Come Apart/Intertwine

J.H.

Remus' eyes reflected something I'd never seen before. In those wild, ambergris irises I saw flecks of new love sparkling in July's midday sun while we sat by the lake, whose surface glittered like so many polished, faceted sapphires thrown across an undulating carpet. But it was fleeting, like a hologram in the light. One second it was there and the next he was just Remus again, good old Moony, my fellow Marauder, one of my partners in crime, the man I loved in the truest, rawest definition of the emotion, if such an emotion could be concretely quantified.

I decided not to ask him about his love life. Instead, I talked about mine. It was a useful ploy, at the time, to steer my mind away from the possibility of somebody other than myself being the object of Remus' affections by offhandedly retelling this week's sexual escapades, complete with histrionics.

I was just hallucinating, it was a trick of the light. I took out another cigarette and clouded the air around us so that Remus' eyes didn't scintillate so much.

When we went along our separate ways once we got back to Hogsmeade, I had to keep myself from grabbing him in an embrace and whispering my heart's desires in his ear before I turned my back to him and trotted off in the opposite direction.

It was the end of August, and it felt extremely bizarre to not be in that same old compartment on the Hogwarts Express with Remus, James and Peter's grinning faces looking back at me. I was instead unloading my few personal belongings from boxes into my newly acquired flat in Hogsmeade. My school trunk sat in the corner, housing seven years' worth of collected memories.

The windows were open as to permit a cross-current of wind. Already the musty odor of the flat's previous occupant was being ventilated out. The last plum blush from the sun on the clouds faded to black and Remus still was not here.

So I shrugged my shoulders and poured a firewhiskey shot into a waterstained glass, reminding myself that we'd never set anything in stone. I didn't need him to help me get settled in. He was probably at a job interview or some such; being the responsible type I wouldn't be surprised. I'd see him soon anyway, with the full moon being just three short days away.

When we met at the Three Broomsticks Remus seemed giddy in a manner unlike I'd seen him in before, especially on the evening of his monthly transformation. He was practically buzzing with energy and his eyes had that look again that I'd glimpsed back in the middle of the summer. In spite of my keen confoundment at his mood, I didn't pry into the cause. We didn't talk much over our butterbeers and platters of lamb chops, mostly because I didn't want to know what was making him act as such. Amazing, the delusions the lovesick mind will fabricate.

The transformation went smoothly and the morning after when I awoke in the Shrieking Shack, I realized first that I was frigid. Usually there was another warm body nearby to keep the biting chill at bay, but not this morning. Rising on all fours I looked around and sniffed the air, but Remus was nowhere in sight nor in smell. A pang of undiluted fear overtook me; my hackles raised and I prowled all through the Shack on high alert, muscles tense and jaw ready to snap into bone, ready to spring at the slightest movement.

I got back to the bedchamber and transformed into myself again. I went over to pick my jacket off from the chair it was slung over and then saw the torn-off sheet of parchment scratched with sloppy black ink held down by an antique candlestick.

'Back home early, you looked too peaceful to wake up. See you later - Moony.'

Face contorted into a look of pain and disgust and hurt, I balled the parchment up in my fist and reduced it to dust to add to the cobwebs decorating this hateful dwelling, then Apparated back to my flat and didn't leave until the sun went down.

"Sirius, you do not look well," Andromeda told me, her dark eyes watery and worried. And it was true. I'd lost weight and let my hair go unwashed and straggly and kept under my filthy black beanie; I had been smoking more heavily and it was making me jittery; my eyes were ringed in dark, tired circles and my skin looked pale as that of a corpse. I felt like a corpse.

I shook my head and looked away from her. Her little girl, Nymphadora, toddled over, hair a living rainbow, and raised her hands skyward while simpering her own simplified version of my name, imploring me to pick her up. I obliged her and walked over to the window which overlooked a lake much like the one at school that Remus and I had visited together on countless occasions. Those memories seemed so far away and cold now. I shivered.

Andromeda crept up on delicate feet and stroked down Nymphadora's technicolor, baby-soft fuzz. "Have you been home at all, Sirius?" she asked.

I knew she meant back to London, back to Number 12, back to that accursed haven of gross intolerance and vile, unethical values. Back to those beasts who were my blood kin. "No."

"Have you heard from them, at least?"

Of course, I had heard indirectly that my cousin Narcissa was being courted by a one Lucius Malfoy, whom I had known briefly at school when I was much younger and much more naive. Now I saw him and all that he represented for what it was: swaggering, contemptuous fanaticism bent on herd uniformity, even if it meant inbreeding among purebloods. He was the sort of example of condescending nobility that my mother would've loved me to emulate.

But I couldn't give a toss about any Lucius Malfoy, much less any Narcissa Black. Why was Andromeda asking this of me?

"I don't speak to them anymore, Andy," I said wearily. "You know that."

There was a few moments' strained pause before she said, "What about Remus? Have you see him lately?" She said it so innocently that I almost didn't feel the sharp weight of the question hit me squarely in the heart like an arrow shot straight through me. Remus... Remus was not someone I liked to think about these days, let alone talk about. The mere mention was like a dagger splitting flesh in the dark, a murder that no one hears or sees. Nymphadora snuggled her face into my neck and babbled in her nonsensical way, oblivious in her infancy and unblemished innocence.

Andromeda's hand moved from Nymphadora's hair to my upper arm. Her touch was sweet and attempted at being comforting, but all I could feel was a sinking, freezing weight in my chest. "Sirius, love... do you ever wonder..." But she didn't have to say anything further, not with her slender fingers speaking her thoughts to me with their tentative squeeze, rife with implication that rocked me like a rogue bludger.

How could she suggest such horrendous things?

"I have to go," I stated abruptly. Without ceremony I deposited Nymphadora into Andromeda's arms and turned for the door.

I had to find out for myself. It was not in Andromeda's character to spin lies or spread rumors.

And Remus wouldn't pull the wool over my eyes like that. Not the Remus J. Lupin I knew so well. The only one allowed to have secrets in this relationship was me.

With stouthearted purpose, I strode up to the door of Remus' flat across town and rapped smartly with my knuckles.

Movement inside told me that he was indeed home. My acute hearing detected approaching footfalls and judging by the gait it was Remus, not some impostor. A second later the door opened and I was face to face with him. It looked like Remus. I sniffed, wrinkled my nose, and it smelled like him... mostly..

"Moon'!" I said with a grin despite the way I felt my stomach twist itself into nauseating knots. "Long time no see. Want to nip down to the pub?"

His face was slightly flushed and his lips were parted as he breathed at a quicker clip than normal, as if he'd just completed a sprint across a pasture. A faint aroma of sex and sweat rose from his skin and hovered around my nostrils. The perfume of a woman lingered there, tainting Remus' own natural scent that was a mixture of chocolate and the smell of the library at school, that smell of worn leather and brittle, yellowed pages of so many aged tomes.

"Um, right now?" I couldn't mistake the way his voice trembled a little. He was nervous.

Nervous with me. And he refused to meet my eyes. That gave me a grotesque thrill and made my heart do a miniature somersault.

"Yes," I said, undeterred and goaded on by this bit of ground I'd gained through his pronounced discomfort. "I haven't seen you in I dunno, a week, mate," I added, shifting my weight onto one foot with my arms crossed over my chest. "That is, unless, you've got company."

Remus actually blushed pinker and ran a hand through his hair: one of his mannerisms that endeared him to me all the more. The movement created a vivid reconstruction by the nerve endings in my hand of how his spiky hair's texture felt between my fingers when I would mess his hair up just to annoy him. What had happened to us?

"I do have company." The words tumbled out in one great stream. " I'll come 'round tomorrow, Padfoot," he said tersely but not impolitely, then without any further hesitation he closed the door again.

Then he latched it shut, like an afterthought.

I felt betrayed.

At that moment, left standing like a jilted lover on the doormat in front of Remus' flat, I decided that at that moment I had washed my hands of my ridiculous infatuation. The breeze whipped up from the slamming door blew out that spark of desire I had kept burning for him all this time.

I never loved him. I was blind, stupid to think such a thing! I had been lying to myself. It had only been passing fantasy, but it had felt so real.

Feeling splintered, I somehow got to the pub and got shitfaced, then took a girl home to see if my blood was still pumping through my veins.

"Have you seen Moony recently, Padfoot?" James asked conversationally over tea. Lily, visibly with child, was within earshot as she prepared scones for us in the kitchen.

I shook my head mutely and sipped my earl grey. James didn't catch the way my jaw stiffened at the mere mention of Remus before I schooled my expression into a passive mask once again.

"I know you didn't ask me," Lily chimed in, ever disarming, "but I haven't seen nor heard anything of him in weeks, either. It's like he's disappeared off the face of the earth," she went on as she brought over the plate of cinnamon pastries, still warm from the oven with fingers of steam curling up from their sugar-encrusted surfaces.

James grabbed Lily by the waist and pulled her close, causing her to giggle by nuzzling her protruding belly with his face. "Oh, well forget Remus. I've got all I need right here," he said while gazing up at Lily's angelic face framed in auburn waves cascading over delicate shoulders. Adoration was plain on his features.

I thought, that's wonderful, James. I'm happy that you're in love. I'm thrilled you don't feel like you've lost a limb, like you're bleeding out until finally your desiccated body shrivels like a vine without sunlight, or a man without love, without his Remus.

But then again, did I ever have him to begin with?

I passed Remus' flat on my way back from Andromeda and Ted's house one night after I ate dinner with them. A late September frost was stretching its icy claws over the smoky windowpanes looking out onto the black streets of Hogsmeade and I remember hearing a woman's voice that sounded hauntingly familiar float and suspend itself in the alley. She was laughing, she sounded happy. She sounded in love.

As quickly as I could, I meandered back to my flat and paced for awhile, chain-smoking and muttering to myself that the sound had come from another flat, then at last broke down and went to call on Peter. I knew that he wouldn't be up to anything, and I was desperate for a diversion.

When he stumped into the Hog's Head he looked lost and fearful, but I waved him over and had a glass of scotch all ready for him.

"Sirius! Jolly good to see you again! Where's Remus?"

Halloween saw the first post-Hogwarts shindig since graduation. James and Lily hosted an elaborate gathering in Godric's Hollow replete with assorted colorful magical decor, skeletons charmed to be dance partners to those who came stag, and a fountain of butterbeer with spider-shaped sugar confections floating in it. It was all quite daring since it was a Muggle village.

Most of the guests omitted costumes and it was much more of an elite, adult party than the Gryffindor common room shenanigans (Marauders' productions, of course) of years past. Remus arrived later than what would be considered 'fashionably late' and scarcely stuck around long enough to even finish his first mug of butterbeer.

Bile crept up onto my tongue at the sight of him. We never spoke. There was something cruel and smug and vaguely secretive in his face that made my innards retch. I drained my glass by downing a few random tablets that were supposed to relax me and slunk off to find a pretty face to erase Remus' visage from my mind's eye.

I loathed him that night, even though while the twenty-something wizard who was distantly related to Lily sucked me off in the upstairs bathroom the only person my eyes saw at my knees was Remus. It could have been a side-effect of the tablets, or it could have been my conscience playing dastardly tricks on me. It didn't matter.

I think at that time the only person I hated more than Remus was myself.

I had just walked in the door to my flat after spending the mid-November afternoon in London when I heard the all too familiar sound of an owl's beak tapping incessantly at my window.

Sighing as I removed my hat and traversed the room to permit the bird entrance, I didn't pause to wonder who could be writing. Instead I was focused on fishing through my pockets for my cloves, which had mysteriously gone missing. Probably left them at the tavern again.

My jaw dropped when I unrolled the parchment and saw the Black Family Crest emblazoned in the top center of the paper, embossed in silver. My eyes skimmed the letter several times over before I actually absorbed what the words written there in that refined script meant.

It was Narcissa all along.

All the anger, all the frustration that had been accumulating since July was obliterated by that letter. Eradicated. I felt ill and proud, perhaps even ashamed. Inundated and bled out at the same time.

The curtains to my open window billowed in a gust of winter air. Had I been listening, I would've heard the whistling breeze urge me to action.

I grabbed my hat and scarf and was out the door before I really knew what I was doing.

The Hog's Head loomed ominously before me as bitter gusts wrapped their tentacles around me, and I knew that tonight would be a milestone, for better or worse.

Swallowing my pride, my hand found the doorknob, turned, and I opened the door to the pub.