CW: Descriptions of child abuse, both magic and non-magic

"Sirius Black, are you insane?"

"I'm actually perfectly fine."

I emerged from my shack the next morning to find Sirius and James arguing. Both their faces were red, and they both had dark rings under their eyes.

"Remus!" James cried, sounding angry. "This absolute idiot here was about to be bitten by you, Remus!"

"Sirius!" I shouted. It all came back to me then, how he'd begged to stay, how I'd said no, but he'd stayed still, and then I'd wanted to kill him… "Why did you do that? How could you do that, you lunatic!?"

"I don't know… I… I… didn't want you to be alone…" Sirius said distantly.

"Sirius!" I put my face in my hands. "Have you gone insane?"

"I was just trying to help," he muttered.

"Do you even think!?" I cried. "You're already becoming you-know-what, that's more than enough, Sirius! You're such an idiot!"

"Yeah Sirius, that was probably the stupidest thing you've ever done," said James. He sounded serious, which was rare for James. "Don't do that again."

"Ummm…" Sirius looked down awkwardly. "It's cold out here, let's go to the castle."

The three of us walked through the grounds and into the castle.

"Are you hurt, Remus?" Sirius asked, under his breath.

"I'm fine," I said, although the huge gash on my chest was stinging like hell. I had applied a bandage and eaten heaps of chocolate, but it still hurt heaps.

We walked through the castle, heading to the Great Hall for breakfast.

That night, in the dormitory, and James and Sirius were planning a prank on Snape, Peter was sitting on the floor, not speaking, and I was trying to stay awake, lying in my four-poster. Everything seemed normal, but it wasn't. I was in pain and tired, but that was normal, I was quite annoyed at Sirius, which wasn't normal. We always got along. And of course, there was still the grief that was felt among all four of us. It had been a month, though, so it somehow seemed to be getting smaller, as well as the guilt, even if that was a lot harder to combat. To get these thoughts out of my head, I tuned into Sirius and James's conversation.

"What's something that he's into?"

"I dunno… Potions?"

"Yes," James grinned. "So, we ruin his potion during potions class!"

"Wait!" Sirius paused, then started to jump up and down in excitement. "The end of year potions exam."

James's grin grew even wider at this idea. "The practical exam… we need to make sure we're near him."

"It's always in alphabetical order. He's S… no hope for me, you could possibly try… P… Q… R… S… is there anyone in our year with Q or R surnames?"

"One or two, but I was near him last year," said James.

The two of them grinned widely and high-fived.

"But what will I do?" James said thoughtfully. "Remus, you have an idea?"

"What?" I muttered sleepily. "You could get in a lot of trouble if you did that. Anyway, night guys, I'm going to sleep."

I drew my curtains and tried to fall asleep, but I felt restless, and my mind was racing. What if James hadn't been there and I'd bitten Sirius? He would've either died or become a werewolf. The idiot.

Did Sirius think that much of me that he'd want to do that? I thought. Ugh, I was thinking of Sirius in the wrong way again.

As if he knew I was thinking about him, Sirius opened my curtains.

"Hey," he said. "Mind if I talk to you for a bit?"

"Sure," I shrugged. He sat next to me and pulled the curtains back.

"I'm… sorry about last night." He was looking down at his hands. "I… I wasn't thinking… obviously it was partly for your sake, I thought you'd want another… but anyway, it was partly for my sake, too."

What? Maybe he really had gone insane.

"I… I know that sounds crazy," he continued, "I mean… I dunno… but I… I… I dunno how to explain it… but… oh, I dunno."

"Take your time."

"Well, I just thought that maybe, if I was to become a werewolf… like, on the full moons, I'd be able to… to escape… escape my… y'know, my own mind, my… my thoughts… my memories."

I knew where he was going, and I didn't know what to say. I was terrible in these situations, but I always felt terrible about being terrible at it.

"Sorry, is that mean to you, trying to gain your problem to fight my own?" he sighed. "I thought… maybe… if I was a wolf, then… then I could hurt them… my family… like they hurt me. But then I feel so bad for wanting to hurt my own family… oh shit, Remus, I dunno."

"Well… I suppose that does sort of make sense… I mean, my family's nice, so I've never wanted to hurt them, but if they were… like yours, I suppose, maybe I would…" I was hopeless at this. "But Sirius, that isn't going to fix anything. All my problems in life somehow come back to my being a werewolf. Trust me, it's just going to make things worse, OK? Maybe you should become a wolf as your Animagus animal? Then you can comfortably transform into a wolf, when you want. And we can be wolf buddies together."

He smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice."

My thirteenth birthday came on the second Saturday of March.

"Welcome to the elder gang," Sirius said that morning, grinning down at me. He and James started singing happy birthday loudly, and I just tried to sleep.

We came out to the Great Hall and sat down for breakfast. Peter was already there.

"Um, happy birthday Remus," he said nervously. "Also, I've been wanting to say this for a while, but I did some research… I realise you can't control your actions when… y'know. So, I'm sorry for saying those things to you."

Wow, I thought. Just wow. You're just going to apologise after refusing to talk to me for months? I didn't voice my thoughts, I just smiled, nodded, and thanked him for his apology.

"How do you feel about being a teenager?" James asked me, wolfing down his breakfast eagerly.

"Old." I looked around at the school, distracted.

Since the attack on Hogwarts a month and a half ago, the mood of the castle had changed a lot. Of course, a lot of people were still completely traumatised from it, but most people seemed to be moving on, slowly. There were hardly any students whom the teachers didn't know the fate of, a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had been hired (and now all the students believed the post was cursed), and overall students seemed a bit happier.

I still couldn't get the sight of killing so many people out of my head. I'd been so upset about killing just one person, and now I had torn so many people to pieces I didn't think I'd ever recover. Pushing the sad thoughts out of my head, I tried to replace them with happy ones and turned back to my friends.

After my birthday, James turned to calling me an old fart for being seventeen days older than him, and when his birthday came, Peter called us all old farts, as he was the only one out of us who wasn't a teenager now.

The night before we were due to leave for the Easter Holidays, Sirius flooded my dreams. He was all I could think of, until I could sense his unease. I sat up in my bed and looked at my clock. 2:34am. I sniffed once and could tell he was awake, and he was worried about something. Should I go talk to him? I knew I was bad at helping people, but if I wanted to be a teacher, I had to be able to talk to my friends.

I walked over to his bed and pulled back the curtains slightly. He was lying in his bed and sat bolt upright when he saw me.

"Remus! What are you doing?" he whispered.

"I could sense there was something wrong," I said, trying to sound casual.

"What – how?"

"Good hearing," I said. I sat down on the bed nervously and closed the curtain. "So, what's up?"

He hesitated for a second, before saying, "Nothing."

"I'm not going to judge you," I said. I was glad it was dark so he could see my face which was totally pink. Why was I doing this? "Come on, you try to help me all the time. It's my turn."

He sighed. "I'm sorry, I didn't think anyone would… I-it's not much, I just… I'm such a fake."

"Whaddayamean?"

"Like, no one really knows who I am. I'm not real with anyone. Well, I suppose I'm the most real around you, James, and Peter. But not entirely real…"

"Why aren't you real?" I asked.

"Well at home I'm just the family disappointment. I used to try to act like this perfect guy, but that's just being fake. And now I am real around them, they just…" he trailed off. "Anyway, when I'm at school it's so different. I'm popular, James and I are basically considered royalty in our year."

That was true: James and Sirius were extremely popular. Everyone except Snape liked them and they were both smart but still rebellious, good-looking (especially Sirius), and nice to almost everyone.

"And I feel like if everyone found out the truth I'd be hated," he said. I couldn't see him very well in the dark, but I could tell his face looked pained.

"The truth about what?"

"My family, I guess. I mean everyone knows I was meant to be in Slytherin, but most people just think my family are fine with it. I dunno if I'm ready to tell everyone the truth." He gripped his bed covers, and I could see the silhouette of his fists shaking. "And I haven't been completely truthful with you guys about it. I feel bad for lying. I… I guess you know how that feels."

"Go on."

"But then, if I tell the full truth, I don't want you guys to think I'm complaining, or just exaggerating. I feel bad that you guys have gone out of your way just to help me, and then there was last summer when I asked for the help… I tried to face it, I promise I did, but it just got to the point where I couldn't do it anymore, I thought I was going to go insane if I stayed for any longer. They… they wanted Regulus and I to practice unforgiveable curses on each other… Regulus hadn't even been to school yet; he'd only just got his wand… yet he learnt the cruciatus… mother told him to do it to me and… and he did. He was only eleven… and then they told me to practice it on him, and… and I said no. I said no, and then they began to torture me again, and then… and then they put me under the imperious curse."

His voice broke, and I could hear him gripping the sheets.

"And I did it. I tortured my younger brother, and then when they took me off the curse, I… I snapped my mother's wand, I was so angry, and then Regulus and my father continued the cruciatus curse while she beat me, which she didn't like doing, as it was a non-magic form of punishment, but she didn't have a wand now, so…" he sighed. "It wasn't until I met your parents, and James's parents, that I realised that the cruciatus curse wasn't a normal form of punishment. I asked James what sort of punishments he got from his parents, and he said it was usually that he had to go to bed without dessert… oh, god, Remus, I'm sorry for dumping all this on you…"

"It's alright. Sirius… I'm… sorry. I didn't know, and… I wasn't there for you, I should have asked, during the broom ride before…" I stopped, wincing, "but, I… oh, I don't know, I'm sorry."

"Remus," he said softly, laying down. "You came. You came and you took me out of there. You've done that twice now, and both times have ended horribly. I can't thank you enough."

"But I didn't help you forget," I sighed. "Or… not forget, but you know…"

"And I haven't been much help to you through the whole Monifa thing, and well, the attacking Hogwarts…"

Silence.

"There's something else," he said. "Less intense, I think, but still… if everyone found out, most people would hate me. Some may even come at me with wands."

"Would you like to share it with me?" I offered.

"You'll hate me," he said.

"I don't think so," I responded. "Unless you've purposely killed someone or something like that."

"What would be wrong with that?" he said, grinning. "Jokes aside, no I haven't."

"Then I don't think I'll hate you," I said. "Just try me."

He shook his head. "I can't. I just can't. People like me get killed."

I was dying to know, but I didn't push it. "It's OK. I don't think I'll hate you though. Is there anything else—"

"I'm not… normal."

"Well, who is?" I said. "What even is the definition of normal?"

"Yes, but I'm not what's socially accepted…" he said.

"What's socially accepted?" I joked.

"There's someone… and they make me feel so good, they make my heart beat faster than it should, make me nervous, I only dream about snogging them." He looked down. "But this person… there's one problem… I… it's a… it's a boy."

Oh.

"Oh… I knew you'd hate me! I'm sorry… maybe you should go… I'm not going to try anything, I promise… I wouldn't… I'm sorry, Remus!" He gripped his sheets.

It was different to Monifa. In Monifa, it didn't affect me. Of course, it was the first time I'd properly heard of it, when it wasn't in the Daily Prophet saying terrible things about it. Then, I didn't think much of it, but now… now…

"I've been trying so hard to make myself normal, but I just can't," Sirius continued. He didn't seem as confident as he usually did. He seemed ashamed of himself. "I don't like hiding it… my parents are already trying to decide which pure-blood girl I should marry, but I don't want to marry a pure-blood girl, but I can't tell them that, they already hate me so much."

"They can't force anything onto you," I said, finally speaking. "And, I don't hate you. I literally don't mind. At all. This doesn't change anything. Anything at all! Nope, doesn't change anything."

This changed everything.

My good mood shined through the next morning as I hauled my trunk through the castle to Hogsmeade station.

"Aren't you cheerful this morning?" Lily said, laughing to Milly.

"I'm just excited to see my parents," I smiled, twirling my trunk around.

"Hi, Evans," said James.

"Bye, Potter," she said, pulling a face then walking ahead with Milly.

The two of them used to have one other girl in their dormitory, Kate Weasley, but she'd been the only Gryffindor in our year to be killed in the battle. The duo looked strange without her.

"James, you gotta pick up your game," said Sirius, laughing as we came out to the station. He was smiling again, there was no sign of his distress last night. "Bye, guys."

I wanted to hug him, but would that be weird? Girls hugged their friends. I'd seen Lily hug Milly and Kate, but for guys to hug each other, so I just left it, grabbed my trunk, and left, fighting the urge to look back. I joined Peter and James in a compartment, feeling my insides squirm. The train started to move, and I lied down on the seat.

"You good?" James asked.

"Yeah," I said, smiling, "it's just a bit hot."

Now that I knew Sirius's sexuality, my feelings for him were at a high. At this point, little thirteen-year-old me thought I couldn't possibly like him any more than I did in that moment. How very wrong I was. I also seemed to be accepting myself more for liking him. I thought about him all day on the way home. I arrived at my house with my parents and walked in happily.

"Remus, I know that face from a mile away," said Dad, after he and Mum greeted me. "Who's the girl?"

"What?"

"Oh, Remus, do you have a little crush?" Mum said, smiling down at me. Was my face really that easy to read?

"No. I'm just thinking of my friends." It was partly true.

The very next morning, I received a letter from Sirius. As soon as the owl dropped it, I had to hide my excitement. I tore open the envelope and rushed to my room to read it. I plopped onto my bed and unfolded the parchment to see his familiar handwriting. The letter read:

Dear Remus,

I hope you're enjoying your first day of Easter Break. Professor Binns is making us write an essay on the history of Easter. In the break! Can you believe it?

Anyway, we haven't really spoken since the other night when you came and talked to me about everything. I just wanted to say thank you for supporting me. You're a really good friend.

I hope you enjoy Easter; I know you love chocolate.

From,

SIRIUS BLACK

I smiled as I read the letter, but one sentence threw me: 'You're a really good friend'.

He was implying that he only saw me as a friend. That was understandable, though. Being friends with a monster like me would be hard enough, but to date one? That would simply be traumatic.

Despite being a werewolf, I could still feel things like this. Even if I knew Sirius would never want to be with me, that wouldn't change how I felt. Nothing could.