"'M sorry, he's got the you-know-what, and I couldn't find him anywhere. I guess James is still looking. If he wanted to disappear, though..." Peter tapped a fingernail in a persistent rhythm on the metal frame of Remus' bed until Remus' entire concentration was spent on trying not to hear the metallic clanging that rang through his skull. Finally fed up, he gave in and did the last thing he wanted to do, reaching out to snatch Peter's hand away from the bed frame. A pain shot through his shoulder at the motion.

"Stop it," Remus whispered, trying not to exert his diaphragm even if he had to move his arm and lips.

This was another reason he needed Sirius. Sirius would have stopped Peter with a glance, knowing noise hurt Remus' ears. Sirius would never have let Peter start that infernal banging in the first place. Remus would never have had to ask Pete to stop, not even have had to ask Sirius to ask Pete to stop. Maybe it was the connection they shared, but Sirius simply knew what bothered Remus, and kept it all away from him during the day after the full moon. It made the difference between several days' recovery and several hours'. That wasn't all due to Sirius' care alone, though, even Remus had to admit. Sirius' emotions were as helpful as anything. Having that sensation, that- admiration- encircling him gave Remus strength. He hadn't known that their bonding would work like that, giving and taking strength from each other. It was like Remus could borrow some of Sirius' vitality for one day, and Sirius simply let him.

Wherever Sirius was right now, he was very, very closed off and exceedingly difficult to pinpoint, else Remus might have tried to steal some vitality regardless. As it was, Remus couldn't even say where the boy was. Instead, he let himself relax back against the mattress and breath deeply.

Remus' quiet moment of relaxation was broken when he heard footsteps, and then James speaking to Peter. His eyes flew open and he could see for himself that James had returned victorious: he towed a despondent Sirius in his wake.

*****
Sirius kept to the back of the room. He didn't want to be here, and didn't know why Remus wanted him. In some small unconscious corner of his mind, he feared retribution, punishment, estrangement, any number of painful things, and so he kept away from the one who could deal him that pain. He had difficulty looking at Remus, and not because Remus looked like hell (which he did), but because Remus could cast rejection at Sirius with just a glance. As long as they did not interact, nothing between them could change.

"Sirius," Remus said. Dammit, so much for not interacting.

Sirius ignored Remus, holding out hope, staying behind James, who might at least offer some limited protection.

"Sirius," Remus was more insistent this time, and Sirius made a hesitant glance up at the prone- sick- twisted- pained form of Remus. He could feel all of these things, along with self-revulsion, fear, anger, and more radiating from Remus, but perhaps the overall icing that covered them was shame.

"Sirius, please."

James shoved Sirius forward, and Sirius, tucking in his lips, told himself he had no right to be in pain. Not in front of Remus, not now. Remus held out a hand and Sirius clutched it mindlessly. Sirius began to speak, the words making no sense. They were sounds, apologies, mumbled pleas, but Remus wrapped their hands together tightly and smiled. Remus' thumb moved lazily over the veins on the back of Sirius' hand.

Sirius froze. This was the last reception he'd expected.

"Sirius," Remus was whispering, and Sirius guessed his throat was sore. Without pausing to think, Sirius removed his hand to pour Remus a mug of water from the carafe on the bedside table. Remus watched him with a peculiar smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Sirius," he continued again once he had had a sip of water, his voice sounding stronger, "please don't ever not be here when I wake up."

Sirius, though, frowned at Remus smile; he could feel the emotion underneath it, and it was not a smile of happiness, but of embarrassment. He turned to James and Pete and tried to give James a meaningful glance. James must have got it, because he was soon dragging Pete towards the door, promising that they'd return in a bit with some food- solid food, the likes of which Madam Pomfrey was never too keen on giving Remus, even when he insisted his stomach could handle it.

*****

Sirius wasted no time in accio-ing a chair. He sat in it with an "oomf" and rested his chin on his hands at the edge of Remus's bed. He tilted his head to the side. His skin looked dark against the white sheets. His hair was a mess and tucked behind his ears, wavy bits sticking up and bits of fringe hanging into his eyes. When his gaze flickered up at Remus, his eyes were baleful and needy. Sirius didn't even need to transform to be so clearly Padfoot. Remus reached down and threaded his fingers though Sirius' hair, scratching and petting. The familiar roles of boy-and-dog were comforting just now when there was so much tension circling them. Sirius' nauseating guilt, which Remus could feel like a strange motion-sickness added to his own illness, seemed to ease slowly, steadily. Remus stroked, calming the dog pretending to be a boy.

"Padfoot," Remus spoke softly, just as if he were speaking to a frightened animal, "I'm sorry. I ought to be angry with you, I know. Maybe I even am," he sighed. "You know... well, you know."

Sirius sniffed and rubbed the back of one arm across his nose, but otherwise gave no response.

"Sirius, I need you here with me."

"I'm-" Sirius rubbed the back of his arm across his face briskly, groaning.

"Listen," Remus answered throatily, "I'm- embarrassed that I need you this much-"

Sirius didn't look up. "That's why you feel-"

"Yes. But morning-after shame is something I learned to live with a long time ago."

Sirius groaned again, more painfully this time. "Love, you've got nothing to be ashamed of. It's me, I-"

"What did you just call me?"

Sirius looked up to see Remus smiling. Remus could see edginess in Sirius' eyes, but Remus' moods tended towards mercurial whenever he was sick.

"I dunno," Sirius lied. Sirius' lies always rippled through their connection. The sensation was hard to describe. Perhaps the closest Remus could have come, if asked, was that it was rather like putting on a shoe backwards: it might look fine from a distance, but from inside, it was unmistakeably ill-fitting. He could easily tell when the words and thoughts did not fit together.

"Nancy," Remus grinned.

Sirius' mouth moved as if trying to find a joke but failing. He swallowed hard and nodded, answering, "'S true, though," through a grimace

"Nit, I was poking fun because you are ridiculously adorable. Is it wrong that you just almost got me put down and I want to nail you? Even though I can't lift my left arm, let alone get anything else up and moving," Remus laughed, then groaned.

"Did I- Did I really- I mean, would they- That's what they do to you, uh, then-"

"Yeah," Remus fought the urge to nod- his neck wouldn't appreciate it- "because I'm an animal."

"I'm the animal," Sirius dropped his head back against the sheet. "Maybe it's me they should put down."

Remus stroked his fingers through Sirius' hair for a while longer before he'd gathered up enough energy to speak with all the emotion that danced on the edge of his mind. "I've never been an animagus. I can't pretend to know what it's like. But I know you, and in some ways, you are more dog than human, Sirius." Sirius didn't stir, and Remus continued his petting. "Dogs, you know- dear lord, don't ask me how I know this- dogs do bite people they dislike if they've been improperly socialized. The state does often put down the dogs, in those cases. That's true in both the wizarding and muggle worlds. But you know, it's not the dog's fault. It never is, you see. The owners who didn't teach them how to be around other people reasonably- they get away with no real penalty, and the dog pays for their mistakes with his own life. I'm not going to kill you, or even hurt you, Pads. Your family-" Remus stopped to take another few mouthfuls of water. Sirius' cheek remained flush with the sheet, and his eyes watched nothingness, as Remus petted him. "I know your family mistreated you." Sirius flinched. "It's ok," Remus whispered, "it's me, Sirius."

Sirius whimpered and moved closer to Remus, and Remus could not miss the start of wet trails running out of Sirius' eyes.

"You associate your family with Slytherins, and you dislike the Slytherins. You take every opportunity to bark at them. Perhaps not without reason- there are rumors of a war, and no one can deny that Snivellus is swimming in Dark Arts. So," Remus sighed, "is Regulus, by the by."

Sirius sniffled loudly in response.

Remus laughed lightly. "One day, when Snivellus is fighting with this supposed 'Dark Lord' and we have to go kill him, we're going to laugh about last night. They'll call you prophetic. 'Gifted with an inner eye,' isn't that what they say in Divs?"

Sirius snorted with laughter, and the sound was music to Remus' ears.

"Please come lay with me? I'll even share my lunch with you when Pete and James get back." Remus stopped stroking Pads' hair to pull on it a little bit. Sirius blushed and tried to hide a shy smile. Most people in the castle would have been shocked to know that Sirius Black even had a shy smile, but Remus got to see it often, and it was his favorite of Sirius' many smiles simply because it was neither easy nor confident. Sirius wordlessly hoisted himself onto the bed and wrapped himself ever so gingerly around Remus.

"Moony," Sirius whispered into Remus' neck, and Sirius' low timbre was soothing, so very different to Peter's higher-pitched voice. "I am so sorry I don't have words. It was a mistake, but I can't-"

"Shhhhh," Remus patted his head. "The things you can feel, I can feel you feeling. Let's not go back in time, then."

"I didn't know-"

"Please, let's not talk about it?"

Sirius nodded against Remus' neck. The warmth of Sirius skin against the sore muscles there was more soothing than Remus cared to admit.

"You don't really think you're an animal, do you? I mean, what you said, what the Ministry says- tell me you don't believe it."

Remus shook his head and found the activity less painful with giving, admiring Sirius in his bed. "I don't. I'm sure I worried about it once. Just like you worry about whether you're moral enough, I worry about whether I'm human enough."

"'Course you are."

"That's just it, Sirius. The desire to be moral makes you moral, mistakes aside. And the desire to be human makes me human, disease aside."

"But what... what if..."

"What ifs don't matter. We probably ought to make that a rule between us, with last night, and, well, everything." Remus laughed. Sirius very much didn't.

Remus, now warm and comfortable and considerably more pain-free, slipped in and out of consciousness. He watched Sirius slide into sleep, rather like a dog: eyes sliding back until his lids closed, nose sniffling and mouth twitching in his sleep. When Remus finally slept a deep sleep, he dreamt not of death and nightmares and the Shack and Snape, but of rolling with a dog in green spring grass. Spring was coming, and he had every intention of enjoying it.

*****

"I can't believe you forgave him," Lily threw her nose into the air, and Remus might have thought she was pure blood from her expression. "I can't believe they didn't expel him."

The story they'd decided on for Lily was, decidedly, a lie. Still, it conveyed some of the same truths, and explained Severus Snape's sudden increased antagonism towards the quartet. She was under the impression that Sirius had sent Remus out in the wood in the middle of the night on a dare, and then as a prank, sent Severus out after him. The story was known in the fifth years' dorm room as "The Gospel According to James," after a muggle religious text, since James had insisted upon having a story specifically for Lily and had made it up himself. It was growing apparent to Remus that James was using the story- using Remus' terrifying night, Sirius' biggest regret- for his own purposes. James featured very prominently in his own gospel, diving in at the last moment and knocking Severus away from a very dangerous spell, the name of which he refused to say to anyone, hoping that it would be taken to be Avada Kedavra without his having to actually incriminate Remus with an unforgivable through a lie. Lily, for her part, didn't believe that Remus would cast such a spell. Rather, she was quick to blame Sirius. Clearly, Sirius had cast the Avada Kedavra in hopes of killing his arch-enemy, and hadn't thought twice about framing Remus for such an awful deed.

Remus tried not to let on how close Lily's version came to the truth. He was, strangely, less bothered by this than by Sirius' reaction to Lily's accusations. Whenever Sirius was in the room with Lily, she couldn't keep her mouth shut. She would start whispering, or even once snipping loudly enough for the whole common room to hear that he was no better than his family and ought to have been sorted into Slytherin, and now he ought to be expelled, and that he would end up in Azkaban someday, mark her words. On and on she went, and Sirius stood there, head down, nodding. Strong, proud, indignant, 'how dare you accuse me of using Dark magic' Sirius Black nodded that yes, he should be in Slytherin and he should be expelled and he was no better than his family and one day he would go to Azkaban, mark Evans' words. He nodded like she was telling them that pumpkin juice was orange and the common room was cold in the winter. Knowing, feeling beyond a doubt that Sirius believed Lily's words, felt like a rip right through Remus' core. He felt like he had a gaping stomach wound, and he guessed he was only feeling on tenth of what Sirius felt when she spoke. The proof of this was in Sirius' overall health. He no longer flew Sunday pick-up quidditch practices. He ate little. He avoided all of the professors as if he had killed someone. He planned no pranks. Worst of all, there was no nailing to be had for Remus unless he decided to help Hagrid build a new fence around the early lettuce. Remus did help Hagrid. He needed to blow off some steam and physical energy. But even exhausted, he was no less horny. He had been doing his homework with Lily for an hour now. Her arm lightly brushed his whenever she reached for her notes, and Remus found himself wondering whether Sirius would be up for a more open relationship and whether Remus would ever in a million years have the kind of nerve required to ask such a thing, when said sexy Gryffindor boy plowed into the library.

Sirius didn't pretend to be here for any legitimate reason. The whole school knew what was between them. Now, the school knew what an arse Sirius was and believed he'd try to cast an unforgivable and pin it on Remus. The overall effect was that Remus grew more forgiving, the less forgiving the rest of the student body was of Sirius. They'd never flaunted their relationship, and most of the school had forgotten about it. Still, it was no longer a secret, and no one thought it odd (though some still glared, and no girls giggled any more, not even Geena) when Sirius half-ran through tables of studying students to fling himself across the top of Remus and Lily's.

"Mooooony. We're popping over to you-know-where for some special pants while you sit in this stuffy room with Miss Evans the most wonderful lady to ever exist," Sirius shot Lily his trademark playboy smile and even an angry Lily seemed to trip over her anger for a second and lose herself in Sirius' eyes. Sirius' eyes that- by some miracle- were Remus' forever. Remus grinned.

"I know you're not a huge fan. Did you want some of that malted, eeerrr, um, or the honey-you-know-whats-its? Or maybe the red! Um, red... pants."

Remus started laughing. "Could you be more transparent, Pads?"

Sirius frowned. "Look, they're going to leave without me and I didn't have to come down here, you know. Do you want something or not?"

"Surprise me, Julietta."

Sirius exaggerated a bow, his hand waving, and darted back out of the library. Madam Pince yelled behind him, but was too late, as her voice reverberated around the quiet library but went unheard by a long-gone Sirius Black.

"Julietta? I can't believe you forgave him. I can't believe they didn't expel him."

Remus tried to ignore her. Truly he did.

"I can't believe you even like him, Remus. Why are you friends with him at all?"

Remus shrugged and reread the project instructions again, trying to calm down.

"Has he imperio'd you or something. I bet he would. That slimy-"

Remus couldn't help himself. He finally laughed. "An Imperious? Really? Sirius wouldn't cast an Imperious on an ant." Remus did pause then to consider a house fly he once remembered. How did one get a housefly to dance?

"That's just what you'd say if he cast one on you, isn't it?"

Remus put down his quill and sat up. He stretched his neck and looked at Lily. Her fiery hair, like her fiery temper, radiated around her like an aura. She rarely seemed to have time to brush it these days, and usually kept it pulled back, but when she was concentrating on something, she undid it so that it fell into her eyes. Maybe it was quieter for her behind her hair, or more secluded. As much as James cared about making his hair look messy, Lily didn't seem to care about making hers look neat.

"Lily," Remus began gravely, "you must simply take my word for it that James' story is not the truth."

"Potter? Lie to make himself look good? You don't say."

Remus sighed.

"So what really happened? Did Sirius just trip and miss Sev?"

"Sirius didn't cast any Unforgivables, for starters. He wouldn't, I don't think. He associates them with his family, and he has this irrational hatred of everything he associates with his family."

"Right." Lily shrugged the explanation off and went back to writing.

"No, listen. Please."

She must have heard something in his voice, because when she turned to look at him there was slightly less anger and slightly more confusion in her grey-green eyes. "Alright," she whispered, "I'm listening."

Remus leaned closer to her, aware of the tens of student ears surrounding them in the noise-hungry library. "I don't mind- no, I do, but Sirius doesn't mind what people in the school think about him. James made up that story, because as long as it makes Sirius look bad, Sni- Severus won't contradict it. I do have to admit that it makes James look good, but you don't ask a lamia to start a convent."

"A... what?" Lily's brow creased. Remus smiled.

"Uh, sorry. What's a comparable muggle saying? Maybe, you... you can't ask a tiger to change its stripes? People are who they are."

"And Sirius? He's a caster of... well, if it wasn't an Unforgivable, what did he cast, exactly?"

"Sirius? He didn't cast anything. He did tell Severus how to follow us, but he did also tell Severus that he'd be asking for it if he followed us. Severus-"

"Oh."

"Yeah. It was stupid of Sirius to let anyone know how to follow us. We were going someplace very... dangerous, and very personal to me. But I've forgiven him, and Dumbledore... He did very seriously consider expelling Sirius. I managed to talk him out of it. I need Sirius here, you see. I don't mind if no one else understands it. It's simply the truth."

Lily was gaping at him, open-mouthed. "So Sirius..."

"Sirius is not the person everyone thinks he is. Neither are Pete and James, in fact... Or... I mean, neither I am. The four of us have got some confidences, Lily, and if it's easier to get everyone to believe some preposterous story about how evil Sirius is- if that will keep people from asking questions- we're all willing to do it. It drives me mad, having everyone look at me like 'why would you be with someone like that,' but Sirius... he thinks he deserves it. And that's probably what hurts me the most." Remus shrugged, and, considering the conversation over, turned back to his project.

Lily, on the other hand, watched him for a long while before she started her half of the project. When they finally rose to leave the library just as night was falling outside, Lily stopped him in the corridor.

"Remus? I'm sorry about the things I said about Sirius. I guess... James said a while ago, when you guys first... He told me I didn't know you guys at all. I guess he wasn't lying. But if it helps at all, this Sirius you know? I wish I could get to know him. I couldn't like him any worse than the Sirius I know now." A smile skittered across her face.

"Thanks, Lily. That means a lot to me, it does, but as I was saying it's a matter of-"

"Confidences, I know."

"I've got to run. Bye."