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Chapter Text

The summer was long, hot and muggy. It always felt like a prison when Sirius was cooped up in 12 Grimmauld Place, but the heat seeping into the already smothering confines of its tight, musty walls made it unbearable. Sirius escaped every chance he could to wander the streets of Muggle London for a breath of air that, if not fresh like the air in Scotland, at least didn’t reek of dark magic. 

He found himself sitting beneath an electric fan in a rundown pub one evening, watching a group of fresh-off-the-clock workers watch a game of footie on a black and white screen. They were crowded around it with their sweaty pints in hand, cheering and groaning in unison as their team fought for some cup or another. Sirius wasn’t totally clear on what the rules were or what the objective was, exactly.

The men looked to be mostly in their forties, going by their hairlines and dated neckties. One of them, however, Sirius estimated to be in his early thirties: around the same age and height as Dearborn, with hair just a few shades darker than the professor’s. He was sitting further away from the screen than the others, watching the game passively and spending most of his time flipping through a stack of papers in his lap. Probably work he’d taken home from the office or something similarly drab.

Sirius tilted his head, taking in the details of the man. There were lines around his eyes and coarse, reddish stubble on his jaw. His wavy hair was thinning slightly at the temples, and his blunt-fingered hands looked weathered. He didn’t look particularly strong, but there was a solidness about his stature, in the way his torso filled his grey twill waistcoat. 

Sirius tried to imagine wanting any part of that. Wanting to touch and be touched by those hands, to feel the thick stubble against his own smooth cheek, to seek a deep level of connection with a person twice his age. To be alone in private with this perfectly nice looking career man.

He couldn’t. His stomach squirmed, and not in a pleasant way.

The man glanced up and caught Sirius’s eye. He twisted to look behind himself, probably expecting to see a pretty girl just over his shoulder, then raised his eyebrows when he didn’t find anyone there. The man adjusted his bar seat so that he was facing the telly more directly and leaned over to start a conversation with one of his colleagues, effectively blocking off the teenage boy with the ice blue stare. 

Good.

Relieved and only slightly embarrassed at being caught out, Sirius settled his tab and made his way back to Grimmauld. It was a long walk home, but never long enough.

He scaled the wall up to his second floor bedroom easily and carefully manoeuvred his limbs through the window frame, landing soundlessly on the floorboards. As he toed off his shoes to settle flat-backed on top of his satin bedding, he heard the front door open and close downstairs. That would be his mother returning from her monthly Daughters of Morgana meeting, where she drank and gossiped with other pureblooded women her age. 

It had been a risky evening to sneak out of the house, as meetings could run anywhere between two and five hours long, depending on the quality of the cocktails and the gossip. But it had been a necessary excursion. Sirius had spent too many hours in this same position, staring up at his ceiling and thinking the same thoughts on repeat, wondering the same muddled things.

He hadn’t been able to stop picturing Remus and Dearborn together since the day Remus had told them everything. Not everything—Remus hadn’t gone into any real detail. Not besides the thumb he’d pressed to the scar on his face, the position Lily had found him in, and the despicable instruction to bend over the desk one last time—words that were enough to set Sirius’s blood boiling, never mind the purple bruises that had wrapped around Remus’s wrist. 

Sirius tried not to think about those things, or to divert himself when he inevitably did. But there was so much that Remus hadn’t said—the affair had gone on for months—and Sirius’s imagination had started following him into his dreams.

Sirius had been inside of Dearborn’s office a handful of times for disrupting class and missing assignments, so he was familiar with the room. He recalled the small green couch against the wall with its yellow merigold throw pillows, the sturdy oak desk backlit by an east-facing window with a view of the Forbidden Forest, the coat rack near the door draped with tweed jackets and cashmere scarves. 

Knowing the space made it all too straightforward for Sirius’s mind’s eye to fill in the blanks of everything that had happened within it. 

Sirius could see the stars twinkling above the forest outside of Dearborn’s window when Remus was supposed to be doing his prefects’ rounds, could see Remus closing the door behind him and Dearborn crossing the room to meet him there, pushing him against the wood. He could see Remus laid out on the narrow couch, his belt and shirt hanging on the coat rack, Dearborn hovering over him, tall and strong and commanding. 

Sirius knew the smell of Dearborn’s cologne and of Remus’s shampoo, and expected that the cushions still smelled like both of them combined. His mind conjured images of Remus’s face pressed into a pillow to muffle the noise, his loose curls a mess. 

He knew the sounds Remus made when he was in pain from accompanying him in the Shack for his monthly transformations. He knew the shapes and positions of the scars usually hidden under Remus’s clothes from covering his shivering form with a blanket the mornings after, and he knew how much Remus hated anyone seeing them, let alone touching them. He pictured Dearborn’s hands finding them anyway, telling him not to be afraid. He knew how stoical Remus could make himself appear when he wanted to impress, and how shudderingly nervous he was just beneath the facade.

Molten anger coursed through Sirius’s veins without an outlet, stuck in Grimmauld. It was torture watching these scenes playing out in his head like a trapped voyeur, but Sirius couldn’t turn them off. They haunted him day and night, and he would have gladly traded them for a hundred angry ghosts. It was sick, twisted. Worst was when he woke up both hard and crying, devastated and confused. He knew he didn’t want anything like that, so why was it affecting him this way?

That was why he had landed at the pub, staring at older men. He had needed to know if something in him recognized what Remus had seen in their professor and wanted it for himself, too. But no, thank Merlin, there was nothing to be found there. Just an ever more pressing need to see his friend and make sure he was safe.

Remus hadn’t written to him, and Sirius couldn’t write to Remus. Not with the guilt he felt every time he thought about him with Dearborn, and not when he had nothing useful to say. Sirius would make it up to him in the new school year, somehow. Surely, when he saw Remus again, he would know what to say, how to make the memories of what Dearborn did fade into a distant haze.

He heard his mother’s footsteps on the staircase and closed his eyes against the blank ceiling and the pictures in his mind, willing her to keep walking past his door. Summer really couldn’t end quickly enough.

-

Peter was second to arrive at King’s Cross. He had hustled to get there earlier this year because he hated being the last of his friends to show. 

Walking up to the three of them already laughing and scheming last September first had made him feel more like an afterthought than ever, and seemed to set the tone for the entire year that followed. Especially since it appeared they had each shot up an extra twelve centimetres over the summer while Peter had stopped growing in fourth year, and they hadn’t even noticed his arrival until Sirius had glanced down and looked surprised, for an instant, to see him there—like he’d forgotten Peter existed, or simply hadn’t expected him to bother showing up.

This year, Remus and his parents were already on the platform when Peter pushed his trolley through the barrier, no James or Sirius in sight. Peter didn’t love this outcome, either. It had been a kind of relief in the spring when Remus had asked for space and all but disappeared into the exosphere. Peter had no idea how to talk to him now, and no particular desire to relearn. Remus hadn’t even been all that fun before what had happened last year. 

Sure, the wolf thing was ruddy cool once Peter had gotten over his fear of being eaten, and Remus was great for revising with and rounding out Sirius’s more cutting edges. But Peter had always felt oddly nervous when talking one-on-one with him about anything other than classes and pranks, like his intellect was out on display for appraisal. He much preferred the more glamorous company of James and Sirius, and wondered if he could convincingly pretend not to notice Remus until they got there.

Peter sighed and pushed his trolley out of the path of new arrivals careening through the divider, drifting reluctantly in the direction of the Lupins.

Usually, only Remus’s father came to see his son off at the station. But today his muggle mother was there as well, blonde and slight and clinging to her son’s arm. The three of them were speaking quietly, and Remus looked upset. He kept making to pick up his trunk to load it onto the train, but his father would stop him with a hand on his shoulder to say something else, and his mother didn’t look like she was ready to let go of his arm any time soon. 

On second thought, it might actually be more polite if Peter gave the Lupins their space. Excellent.

Peter lingered near Candice Clearwater, a pretty Hufflepuff in the year below him, hoping she’d ask him about his summer. He’d make up something impressive if she did. He was trying to fabricate an adventurous but plausible sounding story when he spotted two black haired heads above the crowd and breathed a breath of relief. 

James and Sirius hesitated before approaching the Lupins as well, Peter was pleased to see. When they did walk up to them, it was only to ask if they could take Remus’s trunk for him to load it up with their things. Mr Lupin nodded and waved them on their way with it, but Remus latched onto the interruption as an opportunity to break free, and gently pried his mother’s hands off his arm. He stooped to kiss her on the cheek and hesitatingly reached out for his father’s hand. Mr Lupin took it and used it to pull Remus in closer for one last stern word in his ear.

Remus nodded and hurried off in the direction James and Sirius had gone with his belongings.

Bugger. Peter was going to be last again this year after all.

-

They weren’t even halfway to Scotland, and James was already exhausted. 

Sirius was being a moody berk, barely even looking at Remus sitting right next to him. He'd been acting a bit off since leaving London to stay with James, but nothing like this. He kept his steely gaze trained out the window, his hair falling around his face like he was posing for some kind of Witch Weekly magazine shoot.

Peter was chattier, at least, but only seemed interested in engaging with James and Sirius. He seemed to be almost deliberately excluding Remus from their conversations, and didn’t have any input when Remus responded to James’s questions.

James had mentally prepared a list of safe, neutral topics to get Remus talking, but it had run dry an hour ago. Now he was coming up on ten minutes monologuing about the state of Ireland’s national quidditch team just to fill the quiet (which was a proper feat because there hadn’t been any significant changes in Ireland’s lineup for the past four years). But if making a bit of a fool of himself was what was needed to make things feel normal between the four of them again, he was glad to do it. Remus looked marginally more comfortable than he had done at the beginning of the journey, at least.

The train was winding through the Lake District when the compartment door slid open to reveal the rich auburn hair and emerald green eyes of Lily Evans. Remus stiffened instantly, and Sirius turned from the window to shoot Evans a devastatingly unwelcoming glare.

“Evans!” James exclaimed, extremely grateful on his part for the excuse to stop talking about Donovan McFarland’s unremarkable Keeper record. “Come in! Have a seat, won’t you?”

“Oh,” Lily said, looking a bit wrongfooted. “No, I actually—well, I just wanted to see if Remus was here, since he wasn’t in the prefect’s carriage up front. I wanted to make sure you were all right, Remus.”

Of course, Remus still had prefect duties. James had forgotten about those. He turned to Remus, whose posture had gone rigidly straight.

“I’m fine, Lily, thanks,” Remus said. “How was your summer?”

“Oh, you know. Pretty quiet. Petunia got engaged, which I think I told you about in our letters, but not much happened besides that. Why weren’t you up front with us, then? Kingsley was asking about you.”

James felt his eyebrows travel up his forehead. They’d been writing each other? He hadn’t gotten any owls from Remus. Sirius looked surprised, too.

“McGonagall will assign another prefect from Gryffindor sometime this week,” Remus told her quietly. “I just need to give her my badge. In the meantime, I’m sure one of the others will be able to help with—”

“You are not handing in your badge,” Lily said heatedly. “You’re the best of us, Remus.”

“I broke the rules, Lily. If that’s not a double standard—”

“We’ll talk to her together,” Lily insisted, ignoring the other boys’ stares. “When we get to the castle, I’ll go with you. She chose you for a reason, remember?”

“She chose me in the hope that I could help keep this lot out of trouble,” Remus said, “which I abjectly failed to do. Besides that, she can’t trust me now. I don’t trust me. I certainly wouldn’t trust someone like myself with the safety and wellbeing of younger students. So, no, Lily. Please don’t try to talk to McGonagall for me.”

Lily hesitated with her mouth open, shifting her weight awkwardly from foot to foot in the doorway. Remus had a point and they all knew it, but she didn’t look ready to cede her case.

“He doesn’t want to, Evans,” Sirius said over the silence. “He did enough for Hogwarts’ staff last year. McGonagall can find someone else.”

Remus turned to Sirius, eyes wide and a flush spreading down his cheeks and neck, but Sirius still wouldn’t look at him, his mouth set in a narrow line. Peter made a choked sound, like he’d started to snigger but caught himself. He looked morose when James glanced over at him, though, so James must have misheard.

“Maybe it’s best to leave it up to Remus,” James said more gently, turning back to Lily. “If McGonagall can’t find anyone else, I’ll do it, all right Evans? You won’t get stuck with double the responsibilities.”

“I’m not worried about extra duties!” Lily bit back. “I’m worried about my friend.”

“So are we,” James said placatingly, though he couldn’t help feeling a touch insulted and adding, “which is why we aren’t trying to pressure him into doing anything he doesn’t want to.” 

“He loved being a prefect, though, and if you don’t see how—”

“You can’t honestly think we don’t—”

“Just,” Remus said, barely above a whisper, and they fell silent. “Stop. All of you, you can just stop. Lily—I appreciate it, really, but you’ve helped enough. James, you don’t have to fill every second of quiet with quidditch stats, all right? Pete, Sirius, I get it. You don’t have to look so guilty. Honestly. I’m not—I’m not that fucking fragile.”

He got up from his and Sirius’s bench, and only then did James notice how loosely his clothes fit around his already lanky form.

“I’ll see you at the feast,” Remus mumbled, and slipped past Lily into the corridor.

“Let him go,” Peter said unexpectedly when Sirius immediately rose to follow. It was practically the first time Peter had acknowledged Remus’s presence, and it only came after Remus was gone. “He asked us for space, didn’t he? That didn’t come with a time limit. He’ll come back around when he wants to.”

James nodded slowly at Sirius, seeing the validity in Peter’s point even though it felt wrong. Sirius redirected his efforts glaring out the window to glaring at Peter. Lily sat down in Remus’s vacant seat, her slender fingers twisting the ends of her curls.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the compartment at large. “I didn’t mean to push him away.”

Sirius huffed, but James reached out to her earnestly, stilling her hands from their nervous twisting. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “We never did thank you for what you did, going to Dumbledore. Keeping Remus’s secret when the whole school was after you for it. Truly, Evans, we owe you. Anything you want, just say the word. If we can make it happen, we will.”

Lily turned pink and said something about not being owed anything for basic human decency, then smoothed out her skirt and swiftly left the compartment.

“Too much?” James asked after the door slid shut behind her.

“Nah,” Peter said. “She could have asked for you to stop asking her out, couldn’t she?”

That faint flicker of light was enough to keep James from following Sirius down his own inward spiral for the remainder of the quiet train ride.

When the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station, they waited wordlessly beside the horseless carriages to see Remus disembark. After a few minutes of Sirius brooding silently and Peter grousing about the cold, Remus stepped down from the train followed by a boy around their age James didn’t recognise. 

“C’mon,” Peter said instantly, climbing into the nearest carriage as Remus and the boy cued up to board another one. “We’ll see him up there.”

“Who was that with him?” James asked over the sound of invisible hooves clattering along Hogsmeade’s cobblestones.

The others just shrugged, and James wondered if he mightn’t be happier skipping the Start-of-Term Feast and climbing straight into bed instead.

-

Sirius leaned his head out the carriage window into the cool night air, wondering if he could get away with stealing up to Gryffindor Tower early instead of sitting through the bloody feast. His brain had completely shut down as soon as they’d reunited with Remus at the station, and now Remus surely thought Sirius couldn’t stand the sight of him.

All of his aspirations to be the one to lift Moony up, to help him forget and feel safe, lay broken somewhere on the tracks back in England. It had hit him, the moment he caught sight of Remus standing on the platform with his parents, that he wasn’t about to magically come up with the right things to say. He didn’t have any wisdom to share or comfort to give, and he couldn’t even look at Remus for more than a second without his guilt-ridden insides flipping upside down. Even sitting next to him on the train made his heart kick uncomfortably against his rib cage. Every second he’d spent on that journey avoiding meeting Remus’s eyes had only served to make the situation worse. And now Remus was sure to keep his guard up around Sirius all year long, even if Sirius managed to get his act together, because Remus would think he had shown his true colours on the train.

‘Pete, Sirius, I get it. You don’t have to look so guilty.’ Remus had lumped Sirius in with Peter—Peter—whom Sirius knew hadn’t spent the entire summer grappling with mental and emotional torment. Peter was sitting comfortably in the carriage seat across from Sirius, almost certainly wondering what the house elves would be serving up for dinner when they arrived at the castle. Gluttonous prick. Sirius could punch him right then and there, and his pudgy face would feel like relief under his knuckles.

He wouldn’t do it, of course. It was only an intrusive thought, and Sirius wasn’t really mad at Peter. He was mad at himself. Mad at this school year, which was already a disaster. Or maybe he was just mad, like everyone else in his cursed family. That would at least help explain the perverse visions that plagued him.

He wanted the day to be over already, to curl into Remus’s side and wake up with a clean slate and a fresh start where he’d say and do everything right. But Remus was off in another carriage with strangers, and wasn’t likely to want to share his space with Sirius again.

The idea that that horrible train ride might have been the last time Remus chose Sirius’s company made the prospect of sitting down to a rich, noisy school feast even more nauseating. Nevertheless, Sirius filed into the Great Hall with the rest of the student body and took his usual seat next to James at the Gryffindor table, just the same as he did every year. 

He scanned the crowd still spilling in through the front doors for a familiar tawny profile, and was relieved to find it headed their way only a few minutes later. It was closely followed by a new face, however—the same one that had stepped off the train with Remus, Sirius supposed, though he hadn’t bothered to get a good look at the station. When the two settled on the bench across from James, Sirius didn’t know whether he felt more relieved that Remus had decided to rejoin them or offended that he had brought an outsider into their midst when there was still so much that needed to be said. But as he hadn’t yet found the words to say any of it, he kept his mouth shut and willed himself the patience to wait for the world to start making sense again.