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Chapter Text

Every school year has an Incident: a defining moment, scandal, or tragedy that endures long after schooldays fade into a nostalgic haze of memories. It pops up reliably at reunions and over pints between old classmates, and everyone enjoys repeating the juicy details and speculating about what they were never reliably told.

It’s no different for schools of witchcraft and wizardry. For all the bizarre, impossible things that happened daily within the walls of Hogwarts, a stand-out Incident always cut through the chaos. For the Hogwarts class of 1978, the Incident occurred in March of their sixth year when the young and popular Defence professor got sacked and sent home three months early for improper conduct.

‘Improper conduct’ was the only explanation the headmaster gave over his short announcement speech at dinner, but the Hogwarts rumour mill was already miles ahead of him. Cool, interesting, ex-auror Professor Dearborn had been conducting a secret relationship with an underage student for months before someone had ratted them out.

The identities of the student and the whistle blower were better protected than Professor Dearborn’s reputation, however. Typically strict professors like McGonagall and Flitwick didn’t seem too bothered by their pupils dragging his name through the dirt (‘Dearhorn’ echoed rudely through the halls for days), but they swiftly shut down all crude jokes and speculations about who the exiled professor might have been carrying on with.

Eventually, from amidst the noise and baseless rumours, a grain of truth emerged. Bertha Jorkins swore to anyone who would listen that she’d seen Lily Evans leaving the headmaster’s office the evening before Dearborn’s hasty departure through the South Hall, his dark blonde head stooped low against greetings and questions. Students swarmed Bertha for information she didn’t have but was happy to invent.

Was Evans the informant, or was she the student who’d been seeing their professor in secret? Had she gotten cold feet? Better yet, maybe Dearborn had dumped her and she’d gone to Dumbledore as revenge. Or was she protecting one of her friends? Was MacDonald the real victim? Vance? McKinnon? McKinnon was top of their year in Defence. Had she been earning her marks outside of class hours? Bertha had several fun theories going.

Lily, on her part, held her own against the questioning. She was used to being pestered by tactless gossips, and the onslaught of peer pressure was nothing compared to the persistence of James Potter’s flirtations. Still, she was distinctly uncomfortable being the sole keeper of this particular secret besides faculty.

“You need to tell your friends,” she said softly in the privacy of the vacant Defence room. Dumbledore hadn’t been able to find a stand-in professor at short notice, so they simply hadn’t had lessons in the two weeks since the Incident had happened.

“I don’t see why I should.”

“Don’t you want their support? They love you. You shouldn’t have to carry this alone.”

“You know what they’re like.”

“Yes, I do,” Lily said, frowning. “They’re horrible, generally. But you care about each other more than anything—even I can see that. They should know. It’s wrong that I know and they don't.”

“Lily… I’m so sorry you found out the way you did. And I’m even more sorry for the way I reacted. Thank you for doing what you did. And thank you for caring so much about someone you hardly know, but—”

“Of course I care! We’ve been prefects together for nearly two years now.”

“That doesn’t make me your responsibility. I really appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. This is hardly the worst mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

“Don’t say that. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.”

“Even so.”

Lily exhaled forcefully, frustration building in her chest. Stubborn. “Listen. I will be here for you for as long and as much as you need. I truly mean that, and I’m happy to help however I can. But I also know that I’m not enough. Please tell them. Tell them, or… or I will. I swear, Remus Lupin, I’ll—”

Remus’s head snapped up from its careful examination of the worn edge of the desk he was perched on. “You don't mean that,” he said cautiously, like he was talking down a lunatic wielding a loaded gun.

“Of course I don’t,” Lily snapped back. “But I’d be doing you a favour if I did. Dearborn’s already done enough to you. Don’t let him ruin your last year here by letting the shame of it push your best friends away.”

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Tell your body language.”

Remus sat up straighter, uncrossing his tightly folded arms, then returned to his slouching with a scowl. “I just don’t see what good it’ll do, telling them. It happened, and now it’s over. What’s the point? It’ll only hurt them.”

“I can’t say, exactly,” Lily said, softening. She wasn’t upset with him, really; she was just upset, full stop. “But I know the harm that keeping it locked up will do, to you and to them. They love you, Remus. They’ll understand. What they won’t understand is you shutting them out when they’ve done nothing wrong. I see you pulling away. They don’t deserve that.”

Remus’s hazel eyes, when they finally looked up to meet hers, were scared and wet looking, just like they had been when she’d found him in Professor Dearborn’s office.

-

All four Marauders were sat on their own beds, facing the centre of the room. Sirius had made to sit on Remus’s with him, but he’d cringed away in a tense, visceral way that sent Sirius hurrying six steps backwards to land on his own.

“I need to tell you—” was all Remus had said in the common room, his voice trailing off to nothing at the end, but it was enough to evaporate the laughter from the other three’s faces as they followed him up the stairs to their dormitory. Remus rarely asked for the limelight in their little group, so when he did, they had a habit of listening closely.

Now, he was ankles deep into a story that had Peter clutching his knees and James looking like he might be ill, and he was wading further out into waters that Sirius feared might wash away what remained of their childhoods, right there in their shared room.

“It started over Christmas break,” Remus had said into the expectant quiet after staring blankly at the rug for nearly a full minute. Even though Sirius hadn’t had any way of knowing where Remus was going yet, his stomach had already begun to sink like a stone.

“I took the train with the rest of you when term ended, but floo’ed back early for the full moon on Boxing Day. My dad was away for work, and Mum can’t do anything to put me back together if I hurt myself when I transform. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want any of you cutting your holidays short to run the moon with me; not when Madam Pomfrey was already going to be here to patch me up. It went fine, James, don’t make that face. I was back on my feet after a couple of days. The castle was practically empty, so it’s not like there was much to do anyways. I mostly revised and worked on the map while I recovered.

“Professor Dearborn invited me to—Peter, just—please just wait until I’m done, all right? I don’t—this isn’t fun for me.

“Professor Dearborn invited me to have tea with him after we bumped into each other in the library a few times. I had mentioned in class that I was interested in learning more about dark creatures, and he said he had some books that might suit me. So I went with him, and… it was nice. 

“We ended up talking for hours. He was so interesting. He has so many stories about being an auror and fighting dark creatures around the world. I told him a bit about my grandfather’s research with urban vampires in Bavaria. When he asked what I thought about the classification system for non-human magical beings, he really listened. He told me he thought I was too clever for the regular sixth year Defence curriculum, and suggested I start an independent study under him. I said yes.”

Remus had gone on to talk about more one-on-one meetings in Dearborn’s private office. About shared teas and dinners and blankets. About Dearborn lending Remus his coat so they could hike through the frozen heather to study grindylows down in the icy lake, and brushing snowflakes from his hair. About new spells that required tricky little wand movements and how they’d practised them in his empty classroom: shoulder to shoulder, hand over wrist.

On New Year’s Eve, he’d spent the evening sipping flutes of gillywater on Dearborn’s small sofa. It would have been a waste, Dearborn had said, for Remus to ring in the new year alone in his empty common room. They’d stayed talking for hours past midnight, and Dearborn had poured Remus his first ever glass of firewhiskey. 

“He asked if I’d considered becoming an auror,” Remus was saying now. “He said I’d be brilliant; that I was exactly the kind of partner he’d have wanted on the force. When I told him that wasn’t an option for me, he said he already knew why. I didn’t think Dumbledore had told the whole faculty about my lycanthropy, so I didn’t say anything more. I didn’t want to give my secret away, if that wasn’t what he meant. So we just sat there for a while, and then he touched my scar.”

Remus raised his hand to the scar that ran across his jaw, pressing it with his thumb. Sirius wondered if that was how Dearborn had touched it.

“He called them battle scars, and said I was brave,” Remus continued, his voice sounding slightly choked. “He said he’d met other werewolves on his travels and that they weren’t any different from the rest of us. He said I shouldn’t let lycanthropy stop me from doing anything I wanted to do.

“I asked if he’d ever had to fight a werewolf. He said he had, once, and that it had clawed him down his back. He said he had his own share of battle scars, too. He said he’d show me his if I showed him mine.”

Remus paused, fiddling with the hem of his jumper, and Sirius didn’t want him to go on. They all knew how this was ending.

“He made me feel… legitimate,” Remus said eventually. “He always told me I was more mature than my age. He listened, and understood, and even thought I was worth—” his voice caught, and Sirius filled in the end of the sentence a dozen times over.

Worth touching. Worth invading. Worth throwing his career away for. Worth marring an already damaged youth. Worth destroying years of slow-built trust. Worth taking, taking, taking.

“I knew it was against the rules. He didn’t force me to do anything. He never compelled me, or threatened me, or anything like that. But he was handsome and intelligent and mature, and always so certain that there was nothing wrong with what we were doing. 

“Sometimes I got nervous, but he was patient. Focused. Encouraging. He said he felt privileged to be my teacher, and that he could teach me about love, if I wasn’t afraid to learn. When he told me I couldn’t let my fears rule me, it reminded me a bit of you lot. It made me feel safe. Bold. I wanted to impress him. To show him that he was right about me. That I was mature, and that I wasn’t going to let my lycanthropy hold me back. Not from big things, like becoming an auror or an academic, and not from little things, like taking off my shirt.”

Remus put his head in his hands, elbows rested on his knees, and laughed miserably. “He did teach me a lot,” he said to the floorboards. “Bet I know more than you three combined. These past four months were a ride. It’s half a wonder I can walk straight. Any time I told you I was in the library, or on prefect rounds, or doing recon for the map, I was in his office. And if Lily hadn’t walked in on me on my knees, I’d probably be there right now.”

There was an unbearable stretch of silence, the brass clock on the wall preternaturally loud.

“Are you upset that it’s over?” Peter asked finally, always the first to break under tension. “Do you wish he hadn’t gotten found out?”

Remus shook his head slowly, his forehead still cradled in his palms. “I was so mad at Lily at first,” he said hoarsely, “when she said she was going to tell Dumbledore. She told me I was being abused, and I told her she was being puerile and naive. 

“But then Caradoc—Professor Dearborn—asked me to deny the whole thing. He said he had a bogart in a suitcase, and that he’d tell Dumbledore it had gotten loose and shown Lily a scene designed to upset her. He was going to say that Lily was confused and jealous, and that her greatest fear was being overlooked by men. 

“I said I wasn’t sure that would work, and he told me I was only a foolish boy who would always be afraid of my own shadow. I reminded him that Dumbledore is a legilimens with a pensieve he could use to watch Lily’s memories for himself. That seemed to make the situation sink in for him, finally, and I asked him to take back what he’d said. He just kissed me and asked me to bend over the desk one last time—and I left.”

Remus held up his left wrist and his sleeve fell away to reveal greenish, half-healed bruises in the shape and pattern of fingertips. Sirius let out an involuntary noise that sounded like a wounded dog, but Remus didn’t seem to notice him.

“It only took me a day to realise how stupid I’d been the whole time. How utterly naive. What a foolish, pliant child I must seem to him and to every adult who knows about it now. Merlin knows I’ll never be able to look Dumbledore or McGonagall in the eye again. Or Pomfrey, or my parents. They called my parents, and they haven’t said anything yet, but…”

He was crying. Remus was crying, and Remus never cried. Not when the wolf did its worst, not when his friends let him down. Remus was crying into his own lap, and Sirius just sat there, horrified by the tears as much as by anything he’d just heard.

James was up in an instant, crossing the space between their beds and wrapping a firm arm around Remus’s shoulders. Remus turned his head into his neck as if on instinct, hiding his face in the fabric of James’s robes.

“It’s okay, Moony,” James said softly. “It’s over now. Your parents will be glad of that. We’re all just glad you’re okay.”

“He’s not okay,” Sirius croaked, finally unfreezing. “He’s not okay.”

“Sirius!” Peter hissed, looking between them with huge eyes.

Remus laughed his unhappy laugh again. “I’ve never been okay. Not since I was five and unbitten. So that’s all right.”

“Yeah, that’s all right,” James said consolingly, and Sirius was certain James didn’t know what he was agreeing with. He just nodded slowly, rubbed Remus’s back and said, “That’s all right. We’re here with you.”

“Yeah,” Peter squeaked, and joined them on Remus’s mattress. After a moment’s hesitation, Sirius followed suit. He tried not to crowd Remus too much.

“Thanks,” Remus said quietly, untangling himself from James and shifting subtly away. “Thank you for listening. I didn’t want to hide it from you any longer. I’ve been a liar and a shite friend, and I already don’t deserve you, but I… I think I need to deal with this on my own for a while.”

“What do you mean?” Sirius asked, frowning.

“Just that I… Lily’s been amazing, James. You’re right about her. She really is a special girl. But she keeps telling me I need to talk it through and lean on my friends—whatever that even means—and all I want to do is disappear. To just… not. For a while. Until it doesn’t feel so real.”

“You can’t disappear, though,” James said softly, as if speaking to a child. He reached to brush the hair from Remus’s eyes and Remus stood up suddenly, staggering a little, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry. Lily said I owed it to you to tell you, and I think she was right about that. You’re my best mates, and I’m so sorry for hiding things from you. Again. But as much as I love you, I just need some space to figure myself out.”

“All right, Moony,” James said, clearly trying not to look hurt. “Let’s all just focus on getting through exams, then you’ll have a whole summer’s worth of space.”

Peter muttered an agreement, but Sirius didn’t say anything. He watched the tears trickle down Remus’s chin as he gathered his bag and left the room.

-

The other three Marauders did their best to respect Remus’s space for the remainder of the school year. He still slept in their dorm, but spent the rest of his free time off on his own, buried in textbooks or wandering the halls like a ghost. They lurked around the edges of his periphery, half in case Remus decided he needed them and half so that they could make sure he wasn’t disappearing off to anywhere he shouldn’t. 

How had they not noticed what he’d been doing? They had an enchanted map that showed the location of every bloody person in the school. How could they have missed one of their four returning to the same office every evening, two dots far too close together? How could they not have noticed the changes in their friend?

James racked his memories for any signs he might have missed—unusual behaviour, physical marks, emotional shifts, anything out of the ordinary. But Remus was always so even tempered, so mature—no, not mature; he was sixteen, only sixteen—and James couldn’t pin down any red flags he’d turned a blind eye to.

“You have questions,” Remus said from across the table at dinner one evening in early June. He spoke so softly that James barely heard the words leave his mouth, but he did because there was little else he listened for these days.

Remus was eating alone, as was his new custom, and James was sitting on the far side of the opposite bench, picking idly at what remained of a flaky steak and mushroom pie. Sirius was serving detention for snapping at their Arithmancy professor and Peter was finishing with his remedial Charms group, which meant James was on Remus duty. 

James glanced across the table at him and shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. “There’s a lot we still don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean you owe us explanations.”

Remus grinned a little at that, shrugging back. “Go on,” he said, and nodded at the empty space opposite him. James slid his plate down the table and followed suit, settling in front of Remus’s gaze cautiously. 

“How’ve you been?”

“Ah. I don’t know if I have an answer to that one. You can try another, though.”

“I don’t know where to start,” James said honestly.

“There’s no right or wrong place to start when everything’s wrong to start with, right?”

That made James crack a smile. Typical Remus, defusing the tension with his clever way with words. He was always surprising. James hadn’t fully realised how much he had missed that.

“I didn’t even know you fancied blokes,” he blurted out. Horrible. That definitely wasn’t where he’d meant to begin. Hopefully Remus’s catchy little witticism was also a truism.

“Neither did I,” Remus replied quietly after a moment, and he wasn’t grinning anymore. “Maybe I won’t anymore, after this. I don’t know.”

James toyed with the crumbs on his plate. He didn’t think sexuality worked like that, but if anything could change it, it was likely something like this.

“Does it bother you?” Remus asked, his eyes fixed on the enchanted ceiling. “If I’m bent.”

James’s vision went white behind his glasses. “Don’t you dare,” was all he could manage at that. “Don’t you dare, when you know how much we love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—”

“Right.” Remus sipped his tea, looking like he regretted starting this conversation, ready to disappear again.

“How did we not see you on the map?” There, that was a decent question to keep him talking. Straightforward, practical. He sat up straighter and leaned in toward Remus. Come back, he willed him.

“Ah,” Remus set down his tea with a guilty grimace. “I tampered with it over Christmas break. I didn’t want you to see, so I taught it how to lie. If anyone can teach lying to an inanimate object, it’s me,” he added dryly.

“Okay. That’s… okay. But we need to fix it,” James said with more intensity than he’d meant to.

“I will,” Remus promised. “Or we can do it together, if you want to make sure. You can watch me.”

“I will,” James said. He was oddly incensed, but tried to school the feeling. He didn’t want to be mad at Moony. It was just—the map was theirs. It was—not sacred, but—it was the Marauders Map, and it felt wrong that a Marauder had gone and tampered with it like that. Like it was that easy to rewrite their shared reality.

“I know,” Remus said with a sad little smile. “I’m an arse. I’m sorry.”

“Enough,” James snapped. “You need to stop saying you’re sorry.”

“But I am. As I should be. I know better.”

“He knew better!” James wanted to shout, but kept his voice restrained to their table.

“Well,” Remus said neutrally, face blank. “Anyways. I’ll work out how to make it so the map never lies. Completely unfoolable. Deal?”

James deflated, running a hand through his hair. Everything he’d once cared about felt so pointless, suddenly. “Sounds good, Moony. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you. Was there anything else you wanted to know? Or you can go back to side-eyeing me over the roast potatoes, if you’d rather.”

Of course there was. But he couldn’t ask; but he couldn’t go on not knowing. He held his breath and bit his tongue, then forced himself to look at Remus straight on again. It was hard, maintaining eye contact with Remus now, like staring into the heart of a dying star.

“Did he hurt you? When he…?”

“Of course he did.”

“Why did you let him?”

“Everyone I’ve loved has hurt me, one way or another. It wasn’t so different.”

James swallowed down a sob. It stuck in his throat like a pumice stone.

“Did you love him, then?”

“No. I thought I might, at the time. But no. That's not what it was.”

“No,” James agreed. “It couldn’t have been.”

“Yeah. Well. We’ll fix the map, James. When the new school year starts?”

“Sure. I’ll tell the others.”

He didn’t push it, but James suspected that might have been Remus’s way of saying he missed them. Maybe he was nearly ready to come back to them, from wherever he’d gone inside.

As he exited the Great Hall, James slipped the two-way mirror out of his pocket and whispered Sirius’s name to it. Sirius appeared to be serving his detention alone in the trophy room, his hair damp with sweat from manual scrubbing. It was only after James repeated Remus’s words and saw the same pain etched in Sirius’s face that he allowed himself a few discrete, frustrated tears, pocketing the mirror again before they fell from his bottom lashes.

School was nearly out for summer, and the cleverest students in Hogwarts hadn’t been able to think up a single thing they could do to help their friend. No mandrake leaves or spells cast beneath the crackling magic of a thunderstorm could make things better this time.

They could only wait, hope, and trust—and Sirius had never been any good at waiting.

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.

Chapter Text

Remus’s carriage companion, it transpired, was Bertram Aubrey, a new seventh year transplant from Denmark. He had moved to England with his mother in August, and had been accepted into Hogwarts with recommendations from his former mentors. He hadn’t been sorted into a house yet, so had accompanied Remus to the Gryffindor table for the feast, after which McGonagall would collect him to facilitate a private sorting with the Hat.

Remus had ended up in Aubrey’s compartment near the caboose of the train after he’d left the Marauders’. Apart from the seventh year, the rearmost compartment had contained only a few weedy twelve-year-olds and their pet toads. Glad to find himself in the company of someone his own age, Aubrey had struck up a conversation that carried them all the way through the lowlands and right up to Hogwarts’ gates. Ever the helpful prefect despite his plans to turn in his badge, Remus had offered to show him around the castle and invited him to sit with his friends for the Start-of-Term Feast.

Aubrey was light skinned and athletically built with a narrow face and tightly cropped blonde hair. His Danish accent was fairly subtle but for the way he softened the occasional 'th' and spoke with slower deliberation, an upward intonation slightly lifting the ends of his sentences. He also just so happened to be exactly what the Marauders needed to start acting normally with each other again. 

The unexpected arrival of a new face at their table gave the boys something to focus their attention on that had nothing to do with the way the previous school year had ended. The new student provided a buffer between them as well as a conduit to lighter, happier conversation. They spent most of dinner quizzing him about wizarding school in Denmark (‘do they still teach Viking blood rituals?’), filling him in on Hogwarts’s best and worst offerings (‘Divination’s unfailable but the professor’s a nutter; take Muggle Studies instead if you like a midday nap’), and asking how he was enjoying life in Blighty so far (‘you still haven’t been to a chippy yet? Mate!’).

Aubrey had a mild, slightly offbeat sense of humour about him that came through in the observations he made about his new surroundings. He thought the Hogwarts school robes were funny looking compared to his old school’s standard uniform of blazers, and bemusedly confessed that he felt like he was dressed in ‘a costume for mourning.’ It was amusing to see somebody so baffled by the basic staples of wizarding Britain, and James spilled his pumpkin juice laughing when he noticed the way he’d tucked his robe beneath him like a lady’s skirt.

Remus seemed deeply relieved to no longer be trapped beneath the lens of his friends’ proverbial microscope. He ate second and third helpings of everything while the others chatted animatedly, not protesting the way he usually would when Sirius kept surreptitiously refilling his plate.

Over six years sharing close quarters, the seventh year Gryffindor boys had developed a form of communication so efficient as to render speech pointless at times. It had been just the four of them for so long that they could reliably predict what each other was going to say in response to any given topic before it even arose. Despite how much they loved each other, their filters had gone by the wayside sometime around third year, and small courtesies such as withholding one’s private opinions were moot when they could read each other’s expressions like textbooks. The Marauders were a tightly calibrated machine that had been damaged under foreign pressures, and their new company was a spanner tossed mercifully into their workings.

By the time Aubrey went off with McGonagall at the end of the feast to be sorted, James and Sirius had plans to fly with him in the morning, Peter had a pocket full of salmiaklakrids, and Remus had a new study partner for Ancient Runes. The journey from the Great Hall up to their welcoming beds in Gryffindor Tower held more laughter between the four of them than the entire train ride up from London.

-

“Ravenclaw,” James groaned, his breath clouding in the thin morning air. “Bertram, mate, you couldn’t have asked the hat to pick again?”

Aubrey shrugged and shouldered his borrowed broom. “It sounded like a good fit, from what Professor McGulligan said.”

”McGonagall,” Sirius corrected him, amusement cutting through his exhaustion. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a swot, but Ravenclaws are all right. Anything but Slytherin’s fine in my book.”

“Yes, I thought they seemed a bit…” Aubrey tilted his head from side to side, “shifty? Is that how you’d say?”

“Shifty works,” James nodded. “Shitty would be better, though.”

“Hah. Well, I won’t say that in front of them. Sorry my sorting ruined your plans to try me out for your quidditch team, by the way. Though I’m not so sure I want to play for the school; I like flying, but the sport aspect is a bit much for me.”

“You’re like Sirius,” James said, shaking his head. “Loves to fly, but not on the pitch. All those designer racing brooms and all that talent for speed: wasted.”

“You collect racing brooms?” Aubrey asked.

“When I was younger,” Sirius tossed out dismissively. “Gave them to my brother. It’s more his thing now. He’s Seeker for Slytherin. But I would love to get my hands on a flying m—motor—” Sirius split off into a massive yawn.

“Merlin’s beard, Padfoot, you look like death,” James said, peering at the dark circles under his eyes. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

No, Sirius had not. He’d pushed his sleep schedule further and further into the wee hours of morning all summer, hoping to avoid distressing dreams or at least make himself too tired to remember them. Last night, with Remus in the bed opposite his, Sirius had been loath to risk sleeping and dreaming at all. He’d lain there listening to his friends’ steady breathing, finally dozing off around dawn. Seeing as dawn was James’s preferred flying hour, Sirius felt far from rejuvenated.

“Not after a whole summer without your snoring in my ears,” he deflected. “I need time to reacclimate to the racket. Come on, let’s fly already.”

They kicked off the springy grass and flew in the direction of the lake, the crisp morning air slapping their faces awake. Flying always felt like leaving your troubles on the ground, and for the first time in ages, Sirius didn’t actively hate himself for being a failure of a friend.

Remus had still been asleep that morning when Sirius and James left to meet Aubrey on the quidditch pitch, so Sirius hadn’t had the chance to put things right with him yet. But he was going to suggest that they begin working on restoring the map later that evening, and felt certain that fixing the map would be the catalyst to fixing everything else. 

They would put their heads together over the enchanted parchment like they had done so many times before, all four of them gathered around a rickety little table with stolen candles dripping wax and their wand tips all aglow. Magic would flow freely out of their imaginations and into the air, settling into the parchment that connected them all. James would sit at Sirius’s left and Remus at his right, just like they had done on countless nights, James restructuring common spells to suit their purposes and Remus sketching out rune sequences for Sirius to ink onto the pages. Peter would cheer when their ideas worked and give bolstering encouragement when they flubbed. They might even get him to even pop down to the kitchens to grab them a late-night snack. 

Remus would likely be the first to get tired, with the full moon only a week behind him. Sirius would be the one to notice him drifting, like he usually was, and would suggest they call it a night. Then Sirius would say something kind and comforting about how tomorrow would be better, and the tomorrows after that even better still. And maybe Remus would smile that warm half-smile he hadn’t worn in months, and everything would be right again.

Until then, Sirius could fly and forget. He chased after the tail of Aubrey’s broom and caught up with James, bumping his shoulder with affectionate force before nose diving at the Whomping Willow for a game of chicken.

-

“If we end up needing to start from scratch because you keep sweating into the cauldron, I will hex all of your glands permanently closed,” Remus warned James, who was diligently stirring their pot of Veritaserum (twelve stirs anticlockwise; three-and-a-quarter stirs clockwise; repeat).

After only ten minutes of brainstorming ideas for how to fix the map on their second evening back at school, Peter had surprised them all with a hypothesis that imbuing the map’s ink with Veritaserum would ensure it would never lie again. It was a childishly simple solution, as Sirius had rather cuttingly pointed out, but they hadn’t been able to think of any reasons why it wouldn’t work. The map had taken quite a liking to lying since Remus had taught it how (it was currently showing Santa Claus pacing in Dumbledore's office), so it truly needed to be done.

Brewing the potion was a tedious and lengthy process, requiring an entire moon cycle to mature. And they couldn’t even start brewing until well into October because of how long it took Wormtail to find and pinch tiny amounts of the necessary ingredients from Slughorn’s many creative hiding places. With Peter’s job finally complete, James had erected a makeshift potions station in their dorm’s lav for ease of access and Sirius conjured a waterproof flame to sit under the cauldron. It was a clever bit of magic, but it had the unfortunate effect of raising the bathroom's temperature to that of a sauna. Remus, whose brewing skills only extended as far as a decent cup of tea, nevertheless supported the endeavour by supervising James and Sirius’s brewing from his perch atop the counter.

“All of my glands?” James asked, dabbing at his forehead with a flannel. “Surely that’s overkill.”

“All of them,” Remus confirmed with mock solemnity. “Even the fun ones.”

“No, not the fun ones!”

“It’s not like you’ll be using them any time soon, anyways.”

“Oi! What about Sirius’s glands? He’s just as damp as I am. Aren’t you, Padfoot?” James threw out an elbow, careful not to bugger his stirring pattern.

Sirius kept his eyes fixed unsmilingly on the bubbling potion. “Just don’t lean over the steam so much, James.”

Remus hopped down from the counter and peered into the clear, colourless brew. “Looks like the extra salt content didn’t hurt it,” he said. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

He left the lavatory, closing the door gently behind him.

“When did you become such a dud, Pads?” James asked mildly. He finished his final clockwise stir, then set the ladle aside and leaned back to keep his face out of the steam. 

Sirius frowned that darkly glamorous scowl of his and lifted the spell he’d been subtly casting to keep the sweltering heat from spreading to Remus’s end of the room. James’s glasses immediately fogged up from the rapid change in temperature as the hot and cool air redispersed, settling into something much more tolerable.

“Don’t forget the mallowsweet stems,” Sirius replied flatly, cracking open his NEWT Potions textbook.

“We don’t add those until tomorrow at sunset.” 

“Well, let’s get them prepped, then.”

“Okay. How about I chop, and you tell me what your problem with Remus is.”

Sirius’s head shot up from the text, expression startled. “I don’t have a problem with him. Are you kidding?”

James raised his eyebrows. “Could’ve fooled me. You’re icing him out, mate. He just left because you won’t even take a joke. He’s trying, Pads. Can’t you lighten up a little?”

“I’m not icing him out,” Sirius bit back. “I’m just… concerned about him. I’ll lighten up when we’ve fixed the bloody map and can know for certain that he’s all right.”

“How will the map let you know if he’s all right? You could just ask him instead. You know, like a normal person.”

Sirius scoffed. “Like he’d ever give a straight answer. The map’s the reason we didn’t realise what was going on last year. We just need to fix it.”

“Okay… And then what?”

“What?”

“We fix it, and then what happens? You’ll be nice to Moony again?”

“I’m not being mean to him, James.”

“You’re not being much of anything to him. Least of all a friend.”

Sirius sighed, pushing his damp hair back before letting it fall back in his face. “Just… keep stirring. Anticlockwise, twelve times. Three-and-a-quarter clockwise. And Remus was right: don’t sweat into the cauldron.”

“Fine.” James picked up the ladle and set back to work as Sirius plucked the dry leaves off of their mallowsweet clippings.

The heat was making James tetchy, but things were more or less all right. They were certainly a lot better now that he and his friends had made it through the clumsy back-to-school adjustment period and had settled into a new normal with Remus back in their midst.

Peter, bless him, was doing a remarkable job of acting like Dearborn had never even existed. Lily came around to visit with Remus most days and, like James, seemed unable to help being a little too gentle with him. James enjoyed the excuse to share her company, even though she made it clear that she wasn’t there for him. He found himself more and more enamoured as he got to see her fiercely loyal side. There was so much more depth to her beyond the perfect, polished version of herself she typically presented. 

Sirius had mellowed out since their first bumpy day back, but was still avidly avoiding direct interactions with Remus while simultaneously keeping a weather eye on him at all times. He was single-mindedly obsessed with fixing the map, and often took odd routes between classes so he could check for Remus in the halls. If it had been anyone but Moony, whom they’d all grown increasingly protective of since learning his secret in second year, it would have been creepy. But Sirius, the loyal dog, had always been the most watchful of the bunch when it came to Remus’s wellbeing. James understood where he was coming from, even if he didn’t like the way he was handling it.

Their newest pal, Bertram Aubrey, remained blissfully in the dark about the whole Dearborn affair, only pressing Remus for information about Hogwarts’s many hidden secrets and what else Wizarding Britain had in store. The two shared several classes, and when Remus wasn’t with the Gryffindors he could usually be found around the Ravenclaw table, chatting with him. Despite James’s campaign of encouragement to do so, Bertram hadn’t tried out for Ravenclaw’s quidditch team. James was privately grateful for it, as he was an elegant flyer and James really wanted to secure the cup in his final year of captaincy. 

Bertram still flew with James and Sirius on weekend mornings when James didn’t have practice, but once classes started he’d branched off to spend more of his time either with his Ravenclaw housemates or on his own, rowing out on the Great Lake. Apparently water sports were popular in Denmark’s many fjords and straits, and Bertram said rowing made him feel more connected to his home. He could frequently be spotted from the castle’s windows carving a solitary path through the peaceful water in one of the school’s rickety wooden skiffs.

Remus, who had always been pants on a broomstick, seemed to appreciate this new opportunity for sport and would often join him out in the little wooden boat, sometimes grabbing his own set of oars and other times letting Bertram handle the rowing while he sat back with a book propped on his knees. It was a huge relief to see Remus trying new things and stepping back into his old self after watching him fade nearly to the point of vanishing last year. He had regained some healthy weight and colour, and clever little jokes fell easily from his lips again.

Things were looking good, all things considered. They might even manage to make their seventh year a suitably grand finale to their Hogwarts legacy, if everyone kept their chins up and did their bit. With Bertram and Lily becoming more regular parts of their little circle, they might even grow into something new. Something greater than the four troublesome boys who had dubbed themselves ‘Marauders’ one twinkling midnight, all those years ago.

-

The Dane was not a Marauder. On this, Peter would not budge. 

He wasn’t a Gryffindor, for one thing. He wasn’t an animagus, for another. Becoming both were feats Peter had barely managed to pull off, having to beg the Sorting Hat and his friends for help with each respectively.

Aubrey was more Remus’s friend than anything, and Remus only counted as Marauder-lite in Peter’s book anyway. So even though everything was ‘Bertram this’ and ‘Aubrey that’ and ‘how cool is rowing!’ for the first few weeks of term, Peter knew he wasn’t about to lose his place in his friend group. He wouldn’t let it happen.

The Hogwarts rumour mill had burnt out without any fresh new information on Dearborn to feed its flames. Sirius had bloodied his knuckles a handful of times in an effort to hurry the process along, but swiftly stopped involving himself when Peter pointed out that someone might make a connection between the mystery student and Sirius’s friends. He’d then asked Peter to sow seeds for a new rumour that Sirius had been standing up for the friend of a girl he was privately dating, hoping the fake story would throw people off Remus's scent.

“It’s all very hush-hush because of his family, of course,” Peter told Mary MacDonnald in the common room, making a meal out of the story and knowing the gaggle of girls near the fire was listening in. “They made arrangements for him to be engaged to a pureblooded girl before he was even born, you know.”

That bit was actually true, though it didn’t mean anything at this point. It wasn’t like Sirius would ever follow through with anything his family expected of him, especially not after walking out on them to live with the Potters last month.

“He won’t tell us who the girl he’s seeing is—I know, sorry—but! I saw them together last week. I didn’t get a good look at her face, though. I think she was blonde. Or maybe brunette? Sorry! It was dark in the corridor. Hard to tell for certain. But anyways, he said she’s been really worried about her friend, and she keeps crying about all the horrible rumours going around, so he promised to shut them down. Yeah, he’s a real hero, right? That’s our Sirius. Always standing up for others.”

Peter had a solid enough reputation as a source of information on the Marauders’ planned misdeeds that his word was easily accepted. He continued to trade whispers about Sirius and the ‘mystery girl’ for fresh gossip on Hogwarts’s newest, hottest topic.

Predictably, the school’s female attention had zeroed in on the fanciable new seventh year with the charming accent and strong rower’s arms. Most of the ‘facts’ fluttering around about Bertram Aubrey were pure fantasy, of course, but a few surprising details did make their way to Wormtail’s sensitive ears.

Reliable sources in Ravenclaw had it that he was some kind of minor prince with royal blood on his father’s side. Aubrey admitted this was true when James and Sirius asked him about it, though he assured them the term ‘prince’ was a stretch. He was something like 16th in line for the throne (he wasn’t exactly sure), and his mother had separated from her husband, the Duke of Skagen, years before leaving for England. He’d never even seen the palace in Copenhagen, and figured he was just about as likely to ever don a crown as Dotty, the greenhouse’s house elf who wore a peat pot as a bonnet.

That was good. It was already difficult enough having one young noble in the group. Wait, no—it didn’t matter, because Aubrey wasn’t one of them. He was nobody compared to Peter. And Peter would do whatever it took to keep it that way. 

He vowed to stay vigilantly alert for any signs that the newcomer wasn’t everything he appeared to be. 

-

Sirius found himself subconsciously scanning for Aubrey’s Nordic height in the crowds in the Great Hall and across the quad between classes. It had started out as a handy way to see where Remus was at, since the two often walked together, but then looking for Aubrey had just become a habit. There was something undefinable in the way that he walked that drew Sirius’s attention like a summoning charm, and he found himself strangely fascinated by the new student whether he was near or far away. Sirius had even found himself noticing the way the sun gleamed off of the sweaty back of his neck when they flew laps around the castle with James. It was disconcerting, but also… nice.

He had finally decided he didn’t mind having Aubrey around. He hadn’t been sure, at first, what he thought about him. Sirius Black was difficult to impress by nature, but the fact that Aubrey didn’t seem concerned with impressing him at all worked in his favour.

He’d ended up observing Aubrey a good deal on accident because Sirius was always keeping an eye on Remus. It had hurt, at first, watching Remus opt for someone else’s company over his own, but Sirius couldn’t rightly blame him. Sirius knew he had been ice cold and hot tempered all school year, and Aubrey had… something. Something good.

Whatever it was, it was good for Remus, Sirius knew. And so he didn’t call Remus out when he passed him in the Great Hall on the way to the Ravenclaw table without so much as a nod hello, or when he stopped asking for Padfoot to stay by his side while he transformed in the shack.

It was all good, so why didn’t Sirius feel any better?

His mood lifted considerably on the day their cauldron of Veritaserum was finally finished maturing. He rushed up to Gryffindor Tower throughout the day to check on it between classes, then punched the air in triumph on his final return after the last lesson of the day when he tested a single drop on himself (reckless, but worth it) and it proved successful.

“We did it!” He yelled, flinging himself down the boys’ staircase and into the common room. “Prongs, Moony, Wormtail! The potion’s ready, and it works. Who has the map?”

His hair swung wildly about his face as he turned left and right, searching excitedly for his friends. James and Peter scrambled over from the far side of the room, but Remus wasn’t around.

“Where’s Moony? I want to get to work straight away,” he said in a rush as James grasped his shoulders in congratulations.

“He was headed out to the lake last I saw him,” Peter said, bouncing on his toes. “Do you want me to go look?”

“I’ll go! I’ll even swim to him, if he’s still out there. Merlin, I miss him.” Sirius hadn’t meant to say that last bit, but he and James had brewed their Veritaserum exceptionally well.

“What’s the rush?” James laughed, but Sirius was already heading for the portrait hole.

“I miss him!” He said again over his shoulder, and had to laugh at his barefaced honesty. “I’ll try to be back soon—get the map set up, will you?”

He clambered out before he heard their responses and made his way through the castle and down to the lake, feeling positively buoyant. He squinted out at the shimmering water and didn’t see the familiar little boat bobbing about, but continued on toward the lake’s edge all the same. When Remus still didn’t appear, he changed course and headed for the boathouse, an aged wooden structure that opened out to the lake and housed Hogwarts’s fleet of rowboats. Half a dozen flat-bottomed skiffs, the sort Aubrey usually used, were tied up along the dock that extended out from its side.

The large wooden door was already cracked open, so Sirius let himself inside. It took his eyes several blinks to adjust to the lowlight. Shards of weak autumnal sunshine trickled in through the gaps in the weathered old planks that made up the walls, highlighting dust motes in the scattered beams. 

The whole place smelled strongly of lake water, old wood, and algae. As he made his careful way around crates of varying shapes and sizes, loose coils of rope, and boats flipped belly-up for repair, Sirius made a mental note to come back to explore as Padfoot. If the scents were intriguing even as a person, they would be a sensory symphony as a hound. 

The air was also rich with sounds: the hollow bumping of the docked boats as they rocked against each other, the creaking of the pier, the steady splashing of water against the walls, the low trills of waterfowl—and a sigh of breath, followed by a soft thud and the shuffling of shoes.

The new sounds, which came from the far end of the building that opened out to the lake, startled Sirius into nearly tripping over a stray oar. He caught his balance and, looking up from his feet, saw a pair of mirrored silhouettes outlined clearly against the white light bouncing off the surface of the lake.

All of the air in Sirius’s lungs seemed to vanish, leaving him weak and dizzy. He knew immediately who they were. He would have recognized one of them anywhere on earth.

The two boys were kissing intently, oblivious to Sirius’s presence. Aubrey had Remus pushed up against a stack of nested rowboats, their lean bodies pressed flush together. Remus had a hand on Aubrey’s hip and the other on his neck as he kissed him back slowly, his eyes closed.

Sirius stood rooted to the spot, half hidden in the shadows behind a tall stack of mildewy old crates. In the space of seconds, a barrage of emotions crashed over him. The first of them, once the wave of shock had crested enough to make space for any other form of thought, was blinding rage.

Who the fuck did Aubrey think he was? Remus had been through enough of getting handled; of narcissistic men worming their way into his quiet, gentle world and invading his space. He had just barely made it to the other side of traumatised, and now here was this bastard nobody with his hands all over him like he had any right, any idea of who he was crushing his mouth into. Sirius felt a savage urge to charge at him and shove him bodily away from Remus, into the stupid lake he liked so much.

But then Sirius’s eyes started communicating with his brain again, and reality settled back into his body. Remus didn’t look like he wanted saving. He was enjoying the kiss, and giving just as much as he was taking. And Aubrey wasn’t a bastard, or a narcissist, or even a fully-fledged man yet. He was nice, and a hard working student, and barely seventeen. He was their friend, and Sirius didn’t want to hurt him or embarrass either of them. He’d even started to like Aubrey, and could see exactly what Remus saw in him.

It was confusing. It was horrible. It was arousing. It was a living nightmare, and he was trapped.

Aubrey was tugging at Remus’s tightly tucked shirt. He slipped his hands up beneath the fabric to run his palms over Remus’s bare skin, and Remus made a soft sound Sirius had never heard from him.

Sirius turned his face sharply away, shuttering his eyes. He wasn’t some kind of voyeur, whatever his cursed imaginings of Remus and Dearborn over the summer might suggest. He leaned his head weakly against the crates, trying not to listen but too nervous to leave his cover should he make a sound. His whole body felt numb, and he wished his mind would follow suit. Finally, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he backed as silently as he could in the direction of the door, hoping the noise of the sloshing water and creaking boats would cover his footsteps.

As soon as he made it far enough to feel safely in the clear, he ran. He kept his jaw clamped shut when he got back to the castle, frightened of what truths the lingering traces of Veritaserum might pull out of him. He didn’t want to hear them.

Chapter Text

There were a lot of things about his schoolmates Remus couldn’t relate to.

Having childhood friends back at home was one of them. The other students returned from their summers chatting about old mates they’d caught up with in their hometowns and villages, but Remus only had his school friends. He was unendingly grateful for them, of course, but they would never truly understand what it was to be different.

He’d been bitten too young to remember how it felt to be an untainted human, so it was hard to know what parts of himself were rooted in his lycanthropy and what was just him. His classmates all thought he was bookish, perhaps a bit of a dreamer, because he could usually be found with a novel tucked under his arm. But in truth, he read mostly in the hope that books would help him better understand the human condition. Authors made the spectrum of human emotions sound vast and beautiful, but that had never been Remus’s experience. He suspected what he felt was closer to a wild animal’s amorphous fears and instincts than anything Proust or Kafka described. His emotions were a tangled bramble of joys and hopes and worries that he couldn’t imagine rendering to any satisfaction as words on a page. He couldn’t know for certain whether the students without hideous beasts cloistered between their flesh and bones experienced things the same way he did; just that not knowing made him feel terribly alone.

Remus also couldn’t relate to the experience of having an innocent first love. When all of the boys and girls around him started pairing off for the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, he had looked on and wondered what it must feel like to have your first awkward kiss in Madam Puddifoot’s tea shop instead of naked behind a professor’s locked door. It made him feel toxic, somehow, having all of the experiences he shouldn’t yet have and still blending in with a crowd of teenagers who assumed he was the same as them. It was almost like coming to terms with being a werewolf hidden in wizarding society all over again.

So when Bertram asked Remus if he would show him around the village sometime, he had gladly agreed to play tour guide. But when Bertram clarified that he hoped it could be a date, Remus had immediately felt guilty, like he had accidentally deceived him somehow. He wasn’t like the other sixteen-year-old boys blushing excitedly behind their acne and freckles. He was a wolf’s instincts and a grown man’s experiences comically mispackaged in an unthreatening teenage body. In the bulky woollen jumpers he wore, he was quite literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’d told Bertram they’d be better off as friends.

A month later, when they were out on the water for the fifth time in as many days and the whole world was distilled to nothing but autumn colours and the creaking of oars under calloused palms, Bertram had opened up to Remus about how disconnected he felt from the Brits he was always surrounded by. He talked about how many of the thoughts he tried to voice didn’t come out making as much sense when translated into English, and how none of his new friends could relate to the references he wanted to make to his own culture. He was a bright and friendly sort, so hadn’t had much of a problem fitting in, but he confessed that, ever since leaving Denmark, he had felt achingly alone. Apart from when he was with Remus, he’d said. Meeting Remus on the train, the boy with the gentle eyes that were so kind yet so sad, had been the silver lining that had gotten him through the jarring transition between schools and nationalities. He didn’t think he would ever stop feeling like a visitor in his new country, but said he thought he found just a little bit of home when he was with Remus.

So Remus had said yes to going on a date sometime, and had let Bertram kiss him in the boathouse.

He’d been more anxious than he’d let on, especially when Bertram crowded him against a stack of old boats, pinning him in place. He’d stayed quiet and kissed him back, though, and found it surprisingly nice. It felt new. Different. He couldn’t help noticing how clumsy Bertram’s kisses were compared to Caradoc’s. He didn’t seem to know where to naturally place his hands on Remus’s body, putting them everywhere instead. They were cool and callused hands, and they felt so unlike Caradoc’s large warm ones.

He kept expecting Bertram to push farther, to reach for his fly after a few minutes of rushed touching. But he didn’t, and Remus had gradually realised that Bertram probably hadn’t done any of… that. It didn’t even seem to be on his mind. He only wanted to kiss Remus, was fully present in the moment, and seemed to get a great thrill out of simply sliding his hands under Remus’s cotton shirt. He simply wanted to touch, but not the way Caradoc had, commanding and invasive. Just contact, the joy of getting to know the skin of the person you fancy.

It was all so innocent that the realisation made Remus lightheaded. He could have laughed aloud from relief, but didn’t want Bertram to think he was laughing at his inexperience. Instead, he put a hand on Bertram's cheek and kissed him more slowly, wordlessly telling him to slow down. They weren’t rushing toward anything. They didn’t have to worry about students walking in outside of office hours or professors popping by for an evening cuppa with their colleague. They were just being seventeen, doing what teenagers were supposed to do, and Remus could close his eyes and pretend he was normal.

Never having had a solid grasp on his emotions—wolf or human, he would never truly know—he couldn’t say with any clarity how he felt about Bertram yet. He was handsome and funny and a good friend, but conflating those qualities for feelings had led him down a painful road before. Sirius was those things, too, and Remus had been wrong about what he and Sirius had meant to each other. With only brittle shards remaining of their friendship, he could only be glad that he’d never acted on what he’d once thought he felt toward his closest friend. Caradoc’s timing had been good in that regard, at least. Remus had missed Sirius so much after going through Boxing Day’s transformation without Padfoot that he’d been on the verge of writing to him and making a complete fool out of himself before the professor had invited him to his office and changed the course of everything.

That was why he couldn’t trust his heart with the wolf’s claws in it. Who in their right mind would? It might have been a cop out, but Remus blamed the wolf for the poor choices he’d made. It was always inside him, pulling silently on the strings of his heart, shaping his decisions and intent on leading him down a path of loneliness and suffering. He supposed one night a month of hurting him wasn’t enough for it anymore. It made him want the unlikeliest, most impossible things, and had guided him into a different kind of predator’s lair. 

So he tried his best not to think too much, and focused instead on what was simple and good. He liked Bertram, and it felt good to be wanted this way. To chat comfortably and aimlessly about unimportant things, and to kiss and be kissed without bracing for more.

-

For the past week, Sirius had been preoccupied with one, all-consuming question. It was better by miles than the visuals that had haunted him over the summer, but knowing that still didn’t make him feel much better somehow. The question lurked in the space behind his eyeballs and itched beneath his skin, following him between classes all day and up to his dormitory at night.

What did Bertram Aubrey have that Sirius Black didn’t?

They were both tall and fit, though Aubrey was long limbed and wiry where Sirius was broad shouldered and evenly muscled. They were both good flyers but didn’t go in for sport. Aubrey was a Ravenclaw, which made him a swot by default, but Sirius was top in their year (next to James) without even needing to try. They were both bilingual. Aubrey was Scandinavian; the Blacks were French. They were both nobility, even. Aubrey was technically a prince, but Sirius fit the role better with his inherited features. Aubrey had short, light hair; Sirius’s was long and dark. Could that be it? The difference that tipped the scale? Dearborn had been blonde, too.

Merlin’s sake, this was stupid. Was Sirius really jealous of Aubrey? That thought begot another, harder question that lurked just beneath the surface of the first one.

Did Sirius want to be him, or be with him?  

He couldn’t deny that he found the boy attractive. Did that mean he was jealous of Remus, then? He didn’t think so, and he hadn’t had any plans or inclination to act upon his vague attraction. But there was still an ugly green feeling deep down, something revolving around Remus. If it wasn’t jealousy, perhaps it was something closer to resentment. But why? He had no good reason to resent him. Was he upset with Remus for keeping yet another secret from his friends? Or was he hurt that Remus had turned to Aubrey instead of him? That led to the third question. The real question, buried deeper than Sirius was willing to go.

Why would Remus choose Aubrey when Sirius had all of the same qualities and still so much more to give?

-

“What’s got you in a mardy, Snape?”

Severus was on edge. He had been all term. He picked at his dinner roll, his stomach sour and hands restless. He had been growing steadily twitchier for months, anticipating Potter and his cronies launching some kind of attack. They had never gone this long without making a move against him. What were they waiting for? Were they playing some kind of twisted long game?

“Everything and nothing,” he muttered in reply to Mulciber’s unwelcome query, keeping his eyes diligently trained on the Gryffindor house table.

“Wha? Fuckin’ weirdo.”

Mulciber scooted the bench back to go find somewhere else to sit, causing Severus to jump at the sudden screech the wooden legs made against the marble floor. Mulciber just snorted and aimed a backhand at Severus’s ear, which he at least managed to dodge. He returned to hunching over the crumbs on his plate, scowling at the all-too-familiar scene across the dining hall.

Potter hadn’t been himself all term, which one would think was an improvement, but only served to unsettle Severus. Potter still did all of his usual jockish activities, but off the quidditch pitch he was acting less like a circus ringleader and more like a father to his obnoxious little clique. Right now, he was refilling their goblets, clearly carrying the conversation, jostling their shoulders, practically doting on them. Did he honestly think people would forget the way he’d strutted around like a rooster for the past six years if he suddenly started mimicking an adult? What was he playing at?

The worst of it was that Lily—his Lily—was falling for the act. Where before she had gone out of her way to avoid the Gryffindor boys, Severus now saw her with them every day. How could she let them trick her into thinking they were special? She was smarter than that. They may have had the rest of the school fooled, but she had always seen how they were nothing more than spoiled, overgrown, over-groomed children. Now, she was laughing beautifully at something Potter was saying, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Lupin at the Gryffindor table. 

Severus remembered her at eight years old in the park, her face lit up in a golden glow from the made-up healing charm she had whispered over a bent-winged robin. When it flew out of the cradle of her hands, she had made Severus promise never to throw stones at birds again. Lily had always been kind and gentle toward broken creatures. Still, Severus sneeringly wondered how she could stand the stench of the beast beside her.

Lupin was clearly wasting away. The hideously lumpy jumpers he wore weren’t fooling anyone. Already so unremarkable as to be remarkable, he had recently advanced to the stage of literally vanishing into nothingness. It was almost impressive to watch. He was currently polishing off a plate of shepherd’s pie, but he was still so gaunt and fragile looking that Severus wished he would just give up and put himself out of his misery already. It would save one of the Dark Lord’s dedicated supporters the hassle one day. 

Severus knew he would be one of them soon. He had decided on his path when Lily had made it clear that she saw no redemption for him. Three of his fellow Slytherins already bore the Dark Mark, and he was impatient to join their ranks. Regulus Black was one of them, even though he wasn’t yet of age and didn’t boast any remarkable talents. But the Blacks always did use their name to get the best of everything.

Sirius Black was seated next to Potter, trying to steal his attention back from Lily with words whispered in his ear. Good. Take it, like you take everything you want. Black looked agitated, moving the food around on his plate without interest. His behaviour had been even stranger than the wolf’s lately. Severus had found him lingering alone in odd places, surveying his friends from afar. He reminded Severus eerily of himself at fifteen, doggedly marking Lupin’s daily movements as if waiting for some stubborn parcel of truth to reveal itself. But Black already knew about Lupin’s lycanthropy, so what was he up to? Perhaps he had finally learned to fear his friend for the monster he was. Or, perhaps, Lupin had another secret.

What could possibly be worse than being a werewolf, though? Maybe the beast had actually gone and eaten someone. Severus shuddered, then chuckled darkly at the thought. Lupin looked far too ill-fed to have enjoyed such a substantial meal recently. No, the Gryffindors were hiding something else. And once again, Severus would find out. He’d done it before, after all. The weakest link was always a good place to start, and Pettigrew had been delightfully chatty lately.

He tore into his bread, appetite restored.

-

“I don’t think he likes us together, your watch dog.”

“Who, Sirius?”

“Yeah. He was kind of… glaring at me earlier.”

It might have been the accent, but somehow Aubrey always sounded slightly amused, like the whole world was one big joke he was casually enjoying. His voice carried across the rickety old dock to the patch of high grass where Padfoot rested his chin on his paws.

“I doubt it was personal.” Remus’s voice was quieter, always quieter than whomever he was talking to, but Sirius was an expert at listening for it. It sounded clear to Padfoot’s ears, even over the creaking of the moored boats and the buzzing of evening insects. “That’s sort of his default expression. It’s the eyes.”

Sirius couldn’t tell, from where he was nestled amongst the marshy weeds, which of the docked skiffs Aubrey and Remus were in. They must have been reclining across the narrow wooden benches or stretched out along the bottom with their oars, looking up at the sherbet-coloured clouds.

Sirius had no business being where he was. That afternoon, sick of the rhetorical conversations looping in his head, he had worked up the courage to finally go and talk to Remus. He had run down to the dock as Padfoot to wait for him to get back from rowing, forcing himself to leave the comfort of Gryffindor Tower before he got cold feet. But when he reached the lake, the late November air was unseasonably mild and his weeks of fractured sleep suddenly caught up to him. He’d drifted off where he waited and woken up at sunset to the clunky noise of a boat docking. He could have gotten up then and either announced his presence or left, but curiosity had won out when he’d heard Remus and Aubrey’s voices floating across the water.

“You didn’t see him! When I stopped by to get you after Transfiguration, he gave me this look like he wanted me to either catch fire or turn back around and leave you alone forever.”

“That can’t be right. He likes you, I’ve heard him say so plenty of times. Besides, I doubt he especially cares one way or another what I do, anyways. It’s not like we’re really friends anymore.”

Padfoot’s ears flattened against his head. He sank lower into the grass, shutting his eyes tightly.

“But you four are all friends—that includes you and Sirius, no?”

“Mm. Do you think so? It’s hard to tell, from where I’m sitting. He and I don’t talk anymore, really. He… he doesn’t even like to look at me.”

“But he does. He’s your ‘watch dog,’ remember? Wherever you go in the castle, he’s always somewhere in sight.”

“Ha. Remind me to tell James you’re calling him that, he’ll bust a lung. But—yes, I’ve noticed he does that. I think he’s just keeping an eye on me to make sure I don’t get up to anything I shouldn’t. It’s different when we’re all together, though. He more or less pretends I’m not there, which is… it’s a bit of a shift from how things were, but I’m used to it now.”

“You two used to be close?”

“Yes, very.”

“Did you get in a fight or something?”

“No. I think he just sees me differently now. Some things happened last year, and things just sort of haven’t been the same since. It’s all right, though.” His hushed voice drifted through the reeds, lost to the breeze at the end.

“What did he do?”

“Hm? Oh, no. Sirius didn’t do anything.”

“He didn’t? It wouldn’t surprise me, you know.”

“No. Sirius never did anything wrong.”

“Did you, then? Do something wrong?”

There was a pause where Sirius knew exactly what Remus was thinking about, and it broke his heart knowing how he was going to answer. 

“Yes. I did. Can you handle that, Bertram?”

His question was met with silence but for the sloshing of water as the little boat rocked gently. Aubrey was kissing him, Sirius knew.

“I hope that answers your question,” Aubrey’s voice broke the bubble where Sirius should have left, but had frozen instead. “But I still have to ask. Have you told your friends? James, Sirius, the small one—do they know about… about what we are?”

“What we are?”

“You know. Have you been in a relationship before, Remus?”

“Oh. I… well. I don’t really know.”

No. The answer was no. Aubrey laughed lightly, and Sirius was furious at him for it despite knowing he had no way of understanding what he was laughing at. 

“How can you not know? You are so funny sometimes, Remus. You’d be the last to assume anything, I suppose.”

“I suppose.”

“But have you… you know? With a guy? Or girl?”

“Erm, yeah. I’m pretty experienced, I guess.”

“Oh! Cool. I’m not, very. I had a boyfriend for only about a month back in Denmark, and we didn’t do much. But hey, this way you can show me, yeah?”

“Sure. Yeah, if you want.”

“I mean, you don’t have to, if you’re not into it. You seem like you might not be?”

“No—I am, I think. Just… not right now.”

Aubrey laughed again; still so lighthearted, always. “I didn’t mean right here and now in this boat.”

Remus let out a surprised laugh too, then, and it was a balm on the wound that had reopened in the pit of Sirius’s heart. “Oh, shut it. I didn’t think you did.”

“Imagine the—what do you call them? The splinters.”

“Merlin, don’t. Anyways—no, my friends don’t know yet. I’ll tell them soon, though, if you want. Ready to head back in? It’s getting cold, and my legs are starting to cramp.”

“Sure. Need help getting up?”

There was more creaking and water sloshing and quiet laughter. Padfoot finally slipped out of the high grass, a black shadow darting along the forest’s edge.

-

James was fully in the Christmas spirit. As soon as the massive trees had gone up in the Great Hall, the merriness of the season had hit him full force. Or maybe that was just the fairy that flew into his face when he’d gotten too close, admiring the twinkling lights. Either way, he was determined to make this year’s Christmas spectacular.

He was inviting the chaps to spend it with him and his parents, and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He had six solid strategies to get around the protective Lupins if they tried to stop Remus from coming, and he’d already bought Peter a train ticket since he couldn’t apparate and hated travelling by floo. Sirius always came home with James for Christmas break, and he was never spending another holiday in Grimmauld Place if James got his way. Which he would, because he had twelve plots for how to deal with the Blacks should Walburga ever decide to raise her shrewish head: one for each of the days of Christmas. And a partridge in a pear tree, you wretched bitch.

James was feeling loose and warm, full of hot cocoa and wondering if Evans would object to him giving her a Christmas present, when Peter burst into the common room. He was panting like he’d run a marathon and looking oddly elated. No, that couldn’t be right, with the way his hands were trembling—looking scared.

“Remus,” Peter panted, bracing his hands on the knees of his snow-crusted trousers. “Down in the boathouse—needs help—” he coughed, but couldn’t seem to catch his breath with the fractured phrases tumbling out of his mouth. Sirius bolted up from where he’d been lazing on the couch, alert like a bloodhound.

“What’s happened?” James demanded, clambering to his feet as well. “Pete, spit it out!”

“Cornered,” Peter wheezed. “The boathouse—I couldn’t—go help—before it’s too late—”

James and Sirius were already barreling through the portrait hole, wands drawn. 

Snape had been trying to instigate something recently, but James had been batting off his attempts, not wanting to upset Remus or Lily by making too much of a spectacle of him. They’d found him lurking in corners near the Gryffindor Tower entrance, and he had tried on a few ill-conceived occasions to catch James or Sirius off guard in the halls between classes. None of his attacks had gone according to plan, and the last time James had seen him, he’d looked bloodthirsty.

James hadn’t thought Snape would try going after Remus again after doing so had nearly cost him his life two years prior, but he might have gotten frustrated enough to try. More likely, he might have gotten one of his Voldemort-worshipping housemates to do his dirty work. Snape didn’t have actual friends, but there were plenty of creeps in Slytherin who would gladly attack a halfblood for sickles. Or—James’s stomach plummeted at the thought—maybe it wasn’t the Slytherins at all. Maybe Professor Dearborn had come back for Remus. Did the school grounds have wards to keep people like him out? The prospect of facing off against the former auror terrified James, but he only sprinted faster. Why hadn’t they asked Peter who he’d seen, or taken half a minute to run upstairs to check the map?

The moment they made it through the castle’s front doors, James summoned broomsticks from the quidditch shed. He and Sirius flew at breakneck speed through the whirling snowflakes down to the isolated boathouse on the water’s edge, not even breaking to hit the ground smoothly when they reached it.

James threw open the door, and there was Remus, cornered between the wall and a row of overturned boats, just like Peter had said, a figure blocking him from view. James raised his wand without hesitation, seeing Sirius do the same out of the corner of his eye, and let his strongest Stupefy soar. Their two spells hit the back of the assailant’s head in tandem, sending him crumpling to the ground.

“Remus!” James called out frantically. “Are you okay?”

Remus scrambled to his feet, looking discombobulated and horrified. His shirt was halfway unbuttoned and his flushed face and chest were rapidly draining of colour, leaving him a blotchy mess. He knelt down over the figure and turned him over onto his back, checking for his pulse.

It was Bertram. He was unconscious, and his typically narrow face was morphing before their eyes, his skull rapidly growing to twice its natural size. It didn’t look like a standard engorgio—whatever hex Sirius had used must have combined with James’s stunner to create this new, morbid effect.

“What did you… why are you…?” Remus breathed, blinking dazedly up into the bright light flooding into the shadowy building from the open door James and Sirius stood frozen in front of. “Help him!”

Sirius rushed to his side and knelt over Bertram, muttering a slew of counterjinxes that didn’t seem to have any effect. Remus pulled out his wand as well, running through the healing spells he used on himself after full moons and carefully brushing Bertram’s hair off of his deformed face. Oh.

James cursed under his breath and remounted his broom, flying straight out the door and up to the hospital wing to fetch Madam Pomfrey.

-

“Double detention,” Professor McGonagall articulated clearly, “is, in this circumstance, a very light sentence indeed. Your attack on Mr Aubrey could have ended in a serious magical brain injury. You should consider yourselves lucky that he is making a full recovery and does not hold you responsible for the misunderstanding.”

Sirius and James glanced at each other in disbelief. Double detention was practically a gift. 

“Under the circumstances, the headmaster and I have decided to be lenient. We understand how Mr Lupin’s unfortunate situation last term will have affected those closest—”

“‘Unfortunate situation?’” Sirius cut in, incensed. James kicked him under the table but he ignored him to glare at their professor, who paused and then shook her head in agreement.

“My apologies, Mr Black. You are quite right,” she said crisply, straightening her glasses. “What my former colleague put your friend through is terrible beyond words, but it is not the school’s intention to minimise what happened. Which is why we understand your instinctive reaction to defend Mr Lupin when you thought he had found himself in another nonconsenting position. It was, though misguided, rather brave. Your punishment will be re-stuffing practice cushions for Professor Flitwick’s summoning and banishing lessons. You will serve it together on Thursday and Friday evening, eight o’clock.”

Sirius shifted uncomfortably in his stiff wooden seat. He wasn’t about to ask for a harsher punishment, but this felt wrong. James hadn’t known who he was cursing when he’d fired his spell, but Sirius had. 

He would never admit it, but he’d known exactly what was going on the instant they’d burst through the door, and he’d done it anyway. The blinding rage he’d felt the first time he’d seen Remus and Aubrey together had hit him afresh, and the moment he saw James raise his wand, his own had moved in furious agreement. He didn’t even know what cruel, instinctive spell he’d used. He had regretted it before Aubrey had even hit the ground, and would have given just about anything to take it back. 

Peter had been a babbling mess when they returned to the castle, apologising repeatedly for misinterpreting what he’d seen and glancing at Remus out of the corner of his eye every five seconds. He’d masterfully hidden his surprise when he learned what Remus had actually been doing in the boathouse, but was transparently anxious that he would be held responsible for its discovery and the subsequent attack on Aubrey. Sirius almost wanted to blame him, to push his guilt onto anyone else, but he couldn’t. He was no better than Snape, lashing out wickedly when he saw the person he coveted with somebody else.

He deserved to be expelled, cast out to the ice and snow. But here he was, getting off easy with a slap on the wrist and a shared detention with his best friend.

“I want to caution you both,” McGonagall continued, “against making a habit of firing first and checking the facts later. And an attack like this outside of school grounds, even if it was only a misunderstanding, could have grave consequences. Especially in these troubled times, you must not rely on the courtesy of second chances. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Professor,” they both intoned.

“Very good. Then you are dismissed.” Professor McGonagall stood up with them as they made to leave. “And gentlemen,” she paused, stern expression softening. “Do tread lightly. If you or your friends find yourselves in need of support or guidance, please don’t hesitate to find me.”

They nodded, she nodded back, and the meeting was over.

“I want to die,” James groaned on their way down to the hospital wing to make their apologies.

Aubrey had been asleep in his hospital bed when they'd first tried to visit him. Madam Pomfrey had successfully restored his head to its original size and shape, but the bones of his skull needed to re-harden and his head was wrapped in heavy bandages that stretched across both eyes. 

“Me too,” Sirius muttered at his shoes. He didn't know what he was going to say when they got to the hospital wing, but had decided to apologise without asking for either Aubrey or Remus’s forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it.

Outside, the clock tower played Carol of the Bells. The notes echoed through the courtyard and filled the hollow space in Sirius’s chest. He had a name for that space now, the persistent ache he'd been trying to ignore behind his ribs, because he had finally come to grips with what he'd been missing all year long.

He finally understood the source of his jealousy, his obsessive protectiveness, his frustration with himself. He understood why it hurt to look at Remus, why he was obliquely fascinated with Aubrey, and why, back in the boathouse, he had wanted nothing more than to reach out and fix Remus's gaping shirt, then to pull him to his chest and never let him go.

There was nothing to be done about it now. He understood that, too. He'd ruined everything, as he was always destined to do, and it had been a lost cause before he'd even known what he truly wanted. Even before the afternoon's events, he had been a horrible friend when Remus had needed him most, wasting months acting sullen while he steeped in his own useless guilt.

The bells clanged their final notes as they rounded the final corner to reach the hospital wing. James held the door open behind him when he headed in, and Sirius paused for a second to square his shoulders and put his emotions back in their newly discovered hiding place. He released a breath and followed James inside, resolved to do better this time around. To be better. If not for his own sake, then for Remus's.

Chapter Text

19 Dec, 1977

Dear Remus,

I hope your holiday has been nice so far. You’ve always said North Wales is dull, but all that farmland must look beautiful in the snow.

We can’t wait for you to get here. I know you’ve been to James’s a few times, but you’ve never seen it done up for Christmas. You’re going to love it—it’s practically impossible to feel anything but merry here. Or maybe Mrs Potter puts Elixir to Induce Euphoria in the tea… we’ll have to keep a closer eye on that one.

I hope your parents haven’t been giving you a hard time about things. James says they’re only letting you come for Christmas on the condition that you’re to be supervised by Mr and Mrs Potter and that you don’t go out to the village. That’ll be fine, though, because Mr and Mrs Potter are great company and their house is the best place to be anyways. Don’t worry, you’re going to have the best time.

Can I pick you up to take you to the Potters’ on the 22nd? And is there anything I can do to make things better for you at home or while you’re staying here?

Here, the parchment had been carefully torn off. The letter continued on a second page in a careful, neater script:

I never asked you how your summer went. I’m sorry about that. Mine was a mess, what with leaving home and all, and I guess I got in my head. That's not an excuse, though. I'm sorry for being an all-round shite friend. It wasn’t because I saw you differently after Dearborn. Or maybe it was, but not in the way you think. Not for the worse, I swear it.

I wish this wasn’t the first letter I’ve sent you all year. I’m glad that you and Evans write to each other, though. And that you found Bertram—he’s really great. I’m sure he’s been writing you much better letters than this one, even with English as his second language. I’ll never stop being sorry for hexing him. You were both so decent about the whole thing, but I wish I could take that day back. I’d redo the whole term, if I could, all the way back to when we boarded the Hogwarts Express. I know saying so now doesn’t change anything, though. I promise I’m not trying to win back any kind of forgiveness. I’m just trying—.

The long string of words that followed this thought was crossed out several times over, the inky lines too thick to read through. Sirius had gone back and added a full stop at the end of ‘trying,’ seemingly satisfied that the single word summed up his position sufficiently.

See you soon,

Sirius

-

Sirius showed up on the Lupins’ doorstep on the afternoon of the 22nd with a helmet under one arm and a potted poinsettia in the other. 

Remus had spent the morning lying listlessly on his twin bed with his feet propped up on the footboard, listening for a crack of apparition in the front garden. He’d been trying something new lately where he focused all of his energy on not thinking about anything at all, and it was working decently well. His mind and body felt still and clean like the untouched snow piling up on his windowsill, and when he became a blank vessel for the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins, nothing really mattered. Nothing that had happened or that had yet to pass could touch him.

His state of empty placidity evaporated when he heard a knock at the door. He sprang up and rushed into the hall, but his parents had already beaten him to answering it. Remus hovered behind his mother’s shoulder in the narrow entryway, listening to Sirius and his parents exchange holiday wishes. Somehow, even after waiting for his arrival all morning, he still felt surprised to see the friend actually standing there, framed in his doorway.

After he'd handed the potted plant off to Hope and shaken Lyall’s stiffly-offered hand, Sirius greeted Remus with half a smile and an almost disconcerting flash of icy blue eye contact. Remus shook off the deer-in-headlights feeling it left him with by excusing himself with a muttered excuse to fetch his bag from his room. He lugged it over to the fireplace, assuming they would floo straight to James’s. But once he had hugged his mother goodbye and shaken his dad’s stern grip off his elbow, Sirius had taken the bag from him, slung it over his shoulder, and headed down the street with a twitch of his head to follow.

“Where are we heading?” Remus asked quietly as they passed his neighbours’ ramshackle homes. He glanced around and glimpsed nosy housewives peeping out at them from between cracks in their frayed curtains. Sirius looked rather absurdly out of place here, his slick leather jacket and aristocratic glamour juxtaposed against peeling fenceposts, overgrown lawns and cracked pavement.

“I parked a little ways away,” Sirius said, oblivious to the onlookers. “Didn’t want the noise to bother your parents.”

“The noise...?” Remus repeated a second before his eyes caught on a shiny black motorbike parked conspicuously in front of a peeling white picket fence further down the lane. “Oh, don’t tell me…”

“Yep,” Sirius said contentedly, tossing Remus the helmet. He fished a ring of little silver keys out of his jacket pocket as they reached the bike, toying with them and gazing fondly down at the gleaming hunk of metal. “James’s neighbour was getting rid of it, and Mr Potter asked him to hold onto it in case I wanted to buy it off of him. Looks practically new, though, doesn’t it? He’s an older fellow, the neighbour; more of a collector. Barely touched the thing since he got it. I’ve been working out in the garage all break to get her up and flying in time to get you.”

“Wow, that’s… that’s really great, Sirius,” Remus said, folding his surprise behind an even tone. He kept his eyes fixed on the helmet in his hands as Sirius secured his bag onto the back with leather straps. 

He wasn’t at all shocked that Sirius had bought and enchanted a motorbike. He’d been nattering on about the idea since they were fourteen, and had all the means and talent to make it happen when the right moment struck. It was the fact that this was the most Sirius had spoken to him in months that was throwing Remus off balance.

Sirius slung a long leg over the bike and warmed up the engine with a caress of his wand.

“You coming?” He asked when Remus stayed rooted where he stood. He paused with the key hovering over the ignition looking—trepidatious? Excited? Remus couldn’t quite tell. It had been so long since Sirius had looked him in the eye that he must have forgotten how to read his expressions.

“Yeah. Sorry.” Remus shook off the unsteady feeling and crammed the helmet over his head. It fit like a glove, even over his grown out curls. He took a breath and willed himself to return to the mindset of stark rationality he’d worked on cultivating all holiday, then climbed onto the back of the bike.

Sirius’s abrupt change in temperament made an innocent kind of sense, he supposed as his mind found its way back to that merciful state of judgement-free repose. Sirius had always adored Christmas. The festive season brought out a rare, sentimental side of him, which Remus used to privately look forward to seeing every winter.

This year, it was also surely the reason he’d begun being markedly more considerate toward Remus as the school term wound down for the holidays. It was either that or guilt over what he and James had done to Bertram—and Remus, pessimist though he might be, hated to think his friends were only driven out of feelings of guilt or pity. Besides, he knew all too well how Sirius acted when he was guilty, and this was something different: something tenderer and warm. Something that had driven him to write a letter that Remus kept folded between the pages of A Separate Peace and could barely even begin to process. So really, the only explanation was the mysterious magic of Christmastime.

“We couldn’t just take the floo?” Remus asked. Flying promised to be exhilarating, of course, but Remus wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t first pause to point out the sensible option. In answer, Sirius just shook the hair out of his face and told him to ‘hold on tight.’

He did, and distantly registered that the position was absurd. They hadn’t even sat next to each other since September on the Hogwarts Express, and now Remus had his chest pressed against Sirius’s back like it was something they did every day. Like no time had passed since the last time Sirius had lounged on Remus’s bed with him to work on an essay together. Sirius used to put his feet in Remus’s lap, and Remus used to promise himself he’d tell him how much he liked that one day.

Sirius revved the engine and took off down the street, briefly taking a hand off the handlebars to check that Remus’s grip around his middle was secure. He rounded the corner out of the residential area, checked over his shoulder for muggles, and punched a button that triggered a cloaking spell before pointing the bike skyward. Even knowing exactly what would happen, Remus’s stomach swooped when the wheels rose off the tarmac. He did it, he thought wistfully as he looked down at the rural scene shrinking beneath them.

“Happy Christmas, Moony,” Sirius called over his shoulder as they ascended above the cloud cover that blanketed Wales.

It was the first time Sirius had called him Moony in months, and Remus couldn’t help the smile that broke through his placidity like spring’s first daisy in the snow. 

“You too, Padfoot,” he shouted back. The words were whipped instantly away by the wind, and Remus wondered if they’d made it to Sirius’s ear just a few centimetres away from his mouth. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

Sirius’s festive mood would pass quickly, like Christmases always did. January would soon roll in to replace December's fairy lights, holly, and merriment. Last year, the new year had been filled with something secret, new, and, at the time, exciting. Remus had a feeling that this year’s post-holiday gloom would be harder than ever after finding himself on the other side of Sirius’s friendship again.

It was only Christmas magic: harmless, sweet, and rare, so he promised himself he’d enjoy it while it lasted. He closed his eyes to let the crisp air and the scent of Sirius’s jacket wash over him.

-

James was vaguely aware that it wasn’t especially cool to get on great with your parents. He didn’t really care, though. He was 6’2, top of his class, star of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, and half of the hottest duelling duo in school, so if anyone had a problem with him idolising his mum and dad, they could jump in the Great Lake.

As magical as Hogwarts was, he always looked forward to returning home for the holidays. He was the only one of his friends who truly did, but he refused to feel weird about it. The Potters had more than enough love to go around, so he would simply bring them in rather than let himself feel singled out. Easy as that.

James was an only child, but not by design. His parents had had him later in life and called him their miracle, but they had always wanted more children. James suspected that was why they loved hosting his friends so much.

They considered Sirius their second son already, without Sirius ever having to ask them to take him in when life at Grimmauld became unbearable. They doted on Peter each time he came to stay like he was an adorable little boy, even though the chub in his cheeks wasn’t baby fat anymore but the consequence of too many stolen puddings. And they were delighted and intrigued by Remus, who was the least frequent visitor of the three due to holiday scheduling always being tricky around moon cycles.

Halfway frozen from the motorcycle flight upon his arrival, Remus had defrosted in front of the cast iron stove while James’s mother puttered around him. The two had gotten to chatting about authors and philosophers, and afterwards she had loaded him up with a small library’s worth of books to take home. Later that same day, James’s father had led him on an hours-long tour of all the runes in the house when he’d noticed Remus taking a charcoal rubbing of one of the intricate protection symbols carved in the entryway. The two had compared runes of the world and their applications well into the evening, only putting the scrolls away when James stole Remus back for a round of snap upstairs. Now, Remus was helping James’s mother set the table for a dinner he’d helped her prepare.

”You’re an old soul, aren’t you Remus?” She said warmly, laying out the dinner plates. “It’s easy to forget you’re the same age as our James. The way you talk, you could be twice your age.”

She had been asking him about his hometown in Wales, and he’d spoken briefly but lyrically about the hardworking farmers who pulled off daily miracles without magic.

“Oh, well,” Remus replied impassively, taking his time to straighten the silverware he’d already placed with care. “I don’t know about that. I think I just don’t have as much to say, and quiet sometimes looks like maturity. If my mind worked as fast as James and Sirius’s, I’m sure I’d run my mouth and ruin the illusion.”

James winced internally. He wished Remus wouldn’t do that. One of the great things about his parents was that you could be honest with them, and Remus was deflecting like he always did when he was uncomfortable. James told him as much after dinner (‘it bothered you, I could tell, and you’re allowed to say—’) but Remus just shook his head.

“She only meant it as a compliment. Your parents are both so kind. I’d hate to seem difficult or ungrateful while staying in their home.”

“You don’t have to be so bloody polite the whole time, you know. You can relax and be yourself. They’re just happy you’re here.”

“I know,” Remus said with a little grin. “So am I.”

James bunked with Sirius that night. The boys all had their own rooms, but what fun was a sleepover when you didn’t stay up till daybreak talking? In between rants about Sluggy’s biased treatment of their muggleborn classmates and a quarter hour of fretting over whether Lily Evans would like the gift he’d asked Mary MacDonald to slip into her purse on the train, he mentioned the way Remus had reacted to what his mother said in the dining room.

Sirius had been silent for a while by that point. James thought he might’ve drifted off to sleep and was debating kicking him awake for his rudeness when he rolled onto his back and said, “We have to make this the best Christmas for him. To make up for last year’s.”

“There’s no undoing last year’s,” James said sadly.

“I know. We can’t fix it. But we can make it better.”

“Sure, Pads. Of course we can. And we will. Everything’s been brilliant so far, right? Remember that deer at lunch the other day? You can’t get much more festive than that.”

“Yeah. He loved that. You’re right, of course. Christmas is always the best here, anyways. Still… I don’t know. I’m knackered. You ready to sleep?”

“Fine, suppose we’d better. Night, Pads.”

“G’night, Prongs. Happy Christmas.”

“It’s not Christmas yet, tosser.”

“Still…”

“Fine. Happy Christmas, you silly dog.”

-

The Potters’ country house was tastefully festive, like something out of a catalogue. The wainscoted walls were draped with thick evergreen garlands, and every door bore wreaths bejewelled with holly berries, winter citruses, and silver bells. The sitting room smelled of warm vanilla and pipe smoke, the kitchen glowed with copper pots, and the enchanted gramophone staunchly favoured crackly old records recorded before the 1950s. In the massive front window, a stately fir tree stood waiting to be decorated, with wrapped gifts and boxes of heritage-blessed decor tucked beneath its lowest boughs.

It was all leagues too good for the world, and therefore a form of unreality by Remus’s logic. He thought perhaps Sirius might have made a wrong turn up in the ether when he’d pulled up to Mrs Potter’s snow-kissed rose garden and landed them in some kind of parallel dimension where troubles and hardship didn’t exist.

The afternoon Peter had arrived, for example, the Potters and their guests had just gathered around the kitchen table for lunch when one of the deer grazing in the garden poked his head right through the open window to sniff curiously at Euphemia’s cooking. The scene would have been charming enough on its own, but the magic of the Potters’ worked its mysterious charms to take it a great leaping step further. They’d hung a bell-studded wreath from the window frame, and the young buck stuck its head straight through the centre of it, where it fit perfectly around his neck. After a few startled blinks at the Potters and co, he pranced away still wearing the pine wreath like a lion’s mane, sleigh bells jingling all the way to the forest’s snow-trimmed edge.

The reaction around the table was, to Remus, even more surprising than the wildlife. They’d all laughed and ‘wow!’ed as the deer ran out of sight, and then went on to serve and enjoy their meal cheerily—as if things like that actually happened in real life. Like fairytale moments weren’t bound to the stitching of children’s books, and this tableau was just a nice little dusting of magic on top of an already magical life. Remus had sat back and eaten his sandwich in a haze of Christmassy peace, taking it all in.

It wasn’t just the Potter house making him feel this way. Sirius’s spirit was infectious. Whether he was asking Mr Potter to play something on the piano, pouncing on James with a pair of reindeer antlers, or drizzling extra brandy butter on Peter’s pudding, Sirius was the embodiment of good cheer. It took Remus a little while to realise that it was a concerted effort on Sirius’s part. His sharp eyes were constantly on watch for openings  to make the people around him smile—especially Remus.

He kept going out of his way for him: setting aside a ham and cheese croissant when he’d slept straight through breakfast (‘didn’t want to wake you, but James was going to finish everything off’), checking in on him in his room under the pretence of borrowing a scarf (‘I left my good one at school. Did you bring a spare? How’s the room, comfortable?’), and asking for Remus’s take on things he surely knew the answers to already (‘if you wanted to make a tool that could pick any lock, what spells would you use? Or would you go for runes?’).

Nothing that happened in the Potters’ home could exist in the same world as Remus’s mangled reality. Remus experienced his days there as a dream, and dream rules applied. He could say and do whatever he pleased in the moment, and it wouldn’t hurt because it was all too perfect to be real. So he enjoyed his croissant with a ‘thanks, Pads’ and a grin, lent Sirius his dad’s tattered old scarf, and workshopped ideas for a knife that would open any door while they trudged through the snow searching for pine cones to put on the mantelpiece.

The mind-splitting stress of NEWT revisions, the splintered bed in the Shrieking Shack, and the long, cautionary letters from his disappointed parents would all be waiting for him when he awoke to reality in the new year. His friends would lose the rosy glow about their cheeks and go back to remembering what a hopeless case he was. But for now, everything was shimmering. The freshly fallen snow outside, the fairies fluttering around the windows, and the light in Sirius’s eyes when he smiled at Remus.

-

“What’s this one meant to be, Prongs? A hippogriff?”

“That’s a dragon, thank you very much!” James snatched the homemade ornament back from Sirius, and Fleamont chuckled over the rim of his brandy. He settled into his well-worn leather armchair comfortably to take in the scene around the tree. He and his wife, Euphemia, absolutely loved having their house so full of his son’s friends and laughter.

“Where are its scales? And its tail is all—”

“Shove off! I was, what, five when I made this, right dad?”

“Closer to ten,” Fleamont said, smiling apologetically as his son’s face dropped. “But it’s a handsome creature just the same. I’d hang it next to the centaur, near the bottom there. They look like they could be friends.”

Sirius, Remus, and Peter all laughed, and James obediently hung the paper mache ‘dragon’ next to the centaur on one of the lower boughs of the magnificent Christmas tree. Fleamont and Euphemia had made sure to select an extra large one this year to give the kids more space to decorate.

“It could be a Welsh Green, with that beak,” Remus Lupin (also fondly known as ‘Moony,’ if Fleamont remembered correctly) said fairly, leaning down to examine it. “If you gave it a little paint and trimmed off the… proboscis.”

“Proboscis?!” James squawked, swooping back down to grab it off the branch and turning it over in his hand.

“Silly Moony,” said Peter Pettigrew (‘Wormy,’ they sometimes called him), looking over James’s shoulder. “That’s clearly it’s knob. Oh, er—sorry, Mrs Potter.”

But Euphemia was chuckling along with the laughing boys, and little Peter’s chest puffed up at having made a successful joke.

“We could try an animate spell and see what it behaves like,” Sirius said keenly, pulling out his wand. “James, I’ll give you a galleon if it breathes fire.”

Peter perked up at the mention of a wager. “What do I get if it gets an erec—”

“Ten points from Gryffindor,” Remus interrupted, pointing at Peter. “Put your wand away, Sirius, and James, quit taking ornaments off the tree. We’ve still got a lot of branches left to fill.”

They did as they were told, returning diligently to their tasks, and Fleamont pushed himself up from his seat and let out a hearty laugh. “I’m glad the boys have you to keep them in line, Mr Lupin,” he chortled. “You’re the grown up of the group, aren’t you?”

“No, he’s not,” Sirius corrected him quickly. “He’s younger than me, Mr Potter.”

“I know, son. I only meant he seems like a responsible old sort. He’ll keep you boys out of trouble, if anything can.”

Remus just smiled and went to find another box of baubles, but Sirius pulled Fleamont over to the fireplace, away from the tree and the merry activity.

“Don’t say that,” Sirius implored him, dropping his voice low. “He doesn’t like it. And it’s not true—he gets up to plenty of trouble, he’s just better at hiding it. He’s the brains behind half the mayhem we’ve caused.”

“My word,” Fleamont blustered, surprised. “I wouldn’t have guessed. He seems so self-contained.”

“He might be quiet, but that’s not his whole personality. He’s… more. So much more,” Sirius said, looking into the fire. The heat rolling off the grate turned his cheeks and neck red. “Anyways. It’s not fair that he gets treated like an adult so much. People expect things from him—more than they’ve any right to. But he’s only seventeen.”

“I will refrain from offering him a glass of brandy, then,” Fleamont said stoically, raising his snifter to his lips. “I’m sorry for upsetting you, son.”

“You didn’t. Just… please keep that in mind while he’s staying here.”

“All right.”

Sirius made to go back to the others, but Fleamont put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Maybe you've done more growing up than I give you credit for. I’m proud of the man you’re becoming, Sirius.”

Sirius grinned at him a bit sheepishly, then grabbed his gloves off the table. “I’m not too grown up to challenge you to a snowball fight," he said, nodding at the back door. “What do you say, old man?”

Fleamont laughed and summoned his own gloves and coat with a flick of his wand. His hip ached from the weather and his joints were perpetually tired, but he wouldn’t let them stop him from playing outside with his boys. There wouldn’t be many more of these moments, he knew, and he was going to enjoy every last one of them full heartedly.

“Come on, you lot,” he called to the rest of them. “Snow fight! And an extra mince pie for the victor.”

They all pulled on their boots and rushed for the door, already roughhousing as they shoved out of it. 

As he expertly readied a snowball (he may be slower on his feet, but he had decades worth of experience), Fleamont glanced across the yard at Remus. With a white knit cap pulled over his ears and snow already dusted all the way down his front, Fleamont saw the gangly, fresh-faced kid he truly was. Sirius was trying to shelter him from something beyond Fleamont’s ken, but he would endeavour to help however he could.

That didn’t mean he’d go easy on the boys in a snowball fight, though. He launched his missile with artful precision and took cover behind the wood pile.

-

Peter was growing a bit tired of all the jolly Christmas chores. Why was there so much that needed doing for a simple holiday? None of them were even Christian, for Merlin’s sake.

Everyone else seemed to think it was all great fun, but hand mixing endless batches of gloopy gingerbread dough, collecting basket upon basket of mistletoe, pinecones, and holly from the icy tundra outside, and refilling all of the property’s bird feeders with peanut butter and seed mix was tiresome work. There was somehow always more of it to do, and Peter was itching for some real entertainment.

Mrs Potter asked him if he could flip over the vinyl in the Victrola—again—and he did so with a silent sigh. Why couldn’t the old lady just wave her wand at it, or better yet, invest in a modern radio? He didn’t get these people, but there was still no place he’d rather be than bunking with his coolest of friends.

Sirius was outside gathering firewood out back with Mr Potter, and James was lounging contentedly across the couch, working on a popcorn garland with a needle and thread. He was eating more kernels than actually made it onto the string and creating a horrible mess of broken pieces for Remus, who was tidying up the area and humming softly along to the crackly record.

Bored, Peter took it upon himself to reorganise the presents under the admittedly magnificent tree into neat piles, mostly as an excuse to shake each one as he moved them around.

The Potters spoiled James something terrible, with a heap of oversized boxes and bags tied up in satin. The Blacks didn’t send anything for Sirius, of course (Sirius would have binned them unopened if they had), but the Potters had happily picked up the torch of getting him gifts as well. The Lupins’ parcels for Remus came in brown paper packages, and Peter’s mum had sent her customary homemade sweets for them all in snowflake patterned tins. The gifts from the Marauders to each other were wrapped in Gryffindor gold foil and scarlet wax, as was their tradition.

Then there were the anonymous presents that had begun arriving for Sirius and James each Christmas ever since puberty had struck and blessed them with… everything. They had initially been horrified to open boxes containing terrible poetry and love potion-infused chocolates (Mr and Mrs Potter had quickly recognized them as dangerous and confiscated them), but over the years they had turned them into an amusing little tradition. Peter now looked forward to taking part in unwrapping the nameless parcels and guessing at the identities of their senders, even though he couldn’t deny the pangs of jealousy that he’d never received any himself.

Speaking of gift giving and romance, Peter realised something was missing. There was a prettily wrapped book for Remus from Lily Evans (which was surely driving James bonkers), but conspicuously—

“Nothing from Bertram, Remus?” Peter asked, scanning the pile beneath the tree again.

“Ah, no.” Remus was on the other side of the tree, syphoning dry needles off of the floor with his wand.

“Ouch. I’m sorry. Did you get him anything?”

“Yes, but I returned it.”

“How come?”

“Didn’t want to make things weird.”

“That wouldn’t have been weird. What’s weird is not getting your boyfriend a Christmas present.”

“Well, we’re… not together.”

James sat up on the couch at that, frowning. “You mean you haven’t, like, ‘defined the relationship’?”

“No, James. That’s not a thing. We, er,” Remus pocketed his wand and busied himself with repositioning a velvet ribbon. “We broke up. It’s fine, though. You lot can still hang out and all.”

“What!” James dropped his popcorn string and hurried to Remus’s side. “Mate, I’m so sorry. What happened? God—it wasn’t because of what Sirius and I—”

“No, no. It had nothing to do with that. I just told him we should go back to being friends.” 

“No! Why? He’s great.”

“I know. We just wanted different things.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing. I mean—I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all fine, though.”

“Moony…”

The back door swung open and Sirius and Mr Potter came in with armfulls of chopped wood and a flurry of snowflakes behind them.

“Shut the door behind you, dear, before we all catch our deaths!” Mrs Potter’s voice called out from somewhere deep in the house at her husband, who chuckled and bumped it closed with his boot.

“Why’d you dump Aubrey, Remus?” Peter asked, just loudly enough that Sirius would hear but not so loud as to look like he was trying to cause a scene. This, at least, wouldn’t be boring.

“Merlin, Pete—”

“What?” Sirius asked, right on cue, coming over wide-eyed. He was wearing Mr Potter’s brown workman's jacket, what looked like one of Remus’s scarves, and a rosy flush from chopping wood in the cold.

“Nothing, Sirius. It’s no big deal,” Remus said tiredly. “Look, it’s nearly Christmas,” he continued before anyone else could get a word in, “and this isn’t a very Christmassy topic. Can’t we just… make some mulled wine or something? I think I saw some dried fruits and cheeses; if we roast some nuts and slice up last night’s ham, we can make a nice spread of it and Mrs Potter won’t need to cook dinner tonight. James, want to help? Peter?” 

Remus was back in prefect mode. Hurrah.

“I—sure, unless—” Peter stammered, glancing around for a way out of having to deal with yet more work and an uncooperative werewolf.

“I’ll help,” Sirius said decisively. He walked straight through the swinging door that led into the kitchen, leaving James and Remus to follow behind him on the door’s next swing.

Peter sighed. That had been fun, for all of twenty seconds.

“Do you know how to build a fire, Peter?” Mr Potter asked, reappearing near the hearth with a pair of thick leather gloves.

“No, sir,” Peter said, wishing he’d gone straight upstairs for a nice little nap.

“How about you help me and I’ll show you how,” Mr Potter said warmly, like he was offering Peter something special. “Every man should be able to build a good fire. Grab yesterday’s Prophet—there on the coffee table, that’s the one—and bunch each page into wads. There’s a good lad.”

Peter did as he was told with a plastic grin on his face. Christmas, he decided, was a pointless faff fit only for muggleborns. But if all of his friends were for it, then so too was he. Joy to the world, he thought flatly as he prodded at logs with an iron rod.

Chapter Text

Christmas Day, 1977

To Prongs, From Padfoot
A pair of dragonhide Chaser gloves and a box of Zonko’s explosives

To Padfoot, From Wormtail
A tin of almond brittle and two bars of Honeydukes Finest chocolate

To Wormtail, From Moony
A signed copy of A Snitch in Time and a block of swiss cheese

To Moony, From Padfoot
An antique Folio Bruti with the entry for Werewolf conspicuously missing

To Padfoot, From Prongs
A spare motorcycle helmet and a set of runic decals
(accompanying note: ‘So we can ride together and both keep our heads’)

To Prongs, From Wormtail
A tin of toffee and two bars of Honeydukes Finest chocolate

To Wormtail, From Padfoot
A velvet wizard’s hat charmed to never blow off of the wearer’s head

To Padfoot, From Moony
An illustrated edition of The Atlas of Celestial Anomalies and a knotted rope toy

To Moony, From Wormtail
A chocolate orange and two bars of Cadbury dairy milk chocolate

To Wormtail, From Prongs
A striped cashmere sweater
(accompanying note: ‘So you can stop nicking mine’)

To Prongs, From Moony
An annotated copy of Madcap Magic for Wacky Warlocks and a saltlick tied in twine

To Moony, From Prongs
A leather bag embossed with ‘Professor R. J. Lupin’ (accompanying note: ‘Because you’ve taught us more than any professor at Hogwarts)

A small mountain of crumpled red and gold wrapping paper filled the shiny black sidecar Mr and Mrs Potter had gifted Sirius. It was parked just off to the side of their enormous fir tree alongside a large new record player for James and a veritable trove of smaller gifts from the Potters’ friends and neighbours. Clusters of polished silver platters and thin crystal glasses from Christmas breakfast sat abandoned on the dining table, Fleamont and Euphemia having insisted that cleaning could wait for later.

The morning’s excitement and rich breakfast foods had left the whole household yawning and bleary eyed by mid-afternoon. One o’clock saw the silver haired couple retiring to the front porch to sip tea under a heavy blanket, Peter and Remus wandering upstairs to their respective rooms to relax before dinner, and James and Sirius tumbling out into the garden to test out their new flying accessories, shouldering through their tiredness in stubborn refusal to relinquish a single moment of Christmas Day.

Sirius tumbled back into his room at around half four, his hair an artful mess from his helmet and skin flushed from the cold. His bedroom at the Potters' was directly across the hall from James's and connected to Remus's by a shared toilet with doors on either end. Both doors were wide open the day Sirius had fetched Remus from Wales, making the bathroom a little tunnel bridging the two rooms. For some unspoken reason, both boys had left the open doors as they were, only closing them when in use and then returning them to their original open positions. They each kept to their own rooms, but Sirius found it oddly comforting just hearing Remus moving about. It felt like the best parts of being at home and in their dorm.

Sirius pulled off his snow-dusted scarf and glanced at the bathroom mirror to see Remus’s room reflected in it—a habit he’d developed since Remus’s arrival. He found Remus curled up by his window, reading by the thin white December sunlight.

“Hey,” Sirius said softly to Remus’s reflection, stepping into the little in-between-room and grabbing a flannel to rinse his sweaty face in the nearest of the twin sinks.

Since settling in at the Potters’, Remus had been livelier than Sirius had seen him in months. He still didn’t tend to initiate conversations, but responded to them most of the time (when he wasn’t lost in a blank-eyed meditation, his mind adrift where no one could reach him). He looked fairly relaxed at present, well-fed and rested in one of James’s old jumpers, but Sirius was still cautious not to bother him too much while he was in his own space.

“Hey, Pads. How was your test flight?” Remus asked. His voice sounded bright over the running water. Sirius glanced up from the sink to see Remus setting his book—the Folio Bruti Sirius had given him that morning—down on his bed. 

“It was brilliant,” Sirius said, grinning to himself behind the washcloth as he patted his face dry. “The sidecar doesn’t slow my bike down a lick. Fleamont must’ve put some kind of anti-drag spell on it.”

“Nice. And the new helmet?”

“You mean the one James practically gifted to himself? He loves it, no surprise there.”

“He’s always been a world-class gift giver.”

“The tosser gave you school gear.”

“And? You gave me a book.”

Sirius flushed and opened his mouth to retort that that was different, but Remus just chuckled. “No, but really. Thank you for this.” He picked the leather-bound folio up from his neatly tucked bedcovers and began leafing through it fondly. “I’ve been looking through it all afternoon. I noticed some of the spellings in it are different from our textbooks. How old is it?”

“14th century, I think.”

Remus released the page he’d been holding like it had sprouted fangs. (Some of the older volumes in the Black archives did, in fact, do that, but not this one. Sirius had vetted it thoroughly for dark magic.)

“Merlin. That’s… this is too much, Sirius. You shouldn’t have given me something so—it’s too much.” He actually stood and made to hand it over to Sirius, holding it out into the bathroom for him to take back.

Sirius waved him off, trying not to feel offended. “Please. I nicked it from my family’s library before I left last summer. Would you rather they use it to buff up on ‘vile and dangerous beasts’ to hunt for sport?”

Remus pulled the book back to his chest. “Well, I suppose not. But still…”

“It’s stolen. I didn’t spend a single knut on you. Bit rude of me, really, but there you have it.”

Remus grinned a little at that and set the book carefully down atop his dresser. He lingered a moment in the bathroom doorway before folding at the knees to sit down on the carpet, his back and head leant against the door frame. Sirius hid his surprise, picking up a comb and running it carefully under the faucet to have something to do with his hands. An excuse to stay in this delicate space.

“The book I gave you is secondhand, too,” Remus said conversationally while Sirius set to work fixing his rumpled hair. “I found it in a used book shop down Diagon back in February.”

“I love it,” Sirius said enthusiastically. Perhaps a touch too enthusiastically—The Atlas of Celestial Anomalies was cool, but not fling-comb-water-across-the-counter-cool. But the other three Marauders hadn’t expected to receive anything at all from Remus this year, and Sirius considered the slightly battered little book nothing short of a treasure. “Thank you. I’m glad you thought of me when you saw it.”

“How could I not? You’re our very own celestial anomaly. The dog that ran from the stars.” Remus’s fond expression dampened when his eyes drifted to his dresser reflected in the mirror with the Folio Bruti and James’s supple leather briefcase propped up beside it. “It’s not a first edition or anything, though,” he amended. “You guys went overboard on me this year. You really shouldn’t do that.”

“Hardly. Like I said, I pinched your gift. And Peter gave you muggle chocolate. Stingy little rat.”

“Muggles make good chocolate. And you know he doesn’t have the same resources you and James do.”

Sirius shrugged, and neither one of them acknowledged that Peter had clearly splashed out on James and Sirius’s treats. He continued combing his hair even though it was already sleek.

“Actually, I’m glad he didn’t get me too much. I, er… I regifted his present,” Remus admitted, scratching his nose guiltily. “I went to the book signing for A Snitch in Time for Bertram. He’s a big fan of the author. I couldn’t return it, and I didn’t have anything for Peter besides that silly block of cheese, so…”

Sirius glowed inside at being let in on even this trivial matter of confidence. It only lasted a moment, though, before he looked up to reply and noticed the distant look in Remus’s eyes. He closed his mouth and tilted his head, weighing and considering.

“You obviously don’t have to tell me,” he said carefully to Remus’s reflection, “but do you regret it? Ending things with Bertram?”

Remus only shrugged and shook his head, turning his attention to his hands clasped around his knees. He didn’t get up to leave, though.

“It’s probably not too late to fix things if you’ve changed your mind,” Sirius tried. “You seemed… happy.”

Remus just shook his head. “It was nice, but it was only ever pretend. I was never going to be able to give him what he wanted or what he deserves. But it’s fine; we’re still friends, I think.”

‘We just wanted different things.’ That was all James had told Sirius Remus had said before shutting down entirely. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to get into it, but…

“What did he want that you didn’t, Remus?” he asked quietly.

Sirius knew he was overstepping, but sometimes Remus let him. Remus let people walk all over him, muddy boots and all. Sirius usually tried not to take advantage, but he needed to know. To know what Remus looked for in a relationship and what he couldn't abide.

Remus shrugged again, attention still fixed on his wrists. “Something serious,” he said eventually, without emotion.

“Oh.” It took Sirius a second to register what Remus meant, after which he couldn’t quite mask his surprise. “And you didn’t? I thought you really liked him.”

“I did.”

“But not as much as he liked you?”

“No, just… not enough to let him in. He doesn’t really know who or what I am, or where I’m coming from. I didn’t tell him… anything.”

“Oh. Right. I can understand that.”

Sirius fiddled with the comb while Remus sat with his thoughts. He waited a while before he set the comb down on the sink, crossed over to his own side of the bathroom, and lowered himself to sit cross-legged on his bedroom carpet. The edges of his toes just barely touched the tile floor, which had served as No Man’s Land between them all Christmas. It felt only right to return to obeying its unspoken rules and give Remus space if he needed it.

“Maybe I would have told him about being a werewolf, eventually,” Remus said after a minute of quiet. “But it’s the—the other stuff. I just couldn’t…” his eyes travelled to fix on a spot on the bathroom ceiling, shining wetly but not tearful.

“I get it. I get it, Moons.” 

Sirius rested his chin on his stacked forearms, staring blankly ahead. They sat in silence a while longer, but something wasn’t sitting right with Sirius. Remus was many things, but spontaneous wasn't one of them. It wasn’t like him to open himself up to a relationship thoughtlessly, only to change his mind and back right out.

“Why did you start going out with him in the first place, though?” He asked Remus’s reflection. “If you didn't want it to get serious, why... Unless—” Sirius felt himself flush as the alternative occurred to him. “Unless you only wanted something physical?”

“No,” Remus said, eyes still raised to the ceiling. “I didn’t want either.”

“Oh.”

Oh.

A relationship with neither love or touch.

Only Remus.

“Did he…?”

Remus sighed, finally dropping his gaze back down to the mirror. “Did he what.”

“He had your shirt halfway off when we found you. Did he pressure you? Push you into doing something?”

“It’s just a shirt. We’re blokes, that’s not a big deal.”

“It—in that context, I think it’s still—”

“No, he didn’t pressure me into doing anything I didn’t want.”

“What do you want, then?” It was an impossible question to ask in an offhand, careless way, but Sirius tried his best.

“Wish I knew,” Remus replied flatly.

“What do you mean?”

Sirius, whose whole body seemed to be made of wants, couldn’t fathom not knowing. He shifted to get a better look at Remus's face, the reflection no longer enough.

“It’s the wolf.” Remus's voice was barely more than a murmur, and he seemed to be thinking aloud more than talking to Sirius. “It makes me want things that are bad for me. It’s just another way it’s found to hurt me. But if I don’t listen to it, I don’t know what to feel. There’s nothing else to tell me what to do or where to go.”

“How can you tell what’s the wolf and what’s real?”

“I can’t. It’s lived in my head for too long. It’s probably eaten all of the hopes and dreams that used to be there. Why else would I find myself only drawn to the most destructive, impossible things?”

“What things?” Sirius breathed on empty lungs.

Remus rolled his head to stare Sirius in the eye. In the second Sirius felt his heart stutter, Remus seemed to come back to himself a bit. His voice, when he looked away and started talking again, was clearer.

“I mean. Adults twice my age, for one. Things I'd rather die than ruin, for another. Things I should never—nothing good. Bad ideas only.”

Sirius’s mouth was dry. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to hear Remus say, just that not hearing it hurt like a wound. 

“Well," he coughed. "You’ve had plenty of good ideas. The map. The animagus-themed gifts this morning. James’s salt lick was inspired.”

“Hah. Thanks.”

“And Bertram,” Sirius forced himself to add. “He was good. I could help you set things right with him when we get back, if you wanted.”

Remus frowned. “Why are you trying to fix things between me and Bertram?” he asked slowly.

Sirius tried to smile. Christmas, he reminded himself, is for giving.

“Because I want you to be happy. And I didn’t do anything to help you toward that all year.”

“Oh. Er, cheers.” Remus swallowed, then got to his feet with surprising grace for his gangly limbs. “Listen, Padfoot—it’s not your job to make me happy. It’s fine that you didn’t want to talk to me before, and I promise I won’t expect anything from you once we’re back at school and things go back to normal. So don’t feel like you need to make up for anything, or fix what’s wrong with me. You can’t, and it’s not on you to try.”

Sirius recoiled like he’d been slapped. Was Remus outright rejecting his friendship? He hadn’t even asked for what he really wanted, but here he was, sitting on the bathroom floor like an idiot and getting rejected just the same.

“Once things go back to normal?” he repeated, and at least his voice didn’t sound as fractured as he felt. “When we’re back in school, you want to go back to the way we were before break?”

“I—no, but—it’s just Christmas, isn’t it? It’s Christmas at the Potters’, and a week ago you wouldn’t even look at me, so—”

“LADS!” James’s voice bellowed up the stairs. “MUM SAYS IT’S TIME FOR SUPPER.”

Sirius got to his feet in a snap and strode over to stick his head out of his bedroom door.

“Wormy,” he called hastily after Peter, who was already halfway down the stairs. “Tell Mrs Potter Remus and I will be down in a minute.”

“Sure thing,” Peter shot over his shoulder without a backwards glance.

Sirius closed the door. He hurried back through his bedroom and straight through the bathroom into Remus’s, where he found Remus pulling another layer on over James’s old jumper, eyes pointedly averted. 

“You got my letter,” Sirius said in a rush. “You wrote back saying I could pick you up, so you must have read the rest of it.”

“Yes.” Remus’s defences were back up in full force, Sirius could tell. There may as well have been an iron wall between them. Sirius wanted to pound on it, to yell and dent it with his fists, but knew it wouldn't do any good.

“You said you’re ‘just trying,’" Remus said, voice as neutral as a professor's. "Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“It means—” Sirius cut himself off as his throat tightened and the backs of his eyes burned in frustration. He remembered all of the inadequate lines he’d written and crossed out in the letters he’d drafted to Remus over the first week of break. He sighed, knowing nothing he said would ever be good enough, but that he couldn’t let that feeling make him mute again.

He breathed and tried again.

“It means that I know I’ve fucked up too much when it comes to you. So I’m not trying to win you over or anything, but...” He glanced up, then out the snowy window when the sight of Remus’s beautifully furrowed brow was too much. “I might not be able to make things right, but I can still work to make them better. So if I can help you in any way, I’m going to try. And if that means talking to Bertram and explaining what you need—without giving away your secrets—I’ll gladly do it.”

He turned and left through Remus’s door without waiting for an answer. Euphemia’s Christmas supper smelled as incredible as it always did, but Sirius knew he wouldn’t be able to taste a thing.

Chapter Text

James blinked blearily down at his untouched coronation chicken sandwich, inwardly cursing Past James for not considering the state of his stomach before downing half a bottle of single malt Scotch the night before. But Past James had been fully caught up in the precipitous spirit of revelry, and Present James’s splitting headache was, he conceded, a reasonable price to pay for a legendary New Years Eve with his three best mates.

He, Sirius, Peter, and Remus had spent the previous night gathered around a tall bonfire in their backyard, courtesy of Fleamont and their surrounding neighbours’ tree trimmings. Also courtesy of Fleamont were two dusty bottles of highland whiskey, which James may or may not have liberated from the cupboard beneath the Victrola without his father’s knowledge. The combination of towering flames and smokey alcohol had kept the four boys warm well past midnight as they joked, schemed, mock-duelled, and sang half-remembered drinking songs. They ushered in the new year with long, flickering shadows of antlers and pointed ears and tails that danced across the Potters’ snow-blanketed yard, the tips of their dark silhouettes licking the tree trunks at the edge of the neighbouring forest. Then, at around two in the morning, a sudden and violent blizzard had sent the four of them running inside for shelter and they’d finally split off to sleep.

Now, James was bored and queasy and irritable and bored. His parents had braved the weather to drop Peter off on their way into London that morning, and Sirius had retreated back to bed an hour or so after joining James at the breakfast table for a miserable pot of Yorkshire Gold. Remus, the lazy muppet, still hadn’t gotten up for the day. 

Normally, James would make good use of a free afternoon to go flying, but the snow was still coming down far too hard to venture outside. The first day of the new year was halfway through, and he was hungover and antsy and lonely. And sodding bored. He pushed up from the table and rummaged through the pantry for something his stomach might tolerate. He found soups, crackers, and a tin of salmon, then lost interest in the idea of eating alone.

He considered jumping on Sirius’s bed, but the poor bastard had looked even rougher than James was feeling that morning. Sirius had drunk considerably more last night than he usually did when it was just the four of them. He’d been in a particularly low mood since Christmas, though, and it had been a welcome relief to see the liquor loosen him up and get him laughing again. In the spirit of keeping his best mate’s improved spirits intact, James sent a muffliato in the direction of Sirius’s bedroom and changed targets.

“Remus!” he called up the stairs. “Remus! Oi, MOONY!” he tried again, clutching the mahogany bannister base before begrudgingly beginning the ascent, yanking himself up two steps at a time by the handrail. “Come and eat! It’s going on half twelve, you great lazy beast.”

Like Sirius, Remus had also seemed more melancholic than usual since Christmas. Which was why James would really be doing him a favour by pulling him out of bed and needling a joke or two out of him. He hoisted himself over the last few steps, stomped down the hall, and rapped smartly on Remus’s door. Receiving no answer, he pushed it open.

“Moony! Rise and—Merlin’s tits,” he gasped when a blast of icy air assaulted his skin.

His eyes, stinging behind their glasses from the sudden cold, went straight to the window at the other end of the empty room. It was wide open, letting in the blizzard outside. Snow had built up on the sill and on the floor beneath it, and the linen curtains looked stiff with ice as they were buffeted about by a frigid breeze.

He rushed forward to close the window, only briefly registering Remus sitting on the floor on the far side of his bed as he went. He wrestled the icy glass shut against the wind, kicked irritably at the hardened pile of snow on the ground, then turned to Remus, hands on his hips as he caught his breath.

“Remus? Why the hell did—hey, are you okay?”

Remus was sitting leant rigidly against the baseboard of his bed. His eyes, wide but glassy, didn’t seem to be taking James in.

“Sorry, what?” Remus said dazedly. James could actually see his breath clouding in front of his face as he spoke into the frigid air. Remus’s blank gaze drifted to the closed window and he blinked. “Oh, the window. Forgot to close it. Sorry.”

“You forgot.” James repeated incredulously. “Why’d you open it in the first place? Aren’t you freezing? Shit, you’re practically blue. Focillio.” James twirled his wand in concentric circles, sending a blast of warm air pouring from its tip over Remus.

Remus’s hands came up to block his concerningly pale face from the heat as James continued directing the warming spell at him. “Please stop,” he said after a while.

James lowered his wand reluctantly, then grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed and threw it at him. Remus pulled it stiffly across his shoulders, still looking disoriented but less dazed and frozen than before.

“What’s up with you?” James demanded bluntly, mentally strapping in for a struggle. Getting Moony to open up was an uphill battle at the best of times, and despite James’s considerable efforts, times had not been the best lately.

“Nothing,” Remus said, predictably. “Just wasn’t feeling great after all the drinking last night.”

Remus had had all of one (1) sip of whiskey before making a face and passing the bottle off to Peter. James hadn’t seen it touch his lips for the rest of the night.

“Right. And that’s why you decided to catch frostbite on the floor of our guest room?”

“No, I just… wanted some air. Must’ve dozed off. I’m good now, though.” His voice was impressively steady given the fact that he’d finally started shivering, a good sign along with the colour slowly returning to his cheeks.

“Yeah, you really look it.” James raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I was calling you down to eat.”

“Oh, no, sorry. What’s for breakfast?”

“Lunch. It’s past noon. And you’ll be having hot soup.”

“Sounds great. Thank you. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Why in a minute?” James scratched his nose to cover the way he was squinting suspiciously down at where Remus still hadn’t moved from his spot on the hard floor.

“Just want to wash my face and tidy up in here a bit first.”

“Okay, I’ll keep you company.”

“No, I’ll catch you up. I’d like to get a start on packing, actually. Thought I might head back to Wales a few days early. See Mum and Dad before term starts.”

“Really? You miss your parents already?”

“Er. Yeah, a bit. And I’ve got some books at home I want to bring back to school. I know we were going to go into London together before the train, but I'll just meet up with you at the station.”

“Yeah, sure,” James said nonchalantly. “Sounds good. See you downstairs in a bit, then?”

“Yeah. Sorry again about the snow that got in. I’ll get it sorted.”

“No problem.”

James crossed over to the door, closed his eyes, and sighed. Sorry, Moons, he thought with a grimace before raising his wand and saying, “Accio letter.”

The piece of parchment James had briefly glimpsed before Remus tucked it discreetly under his leg flew out from its hiding spot and into James’s waiting hand before Remus could do anything to stop it.

“James, wait—” Remus started, scrambling to his feet, but James was already shaking his head.

“Sorry, mate. But if this is what I think it is, you know why I had to do it.”

He unfolded the letter and found the name he’d expected to see at the bottom. He did his best to skim past the contents—he desperately did not want to read the missive written in a script he recognized from graded essays and lessons chalked on blackboards—but a few phrases jumped out at him.

‘...can’t stop thinking about that first night…’

‘...never got to tell you before I had to go…’

‘...renting a bedsit in Oxford near the Ashmolean…’

‘...need to see you again, to explain…’

“You were going to go back to Wales, were you?” James asked when he finally looked up.

“Give it back,” Remus rasped. “Please.”

“Why? Haven’t you written him back yet?”

“No. Of course not. I wasn’t going to.”

“Why do you need it back, then?”

“Because, I—I don’t know. You shouldn’t have—you shouldn’t have read it.”

“Neither should you!” James shot back loudly. “You should have burned it! Burned it before even opening it—should never have opened your stupid bloody window for his stupid fucking owl in the first place—”

“You don’t know what you’re—”

“Is this the first time he’s written to you? Do you have more of these hidden in here? Is he why you ended things with Bertram?”

“No. I mean, yes, it’s the first letter. And he has nothing to do with Bertram, so don’t use what happened with him as a weapon against me.”

“What did happen with him? You never tell us anything! How are we supposed to trust you? How am I supposed to know you aren’t going to go flying off to Oxford the second I leave this room?”

Remus was breathing hard, his jaw clenched like he was biting down on the insides of his cheeks. He was still clutching the blanket around his arms defensively.

“What am I even supposed to do with this?” James continued, holding up the letter in a fisted hand. “Should I write to your parents? McGonagall? Dumbledore?”

Remus glared back at him, his hazel eyes a challenge. It was no good; he knew James wouldn’t do it. James rolled his neck, a hand going up to keep his glasses on his face.

“Talk to me, Moony,” he said tiredly. “You’re the one who always knows… I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I’ve tried to tell you it’s nothing, but you’re refusing to listen. Just give that back and go make your lunch.”

“No. I’m getting Sirius.”

“No, James, don’t—”

“Too late,” Sirius’s voice came from the shared bathroom. James and Remus turned their heads at the same time to see him leant against the doorframe, his arms crossed and a frown creasing his brow.

“I heard shouting,” he said flatly. “What’s in the letter, Prongs?”

James held it out and Sirius pushed off the wall to take it, throwing Remus a quick glance as he passed him on his way to James’s side. Despite their close proximity throughout the festivities, the two of them had barely said a word to each other in days.

“It’s private,” Remus muttered when Sirius took the parchment and turned it around in his hands. Sirius’s fingers paused, and when he lifted his head he looked torn between worry and something else James couldn’t quite place. 

“Tell me what I need to know,” he said to James instead of reading the letter.

Without hesitating, James said, “It’s from Professor Dearborn.”

James Potter wasn’t a snitch. He really wasn’t. But Remus’s friends couldn’t help him if they didn’t know what was happening, and they were the only people in the world who’d had any success helping him with his lycanthropy. He needed them again now whether he liked it or not, and they needed to know what was going on. So he continued,

“I came in to get Moony and found him halfway frozen on the floor. The berk left his window open all night after getting Dearborn’s owl. He said he wanted to leave here early to ‘go back to Wales,’ but I don’t believe him.”

“He’s standing right here,” Remus said angrily.

“Yeah?” James’s frustration, which had been building since the moment he’d stepped into the room, was nearing peak. “Well, he’s also a chronic liar, so I don’t really care what he has to say right now.”

“Mate,” Sirius barked. “Not helping. Remus…” he held the letter out to him, and Remus took it back wordlessly. “What was the plan? What’s going through your head right now?”

“I don’t have a plan,” Remus gritted back, not looking at either of them. “Was working on it, before James came in.”

“You weren’t planning on going home to Wales though, were you?” James pushed. Eventually, Remus shook his head. “Oxford, then?”

“What’s in Oxford?” Sirius asked quickly.

“Take a guess,” James deadpanned.

“It’s not what you think,” Remus said, his voice starting to shake from the cold or suppressed anger. “I don’t know if I’ll go. I just—I can’t be here any longer.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong with here?” Sirius sounded surprised and a bit hurt, and James felt much the same.

Remus laughed humourlessly and looked quite deranged for it, still shaking beneath the blanket draped over his shoulders.

“What’s wrong? Nothing! Nothing at all. It’s not real, this place,” he explained like they were missing something painfully obvious right in front of their faces.

James said, “You’re not making sense, Moony.”

“You wouldn’t think so. But your lives, this house—it’s so far removed from reality I can’t even tell when I’m awake or dreaming. But unlike you, I have to wake up sometime. And it doesn’t do me any good to go on pretending I can actually exist in a place where—where monsters only live in the fairytales your perfect, doting parents used to read to you before bedtime. Where no one worries about making rent, or which types of basements are sturdy enough to transform in, or what’s happening in the war against non-purebloods.”

An injured sound escaped James’s throat, and Remus’s hard expression softened. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not... It’s been a beautiful Christmas. Thank you both for inviting me to stay in your home. But this came from my reality,” he held up the note, the disgustingly familiar handwriting visible through the folds. “And I can’t afford to hide from it here any longer.”

No one spoke for a measure, and James fought the urge to defend his happy and comfortable home life. Just because his family didn’t have to suffer didn’t mean they didn’t care about what was happening beyond the safehaven they had made for themselves, but now wasn’t the time for that. If he was honest, James had suspected deep down that Remus had been feeling uncomfortable in his home for a while, but he'd chosen to ignore it in favour of his own feelings of contentment at having all of his favourite people under one roof.

“So you’d actually consider going off to see Dearborn instead,” Sirius said, his eyes dark and voice hollow. “You’d rather be alone. With him.” He shook his head like Padfoot shaking off a fly and straightened up. “Bollocks to that. I could go somewhere with you, if you really need to be someplace else. We could take my bike and wait out the rest of break somewhere quiet. The seaside, maybe. Dover.”

A shadow of a smile flickered over Remus’s lips, but he shook his head. “As nice as Dover sounds… I can’t keep running away. We all have to face down our own demons, don’t we? You stood up to your family, and we were so proud of you for it. Now it's my turn.”

“You have to face a demon every full moon. You don’t have to let this one anywhere near you.”

“There’s a bit more to it than that. There are things I haven’t… Caradoc has answers no one else can give me. All right? Last year he promised he would tell me if I decided I wanted to know, and he said it again in his letter…”

“Tell you? Tell you what?”

Remus ignored James’s question. “But besides that, there are some things I need to see him to clear up for myself. Things I haven’t been able to work through on my own, but that I might understand better if I… if I saw him again. If I go talk to him, just the once.”

James raised a hand to rub his aching temples. All this talk, and they’d gotten nowhere.

“We’re going with you, then,” he tried blindly. “You can have your talk with Dearborn, then we’ll find somewhere to stay until the new term.”

“No. I don’t need to be chaperoned. I need to do this for myself, and I don’t need you two listening in at the door.”

James dropped his hand from his forehead. “Recent history would suggest otherwise.”

“Enough, James. I’m an adult, and I can make my own decisions.”

“Turning seventeen doesn’t make you an adult overnight!” James was yelling again, but he didn’t care. “Whatever Dearborn made you think, you’re still just a kid in school!”

“And I fucking hate that!” Remus yelled back, finally snapping. His face was red as were the rims of his eyes, which were wide and too bright. He tore the blanket from his shoulders and threw it down. “I hate being—powerless—too young to make my own—naive, and—and—”

Remus’s fists were clutching his hair and he looked like he might either bolt or collapse. Sirius, quick as a flash, caught him by the wrists before he could do either and guided him into the bathroom for a glass of water.

“I’ve got it from here, James,” he said as he turned on the tap, and did Sirius blame him for all of this? Surely not, but it was hard to think otherwise from the cautionary look Sirius shot him out of the corner of his eye. Since when was Sirius the levelheaded one between the two of them? But he was nothing if not unpredictable, and always more so when it came to Remus.

Remus settled on the edge of the tub and sipped the water Sirius handed him wordlessly, his eyes still overbright. James knew he would regret some of the things he’d said and done later, but he was still too frustrated with Remus for not letting them help to care at present. He gave Sirius a terse nod and retreated down the hall, shutting himself in his room to clip bent twigs off the tail of his broom. 

If he could only go out flying, he thought, clipping aggressively, he could leave this terrible feeling on the ground. If he could whack a bludger or out maneuver a snitch or send a quaffle soaring through the centre hoop, he’d be able to shed the urge to yell some more or shake his friend by the shoulders.

His friend. His stubbornest, kindest friend. He set his broom down on his quilt before he could do too much damage to the tail, which didn’t really need grooming at all. Even if the sky decided to clear up that exact minute, he couldn’t leave his friends alone like this. He went downstairs to heat up a pot of soup, and hoped Sirius knew what he was doing.

-

The edge of the marble bathtub was cold beneath Sirius’s thighs, so he conjured a bluebell flame to fill the tub’s basin with gentle heat. Remus, sitting beside him, let out a shuddering breath he must have been holding in for some time.

“Better?” he asked quietly.

Remus nodded. “Thanks.”

“Good. So.” Small steps. “Why the window?”

“I had to let in the owl.”

“Right. Why leave it open all night, though?”

“Don’t know. The cold was numbing. It was a kind of relief in the moment.”

”Mm.”

”Then I guess I must have… drifted. I was reading the letter, then I got lost in my head. Then it was daytime and James was on my case.”

Sirius dug his fingertips into his knees, fighting the impulse to demand more answers about the letter like James had done. Restraint was hardly one of Sirius’s strengths, but he had to stay true to his resolution to be better for Remus. New Year's Day is a fresh new page, not a time for more of the same mistakes. So he cast a silent warming charm at the tiles beneath their feet and waited for Remus to say more.

“You don’t have to tell me it’s a bad idea,” Remus said after a few minutes spent watching the tap drip. “Going to see Caradoc. I know that. But I’m not trying to... to jump into bed with him or anything. I’m not, despite appearances, a total idiot.”

“I’d never think you’re an idiot,” Sirius said, frowning. “But I’m pretty certain that’s what he wants to happen, and if you’re considering going… I don’t know what else we’re supposed to think.”

Remus dropped his head, turning the glass of water in slow, contemplative circles. “This whole time I’ve felt so fucking guilty. You know that? Thinking there was something wrong with me because I missed him. Even after I realised how he’d been using me, how wrong it was for him to ask me to do the things we did. Things I’d never ask another person to do.

“When I was with Bertram, it always felt like something was missing. Like there wasn’t enough to him, and there was something wrong with me for wanting more. I blamed the wolf for it, but I was more afraid that a part of me still belonged to Caradoc. That he still held some power over me, even after he’d left the school. But last night, when I read his letter, I finally realised that what I’ve really been missing is the way he made me feel. Not romantically, exactly, but the way he treated me almost like a peer. Like someone who already had a place in the world and deserved to be heard and acknowledged. After spending so much of my life trying to disappear into the woodwork, I suppose that had a stronger effect on me than maybe it should have.

“Now, I at least know it’s not him I want to feel again. It’s… dignity. Which I know sounds ironic, considering. But it wasn’t about the sex for me. Not really. Though I guess it did make me feel… mature. Worthwhile. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Sirius covertly swiped the dampness from his lower eyelashes before it could escape down his cheeks. He hated what Remus was saying, and hated himself in that moment nearly as much. He couldn’t believe he’d spent months hung up on juvenile jealousy of Bertram Aubrey—practically obsessing over the qualities of a nice, normal schoolboy—when, the whole time, Remus had been battling these thoughts alone. 

“Then why?” he asked, keeping his tone low so as not to disturb Remus from his openness. “Why would you consider going to him if you know how you feel about him? Those are all feelings you can find somewhere else. Somewhere better. I promise you.” I’d show you, if you let me.

Remus’s lips thinned to a tight smile. “Yeah. Maybe I will, one day. But he still has something I need. The Ministry…” Remus trailed off, disappearing into his mind and leaving Sirius behind.

“The Ministry?”

“Ah.” Remus hitched a knee up to rest his chin on it, a socked foot finding the spot between himself and Sirius on the edge of the bathtub. He hummed thoughtfully under his breath before explaining in a detached sort of voice.

“Despite its shortcomings, the Ministry does provide some protections for lycanthropes. The registry makes their whereabouts public knowledge, but their identities are confidential and so are their sire lines. I think it’s more in the spirit of preventing pack formation than individual safety, but at any rate: the Ministry doesn’t disclose the identities of werewolves. Not even to their victims’ families.

“The aurors who work with wolf attacks have to follow that code. No one would tell us anything after I was bitten, and maybe that’s a good thing, given the way my dad reacted. So the only thing I know about the wolf who bit me is that it had grey fur, because I found some on the floor by my window. I’ve always imagined an old man lost on the moors, unable to find a safe place to transform before moonrise, but… anyways. Caradoc was on the force when I was bitten, and he remembered hearing about my case because I was so young to have survived. He was supposed to sign a binding agreement to uphold the code when he retired from the aurors, but he got out of it somehow. He said he’d tell me the name of the man who bit me if I ever wanted to know.”

“And you want to know it now?” A name won't change anything. Knowing won't change who you are, and who you are is perfect.

“Yes. I need to. I always have, but I thought I’d have more time to get around to asking when he first offered. I felt so happy at the moment. I didn’t want to go down that road just yet.”

“He could have just put the name in his letter, though. He’s using it to lure you to him.”

“I’ve thought about that. He says there’s more to it; that he’s been hearing things through old auror channels and wants to warn me about something before I finish school, but I don’t know what that could possibly be. It’s probably a lie, and I know why he wants me to come in person. I want to hear what he has to say anyways.”

“It’s dangerous, walking into a trap.”

Don't. Please. I’ll bleed too, if you get hurt.

“I don’t think he is, though. Dangerous. Not overtly. He was never a violent person, just… convincing. If we meet in public, I don’t think there’s anything he can do to me but talk.”

The heaviness weighing in Sirius’s chest threatened to crush his organs, pressing like iron against his lungs and slow-beating heart. “Your mind’s made up, isn’t it. You’re set on going.”

Remus looked just as exhausted when he nodded, dropping his foot back to the floor and folding his hands together. “I think so. Yes. I don’t expect you to understand. Aside from everything else, I just need to see him face-to-face again. Ever since he left, he’s become a kind of… entity in my mind. The more time passes, the less he feels like a person and the more he becomes this dark stain on my life, this formless shame I hide in my closet. I need to see him as just a man again. To know that whatever I feel when I think of him isn’t something I’ve conjured up, something the wolf is pulling me toward. I don’t know what that feeling will be, and that’s the most frightening thing for me. I know what I want it to be—I want it to confirm everything I’ve been trying to figure out since last spring, but I can't know for certain until he’s standing in front of me. I can't move on while he exists as this figure in back of my head.”

The hair curtaining Sirius's face gave him a modicum of privacy as he put his mess of emotions in order. “Together, then,” he said after a minute’s quiet. “If you’re going, you’re not going alone. You’ll meet him in public, somewhere visible. A busy landmark. And I’ll be right around the corner, so you can have your privacy. We’ll make a plan. It’ll be fine.”

It’ll have to be.

Remus looked uncertain, but less staunchly opposed than when James had suggested it.

“Oxford,” Sirius continued, trying to build momentum, to focus resolutely on tangibles instead of the things he couldn’t control. “For landmarks, that gives us Christ Church, the Radcliffe Camera, the Bodleian… the Bridge of Sighs… the Sheldonian…”

“Plenty of public museums.”

“A museum could be good. They’re crowded, but you're not likely to be overheard. Which one?"

"Not the Ashmolean, it’s too close to his flat. Art museums are too quiet. Natural History, maybe?” Remus suggested, seamlessly shifting gears into planning mode. He’d always shone brightest in the Marauders’ planning stages.

“The Museum of Natural History it is. I could try and blend into one of the faunal exhibits as Padfoot.”

“Hah. Or, instead of getting taxidermied, you could standby on another level. There are two floors, I think.”

“That would work. We could use the two-way mirrors to communicate, or come up with a signal of some sort.”

“I like a signal. The mirrors aren’t very subtle. I think he’d notice. There are tracking spells we could use, too, as backup... if we bring along a small object with a powerful magical signature, like one of your family heirlooms, for instance…”

And just like that, Remus and Sirius were leaning in to design a plan, just like they had done in third year when the Marauders decided to infiltrate the Slytherin Dungeon, and in fifth year when they’d rewritten Flitwick’s lesson plans to include creative variations on the Dancing Feet spell, and dozens of times between. Sirius loved Remus when he was like this, spinning clever ideas out of thin air like straw into gold. But then, he supposed, he loved him all the time.

Sirius was more nervous about encountering Dearborn than he was letting on. The idea of Remus being alone with the ex-auror and professor made him ill. But he was readier than he’d ever been to fuel up his bike and tear across the sky toward the uncertain future.

They would go to Oxford, get Remus the answers he needed, and then they’d be off to anywhere else they fancied. He knew it wasn’t going to be a holiday. Not by a long shot. But his home at the Potters’ didn’t feel like a home if Remus wasn’t happy there, and for the first time since this nightmare began, it felt like there was finally a chance they could actually do something to turn things around.

Chapter Text

The limestone domes, spires, and towers of Oxford’s colleges cut stark shapes against the slate sky hovering over the city. Frazzled students, tweed-wrapped pensioners, and knots of tourists jostled around Remus and Sirius where they stalled on the edge of the pavement, staring out at the entrance to the Museum of Natural History across the street. Off in the distance, bells tolled to mark the coming of the hour. The hour Caradoc Dearborn had agreed to in his one-word reply to Remus’s owl.

“It’ll be fine,” said Sirius, not for the first time that day.

Remus hummed in agreement. He supposed he should feel nervous, but he didn’t feel much of anything at all. He was grateful to Sirius for being there to feel things for him. Sirius wore his turbulent emotions in a way that wouldn’t have looked half as gallant on Remus. By carrying the worry for the both of them on his shoulders, Sirius gave Remus the capacity to take the situation at face value. He was resigned to the fact that he had chosen to do this and would have to live with the outcome, whatever it may be.

He didn’t want to think about that now, though. His attention was captured instead by small, inconsequential features of the present moment: the gleaming black paint on a passing cab, the rustle of damp brown leaves around their feet, the old familiar smell of Sirius mixed with the newer scent of motorcycle exhaust. Remus breathed it in, then opened eyes he hadn’t noticed closing.

It was a shame, he thought detachedly, taking in the museum’s neo-gothic architecture again. He had always wanted to visit Oxford. It felt a waste to do it like this.

They crossed the street.

The Museum of Natural History was a cathedral to its subject. Cast-iron arches ribbed the glass ceiling, filtering in silvery light that felt older than creation itself. Remus followed Sirius through the long shadows of marble columns, floating whale skeletons, and ironwork galleries, their footsteps absorbed by the soft din of distant voices and wet shoes on tile.

Sirius had been stoic and tight-lipped since they’d arrived in Oxford early that morning, though he still moved through the scene like a storm—head high, shoulders back, cutting through space in a way that dared anyone to stop him. They hadn’t spoken much, only exchanging reminders about the different plans they’d sketched out over the past two days. (Anti-apparition ward schemas; coded signals; the lock picking knife; an elfbone cameo with a tracking spell; backup portkeys to the Potters’.) But Sirius’s unease was clearly written in the line between his perfect black eyebrows and the way he lingered close by, his hand brushing Remus’s wrist whenever they stopped to get their bearings.

“Are you sure about this?” He murmured, glancing towards the north corner of the gallery. Caradoc was already there, leaning against a glass case as if he spent every casual Thursday morning there.

Remus felt the churn of apprehension stir in the pit of his stomach and forced himself to ignore it. He couldn’t afford to look unsure.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

Sirius’s eyes flicked between him and Caradoc, pupils sharp with adrenaline. “I’ll be right upstairs. You know the signals if you need me.”

Remus nodded, though they both knew Sirius wouldn’t wait for a sign to take action. With one last touch—a fleeting press of Sirius’s hand to his shoulder—Remus walked forward, leaving him behind.

Caradoc hadn’t changed much since the last time Remus had seen him: dark blonde waves neatly parted to the side, a faint scar running through his left eyebrow, and a groundedness in his posture that gave off the air of an old oak tree, firmly rooted wherever he stood.

“Remus,” he said smoothly, straightening as Remus approached.

“Caradoc.”

He gestured towards a nearby bench, partially blocked from view of the museum-goers drifting through the exhibits by the mammalian Skeleton Parade display. The assembled beasts’ ivory ribs, spines, and femurs formed a kind of macabre lattice through which Remus could still see the other side of the main hall and parts of the floor above. Remus hesitated before sitting, a deliberate distance between them. He could smell Caradoc's vanilla tobacco cologne.

“It’s good to see you. I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Caradoc said.

“I came,” Remus replied woodenly. “But I wouldn’t be so sure you’ll be leaving.” He turned the end of his wand casually between his fingers, the length of it hidden up his sleeve.

Caradoc tilted his head down and smiled as though he approved of the response and appreciated the challenge. “Fair enough. Straight to business, then?”

Remus held silent in reply and Caradoc leaned forward, elbows on knees, to lock eyes with him. 

“The man who bit you is called Fenrir Greyback.” He said the words slowly and clearly, his voice low beneath the museum’s hum.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear or feel, but the name settled into Remus’s skin like winter’s chill. He felt the fine hairs on his arms stand on end, but kept his face neutral and nodded for Caradoc to go on.

“Greyback was not a lost soul on an unlucky night,” Caradoc continued, still slow and measured. “He had your name on a list. He positioned himself outside your window on the night of the full moon. It was every bit his intention to bite and turn you.”

The information was a knife to the gut. It shouldn’t have made a difference, really, why he had been bitten. The end result was the same either way. But he’d never dreamt that anyone who lived with his condition could wish it upon another, and the betrayal was an old wound made fresh again.

“Why?” he found himself asking.

“Punishment,” Caradoc tilted his gaze slightly, studying for his reaction. “Revenge. On your father.”

Remus blinked. “What are you talking about?”

”You can’t put your name on something like the Werewolf Registry and not expect to make a few enemies. Lyall had to have known what he was getting into with a beast like Greyback on the loose.”

“I don’t… follow.”

Caradoc sighed. “Listen. Greyback is… he’s more wolf than man. He isn’t anything like you; you need to understand that. He’s never fought the wolf inside, never denied it anything. He embraces it, and believes that werewolves can rise up to become the superior magical race. He is the leader of a vicious pack that believes the same, and he sees his pack as his family. Your father’s work lobbying in the Ministry created a divide that split up that pack. I don’t have all the details, but Greyback doesn’t forgive, and he doesn’t forget. You were a message. An example of the new family he would turn and make his own. You were one of many children bitten during those years, unfortunately.”

Remus shook his head. It didn’t make sense. His father wasn’t important enough to have enemies. And if more children were bitten, where were the others like him, if not—dead, probably. Or part of Greyback’s new pack, living rough on the fringe of society.

He shook his head again, trying to clear it. “My dad didn’t…” he began to argue, then trailed off. He’d been vaguely aware that his father had done some work at the Ministry when he was very young, but he’d never thought to ask for details. The Lyall Lupin he knew was a handyman. A man of tools and stern gestures more than of words.

“I see,” Caradoc said, his light brown eyes ever perceptive. “Your parents never told you, then. I suppose they were waiting until they felt you were old enough. But you should know. It’s your story, your right, and I know you can handle it.” 

There it was again: the warm feeling of respect and camaraderie that had drawn Remus to Caradoc in the first place. He looked away, scanning the second floor for Sirius’s black jacket. He couldn’t see him anywhere.

Caradoc leaned in closer again. “Your father was a very effective lobbyist in his day. Did you know that? I’d even say Lyall was quite powerful, in his way. He promoted some particularly controversial ideas regarding non-human magical beings. Revolutionary policies, specifically in the case of lyc—”

“That’s enough, please. I don’t need a history lesson. I only came for the name.”

“All right. But that’s not all, Remus,” Caradoc continued gravely. “That’s not what I came here to tell you. I’ve been hearing things…”

Remus should leave now. He’d gotten what he came for, and anything else Dearborn had to say was more likely to be manipulation than fact. He began to push off the seat to get up, but felt the familiar warm pressure of Caradoc’s hand on his shoulder holding him in place.

A dry creaking sound ground out from the skeletal display as the white skull of the stag turned its empty-eyed head towards them.

“You need to hear this,” Caradoc said intently, so focused on Remus he didn’t seem to notice the nearby movement. “I’ve been in conversation with The Ord—with Albus Dumbledore. He’s beginning to assemble a resistance of sorts. An unofficial network of allies throughout Wizarding Britain who stand opposed to Voldemort’s ideologies.”

Another painful stab of betrayal shuddered through Remus. “Professor Dumbledore is working with you again? He reached out to you after… after everything?”

Caradoc clocked the words left unspoken with a furrowed brow but nodded in confirmation. “Albus sees people for their potential uses above all else. Whatever else I may be, I still have value to him as a trained fighter. He would rather have me on his side than see me on the other. It’s not personal, this alliance. It’s war. And that’s what this meeting is about.”

War. That word, which had initially felt like hyperbole for occasional bouts of aggression coming from a handful of radicalised pureblood lines, was starting to feel a lot more accurate lately. Remus settled tentatively back in the bench and nodded for Caradoc to continue.

“Since leaving my teaching position at Hogwarts, I’ve been working in private security for—it doesn’t matter. But working in security has opened valuable new channels outside of my old auror connections, and I’ve been keeping my ear close to the ground. What I’ve been hearing is concerning, to say the least. And some of it concerns you.”

“Me,” Remus repeated, disbelieving. He was no one. An average student, an untrained fighter, barely a knut to his name. Cursed and damaged with few prospects come summer.

“Yes. You see—Greyback is allied with Voldemort, and he’s building something. A pack, an army. And you, Remus… you’re part of the plan. Whether you want to be or not.”

“What do you mean?”

Caradoc leaned in closer, his brow a grim line. The stag skeleton shifted its dusty hooves on its wooden plinth.

“Albus plans to recruit you. He wants to send you to infiltrate Greyback’s pack. He hasn’t approached you yet—likely waiting for you to finish school out of some twisted sense of tact—but it’s coming. You’re his golden ticket into the packs, Remus, and one he’s carefully invested years into creating. A werewolf with no pack allegiance, trained at Hogwarts and desperate to prove his worth? You’re perfect, and just nearly ripe for the using.”

Remus wanted to shake his head, to insist that Dumbledore wouldn’t ask him to put himself at the mercy of his attacker. But here he was, sitting next to Caradoc Dearborn, Dumbledore’s hand picked ally. He didn’t know who or what the headmaster was anymore.

“Dumbledore told you that?” Remus asked, hating how his voice cracked on the second word.

“He may as well have, reading between the lines. He’s against the idea of recruiting newly bitten spies, saying he already has the right man for the job in hand. Someone he’s certain he can trust. He claims we can expect to start receiving reports on Voldemort’s pack movements sometime after June. When you’ll have finished your final term. Who else could it possibly be.”

A girl wearing a navy peacoat passed in front of their bench, glancing curiously at them before looking back at the animals. She walked slowly around the display, pausing to read plaques, and Remus waited until she had passed out of earshot to speak.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because I know you,” Caradoc said, his eyes following the girl. “I know what loyalty does to you, what it takes from you. You’ve never said no to your foolhardy friends, and you never so much as tried to set a boundary with me. Dumbledore will sell this plan to you as noble sacrifice, but you won’t come back whole—if you come back at all. Greyback knows you’ll be sent. He’s already watching for you, Remus, and he’ll use your loyalties to break you.”

Remus’s heart lodged in his throat. “Greyback’s expecting me? He remembers me?”

“I told you, Greyback’s pack is his family. I believe he considers you a wayward son. He’ll want to keep you, but that doesn’t make you unexpendable. Greyback’s a lot wiser than wizards give him credit for. He knows Albus has had his hooks in you for seven years, and he’ll be expecting him to use you just as he did. He’ll either try to turn you to his side—make you hunt, kill, turn beastly like him—or he’ll destroy you.”

“How do you know this?”

Caradoc dropped his gaze for a moment. “My current line of work attracts people with… chequered backgrounds. Dubious affiliations. I did a long stint with a werewolf from Kent, and he bragged about knowing Greyback. He’s run with his pack, and others like it, so I did some careful probing. At first for Albus’s benefit, but then for yours.”

“Why?”

“Call it… working off a debt, if you like.”

Remus swallowed, his throat tight. “What would you suggest I do, then?”

“Don’t give them the chance,” Caradoc said with quiet urgency. “You’ve got time to walk away. Not much, but enough. Leave school, go underground. I know people who could hide you, teach you how to vanish completely. It’s not an easy life, but it’s better than the one waiting for you once you finish your NEWTs. I know it’s hard to walk away after all the work you’ve put into your studies. But you don’t need exam scores to be exceptional, to succeed in the world. You have everything it takes already. You have for as long as I’ve known you.”

Remus exhaled slowly, his mind racing. Caradoc's flattery was precisely aimed at his insecurities and his offer was almost certainly opportunistic, but there was an undeniable logic to the idea of stepping off such a fraught path.

“You want to help me disappear,” he said carefully. “I have to wonder—what’s in it for you?”

Caradoc leaned back, a shadow of something softer crossing his face. “Whatever else you might have come to believe in these past months, I truly do care about you, Remus. I am sorry for taking things so far. It was wrong of me, as your teacher. I know that, and I don’t expect you to forgive me any time soon. And you don’t have to trust me right now, either—but you should trust that I know men like Greyback. And I know what they do to people who walk into their traps.”

For a long moment, Remus didn’t speak. The museum noise around them faded into the background, leaving just the weight of Caradoc’s words pressing against his scarred chest.

Finally, he said, “I could be good at it. Working undercover. Being Dumbledore’s inside man with the wolves. I could change things for the better, maybe even save some lives.”

“You’d be chewed up and spat out dead within a year, at most. I’m not saying you’re weak,” Caradoc cut in when Remus opened his mouth to retort, “but you can’t act to save your life; and I mean that quite literally, in this case. That face of yours will be the death of you. They’re expecting you to show up with a flimsy story, and nothing you can say or do will change the packs’ minds about a tame werewolf like you. I know you don’t want to listen to me. I haven’t been good to you. But Albus would trade your health and safety for a few pieces of intel on Voldemort’s forces. I don’t believe he expects you to make it out intact, or at all.”

Remus squeezed his eyes closed, trying to reject the idea of an Albus Dumbledore who would see him die in his teens.

“Dumbledore let me into Hogwarts when no other headmaster would have. He risked so much to—“

“Don’t you see?” Caradoc spoke over him. “This is why he’s invested so much in you. He needs you to feel beholden to him, and he doesn’t care if that gets you hurt or killed in the name of the greater good. I’m not pretending to be better than him; I know many good people will have to die in the battles to come, and I accept that I could be one of them. But there’s no point in you walking right into Greyback’s claws when there’s nothing to be gained from it. Your life will be wasted before you’ve had the chance to do anything to help anyone. Before you’ve even begun living it.”

It was too much all at once. He needed time to put his thoughts in order, to form his own conclusions. He glanced up at the second floor, needing to see Sirius, but couldn’t find him.

“You don’t owe them anything, Remus,” Caradoc pressed, his voice softer now, almost coaxing. “You’ve given enough. Your father crossed the wrong person well over a decade ago, and you’ve been paying for it ever since. Forget Dumbledore, forget The Order, forget school. Go somewhere safe. Somewhere Greyback can’t touch you. I’ll help you. I even have a place for you to transform—a cellar where I used to hide out sometimes back when I was on the force. I can take care of you there after the moons. Keep you safe and secret.”

Remus stood abruptly. He wasn’t ready to die yet. Not for Dumbledore, and not even for the rights of half-breeds and muggleborns. But he wasn’t about to put his entire future and wellbeing in Caradoc Dearborn’s too-eager hands. 

“I’ll think about it,” he said, willing his voice and limbs not to shake.

Caradoc stood too and stepped in close, a strong grip finding Remus’s elbow. “Don’t be a child. You don’t have time to think. Come with me now, and I’ll—”

But before he could say more, a tremendous crash sounded at the opposite end of the museum. Every head in the building turned towards the source of the commotion. The beluga whale skeleton that hung elegantly suspended from the ceiling was taking a slow motion nosedive, raining its massive ribs and vertebrae down upon the glass display cases as its support wires creaked and snapped one after the other. Glass shattered and canoe-sized bones splintered like brittle wood, fragments scattering in all directions.

At that same moment, the great stag in the Skeleton Parade sprung into life, leaping off its display and charging at Caradoc. He staggered back as it pinned him against the wall with its massive antlers, a bone knee rising up to crash into his wand hand. Caradoc’s yell was drowned beneath the racket of shattering and screaming and his wand, which Remus hadn’t noticed he’d drawn, clattered to the floor.

None of the muggles noticed the moving stag or the scene playing out between the three of them, all too busy covering their heads and running towards the exits as the steel cables continued to groan and give out.

Remus stood frozen in shock as Caradoc cursed profusely, struggling against the antlers caging him in place. This was not one of their half dozen plans. Caradoc’s hand, which was clearly broken and already turning violent shades of red, strained its tendons for his dropped wand. Coming to his senses, Remus kicked it across the marble floor, where it rolled beneath a large exhibit box.

“That’ll be my foolhardy friends,” he said coolly, collecting himself. “Goodbye, Professor.”

“Fine. Go, then,” Caradoc grit through clenched teeth. “But remember what I’ve told you. Stay away from Greyback. Don’t trust Albus Dumbledore. Get out while you can. And if you should find you need me—my offer stands.”

Sirius was positioned in the nearest doorway, waiting for Remus to join him with an air of agitated impatience. Muggle security workers in yellow vests flooded into the hall, mitigating whatever damage they could and helping trapped stragglers find a safe way out through the debris.

Remus glanced back at Sirius, silently asking for one moment more, then put a hand on the stag’s winged scapula and locked eyes with Caradoc. He looked weak and a little sad like this. Not worth the nightmares.

“Consider your debt repaid, if you like,” Remus said quietly. “I don’t have the strength left to carry this grudge around any longer. You’ve told me everything I needed to know, so… thank you. But you won’t see me again.”

Caradoc pushed against the antlers restraining him again, but there was no real heart in his movements. “You’re making a mistake,” he called after Remus as he turned away. “I’m the only one who gives a damn about keeping you alive.”

Remus didn’t respond. He had nothing left to say or do with this man. He strode briskly towards the door, weaving around the yellow clad muggles until he reached Sirius.

Outside, the January air hit him like a shock. Sirius tossed him his helmet without a word and he jammed it on blindly, following Sirius back to the bike.

As they sped down Parks Road, Remus felt the weight of Caradoc’s warning like chains around his neck. But then they turned down an empty side street, Sirius hit the cloaking button, and with a twist of the throttle they were airborne, rising high over barren treetops and red brick buildings. The engine roared beneath them, drowning out the echoes of Caradoc’s voice in Remus’s head. The hills of the Cotswolds stretched out in the distance, and from their altitude the top of the Radcliffe Camera looked like a shiny green button. He held his thumb out to press it like a child might try to do, and the heavy chains slipped and tumbled to the ground.

The morning sun glinting off of the chrome handlebars was warm on their backs, so they were headed approximately west. Remus didn’t know where Sirius planned on taking them, and for the moment, he didn’t care. He didn't care about fringe werewolf packs or his headmaster's schemes or the ticking clock attached to his life. The only thing that mattered was the steady thrum of the motorbike and the way Sirius kept looking over his shoulder, just to make sure he was still there.

The next time he did it, Remus smiled openly at him. He likely looked an exhausted mess, but it was the first genuine, unencumbered smile he'd felt break across his face in a very long time. Sirius slowly smiled back, his pale eyes softening at the corners, then turned and revved the engine.

Chapter Text

Peter pitter-pattered down the corridor, singing a Blondie song in his head. He’d never admit it, but he was well pleased to be back in school. He hadn’t missed the lessons or revision, of course, but returning to well-structured days and the security of his friend group was a balm after the last dreary week stuck at home with his mum, her gin, and the tacky plastic Christmas decorations she always left up past New Years. 

He reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, gave her the password (“Cuttlefish!”) and scrambled inside to look for his friends. The common room was crowded, but their absence was immediately obvious. When they were there, the place glowed with eager energy as students formed clusters around them, everyone wanting to be in on a joke or to impress James and Sirius. So he cut straight through to the stairway, past the nobodies, and made his way up to their dorm room. He attempted to think up something quippy to say before opening the door, but came up flat and pushed it open anyways. It was empty. Bugger.

Back out in the hallways, he spotted Lily Evans’s bouncy red hair rounding the corner up ahead. She might know where Remus was, at least.

“Hey, Evans,” he called after her, breaking into a little jog to catch up. He immediately felt stupid and decelerated back to walking, hoping no one noticed. He took the corner too hastily and bumped face-first into Snape.

“Pettigrew,” Snape drawled, looking creepily pleased to see him. “Just the man I’ve been looking for.”

“You have?” Peter squeaked.

“Of course,” Snape said, raising his eyebrows. “You owe me a favour, after all.”

Peter did. Snape had tipped him off on where he’d find Remus and Aubrey holed up back in December, which Peter had hoped would get Aubrey evicted from their little group. Why Snape hadn’t used the juicy information to his own advantage, Peter wasn’t sure. Though it did make him suspect Snape was after something… bigger.

“What do you want, Snivellus?” Peter tried to sound cool and brave, like Sirius. Snape only laughed.

“Your gang is in a private meeting with the headmaster,” he said, his ugly smirk growing when he saw the surprise splashed across Peter’s features. “You didn’t know? Yes, they caused quite the commotion outside his office. Typical first day of term behavior, I thought, but then Potter dropped a very interesting name indeed. I wonder if you know what it was?”

Peter said nothing, because he didn’t know. That irritated him. Snape carried on smoothly, “They're in there right now. Without you, their most important member. Why don’t you run along and tell me what they’re talking about, and we’ll call it even?”

“Wh-what makes you think they’ll let me join them, if they didn’t include me in the first place?”

“Oh, I have a feeling you’re quite capable of getting in. I don’t know how you do it, Pettigrew, but you have a knack for overhearing things no one should be able to know. So do me this one little favour, and I won’t tell Lupin whose fault it is that his disgusting foreign boy-toy got sent to the hospital wing with a deformed head.”

Peter glared at Snape, then set off towards the headmaster’s office at a clip, wondering furiously what they could possibly be doing in there without him.

-

5 Days Earlier | The Cotswolds

They landed, according to a peeling railway sign, in Stow-on-the-Wold. Sirius parked his bike behind a whitewashed gastropub with a smoking chimney, hoping to find a couple of seats inside near a fire where they could defrost. The ride from Oxford had turned colder and damper the further west they flew.

Blessedly, the table directly in front of the fireplace was empty when they walked in. Sirius went to the counter to order tea and sandwiches while Remus shucked off his wet jacket and settled into one of the rickety chairs.

“Thanks,” he said when Sirius returned with their tea. A faint smile lingered around his eyes despite the tiredness manifesting in the way he leant heavily on his forearms, his lanky profile slouched over the table.

Sirius sat down with a sigh, plopping two sugar cubes into Remus’s cup. Now that they’d stopped moving, he could feel the exhaustion settling in, too.

“I talked to the barman, and he said they have rooms upstairs. We can get one if you want to put your feet up. Could probably do with a kip, myself.”

“That could be good. Will James know where to find us?”

“I’ll send an owl to Godric’s Hollow with the address if we decide to stay. But James’s potion won’t wear off for another hour, and his portkey home isn’t until this evening.”

Remus nodded and they drank their tea in a subdued silence punctuated by the fire’s crackling and popping. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Remus onboard with the idea of Prongs standing guard over his and Dearborn’s meetingplace, but James and Sirius had worn him down in the end.

Sirius had only been joking when he’d first proposed blending into one of the faunal collections as an animagus. The idea started sounding a lot more feasible, however, after James dug through his trunk for inspiration and unearthed a small vial of flesh-vanishing potion leftover from two Halloweens ago. (For the entire month of October, the students of Hogwarts had enjoyed spiking each other's drinks with Zonkos’s latest ‘Fleshless Phials’ to watch their friends clatter around as skeletons, trying and failing to grasp their wands with bony fingers.) After a lengthy debate over whose animagus form was best suited to the role of bodyguard, they agreed that James would drink the Fleshless Phial as Prongs. He would masquerade as a skeletal specimen on the first floor of the museum while Sirius would watch the meeting from above and accompany Remus in and out of the building. But before all of that could happen, they needed to break into the museum before opening, build anti-apparition wards around the perimeter, swap James in for the other deer in the display, and cast layers of glamours on top of the potion’s effects to make his bones appear time-bleached and dusty. They might have found the operation exhilarating if they hadn’t been wracked with anxiety every step of the way.

Now, with the excitement behind them, Sirius was anxious to know what had passed between Remus and Dearborn. He stepped on the impulse to ask him about it, though. The change of plan had encroached on Remus’s privacy more than he’d been comfortable with already, so now it had to be up to Remus to decide what he wanted to share and when he was ready to share it. Besides, Remus was looking soft and mellow in his wooly green pullover as he watched townspeople pass by the window between sips of tea. Sirius wasn’t going to ruin that.

“Stow-on-the-Wold,” Remus said eventually. “Why’d you choose to bring us here, of all places?”

Sirius shrugged, surveying the little grey stretch of street framed by the window. “Why not? It’s quiet, out of the way, and the name sounds funny. I figured we could use a bit of funny.”

The corners of Remus’s mouth twitched upward. “Geography-by-whimsy. I should’ve known. Your methods are chaos, as always.”

“Hey, don’t knock chaos.” Sirius leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out under the table. His left boot bumped the side of Remus’s loafers. “My refined aptitude for chaos is what got us out safely back there.” He tilted his head back in the approximate direction of Oxford.

Remus’s fingers curled around his cup, their edges still pink from the cold. “True. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Anytime. You should’ve used one of the signals, though.”

“I didn’t need to,” Remus said softly.

Sirius’s Black heart melted a little. “No, you didn’t.”

An elderly couple came bustling through the door, complaining about the weather. The barman called out a familiar greeting and set about pulling a pint of real ale for the gentleman.

Remus cleared his throat. “Anyways,” he said more briskly. “That distraction was really something. You went a bit off-script there though, Padfoot old pal. Caught me by surprise.”

“Well, you know me. Show me a giant whale, and I’ll show you how much noise it can make.”

“You put up shield charms around the muggles, right?”

“Obviously. The only things in danger of getting crushed were already long dead—and probably well insured. And I made sure it didn’t all come down at once so everyone had a chance to get out.”

“And for dramatic effect, right?”

“Thought that was a given.”

That earned him another flicker of amusement at the corner of Remus’s mouth. A win, Sirius thought. A girl came out of the kitchen to drop off their sandwiches, and they both focused fully on the important business of lunch.

“Stow-on-the-Wold,” Remus murmured again, obscuring what might have been a smile behind his ham and swiss on rye. “How do you manage to make the most ridiculous things seem like good ideas?”

Sirius couldn’t help but smirk. Instead of answering, he nudged Remus’s foot under the table and said, “Toss over your portkey. Unless you’ve changed your mind about not going back to the Potters’?”

Remus shook his head. “There’s no going back after today,” he said, then pulled a crumpled packet of geranium seeds out of his pocket.

That was the closest they came to talking about what had happened that morning in Oxford for the rest of the afternoon. Remus seemed content to stay put at the pub, so Sirius ran out into the misty street to send an owl to the Potters’ house letting James know where to find them. When he got back he exchanged some funny paper notes for a room key, then led Remus up two creaking flights of stairs to a door marked ‘6.’

The room was modest and draughty but, in Sirius’s opinion, the perfect refuge. It had a small fire, a round wooden table in the centre, twin beds on either wall, and a window over a dusty bookshelf looking out on a field of fog. Sirius tossed his jacket and their unused portkeys on the table while Remus headed straight for the bed on the far end of the room, flopping down with a muffled groan into the pillow.

“At least take off your shoes, you animal,” Sirius pretended to tut. When Remus only sighed in reply, he plodded over to pull them off himself, fixed Remus’s socks back over his heels, and then set about unlacing his own boots.

“Why’ve you been so nice to me,” Remus asked through his facefull of pillow.

Sirius froze with his fingers on his laces. “I’m always nice to you,” he said cautiously.

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh,” Sirius toed off his boots and kicked them under the other bed. “Well, I. I’ve only ever wanted to be. But I know I fell short this year, and I’m sorry for—”

“Merlin, stop,” Remus said, picking his head up off his pillow. “I was only teasing, Pads. You don’t have to go into a whole… thing.”

Sirius’s ego twinged. “Don’t I? I tried to apologise in my letter before Christmas, but you didn’t—”

“I know. Sorry. It was a really nice letter. Thank you for it,” Remus offered, grinning his own soft apology. “You don’t need to keep apologising. I’m just glad you’re here, and that we’re… we’re good again.”

“Of course I’m here. And I’ll be wherever you want to go next, if you’ll have me.”

At that, a shadow passed over Remus’s face. He rolled to lie flat on his back, facing the ceiling blankly. “Wherever’s next, indeed,” he murmured.

Sirius chewed the inside of his cheek, waiting for more, then set about lighting a fire in the hearth the muggle way to give Remus time alone with his thoughts. To his chagrin, the task was much more difficult in practice than in the Muggle Studies textbook. Eventually, with a covert glance over his shoulder to see if Remus was watching, he incendio’d a flame to dance on the stubborn logs that refused to be persuaded by matchsticks.

He collapsed onto his own mattress then, and though it was half the size and twice as hard as his bed back at Hogwarts, it felt like heaven. He closed his eyes and dipped in and out of consciousness, his dreams conjuring visions of a great grey whale swimming weightlessly through the clouds.

A couple of hours of patchy sleep later, Sirius woke to the hum and glow of their portkeys activating to return to the Potters’ front garden. A beat later, he heard the creak of springs as Remus rose from his bed to move nearer the dwindling fire. Sirius sat up, rubbed his tired forehead, then got up and joined him at the scarred and battered little table. He wedged another log into the grate then fell into the seat opposite Remus’s, their shared exhaustion settling heavily in the space between them.

“If you feel like talking about any of it, I promise not to interrupt,” Sirius offered after a while.

Remus didn’t respond immediately, his gaze fixed on the fresh log catching light in the hearth. The flames painted his face in shades of gold and shadow, drawing out the lines of tension that hadn’t eased up since before Christmas. Sirius recognized the expression: Remus wasn’t here, not entirely. He was still somewhere else—back in the museum, maybe, or further still, where memories Sirius couldn’t reach kept him shackled.

“He gave me the name I was after,” he said finally, his voice low. “But you don’t need to know it. I don’t want to risk you going after someone like that.”

Sirius frowned at ‘someone like that,’ but kept his promise to stay quiet.

“That wasn’t what Caradoc wanted to talk about, though. And it’s the least of my problems now, if you’ll believe it. He came to warn me. About… about the war.”

That caught Sirius off guard. The war steadily brewing in wizarding politics didn’t have any place in Remus’s life. Surely, Dearborn had only invoked it as a fear tactic.

“He claims he’s caught wind of plans for me coming from both sides,” Remus continued, breathing out a laugh as if that wasn’t the most terrifying sentence ever spoken. “Like I’m important enough to play a part in anyone’s strategy. It’s all a bit mad, honestly. But he says that Dumbledore is forming a resistance alliance, and that he’s going to recruit me to join it soon. And that the people Dumbledore will send me to spy on are already expecting me. That they’ll… hm. That they’ll be happy to see me when I show up.”

Sirius’s mouth had fallen open at some point. He closed it and shook his head, eyes locked on Remus’s. It couldn’t be true. He didn’t understand.

“Yeah,” Remus said vaguely. “I don’t know. He could be lying. He’s very persuasive, and he knows how to… how to get to me. Obviously. But it sounded legitimate. It fits together in a way I don’t like, but feels too real to ignore. Dumbledore made me who I am, and I could very well be the only person both able and willing to do what he needs me to do. As for the others—Voldemort’s allies—they know what I am. A tame werewolf, fresh out of Dumbledore’s pocket. Easily breakable, in one way or the other.”

“No,” Sirius croaked. “He can’t… you aren’t… no.”

Remus glanced at him, the firelight catching his eyes in golden flashes. It reminded him fleetingly of the way the wolf’s arresting gaze sometimes cut to him just before daybreak.

“Yes,” Remus said soberly. “I want to believe that Caradoc was lying, but now that I see more of the bigger picture, it actually makes sense. This was probably always the plan for me, in one form or another. What else would I be good for once school’s through? Not that I want any part of this, just… it somehow feels inevitable now that it’s laid out in front of me.”

“Nothing’s inevitable,” Sirius insisted. Then, “Sorry. Can I—?”

“Yeah, you’re fine to talk. And I know nothing’s actually inevitable. Though Peter’s the only one of us who took Intro to Divination, so I suppose we can’t say for certain.”

“Don’t… please don’t joke right now.” Sirius put his face in his hands. Now that he was free to talk, he didn’t have anything helpful to say. The feeling was all too familiar. 

“Is there anything else I should know about?” was what he settled on eventually.

Remus thought for a while. “Caradoc offered me a way out. I’m not going to take it. I believe what he told me, for the most part, but I don’t trust him not to abuse his position again. There’s not a whole lot more to tell, other than that I…” he fiddled with his knuckles, face flushing red. “I didn’t feel anything for him when I saw him this time. Not that I thought I would, just. It’s a relief all the same.”

“Good,” Sirius said, a little too vehemently. “I’m glad,” he corrected, “that you were able to clear that up for yourself. He doesn’t have any power over you anymore unless you give it to him.”

Remus hummed in acknowledgement, eyes gone distant. “He’s clever and he’s charming, but there’s nothing special about him to miss. Or to fear. He’s just a selfish, egotistical man who I think genuinely believes he knows right from wrong better than everyone else in the world. A fool, in other words. But what does that make me, if not a bigger fool for giving him power over me in the first place?” He shook his head before Sirius could get a word in. “I know you’ve said you don’t judge me for it, but I can’t stop feeling embarrassed about the whole thing. It was just so obviously wrong, from beginning to end. I should never have let it happen.”

“He was already in a position of power because he was your teacher,” Sirius said heatedly, reaching across the table to get his attention. “You were supposed to be able to trust him. There’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about. If anything, be embarrassed for him, the fraction of a man that he is.”

“Yes, well.” The hollows of Remus’s cheeks were still dark pink. It looked shamefully lovely. “Thanks for saying so.”

Sirius took a deep breath and righted himself, glancing at the clock on the mantle for something to focus on that wouldn’t make his stomach squirm with guilt. “James’s portkey should have taken him back to his parents’ house,” he realised. “If my owl beat him there and was waiting for him, he’ll probably be here soon.”

“Right,” Remus said, and looked thoughtful again. “He’ll have stayed put in the museum like we planned, right? He wouldn’t have gone after Caradoc, would he?”

“Guess we’ll find out soon enough. Why? Why would he go—”

James came crashing through the flimsy wooden door with the rage of the North Sea, his hair wild and his eyes a maelstrom behind their lenses. He must have floo’d to the nearest wizarding fireplace in Stow and walked over in the rain, because his clothes were damp and grey with ash. He threw his spent portkey—one of his mother’s Daphne du Maurier paperbacks—down on the table.

“He wants to keep Moony in a cellar,” he all but roared without preamble, voice breaking over the last word. “He wants to wipe him off the face of the earth so he can lock him up somewhere where he holds the key. I should’ve gutted him, the manipulative—”

“James!” Remus hastened to calm him, jumping up from the table to hold him steady with hands on both his shoulders. “It’s fine, none of that’s going to happen. We’re all here, now. It’s fine.”

“How is any part of this ‘fine’?!” James demanded, breaking free of Remus to kick at a chair. “We shouldn’t have come. I told you it was a trap. If he thinks we’re going to let you quit school just so he can sweep in and get his—”

“James,” Sirius cut in this time, his voice commanding even as the new information shook through him. “Have some decency. It’s Remus’s business. You swore you wouldn’t repeat what you overheard.”

James deflated at that, sinking into the chair he’d dislodged. He took off his glasses and they fell off his knee, clattering to the floor. “I’m sorry, Moony. Shit, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Remus said, though he looked upset. “I was just filling Sirius in. On… most things. But please don’t do it for me.”

James nodded, hands covering his face, and Sirius turned to Remus, wide eyed.

“A cellar?” he repeated weakly.

“It’s nothing, Pads. Just Caradoc’s idea of where I’d transform if I didn’t go back to school.”

“Why would you leave school? You aren’t considering that, are you?”

Remus shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I haven’t ruled it out entirely.”

“Moony, you can’t,” James implored. “There’s only six months left, and you’ve worked too hard to bail before your NEWTs. Dearborn’s just trying to make it seem like you have nowhere else to turn but to him. You know that.”

“Do you think so?” Remus asked earnestly. “I’m not so sure. I think some of what he said was conjecture, but that it was more truth than fabrication on the whole.”

“What good would leaving school do?” Sirius pressed, frustrated at being out of the loop.

“Caradoc suggested I remove myself from the situation before things have a chance to get out of hand. Before Dumbledore can ask me to take on a role I don’t know I can handle. Caradoc says he’s likely waiting until the end of term, and that he’s told his people they can start expecting updates from the field shortly after June.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to leave. You could just say no,” James said staunchly, scooping his glasses off the floor and straightening them on the bridge of his nose. “But I don’t think he would ask that of you. Dumbledore would never pressure a student into doing something dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t be his student anymore, though. And I don’t know if I could tell him no if he asked me outright. But besides that, I don’t know if I want to leave before he has the chance to.”

“Why not?” Sirius demanded, suddenly entirely turned off by the idea of Hogwarts. “I’ll go with you. I already know everything. I don’t need NEWTs.” Sirius was already planning their next moves, thinking of safe places they could go.

“Because I think it might be the right thing to do,” Remus said plainly. “Who am I to hold my safety above others’ if what I could learn can make a difference? What if I can prevent more children from getting bitten? We all know what Voldemort wants to do if he takes over. Dumbledore knows the risks he’ll need to take to stop him. He needs people who are willing to take them with him.”

“But if Greyback already knows you’re coming—” James started, but Remus cut him off.

“Please, James. I asked you to keep what you heard to yourself.”

“If the other side knows Dumbledore plans to send you,” Sirius picked up James’s line of thought, making a mental note of the name ‘Greyback’ for later, “that’ll make it impossible for you to do anything useful as a spy. You’re not just risking your life in that situation; you’re as good as offering yourself up to them as sacrifice.”

“Dumbledore might know of a way around that issue. A false identity, maybe.”

“You think a made-up name and a couple of glamours will keep you safe in enemy territory?”

“James, do you want me to stay in school or not?”

“I want you to stay alive. If that really means leaving school, I guess we’ll figure something out. But if you can stay without giving up your whole life, that’s what you should do. Not sign it over willingly just because you think you owe our headmaster some sort of recompense for the noble act of letting you go to school.”

“It’s not only that.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t want to be a coward,” Remus said quietly.

James swore under his breath. Remus slouched over the table, avoiding looking at either of them. Sirius realized that it was all already decided.

Remus wouldn’t turn Dumbledore down if he asked. And Dumbledore would ask, because wizard-aligned werewolves—and of course this was about spying on the werewolves, Sirius wasn’t an idiot—were a rarity. And Remus wouldn’t run away because he’d never valued his personal wellbeing in the first place. And because the boy Sirius loved was anything but a coward.

“If you do decide to join,” he said eventually, ignoring James’s protest, “it can’t be as a spy. We’ll have to make that clear to Dumbledore. And you won’t be joining alone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Remus muttered. “You can’t sign up to fight just because your friend’s doing it.”

“What better reason is there to fight than for your friends?”

On any other day, James would have taken the mickey out of Sirius for such a sappy sentiment. Today, however, he only flattened his hands on the table and dipped his head in a nod of solidarity.

“You’re being very… valorous,” Remus said, looking between them. “But I wish you wouldn’t. You’re making it worse.”

“Your decision’s your own to make, but so are ours,” Sirius said. “We’re just as capable of fighting in Dumbledore’s army.”

“Did you catch Dearborn’s slip up towards the end?” James asked suddenly, turning to Remus.

Remus nodded slowly. “‘The Order.’ He stopped himself from saying that earlier on.”

“Do you think that’s what Dumbledore’s resistance group is called?”

“Sounds like it.”

“We should dig around, see if we can’t find out more about what they’re doing. Maybe find a different source on the inside.”

Remus’s shoulders tensed in a shrug. “If you want. But I wish you’d leave it alone.”

“I’ll start by asking my parents,” James went on, brushing past Remus’s request. “They’re old friends with Dumbledore.”

Remus chewed his lip but said nothing.

Sirius closed his eyes for a moment, then reached across the table and plucked the battered little book from where James had thrown it. He turned it over in his hands to scan the title: “My Cousin Rachel,” he read aloud. “Not quite your usual speed, Prongs. This one’s about incest, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know,” James said with an irked eyebrow. “Talk to my mum if you’re so bloody interested.”

Sirius held it up to Remus. “Want to read it with me, Moony? I could share some fun family stories as we go. There’s enough cousin-loving to fill three volumes this size on my mother’s side alone.”

“What’re you doing, Padfoot?” James asked flatly, looking patently unamused.

“Changing the topic,” Sirius told him. “We’re getting nowhere tonight. The day’s been rocky enough. We’ll work things out later, but for now, let’s just… not.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’re getting nowhere?’ We need to make plans for—”

“Yeah, I’ve read that one,” Remus spoke over James, lifting his chin up finally. “It’s a murder mystery; sort of. You read it, and we can compare notes.”

“Roger,” Sirius said, then flipped past the foreword to Chapter One.

“Really.” James deadpanned, looking between them.

“Yup,” Sirius said, not looking up.

“I’m flooing home, then.” 

“Fine.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to just come back to mine?” James asked, appealing to Remus.

“Sirius can, if he wants,” Remus said, glancing sideways at him, “but I’d rather not. Sorry, Prongs. Thank your parents again for me.”

“We’re staying here.” Without looking at James, Sirius moved from the table to lounge stubbornly on his twin bed with his book.

From the corner of his eye, he saw James sigh and turn to go.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, though, right?” Remus asked after him.

James’s stiff posture softened. “Yeah, Moony. I’ll be back tomorrow. You lads sleep well.”

He closed the door gently behind him, and there was quiet but for the ticking of the mantle clock.

“You all right, Moony?” Sirius said, sight still fixed on the page.

“Yeah. Cheers, Pads.”

They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not anymore, though. Now, when a murderer pays the penalty for his crime, he does so up at Bodmin, after fair trial at the Assizes. That is, if the law convicts him, before his own conscience kills him. It is better so…

The mattress dipped at Sirius’s feet as Remus sat himself on the foot of his bed, a water stained novella from the bookshelf in hand. Sirius kicked his socked feet up onto Remus’s lap like he used to do in the old days, schooling his face to suppress the glow welling up from his chest. Remus let them rest there and turned a yellowed page apathetically. 

“This reads a bit grim for a romance,” Sirius muttered ten minutes and four pages later.

“I told you, it’s more of a murder mystery than a love story,” Remus said. “Well, murder-by-proxy. Which is as good as the same thing, really. But read to the end, and then we’ll discuss.”

Sirius gave it another few pages (We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to the test, and, like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world) then flipped to the last chapter.

-

Peter needed to sneeze. He panicked for a minute, then remembered that a rat’s sneeze is little more than a squeak. He relaxed and let it out, then continued scurrying along the gap behind the skirting.

He’d only snuck into the headmaster’s office once before, to steal a highly-sensitive letter. He remembered the way well enough, though, and was confident that he’d reach his destination soon. The other Marauders thought they knew all of the secret passages the school had to offer, but the castle opened up a hundred fold when you were the size of a rat. They’d never understand it the way Peter did.

He paused when he heard the steady grinding of stone-against-stone behind the wall to his right. Dumbledore’s revolving staircase, he thought. He was almost there. The last bit of the journey was tricky—a nearly vertical climb in pitch darkness—but when he got to the top he could hear voices coming from behind a woven tapestry that occluded a break in the masonry he could squeeze through if he wanted to.

“…kinds of magic you’ve never heard or even dreamed of,” Dumbledore was saying gravely. “It is not a place for untested bravery.”

“But the rules are different for Remus?” That was James’s indignant voice.

“Mr Lupin has had his courage and resilience put to the test every month for the past twelve years. He has also proved his loyalty, maturity, and discretion as a prefect for this school.”

“Don’t you dare use that against him.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Black?”

“He means,” Remus cut in, “that I don’t have any field experience, either. And if I’m recognized while trying to ingratiate myself with the enemy, my chances of surviving, let alone collecting any useful information for you, sound low.”

“Which is why he won’t be spying on the werewolf packs for you,” James cut in bluntly. “And if he does decide to join the Order—not as an agent, but as a fighter—then we’re joining too.”

A pause. “How did you come by that name, Mr Potter?”

“What, ‘the Order?’ We know all about it.” 

James was bluffing. Peter would recognise that tone of voice a mile away; it had gotten them into and out of more sticky situations than he could count.

“Then you should know that it operates entirely sub rosa, and that its members are appointed by invitation only. And, while I appreciate and admire your loyalty to your friend, I'm afraid neither you nor Mr Black are under consideration.”

“And why not?” That was Sirius again. “We’re top of our year. We’re better wizards than all of the Slytherins who’ll be running to join Voldemort, and we barely even have to try. You should want us on your side.”

“And that youthful arrogance is exactly how I know I cannot yet rely on you.”

“We’re too arrogant? What about Dearborn?!”

“Caradoc Dearborn is a highly skilled fighter who owes me many debts after his conduct here. The situation at hand is more complex than you can possibly understand, and his role in it is no business of yours.”

“It’s Remus’s business if there’s any chance he’s going to be in the Order with him. Sir.” Sirius was clearly resisting an impulse to yell at the headmaster.

“Yeah,” James concurred. “And you don’t get Remus if we’re not there to have his back. That’s the deal.”

“I believe Mr Lupin can speak for himself.”

A pause, then Remus’s calm voice. “I want to learn more about the Order. From you, this time, Professor. Then we can make more informed decisions.”

“And that, Mr Black, Mr Potter, is what makes your friend a desirable ally. Not because of what he is, or, as you so imaginatively put it, my ‘puppeteering.’”

“Really. His lycanthropy is of no interest to you, is it?”

“That is not what I said. I beseech you to learn to listen if you seek to take the step from school boys to responsible adults. I would also encourage you to pay more attention to events beyond the walls of this school. Read between the lines of what you hear, and beyond the front page headlines in the Prophet. Perhaps then you will develop an appreciation for the cruelties, threats, and injustices we battle against.

“The Order and its members do not fight for any one individual. They understand that the cause must always come before the man, and the many sacrifices that entails. We may speak again once you can show me that you truly understand the gravity of what you are asking the Order to entrust you with. And with that, I thank you, gentlemen. You are dismissed.”

Peter’s friends lingered for a few stubborn seconds, then three sets of footsteps headed out the door. Peter scampered back the way he came, whiskers tingling with secrets.

-

Albus Vanished the extra seats in front of his desk with a flick of his wand. While he had been surprised earlier that afternoon to find himself accosted by the Gryffindor seventh years waiting at his office door, their visit wasn’t wholly unexpected. He wondered vaguely where the boys had left their fourth member, and expected that little Peter Pettigrew would be presenting himself for consideration soon as well. He didn’t have much talent with a wand, but magic wasn’t the only skill Albus needed.

“I can’t quite decide,” came a snide voice from over his shoulder, “whether I think you are a shortsighted nitwit or rather cunning indeed.”

“Go on, Phineas,” Albus replied mildly.

“While my great-great-grandson’s temperament may leave much to be desired, there is no denying his talents would be a boon to whichever side he chose to fight on. Do you truly mean to dismiss him? Or do you seek to make him earn a place in your ranks?”

Albus hummed, running a pensive finger along the grain of his wand. “Things have always come too easily to Sirius. He has never valued what he hasn’t had to work for.”

“I see. You intend to wield my bloodline’s noble nature to your advantage, then. What will you have him do to earn his place? Prove himself to you in a fiery act of heroism? Dance for your approval like a common house elf?”

“Amusing ideas, but no. Besides, it’s not my approval he’s looking for, I don’t think.”

“What’s that? The Potter boy’s, do you mean?”

“James? To an extent, yes. But perhaps not, in this particular instance.”

The portrait gave an impatient huff. “I may never understand you, Albus.”

“And I don’t need you to, Phineas. I ask only that you continue to serve me in my role as headmaster with your customary wisdom and discretion.”

“We Slytherins are much better at serving ourselves, you know. Do you really think you can trust a Black to act as your loyal servant? Though Sirius may not have been chosen for my house by that rag you call the Sorting Hat, he will always be of my proud heritage.”

“I believe I can trust Sirius to be loyal to those he cares about, though I am not so deluded as to count myself amongst them. But so long as our interests remain aligned…” 

Albus finally turned his attention fully on Phineas Nigellus’s gilded frame, taking in the masterfully painted black hair and high aristocratic features that trickled down his family tree.

“We still require a liaison with the werewolves. I trust that Remus will do what is needed in time, once he sees for himself the suffering he can prevent. But until that time comes, I expect young Sirius Black to serve as a highly valuable member of the Order of the Phoenix.”

Chapter Text

Lily nodded along to Mary’s rant about Professor Babbling’s unfair grading rubric, not taking much of it in. Potter, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew—who, after six long years, she’d finally started thinking of as James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter—were walking in a tight cluster several metres ahead of them. Their heads were bent low together in hushed conversation, and Lily was caught up (not, admittedly, for the first time) in wondering what they were saying.

“—and even though I wrote an extra four inches on my exam, Gene Briarwood still got better marks than me,” Mary continued with a huff. “It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Do you think I should go to McGonagall with an appeal? Or is that just too petty…” 

“It might be a little petty,” Lily agreed vaguely, not totally clear on the situation. She wasn’t even taking Babbling’s class this year. She shifted her grip on the library books she held against her chest and wished Mary would pick up her pace, just a little. The Gryffindor boys were pulling further ahead of them.

Lily would never group herself in with the girls who got distracted by the sight of Sirius’s shiny hair, the soft murmur of Remus’s voice, or James’s frustratingly charming grin (the way it was sharp at the corners and perfectly symmetrical when he was feeling lawful, but lopsided in a way that had no business being attractive when he had mischievous intentions). She had never been impressed by their attention-grabbing antics: not in first year when they floated frogs into the girl’s dormitory, not in third year when James’s trick-shot past Hufflepuff’s keeper won them the cup, not in fifth year when they’d humiliated Severus in front of the whole school following their Defense OWLs. No, she was distracted by their sudden and drastic lack of flash lately. 

Since returning after Christmas break, the foursome had been oddly removed from the Hogwarts scene. The feeling surrounding them hadn’t been the same since Dearborn had gotten sacked last spring, but it had been improving. (James, especially, had been working hard to lighten the mood. Lily could see the effort he put into keeping his friends uplifted, as well as the toll it took on him—the way he rubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses or rolled his tired shoulders when he thought no one was looking.) Now, even James was being serious. And not in a ‘we seriously need to win this match’ or a ‘seriously, keep out of our way while we pull off this prank’ kind of way. They seemed stoic. Burdened, even.

Lily got the odd sense that each one of them was being protective of the others. They seemed reluctant to mix with anyone outside of their own tight nucleus. That included Bertram, who could almost always be found alone out on the lake now, and Lily, who had started to think of Remus (and maybe also James; by extension, and only on good days) as a dear and true friend. It stung a little, being on the outside now. She missed joining them at meals, slipping into the seat beside Remus and listening to whatever madcap stories James or Peter had to share. She didn’t feel welcome there anymore, but she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Something must have happened between terms. It wasn’t her business, but damned if she wasn’t curious.

Maybe that was why she let her books slip out of her arms and spill onto the tiles, and why she said, “Oh, no, what a mess,” a bit louder than she needed to. Because James Potter had never failed to appear at her side when she dropped a quill in class or knocked over a cup of tea at breakfast.

Sure enough, James turned around as soon as her voice rang out and rushed over in long strides to help gather her scattered things.

“Thank you, James,” she said sincerely, tucking a loose ribbon of hair behind her ear. She watched his eyes follow the movement of her hand before snapping back down to the papers on the ground. If that made her smile, it was only a small one, and only to herself.

“No problem, Evans,” he said with a quick flash of that perfectly symmetrical grin. Up close, she could tell that it was missing that little hint of a joke usually tucked into one of its neat corners. Somehow, the whole world felt off-axis with it gone.

Which was probably why she didn’t think twice before asking him, still knelt there on the marble, “Are you busy on Saturday?”

The other three boys and Mary were observing the scene with varying degrees of surprise and amusement on their faces. Sirius leaned over to whisper something close in Remus’s ear that made him choke on smothered laughter. Sirius threw an arm around his shoulders, smirking smugly. Then, as an afterthought, it seemed, he pulled Peter into his other side.

James said he could make Saturday afternoon free, and just like that, they had a date set for two o’clock in Hogsmeade. Maybe Lily’s heart was fluttering like a bird because it was such a nice day (it was about to rain), or, maybe, she’d missed being close to James Potter.

James gave Lily another one of his smiles—a real one, this time—and jogged back to rejoin his friends.

-

Three Weeks Earlier | The Cotswolds

“Lily’s muggleborn,” James said out of the blue. He rolled his head on the grass to look at Remus, who was staring up at the clouds through a pair of Sirius’s shades.

The three of them were lounging on the slope of a mostly-dry knoll in Cheltenham. James’s parents had taken him and Sirius there for the Literary Festival when they were thirteen, and while they hadn’t had much patience for the readings and interviews, the boys had loved having free rein to roam around. They’d wound up high in a tree in this same sprawling park, daring each other to tap into their dwindling stores of accidental childhood magic to jump down and land intact.

“Yeah? I know,” Remus said, his fawnish lashes blinking behind sepia glass. “So?”

“You said I needed a better reason to join the Order than to keep you safe. There’s a reason.”

“Evans doesn’t want the likes of you fighting for her rights, Prongs,” Sirius teased lazily from Remus’s other side.

“She doesn’t need to know,” James said, turning back to look at the sky.

“That’s true,” Sirius said. “It’s not like you could tell her, anyways. Secret society and all. Though, she’d probably make a hell of a fighter if she were to join.”

Remus sat up, dry blades of grass falling off the back of his shirt. “Back to the pub for a pint?” he suggested abruptly. He had a habit of cutting their conversations about the Order short, which was making it difficult to get any real planning done. Sirius was pushing for them to drop the last six months of school and live on the road, while James thought they needed to return and arrange a meeting with Dumbledore. Remus still wouldn’t say whether he was determined to sign himself up or not if Dearborn’s claims proved true. They still had a couple of days before they needed to make any decisions, though.

The three of them brushed off their trousers and meandered back towards the pub next to the inn Sirius had found for Remus and himself, chatting aimlessly about knarls and kneazles.

-

Filius demonstrated the wand movement for the Disillusionment Charm with meticulous precision from atop his usual stack of old tomes. It was shaping up to be quite a chaotic lesson. Half of his pupils were sporting varying degrees of magical camouflage, while the other half were trying and failing not to bump into their invisible fellows. Filius should revisit this lesson plan before teaching it again next year. But, then again, he had had that same thought every year, and here he was nonetheless. Alas.

“Professor Flitwick?” a disembodied voice called from his right. Miss Jorkins, it sounded like.

“Yes, my dear?” he asked, omitting the name just to be safe.

“Should I still be able to feel my fingers and toes, sir?”

“Oh! You very much should,” he squeaked, and climbed carefully down from his plinth to assist the young lady.

With Miss Jorkins sorted, Filius wove between the still-visible students to correct and evaluate their technique. He asked the ones who had managed it to lower their heads for him to tap their skulls with his wand, lifting the charm so they could practice again. The only trouble was, he kept missing the ones who had performed the spell too successfully and having to circle back to un-Dissilusion them in Marco Polo fashion. It was a hopelessly inefficient process. It was also just a tiny bit fun.

The thing students always seemed to forget about invisibility was that it does not make one unnoticeable, only unseeable. The Disillusionment Charm creates a cosmetic illusion that mimics the physical surroundings behind the user, and that is all. It does not do anything to dampen the user’s voice or reduce their corporeal presence, but the sensation of being unseeable nevertheless gives its users an unearned feeling of privacy. Because of this phenomenon, Filius had born witness to some rather spectacular gossip over his years as students neglected to keep their voices down during this particular lesson. Some of the tidbits he had overheard tickled him, while others made the tips of his ears go pink.

This time, he picked up on some happy news.

“So,” the transparent outline of Sirius Black was saying to Remus Lupin’s hazy mirage as Filius circled around the back of the room, rapping smartly on heads and correcting wand technique. Both boys—so talented, so promising—were tilting back in their chairs, watching their classmates struggle while they patiently waited to be un-Disillusioned. “James and Evans. Do you know what that means?”

“Hopefully, that they’ll be very happy together?”

Filius allowed himself a private little smile tucked behind his mustache. James Potter and Lily Evans, together right before the end of their school years! How lovely. They would make a fine couple indeed, both sure to dazzle the wizarding world.

“Try again. Think back. Way back.”

“Ah,” Lupin said after a pause. “I believe it means one of us owes the other a broomstick.”

“And which one would that be, Mr Moony?”

“Eleven-year-old-me. To twelve-year-old-you.”

Filius chuckled to himself. The Gryffindor boys had been an entertaining bunch even in their very first year.

Black made an indignant noise that was likely accompanied by the arch of an invisible eyebrow. “Are you implying that our bet has somehow expired? According to the Marauders Code, ‘All Willing Participants in a Bet and/or Dare Shall be Bound to Honour the Terms of Said Bet and/or Dare Until Death and/or Detention.’”

“We wrote the Code when we were fourteen. That clause came well after the Potter-Evans Bet of ‘71.”

“You need a code to hold you to your word, do you?”

“Mm. I suppose not. But I do need a broom to give you a broom, and I don’t own a broom.”

“That’s fine. You can give me something else.”

Filius didn’t think he wanted to hear what was coming next, going off of the smirk in Black’s voice. Regrettably, he didn’t think his little legs could carry him away from their table fast enough to spare himself.

“Oh?” Lupin, at least, sounded entertained when he asked, “What’s that you want, then?”

“A roommate,” Black said.

Well, that was an unexpected relief.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Padfoot, but we’ve already been roommates for seven years.”

“I mean after. Once we’re through with school, working for the Order. We’ll want to be somewhere central…”

The Order. Filius’s eyes went wide. Surely, Albus wasn’t recruiting Hogwarts’s brightest before they’d even finished their schooling. Filius himself had been disinclined to accept his invitation, and he was far better equipped to survive than these barely-qualified wizards. He hastened to return to the front of his classroom to end the lesson early. He needed to speak with the headmaster.

“Oh,” Lupin’s voice followed softly as Filius trotted anxiously away. “A bit of a downgrade from a broomstick, but. Yeah, I think I can give you that.”

“Really? You mean it?”

“I do if you do.”

“Yeah. I really do.”

-

Sirius looked forward to the full moon every month. He tried not to bring it up anymore (it clearly nettled Remus when he did), but there was no better feeling on earth than breaking free of the shack and tearing through the moonbright forest reborn as Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. It was a selfish thing to want, knowing how horribly painful the transformations were for Remus, but the freedom that coursed through Padfoot’s veins was a high like none other.

It was that same selfishness that drove Sirius to do what he did.

The morning after the February full moon was bone-achingly cold. The night had passed without incident, aside from the four lawless animals romping through the forest where the scent of moss and winter berries filled the air and the emerald leaves were encrusted with frozen dew. 

Padfoot had chased joyously after the stag and its tiny rider, panting white plumes into the air with each hot breath. He was quickly overtaken by the wolf in playful pursuit, weaving through the thin tree trunks like quicksilver. Padfoot slowed down to catch his breath and admire the way the two large animals moved, both differently majestic in their unbridled power. 

With its sharp yellow eyes that caught everything in its forest kingdom, the wolf was quick to notice the dog falling away from its pack. It changed targets seamlessly, abandoning the stag and turning on a pin to leap and tackle Padfoot to the leaf strewn ground. Padfoot fought back with a little less playfulness than the wolf, letting his canine instincts take hold so he wouldn’t get mauled. He wrestled and nipped at thick grey fur until he secured the higher vantage, wrapping his teeth around the wolf’s throat and pinning it to the forest floor. They both knew the wolf could easily throw him off at any moment if it wanted to, but it let him win instead, lying still in submission. Padfoot gingerly let go and they tore on through the night, the stag’s pale antlers always just a few graceful bounds ahead.

When the sun finally cracked the horizon and the wolf retreated back beneath Remus’s skin, Remus collapsed to the shack’s dusty floor without any especially gory injuries to mark the occasion. James and Peter helped Sirius maneuver his naked form onto the derelict little bed, then cantered back up to the castle to thaw out and scrape a few hours of sleep before classes. It was Sirius’s turn to stay behind until Pomfrey showed up.

A quarter of an hour after they’d settled him into the bed, Remus stirred. He didn’t open his eyes but twisted beneath the sheets, a low, pained sound escaping his throat. Sirius sat perched on the edge of the mattress, watching him grow increasingly agitated with a line of concern between his brows.

“Remus?” he said tentatively when Remus didn’t show any signs of improving. He reached out to gently shake Remus’s sheet-covered shoulder, unsure whether he was asleep or not. Remus didn’t respond, but a hand emerged from the covers to clutch at his head. He seemed to be awake, at least.

“I’m going to help you sit up, all right?” Sirius said, and chose to interpret the twitch of Remus’s tawny curls as a nod. He shifted around so he could grip Remus by both shoulders and push him into a sitting position, his back leant against the headboard. He couldn’t see any injuries besides the usual scrapes and bruises, but Remus’s face was still contorted in a mask of pain. He immediately started shivering without the blanket covering up his torso, so Sirius slid into the bed next to him to share his body heat.

“What is it? What can I do?” he asked, panic rising in his chest. Usually patching Remus up after the moons was straightforward enough: staunch the bleeding and numb the breaks until Pomfrey arrived to heal them up properly. Remus was far too accustomed to pain and almost never complained.

“It hurts,” he moaned weakly now. Sirius conjured a glass for him and filled it with an aguamenti, but Remus only turned his face away, eyes clamped shut.

He had looked more or less fine when he’d transformed back earlier. He bore the usual scrapes and bruises from running carelessly through the forest, but there hadn’t been any angry gashes in sight. Internal bleeding, Sirius thought with a jolt. 

“I’m checking your ribs for breaks. Okay?” he asked, and Remus made a noise in affirmative, head rolling to tip back against the wall.

“Okay,” Sirius breathed, scooting in closer to thread his left arm behind Remus’s back. He carefully smoothed both hands over his ribs, feeling along them one by one. 

They’d had a scare two years earlier when one of Remus’s ribs had fractured inwards and punctured a lung. He’d barely been able to draw breath, and it took all three boys’ best efforts to keep him conscious until Pomfrey arrived to find him coughing up blood, alone on the floor. This was different, but there were other organs that could have gotten damaged by the transformation.

Remus was quieter now, his breathing still jagged and eyes half-lidded. Sirius ran his hands slowly down his sides, feeling for any sign of damage beneath the smooth skin. “You’re all right,” he whispered, not sparing any concentration for his words. “I’m just checking for injuries. You’ll be fine… it’s fine…”

He didn’t find any broken ribs, but continued to run his hands over Remus’s arms and shoulders and back down his sides again as though in holy ritual. He was delirious with worry, and with something else entirely. Something much more powerful he didn’t care to name.

“I need to go to the hospital wing,” Remus rasped. His mouth sounded dry.

Sirius hushed him, the corner of his lips pressed against Remus’s hair. “You can’t,” he whispered apologetically. “You have to wait for Madam Pomfrey to come find you. It’s okay, I’ve got you…” He glided his hands down Remus’s arms again, warming them with his palms.

Remus twisted again, his shoulder digging into Sirius’s chest. “God, make it stop,” he pleaded.

“Where’s the worst of it?”

“My head… it feels like it’s going to explode.” His voice was getting weaker.

A lunar migraine. Remus didn’t get them often, but when he did, they were monstrous. He nearly drowned himself in the bath in third year trying to relieve the pressure in his skull. Every time he thought he was feeling one coming on, he would drop whatever he was doing to make straight for the hospital wing.

“Okay, Moony, it’s okay…” Sirius scanned Remus up and down. His face was concerningly pale, his limbs had stopped shivering, and—he was half hard. Sirius could see the line of it through the thin sheet. All of his touching must have triggered a physical reaction despite the dominating pain. Sirius made a snap decision, his brain too wired and scrambled to overthink it.

“I can’t make the pain go away, but I can make you feel good. Okay?”

Remus nodded slightly, his eyes half-closed.

“I’m going to get you off,” Sirius clarified. “It’ll get the blood moving out of your head. Is that okay? You can tell me to stop.”

Remus only nodded again.

“You have to tell me yes,” Sirius said.

“Yes,” Remus gasped between uneven breaths.

Sirius reached beneath the sheet with the hand that wasn’t trapped behind Remus’s back and found Remus’s length. He felt it stiffen in his grasp, and from there, it was all simple motor memory.

He couldn’t help watching Remus’s face in suspended disbelief. His eyes had fallen closed, though his brow was still knitted in discomfort. He was breathing through parted lips with his head tossing slightly from side to side, thrown back on his limp neck.

“You’re okay, Moony,” Sirius found himself whispering mindlessly, panting slightly with exertion. “You’re fine, I’ve got you…”

Ice crystals hung in the thin morning air, but the two of them were warm. The whole world narrowed down to the shack’s iron bed, creaking quietly with each pump.

Within minutes, Remus was coming into his hand, gasping wetly with sweat gleaming on his brow—and Sirius couldn’t help himself. He’d been teetering on the brink the whole time. He touched himself through his robes, and after a few rough rubs with the palm of his hand he was spilling over into the cloth, holding his breath through his orgasm. Remus didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were closed, at least. 

Sirius lay there frozen on his side, watching for any change in Remus. He was breathing harder, but had gone quite still and quiet. The pained creases on his forehead were gone.

Footsteps outside the bedroom door: Madam Pomfrey was due. Sirius whipped out his wand, vanished the mess, and pulled on James’s cloak a second before Pomfrey opened the door and rushed inside.

“Remus, dear, you're awake? What is it this time?” he heard her ask as he moved silently towards the door.

Remus groaned, then mumbled incoherently. “Where’d Sirius… I can’t… my head, god—”

Sirius slipped out into the hallway, treaded carefully down the stairs, then made a dash for the tunnel, his body still riding a confused state of bliss and his brain filled with white fog.

-

Two Months Earlier | The Cotswolds

“Still awake?” Sirius asked into the darkness of their cheaply rented coach house loft in Fairford.

The rustle of blankets coming from Remus’s side of the loft halted. “Yeah, sorry,” his voice floated back. “This bed’s awful. I think there’s a spring lodged in my spleen.”

“Mine’s not too bad. Want to switch?”

“No, no. I’m sure I’ll be good in a minute. Thanks, though.”

“Sure, Moons. Night.”

Half an hour later, Sirius blinked awake to the creaking of floorboards and the dark outline of Remus climbing out of bed, ducked low to avoid hitting his head on the steeply vaulted ceiling.

“Changed your mind?” Sirius asked, voice groggily low.

“Just giving up. I think the floor might actually be better.” Remus dragged his pillow and blankets into the middle of the room.

“For Godric’s sake,” Sirius huffed, watching as he carefully spread a quilt out on the wooden planks as if it would provide any semblance of padding. “Just get up here.”

“No, go back to sleep. No point in trading your comfort for mine. I think this’ll work for me.”

Sirius listened to him get situated on the floor. “This is stupid,” he said a minute later.

“Mm. I’ll gladly argue with you about it in the morning. But for now, sleep.”

Sirius sighed and closed his eyes again. He gave it another distracted fifteen or so before he, too, gave up. He slipped out of the warm comfort of his bed, pulling his blankets with him, then laid them next to Remus’s and lowered himself down.

Remus rolled onto his side to look at him, eyebrows raised. “This is really stupid,” he said, kicking Sirius gently with a bare foot. "You're going to regret it tomorrow."

Sirius just shushed him and tried to drift back off. It seemed like it would be impossible for a while, with Remus’s quiet chuckle lingering in his head and the floorboards uncompromisingly hard beneath his shoulder blades and hip bones. But then he was waking up under half of Remus’s tattered quilt to sunlight and birdsong streaming through the high window, and Remus sitting up with a long, lazy stretch, saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never felt more rejuvenated.”

And although Remus was joking, Sirius had to agree. Even with a stiff neck, a triangle of new bug bites on his back, and purple-grey shadows under his eyes, he’d never woken up so serenely high on life. He rolled over onto his stomach on the bunched up quilt, buried his face in Remus’s pillow, and idly wondered if he would ever feel so well-contented again.

"Do you regret it?" Remus asked him.

Chapter Text

How is this happening again? James wondered dispiritedly, jabbing at his asparagus with his fork and glancing covertly between his friends. After months of things looking better—after the perfect Potter Christmas, thwarting Dearborn in Oxford, and four days vagabonding around the Cotswolds together—Sirius had reverted back to ignoring Remus.

He looked awful. James didn’t even know Sirius could look awful. Even when he was in a foul temper or severely underslept, he usually only looked cooler for it somehow. It was sort of annoying, actually, but mostly James admired it.

That wasn’t the case this time, however. Sirius wasn’t brooding in the tortured-aristocrat-on-a-dark-and-stormy-night way he had been last term. Before, he had been tight lipped and borderline hostile in all matters involving Remus. Now, he was giving Remus a wide berth with almost shamefaced deference, keeping his shadowed eyes averted as if Remus’s gaze held power of divine judgement over him. For the past week he’d been getting up at dawn to vacate their dorm before Remus woke and even skiving off the handful of classes they shared together. James had practically had to drag him down to supper to eat with them.

Remus, for his part, was… quiet. Which wasn’t new. But James thought he seemed hurt and confused, like he didn’t know how he was meant to respond to Sirius and his changed behavior. James didn’t, either.

James also didn’t know what to do about the gorgeous redhead who was finally giving him the time of day. They’d gone on the most brilliant date of his life, and now she’d be expecting him to plan an even better follow up. Which he was eager to do, only he was distracted by the treacherous chasm expanding between his friends. Not to mention the fact that he was still coming to grips with his decision to join an underground resistance group.

It wasn’t the path he’d envisioned for himself. Not even when he was a young boy who loved playing the brave knight. But he knew now that it was what he needed to do, and not just because Remus was doing it. The war against Voldemort, which he had striven to learn more about since their meeting with Dumbledore, needed people like him. He couldn’t imagine pursuing a career in potioneering or spell crafting while less privileged witches and wizards risked their lives for the rights of people like Lily and her family. 

He couldn’t drag Lily into the world of war with him, but he also couldn’t fathom shutting her out now that her eyes shone with something rarer than magic when she looked at him.

The scope of life at the moment was headachingly overwhelming. Plus, he had his quidditch captaincy and the NEWTs rolling up on top of everything else. He needed a sodding break. He needed something, anything, to change for the better.

“Sort yourselves out, won’t you?” He said, interrupting Peter’s soliloquy on the many merits of rodenthood. Peter fell silent and the other two looked up at him like he’d just spoken Dutch. 

“I’m serious,” he said, and made sure he looked it. “I love you, but I can’t deal with… whatever this is between you two. Sirius, you’re being a twat. Remus, use your words. Come on, lads. We’ve got more important things to be getting on with.”

“Keep out of it, James,” Sirius huffed just as Remus said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And that’s why you can never be a spy,” James reminded Remus with a flat look, unimpressed. Remus was a good liar, but really. “Sort it,” he told Sirius again, then pushed his plate away and got up to find Lily.

He thought he might ask her to join him for a walk around the lake. He’d wanted to plan something dazzling for their second date, but at the moment he just really wanted her company. He hoped she’d be content with his, too, and a bit of fresh air before the sun dipped behind the castle.

He wanted to talk about good things. Beautiful things. Trivial things, even. He wanted to know her favourite childhood memory; what she thought about the newest Warbeck song; what she was looking forward to most after finishing school; whether she wanted to live in a city, or if she could see herself settling down somewhere quieter, like Godric’s Hollow.

He found her as soon as he looked for her, a ruby in the Great Hall’s sea of black robes. She smiled beautifully when she saw him coming, emerald eyes shining.

-

3 months earlier | Godric’s Hollow 

It was Christmas evening, and for the first time since he’d begun spending it with the Potters, Sirius wasn’t feeling even remotely jolly. He was growing increasingly certain that he’d said all the wrong things to Moony earlier that day, but didn’t know how to make things right. He was also more than a little stung by what Remus had said about being fine with things going right back to the way they'd been before. Sirius knew he should try talking to him again with a leveler head, but tonight wasn’t the right moment.

Dinner had been tenser than it should have been. Mrs Potter was visibly worried because Sirius had only eaten about half of what he usually did, James was doing that thing he did where he talked too much to compensate for his friends’ awkwardness, Remus was acting like everything was normal in his clipped, overly polite way, and Peter was chewing too loudly, each exaggerated crunch a statement. At least Mr Potter seemed oblivious to the underlying tension, humming cheerily as he doled out heaped servings of Mrs Potter’s best raspberry trifle.

It was Christmas evening, the most magical night of the year, and Sirius just wanted to feel good again. So he changed into Padfoot, of course.

He waited until after James’s parents had gone off to bed, then transformed and curled up in front of the fire dwindling in the fireplace. When the heat faded from his fur, he got up, sniffed around for any leftover treats (carefully avoiding Remus’s chocolate orange—he’d made the mistake of indulging in chocolates as Padfoot before), then trotted up the stairs to James’s room.

He nudged the door open with his snout and made himself at home at the foot of James’s bed. James was lounging back with Madcap Magic for Wacky Warlocks, his new spell book from Remus, propped up on his knees.

“Hullo,” he said, looking up from beneath his glasses as Padfoot jumped up. The dog pawed at his argyle-socked foot in greeting. 

“Not changing back? That’s fine. You know I prefer you this way, anyways. If only human-you would learn how to keep his trap shut so nicely.”

Padfoot scrunched up his nose. Rude.

“Sorry, sorry,” James said on reflection. “Bad joke. Your mother’s the only person who wants you quiet. But she and her silencing charms can kiss Prongs’s stubby tail.”

Great. Sirius hadn’t even been thinking about his family and their stuffy Christmas dinners before, but now he could taste the metallic tang of a silencing charm imprinted on his tongue.

James prattled on, oblivious. “You’re well shot of them, mate. You never have to set a single toe in that awful old house again. Oh hey, speaking of—have you thought about where you want to live after school at all? I’ve been trying to, but it’s hard to imagine calling anywhere but here and Hogwarts ‘home.’ You could keep on staying here, too, you know. Or somewhere in London could be cool. Far from Islington, though, obviously. Westham? Croydon?”

Padfoot huffed indignantly and James let out a laugh. “Only joking, you posh twat. No Zone 5 for the likes of your noble arse.”

If he could speak, Sirius would have reminded James that he, too, was a posh twat with respectable standards (Croydon), but let it slide. It felt so much better being here like this. He wished James would set aside his book and scratch his ears, and a moment later he did.

“What’s got you in a state today, anyways?” He asked, tousling the top of Padfoot’s head. “And don’t think I didn’t notice Moony’s sudden return to prefect mode.” Getting no answer, he sighed and mused, “You know, I kind of miss the way he used to threaten us with detentions. As if he’d ever, in a thousand years. It was cute that he tried, though.”

Padfoot closed his eyes. He agreed, but wished they’d made it easier on Remus instead of always forcing him to choose between his friends and his duties. Retrospect was, as ever, a pitiless shrew.

“You’ve been better with him lately, and it’s definitely been helping,” James went on to say, finishing his massage and leaning back on his pillows again. Then, as if in afterthought, he added, “Keep it up, won’t you?”

Padfoot shot him a side eye before relenting and turning back into Sirius. He sat up, running both hands through his tousled hair. “I don’t think he wants me to, Prongs. Maybe I’ve been too much lately, or I messed up too badly earlier. Either way, I don’t want to push it.”

“When have you ever been shy about pushing things? Come on, Pads. He’s just coming back into himself. That’s got to be more important than whatever nonsense went down between you.”

“What he said sounded pretty clear-cut for ‘nonsense,’” Sirius muttered.

“I’ve known you both since before we could cast a Lumos. I don’t even need to know what it was about to know it was a load of nonsense.”

“Your four-eyed face is a load of nonsense,” Sirius jibed, because it was late and he was drained and James Potter was Britain’s biggest prat when he was convinced he was right about something.

“Weak. Change back into the dog.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and flopped back down on the bed.

“No, I’m serious,” James said, sitting up and fixing his glasses higher on his nose. “Want to go run outside with Prongs? I bet my parents are asleep. Moon’s bright and the snow’s perfect.”

“What about the others?” Sirius asked, already on board.

“We'll grab them next time. Come on.” James sprang up and pulled on his winter jacket, even though he’d be changing into the deer's thick coat in a minute.

“Cool, yeah,” Sirius agreed enthusiastically, getting to his feet. His heart was already lifting at the idea of racing through fresh territory with the stag.

The boys crept down the hallway and stairs, through the kitchen, and shut the Dutch door to the back garden softly behind them. Then, two powerfully built animals burst into the silvery night. They streaked towards the forest that lined the edge of the Potters’ property, their hooves and paws cutting deep tracks in the pristine snow.

Padfoot and Prongs tore through the underbrush, softer than the Forbidden Forest’s, with fantastic speed. The trees were thinner here, too, letting in beams of moonlight that illuminated the snowflakes blowing off the branches like thousands of tiny fairies. The stars shining through the gaps overhead sang of Christmases long past, silent tales of the rise and fall of kings, prophets, and lovers they’d watched from on high. Sirius imagined they could recount the entire saga of the House of Black and their dark misdeeds beneath night skies, and was glad that this would be the way their story ended: with the last heir breaking free to run wild in the most literal sense.

Prongs was leading the way deeper into the woods, Padfoot close on his tail. Every so often, the great stag would turn around with a spray of rich dirt, lower its antlers playfully, and charge at its companion just because it could. Padfoot would dodge the attack, barking, and return the favour by going after Prongs’s ankles, darting around him and trying to latch on.

Padfoot felt the absence of their two missing pack members and kept glancing around, expecting to see the wolf just behind him. He could still feel his human worries tucked away in the back of his canine mind; they were never gone completely, no matter how far he ran. But more than anything, he felt unbridled adoration for the stag: the steadfast presence that understood him better than he knew himself, that would never let him down, even if the world turned against him.

After nearly an hour, they landed in a clearing with a nearly perfectly circular pond in the middle. Prongs cantered to a halt and transformed into a panting James, adjusting his glasses and grinning at Sirius as he returned to his human form as well. They collapsed onto a mossy log to catch their misty breaths and take in their surroundings. 

The pond water looked pitch black in the night but for the silver-white ripples on the surface reflecting moonlight. In the centre, standing out starkly against the dark water, two white swans drifted in serene circles around each other as if locked in some kind of sacred midnight dance. They almost looked like patronuses for how brightly they shone against the forest’s shadows. Vines trickled down into the pond from above, enclosing the space like a lace curtain.

“Have you been here before?” Sirius panted, still out of breath as he looked around in wonder.

“Yeah,” James replied, beaming. “‘Course. Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Why haven't you ever showed me?”

“I’m showing you now, aren’t I? Bellend.”

“Fine. But really… wow. We need to come back here with the others. Moony would love this.”

“Yeah, we do. I bet we could get Wormtail to try and ride a swan.”

“I’d put a galleon on that.”

“I’d put a galleon on you losing that galleon.”

Sirius laughed, long and loud, even though it wasn’t that funny. The laughter felt great in his lungs, the cold air mixing with joy to cleanse him from the inside.

“Can I show you something?” James asked after a minute.

“Go on,” Sirius said, game for anything now.

James drew his wand, smiled a little sheepishly, then closed his eyes. For a few seconds his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, then an exultant look overtook his face. He opened his eyes and pronounced very clearly, “Expecto Patronum.”

As Sirius expected, a silver deer sprang energetically from the end of his wand. Except that it wasn’t his usual stag: it was smaller, more gracile, and its majestic antlers were missing. A doe.

“What happened to your prongs, Prongs?” Sirius asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

James shrugged, watching it canter gracefully around the water’s edge. “Dunno. I can’t say for certain, and maybe I’m only wishing, but. It feels like… you know.” He smiled. “Her.”

“Her,” Sirius repeated, now grinning himself. “You afraid to say her name now? Evans. Evans, Evans—”

“All right,” James laughed. “Evans.”

“What do you think her patronus is? Let’s hope it’s not a great greasy snake.”

“Nah, don’t,” James said, shaking his head a little. “She was a loyal friend, is all. Not her fault she grew up next to Snivellus. But they don’t talk anymore, so. I’m not worried about that.”

“What are you worried about, then?” Sirius asked, reading between the lines.

“Me,” James replied simply. “Not being good enough. Being too late to show her that I’m anything more than a big-headed quidditch player.”

“You might be a little bit more than that, I suppose. If you squint.”

James chuckled and, since it was Christmas, Sirius decided to be sincere.

“You’re more than good enough, mate. I think she sees it, too. You’d have to be blind to miss it. And she’s not blind. Just cautious, I’d wager. We’ve given her plenty of cause to be, haven’t we? But I can still see it happening between you two. I really can.”

“Thanks, Pads.”

Sirius twirled his own wand handle between his fingers. He looked up at James, his best mate and practically his brother, and saw the sincerity in his features even as the glow from the silver doe faded away. James led their little group with an open heart. Remus, Peter, and Sirius probably would have gone through school as a bunch of solitary, miserable tossers if it weren’t for James’s fearless approach to friendship, joy, and mischief.

“Expecto Patronum,” Sirius cast on an impulse, pointing his wand over the dark water.

The spell had been difficult for him at first. He’d thought his mind too steeped in darkness to have any hope of producing pure light. But the memories he’d created with his friends over their years of troublemaking proved even more powerful than those branded into his mind back at Grimmauld, and it hadn’t taken him much longer than the rest of his friends to get the hang of it. Moony, the clever sod, had encountered a similar setback in himself and had talked Sirius through it until he, too, found a way to access a source of light inside. Funny thing that that very lesson became a memory he could call upon to chase the shadows away.

A large hound leapt out of his wand’s ebony tip, landing noiselessly at Sirius’s feet. It took interest in the pair of swans and ambled over the pond's smooth surface to stand sentinel over their graceful paddling.

“Hullo again, Padfoot,” James said, smiling out at it.

“Do you think it’s Padfoot?” Sirius asked, watching his patronus closely. It had a slightly tufted tail and a narrower snout than he remembered. The way it padded slowly around the swans looked considerably more fluid than the way the excitable dog usually moved, though that might have been due to its massless nature.

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” James asked.

“No reason,” Sirius said after a minute’s contemplation. “I just thought I might’ve grown some. Like you. But it looks pretty much the same as before, doesn’t it.”

The patronus began to fade, and James watched it go thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he said after the clearing had gone dark again, the moonlight weaker after the dazzling light show of their creation. “It’s a good patronus, either way,” he concluded.

“Thanks, mate.”

They headed back at a more relaxed pace, switching off between their animal and human forms at random. The forest felt perfectly safe, unlike the Forbidden Forest back at school. When the shape of the house came into view through the trees, Sirius had an idea.

“James,” he said. “Think you can cast nine simultaneous patronuses?”

James scoffed. “No. Who do you think I am, McGonagall?”

Sirius waved him off, ever dismissive of his friends’ self-doubt. “Have you ever tried?”

“Well—no, guess not.”

“Right then. Just think how nice they’d look, all lined up on the rooftop.”

A smile spread over James’s face that quickly broke into a laugh.

“As in, ‘up on the rooftop, click click click?’” he asked, and Sirius nodded, grinning like a little kid. It was a stupid idea. Juvenile. Completely pointless. Perfectly brilliant.

“Expecto Patronum!” James exclaimed without hesitation, pointing his wand confidently at the roof. “Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum!…”

The night glistened with a team of shimmering forms tossing their elegant heads, hooves stamping weightlessly on the rooftop’s icing sugar snow. James didn’t quite make it to the full nine before the first few started to fade, but it didn’t matter. It was Christmas, Sirius had the best friend a bloke could ask for, and that alone was beyond magical.

Chapter Text

Sirius fled the scene as soon as James left the table because that was what he did lately. Remus wasn’t surprised to watch him go. It stung a little just the same. 

“For what it’s worth,” Peter piped up in the ringing emptiness Sirius left behind, “I don’t think you owe Sirius anything. Of course James wants you to patch things up, but… I dunno.”

“What do you mean?” Remus asked, surprised out of his spiraling thoughts. Peter seldom disagreed with James and never spoke up in opposition to Sirius.

“Well… he’s been a right arsehole, hasn’t he?” Peter said, dropping his voice and leaning across the table. His pudgy elbow nearly knocked over a gravy boat. “He went all cold on you the moment you told us about Dearborn, which was pretty fucked up, even for him. I knew his family had some harsh ideas about purity, but I thought he’d dropped all that tosh.”

Remus was horrified to be discussing his lack of purity over cold plates of peas and chicken legs. Peter had kept his voice low, but it felt to Remus like he’d shouted across all four house tables.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said more quietly. “He’s not like them, you know that. I think he just didn’t know how to act. He’s explained, sort of. Apologised.”

Peter raised a shrewd blonde eyebrow. “He felt guilty after he went and mutilated your boyfriend—again, fucked—and tried to sweep it all under the rug. And you let him, and I get it, because he’s him and you’re… you. Then he got a nice little hit of adventure off of you over break, getting to play the hero and all that, and now that it’s over he’s gone right back to giving you the cold shoulder again. Like he’s just gone off you or something. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t go running after him.”

“I wasn’t about to go running,” Remus muttered. He felt hot and hunted, even though Peter was only trying to help.

“Of course not,” Peter backtracked quickly, voice jumping in pitch like it did when he got nervous. “I didn’t mean literally. I only meant you shouldn’t feel like you have to start a dialogue, or whatever the fuck James wants you to do. Sirius ought to know how to be a decent friend without someone twisting his arm to get him to behave. But given his track record… well. I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s like that time he played that joke on Snape at the end of fifth year, you know? You got all banged up, James could have died, and all he did was laugh. McGonagall was the one to make him say sorry.”

Remus rubbed his forehead. He didn’t see what Peter was getting at, bringing up Sirius’s stupid prank out of nowhere. It was another bitter little sting, a jab in a shiny pink scar tissue.

“Er, no,” he said, trying to shake the consternation clouding his head. “This isn’t like fifth year. He doesn’t owe me an apology for anything. Actually… I think James might be right. I’ve been avoiding it, but I should probably just talk to him.”

“Do you even want to, though?” Peter asked earnestly. “Even if you manage to patch things up, he’ll just wind up cutting you out like this again in another few months. You know he will.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Pete. Neither does James, but… he was still right. I’d better go set things straight with Sirius now.”

Peter scuffed his shoe on the floor in frustration and Remus smiled gently down at him as he stood.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to mean it, “for looking out for me. You’re a good friend, Peter.”

He gave Peter a tight lipped grin he didn’t return before making his way out of the Great Hall to dig up the map and find Sirius.

Remus didn’t want to do it, of course. If he had his way, no one would ever talk about the things that pained them. Why couldn’t his friends agree with him on that? They were English, for Christ’s sake. But it wasn’t fair to expect them to choke down their emotions the way he did, and dreading something had never stopped it from happening in Remus’s experience. So he made his reluctant way up to their dormitory to dig up the map, hoping Sirius hadn’t taken it with him.

When he finally reached their door (and Merlin, the castle had too many staircases for a werewolf with bad knees), he heard the hiss of the shower running in their shared bathroom. Realising he no longer needed the map, Remus tossed his bag down on his bed and followed after it, closing his eyes when his back hit the familiar comfort of his scarlet quilt. Sirius took long, scalding showers. He could be in there for a while, especially in one of his dark moods. 

When the bathroom door finally clicked open, Remus had had time to wade through the wolf’s hateful whispers and parse out what he needed to say. He sat up, determined, but felt the words dissolve on his tongue when his eyes met the startled blues of Sirius’s, dressed only with a towel around his hips and shining wet hair.

Sirius froze in the steaming doorway, then blanched. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a rush, darting across to his trunk to grab a robe. “I didn’t know you were here, or I wouldn’t have—” he shut himself back in the bathroom before even finishing the sentence.

Remus blinked, nonplussed, but waited patiently for him to come back out. When he did, clothed and dry, he hovered near the doorway looking anxious at finding Remus still sitting there.

“Can we talk?” Remus asked, his voice raspy from the waiting. “It won’t take long.”

“If you want to,” Sirius said solemnly.

Remus nodded, though of course he didn’t. 

“I just want to let you know that I understand,” he began, “if you’ve changed your mind.”

“Changed my mind…?” Sirius repeated after a pause, dark brows furrowing.

“I know joining the Order must have sounded like an adventure at the beginning,” Remus pressed on, “but it was a huge decision to make on the spot. And if you’re starting to regret it, it’s not too late to back out now. I swear, I’d never hold it against you. I think it’s for the better, really. But it means a lot that it even occurred to you to join on my behalf in the first place, and you even tried talking to Dumbledore, so you’ve already done more than—”

“What?” Sirius cut in, looking perplexed. “Remus, I—I’m not backing out on the Order. I still want to join, whether Dumbledore likes it or not.”

“Oh,” Remus breathed. “Then… that’s not what this is about? That’s not why you’ve been…?”

Sirius shook his head slowly, his eyes startlingly piercing now that they were finally looking at Remus for the first time in days. Remus felt stupid beneath his stare and felt himself flush in embarrassment and frustration. 

Of course Sirius still wanted to join the Order. He was addicted to danger and born to court glory. Always the overthinker, Remus had built a mountain out of something plainly, painfully simple. Sirius just couldn’t be bothered with him anymore.

He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. Peter had tried to warn him mere minutes ago, and he’d been prepared for this eventuality since the day Sirius showed up in Wales to pick him up for the holidays. The mysterious magic of Christmas had come and gone, and now Sirius was once again tired of Remus and all the ugliness that came with him.

“Right,” Remus said, his arms folding protectively over his ribs of their own accord. “Well. What I said back on Christmas still holds, you know. I know a lot’s happened since then, but… like I said at James’s. It was fine that you didn’t want to talk to me before break, and you still don’t owe me anything now. So you don’t have to act all dodgy about it. You can just… it’s fine.”

“I can just what?” Sirius asked hollowly. “Forget it? You really want to pretend nothing happened?”

Remus shrugged, trying to block out memories of windswept days and cosy nights holed up in the Cotswolds, riding from village to village on the back of a motorbike that smelled like petrol and freedom. The way Sirius had stayed by his side over snowkissed hills and muddy green dales as if there was no place else he’d have rather been. ‘Of course I’m here. And I’ll be wherever you want to go next, if you’ll have me.’

“We don’t have to pretend,” Remus said now. “What happened happened. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep hanging around if you don’t want to anymore.”

“It’s not that I… fuck, but you know that I do. Of course I do. But it seemed like you didn’t want me to, since you won’t even… I thought… I’ve been waiting for days, but you haven’t said a thing—and maybe you’re right not to. Maybe we never need to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” Sirius was rambling disjointedly, the dark shadows under his eyes making him look quite deranged. “But I’ve barely been able to sleep, and I know you’ve always been a world-class liar, but I still don’t know how you can act so bloody calm when I’m—”

“Sirius, what on earth are you talking about?”

Sirius’s visibly tense shoulders slumped. “The full moon, of course,” he mumbled finally, eyes downcast.

The floor dropped out from beneath Remus’s feet and he was falling, falling.

“Oh god,” he breathed, and Sirius winced. “Oh god, Sirius. What did I do?”

Sirius looked up from his feet, a confused line between his brows.

“Did the wolf—did I do something to Padfoot? Did I… say something? After I transformed?” 

Remus could recall blurred flashes of running freely through the forest at night, then terrible pain the morning after interspersed with fleeting moments of comfort and warmth. Sirius had stayed with him, he thought. As far as Remus could tell, Sirius didn’t appear to have suffered any injuries—thank Merlin. What, then? Had Remus admitted something unspeakable in his delirium? Had his naked body betrayed his private-most feelings after he’d transformed back? He could die from mortification at the thought alone. 

He rushed to make excuses for himself, knowing nothing would make things right given whatever he’d done to make Sirius react like that. “I’m so sorry, Padfoot. It was such a bad moon, recovery-wise; my head was a complete mess after I changed back, and I don’t…”

“You don’t remember,” Sirius finished for him, eyes wide in horror. “You weren’t even conscious enough to… I think I’m going to be sick.”

He turned back towards the bathroom, bracing himself against the doorframe. The edges of his face, from what Remus could see through his still damp hair, did look greenish.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Remus said again, helplessly. “What did I…?”

Sirius stumbled into the toilet and retched.

-

Two Months Earlier | The Cotswolds

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Remus grumbled, stumbling off the back of the bike onto a gravelly dirt road.

Sirius caught him by the elbow and ducked under it, keeping Remus walking upright with a gangly arm hoisted over his shoulders.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said cheerfully. “It was just a spot of turbulence.”

“Free falling for ten metres does not qualify as ‘turbulence.’ I’ve just realised I never asked you: where did you even learn to fly that thing?”

“Learn? Didn’t have to. It’s all intuition for someone like me.”

“Lord, save me.”

“Quit whinging, Moony, you’re fine. Look where it brought is! Welcome to Blockley.”

“Ah, yes. Blockley. Famous for…”

Sirius looked around at the rolling green pasturelands stretching in every direction. “Cheese, maybe?”

Remus snorted a laugh that made him trip over his own feet, kicking up blue-grey pebbles of gravel. 

Sirius kept him on his feet with a flat hand between his shoulder blades. Yet still, more than he’d ever dared to allow himself, Remus was falling.

-

Remus gave Sirius a minute’s privacy before venturing into the bathroom to check on him. He found him leant over the sink, face damp with water as his hands clutched both sides of the porcelain.

“Sorry, would you rather I left you alone?” Remus asked cautiously.

Sirius looked up at him in the mirror, his hair falling in dark pieces around his eyes. “I don’t think an apology’s going to cut it this time,” he croaked.

Remus took a step backwards.

“From me,” Sirius amended before Remus could leave entirely. “From me, Remus. I did something, and you can’t even remember because you were barely even awake for it.”

Remus just shook his head, confused. He was the wolf, the one who carried all the secrets and shame. He did the unspeakable things.

“I’m no better than Dearborn,” Sirius said as if to himself, hanging his head between his shoulders. “I’ve been the worst kind of hypocrite. Jealous. Opportunistic. Selfish. I asked you if it was okay, but you were in no condition to answer.”

“What are you talking about?” Remus asked, getting more nervous by the second. Sirius’s words and caved-in posture were unsettling.

“I’ve been a coward these past few days. I didn’t know what to say or do, but I thought you at least knew and were actively choosing not to address it.” Sirius turned around then, mercifully, to face Remus straight on. His jaw was set and his eyes were wet. “When you woke up after the full moon, you had a lunar migraine. It was bad. I stayed with you, but I couldn’t help you.” Sirius paused again, gathering himself. “You were incoherent with pain. And I—I touched you. At first it was just to check for injuries. But then you were hard and I… wanked you off. Made you come.”

Remus felt like his beleaguered brain was short circuiting. The migraine must have messed something up, the wolf’s claws slashing wires deep beneath his skull. “I don’t understand,” he said numbly. “You… why?”

“To get the blood to flow out of your head,” Sirius said behind closed eyelids. “Relieve some of the pressure and help you feel something besides pain. At least that’s what I told you, and myself at the time. But I did it because I’m selfish. Because I was already hard, too. I got off on you.”

“You…”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, Moon—Remus. I’ll go to McGonagall with you right now, if you like. I understand if you want me to leave. I shouldn’t be sharing a room with you. After all these months hating him, I’m worse than Dearborn.”

“No,” Remus scrambled through the confusion clouding his thoughts to say. “You did it to help. Because you’re my friend.”

“I did it because I wanted to,” Sirius intoned, voice roughened with self-hate. “What other reason have I ever needed for doing anything?”

Remus’s mouth felt too dry to speak. He wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He only knew he couldn’t continue to stand dumbly in front of Sirius any longer and hastened to leave the bathroom.

“I need some air,” he heard himself say from a distance, his panicked mind already miles away. He fumbled with the doorknob, missing it entirely on the first try, and then he was stumbling down the narrow spiral stairs, chest shaking on each inhale.

-

Padfoot curled up on the one patch of splintery floor that wasn’t covered in a thin carpet of grey dust. It was the same spot he’d been sleeping on for the past four nights because it was the only place in the Shrieking Shack with a view of the castle. He could just make out Ravenclaw Tower and the ridges of the South Battlements peeking out over Hogsmeade’s treeline through the sitting room window, which was only partially boarded up.

The sun was beginning to set. Hogwarts sparkled with tiny yellow rectangles of light, inviting him back inside with promises of warm fires, hot tea, and plush furnishings. Padfoot’s paws twitched with longing to run back through the tunnel, but Sirius wasn’t so easily persuaded. The castle held everything he loved, but also all of his regrets. The shack was far more fitting accommodation for him now, purpose built to contain boy-shaped monsters.

Remus hadn’t asked him to leave, but he deserved to rest in a safe space without having to ask for it. It was easier this way, keeping his head down during the day in lessons and retreating to the shack after dinner. Getting James and Peter to leave him to it hadn’t been as difficult as it normally would have been, seeing as James was still cross with him for ignoring Remus and Peter never challenged Sirius’s actions to his face. James had tried asking why he was disappearing every night, of course, but Sirius hadn’t been able to give him an answer.

Sirius didn’t know where to go from here without James. For the first time in their friendship, he couldn’t go to him with his problems. Not only would it change the way James saw him forever, but it would betray Remus’s privacy. If Remus wanted to tell the others what had happened—what Sirius had done—it should be up to him. 

Back when Sirius had thought Remus was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge their transgression, he wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel much worse than he already did. His confidence, which had always been unshakable, had disintegrated to that of twelve-year-old Peter’s in the face of Remus’s indifference. Now, however, knowing that Remus had been too far gone to even remember it, he needed to learn how to navigate life with a whole new depth of self loathing. 

He tried to justify his actions to himself in a bid for self-preservation. In the heat of the moment, with Remus’s exposed agony in his arms, his decision really had felt like the best and clearest course of action. In retrospect, of course, that was ridiculous. No one else in their right mind would have done what he’d done in his position. But still, he swore he hadn’t meant to take advantage of Remus in his vulnerable state. He had thought he was acting out of compassion and desperation—and, yes, there had been lust there, too—but mostly out of love. And that, he had realised during one of his cold nights alone in the shack, was the rotten root of the problem. Maybe he really had acted out of love, but a Black’s love was always a cruel thing.

The sky beyond the castle deepened from candyfloss pink to cherry red. Padfoot shut his eyes against the beauty of it.

-

Bertram løsnede grebet om årerne og lod robåden drive på Great Lake. Det var en lettelse at være ude på vandet, og næsten lige så rart at slippe for de fjollede sorte skolekapper. Hogwarts og englænderne med deres skikke var så fjollede, men tog samtidig alting alt for alvorligt. Det var udmattende. Bertram kunne godt lide sine med-Ravenclaws, men de var alt for akademisk konkurrenceprægede, besatte af at få topkarakterer. Han nød at lære, men bekymrede sig ikke om, hvor mange NEWTer han fik. Der var vigtigere ting, han brød sig om: hans moder, hans kultur, hans helbred, hans Remus—

Åh. Remus.

Just as Bertram thought about him, Remus appeared along the shoreline, a lone figure dressed poorly for the cold. He looked lost and lonely, like he had on the train when Bertram first met him. It was possible that Bertram was projecting his own emotions onto the hazy figure, though. It was too far to see his face from his vantage out on the middle of the lake, after all, especially in the rose-tinted light painting the grounds beneath the sunset. (The English had never bothered to invent a word for aftenrøde, the burning glory of a ruby sky. They truly were the cultural equivalent of pasty porridge.)

It was funny how his thoughts automatically switched over to English the moment he spotted Remus. He supposed it was because he wanted to talk to him so badly. He had found himself dreaming in English occasionally after starting at Hogwarts, but that had stopped soon after Remus broke things off with him. Then Bertram had spent Yule reunited with his mother in her new home, where he’d been relieved to be able to converse in Danish again. Now that he was back in Scotland, Denmark had never felt so far away.

Remus had said they should go back to being friends, but they’d barely spoken since their last day together before Yule. Bertram had spent most of his time on his own in the months since, while Remus was constantly surrounded by his small circle of Gryffindors. It was very unusual to see him alone like this out on the grounds. 

Bertram stretched his tired back and watched as Remus approached a gnarled tree waving lazily in the breeze. Then he realised that the lake was as smooth as glass, there was no breeze, and the tree was the one James and Sirius liked to tease on their broomsticks. The murderous one they called the ‘Whomping Willow.’

Oh, helvede.

He jumped up to stand and his little boat rocked dangerously beneath him, water splashing over the sides and drenching the legs of his trousers. He shouted from the bottom of his lungs, but knew Remus wouldn’t hear him.

Bertram scrambled to sit back down and started rowing as fast as the protesting muscles in his back would take him. But by the time he’d docked and sprinted to the willow, Remus had vanished. 

Bertram turned on the spot in his muddy shoes, searching for any sign of the only person who mattered to him in this strange, exhausting place. He couldn’t see anything, but his time spent with Remus had taught him that the school and its grounds were full of hidden secrets. So he closed his eyes and reached out with his seidr, whispering a viking wayfinding chant beneath his breath.

He felt more than he saw the knot nested just above the knobbly roots at the base of the tree. It warped and pulsed in his mind’s eye, and when he opened his eyes there it was, glowing softly in an iridescent kaleidoscope of colours.

‘I’m wrong,’ the vibrating earth around the tree told him in a language older than tongues and mouths. ‘I’ve been cut and carved away by unnatural forces.’

Bertram approached the willow carefully, eyes trained on the knot, and had to dodge a branch that lashed out in warning. He flicked his wand to deflect the next strike, which only served to anger the tree. From there on out, nothing he tried got him close enough to examine the knot. His Impedimentas wouldn’t stick for more than a second, Arresto Momentum only made it move faster somehow, and Stupify earned him a stinging gash across the cheek. He gave up, panting, when it got too dark to see oncoming attacks from the furious vines. He still didn’t know where Remus had disappeared to, and could only hope he was all right as he returned begrudgingly to the water to store his boat away.

He trudged back up to the castle in the fading twilight with numb toes and a smear of blood drying on his face, resolved to return until he uncovered whatever mysteries Remus and the tree were hiding. 

-

Padfoot’s tail started swishing on the floorboards before he registered what was making him happy.

He opened his eyes to darkness, lifted his head off of his paws, and sniffed. A faint scent—behind the trap door—home, pack, wool, chocolate, love, wolf—Moony, Moony, Moony.

He got to his feet and transformed back into Sirius, unsure what to do with his human form. He ended up perched on the piano bench, his back to the keys, toes nervously tapping.

Footsteps, a soft “Alohomora,” and the tunnel door sighed open.

Chapter Text

“This place is haunted, you know.”

Remus closed the door behind him and fell back against it in a casual looking lean. Sirius knew him too well to be convinced by it, though. Remus was never at ease in the shack. He hated it here, and was simply loath to venture any further inside than he had to.

“They say you’ll see the Grim if you get too close,” Sirius replied tonelessly. “I’d turn back, if I were you.”

That earned him a short huff of air that might have been a sigh or a laugh.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping out here. You’ll get yourself sick.”

“Padfoot doesn’t mind the cold. It’s fine.”

“That doesn’t make it fine.”

Sirius couldn’t quite see Remus’s face—neither of them had lit their wands—but recognised the tightness in his voice that meant he was tensing his jaw. It was a nervous habit Remus had developed sometime around third year after James had bullied him out of biting his nails. His mouth went very narrow when he did it. And just like that, Sirius’s mind was caught on the pinkness of Remus’s mouth and the softness of its corners. Even across the room and in the dark, he was acutely dialed into Remus’s physicality. He really was incurable.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Lupin.”

Remus pushed off the door and moved further inside, each step pulling a doleful creak from the floorboards. He perched on the sill of the window beside Sirius’s seat at the piano and glanced around the decrepit room for a moment, eyes landing on the dust-free patch of floor where Padfoot curled up each night.

“This is my house, technically,” he said conversationally, lifting his gaze from the spot. “Dumbledore bought it for me and the wolf. You’re trespassing here.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Sirius hadn’t thought of that. He seemed to have a blind spot when it came to taking things from Remus. “I don’t have enough gold with me to rent a place in town tonight, but I can figure something else out.”

“Keep it, I’m only joking. Come back up to the castle. You have a bed there. You should use it.”

“You shouldn’t have to share a room with me.”

“It’s not a problem. Come on now, you mangy mutt. Let’s get out of here.” Remus stood and brushed off his trousers.

When Sirius didn’t move, Remus let out another sigh through his nose, feigned casual air falling away as he sat back down on the sill. He folded his hands on his knees and dropped his head.

“Look, I get it. Believe me, I’m mortified too. But can’t we just—I don’t know—shake hands and move on from this? It doesn’t need to be a whole… thing. We can leave it all here in the shack and agree to never talk about it again. Go back to the way we were before, at least for the last few months of school. For James and Peter’s sakes as much as our own.”

Knowing Remus the way he did, Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised that he wanted to pretend nothing had happened. But this wasn’t just some prank that Hogwarts’s Worst-Ever Prefect had turned a blind eye to, or a cruel word he could insist he hadn’t heard. It was a perverse abuse of trust and power: Caradoc fucking Dearborn all over again, only Sirius’s betrayal was worse because he was meant to be Remus’s friend.

“I don’t think I can do that,” he said lowly. He didn’t want to make things more difficult for Remus than they needed to be, but as tempting as the idea of picking back up just as they had been before the full moon was, “It’s not fair to you. We can’t just… I’m pretty sure I assaulted you, Remus. You understand how unforgivable that is, don’t you?”

Remus shook his head at his shoes. “It’s not as bad as that. Really. You panicked and did the only thing that came to mind. Because I must have already been visibly… you know. I’m sorry to have put you in that position to begin with. It’ll never happen again.”

“Fucking hell, don’t,” Sirius growled. His stomach had gone to acid hearing Remus blame himself. “Don’t make excuses for me. I don’t deserve it. I knew how badly Dearborn hurt you, and I still went and touched you when you couldn’t give consent.”

“But I did. Twice.”

“You said ‘yes’ after I outright told you to say it. I never should have taken that as permission, especially if you were too far gone to even…” he drifted short in realization. “How do you…? I thought you couldn’t remember?”

Remus didn’t answer for a long, stale-aired stretch. Owls cooed at each other outside and Sirius’s heart knocked against his breastbone, begging to either be saved or cut free.

“Remus?” he prompted when he wasn’t sure Remus was ever going to speak again. When he finally did, his shadowy outline against the window was hunched at the shoulders and his voice was just a murmur above a whisper.

“When I woke up in the hospital wing, I thought I’d dreamt it. I thought it was something that had happened in my head, until I got out and saw the way you looked at me. Or, didn’t look at me. But even then, I told myself it was impossible. Managed to convince myself it wasn’t me you were avoiding, but the prospect of joining the Order. You must think me such an idiot.”

“No, Remus. Never.”

“I shouldn’t have let you punish yourself out here. I should have told you before now that I hadn’t blacked out. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.”

“That doesn’t make what I did okay. If you couldn’t tell reality from a dream, you still weren’t anywhere lucid enough to make that kind of decision.”

Remus shook his head again. “It’s not as simple as that, though. The details are hazy now, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t lucid at the time. The migraines—they’re horrible, but I don’t lose myself to them. Not like during the transformations, or when Caradoc used to pour too much scotch. But sometimes, when they’re as bad as the last one was, Madam Pomfrey gives me a potion to help get me through the worst of the pain. It doesn’t wipe me out, but it makes my brain go numb and sort of softens my memory of the whole episode. It’s usually nice, not having to remember every minute of the migraine. But this time, I think it took away some of what we did as well.”

Sirius noted how he said ‘what we did’ and not ‘what you did to me.’ He wasn’t sure if Remus meant it as a kindness to Sirius or himself.

“What do you remember, then?” he asked, wary of the gaps he’d hear in Remus’s answer but still desperate to know.

Remus shifted uncomfortably and glanced towards the closed bedroom door. He cleared his throat and looked away.

“Your voice, right in my ear, and your hands. Asking you to make the pain stop. You told me what you were going to do, told me I had to say ‘yes’ first, and I did. I remember coming, and then being too nervous to open my eyes afterward. But when I did, you weren’t there. Neither was the cum on my stomach. So I thought… I was confused. I took the potion and then everything went numb.”

“That’s… that’s pretty much everything. I got under the cloak and cleaned you up when I heard Pomfrey in the hallway.”

“I figured. After you told me.”

An unfamiliar awkwardness hung between them now. Sirius ignored it to sort through the ramifications of this new information.

“So then… you think you knew what you were saying when you told me yes?”

“Yeah. I did, so you don’t have to beat yourself up anymore.”

“What about…” Sirius took a bracing breath. “I got myself off on you. Not on you—in my robes. After you came. You didn’t okay me to do that.”

“It’s fine. It was just a physical reaction to a stressful moment. Don’t worry, it doesn’t make you gay or anything.”

“It…” Sirius looked at the boy he was desperately, depravedly in love with, baffled. “Doesn’t it…?”

Remus shrugged. “I’m sure it’s been confusing for you, but it doesn’t change anything. You like girls. You just got off because—because it was different.”

Sirius frowned. How was it that Remus was such a bright wizard, yet downright dim when it came to himself? He didn’t even know how to go about addressing such a Hagrid-sized mischaracterisation.

“Girls are just… girls,” he said at length. “They like me, and sometimes I let them. They’re easy.” 

He could leave it at that. Should leave it at that. This wasn’t the right time to say more, if there ever was going to be a right time. But he was Sirius Black, he never did things in half measures, and Remus deserved to know everything if he was inviting Sirius back into his life. Even if that meant exposing his ugliest shame.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever… the only person who’s ever mattered to me in that way,” he haltingly explained. “It’s probably always been like that, only I didn’t even begin to realise it until… until you and Dearborn. It took me a long time to understand what my thoughts and feelings meant, why I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then I spent the whole of autumn jealous of Aubrey, and… well. I’ve known for certain since the day James and I hexed him in the boathouse. And I’ve only become more sure of it since.”

A night breeze rattled the windows and dogs barked off in the distance. “Oh,” Remus’s voice said quietly.

Sirius waited with baited breath, but Remus didn’t offer anything more. He was glad he couldn’t see Remus’s face in the darkness just then. He was probably thinking back on all of their past interactions—every time they’d lounged on the same bed or he’d wrapped his trusting arms around Sirius on the motorbike.

“Yeah. So I can come back to the castle if you really want me to. But if you need more time to think on it, I’m fine out here as Padfoot.”

“No. That’s enough of that. We’ll go back up together.” Remus stood abruptly and cut over to the door, pausing for Sirius to follow. His unwavering lack of hesitation to accept Sirius back into the fold released a pin that had been ratcheting the ribs of Sirius’s chest tighter and tighter.

“If you’re sure,” he said, pushing up from the rickety piano bench. “About the rest of it, though… do you still want to pretend nothing happened?”

Remus did hesitate then, framed by the doorway, and Sirius’s insides tightened again. It was like being stuck on the Knight Bus as it squeezed and stretched through London traffic.

“Maybe it’d be for the best,” Remus said, always so cautious, always gentle. “Just for now.”

“All right, Moons. I get it. I didn’t expect anything different; I just thought you ought to know.”

Remus made to open the door but stopped, hand stilling on the handle. 

“I promise, I’m not trying to be cruel. You just told me you… you think you care for me. I’m not ignoring that. But I can’t afford to let myself… it wouldn’t be smart, is all.” He opened the door.

“What do you mean?” Sirius’s feet were rooted to the floor. He couldn’t have moved even if faced with a rampaging hippogriff. “What do you mean, you can’t let yourself? Let yourself what?” He was hoping for too much, but his reckless heart hoped anyways.

“I’m sorry,” Remus said instead of answering. “It’s just that… I’m not sure I believe you. I don’t think you’re lying, but you do have a tendency to get caught up in things. Throw yourself in over your head. What with everything that’s happened in the past year and your penchant for chivalry… I just think you might be mistaking one emotion for another.”

“Sod that,” Sirius breathed. “I’m not mistaken. I’m in love with you.”

He bit his lower lip. He hadn’t meant to throw those last few words out like that, but he wouldn’t take them back.

Remus was quiet for several agonising heartbeats. “You’ll regret saying that,” he said finally. “And it’ll be horrible.”

Sirius shook his head, teeth still biting into his lip.

“You’re feeling protective,” Remus continued, voice unnaturally calm. “It upset you when you found out I’m bent the way you did, and you were jealous of Bertram because you couldn’t be the one to help. Now your head’s all done in because you’re worried you’ll lose me to the war, and you care about me just like you do James and—”

“That’s a load of bollocks and you know it,” Sirius cut him off, stung that Remus would patronise him in this vulnerable moment. “I’m not some confused, blundering idiot. Why are you always hiding behind a dozen excuses? Why do you have to—damn it, Lupin. Lumos.”

Remus blinked rapidly in the dazzling wandlight, a hand coming up instinctively as his pupils contracted to pinpoints. He looked pale and shaken beneath the sharp shadows of his splayed fingers and the blotchy red flush painted down his cheeks. 

“Is it really so hard to imagine?” Sirius entreated, locking eyes with Remus’s. “Have you ever seen me ask a girl out, for as long as you’ve known me? I know I’ve messed around a bit, but never with the same girl twice. I told you back in the Cotswolds I’d follow you anywhere, and I bloody meant it. If you hadn’t decided to come back to school, I’d have flown you all the way to the States, if that’s where you wanted to go. I’m joining the Order for you. I’m your sodding dog, for Merlin’s sake.”

“You’re not my dog, Sirius. Put that light away.”

And if that wasn’t textbook Remus, ignoring all of Sirius’s other valid points for the one opportunity to be contrary. It would have been endearing if it weren’t so infuriating. Sirius kept his wand lit, but moved its shine out of Remus’s eyes.

“I became Padfoot for you,” he reminded him stonily.

“You became an animagus because you’re a very clever wizard and a loyal friend,” Remus said, dropping his hand. “You’re nobody’s dog. But I am a wolf, and I don’t think you’ve ever fully understood what that means. If you did, you wouldn’t have said what you said.”

Sirius couldn’t help feeling offended. “You think I don’t really know you? After all these years. You think none of that counts because I’ll never understand what it is to be cursed with a wolf bite?”

“No, that’d be daft. I know you know me. But what you don’t understand—or what you know, but have never really accepted—is that I don’t come alone. There will always be the other, right under my skin. I’m not just a monster on full moons. I’ve told you all before, but you never listen.”

He had told them before, many times, and they had always laughed it off. It was still just as ridiculous, but Sirius didn’t feel like laughing now.

“What am I missing, then?” he pressed. “About the wolf. If I need to learn to fear it, even though I run with it every moon. Even though I remember all the nights I spend with it, and you don’t.”

“That’s different. That’s the satisfied pack animal, making the most of its one night of freedom. But when it’s alone, waiting inside me, it’s different. It resents wizardkind. It wants suffering, be it my own or others’, and it would use me to cause it. It’s… it sounds stupid to say it, but it’s evil, Sirius, the things it whispers in my head. The way it tries to manipulate me into poisoning everything good around me.”

“Really.” Sirius had heard this all before. “And what does the wolf say about me, up in that crowded head of yours? Why should I fear it, if it’s never done a thing to hurt me?”

Remus laughed a single, dark breath. “You have no idea. The wolf’s had its sights set on you since we were fourteen. It’s starving, Sirius, and you’re the one it wants most. I would have thought getting Padfoot would’ve appeased it, but no. Somehow, your becoming an animagus only made it worse. It’s relentless.”

“Since we were fourteen?” Sirius echoed, eyes going wide.

“At least. It’s so much more powerful than you realise. It sometimes feels like it’s going to break through my skin to get at you. You don’t know how long and hard I’ve had to fight it. It doesn’t just want to bite you to turn you—it would tear you to shreds if it could. Instead, it pulls on my strings. Tries to manipulate me into doing things that would ruin our friendship, just so that I don’t get to have you either.” 

Sirius was breathless, lightheaded with rapidly mounting glee. Because Sirius knew something Remus didn’t—something he could never say, because Remus would never forgive him. But he knew, with all the certainty in his and Padfoot’s body, that Remus and the wolf were one in the same. The focus Remus employed in the warm glow of the library was the same as the wolf’s as it stalked a hare beneath the cool moonlight. The way the wolf cocked its head when it listened to its pack was all Remus. And the cruel whispers Remus sometimes spoke of—the wolfish voice that told him he was wrong and cursed and unlovable—had always been Remus’s own. 

Remus would never admit to wanting someone so brazenly. He’d probably die sooner than reveal the part of him that wanted to dig its claws in and never let go; not if he saw the thoughts as his own. But if Remus said that the wolf wanted him… the wolf that was always Remus…

“What kinds of things?” Sirius whispered.

Remus turned back to the forgotten door. “Foolish ones,” he said shortly. “Cruel, sometimes. Come on, Sirius. Let’s get back.” He opened the door and stepped through to the tunnel, but Sirius didn’t follow him.

“You feel the same,” he breathed. “The same way I do.”

Remus turned to look at him over his shoulder, and Sirius recognised a flash of the wolf’s hunger in his hazel eyes.

-

Rosmerta dragged the last of the bins out to the street corner and dabbed at her forehead beneath her curly bangs. It had been a particularly rowdy night in The Three Broomsticks, what with the Wimbourne Wasps scraping a five point victory over the Falmouth Falcons after eleven hours of play. Rosmerta had had to stop a Falcons fan from smashing up the wireless when the final score was announced, but things really got out of hand after Ludo Bagman himself showed up in his filthy beater’s uniform and bought round after round for anyone sporting black and yellow. The atmosphere turned from rowdy to trollish in a flash: wine gums buzzed like wasps around Falcon fans, flagons were smashed over skulls, and a pair of warlocks squared off for a duel.

But Rosmerta was going on her third year behind the bar, and the patrons were finally starting to pay her some respect. Gone were her days of responding to calls of ‘Oi, Blondie!" and ‘Top me off, Curly Top.’ She’d booted the warring warlocks right out on their arses, banished the wine gums up the chimney shoot, and threatened anyone who spilled so much as a drop of butterbeer with a powerful Jelly Legs Jinx. That had set the lot of them more or less straight, and earned her a rare nod of approval from Madam Edgecombe, who just wanted to drink her nightly fire whiskey in peace.

“One day, you’ll run this pub and the whole village along with it,” she’d proclaimed in her warbly voice. “And all of Hogsmeade will thank you for it.”

Rosmerta wasn’t so sure about that, but she’d poured Edgecombe an extra splash of Ogden’s in thanks.

Bins sorted, she was just turning to go back inside when she noticed a faint light off in the distance. It took her a few seconds of squinting at it before she registered why the sight set her stomach squirming. It was coming from inside the Shrieking Shack.

“Merlin and Morgana,” she gasped, and rushed back into the pub. She bolted the doors and hurried up to her bedroom upstairs, where she drew the curtains shut tightly. She had heard the tortured noises coming from the wretched little house too many times to ignore the rumours of violent spirits. She wasn’t eager to feed her nightmares with visuals to go with them.

Still, Rosmerta had always been an inquisitive girl, and curiosity won out in the end. After scrubbing her face pink and changing into her nightgown, she padded barefoot to the window and chanced a quick peek through the curtains. The Shrieking Shack was pitch dark once again, just as it ought to be.

Rosmerta blew out the breath she’d been holding and fell into her fluffy white duvet. She was fast asleep within minutes, blissfully oblivious to the scene unfolding on the far end of the street. The little tin alarm clock on her bedside table ticked over to midnight.

-

Remus turned around in the black hole of a doorway, his face a guarded mask but eyes still burning with the wolf’s amber intensity. He reached out for Sirius’s wrist to lower his wand hand, and Sirius’s lumos fizzled out to darkness.

“The same as you?” Remus repeated. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Black. Were you listening at all?”

“Yeah. I heard you.”

“Then what are you saying? Do you want to bite me? Hurt me? Do you chase me through the woods in your dreams?”

“Yes,” Sirius breathed.

“You—” Remus fumbled. “Where is this coming from? The wolf—”

“—wants me,” Sirius finished for him, stepping in closer. “And so do you. Don’t you? Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Enough,” Remus snapped. “I don’t resent you for what you did after the full moon. That’s what I came out here to tell you. But I will resent you for this, if you don’t drop it.”

“What did you feel?” Sirius couldn’t drop it, not if it meant what he was almost certain it meant, but he didn’t move any nearer. “That morning after the moon. What did you feel when I had you in my arms?”

Remus stayed stubbornly silent for a long moment. “I don’t remember,” he said finally.

“But you said—”

“I remember like I watched it in a movie. But I can’t…” Remus gave a frustrated sigh and turned away, staring down the dark, earthy tunnel.

Sirius’s heart sank. Remus was either lying or completely unwilling to acknowledge his feelings. Whatever outcome Sirius might have begun to hope for, it was moot.

“I don’t remember, and you do,” Remus said morosely. “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.” Nothing about this was.

“It’s not fair,” Remus said again, voice weakening on the last word, and turned back around. “So… show me.”

“What?” Sirius’s haggard mind had to be giving up on him.

“Show me,” Remus said again. He crossed the distance between them, a hand coming up to touch Sirius’s chest in the dark.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” Remus asked. Sirius could only nod, lungs filling with the warm scent of his skin. Remus’s fingers ghosted down Sirius’s forearms to take both of his hands and place them on his sides where they’d once searched for broken ribs. Sirius ran his palms down Remus’s torso experimentally, then slid them back up his arms just like he had before. He was shaking slightly—or maybe the heavy beat of his heart was sending tremors through his bones.

Remus’s hands made their way to the back of Sirius’s neck, fingers weaving through his hair before pressing gently to draw their faces together. Then his lips were tracing Sirius’s in the lightest kiss imaginable as Sirius held still, pinned in place like a butterfly. It was purest ecstasy. “I’ll let you do it again,” Remus said quietly against the corner of his mouth, “if you promise to be honest with me afterward.”

Sirius blinked, his fuse-blown brain slow to catch up. Then he broke away from Remus’s touch, stumbling a large step backwards.

“Don’t do that,” he said, shaking out his head. “Don’t… you can’t bargain yourself, Remus. No.”

Remus’s posture had collapsed the instant Sirius pulled back, long arms wrapping defensively around his middle.

“Sorry,” he rasped. “Sorry, I thought…”

“I do want to,” Sirius said, crushed. “But not as some kind of deal. I’ll be honest with you anyways. I was being honest, but you wouldn’t hear it.”

“Yeah. Right—sorry,” Remus said again. “Let’s just—just come back up to the bloody castle with me, Sirius. I can’t do any more of this tonight.”

“No, please—if we leave now, you’ll never admit to any of this again. Please, Remus.”

“Please? Please what? What, Pads? What do you want?!” Oh. Remus was shouting. “What are we doing?” His voice filled the air and shook Sirius to the core. Remus never shouted. “First, you tell me you’re unforgivable. Won’t accept a truce, no matter how many times I offer one. Then you tell me you love me, but you don’t expect anything in return. Now all of a sudden you’re certain that I feel the same way, and you won’t let it go until I—what? Set the wolf loose on you? Get down on my knees? Is that what you want to happen?”

“No! Of course not! Merlin—stop,” Sirius pleaded. He had cleared the space around Remus, who was pressing his knuckles firmly into his forehead. 

“I’m exhausted, Sirius. I can’t… I just want to get back to our room and sleep.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. We’ll go back,” Sirius agreed. He’d do anything Remus asked if it meant he’d stop looking like that.

“This didn’t happen,” Remus whispered hoarsely. “If you care like you say you do, you’ll pretend.”

“Okay,” Sirius said again, hating it. “Forever?”

“I’m sorry, Pads. Just… let’s just get through the end of school. Then we'll talk.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

They began the long, silent trek through the tunnel, Remus leading the way. Sirius could still feel the places where Remus’s lips had touched his.

-

Remus collapsed his brass telescope and repacked his astronomy kit slowly, rolling up his freshly inked star charts and securing them with twine. He knew he’d need to redo them entirely as he’d been distracted all lesson, but he wasn’t ready to go back to his dorm room. Not yet.

The class trickled down the Astronomy Tower’s tightly wound spiral stairs after their professor while Remus loitered behind, easy to miss with his head bent low over his satchel. When the door at the bottom of the stairs swung shut and the enchanted lock clanked behind the last student, Remus stopped rearranging his things. He raised his head to look out at the dazzling sky blanketing the valley and his eyes immediately found Canis Major, like they had done all throughout the lesson. He chewed his lip and wandered over to the opposite end of the tower where dimmer, unnamed stars winked innocently above him.

It was nearing midnight, but it would still be another hour at least before his dormmates went to sleep. He settled in to wait with his back flat against a cold stone pillar, trying and failing to think of nothing beyond the view. 

There was only one month left in the school year. Five weeks until his first official Order meeting, three weeks until he sat his NEWTs, two weeks until his final lessons, one week until his last full moon at Hogwarts. A countdown to the end of the world as Remus Lupin knew it. 

Part of him—the part that wasn’t ready to fight dark wizards and face werewolves like Greyback—wanted his final year to stretch on forever. Another part of him was itching for it to end so that he could get away from the sheltered unreality of the castle and move on with the inevitable. Still another part longed to jump on the back of Sirius’s bike and fly somewhere far away, never looking back at the path he’d unwittingly signed on to at the ripe age of eleven.  

‘Somewhere quiet,’ Sirius had proposed not so many moons ago. ‘The seaside, maybe. Dover.’ Remus wondered where they would be right now if he’d said yes then.

He’d been daydreaming about sea birds and chalky white cliffs when the sound of shoes on metal stairs startled him to his feet. If Sinistra was about to find him here, he’d need to whip up a passable excuse to explain his loitering. If it was the caretaker, he might be able to bullshit something about being assigned a special astronomy project. He glanced around for any kind of prop that might aid his cause. Finding nothing, he panicked and Disillusioned himself seconds before a figure emerged from the staircase.

It wasn’t Sinistra, nor was it Filch. It was Sirius—because of course it was. Remus must have known on some instinctive level that it would be, which would explain his panic. He had never once struggled to come up with a convincing excuse for being somewhere he oughtn’t when faculty had found him out after hours. Sirius, however, knew all of Remus’s tricks. He’d watched him develop them firsthand since they were eleven and Filch had caught them rifling through the teachers’ lounge.

(‘We’re serving detention for wasting potion ingredients, sir. Dusting the bookshelves and sweeping the grates without magic, sir. Professor Slughorn is teaching at the moment, but you can wait with us to ask him yourself… though he could be some time, sir…’ Eleven-year-old Sirius, who hadn’t shown much interest in Remus before then, had looked newly impressed when Filch grumbled impatiently and left them to their mischief. Remus wondered if that was when his addiction to Sirius’s attention had started.)

Mostly invisible, Remus retreated into the shadows as Sirius crossed the open tower to lean against the railing. He gazed out at his twinkling namesake, hair falling effortlessly around the angular edges of his face. His head tilted back as he traced the path through Canis Minor up to Leo, where Regulus shone feebly at the foot of the great lion.

“I know you’re there, Lupin,” he said into the night air after a minute or two. “I found you on the map. I have it here in my pocket.”

Remus delayed a few seconds longer before lifting his Disillusionment.

“What is it, Sirius?” he relented, stepping out of the shadow.

Sirius turned around, cutting an unfairly picturesque image backlit by the starlight.

“We should talk,” he stated plainly. “Please, Remus.”

“What about?” Remus asked mildly.

“Don’t do that. I can’t take it any longer. You promised once school wrapped up—”

“Which won’t be for another month—”

“Yes, but if we’re going to live together afterwards, don’t you think we should start figuring that out now? Before we’re out on the streets with nothing but our trunks and our NEWTs and this massive thing we’re not allowed to mention.”

Remus blinked. “You still want to live with me?”

“I said I did, didn’t I? Why, have you made other plans?”

Remus had been planning on asking Dumbledore if the Order had some sort of headquarters where he could stay for a while. He hadn’t expected Sirius to follow through on a throwaway conversation they’d had in the back of a Charms lesson. Especially not after everything that had followed.

“No,” he said slowly. “I haven’t. Where were you thinking?”

Sirius shrugged. “Anywhere, as long as you’re there. It doesn’t need to be central. I’ll set up a private Floo connection for Order business.”

As long as you’re there. When did Sirius start saying things like that?

“We can start looking for listings in the morning papers,” Remus offered, steering firmly into the practical.

“Already have been,” Sirius tossed back, sounding bored. “For weeks now.”

“Great. Well. You probably already know I don’t have much in savings for rent, but I can—”

“I don’t care about rent. I didn’t come up here to talk to you about rent.”

“Right,” Remus murmured. There really was no subtlety with Sirius Black. It drove Remus crazy, in the best and worst ways.

“You kissed me.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanted to—”

“I know. I was there.” If Sirius was going to be blunt, so was he.

Sirius shot him a sharp look that softened almost immediately. “I know. You said you needed time, and I’ve been patient. But everything’s about to change, and I need answers.”

“I still don’t know what to tell you.”

“How about starting with how you feel? Did you even want to kiss me?”

“Yes.”

Sirius had already opened his mouth like he was ready to argue. He closed it, looking surprised.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That’s… good. Do you still want to?”

“Yes.”

“Then—what are we doing? Why won’t you…?”

“I’m…” Remus closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m bloody embarrassed, Pads. Obviously. I made an idiot of myself.”

“No, you didn’t. You were amazing. But why did you have to ruin it like that? Why wouldn’t you believe me when I told you I love you?”

Remus couldn’t believe he was hearing those words out of Sirius’s mouth again. And there was the problem: he couldn’t believe that anything so good was really meant for him.

“I thought that maybe, if you only wanted to try something physical, you’d admit that you weren’t sure,” he explained. “That it was just an experiment because you’re curious and I’m dangerous, and you’ve always been out to prove you’re a rebel.”

Sirius made a disgusted face. “That’s not—”

“I know, I’m sorry. But you need to understand that I’ve spent years believing anything like this was impossible. Blaming the wolf for everything I felt towards you. Christ’s sake—I didn’t even know I was bent until last year. It just… there was just always something different about you. And I’m still figuring things out.”

“I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions the way I did,” Sirius said soberly. “I was all over the place that night, like you said. I’m sorry. I had this epiphany and… got hopeful, I guess. Wanted to hear you confirm it before I missed my chance, but I pushed too hard.”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry I yelled. I still don’t know how you got there so suddenly, seeing as it's been difficult to reconcile it even to myself. But you weren’t… wrong.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No. Of course not. You’re… you.”

Sirius was beginning to smile, a beautiful thing that spread across the angular planes of his cheeks and up to his eyes.

"You were never going to tell me, were you?"

"I don't think so. I'm still not sure it's a good thing, what with the wolf's—er—proclivities. And on top of that... well. After everything with Dearborn, I don’t exactly feel the most fanciable in front of you. Especially when there are a dozen beautiful girls giving you the eye at any given moment.”

“I don’t give a toss about girls,” Sirius scoffed, “or what you did with Dearborn. I mean—I do care, but… I just care about you. I just want you to let me, if you care about me too.”

“All right, Pads. I do, so… all right.”

“You’ll work on trusting it? Trusting me?”

“Yeah. If you don’t mind being patient with me.”

“Not in the slightest. We’re going to live together, remember? We’ll have all kinds of time to figure things out.”

“We’ll be fighting a war in between turning into savage beasts. It won’t exactly be an ideal setting for romance.”

“Yeah, it will. Because when we’re at home, it’ll just be us two. It’ll be brilliant.”

Sirius looked so sincere in that moment that Remus couldn’t help believing him.

“Well then. We had better start looking for a place, hadn’t we?”

“We’ll see what the classifieds have tomorrow morning. Someplace quiet, hopefully. Maybe near the sea.”

“That does sound pretty brilliant."

They had drifted gradually closer together throughout the conversation. There were only a few stars twinkling in the gap between them, their shine weak in comparison to Sirius.

Remus reached through the dazzling space and kissed him.

Chapter Text

James glanced at his watch for the fifth time in five minutes. If they missed the last full moon of their Hogwarts careers because Sirius had been messing with his hair, James would have no choice but to skewer him on his antlers.

Sirius had never spent more than ten combined minutes on his hair in his life, yet it somehow always looked perfect. And right now it looked exactly the same as it always did, falling in effortless pieces around his cheekbones—except that James knew he’d faffed around in front of the mirror for nearly half an hour with a comb and a furrowed brow. And there weren’t even any girls around to see it! They were in the dark, humid tunnel heading straight to the shack to meet Remus, who’d been resting up in the hospital wing. And then they’d be turning into animals for the remainder of the night. With fur.

Even so, it was hard for James to feel too annoyed with his best mate at present. After months of dour, uncharacteristically reserved behaviour, Sirius was acting like himself again. Better than his usual self, even. James had caught him smiling while lacing up his shoes in the morning, humming tunes between classes, and even charming flowers to bloom along the rim of Lily’s hat at dinner. James had almost forgotten how playful Sirius could be when he was happy.

When asked about his improved mood, Sirius only said he was ‘looking forward to getting out of this place soon.’ ‘This place,’ which he adored for rescuing him from the darkness of Grimmauld. James wasn’t convinced. Because he wasn’t an idiot. He had eyes, albeit slightly defective ones. He knew it had something to do with Remus. 

The two of them had started clipping adverts for rentals out of the Daily Prophet and putting their heads together by the common room fire to discuss the pros and cons of each locale. Peter was thoroughly irritated by this development, though James knew he was only jealous because they hadn’t thought to ask Peter if he wanted to room with them, too. Even James, who would be living with the girl of his dreams, couldn’t help feeling a tad left out.

Remus seemed happier, too. Their upcoming NEWTs had been weighing on all four of them, but they appeared to have taken over Remus’s life for the past few months. He had been distant and distracted, spending hardly any time in their dorm room and opting to revise off on his own. He’d even kept his nose buried in books during mealtimes, barely contributing to their conversations. But now, even with Hogwarts’s exam hysteria more endemic than ever, Remus looked present in a way James hadn’t seen on him in well over a year. He was eating full meals, giving his mates his full attention, and rallying jokes back and forth with his signature wit.

‘Found you!’ James wanted to say, like they were boys who’d been playing an extended game of hide and seek. ‘There you are, silly old chum.’

Fifteen minutes till moonrise, and the earthy tunnel was already beginning to slope upwards. They were going to be earlier than James had predicted, thank Merlin. Moony would have been terribly cross if they’d left him alone to worry until the last minute, even with the bulging pocket full of chocolates Sirius had brought for him. (This, too, was new.)

By the time they finally burst into the shack, Remus had already stripped down to his pants and was pacing restlessly in front of the boarded up windows.

“What kept you?” he asked hoarsely. His hair (unlike Sirius’s, which still somehow looked perfect) was a sweaty, tousled mess over an anxious brow.

James tossed a look at Sirius, who at least had the grace to look sheepish, but decided he couldn’t throw him under the bus entirely.

“Doesn’t matter—we’re here now!” he announced instead. “With loads of time to spare. Fancy a lager, Moony? Anyone up for gobstones?”

Remus ignored him to resume pacing, running his nails up and down his bare arms. This bit was normal, though. Remus would burn off this surplus of energy soon enough. James popped the top off of a cold bottle of lager from his satchel, passed another to Peter, and settled into a thoroughly mullered armchair to sip and wait. 

He caught Sirius’s eye and tilted his bottle in offer, but Sirius shook his head. He dithered by the doorway for a moment, then walked right up to Remus and pulled his soon-to-be-claws away from the red tracks they were leaving on his skin. He said something quiet to which Remus nodded, and then he was turning into the dog and nudging his furry head into Remus’s waiting hands. Padfoot swished his tail contentedly as desperate fingers combed through his thick black fur. He gazed up at Remus and then around the room, nose twitching as he sniffed the air.

A minute later he was human again, standing way too close to their strung-out mate and giving him an odd, betrayed sort of look.

“When did you bring Aubrey here?” he asked tentatively. James and Peter lowered their bottles in unison, trading alarmed glances.

“What? I didn’t,” Remus said. His voice was strained with discomfort.

“I could smell him,” Sirius insisted. “He’s been in here… touched things…” Sirius looked around like he was seeing fluorescent fingerprints scattered all over. “He sat on the arm of the couch, just there.”

“I never brought him,” Remus said through clenched teeth.

“Did one of you?” Sirius asked James and Peter, who both shook their heads. Peter swigged his lager nervously. “Then how could he have gotten in? It’s not like you can just stumble into it, and Snivellus is the only other person—”

“Pads, it’s time,” Remus cut him short, voice rasping. “The moon’s here. Change.”

Sirius continued to frown as Remus hunched over, clutching his stomach, so James put a hand on his shoulder. “Change,” he echoed Remus. “Now.” Peter was already a rat scurrying around their abandoned beer bottles, squeaking urgently.

Sirius obeyed and James followed suit an instant later, swinging his head up and down a few times as it adjusted to the weight of his antlers. Remus was breathing hard, trying to suppress the pained moans that would soon fill the air. Padfoot sat at his feet, but he continued to look distracted by the new smell in the air. Prongs nudged him closer to Remus with his antlers. He had a bloody job to do. That seemed to finally snap Padfoot out of his fixation, and he set about nuzzling Remus’s leg, keeping him grounded. But even as Remus collapsed to his knees and his arms clutched around Padfoot’s neck for support, Prongs noticed him sniffing at the air again.

The transition was never pretty (James always tried not to watch), but it shaped out to be a great night despite its bumpy beginning. Foreign scents forgotten back in the shack, the four animals tore through the forest with reckless abandon, venturing further than they’d ever dared before. They raced juvenile centaurs through the trees, revisited their favourite hidden caves, and clambered up to the highest ridges of the mountains overlooking Hogsmeade. The windows of the little toy village glowed beneath them, train tracks just visible by the silver moonlight, and the castle loomed majestically off in the distance.

From the tops of the rocky peaks, higher than the stag could reach, Moony and Padfoot howled at the moon like it was their sacred duty. Prongs threw back his great head, filled his throat with cold air, and bellowed into the starry sky, a rough bass note beneath the canines’ haunting harmony. Wormtail, from his perch on Prongs’s antlers, joined in their song with a series of pitchy squeaks that didn’t carry quite the same gravitas, but added their own special charm nonetheless.

By the time the sun broke over the horizon, the pack of four were still kilometers out from the shack. Sirius and Peter transformed to lift an unconscious Remus onto Prongs’s back, wrapped up in Sirius’s cloak.

It was a challenge to navigate the rugged Scottish landscape smoothly enough to keep Remus from sliding off, slung as he was with his arms draped either side of Prongs's neck, but James had years of practice. (Remus may have woken up with a few more bruises than usual the first few times they’d tried it.) His hooves danced between mossy rocks and thorny thistles, the weight on his back almost negligible now that he was a fully grown twelve point buck. They made quick work of the terrain and reached the shack while the sky still blushed pink, which meant Pomfrey still wasn’t due for another half hour at least.

“Whose turn is it to stay with him?” Peter asked the two large animals behind him as he unlocked the hidden back door.

“All of ours,” James answered, stepping out of his thick deer coat and back into his true skin. He hoisted Remus through the entrance, tucked him into the bed, retrieved Sirius’s cloak, then sunk into his customary armchair with an accomplished sigh. “I’m not ready to leave yet. Don't you think we should all be here when Remus wakes? This is our last shout of… this. This mad, brilliant thing we’ve done.”

“No, it isn’t,” Sirius said firmly, shrugging back into his own human form. “And make sure you don’t call it the last time when he wakes up. It’s only our last time transforming here in the shack, which he’ll hardly miss. He spent so many miserable nights out here before we could help him. It’ll be better, wherever we find to spend the moons next. We’ll let you know where to meet next month once we’ve figured out housing. But wherever it is, it’ll be even better than this. I know it.”

“That’s right,” Peter agreed ardently. “It’s not the end for us. We’ll still have all this and more after school, won't we? It’s not goodbye, only time for the next chapter.”

James wanted to agree with them, but his overly-sentimental mind conjured crisp images of the castle silhouetted against bright starry skies, four sets of hoof and paw prints on sleepy dirt roads, and a forest teeming with mysteries they’d never get to discover. It certainly felt like a kind of goodbye, and one he wasn’t quite ready for.

“Of course not,” he said anyways, slapping on a smile. “This is still just the beginning for the Marauders. But it’s been a hell of a beginning, hasn’t it?”

Peter agreed with a reverent ‘yeah,’ and Sirius nodded solemnly but didn’t say anything. Remus shifted under his blankets, rolling his head away from the light.

“Hey, Moons.” Sirius went from standing by the door to kneeling at his bedside so quickly that James briefly thought he’d transformed back into the dog.

“Morning,” Remus said, peering out at them through thin, purplish eyelids. “How was it?”

“Gorgeous,” Sirius answered, voice low and smooth, before either of the others had the chance. “The perfect night. You were great.”

“Yep,” Peter chirped. “You were bloody fast last night, Moony. Ran circles around our Prongs.”

“Oi, now,” James said through a grin. “I had to save some fuel to lug his naked arse back here. That’s the last free ride you’re getting off me for the rest of the school year, Moony. I mean it.”

Sirius shot James a look for using the word ‘last,’ but Remus just chuckled weakly. 

“Fine,” he said, closing his eyes but still smiling. “If I collapse after sitting the NEWTs, just leave me there to die. I’ve lived a good life.”

Sirius pulled a melty bar of Honeydukes’ Finest out of his pocket and nudged him with it until he opened his eyes again. “Eat,” he told him gently, pressing the chocolate into his hand. “You’ll feel better.”

Remus did, sitting up with a grimace and grinning sheepishly. Sirius fixed the sheet that pooled around his bare stomach as Remus tipped his head back against the wall, chocolate smeared on his lips. All of a sudden, and for the first time in their seven years of friendship, James felt like he was intruding on something. Which was stupid, obviously, so he flopped onto the foot of the bed (careful not to jostle Remus) and helped himself to some of Sirius’s Honeydukes supply. Peter followed suit moments later, perching on the mattress’s edge and reaching for a chocolate frog. 

By the time Madam Pomfrey showed up to collect Remus, they’d all eaten more than their fill. They vanished their bottles and wrappers, crowded into a corner beneath the cloak, and stood in sombre silence, as if watching some sort of royal procession, while the nurse magicked Remus out of bed and back up to the castle.

-

The dungeons were a terrible choice for student lodgings, Peter mused as he hurried past the entrance to the Slytherin common room. He was heading back from Slughorn’s office, having begged the professor for extra tutoring leading up to his Potions NEWT. A handful of pale, anaemic looking third years eyed him from the dark recess they were loitering in, expressions bored and sullen. Maybe if they got a bit more fresh air and sunlight, the whole house would be happier. 

Just as he was amusing himself by picturing a version of Snape with James’s golden tan, the devil himself appeared on the opposite end of the hall. Peter immediately wished he’d chosen to make the journey back through the dungeons as a rat, but the old stone hallways didn’t host the same generous hideyholes available on the castle’s main floors, and he wouldn’t put it past Slytherins to torture rats for fun.

“Pettigrew,” Snape purred as he drew nearer, stepping purposefully into Peter’s path. “I’ve been wanting a word with you.”

With a vice-like grip on Peter’s elbow, Snape ushered him down a tight corridor branching off from the main hallway. Peter went hesitantly, eyes scanning left and right for a way out. Should he turn tail and run? Snape would just hex him. Could he contact his friends to save him? James and Sirius had never gifted him one of their enchanted mirrors. Peter would have to rely on his wits to make it out of this unscathed. Bugger.

Snape stopped in front of a gruesome painting of a witch whose mouth was stitched shut with thick black thread. Peter shuddered and looked away, but the dark, empty passageway offered no respite from his mounting anxiety.

“I need information,” Snape announced without preamble, because he was a graceless germ. “This little club you’ve weaseled your way into. Dumbledore’s precious ‘Order.’ Who else is in it besides Potter, Black, and Lupin?”

“If you want to know more about the Order, you’ll have to ask Professor Dumbledore himself,” Peter said, proud of his bravery.

Snape smirked disdainfully. “I cannot conceive of a universe in which Albus Dumbledore would trust me with information regarding his pathetic resistance group.”

“You’re good at potions, aren’t you? M-maybe he could use you.”

“I think not. I have my own plans, you see—with far superior company.”

Peter gulped. “You mean you’re… one of them now?”

“Soon enough, I will be. Which is why you should tell me what you know.”

“No. I w-won’t. I don’t owe you anything.”

“Oh, but you could. There’s plenty I can offer. Don’t you think you could use some insurance, marching with the 'light' side of the war? The side that doesn’t dirty its hands with real curses? I could put in a word for you in exchange for some harmless information. Let my friends know to aim their wands elsewhere.”

Peter tried to laugh like James would have done, but it came out more like a squeal. “Yeah, right. You won’t have that kind of influence. Not when you’re brand new. Besides, you’re not even a pureblood.”

“I am on my mother’s side,” Snape said, stiffening to his full, not-very-impressive height. “And I have friends with sway. Lucius Malfoy. He’s well established, and as pure as they come.”

Peter raised an eyebrow in response. He knew Malfoy, and there was no way the posh blonde bellend was one of the Dark Lord’s trusted men. He, Peter, had the friends with real sway. James and Sirius were bigger, stronger, and better than any connections Snape had to offer.

“Fine,” Snape snapped. “Just tell me one thing, and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the year. You’ll never have to hear from me again, and I won’t tell your friends anything they won’t want to hear. Do we have a deal?”

Peter shrugged as if it didn’t matter what Snape could tell his friends. It most certainly did.

“What is Lily Evans’s involvement in all this?” Snape asked, barely moving his thin lips as he spoke. “What will she be doing after school? She won’t say…” his voice drifted off, and for a moment Peter thought he looked regretful.

“She’s not involved,” Peter told him flatly, then added, just for colour, “—yet. James hasn’t told her anything about the Order. He will, though. Doesn’t want to keep secrets from her. After that, it’s up to Lily whether she wants to join or not.”

Snape ground his teeth, and Peter thoroughly enjoyed the ugly look it put on his face. It gave him a surge of confidence.

“As for what she’ll be doing,” he continued, knowing intuitively that this part would hit Snape harder, “she and James are going to live with the Potters’ while they wait for a local cottage to become available. They should be all settled in and cosy within the year. They’ll start planning a wedding soon, probably. Maybe even try for a baby—”

Next thing he knew, Peter was writhing in agony on cold, damp flagstones. He hadn’t even seen Snape draw his wand.

When the curse gradually wore off in Snape’s absence, Peter pushed himself off of the floor with shaky arms. Propped up against the wall next to the portrait of the mute witch, he considered the kind of magic the other side would be wielding. Real curses, like Snape had said. Magic Peter and his friends had never been taught and wouldn’t even know how to defend against. Maybe the others would be able to hold their own against them, with their innate magical instincts, but Peter wasn’t built like them.

Maybe, he thought, wiping drool from his chin and willing his legs to stop spasming, a line of insurance against Death Eater attacks wasn’t the worst idea.

-

Revising for the NEWTs was a funny thing when you already knew what the future held in store for you. Remus had always known on some level that his academic efforts wouldn’t have much bearing on his job prospects. Being a werewolf black-balled him for all work at the Ministry, and most other employers would consider it a dealbreaker once they inevitably found out. Still, he’d worked hard to keep up with his friends at the top of their class. He’d been diligent with his notes and assignments. Because if he didn’t make the most of his time at Hogwarts, didn’t learn everything that was available to him, what hope would he have in the real world?

The NEWTs felt different, though. They were designed to open doors to exciting career paths, to show that you possessed the knowledge and ability to succeed. But with Dumbledore as his future employer and the Order only requiring him to hold his own in a duel (and to turn into a wolf once a month), it was difficult to care too much about his final test scores. Still, he resolved to put in his best effort because that was what Remus Lupin the student did. Remus Lupin the Order member could wait one more week.

He was going on his fourth hour in the bowels of the library, scanning the tiny print of Advanced Potionmaking’s glossary for the inventor of the Befuddlement Draught, when a slim shadow darkened the page. He glanced up to see Bertram hovering over his shoulder, a volume from Professor Kettleburn’s recommended reading list tucked under one arm.

“Bertram, hi,” Remus greeted him a bit abashedly. He’d barely talked to Bertram at all since telling him they should go back to being friends. “Er—how’ve you been?”

“Hej, Remus. Do you have a moment?”

Remus nodded and set about consolidating his spread of books and class notes so that Bertram could join him at the cluttered table. Bertram perched on the chair opposite, watching him with an unplaceable look on his face.

“You’re doing a lot of revising?” Bertram asked, looking over the mess of texts.

“Not as much as some,” Remus sighed. “Should probably be doing more. You?”

Bertram shrugged. “I know what I know. There isn’t much more I can add on to seven years of schooling at this stage.”

Remus huffed a little laugh in agreement. “Getting enough sleep is probably more important than rereading old essays. Still, I can’t help feeling like there are a hundred things I’ve forgotten, so…” he gestured broadly at the piles of crumpled parchment. “If you need notes on anything, I’m happy to share.”

Bertram hummed, flipping pensively through his copy of Beasts and Beings of Britain while Remus glanced back over his potions text, struggling to decipher his own handwriting in the margins.

“Looks like you're taking almost every subject,” Bertram noted once Remus found the passage he was looking for. “What are your plans for after school?”

That, unfortunately, was an answer Remus couldn't share. “Haven’t given it a lot of thought yet,” he said casually, fiddling with his quill. “So I'm just covering my bases. You?”

“Going back to Denmark,” Bertram said, closing the book and giving Remus that unnameable look again. “Lots of good jobs there. Easy to find work. You’re staying in Britain?”

“Yeah. South East of England, probably. Or maybe Wales.”

“Mm. I was thinking,” Bertram said slowly, “that you could come back with me. Denmark is better for… for a lot of people.”

Remus looked up from his notes, surprised.

“Hogwarts is good, but Britain's not so great,” Bertram continued, lowering his voice. “Your culture has a lot of prejudices. We don’t have them as much, back home. The Danes are more accepting.”

“Oh,” Remus said quietly, setting down his quill. He glanced around and cast a subtle muffliato. “I’m not… I’m not that worried about coming out as gay, Bertram. There are worse things to be, and I’m not going to change countries just for the people who have a problem with it. You don’t have to, either, if that’s the reason you’re leaving.”

Bertram shook his head, looking around at the sparsely populated tables around them. “That spell you used, it makes us hard to overhear?”

Remus nodded, twitching his wand again to double its effects. The charm cocooned them in muffled silence.

“I’m not afraid of being different,” Bertram said after a moment. “I’m not afraid of a lot of things.”

“That’s good,” Remus said encouragingly. “You shouldn’t let things like prejudice get in your way. You’re smart and talented. You can do whatever you like.”

“But those things do matter,” Bertram insisted. “They make life harder for good people. They make people think they dont deserve things like love and equality.”

“Well, yes, I suppose, but—”

“I’m not afraid of prejudice. I’m also not afraid of wolves, Remus.”

Remus froze in his seat, the air in his throat catching. “You know, then,” he croaked.

“I notice when my boyfriend gets sick, and I own a calendar. I suspected. Then I saw the place where you transform. It’s horrible.”

Remus might have laughed if he weren’t so tense. Seven whole years of keeping his secret tightly contained, and it slipped out with one week to go.

“How’d you find the shack?” he asked instead of the questions with teeth. What do you want? What do you see when you look at me now?

“I might not be quite as brilliant as your mates, but I’m cleverer than you give me credit for. I can spot a magical signature that doesn't belong in nature. My sedir recognizes unnatural concealment when it sees it, even hidden beneath a homicidal tree.”

Bertram ran a hand over his short crop of hair. Remus noticed the shadow of a mostly-healed bruise near his temple.

“I’ve always known you were clever,” he said apologetically. “I just didn’t think you’d figure it out so quickly.”

“That’s why you ended things, right? So I wouldn’t have time to figure it out? You thought I would stop liking you. Or that I would tell your secret.”

“No. I worried about a lot of things, but I never worried you’d tell if you knew.”

“That’s good. Because I won’t. And I won’t stop liking you, either.”

“Bertram…”

“I mean it. You’ll be safe with me. You and your secret. Does anyone else know?”

“My family and friends. James, Sirius, and Peter. They help me manage it, along with Madam Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Dumbledore.”

“How do they help? I want to help, too.”

“Thank you, really. But you can’t. And—I’m sorry if I left things feeling unresolved, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get back together.”

“But I thought… is there someone else?”

Remus’s immediate instinct was to say ‘no.’ To protect the new, budding thing between him and Sirius by denying its existence. But Bertram had always been open and honest, wearing his heart on his sleeve, and he deserved better treatment than that. Sirius did, too: deserved to be more than a secret, veiled by shame. Maybe Remus deserved better, too.

“Yes,” he said, allowing himself a small smile. “There wasn’t when I broke things off. But now there is someone, and he knows what I am. He’ll help me handle the transformations after school. So… thank you for inviting me to go back to Denmark with you, but you don’t need to worry about me here.”

Bertram nodded, eyes cast down at the table. “I’m glad,” he said after a while. “You should be with someone who understands you. That Pettigrew is a lucky fellow.”

Remus’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “It’s not Peter!” he said indignantly, then saw the laughter playing around Bertram’s mouth.

“Ja, I know.” Bertram gathered his things and stood up, all long limbs and Ravenclaw colours. “Just make sure he’s a good dog,” he said with a quirk of the lips, then patted Remus’s shoulder and walked away.

-

The ginger snap tin was empty. As was the shortbread tin, save for a few buttery crumbs. The stale sleeve of rich tea biscuits would have to do.

The end of year exams always precipitated a wave of student breakdowns, which meant Minerva had run through her desk’s biscuit supply faster than usual. Which was a shame, because she felt she deserved a nice, bitey biscuit at present. She added an extra rich tea on top of her usual moderate stack of two in self-commiseration.

The castle was empty, the students packed up and gone. It was always difficult seeing children she’d watched grow for seven years leave for good after sitting their final exams, but this year felt different. Her leavers weren’t just stepping into the world of adulthood and exciting careers. They would be entering society, fresh faced and keen to prove themselves, only to find Wizarding Britain in a state of utter turmoil. Hogwarts, its staff, and their parents had worked hard to shield them from the worst of what was happening, but they were adults now, technically. And although Minerva and her colleagues had done their best to equip them with all the skills they could need, even the brightest of them were underprepared to face their world’s current reality.

The brightest of Minerva’s leaving Gryffindors were the reason she deserved a blasted biscuit. The Marauders, they’d called themselves. Ridiculous, clever boys. Too clever by half for their own good. She had watched them leave from her office window, looking down over a cup of tea as two black-haired heads, one tawny brown, and one blonde walked confidently into their futures. The moment closed the book on seven years of chaos. It should have felt more like relief. 

By the end of their first year, they had nearly driven her to drink on more than one occasion. By their third, she’d daydreamed about transferring them to separate houses. After the insidious stunt they pulled in their fifth year, she’d genuinely thought they would be the end of her. Then, in the spring of their sixth, she had learned to miss the way they used to test her patience. Now, she felt a curious sort of ache at seeing the backs of them.

Which was perfectly ridiculous. She would, as a matter of fact, be seeing the four of them again in just over a week’s time at Order headquarters. Albus had informed her that they had each formally accepted invitations to join the Order of the Phoenix, signing their names beneath Sturgis Podmore’s (one of Filius’s, and only a few years their senior) with Fawks’s scarlet quill.

What was the Wizarding World coming to, Minerva wondered, if they were sending the promise of their future to the frontlines? These students she had worked so diligently to teach—these budding individuals in whom she and her colleagues had striven to instil not only magical finesse, but also strong morals and ambitions and humanity—all that work and care, for what? To hope their wand hands were faster than the Death Eaters’ on the draw?

How many duels would James Potter, who had cried when his first training broom flew into the freshly planted Whomping Willow, fight and win? How much loss could Sirius Black, who had been teetering on the edge since day one, suffer before it broke him? And little Peter Pettigrew, who had shaken like a leaf beneath the Sorting Hat: how many hits could he withstand? How many battles would Remus Lupin, who had torn himself to pieces for twelve years, walk out of alive? 

How many of her students would Minerva McGonagall outlive?

Behave yourself, Minerva scolded herself when she felt a tightness in the back of her throat. A fourth biscuit followed by a neat glass of scotch helped melt it away.

Chapter Text

A motorcycle. The young men moving into 4B arrived on a motorcycle. 

Where was their rental van? Where were their ruddy-faced fathers heaving cardboard boxes full of clattering pot lids? This was Norfolk, damnit. There were customs.

But no, they only had one bag a piece, slung casually over their shoulders. The one who had just parked the motorcycle on the curb (what was the neighbourhood coming to) took off his helmet and held a hand out for his friend’s. It was difficult to see much of their features from the second floor window, but it was clear even through the salt-speckled glass that they were both quite young and good looking. The dark haired one might have just stepped out of an album cover, and the narrower of the two wore a pleasing smile as he passed over his helmet and squinted up at the dingy block of flats.

Two sets of footsteps clunked up the stairs and through the hallway accompanied by low chatter and laughter. They stopped outside the door just across the hall and keys jangled. More murmuring and quiet laughter. What on earth could be so amusing? The door to 4B creaked open, followed by a loaded pause.

Then a crisp RP accent said, “Merlin. It’s perfect.”

-

The flat looked nothing like the pictures in the advert. In some regards, that was a good thing. The previous residents had been a pair of octogenarian sisters with truly garish taste in furnishings and wallpaper. But the landlord had stripped the paisley paper away to reveal large splotches of peeling paint on the walls, the layers showing time’s passage like rings on a tree. The walls themselves were thin, uninsulated, and far closer together than the listing’s wide-angle lens photos had suggested. A tap dripped metallically in the loo.

Sirius grinned broadly, spreading his arms wide so that his fingertips nearly brushed either side of the tiny kitchen. “Home,” he declared, his voice rich with contentment.

Remus grinned back and craned his neck to see out of the grimy little window over the sink. If you stood close enough to the hob, you could glimpse a sliver of stormy grey ocean behind the old canning factory that blocked the view.

“Home,” he concurred, returning his gaze to the familiar-but-new sight in front of him. Sirius. Dormmate turned flatmate, friend turned partner, schoolboy turned man.

The ceiling light buzzed and flickered. They both looked up at it, Remus filing away a mental note to buy lightbulbs at the corner shop. But then Sirius zapped it with a flick of his wand and the dusty glass dome disappeared entirely, leaving the room bluish in the dusk light filtering through the window. Another swish of ebony conjured clusters of ivory candles on the countertop, warming the room in a familiar glow. Remus nodded his approval, then turned to the living room and transfigured the console TV into a fireplace. It came out plainer than James or Sirius’s would have done, but crackled merrily to life when Remus followed up with an incendio.

“Nice one.”

“Thanks.”

“You really like it, Moony? The flat?”

“I love it. I… I love you.”

He’d said the words before. Several times now. The first time he’d been almost sick with dread, his body revolting like he was relinquishing a vital organ. But Sirius had said it that night in the shack, and kept on saying it with unblinking conviction. And since it was just as true for Remus, he had to step up and match Sirius’s bravery. It was only fair. It still felt like jumping off a cliff, but Sirius’s dazzling smile softened the landing.

That night, after a dinner of beans on burnt slabs of sourdough, they popped a bottle of celebratory wine from Mr and Mrs Potter. Sirius used it as an opportunity to make hopelessly rose-tinted toasts, but Remus set his pessimism aside for once and didn’t set him straight. They smashed their glasses in the fireplace and left the broken crystal to glisten beneath the flames as they stumbled laughingly into Sirius’s bedroom, leaving the door wide open behind them.

-

Sirius had been with a lot of girls. Not as many as the Hogwarts rumour mill would have you believe, but the gossipers had plenty to work with. It was just something he did at Gryffindor House parties; something he’d noticed the cool older boys doing as a younger student. It only made sense to accept the baton’s passing when it came time for his turn. It was fun, if sometimes a bit gross, and girls were easy. He’d never even had to ask.

Being with Remus was… it was something else entirely. Familiar but so, so new, even months after their first kiss and first nervous fumble in their empty dorm room. (‘you’re sure?’ ‘I am—are you?’ ‘I—yes—please, just…’) The hot thrill of breaking the rules shot through Sirius’s blood every time he reached out to touch. Not because they were doing anything wrong, but because this was Remus, Moony, friend and prefect and blood brother by an oath four twelve-year-old boys had made up one moonbright night, crowded onto a single white hospital bed. And now, Sirius was actually allowed to just—any minute of the day, in the flat they had all to themselves, he could just— reach out, guilt free, and skim his fingers down Remus’s spine, press his thumb to that pulse point in his neck, or rest a hand on that jutting hip bone (hidden by wooly jumpers until they were carefully, lovingly removed).

Sirius wouldn’t say he had a type when it came to girls, but most of the ones he’d explored were delicate in stature. Fine-boned if not waifish, as was the decade’s fashion, with small features and gentle curves and soft edges. And though Remus’s lips and skin were soft (wonderfully, addictingly so), his body wasn’t. He was lean, especially compared to Sirius’s broader frame, which had always naturally leant itself to storing muscle. But he was wonderfully solid in a way Sirius had never experienced, a delicious resistance where Sirius had only known softness before. A flat-palmed press to the chest needed real pressure behind it to send Remus toppling laughingly onto the couch, and another hard press somewhere lower would dissolve that laughter into an expression Sirius swore he would burn into the insides of his eyelids if he could.

They’d gradually learned what they liked and what they didn’t like. Though Sirius wished Remus would be more vocal about things that made him uncomfortable, he almost always caught his blink-and-you-missed-it moments of hesitation anyways. They were usually things Dearborn had done, which made Sirius’s insides twist. And the one time Remus had sunk to his knees at Sirius’s feet, Sirius had dropped to his own and held him knelt there on the bare floor, pressing their foreheads together and telling him no, not that. Not the way Lily had found him with Dearborn. Sirius couldn’t.

But physicality was only the surface level of their new dynamic. They were no longer two out of four, a fragment of the Marauders. Now, they were Remus and Sirius, Sirius and Remus, and it was a daily thrill discovering what that meant. Without James and Peter sharing their space, Sirius reveled in having Remus’s unfettered attention. Remus had always been democratic with his time so that everyone, even Peter, got their slice of the cake. Sirius, for his part, had always been most comfortable piggybacking off of James’s energy. He’d trusted James to steer the conversation while he leaned back and observed, only chiming in when it felt right. But now that it was just the two of them, the little interactions that used to be the highlights of Sirius’s day now flowed from one to the next without any filler in between or carefully masked feelings. It was like standing in front of a free flowing cask of butterbeer. Even when they weren’t engaging with each other, when Remus was lost in a book or asleep in the next room over, Sirius was warmed by the knowledge that when Remus finally raised his head, his next words would be for Sirius and Sirius alone.

Remus wanted Sirius back, and the simple joy of that knowledge was bigger than anything. And if Sirius was right about the wolf, which he was, then Remus had been attracted to him for years. ‘The wolf’s had its sights set on you since we were fourteen,’ he’d said. The mere thought of Remus silently fancying him all that time made Sirius giddy. And now, in the victorious present, Remus had boldly agreed to live with him. Not just because it made sense to continue sharing a space after seven years’ practice, but because they couldn’t get enough of each other’s company.

Sometimes, however, for all their closeness, it still didn’t feel like enough. Sirius couldn’t say exactly why that was, and he didn’t try to. It was never because of anything Remus did or didn’t do. But sometimes, as hard as Sirius might kiss him (though never hard enough to bruise; not after that first purple mark on a swollen lower lip) or as desperately as they touched (hands seeking as much skin as possible, roving under shirts and over arms, grabbing at shoulders, shins, and hair), it still didn’t feel like Remus was entirely with him. Sirius was somehow left wanting, despite already having everything.

This was the fantasy he’d sweated through in the sticky heat of his last London summer, the jealousy he’d carried through the halls of their school like a sickness. It was tortured longing made golden manifest, and he knew he didn’t deserve it. He’d be a fool to question it. But still, sometimes, the sensation of needing without getting persisted. 

How was it possible to hold someone in your arms and still feel they were out of reach? To kiss the word ‘yes’ off their lips and taste an unspoken ‘for now’?

Try as he might, Sirius couldn’t shake the niggling sense that Remus was holding something back. Sirius knew Remus inside and out, had done since they were eleven, which was the only way he could have noticed the absence of that one small, cautiously reserved piece. But he also knew, without a doubt, that he had no right asking for it. Not when Remus was already giving Sirius everything else—his trust, his future, his body and heart.

Sirius was grateful. Deliriously grateful, and he promised himself he mustn’t get greedy. He’d likely drive himself mad if he did.

-

The Marauders spent their first full moon after Hogwarts in a cove Sirius had spotted from his bike only a few miles north of their little Norfolk fishing town. James and Peter floo’ed over at noon, complimented Remus and Sirius on their new digs a bit too heartily to be genuine, and then the four of them made the trip up the coast with blankets, beverages, and provisions in hand. They picked up the pace when their destination came into view, waves lapping at the narrowing strip of beach. Inevitably, pebbles sprayed underfoot as the light jog spiralled into a race undermined with unsportsmanlike pushing, shouting, and grappling.

Walled in along the back by a jagged chalk cliff face, the crescent-shaped cove was only accessible from the beach during a short window at low tide. It was entirely cut off once the water came back in, making it practically an island for the Marauders’ purposes. They knew from an unfortunate incident involving a goose and the Great Lake that Moony loathed getting wet, so there was no chance of him swimming away. But Remus loved the beach, so Sirius expected the wolf would appreciate it, too.

After a relaxing evening catching up around a fire pit, his theory was proved right. The moment the wolf raised his great head, eyes burning, it sang its pleasure at the sight of the moon reflected on the surface of the sea. Its friends pranced and pounced in the sand around it, ungainly on the new terrain and sneezing from the salty air. But they quickly found their footing and discovered that the cove was teeming with caves, marine life, and shallow tide pools to explore. The night flew by in a silverbright sequence of rich new sensory experiences, and when the sun broke and Remus came to, hair full of sand, the four of them ran hollering into the waves, starkers. It was even better than the forest, just as Sirius had said it would be.

-

“That was mad!” Sirius enthused, bursting through their flat’s little blue door. “That Moody’s even cooler than the stories give him credit for—and I always thought they were exaggerated.”

Remus hung up their keys and performed McGonagall’s recommended security spells on the entryway.

“His wandwork was impressive,” he agreed, finishing with a final shimmering flick, “but I don’t think he’s the great hero some see him as. Personally, I’d be hesitant to put my life in his hands.”

“You’re joking! I’ve never seen anyone duel like that. His speed alone makes him worth three Prewetts, at least.”

“Mm. I think he’s more concerned about eliminating Death Eaters than protecting his ranks. I’ll gladly stick with Gideon and Fabian.”

Sirius huffed, kicking off his shoes and flopping down onto the couch. “Sorry you got stuck with them, Moons. They’re all right, I guess, but it feels wrong that you aren’t with us.”

Senior members of the Order of the Phoenix were partnered in pairs for missions, but Dumbledore and McGonagall had grouped the newest recruits into teams of three. While they kept James, Sirius, and Peter together, they put Remus with the violently red headed and highly talented Prewett brothers, who had left Hogwarts the year before the Marauders arrived. The third junior-member team was made up of Sturgis Podmore, who was a vaguely familiar face from school, and a young married couple, Frank and Alice Longbottom. After announcing their assignments, Alastor Moody had given them the rundown on rules, expectations, and the importance of ‘constant vigilance’ before challenging each team to a three-on-one duel.

“I was surprised Dumbledore and McGonagall didn’t separate James and me,” Sirius continued, “until I remembered this isn’t class, and we’re actually meant to be disruptive now. They know we’re best at making mayhem together.”

“They do indeed. And that Peter wouldn’t last a day without the two of you to hide behind.”

Sirius barked a surprised laugh, dark eyebrows shooting up his forehead. “Moony! That was downright mean!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Remus chuckled, lifting Sirius’s ankles so he could join him on the couch beneath them. Sirius rubbed his thigh with the arch of his socked foot. “I meant to say, ‘they appreciate that no one can support your and James’s combined genius quite like Peter.’”

“Nah, you didn’t,” Sirius smirked, then sighed contemplatively. “He is a bit useless, our Wormtail. Still, I’m glad he got teamed with us rather than with strangers. You know how he freezes under pressure to perform.”

“Yeah, I do. I sometimes wonder if we did the right thing, telling him about the Order. He’s really not cut out for this.”

Sirius snorted. “And you are?”

“Kind of. Maybe. We’ll see soon enough, I suppose.”

Sirius frowned at that, then shook his hair out of his eyes.

“Well. James said it ought to be his choice, same as the rest of us. It’s not like we pressured him to join.”

“I know, but he’d have followed you no matter what. You two have always been his armour. He probably would have joined the other side without a second thought if that’s what you and James said you were doing.”

“Remus! What’s gotten into you? You don’t mean that. It’s Peter.”

“No… No, sorry, you’re right. I don’t know. I just got this feeling at the meeting, like… never mind. It’s nothing.”

They sat there for a minute before Remus patted Sirius’s ankles. “Come on, let’s change into muggle clothes. We could go for a walk along the shore before dinner?”

They strolled down to the beach as man and dog, avoiding the neighbours who glared at the sight of Padfoot without a lead. (Sirius had firmly established on day one of his life as an animagus that he would never stoop so low as to wear a collar. Not even the handsome lion crested one Prongs gave him as a joke.) He transformed back behind a conveniently bushy hawthorn and walked to the water’s edge to join Remus, barefooted on the pebbly sand.

“I wish you were on our team,” Sirius said as he came up beside him, looking over the horizon. “It’ll feel all wrong without you.”

“Maybe we’ll get paired together later. This team arrangement’s only temporary.”

“I hate ‘maybes.’ The whole purpose of joining was to keep you safe.”

Remus smiled wanly, his colours washed out by the ocean haze, and wrapped an arm around Sirius’s shoulders. “That’s not really true, though, is it?” he mused. “That might have been your motivation at the beginning, but it’s not about that anymore. This fight is bigger than you or me. Staying the course and stopping Voldemort is more important.”

Sirius knew what Remus meant, knew he was right in the grand scheme of things, but shook his head against Remus’s all the same.

“Nothing’s more important than you,” he murmured into his hair, and meant it.

They walked with their feet in the seafoam until it was too dark for onlookers to see them holding hands on the long trek back.

-

Why, when given the promise of ‘I love you,’ did Remus feel like a thief for accepting it? 

It shouldn’t have been complicated. It needn’t have been, but Remus knew Sirius too well. It was both his privilege and his curse.

Sirius had never been one to sit still. Even as a boy, his energy had to go somewhere—into pranks, into reckless duels, into running headlong into danger just to prove he could. And now, with school behind them and the future closing in, that restless, boundless energy needed an outlet.

So it found Remus. 

Sirius’s lust for life fuelled cosy days and long nights with heated touches and passionate promises. It was a heady thing, and bewilderingly new to Remus, who had spent seven years in the shadow of James when it came to Sirius's attention. He was certain Sirius had never looked at him much before. Not really, not until their final year, when he had realised he fancied blokes. And there Remus had been: the outed dormmate, the trusted friend, the one who had already loved him in a dozen quiet, unspoken ways. The simple, effortless answer.

That was the thing Remus couldn’t shake. He didn’t doubt Sirius’s sincerity—Sirius never did anything by halves—but sincerity didn’t make something real. Didn’t make Sirius’s love his to keep.

He’d realized it early on, in the first heady weeks of sharing a home. They had been lying in bed, Sirius on his back, grinning at the ceiling while recounting some of their early Filch-baiting, when it had clicked.

As enthusiastic as Sirius was about the flat, he was also homesick for Hogwarts. And of course he was—it had been his first real home, the first place he’d been allowed to flourish, and now it was gone. They’d sat their NEWTs, James had flown off into the sunset with his dream girl, and now the war, the future, and adulthood were creeping in. But here was Remus, a solid, living piece of that world. A piece of his boyhood Sirius didn’t have to give up.

Sirius didn’t just love Remus. He loved then. Hogwarts, freedom, the days when the four of them had been thick as thieves and magic had been something they laughed at rather than feared. Remus kept that world alive. Of course Sirius loved him. How could he not?

And Remus, weak to his own desires, would take that love and hold it close. For the first time in his life, Remus was feeding the wolf inside. Listening when it told him to bite, to claw, to mark his territory. Because if he didn’t do it now, the opportunity to fully experience the one person the both of them had always coveted would slip through his hands.

Sirius’s restless, hungry energy would inevitably send him somewhere Remus couldn't follow. Off towards greatness and someone who could match his own dazzling brightness. Remus, with his dull, battered edges, was only a stepping stone.

It shouldn’t have been complicated. They were happy. They loved each other. And yet, when Sirius pressed his lips to Remus’s, when he whispered impossible things in the dark, Remus couldn’t help feeling like he was clutching at Leprechaun gold in the shimmering moments before it was gone.

-

“That was mad,” Sirius groaned, kicking the door to 4B shut behind him and collapsing onto the couch with his head in his hands. “Eight against three. It’s a bloody miracle we made it out alive.”

“I know,” Remus agreed, making a beeline for the bathroom and running the faucet. “I wish you’d called for backup sooner,” he said over the sound of the water.

“But we had them, Moony. If they hadn’t gone and summoned more of their pals… you should have seen James in action. He was incredible. Even Peter was in top form. And I got to use that fire lasso spell we read about! Probably should have practiced it first—I was as surprised as the Death Eaters when it actually worked. Nearly burned the whole place down.”

Remus returned with damp flannels and pressed one to Sirius’s bloodied knee. Sirius took it from him, hissing a little, and the furrow between Remus’s brows deepened.

“I need you to be more careful,” he chastised him gently. “There are people who would miss you if your recklessness got the better of you.”

“Oh, Moons. How very romantic. And hypocritical.”

“What?” Remus dabbed a cotton bud reeking of dittany on Sirius’s split lip, holding him still while he focused.

“If I’m reckless, what does that make you?” he asked when Remus released his chin. “Would you call your own actions careful?”

Remus frowned. “I don’t take risks unless I absolutely need to.”

“Is that so? Just last week, Gideon told me how you threw yourself in front of—”

“The Prewetts embellish every story tenfold. Don’t be gullible. And don’t put that on the table, that’s disgusting. We eat here.” He vanished the used flannel Sirius had just set down, but the red stain on the woodgrain remained. He sighed. “We should shower and get to bed. It’s late.”

“All right. Together?”

“No, you go first; I need to send a letter to Moody.”

Sirius did as he was told, exhaustedly washing dried blood and the last of his adrenaline down the drain. Afterwards, he flopped down on Remus’s bed to wait while he bathed. Despite having shared one room for seven years at school and choosing to share a bed most nights since, they both had their own bedrooms. Any landlord would have refused two men looking to share a single, and it was convenient having their own spaces when their schedules didn’t always align. Remus’s lengthy protection assignments with the Prewetts tended to keep him out later than Sirius, James, and Peter’s quick, offensive hits.

Looking around at the clutter for something to distract himself with, Sirius’s eyes landed on the massive Folio Bruti he’d given Remus last Christmas. It sat in a place of honour up on a shelf, separate from the teetering piles of books Remus left all over the flat. Sirius summoned it with a lazy accio and laid it out on top of the quilt. The delicate pages fell open to the section Sirius had unceremoniously ripped out of the 14th century binding before gifting it to Remus: the stubby remains of the ‘Werewolf’ passage. Flanking either side of the missing pages were intricately illustrated entries titled ‘Vampyre’ and ‘Xana.’

Sirius peeked curiously at the alluring depictions of Xanas, a kind of Austrian water nymph, before turning to the more exciting and familiar territory of vampires.

The Folio listed all of the species’ powers and weaknesses, along with helpful little suggestions for vampire hunters such as, ‘drink not of wine, but of hallowed water, for the fortnight ere the Hunt doth commence’ and ‘array thyself in neither the hue of blood nor the gold of sunlight, for their yearning for both is of equal fervor.’ And at the very bottom of the page, alongside a rather gruesome illustration of what looked like a bat crossed with a cherub, was a warning written in faded red ink. 

‘The cursed offspring of the undead is born into the world alive yet twice-damned. This misbegotten progeny, yclept dhampir, beareth none of its sire’s frailties in its tender years, wherein it is most fell and dreadsome. In youth, such a creature may take the guise of bat, rat, wolf, or some cursed mingling of beast and babe, and shall, with wicked hunger, devour both flesh and blood of its hapless prey, leaving naught behind—no husk wherein the blight of vampyrism might take root.’

Sirius had never considered the idea that vampires could reproduce. He wondered if that was prejudiced of him, and filed away the thought to explore with Remus another time. After that evening’s close call with the Death Eaters, he only wanted to show Remus how much he loved him.

He returned the Folio Bruti to its shelf and tried to clear his mind of images of vampyric bat-babies feasting on human flesh. The appearance of Remus stepping out of the bathroom in only a towel aided his efforts tremendously.

-

None of the Marauders were licensed to apparate. The ministry-officiated test for their year had been scheduled for the morning after a full moon, when Remus was too ill to participate. He’d told them to do it without him, but James had loudly insisted that flying was cooler, Sirius that he was too chaotic to apparate reliably, and Peter that even travelling side-along made him vom. 

That meant that apparating straight into “Moony’s Cove” for the full moon wasn’t an option when their unpredictable schedules didn’t align with low tide. 

James couldn’t join them for the December full moon because of something to do with Lily. Peter had a harder time keeping up with the larger animals without Prongs’s antlers to ride on. The soft sand was difficult for his little rat feet to navigate, and he wound up perched on a rock for most of the night. But it didn’t seem to make much of a difference to the wolf, who was happy to roll in the sand with its favourite pack member. 

Neither James nor Peter managed to make it in February. It stormed heavily that night, and the dog and wolf curled up in one of the caves. The view of the raging ocean beyond the jagged entrance was breathtaking.

It worked just fine with just the two of them. The cove did a perfect job of containing the wolf, and Padfoot was an expert at distracting it from hurting itself. He could tell that the wolf was on edge, probably missing the rest of its pack, and he wished they were there, too. But as long as the two of them had each other, they’d be fine.

-

“That was mad,” Sirius growled, slamming the door behind him. Remus winced as the painted wood cracked, but Sirius could feel bad about it later. At the moment, he was too worked up to feel anything but white fury. “Dumbledore must be mad. What was he thinking, inviting Dearborn to tonight’s meeting?”

“You knew we’d see him again sooner or later. He’s working for the Order of the Phoenix, same as us.”

“Bollocks. The Order is huge—we still haven’t even been told half of who’s in it, and Dumbledore knows—he knows—”

What followed was an argument that went nowhere because they weren’t even in any real disagreement. Sirius was just angry, and Remus frustratingly calm. Dumbledore had pulled Remus aside at the end of the meeting for a private word about an upcoming assignment, and Sirius had seen the relaxed way their old Defense professor had leaned back to watch them, the self-satisfied look on his face. He could still see it every time he blinked.

They ran out of steam after an hour or so and made their apologies with a tangle of fingers in hair and legs under sheets. Sirius usually encouraged Remus to take the lead, but not that night. He needed more than Remus’s gentleness. But still somehow, despite the intensity burning behind every touch and movement, it didn’t feel like enough. Sirius remained full of anxious energy afterwards, eventually getting out of bed so that Remus could sleep.

His restless hands continued to seek out Remus’s arms and chest and knees in the days that followed. It was as if his skin needed assurance that Remus really was there, safe and whole and present, and not somewhere off with Dearborn. If Remus noticed the change, he didn’t seem to mind the extra contact, pulling him in tighter when Sirius pressed his cheek to Remus’s shoulder while he made dinner.

-

Back when they’d fought as friends, Remus and Sirius had typically given each other a wide berth until the whole ordeal was more or less forgotten. After their first fight as a couple, however, they both had to work harder to restore their home’s peace. And while they strove to keep life inside 4B safe, warm, and cheerful, the world churning outside was far from it.

The Daily Prophet’s headlines shouted of inferi and Unforgivable Curses on the rise. Order meetings increased from monthly to weekly, moving from safehouse to safehouse. They never knew who would be in attendance. Dearborn sat through more of their meetings than Sirius would have liked, often sitting directly opposite him at the table like a taunt. They rarely saw McGonagall’s comfortingly familiar figure after their initiation, and Moody led nearly as many meetings as Dumbledore, who always seemed torn between five places at once.

Public gatherings petered out as the wizarding community took to spending most of their time at each other’s homes. These intimate house parties became the norm for Order members outside of missions, and were where Remus and Sirius got to know the rest of their ranks. Professor Dumbledore remained an untouchable figure, rarely staying for entire meetings, let alone meals afterwards. But they became much friendlier with Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper, than they ever thought they would be, and were surprised to learn that Professor Kettleburn was also using his knowledge of beasts and dark creatures to help the Order. They grew quite tight with the Longbottoms, found a new friend in Marlene McKinnon, and even acquainted themselves with a few dubious characters like Mundungus Fletcher. They made up an odd but colourful bunch, each remarkable in a unique way.

Because of the way they’d been split into teams, Sirius saw more of their closest friends than Remus did. James and Lily were staying with his parents until their neighbours, the Bagshots, completed renovations on a cottage they’d purchased for relatives decades ago. The place had gone somewhat to ruin, but the bones were good and the Bagshots ready to be rid of it. Fleamont had promised to help the young couple out with a down payment, and he and James spent a good deal of their free time assisting with the restoration efforts. Sirius would ride his bike over to lend a hand when Remus was busy.

Peter had taken on a junior position at the Ministry on top of his work for the Order. It meant he was less available than would have been ideal, but he seemed happy with the arrangement. He was certainly more stable than he’d been at the beginning, dissolving into a nervous wreck after each encounter with Death Eaters.

Voldemort’s forces were strong, but the Order was making a difference. Their efforts, though sometimes costly, were saving lives. Life was far from perfect, but it went on. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter weren’t the centre of their social sphere like they had been at school, but they’d become a part of a much realer community. The Order wasn’t a family, but it was an incredibly strong network built on trust. Trust that came easier to some than to others.

-

“Fabian asked about you the other day,” Sirius mentioned casually over a breakfast of tea and biscuits. The morning was foggy and the air cold and stale, so he and Remus both wore their quilts over their shoulders. “James, Pete, and I ran into the Prewetts at Frank’s place. Fab said something like, ‘the new guy’s not as fast as Lupin.’ What’d he mean by that?”

“I’ve no idea,” Remus said, sipping his tea. “Has The Prophet arrived yet?”

“No. Who’s this ‘new guy,’ then?”

“I just said, I don’t know. I haven’t heard about anyone new joining up since Edgar Bones.”

“Right. Okay.”

“Pass the sugar?”

“Sure. Okay.”

Sirius sipped his tea and didn’t miss how Remus’s mouth had gone narrow, jaw tense as he stirred around the extra lump of sugar his cup didn’t need.

An owl tapped on the window with the paper in its beak. “WEREWOLVES ASSEMBLE FOR YOU-KNOW-WHO,” screamed the headline.

-

Sirius shut the door silently behind himself and folded onto the couch, alone.

“This is madness,” he muttered into the empty living room.

Outside, the full moon hung heavy in the sky, and Sirius didn’t know where Remus was. He hadn’t shown up at the cove like he’d said he would. The tide had come in, the moon had risen, and Padfoot had swum back to shore alone and contacted James and Peter, neither of whom had heard anything. For the first time since they were twelve, Sirius didn’t know where Remus was on the most dangerous night of the month. For the first time since they were fifteen, Remus was transforming on his own. At least, Sirius hoped he was alone, because the alternatives were unthinkable.

Sirius thought about them anyway. The firewhiskey he splashed into his cup did nothing to dull the obsidian edges of his worry. Neither did the wine, nor the gin.

Remus stumbled in the next afternoon looking like a reanimated corpse. Sirius wanted to peel out of his fucking skin, but wordlessly drew Remus a hot bath instead. He hovered outside the bathroom door with his arms crossed tightly across his chest, listening for movement to know he hadn’t drowned. When Remus finished and stumbled straight into bed (‘not now, please, Sirius—please just let me sleep for a while’), Sirius turned into Padfoot and sniffed at his discarded clothes on the floor. He transformed back messily, staggering backwards into the towel rack.

Dearborn.

Sirius’s heart was a war drum, deafening him to all other thoughts. The remainder of the day passed in a surreal haze as he waited restlessly for Remus to wake, but Remus remained lost to the world, pain creasing his forehead as he tossed and turned. His injuries, upon gentle examination, had been crudely healed. The fresh, jagged claw marks would scar.

Remus wouldn’t give him any straight answers when he finally wandered out of his bedroom some twelve hours later. Sirius held off on asking about Dearborn to give Remus the chance to tell him on his own, but he did no such thing. After the third time Remus said he couldn’t tell him where he’d been, only that he hadn’t hurt anyone, Sirius left the flat for the Potters’.

Tearing down the streets on his bike, too weighed down to even consider flying, Sirius thought back on their final night in the Shrieking Shack. Moments before Remus turned into the wolf, Padfoot had smelled Bertram Aubrey’s distinct scent of Icelandic wool and briny wood permeating the space. Remus denied ever bringing him, but Sirius knew he had to be lying.

He’d chosen to let it go, then. Chosen to trust that Remus had his reasons for keeping the truth to himself. Could he do it again? He thought he knew the answer, but didn’t know if he would ever be strong enough to face it.

-

Offensive missions, typically Death Eater raids assigned by Moody, became a kind of productive outlet for Sirius after that. Close encounters that had been frightening at the beginning gave him clearance to release his frustrations in great explosions of red and gold, curses crackling with choler. His aim was deadly and true, and he wondered vaguely if he had been holding back before. If wanting to please Remus had meant fighting the Death Eaters like a good boy rather than the war dog his team needed him to be.

James had Sirius’s back, and he had James’s. Peter had been showing up for fewer and fewer missions, which was fine with both of them. It was easier not to have to worry about him, though they’d never tell him as much. And on the rare(ish) occasions when things went tits up, they had Lily as backup, an unsanctioned Order member only a patronus call away.

Remus never disappeared on the full moon again, but he continued to work long, inconsistent hours. His clothes often carried scents Padfoot’s nose didn’t recognise, and one it always did.

At home, they didn’t talk about it. That was the rule, Dumbledore’s Rule, and it held them together for all Sirius resented it. Later, he kept telling himself when he came home to find Remus dozing on the couch or fixing a cup of tea. We’ll have to face it later, but for now, let us have our peace. 

And as busy weeks turned into months and months into whole seasons, Sirius grew more comfortable living with half-truths and uncertainty than he ever thought he could be. Because when he and Remus were both at home together, the world was small and theirs alone.

Living by The Rule meant only talking in intangibles, discussing books and memories and interests while willfully avoiding the battles raging on around them. They painted the sitting room’s walls the muggle way, Sirius worked his way through Remus’s teetering book stacks and reread Mrs Potter’s copy of My Cousin Rachel three times, and Remus taught himself how to cook a few decent dinners. They reminisced about school and made vague, lofty plans for after the war. They tended each other’s wounds without asking where they came from.

Inside 4B, Sirius had Remus all to himself, warm and wry and kind, and nothing could touch the two of them. Not even the secrets pressing in on their walls and windows. Not even the secrets pushing out from within.

-

Sirius eased his bike onto its kickstand and pulled off his helmet, relieved to be back home. Nearly home, rather, as the neighbours had voiced complaints about engine noise that had Sirius parking a further up the road. It was no matter, though, as the afternoon was overcast but temperate and he always enjoyed the four block walk with its fleeting views of the sea. Still, he was eager to kick off his boots and settle in for an evening with Remus, so he kept his pace brisk, weaving between fellow pedestrians.

Lily had patched him up nicely after his and James’s unexpected encounter with the Carrows. They’d only been sent out to check on a suspicious location, which had seemed deserted on their arrival. As it happened, the Carrow siblings had been asleep on the job and hadn’t taken kindly to being rudely awakened by a couple of ‘blood traitor brats.’ But their sloppy attempts at flaying the both of them had healed cleanly, so Remus need never know just how close the day’s fight had been.

“Sorry,” he said when he knocked shoulders with a man taking a more leisurely path along the pavement. The man nodded in response, head bent over the stub of a cigarette. 

Sirius wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except that in their brief moment of contact he registered that the man’s brown leather jacket, which looked at first to be the aviator-style muggle variety, was actually made of dragonhide. He glanced back at him, curious to have encountered another wizard in this particular pocket of Norfolk, and was flummoxed to find himself staring into the face of his—

“Remus?”

Except that it wasn’t his Remus. Not as Sirius knew him. This man with his partner’s features looked to be somewhere in his thirties, with flecks of grey in his hair and coarse stubble on his jaw. Sirius’s Remus didn’t smoke cigarettes. He didn’t wear rugged dragonhide jackets or walk with a pronounced limp on the left side. And yet it was him. Sirius would know him anywhere, at any age. He’d catalogued every scar and freckle, every angle and divot of the face in front of him.

The face of a liar.

Chapter Text

The weathered stranger with Remus Lupin’s face stood frozen, staring back at Sirius with wide hazel eyes under tangled tawny lashes. His lips parted for a stuttering second, releasing a thin white breath of smoke from the half-burnt cigarette still smouldering between his fingers. Sirius’s gaze darted back and forth between his eyes, completely lost for words.

Further down the street, a cab honked at a cyclist. The noise seemed to cut through the man’s—through Remus’s—shock, and he snapped his mouth shut and jerked his head in the direction of the flat.

“Let’s get inside,” he said in an undertone, and even his voice was different: hoarser, deeper. He resumed walking at a brisk clip and flicked his cigarette end onto the tarmac with a careless grace Sirius had never witnessed in his partner before, squashing it neatly underfoot.

They made the journey in silence, Sirius blinking five times too often as if he might dislodge a lens from his irises or wake himself from an unsettling dream. But each time he opened his eyes, there was the back of Remus’s head a few paces in front of him, the familiar shape made foreign with streaks of grey. 

Finally, down three blocks and up a rickety flight of stairs that took twice as long as usual on account of Remus’s stiff limp, they reached their door where the black paint marking 4B was beginning to flake away. Still unsure whether or not he was sleepwalking, Sirius made to unlock it. But then Remus stepped around him so that his tall figure (just tall now, not the lanky proportions of a teenager) blocked the way. A straight arm leaned heavily across the doorframe, barring entry.

“Security questions, Sirius. Don’t you want to check that I’m really me?”

“Oh, you’re you all right,” Sirius growled in return. There was no one else on earth who could vex him like this. He made to step past Remus, but Remus didn’t budge, stubbled jaw set in a hard line. 

Sirius wasn’t intimidated, but the back of his neck prickled all the same. He was hyper-aware of the warm, smokey smell that clung to the dragonhide jacket and the sturdiness of Remus’s form crowding the doorway. Which was why he paused briefly on the threshold, nearly chest-to-chest with him, before he knocked the arm aside and jammed his key into the scratched and tarnished lock.

Remus reluctantly followed Sirius inside and, together, they cast the Order’s litany of security spells on the door. Finally ensconced in the privacy of their home with an uneasy silence pressing in around them, they both slowly lowered their wands and turned to face each other.

Sirius opened his mouth to demand answers.

“An Aging Potion,” Remus said quickly, before Sirius could get a word out. “I took a dose at four. It’ll wear off soon.”

“An Aging Potion.”

“Yes. It will wear off. I was only killing time until it did.” He pocketed his wand and took the keys from Sirius’s lax fingers, turning to hang them on the nail by the door.

“Why,” Sirius demanded.

“So you wouldn’t react like th—”

“No. Why did you take an Aging Potion?”

“Well, I… I needed to look older.”

“Moony, I swear to—”

“It’s nothing to get worked up about, Pads. I’m sorry for startling you, but it’s a harmless potion. Lacewings and birch bark and mugwort. We made it in fourth year, remember? I’m perfectly fine.”

“And the limp?” Sirius asked tightly.

Remus bent to roll up the left leg of his trousers and pulled out a rusty iron rod. “Just for effect,” he explained, as if that helped to clarify anything at all. The rod went on the dining table with a jarring clatter, followed by the tattered brown dragonhide jacket.

Sirius stared at them unblinkingly as Remus straightened out his shirtsleeves. There, heaped obscenely in front of them, lay artifacts of the secrets that had finally breached their safe haven. Wreckage of their fragile peace, still warm from Remus’s body heat. Sirius tore his eyes away from them before they burned his retinas. 

“What is this about?” he demanded. “Remus—why do you look like that?”

“It’s a disguise,” Remus croaked wearily, pulling a dining chair out from the table and sinking into it. “You’re familiar with the concept.”

“That is not a disguise. You just look… you’re completely recognisable.”

“Only if you already know me by sight. This suits our—my mission’s purposes just fine.”

Our. An ‘our’ that did not include Sirius. He felt his lips tighten over clenched teeth. “And what purposes are those?”

An exasperated huff. “Don’t do that. You know Dumbledore doesn’t want us discussing—”

“Oh, don’t get me started on Dumbledore,” Sirius cut him off, hot fury finally breaking through the choking mist of his confusion. “I’m done with Dumbledore. What’s he doing sending you on the kinds of missions where you need to be in disguise?! And what are you doing, going on them? We told him straight from the beginning: no spy business.”

“Please, Sirius, calm down. He doesn’t have me spying. It’s just a bit of… light infiltration.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘light infiltration’ with the Death Eaters, Remus!”

“Look—I can’t tell you about my mission, you know I can’t, but it’s a real opportunity to help people. All right? I can’t turn that down just because the circumstances are less than ideal.”

“What makes them less than ideal?”

“I’ve just told you, I can’t—”

“I know you’ve been meeting up with Dearborn.”

Sirius dropped the words between them like a grenade. When nothing exploded, when the walls didn’t crumble around them like they ought to have, he barrelled on. “I know the Prewetts have a new third team member. You disappeared for a full moon and came back halfway dead. Now Moody says there’s been a leak—you have to tell me what’s going on. You have to, Remus.”

Remus looked up at him, prematurely lined eyes rimmed in red. “Is this an interrogation?” he asked. And although his tone was mild, the question was undoubtedly a challenge. 

Never one to back down from a fight, especially lately, Sirius squared himself off to meet it. But then, as his shadow fell across Remus’s form, he became painfully aware of their positions: Remus, slumped on a lone wooden chair with Sirius towering over him, wand still in hand as he demanded answers. 

Remus was right. It was an interrogation, and a bitterly hostile one at that. Sirius deflated and pocketed his wand.

“No,” he sighed, settling into the opposite chair with his legs stretched out towards Remus. “No, Remus. I’m sorry.” He pressed his ankle to the side of Remus’s. Remus didn’t respond to the touch, but didn’t move away. He stared blankly at the woodgrain of the table as the wall clock ticked a sombre beat, punctuating the quiet as their shadows lengthened into spindly, periwinkle ghosts.

Across the table, Remus’s hair gradually began to darken. His features softened and narrowed until he was eighteen again, looking just as tired but twice as vulnerable as he had seconds before. And as much as it was a relief to see him as he ought to be, his soft loveliness only brought the ugliness of their situation into sharper relief.

Sirius breathed deeply, fiddling with the rings on his fingers, and decided on another approach. The one he should have led with from the beginning that came from a place of love instead of fear. The two were just so deeply entwined in him these days.

“I know Dumbledore has his rules for a reason,” he began again, tilting his head in a bid to get Remus to meet his eyes, “but they’re hurting more than helping us. He isn’t god. He can’t smite us down if we bend them for each other.” He took Remus’s hands, fingertips pressing over cracked and reddish knuckles. “If you love me—if you trust me, please tell me what you’ve been doing out there.”

Remus didn’t look up from his examination of the tabletop, but Sirius could see the way his eyebrows furrowed. “It’s not fair to ask like that,” he countered, a bitter edge to his voice. “With those… conditionals. Our relationship and the fight against Voldemort are entirely separate things.”

“Not for me,” Sirius said sincerely. “You know the reason I joined the Order. And I know what you do out there is your choice, but you and I are partners, which means that your life is very much tied to my future. And if you don’t make it back here one day, I don’t think I…” Sirius couldn’t finish the thought. He could only hope Remus had followed him to its conclusion and felt the same way. “It’s not separate. Your fate is my future as much as it is yours, love. Can’t you see that? Don’t you… don’t you feel the same?”

“Of course I do,” Remus said, finally looking up. “Every time you step out the door to go out on a raid, I have to imagine the rest of my life if you don’t come back to me. But that’s just the way of things right now, and I trust your and James’s judgement and talents to pull you through. Why can’t you have that same trust in me?”

“You don’t have your friends at your back like I do! You only have Dumbledore and your own self-sacrificing code of ethics, and that terrifies me. I do trust you, and I know you can hold your own, but I’m going mad with worry not knowing what it is you’re up against. We’re partners. We should be in this together. So please tell me you trust me enough to believe that I won’t compromise your mission by sharing whatever you tell me with anyone else.”

Sirius held his breath, frustrated that his Black temper was already rearing its head despite his intentions to remain calm.

“All right,” Remus said after long consideration. “All right. Of course I trust you. I’ll tell you. But... I’ll need another fag.”

“You don’t smoke,” Sirius croaked, watching as he reached for the jacket on the table and extracted a foreign carton from its pocket.

“It’s a recently acquired habit, but a terribly addicting one. Who knew?” Remus flicked a flame off the end of his wand with practiced ease and inhaled a mouthful of nicotine before sighing it out and continuing. “Everyone smokes in my crew. I’d stick out if I didn’t. And it’s easier to get people talking when they want to bum one of your posh European cigarettes, so Dumbledore foots the bill for them. Lucky me.”

“Remus, I swear on Godric’s grave—”

“Sorry. Right. Yes—I’ve been partnered with Caradoc. Dumbledore’s orders. And no, I don’t like it. But I promise, it’s much less risky than the assignments you and James go on. The mission’s a long job. It’s quite literally a job, in fact: I’m posing as a contractor at the security agency Caradoc works for.”

“Okay,” Sirius said when Remus paused, the cigarette finding his lips again. Anything involving Remus being alone with Dearborn felt much riskier than the quick raids he and James breezed in and out of, but he wasn’t going to interrupt Remus’s explanation to deal with that can of flobberworms.

“They’re fairly indiscriminate employers,” Remus continued with a shrug. “As you might imagine, given the marks on Dearborn’s record. Which makes them a useful network for getting in close with other… undesirables.”

“Werewolves,” Sirius finished for him through gritted teeth. He could kill Albus Dumbledore.

“Indeed. This might be the only job I’ll ever have where my condition actually helped me land the gig.” A corner of Remus’s mouth lifted in a mockery of a grin, and then it was gone again like the wisps of smoke floating from his fingers. “That’s where I was, by the way. On the full moon I missed with you. I didn’t know what excuse to tell you, so I just… went. I know it made you hate me a little. But the agency needed to watch me transform somewhere secure to verify that I am what I say I am before they’d sign me on. They like to keep a few werewolves in their crew for intimidation purposes, you see. Caradoc’s done jobs with a handful of them and has had some success getting them talking about their packs. Some, as Dumbledore suspected they might be, are joining forces with the Death Eaters.”

“Greyback’s pack?” Sirius asked. He wasn’t meant to know the name—Remus hadn’t wanted to tell him after Oxford—but James had said it, and of course Sirius remembered.

“Yes, definitely,” Remus sighed. “But I won’t be going anywhere near Greyback. He’s why I take the Aging Potion, though, just to be safe. Greyback might be expecting Dumbledore to use me at some point, but he’ll be expecting a seventeen or eighteen-year-old, fresh out of school. News of a mature, crippled werewolf joining up with a lesser pack won’t pique his interest. If any of my contacts talk about me, I sound like a damaged old stray, not worthy of Greyback’s time.”

“So you are aiming to join one of Voldemort’s packs, then. Does that mean you’ll be expected to hunt with them?”

“Absolutely not. I would never run the moons with a pack under Voldemort’s control. But if I can establish a foundation of trust, get a foot in with a few different packs and talk to their members who aren’t totally sold on Voldemort’s promises, maybe I can get some of them out before they’re forced to become the monsters he wants them to be. I can help them find someplace safe, even if they don’t want to join our side. That’s what I’m doing. Don’t you see? It’s not spying. It’s a rescue mission.”

“Mm. That’s very brave of you.”

“Thanks.”

“But if you happen to hear anything interesting while you’re talking to the packs, you’ll pass it along to Dumbledore?”

“Well... yes, of course.”

“Then the old man got exactly what he wanted,” Sirius said, mouth tasting of copper. “And so did Dearborn. A loyal spy. An obedient pet.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Pads,” Remus muttered.

“I’m not being dramatic! You’re being used!” Sirius fumed, restraint flying out the window. “We all are! Remus, what the hell? What am I even fighting for?!”

“What are you—? The same things as the rest of us! Stopping a tyrant, protecting the defenseless—what kind of a question is that?”

“Don’t mistake me for James,” Sirius huffed. “I’m not putting my life on the line out of the golden goodness of my Gryffindor heart. I made a deal with Dumbledore. A deal you seem intent on breaking—”

“That’s a choice you made! I never asked you to—it’s my fight. My life. I need to be able to choose what to do with it, where to risk it. And if you want to be a part of it, you need to accept that. Don’t you understand? There are things worth dying for!”

“I’m not going to let that happen!” Sirius was physically shaking with righteous anger. He worked to catch his breath. “Not to you.”

Remus’s indignant glare softened, just at the corners. “That’s not something you can control, Sirius. You don’t get to choose who lives and dies.”

Watch me, Sirius thought a bit madly. He pushed the wild thought to the back of his mind, which was filled with fractured images of their former headmaster and exiled professor.

“We told Dumbledore,” he seethed, not ready to let it go yet. “Straight off, James and I made it clear that we were joining under the condition that sending you to infiltrate the werewolves was not an option. Not even a year in, and that’s exactly what he has you doing. And he’s gone and partnered you with Caradoc Dearborn. The man who abused you under his watch, in his school.”

“That’s why the arrangement works, though," Remus insisted, remarkably calm. "Caradoc owes both Dumbledore and myself a debt. He’s magically bound to keep me safe, whether you like it or not. I don’t like it, but I’m mature enough to work around it. We’re just two people working towards a common goal. It’s not like he’s getting anything out of it.”

“You don’t think Dearborn sees this as a win? Holding your life in his hands? You’re off with him more than you’re here with me. I hardly see you these days, and now you come home looking like that and—and wearing his jacket.”

“Merlin’s beard, are you really jealous right now?”

“No. Yes. No—I just don’t trust the bastard, and it seems like you’re playing right into his hands.”

“I know what I’m doing. And there’s nothing—bloody—sordid going on. It’s just a lot of sitting in car parks and tailing random people for the agency. If we’re talking, it’s only so that the other werewolves we work with can overhear me complaining about lunar migraines or how little the Ministry’s invested in Wolfsbane. We’re not… there’s nothing happening there. How could you even think…”

Sirius covered his face with both hands, then dragged them down his neck. “I didn’t think you were doing anything with him. I just know that he’s… Moony, he’s…”

“I know. I don’t trust him either.”

They sat there a minute, neither attempting eye contact.

“Does he supply your potion?”

“No. I get it from an apothecary.”

“Is it safe for you to take it so often?”

“Harmless. I take a low dose. It only adds ten years.”

Sirius leaned back to look at him.

“You looked older than twenty eight.”

“Oh, Sirius,” Remus said, and faint crow's feet appeared at the corners of his eyes as he grinned a small, sad smile. “You didn’t think time would be kind to someone like me, did you? I fear you’ll find yourself disappointed in a few years.”

“I didn’t say you looked bad. You still looked like you. I just… wouldn’t have expected so much grey.” Silver-grey like the wolf’s thick coat. It was beautiful, but now wasn’t the right time to say so.

“Well,” Remus shrugged. “Maybe a lifestyle change will make a difference. Less stress, more salads.”

“Shut it. I don’t care about aesthetics. I… I just want to get to see you like that for real in ten years time. And greyer still. But you need to stay alive for that to happen, and I hate that I can’t control any of this.”

“That’s just the way things are for now,” Remus said gently. “I worry about you too, you know, when you’re out there throwing hexes. But we need to keep doing what we’re doing so this war can fucking end. And then we can settle down and worry about things like greying hair.”

Sirius reached over to take the forgotten cigarette before it burnt Remus’s fingers, brushing them lightly as he did and stubbing the smouldering end out on the table. He usually hated the smell, but something about the way it mixed with Remus’s scent had a heady effect.

“My hair won’t go grey,” he said eventually. He didn’t want to think about any of this anymore.

“Of course it won’t,” Remus agreed, placating.

They sat across from each other until the light faded from the window, then got up to turn on the lights and make dinner.

“What alias are you using?” he asked over the washing up later that night. "With Dearborn's crew."

“Just a normal name. It’s not important.”

“Tell me anyways?”

Remus paused drying the porcelain, thumbing the damp checkered flannel.

“White. John White.”

“White. That’s… that’s a nice name, Moons.”

“Yeah. I thought so.”

-

“His arm and his leg? How’d he make it out alive?” Peter’s eyes bulged over Lily’s toile patterned teacup, hovering forgotten in front of his gaping maw.

“Yeah,” Sirius sighed, thumbing the corner of his mouth. “The whole arm, right up to his shoulder, and half his leg. Had to cut it off just below the knee, I think. I’ve no idea how he managed to get out of the wreckage without the Death Eaters noticing him.”

“Merlin, that Kettleburn’s one tough nut,” James said grimly. “Who’d have thought? He always seemed kind of…” he teetered his splayed hand an inch off the table.

“James,” Lily admonished him. “He’s a hero.” She made her way around the table with a teapot, topping off their cups, and took the seat beside Peter’s.

James and Lily had finally moved into their own little cottage in Godric's Hollow. They were still mostly living out of boxes, but Lily had unpacked her mother's tea set on their first day there while James and Sirius were still moving in the wardrobes. She’d said it made the space feel more like a home, but to Sirius it had already felt like a second home the instant he walked through the door and saw James's smiling face there. It was the only place he felt at ease when Remus was out on assignment with Dearborn, which was far too often.

Peter shook his head, bewildered. “I mean… I guess he had some practice losing body parts. He was already missing half his fingers from those horrible occamys he tried to raise. Do you remember? I was impressed he could even manage to hold a wand afterward. What’s he going to do for the Order now? Was he working on anything important?”

“What’s he going to—he’s in a coma, Pete. He’s out.” Sirius rolled his eyes at James.

“Noted,” Peter muttered, clearly chagrined.

“They’ll probably just reassign his mission to somebody else for now,” Lily answered more kindly. “Don’t worry yourself about the Order.”

“Maybe if he survives, Dumbledore will let him stay on at Hogwarts,” James suggested, stretching for a silver lining like he always did. “As thanks for his sacrifice. Give him someplace nice to live and keep teaching Care of Magical Creatures. Not that he’ll be able to do much with the animals with only half his limbs—but it’s a useless enough subject anyways. You just leave out the right types of food and try not to let the horrid ones bite you.”

“Hah. Maybe. Speaking of horrid little beasties, I should see if Moony’s made it home,” Sirius said, getting to his feet. Remus had said it would likely be a late night for him, but Sirius was getting antsy and wanted to be there when he walked through the door. “Thanks for the tea, Lily.”

“Give Remus our love,” James and Lily said in tandem while Peter said, “Bye, then.”

Sirius waved, grabbed his jacket off the hook, and stepped out into the slate grey evening. It was always peaceful in Godric’s Hollow, even when the weather was shite. His motorcycle was parked just across the street, next to a thin young man wearing black velvet robes and—

Sirius whipped out his wand and cast an instinctive protego at James and Lily’s door behind his back.

“It's nice to see you too, brother,” Regulus drawled.

Chapter Text

He looks tired, was Regulus’s first thought when his brother stepped out into the street.

He hadn’t seen Sirius in nearly a year, watching from across the Great Hall as the Gryffindor seventh years left their table after the End of Year Feast. The two hadn’t exchanged goodbyes, well wishes, or indeed acknowledged each other in any way when their shared time at Hogwarts came to an end. And why would they have? They’d barely exchanged so much as a glance since the day Sirius left Grimmauld Place with nothing but the robes on his back and a mouth full of curses.

Now, Sirius was dressed like a muggle in black denim and a leather jacket. His hair was too long, his jaw stubbled, and the state of his clothes artistically unkempt. He appeared to be going for a rugged, roguish look—but his eyes, like they’d always done, gave him away. Beneath the shadow of his furrowed black brows, they were duller and more hollow than Regulus had ever seen them.

“What are you doing here?” Sirius demanded in lieu of a greeting, squaring off protectively in front of the Potters’ cottage. “How did you find this place?”

Regulus looked meaningfully down at the huge, gleaming motorbike on the tarmac and then back up at Sirius. “You’ve never exactly been one for subtlety. It would serve you well to learn how to apparate.”

Sirius ignored this (perfectly sound) piece of advice and stalked forward, his wand trained on Regulus’s chest. 

“What will it take to get you to leave?”

Regulus held his ground, hands loose at his sides. “I only want to talk,” he said, palms open and face a practiced mask of calm indifference.

“Fine,” Sirius bit out. “We’ll talk. But not here.”

“Where, then?”

“I don’t care. I’ll go anywhere, so long as you don’t take one step closer to that house.”

“Would you prefer the Norfolk seaside?” Regulus suggested casually, just for the sake of eliciting a reaction.

Sirius did not disappoint. He stiffened, clearly unsettled that Regulus knew where he and his special friend lived.

“No,” he said, voice quavering on the single syllable.

“Fine. Come along, then.”

Regulus grabbed Sirius’s wrist and twisted on the spot before he could respond or shoot off a hex. With a resounding crack, Godric’s Hollow’s twittering birdsong was replaced by the familiar, droning hum of London traffic.

Sirius wrenched free and whipped around in a frantic circle, eyes wide and wand outstretched, clearly expecting an ambush of masked assailants to descend upon him. Regulus watched, eyebrow arched, until he stopped spinning long enough to register his surroundings.

“This is…” Sirius trailed off, panting. His gaze landed on a swing set that had seen better days and he lowered his wand hand slowly. “Why did you bring me here?”

Satisfied that Sirius wasn’t about to bolt or start flinging curses, Regulus wandered along the little park lane to sit on a bench at the edge of the grass. Across the packed dirt pathway, a rusty carrousel creaked in the breeze. Two lifetimes ago, a nine-year-old Sirius had perched on the edge of it and patched up an eight-year-old Regulus’s knee with an improvised healing spell and a solemn promise not to tell.

“How many times do you think we managed to make it out here before they caught us?” Regulus wondered aloud. 

Sirius didn’t entertain the question, only repeating his own. “Why have you brought me here?”

“It was always you bringing me, before,” Regulus reflected rather than satisfying him with an answer. “You, leading the way. Me, your shadow.”

“You outgrew my shadow quickly enough.”

“That’s true.”

“Regulus, what the hell are—”

“This is the last place we were brothers,” Regulus interrupted without raising his voice. “I thought we might be brothers again. Just… for an afternoon.”

That seemed to put a stopper in Sirius’s increasingly agitated questioning. Until—“What do you want, Reg?”

Reg.

“I told you, only to talk.”

There was a brambly bush growing over the fence they used to scale to get in, Sirius jumping down first to catch Regulus on the other side. With a spontaneous twiddle of his wand, Regulus charmed the dry branches to sprout little purple flowers. Sirius startled at the movement but stayed rooted where Regulus’s apparition had deposited the both of them, watching through narrowed eyes.

“Sit down,” Regulus huffed. “For Morgana’s sake. Do you want me to have to yell?”

Sirius glowered a moment longer before striding to the far end of the bench. He sat down heavily with his arms folded over his chest, ebony wand still clutched in his fist.

“Talk,” he said gruffly.

Regulus hummed. “I’ve heard about your conduct on the proverbial battlefield,” he began conversationally. “You and James Potter. You both fight dirty, but they say you particularly enjoy the art of destruction. Causing pain.”

Sirius huffed. “Your Slytherin friends are cowards and liars. I’ve never even cast a Crucio.”

“No, you’ve always been more creative than that. But what you did to Macnair? Those burns are quite something. I wonder what his back will look like once they heal.”

“I… he got burnt running away. Cowards, just like I said. The lot of you.”

Regulus shook his head, breathing out a small laugh. “You’re no better than us, you know,” he reminded him gently. “We took different paths, you and I, landed on opposite sides, but we’ve always been the same.”

“You and I are nothing alike,” Sirius snarled.

“We both know that’s not true,” Regulus kept his voice gentle, bordering on consoling. “You’re every bit a Black, just like me. You’ve never been good for the sake of goodness—not like your Gryffindor friends. You were never nice. You played the part to fit in, but I saw you. I still know you. You’re just as self-serving, just as capable of sacrificing others to get what you want. That’s the only real difference between you and me: what we want.”

Sirius looked downright wrathful, the lines around his mouth harsh and twisted, but he didn’t even try to deny it. There was no point between the two of them.

“And what do you want, Reg? A world without muggles or muggleborns? To serve as a grovelling footman to a self-titled lord?”

“I only want what I’ve always wanted. What’s best for our family.”

“Hah. You’re still such a child. You never grew out of wanting Mummy and Daddy’s approval. Toujours pur? Toujours puéril.”

“And what wouldn’t you do for the Potters’ approval?” he countered. “Don’t try to tell me your own place in this war has nothing to do with your new, chosen family.”

Sirius ground his teeth. He used to do that when their parents caught him breaking the rules and he refused to fess up to his misdeeds.

“See? Still the same, you and I.”

Sirius pushed up from the bench, visibly agitated. “Right—if you’re here to try to convince me to join your side, you can forget it. Though I can’t imagine what gave you the idea that that would ever be possible.”

“I am not, I assure you. I don’t care about sides anymore.”

“You’re a Death Eater, Reg! Every time you put on that mask, you choose your side.”

Regulus sighed and rubbed his branded forearm. “Yes, I am bound to the Dark Lord. But Sirius… I need you to hear me when I tell you that your side cannot win. Not even if the Order of the Phoenix doubled, tripled in size. The way things are headed… we are rapidly approaching a stage where the Dark Lord cannot be stopped.”

“So it’s useless to try? To show up and fight for the side of good? I’m not going to—”

“Will you stop with your sanctimonious, bullheaded blathering!” Regulus finally snapped, “and just, for once in your life, listen.” He took a deep breath, recentering. “I have no intention of trading allegiances, but I cannot allow Voldemort to succeed. I cannot allow it.”

Sirius’s mouth snapped shut. His weary blue eyes bore into Regulus as he sank back onto the bench and waited for him to continue.

“Death Eater attacks are the least of your problems. Ah… well. Allow me to begin again. The phrasing’s a bit funny on that one. ”

Sirius only looked his confusion. He’d understand soon enough, the poor devil.

“The Dark Lord is conscripting dark creatures,” Regulus began again.

“I know,” Sirius cut in hotly. “The werewolf packs shouldn’t be a part of—”

“Please. The werewolves are nothing. Useful as a fear tactic, public discord, but little else. They’re only dangerous one night a month, and pack politics make them a pain to reason with. No, he’s investing in better weapons than those filthy mutts.”

Sirius made an offended noise, but Regulus would not be interrupted again.

“You’ve heard rumours of inferi,” he went on, voice raised a note, and tried his damndest not to picture the foetid carcasses he’d watched stir to life in the blackness of night. “The rumours are true, but they only touch the surface. Inferi, vampires, dementors. Body, blood, and soul. These are Lord Voldemort’s true death eaters. And he’s breeding them by the hundreds.”

-

Getting the passenger door to Caradoc’s battered grey Hyundai to close properly took practice, finesse, and a degree of grim faith. It began with a sharp upward yank in tandem with a firm, even tug, and then began the battle of coercing the latch to click into place. The trick lay in pressing a knee against the lower panel, then jiggling the handle in the approximate manner of a thief trying to break in. After several months of repetition, Remus could manage it on his first attempt perhaps sixty percent of the time. This wasn’t one of those times.

BAM. Rattle-rattle. Clunk. “Fuck’s sake.” Thunk. Screech—thunk. CLUNK. Rattle-rattle—

“Lupin.” An arm reached across Remus’s chest from the driver’s seat to press five fingertips against the door. “You’re making a ruckus.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Would you rather I left it open?”

“I’ll get it.”

Remus pressed his back deeper into the cracked leather seat while Caradoc leaned over to yank the handle in a motion that invariably worked for him but never for Remus.

The second the latch clicked, Remus shoved his arm aside. “Be more careful with my name, please. It’s ‘John’ in the field. ‘White,’ to you.”

Caradoc didn’t blink as he settled back into his seat. “There’s no one around to hear.”

“Then there’s no one to hear the door, either.”

“I doubt our employers would endorse that logic.”

Caradoc’s attention returned across the car park to the unmarked steel door he’d been monitoring for the better part of the evening, a bog standard job assigned by their security agency. The recessed entryway glowed thinly yellow in the fading evening light, a single bulb half-illuminating two figures guarding either side of the entrance.

The guards wore their collars high against the damp chill, hands fisted around wands concealed in their coat pockets. The one on the left, with a jagged scar bisecting his face, was a werewolf called Ridge. Remus had spent months building rapport with him one cigarette, one covered shift, one casual complaint about moon sickness at a time. They were getting paid to guard the anonymous contents of the room behind the door, but Ridge was Remus’s real objective. Him, two other wolves in the agency’s employ, and the insular packs they returned home to after each job.

“Morison looks like he’s about to fall over,” Remus murmured, noting the way the man on the right shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I put a gradual shrinking spell on his shoes. I’ll give it half an hour, then see if he fancies trading places with me in here. Should buy me at least an hour on door duty with Ridge.”

“Is he warming to you?”

“Difficult to say yet.”

“What would you say the odds are he’ll invite you to meet his pack before the next moon?”

“I don’t know. Don’t want to push it. The idea needs to come from him, not me.”

“See if you can’t nudge him in that direction tonight.”

Remus turned to look at Caradoc fully for the first time all evening. “Why the sudden rush?”

Caradoc didn’t answer straight away, his eyes still locked on their shivering colleagues. “I’m going abroad soon,” he said finally. “Can’t say how long I’ll be gone, but you might be on your own for a while.”

“You’re leaving the country? In the middle of everything?” The word ‘coward’ hung in the air between them, unspoken.

“I’m not running away. I’ve been given a new mission. Well, new for me.”

“Dumbledore’s reassigning you.”

“This was Moody’s call.”

“Is the Order giving up on the werewolves, then? Because—”

“No, no. Nothing like that. We lost an agent chasing a lead we can’t afford to let go cold, and apparently I’m the next best man for the job. I don’t have the details yet, but I couldn’t tell you more if I did. You know how this works.”

“Right.” Remus swallowed around the sudden dryness in his throat. “I’m on my own with the packs, then.”

“You’ll do fine. The wolves here like you well enough, and they look after their own. Moody thinks you’re ready, and so do I.”

“I’m not so certain I’ve won them over yet.”

“Sure, you have. What’s not to like?”

Caradoc’s tone was casual, but his eyes burned amber when they turned on Remus. The hairs on the back of Remus’s neck stood on end and he refused to return his gaze.

“You can’t say shite like that,” he said flatly to the dash.

“Relax. It was barely a compliment.” As ever, Caradoc remained smooth, unruffled. “You don’t need to get yourself worked up over every—”

“I’m going to go see if Morrison's ready to swap,” Remus cut across the condescension, unlocking the rickety door. “I’d like to get as much time in with Ridge as I can, considering.”

For the second time in five minutes, Caradoc’s arm pinned Remus to his seat as he grabbed the handle, his large hand closing over Remus’s.

“Stay a moment longer.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Remus.” Remus released a frustrated puff of breath. “John,’ then. I know you’ve every right to hate me. I don’t think you do, though. Not truly.”

Remus’s jaw clenched around protests that would only come out sounding juvenile. He pushed on the door’s handle, but Caradoc held it closed.

“We have a bond, you and I,” he continued, resolute. “Made of more than just magic. I’m not abandoning you, and I will always care for you. When I get back, we’ll continue to work on setting things right between us.” His hand dropped to Remus’s knee.

“No, we won’t,” Remus stated firmly. He gave the door another shove and it swung open with a metallic clunk. Remus unfolded himself into the damp evening air, then leaned back into the musty car and spoke quietly. “You’re deluded. That’s not what we’ve been doing here, ‘setting things right.’ Don’t mistake my commitment to our cause for personal grace. There is no ‘us’—there never should have been, and there certainly never will be again.”

“Well,”  Caradoc replied with a sage, patient grin. “Time will tell.”

Remus put his shoulder into slamming the car door shut so as not to have to look at his face a second longer. Miraculously, the door stayed closed this time, but Caradoc’s smile was seared into his retinas just the same as he stalked over to take Morrison’s place next to Ridge. 

-

The old carousel creaked in the evening breeze and dry leaves swirled around the Black brothers’ shoes.

“Breeding?” Sirius breathed. “Impossible. You can’t breed…” he trailed off, looking stricken.

“I never put much thought into why Voldemort chose such a peculiar name for his followers,” Regulus mused while Sirius collected himself from whatever thought he’d drifted off to. “‘Death Eaters.’ Not very discreet. But that is his vision for his perfect army: consumptive grims, hungry for death itself. Merciless creatures that drain the life out of your neck, suck the soul from your mouth. Untainted by motivations like politics, wealth, or bloodlines. Dementors don’t discriminate between the innocent and guilty, muggle and magical. Inferi can’t tell a man from a dog, let alone a pureblood from a halfbreed. And why should vampires care about blood status when, to them, all blood is food? What do you suppose will happen once they outnumber us two to one?”

Sirius blinked back to the present. “Carnage,” he said blankly. “Statute of Secrecy blown. Chaos.”

Regulus nodded once. “Albus Dumbledore and Alastor Moody are wasting their scant resources fighting pointless battles,” he said, leaning forward to force Sirius to meet his eye. “Meanwhile, Voldemort is working to make himself unkillable and raising a soulless army, right under their noses. So many noble lives, lost in vain.”

“No. No, you… you’re lying. You only want to divert our efforts.”

“Oh, Sirius. Would that I were, but you know that I’m not. I’ve never been able to fool you. You taught me how, so you’ve always known when I’m lying.”

Again, Sirius didn’t bother retorting. He’d known Regulus wasn’t lying before he’d accused him of it. It had only been a vain, desperate hope.

“Have you seen them?” Sirius croaked after a spell.

Rotted flesh and staggering corpses with peeling, reaching hands flashed behind Regulus’s eyelids. He blinked them away, took a deep breath, and tilted his chin up towards the darkening sky. Stars were starting to appear, and he could imagine the familiar shapes of constellations branching between them.

“Yes, I have. And so have you. The fog that persists, whatever the temperature? Dementors, multiplying around decay. He has followers tasked with sowing it and collecting them once they… coagulate.” He’d been given that task early on and hadn’t felt properly warm since.

“And the vampires,” Sirius pressed on reluctantly. “Is he turning people, or are they…” he seemed to rake his memory for a word and landed on, “progeny?”

“Dhampir,” Regulus told him. “They’re called dhampir, the children of vampires. Born underground, in old castle dungeons. He has six breeding castles that I know of, all in Eastern Europe. And they’re quite literally packed to the rafters, last I heard. They can fly, you see. Like bats.”

Fear and recognition flashed in Sirius’s eyes. “A cursed mingling of beast and babe,” he recited beneath his breath.

“I’ve not seen them myself,” Regulus admitted. “If I had, I doubt I’d be here to tell the tale. Unlike their parents, they don’t leave scraps.”

“How does he plan to control them? Keep them from hunting his followers?”

“He doesn’t.”

“But—”

“You’re still thinking in terms of sides,” Regulus interrupted, growing impatient. “This will only make sense once you understand that the Dark Lord is mad, and that his promises to us purebloods were hollow from the start. Pandering to old families like ours served him because of our position in the Wizarding World, but he doesn’t recognize our birthright to lead it. He only values our power, not our purity.”

Sirius leaned back, the horror on his face hardening into something colder, an expression reminiscent of their father’s. “Of course I know he’s mad. We all do. It was you who refused to see it: you pureblood supremacists who wanted that extra ounce of power so badly, you sold everything you had to a monster. And even now, you can’t stop singing the same tune. Birthright and purity. My wolf-bitten arse.”

“Please, Sirius. Don’t let your anger derail you. I won’t get into this argument with you now—this is bigger than our political leanings. There’s no point in politics when everyone’s dead.”

“Then leave! It’s not too late. Join the Order and help us bring an end to this madness.”

“No. I’m exactly where I need to be. There’s something I need to take care of from the inside, and the House of Black is protected by our fealty for now. Those closest to Voldemort will last the longest, before his undead come to consume us all.”

Sirius covered his face with shaking hands, like by not looking he could make it all disappear. Like they were six and seven playing hide and seek in the secret park near their house, and when he opened his eyes both Regulus and his terrible news would be gone. 

Ready or not, brother.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Sirius finally rasped through the gap between his palms.

“As I said, I’ve only ever wanted what is best for our family. Whether that aligns with their beliefs is, at this point, immaterial. I only want to keep them alive.”

He’d meant what he told Sirius at the start. Despite the paths they’d taken, the two of them were the same. They would do anything for their respective families. The only real difference was that, for Regulus, his family would always include Sirius.

Regulus stood. “Tell Albus Dumbledore and Alastor Moody to stop wasting their time and start assembling experts on dark creatures. Dig up the dead and burn the bodies. Clear out the bogs and demolish the castles. Then, at least, you’ll only have the Dark Lord himself to contend with.”

By the time Sirius dragged his hands from his face, Regulus was gone—off to see about a necklace.

-

Sirius was wearing a hole into the rug on Dedalus Diggle’s sitting room floor with his pacing. Dumbledore had been holed up in the Diggles’ guest room for over an hour, entrenched in a meeting about Merlin-knew-what with Sirius-couldn’t-care-less-whom. McGonagall, who had been on her way into the room when he arrived, had strictly forbidden Sirius from interrupting their meeting. He’d complied out of seven years’ ingrained habit, but there was no chance that whatever they were discussing was more important than Sirius’s news.

Sirius had spent the days following Regulus’s appearance in a kind of paralysis. He’d barely slept, eaten, or spoken to anyone, including Remus. He knew he needed to pass Regulus’s information along, but doing so would mean admitting that there might be truth in his brother’s story. And if what Regulus had said was true, then all of their sacrifices had been for nothing and the battles ahead would be unthinkably grim. Sirius couldn’t stomach the idea, let alone speak it into reality.

It would, of course, be up to Dumbledore and Moody to determine whether or not to believe Regulus’s news and plan accordingly. But they had been unreachable by the time Sirius had worked up the nerve to pick up his quill and send out an owl, so he had needed to resort to tracking them down via word of mouth. Which was how he wound up in suburban Bristol, glowering at an oil painting of geese every time he passed it on his journey up and down the Diggles’ runner.

Dedalus, from his nervous perch on the couch, cleared his throat and offered Sirius a cuppa for the fifth time. Sirius had been about to tell him he could choke on a tea bag when he stopped and changed his mind mid-step.

“Actually—yes thanks, Dedalus,” he said, turning on the spot. “And a sandwich would be great, if it’s not too much trouble.”

As soon as Dedalus scampered off to assemble lunch, Sirius pulled out his wand.

“Permeare,” he whispered, pointing it at the locked door.

Instantly, the sounds of the meeting poured through as clearly as if the door was wide open.

“—anything at all in his personal files?” a low, familiar male voice was saying. Papers shuffled on a table.

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” McGonagall’s crisp brogue answered. “I’ve gone through every correspondence in his office and private quarters. I’ve even searched around the pens and stables for hidden scrolls or journals, but he never was one for writing things down.”

“I’d like to talk to the healers again. The fact that they won’t even entertain reversing his coma for a single conversation—”

“I already told you, Caradoc.” Dumbledore, stern. “Silvanus has already sacrificed more than enough for us. I will not risk his life unduly if St Mungos has any reservations regarding his recovery.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate to have the coordinates from his portkey orders.” That was McGonagall again. “The where is paramount. It will be your job to report back on the who, what, and why.”

“But these locations have to have been random meeting points. An island on the Danube," tap, "a forest in Albania," tap, "some ruins in Croatia—" tap. "Was he really chasing something big, or was he—”

“Cheese and pickle sound all right?” Dedalus called out from the kitchen. Sirius hastily lifted his spell from the door and the sitting room fell quiet again.

“Yeah, cheers,” Sirius called back, mind whirling. The impact of what he’d just overheard had his skin tingling, but he didn’t yet understand why. His heart was jumping, but his mind was still piecing it together.

There had been a name… ‘Silvanus.’ Sirius didn’t recognize it, though he suspected he’d heard it before. Dearborn wanted to speak to someone in a coma, someone whom Dumbledore said had already sacrificed…

Kettleburn. Of course, Professor S. Kettleburn, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher who had just lost two limbs in a Death Eater attack.

Sirius accepted a porcelain plate and teacup from Dedalus with a vague mumble of thanks. He chewed on a triangle of bread, tasting nothing.

Kettleburn hadn’t left behind notes on his mission, but according to McGonagall they had been able to trace his used portkeys. The Danube River, Albania, and Croatia. Eastern Europe, essentially.

Vampire country.

'He has six breeding castles that I know of, all in Eastern Europe,’  Regulus's voice echoed in Sirius’s head. 'They’re called dhampir, the children of vampires. Born underground, in old castle dungeons.'

Sirius had poured over Remus’s Folio Bruti while waiting for Remus to come home the night of that conversation. He had reread the passages on inferi, dementors, and vampires until every word and illustration was burned into his memory. He could still picture the winged cherub inked above the section on vampyric offspring.

‘This misbegotten progeny, yclept dhampir, beareth none of its sire’s frailties in its tender years, wherein it is most fell and dreadsome. In youth, such a creature may take the guise of bat, rat, wolf, or some cursed mingling of beast and babe, and shall, with wicked hunger, devour both flesh and blood of its hapless prey, leaving naught behind—no husk wherein the blight of vampyrism might take root.’

Kettleburn, the only magical creature expert in the Order of the Phoenix, had been investigating suspicious activity in vampire country, wherein Voldemort had taken six castle ruins as breeding grounds. And now, Caradoc Dearborn was being sent off to retrace his footsteps with no idea what lay at the end of the path.

The door at the end of the hall opened, startling Sirius into dropping the plate he’d forgotten he was holding. The sandwich was gone, though he didn’t remember eating it. Crumbs and shards of china scattered across the rug to land at the hem of Albus Dumbledore's ornately embroidered robes.

“Reparo,” Dumbledore said easily, and the repaired plate flew into his old, bony hand. “Hello, Mr Black. Minerva tells me you wanted a word?”

Sirius’s eyes darted past Dumbledore’s shoulder to Dearborn, whose profile was just visible through the open door of the guest room. He appeared to be sorting through notes spread across a table.

“Sirius?” Dumbledore asked, concern flashing beneath his half-moon spectacles.

“Er, sorry,” Sirius recovered hastily. “No, sir. There’s nothing—nothing that can’t wait.” His heart was pounding like he’d sprinted pell-mell to the decision he’d just made.

Dumbledore hovered a moment longer, but with a hundred other pressing matters to attend to, moved around Sirius to thank Dedalus for the use of his home.

Sirius drifted down the hall to the guest room, murmuring a greeting to Professor McGonagall as she passed him, his eyes locked on Dearborn’s shadowy outline.

Dearborn’s wavy hair was a mess compared to the neatly gelled style he usually wore. A pair of smudged reading glasses were slipping toward the end of his nose as he leaned over a jumble of parchment, maps, and scrolls. He only looked up from the table when Sirius stopped in the doorway, blonde eyebrows climbing up his forehead.

“Hello, Professor,” Sirius said after a moment.

They were the first words Sirius had spoken to him since before Dearborn had been sacked from Hogwarts. They’d crossed paths at Order meetings before, but Remus had repeatedly begged him not to start anything. Sirius could never find words to convey the depths of his disdain anyways, so relegated himself to glaring.

“How can I help you?” Dearborn asked evenly, like Sirius had just popped by for office hours.

“You’re travelling somewhere?” Sirius asked instead of answering.

“Ah. Remus told you.” Dearborn took off his glasses, polishing the lenses and sticking them in his breast pocket. “He’ll do fine without me for a spell. He’s more than capable on his own.”

“I know he is. I’d say he’s better off.”

Dearborn made an unimpressed sound and returned to organising his papers. “Please remind Remus not to discuss our mission with his friends. It's important these matters remain confidential.”

“He didn’t tell me anything. You’re looking at a map of Europe.”

Dearborn’s neck flushed red beneath his collar, but he otherwise hid his embarrassment well. “So I am.” He began to roll up the map, then hesitated and flattened it back out on the table. “You must have unique insights, growing up in the House of Black. Do these locations mean anything to you?” He indicated six areas marked in red.

Sirius peered at the map. Bavaria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania... He could picture moss-covered castles sitting innocently in wait and hear hungry, inhuman cries.

He should tell him. Dearborn was a skilled wizard and a valuable member of the Order of the Phoenix. Time was running out, and the Order needed to know about the dark army Voldemort was rearing. But Sirius was staring into the face of Remus’s abuser. Caradoc Dearborn was smug, dangerous, and all too keen to return to his partner’s side.

“No,” Sirius lied smoothly. “Enjoy your trip.”

-

Sirius fell into Remus’s arms that night with a manic passion. He was surprised when Remus matched his fervour, knocking over the coat rack as they staggered backwards into Sirius’s room.

Remus had been withdrawn lately, which Sirius now understood was because Dearborn would be leaving him alone with the werewolves soon. Remus was nervous but trying to suppress it. Merlin, Sirius loathed that man. He deserved whatever was coming his way.

“It’ll be okay,” he promised Remus out of the blue between kisses. Remus only made a throaty noise in response, more focused on exploring Sirius’s clavicle.

Sirius pressed the heat of his conviction into Remus's mouth, pushing in with the same tongue that had withheld Regulus's warning. His nails scraped a large X across the span of Remus's pale back, signing his decision in red.

Afterwards, Sirius felt strangely dirty with Remus dozing peacefully on his chest. He knew, logically, that his hands were clean. He hadn’t done anything. He didn’t even know if Regulus’s intel was legitimate. And if Dearborn did happen to fall prey to a nest of carnivorous babes in some remote corner of Eastern Europe—well, his blood wouldn’t reach Sirius’s conscience.

But Mrs Potter’s copy of My Cousin Rachel sat beneath a plate of biscuit crumbs on his bedside table, and he rolled his head sideways to stare at its creased spine. It had served as a portkey for James once. Now, it transported Sirius back in time to that same room above a pub in the Cotswolds. 

Sirius was sprawled out on a rickety twin bed with his feet on Remus's lap, thumbing through the first few pages of the book to while away the time.

“This reads a bit grim for a romance,” Sirius muttered.

“I told you, it’s more of a murder mystery than a love story,” Remus said. “Well, murder-by-proxy. Which is as good as the same thing, really. But read to the end, and then we’ll discuss.”

Chapter Text

A lone figure streaked through the woods, grey robes billowing behind him. 

Bare, ivory-limbed trees crowded his passage. What centuries before had been a fine road now barely served as a footpath through the undergrowth, disappearing beneath swathes of brambles every few metres. 

The trail dipped and stretched down towards a shallow, overgrown glen. At its heart sat the crumbling remains of a castle slowly succumbing to the earth’s reclaiming. In its time, the fortress had stood tall and proud, a gleaming beacon of prosperity. Now, only the sloping skeleton of it remained: toppless turrets thick with lichen, rubblestone strewn at its feet.

The closer he drew, the louder the man’s footsteps contrasted with the unnatural silence hovering over the surrounding forest. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, not a single leaf daring to whisper with its neighbour. Only one other sound cut through the petrified air: the wretched, hungry cries of frightened children.

The desperate voices rang out from beneath the ruins, their piercing sharpness barely dampened by the mossy stone walls. The wailing seemed to fuel the man’s determination to reach them, each wordless cry spurring him on faster, his heroic focus leaving him blind to the shimmering haze of dark magic blanketing the glen.

Reckless and brave, the man plunged past the collapsed perimeter walls and into the castle’s jagged maw. 

The cacophony of hungry cries rose to a fever pitch.

On and on he pressed into the hungry shadows, running, running towards the point of vanishing, until his figure was only a pale speck swallowed by leathery wings.

“Sirius. Are your hands clean?”

Sirius’s eyes snapped open. The living room ceiling’s white flatness confused his retinas after the forest’s rich green terrain.

“Wh—what?”

Remus stepped into his line of view from the couch. He was sporting a striped apron tied around his middle, the sleeves of his jumper bunched at his elbows and flour-covered hands held up in front of him like a surgeon’s.

“I could use a hand with dinner, if you don’t mind. Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no,” Sirius fibbed, pushing up from his reclined position on the cushions. “Just—give me a second. I’ll be right there.”

Remus grinned his thanks and turned back towards the kitchen. 

Sirius looked down at the pale hands trembling in his lap. He pressed their heels into his eye sockets, trying to blot out the lingering images from his dream. Except that he knew, down in his magical core, that it hadn’t been a dream at all.

He stood and crossed to the hall bathroom to splash cold water on his face. 

Are your hands clean?

The scalding water didn’t turn the sink’s cracked porcelain red as it swirled down the drain, but still he scrubbed them for a long time.

When he finally turned off the tap and stepped back into the living room, he found Remus by the stove, drying off his own hands with a tea towel and watching him with a faint, considering line between his brows.

He asked a question, a string of words that didn’t make the journey from Sirius’s ears to his brain. Sirius nodded, hoping it had been a yes-or-no matter, then set about trying to make himself useful in the kitchen—wiping down the butcher block, stirring something simmering in a pot, moving mechanically through the motions.

Remus was chopping scallions in a slow, steady rhythm. He did everything that way. Thoughtful, unhurried, head bent in quiet concentration. Sirius sidled into the space behind him, suddenly needing his warmth. He lifted a hand to rest on Remus’s shoulder, but his whole body froze before it landed.

Sirius. Are your hands clean?

They weren’t. They weren’t. They were stained with Caradoc Dearborn’s still-warm blood, and he couldn’t tarnish Remus with them. He shouldn’t be in this kitchen, spoiling a meal he had no stomach for, lying by omission every minute he kept his mouth shut.

His palm hovered inches above the patched fabric of Remus’s jumper, quivering in the air.

He couldn’t. He choked out a vague excuse (‘headache, early night—’) and left Remus to the affair of dinner on his own.

-

Remus shouldn’t be surprised. He wasn’t, really. He’d always known this would happen; he’d just thought he’d have more time. 

Sirius was pulling away. It was happening right before Remus’s eyes, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. 

It had been foolish, wishful, childish thinking. Selfish, too, to hope that the war would hold them together. That if their home was their one safe space to hide from the chaos, if Sirius wasn’t going out and meeting other people, Remus would get to keep him for himself for a while. But that wasn’t how love worked. Was it? He supposed he didn’t really know.

How could he know? Caradoc certainly hadn’t taught him. And he hadn’t found any answers on the lake with Bertram. His parents’ love had smelled like fear for as long as he could remember. And his own love for Sirius felt like… Hunger. Starvation. The urge to bite. A need to claim and be claimed and—Everything always led back to the wolf in the end. It was the horrible, repetitive story of his life. 

What did a caged beast know about love? Longing, yes. But love? Remus couldn’t rightly ask for something he himself didn’t understand. But what was he meant to do? Sit back and wait for it to fade entirely? Keep his head down and hope Sirius would hang around for a few more weeks, months, years? Could his animal hunger subsist on crumbs alone? Could his human pride bear it?

The smart thing to do would be to clear out and find a new place before Sirius left first. It was, he reasoned, the cleanest and easiest way forward. For the both of them, but mostly for Sirius, who wouldn’t be haunted by Remus’s absence in their flat the way Remus would be by his.

But Remus was a coward. He had learned early in life not to question what he was given, be it an esteemed education or a group of stalwart friends. So when Sirius withdrew his touch, Remus didn’t chase after it. When he heard Sirius pacing around the living room in the middle of the night, he didn’t get out of bed to ask what thoughts troubled him. And when Sirius stiffened beneath his kisses, he abstained from pressing them, even chastely, to his cheek or temple, fearful that the next time he tried, Sirius would tell him to stop.

Things were easier around friends, who either didn’t know the details of their relationship or politely pretended they didn’t. The extra distance between them felt natural then, and there were no affectionate gestures to miss in a space where there never had been any to begin with. Lily and James’s back garden wedding was easily the most joyous evening they’d had in months. They laughed and drank and planted kisses on their friends’ cheeks, cheering for the happy couple as they cut into Euphemia’s chantilly cake and danced their first dance as husband and wife. Remus hung back when the camera came out, not because he was avoiding proximity to Sirius, but because that’s what he always did. And when Peter suggested casting a slightly unkind spell on the back of Petunia Evans’s dress (after she’d loudly whispered that Lily’s was tight around her middle), both Remus and Sirius contributed their own subtle flairs to perfect the image. Along with James and Lily, they’d fallen onto each others’ shoulders in fits of laughter behind the champagne tower as Petunia obliviously paraded their handiwork about.

Remus and Sirius had apparated back to their flat (foolishly, because they’d never learned and were far too tipsy to attempt it) at half-one in the morning, still glowing from the Potters’ deluge of love and cheer. They hazily remembered to check that they hadn’t splinched any fingers, nails, or eyebrows, snickering all the while. Then they paused beneath the hall light, eyes locking for a moment, and the smile that had lit Sirius’s face all day fizzled away like bubbles at the bottom of a champagne glass.

He took a half step backwards, then another, until the heel of one of his shiny black leather shoes bumped the baseboard of their narrow hallway. His back thudded softly against the wall, followed by his magnificent head, gaze tilted down his straight nose so that his eyes never lost contact with Remus’s.

“Tonight was nice,” Remus murmured after a minute’s impasse.

“Yeah.”

“James got the girl.”

“He did.”

“Always the best of us, our Prongs.”

“Mm. Not anymore.”

“No? Who, then?”

“Lily. She’s a Marauder now.”

Remus chuckled quietly and moved to mirror Sirius’s posture against the opposite wall. He was still pleasantly tipsy, but not enough to ignore the way Sirius’s unblinking stare made his stomach squirm. He undid his tie just to give himself something to do, glancing up at Sirius once the knot was loose.

“Want me to do yours?” he asked, raising the barest corner of an eyebrow.

Sirius didn’t answer. He didn’t even bother to shake his head. He might have been a statue for how perfectly still he remained leant there, watching Remus as if he was part of a scene in a pensieve. Not cold, exactly, but detached. Maybe even a touch wistful.

“Okay,” Remus said after a long moment. “Just an offer. Night, Sirius.”

Hearing his name seemed to shake Sirius out of the strange, liminal state he was in. He pushed off the wall and opened his mouth, but apparently changed his mind about whatever he was going to say. He closed it with a grimace, averting his eyes and pulling agitatedly at the royal blue silk knotted around his own throat.

They slipped out of their ties and waistcoats in silence and retired to their respective rooms with only a broken and belated ‘Goodnight, Remus’ passing through their flimsy shared wall.

There were other nights, however—rare, magical ones that burned like shooting stars—when Sirius was more brazenly passionate than he’d ever been with Remus. Desperate, even, the way he cupped his face and worshiped the freckles beneath his hands. Remus wondered if that was why he stayed. If Sirius needed an outlet for the bloodlust that distilled into regular lust when he wasn’t out fighting Death Eaters. On those precious nights, he would regard Remus with a fierce urgency, and Remus would get the feeling that he was about to say something crucially important. But then Sirius would whisper senseless adoration into Remus’s skin, promising he’d do anything for him. Saying, again and again, that he always had and always would keep him safe.

‘Anything for you, Moony. Anything. I’d do it again. For you, love…’

It was hot-blooded nonsense, of course. Words and sentiments that evaporated in the morning light. But Remus wanted them all the same, so he played along and pretended not to see the chasm stretching between them. Because even when it wasn’t enough, it was infinitely better than nothing at all.

And because it was Sirius.

Sirius Black, with his effortless looks and aristocratic grace and sharp, sometimes cruel mouth. Sirius, who had been Remus’s first confidant in their first year at Hogwarts, who had gotten a black eye for him in their third year, and who followed through on an impossible promise in their fifth. Who had broken an even bigger promise in that same year, but whom Remus had forgiven straight away because being without him was unthinkable, even then. Sirius was Remus’s everything, and whether that was fair or insane or masochistic didn’t even matter. The point was moot. Remus would always choose Sirius.

But it remained up to Sirius whether or not he would continue to choose Remus. So when, one Saturday morning after a silent breakfast of tea and toast, Sirius slung a large rucksack over his shoulder and told Remus he was leaving, Remus simply responded, “I understand.”

He laid the morning paper down with stoic deliberation and sat very still at the living room table, waiting and listening for what would come next. He kept his eyes fixed on his empty mug, deciding that he’d rather not watch. He didn’t want to be stuck replaying the sight of Sirius’s back as the door swung shut behind it.

The ringing silence that followed lingered for a second too long. Then Sirius’s clipped voice said, “I meant I’m leaving for James’s. To help him build a—what do you mean, ‘I understand’?”

“Oh,” Remus said numbly, stupidly. “I—nothing. Say hullo for me.”

“Remus.”

“No, it’s—”

“Is there something we need to talk about? Do you honestly think I’d—” Sirius laughed a bit hysterically, eyes bright with indignation, and pushed a hand through his hair. He let the bag fall from his shoulder with a metallic clank. Tools, Remus realized. The enchanted set Fleamont had gifted him for tinkering with his bike.

“No, I just—I mean, I would understand if you decided to… leave. Of course I would. That’s your right. But I was only—”

“Don’t. Please.” Sirius sank into the seat across from him, deflating into a pile of defeat. “Merlin’s beard, after everything—”

“No, look, I’m sorry—”

“—how did I manage to cock things up this badly? I’m sorry, Moons. I know I haven’t been… I’m sorry. Truly. But you have to know: I would never.”

Remus smiled wanly. “You don’t have to promise me that, Padfoot. It’s fine if you ever decide… it’s fine.”

“How would that be fine?!” And oh, Sirius was beautiful in his incredulity. Eyes brighter than Remus had seen them in weeks, thin nostrils flaring with the shake in his voice. “Are you really saying you’d be fine with it? Fine without me?”

What a daft question. Of course he wouldn’t be. Left on his own, Remus would become a shell of a man. A hollow vessel for the wolf, the shuddering pain the moon left in its wake, and a fistful of dusty old memories. But admitting that would only make it that much worse when Sirius moved on, so he said nothing.

“Remus. You’ve decided I’m going to leave you one day, is that it?”

Remus bit the insides of his cheeks.

“Gods, Moons. If you knew how much I… what I’ve… I would do anything for you. Give anything to keep you.” Sirius sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How can I make you believe me? Why is ‘I love you’ never enough?”

Dark, shameful bruises bloomed where Sirius’s words landed. The sight of his downturned mouth reminded Remus’s own of how desperately it missed the feeling of Sirius’s lips, and it opened before his brain could step in to overrule it. Messy, inadequate words spilled out before he could catch them.

“Pads—no. Of course it’s enough. More than enough. More than I deserve—which is why I don’t expect you to promise me forever. Right now—as long as you’ll have me—is enough.”

Sirius huffed an impatient dismissal, hands falling to the table with a thud. “That’s bollocks. If this boils down to you believing you’re some sort of undeserving ‘monster’ again…”

Remus resisted the urge to recoil, his pride smarting at Sirius’s derisible tone.

“Don’t say it like that, please. Like it’s some childish notion.”

“But it is! You turn into a wolf one night a month, and it’s fine. It’s always been fine. You never hurt anyone but yourself. And me, when you act this way. No, don’t shake your head, I’m serious. You turn into a wolf, and it hurts, and I know you hate it, but it’s beautiful. The rest of the time, though, it’s just you—trapped up in your thick, stubborn head.” 

“All right, Sirius. Let’s table it. I don’t expect you to understand.”

Sirius stared at him long and hard. There was something steely in the blades of his irises, something new Remus hadn’t seen there before.

“No,” Sirius said after a while, “I do.”

Remus dropped his gaze and made to get up. Difficult. That, at least, was still familiar. 

Sirius caught his hand before it left the tabletop, fingers clutching Remus’s like a lifeline.

“You think you’re the only one battling his demons?” he entreated, voice strangely hoarse. “You don’t know how much I understand. You’re not the only monster in this house, Remus.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Remus muttered, intent on putting the kettle on and pretending this mortifying conversation never happened. 

Sirius’s hand tightened around Remus’s when he tried to extricate himself. “You saw it in fifth year,” he insisted. “That night I decided to play that stupid joke on Snape. I let it out, only for a moment. But that’s all it takes, isn’t it? A single bite, a few words before dinner. One impulsive decision, a few seconds off the leash, is all it takes.”

Remus shifted, unnerved. “I’m sorry, I… don’t follow.”

“No,” Sirius agreed softly, his thumb tracing the greenish veins on the back of Remus’s hand. “No, how could you? You put everything you have into controlling your darkness. Keeping it muzzled. You turn its claws against your own flesh so it can never get out to harm another human being. If, after all your years suppressing it, you’re still a monster, then I… I, who, of my own volition—”

Sirius rose suddenly, as if snapping out of a trance, and dropped Remus’s hand. The next moment he’d circumvented their rough little table in two long steps and was wrapping himself around Remus’s surprised torso, curling his shoulders to bury his forehead into the crook of Remus’s neck.

“I would do anything for you, Remus,” he promised, his warm breath tickling the skin above Remus’s shirt collar. “Anything but leave. Not unless you made me. You wouldn’t, though. I know you. I know you.”

The words carried the same tone as the heady nonsense Sirius was prone to whispering on the midnights they made love. Remus found himself stroking Sirius’s hair, a reflexive habit.

“Even if you saw the beast in me, you’d stay, wouldn’t you?” he went on, quiet and underenunciated like he was talking to himself. “Just like I stayed the first night I saw the wolf, even though you told me I had to go. Do you remember, Moony? Do you remember any part of that night? When we ran together for the first time and it was like time stopped existing. Like there was nothing but the forest and stars and the endless night. Some days I wish we could live forever in that night. But I didn’t have you then, and I can’t not have you. Even with everything that’s happened between then and now, I wouldn’t go back to a time before I could kiss you. Is that unforgivably selfish, Moony?”

He leaned back, finally, to look at Remus, but didn’t seem interested in hearing an answer.

“No,” he said before Remus could even try to construct a response, “I already know I’m selfish. Always have been. And I’m not asking for anyone’s forgiveness—not for anything—so really, what’s the point?” He laughed then, manic, and let go of Remus. He stepped back, grinning joylessly, and scooped up his bag.

“I promised James I’d stop by,” he announced loudly, as if he hadn’t just monologued like a madman. “He and Lily are building a cradle. I’ll be back, though, so don’t get it in your head that it’s time to go out and start a new life on your own.”

“A cradle?” Remus echoed a stupified beat later, but it was too quiet and too late. The door to 4B clicked shut behind Sirius, boots thudded on the stairway, and the sound of a revving engine filled the street below. The electricity Sirius left behind him lingered in the air with a hair-raising charge.

Releasing a slow breath, Remus let his gaze drop down to the newspaper he’d forgotten on the table. ‘Closing Down Sale at Brood and Peck - ALL CREATURES NEED GOOD HOMES.’ He flipped it over and the daily obituary spilled over six long columns covering the back page.

He ran a hand over his face and made to stand, deciding he should probably send James an owl warning him of Sirius’s strange mood, when a name at the foot of the second obituary column caught his eye. His knees turned to jelly beneath him and he collapsed back into his chair, two shaking fists crumpling the Prophet’s margins as he held it up to the light.

-

Caradoc Dearborn was officially declared dead two months after he disappeared. No body, no wand, no trace. Just his name printed in the ever-growing obituary section of the Daily Prophet on an unremarkably grey Saturday.

In the weeks since Dearborn’s departure for the continent, five seemingly unrelated events had taken place. Alastor counted them on his callused fingertips, tapping them rhythmically on the head of his walking stick as he made the tiresome trek to Albus Dumbledore’s office.

One. An anonymous owl had delivered a warning directly to Order headquarters detailing Voldemort’s plans for a new, macabre army. Alastor and Albus had deployed the Prewett boys to investigate the suspicious intel’s veracity, and the typically chipper lads had returned with haunted eyes and grim confirmations of hollow graveyards and dementors multiplying in marshlands. This information would change everything about the nature of the battles to come, and they were only just beginning to realize how unprepared they were to face them.

Two. An underaged Death Eater had been pulled, soaking and shaking like a drowned rat, from a turncoat suicide mission and deposited on Elphias Doge’s doorstep. He’d babbled some codswallop about house elves and lockets and broken souls before falling unconscious, and upon waking had refused to answer any of Elphias or Alastor’s questions. They couldn’t even get him to tell them his name. But before they could send him off to Azkaban where he belonged, Albus had showed up and intervened with the dubious decision to keep the boy under his direct watch and wardship at Hogwarts. Albus had been notably absent from several Order meetings in the weeks since.

Three. Their resident werewolf’s cover had been blown. Years of Albus’s foreplanning and months of careful undercover work: straight down the gutter after a single call from a London ‘fone booth.’ Whatever that was. A private client had contacted Lupin’s employer at the security agency complaining about ‘tame werewolf pups masquerading as grown men,’ demanding to know what they were playing at, ‘trying to pass prefects off as protection.’ Albus had immediately aborted the mission and instructed Lupin to lie low, assigning him instead to conduct research on dark creatures from the safety of his living room or the Hogwarts library.

Four. Alice Longbottom and Lily Potter had been identified as the subjects of a new prophecy concerning Voldemort’s fate. The exact details of the prophecy were confidential, but both mothers-to-be were granted Ministry-administered Fidelius charms on their homes. Yet the previous night, Voldemort had proved too powerful for even the Ministry's highest level of protection, breaking through the enchantment to stroll right through the Potters’ front door. And although the newlywed couple escaped unharmed, they lost their home and security for their unborn baby.

Five. There was a traitor in their midst. Alastor had suspected it for some months, but Dorcas Meadows’s death confirmed it. Meadows’s mission had been terminated when Sturgis Podmore sent news that the Death Eaters had anticipated their plans, but it seemed Alastor’s coded message with new instructions never reached her. The only touchpoint where it could have been intercepted was at Order headquarters. And so Meadows had apparated directly to the original rendezvous point where Voldemort himself had been waiting for her. That morning, when word got back about her fate, Albus had sent phoenix feathers to every member of the Order with a message and a warning. It stated that one of their own had withheld critical information resulting in the death of a highly valued field agent—and that no one could be trusted anymore.

Alastor fed the gargoyle Albus’s cloyingly sweet password (‘Jelly Babies.’) and mounted the spiral staircase. He privately enjoyed the smooth motion of the stone beneath his feet along with the moment of respite it afforded his battered bones. But there was no room for comfort in wartime so he used the time ascending to straighten the straps on his wooden leg and blink his new glass eye into alignment. 

It was two sizes too large for its socket. The enchanted sphere hadn’t been designed to be worn inside a human skull, but the unfused fractures in his orbital socket (courtesy of Rabastan Lestrange) allowed it to fit just fine with a little elbow grease. Its one-of-a-kind abilities were well worth the chronic headache in Alastor’s book. At last, he had it: constant vigilance, even with both eyes closed.

He reached the closed door and paused outside, scanning the room before entering. Albus was nowhere in sight, which was no surprise. Alastor was early and Albus was always on the move these days. But the office wasn’t empty. A student sat before the headmaster’s desk, his shoulders bowed in distinctly repentant posture.

Alastor turned the handle and the student straightened, neck twisting to look at the door.

…Six.

Alastor had been mistaken. It wasn’t a student waiting for Dumbledore to return. It was Sirius Black.

Sirius Black, the pure blooded, pretty-boy hotshot from a long line of dark wizards. Who swore he was nothing like them, but whose dueling style was so ruthless it bordered on sadistic. Who had practically forced his way into the Order’s ranks despite clearly resenting Albus for reasons Alastor had never learned. Who had friends on their side but family on the other—and whose sleep-hollowed eyes bore clear intimations of guilt.

All at once, the scattered pieces clicked into place. Alastor could have cursed himself for being so blind until now.

The teenage Death Eater, with his dark features and haughty disposition: Black’s kid brother. The werewolf, forced out of dangerous field work: Lupin, rumoured to be Black’s lover. The Potters’ Fidelius: not forcibly overpowered by Voldemort, but willingly relinquished by their secret keeper. And who would that be, if not James Potter’s best friend? 

Anonymous owls. Anonymous calls. Intel leaking in, information slipping out. One foot on either side of the line, pulling whichever strings served his personal purposes. Carving out a place for himself in the eventuality of either victory.

“Incarcerus!” Alastor roared, kicking the door open and slashing his wand through the air before the traitor could so much as rise from his seat.

-

“It wasn’t him,” James insisted again. His arms were locked in a tight knot over his chest, sweat blooming through the fabric beneath them. Beside him, Lily twisted and unwound a frazzled tendril of hair, eyes shining with righteous energy.

Remus let his face drop into the cage of his hands, elbows braced on the steel table. Nothing could shield him from the piercing appraisal of Alastor Moody’s mismatched eyes, but it felt safer, just for the moment, to take refuge behind his fingers. 

“Remus, say something,” Lily urged him with a hand on his forearm. “He’s your…” she cut herself off, glancing sideways at Moody. “Flatmate,” she finished quietly.

“It’s Sirius,” James joined her. “Come on, Moony. He’d die for you.”

Would he? Remus wondered silently. He’d kill for me. That, I know. But he’d try not to die, I think. Because then we wouldn’t be together.

Exhaustion pulsed behind Remus’s temples. All he needed was a few hours alone to think. If he could just sort through his tangled web of thoughts and memories, he might be able to answer Moody’s questions. But what with James and Lily’s voices filling the room from either side of him and Moody’s wandlight shining in his eyes and the fear, the burning fear that Sirius could be—

“Remus!” James again, insistent and incensed. “What’s going on with you? You’re the only one of us who can give him an alibi. Just tell Mad-Eye something. Anything.”

“I can’t,” Remus finally responded, dropping the shelter of his hands. “We keep different schedules. I wasn’t even home when Fawks’s note arrived.”

“But you would’ve seen each other the previous night, surely?” Lily asked with another nervous little glance at Moody.

Remus twisted his lips to the side and shook his head.

“You two aren’t shagging anymore then, I take it?” Moody asked, crude and unvarnished. “Or is this little act in service of pretending you were just flatmates?”

Lily gasped and James jumped up, stammering something broken and incoherent along the lines of, “that’s bang out of order!”

Remus put a hand on James’s arm to quieten him. He stared cooly at Moody, refusing to rise to the bait. “I don’t keep tabs on him. He comes and goes as he likes. And I don’t know anything about what happened with Dorcas Meadows. I don’t even know if he knew her.”

It was all true. He didn’t know the answers to Moody’s earlier questions about where Sirius had been on the night Meadows was killed or why he’d gone to talk to Dumbledore after receiving his message. He didn’t know whether Sirius had been in contact with anyone outside their circle, how close he’d been with various members of his family lately, or if he could have been Imperiused.

But he did know other things. Important ones. Most of them starkly contradicted what James and Lily had been insisting since the minute Moody hauled the three of them in for questioning, which was why he was doing them a favour by keeping quiet. He just needed some time to sort a few more things out before giving voice to them.

‘Sirius would never betray our trust,’ James had scoffed when Moody first told them why he’d summoned them. ‘He’d sooner die than hurt his friends.’

Remus had drawn a breath with every intention of backing James up, but his words snagged on something in Remus’s mind. Because they weren’t quite true, were they?

Sirius had betrayed Remus’s trust in their fifth year at Hogwarts. He had weaponised the secret he’d sworn a hundred times—boldly with James and softly in Remus’s ear—that he would protect. And Remus had wound up very badly hurt indeed as a result.

‘He was the first of us to volunteer to join the Order,’ Lily had reminded Moody. ‘He gave up everything to fight for our cause.’

He hadn’t, though. Sirius had already renounced his inheritance before joining the Order. And although Remus had never wanted to hear it, Sirius had told him plenty of times that his sole reason for joining was to keep close to Remus. He had never truly pledged his loyalty to their cause, only to his selfish heart. And after Remus began spying on the werewolves and James underwent the Fidelius lockdown, Sirius had openly resented Dumbledore’s leadership more than ever. He’d grown to hate Dumbledore’s name nearly as much as Caradoc Dearborn’s.

Caradoc. Sirius’s sleepless wandering. The strange things he’d whisper late at night. (‘Anything for you, love. I’d do it again—’)

‘Stop talking about my best mate like he’s capable of murder!’ James had roared when Moody’s interrogation escalated. 

But oh, how he was. Not directly. Not an Avada Kedavra to the chest—Sirius was cleverer than that. James should’ve known that about his best mate. He’d seen it before, after all, firsthand.

At the time, the Marauders had laughed it off as nothing more than a prank on their Slytherin nemesis. But in retrospect, with all their teenage showboating stripped aside, Remus couldn’t deny that Sirius’s actions had been anything less than a loose-fisted attempt at manslaughter. An early experiment, a curious toe dipped in murky waters. And it had so nearly worked. Without lifting a finger, without even being present for the violence, Sirius had sent Severus Snape down a path that ended with him trapped in a room with a bloodthirsty beast. The act itself, a flippantly dropped suggestion just outside the Great Hall at dinnertime, had been so small, clean, and measured that even the school’s professors had excused Sirius’s behaviour. Remus, bruised and broken the next day, had forgiven him easily as well. But he hadn’t forgotten. He had watched Sirius closely afterwards, becoming hyper-aware of his demeanour: his nervous habits, the words he used to get his way, the physical manifestations of his anger and guilt. But Sirius had been so beautiful that it had been a pleasure to watch him, and before long Remus had stopped looking out for danger signs, too caught up in the looking itself.

And that, Remus suspected, was why he hadn’t been able to recognise the signs when Sirius, perhaps inevitably, did it again.

“What are you hiding, boy?” Moody growled across the table, his commanding baritone cutting into Remus’s thoughts like a jagged knife. Still, Remus ignored him. He was so nearly there, could almost make out the full picture.

Remus had been too distracted by his and Sirius’s bewildering romance to see clearly, but it was crashing into focus now. How Sirius’s loyalty would always belong to himself and the few people he loved, not to any army or cause. How he could eliminate his enemies without a wand or weapon, without even needing to say a single word, and justify it as an act of devotion. And how if, for some reason, Sirius had gotten it in his head that the Order’s interests weren’t in line with his loved ones’ safety, he might have seized upon opportunities to undermine them.

Remus could practically hear Sirius’s immaculate RP accent over a crackling telephone line, imperiously complaining about tame werewolves to Remus’s boss and bringing his mission to an early end. He could see him trailing after Regulus from afar, making sure his little brother didn’t get in any further over his head and pulling him out of harm’s way at the final moment, allegiances be damned. He could even imagine Sirius’s quill scratching coded messages onto parchment while Remus slept, trading small pieces of information he deemed unimportant for leads that would move the stagnating war closer to an end. And if he had been James and Lily’s secret keeper… but that was where it stopped making sense.

The style of the betrayal did fit Sirius’s pattern: whispered directions ending in slaughter ('prod the knot at the base of the willow’), a step removed from the violence. Cold, clean and clever. But Sirius would never sell James out. Of that, Remus was more certain than anything. But James and Lily had reluctantly confirmed that Sirius had volunteered to be their keeper and the records Moody brought in from the Ministry’s Fidelius casters confirmed it. A single black dog hair served as a talisman preserved in amber resin, magically binding him to the spell. Still, something wasn’t adding up. There was an invisible line in the sand. No matter what the evidence showed, Sirius would sooner die than invite Voldemort into the Potters' home.

And although Remus knew Sirius could be cold-blooded when pushed to his limits, he couldn’t honestly conceive of a scenario where Sirius would have delivered Dorcas Meadows to the Death Eaters. He’d had ample motive when it came to the other souls he’d condemned: years of fermenting resentment and an inexplicable, dog-like instinct to protect Remus. But sacrificing an innocent? Condemning someone he barely knew, who presented no threat to his friends? Whatever else he might have done, that wasn’t Sirius.

“What has he told you?” Remus demanded of Moody, cutting James off mid-rant. “Sirius. What did he say when he turned himself in?”

Moody raised his one good eyebrow. “He didn’t,” he said flatly.

“Didn’t what…?” Lily asked, brows furrowed. “Didn’t say anything, or didn’t actually turn himself in?”

Moody huffed and extracted a flask from his pocket. He took a long swig before growling, “Black got cold feet. He was waiting to confess in Albus’s office when I detained him. Once we got him situated in Azkaban and he got a taste of what he was in for, he changed his mind and said there’d been a misunderstanding. Then he said he wouldn’t say anything until he could talk to Albus.”

“Dumbledore,” Remus repeated, stunned. Sirius had no faith in Dumbledore. Not since he’d broken his promise by sending Remus to spy on the werewolves.

“Yep. Which is bad news for your pal, seeing as Albus is abroad."

“He’s what?” James squawked.

“Abroad. Antiquing, if you must know. Said he’s in the market for 'historical magical artefacts.' No telling when he’ll be back. So let’s hope Black finds his cell nice and cosy, because neither he nor his friends are giving me any reason to let him go.”

Remus let his head hang between his shoulders. “He’s not the man you’re looking for,” he said, finally certain of it. “You’re deluding yourself if you think the Order’s secure with Sirius behind bars. Keep searching. Come on, James, Lily. Let’s go. It’ll be all right. We just have to wait for Dumbledore to get back.”

“But—” James protested, planting his palms on the table.

“James,” Lily nudged him, cradling her gently domed abdomen. “He’s right. There’s nothing more we can do.”

James squeezed his eyes shut then pushed to his feet, his chair scraping noisily on the floor behind him.

“It wasn’t him,” he repeated for the umpteenth time, only this time his pleading glare was for Remus.

“I know,” Remus agreed. “He’d never betray you two. He’s not our traitor.”

They got up and moved toward the door. Moody barked something at their backs, but Remus wasn’t listening, already returning to his thoughts. 

Sirius might not be guilty of the crimes he’d been accused of, but he was far from innocent. Remus was certain, now. Dumbledore would return, Sirius would be released, and then…

Then Remus would ask him how he killed Caradoc Dearborn.

Chapter Text

He spotted the bike before he found Sirius. It sat at an angle on the wet sand, small waves crashing over its tyres and salt scum speckling shiny chrome. 

The little crescent-shaped cove was only the second place Remus had thought to look for Sirius since receiving Dumbledore’s owl. A good thing, too, because the sun was beginning to sink and he didn’t much fancy hunting down a black dog on a dark night.

Remus made his careful way down to the strip of sand that connected the pebbly beach to the cove, remembering the first time he’d made the trek with Sirius. It had been just a few weeks after they’d moved to Norfolk. Sirius had been so excited to show him his discovery that he’d broken into song, improvising clever new lyrics to ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’

By the time he reached the bike, the dying light had turned everything copper, from the rough chalk cliff face to the surface of the dancing water. Remus could just make out a trail of footprints that broadened into pawprints in the compacted sand leading away from the wash. He followed them to a sandstone cave they often used on full moon nights when it stormed, where Padfoot would lick the wolf’s wounds and they’d howl over the sound of the rain.

Sirius was a shadow of himself, slumped in a heap against the foot of the cave wall. Six days in Azkaban had left black rings around his eyes, his hair stringy, and his robes reduced to loose tatters. His chiselled features had a gaunt quality and his glacier-blue eyes appeared grey as they lifted to meet Remus’s.

“Hello, Padfoot,” Remus said evenly. He had promised himself he would keep his composure, no matter what version of Sirius he found.

“Remus,” Sirius rasped. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“Is it—” his gaze flickered toward the mouth of the cave over Remus’s shoulder. “Is it the full?”

“No. It’s gibbous.” 

Remus extended a hand to help him up, but Sirius didn’t move. He was shaking slightly, the tremors traveling down to the ends of his salt-streaked hair.

“They wouldn’t tell me what day it was when they let me out. I was worried—” Sirius’s voice splintered into a fit of coughs.

“What was that?”

“The moon,” he whispered roughly. Remus conjured a goblet and filled it with water for him, but Sirius ignored it. “It was waxing when they took me. There’s no way to track time in there. That place… the dementors, they…” he drifted off, eyes going vacant.

“You should’ve come home. I waited for you. James, too. He and Lily are worried sick.”

Sirius flinched at James’s name, but shook his head. “No. No, I couldn’t go home. Not like… this. But there was a chance that tonight was the full, and I couldn’t leave you to turn on your own.”

“It’s not tonight,” Remus reassured him again, pressing the water into his hands.

Sirius drank, coughed, then tossed the goblet into the sand beside him, wrist falling limp next to it. The energy seemed to be draining out of him now that he knew he wouldn’t be transforming for the night. His shoulders sagged and his eyelids twitched as if fighting the weight of his dark lashes.

“So,” Remus said conversationally. “How’d you do it?”

Sirius’s eyes snapped open, wide as galleons. He scrambled to his feet but remained glued against the cave wall for support.

“I—I didn’t, Remus. You’ve got to believe me,” he stammered in a rush. “That’s why they let me out. It was Peter, stupid Peter—the hair wasn’t mine—it’s a whisker, Wormtail’s whisker, and they’re looking for him now, though he’s probably turned rat and—”

“I know,” Remus cut in. “Dumbledore explained in his letter. I never believed you were the traitor. I meant Caradoc. How did you kill him?”

The panic on Sirius’s face collapsed to something more like dread and the small, hopeful moth that fluttered feebly behind Remus’s breastbone folded its wings.

“I… didn’t,” Sirius tried weakly. “Not really. I never touched him.”

“No,” Remus agreed. “But you didn’t need to, did you?”

“No,” Sirius breathed. 

“He’s dead by your design.”

“Yes. Yes, Morgana help me, he is.”

“How, then?”

Sirius closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Let’s go home,” Remus offered quietly after a moment. “Walk with me. We’ll talk along the way.”

He helped Sirius off the sandy wall, uncorked a vial of Pepper Up potion for him, and maneuvered the both of them out of the shady shelter with an arm beneath his shoulder blades. Outside, the sun had already dipped beneath the horizon, leaving only a stripe of gold lingering above the water. Movement seemed to do Sirius good, and he leaned less heavily on Remus after only a few stumbles in the loose sand.

“James and Lily,” Sirius said eventually. “Have you seen them?”

“Yes. They’re fine. Shaken, obviously, and sad about Peter, but unhurt.”

“Good. Dumbledore said they got away, but I worried with all the stress, the baby…”

“Lily’s just fine. James got the brunt of the stress, I think. You should have seen him in Moody’s interrogation room. He was bellowing like the bloody stag.”

Sirius snarled. “Moody gave me the interrogation treatment as well. Plenty of it. Kept saying I’d ‘failed’ at killing my best friend. I had no idea what he was on about at first; I hadn’t heard about the attack on Godrick’s Hollow when I went to see Dumbledore.”

“I figured as much. James, too.”

“Did… did he believe it? When Moody told him I was the one who sold them out?”

“Not for a second.”

“Did you?”

When Remus didn’t answer right away, Sirius stopped walking, boots planted in the sand.

“No,” Remus admitted, “I couldn’t believe you’d give James up. And I wasn’t convinced you were the Order’s traitor, except…” he glanced up at Sirius beneath furrowed brows. “There were a few things. It was more difficult for me, I’m afraid, to insist upon your innocence.”

“Well,” Sirius huffed. “I've never claimed to be ‘innocent,’ anyway. You were right not to.”

“My mission…” Remus began. “You were the one who blew my cover?”

Sirius nodded slowly, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Remus’s.

“And someone saved a Death Eater. Your brother?”

Sirius nodded again. “Regulus was trying to do the right thing. Trying to end it. He’s helping Dumbledore now.”

“I see. Then, the intel about Voldemort’s dark creatures—that came from him, I take it? Through you.”

“Yes.”

Remus took a deep breath. “And the parcels of information that leaked out—a trade?”

“No,” Sirius insisted, eyes still boring into Remus’s as if willing him to see into his mind. “I never gave them anything. I only ever talked to Reg, and only because he wanted to help us. Yes, I called your boss at the security place, but that was to protect you. To keep you away from the werewolves before you wound up in Greyback’s hands. I didn’t sell you out. I’d never trade information about the Order. And the very idea that I’d turn our friends over to Voldemort…”

“Okay,” Remus said, resting a hand on Sirius’s shoulder. “I believe you. Like I said, I didn’t think you were our spy. I just… I saw the pattern, Padfoot. I finally recognised your behaviour from before. And I wasn’t sure what else you might’ve been able to justify in the name of protecting me.”

Sirius went quiet again, his gaze dropping to Remus’s hand on his shoulder.

“How’d you do it?” Remus asked again, more gently than before. “How did he die?”

White gulls floated around overhead, swooping down upon crabs and mussels exposed on the rocks by the low tide. They started walking again at a slower pace, Sirius led by Remus’s hand on his back.

“Vampires,” Sirius said at last, his soft voice nearly lost to the crashing waves. “Juveniles. A nest of them.”

Something like ice trickled down Remus’s spine. “Voldemort’s breeding grounds,” he realised suddenly. “Then—Kettleburn figured it out? But he got blown up before he shared his findings.”

“Apparently. I went to Dumbledore after Regulus told me about them, but he was in a meeting with Dearborn. I overheard enough to put two and two together then. And to understand that Dearborn didn’t have any idea of what he was in for.”

“So you didn’t tell them.”

“I did. Only…”

“Only, first you waited?”

“A few days. Yes.”

“To ensure that Caradoc had time to die before anyone could warn him.”

Sirius’s footsteps slowed to a stop. “Isn’t it funny,” he said, looking out to sea, “how this whole time, you thought you were the monster?”

Remus didn’t have an answer for that and resumed walking, still carrying half of Sirius’s weight.

“I saw what happened to him,” Sirius offered in his silence. “A vision. He went bravely.”

“You saw it?”

“Yeah. As it happened, I think.”

“That’s…” Remus swallowed dryly. “That must have been terrible.”

Sirius’s focus remained glued to the horizon, only a sliver of his profile visible to Remus. “It shook me at first, but it wasn’t so bad. It got worse with time, though. The guilt… it’s eaten me. Stained my soul red.”

“You regret it, then.”

“Yes. But also, no. More than anything, I felt… still feel… relief. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you now. I would do it again. I still would, Moony. For you.”

Remus wished he could see Sirius’s face. “‘For me,’ you say. But I never asked you to.”

“I know. I know. But the thought of him near you all those nights, holding your life in his hands… it drove me mad. Stirred up the Black in my blood.”

“Sirius…”

Sirius detangled himself from Remus’s supporting arm and staggered a few steps away, soaking his shoes in the encroaching tide. 

“I couldn’t stand it, imagining the things he did to you at school. Waiting for him to hurt you again. He would’ve, given the opportunity. I know it. He deserved what he got. It would have happened anyway, if Regulus hadn’t turned up and told me. Only he did, so I made that choice in the heat of the moment. And now I, too, deserve to rot.”

Remus followed after him into the shallow waves, his mind barely registering the icy cold seeping up his trouser legs.

“And what about me? Don’t I deserve a say in anything?”

Sirius laughed humourlessly, eyes dark and wet. “I’m sorry, Remus, but it’s too late! Too late for Dearborn, too late for me. Too late for us, and whatever future I’ve gone and ruined.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Sirius only laughed tearily again and shook his head, backing up further towards the horizon.

“You’re planning on turning yourself back in, then?” Remus had to raise his voice over the hissing sound of the ocean. “Leaving the Order and your life to go back to rotting in a cell? Or is it only me you’re leaving behind?”

“I… no. No,” Sirius repeated, louder so that Remus could hear him. “I would never leave you. But you—now that you know, now that you see me as I am… you won’t be happy. My soul is tainted. You deserve more.”

Remus took a grounding breath and waded closer.

“It’s not tainted. You didn’t kill anyone. Not really.”

“I as good as did.”

“Like you said, it would have happened anyways. Even if you had told him, he wouldn’t have listened—”

“Quit trying to spare me. The intent was clear, and the result the same as if I’d put my wand to his heart and cast the killing curse.”

“But it’s not the same.”

“Murder-by-proxy, Remus. Your words.”

“Fine! You did kill him, a bit. But you did it because… you love me.”

Sirius looked up, surprised.

“Yes. Of course. Why else? Why do I do anything I do?”

Remus took another deep breath, tasting the adrenaline of an unpalatable truth on his tongue. “I’m glad Caradoc’s gone,” he confessed. “I never would have asked you for this; I didn’t want him dead, but… I’m not sorry for him. I won’t ever have to see him again, and he can’t hurt anyone else now. I’m not glad that you did it, but… I might be glad that you did it… for me.”

Sirius blinked twice in surprise, then offered Remus a melancholic smile. “Well. That’s something, at least. Shame that it had to come at the cost of your love for me. Still, I’ll take it.”

“When am I supposed to have stopped loving you?”

Sirius’s smile fell. “Don’t,” he warned.

“But I do, Sirius.”

Sirius shook his head, the archetypal wet dog. “I pushed you away, and you went. I know you felt my darkness, even if you couldn’t see it in full. You’ve been enduring me these past months because you’re loyal. But you should be with someone good. Light and kind—someone like Aubrey. Like you. Look what I’ve become.” 

He held out his arms as if to demonstrate some hideous dark form beneath his ruined robes. 

“I’m more of a monster than you’ve ever been. And leagues less deserving.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Sirius scoffed, empty and exhausted. “How, Remus.” 

“Because you’re still you!” Remus said, frustrated. “This thing you’ve done… it doesn’t change that. You’re just you, and, yes, sometimes you’re a right fool, but you’re not a monster. You’re the person I want to be with. Always. Selfishly.”

“Merlin. You are such a bloody hypocrite.”

Remus frowned his confusion but didn’t budge in his stance, even as the water pushed and pulled around his knees.

“Why do you refuse to see it?" Sirius entreated. “You hate yourself because of what you are, even though you’ve never harmed another human being. But imagine, just for one night, you gave in to the wolf... if it got out, only for a moment, and killed someone. If it happened by accident, while the wolf was in control—or if you did it on purpose, as a man with clear intentions. Which would make you more of a beast? Tell me, Remus. Which would make you less worthy of love?”

Remus opened his mouth then closed it again, throat working.

“You fight your darkness tooth and nail every month to ensure it doesn’t harm anyone, while I let mine out to hunt when it suits me,” Sirius went on, voice scraping low. “That’s the difference between us. Not a wolfbite. Not my blackened blood. It’s our actions that make us what we are, Remus.”

“All right,” Remus relented, jaw tight. “All right, Sirius. You make a strong argument. We can discuss it at home. Come on.”

“No!” Sirius stumbled out of arm’s reach, splashing deeper into the water. “Not until we clear this up for good. You say you still love me, knowing what I am? What I’ve done?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I do.”

Sirius ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “You love me still,” he repeated, almost in disbelief, “but you’ve never been able to accept my love for you. I killed for you. Surely, that’s an act of devotion you can understand.”

Remus did. It scared him and he didn’t know what to do with it, but the wolf inside did recognise it.

“At this point, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to convince you that you’re not a monster,” Sirius went on, voice cracking at the edges. “Even though you’ve never hurt anyone, and I have. But in that case, can you accept that we’re both monsters? And that if you can love something deadly and terrible, so can I?”

They stood there, facing off like duelists, Sirius’s words breaking over Remus. He felt cracked open, the beast inside him peering out at the amorphous dark shape in Sirius's chest.

“Yes,” Remus whispered at length, the word swept by the breeze from his lips. “Yes, I suppose I can.”

There in the dim evening light, Remus had never felt more seen, nor seen another more clearly in return.

“Right,” Sirius croaked belatedly. “That’s… you really mean that?”

A tear rolled down Remus's cheek and splashed into the ocean. He blinked the wetness from his eyes and breathed a surprised laugh.

“I do.”

“Then… that’s brilliant, love.”

They moved towards each other cautiously, meeting in the middle of the swirling tide. Remus reached for Sirius’s wonderstruck face, fingers tracing over his lips and jaw before replacing them with his own. Sirius’s shaking hands landed on the sides of Remus’s face as well, fingertips ghosting over his eyelids and sliding into his hair.

They kissed slowly, unhurried despite the dwindling twilight and rising water. Because now Remus understood that their time together wasn’t the stolen thing he had always believed it to be. Their embrace was warm and gentle because it wasn’t something he needed to clutch tightly to his chest before it slipped away. Their shared passion felt bare and honest in a way that might have swept Remus’s feet out from under him—if a rogue wave hadn’t toppled the both of them first.

They fell gracelessly into the water, thoroughly soaked head-to-toe as they gasped their way back to the shallows to collapse in soggy heaps. 

Remus looked over sideways at Sirius, seaweed tangled in his dripping hair, and let out an amused snort. More laughter bubbled up inside of him, spilling over when Sirius’s face cracked and he started laughing, too. They held each other in the sand, gasping and rubbing salt from their eyes until Sirius pulled himself together enough to get to his feet, offering Remus a hand.

Remus hauled himself upright, clutching at a stitch in his side from lack of oxygen. He swiped the dripping hair from his forehead and squinted towards where the motorbike ought to be.

“We might’ve lost our ride home.”

Sirius extracted a key from the sopping folds of his robes and pressed his thumb to a rune carved into its silver head. Immediately, a roar answered through the darkness. The round glow of a headlamp appeared just beneath the waves, then the bike surged upward in a burst of surf and spray, arcing onto the beach next to them with a metallic sputter. The headlamp flickered and died and the exhaust pipe sighed a shuddering breath.

“I think it might be ruined,” Sirius murmured, nudging a tyre with the side of his boot. 

Remus slotted in beside him to examine it, their elbows brushing. It was so easy to be near him, now, as it always should have been.

“I think it’s just exhausted. And wet. Give it some time, some care… it’ll pull through.”

A small, grateful smile tugged up the corner of Sirius’s mouth. “How do you feel about risking a flight home? It might give out on us midway.”

Remus shrugged. “I’m game. I trust you.”

They took to the sky with a rallying growl from the engine. Above them, the gibbous moon broke through the clouds and the sea shone silver as it winnowed their tears and revelations away.

“Are we really all right?” Sirius asked quietly once they were floating amongst the stars above their street, engine idle.

“Maybe not entirely,” Remus said honestly. “Not yet. But we will be.” 

He tightened his arms around Sirius’s torso as Sirius angled the bike down to park on the street. 

“We need a hot bath and a proper meal,” he continued, “and there’s plenty more we should discuss once we’ve slept a good twelve hours. We’ll need to visit James and Lily tomorrow. Dumbledore, too, to help him find Peter. And you ought to see a healer. But—yes, in the scheme of things. I’m still learning what it is to be all right, and I think you’ll have to relearn it, too. But we’re going to be just fine, so long as we’re together.”

Sirius steadied the bike on its kickstand and helped Remus dismount, pressing the key to their flat into his palm.

“Together, then,” he agreed softly. “Us two and our demons. All four of us, figuring out how to be all right.”

Remus huffed a laugh and kissed his cold cheek, a hint of the wolf playing in the corner of his smile as he pulled away. They went up the rickety stairs and locked the door behind them.

-

Harry did up his cardigan, careful to get the right buttons in the right holes. His mum had bought it for him on their last trip to Madam Malkin’s. They’d stopped there on their way back from his uncles’ house (‘the Dog House,’ his dad called it), and he’d picked it out himself.

When he was little, Harry had wanted to be just like his Uncle Sirius. He had a favourite black jacket and a pair of cap toe boots that didn’t fit him anymore. But now that he was big (double digits as of today, nearly Hogwarts age), his tastes were more grown up. He was his own person. And his own person just happened to dress more like Uncle Remus.

Remus was quiet company. Harry had spent a lot of time with him over the start of summer. His dad and Sirius had gone on a long trip to Australia to watch the Quidditch World Cup, and his mum had taken to dropping him off with Remus while she ran errands.

Harry had expected to be bored at first. Remus didn’t tell madcap stories from his schooldays like the other grown ups in Harry’s life did. He asked a lot of excellent questions and read aloud from books that didn’t have pictures in them, but he didn’t talk about himself very much at all. You had to really dig to get anything good out of him. As a result, the bits Harry did manage to glean felt all the more special for it.

Remus liked chocolate. He collected sea shells. He was a wolf sometimes (Harry already knew that) but didn’t remember anything about his transformations afterwards (which Harry was disappointed to learn). He hadn’t done anything interesting or important during the war. He liked card games and was a patient teacher. He had a friend who lived in a cold place called Denmark, and they sent brown paper parcels back and forth. Remus let Harry rummage through them. Once, Harry had found red sweets shaped like racecars that tasted of death. Remus had laughed at the face he made, though not unkindly.

Harry had learned more about Sirius through his time with Remus, too. Sirius made the world’s best French onion soup, which he’d stocked in freezer tubs so Remus wouldn’t live off of beans and toast while he was away. His handwriting was nice. He wrote long, multi-page letters that Remus hastily cleared away before Harry could read them. He was the Santa Claus who visited Godric’s Hollow with a sack full of presents every year. (Harry had long suspected this, but had his suspicions confirmed when he’d found the hat and beard in one of Sirius’s drawers. He’d tried not to be too disappointed.) Sirius used to be ‘a bit of a wild card,’ according to Remus. That meant he was unpredictable. He was pretty predictable nowadays, though. Everyone had known what was coming when Sirius had proposed to Remus four years earlier. Harry’s parents still laughed about it sometimes.

They hadn’t had a church ceremony like the other weddings Harry had been to, but it was a fantastic party. Harry couldn’t remember much of it—he’d been six—but he could recall golden sparklers and loud music and being tossed up in the air on a floating dancefloor. There was a picture from that night in Sirius and Remus’s living room. It hung above a pitcher of bushy goldenrod next to a big window that opened out to the sparkling ocean.

Cardigan on and shoes tied, Harry checked that he’d packed his kite (enchanted to move like a real dragon) and extra string in case it got caught in a tree again. It was going to be a windy day at the beach, according to Sirius’s letter that morning. Too cold for swimming, but ideal for kite flying, Remus’s post script had noted.

Harry found his parents (‘No, darling, I don’t need a parasol—’) by the front door. His dad’s hair was a mess like Harry's, but his mother neatened them up like she always did.

“Ready to go?” his dad asked, grinning broadly beneath the striped umbrella hitched over his shoulder.

“Not just yet,” his mum hummed, then dabbed large white globs of sun cream on both of their noses.

“Aw, mum,” Harry grumbled, trying to rub it away. Remus and Sirius never wore chalky white cream on their faces.

“They’re not going to judge you for being well-loved,” his dad assured him, reading his mind as he rubbed his own cream in. “If Sirius and Remus get burned for their own vanity, so be it.”

“They live at the beach, James. They don’t burn anymore.” Harry’s mum tied her hat beneath her curls with a thick green ribbon. “Come along, boys. This birthday won’t celebrate itself.”

Harry did his best not to squirm with excitement, because he was too old for that sort of behaviour now. He was about to spend the day in his favourite place with his favourite uncles and eat lots of cake with his name on it in frosting. He'd already decided what he was going to wish for when he blew out the candles. And in a year, he’d be getting ready to go to Hogwarts, where Remus would teach him Defense and Sirius would be his head of house, assuming all went to plan and he got sorted into Gryffindor. Maybe he could even convince them to help him become an animagus if he did well enough in his studies.

But that was all far off in the future. Today was about running along the water’s edge with Padfoot and opening gifts from his mum and dad and finding a pristine shell for Remus’s windowsill. It was scones for breakfast, a seaside picnic, and quidditch before dinner. It was turning ten years old, surrounded by four of the most loving people in the world.