It was night, and Grimmauld Place was silent- Sirius' parents had left on a trip, taking Regulus with them, and Sirius (who was glad, really, of the unspoken anti-invitation that had left him here) was alone- save, of course, for that blasted house-elf...but to him Sirius paid no mind. He sat out on the fur rug at the foot of his bed, bare limbs folded, lit by the full moon coming through the window. Sirius screwed up his face, as though by tensing every muscle in his body he could similarly take charge of his cells, command them the way he did his hands and feet and eyes…
In this state of perfect concentration, Sirius thought only of wolves.
He tried to picture one as clearly as he could- seeing every blade of fur and follicle, and the shine of its black nose, and the saliva that dripped between its sharp white teeth, as though the beast stood before him in broad daylight, if not closer...but no, that was wrong; the wolf couldn't be before him, it needed to rise up from inside...instead he tried to imagine his face as a wolf's face, his limbs as a wolf's limbs- fur and claws and fangs, eyes that glowed in the dark…the ability to race over endless yards of terrain, wild and completely free, filled with fresh energy by the moon…
When Sirius' breath had been held for so long in this state that his lungs began to burn he released himself, feeling blood flush up his cheeks and behind his eyes as he gasped for air, and when the spots had cleared from his vision he held up his arms to the light, trying to see a difference- perhaps, could the hair on his arms be a little darker? If he ran his tongue over his eye teeth, did they feel a little sharper?
Sirius stood and moved over to the ornate, age-damaged mirror in the corner of the room, eyes and fingers running over his body with practiced sensitivity...but there didn't seem to be any change.
With a sigh, Sirius flopped back down on the rug, looking out at the moon.
No luck yet, Remus, he thought with some frustration, letting his eyes slip closed. Tonight, you're on your own again.
September came- back at school again, cool air, red train, new hope...Sirius still had yet to share his theory about animagi with his friends. He felt almost superstitious over it, as though should he let the idea slip it would escape him, and there would be no hope...but surely this was foolish. What was he doing, really- he knew, in a background kind of way, that wizards couldn't choose their animagus form, but he was still trying to. He couldn't imagine he would be of much help to Remus as, say, a lizard or a dove.
(Deep inside, Sirius knew this fine, irrefutable logic was actually a front- what he really wanted, he did not feel he could say. To run with the wolf, to be close to him like that, close in a way he couldn't as a human...there was a heat in this thought, a heat that made his blood burn.)
But he still helped Remus after the moon, and with the others there too, it almost became fun- there was a vague sense of competition in discovering who could be the most comforting, fetching sweets and cups of tea and blankets and medicine...Remus only barely indulged them, usually too tired to do much more than sleep, curled on a makeshift bunk they hid in the bathroom like a Muggle tourist out 'camping', but they didn't care. Before long that cold place became very well put to use- snacks and medical potions were tucked away in hidden places, sound-dampening charms were cast so that any raucous conversation would not be heard from the corridor and everything became better, and everything became more like home.
That look that Remus would give him when he was just beginning to wake- like he couldn't believe this was happening, like he had been given the greatest gift in the world- it was the best thing Sirius had ever seen.
It was the night before Halloween, and Remus had to leave. What was it about the holiday that made full moons fall upon it so often? Some ancient celestial magic, perhaps, that called all the dark things out into the light…
"Pity you'll miss the feast," James told him. "Though, I suppose you don't want to know what we have planned for the Slytherin table…"
"We'll bring you the sweets," was Peter's contribution. "My pockets will be full of napkins!"
Remus smiled at them both as he pulled his cloak over his shoulders (making only the mildest effort to chastise James; the truth of the matter was that they were going to sneak into the dining hall early and stick stink-bombs under the table settings, so that when students sat down they would go off), but too soon was he heading down the stairs, a lone voyager dressed for battle while the rest were still in pajamas, and Sirius couldn't stand to let him go that way, so he followed him down the stairs to the abandoned common room once more.
"I'll see you soon, Sirius," Remus said to him at the Portrait Hole ('soon', rather than 'later', somehow that seemed important) but he wasn't looking Sirius in the eye- he was already at a distance, his fingers trembling as though in preparation for what was to come, the night sky pulling him towards that shack in Hogsmeade. He moved to go- still, not looking back once, it was unbearable- and on sudden instinct Sirius blocked him, putting a hand on the back of the door. Now Remus turned to him, those sad, innocent eyes open wide, showing for the first time that night real worry.
"You can't come," Remus whispered, and Sirius almost bit his tongue for what he felt hearing that.
"What if I could?" Sirius replied, and he wanted to take Remus' arm, wanted to hold him there- hold him and do what?- they had both gotten taller over the summer, and Remus had grown into his eyes, and Sirius' hair had grown to his neck, something that he viewed as a mark of adulthood- hold him and do what?
(Didn't he already know? Since he had seen those Ravenclaw upper-years through a door half-ajar, an embrace, embrasser-)
Remus cringed away from him, though- the proposal hadn't made him hopeful but rather afraid, or perhaps even disgusted, as though Sirius had suggested some terrible perversion.
"No," he said softly, his voice broken. "No- the only way that- no, I would never, ever do that to you, Sirius. Do you understand? Never."
And before Sirius could open his mouth wide enough to express his feelings- feelings that were, perhaps, a little bit of heartbreak- Remus was gone, his cloak collecting the shadows of the air and vanishing him just as surely as any other magic.
Sirius almost swore, his fingers clenched into a fist on the nearby tapestry, what was this burn, like anger but so much lower in his chest, how come, after everything, did Remus still slip away…
...but no, Sirius realized, as those last words spun around inside his head: Remus had misunderstood. He had thought- oh, he must have thought- the only way for Sirius to join him was if he, too, were a werewolf...and of course Remus didn't want that. And no, Sirius supposed, he didn't really want that either.
And what he did want...well.
Sirius redoubled his efforts to become an Animagus after that moon, telling himself that if he could do it in a month then Remus would never have to suffer alone again, but of course this did not come to be. It was challenging work, often the work of a lifetime for grown wizards- was this some Gryffindor arrogance, thinking he could manage it if he was doing it for someone else?
(Though of course, deep down, he knew he wasn't doing it for someone else.)
Night after night Sirius wound up lying on the floor (in the dark common room, in the abandoned bathroom, some empty class- he didn't care), skin sweating and muscles strained, his mind spinning with images of paws and tails and long teeth that snapped at the haunches of a deer...the progress he made was minimal. In one month, the hair on his body grew longer, but only when he tried very hard- in two, his joints creaked strangely, stretching ever so slightly out of shape before snapping back the moment his concentration slipped, the transfiguration reversing like the breaking of a rubber band. Each step was progress, certainly, but he was impatient, and even successes felt like setbacks when Remus left him each month, when the words Sirius wanted to say couldn't be said and festered instead on his tongue like mold in old water.
It was nearly Christmas- everyone would be leaving the castle again, save Sirius, for whom home life was becoming ever impossibly more stifling- so many dark whispers, strangers coming and going all summer, meetings he wasn't allowed to attend- and Sirius was determined to put the empty time ahead to good use. He was crawling down to the common room every other night now, casting a casual silencing charm up the stairs so no sleepers would hear his muttered swears as he worked, trying and trying again, sometimes feeling like he made it a little further but never making it far enough…
Sirius was lying on the floor behind a barricade of squashy armchairs, breathless and newly transformed, holding above his head a pair of unpleasant-looking furry hand-paws to the dim light coming through the window; was it an illusion, or did the fur look black, like the hair on his head- he always concentrated on picturing a gray wolf, the sort that haunted Scottish moors, the sort he had thought he had seen a shadow of that night when he had slipped down the tunnel to Hogsmeade...but wolves could be black, couldn't they? And if he wrinkled his nose, he could swear it felt different, like his face had puffed up- damn, this could be real progress, he needed to get to a mirror-
"Sirius?" a disbelieving voice hissed. Sirius rolled over and saw James, his arms thrown lazily over the back of one of the armchairs, and his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline for how great his amusement was. Sirius felt the transformation melt away as he sat up, enormously glad that he had chosen to keep his pajamas on as protection from the cold- and as he did so he saw that James had not come alone, Peter and Remus were there too, hair ruffled and eyes bleary, the former looking vaguely disgusted and the latter...well, Sirius didn't know how to categorize that expression.
"What were you doing?" James crowed. "You looked like- hell, I don't even know what you looked like-"
"A werewolf," Remus interrupted, his voice as strange as his eyes. "You looked like a werewolf."
"Did I really?" Sirius said with no little excitement. "Though, you lot weren't supposed to find out until I was finished-"
"And how did you think we wouldn't notice?" James retorted, giving him a lighthearted shove. "I thought we already established that friends can't sneak off into the night all the time without being caught."
"What were you doing?" Peter asked dumbly before Sirius could manage anything witty to send back; he hesitated before answering (he still felt a faintly superstitious desire to preserve the surprise), but the terrible look on Remus' face convinced him to give it up.
"I'm not a werewolf," Sirius told them firmly (as though this was necessary- the moon outside was only half-full). "Actually, I'm practising something...I'm trying to become an animagus."
"Oooh," said James immediately. "Of course! That's a brilliant idea- imagine all the things you could do as an animal, the places you could go-!"
"Precisely," Sirius murmured, and he slid down to sit in one of the chairs, his eyes on Remus. "Like a certain house in Hogsmeade, every full moon."
Remus' pale mouth opened once, and then closed again. He didn't seem to know what to say- so Sirius would say everything for him. Suddenly, the words were spilling from him, uncontrolled, a floodgate unleashed at last:
"I researched it all last year- werewolves, when transformed, don't hunt for animals, so- and there's no way you'd know, an animagus transformation is so complete, you'd think of me just like- like a packmember, I- I could help you, I thought, so you wouldn't be alone…it would be fun, maybe, and I want to."
(This last admission, he almost wished he'd swallowed.)
"For me?" Remus whispered, and Sirius thought only he heard, thought only he saw the crystal edges of tears forming in those terrible eyes.
"Hey, that's true," James chirped, oblivious. "Why'd you keep it a secret, Sirius? We could all join in- and it would be so cool to see what kinds of animals we would be...from what I know, you don't really choose, right?'
"Right," said Sirius, though he had yet to release Remus from his gaze, Remus who for the first time seemed to understand what he meant, and whose tears kept fading and rising again in his eyes like tides that never fell.
"Then it's decided," James continued, cheerful with this prospect of new, unchecked mischief. "Operation become-animagi-to-help-Remus, begin!"
Despite their decisiveness, however, the matter was slow going- Sirius had had a head start and even he had not succeeded yet. Moreover, there were other things to be done- everyone had homework, James had Quidditch practices that were ramping up, and no matter how determined Sirius was, he couldn't spend every spare moment upon the task- there was other trouble to get into. And their animagus 'mission', as soon became the case, was not the only new addition to their roster of games to play.
The night after Christmas break James gathered them in a circle on the dormitory floor, red blankets strewn like the remnants of a blasted fort- all their faces were made bright and strange by wandlight, for the moon outside was new, and the stars blackened by clouds.
"I found something in the attic during the holidays," James said with relish, his voice a half-whisper, like the teller of a ghost story. He pulled out from beneath a wrapper of dirty robes a strange package- brown paper, tied by a string, a relic- and after a pause for dramatic interest tore the constraints apart; what spilled into his arms seemed at first like some kind of liquid, quicksilver, but no, for it didn't separate into droplets...James lifted the glittering thing before himself, that which was so nearly not there, and then whipped it over his head- in that moment, he vanished.
"An Invisibility Cloak," Remus murmured, his voice like wind sliding over stone.
"An Invisibility Cloak," Sirius echoed, almost a cry; the possibilities of this... well, he didn't even have the faculties to think of them all at once.
One by one the boys tried it on, playing at crawling about the room, being ghosts...limitations were tested, such as the volume of breathing that was audible, the grace of footstep required to avoid tripping or being heard. It was discovered that three could fit beneath it with a struggle, but four left them visible from the knees down, and if Remus was involved in any capacity he had to bend so that toes wouldn't show, flickering across the ground like mice or unpleasant spirits. Still, this was a treasure.
"We can use it to follow you," James said to Remus, reading Sirius' mind. "When we all go to transform…"
Remus flushed strangely at that, the way he always did when the matter was brought up out loud, and at the sight Sirius' heart missed several beats. Sirius wrapped an arm about his shoulders, a quick squeeze before the heat became too much, before Remus turned to him with one of his vaguely tragic expressions and made Sirius' insides turn liquid.
"We can use it for anything we want," Sirius said to distract himself, and James cheered to that.
The first order of mischief with James' Invisibility Cloak was inspired by the posting of a new Hogsmeade trip; as fourth years, the delights of Hogsmeade (though plentiful) were familiar, bland, and if Sirius and James craved anything it was spice...so it was with this new tool packed that the group set out one chill Saturday morn, their eyes bright and their heads bowed to whisper amongst themselves. Remus wasn't coming- the full moon had been only a few days ago, and he did not feel like returning to Hogsmeade so soon, when he could spend the cold hours sleeping by the fire instead. Peter had teased him- called him an old man- and James had given him a wink, a promise of worse trouble to be had without him (Remus was, after all, the best behaved out of all of them- even if this was perhaps not a terribly high bar). Sirius was, for his part, only a little disappointed- in truth, like James this absence made him want to behave more wildly, but for different reasons. Sirius wanted to bring back an incredible tale of vandal heroism to pitiful, sleepy Remus, who would surely be wearing that oversized blue jumper for pajamas, the one that bared the tiniest bit of his neck...there, in that bed-ruffled and half-asleep state Sirius could tell him of the cold winds and bright lights and wild exploits, and perhaps he would smile that narrow smile he had, like he was trying not to smile at all, and his eyes would turn down and God, Sirius wanted, he wanted so bad…
On the day of the trip James, Peter, and Sirius walked to the village in the crowd, but they kept their heads down, they did not chat or cry so raucously- all the more to blend in, to have their distinctiveness removed, so that adults would not look and say 'oh, there are the troublemakers, going out again'...in the village itself they purchased a few things, candy and alibis, and Sirius looked up the winding dirt road that would lead to Peter's 'haunted house' and felt a pull so terrible he almost cried, but then the plan was set in motion and he was distracted once again. In the alley behind the Three Broomsticks James and Sirius climbed under the Invisibility Cloak, and Peter went in, ordering a single Butterbeer and sitting in a corner as lookout and diversion, because amazingly despite all of his nerves he could hide them when he wanted to, it was a skill of his, pretending that there was nothing to lie about and no reason to fear being caught…
While Peter distracted the bartender with a silly question or two, Peter and James slipped behind the bar itself, and no one saw them (of course) and no one heard them over the din in the room, and they felt invincible, like gods themselves, gods of mischief and of the game. In the storeroom, they looked about- so many options, too many for such trembling hands- but there, James recognized something and began pulling bottles off the shelf- yes, Ogden's Old Firewhiskey, and that was perfect because it did not remind Sirius of anything his family might have stocked on dirty black-wood shelves.
Between the two of them they had pockets enough for four good-sized bottles (young hands reaching out of nowhere, plucking contraband from the shelf and vanishing it to the ether) and with this their mission was achieved in only moments; with a tap on Peter's shoulder as they passed they escaped, 'scot-free' (as though the Scots were 'free') and already on their way back to Hogwarts, the bottles shared between them and hidden in the deepest pockets of their robes alongside the Cloak.
"We're marauders," James declared with delight. "Scoundrels and pirates and thieves…"
"I like the sound of the first one," Peter chriped. " 'Marauders'... "
The mid-winter air was cold but the sun was hot and the combination was ecstatic; Sirius' hair (at his shoulders, now) was blown back by an icy wind that trailed across the nape of his neck, wicking away the sweat there, and he had never felt more alive.
That evening they drank their prize down to the last drop. All kinds of spells were cast- silencing charms abundant, so that the other dormitories would not hear, and then magic to make music play and to create the tiniest illusions, lights that danced across the tapestries and bedspreads. Sirius hadn't had alcohol like this before- the taste was so bitter it burned, and every mid-swallow he thought he couldn't bear to take any more of it, but by the time it reached his chest he was in love with it again. He felt like a small fire was lit against his heart, and the heat of it spread to the ends of all his limbs and up his cheeks into his eyes. Even as the world became blurrier and blurrier the heat remained, burning just as bright and just as fiercely, and Sirius knew now why such things were referred to as 'liquid courage'.
Remus stayed on par with them, taking shots right from the bottle, and every time he swallowed Sirius stared. It seemed a small miracle that anything could turn the hollow apples of Remus' cheeks pink, or make his lips look anything more than dry. And better than that- better than anything in the entire world- was how he curled on the carpet and giggled as though helpless, his eyes wet and misty and only very faintly wild.
Time coagulated, and in a handful of humid breaths it was the witching hour. Peter had fallen asleep in a wrong bed, when had that happened, and James stood on fawn's legs with a declaration of 'bathroom', but Sirius barely heard him. Remus was strewn out on the floor, some fabric (robes or blankets or tapestry, Sirius did not know) bunched up beneath his thin limbs like the set dressing on some Renaissance painting. Sirius slid over, his own body shaking as though with fever, but even so close as this the thread pulling at his heart did not take slack.
"I'm so drunk," Remus sighed, and he rubbed at one eye lazily, and his head rolled over to face Sirius, and like this all his scars were so visible, and there was a drop of the Firewhiskey trailing from the corner of his lips...and in a better state of mind, oh, in a sober state of mind Sirius wouldn't have done it, he would have looked away and ached and felt the moment's loss like a wound, but the fire in his chest was still burning and there was nothing to put it out and the drink had put bravery into his every vein, and so he leaned over and kissed Remus on the mouth at last.
(At last.)
Remus didn't pull away; in his current state of mind, Sirius hadn't even expected him to. It felt clumsy, but neither of them seemed to care- Sirius wrapped his arms around that terribly slender frame, wanting, wanting more than he could have even like this, wanting to drown in the mixed scents of Firewhiskey and Remus' skin, and the burning taste in both their mouths…
Remus moaned, and for a moment Sirius went supernova.
They broke apart even though Sirius desperately didn't want to, and he watched Remus' head roll back, watched the scar tissue on his throat shift, and wished he could swallow the gasps that passed his flushed lips.
"Sirius," Remus whispered, and his eyes reflected both the artificial yellow stars James had cast on the ceiling and the waning gibbous outside.
James returned, saying something loudly that Sirius didn't hear at all, and Remus stumbled away, crawling back into his own bed where he fell in a heap, his long limbs too numbed to move with their usual animal grace, and his eyes fell closed before Sirius could say another word to him.
Sirius looked balefully back at James, for his drink-dumb brain vaguely put his friend to blame for the fact that he wasn't kissing Remus still, but James didn't notice at all, making some dull declaration of bed and settling in to one without bothering to pull up the covers.
The spell casting lights on the ceiling was extinguished. For a moment, Sirius sat there in the dark, listening to his own beating heart, and then he foolishly climbed into Remus' bed and fell asleep there, one arm about that narrow waist, in every part but the physical a dog.
There then came forty-eight or so painful hours in which Sirius nursed his first, infant hangover, and worried desperately that he had dreamt the feeling of Remus' mouth on his- with nausea swimming in his bones instead of courage, he didn't feel like he could stake claim to the odd looks Remus kept giving him, furtive and sideways and with lips faintly parted, as though he wanted to say something but didn't. The thread tied between them was tauter than ever, Sirius couldn't leave him alone, and now it was even worse because he could swear there was a wire drawn along it too, spitting electricity like those plastic Muggle cords. Hands brushed, Remus bit his lip and looked away, and Sirius swallowed what felt like a Quaffle. Classes were unbearable, Sirius couldn't think straight, and Remus seemed hardly better, making the best/worst noises Sirius had ever heard every time they touched during Potions, and was he blushing or was that just an illusion constructed by Sirius' own fevered brain?
The suspense ended when Remus, with a pointed look in Sirius' direction, slipped into the abandoned third-floor bathroom and Sirius followed and before the door even closed Remus was kissing Sirius again, kissing like he had been craving it, and then Sirius had him up against the wall and they were so bad at it their teeth clacked together and Remus laughed and Sirius didn't want to stop doing this ever, ever, ever.
For the rest of the week Sirius felt like a madman. They didn't say a word to each other but for kissing, and the moments that they weren't felt like those before a coach blew their whistle on the racetrack. Did the others notice? How could they not? Remus stumbled from empty classrooms or broom closets with his robes in disarray, half removed from when Sirius had had him sitting on the windowsill, legs parted enough for Sirius to set himself between and they both felt it like that, each other's respective pressures, but they couldn't do anything about it because even so much as looking down would break the connection of their mouths. That was the worst part of every day- Remus kept insisting that they had to go to class, but Sirius didn't want to, he didn't want anything but Remus' arms flung about his neck as he made those tiny, wonderful noises- and it wasn't like either of them were paying that much attention in class, anyway. Sirius wasn't paying attention at all- even in Potions, which Remus always needed help with, all Sirius could do was stare at the slow-growing bruise that had appeared just above Remus' collar, and wonder at it because unlike all of Remus' other injuries he had left that one there.
Had they always been building to this? Had the strange attraction Sirius had always felt towards Remus been some sort of proto-eroticism, or perhaps even the signs of true love? Yes, when Remus was on his back and whimpering and his shirt was rucked up to expose parts of a white, taut stomach and Sirius wanted to take the rest of his clothes off but Remus wouldn't quite let him- like that, Sirius thought wildly that it must be true love.
But-
When Remus turned to him and asked, his lips swollen and his eyes glassy, 'what is this, Sirius, exactly,' Sirius had no answer for him. Every answer he could have given, honest or otherwise, shrivelled up on his tongue with the realization that he didn't know, actually, he didn't know at all. Was there even a word for this feeling? Was there a way to present this to the world as anything other than a terrible, unholy secret…? There were upper-years that 'dated', yes, they went to the teashop in Hogsmeade for St. Valentine's and they held hands as they walked the corridors, the girls beaming bright and the boys blushing- but Sirius didn't think this was that. There were parts missing, or perhaps too many things that were the same, Sirius didn't think he felt that way for Remus, no, what he felt seemed like so much more- it was a feeling that took over his entire body and possibly his entire soul and if he couldn't explain this to Remus he knew there was no way he could explain it to anyone else, friend or family or enemy or stranger, no way he could explain it at all.
(Was there even a future in these furtive kisses, these hungry, taken moments? The only future Sirius knew of, when it came to love, was that of marriage- and Remus would be disqualified as his bride twice over, first for being a man and second for being a werewolf.)
But Sirius had never been the type to ponder the future, and so when Remus' brow furrowed and he opened his mouth for words instead of kissing, Sirius hushed him, and smothered all the uncertainty in ardour. In the end, it didn't really matter, did it? They were young and they were alive, here and now and now, now, now, and that was all Sirius wanted to care about.
The Invisibility Cloak slid from their shoulders and bunched, a puddle of quicksilver, on the forest floor. The night air smelled of pine needles and the fast-approaching summer, summer that felt like a train off its tracks, flying unstoppably towards Sirius' face- God, he did not want to go 'home'. Remus wouldn't be there, and how could he survive three whole months without the body that was pressed to his now, without those lips or those sad, sad eyes? There wasn't even another moon left before term was over, and Sirius dreaded to think of it.
"You wanted to show me?" Remus whispered against him when they had finally run out of breath. "Or did you just want to get me out here alone…?"
Sirius pecked him once more but stepped away, untying his robes and then pulling his shirt over his head so that they both joined the Cloak, rejected things, not needed in this warm weather...Sirius felt bashful only briefly, and more because he wasn't confident yet in what he was about to do than any shame of his body. Shoes and socks he discarded next, kicking them haphazardly aside, and when he was nude from the waist up and barefoot like a savage he wiped his hair from his eyes and looked back at Remus, who was still leaning back against the tree where Sirius had left him, his eyes shining faintly in the starlight and the scars on his face glittering like threads of pure silver. The lazy, faintly hungry look on his face made fire lick all the way down Sirius' spine.
"I'll try my best," he said, offering a jaunty grin, and Remus raised his eyebrows, a smile-trying-not-to-smile. Looking at him then, Sirius wondered if he'd been going about it all wrong- if he'd been pushing too hard, trying to control it too strictly, when magic (like all good things) worked best when it came easy.
Sirius took in one deep breath and then let it out, still holding Remus' gaze, a kind of challenge. Another in, and out- the world seemed to blur, he wasn't trying to force it now, he knew what he wanted and for some reason, for the very first time, he thought he felt that thing rising up to meet him, like a reflection appearing deep in the water, coming closer as he fell into the depths, for as soon as he touched the ocean's surface they would meet, crashing into each other, becoming one...and then, absently, Sirius realized that the ocean he was imagining was not an ocean at all, but instead the darkness of Remus' pupils, and the reflection he saw was bounding through them and into him, of course, of course, it would always be because of Remus…
Sirius felt a wave of prickly warmth, as though an army of beetles with tiny flattening irons for feet were running down his entire body, from scalp to heel- he didn't look, still he was held in that black, fixated on the mirror image that was racing towards him- but then the sensation passed, and he blinked and shook himself; he was constrained by something around his back legs and so he wriggled free, stepping back to sniff it- a fabric, and it smelled like him. Oh, his pants. Obviously.
"Oh my God, Sirius," there came a voice- the sound of it was clear, clearer than anything, but Sirius didn't really notice the words. He turned and the speaker was there, kneeling, pale hands outstretched in the moonlight- oh, the wolf, of course...
Sirius wagged his tail without thinking and trotted over, sniffing at the wolf's mouth and then behind his ear, where he smelled most like himself. The wolf laughed- the sound was almost too loud, but it was not unpleasant- and fingers rubbed at his ears and ran through the thick black fur at his neck and that felt great, yes yes yes, Sirius' tail was still thumping and he couldn't have stopped it if he wanted to.
"You're really a dog...it's perfect, Sirius, I- I can't believe it…"
Sirius licked the cheek that was so close to his nose, tasting a bit of salt, though he hadn't quite the presence of mind to register it as a tear. In that moment, his happiness was simple and complete.
"Ha...you look like a Grim, you know. Remember, from Divination…? A big black dog…"
The wolf sat back slightly, his thumbs rubbing at the short fur on Sirius' nose (this, too, felt really good). He thought he could perhaps stare into the wolf's dark, moonlit eyes forever- there was no reason he could think of then to do anything else.
"I wonder...just whose death you are predicting…"
With his animagus transformation now a smashing success, Sirius had plenty to lord over the other hopefuls, who by the end of the year were still only reaching intermediate stages- James, when he tried very hard, grew bones from his head indicative of some kind of artiodactyl, while Peter's face caved in on itself, becoming somehow smaller and mousier than it already was. But there was no opportunity to accompany Remus, and the sweetness of Sirius' victory was bittered by this. Remus didn't seem to mind- Sirius had a feeling he was still reluctant to allow company on the moon, even if said company was also canine- but ever since that night in the woods when he had gone all the way (and back, and all the way again- practice makes permanent makes perfect) Sirius' longing for it had multiplied terribly.
"I could come with you," Sirius murmured to him on the morning that the Hogwarts Express would be settling into Hogsmeade station; he slipped these words into Remus' ear before biting him there, teeth closing as delicately as possible around the lobe, and Remus jerked against him like he had been shocked. "You could say I'm a new pet, your parents wouldn't have a clue…"
This sounded like a joke, but to Sirius it was at least half-serious (half-Sirius, ha). He didn't want to go back to Grimmauld place, he never did, there was no point to it...but Remus didn't indulge him, laughing and sighing and disentangling them, and as always Sirius felt like there was some terrible injustice going on here, one he couldn't even fully put name to.
"Thank you, Sirius," Remus told him, and his scars looked invisible in the sunlight. "Really. I'll write, and I'll miss you…"
"I'll miss you, too," Sirius replied, and he meant it more than he had ever meant anything else.
Four years down. Three to go.
(Was that going to be enough?)
