It happens on a cold November night.
She is crawling into bed next to him. This is a new progression in the awkward land that is Them. Remus has already given into her body. The warmth. The smooth skin and slope of hip, her softness and sweetness and brightness bent over her own kitchen counter, or sprawled lewdly on her own sofa, or wearing proud carpet burns from fucking on her own bedroom floor. But this - welcoming her into bed, into his bed - feels very much like giving into the rest of her. He finds he doesn't mind it as much as he thought he would.
Sirius has been dead for four months, two weeks and four days, and Dora has these small hands that fit the back of Remus' neck like they were made to pull him closer. She has bright eyes and bright hair and a laugh that twinkles like fairy lights and she is generally everything that Remus has pretended not to need for so long now. Longer than he'd care to admit.
Nevertheless, it happens on a cold November night, when she is wrapped up in Remus' sheets. He is reading a novel called The Forgotten, which is fitting, really, when he thinks about it. It's a mystery with a good hundred page of superfluous nonsense meant to distract the reader from the fact that the gardener with the gammy eye killed the maid, but Remus has always been drawn to pointless escapism. That, in itself, explains Sirius quite well.
So he is lost in a grey world, filled with delightfully grey characters, when she says, "Did you love him?" so quietly that he is not sure she has spoken at all for a moment too long. "You don't have to answer. I was just... Wondering."
The novel is set in a town called Fairgreen. Remus is not sure whether or not it really exists, but he thinks it sounds quite beautiful. In Fairgreen, the houses are identically quaint and the gardens are always in bloom. Of course, they probably won't be once the gammy-eyed gardener is dealt with, but Remus digresses.
He thinks Sirius would've liked Fairgreen. Sirius afterwards, of course. Sirius before would laugh at such a quiet little village, with its cafés and corner shops and aged population. Sirius before would wreak havoc, running free as that darned dog that nobody owns who mysteriously appears and eats everyone's prized begonias and pisses on the postman and robs the fresh bread from the baskets at the front of the corner shop on Saturday mornings.
Remus thinks Sirius afterwards would embrace small-town life. Thinks, if they'd gotten out of this war together, that they'd have found Fairgreen. That they'd have kissed in the back garden under the waning moon, or baked pies and bread and had picnics in the park, or just lain together on the floor of their quaint sitting room in their quaint house in that quaint little town and let the warmth from the fire embrace them slowly.
He wonders if Dora would like Fairgreen. He's not sure.
"Would you like to live in a little town some day? In the countryside maybe. Or further. Wales. Ireland?"
"Remus," she says softly. "What are you babbling about?"
He looks at her over the rim of his glasses. She looks gorgeous, and heartbreakingly young, and absolutely besotted. He smiles crookedly, a weary sigh stuck in his throat. "I was just thinking. Fantasising. Do you think you'd like to? Someday?"
She shakes her head and smiles. "I don't care where I end up, as long as you're there."
Remus' sigh escapes. "Dora. Please."
She says nothing. Her small hand comes to rest on Remus's wrist, lowering his book. He meets her eyes again, her bright eyes, and she looks so pained that he feels his breath catch. "DId you love him?"
"Yes."
Remus' copy of The Forgotten is secondhand, like most of his things. He wonders if "secondhand" is a word that will always follow him, a word they will engrave onto his tombstone. He wonders if that's what Dora sees when she looks at him. A secondhand man with a secondhand heart.
He folds over the corner of his already dog eared page and places the book carefully on the locker next to his bed. Dora watches, eyes softening. "Okay," she says.
"Okay?" Remus turns back to her. She is watching his face intently, eyes burning with more questions, but she simply nods.
"I just needed to know."
"Please, Dora, don't think that I can't - This is very different, you know. You and me," he says, feeling the heavy weight of the words as they fall from his mouth, settling between them on the bed. He can feel them pile up, large and awkward, slotting themselves together like bricks in the space between them, but he cannot stop. "I care a great deal for you, but you have to understand how hesitant I am to call it love. I know it's selfish of me, but I loved Sirius, and he was - was taken from me. Twice, and both times far too soon."
She's staring at her hands. At her left hand, the one that held Remus' wrist moments ago, and how it is still hooked like a handcuff. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, Remus."
Remus swallows. "But I do want to. Want you."
She looks up, and her eyes are steel. "Don't say that if you can't love me back. Don't say those things. You know I don't have the resolve to leave you, and this will only hurt us both."
"Dora, I never said I couldn't love you," he whispers. "I said I was scared to."
She blinks, suddenly teary-eyed. "I'm not going anywhere. No one is going to take me away. I promise you." She reaches for him, cups his stubbly jaw with her delicate hand. "What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid I've already fallen too far and it won't be long before everything turns to dust," he croaks, throat suddenly very dry. His chest feels tight, his insides twisted. "I can't do it again, Dora. I'm not strong enough to lose this a third time."
She nods. A sprinkle of tears spill down her cheeks as she leans forward to kiss him. "I will never leave you, Remus Lupin," she says fervently, her face still very close to his. "Never. I promise."
"I believe you," he says softly, and it is almost the *I love you* that he can't bring himself to say. She kisses him again, and again, and says, "I promise," until it starts to sound like just meaningless noise, but he knows it's not.
After some time, she sinks down beside him and he pulls her as close as he can. She is too warm, or maybe he is too cold, but it doesn't matter.
"What was it like?" she asks suddenly, her head falling to rest against Remus' shoulder. "Loving Sirius Black?"
He thinks about it. He thinks about the last twenty years of his life, of stupid boys and men who made a lifetime's worth of mistakes in far too short a time. He remembers kissing and fucking and forgetting there was a war going on. He relives, just for a second, the reality of his world crashing down when Sirius was taken away the first time. Relives the hatred, the betrayal, the pain. The overwhelming love and relief and guilt when he came back, when he came back innocent but broken beyond repair. He thinks of the novel on the bedside locker, the one Sirius gave him, and its dog eared pages folded by the hands of ghosts. He thinks of forgetting, and remembering, and the future without Sirius in it.
What was it like loving Sirius Black? He thinks and thinks, and answers her the only way he knows how: honestly.
"We were together. I forget the rest."