Moony-
Can't believe summer is half over. Sirius and I are bored as hell over here and anxious for a little fun before we go back to Hogwarts. Care for a little Gryffindor camping trip at the lake? All the seventh years, and girls too (Sirius's idea and I can't say that I mind). Peter's in, too. We deserve a little fun before seventh year after all. Owl me back as soon as you can.
Prongs
Remus grinned, unsurprised by James's latest scheme. Prongs was notorious for summer boredom, and Remus had already received countless owls from his friend since school let out in June. Camping itself didn't seem that great, but it would be nice to see his friends again—well, some of them, anyway. They didn't have much time left together. James especially was feeling the pressure of their final year of school. One last chance for him to pair up with Lily Evans. One last chance for fun before they had to face the real world and whatever the war with You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters was going to bring.
Remus noticed another scrap of paper, and turned it over to find a letter from Sirius, who had moved in with the Potters earlier that year. He felt a pinch of nerves as he read the short note.
M-
James says it's my idea to invite girls, but you KNOW he's all about getting in a tent with Evans. Bet you a Galleon she says no.
-P
PS. I'm still sorry.
Remus let a long slow breath out through his nose, and tossed both letters down on the table. It wasn't the first apology letter he had received from Sirius that summer, and he didn't intend to answer it.
There were two reasons why he was not inclined to correspond with Sirius. One reason—the reason for the apology—was well known among the Marauders. In the spring, Sirius had played an exceedingly dangerous prank, a prank that had nearly brought Severus Snape face-to-face with Remus at the full moon. Remus, as a fully transformed, out-of-control werewolf. If James hadn't interfered, Snape almost certainly would have died.
As it was, James had saved Snape's life, and Remus had only to live with the fact that he was capable of such a killing, not that he had actually done it. That, and the fact that one of his best friends had set him up for the sake of a prank.
"Look, I don't know what came over me," Sirius had tried to explain. "It's just- Snape is such a prat, and he's always groveling around those Death Eaters, Lucius Malfoy and Reg—and the others. Calling Evans a Mudblood. At least Lucius was born into that cesspool, but Snape is a half-blood and he still chose it. He disgusts me."
"That doesn't mean you get to make me kill him!" Remus had shouted angrily, while James and Peter sat in worried silence. "You didn't even give me a choice!" Remus couldn't remember ever having been angrier in his life. He felt as though the werewolf within him could leap out at any moment. "I have little enough control as it is!"
"I know! I just wasn't thinking!" Sirius had grabbed Remus by the arm to stop him from leaving, pulled him in so they were standing eye-to-eye. "Remus, please. You can't stay mad at me forever."
For a moment, Remus wavered, disarmed by Sirius's proximity and the heavy emotion in his eyes, but then he pulled away. "Don't you dare tell me what I can do."
Things remained frosty between the two boys until the end of the year. They spoke little to one another, and only in the presence of Peter and James. But Sirius was still Sirius, charming and doggedly loyal, and Remus too exhausted and level-headed to hold a grudge. Sirius continued to join him each full moon, his Animagi form a loyal companion to the wolf. Perhaps that was why Remus didn't write Sirius off altogether. There was a part of him that knew Remus and understood him in a way that few others ever could, or would.
But there was more to it than that, and that was the second reason why Remus wanted to avoid Sirius, though he could barely admit it to himself. The truth was that he had felt tension with Sirius long before the dangerous prank on Snape, a new kind of tension and awareness that he had previously only noticed with girls. Most of the time he tried to ignore it, but that was nearly impossible as the year wore on.
He couldn't quite identify the feeling for a long time. It had something to do with Sirius's confidence and ease, the way he stretched his body out in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room. The way he leaned forward on his broomstick at Quidditch practice, showing just a few inches of his tanned, muscular back. The way he flopped down on the couch next to Remus, smiling and carelessly extending his arm across the back of the couch, smelling like sweat and the outdoors and cigarettes and life itself.
In their sixth year, the things that Remus had never particularly noticed about his friend became all he noticed. And Remus found that he had a secret in addition to being a werewolf, a secret that he couldn't tell the Marauders. He was attracted to Sirius Black.