station to station - aeridi0nis - Harry Potter (2024)

nineteen seventy-eight.

-

part i: the thin white duke.

wonder who / wonder who / wonder when.

i.i – january third, 3.56 a.m.

“Alright there, Moons?”

To his credit, Remus doesn’t open his eyes at Sirius’ voice, even though it’s quiet and gentle in that rare way of his, that way that makes Remus want to gut himself, hollow himself out right here on the bathroom floor until he’s something dead and utterly numb. No: instead, he keeps them squeezed firmly shut, tilting his head back until it comes to rest on the cool tiles, feeling the nape of his neck and the back of his pajama shirt, damp with sweat.

He hums an affirmative response that even to his own ears sounds feeble, and so he quickly follows it up by mumbling, “m’fine.”

“Oh, of course,” Sirius replies. Remus can hear the amusem*nt in his voice, all technicolor. He cracks an eye open, now, to find Sirius half-grinning down at him, messy dark hair and pale skin accentuated by his own white wandlight. Sleep softens Sirius, with his usually sharp lines and angular features, in a way that nothing much else seems to.

“I know when I’m fine,” he continues, moving to sit down next to Remus, who’s now wedged between Sirius and the chilled porcelain toilet bowl he fears he may be retching into at any moment, “I like nothing more than to stumble out of bed at an unholy hour to come and collapse on the floor by the loo. Even better when I get to look like death warmed up while I do it. Daft prat.”

Remus breathes a laugh which is promptly cut short when his stomach rolls; he flashes from hot to cold and back again with nauseating speed and has to close his eyes again for a moment. It’s nothing, obviously, to do with Sirius beside him, watching him intently.

“Have I ever mentioned that your bedside manner could do with some work, Pads?” he says, the sound of their whispered voices echoing against the walls. “Something about calling the ailing individual a prat…”

“A-ha.” Sirius’ eyebrows raise in triumph. “So you’ll admit you are ailing, then – that’s a start.” Then, the corners of his mouth fall, and his voice sobers slightly. “Really, what’s the matter though? You don’t look so good, Moons. Is it tonight already?”

Remus swallows. “Reckon so. Just…nauseous – and a bit of a fever and that. Might be a bad month. Figured I’m better off throwing up into the toilet than into my own pillowcase.”

“Anything I can do? You want some water?” Sirius twists upwards towards the sink, reaching around for one of the glasses they nicked from the kitchens back in first year. He dulls his light for a moment to cast a non-verbal aguamenti (like it’s easy) and places it down in the space between their legs. Remus mumbles his thanks even though he doesn’t go to take it.

“Didn’t mean to wake you up,” Remus says. The bright light from Sirius’ wand is starting to bring on a headache, dull and heavy and right between his eyes, and so he tries to avoid looking at it for too long. “Go back to bed, Pads.”

Sirius scoffs. “Nonsense. Prongs is snoring again, it wasn’t you. Doesn’t matter how many times you tell him to put up silencing charms, does it? The man’s in denial.” He pauses as Remus pushes sticky hair from his forehead, nudges him lightly with his elbow.

“This must be a properly sh*t way to start the term for you, Moons,” Sirius says. “A full on the first day back. sh*t timing.”

“Mm,” Remus replies. “Yeah. I have had happier New Years than this, that is true.”

“Eurgh, haven’t we all. I swear, if I have to hear Pete practice Auld Lang Syne on that f*cking harmonica one more time—”

Remus surprises himself, then, by laughing – properly laughing, despite the nausea and the migraine and the aching joints that make him feel seventy rather than seventeen, burying his face in the crook of his arm that rests on the toilet seat, shoulders shuddering.

“It’s his resolution,” he snorts. “Leave him and his harmonica-learning be. Besides, he’s moved on from that one now. Last I heard he’d started trying to crack Love Me Do.”

Sirius swears even as he grins and then he laughs, too, and that makes Remus the sort of dizzy that has nothing to do with the full moon that’s now only hours away.

And beneath it all, at the back of his mind he does know that there’s something terrible in this: terrible in the fact that it’s god-knows what time in the morning and he’s sitting here, sick as a dog (that joke used to get the biggest eye-roll from his mum), and then Sirius can turn up with his eyes and his laughter and his arm resting against Remus’, and suddenly he could do this forever, Remus could – sit here with him like this. Grow old on the bathroom floor, Sirius’ wandlight casting soft shadows over the two of them like the dark patches on over-sweet fruit.

Sirius’ laughter dies down and he sighs. “Nineteen seventy-eight,” he mutters, as though testing the year out, the way it sits in his mouth. “Mad, isn’t it?”

“A bit.” Remus’ head has begun to pound more obnoxiously, and he reaches finally for the glass of water, room-temperature. “What about you, then?” he asks between gulps. “Any resolutions? Preferably non-musical?”

“Buy a motorcycle,” Sirius replies, without missing a beat.

Remus turns to look at him properly. “Would you even know how to drive a motorcycle?”

Sirius shrugs. “Well, I’ve never had the chance, have I? I don’t have one – hence the resolution. Why, you going to come for rides with me?”

Shaking his head is a bad idea (probably best to keep that part of his anatomy still, for now), and Remus quickly regrets it. “God, no. Absolutely not. In fact – tell me when you plan to be on the roads, and I’ll make sure to stay safely at home. But – I think learning to drive one would make a better resolution. Buying one is just a…a shopping list, really.”

“Semantics,” Sirius says, waving his hand about dismissively. “What’s yours, then?”

“No idea. I don’t really do that sort of thing.”

“Hm. I just…” Sirius yawns, scratches at the back of his neck. “I just – it’s going to be a weird year, isn’t it? Leaving school and that. Growing up. Time to decide what you want, right?”

At that, Remus actually nearly laughs again, because god – if only you knew, he thinks bitterly. Remus knows what he wants, see: it’s a realization he has long since had – had it years ago now, back in fourth year or something, just as enamored by the bright, blazing, walking celestial body that is Sirius Black as everyone else seemed to be.

Whittle Remus down, down until you strike the f*cking – the f*cking peach-pit core of him or whatever it is that rests beneath his mantle, and he often reckons you’d find it graffitied, the same name in practiced cursive over and over and over again. Or, failing that – finger marks, dug through the dirty, riverbed-sludge clay of his skin, where Sirius has reached forward and come away with a handful of the soft stuff where Remus’ heart is supposed to be. For a long time now there has been a great hunk of clay – of Remus – in Sirius’ unwitting palm, to do with as he pleases; to squeeze into nothing or smooth into something or just to let fall with a wet, heavy thud.

“Right,” Remus says, shoving all that back down. After all, it’s never done anyone any good, not ever.

He feels himself fading now, eyelids heavy. They should probably go back to bed. “And you want a motorcycle?”

Sirius smiles. “Yeah. I mean – that sounds bad. It’s not all I want, obviously. I’d like to think I’ve got bigger ambitions than that, overall, but that’s…that’s the easy one. I’d really love a motorcycle.”

“And the rest of it? The stuff that’s not as easy?”

“Dunno,” Sirius says, eyes on the tiles on the far wall. “Dunno yet.”

“No,” Remus replies. He looks at Sirius again. “Me neither.”

-

i.ii – january nineteenth, 8.48 a.m.

The thing about the war is that it loiters; it skulks between classrooms, in the split-seconds that can’t be filled with Quidditch or laughter or youth, simmering away within the bones of this worn old castle. It’s black grime beneath your fingernails. It’s a faulty tap. Then, sometimes, just when you’ve grown used to the drip, it becomes a little bit more than that.

James says, once, watching Filch scrub a large emblem of a skull and a snake from a corridor wall, that, it all feels a bit like the moment before all hell breaks loose, doesn’t it? Like we’re being dangled over a cliff-edge and everyone’s just choosing to shut their eyes and pretend everything’s still hunky-bloody-dory.

Sirius knows what he means.

Anyway – hunky-bloody-dory: Marlene snorts into her orange juice during breakfast, and it bubbles rather obscenely. “Mare,” she giggles, reaching for a napkin. Dark, dreary morning rain hammers relentlessly against the arching hall windows. “Mare – I’m sorry, love, let me just stop you there—”

“No! Hang on, let me explain—”

“Explain what?” Sirius asks, dropping himself into the empty space between Marlene and Peter and reaching over to steal a slice of buttered toast from James’ plate.

“Thief,” James snaps, belatedly slapping Sirius’ hand away. “If you want breakfast, get up on time.”

“When I could lie in until half-eight and then help myself to the meal you’ve so lovingly prepared in my absence?” Sirius makes an elaborate show of his first bite, slinging his hair out of his eyes. “Never. Now – explain what, Macdonald?”

Marlene interjects: “Mary fancies Professor Kettleburn.”

“I do not!” Mary cries immediately. She slams her palm down on the table. “I don’t fancy him! I was just saying – we were dealing in hypotheticals, and if you had to pick a teacher – that he’s kind of attractive in an, um, an unconventional way. Hypothetically.”

In his seat beside James, Remus leans forward, frowning. “Doesn’t he have about six of his own teeth left?”

“Nah,” says Peter, forkful of bacon halfway to his mouth. “Since we came back in September, I’m pretty sure it’s now only five.”

“I said unconventional!”

“Okay, okay.” Lily pats Mary’s shoulder reassuringly. “To be fair, he’s replaced every last one of those teeth with some lovely golden false ones. Exceptionally popular with the Nifflers off the back of it.”

James shifts in his seat beside her, his expression questioning. Somehow – somehow – his hand finds its’ way into his hair. “You don’t think Kettleburn’s attractive, do you?”

Sirius’ gaze meets Remus’; they share a smile. Strange, how the two of them seem to do that more and more nowadays. He’s come to translate it as a Prongs is a lovesick prat, isn’t he? smile; the left corner of Remus’ mouth twitches ever so slightly upwards. He’s got a dimple there, Sirius knows – at some point during seven years it’s been one of those weird little details that’s just stuck with him.

Lily rolls her eyes. “Yes, definitely, James. In fact – our whole relationship is merely a front until I can figure out a way to woo our sixty-year-old Care of Magical Creatures Professor.” She laces her fingers between his, runs her thumb over his knuckles (it strikes Sirius, then, just how much things have changed: when did they all become this?). “So glad you’ve finally cottoned on,” she adds.

“I don’t think he’s as old as sixty,” Mary protests, fiddling with one of her braids as James mutters something wounded. “I’d put him more in the early-fifties range. And I only mean it in a,” she clicks her tongue, searching for the word, “a rugged way. That’s – yeah. He’s quite rugged.”

“Particularly after that Quintaped bit his right arm off,” Marlene deadpans.

Mary kisses her teeth, reaches over the table to swat Marlene on the arm. “And,” she continues, as if Marlene hadn’t spoken, “he always used to give outrageously good marks, too. Obviously he’s not attractive in a poncy, pretty-boy way like you, Black—”

Sirius gasps: “aw, Mare, you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes, and I believe I prefaced that by calling you a ponce. Anyway, Marls, you make it sound like I’m professing my undying love or something. I just think there are worse-looking teachers in this school, right? The scars are kind of…dashing, if you go for that sort of thing. Like yours, Lupin!”

Remus, who seems to have zoned out of the conversation a while back, looks up from his porridge at the mention of his name. He blinks. “Hm?”

“Your scars, Remus,” Mary continues, smile molasses-sweet. “You’ve got the whole dashing, rugged thing going on – like Kettleburn.”

Sirius watches the blush rise in Remus’ cheeks, dusty-red beneath his smattering of freckles. “Er,” he says, laughing nervously. He rubs at the side of his neck; the movement momentarily covers the old, silver-white gash there and Sirius wonders if that’s intentional.

“I’m not sure those are words that have ever been used in the same sentence as my name, but – erm…thank you?”

Not that it matters – and not that he’s thought about it particularly extensively, of course – but in Sirius’ opinion, rugged feels an ill fit for Remus, even with his scars. Remus is sort of…well, there’s just something sort of nice about him (which is utterly deceptive, seeing as he’s the most sarcastic git Sirius has ever met). As in – Remus has a dimple, and freckles, and he owns at least one Beach Boys album, and he’s the least imposing version of six-foot-f*cking-three that it’s physically possible to be. Remus is all things woolly and familiar – smudged outlines, the creases on Sirius’ palm or the month of September.

Maybe it’s his Welsh accent. Or his hair.

Still, it’s not as if this is something Sirius cares about all that much – that is to say, this isn’t really a hill he intends to die on. So he doesn’t point any of that out.

At the same times as Sirius does, James appears to piece together that Remus would very much like to shift the conversation away from himself; he clears his throat to change the subject, but he needn’t bother – as it so happens, a distraction quite literally drops out of the sky.

“They’re late,” Remus mutters, casting a glance upwards as the morning post arrives in a flurry of feathers and hoots and the crinkle of paper, as well as a few ominous thuds as the more fragile packages hit the table just a little bit too hard.

Peter snatches his coffee out of the way just in time to avoid James’ copy of the Daily Prophet knocking it over; the dark liquid sloshes slightly over the rim, seeping beige into Peter’s shirt cuff. “James,” he grumbles, pulling his wand from his belt (he botches the scourgify: inexplicably, the stain appears to start fizzing). “Tell your f*cking owl to get over whatever grudge it’s holding against me.”

“Peter,” James replies, mimicking his tone as he reluctantly extricates his hand from Lily’s, retrieves his folded paper. “Tell your stepdad not to throw a slipper at Owl Pacino every time he tries to deliver a letter through your kitchen window, and perhaps he’d hold you in higher regard.”

“Owl Pacino?” Marlene repeats, her expression lying roughly midway between amusem*nt and disdain.

Down the table, Remus nods like a world-wearied parent. “I took them to the cinema a few summers ago. The Godfather. They made us watch it three times.”

Mary wrinkles her nose. “Oh, I hated those films.”

“Didn’t that Dennis boy take you on a date to see the second one? The boy from Brixton?”

“Uh-huh. That’s why I hate them.”

“Oh? Do we not like Dennis anymore?”

“We do not,” Mary confirms, flipping open a little pink compact mirror.

Lily leans in behind Mary to glance into it, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Duly noted.”

“sh*t.”

James’ voice is breathless, quiet, but all the same it halts their conversation in its’ tracks, like something shot out of the air. Sirius turns; James is staring fixedly down at the paper in front of him, some type of worry cutting grave creases through his brow. Everybody stills.

It’s as quick as that, really.

As quick as unfolding a newspaper, as quick as the turn of a page to sober the seven of them up, to pry their eyes open with unforgiving fingers, dirty fingernails. As quick as that to drag the atmosphere sharply in the opposite direction – the Prophet hitting the table or else a body hitting the car bonnet.

“What’s happened now?” Marlene asks, tentative.

Sirius cannot pinpoint exactly when it was that that all begun. When news became synonymous with death, or dread or terror. He knows that it was likely a very long time ago, now, the edges of their schooldays slowly rotting, caving inward like mold in the walls of a house you can’t bear to leave. He knows that at some point, dark-magic extremists became death eaters, who became his family and his classmates and his politicians. He knows that this war is making adults out of children; pushing his friends from behind. He knows it’s making the world feel entirely too small. And entirely too big. And entirely too imminent.

James wordlessy turns the newspaper to face Sirius, Peter and Marlene.

The first of the large, stern black letters that Sirius’ eyes land on is DEAD. Close behind: MUGGLES and 23 and BIRMINGHAM.

Reading in more detail, Sirius learns that nineteen muggles from eight different families were found dead in their homes last night. Four muggle-born wizards. The same skull-and-snake symbol thrown up on a wall somewhere in each property. The flashing image displays it above a mantlepiece; a glass ashtray left untouched. Family photos. Birthdays and weddings and sepia-tinged existences.

“Carbon monoxide?” Peter murmurs, eyes darting across the small print. He makes a face. “That’s what the muggle press has gone with? Who – who’s going to believe that? It’s nine different houses.”

The answer, of course, is no one – nobody even bothers voicing it.

On Sirius’ other side, Marlene has a hand raised to her mouth, curtain of feathered blonde hair falling forward. “Hang on,” she says. “Hang on…Bennett-Hughes. I know that surname. Where do I know that surname from?”

“Sarah,” Lily cuts in. “Sarah Bennet-Hughes. She’s in the year below us, one of our Ravenclaw prefects – blonde girl? Does the Quidditch commentary.”

“Sarah? I – yeah. I know her.” Sirius looks up from the article. “She and I once – uh, you know…”

His comment is received with none of the usual teasing; in fact, Remus’ mouth twists into some unreadable expression, and he speaks up before Sirius has barely finished. “Is that one of the names there? Sarah?”

“No, but it says one of the muggle-borns was a Bennett-Hughes. That’s got to be a relation, right? Too much of a coincidence, surely.”

There’s something unyielding about that three-letter word: W-A-S. Final in the way of stone, or of full-stops. Granite. Was implies the irrevocable act of severing. Of a thing that no longer is.

“Those poor people…” someone says. Because that’s what you say.

Sirius knows James is looking at him without even looking back, and he knows what he’s thinking without him even uttering a word. It’ll do that to you, tandem brotherhood. Thicker than thieves, joined at the hip, et cetera.

You lot don’t have to, James had said back in September. But if there’s a way to do something – if there’s a way to fight back, then…that’s what I’m going to do. After school, whatever use I can be of. Whatever there is. It’s a war. People are dying, right? I can’t just sit around, and – and…

Are you mad? Sirius had replied. You think we’re going to let you go off and die a hero without us? Of course we’re going to fight too. He’d turned to Remus and Peter: Right?

And that’s when Remus had said, Actually.

Actually, Dumbledore spoke to me before the summer. I wanted to tell you – I swear, I did, but I didn’t know if I was allowed to. But, er – in his office, he spoke to me about this – organization. Said I offered a…unique…set of abilities. For – well. As you say, Prongs. For fighting back.

It had only been the four of them in their dormitory, but nevertheless Remus had leaned in, lowered his voice.

Have any of you ever heard anything about the Order of the Phoenix?

James is looking at him now and Sirius knows he’s thinking about that conversation. In the incline of his head there’s a question: are you still in?

Sirius tips his chin up: yeah.

Outside, the rain batters on.

-

i.iii – january twenty-sixth, 7.14 p.m.

“They’re doing the f*cking crossword.”

Sirius does not do well in confined spaces. Figuratively speaking.

It’s something that Remus learnt about him very quickly, actually: Sirius does not do well with feeling trapped, with feeling backed into a corner. Grimmauld Place used to do that to him, he knows. Now, whether it’s everything that’s been going on (as has become the polite way of putting it), or the rest of their lives looming tall and faceless on the underbelly of this coming June, Sirius needs to know that he still has space to breathe.

Whatever it is, this much is clear: Sirius is growing restless.

(And Remus knows what that means.)

Thursday evening sees Sirius storming into the dormitory, all theatrics, and declaring to its’ sole occupant, “they’re doing the f*cking crossword. Right now, Prongs and Evans, in the common room! They’re sharing an armchair, so that they can spend the evening doing the f*cking crossword.”

“Mhm, I’ve heard,” Remus replies, without looking up. He doesn’t ask where have you been, well aware that he has no right, that he doesn’t really want to know. “It’s quite the scandal,” he continues, instead. “I mean – two people, doing the crossword? How dare they? There’s been talk of taking to the streets about it all, actually. I think Dorcas is organizing a protest.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind?”

“Not sure. I was partial to the idea of a human chain, myself. I’ll let her know she has your support.”

Sirius makes a snorting noise, and then he mutters, “you’re so f*cking insufferable, you know that?”

“I believe that’s supposed to be my line.”

Remus slides his bookmark into a place: a flattened-out cigarette packet, courtesy of Sirius getting bored in Charms two Wednesdays ago (“Moons, Moons, look, ‘ve made you a present,” “I don’t want to carry your rubbish around, Sirius,” “It’s not rubbish, it’s a present – for you to keep, y’know, forever,” and of course Remus has, to the unbridled glee of the nasty voice that lurks in the poorly-lit back-alley of his mind).

He glances upwards, finally, to find Sirius sprawled out on his (Remus’, for whatever reason) bed, face-down like he’s been shot in the back. A bullet right between his center-most vertebrae; the smoking barrel that is Lily Evans and a ballpoint pen.

“I trust you don’t need me to tell you that you’re being,” and here Remus gestures towards him, towards his face contorted in disgust, half-buried in Remus’ own pillows, “a tad – erm – childish. Dramatic. Unreasonable, if you will. Worse things to find in the newspaper than the crossword, nowadays.”

“I know,” Sirius replies, sullen, muffled. He twists around to lay on his back, turning finally to look at Remus properly, who’s sat cross-legged on the floor below him.

“Don’t – don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for him, yeah? Really bloody happy for him—”

“Am I allowed to suggest you tell your face that?”

“Piss off,” Sirius snaps, but he’s smiling. He props himself up on his elbows, shakes his hair back, tumbling from his face like dark water. “Really, though, really I am,” he insists. “All that time we had to endure Prongs’ pining – and Evans, yeah, she’s a right laugh, and they’re disgustingly sweet together now that they’ve figured their sh*t out.

“But it’s also just that we’ve got months left of seventh year before we’re all off to fight in this – this f*cking mess, and the four of us, Moons…don’t you think we have a reputation to live up to? We ought to be – enjoying the time we’ve got left. Feels like we should be going out with a bang, but instead we’re going out with a…a mewl, or something. A – a f*cking head boy badge and a finished crossword puzzle. We never do anything anymore, y’know?”

Sirius sighs. “I dunno. This year, so far – just feels a bit anticlimactic, if you ask me. I feel…I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And actually Remus didn’t ask, but that doesn’t matter – it never really does. For a while, he doesn’t say anything at all. Just watches Sirius, and then Sirius rolls his head to the side and watches him right back, eyes glittering with half-hearted indignation. When they don’t catch the light – as they don’t, now – they’re a gravel-grey. Sirius’ brow is slightly creased.

Remus – in quite a spectacularly self-destructive move – thinks about leaning over and smoothing that crease out with his thumb. Thinks about kissing the tantrum out of Sirius’ mouth, or else kicking through the nearest window and throwing himself out of it. Reckons he could guess how Sirius has been spending this evening, and nevertheless thinks about waving his hands about like a madman, crying, I love you – I love you! Don’t you f*cking get that? Can’t you f*cking fix that?

He thinks about doing these things, and then he just sets his book aside. Climbs onto the bed, moves Sirius’ legs out of the way himself and says, “you sound bored, Pads.”

Sirius’ eyes bore into his. He grunts.

“Yeah. That’s – eurgh, that’s exactly what I am. sh*t. f*ck me.” He looks away; Remus breathes. “I just – this doesn’t seem fair. It’s our last year and there is all this bollocks waiting for us, so shouldn’t we be having more fun than this? We haven’t done a proper, thought-out prank since f*cking…October, right? I’m so bored! And Prongs, with his reprehensibly brilliant girlfriend: since when did Prongs do the crossword? I fear she’s going to make an honest man out of him, Moons. It’s indecent, is what it is.”

Sirius voice grows quieter, then. “I’m sick of thinking about what comes next. I like things the way they are now, I don’t…I just feel like I need more time than this.”

But time isn’t something Remus can give him (and oh, won’t he know it, years from now). So he just raises an eyebrow, unconvinced, pretends it was left unsaid. “Honest man? I watched the two of you release those bouncing bulbs into Filch’s office three days ago. I think you’re jumping the gun a little, declaring him Saint Potter just yet.”

Maybe that does the trick: an absent grin spreads across Sirius’ face. “f*ck, yeah. Forgot about that one. Well – emphasis on watched.” He jabs a finger at Remus, mock-accusatory. “I might point out that you didn’t do a single thing to stop us, Lupin. In fact, you’re the one who told us where Sprout keeps those bulbs. Ever heard of joint criminal enterprise?”

“Nonsense. I had no idea what you were planning to do with them, naturally. Besides, James is the Head Boy – forgive me for still having faith in my authority figures.”

“Excuses like that won’t hold up in a court of law,” Sirius replies solemnly. “Anyway, that was more of a revenge errand that a fully-fledged prank. Utterly juvenile – we should be onto bigger and better things, by seventh year.”

He tips his head back. “f*ck, s’alright for you. You’ve been doing the crossword since you were eleven, you don’t know any better than being an old-age pensioner.”

Remus frowns. “They’re relaxing.”

Sirius makes a noise of disdain, low in his throat. “For the senile, maybe.”

“Sod off,” is all Remus can come up with, and Sirius is laughing as he shuffles forward, turns so he and Remus are facing the same way. He drops his head into Remus’ lap, knocking their knees together in a tangle of limbs and shoes on the bed.

Remus does think, sometimes, that perhaps he knows.

“Next birthday is Mare’s, I think, few weeks from now,” he informs Sirius idly. Remus bites at his nails as though he might be able to catch the urge to bury his fingers in Sirius’ hair between his teeth. Grind it to dust beneath his molars and swallow it down. “The girls’ll throw a party for her, then. Something to look forward to.”

“Mm,” Sirius hums, fiddling with the hem of Remus’ jumper. Woolen, navy. “That’ll be good. Fancy getting pissed.”

Remus has nothing to add after that, so they sit on his bed in silence, bar the steady thump-thump of their hearts, the comfortable rise-and-fall of their chests. His leg’ll go dead soon. He isn’t going to move.

After a few minutes, just when Remus is starting to wonder if he’s fallen asleep, Sirius shifts. And when he smiles up at him, that’s when Remus notices them: the hickeys up Sirius’ neck, just below his ear where before his hair had fallen over them. Fresh and mottled and so obviously from this evening.

He was right, then; Sirius is bored. Or – restless, or frustrated, or all the words Remus can drag out to pretend that the long and short of it isn’t that he’s snogging other people because that’s what he wants to spend his time doing. Peter mentions, hours ago, seeing Sirius leave through the portrait hole, and on some base f*cking level Remus knows, then. Not that it’s his business, anyway. Sirius can do as he pleases. Already does as he pleases.

Point is, though, a few bruises are all it takes to remind Remus, once more, exactly what the two of them are to each other – or more importantly what the two of them aren’t. And sure, yes, that calcifies something in Remus, undeniably so, seeing as inadvertently Remus has already utterly, entirely given himself over to Sirius – to Sirius who calls him Moons and rests his head in Remus’ lap and then snogs other people in dark corners while Remus is still trying to put himself back to together.

But that’s how it is, how Sirius has always been – and even more than usual, these days. As though he’s trying to prove something. Well, consider it proven: there’s no chance of Remus getting the wrong idea, that’s for sure.

The smile Sirius is giving him is soft and slow and honeyed and crippling. “What are you thinking about, Moons?”

“Nothing,” Remus replies, far too quickly. But Sirius just smiles wider for a moment, and then he shakes his head.

“That’d be a first.”

A mewl, he’d said. They’re going out with a mewl.

It’s funny, though, because Remus looks down at him and decides that right now, it all feels a bit more like a bang than Sirius seems to think it does. A crash, or a clang, or something along those lines. A breakage.

Perhaps a thud.

-

i.iv – january twenty-ninth, 5.13 p.m.

“What on earth did you say to her?”

“What did I – nothing! Nothing!”

Sirius tries – hand on heart, he tries – not to laugh, as James’ righteous indignation has him flapping about with all the frenzy of an overzealous wind-up toy. It’s poor library etiquette, he’s aware, but James’ whispers are growing increasingly high-pitched, and Remus keeps shooting him sideways glances, wicked little git he is, and Sirius really only has so much resolve.

Lily is looking at James with a look that is similar to – but not to be confused with – the Prongs is a lovesick prat, isn’t he? smile. Instead, there’s something more affectionate in her bottle-green eyes: this reads, you’re a prat, but I love you, which probably makes me a bit of a prat too. Across from Sirius, she shakes her head despairingly, places a hand on James’ arm.

“You must have said something, if what Dorcas says is true,” Lily reasons. “Did she really run out of class?”

“Yep,” Sirius chimes in. “Most interesting thing to happen in Divination in weeks. Excellently timed, too – whole thing made Trelawney forget to check the homework.”

Remus grins. “What, she didn’t predict that happening?”

“Shockingly, she did not.”

“I didn’t say anything!” James insists. “I was just – Trelawney’s got this big old shelf full of teacups, right at the back of the room, so I was up there getting ours and Julie was up there getting hers, yeah?

“So – we were making small talk, and she mentioned the upcoming match, and that’s when I remembered that she’s dating that Ravenclaw beater – er, Wallace? Walter? Anyway. I was joking, said she’d have a conflict of loyalties, choosing whether to support her house or her boyfriend, and she just burst into tears! Practically tossed the bloody teacup at me and ran away! I was joking! How is that my fault?!”

Remus gives Sirius another look at that; the two of them have to resort to focusing intently on the copy of Transfiguration Transcribed: A Complete Guide to Conjuring that’s open on the table between them in order to stifle their grins.

“Oh,” Lily is saying meanwhile, with an air of realization. “Oh, alright, well that makes sense. Jules was dating Walton – past-tense. Last week she found him necking Sylvia Alifort in one of those empty classrooms on fifth – actually think it was one of your usual haunts, Black. She came up to the dorm in floods of tears, poor thing – still quite torn up about it all, sounds about right that she started crying when you brought him up. We had to stop her setting a record he bought her on fire last night, right there in our bathroom sink.”

“What record?”

“Rumours.”

Sirius makes a face. “Should’ve let it burn.”

“How was I supposed to know she’d split from the bloke?” James complains. “I don’t make a point of keeping track of these things, is there a – did I miss the newsletter?”

“To be fair,” Sirius says, leaning back in his seat. “I don’t think you can be sure that that’s why she started crying. Girls are often known to run away after spending a few minutes chatting with Potter here – it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Remus looks up from his half-finished essay, nodding gravely. “It’s an epidemic.”

“Jealous and bitter and rude, the pair of you,” James shoots back amidst Lily’s snickering. He’s glaring at them even now, as he presses a quick, point-making kiss to Lily’s cheek, arm slung low around the back of her chair. Lily flushes, smiles, and Sirius would make a joke about that if it hadn’t hurt so much when she’d lobbed that chess piece at his head the last time he pointed out that oh, look, you’ve gone red, Red!

“Jealous?” Sirius repeats. “Me? I do more than alright, Potter, thank you very much. And Lupin here…” he looks to Remus, falters. “Well, just because he’s – er – saving himself—”

He’s interrupted by Remus making a funny sort of sound, then. It’s not quite a laugh, but grunt isn’t the right word for it either. If Sirius didn’t know better, in fact, he might say that what Remus does then is scoff.

“That ship’s sailed,” Remus mutters quietly, eyes fixed on his parchment in front of him.

Coincidentally, Sirius’ face drops.

Not because of – not for any reason, he simply – it’s just – “eh? What’d you say?”

Remus lifts his head, gaze moving between the three wide-eyed faces in front of him with a vaguely bored expression. “I said, that ship has sailed. I haven’t been saving myself,” (he screws his face up at Sirius’ phraseology) “since – well, over two years, actually.”

Sirius blinks.

“You – I’m sorry, what?” James splutters. “What? You never – you have never – you didn’t think to tell us? How – you know about every single romantic pursuit I’ve ever had! And you’re just telling us now that you’re not…” he shakes his head slowly, starts again: “Remus J. Lupin. Can we have some context for that statement, please?”

Sensing that this conversation is only just beginning, Remus sighs, puts his quill down, and Sirius doesn’t know whether to look at him or not and he also doesn’t know why that’s such a hard decision to make.

“Summer after fifth year,” Remus explains, propping his chin up with his hand – and Sirius opts for not looking at him, then, instead focusing on the bookshelf just past his left shoulder – “I – Jesus Christ – I had a…thing, with someone. For a bit. That’s all. Clearly, it was remiss of me to not issue a press release about the matter.”

James repeats, “a thing?” at exactly the same time as Sirius asks,

“Who? With who?”

Then, Remus – who had before appeared, if anything, slightly disinterested in discussing this, stares down at the table. His hands fidget slightly with his inkwell.

“Muggle boy from my village,” he says stiffly.

Remus swallows, lifts his head again, fixing them all with a meaningful look. In the library’s evening light, his eyes appear a darker brown than Sirius knows them to be. “Is that a problem?” he asks.

Lily answers immediately, gently: “Not at all, Remus.”

Sirius watches – it takes a moment for the implication of Remus’ question to dawn on James’ face, but as soon as it does he’s saying, “Oh. Oh. No – of course not, mate. Of course not. Thank you for telling us.”

He’s not really listening to James, though: “Who is he? Is he your boyfriend?” Sirius asks, tone unintentionally demanding. If Remus has any internal reaction to it, he gives nothing away.

“No,” Remus replies. “I haven’t seen him since that summer. We don’t keep in touch.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” Were Sirius someone else, he might not notice the flint-edge of Remus’ voice when he says that. “Like I said. We don’t keep in touch: he moved away. It was one summer. Nothing more to it.”

Nothing, which is all Sirius says, after that. In fact, nobody says anything at all, and Sirius knows James’ eyes are on him but whatever it is he wants, Sirius finds he cannot provide it. Before the table can fall into too thick a silence, James – prince that he is – pipes up. “Well,” he says. “Good for you mate. We should’ve expected this, really – how unreasonable to believe that near eighteen years could’ve passed without anyone falling for your charms, Lupin.”

Sirius wants James to stop talking about this. From the way Remus laughs, mirthlessly, shifts about in his seat instead of flinging a wry comment right back, he probably does too. He doesn’t look at Sirius. Why should he look at Sirius?

It isn’t that Sirius is necessarily all that surprised that Remus is gay (if he’s gay, that is – is it just boys? Was it just that one boy? Sirius isn’t going to ask but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t wonder) – it’s not as though it was obvious or anything, but it has seemed plausible, over the years, that Remus might be that way inclined. And obviously it’s not that Sirius would ever have a problem with that, owing to the fact that he’s not a f*cking tosser.

So, with that in mind, the thought of Remus having a thing (no, had, past-tense – Remus said had) with a boy from his village shouldn’t sit this uncomfortably with him. It was bound to happen eventually – as James said – because Remus is – is nice, and of course people are going to like him and date him and snog him and all that stuff.

It really shouldn’t feel like this: an itch on the back of Sirius’ neck or something, like knowing you’re out of cigarettes but checking the packet anyway, only to confirm the suspicion – nothing else to do, after that, but drum your fingers against the table until the gnawing ache subsides.

So that’s what Sirius does.

At some point between James saying that Remus is charming and Sirius finishing tapping out the second chorus of Golden Years against the polished mahogany (I’ll stick with you baby for a thousand years / nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years!), Remus returns to his essay, adjusting the Transfiguration book slightly more towards him. He scratches at his jaw, inadvertently smudging ink there.

Sirius moves on to the third verse.

(Some of these days / and it won’t be long—)

“f*ck’s sake,” Peter jogs up to their table, red-faced and clutching a large, dusty tome whose binding bears a gold-outlined stamp of a mushroom. Herbology: such a f*cking joke.

“Always the ones I need that they shove right up on the top f*cking shelf,” he huffs, collapsing into the chair beside Remus. “Reckon Pince does it on purpose, too – she never forgave us for that howler prank back in second year. Sour-faced old crone.”

Peter must realize that he’s not exactly delivering these comments to a particularly receptive audience, right now, because he frowns into the silence that follows. Sitting up, he looks between the four of them, and Sirius doesn’t give him enough credit, he really doesn’t – the lad’s a lot more observant than he lets on.

“What?” Peter says. “What did I miss?”

-

i.v – february first, 10.04 a.m.

“I don’t think he reacted badly.”

“No, he didn’t react at all. That’s worse.”

If he’s going to rank them, the third problem that Remus faces today would be that the Ancient Runes classroom is on the sixth f*cking floor. It’s excessive. It’s entirely unnecessary. Who decides a castle needs to have seven floors in the first place? He’s exhausted.

As it happens, that problem ties in rather nicely with Remus’ second one: the full moon tonight, with its’ teeth that’ll drag back out of him what was left when he was four. His second problem is tearing sinews and grinding bones and coughing it up until he’s hoarse, and until then it’s right now, when he’s climbing, barely, a fifth staircase, all lead-jointed and ill, the steady thumping behind his eyes like that of heavy boots on the hot, chewing-gum riddled pavement of his skull, fingers itching for a cigarette (or better yet, a joint).

But somehow, someway, it pales in comparison – all of it, all of it ever, all of it for as long as Remus will get, in the end – when held up against problem number one. Problem number one – which is always, endlessly, in one way or another, Sirius Black.

“He sort of reacted,” Lily points out as they finally reach the sixth floor. In that singularly wonderful manner of hers, for which Remus is incessantly grateful, she’s made no reference to the fact that he looks like absolute sh*t this morning (as far as all of the girls know, he’s just chronically ill), only offered to carry his textbooks, though Remus’ pride had him politely turning her down.

“He was…inquisitive? Curious. Which is – well…”

Before Lily can think of a comforting end to that sentence, Remus interrupts with a soft shake of his head. “He asked if I had a boyfriend,” he counters, quietly, “and he could barely say the word.”

Lily only frowns, doesn’t say anything for a few steps.

“What’s Sirius been like since then?”

“Erm…” Remus’ eyes fall to his shoes as he contemplates his answer – which is laughable really, as though he’s unsure. He knows exactly how Sirius has been with him, has been studying it, actually, trying to gauge if things have changed in the two days since the library, when he’d told them about that summer, and he’d told them about Elis.

Remus doesn’t think about Elis all that much anymore. After all – Sirius came before him, and reliably enough he came after him, too.

And since two days ago, Remus has been more aware of that than ever, in a blade-sharp, chemical way which just makes him absolutely loathe himself, because ultimately Sirius Black refuses to be ignored (or else Remus Lupin refuses to ignore him). He’s aware of Sirius being quieter around him; careful to pay attention to whether Sirius is tense when they touch, fingers brushing at dinner when he passes him the salt, or if he sprawls all over him on the common room sofa as he usually does.

Remus says, “He’s – normal, I suppose? But…quieter. He’s not – he’s fine, I suppose.”

Sometimes, too, in those times when Sirius goes quiet, he looks at Remus as though there’s something he wants to say. To ask. And then he never does.

“See?” Lily smiles. “There you go. Of course, I’ve got absolutely no right to say you’re overthinking things, so I’m not going to do that, but I do know that those boys adore you, Remus. And you adore them, and the four of you…I really don’t think that that would – change, over something like this. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose so.”

She nods, makes that decision for him. “And I’m not being funny, Remus,” Lily continues as they round a corner, pausing only as they pass a group of fourth-years, “but if Sirius does have a problem? He can f*ck right off. James’d go spare at him – you’ve got the rest of us, you don’t need to bother with Sirius if he wants to be a git about anything. And for god’s sake, he’d be one to talk about who people can and cannot carry on with – I swear, that boy has got history with half the girls in our year by now—”

“Yeah,” Remus says quickly, with a short, unconvincing laugh. He swallows. “Yeah. You – you’re right. But it’s really not – now I think about it, he’s not any different. He’s fine. It’s fine.”

Lily’s voice is gentler now. “I’m sure he is. You know? If you told me about a year and a half ago that I’d have a soft spot for him now, I would’ve asked you if you’d been dropped on the head as an infant—”

“—I think you did ask James that, once—”

“But…Black isn’t all bad, actually. He has his moments, and he’s – definitely tolerable, most of the time. Or perhaps I’ve started spending so much time around him since I started dating James that I’ve just become numb to it. One of the two.”

It’s Remus who smiles now. “Yes, the two of them do tend to be a bit of a package deal. But definitely tolerable? He’d be very pleased with that – I’ll tell him you said it.”

“Don’t you dare.” Lily whips her head round, glaring at him without any real venom. “I’ll never live it down.”

“What else was it? Soft spot?”

“I’d like to rescind that statement.”

“Too late, I’m afraid.”

“Drat,” Lily says, sighing dramatically. Wordlessly, she takes one of the books from his arms, ignores his mumbles of protest. “And to think, I used to tolerate you once, Lupin.”

-

i.vi – february third, 11.21 a.m.

“Don’t be pissed,” James pleads, voice low as he leans sideways in his desk. “I know this isn’t – us all living together, like we planned, and I’m sorry, but—”

Sirius only laughs. “I’m not pissed, Prongs, you daft git. Were you really that worried about telling me? I’m not a child, you know. Anyway, it’s not as if we didn’t see this coming – half expected you to have gotten down on one knee already, to be honest. I owe Pete two galleons over that.”

Sirius genuinely isn’t pissed that James and Lily want to get a place together after school. In fact, he’s not even disappointed, not really.

It was something of an inevitability; with each passing day, Sirius becomes more and more certain that for James, this is it. There isn’t going to be anyone else for him, not if he can help it.

And it makes sense. James and Lily; it really does roll off the tongue, comfortably and so obviously right, so why-weren’t-we-saying-that-the-whole-time right. Every time Lily smiles at him, James practically lights up from the inside out – odds are that you could cut him open and actually watch him bleed a soft, blush-pink lumos.

It’s sickening, as Sirius has taken it upon himself to remind James. Often. And loudly.

Sometimes, though, Sirius does wonder if he’s even capable of that sort of feeling, himself. If he’s got the capacity for it.

(Other times, he doesn’t wonder at all.)

“Really?” James co*cks his head slightly, before the two of them are obliged to look to the front of the class again and pretend to be engaged in Professor Doherty’s explanation of the muggle political system. Doherty turns back to the chalk board, and James continues.

“To be honest, I didn’t even see it coming - not her agreeing to it, I mean. We’ve been dating, er…five months now? I dunno…how long are couples meant to wait before you start talking about moving in together?”

“f*ck knows. Daresay I’m not exactly the person to come to with your queries about monogamy, James.”

James snorts, “no, I s’pose you’re not, mate. You’re f*cking prolific.”

“Oi, alright. Prolific is a bit harsh.”

“Bollocks. Peter told me what you were up to last Thursday. Necking that Ravenclaw girl you started talking to in Hogsmeade?”

“I was bored,” Sirius protests, rocking back in his chair. “Remus and Pete were studying, and you were busy trying to solve eight across with Miss Evans. What else was I supposed to do?”

James only grins, shakes his head. “You are unbelievable. Unbelievable. Took me about four evening duties in a row where we had to catch you with some girl’s hand down your trousers to decide I finally understand why Moony used to get so huffy about it during his prefect rounds.”

The front legs of Sirius’ chair slam back down onto the flagstones with a resounding smack, garnering a few glances in their direction and one startled obscenity. “Huffy?” he repeats in a whisper. “How – what d’you mean by that? Moony was huffy?”

“Oh, come on.” At Sirius’ frown, his brow drawn in confusion, James rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dense. He used to come up to the dorm after his duties with a face like a slapped arse, with you trailing behind him still trying to put your belt back on. I found it funny, but I get it now: only so many times I can bear to look behind a tapestry and find you…occupied.”

“I – are you sure? I never noticed Moony really…giving a sh*t about all that. He never said anything.”

James shrugs, “s’not his place to say anything, is it? Not any of our places, mate. It’s your life, you can spend it how you like. But I can’t say it surprises me that you never noticed, it’s awful hard to be observant when you’ve got your tongue down someone’s throat.”

He’s obviously joking, mouth curled up into a fond half-grin, but Sirius doesn’t laugh. “Do you really think it bothered him that much?” he asks, quietly.

Sirius can’t quite explain it: the thought of Remus caring about that sort of thing, caring about Sirius doing that sort of thing – it’s odd. Why hasn’t anyone ever mentioned this to him before? He thinks about it now and it’s something strange and unnerving and low in his chest, all disruptive and light, downy-blue.

Not for the first time, Sirius envies James’ dark complexion. His cheeks feel hot.

“Mate,” James is saying, “it bothers me, very much so, to have to deduct points from my own house over your shameless late-night rendezvous. And I’m nowhere near as reserved as Moony is about this kind of stuff – he didn’t even tell us about what he told us in the library the other day until almost two years after it happened. So I’d say yeah, it probably did. No one does exasperation like our Remus does, eh?”

“You reckon that’s what it was, then? Exasperation?”

“Huh?” James adjusts his glasses on his nose, squinting at Sirius. Up the front of the class, Doherty is rambling on about a house full of Lords. “I don’t know – I…yes? I don’t really understand the question.”

Sirius thinks for a moment.

“…James?”

“Yeah?”

“D’you think Peter mentioned to Remus where I was last Thursday? You know – what I was doing? With the Ravenclaw girl?”

James is looking steadily more confused, and he studies Sirius before answering, “I really haven’t got a clue, Pads. Why – has something happened with you and him?”

You and him.

Hm.

When Sirius doesn’t answer immediately, James’ jaw tightens. “Hang on,” he says, devoid of all his usual warmth in quite a startling way, in a way Sirius can only ever recall being on the receiving end of once before, in fifth year. It’s still the worst mistake of his life. “This isn’t about what he told us, is it? Because – f*ck, Sirius, if you dare—”

“No!” Sirius hisses, horrified, barely-hushed in his rush to set things straight. “No, no – sh*t, of course it isn’t. sh*t. I’m just…” Sirius shakes his head instinctively, taps his quill against his desk. “Thinking, is all. It’s got nothing to do with that. Just thinking.”

“Ah.” James’ face smooths into a smirk. “Well. Always knew no good could come of you doing that.”

“Git,” Sirius shoots back, more at ease with the conversation’s change in tone and yet no less able to shake the funny fluttering sensation – like he’s swallowed a snitch. It’s absurd, of course – so very absurd to imagine that Remus could ever be arsed about Sirius’ dating habits either way, honestly.

But it’s not entirely unpleasant. And Sirius doesn’t know what to do about that.

James is laughing: “There we go, Pads. Monosyllables. Much safer territory for you, I’d say.”

“Oh, as if you’re some great intellect. Don’t you have china patterns to be picking out? Or is Lily starting you out with something easier – tea towels more your speed, d’you reckon?”

“Black?” Doherty calls, peering at the pair through tortoise-shell spectacles. “Eyes to the front, perhaps? Less talking?”

“Nonsense, Professor,” Sirius replies with a polite smile. “It’s your class. You should feel free to talk as much as you’d like.”

“Detention, Black.”

“Sounds about right.”

Sometimes Sirius thinks about James and Lily, and then he thinks about himself. Wonders.

Sometimes, he doesn’t.

-

part ii: european canon.

should i believe that i’ve been stricken? / does my face show some kind of glow?

ii.i – february fourth, 10.28 p.m.

“So – Lily and Prongs?”

“Lily and Prongs.”

“Sharing a living space? Constantly? As in, inhabiting the same rooms with no other people also living in those rooms? The two of them? All of the time?”

“That seems to be their plan, yes.”

Remus’ eyebrows quirk up. There’s a slow, deliberate smile (and a dimple, if you’re taking inventory – which Sirius is not). “They’re going to drive each other up the wall.”

“Yeah.” Sirius grins. “But I reckon that’s half the appeal.”

The common room has been empty since Peter went to bed, but nevertheless they’re sitting on the floor, the fireplace glow full-bellied, threading gold through Sirius’ jumper (which is really James’), through Remus’ hair. It’s with a funny sort of pride that Sirius reflects that twenty minutes ago, Remus had been hunched over his Runes work; now, due solely to Sirius’ persistence, he sits facing him, eyes darting between Sirius, his Exploding Snap hand, and the face-up card pile on the worn, red-gold rug between them.

“D’you think you’ll find it odd?” Remus is asking. Sirius watches his hand as he hesitates, before placing a card down. It’s not a match; the card sparks softly. “All of us not living together anymore, after seven years of sharing a dorm? I mean – and you and James especially, seeing as the two of you actually live together.”

“Guess so.” Sirius peers back down at his own hand, which is, frankly, sh*t. “But he’s mad about her – it would’ve happened sooner or later.”

“Oh, she’s mad about him too,” Remus says. “She’s just infinitely cooler about it than he is.”

Sirius’ hum of agreement is cut short: the card he’d tossed at random doesn’t take kindly to the gesture, and sizzles rather viciously. “Bugger. We should’ve played Bavarian rules, I’m far better at that."

“No, thanks. I’d rather not singe my eyebrows off, I’m not confident I could make the look work.”

And Sirius hazards a glance up at Remus and finds he has to agree: Remus looks much better with eyebrows. Really quite nice.

With eyebrows.

Because – see – people tend to look better with eyebrows. In Sirius’ opinion. That is all.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sirius returns, though, co*cking his head slightly. “Remember when James accidentally burnt his left one off in first year? When we started that dueling club? I daresay he didn’t look any worse than usual.”

Remus smiles again, though he’s looking downwards when he does it. “Actually, I seem to recall it being you who was responsible for that. Also, I don’t think you’re allowed to call it a club if it only meets for a single session before all four of its’ members are given detention.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong!” Sirius wags his finger. “All of history’s greatest organizations were forcibly disbanded, Moons. It’s the rebellion against authority, see: that’s what makes the four of us so wonderfully punk rock.”

“…Right. Remus punk-rock Lupin, that’s me.”

“It is! You’re very punk rock!” Sirius insists, over the sound of Remus’ gentle laughter. “You’re a punk-rock, old-age pensioner – you don’t give yourself enough credit, Moons. You bought me that Ramones album! And last year – The Damned!”

But Remus only shrugs, his smile curving up into something a little crooked, a little self-deprecating as he sorts through his cards. And Sirius stares and stares and realizes, then, that he’s let the silence go on for a few seconds too long, and he quickly looks away. Clears his throat.

“Of course,” he says, a little hoarsely at first. Sirius resigns himself to the reality that this game is probably already lost, which is easy enough because he doesn’t particularly care. “We can merge our collections when we move in together, right? I’ll even endeavor to make peace with Pink Floyd, in the name of domestic harmony. And I’m going to get a proper record player, a new one, not that piece of sh*t I’ve been lugging around since—”

All it takes is Remus’ eyes widening a little – a pause, the modest, surprised lift of his brow – for the rest of Sirius’ sentence to die on his lips, quickly and without fanfare.

“…When we move in together?” Remus repeats, slowly.

Sirius frowns. “Well…yeah? That’s always what we were going to do, wasn’t it? I mean, I know Pete wants to go back to his parents’, but me and you and James…we said we’d all move in together somewhere in London, didn’t we? I figured that now he’s planning to get a place with Evans, that it’d just be me and you…?”

Remus opens his mouth as if to say something, and then closes it again, and then seemingly perseveres: “Oh,” he settles on, eventually. “Oh – er – yes, obviously. Sorry. Right.”

“Unless – that’s not what you want…?”

There’s a split second where Sirius prepares himself to have to appear far less disappointed by that possibility – far less wrung-out, less wilted – than he suddenly, inexplicably feels.

But Remus clarifies, “no – no. I do – that’s – sorry.” He shakes his head sharply, fringe flopping into his eyes (his hair is longer than it used to be and sometimes it does that and also, sometimes, Sirius feels sick for no good reason). “Yes, that is what I want,” Remus says. “Sorry, I don’t know why – I suppose I wasn’t sure you would still want to, now that James…”

“Why?” Sirius asks, immediately. He places the rest of his cards aside. Wipes his palms on his trousers. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”

“I – er – I don’t know. I was just being stupid, I – though things might be – never mind. Yes, I’m still up for us sharing a flat.” Remus scratches at the side of his head, fingers tangling through his curls as he does that nervous little chuckle of his that Sirius knows as though he’s written it down, somewhere.

Sirius leans forward. “This isn’t about rent, is it? Because we’d had this conversation before, Moons: you don’t need to worry about that, alright? f*ck’s sake – uncle Alphard was good for three f*cking things: never locking his wine cellar during parties, dying, and apparently leaving his blood-traitor nephew, yours truly, all of his money when he did. I can more than cover rent on that alone for ages, with or without James, yeah? That’s what I want to use it for.”

All traces of Remus’ smile have dissipated now. Sirius knows he finds it difficult to talk about money – hates it, in fact, and worse than that hates himself for it. As Sirius has spoken, Remus’ expression had begun to tighten, lips pressed into a thin, uncomfortable line. Now, he fixes his gaze on the rug, mutters, “it’s not that.”

“Then what is it, Moons? Why would you think I wouldn’t still want to – live together, without James?”

“It’s nothing,” Remus replies. He meets Sirius’ eyes again and softens, and when that fails to settle the furrow in Sirius’ brow, he exhales lightly, stresses, “really.” There’s a wearied amusem*nt in his voice as he draws out the word: rreeeally. As though Sirius is the one who isn’t making sense here – f*cking what?

So maybe, yeah – maybe Remus goes to place down another card, as if this game hasn’t long since grinded to a halt, but even still, something – the space draped around them or the corner of Remus’ mouth or some coiled, fidgeting thing in Sirius’ intestine (if he’s lucky then it’s big old f*cking tapeworm, and if he’s not then it’s nothing at all) – still feels wrong, off-kilter, and later Sirius will spend hours, hours wondering why he does what he does next, but right now there isn’t anything of any real value rattling about in his skull as he reaches forward and catches Remus by the wrist.

And for the record – if anyone’s getting this down – in and of itself, that’s nothing. In other circ*mstances, Sirius has probably done this sort of thing countless times, but the thing is that this isn’t other circ*mstances, and out of nowhere it crashes into him – Hogwarts Express to the f*cking chest – just how quiet this common room is, how empty, and there’s a bassline in Remus’ pulse-point beneath Sirius’ fingers.

“Moons?” Sirius whispers – he needn’t be any louder than that, not with their sudden proximity. “What’s wrong?”

“I – you’ve been a bit quiet, recently,” Remus murmurs back.

His eyes are brown, but there’s a ring of muddy-green around his pupils, if you look carefully. There’s an eyelash on his cheek. “Sometimes. Since the – er – library. Like there’s something you want to…say.”

Sirius still only has loose change for thoughts – one sickle, a couple of knuts and some pocket lint – but all the same he tries to recall what it is that Remus is referring to: the library? What’s he—

Oh. Oh.

“…I have?” Sirius asks (because he’s an utter f*cking liar, he knows he has, knows it every time his mind inexplicably drifts back to – nevermind).

Remus does a funny little half-nod; it’s as if he rethinks the action halfway through, and all it does is leave their faces closer together. “Yes. I’m not – not all the time, I just – a bit, and I didn’t know what was – er…”

“And that made you think that I…”

“No. No, it’s just something that I – noticed, I suppose.”

“I didn’t realize I was being quiet,” Sirius says. He adds, “I didn’t mean to be, I’m sorry,” and wills his face into something of a smile, squeezes Remus’ wrist once. Doesn’t let go. Should probably let go.

And then Sirius tells the biggest lie of all.

“Didn’t mean anything by it, Moons. I’m fine.”

Fine: it’s now that Sirius realizes what a ridiculous little word that is, what a joke, how it’s never, ever used for its’ intended purpose. Sirius is not fine, as a voice in him yells, flailing about and kicking at the walls. He’s the antithesis of it, actually; he’s the complete, awful antonym and he’s confused and the worst of it is that he has no f*cking idea why.

Remus is not smiling back. “Are you?” he asks.

He’s staring at Sirius and Sirius is staring back, is replying, “…yeah.”

“Moons?” he whispers. Remus blinks at him.

“Mm?”

“Sorry – you’ve got a—” Sirius lets go of his wrist (because he didn’t do that earlier, should’ve f*cking done that earlier), raises his hand up to Remus’ cheek. Remus starts away a little, puzzled, but Sirius only makes to gently thumb away the stray eyelash. Barely touches him, in fact.

“Eyelash,” he mumbles sheepishly, nose centimetres away from Remus’. His knee slips a bit on the Exploding Snap cards strewn beneath him; Sirius has to put a palm down to steady himself.

“Oh,” Remus says, unmoving. “Thanks.”

“S’alright.”

And then neither of them speak, and neither of them move, and Sirius’ eyes flicker ever so slightly downwards, and apparently this is going to be the bit that ruins everything.

Because Sirius would like to kiss him, now.

Which is terrible, because it’s not meant to go like this: the end of the world is not supposed to rock up in the common room, quietly one evening as an eyelash on Remus’ cheek. Nowhere – nowhere, had Sirius planned for that. And yet Remus is looking at him blankly and Sirius wants to kiss him more than anything and of course that isn’t supposed to happen – that can’t happen, since when did that happen, so how can this be anything less than the end of f*cking everything?

Remus doesn’t seem to realize that it’s all over now, because he finds his voice: “Sirius, I…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I—”

“James, I don’t think you’re comprehending just how bad it is. A bright pink bridesmaid’s dress! Tuney – she’s either insane, or evil, or quite possibly both. Oh my god, I’m going to look like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol…”

Sirius didn’t hear the portrait cover swing open, but he does hear Lily’s voice carrying through; he shoots backwards like he’s been burned, shuffling hastily over the abandoned game cards until he hits the empty armchair behind him with a dull thump. Remus, for his part, just watches. Closes his mouth. Swallows.

Briefly, he looks hurt. Or maybe it isn’t brief at all. Sirius just doesn’t want to think about it.

“Pepto-what?” And this time it’s James. Sirius looks up to find him and Lily standing behind the sofa, holding hands. He feels a pang of – something. Undefinable. All of it, everything, undefinable.

“Alright, you lot?” James asks brightly. Lily stifles a yawn with the back of her free hand. “Thought you’d have gone to bed.”

“We were just,” Remus looks at Sirius, and then quickly away. “Playing a game. Are you going up now?”

James rubs a hand beneath his glasses. “f*ck, yeah. M’knackered. Don’t think we encountered a single student all of that round, did we?”

“No,” Lily replies. “Everyone seems to have chosen to be disappointingly well-behaved tonight.”

James shakes his head: “What are our youth coming to?”

Sirius doesn’t respond, largely because he’s too busy caving in on himself like a dying star (yes, he knows). Whatever he’d been thinking – and that’s in the loosest sense of the word to begin with – he’d been out of his f*cking mind.

Because this isn’t something that can happen. He can’t be that way about Remus, about his best friend. He breathes through his nose. He can’t do this. He can’t do this.

“Right, well,” James says. “I’m turning in.”

“Me too.” Remus clambers to his feet, turns towards Sirius. “Are you coming?”

Sirius is trying not to look at him, because maybe this is all fixable if he just doesn’t look at him. His best friend. “No,” he mutters, a little tight, a little harsh. “Not yet, I’ll, uh – put the game away.”

“Oh, well – er. Night, then,” says Remus.

Sirius can’t find it in himself to answer. And even though he doesn’t want to – and oh, how he doesn’t want to – he sees the way Remus’ smile fades.

James gives Sirius an odd sort of look, but ultimately just shrugs. “Alright, then. Come on, Lupin…”

Somewhere far away Lily calls, “Night, boys,”, and somewhere barely closer than that, James and Remus reply. And then they’re gone, and it’s just Sirius slumped against an armchair, and possibly this is what the end of the world looks like. Possibly there’s a fire that crackles quietly and a rug beneath Sirius’ fingertips.

He exhales shakily, running a hand through his hair. It’s alright, he decides. It’s fine. It can be fine. Sirius can pretend this never happened, just – forget about it. This doesn’t have to mean anything.

That’s one thing, at least: Sirius does know how to forget. How to preoccupy himself, take his mind off of things. Get some distance. He’s become very good at it, in fact. He can just close his eyes.

Eventually, Sirius sits up. He glances the Exploding Snap cards, begins to gather them up off the floor, but eventually just thinks – sod it. Someone else can do it in the morning. f*cked if Sirius cares.

Sirius stands, tosses the cards back down. They spark softly.

-

ii.ii – february ninth, 5.52 p.m.

It becomes very obvious, very quickly, that Remus had been wrong before.

He’d been wrong to say that Sirius had seemed quiet before, because compared to how he’s been since – well, that’s another thing, too: since what? He doesn’t even know what to call that night in the common room, because nothing even happened. Not really.

Sirius doesn’t seem to agree, because he’s barely spoken to Remus at all since the fourth – not when it’s just the two of them, anyway. Which it rarely is. Sirius makes sure of that.

Instead, Sirius becomes skittering glances. He becomes elbows pressed tightly to his sides at the breakfast table, when Remus (and here he thinks of Tennyson: into the f*cking jaws of death, the mouth of hell is eight in the morning over toast and jam) is stupid enough to sit in the space next to him. He becomes Remus’ homework, finished in one sitting because no one’s distracting him with Exploding Snap or the way a cigarette looks when it’s dangled between their lips. And disappearing in the evening and returning late at night and smelling like other people’s perfumes.

What’s the matter with you, Padfoot? James asked yesterday, frowning. And yesterday that matter had been, simply, that Remus had accidentally brushed past him in the bathroom while Sirius had been shaving, and that’d apparently been enough for Sirius to flinch, razor sent clattering into the sink.

They’d both frozen, and when Remus spun to face him and found Sirius staring back, nothing, nothing in his eyes, it’d been the longest Sirius had looked at him for roughly four days.

But James, in the doorway, had asked – What’s the matter with you, Padfoot?, and Sirius been gripping the edge of the basin with both hands when he’d muttered, nothing. Wasn’t concentrating. And James had left and then it was just them, again.

You’re bleeding, Remus had told him flatly, nodding towards the nick on Sirius’ jaw, beading red. And then he’d walked out.

Because the thing is. The thing is, Sirius has always been so very predictable in his capacity to devastate Remus. Sometimes loving is just the same thing as knowing, and Remus doesn’t know anything the way he knows Sirius – doesn’t know himself unless he’s got Sirius to define it against. It’s – it’s I’m me while you’re you, and right now Sirius isn’t himself.

Remus knew it. He knew this would change things, wishes he had never said anything at all. He always knew it, but maybe for Sirius it just took a little longer to set in. And that’s what that thing in the common room had been, then. Remus had been pathetic to think it could’ve meant anything else.

And now they’re this.

It makes Remus feel a variety of different things, of course, but chiefly he’s just tired. He’s really tired.

“Oi, Remus.”

It’s Peter’s voice which hauls Remus from his thoughts, stops him staring at the empty space between Marlene and Mary at dinner tonight. It feels especially cruel, as though they’re saving the seat for Sirius. It should be obvious by now that he isn’t going to turn up – that he’s somewhere else, doing something else. He does that a lot recently, but nevertheless: he’s conspicuous in his absence, as an empty seat. Like a missing tooth. Canine. It’s funny.

God – what’s the matter with him? He’s doing it again, isn’t he?

Peter’s voice once more: “Remus?”

This time it’s more successful; Remus briefly presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, turns to Peter beside him, who’s looking between Remus and his incomplete Care of Magical Creatures homework in front of him with a decidedly desperate expression.

“Sorry, Pete,” he says. “What did you – erm, right. Griffins and Hippogriffs. The main difference is their back halves, right? A Griffin is half eagle, half lion, and a Hippogriff is half eagle, half horse. And – oh, er – wings. They’ve both got wings.”

“Right,” Peter says. “And they’re both classified as XXXX?” He dips his quill into his inkwell and then pauses, hand hovering over his parchment.

“We should ask Kettleburn,” Marlene suggests wisely, laying her head on Dorcas’ shoulder. She grins at Mary, who pokes her tongue out in way of response.

“No, only Griffins. Hippogriffs are XXX.”

Dorcas gives him a curious look. “How do you just know that off the top of your head? You don’t even take Care of Magical Creatures, do you?”

“No, but I, er—” Remus glances in James’ direction, to find his friend looking straight back at him. He scratches the side of his head. “I’ve just read the book a lot, I suppose. The Scamander one? Fantastic Beasts.”

He pointedly does not add: you would too, if you were in it. Before coming to Hogwarts, back when his parents had been sure they’d have to educate Remus from home, his father had brought home quite a few battered, second-hand textbooks. Remus had spent so long scouring the werewolf section of Fantastic Beasts that his mum had taken it away from him, in the end. Dog-eared and broken-spined.

“Newt Scamander?” says Marlene. “From the papers, like?”

“He’s in there quite a bit, yes.”

“No – I mean – he’s the bloke that was in it today, wasn’t he?” Marlene lifts her head, looking to Dorcas as if for confirmation. “Talking about all that,” she waves her hand about. “Oh – the stuff with the werewolves, wasn’t it?”

Beside him, Remus feels Peter freeze.

“Oh?” Remus raises his eyebrows, reaching over to fill his plate with a few roast potatoes he has no intention of eating. He’s acutely aware of the fact that James’ eyes are still on him.

“Yeah – did you not see? Didn’t you get the paper this morning?”

“Didn’t actually get around to reading it,” James explains. He pushes his glasses a little further up his nose, hesitates. “…What did it say?”

“Long and short of it? They’re just cracking down on them, really. I mean, so many of them are siding with the death eaters now, and they’re all so underground – the Ministry doesn’t really know where most of them are operating, and they’re under a lot of pressure after that incident with those bitten children in Bristol before Christmas. That made them look right incompetent. So,” says Marlene, leaning forward. She huffs her hair out of her eyes.

“They’re – you know – stepping it all up. More staff for the WCU, a big song and dance to prove they’ve got some semblance of control over the situation. It mentioned legislation, but they haven’t actually, like, announced anything yet.”

Beneath the table, Remus shoves his hands into his pockets. Stares down at his plate. “Ah.”

“WCU?” Mary asks. “What’s that stand for?”

“Werewolf Capture Unit,” Peter supplies darkly.

“Oh. Well. Honestly – it’s just one thing after another, isn’t it? Not enough that we’ve got to worry about,” Mary lowers her voice, “You-Know-Who, and all of that – now it’s werewolves? For God’s sake.”

“Mare, it’s not as simple as all that…”

“That wasn’t what Scamander was talking about, though,” Marlene continues. “He was mainly writing about the reclassification: they’re moving werewolves back to the Beasts division – it’s easier to pass laws over beasts. I think he was criticizing the decision, I dunno. Didn’t read the whole thing, it was like a – sodding double-page spread.”

“I didn’t realize they were ever classified as Beings in the first place,” Mary admits. “Remus, sweet, could you pass me the gravy?”

“Well, they were,” James says tightly. “They still should be, too. This is bollocks.”

“It just makes no sense to me,” Lily adds. “I can’t understand who in the world decided that the best way to prevent an isolated group from being radicalized, was to discriminate against them even more.”

“The Ministry never makes much sense these days,” Peter points out. He shoots Remus a sideways glance, a small, sad smile that Remus doesn’t know how to respond to.

Dorcas sighs. “Yeah. I suppose they had to do something, but this seems…counterproductive.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” James scoffs. “It’s rot.”

James has always been good that way – quick to voice his disgust over any and all werewolf-related injustices (sometimes more vocally than Remus would generally prefer). He’s always carried Remus’ anger and frustration, so that he doesn’t have to. And it’s brilliant; James is brilliant, he’s the dictionary definition, he’s the colour gold. There is something utterly, unjustifiably, unfairly magic in James’ goodness, in a way that maybe Remus won’t fully appreciate until they’re all a little older. All a little wiser.

But he doesn’t always have the energy for this stuff, not the way James does. And he’s sitting here, surrounded by his friends, and all he can think about is the empty space between Marlene and Mary, and isn’t that sickening? Isn’t that awful? Remus often wishes he were made of the same stuff that James is.

Remus makes his mind up. Stands. “I’m going to – er. Go to the bathroom,” he says, when he catches James frowning at him. “Catch up with you lot later, I think.”

“D’you feel alright, Remus?” James asks. Remus returns a smile that’s hopefully less strained that it feels.

“Course,” he says. “Just a bit tired.” And with that he leaves.

Though he’d said he was going to the bathroom, he didn’t actually plan on it. But after wandering around for a while, he ends up there anyway – specifically, the first-floor boys’ bathroom, which no one ever really goes in because barely any of the stalls lock properly, one of the toilets has a habit of spontaneously overflowing every now and then, and to top it off it’s hidden away down a side corridor – unless you know it’s there, you’re unlikely to stumble across it.

It’s a grimy bathroom, but it’s an empty one – and a good place to smoke, too, on frostbitten days like today when Remus doesn’t fancy braving it outside.

When Remus pushes the door open, however, and someone on the other side of it swears, he finds that only two of those statements are true.

“f*ck off!” a voice – a male voice – calls, breathless.

But, see, the door is already swinging open, and when he remembers it, later, that all happens very slowly: Remus’ memory will weather those door hinges a little, as if those extra few seconds might stave off the inevitable.

Rems realizes far too late that that was Sirius’ voice, and so it’s only logical that when the door opens – very quickly, in reality – Sirius is there, leaning back against a grey urinal, hands resting on the waist of the girl with short, black hair, whom he is kissing.

“Oh,” says Remus, possibly.

They break away instantly: it’s then that Remus recognizes the girl as Anna Xiang, one of the nicer Hufflepuffs whom he’d had Arithmancy with last year. She’s facing the doorway, now, cheeks flushed with pink-tinged horror before she looks down and begins to frantically button her blouse back up. Sirius makes no such effort regarding his own shirt; in fact, it seems that all he does is stare at Remus, slack-jawed, eyes round and bright and blustering.

Quiet and gentle, in that rare way of his: “Moony?”

At some point, Remus reckons, somebody knocks the air out of him.

“Oh my god, Black!” Anna hisses. “You said no one ever comes in here, oh my god, I told you we should’ve locked the door!”

Remus’ second attempt at speaking is no more fruitful: “Er—”. Immediately, he averts his eyes from the pair of them; the next thing they land on is a mirror, but his own face is almost worse, so instead he settles on the floor. “Sorry – I’m, really – thought it was empty, I’ll…”

“Oh my god,” Anna is muttering, “oh my god, oh my god…”

“I'm – er – so sorry, I really didn’t—”

He spins on his heel, accidentally leaving the door ajar in his effort to get away as quickly as possible.

It isn’t shock, because this isn’t shocking – the slow, red-raw, mounting pressure between his ribs is wearied and ever so familiar; lungs full of stagnant rainwater, dead leaves and the like. The shape a mouth makes when it says the word, Oh.

And here again he’s angry with himself: for being angry with Sirius, for knowing he’s not allowed to be, for feeling so chokingly let-down despite having no right. This stupid, parasitic, pulverizing adoration that he has fought every step of the way. Remus loves Sirius furiously, even now; kicking and screaming and blood in his mouth. In smithereens.

He’s barely out of the bathroom before the sound of footsteps thunders behind him: “Remus! Hang on, wait, I—”

Sirius’ hand on his shoulder spins him around; Remus overbalances, palms flat against Sirius’ chest – shirt now buttoned, tie hung loose – until he rights himself, steps backwards quickly and without grace. There’s no sign of Anna, now.

“Uh, sorry – about that,” Sirius begins, seemingly still catching his breath. His lips are wet. Occasionally, the soft, dirty flames of the corridor’s bracketed torches point that out. “Sorry, I never thought anyone would come in, I – didn’t mean for anyone to...”

“I gathered that.”

“Right – ah, of course, well—”

Remus holds a hand up to silence him. Surprisingly, it works. “It’s not a big deal, Sirius. Really, I was only going to have a cigarette, I didn’t realize anybody was in there. I’m sorry for – er – interrupting.”

“Me and Anna – we’re not…we’re not dating, you know. Just, if you thought. We’re not a…thing.”

“…Alright,” Remus replies, slowly. He shrugs – it doesn’t really matter either way, after all. Doesn’t change anything. “That’s…really not my business, Sirius.”

Sirius’ brows draw up. “No, but I’m just – letting you know, yeah? Just – didn’t want you to see and…and get the wrong impression—”

Remus resists the urge to scoff – what was the right impression? he’d ask, if he were braver.

“Genuinely, Sirius, you – don’t have to explain anything to me, f*cking – Jesus, I’m not your—”

“Not my what?” Sirius demands, voice rising suddenly as he shakes his hair back. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his shirt sleeve and Remus has to look away. “Not my what?”

There’s silence for a moment. Sirius’ nostrils flare; his arms fall to his sides.

Finally, Remus sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “Er – nothing. Nevermind. This isn’t a big deal,” he says again. “Besides. Nothing I haven’t seen before, right?”

Sirius’ face falls. There’s a flicker of something like guilt. “Moons…”

“Stop it. Just – please, stop. What are you actually doing, Sirius?” Remus cuts in, exasperated. “What – what is this? What would you like me to say?”

“What?”

“We haven’t spoken in four days,” and then Remus does laugh: tiredly, bitterly. He scrubs a hand through his hair, tugs at his fringe. “Sirius, you’ve barely looked at me for four days. And now – this is what you finally want to talk about? What is this? What am I supposed to do with this?”

“That isn’t true,” Sirius shoots back. “We’ve spoken.”

Tilting his head, Remus asks, “when? When have we actually talked, like normal? You know we haven’t.”

“Do not tell me what I—”

“You know we haven’t. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

Sirius pauses. Then, he tips his chin up.

“Yeah? Well, you know what? We’re two people, you and me, so – so don’t act like you’ve spoken to me either, Remus. It takes two people to not talk to each other, doesn’t it? And you – I mean, sh*t, I’m being lectured by the f*cking king of poor communication here. Because as usual, you don’t ever make the first move, do you? If it bothered you, the way we’ve been, you could’ve said something. But – no: just repress everything, right? That’s what you do, just, f*ck.” Sirius snaps his gaze to the wall. He pushes his tongue into the side of his cheek, before his mouth curls into a spiteful, incredulous smile.

“And so you just…just walk about all miserable, instead. Feeling f*cking sorry for yourself because god forbid the alternative – oh, god forbid Remus has to have a conversation that’s even vaguely, potentially difficult –”

“I did that!” Remus cries, flinging his hands about desperately. “I f*cking did that, Sirius! I told you – I told you that night in the common room, I said you’d been quiet and I didn’t know what to make of it, so why did you lie? Why did you say you were fine when you obviously f*cking weren’t, when you then proceeded to avoid me for four f*cking days, hm? If you’ve got a problem with – with me, now, then I’d rather you actually—”

“What are you talking about? Problem with you? I don’t have a problem with you, Remus! I never had a problem with you! That’s the whole – for f*ck’s…” Sirius turns around for a moment, and the tiny silver earring in his left lobe glints, and all Remus can hear is the blood pounding in his own ears. At some point he’d clenched his hands into fists at his sides – now, as he uncurls them, they sting; little crescent-moon indentations where his nails have dug in.

“You don’t get it, Remus,” Sirius mutters quietly. Remus’ eyes follow the dejected slump of his shoulders. It’s new on him. Remus feels like the word ache. “You don’t – it’s…you don’t understand, alright? But I can’t…”

“No. I don’t understand.”

Remus waits. Waits, and waits, for Sirius to say something else. But he’s just standing there looking defeated, which can’t be right. Because that’d make Remus the winner here, and he surely feels nothing of the sort. This is all your doing, he’d like to say. This mess – me. I am all your doing. Yours, yours, yours.

“I’m…sorry,” Sirius offers, half-hearted and meagre, kicking at the floor. It comes out lopsided, though: raised at the end, tilted upwards like a question. Like he’s asking.

“Yeah. I – yeah. Sure, Sirius. Whatever.” Remus tucks his hands into his pocket, feels for his cigarette packet. “Anna seemed upset,” he says, just before he turns to go. “You should make sure she’s alright.”

Sirius blinks; glances upwards. “Yeah, I will. I’ll – do that. Are…are you alright, though?”

“M’fine,” Remus replies, without even thinking about it. It’s an easy lie. He starts walking, doesn’t stay to see how Sirius reacts. Doesn’t care.

(Though that’s a lie, too.)

-

ii.iii – february ninth, 6.44 p.m.

M’fine.

And – what could Sirius possibly say to that?

He says: I don’t have a problem with you, Remus! I never had a problem with you! and if he’d finished his sentence then maybe he could say, after that, that’s the whole f*cking reason I’m shouting at you here, right now, in the corridor, because the alternative is that I try to articulate something that I don’t even understand myself.

Something being, of course, that Sirius has barely looked at Remus because he finds he doesn’t know how to, anymore. It doesn’t work the same way, anymore.

Now, if he has the misfortune of doing so, it’ll without fail coincide with a squeeze to his lungs; some white-knuckled grip on them that Sirius can’t avoid, unless he avoids Remus. Now, he looks at Remus and sees him: the way his mouth screws up when he’s trying not to laugh, the way he has to be doing something with his hands if he’s nervous, the fact that there is green in his eyes (and Sirius knows that because he is trying not to look, but when he does it is always, always carefully).

So, when Remus is standing there in front of him in his stupid jumper, with his stupid eyes and his stupid everything, asking Sirius why he lied, how can Sirius possibly explain that it’s because the truth is that all of a sudden Remus confuses him? Undoes him. Distracts him. And Sirius can spend hours in bathrooms and broom cupboards with as many other people as he likes – which is what he does, too – but it never seems to obscure the fact that Sirius wanted to kiss him in the common room and he wants to kiss him now and when Remus is yelling I f*cking did that, Sirius! he wants to kiss him then, as well.

No. I don’t understand, he says, as if Sirius f*cking does.

Of course he can’t say any of that. He thinks of the look on Remus’ face when he walked into the bathroom: a sinking, falling thing, like the shop shutters coming down – what on earth would he look like if Sirius admitted that, then? What on earth would he think? How on earth would that help?

Remus stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks away and Sirius lets him. And it’s a razor hitting a sink and it’s an Exploding Snap card blowing up in his face and it’s the reason the two of them still don’t speak properly for days after that.

-

ii.iv – february eleventh, 7.26 p.m.

It’s three more days of awkward, eggshell-brittle distance, when all eight of them find themselves in the common room.

“I’m really not fussed, honestly – you’re sweet to plan anything at all, Lils, you really don’t have to go to all that trouble for me in the first place…”

Remus anticipates Sirius’ reaction before it comes: legs still slung over the arm of the sofa (he’s taking up half of it, laying that way, though it’s not as if Dorcas and Marlene mind sharing a seat), he sits up immediately, affronted. “No, no,” he says, before Lily can reply, wagging his finger in Mary’s direction.

“No, we do have to go to all that trouble, we absolutely have to go to all that trouble! I was promised a night of music and alcohol, MacDonald. That was a legally binding contract. Your new-found decorum will not stand in the way of me seeing someone throw up into their shoes and then try to wear them again—"

From his seat by the fire, Peter flushes with impressive haste. “We agreed not to talk about that night…”

“Happens to the best of us,” Remus assures him, offering as sympathetic a smile as he can muster.

“And sometimes it also happens to Pete,” Sirius adds chirpily, not at all affected by the hand gesture he gets in response. “Point is, Mare, it’s your eighteenth, and that’s a big one for muggles, right? So if we don’t all spend next Saturday pissed out of our minds, well, as a Muggle Studies student I’m going to feel extremely hard done by.”

Lily grimaces, settling back against James. They’re sharing one of the armchairs again; they’ve been doing it for months, and Remus, who’s taken the other one, is honestly still surprised James is yet to spontaneously combust from pure force of joy – a seventeen-year-old, six-foot red-and-gold firework display with poor eyesight waiting to happen.

Mary giggles at Sirius’ comment – “okay, okay, we’ll have a party.” Idly, Marlene is toying with Sirius’ hair.

“God, our celebrations always sound so vulgar and sleazy when you describe them, Black,” Lily laments.

“Do you have any idea how many stuffy formal dinners I’ve had to sit through in my life, Evans? I don’t see the fun in a celebration that isn’t vulgar and sleazy,” Sirius replies. “Every shot is like a little reparation for my years of suffering, in fact.” And then he winks. f*cking winks.

Marlene grins. “Oh, yes, we’re well aware of how much you value sleaze, love.” Her hand slips down to tap the side of his neck, though the hickey there has long since faded. Sirius squirms, a wicked smile of his own as he attempts to angle his head out of her reach.

There’s a hole in the upholstery on this armchair. Remus picks at it.

“Oi,” James pipes up, finally, over scattered laughter. “Leave him alone, the lot of you. Sirius’ extracurricular activities are solely between him and his lady friends and the many various prefects who happen to walk in on them during their rounds.”

Sirius’ eyes sweep to Remus, for a second, then. Remus catches his gaze and does nothing with it, but it’s only a second, anyway, and then they’re gone.

Dorcas wrinkles her nose. “Please don’t call them that.”

“What? Extracurricular activities or lady friends?”

“Potter, if you have to ask…”

“Ah, we’re only joking, Jamesie; Sirius knows I love him very dearly, don’t you, Black?” Marlene smiles, and Sirius, upside-down, blows her a kiss.

When Dorcas clears her throat in mock-jealousy, Marlene chuckles, leaning into her girlfriend’s side. And if Remus hadn’t been watching Sirius right at that moment, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the way Sirius’ smile falters a little, then, as he looks at the two of them. No one else seems to.

He doesn’t look unhappy, per se. Just – musing.

Remus focuses on something else instead. Does Peter know he’s wearing odd socks today?

“You and half the girls in this castle, Marls,” says Mary, throwing Lily one of those knowing smiles that always remind Remus a lot of James and Sirius. “A trail of broken hearts probably stretching all the way back to King’s Cross…”

“And then back again.”

“And then round the lake a few times for good measure.”

“And then—”

“Oh, oh, I am sorry,” Sirius interrupts, raising his hands defensively. “I didn’t realize I’d been brought before the f*cking – the f*cking dating Wizengamot, f*cking hell. But get your jokes in now, anyway, because it’s irrelevant: I’m not doing it anymore.”

“Not doing what?” Remus asks, before he can help himself. Sirius snaps his head round to look at him, and Remus thinks that perhaps Sirius had forgotten he was there. Which might be easier to believe, truly, were his eyes not so searingly intense now, dark and clear and a somehow a little sad. As though he knows something Remus does not.

And then they’re gone.

“Not…” Sirius shrugs, addressing the group as a whole. “I dunno. Doing that. Like, going around with all different people all the time. Not doing it anymore.”

“Why’s that, then?” says James.

“Don’t want to. It’s…I just don’t fancy it anymore. I’d just like to stop, so I’m stopping, is all. Guess I’m bored of it.”

“Oh my god.” Marlene’s smile is slow and mischievous; she raises a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. “Is there a someone? Oh my god, please, please, is there a someone? Are you sweet on somebody, Sirius?”

Peter’s left sock is striped. Blue and green – like a minimalist landscape although it really isn’t, and oh, what’s that painter’s name? Diebenkorn? Diebenkorn! Blue and green like a Diebenkorn, but not. And Remus has picked a rather large hole in the fabric of this armchair, now – he’ll feel guilty about that later, if he remembers, which he won’t, and—

Sirius has spent the best part of seven days not looking at Remus, but he’s doing it now, silver-soft and rounded edges, when he says, “no.”

Whether it’s out of insistence or apology or pity, Remus’ stomach churns all the same. He’s got no idea what Sirius is searching for in his face, but he hopes he doesn’t find it.

And maybe he doesn’t: Sirius shakes his hair back and laughs, briefly and deliberately. “Merlin, I don’t – no. Nothing…nothing like that, ‘course not. Just because Jamie and Evans are halfway down the aisle,” (Lily blushes, James’ glare fools nobody), “doesn’t mean the rest of us are quite there yet.”

“Baby steps, Black. I’m willing to bet we’ll make a lovesick git of you yet – composing poetry in no time, yeah? Ooh, and you could do it in French. Watch out, Lamartine.”

“You’ve heard of Lamartine?”

“I’ve heard of lots of things, posh boy.”

Sirius rolls his eyes, and then Remus doesn’t know what he does after that because he takes care to be staring quite literally anywhere else. James hums.

“Mm, I agree Marls. I’ll start getting in an extra copy of The Prophet, shall I? I actually think you’ll grow to quite enjoy the crossword, given the right company and all.”

Sirius lobs a cushion at James’ head. “f*ck off, Potter.”

-

ii.v – february fifteenth, 10.12 a.m.

“So, why are you here, Black?”

Sirius frowns. “Why do I have to have a reason?”

“I’m finding it hard to believe you’ve decided to waste your free period following me up here just to enjoy the view.”

Marlene’s got him there: Sirius can think of any number of places he’d rather be this morning than the Owlery – in fact, even the library is looking like a more attractive option in this moment (which is a realization that Sirius might have found a lot more distressing, had the recent weeks not served to demonstrate that there are far worse things to discover about yourself).

He’s never liked it much up here; noisy and dirty and not as if he’s ever had much interest in writing home. Even now that he’s with the Potters, Sirius hasn’t been able to pick up the habit. James writes letters for the both of them, Sirius signs at the bottom. Your favourite son or James’ big brother or just, Sirius.

“Alright,” Sirius says eventually. He leans over, peers out through one of the Owlery slats. Grey on grey on grey; the Black Lake churns like liquid granite. “Alright. I was sort of – hoping we could talk about something, actually.”

Marlene looks up from where her hands are fretting, trying to attach a letter to her barn owl, Agnetha (there’s not a soul out there / no one to hear my prayer – that’s the one.) Her blue nail polish, shimmering, reminds Sirius distantly of summer, of warmer waters, and he shivers. Pulls his jacket further across his front. “Ah,” she replies, with the beginnings of a smile. “You’re being really weird, love. What would you like to talk about?”

“I, uh. I need advice.”

“Nothing makes my day like hearing Sirius Black say those words.”

Sirius scowls, already beginning to regret bothering to make the climb. “Give me a break, McKinnon. I’m not joking.”

“Didn’t say you were, love,” Marlene replies calmly. She straightens up, sends Agnetha off with a treat and a pat, pale feathers disappearing against paler sky. f*cking February; something so miserable about the last month of winter, about the persistence of rain and frost and dead things. “So, then. What can I help you with that the rest of your little barbershop quartet can’t?”

“It’s – right.” Sirius inhales, kicking at the straw beneath him, eyes on his boots as though to confirm that they – along with his feet – are, in fact, there, unsteady as he feels. He’s ready to speak in vague terms, leave out names and details. “Well – the thing is, right – it’s sort of difficult to explain. It's - there's, someone—"

But Marlene beats him to it.

“Is this about Lupin?” she cuts in, suddenly, casually, like you could substitute Lupin for the Charms homework or the weather forecast or f*cking – what’s for dinner. Sirius snaps his head up to find Marlene, smug and self-satisfied and triumphant Marlene, blue eyes twinkling: ha. Got you.

And then Marlene just laughs – laughs at the reaction a single name drags from him. Sirius looks away and then he looks back but it’s far too late: she already knows she’s right, watching him with a smile-turned-grin – and perhaps she’s got some new-fangled sort of legilimency or something, that allows her to look straight through him and notice, too, the jolt of his internal organs: stomach, lungs, even the irrelevant ones. Liver, kidney, all of it heaving downwards. The whole sodding lot.

So, perhaps it’s desperation, or perhaps it’s a little of that Gryffindor perseverance, then, that has Sirius going, “why – how – I…don’t know what you mean by that.”

“It’s freezing up here, love, let’s not waste time doing that.” Marlene’s tone is still teasing, but her face is now kind. She moves to lean against the bird-sh*t crusted wall, pauses, casts a scourgify first and then proceeds. “You said you wanted advice?”

Sirius feels stupid. He hates it – hates the way Remus can make him feel this idiotic. “Fine.”

“Grand. So. Lupin. You fancy him, don’t you?”

He thinks about it, though, and it doesn’t feel like that’s what this is. Sirius has fancied people before – when he thinks of the word, a lot of other words come to mind: fleeting, and trivial and all other things quick and fast and easy, all things chocolate-box sweet and pre-packaged and consumable rather than consuming.

This, this is something different. Remus is different. It’s – delicate; sleepy-soft and bleary, resting thick in his chest like treacle. This is something fragile. Sirius has possibly already broken it.

But he says, “yeah, a bit,” because that’s a lot to explain, even if he wanted to.

“I knew it.” Marlene’s elation balances out Sirius’ horror rather nicely: he can’t help but get the impression that, if she was just a tad more dedicated to this bit, she might actually, genuinely clap her hands together. “I f*cking knew it, oh my god. So – the other night, then? I was right! You are sweet on somebody, and you said no because he was sitting right there.”

“I’m sorry?” Sirius may be sick through one of the Owlery slats. Anyone hanging about in the courtyard beneath it is, from this moment forth, doing so at their own risk. “What do you mean you knew it? Who else knows it?”

“Calm down, love, I’m pretty sure it’s just me – at least it is to my knowledge. It’s not…proper obvious, if that’s what you’re worried about. Though from the sounds of it I knew before you did, then?”

“How could you know I fancy Remus before I do?”

Marlene sighs, as if that’s a ridiculous question. “We’re really going to do this? Alright, then. Well: you used to stare at him far too often, for starters, and you were always all over him—”

“—I’m always all over everyone—”

“Not like that,” she says, with a decisive shake of her head. “And there was the Halloween party, too – when Remus was talking to that Ravenclaw girl for ages. You didn’t take your eyes off him all night, all moping about the common room. And I just thought – hm. Maybe, you know? Just…maybe.”

Halloween? Surely he hasn’t felt this way since then. He doesn’t remember feeling this way, and he would, wouldn’t he? No, this has to be new. Sirius never thought about Remus like that before.

Right?

“Remus was drunk on Halloween. And that girl was – she must’ve known how drunk he was, and she wouldn’t leave him alone even though he clearly wasn’t interested, and I was just…worried about him.”

Marlene raises her eyebrows a little. “I dunno, Black. He was laughing at her jokes quite a bit…”

“He was bladdered! And that’s just what he’s like! He’s just – he’s f*cking nice, and kind, and just because he’ll laugh at someone’s jokes so they don’t feel embarrassed, doesn’t mean he…”

Sirius trails off when he looks at Marlene and realizes that he’s one word away from making her burst into laughter.

“It’s not funny!”

“This is adorable.”

“I didn’t come to you to be laughed at!”

“Alright, alright.” Marlene raises her hands as if to make peace, flicks her blonde hair back. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, but – you get what I mean, yeah? I’ve thought you might like him for a while. The two of you are different with each other. You’ve always been a bit…gentler, with Lupin.”

Sirius has nothing to say to that.

“So…what’s brought all this on? The fact that he’s a boy?”

Sirius half-shrugs. “No, it’s – not that. I don’t really care about that, I don’t think.”

“Okay,” Marlene says, slowly. “Because – Remus likes blokes too. I know you know that.”

He stops dead. “Who told you that? That’s supposed to be a secret.”

“He told me, love. Ages ago. Everyone knew I liked girls, even before I got with Dor. It’s – easier to talk about with someone who gets it.”

“I’ve only known for about two weeks.” It’s awful, but Sirius can’t help but feel some sort of tug at that. Remus could’ve talked to him about anything, and Sirius thought he knew that – it’s what they do, the two of them. Did.

“Mm.” Marlene hugs her arms around herself a little tighter as the wind whips around them, sharpened and corpse-cold. “He told me that, too. I wouldn’t ever be talking to you about this if he hadn’t.”

“I…didn’t realise you two spoke so much.”

Marlene grins. “Getting jealous, love?” she asks, playful. “You know you’ll always be my favourite, Black. We don’t really talk all that much, me and him, but like I said – it’s easier, you know? He needed some to talk to, so. He’s a very sweet boy.”

“I know that,” Sirius grits out. He fiddles with his earring a little. He pierced it himself, a long while ago now, but the damned thing never quite healed right.

“And,” Marlene says, then. “He told me you’ve been acting weird around him ever since.”

“What? He...told you – he thinks that’s what it was about?”

“So you have been acting weird?”

“No – yes – not because of that!” He cries, far more frantically than he’s willing to admit. “He thinks this is about him liking blokes? Are you kidding me? f*cking - for f*ck's sake, it’s not – I’ve been acting weird because I’ve trying to forget about fact that I might f*cking love him—”

“Oh, Sirius.”

He didn’t mean to say that. He did not mean to say that. Sirius pauses. Regroups. Marlene is watching him with the sort of pity one usually reserves for stray dogs, or idiots, which is a strange Venn diagram to be occupying the centre of.

“Fancy,” he corrects, utterly futile, breathing through his nose. “Fancy him. When he told us about – you know, that, he mentioned there’d been a boy back in Wales a few summers back. And I didn’t get it then but – that’s what bothered me – not…not the other stuff! I was – jealous, which is stupid, I know, but then it just got bigger and bigger and ever since then I’ve been trying to get over my – my feelings, or whatever, and I can’t do that when I’m around him all the time, so I had to…not be. Around him.”

“And how did that go for you?” Marlene asks, with the air of somebody who knows exactly how it f*cking went for him.

Sirius grimaces. “He may have, uh – walked in on me snogging somebody, a few days ago. And it was all just – I tried to talk to him and it went really badly and we sort of…shouted at each other a bit, actually, and – he was upset that I’d been avoiding him, said I obviously had some sort of problem with him, but I didn’t realize he thought…” He glances at Marlene, briefly, guiltily, but she remains expressionless.

“Anyway. I did tell him that I didn’t have a problem with him, but I – don’t think he believed me. I wouldn’t have believed me if I were him. We still haven’t really talked to each other since.”

The longer Marlene waits to speak, the heavier Sirius’ words seem to hang in the air between them. The wind picks up to fill her silence; around them, birds hoot and bristle, disgruntled. Sirius squints out into the distance, at the fog rolling in, the mountains that tear through its’ vulnerable flesh.

“So,” Marlene says, eventually, mercifully, drawing out the word. Sirius would like to know what she’s thinking, but then again, this is Marlene: he’s probably about to find out.

“So you aren’t speaking to him, and you still fancy him,” (the way the corner of her mouth twitches upwards as she says fancy is not lost on Sirius: they’re both thinking about the other word he’d used), “so as masterplans go, yours is zero for two.”

“I didn’t know what else to do! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! I can’t – I see him and it’s all I can think about and that can’t happen – you get that? He’s…he’s my best friend—”

“I thought James was your—”

“James is my brother,” Sirius says, automatic, gesturing dismissively. “Remus is my best friend. And this would ruin that, you know? This just…this just obliterates it. And I can’t do that. I can’t stand that.”

Marlene hums, nods in all the right places, and Sirius appreciates, then, just how much of a star she is – more than he’s ever been, certainly. Unwaveringly patient – he’s not sure how he never manages to drive her up the wall.

“Have you ever considered telling him?”

Sirius’ frown deepens. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Of course not. I’ve barely even…I don’t know what I’d do if I told him and he didn’t…” he trails off, deciding on the sport that some things just aren’t worth thinking about.

“Anyway. I might not need to. It might still pass,” he adds, painfully aware that that isn’t going to happen. As if to prove it, on cue, he thinks of Remus: just Remus. He’s not even doing anything; he’s possibly several hundred images superimposed onto one another, he’s possibly just a voice or a smile or a habit. But Sirius knows immediately: fat chance. Fat f*cking chance, idiot.

Marlene kicks off the wall, stepping towards him. “Why did you come to me, Sirius? What advice do you actually need?”

Isn’t it obvious? “I don’t…” he begins. “I need you to tell me what to do. And I’ve always thought you and me – we get on – and I can’t believe you’re making me say this, but I trust your judgement, McKinnon. Plus, I don’t really know who else I could talk to about something like this. Not James – not…when it’s Remus.”

Marlene co*cks her head, somewhat disapproving. “I can’t tell you what to do, Sirius. That’s up to you.”

“Then I need you to tell me what you think.”

“…What I think? Honestly?”

“Honestly.” Sirius slings his hair out of his eyes, tries for a smile. “I’m a big boy, McKinnon.”

“Well,” says Marlene, inhaling sharply. “I actually think you’re being rather childish.”

Oh. Sirius nods slowly, once.

“I think,” she continues, “that avoiding Remus with no explanation just because you thought it’d help you get over him probably really – hurt him, love. It sounds like a sh*tty thing to do, and I don’t think you’re a sh*tty person, not at all, but…I do think that you can’t have it both ways. It isn’t fair on him.”

“Both ways?” Sirius repeats. “How is this me having it both ways?”

“It’s like – you don’t want to let this ruin your friendship. Okay. Fine. I understand that, Sirius, I really do. But if you two aren’t speaking, aren’t you already doing that? You can’t hope to stay friends with him if you can’t be around him because you’re so frightened of your own feelings. It just isn’t going to work.”

“But—”

“No, no, but nothing,” Marlene cuts in, firm. “You asked me what I think – this is it. You’re telling me about all these different things, all these things you don’t want, but here’s my question, love.”

Sirius always knows he’s done right talking to Marlene, because she always tells him the sort of thing he doesn’t really want to hear. Now, her gaze is stern: eyes keen and ineludible, cheeks ruddy from the chill. The wind shifts and her hair tickles his face a little, smells like artificial strawberries.

“Sirius,” says Marlene. She gives him a small smile, touches his cheek lightly, frozen skin on frozen skin. A star.

“Sirius,” Marlene is saying, has said. And it’s the sort of thing you know is coming, but you only realize you were expecting it after it’s out. “What do you want?”

-

part iii: side effects.

it’s not the side effects of the cocaine / i’m thinking that it must be love.

iii.i – february eighteenth, 4.42 p.m.

“You could help, you know.”

“Theoretically? Yes.”

“And me and James’ll get so much sh*t if it gets out that we let you smoke in here, too.”

Remus stares at Lily; hands on her hips, red hair twisted up out of her face and pinned through with her wand – he recalls that leaving James utterly dumb, when he used to watch from afar (and it honestly still does, now). Her eyes, narrow with disapproval, are focused on Remus’ hands.

“…It’s medicinal,” he offers, slowly. Lily raises an eyebrow – that’s a real talent of hers, that is, and right now it has the effect of making her look distinctly – if not really sincerely – unimpressed with him.

“Your Benson & Hedges are medicinal?”

He glances down at the cigarette between his fingers, and then back up at Lily. Exhales out of the corner of his mouth. Hesitates. “…If I say yes, am I allowed to finish it?”

Lily answers that with an eye-roll and a packet of multi-coloured muggle balloons shoved into his free hand.

“I can’t believe you were a prefect sometimes. Remus, balloons. Balloons, Remus. There. You’re formally acquainted, now – blow them up. It’s all hands on deck, Lupin.”

She turns to walk away, then, but pauses. Sighs and looks back at him and adds, finally, “oh, sod it.” Gesturing towards the cigarette: “Give me one, would you?”

Fumbling for his packet, Remus doesn’t even get to finish making his own retaliatory prefect comment before Lily swats him on the arm for it, though this time there’s a smile lighting the way she rolls her eyes. Having extricated himself from the armchair – the frayed little hole he picked in it still visible – Remus casts a look out over the rest of the common room – or, at least, what used to be the common room. Right now, it appears more akin to a moderately-sized distillery.

Over in the corner, Marlene and Sirius are setting up drinks: bottles of dark auburn spirits and multi-pack cans and liquors in vivid, unnatural hues that make Remus think of the word radioactive. Owing to the authority that only being a seventh-year will grant you, most of the younger years appear to have been shepherded away to their dorms already; Julie Fernsby is rifling through a large stack of records (and occasionally clicking her tongue in distaste, it’s a bad day for the Bee Gees), and Peter and James are holding opposite ends of a large banner, peering up at the ceiling in confusion (this does explain earlier, when Remus overheard someone tell James very clearly that you’ll have to levitate it or something! For the last time, James, you’re not flying your broom in here!). Peter’s holding his end the wrong way round, though, so the banner’s twisting in the middle and from where Remus stands it simply reads, HAPPY EIGHTEE.

Lily finishes lighting her cigarette (she’s got her own bloody lighter, the hypocrite), plucks it from her mouth as the two of them make their way over to the rest of the group. James seems to have spied the smoke instantly, and is now watching Lily with a familiar look of utter enchantment. “Dor’s coming later with her Hufflepuff mates," she informs Remus.

“And where’s the birthday girl herself?”

“Mary’s upstairs getting ready with Angie,” says Marlene, uncorking a bottle of luminous-pink something-or-other and giving it a cautious sniff. “On Lily’s express instructions not to come down until we’re ready.”

Lily nods affirmatively. “Precisely. Actually, now I’ve found you, Remus—”

“I really have been sitting over there the entire time—”

“If you give Peter the balloons, you and James figure out to hang that banner up, would you? You’ve enough height between the two of you to manage it without turning the place into a Quidditch pitch.”

Noting that Sirius has kept his back turned towards the drinks table the entire time, Remus exchanges the packet of balloons for Pete’s banner and, upon glancing upwards at the high ceiling, immediately grasps the issue.

“Can’t we just go and get a ladder?” he asks James, wrenching him out of his Lily-induced trance. Remus grinds his cigarette into the little ashtray Sirius transfigured for the side table last year. “Filch keeps them in most of the broom cupboards.”

As soon as they step through the portrait hole in search of one, however, James turns to him with a purpose that suggests he’s completely forgotten what they were actually supposed to be looking for anyway.

“Listen, mate,” he begins immediately. They start to walk. “Can I have a word?”

“Er - I feel as though you’re about to have one either way,” Remus replies, bemused.

James chuckles. “Right, well – that’s true.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. Once it might’ve been vanity – now, it’s just habit. “Look, Moony. I don't mean to fuss, but...I’m a bit worried about you, mate.”

“What?” Remus’ pace falters. He’s not sure what he had expected James to say, but he’s quite sure it wasn’t that. “Why? I’m—”

“Fine, I know. You’re always fine. I’ve seen you get through a moon by the skin of your teeth and tell us you’re fine. But this isn’t – you’ve looked…down, recently, mate. I know you like your space and all that, but I’m allowed to be concerned, yeah? And you’ve seemed like there’s something on your mind, and I thought maybe it was all that werewolf stuff that’s been in the papers recently—”

“Prongs,” Remus cuts in, “I’m honestly—”

James raises his eyebrows, and Remus has to stop himself before he says fine. “…Not – er – down, about anything. I promise. I mean – I suppose I’ve been thinking about all that stuff a little but it’s not…new. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to be,” James mutters.

“I am, though. It’s the way it is. You don’t need to be concerned about me. I…appreciate it, I do, but it’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Hm. That’s really just a synonym for fine, Moony. Here on out I'm going to ban you from using fine – or any of it’s counterparts.” James shoots him a half-smile, the furrow in his brow not quite lifting. “That’s all it is, though? There’s nothing else going on?”

To be honest, Remus doesn’t get it – he’s looked down? That’s what James has noticed? Not – not Sirius, not the back of his head, not his evasive gaze and his mumbled replies? Remus?

But then he realizes, and suddenly he just feels stupid.

James hasn’t been getting any of that from Sirius. Because Sirius hasn’t been avoiding him.

“Nothing,” he swears, voice as sincere as he can make it. “But I know I could talk to you about it if there was something.”

James nods. “Always. Good. Well – as long as you know that. I don’t like to see you down. Promise me you’ll have fun tonight, yeah?”

“I promise, mum,” Remus says dutifully, though this doesn’t appear to sate James.

“Say it.”

Remus sighs. “I’ll have fun tonight. Promise. So much fun. The most fun. All the fun.”

Whatever fatherly effect there is to James ruffling Remus’ hair after that, it’s severely diminished by the fact that he has to reach above his own height to do it. “Alright, well, that’s good. Although I’m not sure the girls are going to let either of us have any fun at all if we don’t find a ladder to put that sodding banner up.”

“That’s your fault,” Remus points out, “for distracting us both by deciding to stage an intervention for me. We’ve walked past two cupboards already.”

“sh*t, have we really? Oh, hang on, there’s another one here—”

Fun, Remus thinks, as James crosses over to unlock a door on the far wall. It swings open and James ducks in, before beckoning Remus over to give him a hand. From the cupboard rings a series of clanging noises, a crash, and then a single, “f*ck!”. Remus grins.

Fun. He can do that, he decides. With or without Sirius. He can do that.

-

iii.ii – february eighteenth, 4.51 p.m.

He doesn’t turn around until James and Remus have left, bar a surreptitious glance over his shoulder just before the portrait cover swings shut. He catches the back of Remus’ neck, he catches brown hair curling at the nape.

Sirius peers back down at the bottles before him, pulls at the adhesive label on a bottle of firewhiskey.

Beside him, Marlene seems to have followed his gaze. She bumps her shoulder gently against his.

“Tonight, yeah?” she says quietly. “Do it tonight?”

He shrugs, non-committal. The label does that irritating thing where it only half-tears off.

“Maybe.”

-

iii.iii – february eighteenth, 8.37 p.m.

“Happy Birthday, Mare.”

“Eh?”

“I said, Happy Birthday.”

“Sorry – one more time? I can’t hear you.”

Struggling to be heard over the music – he feels for the younger years trying to get some sleep upstairs, he really does – Remus leans in towards Mary. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARE,” he repeats, near shouting. Mary giggles, raising a hand over her mouth.

“Thank you, sweet!” she calls back through her fingers. Together they move away from the crowd, settling for perching on the dormitory steps as they look out over the party. “It’s actually on Monday, but you can’t very well throw something like this on a Monday.”

“I am glad we did this, in the end,” Mary tells him, the liquor in her bottle sloshing in delicate curves as she gestures around the room. In the low light, shimmering, burnt-orange glitter sparkles around her eyes. Mary is always beautiful, but especially tonight. “It’s really wonderful. I’m having a really good time.”

“Good,” Remus smiles, and he means it when he says, “me too.”

Let it never be said that the Gryffindor class of seventy-eight throw a dull party: having provided the holy trinity of booze, music and people, James and Lily are lost, somewhere in the crowd that’s currently dancing to The Who (I’m not trying to cause a big sensation / I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my generation), and Marlene and Dorcas are heading opposing teams in the beer pong tournament they’ve set up on the coffee table.

Angie Bracknell is yet to relinquish control over the turntable, and for the last ten or so minutes Sirius appears to have been trying to get her to shove over, waving about one of his own records with growing frustration. Peter is at the drinks table, a girl on each arm as he mixes several different-coloured spirits into one cup. This may be the happiest Remus has ever seen him, and he doesn’t begrudge him a second of it.

“Have you got a drink?” Mary asks, eyeing his empty hands.

“I had a beer earlier, I’m alright,” Remus replies. “And James insisted I do a shot with him to kick things off. I think I’m set for the rest of the evening, actually.”

Mary tsks. “Night’s still young, Lupin. And you’re still sober. It’s my party, eh? I say you need something stronger.”

“As long as it isn’t whatever Pete’s concocting, I’m game.”

“I’ve been watching him – it’s at least sixty-percent vodka,” Mary informs him. “And fifteen-percent tequila. I reckon it’d melt the scales off a dragon at this point.”

Remus grins. He looks on as the girls convince Peter to take a timid sip, snickering with Mary when Peter’s face immediately screws up, and he splutters and doubles over.

“Oh, Pete.”

“Serves him right,” Mary laughs. She takes a swig of her own drink, but Remus sees her smile fade as she continues to watch the scenes before her. She sighs.

“What’s wrong, Mare?”

“Mm?” She turns to him. “Oh, nothing. I’m just…I suddenly realized that this is all going to end soon, isn’t it?”

Remus frowns. “What do you mean? We’ll still have parties after we leave school.”

“Yeah, but it’s…” she shakes her head sadly, adjusting the strap of her dress. “sh*t. It’s going to be different, isn’t it? It won’t be like this. And there’ll be the war, and—”

“The war won’t last forever,” Remus assures her. “And it won’t stop us having a few nights out.”

Mary just sniffs, but when Remus moves to put an arm around her she leans into it, lays her head on his shoulder. “I’m going to miss you lot so much,” she says. “All of you.”

“We’re not going anywhere, Mare. Even if you want us to. We’re all rather stuck with each other now, you see.”

She chuckles wetly into his cardigan. “Good. M’gonna hold you to that.”

“I expect no less.”

“This is a really good party,” Mary mumbles, slightly muffled.

“I know,” Remus says.

“I’m already drunk,” she adds.

“I know,” he says.

-

iii.iv – february eighteenth, 10.57 p.m.

It’s over three hours into the party before Sirius manages to catch James Potter without some part of his anatomy attached to Lily Evans, and the sight is so astonishing that he actually has to do a double-take.

“Where’s your better half gone, Prongs?” he asks, joining James by the drinks – who, by the looks of it, is already far more inebriated than Sirius is. In the spirit of playing catch up, Sirius uncaps another bottle of something dark and strong. “You look lost without her, mate. She ought to invest in a babysitter.”

“Shut up, you,” James grumbles. He takes his glasses off for a moment to clean them on his shirt. “She’s upstairs comforting Julie. It seems Wal…seems Walton turned up uninvited. You know, the – the ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And he brought a plus-one.”

“Oh.”

“Uh-huh.” James puts his glasses back on, Sirius decides not to point out that they’re crooked. “There’s about five of them up there with her, was a whole – whole thing. Interrupted everything, we were right in the middle of dancing, too.”

Sirius can only provide a consoling pat on the arm. “Ah, I’m sorry. Really is a difficult life you lead, Prongs, eh?”

“It is!” James protests, petulant, words a little slurred as his face screws up, haphazard. “I waited…years to dance with her, Padfoot! Years!”

“Then you can wait an hour or so for her to come back down, yeah?”

James only mutters something that the party drowns out, shrugs his shoulders loosely. When Sirius glances at him then, however, he finds that he’s no longer glum: instead, he’s smiling at the floor like a dope.

“Merlin, f*ck.”

“What?”

“You, you soppy prat. You’ve never been this happy, have you? As happy as you are with – Evans, I mean.”

“Never,” James replies without missing a beat, features dazed and upturned. “Never, really.” He looks up, turning his liquor-grin on Sirius.

“Here, you want to know a secret, Pads? But it’s – it’s a real secret, so you’ve got to stay…got to shh, yeah?”

Fighting back his own amusem*nt, Sirius nods solemnly. “Shh. Got it, yeah, I can do that. Go on then.”

The indistinguishable, stifling, woozy-sweet scent of drunk strengthens considerably as James leans down close, his breath hot against Sirius’ face.

“I’m gon – I’m gonna ask her to marry me, Sirius.”

Sirius jerks his head round, mouth agape.

“What?”

James just smiles.

“You’re going to what? While we’re at school? We’re – we’re eighteen, Prongs! You’re seventeen!”

“Not, like, now,” James clarifies. “Even I know that’s a bit—” (he hiccups) “bit much, this soon. I mean once…once we leave school. We’re already going to be living together, Sirius. I’ve already made my mind up. I’m gonna ask her to marry me.”

Sirius spends several long moments downing half of his drink, regardless of the heady burn against the back of his throat. He’s unsure of whether he means it in way of a reply, or in the absence of one.

Uncharacteristically apprehensive now, James chews his lip. “What d’you think?”

“Mate…” Sirius’ disbelief has him trailing off, giving way to a quiet chuckle.

“I…I think – I think I wish you’d told us this three weeks ago, so I didn’t have to fork over those galleons to Wormtail.”

James snorts. “I’m sorry I didn’t have your financial interests at the forefront of my mind when deciding to propose to my girlfriend.”

“I’ll forgive you if you let me be the best man,” Sirius grins. “Really though, it’s…bloody f*cking hell, Prongs. This is – brilliant, obviously – but mad. You’re mad. You’re going to be someone’s husband. Does she – does she even know about the Prongs thing? Or is that a wedding-night sort of revelation? You know – I love you, honey, and also sometimes I’m a great big f*cking deer.”

The thump on the arm James gives him for that is pathetic, and Sirius barely feels it through the leather of his jacket. “No, not yet,” James says. “I haven’t told her yet. I will – before I propose and everything, of course, but it’s – if I tell her about Prongs I’ll almost definitely have to tell her about Moony, and he's not…”

“And he’s not ready,” Sirius finishes quietly. Not for the first time tonight, his gaze drifts over to Remus: he’s sitting at the bottom of the dormitory stairs, talking animatedly to Dorcas, and the clear drink in his hands is either water or something he absolutely did not choose for himself.

And maybe it’s the faded-green cardigan (it’s a nice color on him), or simply the fact that he’s worn a cardigan to a party, or his shuddering laugh and crinkling eyes at a comment Dorcas has just made, happier than he’s seemed for a while, but Sirius is sure of it, now. It isn’t going to pass – it was never going to pass, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe he doesn’t want it to.

“He’s not ready,” James agrees. “I know he’d…he’d say he was, if I told him I wanted to tell her but – I don’t think he is and I’m not…not gonna force that decision on him. It isn’t my secret to tell. She wouldn’t – Lils wouldn’t care, I know that – she might’ve figured it out herself by now, honestly, but that doesn’t – doesn’t make it any less of a big deal for him. He’ll…when he’s ready, we’ll tell her everything. I’m gonna marry her, Sirius.” James pauses. “If she says yes, of course.”

“She will, mate. She will.”

“Hope so. You’re gonna say I sound daft, but…if we’re gonna go into this – this Order thing, which we are…I want to do this before I might not get the chance, you know? I want to be married to her. That’s…always what I’m gonna want, s’not gonna change, so – why not?”

Sirius’ eyes don’t leave the stairwell. “I don’t think that’s daft, James. I mean it, I don’t. I never – thought of it like that. I’ve been trying not to think of it like that.”

“Yeah, well.” James lifts his shoulders a little. “I spent so long…so long getting my head out of my arse about Lily. Took me way longer than it should’ve to just grow up and…I’m finished with doing that, Sirius. I’m finished with wasting time.

“I don’t want to wait about on the things that make me happy anymore, you get what I’m saying? I don’t see the point. And Lily makes me happy. Being married to her would make me happy.”

Remus twists around where he’s sat, placing his less-than-half-finished drink on the step behind him. As he’s turning back, he catches Sirius looking at him. And Sirius doesn’t particularly care, doesn’t f*cking care if he’s drunk or kidding himself or it’s not for him – for a moment there Remus smiles, and Sirius is irreparably in love with him.

He raises the bottle to his lips again, but he doesn’t take a sip. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I get what you’re saying.”

-

iii.v – february eighteenth, 11.38 p.m.

“Did you – uh, ha. Did you see Wormy come up the stairs just now?”

It takes a moment for Remus to realize who’s talking to him.

“Huh?” he lifts his head, squints up at Sirius, finds he is no less beautiful for looking a little nervous.

It’s rather unfair, that is – but then again, there has always been something wholly unfair about Sirius Black. Something completely inevitable, unstoppable, Remus reckons: in this moment he does not think this could have ever gone any other way for him, really – how could it have? How could it not have been Sirius? This ended, perhaps, on a train in nineteen seventy-one.

That’s nearly seven years ago, now. He’s tired of wishing things were different. He’s got no interest in being angry anymore.

Remus recognizes the question for what it is – an olive-branch, tentatively held. An outstretched hand. He’s willing to take it.

“Oh,” he says, gaze leaving Sirius with all the relief of an exhale. “Yes. He looked vaguely green.”

As soon as Remus answers him, Sirius appears to loosen, uncoil; he lets himself smile. Lets himself sit down in the space next to Remus.

“He’s so f*cking drunk,” Sirius grins – they return to this so easily, this is a second skin and a favourite song – clasps his hands loosely in his lap. “So f*cking drunk. We’ve convinced him to go and get his harmonica down. There’s a – a captive audience waiting for him.”

Remus snorts, dryly. “Oh, god. Why?” and now he’s laughing, and they haven’t been doing this, have they? He’s missed this. It’s like nothing happened. It’s like starting again. It’s like carrying on. He can taste the alcohol on his tongue again, sharp and sterile-sickly. “Why would you do that? I don’t know whether to be – upset on his behalf, or on mine because I’m going to have to – going to have to hear it.”

“I think he’s forgotten how to play Love Me Do.”

“I don’t think he ever knew how to play Love Me Do.”

They snicker at nothing for a little while after that. This’ll work, Remus decides. If this is all it can ever be, this can work. They can share a joke, a step, a flat: these little things, he can love. He can turn it all into something littler. It’ll be alright, he tells himself. This is enough. This is enough.

“Are we okay?” Sirius asks, gently. His voice wavers.

“I think so,” Remus replies.

Sirius nods, rocks back a little: good. It’s good.

"I've missed you."

"You too."

Neither of them really need to say anything now, but Remus does anyway. “This song’s been going on for a while,” he comments, idly. “Everyone’s stopped dancing.”

“This?” Sirius tilts his head up a moment, listening. “I’ve got this – you don’t recognize it? It’s Bowie. It’ll pick up in a moment, and everyone’ll start dancing again – whole thing’s ten minutes long in all. Wait, you’ll hear it in a minute – goes into something completely different. It’s brilliant. Genius.”

“Right.”

Remus hears the glug of liquid as Sirius downs more of his drink. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees his head thrown back. Sees the bob of his Adam’s apple.

“You know,” Sirius says, afterwards. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you dance at one of these. We’ve had – dozens, haven’t we? And not once. I haven’t seen you dance once.”

“Ah, yes. That would be because I can’t.”

Sirius scoffs. “Bollocks. Course you can. It’s not – not hard. Prongs can do it, so you know I’m not lying.”

“It’s not hard for you,” Remus corrects. “I can’t, my limbs are too long. I’d look like the Whomping Willow.”

He can feel Sirius’ eyes on him. “I’ll show you.”

“Funny.”

“No, really – it’s really not hard, I can show you. Nothing complicated, I’m not expecting you to do a waltz—”

Remus quirks an eyebrow. “You can waltz?”

“Course I can,” Sirius sniffs. “They taught us all that ballroom sh*t. And three languages, and two instruments: I’m the full pureblood package by now, Moons.” He grins, lurches forward, and suddenly he’s upright and looking down at Remus again. “Come on, then. The music’s going to kick in in a moment.”

“What?”

“What d’you mean, what? I said I’d show you how to dance. Come on then, up you get.”

Remus stutters, amusem*nt giving way to genuine concern. “I – I thought – no – I thought you were joking,” he says, eyeing Sirius – his challenging smile, expectant brows – with distrust. “I can’t actually – I’m not dancing, Sirius. You must be joking.”

“And yet, I’m really not. Come on.”

“No – absolutely not. I’ll…watch, or something.”

“Moons.”

“Pads.”

There’s nothing for it, though: this ended on a train in nineteen seventy-one. Sirius folds his arms, purses his lips, a wire-bright smile. Remus holds his stare for a few seconds longer, so that’s what they do, then: stare at each other. But then Sirius says, “please,”, and that’s the trick, that is. Who is Remus to refuse him anything? Who has he ever been, really?

He sighs. Closes his eyes. Smiles, despite himself.

“I really do not want to.”

“We both know you’re practically standing already,” Sirius counters (he’s right). “Quick, before this song ends.”

Remus knew this was a bad idea when they were sitting on the stairs, and he’s quite passionately sure of it when, thirty seconds later, the two of them are standing in front of each other, off to the side by the portrait cover (less people will see them), and Sirius is fixing him with an appraising look (he’s an awful person).

“…Now what?” Remus asks, suppressing the urge to bury his hands in his pockets. That question was supposed to make him sound disinterested; instead, he just sounds nervous, and he rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“Now,” Sirius says, “ideally, you move.”

“Ah, see,” Remus tsks, “You’ve lost me there.”

Sirius barks a laugh: “Insufferable. Here, if I just—”

He reaches down and takes up both of Remus’ hands and the awful thing about it is that he does it like he’s confident: quickly, all in one surging breath, as though he doesn’t think twice about it. As though his insides aren’t flipping and waltzing and stumbling like a drunk student at a party, like Remus’ are. His grim is firm, though their palms are a bit clammy. The ring on Sirius’ index finger is cold metal digging into Remus’ skin wonderfully. This is horrific.

Remus swallows, stares down at their hands between them, waiting for them to do something. Sirius follows his gaze, and then looks back up at him.

“Is this alright?”

Well, it’s got to be – he’s in it now, isn’t he? This, this is the fray, the breach, the thick of it, whatever you’d like. The point of no return, because Remus can’t very well let go of Sirius’ hands now (and wherever the record player is spinning, David Bowie – f*cking David Bowie – is now reminding him of that very fact: yes, it’s too late! / it’s too late! / it’s too late!).

“Sure. I mean – no, not really, I’m about to make myself look like a prat in front of half the year, but – sure.”

“Look around, Moons. Everyone’s pissed out of their minds, you’ll fit right in. Okay, so all you’ve got to do is…”

Sirius begins to pull their hands back and forth in time with the music, in a terrible sort of twisting half-shimmy that Remus observes with an expression of uncloaked despair, as though he himself is completely removed from the situation – which he almost is, seeing as every other part of his body remains agonizingly still.

It’s a catastrophe; it’s tragic, it’s horrendous, and apparently it’s doing it wrong, because Sirius promptly bursts out laughing.

“See! You’re laughing at me!” Remus cries, cracking up as well. “I told you I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t built for this sort of thing.”

“You aren’t—” Sirius snickers, has to stop to catch his breath (rather offensive). “—It’s not – you just aren’t moving, you have to actually—”

The second time Sirius attempts it, Remus complies a little more, though his principal emotion is still embarrassed determination rather than joy. “Alright?” says Sirius. “Better! That’s genuinely all you have to do, just…faster. And with an expression that’s less like you’re in pain.”

“I hate it when you’re good at things,” Remus mutters, though Sirius doesn’t hear him. To be fair to Remus – and to both of their surprises – he does get the hang of the whole back-and-forth movement enough to speed up to a marginally less pathetic tempo: if they stay just doing this, he might just be alright.

Sirius smiles. “See how easy it is when you stop whinging?”

“I’ve no idea what you’re referring to. I don't whinge. I have never whinged in my life,” Remus replies, slightly breathless as he tries not to trip over his own feet. “Also, I’m rather drunk.”

“Liar.”

Remus does not mind saying that by the time the Bowie song is ending, he doesn’t actually reckon he’s doing half bad: both of them repeatedly descend into fits of laughter, but that’s to be expected, all things considered, and he’s aware that he’s too tall for this and too awkward for this and Sirius is making it look disrespectfully easy, disrespectfully graceful, but that’s no big shock either.

They’ve never done this before, but he’s missed it. They’ve never done this before but it’s also all they’ve ever done – all Remus has ever done is move after Sirius, adoring – and they’re dancing and perhaps it isn’t love, but all of a sudden that’s okay: maybe you get more than one shot at this sort of thing. There’s ghosts in this castle that tell of an afterlife – maybe there, they’re dancing. Maybe there it’s love. Maybe it isn’t. Remus can be okay either way.

The song has already changed, and Remus has no idea what’s on now; he bumps into someone and it’s almost too loud for him to hear himself say, “sorry!”. He tries not to notice the fact that Sirius is yet to let go of his hands (if anything the grip tightens), and Remus’ll swear it’s James and his f*cking obligatory, inaugural shots that are speaking when he untangles one of his hands from Sirius and attempts a spin: ridiculous, flailing and off-balance, his hair falls into his eyes and he shoots Sirius a crooked grin, doesn’t even notice that he’s stopped moving.

Between short-winded, gasping laughs, Remus asks, “I’m still making a prat out of myself, aren’t I?” though he’s sure he already knows the answer to that. His breathing slows, however, in the time it takes for him to realize that Sirius is not laughing with him. In fact, he’s not doing anything at all, he’s just watching Remus, expression untraceable and disconcerting. Remus’ face falls. He straightens a little.

“Sirius?” he says, sobering quickly. He quickly feels silly, heat prickling on the back of his neck. “What?”

Sirius shakes his head a little; Remus frowns. But then Sirius opens his mouth and by the time he’s finished saying, “f*ck it,” his hand is already tugging Remus towards the portrait hole.

-

iii.vi – february eighteenth, 11.57 p.m.

He’s got no plan after that. It felt like the only thing to do when he was doing it, but now there’s – there’s nothing at all. There’s no plan, and Sirius had been wrong before: this is how the world ends.

Remus is asking him, “what are you doing? Sirius? Where are we going?” and the Fat Lady is swinging shut behind them, dulling the glittering noise of the party, and the corridor is dark; long, gaunt shadows against the bone-grey light of the moon.

Sirius doesn’t answer Remus and the reason for that is that he doesn’t actually know, just pulls him forward by the hand and begs himself not to throw up because he is so scared and he isn’t scared at all and he’s doing this and it’s now or nothing – no never, there isn’t a never anymore, it’s just – now.

Now: now, Sirius is none too deft and he stops at the nearest alcove and pushes Remus against it and says, “—we.” For one paralyzing moment he fears there are no other words forthcoming, just we: me-and-you, he means; us, he means; entwined fingers, he means. We is a confession, an assertion, a question.

“—We – we need to – I’ve got to talk, now, so just—”

Remus’ eyes are blown wide with confusion. “Sirius, what on earth is going on?”

“I’ve—” Sirius releases him to place his hands on Remus’ shoulders, and he doesn’t know where to look – he doesn’t know where to look. “I owe you an explanation.”

“Oh, well. You don’t have to do that, Sirius, we’re…we’re alright now, aren’t we? It’s forgotten, let’s just—”

“No, no – yes I do, and – listen, the thing is – Remus. I need to say something.”

Remus inclines his head a tad. “…Okay? Are you alright, Sirius?”

But that’s far too difficult a question, isn’t it? And so in the end Sirius finds it’s easier, instead – the easiest thing in the world, actually – to just pull Remus down and kiss him.

It’s everything. It’s the only thing. It’s all of it. It’s – frantic and it’s startled and it is incomprehensibly what he has just done and at first it’s a smash of chapped lips, at first it's chaos and Sirius dares not open his eyes, but then Remus is relaxing, softening.

And then he’s kissing him back. That’s the whole, entire truth of it: Remus is kissing him back. His hands slip into Sirius’ hair, while Sirius’ own are falling, catching at Remus’ waist, fingers twisting into his belt loops, tugging.

They break away before Sirius has a chance to realize that that’s what’s happened; it’s a moment before he opens his eyes again but when he does there’s...Remus. That’s it. That’s all that comes to mind. A bit of a broken record, really: Remus, over and over again until the word loses all shape, all meaning, all tethers. Becomes a none-word: Ree-muss. Becomes a sound clinging to his throat.

“Sirius, should we – we…shouldn’t do this, this is—” Remus breathes, though it lacks conviction and his fingers are still buried in Sirius’ hair and his chest is rising and falling, rising and falling. Sirius shakes his head furiously: no, no.

His eyes snag Remus’ lips on their journey downwards. “No, yes – yes we should, listen. Let me explain. Can you let me explain?”

“Er – okay.”

“Listen – right. I’m…I said it was – didn’t I say it was time to decide what you want? Do you remember? That night at the – the start of term? And I said I didn’t know, yeah?”

“…Yes, I remember, but—”

“No, I’m – not done. I said that, but now I – I know, now, and it’s you. Yeah? It’s you. And I didn’t think I could ever tell you that or – say anything, so I tried to avoid you and distract myself because that’s how I thought I’d make it go away but it never did. So I – hurt you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that I was so awful but I didn’t know what to do, right?

"Remus: what I’m saying is that you are what I want. I don’t – nothing else. No one else. I’m finished, because I think you are everything, I think you’re lovely and I love you and that is – that is what I’m trying to say. Is that okay, Moons?”

Sirius runs out of words, like a candle blown out. Like a knox. And all he wants is to go back to what they were doing before but he knows he has to wait, first: he meets Remus’ eyes and tries to breathe, tries not to let his hands shake. “Lie, if you’ve got to,” he pleads softly. Remus blinks at him.

“You—”

“I—”

“You. You’re an idiot,” Remus says, and then he begins to laugh as he leans down once more. “You’re a f*cking idiot.”

There’s a purpose to the brief way Remus presses his lips against Sirius’ again. “Are you – are you kidding me? I have – I love you,” he mutters, strangely incredulous. “I’m not lying, you massive f*cking – you. You nightmare. I’m not lying. I can’t believe…I can’t believe…”

“You do?”

“Yes, you utter – you tosser.”

The relief of it all is all-consuming, is dizzying: Sirius giggles, reaches up to hold Remus’ face with both hands, that he might bring him down further until they’re nose-to-nose again, grinning like this is an in-joke, their foreheads resting against each other.

“How long…?” Sirius whispers.

“Ages,” Remus replies instantly. “Doesn’t matter. Ages.”

“Yeah, I don’t – don’t know how long. And then you told us about that boy, after fifth-year, and – no, yeah, really, I was jealous, and then I wanted to kiss you that night in the common room and I panicked and I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry, Moons – those things I said…”

“Thought you might've hated me, to be honest.”

“And I’m – so sorry. It was very much – very much not that. At all.”

“That’s good to hear, considering we just snogged.”

It’s not even that funny, but Sirius feels like laughing and so that’s what he does – does it until he nearly cries. All of this – the two of them – it’s all hilarious. It’s the funniest, most brilliant thing Sirius has ever heard of. It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd, he feels hysterical. Dismantled in the best possible way.

“Do you want to go back to the party?” one of them asks.

“No. f*ck, no,” the other replies.

“Me neither. It’s – us, now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Sirius smiles, pushes his forehead against Remus’ and Remus pushes back and it’s all too much, it’s all spectacular, it’s so far out. It’s the furthest out that anything has ever been. It’s the rest of him. It’s Remus. It’s kissing the boy he’s in love with in the corridor of his boarding school and it’s the boy he’s in love with kissing him back.

Forehead-to-forehead looks funny: Sirius stares at him this way, brown eyes large, his long, freckled nose with that single scar, his face distorted from the cross-eyed proximity like some marvellous, odd deep-sea fish. And of course, Sirius knows he must look just as bizarre, for Remus is chuckling again, quietly, uncontrollably, he’s so lovely.

“What are you laughing at?” Sirius asks, grinning.

“Nothing, I just - I’ve found it,” Remus says, forehead resting firmly against Sirius’. “I’ve finally found your bad angle.”

Sirius snorts and Remus smiles even wider, somehow, and then they’re both laughing and Sirius replies, “Wanker. Come here.” And then his hands are cupping Remus’ jaw and he’s kissing him, and he’s kissing him, and he’s kissing him.

And it’s the funniest thing in the world.

And it’s the only thing in the world.

-

iii.vii – february nineteenth, 1.26 a.m.

“A lime-green coffee table?”

“No, okay, alright – that was a bad example. But really, I’m telling you, Moons: London’s full of those – those muggle antique shops, everywhere, and they’ve got all this dirt-cheap stuff and some of it’s actually quite nice—”

“Nicer than green furniture? Surely not.”

“Piss off, I shouldn’t have led with that, that was a – most of it is nicer than that, it’s just the first thing I remember seeing. I’m not actually suggesting we put a lime-green coffee table in the flat, you git. But we should have a look this summer, yeah? And I can show you London. Besides, we’re going to need at least two bookcases if you’re going to bring your – your bloody library.”

“Which I am.”

“Which you are.”

They end up at the Astronomy Tower, finally – it takes them a while to decide where to go. What to do. Remus feels giddy, dazed, like a little child. He feels like himself; eleven, wandering about this sleepy castle with his friends, in search of whatever. In search of something, anything magic.

He also can’t find it in him to feel guilty about leaving the party so soon: they’re plastered, the lot of them, Sirius reasons. Last time I saw James he was looking for his glasses. He was wearing them, Moons. There’s no f*cking way they’ll even notice we’re gone, and I don’t really care either way. So Remus laughs and Sirius kisses him (endlessly more convincing), and they end up at the Astronomy Tower.

They’re sitting against the wall, legs kicked out in front of them. A while back, Sirius started trying to roll a joint (the f*cking things he keeps in his pockets), and then gave up when he realized he couldn’t do it using only one hand. The other is occupied, as it has been for a while now, with holding Remus’ own hand, resting in the space between them.

Sirius nods towards the sky; jewel-crusted, endless, their own. “Is it bad that I can’t tell which one’s mine?” he asks. “The stars, I mean. I usually – I usually can, I just can’t remember which one’s Sirius. Is that bad? I feel as though that’s bad.”

“Neither of us took Astronomy, Pads,” Remus replies, shaking his head. “You could point to any of them and tell me it was your one, I wouldn’t know any better. You could point to a streetlamp or something – If it’s faraway enough, I’d believe you.”

“I’ll show it to you sometime. When I find it. They all look so bloody similar, that’s the problem.”

"I think the problem might be that you're drunk."

Sirius responds by turning to Remus, smiling; the starlight cuts into him, carving him out by cool silken blade. It’s cold up here. Sirius’ hand is warm. “You know? I don’t even think I am. I can’t tell. This is weird.”

A flicker of concern snaps through Remus. “Weird?” he repeats, eyebrows lifting, but Sirius appears to catch on immediately.

“No, no, I mean – good weird,” he explains with haste. “Best weird. I’m just…I’m not sure how I’ve got you, is all. That’s what I’m trying to say. I can’t get my head around the fact that I’ve got you. That we’re – you know,” Sirius peers up into the distance, as though looking for something, “this, now, all of a sudden. That’s what’s weird to me. How – how do I get to have you, Moons?”

You’ve always had me, Remus would like to explain.

But he doesn't: instead, he just brings Sirius’ hand – the one entwined with his own – to his lips, briefly, and then sets it back down. Hopes that’ll be enough – hopes they’ve got time.

“And you’ve got me too, of course,” Sirius continues, tone conversational, words strung up in the dark. “If that’s what you want. I can have you and you can have me – how’s that sound?” He twists slightly, facing Remus now. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Good. That’s – really good. And I mean it, Moons: whatever happens. With…you know. With everything that’s going on.” And he doesn’t say it outright but Remus knows what he’s talking about, as they turn back out towards the night. He feels Sirius squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.

“Remus?” comes Sirius’ voice, a whisper.

“Yeah?”

“…Do you think – does it ever scare you? The, uh. The next bit?”

“All the time.”

“Right. I – me too. A lot, I think. But…it’s us, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Remus replies, eyes fixed on the sky. “It’s us.”