Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Dedication: Special request for Liza!

Hogwarts: Ravenclaw, Assignment #7, Cartography Task #1 Map Projection - Write about having to change something or distort something

Content Warnings: Canon-compliant injuries

Draw Me a Map Home

"It isn't much," Remus had said shyly when Sirius had arrived at the Yorkshire cottage—and he meant it. The ceiling was never not leaking. The floorboards creaked like a banshee screamed. The windows never stayed shut properly and the walls were thin, so there was always a draft. The gutters were rusty, the chimney might fall through the roof at any point, and the door hinges screeched no matter how much he oiled them. But it was home. It was a falling-apart work-in-progress that gave him a new project to tackle every day.

Besides, to Sirius? To Sirius this was paradise. There was sunlight streaking through the foliage, the air was fresh, the water from the well was cool, and the cottage was far enough from the main road for Sirius to spend some time as Padfoot running around the handful of acres Remus owned while his friend dealt with the more serious matters of keeping the chickens fed and the vegetable patch tended to.

Sirius always woke up to the sound of Remus puttering about the kitchen, boiling water for the kettle or punching down dough that had been proofing since dawn. Sure, it was a bit rough to face the morning chill to use the outhouse, but eventually that became a gentle way to wake-up too. Remus had learned to keep busy in his years alone, so there was always something to do. Candle stubs to melt and remould so as not to waste precious wax, dandelions to harvest since their greens were good and hearty, mushrooms to forage (which was always a slow process since Remus quadruple-checked every specimen with his herbology textbook a dozen times). There was the chicken coop to scrape down (how did they shit so much?), laundry to hang, water to collect, socks to mend (although Sirius was rubbish at that so Remus never let him help). In the kitchen there were fruits to preserve, vegetables to pickle, meat to salt and put away for later when Remus was able to get a good deal at the village market. Outside, there was a small patch of dittany to harvest and press so that Remus could sell it to the local wizard hospital, a handful of apple trees to check on, mail to fetch from the postbox down the road… that was one of Sirius's favourite activities, since it was the only errand on which he could accompany Remus without being on a leash. He was still in his Animagus form, of course, but Remus let him roam free for that one. Thank goodness. But the business helped, even if Sirius worried about how exhausting this all must have been when Remus had been all alone.

Especially since it never seemed to stop, no matter how much they worked. It was as if the little cottage didn't want to be fixed. Sirius remembered a very famous Muggle myth Lily had once told him, about a Muggle woman who had promised to marry when she finished weaving a shroud and who spent all her days weaving and all her nights pulling it apart. Well, Sirius suspected that the damn cottage was spitting out the nails they drove into it every night. Remus wasn't quite agile and strong and steady enough to get on the roof, but he'd let Sirius climb up there with the ladder and have a go at patching it out—so the leaky ceiling in particular felt personal.

Which was why he cursed up a fucking storm when the sky burst and started pissing rain the night after he'd finally made some goddamn progress with the stupid thatching.

"Motherfucker," he said under his breath, transforming back into his human form when he felt a drip-drop over the dog bed Remus had acquired in case the neighbours visited and where he tended to sleep. Dogs didn't have nightmares quite like people did, and he'd discovered quickly after leaving Azkaban that he did not want to let that place creep back into his dreams. The stupid drip was right over his bed. "What are the fucking odds?"

"I'd say move the bed if it's bothering you, but I think we've got quite a few leaks going," Remus said. He lit the lantern by his bed and got up, moving over to the kitchen to find some pans and teapots and jars that he could lay across the flat to catch the leaks.

"Did I… did I somehow make the roof worse?" Sirius asked.

"Did you recast the water resistance charm once you were done mending it?" Remus asked.

Sirius didn't answer.

"A better question would be: 'did I know that I should recast the water resistance charm once I was done mending the roof,'" Sirius said. "I'll go—"

"Absolutely not," Remus said. "It's raining cats and dogs out there, I won't have you climbing on the roof and breaking your neck. It's fine; I'll just cast self-emptying charms on the pots and pans to get us through the night. We'll get into it in the morning."

"I'm sorry," Sirius said. He was already such a burden on Remus's small space and strained resources and precarious social position. He'd tried to explain that the goblins didn't give a singular shit about whether or not he retrieved money from his vault, using Harry's new broomstick as an example, but Remus wouldn't hear anything about it. He said it was too risky, that the Aurors might be keeping an eye on his banking now. He'd even refused when he'd dug into his savings to buy Sirius a new wand, which he knew mustn't have come cheap.

"Don't be," Remus said so genuinely. "You could set this house on fire and I'd simply be happy that you were here and free to do it."

That made Sirius feel a little better, as Remus stood up in a sea of pots and pans and looked around him.

"Now I'm simply wondering where you'll sleep…" Remus said, chewing his lip. "Well, I'll take the rocking chair and you can take the bed."

"What? No!" Sirius said. "Absolutely not, you had to deal with a Full Moon 48 hours ago Moony, like hell you're sleeping in a rocking chair."

"It's alright," Remus promised. "Sometimes I fall asleep reading there, anyways."

"Of course you do, Gran," Sirius said. "Come off it, I can stay on the floor."

"It's wet and damp and cold," Remus protested.

"Alright then, we can both fit in the bed," Sirius said. Remus hesitated. "Come off it, Moony. We've done it before more times than I can count."

It was true. The Marauders had all piled into a single bed to pour over the map or their Animagus notes and fallen asleep in a heap tons of times before. When they'd camped in the Potters' backyards for James and Sirius' birthdays one year, it had gotten cold in the tent. When they'd moved in together, Sirius would come home from the pub sometimes and collapse into Remus's bed. And then there'd been that brief stint a few weeks before the war had gotten complicated and too secretive and the question of spies had started poisoning the Order's relationships… well, they'd spent plenty of time in each other's beds.

But Remus hesitated.

"That was… some time ago," Sirius amended.

"It was," Remus said.

"I'll take the rocking chair if it's a—"

"No, no," Remus said. "No, it's just… I realized that… that there's a lot of time that's gone by and a lot of things that have… changed. Not with us, but with…"

Remus stared down at his bare feet and chewed on his lip.

"It's been some time since… since you didn't know every single scar and bump and cut on my skin like a map," Remus said quietly. He ran a hand through his greying hair—prematurely grey hair, Sirius should add. They weren't that old, and yet. Time had frozen for Sirius in Azkaban and it had ploughed through Remus. Again and again and again.

"The whole world knows that I'm a werewolf now," he said quietly. "And you, well, you've always known, really. It's just… it's just unpleasant that I have to fill you in too, now. That the person who's always known me best has to distort their image of me to make it fit again. That's all."

Sirius chewed on his lip some more.

"Well, I didn't claw my way out of Azkaban not to know you, Remus—change or no changes," he said. He pulled off his own shirt to get them started. His collarbone protruded in ways it never had before and his skin hadn't picked up any colour, despite all the time he'd spent in the sun since Azkaban had drained him of everything. But that wasn't what Sirius wanted him to see. He pointed out the tattoo just under his clavicle.

"I gave myself this little sun a few years ago," Sirius said. "I've got new things about me too."

Remus frowned.

"How in Merlin's name did you give yourself a tattoo in Azkaban?" Remus asked.

"That's neither here nor there," Sirius said. He outstretched his arm so that Remus could see. "I tried getting a lion done here—you know, like Gryffindor—but it mostly looks like one of those smiley faces Evans drew on her notes, surrounded by squiggles."

"No, it's a lion's mane," Remus said. "I see it."

"Thank you," Sirius said. He pivoted towards Remus so that Remus could see the one just above his hip bone. "Tried to write Lily and James' old address here, so I'd never forget. I ran out of ink before I got to the street name though and never got my hands on more. Wait, no, that's a lie. I did, but I did this one."

Sirius pointed out the little lightning bolt above his heart.

"I heard that that lightning scar I'd seen on Harry's face had never gone away," he said. "It made me think of him and that helped sometimes, even if I knew what he must think of me."

Remus nodded. He reached for the hem of his own shirt before hesitating, and wrapping his arms around himself protectively.

"I've got… it's a lot, Sirius," he said. "It's a lot, and the transformations… they haven't been good since I've been alone."

Guilt twisted in the pit of Sirius's stomach, but he tried to soldier on since Remus was nervous enough as it was.

"You know I never cared," Sirius said. "I'm not winning any beauty contests anytime soon either."

Remus nodded. Then he turned back towards the bed.

"Let's sit, then," he said. "It might take all night."

"That's alright," Sirius promised. "I've got all night to learn how to read you like a map again."

North, South, East, West, and topographically with the very tips of his fingers too.

WC: 1810