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Chapter Text

It’s raining when the portkey dumps him in a London alleyway, and Remus is soaked in a second. His breath curls out in front of him, and he realizes, as his hair sticks to his forehead and his clothes ice to his skin that it’s not so much rain as it is sleet, icy and painful. He clambers over heaps of rubbish – muggle junk, old takeaway boxes, the smelly, drippy slices of other people’s lives – and pulls his coat tighter around his body.

He knows what he’s looking for. There’s a sign, it’s hard to see and even harder to know if you’re not in the Order. He checks the wall of the rowhouses when he gets out of the alley, running his fingers against the rough brick. He wishes he could take out his wand, he wishes his fingers weren’t freezing, but the fact is that he can’t and they are. Even this far into the heart of London, there is a war. Maybe especially this far into the heart of London.

He feels and finds it – a depressed series of cuts in the shape of a phoenix feather, and then one, two, three vertical slashes upwards. He looks back, to where the rounded part of the feather was pointing and counts the doors, and at the third door he gives a miserable knock.

He hates using the safehouses.

It’s not because he doesn’t trust them, which is why Peter hates using the safehouses. Dumbledore is more than capable of determining who is trustworthy and who isn’t, and Remus is hardly worried about that, but it’s because once in a safehouse there is no telling how long before he’ll be able to get out again, and the chances of transforming get higher and higher. The time near Cardiff, with the Gotobed family, and their little girl-

Well.

Remus shudders at the thought, but knocks anyway. There’s no choice, now. He needs to get under cover, he needs to find a place, and the moon just passed a week ago, so he has time to gather. It doesn’t have to be for long, he tells himself. A week. A few days. Dumbledore’ll get word and he’ll be out in no time.

The door opens, and Remus feels every raindrop like a pin that seeps right through his skin and into his chest, battering at the door to his lungs, making air impossible. “Are you-“

“Get in, you’ll be seen,” Sirius Black hisses, moving over, just enough to let Remus in before he closes the door. “Merlin,” he adds, once Remus is inside and dripping on his very fine wood floor, “I’ve seen strays look less sad than this.” He turns and calls out, “Tibby! For the love of-Tibby!”

There’s a crack and Remus takes a startled step back as a clean house-elf – a house-elf, of course Sirius -Black has a house-elf – dressed in a clean blue tea towel with eyes like saucers appears and squeaks, “Yes, Master Sirius?”

“Run a hot bath for my guest, see him to the upstairs bedroom, and have his clothes cleaned and dried in the meantime. And, I don’t know, if he’s hungry – are you hungry?”

“I-yes, I mean, if it’s not too much-“

“And give him the rest of whatever it was I ate for dinner.” Sirius finishes in his best aristocratic drawl, and turns on his heel. “I’m going back to work.”

Remus hardly has time to enquire before he’s being shepherded, dripping icy puddles of water, up a narrow staircase. The house isn’t so large that he imagines its Sirius’ grand family palace of Grimmauld place (known by reputation only), but the kind of home owned by a consummate bachelor or maybe a young couple – tidy and neat, but dripping in money just from the color and quality of the wallpaper and the stain on the wood. The house-elf (Tibby, Remus reminds himself as he thanks her for the towel and the drawn bath and embarrassingly, the dressing robe after) does as she’s told, and Remus sits in the bath for what feels like an eternity and tries to soak up the blissful heat, steel himself for what awaits him below, and wonder what he did to earn this particular punishment.

Sirius Black, he thinks. Not exactly someone he ever thought he would see again, after he left school. Not someone he ever really wanted to see again (are you lying? his traitorous brain asks, and he shushes it) and definitely not someone who he expected to be running a safehouse for the Order during the middle of the worst War known to Wizardkind in recent or ancient memory. When people think of Sirius Black, he imagines, they think of the Slytherin pureblooded boy whose lasting legacy was mostly one of control.

It’s not what Remus thinks, of course, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He dips his head under the water and shakes away the last remnants of the December chill from his skin and gets out and dries off, wrapping his (no, not his, his was never, even at Hogwarts, so thick and plush and decadent) dressing robe around his waist and heads back downstairs, to the kitchen, where he smells food, and gratefully accepts a plate of pork chops (meat, he blesses for a moment, in a thick gravy) and mash and is about to start shoveling it in mouth with no regard for where he is when the master of the house comes into the kitchen, and Tibby squeaks and cracks elsewhere, probably to fluff a pillow or turn down a bed or save herself.

Now that he’s dry and warm and almost fed, Remus feels his stomach bottoming out. He had forgotten, in the time between then and now, how beautiful Sirius Black really is. He had forgotten how he is exactly like his namesake, a brilliant, bright star, impossible not to look at, with a mass of thick hair and eyes so grey that they match the underbellies of clouds on those days where despite the coverage, the air is still incredulously bright. It is as though time has dulled so much, softened the edges of Black’s sharp beauty in his memory. But now faced with it again, Remus doesn’t have any defense.

“Don’t let me stop you eating my food, by all means,” Black says. “When is the last time you ate, anyway?”

Remus stares at the mash, suddenly fighting the embarrassment. He can’t hold down a job, hasn’t managed in a while, and hasn’t even really seen food this rich since he left school. He’s not starving, but he’s not eating like a king, either. “Yesterday,” he manages, “I was a bit preoccupied,” he continues, and would add more, but realizes that Black knows exactly what preoccupied him.

“Yes, I would imagine,” the other man drawls, and sets a cup of tea down on the table. Remus fixes his gaze on his long fingers, covered in rings as though he were some kind of prince. But he doesn’t say anything else – instead he sits silently across from the table for a moment, watching him, as Remus eats, and it’s decidedly awkward.

Once he finishes he looks up, and thanks Black in a voice that isn’t quite a mumble, reduced back to the role of awkward schoolboy in a turn of events he did not really expect. He remembers that he should not be muttering and mumbly, but that rather he should just remember what happened, that night, and remarkably, it helps. “I didn’t expect you to be hosting a safehouse.”

“You mean you expected me to be a Death Eater.” Black’s voice is dangerously soft, just like in school when something upset him.

It’s oddly comforting, that at least that hasn’t seemed to change at all. “It would have surprised me less, you’re right,” Remus says back, fully aware that he’s here on Black’s generosity and Dumbledore’s good name, and nothing else.

“Well, surprise,” Black says, the irritation on his face only visible because Remus knows the signs to look for behind that arrogant, chilling mask. The way his eyes darken a little, or the way the corners of his lips tighten. “Here you are.”

“Not for long,” Remus states, getting up. “Once my clothes dry-“

Black interrupts him, but doesn’t move. “You don’t have a choice. Word came in from Dumbledore ten minutes after you got here. You’re not to leave.”

Remus feels all the muscles in his back seize up. “You’re making that up,” he says, automatically, feeling suddenly repulsed that Black would do that. Of course he would, wouldn’t he?

Black passes a note over, charred and looking very much like it came through the fire, or perhaps carried by a bird that also carried fire, and Remus knows it’s the truth then, without even looking at the note. He knows, then, that Dumbledore knows exactly what Remus knows, and how valuable that knowledge is. The scroll says exactly what Black said it would. “Welcome to 73 Aberdeen,” Black snorts, almost in a drawl, and gets up from his place, and leaves the kitchen, as if he’s the slighted party in this situation.

Remus presses his hands against his face and runs them over his cheeks, but nothing gets better.

~~~~~

He can remember the very first time he saw Sirius Black.

He’s not easy to forget. He was first to be sorted, and the hat stalled, sat quiet for a long time, and all the first years (especially the muggle-born) giggled nervously, wondering what happened. But then the hat yelled Slytherin and Remus watched the boy get down and the look on his face go from excited to resigned, like maybe this story has been written out long before they got there.

That was the first time he saw Sirius Black, but the first time they spoke was at their first potions lesson, where Remus was trying hard to take notes and focus and he turned his head a moment too late, and chopped up bits of slug ended up on his cheek instead of on Potter, who was sitting on Remus’ other side.

Slughorn had not docked points, but Sirius Black, all smiling, leaned over, “Well, that wasn’t really for you, but good enough for now, I suppose. Good time, Lupin?”

Remus, in a gesture that he was rather sure came from some deep need to prove himself worth his new house and his new friends (well, his new roommates, certainly) scraped slug and slime off his cheek and pressed it into Black’s hair. But he didn’t smile when he replied, “Good time, Black,” with a sour look on his face.

The shock on the other boy’s face had almost been worth the ten points from Gryffindor. But Sirius Black’s sudden awareness of Remus may not have been in his best interest. He should have noted the lack of immediate revenge. He should have not tossed it off as nothing, as a simple exchange that ended there.

That meeting was his first indication. Their second altercation, which ended with Remus hanging from the underside of a revolving staircase almost two months later, guaranteed it. It hadn’t been that dangerous, really. Black had timed it well, worked his charmwork flawlessly, and taken Remus’ school tie on top of it, as if that would just add fuel to the fire. Remus hung there, uselessly, for ten minutes before a Ravenclaw sixth year spotted him and got him down.

It was a lesson.

Sirius Black was trouble. Clever, fiendish, cruel trouble. But more than that, he was patient enough for revenge.

~~~~~~~~

Sirius had not expected anyone, but then they always show up at his door when he doesn’t, usually in the most inclement weather on the worst possible days of the year. No one ever shows up when it’s a warm sunny day and Sirius has just finished a good swath of work and everything seems just fine, outside the fact that there’s a madman out on the streets who wants the entire wizarding world in some kind of flame or another. His entire generation is out fighting a war and he’s sitting inside, watching it unfold with a cup of tea and a book.

It makes him feel uncomfortably middle-aged.

He had not expected anyone but mostly he had not expected Remus Lupin, looking like a wet cat, soaked to the skin and shivering and needing a place to stay. Sirius should have seen this coming, he should have anticipated this, but he didn’t. Not for the first time does he wish he were living in some hostile, coldwater flat with bad lighting and no glass in the windows and braving Death Eaters and Voldemort instead of in his townhouse like some middle aged failure.

Of course it’s all unspeakably dramatic. Sirius thrived, once, on drama, or at least on controlling drama – letting it out in measured amounts, tamping down on it, or watching the chaos bubble freely – but now he just finds it exhausting, and the more he thinks about it the more exhausted he feels. He’s twenty-one years old and he feels like he’s fifty. Or at least he acts like it.

But Remus Lupin.

He’s shivering and dripping on his doorstep and all Sirius can think, for a brief, glorious instant is that the past six years have been some strange hallucination, some Imperio curse gone strangely awry, and here was Remus, home, to relieve him of house-watching duties so that he could go out and shake off some of his ennui.

But no.

It had taken him a good moment to remember the name of the bloody house-elf before he was foisting off his latest pathetic wayward child on her and trundling back to his writing, except he couldn’t write. He instead tried to forget that Lupin was sitting upstairs in his spare bath, naked (his brain chose to focus on that with a cruel sort of stubbornness) and that no matter what transpired, nothing would actually be fixed.

That’s why he had written to Dumbledore asking for the name of the next house on the chain, but Dumbledore had forced him to keep Lupin, and now Sirius is stuck with him for at least a few days. But with the war going the way it is, and with more and more pressure mounting for him to join a side instead of staying neutrally in his house (or so his family believes) Sirius wonders if this isn’t going to be a longer ride than just a usual three day stint watching Tibby clean and cook.

He sits in his chair and considers how he even got into this mess at all. He hadn’t thought, when he left Hogwarts, that he was really well-suited for something brave and dashing and daring, not after his fifth year and the mess he made. He thought that this was its own kind of atonement, living in Alphard’s old house, and dabbling in danger by letting Dumbledore use him as a safehouse. But it turns out that atonement is boring, and there truly is no justice in the world because there’s Remus, showing up the very night that Sirius has had more than enough, cooped up like a prisoner.

He manages not to sneak up and watch the man bathe. He manages not to make any lewd comments when he’s eating. He manages, and it’s horrible, and it makes him sick, because he feels less like himself than he’s ever felt in his life.

~~~~~~~
He imagines, then, how it will go.

He’s only eleven but he’s heard enough, seen enough, been walked through the hallowed grounds of the school he would attend by his father (who is not a Governor, thank you, he has far too many things to do to deal with such trivial matters) and now, this is the first time he will be alone, without his family. He imagines some sort of freedom, some sort of moment where he can, for the first time since the moment he was born and welcomed into the blood, he will be able to simply be himself.

He imagines it, but that’s not how it goes.

The way it goes, of course, is that Narcissa – already a fifth year – keeps a sharp eye on him on the train, at the request of his father, and he’s bored to death as she talks. And talks. And talks. And keeps talking, none of it substantial or interesting. Andromeda, who would normally be there to keep her younger sister in line (or at least distract her) is off, bounding away to some other car with her silver and green scarf trailing on the floor.

“Do you ever stop talking,” Sirius finally says after they pass York – it’s in the distance, he can see the very faintest part of it from the window. “I could be finding people my own age,” he points out.

“People your own age,” Narcissa sniffs, her nose curling in manner that could not possibly be attractive to anyone, “are as of yet unsorted.”

That, Sirius thinks, is the entire basis of their appeal, although a part of him considers that, truly does. He is unsorted. He could go anywhere. To Ravenclaw (not bookish enough, a part of him thinks) or Hufflepuff (Ha!) or even Gryffindor (except he can see the Howlers coming in, scorching at what he imagines must be a magnificent breakfast spread). Except he knows he won’t. He knows that the freedom he wants to feel is an illusion, because he’ll end up in Slytherin, and Narcissa and Andromeda will keep their eyes on him, and he will-

“Don’t slouch, sit up straight.” Narcissa is bad at a great many things, but one thing she is excellent at is catching bad posture, as much as a tailored waistcoat and trousers will let one slouch. Sirius sits up. He’ll manage. Of course he will.

On the other side of the train, in another life, he imagines there are friends, but, well.

He’s a Black.

The train ride isn’t horrible (boring, but he manages to get a hex in, and Narcissa screaming about the color of her hair is rather good), and then the castle, well, the castle.

He wishes that he could say that it hadn’t overwhelmed him, that he was so used to magic – his mother, his father, the maids, the bloody house-elf, his entire family, or well, just the house itself – had inured him to the joy of pure magic, had broken him of the wonder that besieged him as the ships floated along, illuminated by a lantern, across the lake to the castle. But the fact is that Sirius is so besotted with his new home that he doesn’t even notice the other people in his boat with him, just stares up at the castle. The doors to the great hall open and later he will say he was watching coolly, taking it in, but the fact of the matter remains that he doesn’t recall much of what happened that night.

Well.

That’s not true, either.

He remembers his name being called, and that’s when his memory pitches from distinct impressions of spires and starry skies and foggy, brief notions of tables and chairs and people to clarity so sharp that sometimes the memory slices him like a knife, if he mishandles it. He’s the first name, and he sits on that stool and has a grotty hat put on his head and he closes his eyes and thinks, well, Slytherin, then.

The Hat answers back. “Slytherin? Are you sure? There is ambition, there, and potential, and drive. Another Black in Slytherin, that wouldn’t surprise anyone at all.”

I didn’t know you were in the business of surprising people, Sirius thinks back, in what he feels is a rather brave attempt at conversation.

“Bravery would do well in Gryffindor, you know. You have the rebellious streak to you, it would foster you, if you let it.”

But suddenly all that Sirius can imagine is a flurry of Howlers landing on the table, smoking and roiling themselves into the table until they would be his legacy, that place where Sirius Black sat, and everyone knows it, because the scorchmarks will be there until the day Hogwarts burns to the ground. Probably in a further flurry of Howlers, all left ignored as they descended down the main staircases.

By the time that image finishes working through his head, the hat is crying out “Slytherin!” and there’s clapping, and the hat is off his head before the hat can see him imagining himself at the top of the stairs, watching the Howlers fluttering, and realizing he doesn’t care, not a whit.

But it doesn’t matter because he’s now sitting at the table, surrounded by silver and green and thinking, well, it could be worse.

He looks over to the Hufflepuff table where a very fat ghost is greeting a friendly looking girl with her hair in a plait and shakes his head out.

The sorting continues, but Sirius doesn’t pay it much mind, even when other Slytherins come in to join his table. He’s known some of them since he was a small child – well, a smaller child – and they all sit in a way that is half torn between reverence and hesitance. “You know,” he says to the person next to him, “I’m only dangerous when I’m annoyed.”

The person next to him, a pale boy with lank dark hair that looks like it could use a good washing and robes that, while not second-hand, are clearly not the same quality as his own, “At least we share that one quality,” he says, and looks Sirius over, as if trying to decide what he’s going to do about this. The look only lasts another moment. “Severus Snape.”

He doesn’t know that name, it’s not on his list of approved names and friendships, but he’s in Slytherin so at the very least Sirius realizes he should probably at least get on with the boy. “Black,” he says, and decides that for the moment, that’s good enough. Isn’t it?

But even if he were going to announce his Christian name he’s interrupted by the arrival of food, and he gives a bit of a yelp of joy, despite having missed all the announcements and the rest of the sorting by being caught up in his own head. It doesn’t matter, because that’s not likely to happen again. He grins over and sees that everyone is eating, but that the first years are keeping mostly to themselves, and he hopes that the next seven years are not indicated by this one meal, because he cannot fathom the amount of boredom.

The feast ends with dessert that Sirius enjoys with all the gratitude of someone raised by Walburga Black – that is to say, being allowed to consume it without worrying about getting icing sugar down the front of his robes, for once. Afterwards the prefects – Andromeda among them, making Sirius just a touch proud about the fact that she, the pretty one, is his cousin – lead them down to the dungeons. At night, it’s hard to see a great deal of the appeal of living down here (thanks, Salazar, is all Sirius can come up with, annoyed at the damp) but the common room is sufficiently different from home, where the furniture is for looking at, not for sitting comfortably in, that Sirius already feels a bit of the pressure rise from his chest. The windows – not properly windows, really, because outside is the dimness of the lake – are muddy and cloudy now, but he can imagine that during the day the effect is probably not horrible.

And his bed is warm and squashy and private, and even if the drapes are green and silver and it’s starting to sound like Edward Blishwick snores (distant cousin or not, Sirius will go mad if he has to listen to that seven years running) he thinks that maybe this will all be quite all right.

~~~~~

Remus wakes up and for one horrible moment he thinks that he must have died in the night because his face is mashed into the softest pillow created by man, and he doesn’t feel the usual level of exhaustion that sleeping in his usual haunts usually gives him. There’s the smell of warm bread and fruit and jam and when he wakes up, there it is.

And then the bottom of the dream, nightmare, inverted fantasy, whatever this is, falls out when he recalls exactly where he is. He sits up and stares at the tray of breakfast on a nearby table and groans. The house elf, of course, the house elf is behind this, he thinks. Not because Black wouldn’t do this, but because he doesn’t want to think about Black arranging for a perfectly arranged tray of croissants and fruit with butter and tea, and a small hot pot of tea being as tantalizing as possible.

Remus doesn’t want tea (no, that’s a lie. He pours himself a cup and hates how much he loves it), he wants to leave before he can be saddled into another conversation with Sirius Black. He wants to apparate to James and Lily’s place and hide under their spare bed for a few days and be sulky and angry about this entire affair.

But instead he is drinking Sirius Black’s tea and trying to not let his irritation get the better of him. He thinks he shouldn’t go downstairs, he should just stay up in the bedroom and avoid the man who he’s rather sure he hates more than anyone else on the planet but in the end he decides that as he is no longer five years old, and as he has nothing to be ashamed of, he won’t.

Black is sitting at his kitchen table looking very much like he hasn’t slept and even then he looks beautiful. The house-elf – no, Tibby – is standing on a stool behind him and trying to brush his hair as he reads the newspaper. It’s not going well, because Black keeps tugging his head away and swearing at her, and she looks about one vile word from running to smash her head into the oven door.

“Did you see this?” Black snarls, “Did you honestly come here after this?”

He tosses the newspaper between them and the headline reads Northumberland witches slain in the largest massacre of muggle-borns ever and Remus feels sick to his stomach. “No,” he says, “I wasn’t there, I was Sussex, and have a care, Black-“

Black doesn’t have a care. He stands and Tibby topples off her stool and to the ground before she’s taking off somewhere that isn’t this kitchen. “This is my house,” he begins, righteous pureblooded anger bubbling up at being spoken back to, even a little, until suddenly it looks like he remembers who he’s speaking to, because instead of his temper going straight into the darkest place his soul can go (and Remus is utterly and horrifying aware of just how dark that place is) he seems to deflate, and he sets his newspaper down.

“And?” Remus asks, feeling suddenly combative. Like maybe they can actually have a conversation about this. Like adults. “You weren’t there either, I notice.”

But Black sees the bait and doesn’t take it. “I’m disinclined to leave. Someone has to keep watch here.”

“I’m told house-elves are perfectly capable of opening doors. It’s not surprising at all you have one, by the way.”

Black bristles and Remus wonders what he’s doing, picking this fight. Trying, perhaps, to get him to insist on Remus leaving instead of staying about the place until Dumbledore is ready to have him fetched or moved or let go. “She came with the house, what was I supposed to do, let her go?”

“And have you hair unbrushed? Never.” Remus crosses his arms over his chest.

“For starters, so much as say the word shirt and she-“ Tibby squeak and slams her head against a door, and apparates away, and Sirius looks disgusted. “See, just like that. Say what’s upsetting you already, let’s move on with this conversation-“

“I’m not upset at you, except for possibly abusing your servants,” Remus shoots back, “I’m simply telling you the truth. You could be out there, too. On one side, or another.”

Black’s voice drops, softens, gets dangerously quiet. “I have no desire to die.”

No, Remus thinks, but this, mercifully, he keeps to himself. Only to lead people there. “Well, then, let’s keep my comings and goings out of the morning conversation, as you’re unlikely to find out more than that, in any case.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Black asks, and Remus hears a fifteen year old boy ask that, in a different tone, and he knows when his rage reaches a point where a conversation is no longer viable.

He doesn’t do what he wants to do, which is to punch Sirius Black in the mouth. Instead he firms his mouth against speech, turns, and walks away.

~~~~~~

In his third year, Remus figures out what friendship is. Peter Pettigrew had been his friend, in a manner, since their first year – good for studying, and good for a game of gobstones. Good for casting tricky little charms, which Peter, despite being a vaguely negligible student in all other subjects, was surprisingly crafty at. James Potter, who slept on the other side of him for a year and caused trouble and mischief like it was his legacy, didn’t mind them until at some point in their second year when James realized how good Remus actually was at avoiding trouble. They were friends, but not close, not until their third year where James became a chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team and routinely needed Remus’ help to get out of detentions so that he could stay on the team, instead of in the classroom cleaning out old cauldrons.

It’s Halloween when it happens, the cementing moment; because that’s the night that James takes Remus aside after the feast.

At this point, Remus is so full of treacle tart and cinder toffee and something eggy and delicious that it’s the most he can do to walk out to just outside the Great Hall, where James parks them both behind a suit of armor and whispers something.

“What?” Remus rubs his own forehead and leans in closer, and James mutters again, and Remus has to actually ask, “Can you speak up please?”

“I know you’re a…I know about your furry little problem, mate,” he says just loud enough, this time, and Remus feels like someone’s poured water down the back of his robes, “And I wanted you to know I know, and I don’t care, but also, I need your advice on the best way to get those enormous stingless bees that we transfigured from quail eggs into the Hufflepuff common room.”

That part is so confusing that for a moment Remus thinks that James is drunk. “Potter,” he says, carefully, “Are you telling me you don’t care I’m a werewolf?”

“Yes, and also, giant stingless bees,” he says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “This is tremendously important, Remus, so if you will focus on the things that matter, here.”

“Is this about how they live next door to the kitchens?” Remus asks, the feeling of frozen wastelands that were rising in his stomach shaking off. It’s a Halloween miracle, if such a thing exists.

James looks furious for an instant. “How is it fair, I ask, how is it even remotely fair, that we Gryffindors brave the elements and the horrible perils of the world about us – that we, the bravest, the best, to be honest here, have to sneak the furthest out of any dorm,” he holds a finger up as if he can sense Remus ready to interrupt, “further than the Ravenclaw tower in actual distance that cannot be accessed via broomstick from delicious edibles?”

“You do realize that it’s not actually their fault, right?”

“Remus there are principles and we are the men to stand up for it. Giant stingless bees. You know how to transfigure them better than I,” James says gravely, and Remus takes a moment to not hug him, but to smile awkwardly, because despite James’ bizarre vendetta against the Hufflepuffs and his need to antagonize them with their House colors, he believes, absolutely believes, that this is actually what his father meant when he said that he would make friends at Hogwarts he would have for the rest of his life.

He probably didn’t anticipate the giant stingless bees, but then no one could anticipate the madness that is James Potter, honestly.

That’s why ten minutes later, when they are both meandering back, Peter ahead of them a bit as they plot the great stingless bee prank of 1973, it’s such a ridiculous, betraying feeling when he suddenly gets hit with a jinx and starts oozing slime like he’s a slug, and he turns to see Sirius Black with an amused grin on his face and a wand that looks like a family heirloom in his hand. Behind him is Regulus Black, who looks more bored than anything, and Severus Snape is beside the Black brothers, and he’s laughing, laughing, laughing, as Remus reaches for his wand only to drop it because he’s covered in goo, and he turns to James to find him equally gooey.

“Enjoy the slime, boys,” Sirius Black says with a grin and a bow, and Snape laughs harder, but they take off when they hear girls coming around the corner and Lily Evans and Dorcas Meadowes find Remus and James slipping in puddles of oozy slime as Peter tries to help them stay up.

James spots Evans and howls, “This was not my fault,” which, to be fair, it wasn’t, but Remus hardly has the patience to point out that when people scream that it is because they’re usually relatively guilty. “I’ve been slugged! It was Sirius Black! And that greasy one, Snape!”

Dorcas is blessedly unafraid of slugs and she picks Remus up as Lily snaps back, “Don’t blame Severus for the things that Black does, honestly, Potter!”

“Will you stop defending him and help us, Evan-no, don’t walk away, Evans!” James cries as she goes. “Have you no loyalty at all?”

“I’m going to get a prefect, will you shut up, honestly!” She snaps back, and good as her word, she does.

The pair of them are toted back to the Gryffindor common rooms where they ooze in front of the fireplace, and Fabian Prewett laughs and laughs and laughs while Gideon Prewett tries every spell in his repertoire to try and unslug them. “I can’t believe we’re producing slime,” Remus says mournfully, as Fabian falls back on a chair and laughs until his twin throws his wand at his head in a bit of a huff. “We’re boy-shaped slugs. Slugs shaped like boys.” He was having such a good night, too.

“I can’t believe that Sirius Black even knows a spell like this,” Lily says, her nose in a book of countercurses. “I think he actually transfigured your sweat glands.”

Gideon scoffs at that. “Don’t underestimate Sirius Black,” he says, “All the Blacks have a nasty streak. The boys,” he says, referring to both Sirius and Regulus, “just control their tempers better than the rest of their family. And with all the money that family has? You know they have those old spellbooks with these kinds of horrible spells in them just sitting around the house for a bit of light reading.” He looks over at Lily’s book and goes to fetch his wand from where Fabian is sitting.

Fabian, finally either sick of laughing or actually interested in the conversation adds in, “First thing you should always remember about the Blacks is that they actually believe that pureblood nonsense, and that they’ve been believing it for a long time. Did you know that their parents are second cousins?”

Lily sniffs, and looks down, intrigued in her book. Remus looks slightly away. Blood politics aren’t really a huge part of their lives in Gryffindor, he thinks; the Prewetts are a very old family, and James’ family is particularly pure blooded as well. But he and Lily aren’t, and it’s not a topic anyone brings up. “Can we just focus on making us boys again?”

Fabian looks over at Gideon. “How about that cleaning spell Molly uses, mixed with that anti-slug spell that Arthur favors?”

“Wait you can’t just mix spells like that-“ Lily begins, but it’s too late, because the twins have already done it, and both Remus and James are hit. They look at each other and bend over, and soon they are vomiting slugs onto the Gryffindor common room floor. Marlene McKinnon screams and jumps over Peter, who is watching in fascination until he’s squashed, and Remus is coughing and spewing slime all over the place. “Or maybe you can,” Lily mutters.

“I think I’ve stopped oozing,” James moans.

“Me too,” Remus says in agreement, flopping over in the puddle of slime, and groans in disgust. There are things that cement a friendship, he decides, trying to get up, as Fabian obligingly starts casting housecleaning spells. One of them is knowing your friends don’t care you turn into a monster every month, and another is being turned into a giant slug shaped like a boy and lying in a puddle of one another’s slime.

~~~~~~~

The number one thing about Sirius that most people don’t realize is how good he was at Herbology, and how much he genuinely enjoys it. Mostly people think of the Blacks and think of dedicated spell-caster good at solid spellwork, and the physical labor could go to the house-elves. However, Sirius actually likes fussy plants, he’s good at making them do exactly what he wants, and he’s good at getting rare and prickly plants to bloom. Besides, it means less dealing with the outside world, for the rare instances he actually brews a potion.

Of course no one knows this because Sirius doesn’t leave his house or talk about his garden, but he’s there, a fag hanging off the corner of his lips as he wrestles a stubborn bubotuber back into its container. The thing doesn’t want to be repotted – not that it has a choice, or will to fight back, but the roots cling to the pot with a vengeance and by the time Sirius manages to tamp it down into a new pot, he’s covered in dirt.

“I had forgotten about your little hobby,” Lupin says from the doorway, and Sirius turns to scowl up at him. In school, very few people knew about this particular proclivity. “The great Sirius Black, a closet gardener.”

“We all had our secrets, didn’t we?” He asks and feels particularly nasty when he says it, but Lupin isn’t the boy he was in school, a Gryffindor by merit of situation alone, almost.

Lupin just gives him the kind of look that could wither bark off a tree. “Do you really want to speak to me that way?”

“See,” Sirius begins, sucking on the end of his fag, not caring that it’s not lit, “that’s always been your problem. Always willing to give a man warning-“

“Don’t start about warning, Black,” Lupin hisses back, “You gave me no warning at all, what I do is at least sporting-“

Sirius feels the bait rise, he can see it, bobbing up in front of him, but he doesn’t care, “Shall we go with hunting metaphors? How about how in some circles it’s considered sport to release a werewolf just before the full moon and chase it down before it –“

Sirius doesn’t realize how close Lupin is until Lupin is pushing him back into the wall of the house, his arm against his throat. “Shut up,” he all but snarls, “shut up, you, of all people, have no right to speak to me that way.”

Sirius had his hands on Lupin’s robes, the tattery, shabby things, and he pushes him away. His voice drops, low, dangerous. He learned, years ago, that shouting never solved the things he wanted solved. Shouting only resulted in people taking you less seriously. “Considering everything, I doubt you really have the right to push me around my own home,” he says, and nods his head up. “The protection spells end at the door, get back inside.”

It’s a bit of a rush, an embarrassing one, when Lupin gives him a look that curdles but does as he’s told and trundles back inside the house. Sirius sits for a moment before he follows him inside. “You could just say the part that’s bothering you, and spare us both the rest of this bloody snit,” he says. Tibby is in the kitchen, and she looks up at Sirius at the same time he looks down at her. “And you, will you go and be useful-“

“I would really prefer if you didn’t speak to her that way-“

“Fortunately for the both of us, she’s about to disappear, so you don’t have to hear it anymore,” Sirius interrupts, although it rankles a bit to be told how to speak to a house-elf – for Merlin’s sake, it’s not like she’s a whole person - and Tibby obliges with a crack of her magic. “So will you just say it already?”

Lupin responds to the latest tone, and Sirius files that away under pertinent information. “We both know what’s bothering me, so can we just stop pretending we don’t?”

Sirius goes silent for a moment, and nods his head, finally, in agreement.

~~~~~

He’s caught flat-footed in his second year at Hogwarts, just around the time that Narcissa won’t shut about about getting married. Qualifications, she decides, are not nearly as important as marrying Lucius Malfoy and beginning the continuation of the pureblooded line of wizards and witches. Word is that that her marks are suffering for it, or at least, that is what his father writes him, because that is the kind of thing his father speaks about. It’s not that she doesn’t like school as much as she really likes Lucius Malfoy, who Sirius thinks looks a bit too much like a blonde ferret, but then he hasn’t liked Lucius since he gave Sirius an old tome of pureblood family names for his ninth birthday, as though that were actually a gift any person, pureblood or not, would actually want.

It’s just at the beginning of the year, right after the holidays, when everyone is returning to school. Regulus only sniffles a little at the train, although Sirius suspects it has less to do with leaving home and more to do with leaving Kreacher’s cooking, which is actually very good. But then, Regulus has an odd relationship with the miserable house-elf, and Sirius can’t say he fully understands.

But once they’re back and classes begin again, everything seems the same, except that Sirius feels like something’s going to happen, although he can’t exactly seem to figure out what. It’s like an itch in a spot that he can’t reach – deeply irritating but at the end of the day, painless and harmless. He assumes it has something to do with Nasha Max, his only real rival for leadership inside of Slytherin, but Sirius’ talents for divination are likely more attributable to indigestion than they would be to actual latent ability.

It’s not that Slytherin has a distinct leadership hierarchy and it’s not really that Sirius would want it anyway. No one cares about the prefects or that other nonsense – what people respect, in Slytherin, is the ability to amass loyalty. That’s why there’s always a defacto leader, and that defacto leader isn’t always a seventh year. Lucius Malfoy, for instance, was pretty much in power from the time he entered Hogwarts (although Sirius refuses to think of it that way) until he was toppled in his seventh year by a second year newcomer, and now Lestrange is in the last term of his seventh year and the entire House is holding its breath, waiting for the power vacuum to be filled.

Of course, Snape says, it will have to be either Sirius or Nasha, who is a fifth year. Sirius because he’s a male member of the Black line, the oldest at the school, and, of course, because he’s affable and charming and people like him, or Nasha, whose family is equally old and pureblooded and at that point Sirius stops listening, because Nasha likes to toss her hair and scoff at him like he’s beneath her, because he’s friends with Snape who is unfortunately a half-blood.

But when Regulus runs to find him, it’s not about Nasha. “Nott got slammed in the head with Yaxley’s bat and fell off his broom and now he swears he’s part duck-“ he starts, and Sirius is confused for a moment because usually Regulus isn’t the one getting excited over random acts of Quidditch-based violence, but then he realizes and he can’t help but grin, “-and now they’re short a beater and it’s an emergency and Yaxley demanded I come get you right away-“

And he’s running before Regulus can even finish, and he’s coming in through the door of the dungeons when he slips on something, and he’s launched facefirst into stone and something wet and disgusting and sticky-

Is that mud?

He looks at his hands, confused for an instant, wondering what happened, and why he’s covered in mud (and he is, covered in it, doused in it) when he looks up to see Nasha Max looking down at him, tossing her long hair and crossing her arms. “Oh,” she says in her most affected manner, “Poor little Sirius Black, don’t you like the mud now that you can see it?”

It’s so absurdly ridiculous – first off, Sirius is only a second year but even he knows how utterly and profoundly stupid and in poor taste this particular prank is, but moreso, this is pandering, plain and simple.

But it doesn’t mean that Sirius enjoys the sound of laughter, the taste of mud, or the bitter feeling in his stomach that his own brother was involved. Nasha Max may be pureblood, he decides, but there is no way that she is more devious than any son of Orion Black’s on a good day, let alone on most days where she’s simply just popular for being pretty and haughty.

He’s reminded, suddenly, of his first day in potions, and he stands up. Nasha, stupidly enough, thinks she’s won, and turned her back to him. Although someone warns her with a gasp and a point (he’ll deal with that particular disloyalty later, and it’s funny how at that moment he started thinking of everything in actions of loyalty and betrayal) he smashes enough mud into her hair that she screams, and the sound is the best thing that Sirius has ever heard.

“Sorry, Nasha,” he says with the most charming smile he has, “But it seems you have mud in your hair.”

After that, it’s almost a joke, how easy it is. Nasha Max crumbles like a house of cards after just a month long campaign – apparently she thought that since he was a second year, it would be easy. But no one does vengeance quite like a Black, and Sirius learned how to turn his temper from something hot and blazing, screaming and furious, into something cold and sharp like the blade of a knife. Of course, the incident with the mermaid and the watermelon may have been going too far, but Sirius has never been one to reign himself in, if the opportunity presented itself. He focuses on Nasha first, and then turns to Regulus.

It’s late at night when he casts a silencing charm over Regulus’ bed, and pins his brother with the end of his wand. “Little brother,” he says, and Regulus knows too well what follows something like that, “it’s time for me to pay you back for your little joke on me.”

Regulus is only a first year but Sirius doesn’t care. He’s almost sobbing – not quite, because Regulus is a member of the House of Black, too – when he blurts out, “She made me!”

“You should have said no,” Sirius replies, and he’s not at all surprised that Regulus knows exactly why he’s here. “You, of all people,” he says, and when they find Regulus in a makeshift pig pen in the Great Hall, complete with a pig nose and ears (and a tail, but that’s harder to see) the next morning, Sirius is slightly pleased when he hears that if he’s willing to do that to his own brother, what is he likely to do to everyone else?

~~~~~

Tibby, for reasons Remus isn’t sure of, has followed him up the stairs; or, at least, she’s managed her apparations to exactly where she can follow Remus up the stairs. “I’m sorry, am I in your way?”

“Master Remus is not in Tibby’s way,” she replies, in that strange house elf cadence where they never seem to just speak. They make Remus a little nervous, because thanking them and being polite always seems to turn into an hour-long affair of weeping about gratitude on their part, and because he gets uncomfortable with the institutionalized slavery of an entire race, even one that seems to enjoy it.

Tibby’s ears wiggle a bit as she goes down the hall to Black’s bedroom and turns to keep an eye on him as he’s about to enter the bedroom he slept in, when suddenly she’s wide-eyed (even wider-eyed) and she holds up her hands, and Remus is apparated against his will into a very cramped space that Remus assumes is a closet.

He finds that he can see, except that when he looks forward, he realizes he’s looking down into Sirius Black’s reception area, and he’s in some kind of crawl space in the roof. It’s sheer luck – or maybe an intense sense of self-preservation – that keeps him from apparating out, because he hears a pounding on the door.

Tibby opens it and she’s immediately punted – that’s the only word for what happens – across the hall, and there’s a loud, “Cousin, cousin come now!”

Remus recognizes the voice, but not because he actually knows the person it’s attached to. It was a very bad night that he had a run-in with Bellatrix Lestrange, and Remus’ blood runs cold, because she’s marching into the room and Remus realizes just how not safe this particular safehouse actually is, if Bellatrix knows it’s here.

Black comes out of the kitchen, no longer covered in mud. Remus can see he’s rolled his sleeves up, and he can see his forearms, where there’s no telltale mark of loyalty. He can’t see Black’s face, but his voice is irritated enough. “I don’t want you here,” he says, crossing his arms.

“Have you considered my offer, my little cousin, or are you going to tell me no again?” Bellatrix asks, and Remus can feel his heart pounding.

Black doesn’t seem to be impressed – or intimidated. “You do know it’s broad daylight, and you’re a wanted woman, don’t you? What you’re doing is tantamount to suicide,” he points out.

She doesn’t seem to either be impressed, or to care that much, because she is walking around the reception like she owns it, and Remus is suddenly aware of the loudness of his own breathing. “The Dark Lord is not pleased you have kept refusing him.”

“Yes, well I’m not pleased at the level of insanity you seem so intent on tracking into my house, Bellatrix, but we both know that my family lines and blood purity are good enough that you won’t kill me as long as I don’t get involved with the other side, don’t we?” Black seems to be very blasé about the fact that a psychopath is standing in his doorway and just punted his house-elf across the front hall.

But then, Remus supposes, she is family.

Bellatrix has her wand out then, fast as a snake, and Sirius has his in response and remarkably is faster with his shout of “Expelliarmus!”

Her wand goes flying and he catches it and dodges her heavy-handed slap in the same motion, and Remus is downright impressed. He keeps his hands over his mouth and breathes in low, shallow breaths. Black holds her wand and looks at it as he keeps dancing back from her grip, and he mutters something low and soft and she freezes as the spell hits her. “Bella,” he says, and his voice is that cruel, creepingly cold tone that Remus remembers from school, “I know you think I’m an asset, and frankly, yes, of course I am. But I’m not interested. Frankly, I’m lying with my parents on this matter. Come here again, cross me again, and cousin or no, I’ll rearrange your insides until you shit out your mouth, Dark Lord be damned.”

Remus can feel the terror run up his spine, and he’s not even being menaced.

“I’ll keep up the deal – and I do, I don’t leave the house – and everything will remain as it is. Now.” He flicks his wand until she’s outside, and calls out, “Tibby, send Mistress Bella back to wherever it is she came from, will you?”

As a parting gift, Black places her wand back in her hand, and there’s a crack as she disapparates away. Black looks up and sits on the floor.

They sit like that for a long time, and Remus realizes that Tibby, for all her house-elfishness, for all the mutterings and squeakings, looks clean and fed and well-cared for, even though Black seems to make it a habit of making her work her fingers to the bone, she seems to genuinely like him. From school, Remus remembers that Black never liked the house-elves, but this one, he at least stands. Stands enough to tell her to go compose herself from the kicking in an imperious tone, but it is what it is. Small favors. Tiny reminders of humanity.

An hour goes by and Remus can no longer feel any of his body parts, but then without warning there’s a crack and he’s apparated to the kitchen table, where he immediately falls to the ground from the chair and stretches all his cramped limbs. He hears footsteps and swears a bit. “My, I’ve never heard you use that particular string of words before,” Black says, looking down at him. “I wanted to make sure she didn’t come back before we let you down.”

“They know you-“

“Of course they know I live here. This was my uncle’s house, before he died.” Black sounds almost sad, but it’s hard to tell from where Remus is sure his bones are now melting into the floor. “But like you heard – I don’t leave, and I don’t appear to interfere, so they leave me alone. Blood counts with these people.”

Remus thinks this is absurdly dangerous, and stares up, “What if they just apparate-?”

“Can’t. My uncle was not quite as paranoid as my father is, but suffice to say, the house is not easily entered. And Tibby, who, by the way, did very well,” he says that extra loudly, as if the house-elf might be listening, and Remus supposes that she probably is, “knows whenever someone opens the front gate.” He shrugs. “So here we are.”

Remus stares up at him. “So here we are,” he says, and his head hits the back of the floor and almost blacks out. “Just, ah, leave me here another moment.”

Black just looks down and rolls his eyes before he reaches to help him up.

~~~~~

It’s November of their fifth year when their worlds crashed in a way that it had never quite managed before.

Before it had been war – outright or subversive. War with Sirius Black only meant one thing, which was war with the entirety of Slytherin. Sometimes the rest of the house, from first years right on up the line, just seemed like extensions of some horrible monster with Black at the base. His moods dictated their moods, which in turn, dictated how they treated the rest of the school. Everyone knew it. The teachers knew it and targeted him for penalty or praise, depending on how he had the rest of the house behaving. It was a strange method, but then Slytherin was good at breaking lines that teachers either didn’t mind or didn’t notice.

James, on the other hand, was no good at subtle, and half of Gryffindor wanted his head mounted on a spike from a turret at the same time that the other half adored him for being funny and sociable. But Sirius always seemed to have a particular spot for tormenting Remus.

It was always mild – shocks during Defense Against the Dark Arts, hexes in the corridors, torn bags, junk pranks, nothing terrible – just annoying. Then, one day in September, it all stopped, and Black seemed to turn his attention elsewhere.

And then it’s November, and Remus is sitting under the trapdoor under the Whomping Willow. He hears the tree get frantic and then stop moving, and he doesn’t even realize that it’s early, too early, really, for the school matron.

He opens the door and is staring at the smug face of Sirius Black, and he feels like his heart is seizing in his chest, closing, like he can’t breathe. James and Peter know but they’ve never been out here, never done this, not even after everything is safe, and certainly never stopped the Willow.

Maybe this is a nightmare. It certainly bears all the hallmarks of one.

“You know,” Black says, his green and silver scarf wrapped mostly around his head. It’s cold out here, there’s frost on the ground, the sun is barely up, “You really should be a little less obvious about the dates you’re sick.”

Remus considers his options, and doesn’t like either of them. He could lie, but without a doubt, Black knows already, if he’s standing here on this ridiculous hill under the infernal tree that was supposed to keep this particular secret. Or he could tell the truth, and threaten him. Well, from bad ideas to worse. So naturally he picks option C, which is to stand like an idiot, staring at Sirius Black and hating the part of him that thinks that his boy is so sinfully attractive that the devil would probably be jealous.

It’s an obnoxiously loud part of him, too. Remus sometimes wishes he had skipped from 11 to 45, to avoid it.

“Are you even awake, Lupin?” Black asks, like he’s terminally irritated that Remus is not rising to his bait. “Are you going to say anything?”

Remus actually doesn’t know what to say. He’s never really experienced speechless in quite this form before, but finally he manages to dredge up some words. “What do you want?” he asks, feeling horrible that he’s asking it. Later, years later, he’ll remember this moment as the moment he lost his soul instead of the moment he went running for Dumbledore. Really, what was he thinking?

Black just laughs. Remus isn’t sure he’s ever heard this particular sound before, but it makes him even more beautiful, and it isn’t nearly cackling and evil enough to belong to someone who is standing in front of him and probably lining up something awful as extortion, so Remus continues. “I don’t have money, and I’m not all that popular, so I don’t know what I could give to you that-“

“Fortunately for you, I have both of those things in spades,” Black interrupts, and moves forward to fix Remus’ buttons, which is confusing because why does Black do that, and also, who knew that he knew how buttons worked? Remus thinks a rather ungenerous thought, which is that Snape likely dresses him like some kind of valet in a Jane Austen novel, with the way he follows Black around. “I just want some favors. Nothing dangerous, I promise.”

His heart hammers, stammers in his chest. “I won’t betray anything about James and Peter,” he states right up front, although he’s not sure if that could be tested. It could, he worries. What kind of friend would he be then?

But Black doesn’t seem to mind that at all. In fact, he smiles, and it’s not sly or smirky or smug, it’s pleased, like Remus finally said something that Black wanted to hear. “Don’t worry. Nothing involving the ongoing campaign between our houses,” he adds, then, like a balm to soothe a stab wound to the chest.

“Are you saying you’ll tell if I don’t agree?”

“I’m not saying anything of the sort.” He finishes, and Remus has never been more terrified of a person since the night that he met Fenrir Greyback. It’s funny. This is a boy playing a game – a stupid, dangerous game, a game that Remus should see an easy out of, but he can’t, he doesn’t know how to outmaneuver here and he can’t figure out why, but he’s as terrifying as a werewolf who doesn’t care who he harms. Black continues. “But you’ll think it over. We’ll work something out.” He lifts a hand up, but the gesture is aborted, and he just takes a step back. “Oh, and Remus?”

Remus looks up, then from where he’s staring at the ground by Black’s feet, the shame and terror warring in his stomach. “Yes?” he asks, politely, because he doesn’t know what to do.

“Let’s not get anyone else involved, hm? I’ll speak to you soon,” Black says, and starts heading up, up and back to the castle.

It’s funny, but it’s at that moment, that precise moment, that what Remus hears isn’t “Don’t tell a teacher,” but “I won’t tell a soul,” and maybe that’s where this problem really starts.

~~~~~~

For four days, Sirius does his absolute best to keep to his usual routine, which is generally to wake up, eat breakfast, read the papers, make notes of who is still alive, avoid his father’s owls, write some, eat lunch, then try and write some more in the afternoon before having an explosive temper tantrum in the basement about how utterly bored he is. Sometimes he’ll fit time in to try and read a book, but really, who has time to read a book when one is exiled in a house with a clinically perky house-elf and a terminally attractive werewolf?

Of course, the latter is only a recent symptom of Sirius’ life. Lupin seems to involve himself in everything that Sirius is trying to do – probably because he, too, is unfortunately bored out of his wits, and he doesn’t have Sirius’ long (two years, two years, two years) practice at being trapped inside a house. Sirius goes to eat breakfast and Tibby is giggling (giggling!) over Lupin’s tea, which he refuses to take upstairs in his bed, like a normal person. He goes to read the paper and the owl has been paid with the knuts he leaves in the bowl by the window for just that reason. His father’s letters are inexplicably piled up (because Lupin couldn’t just destroy them, no, he had to be polite about that, that chore he had to leave).

He goes to write and Lupin sits in the corner watching the outside world or reading a book or drinking tea – honestly the way the man drinks tea should be made illegal, and how did this become Sirius Black’s life: watching Remus Lupin drink tea and page through one of the books he’s found in the house and stare at the fireplace like any moment it might just drop a letter from Dumbledore freeing him from all this.

“Don’t you have anything to do?” Sirius asks irritably on the afternoon of day four, just as Tibby is retreating from cleaning the parlor and into the kitchen. “Or do you just sit about your own home imitating a middle-aged man?”

Remus looks over from where he’s reading a copy of a witch romance novel, really, how did that even get into the house, that must have been one of Alphard’s old books, which were supposedly boxed up in the attic. Tibby must have unboxed them for Remus. She wasn’t meant to, she’s not meant to go up there at all, because it’s full of all of Sirius’ old schoolthings and Sirius doesn’t like to look at them. “This, coming from the man who by all accounts hasn’t left his house in two years?”

“I am independently wealthy, if I have eccentricities and choose to be a hermit locked up with a house elf, then that’s what’s going to happen. Stop looking at my fireplace, you’ll give it a complex.” That doesn’t even make sense.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Remus points out. “What do you suggest I do? Because I don’t remember you having an explosive temper but considering what I hear coming from your basement right before tea,” he retains such charming northern tendencies, it would put Sirius’ teeth on edge except that it doesn’t, “that’s changed since school.”

Sirius gets up, almost ready to leave the room, but he just can’t, as if his feet are unable to carry him out the door. The walls are closing in more than ever, more than they ever did even at the worst of times. “I don’t yell,” he says, as if that explains everything.

“And it’s likely miraculous,” Lupin quips back, going back to his book.

Sirius is about to reply, something smart and funny and clever and nasty, but before he can there’s a knock and they both look up and over to the door at the same time. “Keep hold of that thought,” Sirius says, as he makes his way to the door and opens it. Tibby didn’t apparate Remus into the holding area, so it must be an Order member, or perhaps a muggle salesman – there’s one that comes by at least twice a month because he fancies tea and Sirius is so perpetually bored that they actually have something of a friendship going.

It’s not, sadly enough, Henry, but it is Arthur Weasley, who looks flustered and exhausted and who Sirius gives a once over before asking the standard set of questions, looking considerably annoyed at this, and rolling his eyes at least once before he allows him in the house. “I sent my patronus four days ago,” Sirius says as soon as the door’s closed.

“The twins have some kind of gripe, Molly hasn’t let me out of the house at all outside of work. Ah, Remus!” he says, when he spots Remus, who is peering around the corner. “Let’s get to it, then, quickly, yes? Sirius I hope your Floo-“

“This house isn’t connected, sorry, but I can ask Tibby to apparate you from the garden,” Sirius interrupts.

Remus looks confused for a moment and Sirius looks away quickly, before he can engage with that particular bundle of emotions, because he knows exactly how this plays out. Remus thinks, or must think, that Arthur is here for him - he is, in a way. But not the way that Remus hopes. Arthur musters all the cheer he can, though. “Ah, well, no matter! Let’s get along with it, then! Remus,” he says as though he is some kind of father figure, all portly and full of gifts for Christmas, “the basement has a door, which leads to Sirius Black’s storeroom and office of the Order of the Phoenix.”

He finishes and looks up, pleased. “All right then, I have some words for Remus, and then I’ll be off, I’ll just see myself out your garden, right?”

Sirius feels himself move, but it seems to just be out of habit, because when he sits he’s not entirely sure how he moved from point a to point b. He covers it up with a crabby wave of his hand and Remus goes off, and Sirius can finally get back to work.

Of course, nothing gets accomplished, and nothing will, until Remus Lupin finally leaves.

~~~~~

While he had met Remus in their first year, almost on their first day, the fascination didn’t really begin until their third year. Every now and again he sees him and is struck by how he always looks exhausted, how he always looks like he’s on the edge of falling asleep or passing out, but how he sticks to Potter (Potter) like glue, and how Potter, who is the kind of boy that Sirius might have been friends with in another kind of life, is smarter with Lupin around.

But they both have their generals. Snape is a general of his own, quippy, always testing the ends of his lead, seeing how far he can go before Sirius snaps him back. It is the most dangerous sort of friend to have, and Sirius knows it, in his position – the kind of friend who undermines authority. Ever since the pig nose incident, Regulus has fallen in line, but he’s more stuck up than Sirius, who just doesn’t care a majority of the time.

Lupin is a fantastic distraction. He is clearly Potter’s favored friend, smart, well-liked, but quiet and withdrawn, and all too easy to make miserable with just a few well-chosen hexes, and nasty words. And the best part about it is how much Snape doesn’t seem to like it. “Don’t you have better things to occupy your time with?”

“Now, now, we’re not jealous, are we?” Sirius says on a fine spring day. It’s unseasonably warm, the first true day of spring, and no one is revising even though everyone should be. Half the school is out by the lake, books out as if they actually intend to read them, and Sirius has just cast the sort of hex that leaves marks and bruises where no one can see on Lupin, who has his tired eyes closed but his most irritated face on, but as usual, he doesn’t tell. He doesn’t even tell Potter, who is trying to catch Evan’s eye.

Snape’s watching that, as well. “You keep staring at that little mudblood of yours, but I think you’re losing her,” Sirius tries, and sends another tricky little hex Lupin’s way, but Snape ignores the dig on Evans and focuses instead on Lupin, who is starting to look annoyed enough that he might leave, but he still isn’t saying a word to anyone.

“You could do a lot worse,” Snape says, of Lupin, naturally, because he is the topic of many of their conversations. “You could do worse and you don’t. You could do to him what you did to-“

“I think it bothers you more that you think I’m kind to him,” Sirius muses, in interruption, because he knows exactly who and what Snape is thinking of and that matter does not get spoken of aloud where anyone can hear.

Snape just looks at Sirius, with his nose in the air, that sort of impudent look that makes him seem so desperately pureblooded, except he tries to damned hard. “If he were a Slytherin, you would have already destroyed him.”

“If he were a Slytherin,” Sirius points out, “I wouldn’t have to.” He gets halfway up, and considers things for a moment. “And it doesn’t matter what I do, or who I do it to, because you’ll go along with it.” He lifts his wand, aims at Potter, and Snape raises both eyebrows, because well, that’s nothing new. But then quickly, with the kind of precision needed to survive both his schoolboy ambitions and living with his mother, he snaps the curse over, barking “Levicorpus!”

Lily Evans didn’t even have time to blink before she went in the air, and Sirius doesn’t even watch the panic ensue. He turns to the boy who is his best friend and watches as his face pales, but he doesn’t run over, he doesn’t move. He just sits there, still, fuming, because at the end of the day they both know where his loyalties lie.

That night, Evans announces she’s never speaking to Snape again, and Sirius just shrugs. “You’re better off with some other girl, if you have any ambition at all.” Severus looks like he’s about to punch Sirius, but he doesn’t. Instead he tosses some OWL materials his way.

Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve been fighting over him, or maybe it’s just good timing, but he takes those materials and is a third of the way in when it smacks him in the face. No.

He stands up and paces, because it’s ridiculous. Dumbledore would never – Sirius may not like him much, may think he’s soft and sometimes altogether incomprehensibly mad, but the man isn’t stupid, as much as Orion Black would have him believe he is. “Pass me a calendar,” he says to no one in particular, and one materializes in his hand a moment later, and Sirius begins to set dates he can remember to days where Lupin was, for some reason or another, sick, or missing, or simply not in class. The day of their Charms examination. December, when everyone was at the Yule Ball and Evans was wearing the same green dress that Della Max (Nasha’s much more fortunate younger sister) wore, and Sirius almost caused a riot when he was caught with his hand up her skirt because he was trying to convince her that it was perfectly all right, and the dress was scads prettier on her anyway.

The astronomy class in September where they had gone over Orion, Sirius, and Regulus.

The history of magic exam in February.

Sirius feels like he’ll actually be sick, like he’s on the tail end of the worst kind of hangover. What the hell is going on here? What the hell is Dumbledore thinking - is the old man thinking? Who sets up a werewolf - and the thought, the thought of being touched by one, the thought of it in the hallway just walking around like it’s nothing, like it’s something human, it’s worse by far than anything else, than the school being overrun with muggle born students-

A werewolf.

A bloody werewolf.

He’s not sure, and he doesn’t want to be sure. The obsession with Remus Lupin has to end.

But it doesn’t end.

And for Sirius, that’s where the problem starts.

~~~~~

Remus has only met Arthur Weasley in a furtive, unsure way. He had already left school by the time that Remus arrived, and so this meeting is strange, because it’s like dealing with a stranger who knows intimate details, if only because in the Order, secrets are things to be hoarded like candies, and only the most precious ones aren’t shared around. Marlene has a mouth on her, and no fear of reprisal, at least about other order members.

He’s jovial enough. “Listen, I don’t know exactly what it is you have,” he begins, and Remus is about to interrupt when Arthur waves his hand, “no, no, I don’t want to know, it’s probably for the best, what with the children,” he adds, “but I have two messages. One more severe than the other. Which would you like first?”

“You have a message from James and Lily?” he asks, because he knows that they’re the most likely to try and get ahold of him.

Arthur smiles fondly, “Yes, they send their hellos, and say that they expect to see you shortly, and not to worry. James in particular wanted me to assure you that he’s already setting up things so you can be moved to theirs. I’m afraid that’s the more cheerful of the notes, though.”

“Go on, what did Dumbledore say, then?” Remus rubs his forehead in an old gesture, as if the pressure will stop an oncoming headache. It doesn’t, not really. These habits are hard to break.

Arthur seems to have one as well because he mirrors Remus for a moment. “He says you’re to stay here, for as long as possible. Black’s basement should do the trick. Don’t move with the package, he says,” Arthur relays, and gives him a sad sort of smile. “I’m sorry, I know that isn’t at all what you wanted to hear.”

“No, no,” Remus says, although he’s right. “Bearer of bad news, that’s all. Ah, you ought to get home, before your wife –“

He doesn’t have to finish, because Arthur pats him on the shoulder and nods, and heads into the garden. “Would you?”

“Tibby?” Remus says, and a moment later the house-elf is apparating Arthur Weasley away. Remus hates those kinds of conversations, the kind that say nothing. It takes another moment, longer than Remus would have liked, before he’s stomping into Black’s sitting room where Black is staring glumly out the front window and he manages not to yell (but only just), “Why is Arthur Weasley the secret-keeper for this house?”

“Not for the house,” Black replies, “Just for my bottom room. And who would you suggest? My brother, perhaps?”

“Why?” Remus asks, although he knows it’s a dumb question, and he’ll probably get mocked for it.

Black doesn’t mock him. Instead he turns and gives Remus his full attention, and Remus feels his stomach contract, squeeze tightly into a knotted fist in the base of his abdomen. It’s as though he’s fifteen again, and they’re standing, cold, on the hill under the Whomping Willow and for the first time he feels visible.

Finally, Black speaks. “Because I owe you, don’t I?”

Remus doesn’t move, just curls his hands against the base of his stomach. “Yes,” he replies, quiet. “Yes, you do.”

~~~~~

It turns out that above being manipulative and cruel, and utterly controlling, Sirius Black is also remarkably patient. Remus knew that, of course, but didn’t expect it to last so long, or perhaps that was his own impatience showing itself, but it’s three weeks and almost an entire moon cycle before he hears from him again.

“Lupin,” he says one day, after Charms, just before lunch, as they’re leaving the classroom, “a word.”

James turns to stare, and so does Snape. Peter crashes right into Remus, frowning. “What do you want?” Peter, of all people, asks first, breaking the tableau.

“To speak to Lupin, obviously. It’s private. Run along.”

No one runs along. Snape’s face drains of color, turns pastier than usual for a moment before it starts going red. James doesn’t look at all pleased. “Anything you need to say to Remus can be said in front of us.”

At that, Remus’ heart starts a dance in his chest, and it is surprisingly painful for something so unrelated to his condition. Black opens his mouth but Remus is the one who speaks first. “It’s all right, I’ll meet you two downstairs.”

James is going to argue, he can tell, but Remus just gives a long, drawn out sigh. “Honestly, James, just go, I’ll be right there.” Later James will ask, but Remus won’t respond.

James grabs Peter by the scarf and tugs, and Peter watches and complains, “We shouldn’t leave-“ but they leave anyway, the both of them.

Now it’s just Snape, Snape who is watching and waiting and his face is getting more irritated by the second. “Leave, Severus,” Black says, not looking at him but rather at Remus, and at some distant point off to the right.

“This is a bad id-“

“No. A bad idea would be making me repeat myself.” Black looks over at Snape, and Remus feels the heat of his attention go, drift away. “You know I hate doing that.”

They’re trite words, they’re not threatening, it’s like something out of a novel, but the temperature in the hall feels like it has dropped ten degrees, at least, like a dementor has suddenly manifested just outside their range of vision. Snape looks like a leashed dog that really truly wishes to snap and bite, but in the end he flicks his robes out of the way and goes, and shoots Remus a glance. It only lasts a second, but it says enough; he won’t lose his favored spot.

“What do you want?” Remus asks, wearily, pressing his hand against his forehead and rubbing.

“We’re going for a walk, you and I,” Black says, like they’re friends, as though there is nothing wrong with this picture. “Towards the prefects bath.”

“Is that seriously what you want? I could give you the password, it would save us both time.” Remus hopes that this is the end of it; a pass into a place Black usually doesn’t go.

“And yet, we’re going together,” Black says. “Off you go, you first.”

They walk in silence for a while, passing students who look back, as if confused by this tableau. Remus doesn’t blame them, he’s rather confused himself. But the silence keeps going until they’ve reached a floor with no one on it, and Remus opens his mouth again. “Black, why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to. Do you know how boring Slytherin is?” Black steps up next to him, and Remus tilts his head. What? “It’s the same thing, every day, it’s so easy.”

“So I’m your entertainment?”

Black laughs, and it’s the kind of sound that makes Remus’ skin crawl, almost. Not because it’s ugly, but because there’s something so hollow about it. Like the semblance of a person, instead of a real one. “You’re enough, let’s say that.”

“I’m boring,” Remus argues as they both jump one of the trick steps.

Black looks over and him. “If you are, you shouldn’t actually tell me that. Then entertainment might just come from writing my father about you.”

“Don’t-“ Remus yelps, and then he gets his heart back into his control. “What is the matter with you? Why do you even care? I haven’t hurt anyone. I’m just a boy-“

“Yes, yes, a boy who has a condition, I’m sure. Because the entire Wizarding World is just biased, even those that don’t know better. One of you has never done anything that might merit this, have they?” Black keeps walking, and Remus realizes, now, that he’s following.

“It’s prejudice-“

“Whatever, I didn’t bring you up here to have a conversation about werewolf rights.” Black says, and Remus realizes how loud the word werewolf sounds, like a firecracker, snapping and popping through the hall.

A firecracker, and he’s not sure why he’s here at all, to be honest. “Why am I here? What do you want?”

Black takes a moment and relaxes back in the hallway. “I wanted to see if you would do it.”

“Do what?” Remus demands, and he’s about to argue, but Black doesn’t say a word. Instead he walks away, as if this wasn’t anything, and Remus is about to follow but instead stares at Black’s retreating figure. It doesn’t make sense. It’s nothing that he expected. It was a walk, one that ate up his time, that made him late for food, that inconvenienced him, annoyed his friends, showed something to someone, but that was it.

There’s no rhyme or reason, none at all, he huffs, and makes his way back down the stairs, getting a foot caught in the trick step, throwing his papers and bag down the steps, and making Sir Nearly-Headless Nick tut in disapproval. “I expected better from you, Mr. Lupin,” he says, floating down the stair.

“You’re not alone – could you at least get me some help?” he calls after him.

~~~~~

There aren’t many places to hide inside his house – well, no, that’s not true. There are several hiding places, not all of them Alphard’s – his basement, of course, the cupboard above the door, then the space under the stairs but above the cupboard under the stairs, the secret compartment beneath his own bed. But there aren’t many places to hide that don’t involve either moving furniture or getting Tibby to apparate him into them. Alphard’s house is not like his mother’s house (a fact that Sirius thanks Merlin for on a daily basis) which is much larger, having more children to care for (as opposed to Alphard’s no children at all) and possibly because Orion Black was the heir, just as Sirius is the heir now.

Although the prospect of owning Grimmauld Place is a dank one. Just the thought of Kreacher gives Sirius the shakes, some days.

While the days pass and Lupin doesn’t really speak to him, and he doesn’t speak to Lupin, and while the house is big enough for more than two people (really it could accommodate four quite comfortably) they always seem to be dodging each other, and the more time they spend together, the more that Sirius remembers what he liked about Lupin.

He pours his tea at exactly three-fifty, so it has ten minutes to cool before he drinks it. He’s fussy with his books and his papers and his things. He can’t bear to accept any charity outside of what he feels Dumbledore may be offering Sirius in exchange for being a safehouse, and Sirius is loathe to correct him that he isn’t getting paid for this particular service. Sirius watches the way he waves his wand, just that tiny little flourish at the beginning that is somewhat of a signature, the way he starts to nap when his exhaustion overwhelms him, the way that he rebuffs Tibby’s growing affections with a self-deprecating laugh.

So what he means by there aren’t many places to hide what he would really like is to not have to notice those things. It was so much easier when it was just him and Tibby and they would get on each other’s nerves and he would just write and write and write until papers had nowhere to go but to his editor.

Remus is asleep on the couch, and the rain has turned to snow. It’s dusting carefully outside, icing over the street. North London – Islington, really, properly, at any rate – isn’t ugly by far. It’s a pleasant little street. It’s a pleasant place. Alphard had good taste in that, at least. When it snows it almost looks charming.

Sirius is just trying to write, but Remus is asleep on the couch, and there is snow falling, and Tibby is cooking something warm and delicious, and it’s all so repulsively domestic, as though they have forgotten there’s a war on or that Remus would rather choke on his own spittle and die a painful death drowning that way than be domestic with Sirius.

But he stands up anyway and takes a blanket from where he left it on the other couch and moves to settle it over Remus, who sleeps on for another moment. He is about to step back when Remus mutters, “I’m not a child, I can get a blanket if I want one.”

The illusion of domesticity is a fleeting thing. “You were fast asleep.”

“How does that deage me, please, inform me,” he snaps back, and it isn’t fair, a man shouldn’t be able to be so sharp just as he wakes.

Sirius can feel pressure building behind his eyes. It’s either irritation or distemper, and neither is a good thing. They’ve been inside too long. He’s been inside too long, and Lupin has probably not been inside so often since they left school. “I was trying to be nice,” Sirius argues, but the pressure doesn’t go away.

Lupin seems placated by that, by the imagery of kindness, by the delusion of it, because he puckers his hand around the blanket. “It’s snowing,” he says, and closes his eyes. “It must be blanketed, up in Scotland.”

Sirius sits next to him, then, and Lupin moves a bit, so they are sitting side by side. “There’s no word from Dumbledore,” he says.

“I’ll be here a while, I’m afraid,” Lupin replies, “I’m carrying something that cannot be transported easily.”

There is a prickle up Sirius’ spine. He didn’t know that – he thought it was information, not something concrete, not something that could actually cause a problem. Not something that could be tracked. “Don’t tell me,” he says, quickly, where once he would have demanded to know. Where once he would have needed to control it.

Lupin looks at him as though he’s said something terribly odd. “I didn’t intend to, you know. I was never going to tell you anything.” He moves, then, and kisses him on the mouth, and then moves away. He looks terribly embarrassed, like he’s shown a card he didn’t want to show.

Sirius cannot bring himself to exhale. It’s as though he has taken his first full breath in five years, and if he breathes out, all the oxygen will leave the room, the house, the planet.

~~~~~

Sirius never asks for anything tremendous. Not at first. Really, this game is more about trying to prove to himself that he is both unafraid of werewolves and utterly uncaring about blood status, that he can both be a Black and above everyone and that he can’t be tainted by the company of something worse than a mudblood.

He meets Lupin outside of Hogsmeade. It’s a late winter, still snowing into March, and everyone is miserable; Regulus didn’t even want to go out to the village, stating that he was sick of slipping and sliding across half-melted snow and tamped-down ice. Snape went, and spent most of it brooding outside of the pub, pacing up and down the street, and being moody inside of Honeydukes while everyone else was trying to stock up on candy, but Sirius left him there almost an hour ago.

Lupin isn’t late, but he looks miserable and cold, his scarf snug around his neck and his cloak – looking a little shabby, like maybe he slept in it, wrapped firmly around his shoulders. He even has a pair of earmuffs.

“You look ridiculous.”

“Hello to you too, Black,” he says. They’ve reached a point where they just talk, at least, some of the time. “What do you want today, it’s too cold to spend all our time outside, so I hope a jaunt indoors is warranted.”

Just for that, Sirius decides that they will not be going inside, although he’s not exactly warm himself. “Walk.”

Lupin doesn’t seem particularly pleased by that, if his snorting is any indication. “Honestly, what do you want with me? You never seem to do anything, you never ask for anything, are you that desperate for a friend?”

“Don’t let your high Gryffindor values down now, please, continue to insinuate I am lacking friends,” Sirius says in reply, avoiding puddles of ice. “Stop analyzing this.”

Lupin doesn’t stop. “I’m trying to find out exactly what you expect out of this – whatever this is, why you seem so interested in me. I’m boring. Even my-“ his voice dips low, although there is no one around, “-condition is boring, most of the time. I get good marks. I’m not in your house. We have nothing in common.”

“You keep saying that as if that’s going to make me change my mind,” Sirius replies, looking over at him. The castle in the distance is growing bigger – this walk is taking longer than usual, though, because Sirius keeps avoiding puddles and Lupin keeps jumping over them, and then trying not to slip. “You’re not.” And then a pause. “Also marks have nothing to do with this, my marks are excellent-“

“You have friends. Friends who I presume actually like you.” Remus interrupts, because this is not about who is top of their class.

“Are you saying you don’t like me?” Sirius isn’t offended, or even remotely surprised, but he is slightly impressed that someone finally admitted to it, when he suspects that half the school and more than half of his own house dislikes him.

But Lupin stammers, “You have your brother. You have everything. You’re rich and popular and well-liked by professors, you have girls hanging over your breath, but for some reason this makes you feel like – like what, Black? Like you have control?”

“I do have control,” Sirius snaps back, and slips a bit on an ice puddle.

Lupin actually catches his arm. “Clearly,” he says, and Sirius yanks his arm away. “Just tell me what you want so I can go on with my life.”

Sirius looks up and the castle seems even further away, although they’re back on the grounds, now. “I want you to drop this,” he says, suddenly irritated that he cannot control this conversation. This isn’t what he wanted, and he slips again, and Lupin catches him again.

“What is this about, Black? Are you lonely?”

“I’m not lonely!” he says, maybe a touch too loudly, and he closes his mouth quickly. His mother yells like that, his mother yells all the time, she loses her temper just like that. They all have bad tempers, all the Blacks, and maybe Sirius’ is quickly becoming the most famously awful one, except that he doesn’t yell, he never yells, and that’s why it’s so dangerous.

Lupin gapes, honestly gapes, like some kind of fish. “You’re lonely.”

Perhaps it’s just bad timing, but suddenly Sirius gets a slushed snowball to the back of the head. It drips, coldly, down the back of his robes and some gets between his skin and his clothes, making everything wet. He turns and sees a trio of first years – maggots – laughing for a second, until one of them realizes who it is that they just pelted with a wad of frozen snow and goes whiter than the ground around them. He feels his gloved hands curl into fists – two Gryffindors and one Hufflepuff, all big eyed and staring, dropping snow and tripping over themselves to run. They fall into the snow.

His wand is in his hand but Lupin’s hands are on his arms. “Don’t,” Lupin says, pleading. “Don’t, just calm down.”

“Don’t touch me,” Sirius snarls, the quiet snarl of an enormous dog who can easily rip out a person’s throat. The only warning he’ll give.

Lupin lets go and the first years are trying to puzzle themselves out, but every time they try to run they go flying, flipping into the air as they slip on hidden sheets of half-melted ice. “Don’t, they were just playing, you’re really angry at me, not at them.”

Sirius hears the words and he knows it’s true, and that icy, stunning logic that he tries to cultivate when he is this angry, so angry that he can no longer see in any color save for red emerges. “Then you do something.”

“What?”

“Do something now, Lupin, or I will,” he says, quiet, bone-cold. “I won’t repeat myself.”

Lupin goes still, his face flushing red, and then his wand is out, and he stomps over, miraculously not slipping on ice. There is no jinx, no hex. He gets them up and says something, something that Sirius cannot hear, and they all look a little bit horrified but run off, and this time they don’t slip or slide or fall at all, but manage to make their way up the path.

Lupin turns back and stomps to Sirius, who has managed to master his anger, at least a little, although mostly it’s tempered by curiosity. “So?”

“I docked them ten points each,” he says, and Sirius’ eyes flick over to the prefect badge on Lupin’s chest. He’s never had a pet prefect before – well, not that the ones in Slytherin actually count, because he doesn’t so much own them as much as he just lets them be for the returned favor. But Lupin isn’t finished. “I won’t hex or jinx people because you’re angry. I won’t turn into a bully for you, do you understand me?”

That makes Sirius look at him, actually look at him for a moment. No one has actually said anything like that to him – not ever. The people in Slytherin who don’t agree with him in a show of blind faith are either too scared or too busy trying to outmaneuver him. No one says anything like that to his face. It’s not done.

It’s interesting. It makes his anger fade away.

“What if I am?”

“What if you’re what?” Lupin asks, his mouth in a fine, fine line.

Sirius looks away, suddenly, back at the castle. It looks smaller, but maybe it’s not that it’s far away. Maybe the magic he felt when he was eleven is evaporating now that he knows what’s inside. “Lonely.”

Lupin’s face relaxes, softens, and he sighs. “You could try not tormenting people,” he suggests, as if it’s that simple.

Sirius refuses to believe he’s that stupid; he’s seen Lupin’s marks. “Well I’m not doing it for fun, am I?” Well, not most of the time. “By all means, if you think of a way to control Slytherin that doesn’t involve my temper, don’t hesitate to suggest it.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Lupin counters, putting away his wand. Sirius finds himself copying the motion, and with those words his shoulders sag. He feels heavy, and he runs a hand through his hair to get rid of the last of the ice. He doesn’t say anything, but Lupin seems to take that silence as affirmation. “Then why do you do it?”

“You can’t possibly be that thick,” Sirius replies.

Lupin rolls his eyes. “No, remarkably, I’m not, but it hardly seems worth it.”

It has never been a question. It has never been something that Sirius has put a lot of thought into. It was him or it was Regulus, but it would never be Regulus. It would be someone else, someone stronger, someone better than Regulus, who was always more a follower than a leader. “Who would you recommend?”

Lupin goes quiet, and Sirius nods. There is no one else. Well, there is. But they are all bad choices. They keep going towards the castle, and once they get there, Lupin looks over at Sirius, a complicated look on his face. “I don’t want to regret this,” he says, finally, “so don’t make me.” He takes a moment, and nods his head, as if it is suddenly certain. “I’ll be your friend. Not because you know things about me,” he adds, quickly, “but because it seems to me that you need one who isn’t kissing the hem of your robes when you get up in the morning.”

Sirius is affronted, at first, that a werewolf would dare suggest it, that he needs it, but then Lupin is gone, heading up the stairs that would lead him to the Gryffindor dormitory, and Sirius is left standing in the foyer, wondering what happened, and why he doesn’t feel quite as cold as he did just a moment ago.