"No! No, please!"

Sirius blinked, disoriented, into the darkness. Somewhere at the other end of the room, Peter was snoring.

"Don't -" The word was little more than a broken sob.

Sirius sat up, tugging back the dividing curtain. "Lupin?"

His roommate struggled against his blankets, fighting phantoms in the moonlight, clearly in the grip of a nightmare.

"Lupin!" Sirius hissed, grabbing the boy by the shoulder and shaking him roughly. "Remus, wake up!"

Hard knuckles connected with Sirius's mouth, and he fell back with a cry of surprise, crashing into the side of his own bed as he went down.

On the other side, James sat up. "Whozzat?"

"It's nothing," Sirius assured him, prodding his lower lip experimentally with his tongue. It was split, but not bleeding too badly. "Just a dream, Potter. Go back to sleep."

James subsided back onto his pillow, and began to breathe deeply almost at once. He had never been fully conscious.

Remus leaned halfway out the open window, breathing in the cold, misty night air in deep, ragged gulps. Sirius pulled himself to his feet and approached him warily. Remus was trembling, and Sirius did not think that it was from the cold.

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

"Don't - don't touch me," Remus gasped.

"I won't," promised Sirius. He hovered behind the other boy uncertainly.

Remus closed his eyes, took a few more deep breaths, then drew his head back into the room. He turned and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, forehead resting on his drawn-up knees. Sirius hesitantly sat down beside him.

Remus broke the silence first. His voice was rough and muffled against the fabric of his pyjama-clad knees. "They think those bloody pills will help," he said bitterly. "What the fuck do they know?"

"What are they for?" Sirius asked again.

Remus did not look at him, but tilted his head back to rest against the wall. "Sleeping. They think I don't get enough sleep. But I'd rather be tired all the time than be stuck in the middle of one of those dreams and not be able to wake up."

"Oh," said Sirius, thinking of his own nightmares. "I wouldn't take them either, if it were me."

"They think that if they just shove enough chemicals into me, I'll get better. But I'm not ill, am I? It's not some bloody virus that will go away if they find the right medication."

"What is it, then?" Sirius only half expected an answer.

Remus gave a huff of humourless laughter. "Same thing as you, I guess. They call it PTSD, though."

Sirius's brows drew together in puzzlement. "PTSD? What's that stand for?"

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," Remus explained. "It's a fancy way of saying that something bad happened, and sometimes I have a hard time dealing with it."

Sirius had never thought of his recurring dreams about his brother's death as an illness with a name before, but Remus's description seemed to fit.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

Remus shook his head, closing his eyes again. "You don't want to know."

Sirius looked helplessly at his friend. He did not want to pry, but - "I felt better. The other night, after I told you. I mean, I don't think I'm cured or anything, but maybe it helped a little bit, talking about it."

Remus looked at him, and caught sight of Sirius's swollen lip. "Did I do that?"

"Yeah," said Sirius. "But it's OK. I shouldn't've grabbed you like I did."

"No," agreed Remus. "You felt better because you thought what happened to your brother was your fault, and I told you it wasn't. I already know that what happened to me wasn't my fault - not really - and I've already had to talk to lots of people about it. It didn't help."

"You don't have to tell me," said Sirius. "But if you do, I swear I'll never breathe a word to anyone. I swear it on - on my brother's grave. You can trust me."

Remus's eyes searched Sirius's face. Sirius met his gaze, unblinking. The stillness of the night hung between them as Sirius held his breath.

"All right," Remus said at last. "You think you want to know?"

He looked away - like Sirius, he found it easier to talk without looking at his confessor - and he began to speak in a quiet, dull voice.

"We were on holiday in Guernsey. My parents and my sister and I. I was six. I was going through this thing where I thought my parents loved my sister more than me, but it was just that she was three and she needed them more than I did. I know that now. I was angry about them fussing over her one day while we were in town, and I wandered off on my own."

Remus closed his eyes, hands clenching around his knees. "He found me. Fenrir Greyback. I knew I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. I should have yelled when he grabbed me, but I was too scared. I thought I would be in trouble for wandering off. He took me to a house in the countryside. Locked me away in a stuffy little room with no window. And he - he hurt me and - made me do things. I was with him for months."

"Jesus," whispered Sirius, horrified.

"You'd think that would be the worst of it, wouldn't you?" said Remus hollowly. "But every day, he would tell me that my parents didn't want me anymore - that they were angry with me for running away - that I belonged to him now. And I believed him."

Silence stretched between them like a chasm. Sirius had no words to express the feeling of sick horror that welled up inside him at Remus's confession.

"I think he would have killed me, in the end," Remus whispered. "After the police finally found me, there was a trial, of course, and I found out that there had been another boy before me who died. Anthony Montgomery."

Sirius must have made a sound, because Remus raised his head and looked at him.

"Sometimes I wish he had killed me," he said, voice hollow. "So many nights, I end up right back there. I can feel his hands on me and hear him telling me that my parents don't want me - that this is what happens to little boys who run away." A look of revulsion crossed his face. "Sometimes I can even smell him."

Sirius felt ill. He desperately wanted to offer Remus comfort, but he had none to give. Words felt empty, and to touch him unasked in any way after what had happened to him seemed wrong.

"Does it get any easier?" he asked. "I mean, you're older now, aren't you? It was a long time ago."

Remus shook his head. "No. You'd think so, but there's always something or someone to remind me of it. Sometimes little things you'd never expect catch me out and wreck me for days. And the dreams keep it fresh, like it's only just happened. You know that."

Sirius nodded. "At least my parents never made me take pills for it."

"Your parents blame you for what happened," Remus said bluntly. "My parents blame themselves. We used to have money, but a lot of it went on private shrinks and doctors and therapies that didn't work. One of the shrinks touched me, too. He said it was an 'experimental method' where you were meant to act out the things that had happened to you in order to understand how they affected you. I stopped talking to any of the doctors after that."

"But he was meant to be helping you!" gasped Sirius, shocked. "How could he -?"

Remus shook his head. "Some people, they figure once you've been through a thing like that, you can't get any more broken than you already are, so they might as well have a go. There was a boy at my last school who thought that, too. He found out somehow, and he thought he could make me do things with him in exchange for him not spreading it around the school. So I beat him to a bloody pulp. That did make me feel better, actually." A corner of Remus's mouth turned up briefly.

Guilt squirmed in Sirius's guts. He would never have dreamed of trying to force himself on Remus, but suddenly his idle fancies of catching the boy unawares and kissing him made him feel like a villain. It was no wonder Remus had told him to keep his hands to himself. Sirius was surprised the other boy did not hate him on principle for his sexuality. Sirius would have understood if he had.

"So," said Remus, eyes measuring, gauging Sirius's reaction to his story, "are you sorry you asked?"

Sirius bit his lip. "No. But - I am sorry I grabbed you tonight. And I'm sorry I shut the window all those times." Now that he knew, Sirius thought he would rather set himself on fire than take away that one small comfort from Remus.

"You didn't know."

"No," agreed Sirius. "But I do now. I - thanks. For trusting me. I know you didn't want to tell. If anyone at this school ever gives you trouble, you let me know. I'll sort them out."

"Thanks." Remus's smile twitched momentarily back into existence. "I can take care of myself. But I think maybe you were a little bit right. I might be able to sleep tonight."

"Well, that's something." Sirius was not sure if he would ever be able to sleep again.

"You should get back to bed, too. You're all covered in gooseflesh."

Remus's fingers brushed Sirius's wrist, and Sirius swallowed hard. He longed to take Remus's hand, but if he did, Remus might never speak to him again. He might even hit him.

"G'night, Sirius," Remus said softly, getting to his feet. He did not offer Sirius a hand up, for which Sirius was both relieved and disappointed.

"Yeah. G'night."

He struggled up from the floor, stiff-kneed, and staggered back to his own bed, falling into it as pins and needles rushed up through his feet, but Sirius barely felt them. The hollow ache in his chest and the tightness in his throat left no room inside him for anything but helpless rage and the desire to protect Remus from any further harm.