Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Harry Potter or any of JKR's characters.
Author's Note: My second fanfiction! Criticism is appreciated, but please be kind. :)
Thanks to TeamGredAndForge for some wonderful ideas!
Remus had never seen this much death.
He was in the Entrance Hall; there were screams and flashing lights, bodies lying open-eyed on the floor. Someone pushed him from behind, and he fell into an undignified heap, painfully knocking his head against the flagged stone floor. A girl who looked vaguely familiar – maybe he taught her? – seized the back of his robes and set him upright, before pushing her way through to the Great Hall.
"Well Moony, look at this. It's ours." Sirius spread his hands out in a rather grand and flourishing manner, his hair sticking up in all directions, still wet from the rain pounding the pavement outside. As Remus looked around the apartment, with the dusty Oriental rug and the couch that creaked dangerously any time anyone sat on it, a raindrop fell and splattered on his forehead. Startled, he glanced up and saw a small crack in the ceiling.
"Reparo," he muttered, poking his wand at the fissure. "Well," he said, wiping his forehead on his sleeve, "Now it's perfect."
It was strange how Remus was in the middle of one of the biggest battles in recent Wizarding history, and all he could think of was a moment nineteen years ago, when everything has seemed so new and perfect. Now, nothing was new and nothing was perfect, everything and everyone he had ever cared about was either old and crumbling beneath his feet, like Hogwarts itself, or dead, except for Teddy.
Remus was pushed again, and then he saw her at the far end of the hall. Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius's cousin. As he watched, Bellatrix casually blasted a girl off her feet with a flick of her wrist, leaving a crater in the floor. She was supposed to be Sirius's family, and a primal hatred welled up inside of Remus that he had never felt before for anyone, not for Fenrir Greyback, not even for Voldemort himself. Without consciously thinking, Remus tore his way through a throng of people and sprinted towards her. He would kill her, because if he didn't he would fail Sirius, he would fail James and Lily and Harry. He leaped over bodies, skidded over rubies and sapphires which had spilled from the hourglasses, dodged jets of light, weaved between pairs of fighters. He would kill her and he knew he would have no reserves about doing it, especially with the full moon so close. It would be so easy to lose himself in the animal he had been fighting his whole life.
Sirius's face broke into an enormous grin. He crossed the room in three long strides to stand next to Remus.
"It is, isn't it?" he asked fondly, running his hand along their wooden dinner table, worn smooth with age. Remus studied the room again, memorizing the pattern of the bricks in the fireplace, marveling at how quickly time had passed. Everything seemed such a blur; one moment he was eleven, the Sorting Hat on his head whispering in his mind about bravery and intelligence; he was twelve, terrified that his friends would leave him as they confronted him about being a werewolf; he was fifteen, an enormous lump rising up his throat, watching in awe as James turned into a stag; he was seventeen, huddled with Sirius, James, and Peter as they looked up at Hogwarts as students for the last time; and now he was nineteen with a new apartment, feeling oddly nostalgic .
He could see the details of her face; she looked a bit like Sirius, from a distance, and he gripped his wand so hard his knuckles turned white. Then, so quickly that he wasn't exactly sure of what had happened, Remus was hanging a foot off the ground, held by the throat. His wand spun out of his hand and clattered to the floor. He looked down at the wand pointed at him, at the twisted face of Antonin Dolohov, and choked. No air could get through the curse that was crushing his windpipe. He struggled and kicked, but Dolohov had stepped back to where he couldn't be reached. Remus felt himself slowly turning red, then purple, and surely somebody should notice that Remus Lupin was dying? He looked over Dolohov's head as if his eyes were drawn by a magnet and saw Bellatrix standing and staring at him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes shining in a way that reminded him irresistibly of Sirius. Remus began to feel dizzy. He tried to breathe again, but the air hitched in his throat.
Remus absently picked a thread from Sirius's hair.
"Yes," he agreed." It is."
I hope you enjoyed the story! This is my take on what happened before Lupin dies. As for the relationship between Sirius and Remus, it can be interpreted as either romantic or platonic, it doesn't matter to me. Thanks for reading, review if you want! :)