Chapter Five: Je Connais Un Homme
What happens: This chapter is about change, realizations, revelations -- and all that good stuff. Sirius, in other words, wakes up a little.
Main Characters: Remus J. Lupin, Sirius Black
Subsidiary Characters: James Potter, Lilly Evans, Peter Pettigrew; Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy; Professor Voldemort, Professor McGonagall; Etienne Ibert
Couples You Will Find In This Fic (Whether You Like It Or Not): Sirius Black/Remus Lupin; James Potter/Lilly Evans; Severus wanting Remus's body; a hint or two of Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape; other relationships of both a homosexual and heterosexual nature
Dedication: This fic is dedicated to Lins, who continually rekindles my joy of SiriusxRemus whenever I am losing it.
This is: chapter four of a work in progress. Like all my works in progress, it is possible that you will be waiting a very long time between installments, or they could come out daily in a psychotic and rather frightening fashion. Do Not Worry! Just take it as it comes, and feel free to send me demanding fan mail (all demanding fan mail should be sent to IremusJLupin@aol.com) if you feel you've been waiting an egregiously long time. Demanding fan mail is annoying sometimes, but on the whole it makes me feel incredibly cool. And that's what it's all about, right? Oh yes. And I am also constantly updating chapters that have already been uploaded, whenever I find a hideous spelling error or a problem with grammar. So check back often.
C&C: is demanded. Or, you know, desperately longed for, in a rather pathetic sense. Just gimme some of that good ol' fashioned R&R, and let me know you actually do want to see more of my work.
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Chapter Five: Je Connais Un Homme
It was just as it should be. Warm and tight, the scents familiar, a grasp in which he felt protected, not smothered or threatened. His eyes closed and the two of them reveled in that natural closeness. It felt right, as if Remus was returning home after a long and tiring journey. They may not have known why it felt so good, so right, but they didn't need to, to revel in it. Remus felt fingers in his hair and an arm around his waist, a body taller than the one he remembered, but fundamentally the same, crushed against his own. It was what he had been missing the whole summer, returned to him at last.
"Well," he said softly, voice muffled against Sirius's neck, "I missed you, too."
"Shut up, Remus," Sirius's voice said, breath hot against his temple.
"All right," Remus complied agreeably, eyes squeezing shut. The little vial of Moonshine he'd given to Sirius a year before was pressed between their chests, digging lightly into Remus's ribcage. A tiny thrill ran through him, to know Sirius was still wearing it.
Sirius held Remus like that for a while, then tightened his arms suddenly before letting him go. Looking flushed and breathless, he ran his fingers through his black hair, which had gotten longer, Remus noticed, since last he'd seen it. They studied each other, taking in differences in appearance and noting with relieved fondness all the things that had not changed. Sirius, as Remus had previously noted, had grown taller by at least an inch and maybe even two, and his hair had grown, silky blue-black, down below his shoulders. His face had changed, was sun browned and older, but his smile and the glint in his dark blue eyes were the same as they'd always been. It was doubtful whether or not that aspect of Sirius Black would ever change.
Remus, Sirius saw, had not grown, or at least not noticeably, and, as over the last summer, he had lost some of the weight eating at Hogwarts had put on him. His hair had gotten a little longer, and hung in uncombed glory around his unchanged face. On his neck, almost completely hidden by the collar of his t-shirt and his messy golden-brown hair, was the dark, bruised rosiness of a deep cut in that pale skin. Sirius felt himself frowning as he leaned forward, brushing Remus's hair back to reveal that surprising and unsettling marring of Remus's flesh. Remus's eyes widened in understanding, and then lowered, his whole body tensing in a wince.
"You're-- you're hurt," Sirius said, unsure whether he should be angry or miserable.
"Yes," Remus murmured, shadows hiding his eyes.
"What happened?" Sirius was trying his best not to sound accusatory, trying to stay calm. But the thought of anyone doing this to his friend was making his blood boil uncontrollably.
"It's nothing," Remus said quickly, soft but firm.
"It's not nothing," Sirius protested, pulling his hand back. The volatile Black nature was impossible to control for too long.
"Please, Sirius." Remus lifted his eyes suddenly to Sirius's face, and the anger seeped out of the taller boy, leaving him with a weak, terrible helplessness, and no words in his mouth. "It was an accident-- I was helping papa move a bookshelf, and one of the shelves fell. I was lucky it wasn't as bad as it could have been."
"Remus" Their eyes met, blue on brown. Sirius sighed. "did it hurt too much?"
"No," Remus murmured, relaxing in sheer relief, "not that much."
"Sorry," Sirius whispered, reaching out to tuck Remus's hair back so that it still hid the cut. Both of them knew he wasn't apologizing for how much it hurt. Remus nodded, lifting up a hand of his own so that their fingers brushed together.
"Oh, bloody--" said another voice to their right, and both of them whirled around to find themselves face to face with James Potter. "The party's started without me. Some people have absolutely no manners." Sirius and Remus let go of each other's hands instinctively, and Peter stood from his awkward and slightly wistful spot as an observer.
"Some people shouldn't get their arses to social gatherings so late," Sirius returned, grinning carelessly once more. Remus stepped to the side to stand next to Peter, flashing him an apologetic and helpless half-smile. Peter ducked his head down. People couldn't help it if they liked him less, cared about him less, than they did other people.
"Some people simply can't help it if they get their arses caught in traffic," James protested, pretending still to be offended.
"Some people spend a lot of time excusing their sorry arses rather than trying to make them less sorry," piped up a new voice, Lilly's, deeper than it had been the year before, more mature and with a melodiousness about it there hadn't been before. She certainly wasn't Ellen Abott, but she was getting there, pale red brown hair framing her changed face and accentuating her emerald green eyes, which were fringed with pleasantly long lashes. Nothing spectacular, but certainly, she was changed. James and Sirius both fell silent, and Peter froze where he was, even forgetting to breathe.
"Hello, Lilly," Remus said, that half smile tugging at his lips. He was apparently the only boy there who hadn't been struck speechless.
"Well - at least someone hasn't forgotten his manners," Lilly grinned, trotting forward to embrace Remus in a light hug. Both James and Sirius bristled, but for different reasons. "Have a nice summer, Remus?"
"Mm. I did. How was yours?" Remus pulled back, noting silently that even Lilly was at least a half-inch taller than he.
"It was all right." Lilly shrugged a bit, flashing another smile that left James feeling pathetically weak-kneed. It took a while for him to regain his voice. "My sister drives me mad, but I've learned to live with it."
"You look different," James squeaked, "really good different."
"Thank you," Lilly said brusquely, "we should get on the train." James's stomach did a flip-flop.
"Right," he said and, in a moment of unforeseen and unexpected chivalry, took up Lilly's suitcase as well as his own. A look of surprise mixed with triumph and pleasure played over Lilly's face as she trotted along behind him, Peter following her in silent awe. Remus and Sirius turned to each other, Remus's eyes sparkling, Sirius bemused.
"People do crazy things," Sirius said, shaking his head mock-mournfully.
"Yes," Remus added wryly, "when they're so obviously in love."
"Yeah," Sirius said, grinning. "C'mon." Before Remus could pick up his things, Sirius had done so for him, moving after the other three with both their bags in his hands. The sun got caught up in that long, dark hair and made it shine blue black. From behind, Remus could see the way a few locks were captured, dancing with the breeze. On Sirius, torn jeans and an old black t-shirt were worn like a fairytale prince's robes were.
"And the prince stood in the center of the forest, the sunlight on his hair. His eyes were dark and they heard the wolf-calls on the air. He longed to get down on all fours in the dirt and run as swift as the wind. All around him were the trees, but still he wanted only to be king." Dalila Lupin sang to her son a story, combing his hair with her delicate fingers.
Remus quickly shook his head to clear it and hurried to catch up with Sirius, the sunlight warming the shivering air.
Snippets of conversations mingled with the clacking of the train speeding down the tracks as Remus walked through the cars with Sirius by his side, trying to make the bar of chocolate Sirius had bought him last.
"--went to France for a week, saw the most amazing"
"--and you'd never believe what he said, it was"
"--father told me that next year we'd all be going to"
"--all right, but you can't tell a single soul"
He and Sirius were silent because it was always best when they didn't speak at all, and just basked in the glow of their silence and the pleasantness they felt when they were together. Remus broke off another small piece of chocolate and placed it between his lips, the sweetness lingering, spreading out over his tongue. Beside him was Sirius, and they were very close in the narrowness of the corridor, shoulders, elbows and wrists brushing together.
Their steps were equally paced.
Remus wouldn't have been surprised if they were breathing together, with the same rhythm.
"S'nice," Sirius murmured absently, "to be alone for a little while."
"Mm," Remus agreed, nodding faintly in agreement. He felt merely comfortable with James, Lilly and Peter around. With just Sirius, he felt home. The two feelings were dissimilar, he'd mused, perhaps very slightly, but in the end it made all the difference.
"We won't get to Hogwarts for a while," Sirius thought out loud, eyes roving so they would not inevitably fix upon Remus beside him, and end up staring.
"No," Remus confirmed, "not for at least another half hour." Sirius lifted his arms above his head, stretching with a little yawn. From the corner of his eye, Remus watched him, glad for his messy hair, which obscured his face in shadow.
"Hey - can't see you, like that," Sirius said after another few minutes of silence passed between them. He turned, and Remus stopped short as Sirius lifted his hand for the second time to brush those golden bangs from those deep brown eyes. Sirius's fingertips brushed over Remus's cheek and against his temple, over the back of his ear. Both of them stopped breathing for a moment, so acutely in tune with each other's internal rhythms.
"Thank you," Remus said, so softly Sirius had to strain to hear it.
"Just-wanna see you, that's all," Sirius replied, looking away, his hand still on Remus's face, cupping his cheek gently.
"Oh," Remus said, immediately feeling stupid for having nothing better to say.
"Haven't seen you-for a while." Sirius ducked his head down, though his eyes were still on Remus's face.
"no," Remus managed, feeling stupider still.
"Don't like-don't like seeing you hurt," Sirius continued, running his fingers down the side of Remus's cheek, towards the tear in his flesh, just begging to heal, on his neck.
"It isn't anything important," Remus murmured, blinking slowly. They'd stopped walking and the minutes were either flying by or not passing at all. Time was confused, obviously, and just as bewildered as Remus himself was.
"It is," Sirius said, "must've hurt."
"Not really." Sirius rifled his fingers through Remus's hair, tucking it again behind his ear.
"Must've," he insisted.
"I'm used to it," Remus said quietly. "I'm-I'm clumsy, a lot of the time."
"Should be more careful with yourself," Sirius said, his voice low and insistent, though he wasn't trying to push, and it came off as more a pleading tone than a demanding one.
"I try," Remus said. Again, those fingers combing through his hair, fingertips against his scalp. Sirius was touching him. It was pleasant, to say the least, and while part of Remus adored the attention, part of him was desperate for it to stop. It was giving him too many ideas, and too many feelings, enough to overwhelm him.
"Not hard enough," Sirius chided, without any vehemence.
"Oh," Remus said again. Words were becoming ungraspable, confused in his mind, and every time he reached out to a sentence it floated away from his fingers.
"Try harder," Sirius said softly.
"All right," Remus promised.
"How touching," a familiar voice said beside them, dark and mocking. Remus was shocked out of the world of Sirius's touch, and Sirius pulled back, a scowl replacing the fond, serious smile on his face.
"Lucius," Sirius muttered darkly, fists clenching involuntarily at his sides as he placed himself between Remus and the blond boy.
"Black," Lucius murmured, sniffing the air in displeasure.
"Decide to get an early start on getting your ass kicked, this year?" The tension and the disgust that was evidently threaded through Sirius's muscles could be felt rippling in the air. Had Remus been in wolf form, he would have whimpered.
"No - in truth, I thought I smelled something terrible, and I came to see if the mudbloods had gotten on the train yet." Lucius could look down at anyone -- even on Sirius, who was an inch taller than he.
"Lucius, you've been sitting in your own stench for so long it's a wonder you can smell anything," Sirius hissed, fists tightening. Remus reached out a hand, touching his shoulder lightly.
"Don't," he said, but neither Sirius nor Lucius heard him. From behind Lucius, Severus shrugged lightly, almost apologetic, and Remus bowed his head in defeat. There was no stopping Lucius and Sirius, once they got started. Both Severus and Remus knew enough to stand clear and let the flames flare up, and then flicker out.
"Black, one of these days--" Sirius cut Lucius off quickly, drawing himself up to his full height, looking quite impressive and almost terrifying.
"One of these days you're gonna fight for yourself, and I just may die of shock," Sirius said. "C'mon, Remus. He doesn't have his hired help with him -- he's just blowing it out of his ass." Lucius's face turned a light shade of red, and his eyes grew dark with rage.
"Sirius Black--"
"Right, right, you know my name," Sirius drawled lazily, taking Remus's hand in his own as he turned his back to the two Slytherins. "I don't have time for this. Go bother someone else with your dirty presence." Sirius's fingers twined tight with Remus's own, their palms pressed together. Remus's hand was cold but Sirius's was warm; Remus's fingers were delicate and slim, and Sirius's were less graceful and more strong, power and passion behind them.
Lucius turned to the dark-haired boy beside him once Sirius and Remus had left, face twisted with anger. Severus, watching Lucius's ice blue eyes flash with a rare passion, felt oddly and unusually breathless. This was why he stood by the boy so faithfully for so long. It was this conviction, this strength, that he admired so in the blond. It was not his beliefs that Severus was in awe of, but the power and the will exerted behind them.
"His kind," Lucius snapped suddenly, "is what we are working so hard to get rid of."
But he's so much like you, Severus realized at that moment.
"Yes," Severus murmured, running his fingers nervously through his hair. He was terrified of Lucius Malfoy, and that terror was practically intoxicating.
"I refuse to let people such as Sirius Black and that revolting Remus Lupin pollute our school," Lucius went on, graceful hands clenched into fists. He made a beautiful picture. Severus felt his heart ache, just looking at him. If only the seeds planted from youth in Lucius's mind had been different ones. His nature was formidable and breathtaking. It was the nurture that had been, and still was, lacking.
And all the damage was already done.
"Let's just go," Severus ventured, reaching out to Lucius's arm. Such a motion was encouraged by the jealousy he felt doubly at the way Sirius and Remus had left hand in hand, first at the affection shared unconditionally between them, and second at the intense worship in Remus's depthless eyes. At the touch, Lucius started, nearly jumping with surprise. Those blue eyes fixed on Severus's face, and the dark-haired boy noticed the blond's lower lip was trembling.
"Right," Lucius said finally, his eyes startled but thoughtful. They had a light Severus had never seen before prismed in their crystalline depths, as if for the very first time he was looking at Severus, and not directly through him.
"Right," Severus echoed, not knowing whether he should be afraid or excited by all that look entailed.
Voldemort had been having afternoon tea in his office, but he had finished his cucumber sandwiches, and he had stopped drinking his tea. In the bottom of his cup the tea leaves shifted lazily, half melted sugar making the liquid look murky and, in turn, the future seemed clouded over.
A little smile played over the professor's face.
In looking at the tea leaves, Voldemort knew five things, and he was smiling not at what they were, but at the fact that he knew them.
First: His days as a professor at Hogwarts were soon to be over. It was not clear whether or not he would last the rest of the year.
That, he knew, could be expected. For a long while he had waited to see such a prediction in the bottom of his teacup, and now that it had come, it was of no importance. One era was ended, one stage over. That only heralded the start of the next. There was no need to mourn the passing of something, for what was the end to some was just the beginning to others.
Second: Remus Lupin would never come to him, of his own free will or otherwise. The boy's convictions were strong.
That, too, he had known, and still knew. There was a determination in Remus's small body that was unseen and unspoken and that made it all the more powerful. It was a pity, for Voldemort had liked the boy -- truly liked him, as he liked so few people. He had liked him for his modesty, and the silent way he attacked those things he wanted to defeat. Going at them quietly, so that they barely noticed, or barely understood, what had suddenly happened to them.
Third: He was going to have to kill at least two of his students.
This was the first bit of news that was most definitely unforeseen, and the tea leaves were being very kind to him for revealing something so very far into the future. It was a bit of a shame, he had to admit, but what must be done, must be done. Voldemort did not discriminate amongst those he simply had to kill. It was an equal opportunity sort of thing, and it was very simple when he didn't think about it too much.
Fourth: The two students he was going to have to kill were James Potter and Lilly Evans.
This, too, he had not known, but as the tea leaves arranged and rearranged themselves in the remnants of the steeped and flavorful tea water, he knew that it must be so. Whether or not he killed them with his own hands was superfluous. They needed to die, and he needed to engineer such an eventuality for their deaths to seem plausible.
Fifth: He was to find an unexpected ally in the less-than-formidable form of Peter Pettigrew.
The boy was quiet and completely ordinary. He was so ordinary that, next to Sirius Black and James Potter, he seemed to be a mere part of the woodwork, as special as a desk or a chair. That was very intriguing, Voldemort mused to himself, staring thoughtfully at the teacup in his hands. Truly, he had thought the boy nothing even remotely interesting. Not a factor. To be overlooked. That, he realized, was a talent not very many people had. Fantastic.
Voldemort set his teacup down on the desk before him.
"Oh my," the professor murmured softly. He propped his arms up on his desk and his chin on his folded hands, and buried himself pleasantly in thought.
There was Lucius Malfoy, close-minded and foolish, but with just enough passion so that he wasn't entirely useless. The blond was driven by an inner strength that Voldemort couldn't help but admire, and was loath to lose. He would prove to be a decent ally, though Voldemort did not think he particularly liked the boy.
There was the young Malfoy's friend, Severus Snape, Cyril Snape's boy. The future that involved him was just as shadowed and unreadable as the boy's dark and somewhat sullen eyes. Voldemort could only theorize about how the Snape boy would factor in to all of his complicated equations, and therefore was wary to place too much stock in Lucius's assurances of his loyalty.
There was James Potter, who didn't matter anymore, because Voldemort was going to kill him.
There was Lilly Evans, who had never mattered much anyway, and mattered even less now because Voldemort was going to kill her, as well.
There was Remus Lupin, who had for a while been so important and so desired, but lacking him, Voldemort's plans had changed and Remus was no longer even wanted, much less necessary. Still, Voldemort had to admit the boy was quite spectacular, and he was vaguely disappointed not to have him as an ally, or simply as a friend. If it ever came to killing Remus Lupin, Voldemort would have been fleetingly dismayed, but would not have lost much sleep over the matter.
There was also Sirius Black. It was not exigent to kill him, but he did need to get rid of him at some point or another, to make things flow smoothly. It was not, Voldemort knew, the mark of a true professional to leave loose ends like Sirius Black lying around unattended.
There was lastly Peter Pettigrew, previously overlooked and now growing as a noteworthy presence in Voldemort's constantly changing plans. Voldemort was incredibly pleased to be able to make him so wonderfully useful because he rather liked irony, and taking the quiet, introspective boy under his wing would amuse him for many years on into the future.
Yes, Voldemort thought to himself, life was a joke, and though it was quite complicated, it was shaping up to be a very good one.
Remus felt the most comfortable when he was burrowed into the downy and private embrace of the cloud-soft Hogwarts canopy bed he thought of as his own. His third year would start the next morning, bright and early, and he couldn't wait for it. He and Sirius had stayed up for a while talking, and then they had retired to their respective beds for the night so they would be ready for the day to come.
It did not take Remus long to fall asleep, as it would have any other boy his age. He drifted off into a pleasant and dreamless sleep, until the early morning, when he began to see things, playing in a confused but urgent dance over the backs of his eyelids:
He was in the middle of a dark forest. There were shadows all around him. He had a pack...
He was running, free at last to chase shadows on the earth. There was a heavy form with a familiar scent running beside him. They were racing each other. He had a packmate...
He was alone. There was the mournful and solitary shape of the moon suspended in the sky above him. He was human and he was miserable, and he wanted so badly to lift his head and howl out his despair...
On one side of him was Severus Snape, figure shadowy and dark. His profile was outlined in the weak light. "Stand back," he said, his voice echoing in Remus's ears. From the folds of his robes he produced a wand. There was a bright flash of light. "Avada kedavra!" said Severus's voice from behind the white and blinding illumination...
On his other side was Sirius. The bright light had faded once again into darkness. His countenance seemed old, too old, and then he could not even make out the features on his friend's face. "I," Sirius said, and then he fell immediately and terribly silent...
Voldemort was in front of him, tall and terrifying. The man had changed, seemed inhuman, was like a cobra raised up and ready to strike. Remus was defenseless before him, without a weapon, without a wand in his hand. "I never wanted to kill you, you know," Voldemort said, and his green eyes were as terrifying as a chamber that was filled with nothing but mirrors, and Remus's own horrified expression...
And then, there was nothing more chilling than knowing he was alone...
And Remus was nothing more than that...
And he cried out but even he himself could not hear it, and no one came to rescue him.
His eyes snapped open. In his chest, his heart was pounding hard and fast enough to split his ribcage in half. Sun filtered through his bed-curtains. There was nothing better than waking from a nightmare, and thus destroying all its previously impossible power.
In the pale, early morning light, Remus slipped out of his bed, and began to ready himself for class.
The school was alive with whispers. Remus couldn't take a step forwards or backwards without passing by a cluster of three or four students in heated but hushed discussions.
All classes for the day had been canceled. All the teachers had gathered in Dumbledore's office.
"The say it's Professor Voldemort," one girl was whispering to another, "and that he's done something really bad."
"I hear," the girl's friend replied, cheeks flushed with the gossip, "he killed a student!"
"That's crazy," a boy standing with them muttered, giving them both superior looks. "He's being accused of corruption, or something like that. They're going to bloody kick him out. S'what I heard."
"Can't kick him out," the first girl said dubiously, looking between both her friends. "I mean. That sort of thing -- it's never happened before." They were all three of them silent for a moment.
"Never needed to happen before," the boy said after a while, nodding firmly. Remus moved on. Bits of conversations floated in one ear and out the other. He never trusted gossip.
"...and they said he was doing all sorts of things down in the potions room..."
"...tried to kill Professor McGonagall yesterday, I heard..."
"...went mad last night and it took four professors to restrain him..."
"...saw Dumbledore, he was mad as hell, think he was bleeding..."
"...never heard anything like it..."
"...never seen anything like it..."
"...what d'you suppose this all could be...?"
"...well, what I heard from Sean Wood is that there's been this great bloody mess, all the professors are involved..."
Remus lowered his head, plowing through the crowded hallways and the thick air pregnant with gossip, tension and breathless curiosity.
"Remus," Sirius hissed, reaching out from a doorway, grasping his friends arm, "have you heard what's happened?" Sirius eyes were bright with excitement.
"More or less," Remus murmured, but Sirius was too distracted to catch the dryness in his tone. Instead of commenting, the taller boy dragged Remus into an empty classroom, where James, Lilly and Peter were seated on the desks.
"What've you heard?" James asked, hushed and breathless.
"A lot," Remus said.
"You know what it is, it's conspiracy," James continued, as if he'd never asked Remus a question, or even thought of hearing an answer. "A conspiracy against the school, against the entire world. It's insane, that's what it is. Insane."
"Calm down for a moment," Lilly said, without any conviction, "just calm down." She seemed as excited by all of this as James was, though, and Remus resigned himself to being the only one whose life wasn't suddenly revolving around this unanticipated scandal.
"I heard," Peter said, eyes glowing, cheeks pink, "that he was caught teaching a student the Cruciatus curse, and Dumbledore's absolutely furious." That was the first theory that made any sense at all, though Remus couldn't see Voldemort being that careless, unless he had been so intentionally.
"Who cares," Sirius said, even though he was on the edge of his seat (or desk), "it's a day off of school. Unheard of in the entire history of Hogwarts!"
"I think firing a teacher is a little more important than that," Lilly said, though she still looked excited for all she was trying to be above such immaturity.
"We don't know that they're firing him," Remus said softly.
"How couldn't they?" James exclaimed. "He taught a student the Cruciatus curse."
"We don't exactly know he did that, either," Remus pointed out, swinging himself up onto Sirius's desk, beside his friend.
"Come on, Remus," Sirius said, frowning half-heartedly, "live a little."
"I just don't see Professor Voldemort being so careless as to get himself fired," Remus said. The other four were silent, thinking this over.
"He's right," James said at last, "the man's brilliant. He's not about to go getting himself kicked out of such a position unless he wants to."
"It really doesn't make sense, does it," Lilly mused.
"Who knows," Sirius said, though he looked quite doubtful of the theory himself, "maybe Dumbledore's just too smart for him."
"Maybe," Peter said, pursing his lips in thought.
"We'll just have to wait," Lilly said, resigning herself. The excitement seemed dull, at the prospect of sitting around all day without learning anything new.
"So," Sirius said, and then all of them were silent for a short while that seemed painfully long. Peter stared from his hands to the ceiling, almost feeling time limping by him. James and Lilly stole secret glances of each other, fidgeting nervously though their minds were elsewhere. Sirius got up from the desk and began to pace for a while, brows knit together in annoyance, mind writhing with impatience. With one knee pulled up to his chest, Remus buried himself in troubled thoughts, wishing he had a book to keep him otherwise occupied.
It was more than strange, Remus mused. It was just wrong. All his instincts were telling him so. Deep in the back of his brain, he thought he could smell a rat. "I," Remus began, but it was then that Ellen Abott threw the door to the classroom open, breathless and wild and lovely.
"They've come out of his office," she cried, "and Dumbledore's fired Professor Voldemort!" The tension in the room was cut in half, and then returned doubly strong.
"Why?" Sirius had crossed the room to her side in an instant. The way she was looking at him made Remus's gut clench miserably.
"Nobody knows," Ellen Abott said quickly, "but he's packing his things now."
"Why didn't you come sooner?" Sirius lamented.
"I only just found out! If we hurry, we might be able to see him before he -- oh, come on!" She grabbed Sirius's hand and the both of them raced out. Spurred at last into action, James and Lilly hurried after them, Peter right behind.
A silent, motionless minute passed. Remus could hear muffled exclamations from the hallways outside the classroom.
He slipped down from where he sat.
"Why did you do it?" he asked the air, knowing somehow, Voldemort would hear it. There was no answer. Remus cleared his throat and repeated his question again, louder. "Why did you do it?"
"Je ne sais pas," Voldemort said, shutting the door politely behind him.
"Vous savez," Remus replied. Voldemort smiled.
"Tu ne comprendrais pas." Voldemort set down two suitcases he had been carrying and folded his hands before him. He stood very straight. There was no lack of confidence in his manner.
"Pourquoi etes-vous ici?" Remus forced himself to look at the man straight on.
"Parce que...parce que je reponds toujours aux questions." A moment of understanding passed between them, silence hesitant and afraid of being broken.
"Et parce qu'on ne sait que ce qu'on a vu," Remus added. Voldemort threw his head back and laughed. It was not the laugh of a madman. It was the laugh of a perfectly normal human being enjoying a very good joke. That was what made it all the more terrible: knowing you should be afraid of him, but not able to put your finger on why.
"Tu sais les choses que les adultes ne savent pas," Voldemort murmured, when he had finished laughing. "Vraiment, tu es un savant."
"C'est faux." Neither did Remus know why he was being so stubborn, defending himself against the compliments this man paid him. "Votre nom," he murmured after a moment, eyes fixed on Voldemort's pale face, "quel est votre nom?"
"Voldemort," Voldemort replied.
"Non," Remus pressed. "Tout."
"Liam d'Or Voldemort," Voldemort said finally.
"Je n'ai pas confiance en l'or. C'est faux, aussi. Ce n'est pas important." Shrugging lightly, Voldemort leaned down to pick up his bags again, signaling his termination of their conversation.
"Bien," he said softly, "au revoir."
"J'espere que c'est 'adieu'."
"Au revoir," Voldemort repeated.
"Au revoir," Remus replied.
Voldemort left behind him an emptiness that seemed at first to be a chill in the hollows of the air. It was easily mistakable for the bite of fear, but Remus realized immediately that it was just the mere discomfort at the feeling of hollowness the ex-professor radiated. The air he passed through was left hollow. The words he spoke were hollow. His eyes and the passion he pretended to portray were hollow. There was nothing of weight in all of him.
It was as if, if you took your eyes off of him for a moment, he could simply disappear, and leave you wondering whether or not he'd ever been there at all.
And he had not said, 'to God.' He had barely even said 'goodbye.'
He had said, 'until we meet again.'
Remus frowned, but it was not in anger, just in thought. The man left him feeling pensive and unsure of himself, that hollowness creeping throughout him and leaving him more than just mildly unsettled. Voldemort was absent of his body, much too powerful for it. Perhaps the man did not deem it necessary. Remus didn't even want to think about that, though he felt it was impossible not to wonder.
Au revoir.
Until we meet again.
It seemed - no, it was - more of a threat than a parting of ways.
Rubeus Hagrid felt the school grounds grow cold, but it was not with anger, nor was it with misery. It took him a few moments to gauge what it was he felt, what it was the world was feeling, and when he at last managed it, his blood ran cold.
It had nothing to do with passion.
It was with indifference.
The sky was blue and bright above him, clouds stretched and pulled by the wind until so that they were light and unable to block out the cheeriness of the sun above. The day had been beautiful, until this shiver swept over him, and left his big hands feeling powerless and dwarfed.
It was not a time for gardening, he realized, kneeling in the warm earth, digging up weeds without minding when dirt collected beneath his stubby fingernails.
The earth was crying out in protest against this lack of caring.
"Cor," Rubeus Hagrid said, and hurried to get inside, as if the whole world and all that inhabited it had gotten the premonition of a storm, and the best course of action to take was running pell-mell for shelter.
"He's gone," Lucius said softly. It was the closest to truly upset Severus had ever seen his friend, and had he not been secretly relieved by Voldemort's departure, he would have felt slightly bad for the blond. Lucius was used to getting his way. Lucius was used to things going just how he wanted them to. In this case, all his conceptions of the way the world revolved had been shattered.
"Sorry," Severus said, looking up from his notes. Lucius's eyes were wild and grasping for some truths to hold on to. Severus felt chill after chill race down the center of his spine.
"Voldemort -- he must have wanted it this way," Lucius insisted, arguing with no one at all. His eyes were snapping that cold fire, his hands set on the table before him in elegant but dangerous fists.
"I'm sure," Severus agreed. That thought, though frightening, was forcing its way into Severus's thoughts in a rather aggravatingly insistent fashion, and he couldn't seem to shove it aside.
"They must have played right into his hands."
"Right." Severus wanted to be admired the way he admired Lucius, the way Lucius admired the ex-professor. He wanted those blue eyes, alight with the thought of him.
"Because there's no other explanation," Lucius murmured, shaking his head and shaking Severus from his foolish and unrealistic reverie, "because he's too smart for them. He's always been too smart for them. No one - no one can ever get the better of him."
"No," Severus said quickly, "no one can."
Though he was quick to agree with all Lucius said, Severus could only hope his friend was wrong, even though he was almost completely sure he was right. With a little shiver, feeling as if someone had just stepped onto his future grave, Severus buried his nose in his work, and refused to think about such things any longer.
The new potions teacher was not a overly-liked man but he was certainly more ordinary than Professor Voldemort had been. Basil St. Hemlock was aging but wiry with passion for all he had to teach, and though Remus's desire to learn the art of potions-making had dwindled into nothing a long while back, he at least no longer had to dread every time he had the subject.
Professor Hemlock was a miserable disappointment to the third year Slytherins -- for after two whole years being favored by a professor of the same house, they were suddenly faced with a Ravenclaw professor, who favored neither the Slytherins or the Gryffindors he was teaching jointly.
That meant for a lot less trouble between Sirius and Lucius, at least, and for that Remus was grateful. Professor Hemlock refused to allow any bickering in his classroom. After a while, the two boys learned somehow to restrain themselves, and keep their arguments to the hallways, or in the classes of less observant and less strict teachers.
Dumbledore was the most happy with his choice of new professors, and valued the elderly man as not just a teacher, but as a friend and a comrade, as well. There was a worrying, nagging presence in the back of Dumbledore's mind that spoke of events soon to come -- he only had slight glimpses of them, fleeting images and snippets of dialogue, but what he had so far seen was enough to keep him up at nights. With Basil St. Hemlock and Minerva McGonagall, he would take short walks around the Hogwarts grounds, asking for advice, or simply cultivating a discussion, between the other two.
"We are on the brink of something terrible," Hemlock murmured to himself, shaking his head.
"The sooner we deal with him, the better," McGonagall said quickly, holding herself against the chill of the breeze. Winter was coming, no matter how they longed for the warmth of summer to last.
"Nip the bud in the head," Dumbledore said, and he thought suddenly of roses.
"But he's disappeared," Hemlock said, for the fifth time that day, "we've lost our chance. For now."
"Which means time is no longer on our side," McGonagall mourned, fists clenching in futile anger.
"Something must be done," Dumbledore acknowledged, "and though I may regret this later -- it cannot be done yet. The time will come," he went on to keep McGonagall from protesting immediately, "for us to act. Voldemort has poured time, effort and faith into the next generation. He has not done this on a whim -- he would not waste his time with anything he deemed unimportant. Therefore, he must have seen something we did not. We must do as he did. The future battle lies in the hands of our children. We must do as Voldemort did, and cultivate our students, teach them and trust them. This is the single most important course of action that we can ever take." The light wind rustled the leaves in the trees. Dumbledore caught his breath, having fallen silent.
"I wish there were more we could do for the world they will inherit," McGonagall murmured, tone hushed and somber.
"All we can do is trust them," Hemlock said, agreeing with Dumbledore, "and hope we live to see the day they triumph."
"Here," Remus said, resting his hand atop Sirius's to still it, "if you stir it too fast, you'll keep the ingredients from mixing properly." Sirius groaned and once again let Remus take over.
"We've been waiting to get this potion right for hours, now," Sirius whined, flopping back dehectedly in his chair.
"If we hadn't been so careless with the other potion this morning, we wouldn't be here right now," Remus explained with inhuman patience, "and it's barely been a half hour, yet. I'd hate to see how you'd be in, for instance, jail." A tiny, almost imperceptible smirk flickered over Remus's features, and Sirius shot him a dirty look.
"Hemlock's just mad 'cause we set his sleeves on fire," Sirius muttered, "and it's not like it was on purpose, or anything."
"Mm," Remus said, looking over at Sirius dryly, stirring the cauldron dutifully, "and you can't possibly see why he'd be angry that James and I had to put him out with our Potions books."
"I can see where he'd be upset," Sirius said vaguely, not meeting Remus's eyes, "but not where he'd have to make us do it over and over and over until we kill ourselves, or get it right."
"We've almost got it," Remus sighed, "it won't be too much longer, now." Secretly, he enjoyed this - enjoyed spending the extra time with just Sirius, the both of them alone together. Despite the tedious work and the heat from the bubbling cauldron, Remus thought it was rather nice.
"Mh," Sirius grunted, but he fell silent, closing his eyes. They didn't even have to pretend he was doing any work, anymore. If he helped, he'd only make a mess, and they both wanted to get the punishment project over as soon as possible. "So," Sirius said finally, breaking the silence, "your birthday's coming up, isn't it?" He kept his eyes closed, watching more interesting things on the backs of his eyelids. He'd managed to pry the date out of Remus after a full month of trying. Remus was, in Sirius's supposedly vast experience, nothing at all like a girl. He was literally terrified of getting presents.
"Yes," Remus said, "January twenty-fourth. Sirius," Remus went on quickly, before he could lose the nerve, before Sirius could interrupt him, "my father said -- this summer -- I could invite any friend over to stay with me, for a while."
"Yes," Sirius said.
"I didn't even ask you, yet."
"Yes," Sirius repeated, and the two boys caught each other's eyes. Sirius had been dating Paavana Patil for a month and still he knew Remus's eyes better than hers. Little flecks of amber in that deep, earthy brown. Lashes that were dark, but golden when the sunlight caught them. A wisdom buried inside. A sadness that Sirius couldn't understand, and wanted so badly to take away. An understanding of Sirius himself that even Sirius didn't have. There was fear there, as well, and Sirius knew that he would protect this boy from from whatever it is made that dark spot of fear murk up the depths of his eyes.
"Good," Remus murmured.
"You're letting the potion boil over," Sirius said suddenly, and Remus pulled his attention away from his relief and his friend and back to the safer area of calculations and magic and schoolwork. His heart, he realized, had been pounding, and his hands had grown cold. They didn't tremble -- they never trembled -- but they had come close to doing so.
"For how long?" Sirius asked, as Remus got the potion back under control once more.
"A week, a week and a half at most, he said."
"You tell him I'm coming?"
"I'll write him tonight."
And Sirius settled back and thought how easy and how hard at once it was to predict everything that Remus did, and how he was going to look forward to summer, this year.
And Remus was fighting off a little wave of happiness that bubbled up from deep within him, in the place that said there is nothing to fear.
And if Dumbledore could have seen them -- awkward, clumsy in boyhood, coming into manhood, moving around each other but slowly orbiting closer and closer -- he would not have known anything other than that this, and the tentative bonds that were blossoming between the two of them, was strong enough for any man to trust.
Shyness, hesitation, were keeping them apart, but something instinctual and animal in nature was drawing them together. Deep down inside him, Remus could feel it. On the edges of his senses, Sirius could feel it, too.
It was something they could not resist, because they did not truly want to resist it.
Rubeus Hagrid, assistant groundskeeper, scratched thoughtfully at the area that was probably his chin, but was hidden by the great bulk of brown beard he was growing. "Roses, roses," he murmured softly to himself, seeming to be thinking aloud, "what sort of roses is it, then, that you're wantin'?" There was a long silence, and then,
"Dunno," Sirius said, fidgeting a little. Hagrid's 'greenhouse' was just an entire room of his cottage, heated to a terrifying humidity and filled with tubs that overflowed with soil and plants. (Once, when asked why he had filled an entire room with bathtubs, dirt and fertilizer, Hagrid had replied, and cheerfully to boot, "I like gardenin'." And no one had pushed the question any further.)
"Are they roses f'r a girl?" Hagrid asked, after looking Sirius up and down and attempting to size up his entire character. It wasn't a guess too far off base, and Sirius was used to such assumptions about him. After all, he had purposely cultivated such an image, and so it was best always to play along with someone's first impression of him. He'd take them by surprise later.
"Yeah," Sirius said, grinning faintly to himself, running his fingers through his hair to keep it out of his eyes. Hagrid looked him up and down again, breaking into a grin behind his beard.
"I see, I see," he murmured, eyes sparkling beneath bushy eyebrows. He looked, Sirius thought, like a big shaggy circus bear who was suddenly eager to please, but was clumsy and awkward in his shuffling, comical movements.
"For a birthday present," Sirius added helpfully.
"How 'bout a dozen roses?" Hagrid suggested, rifling through packets of muggle and wizard seeds alike, stored in a drawer that was also growing three varieties of venus fly traps. They seemed, however, to like him, allowing the big man to get near without snapping at his mammoth hands. "I hear that's very popular."
"Tootoo usual," Sirius said, after a moment, poking through some of the less dangerous looking foliage. A fuzzy leaf here, a glossy petal there, and every once in a while stumbling across a jewel-like beetle or two burrowing through the wet dirt, into the roots.
"Right," Hagrid agreed quickly, "everyone's been doing it. Hm," he went on, brow furrowing up with deep thought creases, "I heard nice muggle red is very romantic." Hagrid produced a seed packet from underneath a few others and held it up to display the picture on the front. For a few moments, Sirius studied the picture, thinking the idea over. A single red rose. Romantic, as Hagrid had said, but it wouldn't last. Too easily, Sirius mused, the beauty of the rose would fade, and the petals would dry up, and then Remus would be left with nothing.
"No," Sirius said at last, "but closer." There was sweat beneath his eyes and on his upper lip. The air was too heavy and too wet for him to even breathe.
"'Ow about a Black Rose, then?" Hagrid suggested next. "They ain't usual, certainly, and they're gettin' t'be more popular'n I ever thought they would be. Bein' such an odd color."
"Thought of as rare?" Sirius lingered on the possibility for longer, because of its rarity, but decided against it for the same reason he had against a regular single rose. Too fleeting. He wanted his gift to last.
"Guess not then, eh?" Hagrid read the boy's dubious expression well. "All right -- what about a Blue Rose of Forgetfulness? I've been working on one f'r a while, an' the color's gotten jus' right, finally. 'Ere, I'll show you." With one huge and harmless hand he beckoned to Sirius, and showed him a line of young, blue blooms the color of bruises and midnight skies.
Sirius thought immediately of the dark sadness in Remus's eyes.
In their pots, the roses seemed to be singing mournfully, trembling with memory on the thick air.
"Is it better, d'you think, to remember, or to forget?" Sirius questioned the assistant groundskeeper, very softly. Hagrid looked at him, half pensive and half just plain confused.
"Don' know, really," he said finally, shrugging his broad shoulders lightly. "Can' say. They're...pretty roses, 'n any case."
"Perhaps -- it's best to remember, most of the time and then -- have moments, where you can forget?" Hagrid looked at Sirius blankly, blinking a few times, and then his mustache and beard moved faintly. Sirius had to assume that he was smiling beneath it.
"Guess," Hagrid said, "it's jus' best t'have th' choice, t'make it for yourself."
"You're right," Sirius said, fingering a bruised but velvety petal.
"Y'want one, then?" Hagrid looked between Sirius as the six blue blossoms, expectant and pleased with himself. They swayed lightly, humming in despair, beautiful for their absolute misery.
"Yes," Sirius decided finally, "but I need it for -- for more'n a month from now. For January." Hagrid beamed, the brightness not dulled one bit by the shaggy mane of his beard.
"Can make a special one f'r you," Hagrid said, "now that I know what I'm doin' with 'em."
"Could you?" Sirius couldn't help but grin back, the man looked so bloody cheerful.
"It'd be my pleasure," Hagrid murmured solemnly. He reached out a hand, and Sirius took it, his own dwarfed against that vast palm. They shook on it, as if it were a deal well done. The Blue Roses of Forgetfulness strained against the roots which kept them firmly planted in the dirt, bound to the soil. They were lovely, an aching loveliness, more profound than Sirius could hope to comprehend. All he knew was that when he looked at them, his heart felt as if it were drowning.
All he knew was the emotion that swelled up behind his ribcage, at their soft, sad song.
It was, he mused, like looking at Remus. He knew he felt things. He just couldn't put a name on those feelings - didn't have the capacity, or at least the knowledge, to understand them fully. Understanding, though, would make the feelings less beautiful, less wonderfully strange. If he knew what the roses sang of, it would not be so deeply touching or moving a song.
"...an' so what date should I have it ready by?" Sirius was suddenly made aware of the fact that Hagrid had continued talking, even as the roses' song had dragged him into another world of thought, and he turned his face away to hide the flush that came over it.
"What?" Sirius lifted his eyes from the flowers, all the way up Hagrid's face. "Sorry -- didn't catch that."
"When will you be wantin' th' flower ready?"
"January twenty-third," Sirius said, figuring that he couldn't kill the thing in one day. He'd be careful with it. Really. It was for Remus, and he took that more seriously than most things.
"You 'ave my word for it," Hagrid said.
And the roses sang softly beneath their petals, water hanging like tears on the heavy air.
In the winter the snow came, white and soft. The nights became a pale, icy blue and the days were spent in gratefulness for the warmth of the indoors.
It was the sort of season where swift kisses meant more than long ones, and everyone felt naked, despite their heavy winter robes.
It was the sort of season meant for birth and rebirth, despite the barren trees and the icy frost.
It was not the sort of season one spent alone.
On one firelit and starlit evening James Potter and Lilly Evans shared their first kiss, and their second soon after, then their third right after that. They weren't particularly skilled kisses but they felt very good, nonetheless. Afterwards, the winter seemed less cold and the world less vast, and the snow blanketed ground was more comforting than desolate.
For those with the misfortune to be lonely during that winter, the world was a sullen, frigid tundra, icy and unforgiving. For those lucky enough to spend the chilly hours with those close to them, the world was a lovely secret, unsolved mysteries making the air sweet and exotic.
There was one mystery, though, that lingered in the back of Sirius's mind, turning his thoughts sour when he was careless enough to let it surface in his consciousness. It turned good days bitter and good dreams foul.
And on one December night, when the moon was full and powerful in the sky, and the darkness was more black than blue, and most of the other students had returned home for the holidays, and Remus had made a feeble excuse and disappeared, Sirius lay awake in his bed staring at the ceiling and tried unsuccessfully to fight down the overwhelming sense of impossible wrongness surging up within him.
He was angry.
First of all, he was angry with Remus. He was angry at him for disappearing like this, for being the way he was so that Sirius couldn't help but be terrified that something was wrong, for making Sirius so confused and so panic stricken and so unable to confront him for fear of losing him.
Secondly, he was angry with himself. He was angry at himself for being so helpless, for being so weak, for being so quick to jump to conclusions that made his heart race and his stomach clench into miserable knots. He was angry at himself because he had never felt so useless and unnecessary in all his life.
It would have been nice to blame Remus for this, but in the end he knew it was his own fault entirely. And that just made him angrier.
What right did Remus have to keep secrets from him? He was keeping secrets -- Sirius saw it in the way he turned his eyes to the ground and turned his face to the side, not looking anyone directly in the eye as he made his excuses. What right did Remus have to lie to him, tell him things that weren't true? And they weren't true, he knew by the way Remus stood when he told them, his body at an angle to Sirius's body, as if he didn't want to have to lie but forced himself to anyway because the alternative was far less pleasant. Perhaps it was even that thing he feared, that lurked nastily in the back of his wonderfully sad eyes. The part that angered Sirius the most was the thought that Remus did not trust him. Whatever secret it was that Remus was hiding, whatever fear Remus harbored of it being discovered, should not have applied to Sirius.
Sirius wanted to know everything, but he was left without any clues, guessing and grasping at straws and coming up empty-handed every time.
He was out of control in the one place he wanted to feel secure.
He knew all he had to do was wait until morning, and then Remus would return. There would be bandages on his wrists, sometimes more bandages hiding bruises on his arms and cuts on his face -- and God only knew where else. It was possible, Sirius had mused, that Remus went off and hurt himself, methodically, causing those rents and defilements in his own flesh. There seemed to be no other explanation for it, but Sirius could not bring himself to believe it.
Why would he do that?
His mind was struggling. He was struggling. There were pieces that didn't fit, things that he didn't understand.
All he had to do was wait for morning, but he had never been patient. After a while of anxious boredom, he fell asleep.
In his dreams he was trying to tell Remus something, chasing after him desperately, but Remus's back was to him, and he couldn't reach the other boy, no matter how fast he ran to catch up. Behind him his footprints were swallowed up by the snow, and he was aware of his own mortality, disappearing into the dark night.
When Sirius woke, Remus was in his own bed, curled up and fast asleep. Both arms, including the palms of his hands, were bandaged up to his elbows. A bit of cotton had been secured with band-aids to his swollen right cheekbone. His chest rose and fell shallowly beneath the quilt, pulled up underneath his armpits.
The way his hair fell, pooled back from his face, allowed Sirius to see without getting too close the entire story of Remus's face.
There was scar tissue underneath one ear, paler than the other, smooth skin. It was a little puckering of flesh that pulled his skin a little too tight right beneath his earlobe, which was not unmarred, either. It looked as if the baby-soft flesh had at some point been torn at by something sharper than human teeth, ripping it in half. It had been healed, but there was a thin scar line running up the center, easily perceived in the early morning light.
Underneath his chin there was the darker memory of an older but angrier wound, a rose-colored scar stretching from one side of his jaw to the other across the sensitive flesh of his throat.
One cheek bore the line of an old and shallow gash. Sirius was surprised he hadn't noticed it before. He'd thought he knew Remus's face by heart.
Right beneath his left eyebrow there was another thin scar of a deeper but narrower cut, as if someone had sliced into the delicately veined skin with a razor blade. It stretched across the top of his eyelid and curled, grew bigger, at the corner of his eye, seeming to take on the shape of a tulip blossom.
Above his right eyebrow, across his forehead, was the tightening of too-white flesh that must have come from stripping off layers of skin from over the muscle. Head wounds, Sirius remembered, bled a lot.
After brushing aside Remus's bangs Sirius found, too, a scattering of many small scars all along his scalp, right at the hairline. There were bruises there, as well, some older, yellower ones and some newer, a deep purple-blue.
Behind his other ear, a scar curled around the outside of the shell, looping around it in a semi-circle.
Moving down to Remus's neck, there were a few new bruises, and that deep cut Sirius had seen at the beginning of the year starting to form a new scar, still red and violent looking. The skin around it seemed too pale, in contrast. The scar curved over his collar bone, and dipped beneath the collar of his shirt.
His upper arms were no better, little scars mixed with the bigger, older mixed with the new, on that soft skin. Sirius ran his sun-browned fingers over what would be an otherwise smooth plane of pale flesh, and stopped where the bandages began.
"Remus," he said, not knowing he was speaking out loud, "what is this? Remus."
In the bed, Remus stirred, brow furrowing before it smoothed out again. He wasn't untouched. Some hand, whether it was his own, or someone else's, had done such things to him.
Sirius wasn't angry.
He should have been angry, should have grabbed Remus up and shaken him awake screaming, flying into the realization as he flew into everything, head first and hoping he'd come out on top. There should have been that sudden rage that boiled up whenever he was put into a situation he didn't understand, whenever he saw someone hurt and couldn't do a thing about it.
But lying there, Remus looked so tired, even though he was sleeping. You weren't supposed to look tired when you were sleeping, Sirius wanted to say. You were supposed to look like you were resting. Like you could rest.
That was the funny thing about Remus. He could look calm when everyone else was losing their heads around him. He could stay smart when everyone else seemed to have gone completely crazy. His head was on his shoulders and he was stronger than anyone who bragged about how strong they were. But he looked so tired all of the time, like being old wasn't all it was cracked up to be, like understanding things made you miserable, not suddenly enlightened and able to manage everything for your wisdom.
Even in sleep, Remus Lupin looked tired.
And when you couldn't shake that weariness when you were resting, Sirius Black didn't know how to be angry. All he could feel was this great weight, stinging the backs of his eyes and the spaces in between his ribs.
"Remus," he said sadly, and the name sounded like a plea, "Remus. Remus."
I fell, Remus would say.
I was clumsy, he would say, and he would smile and turn himself so that he wasn't meeting Sirius face to face, was looking up at him from somewhere where he became small and not-Remus.
I'll be more careful next time, he would say, and Sirius would have to believe him, because if he didn't it would mean that Remus was lying, and Sirius couldn't bear that.
Remus wouldn't, shouldn't lie to him.
I promise, Remus would say.
And Sirius pulled back from the bed carefully, so that he wouldn't disturb the sleeping boy in it, and tiptoed across the room, back to his own.
And when Remus awoke Sirius was fast asleep in his bed, even though it was almost twelve-o'clock. Really, he was just so lazy like that.
The night sky, Remus mused, was the most beautiful thing to see on a crisp winter's night. It didn't look bruised or angry at all, just the softest, most welcoming of crushed velvet, sprinkled with the occasional bright sparkle of a star or two. The air was crisp, chilled, but the cold did not bother him, and the sky was dark and vast enough to distract him from where he was firmly resting, held by gravity, on the earth.
The cuts on his wrists had healed, but he still wore his sleeves long, just for precaution's sake. Sometimes he caught Sirius looking at him, from the corners of his deep blue eyes, as if the younger but bigger boy was trying to read his face using his scars as the words of the tale. Remus was terrified of being an open book to anyone, especially to Sirius. There were so many things to be read inside of himself that Remus had worked so hard and so long to keep hidden. He couldn't risk Sirius knowing. If Sirius knew, Remus would lose him. So he had to keep himself covered up, all that lay inside concealed.
But it was night, a beautiful clear night where, when Remus watched the star-speckled sky out the Astronomy Tower window, he felt as if he could see forever mapped out by the half-recognizable constellations. The pinpricks of light seemed ephemeral and faint when contrasted with the vast expanse of the dark sky. It was comforting to know, though, that they had endured for ages, lasting for endless lifetimes of the past, strong enough to remain for endless lifetimes on into the future. Remus took pleasure in knowing and remembering small things such as that.
"I never know what you're thinking," Sirius said from beside him. The dark haired boy shifted, propping himself up on one elbow, so he could watch Remus watch what seemed to be nothing at all.
"It isn't important," Remus replied distantly. He was thinking about the stars. He was thinking about the birthday party his friends had thrown him that day, with butterbeer James had snuck into Hogwarts and kept hidden since he'd returned from Christmas Break, and with the dazzling array of expensive chocolates Lilly and Peter had spent months of hard-earned pocket money on. He was thinking about the way Sirius laughed, his eyes alive with the most wonderfully bright fire, so that Remus and the other three couldn't help but laugh with him.
"C'mon," Sirius pleaded, watching Remus lazily. "Y'have a good birthday and suddenly you're mooning around about the stars?" The moon was a half-circle in the sky, half-powerful, as if it were the mocking line of half a laughing face. Remus had to admit it was beautiful, despite how it terrorized him, despite how he resented it. Sirius looked from Remus's face to the deep blue sky out the window, trying to see what it was that made him so sad. Somewhere in the stars was contained the name of what it was Remus was longing to forget.
"I'm not mooning," Remus protested softly. In the sky the moon wavered sadly behind the misty formation of a snow cloud. Moonlight caught the soft curve of Remus's cheek, as if the slight boy were merely the moon's reflection in a still, somber lake.
"You're mooning," Sirius insisted. Mooning over something but Sirius didn't know what it was. In its dome and wrapping paper, the Blue Rose sang. "Open your present, Moony." Naming things made them less foreign, tamed them, stole from some of their secrecy. The moon would have been less lovely and more threatening, there night after night, if it had not been given a title, m, o, o, n. He had to name this. He had to name this part of Remus that had not yet, and maybe never would, include him. With a grin Sirius adopted to make himself feel less nervous and more in control, he nudged the box across the cold stone floor between them to Remus's side.
"Moony?" A slim brow arched, and Remus took up the package into his hands, placing it in his lap. The glimmering wrapping paper caught the moonlight and burned silvery blue.
"Yeah," Sirius murmured, sitting up to watch in eager anticipation, though he hid his impatience well. Like the moon, so far away, so lonely and so beautiful. The name seemed to suit Remus. Even Remus felt how well it fit him, but he didn't know whether he should feel nervous or proud of the association between his himness and the moon's moonness. He pushed the nagging voices aside and began to unwrap the present, making sure he didn't rip the paper. Sirius realized that Remus did everything carefully, and wondered why he felt he had to.
Remus peeled the layer of wrapping paper back and smoothed it out in a glinting square on his lap. He lifted the protective gold from the flower, and they were both aware of a thick, sweet smell in the air. The dark blue petals shivered with the cold of the night. Remus touched one. It felt like chilled velvet. The stem trembled, the thorns ached, and the petals whispered wonderful but impossible promises in the form of a wordless melody.
"Oh," Remus said, in that way which meant I have no words to describe this, "I've never"
"Seen a rose like that before?" Sirius fidgeted. "No. 'S a new type Hagrid's been working on for a while."
"It's a wonderful color." The deep blue that spoke of yellow, green and purple too, like a bruise that would not fade. There was a strange sound on the air, bittersweet harmonies mingling with that rich, enticing scent. Little shivers ran down Remus's spine as if someone was tickling down the center of his back. As he fidgeted the potted rose seemed to reach its petals out to him.
"Took a while to get it just right, like that," Sirius said, as if he had spent all the time on it and not Hagrid. "Just that color."
"Thank you," Remus said, "thank you, Sirius." His voice had gotten all soft and low, as it only did when he was speechless. In the darkness, Remus's eyes looked like the blue of the rose petals, wounded but stronger for their wounds, turning the origins of their wounds into a sad, sweet song.
Remus could hear what the petals sang, suddenly, loud and crystal clear.
Je t'aime, they mourned.
Je t'aime et je suis seul, each one chorused.
Je suis ta rose, the bloom echoed brokenly.
La tienne.
And somehow that was heartbreakingly sad.
"'S called a Blue Rose of Forgetfulness," Sirius explained, moving closer to Remus's side, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Hagrid said -- said it'd come in handy, some day, pro'lly, and I thought you might like it, 'cause the color...I'd never seen anything like it, before... And you smell it, if you ever wanna forget anything -- thought, it's always good to have the choice. To forget. To be able to forget...anything you wanted to." Remus never said much. Sirius was trying to kill the pregnant and uncomfortable silence unsuccessfully with his words. They seemed helpless and weak in the face of such a challenge.
"Sirius," Remus said finally, lifting his eyes to his friend's face, tearing them from the rose in his lap.
Je veux oublier tout, it sang. The choice. The choice not to remember that dark night with his mother on all fours before him ripping at his soft belly before she even changed bodies because she couldn't wait and she wasn't strong and she didn't love him right. The smell of his own blood. The smell of his mother's blood later, but they were one and the same anyway, in his confused mind. Hating his father who locked him up, loving and hating his father who had killed to protect him. Being alone. Forget all that, and who was he? But still, the temptation was there, intoxicating and almost irresistible, like a drug, a heavy weight sinking lower in his lap.
"You look like the moon," Sirius whispered. "You look so damn sad, Moony." The name stuck on his tongue, choked in his throat, froze on his lips. "Remus." A little bit sad, like the moon. A little bit too far away. You couldn't cast a fishing net up at the sky and use your love for bait and catch the moon. Couldn't do things like that in the real world. "Remus."
Je veux oublier l'amour, the rose sang, because once you forgot the love you forgot the pain that came with the loving.
Je veux oublier la tristesse, the rose sang, because once you forgot the sadness you forgot that you had any tears at all to be cried.
But if you forgot the sadness and the love then you forgot the happiness, too. Forget all three and you forgot yourself.
"Remus," Sirius said, "say something. Please."
But if you had the choice to remember or to forget and you chose to remember, then you were strong and you knew it. It meant you wanted to stay yourself. It meant that you were worth wanting. It meant that you were worth the sadness you caused yourself.
Je veux oublier tout, the rose repeated, but the call seemed far-off and weak, unimportant in light of the sudden shock of warmth to Remus's body.
Memories are like scars. They are the map of who you are, who you have been, who you may one day become, all that you are and were and will be. Memories are like the scars of the past and they echo inside you, resounding over the walls of your future. If you forgot then you could not learn. If you forgot then you could not grow. If you forgot, then you were not. And perhaps this was what was in Voldemort's eyes when they spoke with each other. You must know your past to know yourself. You must know your past to know your future. There are these things, these reasons, for why you cannot allow yourself to forget, because to forget is to ignore, and to ignore is to allow weakness in yourself. To ignore yourself is to deny yourself and to deny the world.
"Thank you," Remus said, "Sirius. Thank you." And in that way of making the most important emotions seem diminutive and soft-spoken, Remus's voice could and did send a thousand shudders through Sirius's body, right down to his fingertips. When you left how pleased you were to the imagination, it was all the better. Sirius couldn't help but burst with pride, though he didn't know why. The rose seemed to have quieted, the tension in the air, maladroit and almost frightening, completely gone.
"Happy birthday," Sirius murmured, because it was the right moment for that, now. Remus set the rose aside, placing it down next to him, where it sang and he could ignore it, and feel his body flood with strength.
"Thank you," he said again.
"You deserve it," Sirius said, grinning crookedly, "Moony." He leaned forward so that they could embrace each other tightly. They did. Sirius buried his face against the side of Remus's neck and didn't notice it when the other boy stiffened slightly. Remus smelled better than any roses Hagrid had been growing. Remus smelled like Remus, his own scent, and Sirius found himself oddly more aware of it than he ever had been of the way anything smelled, before.
The choice he had never been given before was in his own hands, now, and though they might have trembled from the weight, they were tangled in Sirius's hair, and could not.
The choice he had not known could be given to him, as a birthday present, perhaps, was beside him on the cold floor, and his heart would have pounded except his chest was pressed up against Sirius's and their hearts had somehow managed to beat together.
They fell asleep like that, though they stayed awake together late into the night, with the stars burning bright messages in the darkness above them. You did not have to reach the stars to understand that they were simply there, Sirius realized. You did not have to fully understand them to feel the songs they were singing to you from far away, and enjoy the melody.
For a while, gazing at the stars could make anyone content. Later, he would wish to reach them. Later.
But for now their two bodies were tangled together, and they were warm despite the chill that pervaded the air. After talking to each other of nothing at all, talking just for the words between them, talking just because there was nothing else in the world they could think of doing but hear each other speak, they drifted off, lulled by the beautiful night into their own depthless sleeps.
In the early morning it snowed and Sirius dreamed of chasing butterflies in an abandoned mine while Remus dreamed of a world that was made from crushed blue velvet, where he could run naked on the supple fabric, free and wild.
Remus woke to Sirius nuzzling against his cheek, into his hair.
"...snowed, Moony," Sirius said, as if it hadn't snowed more than once each week the past winter, as if the snow were suddenly something bright and beautiful and new to their eyes. But they had seen snow every single day, this winter, since the very last chilly day in November.
"Mmh," Remus groaned, eyes opening slowly, reluctantly, "it's the snow." Sirius butted up against his chin.
"Mm," Sirius said, "but it's our snow."
"The snow doesn't belong to anyone," Remus mumbled, sitting up as Sirius pulled away from him. The chill in the air made itself suddenly known as Sirius's body heat left, and Remus found himself moving after Sirius as Sirius moved away, holding onto his shirt.
"Getting friendly, Moony?" Sirius laughed softly against his ear.
"Getting cold," Remus said, grumpy sleep fading and leaving his senses with only a cold room and a warm friend.
"Keep you warm, then," Sirius said, and though he laughed after that, he wrapped his arms around Remus's shoulders, intending to keep that promise.
Things were warmer with Remus held close, anyway.
Leading up to That Night Which Changed Everything were a few other but less important events that were necessary for things to work out as they did, but because of their basic irrelevance, they were forgotten later.
The first was, Ellen Abott looked so happy she might very well burst, and there was the general consensus among the other girls that they needed to become immediately jealous of her good fortune. Whatever it was that good fortune happened to be.
She glided through the hallways with her head held high and her hair tossed behind one shoulder, and she looked as if she could kill a horse with the sheer force of her self-confidence alone. It drove the boys crazy and the girls even crazier.
It was a secret.
Only for James Potter it wasn't so much of a secret as a little pet peeve.
"You're a bloody git," he hissed to Sirius Black after potions, the first day Ellen Abott began to look revoltingly cheerful.
"Yeah," Sirius said, shying back miserably from his friends accusing eyes.
"You know," James continued, eyes flashing angrily still, "that it isn't her you want. The entire grade's going to kill you. I'm going to get there first."
"You can let up a little," Sirius muttered, running his hands ashamedly through his hair. The part that was so annoying was that James was completely and totally right. His glasses caught the light, messy hair falling over his forehead, making him look comical despite his seriousness.
"No," James said, "I can't let up a little. Ought to kick your sorry arse right here and right now but I don't have the bloody time."
"Language," Sirius mumbled, but it was a half-hearted attempt.
"Don't you 'language' me, Sirius Black," James hissed, and it was then that Sirius knew his friend was truly angry.
"Come off it, James," Sirius said, keeping his gaze fixed to his feet. The bottoms of his robes, he took note, were absolutely fascinating, the way they frayed at this one edge because he was rather careless with his clothes.
"Ellen Abott. Again."
"I know."
"After all the things you said -- about not liking her. All the things you said about Remus..." James looked dangerous, bringing himself up to his full height, which, though it was a half inch shorter than Sirius's, still managed to make Sirius feel very small.
"That was last year?" Sirius attempted lamely.
"And you expect me to believe that?" James gave him The Look, used first in their little group by Lilly, but patented originally by Mothers Everywhere. Sirius had used it against James many times, but it was quite another thing having it used on you.
"Well, I did," Sirius muttered, "until you didn't."
"Sirius."
"Yeah?"
"If you come running to me for help about Ellen Abott or any of this bloody mess you've gotten yourself into," James said, all in one breath, "then I'm going to really kick your arse, and you're not going to know what's bloody hit you."
"I know."
"And you're going to deserve it."
"I know."
"And more than even I can give you."
"I know." Sirius scoffed the heal of his shoe against the ground, trying not to look James directly in the eye. The most annoying thing about friends coming to tell you you were wrong was knowing that they were absolutely, infuriatingly right.
"Because maybe you should stop to think that you aren't just hurting yourself in the end, and you aren't just hurting Ellen Abott, too, so it doesn't matter what you bloody do." James could face anyone down. He was the only one of them who could stand Lucius face to face and truly make the blond feel miserably tiny. Sirius's eyes narrowed, mostly in defense. If he didn't get angry now, then he'd just be giving in. He couldn't do that, not to anyone. Even if it was James.
"I got the point, James," he said tersely.
"No," James went on, less nasty and more exasperated, "I don't think you did."
"Who the hell asked you, anyway?"
"I think Remus did," James said, and his voice was very low, and very calm, which made Sirius feel like he should run under his bedcovers and hide for at least a week.
"Remus asked you?" Sirius found that quite hard to believe.
"Yeah. Remus. 'Cause we all had to sit there and listen to you go off about what a royal pain in the arse Ellen Abott is, and then you're off and with her again. And I don't know how blind you are, Sirius, but you can hurt people by just being careless around them. Stupid around them."
"What are you even talking about?"
"You came to me last year and begged me to help you with her. Because you don't like Ellen Abott, you bloody daft twit, you like Remus, and if you had any eyes in your big swollen head you'd see that he likes you, too!"
There was a very long silence between them. The empty halls seemed to echo with the words, though James hadn't raised his voice above a menacing whisper.
James couldn't have possibly been so observant on his own. Most of this, Sirius figured as his mind suddenly began to function again, must have come from Lilly's intelligence and -- he took it a step farther -- Lilly's womanly intuition. Not that Sirius really believed in that sort of thing. He just knew that James was a sight deal emotionally dafter than Lilly was, and that he himself was feeling at the moment stupider than a truck full of headless chickens.
So, Sirius concluded, Lilly must have put James up to this. There couldn't be any other explanation for it.
It also explained why Sirius felt so defenseless in the face of these arguments.
And then the weight of all James had said finally sunk in to both his chest and his brain and he felt himself spluttering a little, refusing to believe it, or perhaps not quite able to let himself hope so greatly. Of all impossible things the most impossible was Remus ever looking at him as someone more than just a friend. A best friend, yes, but only that.
"You're daft," Sirius said finally, when he could make his dry lips move.
"You're blind," James replied evenly, blue eyes challenging his friend with that hidden but ever triumphant passion behind them. Of them both, Sirius knew James was the better.
"You're an idiot," Sirius said, because something had begun to ache inside his chest, and he blamed James for it, whatever it was.
"Hn," James said, folding his arms over his chest. He had turned his face away. Sirius couldn't challenge it, that way, couldn't fight the looks he had been given with anger of his own.
"Blow off," he hissed finally, turning on his heel and storming away, in more of a huff than he'd been in for a long while.
"That could have gone better," James mused to himself, before he, too, left, knowing full well that if he didn't give a full report to Lilly, he'd get his own arse kicked.
And soon after that the second semi-important thing that happened, which was a mixture of two things. Firstly, summer seemed to come early that year, and secondly, it brought with it a storm of monarch butterflies, orange and black on the suddenly hot air. Ellen Abott chose it as a sign, some sort of omen, and because it was lovely to watch those fragile wings beat against the cool breeze and triumph, she immediately assumed it was a good one. No student of Hogwarts could take a step without running into the fluttering things, and for a while, it was surreal, like walking always into a wall of bright color no matter where you stepped. After the pale winter it was a welcome change, and eventually, everyone grew used to it. It was called the Spring of the Butterflies, and it was a time in which both the young and old allowed themselves to harbor the misapprehension that they were immortal, that eternity was within their grasps.
The days of the Butterfly Spring passed, the days thick with butterflies, and Ellen Abott was safe in a cocoon of happiness. All the while Sirius and James barely spoke to each other, and Remus withdrew behind his massive books, as well as into his secretive studies with Severus Snape. The butterflies around Peter seemed to shiver, as if he exuded an aura thick with tension, and where he walked they parted. It gave him a feeling of power he had never before felt, enjoying the way the butterflies let him pass, and trembled in distress when he came near.
Because of the butterflies, receiving and sending mail by Owl Post grew less effective, letters delayed because of the owls' confusion in the butterfly-filled air. When Remus at last got his father's letter saying that he had talked things out with Sirius's parents, and Sirius was going to come stay with them for a week and a half in late July, Remus couldn't even find Sirius to tell him the news, what with the butterflies and Ellen Abott. That was the third thing leading up to the Night Which Changed Everything.
In a moment of passionate loneliness Remus hid himself in his room and listened to the Blue Rose sing and began to feel something well up inside him that had never been there before. Emotions and hormones were toyed with in the odd and somehow unreal atmosphere. Best friends picked fights with each other, lovers quarrelled, teachers canceled classes because of headaches, or simply to watch the flight of the butterflies outside the windows, and Remus felt the beast within him writhe and whimper in turmoil. He was betrayed in a way he had never before been, betrayed by himself, perhaps, but that did not mean the betrayal hadn't gone deep. He did not place trust in anyone on a whim. Sirius Black had been, Remus realized, his other half for a long while now. It felt as if a limb had been severed from his body, every time Remus became freshly aware that the other boy wasn't there with him.
Without Sirius, it was hard to smile, harder still to laugh. Without Sirius places that had been filled up inside of Remus's chest began to empty out again. Without Sirius, Remus felt acutely alone, in a way a lonely person only can once they've had something to compare loneliness with.
There was jealousy, and anger, and the part of boyhood that had made his wisdom and sagacity seem precocious began to fade away. The Spring of the Butterflies was a time for change, perhaps for adulthood, and as the world changed around Remus he could not help but have to change, too. As when he changed from boy to wolf, he withdrew into a carefully constructed shell, excluded himself from his friends and waited as he began to change from boy to the beginnings of a man, the very framework for who he would one day grow up to be.
It was miserable, Remus realized late one night, going through it alone. It was miserable going through anything at all alone but it seemed as if he had no choice in the matter any longer. He considered writing back to his father, telling him there would be no visitors, but at the last moment he didn't. If he had, he knew he would go through life as a coward.
Il faut que tu m'apprivoises, the Blue Rose had begun to sing, and in the butterfly scented air, the tune changed from one of aching to one of bitter longing. Remus didn't fully understand it. Perhaps it was echoing the longing in his chest that was tinged with sadness, a longing for something he didn't understand and didn't have a name for, yet.
What good were words when you couldn't use them to comfort yourself in times like these?
Remus had not cried since that dark night when his mother, Dalila Lupin, died on the forest floor with a bullet in her throat and her blood pooling out on both their bodies. Inside him there was something coppery and something sour that spoke of tears, and from behind his books he felt it rise up through his body, tugged by someone unknown force of his changing nature.
The last event that led up to the Night Which Changed Everything was that the head of the Gryffindor house came up with the brilliant idea of throwing a wild, end-of-the year party that would put all the Slytherins to shame, and force them to turn green with utter envy. Butterbeer was snuck in and someone managed to spike it with something, so that in a little over an hour the Gryffindor Common Room was alive with teeming, teenage chaos.
Naturally, Remus was not a part of it. In missing essential parts of his own self he could obviously not become a part of anything else, and had snuck back up to his own bed the instant Sirius had left his side. He could hear the sounds of the party drifting up to him from below, muffled but not muted happiness seeming as carefree as Remus was not, even diluted as it was through the floorboards and his canopy bed-curtains.
" 'Who can say whether we shall ever see them again?' said Morrel, with tearful eyes."
Sirius with his head in Remus's lap, eyes closed, a familiar weight against him, making Remus's body jump with excitement just a little at the memory of it, only it didn't jump then, just felt warm and comfortable. Took it for granted. Took Sirius for granted.
" 'Darling,' replied Valentine, 'has not the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words,-- "Wait and hope"?' "
He had never gotten to finish the book with Sirius.
Remus closed it, the cover heavy and rough beneath his fingers. One of his favorites, therefore grown old with use. The pages were wrinkled, like old skin, and crackled when he turned them. It smelled familiar, and he knew at least the words of the book would never change. They were something that he could rely upon forever, or for as long as he needed to.
The door swung open, the sounds of the party growing louder, and then soft again as the door thudded shut. Remus pulled his knees up to his chest, listening to the laborious footsteps of whoever it was had come up to escape the party creak over the wooden floorboards. After a while he lost interest in them, pressing his palms down against his shins and frowning at nothing at all.
Wait and hope. The words of Edmond Dantes suddenly held little meaning to Remus, who had been waiting patiently with that hidden hope for too, too long, now. He had always attended without complaint the arrival of all he hoped for. More than fourteen years, now. He was allowed to get restless.
Remus squeezed his eyes shut. That metallic tang in the back of his eyes and that tight feeling that constricted his throat were getting worse, harder to ignore. His hands clenched into fists, his body tensing into that tight ball. On his wrists, fresh cuts from the last full moon reminded him of their presence in sharp bursts of pain.
The curtains to his bed were brushed aside. The bed sank a little as Sirius sat on it, his weight causing the bedsprings to shift. The scent he brought with him told Remus who it was, so he didn't have to look up.
"Moony," Sirius said.
"Go back to the party," Remus managed. His cheeks burned, hot and unexpectedly wet. He hadn't cried in years.
"You're not there," Sirius attempted. His voice sounded loose and strange, which meant he'd no doubt had some of the enhanced butterbeer.
"There are other people." Remus wasn't the party sort.
"But not you," Sirius pressed, leaning forward. Curled up like that, Remus looked as small as he really was and as hurt as he must have been. James's words came back to him, and it struck him suddenly that the reason Remus hurt so much, the reason Sirius had been searching so long to find, was Sirius himself. "Moony. Remus."
"Go back to the party," Remus repeated. Sirius had a hand on one of his hands, now, and Remus felt his fist go limp. Sirius had his fingers splayed on top of Remus's fingers, now, and Remus lifted his head.
"Moony," Sirius said, pulling back, "you're crying." The idea of Remus doing such a thing was foreign to Sirius's mind, and he could barely process the concept, with everything inside his head as fuzzy as it was. But, no, there were slicked tear streaks running down the sides of Remus's cheeks, and though Sirius had never seen Remus do anything like it before, the boy was quite obviously crying.
"Oh," Remus said, as if he hadn't fully grasped that he was, himself. He lifted his free hand to his own cheek, and pulled it away slowly, looking down at his wet fingertips. "Oh," he said again. On top of Remus's other hand, Sirius tightened his hold, eyes half-panicked.
"Why are you crying?"
"I don't know."
"You have to." Tell me, Sirius's eyes begged, that it's not because of me you're crying.
"I don't know," Remus said again, soft and hesitant. "I can't stop." From the very depths of Remus's amber-brown eyes Sirius could see a little silver light, trembling amongst the flecks of gold. He didn't know what it was. But he must have been very close, to be able to see it there. How had he gotten so close, in the first place? His mind couldn't place things, couldn't keep a solid grasp on the passage of time or relative distances.
"Moony," Sirius said, very softly, "Remus."
"Don't," Remus said, but Sirius's hand was warm against his own, their fingers interlaced against his shin, and Sirius was very, very close, so that Remus was protesting against the line of his jaw. It didn't seem like it was a real protestation at all because there was simply no passion behind it. Sirius promptly ignored it and acted as if Remus had said nothing at all. Remus's breath was ghosting over his cheek, and it made something in his stomach tighten while it effectively shut down the functionality of his brain. The tear tracks on Remus's face caught the dim light, and Sirius frowned. Whether he had put those tears there or not was his own selfish wondering. What mattered now was brushing them away.
Sirius took Remus's face in one hand and brought his lips to his cheek, eyes falling lazily shut.
He pursed his lips, kissed the side of Remus's face gently, felt the salty wet on his tongue and trailed up the length of that slightly-sticky streak until he got to the corner of Remus's eye. He felt the other boy's eyelashes tremble against his mouth but couldn't bring himself to look at Remus's face. He kissed right beneath those lashes gently, slowly, and then pulled away.
"Sirius," Remus said. His voice was a rough, shaken whisper, and his hand in Sirius's was cold.
"Next side," Sirius murmured softly, and closed the distance again between them.
He started at Remus's eye this time, coaxing the last of the tears onto his lips, and then moved down the curve of his cheek, to where the tears had slipped over his chin and underneath. He tilted Remus's head back just slightly and dipped underneath, against his throat, to kiss the last of the tears away from his skin. He nuzzled lightly against that soft weak spot, kissing it three times after all the tears were gone, replaced with the moist, not unpleasant memory of Sirius's lips.
Remus felt himself stiffen but he allowed Sirius access to his neck. Muscles in his stomach tensed and relaxed, only to be followed by more tensing muscles. He closed his eyes, dark lashes fluttering helplessly over his cheekbones. His head was leaned back with his chin up so that Sirius could get at his throat. Part of him was panicking.
"Sirius."
"Moony," Sirius said, voice thrumming against Remus's Adam's Apple. It was the impossible terror of knowing, Remus thought to himself in a place where his mind was somehow still coherent, that this was something you wanted so badly. It was the impossible terror of not-knowing what it was Sirius was after.
Sirius's hair was tickling his chin. It was painful to breathe but he managed to anyway, feeling the air catch in his throat and against Sirius's lips.
If only he could stop thinking for just a little while, Remus thought. If only he could put enough trust in their clasped hands to make his mind shut up.
Sirius slid their hands up Remus's leg, resting them more comfortably on Remus's knee. The hand on Remus's face moved down and behind, resting on the back of his neck. Sirius pulled back, only to move in so that their faces were close together. They breathed against each other for a while, lips parted, breaths mingling between their half-open mouths. Sirius rubbed his thumb over Remus and was aware that their motions seemed static and slowed down. He couldn't bring himself to move any closer or to do anything else. It would be the end, they both knew, of something they had been for almost three years, now. It would be admitting too much, much too soon. Their foreheads rested together, their eyes closed, their breathing slow and paced the same.
"I just like to hold you," Sirius said softly, his words dancing along Remus's own lips. It was his own sort of protest. I don't want to change; I don't want to feel this; I don't want to get any older. All he wanted was to stay the same, and maybe run his fingers through Remus's hair sometimes, and maybe kiss the corners of his eyes, and the corner of his mouth, too, to make him smile. Maybe, all he wanted was to see Remus laugh, and to hold tight to his hand, and banish that cold, eery moonlight from deep in his eyes.
"I wouldn't tell you you couldn't," Remus murmured, and Sirius could almost taste his voice on his tongue, sweet and lonely, but maybe less lonely, now. Sirius felt Remus's knuckles underneath his thumb and caressed them, gently. Remus wondered at the heat he felt from the touch and the fire he felt from Sirius's words and the pounding of his own heart, despite how slow the whole world felt, how lazy and thick.
"I just like to-- like to hear your laugh," Sirius said. It sounded like a rusty gate opening, just that broken and world-weary. It sounded like a child on Christmas morning, just that innocent and delighted. Remus seemed to know there wasn't much to laugh about, which made every single laugh more important.
"I didn't know that," Remus wondered aloud. When Sirius breathed in he was breathing all that Remus was breathing out. There was no air but their own breaths between their lips, no room for anything but that between their bodies. Their hands were warm and held tightly together, finally motionless atop Remus's knee.
"I never told you," Sirius said, and he leaned in to kiss him. Remus's ribcage tightened around his heart, his chest constricting almost painfully. Their lips weren't more than a centimeter apart. Less. Remus's eyes were open, half-panicked, and his fingers clenched against Sirius's.
The door to the room slammed open.
Sirius jerked back at the noise.
Footsteps thudded, creaking over the floorboards.
"Sirius?" James's voice called out.
"Remus?" Lilly's followed James's a moment later.
Sirius's blue eyes caught Remus's deep brown ones. Something passed between them that later Sirius would not be able to name and Remus would never be able to explain. It was then, in that instant, that Everything Changed.
"Where are you?" James's voice again. "You're missing all the fun!" And Sirius pulled away, letting go of Remus's hand.
"We're here, we're here," he grumbled, pushing out of Remus's bed, "I was trying to convince Remus to come back down and join the party." Remus slipped out of his bed, smoothing himself out, his face calm and emotionless. Sirius thought to himself that his friend would make a spectacular poker player.
"Are you coming?" James asked, impatient.
"Mm," Remus murmured, and,
"Yeah," Sirius said.
On the Night Which Changed Everything, the butterflies looked like flames leaping in the darkness, clustering close to the windows which radiated meager light and tentative heat, their fragile bodies packed together against the glass.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Translations
I don't know.
You know.
You wouldn't understand.
Why are you here?
Because...because I always answer questions.
And because one only believes what one sees.
You know things that adults do not. You are truly a scholar.
That's a lie. Your name. What is your name?
Voldemort.
No. All of it.
Liam d'Or (of gold) Voldemort.
I don't trust gold. It's a lie, also. It isn't important.
Good. Goodbye (lit: "to the next sighting")
I hope that it's good bye (lit: "to god"; implying that they'll never meet again)
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
I love you.
I love you and I am alone.
I am your rose.
Yours.
I want to forget everything.
I want to forget love.
I want to forget sadness.
I want to forget everything.
