Chapter Text
Professor Lupin, begins the first letter, the one from Dumbledore. Your presence is requested immediately at Hogwarts.
Remus, writes Minerva, in the second letter that arrived just as the first owl left.
You're going to want to see this.
Remus lays both letters side by side on his table and studies them as he drinks his tea. The morning light that streams through his kitchen window is a weak and pale gold, but at least the sun is shining. It's been a dark November, even by the standards of that bleak month. Remus has half a mind to take the stack of editing he needs to finish to a Muggle cafe and sit in the cold sun for a couple hours. He's sick of Order business. He's sick of the world ending.
But he finishes his tea with a sigh and straightens his robe. He'll have to hem it again soon, he registers dimly. He adds it to his mental list of tedious tasks that he’s unlikely to complete and steps outside.
He apparates.
Scotland is colder and grayer than Wales, a hard wind blowing and the clouds fat with the possibility of snow. Remus holds his cloak tightly around himself as he makes the walk up from Hogsmeade to the castle. Hogsmeade is depressing. There are few people out in the streets, and all, like Remus, are bent against the wind, hurrying off to somewhere they’ll be warm. It’s too early for Christmas decorations to have gone up, but, reflects Remus, perhaps that would just lend an edge of hysteria to the whole, dismal scene.
Or maybe he’s just projecting, he tells himself. His mouth twists, and he shunts the thought aside.
A few students recognize him once he’s reached Hogwarts.
“Professor Lupin!” shouts Seamus Finnegan. “Are you back? Are you replacing Snape? Please say you’re replacing Snape.”
Remus attempts to look engaged. He remembers liking Finnegan, but he's at a loss to do more than summon a vague smile.
“I’m afraid not,” he says. “I’m just here to see Professor Dumbledore.”
Finnegan looks disappointed, and Remus manages to keep his smile up until he reaches the gargoyles that guard the stairs to Dumbledore’s office.
“Fizzing whisbees,” he says, tired, and he takes the stairs up.
As soon as he steps inside the office, he freezes.
Seated in front of Dumbledore’s desk is Sirius. He recognizes him immediately.
Remus gropes at the air and feels his knees start to buckle. Minerva grabs his arm and, with surprising strength, steadies him.
Sirius turns in his seat and looks at him. Remus stares. It’s Sirius, but it’s not Sirius as he remembers him – not the Sirius he saw fall through the Veil. He’s much younger. He looks like he did at seventeen. Remus has seen him twice like this in Dumbledore’s office. The first in the middle of the sixth year, when Sirius had led Severus to the Shrieking Shack. It had been the three of them and James, and Remus had barely been able to look at Sirius the whole time. He had felt only a vast and spreading chill.
The second time had been the end of their seventh year, when Dumbledore had told them about the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius then had glowed, and even Remus, for all his tendency to worry, hadn’t the faintest idea of what awful road lay ahead of them. He'd just been honored to be asked to join.
Both these memories strike Remus at once, and he’s locked into place, beyond words. Sirius keeps staring at him, eyebrows drawn together in a faint expression of consternation. Then, he rises and walks across the office. Remus almost wants to leap away – like a Muggle who’s seen a ghost. But he remains rooted to the spot.
“Moony?” says the boy with Sirius’s face, in Sirius’s voice.
And then he reaches up and touches Remus’s face, lightly, high on the cheek. Remus feels his heart leap in his chest – Sirius! Sirius touching him! – an awful, wonderful, familiar feeling, something that twice now he’s never expected to feel again.
Remus closes his eyes and finally manages to find his voice.
“Yes, Padfoot,” he says roughly. “It’s me.”
Sirius drops his hand and laughs, forced and loud.
“All right,” he says. “This is very funny. But I’m ready for the prank to be over.” He looks behind Remus, as if expecting to see someone else there. “Prongs? Wormtail? Wherever you are – joke’s over. I don’t know how you got McGonagall in on it, but I am duly impressed.”
Remus’s chest squeezes painfully. Again, he’s unable to speak. He wants, so much, for it to just be a joke. That James and Peter will pop out from behind Dumbledore’s desk, rolling with laughter. “We really got you that time, Padfoot! Serves you right for that trick with the niffler!”
But they won’t. Remus long ago accepted that miracles don’t happen; that the truth is always as bad as it says it is.
“Sirius,” says Minerva, with more gentleness than Remus has ever heard her speak. “I’m afraid this is no joke. It’s 1996.”
“No,” says Sirius furiously. He glares at Minerva. “This is some – some extremely well done prank! You’re probably Prongs, honestly!” He waves his hand in front of McGonagall’s face, imperious and demanding. “Cut it out, Potter!”
Remus steps between them and grabs Sirius’s hands.
“It’s not a prank, Sirius,” he says. His voice breaks halfway through Sirius’s name, and he has to take a deep, steadying breath. Sirius’s expression is horrified, transfixed. “I wish it were. But I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
Sirius pulls his hands away quickly. He wheels around the room, staring at Remus, Minerva, and Dumbledore in turn. Each of them look back - wary, sympathetic. He collapses back into a chair.
“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes out, and then his head jerks up quickly. He stares at Remus. His eyes are bright, and he says in a hard, cold voice, “But where is James?”
Remus kneels down in front of him and takes his hand again. It’s warm, almost hot, like Sirius’s hands always were. He doesn’t think he can say this standing up. He feels dizzy, a decade and a half sliding away from him, so that he's once more standing in the doorway, getting the news in the Prophet: James and Lily Potter dead; Voldemort defeated. In one day, they had won war, and he had lost everything.
How can he be the person who brings that news to Sirius?
“James Potter is dead, Sirius,” says Dumbledore, sparing Remus the task. “He died fifteen years ago.”
Sirius looks back and forth between the three of them, and something dark and terrible passes his face: a realization.
“And Peter?” he asks.
Remus flinches, and Sirius inhales sharply.
“Him, too?”
“No.” Remus lets out a choked laugh. “Sirius… What do you remember?”
Sirius doesn’t say anything for a long minute. His face has dimmed; his expression is distant. Remus doesn’t have to wonder what twisting hallways of the mind he’s wandering through. He can tell. He runs his thumb over Sirius’s knuckles, feels the familiar bumps of bone, the shape of his hand something Remus could recognize even in the dark.
“Padfoot,” he says quietly.
Sirius takes a deep, shuddering breath, and crumples with a sob. Remus puts his arms around him, trying to hide him from view. Sirius’s hands clutch at his robe and hold him there. Remus leans down, so that he's covering Sirius’s bent over body.
“Padfoot,” he says again, into Sirius’s back, and then he can’t think of anything else to say. There’s nothing to say that can make it better. Fifteen years haven’t made it better. He tries to run his hand over Sirius’s hair, but the way they’re sitting makes it awkward, and his hand gets stuck on Sirius’s nape. He presses his hand down, trying to comfort.
They stay like that for minutes. Remus feels the back of his neck and his cheeks heat up, and he feels a sudden, fierce resentment that Minerva and Dumbledore are witnessing their reunion.
Finally, Sirius pulls away from him and straightens with a gasp. His eyes are bright and wet, but he’s no longer crying, and a red flush colors his cheekbone. He glares at Dumbledore fiercely, his pride reasserting himself.
He keeps one hand wrapped tightly around Remus’s, though.
“It was November,” he says. “Seventh year.” He glances at Remus, and his cheeks color more. Then he looks back at Dumbledore. “We’d just finished… The four of us, we’d just finished… a project.”
“The map,” says Remus, stunned. “We’d just finished the map.”
They had finished it the fall of their seventh year. It had worked before then, but the final step, adding their personalities, had been Sirius’s idea – ‘so we’ll keep causing mischief, even after we’re gone.’
“The map?” asks Dumbledore.
“The one Harry has,” explains Remus. He sharpens his voice as a question occurs to him. “Have you told Harry?”
Dumbledore frowns slightly. “Not yet. I wanted you to know first.”
Remus feels at once grateful and guilty.
“Who’s Harry?” asks Sirius.
“James and Lily’s son,” answers Minerva.
“Your godson,” says Remus.
Sirius barks a laugh. “Lily? Lily Evans? They actually…” He laughs again. “Merlin.”
He goes silent. Remus squeezes his hand.
“How is he here?” says Remus, looking up at Dumbledore. “It can’t just be the map…”
Dumbledore touches Fawkes’ head lightly. He looks thoughtful.
“I truly cannot say. A contact of mine at the Department of Mystery found him this morning and brought him here.” He pauses and looks at Remus gravely. “He is Sirius Black, as far as we can tell. Remus, you must realize that Voldemort will be very interested in discovering how Sirius has escaped death. Could you bring him to Grimmauld Place? He’ll be safest there.”
“What? I'm not going back there!” shouts Sirius, true panic in his eyes and voice.
“He can stay with me,” says Remus quickly.
Dumbledore raises a silvery eyebrow.
Remus forces a gentle humor into his voice, even though the only thing he wants to do is immediately take Sirius away and hide him.
“Sirius is a vindicated man, and, more importantly, a dead one. No one is going to be looking for his seventeen-year-old self."
“I should think Bellatrix has a very good idea of what a seventeen-year-old Sirius Black looks like,” says Dumbledore.
“She's still alive?” says Sirius, with an overwhelming sense of injustice.
“Grimmauld Place killed Sirius,” says Remus calmly, decisively. “I won't let it have a second chance."
++
There is no hour darker than 5pm in late November, and the sky is full black by the time they get back to Remus’s, the stars and the waxing moon hidden by the clouds. His house looks small and feeble in the darkness, even after Remus waves his wand and the lights come on. He felt safe here, once, but that was very, very long ago.
Sirius is quiet, and Remus has trouble placing what kind of silence it is. Sirius had – has – so many kinds of silence. Very few of them are any good.
“Are you hungry?” asks Remus.
Sirius shakes his head. His dark lashes are low over his eyes, and it gives him a shuttered expression. He takes in the parlor and the dining room and the small, neat kitchen just beyond. Everything is much the same as it was when Remus’s parents were alive and lived here, only shabbier. He’s never had the money nor the inclination to repair or replace anything.
“Tea then?”
Sirius shakes his head again.
"Then are you tired? You can have my old room. I'm afraid it's quite dusty. It's been some time since I've had guests."
He hasn't had guests since Sirius stayed with him, that glorious summer the year after Sirius had escaped, but they hadn't needed separate bedrooms. Sirius had helped even out the slanted floor of the dining room and fixed some of the windows to be less drafty, and they had laughed over the memory of the flat they’d had together in London, before the world had shattered around them.
Finally, Sirius looks at him. His face cracks open in a brittle, bright smile, like the thinnest crescent moon on a January night.
"I can't say this is how I pictured getting in your bed, Moony," he says.
Remus flushes.
“Is that really appropriate?” he says, and he winces at the tone of his voice. He sounds like he’s speaking to a student, not to the man he loved. Loves.
Sirius laughs, short and barking and familiar enough to make Remus’s chest ache.
“I don’t really know what’s appropriate,” he says, and there’s a hysterical edge to his voice. “Apparently I died, but not now, years in the future! Or last summer! But all I can think of is that last week I kissed you! Because that's better than thinking about Prong being dead!”
He cuts himself off and takes a deep, hitching breath.
“You did,” says Remus. He feels horribly overwhelmed.
“Am I ever going to find out if you kissed me back?” asks Sirius, with another desperate, barking laugh.
Of all the things he could choose to fixate on, Remus supposes this isn't a bad one. But he still doesn't want to have to negotiate it. He can sense the danger before him, like a wary traveler on marshy ground, will’o’wisps haunting the corners of his eyes. But he doesn’t know how to avoid it. Even at seventeen, Sirius could tell when Remus was lying, and Remus doesn’t think time has made him any better at it.
And he wants to comfort Sirius.
“I did,” he says. “After we got back from Christmas break.”
“How did it go?” asks Sirius.
Remus almost has to laugh at the memory, if everything else weren't currently so dire. Sirius had kissed him for the first time very late on a fall night. Remus had fallen asleep over his Ancient Runes homework in the Gryffindor common room, and Sirius had woken him up. Remus remembers it like a dream, and he had half thought it was a dream at the time. The fire had ebbed to a few glowing coals, and the smell of winter and wet leaves and firewhisky had come off Sirius in waves. He’d been out, on one of his mysterious midnight jaunts that always made Remus’s stomach twist with jealousy.
“Come to bed, Moony,” he’d said, smiling fondly, his face very close to Remus’s, and then he’d kissed him, very softly, just once, before jerking away, shocked at himself and bolted up the stairs.
“You spent two months avoiding me,” says Remus, two months during which Sirius laughed too loudly and glittered with mania and always made sure Peter or James were in the room with them. “I’d never seen you so embarrassed. It made me think you must really like me.”
Sirius laughs weakly and passes his hand over his face.
“Yeah,” he says. “Well. You’re not wrong.”
“I used the map to track you down when you were alone,” says Remus. He watches Sirius’s face closely. He’s not sure what he wants to see there. “And I told you off for being a prat, and then I kissed you.”
It had felt like the most reckless thing he’d ever done, that he would ever do, and he’d been giddy with it, especially when Sirius kissed him back. His heart had squeezed with painful hope. They spent the rest of seventh year in a haze, both sure they were each other's forever, both too naïve to realize the cracks in the foundation of their relationship had been there from the start.
“Romantic,” says Sirius, with a smile. It’s the first genuine smile Remus has seen from him. Then he looks Remus up and down and smiles wider, a leer. “You know you are still fit.”
Remus laughs. “I was never ‘fit,’ Sirius.”
Sirius scoffs and steps closer to him, serious intent in his eyes. Remus shakes his head and puts his hands out in front of him to block him.
He knows this. He knows that Sirius will fling himself at the nearest bad idea to avoid his pain. He won’t take advantage of it. He takes Sirius by the shoulders and steers him gently to the sofa.
“I’m going to make myself some tea, at least,” he says.
He goes into the kitchen and steadies himself against the counter. He breathes deeply, to the count of ten, and then starts over. After his third count, he’s able to straighten up. He makes two mugs and brings them out. Sirius is still on the couch, but he’s bent over, his face in his hands. Remus places one mug gently in front of him, and then sits on the other end of the couch. He crosses his legs, clasps his hands on his knee, and looks at the fireplace.
He should start the fire. It’s cold in his house.
He makes no move to do so. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sirius shudder and sit up. He glances away.
“Tell me everything,” rasps Sirius. “Everything that happened.”
Remus picks up his mug and blows on his tea. He wishes he had a Pensieve, so he could show Sirius some of it, the parts that are too painful – either two sweet or too bitter – to say. Maybe Dumbledore will loan him one.
“From seventh year on?”
“From when you kissed me, I guess,” says Sirius.
Remus nods.
“All right,” he says, and he sketches the sorry tale out. Maybe he’ll be able to give it color and shape later. But, right now, a skeleton is all he can bear.
++
He stays up late that night, after Sirius has gone to bed. He finishes the editing he had hoped to work on earlier in the day, before the owls had come. By the time he’s finished, it’s past one in the morning, and he has a headache throbbing behind his eyes. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep easily, though. His mind is too full of thoughts.
He walks to the kitchen to wash his mug and pauses as he passes the door to Sirius’s room. He hears a sound like a stifled sob. Remus doesn’t hesitate. He knocks on the door.
“Sirius?” he says.
He listens closely and hears what sounds like a deep, wet gasp.
He opens the door.
Sirius sits up, eyes bright and ashamed, cheeks wet.
“Don’t – ” he says, a sudden, furious blush covering his face. And then he gasps again, and his breath comes out in a stutter. Remus stands for three seconds in the doorway, and then he crosses to the bed. He doesn’t feel in control of his own body. He sits next to Sirius and pulls him to him and holds him.
Sirius sobs again and drops his head onto Remus’s shoulder. Sirius's tears and breath are hot against Remus's neck, and Remus doesn’t know what he could possibly say to make things better. So he holds Sirius, and tries not to lose himself in the familiar shape and smell of him. He's here to comfort Sirius. Eventually, Sirius stops crying, and he just pants, catching his breath. He has an iron grip around Remus's waist, and he presses his nose into the divot where Remus’s collarbone meets his neck. Remus tries not to react, but he feels his body go shock-still all the same.
“Were we happy?” asks Sirius, after another long moment of silence.
Remus runs his hand down Sirius’s hair, ashamed that he hadn’t even been able to give Sirius that much detail. Even just admitting they were happy once feels like opening a wound.
“Sometimes,” he admits. He keeps his hand tucked against the back of Sirius’s neck. He should stop stroking his hair, he tells himself sternly.
Sirius shifts slightly. He keeps his head on Remus’s shoulder, but he pulls away just enough that he can see some of Remus’s expression.
“But sometimes we weren’t.”
Remus shakes his head and tries to find the words.
“No one’s happy all the time, Sirius. And… towards the end of the First War, things fell apart rather badly. Rather quickly. I thought you were a spy, and you thought the same of me.”
Sirius breathes in sharply.
“Why would we think that?”
“You don’t know,” says Remus, laughing, miserable, “how awful it got.”
“So tell me!” says Sirius. He sits up fully, eyes dark, scowling. Remus immediately misses having Sirius against him.
He shakes his head. He doesn’t have the words for this. He keeps his head down. He can’t look at Sirius. But he can tell Sirius is watching him.
It hadn’t been just one thing, but the accumulated weight of many. Sirius was reckless and casually cruel, and Remus was secretive and deliberately cruel, and neither of them had ever learned to be kind to themselves. He remembers one of the last, ugly days of the war, two weeks before Harry’s first birthday, when the sun had been a brutal eye. He’d been living in a camp of werewolves for the past three weeks, trying to turn them against Voldemort, or at least keep them from joining, and returned to a stifling London that stank of sweat and grime, an apartment full of dirty dishes, the fridge full of spoiled food, and the news that Fabian and Gideon Prewett were dead. He’d yelled at Sirius about the dishes, been too numb to say anything about the Prewetts, and gone to bed. When he woke up, the sky was dark, and Sirius was awake beside him. He’d sat up and asked Remus if he were capable of feeling anything at all.
“There’s a difference between not having feelings and being an adult,” Remus had said indifferently, and he’d rolled onto his side, away from Sirius. “Maybe one day you’ll stop having tantrums long enough to realize that.”
He can’t explain any of that to Sirius, not to Sirius at seventeen. He keeps staring at his hands. Sirius lets out a short, contemptuous laugh.
“I never would have figured Wormtail to have the courage to turn spy,” he says bitterly.
“None of us did.”
“He loved James,” says Sirius. He pauses. “We really… We all fell apart, like that?”
“Hogwarts isn’t forever, Padfoot.”
Sirius flops backward onto the bed and stares at the ceiling.
“I just can’t imagine it,” he says.
Remus shrugs helplessly. Even having lived through it, its's impossible to describe the dark, claustrophobic terror and insidious, paranoid fear that had ripped them all apart. He still has nightmares of the First War – vague, ominous nightmares full of waiting and dread, where he walks through endless hallways filled with the dead.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s all he can offer. He still isn’t able to look at Sirius. "I really, really am."
He gets up to leave, and Sirius shoots up, grabs his arm.
“Don’t,” he says, half commanding, half pleading.
Remus hesitates, and that hesitation is enough for Sirius to drag him down beside him.
“We don’t have to do anything,” says Sirius desperately. He keeps his hand on Remus’s arm, but he doesn’t touch him otherwise. “Just don’t go.”
Remus touches his hair lightly where it curls behind his ear. Sirius’s eyes are still red from crying.
“Just for tonight,” he says carefully, and Sirius nods, still desperate. Remus settles himself down more comfortably, lying on his side, facing Sirius. He wants to turn his back to him, but even he’s not that cruel. Sirius adjusts, too, onto his side, facing Remus. They don’t touch. There are inches between them. Remus waves his wand to pull the comforter up over them both.
He looks at Sirius and takes in his high cheekbones and his storm gray eyes and the elegant turn of his mouth, the almost-perfect symmetry of his face, broken only by a beauty mark high on one cheek, the slightly crooked angle of one canine when he smiles. Remus had been fourteen the first time he looked at Sirius and felt his body turn to air. Sirius was unfairly, impossibly beautiful. Even now, with his eyes cracked red and strands of his hair sticking to his damp face, he’s beautiful. The Sirius who came back to him after Azkaban hadn’t been, but he had been just as brilliant, just as reckless, just as Remus’s as he’d ever been, and Remus had loved him all the same.
They watch each other until their breathing syncs, until Remus’s eyelids get heavy, and then he watches Sirius as if through the clicking shutters of a camera, a long darkness, a brilliant light, a long darkness, Sirius, a long darkness, and he sleeps.
++
The bed is empty when he wakes up. He groans and throws an arm over his face to block the light. He must not have closed the curtain. He has no idea what time it is, and he has the vague, stuffed-head feeling of having overslept. Sirius always let him sleep in too much, he thinks dimly, pleasantly.
And then he sits up abruptly. Sirius. Panic grips his throat and forces him from the bed, propels him out of the room. Is Sirius still here? Remus isn’t even sure what he’s afraid has happened – if he’s afraid whatever magic brought Sirius back to him has already snatched him away, or if he’s afraid that Sirius has left of his own free will. He’s just afraid. He bolts down the hallway and into the living room, calling Sirius’s name. He skids to a halt.
Sirius is standing in the middle of the living room. He stares at Remus and raises one eyebrow. He seems like he’s been caught in the middle of something, his body tensed with potential action. Remus realizes he must have been pacing.
“Are you all right?” asks Sirius.
Remus walks to the couch and sinks down onto it. He can still feel his heartbeat in his throat.
“Yes,” he says. “I just… I was worried you had left.”
Sirius barks out a laugh and turns on his heel. He stalks to the fireplace.
“Where is there for me to go?” he says. He leans against the mantle and glares at Remus. He looks like he’s stepped out of a Gothic novel - pale and melancholy and furious, with his dark hair swept back, falling to his collar, his eyebrows drawn low.
“I don’t know,” says Remus, even though he once watched the darkness swallow Sirius whole.
Sirius shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water, and stalks to the window. He’s overflowing with a brittle, nervous energy. His whole body seems to vibrate faintly with it. It’s like the smell of ozone before a storm, like the ragged dark edge of rain dropping to the distant horizon, the wind picking up and the leaves all scattering.
Remus waits, tensed.
“I just don’t get it,” snarls Sirius. “None of it! Why I’m here! What happened! That Peter could do that!”
He cuts himself off with a swallowed growl and a sharp hand gesture, as if he were trying to slash away all the parts that make no sense. He turns to Remus again. The slanting morning light from the window behind turns his form into a shadow. Remus can’t quite make out his face.
“There has to be something we can do about it!”
“About what?” says Remus. He rubs his hand across his eyes. His dull headache is starting to crystallize, sharpen.
“About all of it!” bellows Sirius. He slams his fist into his palm and stalks to the hallway. “You said – you said you were in the Order. That we all were. It still exists, right? What are they doing?”
“Waiting, mostly,” says Remus, slumping back against the couch. “Preparing. Gathering intelligence.”
“They should be hunting Death Eaters down in the street and killing them!” howls Sirius. “It’s not like we don’t know who they are!” He laughs sharply. “My cousin, right? Bellatrix? Her husband. His brother. The Malfoys. Everyone I grew up with. All those cunts.” He pauses. His mouth curls downwards, and his eyes cut away from Remus, to the fireplace. His voice gets much softer. “Regulus, I assume.”
“Oh,” says Remus. He hadn’t told him. There had been too much to say.
Sirius stares at him.
“Oh?” he says, with a narrow, focused look.
Remus forces himself to meet his gaze.
“Regulus… disappeared,” he says. “During the First War. We never found out what happened to him. But he – yes. He was a Death Eater.”
Sirius had shattered every plate in their apartment when he’d learned, and then gone out, not come back until the first creep of dawn, soaked out of his mind, a bloody gash on his cheek and both eyes blacked. Remus had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him.
They never spoke about it. Remus never knew what to say to Sirius about his family. Once, last year, they’d gotten close, when Remus had found Sirius slumped on the wall by his family’s tapestry, an empty bottle of wine by his side.
“I wish I could have saved him,” Sirius had told him, as Remus sat down next to him and gently drawn Sirius close. He’d thought Sirius had meant Regulus, but he could just as easily have been referring to James.
“Well,” says Sirius, after a long pause. He stands partly hunched, hands twisted, claw-like. “I guess at least one of us made ol’ Mum and Da proud then.”
Remus rises from his couch, because he knows this stillness is more dangerous than the pacing and the ranting. He puts his hand on Sirius’s shoulder. Sirius flinches, but Remus keeps his grip firm.
“Are you going to do something?” he asks. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”
Sirius laughs hollowly. His face is bloodless, and he twists in Remus’s grasp, restless and helpless.
“How can you do it?” he asks finally, stilling again, staring at Remus with burning eyes.
“Do what?” asks Remus.
Sirius jerks away from him and raises his arm, furious. He grabs at his hair. His eyes show white all the way around.
“Keep going! With everything that’s happened! How can you keep going?”
Remus laughs sharply. He puts his hand to his head and presses down against the headache.
“What else can I do? I can’t keep going, Sirius, but I have to.”
It’s what he’s always done. The world has wanted him dead since he was six. He’s never thought about why he’s kept going; he’s been too busy doing it. Maybe that’s limited him. It’s certainly warped him. But it’s also the only reason he’s still alive. Take his body, take his heart – still, he’s limped on.
Some of this must show in Remus’s face, because Sirius’s shoulders drop.
“Oh, Moony,” he says. The fury and anguish leave his face, replaced by an even more awful pity. “How long have you been alone?”
He steps back to Remus and touches Remus's face high on his cheekbone. Then he spreads his palm and cups Remus’s cheek. Remus shudders. He wants to lean into that touch. He pulls away.
“I have to go to Diagon Alley to send an owl,” he says briskly. He pauses, unsure if he should voice his question.
Sirius gives him an expectant look. He doesn’t look angry that Remus pulled away, which is both a surprise and a relief. “Go ahead and spit out whatever it is you’re going to say.”
“Will you still be here when I get back?”
“Yes,” says Sirius quietly. His mouth twists. “I will.”
++
Remus sends the manuscript back to the publisher with his notes, and then he wanders down Diagon Alley, lost in thought. Now that he has Sirius, he has to figure out what to do with him. He won’t send him back to Grimmauld Place, but he also knows he can’t keep Sirius out of the war. Maybe he’ll want to go back to Hogwarts to finish out his education. Dumbledore could make sure it happened unobtrusively, set up a different name and life for Sirius. It wouldn’t keep Sirius safe for long, but six months isn’t nothing. And that would give Remus space and perspective.
When he returns home, he walks into the parlor to see Sirius stringing fairy lights. There’s a fire going in the fireplace, and Muggle Christmas tunes warble from the radio that Remus still thinks of as his mother’s. A tree stands in the corner, already decked with baubles. Paper snowflakes cover the windows.
“What are you doing?” asks Remus.
“I’m decorating,” says Sirius. He has a Father Christmas hat on his head. “For Christmas. I should think that was obvious, Moony. It’s December in less than a week.”
There’s a familiar, manic glow to Sirius’s features. Remus knows he’s lucky that, so far, Sirius’s rage and energy have been channeled into Christmas preparations.
“Where did you get all this?” he asks, bemused. The nearest town is a two mile walk away, and he doesn’t think Sirius is familiar enough with it to apparate to.
“Transfigured it,” says Sirius cheerfully. He gestures at the ornaments on the tree. “You only have two mugs left now. Sorry.”
Remus laughs.
“I guess we only need two.”
He lingers just inside the doorway, watching Sirius work. He’s impressed that Sirius has been able to do so much without a wand, even if Sirius has always been clever, especially at transfiguration.
“Would you like to go to Hogwarts?” he asks, after a moment.
“What for?” asks Sirius. He’s twining lights around the legs of the dining table.
“To meet Harry,” says Remus. Harry should know Sirius is back, anyway, and maybe meeting him will prompt Sirius to start back at school.
Sirius pauses what he’s doing and looks up at Remus. The fairy lights cast odd shadows on his face, but Remus reads uncertainty there.
“When?” he asks.
“Whenever you’re ready,” says Remus.
Sirius nods and resumes his work.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he says.
++
They end up going to Diagon Alley the next day instead. It’s risky, but Sirius needs a wand and robes, and Remus knows he can’t keep Sirius hidden away. He does charm Sirius’s hair blond, though, as a precaution. No one will be looking for a seventeen-year-old Sirius Black, but they really won’t be looking for a blond one. Sirius scowls when he sees his reflection.
“I look like Narcissa,” he complains.
Remus tosses him a green, knitted cap in response, one of the avalanche of goods and meals that Molly had plied him with after Sirius’s death.
Sirius snorts when he pulls it on.
“Oh, good,” he says. “Green. Now I really look like Narcissa.”
“At least you’re prettier than her.”
Their eyes catch in the mirror as soon as the words are out of Remus’s mouth. He’s horrified. He didn’t think about them. He’s already too secure around this Sirius, lulled into a familiar, easy needling and affection.
They both blush and look away.
++
They walk through Muggle London on their way to Diagon Alley, and Remus feels a line of tension form in his shoulders. No one is watching them, but a few people do glance at them, struck maybe, by Sirius’s good looks, his easy grace. Remus wonders what they see.
Do they see him, old and tired, with a man young enough to be his son? Do they see what Remus’s mother feared when he told her he was gay? “There’s just so many men out there,” she’d told him, with tears in her eyes, “that might take advantage of you for this.” It hadn’t mattered he’d already been dating Sirius for a year, and she’d never really liked Sirius after she found out.
It twists at Remus sometimes: he’s been hated almost all his life. He should be used to hatred. But being hated has only made him quick to hide, desperate to please.
His thoughts are unpleasant company, and he tries to force himself away from them, and focus on Sirius, who keeps up a steady stream of talk. Remus hasn’t realized how much the Muggle world has changed in twenty years, but Sirius’s wide eyes and questions make him realize how very different the Muggle world is. It strikes him as funny. The wizarding world is stuck fighting the same war, the only difference the names of the dead, and the Muggle world has gone on cheerfully, obliviously, into the future.
He has a moment of pause when they get to Ollivander’s. The man inside is not Ollivander, and then Remus remembers with a start that Ollivander has been missing since July.
The man looks at them both oddly, and Remus sees his hand go immediately to his wand. He clearly wasn’t expecting two adult men to walk into the shop.
“Sorry,” says Remus. He tries a placating smile. “We didn’t mean to startle you. Only my… friend has lost his wand.” He pauses. “Are you… related to Ollivander?
The man nods. “Yes. He’s my uncle. Great-uncle.” He glances between them both, still looking suspicious. “You’ve lost your wand?” he says to Sirius.
Sirius blasts a smile at him.
“You’d think I’d be old enough to know better by now,” he says. “But, live and learn.”
Remus doesn’t laugh. The man sort of grimaces, an attempt at a smile.
“Of course. Well. Let’s get you measured then.”
Remus watches the process curiously. Sirius’s old wand had been blackthorn and dragon heartstring, a dark and rigid and clever wand. They go through several wands, and the new Ollivander seems more and more perplexed, but at least he no longer seems frightened of them.
“Try this,” he says, after a dozen wands have been discarded. “Phoenix feather and yew. It’s, uh, unusual, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a wand react like these have to you.”
Sirius touches the wand and gives it a wave. Remus feels the hair on the back of his neck stand. There’s a strange hush, like that of standing in a great, stone ruin or an ancient forest. It’s the feeling of presence of old magic, raw magic, the wand a stream breaking off from whatever great river it is wizards can tap into.
Sparks burst from the wand, and a wind whips through the shop. Sirius lowers the wand, his eyebrows faintly raised.
“Well, I think that’s decisive,” he says.
++
“Phoenix feather and yew,” says Sirius, as they walk down the street to Madam Malkin’s. “What do you think that means?”
“Rebirth,” says Remus, after a pause. He doesn’t quite smile. “You would pick a wand with a bad sense of humor.”
Sirius laughs and shakes his head, and then he looks up and down the street curiously.
“I’ve never seen it this dead,” he says. “Especially not this close to Christmas.”
He twists his head around some more, as if by looking he could summon the usual bustling, festive crowds.
“People are scared,” says Remus. He sees a figure turn, in the direction of Knockturn Alley, and quickens his pace.
Sirius matches his stride to Remus's. His face is twisted in an unhappy grimace.
“Right,” he says. He tilts his head back and squints at the sky. It’s gray, but the clouds are too high and thin for snow. He seems on the verge of saying something else, and Remus waits patiently.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says finally. “That I could probably meet Harry.”
"Oh." Remus nods, and he feels a sudden, odd, spike of fear. He shoves it down. “We’ll send an owl to Dumbledore, then.”
He mulls on why he’s worried all through Sirius’s robes-fitting. Is it just that he thinks Sirius will – yet again – act as if Harry were James?
++
“Shall we try your new wand out?” asks Remus, once they’re home.
Sirius grins ferociously.
“Are you challenging me to a duel, Moony? I thought you didn’t approve of those.”
“I approve of anything that will keep us alive,” says Remus primly. “I just didn’t like when you and Prongs destroyed our bloody room pretending to be Aurors.”
Sirius twirls his new wand in his hand and then points it at Remus.
“Shall we go outside then?” he asks, smirking.
It’s dark outside, and cold, and the grass is wet from a fine drizzle that ended just as they came home. Remus sends up a few globes of glowing light, and it lends a fairytale cast to the scene. Sirius’s face glows golden. He tosses his dark hair out of his eyes and smiles.
“Ready?” he says. His breath floats around him like mist.
Remus takes a defensive stance.
“Ready,” he says back.
Sirius fires off a jelly-leg jinx, and Remus parries it easily. Sirius has always been quick, and his youth makes him quicker. But Remus has the advantage of experience, and he’s always been more patient than Sirius ever was, let alone Sirius at seventeen. He keeps parrying and shielding and lets Sirius bring the attack to him. Sirius dances and weaves, but Remus keeps his eyes on Sirius’s shoulder and always knows just when Sirius is about to fire off another blast. He waits for Sirius to make a mistake.
And then Sirius does. He takes too large a step forward and his foot skids on the wet grass. His eyes go round and he falls back, arms wind-milling twice. Remus freezes, his breath trapped in his throat, and an awful double vision plays – Sirius laughing in the Department of Ministry, Sirius struck, Sirius falling, and then just the Veil left behind.
Sirius lands with a thump, and lets out a great ring of laughter.
Remus rushes forward.
“Are you all right?” he asks, bending down to check on him.
Sirius looks up at him with a smile, and then he lunges forward and grabs Remus’s arm and yanks him down. Remus yelps and stumbles, and then his feet slide on the wet grass, and he goes tumbling over, landing hard beside Sirius.
He presses his face into the ground and starts to laugh, breathless and hysterical.
“Moony?” says Sirius from above him, alarmed. “Moony – are you all right?”
Remus keeps laughing. He shakes his head, trying to convey that there’s nothing to worry about. There are tears in his eyes, and his stomach is starting to hurt.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” says Sirius. He shakes Remus’s shoulder. “Remus?”
“No,” wheezes out Remus. He presses his face into the ground some more, feels the cold sting of the grass against his cheek. Sirius keeps his hand on his shoulder. “No. Everything is fine, Sirius. Really.”
++
Sirius is nervous about meeting Harry. He doesn’t show it obviously, but even now Remus knows him well enough to read the signs. He’s silent that morning at breakfast, hunched over his tea. Remus talks to him in neutral tones about everything besides Harry.
Sirius had cried, the first time he met Harry, in the maternity ward at St. Mungo’s, with Harry held tightly in Lily’s arm, and James beside her, as dazed and happy as a man on drugs. Remus had cried, too. Harry’s birth had felt like the first happy thing in a year.
Sirius only gets tenser the closer they get to Hogwarts. They’re met by Tonks in Hogsmeade, by the Shrieking Shack. She takes one look at Sirius and then hugs him and bursts into tears.
“Dora?” says Sirius, stunned, once he realizes who she is. “Baby Dora?”
“I go by Tonks, actually,” wails Tonks through her tears. “Does Mum know? Merlin, Mum is going to explode. After your name got cleared, she said she always reckoned it’d been a set-up.”
“Dromeda’s still alive?” says Sirius, joy leaping his voice. He looks at Remus from over the top of Tonks’s head.
“Yes,” says Remus, chagrined. “Sorry, I forgot to – ”
“It’s all right,” says Sirius quickly. He gives Tonks an awkward pat on the back, and she finally pulls away. She wipes at her eyes with a sniff. “I know I’ve missed a lot. I just.” He beams. “That’s good news.”
“We’ll find a way for you two to catch up,” says Remus gently.
“I’d like that,” says Sirius. He turns his beam on Tonks and laughs brightly. “Merlin. You’re really all grown up.”
Tonks smiles weakly. “I know. I bet I was yea high last time you saw me.”
“Something like that,” agrees Sirius, and Remus is struck by how nice it is to see Sirius smiling so easily and so happily. It's been a long time.
Sirius and Tonks don’t have long to catch up, though. She ushers them into a thestral-drawn carriage – “Just as a precaution” – and promises that she’ll catch up with Sirius more at the next Order meeting.
“Order?” says Sirius, when they’re alone in the carriage together. “She means the Order of the Phoenix, right? She’s in it, too?”
“Yes,” says Remus.
“And you’re in it. And I’m in it.” He glares at Remus, like he’s expecting Remus to argue. Remus doesn’t, and Sirius smirks. “So when’s the next meeting?”
Remus can all but see the visions of dueling with Death Eaters flitting through Sirius's mind. He can almost smell Sirius’s anticipation. He wants to warn him, but he knows Sirius won’t believe him, and he doesn’t have the heart to take from this Sirius what he already knows the war will.
“A couple days after the next moon,” says Remus, and he turns his head to watch Hogsmeade pass them by.
++
They meet Harry in Dumbledore’s office. To Remus’s surprise, Ron and Hermione are with him. But, perhaps Harry was too nervous to do this alone. He smiles at the three of them fondly, but they’re all fixed on Sirius.
There's a moment of tension, and then Hermione lets out a yelp and rushes forward. She throws her arms around Sirius. Remus stifles a laugh as Sirius's back stiffens. Ron hugs him next, moving in as soon a Hermione has stepped aside. There are tears in her eyes, and Remus does her the courtesy of looking away. Harry stays back, frowning slightly. Then, when Ron finally lets go of Sirius, he steps forward and offers his hand.
Remus sees Sirius’s eyes widen and his throat catch as he gets a good look at Harry.
“Merlin,” he says.
“Yeah,” says Harry. He looks Sirius over, just as stunned. “I know.”
Sirius takes his hand and shakes it. He swallows audibly.
“It’s good to meet you,” he says. “Harry.”
Dumbledore touches Remus’s elbow then, drawing him away to talk privately behind his desk.
“How is he adjusting?” he asks.
“As well as can be expected,” says Remus with a shrug. “He hasn’t tried to murder anyone. Though I think he'd like to.”
Dumbledore smiles without humor. He seems weaker and more tired than Remus has ever seen him, and he’s holding one of his hands close to his chest. Remus takes this all in and doesn’t react to it. He trusts Dumbledore to know his own business, and Remus has other things to worry about.
That thought jolts him, though. Three days ago he just wouldn’t have had the capacity to care, not been too busy caring about something else.
“I’m sure he’ll have plenty of opportunities before this is all over,” says Dumbledore. He lowers his voice. “The Department of Mysteries is aware that something happened. I’ve had a letter from my contact there that they’re conducting an investigation.”
“Oh,” says Remus. He takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulder. “If they figure out it was Sirius, I won’t let them take him.”
“Nor would I expect you to,” says Dumbledore with another thin, humorless smile. “I am merely passing on the knowledge.”
“He’s still not going back to Grimmauld Place,” snaps Remus. He doesn’t care if he’ll have to fight the whole Ministry and every Death Eater to keep Sirius safe and out of another prison. He will.
“I understand,” says Dumbledore. “I do. It’s terrible to keep someone you love locked away, even if it is for their own good.”
Remus says nothing. He doesn’t see how Dumbledore could possibly understand.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” says Dumbledore after it becomes clear Remus isn’t going to speak.
Remus feels his irritation dim a bit. He is grateful to Dumbledore, for everything he has done for him personally, and for the fact that he did bring Sirius back to him.
“Could I borrow your Pensieve?” he asks.
“Ah.” Dumbledore’s eyes flick once, to Harry. “I’m afraid I have need of it for the foreseeable future. But I’ll see if I can dig one up.”
Remus looks at Harry, too. He’s standing next to Ron, whose head is bent close to Sirius’s. Remus hears the occasional Quidditch fact waft over. Ron is apparently updating Sirius on nearly two decades of Quidditch news. Sirius seems to be listening intently, but, every so often, he looks away, looks at Harry. Hermione stands next to Harry, her hands clutching his arm, and Remus hears, once, “Honestly, Ron, he doesn’t want to hear about Quidditch.”
Harry just looks stunned.
Watching the four of them, Remus realizes why he was so worried about this meeting. Sirius is barely older than Harry – barely older than James’s son. Of course he’ll want to come back to Hogwarts. Of course he’ll want to have friends. Of course he'll want as normal and as real a life as he can.
But, selfishly, Remus wants him to stay. With him.
++
They take a secret passageway back to Hogsmeade, again as a precaution. Harry loans them James's old invisibility cloak and advises them to just leave it in the statue of the one-eyed witch.
It’s a close fit, and Remus is intensely aware of the heat and press of Sirius’s body. Sirius stifles a horrible laugh as they creep through the hallway. Remus doesn’t comment on it until they’re safely inside the passageway.
“Is something wrong?” he asks, once he’s managed to get several feet between him and Sirius.
Sirius doesn’t say anything at first. He holds the invisibility cloak out before him and studies it.
“I’m glad Harry has this,” he says. His voice is high and choked. “He has the map, too?”
“Yes,” says Remus. He watches Sirius warily. Sirius’s back is to him, and his shoulders are a tight line. It looks like his hands are shaking.
“Padfoot,” he says gently, and he steps forward and touches Sirius on the shoulder.
Sirius turns abruptly and all but flings himself into Remus’s chest. Remus puts his arms around him, surprised. Sirius presses his face into Remus’s shoulder with a half-laugh, half-sob.
“We were just doing this a week ago,” he says. “Only it wasn’t a week ago. I hate this. I feel – ”
He breaks off abruptly with another sob, and he shakes all over now. Remus presses his face into his hair and holds him, once again at a loss for words.
“I feel like I’ve lost everything,” says Sirius, almost too soft to hear. “I don’t feel like any of this is real.”
“I’m sorry,” says Remus. “I know.”
His chest aches. He leans against Sirius, propping him up against the wall of the passageway, and brackets his forearms along either side of his face and looks at him. The stones of the castle are cool against his arms. Sirius’s eyes are wild and panicked, like a trapped animal’s. Remus hopes that maybe simple, physical touch will be enough to soothe him. Sometimes, with Sirius, it was. It is.
“Moony,” whispers Sirius hoarsely. He brings his hand up and pushes Remus’s hair back from his face. Remus winces. How old he must look to Sirius, he thinks, how tired.
“Moony,” he says again, brokenly. “I’m glad you’re here at least. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t.”
Remus attempts a smile. He’s sure it’s unsuccessful.
“Yes. It’ll just be me and my books and the roaches at the end of everything.”
“I always knew you were stronger than the rest of us,” says Sirius, and the way he looks at Remus makes Remus’s cheeks burn with shame and want to look away. He was never as good as Sirius believes him to be. Numbness isn't real strength.
“I always knew you were a terrible flatterer,” says Remus, attempting a joke. It even sort of works. Sirius laughs feebly and takes a deep breath.
“Someday you’ll believe me,” says Sirius, and he straightens up and raises his eyebrows at Remus. “Maybe in another twenty years,” he adds dryly.
Remus laughs, and he startles himself that he’s able to do so. He pulls away from Sirius and gives him another moment to compose himself. Sirius has always been this way, he knows, jumping easily from some terrible calamity of emotions to a cheerful calm. It makes Remus as wary as it ever did, but he won’t push Sirius on it now.
They walk in thoughtful silence for a couple minutes, and then Sirius speaks.
“He has – ”
“Lily's eyes, yes.”
Sirius grins, cocky and beautiful and familiar. Any sign that he had been sobbing a scant five minutes ago is gone.
“I was going to say James's nose.”
Remus laughs. He smiles at Sirius fondly.
“He does. But, he's more like Lily than James overall.”
Sirius makes a neutral sound. Remus remembers that Sirius, at seventeen, still didn't like Lily. The two circled each other like cats. They'd almost died in a Death Eater firefight before they were able to become friends. Remus has no ability to convey to Sirius how important that friendship became to them both, and he feels a pang of regret he wasn’t able to get the Pensieve from Dumbledore. He can remember Sirius and Lily, on the Potters’ couch in Godric’s Hollow, one bright head and one dark, bent over the crossword puzzle in the Daily Prophet, arguing fiercely and then both walking away with smiles on their face. Their whole friendship had been like that: combative, warm, full of laughter.
“I'm sure he's not bad as Evans,” says Sirius, “if he has any Prongs in him. And, as his godfather, it's my responsibility to see he actually has a sense of humor.”
“Don't be a bad influence, Padfoot.”
Sirius grins.
“Was I a bad influence on you?”
Remus has to smile, too. “The worst.”
Sirius's grin turns diabolical. “Good. You needed it.”
Remus realizes that he’s still smiling. Even after his memories of Sirius and Lily’s friendship, his fond smile hasn’t faded. It seems stuck on his face, his happiness and affection too strong for even those old memories to hurt more than a passing pang.
“If you want,” says Remus carefully, after a few more minutes, “you could go back after winter holidays. Finish your education.”
Sirius seems to consider this. He tilts his head back. His hair curls ever so slightly where it meets his collar. It’s shiny and looks soft to the touch. Remus finds himself staring at it, at the sharp line of Sirius’s jaw, at the elegant disarray of his robes, with the same, gnawing feeling he had at seventeen. He knows what he wants Sirius to say.
“How many NEWTs did I get?” asks Sirius.
Remus looks at him in surprise.
“Merlin, Sirius, you expect me to remember that?”
“Yes,” says Sirius decisively. “I know I must have bragged your ear off about them.”
Remus’s mouth quirks at one corner. “One more than James,” he admits. “Eleven in all, I think.”
Sirius nods; a small, satisfied smile plays at his mouth.
“Sounds like I know enough, then. I don’t see what another six months will do.”
“Are you sure?” asks Remus, because he knows he's obliged to.
It had been hard enough to get Sirius to take his NEWTs the first time around. James had had to talk him out of dropping out. Sirius had been too set on fighting the war. Remus doesn't think he'll be able to talk him into taking them a second time, even if Remus actually wanted to.
“Why do you always ask me that?” says Sirius with a bemused look.
Remus is momentarily stung into silence. He doesn't think he’d had a bad habit of that at seventeen. But he supposes he must be remembering wrong.
“I just want to know you’re sure,” he says.
Sirius scowls at him. “When have I ever not been sure?”
“That’s the issue,” says Remus with a sigh. “You’ve never had a second-thought in your life.”
Sirius’s mouth flicks up into a wry smile, and Remus realizes too late he’s hit a tender mark.
“Maybe you were too busy having them for me,” says Sirius lightly. He walks several paces ahead.
Remus sighs again, and, at his sigh, Sirius turns sharply, a dark fury crackling across his features. His good mood vanished as abruptly and totally as it came, his feelings and expressions always as fickle, as brutal as summer weather
“Do you even want me to stay with you?” he demands.
Remus stops. He opens his mouth to answer, then pauses, unsure of what to say. He wants Sirius to stay. He absolutely does. He’s just not convinced that’s what’s best for Sirius.
“No second thoughts,” snarls Sirius. “Do you want me to stay with you or not?”
Sirius had asked him a similar question once, right before they fell apart, and Remus’s hesitation then had been damning. He feels dizzy once more as the years slide into each other, overlap. Is this a torture designed to test him, or a second chance – a third chance – at doing things right?
“Of course I want you to stay,” he says softly.
Sirius’s face transforms dramatically yet again. He looks stricken, his mouth half-open, his eyes wide beneath his dropped brows.
“That’s all I wanted you to say,” he says, and he steps forward and takes Remus’s hands, and he kisses him. Remus almost gasps. It’s like being kicked in the chest. He grabs Sirius’s arms, but he doesn’t know if he’s trying to push him away or hold him closer. He feels Sirius’s muscles jump beneath his hands. He kisses him back, hard and desperate.
He missed this, he thinks. He missed this. He missed this. He missed Sirius. He missed Sirius kissing him, and Sirius’s laughter, and even Sirius’s awful, shifting moods. He’s missed it all for more of his life than he ever actually had any of it. He half-laughs at that thought, and Sirius growls in response and pushes Remus firmly into the wall and kisses him harder. Remus bites his lower lip gently, and Sirius moans. He slips his tongue between Remus’s lips.
It’s enough of a shock to make Remus finally shove Sirius away. Sirius staggers. More, Remus thinks, from the emotional blow than the physical one. His eyes are wide, wounded.
“What the fuck?” he says, ragged.
“I can’t,” says Remus. He laughs hysterically. He covers his mouth with his hands. “Merlin, Sirius. I can’t.”
“Why not?” says Sirius.
“Because!” shouts Remus. "Isn't it obvious?"
There are a million reasons because: because Sirius is too young, because he’s alone and scared and Remus won’t take advantage of him, because he can’t bear to have Sirius and lose him again.
Sirius stares at him, black-eyed, red-mouthed, trembling. Remus looks away.
“We should go,” he says, as gently as he can. He's suddenly, deeply ashamed. “We should get home.”
Sirius doesn’t say anything, just falls into step behind him. They walk the rest of the way in total, abysmal silence, and from the basement of Honeyduke’s, apparate home.
They’re both still quiet as they go inside. Remus braces himself for whatever storm is about to burst upon him. It doesn’t come. Sirius goes to the fireplace and starts it, then stands beside it, peering into the flames. Remus watches him for a moment and then goes into the kitchen to make tea.
When he comes back, Sirius is still staring into the fire. Remus sits on the couch, unsure if he should say Sirius’s name or give him his space.
Sirius makes the decision for him. He turns, and Remus flinches when he sees that Sirius has been quietly crying.
“Padfoot…” he begins uncertainly. He keeps his hands cupped around his mug and holds his mug in his lap. A barrier, just in case.
Sirius tugs at his hair despairingly and laughs.
“I just kissed you a week ago,” he says. “I didn’t even mean to – I mean, I wanted to. Merlin, I’ve wanted to for ages. And you just – when I saw you asleep I thought I’d bloody die if I didn’t kiss you. And now I’m here, and we – we were in love, it sounds like. Really awful, wonderful love. And I don’t – I don’t know that. I don’t have that. I'm not going to get that. It’s like you loved a totally different person.”
Remus listens to this all without reacting. He just bows his head. He's as much a ghost to Sirius, he realizes, as Sirius is to him.
“Did you love me?” demands Sirius, when Remus doesn't respond. “You said you want me to stay. But did you love me?”
Remus’s jerks his head up. He nearly drops his mug. He feels like he’s been stabbed.
“Yes," he says, incredulous. “Merlin, Padfoot. Yes.” He laughs hollowly. “You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”
“Then could you love me now?” says Sirius, an awful, vulnerable hope in his eyes. “Or love me still?”
Remus puts his mug down and covers his face. It's like being stabbed again.
“Yes,” he says, through his hands. How couldn’t he love Sirius? Even when he had hated Sirius for betraying James and Lily, for killing Peter, he’d still loved him, and hated himself all the more for it. He was a monster who loved a monster, though he knows now he’s just a monster who loved a man – a fallible, mortal man.
Sirius lets out a shaky breath. “So why – ”
He cuts himself off with a small laugh.
“No,” he says. He sounds very tired. Remus doesn’t dare look at him. “Actually, no. I don’t think I want to hear the why right now."
Remus senses him linger for a moment, but he doesn't look up. He doesn’t dare respond. He stays seated, his face in his hands. He's not even sure what he's scared of any more. It's been half a year since he last felt fear - since he last felt anything at all.
He hears Sirius mutter a curse, then sigh. "Good night, Moony,” he says.
And then Remus listens as Sirius walks to bed alone.