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Chapter Text

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword! 

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old,

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because 

The dead so soon grow cold.”

— The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

–

Dedication, 

To my heart, my light, through day and night; you know who you are. 

–

October 15, 1975

“Remus! Remus! Remus!”  

The sound of James Potter’s voice is as familiar to Remus as his own, yet there’s a drift to it—a thousand miles worth of distance as if Remus’s rotten luck has reached a new peak and he’s stuck on an isolated island, a ship begging for harbor, and James is just that, waiting and waiting. Remus knows he’s lying limply in his arms, for to mistake them would be to mistake air or sunlight; he learned shortly after he first met James on the Hogwarts Express that there’s a particular warmth which answers to him only, surpassing his vanity, the boy with terrible eyesight and rumpled hair and a shit-eating grin, the boy with the heart of gold, and so Remus sinks into it in search of shelter but mostly escapism. 

It’s selfish, and he knows it, and the bared-teeth nibble of guilt at his gut would have been splitting had it not been for the fear of what he might have done. 

If he stays here, in this half-solace, half-cowardice, he would never know if the blood was his or James’s or Snape’s. 

God, God, please, let it be mine. Let it all be mine.  

He can hear Peter’s voice mingling with James’s in equal panic.

James gathers himself together, the way he’s wired to, and starts speaking. “Remus, I know you can hear me. You told me as much before, that our voices always reach you. Even now. And I know that you are scared, and I know you have every right to be, but I swear on Merlin—hell, no, I swear on us, your Marauders—that I will take care of everything, that all will be well if you just wake up. Don’t give into the darkness, Moony. You are our heart, our light, and we cannot do without you.” 

Remus wants to object, blistering over the force and the faith and the love that is James; the red-hot urge of it stuck in his throat—to tell James that he is their heart and light, that Remus is only their dark mirror, the monster tainting their story. And as he shakes, he knows it isn’t just from the burn, or the sickening horror, or all the remorse tugged under his skin and the space in-between his ribs, deeper than blood or breath. It’s from the tireless, tireless love. 

He doesn’t know if it’s what pulls him out, or if it’s the last shreds of his courage, or plain stupidity, but he flutters open his eyes. And for a moment there’s just searing light; Remus can’t tell whether it’s the morning flush or James’s face coming into view, blurry, but what difference would that make anyway?

“James?” Remus croaks, still in James’s grip. “James, what happened?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” James says, and Remus pulls away, knowing the lie. The cost. 

When he blinks, there’s a trail of blood running down the side of James’s head, seething. 

Perhaps it’s a mere second, or the passing of a lifetime in which his chest tightens, and air is foreign, and life slips; he raises his hand, bruised and quivering, to touch the blood. James’s blood. Gasping as in from behind a screen. “I—My God, James, James. . .”

He supposes he should have seen it coming, the price of hope; for Remus it has never been the thing with feathers but claws. Pale-painted room, and a cry of creed, a God who refuses to listen and a brute who answers, and yet he hopes and hopes. Everytime. 

“Remus, it’s okay. I promise. Just—”

“No, it’s not!” Remus shouts, tormented, crawling away from James. “You shouldn’t be here. Get out! Just— get out , James. Go somewhere safe. Please. Please.” 

“I’m as safe as I can be,” James says, patient and firm. 

“For fuck’s—” Remus looks as if he wants to slam his own head into the wall. “Being near is dangerous. I’m dangerous. Don’t you understand?” 

And then he understands; altruistic James Potter wouldn’t. Remus wonders if he could will the ground to split open, and wipe him off the face of the earth, rid it of his evil, and yet he knows that even this wouldn’t stop James. 

“No, I don’t understand,” James says as Remus’s back hits the wall, “Because I know you, and I know you will never hurt me, that you weren’t made for hurting, Remus—and I’m sorry you were hurt. I’m so fucking sorry. Because you deserved better. You deserved better than Snape, and Grayback, and the sum of assholes who looked at you like you amounted less.”  

“But—” 

“I know,” James tells him. “I know I’m vain and irrational and spoiled, but I try to be your better. I decided it, when I first met you, when I knew. Just as I decided to follow Snape and stop him, knowing the risks, the sacrifice. Screw that, Remus. Screw the blood and the pain, shallow as it can be—and I swear it is—if it all means your sanctuary. Mulciber almost split my head in half with his Quaffle, and I survived it, and bit him right back in the arse, like I would have buried Snape alive had he touched you. I would have buried that bastard six-feet under, and never looked back, and if he dares open his mouth so God help me it will be the last time.” 

“James, I—” Remus begins shakily, and thinks it futile, that all he says is James, as if salvation is wrapped around these syllables, as if forgiveness is stored in a name. 

James just hums, and pulls him in; a cord of conjoined hearts, in tragedy and bruise and first light. He rocks him gentler than Remus is worthy, and whispers, “It passed, it passed, it passed—and I’m here now. We’re here now, Moony.”

And just like that, Peter kneels down and cradles them both, and Remus is enveloped whole. He looks at Peter, pleading: “Make him see sense, Pete.”

“He sees perfect sense,” Peter tells him, smiling. 

“You two are so—” Remus begins in frustration, shaking his head, tears stinging. “Where’s Sirius?”

Sirius would know. 

He would know Remus’s six stages of grief; he would know he could never look James in the eye again. Or perhaps he would encourage it, perhaps his love for James will transcend Remus’s shame. 

James’s hand freezes, no longer rubbing Remus’s back. Had Remus not been consumed by terror and guilt, he would have seen it; the look exchanged between James and Peter, the glimmer of a secret. “I sent him away.” 

“To hurry Pomfrey up,” James adds, and he hopes Remus couldn’t hear him. I sent him away so that you wouldn’t hate his eyes, so that you would have more time, because I know what he means to you and I don’t want your heart to break just yet. 

Remus dims, and replies, “Okay.” 

James wants to punch his fist into a wall. 

But the world spins, and exhaustion wins; Remus’s head falls into the crook of James’s neck, and James lulls him in, voice soft in the devouring dark, hands softer around him, a cradle of scars and broken hearts. Remus’s final whisper is, “I’m so, so sorry, fy mrawd anwylaf.” 

And although James barely speaks Welsh, he knew. 

I’m so, so sorry, my dearest brother.

– 

An hour earlier,

James paces around the castle, his invisibility cloak tugged around him as the staircase sways. He never sleeps on full moons; terror always thrums in his veins, pushing out dreams, pushing out peace, and the screams don’t help. Remus’s screams, the boy with the sandy hair and crooked nose, the boy with the scars and countryside’s smile, soft as grass, warm as spring. 

He fumbles with his wand, and tries to will it out—the change. Last time he tried he passed out dead, and Remus made them all swear they’d let go of the whole thing. 

There’s a buzz beneath his skin, magic spilling out, but before it’d lead to another catastrophe, a hand grabs his shoulders, startling him. “Got you.”  

“For Godric’s—” James takes off his cloak. “Did you learn how to trace my steps?”

“That, and,” Sirius grins. “Your rather ravishing pumpkin socks give you away.” 

“It’s Halloween,” James says in mock dignity, “All pumpkins and ghosts—oh, ‘ello, Nicky!—are welcome.” 

The ghost’s color, although remaining transparent, turns into a fading red. “NICKY? NICKY? What is this absurdity—” 

Sirius interjects, amused. “Would you rather prefer Nearly Headless Nick?” 

“It’s Sir Nicholas, you insolent child!” Nearly Headless Nick exclaims, growing larger in size. 

James and Sirius bow down theatrically, laughing it off; then James hangs on Sirius’s arm, and announces: “We better go though. We have got some—practicing to do. It was nice running into you, Sir Nick!”

“Speaking of,” Sirius begins, a switchblade smirk on his face. “You will never believe how I pulled Snivellus’s leg this time.” 

“Enthrall me.”

And enthralled James wasn’t; one moment he’s holding Sirius by the arm, laughing, and the next he’s grabbing the collar of his shirt, outraged. 

“You did what?” James shouts, shaking him, as if it could snap sense into his senseless head. 

“He was being too fucking noisy,” Sirius says, defensive. “I only told him where Remus is because we both know he’s too much of a coward to actually go there.” 

“But have you checked?”

“Checked what?”

“Goddamn it, Sirius, have you checked whether or not he went there?” James repeats, letting go of him with a jerk. 

Sirius stumbles with the force of it, and having forgotten the Gryffindors’ ghost, neither of them anticipate his voice. “I believe Mr. Snape has already passed the gates.” 

“Remus,” Sirius breathes, face paling. “We have to—” 

“You have to do absolutely nothing else,” James yells, starting to bolt; the echo of his voice haunts the castle. “Or Merlin help me with what I will do to you!” 

–

Pulling the invisibility cloak over his head, James walks out of the infirmary. 

He’s left Peter with Remus and half of his heart, then taken off. Madam Pomfrey has promised to take care of Remus, though having expressed—in great length—that she’d rather not be occupied while doing so, and Peter has promised he’d be silent, but insisted not to leave. She’s let it pass, but James knows better; she knows better, the air smells of something off between these boys. 

James descends the stairs, and upon arriving at his destination, he murmurs the passcode to the Slytherins’ Common Room; the door slides open, and James creeps inside, feeling the gaze of the serpent portrait on him, feverish, alive. 

The place is empty, dimly lit with greenish light and the slipping sun rays; most of the Slytherins are still asleep in their dorms, and so James tugs on his cloak. He breathes a long breath of air once he’s free, but it halts at once. Snape is standing at the corner of the room, unaware of James’s presence, muttering with spite like a madman. There are heaps of posters all around him, and James takes a few steps closer and dares to read, wishing his eyes blind. 

REMUS LUPIN IS A WEREWOLF. HIDE AWAY. 

Somehow miraculously, James has withheld his anger until now; he hasn’t stormed off to find Sirius again and teach him what pulling someone’s leg is actually like, and he hasn’t punched a hole into the roof or torn down one, but now, now there’s no going back. Snape intends to spread these posters all over Hogwarts about Remus, Remus —the kind-hearted boy who’s never refused to help someone, who smiles crookedly in the face of misery, all too familiar with it and by God he shouldn’t, welcoming its blows with teeth and heart. James’s best friend. James’s brother. 

With a wave of James’s wand, the posters turn into ash. 

Snape turns around sharply. “Potter,” he says through gritted teeth, wand raised. “How on earth did you get here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” James snaps, unfazed by the wand; he can take that bastard apart, and he will if he has to. “What matters is that you aren’t going to say shit about Remus, you hear me? What you saw last night, what you almost went through last night, didn’t happen. You never left your dorm, or your little chemistry set; you never had me save you, you ungrateful, spoiled—”

“I didn’t need saving,” Snape interrupts, icy cold. 

“What you needed or didn’t need doesn’t matter,” James retorts. “You can’t change what happened.” 

“Neither can you,” Snape replies with a sinister smile. “I know Lupin’s dirty secret now. I have evidence, Potter—and there’s nothing to stop me from using it.”

“You owe me,” James stresses, pulling his hands into fists. “You owe me your wretched, pathetic life, and you will pay for it with your silence, Severus, or I will—” 

“You will do what, Potter?” Snape asks idly. “I owe you nothing.” 

“Or I will fucking kill you,” James says, rage a hot-drum in his veins as he steps closer. “We’d be burying you in a grave right now if I didn’t interfere, but just because I did, it doesn’t mean I won’t dig it again myself if I have to. You can keep your life by staying silent about Remus and let us be even, or you can expose him and be indebted to me forever, six-feet under.” 

“I will expose Lupin, and your empty threats will not stop me,” Snape insists. “The school deserves to know what lurks inside it; all the disgust, the horror. Everyone in contact with him will find out the truth, I will make sure of it.”

“Our bloody hero,” James spits. “We both know you just want a chance to get back at me and Sirius—and fine, do it. Get back at us. Just leave Remus out of it. He’s never hurt you before. The people he’s close to know his secret, and we accept him as he is; we love him as he is.” 

“Not all of them know.” 

“She does,” James chuckles, and it’s his first time to admit it, that someone who isn’t a Marauder knows about Remus. It’s always been a silently acknowledged fact between the group, that Lily Evans accepts and loves Remus just as much. “Lily knows, and she doesn’t mind. Remus is her best friend.” 

“But—” James watches in satisfaction as Snape struggles for words. “He is a parasite, a—”

James’s fist collides with Snape’s jaw. 

It’s as simple as that: one moment James is standing right in front of him, somewhat civil, and the next he’s punching his teeth out of his mouth into an irreparable shape. Snape stumbles, one hand over his cheek in shock, and falls to the floor. 

But before James could advance on him again, he feels a cold chill spreading across his arm, freezing it mid-air. Both boys look at the door, and find a figure emerging from it, rubbing his brown beard and shaking his head in disapproval. 

Albus Dumbledore. 

“Violence is never the right choice to solve such problems, Mr. Potter,” he says, freeing James’s hand. “It is good that you’re here, however. I was going to pass by the infirmary to fetch you.” 

“Headmaster,” Snape addresses him, scrambling to his feet. “I must tell you something of paramount importance, Lupin is a—”

“We must not discuss matters of ‘paramount importance’ as you say where anyone can hear us, Severus,” Dumbledore interrupts him. “Come. Both of you. To my office, now.”

He turns around and walks outside of the Slytherin Common Room with the two students trailing after him; James doesn’t bother biting back a smirk at Snape’s bruising cheek. 

“I believe the two of you have put yourselves in immense danger tonight,” Dumbledore says, his hands interlocked on his desk. “Breaking multiple school rules, might I add.” 

“You—know?” Snape asks in disbelief, pressing each word, almost bolting out of his seat. “You know how filthy Lupin is, and you’re letting him walk among us as if he’s our equal?” 

James briefly wonders what will happen if he hexes Snape in front of the Headmaster. He’d most probably get expelled, and said consequence doesn’t seem bad in comparison to what he’s hearing. But before he can raise his wand, Dumbledore shoots him a warning look. “Mr. Lupin has as much of a right to attend Hogwarts as the rest of you, Severus. If you are going to express your concerns about this matter through insults only, you will find that I will not be convinced.” 

Snape’s breath is ragged. “But he is awfully dangerous. He could have killed us last night. Is that not enough of a reason to convince you?”

“Mr. Lupin has been a part of our school for five years now, and he has gone through countless full-moons on its ground,” Dumbledore begins, calm. “Yet we have encountered no accidents at all, save for last night, because of his—unique condition. I wonder what made it so different, who made it so different, since Remus has never broken any of the rules I have put for him when he first joined us here.” 

“You’re blaming me?” Snape asks, appalled. 

“Indeed I am, Severus,” Dumbledore answers firmly. “You should have known better than to follow a werewolf on a full-moon. It was absolute foolishness—to risk your life, and James’s, for the sake of a silly rivalry between schoolboys, and to think that you could ever know something that I do not. Nothing happens inside the walls of Hogwarts without my permission. It was I who allowed Remus to be a student here, and it is I who bear the full responsibility of keeping each and every student safe through the boundaries I set.” 

James watches the waves of violent emotions flashing across Snape’s face—his disgust at Remus, rage at Dumbledore, and deep-rooted hatred for Sirius and James himself. James knows he wouldn’t rest until Remus is exposed, until he’s ruined them all, including Dumbledore himself, whose reputation would be torn into shreds when the wizarding families find out that he’s keeping a werewolf in the same place as their children. 

James presses, “And those boundaries must include utmost secrecy of Remus’s lycanthropy to be set, right, sir?” 

“Indeed, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore replies. “And that is precisely why I need your word, and Mr. Snape’s, that you will never speak of what you witnessed last night to anyone. I can assure you that the consequences of disobeying me will be dire.” 

James bolts out of his seat, insulted at the accusation. “Over my dead body would I betray Remus. How could you think otherwise?” 

“It’s true that you’ve been keeping Mr. Lupin’s secret for long years now,” Dumbledore says, unfazed by James’s outburst, gesturing towards the blood on his forehead. “But he’s never hurt you before. However, last night changed that, so you must forgive me for having my doubts. It is Remus’s safety I am ensuring, after all, my dear boy.” 

“Have no worries, Headmaster,” James says, half-pissed. “I will be carrying Remus’s secret with me to the grave.” 

Dumbledore only nods. “Mr. Snape?”

“So will I,” Snape mocks.

“His word is worth nothing!” James shouts pointing at Snape with his index finger. “He will lie, and cheat, and expose Remus still. Because he doesn’t fear you, sir. He knows he’ll get the protection he needs once the truth is out.” 

Dumbledore ponders James’s words in his mind for a moment, with James’s eyes looking at his, screaming do something, do something, do something. 

“This is a heavy accusation, James,” Dumbledore says, at last. “But I believe all caution should be taken—for all’s welfare. Perhaps we will need firmer procedures to ensure Remus’s safety.” 

Snape narrows his eyes. “What procedures?”

“How odd it is not to deny James’s claims, Severus,” Dumbledore says, with a flicker of heat. “But this shouldn’t matter much. The Unbreakable Vow the two of you will swear to me will ensure that my orders will be followed—to the grave you said, Mr. Potter?” 

“Precisely,” James says instantly, outstretching his hand towards the headmaster. “I will swear a hundred Unbreakable Vows if they safeguard Remus.” 

“I will not swear an Unbreakable Vow for the sake of such a—creature,” Snape spits.

“You will, Severus. In fact, you are the only one who is going to swear it now. James has proven himself with his willingness, and you could have done the same if you had any sense,” Dumbledore tells him sternly. “Your words, however, keep proving that you aren’t trustworthy.” 

Steam erupts from Snape’s perfectly composed face, and Dumbledore stands up from his chair, unbothered. 

“You must wait for me here,” he says. “I must get someone—reliable to stand as witness in the Vow between me, and Mr. Snape.”

An idea sparkles in the back of James’s head. “I don’t think that’s necessary, sir.” 

“You have stood as a third party in an Unbreakable Vow before, James?” Dumbledore raises his eyebrows in mild interest. 

“I have not,” James replies. “But I’m certain that you have, sir. Snape can swear the Vow to me, and you can stand as the third party between him and I.” 

He notices the interest on Dumbledore’s face deepening, like he’s seeing something new for the first time. James hopes it’s something good; he hopes it’s something that can help him save Remus. 

“Very well,” Dumbledore agrees. “But I must explain the terms of the Unbreakable Vow to you, for they must not be taken lightly. James will state the promises you must agree to, Severus, and when you do, you will have to uphold them at all times, or it will mean an immediate death for you.” 

“I wonder what the Ministry will think if they ever find out that Hogwarts’ Headmaster forces his underage students to take Unbreakable Vows,” Snape snarls, extending his hand out to  James. 

There’s only a peculiar smile on Dumbledore’s face.

James holds Snape’s hand with an iron-grip, and Dumbledore raises his wand, placing its tip on their interlocked hands.

James inhales a deep breath and exhales it as he starts speaking: “Do you, Severus Snape, swear to never reveal the truth about Remus John Lupin’s lycanthropy to any soul, living or dead, through gesture, word, or action?”  

Snape stares at James in pure malice. “I do.” 

Magic flows from Dumbledore’s wand in the shape of a thin, gold wire, and wraps itself around James and Snape’s wrists. “And do you swear not to let anyone know that you have undergone an Unbreakable Vow inside the walls of Hogwarts, even if you never speak of what it prohibits you from doing?” 

“I do.”

Another cord follows, intertwining with the first one. Dumbledore pauses for a few moments before withdrawing his wand. The Vow is sealed. 

“Now you will carry it to the grave,” James tells Snape, smiling—relieved, victorious. 

“I believe that this matter is now settled,” Dumbledore says, going back to his chair. “And so I will not take more of your time. You are dismissed.” 

Snape turns around hotly, walking out of the office. Just as James is about to do the same, Dumbledore’s voice stops him. “Not you, James.”

“You have shown great courage and great determination tonight,” the Headmaster begins. “To put yourself in serious peril to save someone you aren’t even fond of, and to ensure that Remus’s secret stays as one—and I let you have your way, didn’t I?”

“You did, sir.” James nods, uncertain about where this conversation is going. 

“Then perhaps you owe me an explanation about how this mess happened in the first place,” Dumbledore demands. “Very few people know about the passageway from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, and I’m positive that Severus wasn’t one of them, so do you care to explain to me how that sensitive piece of information reached his rather unforgiving ears?” 

James swallows, his victory overshadowed too soon. He should have seen this coming, shouldn’t have given into the win, but he’d been so focused on sewing Snape’s vile mouth shut that he’d forgotten all else, what awaits the moment he steps out of Dumbledore’s office and into the mess that is his friends’ hearts. 

“It was me,” James lies. “I slipped.”

Dumbledore stares at him hard. “You told Severus about the passageway in the Whomping Willow?” 

“Not on purpose,” James tries, fiddling with his fingers. “It was an accident, and I’m willing to take full responsibility.” 

The Headmaster remains silent for a few minutes, and James is almost fairly certain he will call Euphemia and Fleamont anytime now to come and take him away for good. 

Dumbledore looks weary when he finally speaks. “I don’t appreciate liars, James. Yet—”

“I’m not lying! I—”

“I do appreciate nobility.”

James sighs in defeat. “Please don’t expel him. I will do anything.”

“It is only because of your heroism last night that I may reward you with not expelling Sirius,” Dumbledore says, and James’s chest starts to feel lighter. “But I fear he may take this as a sign to continue acting irrationally.”

“He won’t, I promise,” James says quickly. “I will ensure it myself.”

“And will you also answer to it yourself if he goes out of line again?”

James nods. 

Dumbledore looks impressed. “It seems to me that you will always go to the greatest lengths to protect your friends, Mr. Potter.”

“Whatever befalls them, befalls me.”

“I understand,” Dumbledore tells him. “I will not be expelling Mr. Black, but the punishment will remain severe regardless.”

James knows he can’t argue with this; the heaviest sentence Sirius could have suffered is now off the table, and that’s all what matters. He can mop the floors of Hogwarts for the rest of his life for all James cares about. “Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore says, eyes flickering to the invisibility cloak James has been holding the entire time. “I have stood by you when you needed it, and I expect you to do the same for me, James—if time ever requires that.”

“For sure, sir.”

“All right.” Dumbledore smiles. “You can go now, and send Sirius to me, please.” 

James nods before he walks out of the office, closing its door behind him and leaning his back against it, eyes closed for the first time after that very, very long night. 

– 

Sirius slithers into the infirmary. 

In the crack of light and the hiss of late-September shiver, something settles in the spaces between his ribs, phantom-like. The tide pulls out autumn and winter slices through. Deep down he knows it isn’t the turn of the season, he was born on a cold night—on a Black night, when his mother almost died for the case and he cut through her womb and into the starless outstretch, lit with his first waking breath. 

He shoves it aside, the lingering shadow, and doesn’t dwell on it for a second longer; perhaps James is losing momentum, perhaps he’s growing old in the head to be that outraged over a laugh. 

Sirius leans against the windowpane, light eclipsed in his silhouette, arms crisscrossed as he watches. The cartography of Remus’s body is etched into his brain deeper than his own name or magic unfolded, and he supposes it normal when you’re used to seeing your best friend naked since twelve—and not at all deranged—to know, blindfolded, where every rug lies, every tear. Although you have never touched before, never known. 

As he counts Remus’s new scars, seething and blood-red, on the curve of his throat and shoulderblades, across his arms and chest, Peter tells him: “You fucked up real bad this time.” 

Sirius doesn’t turn to look at him. “He had it coming.” 

“But did Remus have it so?”

“Remus wouldn’t think—” and before he could tell him that he could never know Remus better than he does, that no one in this lifeline and the spiral of all others could know the meat and the tortured cords of Remus Lupin better—knotted into his own in an ineffable tangle when you have spent long nights rolling cigarettes and spilling out your guts in conundrums, wondering with a vigorous hunger if you leaned in, if you just leaned in-in-in, would it be another colossal fuck up in the endless thread or the end of it—Remus half-wakes. 

He spits out the potion Pomfrey has been shoving down his throat, and Sirius remembers him complaining about the taste when he once allowed himself the luxury of being bitter. In a moment, Sirius is next to the bedside and the matron glares at him. “Give me that.”

“This is no play thing, child. You shouldn’t even be here—”

Sirius’s hand doesn’t waver, pressing, “Give me the potion.”

Madam Pomfrey clenches her jaw, knowing that Sirius Black is an electric force that won’t be stopped with glares or detention, and so she unwillingly does as told. 

Delirious, voices overlap in Remus’s head, confusion and pain blending in—but there’s a hand on the nape of his neck, flattening the tension there; fingertips that know the hurt all too well that he almost, pathetically, cries. “I know this tastes like shit, but you’re made of stronger stuff, Moony.” 

And then Sirius is coaxing the foul liquid down his throat. Remus is slapped with a reality check; everything is vivid, and he clutches Sirius’s shirt, eyes wide with terror. “James—” 

“What of James?” Sirius asks, bewildered. 

“He’s hurt,” Remus panics. “Sirius, I hurt him. I hurt James, our James.”

“When he pushed Snape out of the way,” Peter interferes, and Sirius’s head snaps towards him. “Remus pushed him back and he hurt his head, but it wasn’t severe.”

“Doesn’t make it any less all right,” Remus says, gripping the sheets until his knuckles turn white. “Doesn’t make me any less guilty.” 

At that, he looks at Sirius; he looks, and he waits for mercy, and it doesn’t come. 

Peter turns to Pomfrey. “Perhaps we should leave them for a bit since Remus drank the potion and all?” 

And since they obviously bloody need it, he almost adds. 

Pomfrey puts her hands on her waist, evaluating the situation. “Fine. I will be back in a while to check on you, Remus. But if you exhaust yourself with too much talk, I will forbid your friends from visiting you until you are well again, specifically you, Mr. Black, and you will not have your way again.”

She walks out of the infirmary with an air of finality, and Peter trails right after her, but not before exchanging a look with Sirius that said ‘you better fix this.’

“I’m sorry,” Remus says, and Sirius realizes he’s apologizing to him, to him. “I know you would rather kill than have someone touch James, but so do I. I swear to Merlin, to God, to all religions—and you must believe me, Sirius, because you know me better than all, because you have seen more of me than all, and you must believe that I would have never done this had I had a choice, don’t you?”

Don’t you?  The phantom is a graveyard that opens and stretches from his ribcage to the tip of his tongue, deadly cold. In that moment he realizes—like a bolt of lightning or jumping headfirst into water, when he’d first taught Regulus how to swim—that the thrill of beginnings is always blinding. When Snape came to him and asked where Remus was, pressing the wrong buttons, he saw in his arrogance and obstinacy a stamp of all he despises: pureblood superiority and the so-called family pride, a chance of that bastard reaping what he sowed. And he knows he isn’t a moralist, knows that if James didn’t come to the rescue, he wouldn’t have. And this has often been the balance of their friendship; James being his better half and all that’s good and kind and honorable in this world, his opposite and the ultimate conqueror of the darkness within. 

When his mother pushed him over the edge a month ago, making demands he wasn’t going to meet with a tongue as sharp as his own, he saw all-consuming red as he packed his belongings and took off without looking back, midnight air stirring in his lungs like the first breath of a newborn, his feet faster than the wind, lighter than any wind. He ran and ran and ran with maddening laughter until his feet gave out in front of the Potters’ Manor and it all came to a halt. He started choking. 

The pain was abrupt and razor-sharp, clearing the fog in his mind, and emerging from it was the image of Regulus watching him go, knowing six-feet into his heart that his older brother wasn’t going to return home this time. Just before he left, Regulus looked down at him from the window and all charade broke, one palm resting on the glass in a gesture that Sirius couldn’t recognize in his fit, a call out for help, a silent plea of ‘Sirius, Sirius, please. Don’t leave.’

“If you have any shred of—” Remus trips, love-love-love. “—empathy left for me, then, you will get me out of here, Sirius.”

“Like hell you’re going anywhere—”

“I can’t look them in the eye and see what they see,” Remus cuts him off, I can’t see the monster in me. 

But Sirius has had enough. He sits down and grabs his shoulders as if to wake him up, looking straight into his eyes. “This is what they see.”

In Sirius’s eyes, there are no monsters; only Remus, his Remus. Before he could cry, Sirius pulls him in, and for a moment it’s an act of patriotism and yet not. He’s selfishness incarnated—to want, to have, when Remus wouldn’t feel the same had he been hit with a different light. Sirius understands that once the curtains are pulled apart, by no hands other than his own in an inevitable confession of a sinner to a saint, and the truth emerges from behind like the stage’s brightest actor, he’ll face God’s most ferocious punishment; the eternal deprivation of Remus’s body against his own, just like this, all solace and warmth and what he dares to hope is love, even now. 

And so he relishes in the way Remus fits perfectly into his chest as if their bones have been carved out for one another only like two complementary statues and the way he holds him back as if the mere act of letting go is a death sentence, and laments like Adam did moments before he was cast out of heaven, for he knows what is coming. Remus buries his head in the crook of Sirius’s neck, from which he has built a home for himself throughout the years; the soft texture of Sirius’s skin against his closed eyelids and the feeling of his slender fingers rubbing circles on his back have been his hideaway from the terrors of the world and the terrors he brings upon it altogether for as long as he can remember, and Remus never wants to forget.  

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Sirius repeats, still not letting go. “And if that bastard opens his mouth, I will cut out his tongue.” 

“I just don’t understand. . . how did he find me in the first place?”

Sirius knows he has two choices now—to either tell the truth like a coward, or to remain a lionheart till the end. Every cell in his body is begging him to stay still, not to look at Remus when he opens his mouth, but he resists the temptation, knowing that this isn’t one of the things he can run away from, despite being an expert on the matter. He pulls away to look right at Remus.

“It was me, Remus. I led Snape to you; I told him about the passageway, about the knot in the Whomping Willow.”

Remus is suddenly immobilized. “But—surely you didn’t mean to? Surely it was a mistake?”

“It was the gravest mistake of my life,” Sirius says, his face a study in regret. “But he didn’t trick me, I told him everything willingly.”

“Willingly?” Remus repeats, the world spinning around him. 

Sirius nods, slowly. 

It hurts more than the Cruiatius—the swiftness with which Remus moves away from him, almost as if Sirius’s touch is silver. 

Remus jolts out of the bed and stands on his feet, or he tries so. Excruciating pain hits his side and he realizes he’s forgotten all about his broken ribs, hissing out in pain, eyes squeezing shut. Sirius hurries to his side. “You will fall—” 

But Remus pushes off his hand even as he almost doubles over. “I would rather crawl.” 

“Fuck, Remus, I know you are mad, but you have to just let me—”

“I have to let you do absolutely nothing else,” Remus half-yells, half-hisses in pain. “Who the fuck do you think you are to demand anything of me now?”

In defiance, Remus leans against the wall, chest heaving. “Get back right this instant and tell me what I have done.”

Sirius doesn’t move. “What?” 

“Tell me what I have done to you that was so bad you felt like this was the only way to get back at me.”

Sirius’s eyes widened. “I’d never do this to you for revenge, even if I was angry with you—which I’m not. You’ve no hands in this, Remus.” 

“Then why did you do it?” Remus cries out. 

Sirius opens his mouth and closes it twice, attempting to say the right thing—to say the honest thing, but only superficiality slips past his mouth; the kind which doesn’t earn one forgiveness, the kind that stretches a gap of bridges over bridges between hearts which were once close enough to almost be one. 

“The bastard found me, and he kept getting on my nerves trying to know where you were, and I just wanted to scare the shit out of him so that he’d shut up and know where to draw the line of crossing us, which all now sounds like a stupid fuckery and it is. I wasn’t thinking straight,” Sirius says. “If I’d known, if only I’d known, that James would be hurt, that you would be hurt—”

“You didn’t think straight?” Remus echoes, shuddering in disbelief. “That’s your goddamned excuse, Sirius, that he pissed you off and you didn’t think? That’s your idea of drawing a line, when you don’t even know what that fucking means? I could have killed him! I could have become a murderer for you!” 

“What would you have done if I killed Snape, huh?” Remus presses on. “Would you have gone to Azkaban for me?”

Sirius’s voice is steadfast. “I would have rotten in Azkaban for you.”

Remus shakes his head violently, the intensity of his voice is unrecognizable even to his own ears. “How dare you? How dare you lie to me again?”

“I’m not lying!” Sirius argues. “I know you can’t trust me now, and I don’t blame you for it. I have no one to blame for this but myself, yet you have to believe me when I say I would have taken whatever punishment they would have sentenced you with, and served it in your stead without any lingering regrets. I would’ve deserved to feel each and every ounce of pain they’d have put you through just as I deserve to feel each and every ounce of pain you’re now going through.”

“And if he killed me? Would your pain have been enough then?” Remus asks. “He was ready and he was bent on revenge, Sirius. It could have taken a single flicker of his wand. Don’t tell me you put it past him, with all the rumors going around.”

Sirius understands what Remus means well; he’s heard all about it in Grimmauld Place—known that the whispers are true, that a Dark Wizard is rising, encouraging others to tag along, to break the chains of the Ministry, to use magic freely because there are no forgivable or unforgivable parts of it; it’s just a force, their force. 

“I would have murdered him,” Sirius vows with a dangerous darkness. “And not with a single flicker of my wand.” 

“And fixed absolutely nothing,” Remus adds, fed up. “Exactly as you’re doing right now.”

“Then you must let me know.”

“Let you know what?”

“How to fix it all.” 

“Leave,” Remus says, in all simplicity. He tastes salt at the back of his throat. “That’s how.”

It stings—how Remus vocalizes his wish so fast, without a second thought, as if Sirius’s presence is the core of his anguish and Sirius’s absence is its cure. It used to be the other way around. 

Sirius finds himself standing still, his feet disobeying Remus already. “Remus—” 

“Just for once in your life, listen to someone else’s wishes before your own!” Remus tells him, and it is more heartbreak than anger speaking this time. “It wouldn’t have been that hard to mislead Snape or to tell him to bugger off, but you wouldn’t bear it, would you? You wouldn’t bear mortifying your pride, wouldn’t bear stepping over it and losing just this once for me, so can’t you spare me even now and leave? There’s nothing more to devastate; I’m all ruins. You won, Sirius.”

“I’d rather be damned a thousand times than have you think that this is me winning.” 

“Be damned, then,” Remus replies instantly, almost like a reflex. 

Sirius stumbles back a step or two, almost as if he’s been hit by an invisible force. There’s an internal cry inside his chest, like Lucifer’s as he fell from grace—except that Sirius welcomes his retribution in a way that the archangel never did; with open arms, wings deservedly clipped.

The door slams open, and James comes in. He eyes the situation and figures out from the looks on his friends’ faces that the truth has been revealed in his absence. He has thought of a hundred ways to break it down to Remus gently during his walk from Dumbledore’s office to here, but it seems like there is no longer a need for that. 

“Sirius,” James says with a sharp edge in his voice. “Please wait outside.” 

Having heard James’s silent message and seen the agony increasing in Remus’s eyes the more he refuses to leave, Sirius starts to walk out of the infirmary, overpowered by how clearly his presence is unwanted. But he pauses at the door to steal a one last glance at his friends, tilting his head to the side—only to find that Remus has finally given in and sunk to the floor, his hands fisted in James’s robes as he cries silently. 

I have lost everything, Sirius thinks. Everything.

–

Chapter Text

When James leaves the infirmary, he finds that Sirius has been waiting outside as requested; that he hasn’t thrown a tantrum and disappeared somewhere he can’t be found as usual. He’s leaning against a wall not so far away, unaware of James’s presence yet, too lost in his own thoughts—head hung low, long midnight hair shadowing his eyes. James thinks he looks like a grieving Greek statue, ripped straight out of one of the old illustrations inside Remus’s books, without a single teardrop rolling down his cheeks but with his face twisted in profound sorrow. 

Before James can approach him, students start filling the hallways, and he realizes with dismissiveness that the first round of classes for the day are about to begin. He watches as friends and strangers both greet Sirius, and the way Sirius lifts his head and nods effortlessly here and there at all of them, the guilt and heartbreak almost wiped off his face, replaced with a guarded, unreadable veil—his sharpest blade. James knows he means for the tip to be pointed at others, to work as a shield, but he wants to tell him that it still cuts him all the same. 

He walks towards him, their eyes finally meeting. “We must—”

Go. But he doesn’t get to finish his sentence, as a fourth–year Gryffindor boy cuts him off. “Oi, Potter! What happened to your head?” 

James freezes in pure horror for a second, realizing that there is still dried blood on the side of his head. He’s forgotten all about it until now, a sharp ache hits where the wound is, awakened by the comment. Maybe it has been there all along, concealed by adrenaline. 

“Fell off my broom,” James says, recovering as others stare at his injury. “Early quidditch training. No gain without pain, huh?” 

“That’s our Chaser!” the boy says, grinning and patting James’s shoulders. 

James grins back briefly before grabbing Sirius’s arm, and walking away—a normal sight to the passers–by; Potter and Black’s heads squished together in deep, secretive conversation, planning their next act of mischief. Except that this isn’t the case this time. As James leads Sirius to the dorms, he narrates to him the events that have unfolded inside Dumbledore’s office, voice low but not kind. 

He goes in first when they arrive, the place empty and entirely theirs. Turning around abruptly, he points his index finger at Sirius’s chest. The sharp movement makes his head throb, but he ignores it, his pent-up pain and exasperation exploding like a bomb that’s been ticking for too long. “Give me one reason for which I shouldn’t rage hell upon you right now!” 

“I have none,” Sirius says, voice hollowed out. He doesn’t care about the severity of the penalty James has decided he’s worthy of; he knows he deserves it all. “Do it. I won’t stop you.”

James’s hand makes a frustrated gesture in the air, curling in and around itself. Sirius’s acceptance of being reproached, without a hint of his typical back-and-forth pulling, is what makes him pause. He wishes Sirius would fight or yell at him, defend himself in any way; say that he doesn’t regret it so that this situation would be easier. James would kill him then, but the defeat on his face and desire to condemn himself further is hardening it all; James has always been a saviour, never a wretch.

Sirius steps forward when James doesn’t move, getting rid of the small distance that used to divide them. He clutches James’s fist midair with his hand and slams it into his own chest, pressing on with what resembles almost insanity. “Do it, James. Rage hell upon me so that Remus wouldn’t suffer alone, so that you wouldn’t suffer alone, so that I would know exactly what shape these kinds of scars take, the ones caused by those you love most, although your conscience should always remain guilt-free, unlike mine. I won’t seethe, or hold a grudge. I will have no right to.”

“I wish I could,” James says, now more angry at himself than at Sirius. “But my hands won’t let me, my heart won’t let me, and I just can’t understand how it wasn’t the same for you when it came to our Remus—your Remus. How could you have the fucking heart for it, to wound him like this?” 

“I didn’t,” Sirius says, hopeless and true. “I never intended to wound him.”

“What you intended changes nothing to him,” James replies. “God knows I always tolerated your recklessness, that I went along with it—and encouraged it even—because it’s a mirror of my own, but not this time, Sirius. I won’t be favoring you.”

“I don’t deserve your favor,” Sirius says, the light gone out of his eyes. “Or anyone else’s. I can’t even favor myself, and I never will. Leave tolerance aside, and be as angry with me as you wish—even if you can’t hurt me the same way I hurt Remus—it’d be the least I deserve and the most I can endure.”

And then I’d be too far gone, with my circle of damnation coming full, he almost adds, starting with Regulus; the first and worst mistake, curving with Remus; the rawest and deepest wound, and ending with you, James; the last blow of it all, the final seal.

James opens his mouth to reply, but before he could, a wave of severe dizziness hits him, doubling his vision. The ground shakes beneath his feet.

As he stumbles, Sirius’s arms enfold around his waist and shoulders faster than a split-second, steadying him. It never gets old; the way they’re wired to always rush to each other’s aid. “James!”

“I’m fine. It’s nothing. Let go—”

“Like hell I will let you go.”

Ignoring James’s carelessness about his own good, Sirius walks them to the nearest bed and sits him down—with James having no strength to fight him off with, except that of words, which proves itself to be futile against Sirius’s iron will. The ringing inside his head slows down a little, when he’s no longer standing and gesturing and yelling, and he can’t help sighing, eyes squeezed shut.

He feels Sirius’s hand brush off his rowdy curls to reveal the injury; touch soft and cautious. He thinks about moving away, about dismissing his pain for a while longer to continue reproaching Sirius’s stupidity, but Sirius’s grip on his shoulders is strong and the mere attempt of standing up threatens to avert the ringing twice as hard, so he stays still as Sirius’s wand touches the side of his head. The feeling of his magic is like a cool breeze amidst July’s heat, a spilling relief. 

As his eyes remain closed, partially because he’s still recovering and partially because he’s still debating how to respond, Sirius’s worry grows and words leave his mouth in a panicked haste. “James, focus. Talk to me. Tell me how foul and cruel I’m, how I don’t deserve any of you. I know the words are on the tip of your tongue. Just don’t drift off, okay? Don’t go somewhere I cannot be with you.”

“We spent years ,” James emphasizes each and every word, eyes fluttering open. “Years trying to convince him that he didn’t amount less than any of us, less than anyone else. And it was working. You knew that best. He stopped dreaming of Greyback only. He started believing in himself again, having love and hope again—and you crushed all of this, all of him, overnight. Pray tell me, Sirius, what was worth this almost irreparable damage?”

“It’s true I’ve crushed him, and crushed myself, and crushed us all,” Sirius replies, with fear breaking the usual courage of his eyes. “But you said it’s almost irreparable, what I’ve done— almost, so you must tell me how to fix it. You must guide me one more time. Otherwise. . . Otherwise. . .”

“You would be alone?” James finishes for him as the healing spell takes full effect. He straightens his neck, the pounding gone. “Remus trusted you, he trusted you with his life—but that never meant it was yours to use or bargain with when you felt so, least of all for the sake of a laugh, Sirius, to which, by the way, none of us are laughing. He was supposed to be yours only to cherish and protect.”

“You think I don’t cherish Remus? You think I meant to endanger him?” Sirius asks and realizes instantly how hypocritical he must sound, as James’s gaze remains hard and unforgiving. “James, I would die for Remus.”

“What I think isn’t important!” James cries out, now standing up again. “But what Remus thinks, on the other hand, is. He believes you have made a mockery out of his lycanthropy, out of his suffering, to amuse yourself.” 

“A mockery?” Sirius echoes, ashen-faced. “There isn’t a lifetime in which his suffering would ever bring me a trace of amusement. Remus’s pain is my own. My own. Can’t you see me burning, James?”

James pauses, sheer grief filling his eyes. “I can barely see you at all.”

His words shoot an arrow straight into Sirius’s heart, puncturing it, and Sirius clutches it as he bleeds woe and regret all over their dorm. 

“James—”

Sirius sounds as if his voice has been punched out of his chest, in a choke. He isn’t certain whether or not James’s heard it and it almost feels like he’s forgotten how to speak; incomprehensible thoughts floating inside his head, noises stuck at his throat, with the only thing making sense being the syllables of James’s name—shaped on Sirius’s tongue with torment and desperation. 

“James, I—” it is too heavy of a weight, to push James’s statement far enough off his chest to be capable of breathing again, of talking again. “I will do anything, anything, so that—” 

You could see me again. 

“Ask for Remus’s forgiveness until it is given, freely and truly, if you’re to do anything for anyone’s sake,” James interrupts him. “Only then you will find mine. Only then you will find yours. ” 

Sirius nods slowly, at the very end—after a long while of painful, stunned silence. It takes everything in James not to rush to his side and hold him, witnessing his heart break. But the sound of Remus’s anguished cries is still ringing in his ears, serving as a reminder that he’s doing what’s right for both of them, as hard as that can be to believe. Remus deserves justice, and Sirius needs to be taught a harsh lesson, yet James’s heart hasn’t been built for harshness, and therefore; before his impulses would kick in, he leaves the dorm with the finality of a play’s exit scene. 

–

Remus watches the night falling from the window of the infirmary; how the midnight sky cradles the new moon in its arms, almost as if it’s an infant, rocking it back and forth. He can feel it all the time, either like a chronic itch or a faint tingling sensation he could ignore at will if he concentrates hard enough on the sound of James and Sirius’s laughter, sensical but mostly nonsensical, or Peter’s voice planning out the smallest, sneakiest details for a new prank, taking the entire group by surprise, or Lily’s soft humming as they study together in the library, away from the noises of the castle. He’s become so good at it that he sometimes fools himself into thinking he’s just a normal teenage boy, not a walking ticking beast. On days like this, when the nightmare has come and passed, there’s relief replacing anxiety and agony. The mantra set to I’ve made it one more time, as if he’s ended world hunger, the wolf hasn’t broken me yet.

Except that this time it has.

The realization is stronger than a tidal wave and Remus sinks deep and under it. He mulls attempting to swim to the surface, to know the taste of air again, but thinks better of it; he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, lungs giving out, blood circulation cut short. The gnawing sense of guilt in his gut pulls him down with the relentless memory of James’s injury and the distant echo of his scream in the Shack, with Sirius’s voice admitting what he’s done and the gray of his eyes glinting with a kind of peril Remus has never associated with them before, jagged and aimed at him for the first time—and he aches and aches and aches with it all.

He can’t detect the exact moment in which blindness washed over him, in waves and waves of darkness, a flow without an ebb—and he can’t, or God forbid come close to understanding, when that darkness started tasting sweet as a grape, addictive as a drug, on tongue and veins. He’s all mischievous, and devilish, and rebellious underneath the innocent flutter of his eyes, and the coy smile on his face, and the nonchalant shrug of his shoulders when something goes off in school, a prank set on purpose or sheer dumb luck; a Marauder in blood and bone, through and through.

Yet if one out of that deranged group of boys possesses an ounce of sense, it’d be him—admitted by McGonahall and Dumbledore and Peter and James and even Sirius himself, our stairway to heaven, he’d say, a cigarette between his teeth, mouth stretched to a teasing smile, because he knows it’s only Remus who could pave a way out of purgatory for them. And it’s only clear now that if Remus is their stairway to heaven, then Sirius is their descent to hell.

How Remus has been blindly descending is the mystery of his entire fucking miserable existence. Did it happen when they first met on the Hogwarts Express, when Sirius shook his hand and spoke with an accent dripping elitism? Midnight hair trimmed to perfection, manners set on the table—with just the slightest glint of the devil in his eyes, implying that none of it was real. Was it that goddamned glint all along, just the mere prospect of an invitation that there may be more? Or was it when Sirius started surpassing childhood and flourishing into adolescence, with the devil mightier than ever; hair growing long and free, laughter turning wild and loud, lips only knowing killer, killer smiles. Was it when the touch of Sirius’s hand lingered a bit too long on his shoulders, drawing circles and testing the rhythm of Remus’s breathing and his sanity altogether, or when he’d grab his elbow down Hogwarts’ hallways before Filch could catch up, or spread his palm across his chest as he jolts awake from a nightmare, shaken to the bone, partially to calm him down and partially to catch his heartbeat in the curl of it—and Remus would want to laugh then, half in torment and half in defeat, would want to tell him there’s no need, that his mark was already all over every beat.

It was me, Remus. I led Snape to you; I told him about the passageway, about the knot in the Whomping Willow.

Despite the piercing pain, his eyes have given up, swollen and blood-red—and Remus sits in silence, realizing that it’s an even greater torment than weeping, to endure such pain and sit still, trying to cut through a web of lies; that perhaps this is just a nightmare he’ll wake up to the sound of soft French ballads, that perhaps this wasn’t Sirius and yet how could it be anyone else?

Peter has been with him since the morning, skipping the day’s classes and guaranteeing himself detention, but James has asked him not to leave Remus until he comes back—not that Peter wants to bail on his best friend anyway. He’s flipping through Remus’s own copy of Macbeth, rambling about the Muggles’ weird depiction of wizards in an attempt to distract him.

“All right,” Peter says, clearing his throat and slamming the book shut to free Remus out of his daze. “I’m tired of pretending I understand half of the shit that’s written in here.”

And that earns him a laugh, vibrating through Remus’s chest suddenly, surprising them both. “I’ll explain it to you when I’m in a better state of mind—because it’s not shit, Pete.”

“Nah, I think I still got the moral of the story,” Peter tells him, grinning and waving one hand in the air carelessly. “Don’t trust the Dark wizards and their prophecies, don’t try killing your brother and his wife, and all shall be well.”

“The Muggles got this one right,” Remus replies, a ghost of a smile on his face, but it soon fades and he’s back to staring at nothingness.

“There,” Peter says, his tone a little louder than necessary, preventing Remus from fully diving into another reverie. “You’re doing it again, reverting to the back of your head. You can talk to me instead, you know? You’ve always been the best listener out of the four of us, but I can try.”

“It’s not—It’s not that you’re a bad listener,” Remus sighs.

Peter moves his chair closer to Remus’s bed, staring at him with a sincere gaze, void of the mischief which usually comes along with being a Marauder. “What is it then?”

“James always says that the right words come to me easy as a breath,” Remus begins, fingers fumbling with the sheets. “That I always know what to say, and when to say it—that I’ve the ability to make sense out of nonsense when everyone else fails to do so. But I can’t, for the love of him, even come close to accepting what happened, let alone to speak of it. My agony is beyond words, Peter. They don’t fit it, and neither does my heart.”

“Well, for starters, you shouldn’t force yourself to make sense out of anything. James wouldn’t want you to, if you can’t,” Peter says, leaning his elbows on Remus’s bed. “Too much saint-likeness never did anyone good, did it? Rage about it if you want, or if it would make you feel better, we can bash the hell out of Sirius all night long. That shouldn’t be too hard to find words for.”

“Half of me wants to,” Remus admits. “But the other doesn’t because I can’t completely believe it was Sirius. I think I may be going mad, Pete. One moment I know it was him, and the next I’m aware of what happened, but not of who did it. It’s almost as if there are two Sirius-es. The Sirius who didn’t hesitate to crush me, and the Sirius of. . .”

My heart, Remus almost adds foolishly.

Peter sighs something that sounds like ‘Fuck you, Black’ and stands up from his chair to sit on the edge of Remus’s bed. “What you’re feeling is a perfectly normal reaction to. . . well, being wronged like that. It has nothing to do with madness, Remus. You’re just still in shock, like how you call it when James is beaten in Quidditch and refuses to accept it until hours later, so give yourself time, considering that this is far, far worse than a lost Quidditch match. Sirius should have known better than to step this low; he should have honored your trust, as he was the closest to you out of us all. And yes, James and I aren’t that dim, mate. And it’s fine, it’s always been—how he means, meant, to you. . . more.”

Remus looks away instantly, almost as if he’s been struck across the face, hands gripping the sheets of his bed tighter. Peter’s reassurances brought him an undeniable sense of comfort and understanding, as the line between sanity and lunacy felt thinner to him than a wire for a moment, and Peter helped thicken it again, yet the last words he said, for all their sincerity, hurt: how Remus has always given more of himself to Sirius than to anyone else, and how it’s been obvious enough to everyone but him.

Or maybe it was, whispers the sinister voice in the back of his head, becoming alive as reality strikes him like a bolt of lightning, unyielding this time. There’s only one Sirius, the so-called Sirius of his heart, who has destroyed him without a second thought. And he still didn’t care. Why should he, though? Why should he care about the feelings of a walking bag of fur and claws, of taint and scars, let alone to respect or reciprocate them? He could do better, he could do so much better.

Remus blows out a deep breath, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat.  “I once told him that we all have light and dark in our hearts, that we aren’t born inherently evil no matter whose blood we carry, that what matters most is the side we choose to act on, and that he has more capacity for goodness, for love. Like a fool.”

“Seeing the goodness in others first isn’t something to scorn,” Peter tells him. “You saw that behind James’s arrogance is an incredibly true and loyal friend, that behind my hesitation is a boy that can be certain of himself if encouraged enough, and that behind Sirius’s recklessness is someone you could still count on, or we thought so, and that’s what drew us towards you. It was your kindness, first and foremost.”

Remus smiles tiredly. “When did you become so wise, Pete?”

Peter winks. “It seems like the student became the master.”

Remus laughs again, and when it comes to a stop, he softly says to him. “If what I’ve been through means I still get to keep you and James, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

And although it isn’t directly acknowledged, the exclusion of Sirius from Remus’s affirmation acts as the first shift in the Marauders’ friendship. 

“Ah, you’re getting all emotional without me,” James says, grinning as he walks in.

“James,” Remus looks up, eyes instinctively flickering to where the injury on his head should be, hand following suit—but it’s gone.

“Hey,” James smiles as he snuggles beside him on the bed, swinging one arm around his shoulders. “I brought you this.”

James grabs a chocolate bar out of his pocket, and Remus takes it, a half-smile on his lips. “Anytime. After all, a wise man once told me,” James begins, laughing. “Eat chocolate, you will—”

“Feel better,” Peter finishes for him, with a laugh of his own.

Remus smiles; it is hard not to in the presence of James—who’s always cracking a joke, or pulling a ridiculous prank, or preventing one of his best friends from falling apart.

Remus eats the chocolate with James’s hand rubbing soft circles around his shoulders and Peter humming a rhyming song, elbows pressed into the mattress of the bed as he looks at the other two boys. Remus’s mind starts to feel a little less like a battlefield.

“James,” he calls. “And you, Pete—in case you decide to ever follow his footsteps—you must promise me something.”

“Anything.” James smiles sincerely.

“You must never follow me again on full-moons,” Remus tells him, serious as he shifts slightly to the side to face him better. “I don’t care what is happening. I don’t care if the whole world is crumbling. You just don’t do it. You let it crumble. You let me crumble.”

“You know you can’t extract a promise like that out of me,” James replies, still smiling. “I promise I will be more careful, if it makes you feel at ease; less reckless, although I will be ruining my reputation for you this way, Moons.”

“No, James, you will promise me exactly that,” Remus insists, clearly mad and frustrated. “Because—Because you must understand this, okay? You must understand that it’d have been hard to live if I killed Snape, that I’d have never forgiven myself for it, but you? God. . . you can’t put me through such pain and ask me to keep on living. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. The fact that I hurt you is already enough.”

“I’m as good as new, I swear,” James assures him. “Remember that one time Mulciber almost split my head in half with a Quaffle? A little push compared to it wouldn’t have killed me.”

“James.”

“All right, all right,” James relents. “I will never follow you on full-moons again. In human form, at least.”

Remus sighs. “Remember what happened last time?”

James grins from ear-to-ear. “Oh, I do. I so remember what happened last time.”

“James, you grew bucks out of your head. Bucks, ” Remus repeats, “It was—”

“Wicked,” James and Peter interrupt him in illusion. “Absolutely wicked. You can’t deny it.”

“Maybe,” Remus agrees and James raises an eyebrow. “Fine. I can’t. It was wicked, but we spent three hours trying to figure out a way to remove them.”

“I could’ve become the next Santa Claus if we didn’t succeed,” James argues back. “They could have become a part of my costume, and I would have worn all red and showered the first years with gifts and sang the Muggle jingle-bell song you taught me. I could have become a legend, Remus.”

“Christmas is not even here yet.” Remus smiles despite himself at the image.

“But it will be,” James says, tone softening in the end. “And I will be ready then. We will make it, and you won’t have to be alone again.”

And then it flashes like a camera snap, Remus and James in one bed in their second year, awake at midnight days after James followed him to the Shack and found out the truth. 

“What’s the worst thing about it, besides the pain?” James asked with sincere curiosity, no judgment in his voice. 

He doesn’t know whether or not he’s imagining it, but Remus shrinks a little bit into himself. “It’s lonely.”

“I’m not alone,” Remus promises, yet James’s grip around him tightens. “And I’m so indebted to you. For everything. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

“You repay me by forgiving yourself,” James tells him. “Because I’m not begrudging you for anything, nor I ever would.”

Remus manages a nod, a heavy lump hanging in his throat—and he pulls James into his arms, hoping that this would accommodate for his loss of words.

It does.

–

At the strike of midnight, the world is a blur.

He stumbles and almost falls, catching himself last-minute with a hand stretched out to hold onto thin air. Somehow miraculously it steadies him, or perhaps it’s the magic thrumming in his veins and beneath his feet that does, similar to a drumbeat. Sirius continues to walk, feet light nonetheless as if he’s some sort of a ghost floating around and haunting the castle in the dead of the night, terribly bored or bent on revenge or in search of someone who despises his presence because he’s fucked up their life in one way or another; the status-quo. He supposes it’d be the last. The final remnants of his lucidity refuses his ascension to spirituality, and for a moment he listens to the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and feels the piercing fire inside of it like hell has been pressed there by a divine order, and decides in the end that he’s still very much alive.

One doesn’t have to lie six-feet under the grass to burn like this; he realizes that whoever convinced humanity damnation is found only after death is a pretentious, lying bastard—because here it is, here he is, clung around the bitterness of alcohol on his tongue and the scorch of it deep in his throat and the absence of all that’s ever made sense to him, around the imprints he leaves on the wall as he aimlessly traces it with his fingers and the imprints he leaves on this earth altogether, buried in all the places he lived before, the creeks in Remus’s and James’s and his little brother’s hearts. Left a wasteland in his wake.

Be damned, Remus said and he’d meant it, like the first time he’d admitted to him that the pull of the moon is ever-present; how it makes his hands curl and quiver, the reverberation of it in his bones and veins like marrow and blood, or when he’d told him in the Shack, naked and feverish, that if he could choose how the wolf kills him, then this is how he’d rather go—in his own skin, moments post the nightmare, Sirius’s arms tangled around him like a sheathing, one hand in his hair and the other coaxing the terror out of his spine, heartbeat on heartbeat.

Or when he crawled into his bed post-Christmas second year, the dorm quiet and the snow twinkling in the dimness outside: a final thread of hope, and held him so—because he knew Sirius wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t show the toll of being inside that rotten house again, would push it away and laugh it off as if getting cursed on the holidays is some sort of a perfectly acceptable joke. But all it did was make Remus want to scream until it ripped out his vocal cords, or summoned a force strong enough to strangle Walburga Black in her sleep. He’d bottled it up instead, and offered his hands in the dark, as if saying there’s still kindness, there’s still love, small mercies exist, and here is hope. 

He knows Remus often believes it to be the thing with feathers, the elixir perching all souls, even when he’s torn and shred into inhumanity with the turn of the tide, Dickinson’s influence mingling with life’s breadcrumbs of leniency—and for a short while, when he’d stretched out his own hand back in the same dark, so did he. A brief sensation beyond misery and suffering, a torchlight.

Yet it slipped through his fingers, and flew out of reach the moment James told him I could barely see you at all. 

Far in the distance dawn breaks, scattering the night like ash. Sirius leans against the wall, an empty bottle of wine dangling in one hand, the other trembling, palm open—the words echoing in his ears like a never-ending song. The just-risen sun urges the breathless world to wake; its light kissing his skin, yet he barely feels any warmth. He’s cold all over.

–

Chapter Text

When Remus sets foot into the dorm one week post the full-moon, Sirius is out of sight. 

Outside the sun is setting, casting a reddish-golden haze over the walls; it glistens most in the strands of Peter’s sandy hair and Remus’s eyes, insomnolent. The last slivers of summer cling onto autumn, fading warmth battling the crisp air sweeping in, but nightfall is almost here and so is the cold; a mirror to the chilling numbness spread across Remus’s chest like a seal, the cords of his heart and the tip of his tongue and all the places that have once dripped tenderness and love with ease, replaced with alien frost, the places Sirius has once inhabited like they were his own. It feels like a robbery of some sort, to be stripped of love and warmth, to make peace with the cold.

And so when Remus glances at Sirius’s bed at the furthest corner of the room, with faint sunlight slanting on its edges and the sheets perfectly made as if no one slept in them the night before, drapes left wide open for the wind to tease and ruffle, he doesn’t care.

“He’s barely been here,” Peter says as if he’s obligated to. Remus wants to tell him he isn’t. “Had quite the falling out with James and I.”

Remus nods nonchalantly, averting his gaze to his own bed to which he walks and sits on, back turned to Sirius’s. “Where’s James?”

“Quidditch practice,” Peter replies, grinning. “Lost to Slytherin a few days ago, and he’s been pretty much killing himself—and the entire team, if we’re being honest—trying not to lose next week again. He might as well kick Frank out and appoint himself the new captain.”

Remus chuckles. “He’d make a great captain.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, back to fumbling with the task he has at hand, ink still barely on paper. When Remus asks about it, he goes on, “It’s a DADA essay. . .”

And so Remus agrees to help and write his own as well. He could always get a deadline extension on it, all things considered, but he’d rather have something to do than to sit all hollowed out. Always better to be of use.

When he flips through his DADA book, pages worn out and notes slipping out of them, looking for the correct chapter, his eyes fall on the one titled ‘Werewolves.’ It doesn’t bother him anymore, the chunk of nonsense written inside, the lies the Ministry would rather tell than spend actual time learning about lycanthropy. He doesn’t eat human flesh, for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t even like meat that much. But all of this was crossed out anyhow—along with the ‘Where to find werewolves?’ section, replaced with familiar cursive handwriting. It reads:

In Sirius Black’s arms.

It was a half-joke then, when Sirius sensed his discomfort and wanted to lighten up the mood, and so he snatched the book out of Remus’s hands when no one was looking, grinning as he scribbled the words down. When he returned it to him, Remus had to hold back a laugh in fear of drawing attention, but his mouth was stretched into a helpless smile and his hand held steadfast onto Sirius’s underneath the table.

The memory fades as soon as it surfaces, like a candle blown out midway—and all that remains is a darkness which takes and blinds, spreading high and wide and faster than a bolt of lightning, along with the fog of what could have been, bittersweet. Remus traces the ink with his fingers to see if it still feels the same, if it still makes something inside him beat. He isn’t doing it out of the late-night longing which used to tear his ribcage in half, when he’d wonder behind closed drapes if Sirius could hear the sound of it—of him—cracking, if he would come and bury himself inside his chest the way no one else is ever welcome to, or out of the eternal, gnawing question of whether or not one of them would finally have the guts to cross the threshold of what they dare not name, despite their blood being redder than most. And yet—

There’s dead silence. 

It’s like he’s watching his own life tape unfold from behind a screen, devoid of color. Or perhaps, not a screen. No.

A wall.

–

Halfway through transfiguration, Minerva McGonagall stands in front of Remus, James and Peter, eyes narrowed. “I assume the three of you know where Mr. Black is?”

James shakes his head almost mechanically, eyes desolated, and Remus knows it doesn’t come easily to him: the nonchalance, the abandonment. He can hear it well, above noise and in dead silence, the ringing in James’s bones urging him to move, to do something. To know. Because all the not knowing kills him, the gut-wrenching what-ifs. The resonance of it in the air, sewn into matter and morning light. Because James doesn’t sit and watch; he doesn’t bypass and wait. He brings late-night hot chocolate and cradles stubborn, stubborn hearts till dawn and gives love to those who think they aren’t worth a scrap as if it costs him nothing. And it doesn’t. He heals, and heals, and heals. . . until the wound is barely there.

And now it hurts to hurt.

Remus breathes through it: another reason to trip over guilt. There’s an icy fence when Sirius is concerned, but not James—James, who rushed headfirst to his aid on that scary night, mind set only on saving him, who always stood by his side but especially in this ghastly wake, throwing away years of close-knit brotherhood for his sake, who pierced his own heart for his. Remus wants to enfold him, to tell him that there’s no need for all this suffering and restraint, that he wouldn’t dare separate him from Sirius and neither would he wish for such separation, that he wouldn’t begrudge him if he stormed off mid-class to find him, that he wants him to find him—because if there’s someone who understands the agony of tearing skin from bone, it’d be him.

After all, he’s become a sight for sore eyes.

He wants to tell McGonagall not to bother, that Sirius will make an appearance when it pleases him and not a minute before, consequences be damned.

“Here,” comes a familiar voice from the door, cool and casual.

Sirius walks in and Remus doesn’t turn and look, letting the apathy wash over. Take control of his heart as if it’s a marionette between its strings. And it welcomes the gesture; a chill sweeps at Sirius’s presence, the lingering warmth and earth-shattering longing which used to sing a broken ballad of I-want, I-want when he’s around are gone. For the past week he’s been forcing his motion memory to shut out all things Sirius-imprinted, knowing that this moment was bound to come, the way a body has to spit out venom, in case his heart or hands or eyes betray him. All the subconscious reaching out first to him in a room full—or empty, it doesn’t truly make a difference—of people; eyes yearning, or shoulders touching, or a fleeting brush of a hand which Sirius’s never allowed to be merely that. He would hold his palm in the curl of his own until their hands blurred into one another like colors in an impressionist painting. Always demanding, always wanting more. And Remus would be the world’s shittest liar if he denied relying exactly on that, on Sirius turning every tiny thing he did into something bigger because he was scared of doing it himself, of the doors that could open. Here’s your 101 guide on being a fucking Gryffindor, composed and written by Remus Lupin, with blood in his mouth.

Heads turn in wonder as Sirius sits down two rows behind the rest of his friends; the four of them have never been apart since their first Hogwarts Express ride and now Sirius, the life of their every party, is strangely cast out.

When class is over and he’s disappeared again, with Peter chasing some Hufflepuff girl he likes, Remus takes James by the arm to an empty corner and gently yet firmly says: “You don’t have to stay angry at him on my behalf.”

And James replies, just as gently yet firmly, with: “I’m angry at him on my own behalf, Remus.”

And for the next few months, the school witnesses the fall of the Marauders.

–

The clamor hasn’t stopped since James caught the Snitch.

To top it off, it’s his first—and most probably last—match as Seeker, considering that McKinnon’s been badly injured and he’s stepping in her stead. James loves being Chaser, the Chaser, yet there’s an exhilarating rush to pulling the final move, to seeing the dismay on Regulus Black’s face, an inch away from his, his wrist wrapped around James’s outstretched one, almost like a promise but more like a threat, moments before the disaster.

James grins, shameless, the wind whipping his hair—rather infuriatingly, in Regulus’s opinion—all around. He lets go of James’s wrist promptly, a scoff between his teeth: “Amateurs luck.”

James’s “Whatever makes you sleep at night!” gets lost in the applause as Regulus flies away; Remus watches him avert his eyes to the crowd, landing first on Sirius—who’s almost standing beside him, Peter stuck between them like a shield—and his smile half-flutters because he’s never liked the roaring air as much as he does when Sirius is there. Then he spots Peter and Remus, who are jumping out of their seats, hurraying with the rest of the Gryffindors.

Sirius’s close proximity is pushed aside; once in a very near lifetime there was a whir in the back of Remus’s mind, telling him when he’s there and when he’s not, as if it’s wired to keep track of their distance, all the tiles and the walls and the life which sometimes separates them, a machinery carved precisely for Sirius Black out of Remus’s heart and gore. A machinery with a whir louder than the moon’s, in spaces deeper than its reach—where tender warmth has folded at one point. Now it’s cold and barren.

And for a moment, Remus fears. He fears something rare has been robbed from him, something humane. That all what remains are teeth and claws and a heart which can’t be called one.

Music and alcohol spill into the Gryffindors’ Common Room, a flood of intoxication and victory. James has been paraded inside, on the arms and shoulders of the Quidditch team. Peter has placed perfect Silencing Charms on the walls, and Remus has snuck in the drinks; there’s a double-edged innocence to his face, in spite of the scars, which has made the Headmistress of their House suspect nothing. Or at least pretend so.

“What’s the worst thing someone’s ever done to you?”

Half-gone into the night, a smartass wannabe asks. Remus almost chokes on the Firewhiskey he’s ingesting and comes to the conclusion that it is the reason this is happening in the first place. He wouldn’t have been lulled into a dumb game of Truth or Dare if he was in his right mind, even if all his friends were into it—and they are, James and Sirius always joining just to prove a point, choosing Dare and never backing out even when it includes public displays of nudity, and Peter tugging along because he fancies himself the spotlight of a Dare occasionally, yet he mostly sticks to Truth. Remus chooses Truth as well.

Just before the start of his round, a drunkard has exclaimed that the questions asked were too soft for this kind of party, in which the Gryffindors were bragging about their courage.

Remus can feel the gaze of eyes he knows all too well—or at least he thought so—pouring into his back, gray and piercing. He can feel the alarm on James’s shoulder blades, behind his crooked glasses despite the liquor streaming in his veins. Like a wake-up call.

He swallows and pulls the bottle off his mouth, about to answer with something trivial when the truth pushes its way past his throat and onto his tongue, set free before he could even realize it.

“When someone I—” Remus takes in a deep breath as if he’s choking. There’s a devouring burn in the middle of his chest as he withholds the word loved, loved, loved that’s threatening to come out. “—trusted looked me in the eye and told me it was him all along, told me ‘I did this to you; I drove the knife into your back, and split you open, whole and raw, like it meant nothing. Like you meant nothing.’”

At first, shocked silence engulfs the place. It stretches out to what could have been hours or mere minutes; a glitch in time which re-introduces Remus to death. All the bone breaking and twisting have never made his heartbeats come to this halt, strong enough to convince him that this is it, this is where it ends—with the truth arising from where he’s buried and buried it, beneath heaps of ice and dark, like a blaze.

Remus is the first to burn.

“Holy shit, man. Who’s that arsehole?”

And just like that, silence ends and voices overlap.

“It worked! It worked!” a third-year exclaims louder than the rest, high-fiving their friend, over the moon.

James turns to look at them, glaring deadly. “What the fuck do you mean? What worked?”

“The Veritaserum!” the boy answers, smug. “Bet you couldn’t brew Veritaserum in your third year, could ya?”

“We thought that if we were to play Truth or Dare, we better play it right! We slipped the potion in so that anyone who chooses Truth for an easy way out, doesn’t really get that. Just like your poor friend there.”

Veritaserum.

The room explodes into motion.

Remus springs out of it, Sirius on his heels. James is shouting at the foolish third years, his voice fading out as Remus runs. The corridors stretch out long and empty in front of him, somewhat blurry around the edges, Sirius’s voice a distant echo to his ears, although he suspects this is real. “Remus, Remus!”

Cold winter air splashes into his face as he bursts into the Astronomy Tower. He inhales gulps of it as if it’s his last and in a split-second Sirius is there.

“You—” Sirius pants, pointing his index finger at him, fiercer than flame. “Do not mean nothing. You can be angry at me, you can never speak to me again, but you cannot believe that. You cannot—”

“You don’t get to bloody tell me what I can and can’t do—”

“Yes, I do,” Sirius insists, stepping dangerously closer with each word. “When it comes to this, I do. You will not waste away with these thoughts for me.”

“I will waste away if I wish it, however I wish it,” Remus argues, just as stubborn, as fiery. “And it isn’t for you. Not everything has to be about you.”

“Not for me, then. No,” Sirius presses. “Because of me. I will bear the grief of what I have done, of you not wanting anything to do with me, of the cuts, but I will not bear you thinking that bullshit you said in there.”

“Hard to believe coming out of the mouth of the world’s classiest hypocrite.”

“I’m not a hypocrite in what I feel about you, Remus,” Sirius says, steadfast. “I never have been, and I never have looked at you like that. Because you are worth everything, all right? You are worth everything good, and kind, and luminous. You are not worth me.”

“That’s—that’s fucking cruel, even for you,” Remus says with bloodshot eyes and a racing, racing heart. “Haven’t I already given enough, Sirius? Do you have to step over my heart with lies again? Do you have to rob me of the last shred of it?”

“I’m not lying! I—”

“Do you like to see me break?”

“What the—no. God, no,” Sirius replies instantly, horrified at the sincerity of the question. “I would rather let the world break before it breaks you. I would rather break before I break you.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Remus asks—cries out. “Why didn’t you let Snape break for me? Why didn’t you break for me, Sirius?”

“I do now.”

Remus shakes his head, violent and mournful. “It’s too late.”

Sirius swallows down the blow. “Only you decide that,” he tells him, “Only you get to decide if it’s too late, or if there is still hope. You can never see me again, or you can let me try and I swear I fucking will. I will try until there is nothing left of me but the embers of just that. Because I didn’t do it to hurt you, I did it to spite him. Had I been thinking about you then, I would have never—”

“I don’t understand how this is supposed to be a defense for you, an excuse of some sort,” Remus snaps, yet there is an emotion more profound than anger in his voice; anger has come and dulled and only sorrow remains, refusing to be soothed. “It’s sick—to keep repeating it wasn’t I you were thinking about, that you gambled me away, Sirius.”

“Gambled you?” Sirius echoes, appalled. “This is not—”

“Will you ever drop the act, Sirius?” Remus clenches his fists at his sides. “Will you ever stop?”

“No, I won’t.”

Remus supposes he should have seen it coming; long years spent in Sirius’s presence should have made him predict it—but that has always been a part of his charm all along, the impulsiveness, the unpredictability. Remus has no recollection of running away with the bottle of Firewhiskey still in hand, but here it is, and Sirius snatches it out, drinking the liquor.

“I won’t ever stop until you forgive me. I cannot stop until you forgive me,” he goes on, the Truth potion now in his system. “There are few people in this life that I would gamble it for, and you’re one of them. You always have been, ever since I laid eyes on you on the Hogwarts Express and you smiled, all wonder and kindness in face of my own inherent arrogance, and it—God, I have never said this out loud before—it pierced through my heart. You pierced through my heart, Remus. And I knew then I never wanted it to be repaired again. I wanted you in there, I wanted light in there. And I will not lose it, I will not lose you.”

There are instances in which time stopped for Remus before; the night Greyback found him and pressed his claws in, when Remus thought this was it—the bridge between life and death, the bridge on which the clock no longer ticks, the next morning when his father ceased mourning and told him he loved him still, lycanthropy or not, the first snap of his bones the following full-moon, the way sunrise kissed his bloody skin sorry as he came back to his senses, when Dumbledore took pity on him and handed him his Hogwarts letter like he wasn’t forever damaged, the Hogwarts Express taking off to mark it all as something real and not another Welsh daydream, the moment Sirius Black set eyes on him—and lingered.

And right now.

“Do you still not believe me, Remus?”

“No,” Remus replies, gasping. His own Veritaserum doing its magic. “I believe you.”

“Then let me in,” Sirius says—almost begs. “Let me in so that I could fix this, so that I could show you how I’m all apologies.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I was with you, I could forget for once that I’m a monster, but now you’re the solid proof that I’m one, Sirius. And I can’t shake that away,” Remus admits without a need for any mystical trick.

“That’s nonsense, that’s—”

“Don’t you understand, Sirius?” Remus asks, split-open. The wall down. “I can’t look at the mirror, I can’t face what I see.”

“Then look at me, Remus,” Sirius says, raising his hands to caress Remus’s cheeks. “Look at yourself in my eyes.”

Remus tries to back away, but his back is hit by the wall. He realizes with a jolt that he’s entrapped. Behind closed eyelids there’s a touch full of softness and what he can’t deny is love, despairing yet sincere. There is the horror of leaning in and the horror of not leaning in.

“You are far more humane than I can ever hope to be,” Sirius tells him, firm and ardent. “Than anyone can ever hope to be.”

Screaming from the inside, Remus catches Sirius’s wrists and lowers his hands down; Remus’s cheeks and heart exposed to the cold altogether. His eyes are still closed. “Please— Please don’t.”

And just like that, he’s out of the Tower; Sirius’s hands hold onto nothingness. 

Chapter Text

James tries not to notice it—or to just pretend so.

He flips to the other side of the mattress, sleep a long-awaited guest who refuses to arrive, the mantra of it’s not there, he is not there echoing relentlessly despite the fact that Sirius is one bed away, tossing and turning in rhythm. James would repeat it to himself between classroom walls and crowded hallways and on Quidditch fields, as if delusion could mold reality.

And yet it’s not half as persuasive as it ought to be; his centerfold is plucked out and he is meant to stand still and not stumble off the edge. James treads on their worn-out tether and wonders if Sirius has already fallen down.

On the windowpane the rain stirs a song for the unsleeping, the wind orchestrating along, moss and trees bending to its will. No one sane would dare go outside now.

But there’s the shuffle of stubborn, out-of-their-goddamn-mind feet, and a doorknob twisting open with more urgency than caution.

James curses incoherently something too close to ‘fucking maniac’ as he grabs his glasses and hurries along; pretenses abandoned, the ringing fading out. Any and all hopes of finding Sirius in the corridors, out of belated wisdom or dubiety, follow suit and he should’ve just known better.

“What the hell are you doing out here, now?”

James shouts over the raging storm and in less than half a minute he’s already soaking wet; the school’s front door is left wide open behind him, the harsh breeze slipping inside, and he knows it won’t take Filch and his bloody cat two seconds to be here.

Sirius’s back is to him, midnight hair curling and sticking to the nape of his neck, shoulders tense—and unmoving. In the dim light, he looks like a vengeful God, thunder and lightning drawing out his shadow. In James’s eyes, all that is there is a boy falling.

“Sirius,” James calls out, now concerned, with a hand on his biceps. 

Sirius titles his head, finally looking at him, past him—his face an unsettling blue, yet full of determination, a hand resting on his heaving chest, as if he could clutch his heartbeat in a grip, as if he could command it to slow down. . . as if suffering is bound to obey and not be obeyed. 

James realizes with a jolt that he’s choking, and in one rapid move, he stands right in front of him, one hand enclosing around his own. The rapid thud thud thud of his ribcage thrums into it, nearly contagious. “Hey, hey,” James coaxes, his other hand cupping his cheek in time; a familiar cadence of I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

“Sirius, breathe,” James stresses and he knows it shows; the panic on his face clear as daylight.

“I’m—breathing—” Sirius stammers, lying, tilting his head to pull away, opposite to everything sensible. “Go back inside.”

“Like hell I will!” James practically half-yells, grip growing firmer on him; chest and cheek altogether. 

“Just go b-back, James—”

“For fuck’s sake, what’s the need now for all this bravado?” James shakes his face, as if saying wake up, wake up. “I have already seen the worst of it all, haven’t I?”

And to this, there’s no disagreement; it’d be like claiming that the sun rises from the west. Sirius closes his eyes, half in torment, half in defeat—for who else is worth surrendering to, if not James?

“Just do it with me, yeah?” James leans in, letting go of Sirius’s cheek only to enfold his free hand, placing it on his own chest, breathing in and out measuredly. “Just breathe with me.”

“Okay,” it comes out a little ragged, but steadier than before, and so James goes on, Sirius with him; a conjoined tempo of chasing the darkness away. 

“Whatever it is you are seeing,” James tells him, his voice an anchor beneath the waves. “It’s not real, all right? I’m real. This—” he starts caressing Sirius’s knuckles. “Is real. Nothing else.”

“I know,” Sirius says, laughing bitterly, eyes opening, overspilling grief. “Believe me, I know.”

Before James could question it, there’s the sound of hurrying feet and he is certain that if it weren’t for his reflexes, always reaching out for his Invisibility Cloak first, they would have been caught. When Filch comes out, there’s only the pouring rain in sight.

They run to a secret passageway to sneak right back into the castle. Amidst it, James listens to the pattern of Sirius’s breathing like it’s his own, now a calmer in-and-out. When he looks at him, he realizes that it’s all there; the shadows under Sirius’s eyes, lingering and haunting, the tight clench of his jaw, like he’s holding something back (and James knows he is), the bone-deep despair. Sirius is here and now so is James, stretching out his hand for him in the dark again, just like he’s always been wired to. 

“What did you mean? Back there,” he asks slowly, cautiously, in the dimness of their surroundings, aware that Sirius’s answer is going to be unpleasant—that whatever has driven him out into the storm like a madman is way heavier than what he could carry. “What did you dream of?”

If James is expecting the answer to be a mere remembrance of that twisted, twisted prank, or what Remus said to him about it, or his serpent-like mother, or the vile, absolutely insane Mark they wanted to press down his arm like a Faustian bargain, or all the dark corners inside his family’s house which haunt him still, then he is dead wrong.

“Forgiveness.”

Oh. Oh. James’s face softens and he doesn’t ask what for; he knows. And yet it is plain in the gray of Sirius’s eyes, agonized, the never-ending beat of—you, Regulus, Remus, everyone I have ever graced with a touch. 

And so James sighs and pulls him into his arms, pulls all the pain, and the guilt, and the innate self-hatred in one encompassing embrace, offering Sirius a taste of his fever dream—a taste of atonement, second chances and forgiveness, the only salve.

“Like this?” James asks softly and feels Sirius’s eyes closing momentarily on his shoulder. 

“Don’t do it out of pity, James,” he tells him, lifting his head, looking straight at him, desolated. “Don’t forgive me if you can’t really find it in your heart to.”

James refuses to let him go. “I went against my heart when I left you. Because I had to. Because it wasn’t only for Remus, it was for you too. And it was out of love, my abandonment, contrary to what it might have seemed like. Because I know you. I know you better than you know yourself—better than all your mistakes, and your remorse, and your self-destructive ways. I love you past them. . . and this is why I couldn’t stand and watch one more time. I needed to snap you out, and maybe I should have done that much earlier. He came to me before about this, did you know that?” 

“Remus?” 

“Yes, after you ran away,” James goes on. “And he told me you were too far out of line, not that we have ever been saintly, but somewhere between the pranks and the parties and the revolts, there were limits—and you were strolling on the edge. He didn’t want you to fall, yet you barely took his hand, you barely took anyone’s, Sirius. But Remus thought you would take mine. And I just told him that it will pass, all the acting out, to let you be for a while so that you wouldn’t feel as if we were trying to cage you, so that you wouldn’t pull away from us in chase of whatever it is you thought was the cure. I just never thought you would go that far.” 

“You are my cure, James,” Sirius says, bare as water. “I just didn’t want any of you to see me like that; you know that I don’t like to be seen like that. Maybe this is why you didn’t give into Remus’s wishes. Because you understood. Because you thought I would eventually get my shit together. But maybe I didn’t want a remedy in the first place, even when I knew exactly where it lies, because I craved every sting. I deserved every sting, and so I kept fueling it—but Remus’s never been a fan of that particular fire, has he?”

“No,” James agrees. “But he’d walk right into it if it meant reaching you.”

“I love him,” Sirius blurts out, not in a spur-of-the-moment kind of epiphany but a lifelong familiarity. “I love him and I lost him.” 

“You will get him back,” James tells him. “It will be hard, and it will take time, and you will need to fight for him like your life depends on it, but that’s okay. God knows no one fights for Remus the way you do.”

Sirius nods half-heartily and there’s a minute of silence as they break apart and head to the end of the passageway. Before James can twist the knob open and let them out, Sirius’s voice stops him. 

“Can you see me now, James?”  

“I can see you blind.” 

When they get out, the storm is nowhere in sight; morning has come, and when sunlight touches Sirius’s face, there’s warmth again. 

–

November 3, 1975

‘Make a wiish, Blaack!’ 

Sirius hears someone shouting from behind, their voice dragged out with the effect of the expensive Firewhiskey James has purchased for the special occasion, an intoxicated giggle following shortly after—a girl, most probably. A pretty one, even. He knows that if he turns around, he’ll find an invitation he isn’t certain whether or not he’d like to reciprocate. Enamored mouths and skilled hands have often been his go-to when he wants to hush his mind, even if the outcome isn’t long-lasting.

He settles for just tilting his head to the side and flashing out one of his effortlessly killer smiles. James once heard a group of third years whispering about it, taking the metaphor to heart, one of them fanning her friend after she almost fainted when he accidentally grinned her way. Sirius’s eyes weren’t on that girl then, but James still told him all about it in great detail, and the two assholes mimicked those girls in their own dormitory later at night, with Remus shaking his head and biting back a smile at their ridiculousness. 

Making wishes on birthdays is a Muggle tradition, Sirius learned that on his eleventh birthday—when Remus leaned in and whispered it in his ears, almost as if it was a secret meant only for him to know. If Sirius squeezes his mind tight enough, he may remember fragments of what he wished for then, rushed words shaped at the sudden request; a superficial desire. But he can vividly remember how the candlelight caught the amber of Remus’s eyes in an embrace, and the way it danced with tiptoes on his freckles like ballerinas, and how he was struck with a bone-deep want to count them instead of his aging years, and Remus’s soft, soft mouth stretched into the warmest of smiles.

Celebrations at Grimmauld Place always possessed a numbing chill about them, although bigger cakes were served and fancy suits were worn and long speeches about family honor and pride were delivered, partially out of custom and partially to remind him that he was getting closer to fulfilling his duties as Heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black—or to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Shit as the Marauders prefer to call it. 

Sirius finds himself standing in front of a new round of candles this year, fifteen to be precise, placed in two perfect arcs on the edges of Honeydukes’ mouthwatering cake, charmed to twirl. One will know that he has no appetite for it whatsoever if one knows where to look, which isn’t likely when it comes to the fortified Black. He may take a bite or two later on for show, swallow them down with certainly more than a drink or two for himself, and allow the ear–splitting music to take hold of his dazed body and sway him back and forth in the arms of whoever is willing.

The Gryffindors are standing in a circle around him, and he can hear their voices singing in sync happy birthday, and feel the grip of James’s arms around his waist tighten, and read the look under his glasses that says I know, despite the fact that the melancholy in his heart isn’t touching his excellently composed face, or his excellently designed grin as he looks here and there at all the faces staring brightly at his own. 

When the song ends and he’s expected to blow out the candles, he knows it’s time to make a wish. He understands it’s out of reach, the one-in-a-thousand chance kind of wishes, but he makes it nonetheless, heart daring and selfish. He hopes Remus and Regulus would walk in now, freezing his gaze on the door for a brief minute that prolongs into what feels like a lifetime, awaiting his lucky stars to listen to him. Maybe Remus would change his mind, or Regulus would decide to continue his habit of walking into the Gryffindor’s Common Room at this exact moment every year, carrying a box with him which would usually contain a special gift that would surprise Sirius himself at how much he needs it. The younger Black has always been extremely observant and it has often taken all to most people by surprise. James would make room for him, and he’d stand beside them both on one side, and the other would be filled with the presence of Remus and Peter, and all would be well; Sirius would be whole.

Yet the knob of the door remains as still as a statue, and the boy who has never known when to quit gives up, harshly blowing out the candles at once, letting utter darkness take over the room before letting his face fall at last. Arms enfold all around him, familiar and unfamiliar, in a fit of cheerful laughter and loud echoes of his name, still incapable of filling the two voids in his heart. 

The party is over when dawn breaks and there are arms hurling him off the sofa on which he’s been debating his entire existence for what feels like—and probably is—hours by now; it’s a tortuous shade of familiar amber, and he briefly wonders if this is the only reason he’s sunk into it in the first place, a pathetic attempt of fulfilling what cannot be fulfilled, of feeding a longing close enough to hunger with breadcrumbs. He shifts his weight onto James, one arm dangling from his shoulders, and knows it’s unfair because James himself is somewhat pissed and cannot carry them both steadily yet he tries: the patriotic hero. Peter has already passed out in the Common Room after a heavy drinking game, which he won moments before he collapsed but at least he did it victorious. They had spared him a glance, sprawled on the floor and too-far gone to be shaken awake, and decided to just let him be, leaving right after.

Halfway across the staircase the ache inside his chest decides that enough is enough, pushing past the numbness of the alcohol and demanding attention; the tip of his tongue curls to its command, the words spilling out as if they’d tear his throat in half if held back much longer, and maybe they would. 

“He didn’t come.”

“I tried—” James begins, slowing down. “I tried to talk to him, I tried to—”

“I know,” Sirius replies, in defeat or despair or both. “I know. I did this. I cut him. It’s only fair that he cuts me too.”

James’s voice doesn’t stop on their way up to the dorm, but it wanes at least in his head. It drips sympathy and love, and he refuses them in spite of the thirst.

In the end, James pushes them both onto Sirius’s bed. Sirius counts one, two, three before James starts snoring, glasses still on his face and will certainly be broken by tomorrow morning. The drapes over Remus’s bed are closed, but Sirius doesn’t fail to hear it despite the dizziness, the soft sound of Remus’s laughter (he most probably counted one, two, three as well). It gets muffled almost instantly, and Sirius knows without having to look that he’s putting his hands over his mouth. He closes his eyes and opens them, blinking twice and gathering whatever last bits of sobriety he has left in his body before he speaks. Don’t fuck this up. “Remus?”

Remus’s voice quiets down until it’s no longer there and Sirius is left with the frustrating silence again. He would rather have a shouting match than this, than Remus refusing still to look at him, even after the Astronomy Tower. “I thought we convinced you to stop doing that halfway into our first year.” 

Sirius waits a few beats before he hears a defeated sigh and feels like a winner for the first time in forever. Remus pushes the drapes apart, and sits on the edge of his bed instead of lying down, face-to-face with him. He hasn’t looked at him in over a month; his amber eyes have almost always been glued to a wall or a book or absolutely no-fucking-where when circumstances forced them to speak a few polite words to each other out of the act. And Sirius despises it to his core; the formality, the delicacy. When once in a very close moon the marrow of their bones was blended into one.

“Doing what?”

“Hiding,” Sirius says and Remus doesn’t instantly reply. “Like when you used to fake falling asleep earlier than you wanted, or doing your homework when you have already finished it ten times so that you’d avoid unwanted questions and conversations.” 

His voice sounds steadier than expected, and he knows the alcohol is getting overbeaten by the intensity in Remus’s gaze. “It’s quite presumptuous of you to assume that I’m hiding from something or someone when I have no interest whatsoever in being near them, let alone to chit-chat.” 

“One of my many faults,” Sirius tells him. “Being presumptuous—and hopeful.” 

“For what?” Remus asks as if he doesn’t know the answer, as if Sirius himself doesn’t know that he knows but is pressing anyway. 

“Am I not even worth a happy birthday anymore, Remus?” Sirius asks, raw-peeled; all false pretense left behind in the party. 

Remus holds his gaze for a moment—before he turns away, jaw clipped. “You were once worth so much more.” 

He watches him pull the sheets up, head turned as the silence kicks in, and knows that this is one of the times where he can almost never see a way out. During former fuck ups, there used to be a light at the end of the tunnel, a flicker that signaled some sort of amendment he could make to make things right, but now there’s sheer darkness and sheer agony that paralyze from top to toe. 

He can’t believe Remus can just say something like that and drift back to sleep as if it’s nothing. Sirius hopes his eyes are still open. 

They are. 

–

Chapter Text

December 18, 1975

It’s dark inside the wolf.  

And when Remus surges through, blood gushes and flows like a stream, the just-risen morning a haze. Amidst it are incandescent grey eyes, shoving and pulling the gore and the shadows and the terror, and just like that—the light is no longer cutting; it is merciful once again.

Sirius is crouched right in front of him, and Remus blinks. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, heart an unfair whirlwind. The moon has come and passed, and it shouldn’t be beating this loudly, this wildly. 

“What I know best,” Sirius says, and threads his fingers through Remus’s blood-stained hair softer than the breeze slipping in, as if to prove a point.

For a fleeting moment Remus sighs, and involuntarily sinks into Sirius’s touch, more awake than delirious but tomorrow he could claim otherwise. In the curl of his gut lies a gnawing urge to scream—at himself, for being this weak-willed, at the world, for expecting him now to have any shred of will left in the face of tenderness. Somewhere in the back of his mind the smell of fresh Welsh grass conjures itself up along with his mother’s voice when he’d laid in her lap post the full-moon and she’d swore God gave his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, and that he was her strong, strong boy. 

And so he tries to lean out of it, the warmth spreading across his chest like the first wave of summertime washing over winter. Remus sits up—or more like tries to—and Sirius’s hand falls, a gasp in Remus’s throat as he clutches his side, half at the pain and half at the frost.

“Remus,” Sirius calls, one hand gripping his shoulder and the other covering his own right over his broken ribs, soft, soft. “For Merlin’s, for fuck’s—just don’t be stupid now.” 

The thing about war is that it’s rarely won at once, a victory here and a hundred losses there and the line between them mostly blurring. Remus can’t tell whether he’s winning or getting beaten bloody in the chest as Sirius’s hand persists, sincere. A moment later he could feel him cast a wandless spell; a string of silver leaps out of their intertwined fingers and into his side, unbearably soothing.

Remus looks up, eyes half-open, glimmering with phantom silver. “Sirius—”

“Just lean back on me, Remus. Lean back on my heart.”

And that is somehow stronger than any spell, any force—the command, the plea. Remus buries his face in Sirius’s chest, the machinery of his body yielding, his last fluttering thought being not today, Ma. Not today. For once the world quiets down save for the ballad of Sirius’s heartbeats against his ears humming something familiar, something that almost sounds like his name.

But that’d be just insane.

There’s the shiver of December cold, and the shiver of this—his throat held up to the knife’s edge, willingly, foolishly. Remus wonders if he’s always been made for sacrifice. Laying naked in Sirius’s arms like a tragic Greek painting, having him draw circles on his back until all the terror is out. 

He realises with a jolt that perhaps this is closer to worship than sacrifice, that it’s closer to love than lure, that the only insanity being not this. Not Sirius lifting him up, slither-like, an arm wound around his shoulder blades and the other on his waist, fingers pressed into his hipbone where it’s jagged and scarred and hollowed out just enough for their imprint. Not dawnlight getting caught in the strands of his hair, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into a distressed line, and the burning ache in the pit of Remus’s stomach of wanting and wanting to trace the worry away with his thumb, to tell him that he’s only limp and withering because he’s in his grasp and not someone else’s. Because how could he ever, ever let anyone else see?

The bathtub is full to the brim, hot water envelopes Remus’s feet the moment he steps inside like a seal. There’s a groan in his mouth, and a quiver in his spine, and gentle hands coaxing him inside, dragging the sound out into a cry. He bites down on his lip, and tastes fresh blood, and hopes it makes up for being lovesick. Warmth ricochets from the tip of his toes to the back of his eyelids to the chords of his heart, pulled apart enough it hurts.

Palms raised, he looks at them like something grotesque, soaked in the crimson red of whom they could have touched, and God, God, who did they touch? He feels his ribcage closing in on him similar to a mouse’s trap and tries to count one, two, three. Sirius reaches out, and takes both hands in his own, smearing the blood between them, gray-lit eyes never repulsed by sin. 

“Don’t look at the blood,” Sirius says. “Look at me, Remus.”

Eyes fixated on their interlocked hands Remus’s heart clenches like a fist. He’s already half-covered with water, and maybe if he leans back into the tub and dives in he wouldn’t have to watch a thing. There’s a fear more innate than a child’s of darkness and his of moonlight; a fear stronger than all blood and his own stamp of carnage, the fear of shuddering beneath an ever-loving hand, and knowing that it is, the fear of looking at Sirius’s face and having the trajectory of his life forever altered—because here he is, in irrevocable love, the posh eleven year-old who’s walked into the Hogwarts Express thinking he’d owned the world, yet a glance over a glance at Remus’s eyes, a countryside’s gold, and the passing years have taught him all he holds is a sliver. 

The water dips, and Remus realizes Sirius has stepped into the bathtub; the absence of his hands haunts. He watches him sit down, watches his shirt drip-wet and his face painted in something rare: dread.

“You are scared.”

At last Remus looks at him—bone-weary, teetering on bravery.

Sirius’s voice breaks. “Of me?”

It pulls something out of Remus’s heart, something equally broken. 

“How can I not be?” 

Sirius breathes hard and long, a ragged draw of air which scorches. Ash fills the corners of Remus’s old-rusted heart, the cord between them wrenched into tragedy and yet somehow still functioning like all things bizarre in the universe and plain at once. There’s a moment of mourning that stretches out into a wake for what is lost and what is to be; Sirius looks down at his own shaking hands and thinks it fair, the interplay. 

Would there be any gain to it if Remus soul-sucks his last bits of charity and reaches out for the tremble of Sirius’s hands to cease, or for him to know the touch of redemption is the question of the century bearing down on their shoulders like a fucking hurricane. And they’re just sixteen. Must be the price of a better tomorrow, or the so-called light at the end of the tunnel, or a future heavy enough this would be grace. Sirius supposes it’d be the latter, but it doesn’t stop him, electric over the force of fate and circumstance and crime. 

“Like this,” he decides, pulling his hands into fists. “Like this, Remus.” 

Fists unfolding into open palms that soothe and hold, he grabs the edge of Remus’s jaw, and caresses with his thumbs, pushing his mouth onto his; a tight-pull of ardor and want and love cascading headlong into the cuts in their thread and their hearts unwired, insides clenching. Remus’s back is pressed flat-out against the bathtub, and he ought to be tremoring with the cold, the tub and the breeze and the nakedness taunting, yet he’s white-hot as if electrified or torched to the ground, when in fact he’s barely touched. 

He knots one hand into Sirius’s hair, more innate than a reflex, gripping like he’d otherwise let go. Like Sirius would ever, ever, in the sum of Remus’s wildest dreams and the misery-prone of his, let go. When he gasps, Sirius slides his tongue inside the wet curve of his lips, crisscrossed, tasting blood and parchment and vanilla; Remus’s marrow, more his own than skin or pulse or name. In this life and the spiral of all others. The irreversible wheel of breaking and finding, and finding and breaking and breaking—

“God, do you really think I’d hurt you?” Sirius asks. “Does this hurt you, Remus?” 

Six-feet into his chest something combusts, and Remus wants to say yes, yes, but only because he’s stopped kissing him—and so he draws Sirius back in by the neck, almost violent in the act, hands shaking and yet not; the thrum of Sirius’s pulse a live-wire under his fingers, pressed into the nape and the curl of soft strands. Long limbs he’s fantasized about in dark corners sink onto his, entire, entire; relentless nights spent wondering if Sirius would ever know, if he knows, all the ways he sets his blood on fire, or slams the air straight out of his lungs, or invades his dreams, sex-stirred with the silhouette of his slender hands and the arc of his throat in pale moonlight, his lips pulling Remus’s taut till he groans and the glide of his tongue, his switchblade smirk and the spread of his palms across Remus’s chest and belly and thighs, finally set into motion. 

Remus wounds a leg around his waist and tugs, the sear of it spilling into both of their bodies and the spellbound shack, awakened by long years’ worth of yearning and magic sprinting free, more infernal than not.  

“Sirius,” Remus cries, the last bits of his breath and sanity spent as Sirius reaches into the lukewarm water, and wraps one hand around his cock, throbbing and flushed blood-red. When he strokes a stripe across the drag of it, deliberate and slow, Remus shudders, nerves and soul, mouth slackening; Sirius darts his tongue inside it again, moving with the same rhythm as his hand, unyielding. Somewhere into Remus’s chest there’s a cry muffled, and he clutches Sirius’s shirt, pulling, pulling; fingers digging into the fabric over his fluttering ribs, wondering if he’d still leave marks, a feral hunger cutting into his gut at the thought. 

Sirius runs his free hand through Remus’s hair, pulling harsh enough on the roots to tilt his head, and he bends. Sirius curses, and kisses his bared throat, open-mouthed against the long, seething scar over its trail; Remus panting and stretched out beneath him in thrall to the hollow of his lips and the curl of his fist, knowing no resolution other than this—Sirius’s index finger rolling the head as he strokes, again and again, Sirius’s mouth on his neck, mapping all he’d later hate, uncaring in first light—is more addictive than drugs, or cigarettes rolled at midnight, or the shiver of winter air, the deafening drum of new music, or the whir of magic curled around his fingers and his heart chords, closer than a beat. Remus is closer than a beat, and it’s enough, and not not not half-enough—

When he presses his mouth to Remus’s sternum, devoutly, Remus thinks that this is it; the conjunction in which the world ends and begins, his heartbeat caught between Sirius’s teeth. As he lingers there, Remus realizes amidst the fog of lust and obsession and crippling love that Sirius isn’t just kissing his skin, he’s kissing out the fear, kissing in apologies. Biting down the arc of a ripe cut, his own or the wilderness. 

With one hand around the warmth between Remus’s legs still and the other over his spine, Sirius draws on it a pattern of the words stuck at his throat, choked and choking—you’re all I love, all I’ve ever loved, long before I’d known what it was, worse than light and moth and spell, better than wine and night’s edge and what I deserve; you’re all I’d ever choose, over the outstretch of time infinite and the spread of all the places I’ve longed to see; I’d rather be stuck in time, in place, with the fold of your lips a blur on mine, and my breath in your throat, and your heart in my fist, and I’d never close it again. I’d never hurt you again. You’re all I love in misery and dark and the mouth of dawn, in sleep and the sombre wake—until it’s unknotted, until Remus is on the verge of tears, stupidly; the price of love—his bleeding love—is always vulnerability. 

He brings one arm up to his face, the plain light and Sirius over him is too much, and yet in the deepening dark all he could think of is that he doesn’t remember a moment when Sirius wasn’t all he’d ever loved. 

Sirius trails kisses all over his chest, the flutter of his collarbones, the flex of his belly—close-mouthed, attentive of where he’s beaten and bruised, and it would have been chaste had it not been for the hand kneading his cock. He trails the swell of Remus’s arse, mouth hot over his hipbone, and squeezes in tandem; Remus arches up to the palm of his hand, muttering nonsense until he pins him down again by his writhing thigh, the hum of blood and fever beneath his fingerprints as he thumbs his slit, making Remus’s entire body jolt; the blinding drunkenness of it slices a vicious curl of heat in Sirius’s gut, and so he does it again, hearing his own groan.

“Sirius, Sirius—stop,” Remus gasps, wrapping his hand around Sirius’s over his cock, halting it, starving off his orgasm. 

Acting on his own desire, or the delirium in Sirius’s veins, he fists the hem of his Bowie shirt and yanks it over his head at once, as if possessed by momentarily strength post the full-moon. He pulls Sirius down by his belt, and kisses him worse than hunger and thirst and all aching, and Remus knows it well; mouth peeling his open, hands frantic over said belt, taking it off and undoing his fly. “Come here, come here—” is all he breathes as if Sirius is a distance away, and not a hair’s breadth. 

Sirius obliges, kissing him soundly before the two of them tug on his pants and boxers roughly; the last clothing items discarded on the floor, and air is all too foreign to Remus. He arches up to him—experimentally—only for the world to fall off its hinges. One or both of them cry out at the contact, long and strained, and so Remus grinds his hips again, brushes Sirius’s cock with his own again, higher on his hanging mouth and ragged breath and the curve of his body, bare and lean and his, than he could have been on anything. In this daze, he kisses Sirius’s pulse-point; the hot-drum of it against his mouth, and he’s certain now that Sirius’s heart is calling his name. 

When Remus nibs on the wafer-thin skin of his throat, Sirius pins his hip with one hand spread out possessive, and sets a bruising pace, rolling over Remus until he sees white; his other hand gripping the bathtub for his own balance and sanity, knuckles tight, and he knows he wouldn’t stop even if it breaks, wouldn’t even notice it breaking.

And for a moment they’re shaking with something rawer than desire and tears, something that reaches into their chests, and rips their ribcages apart, offering their hearts out to one another as if in ritual or sacrifice, scarce and blood-soaked—a force so vigorous, and excruciating, and weary of withholding that it swallows them whole, killing and reviving, reviving and killing, with the perfect portion of death for a new spring of life. 

It is the demise of their vanity, and their cowardice, and their selfishness, and their fears, and their cuts; it is the unfurling of their hopes, and their dreams, and their yearning, and their love, above all, irrevocably imprinted everywhere and nowhere in particular—in the shack, and the fabric of magic woven in-between and beyond, in the shell behind Sirius’s ears on which Remus is kissing, and the drag of his bloodied nails on Sirius’s back, the abrupt moment in which Remus comes, his voice wrecked with Sirius’s name, and the spill of it pushing Sirius over the edge, seeing none but Remus. 

Remus leans his head back onto the tub, eyes fluttering shut, breath evening out. Before he could dwell on this, on whether or not it’s yet another catastrophe, Sirius cups the nape of his neck, knowing, and whispers a soft “Hey,” and then Remus is looking at him as if he could never look at someone else, heart sliced open. Sirius kisses him, honey-slow, and Remus melts into it, into him, deciding to hell with catastrophes, and pain, and regret; he’d never regret this even if tomorrow neither of them could meet the other’s eyes. 

He puts his hands on Sirius’s sides, caressing the skin soft; the marvel of it and Sirius’s mouth feel like a fever dream. But he isn’t dreaming. For once, Remus has him, and he isn’t dreaming, and he will be damned if he closes his eyes again. Sirius flickers his wand, and all the mess is gone—yet he never wipes off Remus’s blood with magic, he uses his own hands, rinsing the gore and the grief out of Remus’s chest, and shoulderblades, and hair, the back of his thighs, and the arc of his spine, and the curve of his jaw, the thrum of love on his fingertips. 

He wounds an arm around Remus’s waist, and helps him out of the bathtub; in the freezing cold he should have been shivering, but Sirius has cast a warming charm on the shack, and it sweeps into his weary bones and the place his heart is bruised. 

When he stumbles, bowing to Sirius’s side, Sirius catches him instantly. “Don’t think I can go back to school now,” Remus whispers, head buried in Sirius’s chest, and Sirius just hums, rubbing his back. He settles him down onto the small-sized bed, and shuffles through the stack of spare clothes they keep here, picking out an old navy green sweatshirt and pants. He puts them on Remus as he lifts his arms, and gets dressed himself back in his pants. 

The bed is hard, and so Sirius leans on the headboard and pulls Remus into his chest, one arm wrapped around his waistline. Remus rests his head on the conjunction of Sirius’s shoulders and allows exhaustion to take over, overtaken by love and warmth anyway. 

“Stay with me, love,” Sirius says against Remus’s hair. 

And although Remus is already drifting off, he says back: “Where else would I go?”  

–

Chapter Text

In the Potter’s Manor, Christmas lights shine bright—but James’s love transcends. 

Christmas knocks on the door by the time Remus is out of the infirmary, and James Potter is nothing if not a sucker for it yet not without the company of his best friends. It’s tradition; Christmas night at the Potters no matter what the circumstances are, no matter if one of them is broken, or bruised, or on the verge of losing it all. The Potter’s Manor holds a special magical air that patches them up, that almost has nothing to do with magic itself.

James senses that ever since the last full-moon, something fundamental has shifted in the worn-out thread between Sirius and Remus—because for the very first time in a long time, Remus doesn’t flinch when James speaks Sirius’s name. In the infirmary, Sirius lingered as if bound by spell or blood when it was just sewing love.

Remus never told him to leave.

Before setting off to Wales for Christmas Eve, Remus has tried. He has tried to untie his tongue, to swallow the lump—to do more than gaze, and yearn, and remember; soft hands in morning light, all around him, and a softer mouth still. The shack lit by love.

“You look different, cariad,” his mother said with a kind smile when he stepped into their cottage. At first, he didn’t know what she meant, whether or not the misery of the past few months showed on his face, but later in the day, as the sun set by the pond, he understood: you look loved, my love, Hope wanted to say. He supposes this is how it’d always be for him; loved out until he’s cut.

In the evening, James shows up with Euphemia and Peter via the floo, escorting him to his house, where Christmas lights, and another dinner, and Sirius awaits. He murmurs a ‘Merry Christmas’ to him, the glint of reminiscence and love in his gray-lit eyes, and Remus half-wants to laugh; when you have slept with your best friend, and have split your heart open for him—and had him split his open for you—you’d assume you’re past formalities, and the thought strikes realization into his head, thunder-like. Had the circumstances been different, Sirius would have been kissing him under mistletoe.

–

When Remus hears a knock on his bedroom door, it’s past midnight.

Upon opening it, he finds no one outside—just a small blue-clad box and a note, in cursive handwriting he’d recognize blind.

Merry Christmas, my love.

Remus stares at it for a beat, two, three then at the door across his; it didn’t slip past him, that James has put him in a bedroom opposite to Sirius’s, and how he’d shrugged his shoulders with anything but innocence when Remus stared too hard at him.

He sighs, and takes his Christmas gift inside, shutting the door behind him and leaning against it. Remus caresses the note once; everyone and their mother is ‘love’ to Sirius in one way or another, yet the possessive pronoun is reserved only for him.

Inside the box, there’s a gold pendant, in the shape of a crescent moon. The gesture doesn’t skip his mind, that it is gold and not silver, despite silver being less lethal to werewolves than dramatized in Muggle stories, but it still hurts to touch—and neither does the engraving on it.

Tu me manques, ma lune.

Ma lune—that’s all Remus makes out, my moon. The first time he’d heard Sirius’s French was in second year hiding in a cupboard from Filch when James was too late, the tender syllables rolling off his tongue like music foreign and yet home, the gnawing desire to hear more of it although Sirius was probably cursing something foul. The next full-moon in the infirmary, torn to the bone, the transformation still all too rough for the body of a gawky child, is when he’d heard it again; a soft French ballad, a torchlight in the devouring dark, sung in a voice lower than humanly possible, played in every corner of Remus’s tortured mind every since.

Remus contemplates it, the surrender, and deems the whole ordeal infutile; he’s surrendered in the Shack, and the infirmary, and the Potter’s Manor — when he’d let Sirius’s hand touch his beneath the dinner table, when he’d let it caress and linger.

He opens his door, about to go over to Sirius’s room, only to find him waiting outside.

“Well, can I come in?” Sirius asks, and Remus lets him in, locking the door.

On the edge of the bed, they sit down with the window half-open, winter air ruffling Sirius’s hair. There’s an itch in Remus’s fingers to reach out, and push the strands that have fallen on his forehead back, the way he did less than a week ago. The restraint is pressed to his ribs like the edge of a knife.

“You know I barely speak French,” Remus says, tracing the engravement on the necklace with his thumb instead. “Whatever I know from it, I know from you. Ma lune, it means my moon. But what is the rest?”

Sirius considers it a first, that Remus doesn’t correct him—that he doesn’t say he isn’t Sirius’s, that the Shack haunts his every word; he’s whispered the phrase enough times to him before, in the darkness of their room, and although he never really spoke them in English, he knew that Remus understood.

“If you want a literal translation,” Sirius says. “It means I miss you.”

Something flickers in Remus’s eyes, like glass shattering or a wall coming down. “And if I don’t want one?”

“In French, it doesn’t mean that you just miss someone. It means that this person is a part of yourself, and when they’re not there, it feels like they aren’t only gone, but that they are missing from you—like a lost limb,” Sirius explains. “Tu me manques. You are missing from me, Remus.”

For a moment, Remus is stunned into silence. “I have never had a word for it, not until now—how these past few months felt like. A lost limb.”

“Because it wasn’t—,” Remus searches for the right words, his fingers curling and uncurling in the fabric of the bedsheets, “Death. Not instant, abrupt death, I mean. It still killed, it just—”

“Went along with it slowly,” Sirius finishes for him, a tormented smile on his face. “It cut you at first, and let you bleed, and fooled you into thinking that this is all it will ever be—just the bleeding, and you fooled yourself into thinking that the wound isn’t lethal, that you could survive it, even if you dripped blood like it’s fucking breath wherever you went. It is, though, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Remus says, allowing the truth on his tongue for the first time in months; voice far away to his own ears. “It’s fatal. Being away from you is fatal, but you proved that being near also is—which is bloody unfair, you know that, don’t you?”

“I do,” Sirius says, knowing well-enough that he’s the poison in everything sweet. “And I want to say I’m sorry, to shout it out loud until my voice is gone, but you won’t let it be enough, and you won’t tell me how to make it enough, and that’s also bloody unfair, Remus.”

“You’re supposed to figure it out,” Remus tells him, eyes defiant. “I’m not supposed to spoon-feed you everything. You owe me that much.”

“I never said I don’t,” Sirius replies. “But how am I even supposed to figure it out when you won’t talk to me, or be in the same place as I’m for longer than five minutes—or so much as look at me before the Shack? You stopped looking at me, Remus.”

“I didn’t—”

“Not in the ways that matter, anyway.”

“What ways—”

“Don’t you dare play fool. We both know what I mean,” Sirius cuts him off. “My cowardice and your cowardice shouldn’t have a place in this conversation, if we’re really going to have it.”

“Fine,” Remus relents, finally looking at him instead of the blue-postered wall of James’s guest room that Sirius has been having the urge to tear down with his own hands if it means Remus would cease staring at it like it’s the world’s eighth wonder and gaze at him for two seconds straight. “I did use to look at you, and I did it like a fucking manic, as if they sewed the constellations of the entire universe into your skin, and your face, and your hair, and I was tired of the darkness and needed an ounce of light, and you were vibrant with it all the time even when you thought you weren’t. I just never expected you to wear the coat of every horrid thing I told you I was running from, and God knows I never let anyone else in the way I did with you, not even James or Peter, and this is exactly why I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you again, or be in the same place as you are, or look at you as you want me to—because it hurts, all right?”

“It all hurts, and not just as a sting I can bite down on my mouth hard enough to beat. It hurts more than hell, and I’ve been through it. It hurts more than having every single bone in my body snap and break into half once a month. It hurts to the point that I would rather be constantly in that pain than having to be in this one, than having to know it was you who pressed in the knife after I handed it over because you said you never would. You promised me, Sirius.”

A bone-deep shudder runs through Remus’s body; terror thrumming in his veins like a second pulse at the vulnerability which echoed in his voice at the very end. But he doesn’t bother hiding it, sick and tired of sheltering Sirius from the gravity of what he’s done. He’s claimed he knows the wound and the measure of its deadliness, but does he? He’s demanded courage, and here it is, clear as water, ugly as truth; courage has never been standing straight in the face of danger, it’s just standing at all—and Remus stands in the face of him despite his quivering feet. 

More than half of his words could be taken as absolute lunacy—a joke to laugh at later, if there’s a later, constellations in Sirius’s skin and all: a poem for Tennyson to roll in his grave in jealousy of—but the rest is Remus’s heart bared whole, brave, brave, brave.

Sirius has never been the one to exhaust his mind with long debates or decision-making calculus, that’s more of Remus’s speciality—but just this once he does, pulling his hands into fists at his sides, nails digging into the flesh of his palms harsh enough to tear the skin open, all in an attempt to restrain himself from unleashing all his guilt and years’ worth of suppressed yearning and love into motion. It’s an urge more vigorous than hunger, thicker than blood, one that claws at him like a dog with a bone. 

Yet it’s one thing for Remus to let them talk, properly talk, for the first time since that hellish night, and it’d be an entirely different thing for Sirius to respond with his hands and mouth like he did in the Shack, a moment of weakness, to imprint apologies all over Remus’s skin until he knows how sorry he truly is and he is beyond that. It’d be taking liberties.

“I know I did,” he swallows it all down, searching for his voice, burdened with regret, burdened with shame—the marrow of his existence. “I never deserved it, your trust and the secrets shared between us. I never deserved you. But I warned you from the beginning, Remus; that I was prone to ruination, and ruination to me. Wherever I go, I bring it along, or it follows my footsteps on its own, like it’s appointed itself my fucking shadow or something. You just never listened.”

“I didn’t—although it was supposed to be your thing, the never listening, the rushing head-first past warning signs,” Remus says, waving one hand a little theatrically in the air, a humorless chuckle vibrating in the back of his throat.

“Turned you a little reckless, didn’t I?” Sirius asks, a ghost of a smile on his face. “A poison of some sort.”

“I couldn’t get you out of my system, no matter how hard I tried. It just never worked,” Remus admits, frustration between his teeth at first, then utter defeat. “And here I am. . . in ruins.”

Sirius closes his eyes. “I’m sorry I ever let it touch you; I’m sorry I ever touched you.”

“You know what the worst part about this is?” Remus asks. “That in some twisted-up, unexplainable, deranged—like, completely deranged—way, I am not.”

Sirius’s eyes snap open. “Remus—”

“Merlin knows I should be, though.”

“It wouldn’t paint me in a good light if I say I’m glad you aren’t, would it?” Sirius asks, heart drumming in his chest. “But then again I’m arrogant, and imprudent, and most of all selfish—and I want you, and I want you to want me back, in spite of everything.”

Remus wants to laugh, the sound almost stuck in the back of his throat; he suspects it’s coming out as a choke, pretends it’s not to keep the last slivers of his sanity intact. Months ago he thought he’d never get to hear these words, the deepest desire of his heart—Sirius, God forbid, wanting him—spoken out loud; months ago they lived in stolen glances, and touches which lingered longer than necessary, and the possibility of them at all, always on the tip of their tongues, never pushed past that; months ago his breath would have stopped the moment they left Sirius’s mouth, the world falling off its hinges and coming back together twice as right. But he doesn’t know what to do with them now.

“If it is want you wish for, it is here,” Remus says slowly, the memory of the last full-moon sharp as a whip. “But it won’t do on its own.”

“Not just want, no,” Sirius tells him. “Forgiveness too. I have to right this, and you have to let me right it.”

“Never said I wouldn’t, and actually meant it.”

“I guess you’re tired of hearing how much I regret what I did, and it’s proven itself to be pretty much useless, hasn’t it?” Sirius asks, and Remus nods, affirming it all. The sum of his guilt is never enough to knit what he shreds. “Then break your promise, too, Remus. Press the knife in. Rip me wherever you wish, call it even.”

Remus debates it for a splitting second, the earth-shattering force of his agony being abruptly set free, like a bomb that’s been ticking for way too long and finally exploding, all the sickening, sickening things he could say and do to Sirius, all the ways he could betray him with—just as cruel, just as unpredictable, the slow twist of the knife, the draw of vengeful blood, bitter and sweet at the same time.

But a hypothesis only works when it’s built on a firm center, even if minor factors end up not contributing to its cause. The chance of success remains there nonetheless, but Remus’s is zero, for his would be entirely built on a lie, and he isn’t certain whether he has science to blame for this, or himself, or both. He’d have to hate Sirius, deep into his heart, but it’s proven to be treacherous over and over again, drumming only with love.

“No,” Remus refuses at last, sternly.

“But you have my permission, and you deserve it. Hell, I deserve it.”

“Yes, you do—because screw you for not having mine and still doing it anyway,” Remus says, with a flicker of resentment. “But it’s still a no. I can’t.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Sirius objects, a knowing looking in his eyes. “I won’t ask for mercy, and I’m not here for morality either, if that’s what you’re going for.”

“You never are, are you?”

Sirius almost grins that devilish grin of his. “You know where the holes in the charade are, Remus. Make your pick.”

“I do, and I can,” Remus corrects himself, “But I won’t—and it isn’t out of some moral pretense.”

“What is it out of, then?”

“Fear of what we would become.”

“Even?”

“Monstrous.”

“Remus—”

“Enough is enough, Sirius. I know you’re some sort of a pain addict, and I will not give into what you want. I will not give you more reasons to hate yourself, and I will not make you hate me.”

“I will never hate you, Remus.”

“All right,” Remus says. “But I don’t want to fight anymore. Can I have that?” 

“You can have whatever you want,” Sirius replies, and he means it—wholly. 

“Then come here,” Remus tells him, and before Sirius actually can, he’s leaning in and kissing him. 

It strikes Sirius like a bolt of lightning, Remus is kissing him—and it’s everything like the Shack and nothing of the sort at all; his mouth less desperate and more forgiving, just as soft, and it will never not tear at him, that he could have lost this, that he could have lost him, long before anything has even begun. In the thrill of it, he pulls Remus onto his lap, their mouths conjoined, and then Remus is pushing him flat-out onto the bed, the world and its entirety lost to the places their skin touched, the cold breeze slipping by unnoticed, and from outside London is cloaked in white, watching their spectrum of love.

–

By sunrise, neither of them has slept; Remus looks up at him, a slow smile on his face. “I lied before, you know.”

Sirius crooks an eyebrow, amused. “About?”

“I did get you a Christmas gift.”

Sirius grabs his waist, pulling him under. “Better than this?” he grins a boyish grin, kissing Remus’s already swollen lips.

Remus contemplates the answer, chuckling. “Equally as good.”

“You spoil me, Moons.”

Remus wiggles from under him, getting out of bed. “I heard you are into Queen now—and they’re legendary, you know.”

Sirius pushes his weight up on one elbow. “Absolutely.”

“But you will never know true legends if you don’t know this,” Remus grins, getting out a record from his bag. There is a record player on the nightstand, and Remus uses it. “Allow me to introduce you into a whole new era.”

Sirius smiles, lovesick, and the record plays a second later.

I have been cheated by you since I don’t know when,

So I made up my mind, it must come to an end,

Look at me now, will I ever learn,

I don’t know how, but I suddenly lose control,

There’s a fire within my soul. . .

And all along, Remus has been singing, pleased he is the one to introduce Sirius to ABBA, only that Sirius lets him have his fun in the beginning before pushing off the bed, and grabbing his waist again, singing just as knowingly. “My, my, how can I resist you, Moony?”

“You know them? You know ABBA?” Remus is half-baffled, half-impressed.

“May or may not have snuck into Muggle pubs, and heard them—couldn’t stop ever since.”

“I can take you, you know, to see them next summer,” Remus says, beaming. “I went once with my Da, and it was amazing.” 

“Sounds like a plan, my love.” 

When they descend down the stairs later on for breakfast, hand-in-hand, James sees them first, and smiles the brightest he has in months. 

–

February 1976

It’s a cold night, when February is mightiest, that Sirius stirs them all awake with a feverish excitement. 

“I swear to God, Black, if you don’t have a good reason for this—”

Sirius drags them to the Room of Requirement, barefoot and shivering, insisting that this is all more than just worth it—a moment before he waves his wand, and in the beginning, nothing almost happens, than the transformation takes over like a whirl; a black dog emerging, a Grim. 

“Holy shit,” either James or Peter exclaim, Remus too silent to speak, before Sirius comes back to human form, victorious.

“Would like to see the look on McGonagall’s face now,” he says, smug. “Saying that being Animagi is for bright wizards only.”

And before he can help it, Remus blurts out, “You are radiant.” 

From right here, Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are born. By March’s full-moon, on Remus’s birthday, both James and Peter succeed in becoming Animagus, and the four of them freely roam Hogwarts’ grounds. 

On that night, the Marauders were infinite. 

THE END.