Author's Note: Drunk angst, fun! This contains slash at the end, Serious!Sirus and shameless fairytale clichés.
A not-so-vague Disclaimer: I own nothing… well, nothing fiction-related, bar books and merchandise. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not JK.
Sirius was drunk… again. Remus couldn't remember a night in the month since their seventh year started in which Sirius hadn't been drinking. It wasn't that Remus didn't drink, or even that Sirius was drinking on a school night. It was the fact that Sirius was drinking alone in their dormitory. Again. He was still his slutty self, seeing so many girls that even Remus couldn't remember their names, but he had taken to coming in from his 'dates' and drinking. Or, on the off-chance he was alone for the evening, drinking almost continuously after dinner. The marauders had thought about talking to him about it, but they didn't know what to say. He just wasn't himself anymore, not since he moved out from James'. Remus had tried to casually ask James about it but was told he was worrying too much. Remus gritted his teeth and did the only thing he could think of in the situation. He took a bottle of fire whiskey out from under his bed and took a swig.
"So, what are we drinking to?" He asked. Sirius turned to him, looking up from reading the back of a record.
"What?"
"What are we drinking to?"
"Dunno." Remus' mental alert system went from amber to red. Sirius wasn't even joking anymore.
"Are you serious?" He asked, inviting a joke. Sirius didn't even seem to hear him.
"Remy," He asked, suddenly alert. Remus raised his eyebrows, Sirius had gone from detached to hyper, and he was advancing through the stages of drunkenness at a rather accelerated rate. "Let's go and do something!"
"Like what?" He smiled, glad that Sirius was talking, at least.
"We could go to Hogsmeade, or go by the Lake-" He started.
"Let's go down to the lake. I think Tracey said something about a get-together there tonight." Sirius' eyes glittered at the idea of a party.
"Let's go!" He shouted, pointing his bottle towards the door. Remus cursed James and Peter for being out but stood up and followed Sirius out of the door.
It was only when they had got to the lake that Remus remembered Tracey had said the party was the next day (which, with hindsight made more sense, given that it was a Thursday night) but when he made sounds to leave Sirius protested.
"Let's stay here, Moons. P'raps someone will come out." But nobody did. They spent the next few hours chain-smoking and playing I Never (which wasn't very interesting with only two players). At first Sirius was cracking jokes but he quickly turned maudlin.
"What are we going to do after school?" He asked. "I don't have anywhere to go." He sounded like a lost child.
"You have your flat, remember?"
"Yeah, but I'll be all alone, and Prongs is going to marry Lily and you'll probably be buried in work at some job and Peter will be helping his mum all the time."
"Dumbledore said something about wizards to fight you-know-who. We could do that."
"And kill my family?" Sirius laughed. "I know I'm a bad son, but that's going a bit far." Realizing that Sirius was opening up to him, Remus grabbed the occasion.
"What happened, Pads?" He asked.
"I was sorted into Gryffindor and had to live with Prongs."
"No, what happened over the holidays?"
"Nothing, I was with James for most of it."
"Then why are you…" He didn't know how to say it. "Why are you doing this?"
"'m seventeen, Remy, I'm supposed to get drunk."
"Not every night."
"'m a grown-up. I can do what I want."
"And you want to throw away your seventh year?" Remus started to get angry and could feel the wolf inside him getting riled up.
"'m not. 'm just having fun."
"What happened, Pads?" Sirius looked into his eyes and Remus saw a look of a level of fear that he didn't know Sirius could feel.
"They killed her." He said.
"Who?"
"Bella's kid, Elladora." He stumbled over the name. "He killed her."
"Why?" Remus didn't even know Bellatrix had had a child, it wasn't like Sirius talked about her.
"Dumbledore told me, she did something to another Death Eater and they killed her kid." He looked down. "I know she's insane and a killer, but her kid didn't have to die."
"Merlin Pads, why didn't you tell us?"
"Didn't want to scare you, telling you what they do to their own." He shook his head.
"They're not on our side, but she could've been. She was just a kid."
"So you…"
"Didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think about what they might do to us."
"We're at Hogwarts, even You-Know-Who wouldn't come here for a fight."
"But we're not going to be at Hogwarts forever. And Prongs is going to marry Lily and have babies and they're going to go the same way."
"We're going to fight, and we're going to win."
"You don't know that, you didn't have to grow up with people like them."
"Hey, werewolf here, we know things. We're going to win."
"They'll take everything." Sirius said. At that moment Remus knew exactly what to say and what to do.
"Trust me," He said and took Sirius' face in his hands, he kissed him and somehow it was just like a cliché, just like a fairytale. Sirius looked at him and smiled.
"Always."
Author's Note: Bellatrix's child's name is taken from one of her ancestors on the Black family tree. I always thought that something must have happened to turn Bellatrix so outspokenly bad, so yeah.