Title: Trust
Author: Kat Halcyon
E-mail: kathalcyon@hotmail.com
Summary: Remus muses on loss.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Takes place in the middle of PoA
Warning: SLASH. Men with romantic feelings for other men.
Author's Notes: It's sad, but we all know it ends happily!
"If you knew my dad, you must've known Sirius Black as well."
Looking back, I can't say I ever really did know him. I tried, and I got to know superficial things – his favorite colour, his worst subject, what his parents were like – but no matter what I did, I never really managed to get inside his head, to figure out how he thought and what his motivations were.
So many people thought they knew him. But those were the ones who knew even less than I did, for those people never recognised that his exterior of pleasure-seeker was merely an act.
James understood him better than I did, I think, and I was often hurt by their intimacy. Though our little group was tight-knit, it was evident that, within the four of us, James and Sirius were the closest. I typically ignored my resentment about that, for they never – well, rarely – excluded Peter and me.
Despite the cover-up, the seeds of resentment were always there, as were the seeds of jealousy. And embarrassment, and fear, and hurt. It is not an easy thing to be an insecure teenage boy and to fall in love with one of your best friends.
And I was convinced it was love. I did everything I could not to let on, and nothing Sirius, or the others for that matter, ever did made me suspect they knew. But I spent hours out of every day obsessing over him, imagining how things might be if he ever reciprocated my feelings. Then my thoughts would take a downturn, and I'd imagine a bleak possibility of how he might react if I ever told him. Day after day, the same routine of thoughts, some creative and some not.
For years I lived like that. And no one ever knew. And then it happened.
Sybil Trelawney, an old classmate of ours who had always proclaimed she was a True Seer, made a prediction that changed our lives forever. James and Lily would have a child, she claimed, that would be the world's best hope for defeating Voldemort.
The war had raged on for years at that point, neither side ever quite prevailing. James and Lily were on the run, but after several close calls, it became apparent that someone close to them was informing the Death Eaters of their movements. I was suspected. Though no one ever came up to me and asked "Remus, are you a spy for the Dark Lord?" I knew that's what they were all thinking. Even if someone had accused me, what good would protesting my innocence have done? A spy would be expected to lie.
So they performed the Fidelius Charm, using the ever-trusted Sirius as their Secret-Keeper.
Sirius betrayed them.
Though many parts of him have always been a mystery to me, I still have trouble believing he could have done such a thing. He had never seemed to me to be evil or malicious or power-seeking. His motivations had never been clear to me, but I had never suspected him capable of something so brutal.
If that weren't enough, Peter decided to go after Sirius. I tried to convince him not to, but he was inexorable. He went, and he died.
Our group destroyed. All my friends gone. James and Peter murdered, and Sirius, the man I thought I loved, the murderer.