A/N: I was musing to my friend the other day that I'd like to write some fanfic, and I'd never written a serious Sirius/Remus fic and wanted to try. Unfortunately, she heard "Sirius/Sirius/Remus," and asked me how that would work. What could I do but show her? And so I present...
Sirius/Sirius/Remus
In which HERMIONE W. CULLEN, author of the esteemed publication HARRY POTTER AND THE IRRESPONSIBLE SHIPPERS, ships irresponsibly.
For Roxanne L. Gentry,
Who shares a middle name with all of my characters.
Sirius was laughing in the library. Too loudly, of course. Everybody was looking at him. Then again, everybody was always looking at Sirius Black. They joked about it.
"Hogwarts' unofficial pastime," Remus had called it. "Better than quidditch."
"Take that back," James had growled, "or I'll have to wash that dirty mouth out with soap."
"I absolutely will not," he'd replied. "I'm always there to support my House, of course, but there are many things I'd rather do with an afternoon than watch you two ponces show off fifty feet in the air while hurling projectiles at helpless Hufflepuffs."
And so James had cursed him with one of those ridiculous charms he found in the joke books he devoured. Peter had giggled like a five-year-old girl. And Remus had spit out soap bubbles for the rest of the day.
Now he was sitting across from loud, laughing Sirius in the library, deeply irritated. He was in the process of memorizing a very complicated chart for Transfiguration, and this distraction would set him back at least ten minutes.
"What?" he snapped when Sirius didn't stop.
The boy was wheezing, tearing up, barely able to breathe. Since he couldn't speak in this state, he merely pointed to his open book. Remus took it and looked at the page.
It was an old engraving, of a naked old woman on a broomstick, maliciously crouched over a cadre of dancing devils. It was a lewd, suspicious sort of image, not the sort of thing one usually saw in textbooks.
"A—witch," Sirius choked out, bursting into laughter again, "by—a—Muggle."
"Albrecht Durer, I believe," Remus replied. He recognized the image, he now realized, from his childhood. His Muggle mother had been quite fond of taking him to art museums, sharing a secret joke at each painting of a magical creature. She treated the Wizarding world as though the joy of its discovery was endless for her.
Remus frowned a bit. He didn't want to think about home.
"Oh, come on," Sirius said, wiping tears from his eyes, "it's a laugh."
"Yes," said Remus. "Quite amusing, silly Muggles, what will they think of next."
"Come on, Moony, you know I didn't mean it like that."
"Oh, come off it," Remus snapped, closing his book and gathering his parchment. "We both know you've only taken Muggle Studies to upset your mother. Never mind that she's long past looking over your shoulder at your class schedule. No reason to give up the ghost and try to learn something useful."
"Tactless," sniffed Nearly Headless Nick, passing through the shelves.
Sirius was laughing too hard to try to stop Remus, so he just followed him out of the library.
"Come on, come on," he called when he finally caught his breath, "Moony! Wait up! Remus!"
Remus stopped. It wasn't often he heard his given name from his friends—just the name they'd given him. They'd done so much for him. Sirius, Padfoot, had done so much. It wasn't his fault.
Sirius put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."
Remus clasped the hand. "I know."
He turned around and looked his friend in the eyes. They were quicksilver, storms; the color of change. A fierce affection welled in him for his proud, snobby, incandescent friend.
"I really do have to study this chart," he said, nodding to his Transfiguration papers. Sirius cleared his throat, and loped after Remus down the hallway, the moment broken.
"Now wait just a moment," said a voice from behind them. "I really thought we were getting somewhere here."
The voice was posh—too posh. He said "really" like "rail-y" and "somewhere" and "here" rhymed. There was a clip to the consonants, and to the brush of the boy's boots on the stone floor. Remus turned around to place the voice, which he didn't recognize.
It was uncanny. The boy looked just like Sirius, only...shinier. Sort of the opposite of Regulus, who looked, on his best days, like a smudged charcoal drawing of his brother. This boy was slightly taller and thinner than Sirius, his black hair slightly longer and gleaming so much that it was nearly aglow. His long face and nose were the same, though his cheekbones were sharper than Sirius'. He was much better dressed, and all in black.
Sirius was also staring. But unlike Remus, he was not dumbstruck. He never was.
"Who the hell are you?" he growled, drawing his wand. "One of my mother's?"
"Darling, please, you can put that away," said the boy, raising an eyebrow at the wand and quietly adding, "for now."
"Who are you?" Sirius repeated.
"You ought to know."
"Indulge me." Remus was half afraid Sirius would transform and maul the other boy. His friend truly hated relatives.
"Well," the boy mused, "I suppose, in a way, I am one of your mother's." He looked into Sirius' enraged face. "You know, since I am you."
This time it was Remus who said, "explain yourself."
Slowly, as if Remus were very stupid, he said, "I'm your boyfriend, darling, but from an alternate dimension."
Remus colored and said "I don't have a boyfriend" at the same time that Sirius sputtered, "What's an alternate dimension?"
After giving Remus a scathing look, the other Sirius turned to Sirius. This was certainly strange. "An alternate dimension," he said, "is a universe like this one, but just...a little different. In this case, the alternate universe I come from, I have just a bit more spice and"—he looked Sirius up and down—"better taste, but otherwise, more or less the same life." He finally turned to look at Remus again. "Same boyfriend, for one."
"We're not like that," Remus muttered. "I mean, together. We're not."
"Indeed," said Other Sirius.
"I don't know what sort of trick this is meant to be," Sirius said, "but your confundus charm missed. We're not buying it."
"I thought you might say something of the sort," said Other Sirius, and pulled a sheaf of oddly white, printed paper out of his immaculate robe. "You'll want to read this. Then I'll explain."
"What was that?" Sirius growled. He was crouched over Remus, who had fainted and now lay face-down on the cold stone floor.
"Fanfiction, darling," Other Sirius said. "The world you exist in is...not quite your own. Not to the extent you think it is. The world I come from is an offshoot of yours. You are a story that people write stories about. I am from one of those stories."
Sirius rubbed his temples. "I really wish I could just kill you and not have to figure this out."
"There are alternate dimensions in which you would," said Other Sirius.
"Remus," Sirius said desperately, lightly slapping his friend's back, "wake up, mate!"
Other Sirius clucked his tongue and gave a matronly shake of his head. "No finesse," he lamented, and knelt to turn Remus over onto his back. The boy was in a dead faint, pale, his eyes closed, long lashes brushing freckled cheeks.
"Damnably fine," Other Sirius sighed, "in any universe."
"Will you stop that," Sirius snapped. "We need to find a way to revive him."
"Oh, you won't find that," Other Sirius assured him. "There's only one way to wake him from this sort of sleep."
"What?" Sirius snapped.
Other Sirius grinned ear to ear, a surprisingly dog-like look on his finely tuned face. "A kiss," he said simply.
Sirius frowned deeply. "Who could I get to kiss him? Moony hasn't got a girlfriend. I don't think he's ever so much as looked at a girl, except to study with Lily, but James was there..."
Other Sirius slapped him.
"Oy!" Sirius said, "What was that for?"
Other Sirius slapped him again.
"I don't understand."
Other Sirius breathed out heavily through his nostrils like an irritated horse. He looked from Sirius to Remus and back again. Sirius blinked.
"You, you dunderhead."
"Me what?"
Other Sirius slapped him again.
"Me what?" Sirius repeated.
"You kiss him."
Sirius laughed stupidly. "You're off your rocker, mate. James would never let us hear the end of it."
Other Sirius ground his teeth and snapped, "Unless you want to drag his unconscious body all the way to the hospital wing, you will kiss this poor boy."
"I could levitate him."
"Kiss," said Other Sirius, so intensely that Sirius was shocked into obeying.
He bent down to kiss his friend. It was strange. His lips were just like...well, lips. Lips on his friend. A friend whom he'd called brother countless times, but, still. Nice lips.
Then, suddenly, those lips came alive and sprang into action. They dove into his, a burst of fireworks, all-consuming. Sirius was bowled over as Remus sat up to embrace him.
And then opened his eyes. And then realized what was happening. And then broke away, beet red and already stuttering. The noises he made had probably originated as words in his head, but were emerging as nothing of the sort.
Sirius was leaning back on his hands, looking utterly gobsmacked, both in the literal and figurative senses of the term.
Other Sirius actually clapped his hands in delight. "Who knew," he said, "that you two would need me so much? Capital! Just delightful!"
"Ninnyhammer," Remus muttered, almost inaudible.
"What did you say?" Sirius asked him, eager to confirm his friend hadn't lost his senses in the fall.
Remus jerked his head toward Other Sirius, and murmured again, slightly louder, "ninnyhammer."
"That's a good one," Sirius mused. "Your dad's?"
Remus nodded. His father loved to collect antique insults, both Wizarding and Muggle.
"I don't think," Other Sirius cut in loudly, "that you two are aware of the situation at hand. You, Other Me, have just bestowed upon you, My Wildest Fantasies Come True, a True Love's Kiss."
"A what?" Sirius asked. Remus just turned redder.
"True Love's Kiss. That was the spell I put him under. It exists in my universe. Only a True Love's Kiss could wake him." Other Sirius looked positively smug. Remus, on the other hand, had become an absolute tomato, shiny red from start to finish.
"Well," said Sirius, growing dangerously cold, "what if that hadn't worked? What if nobody were able to wake him? You slimy git, if you put him in danger"—
"But, darling, I couldn't have! Weren't you listening at all? I am you!" At Sirius' blank look, Other Sirius sighed and said, "Let me demonstrate." With that, he knelt again, swept up the still befuddled Remus, and kissed him in a surprisingly expert manner, both tender and passionate. Sirius looked on in fascination. If this was indeed an alternate-dimension version of himself, then he had had a good deal more sexual experience in that alternate dimension. Other Sirius was positively suave.
The thought disturbed him deeply. Especially since Remus was looking swoony again. So Sirius cuffed Other Sirius on the back of his head to put a stop to the nonsense.
There was a moment of silence after Other Sirius broke away. Remus looked from Sirius to Sirius in a daze.
"Good dream," he finally said, nodding to himself. "Very good dream.
It had not, of course, been a dream, but after a very satisfied Other Sirius walked down the hall and vanished, the two of them pretended it had not happened for more than two weeks. They laughed and joked with the others, and barely avoided eye contact with each other.
It had happened, though, and as the next full moon disappeared in the blaze of the rising sun, Padfoot nodded to Wormtail and Prongs that they could head back to the castle before class ahead of him. He stayed curled with Remus, each of them in their canine forms, until the pain of transformation woke his friend. Sirius changed with him. Remus clasped his shoulder and nodded in thanks, and they both began to walk out of the Shrieking Shack.
But just as they reached the doorway to the empty bedroom they'd stayed in, Sirius grabbed Remus by the tattered collar, pushed him against the wall, and kissed him once, fiercely, just to check.
It would be two days until they tried this again, and another week until either of them worked up the courage to talk about it.