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I.
The boy on the train pins him with hostile gray eyes when Remus opens the compartment door. "You can't sit here," he says.
Remus glances around. It's empty but for the dark-haired boy with the scornful expression. "Are all the seats taken?" he asks politely.
"No. But you can't sit here." His gaze lands with deliberate insolence on Remus's patched robes and scarred hands, and his lips curl into a sneer.
Flushing in mortification, Remus backs away and stands shaking in the corridor, longing fiercely for tea and comfort and home. He hopes he never sees that mean boy again.
II.
"Why do you always drink that flowery-smelling stuff?" Sirius Black sneers, sliding into the chair across from Remus.
Black has been aloof and unpleasant since the day he was sorted into Gryffindor. He and James have been especially at odds, but generally he ignores Remus.
Remus decides to be polite. "It's Earl Grey. You're smelling the bergamot." He pours Black a cup and nudges it toward him.
Black sniffs it suspiciously, takes a cautious sip. He wrinkles his nose. "It's…not bad." He meets Remus's gaze, almost challengingly.
"Mm," Remus says. He holds Black's gaze, and smiles. "Not bad at all."
III.
When he cracks open his eyes, Madam Pomfrey has left a cup of tea for him on the table, and his three friends are at his bedside, watching him. His heart jumps into his throat.
"We know, Remus," says James, unusually solemn.
Terror steals Remus's voice.
Sirius picks up the cup and saucer. "Never knew werewolves were such fiends for tea."
Remus manages to mumble something about not generally and as a species.
James hits Sirius.
Sirius hits back. "See, he's special. 'Course, we knew that." Sirius's smile is dazzlingly white, as only Sirius's smiles can be. "He's our werewolf."
IV.
A warm palm slides up his thigh under the table, and Remus nearly chokes on his tea.
Sirius sits next to him, blithely debating the merits of Dungbombs versus Stinksap with James. When Remus shifts, the hand tenses, but continues its slow stroke toward his groin.
Remus squirms, drawing James's attention. "You all right, mate?"
"You know our Moony," Sirius laughs. "He gets all prefect-y when we talk about pranks around him."
"I should go." Remus sets down his cup with a clatter.
"We'll come get you later," James says.
"Yes." Sirius's eyes are full of promise. "We'll come later."
V.
When Sirius fled their flat that night, he left a half-empty cup of tea on the countertop.
Remus eyes it dispassionately. It's cold now. Sirius won't be coming back to finish it.
There'll be no tea for him in Azkaban.
Remus wonders how he could not have known. What does betrayal taste like? Where does it reside in the tilt of a smile? What does its touch feel like in the dark?
James is dead. Lily. Peter. Harry's been taken away. Sirius is—Sirius—
And all Remus has are memories and cold tea.
He hurls the cup against the wall.
VI.
When Professor Lupin reaches his chambers after the Feast, he is still shaking from the encounter on the train and the strain of concealing his tension.
Harry.
Harry, with Lily's vivid eyes and James's hopeless hair and a soul too old for so young a boy. The sight of him lying unconscious had evoked fear deeper, sharper, than anything the Dementors had ever touched.
Sirius, he thinks, you'd better hope they find you soon, or the Dementors will be the least of your worries.
He wraps his hands around a cup of Earl Grey, but it cannot warm his palms.
VII.
"What do we do now?" Sirius asks, eyes wary over the rim of his cup.
He puts Remus in mind of a dog waiting to be whipped. He hates that look, hates the years in Azkaban that took the light from Sirius's eyes, hates that even just over a year ago, Remus would have taken pleasure in that expression of expectant suffering.
He isn't sure what they're supposed to do now—wait for Dumbledore's orders, he guesses. But he knows what he wants to do.
When he bends forward to press his mouth against Sirius's, he tastes tea, and hope.
VIII.
Molly sets a pot of Darjeeling to steep, and the very scent nauseates Remus.
He retreats up the stairs, brushing away imploring hands, soothing words. The last thing he wants is tea and sympathy.
The bedroom looks unsettlingly normal—Remus's attempts at neatness battling Sirius's deep-rooted slovenliness. The room still smells like him, like them.
Remus sinks onto the bed, burying his face in his hands and trying to block thoughts of that final glimpse of Sirius, the sound of Harry's cries, the yawning emptiness of this room, this house.
Molly knocks softly. "Remus," she calls. "Tea?"
He doesn't answer.
IX.
Sometimes, when he catches her in the right light, the right mood, she looks like Sirius. The pale skin, common to all the Blacks. The upthrust chin. The sly expression in her eyes.
She doesn't feel like Sirius. She's too soft, too curved, too delicate. Too young. Too unscarred. She doesn't grip Remus like he's her only anchor in a life adrift.
Sometimes she tastes like Sirius, when Remus prepares Sirius's favorite meals and the Darjeeling he loved.
Remus knows it isn't right, isn't fair. And he knows she deliberately drinks Darjeeling before they make love.
She knows things too.
X.
Remus will sit in a tea shop, cloak damp with the cold rain of late fall. He will drop a lump of sugar into his cup, stir idly while he reads. He will feel warmth begin to creep into his skin as he turns the pages, the words pulling him into a private world, and it will be only Remus and tea and an excellent book, and books are friends, in their way.
When he hears the voice, his breath will stop, and he will drop the spoon with a clatter. He will turn slowly in his chair, and see—