Summary – Remus is feeling a little depressed. You see, he just got an invitation to Sirius's wedding ... and Sirius had sworn that he loved Remus. What happened? Why is Sirius marrying this pureblood girl, Maria Brogan? And can Remus do anything about it?

Disclaimer – Pretty much everything is J.K. Rowling's. But Maria Brogan is mine, and the text is mine. I'll take whatever I can cling to.

Rating – PG

Reviews – flame me, I like pain. Good reviews are nice, too.

The Invitation

If there's one good thing I can say about her, Sirius, she has excellent taste in wedding invitations. I am quite sure that her chosen china and silver will be equally tasteful. You, of course, wouldn't have helped her choose such things. You never had such patience. Then again, Maria has changed many things about you, hasn't she?

It's a nice, traditional, wizarding wedding to a nice, traditional wizarding girl. Miss Maria Brogan. The Brogans are an old family, respectable. Maria's your distant cousin, but it's distant enough to allow for marriage. Not that the wizarding world has incest laws. They're far too busy with other things. Maria is a nice, respectable girl, twenty-two to your twenty, eldest in a family graced with four daughters and one son. You're getting a lot of in-laws. Pretty, very pretty, bright black eyes and hair. Polite, friendly, socially adept. Well-trained by her good family. She doesn't hate werewolves, just holds them in slight contempt. I visit you and feel that I am a lowly peasant and Marie Antoinette is offering me cake. She thought I'd forgotten her name when I accidentally called her Marie. She corrected me, with a look on her face that asks what one can expect from someone like me. Half-blood and a werewolf, too – what can one expect? I apologized scrupulously.

You didn't notice. You, who used to be so protective of me, who used to half-kill people for looking at me wrong.

James will be your best man, of course. You were his. I'll sit on the groom's side. Everyone will assume I'm a cousin. You have enough of them. Few of them will realize that we are not related. Not by blood, anyway. Or perhaps we are – how much blood have we shared? How much of each other's blood have we ingested, vampire-like, when the moon made both of us mad and we rolled on the ground, playing like the puppies we were? I still had a babyishly fluffy coat until I was almost sixteen, and you ... you were always puppy-like, dog or not. I played roughly, I left scars on you from my teeth, my claws. It was okay.

You used to swear you would marry a Muggle-born girl, or a half-blood one, if you ever married at all. None of us were quite convinced you would. What, Sirius Black, womanizer extraordinaire? I know that your marriage to Maria is not a love match. I am sure that she comes with a dowry and your family paid a bride-price for her. How did you choose Maria? Did you select her from a list of worthy candidates upon whom to bestow your heart, expertly compiled by your loving mother? Did you just like her name? Did you pick her by Tarot from several options? Look at pictures and see who was the prettiest? I was rather surprised by her dark eyes. You always told me you preferred green. Or gold.

But once again, she has excellent taste in wedding invitations. Engraved, cordial, in a nice, thick, expensive-looking envelope of creamy parchment. Addressed in jet-black ink by a calligrapher, looks like. Or is that really Maria's handwriting? I wouldn't know. I never knew her. I only vaguely remember her from Hogwarts. Dark and pretty Maria Brogan of Slytherin House, two years older than any of the infamous Marauders. She never had anything to do with us. Nostalgically, I can't help but feel that she never will have anything to do with "us." "Us" is the Marauders, those bound together by initials deeply carved into the wood panelling of a classroom we claimed as our own room.

"Future generations will think we were some kind of weird foursome," James laughed as he deeply carved the shapes of the Gothic block letters I had sketched into the wooden floor under the grand piano. M,W,P&P: The Marauders Ride Forever. He never looked up at the ink drawing on the lower side of the piano bench, the rather good sketch of a dog and a wolf howling at the moon together. We didn't know how the piano got there, or who, if anyone, used it. The dusty cover was closed over the strings. None of you played; I'm the only musical one; but you three had fun with it, Peter just stickying the keys, you strumming odd, atonal chords that formed a strange and haunting melody, and James playing the one tune I taught him. Then you would always call me to the piano to demonstrate my mastery. All this, and you said you hated classical music ... a term that, for you, extended to anything composed before the twenties. You put up with it for me.

You put up with it for Maria, as well. She plays – beautifully, I might add. There is a lovely piano in the house you are to share after your marriage, bought with your old family gold. Her well-trained face never shows emotion as she makes music. That is one lesson you learned very well from your family; you still keep to it faithfully. Almost never do you show emotion – or rather, you have a set range of emotion that you show. Anger, yes; humor, yes; boredom, yes; insanity, yes. Not often discomfort, rarely sadness, seldom compassion, almost never love. I grew adept at seeing it, though – the warmth of your friendship with James, your respectful liking for Lily, your amused tolerance of Peter – these were love, for you. The softening in your eyes when you looked at a girl who had attracted your special attention. That love was short-lived, but it existed. I can always see love in you.

I see none for Maria.

But I knew, of course, that you were not expected to love Maria, and you didn't expect to yourself. It's a pureblood marriage between the compatible offspring of old and ancient families. You'll have your other lovers. She probably will too. You'll have just as much a parade of momentary lapdogs as you ever had – but now you get the added thrill of cheating on your wife. She'll do the same, though Maria is probably a virgin at this point. That's the way it works. Pureblood girls are expected to be practically cloistered until marriage. I've always perversely admired your cousin Bellatrix for breaking the norm. With her dark charm, she got away with it. After marriage, though, the newly married ladies can be whatever they like to whoever they like. That's pureblood custom, isn't it? And only half-breeds like me, outside observers, will admit it. But again, Maria is surely chaste at this point. You'll know soon, won't you?

And you'll have your lovers. A parade of lovely girls – maybe not all as pure of blood as Maria is. Maybe some of them will be men.

At the moment I am feeling pathetic. I wrote you a love letter.

I destroyed it, but I still feel pathetic.

But that's what I was for you. Hopelessly romantic enough to write such things. Practical enough to burn them. Wild and calm, virginal and loving. Someone your parents would never approve of, even if I wasn't your own gender; maybe that was the greatest attraction. I would ask, Did you love me? but I never expect an answer. Not from Sirius Black.

I understand. It hurts me to understand, but I do. I could see the pain in your eyes at every fresh missive from your mother. I stood beside you on the platform, waiting for the train after your summer with the Potters. I heard the nearly inaudible, puppy whine in your throat when you watched her kiss Regulus good-bye, and how you turned away, dragged me by the hand after you onto the train, grasping my fingers so tightly it hurt, though I wouldn't have dreamed of complaining. I saw you hex Regulus then on the first day back to school, and I saw your anger against him. I could always recognize love in you, Sirius.

You needed her approval. Warm as you were, you needed a family. You needed your mother.

Morbidly, I wish I knew how the reconciliation came about. Did she write you one of her infamous letters – "Marry one of these girls I've picked and placed in an alphabetized list, and maybe I will let you back into my heart"? "Be a good son and I'll be a good mother"? "Pretend to love her and I'll pretend to love you"? If she approached you, it was disguised as a new set of marching orders.

And if you approached her ... I doubt that. You are too proud to ask for your mother.

Aren't you, Sirius?

Well, you fulfilled the criteria, it seems. You're marrying this nice pureblood girl with her good taste in wedding invitations, and her good handwriting, if it is hers at all.

You know what hurt? I was half-expecting a personal note in that beautiful, if unreadable, script of yours. The impersonal invitation hurt. I was almost expecting "Please attend the marriage of Sirius Black and Maria Brogan" to be followed by something saying, "Dear Moony, I'm sorry to be marrying a pure-blood girl when I always said I'd marry a Muggle-born. I'm sorry to be marrying a girl my mother picked when I told you I loved you."

I was always so good at detecting love in you. Maybe not so good at detecting its absence. Or maybe it was the same kind of love I saw when I looked at you watching the girls. I thought it was different for me; maybe because I was your first boy, maybe because we were already friends, maybe because I am at heart a hopeless romantic.

Will Mother keep you under her beady eyes at all times? Or will you have time, in the dark of the night, to slip away like a romance hero and visit your old lover? No. No, you won't, and I shall be glad of it. I won't be your fairy-tale heroine. I'll live. I will go to your wedding and sit on the groom's side. I will wrap my hand in a napkin to protect my skin from the silverware. I will go to the wedding and throw the invitation away afterward. I will shake your hand, congratulate you. And then maybe afterward, I will go back to my flat and I will get thoroughly drunk for the first time in my life, and remember until I've drunk myself insensible. Remember how you always used to call me Remy, for instance (I called you Siri in retaliation until you told me that's what Bellatrix calls you). Remember when you drew the dog and wolf below the piano bench (I told you James would laugh, and you said you didn't care. He didn't notice). Remember all the places at Hogwarts that our initials are etched, very small, into the woodwork. In the morning, I'll probably suffer through my first hangover. The misery will distract me from thinking of how mercilessly you would tease me if you knew. It will distract me from wondering how your wedding night with Maria was. By then I'll have used my paid leave on this job and have been fired, so it won't matter if I stay in bed all day. But it'll be okay. Because I'll live. I'm good at it by now, I have some practice. Practice has not yet made perfect.

But I'll live.

So now I have to find some good dress robes, or borrow some from James ... that's probably what I'll do. I should look respectable, after all. I have a wedding to go to.

Don't I?

End