along his crease; it just catches on his rim before slipping past until the shaft is cradled between his cheeks and the head rests on his lower back. He shudders in fear and anticipation, and a nickering chuckle settles around him. Firenze draws back and Sirius shifts below him, spreading himself apart with his hands until he’s fully exposed, gaping and vulnerable and wanting. The centaur aims another thrust and this time slides home in one smooth movement, knocking all the breath from Sirus’s lungs so his cry is nothing but silence.
Firenze gives him a few moments to adjust before he’s thrusting with wild abandon, and Sirius can do nothing but scrabble at the rock for purchase so he isn’t pounded into oblivion. He feels himself tearing open and he’s gasping and choking as tears leak from the corners of his eyes and precome smears against the soft green blanket in front of him. He’s never been so full; he didn’t think it was physically possible to take this much. As Firenze settles into a steady rhythm, Sirius tries to force his body to relax; to accept his length and the overwhelming drag against his prostate. His throat is sore from the sounds Firenze is tearing out of him, but Sirius is so lost he can’t hear himself or the heaving breaths of the centaur above him.
Every stroke is a journey, from devastating emptiness as Firenze draws back, through intense pleasure that sparks every nerve in his body while his thick head pushes over his prostate, to the unbearable, breathtaking fullness when he’s fully seated. The stretch, the burn, the ache, the pleasure so all-consuming, Sirius almost misses it when something tugs at his rim. The next withdrawal makes Sirius’s entire body feel like it’s on fire as a thick knot stops Firenze from pulling back entirely, the heavy head of his cock stopping directly on Sirius’s prostate. There’s a brief moment of relief as he swings forward, but the next stroke hits again, and the next; the fourth pass has Sirius’s hips jerking and back arching as he paints the rock wall with thick, sticky stripes. Sirius is sobbing and exhausted as he lays his entire weight on the heavy boulder, electricity running beneath his skin.
But there’s no relief, and Firenze fucks him through his overstimulation as another knot begins to form, far enough up the centaur’s length that the first hits where he’s most sensitive, and Sirius can feel himself trembling and wobbling under the pressure. He can see the tip of Firenze’s cock pushing at his abdomen from the inside, and Sirius moves a hand toward his navel to press against it. Firenze is panting and grunting above him, and the extra stimulation makes him throw his head back to look at the sky as he cries out, and Sirius feels a zing of power rush through him that he could have any impact on such a domineering creature.
Firenze increases his pace with short, sharp thrusts as the knot at the very base of his cock starts to fill, the minute twitches of the second knot applying constant pressure to Sirius’s prostate, and he’s moved beyond mere gratification; this is a hedonistic bliss Sirius never knew existed. A steady buzzing fills his ears and he’s so inundated with pleasure, his brain feels disconnected from his body. The knot fills and catches on his rim, stretching him beyond his limits, he’s so full, the pressure building inside him is uncontainable, he’s overflowing, and then Firenze is fully seated inside him and finishes with a shout, hot spurts of come filling Sirius completely and leaking down his thighs.
Sirius’s body follows right behind, but his mind is gone; he’s spinning across the night sky, spiraling through space and time, existing in the past, the present, and the future, and oh.
Oh.
Sirius can See.
The celestial light, burning through space, persevering through light-years of distance to shine down on the Earth, are a window to the past. He sees his ancestors, Noble and Ancient, stretching back generations and all culminating in the existence of himself and his brother. He sees his time at Hogwarts, friendship cemented in canopied beds and late nights running through deserted hallways. He sees covert looks he missed in the moment, full of secret affection and desire, stifled under fear and longing. He sees other, darker looks, of envy and resentment, growing more frequent as the children in his mind’s eye age. He sees his brother disappearing into an ominous cave and escaping, scratched and scraped and coughing water, to disappear from the edge of the sea.
The way the stars burn, silver fire across an inky black canopy, too numerous to count but Sirius tries anyway, and he could be there for seconds or decades, he doesn’t know, but Sirius has never felt his mind so focused and present. He sees himself as if from above, now cradled in Firenze’s arms as he wades into the pool, head lolling against a muscled chest while strong hands and a low voice soothe Sirius’s battered body. He sees his friends lying in a clearing not far from where he floats, Moony howling mournfully before he and Prongs curl around each other to fall asleep. He sees Harry, asleep in his crib. Lily silently watches over him, dark circles under her eyes while she counts the seconds ticking past and waits anxiously for morning. He sees Regulus, frazzled and haggard and bent over a book written in a language he doesn’t recognize, frantically taking notes. And he sees Peter, anxiously tapping his fingers against his leg at a table surrounded by wix in silver masks, hoping he won’t be called upon but knowing he’ll do what he needs to survive.
The patterns reveal themselves, clear and predictable as the movements of the constellations across the sky. He sees what’s to come, devastation and loss, regret and mourning, years of life lost to death and punishment and the numbing effect of self-medication. Sirius can See, and he knows what needs to be done.
He comes back to the awareness of his own body to find he’s being bathed beneath the waning light of the full moon in a small pool that collects the water from the hot spring. Firenze is rubbing a poultice that smells of mint and chamomile across his throbbing body, murmuring healing spells until the searing pain is dulled to a mild, commemorative ache. After he heals the scratches and scrapes adorning Sirius’s feet—souvenirs from his escape from Moony—Firenze glances up to meet his eyes.
“You are awake,” he observes, and Sirius nods. “Do you understand? Did you See?”
“I did.” Sirius’s voice comes out raw and scratchy, and Firenze hands him a wooden goblet filled with cool, clear water. He swallows it down and discovers it’s some kind of potion that heals his battered vocal cords before settling in his starving, growling stomach. Firenze pulls him out of the pool and dries him in silence, Sirius’s long curls leaving rivulets of water running down his back. His clothes appear in a pile beside him, and he pulls them on, the dirt and sweat from his time in the forest contrasting with his freshly cleansed skin. He’s exhausted but exhilarated, ready to take his leave and return home to the man he’d been prepared to wrongfully accuse a few short hours ago. “Thank you, Firenze, for showing me the way.”
“You are most welcome, Sirius Black. Do not squander your opportunity.” Firenze takes Sirius by the hand and leads him slowly to the far edge of the clearing, and Sirius can feel a wash of magic as he steps back outside the Hogwarts wards. This whole time, no more than ten metres away from freedom.
“I won’t,” Sirius promises, and he means it. Sirius stands on his tiptoes and presses a soft kiss to the centaur’s lips. “Goodbye, Firenze. You have my eternal gratitude.”
“Goodbye, Sirius Black. May the heavens shift and the stars continue to guide you to a happier future.” The centaur turns and gallops out of the clearing, leaving Sirius alone with his thoughts and plans. He’ll change the course of their future, save James and Lily from a terrible fate. He’ll find Regulus and help him in his quest. He’ll trust those who have earned it and forgive where forgiveness is truly sought. He’ll accept the quietly-offered love he’s been hiding from for years. He’s ready to start again; his path is laid clearly before his feet. Sirius turns on his heel and disappears with a crack, leaving the clearing empty and silent behind him.