o─-o─-o─-─-─-─ WITHOUT THORN THE ROSE ─-─-─-─o-─o-─o
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.
Warnings: Some slash in this chapter.
Notes: No new pins for this chapter. I still can't find a good model for Remus. I'm open to suggestions at this point.
o─-─-─-─-─ 12. COMING CLEAN ─-─-─-─-─o
The day of Sirius Black's death was damp and drizzly. Mist crowned the highlands of Azkaban, shrouding the prison in a cloud but for the sky-scraping tower. Harry, who was so anxious that he hadn't managed more than a few bites of breakfast, went over his plan ad nauseam, pacing a rut into the floorboards of his attic bedroom. It was a relief when at last James left for work, and Harry was able to set off soon after, with two baskets of fresh food, several flasks, and a box containing a shrunken, half-defleshed corpse.
Climbing the twisted stair, Harry's hands trembled so much that he almost lost his grip and tumbled down into darkness. He cursed himself at length while clinging to the absurdly steep stairs, which were damp with humidity. Ever since being attacked in Knockturn, he had been experiencing transient episodes of panic, and none of his usual meditation techniques seemed to help. One of the flasks in his pocket was a calming potion, and he downed the entire bottle before resuming the climb. The potion stilled his trembling hands and slowed his racing heart, but his brain still chased itself in circles, painting vivid scenes of everything that could go awry.
The tower-top seemed a ship lost on a sea of fog. Harry wanted to go straight to Sirius' cell, but Rab's voice called to him first.
"Boy! Over here!"
"Hello, Uncle Rab," Harry greeted the auburn-haired Death Eater.
"Didn't manage to get your throat slit in Knockturn, then?" the man replied, looking him over with a crooked twist of his lips.
Harry glared. "No thanks to you. You might have warned me about that rune circle at the potions shop."
Rab tried for an innocent look, but only managed to look guiltier than ever. "Was there one? It's been a long time." He rubbed his hands together greedily. "What did you bring me today?"
Harry grumbled to himself and passed a basket of breakfast food through the bars. Rab attacked it with a vigour that belied his half-starved, skeletal state. "I've got to talk to Sirius now," Harry explained, turning away.
"Bloody mutt," Rab spat, spraying crumbs that he picked up and shoved back in his mouth. "I'm your uncle. Keep favouring him and I'll start to think you don't care for me."
Harry looked away uneasily, as if for an escape hatch from the conversation. "Sorry. We'll talk later."
Harry left Rab muttering imprecations to himself. He found Sirius in dog form, as usual, huddled in his blanket. A bedraggled Pax sailed through the grimy fabric and alit on Harry's shoulder. Harry woke Sirius with a warming spell, and slid the basket of food through the bars. Sirius moved as if to eat while still in dog form, but Harry stopped him with a quick shield.
"Sorry, but don't you think you'll enjoy it more in human form?" Harry urged. Sirius cocked his head, then shifted, with obvious effort that left him panting on hands and knees.
"Thanks," the dark-haired Death Eater muttered, before shovelling the food into his mouth. He hadn't consumed more than a bite or two, however, before he directed a dark glower at Harry. "What is this?"
"Breakfast," Harry tried, keeping his face as blank as he could.
Sirius just stared at Harry for a long moment. "If you want to kill me, you can at least tell me why," he declared evenly.
Harry's stomach fluttered in spite of the hefty dose of calming potion. "It's not poison, I promise."
"I have a rather good nose, you know, on account of being a dog animagus," Sirius replied. He sniffed a piece of toast at length, then frowned. "This is Draught of Living Death. You either want me dead or helpless. So which is it?"
Harry sighed noisily, annoyed. "Why would I go to all the trouble of getting you your memories back, fattening you up, letting you keep my patronus, and then off you? What's the point of that?"
"You tell me." The man's dark eyes glittered as they searched Harry's face, and the boy felt a brush of legilimency against his mind.
"Stop it," Harry snapped, repelling the invasion easily, as James had taught him. "I'm getting you out of here, all right?"
Sirius' face was blank with shock for a moment. Then he pushed the basket of food away with his long, bony fingers, and turned his face resolutely to the wall. "Save yourself the trouble. I don't want out."
Harry's mouth dropped open. "Are you joking? You can't even imagine how much trouble I've had putting this plan together. I almost died for your sake, you—you—ungrateful mutt!"
"I could have saved you the effort, if you had bothered asking," the man replied, rather rudely, Harry thought.
"If you really want to rot away in here, why don't you just cut to the chase and—I don't know, bite your wrists or something?" Harry demanded.
Sirius smiled grimly, displaying the runic tattoo that marked him a prisoner of Azkaban. Then he turned his hand over and showed Harry a set of white, dotted scars on the inside of his wrist—dog bites.
Harry's stomach sank. He had known Sirius was depressed, but hadn't an inkling that it was so bad. He recovered quickly, however, resolute in his plan. "Well, I don't bloody care what you want. You either eat that food, or I'll damn well shove it down your gullet," he informed the stubborn prisoner.
"Why?" Sirius asked tonelessly. "What do you care? Are you in the Junior Death Eater League or something?"
"It's not for your sake, believe me," Harry answered snippily.
Sirius snorted derisively. "There isn't a soul alive who cares if I live or die."
"That isn't true. There's someone who very much cares about you."
Sirius froze, looking poleaxed. His eyes darted to Harry, then back to the wall. "I don't want to see him," he muttered quietly.
"Too bad. It's the least you can do for abandoning him all these years. Anyway, I don't believe you."
Sirius mulled this over, looking intensely troubled. Harry began to feel hints of doubt and guilt adulterating his self-righteous determination.
"Like a penance, you mean?" Sirius asked finally, raking his fingers through his matted dreadlocks.
"If that makes it easier for you," Harry replied irritably.
"He really wants me back?"
"I haven't asked. If he doesn't, you can consider yourself free to go off and die somewhere, if that's what you really want."
Sirius sighed, hanging his head. "Do you really know what you're doing?"
Harry shrugged. "It's a good plan, and everything's in place. You'll go to sleep here and wake up there, a free man."
"A fugitive."
"Better that than a prisoner."
Sirius glanced suspiciously at Harry. "What's in it for you?"
Harry half-smiled. "He's my godfather. He practically raised me. Anyway, there's nothing else to do for fun around here."
Sirius considered this for a moment, still eyeing Harry with undisguised distrust. Eventually, however, he nodded, once. "All right."
Harry deflated with relief. He nudged the basket of now cold food toward his cousin, and Sirius wolfed it down, moving more and more sluggishly, until his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed. Harry cleaned up the remaining food and waited. Sirius' chest slowed and then stopped, and the kaleidoscopic tangle of his soul stilled as well, turning white, as souls did upon death. Harry watched the luminescent spirals warily, but they showed no sign of dissolving. Last of all, the man's runic prisoner tattoo faded, having lost the magic that powered it.
Sirius would remain in a state of suspended animation indistinguishable from death, until he received the antidote that Harry had nearly paid for with his life. The dark-haired boy cast a spell to repel animals, then retreated to the hidden stair and waited for the wizenguards' patrol.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
Several hours' time found Harry crouching in the highest of the cliff tunnels, waiting for the wizenguards bringing the body to be excarnated. The stone floor around Harry was littered with bird and rat droppings, broken claws, and tiny human bones, some as yellowed as ancient ivory, others still bearing snippets of tendon. Where the larger bones were taken after the flesh had been stripped away, he did not know, though a careful inspection of the beaches indicated that at least some of them fell into the sea. When the sound of footsteps approached at last, Harry scuttled back, using magic to silence his movements, and waited with baited breath for the body to be placed.
There was a long wait, while the wizenguards came and went, and Harry counted thirteen souls. He wondered why so many were present. Finally, a louder voice called the others to silence, and then all of the guards began a call and response chant, in Latin, of all things. It was strangely touching to think that the guards cared enough to perform some sort of funerary rites. Harry had imagined that they would regard the prisoners' bodies as a kind of refuse. He strained to make out the words, which echoed strangely in the roughly carved chamber, and were swallowed by the roar of the waves and wind. The word mater was repeated several times, but the rest was unintelligible.
At last, the souls filed out, returning to the upper reaches of the prison, and Harry crawled back to the cliff face, using sticky spells on his hands and feet to clamber from one aperture to another until he located Sirius. A couple of rats were investigating already, but Harry's spell thankfully kept them from digging into the feast. Harry took the small box from his shirt pocket, removed the half-eaten skeleton he had stolen weeks ago, and restored it to its original size.
Bjorn had warned Harry against trying to shrink a living being, and Harry, after committing several atrocities against bird-kind, had conceded the point. Instead, he cast a feather-light charm on Sirius, and stuffed the Death Eater unceremoniously into a canvas sack with a space-expanding charm. The sack, which was small enough on the outside to be tucked into Harry's shirt pocket, was what Bjorn's Yule gift of reindeer jerky had been wrapped in, although Harry hadn't realized the sack's magical nature until James had exclaimed with a distended gut that perhaps the hairy brute of a captain was not so bad after all. Harry took the gift for what it was: plausible deniability.
Escaped prisoner in hand, Harry kicked off from the cliff and arched back into the fog, thrilling to the rush of air in his ears and the weightless fall, until he hit the waves with his cushioning charm. It was time to go home.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
To Harry's dismay, Remus arrived with Bjorn the next day, and insisted on speaking to James before he left. The werewolf's shaggy silver patronus was dispatched to the prison with a message, and Harry was relegated to the kitchen while the two men talked behind a magically muffling shield. Despite the spell, Harry could hear the two men's voices rise and fall with agitation. Peeking around the corner, he could see that James was firmly in denial mode, his eyes flat and his arms cross. Remus, on the other hand, waved his arms around in the air and gesticulated vehemently in the direction of the kitchen.
Harry ducked back, heart beating a little erratically, and continued preparing a plate of sandwiches, all too conscious of the escaped prisoner currently tucked into his shirt pocket. When a lull in the argument finally presented itself, he brought out the food, and the make-shift family enjoyed an awkward and mostly silent lunch. Then James escaped to the prison, and Harry and Remus walked back along the beaten grass path to the small harbour.
"I'm sorry you had to hear that, Harry. It wasn't about you," Remus apologized as they walked. The mousy-haired werewolf chose to walk through the dewy, knee-high grass so as to stay at Harry's side.
Harry snorted. "And you say I'm a bad liar."
Remus scratched the back of his neck and looked sheepish. There was an awkward pause, as he seemed to search for words. "Is there…anything you want to tell me, Harry?"
Harry's stomach fluttered. "Well—yes, actually."
Remus looked surprised, but brightened at once. "I see. Well, you know I'm always here for you." Remus' tone was gentle, and it made Harry squirm.
"I appreciate that."
"Will you tell me what happened last month?"
Brains dribbling out of a skull that was cracked like an egg—a severed hand in a dirty puddle—
Harry stumbled and almost dropped his knapsack. "Nothing happened," he answered immediately, in a harsh voice that belied his words.
"Harry…"
"I have something I want to tell you, but not until we get home, all right?"
Remus sighed and nodded.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
On the boat, Bjorn served them all stiff cups of tea, as usual, and Remus sipped his appreciatively, though he still viewed the one-eyed captain with a good deal of distrust. Bjorn had apparently decided to take the wolf's scrutiny as a compliment, and the old bear practically preened under the wolf's watchful eye. Harry ignored them both, choosing to immerse himself in the Prophet instead, which Bjorn had thoughtfully left out for him.
SIRIUS BLACK DIES AT AZKABAN
by Rita Skeeter
A representative of Azkaban reports that Sirius Orion Black perished of natural causes in his cell at Azkaban early on February 2. After consultation with his next of kin, Black's remains were interred at Azkaban. No ceremony will be held.
Those fortunate citizens of wizarding Britain who survived the perilous years of You-Know-Who's reign of terror will recall that Sirius Black was one of the You-Know-Who's most vile henchmen.
"Chaos, just sheer chaos… smoke everywhere, people crying and screaming, and the blood…" remembers Mitchell Pierce with a shudder. Pierce was working on the fifth floor of the Ministry during the explosion of the fourth floor, which was masterminded by Black. He rushed to the scene in the aftermath. "Then we saw him through the smoke, grinning like a demon. The man was pure evil."
"I, for one, will sleep better at night, knowing that there is one less Death Eater in the world," said Narcissa Black Malfoy, cousin of Sirius Black and wife of renowned philanthropist Lucius Malfoy. When asked what Sirius Black was like as a child, she recalled, "He was always getting into trouble. As soon as he knew what the rules were, he had to break them. It was a compulsion for him. In retrospect, I think I always knew he was a bit unbalanced, but you just don't think that someone you know could turn out to be such a monster."
Readers may recall that after the passing of Orion Black in 1979, Sirius Black became the heir-in-waiting to the Black fortune, which is currently controlled by octogenarian Arcturus Black. According to Ministry officials, the Black holdings include approximately 75 million galleons in liquidity, as well as various investments and property in Britain, Ireland, and France. The Black family fortune will now pass to newly designated heir-in-waiting Lucretia Black Prewett upon her father Arcturus Black's passing.
"What are you reading?" Remus asked, appearing behind Harry.
Harry closed the paper with a snap, but not quickly enough. Remus snatched the paper from Harry's hand, and turned back to the article. The blood drained from his face, and he set the paper down on the hold's small table with a shaking hand.
"Think I'll get some air," the ashen-faced man said, and exited the hold with a stiff posture.
Bjorn and Harry exchanged significant looks. Bjorn's was smirking, while Harry's was grim.
Harry patted his shirt pocket. "Thanks again for the jerky."
Bjorn chuckled, his scar going white and taut around his grin.
On the deck, Harry navigated his way across the rocking planks to the stern, where Remus was staring into the wake morosely. He glanced at Harry with red-rimmed, watery eyes, then looked away. Harry hugged his uncle and patted the man's back somewhat uncertainly.
"You were right," Remus said.
"About what?"
"I should have gone to see him. At least once."
"I'm sure he understood."
"He did it for me, you know. I could never forgive him for that."
"Yeah. I figured."
Remus sighed. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't unburden myself on you, Harry."
"It's fine," Harry replied quickly. "You always listen to me."
Remus smiled wanly, but it faded quickly. "It's not like anything has really changed, after all…"
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
Harry found himself that evening in the strange position of both wanting to spill everything as soon as possible, and wanting to keep delaying the inevitable. In the end, he put off the moment until after dinner, when Remus had lit a merry fire in the hearth and drawn the curtains. They met in the living room, after Harry had downed another calming potion in the bathroom, and Harry rubbed his knees nervously, unsure how to start.
"Well?" Remus asked. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
Harry opened his mouth, but the proper words remained just out of reach. He closed his mouth and swallowed. "Here," he blurted, and thrust a potion flask at Remus.
"What's this?" Remus asked, turning the flask up to display the symbols etched on the base: three zeds, a skull, and a sun.
"Antidote for the Draught of Living Death."
Remus looked at Harry sharply. "Where did you get this?" he asked warily. Harry plucked at his trousers and remained silent. "Harry?"
"I bought it."
"Where?"
"It doesn't matter."
"What's it for?"
Harry chuckled awkwardly. "Well, I didn't get you a very good Yule present, so…"
"Not at all," Remus protested, glancing at the window where he had hung the cleverly carved mother-of-pearl wolf so that it could catch the light.
"So I thought I'd get you something else. Only I don't really know whether you want it or not, and I couldn't exactly ask."
Harry withdrew the canvas space-expanding sack from his shirt pocket and stood on the wide expanse of Oriental rug between the sofa and the Omnivision.
"Why couldn't you ask me?" Remus asked suspiciously. "Harry, does this have to do with what happened last month?"
The gruesome images flashed before Harry's eyes again. The calming potion prevented his hands from shaking, but his heart tripped and stumbled even so.
"Nothing happened," Harry answered, and stifled another hysterical giggle. "Erm, well, I guess this can be an early birthday present, or something, even though…oh, hell, just…here."
Harry held the sack upside down and emptied the comatose convict out onto the rug. Sirius landed in a sprawl of spidery limbs, and quite a bit of dirt fell out after him, as well as a piece of reindeer jerky that must have stuck to the canvas. Harry surreptitiously vanished that. Remus would murder Bjorn, or maim him at the very least, if he ever suspected the sea-captain's complicity.
Remus' eyes nearly bugged out of his head. It would have been quite funny if it weren't so terrifying. "What the—Harry, get away from him!" The man leapt across the room and dragged Harry behind him. One hand dug frantically in his pockets for a wand that he couldn't find.
Harry skipped away from Remus, putting the sofa between them. "Don't worry, he's totally knocked out. That's what the potion's for," Harry explained, cowering slightly under Remus' blazing look.
"What—how—who—explain!"
Harry looked puzzled, then realized that Sirius' matted hair was obscuring his face. "Look," he said softly, moving Sirius' hair aside with a wave of his coral-pierced hand.
Remus froze, not even breathing for several heartbeats. He sank to his knees and touched Sirius' cheek tentatively. Then he shook his head, and backed away, his eyes wild with fury and terror.
"Harry," Remus groaned, "what have you done?"
Harry bit his lip as another entirely inappropriate giggle tried to escape. "Erm…happy early birthday?"
Remus sputtered incoherently for a moment. Then he snapped, "Accio Wand!"
The wand in question hopped out of Harry's pocket and zipped across the room, but Harry retrieved it mid-flight with a grasping motion. Remus recoiled as though Harry had slapped him in the face.
"You've been practicing magic?" the werewolf demanded. His eyes flashed with sudden understanding. "With that bloody coral! You lied to me, Harry."
Remus' disappointed and accusing tone was so familiar to Harry from a lifetime of getting into trouble and being disciplined by his uncle that he felt an instinctive urge to apologize meekly. He resisted this, however.
"I could hardly get him out without magic, now could I?" Harry asked, trying to keep his tone even. "And I didn't lie, I just didn't tell you. Anyway, don't worry, I'm being careful with it."
"Careful!" Remus repeated hysterically. "Careful! You just helped a mass murderer fake his death and escape from prison!"
"To be fair," Harry answered, circling away around the sofa as Remus began to edge toward him, "I didn't help him. It was all me. All he had to do was take the potion, and I practically had to stuff it down his throat even so."
"Harry," Remus cried, "the man is a psychomage! He can get inside your head, plant ideas, make you think they're yours!"
Harry huffed. "I'm quite good at Occlumency, as you very well know. And I know all about his psychomagy, since I'm the one who got his memories back for him."
"Memories?" Remus stopped circling the sofa for a moment.
Harry nodded. "He displaced his memories of you, so that Voldemort and the Ministry wouldn't find out about you. Only, once he was caught, he couldn't get them back. He didn't know you from a school-boy fling for ten years." Harry looked away and added uncertainly, "I think he tried to kill himself after he got them back."
Remus wavered for a moment, but he brushed off whatever doubts he had quickly. "Harry, the man is a Death Eater. Any one of them would kill you in a second, for revenge or glory—or just the sheer fun of it."
Harry rolled his eyes. "He doesn't even know who I am. Look, just give him a chance. We can hide him here until you make up your mind what you want to do with him. If you insist that he still needs to be punished, I'm sure we can work something out."
Remus glared. "We will not be doing anything, aside from discussing your punishment. This isn't in your hands any longer, Harry."
Harry raised one eyebrow and waggled Remus' wand in mid-air at the man. "Seeing as all the wands do seem to be in my hands, I'd have to disagree," he answered impertinently.
Remus looked ready to spit nails. "Yes, we'll be discussing that, too."
Harry steeled himself and narrowed his eyes. "I'm not going to make you take a Vow, because you're my uncle, and I trust you, but if you think I'm giving this back before I'm convinced you're not going to turn him in, you can just keep thinking. I went to quite a bit of trouble getting him out in the first place."
Remus growled at Harry, a little of the wolf showing behind his eyes, but after a moment, his gaze was drawn back to the pitiful specimen of man sprawled on his oriental rug.
"Do you know what the dementors do to them?" Harry asked in a serious tone. "They siphon off their souls, a little at a time. They go mad, lose their minds, their memories, their humanity. In the end, they're all Kissed; the only question is how long it takes. And if that wasn't enough, the guards kept him in conditions that would have killed him, if it weren't for magic that prevented him dying of exposure or taking his own life. If you want him to go back to Azkaban, you should just kill him instead. It would be more merciful."
"He doesn't deserve mercy," Remus spat, but he looked weary suddenly, as though he had aged ten years in ten minutes. He dropped to the sofa and held his head in his hands, thinking. "I can't turn him in," the man grudgingly admitted. "There would be too many questions. And I'm afraid your father would bear the brunt of the blame. Did you account for that in your little scheme?"
Harry looked away guiltily. He hadn't.
"But he's still a Death Eater. I can't set him free," Remus continued, "and I can't watch him day and night, either. Do you even comprehend the position you've put me in?" He glared at Harry reproachfully.
Harry bit his lip. "Get him to make a Vow that he won't do anything you wouldn't approve of."
Remus nodded, slowly. "I suppose you have plenty of experience negotiating Vows with Death Eaters," he accused bitterly.
"Some," Harry allowed.
"How did you get into the prison?"
"I'd rather not say," Harry evaded. Remus would try to prevent him going back, that was certain.
"Give me my wand, Harry."
"Not until you promise not to tell my dad."
"The hell I will. He needs to know what you're doing, for his own protection if nothing else."
"He doesn't want to know," Harry answered carefully, perching on the arm of the sofa. "He's still not in a good way. Azkaban has taken a lot out of him."
"That's always your excuse, isn't it?" Remus demanded bitterly. "You know, for all the complaining you do about his shoddy parenting, you certainly do seem invested in letting it continue. You two bloody deserve each other."
Harry flushed with shame, but held his ground.
Remus sighed heavily and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Sorry. I didn't mean that, Harry."
"It's fine," Harry replied flatly. "It's true, anyway. But just think what would happen if he was ever involved in another incident like the last one. If he gets questioned under Veritaserum by Aurors, do you really want this coming out?"
Remus sighed, and his shoulders slumped. After a moment, he gave in. "Fine. I won't tell him."
Harry smiled tightly in triumph, and he tossed Remus' wand to him. "Well? You have the potion. Just pour it in his mouth. Or we could clean him up first."
Remus clutched his wand determinedly. "For the last time, Harry, there is no we. You're grounded until I say otherwise. Now go to your room!"
Harry went. Just before he closed the door, however, Remus called out to him again with a strange expression on his face.
"Harry. Why does he smell like he's been marinated?"
This time Harry couldn't quite manage to keep his hysterical laughter from bubbling over.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
Sirius woke surrounded by warmth, floating on a cloud. He sat upright with a great slosh of water, taking in his surroundings with the urgency of a wanted man. For a long moment, he simply stared at his old lover, drinking in that face that had haunted his dreams, with all its new and old scars, the delicate signs of aging, the hardened expression that looked so alien on his gentle wolf. The luminous amber eyes were the same, and the petal-soft lips. Sirius was overwhelmed with the urge to touch them, but Remus' expression forbade it.
"Well? Aren't you going to ask if you're dreaming or something?" Remus asked. His voice was a cocktail of bitterness and anger with a twist of sarcasm.
Sirius tried to speak, but managed only a fit of violent coughing. When his body had ceased its racking convulsions, he sank back into the water, exhausted, and murmured with a rasp, "Since you haven't tried to stab me yet, this couldn't be one of mine."
"Give it time," Remus replied, without irony.
"As long as it's you, it's fine," Sirius answered earnestly. He felt dizzy and weak, but still better than he had in years.
"Sit forward. I'm almost done."
Sirius complied, hunching over his knobby knees, conscious for the first time in years of how repulsive he must look. His hair had already been regrown, it seemed, and now Remus poured hair potion onto it, massaging the sudsy solution into his scalp. Sirius could have died happy in that moment.
"How did you get your hooks into my godson?" Remus asked coldly as he worked. He had always been fiercely loyal to his loved ones, and being on the other side of that felt like being chased from his own warm home into a bitter winter night. It seemed to Sirius that his heart no longer had any defences; it was a helpless lump of raw meat, pried from its shell.
"I think it's the other way around," Sirius answered honestly. "That boy gets up to quite a bit of mischief. Just like his father—adopted father, I should say."
Remus' fingers froze, digging into Sirius' scalp like claws. "You legilimised him?" he accused peremptorily.
"Didn't have to," Sirius responded as evenly as he could. He would happily have begged forgiveness for any sin, real or imagined, that Remus wanted to accuse him of, if he thought it would have helped, but he knew his old friend better than that, no matter how many years stood between them. "He had to be one of the guards' kids, and he looks so much like Lily. And you know as well as I do that those two couldn't have children."
Remus' fingers relaxed. He had always responded best to calm logic. A wand-tip touched Sirius' head, and warm water began to cascade over him.
"Don't think I'm doing this for your sake," Remus explained in the wake of a contented sigh from his prisoner. "I just don't want you dirtying the bedding."
Sirius smiled to himself. It would never occur to Remus that he didn't need to give an unwelcome visitor a bed.
Eventually, Remus vanished the cloudy water from the bath and helped Sirius to stand. The animagus towelled himself off with some difficulty; he was still dizzy. Remus spelled him into a set of pyjamas made from red flannel printed with small dogs chasing balls in circles.
"I didn't ask him to break me out," Sirius told Remus, as the werewolf helped him into a bed and pulled the covers up to his chest, "but I'm not sorry. It would have been worth it to see you one last time, even if you hit me with the Killing Curse the next second."
"I'm not like you, Sirius," Remus answered frostily, dimming the lights and lingering by the side of the bed. "I don't kill people."
"Not even to save someone you love?"
Remus looked at Sirius for a long, tense moment. "You're going to make me a Vow. Vow that you'll never lie to me, never hide anything I would want to know, and never do anything I wouldn't approve of."
Sirius' heart fluttered with hope, sending a wave of pain and malaise throughout his body. "Does this mean you're not going to turn me in?"
"I can do a lot worse to you than those prison guards," Remus warned.
Sirius smiled indulgently and reached for Remus' hand, but it was snatched away before he could touch it.
"Don't. That's over now," Remus snapped.
Sirius nodded sadly.
"I can't just…" Remus continued, his voice choked with emotion.
"I understand. I do."
Remus went to the door. "You…you weren't who I thought you were. The person I loved…wouldn't have done what you did."
"Remus," Sirius called. Remus turned, glancing back. "I still love you. I always have."
Remus turned away, hiding his face.