There are no outward signs of it.

No scars, no protruding bones, no overdoses.

If you didn't know, then you wouldn't have even been able to tell.

You can't see it.

He can still wear short sleeves, and he still eats properly, and he doesn't try to kill himself.

You'd never be able to tell, if you happened to catch a glance of him.

But at the same time, it's blatantly obvious, to everyone who's close to him.

It's in the way he presses his thin knees against his chest at night, when he has his back to you and he's staring out the window.

It's in the way every exhale of smoke sounds like a tired sigh, or in the way he doesn't flinch when hot embers blow back onto his pale skin.

It's the way he always wakes up with a gasp, a soft one, but still audible to anyone who's listening, really listening.

Or maybe it's the way he spends at least an hour in the shower every day, scrubbing his body obsessively with a sponge, and you think that maybe all those crystal droplets resting on his thick lashes might not be entirely shower water.

But most of all, it's the subtle way he flinches whenever a hand is raised in a thirty centimetre proximity to him.

The way James is always meticulous in not being too flamboyant with his gestures, or simply just keeps his hands stuffed in his pockets as he relays conversations.

Or the way Peter is unnecessarily loud when he approaches him, a silent warning that the contact is about to happen, a soft touch on the shoulder to remind him that it's time to eat.

His eyes are always wiped of all emotion, carefully canvased so he appears uncaring. Numb. And it's unnerving, to see him like that, because he looks so... dead.

And there are days where he is perfect. Where his hair is washed and his clothes are fresh, and his smile doesn't look like it's stretching his skin to breaking point, it looks almost natural.

And he'll laugh just the right amount, for the perfect amount of time, and if you only just met him, you'd never suspect anything was amiss.

Because there are days when he is broken.

His eyes will be blank and his hair will be messy. His clothes will be four days old and all of his stiff, disjointed movements make him look ready to snap in half.

Those are the worst days, the days you dread.

And the worst thing is knowing that the only thing that can help isn't you, or James, or Peter. it's a bottle of whiskey and a packet of cigarettes.

Even on bad days, the way he smokes is still elegant, even punctured by tremors and depression. He does it so discreetly that it's reminiscent of the anatomical structure of graphite, slipping past each other so smoothly. And he leans so far out of the window, only clinging on by a single hand, his legs testing the waters of oblivion, that you daren't watch, for fear he'll plummet to his death any second.

Because you'll get the urge to drag him back through the window, through honest fear that if he did happen to slip, maybe he wouldn't hold on for as long as he could muster.

The mask he's perpetually wearing is difficult to break, and when it does, it's hardly the floodgates. Only a trickle is let through, before it is hastily glued back together by those trembling fingers.

You see pain. You see sadness. But more often that not, you see fear.

You see it when Lily lets her hand linger on his tensed shoulder. When a careless arm is thrown around him by a classmate. Even when a teacher accidentally brushes their hand against his when handing out work.

It's worse during practicals.

The fear is evident in his eyes when he tries to steady his hands as a wand is directly aimed in his contorted features. He can't hide it then, and his free hand will go to cling on to his thigh, because it looks like he wants to flee. And he longer he forces himself to endure, the paler his face gets, the more he sweats, the more breaths catch in his closing throat.

He goes to the bathroom after all of those lessons, and he stays there, and ten minutes later he re-emerges with an impassive face and his breathing back to normal.

The school genuinely believes he's on drugs, because of how much his moods swing, and you see no real need to correct them, because they believe he'll snap any second, and that's not too far from being true.

You're scared of him sometimes, but not of what he's capable of.

You're terrified that he'll just break, and all you'll be left with are shattered pieces and bleeding hands.

He is the glue that holds you all together.

He is the link that connects you and James through much discussed mutual agreements, a precarious balance between pranking and homework.

And he's the link between Peter and James, as James isn't always the best at controlling his anger, and without him, Peter would surely be James' target.

Without him, everything starts to break down, even when he's like this, a ghost of his former, charming self.

Sometimes you want to bury him in blankets and keep him safe, but the torture he feels is internal, mental. You can tell.

You don't know what it is, but you know something has changed. Something broke him.

And that scares you more than anything else, because Sirius was always the strongest out of you all.