Bitterest Tears
By Rose Williams.
Harry Potter all associated stuff was created by JK Rowling and is used here without permission or knowledge.
Rated PG.
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"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." Harriet Beecher Stowe.
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"There are so many things I should have said," Remus began.
The words settled on the autumn leaves gathered against the surrounding tombstones as their own patch of dried up spring hope. Remus found the quiet and solitude of the cemetery preferable to the careful company kept at Grimmauld place. They had placed Sirius's memorial stone with James and Lily's. And when Remus sat with his back against it, he could look out across Godric's Hollow towards the too far distant sea.
"And what, in Godric's name, is a Black doing in my dormitory," James demanded.
"Goodie Gryffindor can't take the competition?" Sirius shot back, the passion almost visible on his skin. Envy for such freedom rose in Remus, coupled with fear for the argument, and automatic siding with James, who had just declared himself the leader.
It had taken weeks for James to trust Sirius, and even longer for Sirius deign to talk to Remus, who he saw as the follower of no import, the quiet one who had nothing interesting to say, and nothing to contribute. Remus had spent those quiet months watching the passion that lived in Sirius ebb and flow, wishing that it would just once be directed at him, and knowing always that he hadn't spoken up for Sirius the way he would need someone to speak up for him.
"Aren't we supposed to give everyone a chance? I mean, the Sorting Hat put us all together," Remus told the October afternoon.
"I was so jealous of everything about you that sometimes I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I forgot there was anything about me except that I escaped your notice."
When Sirius had turned around and worked out all of Remus's secrets, named them aloud in the dormitory, and named Remus himself for them, it had seemed like the world had suddenly been painted in different colours.
"And I should have trusted your feelings for me, all of you. I should have been the sensible and uptight person you always accused me of being. I should have told you to stop."
James Potter hung Severus Snape upside down to distract his friend, and the Prefect witnessing it said nothing. Sirius Black woke everyone one night during the Christmas holidays to set dungbombs in the dungeons, and the Prefect in the dorm watched the map that let them get away with it. Severus Snape made it down the corridor towards a werewolf, and the Prefect who returned in the morning had no idea what had happened.
"I'm so sorry," Sirius said. "But I still think he deserved what he got."
"I know," Remus replied quietly. "It's really okay Padfoot."
But it wasn't. Remus had secrets again, because what had happened to him that night was so different from what the others understood.
"I felt used. I felt like you saw the wolf, saw me, as a plaything, a useful tool, rather than either a wild beast or young man. I couldn't be sure that you had ever, or ever would see what I could see, or understood what I knew to be true. And I know you felt that distance."
The wind stirred the leaves at his feet, revealing patches of still green grass underneath. What was, was, Remus knew that. And the philosophical part of him wondered if there was any other world where things were better than here; Harry was safe, was aware of his destiny, and Voldemort was too preoccupied with Harry ever to learn the truth before it was too late. The world would come right, he knew that, but he couldn't help wishing that it had done so years before.
"I know there are more things going on inside your head that I will ever be able to count, let alone understand," Sirius said, his voice low, desperate and angry, "but can't you give me something? Please, Moony, Remus, something so I know it's you in there."
Remus started at him. He was sure Sirius had been drinking, but even complete inebriation did not make Padfoot stupid. Remus never knew what was happening in Sirius's head either, and thought the lack of exchange fair. Everyone was under pressure, that was a given, but he didn't think that Lily's pregnancy was so much more as to cause Sirius to jump at shadows. Remus refused to act blindly, refused to give Sirius any answer when he did not know what the question implied.
So he asked for an explanation, and Sirius told him that he should know; they were the last rational words they exchanged for thirteen years.
"We're all we've got, Sirius. We have to do everything we can to protect James and Lily. What do you know that I don't?"
The question that might have changed the world settled in the darkening clouds gathering over the valley. He had hated asking questions, hated admitting ignorance, and hated the slowly sinking feeling that Sirius was burning out.
"You think you know anything about what it's like to be a werewolf because your Animagus shape is a dog?" he finally asked. "My transformations are raw, painful, involuntary, uncontrollable, and the creature I become is no way predictable, let alone tameable, and you can't understand that. But we were pack, Sirius; you, me, Peter and James. It would never have occurred to me to betray the pack, or suspect another of it."
He had spent those missing years almost as removed from Wizarding England as Sirius. Andromeda cooked him meals occasionally, and he checked the footnote references in literature journals and Dark Arts texts for money for bread, which he ate without jam.
But he never went into London, never bought anything from a Wizarding shop, and apart from the Dark Arts texts books he had, and the articles he read, he would have been a Muggle. He spent Friday nights at the local pub and Sunday afternoons in the library and didn't answer questions about what a nice, if sad, young man was doing without a girlfriend.
Then Sirius had escaped Azkaban using powers beyond comprehension, because if they weren't beyond comprehension then they were powers only Remus knew he possessed and he would have been obliged to inform Dumbledore of the evil heart which lived inside a big, black friendly dog. And Dumbledore invited him to Hogwarts to see James's determined son. Nothing of his carefully constructed walls survived the end of that year, but it was okay because nothing remained of the pain and despair and doubt which they had been built to conceal; and the grief could now be shared.
Padfoot appeared at Remus's back door at 4.30 on a Tuesday afternoon, several hours after a detailed letter from Dumbledore. Remus opened the door to him, and Sirius entered the kitchen.
"Have you been in touch with Andromeda about the house?" Sirius asked.
Remus ignored the hollowness in Sirius's face, the tension in Sirius's tone and the sudden spark of freedom in his chest. Instead he was the serious, practical and detached person he was relied upon to be.
"It's still yours," he said. And quashed all suggestions of anything else.
"Welcome back. I missed you."
The stone under his head gave no reply. Neither did anything else in the vicinity. That was nice of it, Remus thought, lazy in half-light of afternoon.
"All those years and all that year I missed you. And to have you arrive at my place was like going back in time. The world in colour again."
He had made the tea with magic that day. And then he'd followed Sirius in re-forming the Order, followed him to Grimmauld place, and done nothing more than his best in keeping Sirius alive while he was there. He had done nothing more than try to keep Sirius alive.
Snape relayed the news of Harry's absence to the Order; Sirius automatically rose to his feet from his usual place sprawled at the end of the kitchen table.
"No, Sirius," Remus said. "We need you to stay here, tell everyone else what is happening."
Sirius had glanced once at the smug superiority embodied in Severus Snape, and balked. It was sixth year again for Remus and he was much too tired to see it all again.
"We need you alive, Sirius. Harry needs you alive."
"He needs me."
"Alive."
Sirius had nodded, and dropped into his seat again, but Remus was not surprised when he arrived beside them at the Ministry.
"I needed you, too," Remus said, eyes closed now against the emptiness of the landscape. "I loved you."
The wind pushed the words back at him, stinging the tears on his cheeks.