y o u ' r e . f i n a l l y . h e r e . a n d . i ' m . a . m e s s

You're Finally Here and I'm a Mess
[by victoria p.]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Sometimes people ask him questions and he answers before he can think, with answers that aren't his to give.

Notes: I always wanted to write about Stubby Boardman, but hadn't quite gotten to it yet. Until this.

Date: July 13, 2005

Sometimes he looks at his fingers on the guitar strings and wonders who they belong to.

He knows (he knows) that's the firewhisky, the lonely nights, the endless travel. He knows that he is Stubby Boardman, always has been.

And yet.

His memory isn't what it used to be, that's all, thanks to years of firewhisky and other, less legal substances, and sometimes he dreams of things he knows are impossible -- dreams that belong to someone else, a man he's never been. He dreams of a rat and a stag and a wolf. The bone-chilling cold of a Dementor's kiss. He's spent his share of nights in the lock-up for brawling down the pub, but he's never been to Azkaban.

Those are the nights he writes songs he will never sing.

He knows he's spent too much time reading the papers when he dreams of Harry Potter, who looks like a scared kid in need of a hug instead of a hero who once defeated a dark wizard.

Those are the nights he composes letters to the Boy Who Lived, letters he'll never send. Rock stars, even has-beens who'll never have another hit, don't send fan mail to teenage boys.

Whenever they're booked to play a club, he looks over the groupies Bernie brings backstage after the show, girls and boys, sad small-town teenagers who don't know or don't care that the Hobgoblins are a second-rate bar band who ought to have gone into semi-retirement, playing only at friends' weddings and the odd family reunion, and only the inexplicable, indomitable drive of their lead singer keeps them performing night after night, nightclub after dive bar after strip joint, always moving and never actually going anywhere. The kids are all the same, and sometimes he imagines something -- someone -- different, a man with long fingers and pale, scarred skin, secret smiles and moonlit nights.

The girl can't be more than seventeen, fresh out of school, and when she's done going down on him, she curls up in his lap to kiss him, bitter and sweet, sex and cigarettes and youth on her tongue.

She makes him feel old and sad, and when she asks him to sign her breast, the permanent black scrawl reads Sirius Black instead of Stubby Boardman. She is not amused.

"That isn't funny, you sick fuck," she says. Her mascara is smeared and her mouth is a swollen red gash in her pale face. He shivers, thinking of mad laughter and Dementors as she stomps away, muttering curses at him.

Sometimes people ask him questions and he answers before he can think, with answers that aren't his to give.

Wizard Tunes Weekly sends a reporter out to interview him when they play a pub in Sheffield, for a story about the possibility of wizarding music crossing over into the Muggle mainstream, following the Weird Sisters' recent success.

"Good to see another Hufflepuff make good," the reporter says, holding out a hand.

He doesn't shake it. "I wasn't in Hufflepuff," he says, seeing a flash of red and gold, a scarf looped loosely around the neck of another boy, remembering shy smiles and stolen kisses in the warm dark behind drawn red curtains. "I was in Gryffindor. My mum did her nut when she heard. Got howlers for a week."

The reporter looks down at his notes, frowning. "I see," he says, but it's clear he doesn't see at all, doesn't quite understand why he's being lied to, if he's being lied to at all.

The interview does not go well. He can't keep his mind from wandering, and his hands tremble when he lights his cigarette. The finished article is not kind to him, but he doesn't really care. The press has never loved him (wannabe, poseur, traitor, murderer), but the kids keep coming out to drink and dance and brawl, and they do it all to the screech and howl of his voice and his guitar.

Two days after the piece in WTW appears, Bernie tells him a reporter from The Quibbler is there to see him.

She is pale and blonde and keeps her wand behind her ear. She chews the end of her quill like, like-- the name eludes him but he can see the face, plain and pale and worried, loved, in his mind's eye.

"Harry?" she says, turning toward the window, and there's a boy there, no, not a boy anymore, but not yet a man, all scrawny, gawky limbs and a shock of messy black hair. A boy who wasn't there a minute ago, but is there now, invisibility cloak pooled about his trainers, complete with black-rimmed glasses and scarred forehead and that same haunted look he wears in Stubby Boardman's dreams.

"Sirius," he says softly, and again, "Sirius Black."

And Sirius says, "Yes."

end

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Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling, Scholastic, etc. This piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.