A/N: When I'm happy, I write about things that will make other people happy. When I'm not, I mope on paper.
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Some nights, Remus likes to sit by the fire and remember. On those nights, Tonks knows not to bother him. She quiets the children, feeds them, sends them to bed. She goes upstairs and opens a book.
Remus will sit there all night--it hardly makes a difference to him. He isn't in the here, and certainly not the now. Instead he is drifting about in the there and then. He is boarding the Hogwarts Express for the first time, dozing under a tree of long ago, feeling grass beneath his paws and hearing the voices of his friends around him.
Mostly, though, Remus is with him. He remembers the day he met Sirius--a dark, bitter child far too young to have as much hate in his eyes as he did. He remembers the first time he saw Sirius smile. He remembers the way Sirius was unafraid of him when so many others wouldn't come near, the way they understood each other--profoundly, distinctly, more than anyone else possibly could.
He remembers the way Sirius' hair felt under his fingers. He remembers the way Sirius' lips felt pressing down on his own.
As he remembers these things, he covers his eyes with one hand and sighs.
Tonks comes down at midnight and puts a cup of tea and a biscuit on the table next to him. He doesn't look up. She leaves again, and knows that when she comes down in the morning the tea will be cold and the biscuit will be stale and both will be untouched.
The night progresses. Remus becomes more and more exhausted, and this strengthens his resolve not to sleep. He slips into waking dreams of Sirius stepping out of the fire as though he's just been on a brief jaunt down to the corner-store, walking toward him with open arms. Remus stands and opens his own arms, only to close them on a wisp of smoke.
He sits back down.
He sits and stares into the fire and remembers and does not cry.
The sun rises and as the darkness retreats, so too does the vividness of his rememberings. The red flanks of the Hogwarts Express fade to a dull pink, the tree dies, the grass wilts beneath his feet and two of his friends disperse, one to become the left hand of a madman, the other to frolic with a red-haired girl on some new, grand adventure far away.
One remains.
And as the light banishes all else, in the moment between darkness and the beginning of the day, Sirius is solid and real and full of life. In that moment he kneels, kisses Remus' hand, and whispers those words that were their favorite words--"I love you."
Then the voices of the children rise and they come tumbling down the stairs with Tonks behind them, eyes full of sleep and last night's dreams. Remus rises and turns, opening his arms for them, smiling, and embraces each one as though he has never seen something so wonderful, so precious, and of course he hasn't, for they are life to him--and as much as he spends his nights remembering the life that was, he knows that the day is for the life that is.
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A/N: Well, there it is. I hope you've got warm-and-fuzzies. Review if you love SiriRem.