By Oscura
Disclaimer – I do not own or make any profit from the characters. The poem is Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot, which I also do not own.
Warning – contains slash and het. Somewhat angsty.
Author's Note – originally published on the yuletide SeSa site under my previous pen-name. Written for "k" as part of the yuletide obscure pairings Secret Santa.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scopeI no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
This year you are trying not to think about James. Last year you thought about him all the time, you dreamed about him and spent each day reconstructing what you remembered (fragmented, disconnected) into something coherent. You barely noticed Christmas passing, and now you aren't sure what you did, whether you did anything apart from think about James.
But this year (now that you can remember him) you don't want to, because every time you think about him tears try to push out of your eyes, and you don't want to frighten Harry by sitting down amidst the red-gold-green-silver decorations and weeping (like a child, and Sirius Black never cries). So you sing very loudly your voice filling the whole house, and smile at everyone, and none of them really know you that well, so they can't see that your smile is too bright, your speech too fast. (Remus wonders (worries) about you but James never wondered, he knew.)
And on Christmas Eve you're sitting on the hearthrug, close to the heat and glow of the coals, sipping Firewhisky and determinedly wondering whether Harry will like the books Remus chose, and Remus settles down next to you very close, and kisses you, and you're not prepared, so you pull away and gasp under your breath, and he jerks back and you can see his wet eyes. You're ashamed then, because you love Remus of course, and without him you wouldn't have a present for Harry, even. And this morning Remus cooked bacon and tomatoes for you, and last night he held you when you woke up screaming. (Your room has a permanent silencing spell nowadays.) And when the Order members sit in the kitchen and talk Remus glances over at you sometimes, just to check you're all right – which is just what you think James would have done. But all this isn't enough.
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn againLet these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because at Christmas James always knew when to laugh at you and punch you (gently; you bruise easily), and when to just hold you tight and close, (and not to speak), and when you wanted to talk and cry and have him touch your tears with wonder. The year she sent you a Howler on Christmas morning he said to you, "Every time you cry it makes me love you more."
In sixth year he kissed Lily Evans on the Hogsmeade trip before Christmas; so you kissed Remus in the common room that night. And both of you pulled the curtains round your beds that night. Then you didn't speak for eight days, and some nights you went downstairs to the common room so no one would hear you crying. (Because you'd never let anyone hear, except him.) You had a fight on Boxing Day, one of those stupid, unpractised fights, where nobody hits hard, but no one wants to finish it and make up. And then that night he woke you up from a dream about your father and a branding iron – not that he ever did that to you, it was a speculative dream, you'd had worse – but you were crying and James stroked you, played with your hair and his hands were light and warm on your face. He stilled you, and no one else can do that, so now you are very rarely still. You kissed him and he tasted of cinnamon and vanilla sugar.
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the airThe air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
You are ashamed that you can't love Remus more. The next morning you eat panettone sitting at the kitchen table, and sip sugarless coffee, chatting to Harry and ignoring Molly's tears and the usual mild arguments swelling and subsiding. At Hogwarts, in seventh year, James slept in your bed the night before Christmas, and woke you up pressing cold lips (it snowed, all winter, that year) onto yours. You were having sex then, and perhaps that was the high point of your life: although sometimes you still saw James looking at Evans over breakfast. But it was still you he sat next to in all your lessons, and held in his arms at night. Remus was slightly lonely that year, you think now, and you actually feel guilt: it's strange to feel guilt over something so comparatively trivial. (When for quite a long time now you've been feeling it over more serious things. You do wonder sometimes if you were afraid of being the secret-keeper – it's been such a long, long time, and you're not really clear on some things, still.)
Remus was always more mature than you were, and this is a case in point: he acts just as usual, hugs you good-morning, speaks in a voice pitched no higher, no lower, than everyone is used to hearing. You're not sure about this; even though it was generally acknowledged that you were the one with the passionate, uncontrollable emotions (but still, no one except James would see you cry), he had still shown it when there were things going on. It makes you uncomfortable, this tight control, seeming at odds with Remus's ruffled appearance and apparent cheerfulness. You seem upset, a little shaken – you know this, but Molly is very upset, and no one notices. This is better, you've always been particular about who to take comfort from. The tenderness that was James could wrap itself around you and make you vanish, it was like the rich, cool folds of the invisibility cloak, it made you safe, and you've not found anything similar since he was gone.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
The same year (seventh and last) you sang muggle Christmas carols from the top of the Astronomy Tower, your clear tenor soaring over James's baritone. Of course you didn't believe in God, it was (you thought then) no more than exquisite myth, belonging in childhood with languid rose-maidens and knights pure-of-heart and golden-haired. But the words pierced you, thrilled you – In the Bleak Midwinter (murmuring of solitude and chill: like you, you remember thinking, before you met him). And you thought about holiness, and how it seemed at once incompatible with you, Sirius, about to wander down to the common room and drink hot chocolate and hold James's hand, and yet at the same time you could feel so separate and free and solitary. And "holy" didn't seem such a bad way of putting it.
But of course things never work out right. You've always been cynical (an unusual combination: a cynic and a romantic) and now you're more of one. You disdained melodrama and thought that within a year he'd come back, and things were always a bit funny between you, you'd visit every so often, (and you were best man, shivering in November – a sad month for marriage, but no one could delay. Those were dark times) and sometimes when it was Lily's turn to change Harry's nappy and she was out of the room, you'd lean against him and he'd clutch at you with hunger, and Lily never noticed swollen lips and liquid eyes and standing too close. You felt bad about it, but it wasn't anything wrong, really, you didn't have sex more often than once in two months, when it was slow and secret and delicious. Lily was tired with staying up, taking care of the baby, Aurors often had to stay away over night, and occasionally you and he coincided. In her house, you never did more than kiss.
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-treeIn the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live?
He was missing you more though, you could tell. After all, seven years of friendship, three of brotherhood (after you told him about your father's favourite way of passing the time – your dreams weren't that far off the mark), two of loving him while he chased the girls and you pretended to, and one of loving each other: it was still very much in the foreground, Lily wasn't that important. The last time, was at Moody's, you were alone in the house, both exhausted and sent away by the older ones – you were still only nineteen after all, and James just twenty – in February by the fire (so you'd never kiss anyone by a fire again, even when you loved them – sort of), and then you went to sleep while he sang to you, Hey Jude, over and over very low. It was better than Christmas, and today (alone, while the others visit Arthur Weasley in hospital, and you sit next to Buckbeak's warm flank and lean your head against him) it's suddenly the only thing you can bear to remember.
And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my loveTo the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
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