You charmed the heart right out of me
Remus really hated Celestina Warbeck.
He hated the fact that she was a fantastic singer, hated the fact that she seemed incapable of singing about anything except love, hated Molly for playing her songs, hated the fact that every note sung brought him a little closer to that Christmas when he had received an unexpected visit at five in the morning…
There was been somebody knocking on the window. Remus, throwing away his book and wondering who on earth would be mad enough to be hanging on the outside of his house at this hour, went up to gaze out the frost-covered glass.
The answer had of course been obvious from the first moment. Sirius was mad enough to do virtually anything. It would, of course, have been a bit of a laugh, had it not been the fact that he was holding on to his stupid motorcycle for dear life, looking like he was trying very hard not to faint.
The bloody music had been playing all the time since Dumbledore's death. Over and over again. Remus knew that it was Molly's way of putting up a sheen of normality. Since the wedding, it was as if Celestina Warbeck was some kind of ridiculous protection-charm of Mrs Weasly's to keep the shadows away.
He had innumerable small gashes all over his body, all of them spilling a sickeningly thick stream of blood down on the previously white snow below.
"Sirius! Good god, what…"
"Shuddup…" his friend slurred, giving him a very unconvincing, painful grin. "Jus' geh me insi', rih?"
And he fell off the motorcycle.
Remus didn't think twice before jumping out the window, falling three meters before hitting the soft snow with a still quite painful thump. The motorcycle left the air and neatly parked itself beside its owner, as Remus bent down by Sirius' side, muttering every healing-charm Madame Pomfrey had ever taught him. Still, if he at least wasn't bleeding to death anymore, Sirius looked like he had been trying to snog a Fanged Frisbee. And he wasn't moving, or showing any other sign of being conscious.
As he was desperately pondering how to get Sirius inside the house, a horrible cry rose behind his back.
The wedding had been nice, though. He was glad that Fleur had at last shown herself to have a core of steel, not – as they had all thought – brittle, useless and decorative glass. She had shown the strength that love could really have. And he had for the first time though that maybe, after all, he had been wrong…
"Remus! Remus, what have you done to the poor boy!" His mother was advancing on him, still garbed in a dressing-gown, a look of absolute horror and panic on her face. "How could you, Remus, after all that…"
"I didn't do it!" snapped her son waspishly, fighting the feral rage that was rising in his chest but not quite managing to prevent that he for a short moment bared his teeth on her, something that made his mother back away, pale and trembling. "I don't do things like this. And this is Sirius Black. My friend."
She looked unconvinced. "All those cuts…"
"Are too small and precise to have been made by claws or fangs, something I – incidentally – don't have, since the moon is far from full. They have been made by several powerful Dark curses."
Her eyes widened. "Oh, Remus, my unfortunate child…" she moaned, and Remus could not keep back the growl that rumbled in his throat.
"I do not know any Dark magic, and I do not want to" he snarled, and she once more jumped backwards. "And even id I did, I would never ever use them on Sirius. As I said, he's my friend. He takes care of me." The last sentence he whispered so silently that nobody could've heard it.
…wrong to think that he didn't deserve her love, couldn't give her anything back for her affection (hoping that it would eventually die from starvation). Something had stirred deep in his soul that time when she had shouted how little she cared in his face in front of everybody, and the imprint she had finally and most definitely made in his heart… well, it refused to go away.
He put his hand on his friend's chest, feeling the heart thumping underneath his fingers as a wave of obscure relief travelling through his body. "I merely thought" he continued after a while "that it only could have been Sirius' family that did this to him. All of them Dark witches and wizards. Blacks."
She was breathing shallowly and rapidly now. Remus looked at her wide-open eyes for some moments, before he finally took pity over her. "Mother, please, take him inside" he mumbled gently, standing up. "I've breached the decree of underage sorcery enough as it is. And we cannot let him lie here in the snow…"
She nodded, still throwing frightful looks at the son she didn't understand, getting the body of the black-haired young man to hover inside the house. Remus followed with his head bowed, his soul hurting from equal parts of sadness and bitterness. To see those you (used to?) love look upon you with fear… There can hardly be anything worse than that.
Sirius was placed upon the dining room table, and his mother set to work with healing him much more throughoutly than her son had managed to. Soon, the only thing that bore witness of what had happened was that Sirius' pale skin now bore a criss-crossing pattern of even paler scars. Remus looked upon it and thought distractedly that it wasn't fair that these marks would only enhance his friend's beauty. His own scars made him seem monstrous, grotesquely disfigured him, and he wasn't really much to look at in the first place. It was really quite unfair.
Pearl-grey eyes flared open.
He supposed it had felt wrong. Dora hadn't known of it, they had kept it secret from almost everyone. Well, Severus had known, of course, and it was hard to keep anything from Dumbledore. Minerva, yes, and Fred and George, since they had managed to walk in on them. But otherwise, none. And in some way, it felt like a betrayal. A horrible betrayal.
He just didn't know exactly who he had betrayed. Sirius? Dora? Himself?
"Fuck them" Sirius muttered and sat up, grimacing slightly. "I feel like I've been run through a meat-grinder."
"You looked like it, as well" Remus told him bluntly. "What the hell happened?"
"My parents" Sirius answered, grimly. "Bloody gits. I finally managed to scare away that awful woman that they thought I should marry. This was my punishment."
Remus' mother looked horrified. "Your parents did this to you!"
"As I told you" Remus muttered coldly, his voice sharper than he had intended. She looked down at her hands, ashamed.
"Yes, Mrs Lupin" Sirius said, looking at her with slight confusion. "What did you…?" His eyes widened, and he gasped. "No. You didn't… But Remus wouldn't do that!"
She turned her gaze away, uneasily. Sirius' eyes blazed with sudden anger, but Remus gently put a hand at his shoulder, held him back. "It's okay, Pads. Just leave it. I'm just… I'm just fine."
Liar, liar, pants on fire…
Sirius sent his mother one last, furious glance, but then turned to Remus with a slightly apologetic smile. "Sorry about this. And… thanks for helping me."
"Any time" Remus answered weakly. "But why didn't you go to James' house? It's closer."
"I thought" said Sirius pointedly "that people around here should be used to performing healing-charms."
"…Oh. Right."
Maybe he had betrayed everybody. It was so hard to be sure. Hard to accept the love of somebody new, after you had lost the centre of your life. Hard, yes, but very tempting. And she was strong in her wish, wouldn't give up. She was persistent, stubborn, angry with him for being so indecisive all the time. In short, Remus thought with a sigh, she actually was a lot like Sirius.
That early, dark Christmas morning, they lay awake, side by side, driving the chill brutality of reality away with talk about school and about their dreams. Remus' mother was playing songs by the young, highly talented witch Celestina Warbeck below. It was almost like an apology, Remus thought, and he wanted to be grateful, but couldn't.
And that morning – when the world was slowly nearing perfection, icy and slightly unreal – Sirius suddenly stopped talking in the middle of a sentence, looking at Remus as if he never had seen him before. "You know what, Moony?" he said softly, as if barely able to voice his thoughts; as if they were too big to be expressed.
"No?"
"You are awfully beautiful."
And Remus couldn't say who's fault the kiss was. He supposed it was Sirius', for how could he himself ever be brave enough to do something like that? But there was some little part of him that wasn't sure.
But there suddenly was soft, almost reverent lips touching his, a pair of hands fumbling lovingly over his body, a slight, terrified but happy, moan that – he realised with a start – came from himself. And that was when he finally saw that all of his life before this was just a bleak copy of what it was now. Every colour around him blazed to life, every sensation was intensified to the point when it became almost painful. His body was tingling and trembling as if someone was running electricity right through it.
"Beautiful…" Sirius repeated into Remus' mouth, and Remus felt tears wet his skin, didn't know if they belonged to him or the boy lying so close to him, kissing him like his life depended on it.
Downstairs, the music kept playing. 'You charmed the heart right out of me' soared, in all its frail, klichéed beauty, into the cold, still world that was a perfect winter morning.
He didn't think he would ever let Dora know. So much better to keep it inside, so much better to remember, yes, but not dwell on the memories more than necessary. He was happy now, and so was she. It was better to leave the past to the past.
But when Remus Lupin told Nymphadora Tonks that "she deserved someone whole", he was not referring to his illness, to his cloven soul.
He was referring to his cloven heart.
However much he loved her, he could never give her the whole of it. His heart – loving as it may be – was not whole anymore; had not been so for a long, long time, and would never be so again.
A part of it had for ever been lost behind the Veil of Death.
Lost together with Sirius Black.
Lost with the boy, who had later become a man.
Lost with the one who had managed to charm the scarred and trembling heart out of a sixteen-year-old Remus Lupin, one early morning in December, an eternity and more ago.