Title: Counting Days
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: "Family christmas. Or the notable lack thereof."
Summary: Sirius sits in Azkaban, reminiscing about mistakes and Christmases past.
A/N: Written for the 2008 RS Small Gifts LJ Exchange for lhazzie.
This will be his first Christmas alone since attending Hogwarts.
It's one of the things he hasn't lost yet in Azkaban, in the damp, dark corner of the cell, pretending it's far enough away from the dementors who draw in raspy breaths and suck the warmth from his body and remind him of days before Hogwarts, locked in rooms in a house too cold, too empty, too hateful: he can still keep time. He's been here one month, three weeks, and two days. He keeps counting minutes and hours and days, pretends he doesn't know that soon he won't be able to tell his bed from the cold, hard floor.
It's against the wall, staring at the cell bars and not quite seeing, that he can close his eyes and fall into a semblance of safety and comfort, think of memories that are too far away to reach now.
He remembers meeting James on the Hogwarts Express; that loud, boisterous presence that had reminded him distinctly of the twin brother he'd always needed. He'd strode like the world was at his feet (the way a Black walked), and yet, James had that way of making people feel accepted: a kind person, a warm hand in a sea of strangers.
Like Remus Lupin. A thin, scarred boy with a frightened, mistrustful look in his eyes; a quiet ghost in the corner that Sirius had not even noticed. It had been James, with his careful, sure voice and his bright, unassuming smile, who had turned towards the pale figure and asked him what he thought Hogwarts would be like; he was the one who had drawn out of Remus a certain eagerness: excitement in blank, pale eyes (such an odd, beautiful color, like the full moon on summer nights), and that crooked, shy smile.
James was friendly and outgoing, but he came from a loving family, was used to being adored and pampered. It was second nature to him to treat people as equals. He didn't know what it was like, being confused, feeling that hatred burning, consuming you.
Remus did.
Sirius saw it the second their eyes had met. There had been pain in those eyes, a caged look, bred from years of something that Sirius didn't quite understand. That had not been the anger, the overwhelming sense of unfairness, that Sirius felt. Remus's eyes were bitter and he hated, not others, but himself.
And Sirius hadn't quite understood.
How could he have ever thought it was Remus? Gentle, thoughtful Remus, who had grown up too fast and deserved it the least? He had seen the scars himself, long and jagged, crossing over his chest and ribs that healed and re-healed again; physical punishment that he endured because of something that was not his fault, never his fault, just a monster inside a boy. A boy with eyes that shined sometimes with amusement and never spite; a boy who tolerated all of their quirks, corrected their bad habits and messy, ink-splattered essays with easy, obliging smiles. He'd always been too skinny, hip bones jutting out and shirts baggy and slipping over thin, white shoulders. He should have known that Remus would never do anything to hurt them, their family: broken and makeshift and small, but theirs.
He should have known, seen it the first time all of them had gotten together since Harry's birth. Lily had insisted, had refused to back down in that way of hers, her red hair flaming and green eyes flashing, her freckled cheeks flushed with determination, and James had never been able to deny her anything when she'd looked like that. So they'd spent Christmas together, and Sirius was glad because otherwise they might have all been alone and miserable, pretending not to be scared while cold seeped into cramped apartments with no furniture. Alone instead of together, laughing and exchanging presents in the glow of the Christmas tree lit with candles floating in neat little rows.
Lily sang while she cleaned up in the kitchen – off-key and wrong lyrics, but they all smiled indulgently and didn't wince at all, even if they laughed at how even James couldn't deny that his wife couldn't carry a tune to save her life. James kissed her under the bright, berry-red of the mistletoe, while Sirius jokingly shielded Harry's bright green eyes (just like Lily's, as James always pointed out).
The war couldn't touch them that night; they had been young and drunk on life and maybe a little Firewhisky, oblivious to the world outside.
It's almost midnight, and Sirius is reluctant to leave. He's curled up on the couch, his shoulder pillowing Remus's headand his arm wrapped around a frame that looks delicate but is as strong as the protective charms around the house. He's teased Remus about it before, that he's all bones and awkwardnesslike he's still a gangly teenager, but Sirius doesn't really mind. He likes Remus this way, with his skinny ankles and jutting cheekbones, likes to look at him and ignore the fact that his hair is graying already, because in the candlelightit looks like it did when he was fifteen, like straw spun into gold, and his eyes are that unsettling shade of yellow.
Harry gurgles happily in Remus's lap, chubby hands wrapped around Sirius's finger, biting it like it's better than Lily's cookies (and they probably are; James, surprisingly, is the one who makes supper. Sirius had roared with laughter when he found him in the kitchen, having arrived half an hour earlier than planned, balancing Harry with one arm and prodding at potatoes with another, lacy pink apron tied around his waist, looking more like the wife than Lily, with her messy hair and unshaved legs, snoring away on the couch).It scares Sirius a little; not so much this tiny little person who giggles when Sirius makes faces at him and tells him stories, making his voice high-pitched for different characters, but the feeling that he could break under Sirius's touch. The way he dozes with his head in Sirius's lap, though, is complete trust, and Sirius feels like Harry's enough reason to live.
Remus prods Sirius in the side, whispers that he's a softie on the inside. Sirius shoves him, gently, because Harry is sleeping, but Remus smiles his lopsided smileand Sirius smirks like his heart didn't just skip a beat, like he doesn't feel thirteen again, unsure and a little hesitant.
He kisses him, and doesn't mind that Lily and James are still making stupid faces at each other across the room, or that Wormtail is watching Quidditch on the floor three feet away.
It had been Peter, Peter all along. Watery-eyed Peter, stumbling in their wake, taking advantage of the genial friendship offered to him by James, and Sirius hates him all the more for the betrayal. James had helped Pettigrew, let him in on their pranks when no one else spared him a glance, and he repaid him by using their trust in him to kill the one person who had ever bothered with him.
He feels the rage and lets it wash over him, because it's better than feeling nothing. The dementors will take even that away from him, soon, so he clings to the memories because they're all he has now.
When they had brought him in, he'd laughed, because he'd cry if he didn't laugh, and he refuses to cry. He doesn't think he can do either now, when he lifts his hand and doesn't recognize skeletal fingers glowing ghostly white in the moonlight, when he's numb from cold and can't remember the way snow felt in his gloved hands. He remembers it falling down the back of his neck though, under his shirt, knows it feels cold (but what is cold again? He knows there's hot and there's cold, warm like summer and crisp like autumn, but he can't feel cold until he's been warm, and it's been so long since he's felt anything at all), and remembers a group of boys who'd laughed and chased each other the way boys do, carefree and on top of the world, like nothing could ever touch them.
The vague memories are almost enough for him to close his eyes and will himself to sleep, the thought of being that boy again: that handsome, dark-haired boy who laughed and smirked while girls swooned at his feet and he hadn't cared, hadn't cared at all, about anything except for his friends, when everything had been easy. Sometimes he wants to close his eyes and never wake up again.
And then they come back, rushing at him like a whirlwind of reminiscence, like throwing himself headfirst into a Pensieve.
He can see eyes, bright as the grass in summer, the innocence of those eyes half the reason anyone kept fighting those days. He sees a tuft of perpetually messy black hair and a tanned, callused hand that ruffles it, that confident grin.
And he sees Remus as he was in school: when the war was just a rumor among teachers; when Voldemort was nothing but a name; when the accidents in the paper were just that – accidents. Remus, with unnerving eyes that saw too much. Remus, and his straw gold hair, all long limbs and angles. He sees them together, scared, like teenage boys are, and nervous. He sees that first, hesitant flutter of a kiss, chapped lips pressed against the corner of another.
James is gone. He'll never see him laugh again; never see him show off on a broom or throw Harry in the air again, catching him and holding him tight like he'd never let go. No more stupid, schoolboy smiles at a short-tempered, brilliant redhead; no more hair being ruffled; no more good, simple James Potter kindness.
Harry's still here, though. Harry's not gone. Nor is Remus, even if Remus thinks Sirius killed James and Lily, even if Remus hates him; he's still alive.
And he knows these things: that Harry and Remus are alive; that James and Lily aren't. That even though they're dead, it wasn't him, he didn't do it, he didn't kill them. So he wakes up, again and again, eating crumbly, stale bread that tastes like nothing and counts in his head.
His dreams are filled with schoolboys and laughter, summer grass eyes and snow, but he counts the days until he can reach out and run his hands over warm skin and feel lips that taste like freedom.