Remus, After (that was what he thought, flinching away from the dark and the veil), drinks his tea very dark and very hot. It is raining. He only knows it by the sizzle in the chimney; there are no windows in the kitchen, and he has not been outside in days. The rain makes him think of Sirius, and one morning after the full moon: wet grass, cold drizzle, warm bodies. He drinks his tea and lets it scald the memories away.
Remus Before had tempered the bitterness of tea with milk. James had always ribbed him for it, his eyes dancing behind glasses fogged by tea-colored tea, perfect English tea. Sirius had merely shouldered Remus gently aside reaching for the tiny pitcher of cream as those long aristocratic fingers dropped three cubes of sugar into his own tea. At Hogwarts the second time, the aging werewolf among the fresh-faced students, Remus had always dipped a cube of sugar in his tea and crunched it between teeth that ached a little, in memory of the boy Sirius shaking his hair out of his face and touching the tip of a pink tongue to a drop of cream on the rim of the cup.
Sirius Before.
Sirius Before had been a bright star in a dark family. Sirius After (after Azkaban, after the refuge of the dogmind) was no more than an ember until the last, when he had the dangerous glitter of a firework. Sirius After drank his tea very dark and very hot in the grim kitchen of the noble house of Black, back in the place he thought he'd never call home, and Remus sat at his elbow stirring until milk and tea were mixed and dimpling in the cup.
"Do you remember," asked Sirius once, abruptly, the sugar bowl teetering almost off the table, "our Polyjuice prank?"
"Your finest hour," Remus answered.
"Mmm," said Sirius, a little gleam of nostalgia lighting the dull grey of his eyes.
"Seventh year," Remus said, telling the story they both knew, just to fill the kitchen with something besides the dry crackle of the fire, and because Sirius would sometimes relax when he talked. Sirius After was never not on edge, but Remus was willing to babble until his jaw ached if it would ease the haunted tension of Sirius' jaw. They hadn't kissed since the Order had made the house their headquarters. There had been nothing between them since Azkaban but furtive, heated pawing once or twice, and they never spoke of it. Remus would retell the old stories forever if it would give Sirius After a hint of the ease of Sirius Before, when life had been a thing to enjoy. When they had been in love.
"Seventh year," Remus said again. "You decided, since James was occupied with Lily and being Head Boy, that we ought to swap faces for a day. The best Halloween prank ever, you said. I could never refuse you. You'd brewed up a whole batch of Polyjuice Potion in secret, in the Come and Go Room, and you dragged me in there that morning after breakfast and pulled a couple of teacups out of the air and spelled out your masterplan." Sirius was sipping at his tea, the creases around his eyes tightening in memory of old laughter. Remus could see the hint of a dimple he'd been used to kiss in the mornings. He marshaled his thoughts around the past, pre-kisses, prehistory almost. "And so you yanked out one of my hairs and one of yours and dipped up that foul potion."
"It was a genius potion," Sirius said, miles away, echoes of his old arrogance. "And you looked like tea."
"I looked like tea," Remus agreed. "And you weren't foul at all." It was true. Sirius' cup full of potion had bubbled and turned a deep clear brown. The Sirius-potion in Remus' cup had swirled into a pearly grey, like a mouthful of twilight. "Only it didn't work properly."
They had toasted each other, Remus all trepidation and Sirius all mischievous anticipation, and tossed back the potion. Sirius had immediately gasped and gagged, his face melting, and Remus, startled, had grabbed his shoulders. It was over in a moment: Sirius in his arms had turned into an image of himself, and how odd to be holding himself in his arms instead of Sirius' strange-familiar angular weight.
"You didn't change," Sirius had said accusingly, standing.
Remus had shrugged, uneasy. "Werewolf? Maybe the Potion only works on proper humans." But then he had felt it: a ripple of insouciance, a bubble of wicked delight, a sudden confidence inside his own skin. A certainty of things going right. There was a mirror on the wall and he looked at his reflection. Same old Lupin body, except that he was standing hipshot in such a Sirius way, and that smirk was all noblesse come-hither, not his own smile at all. "No problem. We'll Transfigure me."
"Like looking into a bloody mirror," Sirius had said, studying Remus intently, until Remus had thought he might just catch his thumb under Sirius' chin and kiss him (odd thought not quite out of nowhere with the new simmer of Sirius' kissable yearning personality in his veins).
All day they had gone around like that, sitting in on each other's classes: Sirius with Remus' body trying to sham Remus' bookishness, and Remus wearing a reasonable facsimile of the Black features while all his instincts were pure Sirius. Best of all, it didn't wear off. Sirius had a flask to sip from every hour, but Remus' unpredictable werewolf metabolism and his Transfigured face meant that he was simmering with mischief all day. The best moment was in Transfiguration, whenMcGonagall caught Sirius fumbling with the flask.
"Mister Lupin!" she had snapped, advancing on them. "You of all people I wouldn't have expected to be tippling in my classroom."
"You misunderstand, Professor," Remus had said calmly, putting on Sirius' best winning smile as Sirius choked on a mouthful of potion. "It's from MadamePomfrey. Medicine. Poor lad's got simply massive boils all over his -"
"Yes, yes," McGonagall had said hastily. "I have no doubt you had a hand in that, Mister Black. Carry on." And she had dismissed with a sharp look and a flick of her fingers, and gone on to shout at Peter and a couple ofRavenclaws.
It had been exhilarating. It had been brilliant. Sirius had made an utterly bizarre bookish Remus, or danced as the mood took him. Remus had made a fourth year girl swoon just by winking at her, while Sirius at his side grumbled, "Steady on, remember the standards." He had been invincible with Sirius' personality inside him, startling professors by answering every question as Sirius flung tiny paper airplanes at James. Remus had even gone to Quidditch practice, zipping around the pitch with none of the old swooping in his stomach. There was a new thrum inside him, a hit of hormones with every pulse. Remus had always lived around such urges, but the Sirius-potion was electrifying. Irresistible, even, and he went with it, leaning over a girl's shoulder, smirking at a boy who checked him out. He had called it an opportunity instead of a misunderstanding. A seventh year Hufflepuff girl had caught him by the tie at one point, when he was alone in the hall, and had pulled him into a niche and kissed him. Remus had felt like Pinocchio in the jolting moment of learning his wooden flesh yielded: he had kissed her back, thinking, oddly enough, of Sirius. He was a real boy, yearnings and all. It had been a day of bliss, and at the end of it, it had been the two of them in the Come and Go Room again, Remus cleaning the cauldron while Sirius melted back into his own bones with a grimace.
Even after Sirius had waved his wand about and restored Remus to his everyday face and his familiar scars, the thrill hadn't gone away. O, brave new world, which had such kisses in it, and such possibilities. Remus hadn't wanted to leave, even though it meant being out after hours. Even though he still had all those prefect manners. Essence of Sirius, perhaps, taken willingly and now bound tight to platelets and corpuscules (it had been weeks before all of Sirius' charm had worn off, and he still gets flashes of it after all these years, the potion soaked into the grain of unused muscles and released by a smile). So he'd reached up, hoping, and pulled two perfect teacups out of the air, which he'd never managed before.
They'd had tea then in the Come and Go Room, which had grown a windowseat lined with cushions, and their knees and elbows had knocked together as rain drummed at the windowsill.
"Happy Halloween, Moony," Sirius had said, throwing a friendly arm over Remus' shoulders.
"Happy Halloween, Pads." Remus had tingled at the touch, a little wild with the successful prank and the eerie aura of the night. There had been the October sense of yearning and the smell of cream on Sirius' mouth. Remus had thought about licking the fleck of sugar at the corner of Sirius' lip, but then Sirius had yawned and leaned away, his high cheekbone pale against the cold glistening window.
"Cream tea," Sirius said mournfully at the table in the dark kitchen. "We laughed for an hour. Nearly got caught out by Filch." He looked askance at the sugar bowl and nudged it out of danger. "Can't even think of cream tea now. Gotten old."
"I wanted to kiss you," Remus said. He tried to smile past the pull of the scars and the weight of memory at the corners of his mouth. "I think that was the first time I realized it."
"Should have," Sirius said, pausing with his black tea steaming under his nose. "Would have saved the trouble, wouldn't it?"
"We were young," Remus said. "We thought we had time." He shifted his chair a little closer, dropped a dry hand over Sirius'. One last twinge of bravery (was it his own or a memory of Sirius' boldness?) in memoriam for the boys they had been, with their careless hands and mouths. Sirius' fingers were chilly, as if Azkaban had drained the heat from his bones, but they curled under Remus'. Remus sighed, tried not to, and caught his breath like a hiccup. He toyed with his tea. Sirius tipped his own teacup to his lips and swallowed the last bitter mouthful.
"Come on," he said, his palm flattening against Remus'. "We aren't so young, but we aren't dead, either."
Remus felt the old familiar simmer in his blood, like seeking like, and followed Sirius upstairs.
Remus After tosses in his sleep, flinging an arm over the empty half of the bed. He rips down curtains that flutter. He drinks tea with no milk like a penance, trying to see if the heat will ease the ache in his bones, but grief is as natural as breathing now, and something has been pulled from the marrow of him, so that each day is a memory of loss.