[A/N: written for 12 Days of Christmas at LiveJournal. I do not own HP.]
Remus dislikes the winter. The bitter cold makes his bones and joints ache, makes the monthly transformations nearly unbearable. His knees pop painfully with every step, his back straining beneath his rucksack. It takes days for the residual stiffness to fade, for him to regain his speed and motility.
He isn't the biggest fan of snow, either. Remus can vaguely remember the days when he loved the snow, when he'd drag his father outside to build snowmen and forts. But that was before. Now the snow does nothing more than pose an extra challenge. Trudging through it to Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures is exhausting. It takes twice as much energy to lift his heavy boots through the deep snow of Northern Scotland. It is cold and wet and he wishes he could be like James and Sirius, both so full of youthful jubilance at the first snowfall. But all Remus can think of when he awakens to see the snow covered ground is of the effort it will take just to make it through his day. It's enough to make him consider skipping class altogether and hiding beneath his blankets.
But, despite all this, there is one thing about winter that Remus cannot begrudge: sweaters. He loves his sweaters – the softness against his skin, the way they keep him warm in the coldest weather. But it's more than that.
They fit his bookish personality, and Sirius teases that his brown cardigan makes him look like an old librarian. James says that the blue wool jumper makes him look like a stodgy professor and Peter just doesn't understand what is so special about the worn forest-green pullover. And Remus finds himself unable to answer these questions, unable to explain why the sweaters mean so much to him.
Maybe it's that his father always wore sweaters. When Remus would wake in the middle of the night, plagued by nightmares, he would wrap the young boy up in his largest sweater and make him a cup of hot tea or cocoa.
Maybe it's that, in sweaters, Remus feels normal. Everybody wears sweaters: old men, little boys, aristocratic purebloods, and poor werewolves. They can be casual, or dressy, and so Remus doesn't have to worry that he'll be inappropriately dressed.
Remus has sweaters for everything, each tied to a memory. There's his oldest Gryffindor sweater that, when he first got it, was too big on his lanky boyish form. It's too small, now, and too worn out to donate. But Remus keeps it. In this sweater he met James and Sirius and Peter. In this sweater he'd summoned the courage to make friends. He'd worn it proudly, the red and gold trim reminding him that he did belong. This patched and worn sweater had shaped his life.
When his father died, Remus had managed to pull his favourite sweater from the donation boxes. It's the same one that he'd been wrapped in so many years ago. Years after his father's death it still smells of pine and tobacco, of love and devotion. It's not so large as Remus remembers, but it's big enough for him to hide in. And, after his father died, that's all he really wanted to do, because things were changing too fast and the war was aging them all.
Then there's the black one that Sirius gave him. It's cashmere, and whenever Remus wears it he is reminded of the only good to come out of the Black family. He is reminded of Srius, of his barking laugh and his arrogant elegance. He's reminded of the tender moments, and of the fights, the quiet love and the burning passion. This sweater is everything that is them.
When things change again, when another line is drawn between 'before' and 'now', Remus packs all the sweaters away. He doesn't want to be reminded of the past, of the laughter and the tears, of the good and the bad. Because he'd gladly take everything he'd bemoaned before, if he could get rid of the reality that is November, 1981.
But when the first snow comes and the bitter cold sends stabs of pain through his body, Remus realises that he can't forget, no matter how much he may want to. And so he gets them all from where they'd been stored in his mum's attic. His fingers run over the soft, familiar fabric and he cherishes the feel of the wool against his skin. Grey, blue, green, brown, they all come out, one by one. Except the last one, at the bottom of the box. The black one remains because this Remus will forget. Because even though it's the warmest, the pain of Sirius hurts more than the coldest wind.