Previously in the Darklyverse: A Patronus interrupted Mary's wedding shower calling everyone in the Order to an emergency. Sirius and Remus broke up.

xx

November 11th, 1978: Remus Lupin

The orb is at Rosalie Caprine's house, but when Remus Apparates there, Rosalie is gone. Instead, the Prewett twins, Dedalus Diggle, Elphias Doge, Sturgis Podmore, and Frank Longbottom are all gathered in the dining room, where the orb is sitting at the center of the table and—

—flashing between scenes, by the looks of it? Remus has never seen it do that before. Flash. Three masked Order members doing battle with no fewer than five Death Eaters. Flash. Two more Order members on the ground as Death Eaters play with the bodies of them and three Muggles. Flash. Death Eaters twirling Muggle or Muggle-born bodies in the air as the victims sob with pain…

"There are five scenarios in all," says Sturgis. "We think the Death Eaters are trying to overwhelm us and get a sense of how many people we have at our disposal, but we can't think of a way not to play into their hands that doesn't involve letting our operatives get killed. It doesn't look like there have been fatalities yet, but—be on your guards. Prewetts, Longbottom—go help Moody and Caprine. Potter, Lupin, Pettigrew, Black—take the second scenario with Pertinger. Abbott, McKinnon, Evans, Vance…"

Remus only hesitates long enough to get the visual and the coordinates. He steps into darkness and reappears in the kitchen of a man and a woman who are limp on the ground. Sometimes has got a Shield Charm up and covering all three of them, but that, of course, doesn't allow spells to get out from behind the charm, either. "I'm okay, but I can't hold it," says the man—it's Hyatt Pertinger's voice. "Somebody get the two of them to safety—"

Jets of red, blue, and green light are already flying; two of them hit Sirius and Peter, and Remus prays, prays, prays that they're still alive, that everyone is going to make it out today alive. James rushes over to the couple on the ground to Apparate them out of here, while Remus puts up another Shield Charm in front of Sirius and Peter. With no one left to protect, Hyatt lets his shield lapse and fires beams of light at the Death Eaters—there are four of them, their masks grinning like Cheshire cats.

James reappears a moment later, crouching down to check Peter's and Sirius's breathing. "They're alive, but barely," he yells over Hyatt's and the Death Eaters' shouted spells. "I think we need to get out of here and stop trying to make captures—"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

It's not Hyatt who casts this—a jet of green light sparks from one of the Death Eaters' wands squarely into Hyatt's chest. All Remus can think is, not again. They haven't even recovered from Elisabeth's and Millie's deaths properly yet, let alone atoned for them, and for another person on their side to be taken from them so soon after—

"You're going to have to put the Shield Charm down if you want to Disapparate out of here," James shouts. "I'll get Wormtail and Padfoot."

"But what about—?"

"He's gone, Moony. He's gone, and he wouldn't want us to go with him. Come on!"

When James disappears, Remus just stands there a moment with his wand up, watching the four Death Eaters on the other side of the barrier cast by the Shield Charm. They're still firing at Remus, even though their curses aren't landing, and it's not until Remus sees another jet of green light that he gets up the nerve to lower his wand and step forward with destination, determination, and deliberation. A ray of white light gets him in the chest just as he's Disapparating, and when he reappears at Rosalie's house, the blood has already begun to spurt in waves.

Peter immediately rushes to his side, saying, "You're going to be okay. Lily isn't back yet, but she passed on the countercurse to us. James will take care of you."

"Sirius," Remus croaks. "Get Sirius."

"I… of course, yeah, whatever you need." James has crouched down beside him and is pulling out his wand, running it along the lines the curse cast on Remus's body. Peter disappears, and what feels like only a second later, Sirius is there, sitting down on the floor next to Remus's head and stroking hair off Remus's forehead.

"I didn't want—"

"Don't try to talk, Moony," Sirius whispers. They're surrounded by people who aren't supposed to know their Marauder nicknames, lest they figure out their secrets about being werewolves and Animagi, but they're talking quietly, and Remus figures the circumstances make this an exception.

"I didn't want to die without you knowing—"

"I know, Moony. I know."

"I'm sorry," Remus breathes. "I love you, and I'm sorry."

"I love you too. Of course I do."

"We shouldn't get back together if I survive this just because we're sad. We have to do—do the right thing."

"Shh. We can talk about that when you get through this."

"If I get through this," says Remus.

"When you do. None of that 'if' talk allowed."

"I'm still going to love you. I can't just turn it off. Do you know how?"

"No," Sirius says. He's smiling, but his eyes look sad. "I don't know how to turn it off, either."

"Look at us," Remus gurgles.

Sirius squeezes his hand. "I'm not going anywhere," he promises.

Most of the next few hours pass in a fog. He's dimly aware of Peter coming back and all three Marauders sitting with him at various moments—of James setting aside his wand and dusting off his hands when Remus is as healed up as he's going to get. At one point, somebody takes Remus's hand in theirs and Apparates them away from Rosalie's house—he doesn't place until a few minutes later (or thirty or sixty or ninety minutes later; he couldn't really tell you) that he's at Sirius and Lily's flat.

The first thing he's really alert for is Sirius pulling him into a sitting position and setting a bowl of tomato soup in Remus's lap. "I can hand-feed you if you want me to, but I thought I would give you the option of doing it yourself," says Sirius, and Remus can hear the laugh in his voice.

"I got it," Remus says. He clumsily takes the spoon Sirius holds out, dips it into the soup, and raises it to his mouth. Soup spatters out of the spoon back into the bowl underneath, but enough of it reaches Remus's mouth that he's able to take a little sip of the stuff. "Tastes good."

"You can thank Wormtail for that," Sirius laughs. "He dropped it off about an hour ago for you. Cooked it from scratch and everything."

"Why are you calling Peter—what is it you're calling Peter, exactly?" asks Lily, who steps back into the living room from wherever she was and sits down on the floor next to where Remus is laid up on the couch.

"James didn't tell you already? We have nicknames based on our Animagus forms. I'm Padfoot. Peter is Wormtail. James is Prongs."

"Does Remus get a name?" Lily says, sounding amused.

"Moony," Sirius says. Remus catches Sirius looking at him, and Sirius bashfully turns his head away and twists his lips.

Remus asks then, "Lily, can you give us a minute?"

Lily gets back up and sets off for her room. Remus scoots back against the armrest behind his back so that Sirius can sit down over by Remus's feet at the other end.

"I know, when I was out of it, we said a lot of things," Remus says carefully.

"I'm not going to hold you to any of it," Sirius says, but Remus says—

"Just let me get this out."

Sirius nods and falls silent.

"I don't think we can just—get back together and ignore the reasons we broke up, because I think those problems are just going to come right back and still not have a solution. But—of course I still love you, Padfoot. Of course I do. And I don't know how to do this because—well—either I have to lose my best friend, or I can keep him but not have any space to move on, and both of those things seem too painful to fathom."

"Permission to speak?" says Sirius quietly. Remus nods, so Sirius continues, "There's got to be some kind of middle ground. I know we'll be happier in the end if we get over it and stop feeling the way we do, but I can't stand doing more of what we've been doing for the last two weeks or however long it's been. I can't do it anymore."

Remus lets the words marinate for a while, his mind off in a million different directions. Finally, he says next, "Did we lose anyone other than Hyatt?"

"No, he's the only one. Peter took it really hard—I didn't realize he was so attached to him. They almost got Fabian and Frank, too, but they both pulled through, just like you did. We didn't make any captures, but it could have been worse—more people could have died."

"Dumbledore's wizards don't really know what they're doing, do they? No more than any of us do."

Sirius shakes his head. "No, I don't think they do, Moony."

Hyatt Pertinger is dead, and the Death Eaters keep coming and coming and coming for all of them like they're not going to stop until every last member of the Order bites it. A man is dead, and here Remus is worrying about his love life and how he's going to stay broken up from his best friend.

"We don't have to figure anything out today, Padfoot," he says finally. "Can you just sit with me until it's time to go?"

"Yeah," says Sirius. "Yeah, I can do that."

They end up sitting side by side, Sirius's arm around Remus's waist, Remus's head on Sirius's shoulder. When Lily pops back in to make herself dinner, she doesn't comment, and maybe that's just as well: it's not like Remus has any answers to give her or anybody else who might want to know what the hell is going on between him and Sirius.

It's not until that moment that he thinks about Mary and her ruined wedding shower for the first time since he left it. He feels like an arse. "Has anybody let Mary know that we're okay?" he asks the room.

"Alice sent her an owl," Lily calls out from the kitchen. "It was before your condition was stable, but, well, we thought it would be best not to mention Hyatt's death or anybody's injuries to her."

So he's a shit friend to Mary and a shit boyfriend (or ex, or whatever) to Sirius, and he let Hyatt die right in front of his eyes. The last thing Remus deserves is for Sirius and Lily to make him feel better, but he lets them—because he's weak, or maybe because he's heartless.

You decide.

xx

END OF PART FOURTEEN