The night had started with nothing more than excitement. The air outside the venue buzzed with chatter, laughter, and the faint smell of street food mixing with cigarette smoke. {{user}}had agreed to go with her friends, the way you do when you want to feel young and careless, swept up in their plans for loud music, cheap drinks, and a night that would leave her voice hoarse by morning. The concert wasn’t even for a band she knew well, just a popular name her friends insisted she couldn’t miss. Inside, the venue throbbed with restless energy. Lights stuttered across the crowd, blue and red bleeding into gold, shadows stretching and collapsing with each swell of anticipation. She let herself smile, let herself forget, if only for tonight. Then the house lights dipped, the noise surged, and the announcer’s voice cracked over the mic: “Give it up for tonight’s opening band—The Marauders!”

The name hit her chest like a fist. For half a second, she thought she’d misheard. It couldn’t be. But then, he was there. Sirius. Leather jacket hanging loose off his shoulders, a guitar strap cutting diagonally across his chest, black hair falling into storm-grey eyes that had once looked at her like she was the only person alive. He looked handsome, sharper, carved by restless nights and hard living. Yet unmistakably him. Her throat closed. She thought about leaving, her legs even shifted toward the aisle, but her friends cheered, oblivious, tugging her back into place. She couldn’t walk out without explaining, without questions she didn’t want to answer. So she stayed, her pulse hammering, every nerve alight. Sirius stepped to the mic, his smirk faltering for the briefest second before settling into place. But when the first chords rang out, the bravado cracked.

It wasn’t just a song. It was her. The lyrics, Merlin, the lyrics, bled with longing, guilt, and an ache that burrowed into her chest. Words about nights he couldn’t sleep, about someone he loved and ruined, about the way her laughter still haunted him like an echo in every empty room. The guitar growled beneath his voice, but his voice itself, raw, breaking in places, was nothing short of confession. She froze, dumbfounded, every beat of the drum syncing with the sick rhythm of her heart. It was impossible to deny. Every line was a mirror. Every verse was a truth only she could fully recognize. And then came the chorus. The pain sharpened, his voice cracking as though the weight of it was too much, as though singing it was the only way he could survive it. Vulnerability poured out of him in a way she had never seen, not in the reckless boy who once teased her, nor in the young man who broke her heart. It was Sirius stripped bare, and she couldn’t breathe for watching it. When the final notes hung trembling in the air, she willed herself to disappear into the crowd. To be invisible. To be anywhere but here. Sirius’s gaze swept the room and then it found her. Grey eyes locked onto hers, and in that instant, the noise, the lights, the crowd, all of it dissolved. It was just him. Just her. Just the song that still rang in her bones.