July 1

Sirius woke up this morning completely coherent and also ravenously hungry. I awakened to his mouth right next to my ear.

"Remus," he whispered loudly. I jumped about a foot in the air.

"Good God, Sirius, what are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?"

"Sorry, but I've been saying your name for the last five minutes and you weren't moving."

I looked up at him. "Wait a minute, you shouldn't be walking around on that foot!"

"I did a spell on it this morning with your wand. It's healed now." He put his foot up on the arm of the couch and sure enough, all that remained was a faint scar. I nodded, impressed.

"Hate to be bothering you," he said, "but I haven't eaten in three days and – "

"You're not bothering me!" I said. "Come on, let's go get you breakfast."

Inside the kitchen, he looked around in the refrigerator. "Have you got any sausages?"

"No, I'm a vegetarian."

"Since when?!" he asked, looking very surprised.

"Since the Wolfsbane Potion was invented four years ago. It decreases my desire for meat."

The Wolfsbane Potion was one of the biggest miracles in my life. With it, I felt like I could actually lead a normal existence. Along with meat, I gave up alcohol (except butterbeer, one of my weaknesses), cutting myself, and sex with people I didn't love. Seeing as the only one I ever really loved was Sirius, that meant I gave up sex entirely. The potion made me feel like a full human being for the first time since I was three years old.

"I'm surprised," he said. "I remember that time you ate the five rare steaks in a row."

"You remember that?"

"Yeah, does that amaze you?"

"Well, it happened when we were fourteen."

"I remember everything about us, Remus."

A feeling of dread stole over my stomach.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice full of concern. "You look really pale."

"No, I'm fine. Hey, you want any scrambled eggs with blueberry jam?"

A small, content smile came over his face. "You remembered," he said softly. "I haven't eaten that since we were about eighteen. You remembered."

"You used to have the house-elfs make it for you…"

"…and then they were thrilled because of the extra work…"

"…but the rest of us thought it was the most disgusting thing ever…"

"…James used to make vomiting noises…"

"…and Lily would…" But I stopped.

He reached over and took my hand. His other hand lifted up my chin and made me look him in the eye. My breath was shaky and shallow, my heart was pounding like mad. "It's all right," he said. "We don't have to talk about them if it'll make you upset, Remus."

I opened my mouth and before I could think, out came, "Sirius, what was it you wanted to tell me?"

He stood up. "Come on," he said, the hand that still held mine helping me up. "Let's go into the living room."

I felt like I was drifting through a dream. Everything began to seem unreal…the carpet, which I've had for five years, suddenly looked strange to me, and the lights seemed overly bright. He was still holding my hand. We sat down together on the couch.

"Remus," he said softly, gazing directly into my eyes, "I have never stopped loving you. I've been attracted to you since the day I met you and I've loved you since we were fifteen and it hasn't stopped. It isn't going to stop. I don't want it to stop. You were one of the things that kept me sane in Azkaban, I thought about you every day. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I want to be your lover and I never want to leave you. If you don't feel the same way, then, well, there isn't anything I can do about it, and I'll still want to be your friend, but please know that I'm always going to love you regardless of how you feel about me. I know that a lot of horrible things have happened to both of us and that we aren't the same people we once were, and I'm not asking that you try and change. Remus, could we…could we pick up where we left off with each other and give it another try? I came so close to losing you forever."

I didn't speak for at least ten seconds digesting his words, not quite able to believe that this was really happening. Then I said, "It's going to be hard."

"I know."

"Sirius…I don't feel like I really know you anymore. That night in the Shrieking Shack, the night when I found out you were innocent…I hardly recognized you. You were so bitter, so angry, and obviously you have every right to be, but I could barely tell you were the same person. The only reason I believed it was really you was because of your voice. The voice of a boy I loved. A boy I still love. But you aren't that boy anymore."

"Part of me is," he whispered. "I'm not asking you to devote yourself to me right away. I'm asking you to give me a chance…a chance to show you the person I am now. And that's much more than vindictive and enraged. Give me a chance to show you the man who loves you. The man under this." He traced the lines of his skeletal face.

"S-Sirius," I whispered, my voice shaky and barely audible, "all sorts of terrible things have happened to me."

His arms slid around me and held me tight. His head rested on my shoulder, and I realized he was crying. I was too.

"Sirius, I-I've slept with a lot of people. I used to drink so much that I was almost an alcoholic. I'm messed up, Sirius, and…" But then I was sobbing, gasping, horrible wretched noises escaping my mouth.

"I love you anyway," he murmured, holding me as tight as he could. "I love you no matter what you've done. Remember the night in our sixth year I saved your life?"

I nodded, still crying and feeling horribly embarrassed about it.

"We're bonded for life, Moony. That's a powerful thing. Whether we're lovers or not, there is always going to be that connection between us."

I nodded. He pulled away from me a little and began to dry my face with the sleeve of his robe. I closed my eyes, unable to look at him.

"You don't have to be ashamed," he whispered. I opened my eyes and held him close again.

"I love you, Sirius," I said. "I want to give you another chance."

He pulled away from me and the next thing I knew we were kissing, his hand on my shoulder and my tongue in his mouth. We both had terrible morning breath but I didn't care, because this was what I had wanted for longer than I could remember. He was both gentle and passionate, his mouth sucking on my tongue and allowing it to explore the depths of his throat. One hand slid around to my backside and gripped.

I pulled away slowly, letting him know that I wasn't upset. "Sirius?"

"What is it?"

"You're going to have to go slowly with me. I haven't had sex in years. This is going to take some getting used to."

"I've never slept with anyone."

I looked up startled. "You've never – "

"No. I'm a virgin."

"Oh, come on," I started to say, but then I looked into his eyes and realized he was telling the truth.

"It's not that I didn't have my options," he said, " but it was never right. For one thing, everyone who wanted to sleep with me was female."

"You're gay, then?"

He rolled his eyes. "Remus, I just finished telling you how much I love you. What do you think?"

"Well, you could be bisexual."

"You're right, I could. But I'm not."

"I'm not either."

"I know."

And then we kissed again, longer and more passionately. We could still be doing it, except that Sirius's stomach started rumbling. "Come on," he said, grinning, "let's go get breakfast."

~~*~~

After breakfast, I had to go into work. The Tellery Magical Library is not my ideal place of employment, but it could be much worse. My main problem is that I want to stop sorting books and start reading them.

"Remus, are you all right?" asked Calliope Ecritus, the head librarian, after the sixth time I was caught staring off into space.

"Fine, Calliope, fine."

"You seem a little distracted."

"I'm all right."

"Your sleeve is dragging in your inkwell."

"Oh, so it is. Thanks very much."

The staff there regards me as quite strange but relatively harmless. They still don't know that I'm a werewolf. Every month I call in sick the morning before I transform and tell them some new disease that I'm suffering from. So far I've had influenza, German measles, mumps, a migraine, pneumonia, a sore throat, pink eye, and a mild case of mononucleosis…and those are only the ones I can remember. I almost told them I had malaria once, but then I remembered you can only get it in the tropics.

When I arrived home for supper, Sirius had made me stir-fried vegetables. I smiled as I sat down next to him.

"I've been quite busy all day," he said, smiling. "Notice anything different about my mouth?" He smiled wider.

"Your teeth are white again!"

"Yeah, they were getting pretty disgusting. That's what happens when you eat rats."

I shuddered. "How did you manage to do it?"

"I imagined that every single one was Peter."

Surprising even myself, I laughed. "Come on," he said, "eat fast. I want to show you the biggest surprise. It's in your bedroom."

"Our bedroom," I said, taking his hand.

"I thought that you weren't ready for sex yet."

"I'm not. But you can still share my bed until I am."

"I'd love that," he said solemnly. Then his mood changed. "Come on, eat up!"

Inside my – sorry, our – room, he led me to the wardrobe and thew it open. I gasped in delight.

All of my old and patched robes were gone, replaced by new, thick, beautiful ones in burgundy and emerald and navy blue.

"Sirius…how did you…"

"Oh, they're still the old ones," he said. "They're Transfigured. The spell is fairly obsolete…I found it in some book you had upstairs."

I threw my arms around him and kissed him. "I like this goatee," he said, when I had pulled away. "The way it tickles is very sexy."

That night, when we got into bed, I realized that I was happier than I'd been in a long time. "Is this really happening?" I whispered.

He kissed me. "Yes."

And then he curled up next to me and we fell asleep.