"Oblivious To The Obvious"
Pairing: Remus Lupin / Sirius Black
Rating: "M" for slash and language.
DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional – that's F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It never happened, and is not real. It is the product of my own imagination. It contains descriptions of male slash (that's male/male homosexual relations). If you do not like this type of content, or if you find homosexuality or its practice offensive, please click the "Back" button or close your Internet browser NOW, and do not read any further. All characters and copyrights are owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers™ (AOL Time Warner), but this story is owned by me and is all my own work.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I saw the title of a fic, "Gay Werewolves and the Ex-Convicts Who Love Them", previously lurking somewhere on ff.n, and fell in love with it. So much so that I felt obliged to write a fic of my own to it. So here it is. Thanks, Uozumi, for giving me the concept for it.
Harry returned to his bedroom after seeing his Godfather and ex-professor again, his head spinning with the latest information about the plight of the Order of the Phoenix. It was good to see the two of them together again. He cast his mind back to when he first found out that the pair had been old friends – that night in the shrieking shack, when Sirius had been pulled up from the floor and into such a fraternal embrace by Remus.
The two of them had seemed so happy to be in each other's company once more. E felt that he could not remember when he had seen Sirius smile so hard, apart from that night, and in his parent's wedding photograph. 'Finally,' he thought, as Ron chattered away to his side, 'Remus isn't alone anymore, and Sirius can begin to rebuild what's left of his life.'
Homosexual lycanthropes, and the previous guests of the Minister who acquaint with them…
Harry knew that Remus had a house of his own somewhere – where else was he living after he resigned from Hogwarts? And besides, hadn't Dumbledore told him to "lie low at Lupin's" a few months ago? But now it seemed that the werewolf had moved in with Sirius. He had had an inclination that Remus was, well… batting for the wrong team when he was giving him private defence lessons in school. He didn't know what it was – the way he moved, or spoke or acted when he was alone, or maybe it was nothing more than his own unfounded intuition, but he felt sure that his former teacher was, well, one of those queers he had heard about. A poofter. A faggot. A man who takes other men up the arse.
And what if he was? Naturally, if it was true, then Sirius would have known about it. So he decided to ask his Godfather.
"Yes, Remus is gay," Sirius had replied, chuckling. "Why?"
"Oh, no reason," Harry said. So, that confirmed it. And Sirius did know. Since Remus was still living at Grimmauld Place, Harry assumed that Sirius didn't give a shit about it. So Harry decided to try not to let his new-found knowledge of Professor Lupin bother him.
Shirt-lifting wolverines, and the unofficially released prisoners who enjoy their company…
Before Harry knew it, it was Christmas, with its horrors of Arthur's accident and St Mungo's. But Christmas meant presents. A good haul this year, especially the set of books which Sirius and Remus had got him.
Sirius and Remus…
Sirius and Remus…
Together…
There could have been dozens of explanations for this, of course. After all, Remus didn't have much money, did he? But still, joint presents like that were the sort of thing that couples did, not friends. Mind reeling, he went to go and wish Buckbeak a Merry Christmas. But as he opened the door to the hippogriff's room, he saw Remus and Sirius in there as well. A Remus and Sirius who practically leapt apart when they heard the door open; as if, seconds before, they had been…
Poofs with a "furry little problem" and the previous offenders who are quite partial to kissing them…
Harry made the visit to the hippogriff as brief as possible before making his excuses and beat a hasty retreat to the House-elf corridor which Kreacher wanted to make his final resting place (for his taxidermed head, at least). Yes, he had heard of fags and queers, and of what they do, from his Uncle Vernon and the boys at school. Of how they take advantage of people like that! It was just so… dirty, so wrong, somehow. It wasn't right, and now Remus, no! now Lupin had dragged his poor Godfather into the equation! But it was Christmas, and he thought of the trip to St Mungo's to see Arthur later. So he forgot about Sirius with Lupin for the time being.
That night, when he knew that everybody would be asleep so that he did not have to face anyone, Harry snuck downstairs to get a drink of water and maybe a snack. But as he walked past Sirius's room, he heard a moan. Was his Godfather in pain? He decided, full of concern, to listen at the door, in case Sirius needed assistance of some sort.
There it was, again! A low, guttural moan of distress, followed by a grunting noise. Something was definitely wrong here! But as Harry started to reach for the doorknob, he heard Sirius call out
"Are you okay for me, Moony?" Harry retracted his hand and stood, paralysed, at the door.
"Oh, yes!"
"Sure?"
"Yes, already, Pads! Come on! You're driving me crazy here!"
"Well, we aim to please, Moony. We aim to please!" Harry listened, mortified, as the sounds of mattress springs and more moaning floated through the keyhole to his ear. They… they couldn't be! No! Not his Godfather… And, feeling the waves of nausea threatening to relieve him of the pitiful mass which qualified for his stomach contents, he fled back to his room. Suddenly he was neither hungry nor thirsty any more.
Queer beasts of the night, and the former jailbirds who do naughty things with them…
No! He couldn't be! Harry's Godfather was a shirt-lifting faggot queer! Harry retched, feeling himself dry-heave in the dark solitude of his bedroom. This couldn't be happening! It couldn't! Sirius Black, cocksucker extraordinaire!
But… but maybe…
As he thought on what he had eavesdropped on, he began to realise that the sounds he had heard weren't forced, or painful, or as sordid as he had thought. They seemed to be the sounds he had heard as he had walked past Arthur and Molly's bedroom last year. The sounds of two people, not doing disgusting things to each other, but two people making love. Because they wanted to.
And maybe… just maybe… Uncle Vernon's informative lectures about the goings-on between Mr. Lomax and his fairy fag friend in number fourteen weren't quite so informed, after all…
It was the shock. It was only the shock of finding out about his Godfather and former teacher that had made him react so badly, so childishly. Because he had known that Lupin – sorry, Remus – was gay, but he hadn't known that Sirius was as well.
But, then again, he had never bothered to ask…
And what surprise? What shock? Their relationship had been obvious since Harry had seen them reunited in the Shrieking Shack. The way they had looked at each other, and spoken to each other, and all their references to doing things together… The way that they had looked into each other's eyes… The way they had held each other, as if they had hungered for each other's touch for…
For nearly thirteen years…
It wasn't a sordid, dirty little l'affaire des cœurs. It was a long, ongoing thing, so blurry yet so perfectly in focus at the same time. And all Harry had to do was to open his eyes and he would have seen it.
So hidden, yet so openly there.
Neither Sirius nor Remus were ever hurting anyone. They weren't hiding anything. They were simply not parading anything around. Not to protect anybody, but to protect themselves from everyone else's opinions and views…
Views like Harry's…
Harry felt ashamed; felt ashamed and angry with himself. Sirius and Remus were two more victims of the deviation from socially accepted normality and he, Harry, had become one of the inconsiderate bigots who forced them to love each other only in semi-privacy. And it was startlingly obvious, when he thought about them, just how much they clung to each other, ached for each other, and loved each other with every fibre of their hearts.
Gay werewolves, and the ex-cons who love them…
What right did he have to judge them; to make assumptions about them, when the only crime they had committed was to fall in love?
They deserved each other. They both hurt so much from what had happened to them in their respective lives, and had found solace, at last, from the terminal loneliness and love-sick craving to be with somebody who would show them some affection. Sirius and Remus had found somebody to love. And Harry realised that he had thought the worst, had thought ill of them, not because he really thought that their companionship was wrong in some way but because he was jealous.
He was jealous that they had each other and had found each other; that they had fond something that he, Harry, had not.
"And that," he whispered to the empty room, "is the real tragedy. We hate them out of envy, because they have what we want for ourselves."
But if Harry had been able to make this realisation, this rationalisation, tonight; if he had been able to see that love between two members of the same sex is not dirty and sordid, but just as rare and as beautiful as the love between man and woman, then maybe, just maybe…
Maybe the rest of the world could, too…