It had seemed like another silly adventure when it all started. A chance to be heroes, a chance to change the world with their brilliance.
"London calling to the faraway towns!" Sirius crowed when he arrived with the message, somehow managing to beat the owl Dumbledore had already sent. "Get off your lazy butt, Chesterfield is no place for a Marauder to be! London's calling!"
Remus had been unpacking, but it was Sirius, and as the owl confirmed thirty seconds later, London was indeed calling. And so Remus went with him.
Their first Order meeting started with energy and excitement; it felt more like joining a secret club than a rebel group. James and Sirius nudged each other every other minute, their eyes shining with anticipation; Peter, on his part, had the same look he had when they used to discuss pranks: an eager kind of hesitance that clearly indicated it wouldn't take much at all to convince him. But then people began speaking, giving reports of whispered secrets and frightening rumours, and by the end, Remus feared he was the only one of the four who truly understood what was going on.
"Now, war is declared."
These words didn't bring a thrill to his heart in the same way they did for James or Sirius, or even Peter. They brought dread, they brought fear. They meant death, and he didn't think the other boys fully realized yet what that entailed.
It was three in the morning - three seventeen, to be exact - and unusually cool for that time of year. Sirius was standing in his doorway, white as a sheet, a crumpled parchment in his hands.
"Battle come down," Sirius said, his voice hoarse and faint. Remus took the parchment and read it, the blood draining from his face as his eyes reached the bottom. It was a miracle Sirius managed to catch him before he hit the floor, and it took everything in Remus not to throw up all over both of them. They spent the night together, huddled in Remus's bed with hands clutching warm skin as they tried to assure themselves that yes, yes, the other was there, he was there breathing and shuddering and alive.
It was the first time they would receive news of a lost member, a murdered friend, but it would not be the last.
London was calling to the underworld now, and it was up to Remus to deliver the message.
He was instructed not to tell anyone, not even his friends.
It had to be one of the hardest secrets Remus had ever kept, and one he would never stop regretting.
We're going to die we're going to die we're going to die.
"Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls," the cruel voice laughed, so dangerously close it made his hair stand on end. Remus shivered. He knew this voice; its howl had echoed in his nightmares since childhood. And now, hidden away in these woods, Remus felt he was five years old again, lost prey waiting to be caught and eaten screaming.
There was a hard poke in his arm, and Remus managed to turn his head to the right, locking eyes with a frightened young muggle woman. Her hand was clutched over the mouth of a terrified little boy, a boy so small Remus was afraid she'd accidentally strangle him.
It was up to him to get these people away, to save them from the man that had ruined him. It didn't matter that he was still a child, that he wouldn't be twenty for months and was so scared he could barely stand. He had to do it, and he had to do it now.
Remus took a deep breath and raised his wand.
They couldn't remember when exactly their first meeting had been anymore.
They were called in at random now, the times and places changing to keep the Death Eaters from gathering any sort of pattern. Meetings were hardly ever in London anymore, the city too compromised to be anything near safe, but that didn't keep them from using the old phrase.
Sirius loathed hearing it. They both did, really: it meant a call to arms, the start of another mission or the discouraging conclusion of the last. Briefings had lost their sense of adventure even to Sirius; now, they were almost a punishment, a harsh reminder of what went on outside of their quiet flats.
Remus especially hated it when they would come in the middle of the night, interrupting them as they tried to hide away in each other. Often they'd come while he and Sirius lay entangled in the sheets in one of their beds, finding it both safer and more comforting to share two homes rather than risk building one.
"London calling, now," Remus would say gently, guilty on the message's behalf for ending their peace. His hands would caress Sirius's arm and waist and chest, trying to make it up to him, to reassure him that this time, there would be word of a victory.
But Sirius wouldn't hear it. "Don't look to us," he would mutter moodily, burying his face into the pillow and refusing to budge.
It would take several tries for Remus to coax him out of bed, each time taking longer than the last. Finally, Remus would leave Sirius there, his heart constricted in anxiety as he went on his own and waited for Sirius to follow.
He didn't know what he would do if Sirius ever chose to stop coming after him.
Sirius's moods were in direct proportion with the extremity of the weather; the hotter or colder it was, the more irritable he would become. It didn't matter if the ice age was coming or the sun was zooming in; after the initial novelty of the situation Sirius would turn into a volatile mess. A meltdown was, honestly, expected.
"What is it?" Remus asked quietly one morning from the breakfast table. Sirius was at the window of his Newham flat, reading something that had just been delivered by an unpleasantly familiar owl. The tense muscles beneath the smooth skin on Sirius's back warned Remus to be careful, even if Sirius's words wouldn't, and Remus waited.
There was an indignant squawk as Sirius practically pushed the bird out the window, and Remus watched as Sirius silently took out his wand, set the parchment on fire, and dropped it out the window.
By the time Sirius had reached his bedroom, a table and chair had been overturned, and soon a lamp toppled off a shelf by the force from the slamming door.
Silence filled the empty space, ringing in his ears, and Remus stared down at his toast until he heard the sound of something else shattering in Sirius's room.
When, he asked himself as he tried to gather his courage to just get up and open that door, did he all of a sudden become so useless?
Sirius, he had wanted to say, how did this happen?
But there was nothing to be said. Useless questions wouldn't change that.
"London is drowning," he said instead, swallowing the bile that threatened to escape him as he surveyed the bloody remains of the raid on Diagon Alley. He tried and failed to ignore the sounds of whimpering children, of moaning bodies waiting to die, and turned to the man beside him for something, anything.
Sirius made a derisive noise as he dropped his fag on the ground and crushed it with his foot, the smoke escaping his lips in a way that made Remus suddenly feel very young.
"And I live by the river," Sirius grumbled darkly, stepping forward to deal with the attack that none of them had been expecting.
Remus couldn't sleep. All he could do was remember what had happened earlier that night.
"Forget it, brother, you can go at it alone."
He couldn't get it out of his head, the identical looks of shock on their oh-so similar-faces, the expressions of hurt and anger and betrayal.
"London calling to the zombies of death!"
Their taunts, their painful words, followed by spells and hexes and more blood than either of them could have accounted for. The damage that had been accidentally dealt between the two brothers was sickening.
What made it all even worse, though, was that that expression was no stranger to Remus.
And it was agonizing, knowing that he had been the cause of that much pain.
"Quit holding out!"
Remus blinked. Suddenly the room was spinning.
Just draw another breath. That's all he had to do right now.
"London calling, London calling…" What was going on?
Why did Sirius sound so angry?
"Sirius, I don't want to shout…"
Wait, did he just respond? He didn't mean to, he's just lost, just – What was going on?
"Whatever, Moony, while we were talking I saw you running out - "
And suddenly, inexplicably, it clicked.
Sirius.
His flat in Chesterfield.
James, Lily. Harry.
A birthday party left early thanks to a message from Dumbledore, a message that forced him to go back underground for a few days, immediately, without any explanation other than it was "London calling".
But before he could finally remember how to use his mouth again and just speak, the door slammed and Remus was left alone.
He didn't follow.
It would be their last night together for another thirteen years.
"Now get this," Remus hissed, fresh from one of the most humiliating Order meetings he had ever attended. "I-"
"Yes, I was there too," Sirius interrupted, his face filled with contempt. "And you know what they said? Well, some of it was true."
It was incredible how, upon learning from his once-best friend and lover that he wasn't trusted, that he was a suspected spy instead of a man with forcibly secret orders, the only reaction he could muster was speechlessness.
Remus knew Sirius was fully aware of how hard that would hit him, and that only made the blow that much harder.
He watched numbly as Sirius stepped forward once, twice, three times until he was so close Remus could smell the cologne he always wore beneath the familiar scents of motor oil and sweat. Remus fought down the urge to shiver.
"And after all this," Sirius said mockingly, silver eyes narrowed like slivers of the moon, "won't you give me a smile?"
I never felt so much a-like, a-like, a-like...