Three memories
Chapter 1: Memory One: Childhood
Chapter Text
I've got a record player that was made in 2014
Died my hair blue, it came out a seasick sort of green
I like vintage dresses when they fall just below my knees
I pretend I scraped them climbing in the trees
– Daisy the Great, The Record Player Song
The first real memory Sirius has is of when he was six years old. It is also the first time he met Remus, which is not a coincidence.
He remembers it very vividly, it's etched into his mind like a brand; everything before that is just a mix of foggy, kaleidoscopic pictures and memories that he can't truthfully say are entirely his own and not a post-factum imagination of events that he knows have happened.
He knows that he was born in London and that his family lived in an old townhouse. He knows that one year later his brother joined them. He knows that he never met any other children. He knows he was lonely, in a you-only-realize-it-later kind of way – because you can't miss something you don't yet know is missing. He knows that Regulus was poorly. That's how their mother always phrased it – 'Regulus is poorly' – as if it was just a harmless cold or a meagre stomach bug, but Sirius knew that it wasn't as inconsequential as everyone made it out to be. He knows that when Regulus turned five, he was so ill that he could barely walk or even sit up on his own. He knows that this was the reason they moved.
Sirius has never been outside of London before, has never known that there is a world out there that isn't grey, foggy, and loud. That's the thing that baffled him the most about the countryside – the silence. It's not the silence he was used to, magically induced and feeling like a thick, impenetrable blanket; it's a hollow silence that is filled with sounds one associates with silence, with solitude. With the rustling of long grass and wildflowers in the wind, the trill of birds in the trees, the chirruping of crickets and the occasional croak of a frog from the pond. It's a silence that makes you feel lonely, and open, and aching. Even at six years old Sirius felt it, deep in his bones, without even having the words to describe the feeling yet.
Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean you can't feel it. That's something Sirius only learned way later in life, maybe too late in hindsight. But it still applied.
Sirius knows the house was big, much bigger than their house in London, it looked endless to him back then. Later, many years later, Sirius visited that house again and thought it was quite reasonably sized, objectively, and felt like it was so small and tight, it would easily choke him if he stayed longer, subjectively. The latter had nothing to do with its size.
Sirius knows that neither his mother nor his father particularly wanted to move away from London. He knows that this is what the Healers recommended. He knows that Regulus' illness could not have been healed with charms, potions, or even muggle medicine – he knows they tried it all. He knows the Healers suggested to move him outside of the city, to the sea, in the hopes that a change of climate would help him.
Sirius knows that this was just a lie, a spoon of sugar to mask the bitter taste of the inescapable demise of a child. Sirius thinks he knew that back then too, deep inside, but maybe he's overestimating his six-year-old self.
Sirius knows and is ashamed of it, that the feelings he had towards his brother were a mix of fear and repulsion. There was nothing to be afraid of, Regulus was not contagious in the literal sense. But it was like the air around him was somehow thicker, laced with smells of medicine and grief. Later, Sirius' feelings became way more complex than that – compassion, hurt, despair and relief. But back then, Sirius tried to stay away from him as much as he could. Later, Sirius wished he didn't, wished he'd spent more time with him as long as he still could.
At six-years-old Sirius had no concept of life and death, the only thing he could sense, in an almost animalistic way, was that something was not right with Regulus.
Sirius knows he spent hours, days even, outside of that house – at first in the garden around it, poking his nose into every nook and cranny, behind every bush, inside the big hollow in the huge oak tree, then further and further out. His parents didn't pay him much attention, concerned with adult responsibilities and worries, and Sirius had free roam. He walked through the fields, ran over the meadows, climbed rocks and skittered down hills.
He was completely alone, the whole world at his feet – as far as his eyes could reach – until he wasn't anymore. This is how he met Remus.
Their house was situated in a valley between two hills, hidden from view by their green expanse, and hidden from muggles by his father's Charms work. Behind one of the hills, just a short way down a dusty road was a small muggle village. Behind the other one was the rest of the world, a world that was, back then, firmly cornered in by a steep cliff with angry waves stirring up seafoam against it, a dark and eerie forest, and a big, loud muggle motorway. But in between all that, the possibilities were endless.
Sirius had a favourite place there, just next to the cliff – a huge pile of rocks that could not have originated without muggle intervention but was magical all the same. If Sirius squeezed past two boulders, there was a small alcove he liked to sit in, his own fortress that only he knew about. Or so he thought.
That day, when he trekked over to it, another boy was there – not inside his fortress, which was the only reason Sirius didn't blow up immediately, but rather lounging on top of the highest rock. From his position underneath, Sirius couldn't see much aside from a dangling foot with a thick, rumpled sock sliding down over a scuffed-up shoe, and a knobbly, bruised knee.
"Hey!" Sirius yelled, and he can't remember what exactly he felt at that moment – probably anger, definitely some curiosity, and possibly even fear. The only other boy Sirius knew back then was his brother, whom he avoided, and that wasn't the best track record.
The boy ignored him as if Sirius' voice was but a sharp tug of the wind on his clothes or the shout of a seagull in the blue sky above them. Years later, Remus told Sirius that he absolutely heard him and that he hoped that Sirius would just go away if he didn't answer – Remus didn't have many positive experiences with peers back then either.
"Hey, you!"
After not getting any reaction again, Sirius picked up a pebble from the ground and threw it as high as he managed. Which wasn't very far, he didn't even reach the boy's foot, but the attempted attack didn't go unnoticed. The foot drew in, and then after some shuffling, the boy's head leaned over the edge, peering down on him.
Sirius remembers instantly knowing that the boy was his age, in a way only children can accurately sense, even though he looked younger – Remus was skinny and gangly even back then, pointy nose and pointy chin, and the biggest eyes Sirius has ever seen. Later, Remus grew into his features, broadened and stiffened, but his eyes always stayed the same – huge, and bright, and hiding absolutely nothing of what was going on in his mind, like two windows Sirius liked to peer into.
Sirius didn't know it back then, didn't have the words or the experience to describe it, nor did he have them for a very long time afterwards, but this was the moment the first drop in the flood of Sirius' love for Remus fell. Because that's what it was – an empty, dried-up nothing , slowly filling up to a sip, and then a puddle, and then a pond, and then, after years and years, it grew to the size of the Atlantic Ocean.
Years later, Remus confessed that it didn't feel like that for him at all. That he felt it like a switch was flipped – instant, and bright, and overwhelming. But they have always been different like that. Sirius has always felt like he was drowning a little bit, his traitorous tears just as salty as the love he stood in up to his nostrils. Remus has always had the clarity he lacked.
"What?" the boy asked and sniffed. "What do you want?"
"Who are you?" Sirius asked back angrily, and he knew he wasn't meant to answer questions with questions, but his mother wasn't there to reprimand him, and that was one of the best things about this situation.
The boy scowled, and Sirius noticed that he had an angry, red mark down his left cheek, it wrinkled a little with his expression.
"Who's asking?" the boy shot back.
"Sirius," he said automatically and instantly noticed that he lost the game by answering first.
"Yes, I am serious," the boy said.
And Sirius liked to remind Remus of that moment whenever he complained about the puns connected to Sirius' name – that he essentially started them. The very first Sirius joke came, unknowingly, out of Remus Lupin's mouth, and it's not a coincidence Sirius is so fond of them still.
"No. My name. Sirius."
That seemed to throw the boy off because he lost some of his animosity. He blinked a couple of times before introducing himself as well, "I'm Remus."
Sirius remembers being instantly fascinated by him – by his name, by his attitude, by the soft curl of his hair against his forehead – and he remembers desperately trying to cling to his indignation despite that because he didn't know what else to do.
"This is my place," Sirius said. "And you have to go away."
An expression Remus liked to tease him with every time Sirius wanted to be left alone. 'This is my place, go away', he would parrot him in a high-pitched voice every time, a smile on his lips. It never failed to make Sirius feel if not good then at least better.
Remus' eyebrows drew together even more. "I am not going anywhere. You go away."
Sirius didn't know what to say to that. He has grown up with the mentality of 'all or nothing' – he always either got anything he wanted or was punished for the smallest things. Sharing was not something he did, nothing he ever had to do before. But he also didn't want to give up so easily. It was essentially a stand-off, a battle of wills and stubbornness – they stared at each other silently, neither ready to let go.
Now Sirius finds great joy in the parallels of this interaction, a starting point that damned them to this dynamic for years and years after. It has always been like that for him and Remus – Sirius feeling entitled and infallible, Remus being unyielding and steadfast, Sirius challenging him to leave, Remus refusing to succumb to his whims, Sirius too cowardly to cut the ties himself, Remus brave enough for both of them to persevere whatever life threw their way.
After a while, Remus shrugged and broke their staring match, lying down in his initial position again and ignoring Sirius' presence – his whole attitude saying, 'You can do whatever you want, but I am here, and I will not move'. Sirius does believe that people can change, but this… This was Remus in a nutshell. And just like when they met for the first time, Sirius has always crawled back to him, time and time again, cowed and anxious to be dismissed. He never was.
"How did you get up there?" Sirius asked after spending some time kicking the base of the rock and glaring at the sea to his left as if it was responsible for his current misery.
He didn't expect a real answer, or any answer at all – Sirius was used to being ignored, after all, and asking questions was always a sure way to get punished even more rather than breaking the silent treatment. But Remus didn't ignore him this time. He sat up again and looked down at Sirius thoughtfully as if trying to decide what to do with him. Then he sighed a sigh that was way too world-weary for a six-year-old and pointed at a smaller boulder to the side.
"Get on there, and then put one foot in this crack, and you can hold on… Here." Remus leaned over and grabbed Sirius by the wrist as he started to wobble and almost toppled down to the ground again. With Remus' help, Sirius finally managed to climb on top of the rock and slumped down next to him.
Later, Remus told Sirius that he thought he imagined him for the longest time. That he even told his parents about Sirius and what they got up to together, and they thought Remus had an imaginary friend. Because Sirius didn't go to school in the village, and no one has seen their house, and no one knew that they moved there at all. And that this was the only reason Remus was so open and confident with Sirius – if Sirius was just a product of his imagination, surely, he meant no harm and was there to be Remus' friend.
He was right about that either way.
"What's that on your face?" Sirius asked him then, with a bluntness that came with being a child but never went away for him. A point of many fights and tensions between them in later life.
"A scar," Remus has answered simply but he watched Sirius' face cautiously as he did so, waiting for some kind of negative reaction.
Sirius found out later that the other boys at Remus' school picked on him – for many different reasons, but especially for his constant bruises and scratches. He thought it was only fair that these boys get some bruises and scratches of their own, and Remus was mad at him for it, but Sirius knew he was hesitantly appreciative of his intervention. Or so Sirius likes to think, Remus never actually mentioned what exactly he thought about it.
"I have a scar too," Sirius said and hitched up his trouser leg for Remus to see.
At first, Sirius was sure that Remus got mistreated at home, that he got punished in a similar fashion Sirius was. And in a perfect world, Sirius would have liked to take him away from them, bring him home where it was safe. In the real world, Sirius' home was the last place Remus would have been safe.
So, they met halfway; between Sirius' huge house in the valley and Remus' small cottage by the sea – in the flower-dotted meadows, or on the brink of the forest that felt cold even on the hottest summer days. Or where they met the first time, on the rocks by the cliff, the highest point of the village-forest-sea-motorway-cornered world that belonged to them alone.
"Does it hurt?" Remus asked, tracing the long scar on Sirius' calf with his eyes. It was new, the scab had just fallen off to reveal soft, tender new skin underneath.
"Itchy," Sirius admitted and sniffed. Remus laughed. "Does yours?"
"No," Remus said and rubbed his cheek. "Not anymore."
He wasn't lying to appear stronger than he was, it was the sick and twisted irony of his condition that made him tear at himself and then heal much faster than a normal human would. It took years until Sirius found out about it though, for Remus to tell him. Sirius was brought up with the belief that werewolves were monsters, inferior beasts that had nothing to do with humans anymore and were only there to scare small children into behaving. Naturally, Sirius thought it was the coolest thing ever that Remus was one of them.
"That's good," Sirius said, and he remembers that it wasn't meant as anything other than an empty response, for lack of other things to say in this awkward in-between realm of not-quite strangers, not-yet friends.
But Remus looked at him with his huge, bright eyes and then he smiled shyly. And, again, Sirius didn't know what exactly he felt back then, and maybe his impressions from further down the line muddled his memory of what exactly he thought, but he's pretty sure it was the first time of many when all he craved was to make sure nothing even remotely upsetting ever happened to Remus. He was not always successful with that, and oftentimes he was the sole reason Remus was upset, but the desire never went away.
"Why are you here?" Remus asked, and he probably didn't mean it in an existential way – he was six years old, after all – nor in a broader sense.
He just wanted to know why Sirius suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started yelling at him to go away, but Sirius is pretty sure he already mostly forgot about his rude entrance at that point. So, he answered truthfully, "My brother is poorly."
The first time Remus met Regulus was on Sirius' eighth birthday. For some reason, his parents actually asked him what he wanted to do that day, and of course, Sirius said he wanted to invite Remus. Needless to say, it was a complete disaster, and Remus never quite got over his dislike for Regulus after the jealousy-induced screaming fit he had about Sirius getting another friend. He was always respectful, because he was still Remus, and also because he had little choice in the matter – Sirius tended to talk about his brother a lot – but the cold air between them never ceased. It didn't bother Sirius much, he kind of liked it even, it made him feel special somehow, a point of arguments.
He remembers waking up one night to muffled cries and thinking that Regulus was a bit daft – their parents would never give him the attention he wanted if he cried. So, he snuck over to Regulus' bedroom, taking his time to shuffle close to the walls and slide over the floorboards on his socked feet as to not get caught, and slept in his bed to the sound of him hiccupping and sniffling into his shoulder. He didn't understand back then that Regulus was anything but stupid and it wasn't their parents whose attention he craved.
"What's wrong with him?" Remus asked with clear curiosity.
Sirius chewed on his lip, trying to think of how to answer that without giving away that his family was magical. This is one thing his parents made sure he remembered before they moved – he was not allowed to tell anyone. "He has a cough," Sirius said finally, which was a very understated way to describe how Regulus' own magic was destroying him from within.
Only three months after that, Sirius found out that he didn't have to hide his magic anymore. They were chasing each other through the woods, laughing and jumping over the little winding creaks that snaked their way through the underwood when Remus accidentally slipped on a water-smoothed rock. But instead of falling and banging his head open on the rocky waterbed, he remained hovering unnaturally in the air, arms splayed wide, eyes broadened in shock. A typical example of accidental magic all wizarding children their age displayed.
Later, Remus told him that he wasn't surprised at all to find out that Sirius was a wizard too. He always thought Sirius was magical, and he phrased it like some kind of sixth sense wizards had for their kind but even Sirius, never very good at reading between the lines, sensed that it wasn't meant literally.
"I wish I had a brother," Remus told Sirius. And it was the first and last time he did – maybe coincidentally, maybe because that day he found a brother if not of blood, then of mind.
A curse and a blessing all the same in Sirius' head, something he struggled to reconcile with the budding, not-so-brotherly affection for the longest time, foolishly thinking that one would negate the other. For Remus, it has never been an issue, or so he told Sirius at some point after he'd made his own peace with it – whatever happened between them later never had the chance to erase the friendship they carried through their lives like a guiding light.
'Friend or lover?' Sirius would ask Remus later, whenever they talked about things that mattered, always in a taunting tone to mask the uncertainty he felt. And sometimes Remus would reply 'friend', even if they were naked, tangled with each other like seaweed in the dark depths of the night, and it didn't feel misplaced. And sometimes Remus would reply 'lover', and Sirius knew that the tone of the conversation would be different from then on out. And sometimes they would discuss the same thing twice, from both perspectives, and it sounded confusing, but it really wasn't. These bonds co-existed effortlessly with each other, and there were times where it was always only 'friend' and nothing more, which hurt but not as much as it would have if they didn't make this separation clear.
They sat like that for a while, on top of the high rock, a beautiful view of rolling fields and the deceptively calm sea in front of them, talking. Remus was still a bit wary of Sirius as if he couldn't believe he would even talk to him at all. He wasn't exactly shy or timid, just on high alert all the time but Sirius was not a stranger to stilted behaviour, so it didn't bother him much.
At some point, Remus startled, seemingly out of nowhere, and looked over his shoulder. There was nobody there, Sirius even extended his neck to check, but Remus still scrambled up. "I have to go home," he said and then stopped in the middle of climbing down again, looking up at Sirius with something like worry.
"Oh, alright," Sirius said reluctantly. He didn't want Remus to leave now even if it was his initial wish when he saw him for the first time. Talking to Remus was nice, effortless somehow – Sirius never experienced this before in his short life.
This never changed and sometimes it felt scary, sometimes Sirius was mortified at the idea of how seamlessly they fit together, it didn't feel natural. Many bad things happened to them, they have done many bad things to each other, but no matter what, the ease with which they got along never ceased, and it was fucking terrifying.
One time, Sirius almost split Remus' skull open with a century-old vase, heavy and useless in its pompousness, missing him just by a hair's breadth – and not because he didn't try his hardest. But two decades of no practice and an Azkaban sentence lessened his infamous Chaser skills. Remus just whipped his head around, eyes blazing amber, and Sirius didn't even see his wand-hand move before he was pinned to the wall by an invisible force. 'You ungrateful asshole', Remus murmured, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest indignantly, but his lips were curling with a smile. 'You shameless hypocrite', Sirius pressed out, barely able to take a full breath with how much his chest was constricted by Remus' spell. And then Remus laughed, not because it was genuinely funny – it was anything but funny, to be honest – but because it was always like that between them, and there was a twisted comfort in that when the world was, once again, crumbling around them. 'Kiss me', Sirius demanded then. 'No', Remus said stubbornly, still smiling, and then kissed him, still unable to actually refuse anything Sirius asked for.
"I'll be back tomorrow..?" Remus said, his leg hovering hesitantly over the stretch of air between them and the ground. It sounded like a question as if he was asking permission, giving Sirius the opportunity to back away.
He always did that, subconsciously or not. Remus told Sirius once that he felt that being with Sirius was like playing with fire – warm and exciting and always slightly on the brink of a disaster. He felt like holding on too tight would push Sirius further away, like a fire snuffed out by lack of oxygen.
"Tomorrow," Sirius agreed, smiling, not even trying to hide the elation he felt that came with this almost-promise.
A promise Remus kept for the rest of their life together. No matter what happened, who had to leave or when their paths would forcefully part – he would be there tomorrow, an unmovable rock in the surf, swallowed and released by the tide, for Sirius to come back to.
Chapter 2: Memory Two: Adolescence
Chapter Text
Strangers rushing past, just trying to get home
But you were the only safe haven that I've known
Hits me at full speed, feel like I can't breathe
And nobody knows this pain inside me
My world is crumbling, I should never have
Let you go
– Freya Ridings, Lost Without You
The second memory that nothing was able to take away from Sirius – neither time nor experience, not even the Dementors – is of when he was eleven years old. It's also one that is laced with so much yearning and nostalgia that whenever Sirius thinks back on it, he feels like the air has been punched out of his lungs. It's not exactly a longing for better days or happier times, it's the longing for freedom, for the potential that was yet to be used at that moment.
Every year that passed in Sirius' life, he felt like more and more doors closed in front of him. As he was climbing the tree of his own future, fewer branches were in front of him to take hold of – some were reliable and sturdy, some were rotten and flimsy. And the higher he climbed, the more delicate and thinner these branches became, snapping under his desperate hands, bending under his force, giving away under his feet.
Back then, all doors were still open for him to walk through, or to peer inside, or to ignore willingly; and he was still standing at the foot of his tree, looking up over its seemingly endless expanse, not yet knowing that falling down was way easier than climbing up.
The second memory is of when Remus got his Hogwarts letter, which is not a coincidence.
The Lupins' front yard was glistening in the morning sun, the dew covering every inch of the tentative, young grass sprouting from the still-frosty soil. It was so different to the garden Sirius' parents tended to with magic – all symmetrical bushes and carefully planted flower beds. Magical and muggle herbs alike grew in a wild mix with wildflowers and weeds in between them, and there were some curious gnomes poking their heads out in response to Sirius' intrusion. Sirius stuck his tongue out at one of them and knocked on the slightly crooked, wooden front door.
"Oh, Sirius!" Hope exclaimed instantly after opening the door for him. "How nice of you to visit us today!"
Sirius grinned at her and shook a carefully wrapped box. "Wouldn't think of missing it," he said importantly.
She ushered him inside, fussing and cooing over him in a way Sirius barely got used to over the years of walking in and out of the Lupins' house as if he was a part of it. 'You're the son they always wanted', Remus always joked with a wry little smile, always so quick to see himself as a burden or disappointment despite everyone's attempts to prove him wrong.
"Ah, there he is," Lyall boomed good-naturally and dropped the Prophet on the table in front of him carelessly, almost knocking over his coffee mug. For all of their visual similarities, only growing stronger with time, Remus was much more like his mother at heart – always careful and deliberate in everything he did, even if it were small things like putting down the paper.
"Congratulations on birthing such a wonderful son," Sirius said and revelled in the way both of them laughed in delight.
"We did well," Lyall agreed and smiled at his wife fondly. Sirius thinks himself incredibly lucky to have been deemed worthy to witness the same exact expression directed at him on Remus' face many times over his life.
"Oh, stop it," Hope murmured and waved a tea towel at him exasperatedly. Then she focussed on Sirius again. "Remus is upstairs, honey."
"Sulking," Lyall added with a grin.
"As he does." Sirius nodded conspiratorially at him.
"How's your brother?" Lyall asked then before Sirius managed to excuse himself to Remus' room.
The first time Lyall met Sirius' parents was when Sirius was seven. It was December and a sudden snowstorm caught them all by surprise, effectively locking Sirius in with the Lupins in their little cottage by the sea. Sirius can remember his own mortification at the thought of not making it home before his curfew or, worse, having to stay over entirely, and feels pity for his own childhood self. It took some convincing but eventually, Lyall agreed to walk Sirius home under some strong water-repellent charms.
Sirius' mother was anything but amused about her son being escorted by someone like Lyall Lupin to their residence but her good manners didn't allow her to bite down on the invitation to come inside. To Sirius' surprise, Lyall agreed instantly. Later, Lyall told him that he wanted to make sure Sirius was safe there – he has not managed to be subtle enough about the way he was disciplined on the regular, even to Remus' parents.
Lyall took one sweeping look around and then froze, his eyes trained at the upper landing of the staircase leading to the bedrooms. Sensitivity to magic is something only few people possessed and even fewer were willing to share, but Lyall did not make a show of hiding it that day when he felt the bottomless black hole that was Regulus' magic.
Sirius doesn't know, and won't ever find out, whether his parents knew all along and refused to do anything because of their sick beliefs in blood purity or if they genuinely had no idea what was wrong with their younger son. After all, their insane determination to keep the Black bloodline as pure as possible, going as far as marrying close relatives, was the reason Regulus' magic turned against him in the first place. If it had been a muggle illness, it would have been a form of an autoimmune disease, his own body was fighting his magic like a malevolent intrusion.
The cure has been simple, even simpler than moving out to the seaside for a 'better climate', but it also went against everything the Blacks believed in. Sirius doesn't even want to begin thinking about how many children were murdered in their family simply because they didn't show any signs of magic by a certain age – there was no way a family as big and fucked up as theirs wouldn't have had their fair share of squibs, but there were no records of any. There was a reason why family members were woven into the Black family tapestry only after reaching five years old, and it had nothing to do with naturally high death rates amongst children in the earlier times.
"Better, thank you," Sirius replied quietly. "The cuffs are helping."
And they really did, to a certain point. As far as they knew, there was no way to strip a wizard of his magic entirely, but there were methods to suppress it to a minimum. Back then Sirius didn't know what it felt like to use such restrains but by a turn of fate he experienced them on his own skin while he was at Azkaban – the chances of uncontrollable magical outbursts from inmates were too high to not muzzle them like that. Fortunately for Sirius, his Animagus capabilities were not touched by it or else he would not have survived.
After feeling what it was like to wear similar cuffs, Sirius couldn't blame Regulus for taking his off anymore. 'I'd rather die than suffocate', Regulus yelled at him back then, cheeks hollow and eyes dark from the war that has broken out in his body again after years of apparent improvement.
"Good," Lyall said, satisfied. "Now off with you. Make sure Remus doesn't wither away with his dramatics."
Sirius giggled in response, not yet understanding how close to the truth Lyall was when it came to Remus' character. Anyone who saw them together would say that Sirius was the dramatic one of them, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong, but Remus had his own ways of spinning every little thing into a full-blown tragedy. An overthinker by nature, and self-punisher by design, his suffering was quiet and subtle to untrained eyes, which made it all the more destructive.
Sirius remembers the aftermath of the pivotal full moon in their fifth year like a row of snapshots. His own toxic mix of guilt, fear and anger aside, the way Remus spiralled to rock-bottom was easy to oversee for anyone else. He behaved normally, went to classes, did his homework, sat by the fire, and talked to his friends. But Sirius remembers the sleepless nights of listening to Remus' ragged breathing in the bed next to his – too worried to fall asleep, too timid to offer support, hovering uncertainly at the edge of their friendship like a wanted man ready to be hanged. He remembers the sweet smoke, curling and floating to the low ceiling of the Shack, and Remus' glazed-over eyes looking anywhere but at Sirius. He remembers the way Remus' clothes, always slightly too-small, too-short for his never-ending growth spurts, hung off him like rags by the end of that year, and the way Sirius' heart broke when he took Remus' hand in his at King's Cross just before they were whisked away by Lyall's side-along Apparition – bony and uncharacteristically fragile, like dry, creaking twigs.
"For he's a jolly good fellow!" Sirius exclaimed, bursting into Remus' room without a knock. "So jolly, Merlin's beard, I might not handle the exhilarating atmosphere in here!"
Remus didn't even grace him with a fleeting look from his sprawl on the threadbare carpet in front of his bed. He just grunted something unintelligible under his breath and Sirius huffed a laugh. Only Remus would be able to have one of his moods on his own birthday – the arguably most important birthday in the life of a wizard.
Sirius flung himself on Remus' bed and rolled on his stomach, poking his head over the edge so that he was looking Remus directly in the eyes. "Happy birthday, tosser, I got you a small something," Sirius said and dropped the present on Remus' face.
"Thank you," Remus said moodily and rubbed his nose, grimacing from the impact. "That was not necessary."
"Oh, really?" Sirius drawled with fake surprise and reached out for the box again. "If that's so, then okay, give it back!"
Remus smiled and extended his hand with the present away from Sirius. "Nah-ah! That's mine now!" He shook it, listening carefully to the sound it made and raised his eyebrows. "What is it?"
"A book," Sirius said innocently.
"Liar," Remus replied with a laugh. "I always know when you're lying."
Looking back, this statement made Sirius feel conflicted for a very long time. Because he did, he really did always know when Sirius was lying. But, for some reason, he didn't always know when Sirius was saying the truth. Or, which was even worse, developed doubts about his unmatched ability in a moment where it was most important to believe. In Sirius, in his innocence, and Remus' skill to feel when he was sincere.
"Half-lie," Sirius conceded. "Open it."
With careful hands, Remus unwrapped the box and folded up the wrapping paper neatly. Sirius rolled his eyes a bit at his antics but didn't say anything – it was just like Remus to leave the best for last.
"How is it a half-lie?" Remus asked incredulously, taking out an artfully designed writing set. The brown-and-red self-inking quill caught light streaming in from the slanted window above them – the one Sirius and Remus spent countless nights looking out of into the dark, star-dotted expanse of the sky. The sturdy, bound parchment stack could potentially count as some form of a book but that's not what Sirius meant.
"Well, I'm sure one day you'll turn this one into a book," Sirius said casually, but he felt giddy inside, awaiting Remus' reaction.
And turn it into a book he did. Many years later, and not at all with this writing set that got lost over the years piece-by-piece, but a book, nonetheless. When Sirius was the first one to read the manuscript, he felt like his own childhood dream came true and not Remus', and when he read the first lines of the dedication, he felt like the ground slowly floated away from beneath his feet.
To the love of my life Sirius
Whose ego is a book dedication short of catapulting him to the moon
Good thing I'm there to catch him.
There have been many more after this first one, and every single one of them, without fail, started with the same seven words. Some of them were funny–
To the love of my life Sirius
Who never listened to a single word I said
And thank God for that.
Some were heartfelt–
To the love of my life Sirius
If you are the only one to read this
I achieved everything (and more) I ever dared to wish for.
And some were exactly the sort of timid boldness that made up Remus' character.
To the love of my life Sirius
Once you asked me whether I wanted to be married
And I said no
Only because you didn't ask whether I wanted to be married to you
(And because we were eleven)
Frankly, I'm tired of waiting
Will you marry me?
Sirius strongly considered writing his own book just to say yes (and to make Remus wait for it for six to eighteen months), but Sirius' patience was never his strong point – especially in comparison to Remus' who, apparently, waited for over thirty years to tackle this topic.
"Thank you," Remus breathed, sitting up and almost colliding with Sirius' forehead in his eagerness to go through the box. "That's… it's– Thank you."
"Moony, the boy with all the words – speechless?" Sirius taunted, feeling his heart leap up with elation. "Feeling a bit better?"
Remus' face fell a little and he sighed. He always did that – his sighs were a rainbow of emotion, a whole colour box of feelings he somehow managed to convey with only one breath. Sirius made it his life mission to decipher every single one of them even if he felt at times that his perception of colours was slightly smaller than Remus'.
"What's the matter?"
Remus reached behind him blindly and pulled an opened envelope from his nightstand, his full name and address on it in neat, green-inked lettering. Sirius grinned and snatched it from his hand, skimming through the short letter. Dear Mr Lupin blah-blah pleased to inform you blah-blah accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry blah-blah.
It was not a surprise that Remus got his letter, not to Sirius anyway. Remus, on the other hand, was convinced that he'd never get accepted to Hogwarts because of his condition.
When Sirius got his own letter, back in November, and shared it excitedly with Remus, the reaction he got was not something he anticipated. Usually, getting the Hogwarts acceptance letter warranted a celebration even if it was to be expected and not exactly an achievement on the child's part. But Remus got incredibly quiet, and his hands started to shake as he read through Sirius' letter, and it was the first time Sirius ever saw him crying in over four years of being friends. Even when Remus came down from the full moons, aching and hurt, he never cried. But it seemed like Sirius' Hogwarts letter was much more painful to him than any real wounds he could inflict on himself.
At first, Sirius thought it was jealousy. Of course, they talked about going to Hogwarts, and Sirius knew that there were no instances (at least openly) when children with lycanthropy were admitted, but it didn't mean there weren't any. But then, after a lot of coaxing and prodding, Remus blurted out that he was scared Sirius would leave him. Would go off to Hogwarts, and leave Remus behind, find new exciting friends, and never think of him again.
Sirius assured him that it would never happen, that even if Remus didn't get to go, Sirius would come back over the holidays, and write letters. That Remus was his best friend and, of course, he would never leave him behind and forget about him. But no matter what Sirius said, he didn't seem to be able to get through to Remus.
And then, shortly after Christmas, the Headmaster himself visited the Lupins to talk about Remus and the possibilities of him still going to Hogwarts despite his circumstances. It was all very hush-hush, and to this day Sirius doesn't know whether Lyall initiated these negotiations or Dumbledore just had an eye out for people like Remus, but the conclusion was that Remus would get to go to Hogwarts under the condition of being treated by the matron there and going to a safe place for the transformations.
"Congratulations!" Sirius said, grinning, and whacked Remus over the head with the folded-up letter. "Why are you making a face like that?"
"It's just my face," Remus grumbled, playing with the little parchment weights from his new writing set absentmindedly.
Sirius couldn't stand it when Remus did this, it drove him absolutely mad, but he has long given up on trying to bring Remus to stop fumbling. He had to do something with his hands at all times, and countless quills have suffered under the assault over his education. At some point, Remus started playing with Sirius' fingers instead – under the table during lessons, between them on the bench during meals, over his heart when they lay cuddled together at night – and suddenly Sirius struggled to remember why he disliked his habit so much in the first place.
"Spit it out, Moony," Sirius prodded further.
"Shove off."
It was just like them to go around in circles like that. Sirius never knew when to leave things be; not understanding what was going on in Remus' head was like an itch under his skin he absolutely had to scratch, even if it meant to draw blood. And Remus never gave things away easily, always stewing in his own thoughts and reluctant to share anything until it was pulled out of him with tweezers. Later, he told Sirius once in a drunken haze that he was grateful for Sirius' resilience when it came to things like that, even if he pretended like it was the opposite. Sirius still felt guilty for needling him and hurt that he even had to in the first place – he shared everything with Remus willingly, unasked, maybe even too much. Because he was never able to keep anything secret from him anyway, and what good would it do when Remus was quite literally his moral compass most times?
"Let me guess," Sirius mused. "You're still worried that it's a bad idea despite the Headmaster himself moving heaven and hell to make it happen?"
Remus glared at him for making light of his fears. "It is a bad idea," he urged. "I'm dangerous."
Sirius snorted a laugh. "Dangerously annoying, is what you are," he mocked him. "Get over it. You deserve to be there as much as anyone else. More probably. I met the Goyle sprout over Christmas and, oh boy, oh boy, he might be the dumbest person I've ever seen. And he's going, can you believe that? I'm surprised he could read his letter."
"Probably had his house elf read it for him," Remus murmured and then bit down on his lip – too cheeky to keep silent, too good-mannered to not feel guilty about it.
Sirius rolled with laughter at the idea that a house elf was more intelligent than the son of a pureblood family, and when Remus dug an accusing finger in his side, chuckling a little himself, Sirius laughed even harder.
"I'd have to keep it a secret," Remus groaned, returning to the initial topic. The dam has finally broken and now he wasn't able to hold it in anymore. "From everyone!"
"Ah, that's not that hard," Sirius waved him off. "Besides, not from everyone."
"It's bad enough that you know…" Remus sighed again.
"You told me," Sirius remarked. "It's not like I cornered you."
Remus gave him an exasperated glance before looking down on his hands again. "You would have," he said. "I know you. You were getting far too suspicious, and you're clever enough. I'd rather tell you myself than have you figure it out and… And…"
"And what?" Sirius asked, amused. "Tell the whole world?"
"Leave me…" Remus replied, barely audible. "I'm surprised you didn't."
Sirius doesn't remember when exactly Remus' fears of abandonment ceased, maybe they never fully did, but he remembers how anxious he was as a child. And how secure he became as an adult, even as a teen. Secure in the knowledge that Sirius would not just leave him on a whim, no matter what would happen, and especially not because of his lycanthropy. Maybe it solidified in his brain when James, Peter and Sirius became Animagi for him – a successful endeavour if not for making Remus' transformations bearable, then for his heightened confidence.
"I'm surprised you didn't leave me when you found out who my family was."
Remus rolled his eyes. "Not like it's your fault."
"Not like it's your fault," Sirius parroted him and grinned. "Ha! See? You said it yourself, now stop moping about! It's your birthday, you got your letter, I saw your mom baking a huge cake, and next autumn we will go to Hogwarts! Together!"
The crease between Remus' brows, the one Sirius made his morning ritual to kiss away obnoxiously in later life, softened somewhat and he looked up tentatively. Sirius smiled encouragingly at him and had to bite on the inside of his cheek to keep it from spreading wider at the returning smile.
"Together," he whispered.
Sirius grabbed his hand, stopping his fidgeting, and Remus squeezed back with much more force than Sirius anticipated. "Together!" Sirius said again and laughed, flopping over on his back, their hands still hovering linked in the air next to the edge of Remus' bed. "Just imagine what we will get up to at Hogwarts! Do you think we'll end up in the same House?"
Remus made a non-committal noise in response and Sirius didn't think much of it back then, but later he found out that this was a major point of worry for Remus. Which was silly – Sirius was one of the first to get sorted that year, making Gryffindor quite easily after some thinly-veiled gloating from the Hat about a Black finally breaking the tradition, and he watched the rest of the procedure with unwavering sureness that there was no other House better suited for Remus than Gryffindor. And he was right, Remus even broke a record with the quickest Sorting in some decades – the Hat barely touched his head and screamed Gryffindor. Remus didn't even know the Hat talked to the children until much later because he never got to experience it, that's how obvious his Sorting was.
"I hope so," Remus said, and Sirius didn't see his face anymore but he had a sixth sense for his frowns by now. "We'd be sharing a dorm, right?"
"Yes," Sirius agreed with a grin. "And go to lessons together, and study in the library. Oh, Moony, you'll love the Hogwarts library, no one will be able to pull you out of it!"
Remus laughed, a little flustered. "I'm sure you'll find a way," he murmured.
"I'll lure you out with chocolates," Sirius promised.
"Where would you find chocolate?" Remus asked incredulously. "Hogsmeade is only third year and up."
Sirius groaned, annoyed by Remus' inability to stop being so damn realistic. "I'll find the kitchens! And befriend all the house elves there."
"Bribe them, you mean," Remus joked. "With extra dirty socks."
"Oi!" Sirius huffed. "I will tell you, my socks are perfectly clean at all times, thank you for asking."
He didn't like the way Remus hummed condescendingly but he decided to let it slide for now. "Besides, Hogsmeade is third year and up officially ," he continued excitedly. "You get me?"
"Oh no," Remus said darkly but his hold on Sirius' hand strengthened minutely. "We aren't even there yet and you're planning on breaking…" He tutted calculatingly. "Four to five school rules. We will get expelled before the first week is over."
This is what Sirius loved most about Remus. He was always the voice of reason between Sirius' never-ending enthusiasm, James' wickedness and Peter's surprisingly easy-going character, yet he never removed himself from anything they got up to. It was always a 'we' even if he was against it. No matter how bad of an idea he thought it was, he'd try to sway them over, and if it didn't work, he'd still have their back every time.
'You'd end up dead or, at the very least, badly injured before OWLs if I didn't', Remus told him later when Sirius pointed this out to him. He wasn't wrong, Sirius can remember a handful of instances where Remus was the one to literally save their skin at the last moment. The Expired Fireworks Incident of 74' comes to mind, or the time Peter took the dare to walk on the railing of the Astronomy tower from one wall to the other in the middle of January, or that one memorable train ride back to London after their sixth year when James decided to climb on the roof of the Hogwarts Express.
Merlin, they were stupid, foolish children back then. Sirius thinks himself a hypocrite for it, but if he knew his kids were doing the stuff they got up to, he'd have a heart attack. Remus on the other hand, outwardly the more sensible and worried type, has not lost his cool over the years and was just as composed when reading angry letters from the Hogwarts staff demanding disciplinary measures as he was when he stood next to them as they were scolded by McGonagall. Sirius suspects that he doesn't even know the half of it – his whole family silently agreeing on letting him live in blissful ignorance. He was alright with it as long as Remus had it under control. The irony of Remus ending up as the cool dad was hilarious even to Sirius.
"Only if we get caught," Sirius whispered conspiratorially. "Do you think we'll make loads of friends?"
Remus remained silent for a while and when Sirius lolled his head to the side to look at him from the corner of his eyes, he was chewing on his lip in thought. "Maybe," he conceded. "You will, anyway."
" We will," Sirius urged and nodded to himself.
And so they did. Not too quickly though. Perhaps things would have been different if Sirius and Remus weren't basically joined at the hip already when first arriving at Hogwarts – they'd have a bigger incentive to look elsewhere for company. But as time went on, they eventually became a quartet instead of a duet, and Sirius can't help but think that it was probably for the best. For all their love for each other, sometimes it could get too much too quickly with no one else there to take the heat off.
Even when James confessed to him once that he felt a little like it was always Sirius and Remus, and then, after a longer pause, James and Peter, Sirius thought it wasn't as simple. Sirius has been friends with Remus almost his whole life, as far as he can remember, but their relationship had its ups and downs, as one does naturally. It was good to have other close friends as well.
"My parents will probably want me to be friends with the Slytherin lot," Sirius murmured, his enthusiasm dampened a little from this thought. "I heard Cissa and Bella are already scouring the school for a potential Black bride."
Remus let his hand go then to recline back on his elbows and let out an amused huff. "A bit early for that, don't you think?"
"Yes," Sirius said reverently and made big eyes at the ceiling. "Yes, Moony, I very much think this is too early. You know what? It will always be too early for that – eleven or one hundred and eleven."
Sirius remembers the awful dinners he spent at home over holidays, forced to play nice with some well-bred girl or other, his mother watching them with hawk eyes that promised nothing good, and his father behaving like it was some business arrangement rather than a date. Maybe if Regulus wasn't so ill, Sirius would have gotten off easier – 'an heir and a spare' for a reason, after all. But even with the working treatment, Regulus was not likely to make it to marrying age, and there was no other male in the main Black line to save the day.
It caused Sirius a lot of anguish in later life. As silly as these knee-jerk reactions were after two wars they fought and somehow survived, after raising one child, albeit not theirs but one of them after all, Sirius couldn't help but feel almost physically ill at willingly continuing his bloodline. It felt like defeat – after so many years of fighting against everything his parents stood for, he was now doing the exact thing they wanted? No way!
Only after almost a year of discussions, arguments and pleas did Sirius agree. It was the smarter choice, after all. 'Not enough research' and 'fifty-fifty chance' ringing in his head in Remus' quiet, wistful voice, effectively crossing out any of Sirius' dreams of seeing a mini-Remus patter down their stairs. But how could he deny Remus the joy of experiencing the same thing?
"One hundred eleven is prime age, I heard," Remus joked and stuck his tongue out at Sirius' glare.
"Do you want to get married? Someday?" Sirius asked after a bit of silence.
"No," Remus answered surely, the 'only if it's you' hanging unsaid and invisible until much later between them.
Chapter 3: Memory Three: Adulthood
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
My tea's gone cold
I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could, it'd all be grey
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad
– Dido, Thank you
The third memory Sirius holds dear to his heart is not one he's exactly proud of or one that is particularly happy or carefree. It's hard to pick out what feelings this memory is laced with, even after so many years, perhaps because of so many years that have passed since then.
Sirius just remembers how angry he was. He remembers the all-consuming rage bubbling inside him as he walked up to the oh-so-familiar cottage by the sea.
This memory is of when Sirius was thirty-five. It is also the memory of his first interaction, first real interaction, with Remus after he escaped Azkaban, which is not a coincidence.
The sun shone down mercilessly on him, and Sirius could feel its pressing heat on his dark hair, could sense himself sweating from the temperature and exertion, ground his teeth against the burn in his muscles. Yet he still felt cold, frozen to the bones – a possible side-effect of Dementor exposure, Dumbledore had said, but Sirius was not so sure about that anymore. If anything, the view of the house that held so many happy memories for him before only made him shiver more. It's like anything remotely good was drained from him by now, leaving only a bag of bones and intestines to slowly ferment in the anger, loneliness and feeling of betrayal churning in his chest.
He didn't allow himself to hesitate before knocking but he didn't have to – the door swung open as soon as he stepped onto the porch. Remus had always had an exceptional sense of smell, and truth be told, Sirius must have reeked something awful at that moment.
Seeing Remus then, properly in the bright sunlight, made something inside Sirius soften against his better judgement and he hated himself for his spinelessness. They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity, just looking at each other, and Sirius felt Remus' eyes wander over him as if he was physically touching him all over – desperately, greedily. Sirius would be lying if he said he didn't do the same. It was chilling to understand that he somehow managed to forget how Remus looked like as an adult over the last fourteen years. Sirius never forgot him as a child – small and thin, all knobbly knees and pointy chin – but the adult he became to be, the one Sirius still witnessed before being locked away, was no more than a fuzzy shadow in his abused mind.
It felt like seeing a stranger. It also felt like nothing has changed at all, which was all the more frightening. The setting of their little corner of the world that seemed endless thirty years ago didn't help Sirius to find his way out of the quicksand that was his love for Remus either.
"Sirius," Remus breathed, almost disbelievingly even though Dumbledore must have informed him that Sirius would come.
"Well," Sirius prompted rather rudely, desperately trying to make up for the wave of something in his gut with a harsher tone, "won't you let me inside? Or am I not welcome here?"
"Of course," Remus said, stepping to the side quickly. "Of course, you are."
Sirius nodded stiffly and walked past him straight into the little kitchen. The tiling has been renewed, and there was a newer stove now, but everything else still looked like it did before. Before.
"Are you hungry?" Remus asked, coming up behind him, and Sirius' hair stood unpleasantly from the sudden proximity.
"No," Sirius lied and clenched his teeth. He had days to come up with some sort of plan, some kind of idea of how to handle that situation. So did Remus. Yet here they were – best friends, lovers, strangers – and neither knew what to do or what to say. "I wouldn't say no to a shower."
It was cowardly of him, and Sirius knew that. But the possibility of being alone, even if just for a short moment, was unbearably tempting. Also, he didn't fancy having whatever conversation that would undoubtedly ensue between them in his current state. Also, a shower sounded bloody brilliant after years of being on the run.
Remus led him up the stairs to the single, tiny bathroom, and Sirius couldn't tell whether he was just trying to be helpful or worrying Sirius might do something bad without supervision. Feeling petty and secretly enjoying the hurt look on Remus' face, Sirius slammed the door shut in front of him. If things had been different, they could have showered together. Maybe Remus would have enjoyed it even – he always had a thing of caring for Sirius in the most obnoxious ways possible. Maybe Sirius would have liked it too – being able to let go, let someone do things for him, let Remus do things for him.
Or, actually, what Sirius would have liked more was to not be locked away in Azkaban for twelve years without a trial or even a question.
He has been really good at stomping down these thoughts and feeling over the last years – there were far more pressing matters than his broken heart. Harry needed him. But now, back in this house he once called home, back with a man he once called friend, Sirius was swamped with every repressed piece of anguish. He turned the water to scolding hot and stood under the spray until the burn on his skin replaced the burn in his soul.
It took him a long time to get over it, and sometimes Sirius would wake up from a nightmare even today, sweating and crying, slung back to his past like it was present, and look at his husband beside him with a feeling of not-understanding . They have always been different, almost opposites, and it was not new for Sirius that he didn't really understand why Remus did some things he did. It took him years to come to the conclusion that he didn't have to understand the reasons as long as they were there, and Remus was sincere in his intentions. Sirius would not be the one to cast the first stone, not after all the things he managed to mess up over his life.
When Sirius came down the stairs, clean and wearing fresh clothes Remus put out for him, Remus was sitting at the small kitchen table and staring unseeingly out of the window.
"Alright?" he asked in a measured tone when Sirius dropped in the chair opposite him.
"Feel like a human again," Sirius said truthfully. Then he bunched the fabric of his t-shirt between the fingers and raised his eyebrows. "Really? You still have these?"
A brief flash of confusion appeared on Remus' face before he smiled a little and shook his head. "Of course. Everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything," Remus confirmed and pointed to the stairs with his chin. "Where it always was. Why should I have done anything about your things?"
Sirius had to swallow down the lump in his throat to answer. "Maybe because I wasn't meant to come back at all?"
He couldn't believe Remus kept all his stuff – clothes, books, records. He later found out that Hagrid still had his bike, and that it was still functional. If he hadn't been there for the whole time himself, Sirius would have said that maybe fourteen months have passed and not fourteen years.
"This house is as much of your home as it's mine," Remus said as if it was obvious. "I would never have touched anything of yours."
"Really?" Sirius asked mockingly before he could stop himself. "Not a single thing?"
Remus narrowed his eyes and smiled almost relieved. "I did play the records. Once or twice."
"Where are your parents?" Sirius asked then.
"They passed away," Remus replied with a sigh. He didn't seem too raw with grief though, more of a quiet sadness that crept into his eyes. "Mum first, she had cancer. Muggle disease."
"I know what cancer is," Sirius murmured and frowned. "And Lyall?"
Remus huffed a laugh that wasn't all devoid of humour. "He died from a broken heart shortly after."
"Broken heart?" Sirius repeated and cocked his head. "Like heart failure?"
"Don't you know?" Remus' voice was a little taunting. "Sometimes, when you love someone hard enough and they die, it's so traumatic that your heart can't handle that."
Sirius felt like laughing but just about kept it at bay to not sound morbid even if Remus' way of speaking sounded more like he was reciting an anecdote rather than telling someone about his parents' death. Maybe this is how he dealt with grief. Sirius never got to see it for himself until that moment.
"I thought it was an urban legend," Sirius admitted. "I'm sorry about your loss."
"It probably is," Remus agreed with a wry little smile, his eyes wandering over to the window again. "Thank you."
They sat after that in silence, huddled around the tiny table, Remus' knees almost knocking into Sirius' underneath it, but Sirius never felt more removed from him before. The silence wasn't effortless anymore, the familiarity gone now. It was tense and thick like molasse, creeping over Sirius' skin, running into his ears and nose and mouth until he felt like he would choke on it.
"What happened to you, Moony?"
Remus slowly dragged his impossibly big eyes away from the window and looked impassively at Sirius. "What do you mean?"
Sirius huffed a bitter laugh. "You know what I mean."
"I know," Remus agreed easily, and his face fell. He looked old at that moment, jaded, exhausted, and so, so guilty. For some reason, it made Sirius even angrier. "I'm sorry. I really am, Sirius. I should have never believed them…"
"How could you?" Sirius asked and he would like to think that he was accusing, beautiful in his rightful anger, the picture of stoic suffering. But in reality, he probably was on the verge of tears. "How could you believe I would betray my friends?"
Remus' face, slowly crumbling in a grimace before, suddenly froze as if he was unsure whether he heard him correctly. He frowned and shook his head. "I never believed you betrayed them."
Sirius remembers him saying that felt like a punch to the face and the warmest hug at the same time. A very confusing mix of sensations that left him gaping to which Remus just frowned more and tilted his head.
"I thought you killed Peter," Remus clarified. "I knew you would never betray James or any of us. So, I figured you must have changed the secret keeper to Peter without telling me and that's why you went after him. I didn't know he would be able to pull such a stunt though."
He has always been clever like that, of course, he would see through that plan given the right clues. But it was so much more logical to believe that he didn't, that he just didn't trust Sirius back then anymore. To this day, Sirius isn't sure whether his doubts in Remus were entirely his own or rather enforced by the Dementors at Azkaban, twisting and turning his perception to the most painful conclusion.
"You thought I'd kill someone? Kill Peter?" Sirius asked, more surprised than angry now.
"Wouldn't you have?" Remus asked back and raised his eyebrows. "If he wasn't quicker?"
And Sirius would like to believe that he wouldn't have, that he would have just confronted Peter and then dragged him before the Order to let them decide what to do with the traitor. But he also remembers the state he was in after arriving at James' house, stepping over his lifeless body in the hall, seeing Lily, crumbled and pale at the foot of Harry's crib.
Remus interpreted his silence as him being offended though and shrugged. "Then you're a better man than I," he admitted bitterly. "Because I would have killed him, back in the Shack, in a heartbeat. I still can't believe I let myself be swayed by a thirteen-year-old child. Look where we are now."
"Just like that?" Sirius didn't necessarily disagree; he was more amused about the way Remus' mind seemed to work. "You'd have killed him just like that?"
"And wouldn't have lost any sleep because of it, believe me," Remus confirmed without a second thought.
"Moony, you're fucking ruthless," Sirius said and couldn't help a genuine smile. "Where is the soft-hearted, shy boy I knew?"
Remus stilled for a moment and then laughed. He raised his hands to cover his face and laughed as if Sirius told a really funny joke. As if they didn't talk about the literal murder of a once-friend.
"What?"
"Pads, he was the reason you spent over a decade in Azkaban," Remus said then, still amused. "I can't even begin to explain to you the hatred I feel towards him."
"Moony, he was the reason for James' and Lily's death ," Sirius reminded him, a bit shocked.
"That too," Remus agreed as if it was only a footnote in his list of reasons and not the whole point.
Sometimes Sirius forgot how incredibly loyal Remus was – it's easy to disregard something you see every day, something you almost take for granted after years and years of exposure. Sometimes Sirius forgot that this loyalty was not just a general character trait of his, but a spotlight focussed on him at all times.
"That's why you didn't press for a trial?" Sirius asked the burning question.
Remus' face slowly lost the last trace of amusement, sagging with remorse. "I should have," he murmured and closed his eyes for a moment. "I should have done more. Even if I believed you did it, you still deserved a trial."
By then Sirius felt like he lost all his steam in regard to this. He didn't think so before but after that conversation he suspected that most of his feelings of betrayal came from the idea of Remus thinking he was the traitor, doubting his loyalty. Remus thinking he was able of committing murder in retaliation though… It wasn't exactly flattering, but it was better than what Sirius thought.
"Did you ever think it wasn't worth it?" Sirius asked after a moment of silence. He fought the initial instinct to tell Remus it was fine. Because it wasn't. He had nothing else to say about it. He did not want to hear more excuses or reasons at that moment. He was scared there wouldn't be any.
He did hear him out later – this was not an issue that was resolved with one kitchen table conversation. Remus told him he felt defeated, trapped in his grief and trauma, too shaken to take action and too insecure to believe it would have made a difference. It's not something Sirius ever really understood about him, he would have done anything in his might to get Remus a trial if the roles were reversed, even if just to get closure. But Sirius wasn't the one suffering from discrimination his whole life – a pureblood heir to an ancient family, he was used to being taken seriously no matter what he had to say.
Even his own parents had to take his thoughts into consideration, especially as he grew older. With Regulus being terminally ill, Sirius was their only hope for the continuation of the family line, and even though his mother threatened to disown him on the regular, everyone knew that she'd never do it. Their expectations were like a sling on Sirius' neck his whole life, but he had enough power to blackmail them too.
When Regulus died, Sirius' parents returned to Grimmauld Place, their reason for staying out in the country gone. Sirius never had any intentions of following them – he was of age, he now had full rights to the family finances, and if the huge house by the seaside was suffocating, the stuffy townhouse in London would have snuffed him out completely. He stayed with the Lupin's then, which was hardly any difference to the time after their graduation – he spent most of his nights there anyway by then.
Remus sighed and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, clearly trying to choose his words wisely. "I think it was bigger than what we thought it would be, it was bigger than us," he said. "We were young and had no experience, and a war was breaking out. It made sense to fight for the right cause."
"Very well put, Professor," Sirius taunted and shook his head. "You know, I had a lot of time to think. And I don't know what it says about me, but I couldn't stop thinking we should have just gone to France like we wanted to."
It started out as a silly, childhood dream of theirs, like any other students wanting to travel the world. Sirius doesn't know when exactly the rolling fields and grass-covered meadows stopped feeling endless and started seeming boring and monotonous, or when the village turned from an unreachable centre of excitement into a handful of houses and a tiny marketplace with weekly vegetable stands, or when the sea became cold and unappealing instead of intriguing and full of unknown magic.
Maybe it was when one summer they came back from Hogwarts and their meeting spot, Sirius' mighty fortress he stopped fitting into by then, was gone – just a dust-covered spot with some left-over rubble in its place. Maybe it was when the papers started flashing with moving pictures of the Dark Mark floating above burned-down houses of witches and wizards, and more and more of their schoolmates got pulled out of Hogwarts. Maybe later, when Regulus started quickly deteriorating again after turning seventeen and refusing any more treatment, and the house Sirius grew up in didn't smell of medicine and the ozone-scent of Healing magic anymore and started smelling of death again.
"James wanted to fight," Remus mentioned, his voice gentle. "You couldn't leave him."
"Foolish." Sirius felt his face distort in a grimace. "You may be too scared to say it but I'm not. It wasn't worth it, Moony."
Remus sighed and his hand twitched as if he wanted to reach out for him but stopped himself just in time. "Maybe," he relented placatively. "But we didn't know that back then. And when the prophecy was spoken, it was already too late."
"We should have insisted on Dumbledore being the secret keeper," Sirius murmured guiltily. "None of this would have happened. Fucking Peter…"
"Why did you choose him?" Remus asked curiously, and what he was really asking was – why not me?
It's not like they didn't consider it. But Remus was always off on some mission for the Order, infiltrating werewolf packs around the country, fostering connections with other magical folks. Sirius remembers how he would come home, starved and hurt, and would lie in the tub until the water didn't even respond to heating charms anymore. And then Sirius would take him out, quiet and numb from all the things he had to witness, and wrap him up in every blanket he could find. Remus wouldn't talk, not until it was properly dark as if not being able to see Sirius' face would make it easier to confess to all the things he had to do. All Sirius wanted was to march right into Dumbledore's office and punch him in the face for what he dared to ask of Remus. Remus, who couldn't say no to him after he made it possible for him to get an education that would have otherwise been off the charts for a werewolf boy.
He didn't, in the end. But he knew he couldn't burden Remus with another deathly task.
"Because no one would have thought he'd be the secret keeper," Sirius said bitterly. "Lily wanted you, by the way, in case you didn't know."
"I didn't," Remus said quietly. "Not you?"
Sirius gave Remus a tired look. "Doubting me again, Moony?" It was unnecessarily cruel, but Sirius still felt like venom was seeping out of his pores when thinking of this whole story. "No. Not me. You know why?"
"I know."
"You know shit," Sirius said bitterly. "I'd rather die than see you with a target on your back like that."
Remus huffed humourlessly. "Funny you say that when I was the one thinking you were going to get abducted at any moment. Did you know I put tracking charms on you every day?"
Sirius nodded. "Yeah. They are itchy, you weren't that subtle."
There was a glint in Remus' eyes then. "I got better," he offered. "You wouldn't even notice anymore."
"Afraid I'd run off somewhere?" Sirius barked a laugh. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere as long as Harry needs me."
"I figured…"
Sirius remembers suddenly realizing that he somehow relaxed over the course of the conversation, falling unknowingly into an old habit of banter. Remus looked like a stranger, made choices Sirius would never truly understand, revealed things about himself Sirius didn't expect of him, yet he was still the same. The way he spoke, the sound of his voice, all the little mannerisms were still there. It was truly bizarre but for a moment Sirius didn't feel like any time has passed at all.
"Why didn't you take him?" Sirius asked, remembering watching Harry in his aunt's home, the way he was treated, how his eyes lit up when Sirius told him he could live with him now – a literal stranger he thought was a mass murderer just hours before. This is not how James would have wanted his child to grow up.
Remus looked away then, the reflection of the sun-lit window shining in his eyes. "He was safe with his aunt."
"Remus," Sirius urged, "why didn't you take him?"
"Dumbledore said he needed to stay with relatives."
Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Remus."
"I am nobody to him, not even a godfather, just an old friend of his parents. Why should I have taken him? Who would allow it?"
Sirius exhaled through his nose and fought the urge to lean over the table and grab Remus by the collar to shake him. "Remus."
"I am a werewolf, Sirius, with no money, no prospects, no experience in raising children. He would not have been safe with me."
"Remus!"
"Fine!" Remus snapped his head around and slammed both open palms on the table surface sharply, his eyes lighting up dangerously. Sirius' heart leapt up to his throat from the sudden outburst. "I couldn't bear it! Not after everything that happened!"
"Because," Sirius said gravely. " Because of everything that happened, Moony! You had to make sure he stayed with someone who loved him, and it definitely wasn't Petunia – you knew her!"
Remus let out a truly pitiful noise and slumped back in his chair, all steam gone in an instant. "You are so sure I would have loved him…" he whispered. "But I wasn't. I didn't think I had it in me anymore, Pads… James and Lily were dead, I thought Peter was a traitor and dead, you were in Azkaban… The war was suddenly over but the martial law was still on until the last Death Eaters were captured – it took years! They were like fucking cockroaches… I couldn't get a job; I had no idea how to function as an adult without fighting…"
Sirius nodded along patiently and then smiled sweetly. "What a total load of bullshit, Moony."
"Fuck you," Remus bit out, pointing a finger at him. "Look at you. So high above me with your whole holier-than-thou narrative. You weren't the only one suffering, Sirius."
And he wasn't, he supposed. But back then Sirius wasn't ready to hear that, and it took him an embarrassingly long time to understand that it wasn't about who had it worse but about compassion for someone who might be weaker than you when it came to biting down and doing what was right. That everything Remus went through might not have been an excuse but a reason , that it wasn't egoistical or careless by design. That someone saying, 'I can't do it' is not cowardly, that it's not the same as 'I don't want to do it'.
"Let me throw you a giant pity party," Sirius replied acerbically. "I can relate to everything you say, yet I was locked away, and you were free. I sat there, for years, wishing I was out there with you, with Harry, wishing I could see him growing up into a man James would be proud of. And you had all that, ready for you to take, yet you fucked off for twelve years before as much as simply talking to him."
Remus smiled cruelly. "Oh, and it hurt like a fucking bitch when I finally did, Sirius," he said with a chuckle. "I wouldn't have come back if I didn't know you broke out. Because I just knew – when I would look at him, the only thing I would see would be you in a fucking prison cell."
It wasn't necessarily new for Remus to show Sirius the ugly side of his mind, they did that a lot when they were younger. It's surprising how much you don't know about a person until they unravel all their secret thoughts and feelings before you. It's surprising to understand that you aren't the only one carrying stuff around that would never be acceptable to share with others.
Never had Sirius felt closer and more connected to Remus than when they talked about Sirius' struggle to comb through all the pureblood-supremacy his parents instilled in him, or Remus' secret anger against his father who was partly responsible for Greyback coming after him, or Sirius' conflicting feelings towards his younger brother, or Remus' fear of himself when the time came closer to the full moon.
Sirius just didn't think he still held that privilege to Remus' darkest secrets anymore.
"He's not to blame for everything that happened," Sirius said with a frown. "He is just a kid. He suffered just as much, if not more."
"Don't you think I know that?" Remus asked bitterly. "I'm not crazy, Sirius, of course, he's not to blame. But I couldn't be sure I wouldn't fuck him up more than Petunia ever could."
They sat in silence for a while. Sirius didn't know what to say to that. He thinks to this day that Remus should have tried. He still thinks he would have managed to do well with Harry if only he trusted himself more. But, in the end, Remus made up for all his mistakes tenfold, and from his perspective now, it doesn't make sense to blame him for the doubts he had as a twenty-two-year-old. Their son is now twenty and Merlin knows, he is still a giant child sometimes even if he likes to believe otherwise.
"Well, you'll just have to get over yourself, Moony," Sirius decided. "Because Dumbledore can go fuck himself for all I care. Harry is staying with us, and we will make up for the time we lost, whether he likes it or not."
Remus looked up at him then, speechless. "Us?" he finally asked. "We?"
"Oh." Sirius smiled a little wistfully. "Should I have asked at the start? Friend or lover?"
"I– Whatever you want, Pads," he said shakily. "Whatever you need. I didn't think you'd want to be either…"
"Shove off, Moony," Sirius said and rolled his eyes. "I'm really fucking angry with you. But I promised I won't ever leave you, remember? I keep my promises."
Remus smiled slowly. "Ah, yes, the Sexual Identity Crisis of '80."
One of many Sirius went through over the years. The first one in their fifth year – they have only been a real couple since the summer holidays, and Sirius was shitting his pants with the sudden realization that everything he pined after for years was suddenly coming true.
Then another one in sixth year, just after they have properly mended the rift in their relationship after the Snivellus incident, Sirius being frightened of causing Remus any more harm and blaming it on the fluidity of his sexuality. This was the longest period they were separated, not in friendship but in everything else, and Sirius did some pretty stupid things during that time he doesn't like to think back on.
Then just after they graduated and Regulus' quasi-suicide broke Sirius down completely, making him question the way he treated his brother all his life as someone who always came second to Remus, and then to James, and then to Peter. A truly mortifying realization that he was a literal monster who didn't deserve the love Remus threw his way unashamedly.
And then the last one over the summer of 1980 when James and Lily became parents and Sirius for the first time in his life understood that this was it. If they would survive this war, he would stay with Remus for the rest of his life. When you're twenty-one, the rest of your life sounds like a bloody eternity, and while he didn't think he'd be able to live without Remus anymore, he also didn't know whether he would be able to live with him until the end of time. That he would never again get the opportunity to find out who he really was on his own, to experiment, to consider other possibilities, scared him senseless.
Remus, bless his soul, was understanding in all of these instances. Over the rest of their life, the suspicion that he knew Sirius way better than Sirius knew himself solidified in his mind.
"You changed," Remus stated then, cocking his head.
"Did you expect me to stay the same after everything?" Sirius asked, and he felt bitter, but it just sounded sad.
He remembers the sudden wave of panic that overtook him at the idea that maybe Remus changed as well, that he wasn't someone who would accept Sirius back as effortlessly as he did before anymore. That Sirius was now too old, too damaged, too broken for him after all.
"Oh, no, I learned early on that if there are any expectations, Sirius Black will crush them," Remus said with a lopsided smile.
"Now, this just sounds like I'm a disappointment."
"I was thinking more of the time the Board of School Governors decided to ban the girls from wearing pants as part of the uniform," he corrected him.
"Misogynistic lot, all of them," Sirius grumbled but couldn't help a smile too.
It was in their fourth year, just after the Christmas holidays, and Sirius expected some kind of uproar from the student body. But while most girls weren't pleased with that development, nobody moved a single finger to protest against it. So, naturally, he had to do something.
"And then you wore a skirt for the remainder of term," Remus continued, his smile growing wider.
"Solidarity." Sirius nodded and held up a fist victoriously. "Also, I looked dashing in a skirt, don't you dare disagree."
"Quite the view," Remus mused. "I wasn't mad about it in the slightest."
"Of course, you weren't," Sirius said and laughed. "Earned me the first snog with that."
They smiled at each other then, and maybe there should have been an audible crack in the layer of ice between them, maybe it should have felt like someone blew away the dust on their relationship with one well-aimed breath, maybe it should have looked like a switch was flipped on again.
But Sirius has never been much about switches or illuminating lightbulbs or clarity in general, come to think of it. He just felt like seawater was running into his nose now, stinging with salt and making his eyes misty. Sea levels were rising and so was Sirius' love for Remus.
Sirius hears the door creak open and straightens back up, the milky liquid running down his face and evaporating without a trace before it could trickle under his collar.
"What– Ah." Remus cocks his head, and his lips twitch a little, one hand still on the doorknob to Sirius' study. "Back at it again, old man?"
"Who are you calling old, Moony?" Sirius asks clutching his heart theatrically and grinning. "And I don't know what you mean."
Remus takes a look around the room – the bookshelves in total disarray, multiple photo albums piling open on the floor next to them, the chaos of pictures, papers and overturned vials on Sirius' desk.
"I should have never gotten you that Pensieve," he murmurs. "That shit was expensive and is now eating away all of your, scarce might I add, free time?"
What Remus forgot to mention was that Pensieves were not only expensive but also extremely rare and in case you didn't inherit it from someone, ordering such an intricate artefact was not an easy task. The waiting lists were full, it would take years to finally get one. Which means Remus must've planned this way far in advance to have it finished until Sirius' sixtieth birthday.
"Jealous of your own present?" Sirius asks and walks over to him slowly. Remus watches his approach with mild amusement. "Would it placate you if I said I was watching memories of us together?"
"I don't know," Remus muses and smiles when Sirius smooths his palms over his chest and shoulders. "Depends on what kind of memories you were watching"
Sirius laughs and shakes his head. "Not that kind of memories, you dirty dog. Or was that what you intended for me to do all along because if you want, we can–"
Remus rolls his eyes and huffs. " Anyway. I just wanted to tell you that Ian sent a letter. He's coming home on the fourteenth."
"Oh." Sirius smiles, a little surprised. "All done in Kairo?"
"I don't know, his letter is five pages long." He holds up his other hand with a wad of paper, covered from top to bottom with Adrian's squiggly handwriting. "Something about this guy from Bolivia who beat him to the treasure again, I only skimmed it. Your son is a blabbermouth, just like his father."
Sirius grins and flicks some invisible dust from Remus' shirt. "You mean your son. Who's the writer here? He got the hang for endless narrative from you."
Remus scoffs, affronted, but Sirius is not fooled by that – he can see the proud glint in his eyes. No matter how Black the blood running in their son's veins is, he's much more like Remus than anyone would think
"Does Harry know already?" Sirius asks. "He'll lose his marbles."
It was an interesting dynamic that developed between him and Adrian – with Harry being eighteen after the war was over and they decided to try their luck with another child, he became something between a brother and a third parent to the boy. They have been a little apprehensive of breaching this topic with Harry in the first place, unsure of how he'd react but he has been nothing short of supportive throughout the whole thing. And, to everyone's amusement, he adored Adrian in an almost overbearing sort of way, which did not cease when he grew up.
"I assume he'll get the same novel as we did," Remus says. "Maybe even longer, who knows. He's the only one reading them fully anyway."
"Speak for yourself, father of the year," Sirius mocks. "I read and catalogue every single one of them. It's cute."
"It's blackmail," Remus corrects him knowingly. "I can see you whipping up a best-of on his wedding one day. Or embarrassing him in front of his own kids with the letters he sent from Hogwarts."
"And you'd be against that?"
"Of course," Remus says with a smirk. "I do not condone such treachery! Because I am, as you correctly pointed out, father of the millennium–"
"Year."
"…and am here to support and treasure my child."
"Right," Sirius says and narrows his eyes playfully. "Prove it. Read this letter then."
Remus sighs and slaps the letter on Sirius' chest before turning around and walking off. "Never mind. Make sure to include the paragraph about the dream he had of Flitwick in panties into your wedding speech draft."
Sirius smiles and shakes his head, thumbing through the slightly crumpled pages of the letter. "He does read them all. What a loser."
"I can hear you!" Remus' muffled voice sounds from downstairs.
"Love you!" Sirius shouts down the hall. He thinks he hears a muttered 'fuck you' but maybe it's just his imagination. Someone who calls himself 'father of the millennium' surely wouldn't use such language, after all.
