Remus didn't know when he'd become such a fantastic actor. At Hogwarts he'd always been rubbish, and at Muggle school before that. He'd been in the nativity play once, too-large shepherd's robes swirling around his ankles and drowning his shoulders in fabric. He'd had one line "And what a child it is," and after an eternity's nervous silence and cold glares, had squeaked out "And" before he vomited into the manger. Sirius and James had quickly learned to keep him out of sight when there was "trouble a'brewin'' as McGonagall knew to simply seek out Remus, whose 'I-I-I-uh, we, just uh, I, I mean to say, that's-' would immediately incriminate them all.
But somewhere along the line he'd developed a steely outer calm, a completely deceiving ease of movement. He could be – would be – fighting a maelstrom of emotions to simply stand up, and his every movement through the cloying, tangible air took all the effort he could muster, but it would appear to anyone observing him that he was simply buttering toast.
And that was what he was doing – externally, at least – six days after the End, when the butter trembled on the table and fell to the floor. The knife clattered from Remus' hand after it.
It couldn't. He couldn't. It wasn't possible. It was- it was a mistake, a plane, a helicopter flying low, spraying mosquitoes, happened occasionally, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to worry about.
Except helicopters didn't roar. And helicopters didn't throw themselves at the ground in Remus' front yard, cutting off suddenly to leave a terrible, heavy silence.
Remus hadn't moved.
There were footsteps up his path, a pause, then there was a knock on the door. There were jangling chains, creaking leather of boots and jacket, helmet resting lightly on his head, straps tangled in dark hair over bright, watering eyes, never happier.
"'Ello Remus." He hadn't even been aware of crossing the house and opening the door, until he was face to face with Hagrid, the motorbike sitting docilely in a patch of dirt, rather than lying on its side in mangled hydrangeas.
There was embarrassment, awkwardness, there was avoidance of eye contact, and underneath all of it, or maybe above it all, there was painful, agonizing disappointment.
"Hagrid," he managed to reply, his voice too soft and the surprised friendliness he tried to inject in his tone coming out as a raw croak, "Come in, come in."
He gestured into his hall. The knife and butter still lay on the dirty linoleum, and he'd knocked a hat rack over so that it hung propped against a wall, blocking the path. He hadn't even noticed, in his rush to get the door.
Hagrid glanced in, then looked down at his huge, muddy shoes, worlds apart from the suave boots Sirius had worn everywhere, bearing a heel James called 'downright girly' – as they would have been on anyone else.
"Thanks, but I can't stay." None of the Order could stay anymore. Few of them even came by, save once to check on him, muttering dark things about Sirius as if that would console him. "I've just… come by. I wanted to know if, I mean I've had it since the night… well, you know. I'd meant to give it back, but then… and I remembered that it had sort of belonged to all of you, even if only, um, one of you more or less…"
It took Remus a long time to work out what Hagrid was getting at, but when it finally clicked he cut him off. "Sirius' bike."
Hagrid looked surprised, as if the use of Sirius' name could possibly make Remus hurt any more than he already was.
"Well, yeah." Hagrid moved aside as Remus stepped onto the porch.
Hagrid had cleaned it. It gleamed in the sun, throwing eye-wateringly bright rays back at Remus. It had been a muted summer so far, as if the world knew the intensity of action and emotion going on and had dulled itself accordingly. It was a fierce juxtaposition which made everything even more unbearable to Remus.
The great hulking beast absolutely shone, brighter than Remus had seen it since its creation. Sudden images, of Sirius and James bare-chested and cross-legged on bright green grass amongst oily rags, tools and unidentifiable pieces of machinery flashed into his mind. Remus had spent much of that summer perched on various bits and pieces of the bike, reading to them from books on motorcycle assembly and maintenance while Peter fetched and carried and Sirius and James reverently pieced together the greatest machine their collective abilities could create.
In the interests of including Peter even after he'd twice stepped on integral parts and broken them, Sirius had sent him to town almost daily for magazines, the Daily Prophet, and unholy amounts of cigarettes and wine. The wine made Remus sleepy, and by late afternoon he would usually be lying in the grass, watching the patterns the sun made on the back of his eyelids and listening to the idle, expert conversations between Sirius and James as they worked. Some days Sirius would flop down beside Remus and they would lie, either in silence with their arms brushing together, everything unsaid said, or holding whispered conversations in whatever flavour Peter had favoured that morning.
Occasionally they all visited the dump to rummage for parts, as independence was fun but all of them were skint, mostly due to the nature of Peter's shopping trips.
Some days progress was infinitesimally slow, like when they left a half-full bottle of wine out in the yard one day and came out the next morning to find ants crawling all over the machine. James wouldn't go near them and the others couldn't move for laughter at his genuine terror. Or when Remus had missed a page of instruction and they'd had to spend a week undoing what they'd done.
But it had come together.
And it had been a wonder. The day it was finally finished it had rained, but none of them had been willing to wait for better weather to try it out, so they'd taken it in turns screaming through the air in the countryside around James' house, soaking wet and shivering but grinning stupidly at each other. Sirius had refused to come inside even after the sun had gone, and it was only Remus' ingenious quoting of a passage on the dangers of water to their new baby that had convinced him to get off. They'd flopped down around James' living room, the pride and contentment in the room practically physical. James and Sirius were still shirtless, and Sirius' hair straggled to his collarbone. His arm was pressed against Remus', his skin clammy but inexplicably warm, and he'd laid his sopping head on Remus' shoulder.
"Well boys," he sighed, "we did it."
"The most perfect machine in the universe is ours," Peter smiled dreamily.
"I say we swear, right now, that as long as we can prevent it, this bike never falls into the hands of a non-Marauder," James declared.
"Agreed," Peter replied immediately, and Sirius nodded. They all turned to Remus.
"As long as we're loyal to one another," Remus said solemnly.
"Forever then," Sirius grinned and impulsively ruffled Remus' hair. Then James' mother had come in to send them upstairs to shower and change.
They'd detoured through the garage to smile blissfully at the bike, shining magnificently in the fluorescent light.
Now, standing on his porch, Remus looked once more at their creation. It had been a few years, but it was no less perfect. Even the dent where James had stumbled, showing them the foxtrot in the heady rush of sweet Muggle wine, and hit his head on the not-quite-assembled exhaust pipe only added to its charm, and the leather of the seat, shiny from use and worn from the black jeans Sirius had barely taken off in three years gleamed like the metalwork.
He tore his eyes from it and turned back to Hagrid, who had been watching him all along, concerned and anxious.
"Thanks," he croaked, "But no thankyou." His politeness was almost as cold as his insides, "It's, it's yours."
Then he walked back into his house, closing the door firmly and returning to buttering his now stone-cold toast.