Disclaimer: Remus, Sirius, and the rest of the world of Harry Potter belong to JKR. Not me.

Warning: This contains Remus/Sirius slash and, at the end, Half-Blood Prince spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Remus turned fitfully in the bed beside Sirius, eyeing the grandfather clock across the room. With his improved night vision, he could clearly see that it was two in the morning. Sirius had dropped off hours ago, but Remus couldn't seem to sleep.

It was — different, now. It was still him and Sirius, of course, and it was still the same love it had always been, but there was something missing. Azkaban had changed Sirius — it was heart-breaking, what Azkaban had done to him. He wasn't — whole, anymore. He tried to be — he tried so hard — but he had suffered so much. He hadn't just dealt with the guilt of accidentally sending his best friends to death and (as if that wasn't enough) leaving his lover alone in the world, but he had lived in that moment for twelve years. He'd never been allowed to heal.

Remus wondered if he had perhaps forgotten how to heal.

The way things used to be, Remus could have helped him. He remembered sixth year, when they had first kissed — it was two weeks after Sirius's infamous "prank". The one that had nearly gotten Severus Snape and Remus himself killed.

"He called you my bitch," Sirius had told him hollowly, when Remus finally made him explain. "He asked where you were, and said — and said —"

"Said what?" Remus had asked, as gently as he could.

"He asked if you were off whoring yourself out to the other Gryffindors." Sirius had looked up at him, eyes so pleading, so unhappy. "I got so mad, Remus. I didn't mean to — I swear, I wouldn't have —"

"Which one made you mad?" Remus had asked, fighting down a smile. "The bitch comment, or the whoring myself out comment?"

"It's not funny!" Sirius had cried. The incident had destroyed him, although it really shouldn't have. There was no way he could've known Snape would wait for so long, until the early hours of the morning, to see Remus and Madam Pomfrey approaching the Willow, even if he had been thinking straight when he'd said it.

After Remus's original feelings of betrayal, after he had calmed down a bit and heard the perfectly logical explanation and completely forgiven Sirius (because he really couldn't have known Snape would be so damn stubborn) — Sirius had still been wallowing in self-loathing. Whenever Remus walked into a room, he would look down and turn red, and he could hardly speak to his long-time friend.

Remus had gotten heartily sick of it, and one night nearly two weeks later, he'd simply snapped, dragged Sirius up to the dorm room, and yelled at him for a straight hour about how it hadn't been his fault at all, and that he should really stop being such an idiotic prat about it.

Somehow — Remus couldn't really remember exactly how it happened anymore — they'd ended up snogging.

Then they'd talked for quite a long time, with a locking charm and a silencing charm on the door to keep James and Peter from bothering them, about how exactly that had happened.

Sirius had confessed that he'd been falling for Remus for quite some time now, and then his family had been so insufferable, and Regulus had joined the Death Eaters, and he'd run away from home, and nothing had been right in so long, and then he just had to go and be completely stupid and nearly get Remus killed, and to top it all off, his feelings for the other boy had just kept intensifying, and he hated himself for daring to feel that way about a boy he'd betrayed so badly —

Remus had shut him up quite effectively by kissing him again, and by the time they let the other two in, both were feeling quite a bit better. James had taken one look at them, grinned, and told Sirius, "Took you long enough, mate," and the whole story had come out to Peter, who hadn't reacted nearly as badly as they would have expected. In fact, he'd confessed to them that his mother had a lesbian lover and he'd been keeping it secret for quite a while now. Sirius had remarked that it certainly was a night for coming out, at which Peter had looked slightly flabbergasted and spluttered that he wasn't the gay one, at which they all had laughed.

But the point was, Sirius had been healed, and Remus had been the one to do it.

He wasn't too sure he could manage that now.

He rolled over on his side, studying Sirius's bare back. It was still bonier than it should have been, and there were a few scars that hadn't been there before. Remus had never asked how Sirius had gotten them. He wasn't sure he could. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know.

They'd both been places the other couldn't understand. They'd both changed, and they'd both stayed more the same than they cared to admit. The trouble was figuring out what was different and what was the same, what was real and what was imaginary.

It had been so hesitant and awkward at first, when Sirius had first knocked on his door on that humid, overcast day not all that long ago. Dumbledore had instructed him to "lie low at Lupin's", and he'd obeyed. Remus privately wondered whether that old man was a matchmaker at heart, but he didn't question his decisions.

Remus hadn't been sure if Sirius still wanted him, after all that time, and he suspected that Sirius had felt the same uncertainty. They'd sat across from each other in the sitting room for hours on end, in utter silence, sweating in the muggy weather despite their motionless state, and then suddenly both speak at the same time:

"Are you —"

"D'you still —"

"You first."

"No, you."

And then they'd lapse into awkward silence once more. This had gone on for several days before Sirius had finally snapped, and burst out, "Dammit, Remus, do you still want me, or don't you?" And things had progressed from there. Rather jerkily, in stops and starts, but they'd progressed.

So here they were. Sleeping side by side in Sirius's old room at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. It was killing Sirius to be stuck in the house of all his old nightmares, Remus knew that, and it didn't make it easier that he himself had to be away for long periods of time, leaving Sirius alone with Kreacher. It was a wonder he was doing this well, really.

But it seemed that Sirius was genuinely happy with Remus. Harry was the only other one who could make his face light up like that, and it gave Remus a certain sense of self-worth to see Sirius look up hopefully as he walked into a room, breaking into a grin as he saw who it was.

Still, it was a far cry from what it used to be.

At Hogwarts, everything had been an explosion of joy, from the end of October when they first got together through graduation. It had been a realm of discovery, of opening doors that had never been there before. They'd had two close friends who accepted them for what they were, and while Remus could never have replaced James as Sirius's eternal partner in crime, he didn't mind so much. He and Sirius had always been different from James and Sirius, and he'd accepted that. Life had been so perfect — they'd snuck out at night often to a cave they'd found outside Hogsmeade, riding broomsticks, and sometimes stayed the night, transfiguring rocks into pillows and a pair of beds, because they hadn't exactly been ready yet for the concept of a single bed. They'd lie just outside the entrance, looking up at the sky. Sirius would naturally show off his prowess at astronomy, never failing to point out his own star, and Remus would just make a face at him and say, "Oh look, there's the moon."

"There are a lot of stars out there," Sirius had remarked one night, lying on his back just outside the cave entrance.

"Mm," Remus had replied. "You can see more of them here. In big cities like London there's too much light pollution."

"But there are even more that we can't even see, that no one can see from anywhere on Earth, because they're so far away. It's so big out there." He'd suddenly propped himself up on his elbows. "You know what, Remus? We should claim a star. For us. All our own."

"Aren't most of them taken?" Remus had inquired politely.

Sirius had waved an impatient hand at him. "That's why we claim one that no one can see. One that's so far away that no one else even knows it's there."

"Then we don't know it's there either," Remus had pointed out rationally.

"Sure we do. It'll be — hm. Let's have it be right in Canis Major. My constellation."

"It's a good thing we're not claiming an astronomical object for your ego. We'd have to find a galaxy."

Yes, it had been idyllic. They should have known it was too good to last.

When they'd graduated, Remus had gotten a flat of his own, but spent so much time at Sirius's (which he had bought the year before with money left for him by his Uncle Alphard) that he'd eventually just moved in. At that point, all four of them had joined the Order, and things weren't quite as easy as they'd been before. For Remus, Sirius had been the one he'd turned to when he'd needed somewhere he could be himself, could get away from the war for a few short hours.

That was another thing they'd lost. There was no getting away from the war now, not even with each other.

They'd been sleeping together for a while when things had really gotten bad, when Dumbledore had started making everyone keep secrets from each other, and the air had become fraught with tension and mistrust. They'd started to row far more frequently. Sirius had been wont to occasionally stomp out of their flat when they'd been arguing and not be seen for the rest of the day. Things had been rocky, and everything they did together seemed almost an act of desperation, as they felt something important slipping away.

It was right after one of their fights that they'd been discovered; they'd just made up and were snogging rather passionately in the back wing of Moody's house, which was then the Order headquarters. Gideon Prewett had walked in on them, and hadn't taken kindly to the idea of "two blokes having it off". He'd been yelling up a storm when his twin Fabian, who'd come looking for him, managed to restore order.

Fabian had been with his girlfriend Marlene, and they'd both found out about Remus and Sirius, but nothing had really come of it. Fabian, ever rational, had calmed down both his brother and his rather startled girlfriend.

But the incident had cast into relief the desperation of their relationship — back in Hogwarts, they would never have been so careless, would never have been found out. It was a mark of how difficult things were becoming that they had been so foolish, and it made Remus very uneasy.

Then his mother had died, and things had never been the same again.

It hadn't been the Death Eaters who killed her. No, it had been cancer, a simple Muggle disease that even his father's magic hadn't been able to heal. It had made him so angry, at the time, that there was some stupid Muggle disease that couldn't be solved by magic.

His mother's death had been a terrible blow to him, and he'd withdrawn from everything for nearly a month, taking his own flat in a completely different part of London and not telling anyone where it was. He'd also lost his job at that point, and wasn't able to support himself completely; money had become short, and some days he'd had to go without food. In the end, he'd been evicted from the flat, and had been on the streets for a few days when Sirius had found him and brought him home.

Things had changed, after that. After the initial tide of affection that stemmed from being together again, things had grown even worse between them. Remus became even more secretive than he'd been forced to be before, and far more moody. Sirius told him now that he'd thought Remus had been approached by the Death Eaters in the month he'd been away, and had joined them out of bitterness over his mother's death — of cancer, of all things, even when they'd been in the midst of a war.

Remus had to admit that the notion wasn't entirely ridiculous; he'd been acting quite suspiciously, and he'd never opened up to Sirius anymore, not like he'd done before. He'd been keeping so many secrets that, when Dumbledore first revealed his suspicions of a spy among the Marauders, Sirius's mind had most likely jumped straight to Remus, whether he'd liked it or not.

Remus couldn't blame him, not really. Of course, he could and did blame himself for believing everyone's story, that Sirius had been the spy. He should have known that Sirius would never do a thing like that. He should have remembered that Sirius would die before he'd betray James and Lily.

Remus had been the only one of the three suspects who hadn't had clear convictions as to who he himself suspected; he'd refused to think about, removing it from himself and ignoring the true implications of Dumbledore's claim. He thought James had probably reacted in the same way; unwilling to place the blame on any of his three close friends, he'd left the term 'spy' as a very general one and hadn't really thought about who it would actually be. But Sirius and Peter had eventually convinced him that it was Remus, and . . . well . . . Remus didn't blame them. Remus could never blame any of them except Peter, the true traitor.

He still didn't know why Peter had betrayed them. It was so easy to hate him, now, but thinking back to their school days, he just didn't know how Peter could have done a thing like that. He'd been a bit of a hanger-on, yes, sometimes a bit of an annoyance, but he'd genuinely liked them, and they him. He'd been one of them. And he'd betrayed them.

Remus could see why Sirius had suspected him. Between Peter, the loyal, the James-obsessed, and Remus, the withdrawn, the secretive — he would most likely have thought the same.

The hardest part about that year, between the death of Remus's mother and the deaths of James and Lily, had been that the two of them were still so in love. As a couple, they'd been in terrible shape, bruised and battered, but they'd loved each other too much to simply call it off. Remus couldn't count the number of times he'd wanted to just end it cleanly, but he'd needed Sirius too much to even try. Perhaps if he'd been stronger . . .

He'd voiced this thought the other day to Sirius, who'd snorted at him. "Don't be silly, Remus," he said. "I needed you just as much as you needed me. My fault too. My fault more, for thinking you were the traitor."

"What's done is done," Remus had replied sleepily. "It's all forgiven now."

Yes, it was all forgiven, and things were better now by far than they had been that year. Really, they were so much better now than they had been in such a long time that Remus still wondered if this was all a dream, a hallucination induced by lack of food, if he was actually lying on the cot in the tiny little shack in Scotland, delirious and raving.

But it wasn't perfect. Things were too imperfect to be a dream.

Remus was constantly away, trying to unlock secrets from others of his kind, which were all so hostile. And then he'd get home and find Sirius, shut up continually in this terrible house, sprawled defiantly across the couch, bottle of firewhiskey in his hand and several more empty ones on the floor. Sirius had liked drinking, certainly, but he'd never been like this before. Of course, after Remus had informed him in no uncertain terms that it was not pleasant to be kissing someone who tasted of firewhiskey, he'd refrained from drinking on the days when Remus would return, but Remus knew he hadn't stopped completely.

He turned over, facing away from Sirius, and edged up to him so that their backs were touching. Remus had always loved sleeping back-to-back with Sirius — nothing else could make him feel so warm, so safe. Sirius's back wasn't quite so sturdy now as it had been before — he was more frail, and Remus could feel some of his bones as he lay there — but it still gave him an undeniable sense of comfort. He'd missed this, he realized, in the twelve years they'd been apart. He'd missed having a back to lie against.

It wasn't that he hadn't dated anyone in that time. After all, he'd thought Sirius was gone forever — he needed to move on, if he wasn't going to live eternally in his former lover's shadow. He'd dated several women and a few men as well, but only ended up sleeping with two of them, over those twelve years. He'd told Sirius as much, quite frankly. There were to be no secrets now. He'd had enough with secrets.

Sirius had scowled a bit and said, "I s'pose I would've, too." And Remus had nodded with a slight smile, knowing he was forgiven. It was all forgiven, as he himself had told Sirius. Everything was forgiven, but nothing was quite right. Their love now was just as shadowed as the house they lived in, and it amazed Remus how happy and how sad it could make him feel in the same moment.

He did know that he did not regret it. He did not regret falling in love with Sirius, and he never could again. He might have back when they were falling apart, but still so in love; he knew he had when Sirius was in Azkaban; but now he knew that he could never regret it again. No matter what happened, he could never regret Sirius.

At long last, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be overtaken by sleep.

---

Remus stood waiting on the Hogwarts grounds, one hand grasping that of Nymphadora Tonks. He hadn't been back here in three years, not since Sirius had returned. Sirius was dead. So, now, was Dumbledore.

The crowd assembled was immense, all come to pay their last respects to Hogwarts' ancient headmaster. Knowing that the time was completely inappropriate, but somehow not caring, Remus wished this could've happened for Sirius — wished they could've buried him properly.

Well, he was with James and Lily now, and he would be happy there. Remus knew that. Sirius was gone, and it was time for Remus, with a clear conscience, to allow himself to move on.

He glanced over at Tonks, only to blush slightly as he found her gaze to be upon him. He'd been grappling with this all year — it felt like treachery, to move on this soon after Sirius's death, and to his cousin, no less. Not to mention that she really did deserve someone younger, someone more whole than he was.

She'd chosen him, though. And he found that, now, he didn't truly mind.

Oh, he still loved Sirius. He would always love Sirius. But Sirius, if he could see him now, would accept Remus's choice. When Sirius had been in Azkaban, he'd been alive, he'd been there, and so Remus couuld never truly move on. But now Sirius was dead, and it was time for Remus to step out of his shadow.

He had almost expected it. Sirius had been too unhappy, living too dangerously, to be able to continue as he was. Remus remembered an old saying — life fast, die young. Sirius had lived fast, there was no doubt about that. And for all that he'd died at thirty-six, it wasn't like that. Sirius's true death had been at twenty-two, but by some cruel twist of fate, his last leg of life had been dragged out for nearly fifteen years.

Remus knew that, wherever Sirius was now, he was happy there. He belonged there. And that mattered more than he could say.

He gave Tonks' hand a squeeze and turned to watch as Hagrid bore Dumbledore's body up to the white tomb.

A/N: This story is a tribute to FictionAlley's HMS Wolfstar. It contains countless ideas that I've gotten while answering their discussion questions, as well as a reference to their recently obtained star. (There is a program in which one can name a star, and one of the shippers has gotten one named the HMS Wolfstar. It is located in Canis Major.) I'm very happy with this fic, other than occasional tense issues, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please review.