"Non Unus."
A/N: The book extraction is real, and it was taken from Cuckoo Time. I found it in the back corner of the Salvation Army thrift store today, only 50 cents. I've always had a thing for old books, so I bought it. Then, I got to thinking, Remus is rather like me, a bookworm, and I imagined that he might have a thing for old books too... The flashback part is something my friend and I RP'ed last night. During the flashback, my friend wrote Sirius's part, but I cleaned it up and changed a few words here and there. I was Remus, as usual. The title literally means (in Latin, as always), "Not alone."
As always, flames, and reviews, are more than welcome.
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He didn't bother to knock, just pushed open the door and went inside the room. The two of them never knocked anymore. There was too much trust between them to bother with petty things like knocking. Besides, now that Hogwarts was back in session, there was hardly ever anyone around number twelve, Grimmauld Place.
"Look what I've found, Siri." There was Remus Lupin, sprawled on the bed, his nose buried in a book. He hadn't looked up, but he knew who was entering, so he didn't need to bother. Sirius Black laughed, plopping down in the chair that was set in front of a desk covered in miscellaneous objects that were so very Remus. "Another book, Rem?"
Remus looked up. "Not just another book; it's an OLD book." Sirius smirked. "Oh, well then, that makes it worth its weight in Galleons." His companion propped himself up on one side, flipping to the frontispiece. "No, no, listen, it's really quite special. 'Copyright 1945, by Ralph Temple. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. Government wartime restrictions on materials have made it essential that the amount of paper used in each book be reduced to a minimum. This volume is printed on lighter paper than would have been used before material limitations became necessary, and the number of words on each page has been substantially increased. The smaller bulk in no way indicates that the text has been shortened. Manufactured in the Unites States of America.'"
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Where'd you find that?" Remus grinned. "Well, it's quite amazing what you can unearth in the back corners of muggle thrift stores... It was cheap too."
The gaunt man sighed deeply, leaning back in his chair. "Wish I could've gone..." His best friend nodded, shaking his honey-brown hair, now speckled with grey, out of his face. "So do I, but you know what Dumbledore said..." The other nodded rather grimly, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I have to stay inside the house, because I'm a murrrrrdererrrrr... What a load of crap. I hate this house. I hated it even when I was a little boy and I lived here with my parents. I've always hated it. I always WILL hate it." Remus merely smiled sadly, shaking his head, turning back to the old pages. Sirius sighed again. "It just feels so... empty in here, you know? So melancholy. Makes me feel alone."
Remus looked up, turning his head slightly to the right, looking into his old friend's chocolate eyes. "Do you remember that afternoon, right around the holidays, in 5th year?" Sirius smiled. "Yeah, I remember that... James was at his parents' place, we had the whole common room to ourselves, and I was scared because we were going to have to face the full moon, just me and you." Remus nodded. "Remember what I told you?" Sirius furrowed his eyebrows, thinking back. "Give me a moment, and I will..."
------------FLASHBACK--------------
Remus Lupin, a quiet, lanky boy of 15, lay sprawled out on a couch in the middle of the Gryffindor Common Room, reveling in the fact that he was allowed to be lazy. His chin-length honey-brown hair spilled into his amber eyes, and he didn't bother to brush it back. It was the Christmas holidays, and he and his best friend Sirius were the only ones of the Mauraders to've stayed behind at Hogwarts. But then again, they were the only ones of the Mauraders to have families that were so highly dysfunctional that neither boy was welcome in their own home. He sighed, turning his head to look at Sirius, who was sitting nearby. The Common Room was mostly empty; what few students there were left at the castle were almost all playing out in the snow that was still falling. "Sirius? Why didn't you go home with James for Christmas? You know his parents adore you, they'd've let you." His voice was rather long and lazy, very much reflecting his mood. He yawned and sat up a bit in order to see his friend better.
"Well, Moony, my friend, where would that leave you? Alone?" The black- haired Gryffindor snorted indignantly. "As if I'd do that, Remus." He yawned lazily, draped over the large, puffy seat beside the fire. His ebony hair, also chin-length, glistened in the firelight.
Remus grinned, shaking his hair out of his face and twisting around onto his stomach on the couch so that he was now leaning on the arm of it, still fully stretched out. Now he could see properly. "Well, I donno, this IS the first Christmas for you out of Black Manor..." He shrugged. "Just wondering, that's all." He paused, thinking for a moment. "Prongs told me I would've been welcome as well---" Sirius interrupted him. "As well you should be." Remus sighed and finished what he'd been saying. "But of course, full moon's on the second-to-last day before school starts back again, so that'd be no good, now would it?" He smiled amiably.
"Exactly." Sirius said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. "It's actually kind of a relief to be out of the house this year. Family's nuts. My mum..." He trailed off, leaving the statement hanging. After a moment he said, "I think James deserves a break from the insanity anyway." He grinned. Remus grinned back. "Yeah, sorry to break it to you mate, but you gotta house full of nutters." He yawned again.
"Besides, you get to spend not only all of Christmas with me, but also a whole entire transformation, out in the cold January night! Won't THAT be fun, Sirius?" Sirius let out a bark-like laugh. "But imagine, prowling Hogsmeade in the dark, the cold, just the two of us, dog and wolf... Okay. It's not all that grand and spectacular, I must admit, but still." He laughed again. "It's a pity that Jamie boy couldn't be with us. Wormy, I can live without." He made a small noise of disgust; he obviously didn't like the little tag-along at all. "I mean, really, he's a rat. No pun intended. He needs to get a life. I know, I sound so cruel, but that little rodent deserves it. He literally grabs onto our heels and begs us to drag him along." Remus smirked a little. "Now, now Siri, be nice, Peter's a person too..."
"Although," Remus mused after a silent moment, "he HAS been acting a little... weirder lately. Then again," he laughed, "so's the Prophet." He tipped his head slightly to the right. "Have you been seeing all those crazy stories they've been running about some nutter dark wizard who's got himself a band of followers? Voldemort and his Death Eaters, I believe they were calling themselves." Remus shrugged. "Peter always gets jumpy when one of those stories're on the front page..." Sirius nodded. "I mean really. This isn't the first time someone's tried to take over the wizarding world. No worries, I say. Dumbledore's got it under control, I bet. The Ministry relies on him for everything. Peter's just overreacting, but still... it is a little strange." He yawned and turned his head to see his friend better.
Remus nodded. "Keeps touching his left forearm, have you noticed that?" He thought for a moment more, working his sharp brain. Sirius interrupted his train of thought. "You really are too astute for your own good, you know that?" Remus merely nodded. The Hat had wanted him in Ravenclaw, but Remus had protested, since his three new friends he'd met that day on the train were already sorted into Gryffindor. The Hat had given in, saying that the young man would be braver than he ever dreamed possible, someday. Sirius, however, preferred to slack off, only paying enough attention to pass the class. Sometimes. Other times he'd just charm the grade book to attack the teacher the next time it was opened. So far, he'd never been caught.
"Another thing I've noticed," Remus continued, "is that all the Slytherins tend to grab their left forearm, all at the same time, too. Wormtail, also, at the same time." He looked at Sirius and shrugged. "It's just kind of strange, y'know?"
"Yeah. It's like, they've all burned themselves there or something." After a moment's pause, Sirius said quietly, "D'you think any of it's related?" The question burned in his chocolate eyes. Remus just looked at his companion for a moment. "Yeah, that's kind of what I've been thinking..."
After a moment, he turned around, pointing his wand over the back of the couch. "Accio newspaper," he said, and the morning's copy of The Daily Prophet came floating over. He licked his thumb, and flipped though the pages till he got to the article he'd remembered reading earlier. "Ah. Here we go." He held the paper up, cleared his throat, and began to read a section of an article. "Listen to this, Siri.
'It is often said that all of the Dark Lord's elite Death Eaters are marked by a special mark, known to the general populous as the Dark Mark. When a member is inducted into their secret society, the Mark is branded upon him somewhere on his person. This reporter has had special inside information that leads him to believe that if the Dark Lord touches the Mark on any one of the Death Eaters' body, all feel His presence, and gather around Him. There has been some speculation as to the bodily location of the Mark, but the general consensus is the inner left forearm.'"
Remus shot Sirius a significant look over the top of the paper. The other boy raised his eyebrows. "Well, well, well. Maybe we have some minor supporters of this Dark Lord, don't we?" He snorted a little. "Death Eaters, eh? If Wormy's a Death Eater, I'm so gonna eat his ass... Hanging onto the hem of our robes, only to be running after the hems of this new playground boss..." A careless smirk fell across his features. After a moment he said, "Should I be smirking or do you think this is for real, Remmy boy?"
Remus pursed his lips together and shook his head, eyebrows raised. "In any other situation, I'd say go ahead..." He carefully folded the paper and floated it back across the room to the table it had been lying on. "But..."
He snapped his head up. "Siri, have your dog senses been telling you anything weird lately? Mine have been yelling at me to be more alert, more... more vigilant..." He furrowed his eyebrows, looking intently at Sirius, who closed his eyes. "Somethin's up, yeah. I've been ignoring it, thinking maybe it's the looming of the full moon ahead of us, just you and me y'know. It's never happened before, just us." He ran his hand back through his raven hair, keeping it entangled in the locks for a moment. "But something has been weirder lately. Wonder if James' noticed." Remus smirked a little, a snicker in his throat. "Honestly, all James notices these days is Lilly Evans..." He rolled his eyes. "But no, seriously... I don't know what to tell you, Siri, I really don't. Yeah, the Prophet's been known to get worked up over nothing, and it's also been known to neglect to report something majorly important, but this... It just seems real, somehow, but I couldn't tell you why I think this is real and those other times weren't."
A moment passed, both boys silently lost in thought. Suddenly, Remus looked over at his friend with a analyzing stare. Something Sirius had said was bugging him. "Sirius," he said, turning his head to the side, "are you worried about the moon?" His voice was much quieter and his tone much gentler than it had been when they were discussing the troubled world. His facial features softened, and he raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "If you're not comfortable around me just by yourself, I can go alone, you know. Really, it's okay if you aren't."
Sirius took a moment to pull his hand the rest of the way through his hair, opening his eyes and sitting up in his chair, swinging his legs around so he was seated the correct way. "Rem, I'm not gonna feed you a bunch of shit and tell you that no, I'm not worked up about it. Instead, I'm gonna tell you the truth, because you deserve to know. I'm nervous about it, yes. But I'm not nervous enough to back and out let you do this thing alone. Knowing you, tearing up the walls and ripping apart the furniture, you'd probably kill yourself with nothing to do and no one there." He leaned back in the puffy cushioning of the chair. "I'm gonna go down there with you on this moon, whether you like it or not."
Remus pulled one of his knees up to his chest; the other was still stretched out. "Well I figured that much..." He looked at his friend closer, piercing through him with his eyes, trying to read into his soul. Usually, if Sirius allowed, he was able to see what the other was thinking, but not this afternoon. He was tense, that much was clear. "But..." He pulled his eyes into a squint, then let them go normal again. "But why would you..." He blew a thin stream of air from the corner of his mouth, making his hair fly out of his face. "Why would you be nervous at all?" He ran the tip of his tongue around his upper lip, thinking.
"I mean," he began slowly, "if it were just James and me, yeah, I can see how he might get slightly more hurt than normal, and if it were just Wormtail and me, well, I might end up eating him..." He smirked a little. Getting no reaction from his friend, he continued, his words slow and measured. "But you, Sirius... Don't you know? You're Alpha, to the wolf that lives inside my mind. What reason could you possibly have to be nervous?" Sirius cut into his friend's musing. "I know. Hey, I'm Alpha, king of the world!" He laughed humorlessly.
Remus was absentmindedly playing with the delicate chain that hung around his neck, still looking at Sirius. The chain held a locket that his mum had given him a long time ago. She'd meant for him to put a picture of his sweetheart in it, but instead, there was a little picture of the Mauraders, his best friends. Remus always wore it in an effort to keep them right beside him, wherever he was.
"You're the LAST person the wolf would ever even CONSIDER harming, Siri." At this, a fleeting smile appeared over Sirius's lips, just a small one though. "Yeah. I know. It's a bit silly to get even the slightest bit worked up, I know." He let his head fall back against the crimson, parting his chapped lips with the tip of his own tongue. "It's just, I've never..." He tweaked the end of his shirt. "We've never done it alone." He ran his thin finger over the velvety material of the chair, parading the charade that he was paying more attention to it than his uncertain answer.
Remus smiled, a smile that was sad and wistful and almost mourning. "But it's not alone. I've been alone. I was five years old when I first got bitten. Do you think I had any Sirius or James with me then?" He shook his head, remembering things that were better left in the past. He pulled the other knee to his chest. "Siri, look at me." Sirius looked up at the young werewolf, the firelight dancing in the depths of his dark brown eyes. "You still didn't answer my question," Remus said, raising both eyebrows. "What reason could you possibly have to be nervous?" He looked at Sirius, but not hard. The gaze was merely a kind one, which was trying to be understanding, but couldn't, because owner of said gaze didn't understand his best friend's reaction. "I don't really know. Really," he said gravely, not quite sure if he was telling the truth or not. He'd figure that part out later. "Why am I nervous? I have no answer. I honestly don't." He thought about what Remus had said, about not having him and Prongs before. Well. The point was that they were here now, and those days of being alone were over.
------------END-FLASHBACK--------------
Sirius looked up slowly at Remus. "You said... You said it wasn't alone." His friend nodded. "What were you thinking, right then?" He turned his head to the side a bit, awaiting the answer.
"I was thinking..." Sirius's voice became quiet, almost a whisper. "I was thinking that you'd never have to be alone again, that you'd always have us, me and James." Remus smiled, the same smile he'd given his friend that afternoon nearly 20 years ago. The sadness and the wistfulness and the mourning were all there still, but his amber eyes danced with affection. "And, to follow your line of thought, you'll always have me."
"But... but what if we should lose each other, Rem?" Sirius asked quietly. His tone of voice was very grave indeed. Remus simply said, "No matter where we are physically, our souls will never lose sight of one another, Sirius." Sirius asked the question that his dog senses had been bugging him about for awhile. "Even in death? Death seems to be a pretty solitary, lonely process to me."
Remus just looked at him. "We have each other. Those days of being alone are over, no matter what may happen." He folded his friend into a hug, and whispered into his black hair, "It's not alone."
A/N: The book extraction is real, and it was taken from Cuckoo Time. I found it in the back corner of the Salvation Army thrift store today, only 50 cents. I've always had a thing for old books, so I bought it. Then, I got to thinking, Remus is rather like me, a bookworm, and I imagined that he might have a thing for old books too... The flashback part is something my friend and I RP'ed last night. During the flashback, my friend wrote Sirius's part, but I cleaned it up and changed a few words here and there. I was Remus, as usual. The title literally means (in Latin, as always), "Not alone."
As always, flames, and reviews, are more than welcome.
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He didn't bother to knock, just pushed open the door and went inside the room. The two of them never knocked anymore. There was too much trust between them to bother with petty things like knocking. Besides, now that Hogwarts was back in session, there was hardly ever anyone around number twelve, Grimmauld Place.
"Look what I've found, Siri." There was Remus Lupin, sprawled on the bed, his nose buried in a book. He hadn't looked up, but he knew who was entering, so he didn't need to bother. Sirius Black laughed, plopping down in the chair that was set in front of a desk covered in miscellaneous objects that were so very Remus. "Another book, Rem?"
Remus looked up. "Not just another book; it's an OLD book." Sirius smirked. "Oh, well then, that makes it worth its weight in Galleons." His companion propped himself up on one side, flipping to the frontispiece. "No, no, listen, it's really quite special. 'Copyright 1945, by Ralph Temple. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. Government wartime restrictions on materials have made it essential that the amount of paper used in each book be reduced to a minimum. This volume is printed on lighter paper than would have been used before material limitations became necessary, and the number of words on each page has been substantially increased. The smaller bulk in no way indicates that the text has been shortened. Manufactured in the Unites States of America.'"
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Where'd you find that?" Remus grinned. "Well, it's quite amazing what you can unearth in the back corners of muggle thrift stores... It was cheap too."
The gaunt man sighed deeply, leaning back in his chair. "Wish I could've gone..." His best friend nodded, shaking his honey-brown hair, now speckled with grey, out of his face. "So do I, but you know what Dumbledore said..." The other nodded rather grimly, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I have to stay inside the house, because I'm a murrrrrdererrrrr... What a load of crap. I hate this house. I hated it even when I was a little boy and I lived here with my parents. I've always hated it. I always WILL hate it." Remus merely smiled sadly, shaking his head, turning back to the old pages. Sirius sighed again. "It just feels so... empty in here, you know? So melancholy. Makes me feel alone."
Remus looked up, turning his head slightly to the right, looking into his old friend's chocolate eyes. "Do you remember that afternoon, right around the holidays, in 5th year?" Sirius smiled. "Yeah, I remember that... James was at his parents' place, we had the whole common room to ourselves, and I was scared because we were going to have to face the full moon, just me and you." Remus nodded. "Remember what I told you?" Sirius furrowed his eyebrows, thinking back. "Give me a moment, and I will..."
------------FLASHBACK--------------
Remus Lupin, a quiet, lanky boy of 15, lay sprawled out on a couch in the middle of the Gryffindor Common Room, reveling in the fact that he was allowed to be lazy. His chin-length honey-brown hair spilled into his amber eyes, and he didn't bother to brush it back. It was the Christmas holidays, and he and his best friend Sirius were the only ones of the Mauraders to've stayed behind at Hogwarts. But then again, they were the only ones of the Mauraders to have families that were so highly dysfunctional that neither boy was welcome in their own home. He sighed, turning his head to look at Sirius, who was sitting nearby. The Common Room was mostly empty; what few students there were left at the castle were almost all playing out in the snow that was still falling. "Sirius? Why didn't you go home with James for Christmas? You know his parents adore you, they'd've let you." His voice was rather long and lazy, very much reflecting his mood. He yawned and sat up a bit in order to see his friend better.
"Well, Moony, my friend, where would that leave you? Alone?" The black- haired Gryffindor snorted indignantly. "As if I'd do that, Remus." He yawned lazily, draped over the large, puffy seat beside the fire. His ebony hair, also chin-length, glistened in the firelight.
Remus grinned, shaking his hair out of his face and twisting around onto his stomach on the couch so that he was now leaning on the arm of it, still fully stretched out. Now he could see properly. "Well, I donno, this IS the first Christmas for you out of Black Manor..." He shrugged. "Just wondering, that's all." He paused, thinking for a moment. "Prongs told me I would've been welcome as well---" Sirius interrupted him. "As well you should be." Remus sighed and finished what he'd been saying. "But of course, full moon's on the second-to-last day before school starts back again, so that'd be no good, now would it?" He smiled amiably.
"Exactly." Sirius said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. "It's actually kind of a relief to be out of the house this year. Family's nuts. My mum..." He trailed off, leaving the statement hanging. After a moment he said, "I think James deserves a break from the insanity anyway." He grinned. Remus grinned back. "Yeah, sorry to break it to you mate, but you gotta house full of nutters." He yawned again.
"Besides, you get to spend not only all of Christmas with me, but also a whole entire transformation, out in the cold January night! Won't THAT be fun, Sirius?" Sirius let out a bark-like laugh. "But imagine, prowling Hogsmeade in the dark, the cold, just the two of us, dog and wolf... Okay. It's not all that grand and spectacular, I must admit, but still." He laughed again. "It's a pity that Jamie boy couldn't be with us. Wormy, I can live without." He made a small noise of disgust; he obviously didn't like the little tag-along at all. "I mean, really, he's a rat. No pun intended. He needs to get a life. I know, I sound so cruel, but that little rodent deserves it. He literally grabs onto our heels and begs us to drag him along." Remus smirked a little. "Now, now Siri, be nice, Peter's a person too..."
"Although," Remus mused after a silent moment, "he HAS been acting a little... weirder lately. Then again," he laughed, "so's the Prophet." He tipped his head slightly to the right. "Have you been seeing all those crazy stories they've been running about some nutter dark wizard who's got himself a band of followers? Voldemort and his Death Eaters, I believe they were calling themselves." Remus shrugged. "Peter always gets jumpy when one of those stories're on the front page..." Sirius nodded. "I mean really. This isn't the first time someone's tried to take over the wizarding world. No worries, I say. Dumbledore's got it under control, I bet. The Ministry relies on him for everything. Peter's just overreacting, but still... it is a little strange." He yawned and turned his head to see his friend better.
Remus nodded. "Keeps touching his left forearm, have you noticed that?" He thought for a moment more, working his sharp brain. Sirius interrupted his train of thought. "You really are too astute for your own good, you know that?" Remus merely nodded. The Hat had wanted him in Ravenclaw, but Remus had protested, since his three new friends he'd met that day on the train were already sorted into Gryffindor. The Hat had given in, saying that the young man would be braver than he ever dreamed possible, someday. Sirius, however, preferred to slack off, only paying enough attention to pass the class. Sometimes. Other times he'd just charm the grade book to attack the teacher the next time it was opened. So far, he'd never been caught.
"Another thing I've noticed," Remus continued, "is that all the Slytherins tend to grab their left forearm, all at the same time, too. Wormtail, also, at the same time." He looked at Sirius and shrugged. "It's just kind of strange, y'know?"
"Yeah. It's like, they've all burned themselves there or something." After a moment's pause, Sirius said quietly, "D'you think any of it's related?" The question burned in his chocolate eyes. Remus just looked at his companion for a moment. "Yeah, that's kind of what I've been thinking..."
After a moment, he turned around, pointing his wand over the back of the couch. "Accio newspaper," he said, and the morning's copy of The Daily Prophet came floating over. He licked his thumb, and flipped though the pages till he got to the article he'd remembered reading earlier. "Ah. Here we go." He held the paper up, cleared his throat, and began to read a section of an article. "Listen to this, Siri.
'It is often said that all of the Dark Lord's elite Death Eaters are marked by a special mark, known to the general populous as the Dark Mark. When a member is inducted into their secret society, the Mark is branded upon him somewhere on his person. This reporter has had special inside information that leads him to believe that if the Dark Lord touches the Mark on any one of the Death Eaters' body, all feel His presence, and gather around Him. There has been some speculation as to the bodily location of the Mark, but the general consensus is the inner left forearm.'"
Remus shot Sirius a significant look over the top of the paper. The other boy raised his eyebrows. "Well, well, well. Maybe we have some minor supporters of this Dark Lord, don't we?" He snorted a little. "Death Eaters, eh? If Wormy's a Death Eater, I'm so gonna eat his ass... Hanging onto the hem of our robes, only to be running after the hems of this new playground boss..." A careless smirk fell across his features. After a moment he said, "Should I be smirking or do you think this is for real, Remmy boy?"
Remus pursed his lips together and shook his head, eyebrows raised. "In any other situation, I'd say go ahead..." He carefully folded the paper and floated it back across the room to the table it had been lying on. "But..."
He snapped his head up. "Siri, have your dog senses been telling you anything weird lately? Mine have been yelling at me to be more alert, more... more vigilant..." He furrowed his eyebrows, looking intently at Sirius, who closed his eyes. "Somethin's up, yeah. I've been ignoring it, thinking maybe it's the looming of the full moon ahead of us, just you and me y'know. It's never happened before, just us." He ran his hand back through his raven hair, keeping it entangled in the locks for a moment. "But something has been weirder lately. Wonder if James' noticed." Remus smirked a little, a snicker in his throat. "Honestly, all James notices these days is Lilly Evans..." He rolled his eyes. "But no, seriously... I don't know what to tell you, Siri, I really don't. Yeah, the Prophet's been known to get worked up over nothing, and it's also been known to neglect to report something majorly important, but this... It just seems real, somehow, but I couldn't tell you why I think this is real and those other times weren't."
A moment passed, both boys silently lost in thought. Suddenly, Remus looked over at his friend with a analyzing stare. Something Sirius had said was bugging him. "Sirius," he said, turning his head to the side, "are you worried about the moon?" His voice was much quieter and his tone much gentler than it had been when they were discussing the troubled world. His facial features softened, and he raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "If you're not comfortable around me just by yourself, I can go alone, you know. Really, it's okay if you aren't."
Sirius took a moment to pull his hand the rest of the way through his hair, opening his eyes and sitting up in his chair, swinging his legs around so he was seated the correct way. "Rem, I'm not gonna feed you a bunch of shit and tell you that no, I'm not worked up about it. Instead, I'm gonna tell you the truth, because you deserve to know. I'm nervous about it, yes. But I'm not nervous enough to back and out let you do this thing alone. Knowing you, tearing up the walls and ripping apart the furniture, you'd probably kill yourself with nothing to do and no one there." He leaned back in the puffy cushioning of the chair. "I'm gonna go down there with you on this moon, whether you like it or not."
Remus pulled one of his knees up to his chest; the other was still stretched out. "Well I figured that much..." He looked at his friend closer, piercing through him with his eyes, trying to read into his soul. Usually, if Sirius allowed, he was able to see what the other was thinking, but not this afternoon. He was tense, that much was clear. "But..." He pulled his eyes into a squint, then let them go normal again. "But why would you..." He blew a thin stream of air from the corner of his mouth, making his hair fly out of his face. "Why would you be nervous at all?" He ran the tip of his tongue around his upper lip, thinking.
"I mean," he began slowly, "if it were just James and me, yeah, I can see how he might get slightly more hurt than normal, and if it were just Wormtail and me, well, I might end up eating him..." He smirked a little. Getting no reaction from his friend, he continued, his words slow and measured. "But you, Sirius... Don't you know? You're Alpha, to the wolf that lives inside my mind. What reason could you possibly have to be nervous?" Sirius cut into his friend's musing. "I know. Hey, I'm Alpha, king of the world!" He laughed humorlessly.
Remus was absentmindedly playing with the delicate chain that hung around his neck, still looking at Sirius. The chain held a locket that his mum had given him a long time ago. She'd meant for him to put a picture of his sweetheart in it, but instead, there was a little picture of the Mauraders, his best friends. Remus always wore it in an effort to keep them right beside him, wherever he was.
"You're the LAST person the wolf would ever even CONSIDER harming, Siri." At this, a fleeting smile appeared over Sirius's lips, just a small one though. "Yeah. I know. It's a bit silly to get even the slightest bit worked up, I know." He let his head fall back against the crimson, parting his chapped lips with the tip of his own tongue. "It's just, I've never..." He tweaked the end of his shirt. "We've never done it alone." He ran his thin finger over the velvety material of the chair, parading the charade that he was paying more attention to it than his uncertain answer.
Remus smiled, a smile that was sad and wistful and almost mourning. "But it's not alone. I've been alone. I was five years old when I first got bitten. Do you think I had any Sirius or James with me then?" He shook his head, remembering things that were better left in the past. He pulled the other knee to his chest. "Siri, look at me." Sirius looked up at the young werewolf, the firelight dancing in the depths of his dark brown eyes. "You still didn't answer my question," Remus said, raising both eyebrows. "What reason could you possibly have to be nervous?" He looked at Sirius, but not hard. The gaze was merely a kind one, which was trying to be understanding, but couldn't, because owner of said gaze didn't understand his best friend's reaction. "I don't really know. Really," he said gravely, not quite sure if he was telling the truth or not. He'd figure that part out later. "Why am I nervous? I have no answer. I honestly don't." He thought about what Remus had said, about not having him and Prongs before. Well. The point was that they were here now, and those days of being alone were over.
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Sirius looked up slowly at Remus. "You said... You said it wasn't alone." His friend nodded. "What were you thinking, right then?" He turned his head to the side a bit, awaiting the answer.
"I was thinking..." Sirius's voice became quiet, almost a whisper. "I was thinking that you'd never have to be alone again, that you'd always have us, me and James." Remus smiled, the same smile he'd given his friend that afternoon nearly 20 years ago. The sadness and the wistfulness and the mourning were all there still, but his amber eyes danced with affection. "And, to follow your line of thought, you'll always have me."
"But... but what if we should lose each other, Rem?" Sirius asked quietly. His tone of voice was very grave indeed. Remus simply said, "No matter where we are physically, our souls will never lose sight of one another, Sirius." Sirius asked the question that his dog senses had been bugging him about for awhile. "Even in death? Death seems to be a pretty solitary, lonely process to me."
Remus just looked at him. "We have each other. Those days of being alone are over, no matter what may happen." He folded his friend into a hug, and whispered into his black hair, "It's not alone."