Remus would trust Sirius with his life. He doesn't even have to think about it, when Sirius murmurs, Do you trust me, Moony against the dark heavy air of the night. Remus can't see anything with his eyes closed in half sleep. He reaches out for the feel of Sirius's skin. Yes, he thinks, yes, yes, yes, always.
x
August, 1981
The casualties were getting worse. It wasn't just death anymore, but increasing instances of torture, of disappearances, of grief from which there could never be closure. Remus couldn't read the paper anymore. He asked Sirius to stop telling him the latest, but Sirius never listened.
"Carodac Dearborn is gone," he said. He wasn't reading from the Prophet, or from any of the other papers that he kept his nose buried in every spare moment of the day. Instead, he was holding a heavy piece of parchment, the kind that Order messages were written on, the kind that had told Remus he would never see his parents again.
"When's the funeral?" Remus asked wearily. His heart was torn with too many bruises and cuts and scars for him to feel the new ones quite so deeply anymore.
"He's not dead," Sirius answered. His voice was so level, so emotionless, that Remus had to turn away, as if that could stop him from hearing the words. They had entered the dog days of summer. The window was open, but it just let in the sweltering city heat, and the loud honks of car horns and shouts of anger and short tempers violently tread upon.
"Or at least we don't know it," Sirius continued. "The Order's lost contact with him. Officially missing. His family's refusing to give up hope."
"That's terrible," Remus whispered. He almost didn't recognize his own voice, its awful detachment, how little he seemed to be able to comprehend the words coming out of Sirius's mouth.
They didn't talk anymore. When they did speak, they fought. It wasn't silly shouting matches anymore. It was seething words and insults, accusations barely grounded in the truth, narrowed eyes and spiteful lashings out.
Sirius hadn't shown up to a meeting on time, and the whole group had almost gotten killed when Death Eaters showed up. Did he want them all to be murdered? Didn't he care about anyone but himself?
Remus hadn't come home until late, and when Peter showed up and asked where he was, they'd called out half the Order to try and find him. Did he realize how many people could have been lost while they wasted their effort on his sorry arse? Was he really that selfish?
Those were the words they said to each other. Those were the sort of charges made. They were just excuses—they both knew it well enough. Remus was angry because Sirius had to bring up the war so often; he couldn't let it go; it was if he wanted it to be around them, always, never stilling or stopping or pausing for breath. Sirius was furious because Remus was so quiet; he took every new tragedy with nothing but a low sigh; it was as if he didn't care that the carnage never ended, only grew, only piled higher till it seemed to reach the very sky with its pale new moon.
Sirius spent most nights sleeping on the couch in the main room, and Remus spent most of his nights not sleeping at all. He stood by the window instead and watched the moon grow from a sliver to a silver sphere in the sky. He felt the old, pounding fear in his chest every time.
Dumbledore asked to speak to Remus separately a few days later, after his return from an information seeking mission to Italy. He didn't know a word of Italian. He had gone with a translator a few years older than he was, who had drank wine with him on terraces and listened to his troubles, and advised him that if his boyfriend was really that awful, than maybe it was time to move on. Remus had smiled softly. Later, he was proud of himself for everything he hadn't done, and he had to pull that pride over, and stretch it thin across, the guilt he felt that the affair had almost happened. The guilt he felt because, maybe, he had wanted it, though he'd never admit it, not even when he saw Sirius's dark shadow fall across the floor.
Remus had never spent much time in Dumbledore's office. He felt automatically like a little kid the minute he stepped in. It had been his first experience of Hogwarts, that room, before he even started to attend: he had been just a little eleven year old boy, sitting between his mum and dad and listening, with hope and fear and wonder, at the special conditions of his education. He might as well have still been that little boy, watching Dumbledore, who was in his turn watching Remus through mystical half-moon spectacles.
"I have some…rather unfortunate news, Mr. Lupin," he started, "which I have already shared with certain other members of the Order, while you were away."
Remus faltered for a moment. Which certain other members? His eyes twitched quickly. "What sort of unfortunate news?"
"It has been my suspicion for some time—a now all-but-confirmed suspicion, in fact—that there is a traitor among our number."
Dumbledore spoke slowly and smoothly, but there was only a hint of the comforting tone his words had often taken in the past. That was the tone he used with children, and Remus wasn't a child any longer.
"Like…" he swallowed. "A spy?"
Severus Snape was a spy. Of course, he was a spy for the Order. Remus hadn't given much thought to the idea that, perhaps, the tactic could work both ways.
"Exactly like a spy, Mr. Lupin, exactly. It is my understanding that this spy, whoever he or she is, has probably been sending information to Lord Voldemort for many months now. It is also a part of my theory that this person is close to James and Lily Potter and is probably informing Voldemort on their whereabouts."
Every time James and Lily moved, Death Eaters attempted an attack. They were always held off, always, but always barely. Remus's stomach sank to his knees.
"I am not sure about any of this," Dumbledore continued. "I am collecting new information all the time. However, everything does seem to lead to this conclusion. That is why I am alerting those close to the Potters that someone they are close to is probably not as he appears to be. It is, you understand, Mr. Lupin, a risky decision to make."
"I understand."
Someone Dumbledore had spoken to already was a traitor. Someone Remus knew was a traitor. His stomach met his toes. He felt sick. A terrifying thought occurred to him.
"Headmaster?"
"Yes, Mr. Lupin?"
"You don't…don't think it's me, do you?"
The flickering lights of the room reflected off the glass of Dumbledore's spectacles. "I don't know whom to suspect, Mr. Lupin," he answered.
Sirius already knew. He had been informed of Dumbledore's suspicions while Remus was away. He said so, quietly, while they ate leftover dinner from James's (Lily had given it to them) on their living room floor. The table, where they used to eat, was too covered with letters and maps and codes and papers to be bothered with any food or drink.
"James and Lily will probably be moving again, soon," Sirius said.
He looked up, his eyes unblinking. Remus couldn't remember the last time Sirius had looked, really looked, at him.
"Yes. Only this time, I suspect nobody will know where they're going," Remus answered.
He looked up, too, and his gaze caught Sirius's, and they sat, simply staring, for a very long time.
x
End part 8/10