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The December moon was thirsty for wolfblood, and Remus obediently spilled everything he had for it.
The night seemed to stretch on for years before dawn finally crested over the frost-brushed hills of Hogsmeade. Remus drifted into consciousness in Madam Pomfrey’s arms, bone-white and hypothermic, with a blanket of red pooling beneath him. In the weak morning light, his blood looked more satin than liquid as it soaked into the shack’s dusty floorboards. Pomfrey, pristine in her hospital whites and broad-brimmed nurse’s cap, knelt over him as if in prayer to spell what little she could salvage back into his gasping veins.
Remus let his fingers slide through the crack in the dormitory door so that it closed silently behind him. There was just enough moonlight filtering in through the window for him to make out the towering black outlines of four four-poster beds, two to a wall. He picked a slow and careful path towards the shadowy shape nearest the window, wary of stray shoes and mounds of quidditch gear lying in wait to trip him up. He wouldn’t have been able to move much more quickly even if there had been enough light to see by, though.
No quantity of blood replenishing potions or Skelegro had seemed to satisfy Madam Pomfrey during his day’s stay in the hospital wing. After levitating a half-awake Remus into his usual corner bed that morning, she had cast a student-repelling spell on the door, confirming Remus’s suspicions that she was well aware of his friends’ habit of sneaking in to see him under the cloak. The loneliness he’d felt as she drew the curtains closed around him mingled with a guilty feeling of relief. They were the most incredible friends he could ever ask for, but he really, really didn’t want them to see him like this.
Madam Pomfrey had wrapped thick gauze bandages around his throat and abdomen with strict instructions not to touch. She needn’t have bothered, though. What remained of the ruined flesh underneath burned like fiendfire, and he didn’t want to look to see how it would scar this time.
The Marauders had witnessed Remus return from full moon nights with an impressive array of battle-worthy gashes, breaks, and bruises, but he was fairly certain there was nothing ‘wicked’ about his purpled eyelids, sweaty forehead, or pale, icy skin. There was nothing for Sirius to make a bracing joke about or for James and Peter to swear up and down the girls in their year would find ‘downright dishy.’ Remus just looked broken.
His insides felt like shards of glass and the rickety hospital bed, with its scratchy cotton sheets and tightly coiled springs, had made him want to scream. Pomfrey had insisted on keeping him all day long to prod his bony torso with her wand tip and tut at the diagnostics it revealed. Finally, when she had finished her final check up and announced that she would be retiring to her own quarters for the evening, he had gently persuaded her to let him do the same. He only hoped he would continue to heal in his sleep so he could face his roommates in the morning without finding pity or revulsion in their eyes.
The curtain rings rasped as he drew back the heavy drapes surrounding his bed. Peter let out a pillow-muffled groan in the next bed over, but Remus could always count on James and Sirius, who shared the wall opposite his, to sleep like the dead. He peeled off his shirt and collapsed on top of his comforter with a shaky exhale that hitched into a hiss when he rolled onto his side, his newly reformed ribs screaming in protest.
“Remus?”
Remus nearly jolted off his mattress. Had his muscles been in proper working order, he probably would’ve done. The voice hadn’t come from the other side of the room where it belonged, but the other side of his bed. Remus felt the mattress shift as Sirius sat up to place a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Sirius?”
“Yeah. How are you feeling?”
“Fine, I’m fine—what are you doing here? Did the others put doxie eggs in your sheets again?”
“Doxie eggs in my—? No, idiot. We were worried about you. We couldn’t get in to check on you, so I drew the short straw to wait up.”
“Oh,” Remus breathed. The short straw. Of course he had been a short straw item. In an instant, his moonlit grapple with the jaws of death was diminished to the same level of importance as standing by the portrait hole to let Peter in after a post-curfew kitchen raid.
“I wanted to. I would have anyways, straw or no,” Sirius said, as if reading his mind. “You’re sure you’re okay? Your voice doesn’t sound great.”
“I’m—” the word ‘fine’ stuck in his bandaged throat, as if in retribution for all the misuse he’d put it through. “—still here,” he finished instead.
“Brilliant. The bare bloody minimum,” Sirius muttered. “Well, let’s get a look at you.” There was the rustle of fabric on fabric as Sirius reached for his wand.
“Lumos,” he whispered, just as Remus said, “No, don’t—”
The tip of Sirius’s ebony wand sparked to light, illuminating both boys’ faces from below and throwing crisp shadows onto the inner linings of Remus’s bed curtains.
“Put that down, won’t you?” Remus said sharply, holding a hand up in front of his eyes.
Sirius set the wand gingerly down on the bed cover, where it dimmed to a gentler glow. The shimmering light illuminated a blanched expression on Sirius’s face as he took Remus in, his eyebrows drawing closer together the longer he looked.
“I just need some sleep,” Remus said when Sirius opened his mouth to say something.
“Sure, and a cauldron full of phoenix tears. What in Merlin’s name happened to you?”
“Haven’t you heard? I get eaten alive by a wolf every twenty-eight days. I thought you knew.”
Sirius snorted. “Glad to know it at least spat out your winning sense of humour. But Moony, this is… this looks different. What happened in there? James said I was imagining it, but I swear I could hear howling all the way from Hogsmeade.”
Remus could only remember flashes, but what did come back to him was painted in shades of red.
He tasted his own blood on the wolf’s curling tongue, felt claws scooping at his insides, trying to carve out whatever human remnants lingered beneath the wolf’s pelt. When he’d awoken to the steady drip of his life force draining out through splintered ribs, he could have sworn that, through his blurred and fading vision, he’d seen the shadow of the Grim. Its shaggy black form loomed over the splintery patch of floor where he lay, ready to carry him away in Death’s gentle maw. Remus had been so close to peace, poised on the precipice of the journey that would take him far away from the pain and humiliation of his condition, on to the place where neither beast nor man could harm him. But then Pomfrey arrived with her wand and her stretcher and ruined…
“—hear me? Hey, you still with me?”
“Sorry. Just—er—drifted for a moment there. What was that?”
Sirius tilted his head, concern flashing in his grey-blue eyes, then broke into a hearty, encouraging sort of smile.
“All accounted for, Lupin? Let’s take an inventory, shall we? Let’s see. Two legs, two arms; that’s good. What do we have here—” he tugged Remus’s numb hands out from under the blanket. “Ten fingers… ten toes—?”
Remus laughed weakly, tucking his feet beneath himself before Sirius could make a grab at them, too. “Yes, thank you, Sirius. Everything’s where it ought to be, by Madam Pomfrey’s accounts.”
“Yes, well, I don’t trust that Poppy Pomfrey. A shifty old bird, if I ever saw one. And she kept you locked up all day today—warded off the doors and everything.”
“Well, it takes time to restore all of this—” Remus gestured to his wrecked self—“to its usual glory.”
“Hah. Right,” Sirius pushed a hand through his hair, glancing surreptitiously down at Remus’s bare torso. “But really, Remus, she never seems to see the job all the way through with you. I’ve half a mind to have a word with Dumbledore.”
“No, no. She does a fine job of patching me back together. I couldn’t ask for better. Always shows up right on time to pull me back from the edge.”
The playful grin faded from Sirius’s face as he studied Remus’s. “Why do you sound bitter about that?” he asked quietly.
“Hm?” Remus hummed distractedly, briefly lost again in the shadow of the Grim flashing behind his eyelids. “No, I’m very grateful.”
“Are you really?”
“Of course.”
“Then why don’t I believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure, you don’t.”
Remus looked down at his hands, then back up at his friend, lips going tight. “What do you want me to say? I’m tired, Sirius. Thank you for staying up to make sure I made it back, but you should go to bed.”
“How about you say what you really feel, for once?” Sirius pressed, ignoring Remus’s clear dismissal. His tone was argumentative but his face was earnest, something desperate behind his eyes. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you say anything besides what you think people want to hear you say.”
“That’s not true,” Remus said, hurt.
“Yes, it is. And you don’t know how stupid it sounds coming out of your mouth when we can see right through it.”
“Ah. Well, thanks for that. I’ll definitely take it into consideration. Goodnight, Sirius.”
“Wait, no—I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that, just… you always think you need to go it alone, like you need to keep all traces of the wolf locked up in your head. But you don’t. And I’m beginning to wonder whether you shut us out because you’re scared of losing us, or because you’re too wrapped up in your fear of losing yourself.”
Remus sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Do you really think now is the right time to try your hand at armchair psychoanalysis?”
“It bloody well has to be. Because I’ve never seen you look like this, and... and it’s freaking me out. Please, just—I won’t be able to sleep otherwise. If you don’t tell me what’s going on with you, I’ll only imagine the worst.”
“Don’t worry. Nothing you imagine could possibly be worse.” Remus employed the same dry tone he usually used when making a joke, but they both knew it wasn’t one.
“Remus…”
“No. Listen. The thing is—the thing is, there are things you just shouldn’t say, right? Putting them into words doesn’t help anyone. Some truths you shouldn’t name because words make them too real. It’s easier to just... live around them. Can you understand that?”
Sirius sighed and hung his head. “I think so. Like how you can’t be let down by a wish that doesn’t come true if you never let yourself make the wish in the first place.”
“Yeah. Exactly. You can’t miss something you never even asked for.”
“And a promise that was never made can’t be broken,” Sirius added softly, glancing up at Remus from his knees.
“Right, yeah.”
“Right. So I’m not going to make you a promise, and I’m not going to name it.”
“Oh—okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just going to tell you that I’ve been working on… a spell. A spell they don’t teach here at Hogwarts.” He paused and edged closer, clearly excited but trying to restrain himself. “It’s from a particular branch of magic that very few wizards understand, and even fewer manage to master.”
“That sounds quite dangerous.”
“It is,” he said, pride lifting his noble chin. “I haven’t told James or Peter yet—I don’t want to scare them off. But you and I both know that you’re made of tougher stuff. You don’t scare so easily. So I’m telling you now because I want you to know that, if and when I manage to get it right, you won’t be at the wolf’s mercy anymore.”
“The wolf? What does this spell have to do with the wolf?”
“Everything.”
Remus felt a tide of trepidation rising in his chest. “What are you on about, Sirius?”
Sirius huffed impatiently, like his meaning should be obvious. “Look at yourself, Remus. You’re the strongest, most stubbornly independent person I know, but I don’t know how many more moons you have left in you at this rate. I know you’d never willingly let the wolf take you out, and I need you to know that I won’t let it, either. I swore when we were twelve that I’d find a way to help you. And I think I know how, now.”
“You can’t. There’s no cure for it.”
“I know that. That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what…?”
“I mean I can be there for you,” he said, leaning forward with his blue eyes alight with meaning. “So you won’t have to do it alone. So you won’t be stuck in some shack torturing yourself, month after month after bloody month. So you won’t have to spend the rest of your life waiting for the night the wolf finally wins. Because I can tell that's what you're doing already, and it's wrong. No one should have to live like that. Especially not when they have friends who care for them like we do.”
“Oh,” Remus said softly. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat and tried to swallow it down. “You’re saying you’ll… help me? When the time comes, you’d be willing to… I mean—you’ll step in when I can’t do it anymore?”
Sirius must have seen the dawning comprehension on Remus’s face, because he nodded and leant back on his hands again, looking satisfied. “I’ll have figured it out long before then, though. I’ve already made quite a lot of progress. It’s not just as simple as saying an incantation and waving your wand, you know—there’s a whole process to unlocking the power within yourself. You need to connect with a deeper, animalistic part of your magical core. Obviously I won’t know if it will work or not before the moment of truth, but I’m making sure I master all the theory. My family has a private library with all kinds of forbidden books that should have everything I need to know.”
“Right. Yeah, they would, wouldn’t they,” Remus said dazedly, his mind racing ahead through the moon cycles between this moment, safe in his bed with the most dazzling boy in the world, and the fated day they were discussing.
Would the time pass quickly? Would the damage to his body continue to compound, or would he grow more resilient with age? Which silvery night would be the tipping point? How would he let Sirius know it was time to end it for him? It would be a world of relief not to have to do it himself before the wolf could finish him off when the time came—but it was too great a favour to ask. As much as Remus valued it and as gifted as Sirius was at every branch of magic he tried, Sirius didn’t seem to appreciate the weight of what he was offering.
“If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about,” Remus began cautiously, “it’s a one-way trip to Azkaban. You can’t know how much I appreciate the offer, but I couldn’t let you put yourself in that position with the law.”
Sirius, the sheer gall of him, scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic, Moony. It’s obviously illegal for a good reason, but I don’t care about going up against the law for the right reasons. Putting myself between you and the wolf, making it so that you don’t have to go through that agony every month—can you name a more worthy use of my magic than that? Illegal or not, it’s more ethical than whatever crumbs of comfort the Ministry offers people like you. Besides, it’s not like I’d let myself get caught.”
“You… you got caught releasing Cornish pixies in Kettleburn’s office three days ago.”
“No, I sacrificed myself to Filch so James could get away. There’s a difference.”
“How very noble.”
“Can’t help it. It’s a family trait, you know.”
Remus huffed a reflexive laugh, but his face fell sombre again quickly. “You aren’t worried about fracturing your soul?” he asked timidly.
Sirius frowned, looking confused. “No? That’s not how it works at all. It’s not a matter of splitting or dividing yourself—if anything, the process adds new layers of dimension to the soul. If you do it correctly, you tap into something deep and primal that’s dormant in all of us. It’s… well, I think it’s actually kind of beautiful.”
“Oh,” Remus said blankly. He wasn’t especially well read on the effects dark magic left on the caster, but Sirius’s description sounded like the kind of romanticised drivel his horrible family would spout. He was surprised Sirius had held onto that interpretation of the killing curse after spurning the rest of his family’s ideas, but he wasn’t about to question the person who was offering to do the unaskable for him.
“I got the idea from a story Andromeda told me about an uncle of mine,” Sirius continued softly. “Her father’s brother, Icarus. She said he was always a bird at heart, always wanted to fly away from the weight of our family name. He was their grandfather’s punching bag and never had any control over his own affairs. Apparently one night, right in the middle of this horrible party where they were planning on announcing his engagement to Lady Carrow, Icarus threw open the third story window and stepped right out into the open air. He was burned off the family tree and our parents never mentioned his name again after that, but I never stopped thinking about how brave he was to take his fate into his own hands like that.”
“Oh. Wow, ah—Sirius, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I only met him a few times when I was very young, so it’s not like I miss him now that he’s gone. He’s in a better place, I'm sure. But the point is, I can do that for you. I can be your bird. Well, not a bird, probably—but, well, you know. It’s not going to be easy, but I know I can master the magic.”
“I know you can, too.”
Sirius nodded gravely, then swung his legs over the edge of Remus’s bed, pushing the curtains apart. “Good. Like I said, it’s not a promise. I just… just wanted you to know. Remember, don’t tell the others what I’m working on. Leave it to me. I’ll talk them 'round to the idea.”
“Yeah,” Remus said on an empty breath. He could hardly believe the exchange they’d just had, nor how abruptly it was coming to a close. “Thank you. Sincerely, you don’t know the peace of mind you’ve given me. I can’t possibly—I don’t know how I can repay you.”
Sirius just smiled and nodded, locking eyes with Remus in a way that always made Remus’s heart skip a shameful beat before pushing to his feet and letting the curtains swing shut behind him.
“Goodnight, Moony.”
Remus lay awake in bed until sunrise with tears crystallising to salt tracks down the side of his face, bewildered and grateful in equal measure.
☽
The thin dawn air vibrated softly with the echoes of hoarse screams. Remus lay shaking on the grimy floor of an abandoned barn near Cardiff, staring unseeingly at patches of silvery pink sky visible through the holes in the broken roof. Blindly, he pried a loose floorboard up with his fingernails and grasped for his wand. Following a wordless swish of cedar, a tattered cloak flew from the corner to cover his naked and bloodied form. The wand clattered to the floor and his body fell still.
Hours later, his blackened eyelids blinked open to birds flying overhead. They seemed to mock Remus with their lightness. He had felt so impossibly heavy for so long. Remus’s thirty-year-old body had accumulated more damage than his spirit could possibly carry since leaving the safety of school and the comfort of his brilliant animagus friends.
He stretched an arm out to reach for his wand and felt a multitude of wounds tear at the edges. For once, he didn’t really mind the fresh damage. He couldn’t even fathom healing them this time. They were merely the punctuation at the end of a long, played-out story.
Remus hadn’t spoken to Sirius in several years. He had left the country shortly after school and been reticent to get back in touch with his war hero friends when he returned, but Remus had no doubt that their bond still held true. And it was time, at long last, to take his oldest and dearest friend up on his offer. The unspoken promise that was never made, so couldn’t be broken.
“Expecto Patronum,” he croaked, imagining the weightless freedom of The Void, then whispered a message to the wispy wolf that appeared. It bounded off into the daylight as he let his head fall back to the floor.
It was oddly peaceful, he thought, forgoing his usual morning-after routine of healing spells and potions. Remaining as the wolf had left him, letting his blood run its course. Accepting the pain rather than fighting through it. It left him light headed.
“Remus?”
Remus felt the first true smile he’d worn in years spread over his face, then sat up, letting the threadbare cloak pool around his waist.
“Hello, Sirius. Thank you for coming.”
“Wh—Shit! What’s happened?!” Sirius rushed forward to crouch at Remus’s side, eyes wild and hands held out like he wanted to piece Remus back together with his fingers. “Is this all from the moon? Why haven’t you healed yourself?”
Remus waved Sirius’s hands away and reached up to grasp his shoulder. It was so solid, so whole. Sirius was whole and strong and good, and Remus loved him for it.
“Because it’s time, old friend. It’s been a good ride—better than I could have hoped for—and I’ve decided it’s finally time.”
“Time? Time for what?” Sirius croaked, voice laced with anxiety.
“Time to take you up on your promise. You don’t know how it’s sustained me over the years, knowing that you’d help me when I was ready. But I’ve had enough now, I think. I don’t think I can do the transformation again.”
“Moony, you’re not making sense,” Sirius said shakily, reaching for his wand. “I’m going to take you to St Mungo’s. Don’t try to move, just—”
“No,” Remus said, his voice firm for the first time. He sat up further and felt the rivulets of scarlet as they cascaded down his torso. They tingled like tiny, cool fingers beckoning him down towards the earth. Sirius fumbled his wand and tried to push Remus back down, but Remus held strong. “I don’t need St Mungo’s. There’s nothing they can do for me. There’s nothing anyone can do for me, except you. My most wonderful, most steadfast friend. Please, don’t tell me you’ll renege on your word now, when I need you most.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sirius wept. Oh, he was crying now. It felt rather lovely to be cried over by someone so beautiful.
“When we were fifteen,” Remus began, his head feeling lighter than ever—light like the birds in the sky, and he would join them soon, free and massless up amongst the endless blue—but he needed to focus, needed to make Sirius remember—“you said you couldn’t break a promise you never made.”
“What? Remus, I said so much stupid shit at fifteen, you can’t—” Remus silenced him with fingers over his pink mouth. They left bloody prints there, but that was okay. Everything was going to be okay.
He began again. “You told me you were learning a spell… the Avada Kedavra… that you would help me out of my suffering when the time came. That I wouldn’t… have to do it alone…” The numbness was spreading throughout his body now, intercepting the pain signals, and he was finding it hard to focus on breathing and speaking at the same time. “You said…”
Sirius’s voice echoed through the years. “You can’t be let down when your wish doesn’t come true if you never wish for it in the first place.”
“Yes,” Remus whispered. “Yes, that. I knew you remembered.”
“No,” Sirius moaned. “This wasn’t what—Remus, I was trying to tell you that I was working on becoming an animagus. So that I could be there with you when you transformed, could stop you from hurting yourself, not—” he covered his face with a blood-soaked hand.
“Oh,” Remus breathed. Suddenly he was a teenager again and Sirius’s blue eyes were bright and innocent in the darkness of his four poster—except they were also red-rimmed and wrinkled at the corners and smeared with Remus’s blood. The two Siriuses faded in and out of focus and Remus loved and resented them both.
A bolt of searing pain shot through Remus’s shattered right shoulder blade—Sirius was trying to lift him up now. But no, that wasn’t the plan—this had been his plan for years—he’d counted on Sirius—and the sky shining through the broken slats of the barn roof was turning white—
☽
Remus woke up with the sound of breathing in his ear. He cracked his eyes open to find the great black dog curled around him on a small, comfortable bed in a room he did not know. His muscles were sore but he could tell that all of his wounds were healed, and he was wearing soft clothes that didn’t belong to him. From the iron tang in his mouth, he’d recently swallowed a blood replenishing potion.
He closed his eyes again.
☽
“Remus?”
He kept his eyes shut.
“Wake up, Moony. It’s been days. You need to eat something.”
In his life, though it had been a good one by many measures, there was very little Remus claimed control over. As a boy, he couldn’t get his friends to listen to him when they got it in their heads to break the rules. When he returned to Britain after the war, he couldn’t persuade hiring managers to give him sustained work. Each month, he couldn’t stop the wolf from consuming him. Couldn’t stop the clocks from ticking or the moon from rising. But he had thought, all this time, that he would have control over his ending. That he had been gifted the kindness of a friend’s caring hand to close his book with dignity and love.
That choice was gone now. It had, in fact, never been there to begin with. One of his most confusing but cherished memories was nothing more than a misunderstanding.
So he held firmly to the few crumbs of control he had left and chose to keep his eyes closed with his back turned to Sirius, whose weight he could feel on the edge of the bed.
“Please, Remus. Get up.”
None of it was Sirius’s fault, really, but Remus couldn’t help feeling bitter toward him. All this time, he had thought they’d shared a special understanding. It had served as a thread of connection keeping him tethered to his humanity in his darkest times, isolated as he’d been during the war. Now he was adrift and Sirius felt further away than ever before. Remus retreated deeper into his mind, willing himself to go numb again.
“I was wrong.”
The whispered words caught his attention. He drifted back from the edge of Nothingness, waiting for Sirius to continue.
“When we were at school, I thought I was just about the cleverest wizard to walk the halls since Merlin. I somehow convinced my friends and classmates to take me seriously, but I was such an idiot. I thought that it was weak to hope. Dangerous to let others know how you felt. I honestly believed that I couldn’t get hurt if I never admitted what I wanted out loud.
“But in my head, I was wishing with everything I had for you to be alright. I channelled that into a fixation on Snape; into becoming an animagus; into fighting in the war; and I never let myself give voice to what I wanted most. And where did that get us? You disappeared right after we got out of school, and I’ve spent every full moon since wishing I could be there to stop you from doing this to yourself. Maybe if I’d said something, if I’d made sure you knew how much I cared about you, we wouldn’t be here now.”
Though he desperately didn’t want to, Remus blinked his eyes open and sighed. Whatever hideous resentments he was harbouring, Remus couldn’t let Sirius go on blaming himself for his own failings.
“You did,” he croaked, voice rough from days of disuse. “I knew.” With no energy to spare, he lay very still, still facing the wall.
“I didn’t,” Sirius said heavily. “I played the whole animagus thing off as a lark, didn’t I? I acted like you were just an excuse to do something cool and exciting, and not the reason behind everything I did. James, Peter, and I treated the full moons like a bit of fun. A new, risky way for us to be clever and break curfew and play with our dangerous friend.”
Remus didn’t have anything to say to that. They had had fun running around as animals, and he had never minded being the catalyst for the Marauders’ favourite game. It was more than he could have dreamed of before getting into Hogwarts, and he didn’t want Sirius to take that away from him as well.
“But was always about you, for me,” Sirius continued miserably. “You were the reason I showed off in lessons like an idiot. The reason I hated Snape so much, the way he was always watching you. You’re probably the reason why I still ride a sodding motorcycle—because being loud and flashy seemed to work at catching your attention. And even after you outgrew us and moved away, I kept on doing the kinds of things I thought would impress you out of sheer habit. Because I never stopped wanting to…” he stopped and sighed, and Remus felt his weight leave the mattress as he stood up to pace around the small room. In spite of himself, Remus turned over to watch him. He’d never been able to ignore Sirius for long.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius began again when he’d finished pacing, coming to a stop next to the bed. “I know this isn’t about me, but I need you to understand that you’ve always been so much more important than James, Peter, and I let you think you were. We were supposed to be your best mates, and we loved you, but throughout school we let you believe you didn’t matter. But, god, you did, Moony. Not just to me—but, yeah. Especially to me. You understand that, don’t you? That’s why—why you can’t ask me to do what you wanted me to do. You just can’t.”
Remus closed his eyes. If he had heard these words years ago they would have made his hopeless heart soar, but now he was just so, so tired.
“I won’t ask you again, Sirius. This is humiliation enough, I should think.”
“Remus…” But Sirius didn’t seem to have anything lined up to say and just stood there, looking down at Remus like he was lost and only Remus could tell him where to go.
“You don’t know what you’ve condemned me to,” Remus said softly, because Sirius needed to understand. “The pain. The indignity. The hopelessness inherent to this curse I’ve carried for twenty four years. It would have been kinder, much kinder, to end it here. But I wouldn’t have asked you to if I hadn’t thought that you... I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I see now that it was wishful to think you ever would.”
“What if you had a pack again?” Sirius asked, grasping at hope. “You didn’t do this to yourself when we transformed with you at school.”
”That was half a lifetime ago, nearly.”
”That’s right. I’m a better wizard now than I was back then. I can do more. There are new potions that could help. I could learn to make them.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you. Calling for you in my final moment is one thing, but I couldn’t ask you to put your life on hold every month for me. Brewing endless potions and chasing after the wolf and mending flesh and bones—this curse wasn't meant for two. I suppose it sounds backwards, after what I’ve already asked you to do, but I care about you far too much to put that much burden on you. You don’t deserve that. You won’t want… this.”
Sirius’s mouth had narrowed into a thin line, and his eyes when they met Remus’s were both sharp and wet. “No, I don’t,” he said tightly. “I certainly don’t ever want to see you like this again. But it doesn’t have to be like this every month. Not if you have Padfoot. I’d—he’d keep you safe. And I wouldn’t be putting my life on hold if… if you were in it again.”
Remus looked away. “Sirius, you don’t remember how dangerous—how foolish—”
“No, Remus, you’re the one misremembering. When did you forget how magical it felt to run together? To wake up in the forest laughing, without a scratch? It worked, perfectly, and it would have kept on working. But then you left. When I became an animagus, I never intended to stop spending the moons with you once we finished school. Moony and Padfoot were meant to be forever. You don’t know how I’ve missed you.” Sirius swallowed and cleared his throat. “So stop being so bloody stubborn, already.”
A small smile flickered over Remus’s downcast face. “You’re trying very hard to make me feel better.”
“Of course I am. But I mean every word of it. You’re one of my favourite people in the world. Haven’t you been listening?”
Remus met Sirius’s eyes again and was shaken by the ardor he found in them. It was disconcerting, the way his cautious instincts told him to surrender his trust to them.
“Maybe you do mean it, for now. But what about a year from now? Five? Twenty? Look what this life has done to me.”
“I am. Looking, I mean. And I think we’ll be alright.”
“You can’t know that.”
“And you don’t know everything, Lupin. A few days ago you thought I was a very different person than the man I am. Let’s just start with today, and then tomorrow. How about that?”
Remus sat up slowly, feeling every mark the wolf had left on him, every missing piece of body and soul it had ripped away. He locked eyes with Sirius again, ready to tell him no. But Sirius looked so sincere, so determined, so much like the boy Remus had quietly loved in more innocent times, that he couldn’t find it in himself to fight anymore.
“Okay, Sirius. Today feels alright. We’ll see about tomorrow.”
☽
A year later, Remus rested on the couch while Sirius made them dinner. The full moons since he’d started spending them with Padfoot were the gentlest he’d experienced since Hogwarts, and in the years between he had entirely forgotten how it had felt to feel joy in the wolf’s skin. Still, Sirius’s post-moon potion always made him drowsy.
As he closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the oven door opening and closing, Remus couldn’t help thinking back on the night all those years ago when he and Sirius had gotten their wires crossed so catastrophically. He had already played through the conversation a hundred times in his head, picking it apart and still finding more holes in his comprehension.
“Sirius?” he called into the kitchen with a small frown of confusion creasing his forehead.
“Yeah?”
“What happened to Icarus?”
“My uncle? The raven animagus? He’s living in Glasgow, last I heard. What about him?”
“Ah. That makes sense. It's nothing, Pads.” He relaxed back into the couch cushions and returned to his thoughts.
What would have been different between them if he hadn’t misunderstood Sirius’s intentions? Where would they be today if he hadn’t gone off on his own after school, uncomfortable with the ethical burden he imagined he posed to the friend he already wanted too much from?
There were far too many ifs to wrap his head around. Those were such delicate years, in the heart of the war. Their side had only won by the skin of their teeth, and any slight change in the Order’s ranks could have turned the tides in Voldemort’s favour. If Remus had stayed, if he had fought alongside his friends in the Order, things could have turned out differently. There could have been infighting or accidents or more miscommunications, and they might not have all made it out alive. All that mattered was that he and Sirius were here now, safe in their shared home, and Sirius wanted to be together tomorrow, too, and all the days after that.
“Remus?” Sirius had wandered over from the kitchen with Remus’s favourite tea mug, wearing an apron and a hopeful kind of grin.
“Hm?”
“I was just thinking. We should make sure to tell each other all of our wishes from here on out. Put them out into the world so we can make them come true together. Let’s make all of the promises we were too afraid of breaking before.”
It was an odd thing to say out of the blue, but Sirius was an odd man and Remus loved him for it.
“Alright,” he humoured him. “What if we can’t keep them, though?”
“Then we’ll tell each other why, and then just, I don’t know. Carry on together.”
“That sounds fine, Sirius. I think we can do that.”
“Good. Because I’ve got one, if you don’t mind me starting.”
“A wish or a promise?”
“Both, I suppose.”
He handed Remus a thin golden band with his mug of tea.
Remus smiled.