5.
Sirius never does find out what Severus Snape has decided to tell Albus Dumbledore, if anything. The Headmaster questions each of the boys separately, and sends each of them back to their dormitories afterwards, while the others wait in a separate room. He sees Peter, who knows the least, first. Snape is next, and he is closeted with Dumbledore for what seems a very long time to James and Sirius.
The two of them discuss the night's events in whispers as they wait for their respective turns to come. They first sort out what James can and cannot tell the Headmaster, and once that practical matter is resolved, James then tells his closest friend exactly what he thinks of his various recent activities. Although he uses any number of colorful and extremely pejorative terms, he never once tells Sirius "I told you so."
Sirius appreciates this restraint; he has enough "I told you so" ricocheting busily around his own skull for the both of them. When Dumbledore calls James into his office for his own turn on the hot seat, Sirius impulsively grabs his best friend before he goes in, and crushes him in a quick hug.
"Thank heaven at least one of us isn't a nutter, Prongs. You know how much worse this would all have been without you. And I know too. Thank you."
James scans Sirius' bruised, troubled face. He smiles, slowly. "You're welcome. Friends don't let friends commit murder – I'm sure I read that somewhere in the Gryffindor handbook. And wait until you hear what Dumbledore has to say before you throw yourself off the roof of the Astronomy tower, all right, Paddy? He'll probably be a bit less harsh a judge than you will."
"I'm not really … cruel, you know," Sirius says, in a small voice. "Not always. Am I?"
James smiles gently once more. "No, you generally reserve the really abominable treatment for yourself. Let someone else decide, this time, okay? I'll see you later."
Sirius waits for his time to come, alone, after that, and it seems like an eternity passes before he is called into the office.
He tells Albus Dumbledore everything, omitting only the secrets of others, that he has promised to keep. He is, by turns, ashamed, mortified, disgusted with himself, and absolutely amazed by the sheer idiocy of some of his decisions, but he doesn't leave anything out. By the time he is finished, he is covered in a thin, chill second skin of sweat, and he feels as though he's just dug a ditch straight across Europe. Dumbledore regards him gravely for a time, and the silence spins out between the two of them.
Eventually, Dumbledore speaks.
"Would you care for a cup of tea, Sirius?" he asks. Sirius feels as though he's slipped a few mental gears and he remembers the dreadful feeling of unreality that accompanied him on the path to the castle just a few hours earlier.
"Sir?" he asks, voice trembling with confusion and terrible fatigue.
"Tea. You look as though you could use a cup. Certainly I could. Just a moment."
Dumbledore rises from his desk and pulls a small silken rope in a nearby alcove of the office. A tray with a steaming pot of tea, china cups and a plate of biscuits appears on a deal table in the alcove a moment later, sent up from the kitchens, no doubt.
Dumbledore pours, and Sirius finds that the simple, homey rituals of cream and sugar and holding a warm cup in both hands allow him to collect himself much more effectively than he would have guessed they could. He nods gratefully to the Headmaster as Dumbledore resumes his chair behind his desk and sips at his cup, still holding Sirius in his gaze all the while.
"Well, then," Dumbledore says. "What am I to do with you? Am I to have you expelled and have your wand destroyed? Cast you out? Send you off somewhere where you can't do any more harm?"
"Perhaps you should, sir," Sirius replies quietly. He grasps his teacup tightly and looks Dumbledore in the eye. "That might be best."
Dumbledore sighs. "I see your doubts, Sirius. I share them. What do you feel right now? Which emotion most fills your heart?"
Sirius listens to himself for a moment, listens to the small, dark spaces inside him.
"Fear, sir," he answers. "I'm afraid."
"Yes. But not for yourself. Of yourself. Isn't that so?"
"There's … there's so much about what happened – about the things I did – that I don't understand. But there's also quite a bit that …I'm afraid I might understand altogether too well. Do you … do you see what I mean?"
"I see that you have some adult choices to make. You are certainly no longer a child. I see that you are going to be a man very soon, Mr. Black"
"And I wouldn't want to be a bad one," Sirius says, and sighs tiredly. He looks into his teacup as he goes on. "My great-grandfather died in a private sanitarium, did you know that? The family hushed it up, of course, but you might have heard about it. So did one of my aunts. My father sometimes raves in his sleep and my mother raves awake, night and day. My little brother hexed one of the house-elves to burst into flame once, when he was six. I had him beat by two years; I set Narcissa's hair on fire at four. My cousin Bella …well, you've heard enough about her. I don't want to do any more harm, but …you know, I didn't especially want to last night, so far as I can remember. I'm beginning to wonder how … how valid any choice I make really is."
"Your blood, I agree, has conveyed some curses along with its gifts. And that, I am afraid, is most often the case. We are not, any of us, often born with gifts that have no cost. You are suggesting that perhaps it's best if I send you off to some remote cloister where you can't do harm? And where, Sirius, do you suppose that might be?"
"I …I don't know, sir."
Dumbledore smiles, a little. "The world can seem like a very big place, when we're young, but it really isn't. I can't send you outside the world, that is far beyond my power, whatever you might wish. No matter where you go, no matter where you'll ever go, as long as you are in this world, you can always do harm."
He stops and takes a sip of his tea. The smile has died from his lips when he next raises his eyes to Sirius.
"Nor can I somehow render you powerless and thus harmless forever, even if you wished it, even if I wished it. But I do not wish it. A war is coming. You yourself must know this, you've been touched by it already – bested, in fact, in your first battle. For make no mistake, Sirius, Voldemort has been your true adversary in this skirmish."
"But it was Bella who – and it was me that-"
"It doesn't matter. Bellatrix, Voldemort, poisonous deeds, poisonous thoughts, they are all one, in this conflict. This is how the Dark Lord, and those who serve him, attacks. He preys on the weaknesses of his victims and invites them to destroy themselves. You do have the potential to be a deadly enemy, young Black. I shall not lie to you in that regard. Your classmate, Mr. Snape, has a similar potential. I should much prefer that the both of you be Voldemort's enemies, rather than mine, as I oppose him. Must I permit him to force me into a position where I must destroy two young lives in the pursuit of some cold ideal of justice? Thus reducing the number of opponents he himself must eventually face by two? Do your fears truly run that deep?"
"I don't speak for Severus," Sirius says, a bit tensely.
"No, indeed, you have deliberately failed to speak for him on several pertinent points this very morning. Some private arrangement between the two of you, no doubt. But you can speak for yourself. Will being expelled and forbidden the practice of magic truly protect you and others from everything you fear in yourself? Can you even promise, truly promise, that if I did cast you to the wolves, as it were, you would never use magic again?"
Sirius thinks of the thousands of spells, jinxes, charms and curses that he has already cast in his relatively short life. He thinks of how easy it had been to learn his first charm; of how it had seemed as if he'd known just how to do it all along, in exactly the same way that he knew how to breathe or swallow or blink his eyes. He thinks of Padfoot, and of how very close the black dog always is now, of how blurred the boundaries between himself and his other self have become. He thinks of all the magic in the earth and the sky and the water and the air that he can always feel, humming endlessly, always just within reach. He can no more promise to give up magic than he can promise to give up air. It is as inextricably a part of him as his bones are.
"No," he admits to Dumbledore finally, voice cracking. "No, I can't promise that."
"No. So, that being the case, we must both find a way to have a bit of faith in you, I believe. You have not been a bad child, and I don't really think you will ever be a bad man. Most evil men have little ability to love. But you suffer from a surfeit of it, as the events just past amply demonstrate."
Sirius' eyes widen a touch in surprise. This idea is not something that has ever occurred to him, over the past weeks.
"It is true that I was thinking about - I've – I've been so frightened for -" he breathes, more to himself than to Dumbledore.
"For Mr. Lupin, yes. A pity your deep concern for him placed him in far greater danger than your cousin alone could ever have managed. This great capacity for love is something you also must learn to control, perhaps more than anything else in you. You do not yet see it as your primary weakness, and, indeed, it is your greatest strength. But love is an explosive substance, Mr. Black, the most explosive there is. And you are steeped in it. You'll have to have a care where it leads you, in future."
Sirius nods, a bit grimly. He will have to have a care. Not that Remus, by any sane standard, will do anything other than despise and detest him, once he finds out what Sirius has very nearly done to him. And perhaps that's for the best.
Dumbledore is still speaking to him. He tries to put aside the monstrous aching in his heart at the thought of his friend Remus enough to listen.
"I've known you since you were very small. Please trust me when I say you have never been as strongly controlled by your own blood as you might believe. In truth, you are singularly difficult to control at all, by any force that I know of."
Dumbledore smiles again, and there is genuine fondness in it, despite the graveness of what he says next.
"But you expect to be judged, I imagine. Therefore, I'll render my judgment now. And you must render yours. Stay with us, then, Sirius. Turn your considerable power against Voldemort. Turn your considerable ability to love and your equally considerable ability to wreak havoc against him too. Will you do that? Can you do that?"
Sirius stares into Dumbledore's eyes, trying, in his way, to see the thoughts behind them. He cannot see his future there, and he cannot see where this day will eventually lead. He sees only that it all comes down to choices, in the end. And so many choices must be made blind.
"Sir," he says at last. "I'll try, sir."
"A fitting punishment, I think. A life sentence, in fact. But I can also deduct some points and give you some detentions if it will make you feel better, Mr. Black."
Sirius feels his face pulling in an odd way, and doesn't realize that he is grinning, it has been so long since anything at all has struck him as funny. "It would certainly make Mr. Snape feel better, sir. I'm sorry to say that I rather think you ought to."
"Just as you wish, then. See Professor McGonagall this afternoon. And see Madame Pomfrey, as well, you look a fright. I would not have thought Mr. Pettigrew had it in him. Good day, Sirius. We'll talk about your future plans again in a few months."
6.
Over the course of the next few hours, Sirius quite forgets that one of the last things the Headmaster told him to do was to have Madame Pomfrey take a look at him. He still has to deal with the judgment of Peter and of James, and he will eventually have to face Remus, whenever he recovers enough to leave the hospital wing. He and James and Peter are comparing notes on the shore of the lake late that morning when Severus Snape shows up to give them all a virulent dose of opinion, and James' only comment, when they see Snape approaching, is eloquent.
"You bloody wanker, Sirius. Thanks to you, now we all have to be nice to the greasy git!"
Remus Lupin comes staggering out to the lake not long after, pale as death and swerving to and fro in his course towards them like a defective top. Sirius wishes he had the nerve to cast a quick Disillusionment charm on himself, since it is clear from Remus' expression, even at a distance, that he is the target Remus most urgently seeks.
"How in hell did he find out so soon?" Sirius asks the air in pointless aggravation. "He shouldn't even have been out of bed until tomorrow at least! This'll put him back in hospital for a week!"
"Dumbledore, I should think," James remarks evenly. "Brace yourself, mate. I promise not to let him kill you if it looks like things are getting out of hand."
"You're a true friend, Potter. You can have my History of Magic notes if anything goes wrong. And you won't let my family get their claws on my corpse, will you? No telling what they'll do with it." Sirius says, watching as Remus gets closer and closer.
Remus is on him a few moments later, and Sirius really can't remember very much after that at all. He recalls telling Pete and James to see if they can collect his teeth at one point, and he remembers Remus saying he is satisfied and will not be administering any further beatings in the foreseeable future, and he remembers being amazed and immensely grateful that Remus, rather miraculously, is actually willing to touch him, even if it is only to pummel him into shreds. But he has been around the dark side of the moon and back, over the past twenty-four hours, and has also been beaten senseless twice, in two separate forms, and it is all a bit much, even for a young, healthy teenager. He doesn't ever, for the rest of his life, recall much of anything about his next two days in the hospital wing.
During that time, Peter and James fill Remus in on all that has happened, and attempt to answer all his questions. Remus, even from his own hospital bed, is not too exhausted to see that James, at least, is not answering all his questions, even now, and from this he deduces that all the things James isn't telling him are probably not his secrets at all. He stops asking while he considers things, over the next two days.
On the third day, Remus is about to be permitted to leave the hospital, and Sirius, he has heard, has finally returned to full consciousness, sometime during the night. James shows up early that morning, while Pete is away at breakfast, and stops for a quick visit with Remus.
He peeks around the privacy screen that is always put up during Remus' periodic visits to the hospital, and grins when he finds Remus awake.
"How are you feeling?" he asks as he slides into the chair beside Remus' bed. "Want a muffin? I nicked it out of the dining hall before I came down."
"Better, thanks. Madame Pomfrey says I can leave, a little later today." Remus takes the muffin and bites into it immediately. "Ta, James. I like blueberry. The food in here is swill, somehow. It's bit of a mystery, really, it all comes out of the same kitchen, doesn't it?"
"So it does…" James answers, glancing around. "Some sort of hospital food charm?"
"Mmph. Could be. Sirius is awake. Had you heard?"
"Er … yeah, Frank Longbottom mentioned, his cousin was in last night with a light concussion after the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff match. I'll… I'll drop by and see him in a bit."
Remus smiles. "Did you save a muffin or two for him?"
James can't help snickering, though he is clearly a bit nervous. "You know he hates muffins, Moony. He says they -"
"Look like toadstools. Yes, I know."
They both smile for a moment. James' smile fades first.
"Um … are you going to …visit him before you leave? You know, just a quick 'hullo', maybe?" James asks.
"Maybe a just quick 'hullo, sorry I put your lights out for two straight days', then, James?"
"That's not what I meant. You know it isn't."
Remus sighs. "You can't protect him from everything, James. You really can not."
"You could break his heart, you know. It'd be easy, just now. Maybe you'd like to, I can certainly see why you might."
"But - don't. Don't do it, just because you can. That is what you're telling me, isn't it?"
"No. I'm asking you. Please don't."
Remus gazes at James, steadily. When he speaks again, there is no anger or resentment in his voice at all; he desires information, only that. "Why not?"
Now it's James turn to sigh. "I'd tell you if I could. It's not that I don't want to."
"But there are reasons? You can promise me that?"
"Sirius isn't completely mad – not yet, anyway. Yes, of course there are reasons. This didn't just happen overnight."
Remus snorts. "No, Prongs, it certainly didn't. You and Sirius have been driving me round the twist for weeks. There were reasons for that too, or so I devoutly hope!"
"We may have gone a bit overboard, I'll admit," says James, grinning.
"The two of you are so much alike, in so many ways. But that asinine tendency to go overboard may be the one most striking similarity between you. You two are identical, in that respect. It's a wonder you've both lived as long as you have."
"Well, that's what we need you for, you condescending git. To keep us in check. It's certainly not your sparkling personality we admire."
Now Remus really laughs. Hard. "Oh – oh, no, I expect it isn't."
James smiles at him. "You do know that we love you, don't you, Moony? Both of us? We have finally gotten through to you on that?"
"I do make an effort to remind myself, from time to time. Just – just lately, though, it's been a bit difficult to remember. I am trying, James. Really, I am."
James looks off toward the privacy screen, as though he could see through it and see Sirius, somewhere off on the far side of the wing. He looks back at Remus.
"I can't really tell you much of anything that could help. They're not my secrets. But I can tell you this. There was never a single moment, not one, through any of it, that he wasn't thinking only of you."
Remus blinks. There is more to this statement, perhaps much more, than what he can immediately determine. There is more to it than just a few words. James is telling him something vastly important, even if he can't – quite – divine what it is.
Perhaps he'll have to ask Sirius what it is.
"Yes," Remus says to James. "Yes, I will."
"Yes? Yes, what?" James asks, a bit puzzled.
"Yes, I am going to visit him before I leave. I was in any case. You needn't have bribed me with blueberry muffins at all."
James relieved grin might light up an entire room. "Waste of a good muffin, then," he says. "And I was really hungry, too."
"I drive a hard bargain, Potter. Part of the Prefect credo. Will he murder you for having this little chat with me?"
"Not if he doesn't find out about it," James answers, standing up.
"Ah, yet another opportunity for future bargaining. Thanks for coming by, James."
"Thanks for …just … thanks, I guess. I'll see you in class?"
"I should be up and about in time for Potions," Remus says. His smile is a bit wry. "Simply wretched timing."
"I'll partner with you today, make sure you don't do anything too fatal. Pete will have to look for other quarter, for once. I owe you."
"No, you don't, not really. I love Sirius too. Even when it's hard to do."
James smiles and suddenly reaches out and messes up Remus' hair. Not that Remus had combed it yet, so early in the morning.
"He'll be glad to hear it. See you later, Moony."
Remus thinks about all that James has said long after he is gone.
7.
Finally, in the last stretch of the morning when the spring sunshine streams in through hospital windows at its prettiest slant, it is only Sirius and Remus.
Remus, as promised, has come to visit his friend before leaving the hospital wing and going to class. He pulls a chair away from one of the nearby, empty beds, and sets it down quietly beside Sirius' bed. Sirius is still dozing, and Remus doesn't want to wake him abruptly.
Of course he's still dozing, the lazy thing, Remus thinks. He never has been much of a morning person. And with that, almost as if he's been called by Remus' very thoughts on him, Sirius awakens and opens his eyes.
"Mmm…hullo, Moony," he croaks muzzily. "Nice surprise to see you. I thought you might not be waiting in line to visit me, considering."
His nose is swollen out of its proper shape and he has a spectacular black eye, and when he smiles at Remus, he is still a bit snaggle-toothed, as Remus can plainly see.
He somehow manages an almost mystically beautiful smile anyway.
How on earth does he do that? Remus asks himself, and not for the first time. Is it just some little-known and rather pointless magical power that he has?
Sirius is an extraordinarily handsome young man, Remus has been aware of that, along with everyone else at Hogwarts, ever since he was an extraordinarily pretty little boy. It's just the way things are, and there are other boys at the school who are no less good looking, and there are especially lovely girls, as well. But sometimes, when Sirius smiles, he has a beauty that is more than the sum of its parts.
Is it just the way he looks? Remus thinks. Or is it, perhaps, in the way I look at him? Or is it that he only smiles exactly like that for me?
"Strangely, Paddy," Remus says aloud. "There was no queue to get in to see you at all. I was able to get a seat without even making a reservation." He takes a moment to sit back in his chair and consider the exhibit before him, unconsciously tilting his head in an oddly wolf-like manner. "How do you feel?"
Sirius snorts, and then winces, since snorting seems to make his newly set nose feel like it's going to explode, and then, of course, he can't help laughing at the absurdity of it all.
"Brilliant! Feel great! Never better! Thank you so much for asking, you blood-thirsty supernatural monster. Did you break my nose in the tunnel or by the lake?"
"I think it was in the tunnel, but I wouldn't swear to it before the Wizengamot. I did warn you not to cross paths with the Wolf that night. I can't help it if you never listen to a word I say."
"Oh, you were in a temper when you said that. I thought you'd come round."
Remus sighs, and turns his eyes upwards as if in heavenly complaint. "Foolish humans. You teach them and you teach them and they still won't learn anything."
Remus returns his gaze to his friend, and they both smile at one another in that mildly bemused way that they have always had.
"What a sketch you are, Sirius," Remus finally remarks.
"Ah. Well, so others have occasionally said. And not always in such laudably polite terms, for which, of course, I thank you." He very carefully pulls himself into a half-sitting position and stares at Remus for a moment.
"How much lasting damage are we looking at, here, Remus? Is this a good-bye visit? Because … I would understand if it were."
Remus sighs a bit; he would have been content not to discuss this at all on such a pretty morning. But Sirius, of course, will want to know where they stand, and he never has been able to tolerate being kept waiting for long.
"There's a great deal that I don't understand, Sirius. Why would you do something like this? I know there must have been reasons, but I still have no idea what they were. And I've asked you to tell me what was wrong once already, if you recall."
"Well, I'm tempted to say you've thumped me on the noggin once too often lately and I don't actually recall, but I'd be lying."
"Then you'd be lying again. Can you at least stop doing that, at this juncture?"
"Yes," Sirius answers, quietly, emphatically. "Yes, I can, at least, stop lying to you. And I'm so sorry that I ever did in the first place – you must believe that, if nothing else."
"Sirius, I've never believed any of this was just some sort of stupid joke, if that's what you were afraid of. This whole fiasco had been brewing for weeks and weeks before Severus just happened to get in its orbit. Something went wrong with you about a month back. But I still don't know what it was."
Sirius looks very white, against his counterpane, Remus notices. His pale face in its dark halo of black hair looks drawn and fragile and tired, and there are hectic spots of color high up on his cheeks. Remus suddenly wishes he could smooth some of that haggardness away with his hands, and then he is terribly surprised to discover how much his fingers ache to touch Sirius' white skin. He finds that he is staring at Sirius' mouth when next his friend speaks.
"I'd tell you what it was if you asked, you know," Sirius says, and his voice is so low it's almost inaudible. "If you ask me, I will tell you. But I hope you won't ask me. Because there's not a single thing about this that I ever want you to know, or to think about, or to remember. I don't particularly care to remember myself. So, you decide, Moony. Will you ask?"
Remus considers, once again, he belatedly realizes, staring at his best friend's mouth. The lower lip is split towards the right side, he notices. Sirius will have to avoid kisses and all acidic foods and beverages for another few days. He will have to avoid being kissed, at least for a little bit longer.
But not forever, Remus thinks, with a secret little inner trickle of happiness that surprises him yet again.
"Is this a one time offer?" he asks, trying to look extremely grave, but smiling anyway. He is beginning to think that he may understand now, at least to some small, breathless and astonishing degree, what James might have been trying to tell him earlier. "Or can I hold you to it, say, five years down the road?"
Sirius immediately understands the implication. Remus can see it in the way the color of his tired eyes light from a dark slate to the pale grey of dawn breaking in a single moment. There are all kinds of grey in this world, Remus thinks. And Sirius has every one of them in his eyes.
"You can hold me to it twenty years from now, if you like, Moony. There'll never be a time again, ever, when I won't answer your questions."
Remus feels an unaccountable chill to hear these words, and some part of him asks where they will be, where any of them will be, twenty years from now. But Sirius is smiling again, split lip and all, in that way he saves only for Remus, and he has gone from merely handsome to supernally beautiful again, and no ghostly chill can stand against the warmth that Remus feels slowly opening inside him every time Sirius smiles for him this way.
"Very well, Paddy," Remus says. "Then I won't ask."
Sirius shuts his eyes for a moment.
"Remus … I …thank you," Sirius murmurs, as soft as a breath being taken, and as vital.
Remus' heart is at once unraveled and undone. He has no resistance to Sirius at all. One smile, one gentle murmur, and he falls to ruins. It would be funny if it wasn't so intensely frightening. He quickly rises to his feet.
"I'll have to be off, presently. Potions awaits."
Sirius opens his eyes and grins, this time in his more normal, far less otherworldly way.
"I'm sure they'd begin without you, if you'd only give them the chance."
"If I can stand it, so can they. You'll be all right? Anything you'd like me to bring you from dinner?"
"Yes, please, see if you can find some sherbet, will you? Lemon."
"Not lemon, Sirius. I advise against it in the strongest possible terms." And now Remus is staring at his mouth. Again.
"Coconut, then. What are you staring at?"
In answer, perhaps, Remus does something that absolutely astounds them both. He has never done anything remotely like it before, and he hasn't the faintest idea what on earth has possessed him now. He leans down over Sirius' bed until he is almost nose to nose with him, and then he kisses Sirius' least bruised cheek.
But it's more what he says, just before he does it, that keeps Sirius' blood racing for hours after Remus has gone, keeps him awake and smiling foolishly from time to time and examining and reexamining all the possible meanings, long into the day.
Just a warm gust of breath, ghosting over Sirius ear, just before the very first kiss Remus has ever bestowed on the friend he loves so dearly.
"I am very sorry I split your lip, Paddy."
And then Remus is rising away from Sirius and gathering up his things briskly and there's a faint but ravishing blush on his skin and he smiles shyly just before he's gone, like a silent eddy of water.
