Summary: Remus, haunted by memories, spends a weekend with an old friend. PoA-era. Sirius/Remus, Remus/OMC
Notes: for barefootboys spring 08 prompt 8; "thy love, like a beast it bites" from Anactoria, by Swinburne.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, any of its characters, including and especially Remus, Sirius, Harry, James, or Lily.
x
Remus sits in his office and reads Swinburne and remembers when he used to whisper these lines in all their perversity and cruelty and lust to him and crazy they were back then, how insane they'd gone with each other. Spring is coming late this year. Most of the snow is gone now but the winds at night are powerful gusts against his window and he piles on extra blankets on his bed. He did not used to be like this. He used to sleep whole nights of early March under pinpoint stars with only grass for his bed, and never minded. He supposes he must be growing old, old way before his time, in that way that werewolves do.
x
"I always thought a wolf would be fiercer in bed," Sirius told him, and Remus answered, first, he wasn't having sex with a wolf, but only with a gangly eighteen year old boy, sorry to break it so harshly, and second, they weren't in a bed, they were on a splintery wooden floor. And Sirius answered, "Good thing we brought blankets."
x
Hogwarts is not as he remembered it. And what was he expecting? Peter's shuffling footsteps down the hall, or James's yell echoing across the Quidditch pitch? Some days he thinks he sees these ghosts and those are the days he knows the moon is coming. He spends free hours now in the teachers' lounge he used to sneak into under cover of invisibility. When he wanders into his classroom, he has to remind himself to take the desk at the front. The students aren't that different now than they used to be, and yet in some ways they bear no resemblance at all to the people that once slept in their beds and ate at their tables.
x
Sirius told him once that his beauty like a beast it bites but only later could he place the reference. That night, they stole free of their tower room, carried Gryffindor blankets rolled up in their arms and crawled down the tunnel to the Shack, a plan followed in silence, the windows all opened to let in the first warm spring breeze. "Like a beast," Sirius said, again, and grabbed him.
x
Harry, he thinks, still looks too much like James, standing there in robes growing by the day too short for him, his hair in his eyes, determined look on his face. He does not act like James, though. No, too mature to have much in common with that proud teenager, the one who used to seek out secret passageways and use them to escape all of his responsibilities. Remus wants to tell Harry that it isn't fair. He wants to ask him what he remembers. He feels a chill run along his skin when Harry says he hears her, and a second of dizziness floods him on the day Harry mentions James.
x
Sirius was standing by the window, little more than a shadow in the darkness with no moon to light him, and buttoning his shirt. He kept the cuffs unbuttoned, then slowly rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. Remus was still lying, tangled in blankets. Watching him. He didn't want to speak. He didn't want to leave. Sirius sighed, like he felt the same way, and walked toward him slowly, and pulled him up with one sweaty palm to one sweaty palm. Remus thought Sirius would kiss him then, and that that would be right somehow, but instead he folded him into his arms in a warm, strong, hug. "It was Sappho," he said. "To her Anactoria."
x
One weekend, Remus leaves the school and takes the train from Hogsmeade to Walter's house. Walter meets him at the station. "Got my owl, then?" he asks, and Remus nods. He didn't take any bags with him, and his hands feel empty. "Well, come here," Walter says, and gives him an awkward sort of hug, and tries to avoid the distance between them that not even such close contact can erase. Walter looks terrible, but Remus figures he probably looks worse himself. Walter leads him to a small Muggle car in the parking lot and drives him the ten minutes home.
x
For a long time, they didn't tell James, and they couldn't tell Peter, and of course Lily figured it out on her own. They became a secret, another secret; Remus kept the knowledge of them close and only when they were alone did he let even himself know. He had to admit: Sirius smiled more now, a quirk to his mouth that Remus couldn't read. Caught up in them, ignoring the outside world, turning his brain off; he was letting himself slide.
x
They drink tea; Remus lets his steep too long and it's stronger than he would wish but then, so is Walter's gaze whenever he catches it, so is the slant of the sun coming through the window (the days are getting warmer but the wind still bites and the nights, they are bitter), so are the twists of memory he feels no matter where his glance falls. The place hasn't changed much. Neither has Walter. He tells Remus he looks terrible and asks if he's bit any children recently, and Remus tells him he's been trying to cut down. Walter answers, "That's what I say about smoking," and offers Remus a cigarette. He accepts. He hasn't smoked in three years, but it's okay. Later, Walter cooks him dinner; they drink the last of his wine; Walter pulls the shades down in his bedroom and when he bites at Remus's neck, he doesn't bother to hide the sharpness of his teeth.
x
They began to measure their time left in school in weeks, not months. At breakfast, Remus felt sudden jitters, attacks of the shakes. Even James noticed. And everyone asked if he was okay and he told them that he was, and at night Sirius crept into his bed and would't look him in the eye but asked him anyway, somehow, just to agree to move in already. He didn't get that new flat just to live in it all by himself, after all.
x
Walter leaves only to get more blankets for the bed, damning these cold nights as he searches on the top shelf, and when he returns they make a fort as if they were kids again and Walter says, "So I heard your boyfriend's escaped from Azkaban." Remus tells him to fuck off. He doesn't want to discuss Sirius Black. "Fine, fine," Walter says, and twist over onto his back. He reaches out for his cigarettes and lights up again. "I'm seeing someone, by the way" he says. "He hates it when I smoke. He's a felon, too, if you want to know." Remus doesn't. Listens anyway. "Yeah. Another wolf. One of Fenrir's old boys. Quit of course. But still has some of that rough streak to him." He twists back now, and grabs Remus's chin to pull his gaze down to Walter's own. His hand is warm and course. "Rough like you sometimes," he says.
x
They sat together by the lake for a full afternoon with their school books by their sides and the Prophet spread out in front of them. Studying seemed unimportant. The war headlines were beginning to creep on to the front pages. Remus felt ill with them. They didn't talk much. A lot of people were out, enjoying the first good spring days, so they knew, both knew, that they weren't allowed to touch. But later, Sirius promised, as they walked back up to the castle as the first tinges of dusk hit the water behind them, later. Like a beast it bites. We will be like animals.
x
Walter drives him back to the station on Sunday morning. He would stay another day but he has class. "It was nice seeing you again, professor," Walter says, all mocking and sweetness, and gives him an alien grin. He's clean shaven and well dressed and as respectable as anything but he doesn't hide his identification papers or the scars on his arms and cheeks from anyone. Walter is proud of what he is. Remus has never understood him, never will. He looks out the window to wave goodbye as the train starts to move, but Walter has already disapeared.
x
It was a long winter, the cold streak before their final Hogwarts spring. It took the castle a long time to shake off that chill. And in that time, they waited, waited with held breath until their skin turned blue and when the last frost melted from the windows they attacked. That's how it was, at the beginning, an attack. How crazy they were, how insane they fell with each other, how in love.
x
That night, Remus lies on his bed for hours until he realizes he cannot sleep. He goes to sit by the window; it looks out over the sweeping lawn, the lake, the Willow in the distance. Soon, he knows, the weather will warm and warm and warm until it smells like summer out and all of the flowers on the trees will bloom. When they left the school for the last time and stepped up onto the train, James gave Lily the white blossom he had picked and she threaded it carefully in her hair. It didn't last half the train ride, but while it was there, it was beautiful. And Remus remembers it now and it's true that this memory comes with the stab of losing them that will never fade, but he can't—can't feel angry anymore. He's been remembering, recently, more than he thought he could stand. Sirus Black still lives in his head. But he saw the poster at the train station and the rage that welled up in him fell down just as quickly, a destructive tide pushed and pulled by the moon. He feels, finally that his fever has broken.