This Time - Chapter 13 [Part I]

Remus was discharged from the hospital a week and a half later. He still wasn't in a great shape - the student nurse at the hospital who looked after him had told me it would take months before he was completely back to normal. As ever, he put on a brave face throughout it all and was back working at the coffee shop. Soon enough, Christmas decorations began springing up for sale in shops, snow began falling on a more regular basis and the temperature dropped.

"I always loved Edinburgh at this time of year." Remus said to me one evening on the way back from work. "It's bloody freezing but the city just looks so at peace with itself."
I hummed in agreement. The buildings all around has a dusting of white snow on them, and since the nights had begun to draw in earlier, a large moon hung in the sky, white as the cold surroundings.
Reaching out, I took Remus' gloved hand in mine. "How long have we known each other?" I asked.
He considered the question for a moment. "God I don't even know. It feels like barely any time, but also like forever." He paused again. "I can remember it all though, that first day in the coffee shop, me helping you with your dissertation, our dates afterwards."
"I should bloody well hope you remember." I laugh, "And you essentially wrote my dissertation for me. You're the only reason I'll pass it."
"The ideas were there, I just put them together."
"Stop being so modest Remus."
"Make me."
So I do, the only way I know how. "Your lips are cold." I mutter against his mouth."
"Shut up and kiss me."
Even now, after all this time, making out with him still makes me giddy to my stomach. Breaking the contact, I take his hand again and we continue walking.
"You're right though." I tell him. "The city is beautiful."
"The moon is too. I've always liked the moon. When I was at primary school we used to have this astronomy class, and we all had nicknames based off of the planets. They called me Moony."
"That's really cute. I'm calling you Moony now."
He nods. "I haven't told anyone that. I got sick that year and had to leave the school afterwards."

"You got sick?" I ask. He's never brought this up with me before.
"Have I never told you?" He says. "When I was about seven years old, a stray dog bit me on the arm. My parents took me to the doctors who checked it out. At first they just gave me vaccines for the standard possibilities, like Tetanus, but a couple of weeks later it flared up. I started running a fever, convulsing, vomiting, you name it I did it. And they couldn't figure it out. I spent about three months straight in hospital while they ran tests."
He stops, and sits down at a bench. "Can we rest, I'm feeling sore." Moony asks, indicating at where, underneath his clothes, I know the bandages are.
"Of course." I sit down with him on the cold bench.
"In the end, they just let me out of the hospital on this experimental drug. It worked about 75% of the time, so it really just hit me hard every four or so weeks. And it carried on like that, all the way through secondary school. It only stopped around my third year of university. It was painful, and those few days where it hit me where the worst days of my life. At times I contemplated just ending it all, the pain was that bad, but I persevered on through the few days and I would be fine."
"How did it stop?" I asked.
"I don't think it did. My body just got more and more tolerant of it, and I stopped noticing the symptoms. I still get bad days sometimes, but they are few and far between."
I sit back, processing what he just told me.
"Come on Sirius, Lily will be wondering where we've got to." he says. I help him up, and take his hand again.
"I'll make you some tea once we get back in." I promise.
"You better. Or you're not getting any tonight."
"Neither of us are getting any until you've recovered more. You're still too... fragile."
He laughs. "Me? Fragile? Sirius I took a gunshot and lived through some sickness that some of the world's best doctors couldn't figure out."
"No sex."
"But..."
"No."
He sighs. "I don't deserve this."
"No you don't but I'm not going to let you get hurt again."
He puts his arm around me side and pulls me in. "Then as soon as I'm well enough we're not leaving that bedroom for a good few days."
I chuckle, "I bet Lily would love that."
"Totally. Well, she can't complain anymore, not with 'Officer James' on the scene." He giggles.
"I know right."

Turning the last corner we approach the apartment building. We have to use the side-door as nobody is on the desk at this time. The warmth hits us like a wall when we finally get into the flat.
"Tea." Moony says to me.
"Right away." I reply. "Lily! Want a tea?" I yell out.
She comes out of her room and sits down on the sofa. "Please. How was work?"
"Busy as usual." Remus says. "Minerva's all fussy because Sev's having to take less shifts, so Sirius is pretty much working overtime there now."
"We told you it'd only be so long and you'd have literally all the shifts." Lily said.
"I believed you when you told me. It was very kind of Minerva to give me the job though."
"She could see we needed it." Remus replied. "Plus you covered my shifts and we owed her one anyway."
"Anyway, you boys are back late. Better have been behaving yourselves."
"We stopped off for story time with Remus and at the Bookshop on the mains street." Remus explains. "And we had a look at that camera shop. I still really want that camera. You know the one I showed you."
"I do." she said. "Well Christmas is coming up so if you're lucky it'll turn up somewhere in a couple of months."
"I don't think so, it sold a couple of days ago to a dealer down south the manager said." he said, sounding quite dejected.
"Well then we'll have to find another one."
"No, no, it's not worth the hassle."
"Pfft. If Moony wants it, he'll have it." I told him.
Lily glanced over at me, a knowing look in her eyes. I'd bought the camera, obviously, as a surprise present for Remus.

"Either way, I'm down with my mother remember?" he said.
"She should come up here." I suggested. "There's probably room to accommodate her up here and you're not in the best state for travel."
"I, uh, I don't know how she'd react to the whole gay thing."
"Then Sirius is my boyfriend from when she gets here." Lily said.
"But..."
"Remus, Sirius and I have been planning this. We want a nice Christmas all together. My family aren't in the country, and I doubt Sirius wants to see much of his. Go on, invite her up."
"Okay I'll ask her. She's never actually visited me up here, so it'll be a nice change."

Remus called her that evening, and she accepted. And on December 23rd, we picked her up at the airport.
"Mum!" Remus called out, running to hug her. "Not too tight please, you remember." he said after a moment.
She let him go. "Bloody Edinburgh Police, letting the crime get out again. Lyall always used to complain whenever he came back from here on business." She looked past Remus to Lily and I who were standing not far behind. "Lily Evans, looking gorgeous as ever." she said brightly, then looked me up and down.
"Sirius Black Mrs Lupin." I introduced myself in my most gentlemanly voice with my most dashing smile. "May I take your bags?"
"Sirius is Lily's boyfriend." Moony quickly explained.
"You got a gentleman, that much is clear." Remus' mother said. "Hope Lupin dear." She said shaking my hand. "Lovely to meet you."
"The pleasure is all mine Mrs Lupin." I said, shaking her hand then picking up her bags.
"Please, call me Hope. I can't stand surnames, such formality."

We walked her back to the apartment. Everything had been set out - Lily and I having brought in the Christmas tree the day before, Remus having decorated it.
"Remus, you're apartment is clean!" Hope said emphatically. She turned to me and Lily. "Nothing like his room at home, you could never see the floor for the mess."
"Mum!"
"Remus, it's a mothers job to embarrass her children."
"Can I make you a cup of tea Hope?" Lily asked.
"That'd be lovely. "
"I'll take your bags to your room." I said, carrying the two suitcases into what was Remus' room. We had decided to put Remus into Lily's room, due to his injury, with her while I would sleep on a camp-bed in the corridor.
"Lily, you certainly nabbed a good one. Handsome too." Hope said.
"Mother..."
She just laughed. "Now, how is work going, tell me everything."
We just sat in the living area with her talking for a good hour or so. Lily told Hope that she and I had been together for a few months and had met at work.
"So you're all in that coffee shop?" she asked.
We all nodded. "Minerva treats us nice, the pay is alright and the stress is relatively low." Remus told her.
"I remember when you wanted to be a photographer when you were younger." she said.
"Did you?" I asked Remus.
"Yeah, I did." he said. "It's one reason why I wanted that camera. My secondary school didn't run Photography as a course, so I did Film and Media at Uni."
"He was talented. He used to use Lyall's old Polaroid camera to take photos. He had the right eye, even when he was that young." Hope tells us. She pulls out her purse, opens it, removes a photo and hands it to us.

The photo is dated at Christmas fifteen years ago down in the corner. It's an old Polaroid shot, showing a man who looks just like Moony now and a much younger Hope. They're sitting by a Christmas tree talking, obviously unaware the photo was being taken. Even on such an old photo, the lighting is perfectly placed, the profiles of the faces clearly capturing the moment.

"I still carry that photo to this day. It was one of the first he took, and I just couldn't let it go."
"Remus, this is amazing." Lily says, still examining the photo.
"It was a fluke."
"I have the other photos Remus. I kept all of them, your photos are no fluke." Hope says. "I still think you should do photography professionally. A new year is coming up, you should have a new start."
"I agree Remus." I say. "This is incredible."
Remus mutters something, then stands and goes to get some more tea. We chat for the rest of the evening, Hope telling us all about Remus when he was younger, his father, everything. Lily and I listen intently to her every word. Only when the clock chimes twelve do we stop, all retiring to our beds for the night.

The next day, Lily and I head off for work, leaving Remus and his mother time for a good catch-up. On the way back that evening, we stop off at a shop to get some fancy wine. On our return to the flat, we're met by the smells of cooking.
"You're back!" Hope says, greeting us at the door. "I figured you all might be hungry so I made up some food. It's just a curry and some sides."
"Smells incredible" we both say. We sit down to supper as a group, eating the delicious food and sipping at the expensive wine. Hope asks me a fair bit about myself, my family and such. I respond, telling her my family were not good people, and how this is the nicest Christmas Eve I've ever had. The conversation then turns to Lily, who clearly had known Hope for quite some time. They even had in-jokes, which neither Remus nor I got the punch lines for but had both women laughing.

We continue to drink past supper and into the evening, watching the Vicar of Dibley on the small television in the flat. Hope bids us goodnight after a couple of episodes, retiring to bed. Lily does soon after, leaving Remus and I together.
"Did you mean it?" he asks me. "Is this your best Christmas eve?"
"Of course. None of my bad family are around, and I'm not alone. Of course it is."
"My mother thinks your great you know. She says she's glad Lily found a good guy."
I lean in to his ear. "If only she knew." I whispered.
He chuckled. "True, you're building up one hell of a rapport for later when the truth inevitably comes out."

I give him a cheeky kiss and settle down in the camp-bed while he retires to Lily's room. Sleep evades me however, as I stare at the ceiling of the flat, listening to the ticking of the clock. After some time I sit up, intent on making a hot chocolate, when the door to Remus' room opens. Hope comes out.
"I see you're still up." she says.
"I can't sleep." I reply.
"Me neither." she says.
"Hot chocolate?"
"Please."
A few moments pass in silence as I pour the milk out and heat it up. Once it's made, she sips at her mug, leaning against the counter. I lean against the wall warming my hands against the mug.
Hope breaks the silence first. "I'm aware of you and my son."
"How?"
"How do you think?" She asks. "I'm his mother I was aware of his orientation long before he was."
"I guess I should have expected that."
"Plus it's incredibly obvious." she says. "The way he looks at you, talks about you, and tonight at supper I realised it's the same with you to him. You make him happy."
"I do try."
"It clearly works. He's happier than I last saw him."
She pauses.
"I know you won't, but break his heart and I swear on Lyall's grave that it will not end well for you."
Silence, then we both chuckle. "I wasn't intending on it, but now I will be extra careful."
"Good." she says. She looks out the window for a moment. "The photo I showed you was also on Christmas Eve. It was the night Lyall died."
Oh. "That's why you can't sleep?"
She nods. "He went out to the church that night for evening mass. He never came back, his bike skidded off a bridge with the ice and he drowned." She says, calmly. "I can never sleep on Christmas Eve nights since."
"I know the feeling." I say. "A cousin of mine committed suicide three years ago today."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"She was a lovely girl. One of the nicest of my family."
"Like you then?" she says.
"I aspire to be like her. She was kind, generous, all the things my family isn't."
She takes a sip from her mug. "I assure you that you are all those things. Remus is like Lyall in the same sense. I first met Lyall through a boyfriend of his you know. Lyall was arty, fearless. He put up with a lot but smiled through it all. I fell in love on the spot."
She tipped her mug up and finished the contents. "Be as public as you want with my son with me around. He's nervous about it, I can tell, and he'd appreciate the comfort of knowing I'm fine with it." she said. She then turned and returned to her room, only stopping to tell me, "Goodnight Sirius."
"Goodnight Hope." I called back quietly.

The next morning soon dawned and I managed some sleep. Sunlight burst through the windows, waking me early. I set about, as quietly as possible, moving presents under the tree, setting out the table, etc. Once the clock struck eight, I started cooking, knowing the smells would wake Lily up quickly. Right on cue, once the bacon was in the pan, she emerged from the room, tying her hair up into a ponytail.
"Merry Christmas!" She beamed at me.
"Merry Christmas Lily. I have to tell you something."
I filled her in on everything that happened last night, all the while flipping bacon, cooking pancakes and making tea. Lily busied herself putting Croissants in the oven and adding her own presents to the pile under the tree.
"You have to do something cheesy!" Lily told me. "Like stick a bow in your hair, tell him that you are a present to him then kiss him."
"But he'll flip."
"It'll be perfect."
"No... I have a better idea." I tell her, with a wicked smile.

~~~ To Be Continued ~~~

Authors Notes: It's back! And it's a long one! And one of two parts! I can't promise when the next part will be out (hopefully soon), but it should also be a long chapter, and will most likely close off the fic nicely. This was supposed to come out after January but I got very caught up IRL. I hope you all enjoyed reading, any Reviews, Follows and Favs are truly appreciated. Also check out my other fics, like The Scientist, for more Remus/Sirius action. I hope you're all having a great 2016 so far. Peace!

Thomas