Previously in the Darklyverse: The Order exposed Voldemort's corpse to Wizarding Britain, but the Ministry tried to cover it up.

xx

November 6th, 1982: Remus Lupin

There are a lot of strange things about sharing Grimmauld Place with the entire original Order of the Phoenix. It's nearly impossible to get bathroom time in the mornings; he's going a little stir crazy from not being able to stretch his legs outside; he's living in a house decorated with decapitated house-elf heads and a portrait that screams bloody murder if anybody gets a little too noisy in the entrance hall; and even when Remus's own nightmares aren't keeping him awake, the screams and moans of the other inhabitants of the house do the job for him. But the weirdest part of all is simply that Remus hasn't cohabitated with this many people since his Hogwarts days. Sure, he interacted with other Order members on raids, and he eventually had coworkers to chat with when he started working at Jonker's, but Remus had gotten so used to having his entire life wrapped up in his best friends—and, later, had gotten so used to being trapped in his own mind in Azkaban—that it's weird as hell to suddenly have no privacy in his new communal living arrangements.

He knows he's been avoiding dealing with what happened to him in Azkaban—with losing Em and Mary and James—and he knows he can't outrun his terror (or Sirius's ill-disguised attempts to get Remus to talk) forever. All Remus wants to do is to forget all the things with which he tormented himself in his mind for so many months—to focus on what he can do instead of losing himself to his pain and his grief and his disbelief that they're ever going to survive, let alone win, this war—but all he's doing is keeping one step ahead of the breakdown that's nipping at his heels, and he knows it.

Out of the best friends he's got left, Sirius and Lily (bless their hearts) couldn't possibly understand, and Alice is dealing with a whole other set of problems readjusting to life on the outside: after all, she's been a lot less functional than Remus has here in Grimmauld Place, and she can't relate to running from her trauma because it caught up to her a long, long time ago. It makes Remus feel totally separate from his best friends, yet at the same time, he feels like having them there with him—the ones still alive, anyway, and who aren't Death Eater traitors—is the only thing helping him cling to sanity.

He doesn't really know what the hell he and Sirius are doing. They haven't talked about it. They'd agreed right before Azkaban not to see other people, and they're certainly acting like they're in a committed relationship, with the casual pecks on the lips right in front of other people and the constantly leaning up against each other throughout the day and the bed-sharing they're doing at night. Sure, Remus is still hurt that Sirius thought he was the spy; being trapped in Azkaban with his insecurities only accentuated that pain; it's probably not a good idea to jump into a relationship when he's just spent four months in the constant presence of dementors and still hasn't recovered from that, but—

But it feels good to let Sirius in, and it feels like it's been forever since Remus has had anything good for himself. Besides, hasn't it taken them bloody long enough to get to a place where they can just be happy together? After the drama with Marlene, the miscommunications over Sirius's sexuality, the breaking up and making up and sleeping together when it meant a hell of a lot more to both of them than they said it was supposed to—after Sirius came clean over a year later to Remus that he'd thought he was a Death Eater—after Sirius conspiring to bust Remus and the others out of Azkaban, don't they deserve this?

He makes up his mind about a week after Frank's mum, Augusta, unveiled Voldemort's corpse on the steps of Gringotts for the whole wizarding world to see—or, at least, before the Ministry got to work Obliviating all the witnesses and started "quarantining" Diagon Alley. He's in bed, Sirius's head on his chest and his fingers tangled in Sirius's hair, when Remus says, "Let's be official."

Sirius takes a second to respond. Remus is almost starting to think Sirius has fallen asleep by the time he says, "What?"

"You and me. We should… you should be my boyfriend. I should be your boyfriend."

Sirius pulls his head off Remus's chest and drags himself up the bed so that they're at eye level. "You're serious."

"No," says Remus, grinning, "you're—"

"Shut the bloody hell up. You're really okay with this?"

"I… yeah."

"Even though I thought you were a Death Eater?"

"Yeah."

"Even though I'm not gay?"

Remus points out, "Well, that never stopped you before from having mind-blowing or—"

"And you're not going to change your mind and leave me?"

He shrugs. "I can't promise nothing will go wrong, but on those two points, I'm not going to change my mind, no. I just—I love you, okay? And even if our sex life is never going to be completely normal, I… I do know that you love me. I mean, you do love me, don't—?"

He doesn't get to finish the thought before Sirius is kissing him hard and deep, swinging his arms around Remus's neck. "Of course I love you," Sirius says when he finally pulls away. "Of course I'll be your boyfriend. You and I—as far as I'm concerned, we're endgame, okay? I don't want anybody else. I don't think I've ever—"

Remus raises his eyebrows and smirks.

"—Well, okay, there was Marlene, and there was Emmeline," Sirius admits, "but even while I was—I couldn't recognize it for what it was, but I think I loved you the whole time. I can hardly remember what it felt like not to feel every time I look at you like I…"

Words fail him, but Remus doesn't need to hear it—he knows exactly what Sirius means. He kisses him again, then pulls back and mutters, "Can you be quiet? There are twenty other people in this house, and I'm not particularly keen on all of them hearing what I'm about to do to you."

"Moony, we're wizards. We can cast Silencing Charms."

"If we both do, then neither of us will have any voice to cast the countercharm when we're done," Remus points out. "Besides, where would be the fun in that?"

Sirius breaks into an earsplitting grin. "In that case, do your worst."

"Oh, I will," Remus assures him. "I absolutely will."

xx

They manage—with difficulty—to keep their voices down, but Remus is positive the next morning that half of the Order was able to hear the bed creaking and has told the other half of the Order exactly who and what were the cause of it. Sirius is still asleep when Remus comes downstairs to scrounge up some breakfast, and literally everyone he passes either shoots him a knowing grin or looks embarrassed when he catches them staring at him. In light of this, he's not sure whether he wishes Sirius had come down with him, so that he wouldn't have to brave it alone, or is glad he left him upstairs.

He winds up cooking massive amounts of bacon in the kitchen with Frank and Sturgis, who keep eyeing him weirdly until Remus finally says, "Okay, yes, I got laid last night. Sirius is my boyfriend again. We'll try to keep it down next time."

"It's not that it was so distracting," snickers Sturgis. "You weren't that loud, really. I was able to fall asleep and everything while you were still… going. It was just—unexpected. If Molly and Arthur or Andromeda and Ted have been doing the same thing, we haven't heard them—and they're all married. Until—apparently now—none of us knew whether the two of you were really together or not."

"I don't see how that's anybody's bloody business," mutters Remus.

"Mate, you made it our business when you let the whole house hear you going at it. Welcome to Grimmauld Place, where there is almost as little privacy as any of us had at Hogwarts."

"Well, I think it's great that you're back together," says Frank, flashing Sturgis a look. "I always thought it was really brave of you both when you came out as a couple at Hogwarts, and you've both been mooning over each other ever since you broke up—how many years ago now? It's about damn time."

"I—thanks, Frank. Speaking of getting back together, is that in the cards for you and Alice? It's just—you've been pretty cozy ever since coming here."

"What?" Frank actually looks really taken aback by this, which surprises Remus—after the way Frank and Alice have been acting around each other, Remus would have thought he wouldn't be the first to suggest this. "We—no. No, it's not like that. I love Alice—I'll always love Alice—and I've been glad to spend so much time with her again after avoiding each other for so long. Azkaban sort of put that in perspective—life's too short, you know? But I don't think I would ever feel safe jumping into something romantic with her again."

"And she knows that? I know she was really out of it at first, but—you've talked about it?"

"We did eventually, yeah. We're both clear on what we expect from each other. She knows what I want—or don't want—and honestly, I think she and Kingsley might become a thing soon."

Remus raises his eyebrows. "Al and Kingsley? I knew he helped her a lot while we were in Azkaban, but I didn't realize they were…"

Frank shrugs. "Nothing's happened yet. I think Kingsley doesn't want to overstep while Alice is still recovering, and I don't think dating anybody has even crossed her brain yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if they started dating one of these days. She's doing much better this past week, and she has to have noticed how much he cares about her."

"I keep telling Frank he should just bloody talk to Kingsley already about it," Sturgis comments. "Kingsley probably thinks you're still in the picture, man, and that's got to be weird for him."

"Yeah, yeah," says Frank, rolling his eyes. "I'll have talked to him before the meeting starts tonight, I swear."

"Is there an agenda yet?" Sturgis asks.

"Liaison reports from me, Arthur, and McGonagall, remember? It's not like anybody stuck in Grimmauld Place has any other source of news."

"Yeah, but what's the word from our people on the outside? Don't leave me in the dark here. I'm your best mate, remember?"

Frank grins. "Well, there's not much to report that we don't already know. The Quibbler picked up the story on the body reveal, but most people don't believe it's real. Vector's working on it with the War Stories gang, but she's got to be careful, and so do Mum and the Weasleys. Mum says it's really, really dangerous for anybody on the outside to show any sympathy for vigilantes these days."

"It's all backwards," Remus sighs. "Us all getting arrested—and then breaking out of Azkaban—was one of the worst things that could have happened to Wizarding Britain at this point, barring, like, the Death Eaters going on a genocide spree and killing all the Muggle-borns in the country. People see us as the bad guys now. Even though they can't know that Malfoy is a Death Eater, having him in office and no confidence in any of us must make Muggle-borns feel like there's nobody left on their side that they can trust."

"That's not going to make recruitment easy," says Sturgis, "and we need to recruit if we want to have any kind of impact on what's happening on the ground. We can't do anything from inside here if we don't want to leave the confines of the Fidelius—"

He breaks off abruptly. Remus frowns, looks up from the pan of bacon he's cooking, and realizes instantly what's the matter: Snape has just walked into the room. He glowers at the three of them, crosses to the icebox in silence, retrieves a glass dish stuffed with last night's leftovers from dinner, and stalks away in the space of about ten seconds.

"At least he's stopped trying to talk to Lily," Frank says in an undertone, even after Snape has long since left the room. "I thought she was going to cut him open with Sectumsempra when he tried last week."

"You think she's being too hard on him?" Frank says. Sturgis looks like he's about to argue vehemently against this, but Frank adds, "He did switch from the wrong side to the right one, unlike… someone else we all know who's living in our attic."

"Don't let Sirius hear you talking about Pettigrew," warns Remus. "My ears are still ringing from the last time he chewed him out."

Sturgis rolls his eyes. "I still can't believe Reg insisted on breaking him free. I'm a Hufflepuff, too, but even I think that some people are bad enough to deserve the dementors."

"You can really say that with a clear conscience?" Frank asks. "You were in there for those four months right along with Pettigrew. You know what it feels like to…"

"People are dead because of him. I'm sorry, but people like that don't deserve to be happy."

But even Remus himself isn't so sure of that. He doesn't really understand how he feels about Peter anymore—whether it makes it easier or harder that Peter was his friend—but he can see where Reg was coming from when he insisted on getting Peter out of Azkaban. Remus can only imagine how demoralizing it was for Reg to try to care for everybody in the Order day in and day out while they were in there—maybe, if that had been Remus's job, he'd have had a little sympathy for Peter, too.

Peter was a Death Eater, Sirius thought Remus was a Death Eater, and Severus Snape saved James's life (before James got himself killed, anyway) after being the one to endanger it in the first place. Remus doesn't think his life is ever going back to normal.