Why do birds sing so gay,
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
- Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers
Haunting
Sirius hates them. He should probably feel guilty about this, but he doesn't. Spending twelve years in prison for a crime you didn't commit gives you an odd relationship to guilt. He hates being with the two of them together, but given the circumstances that's often unavoidable. At Order meetings they drool at each other from opposite sides of the table- they're so sickeningly obvious that it's a miracle hardly anybody else has found out about them. Remus likes to think he's a master of subtlety but they could hardly be less subtle if Nymphadora had "Shagging the werewolf" written across her forehead. Sirius hates the coy, unsure way Lupin looks at her. Get a grip, Moony, he wants to snap, a girl half your age throwing herself at you? You wouldn't turn that down even if you weren't getting zero other offers. He hates the way Tonks gazes at Moony; possessive, enamoured. What's there to be possessive about? Sirius wants to sneer, You don't know him. I know him. Sirius hates the way she touches him too. Nymphadora holds Remus like she's his Mum or something, clearly overcompensating for how blatant their age difference is.
Sirius hates when they turn up at Grimmauld together; it makes him feel like he's their senile grandmother who they have a duty to visit. It hurts to know that Moony and Tonks have been couple-hanging-out and he wasn't invited. Sirius misses them, that's all. That isn't a crime, is it? (Spending twelve years in prison for a crime you didn't commit gives you an odd relationship to criminality). He misses both of them. He had a few months of having his best friend back to reminisce and laugh and talk everything through with, and he had his baby cousin back to wind up and be Black with. Now they've drifted away from him and towards each other, and Sirius is left out in the cold. They don't mean to make him feel that way, but their looks and their visiting him together and their "Sorry, I'm not around tonight, I'm seeing Remus," makes him feel redundant. Is this what it's like for Harry, stuck in middle of Ron and Hermione? Remus slept here most of the Summer, in the spare room next to Sirius'. Now Dumbledore's got him doing overnight surveillance, and on his free nights Lupin goes home to his cottage or he's with Tonks. He only stays over in the spare room once a week these days. It's so quiet here without him.
Sirius misses who they used to be too. He hates that Nymphadora's no longer the little kid who used to sit on his lap and tangle her fingers in his hair and dollop sloppy kisses on him. Now the little girl is gone and it's Remus who gets her on his lap and gets her fingers in his hair and her kisses. Sirius hates that everybody calls her by her surname now, like she's a different person. He feels betrayed, somehow, that she grew up without him. Spending twelve years in prison for a crime you didn't commit gives you an odd relationship to betrayal.
He misses Remus the most. Young Remus, whose cynicism was amusing, who had properly brown hair and whose knees didn't crack when he stood up. Schoolboy Remus with his books and his prefect badge and his choirboy treble, unbroken for three years after Sirius's own voice dropped. Moony now is so old. Not only his hair and his craggy voice and his crow's feet, but in his resigned jadedness and exhaustion. In the way he patronises Sirius and bosses him around (schoolboy Remus wouldn't dare). He feels betrayed that Remus grew old.
Sirius is offended that they don't remember each other from back then. Remus had come round to Andromeda's house at least a few times; Sirius can remember them all sitting round the dining table talking. Lupin and Ted would chat about Muggle stuff while Sirius and Andromeda drank too much and talked Black, and Nymphadora would get cross that she wasn't getting enough attention so would start turning her hair green. It grates on Sirius that neither of them remember that but they're together now. As if that life didn't exist. Like Lupin-and-Tonks have become their own entity and Sirius, who knew both of them first, is their spare part. It's like James and Lily all over again except Sirius is older and bitterer. Perhaps Remus does remember those times at Andromeda's house, Sirius considers, but is pretending he's forgotten so that this thing with Nymphadora doesn't make him feel like a creep. Moony's been good at repression. Sometimes Sirius wishes he could sneer at him that what's everybody going to say when they find out that goody-two-shoes Remus, prefect Remus, Professor Lupin, turns out to have a taste for little girls.
The infuriating aspect of all this is that Sirius knows he's to blame, at least in part. He egged them on from the beginning- "I reckon she fancies you, mate", "Of course he isn't gay, Nymphadora, haven't you noticed who he's always looking at?"- it was a laugh, a little project, something to occupy his brain while he's stuck in this godforsaken house. And it had wound them both up something rotten- "Don't be ridiculous, Padfoot", "Me? He doesn't look at me, he doesn't!". Sirius hadn't expected them to actually get together. That's rather ruined the joke. The joke's on Sirius now, but for the sake of his pride, and to spare himself an excruciating conversation with Lupin where Remus explains that it's nothing personal, Sirius can't let them know how angry they make him. So he has to keep teasing and sniggering and winding them up; "Is it me, Moony, or is that a new bite you've got on your neck?", "Remus hasn't been here all day, Tonks, and yet I can smell his soap? That's strange isn't it?", "This is my father's study. I think it would be a fitting tribute to his memory if you used this room for all future amorous activities".
And fine, he'll admit it- he's jealous. Not that Lupin's with Tonks specifically- that's disgusting, she's his cousin, she's a kid- but that he's having fun, getting laid, doing something with his life which isn't the damn Order and this damn house. He's living, which is more than can be said for what Sirius is doing in here.
Sirius is so lonely.
