Notes: Herein be the slashiness. Mind the fluff.

Disclaimer: all herein belongs to JK Rowling. I am making no money; I am only having fun.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

Chapter Four

Fellow Feeling

Sunlight shone down on me, sweeping one way and then another across my face as the trees above my head swayed in the morning breeze. I blinked up at them in puzzlement. Trees? I was lying sprawled on the ground, amidst dirt and grass and leaf mold. I turned my head sideways a bit, and could see my motorcycle too.

Ah. Of course. The previous night I'd flown off – flown all night – and at last, very tired, landed among a copse of trees, immediately falling asleep. So here I was, and I was definitely not going back, to my damn false friends.

I sat up.

And gave a quickly stifled yell of surprise. "Remus!"

For there Remus Lupin was, sitting comfortably on the ground a few feet away from me, with his cloak spread out under him and a look of mild interest on his face. "Hello," he said evenly.

"How the hell did you find me?" I said, sounding rougher than I'd intended to cut through the unexpected warmth and relief I'd felt upon seeing him.

"I tracked you," Remus said, smiling wryly, gesturing to the wand lying beside him and the broom slightly further back, in the grass.

"What about the others?" I found myself saying bitterly. Could I control anything that came out of my mouth? "Did they try to track me, or were they too afraid I'd be mad and unreasonable?"

Remus raised his eyebrows. "Well, if you want them to think that, you're certainly doing a good job of it."

I took a deep breath, doing my best to calm down. "Well?"

"Of course they went looking for you," Remus said gently. "Mr. Potter saw you leave, and we all heard you go off on your motorcycle, so we knew the general direction. I just happened to find you first." He paused, tracing a pattern in the leaves with a finger. "And whatever you heard, last night …"

"If you're going to say James didn't mean a word of it, you're going to have to make a really good job of explaining it," I said shortly.

Remus sighed, sounding almost impatient. "He's worried, Sirius. He's not accusing you of being a psychopath, for goodness sakes. He was asking for his mother's medical advice, if nothing else." Remus abandoned the leaves and looked up at me again, very gravely. "From what he's told us, we haven't really got any counter-proof you haven't gone mad."

"You – what –" I sputtered, enraged. "How could you – Moony –"

He simply looked at me evenly, and waited for my righteous stammering to die out.  "Perhaps it would be best," he said finally, "if you'd make the entire story clear."

I squeezed my eyes shut with remembered pain. "I'd rather not."

"Look," he said softly, and laid a hand on my knee. I opened my eyes and unwillingly looked back up at him. "I know this is hard. I know. But sometimes things are easier if you share them with someone else."

For a moment I simply looked at him, and he looked back at me, a very strange sort of understanding in his eyes. My heart began pounding very fast, from fear of what I was going to say and from something else entirely. My knee was very, very warm where Remus' hand rested upon it. I took a deep, shuddering breath, licked my lips, and began, "When I got home, my mother was upset with me …"

It was sometime later when I finished telling him. The telling had been as difficult as I had feared, going in fits and starts at the more painful parts. The only time I'd been able to really speak rationally was when I was explaining what I'd heard of the Dark Lord, which was somehow a darker and more remote terror then the rest of the story. The only thing really keeping me going was Remus, who kept his hand on my knee and his eyes on my face all through the telling.

Now that I had finished, I felt both very drained and strangely light.

The both of us were silent for a minute, simply looking at each other.

"I used to think," Remus said thoughtfully, breaking the silence, "that no one would ever be able to understand what I went through. That no one else had to deal with inner demons, and no one else ever got physically ripped apart, and knew that it was, at least in part, their own fault." He shook his head thoughtfully. "Oh, I knew there were other werewolves, but it's not likely I'll ever really meet any, unless I run into one at the Registry." Remus smiled ruefully. "This is incredibly selfish of me, but in a way I'm almost glad this happened. Because I think we understand each other better for it."

I nodded slowly, not quite trusting myself to speak.

"Your parents," Remus continued thoughtfully, "do you really think they're evil?"

"Yeh –" I started to say, and stopped. "My mother's crazy, Remus. I don't think anyone can be really evil without being mad, but they can probably be mad without being evil."

The corner of Remus's mouth quirked up in a wry smile. "So you're saying your mum is a poor misguided soul?"

That actually drew a chuckle out of me. "Of course." I sobered. "Regulus is. Misguided, I mean. He's only fifteen."

"And you're only just seventeen," Remus reminded me gently.

With a jolt of shock, I realized this was true. I'd turned seventeen, mid-July, without even noticing. I now remembered having come back from a day's work on my motorcycle to a dinner with the Potters', where they served cake and ice cream for dessert, and James asked me enthusiastically how the bike was coming, and finally deflated when I only wandered off to my room.

"I've been a bit of an idiot," I observed.

"With a fine excuse," Remus pointed out. "James understands, Sirius. He's not going to be angry with you because you've had one of the worst summers I can possibly imagine anyone having."

Nodding, I sighed shakily. "I suppose. But …" This was still bothering me, the last bit of weight still lodged in my chest from my horrible few days at the beginning of summer with my family. "Remus, I didn't … I didn't really expect my family to be capable of Unforgivables. I thought they were mostly talk."

"I'm not too surprised," Remus said mildly. "From what you've said, your father is impulsive. It may have only been the first thing he could think of to 'teach you a lesson', as he put it. At least, afterwards he justified it like that. I doubt he'll be doing it again any time soon, though."

I half-wished that Remus couldn't be so analytical, but I was also grateful that someone could step back and take an impersonal view of the whole thing. Looking at my friend, sitting there on his cloak and regarding me with a sort of calm empathy, I suddenly felt like crying again. I hadn't done a whole lot to deserve such a wonderful friend, had I?

"One thing's certain," I said fiercely, half to distract myself from the tears pricking the back of my eyes. "I will never, ever, no matter what happens, ever use an Unforgivable Curse. Ever." It suddenly seemed very important that this be the absolute truth, that there would never be the question, in either Remus's or my own mind, that I could possibly be like my family. "I swear. Never, never."

Remus nodded. "I believe you."

I swallowed. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said, smiling. "Anyway," in a brisker voice, "are you willing to go back now? The others will find us soon anyway, and it'll be better if we meet them midair." He got to his feet and held out a hand to me.

I grabbed his hand almost desperately, and he pulled me up and to him, so that we were standing there pressed up against each other. My heartbeat quickened involuntarily. "No," I found myself saying. "No, I don't want to go yet. It's – it's too nice here. I want to stay for a bit."

Remus nodded. We were silent a minute more, listening to the forest sounds around us, wind rustling the trees, insects humming, birds chirping; and it was a companionable silence we shared, reminiscent of other silences Padfoot and Moony had shared of a moonlit night. I realized we were still clasping hands.

"Remus?" I muttered.

 "Yes?"

"I …" I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say. Thank you? But that didn't seem enough. Hardly enough. Never enough, for having gotten me to bleed the poison of my memories, for having been there, a quiet steady support like leaning against the warm fur of his beautiful other form, for having been so damn wonderful.

I love you, I wanted to tell him. Told him, over and over, silently and fervently, as I tried to think of what to say aloud.

Actually, what I really wanted to say was kiss me.

Hang on, check the thought. I prodded it with my mind, one more thing as upside-down and mad and out of place as the rest of the things that had happened to me this summer.

Since when did I want Remus Lupin to kiss me?

Well, since right now, at any rate. Since all this last year, really, if I was going to be honest with myself. The strange thing about Remus that had been niggling my mind, and I hadn't quite noticed because I'd been too busy keeping up the party in my head, doing all those mad dumb things for the sake of the intoxicating defiance that had made me run away from home. And here I was, standing on the mossy ground of a small woods, with the one person I'd been able to tell about it and had actually, by some twist of fate, understood it, and I wanted to kiss him.

Hell.

"Yes?" Remus prompted softly.

"I …" I said again with great eloquence, and without quite telling myself to, leaned forward so that my face was only inches from Remus's. His eyes widened, and I could feel his breath against my face quicken. "Please …" I whispered.

With a little choked-off laugh, Remus leaned forward those last few inches.

It was a pitiful kiss, really. We broke it off, eyed each other, and began giggling a bit nervously. Remus calmed down first, and said hesitantly, "Sirius … what on earth are we doing, really?"

"Er, trying to kiss, I think."

Remus cleared his throat. "Want to try again?"

So we did. This time we had each other's unspoken permission. I tilted my head a bit sideways, and Remus leaned a bit further, and then we were really kissing. Without thinking about it my hands went out and clutched Remus's shoulders, then slid around to his back, pulling him closer. I felt Remus's own hands in my hair, tangling in it. As we meshed together, I heard myself making a funny little noise, like I desperately needed air, only it wasn't air I needed, it was Remus.

And then I did need air, and pulled back a bit to breathe, and glance at Remus to make sure this really was all right. What I saw reassured me greatly – he was flushed and looked overjoyed and somewhat uneasy, and I was fairly sure my face looked much the same.

"Sirius …" he said hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

He was still looking nervous. Even though I knew I looked the same way, it was a bit surprising; I can't think of many times when I've seen Remus be anything other than calm and collected. "I …" he said. "Er, this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous … I've never kissed anyone before, and I was wondering if I managed all right."

I laughed. I'd been laughing a lot this summer, but it was always desperate laughter, because there wasn't anything else I could do. This was different; this was because I was delighted, and because what Remus had just said seemed like the silliest thing ever, because I knew firsthand he could kiss very well, and because Remus's mouth quirked upwards and he began laughing too, and because we were standing there with our arms still wrapped around each other, now clutching each other for support as we grew weak with giddy laughter.

After a while we calmed down, and in between chuckles I said, "Mr. Moony's observation that he is being ridiculous is wholly agreed with. Furthermore, his concerns that his kissing is anything other than very good indeed are completely unfounded."

Remus grinned. "Mr. Moony requests that Mr. Padfoot prove it."

So I spent the next five minutes or so proving that Remus Lupin was in fact very good at kissing.

Eventually Remus tightened his arms around my waist in a quick hug and pulled away. "We should really get back to James's house," he said regretfully.

"Yeah." I remembered why I'd wanted to kiss Remus in the first place, why I'd just spent the last five minutes having the most fun I'd had in a very long time, and before I could think better of it I told him, "I love you."

Remus just looked at me for a moment. "Yes, I know," he said quietly.

I grinned embarrassedly and wandered over to my motorcycle. Remus followed me and ended up standing on the other side of the bike, running a hand over the chrome.

"It's a wonderful bike," he said. "James mentioned that you'd done a lot of charms on it. Did you fly it here?"

"Yeah."

Remus smiled slightly, still looking at the motorcycle, not looking up or meeting my eyes. "He was going to buy it himself. He thought it might cheer you up, after I mentioned –" Remus stopped, shook his head slightly, and finished feebly, "So we all pooled our money together, and James bought it."

"You thought of it, didn't you?" I said. I knew he wouldn't say, that he'd give James as much credit as he felt our friend deserved, but I'd caught what Remus had started to say and cut off. "You remembered what I said, when I mentioned I wanted one, on the train." I grinned at Remus's hair; his head was still bowed as he inspected the motorcycle. "You're brilliant. It kept me sane this summer, you know."

Remus finally looked up, eyes dancing. It seemed that he'd been looking down to cover laughter. "I know," he said softly, in a voice infused with mirth. "I love you too."

Wonderful warmth bloomed somewhere in my chest, and I found myself giving Remus the same sort of absolutely loopy smile he was giving me. "Come on," I said, climbing onto the motorcycle. "Get on behind me. We'll fly back." At his uncertain look, I added, "Got Invisibility Boosters on the thing. It's all covered. It's as safe as you're ever going to be around me."

"How reassuring," Remus retorted, and climbed on behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. As we took off his grip tightened, and a chill morning wind rushed into our faces.

Regardless of the icy wind, I felt impossibly warm the whole ride back to James's house.