November in London

by Liana Goldenquill

Cold, grey, foggy, and gloomy. That’s November in London—at its best. At its worst, it can drive Sirius Black to old memories and despondent thoughts of suicide. It’s not just that he half-believes that he killed Lily and James; it’s that, _and

November in London

by Liana Goldenquill

Time: about five years after MWPP's graduation

Setting: London (obviously enough)

POV: Sirius Black

Genre: Angst

Pairings: Sirius/Remus mentioned, James/Lily mentioned

Rating: PG-13 for mentions of death and for suicidal nature of protagonist

Warnings: mentions of shounen ai (Sirius/Remus) and het (James/Lily).  AU

Summary: Cold, grey, foggy, and gloomy.  That's November in London—at its best.  At its worst, it can drive Sirius Black to old memories and despondent thoughts of suicide.  It's not just that he half-believes that he killed Lily and James; it's that, plus the fact that he will now always be Lupin-less.

New special note: Do not read this story if you are in a state, province, or country where reading small hints of shounen ai, also known (in this case) as a male/male sexual relationship between two consenting adults, is not allowed for your age or type of person or whatever—if it's illegal for you to read it, don't.  If you continue to scroll down despite this warning, all legal culpability rests on you.  It isn't my fault, and don't say I didn't warn you.  I am responsible for no mental, financial, physical, technological, or other changes or effects in you, so don't even try to blame me, please.

Boring disclaimer required by law: J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Inc., The Coca-Cola Corporation, Christopher Columbus, and probably some other companies, conglomerates, and/or people I don't know about, own everything detailed in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.  Of a certainty, none of it belongs to me.  Of an equal certainty, I am making no money from this venture.

dedicated to

Mieko Belle,

who asked until I shared, and pestered until I published.

November in London, and getting chillier by the second. November in London, wrapping me in a thick fog blanket, grey as undyed raw wool. November in London, and though I'd always imagined being here, I hadn't wanted it to be like this.

November in London, and I'm undercover and hurting.

In London, because it's not exactly known for its enormous wizard population, and hopefully nobody will think to look for me here. After all, I was always scornful of Muggles and their ways. Not of those with magic, no; not those who could come to Hogwarts; but those who were Muggles through and through have always been anathema to me and to my friends.

Undercover, because everyone's looking for me. They say I've killed them. Two of my three best friends, and they think I've killed them. Never mind that I'm as grief-stricken as anyone else; that doesn't matter, not to the harsh cold Aurors pursuing me. They just need someone to blame, a scapegoat. One second I tell myself that, and the next I'm panicking. What if I did kill them? What if they're right, and not me?

I've read of such things. I know people can snap in an instant, and the next forget it all. What if James had been humming in that annoying way he has—he had—while scratching the back of his neck? I would say it wouldn't drive me insane. After all, I lived with it, and him, for seven years, in the same bedroom at Hogwarts, and I've known him far longer than that. But what if it did? It's the uncertainty I hate. One second I know it could never have been me, and the next I can't help but believe the Aurors' accusations.

Hurting, because of James and Lily, yes, and Harry, their son who will never know his parents; hurting for him, and for their deaths tearing holes in my soul.

But I hurt more, far more, for someone else. Someone who is aiding the Aurors, someone who had always been my very best friend, and for nearly a year before the double deaths, my lover. Remus Lupin. And my heart is most sorely wounded there just from his previously-unshakable fidelity.

When Filch, Hogwarts' grimy caretaker, tried to get me in trouble for anything, Remus was there to take at least half of the blame, blame that was usually rightfully mine. When I didn't have enough to pay my apartment's rent, Remus was there to take me in. And when I hadn't had a proper shag for a year or more, Remus was there.

Remus had always been there. He'd always helped me when nobody else, not even James or Peter, could. Before the deaths, that is.

Even after Lily and James were killed, I knew Remus was the one person who would understand me. He was a werewolf. Surely, I reasoned, he would know about how it felt to lose oneself in the anger of a moment. If I had, that is. I didn't know—I don't know—did I kill James, Lily? Surely, I thought and hoped, he would understand, and he would help me. He would figure out a plan. He would shelter me from the Ministry, the Death Eaters and Aurors they threw at me. He would know what to do. And he would do it.

Because he always had.

I had thought he always would. That nothing would come between us. That ours was the closest, the tightest, of bonds: childhood and lifelong friends maturing to eventual adulthood lovers. That there were no secrets hidden from each other.

I had thought he would always know what to do and how to do it, and that he would then act on those plans.

But when I needed him the most, he deserted me.  More than deserted me. He took my enemies' side.

I saw him after the attack. Once. It was at the funeral.

I know it was stupid. I'd known then that they'd be looking for me, scouring any known congregation of wizards. I'd known it was quite possibly the most asinine thing I'd ever done, worse than blaming a set of knocked-over armor on Peeves in my first year at Hogwarts. (Peeves took it out on me for all seven years, doing his best to blame all of his misdeeds on me.)

Worse, even, than approaching Remus that first time, just a year or two out of Hogwarts, and confessing to him the sort of people I liked. (Loosely, attractive and intelligent male wizards with a good sense of humor, who like long walks on the beach, sunsets, cuddling, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Beatles records, etc., etc.; specifically, him.)

But I'd gone to the funeral despite the manhunt. It was more than just paying respects to James, one of my three best friends, and Lily, his wife. It was—well, I'd gone to see if I'd remember then. Maybe if I saw them lying there dead, I'd remember the first time I saw them that way, and I'd remember what had led up to that moment. It was a faint hope, feeble and pathetic, but the only one I had.

Well, I went; I skulked in the back of the church, feeling terribly out-of-place and conspicuous. It wasn't only that I'd never been inside a church before, it was that added to the fact that I knew there was a worldwide manhunt on for me. Me, one of the most dangerous dark wizards, Voldemort's right-hand man—or so the gossip said, the spreading stories. With my cloak's collar up, hiding most of my face, and a quick spell trying to cover the rest, I hadn't really been prepared to see so many people I knew. I'd expected something lonelier. Lily and James side-by-side. Twin coffins, plain wood.  Maybe a flower or two. One or two witches or wizards weeping quietly in a corner, absorbed in their own grief and not wanting to look around.  Lurking greasy funeral director hoping he's being paid enough.

That wasn't the case. I'd been foolish again. This was high-publicity, after all. They'd died defending their son from Voldemort—and me, his agent—and their son, little Harry, had lived.  This meant an enormous cathedral for the wake and funeral, filled with various members of clergy—who made me uneasy at the best of times—and innumerable burning candles.  Votives and candelabras, tapers and floating candles, kinds I didn't know the names of—I knew my cloak's hem would be set on fire, drawing too much attention to me.  The flowers' blended fragrances were overpowering, sickening.  Gardenias, orchids, roses, and, of course, the ubiquitous waxed white lily, were all out in full force.  I felt ill, but I didn't know if it was from the flowers' and candles' fragrances or from actually attending a funeral of friends.

People from my Hogwarts class were there in the plush pews, the cathedral smelling of beeswax and too many gardenias, looking just like I'd seen them last year, at my five-year reunion. The plumping housewives in too-tight black; the Quidditch stars who hadn't quite made it on a team, no longer quite in their prime; the researchers, scientists, pale-faced and pasty-skinned, glasses too large on their frail faces, who spent their time trying to invent new spells in a lab deep underground, spells with which to hurt Voldemort; the Ministry officials, puffed up with newfound dignity and decorum, responsibility encroaching on their once-free hours for the first time, knowing nearly what to do and say, but never quite.

James' parents were there, suddenly old and fragile-appearing. Then there were Lily's, a pair of Muggles obviously inside Hogsmeade with special dispensation, who I'd only ever seen briefly before—they, too, seemed to carry the weight of thousands of years. How must it have felt for all four of them, knowing that their children were dead before they were? The guilt must have been tremendous.  I didn't know.  I couldn't comprehend.

Journalists—from the Daily Prophet, the Witch Weekly, and at least a dozen more that I could see—were in attendance, omnipresent but at least attempting quiet on this mournful occasion. Flashbulbs went off as memories of James and Lily in their side-by-side coffins were preserved forever. Unlike the usual wizards' pictures, I knew that these images wouldn't move, not even when properly developed. How could they, when the spirits that animated the subjects were dead and gone?

And then I saw the one person I wanted to reveal myself to—Remus Lupin. He'd been there longer than I. Knowing his sympathetic nature, I guessed he'd been there from the beginning.  Before that.  Had probably been active in the planning.  I watched from the rear as he got up from a seat in an upholstered pew, next to Peter, and darted toward the back of the room, trying to leave as tears rolled unabashedly down his face. My heart and stomach twisted with the very sighting of his unshaven, unwashed face—I hadn't spoken to him since Lily and James died—a week, two, three? Time was fuzzy for me then. Chalk it up to the stress and insanity. My heart twisted, and just as he passed, my arm reached out and caught his as I dropped the spell covering my features.

"Remus," I breathed, "it's me—"

And he spun to face me, his farther arm moving in a quick circle of welcome, coming to catch me up in a tight, loving hug as he had so often before, telling me everything would be all right—I felt a surge of relief. With Remus defending me, I knew I'd survive somehow and everything would eventually come round. Surely Remus could explain to them, could promise me, that I hadn't done it. I knew it. I trusted him. I knew he would make everything normal again, would stop the incredibly lucid insane dream, would cuddle me and smooth away my tears and fears and cares.

My eyes closed; I smiled gently, waiting to be caught in his long embrace—

And what I felt wasn't comforting warmth binding and encircling me, but an open hand smashing into the side of my face.

Remus had hit me. As hard as he could.

My brain refused to register it—Remus had never hit me before, had only ever hurt me the slightest bit in jest or a moment's passion—and my eyes opened slowly. "Remus, it's me—"

"Traitor!" was all I heard. "Murderer! Hope-stealer!" I felt another punch slug into my face, heard something snap, but still I felt no pain. I watched his action in slow motion, replaying it repeatedly in the private silence of my mind, refusing to believe what he'd done, trying to find another motive, some kind of reason for this insanity.

"Remus—!" I seized his other arm as I was knocked sideways by the force of his blow, and decided he still didn't understand. "Remus, it's me, me, Sirius Black—me."

"Dream-killer!" Another blow landed, swatting me like a fly, and I couldn't imagine what was wrong. Was Remus insane? Oh, what was it? Surely he still trusted me, loved me, believed in me? I couldn't live without his love.

But when, through my tears, I saw him reaching for his wand, and when I knew everyone else in the sanctuary was watching with their hands on a wand, I fled.

And then there was another epithet Remus could easily have dubbed me with: coward.

I fled when I should have stayed and denied it all, demonstrated to everyone my innocence and peaceable nature. I fled, scared of the one person whom I loved more than anything—so I'd thought.

But I hadn't loved him more than life, or I would have stayed and accepted whatever he'd do to me.

I crouched on the cold stone arch on top of the cathedral for the rest of the day. Sat, sobbing and sniffling, hunched into a gargoyle with my thick grey cloak covering me. The cloak wasn't sheltering me from the slowly-drizzling rain of the awful grey day; wasn't keeping me as warm as Remus' arms had once.

Once upon a time, so long ago. Stories begin that way, but that's how mine ended. The story of my and Remus' love, gone in less time than a tiny baby's heartbeat, a whisper of affirmation, a breath on a cheek, a soft early-morning sweet kiss.

Over and done with. Long ago and never to return. Once upon a time, so long ago.

I was guilty of two murders as the crowd of black-cloaked wizards came pouring into the street to see where I'd escaped to and try to capture me. Guilty of two murders as Ministry officials and Aurors shooed everyone else back inside; they were the professionals; they would deal with me. They didn't want to risk civilians' lives trying to get me. Guilty of two murders as I faintly heard the service finally start far beneath me.

And by the time the crowd from the funeral poured again from the building, I was guilty of six murders.

One my second-best friend. One his wife. Two his parents. Two her parents.

And, of course, their child's attempted murder, all along. But he'd survived—I didn't know how. Did I save him? Did I pull back just that tiny bit at the end? Or did James or Lily use the last of their energy to save him, energy they could have kept living on?

Worse than any of the seven was the crime that Remus committed.  Oh, it won't show in any record books. They're not going to punish him for it.  His self-flagellation compensates, or so I hope.  Still, I will pay for it for the rest of my life, in everything I do and every breath I take, in every word I say.

When I murdered—did I murder?—James and Lily, I killed hopes and dreams for a good future, one controlled by good wizards.  When I murdered—did I murder?—their parents, I repeated my crimes. Sent Voldemort's message that he would not be balked. That any good wizard, or even Muggle allies of good wizards, would always be in danger no matter where they sat, whose eyes they were under.

But when Remus struck me, he murdered my last chance at redemption, my last chance at being helpful or good, at striking against Voldemort, at having any kind of future.

Yes, I live still. But it's a fugitive's life, and I would as soon die. A fugitive's life, that of a criminal perpetually on the run, could have been tolerated. If Remus were with me, supporting me, sharing and caring for me, always expressing the soft tender love he had once held.

Without Remus, without the wizards' community, I hold no reason for living.

Now I sit in my Muggle flat in London, a dingy one-room with all windows open to the cold grey evening air. I could close them, but it's too much effort to stand from the bed. Too much effort to remove myself from memories of days long gone past, to pull myself back from daydreams of what-might-have-been. Too much effort to wonder How is Remus doing now? Where does he work? Has he found someone else to brew the potion for him? Or someone else to love? or How old is James and Lily's son now? Where did he go, and how is he coming along? Does he have magic or is he a Squib? or Where can Peter be?  Where was he that night?  Surely he is all right? or Are the Aurors, the Death Eaters, closing in on me here and now?—too much effort to think, to worry, about any of that. If it is happening or not, well, it will go on without me wonderfully. I'm not needed in anyone's life anymore, if I ever was. Just a hindrance, someone to bollocks it all up.

Sometimes I'm too tired to wonder whether I killed everyone or not. Sometimes it doesn't seem to matter to me. And sometimes I'm convinced that the Aurors are right, that I should turn myself over to the Death Eaters, or at least kill myself, for my own good. But I can never quite work up the energy to do anything about it.

I know that if I wanted, I could punish Remus nearly as painfully as he hurt me.  One anonymous owl is all it would take, a lonely owl delivering to Witch Weekly or Daily Prophet a note reading, "Remus Lupin is a werewolf."  They might not believe at first, but they would check anyway.  A few notes here and there.  A timetable of the moon's phases.  Checking a few connections.  And then photos, incriminating wizards' photos of man changing to wolf, pacing back and forth with bared fangs.

I could retaliate.  I could hurt him badly.  But I could never hurt him as much as his denial hurt me.  And why should I bother?  Why should I care?  He doesn't care about me anymore, I'm painfully sure.  Why should I care about him?  For all I know, he's not even still alive.  Voldemort could well have attacked again.

I want the energy to want to see him once more.  It's the only thing I can work up any excitement about.  But no matter what energy I want, I can't find any, not for anything.  It doesn't matter, though.  All the vigor in the world can't help me make any difference on this earth now.

The fight against Voldemort has been lost by now, I'm fairly sure.  It's only a matter of time until his Dark side begins to make itself known among even the Muggles.  It's not all due to me, but I'm guessing that most of it was my fault.  If I hadn't killed James and Lily—well, I did.  (Or did I?)  And when I did, I killed hope, too.  Mine.  Remus'.  Other wizards'.  They might have fought if they hadn't seen their young, strong leaders slain, or if they weren't terrified by their leaders' parents killed when under the strongest wizards' noses.  But they probably didn't fight, or not enough of them fought.  An act of cowardice, inspired by me.

A Muggle stereo is thumping deep, flat techno/thrash bass from the flat to my left. Someone passes loudly in the hall, dragging something that moans and scrapes its heels. On the right, some people are having what is apparently a drunken (and quite probably drugged) orgy. Above me, I hear the would-be operatic soprano begin her scales.

The sounds meld together, fusing in one tempo. It may be the music of life and the rhythm of the city to others, but to me it is meaningless confusion. Noise.  It's all meaningless. Everything is. What's left to me now?

I huddle in the center of my bed, but don't bother to wrap myself in the blankets beneath me. What does it matter?

The thick grey fog, thick enough to smell and nearly to touch, is drifting in through the windows. Outside, the sky has deepened from the day's rainy grey into full black, but it hasn't stopped drizzling.

I wish I were dead.

But of course I don't have the nerve to kill myself, or even to reveal myself and let them kill me.  How many more years must I go through with this living torture?

It's November in London once more.

Once more I've gone and done it—written a fic heavy on the angst, light on the plot.  I have got to stop doing this!  Any suggestions for breaking the habit, or for—all right—other angstfics?