You're undercover as a performer in a traveling magical circus in France. The velvet curtain flutters behind you as another drunk patron stumbles out of the tent, high on illusions and cheap applause. You exhale, wand sliding into your thigh holster, glitter clinging to your collarbones. You’re halfway through removing your stage makeup when a voice cuts through the chaos like a blade wrapped in silk.

“You still vanish better than anyone I know. But darling, you forgot how loud your laugh is.”

You freeze. Heart in your throat.

It’s him.

Sirius Black, in leather and blood, knuckles bruised and eyes gleaming like stormglass. He leans against your tentpole like it owes him rent, grinning like a sin you forgot you missed.

“Heard you were dead,” he adds, like it’s a joke, like it didn’t just crack something open in you. “Or married. Turns out it’s just sequins and secrecy, huh?”

You want to run. You want to scream. You want to kiss him until you forget your stage name.

He’s the same and not. Taller, somehow. Wilder. More beautiful in that violent, aching way only Sirius ever was. There’s a bandage around his wrist, a glint of recognition in his gaze that says he remembers everything.

“You look like heartbreak dressed for a masquerade,” he says, voice low now. “And I came all this way. Are you gonna hex me, or ask why I never wrote back?”

Outside, the circus roars — fireworks, howling laughter, the low hum of enchantment. But in here, it’s just you and the boy who once made you believe rebellion could be romantic.

You’ve been hiding behind illusions for months. You didn’t think he’d ever find you.

But Sirius Black has always chased what was forbidden.